The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - Why Short-Term Pleasure Is Ruining Your Life

Episode Date: July 26, 2026

What does it mean that every glance you take is a moral act — and that the world you see is literally shaped by what you're aiming at when you look? This lecture builds from a deceptively simple observation about perception and intent into one of the oldest and most unsettling ideas in the biblical tradition: that the spirit you bring to your decisions determines what reality reveals to you. Moving through the stories of Jacob's ladder, Elijah's cave, and the still small voice that turns out to be harder to hear than any earthquake or firestorm, Peterson traces the case that conscience, calling, and the instinct to aim upward are not three things but one — and that the God of the Old Testament is less a being to be believed in than a direction to be chosen, one glance, one word, one sacrifice at a time. This lecture was filmed on December 2nd, 2024 in Cincinnati, Ohio. Unlock the ad-free experience of The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast and dive into exclusive bonus content on DailyWire+. Start watching now: http://dwpluspeterson.com/yt ALL LINKS: https://feedlink.io/jordanbpeterson // LINKS // Peterson Academy https://petersonacademy.com Books - https://www.jordanbpeterson.com/books/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Find your rhythm across a seamless 33-inch display and an immersive 19 speaker AKG surround audio system. This city demands agility, and Optic delivers with precision to make every drive extraordinary. Let's take the Cadillac. Find out more at Cadillac Canada.ca. Luxury sales claim based on S&P Global Mobility Canadian New Vehicle Total Registrations for calendar year 2025 for the Cadillac definition of luxury. Hi, everybody. Welcome to this week's lecture. The first note, all the lectures that I'm releasing from my tour archives focus on psychological analysis of a set of key biblical stories. Each of them stands alone, but they work together as a group as well. Second note.

last week in the intro I mentioned that I had written and released an article on climate change, but we decided to forestall that in favor of releasing another piece that I recently wrote called They're Not Rape Gangs. Well, you can tell from the title that that's a very punchy and provocative essay, and we thought it should take primacy with regards to the first thing that I've written in a year, not to say that the climate piece doesn't have plenty of power behind it. Anyways, you can find it on my blog, you can find it on X, you can go to Jordan B Peterson.com, on with today's show. Well, I'm looking forward to this. That's typical. If I stopped looking forward to this, I would be morally obliged to stop doing it. It's a great privilege.

So I'm going to talk to you for an hour, 15 minutes, something like that. Then we're going to do a Q&A. and so I'm going to talk to you tonight about well something that I have talked about before and I've written about before but there was an idea that's been brewing in the back of my mind for a long, long time that I haven't ever made explicit and I'm going to try to do that tonight so that'll be entertaining

see if we can manage that so I have this new book which is the name of this tour, We Who Ressel with God. And it's a great joke on the New York Times that it hit number one on the bestseller list, which I'm quite grateful for, let's say.

And also regard as ridiculously comic that a book focusing on the stories of the Old Testament could hardly be anything more traditional is the number one book in your advice section. that's utterly preposterous and ridiculous, and a very good thing, because you might as well get advice from the best possible source. And I don't mean me. I mean those stories.

So we who wrestle with God. Well, I picked that title because it turns out that that's what the word Israel means. And Israel, the people of Israel, are the chosen. people of God. That's the promise and that's so interesting as far as I'm concerned because everybody wrestles with God to a greater lesser degree and the reason for that is that we are fated to make moral decisions. We have to chart our course forward into the unknown. There's no way around that and that means that at every opportunity with every glance with every word you're aiming up or down. Those are your options. And it's very much worthwhile thinking about what that means.

So at a rule when I wrote this book, there was a couple of rules, but one of them was that I wasn't going to put forward any claim that I couldn't justify from the philosophical or theological perspective insofar as I'm capable of doing that. the scientific perspective simultaneously. And part of that was based on my presumption that insofar as there is a unity at the base of all things that the scientific and the ethical must converge. I don't see what the alternative is to that, that there is no moral world. That's a utterly foolish claim that empirical facts have no basis in reality. That's a ridiculous claim. That those two modes of being are going to be necessarily set at odds with one another.

That's the claim of those who insist that there's a conflict that's inalienable between the ethical and the scientific. I don't think any of that's true. I can't see how it can be true. So I'm assuming for the time being that it isn't true and that any apparent conflict is a consequence of our age.

ignorance and not a consequence of some disjunction in the fundamental nature of reality or the illusory nature of the ethical. No, none of that makes sense to me. So, let's investigate that a little bit. Where to start exactly. We could start with a riddle. Why did the chicken cross the road? Well, the answer to that is to get to the other side. The question is, why did he want to get to the other side. And the answer has got to be that, unless it was a self-destructive chicken, that he assumed that the grass was greener on the other side of the road, right? And it's a funny little joke, and everyone knows it, and that's kind of interesting. And I think the reason it's a funny little joke, and because everyone knows the joke, is because it points to something

very fundamental. It's a meme. That's a way of thinking about it. that would please Richard Dawkins, possibly. There's a reason that we do everything. Now, we can have a bad reason or a good reason. We all know that, right? We know that we're likely to feel ashamed, even though we might be happy that we got away with it, if we do something for a reason that's bad

and might be easy and pleasurable in the moment, but that doesn't mean that we think it's right, we don't make a decision of any sort without making a moral decision because a decision about destination is a moral decision. We make the decision to go from point A to point B on the assumption that that's an uphill climb towards something better. Or the opposite that we've decided that we're going to make things worse for whatever reasons of reasons. resentment or deceit or deception or Machiavellian manipulation or vengefulness or just sheer sadistic delight in making the world a more unbearable place

Every action is a Directional action and every directional action is an ethical action and this is true in the most microcosmic way possible so for example example, there is no perception without action. This is a fundamental discovery laid out in detail by physiologists in the last 60, 70, maybe 100 years. There's a very different idea than you look passively at the world and you just see what's there. That isn't how perception works. There's no base level of perception independent of action. And there's no action independent of decision and there's

no decision independent of morality. And that means there's no perception independent of morality. And that's an interesting thing to contemplate. Right. So when you're looking at the audience, for example, when I'm looking at the audience, I do that with a kind of intent. I have to select the person that I'm looking at or I can look at the whole crowd at once. I have to, I'm looking at a given person or the crowd with a set of nested intents in mind. Here's a way of thinking about it. Here's a good way to be self-conscious on stage, which is not an experience I'd recommend. if you want to be self-conscious on stage, which will make you embarrassed and ashamed and stumble, you have to look at the audience with the glorification of your ego in mind.

It has to be about you. You know, if you go out, it's a good thing to know if you're going to speak publicly. If you start worrying about you, how do they, are they going to be interested in what I have to say, are they going to think I'm smart? Are they going to think I'm compelling? What will this do for my career, for better or worse? As soon as you start thinking about that, you treat the audience in a way that's oriented towards those ends, you're highly likely to be self-conscious, and that's going to interfere with the truth of your proclamations and with your so-called performance. It's not supposed to be a performance exactly, certainly not one dedicated to your own

self-plurification, let's say. And if you have that as your aim, however unconsciously, then you're going to treat the audience like a means to your own ends, and that's going to trip you up, because it turns out it's not that pleasurable to be self-conscious. And in fact, there's no difference between being self-conscious and being miserable. Technically, those are so tightly associated that you can't distinguish them conceptually or statistically. So then you might say, well, what should it be about? If it's not about you, you're the one offering the talk, let's say, well, there are alternatives. You could use the opportunity to tear someone or something down.

