The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - Jordan Peterson Live on Tour: The Hidden Key to a Fulfilling Life

Episode Date: June 16, 2025

In this powerful lecture from the We Who Wrestle With God tour, Dr. Jordan B. Peterson explores why stories aren't just entertainment—but the essential structure through which we perceive reality, aim toward meaning, and shape our lives. From biblical archetypes to everyday struggles, Peterson weaves a compelling argument that our suffering, identity, and moral choices are all governed by the stories we believe and the sacrifices we're willing to make. Drawing on deep psychological insight and ancient wisdom, he reveals that without a unifying aim, we drift toward bitterness and chaos—but with the right sacrifice, we forge a path toward meaning, community, and spiritual alignment. This “We Who Wrestle With God” tour stop was filmed in Reading, PA on October 14th, 2024.

Since 2018, I've been traveling with my wife around the world in what's essentially been a nonstop lecture tour, and it's quite a privilege. It's a remarkable thing to be able to extend what I was doing as a university professor to tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people around the world, and to have the privilege to lecture and think about whatever grips me at the moment. We've recorded a number of these lectures.

We're going to release one that I delivered in Reading, Pennsylvania. I delved into the relationship between the concept of sacrifice and the idea of work. Work is the sacrifice of the present to the future. Work is the sacrifice of your own self-interest to that of your family and your community. That's a good way to think about it. That self-sacrificial work is part of the proper foundation of the world. I elaborated on those theses in my book, We Who Wrestle with God, and I'm writing about it now. I'm going to continue my lecture tour in Europe, January through March of 2026, and so if you're in Europe and you're interested in hearing a live elaboration of such ideas, check out my website, jordanbpeterson.com, all the dates are listed there. You have an opportunity to buy the

tickets. In any case, here's the lecture from Reading, Pennsylvania. I hope, we hope, the whole team here that you find it deep, meaningful, and useful. All right, so I'm going to tell you a series of stories tonight, and I'm going to make them center around the theme of sacrifice, which of course is everyone's favorite topic. And, but I'm going to start by telling you why I'm going to tell you stories. You know, we are suffering from the delusion

in our culture that stories are mere entertainment. And that's a foolish theory. And part of the reason it's foolish is actually self-evident. Stories are entertaining. So that's why we listen to them. Well, why are they entertaining? They're entertaining to everyone. Your children will be pleased with you

if before they go to bed, you tell them a story, you read them a story. They can learn things from stories, and you will do surprising things for stories. You'll watch them after work because it's a form of play. You'll line up and pay to go see a story, to go watch a movie, to watch a play. Most of the things that we do voluntarily have a story structure. And so if you're an intelligent scientist, let's say, let alone someone interested in's think of what you do when you go watch movie, okay? And this is also something that will help you understand how you

understand other people because these things are very tightly aligned. Obviously, you come to understand a character or a series of characters when you go see a movie, because otherwise the movie wouldn't make any sense. So how does the author and the actors, how do the author and the actors guide you through that process of understanding, and how do you manage that yourself? Well what you see in a movie is a series of characterizations. It's akin to what you see when you meet someone multiple times. You know, you meet someone in different situations and you watch. What do you watch?

You watch how they act. What do you specifically watch? You watch their eyes when you're talking to someone, when you're getting to know them. And the reason you do that, there's actually evolved adaptations that are biological that help you manage this. Your eyes are black pupils set against a colored iris, against a white background. And the reason our eyes are like that is so that we can

easily see that they're easily visible to other people. And they need to be easily visible to other people because if you can watch someone's eyes, you can see what they're pointing their eyes at. You can see what they're pointing their eyes at. You can see what they're attending to. You can see what's important to them. That's what they're attending to. And you can infer their aim. That's what you do when you watch someone's eyes. That's what you do when you

point out things to children. You specify an aim. Children learn to point around before two. That's quite a magical talent to point to something. Animals can't really understand pointing. Dogs can understand pointing better than wolves because they've adapted to human beings. To point to something is to specify the target of aim. Okay, now, why do you want to specify someone's target of aim. Okay, now, why do you want to

specify someone's target of aim? What they're attending to? What they're interested in? Because then you know what they're up to, and more than that. And this is how you come to understand someone is you infer their aim from the manner in which they conduct themselves across multiple situations. Aim specifies perception. Now this is a radical thing to understand, a truly radical thing to understand, because normally the way we think of the world is that we just look at the world and there it is,

in a self-evident way. The objects of the world are just there simply and when we look they present themselves to us. But that's not how it works. Not actually because there's an unlimited number of things you can look at. There's an unlimited number of things you can attend to. Even in the surface of any given object, there's variegated patterns in the carpets, in the walls, in the paint, there's shadows and lights, there's changes in illumination, there's a trillion things going on. And how you simplify that to what you actually see is quite a mystery. And the way that you do that, by the way, is with your aim.

Your aim specifies the landscape of your perceptions. And what you really see in the world aren't so much objects as pathways forward, tools that you can use to move towards your aim, obstacles that will get in the way, friends, the human equivalent of what would you say, the age that move you along your way, enemies, those are people who block your pathway, and agents of transformation, those are magical things in a sense that transform your aim. You know sometimes you're moving from point A to point B and you realize something fundamental or revolutionary and now instead of moving towards point A, point B and you realize something fundamental or revolutionary and now instead of moving

towards point A, point B, you're moving towards point C, you're a new person, you're doing something new, you've changed, you have a new personality, right? The world is shaped differently for you, the way that things make themselves manifest has shifted, who your friends are and who your foes are is different and Your mode your essential mode of being your personality has transformed This is what you're doing when you go watch a movie you see you see someone The protagonist the hero or the antihero doesn't really matter. They're both Exemplars, they're both patterns that you can learn from.

You see them in multiple situations. You see them acting in the world and you infer their aim. As soon as you infer their aim, you can inhabit the same world they inhabit. That's actually why movies are meaningful to you because as soon as you have the aim of the character, the world appears to you the same way it appears to the character. The objects of the world are the same, and so are the emotions that you experience and the protagonist experiences. And you get to do that for free in a sense, right?

You go see a James Bond movie and there's death everywhere and you can death an adventure everywhere and you can participate in that without having to die. And it's very useful to be able to explore very complicated ways of looking at the world without having to pay the ultimate price for it. And we're continually doing that with each other. We're continually telling each other our stories. We're exchanging our aims. We're exchanging the manner in which we look at the world with one another. We're exchanging our aims. We're exchanging the manner in which we look at the world with one another. We're exchanging our emotional experience. It's really, that's what we have to offer each other.

