SKZ - Episode 1 - A True King Withdraws: What Jesus, Dune, and Satoshi Nakamoto Teach Us

Episode Date: April 22, 2023

This is a video/audio essay about the importance of withdrawing, integrating content from the Bible, the Dune series, and the history of Bitcoin.

Hey everybody, it's Joe here. I'm a doctoral student studying clinical psychology, and this is psych made simple. Today I want to do a little bit of a different video, almost more of a theme analysis across a lot of different things, and I want to talk about the importance of withdraw. Now, what first drew me to this topic is the readings of, is listening to René Girard. So first what drew me to this topic is, listening to a lot of content about Renee Gerard. And I thought it was really interesting that he talks a lot about how much we imitate one another as human beings, right? He calls it memetic desire. And he also talks about how, you know, Jesus calls us to imitate him. He talks a lot about imitation. He talks a lot about Jesus. He's a Christian. But I thought it was interesting that his ultimate conclusion

to, you know, his advice, I guess I would say, is like what you should get out of his whole philosophy is that you should withdraw and you should kind of, you know, almost become a hermit of like withdraw from society because you don't want to be engaged in this imitation of other people in society or of these societal norms and things like that. You need to find your true self. I don't want to put too many words into it because, you know, I'm not an expert on René Girard, but it got me thinking a lot of why should we withdraw when, you know, if he's talking about about Jesus, Jesus came and he made an impact on the world, right? And Christians believe that he, you know, lived a great life that we can emulate and then died and resurrected. But I thought

one thing that's really interesting about that is that Jesus, after he resurrected, he definitely could have just stayed around, right? But he chose to withdraw. He chose to go up to heaven and he told his followers that they were going to do greater things than this. So when we're talking about withdrawal today, what I mean a couple other words that might describe what I'm trying to get at is disengagement or almost even just retiring. And one major point that I want to get across here is that the importance of withdrawing just goes to show that not everything that lasts forever is like a positive thing.

sometimes there's a time and a place for something, you know, there's a time in a place for everything. And I think something being temporary isn't necessarily a bad thing. Something that's temporary can actually be really great. And if it, you know, a common phrase is overstays it's welcome or overstays you're welcome, right? Things can overstay their welcome very easily. And people can do that too, you know, especially in positions of power. So I think when we think about withdrawing, the important thing to get here, is knowing when to reject power, knowing when to say, okay, I can take power here, but instead, I've made my impact and I need to step back.

And I think this can apply to a lot of different situations. So some key figures that I'm going to be talking about in this video. First of all, just as I mentioned, we're going to start off with Jesus because I think this is really important to René Girard and also just important as like this example. of why Renee Gerard was inspired to say that withdraw is the right solution, right? And as I said with that example, him withdrawing into heaven after dying, I mean, that's an example where he totally could have taken power, and it's this perfect example of making your impact on the world, and then withdrawing and letting other people kind of follow that mission,

and we're going to see why that's important through the life of Jesus. A couple other examples I wanted to bring up of specific people would be Paul Atreides or Paul Mouadib in Dune. So they recently made a Dune movie. And I read the first couple of Dune books. So I haven't read all the books in the series. But I thought he's a really interesting character that clearly there's supposed to be analogies with Jesus, where he and his mother are kind of supposed to be like Jesus and

Mary in the book. And I would say that instead of, and this is kind of a spoiler, you know, for the end of the first book and the second book, but I would say that he is a person who was seen as a Messiah or seen almost like a Jesus-like figure, and he saw an opportunity for power, and he took it instead of rejecting or withdrawing from that opportunity to take power. Another person I wanted to mention is Satoshi Nakamoto. This is the inventor of Bitcoin, and you might be thinking, wow, that's strange. You're going from Jesus to a figure that's clearly is so, you know, meant to be like Jesus or resemble Jesus in some of the symbolism

in the book of Dune and then jump into a very more modern example of the person who invented Bitcoin. And the reason why I'm jumping here is, you know, I'm not trying to compare any of these individuals or else to talk about a couple kind of just roles, but I'm not trying to compare any of these individuals or roles to Jesus in the sense of saying these people are as good as Jesus or comparable to Jesus, anything like that. But, you know, Jesus, Jesus, does ask, you know, people who are following him to imitate him, to act out life the way that he did. And in one, you know, sense, in this sense of withdrawal, I think that Satoshi Nakamoto does this. So I wanted to point that out.

