Jordan Peterson with Bret Weinstein - A Metaphysical Delight

[SanteriSatama]

But it's not only related to Protestant work ethic, rather the concept of 'sacrifice' (delayed gratification) is at the heart of all Christian formulations of redemption. And we can see echoes, shadows, pre-figurations, etc. of that in most other major spiritual traditions as well. The idea that sacrifice through individual responsibility provides the maximal meaning to one's life on the social, physical and psychological level is hard to argue with.

Fair point. However, the animal sacrifice institution of the ancient religions is a continuation of animistic rituals of hunter-gatherer cultures, where deeply spiritual meanings and practices of hunters made loads of ecological sense. Over-hunting and bad politics with the master/guardian spirit of the pray would lead to starvation and suffering of hunter people. In that context 'sacrifice' is a form of mutual gift giving of indigenous gift economies.

The actual historical work of Jesus and his spiritual twin Apollonios of Tyana, beneath all the ahistorical hagiography memes attached to both, seems to have been mainly focused on renovating the religious cults of the time and putting stop to the practice of animal sacrifice, which had long ago lost it's animistic spiritual meaning and become commercialized disrespect and torture of other animals. Any case, the practice of animal sacrifice largely stopped, until modern scientism reintroduced it in big way by sacrifice and torture of laboratory animals "for the benefit of human kind".

Parents being ready to sacrifice their life to protect the lives of their offspring is very natural and common in the natural world. It's instinctual for humans as well as for many others.

Spiritual sacrifice is different issue, but could be deeply linked with the biological instinct, as family relations figure deeply also in that area. It is very possible to interpret the sacrifice of Jesus (whether self-sacrifice or by his spiritual father) as accepting parent relation to all living beings and especially the sacrificial animals offered to gods. A parental human sacrifice to end the pseudo-spiritual institution of animal sacrifice. That would be very high level exemplary of spirituality and loving care, but not especially humanistic, not very subservient to human self-importance. Which makes this interpretation only more plausible. We should not think that humans are the only species that create gods in their own image. We just saw a video posted here where flock of birds form an image of a bird for camera to capture and share.

In real everyday life, the "sacrifice through individual responsibility" manifests often as attention seeking martyr complex that acts out of self-pity and resentment, and the "sacrifice" declared in loud voice is a rationalizing pretext for self-importance and attempt to guilt trip and dominate others through psychological manipulation. Often, not always. Mutual care and service through healthy self-interest do not require talking and thinking about sacrifice.

[AshvinP]

But it's not only related to Protestant work ethic, rather the concept of 'sacrifice' (delayed gratification) is at the heart of all Christian formulations of redemption. And we can see echoes, shadows, pre-figurations, etc. of that in most other major spiritual traditions as well. The idea that sacrifice through individual responsibility provides the maximal meaning to one's life on the social, physical and psychological level is hard to argue with.

Fair point. However, the animal sacrifice institution of the ancient religions is a continuation of animistic rituals of hunter-gatherer cultures, where deeply spiritual meanings and practices of hunters made loads of ecological sense. Over-hunting and bad politics with the master/guardian spirit of the pray would lead to starvation and suffering of hunter people. In that context 'sacrifice' is a form of mutual gift giving of indigenous gift economies.

The actual historical work of Jesus and his spiritual twin Apollonios of Tyana, beneath all the ahistorical hagiography memes attached to both, seems to have been mainly focused on renovating the religious cults of the time and putting stop to the practice of animal sacrifice, which had long ago lost it's animistic spiritual meaning and become commercialized disrespect and torture of other animals. Any case, the practice of animal sacrifice largely stopped, until modern scientism reintroduced it in big way by sacrifice and torture of laboratory animals "for the benefit of human kind".

That reminds me of, "I have not come to abolish the law or the prophets... but to fulfill them." The concept of sacrifice has transfigured and evolved, but it's underlying essence remains. It is nothing less than the discovery of the future and the push towards the future. Certainly that, as with anything else, can be pathologized, although the scientific pursuit of knowledge through sacrifice was absolutely necessary in my view, and not separate from "spiritual sacrifice". There is a deep continuity there.

Parents being ready to sacrifice their life to protect the lives of their offspring is very natural and common in the natural world. It's instinctual for humans as well as for many others.

Spiritual sacrifice is different issue, but could be deeply linked with the biological instinct, as family relations figure deeply also in that area. It is very possible to interpret the sacrifice of Jesus (whether self-sacrifice or by his spiritual father) as accepting parent relation to all living beings and especially the sacrificial animals offered to gods. A parental human sacrifice to end the pseudo-spiritual institution of animal sacrifice. That would be very high level exemplary of spirituality and loving care, but not especially humanistic, not very subservient to human self-importance. Which makes this interpretation only more plausible. We should not think that humans are the only species that create gods in their own image. We just saw a video posted here where flock of birds form an image of a bird for camera to capture and share.

