https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=G7U9el_yVhI
What happens, so now we’ve got to the point where the story says, well, human beings became self-conscious and here’s the problem with that. The problem is that we’re terribly self-conscious about our inadequacies and our vulnerabilities and that sets up enmity between men and women and it dooms women to pain in childbirth and child rearing and it dooms men to work. It’s a big problem. Okay, so now the next story that comes up in the sequence is the story of Cain and Abel. Now, you know, we talked about the dragon of chaos and then the terrible mother and the creative mother and the tyrannical father and the secure father and then the adversary and the hero. Cain and Abel are the first manifestation of the adversary and the hero and what happens is they emerge as soon as the original Genesis story ends. So what the story basically proposes is that once people became self-conscious, two modes of being emerged as a consequence of that and one mode is represented by Cain and the other mode is represented by Abel and that’s echoed in the story of the hostile brothers in stories of hostile brothers everywhere but it’s also paralleled in Christianity by the idea of the relationship between Christ and Satan. So it’s like Cain and Abel are precursors to the idea of Christ and Satan. Now what happens is that, so Cain is the older brother and that makes him sort of the embodiment of tradition. He would also be the favored one in terms of the traditions of the ancient Israelites because he would be the one that inherits everyone, so everything. So he’s actually the one that’s, he’s like the embodiment of tradition and there’s some advantages to that because he’s privileged because of it but there’s some disadvantages because to the degree that culture itself has become sterile and inappropriate and he manifests that, that means that he manifests error by merely being what he was. Now what happens with, and then Abel is the young brother. So Abel was a keeper of sheep but Cain was a tiller of the ground. Okay so there’s a dichotomy of professions here and people have read that in all sorts of different ways but one of the ways that you can think about it is that there are valid different modes of being in the world. So you can be, in this situation, you can be a tiller of the ground or a keeper of animals but in the world in general you can adopt any number of roles that suffice. You can be a plumber, you can be a lawyer and there are, there’s ways of acting within those roles that transcend the roles themselves and so that’s part of what’s being exemplified in Cain and Abel. So they can function in the world despite their different roles. In process of time it came to pass that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord and Abel he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. Now that’s very archaic, the idea of sacrifice. So basically what happens is that you’re trying to get God on your side and so God seems to want something from you because he keeps demanding this and that so you might say well reality wants something from you, it wants you to behave in a certain way so that you don’t suffer any more than you have to and so that things go well for you. Now human beings at this point in time are trying to work out exactly what that means and they’ve already got to the point where they’re conceptually sophisticated enough to understand that that means that sacrifices are necessary. Now you remember that it’s only prior to this that human beings discover time itself, that’s when they discover that they become self-conscious and discover their extension across time. And so one of the consequences of realizing that you’re extended across time is that you also will come to the realization that you may have to let go of certain valuable things right now in order to make things work better in the future. And you can’t imagine that people just woke up and figured that out. Like it took people, God only knows how long to sort that out. It takes tens of thousands of years to come up with that realization. First of all they would have acted it out like bees do, you know they collect honey and they make it through the winter but they don’t know what the hell they’re doing or maybe they do, maybe they’re little super computers like these bloody atoms. But you know what I mean, you can act this sort of thing out without realizing what you’re up to. And the motif of sacrifice seemed to be exactly that. People stumbled onto the dramatic idea that if you gave up something of value there would be some reasonable possibility that God would smile on you in the future. Okay so that’s why there’s the sacrifices. Now you might say well why did they burn them? And the reason for that is well as far as I can tell people are trying to understand what the ultimate fabric of existence is. And I think that you can feel that sometimes. And one of the places that people feel that regularly is when they’re out at night and they look up at the sky and they see this immense blanket of eternity that’s laid out before them and that induces a feeling of awe. And I think that archaic people took the notion of that awe that was a