What Moses Reveals About Your Life

The question I wanted to address tonight is that I'm going to address tonight is uh what's the story of what is and should be the story of of your life? The first part of addressing that question, I suppose, is why a story? Why the story of your life? Well, I think it's because I think it's because life is a story. And that's a strange idea that life is a story because you could say you tell a story about life. That's different than saying life is a story. But if you wanted to represent life and you wanted to do that most accurately and you had to do that with a story, which is what we do when we try to represent life, then why wouldn't you conclude that since the story is the most accurate, interesting, and memorable way of representing life, why would you conclude anything other than life's a story and and it is a story. And that's a very different view than life, let's say, in a dead material world of automatons and and creatures that are deterministic in their movement forward. A story is a romance or a story is an adventure. A story is something that has a deep intrinsic meaning or it's not much of a story. And you go to a movie, you go to a story, you go to a movie, you watch a book, and if it's not engaging, if it doesn't attract your attention and and and bring you along, it's not much of a story. And what that seems to indicate is that it's not a very accurate representation of life. Because why would you be bored or disenchanted or disengaged when you're being told or watching or acting out a poor story if that wasn't a deviation from from the ideal that you're actually hoping to experience, right? And so life is a story and stories vary in their quality. And we have an instinct for assessment of that variation. And that instinct is really whether or not we find the story meaningful and engaging. And so that also implies that the proper story of your life would be one that's meaningful and engaging. Now I I realized something a long time ago. This is a matter of definition. And so in some ways it's a matter of faith. Like so many things are in life, you're you're an ignorant creature and there are limits to your knowledge. It means you have to put a stake in the sand somewhere. You have to decide what you're going to regard as real and act and act in relationship with an as if it's real. And we're enjoined by the reductionist materialist types, the enlightenment types particularly to assume that life in the dead deterministic world of atoms, let's say, is meaningless in its essence with an overlay on me of meaning on top of it, which is our arbitrary way of dealing with the hopelessness of our fate on this insignificant planet in a third rate solar system on the edge of one galaxy among trillions. That is a way of looking at the world, but it's not a very interesting or productive way of looking at the world and it it tends to produce a certain kind of bitter hopelessness and that could well be an indication that there's something little offkilter about it. You can start from a different perspective and this is a more religious perspective although there are also philosophical schools that adopt it and you could make the case that no what's really what's real in its most fundamental essence is what motivates you what what interests you what you find deeply meaningful real is a matter of definition in many ways. I mean I mean you pay for the definition. It's not like there's not consequences for the definition, but you make a decision about what you're going to regard as real. Could investigate that a little bit. Even the materialist types tend to act as if their pain is real. Right? Pain has that intrinsically meaningful quality which is core. It's it's the essence of pain to be meaningful. It's not something you can ignore. It's something that brings you to a halt. It brings you to your knees. It it can make life itself unbearable. It's not something you can set aside with your disbelief. It's it's plenty real. And and I think that's an undeniable truth. You certainly act as if it is. And you don't. And then so there's another question that emerges from that observation which is well if pain is real which is a reasonable proposition then what helps you cope with pain is equally or more real like that's a good way of thinking about a battle between different realities is the the victor of the battle is the more more real phenomen phenomena and what helps you deal with pain? Well, love. I mean, we know this even biochemically. If you have a child and the child scrapes his knee, let's say, on the cement and he runs to you and you kiss it better, that works. And part of the reason it works, we know this biochemically is because the hug and the expression of care produce an release of indogenous opiates in the child's brain along with oxytocin. And both of those chemicals are reassuring and analesic. And so even at the biological level, love has the ability to ameliate pain. We can withstand a lot of pain in our lives if we're surrounded by love. And so that seems to give love a kind of reality that's irreducible. I don't find that it undermines these sorts of observations to point out the the biological the parallels the biological parallels with that. It's it makes perfect sense to me that what's meaningful and what's biological could work together in harmony in some sort of ultimate unity. I can't understand at all why that wouldn't be the case. Meaningful pursuit that also ameliates pain. We also know this technically. So it's very common, for example, for athletes who are involved in a very compelling game, let's say a championship game, if they're injured, they can carry on and then continue to play. And the reason for that, there's a technical reason for that. And the technical reason is that imagine you have a goal that you value, which of course you have in a sporting event because the goal is a goal. It's pretty straightforward. And the stakes of the goal are high. Perhaps that's the championship. And that's the goal of winning a set or a match made up of many goals. So it's like a meta goal to win a championship is a meta goal. And if you're a key player in that and you see yourself contributing in a meaningful manner to the movement towards that goal, that produces a release of a neurochemical, the neurochemical dopamine, which signals movement towards a valuable goal, which produces positive emotion and enthusiasm. It it produces that sense that what you're doing is meaningful or it's an index of the fact that what you're doing is meaningful. That's a better way of thinking about it. And that's analesic. And so meaningful engagement and love are both medications for pain. And pain's pretty real. And so why not assume that what alleviates suffering is real? Uh you'll pay for what alleviates suffering. You'll pursue it. what you actually do seems to be a good index of what you regard as real. And so if you're willing to pursue if you're willing to pursue something, that's a evidence that you have faith in its value and that you believe in its reality. So now with stories they they indicate what people believe to be real. So when you go to a movie for example or when you you hear a story, you read a story, what you're watching or listening to, what you're simulating with your imagination is the theory of reality that the character that you're watching is applying to the world. That's the story they're acting out or the story they're telling themselves. And what you see when you go to see a movie is you see a character pursuing his aim and perhaps transforming that aim as the plot develops. That's the development of character is the transformation of aim, the sequential transformation of aim. And that's that's the story of life in many ways is that each of the episodes in your life is bounded by an aim. What you're trying to accomplish, the destination you're attempting to reach, motivated by the call of something that fills you with enthusiasm. And then the transformation of those aims across time as your wisdom increases or your corruption if you're playing a negative game. As your wisdom increases, the aim transforms and becomes higher and your character grows and develops. And that's what you want to see when you see a movie or when you read a great book. You want to see someone pursuing his aim and then you want to see the transformations of those aims that transform his character in some manner that sheds light on the structure of the world. And that can be a hero who's climbing upward and becoming more than he is on a continual basis transforming as he pursues his aim with the transformation of aim that that entails. Or you can see someone degenerate into hell essentially by aiming down, corrupting himself, aiming down more bitterly, corrupting himself more and pursuing that pathway until he's an avatar of the abyss itself. And both of those patterns of characterization are salutary. They're both informative because you would like to aim up assuming that you would like to have your life improve and the life of those around you. Assuming that that could happen and that you believe it could happen, that you want it to happen. If you can simulate the life of a transforming hero, then you can practice in your imagination that upward pathway. And that's what you're doing when you participate in the world of fiction, of literature. It's what you do in in some sense as well when you're going to a sports event with the other 20,000 people who are joining you in your worship and it's a worship of AIM, right? Because every sporting event is a celebration of aim and a communal admission of the value of that skillful aim and a participation in the process of the development of that aim. because you want to see skilled athletes on the field getting better at what they do. That's the most exciting part of a of any athletic competition. It's not only the competition and the possibility of victory, but you want to see the athletes push themselves to their limits while they're engaged in that and becoming more than they are while they're doing that. And that when you watch that on the field, when you watch that, say in a gymnastics contest where you see someone really hovering on the edge of disaster and pushing them pushing themselves past where they even thought they could go, that's the sort of thing that'll bring the whole crowd spontaneously to its feet, right? Because that's a testament to the it's a testament to the logos of human nature. this ability to move beyond the zone of comfort and to develop an ever deeper level of skill and commitment while pursuing an aim. Right? And that's what you see in an athletic competition. And that's what you participate in as an athlete. And that's what you portray as a writer. And that's what you act out as an actor. And that's