The video delves into the fundamental questions about human exploration and the motivations behind significant achievements, like the moon landing. It contrasts Richard Dawkins' view, focused on science and technological achievements, with a perspective that emphasizes the underlying reasons and metaphysical narratives that drive such endeavors. The discussion highlights the importance of identity and human purpose in exploration, using historical and mythical examples to illustrate the human quest for new horizons.

The conversation further explores how societal structures and philosophical underpinnings contribute to major achievements. It discusses the American social contract and its connection to reaching the moon, arguing that these accomplishments are embedded in deeper Judeo-Christian values and philosophical foundations, such as those in biblical narratives. The dialogue suggests that society's foundational beliefs and structures can significantly influence its capabilities and aspirations.

Main takeaways from the video:

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Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:

1. transcend [trænˈsɛnd] - (verb) - To go beyond the limits of; to surpass or exceed. - Synonyms: (surpass, exceed, go beyond)

It transcends its elements.

2. ineffable [ɪˈnɛfəbəl] - (adjective) - Too great or extreme to be expressed in words. - Synonyms: (indescribable, inexpressible, unspeakable)

It also fades into the ineffable.

3. self-evident [sɛlf-ˈɛvɪdənt] - (adjective) - Not needing to be demonstrated or explained; obvious. - Synonyms: (obvious, apparent, clear)

We hold these truths to be self-evident.

4. ethereal [ɪˈθɪriəl] - (adjective) - Extremely delicate and light in a way that seems not to be of this world. - Synonyms: (delicate, airy, otherworldly)

It's like weird ethereal, purposeless fact.

5. perceptual [pər-sɛpˈtʃuːəl] - (adjective) - Related to the ability to interpret or become aware of something through the senses. - Synonyms: (sensory, perceptive, interpretative)

That's in line with this whole perceptual mechanism that you bring to light.

6. agglomeration [əˌɡlɑːməˈreɪʃən] - (noun) - A mass or collection of things; an assemblage. - Synonyms: (cluster, collection, accumulation)

Every category is an agglomeration of parts towards a purpose.

7. pathological [ˌpæθəˈlɑːdʒɪkəl] - (adjective) - Involving or caused by a physical or mental disease or ailment. - Synonyms: (diseased, morbid, unhealthy)

William Blake portrayed it as a spiral with angels moving up and down, right? So he sees this infinite upward movement that characterizes life with the ineffable divine at its pinnacle, right? And then this is exactly at the time when Jacob decides to leave his pathological mother, right? Who he's been conspiring with to betray his brother

8. perennial [pəˈrɛniəl] - (adjective) - Enduring or continually recurring. - Synonyms: (everlasting, perpetual, eternal)

The mariner's journey. It's the mariner's story.

9. paradigm [ˈpærəˌdaɪm] - (noun) - A typical example or pattern of something; a model. - Synonyms: (model, pattern, standard)

Merrick Health represents a paradigm shift in how we approach medicine.

10. conspire [kənˈspaɪər] - (verb) - To make secret plans jointly to commit an unlawful or harmful act. - Synonyms: (plot, collude, scheme)

He's been conspiring with to betray his brother.

Why Mankind Really Went to the Moon - Jonathan Pageau

Sorry to bring back the Dawkins conversation. It just happened because it's still fresh in my mind. Dawkins at some point said something like, I don't care about these stories. I care about the kind of science and the kind of prediction that can help us land, you know, a spaceship on the moon. And I was like, I missed an opportunity. And I was like, I care more about why the hell would we want to land a spaceship on the moon. Why would humans do that? That's more interesting to me or more important than the fact that we're capable of doing it. Well, it's also. There's two things there that are interesting. The first, well, we landed on the moon. And for Dawkins, the fact that that's remarkable is self evident. It's like, for a psychologist, it's like, that's not self evident, buddy. There's lots of things we could have done and had been doing for a very long period of time before we landed on the moon.

So it's something like Star Trek to boldly go where no one has gone before. Yes. The Mariner's journey. It's the mariner's story. You know, you have all these stories, ancient stories, the story of Ulysses or the story of St. Brendan, who goes out into the ocean and goes into land that nobody has. These are the stories that we care about the idea of going on. Oh, and they plant a flag. Yeah, well, that's what we did on the moon. And the flag, that's the staff of Moses, signifies a new center. Right. The center of identity. It's the joining of something with identity. That's why we plant flags or crosses. When the explorers would encounter new lands, they would plant a vertical pole to say, this is an identity. This is the identity. This is the center of the new center. Yeah. It's a tree, it's a pole, it's a marker. Just like a stalker. A shark of the beanstalk. Yeah, exactly. It's an identity. That's what it is.

