2017 Personality 08: Carl Jung and the Lion King (Part 2)

0:11so we'll continue with our union analysis of the Lion King today we ended

0:18at the point where remember Mufasa had taken Simba up to the top of Pride Rock

0:25and described to him the fact that his kingdom essentially constituted

0:31everything that the light touched and you can think about that as the domain

0:36of the roughly speaking of the great father with the domain of the great

0:40mother on the outside of that being symbolically equivalent to the

0:44underworld or to death or to nature all of those things seem to be approximately

0:49equally true and he forbade Simba from going to investigate what was beyond the

0:55confines of the light and in some sense that's exactly what a tradition does for

1:00you it because the tradition is precisely what defines the domain of the

1:04light and to be moral from the perspective of the tradition it's akin

1:09to playing a piagetian game but only adhering to the rules you know how

1:13Piaget described the fact that when kids first master a game they learned they

1:17learn how to act it out and then they learn what the rules are and then they

1:21regard the rules in some sense as sacred you can't go outside the rules and then

1:26later in moral development if they get to that stage then they start to

1:29recognize themselves also as formulators of the rule or formulators of the game

1:34and culture tells you don't go beyond the rules that's the definition of

1:38morality within the box of culture and you don't go outside of that and so

1:42that's why Mufasa plays that particular role and it's wise because if you go

1:47outside the domain of what you already understand then it's dangerous out there

1:51clearly it's dangerous out there but the downside of that particular message and

1:57this is perhaps this is the mythological reason why Mufasa isn't as aware as he

2:02could be of scar you know his knowledge is bounded and

2:05he's no I'm not aware enough of what lies outside of that in this realm let's

2:10say of death and destruction and so scar is he is able to overcome his his

2:17brother one you see this sort of thing happening to people very frequently for

2:22example who developed post-traumatic stress disorder

2:25and one of the things that's not as well known about post-traumatic stress

2:28disorder as might be known is a it happens to you if you encounter an

2:33experience that sort of blows out the axioms of your knowledge system that's

2:37one way of looking at it it's so unexpected that you can't account for it

2:42within the confines of this of the system that you're using to interpret

2:46the world that often happens to people when they encounter something that's

2:49truly malevolent and that can be within them or it can be in the form of someone

2:54else who is genuinely out to hurt them they're often people who develop PTSD

2:58are often but not always somewhat naive and they're not aware of the full

3:05catastrophe of the world that might be one way of looking at it and then they

3:10encounter someone who's truly out to hurt them and they can detect that even

3:16in in the way the person's face looks or they encounter a part of them that's

3:20much more malevolent than they had ever imagined it could possibly be and then

3:25they do something terrible and then they don't know what to do about it

3:28so delay or the the Canadian General wrote a book called shake hands with the

3:35devil and it was about what happened to him in Rwanda when he was stationed

3:38there as a UN warrior or a UN soldier and I mean Dallaire was not naive but

3:46what he encountered was truly malevolent and it just blew him into pieces and and

3:51that that's what happens and so there's real utility and staying within the

3:56bounded domain but the problem is is that there may be information that's

4:00outside of that domain that you absolutely need to know and so part of

4:04the problem with being alive is that you have to continually determine how much

4:09you're going to maintain your stability and how much you're going to explore and

4:13you have to explore because the stable part of you gets outdated but if you

4:18explore too much or too too unwisely then you can encounter things that flip

4:24you upside down it's actually one of the problems with being high and trade

4:28openness especially if you're also high in neuroticism because if you're open

4:31you're creative you're always looking for for ideas that are outside of your

4:35current systematic way of thinking but if you're high in eroticism so you

4:39parents a lot of anxiety and emotional pain and that sort of thing you can

4:42continually upset your own apple cart now the other thing that you might want

4:46to think about this is really useful as far as I'm concerned is you might want

4:49to think about this politically and we've been doing a lot of work I'm gonna

4:53have one of my graduate students actually come and talk to you about the

4:55work we've been doing on personality and Paul and political belief so what

4:59happens with political belief is that if you're high in openness and low in

5:02conscientiousness you tend to be a liberal the openness being the

5:06particularly important part of that and if you're low in openness and high in

5:09conscientiousness especially orderliness you tend to be a conservative now it's

5:14kind of strange because openness and conscientiousness aren't very highly

5:17correlated so it's not obvious why those two traits would combine to determine

5:22political belief and and the relationship is actually quite strong

5:25between temperament and political belief if you measure political belief

5:28comprehensively but it seems to me that the fundamental distinction and this is

5:33the political game at least along the liberal conservative axis this boils

5:36down to one thing it boils down to how open borders should be compared to how

5:41close they should be and you know you can see that reflected for example in

5:46the attractiveness of Trump to a large part of the general population because

5:50he's going to close the borders build a wall and fortify the borders and

5:55conservatives like that they like to have borders between things stay tight

5:59and they don't even care if it's state borders or political borders or town

6:04borders or ethnic borders or borders between ideas or borders between sexual

6:09identities conservatives like to have things stay in the damn box where they

6:13belong partly because they're orderly and

6:15partly because they're lone openness they don't get any real they're not

6:18interested in what happens if you free up your conceptions all they see in that

6:23is the probability of disorder whereas liberals who are high in openness and

6:28low and conscientiousness slash orderliness they get a real charge out

6:32of letting things out of the box so that they can creatively interplay now the

6:36issue is who's correct and the answer is you don't know because the environment

6:42underneath the political landscape moves and so sometimes the right answer is

6:46tighten up the borders and fortify and sometimes the right answer is no no

6:50loosen things up because everything's good

6:53to static and tight and we need more information and the dialogue that occurs

6:58in the political landscape with this is why dialogue is so important is

7:02fundamentally between these two opposing views of borders and because you can't

7:07say with certainty which one is right at any given time an open dialogue has to

7:12maintain itself so that the entire political State can maneuver properly

7:16along that moving line it's absolutely crucial it's really really really useful

7:22to know that people vote their damn temperament it gets you it gives you

7:27more of an understanding at least in principle of your of those who sit on

7:30the other side of you on the political fence and there's been recent newspaper

7:34articles quite interesting I tweeted a couple of them about this company and UK

7:39called Cambridge analytics and they're using the damn big five they can extract

7:43out big five information from your Facebook Likes they've got a model of

7:47every single person in the United States big five personality and they help Trump

7:53craft political messages right down to the level of apartment buildings to

7:57appeal to people based on their Big Five temperament and that's all recent work

8:02and so one of the things that's very interesting is we are teaching computers

8:06to understand us so fast you can't believe it and we really do risk walking

8:11into an electronic world where you will only see what you want to see I mean

8:16obviously the marketers are trying to do that as fast as possible right they only

8:19want to send you ads that you're going to be interested in because it's

8:23expensive and foolish to send you anything that will annoy you or that

8:26you'll ignore and so the marketers are trying like mad to map who you are even

8:31by watching your eyes they're trying to figure out who you are so they can send

8:35you the right information but the danger is that that will happen say in the

8:39domain of news and broader information increasing this tendency for people to

8:43be siloed in their exposure to the external world it's a big sort of like

8:47each of us is becoming a micro celebrity surrounded by electronic sycophants who

8:53do nothing but tell us exactly what we want to hear it's a real problem

8:56Karl Popper a famous philosopher science said that one of the things that you

9:00should do and this is akin to the PIA jetty and view is you should always look

9:04for information that contradicts your cur

9:07viewpoint now that's painful right because who wants their axioms

9:10contradicted it can take you apart but it's the only way that you can ensure

9:14that you're learning at the same time that you're maintaining your stability

9:18and that's another reason why it's really necessary to engage in dialogue

9:22with people that you do not agree with because they're the ones who will tell

9:25you things that you don't know it's crew it's crucial importance in the

9:29maintenance of your own stability the worst thing that can happen to a person

9:32know because there's many horrible things that can happen to a person but

9:36one of the worst things that can happen is that you find yourself in a situation

9:39where no one is offering you corrective feedback anymore because you rely on the

9:44corrective feedback provided by other people to keep yourself sane to keep

9:48moving in the ever-changing environment and if you cut yourself off from that

9:52feedback then well then you end up static and shrinking it's really it's

9:58really not good you get less and less competent you get less and less

10:01confident and the threats outside of you loom larger and larger so that's all to

10:06do with the you know the domain outside the light see young would also say that

10:13out in this domain that sort of beyond what you understand that's also where

10:17you encounter the archetypes of the collective unconscious now that's a

10:21really really complicated idea but what he means by that is that if you're put

10:25outside the domain of your competence you're going to start to use fantasy to

10:31organize your world so I can give you an example of that so you you I presume

10:36most of you are old enough to have a conscious memory of when the Twin Towers

10:40came crashing down and so everybody in the days after that was wandering around

10:45like they were in the days and the reason they were in the days is because

10:48well it wasn't exactly clear what fell right there was the physical towers fell

10:53but that was only a tiny bit of the problem because those physical towers

10:57were embedded in a network of meaning like a very very sophisticated network

11:01of meaning but also a political network and an economic network and a military

11:04network and like they're they're nodes inside a very complex system and so when

11:09they come crashing down you don't know what's come crashing down right so

11:13you're out there in the unknown and and wondering what's going on and wandering

11:16around in the days which is exactly what happened to people and then what bush

11:20did George W was immediately turned that

11:23into a good versus evil drama instantly and that's an archetypal idea so that's

11:28when he came up with the idea of the axis of evil I think that was Iran North

11:33Korea and I don't remember the other one at the moment but but he yeah he

11:38immediately turned the political landscape into a good versus evil drama

11:41and he said to everyone in the world that they were either with him or

11:44against him fundamentally and that was the that was part of the retreating into

11:49a I guess a more protected landscape that's one of the ways that human beings

11:53deal with the encounter with a traumatic threat and so the reason you meet the

11:58unconscious and even the collective unconscious on the border of your

12:02knowledge is because when you hit the border of your knowledge you start to

12:06use fantasy in order to bring the the newest form of order out of the unknown

12:12so that you can start to make sense out of it and that's what artists always do

12:16that's what they do and so from the Union perspective people who are engaged

12:20in creative art are the ones who are on the perimeter of knowledge structures

12:24and so what they're doing is taking the absolute unknown which would be in

12:28Rumsfeld terms they're unknown unknowns and turning them into partially known

12:34unknowns that's what an artist does and and especially the more classical

12:39artists who deal with mythological and religious themes which was the case for

12:42art right up until really until the late 20th century

12:45they're they're using these mythological ideas to sort of extend the domain of

12:50human knowledge out beyond its current parameters and so artists do that and

12:55literary people do that and and dramatists do that and they help us

13:01extend our knowledge now that's where open people live that's another way of

