Transforming Evil Into Good | Biblical Series: Exodus Episode 2

thank you for joining us as we journey through the Great Book of Exodus and thank you very much the DW plus crew for having the vision and generosity of spirit to make this Exodus seminar produced at no small cost and substantial risk freely available to all who are interested on YouTube perhaps you might consider a daily wire Plus subscription it's a Bastion of free speech and we have great content there with much more to come we journeyed to Athens Rome and Jerusalem to film a four-part documentary series on Western civilization and have additionally recorded specials on marriage Vision the pitfalls and opportunities for adventure and masculinity all of which are exclusively available there these join many of the Beyond order public lectures that made up my recent tour and my extensive back catalog fully uncensored onward and upward good foreign [Music] welcome to day two of The Exodus seminar hosted by daily wire Plus we're in Exodus chapter 3 today pretty much at the beginning of it I'll just briefly introduce everyone we have a new participant today uh Mr Greg hurwitz an author and a man of many other talents I'll let him introduce himself after I introduce all the people that perhaps you're familiar with from yesterday's episode or episode one uh Dr Douglas Headley was Guinness Dr James Orr Craig hurwitz Dennis Prager Dr Stephen Blackwood Jonathan paggio I'm Dr Jordan Peterson Greg welcome I'm glad you're here I'm looking forward to including you in the conversation and maybe you can say a few words about who you are and thank you for having me here I'm a I'm a novelist all right crime fiction I'm screenwriter also I write comic books as well and I'm very interested in narrative and how narrative moves through culture and particularly archetypes and studied a good deal of young as well and so I've had the opportunity to cross with several of you in the past and I'm very happy to be engaging with you now that those of you who I haven't yet so thanks for having me here yeah Greg's a great Storyteller and we've talked a lot about literature in the past he was a student of mine way back when at Harvard one of the brightest students I had there and we've had a very productive post Harvard friendship over multiple decades and so I'm very happy that Greg's here and we're on Exodus chapter three we just cracked it yesterday and I think I'll start right from the top um and Dr Blackwood had some comments about a part of the chapter uh 3-3 that we brushed over lately or yesterday and but deserves some some more in-depth consideration now Moses kept the flock of Jethro his father-in-law the priest of Midian and he led the flock to the back side of the desert and came to the Mountain of God even to Horeb and the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush well that's a that's an interesting passage and Dr Blackwood will elaborate on this the word phenomenon is linked is etymologically derived from the Greek word famous thy and that means to shine forth and that's a concept worth considering because you'll note if you look at how you attend to the world that some things attract your attention they beckon to you sometimes that's because you can voluntarily find things meaningful so you're imposing a structure on the world but sometimes it's as if the world is calling to you it's pulling your attention hither and yawn and and Dr Blackwood you had some interesting comments about what happens with Moses next and Moses looked and behold the bush burned with fire and the Bush was not consumed and Moses said I will now turn aside so he deviates from his pathway and see this great sight why the bush is not burned well and it goes on to say you know and when the Lord saw that he turned aside to see I was just really as we were talking last night I was thinking about you know what are the conditions under which this Revelation happens and what are the conditions under which it happens in our own life this opening up to the Transcendent and it seems to me there's something very important here in which you know Moses is is is attending to something and it's it's like Aristotle says philosophy begins in Wonder there's this uh very beautiful moment in which Moses turns aside from where he is to go and attend and that it's only because he's open to the possibility of turning aside that he sees the burning bush and the Revelation that is in that is able to unfold in his life so he's engaged in some sense in an instrumental activity right he's about his own business but he's open enough to what isn't within his framework of reference let's say to note when something's is significant that calls to him and then humble enough to pay attention to it and that's where he encounters God right and that's that's definitely worth considering and so and I think just for a moment um I've always wondered and I have no answer to this if I were a Shepherd I wouldn't see burning bushes regularly so it takes perhaps a Moses type which is building on what you've just been saying to say hey wait a minute it's not it's not being consumed the bush it's not burning there's a fire I think I think it does suggest that also can I just say there's a sense you know he says you know dude take off your shoes because the ground which you're standing is Holy I mean there's this real question of you know is everything Holy Ground I mean it's not the world that changes right it's our own perception of the world that changes and you know I I would say there's there is no moment in life that does isn't and in itself actually holy it's a matter of coming to be open to or it to be revealed as holy in your life no there's no moment that isn't is that is cannot be redeemed or made epiphanic whether it's doing the dishes or you know doing the laundry or or picking up the usual things of any day or the usual toils and tribulations of normal life there's no moment that doesn't have in it the possibility of divine revelation and so it's if your shoes are awesome yes yes if you're have the spiritual let's say uh stance or Attunement to let that Discovery happen yeah well that's part of what meditative practice is supposed to but instill in you as a habit and there's something nourishing about that if it's practiced properly and that is the relief in some sense of being immersed in something that's outside of you that's beyond your conception there's a terror that's associated with that in principle like there might be Terror with a burning bush but it's also extremely uh salutary in the most fundamental sense so a nourishing so and when the Lord saw that he turned aside to see and so that's that speaks to your point too the Lord responds the highest the thing that's put in the highest Place responds to Moses response to the call right and when the Lord saw that he turned aside to see God called unto him out of the midst of the Bush and said Moses Moses and Moses said here am I and he said God said draw not nigh hi hither put off thy shoes from off thy feet for the place where on thou standest is Holy Ground moreover he said I am the god of thy father the god of Abraham the god of Isaac and the god of Jacob and Moses hid his face for he was afraid to look upon God I read in Jung years ago this idea that I found extraordinarily compelling and useful which was that every ideal is simultaneously and necessarily a judge so you imagine that the ideal is something that beckons to you but you're also you also pale in comparison to the ideal and so by apprehending an ideal you're also simultaneously judged and the higher the ideal the more intense the Judgment in some real sense I think that's partly why people are terrified of great art like Michelangelo's David I read a great commentary on that the commentator suggested that the statue calls upon you to be far more than you are so there's that judgment and I think part of what happens to Moses here is that he's afraid to look upon God the god of Abraham that calls people to Adventure the god of Isaac the god of Jacob the god that calls people to Adventure and sacrifice and and then out of slavery as well is that ideal that's ultimately terrifying in some real sense and so Moses hides his face for he was afraid to look upon God their negotiation is interesting to me because God sort of comes forth here and lists his benefits right because he says I'm your God I'm the god of your people and so it's it's very interesting the back and forth between him and Moses and so you know he it's sort of he he's almost proving the case that he's the god to be set before other gods by identifying him as the god of his people and certainly the god to be said be before other gods by Moses given his given his cultural heritage right so I'm not only God I'm not only this Transcendent figure that that you would assume might be behind the unconsumed burning bush but the more particularized God that's already been identified as part of this tradition right and based on what Stephen was saying Moses's reaction to What to God's call is also one of attention you know he says here am I here I am that's all he can do he can just I'm I'm here and I'm paying attention to what is happening and this phrase is so important that it's repeated in other places in the Bible you see it in the story of Samuel for example who has that same reaction he hears the call and all he can say is I am here and I am attending now and so so it's interesting to see that this this idea of attention continues on in the story well it's it's this idea of attention is extremely important because it's easy to think of attention and cognition let's say or even rationality as somehow equivalent but they're importantly different because rationality builds towers of Babel let's say and rationality makes presumptions about the world but attention is a precondition for Revelation and for rationality and attention in is in and of itself a kind of openness to the Horizon of transformation and the more I would say there's a direct connection between being attentive and even being capable of healing in some real sense so if you're a clinician one of the things you learn in Carl Rogers the clinic nation was a particularly potent Raider on this notion that attentive listening in and of itself has a Curative capacity you let people unfold in front of you you encourage them to unfold in front of you and that's not even analytic thought there can be a strategic component of it but mostly it's it's just the devotion of attention and attention also in some real sense sheds light on the darkness because we only see what we attend to and what we don't see or what we don't perceive in the broadest sense is in some real sense not even there and so it's it's also attending like the rogerian theory also it's attending at the level of the nervous system it's attending all the way down right having enough having sufficient um confidence in your own world view to be able to open up and attend and embrace a Viewpoint that might be opposing and it's very interesting to me here that you know one of the things that seems to be prevalent in as with the story of Adam and Eve is shame right shame is one of the precursors of this the first thing is that you hide your face and so the calling is to back and forth and they this negotiation that continues is a drawing out and through shame in some regards because Shane's the first thing I think to overcome about your inadequacies to hold your your strength of openness in the opposition of a of something that is revelatory or different to you and it's a nervous system level engagement well Rogers talked about this cons this concept he called congruence and he believed that if you were going to enter into a therapeutic dialogues because Rogers was basically a Christian seminarian although he became an agnostic he was going to go practice as a missionary and so his thought is is absolutely saturated with Protestant liberal Christian presuppositions and he believed that in order to engage in a healing conversation so to actually be able to listen you had to be congruent and what he meant by that was that your your body and your emotions and your motivations and your rationality and your utterances and the way that you cast your attention were genuinely integrated all the way down and I think part of the yogic practice so when you practice yoga people don't know this generally but the postures the asanas those are more like dance moves then they are like the point of the exercise the the asanas are postures that you learn to adopt so that you can put your body in all sorts of different positions but once you master the asanas you're supposed to allow your body in some sense to