Well, and it's also the case. And I missed this. It's so foolish. There was so much going on. Well, there was, there was. But he's interested in the technology that gets us to the moon. It's like, okay, the technology that gets us to the moon. How about the social. The nature of the social contract that produced the education system and the technology that made the moon voyage possible. Right. I mean, one of the things I've learned, not least through analysis of the biblical narratives, which is partly what we who wrestle with God does is that the ethos that upon which a society is founded is the prime natural resource. And so there was a reason. It was the Americans that got to the moon. And part of the reason for that was the nature of the American social contract. Then the question is, well, what's that social contract predicated on? It's like, well, we hold these truths to be self evident. Evident. Right. And what constitutes the self evidence? And what's underneath that?

Well, the entire Judeo Christian landscape is underneath that. And what's underneath that? Well, it's something like the social structure itself and the biological reality underneath that. And the patterns in the material world. And while God only knows what that's ultimately reflective of, I mean, the, the, the deepest narrative insistence is that there's a pattern that's fundamental, that's beyond the mere material. And I see no reason whatsoever to assume that that's an incorrect presumption. Yeah, well, because it's also true at every single level. Once you start to see it, once you start to see that every category is a meta category, that every category is an agglomeration of parts towards a purpose, then you realize that all categories in some ways transcend its parts. It transcends its elements. And so they all are moving towards this transition because they're related to something higher.

Yeah, they keep pushing up higher. Plato wasn't ridiculous in understanding the notion of forms. I think that one of the things that, let's say contemporary thinking or even Cogsci, can help the Platonic form problem with is that these forms, their purposes, their reasons. Right. Some of the saints, like Saint Maximus the Confessor, collapses it together. He does talk about that. It's like the reason why we notice a form or an identity is because we're seeing a reason for it to exist. We're noticing a purpose. And that's in line with this whole perceptual mechanism that you bring to light. Definitely. And so it's not that these ideas or that these forms exist in some weird. I don't know, it's like weird ethereal, purposeless fact. Yeah.

It's just that they are. Because they bind multiplicity together. They are. They're relatively invisible because you can't see the category you're always seeing. Well, it also fades into the ineffable. So that's the structure of Jacob's ladder. You could imagine that as you move down into the material, let's say you're taking things apart, you're taking meta categories apart into their subsidiary meta categories, all the way down. Well, you run into something like potential. Potential at the bottom, right? And then if you move up to the top, well, you run to something. Spirit. Yeah, exactly. Spirit. Exactly. Well, that's the Jacob's Ladder imagery, right? And it's so interesting, too, because Jacob, just before he has the dream of Jacob's Ladder, which is this spiral. It's often portrayed as a spiral. William Blake portrayed it as a spiral with angels moving up and down, right? So he sees this infinite upward movement that characterizes life with the ineffable divine at its pinnacle, right?

And then this is exactly at the time when Jacob decides to leave his pathological mother, right? Who he's been conspiring with to betray his brother. Betray his brother and his father, right? He leaves and he decides he's going to be a new person, right? So he reorients himself, Then he has this dream, Then he starts making sacrifices toward the dream, which is absolutely perfect, because that is exactly what you do. And we could walk through that. It's like, well, why do you make sacrifices toward the dream? Well, it's because it's that dream and not some other one. So his previous dream was, how can I screw over my father and my brother and, you know, stay in a relationship with my mother? That's a little bit too close, okay? So that was his pinnacle of aim.

And then he understands. He comes to understand, I think, not least because of his brother's anger and the danger that that represents and maybe some dawning sense of conscience that that aim is inappropriate, and he decides he's going to transform, and then he has this vision of infinite potential, and then he makes sacrifices. Well, the first thing he sacrifices, obviously, is the previous pathological dream. And so every aim. Well, you talked to me about this a bit. Every aim requires a sacrifice. It requires the sacrifice of all other aims. Yeah, It's a two sacrifice. Two sacrifices is a good way to understand it, you know, and we get this, I think, from the Yom Kippur sacrifice in Scripture, which is. There are two aspects of the Yom Kippur sacrifice, which is the sacrifice of atonement. That is that on the one hand, you remove that which is sinful, you remove that which doesn't fit. Right. Which violates the aim. Something like a cutting away. Yeah. But then there's also a man in which you offer up the best part, right. And then that purifies the being.

