The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 128. Biblical Series: Joseph and the Coat of Many Colors

Episode Date: July 19, 2020

We present the final lecture in this Jordan B. Peterson biblical series. Thanks to our sponsor: https://helixsleep.com/jordan

Welcome to season 3, episode 15 of the Jordan B. Peterson podcast. I'm Michaela Peterson, Jordan's daughter. I hope you enjoy this episode. It's called Joseph and the Code of Many Colors. We're still in Serbia. Obviously, I was too excited about it being completely open here, and now we're kind of quarantined again. And there are riots.

Oops. Hope you're not too cooped up. If you're interested, I released a podcast with Lauren Southern on Tuesday. It's on YouTube and on my podcast under the Michaela Peterson podcast. If you're so inclined to hear what she's been up to, if you know who she is. Also, my dad has a newsletter now that is featuring part of the calls from his newly written unpublished book. If you're interested in receiving a free weekly newsletter from him, please go to his website at jordanbpeterson.com and sign up. Enjoy the episode. Stay sane out there. We should all be optimizing our health right now, and one of the most important ways to do

that is by getting proper sleep, for many of us that depends on having a good mattress. This is why I choose Helix Sleep. I have her mattress at home, and wish I had one here in Serbia with me. I miss it desperately. The rated the number one mattress by GQ and Wyard, and CNN called it the most comfortable mattress they've ever slept on. The best part is they're customized to fit your exact sleeping needs. Helix even has a quiz that takes just two minutes and matches your body type and sleep preferences to the perfect mattress for you. And if you and

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Season 3 episode 15. Joseph and the Code of Many Colors. A Jordan B. Peterson lecture. That's a hell of a welcome for someone who's going to talk about the Bible. So I thought I would get farther than through Genesis by this point, but I'm not unhappy about the pace either. I've learned a tremendous amount, and so hopefully what we'll do today is finish Genesis completely. And then I think I'll try to start up with Exodus in May, depending on what happens next year.

I have a busy travel schedule, but I would really like to do it. I really like the Exodus story, and I understand it very well. A lot of the stories in Genesis, especially after the first few stories, say, up to the Tower of Babel, I had to do a tremendous amount of learning about, which is really good, but I do know the Exodus story, so I'm really looking forward to that. So let's dive right into it and see how far we can get today. So we'll review first. So Joseph's father is Jacob, and Jacob is the patriarch of Israel, essentially, that the father of the 12 tribes. You might remember that he had a very morally ambival, pathway through life, and it's one of the things that I think so interesting about the stories in the Old Testament is that these so-called patriarchal figures are

very realistic, and it's something that I was also being struck by that accounts in the New Testament that way. There's lots of things that Christ does that you'd think would have been edited out over time and sanitized, but they're not. And the Old Testament is definitely not a book that's been sanitized. And that's, it's quite interesting that that's the case. So you sort of see people with all their flaws. And I've been trying to also derive some general conclusions about the moral of the story,

of the genesis stories. Because these stories are fundamentally moral, and moral as far as I'm concerned has to do with action, right? Because moral decisions are the decisions that you make when you're structuring action, when you decide to do one thing or another. Generally, you want to do things that are the best things that you can think of to do and hence good. But sometimes you also want to do things

that are the worst things you can do, because you're angry or resentful or bitter. And so the moral decisions that you make that govern your actions are really the most important decisions that you make in your life. And it's not that easy to figure out how to make moral decisions. We don't have an unhearing technology for that the same way as we do for, say, making decisions about empirical reality, which in some ways seem a lot simpler partly because we can work collectively at it partly

because we have a rigorous methodology for deciding what's true and what's not. So one of the things that's really struck me, like it's an overarching theme, I would say, that the emerges out of Genesis, especially after the really ancient stories, say, especially after the stories of Canaan Abel and Noah and the Tower of Babel. When you get to the accounts of the historically, or historically real people,

one injunction seems to be, get the hell out there and do something. You know, one of the major themes for all of the patriarchs that we've talked about, Abraham, say Jacob, and Joseph is move out into the world regardless of the circumstances at hand. Now that's in in the Old Testament stories, that's basically portrayed as harkening to the voice of God, something like that. Maybe you could think about that as destiny or a psychological calling. And the funny thing too is that it's not that these people have an easy time of it when they heed that call. So what's fascinating is that they often run into extreme difficulties right away.

what's fascinating is that they often run into extreme difficulties right away. And I think that's very interesting, first of all, because life is obviously full of extreme difficulties. And second, it's another example of the failure to sugarcoat things, which is one of the things I think makes a mockery of anti-religious theories that are even quite sophisticated, say like Freud's, because Freud thought of religion as a, as a wish for film, essentially, and and also Marx who thought about religion as the opiate of the masses. It's, if those were true, it seems to me that there'd be a lot more wish and a lot less reality, a lot less stark harsh reality. You know, I mean, the first thing that Abraham encounters is a famine. And then he has to hide his wife and then he basically journeys into a tyranny.

So that's about as bad as it gets in some ways. And those themes recur continually. And no one ever lives where they're supposed to live. They live in Cain and and not the promised land and so it's a pretty rough it's a pretty rough series of stories but the fundamental idea is something like there's no time for sitting around there's time to go out into the world and engage and then there's there's hints about the proper and improper ways of engaging right so clearly the improper way to engage is, I think, most clearly delineated in the Canaanable

story, and with Cane exemplifying the inappropriate way to engage with the world, and that's to engage with the world in a bitter, jealous, and resentful manner. Now one of the things that I really like about the Canaanable bitter jealous and resentful manner. Now, one of the things that I really liked about the Cane and Abel story, and that theme recurs continually with the duality of the brothers, right? There's constant conflict between a perspective that's essentially like Canes

and the opposite perspective, which I'll get to in a minute. But Cane sees that the world is a very tragic place and that the rewards are distributed unfairly and that there are people who do better and people who do worse, and as a consequence of that, he becomes bitter and resentful and curses God, and then he becomes homicidal, fratricidal, which is even worse, then he destroys his own ideal, then his descendants basically become genocidal, something like that. So that seems to be the wrong way to go about things.

You know, unless your goal is to make things worse, like, it's not like it has a limited number of things, has nothing to object to. He's got plenty to object to. His situation actually is bad. He's overshadowed terribly by his brother, who everyone loves, who does extraordinarily well, and who's good at everything. And the story is a bit of mivalent about the reasons for King's failure,

although fair bit of it's laid at his own feet, but he's definitely failing. And so you can understand why he would have this terrible attitude, but the problem is all it does is make it worth. So it doesn't seem to be... One of the things I've also learned as a psychologist, sort of pondering these sorts of things, is it's often a lot easier to identify what you shouldn't do

than what you should do. Like, I think evil is easier to identify than good. I think good is trickier, but evil stands out to some degree, and then at least you can say if you're trying to get as far away from that as possible, we could even say just for practical reasons, so your life doesn't become hell, and your family life doesn't become hell. At least you could get as far away from that as possible, even if you weren't able to conjure up what would constitute the good as a name.

You could at least avoid those sorts of pitfalls. And I do also think that it's pitfalls like that that really threaten our society right now, you know, that I see a tremendous rise in resentment, fueling almost all of the political polarization that's taking place. Seems unfortunate given that by and by large, everyone on the planet is richer than they've ever been. Now, that doesn't mean there's no disparity, but there's always disparity. Anyways, Jacob, of course Jacob and Rebecca deceive Esau, and Jacob ends up with Isaac's blessing. And so that's a moral catastrophe.

And then he has to run because his brother wants to kill him. And so that's the Fratricidal motif again. I like that too. I think that's really realistic. You know, one of the things that Freud noted constantly, and this is where Freud really is a genius, is that the most intense hatreds, and also sometimes the most intense love,

is within families. And in the Freudian world of psychopathology, it's all inside the family. In fact, the pathology in the Freudian world is actually the fact that it's all inside the family. Because people who get tangled up in the Freudian familial nightmare, which is roughly eadipal in structure, can only conceptualize the world in terms of their familial relationships.

They've been so damaged by the enmeshment and the trauma and the deceit and the betrayal and the blurred lines and all of that that they just can't expand past the family and go out in the world. So the idea that brothers can be at each other's throats, I think, is that's a very powerful idea. And it's not something that people like to think about. So Jacob has to leave, and it's not surprising, because I mean, what he did was pretty reprehensible. He betrayed his brother. But nonetheless, he's the person who dreams of the ladder that unites heaven and earth. And that's a very perverse thing, you know what?

But one of the things I think it does is give, in some sense, it gives hope to everyone because it isn't, you know, if only the good guy is win, we're really in trouble, right? Because it's not that easy to be a good guy. It's really not that easy. And most people are pretty keenly aware of all the ways that they fall short, even of their own ideals.

And so if there was no hope except for the good guys, almost all of us would be lost. And so that's one of the things I really like and was more surprised about with the Old Testament stories is that these people are have very complex lives and they make very major moral errors by anyone standard. And yet the overall message is still hopeful and the message that runs contrary to the message of evil say that message of good is something like, well, there's a lot of emphasis on faith, right? And that's a

tough one because synics, people who are cynical about religious structures, like to think of faith as the willingness to demolish your intellect in the service of superstition. And, you know, there's something to be said for that perspective, but not a lot, because the reality is much more sophisticated, part of the faith that is being insisted upon in the Old Testament is something like, and I'm speaking psychologically here again, that it's useful to posit a high good, a day-matting. So, and I really think that's practically useful, too.

The research we've done with the Future Authoring Program, for example, indicates pretty clearly that if you get people to conceptualize an ideal and a balanced ideal, you know, so what do you want for your family, what do you want for your career, what do you want for your career, what do you want for your education, what do you want for your character development, how are you going to use your time outside of work? How are you going to structure your use of drugs and alcohol in places where you might get impulsive?

How can you avoid falling into a horrible pet? If you really think that through and you come up with an integrated ideal and you put it above you as something to reach for, then you're more committed to the world in a positive way and you're less tormented by anxiety and uncertainty. And so, that makes sense, right? Because here you are alive in everything. And so, unless you were capable of manifesting some positive relationship with the fact of your being, then how could that be anything other than hellish? Because it would just be anxiety-provoking and terrible because you're vulnerable and there'd be nothing useful or worthwhile to do. Well, that's just not... I just can't see that as a winning strategy for anyone. You can make a rational case for adopting that strategy in that, you know, you can say,

well, there's no evidence for a transcendent morality or for an ultimate meaning. There's no hard empirical evidence. But it seems to me that there's existential evidence as well that has to be taken into account. And of course, psychologists have talked about this a lot. Karl Rodgers, for example, in Jung, for that matter, Freud, for that matter. Most of the great psychologists have pointed out that, you know, you can derive reasonable information that's solid from your own experience, especially if you also talked to other people.

And you can kind of see in your own life when you're on a productive path that sort of enobles and lightens you, or a destructive path. And I think it's kind of useful to think that maybe the dichotomy between those two paths might be real, you know, and because that also allows you to give credence to your intuitions about that sort of thing. But I don't, anyways, I don't think it's unreasonable to posit that since you're alive, adopting the highest possible regard for the fact that you're alive and that you're surrounded by other creatures that are alive, I just can't see how that can possibly be construed as a losing strategy. And so that's the first thing. So that's something like faith, right? It's faith, It's not, it's not only faith in your being, but it's faith in being as such.

And the faith would be something like, if you could orient your being properly, then maybe that would orient you with being as such. And you never know. Like, I mean, it might be true. There's no reason to assume that it wouldn't be true. I mean, even if you just take a strict biological perspective on this and think about us as the product of three and a half billion years of evolution. I mean, we have struggled over all those billions of years to be alive and to match ourselves with reality. And so, because one of the things I've often wondered is, you know, life is definitely difficult. There's no doubt about that, and it's unfair, and there's inequality, and all of those things.

And people are subject to all sorts of terrible things. But I also wonder if you weren't actively striving to make things worse, just how much better could they be, you know, because people are very, they're like houses that are divided amongst themselves. They're pointing in six different directions at the same time. They're working at cross purposes to themselves because of bitterness and resentment and unprocessed memories and childhood hatreds and unexamined assumptions, all sorts of things. And you just got to wonder if you could push that aside and orient yourself properly. And then the other thing that, of course, is stressed very heavily in the Old Testament. And of course, that goes through the entire biblical corpus is that it's not only enough

to establish a positive relationship with being which I think is the essential It's a good description of faith You have to make that decision right because being is very ambivalent and you can make the case that maybe it's something that should have never happened But that doesn't seem to be productive to me and faith seems to be I'm going to act as if being is Ultimately justifiable and then if I partake in it properly, I will improve it rather than making it worse. So I think that's the statement of faith. And then what seems to go along with that is something like

truth in conception and action. You know, even people like Jacob who are pretty damn morally ambivalent to begin with, get hammered a lot by what they go through. And what seems to happen is that they're hammered into some sort of ethical shape, right? So by the midpoint of their life's journey, there's people who are solidly planted, who you can trust, and who don't betray being or themselves or their fellow men. And so it's an interesting, I mean, being or themselves or their fellow man. And so it's an interesting, I mean, it seems reasonable to me

to first assume that you have to establish a relationship with something that's transcendent. It might even be just the future version of you. But, and then second, that you have to align yourself with reality in a truthful manner and that that's your best bet. And... The biblical stories are actually quite realistic about that too,

because they don't really say that if you do that, you're going to be instantly transported to the Promised Land, like even Moses, as we'll find out in the Exodus stories, he never makes it to the Promised Land. And so, it's not like you're offered instantaneous final redemption. If you move out forthrightly into the world, establish a faithful relationship with being and attempt to conduct yourself with integrity, but it's your best bet and it might be good enough.

And even if it's not good enough it's really preferable to the alternative which seems to be something closely akin to hell both personal and social. So Joseph's father is Jacob, later Israel, he who wrestles with God. And we've talked about that a little bit. It's sort of implicit in what I've been saying, is that I think we all do that to some degree. We wrestle with reality itself. That's for sure. Not only the reality we understand, but the reality we

don't understand, which is sort of a transcendent reality. And then maybe whatever reality is outside of that, because the classic Judeo-Christian conception of God is that there's time and space. And of course, there's lots of things about what exists in time and space that we're completely ignorant of, and that's transcendent in that sense. But then there's an idea that there's a realm outside of that, which is a, well, it's an interesting idea. It's a very sophisticated idea, I think, rather than a simple idea.

It's difficult to know what to make of it. But it doesn't really matter because I think regardless of what your attitude is towards those sorts of things intellectually, you still end up in the same position as Jacob for all intents and purposes, practically speaking. Because I don't think that there's anyone who, at some point in their life, or perhaps even every day, doesn't at some level wrestle with God. And you could just call it, well, the nature of reality, I suppose, if you want to be, say, reductionistic about it, but I don't think it makes any difference. It's still something you're stuck with. And it's not only the nature of reality itself that you have to struggle with, but it's also the nature of your moral relationship to it, your behavior relationship to it. So that's how you should perceive it and how you should conduct yourself. And then whether or not the advantages of doing it properly are worth the difficulty and the disadvantages.

So that seems to me just a straight existential statement. And then you know, Jacob gets damaged by his wrestling, which is also very realistic. So anyways, he also ends up as father of Joseph, who's the favorite son, son who's born in his old age to his favorite wife. And that's who we're going to talk about today. So you remember, so Jacob is the forefather of the 12 tribes of Israel, and there's his wives and the offspring that resulted.

