55 2007 peterson jb a psychoontological analysis of genesis 2-6 arch psychol religion

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Archive or the psychology o Religion 29 (2007) 87-125 www.brill.nl/arp

Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2007 DOI: 10.1163/008467207X188649

A Psycho-ontological Analysis of Genesis 2-6.

Jordan B. PetersonDepartment o Psychology

University o oronto

AbstractIndividuals operating within the scientifc paradigm presume that the world is made o matter.Although the perspective engendered by this presupposition is very powerul, it excludes value andsubjective experience rom its undamental ontology. In addition, it provides very little guidance

with regards to the undamentals o ethical action. Individuals within the religious paradigm, bycontrast, presume that the world is made out o what matters. From such a perspective, the phenom-enon o meaning is the primary reality. Tis meaning is revealed both subjectively and objectively,and servesunder the appropriate conditionsas an unerring guide to ethical action.

Te ancient stories o Genesis cannot be properly understood without viewing them rom withinthe religious paradigm. Genesis describes the primary categories o the world o meaning, as well asthe eternal interactions o those categories. Order arises out o Chaos, through the creative interme-diation o Logos, and man is maniested, in turn. Man, a constrained Logos, exists within a boundedstate o being, Eden. Eden is a place where order and chaos, nature and culture, fnd their optimal

state o balance. Because Eden is a walled garden, howevera bounded state o beingsomethingis inevitably excluded. Unortunately, what is excluded does not simply cease to exist. Every bounded

paradise thus contains something orbidden and unknown. Mans curiosity inevitably drives him toinvestigate what has been excluded. Te knowledge thus generated perpetually destroys the presup-

positions and boundaries that allow his temporary Edens to exist. Tus, man is eternally allen. Teexistential pain generated by this endlessly allen state can undermine mans belie in the moral

justifability o beingand may turn him, like Cain, against brother and God.

KeywordsEvil, Genesis, Cain, Abel, atrocity, Logos, chaos, order, adversary, exploration, serpent, Paradise,sacrifce, resentment, rustration, ear

Perception and Conception are Axiomatic by Necessity

In 1962, the philosopher Tomas Kuhn brought into public consciousnessan idea that has since proved very inuential. He claimed that scientifc datacould only be interpreted within a particular, bounded ramework, whichhe termed a paradigm. He also believed that such paradigms were sometimes

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88 J. B. Peterson / Archive or the psychology o Religion 29 (2007) 87-125

incommensurate (which meant that a person operating within one could notnecessarily understand or evaluate the claims o a person operating withinanother). In recent years, we have come to understand more clearly both why

paradigms are necessary and why they can be incommensurate. It also seems pos-sible, now, to explain more ully why knowledge can genuinely progress, despiteits paradigmatic limitations. Te philosopher Daniel Dennett (1984) has taken

pains over the last decade to ocus scholarly knowledge on a phenomenon origi-nating in the domain o artifcial intelligence, whose nature must be understoodbeore the ideas o paradigmatic necessity, incommensurability and progress canbe explored more deeply. Tis phenomenon has become known as the rame

problem (Lormand, 1999; Peterson & Flanders, 2002). Te rame problememerged unexpectedly in the felds o artifcial intelligence and robotics as thebiggest obstacle to the development o machines capable o acting independentlyin real-world environments. Dennett believes that the rame problem is amongthe most signifcant and proound o those issues acing modern philosophers.

Te sel-evidence o the external world and its objects appears axiomaticallyobvious to the casual human perceiver, and was held as axiomatically true byscientists working within the behavioral paradigm or much o the late twentiethcentury. Artifcial intelligence pioneers working on the development o indepen-dent machines, adapted to the real-world, originally took this sel-evidence orgranted, and presumed that the problem o intelligent behavior was one o plan-ning and action, not o perceiving the world. Unortunately, it turns out to be

very dicult to perceive objects (or stimulithe behaviorists equivalent),and their apparent sel-evidence is a consequence o exceedingly complex uncon-scious neural activity operating invisibly behind the scenes o conscious per-ception. Tus, creating a machine that could perceive objects in any reliablegeneral manner (a precondition, in theor y, to acting upon them) proved impos-sibly dicult.

