I was thinking about this in terms of veganism and vegetarianism I think part of the reason that people are so guilty about what they eat now is because they don't sacrifice it to a sufficiently high purpose and you might say well why should an animal die so that I should live and that's actually a real question yeah and so and I think maybe it's a question that everybody has to answer or or feel profoundly Disturbed in their unconscious orientation and and then suffering as a consequence of it and so if it's it's not consecrated if
what you're sacrificing that's alive isn't consecrated to something like a a a Transcendent the the highest possible Transcendent aim then there's no justification in taking the blood yeah I don't know I'm I'm nervous about that conceptualization to some degree because it sounds like a ends justify the means argument but but but it's important but in terms I mean I don't know about the veganism question but in terms of understanding sacrifice it's important to see what happens and one of the things that let's say the meeting of Athens and Jerusalem does in the then the foundation
of Christianity is to reveal the notion that the the the best sacrifice is giving yourself yeah that's the best sacrifice so you can think about it right in a family you can have a scapegoat it works right you can have you can have if you have a family of five you can have one of the kids who's always the one doing the wrong thing you blame everything on that on that person and it actually B you together like if you find someone to like you know a group of young boys find the you know the
one boy that gets picked on yeah and that works it binds the group together but it's not the best way to bind and what seems to be revealed it's cuz all the sin is externalized that's right and it seems like the idea of saying no I give myself to this group that's the best that seems to be the highest sacrifice H well I think what what we saw today so with the Stations of the via delosa the Stations of the Cross what you see in when people act that out and contemplate it is a journey
through the Realms of human suffering and so then the question might be well why would you do that or why should you do that even and then why would that be a uniting phenomenon that's right and so you should do it from the psychological perspective because it appears that the best way to put the best foot for forward is to voluntarily confront those things that you're afraid of and that disgust you that stand in your way and a century of clinical Endeavor has culminated in that as I would say a universal Axiom of successful Psychotherapy
it's voluntary exposure yeah it has to be voluntary exposure augmented by voluntary attention so the more intense the attention the more real the encounter with that which is feared and avoided the more Curative the result quite counterintuitively and the reason for that as far as I can tell fundamentally is that there's no difference between that and learning I'm taking four of my esteemed colleagues and you across the world oh wow this is amazing to ReDiscover the ways our ancient ancestors developed the ideas that shaped modern society it was a monument to Civic greatness visit the
places where history was made that is ash from the actual fires when the Babylonians burn Jerusalem from 2500 years ago to walk the same roads We are following the path of the crucifixion and experience the same [Music] Wonder we are on the sight of a miracle what kind of resources can human beings bring to a mysterious but knowable universe science art politics all that makes life [Music] wonderful and something new about the world is revealed when you learn what you do is you put yourself on the border of Order and Chaos and this has all
been mapped out quite nicely now neur neurophysiologically the order is the conceptual scheme that you're already using to bind the world and the chaos is everything that exists beyond that conceptual scheme which would include to some degree the future because the future has this novel element because the future is is not encapsulated yet in the conceptual scheme and can't be because it's technically still potential it's Tech it's yes and it's not a deterministic potential either at least not entirely and so what you do when you learn is you put yourself on the edge optimally and
then you incorporate something new like a new fruit and you let something that's not sufficiently meat not sufficiently appropriate die as a consequence and so in that sense learning means you have to sacrifice your ignorance and your your pride in an optimized Manner and if you do that properly then it's actually enjoyable it's engaging and meaningful and playful and all those things and there's a deep Instinct that signifies that but it's a sacrificial act because you have to let the elements of yourself which are really like subpersonalities these functional conceptions you have to let them
die and there's some pain associated with that and that's part of the process of optimizing death on the psychological and psychophysiological front so that you stay healthy and adapted and so that you don't actually die by acting out your mistakes and so that idea of it's so and so that would be like the sacrifice of sin so there there are two there there are two sacrifices right so in the Jewish tradition in at yam kipur there are two sacrifices and this is actually I think I've been thinking about this in terms of understanding the problem
of coherence even in whether it's in in your person or whether it's a conceptual category whether it is a society there is a realizing that which doesn't fit and then kind of pushing it out that's that's the scapegoat sacrifice so during yam kipur they would take a goat and they would put the sins of other people on the goat they would Chase it out into the desert for it to die it was given to a demon right that's to that's to obliterate the anomalous right right rather than to incorporate it and so and then there
was another sacrifice which another goat was taken and then was given up to God and then that would and it so that was the sacrifice up so you can imagine that if you're part of a basketball team you have to give yourself up to the purpose of the basketball team and you also have to eliminate the behavior that doesn't fit yeah and then you could also Imagine using the basketball analogy think about that think about the game as the as the uh what would you call it it's a fractal form of civilization a game yeah
yeah okay so the rules of the game aren't there to constrain they're there to enable yeah now you have to abide by the rules but the reason for that is the game can't continue without the rules it's not so that you're constrained it's actually so that you're freed yeah to play the game okay so then you might say what principle should you abide by while you're playing the game and the principle might be crush your opponent and then you might ask well who's your opponent and one could be the other team the other could be
well also your own teammates because you want to be the star player and then you might say well and what kind of margin of Victory do you want to win by and you might say well the the largest possible margin of Victory so what you do is you go out as an absolute narcissist you never pass the ball once you you play people who can't play basketball at all yeah you demolish them you never pass to your teammates and you score all the baskets it's like Victory right well in some sense that is the ultimate
local Victory if you constrain the game to a single Exemplar it's like well you're the best player on the team and your team crushed your opponents Victory but then the problem with that conception is that if you're on a basketball team you don't play a basketball game you play a whole sequence of basketball games and you play them with a whole variety of opponents and the ethos that has to emerge to allow the game to continue if it iterates across locations is not the same game that emerges if you only play it once mhm and
so and that's probably another example of that stacking of centers so so you could say well imagine each game there's a pattern that would enable you to win each game and to some degree merely playing for power would enable you to win some win some but if you calculate across a huge set of games Power it would be some other principle that would arise which would be something like the the principle of voluntary free play is really what it is it's the antithesis of power the principle of voluntary free play then you'd say well your
opponent if you're if you pick the right opponent then that person is very tightly matched against you they're almost exactly at your skill level and the reason for that is because if they're almost exactly at your skill level they push you into optimal transformation while you're playing because you have to extend your skill while you're attempting to win and so and that's something like that ethos of reciprocity is the extension of skill maybe it's only that while you're attempting to win I mean when we're having this conversation there's no real personal victory in it if
we're doing it right yeah right it's only an extension of skill yeah and it's it's it's the hope that something more will emerge something the victory yeah that's the victory yeah and so as so this idea of sacrificing that which is outside and sacrificing up once you see that you'll understand that the story that we saw today like the story of Christ it's both of them at the same time so Jesus that's why the story of Jesus is so hard to understand one of the reasons there's so many one of the reasons why it's so
hard to understand is because he he's both sacrifices you could say so he's both he's both it's a that which goes up the king you know the prophet the Son of God the son of man but he's also that which is excluded which is outside the city which is you know the criminal that is that is murdered all of these things get collapsed into one super duper con condensed image and it becomes the center you could say [Music]