Those are all the sons. There's a daughter named Dina as well. And Rachel is the woman he really loved, and the first son he had with Rachel was Joseph, and that was when he was was older and so that's in some sense why Joseph is his favorite. So this is the beginning of the story of Joseph. Now Israel, Jacob loved Joseph more than all his children because he was the son of his old age and he made him a coat of many colors and there's a lot packed into those two sentences, The first is that, now Israel loved Joseph more than all his other children. That's probably not so good. One of the things we've seen in the stories that have preceded this is that whenever there's marked preference on the part of parents for one child over the other, with Jacob and Esau, it was Rachel's favorite. And Esau was Isaac's favorite.

That didn't work out so well. That put a real twist in the entire structure of the family. And so there's a warning there right off the bat. You might say, well, you can't help having a preference for one child or another, but I don't know if that's true, and it's certainly something that you should be very cautious about because it doesn't seem to work out very well. Because he was the son of his old age, fair enough, and he made him a coat of many colors. That's a very interesting image that coat of many colors, that idea.

And so I'm going to delve into that idea. Because it sets the stage. Like it says what sort of person Joseph is, he's favored, he's younger, he's favored, very frequently, dream of clothing as a role. And so if you're interpreting women's dreams, then if they put on the shoes of their grandmother, for example, then you understand very rapidly that the dream is trying to make an association between their own behavior and something that's characteristic of either the state of being a grandmother or the particular grandmother. And it makes sense, right, because clothing protects, but it also signifies a role.

And it's interesting in the Old Testament stories often, if someone is going to act deceitfully, they change their outfit. And that's kind of what you do when you act deceitfully, right? You dress up like someone else. You present yourself like someone else. So anyways, back to the coat of many colors. right? You dress up like someone else. You present yourself like someone else. So anyways back to the coat of many colors. Well for something to be many colored,

it sort of spans the entire gamut of possibility. And so there's a hint there that if you want to be a full-fledged person, that you have to manifest a very large number of traits. And so I want to go into that idea a bit. The first thing I want to talk about is some of the things that we've learned about, what happens to you when you go to a new environment? You know, there's this idea in very deep idea in clinical psychology, a fundamental idea, which is that if someone's anxious about something, what you do is you, and it's getting in their way, you take what they're anxious about and you define it because that already delimits it, right?

Because one of the problems with being anxious about something is you won't speak of it. It's like Voldemort. And then if you don't speak of it, it's way bigger than it should be. As soon as you start talking about it, you cut it down to size. And so, and it's for a bunch of reasons. It's because you're not as afraid, you're not as afraid of as many things as you think, and you're braver than you know, and more, and more capable. So as soon as you're brave enough to start talking about what you're afraid of,

then you see that there's more to you than you thought and that there's less to the problem than you thought, and then you can decompose it further into smaller problems, and then you can figure out how to approach those smaller problems. And so, and then it doesn't seem to me to be that you get less frightened. It seems to be that you get more courageous, which is way better than being less frightened, because there's lots of things to be frightened about. So if you're courageous, that really does the trick. Now the question is, what happens if you, like let's say that you're very socially inept and you don't know how to introduce yourself or to make, or any, or establish

the initial parts of a relationship with anyone. And so then you start putting yourself in situations where you're required to do that. And so then the question is, how is it technically that you transform? You say, well, you learn. Well, we want to be more specific about that. What does it mean that you learn? Well, if you're dealing with someone who's particularly socially inept and you're doing psychotherapy with them, you might teach them how to shake someone's hand properly and

say their name and remember the other person's name. And so you just practice that with them so that they have the motoric routine down. So that form of knowledge is built right into your body. It's like look at the person, put out your hand, shake it, don't not like a dead hell of it. But you know, with a reasonable grip, say your name, don't mumble it, look at them

so that they can hear you. And then when they say they're not, I'm trying to remember it. And that's, then so you can practice that with people. And so then they develop something that's motoric, right? It's embedded right in their body. And so, and then you can say to them, well, the other thing you can do is when you start a conversation is, don't sit there thinking about what you're going to say next, because then you won't be paying attention to the person and you'll make a fool out of yourself because

you'll manifest non-sequiters, right? Because you'll get out of it's like if you're dancing and all you're paying attention to is where your feet are Then you're going to step on the other person all the time So you want to pay attention to the other person and then whatever Automatized social knowledge you have will come to the forefront. So it's a good thing to know if you're socially anxious, right? If you're socially anxious, one of the things you should do is pay way more attention to the

person you're talking to rather than less and you should pay as little attention as possible to yourself. So if you feel yourself falling in because you're anxious, then what you do is you push your attention out and pay attention to the person because to the degree that you've been social anxious, then what you do is you push your attention out and pay attention to the person, because to the degree that you've been socialized, then all your automatic responses will kick in. So, but anyway, so you go out into the social world and you learn to shake someone's hand and you learn how to listen to them and ask them questions, because that's the next thing, because people love, you can't just ask them random questions, obviously. But if they start talking to you and you don't understand something about what they're saying,

or maybe something they said is interesting and you ask them a question, they're pretty damn happy about that because it means you're actually paying attention to them and people actually love to be paid attention to because it hardly ever happens. So they really, really like it. And so, okay, so what's happening? Well, first of all, you're mastering the automated motor movements, right? Where to point your eyes? Where to put your hands? How to move your lips? Like really embodied knowledge, it's a special kind of memory, and you're

practicing that. And so that's building new skills for you. And then by listening to the person and watching yourself interact, you're also generating new abstract information that enables you to conceptualize the world in a different way. So if you go out to 10, you go out and talk to 10 different people or 50 different people, then you get to listen to what those 50 people said, you get to watch how they express themselves, and you gather a corpus of knowledge, the changes the way you perceive that broadens you as a social agent. Okay, so that's two forms of knowledge, but then there's a third one which is really interesting, which is that, you know, you have a lot of

biological potential, and it's hard to know what potential is, but part of it is that you're capable of generating proteins that you haven't been generating. So you should get right on that, by the way. But the way that works, in part, is that if you put yourself in a radically new situation, then your brain, that there are genetic switches that turn on because of the demands of the new situation, that code for new proteins. So it's as if you have

latent software, that would be one way of thinking about, that will only be turned on if you go into the situation where that's necessary. And so then you might think, well, if that's the case, how much of you could be turned on if you went a whole bunch of different places? And that's a really, really, that's a profound question because one of the deep answers to how you should get your life together is you should go a very large number of places and turn yourself on. And I want to walk through that a little bit because there's a very rich symbolic world that expresses that. So now, the idea about having a code of many colors would be that the person who is the appropriate leader, because remember

or the proper person, which would be the same thing, one of the things that these old stories are trying to express and to figure out is how is it that you should act, which is the same as what constitutes the ideal. Those are the same question. And the hint here with Joseph is, well, you should wear a coat of many colors, which means that you should be able to go have a drink in the pub with the guys who are, you know, drywalling your house, and you should be able to have a sophisticated conversation with someone who's more educated in an abstract way and that maybe you should be equally comfortable in both situations, right? Because you might think, well, there's more. One of the indications that there's more to you

is that you can be put more places and function properly. And that would be a good thing to aim at, because here's the other issue, is that you know perfectly well that the fundamental tragedies of life and your exposure to malevolence in the course of that life, so those being the worst things. There's not a lot you can do to alter that fundamentally because there are conditions of existence. You're going to be subject to your vulnerability and you're going to be subject to malevolence. That's that. And you can't hide from it because it actually makes it worse. So you're stuck with it. So then the question is, well, what are your options? And one option is to curse the structure of being for being malevolent and tragic and fair enough. And the other is to make yourself so damn differentiated and dynamic and able that you're more than a match for that. Now, that's not an easy thing,

but it doesn't matter because like what's the alternative? There's no good alternative, and that's also worth knowing. So, you see these ideas expressed in the strangest places. And so we've talked a little bit, I think, in this series about Pinocchio. But if we haven't, it doesn't matter. You see, there's Jiminy Cricket at the opening of the Pinocchio movie, pointing to a star, which is roughly the Nativity star for all intents and purposes. And it's a symbolic indicator of something

diamond-like and pure, right? Glimmering in the darkness that's transcendent and above the horizon upon which to fix your eyes. And so that's, and the thing is you need that technically. And the reason you need that is because we know enough about psychology now to know that almost all of the positive emotion that you're going to experience in your life and positive emotion is analgesic by the way right it actually quells pain so it's

not just positive it also gets rid of negative which is a big plus almost all the positive emotion that you're going to feel you're going to feel in relationship to a goal, because you feel positive emotion as you approach a goal. And so if you want to feel positive emotion, then you need a goal, and then you might think, well, if you want to maximize that positive emotion, which is enthusiasm, and also what pulls you out into the world, as well as feeling good, then you need the best possible goal? Well, that's because that's going to engage the largest segments of your being, like if your goal is too narrow, then a bunch of you isn't going to be on board for it, you know? If the goal is well developed and multifaceted, then all of you can partake in that. Even your negative elements, even your anger and your fear can get on board with that, let's say. So you need a goal, man, that's worthy. You got to think you need a goal that justifies the tragedy and

malevolence of life. That seems to be the bottom line. Now, maybe you think, well, there's no goal that can do that. It's like, well, there are still better and worse goals. So, and I'm not convinced that there are no goals that can do that. I think that's an open question. You never know that until you pursued the proper goal long enough to find out who you would be as a consequence of pursuing it.

So that's also your destiny or your existential voyage, right? It's also not something that anyone else can do for you. Someone can say, get your act together for Christ's sake and get at it. That'll make the world unfold best for you, but there's no way you can know that without doing it. So, and unless you think you've done a particularly stellar job of that, then you have no reason to doubt its potential validity. So plus, like crickets are telling you this, and so, you know, they're a very reliable source. Okay, so you see the star, the star recurs as a motif in Pinocchio, and one of the more interesting elements of

it here is that when Jepetto wants to transform his puppet, the Mary and that, who's being played by forces that operate behind the scenes, which is a really good definition of the persona from a union perspective, right? And also something indicative of something like an ideological or conceptual possession. Jepetto, who's a good guy, his positive father figure, relifts his, even though he's a patriarchal figure, right? And a very competent one, he still even lifts his eyes up to something that transcends his mode of being positive as it is, and wishes that his creation would undertake

the kind of transformation that would make it autonomous and fully functional as a moral agent. No strings, right? So that's very interesting, I think. Solzhenitsyn said, the salvation of mankind lies only in making everything the concern of all. That's a pretty decent star-like goal, I would say. And so what happens in the Pinocchio story is that,

because, and I think this is a symbolic representative of what I just described to you that happens at a genetic level if you put yourself in new situations. So, Jepetto is roughly culture in the Pinocchio story, right? He's a craftsman, and he makes Pinocchio. So, he's his son, he's the socializing agent. And he aims for something above mere socialization, which is I think part of the mysterious element of human beings. You know, in our scientific models, we basically have socialization and biology.

But there's always a third element in mythological stories, which is whatever you might construe as the spontaneous action of consciousness that's associated with free will. And that's just basically being conceptualized in religious terms as something akin to the soul. Now, we don't have a category for that scientifically, because what we try to do scientifically is to reduce everything either to socialization

or to biology. But it isn't clear to me that that's, it's perfectly reasonable from the perspective of practicality at a scientific level. You don't want to multiply explanatory principles beyond necessity. But there's many things that that doesn't come to terms with, such as the fact that we all treat each other

as autonomous beings with free will, and that that seems to work, and that if we stop doing that, then things go to hell very, very rapidly. So, and the mere fact that we have been able to conceptualize what that conscious free will might be, metaphysically or physically, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It just means that we don't understand it.

I mean, what it was only in the last 15 years that we discovered that 95% of the universe was made out of some kind of matter that we can't even, whose properties we can't even imagine except that it seems to have mass. So, anyways, what happens is when Jepetto reached Lyft's eyes up to the star, so its society aligning itself with the proper goal with regards to individual development,

right? So, instead of society being at odds with the individual, they line up. And then what happens is nature comes on board, and that's the Blue Fairy in the Pinocchio story, and that seems to me to be a symbolic representation of what happens biologically when you set the goal properly, get your culture behind you and move into the world, is that there's a biological transformation that occurs as a consequence of that, which means that a bunch of you that hasn't been turned on turns on. And I guess one question would be, is what would you be like if you turned on everything inside of you that could be turned on?

Well, that's a good goal. That's a good thing to find out. Now, I'm going to introduce a couple of other ideas. So, there's this idea in Jungian psychology called the circumambulation. And Jung had this idea that you had a potential future self, which would be in potential, everything that you could be, and that it manifests itself moment to moment in your present life by making you interested in things. And the things that you're interested in are the things that would guide you along the

path that would lead you to maximal development. Now it sounds like a metaphysical idea or a mystical idea, even, but it's not. It's a really profoundly biological idea. The idea is something like, well, you're set up so that you're automatically interested in those things that would fully expand you as a well-adapted creature. Well, there's nothing radical about that idea. How else could possibly be the case? Unless there's something fundamentally flawed about you,

that is what the situation would be. It's interesting to think about how that would be manifest moment to moment, but the idea is something like, well, your interest is captured by those things that lead you down the path of development. Well, that better be the case. Okay, so that's fine.

So there's some utility in pursuing those things that better be the case. Okay, so that's fine. And so there's some utility in pursuing those things that you're interested in. That's the call to adventure, let's say. So, and the call to adventure takes you all sorts of places. Now, the problem with the call to adventure is like what the hell do you know? You might be interested in things that are kind of warped and bent. And often it's the case that when new parts of people manifest themselves and grip their interests, say, they do it very badly and shodily. And so you stumble around like an idiot when you try to do something new, that's where the fool is the precursor to the savior from the symbolic perspectives, because you have to be a fool before you can be a master. And if you're not willing to be a fool, then you can't be a master.

