[Music]
you don’t want a factual description of
every muscle twitch you want them to
distill their experiences down into the
gist which is the significance of the
experience and the significance of the
experience is roughly what you can
derive from listening to the experience
that will change the way that you look
at the world and act in the world so
it’s valuable information and they can
tell you a terrible story and then that
can be valuable because that can tell
you how not to look in the world look at
the world and act in it or they can tell
you a positive story you can derive
benefit either way which is why we also
like to go watch stories about horrible
psychopathic thugs you know and and
hopefully we’re learning not to be like
them although there are additional
advantages in that you know someone you
might be some say that someone who is
incapable of cruelty is a higher moral
being than someone who is capable of
cruelty and I would say and this follows
young as well that that’s incorrect and
it’s dangerously incorrect because if
you are not capable of cruelty you are
absolutely a victim to anyone who is and
so part of the reason that people go
watch anti heroes and villains is
because there’s a part of them crying
out for the incorporation of the monster
within them which is what gives them
strength of character and self-respect
because it’s impossible to respect
yourself until you grow teeth and if you
grow teeth and you realize that you’re
somewhat dangerous and or maybe somewhat
seriously dangerous and then you might
be more willing to demand that you treat
yourself with respect and other people
do the same thing and so that doesn’t
mean that being cruel is better than not
being cruel what it means is that being
able to be cruel and then not being
cruel is better than not being able to
be cruel because in the first case
you’re nothing but weak and naive and in
the second case you’re dangerous
but you have it under control and you
know a lot of martial arts concentrate
on exactly that as part of their
philosophy of training it’s like we’re
not training you to fight we’re training
you to be peaceful and awake and avoid
fights but if you happen to have to get
in one and that I guess the philosophy
also is is that if you’re competent at
fighting that actually decreases the
probability that you’re going to have to
fight because when someone pushes you
you’ll be able to respond with
confidence and with any luck and this is
certainly the case with bullies with any
lock a reasonable show of confidence
which is very much equivalent to the
show of dominance is going to be enough
to make the bully back off and so the
strength that you develop in your
monstrousness is actually the best
guarantee of peace and that’s partly why
Jung believed that it was necessary for
people to integrate their shadow and he
said that was a terrible thing for
people to attempt because the human
shadow mm which is all those things
about yourself that you don’t want to
realize reaches all the way to hell and
what he meant by that was it’s through
an analysis of your own shadow that you
can come to understand why other people
are capable and you as well of the sorts
of terrible atrocities that characterize
let’s say the 20th century and without
that understanding there’s no
possibility of bringing it under control
when you study Nazi Germany for example
or you study the Soviet Union
particularly under Stalin and you’re
asking yourself well what are these
perpetrators like forget about the
victims let’s talk about the
perpetrators the answer is they’re just
like you and if you don’t know that that
just means that you don’t know anything
about people including yourself and then
it also means that you have to discover
why they’re just like you and believe me
that’s no picnic so that’s enough to
traumatize people and that’s partly why
they don’t do it and it’s also partly
why the path to enlightenment and wisdom
is seldom trod upon because if it was
all a matter of following your bliss and
doing what made you happy then everyone
in the world would be a paragon of
wisdom but
it’s not that at all it’s the it’s a
matter of facing the thing you least
want to face and everyone has that old
there’s this old story in King Arthur
where the Knights go off to look for the
Holy Grail which is either the cup that
Christ drank out of it the Last Supper
or the cup into which the blood that
gushed from his side was poured when he
was crucified the stories vary but it’s
it’s basically a holy object like the
Phoenix in some sense that’s
representation a representation of
transformation so it’s a it’s an ideal
and so King Arthur’s knights who sit at
a round table because they’re all
roughly equal go off to find the most
valuable thing and they and where do you
look for the most valuable thing when
you don’t know where it is well each of
the Knights looks at the forest
surrounding the castle and enters the
forest at the point that looks darkest
to him and that’s a good thing to
understand because the Gateway to wisdom