You could use the opportunity to say what you think is true. You could use the opportunity to explore something honestly and share that. Those are very different aims and the fact of those difference in aims is going to make itself manifest in every gesture that you make in every glance that you undertake. And that's true for absolutely everything you do with everyone, including yourself, all the time. So, there are structures of ethics that are complex and sophisticated, that are governing how you use your eyes. Now, you all know that, and here's an example of that. You can use your eyes improperly on a date. Right, and the manner in which you do that speaks to your motivation.

and that motivation speaks to your ethic in a very deep manner and one of the things that your date is going to evaluate you in relationship to is the intent indicated by your gaze and we're doing that to each other all the time our eyes have evolved so they're maximally visible right white colored black you can see them at a distance you can tell where people are pointing them and you can figure out what the hell they're up to. And that's, so, so think, that's so cool. It's so remarkable to know that because it means that the facts that you gather about the world by looking at it are a reflection of your intent.

Now, I tell you, man, if you understand that, if you understand that, it immediately terrifies you. because it means the world reveals itself at the level of fact in accordance with your intent. Man, if you really think that through, it'll scare you straight. It begs some questions, like if things are truly miserable for you, and I do understand that people encounter the arbitrary runs of bad luck, right? I mean, there's an element of existence that's unpredictable. And just because you're careful doesn't mean you're going to be safe. But it's an open question how much of the misery that we encounter

is a consequence of our misaligned aim. And it might even be there for all of us that you prayed, so to speak, that that's the case if you're miserable, because if it is the case, then maybe you could do something about it, and you're not just the victim, the powerless victim of arbitrary and unfair fate. So called? Peterson Academy. Peterson Academy.

Peterson Academy. It's called Peterson Academy. Peterson Academy. If you want an actual education. With hand-selected professors from top universities around the world. Bringing the best professors together, making sure they're not censored in any way, giving them the audience and the remuneration and appreciation they deserve. And you were true to your word.

You gave me absolute intellectual autonomy. I have had it through every course. We figure we can offer people a high-quality university-level education for under $2,000. Well, congratulations, Jordan. It's honestly brilliant. I can't wait to enroll myself. I'll be doing that straight after this. Funjo. It's a possibility that if what's making itself manifest in front of you is not the answer to all your prayers or the source of all your valid desires that you're just not.

looking at it with the right aim in mind. Okay, so let's talk about aim in even more detail. There's a story in the Old Testament that's relevant to this. It's the story of Jacob who becomes Israel. Now, Jacob is not a good guy when that story begins. Quite the contrary. And this is actually in a very interesting feature of the majority of the stories about the Old Testament prophets, these patriarchal oppressors, so to speak. They're not particularly admirable people at the beginning of their adventures.

That's generally the case. And this is a good thing because if the only people who can become agents of the divine are those without flaw, then there's no hope for anyone. There's plenty of hope if those who became great in a manner that's being remembered for centuries started out just as flawed as you might be or I might be. And that's also a realistic portrayal, right? It's the kind of portrayal you'd expect in high-quality literature. Because in high-quality literature, the heroes are complex figures. They're not all good. They're flawed and twisted and bent in all the ways that make people horrible and wonderful and interesting.

And the story of their life that unfolds is the story of how those flawed people make their way to hell or heaven, so to speak. And maybe even in reality. Jacob, when the story begins, Jacob is he's a dweller in tent. compared to his brother, who's a very masculine figure, an outdoorsman and a hunter, and an impulsive person in keeping with that archetypally and stereotypically masculine orientation. Jacob is a favorite of his mother, and that in itself is not necessarily a bad thing, although there's danger in it because there's danger when it. any given child is a favorite, and that favoritism is evident, and there's a danger in being

your father's favorite, and there's a danger in being your mother's favorite, and the canonical danger, I suppose, of being your mother's favorite, is that that can set you against your father, which is, and perhaps your other siblings, which is not an optimal outcome, and also, maybe you'll be a bit too close and tightly bound up with your mother, which is also not generally a good thing, as Sigmund Freud warned about continually, seeing that as he did, as the source of much of familial psychopathology. Why? Human children have the longest period of dependency of any creatures, and that means that that maternal bond and desire for nurturing and protection is extremely powerful and necessary, and also capable of going spectacularly wrong.

And that's what happens in the case of children who are rendered or invited to become dependent. And that's what happens to Jacob. And it's worse, because he conspires with his mother to take the right of inheritance from his brother and to deceive his father even on his deathbed. And that's pretty ugly and very typical of family pathology. Near the story of Jacob as an independent person begins after he deceives his father and his brother in a manner so beyond the pale that it makes his brother murderous. and so Jacob leaves. Now, when he leaves,

you might imagine that he's shocked enough about the necessity of leaving and maybe now old enough because he's now a young adult to understand that perhaps he's done something wrong and also may be able to see things clearly for the first time

because he's gone away from his mother. Now, I'm reading into the text because the details of that particular story aren't all there, but we can infer what the situation might be in consequence of our shared experience. In any case, when Jacob leaves his family, he makes a decision. And his decision is that he's going to aim up. Okay, so if you're an alcoholic, it's a fairly common fate,

How might you recover from being an alcoholic? Well, you could go to a treatment center. For example, you could undergo medical treatment, hypothetically. There's no evidence that that'll work. There's no evidence whatsoever that any treatment, so-called medical treatment, psychological treatment for that matter, for alcoholism ever works. It's been known for 70 years that religiously

religious conversion treats alcoholism. Now, I'll explain why that's the case as we proceed through this. If you're going to wrestle something like an addiction to the ground, if you're going to radically alter your pathway through life, which is what Jacob decides to do, you have to come to a point of crisis where you decide to reorient yourself. You have to understand that the path you're on has been destructive, and you have to realize that. I think other people can tell you that, but that will work.

You have to figure it out. You have to understand that you've gone spectacularly wrong, that it's your responsibility, that that's the case, and that in principle, it would be worth risking something to put that right. Now all those are acts of faith, right? It's like, what makes you think you can change? You haven't. What makes you think there is an up as opposed to the direction that you've been going?

And what makes you think you'd have the power of will and commitment to walk the straight narrow path, even if it revealed itself, to you. You don't know. And so you have to step forward towards what's better by stepping into the unknown. And you have to do it with a sacrificial attitude. And this is something that's laid out very carefully in the Old Testament stories because there's an insistence in those strange stories that you establish the proper relationship with what's highest. So that would be the highest upward aim through sacrifice.

Now, everyone knows that, who's even vaguely familiar with these old stories, but it isn't obvious at all, and anyone understands it, especially because it's couched in this archaic language. So, for example, when Jacob decides to aim up instead of down, when he leaves his home, he builds an altar, and he sacrifices some something concrete, right? He makes an offering, a burnt offering on the altar

and sends the smoke, which contains the essence of his offering upward towards the God who dwells in the sky who assesses the quality of the offering and determines whether it's acceptable. That's a very archaic conceptualization, right? that the essence, that a sacrifice is something concrete, that emulating it on an altar releases its essence,

that the essence can be detected by the God of the sky, who decides whether that's an acceptable sacrifice. It's primordial conceptualization, but it means something deep. It's the way that a very complicated and sophisticated idea made itself manifest before thorough understanding of it could be established, before it could be abstracted. If you're going to change, you're going to sacrifice something, that's the nature of change, right? If you're going to sacrifice your stupidity, right, you're going to sacrifice your immaturity. And you know this too, that as you progress through life, assuming you progress,

and a new opportunity make themselves manifest to you in consequence of your progress you're going to be called upon to leave the parts of you that were only worthy of the last adventure you had behind.