That's what we have to offer each other that's of value. Our alternative modes of being that might be more suitable. Aims that might be more suitable. Pathways forward that might be more efficient. Tools that might be more useful. tools that might be more useful, obstacles, ways to climb over obstacles we hadn't imagined. This is what stories do for us. A story is a description of the structure through which you look at the world. It's a radical thing to understand. It's quite unlike the typical materialist, reductionist, scientific view of the world,

which is that you follow the facts as they reveal themselves. That's not true. There's an infinite number of facts. If someone throws you in the middle of the desert and you're lost, the facts aren't gonna guide you forward. Right? You need a map, you need a name,

you need a mode of perception that structures the world so that you can navigate through it. That's what a story is. That's what a story is. And this is a very fundamental discovery. This discovery was really only made starting in the 1960s. And a variety of different disciplines, humanistic and scientific, converged on this realization more or less simultaneously. The French literary critics, the postmodern types for example, they got there quite early.

The postmodernists realized that we saw the world through a story. Now they fouled up soon afterwards with their presumption that the story through which we see the world is one of power that tilted them towards a demented and pathological Marxism. But at the same time, robotics engineers and people who are studying AI and computation and cognitive psychologists and people who are investigating perception and emotion, they all came to very similar conclusions.

The structure through which we see the world is a story. We see the world through a story. Once you know that, why? Use the story to simplify the world and to specify it. So here I'll give you a very simple example. So if I'm standing on this side of the stage and I decide that I want to walk to that side of the stage, so now I've specified my aim, well, obviously, I look towards my destination, right? Now, so what happens? Well, first of all, all you people instantly become irrelevant, right?

Why? Well, you're still here. I could be attending to you, but why don't I? Well, you're not relevant to my goal, right? You're not in the pathway. You're neither a facilitator nor an impediment. You're simply not relevant. And everything that's not relevant to your aim, that's going to disappear. Right? And so that's how you make a decision about how to simplify the world. You simplify and specify the world with your aim. Things that get in your way, they're negative. Things that move you forward, those are positive. Right, and so there's one, here's an early moral lesson from that realization.

If the world is manifesting itself to you as nothing but thorns and impediments with no positive impulse, let's say, or calling to move forward, there is something wrong with your aim. The word sin, by the way, it's an archery term, at least from the Greek, although three languages converged on the same derivation. The Greek word for sin is hamartia, and it's an archery term. It means to miss the target. And so that's a good thing to know, right?

I mean, if we're going to investigate the structure of the stories that guide us, it's useful to understand the most fundamental stories we have. It's clearly the case that the most fundamental stories we have, the stories out of which our culture emerged, are the stories of the Judeo-Christian tradition. And those are encapsulated most fundamentally in the biblical stories. And one of the, there's an emphasis in the biblical stories

on sin, let's say, as a negative mode of being. And sin is characterized as failure to hit the target. It's an archery term. And sin is characterized as failure to hit the target. It's an archery term. How can you fail to hit the target? Well, there's lots of ways you can fail to specify the target. That's what happens when people have a fragmented story. They don't have their act together.

Things have fallen apart. They've wandered off the pathway. They're no longer on the straight and narrow path, they've wandered off the pathway, they're no longer on the straight and narrow path, they've wandered into perdition, they're in the outer darkness where there's gnashing of teeth, that's all. They're in the desert that the Israelites encounter after they leave the tyranny, they're in the wasteland, they're consumed by chaos, the flood has come, that's all a consequence of failure of vision, failure of aim. A landscape that's bereft of structure. A place of anxiety and hopelessness, because that's actually what happens to you neurologically, neuropsychologically.

When you're aimless, you are overwhelmed with anxiety because there's too bloody many choices. And you have no hope because hope is experienced in relationship to a goal. So you need a goal You need to structure your aim. This is not optional You know John when he introduced me made reference to a study in the UK that said that 85% thereabouts of inhabitants of the UK felt their life was meaningless as well, what's the Proper diagnosis of that the people perish without a vision proper diagnosis of that, the people perish without a vision.

Right, you need a name. Okay, so now we know a couple of things. You see the world through a story, and you're lost and hopeless without a name. Okay, so another question immediately emerges once you know that, and that is, well, if you structure your perception of the world, your emotional experience of the world, your motivation, your understanding of others, as a consequence of the world, your emotional experience of the world, your motivation, your understanding of others

as a consequence of a story, what should the story be? Okay, that's the question that the biblical library, because it's a library, right? The Bible is a library of books, of separate books that were written by separate authors, separate human authors, and aggregated together for reasons we don't fully understand into what actually constitutes a coherent narrative,

which is really quite a remarkable thing. It's not obvious at all how that narrative came about, and it's a remarkable fact that it has a very deep coherence. You could attribute it to the collective workings of the human imagination, that's sort of a psychoanalytic take that would be akin to the interpretations

that someone like the Swiss psychoanalyst, Carl Jung might've proposed, or say Joseph Campbell's study of a great investigator into the structure of mythology, or you can take the religious tack and say that it's the cumulative record of the revelations of the divine, or you can take the cynical tack and say that it's nothing but stories told by fellible human beings. Well, there's no such thing as nothing but stories, right?

Not if stories are more than mere entertainment, not if stories are actually a representation of the structure through which you see the world. There's nothing mere about stories, not in the least. You know, and if we need stories to organize our action and our perceptions in the world, if we need stories to organize our life That means our life depends on stories and you might ask yourself

Well, it isn't what your life depends on real like what's your definition of real? How about pain? Is that real a story that provides your life with meaning can be a medication against existential catastrophe. And people die without meaning, right? You can die of your, you can die of everyday suffering without meaning. What does that mean? Well, this story leaves you or the story that you're living

is false or hollow or the story that you're living is fragmented and incoherent. The consequences of that can be fatal. What's real? Well, the story's real. Well, what's the story? What's the proper story of mankind? What's the proper story that makes you a formidable,

practical, generous, hospitable contributor to the social order? What's the story that makes you a good husband or wife? What's the story that makes you a good mother or father? What's the story that brings your family together? Maybe in harmony with your town and all of that in harmony with the state and all of that in harmony with the nation under some higher order aim, right? That's an aim that unites. That's the monotheistic aim.

That's the unity of story that underlies everything. That's a way of thinking about it, right? That everything stacks together in this kind of harmonious manner. And that harmonious, hierarchical arrangement all the way from the individual to the highest level of social order. It has a nature. Well, what stories might be typical of human beings? Well, the leftist types, the Marxists, the postmodernists for that matter, most of them,

they believe that the fundamental human story is one of power. You know, and we're in a culture war about this. Make no mistake about it. This is, you know that, you wouldn't be here otherwise. This is not a trivial matter. The insistence from the materialist types for the last hundred years,

one of the profound insistences was that the only true, the only reality on the narrative side is one of power. This is what people are taught in universities constantly. How do you understand marriage? Well, it's the story of the power of the patriarchy insofar as that regulates man and woman in the cultural sphere. Marriage is a patriarchal institution.