13:05thinking about so think about it this way so you're in a city you know what

13:08and the city has parts of it that degenerate and so you could think about

13:12that as order degenerating into chaos and then the open people who are

13:16creative come along and they find places in the city that have degenerated but

13:20that still have interesting potential right and then they move in there where

13:24it's cheap to and they start producing art they start producing galleries and

13:28then the coffee shops move in and then the thing starts to get civilized and

13:31then of course the more all conservative types move in those

13:36would be the yuppies roughly speaking so they're they're much more conservative

13:40than the artists but they're still liberal compared to the bulk of the

13:43population and so the more daring people move in after the artists have civilized

13:48it and then after that you know then the chain stores start to move in and soon

13:52it's completely turned into Zellers or something like that and then the artists

13:56have to go somewhere else and find another place on the boundary where they

14:00can live and it's a fizzy elizacass much as a mental boundary and so you because

14:05you think each of those personality traits there's five dimensions each of

14:09them represent the possibility of inhabiting a kind of niche right an

14:13ecological niche so if you're an extroverted person your niche is the

14:17social environment if you're an introverted person the niches I think

14:21nature I don't know that for sure because I've never figured out exactly

14:24what introverts are adapted to but it's not exactly the social world if you're

14:29agreeable then your niches relationships if you're disagreeable your niches

14:33competition if you're conscientious your niche is duty and effort and so and and

14:39that those niches are partly social because so much of our environment is

14:44social but they're also partly natural because our social being is nested

14:48inside the natural world and so you can think about the big five traits as

14:52different kinds of adaptations to different kinds of niches and that's the

14:55niche that the open people the open exploratory types occupy so that seems

15:02to make a higher-order super factor extraversion and openness called

15:06plasticity as opposed to stability which is conscientiousness agreeableness and

15:10emotional stability and there's a play off between those two things because the

15:14stable people obviously are stable but the plastic types of people are more

15:20dynamic and they're they're more concerned with transformation and in

15:23order to get a system optimally stable and dynamic you have to have a continual

15:28interplay of those of those factors because static doesn't work because

15:32everything changes that's the problem with conservatism and the problem with

15:36liberalism fundamentally is yes everything changes but you have to bring

15:40forward some structures from the past so it's very it's very very difficult to

15:45get that balance correct so all right so anyways out there in the

15:51underworld in the place beyond your current conceptualizations that's the

15:56place of death and nature and it's beyond the light and it's also the place

16:00of Hell and that's what you see here and what do you how do you conceptualize

16:04that well one of the things you'll see if you're interested in this sort of

16:08thing if you ever go read the writings of the Columbine killers the teens

16:13they're very interesting they're very much worth reading especially I think

16:17it's Dylan Klebold who was the more literate of the two but he tells you

16:21exactly where he went after brooding and brooding and brooding on his his

16:26isolation and segregation from mankind so he's out there beyond he's out there

16:31in a chaotic domain and because he's tortured by that his thoughts take an

16:35unbelievably dark turn like it's unimaginably dark if you're interested

16:41in that sort of thing you could read that there's another book you could read

16:43called panzram PA and Zed ra m and it's a fascinating book it's about this guy

16:50who I think he raped 1200 men so that sort of tells you what sort of guy he

16:54was extraordinarily physically powerful and brutal and malevolent and he was

16:59kind of a juvenile delinquent type and they put him in a reform school and he

17:03was not well treated in that reform school it's sort of like the worst of

17:07the Canadian residential schools and when he came out he was not a happy boy

17:11and so he spent the rest of his life trying to be as destructive as he could

17:16possibly imagine and purely consciously with malevolent intent and then and and

17:23believe me he was pretty destructive he kept track of the dollar value of all

17:26the buildings he burned down he tried to start a war between Britain and the

17:29United States like he was all out for all-out mayhem his dying words they're

17:35gonna hang him he told the guy who was going to hang him he said hurry up you

17:39who's your bastard I could kill 12 men in the time it takes you to hang me and

17:43that's exactly the sort of person he was and he made friends with this physician

17:48in the in the prison who he thought was like the first person who ever did

17:52something nice for him gave him a dollar for cigarettes if I remember correctly

17:56and the physician encouraged him to write his autobiography and so he did

18:00and it's it's available and so if you want a view because you know you you

18:05always think of people you think well people have good intentions you know

18:08that you especially think that if you're naive and agreeable so all of you who

18:12are sitting there out there thinking people have good intentions you're

18:15probably high in agreeableness but that's not always the case

18:19people can have very dark motivations that are fully conscious and very well

18:25elaborated and panzram was know he was smart and his book is very well written

18:30and he tells you exactly why he thought the way he thought and so it's a good

18:34glimpse of exactly this sort of thing where you can get to if you want to by

18:38brooding on your specific misfortune you know and his his basic credo was that

18:43human beings were so reprehensible that they should just be eliminated and

18:46believe me that's what he was trying to do and these people who do terrible

18:50things like the Columbine shooters that's exactly what for black of a

18:54better word they're possessed by its sheer malevolence and the Columbine kids

18:58had a much more spectacular catastrophe planned than the one that actually

19:02occurred and they knew it was going to be a full-blown media circus and lots of

19:07these people who engage in those sorts of mass murders they know about the

19:11other mass murders and they're engaged in a competition and the competition is

19:14who can do the most brutal thing the fastest something like that so you can't

19:19just be thinking about people who've you know who have good intentions but have

19:23somehow gone wrong if you ever meet someone who isn't like that and you

19:27think that you're just a tree with ripe fruit to be plucked so you don't want to

19:32be in that situation you have to keep your eyes open and so anyways that's

19:36basically what's encapsulated in this part of the story now the hyenas go

19:40after the little lion obviously but they managed to escape

19:44it's very malevolent scene and Mufasa shows up at the last minute to rescue

19:50them so and you know that there's also a mythological trope there which is that

19:56if you go outside your domain of confidence and you encounter something

19:59you don't understand the first thing that you're going to do is look to the

20:03knowledge structures that you already possess to explain it right and that's

20:06the you could say from a symbolic perspective that that's the

20:10manifestation of the father as of course that's what you're going to do and you

20:14you know what's really interesting - is because I've had a lot of clients

20:17who've had PTSD and and without exception every single one of them was

20:21induced by one form of malevolence or another they have to develop a very

20:25sophisticated philosophy of good and evil to get out of it because they have

20:29a worldview in which those things don't really exist there's no such thing as

20:33pure malevolence well that's fine unless you encounter it and then as soon as you

20:37encounter it as soon as you encounter it you won't know what to do and then you

20:42won't be able to get on with your life you'll do nothing but think about that

20:46and think about it and think about it and think about it'll disrupt your sleep

20:49it'll put you into a permanent state of preparation for action because the part

20:54of your brain that's detected that which in my estimation by the way is the same

20:58part at least in part that detects snakes it's the same damn circuit once

21:03it's seen something like that it is not gonna let you go till you figure it out

21:06and that's basically what post-traumatic stress disorder is and you know to some

21:10degree each of you will have experienced that maybe not all of you in here but

21:15many of you and you can tell that so if you go back and you think about your

21:19past and you have any memory that's more than about eighteen months old and when

21:24you think about it it produces a fair bit of negative emotion then that's like

21:29a minute that's like a place where there's a mini post-traumatic stress

21:32problem and what's happened you remember I showed you that hierarchy moving from

21:37tiny motor actions all the way up to high order abstractions well you can

21:41imagine say you have good person at the top and and you you kind of use that

21:45that scenario to construe other people people are basically good well then you

21:51run into someone who is not good and boom the whole bloody system comes

21:55tumbling down because it's violated that highest order axiom

21:58so that's post-traumatic stress disorder if something has violated an axiom

22:03that's more differentiated you know closer to the actual motor output not

22:07quite so high in the abstraction chain then all it does is wipe out that part

22:11of the structure it doesn't wipe out the whole thing and you can tell if you have

22:15holes in your perceptual value structure by checking to see if you have memories

22:21that are still alive in a negative way that are old enough so that they should

22:25have been incorporated into your personality and so one of the things you

22:29can do you're doing one of the exercises that's

22:33on myself authoring site you guys do the personality analysis but there's another

22:37program there called the that's called the past authoring where you write down

22:41an autobiography and thinking through these things that have happened to you

22:46in your past that are negative is a good way of making them go away and thinking

22:50them through kind of means you have to figure out what happened right and then

22:55you sort of have to figure out how to make it not happen again what you're

22:58trying to derive is some kind of causal analysis how is it that I was put into a

23:03situation where I was made vulnerable you know and that could be well because

23:07you're only four and you couldn't protect yourself and now it's time to

23:10update that because you're a fully functioning adult or there may be things

23:14that you have to think through and change in your own personality or

23:17attitudes that you've been holding on to since you were tiny I have this client

23:21once and she came in and told me that she had been sexually assaulted by her

23:27older brother and she told me the story and I kind of got the impression that

23:31maybe she was like eight and he was like 17 or something like that and she was

23:35about 27 when she came and talked to me and then I found out by further

23:39questioning that she was 4 and he was 6 and I thought she still had this story

23:44in her head of her being tormented by this older person right that's how she

23:48told the story and what I told her was well look another way of looking at this

23:53is that you two were very badly supervised children because I mean he

23:57was 6 for God's sake you know he's a little kid that doesn't mean that what

24:01happened to her was any less traumatic but but he wasn't 17 right if the story

24:07was different than the one she had in her head and you know by the time she

24:11left after we had that conversation it was clear that the way that she was

24:14construing the experience had radically shifted and it was very interesting

24:18because you know you think of the past as fixed but and it is in some sense but

24:23the reason you remember the past isn't to make an objectively accurate record

24:28of the past it's so that you can use the information in the past to prepare you

24:32for the future and your mind won't leave you alone unless that has happened so if

24:37you've encountered something that's negative and you don't know why and you

24:41don't know what to do about it if that have

24:43again in the future then that will stay with you and I think one of the things

24:47that does too is it increases your overall physiological load is actually

24:51physiologists who've been talking about this I can't remember the damn phrase

24:56but you could imagine that your mind is doing something like this all the time

24:59it's it's it's it's got a record in some sense of your autobiographical

25:04experiences and what it's doing is calculating how frequently you've been

25:09successful versus unsuccessful and the more frequently that you've been

25:13successful the higher you are up on the dominance hierarchy that's one

25:16possibility so your serotonin levels go up and you're calmer but also it's

25:22reasonable to assume that the environment is less dangerous right

25:25because that's sort of what constitutes danger you're somewhere in and you act

25:30and and something you don't want to have happen happens that's danger and so your

25:34brain is always trying to figure out how to calibrate how anxious you should be

25:37and one of the things that does is by sort of keeping track of your past

25:41success failure ratio and so to the degree that your past has been

25:47characterized by will call them failures that those are situations where you do