consequence of this apprehension and associated that with something like communion with the divine. Which is actually quite reasonable because when you are looking out into space you are looking into the farthest reaches of being. You can see back millions, hundreds of millions of years back into time and you see, you gaze out into the infinite expanses of being. So it’s not unreasonable to assume that in some sense at that moment you have some connection with what’s infinite, whatever that happens to be. And I think that you feel that rather than think it. So anyways the idea basically emerged that the divine was up in the sky and that because the divine was up in the sky you could maybe communicate it with it by sending messages up there. One of the ways you could do that was with smoke. And so if you’re burning these things that you’re offering you get to push the smoke up to God and he can do a molecular analysis and see if what you’re offering is of any reasonable quality and if it seems to be then poof you know God’s going to be thrilled about that or maybe he’s not. Now what happens is that Cain’s offerings are rejected and Abel’s offerings are accepted and so what that means is that Cain gets the short end of the stick and Abel gets everything good happening to him. So what you see happening is that there’s the notion of two paths of being, one that’s favored and one that isn’t favored. Now the story is very ambivalent about why Cain is not favored and Abel is. And you can read it multiple ways. You can just say well God’s basically being a son of a bitch and he’s not going to give Cain anything just because he’s not in a very good mood that day. Or you can say well Abel’s doing something right and Cain isn’t. And I think that interpreting the story in either of those ways is perfectly illuminating because part of the time in life it seems like someone’s doing everything right and still they’re just getting laid waste left, right and center and someone else is doing something terribly and things are going well for them. But then you also see the reverse where someone who’s doing well gets rewarded and someone who isn’t doesn’t. So there’s an ambivalence about it. Now I think the story does indicate that Cain is doing something wrong but it doesn’t do that until later. So anyways, sorry let me just go down to the next section here. So what did Cain enable sacrifice? In the biblical version cited here the nature of Cain’s sacrifice is left unclear except that it is of the ground. It’s vegetative and therefore bloodless. Every canonical tale however carries with it a surrounding cloud of similar stories, some derivative, some the product of a different developmental path and tradition, some intermingled with other stories. In some variants Cain’s sacrifice is not only of the ground but it’s of low quality. Cain is unwilling to offer up the finest fruits of his labors to God. Thus he does not really sacrifice anything. He wants to keep everything good to himself. So he’s selfish as well as faithless. Able by contrast offers up the best of what he has. What does this mean? Once again we already know, we say to our children do your best. Do not hide your light under a bushel. We do not say conserve your best or hide your best. We mean offer the best you have. Do it in good faith. You will not be absolutely assured of success but your chances will be increased to the degree that such increase is possible. Obviously it’s no overstatement to say that if you do not believe this you at least wish with all your heart that it was true. This is hope. To not believe this is to risk descent into the deepest chasms of cynicism. So what happens? God accepts Able’s sacrifice, offers him respect and renders his life acceptable despite its terrible limitations. Cain’s sacrifice however he rejects. This drives Cain into a murderous rage. So the Lord God had respect unto Able and his offering. But unto Cain and his offering he did not have respect. So the idea basically is that Able makes these sacrifices. He’s putting forth the best that he has. He’s doing his best and because of that it’s actually working. Everyone likes Able. He’s getting along with his wives. His flocks are increasing. He’s a good guy. It’s like everything’s going well. Whereas Cain things aren’t going very well at all and no one really cares for him and besides that he’s burning with jealousy because despite the fact that he’s slaving away raising all these vegetables and trying to offer them to God, nothing is going his way. So not only are things going badly for him but he’s increasingly disaffected by it. It’s not difficult to understand that. You know perfectly well that what happens to you if you’re working away you think diligently and properly and nothing is going your way and some other son of a bitch is just flourishing like mad beside you that that’s going to make you vengeful and irritated and anxious and angry and homicidal for that matter and it doesn’t take very long before people reach that stage at least not in their fantasies. Now the story says and Cain was very wroth and his countenance fell and what that meant is he’s angry and his face changes to indicate that. So he’s got this continual look of perpetual