And then a couple other areas we're going to get into is with how this can impact parents and also therapists. Now, that's my role. And I think you might find it interesting how I think this principle of withdrawal can play into the therapy space as well. So just starting with Jesus, you know, in Acts, the first chapter of Acts, his disciples asked Jesus, this is after he's resurrected. Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom of Israel? This is Acts 1, verse 6. And Jesus says to them, it is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes

on you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth. And he's saying, you know, basically, earlier Jesus has said, you know, in the gospel of John, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing and they will do even greater things than these because I am going to the father. And in this example, he's really saying, you know, the Holy Spirit is going to come on you. You're going to do things that are greater than me. And the way you're going to do that is with my spirit, right? By doing things. similar to the way I would do this spirit is going to help you imitate me. But it's important for me to leave, and I think one reason why it's important for Jesus to leave

is so that he is not in that kingly role that they're expecting, you know. They're saying you're going to restore the kingdom of Israel, and during Jesus' life, he's expected to be a king at a lot of different points. They kind of expect him to be like almost do a military takeover, right? And he doesn't do that. but if he did stick around, it would be, you know, almost natural for that to start happening because followers would say, oh yeah, we need to establish his kingdom, you know. And I think an interesting aspect of this withdrawal is that it prevents one person from becoming the decider of every situation. you go to them for a specific answer to everything, right?

So if there was someone who had all the wisdom, all the knowledge, and they were on earth, then you could go to them and basically get the answer to everything. But then you would never learn for yourself to critically think based on certain principles, right? And I think that actually Jesus was trying to implement certain principles or ways of thinking. And he rarely ever answers with a yes or no question. So an example is in Luke chapter 10, someone asked him, teacher, what must I do to inherit internal life? They kind of talk about, okay, like, you should follow the law.

And Jesus is, you know, he recites part of the law to Jesus. Jesus says, you know, you've answered correctly, followed this law. Then the guy follows up and says, who is my neighbor, right? And this is the famous example of Jesus giving a parable of the Good Samaritan. And basically, instead of saying a yes or no, these people are your neighbor, these people aren't your neighbor, Jesus gives us a parable that teaches us a principle to live by, gives us a story to say, hey, look in the story, who was the neighbor? You know, who was being a neighbor to someone else?

And the Samaritan in the story is the one that ends up being the neighbor, and it's kind of unexpected. There's a lot more to get into with that specific passage. But the point I'm trying to make here is that Jesus doesn't answer and say, yes, these people are a neighbor, these people aren't your neighbors, or everyone's your neighbor. He doesn't even just say that. He doesn't give a black and white. He gives us kind of a story that helps us learn and kind of internalize a certain principle, right? And I think that I'm just circling back to the idea of withdrawal. Like, I think that teaching those principles and then withdrawing

can help you kind of can help that impact keep going for a longer time because people internalize those principles and then can critically think and make decisions based on those principles rather than becoming dependent, right? Because if there

wasn't a withdrawal, then sure you can still make that impact, you can, you know, have your wisdom and make good decisions, you know, but people would be dependent on you to make those decisions. they wouldn't inherit those principles. One of the few times that Jesus does, you know, very directly give an answer. You can find it in Matthew 22.

Someone asks him, which is the greatest commandment. And Jesus says, love, you know, the Lord your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself. So he kind of does a combo of like, love God, love your neighbor. These are the most important things. So that is a question he's willing to answer because it's like, This is boiling down to the basic first principles of any, you know, critical thinking on a moral decision you're going to do is, okay, is this something that is honoring God? And in that, is it honoring, you know, your neighbor?

