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Understanding the Parable of the Sower | The Gospels | Jordan B Peterson Clips | YouTubeToText
YouTube Transcript: Understanding the Parable of the Sower | The Gospels
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Summary
Core Theme
The parable of the sower illustrates that the effectiveness of an idea or "seed" depends on the receptiveness of the "soil" or environment it encounters, highlighting the importance of planting the right ideas and the transformative, often sacrificial, nature of genuine growth and understanding.
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3-23 in his teaching Jesus told this
story listen a farmer went out to sew
his seed and as he
SED some seeds fell by the wayside where
they were trodden underfoot and and the
birds of the air came and ate them up
other seeds fell on Stony ground where
they had not much soil these shot up at
once because the soil was shallow but
when the sun rose they were scorched and
because they had no root or
moisture they withered away still other
seeds fell among thorns and the Thorns
grew up with them and choked them and
they yielded no grain but some seeds
fell into good ground and brought forth
grain growing strongly and increasing
and yielding 30 or 60 or 100 times more
than was sown and after Jesus finished
saying this he called out he who has
ears to hear Let Him hear all right so
I'll make a couple of comments on that
I'll turn to jonath and I think to begin
with to discuss the particular the
symbolic reference of this particular
Story one of the things I found
particularly mysterious about this and
this is echoed in many other Parables so
there's the wheat and the weeds for
example and the seed growing of itself
the mustard seed and the yeast there's
an insistence in
Christ's Parable accounts
accounts
that the right metaphor for idea is is
seed and I think that's brilliant
speaking psychobiologic because it's a
real mistake to think of an idea like a
sentence in a book or an idea like a uh
an element in a Excel spreadsheet an
idea is in truth something alive and if
you can plant an idea an idea is alive
in that a sophisticated idea contains
far more than you could ever possibly imagine
imagine
this is one of the things that soljan
niten revealed in his critique of
Communism up to
soliton this is roughly
speaking most critics of the Communist
Empire criticized it on the basis of its
implementation and Solja niten was the
really the first credible intellectual
to come out and say no no no from Evil
seeds evil fruit grows the reason that
communism fails everywhere it's tried
isn't because it's impl mented
improperly which was what all the
radical leftists still say it's because
there's no way of making something
edible grow if you plant poisonous seeds
and what Christ is pointing out here is
that ideas are like seeds and that you
want to plant the proper ideas and I
would say the biblical Corpus one way of
thinking about the biblical text is it's
the seed from which Western culture
itself grew and if we lose that we'll be
in this situation where um we
this these other seeds fell on Stony
ground where they not had much not not
much soil these shot up at once because
the soil was shallow but when the sun
rose they were scorched and because they
had no root or moisture they withered
away that's the situation we're in now
so that's some of the explication around
the idea of the seed yeah do you want to
do you want to just read the parable or
do you want to read Because in this
particular Parable Jesus then gives the
explanation and he not only does he give
the explanation but he also puts a
little Preamble where he basically says
that these things are hidden to most
people that in fact the Mysteries that
he's that he's bringing about most
people cannot see them cannot hear them
that the generation is blind and that
he's gathered these disciples around him
in order to reveal these Mysteries to
them and then he gives the explanation
but what's interesting is that even in the
the
explanation right even as he explains it
the mystery still remains it's not as if
it's it's it's uh because he says like
the kingdom of of Heaven is this and he
explains that it's about he makes it
about basically receiving the word and
then how the word grows in the world and
he talks about distraction he talks
about uh you know the cares of the world
that takes that away um and so it
doesn't it still also doesn't completely
explain what it is that the the parable
is about but that's also what the
parable so powerful this Parable I think
is one of the the most powerful Parables
to explain what it is that Jesus is when
we talked about at the beginning in in
John when it says the light comes the
seed comes all of these elements of
heaven right something that comes from
above and the seed is a it's like a
pattern without body that's the best way
to understand it it has little body it's
not completely invisible but it can help