So it's an error-ridden process. And that's also laid out in the Old Testament stories because the first thing that happens to all these patriarchal figures when God kicks them out of their father's house when they're like 84 is that they run into all sorts of trouble and some of its social and some of its natural and some of its natural and some of its a consequence of their own moral inadequacy. So they're fools. But the thing that's so interesting is that despite the fact that they're fools, they're still supposed to go on the adventure and that they're capable of learning enough as a consequence of moving forward on the adventure

so that they straighten themselves out across time. And so it's something like this. This circumambulation that Jung talked about was this continual, we'll return to this, this continual circling in some sense of who you could be. You might notice, for example, that there are themes in your life. You know, when you go back across your experiences, you see, you kind of have your typical experience that sort of repeats itself. And there might be variation on it like a musical theme, but it's like you're circling yourself and getting closer to yourself as you move across time. That's the circumambulation now. You remember that for a sec, because we'll go back to it. Okay, so imagine that something glimmers

before you. It's an interest that's dawning and you decide, well, first of all, you're paralyzed. You think, well, how do I know if I should pursue that? It's probably a stupid idea. And the proper response to that is, you're right. It probably is a stupid idea, because almost all ideas are stupid. And so the probability that as you move forward on your adventure, that you're going to get it right the first time is zero. It's just not going to happen. And so then you might think, well, maybe I'll just wait around until I get the right idea and which people do, right? So they're like 40-year-old, 13-year-olds, which is not a good idea. And so they wait around until it's waiting for Godot, until they finally got it right. But the

problem is you're too stupid to know when you've got it right. So waiting around isn't gonna help because even if the perfect opportunity manifested itself to you in your incomplete form, the probability that you would recognize it as the perfect opportunity is zero. You might even think it's the worst possible idea that you've ever heard of anywhere, highly likely, highly likely. So, you have, there's, niche, niche you call that, will to stupidity, which I really liked. So, because he thought of stupidity as being it, you know, it's, you have to take it into account fundamentally and work with it. And so, and so you can take these tentative steps

on your pathway to destiny and you can assume that you're going to do it badly. That's really useful because you don't have to beat yourself up. It's pretty easy to do it badly, but the thing is it's way better to do it badly than not to do it at all. That's the continual message that echoes through these historical stories in Genesis. It's like these are flawed people. They should have got the hell out of their house

way before they did. And they go out and they stumble around interiority and famine and self-betrayal and violence. But it's a hell of a lot better than just rotting away at home. And that's great, so that's good. And so why is that? Well, okay, so you start your path

and you think that you're heading towards your star. And so you go in that direction. And then, because you're here, the world looks a particular way, but then when you move here, the world looks different and you're different as a consequence of having made that voyage. And so what that means is that now that thing that glimmers in front of you is going to have shifted its location. Because you weren't very

good at specifying it to begin with and now that you're a little sharper and more focused than you were, it's going to reveal itself with more accuracy to you. And so then you have to take you. And so then you have to take, you know, it's almost like a 180 degree reversal. But it isn't because, you know, you've, I mean, you've gone this far and that's a long ways to get that far. But that's a lot farther than you would be if you just stayed where you were waiting. And so it doesn't matter that you overshoot continually, because as you overshoot, even if you don't learn what you should have done, you're going to continually learn what you shouldn't keep doing. And if you learn enough about what you shouldn't keep doing,

then that's tantamount at some point learning at the same time, what you should be doing. So that's tantamount at some point to learning at the same time what you should be doing. So it's okay. So it's like this. Now what's cool about it though, I think, is that as you progress the degree of overshooting starts to decline, right? And that we know that there's nothing hypothetical

about that. As you learn a new skill, like even to play a song on the piano, for example, you overshoot madly. You make all sorts of mistakes to begin with, and then the mistakes they disappear. There's a great TED talk, I think it was about this guy set up a really advanced computational recording system in his home, and recorded every single utterance his young child made while learning to speak. And then he put together the child's attempts to say certain phonemes and put them in a list and you can hear the child deviating madly to begin with and

then after hundreds and hundreds of repetitions, just zeroing right in on the exact phoneme. So, you know, you might not know this, but when kids babble, because they start babbling when they're quite young, they babble every human phoneme, including all sorts of phonemes that adults can't say, and then they die into their language, so that after they learn, say, English, then there's all sorts of phonemes they can no longer hear or pronounce, but to begin with, it's all there. Which is really quite interesting. But so they, as they learn a particular language, they zero in on the proper way to pronounce that and their errors minimize. And every time you learn something, that's how it is. And that's really useful to know too, because it means that it's okay to wander around stupidly before you fix your destination. Now, you see that echo in Exodus, right? Because what happens is that the Egyptians or the Hebrews escape a tyranny, which is kind of whatever you do, personally and psychologically, when you escape from your previous set of

stupidly held and ignorant and stubborn axioms. It's like away from that tyranny. It's like, great, I freed myself from that. Well, then what? Well, you think, well, now I'm on the way. It's no, you're not. Now you're in the desert where you wander around stupidly, you know, and worship the wrong things until you finally organize yourself morally again and head in the proper direction. So that's worth knowing too, because you think, well, I got rid of a lot of things baggage, excess baggage that I didn't need in my life, and now everything's okay. It's like, no, it's not. You've got rid of a whole set of scaffolds that were keeping you in place, even though

they were pathological. Now you have nothing, and nothing actually turns out to be better than something pathological, but you're still stuck with the problem of nothing, and that's, well, that's exactly why Exodus is structured the way that it is. It's that you escape from maternity, it's hooray, we're no longer slaves. Yeah, well, now you're nihilistic and lost. It's not necessarily an improvement, but it is. But it is the pre, it's also useful to know that,

because you can also be diluted into the idea that, imagine that you're trying to become enlightened, which might mean to turn all those parts of you on that could be turned on. You think, well, that's just a linear pathway uphill. It's just from one success to another. No, it's not. It's like, here you are, and you're not doing too badly.

And the first step is a complete bloody catastrophe. It's worse. And then maybe you can pull yourself together and you hit a new plateau and then that crumbles and shakes and bang, it's worse again. And so because part of the reason that people don't become enlightened is because it's punctuated by intermittent deserts, essentially, by intermittent catastrophes. And if you don't know that, well, then you're basically screwed because you go ahead on your movement forward and you collapse and you think, well, that didn't work, I collapsed.

It's like, no, that's hard for the course. It's not indication that you failed. It's just indication that it's really hard. And that when you learn something, you also unlearn something. And the thing you unlearned is probably useful and unlearning it actually is painful. You know, let's say if you have to get out of a bad relationship, it's like not every, not any real, there isn't any relationship that's a hundred percent bad.

And so when you jump out of it, well, maybe you're in better shape, but you're still lo and some and disoriented and you don't know what your past was and you don't know what your present is and you don't know what your past was and you don't know what your present is and you don't know what your future is. That's not, that's why people stay with the devil they know instead of, you know, looking for the devil they don't know. So, anyways, the fact that your full of faults doesn't mean you have to stop and thank God for that. That's a really useful thing.

And the fact that your full of faults doesn't mean that you can't learn. And so you can pause it in the ideal and you're gonna be wrong about it, but it doesn't matter because what you're right about is pausing the ideal moving towards it. If the actual ideal isn't conceptualized perfectly, well, first surprise, surprise,

because like what are you gonna to do that's perfect? So, it doesn't matter that it's imperfect. It just matters that you do it and that you move forward. So, that's really, that's really positive news as far as I'm concerned, because you can actually do that, right? You can do it badly. Anyone can do that. So, that's, that's useful. Okay, so like if you were an efficient person, you would have just done that. But you're not. But who cares? You still end up in the same place.

And maybe the trip is even more interesting. Who knows? Probably too interesting. Jung, I began to understand that the goal of psychic development, by which he means psychological development or spiritual development is the self. There's no linear evolution. There's only a circumambulation of the self, getting closer. It's like you're spiraling into something, something like that. And the thing that you're spiraling into recedes as you move towards it and gets more and more sophisticated and well

developed as you move towards it, because you're not going to run out of goals, no matter how much you have your act together, there's probably undoubtedly 30 dimensions along which you could get your act together a lot more. And some of those aren't even conceivable to you when you're in your initial, uncarved state, let's say. Uniform development exists at most at the beginning. Later, everything points towards the center. This insight gave me stability

and gradually my inner peace returned. So this is fun. On the left there, that's the shard cathedral. That's the one that has the maze in it that I told you about. They actually light that's the sharp cathedral. That's the one that has the maze in it that I told you about. They actually light that up with lasers now. And so that's it lit up with lasers. And so they're turning it into a cathedral of light, which I think is really fascinating.

And it's a continuation of the same idea, right? Because the stained glass windows were obviously, I wouldn't call them primitive attempts to do that. I mean, stained glass windows are pretty impressive, you know, but it's an elaboration of the same thing. So now you can go to that cathedral, they light up the whole town like that, which is really something. And so there, and there's how the cathedral is built, it's a cross. And you remember, the cross is an ex that marks the center of the world and the cross is the place where each individual is. And I think that's the fundamental message of Christianity. Is the cross marks the place where every single individual is.

And it's a tragic place that consists of suffering and exposure to malevolence and that the only way to come to terms with it is to accept it. And that seems to me, I don't see anything metaphysical about that statement whatsoever. It's like, well, X marks the spot, fair enough. You're in a spot, you're right in the center of your world. It's right in the center of the world as far as you're concerned and the same with the rest of us. It's characterized by suffering and exposure to malevolence.

There's no doubt about that. What are you gonna do about that? You better, resentful, hateful. All that does is make it worth. So you going to do about that? You're bitter, resentful, hateful, all that does is make it worth. So you have to accept it. Now that's not an easy thing because that's actually, I would say a heroic task to voluntarily accept the conditions of your own existence. And that happens at the cross. So that's fine. And that's associated with light. Well that's good, that that's associated with light. You wouldn't want that to be associated with darkness. That would be a bad thing. So, and so there's the, there's the, the labyrinth. That was built in 1200 AD, and so the idea is you walk in here, it's the same idea as that star sequence of

slides that I just showed you. So here's the idea is that North, South, West, and East. So that's the whole world laid out in two dimensions. And so the question is, how do you get to the center? Now, we already know what the center is. The center is the center of the cross. That's the place of maximal suffering. You could say maximal malevolence as well, but it's also the place where that's transcendent.

So how do you get there? Well, the answer is, well, you don't just stand on the outside looking in, that's not going to help. So, and you can't just run right to the center, even if you're in California. And so you have to walk in here, and then you see you go like this, and you go to every single place, every single place on that little cosmos. And then once you've gone to every single place and expanded yourself as a consequence of going north and west and east and south, then there's enough of you so that you're at, so that you can tolerate being, first of all, that you can figure out where the center

is, but also that you can tolerate being at the center. And so that's what that represents. That's pretty, and look, I mean, let's make no mistake about it, hey? People were pretty damn serious about those ideas. Like that's quite the piece of work for people in the 12th century. Some of those damn cathedrals took 300 years to build. We don't build anything that takes 300 years.

People were putting a lot of effort into whatever these things meant. And if you think they meant bearded man in the sky, then it's hard to account for the kind of motivation that would produce these buildings with that kind of positive conceptualization. The towns, and it was certainly the case in Charters, that they groaned under the tax burden that was required to produce these. Now, you might think, well, that's partly tyrannical and no doubt that's the case.

But that's not the whole story. The whole story is that the people who produced those buildings, they thought about every bit of it. It's nothing's accidental. And they're trying to portray something, just like that window is trying to portray something. That's the same thing as this. It's the center from which all things manifest themselves. You see that's Christ there, and being portrayed as that center, or the center within Him, something like that, very much like the shocker is in yogic practice, same basic idea.

It's the opening up of the internal structure and its proper realization. So there are people walking the labyrinth. So that's the code of many colors, right? That's this differentiated mode of being that enables you to be competent and at home in the widest possible number of places. And that's a real differentiation of your personality. It's a breaking through the boundaries of your personality, including the ones that you

impose on yourself to become someone who's useful wherever they're put. And that's really relevant to this story of Joseph, too, because one of the things that happens to Joseph is that, well, a lot of bad things happen to him because he's the favorite of his father, his brothers hate him. And so the first they're going to throw him in a pit, I think they do throw him in a pit, then they sell him to be a slave, then he ends up in, well, we'll go through the story, he ends up some places where you probably wouldn't want to go, prison being one of them. But

it doesn't matter because even when they put him in prison, he's actually not in prison. He just figures out how to make the prison work way better. And then he's in control of the prison. And it's really, it's an interesting, I had this friend, and he was very smart, but very cynical, and he wasn't employed very well, and he got a little older than he should have given his level of intelligence and employability. And so he had to take jobs that weren't very intellectually challenging. And one of the things I tried to convince him of was that even if he worked, he wanted to work behind the parts department in an automotive store because he liked cars.

But it was beneath them, you know, because it was sort of a, as far as he was concerned, it was a, he was too smart for a job like that, which actually turned out not to be true. He wasn't smart enough for a job like that or he wasn't wise enough. But you know, one of the things I tried to tell him was that you're looking at the situation wrong because even in a simple job, so-called simple job, like let's say, dishwashing in a restaurant, which I didn't offer a lot of. It's not that simple. You're dealing with a lot of other people, very fast staff change over. You're feeding people, you're helping them,

have a celebration, you're helping them take a break. Like, you can do it really well. And then the kitchen can operate properly and then people can come out to the restaurant and it's not a bloody catastrophe. And like, even when you're doing something that's a menial job, so to speak, like, diswashing, there are ways of doing it really badly,

resentfully and horribly, and doing it really well. And as soon as you do it really well, it's not a menial job anymore. It immediately transforms, no, I mean, you can be around people who won't let that happen, and you should go get another job if that's the case. But if you do it properly, then it's not menial at all. people who won't let that happen. And you should go get another job if that's the case. But if you do it properly, then it's not menial at all.

And that's also a good way out of resentment. You think, well, I've just got this two-bit job. It's like, yeah, what if you did it as well as you possibly could? What would happen? Well, the first thing that would happen is you'd get a lot smarter. That's for sure.

And that's hardly a negative thing. Okay, so that's the code of many colors. So it's an intimation of what Joseph is like. And what we're seeing with all of these patriarchal figures is the continual realization of the ideal person, right? You can think about it as successive approximations of the ideal person. And the story is exploring all sorts of different possibilities, including ones that are very violent and catastrophic and malevolent. It's trying to cover the entire territory and to focus in on what's the proper way through the maze, the maze of life, the labyrinth. And the hint here is that, well, you should be multi-dimensional.

These are the generations of Jacob. Joseph being 17 years old was feeding the flock with his brethren, and the lad was with the sons of Bill and with the sons of Zilpa, his father's wives. And Joseph brought unto his father their evil report. Well, we already know that Joseph is Jacob's favorite, and so that doesn't make him very popular among his brothers. He's younger, and now we also find out that he's been set up more or less as you might say a snitch, because that's what this phrase means is that he goes out and watches his

older brothers, and if they do something they shouldn't do, then he comes trotting back to Jacob and reports. Well, that's not going to make you popular. So, and you would say, well, is that Joseph's problem? Or Jacob's problem? And I would say, and this is something I learned from reading you, too, is that that's a conspiratorial problem. Right? Is it the parents that fault, but so is the child who agrees to do that. They've got a little cabal going. And you might say, well, it's only the parents fault, but the son will be taking advantage of every advantage that offers him.

Because he could say no, too. I won't do that. So anyway, so Joseph is the favorite. He's a bit of a teacher's pet. That's what it looks like. Now, Israel loved Joseph more than all his colors because he was the son of his old age and he made him a coat of many colors. And when his brethren saw that their father loved him more than all his brethren, they hated him and could not speak peaceably unto him. So let's say you have a child or number of children, and one of them is your favorite let's say you have a child or a number of children and one of them is your favorite. How should you treat that child? Well, it isn't obvious that you do the many favors by overtly making them be your favorite. Right? I mean, first of all, maybe you don't challenge them as much as you should. And second of all, you definitely set up a cane and able like

scenario in the household. And that, or maybe it's an eatable situation, too, because you happen to love your child more than you love your spouse, which is, that's not a recipe for familial harmony. So it seems to be a bad idea. Okay, so now we have two reasons that Joseph is not like by his brothers. Well, he's a bit of a rat-fink, and the other is that he's the favorite, and he's playing that to the help by the looks of things. And when his brethren saw that their father loved him more than all his brethren, then all his brethren, they hated him and could not speak peaceably unto him.

