September 23, 2025 • 77 mins
Erik Erikson, renowned psychoanalyst and student of Sigmund Freud, says we have these innate drives around which ego and consciousness are formed. This brings up a discussion of the ego and its relationship to free will, that elusive philosophical question. Also arising is the Herculean task we are all given - to bind the internal and external world in our attempt to make sense. Enjoy the journey!
Patreon: patreon.com/FoolsandSagesPodcast
X: https://x.com/sagetimepodcast
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/foolsandsagespodcast/
See the Fools and Sages show notes: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1GVCVW1h2_-4JOU22KREzTO0lVDiN3icg?usp=drive_link
Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
05:25 The Intersection of Psychology and Philosophy
08:07 Freud: The Pioneer of Psychoanalysis
17:38 The Roots of Virtue
21:22 Hope, Will, and Purpose
38:20 Love and Care
45:42 Wisdom
52:49 Ethics and Responsibility
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:14):
Ryan, good afternoon. How are you doing today, Sir?
I'm, well, I'm back in Santa Fe,just drove across the country
with my daughter and I. I like long drives more and
more, so it was a great time forreflection and great time, you
know, to spend with her and, and, and it's beautiful to be
back. See, all of America, or most of
(00:37):
it? Good chunk.
Well. One very narrow stretch of it
that is sometimes called I-40. But but yes, I saw a cross
section if you will. Part of the story of America,
part of the story. It's interesting how it plays
out geographically, the story. Yeah, for sure.
But yeah, that's cool. Welcome back.
(00:58):
I'm doing good. I'm making progress here, you
know, on a number of fronts and,and holding the holding the,
the, the tide back and others. So that's good, you know.
Yeah, yeah, good enough. Cool.
So you had something on your mind today?
(01:19):
Yeah, I have been, you know, once we if, if, if for those
long time viewers, you'll noticethat there has been a sort of a
randomness and yet a directionality to a lot of the
conversations that we've had. And so various of the themes,
like the song says, the theme ofthe themes all returned to you
(01:44):
and we've had a bunch of themes kind of weave together.
And once something like that happens, you find that it almost
has a gravity of sorts and it's sort of starts to pull in other
things. It's probably the phenomenon
like when you buy a yellow car, you notice all the yellow cars,
something like that. Well, but chapters also have a
(02:05):
gravity for certain kinds of influences it seems.
So like, I'm thinking of when I started showing up at your
house, there were a bunch of people, young men mostly around
my age, also showing up at your house around the same time.
And that chapter had a gravity of a sort.
So yeah, I guess I relate to that idea consistently.
(02:29):
And maybe the listening that's there sort of pulls out the
curriculum that hits that listening.
And so that might be what happened here, even though we
have a whole different kind of listening.
It's sort of a broader, but we've touched on a lot of themes
in this piece that sort of happened on to me couple weeks
maybe Lassian just plugs into a number of the conversations that
(02:53):
we've had, and it starts out as people might not have realized,
like many of our conversations have sourced out of the
beautiful little town of Freiburg in Moravia.
Now where you might ask, is Moravia?
(03:16):
Look on a map, you won't find it.
I'm guessing that Bavaria. You'd think it's actually now in
what we call the Czech Republic and we're focusing today on the
son of a Moravian wool merchant.And but what's interesting is
(03:38):
that this particular town wherein dwelled to this will
merchant named Jacob and his family, they didn't stay in
Freiburg. But Freiburg itself has played a
setting to a number of the people that we've talked about
already. And I wanted to read them
because I had my friend Al dig them all up in line.
(04:02):
The first first one was, of course, Martin Heidegger, who
we've spoken about Heidegger a bunch.
Heidegger is the sort of the the, not the original source,
but the more common source of the H word hermeneutics, where
hermeneutics kind of met phenomenology.
Also, Phenomenologies founder Edmund Husserl, who was
(04:24):
Heidegger's teacher, also taughtin Freiburg, who we've spoken
about Husserl. Teacher or his student?
I thought he was his student, Husserl.
Husserl was the teacher of Heidegger.
And then we get to a guy named, well, we've mentioned before a
little bit and we shall speak more about Hannah Errant Now,
(04:48):
she was a student of Heidegger and she wrote some interesting
pieces that are one of which I'mreading now side by side with
Kropotkin on revolution. And I'm thinking we might have
some conversations on that some distant future time.
And so, so I thought it'd be interesting kind of because this
is coming out of phenomenology that's had hermeneutics and
(05:12):
existentialism sort of all swirled in there by Heidegger.
And so the other one who we've spoken about who was also a
fellow classmate of Hannah Aaron's that is student of
Heidegger was Hans George Gottemer.
And he was the one who I really kind of dug into his idea of
(05:32):
hermeneutics, and particularly this idea of ontological
hermeneutics, which which for people that didn't catch those
prior episodes, it's this idea of how do we interpret things
where we have a whole picture ofit and we are fed parts of it.
And the parts inform this, this growing image of the whole that
(05:54):
we store. And the growing image of the
store contextualizes all the newparts.
So there's this feedback loop that we call the hermeneutical
circle. And that came out of these cats
in Freiburg. I imagine Freiburg is a
beautiful little town. I have no idea.
Does that, does that represent one of so, so we, there are
(06:16):
places where psychology and philosophy meet and and, and,
and really there are also placeswhere they merge and, and this
seems to be one of them. Like how we make sense is a
psychological question. What I call a crossroads.
But the implication of making sense might be philosophical.
(06:39):
And vice versa. OK, that that, you know, I think
a lot of Husserl's realizations about the dawning of
consciousness and the nature of consciousness really do have
psychological implications that were appreciated later on down
the trail, maybe more. I had some Aha's around that for
sure. Yeah, is is hermeneutics one of
(07:02):
the first places where psychology and philosophy really
collapse together. No, I think you'll find it in
Aristotle. Oh, OK.
You know, and I and, and maybe arguably in Plato also in the
how one has relationship with one's emotions and passions and,
(07:23):
and the higher impulses and the lower important, all that.
Yeah. And and of course the church has
some version of its own type of understanding of psychology,
which came along with Aquinas, mixing Aristotle in there too, I
think. But so, so no, the other one
that came out, who is another existentialist was Carl Jaspers.
(07:45):
And Carl Jaspers was also a teacher of Hannah Aaron's and
maybe even a bigger influence onher than the Heidegger was.
And who else? Max Weber, sociologist,
political economist. Edith Stein, influenced by
(08:07):
Husserl, taught at Freiburg and was later made a Catholic St.
So that's kind of curious, but the character that I'm thinking
of is neat. None of those.
But he grew up, literally grew up until his father's business
took a shot and he had to move to Vienna.
(08:27):
And that's the place that we usually associate this person
with this son of a Moravian woolmerchant.
We know him more popularly as. And here's where my visual aid
comes in, her doctor, Sigmund Freud, who said sometimes a
(08:49):
cigar is just a cigar. This is my action figure,
complete with cigar. That's awesome.
It's kind of like Sean Connery, too.
Yeah, he's a, he's like, I guessI don't have a place where he
can stand here in the consult with us.
But my German accent isn't very good, so we probably shouldn't
go in that. Direction.
(09:09):
I think the right shoulder is appropriate.
There we go, tape him up there. And but the thing that
occasioned my interest it my re awaken my re interest because
back in the day I studied Sigmund Freud.
He was, of course, a, a student,a teacher rather of Wilhelm
Reich, who I later spent a lot of time with a bunch of his
(09:31):
psycho energetic models, you might say.
But Sigmund Freud is interestingbecause he gets a he gets a bad
rap and for for probably a number of different reasons.
And I think that maybe there's some things that that we don't
typically remember or or understand about Freud that I
(09:53):
wanted to talk about. But I learned those things from
this book called, which is wherewhat inspired this all Insight
and Responsibility by a gentleman named Erick Erickson.
People familiar with psychology might recognize that name, but
(10:16):
people who aren't familiar with psychology might be familiar
with the concept that he originated that we know as
identity crisis. And I thought it's not entirely
inappropriate for these times and for some of the
conversations that we've had because these insights kind of
(10:37):
play a role. The subtitle is Lectures on the
Ethical Implications of Psychoanalytic Insight.
And because our conversations turned in a, in a direction that
that sort of elevated ethics, asmany of these philosophers did,
as in fact did Levinas, another student out of that same mix of
(11:03):
Heidegger. And so although he might have
come across in Marburg or somewhere else, I'm not sure
he's literally part of the Freiburg crowd, but he's part of
the Freiburg headspace for sure.And but so, so, so Freud, I
(11:23):
mean, we could theorize why he gets the such a such a whack
that he does, but. I think because he was a pioneer
and that's what happens. And because he was talking about
sex and which I think was charged up, and that's part of
his point. Yeah, right.
But but not just that, I mean the the dreams having meaning
(11:46):
and the unconscious playing a significant role in how we
behave and that our our early relationships with parents are
fraud, especially with mother. And like all of that stuff is
charged. Right.
And he and he wasn't right abouteverything per SE.
But if you're going to try to make a make a map of the psyche,
(12:08):
and then you're going to be the first guy to do it, you're going
to make some mistakes, right? And and most importantly, he
gave a framework for the people that came later to to have a
structure for understanding. And we still use it.
Oh, and we do. And, and, and but one of the
interesting things that people don't realize because of all the
things that you just listed, is they think that Freud is sort of
(12:33):
like off in some, you know, fruit loopy kind of a place.
But the reality is that Freud started as a neurologist, right?
He couldn't have been a psychoanalyst because he hadn't
invented that yet. But he started out as a
neurologist and a very strict materialist.
(12:57):
And he was part of the school that thought that all of the
problems of human consciousness could be explained through
neurology, that is, through the biological machine needing a
tweak like this or a tweak like that.
And, and I think that this was also sort of with the dawn of
(13:20):
modern pharmaceutology. And so there was a popularity to
want to say, well, you might nothave enough of this or you might
have too much of this. And we'll just, you know, tweak
things and all those thoughts, just like the popular idea that
all your dreams. Well, that's just nonsense.
(13:40):
It has no, just like Finnegan's wake, it's all nonsense and
there's no meaning in it and there's no way to move forward
with that information. Well, Freud came to the a
different conclusion than that, but he didn't.
That wasn't the conclusion that he chose.
That was not the direction that he headed in.
He had it in quite the opposite direction, in fact.
(14:01):
And he actually made a saying, he made a statement at some
point rather that that he wasn'tgoing to attribute things to any
other energies other than these materialist energies unless he
was absolutely forced to, which is like, that's a pretty solid
stand in One Direction, you know.
(14:24):
And he was very much influenced by the scientific methodology
and observation and collecting data and doing all that.
But then, you know, once he started to get on to this idea,
he started using hypnosis, he started doing interpretation of
(14:45):
dreams. In fact his first work was
called on the interpretation of dreams.
As he got as he started to get this idea, but how radical it
was, we can't conceive of that because we live in such a post
Freudian world. And you know the things, the
(15:05):
image that we have of him is sort of like, I trust we will
soon find out in a similar way about Descartes.
It's part of my prophecy that that we kind of only have a 2
dimensional image of him and he kind of becomes a a bit of a
punching bag for, you know, maybe some other things that
(15:30):
happened in his wake more than that he's responsible for.
Well, I mean, I think that the main reaction I'm aware of to
Freud is, you know, kind of likethey canned.
You tell somebody that they mustbe influenced by their own
Oedipal complex, and they immediately go to how ridiculous
(15:52):
that is, what a ridiculous idea that even is, that I would fall
in love with my mother. So, and that a Greek myth would
have anything to do with anything.
Yeah, right. It's just stories.
So I, I really think he was overthe target way more than not.
And, and yeah, I think I think anybody that, well, I shouldn't
(16:18):
say I shouldn't say that. But if if you're curious about
psychology, then discrediting Freud does you no good in your
exploration, I think. Right, right.
It means there's some ground to be covered that's very basic
because you could think of this is the guy that discovered that
(16:39):
maybe imperfect childhoods had something to do with the person
that people became. And that that becomes the crux.
