Intersectionality, individuality and the hero: a discussion with Jonathan Pageau

on itself it's uh so people are taking it seriously that's good it's good I say that but you're the one who has to deal with the pain and the pressure so yeah well I'm in a permanent state of being freaked out so then I woke up this morning with all these ideas that I wanted to talk to you about all right okay so let me pull up the emails that I sent you yeah okay so one of the things did you want to talk for us just to just to get our idea straight or what maybe I can I also want to comment on some of the things you wrote go ahead one of the things one of the difficult things by the way are you recording this already yeah like you know we say after well then maybe you should then maybe you should speak first because that way when I talk about the the kind of the questions that I have especially in regards to the cross the cross is really complicated it's a complicated it's like it's it's one of its meant to be to be a mystery and so the way it's presented to us it it kind of breaks all the categories in a way and so or it unites them together you can rather see it that way and so it's difficult to it's difficult to talk about the cross because it's both totally on the inside you know it's the center of the world it's the access of the cosmos it's all those things but it's also you know at the edge of the world because even in the story it's brought outside as crucifixion happens outside of the city it happens on the Mount of the skull and also there's a there's a verse in the songs that says that the just will never hang on a cross and so I will never hang on a tree it doesn't say cross but no the just will never hang on a tree and so there's a there's an aporia in the cross which is that Christ is the just who's hanging on a tree so that's actually one of the reasons why Jews have never accepted Christ as the Messiah because they can't deal with the absolute like paradox of having you know the the the perfect man hanging on a tree and so it's like how does the but but for a Christian it's really bringing together that the extremes you know I talked about that before well I think that Christ really isn't the top of the hierarchy but is really the stretching out of the hierarchy from the from the top to the bottom yeah yeah okay so so all right so we'll get to that all right yeah yeah because I think that's a that's that's an interesting way of conceptualizing the potential solution to this problem yeah okay so Derrida had this concept of undecidability right there were these things that existed on the margins that didn't fit into a category system yeah and we've talked about that before and that seems to me to be very much associated with the idea that I developed in maps of meaning of anomaly mm-hm yeah and the anomalous is the monster and the reason the anomalous is the monster is because there's a very large number of things that won't fit into any category system doesn't matter what the category system is there's the things inside the category system or the category and there's the things outside and there's a multiplicity of the things outside yes and so the monster image is an appropriate image to represent that because that monster is a chimera that's made up of parts yes exactly okay and you always have to confront what stands outside the category system yeah and it looks to me like we use our predator detection and defense systems as the first defense against that the first reaction against that yeah because it's it's an archetypal reality that there are things outside the category system yeah but it's actually and I think that in terms of phenomenology I would say I don't know maybe you can actually you couldn't eliminate this in terms of evolutionary biology because I'm not an expert in that at all but it seems that there's both the the predatory aspect where it's where the the the the monster the anomaly is seen as something to defeat but there's also there's also an aspect which is the desiring aspect yeah right right well that's the dragon with with the gold yes or or the siren the siren no the monster itself like there's something about siren and about the the idea of Lilith for example in Jewish mythology this notion of like that or the or the the Incubus you know the idea of the female demon which lures and brings you out of yourself and kind of makes you kind of waste your seed and in a Christian in like a religious idea where it's as if there's a there's something about the outside of the foreign or the which elicits a desire to move out towards it I think you kind of talk about that when you talk about this notion of the snake that appears let's say about amongst a group of chimpanzees yeah yeah yeah that's the fascination of the unknown and neurobiologically that's associated with the positive aspect of exploration yeah so that's yeah so yeah it's a paradoxical situation because if it's unknown you want to be afraid of it because it might eat you but because it contains new information let's say you also want to approach it yeah and that's really I think it's important especially now in our in like our situation to understand the desiring aspect could you because it you can explain a lot of the strange phenomena that you know that turn around sexuality in terms of of all the strange fetishization of sexuality into into you know sometimes it's opposite you know like the weird the weird scatological fetishes that people have in like the strange like it's as if there's something about the the outside or the monstrous or the the discarded which can also in a certain instance if people who let themselves go will pull them into a desire relationship with that well one of the things you do find is that sexual release like orgasm is potentiated by novelty mm-hmm so that's a good example of that yeah yeah and if you kind of go down that route it can lead you into there's no limit kind of to where it can lead you and and and it can explain I think it can also explain kind of like now we are in this weird paradoxical situation in terms of society where since the sixties people have been telling us you know that in emphasizing that aspect the idea that novelty we'll increase pleasure let's say yeah bring you further into pleasure but then realizing that if you go down that road now we're kind of realizing you know it's like oh now we're surrounded by sexual perverts and we're wondering why we're surrounded by sexual perverts it's like well maybe you led them down that road and that road doesn't necessarily lead to just sunshine and rainbows like it leads to very dark places which include a lot of violence and a lot of of an exploration of animosity and and and a mixture of desire and hatred and all those those very strange things that people kind of let themselves fall into yeah well you might say that that's in some sense the story of fucose life yes exactly I mean yeah we've talked about that before that if if you look at foo codes if you look at fucose life he's almost like a microcosm of what's happening today in terms of his he's like radical exploration of power and sexuality but also like the idea of the constant stranger and the constant anonymous anonymity of sexual encounters I think that for sure I see him really as a as someone to look at in terms of understanding you know the the tone of what's happening today yeah yeah it seems to me to be the case and it's interesting too because Foucault Derrida didn't care for each other no and you know Foucault basically regarded Derrida as a trickster as a word e-excuse me as a wordy trickster and yeah but they there are their ideas fall into alignment with regards to the notion of the excluded as far as I