Okay. And Joseph dreamed a dream, and he told it to his brethren, and they hated him the more. He said unto them, here I pray you this dream which I have dreamed for behold we were binding wheat sheaves in the field and low my sheaf arose and behold your sheaf stood round about and bowed to my sheaf. And his and remember he's yet the young one, right? And also the daughter of the favorite wife,

which is another thing that's, or the son of the favorite wife, which is another thing not really working in his favor. And his brethren said to him, shall thou indeed reign over us, or shall thou indeed have dominion over us? And they hated him yet the more for his dreams and for his words. Well, there's a shock. You know, that makes perfect sense. So,

when it gets worse, so you see here, well, there's the weachies bowing there. And then you see this, what's going on here. Well, that's not the end of his, let's call it grandiosity. And there's an idea too in the Old Testament, especially in the stories of Joseph, that if God sends you a dream twice, he really means it. And so I don't know if that's true, although I do know that people have repeating dreams. It might be true that a dream you have twice is really trying to punch something home.

It's certainly the case that recurrent nightmares are meaningful and that recurrent nightmares are associated quite tightly with decreased states of mental health, and that if you can treat the nightmare, which is often quite easy, by the way, then some of the mental health problems will decrease. So repeated dreams seem to be important. Anyways, he dreamed yet another dream and told it to his brethren and said, behold, I've

had another dream. And behold, the sun and the moon and the 11 stars bowed to me. And he told it to his father and to his brothers, and his father rebuked him and said unto him, What is this dream that thou hast dreamed? Shall I and your mother and your brothers indeed come to bow down ourselves to thee, to the earth, and his brother and envy them, but his father observed the saying,

well, what the hell do you make of something like that, right? If someone tells you that, it's like, are they responsible for their dreams? We don't really seem, we don't really hold ourselves responsible for the dreams we have at night. Then what do you make of a dream? Is like one of the things that Jung pointed out,

this is where he differed from Freud substantially. He's Freud tended to think that the dream hid its meaning because its contents were acceptable to the conscious mind. And Jung said, no, no, you don't understand. That's not what happens. What happens is the dream is doing the best it can to express something that the person doesn't yet really know. And Jung thought about the dream as a manifestation of nature.

It wasn't associated with the ego at all. It was just like you have a dream, and there are things happening in it the same way that when you walk into a dinner party, there are things happening there. It's not, the dream isn't something that's subject to your capacity for manipulation. It's something that happens to you,

not something that you do. And so for manipulation. It's something that happens to you, not something that you do. And so if someone has a dream like that, well, you've got three options. You can just discount dreams altogether, which is what people in the modern world tend to do, which is a very bad idea because there are thoughts and you shouldn't discount them. And they're hardly random as some neuroscientists claim. That's absolutely cock-eyed theory, that random. Be like television snow on a TV set if it was random. So one is, while you just discount dreams, the other is that you consider the person a liar and a braggart and a narcissist. And the third is, well what's the third third? It's like he dreamt that the sun and the moon and the stars bow down to him.

You might think about that two or three times, but it's not necessarily something that's going to make you happy. And his brethren went to feed their fathers' flock and shekim, so they took off. And Israel said unto Joseph, do you not die, brethren, feed the flock and shekim? Come, and I will send the unto him. He said unto them." And he said to him, here am I. And when they saw him afar off even before he came near unto them, they conspired against him to slay him. Rough people back then, right? This sort of thing is happening quite frequently. And they said to one another, behold, the dreamer cometh.

Come now therefore, and let us slay him, cast him into some pit. And we will say some evil beast hath devoured him, and we shall see what becomes of his dreams. So there's an echo of the Kain and Abel story there, obviously, you know, I mean, it's not quite as clear because in the Kaan ablester,

Abel is clearly just doing well. And here you can't quite get a handle on Joseph's character, you can't tell if he is actually the elect or if he's just a spoiled brat with delusions of grandeur, you know, and but it doesn't matter because his brothers are so irritated at the fact that he's favored, and perhaps even the fact that he might be someone destined for something special, that they find it perfectly reasonable to destroy that. And it's so interesting how often that motif of pulling down an ideal manifests itself

in these old stories, right? It's, the pattern is established in the Canaan Abel story, it just repeats and repeats and repeats. And I think that's dead true. I think it just repeats all the time. It's that people are annoyed about how tragic their lives are. They're annoyed that they're subject to malevolence, and they're annoyed that they're not doing as well as other people are doing. And that makes them, that puts them exactly into this state of mind.

Now, maybe with modern people, if you're going to kill someone because you're resentful as a modern person, you don't generally slay them and throw them into a pit. You know, what you do is you just kill them slowly over a few decades. And it isn't obvious to me that that's any better. So, I've seen plenty of married couples who were in that situation. It's like, it's like, yeah. There was this Mitch Hedberg, he used to complain about

Turtle Nacks, he said, it was like being strangled by a really weak midget. And it's probably really politically incorrect joke, but it's a funny joke. So, and then you see relationships that are like that. It's like each person has their hands around the neck of the other person, but they don't have enough courage to actually to squeeze.

They just put enough pressure on to cut the circulation off a tiny bit. So the person just gets like, they die over a 30-year period, something like that. So yeah, and you're all laughed because you know it's true, that's why. And we will say some evil beast hath devoured him, which would be true actually, it would be the evil beast that's inside the brothers. And we shall see what will become of his dreams. That's interesting too, because so they want to spite themselves, because maybe Joseph

is something special, and then they want to spite their father, which is probably not the wisest idea, because they owe him some gratitude. I mean, maybe he's acting like a pain in the neck. There's some evidence for that, but this is a little bit harsh, but they also want to spite God just like Cain did because that's what it means we shall see what will become of his dreams, right? Because then as soon as you're in some sense trying to fight against the intuition of someone, the natural intuition of someone, you've set yourself up against the structure of being itself.

And so pretty bad. And Rubin heard it and he delivered them out of their hands and said, no, let us not kill them. And Rubin said unto them, shed no blood, but cast them into this pit that's in the wilderness. It's like Rubin's the good guy in this story. And there's no water in the pit, by the wilderness. It's like Ruben's the good guy in this story. And there's no water in the pit, by the way, and lay no hand upon him, that he might rid him out of their hands to deliver him to his father again. So Ruben was actually trying to save him, so that he might rid him out of their

hands to deliver him to his father again. And it came to pass when Joseph came onto his brother and that they stripped him of his coat, his coat of many colors that was on him. And they took him and cast him into a pit and the pit was empty and there was no water in it. And then they sat down to eat bread and lifted up their eyes and looked and behold a company of Ishmaelites came from Gilead with their camels bearing spices and bomb and mure going to carry it down to Egypt. And Judah said unto his brother, how does it profit us if we kill our brother and conceal his blood? So he's the practical guy here is what?

Why would we kill him when we can sell him? It's like, come let us sell him to the Ishmaelites and let not our hand be upon him, for he is our brother and our flesh, and his brethren were content. Then they're passed by Midianites, merchant men, and they drew and lifted up Joseph out of the pit and sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites for 20 pieces of silver. It's a amount that echoes through into the future, and they brought Joseph into Egypt. I'm never really sure how these slavery stories work. It's like, so it's 2,500, 3,000 years ago and I decided I'm going to sell you to the Ishma lights.

That just works out. I get the money, you get to be a slave and they take you away. I don't really understand how that works. I can't figure out how people weren't just selling each other all the time. But maybe if you're a family, you can do it. So there they sold him. And Rubin returned to the pit and behold Joseph was not there, and Rubin ran his clothes. So Rubin's very upset about this. And he returned on to his brothers and said, the child is not, and I, where shall I go?" And they conspired. They took Joseph's quote and killed a kid of the goats and dipped the coat in the blood. That's interesting too because blood is actually another color, right?

So he's got this coat of many colors and blood is definitely a color. And so this is the addition in some sense of the color of blood to Joseph's coat. And I would say it's probably a necessary color. Because I don't think that you're serious enough till your coat has been dipped in blood. That can happen in many ways. And they sent the coat of many colors and they brought it to their father. And said, so they lied to him. It's very, very nasty business this. They sell his son to slavery.

They claim that he's dead. They lie to him. They put him into an extreme state of grief. There's a lot of hatred underneath that, right? A tremendous amount of hatred for Joseph and also for Jacob. This we have found, no now whether it be thy son's coat or not. And he knew it, and he said, it's my son's coat. An evil beast has devoured him. Joseph is without doubt rent in pieces. And Jacob tore his clothes and put sackcloth on his loins and mourned for many days.

And all his sons and daughters rose up to comfort him. But he refused to be comforted, and he said, I'll go down into my grave morning, my son. Thus is Father Webform. So that's Jacob collapsing at the news. And the Midianites sold Joseph into Egypt onto Potaphar, an officer of Pharaohs, and Captain of the Guard. And Joseph was brought down to Egypt, and Potaphar, an officer of Pharaoh,

Captain of the Guard, and Egyptian bought him of the hands of the Ishmaelites which had brought him down to the Thither. So now he's a slave. So now you think, well that would be, this is a man who has a lot of reason to be irritated at the structure of reality, right? He's gone from being the favorite to being betrayed by all of his brothers, that's pretty rough, and then he's being betrayed by all of his brothers. That's pretty rough. And then he's been transformed into a slave. And now he's being sold to work as a slave. So you'd think that that would corrupt his character.

Because you know, one of the things, I think this is the case. Anyways, I think people are always looking for an excuse to have their character corrupted. Because if your character is corrupted, then you get to lie and you get to cheat and you get to steal and you get to betray and you get to act resentfully and you get to do nothing. And that's all easy. It's easier to lie than to tell the truth. It's easier to do nothing than to do something. So there's always part of you thinking, well, I need a justification for being useless and horrible because that'd be a lot less work. And so then if something terrible comes along,

you think, ah, that's just exactly the excuse that I was waiting for, and then out all that comes. You know, Solzhevditsin, when he was in the concentration camps in Russia, watching how people behaved. You know, he said that there were people that were put in the camps who immediately became trustees or guards, and they were even more vicious in the camps who immediately became trustees or guards and they were even more vicious than the people who had been hired as guards.

His idea was that they had collected all that, he called it, Foulness, if I remember correctly, around them in normal life. But they didn't have the opportunity to express it. But as soon as you gave them the opportunity, it was like there it was, right away. And so, one of the messages that seems to echo through these Old Testament stories is that just because something terrible happens to you doesn't mean that you get to be, that you get to wander off the path and make things worse. And maybe it doesn't matter how terrible it is

that what happens to you. That's a tough call, you know, because you see people now and then in life who they've really got it rough, man, like 50 bad things are happening to them at the same time. And you think, oh, it's no wonder if you were bitter and resentful and hostile, it'd be like, yeah, no wonder.

But then you meet people and socialists again talked about this in the Goulai Gareqa. Belago, he said he met lots of people yeah, no wonder. But then you meet people and socialists, and again, talked about this in the Gula Gurgh Bellagoy. He said he met lots of people, not lots. He met enough people to impress him in the concentration camp system who didn't allow their misfortunes to corrupt them. And that's something, man. Because maybe the only real misfortune is to become corrupted.

That's a really useful thing to think. Maybe the rest of it, maybe the rest of it is trivial in comparison. I know that's a rough thing because you can be in very harsh circumstances, but I do think there's something to that. And the Lord was with Joseph, and he was a prosperous man, and he was in the house of his master, the Egyptian, and his master saw that the Lord was with him, and that the Lord made all that he did to prosper in his hand. So that's an echo of the idea that we encountered earlier about walking with God, right? So Adam walked with God before he ate the fruit with Eve and then he wouldn't walk with God.

Then Noah walked with God and Abraham walked with God. So the idea is, well, that's that alignment with the highest ideal. I think it's something like that. And you know, we could think about that as a metaphysical claim as well. But I don't think it is. I mean, I've got thousands of letters now in the last year from people who have told me that they were in a pit. That's exactly right. And that they decided that they were going to try to put their lives together, and that it worked. And so that's really something, and they write surprised. It's like, well, I decided that I was

going to work hard at what I was doing, and I wasn't going to lie anymore than absolutely necessary. I thought I'd give it a try for a few months, and all sorts of good things started to happen to me. It's like, maybe that's how the world works. Now, obviously, it doesn't work like that all the time, right? Because you can get sliced off at the knees. I mean, there's an arbitrary element to existence that you can't wish away. But that doesn't mean that there are,

it doesn't mean that there aren't bad strategies and good strategies. And so I do think that one of the most fundamental existential questions is, like, if things aren't going well for you in your life, is, are you absolutely certain that you're doing absolutely everything you can to put things in order? Because if you're not, then you shouldn't complain. Because you don't know to what degree you're actually contributing or even causing the circumstance. Now, that's a very annoying thing to think, and're actually contributing or even causing the circumstance.

Now that's a very annoying thing to think, and I'm not trying to blame the victim. I know that people end up with lung cancer because they were exposed to asbestos. I'm not trying to, although I also know too that if you have lung cancer because you've been exposed to asbestos, that can be a tragedy or it can be hell. And to some degree, that depends on how you conduct yourself. So I mean, I know that's pretty gloomy possibilities, right? So anyway, so Joseph is a slave, but it turns out that he hasn't sacrificed the integrity of his character,

and so it turns out that he's not a slave. It's just that everyone around him thinks he's a slave, but he's not. So that's pretty interesting. He's a goodly person and well-favored. Well, so he's a good guy and he's an impressive specimen as well. This is pretty interesting, given the current political climate, I would say, and it came to pass after these things that his master's, cast her eyes upon Joseph and she said, lie with me. That means that actually has two meanings, right? But he refused

and said unto his Master's wife, behold, my Master does not know what's with me in the house and he's committed all that he has to my hand. There's no one greater in this house than I. Neither have he kept back anything from me, but you, because you are his wife. How then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God? And it came to pass as she spoke to Joseph day by day that he harkened not unto her to lie by her or be with her.

It's being sexually harassed, Joseph. And it came to pass, well, it's right. I mean, look, look at the painting. And it came to pass about this time that Joseph went into the house to do his business, and there was none of the men of the house there within. And she caught him by his garment, saying, lie with me. And he left his garment in her hand in fled and got him out. So that's kind of embarrassing for poor Joseph, I would say, and a bit on the suspicious side.

And it came to pass when she saw that he had left his garment in her hand and was fled forth, that she called unto the men of her house and spake unto them. See, he had brought in a Hebrew to Marcos. He came in unto me, lie with me, and I cried with a loud voice. So what is it? Hellhath no fury like a woman scorned. That's the proper Commentary or not and it came to pass when he heard that I lifted up my voice and cried that he left his garment with me and fled and got himself out

And it came to pass when his master heard the words of his wife So that's the Pharaoh which she spake onto him saying after this manner did they servant to me? His wrath was kindled and Joseph's master took him and put him in prison, a place where the King's prisoners were bound. And he was there in the prison. Well that sort of sucks. It's like, first his brothers betray him and throw him in a pit and then he gets made a slave, which is probably better than being in the pit. And then he becomes sort of like King's slave, so that's working out pretty well. And now someone lies about him, he gets betrayed again, and now it's into the prison with him. And so it's this again, right?

