Bible Lecture #9

[balupton (Benjamin Lupton)]

Discussion thread for The Psychological Significance of the Biblical Stories - Lecture #9

study group discussion

Discussion as part of our Study Group.

2018-02-10: Bible #9

topic podcast [Discussing Meaning #9 & Bible #9] discussion notes first meeting People would choose comfortable hell over changing things. Dealing with phobias and bad relationship. Sometimes getting rid of everything related to that phobia or person help you move on. In the long term, you want to derive the correct lessons from these things and move on that way. Putting yourself together and possibilities that open up with it. Importance of being a fool. Gettin…

podcast

[ExplorerSumit (Sumit Rai)]

My notes

Doing things with all your heart and doing the necessary sacrifices.

• Treat yourself as if you are someone you cared about.

  • People don’t always want what’s best for them.

  • Treat yourself as a critter of intrinsic value regardless of your actions.

    • << One of the issue lots of workaholics have is if they are not working all the time - they feel like shit. That’s really stressful and for me have been very counterproductive. >>

  • Surround yourself with people who are moving forward and are happy when you are moving forward.

  • How would you life to sort your family out ?

• Peterson’s Friend James Simon.

• Anton Chekhov on stage setting.

• You don’t know what would become possible for you if you put yourself together.

  • Non-naive optimism.

God’s command to Abram

Stay Foolish, Stay Hungry

• Go where you don’t know.

• Get away from your family.

  • If they pamper you too much you won’t have “necessity” driving you.

  • You inability to learn when the gap b/w your foolishness and bad consequences is too much.

  • Relationship b/w power and authority and competence.

• You are not the master of your own house. There are all kinds to things that occur inside you that you don’t control.

  • What compels you ? Where does that come from ?

  • You try to study for 3 hours but you attention goes everywhere ?

  • You can’t make yourself interested in something ?

• You are compelled towards what you are interested in.

  • If you don’t listen to the thing that beckons you forward - you will pay for it like you can’t imagine.

  • Positive emotion is generate when you move towards your goal.

  • You are not committed to something unless you are willing to sacrifice for it.

    • Sacrifice the worst in you, God knows how much you love the worst in you.

  • You pursue what you want and try to ensure that results in good consequences for other people to.

  • When you go into the unknown that’s a recipe for many deaths and births over and over again.

  • It’s much better to have bread, and water in peace.

  • The place that you inhabit when things are finally working out for you.

• Development of autonomous individual is same as high.

• << Why chasing it or just the thought of it scares the hell out of me ? >>

• If you stand still - you move backwards.

• A man is not responsible for what he does but for everything everyone else does.

• Things wouldn’t be so bad if you were best version of yourself.

  • Stop doing things that you know are destructive.

• Bitterness really does you in.

  • Make wherever you are better rather than being bitter about where you are not.

• Initial point for Abram is pretty insufficient.

• What is the most important thing I can do today ?

  • Things I want to do.

  • Responsibilities (out of necessity).

• What is it that is worth sacrificing your life to ?

  • To not commit to anything is the worst possible thing you can do.

• Abram doesn’t want to benefit inappropriately from doing the right thing.

• Faith that if you did the right thing, thing will work out for the best. Have faith in the structure of reality.

• What sort of the container you need to be in to tolerate ups and downs ?

[JohnBuck]

my notes

• 2:00 - bible hub (obvious to Vanderklay, his biblical studies is rudimentary, or shallow, but his psychological insights are valuable.

• 8:40 - nothing I’ve ever done was wasted. Anything he put his full effort into has been worth it, maybe not how he expected. Go do something. (Tim ferriss, mike boyd, that idiot that tried to play the chess champion)

• 10:30 - rule 2 and 3 summed up there

• 12:30 - perfect in all his generations, him and his family (a common rule to tell a bad pastor is to look at his relationship with their family. (This is anecdotal and biased and insulting (nade by some christian debating one of them, a supposedly common aspect of the new atheists are poor relationships with theor parents. (Also Johnathan Haidt tallied the aggressive speech used in their books and theyre higher in that speech than rush limbaugh or something (look up))))

• 15:00 - everything is worth paying attention to an infinite amount.

• 16:00 - humor is what keeps us from degenerating into fighting.

• 16:40 - my room is kinda messy.

• 17:00 - in a transcendental state you can see the infinite in the finite. (Platonic forms, higher dimensions , outside of time and material realm.(3blue1brown, sliders that can be adjusted to define an object’s ‘shape’))

• 18:50 - a way to make things beautiful is to severely constrain your material.

• 21:30 - just go. (Im starting my own abrahamic journey)

• 24:30 - (JP always sounds very emotionally tied to these stories, he’s much more vulnerable here than any of the other work he does)

• 25:00 - (yep, i knew it)

• 26:00 - truth and responsibility (finding the biggest rock and picking it up) are the keys to having a meaningful life.

• 26:30 - young men are taught that their mere existence is adding to the tyranny.