It turns out to be dicult to divide the chaos o the world into the ordered,discrete and predictable parts that make up object perception. Medin and Agui-lar (1999) pointed out that even a small set o objects can be categorized in anear-infnite number o ways, and perception is an act o categorization, implicitthough it may be. Consider, or a moment, the potential number o relevantgroupings o chessmen on a chessboard during a game. Ten realize that a gameo chess is a very small and bounded world, compared to the real world o experi-ence. Te complexity o the world o experience exceeds the categorizationcapacity o artifcial intelligence systems. Tus, we have no real-world general-

purpose robots, and are unlikely to have them in the oreseeable uture. Animalsand human beings, by contrast, can exist in the real world, or a time, in their

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J. B. Peterson / Archive or the psychology o Religion 29 (2007) 87-125 89

specifc niches. How? Te idea o paradigm provides the beginning o ananswer. Let us presume that the rather general term paradigm might be replacedby something more specifc: that o the axiomatic system.

Te mathematician Kurt Gdel generated a theorem (Gdels Teorem,1931/1992), predicated on the idea that any axiomatic mathematical systemdepends or its integrity on the existence o axioms that cannot be proved or dis-

proved within the axioms o that system. Understanding o this theoremwhichessentially states that some truths have to be accepted on aith (or at least as

pragmatic preconditions or application o the system)allows or some useulinsight into how a world too complex or ull apprehension might still be catego-

rized and perceived. Gdels observation that something must still remain out-side the system in question means, in principle, that it might be the complexity othe world, theoretically irrelevant to the present purposes o the perceptual act,that can be olded up invisibly outside that system, at least temporarily (and in a

particular locale), inside the axioms. What this means is that although all theeatures o the world o experience are actually variables (in that their ull naturecan never be so well revealed that they have been rendered permanently and abso-lutely predictable) some things can be taken or granted or treated as constantsor some defned purposes in some particular situations or some limited time.

Tis means that a system can produce representations or other outputs thatare good enough or some particular purpose and that may thereore beaccepted and acted upon. I a photograph provides as much (purpose-specifc)

visual inormation about a given domain o experience as a brie glance at theactual domain provides then the photograph may be substituted and be implic-itly accepted as a valid representation o that domain. (However it is always validor something because the purpose provides part o the paradigm or axiomaticsystem that enables the image or representation to be good enough).

Stability and Anomaly: Te Garden and the Snake

In the second edition o his book (1970), Kuhn began to ormalize two addi-tional ideas, extending his earlier work. First, he posited that paradigms or axi-omatic systems could be rank-ordered with regards to their general applicability.Second, he posited that a more general paradigm was better than a less general

paradigm. Tis is an idea that was developed in somewhat dierent circum-stances, and much earlier, by Jean Piaget (1985), who believed that childrenshied through equilibrated stages o paradigm development that were bothsuccessive and progressive. An equilibrated cognitive developmental stage, in

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All systems o perception and conception are necessarily paradigmatic andincomplete. All necessarily incomplete paradigmatic systems employ axiomatictruths to protect their users rom excess complexity, presuming stability where

variability actually reigns. Te axiomatic grounding o paradigmatic systems ren-ders them prone to sudden and emotionally painul disruption. Despite this,some paradigmatic systems are more disruptible than others.

Te Relationship between the Axioms of Religion and the Axiomsof Science

Systems that are incommensurate or in conict dier in what they regard as axi-omatic. Tis means that their mutual adherents disagree about the acts, notmerely about what the acts imply. Te apparent discrepancy that obtains betweenscientifc and religious belie systems is arguably the most proound extant exam-

ple o such axiomatic incommensurability. Te existence o that incommensura-bility, its longstanding history, and its potential philosophical signifcance makesits analysis and clarifcation particularly necessary and desirable.