disaffectation and anger on his face because things aren’t going well for him. So that’s fine. So then he goes and has a chat with God because he’s not very happy about the whole situation and I think people do that all the time too even if they don’t necessarily formulate it in those terms. It’s like they’re thinking well what’s the nature of reality? I’m busting myself in half here trying to make things work properly and nothing’s going well it’s like what kind of stupid universe is that? And for all intents and purposes that’s a colloquy with God because you don’t start about the ultimate fabric of reality without bringing religious intuitions into it you can’t even ask such a question without acting in a quasi-religious manner. So this is what happens. It took me a long time to unpack this. So he goes and has a chat with Yahwah, with God. And the Lord said to Cain, why are you angry and downcast? Surely if you do right you ought to hold your head high. Sin crouches at your door lusting for you yet you can master it. That’s very, very interesting. So I translated those, I got a translation of those lines from a guy named Miles from 1995. So what happens is that Cain goes and has a chat with God about how things aren’t going very well and basically what he’s trying to do is hold God to account for why he made such a stupid universe where everything keeps going wrong. And what God says to him is, why are you angry and downcast? If you do right you ought to be able to hold your head high. So there’s an intimation there that the reason that Cain is wandering around like this is because there’s actually something he’s doing that’s not correct. It’s not that the structure of reality’s got a problem, it’s that Cain has a problem. And God says, well if you just do things properly then you could stand up, you wouldn’t have to be a defeated lobster all hunched over and aggravated. You could stand up and hold yourself properly and be thoroughly integrated in a proper manner with the way being is unfolding. And then he says, sin crutches at your door lusting for you yet you can master it. Now that’s a very interesting line. So I found out that there’s a metaphorical context within which those lines are uttered. And here’s the context. So God basically tells Cain that sin, which is misbehavior, is a kind of personality. he associates it with is something like a sexually aroused predatory cat. And he tells Cain that he’s, no, Cain’s in a house and that thing is crouching at the door and it’s waiting to jump on it. And then he tells Cain that that’s a real threat and it’s right there, but he could not have that happen if he wanted. And there’s a whole set of inferences in there. One inference is Cain invites it in. Now you remember, you may not remember, you have to invite a vampire into your house. It can’t just come in of its own accord. You have to open the door. And so that’s the first thing God tells Cain. It’s like, yeah, yeah, sure, things aren’t going very well, but that thing’s at your door, you invited it in, and you could master it if you want, but you chose not to. And then the next thing, the conceptualization of the sin as this sort of angry and lustful cat, there’s a sexual connotation to it. And so the thing pounces on Cain and has its way with him. So there’s an idea that there’s like a quasi-sexual interaction between Cain and this force, so that it’s a creative interplay. It’s not only that he’s dominated by the sin, it’s that he brings it in and enters into a creative union with it and produces something out of the mixture. And so, for example, when I was reading the Columbine kids’ writings, it’s like you can see exactly that in their behavior. It’s like, he knew perfectly well what he was up to. He knew perfectly well what he was inviting in. And he put his own extraordinarily creative twist on it. It wasn’t just that he was possessed by an idea. He spent months planning with his horrible little compatriot about exactly how they were going to blow up the school and the town, and they would have liked to have blown up the whole damn city that was part of their plan, and exactly how they were going to turn that into a creative spectacle that would be covered by networks all over the land, perfectly, consciously, every single bit of this. So they put their own twist on it as a consequence of being angry and resentful and unhappy. So anyways, God tells Cain, you know, why are you coming to complain to me? There’s nothing wrong with reality. It’s like you get your act together and behave properly. You can stand up high, hold your head up high, and you don’t have to let this thing that’s tempting you have its way with you and enter into a creative union with it. You can just behave properly. And so Cain leaves and then he’s really annoyed. And the reason he’s annoyed is because he’s going in there hoping that he’ll straighten God out with a little chat and set reality straight, and basically what he finds out is that as far as God’s concerned, the reason that all these terrible things are happening to him is because he’s not anywhere near what he could be, and he’s setting himself up for continual failure. And so that really annoys him. So not only is he mad about the fact that