That's an interesting theory, but again the continuity of revealed symbols and patterns in scripture argue against it. Animal sacrifice was never viewed as "pseudo-spiritual" by the Church, or if we want to ignore all the institutional aspects, by Christ. I am not referring to any specific practices of animal sacrifices at any given time or place, which can easily be pathologized into some sort of moralistic and pharisaic superiority complex, but rather the essence.

In real everyday life, the "sacrifice through individual responsibility" manifests often as attention seeking martyr complex that acts out of self-pity and resentment, and the "sacrifice" declared in loud voice is a rationalizing pretext for self-importance and attempt to guilt trip and dominate others through psychological manipulation. Often, not always. Mutual care and service through healthy self-interest do not require talking and thinking about sacrifice.

Yes perhaps, again anything can be pathologized. But in the context of JP and Weinstein, I don't see any evidence of that. JP towards the end even questions whether their concerns with Marxism, collectivism, PC cancel culture, etc. are due to "biased sampling" and they both reason it out pretty well to a resounding "no". And Weinstein's metaphysical assumptions actually limit him to emphasizing broad-based collective 'solutions' to those problems, but JP's implicit idealist assumptions do not, which is why he finds the solution at the individual level.

[Simon Adams]

The actual historical work of Jesus and his spiritual twin Apollonios of Tyana, beneath all the ahistorical hagiography memes attached to both, seems to have been mainly focused on renovating the religious cults of the time and putting stop to the practice of animal sacrifice, which had long ago lost it's animistic spiritual meaning and become commercialized disrespect and torture of other animals. Any case, the practice of animal sacrifice largely stopped, until modern scientism reintroduced it in big way by sacrifice and torture of laboratory animals "for the benefit of human kind".

I won’t go into all the reasons that Apollonios of Tyana was not the spiritual twin of Jesus, but I assume you would agree that Apollonios doesn’t emerge in the context of a tradition of many centuries of texts cantered on the prediction that someone would come, and what they would do when they came. That’s of course significant to us christians for many reasons, but also in terms of sacrifice. The messianic texts themselves talk against the traditional sacrifice of animals, and talk in detail about how it will be replaced (such as Isaiah 53).

I actually agree with some of what you say there, and I don’t expect you to agree that the arrival of the now historical person of Jesus is written into stories and texts from over a thousand years before he was born (self evident as it may seem to me), but I have to call out the scientism-like reductionism...

[SanteriSatama]

That's an interesting theory, but again the continuity of revealed symbols and patterns in scripture argue against it. Animal sacrifice was never viewed as "pseudo-spiritual" by the Church, or if we want to ignore all the institutional aspects, by Christ. I am not referring to any specific practices of animal sacrifices at any given time or place, which can easily be pathologized into some sort of moralistic and pharisaic superiority complex, but rather the essence.

I'm a translator who majored Greek philology. So no apologies for not giving much value to what Church says. Genuine philological eksegesis needs to take into consideration the whole textual corpus of the era, instead of cherry picking what supports a specific politically motivated dogma like in Council of Nicea. And the whole textual corpus needs to interpreted in a larger frame of evolution of spiritual and religious phenomena.

Most of the textual corpus of various hagiographies cannot be given direct historical value, but it does not emerge from vacuum and reflects something that was thought of deserving much attention.

Historicity of Jesus can't be verified with high degree of confidence, though Apollonios can be. It can't be verified that the violent table turning incident in the temple happened against the peddlers of animals to be killed actually happened, but any case in the zeitgeist of much spiritual turbulence it was considered important to tell and write down such a story. Also most of the stuff in Life of Apollonios can't be verified, but any case the stories reflect on something that the zeitgeist considered important. The meaning of 'Christ' can't be confidently personified, most accurate and confident meaning of the term that is available to us through philological methodology refers to the zeitgeist, which produced the textual corpus in question. The fact that institutions of child abandoning and animal sacrifice ceased through the spiritual turbulence of the era and it's zeitgeist is historical. And that's a very big deal in the larger context of evolution of .

This is the standard scientific methodology that my interpretation is based on, together with translators intuition between zeitgeists now and then. Of course no interpretation is exhaustive "only truth".

The metaphor of Good Shepherd speaks from observation of human dominance in interspecies politics, and what should be the right attitude and behavior in the situation.

[SanteriSatama]

I won’t go into all the reasons that Apollonios of Tyana was not the spiritual twin of Jesus, but I assume you would agree that Apollonios doesn’t emerge in the context of a tradition of many centuries of texts cantered on the prediction that someone would come, and what they would do when they came.
That’s of course significant to us christians for many reasons, but also in terms of sacrifice. The messianic texts themselves talk against the traditional sacrifice of animals, and talk in detail about how it will be replaced (such as Isaiah 53).