can tell yeah well the thing that the difference I would say with the III find getting that more useful in terms of you know I've talked about this in my different talks about this notion that what's upside down can be turned back on its head hair back on its feet and I think that data is more useful to to play that game where you can use him and some of his categories to include them in a larger frame let's say so that his ideas are included in a more complete vision of reality because he has like he really shows the real his way of thinking really shows the real deigned the real problem of post-modernism like that you know you talk about that off like how is it that there's this contradiction for example his philosophy has been described as like the philosophy of hesitation you know and that makes total sense because you know when you're faced he has this notion that you're faced you know and in this slipping and sliding analysis of the world where all the all you know reality is multiplies itself is deferred you know that that things always point towards the future so you never know exactly what something is because it keeps changing and it keeps it keeps slipping into something else right and so that actually leads to which is true things yes exactly and but that actually leads to this this this hesitation and if you've ever seen an interview with the ADA you'll see it in his in his demeanor he's constantly hesitating he's hesitating to speak because he's always kind of like he doesn't know he realized that he doesn't know the total implications of what he's about to say all the time so he's always like he's he's like he's constantly cautious and cautious and cautious and so it seems like that's actually what should be normally derived out of the the kind of postmodern idea that that meaning cannot be contained whereas Foucault he really he really used the kind of inverted idea of truth that you have the truth of the marginal where you can use marginality as a weapon to destroy the let's say the the current order you you think okay so you think that's more attributable to Foucault than to Derrida I think so well did he that does it too but what he does it's weird because he'll use the marginal to kind of deconstruct the the center let's say but then he'll also kind of in a st. in the same way he'll also say he'll also heal like reverse it and then annihilate his reversal so he end up really in this slippery slope where you don't even know where you're standing and and so in my opinion that's useful because it helps you to see the the actually kind of in the end it points back towards logos it points back towards logos in the sense that we can't like you like we talked about you can't live in a world like that okay so that's so that's that's exactly what I want to develop today yeah so okay so the first thing that I thought of today is that okay so we have this issue of undecidability from Derrida's the thing that doesn't fit in the category yeah okay now and we know that if you have a category there's way more outside the category than there is inside the category because otherwise if the category isn't very useful right right and so Derrida talks about that as and I think Foucault to at least alludes to it is that that they kind of make the case that the purpose of the category system is to exclude and then they make a political case out of that as well and the thing is is the purpose of a category is to exclude it's to exclude an infinite multitude yeah because you can't deal with an infinite multitude and so you have to simplify the world you have to categorize the world in order to act on it yeah so then the ultimate question has to be something like by what principle do you or what principle guides your categorization of the world and that seems to me to point back to the logos in exactly the way that you just described because then I would say the logos is the divine principle of categorization something like that oh there are two there are actually two ways to do it there there's I think that I talked about it talked about talked about this in Vancouver it's like there's either there's three possibilities there's either the logos there's either absolute dissemination which is this kind of the the the idea that something will just kind of dissolve it dissolves into uncertainty and and it's important to understand the result of that the result of that isn't that it'll just stay in this kind of shaky uncertainty the result of that is that something else from the outside which has solidity is going to ran through it and I think that's something that did he didn't account for you know for example I don't think they accounted for for Islam for example it's like he thought well if we're all if we all if we're all kind of in the slippery slide a situation without firm identities then we have no reason to fight right that's kind of like yeah right that's like the positive infinite number of reasons to fight yeah maybe exactly maybe we have an infinite number at the fight but he didn't see like that something on the outside which has strength will this then just come right through that in terrible actually I am absolutely well I he thought he he was probably Eurocentric in his outlook yeah hilarious it is it's really hilarious yeah it's really hilarious okay so alright so we talked about undecidability alright sort thing about undecidability that we need to mention which makes it more complicated is that undecidability also has to do with time and so it has to do and this is something actually that that you have in common I think with data which you might read funny to say but the idea that you that something let's say you talked about that in example you said like when when when Ford created the car yeah she didn't know what it was because yeah that that the the the that's a the totality of what the car represents is is is manifesting itself in time manifesting itself in like urban landscape in the way we understand economy and in a way it's always the the like the ramifications were so big that you could never know what a car is that's not that's called that's what Deena talks about in terms of of the the deferral of meaning in time so there's that you of difference in terms of um you know like like that there's categories in that they're defined by their opposites and by their their outer categories but then there's also this idea of time that makes it more complicated to yeah well what that means is that what if they is depends to some degree on the spatial and temporal context within which you're interpreting it yeah you could see that way yeah yeah I had a dream about that at one point I I don't know if it's a digression I don't care I'll tell you anyways so I dreamt this is such a strange dream I dreamt that there was this ball floating above the Atlantic Ocean and it was just zoom in long about you know six feet above the surface just cruising along and it was so powerful that it was accompanied by four hurricanes one in each quadrant surrounding the ball it was a little ball away and that was the first part of the dream the second part of the dream was a like a view of satellites and a bunch of scientists who were monitoring the hell out of this thing trying to figure out what it was the sir scene was this thing was trapped in a room it was like in a Victorian Museum case you know a wood case with glass and it was sitting up there like suspended in midair inside the case this a ball the same ball yeah this so they captured it and so then it was in the room the room had no doors or windows and in the room there was the President of the United States and Stephen Hawking and so that and then the room was made out of titanium dioxide I remember