That a lot of people that came after Freud in the
psychoanalytic school sort of fleshed out and, you know,
checked out all the different side paths and if kind of made a
(17:01):
fleshed out his framework for thought in an interesting way.
And, and in a very practical sense, that we construct defense
mechanisms to navigate the the impact of difficult childhood
experiences and that those defense mechanisms then govern
(17:21):
our behavior in some way parallels the shamanic model and
is mainstream coaching language today, like business coaching
has to address that stuff. So, yeah, I, I took a course at
a liberal arts college, the, theschool that I went to that that
(17:46):
was kind of like physics for people that, that weren't
sophisticated mathematically. And, and it wasn't physics, it
was basic science for people that weren't mathematically
oriented. And, and I believe the book we
read was 7 Ideas that Shook the Universe.
And and of the seven big ideas, Freud's mapping of the psyche
(18:10):
was was one of them. Well, and it's a big deal.
There's this idea that that genius is not hitting a target
that other people can't can't hit.
It's hitting a target other people can't even see.
And that was definitely the casewith Freud.
And it seems like when these people come, because this also
(18:32):
happened to Freud, is that he kind of had to.
He's not the only one. We're going to talk about more
thinkers and philosophers that had the same problem, where the
thought that they have is so radical for the setting that
they are in that that it just even saying what they're saying
is tipping over the apple cart. Kind of like Galileo was one of
(18:55):
those guys and they're saying like we have got to lock this
guy up just for the sanity of everybody because he's, he's
poisoned the well, you know, with this thought somehow.
And, and of course the church was a great fan of that with the
idea of blasphemy and and wrong where wrong think was an
official crime, you know, and, but so, so yeah, some of the
(19:19):
thinkers, including the, the person whose book I made
reference to here, Insight and responsibility, they once Freud
said, you know, stuff happens tous and it gets buried and it has
this sometimes pernicious influence on us.
And we don't typically see the mechanism that it works by, but
(19:43):
we they can, it can be unravelled.
The mind can go in there and understand it and in
understanding it, some aspect offreedom is attained by that.
And so. So they started trying to
understand childhood better, which is like very logical.
(20:09):
And because of this is where theproblems are being set.
This is the who's throwing the babies in the river.
Let's go upstream and instead ofkeep fishing babies out of the
river, if we can stop them getting launched in, the work
will be a lot drier at least. And so so they started looking
(20:29):
at early human development and one of the things that caught my
eye that, you know, was sort of like a regular listeners know
that I'm kind of a one string banjo about this idea of is of
virtues. And so, so Ericsson here has
(20:56):
laid out the virtues that he thinks are necessary in a
healthful development. And he lays it out and he's he's
kind of very specific about this, as this is not a map, this
is not an instruction manual of how to build children.
This is not like these are generalities.
(21:16):
He talks about Piaget, who was afamous experimental psychologist
and who's famous for his his discovery or labeling of what we
now call object permanence. That is that a baby sees
something and the baby acknowledges it exists.
(21:36):
But then when you take it out ofsight, as far as the baby's
concerned, it's gone. It's like it doesn't exist
anymore. But at some point the baby
realizes that when you put the object behind your back, it
still exists behind your back. And so they were trying to map
out these different chapters idea.
By the way, that's when you can really start messing with the
(21:57):
baby, when they do think the object is behind your back, but
it's not, and then new worlds are revealed.
Because the thing was really in your ear.
Look. Yeah.
And, and monkeys, I've seen people, magicians playing games
with orangutans and chimpanzees,and they get that same kind of.
Wait a minute. Yeah, it's an interesting,
(22:20):
interesting thing to watch. But so, so, you know, my point
about Piaget was that Piaget really attacked the idea that
there's discrete developmental stages.
He said that you've got all these different things
developing dentition and you know, structure and muscle mass
(22:40):
and you know, he says, and all these things are all locked
together in what he called a functional unity, which is an
idea that also that made it later on into into.
Wilhelm Reich talks about musclegroups having a functional unity
and which is basically things that we can make distinctions
and see parts in it, but when they function it's always these
(23:03):
parts are always seem to be functioning as part of a bigger
system. I mean, that sounds like a
pretty fractal or an idea that can be applied fractally, right?
I mean, that's the difference between coherence and
fragmentation writ large. Pretty much.
And that we find it everywhere as part of that holographic
(23:25):
nature. Yeah.
But so he, he looks at these even though he says we can't
really make chapters and we can't really see stages.
Here are the stages basically, you know, which is I think is
valid, he says. So just reading this little
sentence here, he says, I will therefore speak of hope, will,
(23:49):
purpose and competence as the rudiments of virtue developed in
childhood. And we'll put these in the show
notes with a little a little blurb about each one.
And I'm going to go through eachone and his definition, which is
kind of interesting. So that's hope will, purpose and
competence as the rudiments of virtue developed in childhood,
(24:12):
of fidelity as the adolescent virtue, and of love, care and
wisdom as the central virtues ofadulthood.
And he goes on to mention that these seem like we, again, we
break these things up as separate qualities, but they all
(24:37):
depend on each other, which is why they're considered vital
virtues by his way of singing things.
And so it's, so it's interesting, you know, the first
one of those is hope. And he talks about, he talks
about very early childhood experience and he sees hope is
(24:59):
like the first necessary thing. And he says that if you if you
see a truly hopeless child, thenyou'll understand how
fundamental is this quality of hope in the first foundational
steps of the development of selfhood.
(25:20):
And so he says, one of his firstformulations.
Hope is the enduring belief in the attainability of fervent
wishes in spite of the dark urges and rages which mark the
beginning of existence. I'll read that again.
(25:43):
Hope is the enduring belief in the attainability of fervent
wishes in spite of the dark urges and rages which mark the
beginning of existence. The ontogenetic basis of faith
nourished by the adult faith which pervades patterns of care.
(26:06):
It's kind of interesting becausenow you're in that stage with
your new one here where that you're, you're actually, you
have a chance to see this the, the fruition of consciousness
coming through a human being, ifyou will.
It's been really interesting observing that, especially
(26:28):
informed by, you know, 25 years of these conversations, you
know, and other life experiencesthat give me a perspective on
it. I didn't have 25 years ago when
my my oldest was born or 26 years ago.
But it's interesting to, to stick hope on there because I've
(26:49):
been really cognizant of desire and will emerging and, and kind
of blown away at at how baked inthat stuff is that, that without
will, there's no, there's no drive for an infant to start
(27:14):
figuring out how to turn themselves over.
You can't teach them to do that.Or maybe you can, but but
teaching them to do it is a completely different process
from them grunting and pushing until they flip themselves over.
Like, why would you do that? There's nothing there when you
flip over. Well, in Husserl, you know, he
(27:34):
points at that his idea of intentionality as as even deeper
than that, just the consciousness moving out towards
the the creation and the world outside with without an impulse
to move into it. And that's what you peg free
will to. And here's the next paragraph.
(27:57):
Here, no doubt, is the genetic origin of the elusive question
of free will, which man ever again attempts to master
logically and theologically. The fact is no person can live,
no ego remain intact without hope and will, because will is
(28:18):
in fact the next, the next quality here.
And so he defines will thereforeis the unbroken determination to
exercise free choice as well as self restraint in spite of the
unavoidable experience of shame and doubt in infancy.
(28:42):
He says the social problem of will is contained in the words
goodwill. The goodwill of others obviously
depends on the limitation of ourown wills.
And it's interesting. Here's another one.
I thought that linguistically was very.
Goodwill others depends on on our own limitations.
(29:07):
On the limitation of our own will.
In other words, if we just try to get everything that we will,
if we only are interested in what we want, then other people
will not be happy with us. OK, so it kind of like the the
birth of social. Contract, social contract, maybe
(29:29):
that birth first seed of ethicalawareness.
Yeah. And and and also the awareness
that will is the basis for acceptance of law and necessity
and is rooted in the judiciousness of the parents
guided by the spirit of law. This is an interesting word to
(29:49):
jump in the conversation here atthis point.
And but then the other sense I liked is it'll gradually it will
gradually grant. Is that what it was?
Yes, a measure of self-control to the child who learns to
control willfulness, to offer willingness and to exchange
(30:14):
goodwill, which I think is you know that learning to to work
and play well with others. And in the end, the self-image
of the child will prove to have been split in the way in which
man is apartment to remain splitfor the rest of his life, which
(30:35):
is an you know which is an interesting Chuangsa talks about
this. I think he says, you know, when
I, when I do what I want, then other people are sad and when I
do what they want, then I'm sad.What am I going to do here?
You know, it's a pretty interesting and pretty
interesting little passage. I'll try to dig.
(30:56):
I'll try to dig that one out too.
And so, so we've gone through Will, and we now come to the
third vital virtue, which is purpose.
And any he goes on and he talks about play, and it seems like a
(31:19):
child spends on his play a sincere purposefulness out of
proportion to what he soon must learn, namely what things are
really for, what their real purpose is.
We underestimate the set, the evolutionary necessity for
representational play in an animal who has to learn to bind
together an inner and an outer world.
(31:40):
That's that split, bind together.
The inner and the outer world are remembered past and an
anticipated future before he canlearn a master of the tools used
in cooperation or the roles distributed in a community and
the purpose pursued in a given technology.
So, so he comes to define. Purpose, then is the courage to
(32:06):
envisage and pursue valued goalsuninhibited by the defeat of
infantile fantasies, by guilt, and by the foiling fear of
punishment. So that's the kind of like a
damn the torpedoes. There's a.
There's a consistency here in a in the descriptions that that
(32:31):
reminds me of Freud to some extent, which is interesting.
Maybe we can pause on it for a moment, which is that hope has
to manifest despite the horror of being alive, right?
And purpose has to manifest despite the horror of being
alive. And like I, I just had this
(32:52):
flash of how impossible of a task it really is to bind
together an internal and external world when you got
nothing to work with. Or all remembering, remember
Reich's term Liebenzangst? Yeah.
So. Fear of living.
Yeah, So so does that resonate for you that that shame and dark
(33:16):
urges and and devastation and existential loss.
That's that's what we're all kind of sitting in and
manifesting despite like or is that just a model like you think
(33:38):
we're we're that's that is what the unconscious has is holding.
Well, I think that, yeah, that we are in a project of, of
becoming complete. And that that amounts to an
(33:58):
awareness. I was thinking about this the
other day and that there would be a good graph in here.
And that is as far as as far as what you're pursuing in life.
And because your pursuits, the things you're, you truly value,
you could graph them based on the things we all know.
So for example, if the virtues within yourself that you want to
(34:23):
cultivate are around your physical beauty, we know what
the graph like that looks like. It's pretty steep and it reaches
a peak pretty early in life. And then it's just steadily
downhill from that. So that's informative of
something. If we make some other choices
(34:46):
that might be longer lasting, say we're going to become a
construction worker to make a good living, well, we know that
that'll start out and that'll last for a while and then the
physical vehicle will start to break down, right?
(35:06):
I've experienced this first hand.
I was in the in the line at the bank and I saw a plastering
truck guy next to me and I, we had a little conversation about
plastering and I had said I had messed up my shoulder from
plastering. And he says, yeah, I've got 2
stainless steel ones. But so that's, you know, just a
nice little vignette that shows you that yeah, you're definitely
(35:28):
going to be functional. You like you, the value you've
built up will last longer than your beauty will.
Some of us don't have to worry about our beauty lasting all
that long, but so the real question then becomes, how do
you you know this? Both of those paint life as you
(35:50):
go up, you hit a peak, you hold the peak a while and then it's
all downhill from there. And there's this sort of an idea
that after you no longer pretty or you're no longer, you know,
capable physically of manifesting the the value doing
the work that pretty much you'reall your significant value is
(36:15):
going to be dropping off, you know, and I like Norman
MacDonald was talking once abouthow when when someone dies, they
say, well, he lost his battle with cancer.
And he says, so is that what it is?
Everybody's life? They just lost the battle.
Finally, no matter what, you always end up having lost the
(36:36):
battle somehow, maybe intuitively, we have a little
voice that goes, Nick can't be right, can't be right.
So the Riddle then becomes, whatis the curve that just looks
like this? And that as long as you live,
you know, it's like that, that famous violinist that they said
he was in his 97 or something, he's still practicing every day.
