2017/03/11: Strengthen the Individual: Q & A Parts I & II

So, how are we going to do this? Are people just going to ask? All right. Yes. "You have said that speech brings order out of chaos." "That's why free speech is important." "But why does it appear that speech brings chaos out of order?"

So you would ask that. The question is... laughter The question is: Speech brings order out of chaos -- That's what I said -- but it appears that speech brings chaos out of order as well. And the answer to that is - it does. There are only so many complications I can address in the talk simultaneously.

Umm.... if you look at the most archaic of archetypal heroes, those heroes confront something that represents chaos. It's usually a monster that bears a treasure of some sort, and that's a symbolic representation of the class of all unexplored things. Because things that we have not yet explored are threatening and destructive, but also offer us infinite potential.

But more elaborated hero stories, let's say, also reverse that and say that - well, there are times when the order has become so corrupt and rigid that free speech fragments it into its parts so that it can rejuvenate itself. And so, actually in the gospels, that's the hero that Christ is basically represented as. He's not so much the dragon confronting... the dragon slayer who gathers the treasure, although that's implicit in the juxtaposition of Christ with the figure of like a serpentile Satan. But Christ is the thing that stands up against the corrupt state and rejuvenates it through speech.

And so technically speaking, free speech - the logos - is the thing that mediates between chaos and order. You can think about this as represented in many cultures, this idea. You can see it most specifically in the Taoist conceptualization because in the Taoist world, being is made out of chaos and order, yin and yang, masculine and feminine. Fundamentally, it's chaos and order.

And order is the fact that wherever you go, there are things you understand, and chaos is the fact that wherever you go, there are things that you don't understand. And so the idea is that being is made out of the things that you understand and the things that you don't understand. And it's always that way, which is why Tao is the symbol of being per se.

And it's the case your brain is adapted, in fact, it's partly why it has two hemispheres - for the world that you understand and the world you don't understand. The world you understand, roughly speaking, being handled by the left; the world you don't understand, roughly speaking, being handled by the right. Well, it's that line down the middle that's Tao. That's meaning.

And if you have one foot in chaos and one foot in order, you're maximizing information flow and rejuvenating yourself at the same time that you're maintaining your structure. And you will report on that internally as engagement in the world. It's the most fundamental orienting sense that you have, and it's deeply instantiated neurologically - unbelievably deeply.

And so it really is the case from an evolutionary perspective that reality is chaos and order. It's that to which you're adapted. And so sometimes you are speaking on behalf of chaos, and sometimes you are speaking on behalf of order. It's more complicated than that too, though, because... when we have a dialogue, say, and we're mutually attempting to climb towards the truth instead of convincing each other that we're right... then what we are doing is engaging in the simultaneous fragmentation of old and archaic belief systems, and they're updated.

And you can experience that - because someone will say something that sets you back and then you'll get what they're saying, and it will CLICK together. And what you are experiencing is the death of an old conceptualization structure (its disintegration), and then its re-configuration in a tighter order. And people love that. They live for that.

It's - really, it's what keeps you ALIVE. And you can experience that in a deep conversation, a truthful conversation, a meeting of the minds and soul. And people love that. It's curative. All psychotherapists know this.

Because, what you do in psychotherapy, in addition to helping people face the things that they're most afraid of so that they can overcome them, is to allow them to tell someone the truth. "What happened to you? I'll listen..." So they tell you. And they take themselves apart and put themselves together while they're speaking the truth about what happened. And it puts them together.

The two fundamental elements of psychotherapy are... Let's find what you're afraid of and avoiding and help you confront it, so that you can gather the information that's there... And... Let's allow you to lay your story out in all of its catastrophe and detail so that you can straighten yourself out through speech.

It's exactly what happens in psychotherapy. And it should happen in every real relationship. It's the spiritual purpose of a marriage, fundamentally, right? Because you face someone who's different than you, that you're tied to -- and cannot run from -- and so... laughter you can reveal yourself... Really, really...

It's a critical - it's a critical part of marriage. Because if you can run, from someone, they will never show you their true face. Because if someone shows you their TRUE face... you WILL run. And so you say in a marriage ceremony, "I will allow you to show me your true face, and I will not run." And unless you mean that, you'll never be married. You'll never understand what it means.

And you'll never reap the benefits of it, which are practical, obviously, but also spiritual and psychological. There's a reason for the vow, but it HAS to be a vow. 'Cause otherwise, you have a back door open, and you'll never really tell the person what you're like. And, and no bloody wonder, because really... who really wants to know what you're like? laughter Not even you... that's for sure.

So, I'm not surprised for... I want to thank you because what was surprising about your lecture today was this concept of altruism. I think you were able to put everything together and at the end come out with a higher value of altruism. And, to me, it was a surprise, you know .

And I have a relationship with altruism, and the one that I find that's difficult for me is that there's an evolutionary process of my brain - it's an organ, it's developed, you know? And I'm amazed at how often I think of 3 people: me, myself, and I. To the point where I've actually written down - counted - all the iterations of "me, myself, and I" in either my thoughts or my speech or even in someone else's.

And you'll get a PAGE... And sometimes we'll think of "we." And as far as I've been able to ascertain, it's because I have to expend energy to think about someone else. And yet, I'm addicted to ease and comfort because my natural evolution is one of ease and comfort. You hear it in Alcoholics Anonymous, "Well, booze ain't the problem. You're addicted to ease and comfort."

How do I overcome my - what I think is my sense of ease and comfort to be able to make altruism a more natural state of being?

Jordan: Good, good - good question. So, the question is - the first was a comment about the emphasis in my talk today on altruism, and the second is, "How do I - how do people overcome their proclivity to only act on their own behalf?"

OK, so ... the first thing I will say is that I don't believe that what I spoke about today was in favor of altruism. And, that's not a negative comment on your question. But there's ... So here's a primary religious injunction: Treat the other person like you would like to be treated yourself.

That does not mean "be nice to other people." It does not mean "sacrifice yourself excessively for other people." It means... Think about the other person as if they were YOU, and figure out how you can mutually interact to better both of you at the same time. You have to build yourself into the equation. It's an equation. It's not that others are more valuable, it's that we're ALL valuable. We're equally valuable.

And then you think "well, how do you remind yourself of that?" And the answer to that is, through terror. Because terror is the genuine motivator. So they say - "Fear of god is the beginning of all wisdom." Well, what does that mean? It means, first, that you don't get away with anything.

And it's really useful to know that, because if you really know that, you won't TRY to get away with - well, you still will - because people are stupid - but, laughter but at least it will mitigate the possibility. So - here, I'll tell you something that Jung said. This is quite profound. And I think it's the right answer to this question.

Young believed - he was interested in the emergence of higher morality. -- something the developmental psychologist Piaget was also interested in -- Piaget thought... we started out as individuals, then we learned to play games with other people. Kids - children - learned how to play games with other children, and that made them social.

So, our society is a game, it's a giant game. That we're all playing together, voluntarily. And so children will first learn how to play the game, and only later did they learn the rules of the game. They learned how to play the game first, and then learned the rules - how to SPEAK the rules. And then at some point they realized that they were also creators of the rules.

And so that's ... moral development... on a continual - or, not a continual... it's a fractured staircase upward. But Jung was interested in elements of moral action that were higher than that, so... he conceptualized it symbolically. So imagine this - he did this in the last book he wrote, called "Mysterium Coniunctionis".

So imagine that you exist so that your conceptual structures and your emotions are in uneasy relationship with one another. So you're kind of a house divided ... amongst yourself.