that from the dream which turns out to be the stuff that this the hull of the Starship Enterprise is made out of and something like that nothing like that yeah yeah it was something like that and so the idea was that this intensely powerful thing had been put inside a category system right so it was inside a museum display case and then there was the president there a sort of representation of social order and Stephen Hawking he was a representation of disembodied intellect uh-huh and then there was the room itself which had impenetrable walls they were like six feet thick so we it was like we got this thing and then then I was watching it it turned into a chrysalis so obviously which is something that can transform right exactly and then it turned into a meerschaum pipe it took me about a year to figure that out it was an allusion to that famous painting by Magritte right yeah this is not a pipe this is not a pipe you know that Foucault FC like quite a bit yeah yeah yeah and then it shot out of the room like there was nothing there interesting yeah that's a great dream Wow it was a great dream man and so and it does allude to this idea that you can't capture the thing in permanently in a category system because it shifts and turns yeah yeah so okay so so fine so we're on board with that all right so now the category has to exclude because reality is so complex that you have to categorize it because otherwise you're swamped yes good metaphor for it yeah and I said something that the postmodern is that I didn't totally see the the extent to which that could be all right right absolutely I think he put I think he thought that order was a lot more solid than it was yeah so so or than it is so then I was thinking okay so now in with identity politics you have the politics of the excluded alright so so then you have people excluded because of race or because of gender or because of sexual identity or whatever and one of the problems we've seen with that is that the number of excluded keep multiplying that's why you get that extension of the letters in the LGBTQ acronym right and there doesn't seem to be any limit to that and the reason for that is there is no limit to the number or excluded because it's the cake the category of excluded is the category of all things that don't fit in the category system and that's an infinite set right yeah okay so but then I woke up this morning and I thought well we could do we could calculate that mathematically so because because of I was thinking about the rise of intersectionality and then because the rise of intersectionality is actually the reoccurrence of the individual within the collective ideas of postmodern neo Marxism because you might say well I'm excluded cuz I'm black or I'm excluded because I'm a woman and then someone puts up their hand and says well those two categories don't include black woman they don't include the intersection of the of the two categories and that there's no reason that black and woman is more important than black woman okay so then I thought all right so that's fine so the problem is is that you start to get smaller and smaller numbers of people as exemplars of the categories that are excluded and then so then I thought well how many categories do you need to add in an intersectional analysis before you're actually down to one in a billion because I'm led to you you'd have fractionated down to the individual right so now it's kind of screwy mathematically because it depends on the gradations of your category system right I mean I could call you old or young that'd be binary right but I could say no no you're on a scale from 0 to 100 mm-hmm so that would that would be that would give you a point 0 1 probability of there'd be a hundred groups that you could belong to in a so I thought well let's just use a hundred as an example because it could be - or it could be ten thousand it's arbitrary because we could say that well I'm 41 and and there's advantages and disadvantages that go along with that but someone else could say well I'm 41 in six months and there's a slightly different set of advantages and disadvantages that go along with that then so anyways if you have six categories with a probability of 0.1 then you're one in a billion so you just need six dimensions of intersectionality before you've fractionated the population down to the level of the individual yeah so so that that means the individual comes sneaking back into the collective ideas of post-modernism once you hit six intersectional categories as long as that was I thought that was really well it's ridiculously amusing so I said this will do the trick so if you're multiracial woman who's bisexual 27 years old smart 30th percentile for attractiveness 10th percentile for familial wealth and 80th percentile for education there's there is the you're the only one in the world like that so okay so then I was thinking okay so now then I was also thinking about this from a scientific perspective so the reason you assign if you're gonna do an experiment on two groups you know you you do something to one group and not to the other group but to make the control group proper you have to assign randomly to each group and the reason you do random assignment infinite number of variables you can't control for and so you assign randomly so that infinity cancels it cancels itself out and the only difference you're left with is the experimental condition uh-huh and then but scientists sometimes try to get around that like we used to study people who were sons of alcoholics and multi-and they had a multi-generational family history of alcoholism and then we were trying to figure out what might distinguish them from a normal person let's say so we try to get a control group to contrast them with so we bring them into the lab say and give them alcohol and give the control group alcohol but the problem was we didn't know what to control for like because alcoholism goes along with antisocial personality disorder so do you control for that uh-huh um do you control for education do you control for IQ do you control for socio-economic status like the answer is you don't know because you don't know how those are associated with the alcoholism you can't know and so you guess and then you do an analysis of covariance but the problem is is that you don't know what to covary which is why you need random assign a shinto groups it's the only way of solving that problem uh-huh okay so the same problem of undecidability in some sense pops up very very frequently in clinical research right yeah the same thing happens if you're trying to figure out schizophrenia you need a control group well how about siblings the siblings who don't have schizophrenia uh-huh well yeah except they have a different genotype you know it's an it's an impossible problem to solve fundamentally which is why you need random assign a shinto groups because you can't control for all the variables you can't know in advance what's relevant uh-huh all right so then I had this so I thought that was very funny that the idea of individuality comes back and I never did right with intersectionality yeah it's it's just you just push intersectionality to six dimensions and bang you're down to the individual huh all right so then I had this little vision so I'm gonna tell you the vision okay all right all right so imagine a pyramid like imagine a plane first like at a place in a place a land but flat and then imagine a pyramid yeah and then around the pyramid some distance from it is a wall okay so think about that just as the basic schema of a walled city yeah okay now the pyramid is the group that's in there let's say and the value structure that that group Orient's itself by okay now outside