move by itself so you're trying to take out Kinks and pain and all of that to move by itself like you might when you're dancing to align yourself properly so you can attain that pose the cross-legged pose so you're in a pyramidal triangular position and you're a stack that's integrated all the way up through you through your physiological layers those would be the chakras so that that Revelation can come forth without being impaired by any internal discordance and it always ends in shavasana which is the death corpse pose right it ends with corpse pose you lie still and you integrate and then you you arise again new Jordan because I put it slightly differently though I agree with everything said and you're talking about the extraordinary which we should see in the ordinary Stephen's exactly right I agree with everything you said but here you have the immensity of something quite Beyond any normal experience so we've got to remember more than half of the world have a belief that comes from this chapter because this is different from Hinduism this is different from atheism this is different from every other religion you know and you know say people like Rodney Stark monotheism properly understood as the single most powerful idea humans have ever had I think we've got to keep the immensity of what's Happening Here all you said is right but here it's elevated to an incredible level right well that would be the mysterium tremendum of the summer Barnum right I mean it's it's bad enough to encounter the good in one of its forms but to anybody's idea you can apply to other religions and so on so what do you think specifically differentiates this well verse 14 which we're coming to Amplified by say prophets like Isaiah you have a vision of God here there's nothing like it outside of the cosmos outside of History outside of humanity this is something immensely difficult different and I think we've got to recognize the radical uniqueness of it it's worth pointing out just on that point uh just to back up what Oz just said there's no hesitation at all uh over the significance of the burning bush the the bush is a vehicle for divine revelation what would have been much more common in the religious climate of his time would be to treat the bush as some sort of expression a form of divinity actual Divinity in and of itself yes absolutely just as the Egyptians would take as we'll see later the snake as something Divine a naturalistic way of understanding Divinity that there's no there's no pause there at all it's immediately Moses attuned to the Transcendent attuned to God speaking through an inanimate object an animate object but just a piece of a piece of nature there's no sense that he's trying to divanize or put sort of ultimate significance in just uh in a bush as would have been very common and has been very common in the the sort of across the vast way to the history of these two comments are why in the final analysis I I do believe that this is divine text I cannot think of a natural explanation for the Torah and the radical innovation of monotheism let alone ethical monotheism any more than I can think of a rational explanation for the creation of the universe or of the human being or Consciousness I it just as the creation of of the universe to me argues for the Divine or for Creator Capital C so does the the Torah and its radical new God argue to me for the creator of the text with a Capital C so as part of your point if I understand it correctly is that Moses turns to the burning bush which is a phenomenon that attracts his attention but then in some sense and this is to James Point too he sees through that uh anomalous event even though it's enormous and Powerful in its own right and then he sees something behind that that's the source of that anomalous and interesting event and then in some sense this extends to a vision that's beyond the cosmos itself right beyond the confines of time and space itself to localize the Transcendent not in the natural world not in the phenomenal world but beyond all of that and so that's part of what makes it terrifying and profound simultaneously that well depress it went further I mean Stephen's right yeah he there's attention but he wants to know why an explanation so that's the signal of transcendence but when he turns is not what he sees that's where I disagree with this what he hears and surely that's the significance you see right from you've got three Revelations of God first to Moses alone and then to all the Elders of Israel and then to the entire nation Deuteronomy 4 and it says you didn't see a form you only heard a voice and so it's always hearing Shema so we don't see and I was seeing as what is the normal foresight inside observation no hearing do you think that's associated with the emphasis on the word as a manifestation as a primary manifestation of God because nothing else can capture God we will see many sites I mean we will have to deny the text at some point because even the description of these feet at the top of the mountain there are these these images when When God Says you'll see my backside there's many visual images that will continue all the way through the the book of Exodus there's always the like or whatever it's the feed you don't see the face and no one you know anyway I don't want to press that but the word always comes before the image right the way through we need to make sense of the end of verse 6 in that case so Moses is hiding his face for he was afraid to look upon God I think there is a theory of Panic Dimension here and it suggested by the you know the the burning bush um and indeed that language of the the face um and the looking there's a beautiful late novel by C.S Lewis called till we have faces um and it's all about the vision of God and the dialectic of trying to understand yourself in terms of the Divine and it's also linked to this this theme of shame that that you mentioned the philosopher Max Sheila argued that shame is in fact a very important part of human identity so it's not just some sort of strange aberration but in a way coming to understand ourselves is a process that quite naturally involves an element of of Shame and I wonder whether the this element of Shame here in the face of transcendent goodness well he certainly recognizes himself as lesser than God which is something right especially when you're comparing him to the Pharaoh you would have at least in this narrative context exactly the opposite problem yeah but these aren't I don't think these are ultimately opposed to are they I mean if what's being revealed here is is as it were the ultimate order of being itself you know God is being revealed as that which is beyond nature but revealed through these signs that point to that beyond that which is beyond nature and this is where we'll see the great distinction between the god of the Israelites the god of the the Egyptians or the Egypt as Egyptians conceive of God is totally bound within the natural so it's both Beyond on the one hand but signified in what is visual as Beyond but it is at the same time understood through the word by the way just that's another unique I'm sorry I will belabor this all week please it is another unique thing to the Torah to the first five books of the Bible that God is the creator of Nature and not in it that's the significance of Genesis 1 more than any other significance there are many significant things but that is a radical Innovation and we today in my opinion uh the post-christian or post-trudeo-christian world is not atheistic it's Pagan we are reverting to Nature worship yeah so that's the worship of Gaia for example the notion of the Earth itself is in some real sense a self-regulating deity to which we should be subordinate the right and that too you shall rule over nature drives them crazy that that Genesis verse in a society Rife with anti-religious ideologies it can be incredibly challenging to ground oneself in what you know to be true and good to keep from descending into distrust you need to check out hallow the number one Prayer app in the world with over 10 000 audio guided prayers and meditations that will give you the tools to combat the darkness and overcome with the light with hallow you can explore different themes and types of prayer and meditation such as gratitude forgiveness and centering prayer you can also choose from different lengths of meditation to fit your schedule whether you have a few minutes or an hour with its user-friendly interface and hundreds of guided meditations the Hallow app has quickly become a go-to resource for people seeking spiritual growth and healing download the app for free at hallow.com Exodus you can set reminders and track your progress along the way so what are you waiting for download the Hallow app at hallow.com Exodus that's hallow.com X Exodus hallowed.com Exodus for an exclusive three month free trial of all ten thousand plus prayers and meditations yeah well Jonathan you had an interesting comment at one point that I remember us talking about the idea that the um the command to man from God was to subdue nature and your take on that you took apart the word subdue and you you took it apart oh okay so how so do you remember how the conversation you talked about the subduing of nature the point was to subdue nature is not necessarily to dominate it or even to extract instrumental value out of it but to put everything in its proper place right to subdue it to arrange it in a in the kind of cognitive hierarchy and perceptual hierarchy that you characterized as part of this mountain-like structure and so that I think the way to to for me to to understand it is that on the one hand there's a sense in which all things God is beyond all and that and that God is like you said outside let's say or above all things and then but there's also a manner in which to the extent that we are connected to God is the extent to which we actually exist right that is how we exist we exist to the extent that we are this that is our source and so this is this idea of of the hierarchy of beings you could say which is the notion that nothing has self-existence and this is a this is what ultimately When God says his name and this is how many of the church fathers interpret it that nothing has self-existence except God God is the only one who self-exists everything else if once you think itself exists then it ceases to exist it ceases to have any value and it only has value to the extent in which it participates oh yes and also the Tower of Babel problems well it's the Adam taking the fruit it's like it's the idea of Pride itself which is that pride is always trying to close yourself off and say I've got this I am I am self-causing I am self-existence and as soon as you do that you devolve you die because you're not you're embedded in in this hierarchy of being which is ultimately connected to the transcended source of all things and so the idea is all this discussion would be that all things reveal God to us to the extent that they do but they never give us God completely they they are they are Pointers they are they are steps in Jacob's Ladder which lead us all the way into the Transcendent but the Transcendent always escapes always always you know recedes in front of our appearing eyes uh but that those two movements together I think are super are very important at least at least in a in my Christian perception which is both the absolute Transcendence but then also the the grace of God which Flows In which fills the world with his presence and makes all of reality possibly a theophany and it's only because God is transcendent that he can be present to every ladder on the great as it were every Link in the great chain of being yeah and there is and it's not an arbitrary thing it doesn't mean you know it's not that everything can just be holy in every way it is it lays itself out in these in these beautiful powerful hierarchies and so there are images for example the image of a mountain or the man in which God will give the the pattern of the Tabernacle which is the most appropriate uh theophany it's the it's the way in which you can have more hints to how God reveals himself in the world and so they and the laws are the same God is saying this is the way but the whole world is full of his glory right we we believe that because or else how does the word the world can't completely exist outside God either it doesn't have it doesn't it's not like it's God and then the world has this autonomous existence it's the it's that God is beyond but that he he he out outpours into reality that's so different from a modern way of understanding God and religion in terms of this sort of two-tier architecture of reality with nature