It's the fundamental subjugation of woman to man. Well, how do you understand? Economic relationships. Oh, it's power. It's the exploitation of the worker to take a Marxist trope by the capitalist class, by the owner. It's a victim-victimizer story. It's the same thing. It's power. There's a distribution of privilege. Those who are at the pinnacle of the, who are at the successful end of the distribution,

they're the oppressors. They use power to exploit those who are at the successful end of the distribution. They're the oppressors. They use power to exploit those who are weak. That explains all economic relationships. You can apply the same lens to history. History is nothing but the power struggle between different claims to power. That is absolutely what people are being taught in our institutes of higher education.

And there's, it's unlikely that there's a doctrine that's more corrosive in relationship to the actual spirit upon which your country and the free West in general was founded. There was antithetical stories. What's the alternative story? Well, let's lay some out. Here's another story. Do what you want will be the totality of the law.

That's a somewhat mangled quotation from Alistair Crowley who was a Satanist in the late part of the 1800s. He was like a disciple of the Marquis de Sade. He was one of these people who believed, as you can believe rationally, that why the hell shouldn't I do just exactly what I want whenever I want to whoever I want, regardless of, well, let's say the cost to them. What's the rational argument against that? What if I have power and I won't get caught, for example, if I just get away with what? The untrammeled expression of my most primordial desires. Why not let that be the story?

One whim after another. That's the hedonistic story. It's a cacophony, that story, because as you know from your own experience, if you give yourself over to your immediate wants, you're just one appetite after another. There's no real coherence there. You basically have the same psychological status as a very badly behaved two-year-old. the same psychological status as a very badly behaved two-year-old. Well, two-year-olds are like that.

They don't have a integrated, their self, their fundamental pattern of being and personality isn't integrated yet. And so they're more or less at the mercy of their whims. And a hedonist is a worshiper of his own whims, right? And he's a pagan in that sense because it's just one damn desire after another. And he might say to himself, well, those are my desires.

He might identify with those desires. And that's really, what would you say? The cardinal form of identification in the modern world. I identify with what my wants are, particularly sexual wants. That constitutes my identity. And anyone who gets in the way can go directly to hell. And that's a very pathological mode of being.

And there's a variety of reasons for it, not least that it's exactly reflective of the same kind of immaturity that makes two-year-olds entirely self-centered and driven by instinct. Now you might say, well, what's wrong with that? You know, when two-year-olds entirely self-centered and driven by instinct. Now you might say, well, what's wrong with that? You know, when two-year-olds have their delightful element, you know, they're very enthusiastic,

they're very spontaneous, they're kind of alive in a fiery way, but they're completely incapable of taking care of themselves, right? And this isn't a hypothesis. You don't see roving bands of thriving two-year-olds running through the forest organizing themselves. Well, why not? Well, it's because that short-term self-centered, whim-dominated possession doesn't allow you to exist in the world. You have

to mature. And of course, that's what you're trying to do with your kids as a parent is you're trying to shepherd them through the process of maturation. Well, why? Well, so that, how about so they have some friends? Because if it's all about them, well, then they don't have any friends. And that goes for all of you too.

If it's all about you, good luck with your marriage. If it's all about you, you don't have friends. You might have, if you're a bully in particular, you might have, you know, toadies and thugs who benefit from your use of power, but you don't have friends. If you exploit your customers as a business person repeatedly to redound to your own immediate advantage. You're not going to have customers for very long. Your reputation is going to precede you.

You're not going to do well in the world. So what do you do instead? Power is a bad story. It's a corrupt way of looking at the world. It leads to violence. It's generally manifested in service to a narrow kind of hedonism. Because why have power unless it's to get exactly what the hell the worst of you wants from moment to moment? If you're not under the sway of some self-centered and relatively malevolent whim,

you don't need to use power on other people because you could just ask them to go along for the journey. And maybe they would. That's what you do when you play instead of when you use force. That's what you do when you invite instead of using force. That's what you do when you establish a vision that other people share instead of being a tyrant. Well, that's what you do if you're mature. That's even what two-year-olds understand by the time they're three, when they start engaging in pretend play with a would-be friend. Who's a friend to a two-year-old?

Well, the first thing, or a three-year-old, because three-year-olds start to become social. Well, the first thing you want to do if you're a three-year-old is play a game with someone. That's not the same as having your own game, right? If you play a game with someone else, there are some intrinsic rules. Well, what are the rules?

Well, how about they get a turn, right? And maybe a generous turn, right? Because if you're going to have a friend and you want the friend to like you, which is kind of like the definition of a friend, and someone who likes you would like to see you again, and that continuity of the desire to see you again and to play together, that's the definition of friendship.

It's a sequence of games played with the same person. The game has to be voluntary, it has to be invitational, it has to be reciprocal, right? And so what you're trying to do with your two-year-old is you're getting them to sacrifice the immediate gratification of their instincts to reciprocity, right? Now you do you do something that's a bit more sophisticated than that too because the other thing you do with children and yourself and with people you love if

you're the least bit sensible is you let them know that they shouldn't conduct themselves in a manner in the immediate present that compromises their future, right? That's what you mean when you tell your child, don't do stupid things. Well, what's a stupid thing, generally speaking? Something interesting and entertaining in the moment that you pay for, right?

And that's the same as an impulsive bad habit in adulthood. It's like the definition of a bad habit. A bad habit is something that works now and not so good tomorrow, or next week, or next month, or next year, or five years from now, or 10 years from now. That implies as well that just as the child establishes a relationship of reciprocity with the friend, by starting to understand the future, they establish a reciprocal relationship with their future self. And that's the same thing. So what maturation is, we all know this, maturation is the ability, let's say, to share and to forego gratification, to delay gratification. What does it mean to delay gratification? It means you don't get what the hell you want right now all the time. You have to conduct yourself in a manner that assures communal stability, let's say, and reciprocity. And in the enjoyable sense, you want to be surrounded by friends and compatriots and people who move you forward and people who wish you well,

because that's going to be a lot better for you than the alternative. And you want to do that in a manner that assures the future. The whole cortical, higher cortical apparati that human beings are blessed and cursed with is there to integrate the possessive, possessing spirits that might otherwise be impulsive and fractionating, to integrate them into a personality that can act reciprocally in relationship to others and guide itself as a consequence of apprehension of the future.