It's the same thing. It's Cisophus with the rock and then down. And it's order chaos, order chaos. And then you have to think, well, are you the order or are you the chaos or are you the thing that's moving between them? Because that's the right thing to be. Because otherwise you're just order the thing that's moving between them. Because that's the right thing to be. Because otherwise you're just order and that's a really bad idea or you're

just chaos and that's a really bad idea. You can be the thing that's dynamically mediating between them and that's what he's doing. But the Lord was with Joseph and showed a mercy and gave him favor in the sight of the keeper of the prison. That's no easy thing to do, I would think. It's like you're thrown in prison and now the jailer likes you. Now how exactly are you going to manage that? It's a good thing to think about because you might think, well, if you were really in dire straits, how is it that you should conduct yourself so that you have the highest probability of having things work out?

And it's not saying, well, Joseph took over the thumbscrew, and started using that on the other prisoners. That's not the indication here at all. It's that he's doing something. He's acting like a person who isn't a prisoner, even though he's in the prison, just like he was acting like someone who wasn't a slave when he was a slave. And so,

like someone who wasn't a slave when he was a slave. And so it makes you wonder who you can be despite the fact that other people think that whatever you appear to be. And the keeper of the prison committed to Joseph's hand, all the prisoners that were in the prison, and whatsoever they did there, he was the doer of it. The keeper of the prison looked not to anything that was under his hand, because the Lord was with him, and not which he did, the Lord made it to prosper. So it's a repeat of exactly what happened when he was the slave of the Pharaoh, except it's one rung deeper into hell, so to speak, right?

So it's slave Pharaoh, and here it's prisoner, jail, master, but it doesn't matter. The same thing happens. So now Joseph is in prison and the Pharaoh has a fit one day of peak and throws the chief of his butlers into prison and the chief of his bakers. And they have a dream, each of them. And Joseph interprets the dreams, it seems to be something that he can do. And he tells the butler that his dream means that the Pharaoh is going to forgive him and put him back in his position. And he tells the baker that the Pharaoh isn't going to forgive him and

that he's going to take off his head and hang him in a tree, which is rather rough dream. But that is what happens. So anyways, the butler goes free, and Joseph says, look, maybe you could just keep in mind the fact that I did you a bit of a favor here and told you something that was accurate, but the chief didn't really remember once he was freed, interpreting dreams in prison. And so now the Pharaoh has a dream and he actually has two dreams, so it's another one of those doubled motifs. So the ideas, these are really important dreams because they came in a pair. And behold, there came out of the river seven seven well-favored kind and fat fleshed, so cattle.

And they fed the menow, meadow, and behold, seven other cattle came up. After the amount of the river, ill-favored and lean fleshed, starving, and stood by the other cows on the brink of the river. And the ill-favored and lean fleshed kind did eat up the seven well-favored and fat. So Pharaoh awoke. Fair enough, it's pretty nasty dream. And then he has another dream to hit at home. And he slapped and dreamt the second time and behold, seven years of corn came up upon one stalk, rank and good, and behold seven thinneers and blasted with the east wind sprung up after them. And the seven thinniers devoured the seven rank and foliers. And Pharaoh woke and beheld it was a dream.

And then it says a little later. And for that, the dream was doubled unto Pharaoh twice. It is because the thing is established by God, and God will shortly bring it to pass. It's interesting, you know, because one of the better theories about dreams is that they're part of the way that the right and left hemisphere communicate, or maybe the nonverbal part of the brain communicates with the verbal brain, verbal part of the brain.

And so the nonverbal part of the brain, which is less differentiated and thinks more globally is looking for patterns and anomalies in the world, things that don't fit well with the current way of conceptualizing the world, things that don't fit well with the current way of conceptualizing the world, things that make you anxious and uncertain. And those are things you haven't mastered, right? So they don't fit well into your conceptualization of the world by definition, because if you had mastered them, they wouldn't make you anxious and nervous. And so the nonverbal parts of your brain are like an alarm system. They're looking around for places where you're probably wrong and then they put those in images and try to

conceptualize them so that you can update your model of reality to take them into account, but that also produces a fair bit of negative emotion, especially at night. And so So we know that we know if you do private people of dreams that they go insane very rapidly animals as well, necessary part of mental equilibrium. The way you do that with rats in case you want to know is that you've got rats that you want to drive insane. This is how you do it. So you put the rat on a pedestal that's pretty small and then when he falls, that's surrounded by water, and then when he falls asleep, his nose hits the water and then he wakes up, and so you can deprive

the rat of sleep, and that doesn't, the rats don't respond to that very well after some period of time. So that's one of the ways that that's been discovered. But anyways, the dream does seem to be an update mechanism, and so if, if you have a very powerful dream like a nightmare, especially if it's repeating, it's like something is trying to hammer on the door that needs to be let in, and often you don't know how to let it in, that's a problem. So, but then Pharaoh sent and called Joseph because he had talked to his Pharaoh sent and called Joseph because he had talked to his butler and they brought him hastily out of the dungeon and Joseph shaved himself and changed his clothes and came in unto Pharaoh.

I guess he didn't want to shock Pharaoh with how people dressed in the prison. And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, I have dreamed a dream and there's none that can interpret it. I've heard say of thee that you can understand a dream to interpret it. And Joseph said, it's not me. God will give Pharaoh an answer of peace. So Jacob isn't taking credit for his ability to interpret dreams, which also indicates quite interestingly, there's nothing that despite the fact that he's successful and competent, he's not narcissistic. Like, if he happens to have this gift, he regards it as a gift and not as something that, you know,

redounds to his favor, it's just something that he happens to be able to do. And so that's a hallmark of someone who's got a pretty well put together personality as far as I'm concerned, because, you know, people have gifts that they didn't really earn. Those would be your talents, your intelligence, your good looks, if you happen to have good looks, etc. And there's no sense being all puffed up about that because it's great. It's luck at the draw, though, and the proper attitude is to note that it's luck of the draw and to be grateful for it. It's quite a fine painting that one.

Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout the land of Egypt, and then there shall arise after them seven years of famine, and all the plenty shall be forgotten, and the famine shall consume the land, and the plenty shall not be known in the land by reason of that famine following, for it shall be very grievous. So now we see too that Jacob, he can interpret dreams, but he's also the sort of person who can look into the future and think, this is sort of what Adam was called on to do when he got kicked out of the Garden of Paradise. You're going to be able to conceptualize that even if things are going well now, that

that doesn't mean that they're going to go well into the future. And so he's the aunt and not the grasshopper, right? In the grasshopper in the aunt's story, it's like everything's good, but you should wake the hell up and you should test to see how things can go wrong. And you can see if your systems can survive

them things going wrong, and which is something that I think we could all harken to because I think we do a very bad job in the modern world of testing to see if our systems can go wrong. Okay, so the Pharaoh is pretty impressed by this dream interpretation and pretty worried about it and I guess he's a reasonable person despite the fact that he put Joseph and Jail. I guess he didn't have much choice. Now, therefore, let Pharaoh look for a man discreet and wise and set him over the land of Egypt. Let Pharaoh do this and let him appoint officers over the land.

This is what Joseph is saying, and take up the fifth part of the land of Egypt in the seven plenties years. And let them gather all the food of those good years that come and lay up corn under the hand of Pharaoh and let them keep food in the cities. And just like that Joseph is restored to his position. So Pharaoh said unto Joseph, I am Pharaoh and without thee shall no man lift up his hand or foot in all of the land of Egypt. And so he comes out of the prison and he really, in some sense, as far as I'm concerned, he actually occupies a position that's higher than the position of the Pharaoh. It depends now you look at it because the Pharaoh has relegated himself

to ceremonial status, right? Joseph has all the responsibility, he makes all the decisions, so de facto he's the Pharaoh, he doesn't get the glory precisely, although he's not doing too bad for himself. I mean, there's a lesson in that too. I wrote these rules for Quora a long time ago, and one of them, I've written them into this, some of them into this book, you guys got a pamphlet about today. One of the rules that I didn't write about was, note that, note that opportunity lurks where responsibility has been abdicated, which is really interesting. I mean, I've seen people in their jobs say things like, well, the guy I work with doesn't

do any work. It's like, well, you can do it. I mean, I know there's limits to that, but one of the things you can do at work is make yourself indispensable. I mean, you might get the cane types against you if you do that. But there's something to be said for being indispensable because when people start to be dispensed with, you probably won't be one of them. Or even if you are, then the fact that you're indispensable just means you can go somewhere else and be indispensable there, not just as useful. So it's very, very difficult to permanently put down

someone who's really good at doing things, because they can just go off and do them somewhere else. And one of the ways that you get like that is to take responsibility when someone else is failing to do so. And you think, well, I shouldn't have to do that. That's one way of thinking about it. Another way of thinking about it is, oh, good, I get to do that. And the seven years of plantiastness that was in the land of Egypt were ended, and the seven

years of dirt began to come, according as Joseph has said. And the dirt was in all the lands. Well, that's an archetypal story, right? In the archetypal story, it's the business cycle story. It's a little harsher when you're starving, obviously, but that's not the point. The point is, is that sometimes things are getting good and sometimes things are getting bad. And you can be sure that that's the case.

That's gonna happen to you. And so the wise person takes stock of the fact that things are going to get bad, is this is the same thing that happens with Noah. It's like, assume the flood, because it's going to happen. And you think, well, it's a hell of a world that has floods. It's like, not if you have a boat, right? It helps a lot. If there's a flood and you have a boat, it's like you can float on the flood. And then it's not such a problem. And so if you refuse to look at the fact that things are going to be going downhill badly and that you're going to be in a pit at some point, you and your family

perhaps, then when it happens, it will be as bad as it possibly can be. But if you're awake and alert to that possibility, then you can mitigate it. And the Dirt was in all the lands, but in the land of Egypt, there was bread. And when the land of Egypt was famished, the people cried to Pharaoh for bread and Pharaoh said unto the Egyptians, go to Joseph, what he says to you to do, you do that. And the famine was all over the face of the earth, and Joseph opened up the storehouses and

sold to the Egyptians, and the famine waxed soar in the land of Egypt, and all the countries came into Egypt to buy, to Joseph to buy corn, the famine was soaring all the lands. Now, when Jacob saw that there was corn in Egypt, Jacob said unto his sons, Why are you standing around looking at each other? He said, I've heard that there's corn in Egypt. Get down there and buy for us so that we may live and not die. It's like pretty straightforward advice. That. And Joseph's 10 brothers went down to Bicorn in Egypt, but Benjamin Joseph's brother, so that's the youngest one, right? The only one left. It's the one that was younger than

Joseph, the only youngest one, and also Rachel's other son. But Benjamin Joseph's brother, Jacob didn't send because he was worried that something bad would happen to him. Which kind of indicates to me that maybe Jacob was a bit suspicious about what had happened to Joseph. The last time he sent all the brothers on an adventure. Joseph was the governor over all the land, and he, it was that sold to all the people of the land. And Joseph's brothers came and bowed down themselves before him with their faces to the earth. Well, there's the dream. Now, the thing is too, is that one question you have in your life is who should you bow down to? And you might say no one, that's not exactly the right answer because that means that you don't

have an ideal because you bow down to your ideal That's what makes it an ideal and if you don't have an ideal then what the hell are you gonna do? So you have to bow down to something and so what happens here is well The brothers are bowing down to the person who's so bloody resilient and competent that they can take themselves out of a prison and become the ruler of the Land that happened to Vacklaw of Havill right andyrie. It also happened to Mandela in South Africa. Like, these things actually happen. It's really something. So God only knows what you might learn in prison.

So they bow down to Joseph and properly so. You know, he is, even without his coat, he's still the person with the coat of many colors. And Joseph saw his brothers and he knew them, but he made them so strange unto them. It's a number of years have passed. And he spoke roughly unto them and he said to them, where do you come from? And they said, from the land of Canaan to buy food. And Joseph knew whose brothers were, but they didn't know who he was. And they came back to Jacob their father and told them all that befell them and said, the man whose Lord of the country spoke roughly to us and took us for spies. And we said to him, we're true men, honest men, we're not spies.

We be twelve brothers, sons of our fathers. One is not, and the youngest is this day with our father in the land of Canaan. And the man said, here's how I'll know that you're honest men. Leave one of the brothers here with me and take some food for the famine of your households and be gone, and then bring your youngest brother to me.

Then I'll know that you're not spies, but that you're honest men, and I'll deliver the other brother, and you shall trade in the land, so you don't have to starve to death. And it came to pass as they emptied their sacks that behold every man's bundle of money was in his sack, and when both they and their father saw the bundles of money, they were afraid. So they had bought food from Joseph, and he gave them the food, and then he put all their money back and their socks,

which I could imagine would worry them to some degree. And Jacob said, Me, you've already bereaved of my children. Joseph is not, it's him and is not. Now you'll take Benjamin away. All these things are against me. And Rubin spanked onto his father, saying, Slay my two sons if I bring him not to the deliverment of my hand, and I will bring him to the again."

And he said, no, my son shall not go down with you for his brother is dead, and he's left alone. If mischief befall him by the way, in the which you shall go, then you shall bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to the grave. Now, there's a hint. See, what happens in the last part of the Joseph story is, and

this is associated with the idea of putting your house in order, your individual house in order, and then putting your family's house in order, let's say, reversed a little bit in this story because Joseph puts himself together and then he puts the state of Egypt in order, which is really quite interesting because Egypt is the canonical tyranny, right, in the Old Testament. And so the idea is very, very clear here that the person who wears the coat of many colors can put the tyranny right. And then the next extension is, well, he has to put his family right. Now, you know, generally the progression would be put yourself right, then put your family right, then put the state right, something like that. It doesn't really, if you could do it in a different order, that's probably okay too.

But so that's what happens at the end of the story is that, you know, Joseph is doing pretty damn well. And so is the state that he serves. But that isn't good enough for him. He wants his family to be functional and put together properly, even though they did terrible things to him. And that's very interesting, because once someone does terrible things to you, then the logical thing or a logical thing to think is, well, go to hell in a hand basket, you know,

like you deserve exactly what you get. But it's not a very productive attitude, especially if you're around people that you have to be around. So like if it's your family, and you go have a family dinner and one of you punches the other and then the other punches you back. And then that's like the family dinner for the next 30 years. It doesn't seem to be very productive, even if you're the person who happened to get in the last blow.

Because you're gonna have to put up with them at minimum. It might be nice to just let what you can go go and work to make towards making things better. You have to get rid of the idea of revenge and resentment and all those things that you carry along, but but it's probably better to think about how your family could be if it was really functioning well, and then just aim unhearingly at that. I know, no, that's not easy. I mean, people are very screwy, and there's no end to the depths of pathology within families. But of course, this story states that very clearly. I mean, they tried to kill them. They sold them to slavery. It's a pathological family.

Let's put it that way. But Joseph's attitude is, well, we got to set this right, not least because of his father, but it isn't only because of his father, as you see, and as the story unfolds. And the famine was soaring the land. And it came to pass when they had eaten up the corn, which they had brought out of Egypt. Their father said unto them, go again and buy us a little food. And Judah spake unto him, saying, the man did solemnly protest unto us. You will not see my face except your brother be with you.