I actually agree with some of what you say there, and I don’t expect you to agree that the arrival of the now historical person of Jesus is written into stories and texts from over a thousand years before he was born (self evident as it may seem to me), but I have to call out the scientism-like reductionism...

As I said to Ashvin, the interpretation is scientific in the philological sense, hagiographies of Apollonios and Jesus are manifestations of the same underlying zeitgeist. Church and it's opinions don't carry much weight in this regard.

I'm very much opposed to scientism and reductionism of the post-Cartesian wrong turn. My own views can be characterized as animistic, and many animistic traditions and practices have their own relations with spiritually actual and empirical Jesus. We don't recognize any Church monopoly and authority in this regard. Empirical science of spiritual reality and philological science are not in conflict here.

[Cleric K]

I'm still unclear on what JP's actual view on reality is. He certainly uses the myths and religious life in a very real sense but I don't grasp if he is inclined towards actual spiritual realities. In this video he says that he aligns with the view of physical evolution of the human and from what I reckon, spiritual life emerges initially as symbolic knowledge of the deeper drives, initially originating from natural selection, and then taking on their own life through consciousness.

Sometimes I wonder if he has deeper spiritual conception of reality but he keeps his language and apparent worldview at the edge of the academically acceptable - that is, somewhat compatible with the modern scientific narrative.

[SanteriSatama]

Sometimes I wonder if he has deeper spiritual conception of reality but he keeps his language and apparent worldview at the edge of the academically acceptable - that is, somewhat compatible with the modern scientific narrative.

Well, that's what Jung did, so...

[AshvinP]

Sometimes I wonder if he has deeper spiritual conception of reality but he keeps his language and apparent worldview at the edge of the academically acceptable - that is, somewhat compatible with the modern scientific narrative.

Well, that's what Jung did, so...

Yeah, I could easily see that being the case. It is certainly more spiritual than he lets on IMO, just based on the whole corpus of his lectures.

[AshvinP]

Sometimes I wonder if he has deeper spiritual conception of reality but he keeps his language and apparent worldview at the edge of the academically acceptable - that is, somewhat compatible with the modern scientific narrative.

Well, that's what Jung did, so...

Yeah, I could easily see that being the case. It is certainly more spiritual than he lets on IMO, just based on the whole corpus of his lectures.

He also started a church in the name of a medieval Christian mystic, Joachim of Florence, which he passes off as mostly a joke, but I doubt it's only that.

[AshvinP]

That's an interesting theory, but again the continuity of revealed symbols and patterns in scripture argue against it. Animal sacrifice was never viewed as "pseudo-spiritual" by the Church, or if we want to ignore all the institutional aspects, by Christ. I am not referring to any specific practices of animal sacrifices at any given time or place, which can easily be pathologized into some sort of moralistic and pharisaic superiority complex, but rather the essence.

I'm a translator who majored Greek philology. So no apologies for not giving much value to what Church says. Genuine philological eksegesis needs to take into consideration the whole textual corpus of the era, instead of cherry picking what supports a specific politically motivated dogma like in Council of Nicea. And the whole textual corpus needs to interpreted in a larger frame of evolution of spiritual and religious phenomena.

Most of the textual corpus of various hagiographies cannot be given direct historical value, but it does not emerge from vacuum and reflects something that was thought of deserving much attention.

Historicity of Jesus can't be verified with high degree of confidence, though Apollonios can be. It can't be verified that the violent table turning incident in the temple happened against the peddlers of animals to be killed actually happened, but any case in the zeitgeist of much spiritual turbulence it was considered important to tell and write down such a story. Also most of the stuff in Life of Apollonios can't be verified, but any case the stories reflect on something that the zeitgeist considered important. The meaning of 'Christ' can't be confidently personified, most accurate and confident meaning of the term that is available to us through philological methodology refers to the zeitgeist, which produced the textual corpus in question. The fact that institutions of child abandoning and animal sacrifice ceased through the spiritual turbulence of the era and it's zeitgeist is historical. And that's a very big deal in the larger context of evolution of .

This is the standard scientific methodology that my interpretation is based on, together with translators intuition between zeitgeists now and then. Of course no interpretation is exhaustive "only truth".

The metaphor of Good Shepherd speaks from observation of human dominance in interspecies politics, and what should be the right attitude and behavior in the situation.

Yes, as a general rule, all 'outward' spiritual practices became increasingly 'psychologized' with the incarnation of Christ. I am saying that was not a forsaking of the concept underlying sacrifice, but rather an internalization so that each individual could partake in its essence without relying on collective authorities. You appear to be suggesting that Christ wanted the Jews to wake up and realize they had been doing it all wrong with their cruel animal sacrifices, and that is the position I reject. Is that accurate?