(36:57):
And they asked him about that. And he said, well, I'm making
progress because he was on a oneof these and they're reading him
from A1 of these where dude, you're 97, you're supposed to
just be gumming your oatmeal down and drooling on yourself.
But he's like, what will make that happen?
(37:20):
Living this world model that says that this is the nature of
human life and that's the inescapable nature of the story.
But this model, I think this is the model where this is the
model that's important not just to the old people who are up at
this end. It's super important for these
(37:40):
when when people are down here. And that's one of the things
that he talks about, which I thought was very interesting
because, well, we'll get to it. Let's keep going with these nice
vital virtues. So the next vital virtue he
calls competence and he says that.
And maybe his friend White has some different model of things.
(38:03):
But a sense of competence at anyrate, characterizes what
eventually becomes workmanship ever since his expulsion from
paradise. Now this is a reference, of
course, to the Bible and the curse that's put on Adam and Eve
when they're driven from the by the the Garden of Eden.
(38:24):
Man shall live by the sweat of his brow and so that that
expulsion from paradise. Of course, man has been inclined
to protest work as drudgery or as slavery, and to consider the
most fortunate those who seemingly can choose to work or
not work. Evolute evolution is brought to
(38:47):
pass that man, when he approaches the age of
instruction in the basic elements of his culture's
technology is the most unspecialized of all animals.
So so his point is that there isa certain stage that the child
needs to is ready for a variety of specializations and we'll
(39:10):
learn most eagerly techniques inline with that ethos of
production. Touching back to Bergson that it
is our natural capacity to manipulate matter and to make
things to be productive as in the production of things.
And so competence then is the free exercise of it dexterity
(39:32):
and intelligence in the completion of tasks unimpaired
by infantile inferiority. And so, you know, I think this
shows up a lot of ways, probablystarts out as clean up your
room, right? And, but, but also, I think that
(39:56):
part of the dangers maybe if, ifour life is too removed from
actual things is that our children can miss that, that
development of competency withina defined area, whether it's
being able to drive a nail or I think for a lot of kids that
(40:20):
learned Kung Fu with us, that was a scale of competencies.
I think when I was in the Boy Scouts and there were ranks and
there were requirements for those ranks, there were required
competencies and there was a ladder of that you could follow
to build more competency. And sort of wired into that was
(40:43):
that you had to use some dexterity, you had to use some
intelligence, you had to use some gumption to come to the
completion of the task. I think it is also there's like
a reality check that that's built into learning about what
competence means. And I think a lot of kids don't
(41:06):
get this from their parents these days where, you know,
everything you drew is beautifuland gets hung on the fridge has
its merits. But let's keep it real too,
that, you know, at some point you got to say that doesn't look
(41:27):
like an elephant or, you know, there's there's a container
where where coddling is outside of which coddling starts to do a
lot of damage. It prevents the the building of
competence. It prevents the building of
competence and then there's a reckoning later has.
(41:49):
To be and definitely. Common.
I see parents today. And then I remember hearing one
of the one of the code talkers, I think it was who was in his
age, you know, one of the Navajocode talkers.
And he was talking about when they had to go to school and
that, you know, it was like a number of days through the
(42:11):
desert to get to the school and they let the kids like go across
the desert, you know, knowing where to find water, like the
whole deal to end up a few days later at school.
And it was like, oh, and bring your 6 year old sister with you.
And their lifestyle built that type of competence and their
(42:36):
understanding already at that age of animals and the, the way
things worked was different because the lifestyle was
different. And we move away from that at
our own peril and the peril of future generations and I.
And there may be the real peril is that there may be a self
writing mechanism to this. And if we get too far from the
(43:02):
base, we may get slapped back hard back into reality.
I mean, it's, it's, it's anotherversion of the good.
Good times make weak men, weak men make bad times, bad times
make strong men. And it's it's that.
Right, hitting the guardrail andit bumping you back onto the
(43:24):
highway. Yeah.
So the, the adolescent virtues, you know, it's interesting
because he points out when humansexuality matures in puberty,
that doesn't mean they're ready to really be a mate or a parent.
And that there's actually a realquestion where he gets into
(43:45):
about how the adolescent attitudes or, or our culture's
attitudes about adolescent sexuality and whether it
actually whether a freer attitude actually makes people
freer. And I think when this was
written, these were lectures that all happened, I think,
around around Freud's 100th birthday, what would have been
(44:09):
his 100th birthday. And so it's a little bit
different world than the one that we're living in, what we've
run this cultural experiment a few more cycles than when
Erickson is talking about. And remember, Erickson was the
one that coined the term identity crisis.
And I think this becomes even more significant later here.
(44:30):
But so he defines fidelity as that adolescent virtue, and he
calls it the ability to sustain loyalties freely pledged in
spite of the inevitable contradictions of value systems.
It is the cornerstone of identity and receives
(44:51):
inspiration from confirming ideologies and affirming
companions, which of course we see in adolescence.
But, he says in youth such truthverifies itself a number of
ways. A high sense of duty, accuracy,
veracity in the rendering of reality, the sentiment of
(45:12):
truthfulness as in sincerity andconviction, quality of
genuineness as in authenticity, the trait of loyalty, of being
true, quote UN quote, fairness to the rules of the game.
And finally, all that is impliedin devotion, freely given but
binding vow, with the faithful implication of a curse befalling
(45:32):
traitors. When Hamlet, the emotional
victim of his royal parents faithlessness, poses the
question to be or not to be, he demonstrates in Word and deed
that to him, to be is contingenton being loyal.
It sounds like this is where youget to establish having
(45:54):
character and what what it meansto have character or, or really,
whereas, you know, I kind of read the the building blocks of
childhood that you went through as necessary for virtue.
They do not comprise virtue, butfidelity starts to it needs
(46:20):
boundaries, right. You're.
Thinking out of this world. In adolescence, fidelity is, is
often unbounded and that causes some problems, but you have to
experience that in order then to, it's kind of like going from
dependence to independence to interdependence.
You have to kind of let those boundaries flex so you can
(46:43):
figure out what works and what doesn't.
And I, you know, I, I remember feeling a, a loyalty to my
friends at, at as a 14 year old that I thought would that, that,
that I, I would always want to feel.
And these surely would always bemy friends.
And I was somewhat surprised later to find out that that's
(47:06):
not actually how it works, but feeling that so strongly.
And I think a lot of kids do. And, and I think in hindsight,
what we're doing is experimenting with what it means
to have character. And, and, and it's interesting
because back to Levinas, we do that through our relationships
with others. We can't manifest fidelity by
(47:28):
ourselves, right? Fidelity to.
And, and that's why what I thinkErickson suggests here is that
maybe we've lost some pieces that they're through through
rites of passage, you know, through sort of collective
awareness of this new chapter and this new person that
(47:50):
inhabits that new chapter and sort of verifying and
stabilizing the collective vision of that individual's
identity. And now that happens within peer
groups. It doesn't happen within a lot
more broader social structure, which which I think becomes
(48:11):
significant later as we roll thesame story forward, because
there's an interesting thing that comes of this when we get
to the end and the development of it.
Worth worth a side note maybe I think it was in 7th or 8th
grade. I was having a really hard time
in school. I was really checked out and and
(48:35):
I remember we had to write an essay for an exam in class on
rites of passage and I didn't know what rites of passage were
at all. But I wrote an essay about the
the inter country political needto allow trade through waterways
(48:58):
and that right you had to give rites of passage.
For emerging to. Be able to come through, you
know, depending on the politicalenvironment.
And yeah, I I, I got credit for creativity, but an F on the
essay. Well.
(49:18):
But I remember now very well what rites of passage are.
Right, right. And it, it, it seems like what
was the other one? Domestic violins, They're just
as good as the other as the old ones, you know.
Yeah. Well, and it's interesting
because, you know, I think for me, again, martial arts and, you
(49:45):
know, becoming a black belt, it means different things within
different traditions. I don't think it means the same
thing when you're giving black belts to 7 year old kids because
they're still 7 year old kids. But in the tradition that I was
given that it was not a given that it it it what was the given
was that most people would nevermake it to blackpill.
(50:08):
Just like in Boy Scouts, most people are not going to become
Eagle Scouts. You know, there's a ladder, but
it's not that everybody makes itto the top of the ladder.
But, but I think that again, that was building competence
that gets recognized within a community which holds a standard
for competence. And, and I think that that was
(50:31):
also because I feel like the, one of the qualities that I
walked away from that with was the ability to be, to have
fidelity to principles and as opposed to fidelity to peer
groups. And and that's that inner world,
(50:54):
outer world split right there. And, and honestly, if you don't
manage those two, if you just satisfy the outer world, your
inner world will suffer and, andthe outer world's likely to not
work out that well either. Turns out, who knew?
(51:18):
But but you know, and I I've just been just been realizing
myself over the some of these past things where where I
faulted and where through inaction and where I maybe took
where I maybe took the easy pathwhere I actually should have
(51:39):
been less tolerant. I should have actually schooled
some people more. I should have held to certain
principles. But I not out of peer group
stuff, but more out of like compassion and wanting to get
along and probably some of that orphan stuff about, you know,
(52:01):
wanting to be useful and wantingto be workable.
And God knows you want everybodyto like you all the damn time,
right? So, so, so, so yeah.
It's not like you don't stop. You know, this conflict gets
thoroughly settled, but but it'sinteresting.
And then, and then that that transition, you know, the, the
(52:25):
adolescence he describes later, or rather he describes it in an
earlier section where he's talking about, interestingly,
the psychological issues of migrants.
And he talks about the nature ofuprootedness.
And that uprootedness has certain psychological components
(52:46):
that go along with it. And those components are in high
amounts within adolescence in general, that the state of
adolescence is a state of a typeof unrootedness and that these
are actually mechanisms that help that rooting take place.
(53:10):
And and that there need to be some other structures, which
interestingly, the thing, I think the thing that was that
was like a little aha. And of course, duh at once is
the the relationship of the chapters, which now we're going
to get into to some degree when we come into the adult chapters.
(53:31):
And so the first adult virtue islove, the greatest of human
virtues. And in fact, the dominant virtue
of the universe so commonly assumed that it will be well.
That was going to be my topic for today.
Oh well, there we go, the dominance.
(53:52):
And, and I think we should stilldo an episode on metaphysically.
What does that last thing you said mean?
And not now, because that takes some unpacking.
But I will read it again. Yeah, the greatest of human
virtues, in fact the dominant virtue of the universe, so
(54:13):
commonly assumed that it will bewell to consider once more its
evolutionary rationale and to state why love is here assigned
to a particular stage in a particular crisis in the
unfolding human life cycle. Does not love bind together
every stage? There are, to be sure, many
forms of love, from the infant'scomfortable and anxious
(54:34):
attachment to his mother to the adolescence passionate and
desperate infatuation. But love, in the evolutionary
and generational sense, is, I believe, the transformation of
the love received throughout thepre adolescent stage of life
into the care given to others during adult life.
(54:57):
And so love then is mutuality ofdevotion, forever subduing the
antagonisms inherent in divided function.
He's talking about here particularly male, female unions
(55:18):
and their, their, their, which was taken for granted in those
days, that there were different but complementary functions that
mother and father served and that they were not
interchangeable. I'm just reporting it.
It's here in the book, it's on the paper.
OK, so enough said. The mutuality of devotion
(55:43):
forever subduing the antagonismsin here.
It in divided function. It pervades the intimacy of
individuals and is thus the basis of ethical concern.
Love can also be joint selfishness in the service of
some territoriality, be it bed or home, village or country.
(56:04):
That such love, quote UN quote, too characterizes his
affiliations and associations asat least one reason for man's
clannish adherence to styles which he will defend as if his
life depended on them, and quotehis egos.
Coherence, his certainty of orientation do depend on them,
(56:25):
and it's for this reason that ego panic can make man quote go
blind with a rage which induces him, in the righteous defense of
a shared identity, to sink to levels of sadism for which there
seems to be no parallel in the animal world.
(56:46):
We've talked about this before too.
Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, I, I, I guess he's, he's
saying a lot. They're both about the capacity
that humans have and, and I, I guess that's maybe he would say
that because bridging the inner world or integrating the inner
(57:07):
world and the outer world is such a massive undertaking that
and my, and all of that, what wewere talking about earlier, all
of that darkness that we're keeping at Bay in the process by
somehow manifesting hope and purpose and exerting will.
(57:30):
And it's a messy business. Yeah, that that failing to do
that, the the darkness can't be kept at Bay, right?
Right, right. And there is part of the
argument for free will, right? And only free will can can play
(57:51):
that game honestly. And so the next one is care.
And care is it is sort of an expansion on that interdependent
with this idea of love. And he calls it the widening
concern for what's been generated by love, necessity or
(58:12):
accident. The widening concern for what
has been generated by love, necessity or accident.
It overcomes the ambivalence adhering to irreversible
obligation, which is an interesting one.
And you know, what does he mean by that?
(58:34):
Overcoming the ambivalence, adhering to irreversible
obligation. Every parent knows that, whether
they've whether they know that term or not, right, because you
know, you're in it ain't no getting out of it, not any real,
you know, correct ways. And but, but that care, whether
(58:56):
it's been for the for what has been generated by love,
necessity or accident for what has come about a widening
concern for what's been generated.
That overcomes the fact that it's stuck on you and it's an
obligation. You know, that's like, that's
(59:20):
like my fruit trees, right? Every morning.
I got to be out there and it's if I, if I don't, if I don't
adhere to my obligation, then then they won't live and and
without my care, there will be no fruitfulness.
Yeah, I mean, it gets tricky. My daughter Rebecca is also our
(59:46):
producer, so I know that she's going to get to see this because
she'll be editing it soon. But when you're not sure if your
care is a net benefit or not, that gets tricky.
It is. It is.
And it's, and it's a, it's a serious question.
(01:00:07):
It really is. Yeah.
I mean, it's interesting becausecare extends in so many
different ways. And this idea, the widening
concern for what's been generated by love, necessity or
accident also means, you know, care that manifests in one's
work, care that manifests in themessages that we put out to the
(01:00:33):
world, the things we leave behind us, you know, as part of
the extensions of that. So, so, so after, after care.
But she goes on at some point here, I'll put all this.
So when you want to get your, your, you want to get your own
(01:00:56):
copy of this and hunt it down and we'll, we'll have it in
there because I think it is, it isn't something that you find
around and so. I think I, I just want to say, I
think the premise is profound that, that the, that as we gain
greater insight into the psyche,we, we take on some
(01:01:18):
responsibility also, or we best take on some responsibility.
Like with great power comes great responsibility, or in this
case, knowledge is power. That, that that's a profound
statement to me. And I, and I think we overlook
that frequently as we're, as we're seeking knowledge.
(01:01:39):
And, and maybe after you talk about wisdom, it's worth talking
a little bit about what why ethics is informed by by
knowledge in this way. Yeah, yeah.
You know, it's interesting because here when we come to the
last stage, he points out, he says we become aware of the fact
(01:02:03):
that our civilization really does not harbor a concept of the
whole life as do the civilizations of the East.
And he quotes in office of Confucian in retirement, a
Taoist that is Confucius philosophy is very interested in
(01:02:25):
social interaction and appropriate relations and the
the the law and order and the the manifestation of humanity
and justice within society. And the Taoist in retirement is
about developing this final quality wisdom.
And it's associated with old agebecause it implies a certain
(01:02:52):
distance. You know, we think of the Taoist
is the one who retreats into themountains.
Hanshan, maybe you should do an episode someday on Hanshan on
the cold mountain, who is a recluse.
And the Taoist typically, you know, Lautza, the famous Taoist,
he was riding off into the mountains.
And the gatekeeper to the city said, wait, I can't let you
(01:03:13):
leave until you write this down.And so that's probably why it's
written like telegrams. It's like I got to get out here
before the snow comes or whatever.
But but that idea that one, and again, this is one of the one of
my banjos, one string banjo songs is about the importance of
nature. And this idea that there is
(01:03:36):
something, you know, this is a random association with Spinoza.
Spinoza says that when we have intuitive knowledge, we see
everything he wrote in Latin. So we see everything subspecy
eternitatus, which means under some form of eternity, which is
(01:03:57):
one of the lessons of nature. Is this the the eternal cycles,
the eternal turning of that. But So what he says here is that
for each generation must find the wisdom of the ages in the
form of its own wisdom. Strength in the old, therefore,
(01:04:22):
takes the form of wisdom in all of its connotations, from
ripened wits to accumulated knowledge and matured judgement.
It is the essence of knowledge freed from temporal relativity.
Wisdom then is detached concern with life itself in the face of
(01:04:50):
death itself. And what's significant about
this is that if you're living a life that's doing this, and the
story that you live and the worldview that you live is that
(01:05:11):
this part is the inevitable part, as opposed to this model
where this part is a potential outcome.
Your interaction with all the people that are in the chapters
in the in the cycles following you have just downloaded a sort
(01:05:37):
of a pointless existence for their map of how life works.
If our image of getting old is just losing capacity, losing the
ability to experience life, whata bummer.
It's like, well, who wants to? Who wants to plant their garden
(01:05:59):
if that's all it's going to growas black pumpkins or something,
you know? But if the, you know, the
argument that he's making here is that this, what does he say?
Individuality here finds its ultimate test, namely man's
(01:06:20):
existence at the entrance to thevalley, which he must cross
alone. So that if we've really
developed, if we've really fruited, then what we our
strength manifests as wisdom. Our strength manifests in that
full doubt, fleshed out hermeneutical base that now is
(01:06:44):
so rich, that is so dimensional,that is so digested, that all
the new pieces that come in are considered as if they have a
shining light coming out of them.
Because this piece now sits in adifferent setting that was the
(01:07:05):
built for it by ages of development of consciousness.
So that that's the the the holistic picture of the whole
cycle of life and obviously materialism.
Here is the booby prize, right? That's the point of this final
(01:07:30):
chapter. That's the point of this from a
yet. From a Darwinian standpoint, and
and and the theory of evolution was also one of the seven great
ideas that shook the universe and and it did right?
Fair enough. The the the manifestation of
(01:07:55):
hope and will and competence andand ultimately caring, love,
wisdom being an an evolutionary mechanism that increases the
chances of sexual reproduction. It is a kind of bizarre
(01:08:18):
conclusion to arrive at like those those don't seem to be
like those are evolutionary accidents and and and somehow
trying to deal with the the darkness of having to bridge the
inner world and the outer and reconcile them.
(01:08:40):
That being an evolutionary like advantage.
I mean, it is, I'm sure, becauseculture, through that process,
we have knowledge that we couldn't possibly manifest
individually on our own, like a lizard has to, to a greater
(01:09:01):
degree, right? So that some of it I can see
evolutionary benefit. But this can't just be about
sexual selection, right? No, it seems like you know
again, Bergsen would roll his eyes.
Or shake his head or one of these things.
That's why I love Bergsen so much, because because to him,
(01:09:24):
you know, it's obvious of all. First of all, once you've said
that love is the fundamental energy of the universe, your
your materialist arguments are starting to are starting to get
recontextualized. And you know, an argument might
be made that that the part were fixated at in the on the ladder
(01:09:49):
is kind of our represents the stage of our development of our
consciousness and which is not about how smart we are.
Be very smart and miss entire boats, big boats.
And and again, there is this difference between a sort of an
(01:10:14):
abstracted intelligence or abstracted knowledge and a lived
knowledge or a lived intelligence.
You know, this phronesis idea we've talked about and, but but
so you know the other. I think the thing that was most
the biggest aha for me about this so far, and I haven't quite
(01:10:35):
finished all his lectures, but maybe there's more.
I'm sure there's more goodies tofish out of that, but was this
idea of the, again, we want to the synonymographical approach
using Bergsen's term says let's look at human development and
we'll look at these chapters andthen we'll understand each of
(01:10:55):
these chapters that go through. OK, fair enough.
Except that's not. That's not the way it happens.
Nothing gets taken out of it. It's all mashed together.
So to understand this individual's function in this
chapter, you have to understand the impact of all the other
(01:11:16):
chapters and their relevance to that chapter as manifested in
the people all around them. Your, your picture of the world
as a young man kind of depends on the download you get from old
people and what they're, they seem to convey about what life
(01:11:37):
is about. And so you want to pass this
ultimate test of individuality, as he calls it, not just for
your own fulfillment, but because it's part of the
fulfillment like this happening through everybody's you know.
And so it's, it's a contribution.
It's a manifestation of your love and care for all these
(01:12:00):
other things that were created by accident.
Let's put it that way. And so so you know, this is
another, another wake up to findout that you are the eyes of the
world. You're not just the eyes of the
world, but you're also the thingthat the eyes of the world of
seeing itself through or at you know, you're you're manifesting
(01:12:21):
the world that the that the world sees.
So like the inverse of being theeye, you're being the object
also. The the projector and the
projected. Exactly.
And and and having relevance. That's why teaching is so
important, because teaching is an example of two chapters.
Like all the young men that you talked about, they were usually
(01:12:41):
just a chapter behind me, you know, or two more or less
because there was a whole periodthere.
When I started, they were very close to my chapter and then as
I got older I still had more. So there maybe was some distance
there, but it was that inter intergenerational chapter
(01:13:02):
relations there. It's only now that I can
understand how that kind of relationship is mutually
fulfilling, and that that teaching is fulfilling in ways
that you can't quite imagine when you're when you're a
student. Yeah, yeah.
And that's why some of my teachers, they say, you know,
(01:13:22):
you should always start by saying thank you because you are
very well served by it, no question about it.
And yeah, while we're getting onthere, we probably should
should. Well, before we wrap, I, I just
wanted to, to ask if you had anycomment on the this subheader
(01:13:44):
about the relationship between ethics and insight, because I
think that's, that's really profound.
Yeah. And and what does he call it
here? Yeah.
And responsibility, which we've talked about before.
That's what I'm I'm using ethicsas.
For ethics, right and well, and it's interesting because
(01:14:05):
responsibility is the same term that Fajin used in in a
different kind of way than we usually use the word and.
And I think that in this sense, yeah, the the term insight is,
is a really good charged up word.
(01:14:28):
And you don't have to be a Latinscholar to understand what this
word is about seeing in, right? And we typically think it's
about seeing in things that are outside.
But this is this, this is the seeing in that's going to
illuminate responsibility, right?
That's tied up with your what Heidegger called your Das sign.
(01:14:49):
You're manifesting as a you herethere now and or as as Ramdas's
book be here now. That's a manifesting what he's
really telling you is take responsibility, right?
And so so, yeah, there's a lot of there's a lot going on there.
And, and again, this quest for insight, insight and
(01:15:13):
responsibility are related to inthat what you learn from insight
defines and impacts what, what your responsibilities are.
And you can't really like they're like, they're two sides
of the same thing. So you're not going to be
fulfilling your responsibility without some insight.
And it is your responsibility, therefore, to gain some insight.
(01:15:36):
It was kind of interdependent. Yeah, yeah.
It's an interesting one. It reminds me of the Hippocratic
Oath and it reminds me of, you know, all kinds of developmental
questions where where we find ourselves in deeper water,
characterized in some way by this relationship of greater
(01:15:57):
insight and responsibility. Like, like, you know what, what
what you were saying about care is, is the outcome of of
insight. So so yeah, maybe there's just
another episode to do there. And and we can leave it here for
(01:16:18):
today on the rudiments of virtue.
Thank you. Yeah, I think that was that was
an interesting sort of a connecting piece that just kind
of dropped in and dovetailed so many things so nicely.
And I got to use my Sigmund Freud action figure our our
(01:16:39):
guest for today, us in Sigmund, my buddy Sig.
Yeah, cool. Well, we shall see you in the
future. And and for folks that made it
this far, congratulations. And I always want to reiterate
that we have show notes. That's kind of a regular thing.
(01:17:02):
So often we sort of give you thefoundation to pursue other
threads and we still not, we still don't get a lot of
comments or or, you know, responses.
And so, so if you feel the impulse and you figure that
fingers get, you know, itchy, just drop us a line.
Yeah, be great to hear from folks.