You see, for example, when people have children, they often undergo a process of radical maturity. Not always, but usually. And you can see it in their face. You can see it in how they conduct themselves. They turn from children to adults. I saw this happen with my son, before my son had children.

He was a perfectly fine young man. But he was still, was he still a kid? Most people are still kids before they have children. Partly because you're not an adult till someone is more important than you. And that's a hard thing to be. pull off before you have children. You can do it, but it's not easy. Children make it necessary, and if you don't manage that transformation, it's very difficult for you to be the parent you should be. So, the process of transformation is the decision to aim up. So that's to turn your eyes, let's say,

heavenward. That's the poetic language. And then to vow to make whatever sacrifices are necessary in that pursuit. And that's how you leave behind the dried-up carcasses of your previous self and ascend. And that's exactly what Jacob dreams, right? Because it's at that point that he has the dream of Jacob's Ladder. And Jacob's Ladder is a spiral staircase that reaches up to, to what? To heaven itself. Well, what does that mean? And angels descend and ascend on that staircase. So Jacob has a vision of the structure that unites us with the ultimate upward aim.

Okay, so let's think that through what this is, what this story is trying to relate about the nature of God and the nature of man in relationship to God. we've already established that to do anything is to aim and to do anything good is to aim up and we talked about micro aims the aim that you might indicate with your eyes if you were on a date let's say and your true goal was the establishment of something like

a lasting relationship predicated on truth and love a very different signal, you might say, about your intent, given all the alternative motivations that you might bring to bear on that situation. Now, it isn't necessary that the person that you're dating wants you to signal the highest possible motivation, because they might be oriented, and maybe you're hoping for this, for something short-term, more intense and required. requiring a hell of a lot less commitment. But it's still the case that the dynamic of attention and speech and the dance of personal

interaction that characterizes that date is going to reflect the structure value within which both of the participants are operating. And that means that they each inhabit something like a ladder, but God only knows what's at the top. And this is a very important thing to understand. Now, there's an insistence in the Old Testament and the new, for that matter, that what's highest is ineffable. Okay, so this is a very important thing to understand

because the God that's portrayed in the biblical library is not definable, not in the final analysis. And there's a reason for that. The first reason is you cannot conceive of what the highest possible good might be. And you know that because as you pursue what you deem to be good in your life, you learn more about what's good. And there doesn't seem to be a limit to that, right? If you're striving upward and you accomplish something,

you gather the wisdom that's a consequence of that accomplishment, and now you can specify your next aim more precisely. And there's no reason to assume that there's any limit to that, and what that means is that what's at the top recedes as you approach it. And you also want that, because otherwise you'd be in the position of Sisyphus. You know, Sisyphus, he rolls a stone up the mountain, and then it rolls back down, and he has to roll it up the mountain,

and then it rolls down. and he has a life of fundamental pointlessness. And you might say that your life is Sisyzithian, which means it's one damn thing after another. But you could construe, or the same damn thing over and over, more accurately, but you could construe your life as a sequence of mountains, each of which is higher with no peak in the distance ever being the ultimate peak. And that would also be a place of endless adventure, because no matter how much you accomplished,

there'd still be something left to accomplish. And then you could think of whatever beckons at the farthest reaches of that endeavor as the highest possible principle that recedes as you approach it. And that's one of the ways that God is defined in the biblical library. And I don't see any way out of that. Because the only other hypothesis is that there's nothing that unites what is good. And that's preposterous because we would even have a concept of good if there wasn't something that was the same about all good things.

And so, and you have to think about it as inexhaustible, because otherwise you'd be able to reach perfection. And I don't see anybody glowing white in the audience. So it seems like at least none of you people have mastered. that and so and you'd want what's highest to be ineffable and receding because otherwise it would be exhaustible and then you could come to the end of your adventure and you don't want that and so and so we have Jacob's ladder and Jacob has that realization when he decides to aim up right that the

realization is that you could aim up and that if and that if you up, this is the next thing that's in the dream. If you could aim up, if you did aim up, then what was at the pinnacle of your aim would then communicate with you. Now you think, well, does that make sense? Okay, here is a way of thinking about it. Let's say that you, you could just remember this. Remember a time when you're like viciously angry and possessed by the desire. for vengeance. Okay, now imagine that you now strategize in that spirit. Okay, so now your aim is you, this will happen to you when you have a fight with your wife or your husband, you know, and in the anger, if it's a serious fight, in the anger of that fight, you're going to want to win.

And maybe at whatever cost necessary. And that's not an aim commensurate with spiraling the relationship upward, but in the throes of your rage, maybe not only do you not care, you're actually happy that you'd sacrifice the peace of your relationship to your momentary victory. That's your aim. And then the ideas associated with that aim make themselves manifest to you

in the theater of your imagination because you called upon the spirit of vengeance to reveal its proclivities to yourself. So there's something to be terrified about. The spirit of your aim informs your revelations. And that's true.

That's true. That's not some superstitious religious proclamation. It's true biologically because your perceptions and your motivations, your emotions, are markers for now. navigation. They take you where you're aiming. And so if you understand that, the next thing you

want to figure out is just exactly where the hell are you aiming. And Jacob's vow, like the vow of Abraham, is that he's going to aim up. Now you might say, what does that mean? And the answer is, well, you don't know, right? Because what the hell do you know? And especially when you start out flawed like Jacob or like Abraham for that matter. Your vision is obscured by your own foolishness and you're ignorant and immature. But that doesn't mean that you know nothing about the distinction between what's good and what's not. And so you're called upon, you might say, to aim up in keeping with the limits of your knowledge and your morality. If you don't know what's good or not,

maybe that's not a decision to make, but there'll be times when you know, when you know, and then you listen or you don't. There's a scene in the Gospels that's a very interesting scene. So Christ is on a mountaintop. Now, it's a trope like a meme that people experience enlightenment on a mountain top, not in a hole on a mountain top, because you can see long distances on a mountain top, right? The world is spread out before you.

Your vision is enhanced. And a mountain top is up, and up is nearer the heavens. And up is the direction of our aim if we're aiming at the good. These are all metaphorical truths, you might say. And so Christ is up on the mountain, and his disciples have a vision of him in the company of Moses and Elijah, and they're glowing white, like the sun, which amplifies the notion of the heavenly up that's associated with,

the transcendent heavens. And Moses is there because he's the greatest, prophet of the Old Testament and the founder of the law. But why is Elijah there? Elijah is a relatively minor prophet compared to Moses in relationship, let's say, to narrative length. The story of Exodus, the extended story of Exodus occupies a substantial proportion of the Old Testament stories. And the story of Elijah is pretty short. And he's not a figure who's, identity is known even to those who are divorced entirely from the religious enterprise. Why Elijah? At the time of Elijah, the faith of the Israelites in the God of their ancestors

has become weak. In fact, the narrative theme is that the only real emissary of Yahweh at the time of Elijah is Elijah himself. And it's partly because the Israelites have succumbed to the temptation to have a king. Now, the Israelites in the desert, they don't have a king. In fact, they escaped from a king. They escaped from the Pharaoh. And now they're out there trying to be responsible citizens and not doing that great a job at it. Because they have to take on the responsibility of the state.

they have to take that responsibility on to themselves, and they'd rather not. And so in the aftermath of the Exodus expedition, the Israelites clamor for a king, because everyone else has one, and because they're not regarded as a formidable power without one, and God says, you can have a king, but I wouldn't recommend it, because kings turn into tyrants, and there are subjects, turn into slaves and even voluntarily because they want to dispense with the responsibility and that's not good for them. And the Israelites say, yeah, but we want a king anyways. And so they end up with the king and the king in this particular story is Ahab.