what you simulate as a as a as an observer, as a as a member of the audience. >> Imagine your favorite lecture. Dial that up on Max, put that on steroids, and then add some cinematic elements [music] to it. That's the best way I could describe a Peterson Academy lecture. >> I went to college because [music] I had to. I go to Peterson Academy because I want to. I'm still paying off college from 10 years ago. And I'm also still [music] questioning the value that I got out of college. >> In traditional universities, a lot of times it's just pretty dry. They don't bring the same energy as the professors at Peterson Academy. And >> it is a completely different experience to learn from somebody [music] who actually wants to teach you. If you've been on the fence about this, this is the time. >> That thing that's calling to you, you won't have an answer for it unless you enroll and see for yourself. You [music] have the opportunity to investigate that calling. And how do you simulate that? That's something remarkable, something intensely interesting. You simulate this that the same way that you come to understand another person. And you don't come to understand a person by taking their arguments apart and understanding them rationally. That isn't how we do it. Uh that's too painstaking and people aren't that coherent anyways. Um often in their presentation they're full of complexities and contradictions and we don't build ourselves rationally even though we can be rational. That isn't what you do. What you do is you watch a person and you infer their aim. And that's why you watch their eyes, right? Because their eyes point at what they're aiming at. And you watch their eyes. And our eyes actually evolved so that they're maximally visible. Black people, colored background on a white canvas, right? They're very evident. And that's because all of our ancestors whose eyes couldn't be read were either killed or didn't reproduce because everyone wants to know what you're up to. And they infer that by watching your eyes, which is why we gaze into each other's faces when we talk. What's this person up to? What are they looking at? What are they devoting their attention to? They're devoting their attention to what they value. What do they value? the aim at which they're pointing. How do we understand that? We see their aim. We adopt it momentarily and we replicate the experience on our own body. So to walk a mile in someone else's shoes is to adopt their aim. And that means to see the world through their eyes. Literally to see the objects of their perception. Because what we perceive are things that move us toward or impede our progress. in relationship to an aim. That's what an object is. It's not a dead fact. It's something living in relationship to a journey forward. And this is technically true. We understand this about perception. All facts are not equal. We don't perceive everything in the world. We perceive relevant things in the world. And those are the facts at hand. The relevant facts. And relevant facts are relevant because they pertain to a goal. Even in a simple situation, if I want to walk across this stage to move from point A here to point B there, I am making the assumption that point B, the place I'm headed is better than the place I'm at because otherwise why go? And that's why the chicken crossed the road, by the way. Um, and then when I look on that pathway that opens itself up because of my aim, I can see the pathway forward. I can see these chairs, let's say, as obstacles in my path. The fact that I perceive them as obstacles in relationship to the aim means that I perceive them with negative emotion. Things that get in your way, elicit negative emotion. That's a marker of an obstacle. And things that move you forward elicit positive emotion. Enemies get in your way. And allies and friends facilitate your movement forward. And enemies raise your eye and make you anxious. And friends fill you with enthusiasm. And the desire to cooperate towards that shared aim. And that's the landscape of the world. That's the story that you inhabit. this journey from point A to point B, right? A story is the representation of an aim. It's the representation of a journey. And it's more than that because it can be a sequence of transforming aims. That's a complex characterization. And then it's more than that too because it can be a story of how the aim transforms because there's a pattern. When you go to point from point A to point B, you can just go there and that's not much of a story. Or you can start to go there and you can encounter the allies and tools that move you forward or the obstacles and pitfalls that interfere with your progress and transform you. And that's a deeper story. The deeper story is I was moving from A to B and something emerged that I didn't expect and in consequence of that unexpected occurrence I changed dramatically and my aim shifted and I started to move upward in a different direction as a transformed person and a sequence of stories like that is a tale of character development and that's exactly what happens in biblical narratives, that's exactly what they portray, this story that we inhabit of upward transformation. And I'll give you a concrete example of that tonight so that you understand more deeply what this means. I'm going to tell you some of the story of of of Exodus, of the story of Moses, and uh you'll see how it fits this archetypal pattern. And it's a portrayal of the story itself. Okay. So, what's the basic story of Exodus? Well, the Israelites are going somewhere. They have a point B, right? They have a plan. They have an aim. They have a destination. They have a purpose. And that purpose is the journey to the promised land. And what does that mean for you? Well, everything you do has that structure. Because if you're doing it, what would you say? If if you're doing it right, everything you do has that structure. Well, why? Well, if you're not moving somewhere better, why move, right? So, and I'm I'm really I'm dead serious about this is that the motivation to move is allied with the faith that the place you're going is better. So what that means is whether you know it or not, this is assuming you're not bitter, twisted, nihilistic, and downward aiming. Right? I'm I'm assuming that you're on the upward path. We can lay out the other alternatives as well, but for the sake of this presentation, we'll assume that what you're acting out is a comedy with a happy ending rather than a tragedy that culminates in catastrophe because you can act that out, too. And if you don't know the story of your life, it might be that that's the one you're acting out and you should probably figure that out. So, you're going to act out one story or another or it's going to use you as its agent. Those are the options. Upward aiming moves you from what? From the un undesirable state that you're in to the more desirable state that you're hoping to achieve. How is that portrayed in the Exodus story? What's the undesirable state? Tyranny or more precisely the dynamic between tyranny and slavery. Right? Because those two things dance. You can't have one without the other. The Israelites are under the thumb of the Pharaoh and the Egyptian state. They've been transformed into slaves, the ancient Hebrews, because they had the timmerity to be successful. Right? So that's a story that's many thousands of years old and it's the same story that's playing out on university campuses right now. Right? The temerity of the Jews to be the successful minority. That's what dooms them to slavery in Egypt. They arrive there as beneficial visitors under the authority of Joseph and the new Pharaoh forgets their contributions and the resentful Egyptians who are angry with the Hebrews for their success turn them into slaves. And so that's been going on for a very long period of time. And so the Israelites are burdened by the yoke of the ty the tyrant and a leader arises to speak for them. That's Moses. Okay. So who's Moses in relationship to you? Well, you might say no one because I'm not a leader. or no one because I I'm not what I'm not a s I'm not a member of the tribe of slaves and I'm not and I would say well you should rethink that because there's a fundamental significance to this story and the story is trying to situate each person in the actual landscape of human existence and that landscape is characterized by tyranny and slavery always. Okay. So, how can you understand that? Well, tyranny exists at multiple levels, right? Multiple levels of social reality. So, let's walk through. And I mean this I don't just mean this metaphysically. I mean this in the case of actual tyranny as well. Don't be thinking that tyranny is just something political. That's a big mistake. It's something that exists at the level of it exists in relationship. It exists in your relationship with yourself. You can be a tyrant to yourself. No problem. That's extremely common. You have stubborn, foolish ideas that have possessed you who whose origin you're unconscious of that dominate you in ways that you that your slavish habits allow. And that's always the case. And that's just you as an individual. So the part of you that has a redemptive quality, the part of you that could be a leader could stand up against your your tyranny to yourself and your proclivity to be a slave to that tyranny. And that's something you will wrestle with in your life. You as tyrant, you know, maybe you're a harsh taskmaster. or you're hard on yourself and you're using the stick instead of the carrot constantly. You force yourself to do things. You exist in a relationship of power with regard to your present and your past and your future. You crush your desires. You force yourself to step forward in your traces and you're a tyrant and a slave simultaneously. And in principle, you could rise above that and be an agent of transformation and escape from that dynamic. That dynamic doesn't only exist psychologically. Let's say maybe that characterizes your marriage, right? And that you're a tyrant and your wife is a slave or she's a tyrant and you're a slave or you take turns being tyrant and slave. But the relationship, the degenerate relationship has degenerated in the direction of the expression of power. And that's the definition of a degenerate relationship. And so you could be the tyrant in your marriage or you could be the slave in your marriage or you could be whatever the alternative is to tyranny and slavery and you could fight that battle out in your marriage, which you will. you will. It's like the definition of marriage that and then it's the same with your family. Like, are you a tyrant to your kids or are you a slave to your two-year-old? That's more common now than the tyrannical situation. And so, all that means is the 2-year-old's the tyrant, which is very, very