So I thought I would get farther than through Genesis by by this point.

But I'm I'm not unhappy about the pace, either.

I've learned a tremendous amount, and so hopefully what we'll do today is finish Genesis completely.

And then I think I'll try to start up with Exodus in May, depending on what happens next year.

I have a busy travel schedule, and but I would really like to do it.

I really like the Exodus story, and I understand it very well.

A lot of the stories in Genesis, especially after the first few stories, say, Up to the Tower of Babel.

I had to do a tremendous amount of learning about, which is a greedy good.

But I do know the exodus story, so I'm really looking forward to that.

So So let's dive right into it and see how far we can get today, so we'll review first.

So Joseph's father is Jacob and Jacob is the Hey trick of Israel.

Essentially, that the father of the 12 tribes and, um well, you might remember that Ah, he had a very morally ambivalent halfway through life.

And it's one of the things that I think so interesting about the The stories in the Old Testament is that these so called patriarchal figures are very realistic.

It's something that I have also been struck by that accounts in the New Testament.

That way there's lots of things that Christ does that you think would have been edited out over time and sanitized.

But they're not.

The Old Testament is definitely not a book that's been sanitized, and that's quite interesting that that's the case.

So you sort of see people with all their flaws.

And I've been trying to also derives some general conclusions about the moral of the story of the genesis stories.

And because these stories are fundamentally moral and moral as far as I'm concerned, it has to do with action, right, because moral decisions are the decisions that you make when you're structuring action, when you decide to do one thing or another, generally you want to do things that air, the best things that you can think of to do and hence good.

But sometimes you also want to do things that are the worst things you can do, you know, because you're angry or resentful or bitter.

And so the moral decisions that you make that govern your actions are really the most important decisions that you make in your life.

And it's not that easy to figure out how to make moral decisions.

We don't have an unerring technology for that the same way as we do for, say, making decisions about empirical reality, which in some ways seem a lot simpler, um, part because we can work collectively at it, partly because we have a rigorous methodology for deciding what's true and what's not.

So one of the things that's really struck me like it's an overarching theme.

I would say that emerges out of Genesis, especially after the really ancient stories say, especially after the stories of Cain and Abel end No and, um, the Tower of Babel.

When you get two the accounts of the historically or historically riel people, one injunction seems to be Get the hell out there and do something.

You know, one of the major themes for all of the patriarchs that we've talked about, Abraham say Jacob and Joseph is move out into the world regardless of the circumstances at hand.

Now that's in in in the Old Testament stories that's basically portrayed as hearkening to the voice of God.

Something like that, maybe you could think about that is destiny or a psychological calling.

Um, and the funny thing, too is, is that it's not that these people have in easy time of it when they heed that call.

So what's what's fascinating is that they often run into extreme difficulties right away.

And I think that's very interesting.

First of all, because life is obviously full of extreme difficulties.

And second, it's another example of the failure to sugarcoat things.

Which is one of the things I think makes a mockery of anti religious theories that are even quite sophisticated, say, like Freud's, because Freud thought of religion as a a za wish fulfillment, essentially and and also marks who thought about religion as the opiate of the masses.

It's if those were true.

It seems to me that there'd be a lot more wish and a lot less reality, a lot less stark, harsh reality.

You know, the first thing that Abraham encounters is ah, famine, and then he has to hide his wife and then he he basically journeys into a tyranny.

So that's about as bad as it gets in some ways.

And those themes.

Real Riker continually, and no one ever lives where they're supposed to live.

They leave and live in Canaan and not the Promised Land.

And so it's a pretty rough.

It's a pretty rough series of stories, but the fundamental idea is something like, There's no time for sitting around.

There's time to go out into the world and engage.

And then there's there's hints about the proper and improper ways of engaging right.

So clearly the improper way to engage is, I think, most clearly delineated in the Cain and Abel story and with Cane exemplifying the inappropriate way to engage with the world.