you understand what a pattern without
body is then it encounters
potential it encounters the that which
it can grow in and then it grows so what
Jesus is describing as like it's a
description of reality Christ is a
master at using short mysterious stories
they change the listener who takes them
seriously the person that you do not
think could ever be virtuous well let me
show you this is the person who is
fulfilling the law and the prophets I
don't believe in that promise I'll just
be honest on this point then it hit me I
saw it this Jew is very frightened of a
postchristian exercise The Power of Love
I don't want to be a homework I tell you
we've got our work cut out for us
gentlemen I sure hope we're up to the
task it does have moral consequence but
he's actually describing how meaning
functions and how how how how order and
variability exactly so there's this
possibility of descending order and then
it it manifests itself in all sorts of
places and some of those places are
dismal and nothing much happens and
other places are magnificently fruitful
and that's also the dance between that a
priority order and the randomness of the
world yeah and you so you could you
could actually apply to something that's
completely aoral so you could think
there's an idea I like that flying car
there's a flying car idea but the world
does not afford that possibility there's
the the the ground is not good for that
thing to land in so the the idea just is
like it remains up in the air a bird
comes and catches it and picks it back
up into the air so it never lands and so
we have things like that where they that
you need both the idea the right idea
and you need the right potential for the
world to exist there's an interesting
dance here darwinian models of
creativity indicate that the way
creativity works is that there's a
hyperproduction a hyper production of
potential solutions to a problem so that
would be the abundance you can imagine
that happening in a pedo distribution
manner right but then there has to be a
selection mechanism after that so you
want a plethora of possibility it's even
what happens on the evolutionary front
and then careful selection from that and
that's what's being referred to here is
that we want a plethora we want an
abundance we want to set the pattern of
Heaven in a productive dance with the
possibilities of the world much will
become manifest disproportionately so
and then there has to be a
a
discriminating judgment applied to that
so that only the best can be harvested
and that's Christ's judge and that's the
burning sword that bars the gate to
paradise and so or selection like just
selection even in terms of darwinian
ideas or selection exactly exactly
exactly so that's another elaboration of
it's a principle of Grace to that mean
that John Paul second said your being
increases in the measure that you give
it away so there's a paradox at the very
heart of the Gospel that our instinct is
always to hang on what we have to be
happy I need go back to our wealth
pleasure power honor I need to fill
myself up and hang on to them but that's
exactly how you're going to lose them
whatever you receive as a as a gift you
have to give as a gift and then it
increases in you 30 60 and 100 fold and
then when you get that you give it away
too and you get caught in this Loop of
life and and abundance and then the
opposite instinct is going to cause all
the trouble and I'm clinging to what I
have and then I lose it you kill what
you cling to right so so the little you
have will be taken away exactly well so
you see I saw in the AC Academy John
maybe you could comment on this there's
two kinds of
professors there's professors who cling
to their ideas and want credit for them
they don't they're not generous to their
graduate students they don't give them
authorship if they have an idea they
guard it they feel that everybody's
going to steal it they don't share it
they're stingy they're hard to work with
and the the capability of those people
to generate ideas plummets across time
then you have the other sort this was my
adviser who just gives every idea away
and the consequence of that is that he
gets a tremendous amount of positive
feedback and enthusiasm on the part of
others and neurophysiologic ically that
enthusiasm that's incentive reward it
produces dopamine and dopamine produces
neural growth and so if I share an idea
with you and you're enthusiastic about
that and I regard that as rewarding my
brain will increase the number of
resources devoted to the system that
generated that idea and so if you give
things away and you you get a positive
social consequence of that the source of
the ideas itself is going to make itself
more manifest and that's the the well
that never runs dry the great modern the
great modern Pagan Gerta used to put it
even more radically but with an even
more Christian inflection where he
said die and become and that's um
precisely this thought of the
relinquishing of self that is in fact
the key to the expansion of well the