and the gateway to the development of
personality which is exactly the same
thing is precisely through the porthole
portal that you do not want to climb
through and the reason for that’s
actually quite technical this is a union
presupposition – is that well there’s a
bunch of things about you that are
underdeveloped and a lot of those things
are because there’s things you’ve
avoided looking at because you don’t
want to look at them and there’s parts
of you you’ve avoided developing because
it’s hard for you to develop those parts
and so it’s by virtual necessity that
what you need is where you don’t want to
look because that’s where you’ve kept it
and so and that’s why there’s you know
an idiosyncratic element of it for
everyone your particular place of
enlightenment and terror is not going to
be the same as yours except that they’re
both places of enlightenment and terror
so they’re equivalent at one level of
analysis and and different than another
so anyways back to the fiction and and
and and what it does if it distills
truth and it produces characters that
are composites and the more they become
composites the more they approximate a
mythological character and so they
become more and more unit
firstly true and more and more
approximating religious deities but the
problem with that is they become more
and more distant from individual
experience and so with literature
there’s this very tight line where you
need to make the character more than
merely human but not so much of a God
that you know one of the things that
happened to Superman in the 1980s
Superman started out he’s got a heavenly
set of parents but by the way in an
earthly set of parents and he’s an
orphan like Harry Potter very common
theme is that when Superman first
emerged he could only jump out of her
buildings you know and maybe he could
stop a locomotive but by the time the
1980s rolled around like he could juggle
planets and you know swallow hydrogen
bombs and you know he could do anything
well people stopped buying the Superman
comics because how interesting is that
it’s like something horrible happens and
Superman deals with it and and something
else horrible happens and Superman deals
with it and it’s like that’s dull he
turned into such an archetype he was
basically the omniscient omnipresent
omnipotent God and that’s no fun that’s
like God wins and then God wins again
and then again God wins and you know so
then they had to weaken him in different
ways with kryptonite you know so green
kryptonite kind of made him sick and red
kryptonite I think kind of mutated him
if I remember correctly and anyways they
had to introduce flaws into his
characters so that there could be some
damn plot and not something to think
about you know there’s a deep
existential lesson in that in that
you’re being is limited and flawed and
fragile you’re like the genie which is
genius in the little tiny in the little
tiny lamp
you know this immense potential but
constrained in this tiny little living
space as Robin Williams said when he
played the genie in Aladdin but the fact
that you have limitations means that the
plot of your life is the overcoming of
those limitations and that if you didn’t
have limitations well there wouldn’t be
a plot and maybe there would be no life
and so that’s part of the reason why
perhaps you have to
the fact that you’re flawed and
insufficient and and live with it and
consider it a precondition for being
it’s at least a reasonable it’s a
reasonable idea
so anyways one of the main characters is
the country the known the explored
territory we went over that a bit and it
always has two elements I mean your
country is your greatest friend and your
worst enemy you know because it squashes
you into conformity and demands that you
act in a certain manner and reduces your
individuality to that element that’s
tolerated by everyone else and it it
constrains your potential in a single
direction and so it’s really tyrannical
but at the same time it provides you
with a place to be and all of the
benefits that have accrued as a result
of the actions of your ancestors and all
the other people that you’re associated
with so there’s the good tyrant or the
bad tyrant and the good King and those
are archetypal figures and that’s
because they’re always true and they’re
always true simultaneously you know
which is partly why I object to the
notion of the patriarchy because it’s a
myth the law
see it’s the what do you call that it’s
the apprehension of a mythological trope
which is that of the evil tyrant without
any appreciation for the fact that the
archetype actually has two parts and the
other part is the wise king and you know
you can tell an evil tyrant story about
culture no problem but it’s one-sided
and that’s very dangerous because you
don’t want to forget all the good things
that you have while you’re criticizing
all the ways that things are in error
that’s a lack of gratitude and it’s a
lack of wisdom and it’s it’s founded in
resentment and it’s it’s very dangerous both personally and socially
you don’t want a factual description of
