In this video, Dr. Oz chats with Jordan Peterson about the ancient journey of trials and temptations through the wilderness. Do we ever get to the promised land? Jordan Peterson shares that getting through the chaos in life will help shape the promised land, and that understanding what that promised land looks like may be determined by the development of our own character.
Also, Jordan Peterson explores the significance of the parting of the Red Sea and the metaphoric symbolism of the imagery of stone and water.
Also, Jordan Peterson explores the significance of the parting of the Red Sea and the metaphoric symbolism of the imagery of stone and water.
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00:00 The Jews have to move from a place of fear,
00:03 enslavement, Egypt,
00:05 to what they thought was the promised land.
00:07 They were just gonna make that little trip
00:10 across the Red Sea, things are gonna be okay.
00:12 The story of Exodus is obviously a much older story
00:17 probably than what's written down, what we read today.
00:20 As you look at other traditions,
00:23 what does it mean to be escaping enslavement,
00:27 departing of a natural body of water,
00:30 and then not getting to the promised land,
00:34 but actually just getting to the wilderness?
00:35 - Well, we never get to the promised land really, do we?
00:37 Because you think, well,
00:40 I'm gonna graduate from high school and then I'm there,
00:43 and then you graduate from high school,
00:45 and that's an accomplishment,
00:47 but then your frame collapses
00:48 because you're not a high school student anymore,
00:51 and you're sort of at the pinnacle of being a student
00:55 of high school, grade 12, the pinnacle,
00:59 and then bang, you're at the bottom again.
01:01 You're like the new guy at the job
01:04 if you don't go to college,
01:05 or you're a beginning freshman and what do you know?
01:08 And so then it's up the hill again,
01:10 and you think, well, I'm gonna graduate in four years,
01:12 and when I graduate, well, that's the pinnacle,
01:16 and then you get there and the same thing happens,
01:18 and that's another example of the collapse of narratives
01:21 in some sense that characterize our lives.
01:24 And so, and the promised land is something that beckons.
01:27 So is it real?
01:28 Well, people hate it when I say this,
01:31 but it depends on what you mean by real,
01:34 because when someone asks, is it real,
01:35 they have a bunch of ideas about what real is,
01:38 and they're all unexamined.
01:39 They just think it's obvious.
01:40 It's like almost nothing is less obvious than what's real.
01:45 That's a really hard question.
01:46 What do you mean by that?
01:47 Do you mean what's true?
01:49 Do you mean what's practical?
01:50 Do you mean what's beautiful?
01:52 Do you mean what's objectively true?
01:55 Like, what do you mean exactly?
01:56 Well, you don't know what you mean.
01:58 You just say real, and you think that that means
02:00 what you think it means, and you don't even think about it.
02:03 So the promised land beckons.
02:05 So does that mean it's real?
02:06 Well, it beckons.
02:07 It's like there's something better waiting for you.
02:09 Well, how good could it get?
02:10 Who knows?
02:12 Who knows?
02:13 That's the paradisal vision.
02:14 That's the promised land.
02:16 But you go through tyranny and the chaos of the desert
02:19 repeatedly to get there,
02:21 and maybe you meld yourself into something
02:24 that's capable of, what would you say,
02:27 of embodying the promised land
02:29 as you go through that process.
02:31 And maybe the promised land is something psychological
02:33 in that sense that's dependent
02:35 on the development of your character.
02:37 And maybe the more developed your character,
02:39 the more the promised land is everywhere around you
02:41 all the time.
02:42 Why wouldn't that be the case?
02:45 Is a wise man better situated than a fool?
02:49 Well, if so, then he's already more in the promised land.
02:52 - In a way.
02:54 You've quoted Chekhov's classic line
02:56 that if there's a gun over the mantle in the first act,
02:58 it better be used by the third act.
03:01 So there has to be some specific reason
03:05 why there was a parting of a body of water.
03:07 What does that-- - Oh, there's many,
03:08 many reasons. - But archetypally,
03:09 what does that mean, that the Jews are cornered,
03:12 it's all over, they've given their freedom, they think,
03:15 but Pharaoh comes after them.