self you relinquishing in principle
would be the limited and comparatively
dead old self which you relinquish every
time you have a idea yeah and it's also
you know with great power comes great
responsibility right is the flip side
it's the positive reinstatement of that
in a way right right you're up that's
you you pay for your talent with your
generosity and that's how the cosmic
stal scales stay balanced right it's
also how you don't get stuck in a
useless cycle of guilt around what you
have in a way that becomes sistic and
self servant right right right or that
opens you up to exploitation by people
who claim false
victimization right so
John I I'm I'm trying to not launch into
an ongoing discussion about relevance
realization which you're definitely what
this is this is what it's talking about
I believe it a l of my work and and
maybe that'll come up I'll try and weave
I have I I want to add a dimension to
this I think this is all sorry for the
pun very fruitful uh but um I want to I
want to stop a little bit um and cuz I'm
interested in the kogai of Parables and
the issue there's a problem that's also
implicit in why he's doing it this way
um and my lesson here is largely drawn
from kard uh um with like why writing
why Parables one may be oh they're
simple people and stuff but that's not
what's going on it's and you know that's
not what's going on because Jesus keeps
saying if you have ears here there's an
issue about a resistance to
understanding that the parable addresses
now that means that there's a truth in
there that is in some way threatening to
how people normally naturally natively
see the world and assume an identity in
the world there's a threat in the
parable right and so I like to try I I
like to try and this is you know the
parable that that kirar gives of the wild
wild
goose there's this wild goose and it can
fly and it flies in and it talks to all
the tame geese and it's telling them
about flying and they love it and they
love it and eventually
right they they but they get sick of it
and then then they get angry and they
want to drive them away and if the if
the story stopped there we all would say
oh well you know the wild geese is
Socrates or Jesus and we identify with
them and we want to be like them and
everything but that story doesn't end
there the story is but the wild goose
couldn't fly away because he had spent
so much time with the tame geese that he
had forgotten how to fly and you go oh
and there's a shock in there and what
you realize is you easily identified
with Socrates or Jesus because he's it's
unclear in the parable who's because K
is always talking about both right and
the point is who what identity are you
projecting into the narrative because
that's what narrative is about it's
about practicing perspective taking it's
about practicing assuming identities
what identity are you naturally
automatically projecting it
into the
parable and then how is it challenging
that how are how is it threatening to
the the way you normally understand the
way you normally see and you you
invoking creativity you're invok so
right an Insight but an Insight isn't
just that right an insight and this goes
back to the frame breaking and I I sorry
I just want to make
one very brief thing here yesterday I
misstated something and I want to
apologize for it I misstated that you
and I published the paper together on
breaking frame that's not right what
what was right is that you and I shared
Colin D young who was a ta
and Joe Flanders who was an undergrad
and we were sharing ideas through them
and you you wrote an ackowledgement on
that that I inspired the the experiment
especially around like breaking frame I
just wanted to give them due credit I
felt I realized oh I made a mistake and
I just wanted to so there's a parable
that's I'm going to interject another
Parable here that's relevant to what you
said because it has this it it it speaks
of the complexity of breaking frame CU
one of the things you might ask is well
if there's a pathway to enlighten why
don't people just follow it cuz that
sounds like a good deal and it's because
there's a sacrificial loss that's that's
that's that's what I was trying to get
at I was trying to get out that exactly
that's exactly it this isn't the
creativity I'm not I'm not I'm trying to
elaborate I'm not trying to challenge
righta it's not just the Crea of an idea
this is to be born again this is the
creation of a new way of seeing and
being in World it requires the death of
the old exactly and there's a challenge
to the identity and that's so you see
that reflected in the idea of of the
post tyranny desert soour of the
Egyptians they get out of the Tyranny
but then they're in the desert there's a
cost to a creative transformation and
the cost of the creative transformation
is the death of the old and that's part
of the crucifixion and Resurrection idea
this is portrayed in this Parable I
believe if I've got this right [Music]
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