common. It's very, very common. It's very bad for a 2-year-old to be the boss because he knows he doesn't know anything and he's already on top. It's like, what the hell is he going to do for the rest of his life? So, that means the t the two-year-old who's a tyrant is immediately lost in the desert, right? It's very, very bad. So, you can be a slave to your children, you can be a tyrant, and then it's the same in relationship to your parents. And it's the same in relationship to your friends. Maybe you don't have friends. Maybe you're the sickopant to the local bully. Or maybe you're the bully and you have sycopants. Or or maybe you're such a slave to your appalling habits that you don't have any friends at all. So that just means your fantasies are tyrannical, your fantasies of revenge and isolation. And then maybe as a business person, you tyrannize over your employees. And maybe you try that with your customers, which is not a good strategy, by the way. Right? you. It's not a good strategy with your employees either, that power dynamic. But power corrupts, as they say, and if you're in a position where you can wield the rod, the temptation to do so is something against which you will struggle. And that's part of the eternal dynamic of slavery and tyranny. And then it becomes more obvious when you start thinking about the community or the state or the nation. Well, that's usually where we think of tyranny residing. You can see that proclivity for tyranny now in the west really start to invade the more local forms of community organization, the school boards and the municipalities that are taking or the universities that are taking a vicious turn towards authoritarianism. And we know that that can possess a whole state that happens repeatedly and certainly a nation. And then you might say, well, what's a nation like when it's a tyranny? And you might think Hitler and Stalin and Mao and the freedomloving people on whose neck the heel of authority rests. And that's complete bloody rubbish. That is not how a tyranny works. In a true tyranny, everyone is a tyrant to themselves. Every self-tyrannizing thug is a tyrant to his wife. Every couple is a tyrant to their children. Every family is a tyrant to the neighbors. That the tyranny in the slavery is everywhere at once. And that's a totalitarian state. That's why it's totalitarian. And along with that comes the grip of the lie. Every single person in that awful dynamic, slave to the totality, tyrant in the moment, every single one of those participants is lying about absolutely everything to themselves and to everyone they love 100% of the time. And that's the story of hell. That's for sure. And so this landscape that's portrayed in Exodus, this is this is the human realm. This is the human realm and the battle against tyranny and slavery in favor of the proper alternative. That's life really. Now Moses becomes a leader. How? Well, that's interesting. Moses is transformed into a leader when he encounters the burning bush. So, let me tell you that story because this will tell you how to be a leader. It's a good thing to know. Well, unless you want to be a tyrant or a slave and and you can want both of those maybe simultaneously. The tyrant has power and can gratify his whims and the slave has no responsibility. So, what a deal that is for the slave. And every tyrant needs a slave. And if you're not a leader, then you're a slave or a tyrant. Moses is out. Moses is an adult when he becomes a leader. That's a good story. It's like, how about you're an adult before you're a leader, right? Something university students should be taught on campus. It's like you're 18. Seven years ago, you were 11. You don't know anything. You're not a leader. Why? Your your parents subsidize you or the state. You haven't had a job. You've never supported yourself. You don't have any children. You have no responsibility. It's like, you're not a leader. You're not going to fix the world. You can't even keep your dorm room clean. Moses is an adult. When he had when the call comes for him to become a leader, he is married. He's established a good relationship with his father-in-law, Jethro, who plays a very important role in the Exodus story. Um, he's the kind of husband who chases away the thugs, which is how he meets his wife to be initially. She's trying to draw water from a well. And Moses is a master of water, by the way, like Christ. She's trying to draw water from a well. And there's thugs around the around the well sight. And he chases them away. And so his future wife is pretty happy about this, as she should be, because Moses shows himself as the man who has enough spine to keep the thugs at bay. And that's the responsibility of any man who's masculine in the fundamental sense is to keep the true predators at bay. [snorts] And that theme is amplified by his choice of profession. Moses is a shepherd as an adult. And that's not a high status occupation. It's a workingclass job, but it's a noble workingclass job. And that's emphasized in the scriptures repeatedly because the shepherd is very frequently the savior. David is a shepherd for example and Christ is a shepherd as in in the metaphorical sense. And so why a shepherd? Well, it was a hard job being a shepherd in the in the ancient world. You had to fend for yourself. You were isolated for long periods of time. You had to guard and defend the most vulnerable sheep. Lambs even more particularly were quite tender and delicious. And there were lions and wolves. And you had like a spear and a shield and a slingshot. And that's not a lot of armament to take on a lion, let's say. And so if you were a shepherd, you were an adult and you could take care of things that were vulnerable and you could keep the beasts of prey at bay. And that's what Moses was. And he was having a pretty good time of it being a shepherd, a credible job. He had a couple of wives, got along with his father-in-law, he was away from the tyrants because he'd left Egypt. He's an adult. So now one day he's out with his sheep wandering about in the wilderness and he's near Mount Si or Horeb. And Mount Si is a pyramid with its pinnacle in the clouds. It's the place where earth and heaven meet. Now why is a mountaintop that place? Well, partly because up is good. So up is heavenward. Uh partly because as you climb a mountain, you rise above things. Partly because when you climb a mountain, you can see everything much more broadly. And that expansion of vision is associated with enlightenment and illumination with the ability to see widely and far. And so the mountain pyramid is a classic place where earth and heaven which is the ultimate up meet and many magical transformations happen at mount si and Moses transformation into a leader is one of them. And so he's going from point A to B as a shepherd guiding his flock and something attracts his attention. Now that's worth knowing. People in the modern world have no idea where to find God, so to speak. They believe they have to have the faith in God which is something like the proclamation of a set of descriptive beliefs. I believe in God. That's not what happens to Moses. What happens to Moses is that God reveals himself to Moses. That's a whole different kettle of fish, you might say. And how does that happen? Well, you need to know this because it happens to you and you don't notice it. And that's a mistake. So God is characterized frequently in the biblical texts as the spirit of calling. Now that's not his only characterization. He's characterized as well in many ways as conscience, for example, the voice of conscience. But the spirit of calling is a prime characterization. The spirit of calling is that which fills you with enthusiasm, right? The desire to move forward. this analesic pleasure in the journey upward. That's calling. And enthusiasm means to be enthusiastic means to be filled with the spirit of God. Because the root word enthos theos is deos. It's deity. It's God. To be enthusiastic is to be filled with the spirit of the divine. So that's something to know too. What makes you enthusiastic? What calls you forward? Well, you have to notice and you have to understand that it will take you off the beaten path. Even if the path you're on is a adult, mature and useful path. The call of what will transform you will come from the side so to speak and it will take you off the path. Okay. So now, how do you understand that in your life? Well, are you interested in things? And then you might think, well, is that a good way of saying it? I'm interested in something. It's like, not exactly. E, because you don't get to pick what you're interested in. It's more like what you're interested in picks you, right? You find yourself interested in something. Something beckons. a dream, a desire, uh a fantasy, something that says to you that you could be more than you are and your life could be more than it is. Now, that can be pathological. You can you can nurse a false calling and become delusional, but that has nothing to do with the core phenomena. your children develop and mature like you do because they they're called by the world to move out into it, right? The spirit of adventure beckons to them and it does that like it does for you by gripping their interest and that's what a calling is. And so this is what happens to Moses. He catches out of the corner of his eye a glimpse of something glimmering and glittering and beckoning like the snitch that Harry Potter chases in in the Quidditch game in in the Harry Potter series, right? That meta game that the seeker is playing that if successful also constitutes the victory over in the actual game, right? It's seek and you will find. Knock and the door will open. And that's what happens to Moses. Something beckons to him. This is something to understand. You will see in your life that things call to you and that there's something behind what calls to you. Well, what is it that's behind what calls to you as your aim transforms as you move upward? Well, classically, that's the spirit of the ancestral God of Abraham and Isaiah. It's a definition, right? So God makes himself manifest in what calls you upward. And that's so useful to know because no matter where you start, murderous shepherd, that's where Moses starts. He flew from Egypt. He fleed from Egypt because he murdered someone. He starts in a pretty rough place. It's like, well, you can start in a rough place. Well, how? Well, aim up. Well, I don't know where up is. It's the opposite of down. Okay. I'm dead serious about that. I don't care how confused you are. There's some stupid things you're doing that you know are stupid. You know they're hurting you. By your own definition, you know it with certainty. Stop doing those. That's a start. That's an upward aim. Well, what and what? Why? Because you're going to stop doing