and then supernature and that sort of two-tier structure which emerges in early modernity probably a little bit before that is is a disaster for people trying to advance a strong case for the rationality of religious commitment because as it were supernature immediately becomes the realm of the spooky stuff it also allows God to float off into space yeah absolutely and to be separated from the World of Nature and therefore of scientific inquiry and so it gets relegated becomes then easy for Bertrand Russell to say well belief in God is equivalent to belief in a Flying Spaghetti Monster or rotating teacup but when do we have this notion of being right this I am that will be presented to us when we understand that being is not arbitrary being manifest itself to us in purposes in reasons and those reasons become the place where God you know once you once you encounter the true reason of something you are having a little theophany you're having a mini theophany and so so the idea that being isn't just arbitrary just things that exist but rather it has this natural flow of purposes and meanings then all of a sudden this this this the image that God gives of the I am it's like yeah he's the only he is the only one that's self-subsists in all things and their purposes Point towards that so uh something complicated emerges out of that as if this isn't complicated enough it's there's this so one of Jung's critiques of protestantism was that the critique of Catholicism is that it might fall prey to the authoritarianism that's in some sense implicit in the roman-like structure of the church and the hierarchy that's there but his critique of protestantism the danger there was that everyone would become their own church and then their identity would become self-proclaimed in some fundamental sense because with no mediating structures between the Divine and the person it's easy for the person in some sense to usurp the position of God and one of the things that puzzled me about the recent insistence that people can self-define their own existence is that they're attributing to themselves in some real sense the omniscience omnipotence and omnipresence of God because their stance is something like I am that I am that's why it's Pride yeah right right right and and I I really see those things as tightly linked it's one of the things that's tilted me I would say ethically in a more conservative Direction because even in the psychotherapeutic literature you see this rousseau-like underpinning which more or less assumes that sanity is part and parcel of the autonomous individual and so there's there's a resoleing element there there's a Protestant element and a classic liberal element and I've fallen prayed that to some degree by thinking of the sovereign individual as the fundamental unit of of value and but then I I and this is partly under the influence of Piaget and and the theorists of play and the people who made the case that identity comes out of negotiation that in order to be sane which is something other than let's say self-actualized in the in the narrow sense you have to be positioned in these hierarchical technical structures so you can't be saying without a partner without a long-term partner let's say or if you don't have a long-term partner you better have some children or some parents and if you don't have them you better have some friends and if you don't have them you better at least have some colleagues and a town and a city and a state and a country all the way up the hierarchy and that what the sanity then becomes is the symphony-like ordering of that entire structure rather than the autonomous health of the autonomous psyche self-defined also Conjuring up the notion that all of that embeddedness is nothing but an imposition in the manifestation of your autonomous self which is also something that Rousseau would tilt towards right but but Jordan that doesn't come from protestantism that goes right back to the early Temptation you shall be as God now protestantism certainly reinforces one extreme you're right about that he thinks they have heinous famous description of Marx you are a Godless self God right right right because because that's the alternative well that's a scary that's a very frightening thing if it's real and the lack of embedding is what is ripe for manipulation right because you can move you can move this is what we're seeing with sort of you know mob-like mentality throughout the culture across the spectrum because you can move people like a school of fish because they're not embedded in something and that's the tech in the text that's what we saw at the beginning Pharaoh that's what Pharaoh wants to do Pharaoh wants to reduce the Israelites to potential so that he can then rule over them and manipulate them he doesn't want families he doesn't want all these embedded structures which create this normal pyramid and those are alternative sources of power and structure as well that would that would be they don't have to become they don't compete the idea that a family is a power structure or a structure of of communion doesn't compete with our relationship with God it actually becomes a place where it can happen and that's why the law is right when the God gives the laws they're all modes of communion they're not just a bunch of like rules or moral rules they're methods of being together and of ultimately loving each other that's not the negotiation so Pharaoh makes them slaves obviously and Hayek would say that's what modern collectivism does makes us serves the road to serfdom it's the same yeah absolutely although High ex solution the sort of ultra libertarian solution can lead to a kind of atomization of the individual and as Greg said atomized individuals are easily controlled individuals right so and and the Lord said I have surely seen the Affliction of my people which are in Egypt and so he's re-emphasizing the notion that he's attending and also that he's the spirit that's responding to to their intrinsic and embodied desire to be free of slavery and have heard their Cry by reason of their task Masters for I know their sorrows all of that's a delineation of the notion that there's something intrinsically and fundamentally unethical about the enslavement of the of the Israelites and I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians away from tyranny and to bring them out of that land unto a good land in a large unto a land flowing with milk and honey unto the place of the Canaanites and the Hittites and the amorites and the parasites and the hivites and the jebusites now therefore Behold The Cry of the children of Israel has come unto me and I've also seen the oppression wherewith the Egyptians oppressed them okay so now we have the narrative structure of this text outlined here too and what you see is the the emphasis on the fact that the current tyranny is unsustainable and ethically undesirable and that it needs to be transcended and that the proper counter position to that is the hypothetical land of milk and honey and so that's well that's fat and sugar fundamentally and if you're a hungry people then that's definitely a vision of paradise but there's a there's an archetypal structure to this because we're always moving away from uh an insufficient and tyrannical current state it's not in sync with the Horizon of the future and it's corrupted by our presuppositions and our sins in some sense and we're always moving to a better place and that's actually the motive force in life and if you look at us neuropharmacologically and biologically what you see is that the systems that fill us with enthusiasm so that's the spirit of God in the etymological sense are the same systems that Mark our progress towards a a uh destination of value and so there's a direct concordance neurologically between the degree to which you're aiming up a steep pinnacle your movement towards that upper aim and the degree to which you're filled with enthusiasm and positive emotion and that also regulates negative emotion suffering and anxiety and so you see this fundamental narrative the fundamental narrative substructure in some sense of perception reflected here the Jordan with due respect you're making an archetypal again whereas this is historical and it refers to the Covenant with Abraham and the promise of land and that runs right through the Bible the promised land and that's what's being referred to right well then I would say that then to your point that would be a translation in some sense of this even more thinking biologically this would be a transposition of this fundamental biological Drive which is transhuman because it's not just human beings that have this goal-directed orientation towards the future it goes way down the phylogenetic chain but it's concretized here into geography and territory does that seemed like a reasonable mediation I have a question here to so what are the conditions in the text and and of Moses in the situation they call for God's attendance to this it's not like God was not aware previously that the Israelites were enslaved so what are the narrative conditions that cause this we talked a little bit about this yesterday about Moses character and Moses seems to be someone who's particularly attuned to Injustice and suffering and so there's a call in some sense in Moses to to respond to this and it seems that that's part of what alerts God I think that the slaughter of the children is is uh is also that call like we see we see in the in the story of Cain and Abel you see that pattern set itself up which is that the blood is calling from the earth you know that this Scandal is a is a call and so I think that that I think that the idea of the killing of the children is repeated um is as a repetition of already the neighbors Christ as well if tragic enough things happen to a community they're automatically arises a compensatory desire which is if the lowest thing is happening then there's an immediate call for the re-manifestation of the highest thing as a as a medicament but even behind the things you're talking about Genesis 15 the Lord predicts to Abraham they will go into slavery and the whole point of Israel is to be the counter Egypt and after they're released they're never to treat other people the way they were treated there's a tempering too with Moses I was thinking about your analysis of the meat shall inherit the earth right and and the the meaning of Meek that was always puzzling to me is those who have swords who keep them sheathed so it's very interesting to me that Moses one of his first adult actions is to kill an Egyptian who beat somebody right it's like you he has to have use of the sword before having the power to know when to have achieved to affect transformational change so he's undergone a sort of moral tempering in some ways of having access to determine what's too far and what's the right amount that opens them up well that definitely fills in a discussion we had yesterday about what happened when Moses killed the Egyptian because it doesn't go so well for him right he and it's because well in your analysis it's because he went too far it was necessary that he had that capacity but he went too far and he wasn't we talked yesterday we went too far I'm saying that that well he went too far and learned and was punished for it but you have to go too far to know what is too far you do feel he went too far I I like what he did okay what I'm saying is is that you have to go to you have to know how to use a sword in order to have it Sheed to then bring Transformations soldiers know best and so he had to be a warrior first in order to right and I was just curious because I it's a very a certain only a Christian commentary is often that he he sinned in killing the Egyptian and I and I have never accepted that but but doesn't abuse him to have killed the Egyptian not for us to think that maybe Moses is not exactly a paragon of Courage here I mean he only he looks left and right make sure no one's watching it's not exactly resistance of the regime and only then does he kill someone and then he he buries him to make sure no one would know that he did it and so it wouldn't have been gutsy to have done it publicly well I mean suicidal well one could debate that question but what I'm what I'm saying is that there's a moral principle at work surely but it's it's also let's say um it's it's by no means fully worked out it hasn't manifested himself fully to Moses by that point either and so you'd you'd say was it your point because if it was I I I'm fascinated because you asked the great question why did God intervene when he did for which I have never had an answer and I don't know if there is an answer but it's a very very