It's a definition of maturity. Now you kind of know this because as your children mature, as you've matured, the amount of time you can consider expands, right? For the 13-year-old, for a 4-year-old sitting down to take panel lessons half an hour is an eternity. For a 13-year-old, six months into the future is forever. By the time you're 50, a year is like a week. And there's a loss in that to some degree, but there's a huge gain because as you develop your capacity to apprehend the consequences of your actions across broader spans of time is much improved and that reflects cortical maturation and the same thing happens with regards to your ability to

manage yourself socially. What does it mean to manage yourself socially? Well, it means, as I said, that it's not all about you. Your aim can't be the immediate gratification of the whims that possess you. If you're married, if you have a wife or husband, is your wife or husband... How do they stand in relationship to their importance in relationship to you? Well, we could just think about it in a sort of clear-headed manner. Let's say you have a scrap with your wife, you have a fight with your wife, a disagreement, and you win.

You win. She's wrong, she's punished for it, whatever way you can manage. What's the problem with that? You're right, she's wrong. Well, let's say you do that 50 times. Well, now you're living with someone who's, you always defeat.

And so now you're living with someone who's defeated. And what's the problem with that? Well, they're around. Right, and so maybe that's the problem with attaining a manipulated victory over your marital partner. Fine if it's a one-off, but you know they're there when you wake up in the morning. And so is the consequence of your, what, self-centered power-based maneuvering? Right, and maybe you're a victorious tyrant and she's a defeated slave.

Well, that's not much of a victory there, buddy. And the same applies to any reciprocal social relationship. You know, if you have any sense, if you think it through, you want to build up the people that are around you. Well, why? Well, because they're around you. Well, why? Well, because they're around you. And so if you were a generous, if you made generous offerings to the social world and you improve the nexus of relationships that you were involved in, why wouldn't that

be good for you? Now you might think, well, there's only so much to go around and if everyone else wins I lose but That's another story and it's the story of power and it's a very bad story And it's not true because the truth of the matter is is that there's more than enough For everyone to do and your victory doesn't have to ever come at the cost of someone else's defeat. I shouldn't say ever I mean there are times when You know people are head to head and the game that's being played isn't fair and it's someone else's defeat. I shouldn't say ever. I mean there are times when you know people are head to head and the game that's being played isn't fair and

it's your victory or your defeat but those are very pathological and unnecessary circumstances and it would be better to do everything you can to ever avoid being in a situation like that. Situations like that arise when your relationships have deteriorated radically. And I would say as well, the same thing applies to the story of power. Power is the manner in which social relationships, or even your relationship with yourself,

it's the story that makes itself manifest when the proper story collapses, right? It's the degeneration of itself manifest when the proper story collapses Right. It's the degeneration of a state that turns it into a tyranny. It's not the victory of a state That's the same at every level of social relationship. If you're tyrannizing yourself, that's a failure if you're tyrannizing your wife That's a failure the same with your children the same with your friends. That's not an optimized pattern of being It's not about you It's not about the wh of being. It's not about you. It's not about the whims that narrowly possess you. That's a more accurate formulation. So what does that imply? If it's not about you, it means you have to give up

something to be social and to mature, right? What do you have to give up? You have to give up what the two-year-old gives up. You have to give up getting what the hell you want, the second you want it, all the time, no matter what. So what are you giving up? You're giving up the momentary whims that possess you that you could identify with. You're giving up your wants, maybe you're giving up your needs. What does it mean to give them up? I said it means the other person gets a turn. It means that the future is taken into account. What does that imply? It implies that you

made a sacrifice. Okay, so here's something to think about and it'll guide us through the rest of the talk The basis of maturity and community is sacrifice Okay. Now it has to be that way. It you understand like this isn't an arbitrary proposition We're communal beings and we're future oriented. So because we're future oriented we have to give up the present Right because we have to bring up the present. We cannot sacrifice the future to the present. That's why you can't do impulsive, stupid, terribly interesting and entertaining things. People drink so that they can fool themselves into thinking that's okay. And it is. It's a blast

while it's happening. But the next day tends to be a rather dismal affair, especially if you've seriously gone overboard, let's say. And the reason for that is that it's too easy to sacrifice the future to the impulsive pleasures of the moment. And you know as a self-conscious being that you're going to have to bear the consequences of your actions as

they propagate across time. And then it's the same with the others that you come into contact with. Because you're communal, because you're social, that's the human mode of being, you have to give up the fact that it's all about the local and narrow, present-centered you. That's the sacrifice. So what does that mean? Community is predicated on sacrifice. All right, so that implies that the central story

of mankind is one of sacrifice. Okay, so now if you know that, you've got a fundamental key to understanding the fundamental stories of our culture, the biblical stories, because the biblical library is an examination of sacrifice. Okay, so now we're gonna expand on that.

I wanna make it very clear so that it's perfectly understandable. We'll start with the story of Adam and Eve. So Adam and Eve are the archetypal father and mother of us all. You could think about them as the pattern of masculinity and femininity as such. It's something like that, speaking metaphorically. So how is that to be understood?

Okay, imagine a movie again. You know perfectly well that when you go see a movie, you don't just see a video camera following someone around for two hours of their life, right? You don't see them wake up and you don't watch them blink and you don't watch them make their bed. You don't watch them go through the mundane things that make up day-to-day life. You're not interested in that. You're interested in an abstraction of their, of their mode of being. You want the author, the writer,

to present you with the drama of their life. You want the character that's being portrayed to be an abstraction of those elements of human aim and motivation that capture your interest. Right, so a fictional account is a distillation, right? Which means that fiction, modern people, because we think that stories are entertainment,

we think that fiction is the opposite of fact. And that's a foolish thing to think. We know it's foolish because we think that stories are entertainment, we think that fiction is the opposite of fact. And that's a foolish thing to think. We know it's foolish because we know that works of great literature are true, right? We know that crime and punishment is true. We know that the Brothers Karamazov or War and Peace is true. Well, it's fictional, it never happened.

So how can it be true? And the answer is, well, it's a distillation of what's true right a character like Raskolnikov in crime and punishment a character like the Joker in in the Dark Knight is a Distillation of everything that's pathological right into one character. Now, is that real? Well, it's not real in that it is a Videotaped representation of an actual sequence of events. It's real in that it's a profound abstraction. And you might say, well, abstractions aren't real. It's like, really?

Words are abstractions. Are they real? How about numbers? Numbers are abstractions. There's lots of mathematicians who think that numbers are the most real thing. Well what does that mean? Well, if you're a master of numbers, you master the world.

So how is that not real? How is an abstraction and a distillation not real? Fiction isn't the opposite of fact. Fiction is hyper real. And the deeper the fiction, so to speak, the deeper the distillation, the more real it is. And literature, great literature in particular, is very deep, but mythology, religious accounts,

religious stories are the deepest form of abstraction. So they're the most true. Now, they're the most true. How does it mean that they help you specify your aim better than anything else? There's a definition of true, like an arrow flying true, right? Something that strikes right to the heart.