And that's to engage with the world in a bitter, jealous and resentful manner.

Now, one of the things that I really liked about Cain and Abel story and that theme Rikers continually with the with the duality of the brothers right there's there's constant conflict between a perspective that's essentially like Keynes and and the and the opposite perspective, which all which I'll get to in a minute.

But Cain sees that the world is a very, ah tragic place and that the rewards are distributed unfairly and that there are people who do better and people who do worse.

And as a consequence of that, he becomes bitter and resentful and curses God.

And then he becomes homicidal frat recital, which is even worse than he destroys his own ideal than his descendants basically become genocidal.

Something like that.

So that seems to be the wrong way to go about things, you know, unless your goal is to make things worse, like it's not like and has a limited number of things, has nothing to object to.

He's got plenty to object to.

His situation actually is bad.

He's overshadowed terribly by his brother, who everyone loves who does is extraordinarily well and who's good at everything.

And the story is a bit ambivalent about the reasons for Cane's failure, although a fair bit of its laid at his own feet.

But he's definitely failing and so you can understand why he would have this terrible attitude.

But the problem is, all it does is make it worse, so it doesn't seem to be one of the things I've also learned as a psychologist, sort of pondering these sorts of things.

It's often a lot easier to identify what you shouldn't do than what you should do.

Like it's, I think evil is easier to identify than good.

I think good is trickier, but evil stands out to some degree, and then at least you can say, if you're trying to get us far away from that as possible, we could even say just for practical reasons.

So your life doesn't become hell, and your family life doesn't become hell.

At least you could get us far away from that as possible.

Even if you weren't able to conjure up what would constitute the good as a name, you could at least avoid those sorts of pitfalls.

And I do also think that its pitfalls like that that really threaten our society.

Right now, you know that I see a tremendous rise in resentment.

Fueling almost all of the political polarization that's taking place seems unfortunate, given that by and by large, everyone on the planet is richer than they've ever bean.

Now that that doesn't mean there's no disparity, there's, but there's always disparity.

Anyways, Jacob, of course, Jacob and Rebecca deceived me so and so.

And Jacob ends up with with, uh, with Isaac's blessing, and so that's that's a moral catastrophe.

And then he has to run because his brother wants to kill him.

And so that's the fratricidal motif again.

I like that, too.

I think that's really, really realistic.

You know, one of the things that Freud noted constantly, and this is where Freud really is a genius is that the most intense hatreds and also sometimes the most intense love is within families, you know.

And in the Friday and world of psychopathology, it's all it's all inside the family.

In fact, the pathology in the Friday in world is actually the fact that it's all inside the family because people who get tangled up in the fraidy and familial nightmare, which is roughly eat apple in structure can on Lee conceptualize the world in terms of their familial relationships that they've bean so damaged by the investment and the trauma and the deceit in the betrayal and the blurred lines and all of that, they just can't expand past the family and go out in the world.

So the idea that brothers could be at each other's throats, I think is that's a very powerful idea, and it's not something that people like to think about.

So So Jacob has to leave, and it's no not surprising because, I mean, what he did was pretty reprehensible.

He betrayed his brother, but nonetheless he's the person who dreams of the ladder that unites heaven and earth, and that's a very perverse thing.

You know what?

But one of the things I think it does is give in some sense.

It gives hope to everyone because it isn't, You know, if only the good guys win, we're really in trouble, right?

Because it's not that easy to be a good guy.

It's it's it's really not that easy.

And most people are pretty keenly aware of all the ways that they fall short, even of their own ideals.

And so if there was no hope except for the good guys, almost all of us would be lost.

And so that's one of the things I really like and was more surprised about with the Old Testament stories is that these people are very complex lives and they make very major moral errors by anyone's standard And yet if and yet the overall message is still hopeful and the message that runs contrary to the message of evil say that message of good is something like, Well, there's a lot of emphasis on faith, right?

