https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=wce0JTaFMOU
the story takes a weird twist here, but there is this confusion in the story about whether Simba is an innocent victim who set up for the murder of his father or whether he actually bears some guilt for it, you know, and he’s broken some rules and that and so on, so he’s not exactly placed in the position of innocence, but of course he’s also been set up by Scar. In any case, Scar tells him that it’s his fault, pure and pure, and that because of that he’s going to have to leave, he’s going to have to be banished beyond the kingdom. Now you see this motif quite frequently in hero stories where the hero has to be raised outside of the kingdom. That happens with King Arthur, for example, and it happens with Harry Potter, right, because Harry Potter is raised by Muggles instead of being inside the Magic Kingdom, so it’s a very common theme, and partly what it means is that it means two things. One is that you do grow up alienated from your culture to some degree. There’s no way around that because the culture doesn’t match you perfectly, and it doesn’t work for you perfectly, and it’s old and it’s kind of corrupt, and it alienates you as it’s shaping you, and so you’re going to develop some separation from it, and you see that in intergenerational rhetoric, you know, where the new generation has the proclivity to blame the previous generation for everything that’s wrong with the current system, and fair enough, you know, because you do inherit everything that’s wrong. Of course you also inherit everything that’s going well, which is a good thing to also notice, but the idea is that you can’t help but be alienated from, let’s call it the patriarchy for lack of a better word, because it’s got a tyrannical element and because it’s not matched well to you. But then there’s also this other issue, which is, well, maybe you’re not being successful by the terms that are, by the values that are instantiated in the current system, and you might say, well that’s because the system is set up in an unfair manner, and fair enough, but it’s also possibly because you’re just not very good at acting out those values, right? So part of the reason you get alienated from your culture is because the culture is corrupt, but another part of the reason is you’re just not doing as well as you could be. You’re not playing by even your own rules properly, and so you get alienated and you’re unsuccessful because of your own inadequacies, and so the movie plays both of those. It’s obviously Simba is set up, but there is an intimation that he’s not entirely blameless as well. Anyways, he’s very broken up about this, and no wonder. It’s also partly a story of the emergence of adolescence, because, you know, when you’re ensconced right inside the familial framework, then you sort of exist within that system of rules, like you would under the Piagetian scheme, but when you become an adolescent, then there’s much more of a proclivity to break free and to start breaking rules, and so that’s also akin in some sense to the death of the father, and that’s a necessary developmental stage. Anyways, Scar comes down into the ravine, it’s all foggy now because that goes along with the sort of murkiness of death, and tells Simba that it’s his fault, and that he’s going to have to leave. He’s going to have to leave the kingdom of his father, which makes sense now, his father’s dead, so how are you going to, once your father has died, how are you going to stay around in his kingdom, so to speak. And then Scar tries to get these hyenas to go track Simba down and kill him. And Zazu goes back to tell all the rest of the lions that Mufasa is dead and that Simba has disappeared. And then Scar takes over Pride Rock, and so what’s happened now is the malevolent element of the king has obtained control over the state, right, and so this is, the wise king wasn’t paying enough attention, that’s one way of looking at it, and so the malevolent part of the state has now got control. This is a very, very old idea, I’ve traced it back at least several thousand years in its representation in stories, you can see it in Egyptian mythology for example, so the idea is that as the social structure builds in complexity, it offers you the protection of a functioning complex system, but it also becomes increasingly likely to turn into a tyranny, and because it’s more and more powerful, the fact of its potential for tyranny becomes more and more of a danger. So then the question is, well, what are the factors that encourages it turning into a tyranny? And one factor would be the wise part of it is not paying enough attention to the malevolent part of it. And you could say that’s true at the state level, and it’s also true at the individual level, right, you have to watch your own proclivity to upset yourself and other people and take that into account and pay careful attention to it, because otherwise it can gain control, especially because you’re going to avoid looking at it, and one of the characteristics of the wise king who gets overthrown by the tyrant is that he has an evil brother and he won’t pay enough attention to him. He avoids, he doesn’t look, and so the evil king gets the upper hand, and that’s what’s happened here, and so notice now he takes possession of Pride Rock not in full daylight, right, but at night, so that ties his rule into the rule of unconscious processes and malevolence. All right, so Simba runs away from the kingdom out into the desert. Now why is that? Well, you remember, maybe you remember, and maybe you don’t, maybe you don’t know it, the story of Exodus when Moses takes the Hebrews out of Egypt, they end up in a desert. Well, why? Well, it’s because when you leave a kingdom, no matter how tyrannical, you still fall into disorder. You’re out in a place that’s desert, there’s no civilization there. You know, that’s what happened to Iraq after the Americans went in, you know, the Americans, the neo-cons were all convinced that the Iraqis would welcome them with open arms and there would be this smooth transition to democracy. Same idea in Libya. It’s like, no, that’s not what happens. What happens is the state devolves into a desert