You get your story straight, you see the world in a true manner, right? Adam and Eve are the distillation of what it means to be human. That's a good way of thinking about it Adam for example is charged by God with the task of naming and subduing the world What is that a reference to the masculine proclivity? To set things in a determinant order. That's the what would you say impetus towards the patriarchal hierarchy?

right even the feminists admit that the social order is a impetus towards the patriarchal hierarchy, right? Even the feminists admit that the social order is a masculine construct. Well, that's Adam's task. He's to, God charges him with that after his creation. To subdue and name the world. What does it mean to subdue? It means to give everything its proper due, to put everything in its proper place in the appropriate story.

That's the right way to think about it. To give everything its name, to specify the things of the world in a manner that allows, in Genesis 1, the garden to be shepherded and stewarded properly. That's Adam's job. What's Eve's job? Well, it's an equal job. That's why she's taken from Adam's rib. It's an equal job. The word Eve means, in Hebrew is ezher kanegdo. What does that mean?

It means something like, I have to hit it from multiple perspectives to get it right. It means something like, Marshall partner to hit it from multiple perspectives to get it right, it means something like, Marshall partner in challenging play. Marshall in the military sense. Easer means military ally. That's one of its connotations. Right? So it's a, it's a relationship of strength. It's a relationship of challenge. What's optimized challenge? How would you define optimized challenge? Think about it this way. Imagine you want to play one-on-one basketball

and you want to win. Okay, so you're six foot five and you have a nephew and he's like six and he's you know four feet tall and you think he'll be a good partner because because why well if I play one-on-one basketball with him I'm gonna win of course you want to be a winner so why not be six foot five and stomp the hell out of your nephew when you're playing one-on-one basketball and you might say well that's not any fun and then I might say well you're trying to win and it's pretty much assured. And you say, well, maybe I don't want an assured victory. And that's why you get married. I'm dead serious about that.

I'm dead serious about that. You could imagine this. Imagine that's love. Imagine love as an instinct. Okay, now you could imagine love as a divine, a divine gift of grace. It doesn't matter to me which of those two perspectives you adopt.

Imagine love as an instinct. Well, what's the instinct? It's the instinct to set yourself up with optimized challenge. Why? So you grow. So, your eye falls on someone and love emerges, right? It's a calling to you. It's not something you create.

It's something that appears to you. What's the estimate that your instinct to love is attempting? I can spar with this person in a manner that will make both of us grow. That's what the love signifies. And it's, as I said, you can think about it as an instinct, you can think about it as a divine act of grace. The two things converge. It makes no difference to me whether it's a bottom-up phenomena or a top-down phenomena. What does it mean to enjoy being with someone in the deepest sense? You want a partner in play who's matched with you, right? You don't

want to be the six foot five bully who's winning every game because his opponent is not capable of pushing him or her to the limits of their ability. Well, why do you want to be pushed to the limit of your ability? So you improve. Well, why improve? Well, what's the alternative? A dull stasis, a dull meaningless stasis,

or a degeneration? In so far as pain and anxiety are real, and hopelessness as well, those seem like unacceptable alternatives. It's certainly not what you want for your children or for anyone you love. What you'd hope for them is that they find an occupation, they find an educational pathway,

they find a partner that puts them on the edge of their development so they can dance on the edge so that they can continue to unfold so that they can be better for themselves, so they can be better for the future and so they can be better for everyone else. And maybe that optimized challenge, that love indexes is the voice of the spirit

that calls you to that continued pattern of adaptation. That's Eve, partnered with Adam. What's Eve's role? Well, we kind of know what the female role is. We could speak biologically again, the feminine role. Women are more sensitive to negative emotion on average than men. That's cross-culturally validated finding. It's very well established. It goes along with the female, increased female propensity for depression and anxiety. Men have their problems, don't get me wrong,

they're much more likely to be antisocial. There's all sorts of sex-typed pathologies. I'm not trying to single women out, not in the least. There's no reason to assume that ability and proclivity for catastrophe are anything but equally distributed between the two sexes. Right? We, speaking biologically, we co-evolved. There's no reason to assume that the relationship isn't one of radical equality, for better or worse.

Women are also more agreeable. What does that mean? They're more instinctively empathic. Well, why would women be more sensitive to negative emotion and more instinctively empathic? Well, let's start with negative emotion. Boys and girls don't differ much in their general patterns of negative emotion. The differences emerge at puberty. Well, why would women become more sensitive to negative emotion of puberty? Well, see if you can figure it out. Well, here's a couple of reasons.

Sexual dimorphism in strength emerges more profoundly of puberty. So men have much more upper body strength. They're more physically, they're more capable of physical domination in dispute. Women are very, they're very good at long distance endurance sports. They're very resilient, but as fighters, they lose. So what does that imply in terms of sensitivity to threat? Well, the world's a more dangerous place for women. Why else? Well, they're sexually vulnerable in a way that men aren't.

And that makes itself present, obviously, at puberty. Why are they more sexually vulnerable? Here's the definition of a woman. I don't know if that's what you came here for tonight. You know the Matt Walsh movie. What is a woman? Well, I'll tell you We know we know the answer to that it isn't chromosomal even biologically no chromosome differentiation is a very

Powerful marker of sex but it's not the fundamental distinction the fundamental biological distinction and female is quite clear. Females are the sex that contribute more to reproduction. So for example, the egg is 10 million times the volume of the sperm. And so right at that level, the initial level of conception, the female is already doing, the female is already making the larger sacrifice. So there's a definition of a woman. A woman is the sex who makes the larger sacrifice for reproduction. Now you have to be a fool to dispute that, obviously. Women carry babies, like they're pregnant, and they take primary responsibility for infants when they're in their most dependent

state. That puts them at a disadvantage socioeconomically. It's very much, it's difficult, differentially difficult for women to maneuver in the world when they're pregnant or when they have dependent infants. So what does that mean with regards to mate choice? Means that they look for men who are capable of keeping the predators who might prey on infants and them at bay productive and generous.

And so women look for markers of social status to index attractiveness. Why? Because they outsource the problem of who's the better man to the men, and they let them compete, and they peel from the top. And it's a brilliant strategy. So, why do women reject men?

Well, I just told you why. And so, that might be very irritating. If you're rejected, it is very irritating. There's probably nothing worse in a sense, but how in the world could it be any different? Because the stakes are high. So, women are more sensitive to negative emotion and they're more empathic and agreeable. What does that mean? Why is that? Well, we talked about some of the reasons. Why else? Because they have to care for dependent infants.