They can't go back to Egypt without Benjamin." And they said, the man asked us straightly of our state and of our kindred saying, is your father yet alive? Have you another brother? And we told him according to the tenor of those words, could we know that he would say bring your brother down? And Judah said unto Israel his father, send the lad with me and will arise and go that we may live and not die, both we and thou, and also are little ones. I will be sure to for him. Of my hands shall thou require him,

if I bring him not unto thee and set them before thee, then let me bear the blame forever." Well, so Judah, who played a pretty dismal role in the original selling Joseph into slavery, seems to obviously have learned something by this point since he's willing to put himself on the line to take responsibility for the situation and to put himself on the line and to stand in for Benjamin.

So he's making himself into a sacrificial object of sorts. And so, the game that Joseph's playing, because he's sort of teasing his brothers, but he's also testing them. The game that he's playing is twofold. As one is, have you bloody well learned anything or are you just as corrupt and useless as you were before? That's game number one.

And game number two is, maybe if I poke and prod you and put you into a relatively difficult and mysterious situation, I can get you to clue the hell in and to adopt some responsibility and we can move this whole mess forward. And so that seems to be happening. So Judah is taking responsibility and Ruben did that as well. And the men took presents and they took double money in their hand and Benjamin rose up and went down to Egypt and stood before Joseph. And when Joseph saw Benjamin with them, he said to the ruler of his house, bring these men home and slay and make ready food for these men shall dine with me at noon. And the man, man did his Joseph bade and the man brought the men into Joseph's house.

And when Joseph came home, they brought him the presents which was in their hand and bowed themselves again to him, to the earth. And he asked them of their welfare and said, is your father well, the old man of whom you speak, is whom you speak, is he yet alive? And they answered, thy servant, our father, is in good health. He's yet alive. And they bowed down their heads and made obeisance. And he lifted up his eyes and saw his brother Benjamin, his mother's son, and said, Is this your younger brother of whom you speak unto me? And he said, God be gracious unto thee, my son, and Joseph made haste for his bowels

did yearn upon his brother. And he sought where to weep. And he entered into his chamber and wept there, and he washed his face and went out and refrained himself, and said, Set on the bread. And they sat before them. Now he plays another trick on his brother, so he has them all sit at the table, but he lines them up according to age. And so he's trying to, what is he trying to do? He's trying to freak them out fundamentally. And so it, and he manages that because they have no idea how in the world they could possibly, he could possibly pull something like that off.

They think it's magic. And the man marveled at one another. And he took and sent messes unto them from before him, but Benjamin's mess was five times as much as any of theirs. So what's he doing? Well, he's testing his brothers again. The fact that when he was the child Joseph, that he got more meant that his brothers got terribly jealous and then murderous, right? And so now he's doing the same thing with Benjamin.

He's thinking, okay, well, I'll give this kid more than he's share and I'll watch how these reprobates behave and see if they've learned anything. And so, any command of the steward of his house saying, fill the men's sock with food as much as they can carry and put every man's money in the sock as well. And put my cup, the silver cup, in the sack's mouth of the youngest and his corn money. And the steward did, according to the word the Joseph had spoken. As soon as the morning was light, the men were sent away along with their transportation. The cup is found in Benjamin's sack. Well, so Benjamin's kind of young. And Joseph sends out

people to find out where the cup is gone and they find it in Benjamin's in Benjamin's sock. And they're very upset about this. They said that a harsh punishment would befall whoever had the cup in his sock. They rent their clothes and laid it every man his ass and returned to this city. Judah and his brethren came to Joseph's house for he was they out there and they fell before him on the ground. Veryhappy and apologetic. And Joseph said unto them, what deed is this that you have done?

Don't you know that a man like I can certainly divine? I know what's going on. And Judah said, what shall we say? What shall we speak? Or how can we possibly clear ourselves? God found out the iniquity of thy servants. Behold, we are your servants, both we and also he with whom the cup is found. And he said, God forbid that I should do so, but the man in whose cup

and whose hand the cup is found, he shall be my servant, and as for you, get you up in peace to your father. It's the discovery of the cup. But Judas says, now, therefore, when I come to the servant, thy Father, my Father, and the lad be not with us, seeing that his life is bound up in the lad's life, it shall come to pass when he sees that the lad is not with us, that he will die. And the servants shall bring down the gray hairs of thy servant or Father with sorrow to the grave. For thy servant became surety for the lad unto my father, saying, if I bring him not unto thee, then I shall bear the blame to my father forever. Now therefore I pray thee, let me stay instead of the lad and let the lad go with his brothers.

For how shall I go up to my brother and the lad be not with me? Let's pair adventure, I shall see the evil that will come on my father. Okay, so what's happened? Well, they learned their lesson. So now, Judah again is willing to stand in the place of Benjamin and become a slave himself. And so now, Joseph has determined that his brothers have developed their character to the point where reconciliation might be possible. You know what says you should forgive and forget apologize, the question is, well, what's the apology? Well, it's a layout of a rationale.

It's something like, as far as I can tell, here's the reasons I did this horrible thing. And here's what I've learned from it. And here's what I'm going to do to try not to do it again. And would you give me another crack at it? That's the proper repentance, right? And then you forgive, because you're an idiot too, and you'll probably do something stupid, and maybe you'd like the same kind of break at some point. And besides, if we all held each other completely to account at all possible times for everything, then

it just be hopeless, because there'd be no room for error. So the forgiveness, which Joseph is showing, is wise forgiveness. He's not going to put himself out on the line for people who haven't learned so that the same stupid thing can happen again so that they can continue to spread misery wherever they go. He's going to find out if they've clued in a little bit. And then if so, then they can move on with putting a family together. And so that breaks them up. He says, Joseph could not refrain himself before all of them that stood by him. And he cried. And then he said, get every man away from me. So all the people except for Joseph's brother left.

And there stood no man with him. Well Well Joseph made himself known unto his brothers. And Joseph said, I'm Joseph, is my father still alive? And his brothers could not answer for they were troubled at his presence. It's like, yeah. It's understatement of the decade there. And Joseph said unto his brothers, come near to me, I pray you, and they came near, and he said, I am Joseph, your brother who you sold into Egypt. But don't be grieved or angry with yourself that you sold me hither. For God did send me before you to preserve life. So now it was not you that sent me here, but God, and he's made me a father to Pharaoh, and Lord of all his house, and a ruler throughout all the land of Egypt. Hurry and go to my father and say unto him, thus say thy son Joseph, God has made me Lord of all Egypt. Come down unto me and Terry not.

And thou shalt dwell in the land of Gaushon, and thou shalt be near unto me, thou and thy children, and thy children, and thy flocks, and thy herds, and all that thou hast. And there I will nourish you, for yet there are five years of famine, less thou and thy household, and all that thou hast come to poverty. So that's the other thing that another bit of a hint, that's a bread hint here. here. Who's the what's the most reliable source of bread? Well, it isn't bread itself. It's whatever it is that gives rise to bread. And that's what Joseph is in this story. He's the force that gives rise to nourishment. That's an Joseph is often considered a type of Christ, which means like a precursor in some sense. That's one way of thinking about it. And you can see that echoed right there.

It's like, well, what do you store up for famine? You store up character. That's the best way through. Now that doesn't mean you don't also store up bread. And they went out of Egypt and came into the land of Canaan unto Jacob and told him, Joseph is still alive and he's governor and Jacob's heart fainted for he didn't believe them. They told him all the words of Joseph which he said to them and when he saw all the wagons

which Joseph had sent to carry him, the spirit of Jacob their father revived. And Israel said, it is enough, Joseph my son is yet alive, I will go and see him before I die. And Israel took his journey with all that he had and came to be her sheba and offered sacrifices unto the God of his father Isaac. And God spank unto Israel in the visions of the night and said, Jacob, and he said, here am I. He said, I am God, the God of thy father.

Don't fear to go down into Egypt, for I will make you a great nation there. And so that's how the Israelites end up in Egypt. I will go down with the end of Egypt and I will also surely bring the up again. And Jacob shall put his hand upon thy eyes, thy eyes. And Jacob rose up from Bershiba and the sons of Israel carried Jacob their father and the little ones and their wives in the wagons which Pharaoh had sent to carry him. So the families now all united in the proper state of being that Joseph has arranged. And they took their cattle and their goods. It's so interesting too,

because of course Joseph isn't even, he's a foreigner as well as being a former slave and prisoner, foreigner slave and prisoner. And yet he ends up ruling Egypt, surely because of the force of his character and competence. And that's really something to think about. And they took their cattle because that story there is that there isn't anything stronger than that. It doesn't matter what the circumstances are, that there isn't a force that's more powerful than that. And I don't think that that's naive. In fact, I think it's the

exact opposite of naive. No matter where you are, you can generally make things better if that's naive. In fact, I think it's the exact opposite of naive. No matter where you are, you can generally make things better if that's what you want to do. Unless you're in a place that's really hell itself, not usually is something that elevates you and elevates the people around you. And you can do that wherever you are, because there isn't a place that's so small that you can't do that. That's the message of the prison. And they took their cattle and their goods, which they had gotten in the land of Canaan, and came into Egypt. Jacob and all his seed with him. And he sent Judah before a month to Joseph to direct his face unto Gossian, and they came into the land of Gaussian, and Joseph made ready his chariot, and went to meet Israel his father, and presented himself to him,

and fell on his neck and wept on his neck a good while. And Israel said, I can now die, because I've seen your face, because you're still alive. And Pharaoh spank unto Joseph, saying, that father and thy brethren are come unto thee,

and the land of Egypt is before thee, and the best of the land your father and brothers can dwell, and the land of Gaushen let them dwell, and if they now know any man of activity among them, then make them rulers over my cattle, gives them a job. And Joseph brought in Jacob his father and said him before Pharaoh, and Jacob blessed Pharaoh. That's a very interesting little turn of events

because you'd expect the opposite under those circumstances. So it appears that Jacob was a man of relatively great self-possession because that's not it. You wouldn't bless Queen Elizabeth in all likelihood. That's you had a lot of gall. And Pharaoh said unto Jacob,

how old are you? And Jacob said, I'm 130 years. Few in evil have been the days of the years of my life. And I've not attained unto the days of the years of my, of the life of my fathers and the days of their pilgrimage. And Jacob blessed the Pharaoh and went out from before Pharaoh. And Israel dwelt in the land of Egypt in the country of Gossian and grew and multiplied exceedingly. And Jacob lived in the land of Egypt 17 years. So the whole age of Jacob was 147 years.

And the time drew, now that Israel must die, and he called his son Joseph and said unto him, if I have now found grace in thy sight, put, I pray thee, the hand under my thigh, and deal kindly and truly with me, bury me not, I pray thee, the hand under my thigh, and deal kindly and truly with me. Burry me not, I pray thee in Egypt, but I will lie with my fathers, and thou shalt carry me out of Egypt and bury me in their burying place." And Joseph said, I will do as you have said. And it came to pass after these things that one told Joseph, behold, thy father is sick, and he took with him his two sons, Manus and Ephraim, and one told Jacob and said,

behold thy son and one told Jacob and said, behold thy son Joseph comeeth unto thee, and Israel strengthened himself and sat upon the bed. And Israel said unto Joseph, I not thought to see your face and low God also showed me your children. And Joseph brought them out from between his knees and out himself with his face to the earth. And Joseph took them both, Ephraim in his right hand towards Israel's

left hand and Manusah in his left hand toward Israel's right hand and brought them near unto him. And Israel stretched out his right hand and laid it upon Ephraim's head who was the younger and his left hand upon Manus' head, guiding his hands purposefully, for Manus was the first born. And when Joseph saw that his father laid his right hand on the head of Ephraim, it displeased him. And he held up his father's hand to remove it from Ephraim's head onto Manus's head. And Joseph said unto his father,

not so my father, for this is the first born, put the right hand upon his head. And his father refused and said, I know it, my Father, for this is the first born, put the right hand upon his head, and his Father refused and said, I know it, my son, I know it. He shall also be come of people, and he shall also be great, but truly his younger brother shall be greater than he, and his seed shall become a multitude of nations. Another repeat of the same thing that happens continually, is when God wants to intervene in human affairs, what he does is invert tradition, it's something like that. And so that's a sign that there's something new

and special going on, and that gives precedence to the younger child rather than the older child, precedence to what is new rather than what's traditional. Of course, sometimes that's necessary because tradition is insufficient, and sometimes something new has to come into being in order to update it. And Jacob called together his sons and said, gather together so that I can tell you that would

shall befall you in the last days. Gather yourself together and hear you sons of Jacob and harken unto Israel your Father. Rubin, I'm not going to go through all 12 of these. Rubin, thou art my firstborn, my might, and the beginning of my strength, the excellency of dignity, and the excellency of power. Now, the story is quite interesting here because Jacob blesses Joseph's sons before he blesses his own sons. And so what he's doing is placing the rights of the firstborn into the sons of his favorite son, and then he goes to his sons. And so that has implications for the way the biblical stories lay themselves out from dense forward.

The excellency of dignity and the excellency of power unstable as water thou shalt not excel because thou wentest up to thy father's bed, then defiled it. He went up to my couch. You may remember that Ruben slept with his father's cucumber, concubine. Simeon and Levi are brethren. Instruments of cruelty are in their habitations. So that painting there,

what happened with Simeon and Levi was that somebody lay with their sister, Dina, and then offered to marry her. And then he came circumcised because that was part of the deal and then held other men circumcised. And then Simian and Levi went in when they were recovering and killed them all. And then Jacob and all his people had to leave because while that irritated their relatives. So see me, see me on a leave I

brethren instruments of cruelty are in their habitations. Oh my soul come not thou into their secret unto their assembly my honor be not thou united for in their anger they slew a man and in their self-will they dig down a wall. Curse be their anger for it was fierce, and their wrath for it was cruel. I will divide them in Jacob and scatter them in Israel." Judah, thou art he whom my brethren shall praise. Thine hand shall be in the neck of the enemies.

Thine father's children shall bow down before thee. Judah is a lion's welp. From the prey my son though art gone up, he stooped down, he. Judah is a lion's welp. From the prey my son though art gone up, he stooped down, he couched as a lion and as an old lion, who shall rose a mop. The scepter shall not depart from Judah nor a law giver from between his feet until Shiloh come and unto him shall the gathering of the people be. Joseph is a fruitful bow, even a fruitful bow by a well whose branches run over the wall. The archers have sorely grieved him and shot at him and hated him, but his bow abode in strength,

and the arms of his hands were made strong by the hands of the mighty God of Jacob. For thence is the shepherd, the stone of Israel. Even by the God of thy Father, who shall help thee, and by thy Almighty, who shall bless thee with the blessings of heavens above. Blessings of the deep that lieeth under. Blessings of the beasts, breasts, and of the womb. The blessings of thy Father prevailed above the blessings of my progenitors unto the utmost bound of the everlasting hills. They shall be on the head of Joseph, and on the crown of the head of him that was

separate from his brother. All these are the twelve tribes of Israel. And this is it that their father spake unto them and blessed them, everyone according to his blessing. He blessed them. So that what we see here is an echo in some sense of what happens in the Mesopotamian creation story. When of what happens in the Mesopotamian creation story, when in the Mesopotamian creation story, is the dragon of chaos, Tyamat and her consort, Apsu, fresh water and saltwater, respectively, and they're mingled together. And that combination of chaos in order gives rise

to the first assembly of the ancient gods, and then the ancient gods kill Apsu casually and foolishly, and in rage-tiamat with their foolishness and ignorance, and she comes back with a vengeance. In the meantime, and then she produces this huge army of monsters and puts Kingu the worst of the monsters at its head, and then decide she's going to take out her creation. And so that's a little warning from 3000 years ago about foolishly undermining your tradition. So, anyways, the gods and their friends, they go out and try to fight against Ty Mountain. They come back with their tales between their legs continually. But then a new God appears on the scene and that's Marduk. He's got eyes all the way around his head and he can speak words of magic.