every muscle twitch you want them to
distill their experiences down into the
gist which is the significance of the
experience and the significance of the
experience is roughly what you can
derive from listening to the experience
that will change the way that you look
at the world and act in the world so
it’s valuable information and they can
tell you a terrible story and then that
can be valuable because that can tell
you how not to look in the world look at
the world and act in it or they can tell
you a positive story you can derive
benefit either way which is why we also
like to go watch stories about horrible
psychopathic thugs you know and and
hopefully we’re learning not to be like
them although there are additional
advantages in that you know someone you
might be some say that someone who is
incapable of cruelty is a higher moral
being than someone who is capable of
cruelty and I would say and this follows
young as well that that’s incorrect and
it’s dangerously incorrect because if
you are not capable of cruelty you are
absolutely a victim to anyone who is and
so part of the reason that people go
watch anti heroes and villains is
because there’s a part of them crying
out for the incorporation of the monster
within them which is what gives them
strength of character and self-respect
because it’s impossible to respect
yourself until you grow teeth and if you
grow teeth and you realize that you’re
somewhat dangerous and or maybe somewhat
seriously dangerous and then you might
be more willing to demand that you treat
yourself with respect and other people
do the same thing and so that doesn’t
mean that being cruel is better than not
being cruel what it means is that being
able to be cruel and then not being
cruel is better than not being able to
be cruel because in the first case
you’re nothing but weak and naive and in
the second case you’re dangerous
but you have it under control and you
know a lot of martial arts concentrate
on exactly that as part of their
philosophy of training it’s like we’re
not training you to fight we’re training
you to be peaceful and awake and avoid
fights but if you happen to have to get
in one and that I guess the philosophy
also is is that if you’re competent at
fighting that actually decreases the
probability that you’re going to have to
fight because when someone pushes you
you’ll be able to respond with
confidence and with any luck and this is
certainly the case with bullies with any
lock a reasonable show of confidence
which is very much equivalent to the
show of dominance is going to be enough
to make the bully back off and so the
strength that you develop in your
monstrousness is actually the best
guarantee of peace and that’s partly why
Jung believed that it was necessary for
people to integrate their shadow and he
said that was a terrible thing for
people to attempt because the human
shadow mm which is all those things
about yourself that you don’t want to
realize reaches all the way to hell and
what he meant by that was it’s through
an analysis of your own shadow that you
can come to understand why other people
are capable and you as well of the sorts
of terrible atrocities that characterize
let’s say the 20th century and without
that understanding there’s no
possibility of bringing it under control
when you study Nazi Germany for example
or you study the Soviet Union
particularly under Stalin and you’re
asking yourself well what are these
perpetrators like forget about the
victims let’s talk about the
perpetrators the answer is they’re just
like you and if you don’t know that that
just means that you don’t know anything
about people including yourself and then
it also means that you have to discover
why they’re just like you and believe me
that’s no picnic so that’s enough to
traumatize people and that’s partly why
they don’t do it and it’s also partly
why the path to enlightenment and wisdom
is seldom trod upon because if it was
all a matter of following your bliss and
doing what made you happy then everyone
in the world would be a paragon of
wisdom but
it’s not that at all it’s the it’s a
matter of facing the thing you least
want to face and everyone has that old
there’s this old story in King Arthur
where the Knights go off to look for the
Holy Grail which is either the cup that
Christ drank out of it the Last Supper
or the cup into which the blood that
gushed from his side was poured when he
was crucified the stories vary but it’s
it’s basically a holy object like the
Phoenix in some sense that’s
representation a representation of
transformation so it’s a it’s an ideal
and so King Arthur’s knights who sit at
a round table because they’re all
roughly equal go off to find the most
valuable thing and they and where do you
look for the most valuable thing when
you don’t know where it is well each of
the Knights looks at the forest
surrounding the castle and enters the
forest at the point that looks darkest
to him and that’s a good thing to
understand because the Gateway to wisdom
and the gateway to the development of