that wall there's a very large number of other pyramids and that's basically the postmodern world I would say that's kind of the world that Derrida described and Foucault set reasonable hmm III don't yeah I mean could continue her example I think okay that I think that for sure that Dida would say would say something like we talked about the problem of the contain even the contained space you know the idea of the wall and the pyramid like he would he would have he would have a problem you would have a problem with that structure itself like for him that would be that would be it wouldn't be a solid structure right no it would have been flow with Tanya right that's okay we'll get to that that's okay fine it's no problem let's say that is the problem right okay so you added another dimension to it the problem is there's an inside in a wall and an outside that's problem number one the outside excludes we could call that problem number two problem number three is that the center will not hold right right and that's the same problem as far as I'm concerned as the serpent in the Garden of Eden yeah okay okay good good so so let's say that really is the problem I mean fundamentally yeah usually if you go back to the Garden of Eden you find the problem somehow okay okay so now now imagine that outside the outside the wall all those pyramids fragment and they fragment down to the level of individual people so they decompose to the level of individual people yeah because that's how much variability there actually is right because those groups were artificial constructions right and so you can fragment them down to the individual okay so now the question is you want to let some of those people into the enclosed okay now next part of the vision the pyramid grows across on top of it mm-hmm now it's a church and it's the center and the cross represents whatever the ordering principle of that Center is uh-huh okay so then I would say and you're gonna add to this because you did at the beginning of the talk already the cross is the center point of the world it's the axis of the world so it's the world tree it's also the the place of suffering and it's the place of suffering accepted voluntarily and transcendent huh it's all of those things yeah okay and so that that cross is also a symbol of the hero and the hero is the person who confronts chaos and gain something of value from it so that's voluntary and the hero is also the person who recasts the archaic structure of the structure when it's necessary uh-huh right and so you see those hero themes developed quite regularly across any reasonable historical span of time so that's the Redeemer that's the messiah right it's that makes order out of chaos and then huh takes order when it's too rigid yeah and breaks it apart and recast yeah yeah you see that in the story of King David you see that actually really well like very very well he he breaks like he acts as a fool and as a as someone who is actually a kind of thief trickster figure while the tyrant is in power and then when that tyrant fall then he comes in and creates a new centralized order by bringing the ark to Jerusalem so he has that whole arc in his story okay good version okay okay good I'll keep that in mind for when I get to that story in my biblical lectures all right so now you have to open the door on on on the wall and the question is who do you let in so here's the idea okay so you need to have a center and the center has to hold because things are too complex without a center and a category system and then the question is let's say that your category system has to exist in accordance with the process that creates it and revitalizes it because otherwise it can't maintain its to build on across time it degenerates into chaos or it rigidify zin to too much order right okay so the only people that you let into this the inside the wall are those who agree to live by the rules ethic and the ethic that's symbolized by the cross yeah that's two things that's the willingness to abide by a certain level of social organization but it's more importantly it's also the ability to transcend that and to participate in the process but by which chaos is confronted and voluntarily voluntarily confronted and reordered and also to participate in the process by which order is broken when it's too rigid and brought back that's the death and resurrection essentially yeah so those are the only people that you can let inside the structure without pose without them posing a fatal threat to the structure itself and then if the walls fall then the infinite multitudes stream in and we're done no I mean we say it ceases to exist it's like you just cease to exist that's all you know that that's all that's all it is right well you'd also say that that's that's the problem that's being fought about in some sense with regards to the border issue in Europe yeah do we have a right to have a border right and then I was thinking today about a store like just take your typical grocery store and you say well it's a it's a category system only those with money are allowed to bring food out of this place right and you might say well that's that's a terrible imposition of capitalist patriarchy on and an unfair imposition of capitalist patriarchy so you throw the doors open and you say everybody come and take what they want yeah and that works really well until the store is empty and then that's the end of that yeah because if everyone can do anything they want whenever they want then not then it's complete and utter chaos yeah it's nobody and then what happens is what happens you know because I've lived in a place that is absolute and utter chaos and and cast doesn't cannot sustain itself so usually what happens is the rise of a warlord or tyrant the rise of someone who will by sheer force by sheer physical force impose their will on others because the others will be will have nothing to unite them and so it's not it's not true that you know a lot of you know you you meet anarchists you know and people who think that that there is such a thing as like you know there's just kind of free anarchy where everybody is equal and everybody you know can do whatever they want that doesn't cuz in that Anarchy comes a tyrant inevitably right there's no there's no stopping it right into anarchy comes a tyrant yeah absolutely absolutely and that's the that's and and then the problem with that is that the fundamental organizing principle the tyrant is tyranny yeah pure QR power pure power and pure also personality cult like that it's that it's that person instead of being an ideal unto which we we serve you know or our mythic figure or or a divine figure it becomes a guy you know it becomes becomes Hitler or it becomes you know it becomes Napoleon or it becomes solid or become whatever like it's the it's that person everything is embodied in their personality like I always say like I always have this image of of a functional system is is the person who in some manner is able to to at least symbolically step down from their power right they always say that that yeah George Washington what made him so great is that he he stopped being president right created the impetus for the system to work and in the same in the Roman Empire like Augustus you know people will will say that he didn't really do it but when Augustus became Emperor he stepped into the city as a citizen and he gave away all his power and by giving away all his power in a strange way he actually became the most powerful person in Rome but his power was not a legal power it was like it was like there was something about his capacity to not be the tyrant which which would stabilize the Empire and made him very powerful but in a in a strain in a