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Promethean Inflation: Will our creations destroy us? · This Jungian Life Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to This Jungian Life. Three good friends and Jungian analysts,
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Lisa Marciano, Deborah Stewart, and Joseph Lee, invite you to
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: join them for an intimate and honest conversation that brings
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: a psychological perspective to important issues of the day.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: I'm Lisa Marciano, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia.
• 0:22
  Speaker 3: I'm Joseph Lee, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst in Cape Cod.
• 0:37
  Speaker 3: Hello, everyone. Today, Deb and I are going to be
• 0:40
  Speaker 3: talking about the myth of Prometheus, particularly this complicated tension
• 0:50
  Speaker 3: between foresight and hindsight. The way that human beings can
• 0:56
  Speaker 3: reach into this creative stratosphere and bring down from some
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  Speaker 3: mysterious place inside of themselves or perhaps from the collective unconscious, knowledge, wisdom, capacity, insights, discoveries,
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  Speaker 3: and sometimes wisely implement them and sometimes create disastrous results.
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: The myth of Prometheus gives us a window into that
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  Speaker 3: tension and affords us some mythic metaphors to consider how
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: complicated it is to bring to fruit some of the
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: remarkable things that we can discover. We'll talk a little
• 1:46
  Speaker 3: bit about Frankenstein. We have a wonderful dream that centers
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: around an eagle, part of the Promethean myth. And we
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  Speaker 3: hope that you'll listen right until the end.
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: I am really glad that today we are going to
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: engage with Prometheus because he's been kind of a lifelong
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  Speaker 2: on-and-off interest. When I was a child and we didn't
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  Speaker 2: have a TV or anything, I went to the library
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  Speaker 2: and I had a book of Greek myths written for children.
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  Speaker 2: And I saw the picture of Prometheus. It was pretty vivid.
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  Speaker 2: He was chained to a rock, and there was this
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  Speaker 2: big bird and eagle coming down, ready to dive bomb
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: his side. And I read the story about how he
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: had stolen fire and given it to humans, and that
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  Speaker 2: he was punished for this by Zeus. And I remember
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: going around and asking adult after adult, You know, what
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  Speaker 2: was so bad about stealing fire, and why wouldn't Zeus
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  Speaker 2: want people to have it so they could cook their food?
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  Speaker 2: And I remember sort of indulgent smiles from adults like,
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  Speaker 2: you know, that's such a cute question from this cute kid,
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  Speaker 2: and then no answer. So today, I hope we'll unravel,
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: hope Prometheus was what he stands for, and what it's
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: all about. So I'll just keep going here and kind
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: of lay the groundwork for the basic storyline. Prometheus was
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  Speaker 2: a kind of a trickster, and he's been called the
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: friend of mankind. And the tale starts out with his
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  Speaker 2: offering the gods a sacrificial meal. So a bull was sacrificed.
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: And what Prometheus did was he wrapped up all the
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  Speaker 2: bones and covered them in appealing, glistening fat, which would
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  Speaker 2: be really yummy. And then he took the meaty parts
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  Speaker 2: and put them in the stomach of an ox, I think.
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  Speaker 2: So it looked gross. So the good stuff is hidden
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: inside an unappealing exterior. and the inedible stuff is underneath
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  Speaker 2: what looks like an appealing offering. So the gods were
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  Speaker 2: told they could pick whichever one of the two offerings
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  Speaker 2: they wanted, and they picked the one that looked good
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  Speaker 2: on the outside but just had bones on the inside.
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  Speaker 2: This was something that irritated the gods, but it also
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  Speaker 2: laid the groundwork for human sacrifice to the gods. of
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  Speaker 2: animals forever after, that it was okay to keep the
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  Speaker 2: meat for the human community and just give the gods
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  Speaker 2: the bones that legitimized it. And not to be, because
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  Speaker 2: Zeus was angry about this, he withheld fire from human beings.
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  Speaker 2: It's like, okay, then that's it. No fire for you guys.
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  Speaker 2: At which point, Prometheus steals fire and gives it to
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  Speaker 2: human beings. Now Prometheus is really punished by Zeus, and
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  Speaker 2: that takes us back to that picture that I still
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  Speaker 2: remember from my long-ago library book of this poor man
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  Speaker 2: chained to a rock with an eagle about to dive
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  Speaker 2: bomb into his side. So Is Prometheus the champion of mankind?
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  Speaker 2: Or is he a trickster? Is he devious? Did he
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  Speaker 2: betray his Olympian community? Or is he both?
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  Speaker 3: I think that it's a wonderful thing that myths are
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  Speaker 3: so broad and that we can use them as interesting
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  Speaker 3: metaphors to illuminate any number of things. I think that
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  Speaker 3: there are different tellings of all the myths, which is
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  Speaker 3: just part of the scholarship. One of the things that
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  Speaker 3: seems important relative to Prometheus' motivations is that Prometheus and
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  Speaker 3: his brother, Epimetheus, were tasked with populating the earth. That
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  Speaker 3: Epimetheus created all the animals and Zeus had given him
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  Speaker 3: a bunch of capacities that he could distribute around the animals.
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  Speaker 3: And Epimetheus had this wonderful time giving wings and talons
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  Speaker 3: and scales and abilities to swim and fly and do
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  Speaker 3: a bunch of things running 45 miles an hour. And
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  Speaker 3: by the time it was done, you know, everybody was amazed,
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  Speaker 3: this incredible variety of stuff. And then it's Prometheus's time.
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  Speaker 3: And Zeus says, okay, well, why don't you make humanity?
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  Speaker 3: And after he makes humanity, there's nothing left. So we
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  Speaker 3: were left in the beginning with none of these extraordinary
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  Speaker 3: potencies that animals had.
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  Speaker 2: No claws, no wings.
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  Speaker 3: That's right. Can't go underwater and breathe. And yet, because
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  Speaker 3: we are made from Prometheus, he has this great affinity,
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  Speaker 3: as in many stories before, the creator and the created
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  Speaker 3: have this deep affinity. And so Prometheus beholds that human
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  Speaker 3: beings are suffering mightily. They are preyed upon by the
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  Speaker 3: animals and they have no civilization.
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  Speaker 2: No fur.
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  Speaker 3: No fur. One of the things that are attributed to
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  Speaker 3: Prometheus is that he is said to have gone among
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  Speaker 3: human beings and given them wisdom, which is the thing
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  Speaker 3: that Epimetheus didn't give the animals. He couldn't make them
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  Speaker 3: run 45 miles an hour, but he could try to
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  Speaker 3: make them wise, which is such an interesting piece of consideration.
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  Speaker 3: Because they become wise, Zeus also is very ambivalent about
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  Speaker 3: them and isn't really sure how powerful they should become.
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  Speaker 3: Your story about the sacrifices is that it's one of
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  Speaker 3: the things that Prometheus promises the Olympians and says, well,
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  Speaker 3: they're good for one thing. Let's not just, you know,
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  Speaker 3: wipe them off like gnats. You know, they're good for
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  Speaker 3: something and, you know, they can kill the animals. And
• 9:18
  Speaker 3: since the Olympic gods couldn't eat meat, that they would
• 9:22
  Speaker 3: dine on the smoke. So that was his promise. He's like,
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  Speaker 3: this is what they're good for. So the humans begin
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  Speaker 3: to do that and they're able to curry favor by sacrificing.
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  Speaker 3: This seems very important to me because Prometheus is the
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  Speaker 3: God who sacrifices himself in order to give them fire.
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  Speaker 3: That he himself is put on a rock and shredded
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  Speaker 3: apart by an eagle and in order to satisfy the Olympians.
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  Speaker 3: And there's a foreshadowing of that when he promises that
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  Speaker 3: humanity will also sacrifice all number of things and that
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  Speaker 3: the gods will really like that. They'll think it's really great.
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  Speaker 2: I've never been sure whether Prometheus thought he would just
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  Speaker 2: get away with it or whether it was an intentional
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  Speaker 2: attempt sacrifice. But he brings down something that is of
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  Speaker 2: the gods and gives it to mankind. And so that
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  Speaker 2: takes me into what is fire? What a huge step
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  Speaker 2: that must have been. Can you imagine thousands and thousands
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  Speaker 2: of years ago where men, humans didn't know how to
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  Speaker 2: make fire? And I'm sure they could use what was
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: left from lightning strikes and try to keep all the
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  Speaker 2: embers burning. Fire is how we keep the cave warm,
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: how we cook our food. It's instrumental in building civilization, really,
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  Speaker 2: culture and art. Because I'm thinking about internal fire, the
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  Speaker 2: fire of passion or fires of creativity, you know, all
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  Speaker 2: the metaphors that we have where we say that somebody's
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: just on fire with their project or something lit a spark.