25:51not get what you want then your your body your brain puts your body on

25:55constant alert because if everything that you've done has resulted in

25:59catastrophe then you're somewhere insanely dangerous

26:02and you should be like like a you know like a prey animal that's ready to dart

26:07in any direction and how much you should be a prey animal is dependent on it's an

26:12estimate partly your trait neuroticism partly your your success as adjudicated

26:18by other people right because they'll pop you up the doorman its hierarchy if

26:22you've been successful but also partly on your record of failures and successes

26:26in the past and so you can go back and you can find out where you have holes in

26:31your in the structure through which you're viewing the world that's one way

26:34of looking at it and you can sew those things up and that's a very that's in

26:38some sense that's what you're doing in psychotherapy you know partly it's

26:42exposure to things you're afraid of and disgusted by and are likely to avoid

26:46that's a huge chunk of it but if you go back into your past and you start

26:50talking those things through it's really the same thing it's more abstracted so

26:55Freud of course was always when he was doing his free association

27:00process with his clients he'd find that if he just let them talk that their

27:05speech would circle until it hit a place like that where they were confused and

27:10doubtful and then their speech would sort of wander around that and and then

27:14they'd have an emotional expression that was a consequence of that he thought the

27:17emotional expression was what was curative it was cathartic in his terms

27:21but later James Pennebaker upon whom these writing exercises I described his

27:27research it is based on that my read my exercises are based on his research he

27:33found that if you brought college students into the to the lab and you had

27:37them write for 15 minutes three times over three days about the worst thing

27:41that had ever happened to them or the worst thing they ever did if I remember

27:45correctly they got worse in the short term but better in the long run for

27:49example they went visited the doctor less and markers of their physical

27:52health improved and so I think the reason for that is because what does

27:58that called is called something load just about it got it right from the

28:02physiologist it doesn't matter they got healthier as far as I can tell

28:07because they basically calmed down once they had gone through the negative

28:11memory and sorted it out properly and told a properly articulated story and

28:16figured out how to deal with it then their physiology calmed down and so then

28:23they weren't as stressed they weren't producing as much cortisol and so

28:26cortisol suppresses your immune function and so they were more likely to stay

28:30healthy and so well so that's all very much we're thinking about that's all in

28:36the domain outside of the light that's one way of thinking about it now of

28:39course Simba and his and what's the girl's name

28:43mala yeah they're you know pretty cowed about what has happened because they

28:48sort of stumbled stupidly out into the unknown they stumbled foolishly out into

28:53the unknown and this actually highlights another union archetype and that's the

28:57archetype of the trickster and the trickster is like the Joker in the

29:01king's court and the trickster is someone who will be or play the fool and

29:05the thing about the fool is that the fool is close to the truth because you

29:09can't learn anything new unless you're willing to be

29:11fool right you know what that's like you you know exactly what that's like your

29:15chart you have to master a new skill but you're avoiding it because you know that

29:19you'll be bad at it when you first do it and if you're perfectionistic you're

29:23gonna say well I can't allow myself to be bad at anything I can't allow myself

29:27to be a fool and no wonder but the problem is is when you try something new

29:31you're always a fool and so unless you're willing to be a fool you can't

29:35learn anything new and that's also why you can regarded the trickster as the

29:38precursor to the Savior architect Lee speaking is because you cannot do the

29:42right thing unless you're willing to be a fool first and that's really worth

29:46knowing lots of times you guys are gonna make a stage transition in your life and

29:51you're gonna feel like an imposter when you get a new job or when you get a

29:54promotion or something like that you're gonna feel like an imposter and you are

29:58because what do you know when you make that first transition right but it's

30:03gonna make you embarrassed and it's gonna make you ashamed and all of those

30:06things but you have to understand that you are a fool when you first try

30:10something new but you're a worse fool if you don't try it now that doesn't mean

30:14you should you know make like you know everything as soon as you're promoted or

30:18you have some transition in status that's that's foolish of the wrong sort

30:23but to know that to know that you have to be fallible in order to progress is

30:29an unbelievably useful thing it can free you up you know what I was talking to a

30:33writer the other day about his process for beginning writing he's written many

30:37books he writes a very very very bad first draft right and that's a good way

30:43to think about things is throughout your life you're gonna be doing that is

30:46writing the next draft of you and it's pretty bad to begin with but that's okay

30:52because it isn't gonna get any better unless you put yourself out into the

30:55domain of the unknown to begin with and you know you might you might it might go

30:59badly I mean that's what happens here

31:04anyways Mufasa has a chat with Simba and you know tells him that he's he did what

31:10he wasn't supposed to do although you know even in that situation with fauces

31:16discipline is paradoxical because there's part of him because he's

31:21reasonably wise that knows that breaking the rules like that is actually

31:24necessary even though you still have to say play

31:27by the damn rules you know you have to leave that door open so that the rules

31:30can be broken an appropriate amount so he forgives him and and and peace is

31:35made between them and then they're there they involve themselves in sort of

31:41gazing at the night sky and so the two of them do that together and the night

31:45sky is an interesting place you know because that's where the absolute

31:48unknown resides and one of the things young wrote a lot about was astrology

31:53strangely enough slash astronomy and one of young contentions this is a very

31:58interesting one was that because the night sky was completely unknown people

32:02could project their fantasies into it and that's what they did without with

32:06astrology so astrology is this cumulative fantasy that's going on in

32:11the in that roughly speaking in the deep unconscious projected on to the sky and

32:16so if you analyze old astrological writings what you're really doing is

32:20analyzing old fantasies and because of that you could develop some insight into

32:24the structure of the mind and so he did the same thing with alchemy and his

32:28later writings which are very very difficult to understand but extremely

32:32worthwhile ok so anyways back to the to the hellish domain now I told you that

32:37that domain that's outside of knowledge you could think about that as the

32:40underworld or you can think about it as nature the negative element of nature in

32:44particular and so I mentioned that one element of that is hellish and that's

32:48exactly what the movie explains next it does exactly that we go back out to this

32:53domain that scar the adversary or the negative king that's another way of

32:58looking at him this is his his the domain over which he rules and so you

33:05can see him there surrounded in fire same ideas the you know as the hyenas

33:09surrounded by fire earlier although this is green fire and smoke which I think is

33:13even worse and this is where the movie starts to draw on essentially Nazi

33:19symbolism at least the symbolism of totalitarian states and you know you

33:24think about you think about a totalitarian state you think about the

33:27Nazis and they're goose-stepping what's happening is that every single

33:30person in the military becomes an identical unit right a unit they're all

33:35uniform and they're all in some sense imitating

33:39The Dictator in in an absolutely perfect way and so the dictator wants to impose

33:44strict uniformity on the entire population that's order order and one of

33:50the things we've discovered that's really interesting is that discussed

33:56sensitivity is associated with orderliness and that's associated with

34:00conscientiousness and one of the things about Hitler was that he was very

34:03disgust sensitive and a lot of his hatred for non-aryans so imagine inside

34:09the aryan box it was all uniform outside it was all parasites and predators and

34:13so and that was a manifestation of disgust not of fear it's a whole

34:17different thing and if you read Hitler's table talk

34:20which is a collection of his spontaneous dinner speeches from 1939 to 1940 - it's

34:26a very interesting book you see that his metaphor for the Aryan race was a body a

34:32pure body unof salted by parasites or predators

34:36and that he was trying to erect a border around it to keep all of that away

34:40so it's an immunological disgust like metaphor and there's some recent work

34:45that was published in PLoS ONE about three years ago showing that brilliant

34:50study should have got much more attention showing that if you went

34:52around and looked and sampled political attitudes in different countries or even

34:57within the same country what you found was that the higher the prevalence of

35:02infectious diseases the higher the probability of totalitarian political

35:06attitudes at the local level and you can imagine well what happens if there's

35:11infectious diseases is you want to put borders around everything you don't want

35:14free movement between ideas or people because that's partly how the disease

35:18spreads you're going to have much more strict sexual rules for example because

35:23that's a great way for diseases to be transmitted and before Hitler went on

35:27his rampage against the non-aryans he'd cleaned up all the factories and like he

35:32went in there and fumigated them it was part of the law he went on a public

35:36health campaign to get rid of tuberculosis and he got rid of the bugs

35:39in the factories as well he used cyclone B that's an insecticide and that's the

35:45gas that he used in the gas chambers eventually so first it was the bugs in

35:48the rats and then it was people who were then it was euthanasia that was the neck

35:52move and forced you euthanasia and the the rationale for that was compassion by

35:58the way just so you all know it's it's it's merciful to put these people who

36:03are burdensome to themselves and their families and the state who are living

36:08second-rate lives its merciful to euthanize them and that was a huge

36:13campaign in Germany it was after that that the more racial purifications began

36:20and so that's the disgust thing that's unbelievably important it's it's it's

36:26because lots of times people think that conservatives are more anxiety sensitive

36:30than liberals and that's why they're closed in terms of their ideas that

36:34doesn't look right first of all conservatives are less

36:36neurotic than liberals although the effect isn't that big so it doesn't look

36:40and they actually are there they score higher in measures of well-being the

36:44most unhappy people are liberal men by the way so but you know people are often

36:51accused if they're conservative of being fearful and that's why they you know

36:54suppress other people's viewpoints but that doesn't look right it's low

36:57openness and high orderliness and that looks like it's associated with disgust

37:01and that looks like it's associated with something called the extended immune

37:05system which is the proclivity of people to to keep themselves away from

37:09potential sources of contamination it's really terrifying because one of the

37:13things people often said about Germany was that you know it was a very

37:17civilized country and yet it descended into barbarity

37:20but conscientiousness is a very good predictor of long-term success and so

37:26you could say well conscientious societies are more civilized but they're

37:30also more orderly and that makes them more discussed sensitive and so what it

37:33might have easily might have easily been in Germany was that it was an excess of

37:38civilization rather than its lack that produced exactly these consequences and

37:42that's a far more frightening proposition and one that's I believe

37:45much more likely to be true Hitler bathed four times a day and he was also

37:51an admirer of willpower so he could stand like this for eight hours in the

37:54back of a car and the thing about conscientious people is they're very

37:57willpower oriented and so if you're unfortunate enough to be sick

38:02chronically in the house of someone who's conscientious

38:06if it's a mental illness you're more likely to relapse because the

38:09conscientious person is going to be judgmental and they're going to say to

38:12you if you're schizophrenic they're going to say well if you just organize

38:15yourself and get up in the morning and try a little harder

38:17you could overcome this which is of course true except you can't because

38:22you're schizophrenic and so the pressure put on you by the anger and the contempt