chaos, and maybe then you can make order but probably not, and so Simba has left the kingdom and the first thing that happens is he damn near dies in the desert. And so, you know, if you have an old belief system and it’s not working very well and you abandon it, well, good for you, because you’re out of the old belief system, but now you’re nowhere. One of the things that happens to alcoholics, for example, and other drug addicts as well, so imagine that you’re trying to stop drinking. All right, fine. Maybe you have to undergo some medical treatment so when you first stop, you don’t die of seizures, because that often happens to people who are addicted to alcohol. So they get Valium or something like that from a doctor to see them through the first bits of, what would you call it, of sobering up. And so they get through it and then maybe two weeks later they’re not physiologically dependent on alcohol anymore. The same thing is true of cocaine. But if you take them back and you put them in their environment, say they go back out of the treatment center, back into the normal world, they start drinking or using right away again. And the reason for that is that, well, let’s say you’ve been an alcoholic for 20 years. Okay. First of all, that’s all you do for entertainment. You drink. And all your friends are alcoholics, right? And so if you’re going to stop drinking, not only do you have to rid yourself of the physiological addiction, but you have to completely learn a new way of living. Because what do you know? You have to get rid of all your friends because they’re all drunks, pretty much. Or if they’re not, they’re at least people who are facilitating your drinking. So you have to build a whole new social network. You don’t know how to amuse yourself because of course, the way you’ve done that is by going to the bar, sitting at home drinking. And so there’s a huge hole in your life. You abandon the previous pathological mode of adaptation, but that just leaves you with nothing. And then you have to rebuild that thing from scratch. It’s extraordinarily difficult. And that’s why so many people fail when they’re trying to overcome a major addiction. So all right. So anyways, Simba’s out there in the desert. He’s left his family and the comforts of home. And he’s discovered by these, by Pumba and what was the little rat’s name? Timon? Yes, he’s a meerkat, right? Which are very cool things. And they discover him. And this is sort of his transition into adolescence. And he kind of finds, and this is, I would say, more typical of the male transition into adolescence because females, of course, hit puberty so much younger. The males who aren’t very attractive when they’re young and just starting to undergo puberty, they’re not very attractive to females. They tend to clump together in gangs and manage the transition over what could be seven years. So and that’s what happens here is Simba joins this little gang of, you know, these guys are all right, but you know, they’re a little on the primordial side, you might say. You know, one of them is basically just a walking gastrointestinal tract. The other one is he’s not so bad, but he’s like, you know, a foot high, really. What good is he? And so he’s got some second rate companions out here past the desert, but he enters, he’s out of childhood now and now he enters the adolescent world. And what happens here is that very quickly in the film he goes from being a little cub to a full, full adolescence. And there’s about a five minute transition. And so it’s the next stage in his development. And now he’s out there in this paradise, which is kind of strange because adolescence really is no picnic. But the idea here is that he really doesn’t have any responsibilities, right? None. And that is one thing about adolescence is, and even the stage of life that you guys are at is you have lots to do, but you’re not really responsible for anyone other than yourself. And so even though you might be quite burdened with your current responsibilities, it’s nothing compared to what it would be like when you, you know, you have responsibility for, for children, for example, or for the people that are working for you or, or whatever. So anyways, out here, it’s a kind of impulsive place as well. And adolescence is like that. We’ve had high school students try to do the future authoring program, you know, where they have to think three to five years down the road. It’s like, forget that. They just can’t do it. And I’ve watched them. And what happens is you, you immediately become aware of just how little high school students know when they’re like 15 or 16, three to five years, forget it. They don’t have the world knowledge to project themselves out that far in the future, not even close. So we’ve built a high school version that helps them design a better future three to six months down the road. And even that’s really pushing it. But you know, adolescents are more impulsive and they live more for the moment. And there’s some utility in that. I mean, being impulsive and living for the moment is one of the things that gets you pregnant as a teenager. And that is certainly one way that the species has managed to propagate itself. And so positive emotion and impulsivity are very tightly linked. And so he’s out there in this adolescent delusional fantasy. That might be one way of thinking about it. But more importantly, he’s out there where he’s in a domain now where the impulses of the moment basically take precedence. And so and I think they sing some song about. Yeah, Hakuna Matata, right, which basically means do it every do whatever you want and tomorrow will take care of itself or something like that. So it’s very impulsive and lacks all responsibility. One of the things that I would recommend to you if you want to protect yourself from ideological possession, shall we say, is that when you hear people speak politically and they don’t say anything about your responsibilities, you should probably stop listening to them. Because whenever they’re trying to offer you something, if it doesn’t come along with an equivalent cost, there’s something being hidden from you. They’re appealing to the part of you that’s, well, I would say at best adolescent.