stupid things so your life gets better. It's a proclamation of a decision made in faith. Things could be better. I could take action. If you are even dimly apprehend the next stage up, you're on the path. And if you make it closer to that proximal up, your vision will clear and the next destination will make itself known. And that's Jacob's ladder, by the way, that spirals upward forever with the God of the ancient Jews beckoning at the apex. That's a definition is God is the spirit that stands behind everything that calls to you, right? Behind love, behind curiosity, behind hope, behind that compul that compulsion of interest that pulls you down the pathway of your destiny. I and I've interviewed many people who've been very successful and I often ask them how their calling made itself manifest in their life and it's often very early. These people Joo Willink for example who's this brute of a soldier who's about three feet thick this way and like quite the bloody monster and a very good man but with all the capacity to be a very bad man. And he knew he was going to be a soldier when he was like three. And I'm sure his parents knew it, too, cuz I imagine he was one of those kids that was running around the house shooting the cat with a toothpaste tube, you know. So, people have their pattern of interest very, very young. Often, not always, but often, it makes itself manifest and pulls them along. And that's in you. And maybe you repress it. Maybe you're afraid of it because you think you'll betray yourself. if you don't think you have it in you or you don't want the responsibility. But man, you reject the call at your great peril, right? Literally the peril of your soul and you imperil everything by doing so because if you don't follow what calls to you, you don't become who you could be. And then the world's a lesser and more evil place because of that lack. And that's on you. Like seriously, that's on you. And you feel that in the pointlessness and bitterness and misery of your misbegotten life. That's the voice of conscience telling you that the path of irresponsibility that you chose in preference to the call is the pathway to hell itself and not just for you. And that's man that's the brutal truth. And so Moses has enough faith to wander off the path to investigate. And what he sees is a flaming tree. Well, why a tree? What's the tree of life? Well, why a tree? Well, a tree is alive and it branches upward and it grows from nothing from a little seed into this magnificent thing that stretches its leaves up towards the sun. And the tree is life itself. And it's on fire because living things are on fire. And so it's like the essence of life magnified. That's what a burning bush is. And that's what you see when you see I took my daughter when she was about 16 months old up to this cabin in northern Saskatchewan, which is a province, a rural province that's mostly inhabited by old people. And we took my daughter to this cabin with my parents. And they had a lot of their friends there, all retirees. And my daughter was very happy child. And she wandered around in this little cabin living room playing away and chirping away happily and you know on fire like little kids are. And all those grandparents they just sat there and watched her like they were watching fire itself. And that's because they were. And there's a glow in that, you know, that attractiveness of children that is the revelation of infinite possibility and and the blessedness of of the of the what untrabled spirit of childhood, that expansive attempt to reveal the light and move upward. And they were entranced by that as wise old people are. And Moses encounters that as you do when anything grips you or when anything makes you love it or anything calls you forward. It's what is that? Well, it's the spirit of life itself calling to you. And you could say, well, that's the instinct for development. And I'd say fine, I don't care if you want to think about it from a biological perspective. Doesn't make any difference. you have a instinct or impulse to continually mature and develop into more than you are fine. It doesn't matter how you construe that in some fundamental sense the instinct and the religious will line up in any case and Moses investigates. And as he investigates, he first removes his shoes and that's a sign of respect. He wants to touch the ground again to to shed anything that separates him from what's most real. And in taking off his shoes, he also abandons his current identity. Shoes signify identity. Shoes are part of the uniform of work. Let's say there's soldiers boots. There's Dorothy's red shoes in the Wizard of Oz. There's the glass slippers of of the of the princess. shoes signify your current pathway and Moses sheds them because he's ready to change which you have to be if you follow the calling that pulls you off the path towards the destiny that's characterized by the revelation of who you could be and Moses continues to confer with this phenomena that attracts him and it pulls him in more and more deeply and that's what happens happens in your life. And you know this because maybe you committed in some minor way to some personal deviation to some hobby to some obsessive interest that pulled you away from your mundane identity towards the domain of your interest and you concentrated on it deeply and learned a lot because of your pursuit. And in that learning you got deeper and deeper into things. you started to understand. I I had a friend, a professor who took up stamp collecting when he was like 55. You think stamp collecting, you know, was pretty mundane occupation, but he traveled all over the UK to find these stamps and he talked to all these people who collected and he collected old stamps and that brought him much more into contact with the history of his country and he become became a very avid amateur historian. And like everything that you take seriously leads to everything else, right? Everything that's true and real that you interact with partakes in the structure of reality itself. And if you take it seriously enough, then that reality will make itself known to you. And what's the consequence of that? Well, what happens to Moses is that God himself speaks from the depths of the burning tree of life. And that's what happens when you take something seriously enough to go deep. That's what happens to you. And so what happens to Moses? Well, God says, "I am who I am. I'm the spirit of being itself. I'm what always has been and what is now and what always will be. And that's what's calling to you." And it's telling you to shed who you are and become who you could be. And Moses says, "Well, who's that?" And God says, "The leader who eternally leads people away from the tyrant and the thr of slavery." And Moses says, 'Well, who's going to listen to me?' And God says, 'If you tell them I sent you, they'll listen. And you think, well, what does that mean? It's like, well, if you listen to someone who's deeply engaged telling you about what they know, you listen. Well, why? Because their speech has the charisma of truth. And you can tell that. I mean, you can be gamed. A charlatan psychopath can fake that, but not for long. That's what the court magicians do. in the Pharaoh's court as they ape magic. But there's real magic, too. And that's the magic of someone who's gone deep. And Moses says, "Well, I'm slow of tongue. I'm not much of a speaker." And God says, "That's your problem, buddy. Sort it out." And what does that mean? It's like while you have your problems and your insufficiencies, your areas of no talent, let's say, and no doubt you console yourself with the proposition that in your flawed state, it's okay that you take a back seat because what could you do anyways? And that's just wrong. It's like you're called upon to do what you can regardless of your flaws. Because if that wasn't the case, then no one would ever be called upon to do anything because there's no one without their requisite flaws and their abilities, their talents that they're both unique. And it's your fate to contend with them. And God says, "Well, the fact you can't talk's no problem for me because I'm God and I made everything. So, you don't really have to worry about that being an impediment." And then he says more practically, "Don't you have a brother, Aaron? Can't he talk?" Moses says, 'Yeah.' And God says, 'Well, why don't you just take him along for the ride? And what's the wisdom in that? It's, well, if you pursue your calling and you're called upon to be more than you are, and you have impediments in your way, you don't have to do it alone. You could find some other people to take on the adventure with you, and there's enough bloody adventure for them, too. It's not like they have to take a back seat. It's not a zero sum game adventure. There's more than enough for everyone. There's enough difficulty in life so everyone could strive to their utmost and not exhaust the possibility. Right? All that would do is make more possibility. Right? Life is not a zero- sum game. And it's a corrupt proposition to hypothesize otherwise there's not enough for everyone. What does that mean? Well, there better be enough for me, right? Because that's the first thing that leaps to mind. It's like, no, there's plenty of trouble for everyone. So, you don't have to worry if you're not up for the job if you can ally yourself with others and you have the humility to understand who they might be. Well, the more the marrier. So Moses goes back to Egypt and he he's told by God to face down the tyrant. And that's a hell of a thing. But that's if you don't want to be a slave and you don't want to be boxed in by your presumption of your own or ordinariness. If you don't want to be sterile and frozen and turned to lifeless stone, if you don't want to be a dead branch, then you better learn how to talk to the tyrant. And how do you do that? Well, you tell them the truth, right? And that's what overthrows the tyranny. And God tells Moses something very specific, which is very much worth knowing, very much relevant to the story that we're telling. God tells Moses, you go to the Pharaoh and you tell him this very specifically. You say, "God has commanded me to tell you to let my people go." Right? That's a very famous line. All you Americans know that from the civil rights movement, let my people go. That was the clarion call partly for the American Revolution. Certainly the clarion call for the civil rights movement in the 1960s which used the Exodus theme repeatedly as a motivating and uniting motif. But that isn't what God tells Moses. He says, "Tell the Pharaoh to let my people go so they may worship me in the wilderness." Right? And he doesn't just say that once. He says that once per plague. Exactly those words. And that's very relevant because what God sets up