38:26is going to increase the probability that you'll relapse so orderly people

38:30are very judgmental and you know orderliness is very highly associated

38:35with things like anorexia and the anorexic is basically someone who's so

38:39disgust sensitive that they become unable to tolerate their own body and

38:44they see it as a source of corruption and imperfection which of course is

38:48exactly right it is and it's very difficult thing to maintain order around

38:53so anyways so what happens out here in this terrible domain where scar rules is

38:59that things turn into a totalitarian state you know and he's presented here

39:04as as a Nazi like leader and see there's another thing that's really interesting

39:09this even deeper than this from a mythological perspective I don't know if

39:13I can even go into it well not really I guess what I'll have to do is satisfy

39:18myself with this observation there's always been some antagonism for example

39:23between the Catholic Church and rationalism and everyone knows that it's

39:27a very long-standing antagonism that sort of runs its way through at least

39:32the last thousand years or so of Western civilization and the people who regarded

39:37kaathal catholics as antithetical to science

39:40take the Catholics to task for that and describing it as prejudicial and super

39:45and superstitious and fair enough but there's something else going on

39:49there that's more important and that's the observation and this is at a deep

39:53level again the observation that rationality has one big problem so it's

39:59it can easily become arrogant and believe in its own theories so if you're

40:04smart and there's gonna be some of you people who are like that to some of you

40:07your primary the primary trait that distinguishes you from other people over

40:12the course of your whole life was that you are more intelligent than most and

40:15you may have staked your identity on that and an over value

40:20and rationality and the problem with that is that you you make a theory of

40:23the world and then you tend to assume that it's 100% correct that's the

40:27tendency to fall in love with your own theories and that's what a totalitarian

40:31does the totalitarian says here's the damn theory and it's exactly right and

40:36you're gonna act it out exactly and if you don't well we've got some special

40:41treats in mind for you and one of the most terrible things that that I

40:45encountered while reading about totalitarianism and this was even more

40:49true of the Soviet Union under Stalin was that the true believers and and

40:54there were many of them we're in a terrible position because according to

41:00their own doctrine they're already involved in the process that was going

41:03to bring utopia to mankind the problems had already been solved but many of them

41:07were still suffering terribly as individuals but if you're a totalitarian

41:11believer in Utopia your own suffering becomes heretical right because your

41:16suffering is an indication that the damn theory isn't correct and so then you're

41:20in a terrible position because you either admit that the theory isn't

41:23correct and fall apart because of that and maybe face terrible punishment as

41:27well or you have to separate yourself from your own suffering and lie about it

41:33fundamentally and of course that's exactly what happened in places like the

41:36Soviet Union where everyone lied about everything all of the time to themselves

41:40to their family members to their friends the entire system was completely

41:46permeated by lies and so you get this terrible place that scars the ruler over

41:53which is totalitarian and brutal and murderous and resentful and deceitful

41:58and arrogant all at the same time and that's brought about so mmm-hmm the

42:07columbine guys for example when they're justifying their murderous nests and

42:11their plans to shoot up the schools they keep making reference to the fact that

42:17people had slighted them for example you know and insulted them and that they

42:22were alienated they weren't bullied exactly the way the press made it out I

42:25don't know if they were bullied anymore than people usually are in high school

42:28but they took their alienation personally and we

42:33guarded that their isolation from common humanity as indication of the pathology

42:38of everything and then they went out to destroy and that's exactly what this

42:43sort of thing represents that's the uniformity and you see he's got this

42:47kind of vicious grin on his face which is malicious and and pleased all at the

42:52same time there's no fear in that it'sit's quite quite the opposite and

42:57there's another image of you know using what's essentially imagery of Hell which

43:01everyone understands strangely enough and that associates him with the

43:06crescent moon and the crescent moon is well it's a symbol of darkness and and

43:10the underworld fundamentally so all right so anyway so that's we see the the

43:16underworld we see that which bullet lies beyond the light and in there we see a

43:20fragment of that that's basically hellish and all of that's incorporated

43:23into the story and everyone understands that when they see it even without I

43:28would say the overt references to Nazism okay so now scar has a plan he's going

43:33to kill the king and he's going to do that by putting what the King loves in

43:39danger and so scar feigning sympathy has enticed Simba down into this ravine and

43:47scars minions are going to cause a wildebeest stampede right so a mindless

43:53stampede to to to put to put Simba in danger and so that's what happens here

44:01the Whale debate start to march into the ravine and everyone is making a scar

44:09tells Mufasa that Simba is down in that ravine and entices him down there and so

44:14they're all off running to see if they can save Simba and then you see Mufasa

44:22running in front of the wildebeest herd trying to try to find his son and trying

44:26to stay ahead of them the mad mob that's put his son in danger and so he tries to

44:32escape climbing up the Butte which is almost a sheer cliff and when it gets to

44:37the top mmm his brother is waiting for him there and he asks him to pull him up

44:43and scar basically before he indicates that he's betraying him and

44:49puts his claws into Moo fusses paws and throws him off the cliff and so that's

44:56that and it's a sad part of the story it's a hard part that's very hard on

44:59kids because the father has died and you know it's a rare kid who won't cry about

45:04that scene in particular where you see Simba very upset and his father dying

45:09now this is a hard part of the story to interpret and I don't know if it's

45:13because of my lack of ability to interpret her because the story takes a

45:16weird twist here but there-there is this confusion in the story about whether

45:21Simba is an innocent victim who set up for the murder of his father or whether

45:26he actually bears some guilt for it you know and he's broken some rules and and

45:31that and and so on so he's not exactly placed in the position of innocence but

45:36of course he's also been set up by scar in any case scar tells him that it's his

45:40fault pure and pure and that because of that he's going to have to leave he's

45:44gonna have to be banished beyond the kingdom now you see this motif quite

45:54quite frequently in heroes stories where the hero has to be raised outside of the

46:00kingdom that happens with King Arthur for example and it happens with Harry

46:06Potter right because Harry Potter is raised by muggles instead of being

46:09inside the Magic Kingdom so it's a very common theme and partly what it means is

46:14that it means two things one is that you do grow up alienated from your culture

46:18to some degree there's no way around that because the culture doesn't match

46:22you perfectly and it doesn't work for you perfectly and it's old and it's kind

46:27of corrupt and it alienates you as it's shaping you and so you're going to

46:31develop some separation from it and you see that in intergenerational rhetoric

46:36you know we're the new generation has the proclivity to blame the previous

46:39generation for everything that's wrong with the current system and fair enough

46:43you know because you do inherit everything that's wrong of course you

46:47also inherit everything that's going well which is a good thing to also

46:51notice but the idea is that you can't help but be alienated from let's call it

46:57the patriarchy for for lack of a better word because it's got a tyrannical

47:01element and because it's not matched well to you so but then there's also

47:06this other issue which is well maybe you're not being successful by the terms

47:12that are by the values that are instantiated in the current system and

47:16you might say well that's because the system is set up in an unfair manner and

47:20fair enough but it's also possibly because you're just not very good at

47:24acting out those values right so part of the reason you get alienated from your

47:28culture is because the culture is corrupt but another part of the reason

47:31is you're just not doing as well as you could be you're not playing by the rules

47:36properly and so you get alienated and you're unsuccessful because of your own

47:40inadequacies and so the movie plays both of those it's obviously Simba is set up

47:46but there is an intimation that he's not entirely blameless as well anyways he's

47:52very broken up about this and no wonder it's also partly a story of the

47:56emergence of adolescence because you know when you're a child and you're

48:01ensconced right inside the familial framework then you sort of exist within

48:05that system of rules like you would under the piagetian scheme but when you

48:10become an adolescent then there's much more of a proclivity to break free and

48:14to start breaking rules and so that's also akin in some sense to the death of

48:19the father and that's a necessary developmental stage anyway scar comes

48:26down into the ravine it's all foggy now because that goes along with the sort of

48:29murkiness of death and tells Simba that it's his fault and that he's going to

48:35have to leave he's going to have to leave the kingdom of his father which

48:40makes sense now his father's dead so how are you gonna once your father has died

48:44how are you going to stay around in his kingdom so to speak so and then scar

48:49tries to get these hyenas to go track Simba down and kill him so and Zazu goes

48:58back to tell all the rest of the Lions that Mufasa is dead and that Simba has

49:02disappeared and then scar takes over Pride Rock and so what's happened now is

49:09the malevolent element of the King has obtained control over

49:14state right and so this is the king the wise King wasn't paying enough attention

49:21that's one way of looking at it and so the malevolent part of the state has now

49:25got control this is a very very old idea I've traced it back at least several

49:31thousand years in its in its representation in stories you can see it

49:35in Egyptian mythology for example so the idea is that as the social structure

49:39builds in complexity it offers you the protection of a functioning complex

49:43system but it also becomes increasingly likely to turn into a tyranny and

49:48because it's more and more powerful the fact of its potential for tyranny

49:51becomes more and more of a danger and so then the question is well what are the

49:57factors that encourages it turning into a tyranny and one factor would be the

50:02wise part of it is not paying enough attention to the malevolent part of it

50:06and you could say that's true at the state level it's also true at the

50:10individual level right you have to watch your own proclivity to upset yourself

50:14and other people and and take that into account and pay careful attention to it

50:19because otherwise it can gain control especially because you're gonna avoid

50:23looking at it and one of the characteristics of the wise King who

50:28gets overthrown by the tyrant is that he has an evil brother and he won't pay

50:32enough attention to him he avoids he doesn't look and so the the evil King

50:37gets the upper hand and that's what's happened here and so notice now he takes

50:41possession of Pride Rock not in full daylight right but at night so that ties

50:47his rule into the rule of unconscious processes and and malevolence

50:52alright so Simba runs away from the kingdom out into the desert now why is

50:58that well you remember maybe you remember and maybe you don't maybe don't

51:02know it the story of Exodus when Moses takes the Hebrews out of Egypt they end

51:06up in a desert well why well it's because when you leave Kingdom no matter

51:12how ironical you still fall into disorder you're out in a place that's

51:17desert there's no civilization there you know that's what happened to Iraq after

51:23the Americans went in you know the the Americans the neo-cons were all

51:26convinced that the Iraqis would Oh welcome

51:28with open arms and there would be this smooth transition to democracy same idea

51:32and Libya it's like no that's not what happens what happens is the state

51:37devolves into a desert chaos and maybe then you can make order but probably not

51:43and so Simba has left the kingdom and the first thing that happens is he damn

51:47near dies in the desert and so you know if you have an old belief system and

51:52it's not working very well and you abandon it well good for you because

51:56you're out of the old belief system but now you're nowhere one of the things

52:00that happens to alcoholics for example and and draw a draw other drug addicts

52:04as well so imagine that you're trying to stop drinking alright fine maybe you

52:12have to undergo some medical treatment so when you first stop you don't die of

52:16seizures because that often happens to people who are addicted to alcohol so

52:20and then they get valium or something like that from a doctor to see them

52:23through the first bits of what do you call it well of sobering-up and so they