And so when you. If you think of any aim that you. That you encounter, right, on the one hand, you have to reject the things that don't fit. Right. It's like if you're playing, that's separating from the chaff. Yeah. You have to. All the things that don't fit with the aim. If you're, if you're studying for a test, then you study for the test and you're not, you know, chatting on the phone. If you, if you're doing other things, then you're, you're mixing and you're, you're. Let's say, you know, you're creating confusion in the aim. So that's the, let's say the scapegoat part. You cut out that which doesn't fit. And then you also offer up what you're doing to the aim, which is beyond you. And that's important. Like it's something that you're not gathering it into yourself. You're not giving it to you.

Well, that's, that's where the higher meaning emerges as well. Right. Because it's. So I used to ask my students why they were. Why they were in a. Why they would do a given piece of work, why they were taking an exam. Well, like I'm taking the exam because I need to pass the course. Well, why. Well, I'm passing the course because I have to finish the year, because I need to get a degree. Because the degree is means to a job. Because. And then after that, they often got kind of incoherent like, well, why bother with the job? But there are answers to questions like that. It's like, well, to take up my responsible citizenship so that I can establish a family, so that I can build something lasting for the future, so that I can be a credit to myself, so that I can be a credit to other people. That's the covenant, by the way, that Abraham, that God offers Abraham. Right. And so there is this participation in higher and higher purposes.

And one of the things that's so cool about that is that if you're participating in the highest possible aim, say towards the ineffable, that caps this pyramidal structure, then the power of the divine ineffable saturates all the micro activities that you engage in because it's imbued with rich purpose. And you could say that that makes everything glow. Like it makes things glow. Not in a physical way, but it makes things. You know, it also infuses a kind of joy and a kind of peace. Right. Because it's. That's why Christ says that his burden is light, which is very weird thing. Yeah. Because you realize that, you know, whatever it is that I'm paying for here because I know it's embedded in the highest good or aiming towards a higher good, then I'm happy to do it. Right, everybody? Yeah, because. Well, because by definition there isn't anything better you could do.

Yeah, that's. I mean, that's the ineffable transcendent unity that Jacob swears to serve. And he identifies that with the God of his ancestors, which is with the, with the one true God of his ancestors.

Yeah, and you can understand that you can miss aim, right? And so we see that, you know, for example, like take someone who's studying his test or whatever is doing this. You know, you see it happen with people who become extremely wealthy. You know, maybe they have this idea that really what I want is to become rich. Like that's the purpose. So they do all these things, they get there, but then once they get there, they've got a big choice to make because it turns out that that's not the highest aim. Turns out that it doesn't reach high enough. So you can see it. When people reach a certain level, a certain threshold of being very, very wealthy, either they start to sacrifice, let's say, start to give that towards higher purposes, help others, start to use their power and their wealth in order to help others reach these goals. Or they fall into a kind of power mad hedonism. Exactly. And then they just become a character of the Right. Then their wealth speeds their demise.

Yeah, exactly. So you can see it, I think, that even in a conversation with people like Dawkins, at some point we can start to help people see that the hierarchy of aims is something that you can. It's objective. We can argue about certain details about it. But it's also not arbitrary. No, it's not arbitrary. Well, okay, so we could continue expanding this hierarchy of upward aim. So you want to be a good father, you want to be a good husband, you want to be a good person. Well, then that's nested inside the hero myth, by definition, fundamentally. And so you want to embody the hero myth. Then the question is, because you can keep expanding the terrain, what's the ultimate hero myth? And I think this will be the next book. I really do think that that's laid out properly in the story of the Christian Passion. And I think that the classical Christian insistence that that pattern is implicit in the Old Testament writings is. Right.

Yeah. And so now we actually say it's even crazier because we say that it's implicit in the structure of being itself. Right, right. That is something that people don't tend to think of. That. That's what we're saying. But when we say that the Logos created the world. Yeah, right. That the Logos that was incarnate in Christ is the origin of the world. Right. That's John's presumption. Strange idea. So we are intimating that this story is at the origin of the world in the sense that it contains the pattern of the highest form of being that yields all the other ones. Right. That kind of makes it possible. Okay, so let's walk that through, because I think it's possible.

EDUCATION, PHILOSOPHY, INSPIRATION, EXPLORATION, SOCIETAL STRUCTURES, HIGHER PURPOSES, JORDAN B PETERSON