• 29:50 - if you forthrightly pursue that which god is telling you to pursue, then all things are possible. (All potential futures are opened up to you, whereas if you stay in your basement your future is set in stone. (Id reckon had you asked JP what his life and outreach would be, 2 years prior, he might consider that impossible) (if you want to look at it secularly, just as an ant is in a way chosen to become more than it may have been born as, through recognizing necessary changes that need to be made, that ant changes itself to fit the need of the anthill, (as peterson filled the missing teacher of responsibility), emergent behavior that is more than the sum of its parts (God?)

• 31:00 - find out just what the limits are to what you can do.

• 31:30 - the rationality of nihilism. (Ivans shady existence, suicide)

• 32:00 - if everyone got their act together… (dunkirk)

• 33:30 - Literary writers lived in paris, and by removal from their land that allowed them to recognize what they’re missing. (The heros journey is leaving their place of comfort, completing a worthwhile(necessary) act, and returning home with the elixir or antidote.

• 35:10 - if a catastrophe doesnt occur if you dont act forthrightly today, maybe you wont ever act forthrightly. (my crazy ai want)

• 36:00 - power is a consequence of authority and competence. (Tim ferris, HSPT book, giving people responsibility makes them become more competent)
  (sidenote, bens morality argument is self contradictory in certain cases, the ability to sleep at night is nigh equivilant to relying upon the approval of God)

• 38:00 - you dont have control of your attention, so ‘who’ does?

• 38:30 - subpersonalities that you are merely the facilitator for (the greek gods, inside out, Werther is a ‘fictional’ subpersonality of Goethe’s that demandes to be set free, and after becoming free this character was able to find multitudes of readers to endwell (even to the point of causing himself to relive the actions described within the fiction.) So if a fictional character becomes lived out, how real is it?)

• 39:00 - these subpersonalities are the equivilant to gods because they control us. (Dionysus is eqivilant to college party kids and alcoholism)

• 39:30 - it doesn’t matter what you call it, it still is. (Jungs quote above his doorway)

• 40:00 - youll pay for it if you do not follow ‘the call from God’ (Asimov’s short story about the VR Dreamers and dreamies, a reciprocal necessary relationship)

• 41:40 - sometimes having less is better than having more ( the mohels understanding of circumcision, atheist s reasoning for no god is its imperfect, but then we have the great gift of being able to make it better) (also free will, certain peoples ideas of what a benevolent god is a tyrant that rules over mindless sheep. But humans unconsciously chose to leave that via eden)

• 44:00 - the sacrifice of an animal was an indication of just how seriously they took the idea of the future, and maybe people today arent taking anything as seriously as they used to. (Neumann’s realization of the practical utility to animal sacrifices to people that live off of these animals. To kill one when its unnecessary makes it so you need to hunt more/breed better, making the sacrificer into a more capable individual by necessity. (This mindset has been imbedded into the Jews, who still tithe 1/10 their income)

• 47:00 - if you put in the effort, god’ll reward you. (This seems to me as a beneficial story to hold religiously)

• 48:00 - a series of continual death and rebirths (3cs)

• 49:30 - (peterson’s explanation of these stories has allowed me to see these stories now also in part similar to schrodinger’s cat, a metaphor pointing to a loteral truth outside of our current understanding. Just like if you were going to attempt to encapsulate the 50,000 years of man’s becoming self-conscious into 1 story that story would be the story of adam and eve (and i find it hard to believe rationally that these stories could accidentally happen to fit perfectly with reality (hugh ross and genesis 1) I would reckon in order to get these truths correctly there must be some sort of unconscious consciousness that carries on throughout those thousands of yeats that works within our background subconscious)

• 51:00 - every mundane place has the potential for the glory of God.

• 52:00 - (and to think I started watching Petersons personality lectures on The lion king in order to try to understand the mere archetypes of characters for screenwriting)

• 53:00 - the infinite is a real place, and most of the time we’re in the finite. (Here he is finally admitting to his belief in the metaphysical realm from which infinite forms exist within)

• 53:20 - (VanderKlay has started regularly doing this with his hands because of Peterson)

• 53:30 - you can inhabit, if not forever, it can feel like forever. (Socrates quote: no evil can befall a Good man)

• 56:20 - the magical transformation takes place (in HTWFAIP, he regularly describes these methods as magical, and from reading the stories that is the most apt descriptor possible)

• 58:40 - write a really bad first draft is the most valuable thing (evolution, the child or the fool is brimming with limitless potential embedded within it. (Magnolia has constant reference to children being as angels, and we entertain angels, and children are innocent. And in order to enter the kingdom of god (a mustard seed) we must becomes as little children.

• 1:01:00 - people regret the things they didnt do more than the mistakes they made doing things (the milgram experiment)

• 1:02:00 - there are such things as redemptive mistakes. (That by doing making us less dumb)

• 1:21:00 - maintain your faith in the good and continue to move forward.

• 1:25:00 - there are social strictures, that even if the ruler of the land transgresses against them, there will be hell to pay.

• 1:28:00 - what is it i should do that is worth sacrificing my life to?

• 1:30:00 - (peterson puts way more emphasis on these stories by analyzing them as a coherent story that was intentionally written, than I or my family had done by reading the bible every day)

• 1:48:00 - Abram refuses to be rewarded for acting righteously. (A true man of god, one who is not as us today.)