So here's the rule for caring for an infant up to about seven months old. Whatever the infant wants, goes. Right? An infant in distress is never wrong. Now, you can't say that about a creature of any other age. Right? Once children are capable of moving, crawling even, they're not entirely dependent and every single demand for gratification they make manifest is does not have to be met with immediate, what would you say? Does not have to be addressed immediately

at the cost of everything. It's not the case with infants six months and lower. Whatever they need and want now, that's what's to be provided, right? And so women are tilted towards that kind of care. Okay, what does that mean in the biblical context? Adam's role is to name and subdue, to establish order. What's the problem with establishing order? You might leave something out. Women are the voice of that which has been left out.

What does that mean? Well, you know what it means if you've had a family, if you're in a marriage. Women bring the attention of men to the concerns of the vulnerable. And you know, if you have a family and you have two kids and then you have a third baby, the family's already settled into a kind of stable order, let's say. But now you have this new infant and it's a completely new creature and it's got a new temperament. God only knows what it's up to. It's extremely complicated creature. And there has to be adjustments made to the structure of order so that that child can find its place.

And the women are in contact with that and their emotional makeup and perceptual structure, they're better at decoding nonverbal behavior, for example, than men are, that enables them to speak for the marginalized. Right. That accounts in large part for the political divide between men and women that you can see growing. What's the sin of women? Amongst the marginalized are the serpentine. Right. Not everybody who cries victim is an infant. Some of the

creatures that cry victim are monsters and you shouldn't clutch them to your breast. That's what Eve does with the snake. She clutches the serpentine to her breast. Why? To announce to herself the supreme power of her compassion. Right. That's the pattern. That's the eternal pattern of female sin as laid out in the second story in the biblical corpus. What's the sin of man, Adam? Because he falls immediately after Eve.

Eve hearkens to the voice of the serpent, who is the immediate manifestation of the Luciferian spirit of the usurper and the deceiver. That's the mythological structure. What does that mean? Psychopaths use victim status to gain what they want. Right. And prideful, compassionate fools fall for it. Why?

To elevate their compassion to the highest place. Not a wise move. What's Adam's sin? What do men want? They want to impress women. I worked with lawyers for years, you know, high-end lawyers, people who ran law firms, who were partners of senior law firms, and they made a lot of money, $1,000 an hour, a lot of money. Why were they interested in the money? Well, there are materialistic reasons for being interested in money. We don't have to cover them. But most of them regarded the money, especially their bonuses, as what

did they say? That's how we keep score. What did that mean? Well, that was how the men rank-ordered themselves in the status hierarchy within the firms. And that's very common among men. They're rank-ordering status all the time Why because women peel from the top? the biggest predictor of a woman's attractiveness to a man's attractiveness to a woman cross-culturally is his comparative status among other men. It's a walloping Predictor it's by far the biggest

men. It's a walloping predictor. It's by far the biggest contributor. And we'd said, why? Well, why? Well, because a woman doesn't need another infant, right? She needs someone who can help. And how does she find out? Well, she sees who wins the contest among men. And she assumes that the winner is the winner. And so why not have him? And it's a perfectly reasonable way of conducting an analysis, it can be gamed. But that's a different story. So what's Adam's sin? He tries to impress Eve. So when she comes to him announcing

her new relationship with the serpentine, he says, no problem, dear, whatever you want, and fails to establish the proper borders of order. What happens? That's the fall of mankind. Okay, so what does that mean? It's a very complicated idea. There's a Christian idea, deep Christian idea that suffering is the consequence of sin and that the worst sin, let's say, is the sin of pride.

Adam and Eve both fall prey to the sin of pride in the feminine way and the masculine way. Adam says, I got this, baby. And Eve says, we can even clutch the serpent to our breasts. Right, right, that's their typical forms of pathology. What happens to people who bite off more than they can chew? What happens to people who attempt to incorporate and digest the inedible?

They fall. That's what happens to Adam and Eve. Pride comes before a fall. Okay, so what does that have to do with suffering? That's a complicated question, right? Because you might think, and rightly so, you know that suffering itself seems to be built into the structure of the world, right?

I mean, we're fragile, we can be hurt, our children are hurt, they stumble, they scrape their knees, they break their arms and legs, they develop terrible diseases like we all do. There seems to be an element of suffering and vulnerability built into the world. What else causes suffering? Biting off more than you can chew, right?

So you imagine how many times you're struggling forward in disenchanted misery You're struggling forward in disenchanted misery because you've fallen away from what you should pursue, because you've falsely aggrandized yourself or taken on a task, claimed to be able to take on a task or to have a skill that you don't possess. Setting yourself up for a fall, what's the consequence of that? Misery. How much of the misery of the world is that? That's a real interesting question, you know. We

actually don't know, right? We've established, let's say in the course of this dialogue, that there's a certain amount of suffering that's a mere consequence of the structure of the world, the arbitrary nature of reality, the sort of random distribution of vulnerability and illness. But by the same token, man, you can do a lot of stupid things to make your life worse. And so you've got to ask yourself, if you stop doing those stupid things and you aimed in the proper direction, how much of the suffering that's attendant on life would vanish and The answer is well quite a lot because you know that when you when you're doing your best when you have your act together When you're not pridefully overreaching when you're not overextending yourself when you're not acting falsely when you're not trying to usurp and claim

What's not yours when you're not trying to be theP and claim what's not yours. When you're not trying to be the pinnacle of the moral order, let's say, life's a lot better. And then it's an open question. Well, how much better would it be if you were really good at that? And then there's another question, which would be, how much better would life be in total if everyone was doing that?

Right, if everyone was walking with God in the garden instead of taking to themselves the right to define the moral order, how much suffering would vanish? All of it? It's hard for me to see how all suffering could vanish given our mortal constraints, but you can sure take a bad situation and make it worse with stupidity. So the Christian insistence that suffering enters the world with sin, maybe it's more the suffering that makes the world unbearable enters the world with sin, right? Because there's nothing more Effortful than the work you have to do to dig yourself out of the hole

That you dug and fell in And you see this is sort of what happens to adam and eve in immediate aftermath of the fall because god tells Eve that she's going to suffer in life. She's going to suffer in consequence of her children's dependence on her and her role as the primary contributor to reproduction. And she's going to suffer under the dominion of her husband. Why? Well, they're both fallen creatures. Why would women suffer under

the dominion of their husbands? This isn't something God says should happen. Right? It's not a definition of the moral order. It's a definition of the fallen moral order. Women are attracted to high-status men. The degree to which a woman is attracted to a man is proportionate to his comparative status. Women are attracted to men whose status exceeds their own. What's the implication of that? They're going to be under the dominion of their husband. If the husband is fallen, then they're going to be under the dominion of his tyranny. Right, so that's the definition of the fallen world for women. What's the definition of the fallen world for men?