good question does the narrative you asked imply any reason for God's intervening then and not earlier did you suggest and if you didn't I'll happily take credit for this I but if you did I have to give you the credit that in effect God was looking for the right person all this time well this touches and it's a very tricky issue because it it gets you into a conundrum when terrible things are happening to say Well they're happening in part because no one will stand up and forestall them but if you look at situations like the totalitarian States under the Communists it's certainly the case that people's willingness to not stand up even when they knew they should allow those totalitarian catastrophes to to mount and mountain mountains by the way was there was there a Soviet Moses I can't think of celson nedson was expelled he was expelled though and and uh so but that's an interesting and so on but right anyway I just want to know is that is your s well that's what it is it answer that for you in some way for me so I'm looking at it from a straight narrative perspective of how you make a structure and a story make sense so if we detach ourselves from from the spiritual just for a moment and what it is is that there's not there's not a hero who's worthy of having the ability to to to encounter the Divine in a manner that can be transformational yet so Moses is tempering is the story of right he comes sort of from no one right he's he's raised in in the way that he's raised and he also is is prone to a violent outbreak that shows courage but it's a younger version of Courage it's untempered and so he pays his Penance for that and is finally seasoned or he's he's seasoned sufficiently in his suffering to be at a point that he can take notice of what is revelatory and to engage with it in a manner that's transformation so then he's uh he's uh what do they call that a psychopomp oh my God don't tell me that that's the worst thing you can possibly be to exist on that border and that would require something to come up from mankind so to speak and something to come down from God simultaneously so there's some sort of meeting and then that becomes that person becomes a mediating figure that's right and that person's in engagement at cultural moments or in the life like people can be psychopomps for different people or for a culture well you think Dennis that seems to make sense if you think about it in terms of the prophetic tradition in in the Old Testament is that you get the societies that collapse in and of themselves and and they're they turn from God so to speak and they continue to turn from God and things just get worse and worse and worse and more tyrannical until someone pops up and is now willing to take on the verses this wonderful explanation uh suggests that the old soul God will act if we do right he won't he won't he won't act though entirely on his own no no well we have to prompt his actions that would also interfere in some sense with our Free Will and it also makes sense dostoevsky's strange comment that beauty would would save the world because you you could imagine in some sense that what that what Moses is having here when he encounters the burning bush is something like an aesthetic experience right it's profoundly attractive at least perhaps it's not beautiful but perhaps it is and so that beauty is calling to him and calls them into a relationship that then transforms itself into something Transcendent but he's also prepared for that characterologically well what like to Oz's point so I don't know if you covered this yesterday but there's so many parallels in the story of Moses and the story of creation and the building of the tap the Tabernacle also right there's it's it's embedded in the story of Genesis and what's very interesting to me is that if you just if Exodus was the first book we could say well if God speaks and there's no one to hear them does he really exist if God is appears but Genesis predates that so this is a story to say as you're saying that God is outside of right God is outside that's the revelatory thing that's why Genesis is first and then there's a parallel of showing this now with the Embrace of humanity because right in that okay so so there's this great Jewish commentary that I read I think I founded this in Jung as well and it was a meditation on the limitations of God and so it's like is in Cohen and so here's the proposition the question what does a being whose omnipresent omnipotent and um omniscient lack and you think well by definition nothing and it lacks limitation unless you're a Christian right right well it lacks limitations and so so and and that was an answer in some sense to why what was the question why God and manner in a sense twins and so and it hinges on this same idea is that there can't be someone who calls unless there's someone who receives and so but there is in this tradition right if Exodus was first we're rack with the Pharaohs because Genesis is first and because Exodus and the story of Moses's flight with you know all the water imagery and The Parting of the Seas right it's there's so many mirrors between Genesis and exodus including the construction of the Tabernacle and so because Genesis is first is what sets the foundation for the point that you two were bringing up and the the prophet son just pumping up is an all right Dennis and the Hebrew tradition this is where you have the separation of powers you have the monarchy the priesthood and the prophets and the role of the prophets is abiding role they're the social critics who bring people back to the Covenant so the covenantal idea do they emerge are they like Neolithic Shaman do they emerge by vocation are they are they called yes they're called by God and you have dramatic calls and you can run away like Jonah right that's the most standard well my sad analogy of of most Jews is that they're Jonah God has called us to bring the world to this text and most Jews have decided to flee who continue to be careful at the same time about sort of you know God's work you know Nature's work you know man's work I mean I think the overall uh message as you might put it is this is all in some sense God's work I mean the creation is God's work you know the running away is somehow out within God's will the hardening of the heart of pharaoh is within God's will Moses his own birth and then being put in the river is somehow I mean this this whole the grand narrative here is meant to be revelatory of the nature of what is most real and by definition nothing can fall outside of that but I guess maybe it's a matter of what would you call when you when you give people when you grant two people who are your staff let's say which is relevant to later imagery in here their own domain of autonomy and maybe that's part of this building the the hierarchy that reaches down from the heavens is that it is all under the Dominion of the The Entity that's superordinate that's beyond being let's say but that doesn't mean that each part doesn't have its part to play and its place and that that's actually real too yes I take Stephen's point but the first two chapters of Exodus actually uh God is curiously absent uh he he's it's really I think that I think that it's because there's a direct parallel with the flood and even the even the I'm sorry this is I don't want to sound harsh but like in terms of narrative like I I if we look at the actual narrative structure and Greg the the the killing of the the Hebrew children you have to understand it almost as if they're all dead except for Moses all the males have been killed except for Moses there's just one it's a reduction there's like this reduction so think about Noah as well like everybody's dead there's just one there's this reduction which which manifests the seed right when you so it's like the story of Superman is this is the same story it's like his whole planet is dead and now this last one is as if he's gathered into himself all of the nature of what he is and now he is going to he's going to re-cast it and so I think that that's at least narratively I know it might cause moral problems to people to think about it that way but at least I don't know because people don't like the the idea that God would just let the children of Egypt die but that pattern of the the killing of the children is repeated in scripture and in the story of Christ right right and then the story of Christ you have you have the same image where the King kills it kills the children and it's it's a it's it's a strange thing it's as if there's this concentration and then it it's not that God wants that to happen but that God transforms evil into good all the time that's what God does he takes the evil it's not that God wants evil but that he is constantly covering it with his with his grace and His glory and so it's like this is the worst thing that could happen like kill all the children and then all of a sudden God's like no there's one we're going to replant the seed and it's good and so you can't you can't get rid of it it's like it's it's meaning will return the law will return the Covenant will return you can't you can't get rid of it humans have no power to destroy creation to Stephen's point then because I found the hardening of the heart is very inter it's very struck by that going back to read it because it's like why keep hardening the heart right well it's very interesting to your point is is that in conditions that are the utmost extreme to have good flourish that in some in some regards is the story of the ultimate most condensed version of God it's the most extreme example right like Christ story right it's the same thing so it's not that it's a moral problem whether whether you view that as being literal metaphorical whichever way that you approach the text but it's it's also it's actually a it's actually the experience of everything everything works that way right so it's like Greek civilization dies and it's almost gone and so what do we do we try to save what do we save what do we decide what we're going to say so it actually condenses into its Essence and then that gets carried through to the next right it's an apple falls to the ground it rots everything falls apart and then oh surprise there's that hidden thing inside that seed which will now which will now Sprout up again well that's right and that's in in alchemy it's the jewel matone's head right in Freudian catharsis it's going back to the point of greatest trauma to find the thing that will liberate you right it's that's it's not only true historically and culturally it's true psychologically sociological we also we glossed over the fact that in some sense that all the Hebrew boys were put to death and that there's a there's a structural parallel between that and what happens in Christ's time because it's also an emphasis on the motif of lowly birth Dennis you referred to that yesterday that Moses is the son of two Ordinary People but it's not just that he's the son of two Ordinary People he's the son of two ordinary people born into tyrannical catastrophe under the threat of death and I will return to the archetypal in some sense there in that well that's true of all of us to some real degree and we're even wrestling that within our about that within our culture now because we tend to view our culture as an atrocious tyranny and so we're children of an atrocious tyranny and all of us of course at Birth are susceptible to death because human beings are unbelievably vulnerable at Birth and so it's it's it's the it's the lot of mankind so to speak and then out of that terribly threatened beginning can come the redeeming hero and that's definitely what happens in the Moses story and and and it's the Eternal story and it's all it's reflective in that sense of of the of the story that you just laid out too do you all agree with Jonathan's comment that God turns all evil into good is that a generally agreed to proposition at this table they certainly were the the you might say the philosophically arrivable idea that God is omnipotent has to lead I would say we're going to find out I mean that's partly what we're doing for the record I I've never understood that that line and I don't mean it at all disparagingly I I my love for America's Christians is well known and the Calamity of the death of Christianity is to me the Calamity of our time I want to make that clear but Christian callers began telling me that phrase I had never heard it in 15 years of Yeshiva that uh and and I'm troubled by it because if it's true then a why battle evil number two it it's doesn't it I mean why not just leave it all up to go yes if he's going to turn it into good I'm gonna watch TV I don't understand why that