And that's a tough one, because cynics people who are cynical about religious structures like to think of faith as the willingness to demolish your intellect in the service of superstition.

And, well, there's something to be said for that perspective, but not a lot, because the reality is much more sophisticated.

Part of the faith that's that is being insisted upon in the Old Testament is something like, and I'm speaking psychologically here again that it's useful to pause it.

Ah, hi Hi.

Good day, Matt.

It so And I really think that's practically useful to the research we've done with The future authoring program, for example, indicates pretty clearly that if you get people to conceptualize an ideal and a balanced ideal, you know, so what he want for your family, what do you want for your career?

What do you want for your education?

What do you want for your character development?

How are you going to use your time outside of work on.

Are you going to structure your use of drugs and alcohol in places where you might get impulsive?

How can you avoid falling into a horrible pit?

If you really think that through and you come up with an integrated ideal and you put it above you as something to reach for, then you're more committed to the world in a positive way, and you're less tormented by anxiety and uncertainty.

And so and that makes sense, right, because here you are alive and everything.

And so unless you were cape, if you're not capable of manifesting some positive relationship with the fact of your being, then how could that be anything other than hellish?

Because it would just be anxiety provoking and terrible because you're vulnerable and there'd be nothing useful or worthwhile to do?

Well, that's just not.

I just can't see that as a winning strategy for anyone.

You can make a rational case for adopting that strategy in that, you know, you can say, Well, there's no evidence for for a transcendent morality or for an ultimate meaning.

There's no hard empirical evidence, but it seems to me that there's existentially evidence as well.

That has to be taken into account and, of course, like psychologists have talked about this a lot.

Carl Rogers, for example, in Hume, for that matter.

Freud, for that matter.

Most of the great psychologists have pointed out that you know you can derive reasonable information that's that's solid from your own experience, especially if you also talk to other people.

And you can kind of see in your own life when you're on a productive path.

It's sort of in nobles and enlightens you or a destructive path.

And I think it's kind of useful to think that maybe the dichotomy between those two paths might be riel, you know, and because that also allows you to give credence to your intuitions about that sort of thing.

But I don't anyways.

I don't think it's unreasonable to pause it that since you're alive adopting the highest possible regard for the fact that you're alive and that you're surrounded by other creatures that are alive, I just can't see how that could possibly be construed as a losing strategy.

And so that's the first.

So that's something like faith, right?

It's faith it's not.

It's not only faith in your being, but its faith in being as such, and the faith would be something like if you could orient, you're being properly then maybe that would orient you with being as such, and you never know, Like, I mean, it might be true.

There's no reason to assume that it wouldn't be true.

I mean, even if you just take a strict biological perspective on this and think about us is the product of 3.5 1,000,000,000 years of evolution.

I mean, we have struggled over all those billions of years to be alive and to match ourselves with reality and so cause.

One of the things I've often wondered is, you know, life is definitely difficult.

There's no doubt about that, and it's unfair, and there's inequality and all of those things, and people are subject to all sorts of terrible things.

But I also wonder if you weren't actively striving to make things worse, just how much better could they be?

You know, because people are very they like houses, they're divided amongst themselves.

They're pointing in six different directions.

At the same time, they're working at cross purposes to themselves.

because of bitterness and resentment, and what unprocessed memories and childhood hatreds and unexamined assumptions, all sorts of things.

And you you just gotta wonder if you could push that aside and orange yourself properly, and then the other thing.

That, of course, is stressed very heavily in the Old Testament.

And, of course, that goes through the entire biblical corpus is that it's not only enough to establish a positive relationship with being, which I think is the essential.

It's a good description of faith.

You have to make that decision right, because being is very ambivalent, and you could make the case that maybe it's something that should have never happened.

But that doesn't seem to be productive to me.

And faith seems to be, I'm going to act as if being is ultimately justifiable and that if I partake in it properly, I will improve it rather than making it worse.

So I think that's the statement of faith, and then what seems to go along with that?