Because part of, you know, Christian and Judeo-Christian belief in general is that every human being is made in the image of God. And therefore, loving someone else or being loving to someone else is honoring God. So, yeah, just to circle back to that. theme is that withdrawing after an impact was made allowed Jesus to create an impact without creating dependence, right? Because if he stuck around, people could always turn to Jesus for yes or no, answers to everything if he chose to do it that way, but no, he didn't choose to do it that way. He chose to imbue us with certain principles and then leave when the time was right, because we

understood the principles and, you know, Christians understood the principles and could follow him and basically continue to emulate him without having to be dependent on his physical presence to make those decisions, if he will, because that spirit or basically that critical thinking, understanding of the way Jesus would think. An example that I like to think about here is kind of a funny example,

but for me, I spent a lot of years, I've listened to podcasts for the last several years, and I really like, listen to like finance podcast, Christian podcast, sports podcast too. There were like multiple years where I would listen to Colin Coward every single day. And in the last year or so, I just found myself like not really listening. And the way I would say is I've internalized the way that he thinks so much because I've heard his voice for so long that if there's some new, you know, what happens in the Super Bowl or something like that, I almost know exactly what he would say. And that's not to say, oh, he's not original or anything like that.

It's just like, I understand how his brain works because I've listened to it so many times that I almost don't even need to listen to Colin Coward to know how he would think. And I think like in the same way, we can, you know, for the example of Jesus, like read about the different things that he said, different things that he did. And then we can internalize that impact, even off of just a very short gospel or the gospels, right? because you can read one of the gospels in like, pretty sure you can read Mark in like 20 minutes or something like that. You can read all the gospels in like a few hours. So like just with a small amount of time on this earth, you know, his ministry was about three years, people say. And then just a few books written about that, you can really internalize those principles and then know how that person would think. Just like I would know how Colin Coward would react to the Super Bowl.

I don't even have to listen anymore. Like you could really internalize. the teachings of Jesus or of someone else, you know, and take that and not be dependent on almost like the physical presence of that person, but be able to inherit those critical thinking principles. I think a good part of the Bible, one of the letters written by Paul that really sums up the choice that Jesus made here was in Philippians 2. There's a poem. And part of it is that it says, in your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Jesus,

who being in very nature, God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage, or sometimes it's translated to, equality with God, something to be grasped. Rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.

And basically, so instead of, like, he was God, right? And he could have just completely used that power to become king or something like that, right? But he did not consider that equality with God something to be used to his own advantage. So he chose to withdraw when the time was right because he could have not withdrawn, taken that power and gone with it. But then, you know, we would have become almost like dependent on this king rather than inheriting his principles, being able to move forward from there. So some final takeaways is that I wanted to mention that one time, one of my friends told me, you know, there's a reason why Jesus came at a time before video cameras.

If video cameras were around, then we would know exactly how things go. We could turn back and think like, oh, okay, on this video footage, Jesus said this in this situation. Therefore, we should do that. I think that Jesus, you know, God intentionally planned for Jesus to come at a time where his life could be written about and witnessed. by people, but there wasn't that direct video evidence, because if there were, we would almost become too dependent on the video evidence rather than inheriting those principles, and then he withdrew and then be able to internalize those principles and act on them for ourselves. And if you, you know, like this video so far, for you feel to like and subscribe for more

content. Let me know in the comments if there's anything that's resonating with you. and yeah just continuing with that theme i mean we're meant to imitate the principles that he taught rather than focusing on imitating every single little detail right um and there are another interesting part of this withdrawal is that there isn't you know the gospel that's an autobiography written by jesus right there's some decentralization there of multiple different people's voices got to be heard in how they interpreted and viewed and kind of researched the life of Jesus. So there's four different gospels and no one person has all the power or authority to decide how something has heard. And I know there's multiple authors of the rest of the letters in the New

Testament, but I know this is actually a source of frustration for a lot of people that some people get frustrated by Paul because there's obviously a lot of context to each passage, but there's some that are now kind of controversial passage written by Paul. And some people get very frustrated that, oh, okay, like Paul said this or that about women in the church. And that pisses me off that he's like the only guy who wrote like most of the New Testament, right? And, you know, there are letters written by other people, but it just goes to show the importance of having multiple different voices

to inform our perspective on something. So, you know, if you, and let's say you grew up in a church where like all, you ever heard was like the letters of Paul, letters of Paul, letters of Paul, then like that could be very frustrating because you're only hearing from one person's perspective on kind of the takeaways we should have from Jesus. Now Jesus is the general principle, right? And if we jump to Dune, now Paul Mwadib is this character who a lot of people think is a Messiah. There's a lot of signs that in the culture on the planet Dune, he is supposed to be like