03:16 Now they're in really a difficult setup,
03:19 pushed up against the water,
03:21 the Egyptian troops coming at them, they're unarmed,
03:24 and suddenly God opens up the water.
03:28 They pass through again, not knowing where they're going,
03:30 but they trust the process.
03:31 - Yeah, well, Moses is, see, one of the things
03:34 that underlies the Exodus narrative is the metaphoric
03:39 and literary juxtaposition of stone imagery
03:42 with water imagery.
03:44 And the Pharaoh in Egypt is the land of stone.
03:47 Pyramids are stone, and everything's set in stone.
03:51 And that's a good thing,
03:52 because stone is durable and permanent,
03:54 but it isn't flexible, it doesn't move,
03:55 and so that's the downside of stone.
03:57 And water can wear away stone.
04:00 And water has all sorts of properties
04:02 that stone doesn't have.
04:03 And if everything around you is stone,
04:05 then you die of thirst, right?
04:08 And that's a spiritual image as well, right?
04:12 You rigidified everything, nothing moves.
04:15 Well, then you die of thirst, something has to move.
04:18 Moses is always presented as a master of water.
04:22 I mean, water saves him right at the beginning of his life.
04:26 And there's water imagery associated with Moses
04:28 all the way through the story.
04:29 And so the parting of the Red Sea is part of that.
04:33 It's also a symbolic border
04:35 between the tyrannical land of stone
04:38 and, well, and what?
04:41 The well-watered place, which is what Eden means,
04:43 that's, if I remember correctly, or is it paradise?
04:46 Either paradise or Eden means well-watered place.
04:49 And that's the promised land that beckons.
04:54 And there's much more to it,
04:56 and that's by no means a complete explanation,
04:59 but it's all I can manage to bring to mind at the moment.
05:04 - They get to the wilderness,
05:05 not where they thought they were gonna be.
05:07 - No, that's not where they thought they were gonna be.
05:09 - And maybe that's a good place
05:11 for us to talk about the world today.
05:12 - Yeah, fragmented.
05:13 - Fragmented, worshiping idols.
05:16 Meanwhile, you've got Moses up there collecting two tablets,
05:21 one highlighting the first five commandments
05:23 are a relationship to the divine,
05:25 and the other tablet are a relationship to each other.
05:28 Again, it's a story that's as old as--
05:32 - You see this revelation at the top of mountains,
05:34 and they're close to God, symbolically speaking, right?
05:38 But the mountain is also a representation
05:40 of the hierarchy of value.
05:41 That's the pyramid, that's where the Egyptians worshiped it,
05:43 that's why the Washington Monument has a cap on it
05:46 that's made out of aluminum,
05:47 which was more valuable than gold when it was made.
05:49 And that's a symbolic representation of the state itself.
05:53 And the state itself is organized
05:54 under the highest possible principle,
05:56 and it's at the pinnacle that you encounter
05:58 the highest possible principle,
06:00 and that's why Moses encounters God there.
06:03 And so if a revelation occurs to you,
06:05 then at the highest level of value,
06:07 then in some sense you're at the pinnacle
06:09 of something that's much more mountainous
06:12 than just a mountain.
06:14 It's a meta-mountain, it's like the mountain
06:16 of all mountains, the value structure
06:18 that governs our perceptions.
06:20 And Moses, while he's leading his people through the desert,
06:23 is called on constantly to adjudicate disputes.
06:26 They're all fractionated and fighting,
06:28 like they're no longer under the integrated control
06:31 of a tyrant, let's say, so now they're fighting
06:32 with each other all the time about what should be done,
06:34 and they don't have laws, and all of that.
06:36 And so Moses is constantly adjudicating,
06:40 and I think it's his father-in-law tells him
06:42 to quit doing that 'cause it's gonna wear him out
06:44 and kill him, he's doing it so much.
06:46 So he's spending untold hours over untold years
06:50 sorting things out, subduing things,
06:54 and arranging a hierarchy of value,
06:55 because that's how you make judgments
06:57 when you're in difficult situations.