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  Speaker 2: It's so symbolic and so important that it was fire
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  Speaker 2: that human beings needed and that that is what Prometheus
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  Speaker 2: brought them.
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  Speaker 3: The control of fire. gave them mastery over so many things.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, exactly.
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  Speaker 3: Animals in general are frightened of fire. They might not
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  Speaker 3: be frightened of human beings, but, you know, a flaming log,
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  Speaker 3: you know, being tossed towards an animal is going to
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  Speaker 3: make it run away for sure. Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: And animals will not approach a fire. If you have,
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  Speaker 2: you know, all the stories we've all read about, you
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  Speaker 2: have to light a fire and sleep around the fire
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  Speaker 2: if you're out in the open as protection. And warmth.
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  Speaker 3: And warmth. So there's a way to control the environment.
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  Speaker 3: There's a way to transform things that are inedible. And
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  Speaker 3: by cooking things, it makes them more edible and more
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  Speaker 3: digestible and allows humans to extract more nutrition than they
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  Speaker 3: could by eating everything raw.
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  Speaker 2: Absolutely. I mean, the prospect of eating raw zebra is
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  Speaker 2: decidedly unappetizing.
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  Speaker 3: Absolutely. It's a problem. But as you said, fire is
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  Speaker 3: the first. first step of alchemy. That if you can't
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  Speaker 3: heat things, you can't combine them. That two cold metals
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  Speaker 3: just clanging against each other are just two cold metals.
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  Speaker 3: That fire, which is the softening element, fire also transforms
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  Speaker 3: objects into heat and light, it is the great transformative miracle,
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  Speaker 3: allows things to change It.
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  Speaker 2: Really does, and I think it is everywhere there is
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  Speaker 2: a fire god. I think that is a very universal deity.
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  Speaker 2: I know there's Agni and Hinduism and all kinds of
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  Speaker 2: gods of fire because it is powerful and transformative and destructive.
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  Speaker 2: It's that same ambiguity that Prometheus himself possesses as part
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  Speaker 2: of his nature of how are we going to use
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  Speaker 2: the fire.
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  Speaker 3: And uncontrolled fire. Last year we saw this horrible wildfire
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  Speaker 3: sweeping through Australia. Just as you said, uncontained fire is terrifying.
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  Speaker 3: Hawaii as well. So mastering fire. gives us all these
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  Speaker 3: wonderful things like a stove and hot water. But uncontrolled
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  Speaker 3: fire is something we can only be subject to.
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  Speaker 2: And I'm taking it back inside our own instinctive fires.
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  Speaker 2: Are we on fire with an idea for a great
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  Speaker 2: new project? You know, with our own hands... you know,
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  Speaker 2: build something, let's say? Or are we on fire with
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  Speaker 2: urges and instincts and desires that might better be brought
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  Speaker 2: under control? What do we do with our own inner
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  Speaker 2: fire of desires, instincts? And I could relate that to,
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  Speaker 2: I mean, it's not hard to, by extension, think of
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  Speaker 2: people that are in the throes of, let's say, addiction.
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  Speaker 2: The fire within is for something that is essentially not
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  Speaker 2: in the service of growth and development and individuation. So
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  Speaker 2: we all have an inner battle with our inner fire.
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  Speaker 2: Do we have it or does it have us?
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  Speaker 3: Undoubtedly. And the harnessing of fire is the beginning of
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  Speaker 3: analysis in terms of private work. That looking at a
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  Speaker 3: troubling personality trait, let's say, and just expecting ourselves or
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  Speaker 3: our analysis to constrain it. to reflect on it rather
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  Speaker 3: than to act it out in the environment puts the
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  Speaker 3: instinct into a kind of furnace. And by telling it
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  Speaker 3: that it doesn't get to run around in the environment,
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  Speaker 3: it creates heat. And that's what we call frustration. Frustration
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  Speaker 3: is heat. And depending on how we can watch the
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  Speaker 3: frustration and how that changes us, that we can discover
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  Speaker 3: things that are revealed as the fire burns.
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  Speaker 2: I like the image a lot of having it in
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  Speaker 2: a furnace. We once had a wood-burning stove, and that's
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  Speaker 2: what I'm relating this to. It is amazing how much
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  Speaker 2: heat a small wood-burning stove can throw off because it's
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: contained wood. And I can imagine that the pieces of
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: wood we put in there were frustrated. They were very frustrated.
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  Speaker 2: They wanted to just burst into flame and be all over.
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  Speaker 2: But it's generative. And I think it's such a great
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  Speaker 2: parallel to the internal process, not only in analysis, but
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  Speaker 2: in life of when we can contain our fire. then
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  Speaker 2: it can be useful rather than just burning things up,
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  Speaker 2: being destructive.
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  Speaker 3: Sure. And there's some ways that we take this so
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  Speaker 3: for granted that, you know, let's say we've come through
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  Speaker 3: high school and we're naturally talented dancers and then we
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  Speaker 3: audition and we wind up going to a ballet school. Well,
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: you are definitely put into a furnace. You're not doing wild,
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  Speaker 3: exuberant things that, that the basic instinct to dance and
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  Speaker 3: move and the connection to the body and all of
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  Speaker 3: that kinesthetic gift is subject to this very rigorous structural process,
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  Speaker 3: which ideally allows the instinct to dance to achieve an
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  Speaker 3: artistic height that it could not attain without the discipline.
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  Speaker 3: And then there are the more problematic impulses that are antisocial,
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  Speaker 3: or causing problems, they have to be frustrated in a
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  Speaker 3: different way where something totally new has to emerge because
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: the trajectory of the fire is just going to be
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  Speaker 3: a big problem no matter how we look at it,
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  Speaker 3: which goes to your comment about addiction.
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  Speaker 2: And it's child-rearing, too. I can remember somehow it was
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  Speaker 2: all the thing back then when your kids got to
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: a certain age. to be able to say, usually to
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: a little boy, use your words, use your words. They
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: didn't have all that many words. So it would come
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: out and like, I'm mad. I don't like Susie. And
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  Speaker 2: you could see the frustration there. But of having to
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  Speaker 2: teach kids, pull it in, contain it inside, Your body,
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  Speaker 2: in a sense, is the furnace for the inner fire
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  Speaker 2: of fury, but you can't hit your sister. That we're
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: forever in that tension of what our instincts and desires
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  Speaker 2: and urges want us to do. You know, I'd like
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  Speaker 2: to haul off and clock them versus not a good idea.
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  Speaker 2: Perhaps I could choose some words very carefully to say
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  Speaker 2: I find your behavior very frustrating and have to contain
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  Speaker 2: that inner fury which is like so it's isn't it
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  Speaker 2: forever the story of ego and and instincts, urges, desires, passions, emotions,
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  Speaker 2: either they have us or we have them.
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  Speaker 3: So if we move to this idea of this more
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  Speaker 3: psychological metaphor, and how do we understand our relationship to
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  Speaker 3: inner fire, having us or us having it? So human
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  Speaker 3: beings have been made And they've been made by a Titan.
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  Speaker 3: And the Titans are these ancient, ancient earth forces, unimaged
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  Speaker 3: in many ways, oceans, winds, mountains, unlike the Olympians that
• 20:55
  Speaker 3: are high up on Olympus and they look like perfected
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  Speaker 3: human beings, eternally youthful and beautiful, and also seem interested
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  Speaker 3: in human domestic activities, gods of war and agriculture. So
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  Speaker 3: There are the Olympians up here. There's humanity, you know,
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  Speaker 3: in the beginning kind of crawling around on the earth.
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  Speaker 3: And then there's a mediator between those things. And Prometheus,
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  Speaker 3: I think, represents something inside the human psyche that has
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  Speaker 3: one foot in the archetypal world and then one foot
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  Speaker 3: in the very physical world. You and I had talked before,
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  Speaker 3: and that could be a description of the human ego.
