https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=3dNGacak8Dc
I’ve often thought about the reaction in North America to the hurricane in New Orleans. Because there’s two ways of reading that, right? One is Mother Nature has a little fit and sends a hurricane into New Orleans and wipes everyone out. Isn’t that a catastrophe? Isn’t that an example of our fragility in the face of natural power? But there’s another way of reading it, maybe this is unfair, but it’ll do for the purpose of illustration. It’s like, you know the Dutch build dikes to keep the ocean back. And they’re actually pretty effective at that because their country is mostly underwater. And it turns out that if you go to Holland it’s actually not underwater. And so their dikes are working. And so the Dutch were very organized people. And they better be because their country is supposed to be underwater, right? So you better be organized if your country is supposed to be underwater. And so they are very organized and they have a rule for their dikes which is they try to estimate the worst possible oceanic storm that will come in 10,000 years and make sure that the dikes will withstand that. Well, from my reading, the Army Corps of Engineers in New Orleans built the dikes for a storm every 100 years. And that’s not so good because we live about 80 years, let’s say. So that means the probability that one of those storms is going to come whipping by in a lifespan is pretty damn high. And then so that perhaps wasn’t the wisest of planning, especially because some of New Orleans is actually supposed to be underwater. And then worse, you know, Mississippi is a state that’s quite well known for its corruption. And so you might also say that a tremendous amount of the money and time and resources that could have and should have and was planned to go towards fixing the problem didn’t. And so the hurricane came along and oh my God, wasn’t it a natural disaster? And the question is, what bloody well makes you so sure that it was a natural disaster? Because if the infrastructure would have been maintained and built to the specifications that were certainly technically possible, and would have actually been less expensive in the long run to build, and everyone knew it, and the hurricane came along and wiped out the city, why do you think that’s a natural disaster? To me, that’s a natural example, if you think about it from a metaphorical perspective, of a judgmental God deciding to use a flood to teach a moral lesson. And you might say, well that’s pretty harsh, what about all those flood survivors? It’s like, yeah, well the whole flood thing was kind of harsh. And so pointing out that there were steps that could have been taken, and also that I doubt in the aftermath have been taken, even though everyone knows now exactly what had happened, is you might consider it a diagnosis. But it’s irrelevant, because what I’m really trying to tell you is how the mythological stories would line up on this. Because you can tell a story about Mother Nature manifesting her catastrophe and potential for tragedy. Or you can tell another story of an absolute failure of the human social structure, and the human individual level, because of the corruption, to address a problem that everyone knew was there. And so that’s a good example of how the flood comes when you’re not behaving properly. And one of the things that’s quite interesting about the Old Testament and the people who wrote it is that they always assumed that if the flood comes, that meant you weren’t prepared. That’s the rule, right? It’s like the a priori axiom. You think, you got flooded out? Hey, you weren’t prepared enough. Well, how can you tell? Well, you got flooded out, right? That’s the evidence. And you might say, well, that’s not very fair. It’s like, fair isn’t the point. The point is, do you want to get flooded out again or not? Because fair would be, well, you better figure out why you got flooded out and fix it so it doesn’t happen again. And that’s the moral thing to do when you’re thinking about morality as walking the path that’s most appropriate to get to the destination that you think would be the best possible destination. By the mere fact that it exists, that is, it lives and produces, the cosmos gradually deteriorates and ends by falling into decay. That is the reason why it has to be recreated. In other words, the flood realizes on the macrocosmic scale what has symbolically affected during the New Year festival the end of the world and the end of a sinful humanity in order to make a new creation possible. Well, that’s an interesting… there’s a lot of information packed into those few lines that Diliade wrote, because he also, in the Mesopotamian rituals, the Mesopotamians would act out the collapse of the kingdom into chaos, essentially, at the New Year’s festival. It’s kind of what you do when you make resolutions, because it’s degenerate. What you’d say is our proclivity to make New Year’s resolutions is sort of a degenerate ritual. And I don’t mean that it’s bad, I mean that it’s the remnants of something much grander. So the idea was, well, the Mesopotamians would take their emperor outside the city, the walled city, once a year, and they would make him kneel, and they’d take off all his king clothes, and then they’d whack him with a glove, if I remember correctly, the priest would do that, and then they’d make him recount all the ways that he wasn’t being a good emperor that year. He wasn’t being a good marduk, because that was who he was