52:31get through it and then then maybe two weeks later they're not physiologically

52:35dependent on alcohol anymore the same thing is true of cocaine but if

52:40you take them back and you put them in their environment say they go back out

52:44of the treatment center back into the normal world they start drinking or

52:47using right away again and the reason for that is that well let's say you've

52:51been an alcoholic for 20 years okay first of all that's all you do for

52:56entertainment you drink and all your friends are alcoholics right and so if

53:05you're gonna stop drinking not only do you have to rid yourself of the of the

53:17physiological addiction but you have to completely learn a new way of living

53:21because what do you know you have to get rid of all your friends because they're

53:25all drunks pretty much or if they're not there at least people who are

53:28facilitating your drinking so you have to build a whole new social network you

53:31don't know how to amuse yourself because of course the way you've done that is by

53:35going to the bar sitting at home drinking and so there's a huge hole in

53:38your life you abandon the previous pathological mode

53:42a patient but that just leaves you with nothing and then you have to rebuild

53:47that thing from from from from scratch it's extraordinarily difficult and

53:51that's why so many people fail when they're trying to overcome a major

53:53addiction so alright so anyways Simba's out there in the desert he's

53:59left his family and the comforts of home and he's he's discovered by these by

54:05Pumbaa and who's a little rats named Tim Timon

54:11yes he's a meerkat right which are very cool things and they discover him and

54:16this is sort of his transition into adolescence and he he kind of finds and

54:20this is I would say more typical of the male transition into adolescence because

54:25females of course hit puberty so much younger the males who aren't very

54:28attractive when they're young like and just starting to undergo puberty they're

54:34not very attractive to females they tend to clump together in in gangs and and

54:38and manage the transition over what could be seven years so and that's what

54:43happens here is Simba joins this little gang of you know these guys are alright

54:47but you know they're a little on the primordial side you might say you know

54:52one of them is basically just a walking gastrointestinal tract and the other one

54:57is he's not so bad but he's like you know a foot high really what good is he

55:00and so he he's got some second-rate companions out here past the desert but

55:05he enters he's out of childhood now and now he enters the adolescent world and

55:08what happens here is that very quickly in the film he goes from being a little

55:12cub to a full full adolescence and there's about a five minute transition

55:16and so it's the next stage in his development and now he's out there in

55:20this paradise which is kind of strange because adolescence really is no no

55:24picnic but the idea here is that he really doesn't have any responsibilities

55:28right none and that is one thing about adolescences and even the stage of life

55:33that you guys are out is you have lots to do but you're not really responsible

55:37for anyone other than yourself and so even though you might be quite burdened

55:41with your current responsibilities it's nothing compared to what it will be like

55:45when you you know you have responsibilities for four children for

55:49example or for the people that are working for you or or whatever

55:52so anyways out here it's a kind of of place as well and adolescence is like

55:58that we've had high school students try to do the future authoring program you

56:03know where they have to think three to five years down the road it's like

56:07forget that they just can't do it and I've watched them and what happens is

56:11you you immediately become aware of just how little high school students know

56:14when they're like fifteen or sixteen three to five years forget it

56:18they don't have the world knowledge to project themselves out that far in the

56:21future not even close and so we've built a high school version that helps them

56:26design a better future three to six months down the road and even that's

56:29really pushing it but you know adolescents are more impulsive and they

56:32live more for the moment and there's some utility in that I mean being

56:38impulsive and living for the moment is one of the things that gets you pregnant

56:41as a teenager and that is certainly one way that the species has managed to

56:45propagate itself and so positive emotion and impulsivity are very tightly linked

56:51and so he's out there in this adolescent delusional fantasy that might be one way

56:58of thinking about it but more important he's out there where he's in a domain

57:01now where the impulses of the moment basically take precedence and so and I

57:07think they sing some song about yeah Hakuna Matata right which basically

57:15means do whatever you do whatever you want and tomorrow will take care of

57:18itself or something like that so it's very impulsive and lacks all

57:22responsibilities one of the things that I would recommend to you if you want to

57:26protect yourself from ideological possession shall we say is that when you

57:31hear people speak politically and they don't say anything about your

57:35responsibilities you should probably stop listening to them because whenever

57:39they're trying to offer you something if it doesn't come along with an equivalent

57:43cost there's something being hidden from you and they're appealing to the part of

57:47you that's well I would say at best adolescent so alright so anyways he's

57:52out there in his little adolescent paradise and with his dopey chums and

57:58back at at Pride Rock things are not good right Skaar who's arrogant and

58:06refuses to learn and who will not establish a reasonable relationship with

58:11the females all he does is tyrannize over them he ends up ruling over a

58:15completely barren landscape and that's really what happens in totalitarian

58:19states and we also know quite interestingly is that one of the best

58:23predictors of economic development in a state is the degree to which they extend

58:27rights to women it's one of the best predictors and I would say well if

58:32you're going to terrorize your own women you're gonna Tarin eyes everything

58:34you're gonna Terran eyes ideas you're gonna Terran eyes structures like if you

58:38have to enslave your own women you're you've del adapted a pretty damn

58:43pathological view of the world and the probability that that narrow constrained

58:47restricted viewpoint is going to pay off for you economically is extraordinarily

58:51low so anyways Skaar it's like what happened in the Soviet Union no part of

58:56the reason it collapsed by 1989 is that it just could not move any farther it

59:02was like this really complicated motor that was worn completely out that no one

59:07had ever taken care of and it's just ground to a halt

59:10it just stopped working because it because it didn't work and so if your

59:16totalitarian and you won't update your system and adjust it then it wears out

59:20and grinds to a halt and everything becomes unproductive no it's it's not

59:25easy to figure out what makes a society productive because you might say well

59:29it's Natural Resources or something like that first of all natural resources are

59:33very often a curse to a country because they produce corruption they call that

59:37the Dutch disease there's a reason for that

59:40you can look it up but natural resources in and of themselves are by no means

59:45sufficient to guarantee the well-being of a country Japan has virtually no

59:49natural resources at all and it's really rich and one of the prime natural

59:54resources actually seems maybe there's two one is honesty another is trust and

59:59if you can set up a society where people are roughly honest which means they do

1:00:03what they say they're going to do and where the default bargaining position on

1:00:08both sides is trust then the probability that that culture will become wealthy is

1:00:12very very high so and a functional legal system is also a natural resource of

1:00:18tremendous tremendous value you know it's partly why people in China for

1:00:23example wealthy people in China are dumping their money into the real estate

1:00:26market in North America like mad because one of the things you do know if you buy

1:00:30real estate in North America is you actually own it it's still gonna be

1:00:34yours 20 years in the future 30 years in the future there's no doubt about that

1:00:38and so that fact of ownership is embedded in the functioning legal system

1:00:42and that's what gives those sorts of properties crazy value you know much to

1:00:47the much to the problematic situation for all of you people who are at some

1:00:53point most of you are gonna try to buy property in Toronto and that's really

1:00:57going to be entertaining so now look the the other thing about scars he's got the

1:01:01little bird locked up right that's the vision of the king well he doesn't want

1:01:05to know anything he already knows everything so why does he need this

1:01:08stupid bird flying around telling him what's going on

1:01:11the last thing he wants to know is what's going on yeah Stalin I mean

1:01:16God he gave that guy bad news or good news he was going to have you killed

1:01:21it kept the bad news to a minimum and that's a real problem right because if

1:01:25you torture people who bring you bad news then you're never going to learn

1:01:28anything well you don't have to if you already know everything anyways and so

1:01:32that's the situation here well his little minions the hyenas are getting

1:01:38pretty unhappy because they haven't had anything to eat and the reason for that

1:01:41is they've just stripped the landscape bare right I mean and I read at the

1:01:47demise of the Soviet Union that something like 10 to 15 percent of the

1:01:50entire land mass of the Soviet Union had been rendered permanently uninhabitable

1:01:55by industrial pollution so you know that I don't remember if that included

1:02:00Chernobyl you know where that terrible nuclear accident took place but but

1:02:04there were massive domains of devastation and in those countries that

1:02:08you know will take hundreds of years to fix so anyways when scar rules everyone

1:02:14starves that's a good way of thinking about it or everyone dies but that's

1:02:17okay because that's really what he's after anyway so that works out quite

1:02:20nicely now back out here in paradise I mean look at him how pathetic can you

1:02:25get look at the expression on that creatures face you know he's he selfs

1:02:29he's sated like someone who's just eaten a gallon of ice cream and he's got this

1:02:34pathetic

1:02:37self-satisfied naive clueless unconscious grin on his face which the

1:02:44animators did a very nice job of capturing like that's a complicated

1:02:47expression and you just want to slap him and that's exactly what should happen

1:02:51and that's exactly what does happen so anyways he's out there be an unconscious

1:02:55dingbat well his society is degenerating and that's bloody well worth thinking

1:03:00about because that's an archetypal trope right it's like things are sinking

1:03:03around you the question is what are you doing about it you know are you just

1:03:07staying in kind of a blithe unconsciousness because you can get your

1:03:11next meal are you gonna wake up and do something about it well that's the call

1:03:15of the self so now we go back to two Rafiki here and he knows what's going on

1:03:20in the kingdom he's a symbol of the self and he also has some inkling that Simba

1:03:24is still alive so so the son of the king is still alive

1:03:29despite the fact that the land has become ruled by a tyrant and the son is

1:03:35absent he's still around somehow and so in a union from the Union perspective

1:03:40there isn't much distinction between the self and the and the and the child the

1:03:46self is the sum total of all possibility and the child is possibility itself and

1:03:51so so let's say you've become an adolescent you're all cynical right and

1:03:57everything's falling apart around you which is the typical state of human

1:04:01beings right because adolescents are cynical generally speaking and

1:04:04everything's falling around falling apart around them generally speaking and

1:04:08so what do you have to do in order to to do something about that well one is you

1:04:13have to be drawn by the call of wisdom and the other part is that you have to

1:04:17rediscover that part of yourself that's a childlike part that's associated with

1:04:22the son and associated with that early you know the early exposure of Simba to

1:04:26the son you have to find that again and then trust that some childlike

1:04:31exploration and a bit of manifestation of faith might get you to the next place

1:04:35and so that's what's happening here with a little you know the baboon and the

1:04:40tree and the and the drawing so anyways he knows that Simba is alive now

1:04:43and so he goes off to find him and meanwhile Simba and his dopey companions

1:04:48are out hunting for bugs you know because he's a lion you know he

1:04:52should meet bugs for crying out loud but they're easy and so you see this scene

1:04:56where Pumbaa goes after this bug and then another lion shows up and chases

1:05:01him so she's gonna kill him and eat him and ha see that's an interesting thing

1:05:07because one of the things that happens I suppose you could think about this one