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  Speaker 3: that straddles these two different places and is able, from
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  Speaker 3: the archetypal to the psychoid, is able to translate these
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  Speaker 3: very archetypal dynamics, perhaps even the realization in early humans
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  Speaker 3: that fire could be created, that one didn't have to
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: wait for lightning. I would imagine that that came from
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  Speaker 3: some archetypal insight.
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  Speaker 2: I like that image of it, one foot in the
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  Speaker 2: instinctual and one foot in a way in the heavens,
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  Speaker 2: the gift from the gods, because it was Zeus that
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  Speaker 2: had the control over it and could give permission or not.
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  Speaker 2: And then this elemental force, the Titan, snitches it and
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  Speaker 2: gives it to people. I can imagine, you know, the
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: question for us is, how do we use it or
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: do we overreach? Which is what Prometheus did. He overreached
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  Speaker 2: in stealing fire from the head of all the Olympians, Zeus,
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  Speaker 2: and giving it to mankind. And he paid a terrible
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: price for it, chained to this rock and having his
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: liver devoured every day and regrowing every night. And I
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  Speaker 2: wonder for us, how do we balance those those forces
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  Speaker 2: of the instinctual or perhaps just selfish, egotistical, desirous? And
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  Speaker 2: then when might we overreach and wind up like Prometheus
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  Speaker 2: on a symbolic rock somewhere because we went too far?
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  Speaker 3: Well, I think Jung leans into this in a subtle way,
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: just to start the conversation, that he talks a little
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: bit about Prometheus and the Promethean problem. And as Jung's
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: understanding of the collective unconscious, of this enormous storehouse of
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: information and images and insights, that when someone like himself,
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: Jung himself, plumbs these depths of archetypal and unconscious material,
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: and then brings it through, describes it in words. In
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: the Red Book, he makes pictures of it, that those
• 24:17
  Speaker 3: ideas and those images, in a sense, act as conduits
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: for archetypal forces that cannot necessarily be controlled. And so
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: the person, the artist, the philosopher, the musician, the person
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  Speaker 3: who is incarnating something that has not been here before
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  Speaker 3: is then carrying the emergence archetypal potential, which Jung observed
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: puts that ego under stress often for the entire lifespan.
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  Speaker 3: and that the unconscious itself seems to almost punish the
• 25:06
  Speaker 3: artist by constantly leaning into them, either making demands on them,
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  Speaker 3: giving them overwhelming experiences of feeling and impulses that the
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: collective unconscious, which is so much more powerful than the
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: ego now has its hands on the artist. And there
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: are many tragic stories of artists and writers and philosophers
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  Speaker 3: who couldn't stand the experience, the intensity of having that
• 25:41
  Speaker 3: hand on the God's fire.
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  Speaker 2: So it's really a momentous task, and it is a
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: metaphor for, one way or another for all of us,
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: of what we do with the fire. You know, we
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: don't have to be a great poet or musician or something,
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: but we see the battle writ large in a way.
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  Speaker 2: Somebody like the life of Vincent Van Gogh, for example,
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  Speaker 2: who was so talented and had such a hard time
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  Speaker 2: controlling and met the urges and powers that and the
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: inspiration that came to him to create his beautiful, famous,
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  Speaker 2: original works of art. You know, I am thinking of
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  Speaker 2: what happens when man really overreaches and creates something that
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: he really can't control that's writ even larger than One
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: of the examples of that, the early example that we're
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: all familiar with, is the story of Frankenstein. That there
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: is the Promethean feat of the creator, who was the
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: fictional character as Victor Frankenstein, and he created the creature.
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: And over time, we all refer to him as Frankenstein,
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: but the title of the book says, which I hadn't
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: remembered is Frankenstein or the modern Prometheus. And the backstory
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: is that Mary Shelley and Lord Byron and the person
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: that she eventually married and a stepsister were all vacationing,
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: I think in Italy, but at any rate in Europe
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: during the summer that never really happened. because there had
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: been a huge volcano that exploded in Indonesia. And the
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: volcanic ash created weather disruptions, all kinds of disruptions around
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: the world. And so there they all were in this
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: rented house with nothing to do. And they were all
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: interested in the macabre and in what today we might
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: call sort of sci-fi. And they came up with this creative, hey,
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: I know, Let's all play a game called Who Can
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: Write the Best Horror Story? I'm sure it was said
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: more eloquently than that. And Mary Shelley, who was basically
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: still a teenager, she was only 19 or 20, wrote this.
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: And another man who was a physician, I think to
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: Lord Byron, whose name John Polidori, wrote a story called
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: The Vampire. And That launched us into that whole mythological
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: stream of stories. But Victor Frankenstein, the protagonist in the story,
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: creates the monster or the creature, and he's grieving his
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: mother's death, and he's brilliant, and he's a scientist, and
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: so on and so forth. And he creates the monster,
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: who is about eight feet tall, and hideous, because it's
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: really very difficult to create a facsimile of a human being,
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: as it turns out. And this poor monster is rejected
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: everywhere he goes. People don't like him. He's hideous. He
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: keeps trying to make friends, but people are repulsed by
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: him over and over. I haven't reread the story, but
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: through all these various mishaps and then his own anger
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: and retaliatory actions, eventually he disappears, and he's, I think,
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: still roaming around up in the North Pole. So, just
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: Keep an eye out if you happen to go up
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: into the Arctic Circle, because you never know, the creature
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: might still be up there. But with that little facetious aside,
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: set aside, there is the example of Promethean power writ large,
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: the capability of creating life, and the unanticipated, unwanted consequences
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: of that. And I think we see it all over
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: the place today.
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: There are some wonderful little allusions that Mary Shelley seems
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: to dance back and forth. That if we think about
• 30:42
  Speaker 3: Zeus being the one who was the possessor of fire
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: and Zeus was in control of lightning.
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: Oh, right. Thunder and lightning.
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah, would have seen lightning strike a tree and it
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: would burst into flames. Maybe they would run away. Something
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: Promethean inside of them decides to run over and get
• 31:01
  Speaker 3: a stick and kind of carry it around. The lightning
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: is the thing that holds the fire of life. And
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: in the Frankenstein story, similarly, the inanimate body parts that
• 31:18
  Speaker 3: Victor Frankenstein finds and he sews together are then lit
• 31:23
  Speaker 3: on fire by lightning. The fire of life is put
• 31:27
  Speaker 3: into the wood of Frankenstein. And to his own surprise,
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: things come together. I think you and I were talking earlier,
• 31:37
  Speaker 3: and you had mentioned that Victor Frankenstein is interested in
• 31:41
  Speaker 3: alchemy in the beginning of the book.
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: They were staying near the castle, Frankenstein Castle. They were
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: 10 or 11, 12 miles away from this castle. So anyway, that's...
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: no doubt, the origin of the character's name. And that's right.
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: It takes lightning. It takes a charge to bring the
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: creature to life.
• 32:09
  Speaker 3: So we begin with the symbolism that Prometheus may have
• 32:14
  Speaker 3: the best of motives that he steals fire from Zeus's lightning.
• 32:19
  Speaker 3: He carries it in a sheet of plants, of leaves,
• 32:25
  Speaker 3: and he bestows it on human beings and teaches them
• 32:28
  Speaker 3: about it ostensibly to improve human condition. But Prometheus knows
• 32:35
  Speaker 3: that Zeus doesn't want to share this, that this is
• 32:39
  Speaker 3: supposed to be reserved only for God. And similarly, the
• 32:43
  Speaker 3: young Victor Frankenstein has his eyes on lightning, has his
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: eyes on the capacity to make life. And in his experimentations,
• 32:56
  Speaker 3: he too steals the secret of making life from the
• 33:02
  Speaker 3: divine and then has to suffer a consequence. One of
• 33:08
  Speaker 3: the things that is part of the Frankenstein myth is
• 33:12
  Speaker 3: that when Frankenstein finally comes to life and is rather
• 33:18
  Speaker 3: childlike and sweet and totally innocent, but is grotesque to
• 33:23
  Speaker 3: look at, and Victor abandons him, He just runs away.
• 33:27
  Speaker 3: He doesn't want to be responsible for this enormous event
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: that he has set in motion. And the creature, the
• 33:38
  Speaker 3: Frankenstein monster, is wounded over and over and over again
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: by having no protection, no help, no guidance. And so
• 33:50
  Speaker 3: finally seeks vengeance upon his maker. for the suffering that
• 33:55
  Speaker 3: has been visited upon him by being abandoned.