as the alternative to tyranny is not anarchctic hedonistic freedom. That's not the dynamic. The dynamic is the properly structured state as the antithesis of tyranny and slavery. Of course, that begs the question, what's the properly structured state? Right? And you can think about that state multiple ways. You could think about it as the state of your mind. You could think about it as the state of your house. You could think about it as the state of the nation. Doesn't matter. It's the same pattern at all the different levels of potential analysis. What's the proper state that characterizes the alternative to tyranny and slavery? You think tyranny and slavery as opposites although they dance perversely together but there's a alternative that stands in opposition to both and that's the mystery. That's the right story. What's the alternative that stands in opposition to tyranny and slavery? Well, Moses confronts the pharaoh and performs his magic which the magicians of the court are able to duplicate for the first four or five tricks. And then as the charlatans of tyrants are want to do, their tricks fail. Moses warns the Pharaoh, "Let my people go so they may worship me in the wilderness or or what? Or hell's going to break loose." Well, what does that mean in relationship to tyranny? Well, how often have you stuck to something stupidly to torture yourself and not even learned from that? Well, that's in the nature of the tyrant. What does the tyrant do? A tyrant is the person who refuses to learn from their own mistakes. And what happens if you refuse to learn from your own mistakes? Well, that's easy. Each mistake gets worse. And that's what happens to the Pharaoh and the Egyptians. First of all, the world falls apart. The plagues come up from underneath, so to speak. the natural world rebels and then the heavens fall apart and darkness falls and then the future itself is destroyed and that's the death of the firstborn. And the moral of that story is if you're tyrannical enough and you refuse to learn in the face of mounting evidence, not only will you destroy the present, you will destroy the future. And that's what happens to the Egyptians. And that's what happens to everyone who insists upon remaining the tyrant who's absolutely right in the face of all disisconfirming evidence. And the opposite of that is humility. It's like maybe you're wrong. That's why you're miserable. And so you pray, "God, reveal to me the manifold ways in which the tyranny of my presumptions makes me wrong." That's a prayer that'll be answered to the great relief of everyone who knows you. The Pharaoh refuses that and brings devastation on his state. And of course, that's what tyrants do. So there's nothing about that that isn't true. The Egyptians leave. They despoil the Israelites leave. They despoil the Egyptians. The Egyptians leave their treasure on the table for the Israelites to take. Well, what does that mean? Took me a long time to figure that out. It's like, well, what happens in a tyranny? This is what's happened in the universities. People in a tyranny forget what's valuable. They just forget it. It's like they they're so warped that they think that the true value lies somewhere else. So the universities have left truth, beauty, justice, the scientific method, and the entire religious tradition on the table. For what? For anyone to take and use. It's like, well, if you're going to leave that behind, someone's going to pick it up because that's where the treasure is. And that's what happens to the Israelites when they leave Egypt. They take the treasure with them because the tyrant forgets what it is. And so now they're in the desert. They cross the Red Sea. Why? Well, look, man. When you first escape from the tyranny of your own presumptions, there's going to be some cataclysm associated with that. You know what it's like to learn something painfully, right? It just about kills you. You were so wrong that you almost die to learn. And so that's the Red Sea. That's the sea of blood that wipes out the tyrant. And Moses can weave his way across that chaos maybe in one fell swoop or maybe there's traditions differ in this. Maybe by feeling his way across carefully like someone who's thoughtful does and the Israelites cross the Red Sea of catastrophic cataclysmic destruction of of the tyranny and they end up not in the promised land. And this is something to know and this is part of the story. Why do people stubbornly adhere to their to the beliefs that make even them miserable tyrants? And the answer is better the tyranny than the desert. Right? Better a certainty that's false than a confusion that's real or that's what people are afraid of. It's like I can't let go of that. Where would I be? And the answer is lost in the desert for three generations. Right? the poor Israelites. It's like a short trip geographically. I heard the other day that your state spent 11 billion dollar building 1600 ft of high-speed rail, $80 million a foot. Okay, how do you account for that? If you're confused enough, it takes you forever and costs everything to do nothing, right? Well, that's the condition. There's no limit to the amount of time and money you can waste if you're confused enough. Right? And so that's and the the Israelites are confused. They have the habits of slaves, right? So they don't know anything. They're not used to taking care of themselves. They don't take responsibility. And the t the tyrants's gone. And so that they're wandering lost. Moses and God guide them, but it's a rough journey and it takes them a long time to shed the habits of slaves while they're in the desert. They and whine and moan and complain and lose faith constantly. They lose faith in Moses. They curse God. They doubt the existence of the promised land. And worse, they pine for the bloody tyranny. Well, didn't we have it good under the thumb of the Egyptians? At least we weren't wandering around in the desert. Right? And that's that's that false nostalgia for the pathological past that characterizes a kind of sentimental the worst of a of a blinkered sentimental conservatism. You saw this emerge in the Soviet Union. You know, in the midst of the 90s, everyone over 50 was pining for Stalin. You know, at least at least everyone knew where they were then. You know, that false nostalgia for the previous tyranny, another impediment to growth. You won't let go of your own iron grip on your soul because you'll be in the desert and you'll be so lost there that you'll wish that you were back in the grip of the idiot ideology that had you under its thumb. And that's what happens to the Israelites. They're the whiniest lot, constantly fighting with each other. Why? Well, they have the habits of slaves. They don't know how to negotiate. They don't know how to organize themselves into a community. They don't know how to take responsibility. They're used to being ordered around, which of course makes you a slave. And I suppose there's some misery in that. But you don't have to bloody well think, do you? You don't have to take any responsibility. And that's what the tyrannical state always offers idiot slaves is you won't have to think. You won't have to take any responsibility. Everything will be done for you. It's like well everything. Why should I even be around then? Well, that turns out to be a major problem for people in a tyranny. Like the utter meaninglessness of a life that's run according to, you know, a top-down patterned order. There's no adventure in that. All the adventure is in the responsibility and that's what's vacuumed up by the tyrants when the people themselves become irresponsible and slavish right and so all of you who are sitting there one of the questions I was going to ask you tonight is how many of you take an active role in your political in the in the political realm and you can ask yourself that and and here's something to think about is like for all you decent citizens who abdicate political responsibility. You need to understand that that void will be filled by tyrants, right? So, it's either you or the tyrants. That's the option. So, if it's not you and you're wondering why there's a lot of tyrants, it's because it's not you. And so, and we'll get to that. I'll I'll explain why that's the case. So, now the Israelites are out in the desert bitching and moaning and whining and fighting with each other because they don't have enough sense to settle their own their own disputes. And they start to pine for the Pharaoh who was always there when they needed him. And they set up Moses as a judge. And so he sits from morning till night judging the Israelites, listening to all their petty complaints and adjudicating, right? And you can imagine that's that's a very difficult job to take all that responsibility onto yourself. And at that point, Moses' father-in-law, Jethro, shows back up. And he's a good guy. Jethro, a a benevolent foreigner, pattern of character in the biblical corpus. The foreigner who has the wisdom that the tyrannical state has abandoned. Right? So, the foreigner as agent of transformation, that's Jethro. He comes and he sees Moses out there in the desert visiting his he's come for a visit to his son-in-law. And he sees Moses sitting from dawn till midnight judging the Israelites. And he says, "You got to stop doing that." And Moses says, "Well, why? You know, the people need me." And Jethro says, "Well, there's two reasons fundamentally. First of all, you're going to no one can do this. You can't take the weight of 150,000 people onto yourself. That's too much. You're just, you can't handle it. It's too much for you. It's too much for one man." And then he says, "But there's something worse. This is not good for the Israelites. It's like they're trying to make you into another pharaoh. They're abandoning the necessity to make responsible judgments for themsel. They're pushing it up the political hierarchy. They want to turn themselves into slaves and you into the king." And eventually the Israelites demand a king. This is much later in the biblical stories. They demand a king because everyone else has one. And God keeps saying, "You don't want a king. you could do things yourself. And the Israelites think, "We'd rather have a king." And God says, "Well, you know, those kings, they tend to turn into tyrants." And the Israelites say, "Well, as long as we get to be irresponsible, we don't care if we have a tyrant." And so, they end up with the kings. And that's not a good deal. And that's something your country realized a long time ago, right, when it was founded, that responsible citizens don't need a king. Why? because they do the bloody work themselves. And what's the utility in that? Well, then you get to have a life. So that's what Jethro tells Moses. It's one of the most brilliant, very short part of the biblical story. He