Modern science has provided us with some very proound axioms. Te ideathat everything is made up o matter is perhaps one o those, as is the notion thatall matter is made up o atoms. Residual complexity remains: we dont under-stand the relationship between subjective experience and matter; atoms them-selves are made up o complex sub-entities. Nonetheless, both axiomatic conceptshave been exposed to many situations over a broad expanse o time and have notencountered any paradigmatically-incommensurate anomalies. Tey have gener-ated many acceptable representations and opened up a broad variety o unore-seen domains o pragmatic utility. We can do many things with them, in manysituations, over very long spans o time, and they all work (although the longestterm consequences o our ability to manipulate atoms, or example, remain pro-oundly in doubt). Tus, we regard them as undamentally true. What does thatclaim o truth imply or our understanding o the relationship between scienceand religion?

One possibility is that the axiomatic system o science accounts or represen-tation and prediction so much more eectively than any axiomatic system attrib-utable to the religious instinct that the ormer has merely supplanted the latter.Tis appears to be the position taken by radically anti-religious scientists suchas Freud (1928/1991), Dawkins (1986) and Dennett (2006). Religious unda-mentalists and traditionalists would take the opposite approach, arguing that

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religious belies (at least those o a certain orm, typically) are in act axiomati-cally correct and the deep belies o science are in some, as o yet unrevealed,manner incommensurate with those belies and, consequently, erroneous.

Another possibility is that the axiomatic system o religion might yet be orprove to be commensurate with that o science, in some as o yet undeterminedmanner, and might thereore be regarded as a subset o a broader scientifc view.Te hypothesis that the principles o religion are fctional or mythological (in anon-pejorative sense) appears to be in keeping with this ormalization. Fromsuch a perspective, the broadest world is indeed scientifcally apprehensible.Nonetheless, subsets o that world can be adequately or even prooundly

explained using religious ormalizations, particularly in the absence o detailedscientifc knowledge. Tis hypothesis o subordinate relationship allows the

practices and ideas o religion to maintain at least a local value. Another possibil-ity is that a third, superordinate axiomatic system may yet emerge, posit somedeeper unity, and explain how the incommensurability o the two domains isonly apparent.

Finallyand what seems least likely, on the surace o itthe axiomatic pre-suppositions o religious belie may in act be prooundly dierent rom those oscience, but remain validand valid in a manner that would allow scientifcthought to occupy a limited space o paradigmatic accuracy, within a broaderand more undamental religious view. It is or this most unlikely o propositionsthat I would like to argue, and have argued beore (Peterson, 1999).

Science excludes Ethics from its Purviewbut Ethics is not NecessarilyEpiphenomenal

A very pragmatically powerul and apparently internally consistent argumentcan be made that the undamental building blocks o the world o experience, asrepresented religiously, are more complete and inclusive than those representedby science. However, this case can only be made at the very deepest o axiomaticlevels. In this case, the incommensurability o religious and scientifc thoughtmust be considered at least as proound as the incommensurability o Einstei-nian and Newtonian physics (and perhaps a good deal more so). It is worthrestating the act that this still may allow one paradigm (that o science) toremain appropriately nested, at some level, within the other (that o religion),because I am not interested in quibbling about the validity o scientifc thoughtitsel. It is sel-evidently valid or manybut not allpurposes.

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Te religious domain, unlike the scientifc, includes both representation andethics. Religious belies are thereore about what things are and about whatshould be done with them. It is worth pointing out in this regard 1) that reli-gious practice is a human universal and thus apparently evolved and 2) that rep-resentation and ethical action derived rom the evolved religious instinct hasbeen suciently accurate to ensure the survival and reproduction o the humanorm since religious thought arose (at least 50,000 years ago and, in its moreimplicit orms, ar urther back into the past (Peterson, 1999)). Tis means thatreligious truth has been pragmatically verifed by Darwinian processes, at least in

part (and this is a very important point, rom the scientifc and philosophical

perspectives). Is there any other way o determining whether or not a claim istrue, in the ace o the rame problem? Lie generates embodied, partial solutionsto the rame problem. Insucient solutions die beore they reproduce. Religiousbelie is a solution, and all human beings carry that within them. Tus, religiousbelie is true enough. Are objective materialists right, or Darwinians right? Allbiological scientistsat minimumare orced to presume the latter.