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: There are so many other examples of these unintended and
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: sort of disastrous consequences. You know, it is the prerogative
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: of the gods to have fire. And is it the
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: prerogative of the gods to create life? It has been mythically.
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: But these days we can clone a sheep. Wasn't there
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: a sheep named Dolly that was cloned? An exact genetic
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: replica of whoever Dolly's progenitor was. We have Promethean powers here.
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: We have indeed become godlike. And what might be the
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: unintended consequences of that is, And as you mentioned before
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: that Prometheus, the name means forethought and his brother Epimetheus
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: means afterthought. And I wonder, are we Promethean in the
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: sense that we're, we're just thinking about what we can
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: do rather than, Oh, let's reflect on this before we've
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: done it. Let's look before we leap.
• 35:19
  Speaker 3: Exactly. So the, The great modern example of this is
• 35:24
  Speaker 3: Oppenheimer and his contribution to the creation of nuclear weapons,
• 35:31
  Speaker 3: or rather his discovery of how to master nuclear fusion,
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: how to operationalize that, which then is co-opted to these
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: military purposes. So we have this genius, who in a
• 35:47
  Speaker 3: sense has one foot in the realm of the gods,
• 35:50
  Speaker 3: and one foot in the material world and is able
• 35:54
  Speaker 3: to translate these insights, instincts, these intuitions about what's possible
• 36:03
  Speaker 3: and work out the formula to break the atom, to
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: set a fire free in this world and to give
• 36:13
  Speaker 3: it to humanity, which at first I'm sure seemed miraculous,
• 36:18
  Speaker 3: although when Oppenheimer saw the first nuclear detonation. He had
• 36:25
  Speaker 3: famously taken a line from the Bhagavad Gita and says,
• 36:30
  Speaker 3: I am become the destroyer of worlds.
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: Oh, wow. And yet he willingly created the atom bomb
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: as a weapon. They built a whole town in in
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: New Mexico in order to fund and have all the
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: resources necessary to create this project. And I know Jung
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: said something to the effect that for human beings to
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: have the atom bomb was like giving guns to five-year-olds
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: or something along that line. And it is Promethean. Have
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: we overreached that? that our creations will destroy us. And
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: the new villain on the horizon, I think, is AI.
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: It'll take over.
• 37:24
  Speaker 3: Well, just thinking about the arc of the Oppenheimer's moment
• 37:29
  Speaker 3: is then all of a sudden the creatures, which are
• 37:32
  Speaker 3: nuclear weapons, proliferate. And now they're pointing at their creator
• 37:38
  Speaker 3: from various other nation states, that there is this threat
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: of the monster's coming home and demanding a reckoning for
• 37:49
  Speaker 3: having been brought to life. And particularly, Victor Frankenstein abandons
• 37:58
  Speaker 3: his creations. And in a sense, we can imagine that
• 38:04
  Speaker 3: the secret of nuclear fission is kind of sent out
• 38:08
  Speaker 3: into the world, was not tended properly, was not kept.
• 38:13
  Speaker 3: close and watched in the way that you would a child,
• 38:15
  Speaker 3: in the way you might be responsible for something you've created.
• 38:20
  Speaker 3: And now it's all over the place in all these
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: kind of different ways. Now, I also want to say
• 38:27
  Speaker 3: on the upside, nuclear reactors could offer, as the technology
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: continues to improve, could offer a remarkable solution to the
• 38:37
  Speaker 3: energy crisis. I have friends who are nuclear engineers. they're
• 38:43
  Speaker 3: very clear that that is the path of the future,
• 38:48
  Speaker 3: that that is the only option that is truly viable.
• 38:52
  Speaker 3: And because people have become so frightened of nuclear weaponry
• 38:59
  Speaker 3: and can only see the monstrous side of it, that
• 39:03
  Speaker 3: they've lost sight of Prometheus's gift of fire to humanity,
• 39:09
  Speaker 3: that it was also a gift. And that human civilization
• 39:13
  Speaker 3: was improved by the fire, even though Prometheus suffered at
• 39:18
  Speaker 3: great cost to bestow that.
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: I still wonder, you know, what does it take to
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: really tend these powers? Because you can build Chernobyl and
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: not tend it well enough, and there's a horrible nuclear accident.
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: So when we take these powers into our own hands...
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: It's a big deal, and I think it may be
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: forever ambiguous that there's both a plus and a minus
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: every time. Yes, there's a nuclear power plant that can
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: deliver energy to some countless number of homes, and it's clean,
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: and it doesn't produce waste, and things can go wrong.
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: The tsunami that flooded the nuclear in Japan. There are
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: still consequences from that. And in the States, we had
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: Three Mile Island. So I'm not thinking there's a right, wrong, good, bad,
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: but just how do we hold both of the possibilities
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: that is inherently ambiguous.
• 40:39
  Speaker 3: And I think the myth actually helps us because there's Prometheus,
• 40:44
  Speaker 3: who is forethought, and Epimetheus, who is hindsight. And as
• 40:51
  Speaker 3: often is in mythology, brothers often represent ego and shadow.
• 40:57
  Speaker 3: Prometheus and the worship of Prometheus was connected to prophecy
• 41:04
  Speaker 3: because Prometheus had a sense of what is going to
• 41:09
  Speaker 3: happen down the line. And in that regard, it is
• 41:13
  Speaker 3: quite possible that Prometheus was fully aware that he would
• 41:18
  Speaker 3: pay a terrible price, but that he would pay the
• 41:21
  Speaker 3: price on behalf of humanity. So humanity would get the
• 41:26
  Speaker 3: benefits of fire, but Prometheus would in some way be
• 41:30
  Speaker 3: eternally punished for it. And this leans into the Judeo-Christian
• 41:36
  Speaker 3: stories and other stories of the sacrificed gods who suffer
• 41:41
  Speaker 3: on behalf of humanity, but suffering there must be a
• 41:45
  Speaker 3: sense that it's a price that is predicted. Epimetheus is
• 41:51
  Speaker 3: more impulsive. He uses up all the gifts for the
• 41:54
  Speaker 3: animals and has no sense. Oh, look, there's nothing in
• 41:57
  Speaker 3: the bank, but boy, look at those animals. They're great.
• 42:01
  Speaker 3: So the Olympians are pretty angry about how much has
• 42:05
  Speaker 3: been given to humanity and they still want some punishment
• 42:10
  Speaker 3: going on. And so the Olympians take mud again and
• 42:17
  Speaker 3: craft the perfect woman, Pandora. Athena puts jade in her
• 42:24
  Speaker 3: eyes and breathes life into her. She is the most
• 42:30
  Speaker 3: perfect of all women. They're going to give her to Epimetheus,
• 42:38
  Speaker 3: but before she leaves Olympus, they're giving her a little box.
• 42:44
  Speaker 3: The Olympians have put every form of human evil and
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: suffering in the box. And they seal it all up.
• 42:54
  Speaker 3: And they just say to her, you know, oh, you're
• 42:57
  Speaker 3: going to have a great time. Don't open that box.
• 43:01
  Speaker 3: Whatever you do. And they give her this gift and
• 43:06
  Speaker 3: curse of curiosity, which brings us back to Oppenheimer. Yeah.
• 43:12
  Speaker 3: There is something in the human spirit about curiosity and
• 43:17
  Speaker 3: the need to know that is part of the story.
• 43:23
  Speaker 3: So she's given to Epimetheus who can't believe his good luck.
• 43:29
  Speaker 3: He's smitten. And because he doesn't have a lot of foresight,
• 43:34
  Speaker 3: he just says, yes, absolutely. She's amazing. I'd be happy
• 43:39
  Speaker 3: to have her. And so they're in this bit of bliss.
• 43:43
  Speaker 3: And after a while, Pandora, having the gift of curiosity,
• 43:48
  Speaker 3: as Oppenheimer did, and perhaps as the progenitors of artificial
• 43:52
  Speaker 3: intelligence do, she opens the box. And every ill, every
• 43:58
  Speaker 3: character flaw, every disease, every misfortune zooms out of the box.