And he's not a very good king, as kings tend not to be. And he deviates from Jacob's aim. and he marries a foreign queen named Jezebel, and Jezebel is a nature worshiper. And you might have noticed that a lot of them have popped up in recent years. And that's not a good idea. Nature worship is generally associated with the sacrifice of children, and that's happening now. All right.

Jezebel, the nature worshiper, is a prophetess of a god whose name is Bal, B-A-A-L, and he's a god of nature. Now, why would there be gods of nature? Well, for the same reason that there are nature worshippers now. Nature is very impressive.

It's awe-inspiring, right? You go to the Grand Canyon, you look over the expanse of the ocean, or you see a storm on the ocean, You look up at the immense expanse of the Milky Way or just watch a sunset You experience an earthquake or a forest fire you can feel or thunderstorm you can feel the power of nature and its beauty and its majesty and You can see it as valuable and you can see it as beyond the human and you can see it even validly as worthy of protection and you can take it too far and and you can make nature itself something more valuable than the human soul, let's say,

and you can fall into the worship of nature. And that's what happens with Jezebel. And in consequence, she persecutes all the prophets of Yahweh, and until the only one left is Elijah. And Elijah has a showdown with the prophets of Baal, And they both make altars and the nature worshippers are praying away that their offering is taken up by ball and that doesn't happen. And Elijah makes an altar and he soaked it in water so that it can't be burned. And then the fire of Yahweh descends and consumes not only the sacrifice but the altar itself.

and that's pretty much does in the reputation of the prophets of Ball, and they're all put to death by Elijah's followers, and the drought that affects the kingdom disappears. You remember in the Lion King? You may remember this. Everybody knows the Lion King, so it's a good referent. When Star becomes king, scar, right? Vengeful, Luciferian, intellectual, dismissive, derisive, self-worshiping.

When he takes the throne, which is the pride rock, and the kingdom suffers a drought. Why? Because if your society worships the wrong thing, everyone starves. Why? You think it's easy to get fresh water? You think fresh water, that's a net. natural resource. You know, most people on Earth still don't have fresh water. You have to organize your society very carefully before you can think of fresh water as a natural resource. And you're not going to do that if your society isn't oriented in the proper direction. Right? It has to be oriented so that it's going to serve everyone. Even the poorest have water in the United States, in Western countries. Because we put people higher than nature.

and will make dams and will move rivers and will disrupt the natural order so that children don't die of thirst so the presence of water is dependent not on the benevolence of nature although that plays a role but on the ethos that deference to society and that's true for all the abundance that we enjoy

it's not a mere consequence of good fortune there are plenty of countries in the world that have ample natural resources that are devastated hellholes. In fact, there's almost no correlation between the wealth of a nation and the prevalence of natural resources. The economists call that the natural resource paradox. Well, why? Well, maybe if things come too easily for you, you don't appreciate them.

And maybe if wealth is just lying around the corrupt egomaniacs, capitalize on it and turn into tyrants. You have his counter examples, places like Japan, a highly ethical high trust society with no natural resources, hyper-rich. Right. Elijah defeats the nature worshippers. And so that's one thing he represents, and that's part of the reason that he appears transfigured with Christ. But that's not the end of the story of Elijah, even though just that is quite remarkable. You remember in the Lion King, when Scar is defeated by Simba, who matures under the influence of Nala and returns to take his kingdom back, that as soon as he defeats Scar in a conflagration of fire, the rain returns.

Right. And that's because the proper principle has been put at the pinnacle of the ladder that reaches to the sky. And in consequence of that, the soul is satisfied and society becomes productive and abundant. Right. So Elijah defeats the prophets of Ball and Jezebel gets word of this and she's not happy to put it mildly and she calls for his death. And so Elijah heads for the hills and he hides out. And he's in a cave, which is where prophets hide out. And when he's there, he's wondering what's going on. He's despairing to some degree because there's hardly anyone left in the whole kingdom

who is oriented properly. They've all turned into nature worshipping hypocrites. and he's attempting to find his way. And when he's hiding out, his place of habitation is visited by an earthquake, and then by a forest fire, and then by an immense storm. And Elijah is tempted by the power of those manifestations of nature

to make the assumption that the divine itself is revealing itself in the awe-inspiring displays of the natural world. And then he has a realization. His realization is that God is not in the earthquake or in the conflagration or in the storm, but in the voice that comes to people from within. The still small voice is the voice of God. That's Elijah's realization. And it's this realization that puts them in the league of the most eminent prophets, because that's a stunning transformation in attitude for humanity.

Of the same order of importance, you might say, as Socrates' discovery of how to think. Elijah posits that it's the voice of conscience that's equivalent to the voice of God now this is something to really think about so let's take that idea apart

well the first thing you might realize is that you don't have to do what your conscience tells you so the idea that it's still and small that you have to be quiet to hear it and that it doesn't compel you with power or threat, that seems right. You do something that you shouldn't do,

and you're awake at night, sweating it out, and you know that you did do what you did and that you could continue, but there's something that's, what, calling to you, calling you out on your misbehavior, that you could attend to, that you don't have to attend to. You can squelch it, you can ignore it, you can continue with your misbehavior,

or worse, you have the freedom to not abide by your conscience. And maybe it manifests you as an emotion or as verbal thoughts, a feeling, let's say, or fully developed conceptualization, hints about what the appropriate pattern of action might be. And it has an autonomy, which is a fascinating thing. Because you might think if you're running the show, especially your own show, and you'd think that you are, because it's your show, that you could just tell your conscience what to do. Because it's you, or it isn't.

Those are the options. And if it's you, then why can't you just shut it down and tell it to leave you the hell alone or make a pact with it so that despite the fact that you're doing something second-rate malevolent that it's fully on board? how in the world is it the case that you can't control that?

And what does it mean that you can't control it? Does it mean that there's a part of you that's not you? And it's a part of you that's not you that can think and can invoke emotion, can invoke shame, can invoke the desire to change, that you can't control? Well, what's the difference between that and the hypothesis of a spirit? And then you might say, well, is there a similarity between the diverse voices of conscience that come to multiple people? And we say, well, of course, because we can recognize someone who's appropriately conscience-ridden. We're even likely to forgive them.

And we know that the voice of conscience that speaks to you might speak about your particular flaws to you and about your particular flaws to you. But the thing that it's aiming at is similar enough so that we're... we can recognize it as the voice of conscience. And so not only is it not personal in that you don't get to control it and internal, it's also transcendent. It's something that isn't you, that's beyond you, that speaks to everyone with the same aim in mind. It's an Old Testament insistence that that, this is a definition, you see. It's a definition. That's a definition of what is to be regarded as God. Now you can think of that as a hypothesis, that's perfectly reasonable, and it's not

the only way that God is characterized in the biblical writings. In the story of Noah, for example, Noah, the God that comes to Noah is the voice that tells the wise to prepare when trouble is brewing. Now you can see a association between that and the idea of conscience, but it's not exactly the same thing. It's a different angle on the same thing. And in the story of Abraham, God is the voice of adventure. And the biblical insistence is the voice of adventure, the voice that calls the wise to prepare, and the voice of conscience, they're all the same thing.

That's that underlying unity that makes the book Amat a monotheism. And I think that's correct. Now, back to Jacob's ladder, because we could take apart what conscience is technically. So let's say that you're a reasonably well-socialized man. And I'm going to say this technically. We know that among men and women, but it's more blatant in the case of men, there are two patterns of attitude towards sex and women.