he’s failing, but he’s even more mad because when he fought it through, he realized that it was actually his fault and that the reason these things are happening to him is because he’s not what he could be. So then you might think, well, what does he do as a consequence? You know, you could think, well, he could say, well, a little apology to God and try to get himself on the right track, and that isn’t what happens at all. He goes and kills Abel with a rock. Now you think, well, why does he do that? Well that’s very complicated. It’s partly, well, Abel is obviously God’s favorite, so he’s doing everything he can to pull him down, and you think people do that all the time. If you’re jealous of someone else’s accomplishments, these things really play themselves out in junior high and high school, but they also play out in adult life. You’ll do everything you can to pull down the thing that’s hovering above you and making you look bad as a consequence of the reflection. It’s easier to destroy the ideal than it is to try to live up to it, and people do that all the time. And then they’re punishing each other for their virtues, and they do that because, well, First of all, because they can pull down the ideal, and then they don’t have the mirror that makes themselves uncomfortable, but they can also do that as revenge against God. It’s like, well, if that’s what you favor and you’re going to torture me to death, then I’ll just destroy what you’ve brought up to be the best manifestation of what is at this point, and then we’ll just see who’s winning the war of being. And so that’s what happens. He goes out and kills Abel. And so God comes along. It’s a terrible thing because it means he destroys his own ideal, but he’s perfectly willing to pay that price as long as he can get revenge for his misery and his revenge on God. And it’s interesting too because if you look at the writings of people who commit real atrocities, you can see that they’ve gone far beyond any desire for individual revenge. Like the kids that people, the Columbine kids shot up in the high school. They didn’t even necessarily have any grudge against those particular kids. It was like mayhem for mayhem’s sake, and it was actually better if they shot someone that was innocent because that was a lot more of a protest than shooting someone who was guilty. If you’re shooting someone who’s bullied you, it’s like that’s just justice. I mean, it’s a warped and bent form of justice. But if you go into the high school and shoot someone who’s been good to you, well, then you’re really making a statement about just what you think about the world. And if you’re willing to blow your own head off afterwards, well, it’s just that much more indication that you could say to hell with everything and that nothing is worth having. And that’s a demonstration of that mode of thinking right down to the bottom. So anyways, he goes out there and he kills Abel. I’ll read you this paragraph. Cain is faced with a very stark choice. His pride, his belief in his own omniscience compels him to repeat actions that do not despite their self-defined failure. This breeds a deep resentment. Once his pride and resentment grow past a certain threshold, he starts to fantasize about revenge and then about murder. The gap between fantasy and action grows even smaller as resentment builds and one day the opportunity manifests itself. Abel says something optimistic, deserving, and promising and that straw breaks the camel’s back. Perhaps at first it is just resentment of the successful. But it does not have to end there. There’s no real end. With enough resentment, you can kill once. If you can kill once, why not ten? If ten, why not a hundred? If a hundred, why not ten thousand? Why not a million? Stalin was just getting warmed up when he killed six million Ukrainians in the 1930s. There’s evidence from the KGB archives that Stalin was preparing for the Third World War when he was killed by his own people in the 1950s. And who’s to say that Hitler really lost the war? It depends entirely on what he was aiming for. Maybe he got just what he aimed for when he blew his brains out all over his bunker deep underneath Berlin while Europe burned to ashes around him. Why do we insist upon believing that every tyrant fights a war to win? Cain believed that the world was a terrible and unreasonable place, bent on his suffering and destruction. He thought that hard work and sacrifice was for babies and fools. This is from Richard III. Why should wrath be mute and fury dumb? I am no baby, aye, that with base prayers I should repent the evils that I have done. Ten thousand worse that ever yet I did would I perform if I might have my will. If one good deed in all my life I did, I do repent it from my very soul. Eric Harris, this is from Columbine. The most literate of the two killers said, I hate the fucking world. Kill mankind. No one should survive. Most investigators of the Columbine killings claim they cannot understand the boys’ motivations. And they could understand them, they just don’t want to. Harris said, I would sooner die than betray my own thoughts, but before I leave this worthless place I will kill whoever I deem unfit. Harris transformed himself into an