• 44:06
  Speaker 3: And Pandora can see this somehow, which I find very interesting,
• 44:11
  Speaker 3: because she's stunned. with this rushing river of misfortune. And
• 44:18
  Speaker 3: in the last second, she closes the lid, you know, panting,
• 44:23
  Speaker 3: thinking maybe she's kind of stopped the flood of terrible
• 44:26
  Speaker 3: things from happening. Epimetheus, who only learns things in Heisenzeit,
• 44:34
  Speaker 3: is the perfect person to be standing there with the
• 44:36
  Speaker 3: woman that he loves, looking at her, adoring her, being
• 44:41
  Speaker 3: rather impulsive, not having a care for the future, but
• 44:45
  Speaker 3: it's only in hindsight that Epimetheus is like, ah, damn,
• 44:49
  Speaker 3: we should have buried that box. I don't know what
• 44:51
  Speaker 3: we were thinking, keeping that around the house. But, you know,
• 44:54
  Speaker 3: the cat's out of the bag. Interestingly, Pandora discovers that
• 45:01
  Speaker 3: there is one intelligence left in the box, and the
• 45:05
  Speaker 3: intelligence is hope. Now, I'd like to put something... perhaps
• 45:13
  Speaker 3: a little more pessimistic into the room.
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: All the ills and ailments that got let out of
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: the box isn't pessimistic enough?
• 45:20
  Speaker 3: Well, I think that people put this romantic fantasy that
• 45:27
  Speaker 3: one of the gods must have really liked humanity and
• 45:30
  Speaker 3: put one good thing in the box called hope. Because
• 45:34
  Speaker 3: if she opens the box, and she does, and lets
• 45:37
  Speaker 3: hope out, then at least human beings in the midst
• 45:40
  Speaker 3: of their suffering can be buoyed up by hope. But
• 45:45
  Speaker 3: what I'd like to suggest is, hope may very well
• 45:49
  Speaker 3: be one of the evils. Because Oppenheimer's putting all this together,
• 45:54
  Speaker 3: and he hopes that it'll be put to really good use,
• 46:00
  Speaker 3: and that all the wars that will implement these atomic
• 46:03
  Speaker 3: weapons will wind up being just wars. And he's very
• 46:06
  Speaker 3: hopeful about that. People are very hopeful about artificial intelligence,
• 46:14
  Speaker 3: which could develop all of these remarkable capacities. Hope is
• 46:20
  Speaker 3: the luxury of Epimetheus, who learns in hindsight. Hope is
• 46:25
  Speaker 3: the seduction. We'll just put all this stuff together, stick
• 46:30
  Speaker 3: it under the lightning, see if it lights up and
• 46:33
  Speaker 3: comes to life, and we'll just be hopeful that it's
• 46:36
  Speaker 3: going to be this amazing human being.
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: Oh, wow.
• 46:39
  Speaker 3: Let's put these genetic things together and create some new corn.
• 46:43
  Speaker 3: And we'll just be hopeful that it's going to be
• 46:45
  Speaker 3: nutritious and everyone is going to love it. And we'll
• 46:48
  Speaker 3: just hope that it's not going to give people horrible
• 46:50
  Speaker 3: digestive diseases because no one knows how to digest that molecule.
• 46:55
  Speaker 3: That hope is often that terrible little nudge into the
• 47:05
  Speaker 3: unwise action. The thing that says, well, let's just put
• 47:11
  Speaker 3: all the money on the table for the next roulette wheel,
• 47:13
  Speaker 3: and let's just hope that we'll win, because we've lost
• 47:16
  Speaker 3: almost everything already. So one could be very ambivalent about hope,
• 47:24
  Speaker 3: but Pandora has to make sure that all the evil
• 47:26
  Speaker 3: is let out. So there's the prophetic view of Prometheus
• 47:31
  Speaker 3: that kind of knows that something's going to have to
• 47:34
  Speaker 3: be sacrificed. to give fire to humanity. And then there's Epimetheus,
• 47:40
  Speaker 3: who's just hopeful everything's going to be great, and then
• 47:43
  Speaker 3: releases this untold ills upon humanity because it all looked
• 47:50
  Speaker 3: so good at the beginning.
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, I have another recollection here in that
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: book that I had as a child. There was an
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: illustration of Pandora opening the box, and all the ills
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: and ailments were were imaged as insects. And so this
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: swarm of insects was flying out of the box while
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: Pandora's mouth, she's kind of agape, like, oh, what happened here?
• 48:18
  Speaker 2: And it was portrayed as a good thing that fortunately,
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: there's still hope. So I would like to go back
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: to my theme running through today of ambiguity. that I
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: agree with you that hope can be fruitless and naive,
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: and it can keep us going against all odds. You know,
• 48:47
  Speaker 2: what pops into my mind is Nelson Mandela, who was
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: imprisoned on Robben Island for 27 years. I imagine he
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: somehow kept hope alive. that somehow, some way, that obviously
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: he could not effect, that somehow something would change, justice
• 49:17
  Speaker 2: would be done, and by God, his hope was rewarded,
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: and he was not in good health, understandably. But again,
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: it comes to, you know, how do we use it?
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: How much consciousness can we bring? You know, if I
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: hope that the sun will rise in the West, it's
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: not going to happen. How much insight do I have?
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: Have I done any little research about how the sun works?
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: You know, no, I haven't. It's not an informed, consciously
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: held hope. But for somebody like Nelson Mandela, it may
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: fuel hope. the life spark and the will to hold
• 50:11
  Speaker 2: on in service of something greater.
• 50:14
  Speaker 3: And I understand that. And I think many of us
• 50:19
  Speaker 3: in our darkness have some internal image that we're clinging to,
• 50:24
  Speaker 3: whether it's a religious image or some sense that there
• 50:29
  Speaker 3: will be a future beyond the suffering that we have
• 50:32
  Speaker 3: in the moment.
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: Your point is so well taken. Hope in its darker
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: or negative aspect is just denial or naivete.
• 50:44
  Speaker 3: Right. Well, let's just throw the dice and see what happens.
• 50:48
  Speaker 2: The gods love to punish naivete and innocence. But in
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: its positive aspect, it is inspiring or it can be inspiring.
• 51:00
  Speaker 3: The juxtaposition that I'd like to offer is if we
• 51:04
  Speaker 3: were to entertain that the word hope in the way
• 51:07
  Speaker 3: that Pandora and Epimetheus seem to be demonstrating it, that
• 51:12
  Speaker 3: the correction would be foresight, intuition, and intentionality. That Prometheus,
• 51:23
  Speaker 3: as a god of prophecy, is thinking about what is
• 51:29
  Speaker 3: likely possible as things continue to unfold. That intuition, those
• 51:37
  Speaker 3: of us who are intuitive types, we're gathering data, we're
• 51:40
  Speaker 3: gathering data, and we have a sense of potential. And
• 51:46
  Speaker 3: once we have a sense of the potential in a person,
• 51:48
  Speaker 3: in a situation, in any number of ways, there's a
• 51:52
  Speaker 3: sense that there's an emerging process, there's an emerging thing here.
• 51:58
  Speaker 3: And if I keep the emergent possibility envision that there
• 52:04
  Speaker 3: is something that's given to us. There's something to relate to,
• 52:09
  Speaker 3: and we can fall in love with a perceived potential
• 52:13
  Speaker 3: which is not present in the given moment. So I
• 52:18
  Speaker 3: think that Prometheus' prophetic vision foresaw that there would be
• 52:24
  Speaker 3: suffering involved in this. One could say, well, he's hoping
• 52:29
  Speaker 3: that this potential is going to happen, so maybe that's hope.
• 52:33
  Speaker 3: But I think as intuitive types, it's not the same
• 52:35
  Speaker 3: thing as hope. To legitimately perceive the potential of something
• 52:40
  Speaker 3: feels quite real. It doesn't feel like gambling. Whether or
• 52:44
  Speaker 3: not the situation, the conditions will all come together to
• 52:48
  Speaker 3: actualize the hope. I mean, that depends on lots of things,
• 52:51
  Speaker 3: some of which we can control, some not. But I
• 52:55
  Speaker 3: think of hope as a kind of audacious gambling energy.
• 53:02
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 53:03
  Speaker 3: That we have no idea what's in front of us,
• 53:06
  Speaker 3: if we think from Epimetheus' standpoint. We have no idea
• 53:09
  Speaker 3: where any of this is going. But listen, what we're
• 53:12
  Speaker 3: leaving behind is kind of crummy. So let's just, you know,
• 53:15
  Speaker 3: go ahead. Give me a shot. So intention and true
• 53:23
  Speaker 3: emergent potential is a way to perhaps step away from
• 53:28
  Speaker 3: blind hope towards something that is being informed by something
• 53:33
  Speaker 3: or other.