One pattern of attitude is characterized by preference, biologically speaking, for so-called short-term mating opportunities. That might be the land of the eternal one-night stand, which is a land where conquest is unlikely to be successful or lasting, but still beckons attractively. There are men who prefer the short-term mating strategy, and there are men who prefer sexual opportunity in the context of long-term mating strategy. relationship and commitment. That's clear. Those two patterns actually mirror two different patterns of reproduction in the biological world at large. There are some creatures that have no investment in their offspring, puffballs, mosquitoes, fish. Reproduction is nothing but sex. The only contribution is sperm and egg. There's millions or billions of offspring produced. All of them

die except a tiny handful and sex and reproduction are the same thing. And then there's investment reproducers and human beings are the ultimate exemplars of that. Very few offspring, very long investment period.

Multi-generational even. And there's no creature that exemplifies that pattern more particularly than human beings. That distinction between short-term low investment and long term high investment is echoed in human personality. What's the personality of the men who favor

short-term mating strategies? They're Machiavellian, which means they use their language to manipulate. They're psychopathic, which means they're predatory parasites. They're narcissistic, which means they want unearned social status, and to cap it all off, they're sadistic, which means they take positive delight in the unnecessary suffering of others. And so that's a good example of how aim determines character and character, attention, action, and speech. Now, imagine that you're not a dark tetrad kind of guy, or that maybe you're only 25% tilted in that direction. So you're an intermingling, let's say, of a good, reliable man and an opportunistic man.

And that's pretty much the standard situation. And you're tempted drunkenly to tilt in the direction of sexual exploitation. And maybe you have a willing partner who's tempted for the same reasons. And so you take the intensely pleasurable, advantageous in the short-term path, and then your conscience tortures you. Okay, why? Well, we made a theological case in a sense, right, working on the hypothesis that human beings are related to the ultimate

that in the ultimate city on the hill, let's say, and that in some sense the occupant of that city is in communication with each of us, and that makes itself manifest in the case of conscience. But there's a more mechanistic interpretation that doesn't make that one irrelevant, but adds a more practical realism to the idea. If part of you is aiming at love, if part of you is aiming at responsibility, if part of you is aiming at children, part of you is aiming at having the children who will love you that you will be committed to, if part of you has the spirit of someone who will become a grandfather, then that's part of the implicit structure of aim that's shaping your attention and actions. It might be lurking in the background, highly likely if you're 19, let's say, an impulsive,

not thinking about settling down, not thinking about the multiple decades of your life, but still insofar as you're acting out the pattern of manhood, valid manhood that characterizes your society, that ethos of long-term commitment and abundance is going to be operating unconsciously in the depths, regulating your conscience. And when you act in the moment in a manner that violates that longer-term covenant or contract, your own soul is going to let you know that you've wandered off the path. And I think, by the way, that we know enough about the way the brain is structured neuropsychologically. We know enough about how vision and aim and emotion and motivation and thought are associated to make what I just said an incontrovertible empirical fact.

And so that's pretty interesting. You get the union and it makes sense, right? Because you know perfectly well that you're plagued by your conscience when you do something pleasurable and useless in the moment that compromises you in the medium to long run or that puts other people at risk. It's a form of betrayal, let's say. You can betray yourself and your deeper self, your true self, that's another way of thinking about it, your higher self, you can betray that, and there's a mechanism that operates within you that lets you know. And of course there is, because how the hell else would you know how to orient yourself in the world over spans of time that exceeded tonight?

And it's a pretty sad creature who's 30 and hasn't got a vision, of the world that lasts longer than the next hour. You want to be as far away from someone like that, even if you're that person, as you can possibly get. We know that as you mature, your capability, your capacity to govern your actions by a longer and longer span vision increases. That's what the difference is between a two-year-old and a ten-year-old. The two-year-old's got a span of a few minutes.

You know, the 10-year-old's gone up to the point where maybe he can manage a week. You'd kind of hope by the time that you're an adult that maybe you can think about something approximating the multiple decades of a marriage, let's say. And no one in their right mind is going to presume that the shorter term orientation should trump the longer term orientation. I mean, how could that possibly make sense? If you're worth serving, you're worth serving over the longest possible period of time, clearly. And I also believe, and I think you can make a technical case for that, that if you acted in your best interest over multiple decades, there'd be absolutely no difference between that and acting in the best interests of other people,

especially your wife, your husband, your family members, because they're you. What a neighbor said to me once, no mother is any happier than her most miserable child. And there's truth in that. It's like once you're mature and you're embedded in your social community, when you have long-term commitments, which is what you have if you're not a bloody psychopath, path, then there isn't any difference between your long-term emotional stability, the hope, the future offers, and the manner in which you treat the people around you. It's the same thing, and that's part of that upward aim.

And it's the violation of that principle that your conscience speaks to you of, and you can think about that as a deep biological instinct, or you can think about it as the voice of God himself, and it doesn't matter, and they're the same. conscience as God. That's a deep, by the way, a deep Catholic supposition. It's one of the classic arguments, and I think a very powerful argument for the existence of the divine. It's very difficult, it's very difficult to falsify that proposition.

I don't think you can do it. I tried to do it. Everything I wrote in all my books, but I tried to break it. all the things I wrote. I'd have an idea, and then I'd think, you know, for a week about how that might be wrong. And if it was wrong, then I'd just scrap it. The only thing that was left were things I could not make wrong.

I don't think it was because I had an agenda other than trying to find firm ground, you know. And if you want to find firm ground, then you want to subject everything to a rigorously sacrificial process. process. That's for sure. That's separation of the wheat from the chaff and that's a manifestation of the divine logos. Jonah. When we meet Jonah, we don't know anything about him. He's a middle-aged guy. Non-descript, apparently, because there's no story about Jonah up until the

story that I'm going to tell you unfold. God comes to Jonah and says to him, you've got something to say. And Jonah is not very happy with that idea, and God explains it in some more painful depth. He says to Jonah, you have a divine duty, even though you don't know it. You have to go to the city of your enemies.

It's Nineveh and this tale. And you have to tell them, And I'm not very happy with them And then if they don't straighten the hell out There's going to be like serious trouble of a sort You can hardly possibly imagine And then we might say well Is that the revenge of God

And do we wish to believe in a vengeful God? It's like mess around and find out I'm dead serious It's like we all know perfectly well That there are choices that we can make That will lead to nothing but devastation, suffering, and destruction. And if you make enough of those choices, and there are enough of you making that choice, then good luck to you. And that's basically what God tells Jonah, just like

he tells Abraham in relationship to Sodom and Gomorrah. It's like, break the rules long enough and reap the benefits. And that's the dissent of the vengeance of God, you might say, or the descent into Dante's Inferno. And that's a place. people go and it might be a place that you all have visited, however temporarily in your lives. God says to Jonah, you have to go to Nineveh. Now, you have to understand that Nineveh was a city of the enemies of the Jews at that time. So Nineveh was like San Francisco on steroids to Middle America. Right. If God descended to take vengeance on San Francisco, then there'd be many middle Americans who were thinking, well, it's about time. And if God came to them and said,

you go talk to the hedonistic golden calf worshippers of San Francisco and tell them to fly right or else, you'd think, yeah, I don't think so. They can go to hell in a handbasket in their own particular way. And that's basically what Jonah thinks. He thinks, I'm not going to talk to the Nineveites to straighten them out because they deserve a good smiting and far be it from me to stand in the way. And there's other considerations. There's like 150,000 people in Nineveh and they're foreigners. And so Jonah thinks, so this is the voice of the divine. It's telling me, I have to go preach to my enemies who are people to whom I do not wish the best. And I have to do it alone as their enemy. and there's 150,000 of them, and there's one of me, and who the hell am I?