says, "Look, this is what you have to do. You got to take all these people and you got to make a hierarchy out of them. And here's how you do it. find familial groups, kin groups of 10 people and get them to nominate a leader. And then when the anyone in those 10 has something to about, they can bring their problems to the leader and he can sort it out. And then maybe now and then there'll be a problem that the leader of 10 can't adjudicate. And so put the leaders into groups and then have them elect another leader. And then if a dispute can't be settled locally, it can move up one rung to the next level of self-government and do that all the way up to groups of 10,000. And then you can put yourself at the top and any dispute that isn't settled as it moves up the hierarchy of responsibility can land on you and you can have a chat with God about it. And that'll alleviate the excess burden of responsibility that you've pridefully taken on yourself in your unconscious desire to become the new Pharaoh because the pull of power is a temptation for Moses. And it'll be real good for the damn Israelites because they'll have to stop being immature slaves and figure out how to solve their own problems. Then they won't need a bloody tyrant. And that's the establishment of what's called the principle of subsidiarity which is a core doctrine in Catholic social theory. And the doctrine is the alternative to tyranny and slavery is a hierarchy of distributed responsibility. Starting with the individual, you have something to do. Moving to the family to the marriage, the couple is a unit of responsibility. Moving from that to the family, another unit of responsibility. from that to the local community and then to the state and then to the nation with responsibility distributed down that hierarchy as far down as it can possibly be distributed. Then you don't need a king. Then you're not a you're not under the thumb of a tyranny and you're not a slave. And what does it require? It requires the voluntary adoption of maximal responsibility. And that's what's the payoff? You get to be a man or a woman who's mature and integrated and contributing to the community in a meaningful way and bear the weight of bringing the order that is good into the world on your own shoulders. And what's the payoff for that? Well, you get to do it and it happens and you don't need a king and you're not a slave. But there's more to it than that. It's the same as having an adventure, right? To take on that responsibility. That's that's what gives you value even in your own eyes. You know, that ability to take some of the burden of the world on your own shoulders or maybe a plenty of it not only for you but also for your wife, for your husband and for your children and for your town and your community, right? And you can see then that you are a locust of stability and positive transformation operating in the world. And there isn't anything that's more deeply meaningful than that. And there's no difference between that and establishing the proper covenant with the God who sits at the top of Jacob's eternal ladder. That's all the same thing. And that what that means is a properly God-fearing responsible citizenry is no longer under the heel of tyrant and no longer pro prone to the hedonistic blandishments of the irresponsible slave. And that's a great deal. And one of the things that it's very useful for you Americans in particular to understand is that's the story of your country like seriously and your country is very highly functional and most of you admire success and this is a real remarkably non-envious society and it's unbelievably productive and hospitable and trusting and generous. Remarkably so, uniquely so in the world and uniquely so in the history of the world. And why? Because you adopted a subsidiary structure of self-governance. And you adopted the roles of voluntary of the citizens who took the burden of governance onto themselves. And look what's happened. Don't lose that. Don't lose that. The world depends on that. And so what's the story? What's the story? Well, you're going from point A to B, right? And it's punctuated. A, is it tyranny that you're trying to escape from? Or a state of slavery? There's something wrong with where you are. Where are you headed? Somewhere better or you wouldn't want to go there? That's the eternal movement upward towards the promised land. upward up the holy mountain towards the kingdom of heaven up towards the heavenly city of Jerusalem to the place where the lights are on the hill. Right? Everyone understands that imagery. That's where you're headed. That's what motivates you in life. That's what holds you together. That's what unites the community. Along the way, you leave the tyranny. And it's not a linear journey to up. It's a punctuated journey because you end up in the desert. That's a consequence of your previous idiocy and refusal to learn. And you have to strive chaotically in that desert to put yourself back together. And you do that by organizing yourself properly psychologically and in the community and adopting the responsibility for your own destiny. And then you can sojourn in God's company to the promised land. Right? And that's the story of life. And it's true. And that's the end of that. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. That's quite a trip from Egypt through the desert to the threshold of the promised land. It's a hell of a story, that's for sure. And it's one well worth knowing and well worth understanding because it is a story about you. Like right to the core, you know, it's a story about what everyone could be if they hearken to the voice of calling and adventure. And and it's a story about how a harmonious psyche and a harmonious productive state can be set up by people who are willing to bear the responsibility of their own life. There's no difference between that and hoisting the cross. Those are the same idea, right? And we've we've founded our communities in the west on the image of the cross for exactly that reason because at a deeply unconscious level, a deeply implicit level, we understand that responsible self-sacrifice is the soul of the community. And that's true. Obviously, obviously if you're if you're going to organize yourself communally, you're going to give up your impulsive individuality. There's no difference between that and sacrifice. There's no difference between that and maturation. Obviously, that's the pathway to psychological integration and social harmony. Right? The human pattern of existence is voluntary self-sacrifice, right? And that's the message that's at the core of the biblical library and at the center of the Christian ethos, right? You see it reflected in the story of Abraham, right? He's called upon even to sacrifice his son. Everything is to be offered upward in the process of sacrifice that stabilizes the community and transforms the individual. Right? And that's that's the story that the West is founded on. It's the story that in so far as you're sane, you see the world through. Right? And we're we're in danger of forgetting that. And that's a very very very bad idea. If you forget the truth, you live in falsehood. And there's no difference between that and being in hell. And so, God help us avoid that. That's for sure. So, all right. I'm going to I'm going to ask my daughter to come on stage again and she's going to she's going to t to select some questions from the audience that you were kind enough and interested enough to offer and we'll do that for 23 minutes apparently and that'll be the evening. That was great. >> Thank you, dear. I opened you one already. >> Oh, thank you. >> Nailed it. Yeah. >> Yeah. Well, that's such a fun story. Such a remarkable story. You know, every one of the every detail in those stories is is stunningly worth evaluating. You find these little treasures hidden in the stories that you just I'll give you an example. This is so funny. There's a there's a scene of rebellion in the Exodus story near the end. Like the Israelites have just about made it to the promised land and this guy named Koresh gets like the Israelites always do. And he goes to Moses and this is literally what he says. He says, "I've got together with some of my guys. We're feeling we're feeling kind of victimized and oppressed and we think that you've done everything you've done just to gain power for yourself, right? It's exactly what the radical critics of Western civilization are screeching about now. Everyone who's successful is a victimizer. Yeah. Well, there isn't a more pathological story than that. I tell you, when your culture starts to identify success with criminality, you're in serious trouble. You criminalize success. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that process, that process, by the way, historically often starts with demonization of the Jews because the Jews have the temerity to be a successful minority. And the the successful in any dimension are always a minority. And so the Jews are the canary in the coal mine when when the thugs and the resentful monsters of Luciferian rebellion come crawling out from underneath their rocks. They point to the Jews first and portray them as victimizers because of their success. And people abandon them, not understanding that the target isn't the Jews. The target is those who have the tmerity to be successful. And the Jews fall first, but they're not the last to fall. And if you can't see that unfolding in what's in front of you right now, you are not paying attention. And that's a bad idea. So, so Koresh has this rebellion against Moses and it's a victim victimizer narrative and the consequence of that is the earth swallows up Koresh and all his followers, right? Yeah. Well, so you know, play victim victimizer and just watch what happens. So, and hopefully we'll have enough wisdom to not let that go too far. But we'll see, won't we? We'll see. We'll hope. Are you ready? >> All right. I'm starting with a light one. How do you see the archetype of Satan in today's society? Well, probably the most interesting manifestation is related to the tower of babel. So, the tower of babel is a pyramid of Babylon, right? Babel is Babylon. And uh at the time the story was created, there were multiple citystate kingdoms in the Middle East. And all of the tyrants, all the petty would be tyrants in those states who tried to make themselves into gods built pyramids, towers in competition to see who could build the highest tower. And that was a testament to their own godlike status, let's say. And so, you know, that still happens today as cities compete to see who can build the tallest building. And there's something in that that is, you know, emblematic of genuine technical striving. And the cathedrals, of course, of Europe had that proclivity to be the tallest structure in the