Join Dr. Oz as he chats with Jordan Peterson about his Genesis series and why Exodus is so relevant to us right now. In this video, Jordan Peterson explains how we look at the world through a story, and sometimes, our stories can be disrupted. As long as that story stays intact, we end up where we are planning on going.
In addition, Jordan Peterson touches upon the significance of Moses being born a slave and then becoming royalty. Find out what that transition means of the patriarch being both and how going from one to the other brings its own challenges.
In addition, Jordan Peterson touches upon the significance of Moses being born a slave and then becoming royalty. Find out what that transition means of the patriarch being both and how going from one to the other brings its own challenges.
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00:00 I am captivated by your Genesis series and we have gone through at least 15
00:06 hours. You probably know exactly how much but it's a lot of time to spend on one
00:09 little book in the Bible. Time must be an important one. But allowing the world to
00:16 understand Genesis in a very different way I think was hugely beneficial. You're
00:19 embarking on Exodus and the story is quite different, equally profound. Why is
00:27 Exodus so relevant to us right now? Well it looks to me, and I'm speaking
00:35 scientifically here at least to some degree, that we look at the world
00:40 through a story or alternatively that the world reveals itself to us as a
00:45 story. It's very difficult to distinguish between those two things. And stories
00:51 have a structure so the simple structure of a story is that a kindergarten child
00:55 might tell you, you know, "What did you do today?" "Well I went with mom and I
01:02 took her hand and we went to kindergarten for the first time." That's a
01:06 little story and you're kind of interested in it and you're kind of
01:09 happy that the kid is telling it but maybe he says, "Well we were trying to go
01:15 to kindergarten today and on the way a big dog leaped up against the fence and
01:20 scared me and I had to go home." Well that's a different story altogether.
01:25 Right now our stories are disruptible so we lay a story on the world and as long
01:33 as that story remains intact it tells us where to go. We have a destination in
01:38 mind at every moment. Sometimes there's small destinations you're just going
01:41 downstairs to make yourself a sandwich. There's a little frame there and that's
01:45 nested inside whatever it is that you're doing that day and then that week and
01:49 then that month and then that year and with your relationships. Nested stories.
01:54 Well all of those stories are disruptible so you know maybe you're
01:58 going downstairs to have a peanut butter sandwich and your phone rings and you
02:02 find out that your son was killed in a car accident. Oh right.
02:06 Ooh that's for sure and then what? Well everything falls apart and then you're
02:12 in the desert for 40 years. Right or you know maybe you're in a terrible marriage
02:17 and you're married to a tyrant and and you've allowed for that but you're
02:22 married to a tyrant and finally the marriage dissolves and you think oh my
02:27 god I'm free of the tyranny and then you're faced with the chaos of your own
02:32 unexamined life and so now you're in the desert for 40 years because even if you
02:37 escape from a tyrant that doesn't mean that you're now in the promised land. It
02:42 means that everything has fallen apart around you and then you're going to be
02:45 tempted to worship false idols which is precisely the position that we're in
02:50 today in the political realm and you have to work to reach the promised land
02:56 and even if you're Moses and you know the law that doesn't necessarily mean
03:00 that you're ever going to get there and so that story that that story will never
03:04 die even if it was destroyed completely it would reemerge assuming that there
03:09 were still human beings around and thinking and so and this story is
03:14 unbelievably profound especially for example in its insistence that mere
03:19 escaping merely escaping from tyranny does not deliver you all that happens is
03:23 something equally bad but opposite I mean that's harsh that's harsh you know
03:32 the West the United States most particularly attempted to free Iraq from
03:40 a tyranny well what happened were they was everyone immediately delivered to
03:44 the promised land of democracy and peace no chaos chaos that's what happens when
03:52 tyranny disappears chaos well then what do you do well you figure out what the
03:57 rules are you try to abide by them and then you try to become the embodiment of
04:01 the spirit of those rules and so that's what Christ's commentary for example in
04:07 the Sermon on the Mount and also when he's asked by someone who's trying to
04:12 trip him up what the most important commandments are he abstracts out the
04:16 spirit of the law and says the things that he says and what's the true
04:24 deliverance from tyranny and chaos well it's the embodiment of the proper mode
04:27 of being and what is that well that's allegiance to the divine word that's one
04:32 way of thinking about it you think well how can you believe that it's like well
04:36 you know people they've been thinking about that for like 50,000 years and if
04:42 you think those people were stupid that just means you don't understand what
04:46 they were doing so and you think well what's allegiance to the divine word
04:50 well it's a recognition that there's such a thing as truth and falsehood and
04:55 that that's vital a vital importance and that you have to differentiate between
04:59 those and that you are bound ethically even despite your own wishes either to
05:05 ally yourself to some degree with the truth or to suffer the slings and arrows