And why would they listen to me? So it seems like a fool's mission. That's certainly the case. And Jonah thinks, yeah, no, I don't think so. And so he makes per a port city, and he jumps on a boat, which is going to a city called Tarshish, which was literally as far away as you could get from Nineveh at that time. It's like, and you can, if you have an iota of sense, you identify not with God, but with Jonah. And you understand that that is exactly not only what you would do in all likelihood,

but what everyone would tell you to do. So, fine, so now Jonah's on the boat. And he's asleep. Now that's interesting, eh, that he's asleep. He's asleep like Christ's disciples are asleep in the garden. of Gassimony. And he's asleep like Kane after his murder of Abel, wandering in the land of Nod. And he's asleep because if you violate the call of your conscience, then you will do everything you possibly can to make yourself unconscious. And so Jonah is asleep on the boat and a storm rises.

And that's a convenient time to be asleep too, especially if you're the cause of the storm And so the wind blows and the waves rise and the ship is in peril and the sailors who are a pagan lot are unhappy about their impending demise and they think quite reasonably from a literary perspective. Maybe there's someone on board who isn't exactly right with God. And so they ask the passengers and they all deny any heavy burden on their conscience and they find Jonah asleep and they ask him and he's somewhat sheepish at the moment and says well now that you mention it I did experience a direct command from the god that I worship to go to Nineveh and I'm making tracks in the opposite direction and so it's possible that it has something to do with me

and the sailors say well like who is this god that you worship and And they're kind of expecting like it's the god, because they're pagans of the local forest or the local well or maybe the beach or, you know, some relatively trivial deity that you could just kick to the side without too much threat. And Jonah says, well, you know the guy who made the oceans and the continents and the stars and the moon? That God. And the sailors think, you probably shouldn't annoy him. And so Jonah indicates by the fact that he told the truth that he's actually not such a bad guy

All things considered And the sailors who are none too happy About the fact that their ship is in peril Decide that despite all They're going to row like mad to shore And see if they can save themselves And Jonah, even though he tells them To throw him overboard

But they row and they row and they try to make Progress And they throw all their cargo overboard and it doesn't matter because the storm's just getting worse and worse. And so finally they understand that they have nothing to lose by tossing Jonah into the drink and he's on board for that and so they do when the storm ceases. And they all decide to abandon their gods of the forest, let's say, and bend the knee to the God of Israel.

and Jonah's in the water. So what does this mean? Well, here's one interpretation. If you're called upon to speak by your conscience, even to your enemies, and you refuse, then you put the ship at risk.

And that might be the ship of your soul, and it might be the ship of your family, and it might be the ship of state, or maybe it's all of those. And the notion is that you, despite being nobody, like Jonah, have something to say. And if you don't say it, then everything is imperil. And you might think, well, that's preposterous. It's like, yeah, maybe.

How do you know that the truth that you know that's unique to you isn't necessary for the abundant provision of the world? Don't we all agree that every single person is made in the image of God and has something valuable to offer? And if that's the case, well, then maybe you're called upon to bring that forward when asked to. And maybe the world is a markedly lesser place degenerating into something approximating totalitarianism. When you're silent, when you're called upon to speak. when Abraham meets the angels or God halfway through his adventure they tell him that they're going to destroy Sodom and Gomorah for similar reasons as the threat is posed to Nineveh.

And Abraham says, I don't think you should do that. He's bargaining with God. And God says, why the hell not? And Abraham says, what if there's some good people there in this immense city. And God says, I don't think there are. And Abraham says, yeah, but you might, have you looked everywhere?

Like, you might be wrong. What if I can go there and find 50 good people? And God says, okay, you find 50 people, no smiting. And Abraham, who's a stubborn character, says, well, how about 45? and God's annoyed at his presumption but says, hey, 45, knock yourself out. And Abraham says, 40. I imagine with some hesitancy. And God says, okay, 40. And Abraham says, well, how about 10? And God says, okay, 10. And so what does that mean? Here is one interpretation. If the city hasn't,

if the city is sufficiently uncorrupted so that there are 10 people in it who still dare tell the truth then it has hope and so then you might say well are you called upon to be one of those 10 well what's the alternative that you're part of the mass that's destined for

desolation because those are the options and you might say well how probable is it that it's you that would be called upon to speak and the answer is why not you if not you then who and it's certainly the case that there are going to be times in your life where you're the one that has to speak because no one else knows what you know about that situation or about that circumstance that's a part of the fact that you are in fact unique and that there's something about you that is unlike anyone else who will ever exist and that that's part of the

potential that you could bring into the world. And who knows how valuable that is? The biblical insistence is that it's so valuable that if just 10 people in the city do that, then the city can be saved regardless of its inequity, let's say. So maybe that's the case for your family and for your town and for your state and your city and your state. And maybe it's the case for your nation. And maybe if everyone said what the hell they're supposed to say, then the waves wouldn't rise and the ship wouldn't be imperiled. And that's not all because when Jonah gets thrown into the water,

you might think, well, that's pretty bad. That's a pretty vicious punishment. It's like you ain't seen nothing yet. Because you only think that Jonah's punishment, which is to die by drowning. is the ultimate punishment and that just means that you are naive beyond comprehension

because you don't know that there are worse things than death and there are worse things than death there are conditions under which life degenerates into something so unbearable not least in consequence of your own inaction that you might beg for death if you were there and you want to pray that you don't end up

understanding exactly what that means. But that's what Jonah comes to understand because what happens to him next is that a beast from the deepest possible abyss comes up to the surface and takes him in its jaws and brings them to the bottom of the earth itself, right? And it states explicitly in the text that that's hell. And so what's the idea? Well, if you're silent when you're called upon to speak, then maybe you put the ship of state in peril, and maybe that even imperils your own life, but that's nothing compared to the fact that you're inviting yourself and your fellow people into hell itself.

And you might say, I don't believe in hell, and I would say, well, that only means one of two things. One is, you've been very fortunate so far, because you haven't had a visit, and that's unlikely last, and you know nothing about human history, And you know nothing about how states degenerate when everyone who's called upon to speak remains silent. And that's the definition of a totalitarian state. And if you don't think that's hell, you don't know anything about totalitarian states.

So now Jonah's in hell and he spends three days there. That's analogous to the three days, by the way, that passed between Christ's crucifixion. and resurrection, and that's not accidental. In the depths of his misery, in hell itself, Jonah looks upward and says, my error led me to this place. Help me rectify my fault. And the God who makes himself manifest,

even in the depths of hell, responds and says, will you obey? And Jonas says, yes. And the beast from the abyss arises from the depths and deposits him on the shore. And he goes to Nineveh. And I suppose, having been through all that, he's the sort of man to whose words, to whom? He's the sort of man whose words compel people to listen. just as you might be if you undergo some terrible travail

and speak sincerely in consequence of your knowledge of the inalienable truth and he goes to Nineveh and he tells the Nineveites you don't have to listen but here's what happened to me and here's what's revealed and he's so compelling that they listen and they put on sackcloth and ashes and cease their golden cap worshipping hedonistic ways

and straighten themselves out, and God spares the city. And that's how the world retains its proper orbit in consequence of people's fealty to the voice of conscience. And you can decide for yourself whether or not you think that's true. and I certainly can't see any possible alternative conclusion. And I think if you understand that and you think about it, it's enough to terrify you too.