community. Of course, they were they were what consecrated to God. So, not to the local bloody thug. Um, [snorts] the Tower of Babel is a monument to human presumption. And the builders of the Tower of Babel were the engineers. And that's what's happening in today's society is that the engineers build towers of Babel to their own intellectual presumption. And that's happening everywhere. And why the engineers? Because the engineers are I I like engineers, by the way. Don't get me wrong. We're talking about something very specific here. Engineers have a proclivity to worship technology and that's a bad idea because technology can help us solve our problems if we're upward oriented. But orientation towards technology is not an upward orientation. It has to be put in its proper place. And if you put technology at the pinnacle, which is what the builders of the Tower of Babel do, you build false you build false monuments to the wrong God. Well, what God? Well, imagine the worship of technology is associated with the what would you say? Elevation of of intellect to the highest place. It's something like that. Look how smart we are. Well, the spirit of intellectual presumption, that's Lucifer, right? Because Lucifer is the intellect that worships itself and believes that it should take the place of God. And that produces this Luciferian technological presumption that produces Towers of Babel. What happens when you produce a tower of babel? Everyone speaks a different language. Why? Because no one's united psychologically or communally towards the proper highest aim. And so no one can understand each other anymore. Everyone speaks a different language. Commentators on this story say, "Well, that was a primitive way of explaining why there's so many languages." It's like, "Hey guys, you seriously missed the point." Like seriously, right? It's a story of technological presumption. Why do people start speaking different languages? Because unity of apprehension makes words comprehensible. What do I mean by that? What is a woman? That's what I mean by that. Right? Okay. So, so we don't know. And so what does that mean? And it means the most fundamental words are now have now gone a skew in their meaning. Well, why? Because we're we inhabit the wrong towers. Like seriously, I tell you, I truly believe this as a psychologist who's looked deeply into such things. Inability, there is no confusion deeper than inability or refusal to distinguish the sexes. Creatures without nervous systems can tell the difference between male and female. Right? I'm serious about that. Right? From an evolutionary perspective, we have been able to make that discrimination for 650 million years. That's a long time. It's more fundamental than up and down or black and white or night and day. It's the most fundamental verbally signified reality. If you're confused about that, then everyone speaks a different language. And that's in no small consequence the result of our what would you say mindaddling luciferian technological presumption. I know those things are tangled together oddly, but the world's an odd place. And you can see the fractionation in our ability to communicate occurring as we produce Facebook, as we produce Twitter, as we produce these new landscapes of presumption that destroy, threaten our ability to communicate. It's presumption that's doing that. It's Luciferian presumption. Now, there's nothing wrong with the intellect, but it's a terrible master. It's a great servant, but it is a terrible master. And one of the temptations of those with the intelligence to manipulate technology is to place the worship of their own intellect at the highest pinnacle and then it's luciferian instantly. And that is a bad thing. It's always been a terrible thing. It's no better now, worse probably because we're so technologically powerful. You know, if we if we worship technology, which is a real threat. God only knows what's going to happen. You know, I looked today. I saw this new AI system. It's the uh avatar of chat GPT4. It's been given a voice and a very attractive female voice. very charismatic, very caring, very responsive. It's like we're literally building soulless agents. Soulless agents of seduction. Jesus, that's probably not going to go well. Yeah. And it's who's doing it? The presumption in the presumptuous engineers who can't get a date. Yeah. Haha. Right. It'd be it'd be funny if it wasn't terrible. You know, pornography drove the development of the net and 30% of the traffic is still pornographic. It's like, don't be underestimating the terrible power of frustrated sexual desire and what it's capable of, what kind of havoc it's capable of wreaking. So yeah, so be awake. That's for sure. Well, so that's an example of of Lucifer trumping around the earth. >> And when you use that uh what did you say? You're dumber than an organism without a nervous system. Yeah, >> that's a good one. I'm going to keep that. >> Okay, ready? >> Yep. >> This is a new one. We haven't talked about this before. How can someone who intends to live by logic also hold true to the supernatural elements and beliefs in the Bible without feeling as though you're betraying logic? That's a very complicated question. Um, you know, I would say I I hesitate to attempt an answer because it's not it's an to answer that question properly. You have to elucidate a non-materialistic philosophy like really from first principles. And you just can't do that in five minutes. I mean, I've been trying to do that for I've been literally trying to do that for 40 years, you know, and so, um, let's see if I can just make a make a crack at it. I feel like that's >> let let me I give you an example. That's all I can do. So, and I and this just pushes me to the limits of my knowledge, right? And so don't be thinking that this is some kind of final answer. So Christ in the gospels is presented as the source of the banquet and the banquet that never ends. He's the well that never runs dry, the fish that multiply beyond necessity, and the bread that that feeds the multitude. That's Christ. Okay. So what does that mean? Well, here's at least what it means. I'm not saying this is everything it means, but this is at least what it means. Okay? You know, in this culture, we have the idea of natural resource. Hey, that's a stupid idea. It's a materialistic idea and it's fundamentally a envious and Marxist idea because it's predicated on the idea that valuable things are just sort of lying around and you know, thieves take them and monopolize them and that's capitalism. It's something like that. And if the natural resources were just distributed fairly, everyone would be rich. It's like there are no natural resources, like air maybe you can breathe, but even then you have to put some effort into it. No one's going to push the air into your lungs, right? So there's even some human effort in breathing. There's no natural resource. Okay. Well, what about fresh water? It's like really, are you really that clueless? Like seriously, do you know how hard it has been to produce a civilization that has a reliable that has the kind of reliable access to fresh water that you have in LA? It's a desert here. Like, how did you manage that? Like, it's impossible. Most of the world still has no fresh water. It's hard to have fresh water. Okay. So, what are the preconditions for fresh water? a insanely sophisticated technological infrastructure. Okay. What are the preconditions for an insanely tech insanely sophisticated technological infrastructure? People who go to work every day, right? like workingclass people who are fundamentally honest and hardworking, who are upward aiming, who go and fix the pipes that would otherwise be breaking nonstop, that keep the whole bloody clattering apparatus working miraculously, that keep the lights on, which is impossible. Do you know how many countries in the world have like no electricity? Or if they do, it's rolling blackout city. It's like, why are these on? Why are these on? because you're a Judeo-Christian nation. That's why. So, and why would I say that? Well, it's because there's an ethos of sacrifice that constitutes the valid meritorious work that produces the American dream. And by and large, everyone adheres to it. Like, it's a miracle. You you got to see this. It's an absolute miracle. People damaged people, you know, hurt people. They struggle out of bed at 6:00 in the morning and they go out into storms and they fix the power lines. And why do they do that? Well, obviously to get paid, but it doesn't happen in third world countries. They do it because they they act out an ethos. It's an it's the ethos on which complex civilization depends. It's the self-sacrificing ethos that's characterized by, let's say, the offering of Christ. And the reason he's the well that never runs dry and the bread that never ends is because the pattern of self-sacrifice and upward aiming that's embodied by Christ is the source of the resource that never exhausts itself. Right? And so is that a miracle? Well, yes. Is it the kind of miracle that people usually think about when they read the gospels? No. Now can I bridge the gap between the historical reality and that let's say more symbolic interpretation? No. You know, no one can bridge the gap between the historical reality of Christ and the what would you say the the transcendent narrative power that suffuses the text. That's beyond anyone's ability and it's beyond my ability. But I can tell you that that's at least what it means. And that's not nothing, right? That's something to understand that the pattern that calls you to adventure, the conscience that encourages encourages you to tell the truth, that's the same spirit that makes the desert bloom, right? That's the same spirit that provides the food that never ends to the starving. That's true. And so is that a miracle? Yes. Is it a miracle that the rational can appreciate? It depends on how rational they are. Like I there's nothing about the account I just gave that doesn't make sense. So that's a reconciliation of the rational and the miraculous. And if you don't think that the fact that electricity comes out of the plug with the wall when you put the plug in, if you don't think that's an ethical miracle, you're you just don't you just don't know the first thing about what would you say? What makes life more abundant? It's an ethos. It's the ethos in which technology itself should be nested. Right? And that's that's the Tower of Babel problem. It's like technology is not what makes us rich. Is ethical conduct makes us rich. Technology can serve that if it's put in its proper place. Just like the intellect, just like sex, just like adventure. Everything subdued and named properly. And it can serve what's highest. Out of place, anything out of place, especially elevated to the