05:08 of conscience and so all of that's tangled up in Exodus and much much more
05:14 so it's an exhaustible... let's break it down what's the significance of Moses
05:22 being born a slave rescued from the water and then becoming royalty what
05:28 does that transition mean for the patriarch to be both well we're all born
05:34 insufficient and in slavery to some degree you know that's true you see that
05:40 echoed again in the story of Christ because he's born under lowly conditions
05:43 and is vulnerable and of course Moses also faces the potential death of all
05:48 the firstborn Hebrews right well why is why is that well it's because babies are
05:54 vulnerable what to what well biological catastrophe and social tyranny and that's
06:00 the case for all of us and then Moses spans the entire what would you say the
06:06 entire domain of social status because he's well he has to be everyone in some
06:11 sense for the story to work and so and I suppose because because he's a good man
06:17 the mere fact that he what would you say is placed in a position of undeserved
06:24 privilege does not stop him from does not free him from his moral burden not
06:30 not at all there's and so merely being positioned arbitrarily in a social
06:35 hierarchy doesn't exhaust what it means to be an ethical person not at all and
06:42 in fact there's I would say in a very real sense you know barring outright
06:46 you know mortal privation there's no evidence to suggest that being born more
06:55 fortunate and privileged is less of an impediment to genuine ethical
07:00 accomplishment than being born in privation and and difficulty and that's
07:06 another reason why in some real sense you know there's a profound equality of
07:12 value that characterizes each person so Moses has this unique background and
07:18 I'll just fast forward he challenges Pharaoh he rejects the royalty element
07:25 of who he who he was is was born into effectively and he brings ten plagues
07:31 upon the Egyptians why plagues ironically we're in one now why ten mm-hmm and how
07:39 did that advance the story as well as the Jews plagues is partly I'm gonna
07:46 speak more metaphorically here is that whenever a natural catastrophe occurs
07:53 the question arises is this to be laid at the feet of arbitrary nature or God or
08:01 is this a reflection of our own insufficient preparation because of our
08:07 unexamined tyranny and authoritarianism and corruption so for example apparently
08:14 New Orleans is much more protected against hurricanes than it was when it
08:19 was so devastated a few decades ago why was it devastated I wasn't I was in
08:23 Katrina I witnessed it firsthand it was definitely better but the whole country
08:28 decided we weren't gonna other New Orleans right and so things were fixed
08:32 and so now New Orleans can resist hurricanes to a much greater degree than
08:36 it could the levees were not what they should have been in a big part of that
08:39 was a consequence of political corruption and so was a hurricane a
08:43 natural disaster was it a failure as a consequence of tyranny and that's part
08:47 of what's happening with the plague and so the Pharaoh who thinks he's God
08:51 although the Egyptians had a very sophisticated conception of sovereignty
08:55 and a Pharaoh who would have acted out that conception accurately wouldn't have
09:00 been the tyrant that Pharaoh was in that story he was a he was an authoritarian
09:06 tyrant and he what would you say his actions violated the principle of
09:11 something approximating the fundamental value and equality of all individuals
09:15 their allegiance let's say with something like the divine word and that
09:19 means that the society that he had constructed was based wasn't built on
09:23 firm ground even though he thought it was and he thought the arbitrary
09:27 expression of power was sufficient it's not sufficient at all it doesn't work at
09:31 all it will backfire and take you down and the story in part illustrates that
09:38 so and why those particular plagues I don't have enough knowledge to detail
09:43 that I'd have to talk to my friend Jonathan Pazzo because he would know why
09:47 Passover what why had that element to the story why why spare the Jewish
09:52 children what does that signify I don't know God only knows what that means I
10:00 mean partly it means that you know in any catastrophe some people are spared
10:04 the wrath of God let's say and some aren't so it's partly just a reflection
10:09 of the arbitrary nature of human experience but that's certainly not all
10:12 it is it's tangled up with the idea that the Jews were the chosen people of God
10:16 and as what was it Tevye and in Fiddler on the Roof said why don't you choose
10:21 someone else for a change yeah so it's not like that's without its burden and I
10:27 have no idea about that at the bottom of things I mean the Jews have played a
10:33 very peculiar and interesting role in in the last 10,000 years of civilization
10:40 who can account for it I mean they're people of the book and maybe they were
10:45 the first people of the book and that's just a cliche in some sense but people
10:52 of the book are a completely different kind of people you think well what's
10:55 more powerful a Roman city Rome itself or a book well we know the answer to
11:01 that it's the book and how powerful is the book well indefinitely powerful as
11:09 far as we can tell it's literacy itself and that's part of the raising of the
11:14 word to the highest status and the focus on that that constitutes Jewish culture
11:19 too much to a great degree well it's had incalculable consequences for for
11:25 better and worse for the Jews and I suppose for everyone else so to to to be
11:31 the first people of the book arguably at least insofar as the Western tradition
11:36 is concerned well that's not nothing who knows what that is it's something