isn't the rational well did you see some of that yeah I just want to say one more thing it reduces the the evil that people have suffered in my opinion I I can't tell a Jew who who saw his children gassed Hey listen God's going to turn this into good I mean maybe in the Hereafter that I do believe in very deeply but you don't mean in the Hereafter you all meant in this world no oh oh well okay so in the ultimate analysis oh in the ultimate okay but all right so then then I'll go I'll go back to number one why fight evil if he turns it into good anyway well I would say from I can't speak theologically I would say the way I look at that is the same way in some sense that I uh interpreted the story of Moses is that one of the manners in which God transforms evil into good is by calling on us to do so and it isn't it without our I wouldn't say compliance but we don't transform a bad into good either we destroy bad hopefully but we don't transform it the per the the raped woman remains raped whether whether if if we defeated the Nazis but the Nazis caused I don't know tens of millions of people to to die horribly the question is not whether terrible things in fact utterly horrific things happen is whether there's any possibility of redemption of those very things okay so by the way and I say this with love and I mean it I'm not being in any way patronizing that's a Christian view of of suffering uh so I got to tell you this forgive me the uh what do you see as alternative Dennis I I I'll say it in a moment I just want to tell you how interested I am in this subject so I have I have always asked the question why to any phenomenon since my drove my parents crazy so I always everybody knows Jews complain more than other groups certainly more than Christians so that's a given I I even have a test get a Christian get a Protestant Catholic church and a Jewish synagogue group together for lunch an ecumenical lunch and I arrange in advance to serve over ripe uh uh cantaloupe which group will complain the most everyone knows the answer the Jews will complain the most okay so that's not a riddle the riddle is why and I have a I have a fun Theory which I won't bother with and I have a serious Theory and the serious theory is Jews look at suffering with the following statement it stinks and Christians look at suffering as being Christ like and that's a the difference in views of suffering which is fine I I love the fact that we don't agree on everything because we enrich each other but I really do believe that the view of suffering is different the word Redemption as as was just used that God will redeem this suffering is is not a concept I am I am theologically or emotionally comfortable with mainly just interject I I think that that's extremely profound and something that we ought to bear in mind uh symbolically so um I'll bracket the theological Dimension to it but if you think of the symbolism of the cross then that is symbolism of the transformation of that which is unspeakably humiliating being tied up naked tortured to your death the most appalling death imagined in the Roman Empire as an image that is ultimately an image redempted yes um now there is a very powerful set of images in the Hebrew tradition of separating yourself from Evil right so one of them is here in the book of Exodus you separate yourself from the oppressor uh so you're not transforming the oppressor you're not transforming the evil you're separating yourself from from it and of course another I'm not making a textual critical a Germanic Point here but of course the Babylonian experience is also an experience which is significant in relationship to this narrative right so the re-establishment of um the the uh this over the temple in Israel after the Babylonian exile so there's this very powerful Jewish or Hebrew Narrative of Separation set yourself apart exactly now to some extent there's a counter Christian imagery which is not that of Separation but as it were of integration and transformation now that seems to me a very intriguing opposition of I'm just talking about symbolism I was not brought up in the tradition you're describing them but for me a one-sided very lopsided View and this judgment you take what happened to Sodom or you take the prophets are outraged against evil or our Lord you know the tomb of Lazarus it says once he wept and three times the Greek is furious you know I I don't recognize what you're saying I was taught you should fight evil and overcome it you were brought up more Jewish than most Jews no well so this is let me throw something out to the table and I don't even know if I agree with this it's just the notion so first of all um we'll bookmark the the overripe cantaloupe because I wouldn't stand for that so that's proof of that's proof of your argument here because I don't know what's wrong with you yeah I mean sir that kind of experiment is just unconscionable so first I want to just have that stated clearly but so part of the Jews being the chosen people part of that is to bring peace right that's part of being the chosen people is that right I think it's well ultimately this piece because people will come to God and then God wants us to be peaceful but part of being the chosen people is to negotiate that with people of other faiths right okay so maybe having a different orientation towards suffering is part of the role of being the chosen people to keep calling attention when Christians are being perhaps to a Jewish mindset to accommodating I like both approaches I I just wanted to illuminate that I didn't resonate to the original point of God turns everything into good the evil remains evil our task is to conquer it but you can't transform it the the the the the the tortured individual was tortured you can't untorture the person I agree what did Jordan we warned you yesterday 15 minutes yet I just this is a phrase here I just want to reread because I just find it so unbelievably beautiful and that is and the Lord said I have surely seen the Affliction of my people which are in Egypt and have heard their Cry by reason of their task Masters for I know their sorrows I mean the claim here that the Cry of the human heart that that any suffering or sorrow is present to the creator of all things is it isn't perhaps it's absurd perhaps it's idiocy at least in US responds to that I mean if if if we're suffering and this Bears on the other point about the Redemption of suffering to some degree I mean you do you do see people grow as a consequence of contact with adversarial circumstances and privation and I know this I know the moral issue you're dealing with here because you don't want to justify Evil by the good that it might be transformed into that doesn't justifies I don't know if you asked me but you mentioned yesterday well you did you said what do I resonate to the notion that Israel was built thanks to the Holocaust that would be a good example of what you're talking about and I I said I was horrified by the notion right right right right right right but you also agree that when people face adversarial circumstances and even sometimes is not the same as crucifixion or a gas chamber that's there's a finality to that evil you can't grow from dropping dead you can grow if you continue to live there's a finality to the evil if biological death is death okay once we go to the Hereafter which I'm an adamant believer in then uh then then but we can't depend on that with regard to evil I know that God will punish Hitler doesn't mean I don't fight Hitler here I don't think I don't I've never I don't think I've ever heard anybody suggest otherwise like to at least when I was suggesting that God agree with you but I'm only asking if God does turn all evil into good why fight evil well because of this fractal structure like we are the sons of Adam right we are the mediators we are the ones that God put as those responsible for creation and so we have to play the we have to we have to become the hands and the feet of of God we we have to we are the afraid or else how is it going to happen and even in the story of Exodus right God doesn't just do it alone right he could God could have done anything I could have just done it alone he's like no I'm going to choose a man and I'm going to work through him and then not only him but then I'm going to have Aaron and then I'm going to have the Levites and then I'm going to add this body so that all of this can happen through distribution yeah this distribution of of God's power into into into Humanity so I think that that's the way that I see it that we are when we when we don't fight evil then we are not participating in God's desire yeah so just just because God has the capacity to correct Injustice at you know eschatologically as it were you know beyond death doesn't I suppose license a kind of laziness uh in the face of Injustice in the here and now uh part of our image bearingness perhaps out of the fact that we the reality that we bear the image of God is that we as it were act as he would act act as he would want us to act so so do you suppose this is I mean I've I've wondered about this Christian notion that in some sense Christ Tran triumphed over tragedy and death and even over hell and then because that's a Christian claim and then you think well if that's the case then what's up with all the tragedy and malevolence and hell and it seems to me it's a matter of a confusion between two types of temporality is that something can be finished in an eternal sense like in an absolute sense where is it still has to take place temporally so the fact that this has been accomplished in the I am the Alpha and Omega sense doesn't mean that we still are not called upon to bring forth the conditions that would make that possible so when is the seed in the place the seed in the tree again it's like there's the seed and then you have the fruits that that come after but this in the seed is everything that the tree can be right it has it all but then it has to actually deploy in time and space and in into facing all the the the idiosyncrasies that it'll have to face it's a very interesting point Jordan because I guess from God's Timeless perspective assuming that God is a Timeless being and I think there's warrant for that in the pages of Exodus and elsewhere you might say that God apprehends all reality as a kind of blinding flash a similar a blinding flash of simultaneity and evaluates it in those terms in those as it were Timeless terms and it may be though it's difficult for us to grasp this caught up in the horrors of the Holocaust and and uh other tragedies it's difficult for us from our temporal perspective to grasp what that kind of evaluation might be you know we're still trapped in the pages of the book even though the book might exist in totality and and in some strange sense we're writing it as we go but that doesn't also mean that the final Victory hasn't been attained I mean those are very difficult Concepts to Grapple with simultaneously but it's possible to say that that sort of that's that structure has got timelessly apprehends it isn't better it doesn't isn't more freighted with value and significance and Beauty than say a structure in which no moral actions occurred at all uh no good no evil right right well that I would say in some sense that's the question of the ethical utility of being itself is if being as good as God pronounces it to be continually when creation is first unfolded then the struggle and the suffering are worth it in the I don't know what in the in the total view of things that that is a problem that's the limits question you said right in the absence of suffering there's no limit right so there's nothing to to throw yourself up again there's nothing to be to Define meaning if there's not suffering so then you're sort of Full Circle to is that a is that a cruel God is that a question well the answer to that seems to be something like well you have these limits and they're mortal limits and they they do Mewtwo subjection to malevolence and tragedy and so what's the antidote to that and the antidote is something like to conduct yourself in a manner Guided by what's even higher than death and Hell and then you can live in the face of suffering and malevolence and and have your cake and eat it too in some sense right unless God hardens your heart as he did the pharaoh's heart then you don't send a chance yeah yeah well hopefully you haven't set yourself up for that to happen so it was too late for the fair well like with Moses yeah that's right exactly yeah yeah so now therefore Behold The Cry of the children of Israel has come unto me and I've also seen the oppression where with the Egyptians oppressed them another restatement of