very kind of strange ways different right so so like a legitimate ruler has to be bound by proper sovereign Authority exact not if he gave himself to the to the to the Senate and said I'm at your service and so it made him very powerful but he also kind of bound his power through in the Senate right right well you see that emerging as early as Mesopotamia where Marduk or where the Emperor had to act out his his embodiment of Marduk in the new you festival and Marduk was the God hero who went out and confronted the dragon of chaos and made the world and so the reason that the Emperor had it's not sovereignty legitimacy the reason they have never had legitimacy is because he was acting out an archetypal pattern that transcended his own personality then the question is well what's that archetypal pattern in the answer to that is that's the hero who recasts that the tyrannical state and who confronts chaos so the structure that the answer to the problem of how you maintain a structure in the in the flow of time is that you make the structure itself subordinate to the principle by which the sir the structure is generated and then and that means that the the sovereign needs to be responsible to the word essentially that's that's how I would think about it from a judeo-christian perspective now and that's above everything yeah and it's the thing that does the categorization initially that's when God creates the world because of the word and when Adam names the animals and all of that and then so but also maintains that across time because it does slip and slide yeah so you know it did wasn't really see we've been talking about a post post-modernism right and about a logo centrism and we've been kind of laughing about that too because of because of its reference to Derrida's fellow go centrism but it's funny too you know because if you look at hindu representations of the center they're not fellow go centric the fellows is embodied in its the Lingam and the yoni now the phallus is conjoined with the yoni it's a it's a masculine female duality that's at the center it's not just the masculine right and so the idea that that Center is necessarily fel logo centric is is also wrong right but it you know the thing is that okay this is gonna get explicit I guess but but it is his follow go centric you know that even if you imagine the the phallus inside the inside the the woman the woman the the phallus is the center and woman envelops the the centre-right the phallic center you know but I think that that what I've been trying to get to and I think what we've all been trying to get to what you've been trying to get to to is is to be able to speak of logo centrism as in the proper manner that is to understand that to say logo scent logo centrist means that we also understand like the the power of the the out the power of the frame let's say so the image eyes I have of the logo centrism is really there's a there's an image of the mother of God of Mary with our hands up like this and in her Center there's a there's there's a circle and out of her Cudi's coming the Christ child and inside that that that circle you see the stars as if it's like the entire cosmos right which is the frame for the logos to manifest itself in and so yeah yeah that in those open virgins to that 14th century where Mary is holding a globe I think generally speaking and then she opens up and inside you have God the Father and he's holding Christ on the cross and it's a it's a it's a similar sort of similar sort of notion right and so I think that if we understand it that way there's like an implicit in the notion of the law of logos centrism there's an implicit kind of secret mention of the power of the feminine in that very term if we understand it fully as the the the need for the this kind of the kind of chaotic outside or the chaotic potentiality which frames the manifestation of the logos and and to understand that those two things need each other like the you know the logos doesn't manifest himself without a question right there has to be a Christian for there to be an answer and the question is a frame for the answer it's like definitely okay that's really important that's like super important and it shows how powerful the feminine is because it actually acts as the the category they'll I could say the frame in which the answer is given okay okay so so let's let's develop that for a min so um let me let me see that had made me think of something look I also wanted to tell to talk to you about oh yes so okay so you said the frame is determined by the question that's answered yeah that's asked yes good good perfect so so this is where I've been butting heads with Sam Harris and where you butted heads with Weinstein in in Vancouver right okay so because the question is okay so you have to have a category system now Harris basically claims that you can derive the category system from the from the fact yeah right but the objection to that is there's an infinite number of facts and they don't tell you what to do with them yeah okay so I would say instead that you derive the category system from your aims because categories are there to to help you fulfill your your goals that's that's how category systems work yeah that's why I think of them as pragmatic yeah okay so now the question is given that your your category system includes and excludes and defines the world what should be the aim of the category system and so I think that's what the Sermon on the Mount talks about because it basically says well you should aim at the highest possible good you should aim at union with God whatever that might mean that you aim at the highest possible good with fully right fully right down to the bottom of your soul if you can manage it so that you're not broken and bent up and twist it in a bunch of different sub personalities so you try to unify yourself as a force for the highest good and you do that in large part by deciding that being is worthwhile right so you pledge allegiance to to the concept of being so you're not you don't like Cain now and then you speak truth in the service of that being and then that from that your category system flows and so that's another reason that pyramid with the Cross is the center of the category system yeah because then you get a category system that includes what it should include if the goal is the establishment of the kingdom of God let's say yeah which is the highest of possible goals and excludes what it should exclude yeah one of the things to that that kind of differentiates that's a Christian ontology or like a Chrisman a Christian cosmology is that we have this idea that there is an intimate relationship also between let's say the highest and the lowest there's a there's something which which unites them together completely so that so that so that even beyond let's say there's this capacity to move outside how can I say this - to unite things together and so there's this idea let's say like you know for example there's an idea like the idea of a normal of a Christian family let's say that you know the father is the head of the household you know like this idea that people hate today but there's this really the sense that the head or that nor the the king or the chief exists for the for the the benefit of those that are glow that are the lowest right that's continually insisted upon in the Old Testament yeah because the prophets always come up and say to the king you're not attending sufficiently to the widows and the orphans yeah and that means that you've become corrupt yeah so in a way you can kind of see the hierarchy moving up in the sense of things looking up towards you know into the hierarchy but then there's also a really important man in which the