Messiah, like he's meeting a lot of these signs, right? And I don't want to go too much in the detail. Some people will still consider this a spoiler. But all I'll say is that at the end of the first book, he, I would say, fulfills his purpose. And in that sense, his purpose is to overthrow a very corrupt and evil government that's running the planet of Dune. Right. And he has, so Paul has the ability to see the future, although you can clearly tell throughout the first two books, at least that it's not perfect. Like, for example, in the second book, there's a certain place he goes to meet someone, and then when he goes to their house, there's someone else there that he didn't expect to be there, right? Because his vision of the future wasn't perfect. So that's just one

example. But he, because he could see the future chose, I want to become the king, and I think I can prevent a lot of evil from being done by becoming the king and using my ability to see the future to kind of prevent bad outcomes, right? And a lot of the second book is exploring how that became a very corrupt system where he was worshipped as this Messiah, right? And he is a king at the same time. And you can see it's almost as if what the disciples wanted after Jesus resurrected happened. And Jesus became king, right? Now, of course, Paul, like in the books isn't considered to be like this perfect character the way that like Jesus is often considered to be perfect, right? So again, I'm not saying it's exactly playing out what would

happen if Jesus like stuck around for a few extra years on earth. But what I'm trying to say is it's trying to give us almost this like exploration of like what would it be like if someone who's considered this Messiah sticks around and is in power and everyone can turn to him for every little decision, right? They become very dependent on Paul. They worship him as a religious figure, but they also can turn to him and he gets to make every decision that goes on in like the whole galaxy, right? And there's a lot of evil that's done in his name ultimately because people view him as so powerful and so like worthy of following not only as, you know, a leader, but also as a religious figure that a lot of people are killed. He ends up saying, you know, there's probably more people.

people then killed in my name, then were killed in Hitler's name. So it's a very interesting exploration of like what would happen if someone, in my opinion, if someone has an opportunity for power. And after they make their impact, they use that kind of notoriety or fame to become a leader. And instead of choosing to withdraw, right? because if Paul made his impact over through the corrupt government and then withdrew, obviously we don't know exactly what would have emerged, but it would have been a lot different and maybe a lot better than him being this dictator,

I will say, that even though his intentions were very good, a lot of the outcomes were very bad and ended up with a lot of people dying. Now, alternatively, Satoshi Nakamoto, who's the inventor of Bitcoin, is someone who, who chose to remain anonymous. We have no clue this is a man, woman, a group of people. No one knows. People have different theories about it,

but I'm not gonna really get into that here. But he made an impact by inventing Bitcoin, which essentially combined, there were a lot of digital cash projects, like since the internet was invented, right? But he basically took a lot of the innovations and then also added on what's called the difficulty adjustment

to basically keep the issuance rate, of Bitcoin about the same over time. And then there's also halings that kind of reduce it. But basically in the short term, like it says, consistent over time because of the difficulty adjustment. But he basically combined all these different innovations, made Bitcoin and, you know, helped out for the first couple of years after it was invented.

But he never took credit for it. Or he, she, they, Satoshi never took credit for it, remained anonymous and left the project, handed it off to someone else. when the time was right and well to multiple people to innovate on it right because it's an open source network and when the time was right that it's it's i've made my impact i've done my part for the bitcoin community and i did it and a lot of people who are hardcore bitcoins if you want you there's plenty of resources to learn more about bitcoin but a lot of people who are really into it really

value the fact that sotoshi never revealed his her they whatever identity um it just stayed anonymous and left the project. Who knows if this person's even still alive or if it's a group of people? And I think they withdrew from the project when the time was right. They could have taken power from themselves to say, hey, I'm the inventor of Bitcoin,

you should listen to me and any changes to come through me. But they understood the power of, we can decentralize this, just like how I mentioned that the Gospels are in a sense decentralized because there's four different versions of the Gospels, and then several different people have written about Jesus and about the Acts of the Apostles

and written letters, you know. all to like make up what we see as a New Testament now. In a sense, that was kind of a decentralized process to develop those texts and amalgamate them into kind of the Bible as we see it today. And similarly, Satoshi, you know, made his impact with Drew and let other people work on the project now, right? So again, not comparing Satoshi to Jesus or saying he's as good of a person or he, she, that is as good of a person, group as Jesus was. All I'm saying is that in this sense, they did what all of us are in a sense called to do if you're someone who believes in Jesus is to imitate Jesus in this sense of,