Well, God says, you're gonna have to toil in the fields and it will bring forth thorns and thistles. You'll make your way forward effortfully and you'll return to the dust from which you emerged. When is work toilsome and effortful? It's particularly toilsome and effortful when you're digging yourself out of the hole that you dug and fell in.

Well, you can understand this. There are times in your life where you're putting a lot of effort into something. It's not exactly work, right? You're highly motivated to do it. Well, why? Well, because it called to you, because you're certain that you're engaging in a,

that you're aiming at something that is morally valid, let's say, that your conscience isn't going to upbraid you for that's intrinsically interesting, right? If you're engaged in work that isn't the result of sin, so to speak, then is it toil or is it play? And you could ask yourself, you know, when your life is optimized and you're doing something that is in the nature of your true calling, when you're walking with God in the garden, when you've reestablished that relationship, then the sacrifices that you have to make to move forward

aren't painful. And you understand that because you can see that at the best moments of your life, you work but in harmony with things, not in contradiction to them. And that working in harmony, there's a tremendous pleasure in that. Children's play is effortful.

If they're really playing hard, they're on the edge of their developmental ability, right? They're stretching themselves. But there's nothing about that that isn't joyful. And so there's an insistence, an implicit insistence in the story of Adam and Eve that work aimed properly would be play and play in the eternal garden.

And so one of the things you might want to ask yourself is that if your toil is not play, how wrong is your aim? And then the next question is, well, what should you aim for? All right. The biblical library does what it can to answer that question too. What should you aim for?

God is characterized in the biblical stories as the source of the ultimate aim. That's a good way of thinking about it. So imagine that there are things in your life that interest you and compel you and pull you forward. They call to you. Now imagine that as you mature, what interests and calls to you

and pulls you forward changes, right? But the fact that something interests you and calls to you and motivates your transformation, that doesn't change. God is defined in the Old Testament corpus as the spirit behind all transformational aims. Right? So you can imagine that the thing that beckons to you and calls you to develop and mature further varies in its specific manifestations depending on your time and your place and your temperament

But that there's something behind that that shines through all of those things that beckon and call and fill you with enthusiasm and that's the deity at the pinnacle of Jacob's ladder which is the never-ending spiral of upward aim. That's a definition. And that people are called upon to exist in relationship to that spirit. That's the covenant between man and God. How does that spirit characterized? In Genesis, God, the source of ultimate aim, the target of ultimate aim, is characterized as the spirit that broods upon the primeval water. That's the opening part of Genesis.

What does that mean? Well, there's no water yet in creation. That's the opening part of Genesis. What does that mean? Well, there's no water yet in creation. That comes later. What's the water? The Hebrew is Tohu Vabohu, and it doesn't exactly mean water. It means something like potential or possibility or chaos. God is the spirit that extracts the habitable order that is good out of a pre-existent potential or chaos and human beings are made in that image. What does that mean? This is what you do in your life. What do you perceive when you wake up in the morning? Well, you think, well, I perceive my bed, I perceive my carpet, I perceive my curtains. That just shows how materialistic you are in your conceptualizations because that's not what you

perceive. What you perceive is the possibility that's making itself available to you for the day, right? Think about how you wake up. First of all, you're asleep, you're unconscious, there's nothing happening then. Poof, daylight, you're awake. You're awake. And what are you contending with?

Maybe you're terrified. Why? You're terrified by all the potential left over that you haven't realized because you've been offering inappropriate sacrifices at your job. That's what that means. Or maybe you wake up enthusiastic and optimistic and you can see that there's many things that exist in possibility for you that you could wrestle into the order that's good. Right? And so then you can leap out of bed enthusiastically and begin to, to what?

Subdue and order the world. Right? And that's the nature of consciousness itself. Like consciousness itself, which is being as far as human beings are concerned, because what is non-conscious being? It's the spirit that Grapples with the possibility of the world is the possibility real well Can you do one thing or another? Can you do one thing or five other things do you have choice?

Well, you treat everybody like they have choice. You treat people like they have responsible choice. You assume that on your own account. It appears to you that you have that ability to go this way or that way in what? In the realm of potential. Well, that's why human beings are made in the image of God. Well, that's why that's an accurate representation is we're doing the same thing at the local level that the spirit that gives rise to everything is deemed to have done at the beginning of time and to be continually doing.

Right, we have something to do. What? Transform possibility into actuality. In what manner? How about in the manner that aims up? We're transforming chaotic potential with our aim to what? To establish the kingdom of heaven. Or what? It's alternative? Hell? We've done that plenty, especially in the 20th century, by aiming down, by lying, by being prideful,

by being usurpers of the moral order? That's a communist ideologue in a nutshell. And what do they produce with their downward aiming, wrestling with potential? Hell. Is it real? Wait till you get there and you'll find out. And maybe you've had a few side trips already, right? It's as real as pain and suffering. It's as real as pointless pain and suffering, right?

It's as real as self-inflicted pointless pain and suffering, or maybe it's as real as the pointless pain and suffering that you inflict with your carelessness and your deception and your pride pride even on the people you love That's a good definition of hell. Is that real? You can just ask yourself that question. Everybody knows the answer to that question Is the alternative real the upward aim? all of the great heroes of the New Old Testament they

They sacrifice themselves to the good That's what they're doing when they're building altars. So I want to tell you that story because this is very useful to know. I said the entire biblical library is an investigation into sacrifice. This really becomes clear in the story of Cain and Abel. Now, Adam and Eve are fated to work. Okay, so let's make an equation here so that everybody understands what's going on. There's no difference between work and sacrifice. So that's a key to understanding the biblical text.

Why? Well, what the hell do you think you're doing when you're working? You're sacrificing the present to the future, or you're sacrificing your immediate wants to the community. It's a sacrificial gesture, right work. It's the definition of work You're giving up something now you're offering something now to what? to stabilize The community in the future including your future self. It's a sacrificial gesture.

Work is sacrifice. Okay, so once you know that, you can understand, let's say the story of Cain and Abel, which is the story that I'll close with. Cain and Abel are the first two human beings in the fallen world. So in the actual world, in the world of history, in the world we occupy.

They're born and not made by God. And they represent two patterns of sacrifice. The two patterns of sacrifice that characterize culture and psyche, individual and community. The fundamental patterns, just like Adam and Eve are the fundamental patterns of masculinity and femininity. Cain and Abel, the hostile brothers, are the twin patterns of sacrifice

or work that characterize the human approach to reality. Abel, who's Abel? Abel aims up. He makes the sacrifices that are of the highest quality. Abel is a herder and he takes the best animals and he butchers them and he takes the best cut and he takes the best pieces of that and he takes the best animals and he butchers them and he takes the best cut and he takes the best pieces of that and he immolates it on an altar because he wants to dramatize, because that's what he's doing, playing out the idea that the best is what will satisfy the spirit of the cosmic order.

