Discussion for The Psychological Significance of the Biblical Stories - Lecture #11
study group discussion
Discussion as part of our Study Group.
podcast
my notes
Set up a goal in your life and run the goal to its end. You will need to re-orient yourself after that and come up with a new goal.
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Shed what is no longer necessary. Fire in the forest metaphor.
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Build up of all decisions node made and dreams not followed will overwhelm you and accelerate aging.
Delay gratification
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Needed for a better future and better life outcome.
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How do you know what to sacrifice ?
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What is the maximally correct sacrifice ?
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How much better your future can be if your sacrifice is of highest quality ? Idea of paradise
- What is paradise for you ?
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Dealing with fear
- Increasing courage by voluntarily accepting fear.
How can Abraham establish a covenant on behalf of future generation and other people in the family ?
Let go of things that are holding you back even if it is dear to you.
Socrates’s Trial
Act where you don’t know how to act or in the face of a stranger ? - Question of this lecture.
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Keep people’s transcendent reality in your mind while dealing with them also.
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Well don’t mess with them to begin with since you don’t know who they are.
Ask and it will be given. How to tell if you really want something ?
- Are you willing to make the necessary sacrifices ?
Supposition that every individual has something divine in them.
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Impact on legacy system.
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Without this idea - once you make a mistake you are in the bad people category that don’t have any rights.
Trusting someone
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Having deep vs shallow conversations - they provide bread that is not material bread.
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Asking for best part of them to come out.
Sodom and Gomorrah
What happened in Soviet Union ? (2100 Page book: Gulag Archipelago)
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They got it wrong at many different levels:
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Socially - slavery
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Family - spies inside your own family
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Philosophically
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Why ?
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Corruption of individual (not just people in power)
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Didn’t stand up for the truth and tolerated lies.
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Person to the leaders - all were corrupt.
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You are not responsible for what you do and what everyone else does.
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Abraham trying to prevent God from destroying if there are few good people in the city.
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Few good people can prevent thing from getting out of control.
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Gandhi and Leo Tolstoy
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Immediate gratification without having any civilized structure.
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my notes
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1:40 - a sacrifice is necessary in order to progress to the next epoch of your life
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20:30 - it’s a greater sacrifice to give up something that is a part of you than somethi
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23:50 - Modern man is unable to take things seriously (like resolutions) because they no longer perform symbolic acts
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26:30 - women aren’t as much in need of such symbolic acts as their own biology already act as these transformations of character (menstruation, loss of virginity, childbirth)
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45:00 - you can make your ideal judge incrementally, that tells you what you can let go of in order to become
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56:00 - human rights are predicated upon the christian idea that all humans have an intrinsic divine element
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58:50 - bread that is not bread is information (word that comes of god)
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1:06:00 - if you really want something you will sacrifice everything to get it.
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1:16:00 - there is potential waiting to burst forth from the material (gardening, telos)
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1:28:00 - that’s what people can do. and you’re one of them.
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1:48:00 - (i’m not satisfied with the ‘post-shadowing’ excuse for that consequence.) Bible.org : “That’s what happened to Lot. He allowed little sins in his life to go unchecked. They weren’t major, shocking kinds of sins–just “little” sins. But they were steadily eroding his moral character, until finally the sordid incident recorded here burst the dam.” ---- “Lot’s daughters were frustrated because, due to their father’s passivity and sin, they found themselves sitting in a cave with no prospects for marriage in sight. So they decided on this shameful method of having children. If you are a passive father, just letting your own and your family’s spiritual life drift, you are creating frustration in them that is likely to result in them taking charge of the situation and moving in the wrong direction.” Electra complex, perhaps the feeling of the daughters to make up for the loss of their mother.
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1:59:00 - (for a young person wanting to earn the right to know these great books, they must incorporate them into their own personal lives.)
(-youtube comment on homosexuality to possibly discuss)
Patrick Thomas’ notes
I have to think that Dr. Peterson is going out of his way not to piss off the Gay community here. Because this constant re-emphasis that the story has nothing to do homosexuality I think is wishful thinking and not missing the physiological significance of sexual immorality running rampant in a culture leading to even worse sin, such as the other things that Dr. Peterson suggest like impulsive conduct.
The story as far as I can see includes the idea of acts of homosexuality being part of the immorality within the society that has become fully perverse. That homosexuality being an accepted part of the society is therefore significant. Now it is only part of the whole of the problem of Sodom and Gomorrah. The other parts of mistreating strangers and the conduct of the culture as a whole is the full reason that Sodom and Gomorrah are destroyed.
Much of the bible is making the case giving into your basic desires without regard to moral principle lead to self destruction. If those bad characteristics become common place in a society than the society will self destruct. Homosexuality as the bible views it is an example of giving into basic desires without regard to moral principle and that is why it is a sin.
Now homosexuality is not the only form of perversion in this story or within the bible but to suggest it has nothing to do with the point of the story I can’t see as being intellectual honest.