hierarchy moves down and so the idea is that the top of the hierarchy exists for the bottom of the hierarchy it's like and so that so the top of the hierarchy and us in a really important way as a sack is a sacrificial existence and so the highest thing is is is there the highest road is the one that sacrifices itself for those that are yeah think about that you can think about that practically as the willingness of a father to care for an infant yeah right now so because the infants obviously the and of course the infant also has that potential which is why the infant is made sacred as well in that in that symbolic realm so the high is deserving the lowest the lowest is the infant let's say because it's most helpless but the infant is also the future of the hierarchy yeah and so the I mean I think that that really in a we've talked about this before slightly is that the the notion that the Christian hero you know is slightly is actually slightly different from the pagan hero for example so the night let's say in Western Christianity the night would be the the archetypal image of the Christian hero which is the notion of an aristocrat a warrior you know a soldier whose purpose is not to it is not only to gain honor on himself but in a way he gains honor on himself by sacrificing himself for those who can't do it and so he his honor is based on the fact that he's willing to fight for the for the widow for the orphan for those that that don't have the strength to fight for themselves and so obviously in reality that doesn't always play out I mean but but the ideal is there the ideal is real and it's it's the basis of all our all our hero movies all our hero stories always had this idea of the here is the person who's willing to use their strength and their power to the defense's weak yeah to sacrifice themselves for the for the weak which is very different from the pagan hero like a you know a killer his weakness weakness was contemptible under those circumstances is sitting in his tent and he's moping and whining because we've taken away his sex slave and he won't go back to fight until it affects him personally you know but he he's actually not he doesn't care that much about helping you know the Greeks and their cause he's really doing that doing things for his own honor and so he's perfectly heroic and sitting in his tent and moping and not going back into into battle you know because his honor has been attained whereas in Christianity you know in stories like like if you see Sir Gawain and uh you you read um the the the the night and a cart for example that idea of Lancelot who is willing to be seen as a criminal as a you know as the worst kind of person in order to save the help damsel-in-distress you know he's he's willing to sacrifice all his honor in order to help that that person who is in danger so it's a really it's a very different way of seeing the world okay well I don't know what to say after the whole thing but it's a the idea of the cross absolutely I'm not I'm not I'm not suggesting at all that that was not relevant to what we've been discussing it's dead relevant I really like the idea I know we've talked about the fact that you know I've been conceptualizing Christ as the not as the apex of the hierarchy symbolically speaking but the apex to such a degree that it actually detaches itself from the hierarchy sort of like Horus the bird the the Osprey or the what the hell is he a falcon in Egyptian symbolism right he's the thing that flies above everything that can see or the Egyptian I and your correction was that it's not exact once you're detached in some sense you're not at the top anymore you're everywhere right spread throughout the entire structure which yeah which is a very good way of looking at it right the story of Christ is in historian in his symbolism you see that he's at the top of the dome let's say in the church where he's really exactly what you're saying this kind of did this kind of detached top of the hierarchy but then he also stretches all the way down into death into Hades into de chaos and the cross is the other side where you know he is he's outside of the city being being killed by by his friends by the you know he's the the outcast he's all of those things and so he he unites the two extremes of the hierarchy together and fills the hierarchy with with well a neat little idea that he transcends death again I'm just gonna take this from a psychological perspective because the theological waters are getting too deep for me here well they are because I don't understand that exactly I'm really trying to work it out but I don't understand it well enough yet but the idea that Christ descends into hell and rescues people from hell and death that can be read quite straightforwardly psychologically because the car acquaints of not of erecting a category structure that isn't predicated on the hero is that everyone will be in hell and die mm-hmm so I mean that's what happened in the Soviet Union as far as I'm concerned and so those health stories are real enough as far as I'm concerned but that doesn't speak to their potential transcendent reality now as a whole different issue I mean here's something else that's been that's been bugging me and I'm just starting to think this through you don't I do think that there's there's an idea that if you're in the right place at the right time that everything comes together and loads up you know and I was wondering you know how the story like the story of Christ is told in many many ways like from the cosmic to the microcosmic right so and one of the macrocosmic stories is the relationship between the astrological speculations and Christ himself and so there are 12 constellations like there are 12 disciples and huh the Sun is Christ essentially yeah and that story really works it even Maps onto the calendar properly right and so then you think well that's because people have one interpretation of that is that's because people have retold the story at each level of analysis but another possible reason for that is that it's synchronous in some sense and then it is the fact that everything comes together around that central axis in a in a in a real way yeah and that the story can't help but be represented at multiple levels of reality simultaneously because that's what the story is that's then that I mean it's like that's exactly what it's about the whole the whole thing is about this this this lining up of everything you know like of everything yeah yes okay it's hard to see that it's so it's hard to see the fullness of that when you look at it it always kind of jars you because it's so you know the story of Christ I always tell people like if you pay attention to it it'll constantly be knocking you down because it it seems even at a first glance sometimes it seems like it's contradictory because Christ is all these things like you know he's he's the teacher he's the king he's the shepherd you know he's the outcast he's the he's he's the technician you know he's the artist he's and so it's like how is it that a story Canon company and the more you look in the story the way he's a fisherman you know he's into all these things how did all these things can fit in one story it's easy to glance over because it's so short you read a gospel you kind of go through it but then if you really look at all the the aspects and you understand the traditional categories let's say that in a normal world the let's say the the Shepherd and the the agriculturalists usually are not the same person but in Christ they're the same person he's able but he's slower as he fish exact he's but he's also the fisherman yeah and he's so he's the stumbling stone but he's also the capstone so he stretch it like a