06:58 You have to say, this is higher than this.
07:00 You're right, he's wrong.
07:02 Here's the hierarchy of values.
07:04 And then, bang, all of that manifests itself
07:08 in his imagination as a set of explicit principles
07:12 that should guide behavior.
07:14 And it's a staggering moment,
07:16 because what was up 'til then ritual and custom,
07:20 in some sense only acted out,
07:21 now becomes stateable and propositional.
07:24 It's a massive transformation,
07:27 and that's what that part of the story signifies.
07:29 Now, it's a relationship to objective history.
07:32 Well, that's a very thorny issue.
07:34 It's like the relationship of a Dostoevsky novel
07:36 to objective history.
07:37 It's like nothing in a Dostoevsky novel ever happened,
07:41 but it's all true.
07:42 And so then you say, what do you mean it's all true?
07:45 It's like, well, you can think about that for a while.
07:48 It's also deep.
07:50 Well, what does that mean?
07:51 Well, it means something.
07:52 Well, what it means in part
07:54 is that it deals with fundamental values,
07:55 and those are values upon which
07:57 many other values are predicated.
07:59 And so, all of that.
08:01 And so, is the story of Moses true?
08:03 No, it's meta-true.
08:05 It's more than true, just like great literature.
08:09 It's concentrated truth.
08:11 So, just to call it, you know,
08:13 maybe you're a fundamentalist,
08:14 and you say, well, that actually happened.
08:16 Well, it's like, well, what do you mean?
08:19 You have no idea how complicated that proposition
08:21 that you just uttered is.
08:22 It's like, no, it didn't actually happen.
08:25 It more than happened.
08:29 You're undervaluing it by putting it in that category.
08:33 It's way more true than the normal truth.
08:36 And we don't really understand that,
08:39 you know, that kind of truth.
08:40 Not really.
08:41 We can approach it, we do that,
08:43 when we have reverence for great literature.
08:45 Even utter the proposition that there is such a thing
08:49 as great and lesser literature,
08:51 which, of course, has become, you know,
08:53 fundamentally debatable in modern times.
08:55 So, even though it's clearly the case.
08:59 - So, Moses is aged by receiving those commandments.
09:04 And he's also, despite all the things he's been doing,
09:07 not allowed to go to the Promised Land.
09:09 Why?
09:11 Are there some questions we're not supposed to ask,
09:12 or some questions that are so heavy, they're--
09:15 - Well, he's not Christ.
09:16 - No, he's not Christ.
09:18 - No, and that's really the answer,
09:20 is that you don't get to the Promised Land
09:22 unless you're Christ.
09:23 You know, I know there are exceptions to that idea,
09:26 but that idea is still, it's still germane.
09:30 You know, and what that means about
09:32 what the Promised Land is,
09:34 and what that means about what Christ is,
09:38 and how that's related to Moses,
09:40 those are insanely complicated problems, questions.
09:45 You know, and we're,
09:47 well, our whole culture has been trying
09:50 to parse out the answers.
09:51 Well, I can tell you, let me just take a sidestep here.
09:54 What does the idea that God himself
09:57 was incarnated in Christ mean?
09:59 I'm gonna speak psychologically,
10:01 and to the degree that that's possible.
10:04 Well, one of the problems that Mircea Eliade,
10:06 who's a great historian of religions,
10:07 pointed out about an abstract notion of God.
10:12 So let's say you posit that the thing
10:15 that's at the top of your value hierarchy is God,
10:18 and it becomes this abstract good,
10:20 and it becomes ever more abstract.
10:22 The problem then becomes, well,
10:24 what relationship does that have with your day-to-day life?
10:27 And if the answer is increasingly less,
10:31 then God floats off in some sense into abstraction
10:33 and disappears, that's the death of God
10:35 that Mircea described.
10:36 And Eliade, who was a great historian of religions,
10:38 says that has happened to us many times.
10:41 The idea of God had become so abstracted
10:43 that it floated off,
10:44 and we lost all connection with that tradition,
10:47 that ethical tradition.
