I think one of my greatest disagreements with Bret and Heather Weinstein is their idea of not being able to go back. I think it’s part of their own underlying evolutionary ideological vision. And in a sense, it’s right. You’re always going into the future. But going back, return, as a metaphorical moral and ideological journey, is a staple of mythology and evolved psychology the world over.
Jordan Peterson has articulated this idea of return as the descent into the underworld and resurrection of the spirit of the father. That that is how you rescue and revivify a dying culture, by resicovering and revitalizing in a new, living form what had become blind and dead over time, the enduring spirit and wisdom of the culture. But you don’t generally get to that stage of return until you’ve walked far enough down the road of ossification and decomposition that the primordial chaos is beginning to leak through and collapse the ancient walls upon which your prosperity depends.
I don’t think Bret and Heather are being entirely realistic about the chances of a catastrophic systemic collapse that our technological systems can no longer delay or prevent. After all, most of the cultural phenomena under dispute in our modern culture they say we can’t go back from are so absolutely, ridiculously novel, from an evolutionary standpoint, that it’s silly to say that we know they’re good, that we know they were the right way to go.
We don’t know that because there simply hasn’t been enough time, and we’re piling new changes on so quickly we can’t even tell how or how much our future conditions are being altered. Death and poverty are the ultimate evolutionary mechanisms that will render a judgment on the innovations we’ve developed in the last ten years. But it make take multiple generations for the seeds that were planted to develop and for the nature of their harvest to become clear. It’s hubris to assume that we already know with certainty the value, danger, or stability of our alterations to long-standing adaptive mechanisms. We don’t know what pathogens, biological or sociological, may be developing to take advantage of them.
A good reading of the Torah provides quite the view into the long-term social cycle of exodus and return. God’s people are constantly wandering off after new gods they’ve invented or encountered, or forgetting him and becoming decadent when things are going well. That repeatedly leads to God trying to call them back, and sometimes that happens and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes disaster is avoided, and sometimes the return only happens after years of exile and tragedy.
The old testament is an enormously useful record of one people’s relationship with the demands of being. And return is an essential part of the narrative. That’s one reason why I think it’s silly to dismiss return, as Brett and Heather do, on the grounds that it is somehow an unviable option. It’s perfectly viable if it can save your skin. And it’s perfectly desirable as an outcome and ambition and choice if you lose everything as a result of your wandering. That doesn’t mean you don’t still move forward in time.
It’s not the specifics of that moment in history that the people of God are being called back to, it’s their relationship to God, to the demands and structure of being, that they are called back to. That might mean giving up some things, even some valuable things, for the sake of something more precious. The security of Egypt often seemed more preferable than freedom to the Israelite when they were wandering in the wilderness. I think the idea that we might have to sacrifice something pleasing for the unknown benefits of a promised state of being is part of what makes morality such a hard sell. How do we know the Promised Land will be worth what it costs to leave Egypt?
My point is, the concept of return has a very legitimate place in our evolved conceptual narrative of where we personally and where we as a society can and should go. Much as Brett and Heather have said, you can’t simply dismiss such a longstanding and functional concept on little grounds. We just need a proper understanding of what return really is, what it means.
It’s not simply a turning back, it’s a turning toward. It’s not something that carries us back, it’s something that carries us forward. It’s not a return to a moment, it’s a return to a certain kind of relationship with truth and being and our own nature. People might mistake this state for its particular expression or symbols in a given time and place, but the reality is much deeper. It’s not an integer, it’s an equation.
I think a little more time spent studying the cultural inheritance of their own people could actually give Brett and Heather some deep insights into the nature of this negotiation with being and with ourselves that we find ourselves caught in. It’s hardly a new phenomenon, and no one has documented that negotiation like the Jews. That’s a gift, and it’s one we shouldn’t lightly ignore.
Making Nobody Happy 