supposed to be on earth, and that’s the guy with eyes all the way around his head, speaks magic words, and transforms chaos into order. That’s what the emperor is supposed to do. And so the question would be, okay, you’re emperor, it’s like, have a little humility here, because you’re not God incarnate, you probably made some mistakes, can you think of any ways in the last year that you didn’t take every advantage of every opportunity you possibly could have to take some spare chaos and transform it into habitable order? That’s a good thing to think about. Well, that’s what you’re thinking about when you make a New Year’s resolution, even though you don’t know it. It’s like, well, could you be a better person in the upcoming year? Well, you can imagine the flood, and then you can set yourself straight, and then you can prepare for it. And that means maybe you can stave it off, but it also means that maybe even if you don’t stave it off, you could ride it out. And that’s actually the story of Noah, because what happens with Noah is that he can see that things are not good, and that there’s a flood coming, and God is maybe letting him know. And it says in the story that Noah walked with God. Remember, that’s what Adam did before he got all self-conscious about the whole thing, he walked with God. We’ll talk about that more next time. But what that would mean maybe is because Noah was straight, and he put himself together, and his familial relationships were good, because it also says that, that his antennae were working. And he could see a little farther into the future than someone whose vision was completely obscured by fog and chaos. And he could tell that things were not going to go well. And so he prepared for it. And because he prepared for it, well, then things actually went pretty well for Noah, even though the flood came. And so that’s an interesting thing, because that’s an indeterminate issue. That’s an indeterminate issue in human existence. How big a hurricane would it take to wipe out New Orleans if everyone was prepared? Well, you’re not going to wipe out the Dutch. I mean, that’s going to be a tough one, man. You’re going to have to conjure up a pretty damn big storm to take out their dikes. Well, how thoroughly defended could New Orleans be if nobody in the municipal and state governments was corrupt? Well, end of the hurricane problem, because that’s something that we could clearly deal with. We know how to do it. And the same applies in your own life, is that there are floods coming. You can bloody well be sure of that. That’s absolutely 100% certain. Some of them are going to be personal. Some of them are going to be familial. Some of them are going to be social and political and economic. It’s like, are they going to be catastrophes for you? Or are you going to ride them out? Are you going to prepare? Well, the first issue might be, well, do you have your act together? Do you have your act together well enough to see them coming with enough advance warning so that you can take proper measures? Maybe just to sidestep it. Maybe just don’t go where the flood is going to be. That’s a simple thing. But maybe you don’t have that luxury, right? And so it is going to be a catastrophe. Maybe someone in your family is going to get really, really sick. Right? And maybe there’s just a tiny pathway through that, that everything doesn’t fall apart. It doesn’t end in divorce. It doesn’t end in death. It doesn’t end in sorrow. It doesn’t end in catastrophe. But the margin of error is like slimmed down to virtually zero. And every imperfection that you bring to that situation is going to increase the probability that that tragedy is going to turn into something indistinguishable from hell. And that’s coming. It’s coming your way. Absolutely, certainly. And so then you might think, well, since it’s coming your way, maybe the best thing to do is to put yourself together so that when it comes, it can be the least amount of awful possible. So I’ll close with the story. This was a very affecting story for me. My mother-in-law had frontotemporal dementia. She developed it quite young. She was about 55, something like that. And her husband, who was very extroverted, man about town guy. I grew up in a small town. Everybody knew him. He was charismatic, drank too much, charismatic, good business, good wife. Good businessman. Quite a remarkable person, a real character. But not exactly a family man, even though he provided for his family very well. But when his wife got sick, he really took care of her, man. It was something to see because that’s no joke dealing with someone who has Alzheimer’s for all intents and purposes, because they get taken away from you piece by piece. And that is not pretty. And then it’s also hard. Right? Not only is it catastrophic, but it’s hard. And Jesus, he just stepped into that like perfectly. And it was way less awful than it could have been. Way less. It was just a tragedy. It wasn’t hell. And then I was there when she died. And my wife’s family are actually pretty good at dealing with death. As it turns out, my wife’s sister is a palliative care nurse. And you have to be a pretty tough cookie to be a palliative care nurse. But you can do it, which is pretty interesting, because that means that you can go make relationships with people at the last stages of their life that are genuine relationships. And people just die on you nonstop. And yet, you know, she’s a competent, alive, alert, fun person. It’s like two thumbs up for her, man. That’s