And they know that there's something new about this newest God. It's his capacity for vision and his capacity for articulate speech. And so they say, well, why don't you go out and try to deal with the chaos? And Martin says, yeah, okay, no problem. But here's the deal. You elect me, top god. And now I determine the destiny of the world. And so they're desperate because like timeout is coming to get them, that's chaos with the worst of all possible monsters. They're probably thinking he's not going to win anyways. And so they agree. And Audi goes and he confronts Tyahmat, who's the goddess of chaos. He cuts her into pieces. And he makes the world out of her pieces. And one of his names is he who makes ingenious things out

of the combat with Tyahmat, which is so interesting. That's such a remarkable, remarkable bit of nomenclature. So who should be at the pinnacle? The force that sees and speaks and goes out to confront chaos voluntarily. You know how many years it took people to figure that out? That's like the pinnacle discovery of humanity. That's what that is.

It's echoed here. You know, you see Simeon and Levi. They're too angry. The other brothers, they all have flaws and faults of various sorts, and so they're not elevated to the highest place. But Joseph, because he has his coat of many colors, and because he lands on his feet no matter where he goes, and because he's not resentful and bitter and malevolent and genocidal, and he's not shaking his fist at the sky or yelling at God because of Trump, let's say. Then he's the right representative of the 12 tribes. And so that's brilliant, it's a brilliant story. All these are the 12 tribes of Israel, and this is it that their

fathers speak unto them and bless them, everyone according to his blessing, he bless them. When Jacob had been made an end of commanding his son, so it's the last thing he does to state, he knows that these are the twelve tribes that will progress into the future of this people, and now he's trying at the last thing he does is to try to hierarchically organize their relative virtues as an indication of what has been learned. And when Jacob has made an end of commanding his sons, he gathered up his feet into the bed and yielded up the ghost and was gathered unto his people. And Joseph fell upon his father's face and wept upon him and kissed him.

And Joseph commanded his servants to the physicians to embom his father and the physicians embombed Israel. And when the days of his morning were passed, Joseph spake into the house of Pharaoh saying, if now I have found grace in your eyes, speak, I pray you in the ears of Pharaoh saying, my father made me swear, saying, low I die in my grave which I have digged for me in the land of Canaan, their shelter will bury me. Now therefore, let me go up.

I pray thee and bury my father, and I will come again." And Pharaoh said, go up and bury thy father, according as he made thee swear. For his sons carried him into the land of Canaan and buried him in the cave of the field of Macpalla, which Abraham bought with the field

for a possession of the, of burying place of Ephraim the Hiddite before mammary. And Joseph returned unto Egypt, he and his brethren, and all that went up to him and that all and all that went up with him to bury his father after he is brewed, after he had buried his father. And when Joseph's brethren saw that their father was dead, they said, Joseph will now hate us and will certainly pay back to us all the evil which we did unto him." And they sent a messenger saying,

my father did command before he died, saying, for shall ye say unto Joseph, forgive, I pray thee now, the trespass of thy brethren and their sin, pretty snively, really, for they did unto the evil. And now we pray thee, forgive the trespass of thy brethren and their sin pretty snively, really. For they did unto the evil. And now we pray that you forgive the trespass of the servants of the God of thy father. And Joseph wept when they spake unto him. And his brethren also went and fell down before his face and they said,

behold, we be thy servants. And Joseph said unto them, fear not, for am I in the place of God? But as for you, you thought evil against me, but God meant it unto good to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive. Now therefore fear you not. I will nourish you in your little once, and he comforted them and to them. So the idea there is that there's no evil, so evil that good cannot triumph over it. And Joseph to Elton Egypt, he and his his father's house and Joseph lived 110 years. Joseph saw Ephraim's children of the third generation, the children also of Mackere, the son of Manuset, were brought up upon Joseph's knees.

Joseph said unto his brethren, I die, and God will surely visit you and bring you out of this land unto the land where he swear to Abraham to Isaac and Jacob. Joseph took an oath of the children of Israel saying, God will surely visit you and you shall carry my bones from hence. So Joseph died being 110 years old and they embormed him. And he was put into a coffin in Egypt. And that's Genesis. So. And that's Genesis. So... So thank you all for persevering. Thank you.

Thank you. This has been very worthwhile as far as I'm concerned. I learned an awful lot, and so I'm very much looking forward to continuing with it. Thank you all very much for your support and your wrapped attention and your seriousness in this endeavor and your care and all of that. It's really been a privilege to be able to do this. It's a completely surreal thing to manage and so far, you know, I think about 5 million people have watched it, so that seems to be a very good thing. So that's... Applause. Okay, so I'm gonna ask the questioners.

If you've asked a question in the last three sessions, please don't ask a question today, because I never get through everyone, and so I'd like to Have some questions from people that I haven't answered questions from before if that's okay I Professor Peterson just a two-second. Thank you very much for my community and the Jewish community So many people have been inspired you buy you to be better people and I wouldn't be able to speak to you without saying that. So thank you very much. A couple of things. The first thing I wanted to do is make a quick comment that you might find interesting that in the Jewish astrological calendar, we read the yearly cycle of the five books of

Moses, and it just so happens that we are reading this part of the of the Torah story. So I think that very interesting. That's cool. And synchronicity. Yeah. Which brings me into a question that I wanted to ask you about, which is one question with two parts, about your knowledge of Hebrew. Because if you look at the Torah scrolls that you find in a synagogue, there are no vowels, there are no sentences, it is chaos. And order is trying to be bought into it.

I'm wondering how knowledge of you knowledgeable, are you of the Hebrew, which has many layers of dimension of it? I'm staggeringly ignorant of it. So, you know, I read a lot of commentaries, right? I'm trying to zero in on the, like, with each of the phrases that we went through today, I probably looked at 10 different commentaries. And so, and then I have this underlying psychoanalytic knowledge that it's sort of like if you have a bunch of different templates to look at things through and then something shines through all those templates at the same time, that's very unlikely. And so then you can you know a coincidence is one thing, but five coincidences, that's no longer a coincidence,

that's something else. And so I think I'm hoping that despite the fact that there's many, many things that I don't know, that there's enough things that I do know to kind of weave my way through this with some degree of utility, if not certainty. Yeah, because I just, which is the second part, which I guess maybe you know, no, but the the midrushic, the Jewish oral stories that date back almost as long as these stories, which fill in a lot of mind-blowingly crazy random, so many details about these stories. And I was just wondering if you had encountered any of them before?

I've encountered some of them, but again, it's, well, as you know, it's a very, very rich tradition. And so I haven't encountered enough of it. Were you thinking of anything in specific, specifically in relationship to this story? Not in particular. I actually forgot it. I was intending to bring you a book of midrushic stories. Well, that's a hell of a thing to say now. Well, just, I don't know. I felt like I had to say that. But yeah, maybe for the Exodus version, I'll bring you the book. All right, all right.

That would be good. Yeah, OK. APPLAUSE Hi, Dr. Peterson. I would just like to ask you to please talk about what Jung called a psychic death, also known as an ego death. OK, sorry.

Say that again. Would you please talk about what Jung referred to as a psychic death, also called an ego death? That's what happens when someone who loves you betrays you. Right, so imagine that like the world is complicated beyond comprehension, right, when you only see a very little bit of it. And the way you structure your understanding is you make assumptions about things and they're simplifying assumptions. So if you trust someone, you reduce their complexity massively, right, because like, let's say we were married,

then there's a whole bunch of ways that you're going to act that are going to be simpler. Okay, so then I can tolerate being around you in some sense, because you're not everything at once. Now, those simplifying structures are hierarchically assembled and some of them are far more important than others. Trust is one of them, especially trust in loved ones, family members, which is why betrayal by a family member is really catastrophic, because it destabilizes your past, right? All the memories you have, it destabilizes your present,

it destabilizes your future, it shakes your faith in human beings, including yourself, and everything collapses, and that's an ego death. And so, now, underneath the ego, as far as Jung was concerned, was another structure that he called the self. and the self is the thing that remains constant across ego deaths but it's deeper and less personal it's archetypal and

It's the thing that the ego collapses into when it collapses and then that rebuilds the ego something like that across time lapses and then that rebuilds the ego, something like that across time. But that's when an ego death is. Now, there's variants of that because you can have a voluntary or an involuntary ego death. And a voluntary ego death is when you learn a bunch and you're willing to let go. So that would be your own emulation. It's like you're lighting your, your aphenics and you're lighting yourself on fire. That's a much better idea, even though it can still be really harsh.

The involuntary ego deaths, they're really hard on people. People will do almost anything to stop that from happening, which is partly why they fight to maintain their group fostered axiomatic simplifications. It's not surprising, because it's very, you lose your, like that ego death is a journey into the underworld, or it's a collapse into chaos. And that's not so bad if you do it purposefully. But in the Pinocchio story, for example, that's exemplified by Pinocchio going down to the depths to rescue his father from the whale. Now, he does that voluntarily, but a damn near kills him. I mean, first of all, he hardly gets out of the whale. Second, he actually drowns and dies, but he comes back to life. So even if you do it voluntarily,

it's still worth it. It's just better than doing it involuntarily, which is the other alternative. So that's what it is. You bet. Hello, Dr. Buddhism. So I've been listening back to all of these biblical lectures for the second time now. And I wanted to show you an observation I came upon because I was trying to find a question that you haven't been asked before, which is harder than doing my Ryerson exams, that's for sure. So, so I've noticed, I think you're getting funnier. Oh, yes. Oh, no, I think Michael Corrin said that this week, I think,

but the word he used was bizarre, I think. Actually, I'm feeling better. So I actually have a sense of humor. It's hard to believe that, but so it sort of comes back when I'm not feeling like I'm going to die at any moment. Yeah, I've basically noticed one, you're making more attempts at jokes. So that's great. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Two, those jokes are landing more often. But then there's this third element, which I think was what Steve Martin quit because of, which is that I think the audience is anticipating jokes more, and they're actually, you know, I've noticed people laughing more at things that aren't intending to be jokes. So I was just wondering what you make of that. And they're intended. I'm hoping they're intended.

Just because I keep a straight face doesn't mean they're not intending to be jokes. So yeah, no, it's good. Look, one of the things is like, it's, and I've tried to keep this, I learned a while ago, probably about five years ago, that even when you're dealing with really serious matters, that if you're not handling it with a light touch, you're not an expert at it, you're not a master at it.

And you think, well, there are some things that are so deep and dark that you can't handle them with a light touch. And that's actually not true. That doesn't mean you make light of them. It doesn't mean anything like that. It's that you don't, it's minimal necessary force, it's something like that. You don't hit it any harder than you have to. And it's an art when you're discussing serious matters. And so,

well, one of the upshorts of that is that because we're discussing serious matters and because serious matters are being discussed in the culture at large right now, it would be really good if everybody could keep their sense of humor. You know, and I see positive signs of that, like there's a lot of satirical activity on the net, you know, and that could easily catalyze into horror mob, but it isn't.

It is, you know, that's happening to some degree, but a lot of it's satire and comedy, and as long as we can keep a sense of humor about this, then I think, well, we're not as close to disaster as we might be. And so one of the things that I have found rather ominous is that there are comedians, first of all, being persecuted for under free speech restriction legislation, which I think is absolutely appalling, but also that there are comedians now who won't perform on university campuses. John Cle who won't perform on university campuses. John Cleese won't.

Seinfeld, that's like, well, you know how offensive he is. It's no wonder that, I mean, he's like the straightest, nicest comedian you could possibly imagine. He won't perform on college campuses. I think Louis CK won't perform on, or anywhere else. But it's a bad sign, but no, humor is good. And it's interesting because I've been kind of watching how I'm represented on the web, weirdly enough.

And there's all these memes that have emerged. I don't know, thousands of the bloody things. And most of them are comical, and that's good. Like, people are, are, are, they are, whatever it is that they're doing, I don't know what the hell it is, but it's being done with a relatively light touch and that's really, really good. That's how it should be.

You gotta have a sense of humor. I mean, it's one of the things that makes life bearable. So, or maybe even better than bearable. So, you bet. Dr. Peterson, just want to say what a great lecture series. And this is the last and this year. So Merry Christmas to you and your family. Thank you. Thank you. I just want to say this, Don't give too enthusiastic about that. I wrote you an essay of a question, and then I used the lecture, or the essay writing

guide on psych 232. Now I'm down to just a few pages. A few lines, and then during this particular lecture, the zigzag slide manifests again. And I thought, basically, just had all my questions answered. So basically, I just want to ask, the idea of you've made a lecture that was on YouTube many years ago, and you keep referring to Canaan Abel and the death of Abel by Canaan, the person and I think well that was a single brother, two brothers, conflicting. But here we have in the

the sons of Jacob, the 12. There was one who was good, one who was an able archetype, and there were 11 that came after him. So that, I don't know, maybe there's something about the division. No, that's a good observation. I didn't thought about that. Yeah, well, I mean, there's a bit of variability because Ruben isn't quite as bad as the rest,

but yeah, I would say it's probably easier for the cane side to multiply. Luckily, it's not as powerful because it doesn't do anything. Like, it... Yes, yes, and you know, there's... Jung was often accused of manically and is, I'm sorry, I may have not pronouncing that properly, but there was a variant of Christian dogma that held that good and evil were separate metaphysical realities and that they were battling for the governance of the cosmos, something like that.

But they both had an independent existence. And the classical Christian idea, which one out over that was that no, that good was real, but evil was the absence of good. Now, that produced all sorts of, the absence of good produces all sorts of consequences. And it is interesting to read Jung because he does get kind of manicure in his discussions. And I think it was partly because he was so concerned about what happened in Nazi Germany and then with the Cold War afterwards, you know, because evil seemed to be a palpable force. But I don't think that it's as powerful as good. But I do think it's easier for it to multiply because it's, well, it's easier path. It's easy to be resentful and hostile and bitter and do nothing. That's easy. It's

horrible and it's hard on people, but it doesn't require a tremendous amount of faith or effort. So maybe that is why it's multiplied in the final story in Genesis. Yeah, and I've been reading ahead for my own based on the interest of the present presented stories. And I keyed in on a few other books and chapters in the Bible, like

Friskurinthian 13, which is the love chapter. And that cycles through the idea of I can have all things in life, knowledge, power, but it's all passing. And now and forever, our faith hope and love. And then, of course, love triumphs overall. Yeah, well, the love issue, see, I've been, I thought a lot about the relationship between our hope-face hope and love, and then of course love triumphs overall. Yeah, well, the love issue, see, I've been, I've thought a lot about the relationship between love and truth because I've thought and talked a lot more about truth. And I think partly that's because love is a word that you can hardly even say, because it's been so, it's like it's been dragged behind a car through mud puddles, it's something

like that. But, sorry, let me just finish it, leveraging this idea. But I think that the love idea is associated with, for me, at least with what I discussed at the beginning of this lecture with regards to faith. I think you have to make a decision about what your attitude towards being is going to be.