archetypal embodiment of Cain, whose ultimate prototype is motivated according to Goethe by the following principle. So this is Mephistopheles. The spirit I that endlessly denies, and rightly too, for all that comes to birth is fit for overthrow as nothing worth, wherefore the world were better sterilized. Thus all that’s here as evil recognized is gained to me, and downfall ruins sin, the very element I prosper in. Harris, the day before his mass murder. About 26.5 hours from now the judgment will begin. Difficult, but not impossible. Necessary, nerve-wracking, and fun. What fun is life without a little death? It’s interesting when I’m in my human form knowing I’m going to die. Everything has a touch of triviality to it. Was Harris the leader? Yeah. So what happens then is God finds Cain and has a little chat with him. He says, when you tell the ground, it will not henceforth yield unto thee her strength. You’ll be a fugitive and a vagabond. And Cain said unto the Lord, my punishment is greater than I can bear. Behold, thou hast driven me out of this day from the face of the earth, and from thy face shall I be hidden, and I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond on the earth. And that it shall come to pass that everyone who finds me will slay me. And the Lord said, therefore whoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken upon him sevenfold. And the Lord set a mark on Cain, lest any finding him should kill him. Now what happens in the aftermath of that story seems to be something like that. So there’s Cain, and then Adam and Eve have another son whose name is Seth. And Seth produces descendants, and one of them down the chain is Noah, and he saves the world from the flood. But Cain produces descendants too, and each of the descendant generations seem to get more and more aggressive. The generation that produces a man named Tubal Cain seems to be the same generation as Noah on the other branch. And Tubal Cain is by tradition the first person who produces artifacts, tools of warfare. And so there’s an idea in the Old Testament in this story that it’s the individual murderous resentment of the individual who won’t make the proper sacrifices that distributes itself into the community and culminates in increasing brutality, atrocity, and finally into war. Tubal Cain, T-U-B-A-L-C-A-I-N. Yeah, and so Lamech is one of Cain’s descendants, and this is Lamech. Lamech kills two men when he is wounded and hurt. And Lamech says unto his wives, Ada and Zilla, Hear my voices, ye wives of Lamech, hearken unto my speech. For I have slain a man to my wounding, and a young man to my hurt. If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy and sevenfold. So this is the idea of the exponential distribution of brutality into the community as a consequence of this initial adoption of a particular form of being. Okay, so here’s the situation that’s laid out in Genesis as far as I can tell, is that people emerge as self-conscious and that produces a terrible burden on people, and then the burden is even either handled in the appropriate manner with the proper sacrifices or it’s not. If it’s not, the consequences are that everything degenerates into brutality and atrocity. And that seems to me to be approximately correct. And so you can understand both Cain and Abel’s motivations. Cain gets brutal and resentful because things don’t go well for him and because he’s suffering. It might be arbitrary, you know, and sometimes your suffering does seem to be entirely arbitrary. But part of the moral of the story is that if you allow that to make you resentful and vengeful, that you’ll participate in processes that make things absolutely unbearable and make the entire situation much worse. And all the existential commentary I’ve read on the things that happened in the Second World War and in the Stalinist Soviet Union and in China for that matter seem to lay out exactly the same story, which is once individuals get corrupted because they’re unhappy with the structure of their being, they can corrupt the entire social landscape and the entire world and things go from bad to worse until they’re as bad as they can possibly be. So that’s how things go badly. You might think, well, how do things go well? You know, unfortunately we missed one lecture, but there’s some things that I can tell you that I think I know about. What? What are you laughing about? You said that one lecture about how do you have things to tell you about. No, no, no. No, well, there’s other things that I wanted to tell you about, but I can tell you about this anyways. I just can’t do it in quite as much depth as I would have liked to. So it doesn’t seem to me that it’s reasonable to try to impose an ideological solution on the world. And the reason that that’s not reasonable is because it leads you into something that’s akin to a sin of pride. You think you have the damn answer. You think you know everything. And you can impose that answer, but the problem with that is that it seems to, that’s the kind of sacrifice, or that produces the kind of sacrifices that God doesn’t find very acceptable and things go from bad to worse. So you might say, well, what’s the alternative? What’s a potential alternative mode of