https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=KoZ487aG3SQ
You talk about men being husbands, fathers, warriors, builders, priests, and kings, right? Then you could imagine that there’s something behind that that makes it possible for all of that to become manifest. And that’s the monotheistic spirit that the biblical corpus is attempting to characterize. Right? And it looks to me anthropologically, it looks to me like what’s happened, and I’m not gonna speak religiously, but it looks to me like what’s happened is that people in their various tribal groups had dramatized patterns of adaptation, central patterns of adaptation, and then characterized those central patterns of adaptation with the attributes of something like a transcendent deity. And then as the tribes aggregated themselves, each of those visions of transcendent deity had to be integrated, that actually often necessitated war. There’s actual war between different tribes for what vision is gonna be dominant, but there’s metaphysical battle too. You know, even Eliana, the Romanian historian of religions, talked about the universal battle between the gods in heaven, which was an attempt in the metaphysical realm, the Pluroma is what Jung called it, for these concepts to go to war with one another, and then arrange themselves in a hierarchy. And so anyways, it’s quite fascinating to see that the same underlying drive, there’s actually quite a few similarities in our experience. You know, you have Scandinavian ancestry, you had a child that had arthritis as well, and you seem to be wrestling with many of the same problems that have beset me for, you know, forever. So that was kind of, it’s interesting to see that. I also read the Guardian article, Guardian review of your book, which was everything you’d expect and hope for from the Guardian. Yeah, hope for is there, I haven’t read it, so you’re one up on me there, but- Well, you can just imagine it. Oh, I’m sure. If they’re praising you, then you’ve done something wrong. That’s my usual motto. Yeah, yeah, well, that’s the thing, you know, if there’s to some degree, if you’re not irritating the correct people, you’re doing something wrong. That’s something we could talk about too, because one of the dangers of the sort of enterprise we’re involved in is the possibility of, you know, increasing the degree of polarization, rather than offering a positive vision, which is what you’re trying to do. It’s a strange book for a politician to write, so let’s start with that. Why’d you write this book? Tell everybody a little bit about the book, and then tell me why you were motivated to write it. Well, I was motivated to write it because I’ve got two little boys at home. I’m a father of three, and my two older are boys, and I’ve got a baby girl who’s two years old, but really, Jordan, it was thinking about them. They’re 10 and eight, my boys, and my oldest is Elijah, and my second is Blaze, and I write in the book about Blaze Pascal, so you begin to, though I don’t draw this out in the book, I don’t say it explicitly, if you read the book, you begin to get a sense of why my boys are named the way they’re named, and why these ideas that I write about are so significant to me. They show up even in my kids’ names and lives, but thinking about my boys and their future is amazing. So Elijah, what’s your other, sorry, the other boy’s name? Blaze, for Blaze Pascal. Oh yes, Pascal, yeah, yeah. Who I write about in the book, but really, it was thinking of my boys and my obligation as a father to help them grow into the men that they’re capable of being that set me thinking about the book, and then in my work representing Missouri in the Senate, you know, I get to meet so many men from around Missouri and from around the nation, frankly, and seeing their struggles, seeing the sense of alienation they’re dealing with, the sense of depression, the sense of lack of purpose. I have so many young men tell me that they feel like they don’t have any vision for their lives, that they feel that the media is against them as men, that their educational system is against them as men. So it was really trying to key off of that and offer a positive, affirmative vision for what men are for and why it’s good to be a man. So this idea, you covered a couple of things there, so that with your sons, for example, that you would like to encourage them to be the men that they’re capable of being. Now, I kind of wonder, I don’t know if this is a reasonable proposition or not, but it might be, the maternal tendency is, I think, to value children for what they are. And the maternal tendency is to value children for what they could be. And then if you have that nicely balanced, and I mean, a man can value children for who they are as well, and a woman can encourage what they could be, but broadly speaking, the symbolic proclivity, the essential proclivity seems to be that, and I think that’s partly, perhaps, you tell me what you think about this. Women have to bear the responsibility for primary caregiving in early infancy in particular, first year, and there isn’t a lot of, there’s an awful lot of taking care of immediate needs in that first year, like the child’s immediate needs are paramount because the child is so utterly dependent, born early as our human infants are, and in a state of utter dependency. And then, of course, women have to wrestle with the difficulty of transforming from that state of hyper-caregiving where needs are predominant, the needs of the moment are predominant, into facilitating the independence of the child. And that seems to me to be where the paternal, the patriarchal, the father is particularly paramount to encourage, maybe that’s the primary paternal role, is to encourage. So is that in keeping with the experience that you had as a father? Does that make sense to you? Is there anything you’d add to that? No, that has been my experience, and I can remember before I was a father, and I tell the story in the book when I was a coach, I was a young man, I was 23 at the time, I was coaching a group of rowers, kids, a young high school team, a crew team, and this was in the UK actually, and I remember I tell the story in the book, I had this moment where there was a scene, and during one of our training sessions where I saw one of the rowers encourage, take a leadership role with one of the younger ones, and in that split second, I saw like a flash what this kid, he’s probably a junior at the time, 17 years old, what he might be in the future. I saw maturity in him, I saw characteristics I had never seen before, and it struck me, it’s