• 53:35
  Speaker 2: I'm still going to hold on to hope. Of course,
• 53:40
  Speaker 2: I hope that as we keep talking, you'll see this differently.
• 53:43
  Speaker 2: I can't resist that.
• 53:45
  Speaker 3: We'll keep talking for a long time, I have no doubt.
• 53:50
  Speaker 2: But I like having it veer into intuition, which is
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: a realistic potential thing. that I can make this happen.
• 54:01
  Speaker 2: And the intention of I'm going to apply myself, and
• 54:06
  Speaker 2: if I'm Victor Frankenstein, I have the intuition and the
• 54:11
  Speaker 2: foresight that I can create life, and he had the
• 54:15
  Speaker 2: knowledge base and the intention, and he worked at it,
• 54:20
  Speaker 2: and he made it happen. But where I'm going here is,
• 54:24
  Speaker 2: you know, the creature was unhappy, and wreaked havoc and
• 54:29
  Speaker 2: had havoc wreaked on him. Back to the Greeks and
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: some of the inscriptions on the temple at Delphi of
• 54:41
  Speaker 2: nothing in excess. And when do we know that it's excessive? Like,
• 54:47
  Speaker 2: you know, to my mind, to use your example of
• 54:50
  Speaker 2: take your last dollars and bet them all on a
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: turn of the roulette wheel seems at the very least excessive.
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: And the other that I can recall from that temple
• 55:03
  Speaker 2: is to know thyself, which from a Jungian point of
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: view is, you know, are you really making a conscious decision?
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: One of the terrible sins for the Greeks was hubris,
• 55:17
  Speaker 2: to arrogate to oneself the powers of the gods that
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: you must remember, you, all of us, must remember You
• 55:28
  Speaker 2: are mortal, and we cannot be inflated and arrogant and
• 55:35
  Speaker 2: become too godlike. We have to remain conscious of who
• 55:40
  Speaker 2: we are and what our limitations are. And Mary Shelley's
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: story is just a great example of Promethean power, and
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: there it is in the title of her story. And
• 55:55
  Speaker 2: I have to wonder, have we arrogated to ourselves too
• 56:03
  Speaker 2: much inappropriate hubris and power? What are we doing? All
• 56:14
  Speaker 2: we have to do is look around. We can look
• 56:18
  Speaker 2: at leaders, political situations, areas where there are wars. scientific
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: quote-unquote advances and just wonder about have we become Promethean?
• 56:35
  Speaker 2: And I don't know that Prometheus knew what would befall
• 56:39
  Speaker 2: him or whether it just happened to him afterwards that
• 56:43
  Speaker 2: he was punished, but that we need to have the
• 56:48
  Speaker 2: kind of foresight and afterthought that that the two Greek
• 56:55
  Speaker 2: mythological characters were discussing, didn't really have.
• 56:59
  Speaker 3: And those two qualities are both in human beings, forethought
• 57:04
  Speaker 3: and hindsight. There is perhaps one hopeful bit.
• 57:11
  Speaker 2: You used the word hopeful, Joseph.
• 57:13
  Speaker 3: Exactly.
• 57:16
  Speaker 2: Go for it.
• 57:19
  Speaker 3: That Prometheus is bound to this the Caucasus Mountains, actually,
• 57:26
  Speaker 3: this mighty eagle. Eagles are associated with Zeus. An emissary
• 57:30
  Speaker 3: of Zeus comes and eats the liver out, and he's screaming,
• 57:33
  Speaker 3: and it grows back at night, and it happens again
• 57:35
  Speaker 3: and again. And then something miraculous happens at some untold future,
• 57:41
  Speaker 3: is that the hero Hercules, who is a demigod, he
• 57:47
  Speaker 3: is a son of Zeus, but born of a woman,
• 57:50
  Speaker 3: that he is both divine and human, has transgressed and
• 57:56
  Speaker 3: he has set before him 12 labors that he must
• 57:59
  Speaker 3: perform in order to redeem himself. And while he is
• 58:03
  Speaker 3: in route to do one of these labors, he comes
• 58:08
  Speaker 3: upon Prometheus in this agony. Hercules feels compassion for the
• 58:18
  Speaker 3: suffering of Prometheus, which I think is very important. He
• 58:23
  Speaker 3: shoots the eagle with one of his arrows and ends
• 58:28
  Speaker 3: Prometheus's torment. And so one lens could be that there
• 58:38
  Speaker 3: is a reconciliation between human ambition, represented by Prometheus, and
• 58:47
  Speaker 3: divine authority, which is represented by Zeus, that these two
• 58:51
  Speaker 3: forces Could be mediated, reconciled by a hero who straddles
• 58:59
  Speaker 3: both realms. And the key to resolving this is compassion
• 59:07
  Speaker 3: for suffering.
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
• 59:10
  Speaker 3: And when we think about Oppenheimer and the whole team
• 59:14
  Speaker 3: creating this frightening weapon, where was Hercules talking about feeling
• 59:23
  Speaker 3: compassion for suffering? So learning from that, as we're creating
• 59:29
  Speaker 3: all kinds of remarkable new things. Yes, maybe this will
• 59:35
  Speaker 3: relieve suffering. Maybe it'll visit terrible things about humanity. But
• 59:43
  Speaker 3: the attitude that reconciles all of this is compassion. That's
• 59:51
  Speaker 3: the question. Is artificial intelligence in all its expansions aligned
• 59:58
  Speaker 3: with compassion? And is there an eye to suffering that
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 3: may be alleviated and suffering that may be created by this?
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 3: And if those possibilities are held in compassion, then like Hercules,
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 3: a decision might be made that is perhaps corrective or
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 3: temperate or somehow has a foot in the archetypal and
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 3: the human so that We don't lose sight of vulnerability.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 2: Well, that brings us to a very hopeful note of
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 2: heroes combine the divine and the human. And that that is,
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 2: maybe that's our mission. And that the hallmark of that
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: is compassion.
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 3: Yes, we can intend compassion.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 2: Yes. Yes. okay shall we transition to.
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 3: A dream let's do that a dreamer is a 41
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 3: year old male and he works as a technology attorney
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 3: and here is his dream a likable completely bald old
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 3: man was near the end of his life and fading
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 3: into obscurity so he gave me his eagles He taught
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 3: me how to care for it and what to do
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 3: with it. The eagle came near me. It was on
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 3: my arm at times. I sat listening to the old
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 3: man for a while. Then he said, Of course, this
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 3: isn't everything you need to know, but this is all
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 3: I can teach you. For the rest, you'll have to
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 3: learn from the old man who taught me. Ah. For context,
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 3: he says, I'm about to move overseas with my girlfriend
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 3: of two years, and we are trying to envision a
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 3: longer-term future together. He says the main feelings were honored
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 3: to be entrusted with the eagle by the old man
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 3: and to be accepted by the eagle itself, a sense
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 3: of responsibility, and he felt happy. He offers a little
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 3: bit more explanation. My girlfriend and I have been pursuing
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 3: birdwatching as a hobby since we met. The night before
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 3: the dream, we had been perusing bird books together after
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 3: seeing two robins fighting over mating territory. One of the
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 3: books noted that birds of prey are predators of small
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 3: birds such as robins.
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 2: I'm just noting that my first feeling in hearing this
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 2: dream was was a bodily reaction, smiling. The dream has
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 2: made me smile. And I highlight that because I just,
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 2: you know, for listeners, notice how you feel when you
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 2: first hear a dream or anything else that happens in life.
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 2: Your body will tell you. You'll have a physical reaction.
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 2: And that can be a way in of what that
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 2: first physical emotional response matters.
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 3: So that sounds great to work with that as also
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 3: an example for the listeners. So Deb, starting with that
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 3: feeling of smiling, how do you take the next step
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 3: into the dream through the smile?
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 2: I always think about the first part of the dream
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 2: and the setting because that is the psychic situation. The
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 2: dreams usually start you out with, here's where you are
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 2: inside in your life, and then they depict it as,
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 2: you know, I was walking on the beach or in
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 2: a building where there was this strong smell of smoke.