Is the scientifc solution true enough? ruth derived rom the scientifc enter-prise could easily destroy us, in its many potential applications (birth controlpills, hydrogen bombs, computer technology, biological warare, atmosphericdestruction), and probably will. Progress in one area, according to one limiteddefnition, does not mean progress in all, and accuracy and power developed in anarrow domain may reduce accuracy and power overall. We have no long-term

Darwinian proo or the truth o scienceand very little short-term proo. Itmay be objected: it depends on what you mean by truthbut that is preciselythe point.

Although the religious domain includes both representation and ethics, thelatter fnds itsel shut out o the domain o scientifc thought (except or stric-tures on the generation and reporting o data)ormally so, and sel-admittedlyso, by the practitioners o science themselves. An oughtcannot be derived roman is, as Hume pointed out long ago. Part o the reason this is so is a consequenceo a phenomenon closely related to the rame problem, known as combinatorialexplosion. Because the world o experience is so complex, the end results o anyaction cannot be computed with certainty, particularly with regards to increas-ingly distant times and more spatially separated locations. Complex systems are

very sensitive to initial conditions, or small perturbations. Tus, the manner inwhich they will unold cannot easily be predicted. An oughtcannot be derivedrom an is in a complex situation at least in part because the is is always incom-

plete, and the incomplete is cannot be used to predict the outcome. Under some

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limited conditions, this does not matter, but in any complex situation, it is agenuine problem. Additionally, determination o whether one outcome is bet-ter than another, in the frst place, also presents an insolubly complex rame

problem (should we und AIDs research, or cancer research, or education orhighway construction?). Tus it is not possible to say, scientifcally, i youshouldcross the street. I this is not enough, there is also the problem o the unavoidablereliance o perception on intention and goal. Tus, what you see is always depen-dent, to some unspecifed degree, on what you want (and this remains true even

when a group is seeing). Nonetheless, the act that a myriad o such decisionsmust be made and implemented every day means that ethics (how to act) pres-

ents an existential and perhaps an ontological problem as deep as that o repre-sentation. Tus, science is incomplete (and has been noted as such) in a markedlyundamental manner, and we remain orced to rely on some other unknowndecision-making processes to determine how we should act.

Scientists have dealt with this problem in part, axiomatically: they adopt theworking assumption that behavior is deterministic, so that the issue o oughtnever has to enter into it. However, i behavior is deterministic, it is certainly notso in any simple and modelable manner, and its mere defnition as such does notnecessarily invalidate the idea that the problem o ethics is important and com-

plex (even as important and complex as the problem o representation). Further-more, even scientists act as though ethical decisions might be genuinely real intheir day-to-day behavior. It is clearly useul to make a deterministic simplifcation

with regards to behavior, as the axioms o behaviorism led at the very least toneuroscience and an advanced psychopharmacology. All this means, however, isthat the system that the axiom o determinism engenders is a powerul tool, orsome purposes. However, the act o such utility does not prove that ethics isepiphenomenal, in any broader sense. It could easily be just as useul, albeit orother purposes, to presume that behavior is not deterministic, and that the issueo how to act is a real problem, with genuine ontological signifcance.

Te explicitly areligious scientifc community (i such a broad generalizationis allowed) presumes that the methods o science will provide a picture o the

world that is at present reasonably complete and in the uture may become moreso. I believe that it is worthwhile to posit that such a claim only stands as reason-able because certain untenable claims are embedded invisibly in the axioms othe claim. Tese are claims about what experiential phenomena are allowed to bereal, a priori. Tis is not a simple problem, and the proper solution to it is arrom sel-evident.

In addition to the problem o ethics, or examplewhich remains ormallyoutside the domain o sciencethere exist other phenomena which could in

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principle be granted the samea priori ontological status as the atoms o the mate-rial world. Phenomena that might be real include all o those within the broaddomain o subjective experience, such as emotion and motivation, the apparentact o individual awareness, and sel-consciousness itsel. It is possible that theexistence o such things may be reducible to materialist frst principles, but it isalso possible that they may not. It is not precisely obvious, thereore, what phe-nomena should be considered primaryand the manner in which representa-tion should be ormulated and action undertaken depends implicitly on thatdecision. Tus, it seems reasonable 1) not to leap to any premature conclusionsand 2) to risk experimentation with conceptual systems that presume alternative

ultimate realities. I believe that there is a undamental, even instinctual, similar-ity between dierent schools o religious thought, much as there is betweendierent languages, and that in that similarity one such alternative conceptualsystem exists.