someone you can rely on in a tragedy. And her other sister is a pharmacist. And my wife has volunteered in palliative care wards and is also very good at taking care of people who are genuinely not in good health. And so we were there when my mother-in-law died. And, of course, you can imagine, here’s a deathbed situation for you. Your mother-in-law is dying and everyone’s at each other’s throats. It’s like you think that’s uncommon. Then your eyes aren’t open because it’s plenty bloody common. And then it’s not just a tragedy, it’s hell. And like maybe you can stand the tragedy, but you can’t stand the hell. And in this situation, that isn’t what happened. Everybody pulled together and what happened was, well, she died. But what was so interesting was the family actually came together more tightly as a consequence. And so although there was something taken away on the one hand, there was something gained on the other that wasn’t trivial. And I’m not trying to be all optimistic and, you know, isn’t the universe a wonderful place about all this? Like someone died in an ugly way and it was harsh. But, God, it was a hell of a lot better than it could have been. And maybe it was good enough. That’s the thing, you know, is that this is something that I constantly wonder. Is that if people did what they could to speak the truth and pay attention, then maybe the tragedy that’s part of life wouldn’t have to deteriorate into the unbearable hell that doesn’t have to be part of life. And maybe we could actually tolerate the tragedy or maybe we could even rise above it or maybe we could even mitigate it, you know, because we can, we do that sort of thing all the time. And so it’s always an open question. And Iliad had put it very well. Are the floods the consequence of the fact that things fall apart? Or are the floods a consequence of the fact that people make mistakes that they know they shouldn’t make and make anyways? They sin, right? And that’s to miss the mark, right? Because that’s an archery term to sin. And that means maybe they don’t specify the damn target, which is really you’re not going to hit it unless you specify it. Or having specified it, they just say, oh, to hell with it. It’s not that important. It’s like you got to be careful when you say something like to hell with it. It’s not that important because one of the things that might happen to you if you say to hell with it, it’s not that important, is that you might actually end up in hell for a pretty prolonged period of time or maybe for the remainder of your miserable existence, because it’s certainly the case that people do exist there and I’ve seen them exist there. And once you’re there, it’s no trick. It’s no simple matter to get the hell out. And so it might matter that the things that matter get addressed. It might matter that you do what you can to walk with God. Like I said, we’ll talk more about that next time. And it might be that that is how you build an ark and are protected from the flood, even if the damn thing comes. And the thing is, it will. And this is a funny thing, too, that I’ve noticed about our education system and the way we teach students and their trigger warnings and all of that absolute rubbish. I think in most of my lectures, I’d have to have a trigger warning every 15 seconds. So I tell my students when they’re young, it’s like, look, don’t fool yourself. You know, you’re going to develop a serious illness, at least one, maybe two or three. And one of them is likely to be chronic. And if it isn’t you, it’s going to be someone you love. It’s going to be your husband. It’s going to be your parent. It’s going to be your kids. That’s coming. And so is a lot of death and pain. And so like just exactly what sort of person are you going to be when that shows up? And that’s the right question. It isn’t how are you going to be happy in your life? It’s like good luck with that. It’s a stupid ambition anyways, as far as I’m concerned, because it’s too shallow. You know, happiness, you’re lucky that comes and goes like the sun coming out from behind a cloud. If you’re happy, man, more power to you. Enjoy it. Enjoy it. It’s a gift from the cosmos to be happy. But a pursuit? No. No, the pursuit is when the damn flood comes, you want to be the person who built Ark. And that’s what the story of Noah is about. And the thing is, the flood is always coming. That’s another thing that’s worth commenting on with regards to this story is, you know, There’s an apocalyptic element to the Judeo-Christian tradition. There’s an idea that the end of the world is always at hand and that you should prepare to be judged. And the thing about that is it’s true. And the reason it’s true is because the end of your world is at hand. And it will certainly come. And when it comes, you will be judged. Because it will be up to you to figure out what to do with the fact that your world just collapsed. And that’ll be a moral problem of ultimate severity. Because it’ll push you right to your limits. And you’ll find out exactly where your unaddressed weaknesses lie. Because that’s what happens in a crisis. And so the reason that that’s an archetypal reality and it lurks underneath the entire Judeo-Christian structure, the impending apocalypse, is because we always live in apocalyptic times. And your world is always, in small ways and large ways, coming to an end. And so what do you do? You prepare for it. You prepare for your world to come to an end. And then maybe when the end comes, you get another world. That’d be a good deal.