All righty. Cool, see you next time.
Ryan, good afternoon. How are you doing today, Sir?
I'm, well, I'm back in Santa Fe,just drove across the country
with my daughter and I. I like long drives more and
more, so it was a great time forreflection and great time, you
know, to spend with her and, and, and it's beautiful to be
back. See, all of America, or most of
(00:37):
it? Good chunk.
Well. One very narrow stretch of it
that is sometimes called I-40. But but yes, I saw a cross
section if you will. Part of the story of America,
part of the story. It's interesting how it plays
out geographically, the story. Yeah, for sure.
But yeah, that's cool. Welcome back.
(00:58):
I'm doing good. I'm making progress here, you
know, on a number of fronts and,and holding the holding the,
the, the tide back and others. So that's good, you know.
Yeah, yeah, good enough. Cool.
So you had something on your mind today?
(01:19):
Yeah, I have been, you know, once we if, if, if for those
long time viewers, you'll noticethat there has been a sort of a
randomness and yet a directionality to a lot of the
conversations that we've had. And so various of the themes,
like the song says, the theme ofthe themes all returned to you
(01:44):
and we've had a bunch of themes kind of weave together.
And once something like that happens, you find that it almost
has a gravity of sorts and it's sort of starts to pull in other
things. It's probably the phenomenon
like when you buy a yellow car, you notice all the yellow cars,
something like that. Well, but chapters also have a
(02:05):
gravity for certain kinds of influences it seems.
So like, I'm thinking of when I started showing up at your
house, there were a bunch of people, young men mostly around
my age, also showing up at your house around the same time.
And that chapter had a gravity of a sort.
So yeah, I guess I relate to that idea consistently.
(02:29):
And maybe the listening that's there sort of pulls out the
curriculum that hits that listening.
And so that might be what happened here, even though we
have a whole different kind of listening.
It's sort of a broader, but we've touched on a lot of themes
in this piece that sort of happened on to me couple weeks
maybe Lassian just plugs into a number of the conversations that
(02:53):
we've had, and it starts out as people might not have realized,
like many of our conversations have sourced out of the
beautiful little town of Freiburg in Moravia.
Now where you might ask, is Moravia?
(03:16):
Look on a map, you won't find it.
I'm guessing that Bavaria. You'd think it's actually now in
what we call the Czech Republic and we're focusing today on the
son of a Moravian wool merchant.And but what's interesting is
(03:38):
that this particular town wherein dwelled to this will
merchant named Jacob and his family, they didn't stay in
Freiburg. But Freiburg itself has played a
setting to a number of the people that we've talked about
already. And I wanted to read them
because I had my friend Al dig them all up in line.
(04:02):
The first first one was, of course, Martin Heidegger, who
we've spoken about Heidegger a bunch.
Heidegger is the sort of the the, not the original source,
but the more common source of the H word hermeneutics, where
hermeneutics kind of met phenomenology.
Also, Phenomenologies founder Edmund Husserl, who was
(04:24):
Heidegger's teacher, also taughtin Freiburg, who we've spoken
about Husserl. Teacher or his student?
I thought he was his student, Husserl.
Husserl was the teacher of Heidegger.
And then we get to a guy named, well, we've mentioned before a
little bit and we shall speak more about Hannah Errant Now,
(04:48):
she was a student of Heidegger and she wrote some interesting
pieces that are one of which I'mreading now side by side with
Kropotkin on revolution. And I'm thinking we might have
some conversations on that some distant future time.
And so, so I thought it'd be interesting kind of because this
is coming out of phenomenology that's had hermeneutics and
(05:12):
existentialism sort of all swirled in there by Heidegger.
And so the other one who we've spoken about who was also a
fellow classmate of Hannah Aaron's that is student of
Heidegger was Hans George Gottemer.
And he was the one who I really kind of dug into his idea of
(05:32):
hermeneutics, and particularly this idea of ontological
hermeneutics, which which for people that didn't catch those
prior episodes, it's this idea of how do we interpret things
where we have a whole picture ofit and we are fed parts of it.
And the parts inform this, this growing image of the whole that
(05:54):
we store. And the growing image of the
store contextualizes all the newparts.
So there's this feedback loop that we call the hermeneutical
circle. And that came out of these cats
in Freiburg. I imagine Freiburg is a
beautiful little town. I have no idea.
Does that, does that represent one of so, so we, there are
(06:16):
places where psychology and philosophy meet and and, and,
and really there are also placeswhere they merge and, and this
seems to be one of them. Like how we make sense is a
psychological question. What I call a crossroads.
But the implication of making sense might be philosophical.
(06:39):
And vice versa. OK, that that, you know, I think
a lot of Husserl's realizations about the dawning of
consciousness and the nature of consciousness really do have
psychological implications that were appreciated later on down
the trail, maybe more. I had some Aha's around that for
sure. Yeah, is is hermeneutics one of
(07:02):
the first places where psychology and philosophy really
collapse together. No, I think you'll find it in
Aristotle. Oh, OK.
You know, and I and, and maybe arguably in Plato also in the
how one has relationship with one's emotions and passions and,
(07:23):
and the higher impulses and the lower important, all that.
Yeah. And and of course the church has
some version of its own type of understanding of psychology,
which came along with Aquinas, mixing Aristotle in there too, I
think. But so, so no, the other one
that came out, who is another existentialist was Carl Jaspers.
(07:45):
And Carl Jaspers was also a teacher of Hannah Aaron's and
maybe even a bigger influence onher than the Heidegger was.
And who else? Max Weber, sociologist,
political economist. Edith Stein, influenced by
(08:07):
Husserl, taught at Freiburg and was later made a Catholic St.
So that's kind of curious, but the character that I'm thinking
of is neat. None of those.
But he grew up, literally grew up until his father's business
took a shot and he had to move to Vienna.
(08:27):
And that's the place that we usually associate this person
with this son of a Moravian woolmerchant.
We know him more popularly as. And here's where my visual aid
comes in, her doctor, Sigmund Freud, who said sometimes a
(08:49):
cigar is just a cigar. This is my action figure,
complete with cigar. That's awesome.
It's kind of like Sean Connery, too.
Yeah, he's a, he's like, I guessI don't have a place where he
can stand here in the consult with us.
But my German accent isn't very good, so we probably shouldn't
go in that. Direction.
(09:09):
I think the right shoulder is appropriate.
There we go, tape him up there. And but the thing that
occasioned my interest it my re awaken my re interest because
back in the day I studied Sigmund Freud.
He was, of course, a, a student,a teacher rather of Wilhelm
Reich, who I later spent a lot of time with a bunch of his
(09:31):
psycho energetic models, you might say.
But Sigmund Freud is interestingbecause he gets a he gets a bad
rap and for for probably a number of different reasons.
And I think that maybe there's some things that that we don't
typically remember or or understand about Freud that I
(09:53):
wanted to talk about. But I learned those things from
this book called, which is wherewhat inspired this all Insight
and Responsibility by a gentleman named Erick Erickson.
People familiar with psychology might recognize that name, but
(10:16):
people who aren't familiar with psychology might be familiar
with the concept that he originated that we know as
identity crisis. And I thought it's not entirely
inappropriate for these times and for some of the
conversations that we've had because these insights kind of
(10:37):
play a role. The subtitle is Lectures on the
Ethical Implications of Psychoanalytic Insight.
And because our conversations turned in a, in a direction that
that sort of elevated ethics, asmany of these philosophers did,
as in fact did Levinas, another student out of that same mix of
(11:03):
Heidegger. And so although he might have
come across in Marburg or somewhere else, I'm not sure
he's literally part of the Freiburg crowd, but he's part of
the Freiburg headspace for sure.And but so, so, so Freud, I
(11:23):
mean, we could theorize why he gets the such a such a whack
that he does, but. I think because he was a pioneer
and that's what happens. And because he was talking about
sex and which I think was charged up, and that's part of
his point. Yeah, right.
But but not just that, I mean the the dreams having meaning
(11:46):
and the unconscious playing a significant role in how we
behave and that our our early relationships with parents are
fraud, especially with mother. And like all of that stuff is
charged. Right.
And he and he wasn't right abouteverything per SE.
But if you're going to try to make a make a map of the psyche,
(12:08):
and then you're going to be the first guy to do it, you're going
to make some mistakes, right? And and most importantly, he
gave a framework for the people that came later to to have a
structure for understanding. And we still use it.
Oh, and we do. And, and, and but one of the
interesting things that people don't realize because of all the
things that you just listed, is they think that Freud is sort of
(12:33):
like off in some, you know, fruit loopy kind of a place.
But the reality is that Freud started as a neurologist, right?
He couldn't have been a psychoanalyst because he hadn't
invented that yet. But he started out as a
neurologist and a very strict materialist.
(12:57):
And he was part of the school that thought that all of the
problems of human consciousness could be explained through
neurology, that is, through the biological machine needing a
tweak like this or a tweak like that.
And, and I think that this was also sort of with the dawn of
(13:20):
modern pharmaceutology. And so there was a popularity to
want to say, well, you might nothave enough of this or you might
have too much of this. And we'll just, you know, tweak
things and all those thoughts, just like the popular idea that
all your dreams. Well, that's just nonsense.
(13:40):
It has no, just like Finnegan's wake, it's all nonsense and
there's no meaning in it and there's no way to move forward
with that information. Well, Freud came to the a
different conclusion than that, but he didn't.
That wasn't the conclusion that he chose.
That was not the direction that he headed in.
He had it in quite the opposite direction, in fact.
(14:01):
And he actually made a saying, he made a statement at some
point rather that that he wasn'tgoing to attribute things to any
other energies other than these materialist energies unless he
was absolutely forced to, which is like, that's a pretty solid
stand in One Direction, you know.
(14:24):
And he was very much influenced by the scientific methodology
and observation and collecting data and doing all that.
But then, you know, once he started to get on to this idea,
he started using hypnosis, he started doing interpretation of
(14:45):
dreams. In fact his first work was
called on the interpretation of dreams.
As he got as he started to get this idea, but how radical it
was, we can't conceive of that because we live in such a post
Freudian world. And you know the things, the
(15:05):
image that we have of him is sort of like, I trust we will
soon find out in a similar way about Descartes.
It's part of my prophecy that that we kind of only have a 2
dimensional image of him and he kind of becomes a a bit of a
punching bag for, you know, maybe some other things that
(15:30):
happened in his wake more than that he's responsible for.
Well, I mean, I think that the main reaction I'm aware of to
Freud is, you know, kind of likethey canned.
You tell somebody that they mustbe influenced by their own
Oedipal complex, and they immediately go to how ridiculous
(15:52):
that is, what a ridiculous idea that even is, that I would fall
in love with my mother. So, and that a Greek myth would
have anything to do with anything.
Yeah, right. It's just stories.
So I, I really think he was overthe target way more than not.
And, and yeah, I think I think anybody that, well, I shouldn't
(16:18):
say I shouldn't say that. But if if you're curious about
psychology, then discrediting Freud does you no good in your
exploration, I think. Right, right.
It means there's some ground to be covered that's very basic
because you could think of this is the guy that discovered that
(16:39):
maybe imperfect childhoods had something to do with the person
that people became. And that that becomes the crux.
That a lot of people that came after Freud in the
psychoanalytic school sort of fleshed out and, you know,
checked out all the different side paths and if kind of made a
(17:01):
fleshed out his framework for thought in an interesting way.
And, and in a very practical sense, that we construct defense
mechanisms to navigate the the impact of difficult childhood
experiences and that those defense mechanisms then govern
(17:21):
our behavior in some way parallels the shamanic model and
is mainstream coaching language today, like business coaching
has to address that stuff. So, yeah, I, I took a course at
a liberal arts college, the, theschool that I went to that that
(17:46):
was kind of like physics for people that, that weren't
sophisticated mathematically. And, and it wasn't physics, it
was basic science for people that weren't mathematically
oriented. And, and I believe the book we
read was 7 Ideas that Shook the Universe.
And and of the seven big ideas, Freud's mapping of the psyche
(18:10):
was was one of them. Well, and it's a big deal.
There's this idea that that genius is not hitting a target
that other people can't can't hit.
