https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=O5ooG_O0S-Y
I showed you this map before and I wanted to I produced this map because I I was trying to understand the Fundamental substructure of the mythological world I think that’s the right way of thinking about it And I’m not claiming that this is the only way it can be represented because I know full well that it can be represented other ways But it’s a pretty good schema and so the idea it maps on to Yeah, it maps on to this idea, so you can imagine that when you’re here you’re in explored territory Okay, so explored territory you can do explored territory in an archaic way is The fires at the center the campfire and Tribal boundary surrounds that space and that’s Safe space okay, so it’s a place in nature obviously Within which there’s a pyramid and there’s a fire at the center of the pyramid and the pyramid is the dominance hierarchy the social dominance Hierarchy and that’s where people live That’s the world and so you could say well that circumscribed space where you understand see it’s the it’s explored territory Not only because you understand the the Nate natural world that prevails there and And The cumulative effort of all of your compatriots keeps all the terrible animals at bay So it’s actually safe from a natural perspective, and you understand it so it’s explored when you’re there You’re safe and good things happen to you mostly and then not up But it isn’t just the natural space construed as the environment It’s the natural space construed of the relationship between you and all the other primates that inhabit that space Which is also its social society obviously, but it’s also part of nature and so that explored territory is Your understanding of the natural world And the social world but more importantly the concordance of your understanding with what’s happening in that space so Like take this place for an example right now Everyone of you has expectations about what’s going to happen in this classroom, and you bring those and their desires actually They’re not merely expectations because it’s goal-directed And you bring those with you into the classroom and as long as what’s happening is in concordance with those desires Then you’re safe and calm and maybe at least mildly interested which would be the point right so it’s explored territory because What you understand matches? What’s happening? And that’s a place and it’s a place that you strive to be and You strive to maintain and maybe you even strive to expand which which is a slightly different thing But you certainly strive to maintain it. That’s this that’s one place then there’s another place Which is where you end up when that doesn’t work, and you can think about that is well You know in the Lion King for example when when? Mufasa Mufasa brings Simba up to the top of pride rock Just when the Sun is either rising or setting and so they’re on top of the rock and the top of the rock is lit and they’re sitting at the top in the light and Mufasa tells Simba that his territory is everything that the light touches and Everything that the light touches is everything that you’ve understood It’s everything that your capacity for illumination and enlightenment has turned into Habitable space and so you’re the king of that domain right especially insofar as you’re guided by the light That’s what that little scene meant and Mufasa tells Simba not to go out beyond Where the light has touched into the dark territories, and that’s where the elephant graveyard is in that story right and Simba and Nella go out there because of course as soon as you tell a human being not to do something Those little lions being human beings after all They immediately run off and do it and that’s an echo of the story say in in in Genesis where God tells Adam and Eve not to eat the apple and this is the first thing they immediately do because if you want Someone not to do something you first specify it what it is that they shouldn’t do and then give them some sort of Incomprehensible reason for why they shouldn’t do it and they’ll just do it instantly because that’s what we’re like right That’s why the Catholics are convinced that people suffer from original sin And it’s a very intelligent way of looking at things although it also has its problems So anyways, there’s the there’s the known territory and then outside of that there’s unknown territory And those are the most fundamental elements of existence There’s the place you are when you know what’s going on And there’s the place you are when you don’t know what’s going on and that can be mapped onto Geographic territory if you go on beyond the borders of your society then you’re in unknown territory But it can also be mapped conceptually so that for example We’re all sitting in this room and someone leaps in with a weapon it’s like this was known territory a Second ago, and now it’s not known territory at all even though you’d say well many things have remained the same It’s like yeah, but all the relevant things have suddenly changed right and so part of the way of conceptualizing that is that You can you can manifest a Geographic transformation by moving from you know genuine Geographic explored territory into genuine geographic unexplored territory, but you can do that in time as well Because we exist in time as well as space and so a space that’s stable Can stand and unchanging can be transformed into something completely other than it is by the movement forward of time so Well, so why am I telling you that? it’s because we’ve mapped the idea of The difference in space between the known and the unknown to the difference in time Between a place that works now and a place that no longer works even though. It’s the same place. It’s the same thing It’s just extended across time All right, and so that’s order versus chaos and that’s the chaos that can manifest itself within the order the thing that’s represented in the yin and yang Symbol right because you see the black Paisley with the white dot in it and the white paisley with the black dot in it order can turn into chaos at a moment’s notice And in the same way chaos can turn to order in a moment’s notice at a moment’s notice and so We’re trying to map the geography onto the onto the app onto something that’s more abstract and comprehensive and And we do that using Conceptual schemes that we evolved over vast spans of time and have just moved up one level of abstraction Known territory or what’s explored unknown territory or what’s not explored the trans? Transformation or the dissolution of one into the other and then the reconstitution of that that’s what an election does right? It’s like okay We have our leader who’s the person at the top of the dominance hierarchy and defines? The nature of this particular structure. There’s an election. It’s Regulated chaos no one knows what’s going to happen. It’s the death of the old king bang We go into a chaotic state everyone argues for a while and then out of that argument They produce a consensus and poof we’re in a new state Right, that’s the meta story right order chaos order, but it’s partial order chaos Reconstituted and revivified order. That’s the thing is that this order is better than that order So there’s progress and that’s partly why I think the idea of moral relativism is wrong There’s progress in moral order and and it was defined properly by Piaget The new moral order does everything the other moral the old moral order did and some additional things that’s what constitutes progress Now here’s a here’s a strange idea and we’ll talk about this more as we progress through the class What’s the ultimate in order? Well, it’s not this obviously Because it can collapse and it’s not this Because it can collapse and so then you think well There’s no ultimate order even though there’s progression, but then you have to move it up one level of abstraction What’s the ultimate order? doing this willingness to do that That’s the ultimate order Right. It’s order at a different level of analysis and you can see that’s what’s represented in That idea that’s what that idea means. That’s the Phoenix, right? The Phoenix is something that lives ages and then allows itself to be consumed by fire and then reemerges and the old Phoenix gets old and Burns and the new Phoenix reemerges and so the real Phoenix is the thing that’s constant across those transformations That’s the Union self That’s what he meant. The self is the element of the psyche that remains intact across transformations. Yeah It’s a bloody amazing idea That’s for sure and you can think about that. That’s why Jung claimed for example in Ion Primarily that Christ was a symbol of the self that was his Consequence of decades of meditation on the structure of Christianity Because it’s the dying and resurrecting part of the psyche that remains constant across the Transformation so the ultimate order isn’t to identify with this That’s your current state of being and it isn’t to identify with that because well You can’t by definition and it isn’t even to identify with that It’s to let these things go as they need to go That’s a sacrifice and to allow this continual process of transformation to occur and Part of that is the admission that you’re wrong and so partly what you’re doing is at micro-levels and at macro levels where are you not what you could be and when you realize that it’ll take you apart a little bit and burn you down to your core a little bit and Then allow you to regenerate and if you do that continually then everything that you don’t need burns away