You're entering a new phase of your life, you can you're someone different than you were [when you set out on your journey]. And hopefully, someone better. You have another opportunity now to be the next iteration of yourself.
The metaphor works because you make a decision, you go one direction or another.
[thought] no direction is still a decision.
And there's an old blues idea that you meet the devil at the crossroads.
[external] Denzel Washington Warns Will Smith: ‘“At your highest moment, be careful, that’s when the devil comes for you.”
[thought] And at your lowest.
"I was wondering why that was I thought it through it's a really compelling idea..."
It's an image that has a good narrative fit, and it sticks in your memory. Once you hear why do you meet the devil at the crossroads at midnight? Maybe that's when you let examine your conscience, or it examines you.
"because when you come to a place in your life where you have to make a choice, and I think this is actually true of every choice we ever make, but it's more evident when the choice is more weighty...
The Decision Point: "You aim up or down. There is always an agent of temptation at every choice point, enticing you to aim down."
"I thought a lot about what aiming down means and so all run through that for a bit."
The story of Cain & Able - a study on misguided aims. - Audio
Cain gives into temptation, it was freely chosen, and he could have done differently & better.
Root issue: improper sacrifices he makes, it's not everything that could be, not in the service of the highest good, that are deceptive and arrogant simultaneously.
[thought] God, or any 'greatest virtue or principle or good'. Eg. not putting your all into writing a book and launching it just for money, you didn't make the "proper sacrifice" - expect to pay for your "sin".
JP: " I suggest that that's a temptation, you might want to avoid."
"If you're tempted to aim down, you're tempted to make improper sacrifices, you're tempted to arrogantly presume that you are going to get away with it, that you're not going to be called on it."
[After the improper aim, falling for the temptation...] What are the pathways might manifest themselves in front of you?
Claim - "the two stories that follow the story of Cain and Abel, detail that. So after Cain, and Abel comes the flood, and that's no accident. The narrative placement of those stories is definitely no accident."
"It's unbelievably sophisticated from a literary perspective, philosophical perspective, theological perspective. Existential perspective. "
The Flood: Symbolically represents nihilistic chaos, a temptation. It's the proliferation of sins.
Sin is a word, both its Greek and its Hebrew derivation are related to archery. The word is derived from the Greek word hamartia, which means to miss the mark, and it's an archery term. And so it's lovely. It's a lovely notion to know that because to sin, therefore means to miss the target, which implies that it has something to do with aim, or the lack thereof.
Claim - Sin is to aim wrong or to miss the mark.
there's a variety of ways you can miss the mark: (1.) Don't aim at all. (2.) Assume there is no such thing as aim, (3.) assume all aims are equal.
[missing the mark, or (importantly) not setting an aim can lead to...] can descend one into a kind of nihilistic hopelessness.
You can understand that, you know, you meet people in life whose lives have been so hard, you hear their stories, they've suffered so much, and they're bitter and they're hurt and they're resentful. And you think, oh my god, it's no wonder your bitter and hurt resentful, I mean, look what you've gone through.
however... the bitterness does not help.
You'll also notice that their bitterness, the resentment, their hopelessness, their chaos, and their anxiety, it's not helping. Right? It's worsening the problem. It's not making it better.
[addressing objection] I'm not saying that people can always resist that. But I have certainly seen that it's not helpful.
[Alternatively] Those who seemingly have all the right in the world to feel nihilistic hopelessness, who "aim up".
"I've also met other people, you know, who have had stories equally catastrophic, sometimes more catastrophic. Sometimes so catastrophic, you can't even believe that they survived, who are not embittered or made resentful by those experiences and who continue to aim up."
Determinism implication: individual human beings have no free will and cannot be held morally responsible for their actions.
that makes a mockery of the [idea] that you end up chaotic nihilistic hopeless, anxious, etc, merely as a consequence of the unbearable tragedy of your life.
Because - if that was the case, then everyone who had a series of unbearable tragedies (which by the way will be almost all of us, in one way or another, at one time or another) would end up in that catastrophic chaos (of nihilistic hopelessness).
"Walking The Dog" JP - Story of individual who sought to serve though she had lots to be resentful about 10:07 - 13:55
"She wanted to see if she could go find one of those inpatients who was worse off than her and take them for a walk every day with her dog...."
You meet someone like that, and they just have nothing, they have nothing in the world that you would recognize as any marker of success, or status or ability or, or outcast and tortured. Nonetheless, a woman in that dismal state was able to rise above her own catastrophe and find someone worse off to try to serve.
Chaos, that, if manifested broadly enough, in a society produces a flood that ends everything. And that's, well, that's the story of Noah
6:10 - JP makes the argument that we shouldn't ignore the wisdom of past generations, even if they said things we may now regard as inappropriate. "well, what makes you think that you're above that criticism, 100 years from now that, you know, the best you can do is to be as good as you can in your time and place."
Religious people are often pilloried for the idea that faith means the sacrifice of reason, and the willingness to believe things that are patently not true.
And when religious people debate scientists, they're often sort of hung out to dry on exactly those presumptive presuppositions, their willingness to accept on principle, propositions that seem on the face of the impossible.
I don't think that's what faith is at all, in some fundamental sense. I think faith is a form of courage.
if you're hurt by life, and you will be, it's understandable that you might react in a nihilistic and hopeless fashion and become anxious and depressed, and cynical, and bitter and all of that. That's a bad pathway.
Courage that, fundamentally, there is goodness in existence, despite evidence to the contrary.
(1.) you have a duty and perhaps the capability to transcend the suffering and still serve the good... or
(2.) life is so unbearable that it would be best terminated. Faust: "the world is rife with suffering, and it's so unbearable, that consciousness itself, all beings should cease to exist, that would be better, nothing is better than something if something is rife with suffering."
A conclusion that you can be driven to in the darker, terrible times of life.
You have every reason to be embittered, but combining bitterness and a serious personal problem might be worse than fatal. [story of daughter's illness at a young age.]
"if you don't think there are things that are worse than fatal, you have not suffered, because there are things that are much worse than fatal."
"you don't need many experiences like that, to convince you that there's things about the world that you truly don't understand on the ethical front."
Lucifer is the spirit of intellect, the light bringer, who, who's flown too high and challenges God himself, and falls. And in Milton story, Lucifer is called on his pretension by God... He's a symbol of intellect, that in combination with the notion that he's a Lightbringer, it's a symbol of prideful intellect.
It's the prideful intellect that raises itself against what is most properly placed at the highest place. Which is what God is, whatever that is, whatever it is, it's not the intellect.
It (intellect) is a subordinate spirit. "And if it isn't, then it becomes aimed essentially, at something approximating hell, and perfectly capable of creating it, and then perfectly capable of ruling in it."
The parable continues...
When God calls Lucifer on his rebellion, he says, If you but repent, you could be welcomed home. And Lucifer says: Well, I am the sort of spirit that even if I once repented, I would be instantly tempted to merely repeat my mind mistake.
And he says, as well, I would rather rule in hell than serve in heaven.
"Hey man, there's a choice for you at the crossroads. "