Such a conceptual experiment must begin with the preliminary acceptance oa deeply incommensurate set o axioms. Material entities and their somewhatmetaphysical counterparts, orces, provide the building blocks o the objective

world. Te world o experience, however, is not the objective world. Teworld o experience includes what is subjective, rom the objective perspective, aswell as what is objective. It is this world that religion is about (or that is myassumption)but not only religion. Existential and phenomenological philoso-

phers and psychologists continually rediscover this world, under dierent guises

(it is HeideggersDasein, or example). I would even say that this is the world oFreud, who remains or that reason so peculiarly dicult to dismiss, and that it

was Jungs shocking discovery o this act that ended the Freud-Jung riendshipand collaboration.

Te world o experience, like the objective world, has its constituent entities.For Heidegger (1927/1962) and the phenomenological psychotherapists whorelied on his thought (Binswanger, 1963; Boss, 1963) these were, roughly speak-ing, the Umwelt(the environment as such, or the act o the superordinate natu-ral world), theMitwelt(the world with others, or the act o social existence) andtheEigenwelt(the act o subjective being). Freud also posited what were essen-tially domains o experience, with substantive overlap: the id, or it (nature

within), the superego (the cultural domain o ancestral spirits), and the ego(which Freud viewed as the rather powerless domain o individual being, trappedbetween the lower and upper titans). Tus, Freud was a phenomenologist,implicitly, and perhaps even an existentialist, although he thought o himsel asa strict natural scientist (and was also that). For Jung and Erich Neumann, Jungsmost brilliant student, these domains (Umwelt, Mitwelt, Eigenwelt; Id, Superego,

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Ego) were the domains o the Great Mother, the Great Father, and the hero, theSon ( Jung, 1967; Neumann, 1954, 1955).

I have previously suggested that these domains are undamental to instinctualreligious thought, or a variety o reasons, and that they might most simply andcomprehensively be conceptualized as chaos, order and Logosthe process thatmediates between chaos and order (Peterson, 1999; 2006). As undamentaldomains, these categories o experience are not derived rom anything more un-damental. Instead, they are the axiomatic entities rom which everything else is,in turn, derived. Tere is evidence that they existeven neuropsychological evi-dence (Peterson, 1999; Peterson & Flanders, 2002)but the act o accepting

their existence, at least or the purposes o conceptual experimentation, is essen-tially ana priori act o aith.

Te Fundamental Axioms of Instinctual Religious Tought

Te world o experience is the totality o being, as experienced. Tis totalityincludes experiences that are public and communicable, experiences that are pri-

vate, and those (like the experience o beauty) that occupy the grey area inbetween.

Chaos is the manner in which anomaly or the complexity o the world mani-ests itsel beore it can or has been perceived or conceptualized. It is what thereis when what there is is as o yet unknown. It makes itsel known in the absenceo an expected outcome (a situation that is registered by a system o dedicatednervous system components). It signals the unspecifed inadequacy o one ormore currently explicit or implicit axioms (generally the latter). Finally, it is pro-cessed sequentially by unconscious motor, aective and motivational systems(reviewed in Peterson, 1999). By the time an anomaly is perceived, or partially

perceivedlet alone conceptualized, which implies a more abstracted level oprocessingit has already been transormed in large part into order. raumaticexperiences, which are neither perceived nor conceptualized, remain chaoticremain unnameable.

Chaos is neither being, nor nonbeing. It might be regarded as the simultane-ous maniestation, in potential, o all entities and all o their relationshipsin

which case it might be conceptualized as something like the uture, which is purepotential, but also nonetheless arguably extant. It might also be consideredsomething similar to the complex unpredictability o music, which has its pri-mary eect sub-conceptually. Tese analogies aid understanding, but still consti-tute an oversimplifcation o chaos, like all perceptions and categories.