It's hitting a target other people can't even see.
And that was definitely the casewith Freud.
And it seems like when these people come, because this also
(18:32):
happened to Freud, is that he kind of had to.
He's not the only one. We're going to talk about more
thinkers and philosophers that had the same problem, where the
thought that they have is so radical for the setting that
they are in that that it just even saying what they're saying
is tipping over the apple cart. Kind of like Galileo was one of
(18:55):
those guys and they're saying like we have got to lock this
guy up just for the sanity of everybody because he's, he's
poisoned the well, you know, with this thought somehow.
And, and of course the church was a great fan of that with the
idea of blasphemy and and wrong where wrong think was an
official crime, you know, and, but so, so yeah, some of the
(19:19):
thinkers, including the, the person whose book I made
reference to here, Insight and responsibility, they once Freud
said, you know, stuff happens tous and it gets buried and it has
this sometimes pernicious influence on us.
And we don't typically see the mechanism that it works by, but
(19:43):
we they can, it can be unravelled.
The mind can go in there and understand it and in
understanding it, some aspect offreedom is attained by that.
And so. So they started trying to
understand childhood better, which is like very logical.
(20:09):
And because of this is where theproblems are being set.
This is the who's throwing the babies in the river.
Let's go upstream and instead ofkeep fishing babies out of the
river, if we can stop them getting launched in, the work
will be a lot drier at least. And so so they started looking
(20:29):
at early human development and one of the things that caught my
eye that, you know, was sort of like a regular listeners know
that I'm kind of a one string banjo about this idea of is of
virtues. And so, so Ericsson here has
(20:56):
laid out the virtues that he thinks are necessary in a
healthful development. And he lays it out and he's he's
kind of very specific about this, as this is not a map, this
is not an instruction manual of how to build children.
This is not like these are generalities.
(21:16):
He talks about Piaget, who was afamous experimental psychologist
and who's famous for his his discovery or labeling of what we
now call object permanence. That is that a baby sees
something and the baby acknowledges it exists.
(21:36):
But then when you take it out ofsight, as far as the baby's
concerned, it's gone. It's like it doesn't exist
anymore. But at some point the baby
realizes that when you put the object behind your back, it
still exists behind your back. And so they were trying to map
out these different chapters idea.
By the way, that's when you can really start messing with the
(21:57):
baby, when they do think the object is behind your back, but
it's not, and then new worlds are revealed.
Because the thing was really in your ear.
Look. Yeah.
And, and monkeys, I've seen people, magicians playing games
with orangutans and chimpanzees,and they get that same kind of.
Wait a minute. Yeah, it's an interesting,
(22:20):
interesting thing to watch. But so, so, you know, my point
about Piaget was that Piaget really attacked the idea that
there's discrete developmental stages.
He said that you've got all these different things
developing dentition and you know, structure and muscle mass
(22:40):
and you know, he says, and all these things are all locked
together in what he called a functional unity, which is an
idea that also that made it later on into into.
Wilhelm Reich talks about musclegroups having a functional unity
and which is basically things that we can make distinctions
and see parts in it, but when they function it's always these
(23:03):
parts are always seem to be functioning as part of a bigger
system. I mean, that sounds like a
pretty fractal or an idea that can be applied fractally, right?
I mean, that's the difference between coherence and
fragmentation writ large. Pretty much.
And that we find it everywhere as part of that holographic
(23:25):
nature. Yeah.
But so he, he looks at these even though he says we can't
really make chapters and we can't really see stages.
Here are the stages basically, you know, which is I think is
valid, he says. So just reading this little
sentence here, he says, I will therefore speak of hope, will,
(23:49):
purpose and competence as the rudiments of virtue developed in
childhood. And we'll put these in the show
notes with a little a little blurb about each one.
And I'm going to go through eachone and his definition, which is
kind of interesting. So that's hope will, purpose and
competence as the rudiments of virtue developed in childhood,
(24:12):
of fidelity as the adolescent virtue, and of love, care and
wisdom as the central virtues ofadulthood.
And he goes on to mention that these seem like we, again, we
break these things up as separate qualities, but they all
(24:37):
depend on each other, which is why they're considered vital
virtues by his way of singing things.
And so it's, so it's interesting, you know, the first
one of those is hope. And he talks about, he talks
about very early childhood experience and he sees hope is
(24:59):
like the first necessary thing. And he says that if you if you
see a truly hopeless child, thenyou'll understand how
fundamental is this quality of hope in the first foundational
steps of the development of selfhood.
(25:20):
And so he says, one of his firstformulations.
Hope is the enduring belief in the attainability of fervent
wishes in spite of the dark urges and rages which mark the
beginning of existence. I'll read that again.
(25:43):
Hope is the enduring belief in the attainability of fervent
wishes in spite of the dark urges and rages which mark the
beginning of existence. The ontogenetic basis of faith
nourished by the adult faith which pervades patterns of care.
(26:06):
It's kind of interesting becausenow you're in that stage with
your new one here where that you're, you're actually, you
have a chance to see this the, the fruition of consciousness
coming through a human being, ifyou will.
It's been really interesting observing that, especially
(26:28):
informed by, you know, 25 years of these conversations, you
know, and other life experiencesthat give me a perspective on
it. I didn't have 25 years ago when
my my oldest was born or 26 years ago.
But it's interesting to, to stick hope on there because I've
(26:49):
been really cognizant of desire and will emerging and, and kind
of blown away at at how baked inthat stuff is that, that without
will, there's no, there's no drive for an infant to start
(27:14):
figuring out how to turn themselves over.
You can't teach them to do that.Or maybe you can, but but
teaching them to do it is a completely different process
from them grunting and pushing until they flip themselves over.
Like, why would you do that? There's nothing there when you
flip over. Well, in Husserl, you know, he
(27:34):
points at that his idea of intentionality as as even deeper
than that, just the consciousness moving out towards
the the creation and the world outside with without an impulse
to move into it. And that's what you peg free
will to. And here's the next paragraph.
(27:57):
Here, no doubt, is the genetic origin of the elusive question
of free will, which man ever again attempts to master
logically and theologically. The fact is no person can live,
no ego remain intact without hope and will, because will is
(28:18):
in fact the next, the next quality here.
And so he defines will thereforeis the unbroken determination to
exercise free choice as well as self restraint in spite of the
unavoidable experience of shame and doubt in infancy.
(28:42):
He says the social problem of will is contained in the words
goodwill. The goodwill of others obviously
depends on the limitation of ourown wills.
And it's interesting. Here's another one.
I thought that linguistically was very.
Goodwill others depends on on our own limitations.
(29:07):
On the limitation of our own will.
In other words, if we just try to get everything that we will,
if we only are interested in what we want, then other people
will not be happy with us. OK, so it kind of like the the
birth of social. Contract, social contract, maybe
(29:29):
that birth first seed of ethicalawareness.
Yeah. And and and also the awareness
that will is the basis for acceptance of law and necessity
and is rooted in the judiciousness of the parents
guided by the spirit of law. This is an interesting word to
(29:49):
jump in the conversation here atthis point.
And but then the other sense I liked is it'll gradually it will
gradually grant. Is that what it was?
Yes, a measure of self-control to the child who learns to
control willfulness, to offer willingness and to exchange
(30:14):
goodwill, which I think is you know that learning to to work
and play well with others. And in the end, the self-image
of the child will prove to have been split in the way in which
man is apartment to remain splitfor the rest of his life, which
(30:35):
is an you know which is an interesting Chuangsa talks about
this. I think he says, you know, when
I, when I do what I want, then other people are sad and when I
do what they want, then I'm sad.What am I going to do here?
You know, it's a pretty interesting and pretty
interesting little passage. I'll try to dig.
(30:56):
I'll try to dig that one out too.
And so, so we've gone through Will, and we now come to the
third vital virtue, which is purpose.
And any he goes on and he talks about play, and it seems like a
(31:19):
child spends on his play a sincere purposefulness out of
proportion to what he soon must learn, namely what things are
really for, what their real purpose is.
We underestimate the set, the evolutionary necessity for
representational play in an animal who has to learn to bind
together an inner and an outer world.
(31:40):
That's that split, bind together.
The inner and the outer world are remembered past and an
anticipated future before he canlearn a master of the tools used
in cooperation or the roles distributed in a community and
the purpose pursued in a given technology.
So, so he comes to define. Purpose, then is the courage to
(32:06):
envisage and pursue valued goalsuninhibited by the defeat of
infantile fantasies, by guilt, and by the foiling fear of
punishment. So that's the kind of like a
damn the torpedoes. There's a.
There's a consistency here in a in the descriptions that that
(32:31):
reminds me of Freud to some extent, which is interesting.
Maybe we can pause on it for a moment, which is that hope has
to manifest despite the horror of being alive, right?
And purpose has to manifest despite the horror of being
alive. And like I, I just had this
(32:52):
flash of how impossible of a task it really is to bind
together an internal and external world when you got
nothing to work with. Or all remembering, remember
Reich's term Liebenzangst? Yeah.
So. Fear of living.
Yeah, So so does that resonate for you that that shame and dark
(33:16):
urges and and devastation and existential loss.
That's that's what we're all kind of sitting in and
manifesting despite like or is that just a model like you think
(33:38):
we're we're that's that is what the unconscious has is holding.
Well, I think that, yeah, that we are in a project of, of
becoming complete. And that that amounts to an
(33:58):
awareness. I was thinking about this the
other day and that there would be a good graph in here.
And that is as far as as far as what you're pursuing in life.
And because your pursuits, the things you're, you truly value,
you could graph them based on the things we all know.
So for example, if the virtues within yourself that you want to
(34:23):
cultivate are around your physical beauty, we know what
the graph like that looks like. It's pretty steep and it reaches
a peak pretty early in life. And then it's just steadily
downhill from that. So that's informative of
something. If we make some other choices
(34:46):
that might be longer lasting, say we're going to become a
construction worker to make a good living, well, we know that
that'll start out and that'll last for a while and then the
physical vehicle will start to break down, right?
(35:06):
I've experienced this first hand.
I was in the in the line at the bank and I saw a plastering
truck guy next to me and I, we had a little conversation about
plastering and I had said I had messed up my shoulder from
plastering. And he says, yeah, I've got 2
stainless steel ones. But so that's, you know, just a
nice little vignette that shows you that yeah, you're definitely
(35:28):
going to be functional. You like you, the value you've
built up will last longer than your beauty will.
Some of us don't have to worry about our beauty lasting all
that long, but so the real question then becomes, how do
you you know this? Both of those paint life as you
(35:50):
go up, you hit a peak, you hold the peak a while and then it's
all downhill from there. And there's this sort of an idea
that after you no longer pretty or you're no longer, you know,
capable physically of manifesting the the value doing
the work that pretty much you'reall your significant value is
(36:15):
going to be dropping off, you know, and I like Norman
MacDonald was talking once abouthow when when someone dies, they
say, well, he lost his battle with cancer.
And he says, so is that what it is?
Everybody's life? They just lost the battle.
Finally, no matter what, you always end up having lost the
(36:36):
battle somehow, maybe intuitively, we have a little
voice that goes, Nick can't be right, can't be right.
So the Riddle then becomes, whatis the curve that just looks
like this? And that as long as you live,
you know, it's like that, that famous violinist that they said
he was in his 97 or something, he's still practicing every day.
(36:57):
And they asked him about that. And he said, well, I'm making
progress because he was on a oneof these and they're reading him
from A1 of these where dude, you're 97, you're supposed to
just be gumming your oatmeal down and drooling on yourself.
But he's like, what will make that happen?
(37:20):
Living this world model that says that this is the nature of
human life and that's the inescapable nature of the story.
But this model, I think this is the model where this is the
model that's important not just to the old people who are up at
this end. It's super important for these
(37:40):
when when people are down here. And that's one of the things
that he talks about, which I thought was very interesting
because, well, we'll get to it. Let's keep going with these nice
vital virtues. So the next vital virtue he
calls competence and he says that.
And maybe his friend White has some different model of things.
(38:03):
But a sense of competence at anyrate, characterizes what
eventually becomes workmanship ever since his expulsion from
paradise. Now this is a reference, of
course, to the Bible and the curse that's put on Adam and Eve
when they're driven from the by the the Garden of Eden.