the fact that oppression and tyranny and slavery are intrinsically wrong come now therefore and I will send thee unto Pharaoh that thou may bring us forth my people the children of Israel out of Egypt and Moses said unto God who am I that I should go unto pharaoh that I should confront the king and the Tyrant that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt and God said certainly I will be with thee and this shall be a token unto thee that I have sent thee when thou Hast brought forth the people out of Egypt ye shall serve God upon this mountain and Moses said unto God behold when I come unto the children of Israel and shall say unto them the god of your fathers has sent me unto you and they shall say to me what is his name what shall I say unto them so we can see here that Moses is pretty perplexed and puzzled by the the the and he's he's a man who's capable of Shame and and sees himself as lowly in relationship to the Transcendent we already know that and so he's completely perplexed by the realization and no wonder that it's up to him it's also funny there's a little bit of over ripe cantaloupe going on here too Dennis because it's like God has appeared right and God has said I will be with you and he's like you know he's got all these objections it's pretty funny it's like well I've sort of laid this out well and there's a burning bush and we've we've had this dialogue and he he's committed on goals like well what you know I don't speak that well I mean we're going to get to all of the is that humility or Pride why Pride well because it's God telling you and if he says you're the guy that's good that's good it's another one of those fetching you know what what what's the old line you're not great enough to be that humble something like that yeah so by the way he goes from who am I to who are you yeah yeah it's a very funny uh that's the other thing that's embedded in here is like well if I'm gonna go tell these people that God sent me it's like what am I supposed to tell them and that's when we get into a very complex part of the text because this hasn't been I think it's important though that he doesn't speak well and I think that that's also because what's going to happen is that because he doesn't speak well then in many ways not just also because you then become like a vehicle between God and Aaron and the people he becomes a vehicle for God's word because the speech doesn't come from him it's not him and when he stands up and does things you know but but then God is saying no you're it's like you don't have to it's almost saying you don't have to speak well because I will be speaking through you you will become a vehicle for me this was so interesting to me with the bringing in of Aaron because like for me as a Storyteller it's like right you know you elevate the Storyteller right it's the messenger but then Aaron the minute he has a chance to do anything like you know is running off making golden calves and it's like so it goes back to what you're saying that Moses he's not the direct recipient of the Divine reservation either he's the second he's the second order Moses doesn't work without him and he's completely adrift without Moses so it's very funny yeah yeah if that's not a representation of the relationship in some sense between the genuine prophet and the politician because the politician is necessary and has to play this game where Victory is everything and is going to be swayed in some sense by pragmatic and ideological concerns and that's actually necessary in order to bring the prophetic into the realm policy right you can't do without that you can't just be above politics you can have John the Baptist like screaming out in the desert that doesn't make laws like it's not good for them right right right right right right right or Elena so by the way it's a very sad fact it seems to me we're stuck in in human life we want leaders who don't want to be leaders that's true that is so true that's right right yeah that's right yeah so what do you mean by that that we'd rather have the 90 not all 90 want to be leaders because they want to be leaders not because they want to do immense good and have no Alternatives yeah but the guy who's like that doesn't become a leader right yeah yeah no it's really if God appeared to be in a burning bush I'd run for president but in the meantime I have no interest in doing this right well it's also the I think that part of that it's like the Heisenberg uncertainty principle too because as people start that's what that's what I've come to realize absolute power crops absolutely means I used to think it was like you get to a certain point and you just get headstrong and you have all the power in the world but as you start to engage in the act of leadership there's so many temptations there exactly exactly it's even if you're even if you're somebody who started out with good intentions the will to resist that right that's the active Point you're entirely right yeah well and you've got to ask yourself too what do you need to fortify yourself against those Temptations right when yes and and friends who will tell you the truth and you need to be embedded in these hierarchical structures yeah there's no notice I once had a I do a lot of throwaway lines I I love the Absurd that keeps me sane out of nowhere on my radio show I once said you know folks wife in Sanskrit means she who finds flaws in her husband I totally forgot I ever said that it was one of my crackpot throwaway lines and I moved on with the show you have no idea how many people I have met at speeches you know Dennis that's Sanskrit definition the Hebrew word from which help meet is translated in the King James version yeah it means beneficial adversary that that's a more accurate connection the one that means equal yes equal and that's right it means his equal it's never translated correctly right the Hebrew is a helpmate who is equal to him right right and so does it have that beneficial adversary yes because negot also means against right right right right and well so you know there's a biological it's called opponent processing and if you want to make a it's partly and partly why we have two hemispheres and not one if you want to make a very fine finally gradated discrimination judgment you need two opposing forces and so for example imagine you want to just do something as simple as move your hands smoothly this way okay you can do that it's pretty smooth but this is way smoother and you do that by pushing against and then you can calibrate unbelievably precisely and so if you have this adversarial relationship then you can calibrate much more precisely incidentally how we've discussed that's also true conservativism and true liberalism as a force to negotiate complex change in a manner that smears right right corrupted it's a mess yeah well the conservative stand for what is and the Liberals in some sense stands foreign it's between those two yeah that's the necessity for free speech okay so now and God says unto Moses I am that I am now that's This is complicated because this can be translated and has been many many ways because the tense my understanding is the tense of the verb is indeterminate so it could also be I was that I am and I will become what I will become and so it's not only self-referential so God in some sense says that he is the essence of being itself or but it's not just being in the present it's all the past all the present and all the future all at once and so here here's some other translations of that I am that I am the essence of being a cross time these are biblical translations there's an element of self-reference an element of awareness an element of becoming as unfolding an idea that that which was hidden will be revealed an element of to know the place for the first time in the T.S Eliot sense the distinction between being an objective existence all of that seems to be Tangled Up In This mystery of God's name and and he said thou Thou shalt thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel I am so it's is it being itself something like that being and becoming the ground of being the ground of being has sent me forth to address it'll just help everybody I think that in Hebrew there's no am there's no to to be has no present verb by the way it's very common Arabic doesn't have it Russian doesn't have it because let's say I want to say in Russian I am a doctor it doesn't matter or I am Dennis yeah Dennis everybody knows you don't need am is really unnecessary when you think about it I Dennis is the same as I am Dennis there's no question to The Listener oh he is Dennis so I don't it's an interesting question what does the presence tense of the verb to be serve when it's it's not really necessary but that's so however it's not right to translate this as I am what I am it really is I will be what I will be that that is the Hebrew may I say though and this comes back in the way to Oz's point about the uniqueness of this passage right so this uniquely theistic perspective um is that I'd sort of agree with that but but I think one has to Nuance it a bit and partly if we go back to the you know moreover he said I am the god of thy father the god of Abraham the god of Isaac the god of Jacob and Moses hit his face so there's this curious tension between the tribal side of this deity right so it's the god of a particular people but also this universal dimension right so it's a God who is not actually a tribal God at the same time like the god of the Egyptians right or the god of the Phoenicians or the the whoever so there's that interesting tension between the link with a particular people but also the universality the other thing I just wanted to say was um that uh notwithstanding all that you said about the Hebrew given the context in which this was translated through Alexandria and not least because of a Jew because of because of Philo and and philos uh um significance in that very significant uh great speaking Jewish culture um in the Septuagint that um passage is translated using the language of Plato so it then becomes so where Greek is an extraordinary language in the sense that having a definite article and the capacity to build participles in in uh so what is it in Greek I am the being I am the being as opposed to that which is fleeting and so that's how it's interpreted from flight from five minutes so there we go so it does it so what we get there is something very extraordinary so of course we're right you're right to say this is something in a sense uniquely he break this is the the great hip you know hebraic Jewish contribution to western culture but it's fused actually um with an Athenian element one might say you know so and hence this extraordinary is that part of the Union between the Greek logos so of course when when um you know and then of course is translated into Latin as um or there I am who I am and and but that tradition of linking it into um uh this this philosophical tradition with its rather different uh background means that in the 17th century uh my ancestors in Cambridge as it were spiritual rather than uh literal could say that they were platonists because Plato was merely the attic Moses you know um of course again quoting alexandrians so we still have this interesting Fusion here okay so one of the things I've been trying to puzzle out here recently with the postmodernist insistence that even science itself is only an epistemological game in some sense it's only a Tower of Babel and their dispensation with the Transcendent object is that it seems to me that on the on the Greek side of the logos equation maybe and the rational side that sort of branched into the Enlightenment and science the there's a recognition of the transcendent that seems to be echoed in this platonic sense that allowed us to posit the existence of a Transcendent object right because for a scientist there's a scientific theory but the scientist knows that the theory which is the map is not the territory but it's such a weird thing to pause it because if the reality isn't encapsulated in your conception then it's unconceptualizable it's just a Transcendent entity right it's it's a being beyond your conception and it might be an object it is for scientists but the fact that it doesn't bear any it it doesn't exist preconceived by your preconceived notions and then you refer to it you defer to it as a scientist you say well this is the way I think reality is and this is the way it's manifested itself to me but I will test it and then I'm willing to be corrected by the Transcendent object and I don't know if you can get that this is why I thought you know with the nietzschean announcement of the death of God the death of the Transcendent