1:05:12of the things that happens in late adolescence is that the formation of

1:05:16male gangs is often broken up by the proclivity of one or more members of

1:05:22that gang to get involved in an individual romantic relationship and so

1:05:26the idea that the female lion is the carnivore the female is the carnivore

1:05:32that will devour the group is exactly right and so what a girl will do often

1:05:38if she's in relationship with you know somebody like a young man or an older

1:05:43adolescent is she'll try to separate him from his dopey friends and like no

1:05:47wonder you know why wouldn't she do that because he does have dopey friends and

1:05:51it'd be better for him if he could get beyond them and so anyways they're

1:05:55pretty freaked out about this and so then Simba goes out and has a fight with

1:06:00this lion to protect his dopey chums and I'm sure you don't need any explanation

1:06:04about what that means and they have this huge fight and neljä who it turns out to

1:06:10be pins him and so that goes back to the beginning of the story where when he

1:06:15first encountered her she pinned him all the time she's an animal figure right

1:06:19and now what she does immediately is shame him so she he's an atom a figure

1:06:25in part she's an animal figure in part because she actually does shame him

1:06:28right so she's the gateway to higher consciousness she makes him

1:06:32self-conscious and rightly so but he's also a she's also a psychological figure

1:06:37because he imagined that when a young man is establishing a relationship with

1:06:41a young woman and he's he's enamored of her he's falling in love he projects an

1:06:46idea onto her and that ideal is going to be partially fulfilled by the

1:06:49relationship the degree to which is unspecified and sometimes it'll collapse

1:06:53completely but he projects an ideal on to her because otherwise he wouldn't be

1:06:57attracted to her and then the ideal judges him and so that makes him feel

1:07:01all self-conscious and and useful which is useful because he is useless

1:07:06and should feel that way and so it's part of the impetus to growing up so and

1:07:12of course one of the you need necessity in order to mature you because to mature

1:07:18is to take on responsibility and you're not going to feel that impetus unless

1:07:23adopting the responsibility has some sort of payoff and women tend to mate

1:07:28across an up dominance hierarchy so they tend to actually like men who are useful

1:07:32and so if they encounter a man who isn't useful at all they're gonna that's

1:07:37exactly what's going to happen they're gonna not be happy about that in the

1:07:42least and so and no wonder and I think the reason for that it's an economic and

1:07:47a biological reason the reason is is that women are in the position of having

1:07:51to take care of infants primarily and an infant is a very heavy load and so even

1:07:57a woman who's extraordinarily competent is going to find herself substantially

1:08:01limited in her possibilities if she has an infant and so then she's looking

1:08:05around for someone who'll pick up part of the load it's perfectly reasonable

1:08:08and you're not gonna pick up part of the load if you're completely useless and so

1:08:12it's in the woman's best interest not to have two children roughly speaking so

1:08:19anyway she pins him and then he's all resentful about it immediately because

1:08:23she's calling him on his stupid friends and the fact that he's out there

1:08:25gallivanting impulsively in paradise when there's real problems to be solved

1:08:29and so look at him he's all resentful and useless and and you know feeling put

1:08:34upon and picked upon and you just you got to slap him again fundamentally and

1:08:38she's just completely stunned by that it's like and tells them you know

1:08:42where's the sim buy used to know right well he's a little doubtful about the

1:08:47whole situation there the animators do a very nice job of this part of the movie

1:08:52because one of the things you see is that his eyebrows are always pointing up

1:08:55in the middle whereas his father's eyebrows were pointing down in the

1:08:58middle and so that's the difference between this which is sort of like

1:09:01things are happening to me and this which is more like I'm imposing my will

1:09:05on things and that's an immature face and and the animators capture that

1:09:10brilliantly so here's where she shames him again she tells him how much she

1:09:15liked him when he was little and you know a potential king and

1:09:18how hurt she is that he's this useless you know wide-eyed naive impulsive

1:09:25pleasure-seeking adolescent and she tells him that she missed him and god

1:09:32only knows why because look at him again it's like completely appalling palling

1:09:37creature and this is when Pumbaa and Timon sing that song about the fact that

1:09:43you know their friends doomed because you know this girl's got him and and

1:09:48then they switch into another archetypal scene and so they're falling in love

1:09:52here and so the paradisal imagery is really highlighted in the movie and so

1:09:57they go off and have this like romp self-reflective romp through this new

1:10:02paradise and they wrestle around and and play and then he pins her more or less

1:10:11and she licks him that's that's not so good

1:10:16and this is one of the most brilliant shots I think that the animators manage

1:10:22because she's obviously pushing this a little bit farther than he knows what to

1:10:26do with and so they're wrestling and he she licks them and then she lays down

1:10:31and makes this face which is every single class I've ever showed this to

1:10:36all laugh when they see that image and that's a good example so Freud said that

1:10:41jokes were a good route into the unconscious so the question is and this

1:10:46is an archetypal facial expression and everyone knows exactly what it means

1:10:49there's something sexually seductive about it and something very sexually

1:10:53seductive about it despite the fact that it's a lioness and the animators do an

1:10:58extraordinarily good job of capturing that and so that has a huge effect on

1:11:02him while these guys know that hey the game's up man it's like they know

1:11:07they're dead whatever attractions they can offer are paling in comparison to

1:11:12this so so anyways things don't really progress past out but you know he gets a

1:11:19hint of her longing for him what's waiting for him if he grows up and the

1:11:24fact that she's completely disappointed in him because he's so completely

1:11:27useless and so now he's lounging about you know like some basement

1:11:32with cheeto dust all over his chest and and trying to justify his absolutely

1:11:38useless life and you know saying that he doesn't have any responsibility to the

1:11:42devastated Kingdom and he's out there where Hakuna Matata you know I can just

1:11:46do whatever I want and and follow my impulsive pleasures and she thinks he's

1:11:50pretty pathetic and the reason for that is because he is actually pretty

1:11:54pathetic and she she tells him that you know she's extraordinarily disappointed

1:11:59he gets all pouty about it I mean even here you see when he when he's got kind

1:12:04of an aggressive look on his face there's still nothing about it that's

1:12:07commanding it's petulant right it's like well now I'm irritated but he's got no

1:12:12force and and still completely appalling in this in this particular situation so

1:12:18she judges him very harshly and leaves and that makes him think yeah he make

1:12:23gets all self-conscious because this female that he admires wants to have

1:12:28nothing to do with him and so he's first of all then he thinks

1:12:32well maybe I'll just hate all women which is you know pretty pathetic

1:12:34conclusion and but a very common one and the next is well maybe there's actually

1:12:39something wrong with him right which is a very painful bit of self-reflection so

1:12:43he he had he notes that there's something wrong with him and then he

1:12:48calls out to his father and says look you said you were always going to be

1:12:51here for me and you're not and so what's happening is that he's become aware of

1:12:56the insufficiency of his current adolescent value structure and he wants

1:12:59something beyond it which would be associated with identification with the

1:13:03father but he can't he can't find the father the father's dead it's like when

1:13:07Pinocchio goes down to the bottom of the ocean to bring Geppetto up from the

1:13:10depths right that's the situation that that Simba finds himself in right now

1:13:16the father's gone and has to be brought up from the depths so this is where the

1:13:19movie takes the the archetypal pathway of an initiation ceremony so he says he

1:13:26wants to change now one of the things Carl Rogers one of the clinicians that

1:13:31will talk about pointed out was that if if someone was going to come to

1:13:34psychotherapy there's some things that had to happen before they went into

1:13:37psychotherapy and one thing that had to happen was that they had to admit that

1:13:41there was something wrong and they had to want to change you had to have that

1:13:45before went into the psychotherapeutic

1:13:47situation and what happens here is Simba is actually he's dropped his arrogance

1:13:51and he's looking upward kind of like Geppetto wishing on the star in

1:13:57Pinocchio he's looking upwards he looking towards something higher and he

1:14:01wants to transform himself so he's asked the question how can I change for the

1:14:06better and he doesn't get an answer and then Rafiki shows up so what does that

1:14:13mean it means that as soon as you know you're wrong about something as soon as

1:14:18you admit that you're wrong about something and you open the door to

1:14:22potential change that part of you will respond so and you know this because

1:14:27think about this you're thinking so you ask yourself a question because that's

1:14:33what you do when you're thinking and then you generate some answers it's like

1:14:36it's very strange the thinking will actually work you can actually come up

1:14:39with answers if you think about something and so this square this issue

1:14:43is okay I thought I was real good in my little impulsive paradise but then it

1:14:48turns out that I'm just a half-wit and I noticed that and I want to do something

1:14:52about so the question is now the question is has now been posed and what

1:14:57young would say is the deeper part of yourself the part that still contains

1:15:00your undeveloped potential will respond to that posed question and change the

1:15:06way that you look at things and change the way that you act it'll start it'll

1:15:10start changing things so that you can tap those parts of yourself that are not

1:15:14yet developed and you certainly do that in psychotherapy but you can do that

1:15:18young said that psychotherapy could be replaced by a supreme moral effort and

1:15:22by that he meant was that if you really wanted things to be better if you wanted

1:15:26to get your act together and you admitted that you were insufficient in

1:15:29your current state and you meditated on the issue and tried to figure out what

1:15:34you should do next to make to put yourself together that you would be able

1:15:38to find out that there's something in you that guides the process of

1:15:42development that's the self that's a higher its the higher self in some sense

1:15:46it's the thing that remains constant across transformations you know because

1:15:51you're somewhere then you fall apart then you get somewhere else but there's

1:15:54something outside of that that's guiding that process and that's that's also the

1:15:58self that's what you would be and you can communicate in some

1:16:02sense with what you could be and that's a very strange thing about human beings

1:16:06anyways Rafiki shows up and Simba is sitting by the water self reflecting

1:16:11there's a little pebble that drops into the pool to attract his attention and up

1:16:15pops the self and Rafik he's a trickster he tells him weird jokes and he hits him

1:16:20with a stick a bunch of times thank God because someone really needs to and he

1:16:25he makes some stupid jokes about bananas and kind of entices Simba into following

1:16:30him right he lets him know that he has a secret and he entices Simba into

1:16:35following him so simha's all of a sudden become interested in something so if you

1:16:39ask yourself what the next developmental stages and you really want to know that

1:16:43all of a sudden you're going to become interested in things that might move you

1:16:46to the next stage and that'll happen more or less unconsciously so anyways

1:16:51Rafiki entices him and then runs away and Simba follows him and well that's

1:16:57where he reveals himself as a sage and then he tells Simba to follow him and he

1:17:03goes underground and this is the initiation scene right which we talked

1:17:07about at the beginning of the class this is the descent into the underworld and

1:17:11it's a it's a prerequisite to radical personality transformation so anyways he