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 2: We kind of intuitively get it. And this dream starts
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 2: with a likable, completely bald old man was near the
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 2: end of his life. And he gives our dreamer, the
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 2: dream ego, a legacy. But the first part of the
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 2: dream is a likable, completely bald old man is starting
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 2: to fade. So some inner old man, something of the
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 2: previous generation, maybe a parental complex, is ending and passes
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 2: on a legacy of what we all do. We pass
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 2: on our eagle, we hope. Isn't that nice? And eagles
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 2: are Zeus's birds. And Zeus was the head of Mount Olympus.
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 2: He was the head of the gods. and the eagle
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 2: was Zeus's bird. And of course, it's an American symbol,
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 2: the symbol of our country. So here, there's a smiling
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 2: situation of, here's a legacy for you, an eagle.
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 3: So while the man is fading toward the end of life,
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 3: and it's interesting, he's fading into obscurity. I think that's
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 3: an interesting juxtaposition. It's, It's not just at the end
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 3: of his life, but that he is moving into a
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 3: hidden state. When something is obscured, it's falling out of knowledge,
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 3: falling out of memory, that it can no longer be
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 3: accessed so easily. And the inclusion of that word psychologizes
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 3: the inner death process, because often in people's dreams, when
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 3: a character seems to die, We often interpret it as
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 3: falling out of consciousness or falling into a depth of
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 3: the unconscious that it may be very difficult to access
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 3: and perhaps maybe not possible to access at all again.
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 3: But its life continues in this perhaps secret place. I'm
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 3: also really struck by the fact that the dreamer wants
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 3: us to know that he's not just bald, but he
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 3: is compassionate. Completely bold.
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's okay. What do you make of that? You're right.
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 2: That's a specific detail that is worth taking a second
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 2: look at.
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 3: For me, when I used to be a medical social
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 3: worker in a burn trauma unit, and so I was
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 3: not too frequently, but sometimes there in the end of life,
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 3: And depending on the illness or what had happened, when
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 3: someone had lost all of their hair, it made them
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 3: seem like babies. It was as if they had been
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 3: returned to an infancy, just the way some babies are
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 3: born and they don't have any hair. And there's something
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 3: so profoundly vulnerable about being an adult who has lost
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 3: all of their hair.
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 2: I'm also looking at the flip side, and I think
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 2: your point is really well taken for a very old
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 2: man who is dying. And yet I also think about
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 2: it's a symbol of sort of potent masculinity of all
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 2: kinds of TV stars and actors and films shave their
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 2: heads so they're completely bald. It's like, I don't need hair.
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 2: Because I've got the juice.
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 3: It's interesting that somewhat younger men will lose their hair, really,
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 3: who have the very high levels of testosterone because the
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 3: testosterone thickens the skin to the point where the hair
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 3: follicles begin to lose blood flow. So there's a relationship
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 3: between high levels of testosterone and loss of head hair.
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 3: So you're quite right.
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: And also.
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 3: As we may have seen people towards the end of life,
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 3: as metabolic processes begin to recede, men will lose the
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 3: hair on their legs and hair on all of their
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 3: body will begin to reduce dramatically as a shift of metabolism.
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 3: But I take your meaning that baldness could be a
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 3: symbol of potency. It could also be a symbol that
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 3: the life force has withdrawn from the surface of the skin.
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 3: And so things are not maintenanced there. But I like
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 3: the valence. I also, it's important that he's likable. He
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 3: might be near the end of his life, and that
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 3: the dream ego senses that, but that the old man
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 3: is still vital. He's vital enough to be likable and
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 3: relational and be able to tell interesting stories.
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and he's giving. Yes. He gave me his eagle.
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 2: He taught me how to care for it, what to
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 2: do with it. And then the eagle accepts the transfer
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 2: and comes near our dream ego, and it's on his
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 2: arm at times. So there's something here about passing something on,
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 2: passing the baton. And we've read it a million times
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 2: about people who say, oh, this is the watch that
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 2: was my father's or it was my grandfather's. of something
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 2: being passed down from generation to generation. And in this case,
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 2: it's an eagle.
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 3: Yes, that brings up the idea of the lineage, because
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 3: there's a sense that the old man who taught him
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 3: how to care for the eagle, there's an implication that
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 3: this eagle perhaps is a metaphysical eagle. This is an
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 3: eagle that lives forever, that got passed from an old
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 3: man to this man, and then He lived 90 years
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 3: and the eagle is still alive and it gets passed
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 3: to a young man and then ostensibly passed further again. So,
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 3: which I think you evoked with thinking of the eagle
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 3: as connected to Zeus, that the eagle is a mythic eagle.
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 3: It's a spiritual eagle that stays alive and vital even
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 3: though its caretakers fade lifetime after lifetime.
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 2: So I am thinking about that and it takes us into,
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 2: you know, what is an eagle as a symbol of
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 2: a particular kind of life force? And I have to
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 2: add a personal anecdote that while we're here wintering in Florida,
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 2: there is an eagle here. who flies by the window
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 2: every afternoon. It is riveting, and there are other birds
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 2: that fly by, of course, especially pelicans. But that eagle
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 2: with its white head and its white tail and its
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 2: wingspan makes my breath stop every time it flies by.
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 2: And I'm looking out the window and working on Zoom,
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 2: and I'm facing the window. And when that eagle flies by,
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 2: I look away from the screen for a moment. So
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 2: this is a powerful dream image of to be given
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 2: an eagle. And sometimes I can see its talons. And
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 2: I have also seen an eagle catch another bird in flight.
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 3: That must have been amazing.
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 2: It just dives and snatched this kind of nondescript black bird.
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 2: I'm not a birder. And that, too, is a breath-stopping moment.
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 2: So they're not cute, adorable little birds.
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 3: Yes. They're also huge.
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 2: Huge. I didn't appreciate how big it is. Yes.
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 3: Down in North Carolina, we have eagles. And you have
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 3: to watch your pets. Like, you know, people that have
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 3: small dogs, they'll get carried off. So it's funny and
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 3: not so funny. Yeah, I get it. It's real. This
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 3: stuff is real.
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 2: So he's got a powerful legacy to pass on, being
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 2: kind of king of the birds, and a certain ruthlessness
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 2: that eagles have. They are birds of prey. They're predators.
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 3: So if we look at the context, I'm trying to
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 3: weave it together, that he's about to move overseas with
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 3: his girlfriend of about two years, and they are beginning
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 3: to plan a future, to envision... a long-term future together.
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 3: So it sounds like two important things are occurring. When
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 3: he says overseas, I guess the implication is that he's
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 3: in the United States and he's going to go over
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 3: to Europe, perhaps. To relocate from the United States to,
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 3: let's say, some European area is an enormous undertaking. There's
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 3: a lot of implications involved. and a huge translation into
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 3: a different culture, a different archetypal dynamism, in some ways
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 3: into a more ancient culture, for sure, and that something
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 3: is being passed on to him that ostensibly he will
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 3: need to pass on, that he is going to carry
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 3: with him into this, what I think of as a journey,
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 3: a journey to a new land. He's also considering, I
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 3: would imagine, having a kind of permanent relationship with this girl,
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 3: with a spouse. And the journey of choosing to have
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 3: a committed, stable, long-term relationship, perhaps a marriage, that's another
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 3: really substantive journey across open water. And that the ancient
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 3: tradition masculine, the ancestors passing something to him from the grandfather,
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 3: from the great-grandfather to the father to him, and then
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 3: perhaps on from him, that he is participating in an
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 3: ancestral lineage, both of immigrating perhaps to the new land
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 3: and also considering a permanent relationship with a spouse that
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 3: could in include, let's say, a son or a daughter
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 3: who he would pass the eagle onto as well. So
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 3: the eagle is a spirit. As you were saying, it's
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 3: a spirit of instinctive dynamism. It's a spirit of power.
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 3: It's a spirit, as Americans, it's a spirit of democracy
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 3: and freedom and dynamism and authority. And the sense is,
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 3: it is, while he says that he's giving him his eagle,
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 3: which I'm not sure, if it was my own analysis,
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 3: I'd kind of ask, has the eagle really become your property?
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 3: Or have you become, you know, the caretaker of the spirit,
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 3: the eagle that never dies? But that's going to have
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 3: to get sorted out in his mind, right?