It's enough to terrify you sufficiently so that you might decide to fly straight. And I would say too, and the times we're in now, which are characterized by a rate of change that's unparalleled in human history and by a realm of opportunity that's limitless and a realm of catastrophe that's bottomless the decisions you make about whether or not you're going to say what you have to say

when you're called upon to say it or not are going to have a bigger impact on how things unfold over the next few years than you can possibly. possibly imagine. And that's definitely worth thinking about. So that's God as conscience, and that's the story of Elijah, and that's the story of Jonah, and that's part of the way that the relationship between the human soul and what's properly put in the highest place is laid out in a fraction of the biblical stories. And that's outlined in and we who wrestle with God,

and we got a little bit farther tonight in its investigation than I did in the book. So, thank you very much. You know, one of the things you might think about in relationship to that is it's to consider what prompted you to come and expose yourself to such a miserable sequence of ideas, you know, because maybe that's conscience too. And so those are the sorts of things that are definitely worth some protracted thought. Tam, you're coming back out. So...

Hi there. Thank you. So there's some questions? Okay, here's a question. What's your opinion on the modern-day Western Church? I have concerns after experiencing the church as more business. religious practice versus genuine faith? I think that, you know, when I was a kid, I stopped going to church when I was around 13,

which was pretty common practice at the time, which is an act that's propagated itself into the culture at large. And see, I had the wrong attitude, because I went to the church, and I saw the faults of the church, which were manifold, and I thought, I'm above all that. And that's a preposterous idea when you're 13. It's like, really? You're above all that. You're 13. It's like, what the hell do you know? You don't know anything about anything. And does the church have grievous faults? Absolutely. Are you above that? Definitely not.

Yeah, 100% not. And worse, it's like maybe the thing to do in a situation like that, you know, if you're fortunate enough to purchase a dilapidated old house, you don't curse it for being dilapidated, you thank God that you have a house and then you fix it. And so, fix it. And how?

Well, that story of Jonah tells you how. Is something bothering you about the situation that's genuine? Say it. Talk to other people. Figure out what's wrong. Fix it. No, we all inherit the privileges and for errors of the past. We're not above that.

It's quite the contrary. you have presumptuous enough to presume that merely because you exist now that you're a moral specimen superior to the people who came before you it's like yeah you'd last about 15 seconds on the American prairie in the dead of winter 150 years ago so what was my mistake some of it was luciferian intellect you know I presume that because my local minister, Protestant minister, wasn't particularly good at reconciling the paradox between the Darwinian view of evolution and the creation accounted Genesis that the whole damn enterprise was faulty. When the truth of the matter was, at least in part, that I didn't want to go to church.

I had enough bloody school for the rest of the week, and I was looking for a reason to not what. to not attend services with my mother, which was really not very smart. You know? It's okay, Jordan. Yeah. Well, you know. I liked my mother.

I know you did. I did too. And I could have spent more time with her, and I didn't. And she's dead. But you know that now? Yeah. Thank you.

So, yeah, the church has problems. You have problems. your family has problems, your city has problems like do something about it and here's something cool something I didn't say in this lecture I wanted to talk about it you see

you might say that God asks Jonah to do something preposterous and impossible and it's not reasonable it's like that's true but it turns out that you're the sort of creature that can do something preposterous

and impossible. And then if you did that, you'd find out you could do it. And then you'd find out that there's way more to you than you thought and way more to the world. And so that responsibility of speaking is the opportunity of your life. And so if you're wise enough to see that the church is flawed and you have your finger on, it's like, fix it. everyone will be thrilled about you. Okay. How do you distinguish between high discipline and tyrannizing yourself?

That's a really good question. You could ask the same thing about your children or your wife or your husband or your citizens. So, I'll tell you a story. So near the end of the Israelites, Exodus from Egypt, the fractious and immature sojourners are lost in the desert again and running out of water and they go to Moses who's kind of fed up with them by this point and for good reason and say we're out of water we know you have a channel to God do you want to have a chat with him and see if we can get some water and Moses says okay and he has a chance

chat with God and God says, there's some rocks nearby and you're to go over to those rocks with Aaron, who's the political wing, by the way, the political wing of the spiritual, and you're to invite the rocks to give forth water. And so Moses and Aaron go to the rocks and they strike the rocks. Moses strikes the rocks with his staff. Now his staff is an emblem of authority. It's the staff that has the living spirit in it. That's the serpent. It's the staff that springs into life when it's planted in the ground. It's living tradition. It's the staff of living tradition. It's the symbol of his authority granted to him by his relationship, his valid authority, granted him by his relationship with God. And he uses that to demonstrate his power and he uses

force. And the rocks give forth water. And then Moses is punished with death and with failure to reach the promised land. And this is after guiding the Israelites out of tyranny through the desert for four decades. He uses force when he's told to use invitation, when he's told to use his language, his words, and not compulsion. And the punishment for that, even though he's arguably the greatest leader in the Old Testament library is that he sends to death and he doesn't reach the promised land. Don't use force. Don't use force. Even on yourself.

You want to invite yourself along for the ride. Now, that doesn't mean you get to be undisciplined, but you have to negotiate. You know, it's like find something that you'll do. find something good you'll do enthusiastically. Find something small enough so that you'll do it for good enthusiastically. And then build on that and it's the same when you're dealing with your children or your wife or your husband. It's like, could we jointly come to a negotiated end that we would both be thrilled to pursue? And that's a great basis for negotiation.

Like, if I'm talking to Tammy and she wants something and I want something, it isn't necessary to the case that we can come to an agreement that gives her what she wants and what I want. And what is this I that wants anyways? But maybe if we are honest and we let each other know what the situation is and we pay attention to what's right in front of us, we can negotiate a deal that's far better than anything we could have pursued on our own. And if that wasn't the case, then why the hell would you ever? be married. I mean, that the proposition of marriages that you can do things better together than either of you could do alone. And so, why couldn't it be the case that you could exchange your views

and come up with a vision of how you might perceive that's far better than anything you could conjure up on your own? And that if you did that religiously, then you'd never have to use force because people would say, yeah, I could go for that, and then they're enthusiastically on board, and God only knows what you could accomplish then. And so invitation, not force. Force is the sign of bad policy. Now, you know, maybe you make exceptions for people

who are truly malevolent, but you certainly do that with caution, and with full knowledge that it's a sub-obligent. optimal solution. Did I address that completely? Yeah, I thought that was good. Okay. Between high discipline and tyrannizing? Yeah, yeah, highly disciplined and tyrannizing. Yeah, well, you know, you see this in psychotherapy, so the psychoanalyst figured this out. Like, if you're dealing with someone and you're both aiming at positive transformational change, sometimes the therapist, let's say, will offer some advice and it's well-meaning and maybe it's even accurate but the person

won't enact it or they'll even do the opposite and the reason for that is they're actually annoyed that the therapist is stealing their life you know you know you can't tell someone else what to do exactly because what the hell do you know about what they should do you can invite them to participate in the process of discovering what they should do and you can encourage them in that But even if you are well-meaning, and even if you know what you're doing, if you impose it, you get what the psychoanalysts called resistance. People will work at cross-purposes to your force, even despite themselves.

And it's partly because they want to be free. You know, so you want to make an offer. And you do that with vision. So your initial stance is, to aim up. So you think you're sitting down to negotiate with your wife and you think, okay, what the hell are we aiming at here? And you've got to think that this is a prayer. This is an attempt to establish a connection with the divide. You think, okay, I love my wife. You've got to remember that and rediscover it. And what do I want? Well, I want her to love me. That'd be good.