(38:24):
Man shall live by the sweat of his brow and so that that
expulsion from paradise. Of course, man has been inclined
to protest work as drudgery or as slavery, and to consider the
most fortunate those who seemingly can choose to work or
not work. Evolute evolution is brought to
(38:47):
pass that man, when he approaches the age of
instruction in the basic elements of his culture's
technology is the most unspecialized of all animals.
So so his point is that there isa certain stage that the child
needs to is ready for a variety of specializations and we'll
(39:10):
learn most eagerly techniques inline with that ethos of
production. Touching back to Bergson that it
is our natural capacity to manipulate matter and to make
things to be productive as in the production of things.
And so competence then is the free exercise of it dexterity
(39:32):
and intelligence in the completion of tasks unimpaired
by infantile inferiority. And so, you know, I think this
shows up a lot of ways, probablystarts out as clean up your
room, right? And, but, but also, I think that
(39:56):
part of the dangers maybe if, ifour life is too removed from
actual things is that our children can miss that, that
development of competency withina defined area, whether it's
being able to drive a nail or I think for a lot of kids that
(40:20):
learned Kung Fu with us, that was a scale of competencies.
I think when I was in the Boy Scouts and there were ranks and
there were requirements for those ranks, there were required
competencies and there was a ladder of that you could follow
to build more competency. And sort of wired into that was
(40:43):
that you had to use some dexterity, you had to use some
intelligence, you had to use some gumption to come to the
completion of the task. I think it is also there's like
a reality check that that's built into learning about what
competence means. And I think a lot of kids don't
(41:06):
get this from their parents these days where, you know,
everything you drew is beautifuland gets hung on the fridge has
its merits. But let's keep it real too,
that, you know, at some point you got to say that doesn't look
(41:27):
like an elephant or, you know, there's there's a container
where where coddling is outside of which coddling starts to do a
lot of damage. It prevents the the building of
competence. It prevents the building of
competence and then there's a reckoning later has.
(41:49):
To be and definitely. Common.
I see parents today. And then I remember hearing one
of the one of the code talkers, I think it was who was in his
age, you know, one of the Navajocode talkers.
And he was talking about when they had to go to school and
that, you know, it was like a number of days through the
(42:11):
desert to get to the school and they let the kids like go across
the desert, you know, knowing where to find water, like the
whole deal to end up a few days later at school.
And it was like, oh, and bring your 6 year old sister with you.
And their lifestyle built that type of competence and their
(42:36):
understanding already at that age of animals and the, the way
things worked was different because the lifestyle was
different. And we move away from that at
our own peril and the peril of future generations and I.
And there may be the real peril is that there may be a self
writing mechanism to this. And if we get too far from the
(43:02):
base, we may get slapped back hard back into reality.
I mean, it's, it's, it's anotherversion of the good.
Good times make weak men, weak men make bad times, bad times
make strong men. And it's it's that.
Right, hitting the guardrail andit bumping you back onto the
(43:24):
highway. Yeah.
So the, the adolescent virtues, you know, it's interesting
because he points out when humansexuality matures in puberty,
that doesn't mean they're ready to really be a mate or a parent.
And that there's actually a realquestion where he gets into
(43:45):
about how the adolescent attitudes or, or our culture's
attitudes about adolescent sexuality and whether it
actually whether a freer attitude actually makes people
freer. And I think when this was
written, these were lectures that all happened, I think,
around around Freud's 100th birthday, what would have been
(44:09):
his 100th birthday. And so it's a little bit
different world than the one that we're living in, what we've
run this cultural experiment a few more cycles than when
Erickson is talking about. And remember, Erickson was the
one that coined the term identity crisis.
And I think this becomes even more significant later here.
(44:30):
But so he defines fidelity as that adolescent virtue, and he
calls it the ability to sustain loyalties freely pledged in
spite of the inevitable contradictions of value systems.
It is the cornerstone of identity and receives
(44:51):
inspiration from confirming ideologies and affirming
companions, which of course we see in adolescence.
But, he says in youth such truthverifies itself a number of
ways. A high sense of duty, accuracy,
veracity in the rendering of reality, the sentiment of
(45:12):
truthfulness as in sincerity andconviction, quality of
genuineness as in authenticity, the trait of loyalty, of being
true, quote UN quote, fairness to the rules of the game.
And finally, all that is impliedin devotion, freely given but
binding vow, with the faithful implication of a curse befalling
(45:32):
traitors. When Hamlet, the emotional
victim of his royal parents faithlessness, poses the
question to be or not to be, he demonstrates in Word and deed
that to him, to be is contingenton being loyal.
It sounds like this is where youget to establish having
(45:54):
character and what what it meansto have character or, or really,
whereas, you know, I kind of read the the building blocks of
childhood that you went through as necessary for virtue.
They do not comprise virtue, butfidelity starts to it needs
(46:20):
boundaries, right. You're.
Thinking out of this world. In adolescence, fidelity is, is
often unbounded and that causes some problems, but you have to
experience that in order then to, it's kind of like going from
dependence to independence to interdependence.
You have to kind of let those boundaries flex so you can
(46:43):
figure out what works and what doesn't.
And I, you know, I, I remember feeling a, a loyalty to my
friends at, at as a 14 year old that I thought would that, that,
that I, I would always want to feel.
And these surely would always bemy friends.
And I was somewhat surprised later to find out that that's
(47:06):
not actually how it works, but feeling that so strongly.
And I think a lot of kids do. And, and I think in hindsight,
what we're doing is experimenting with what it means
to have character. And, and, and it's interesting
because back to Levinas, we do that through our relationships
with others. We can't manifest fidelity by
(47:28):
ourselves, right? Fidelity to.
And, and that's why what I thinkErickson suggests here is that
maybe we've lost some pieces that they're through through
rites of passage, you know, through sort of collective
awareness of this new chapter and this new person that
(47:50):
inhabits that new chapter and sort of verifying and
stabilizing the collective vision of that individual's
identity. And now that happens within peer
groups. It doesn't happen within a lot
more broader social structure, which which I think becomes
(48:11):
significant later as we roll thesame story forward, because
there's an interesting thing that comes of this when we get
to the end and the development of it.
Worth worth a side note maybe I think it was in 7th or 8th
grade. I was having a really hard time
in school. I was really checked out and and
(48:35):
I remember we had to write an essay for an exam in class on
rites of passage and I didn't know what rites of passage were
at all. But I wrote an essay about the
the inter country political needto allow trade through waterways
(48:58):
and that right you had to give rites of passage.
For emerging to. Be able to come through, you
know, depending on the politicalenvironment.
And yeah, I I, I got credit for creativity, but an F on the
essay. Well.
(49:18):
But I remember now very well what rites of passage are.
Right, right. And it, it, it seems like what
was the other one? Domestic violins, They're just
as good as the other as the old ones, you know.
Yeah. Well, and it's interesting
because, you know, I think for me, again, martial arts and, you
(49:45):
know, becoming a black belt, it means different things within
different traditions. I don't think it means the same
thing when you're giving black belts to 7 year old kids because
they're still 7 year old kids. But in the tradition that I was
given that it was not a given that it it it what was the given
was that most people would nevermake it to blackpill.
(50:08):
Just like in Boy Scouts, most people are not going to become
Eagle Scouts. You know, there's a ladder, but
it's not that everybody makes itto the top of the ladder.
But, but I think that again, that was building competence
that gets recognized within a community which holds a standard
for competence. And, and I think that that was
(50:31):
also because I feel like the, one of the qualities that I
walked away from that with was the ability to be, to have
fidelity to principles and as opposed to fidelity to peer
groups. And and that's that inner world,
(50:54):
outer world split right there. And, and honestly, if you don't
manage those two, if you just satisfy the outer world, your
inner world will suffer and, andthe outer world's likely to not
work out that well either. Turns out, who knew?
(51:18):
But but you know, and I I've just been just been realizing
myself over the some of these past things where where I
faulted and where through inaction and where I maybe took
where I maybe took the easy pathwhere I actually should have
(51:39):
been less tolerant. I should have actually schooled
some people more. I should have held to certain
principles. But I not out of peer group
stuff, but more out of like compassion and wanting to get
along and probably some of that orphan stuff about, you know,
(52:01):
wanting to be useful and wantingto be workable.
And God knows you want everybodyto like you all the damn time,
right? So, so, so, so yeah.
It's not like you don't stop. You know, this conflict gets
thoroughly settled, but but it'sinteresting.
And then, and then that that transition, you know, the, the
(52:25):
adolescence he describes later, or rather he describes it in an
earlier section where he's talking about, interestingly,
the psychological issues of migrants.
And he talks about the nature ofuprootedness.
And that uprootedness has certain psychological components
(52:46):
that go along with it. And those components are in high
amounts within adolescence in general, that the state of
adolescence is a state of a typeof unrootedness and that these
are actually mechanisms that help that rooting take place.
(53:10):
And and that there need to be some other structures, which
interestingly, the thing, I think the thing that was that
was like a little aha. And of course, duh at once is
the the relationship of the chapters, which now we're going
to get into to some degree when we come into the adult chapters.
(53:31):
And so the first adult virtue islove, the greatest of human
virtues. And in fact, the dominant virtue
of the universe so commonly assumed that it will be well.
That was going to be my topic for today.
Oh well, there we go, the dominance.
(53:52):
And, and I think we should stilldo an episode on metaphysically.
What does that last thing you said mean?
And not now, because that takes some unpacking.
But I will read it again. Yeah, the greatest of human
virtues, in fact the dominant virtue of the universe, so
(54:13):
commonly assumed that it will bewell to consider once more its
evolutionary rationale and to state why love is here assigned
to a particular stage in a particular crisis in the
unfolding human life cycle. Does not love bind together
every stage? There are, to be sure, many
forms of love, from the infant'scomfortable and anxious
(54:34):
attachment to his mother to the adolescence passionate and
desperate infatuation. But love, in the evolutionary
and generational sense, is, I believe, the transformation of
the love received throughout thepre adolescent stage of life
into the care given to others during adult life.
(54:57):
And so love then is mutuality ofdevotion, forever subduing the
antagonisms inherent in divided function.
He's talking about here particularly male, female unions
(55:18):
and their, their, their, which was taken for granted in those
days, that there were different but complementary functions that
mother and father served and that they were not
interchangeable. I'm just reporting it.
It's here in the book, it's on the paper.
OK, so enough said. The mutuality of devotion
(55:43):
forever subduing the antagonismsin here.
It in divided function. It pervades the intimacy of
individuals and is thus the basis of ethical concern.
Love can also be joint selfishness in the service of
some territoriality, be it bed or home, village or country.
(56:04):
That such love, quote UN quote, too characterizes his
affiliations and associations asat least one reason for man's
clannish adherence to styles which he will defend as if his
life depended on them, and quotehis egos.
Coherence, his certainty of orientation do depend on them,
(56:25):
and it's for this reason that ego panic can make man quote go
blind with a rage which induces him, in the righteous defense of
a shared identity, to sink to levels of sadism for which there
seems to be no parallel in the animal world.
(56:46):
We've talked about this before too.
Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, I, I, I guess he's, he's
saying a lot. They're both about the capacity
that humans have and, and I, I guess that's maybe he would say
that because bridging the inner world or integrating the inner
(57:07):
world and the outer world is such a massive undertaking that
and my, and all of that, what wewere talking about earlier, all
of that darkness that we're keeping at Bay in the process by
somehow manifesting hope and purpose and exerting will.
(57:30):
And it's a messy business. Yeah, that that failing to do
that, the the darkness can't be kept at Bay, right?
Right, right. And there is part of the
argument for free will, right? And only free will can can play
(57:51):
that game honestly. And so the next one is care.
And care is it is sort of an expansion on that interdependent
with this idea of love. And he calls it the widening
concern for what's been generated by love, necessity or
(58:12):
accident. The widening concern for what
has been generated by love, necessity or accident.
It overcomes the ambivalence adhering to irreversible
obligation, which is an interesting one.
And you know, what does he mean by that?