being? And so here’s something that you can think about. And there’s one thing that I want to tell you about Christianity that’s relevant in this regard. So you’ll see this in the last quarter of Maps of Meaning when you read it. But there’s images that have popped up in the Middle Ages where the tree in the Garden of Eden is there again. And on the one side of the tree there are skulls, and those are being handed out by Eve. And on the other side, there are these little things that are, they’re like fruits, but they’re representatives of the hosts that are given to people when they undergo the mass in Christianity. And so those little hosts, which are made out of wheat, which is a dying and resurrecting God, are like the body of the hero. And so the idea behind the mass is that in order to overcome death, you’re supposed to incorporate the body of the hero. And the body of the hero, the hero is the person in this mythological landscape who is willing to voluntarily confront death and will, as a consequence, be reborn. Now I think that that can be read at a psychological level because we already talked about the fact that one of the things that happens when you’re in deep error is that you can allow the erroneous structure to dissolve into something that’s chaotic and then have it reemerge as something that’s new. The idea that’s lurking behind this idea of transformation is that you should identify yourself not with the initial state of order, which is like a particular way of looking at the world, and you shouldn’t identify yourself with the state of chaos that’s there when everything collapses around you, but that you should identify yourself with the process of transformation from order through chaos and then into a new form of being. And so the way that you confront the fact that reality is continually transforming is by allowing yourself to transform with it. And that’s the taking on of the continual voluntary death and rebirth in the service of higher being. And we don’t know the potential limits to that. You know, I mean, obviously in the current situation, everyone is still faced with the possibility of ill health and a finite lifespan and all the things that go along with that, but we don’t know the limits of our potential dynamic flexibility. And we sure do know that if you hold on to ways of being that are counterproductive for any length of time, that that kills you faster and makes you more miserable while it’s happening. And the same thing happens as well when you’re wallowing and trapped in a chaotic situation. So here’s a hypothesis. So one of the things that the New Agers will tell you is that you should follow your bliss. And I have a big problem with that because first of all, I don’t think it’s true. And second, because Jung pointed out that if you do follow what you find deeply meaningful, it’s likely to take you to a place that you’re most afraid of. And so to me, there’s a barrier to enlightenment. And the barrier is that you’ll face things that will pull you apart before you’ll face things that will put you together. And I think that what you face that will pull you apart is all the things that you’ve done in the past that have been suboptimal. Those things have to be repaired and fixed. Now if you put yourself in a situation where you’re able to rectify the errors that you’ve made in the past so that you straighten out the manner in which you’re organized, then I think that it might be possible to live so that you’re forthrightly confronting things as they move towards you. And if you’re oriented towards making them better, like assume that that’s your highest value, say, well, what’s the purpose of life? And the purpose of life is to make things as good as you can possibly make them. And that might be for you, and it might be for those around you. And you might not even know exactly what that means. So sometimes you’re going to have to let go of what you think good is as you progress towards it. Well it seems to me that if you orient yourself towards that and you allow yourself to stop living in theories that you know to be false and carrying falsehoods that you’re acting out and believing in that you know to be not true, that you can start to live in a different way. So here’s the different way in some sense. So the first thing you have to figure out is that you don’t know what the hell you’re doing. The second thing you have to figure out, and that’s humility, I think, the second thing you have to figure out is what you want. And you either want things to be better or you want them to be worse. And there’s reasons for wanting them to be worse. And the reasons are deep and they’re justifiable, but they’re not helpful. So then let’s assume that you notice the part of you that’s devoted like Cain to the destruction of things and you understand what that is and you’re willing to take it onto yourself to repair. Then it isn’t other people’s evil that you have to worry about, it’s your own. Then you might say, well, what should you do next? And one of the pieces of literature from which I’ve learned from that seems to address that is the Sermon on the Mount in the New Testament. And one thing that happens in the Sermon on the Mount is this. So Christ says to his