And the proper attitude in my estimation is that you're working for its betterment. And so maybe you have the same attitude towards being as you do towards someone that you love, like a son or a daughter or a wife, that you want things to be better. And so that's your aim. So the aim is basically, the aim is motivated by love.

You want things to be better. Because I think that's a good definition of love. If you really care for someone, you can tell because you want things to be better for them. And then I think truth is nested inside that because I think that truth is the best servant of love. It's something like that. So I've been struggling with an idea recently that I was thinking maybe you'd be able to help me out with.

Basically, in a recent interview you talked about how myth is meant to reconcile inherent contradictions in reality, right? But I'm sort of stuck between two mythological or psychoanalytic ideas that I think are both really important, but they seem to have a inherent contradiction within them that I've been trying to figure out. So on one hand, you have this idea that there's times

in your life where you have to identify things in yourself that are insufficient, or there's a problem somehow that you have to kind of have a controlled burn or like a phoenix-like transformation where you discard part of yourself that doesn't fit or is not working. But then on the other hand, you have talked about this union idea where as you become really, when you get older, you mature by re-incorporating things about yourself that you lost when you were younger or that you're trying to integrate

your shadow or you're trying to find parts of your personality that maybe you've been rejecting and trying to figure out how to bring them into the folder and the whole. So he's got this quote that I really like which is, I'd rather be whole than good. Right, right. So on one hand, you may identify something as a problem, and you wanna get rid of it or burn it off. But then on the other hand, it seems like the path to being stronger is to figure out

how to put everything together. So there's that, there's that, one of the things Jung wrote about in his works on Elkamy was an explanation of the prime alchemical dictum, which was Solve Coagula, which meant dissolve and integrate. Right, so, so imagine this, so imagine that, imagine you had a fairly hostile father who was not very well controlled in his aggression.

A decent person, other than that, but let's say that. And so your reaction is, I'm never going to be aggressive. And so you've built a moral structure. It's part of your personality. And there's possibility floating around outside of that that you've denied an ethical, you've denied any ethical, what would you say? You've stripped the idea of aggression of any ethical utility whatsoever.

Okay, so what happens? This burns off, and then that comes back up. Now you still have to integrate it. So it's associated in some sense with Nietzsche's ideas, morality as cowardice. Because one of Nietzsche's most trenchant critiques of traditional morality, let's say, is that most of what passes for morality isn't morality. It's just cowardice. It's not that I'm a good person and I don't hurt you. It's that I'm afraid to hurt you. And because I don't want to admit that I'm afraid to hurt you, then I say I'm a good person and I don't hurt you. It's that I'm afraid to hurt you. And because I don't want to admit that I'm afraid to hurt you,

then I say I'm moral because then I can mask my essential fear and cowardice in a guise of morality. And that happens far more often than you would think, because harmless and moral are by no means the same thing. So some of what you're burning off, you can sit, and this is where Freud was such a genius, I think, is because he concentrated on aggression and sexuality, which are perhaps the two most difficult parts of a personality to integrate, said that the hyper-simplified morality stops

you from capping into deeper recesses of your psyche. And it's partly because they're primal forces. It's not surprising that you don't want to have anything to do with them, that you stay away from situations where they might make themselves manifest, but the problem is by denying the worst in yourself in that manner, suppressing it, you preclude the possibility of the best,

because no one can be a good person without integrating their capacity for aggression Because without that capacity of a for aggression, you cannot say no Because no means if you really say it no means there isn't anything that you can do to me That will make me change my mind or or conversely it means I will play for higher stakes than you will and or conversely, it means I will play for higher stakes than you will. And unless you've got your aggression integrated, there isn't a chance you can say that.

And if you did, no one would take you seriously, because they'd know it was just a show. So one of the most useful things that Jung did, I think, was to work on this idea of the integration of the shadow, because he was really interested in the idea of evil, right? Especially working with trying to parcel out what happened in Nazi Germany and during the Second World War. What do you do with the part of you that's aggressive

and potentially malevolent? Do you just crush it? That's the super ego response in some sense. Do you just put it behind you, so to speak? Is that a possibility? Or do you admit to its existence and bring it into the game? And that's, see, for Freud in some sense, morality was super ego clamping down on the id, and they were fundamentally opposed. Both Jung and Piaget had a different idea, and I think

they were right. It's like, no, no, you invite the bad guys out to play. And so you're an aggressive hockey player, but it's discipline aggression. That makes you, it gives you access to a whole source of energy you wouldn't otherwise have. And then with regards to sexuality, it's like, well, untrammeled promiscuity doesn't constitute a virtue, but neither does unavoidable virginity, right?

In fact, I think that's worse, because it also masks itself with virtue. It's like, well, you should be able to, you should be able to do things that you wouldn't do. That's like the definition of a genuinely moral person. They could do it, but they don't. And that's not cowardice. And so that's, you burn off the things that get in the way of that integration.

So when you say dissolve and integrate, you have to be a good way to sort of bring the two ideas together that the burning off and the difficult process is necessary because the elements of yourself are structured together in a rigid way that is not working properly. That's what happens to Jepetto in the belly of the whale. He's so caught in his presuppositions that he can't escape. And so Pinocchio represents the new force. It's very interesting. So when you watch Pinocchio try to rescue him, the first thing Jepetto does is confuse Pinocchio with a fish,

because he wants something to eat. But Pinocchio is better than something to eat because he can rescue him. The first thing Jepetto does is confuse Pinocchio with a fish, because he wants something to eat, but Pinocchio is better than something to eat because he can rescue him so he doesn't need to eat. And then Pinocchio wants to make a fire in Jepetto objects because he's going to burn up all the furniture. It's like, we don't need the damn furniture if we're getting out of the whale, you know. And so, so Jepetto, and he's old, so that that's the rigid structure. That's the old year that has to die off before the new year can be born. It's a forest fire that allows for new growth, and that's how those things are put together.

And to see, and it's useful to know too, because if you burn something off, you might think, well, there's nothing left. It's like, that's not true. If it's deadwood, then you have room for new growth. And you wanna be doing that on a fairly regular basis. That's the snake that sheds its skin and transforms itself. That's the death and resurrection from a psychological perspective.

It's exactly the same idea. Now, we don't know the upper limit to that, because we don't know what a person would be like if they let everything that they could let go, let go, and only let in what was seemingly, let's say. But you can see that's funny. We don't know that to some degree. You can see people very, you can see people start to do that without that's not a rare experience.

And people improve very rapidly. They can improve their lives very rapidly. A lot of it's low-hanging fruit. If you just stop doing really stupid things that you know are stupid, your life improves a lot. So, and it frees you up. It's also means there's an element there that's also associated with pride.

Because people tend to take pride in who they are. And that's a bad idea, because that stops you from becoming who you could be. Because if you're proud of who you are, you won't let that go when it's necessary. You won't step away from it. And then you end up being your own parody, something like that. That's also a very bad idea. You want to be continually stepping away from your previous self. And so, and I guess part of that too, is that you, you have to decide, you know, are you, are you order? Are you chaos? Are you the process that mediates between

them? And if you're the process that mediates between them, you, you are the thing that transforms. And that's the right attitude for human being because that's what we are. We're the thing that voluntarily confronts chaos and transforms. That's what we are. And so for better or worse, you know, that's our deepest biological essence, you might say. And so you can let things go if you know that there's more growth to come. So, yeah. Thank you. One more. Thank you for your time, and thank you for spending your time with all of us.

Hey, my pleasure. It's been a pleasure. So, if I could, since we are at the end of Genesis, I like the opportunity to challenge, or at least have you take another look at your position So if I could, since we are at the end of Genesis, I like the opportunity to challenge, or at least have you take another look at your position, you've held with regards to canes reflection on the murder of evil.

I bring this up because it's actually a part of Genesis that has bothered me for a while. And it's not, like, it's because it's not a straightforward as it's presented usually, and it's very, I've been wrestling with it. So in this series, as well as in a couple of your maps of meaning lectures, you summarized it something to the effect of Cain coming to the conclusion

that what he did leads to a punishment, which is more than he believes he can face, which I believe to be born out of a natural reading of specific translation choices, incorrectly made, or innocently made by editors editors just for readability sake So in Genesis 413 Kane does not say my punishment is greater than I can bear He actually says go though on me mean so

My sin is greater than I can bear which is this yeah, which is to say it's not his past actions Which is say it's not his past actions. It's just futures consequences, it's not his past actions, which is to say it's not his past actions, it's his future consequences, which it's his past actions, not his future consequences, which he regrets. For him to say, I won't, and Nick would hear a sin, that is too much for him to bear as a reflection on the reality of his corruption,

and not a plea of mercy to the deity to spare him. Okay, well, that seems to be a deeper interpretation, I would say. And I think it's more, that's the same line of reasoning that Dostoevsky pursued in crime and punishment, right? Because in crime and punishment, Raskolnikov gets away with murder, and then he cannot stand it. He cannot stand that he did it, because he's no longer the same person. But even more, he cannot stand that he got away with it. So that's more in keeping with that interpretation. So this also is reflected in the following verse

in 414 where he states the consequences of his actions. Mainly that God's presence will be hidden from him and that he will be killed. The verse opens with the word pain, which means indeed, more or less, and to note the sense of acceptance and not a complaint. It is the difference between saying, Oh, no, will God now hide his face from me?

And will I be hunted versus, of course, God will hide his face from me, and I will be hunted and killed, which I've been wrestling with, and have taken away to possibly mean that, there are sins that we can do that will just push us too far. Well, okay, there are, well, okay. So one of the, well, one of the things that you see

in post-traumatic, post-traumatic stress disorder situations, for example, is that people view themselves doing something so terrible, they don't know how to put it right. So that, and so you could say, under those circumstances, the face of God is hidden from them, because they cannot, they cannot, a tone for it, they cannot reconcile themselves to it. It's there all the time, and they can't see anything good beyond it. It's hell, essentially. And so, I mean, sometimes when you're working with people

with post-traumatic stress disorder, you kind of initiate them into a philosophy of good and evil so that they can see when Joseph talks to his brothers and that they've got all this guilt, right? And he doesn't want them to have more guilt than necessary to fix themselves because it just burdens them otherwise. He says, look, don't forget, yeah, yeah, it was you, but it's also God's doing. And I had a client once who had an obsessive compulsive disorder, and he was a very smart guy. He also happened to work in a radioactivity lab that had a lot of radioactive materials, which wasn't the best place for someone with OCD. And he was worried that he would make some mistake. And this is very common with OCD that he would make some mistake,

this is very common with OCD, that would result in someone suffering, which you will, you'll do that. And it wasn't until I could get him to conceptualize himself and his life in part as a force of nature, that he was able to reconcile himself to the possibility that an era on his part would produce catastrophic consequences. But people often find themselves in situations where they just cannot reconcile themselves to what they've done.

And that makes sense to me, that the interpretation that you're describing, that makes plenty of sense from a psychological perspective. There are things that will push us to just be on our limits that are too far, but there are also nope consequences to our actions that are devoid of a truth we can accept and learn from. And this is what I've kind of delved out of this bit with Cain and Abel.

So if this is a case, why then does it take us so long and it was so much self-denial before we accept personal responsibility when faced with tragedy, especially when it's self-inflicted. Well, I don't think you want to underestimate the contribution of just sheer difficulty. Like, you know, let's say, you're grieving because someone close to you died. It's like, well, it isn't just that you've lost them, although that's a big part of it.

It's that you have to rebuild yourself. And it's really hard to do that. So, and it's sort of proportional to the significance of your error. So if you commit an error and then you recognize that it's an error, if it's a sort of surface error, it's like, well, you can just touch up the paint, but sometimes the whole understructure is just rotten. And then you don't know what to do. And then so that's one problem, just sheer bloody difficulty. And I see this with people very often, it's like they're at a point in their divorce, let's say, and they don't know what to do. They cannot solve the problem. It's too complicated.

They just don't have the resources. And maybe they've squandered some of their resources as well, but sometimes they just don't have the resources. And then if you add to that, error and sin and malevolence and blindness and all those other things, people, there's a guy named Thomas Saz who wrote this really interesting article in the 1960s, a book actually called The Myth of Mental Illness. And it was classic reading for clinical psychologists when I was training. And the reason for that was is that Saz pointed out,

and this is true, is that lots of times, if you're a psychotherapist, people don't come to you because they have mental illnesses. They have come to you because they have insoluble problems in their life. You know, like maybe they've had a two-year affair at work. Their wife is alcoholic, and they have a very... And their father has Alzheimer's disease. It's like they just don't know what to do.

It's too much. Now, you know, they shouldn't have had the affair. So there's a moral issue. And maybe they should have intervened in the alcoholism in the family. Maybe they used their wife's alcoholism as an excuse to have the affair, you know, like these things get very tangled. It's just it's so bloody complicated that people can't untangle it. So, and I would say that's in keeping with the interpretation that you laid forth with regards to Cain is, it sounds like it's one of the reasons why it's so useful to read multiple translations, right? Because nuance is matter.

It sounds to me from that description that he actually woke up at least briefly and noticed what he did and said, there's no coming back from this. And it is, you can easily get places that you do not know how to come back from. Now, you know, they say, well, all things are possible with God and there's always the possibility of redemption no matter how serious the sin, but I'll tell you, sometimes people have no idea how to get back from where they went.

Well, and you can understand often why people wouldn't do that, right? Yeah, well, that's a funny thing, because one of the things Carl Rogers said to about psychotherapy is that you can't do psychotherapy with someone who hasn't recognized that they have a problem. So it's a massive thing to recognize that you have a problem, and it does open the door perhaps to recovery. But it also means that you've recognized that you have a problem and it does open the door perhaps to recovery. But it also means that you've recognized that you have a problem and that can be very, very, it's the desert, right? You're out of the tyranny, but you're in the desert and

the sun's beating down on you and there's no necessary reason to presume that you're going to survive. So thank you, have good night and stay on. Thank you all. If you found this conversation meaningful, you might consider picking up dad's books, maps of meaning, the architecture of belief, or his newer bestseller, 12 Rules for Life, and antidote to chaos. Both of these works delve much deeper into the topics

covered in the Jordan B. Peterson podcast. See JordanBeePeterson.com for audio, e-book, and text links, or pick up the books at your favorite bookseller. Remember Twitter, at Jordan B. Peterson, on Facebook, at Dr. Jordan B. Peterson, and at Instagram, at Jordan B. Peterson, on Twitter, at Jordan B. Peterson, on Facebook, at Dr. Jordan B. Peterson, and at Instagram, at Jordan B. Peterson, on Twitter, at Jordan B. Peterson, on Facebook, at Dr. Jordan B. Peterson, on Twitter, at Jordan B. Peterson, on Twitter, at Jordan B. Peterson, on Twitter, at Jordan B. Peterson, on Facebook, at Dr. Jordan B. Peterson, on Twitter, at Jordan B. Peterson, on Facebook, at Dr. Jordan B. Peterson, and at Instagram, at Jordan.b. Peterson.

Details on this show, access to my blog, information about my tour dates and other events, and my list of recommended books can be found on my website, JordanB. Peterson.com. My online writing programs, designed to help people straighten out their pasts, understand themselves in the present, and develop a sophisticated vision and strategy for the future can be found at selfauthoring.com. That's selfauthoring.com.

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