okay, I've made my impact, I'm going to withdraw and not kind of revel in the glory of it. I think there's some other roles that many of us can relate to that I think this theme applies two. So one is parents. I think that parents can make an impact on their child's life, right? It's a lot more than, you know, Jesus is three years. It's usually at least 18 years, right, of raising a child. But there are certain points in a parent's, you know, relationship with their child where they realize, okay, I've made my impact. I need to almost withdraw and let them make those decisions for themselves because there's such a thing as like helicopter parenting that you see a lot. you know, usually when the kids are younger, like taking them to all these different clubs and

like always being like watching over what they're doing and sometimes that can be kind of stressful for the kid, right? And there's these different degrees of autonomy that should be given over time, obviously not right when they're an infant, you give them that autonomy. But, you know, let's say when they are, you know, getting to adulthood and, you know, starting to make different decisions for themselves, maybe you might disagree with those decisions as a parent, but it might be important to just say, okay, you know what, I need to withdraw. I've made my impact on this person's life and I still want to be there for them and love them, but part of loving them is withdrawing and letting them kind of think for themselves, use the principles that I've

helped them develop throughout their childhood, similar to how Jesus helped us develop principles throughout his ministry, and then go from there. I think even a shorter term version of the same process happens in the therapy space. So I am, you know, a therapist in training. And one thing that is really important to learn as a therapist is when to terminate with a client or when to start that conversation, right, of realizing, hey, you have made a lot of progress in therapy. Yes, your life isn't completely devoid of problems, but you know how to handle them because of some of the principles that we've learned together, or you know, you've learned from therapy,

such as, you know, different behavioral habits to get into, different ways of thinking about a problem rather than, you know, the ways that were not helpful or destructive in the past that you chose to, you know, use to think about a problem in the past. And then I think, you know, it's, I think as a therapist, what we basically do is make an impact in someone's life for a short amount of time. and then know the right time to withdraw and say, hey, you know the principles, you've inherited,

or you've internalized those, right? And you can go out and emulate what we did in therapy together, but by yourself and you don't need me anymore. And that doesn't mean, you know, it's always wrong if someone like terminates with one therapist and that ends up going to therapy again later in life. Like that's not what I'm saying. But more what I'm saying is that there's a time and a place for everything. And sometimes the impact has been made.

and we need to withdraw and let the person internalize those principles. I think I don't want to get too into this because I'm not someone who's super good at arguing things about politics, right? But I think this applies to politics and to just leadership roles in general at a club or in a business, things like that, is thinking about term limits for leadership roles because I think just it goes along with this general principle, right? of you have served a time at somewhere and you've made an impact and then now it's time to go, you know. So just thinking about this theme as a whole, it applies to those different roles. We just talked about parents, therapists, you know, term limits and leadership roles. And, you know, if we can think about, you know, Jesus is the example that is worth emulating, in my opinion.

I think Paul Atreides or Paul Mouadib from Dune is an example where things have gone wrong, where someone made their impact stuck around for too long and overstayed their welcome. And they didn't know when to withdraw because they thought they could make things better and better and better, but they ended up making things worse. And then Satoshi is a more modern example of someone who, they made an impact on, you know, by creating Bitcoin, they made an impact on the world. and then they chose to, okay, it's my time to withdraw. I'm not going to claim this glory for myself.

I'm not going to keep working on the project even. I'm going to let other people take it over because they understand the principles that I put into the project and then they can keep it moving from there. And, you know, like I said, I think this applies to parents, therapists, but let me know if there's any other roles in the comments that you think, hey, this was really helpful at my job or in my, you know, relationship or whatever it may be.

So yeah, hope you enjoyed this video if you made it to the end Then I'd love if you give me a subscribe I'd love to make more content like this and I'd love to hear in the comments if there's anything else That you think it would be interesting to hear about from someone who is a therapist and Someone who's interested in just exploring different themes like this because I think there's these themes that You know are in literature are In philosophy and different things like that and they permutate a lot of different areas of life and I think it's interesting to talk about those

connections sometimes so this is a little bit of a bigger project than what I typically do but hopefully you enjoyed and yeah that's me signing off so have a great rest of your day