followers that there isn’t something specifically that they should be pursuing. What they should be doing instead is orienting themselves in a particular direction. And the direction would be towards what’s best and what’s true. So that’s the first step is you figure out, do you want things to be better or do you want them to be worse? That’s the fundamental question. So are you working for the betterment of being or for its transformation into hell? Then you think, well, I want things to be better. Then the next thing you think is, well, you don’t exactly know how to go about that. Okay, so then what do you do? Well it seems to me that that’s the point at time when you try to eradicate from your field of apprehension everything that you know to be false and unworthy. You get rid of it as much as you can, as fast as you can. And part of the way you can do that is by listening to what you say and watching what you do. And you can listen to what you say and you can find out if you’re actually saying what you believe to be true. Now here’s a hypothesis. And I think this is the hypothesis that’s laid out in the transformation from the Old Testament to the New Testament in Christianity. But I also think it’s the same idea that the Taoists were pursuing and the Buddhists were pursuing. So the idea is this, and it’s based on the idea of logos. What would happen if instead of pursuing what you think you should be pursuing, you did something else? Which is you set yourself in a position where you’re trying to make things better and the next consequence of that is to try to say as clearly as you possibly can what it is be true in every situation and then to see what happens. It’s a different way of playing the same game. Now in the Sermon on the Mount, what Christ tells his followers is to orient themselves towards paradise and truth fundamentally and then to concentrate on doing everything they possibly can moment to moment as carefully and correctly as possible and then to see what happens. So there’s this ancient idea that’s at the root of Western culture that being is spoken into existence and that’s the speech of the logos. And the idea there is also partly that that inheres inside people if they’re willing to utilize it and that they know how they can utilize it and the way to utilize that is to straighten out your speech and action and to act as well as you can moment to moment and to let go other than that and see what happens. And I think that that’s the movement of faith that the existentialist Christians continually talk about. You can’t because the thing is if you’re aiming at something specific that constitutes the good then basically what you’ve done is made yourself a kind of idol. You said well this is paradise in God but the thing is you don’t know that because you’re not sufficiently informed to understand the ultimate nature of the good. But I think you’re sufficiently informed to figure out when you’re not using your language properly. And I think one of the things that you can notice is that if you’re not using it properly it makes you ashamed and weak and embarrassed. And I think you can feel that. You can feel it fully embodied. And I think that’s what Cain does and that’s what God tells him to stop doing. He says if you’re doing things right you can stand up with your head held high and if you’re not you can’t. You’re downcast and angry and resentful and murderous. And I think that that’s the case. And I do believe that it’s a different way of being because it’s not aimed at something that’s predefined. You have to allow what constitutes the good and your understanding of the good to continually be updated as you pursue it. And I think all you have to do to do that is to speak words, well Norris Robb Frye would say is that you have to speak words with power. And I think you can learn to do that. But you have to let go. And I think that that’s the cure for ideology. You know because what’s the alternative? You can lay out a belief system and try to impose it. Or you can play along and see if you can figure out what’s going on. If you have a productive conversation with someone that’s what you’re doing. You know you say well let’s see if we can figure out how to get along. Maybe this is within the confines of an intimate relationship. It’s like okay what do you want? What do I want? How is that going to fit together? Can we communicate honestly about exactly what that is and how we might get it? And it’s a process of co-discovery. It’s not like you know the answer to begin with. And you’re not going to find it unless you tell each other the truth. And you’re not going to be able to pursue it unless you act out the truth that you articulate. And I don’t think you’re going to be able to articulate the truth properly unless what you want is the good. And that’s a very difficult thing to figure out. But I think one of the things we do know after the 20th century that the continual attempt to make the world as atrocious a place as possible seems to be searching in the wrong direction. Now you know I’ve tried this sort of thing for a very long period of time. Because I think that what I try to do is to say what I believe to be the case in every situation that I’m in and to