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Direct encounter with chaos can produce the experiential phenomena bestdescribed by Rudol Otto (1917) as numinous. A numinous experience is a com-

plex amalgam o terror and awe. It may be o some interest or the more biologi-cally predisposed to note that such responses may be reasonably attributed to theamygdala, in the ormer case and to the caudal segment o the hypothalamus, inthe latter (Swanson, 2000; LeDoux, 1996; Davis & Whalen, 2001). I point thisout to show that the experience o such emotions or motivations is a consequenceo activation in brain systems that are subperceptual and subconceptual: they areactivatedpriorto conscious perceptual and conceptual experience, at least underunpredictable (chaotic) conditions.

Order, as contrasted to chaos, is the current domain o axiomatic systems,hierarchically ordered. It is the explicit and implicit superposition o this domainonto the underlying chaotic substrate that allows or perception, conception andaction. Being itsel is a consequence o this superposition. Tus, Being is anemergent property o the interaction between chaos and order. I order is

well-established, then the substrate it represents (chaos) can vary across broadparameters without producing dangerously high levels o anomaly, within theexperience o the perceiver (o the being).

Logos, whose nature has been most extensively defned by classical Greek andChristian thought, is a process, rather than an entitythe process that mediatesbetween chaos and orderalthough it is embodied (incarnate). Logos can andnormally does generates order rom chaos, but can also serve to return order to

chaos, when catastrophic axiomatic ailure otherwise looms. It is an exploratoryprocess, curious, voluntary, active and communicative, and is primally regulatedby pain and anxiety. Te act o its voluntarism (which has a very archaic neuro-logical substrate) means that Logos can return order to chaos or produce orderrom chaos creatively, pre-emptivelyas well as reactively (under those situa-tions already defned by axiomatic ailure). Te archetype o the hero, the posi-tive aspect o the individual, is the embodiment in drama o the active quality oLogos.

In two previous publications (Peterson, 1999; 2006) I attempted to demon-strate 1) how the frst chapter o Genesis oers a dramatic description o theemergence o order rom chaos as a consequence o the action o Logos and2) how the idea o individual sovereignty and right is necessarily and irreduciblygrounded in identifcation o the individual with Logos. My attention turnsthis time to the stories in the second through sixth chapters o Genesis. I amassuming, as I did or Chapter 1, that these stories cannot be interpreted prop-erly without noting the nature o the broad context in which they occur (thato the already established undamental interplay o chaos, order and Logos).

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Genesis 1 broadly defnes mans eternal domain, the essentials o his environ-ment. Genesis 2-6 describes the eternal pattern o his actions and reactions

within that domain. Tese stories are in no way bad science. Tey are, instead,proound phenomenology, clothed in drama.

Adam and Eve: Partners in Enmity

And they were both naked, the man and his wie, and were not ashamed.Te second creation story in Genesis is a much earlier work than the frst, at

least in its explicitly authored orm, although its origins are also buried in thedeep reaches o prehistory. I believe it has nonetheless been placed by traditionin its proper narrative position. It is as i the stage setting (the nature o being) islaid out beore the action (the story o Adam and Eve) begins. Tere are stillcontradictions in the sequence o events in Chapter 1 and Chapter 2, but theseare details, in a sense. Te overarching order is entirely appropriate. Perhaps theunknown compilers and editors o Genesis recognized this, implicitly, prior tosequencing the stories. Perhaps their incontestable verbal genius enabled them to

see the better story (although not necessarily to know why it was better).

Te man and the woman

And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to all upon Adam and he slept: and he tookone o his ribs, and closed up the fesh instead thereo; And the rib, which the LORDGod had taken om man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. And

Adam said, Tis is now bone o my bones, and fesh o my fesh: she shall be calledWoman, because she was taken out o Man.