highest place, is immediately some variant of of Satan. Could be sex. It could be power. could be anger. It could be intellect. You got to get what's properly at the pinnacle in the right place and and then everything then you're in the garden and everything is at your fingertips. And that's the truth. It's really that's really how the world is structured. That was impressive. Thank you, my dear. Okay, going in a different direction. How do we understand and respond to the differences between men and women in a society that has blurred the obvious truths? Well, that's sort of a problem you hash out in the confines of your marriage, isn't it? You know, I mean, that's where the rubber hits the road, so to speak. And so, how do you do that? Well, I'll tell you a story about that. So, I had this friend. He came from this little town called Bear Canyon. And when I say little town, you have to understand that the town I came from had 3,000 people in it. was way the hell out in the middle of nowhere. And Bear Canyon was a little town that compared to Fairview was way out in the middle of nowhere. So, I don't know how many people were in Bear Canyon. It was like at the edge of the northernmost prairie. It was literally it was literally the last part of the prairie settled by Europeans in North America. And that was only in the like the 1950s or thereabouts. So, it was a backwoods place. Anyways, I had a friend who came from there and he was of Swedish extraction and uh he ended up falling in love with and then marrying the cousin of my wife Tammy and uh they she was also Swedish of a Swedish origin and they decided that they would go to Sweden to get married and during their marriage ceremony there was a custom that they both participated in and the custom was that when they were standing beside each other at the altar They lifted a candle above their heads, right? And that signified the marriage. But it signified more than the marriage. See, it signified what a candle signifies on a Christmas tree, which is enlightenment and illumination and the return of the light in the darkness and the return of the sun in the depths of winter and the heavenly sovereignty of the sun compared to the stars. And that's all tied up in that candle. But it also signifies Christ. And that's because marriage is a sacrament. And the theory is that the union of man and woman recreates the original Adam prior to his division into man and woman and the reestablishment of the identity that characterized life in the Garden of Eden. That's all packed into that symbol, that idea. So what does that mean practically? Who's the boss in your marriage? Well, you know, the the traditionalists, the demented power mad traditionalists, they'll insist that it's the man. Um, try that in your marriage and see how that works for you. It's like one of the really pro troublesome things about women is they make terrible slaves. They're really they're like unruly and, you know, they're full of tricks and if you oppress them, they got like they got six tricks to your one like club. It's just it's just not going anywhere. And so so you know the man is he in charge? Well, the odd deluded man thinks so. And that's just an indication of how absolutely he's being what? Defeated by his wife. Yeah. So, so then it's the wife that's in charge. It's like no, that's a that's a dismal set of circumstances for everyone. So women have the misfortune of liking men who are of higher status than they are, right? And that's cross-culturally true. And there's a reason for that. And the reason fundamentally is, well, why would a woman want a man who's more useless than her? She's going to have a baby to fill that role. She might as well have someone who's helpful. And so she looks for someone who's going to be helpful compared to her. And so, and that's very much key to sexual attraction between men and women. And that's well doumented like cross-culturally it's one of the most wellfounded observations in all of uh what would you say in all of psychological investigation. And so a woman who dominates her husband will have virtually no sexual attraction to him. So that's real fun for both of them. And so then you might say, well, who the hell's in charge then? And the answer is what's in charge is what's signified by the candle, right? And so the notion, it's so sophisticated this idea. This is like the superstition of the religious. It's like you have no idea, man, how deep these ideas are. It they're insanely deep. So here's the idea. So one of Christ's proclamations is that whenever there's two or more together in his name that he's present, the logos itself or the holy dove that descends from heaven is present. So what does that mean? Well, it means that there's a logos. That's Christ. That's the force that extracts order out of chaos at the beginning of time. That's present. Whenever there's honest dialogue, dialogue, dia logos, the logos that two or more people engage in. Whenever there's truthful communication present, the spirit of the logos makes itself manifest. Well, that's what a marriage is. It's the opening up of the possibility of intimate truthful communication. That's transformative. Okay? That's a spirit. Now, that's the spirit that's supposed to be elevated. That's what you both serve in a marriage. Right? So that's the right answer to how the relationship between men and women should be constituted. It's it should be constituted in the spirit of love and truth and the willingness to take maximal responsibility. And if you do that, then the logos flows between you and that's what solves the problems and enobles you and keeps you in love and provides a stable platform for your children. And that's a good deal. And so what do you serve? You serve what's highest in your marriage, both of you. And then neither of you is a tyrant or a slave. And you take the responsibility that's commensurate with your role. And you negotiate that. And then you're the foundation of the community and you have someone to love. You know who has the most sex? This is funny. Religious married people. So, isn't that funny? It's like 60 years after the sexual revolution, the data are in. Is it the alphabet hedonists who are on top or the conservative Christians? It's like on the sexual front, the conservative Christians are kicking ass. That's so funny. It's so ridiculous. It's so unpredictable. It's you just know that's true because it's so absurd. >> So the clock counted down to 23 a number of minutes ago. >> I see. So we should stop. >> We should probably stop. >> We should stop. Yes. Do you have one more? Do you have one more quick? Let's see if I can do one quick. Okay. >> Okay. Okay. >> Speed question. >> Okay. Speed quest. >> Okay. This might be helpful for people. Um, what would you advise people who wish to find meaning in their lives by embracing their responsibilities but find themselves unm unmotivated? >> Oh, you're probably you're probably forcing yourself too much. That'd be my guess. You're using the heavy hand of power, right? You're you want to invite yourself to play. So, how do you do that? Well, figure out a game you want to play, you know, and then make a plan. It's like, how do you do that? Well, this is what Christ tells his followers in the gospels. He says, "Knock and the door will open." Ask and you will receive. Seek and you'll find. Okay? So, you have a problem. You want to be motivated. So, you have to meditate. You have to pray. You have to think, okay, if I could have what I needed to be enthusiastic about working towards it, what would that be? And that's a question everyone should ask themselves. It's like, what the hell do you want? What would satisfy you? Well, you first of all, you have to ask the question, right? And people don't. They're afraid to for all sorts of reasons. And then you have to accept the answer. And you might think, well, that's impossible. It's no. No. I'll tell you what's impossible. Stumbling forward, depressed, anxious, hopeless, and unmotivated. That's impossible. Striving to attain a difficult goal. That's that's a compelling challenge if you set it up properly. And if the end is something you want, it's like you could do this in your marriage. It's like, okay, well, I tell people to do this in local ways. Here's an example. Um, it's a good example. Imagine coming home at night after work. You do that every day. Let's say take a stereotypical example. That takes you about half an hour to make that transition. And so that's about 5% of your life is the half an hour every day that you come home after work. 5% of your life. So you get 20 things like that right. You got your life right. So, you might think, well, how would I like things to happen when I came home? Like, what would motivate me to come home? What would motivate me to keep working? How would I like to be greeted? How would I like my kids to react when I walk in the door? What would response would I like from my wife so that I feel that the work I did during the day was justified? How could I make her happy to see me so that we were pleased when we re-encountered each other after a day's separation? Well, you can sit there and think that through. If you could admit it to yourself, you know, probably what you want isn't that unreasonable. You might be able to negotiate that with her and then you'd have it and then you'd be motivated. It's like dare a dream. You know, ask yourself, what do I want? with the presumption that, you know, if you're not completely blind and deluded and and greedy that you could probably have it and the world wouldn't fall apart just because you got something that you needed. You could give yourself that break and you have to find out just like you would from a when you're making friends with someone. It's like, what the hell do you want? If I could offer you what you wanted, what would it be? Well, I don't know. It's like, well, then the first thing you want is to know what you want. there's some place to start, you know, and you can figure it out. And if you aim small enough, you can figure it out. And then so if you're not motivated, you're probably living someone else's dream. You're laboring under some false illusion. You're tyrannizing yourself. You're taking on too much responsibility. You're using power when invitation would suffice. And you don't have a vision. Well, it it doesn't have to be that way. You could figure out a game you want to play and invite yourself along. And that's you can do that. That's how life is constituted. So don't think it's impossible. It's not impossible. I told you what was impossible. Stumbling miserably forward. That's impossible. That's for sure. All right, that's good. Thank you everyone. Thank you, Mick. Nice to see you all. Thank you everybody for coming. >> Pleasure to see you. >> All right, everyone. Good night.