see what happens. And my experience is being that really works. Like it really works. You can learn to get along with the people in your family and help them straighten out. And you can start to have a relatively beneficial effect on processes that are outside of your you know of what’s right in front of you and within your grasp. So you can practice trying to figure out how to set things straight. And I have no idea what the ultimate limits of that might be. But I can tell you one thing it certainly makes your life ridiculously interesting. You know that in itself is one of the things that takes away the sting of mortality. Because if what you’re doing is so damn interesting you can hardly stand it. The fact that you have to pay a price as you move along starts to become acceptable. You know because you’ll pay a price if it’s worth it. It’s Nietzsche said if you have a why you can bear any how. And I think there’s some truth in that. And you know you might say well what’s a good that’s sufficiently good to justify voluntarily participating in being that’s bent on your misery and destruction. And that’s the fundamental question of life. Well I would say you need a pretty elevated vision in order to counteract that. And I think that’s what a vision of paradise is. And I think that paradise is something that people have to build. I think if we built it properly it would justify everything that happened on the way to building it. Or at least that might be the case. And I think you can do it locally first. And I can’t see and I’ve watched people. I’ve watched how people have lived now for decades. And I have two clients in my practice right now who one of them was pretty damn straight to begin with. But he’s set up his business. It happens to be a firm. And he’s tried to make absolutely straight decisions that were really informed and proper the entire way along. And the bloody thing is running like a… It’s running… It’s equilibrated. It’s extremely effective. It’s not wasteful. Everybody who’s inside the organization is developing properly. No one’s getting screwed over. It’s an honest and straightforward enterprise and everybody seems to be benefiting from it. And I have another client who was pretty damn confused and arrogant and resentful when he first started changing his life. And he put together a relatively small business. And I would say it’s a low status business. But he’s done it as honestly as he possibly could. And he tried to keep himself on the straight and narrow while he’s doing it. And he’s tried to give his customers outstanding service and to be clear and straight with them at every single choice moment. And that’s lifted his cynicism and it’s made his business very, very productive and positive. And so I can’t see… First of all, there has to be some antidote to ideology because it’s corrosive and destructive. I can’t see that there’s any end that you can attain and any means that you can implement that’s more meaningful and rich and deep than that. And I do think it’s sufficient to stop you from being corrupted and genocidal. And that’s a good thing because you can get corrupted and genocidal. And if there’s enough of us who are corrupt and genocidal, then things are going to get very bad instead of very good. So then you can think about that. And I think it’s an easy thing to start to try. The first thing you have to do is decide if you want things to be better or worse. And that’s not a simple question because there will be a lot of you that’s bitter and resentful and vengeful and angry for all of your inadequacies and the way the world’s treated you. And the second thing is, pay attention to what you say and see if you believe it. But if you don’t, quit saying it. See what happens. You can tell if what you say makes you strong or if it makes you weak. All you have to do is feel it. And you can stop saying things that make you weak. But it will change you completely. So you’ll find that you won’t be able to associate with people who only allow you to say things that make you weak, for example. Because lots of people will be upset if you say things that make you strong around them because they don’t want you to flourish and grow. Partly because it sheds a bad light on them. Anyways, this is more elaborated in the last quarter of the book or thereabouts. And so you’ll get a chance to read that if you want to do it. And I guess I’ll see you guys when you have the final. But in the meantime, well, think about it. I think we have more opportunity now at this point in history to make things good than we could have possibly imagined 50 years ago. And it’s necessary. You know, there’s lots of things that are falling apart. And people get cynical about that and that’s the wrong attitude. It’s like you have no idea how much power you might have at your disposal if you used it properly. And I think we could set things right if we decided that it was worth doing. And so it certainly seems to me to beat the alternative because in the 20th century we bloody well learned what the alternative was. And it is as horrible as anything you could possibly imagine. So it seems to me that it’s very much worth a while avoiding that even if we can’t make things perfect. So, see you all.