1:17:18goes through this horrifying underground tunnel system where everything's all

1:17:22tangled up which is you know if you ever fall into chaos that everything down

1:17:27there in chaos is tangled up it's a tangled mess and he's quite and there's

1:17:32horrifying music going on in the background and he goes deeper and deeper

1:17:35until Rafiki says he finds a pool in the middle of the chaos a deep pool and

1:17:41that's another symbol of the self it's it's the deep unconscious to something

1:17:45down there that's alive that can be drawn up to the surface and so Rafiki

1:17:50shows him the pool and Simba who's quite terrified at this point looks in it and

1:17:55the first thing he sees is he only sees himself he only sees his own reflection

1:17:59and Rafiki says look deeper now you see what the animators do here it's very

1:18:04cool so there's Simba and there's his

1:18:07reflection but you see that is already half is farther and you look at the

1:18:11difference in the eyebrows and the so there's a there's a tightness of jaw

1:18:16and a firmness of face that's starting to manifest itself there and that means

1:18:21that he's starting to see the man he could be beyond the adolescent that's a

1:18:26good way of thinking about it and then all of a sudden well they're you know

1:18:28that's a whole different face right that's a seriously different face that

1:18:34everything's going in and that it's like get out of my way because things are

1:18:38going to happen around me very judgmental as well so it's not it's not

1:18:42naive by any stretch of the imagination but you know we know as far there's a

1:18:47good guy and so there's something archetypal about this and so he sees the

1:18:51man he could be reflected back to him and then that's which is that actually

1:18:55becomes a cosmic event and we switch up to the sky instead

1:18:59and so Mufasa manifests himself basically as a solar deity and he tells

1:19:07Simba that he's forgotten who he is which is the son of a king and that he

1:19:13should remember that and start acting like it

1:19:16and that's an archetypal idea so if you're just a useless adolescent then

1:19:22you've forgotten who you are and the consequence of that is that the state is

1:19:26going to fall around fall apart around you and you're not going to do anything

1:19:30to fix it and you're not going to be good for anything and no one's gonna be

1:19:32able to rely on you and you're gonna be all whiny and resentful and then after

1:19:36that it even gets worse and so that's basically what Mufasa tells him and so

1:19:41Simba is like blown away by this vision right because he sees what he could be

1:19:46and also what he's not which is pretty damn horrifying so anyways the storm so

1:19:54to speak clears and Rafiki comes up and and Simba's a lot more thoughtful and

1:19:59not quite as whiny and resentful anymore and Rafiki leaves and so Simba now knows

1:20:06what he's supposed to do he's supposed to stop being useless and take on the

1:20:10moral requirements of setting the Kingdom straight and so he runs back

1:20:16across the desert there's all sorts of impressive music happening and then he

1:20:20comes back to his kingdom and it's not looking so good and that's the

1:20:24consequence of his his abandonment of it that's a big

1:20:27part of it so now it's dead but also his abandonment of it - nothing but

1:20:32malevolence and chaos and so he's pretty taken aback and what's happened and that

1:20:38he exaggerates his guilt or it should anyways and neljä shows up and and they

1:20:46decide they're gonna do something about this so in the meantime

1:20:51Simba's mother is complaining about the fact that there's no food in the kingdom

1:20:55anymore and that they've gone as far as they can and Skaar doesn't want to hear

1:20:58this so he he attacks her and Simba decides to go to war and so this is

1:21:05where he wakes up and he's willing to encounter the shadow at this point and

1:21:10so he confronts scar and scars very concerned about this because actually

1:21:15Simba is looking pretty impressive now and he thought he was dead besides and

1:21:19so he tries to use treachery and whiny Nessun and subordination to excuse

1:21:26himself but he's planning to overthrow Simba nonetheless to resist him so he

1:21:33tells scar to leave he's going to banish him to the nether regions outside of the

1:21:38kingdom like scar did to him and scar basically refuses and then a storm

1:21:45gathers right and lights the Deadwood around the rock on fire so we have

1:21:52another kind of descent into hell seen here very common in Disney movies this

1:21:56this this notion of the hero fighting the evil force on the edge of something

1:22:01that's burning it's quite a common motif you see it in Sleeping Beauty for

1:22:03example so they have a big war and scar ends up putting Simba in the same

1:22:09position that Mufasa was in and then he whispers to him that he killed his

1:22:13father so Simba has been thinking all along that it was only his fault and it

1:22:17is sort of his fault but he didn't know that there was a more archetypal theme

1:22:21playing out in the background which is that societies are always endangered by

1:22:26malevolence always and that's independent to some degree of Simba's

1:22:30decisions and his and his lack thereof anyways scar tells him because he thinks

1:22:34he's won and that energizes Simba to have this sort of final battle he leaps

1:22:40out from the and they have a big fight and he pins

1:22:45him basically and the female lioness has come to his aid and Simba tells him that

1:22:52again that he has to leave and so they have a big fight that's a particularly

1:22:56good bit of animation so there's real demonic aspect to scar they're sort of

1:23:01King of Hell imagery and but he loses and then ha he blames his minions he

1:23:09blames the hyenas for everything terrible this happening forgetting that

1:23:11they can hear him and then he falls off the cliff and the hyenas go in and

1:23:15finish him off so it's pretty brutal ending for poor

1:23:19old scar eaten by his own minions and then scars dead and Simba has one and so

1:23:27the rains come immediately and so what does that mean well it means that when

1:23:30proper order is restored in a kingdom then everything starts to flourish again

1:23:33and so the rains come and then while it's raining Simba climbs up to the top

1:23:42of the rock and now he's completely mature right that the facial the

1:23:46pathetic facial expression disappears entirely knee straightens himself up

1:23:49because now he's full of serotonin after having defeated good old scar and all

1:23:54the lionesses are roaring and he climbs up Pride Rock and they roar at him which

1:24:00is good they're tough and he's tough and they showing their teeth it's it's not

1:24:03it's not a society of naive and harmless creatures it's it's something that's got

1:24:10some bite and the rains come and then the next thing you see is the

1:24:15restoration of the kingdom and so basically that what that means is that

1:24:19if the individual is willing to confront their own shadow and then to take on the

1:24:24malevolent forces that continually undermine society then harmony can be

1:24:28restored and everyone can do well and so then we have a return to the beginning

1:24:33right and so Simba and nella are now a couple along with Pumbaa and Timon and

1:24:41they have a baby and Rafiki shows up and does the same thing you know he's gonna

1:24:52present the baby to the Sun and have all the animals bow again and and that's the

1:24:57end of the movie so that's all packed

1:25:05that's all packed into an archetypal tale and and so one of the things that

1:25:10young would point out is that you all understood this right while you were

1:25:16watching it because otherwise at some level all these things made sense they

1:25:21all cohered and the narrative appeared to be an appropriate narrative even when

1:25:25you're a little kid it because it strikes a chord inside you and well that

1:25:30chord the thing that it strikes inside you that's the archetype because if

1:25:34there wasn't something inside of you so to speak that this could communicate

1:25:38with and it would fall on deaf ears and it speaks to the part of you that's most

1:25:43particularly human and it's a story of the development of the sovereign

1:25:49individual that's that's the right way to think about it's a hero archetype

1:25:51that's another way of thinking about it and people are going to get that story

1:25:56one way or another and now and then a piece of public art comes along like

1:26:00this that does a good job of encapsulating and it captures everyone's

1:26:03imagination and so that's why you've all seen it and why I presume you all

1:26:08enjoyed it when you were kids and maybe still enjoy it now so well that was

1:26:17actually faster than I thought it would be today so this is what I'm gonna do

1:26:20we've got 20 minutes so why don't you think for a minute or two and I'll take

1:26:24some questions which I don't often do but and they can be any questions about

1:26:28anything we've covered in class so take a minute and yes

1:26:43- movie you feel like you know the character but

1:26:48it's not exactly that character like become so - you know can

1:26:55like it feels like you know for a wise old man

1:27:02archetype yeah yeah well there's not much difference between Gandalf and

1:27:08who's the wizard in Harry Potter Dumbledore they could be the same guy

1:27:12it's right right and so well that that is precisely the indication of the

1:27:18existence of an archetype it's like an a movie one time a student asked me well

1:27:23if if there are these archetypes why don't we just tell the archetype over

1:27:26and over why do we need fiction for example which is like a bridge if

1:27:30there's individuals here and the archetype is up here you know at a high

1:27:33level of abstraction fiction sort of fills the gap between them and so what

1:27:37you want is a story that's archetypal so that you understand its basic structure

1:27:41but you want enough variation and specificity so that it's new and

1:27:45interesting and also applicable to you so you have to humanize the archetype to

1:27:49some degree otherwise it's so abstract you can't you can't relate to it and and

1:27:53good stories really do that they bridge the gap and some of them are more

1:27:57personal and less archetypal but if they're completely non archetypal

1:28:02there's nothing about them that captures you it doesn't have any force and then

1:28:06if it's two archetypal well it gets to be too abstract and you can't relate to

1:28:09it so good fiction writers and and good purveyors of dramatic entertainment we

1:28:15think about it as entertainment are really good at occupying that middle

1:28:18position so yeah and they reveal the archetype through the individual that's

1:28:23one way of thinking about it and and that keeps it fresh and you know one of

1:28:28the things that you pointed out to was that you're you're going to be

1:28:33manifesting archetypal patterns of behavior in your life whether you know

1:28:36it or not even when you do something like fall in

1:28:39love because that's going to be a very particular experience for you but it's

1:28:43also a very common experience at the same time right and and romance is older

1:28:49than people that's one way of looking about looking at it I mean because sex

1:28:54is older than human beings and so you're in the grip of something that's really

1:28:59ancient but at the same time it's really personal and so a good novelist or a

1:29:05writer of fiction is able to capture both the personal element of that to

1:29:08show show the transpersonal within the personal and so and in some sense your

1:29:14destiny property study from a union perspective is to

1:29:18consciously express an archetype and so be the archetype there's a bunch of them

1:29:23but one of them would be the archetype of the hero and you're supposed to

1:29:25manifest that in the conditions of your own life so that makes the archetype

1:29:29real in the conditions of your own life and Jung would also say that when you're

1:29:34doing that your experience will manifest itself as meaningful and so it's because

1:29:38in some sense you're acting in accordance with your deepest instincts

1:29:41technically speaking right you're you're acting out what it means to be human in

1:29:45the world and you're gonna find that meaningful so yes

1:30:01like

1:30:14like I just like because it's mine

1:30:19process from life like happy but is like appreciating to

1:30:27help so like

1:30:31you know like love and subsidies

1:30:40okay so the question is about the relationship between the shadow and the

1:30:45okay so the first thing you have to understand with regards to trying to

1:30:53come to terms with the conception of the shadow is to understand the idea of

1:30:56persona and persona is the you that you present when you want people to accept