we talk about this idea of stretching out the entire hierarchy so he's he's like he he's that's he's the stone that doesn't fit so here's yeah right exactly that the builder rejected yeah okay so one of the things I've I've come to understand about tyrannies is that if you have a terror terror analytical person at the top the tyranny isn't just at the top the tyranny is mirrored like the entire hierarchy right it's like like a what are those 3d holographs it's like there are hologram it's like a hologram every part is a reflection of the whole and so I wonder if that's analogous if you have a pyramid say with the principle of the divine hero at the top then what happens is that's reflected at every single level of the of the hierarchy yes like it would be with the tyranny right yeah it should be except that yeah except that the the the yeah the tyranny is will be just that that kind of up down like that top-down you know light that shines down and kind of puts everything in place and then when it reaches the things that it doesn't that it can't absorb it'll just it'll completely cut them off you know like it'll kill them it'll burn them off you know it'll just destroy them whereas there's something about Christianity or like a traditional hierarchy which is a stretching out in so so you could imagine right let's say in terms of all of Christianity it isn't I think there really there is there's like a place let's say for it's at least in in the world there's a plate until the Last Judgement let's say until the Last Judgement there's a place for that buffer to be there and to be slowly assimilated right and so so it's not it doesn't it doesn't totally shut itself off there's a there's a there's a there's room there's a gate you know like you said and there's always people that can come through the gate and that are always kind of entering and slowly being signified assimilated but not just assimilated but also transforming it yes what it's going to be into what it's going to become but it's a but it's not it's not a radical process it's like this organic transformation let's say well that's a huge part of what we're arguing about right now in a culture which is how is it that you handle the integration let's say and the answer isn't no integration no because what that does is rigidify the structure yeah because if you if you close it off completely you also rigidify it inside yeah and so what that means is the chaos is gonna break forth inside so cuz you can't get rid of the chaos now now you know one of the things we talked about so it's out for example with the idea of gay marriage so now there's the excluded are included and then the question is well what what is then the responsibility of the included and the responsibility of the included is to not break the structure of the system that included them yeah you know that's a really that's a really good way of seeing that because that's and that's actually probably the best way of understanding understanding it in terms of how it works itself out in real life it's like you know if you come in if you come in as you know an assimilated margin you know as as a margin wants to participate in in a country or in an identity or in a group or whatever it is like in a club like your responsibility is like you said is to not break what makes that something thank you you know if you want to if you want to be you know if you want to join a I know a baseball group and you in a baseball team and you come into the team and you're the newbie on the team and you and you all of a sudden expect everybody to to play basket to play basketball it's like well then why like what would it doesn't you know you're going to destroy the class I can't destroy the club itself exactly no do you think that's a victorious simple way yes well we talked about that a little bit with the abrahamic stories if I remember correctly because there was the problem in the Abrahamic stories of how to deal with the marginal and so I can't unfortunately I can't recreate that on-the-fly husband Pat like you it had to do with hospitality behavior yeah right so the rule is I show you hospitality but that's my rule my obligation but your obligation is not to do not to make passes at my wife and disrupt my household yeah right and then and then a relationship builds with the stranger and then and then slowly the stranger you know it becomes a friend you know and maybe you then maybe the stranger marries your daughter at some point right it's like you know there's that there's like the possibility of creating a relationship which which will integrate the two identities together but it's a gradual process and one which has to be done you know with mutual respect and yeah that's right well you know the proper spirit well I would I would say that would be the spirit of the logos because the logos is also the thing that goes outside boundaries like so let's say you have person from Group A here in person from Group B here and then they decided to communicate both of them have to go outside their group and meet in in the junction between the two groups is a different place and they have to make peace but they make peace there under the guise of themselves as individuals exploratory individuals and then maybe the groups can integrate as a consequence of that right and they then knowing apart and without fighting and something appears like something will manifest itself as whatever is is holding you know the two groups together the two families are the two people and so that logos will with the coming together let's say let's say two families is a good example you have two families you know and then they then people in the two families intermarry and so there's something that unites them too you know and and it's the in the coming together that that logos will appear and will hold hold the relationships in that lace that marriage is a recreation of that masculine feminine you yeah and that's that's associated sometimes with the androgyny of Christ and sometimes with there's an old idea and I can't remember where it comes from that that Adam before Eve was not for Didache right yeah more androgynous and draw hydrogenous right and that Christ as the second Adam recreates that a draw and drogyny in the proper manner yeah no I think so I think I think that that there's a there's some use find it in some of the church fathers where they'll say things like just to help you to understand and understand it they'll say things that like that God separated Adam and Eve Adam into two in view of the fall right in the sense that it wasn't the fall but it was the idea that it had to it has to do with the the idea of living outside the garden let's say and and and and having then to come back together and that coming back together in in terms of sexual union and in terms of procreation then is becomes a little microcosm of what was in the garden let's say right and so and that's why also you know like you know Adam I wonder if that's actually I wonder to what degree that's actually let's say I wouldn't say neurophysiological II true but I'm gonna say something like that because it seems to me and I made allegiance to this when we did that talk about logos men people maybe thought that it wasn't the most appropriate thing to say but sexual Union produces this this brief union in paradise yeah I think if that's the that's the highest that's the highest point of sexuality and that's why sexuality is used as an image for the union of the soul with God and it's used as an image of the union of the church with Christ because the idea that the unit that the union of the masculine and the feminine is a glimpse of eternity it's a glimpse of paradise well and I I'm not sure that's just