personality which is exactly the same
thing is precisely through the porthole
portal that you do not want to climb
through and the reason for that’s
actually quite technical this is a union
presupposition – is that well there’s a
bunch of things about you that are
underdeveloped and a lot of those things
are because there’s things you’ve
avoided looking at because you don’t
want to look at them and there’s parts
of you you’ve avoided developing because
it’s hard for you to develop those parts
and so it’s by virtual necessity that
what you need is where you don’t want to
look because that’s where you’ve kept it
and so and that’s why there’s you know
an idiosyncratic element of it for
everyone your particular place of
enlightenment and terror is not going to
be the same as yours except that they’re
both places of enlightenment and terror
so they’re equivalent at one level of
analysis and and different than another
so anyways back to the fiction and and
and and what it does if it distills
truth and it produces characters that
are composites and the more they become
composites the more they approximate a
mythological character and so they
become more and more unit
firstly true and more and more
approximating religious deities but the
problem with that is they become more
and more distant from individual
experience and so with literature
there’s this very tight line where you
need to make the character more than
merely human but not so much of a God
that you know one of the things that
happened to Superman in the 1980s
Superman started out he’s got a heavenly
set of parents but by the way in an
earthly set of parents and he’s an
orphan like Harry Potter very common
theme is that when Superman first
emerged he could only jump out of her
buildings you know and maybe he could
stop a locomotive but by the time the
1980s rolled around like he could juggle
planets and you know swallow hydrogen
bombs and you know he could do anything
well people stopped buying the Superman
comics because how interesting is that
it’s like something horrible happens and
Superman deals with it and and something
else horrible happens and Superman deals
with it and it’s like that’s dull he
turned into such an archetype he was
basically the omniscient omnipresent
omnipotent God and that’s no fun that’s
like God wins and then God wins again
and then again God wins and you know so
then they had to weaken him in different
ways with kryptonite you know so green
kryptonite kind of made him sick and red
kryptonite I think kind of mutated him
if I remember correctly and anyways they
had to introduce flaws into his
characters so that there could be some
damn plot and not something to think
about you know there’s a deep
existential lesson in that in that
you’re being is limited and flawed and
fragile you’re like the genie which is
genius in the little tiny in the little
tiny lamp
you know this immense potential but
constrained in this tiny little living
space as Robin Williams said when he
played the genie in Aladdin but the fact
that you have limitations means that the
plot of your life is the overcoming of
those limitations and that if you didn’t
have limitations well there wouldn’t be
a plot and maybe there would be no life
and so that’s part of the reason why
perhaps you have to
the fact that you’re flawed and
insufficient and and live with it and
consider it a precondition for being
it’s at least a reasonable it’s a
reasonable idea
so anyways one of the main characters is
the country the known the explored
territory we went over that a bit and it
always has two elements I mean your
country is your greatest friend and your
worst enemy you know because it squashes
you into conformity and demands that you
act in a certain manner and reduces your
individuality to that element that’s
tolerated by everyone else and it it
constrains your potential in a single
direction and so it’s really tyrannical
but at the same time it provides you
with a place to be and all of the
benefits that have accrued as a result
of the actions of your ancestors and all
the other people that you’re associated
with so there’s the good tyrant or the
bad tyrant and the good King and those
are archetypal figures and that’s
because they’re always true and they’re
always true simultaneously you know
which is partly why I object to the
notion of the patriarchy because it’s a
myth the law
see it’s the what do you call that it’s
the apprehension of a mythological trope
which is that of the evil tyrant without
any appreciation for the fact that the
archetype actually has two parts and the
other part is the wise king and you know
you can tell an evil tyrant story about
culture no problem but it’s one-sided
and that’s very dangerous because you
don’t want to forget all the good things
that you have while you’re criticizing
all the ways that things are in error
that’s a lack of gratitude and it’s a
lack of wisdom and it’s it’s founded in
resentment and it’s it’s very dangerous both personally and socially
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