10:48 - It's happened to us many times.
10:49 - Yes, yes, according to Eliade
10:51 over the course of history.
10:53 Well, religions have transformed and arisen
10:56 and died across time, and so he thought of it as a--
10:59 - Well, what happens to civilizations
11:00 that don't have those archetypes,
11:02 those vessels that we have to fill
11:04 with whatever values and insights we have?
11:06 - I guess we're finding out.
11:07 - Yeah, we are finding out.
11:10 - You bet we are, and we haven't found out yet,
11:12 but we're going to.
11:14 So what's supposed to be at the top?
11:18 Well, is it inclusion?
11:20 Is it diversity?
11:21 Is it equity?
11:23 Is it all three of them?
11:24 Well, this is all a battle
11:27 for what's in the highest place, all of this.
11:31 What's in the highest place, as far as I'm concerned?
11:34 It's the divine word.
11:35 Well, what if you don't believe that?
11:39 Well, and what do you mean by believe?
11:42 Well, I would say to believe that is to be terrified.
11:46 If you have any sense,
11:48 because you can say things that aren't true,
11:51 and God help you, especially if you do that knowingly.
11:55 So to say the divine word is at the penultimate position
12:01 and has to be, to understand that,
12:04 is to be constantly terrified,
12:06 and that's a terrible thing,
12:07 but the alternative is far worse,
12:10 and that's endless fragmentation,
12:12 and conflict acted out violently.
12:17 You have to put what should be at the top at the top,
12:22 and that's the unifying principle, right,
12:23 under which all other values are organized,
12:26 and a lot of, we're arguing about,
12:29 well, whether there even is such a thing,
12:32 there better be, because how else
12:33 are we going to be unified out of one,
12:36 out of many one, after all,
12:39 and the many and the one are both real,
12:41 so what's the one?
12:43 Well, that's a hard question,
12:44 and people have been trying to figure that out forever,
12:47 and the entire religious enterprise
12:50 is to figure out what's one.
12:51 Well, back to the idea of the abstract God,
12:54 well, partly the way you deal with the problem
12:56 of that abstraction is to have the highest value embodied,
13:00 right, to actually be in a person,
13:03 'cause then you can imitate it,
13:05 you can act it out, which is the point.
13:07 Now, and this is all independent
13:09 in some sense of the reality,
13:12 the way modern objective materialists think of reality,
13:15 it's all independent of the reality of that,
13:17 because this is partly a discussion
13:20 about what constitutes reality.
13:22 Now, you can think about this in your own mind,
13:26 it's like, well, what tortures you
13:28 when you do something wrong,
13:29 and can you escape that?
13:32 It's like, you can try, you can pretend,
13:35 but there's no place to hide,
13:36 and everyone knows that,
13:38 and if you meet someone who doesn't,
13:40 it's like, you better get away from them quick,
13:43 'cause for obvious reasons, no conscience,
13:48 and conscience, it's this weird thing that's independent,
13:52 it's like, why can't you control that thing?
13:55 Why doesn't it just do what you tell it to do?
13:57 Wouldn't life be so much easier
13:58 if you could just tell that pesky little monster
14:01 what it should be saying to you?
14:04 You'd just be at peace, it's like, ah, what I did is okay,
14:07 it's always okay, no one thinks that way,
14:10 so what is it that's torturing us
14:12 with our ethical inadequacy?
14:14 You don't think that's real?
14:16 You might say, I wish so much it wasn't real,
14:19 I will devote my entire intellectual enterprise
14:22 to destroying the notion that it's a valid voice.
14:25 Man, you can see why people would be motivated to do that.
14:29 It's a lot easier than trying
14:30 to get yourself straightened out.
14:32 - See, that's why I think people don't like you.
14:34 - Yeah, yeah.
14:35 - That's the real reason.
14:37 - Yeah, that's the real reason.
14:39 Yeah, but you know, it's not me.
14:44 I dispense with me and the problem doesn't go away
14:47 'cause it's not me, right?