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 2: I think that is a really important point of, if
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 2: we had him in the room, of how do you
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 2: envision your relationship with this eagle? Because there can be
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 2: an inflationary aspect around a symbol like this, of like, okay,
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 2: now I have the eagle and it's mine. versus something
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 2: has been passed on to me that I am the
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 2: steward of, that I care for it and have a
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 2: respectful relationship with it, but I'm not identified with, oh, good,
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 2: now I have ego spirit and ego power. Once we
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 2: arrogate that kind of archetypal force to ourselves, it can
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 2: really be inflating. But I don't read it that way, actually,
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 2: from the context. It feels like the dreamer is making
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 2: a big life transition toward a permanent relationship and establishing
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 2: a new home, literally in a new place, a new land,
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 2: and moving into the future At which point this old
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 2: man in him passes the eagle on.
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 3: And that tasks him with reaching back further into time
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 3: or antiquity because there's more to learn about the eagle
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 3: than this man either has time or capacity to teach
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 3: so that he will need to reach back to the
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 3: mentor who taught him. You know, in spiritual traditions, the
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 3: lineage is often very, very important. You know, in the
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 3: Far East, the gurus... and their disciples and their disciples
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 3: disciples there is there is thought to be a kind
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 3: of literal spirit the spirit of the teachings perhaps even
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 3: a living spirit that is passed from the master to
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 3: the student And some believe it is really a literal,
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 3: somewhat supernatural power that is surrendered. And this carries some
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 3: of that quality.
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 2: Yes, it does. And it takes me to the collective unconscious,
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 2: the deep, deep layer of the unconscious that Jung discovered.
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 2: that he believed was sort of like our genetic traits
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 2: that evolved over eons, that we carry the past with us,
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 2: and that so it is with our psychic history as well,
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 2: that that is passed on. And so there's a kind
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 2: of phylogenetic memory that we carry, and our dreamer in
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 2: this context has access to previous generations, to instinctual, inherited,
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 2: deeply human wisdom about old men and the masculine, and
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 2: that that is in him, like what you were talking about, Joseph,
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 2: like the lineage of gurus, that we can reach back generations.
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 2: We have access to stored human experience. And he can
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 2: learn that, our dreamer can learn that from the old
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 2: man who taught the man who is passing on the eagle.
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 2: It's really lovely. It's a huge connection.
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 3: If I step way, way back, and because the images
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 3: are so delightful, I can keep staring at the eagle.
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 3: But I'm stepping back. If I were to take all
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 3: of so much of the material and set it aside
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 3: and ask, what does the ego not know at the beginning?
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 3: And what does he know more about at the end
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 3: of this brief dream? And he is being taught how
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 3: to care for something. And he is embarking on a
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 3: journey with a loved one to have a new life
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 3: in a new place. And so the unconscious is also
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 3: saying there are new and surprising objects, inner objects, outer objects,
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 3: loved ones, and you need to learn how to care
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 3: for them, how to tend them, and what to do
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 3: with them, which is, again, a broad enigmatic statement, but
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 3: how to exercise them, how to care for them, how
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 3: to be in relationship to them. And I'm wondering if
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 3: the idea of the long-term future with the relationship, that
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 3: the relationship could be seen as the eagle as well.
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 3: It's a bit of a stretch, but the idea of
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 3: being in relationship, in a marriage, And what is the
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 3: care and tending and the doing of the relationship that
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 3: he's going to carry into this next stage of his life?
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 2: And he can learn from the old man within him. Exactly.
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 2: He has that inside himself.
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 3: And that the tending, the capacity to care stretches back
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 3: antiquity and there is something inside of us genetically and
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 3: instinctively that if we are paying attention to it is
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 3: talking to us about how to be in relationship how
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 3: to be with the other in our lives I'm going
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 3: to verbalize a bias and I apologize to the attorneys
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 3: in the world but having known many attorneys in my
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 3: life whether it's a certain type of person is attracted
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 3: to law or that the practice of being an attorney
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 3: requires you to develop a certain kind of personality. But
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 3: often there.
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 2: Is a.
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 3: Removal of feeling. People have to be very objective. They
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 3: have to be very strategic. Often an attorney has to
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 3: be very aggressive. There's a lot about winning the debate,
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 3: winning your side of it, winning for your clients, uh,
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 3: harvesting all this forensic information to be right and to
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 3: get what you need and defeat the other side of it.
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 3: I mean, it's a, I can understand how exciting that
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 3: is to be an attorney and whether it's contract work or, um,
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 3: work that's being done in the courtroom, it's still that
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 3: same spirit, um, of the war of words and the
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 3: power of words, as well as harnessed aggression. Consequently, when
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 3: the attorneys of the world go according, there's a whole
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 3: other side of the relational world that isn't about being
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 3: right and isn't about winning and isn't about being the
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 3: smartest or finding the chink in what's wrong with the argument,
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 3: but is about how to care and how to tend
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 3: and how to be sensitive and nurture and feed and
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 3: house something. It's not a legal argument with the eagle.
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 3: It's not going to argue with you. You just have
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 3: to learn what the eagle needs. And also, by the way,
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 3: animals are not as adaptive as human beings. So human
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 3: beings who care for animals need to learn what the
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 3: animal needs and supply it, or lest the animal die.
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 3: So the human has to sublimate whatever its fantasies are
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 3: and its own priorities to make sure that the creatures
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 3: that are under its control get what they need because
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 3: they're now dependent.
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 2: So it may be this dream is about balancing the
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 2: aggressive eagle power, you know, and as you say, attorneys
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 2: harness aggression to argue their case in court, and that's
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 2: what it's often called. And I'm aware that this dream
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 2: was had by the dreamer the night before after having
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 2: seen two robins fighting over mating territory, and that one
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 2: of their bird books noted birds of prey are predators
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 2: of small birds such as robins. So what you're saying
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 2: of how to tend, how to attend to what the
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 2: animal nature, his instinctual nature needs, versus being a predator.
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 2: How do you balance those things? How do you harness
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 2: your aggression, your assertiveness, and the ability to be a leader?
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 2: Zeus was the head of the pantheon of gods, and
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 2: he was also very aggressive and sometimes very lawless in
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 2: his decrees and punishments and pursuits. And how to... How
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 2: do you tend to and how do you use eagle
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 2: power wisely? Well, the dream says, that's okay. He has
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 2: an inner old man who can teach him.
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 3: And there's more to learn.
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 2: More, always more.
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 3: That's the message. Yes. Here's the eagle. Here's the basic instructions.
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 3: I'm fading into obscurity, but go down the road a
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 3: couple of miles and talk to my teacher because... you're
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 3: just beginning to learn what's required to be the keeper
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 3: of the eagle, to be the high priest of the eagle.
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 3: The last bit I want to say is that in
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 3: Western astrology, the eagle and the Scorpio are both assigned
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 3: to the astrologic sign of Scorpio. And there is a
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 3: progression that the lower Scorpio energy, which is said to
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 3: be the sexual forces, often in the spiritual traditions are
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 3: thought to have a sting to them, that being purely
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 3: sexually driven without regard for any philosophic frame can leave
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 3: us like two fighting Robins. You know, the idea of
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 3: territory and mating and the lower instinctive energies of reproduction
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 3: and the fight for reproduction But many spiritual traditions claim
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 3: that the creativity of the sexual force can also be
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 3: turned to higher aims. Freud wrote about this in terms
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 3: of sublimation, that the sexual force he attributed to sports, civilization, art,
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 3: that the sexual libido could be and was in fact
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 3: redirected to all kinds of other aims. And in the
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 3: symbolic system, the Scorpio becomes the eagle. And the eagle
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 3: is able to soar, fueled by the creative and even
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 3: reproductive dynamism of the sexuality. So the eagle could represent
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 3: something very new that is happening at 41 with reproducing
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 3: a life, reproducing or begetting oneself upon the earth, which
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 3: is a way of thinking about bringing forward other kinds
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 3: of children, a vision for a new life in Europe,
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 3: the book that you want to write, the new things
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 3: that require desire, creativity, and passion in order to bring forward.
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 3: And the eagle in astrology is a sign of that
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 3: higher application of the creative forces. I think in the end, Deb,
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 3: you and I just both think the dreams is really
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 3: positive in all the various ways.
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I want to wish them well. Yeah.
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 3: I hope we hear from him after he lands in Europe.
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 2: That would be great.
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 3: Because it sounds like he's going to have a great experience.
• 1:30:33
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• 1:30:39
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• 1:30:51
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• 1:30:53
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• 1:31:00
  Speaker 1: living this Jungian life.