deity that we might have also seen the demise of objective science because we don't know to what degree science also depends on this belief in a being that's beyond conception right like technically Beyond conception I think so there's a lot to that and we've got to be careful about how maybe we're you're using the word transcendence in two different ways so in the first sense transcend the trans Divine transcendencies Transcendence of space-time of the entire of all reality distinct from God himself but then you moved into talking about Transcendence in the sense of what transcends our perceptual and cognitive capacities is the scientific Inquirer I think scientific inquiry is always sort of hedged in we you know we can't jump outside our conceptual skin we can't jump outside our perceptual skin our linguistic skin this is the strategy that the structuralist we can't jump outside our a priorary conceptions to space and time that might also be epistemological right yeah certainly can't can't thought that yeah that space and time are like goggles and all kind of realities um and we could probably part that one for now but there are other senses in which science does need genuinely Transcendent react to appeal to genuinely Transcendent realities a good example would be mathematics um the more it's not as if the more scientific discoveries we make the less mathematical those conclusions are becoming um science is increasingly freighted with mathematics in fact a lot of physics now just is mathematics because as it were our ability to do physics through mathematics outstrips our technological capacity to to as it were well they're embodying capacity to grasp all right but we are appealing that to a domain that is not outside space it's outside time that exists necessarily exists no matter what um and and that is a precondition of successful scientific inquiry that's not open to being constructed in additions too that seem to unite the belief in a Transcendent daily with the belief in a transcended object if the purpose of the scientific inquiry and the pursuit of Truth in that direction is to improve the lot of mankind rather than to make us miserable slaves let's say or to reduce the Earth to Radioactive ashes then an ethic is guiding the scientific Enterprise and so this is something I really learned from Jung and and I think all the work that's been done recently on the the uh what would you call it the necessary ethical framing of attention points in the same direction is that if you don't approach the object with a relationship with God in mind than what the the wisdom the object reveals to you can easily be put to hellish purposes well I think you made this point in your Genesis lectures that there is real warrant in in Genesis in in Exodus 2 for tying to the marriage of goodness and being that the two are really the same thing we talk about good and we talk we talk about goodness and we talk about being but they are really in the classical tradition certainly in the monotheistic tradition these are two aspects of the same thing and so that might just be connected to connect it to your thought that scientific inquiry in rendering being and reality more intelligible is itself a disclosure a rendering of of goodness itself yeah well so that's that's something we hope that's almost like that's another awesome that's to be brought into symphonic alignment right yeah right yes that's a good good way yeah greater Attunement to the way and mathematic mathematics can be that right scientific inquiry can be that they're all it can be beautiful even though it's immaterial they have to keep engaging for alignment right with something else well or or we get discordance in trouble those those are the Alternatives so I thought I'd just bring out the the beautiful way you put that James that the this revelation of being itself is then also revealed as good in its Transcendence and here you have God as a as a as a verb however that verb might be rendered not an object not a not a river not a not a not a not a cow or a tree or or the Sun or or whatever but uh as a verb uh as a as a Transcendent you might say activity that is in all things and yet in that goodness that goodness is particular it's it's a it's a Transcendent activity that that here in this text right here is said to to to care for human life you know they heard the Cry of the Egyptians and and I don't want to read this this text through the New Testament but it does seem to me that what's being suggested here is very similar to you know the the Lilies of the valley and this this not a spirit not not a lash loss as Hopkins puts it and so what you have here in some sense I want to ask the table here is what you have here is this is something like the suggestion that God is revealed as love I mean in this in this specifically understand that well yeah well when I when you were speaking about that I was thinking well what's the maternal spirit that re that responds to The Cry of a baby you you can't exactly attribute that to the particular mother because it's not the mother it's the maternal Spirit that's responding and then that's a reflection of the Divine so that would be a reflection of mother Mary from a Christian perspective let's say and it really isn't it's a Transcendent phenomena what crying brings forth is love really that and and so the Cry of an infant brings forth maternal love and that's not that's not something that's Bound in the individual in any sense at all it's it's it's something Transcendent and it's Transcendent in that it transcends any given individual and so then that begs the question what ontological status does it have right and we can't answer that question because we don't know how our own existence and our own Consciousness is bound up with the structure of being itself but it's but suffering definitely but can call forth contempt it can call forth hatred but it can definitely call forth love and then love is the antidote to that suffering so and and I do think it's reasonable to say that that's in some real sense how the god of our of our heroic ancestors manifests itself through us is that you see the suffering and that's what's happening with Moses you see the suffering and you're open to it so you're willing to grieve because of the suffering and not deny it and and that's the taking on of that suffering and it's the fact of the taking on of that suffering that cows forth within you a counterposition that's certainly what's happening to Moses I mean he's having a dialogue with God about the terrible catastrophic suffering of the Hebrews and he's obviously willing to take that on even though he's leery about it and no bloody wonder he's willing to take that on as a as his Destiny right as his destiny so despite his insufficiency you know well then you can borrow that down to neurology Evolution and hormones and to your point right that reaction of a mother to the Cry of a baby right you it can be proved out here but that's not all that it is right because then you're into the terrain of the intellect that falls in love with itself right it's a line it's one piece of it but the pattern should be right isomorphic well and I think it is like I think I mentioned yesterday I don't remember if it was in this context but Franz dewal's work on the structure of social hierarchies in chimpanzees shows pretty clearly that stable chimpanzee troops are predicated on the spirit of peacemaking and reciprocity that's the fundamental principle it's not power it's and so even among chimps there's this ethical right there's it's ethical interaction there's no real other way of of saying or your argument about the the ratio of of dominant to submissive rats in exactly the same thing it's the spirit of play that keeps rat societies alive but that thing doesn't exist on its own is just an odd rat Behavior no right that's all about this Asana alignment well and you see well pankcept discovered play circuitry and mammals you also see it in birds I mean so that Spirit of voluntary Association and voluntary play which is I think really in some real sense the antithesis of power that's so deeply instantiated biologically that it has its own independent circuitry so you see there in alignment and you'd expect that why wouldn't there be alignment between the biological and the Transcendent how could they're not well we've lost that right we've lost this is the not to derail but our avatars of meaning getting removed from the bases of meaning we were discussing this earlier and so we're we're removing we're viewing things in their own little um bubbles right in more ways than just our Twitter that's the danger of reductionism in some sense that's right that's the Tower of Babel too but are we introducing a second yardstick with those sorts of evolutionary analyzes because it seems like the Benchmark there is not sort of goodness or Transcendent goodness or obligations successfully discharged but simply survival success James I think what will happen is that as the biological view of what constitutes appropriate strategies for survival expands it will increasingly detail with the ethical requirements because well for example what dewalis found out is that just and this is a step in that direction is that what's not dominance that that makes for social organization it's something like reciprocity and and you might say well it's still too narrow to construe that as something only in the service of the propagation of genes which is how Dawkins would look at it and I would say well what do we know about genes they're really really complicated and God only knows what they're up to and so as the biological Vision expands and the theological Vision expands they're likely they're likely I think we can at least say that genes don't exercise morally significant free agency and therefore don't bring about actions that we could give we could evaluate in in a moral way the idea I think that the word survival is probably the bad it's a bad word in this context because it if you use the term the the continuation of being let's use that word instead that is what what makes being continue and if and if you see it that way then all of a sudden it's not just a question of survival and then this idea that God reveals himself as the source of being and then not only that but then he will reveal to the people this is how you be right it's not just I am that I am then he's going to say this is if you want to be in communion with me this is how you have to act this is how you have to you mentioned earlier Jonathan I think correctly you drew attention to it Jordan the this human the human the doctrine is kind of human exceptionalism that we find in Genesis and Exodus the the human beings have a kind of dominion and a kind of power to subdue the created order and that's a responsibility there's a responsibility in that I think it presupposes that we have even if that we can ex think of ethical requirements at the certainly in a non-human sense there is some sort of special ethical requirement special kind of it's clearly the case that we are self-conscious in a way that other animals aren't and the way that's explained is that we bear the image of God that is to say the explanation is given is that there is some aspect of us that is not biological well God is God is also here he knows that he is that he is and so do we we have that self-reflection we've got a humans always have to be fully understood upwards and it's never just downright and isn't that there as well in that that point you made about I don't know who it was now that's about you know where Moses says am I you know who am I who am I and then um you know God says well I am uh and and so there's this is there not there a sense of the the yearning and it linked to that question of well who in the human soul right the desiderium naturality this this natural yearning which is the problem for the naturalist I would say that there is this Instinct in the human soul for Transcendence a yearning for Transcendence which we find depicted in this um In this passage of that desire for something ultimate for something ultimately good ultimately true you know there's a literature on voluntary psychedelic use among animals so even as low as flies so yeah and there's quite a developed literature and so that yearning for the Transcendent might I mean it's particularly what would you say magnified in the human case but that seems to be reflected at nervous system levels way down the chain of complexity it's really fascinating I go back often to that study they did with groundhogs that were risking to alert when a predator was near at risk of themselves and then they saw that their their immediate progeny