(58:34):
Overcoming the ambivalence, adhering to irreversible
obligation. Every parent knows that, whether
they've whether they know that term or not, right, because you
know, you're in it ain't no getting out of it, not any real,
you know, correct ways. And but, but that care, whether
(58:56):
it's been for the for what has been generated by love,
necessity or accident for what has come about a widening
concern for what's been generated.
That overcomes the fact that it's stuck on you and it's an
obligation. You know, that's like, that's
(59:20):
like my fruit trees, right? Every morning.
I got to be out there and it's if I, if I don't, if I don't
adhere to my obligation, then then they won't live and and
without my care, there will be no fruitfulness.
Yeah, I mean, it gets tricky. My daughter Rebecca is also our
(59:46):
producer, so I know that she's going to get to see this because
she'll be editing it soon. But when you're not sure if your
care is a net benefit or not, that gets tricky.
It is. It is.
And it's, and it's a, it's a serious question.
(01:00:07):
It really is. Yeah.
I mean, it's interesting becausecare extends in so many
different ways. And this idea, the widening
concern for what's been generated by love, necessity or
accident also means, you know, care that manifests in one's
work, care that manifests in themessages that we put out to the
(01:00:33):
world, the things we leave behind us, you know, as part of
the extensions of that. So, so, so after, after care.
But she goes on at some point here, I'll put all this.
So when you want to get your, your, you want to get your own
(01:00:56):
copy of this and hunt it down and we'll, we'll have it in
there because I think it is, it isn't something that you find
around and so. I think I, I just want to say, I
think the premise is profound that, that the, that as we gain
greater insight into the psyche,we, we take on some
(01:01:18):
responsibility also, or we best take on some responsibility.
Like with great power comes great responsibility, or in this
case, knowledge is power. That, that that's a profound
statement to me. And I, and I think we overlook
that frequently as we're, as we're seeking knowledge.
(01:01:39):
And, and maybe after you talk about wisdom, it's worth talking
a little bit about what why ethics is informed by by
knowledge in this way. Yeah, yeah.
You know, it's interesting because here when we come to the
last stage, he points out, he says we become aware of the fact
(01:02:03):
that our civilization really does not harbor a concept of the
whole life as do the civilizations of the East.
And he quotes in office of Confucian in retirement, a
Taoist that is Confucius philosophy is very interested in
(01:02:25):
social interaction and appropriate relations and the
the the law and order and the the manifestation of humanity
and justice within society. And the Taoist in retirement is
about developing this final quality wisdom.
And it's associated with old agebecause it implies a certain
(01:02:52):
distance. You know, we think of the Taoist
is the one who retreats into themountains.
Hanshan, maybe you should do an episode someday on Hanshan on
the cold mountain, who is a recluse.
And the Taoist typically, you know, Lautza, the famous Taoist,
he was riding off into the mountains.
And the gatekeeper to the city said, wait, I can't let you
(01:03:13):
leave until you write this down.And so that's probably why it's
written like telegrams. It's like I got to get out here
before the snow comes or whatever.
But but that idea that one, and again, this is one of the one of
my banjos, one string banjo songs is about the importance of
nature. And this idea that there is
(01:03:36):
something, you know, this is a random association with Spinoza.
Spinoza says that when we have intuitive knowledge, we see
everything he wrote in Latin. So we see everything subspecy
eternitatus, which means under some form of eternity, which is
(01:03:57):
one of the lessons of nature. Is this the the eternal cycles,
the eternal turning of that. But So what he says here is that
for each generation must find the wisdom of the ages in the
form of its own wisdom. Strength in the old, therefore,
(01:04:22):
takes the form of wisdom in all of its connotations, from
ripened wits to accumulated knowledge and matured judgement.
It is the essence of knowledge freed from temporal relativity.
Wisdom then is detached concern with life itself in the face of
(01:04:50):
death itself. And what's significant about
this is that if you're living a life that's doing this, and the
story that you live and the worldview that you live is that
(01:05:11):
this part is the inevitable part, as opposed to this model
where this part is a potential outcome.
Your interaction with all the people that are in the chapters
in the in the cycles following you have just downloaded a sort
(01:05:37):
of a pointless existence for their map of how life works.
If our image of getting old is just losing capacity, losing the
ability to experience life, whata bummer.
It's like, well, who wants to? Who wants to plant their garden
(01:05:59):
if that's all it's going to growas black pumpkins or something,
you know? But if the, you know, the
argument that he's making here is that this, what does he say?
Individuality here finds its ultimate test, namely man's
(01:06:20):
existence at the entrance to thevalley, which he must cross
alone. So that if we've really
developed, if we've really fruited, then what we our
strength manifests as wisdom. Our strength manifests in that
full doubt, fleshed out hermeneutical base that now is
(01:06:44):
so rich, that is so dimensional,that is so digested, that all
the new pieces that come in are considered as if they have a
shining light coming out of them.
Because this piece now sits in adifferent setting that was the
(01:07:05):
built for it by ages of development of consciousness.
So that that's the the the holistic picture of the whole
cycle of life and obviously materialism.
Here is the booby prize, right? That's the point of this final
(01:07:30):
chapter. That's the point of this from a
yet. From a Darwinian standpoint, and
and and the theory of evolution was also one of the seven great
ideas that shook the universe and and it did right?
Fair enough. The the the manifestation of
(01:07:55):
hope and will and competence andand ultimately caring, love,
wisdom being an an evolutionary mechanism that increases the
chances of sexual reproduction. It is a kind of bizarre
(01:08:18):
conclusion to arrive at like those those don't seem to be
like those are evolutionary accidents and and and somehow
trying to deal with the the darkness of having to bridge the
inner world and the outer and reconcile them.
(01:08:40):
That being an evolutionary like advantage.
I mean, it is, I'm sure, becauseculture, through that process,
we have knowledge that we couldn't possibly manifest
individually on our own, like a lizard has to, to a greater
(01:09:01):
degree, right? So that some of it I can see
evolutionary benefit. But this can't just be about
sexual selection, right? No, it seems like you know
again, Bergsen would roll his eyes.
Or shake his head or one of these things.
That's why I love Bergsen so much, because because to him,
(01:09:24):
you know, it's obvious of all. First of all, once you've said
that love is the fundamental energy of the universe, your
your materialist arguments are starting to are starting to get
recontextualized. And you know, an argument might
be made that that the part were fixated at in the on the ladder
(01:09:49):
is kind of our represents the stage of our development of our
consciousness and which is not about how smart we are.
Be very smart and miss entire boats, big boats.
And and again, there is this difference between a sort of an
(01:10:14):
abstracted intelligence or abstracted knowledge and a lived
knowledge or a lived intelligence.
You know, this phronesis idea we've talked about and, but but
so you know the other. I think the thing that was most
the biggest aha for me about this so far, and I haven't quite
(01:10:35):
finished all his lectures, but maybe there's more.
I'm sure there's more goodies tofish out of that, but was this
idea of the, again, we want to the synonymographical approach
using Bergsen's term says let's look at human development and
we'll look at these chapters andthen we'll understand each of
(01:10:55):
these chapters that go through. OK, fair enough.
Except that's not. That's not the way it happens.
Nothing gets taken out of it. It's all mashed together.
So to understand this individual's function in this
chapter, you have to understand the impact of all the other
(01:11:16):
chapters and their relevance to that chapter as manifested in
the people all around them. Your, your picture of the world
as a young man kind of depends on the download you get from old
people and what they're, they seem to convey about what life
(01:11:37):
is about. And so you want to pass this
ultimate test of individuality, as he calls it, not just for
your own fulfillment, but because it's part of the
fulfillment like this happening through everybody's you know.
And so it's, it's a contribution.
It's a manifestation of your love and care for all these
(01:12:00):
other things that were created by accident.
Let's put it that way. And so so you know, this is
another, another wake up to findout that you are the eyes of the
world. You're not just the eyes of the
world, but you're also the thingthat the eyes of the world of
seeing itself through or at you know, you're you're manifesting
(01:12:21):
the world that the that the world sees.
So like the inverse of being theeye, you're being the object
also. The the projector and the
projected. Exactly.
And and and having relevance. That's why teaching is so
important, because teaching is an example of two chapters.
Like all the young men that you talked about, they were usually
(01:12:41):
just a chapter behind me, you know, or two more or less
because there was a whole periodthere.
When I started, they were very close to my chapter and then as
I got older I still had more. So there maybe was some distance
there, but it was that inter intergenerational chapter
(01:13:02):
relations there. It's only now that I can
understand how that kind of relationship is mutually
fulfilling, and that that teaching is fulfilling in ways
that you can't quite imagine when you're when you're a
student. Yeah, yeah.
And that's why some of my teachers, they say, you know,
(01:13:22):
you should always start by saying thank you because you are
very well served by it, no question about it.
And yeah, while we're getting onthere, we probably should
should. Well, before we wrap, I, I just
wanted to, to ask if you had anycomment on the this subheader
(01:13:44):
about the relationship between ethics and insight, because I
think that's, that's really profound.
Yeah. And and what does he call it
here? Yeah.
And responsibility, which we've talked about before.
That's what I'm I'm using ethicsas.
For ethics, right and well, and it's interesting because
(01:14:05):
responsibility is the same term that Fajin used in in a
different kind of way than we usually use the word and.
And I think that in this sense, yeah, the the term insight is,
is a really good charged up word.
(01:14:28):
And you don't have to be a Latinscholar to understand what this
word is about seeing in, right? And we typically think it's
about seeing in things that are outside.
But this is this, this is the seeing in that's going to
illuminate responsibility, right?
That's tied up with your what Heidegger called your Das sign.
(01:14:49):
You're manifesting as a you herethere now and or as as Ramdas's
book be here now. That's a manifesting what he's
really telling you is take responsibility, right?
And so so, yeah, there's a lot of there's a lot going on there.
And, and again, this quest for insight, insight and
(01:15:13):
responsibility are related to inthat what you learn from insight
defines and impacts what, what your responsibilities are.
And you can't really like they're like, they're two sides
of the same thing. So you're not going to be
fulfilling your responsibility without some insight.
And it is your responsibility, therefore, to gain some insight.
(01:15:36):
It was kind of interdependent. Yeah, yeah.
It's an interesting one. It reminds me of the Hippocratic
Oath and it reminds me of, you know, all kinds of developmental
questions where where we find ourselves in deeper water,
characterized in some way by this relationship of greater
(01:15:57):
insight and responsibility. Like, like, you know what, what
what you were saying about care is, is the outcome of of
insight. So so yeah, maybe there's just
another episode to do there. And and we can leave it here for
(01:16:18):
today on the rudiments of virtue.
Thank you. Yeah, I think that was that was
an interesting sort of a connecting piece that just kind
of dropped in and dovetailed so many things so nicely.
And I got to use my Sigmund Freud action figure our our
(01:16:39):
guest for today, us in Sigmund, my buddy Sig.
Yeah, cool. Well, we shall see you in the
future. And and for folks that made it
this far, congratulations. And I always want to reiterate
that we have show notes. That's kind of a regular thing.
(01:17:02):
So often we sort of give you thefoundation to pursue other
threads and we still not, we still don't get a lot of
comments or or, you know, responses.
And so, so if you feel the impulse and you figure that
fingers get, you know, itchy, just drop us a line.
Yeah, be great to hear from folks.
All righty. Cool, see you next time.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Cardiac Cowboys
The heart was always off-limits to surgeons. Cutting into it spelled instant death for the patient. That is, until a ragtag group of doctors scattered across the Midwest and Texas decided to throw out the rule book. Working in makeshift laboratories and home garages, using medical devices made from scavenged machine parts and beer tubes, these men and women invented the field of open heart surgery. Odds are, someone you know is alive because of them. So why has history left them behind? Presented by Chris Pine, CARDIAC COWBOYS tells the gripping true story behind the birth of heart surgery, and the young, Greatest Generation doctors who made it happen. For years, they competed and feuded, racing to be the first, the best, and the most prolific. Some appeared on the cover of Time Magazine, operated on kings and advised presidents. Others ended up disgraced, penniless, and convicted of felonies. Together, they ignited a revolution in medicine, and changed the world.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.