like, oh wow, he could really become something, he could become a great leader, a strong leader. I saw a flash of the man he could be, and suddenly in seeing that, I realized my role, my job as a coach to him was to help encourage that and call it forth, and for me, Jordan, I tell that story because that is a, to me, a parallel fatherhood, that helped me get ready for what I think fatherhood is, which is to see that in my kids, my boys and my girl, and to help call that forth, to help call forth what they could be, and to be willing to sacrifice myself and my interests in order to see them develop and grow. I was fortunate enough to conduct a seminar in Exodus in Miami, and one of the stories we evaluated in some depth was the story of the burning bush. In that story, which occurs, in that episode, which occurs before Moses as a leader, he’s wandering along, minding his own business, intent on his own purposes, you might say, and something captures his interest, and glitters and gleams, and it’s a phenomenon. Phenomenon means, it’s from the Greek, phanisthai, and phanisthai means to shine forth, and so something grips his attention and makes itself manifest, and he turns off the path to investigate it, right? He decides to further investigate, and he does that of his own free choice. The story makes that quite clear. So something calls to him, but it’s him that decides to go investigate it. As he gets closer to it, he hears a voice, and it tells him that he’s starting to tread on sacred ground, and so he has to take off his shoes. What that seems to mean is that if you, if something makes itself manifest to you and you pursue it deeply, you go deeper, and if you go deep enough, you go, you enter sacred ground, and that’s by definition, right? Because what’s deep and what’s sacred, that’s the same thing. Technically, it’s the same idea, and everybody has a sense of depth compared to shallowness, let’s say. And so Moses doesn’t stop merely because he’s on sacred ground. He continues to investigate further, and at some point, as a consequence of his engagement, at least in part, it’s the voice of God itself that speaks to him, and it speaks with the voice of being and becoming. God says something like, I am that I am, or I am what I will be, or I have been what I will become. It’s the voice of being and becoming and of eternity that speaks to him, and what that seems to mean is something like, if you pursue something that captures your interest with sufficient intensity, then the voice of being itself will make itself manifest to you, and that’s what happens when people take something seriously, you know? And that’s when Moses becomes a leader, right? Because that’s when God tells him to go talk to the Pharaoh, and it’s not until that transformation occurs, and it’s very much akin to the story that you tell about, because it’s a minor story in some ways, right? That experience you had when you were coaching rowing. You know, it’s a mundane story. It’s the sort of thing in some way that could happen to anyone, but you said it struck you, and it also shaped the way that you conceptualized fatherhood, and that you could see the potential in this young man. All that happened at the same time. Yes, yes, all of it happened at the same time, and it was a significant moment. It was a mundane setting, I suppose, much like a bush in the wilderness, right? But it was a significant moment in that it really shaped my sense of, at the time as a 23-year-old, you know, coaching a group of kids, what is it I’m supposed to be doing with these kids? And it just like a flash. I thought I’m supposed to be helping them, not only become better athletes, of course, but to become the men that they might be. And there was a sense of sort of responsibility that came with that. Having seen who these kids might be, having seen what they might be, having seen their potential, I was obligated to help call that forth. And I think as a father, that’s absolutely what we do as fathers. So that’s the responsibility we have as fathers. Well, you know, it’s interesting. One of the things that has been a phenomenon that’s been continual in the lectures that I’ve been doing around the world is the proclivity of the audience to fall absolutely silent when I discuss the relationship between responsibility and meaning. And I’m suggesting to the people that I’m talking to that one of the things that you need in life is a meaning that will sustain you through suffering. That’s almost like a definition of a deep meaning, right? It’ll sustain you through suffering. And I offer the possibility that the place you find that is in responsibility. And this is something conservatives have been bad at. They’re bad at it. Because they hector and lecture young people about what they should do, as if it’s a kind of detached morality. You should be good because being good is the right thing. You know, it’s like an abstract call to duty. And there’s something in that. I don’t want to be cynical about that. But that’s not the core issue. The core issue, I think, is the fact that in that adoption of responsibility, you find the deepest meaning. And that’s really true on the mentoring front. You know, like my graduate supervisor, for example, his name is Robert Peel. He’s still alive. I still work with him. And I went to his Fest Trift, which was a celebration of his academic career when he retired. And he had about 40 people there. They were students mostly that he had mentored. And it was an extremely positive event. And the reason for that was because Bob was a very, very good mentor. He gave credit where credit was due. He tried to develop people. He didn’t take… He distributed his ideas widely and was generous with them. And he taught people how to be independent and how to conduct themselves as independent researchers. And he helped them develop their lives and their careers as scientists and academics and clinicians. And he was really good at it. And he really liked doing it. That’s the crucial issue here. It’s that there’s a meaningfulness in mentorship that justifies the sacrifice. Because you might say, well, why bother developing other people? And part of the answer to that, this isn’t just a hedonistic answer, is that, well, there isn’t anything that’s more delightful and meaningful to do than that. As far as I can tell. I mean, maybe my relationship with my wife in some ways would triumph over that and some of the intellectual interests that I’ve pursued. But other than that, that pleasure in aiding the best in other people to come forward, I don’t think there is a deeper pleasure than that.