worn in the area of risk and they couldn't figure out why they were risking themselves it's like was this some great heroic act what they figured out is with whatever the specified range was of risk if there was enough cousins that could constitute one half of the DNA of a of a of Offspring than it would alert like they knew at all times from from scent and by orientation in the community what would cause they were situated socially well right and so just real quick I just finished the point but so just because they're that's basically is like a hero's calling right to go forth on the benefit of the community and just because that happens to be something that's encoded genetically doesn't make that any less right so how is it encoded genetically right we get back to your the question that Jonathan keeps kind of poking at that if everything everything goes back it's like which is the seed and which is the tree right if the genetic coding is the same thing as a hero's journey to go out to go forth at risk uh to Endeavor voluntarily into the face of a risk well you see that reflected in the abrahamic call I mean Abraham has called out to this great adventure but God tells him forthrightly that his descendants will outnumber the stars and so you say well there's there's an alignment there between the Divine Call to Adventure and reproductive success in the most blatant literary in in the most blatant literary sense but Abraham is free to refuse and it's morally praiseworthy that he that he accepts and that he accepts his Destiny and I think that that's that's very significant that there must be something that transcends in a in human agency or in any morally significant act there must be something in the agent that transcends determinism transcends whether it's genetic or I think well there has to be in some sense because you can't I think one of the conversation one of the consequences of my conversation with Roger Penrose assuming Penrose is right he's been read a lot about a lot of things is that a system cannot exist in a universe constituted like ours that's only deterministic because the Horizon of the future is literally not deterministic you cannot compute The Horizon of the future algorithmically now I know people who would dispute that but but Penrose isn't one of them so you can't say that it's not a scientific it's controversial it's a very good argument against computational theories of mine yes and that's really what he's focuses the other the other view is more because at the risk of being simplistic bring it back again to the uniqueness of the story and the immensity of what happens here and this is a world-shaking incident for certain reasons I mean every time I go to Cairo I look at the Great Pyramid of Khufu it's incredible and they've been there a thousand years before Moses how the Dickens I said you Greg I want you to free the uyghurs I mean something like that is what he's being called to and he's got a confused identity well he's got a slavish people he's got an impossible regime to overcome the longest lasting one in all human civilizations and one of the most powerful well and he has only the immensity of who he meets here is enough to call him to that well and it's not he doesn't just free the Hebrews from the Egyptians he frees sequential multiple generations of people over a span of two thousand years from whatever Tyrant happens to impress them and that's really something better or worse uh Oliver Cromwell says Exodus was my precedent so so you take the Negro spirituals go down Moses right right exactly why does this incredible text of Freedom Inspire Philippi it's the difference that the Lord makes so maybe that's the English to the to the the victory of Christ in some sense is that Moses didn't just triumph over the 10 temporal Egypt he trans he triumphed over the Eternal Egypt and we can see that playing itself out but people still have to do it and so you could say well the Christian view at least is that Christ triumphed over death and hell but that doesn't mean that people don't have to still do it that's the significance I think of Jesus remarking in I think is John chapter 8. before Abraham was Amy I am and it's interesting the immediately after that I think it says and they went away and and plotted to kill him or bought it plotted to reported to stay in him right this is an incredibly provocative yeah you might say a thing to say that's right just kind of an alignment whether he says elsewhere I think in John 10 that I and the father are are one it's it's incredibly provocative um so there's a political Dimension but there's also a metaphysical universal dimension that is that is encoded into this strange saying I am that I am or I will be what I will be I think it's quite instructive that there's disagreement and and deep ambivalence among translators and between Jews and Christians as to how we how we understand this name that we that it's sort of ungraspable we talked about the apathetic yesterday the way that you know you can't you could Moses is not naming God he's receiving a name but even that name is is it's like a strange name it's named it's not a name it's exactly it's as if the name of God appropriately can't be fitted into the system of human naming to us exactly exactly and we can't we can develop a taxonomy of of the natural order in virtue of our Command to have dominion and uh over nature and to subdue it and to name the animals and so on but we can't name name God that would be elevating ourselves to as it were getting to us it's so interesting in that regard that it's also a self-referential name because names aren't self-referential they put things in a category that that act of self-reference does take the name itself outside of the domain of names and it takes God himself outside the domain of Gods uh it's a black hole name that's right God is no longer a God and on on this understanding that is to say God is as the ground of being well God he does name himself Yahweh well then right and do you know do you know what Yahweh means uh in Hebrew it's for reasons I've never figured out when I wrote my commentary I didn't see this anywhere I'm sure I'm not the first to point this out it means is yeah no God's name is is right and wasn't there weren't there prohibitions against uttering we are in Judaism you're not allowed to say we say instead uh Hashem the name or when we pray we would say Adonai which means the Lord but we never say God so we run into the same issue here where we have a name that is like this name but is also not a name because you can't even say it yes well right except the priest on the higher the high uh the holy day of atonement but even that name is also so it's like a very strange name because it's a name that's also not a it's a name that it just is it's like it is well it is again it's the ground well being in a way it recapitulates Genesis if you think of of Genesis the first verses of Genesis the God is the creator of all reality distinct from himself that is that God is the source of all being all existence distinct from himself and there can only be one there can only be one existence and therefore there can only be one thing that is identical with existence or the source of all existence when you point out the chimpanzee thing which is obviously very interesting the the point is I assume that acting good works better is that right definitely well there's a structured acting okay and I buy that and I think that's important I just want to note on a pragmatic level arguing with people who want to do bad that well you should know that in the long run it doesn't work is not effective no no I understand God's saying do not murder is a better way right and even that doesn't always work is that I'm not sure that's always that's always true because that would be to say that human self-consciousness has is of no merit uh I'm not saying it always works but that's why I said the bad right I I I I agree that it can work for some yes but but not everyone would be convinced by that argument even if they believed it I think in some ways though the power of a story is to have the long-term right to have the abstract grounded in the specific and so when something is aligned you've managed to align the short term the middle term in the long term and that's the that's the ultimate expression of of force of a moral argument is when those things come into alignment and they're way out of whack right now right and we have a lot of of people and Powerful groups and organizations are making lots of short-term decisions and there's a way to try to align them again I mean that's some of the aim of this discussions like that I'm going to ask everybody to let me go through the next four verses because we're coming to a close today and we should close off chapter three are we even gonna do that yeah well I think we can do that um and God said more over unto Moses thou thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel the Lord God of your fathers the god of Abraham he's reminding them the god of Isaac and the god of Jacob has sent me unto you this is my name forever and this is my Memorial unto all generations and he's reminding them of their tradition go and gather the Elders of Israel together so they're the proxy uh representatives of God in some real sense gather the Elders of Israel together and say unto them the Lord God of your fathers the god of Abraham Isaac and Jacob appeared to me saying I have surely visited you and seen that which is done to you in Egypt and I have said I will bring you up out of the Affliction of Egypt into the land of the Canaanites hidites amorites pezerites parasites and hivites and the jebusites don't want to forget about them and to a land flowing with milk and honey and they shall hearken to thy voice remind them of the god of their ancestors and say that you had an encounter and they shall hearken to thy voice and thou shalt Come Thou and the Elders of Israel so now they're on his side unto the king of Egypt and ye shall say unto him the Lord God of the Hebrews hath met with us and now let us go we beseech thee three days journey into the Wilderness that we may sacrifice to the Lord our God and I am sure that the king of Egypt will not let you go no not by a mighty hand and I will stretch out my hand and smite Egypt with all my wonders which I will do in the midst thereof and after that he will let you go that's a that's an intimation of the exacerbation of tyranny I would say and then it's it's demise at its own hands in some sense and I will give this people favor in the sight of the Egyptians and it shall come to pass that when you go you shall not go empty but every woman shall borrow of her neighbor and of her that sojourneth in her house jewels of silver and jewels of gold and raiment and he shall put them upon your sons and upon your daughters and ye shall spoil the Egyptians so the prophecy here is that not only will the Egyptians resist and then submit but the the Israelites will leave under the influence of God in something approximating Triumph and that's the end of chapter three and the end of today and we'll go over the end of that again tomorrow and and pull into the next chapter and so thank you all gentlemen and for those of you who are watching and listening and to the Daily wire film crew and production people for making this possible and welcome Greg it was great to have you along for the for the trip thank you pleasure to be here thank you why is the First Choice somebody who speaks who can speak from is it the proximity to God requires a sort of inarticulateness that the closeness to God means it can't be conveyed as clearly and thus the need for that's a really I never thought about that that's actually a very interesting idea we saw that echoed with Moses I mean Moses walks by the burning bush but as we all noted he does turn to notice and so I would say we do have access to experience of God if if we pay enough attention and we pay enough attention to the things that in some sense transcend our current parochial conceptualizations I I got a call from a guy in San Francisco this is the the joy of doing a radio show who was the head of no Circ it's not only anti-circumcision but was working to have his foreskin restored [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign foreign foreign

Channel: Jordan B Peterson

Views: 581,246

Keywords: Jordan Peterson, Jordan B Peterson, psychology, psychoanalysis, existentialism, maps of meaning, free speech, freedom of speech, personality lectures, personality and transformations, Jordan perterson, Dr Peterson

Id: 7idDtmKtyZU

Length: 114min 5sec (6845 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 24 2023