Do you believe that? Well, you either believe that or the opposite. Like those are your options. There's a no non-belief option here. You believe one thing or another. If you offer your best, will you be accepted? Because that's God's pronouncement to Cain. Cain takes the opposite stance.

He offers what's second best and it doesn't work. Well, is that true? Well, how often have you offered anything but your best and had it work? And then you might think, well, why would you even think it could work? Because life is very difficult. It's very difficult. And if you're going to make a success out of it or something that isn't an absolute hell, it's fairly probable that you're going to make a success out of it or something that isn't an absolute hell,

it's fairly probable that you're going to have to bring your best to the table. Because like, who do you think you are? You think you're the sort of person who can defy the structure of reality itself? That you can fool yourself and other people and the natural order and God by offering what's second rate and succeeding.

That's your theory. That's not a wise theory. Not in the face of the difficulties of life. That's Cain's theory. That's what he tries to do. And what happens to him? It says in the text, his countenance falls. What does that mean?

He's bitter, resentful, miserable, unhappy, and vengeful. Well, why? Well, because he's being rejected. Well, why? Well, because he's being rejected. Well, why is he being rejected? Because he's not bringing his best to the table. And so, what does Cain do? Well, he doesn't do what Abel does. Abel always aims up, right?

He makes the sacrifices that are acceptable to God. That's his story. Because he brings what's of the highest quality to the table. Cain doesn't. Cain fails, is bitter, miserable, and resentful. And what does he do? Well, he doesn't admit it, because he's not able.

He calls out God. And so he has a little chat with God, just like we all do when we're bitter and failing. How did you make this world where I'm breaking myself in half and all that's happening is I'm failing? And my brother Abel, the sun shines on him. Everything he does touches to gold. What the hell's wrong with the moral order? What's wrong with the spirit who created existence itself? That's Cain's challenge to God. It's a hell of a thing to think about failure as a consequence of second-rate effort.

It's like, well, I'm failing because God made the world wrong. There isn't a more prideful presumption than that. And it doesn't really work on God. And God says to Cain, if you did well, you'd be accepted. And what does that mean? It means if you brought absolutely everything you had to bear on the circumstances at hand, and you left nothing behind,

if you were willing to sacrifice everything necessary, you could have what you needed and wanted, but nothing short of that will suffice, right? That's why it's necessary. This is why Christ in the gospels calls upon his followers to abandon even their brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers if they're going to walk uphill. This is why Abraham is called upon to sacrifice Isaac to God. It's like

everything is to be sacrificed to the upward aim, and that's what God insists upon, and he's characterized as the spirit that makes that insistence, and we're characterized in relationship to that spirit. And God says something else, which doesn't make Cain the least bit happy. Cain believes that the reason he's bitter and resentful, miserable and vengeful and cursing God and shaking his fist at the sky in this prideful manner is because he's failing. And God says, that's not why you're miserable, buddy. There's an intervening variable you're not,

he doesn't say that because God's not a scientist. There's an intervening variable you're not taking into account. What does he say to Cain? He said, sin crouches at your door like a sexually aroused predatory animal and you invited it in to have its way with you. And so what does that mean?

It's brilliant, it's so condensed, it's so brilliant. It's it's the most accurate bit of Psychology of resentment I've ever seen. What does it mean? You fail. Okay The causal consequence you're bitter well No one of the causal consequences could be you could wake the hell up and Start doing better and repent and confess and get your

act together in a tone and move on, right, and learn. That's causal too. You can't blame your resentment, misery on your suffering. There's an intervening spirit. What's that? The spirit of sin that crouches at your door, a predator, a sexually aroused predator. Why that? Well, because it wants to fuck you.

I'm dead serious about that. It's a very ancient metaphor, that metaphor of, what would you say? The seminal quality of evil. What's evil? It's something you invite in, right? It's something that you creatively engage with. That's the sexual metaphor.

It's something you brood on. It's something you allow to inhabit you. It's something that possesses you. The terrible people who do terrible things, the people who shoot up high schools, it's like 2,000 hours of fantasizing before they pull the trigger. And what's that a result of? Bitterness and resentment.

But that's not all. It's the invitation of something in to take possession of them. And so that's what God accuses Cain of. And that makes him extremely unhappy, as you might imagine. You're miserable because you're not making the right sacrifices. You're resentful because you all invited in the spirit of sin itself. It's all to be laid at your feet. The last thing Cain wants to hear, the most corrective possible piece of advice, which he instantly rejects, what does he do?

He kills Abel. What does he do? He kills Abel. What does it mean? If you're resentful enough and you're vengeful enough, you'll destroy your own ideal, right? You'll destroy everything. Why? To attain revenge on the source of your suffering, right? To foment bloody rebellion against God. That's what Cain does.

That's what the spirit of bitterness forever does. Cain makes the wrong sacrifices. He sacrifices the ideal itself to his own pride, and then he tells God, my sin is greater than I can bear. Well, why? Destroy your ideal? As a consequence of bitterness? You've got nowhere to go. Cain is destined to wander the land of Nod. Where's that? That's where children go when they're asleep. Sin badly enough, you'll take escape in unconsciousness. Why does Cain wander? Because he's a bitter psychopath and no one wants to be near him. And so he takes the pathway of the itinerant vagrant who's so pathological in his orientation that anyone decent will step away from him.

What's the consequence of Cain's failure to sacrifice? His descendants are worse. His descendants are the first worshipers of technology. They're the first vengeful tit-for-tat genocidal agents. Lamech, one of Cain's descendants, says, you kill Cain and you offend Cain and you die. You offend me, seven or 70 die. What does it mean? The pattern of resentful bitterness that Cain, that characterizes Cain, can make itself manifest in the broader

community and turn everything into a genocidal nightmare. What follows? The flood. The flood that washes away Cain's descendants. Sacrifice. That's the essence of adaptation. That's the essence of maturation. It's the fundament upon which the Communion is predicated. I'll end with this.

For 2,000 years, we've put a symbol at the center of our culture, right? Insofar as our cultures are Christian. And by the center, I mean literally the center of our culture, right? Insofar as our cultures are Christian. And by the center, I mean literally the center. The cathedral at the center of the town or city, the altar at the center of the cathedral, the crucifix at the center of the altar. Why? Because it's a symbol of the ultimate sacrifice, right?

The full sacrifice of self in service of future, others, community, and God. Is that the principle upon which the community is founded? The principle upon which the community is founded is sacrifice. What's the ultimate sacrifice? What's the sacrifice of everything to what's good? Right. That's the fundamental story of Judeo-Christian culture. Is it true? Try making your life, try walking through your life successfully without making the proper sacrifices upward and find out whether or not it's true. Alright everyone, thank you very much. Thank you.