1:31:02and like you often like let's say that you go to a party and you're trying to

1:31:13impress the people that are there and you're trying to get them to like you

1:31:17and so you maybe get jabbed out a little bit and you laugh and you know you're

1:31:23you go along with everyone so that they like you and then you go home and you're

1:31:27bitterly resentful about the way that you were put down at this party and

1:31:31that's going to make all sorts of aggressive I wish I could have said it's

1:31:35gonna make all sorts of aggressive and vengeful thoughts sort of flashed

1:31:39through your imagination well the first part of the problem is that you were too

1:31:44much persona right you sacrificed yourself in some sense at the party so

1:31:48that people would like you and in the second part you're refusing to admit to

1:31:54the existence of those elements of you that would have actually protected you

1:31:57from doing that so let's say you go home and you're all bitter and resentful and

1:32:01you have fantasies of revenge I mean that reveals to you the shadow part of

1:32:07you that's aggressive and the thing is you actually need that because if you

1:32:11would have integrated that more successfully into your personality when

1:32:14you went to the party you wouldn't have had lit you wouldn't have had to let

1:32:17people put you down to get them to like you you know instead of having a face

1:32:21like this which says I'll take anything that's coming my way you know you have a

1:32:27face and a stance that's more determined and assertive and if you manifest that

1:32:31properly people aren't gonna mess with you to begin with

1:32:34but you know you may have already adopted a morality that says well I have

1:32:38to be likeable and I shouldn't do anything that causes any conflict and I

1:32:41shouldn't ever you know hurt anybody's feelings and so you're just to present

1:32:46yourself as a punching bag and you think that that makes you a good person but it

1:32:50doesn't and there's no integration of the shadow in that situation

1:32:54so you see that at the end of the movie we know I mentioned this when Simba

1:32:59climbs up the rock to take control of it all the female lionesses bare their

1:33:02teeth and he roars it's like that aggressiveness is integrated into him

1:33:07and so resentment is a really good emotion for making contact with the

1:33:13shadow side because if you're resentful about something it basically reveals two

1:33:17things it either means that you're immature and you should stop whining and

1:33:22get on with things you know someone's ass this often happens with adolescents

1:33:26who are asked say by their mother to clean up the room they get all resentful

1:33:29about it it's like shut up and clean up your room you know it's not that much to

1:33:33ask or so that can be a gateway into the observation of your own immaturity or

1:33:40it's possible that you're resentful because people really have been poking

1:33:44at you too much and taking and and taking shots at you and oppressing you

1:33:49but what that means is that you've got some things to say that you haven't been

1:33:53willing to say or don't know how to say right you can't stand up for yourself

1:33:58properly and in order to do that you have to grow some teeth and be willing

1:34:02to use them and again that's something that might violate your morality because

1:34:06you might say well I shouldn't be able to bite people and the thing is yes you

1:34:11should be able to bite people hard and if you're able to bite them then

1:34:15generally you don't have to but they need to know that you can because

1:34:19otherwise especially people who are badly socialized they'll just keep

1:34:23encroaching on you and encroaching on you and encroaching on you and

1:34:26encroaching on you until you you put up a wall like someone who's really well

1:34:31put together won't do that you know because they're sophisticated but if you

1:34:37run into people who only have boundaries because other people impose them on them

1:34:41and you won't do it you're gonna be the bullied one in the office for example

1:34:46you're not gonna get a raise people aren't gonna credit you with your own

1:34:50work other people are gonna take credit for it you know and you're gonna go home

1:34:54angry because you're doing your best and you're trying to get along with everyone

1:34:57and nothing ever goes your way well it's because you're a pushover and you think

1:35:03that's good because you confuse harmlessness with with with

1:35:07reality it's it's about it's not right just because you can't do any damage

1:35:11doesn't mean your morale just means your you don't have the capability for mayhem

1:35:16and that makes you a pushover I mean the yogya stuff is very very dark you know

1:35:21it's very dark because his notion of what constitutes a moral human being is

1:35:27much different from the typical view he really thinks you get that horrible side

1:35:32of yourself integrated so it's up there where you can use it because otherwise

1:35:36you're you're dangerous you can't say no to people and you'll go along with the

1:35:43crowd and then if the crowd does something particularly pathological

1:35:46which it's liable to do you won't be able to resist it you won't have the

1:35:50strength of character and so then you'll fall prey to to crowd pathology and

1:35:57it'll be because you're too agreeable with a you know with a shadow resentful

1:36:01side that the crowd and its murderous intent is gonna act out so yes yes so

1:36:15the question is the relationship between archetype archetypes and the idea of

1:36:20memes well oh yeah that's a complicated one so

1:36:25Richard Dawkins was the guy who originated the idea of meme and his

1:36:28notion was that you could produce an idea or a set of ideas that had the

1:36:33capacity to propagate across minds for whatever reason it was catchy let's say

1:36:38like a like a song that gets stuck in your head you know it and that those he

1:36:44called those memes which was sort of a play on the idea of genes so there are

1:36:51these stable sets of ideas that can be transferred across minds well I've often

1:36:56thought when I was reading Dawkins that if he would have kept thinking he would

1:36:59have turned into Carl Jung because an archetype is a meme but it's a really

1:37:03really really deep meme so you can imagine that an idea has been sold

1:37:08around for so long and that people have acted out for so long that it's actually

1:37:14become part of the landscape that does the selection so think about it this way

1:37:26so it's more or less a truism that if you take a male dominance hierarchy the

1:37:32probability that the men at the top of the hierarchy will leave offspring is

1:37:35much higher than the probability that the men at the bottom will leave

1:37:38offspring and it's true in many many species now there's a much higher

1:37:42probability of the average female leaving offspring than the average man

1:37:47so so now then imagine that there's characteristics that push a man up a

1:37:53dominance hierarchy okay and then imagine that there are characteristics

1:37:57that push a man up a set of dominance hierarchies so that each dominance

1:38:03hierarchy has something in common with all of the others it's sort of like the

1:38:06idea of a good player of a game being a good sport across games so then imagine

1:38:13that the idea of the successful male starts to become encapsulated in in in

1:38:22biology because this species is going to the male part of the species at least is

1:38:27going to be adapting to the selection pressures placed on the male by the male

1:38:32dominance hierarchy so what happens is you have a competition between men the

1:38:36men that win the competition find partners in mate

1:38:39so the the male is going to start to adapt to the fact of the selection

1:38:45that's implemented by the dominance hierarchy then you can imagine that

1:38:48that's going to take case take place across dominance hierarchies because

1:38:52this is happening in many many situations spread across time and so

1:38:58then the idea of how the proper man should act starts to become incorporated

1:39:05in the biology and also in the expectations of the society and then

1:39:09that starts to loop so as the expectations become clearer and clearer

1:39:14the notion of what it constitutes success becomes clearer and clearer as

1:39:19well and the two things get tangled together now and I think you can see

1:39:23that a manifestation of that whenever you go watch a movie because you

1:39:30immediately identify the hero and you identify with them it's like he's

1:39:35the person that your mythological imagination grasps on to and you play

1:39:40that out using your body as a representational platform when you watch

1:39:44the movie and so maybe you admire the hero if he's a successful hero you do

1:39:49well that admiration is the manifestation of the instinct that

1:39:53drives you towards that kind of behavior and not only can you manifest it in

1:39:58which case you're likely to feel good about yourself because you know that

1:40:01sometimes you can feel good about yourself and sometimes not but you're

1:40:05also going to be able to recognize it when you see it in the world and that's

1:40:09going to manifest itself in admiration and admiration is the proclivity to

1:40:13imitate so the meme can be soul so you can imagine dominance hierarchies are

1:40:21very very old they're like 300 million years old

1:40:24they've been around a very long time and the idea that we have an image of what

1:40:29it takes to climb the dominant targets it's more or less self-evident because

1:40:35that's the landscape that selected us and at the same time you know the the

1:40:40archetype the pattern that propagates you up the dominant arc is also the same

1:40:45pattern that makes you attractive to women they're the same thing

1:40:50so and of course that's a massively powerful selection mechanism and sexual

1:40:56selection has really shaped human beings it's turned us into what we are and

1:41:00that's an interesting thing too because you know this is one of the things that

1:41:04really bothers me about the emphasis of evolutionary scientists on randomness

1:41:10it's like the the general mutation generation process is random or quasi

1:41:15random we don't know that for sure because there is evidence now that you

1:41:19can inherit acquired characteristics and that was nobody thought that was

1:41:23possible 20 years ago so things are have taken a very weird twist in the

1:41:27Darwinian world but for the sake of argument we could say that the mutation

1:41:31process is random but the selection process isn't random it's not even close

1:41:36to random ever since creatures have been able to evaluate one another the

1:41:42selection process hasn't been random and so basically we're selected by you could

1:41:47say by the manifestation of mind in the world unless you believe

1:41:51that women for example exercise no conscious choice in their made selection

1:41:55which seems completely absurd first of all men consciously choose who's going

1:42:00to lead them at least in part you know who's going to succeed in a hierarchy

1:42:04and women consciously choose their sexual partners so the idea that the

1:42:09selection process that the evolutionary process is random is it's an absurd

1:42:14proposition sexual selection makes it non-random and Darwin knew that he

1:42:18emphasized sexual selection a lot but modern biologists since the time of

1:42:23Darwin except for the last about twenty years down played the role of sexual

1:42:27selection and I think the reason for that is that it brings mind into the

1:42:33evolutionary process in a way that they don't like and no wonder it's

1:42:38complicated you know it's like to some degree we're consciously directing our

1:42:42own evolution at least through the mechanism of selection so

1:42:55yes yes well Dawkins just thought of memes is something that weren't he never

1:43:00thought about them is something that could last long enough to play a role in

1:43:03selection itself you know he thought about the Moroz parasitical cognitive

1:43:08entities I would say that just sort of floated on the surface of the mental

1:43:12landscape he never he never grappled with the idea that a meme could be

1:43:18something that could last for hundreds of millions of years roughly speaking so

1:43:26we got time for one more question if anybody has yes yes from a political

1:43:34perspective like if you divide people by their political affiliation it looks

1:43:38like liberal men are the most unhappy they're higher in neuroticism

1:43:45I think the openness probably contributes to it as well but we don't

1:43:49and also possibly the low conscientiousness when my graduate

1:43:53students come in or one of the many ways we're gonna talk about this in some

1:43:56detail because she's going to tell you because we've also looked at the

1:43:59personality predictors of political correctness which is extraordinarily

1:44:02interesting as well because it doesn't really seem to fall exactly on the

1:44:06liberal conservative continuum so we'll talk more about that when we get into

1:44:11the Big Five part of the course okay good we'll see you on Thursday when

1:44:17we're going to do a speed review of Freud