And I want her to be thrilled about the fact that we're together and I want our life to improve continually and I want to know what's going on with her and I want her to know what's going on with me and I want to do that in a way that's sustainable and joyful

and playful and that requires no force so now you've identified the aim and you conjured up the right spirit and now you can listen in the spirit of that aim and then she'll do the same

and then you jointly climb the ladder to heaven and that's fun yeah and there's no force necessary and so if you're resisting your own insistence then maybe you're bringing a hand that's too heavy even to yourself and that's worth thinking through and that's very different than having no standards it's Like, children love you if you have high standards. You have to adjust the standards to the situation and personalize them and make them invitational. But there's no difference between having high standards for someone and loving them and encouraging them and paying attention to them. The same applies to yourself. Discipline can be religious adherence to a set of enabling principles rather than heavy-handed tyranny.

Right? And then it's the discipline that enables rather than the super ego that crushes. It's an invitation rather than the oppressive patriarchy, I suppose. And an invitation to play, that's way better than do this or else. So, and equally disciplined, you know, we know that. athletes who play are very disciplined people when they play at the highest possible level. So you can play with discipline.

That's a good deal. That's a good deal. That's different than force. Okay, that's the answer to that question then. Good, good. Okay, here's one. You're seven minutes. Okay. So you said perhaps the most important words

ever said was when Jesus Christ on the cross said, my God, and my God, why have you forsaken me? What do you mean by that? Please respond. Well, I don't remember saying that those were the most important words ever said, although it's possible that I said that. They were certainly important words, so we'll proceed on that basis. So the passion of Christ is a comprehensive tragedy. And I mean something technical by that. So we know that there's a category of story that's tragic, right? And there's many variants, many movies that you see are tragic. Many books of fiction that you read are tragic. People's lives can be tragic. So there's a category of the tragic. And then you could imagine that a story can be more or less tragic. And then you can

could imagine that a story could be so tragic that no story could surpass it. And the passion story is that story. And part of the meaning of the passion story is that the spirit of God, the spirit of the prophet and the laws, descends into the common life of humanity and experiences life in its totality, so that everything terrible that could happen to someone happens to Christ. And arguably to you. That includes that moment of desperation when things are as bad as they can possibly be. and that plaintive cry that all the good that was done was done for naught. And Christ's, the spirit's descent into the flesh of mankind would be incomplete without that despair.

Because the despair is part of the tragedy. And so it has to be there. And what does it mean? It means the promise of the resurrection is fulfilled despite the despair. What does that mean? God only knows. You know, the Christian insistence is that the voluntary sacrifice of Christ has reconciled man to God and God to man. And I believe that's true, but I don't understand what it means.

Because I think it's beyond understanding in the final analysis. It means something like you reconcile yourself to life by voluntarily accepting all of its challenges. All of them. This is what Job does when he's tortured by Satan in the conspiracy with God to strip him of everything. Job retains his faith in the essential goodness of his being

and in the ineffable benevolence of God despite his suffering. and Christ does that to the ultimate degree. And how can you reconcile yourself to fate, life, and the divine without accepting catastrophe? Or maybe even without welcoming it. You know, and in the Christian story, which retells the story of Jonah to some degree, it's not only that Christ dies in desperation and painfully betrayed by... his closest friend and under the thumb of tyranny and rejected by his community despite being the exemplar of the good man.

After his death, he harrows hell. And that means that to redeem the world, that not only do you have to face unjust death, but you have to wrestle with malevolence itself. And of course that's true, because how else is life going to be? taken, you're going to thrive because you hide. No one believes that. No one teaches anyone they love to run in terror from death and evil. And the alternative is to what?

To welcome it with open arms? That's a lot, man. But that's the spirit of adventure. That's the voice that comes to Abraham. And we know we've learned as therapists over the last century that people who voluntarily confront what terrifies them and makes them desperate become brave enough to prevail. And the biblical explanation for that is that if you walk through the belly of the shadow of death in faith and the spirit of your ancestors walks with you.

and that's right so that's what that means one more one more all right that was a rough one that was a rough one okay how about this one what effect does phone addiction have on one's

relationship with God and how would one go about decreasing their phone usage so I guess that's a variant of the Tower of Babel story so in the the Tower of Babel

is built by engineers. They're the descendants of the city builders and the creators of artifacts. They're people who are obsessed with technology, with things, with machinery. And it's not that that's a bad thing, but it has to be put in the proper place. It can't be the goal. It has to be the servant of the proper goal. And the Tower of Babel is the tyrannical society that emerges when technology is worshipped as God.

And the consequence of that inversion of the proper moral order is that everyone loses the ability to genuinely communicate. That's the proliferation of languages and the descent into linguistic chaos. So that's the abstract level of answer. The practical level of

answer. A phone should be your servant and not your master. Now, that's a very tricky victory to attain because you have more computing power in your phone than any human being on the planet. No, every human being on the planet had 10 years ago. And so that's quite the adversary. It's a very difficult thing to stay on top of. we better stay on top of it because if we don't it's going to be on top of us and that's the tower of babel that's the all-seeing eye of soron right from the lord of the rings that's the technological god whose omniscient vision will replace the truly divine

if people are sufficiently irresponsible is that a battle you'll have to fight with your own phone and in your own family? Yes. What did you tell me at lunch today? I was on my phone. What did you tell me? I'd phone my sister. No, I phoned. Oh, I know what it was. You asked me if you could call Charles, and Charles had a flood in the house, so he had to call Charles. A friend of ours. Yeah. And that was allowable. And I said, yeah. Charles had a better. I saw him. And I snuck in an additional phone call, which was an important phone call, but not a vitally important phone call. And it was... I think I said,

I think you can be with your phone or you can be with me. I have other things I can do. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. She said it, I would say kindly, by her standards, and also, but also honestly. And like,

it was a very good response because she noted that I was pushing my luck, which I was, and there's likely some egotism in that. And also that didn't make her happy, and that's not helpful. It's not that her unhappiness is the problem. It's that if her unhappiness is valid, then it's a problem. Because I don't want to use my phone in a way that will interfere with her wanting to go have lunch with me, because I'm going to have a lot of lunches with her, hopefully, and I'd rather they went well. And so, you know, I mean, one of the things you do in your family is you speak when you've got something to say. It's like you're pissing me

off with that phone. And then you might say, well, that's because you're a little too sensitive. And like, who knows, right? Maybe you're not so good with your phone and maybe she's a bit too sensitive. And you can hash that out and hopefully come to some conclusion. My conclusion was, I kind of knew I was pushing my luck with that second phone call. But I also appreciated it because we need to be tapped into shape constantly by the people around us. Like, none of us are sane enough to be sane by ourselves. You can just forget about that. That's never going to happen.

You're sane if people can stand you because they keep reminding you of how useless you are and then that sort of makes you sane. So that's the definition of sanity. really and you've got to conduct yourself in a way that makes you acceptable to other people so they remind you politely how to not be insane and in hell and so you battle that out with your phone and you guess you refer to your own guilt and your sense that you're wasting time and the clock is ticking and then you watch and see if everyone you're sitting down to you know at Christmas dinner is on their phone and not interacting with each each,

other because that's obviously not so good unless you don't like them in which case what the hell are you doing there and maybe you should fix it yeah and then you should fix that definitely so i mean i don't have any particular wisdom other than that on the phone front because everyone's wrestling with this insanely powerful and attractive technology and it's just going to get worse and better, like, and fast. Like, whatever you're worried about in relationship to these phones, something way more terrifying is going to be coming down the pipelines in the next few years. Like, you ain't seen nothing yet. So get ready, because it's going to be quite the ride. So, so I guess that's that for tonight. Yeah. All right, everyone, thank you very much for coming

tonight. Thank you, dear. You reckon. Very good to see you all, especially you people from Cleveland. Yeah. Good night, everybody. Thanks again.