an idea yeah I can t think that that's that's our can it actually happens yeah yeah I think that it actually happens yeah I think so yeah and that's why also I think that in in Christianity the idea of taking that lightly right it's very dangerous the idea of uniting yourself with with all kinds of people he's very dangerous because you when you unite yourself with someone you're actually creating a very powerful spiritual unity you know and then if you kind of wonder that and yet shallow then you don't have your heart yeah you're devaluing it yeah and it also to rip you apart because you leave a part of yourself with that other person and you leave a part of it's like you leave you're kind of still attached to someone and you're leaving a part of your soul whatever with that person and they ripped apart so you had what makes your sin that you might say it makes you cynical yeah which I would say I think that sleeping with a hundred women would leave you cynical for sure I don't see how it wouldn't I don't see how it went you would yes yes yeah well that's that's that's the question no I think that's a very good way of thinking about that yeah so we would at least leave you in a position of you know like the person who only eats caviar let's say who doesn't understand how precious things are you know and to not understand how precious things are as to devalue them right if you if you if you well if that's the highest thing that you're devaluing then you end up like Cain with Abel like he kills Abel his highest ideal and then he says the punishment is more than he can bear so if you take what actually is the highest value and devalue it then you're left without hope yeah yeah yeah no I mean that's why that's why I mean I don't know but it's like the people that I've known in my life who who who who sleep around a lot they tend to to have a kind of nihilistic tendency let's say a blase tendency like to not how well things can be discarded yeah yeah and and that and that and that moment of Union let's say is also pretty much devalued to just brief pleasure yeah that's the only way that it's conceptualized you know when it is the case to that if you look at early miscue 'ti in teenagers it's associated with antisocial behavior hmm yeah it's a strong predictor or strong correlative antisocial behavior interesting yeah now I'm not saying there's a causal relationship there but I am saying it's part of the same constellation right that's quite clear hmm so yeah all right well that's probably enough of that yeah yeah okay okay well that was good man I I was thinking about these things when I woke up this morning you know like for about an hour I mean they were just flash like crazy yeah you've got that excited look on you I can I can tend to discern it now yeah well it's too much you know it's too much this sort of thing really is just so it's like Christ I'd like to get up in the morning and think about raking the backyard or something like that yeah so oh well that was really good Jonathan you think that you think that way no you think that's good like you think that we got to what we wanted we have ya know if you if you want like think about it I mean I mean because we had a whole bunch of things that we said we wanted to talk about yeah I mean maybe we could we could make it like whatever every two months or every month or something well I'm sure that I'll have the way my mind is working right now I'm sure that I'll have some ideas that you you'll be the right person to talk to about so yeah well like I said I'm here's see you're one of these weird intersectional people a you're a Greek Orthodox wrote French Canadian icon Carla knows a lot about post-modernism it's like I think there's probably exactly one of you in the world fitty sure I'm sure that's why I think that is why like I've always been a marginal person that's why I understand it so well but I think that the key the key to my situation right now is that I I kind of saw it but now I also see how it can serve the the center let's say and so that's my job in life I think that's pretty much I think what I'm supposed to be right well that's a good way of ending because the postmodern claim the postmodern er his claim is that the center should serve the margin now but the counterclaim is the margin should serve the center now and both those claims are right yeah and that's also related with that idea that you already described of of the image of Christ as the perfect man saturating the entire hierarchy yeah no I agree and the first would be the last and the last will be the first there's something about that in Christianity which is absolutely true that there that there's even something at there's even something weird that happens at the end or at the bottom where there's a mere reflection between the bottom and the top where like the lowest thing would be the fool for example and the highest thing would be the the holy fool and so there is this strange completion that happens in the in the whole thing but it's really a very it becomes very mystical at that point it's hard to describe in in straight categories but well I think Marlowe's kind of an example of that well I'm asking myself been asking myself that for months you know I did that interview with with dr. Rachel Fulton Browne about Yad Milo yeah and by the way she really like would like to talk to you anyways so that the thing I'm wondering about him is that in the in the holy fool usually there's a lot of self-depreciation and so st. Francis you know he would go out into the public space and strip naked you know and he would he would pass for for a beggar and all those things and so I think that that might be a requirement for the Holy fool is is that the the the humor is not only against the people around them but also it turns back on themselves constantly and so that's what makes them the holy fool is that is that you can't criticize them because as as much as they're criticizing the rulers they're the structure of the order it turns back on them and then they act as the lowest of the low so there's that's what is is is able to hold them to to hold them in that high place so something to think about okay all right all right well I'm gonna cut the front of this off maybe a little bit yeah that's my post-it so all right cool all right good luck with everything yeah I've got another lecture tonight oh that the end of Jacob's Ladder yeah yeah so now I have to go prepare that so wait let me let me think about Jacob's Ladder two seconds did you ever watch that talk on on on Moses and the ascent of my talk I'd gave on the on uh on uh it's called the life of Moses like st. Gregory st. Gregory of Nyssa on the life of Moses you should watch that if you if you have time you should what it's like it's like 45 minutes and it's really about the ascent of the mountain and you sent up the holy ladder mhm would you email that to me yeah I'll send you something I'm completely out of brain house and I'll send you the link right now I think I think that might be helpful for you for your talk tonight can get some rest okay see ya all right bye-bye

Channel: Jordan B Peterson

Views: 157,532

Keywords: atheist, bible, christ, christian, christianity, existentialism, faith, free speech, god, jesus, jordan peterson, lecture, philosophy, psychoanalysis, psychology, religion, spirit, truth, university of toronto, discrimination, diversity, equality, equity, feminism, freedom, inclusiveness, inclusivity, jordan b peterson, left wing, misogyny, pc, personality, polarization, political correctness, politics, right wing, sjw, social justice, social justice warrior

Id: E5F4oOlAK8w

Length: 65min 17sec (3917 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 14 2017