It is o course contrary to the entire scheme o nature that woman be derivedrom man, and it is very tempting to read a simple patriarchal prejudice into thatderivation. I think it is more appropriate to give these ancient and incomprehen-sible stories the beneft o the doubt and to search or something more proound.Logos is symbolically masculine. Tere are diverse reasons or this (see Neu-mann, 1954) that have little to do with simple ideological prejudice, or withgender, per se. Te proound implicit idea put orth in this creation sequence

(woman rom man) is that the individual woman, rather than the mere emale, isa product o Logos,1 and not simply a daughter o matter (mater, mother) or

1 A similar idea is put orth in Te Gospel o Tomas (114), in more thoroughly elaborated orm:Simon Peter said to them, Make Mary leave us, or emales do not deserve [everlasting?] lie. Jesus-said, Look, I will guide her to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling

you males. For every emale who makes hersel male will enter the kingdom o Heaven.

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nature. Tus the story does not denigrate the emale, as is now commonly postu-lated, but elevates human being itsel, man and woman, above its simply materialand symbolically eminine substrate.

Te man and the garden

And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden o Eden to dress itand to keep it.

In Genesis 2:7 man, made earlier in the image o the Logos, is provided with adefned and limited habitat, Eden. Tis means at least in part that the powerul

potentiality o Logos as such is restricted in the very beginning in the same man-ner that the individual Logos fnds itsel restricted, here and now: it is an axiom-atic truth that man always has aplace. It is or this reason that the Logos even asincarnated in Christ had to undergo kenosis or emptying. Everything cannot ftin one place.

It is true at the deepest levels o meaning that place is composed o order andchaos, but it is also true, proximally, that each place is a defned and limited localein time and space. Tis means that the world o experience is under earthly ormundane conditions an experience o historical particulars (but also that thisexperience can be transcended and the more undamental reality beneath, myste-rium andascinans, may be unexpectedly revealed).

What is the nature o Eden, the place o man? Te name itsel oers hints.

. . . Eden signifes in Hebrew delight, a place o delight . . . our own English wordParadise, which is rom the Persian,pairiaround, daezaa wall, means prop-erly a walled enclosure. Apparently, then, Eden is a walled garden o delight . . . .(Campbell, 1973, p. 25). Tere are also intimations that the word may be relatedto the Ugaritic base dn, meaning a place well-watered throughout. Tus, i wecontinue with our new ontological assumptions, we might make the ollowingobservations:

A walled garden is a productive natural place, given order by structure. Tus,it is a localized replication o the interplay o chaos and order. Te man, a kenoticLogos, is placed there to inhabit and keep it. Te act that the garden mayalso be a well-watered place intimates the same. Water, the primal element,commonly represents ertility and generative chaos. However, the garden itsel

is tended, structured and ordered. Tus, a garden is both productive andshelteredparticularly i it is walled, and well-watered throughout. Te garden,a microcosm o being, is in turn the place o man, emale and male, who aremicrocosms o Logos.

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Te garden and the tree

And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the manwhom he had ormed. And out o the ground made the LORD God to grow everytree that is pleasant to the sight, and good or ood; the tree o lie also in the midst othe garden, and the tree o knowledge o good and evil.

A walled garden is also a place that is separated rom other places (the placesoutside the wall) by structure, so that it may be productive and sae. Te ancientrepresentation o Ygdrasil, the Scandinavian world tree, is instructive in thisregard. Te roots o Ygdrasil extend down into the primal water o the world,

which nourish and replenish it, while it is simultaneously devoured by the snakesor serpents o chaos. Ygdrasil grows up through the center o the world, just asthe tree o knowledge grows up through Paradise (Peterson, 1999).

Te microcosm o Eden is an abstracted place, the environment o man, whichis part o nature and chaotic in some sense, yet part o culture and orderly. It isthe combination o these two that makes the garden productive. Man inhabitsa microcosm, in an embodied, practical sense. However, the domain o hisabstracted conceptual and perceptual ormsthe world o his thoughtsalsohas a microcosmic nature, abstracted once more even rom the already restrictedgarden. Otherwise, his ideas could never be useul, once re-embodied, ormaneuvering in Eden. Our feld o experience is pragmatically limited by the

physical structures we inhabit and create, which regulate our temperature and

shelter us so that variability in climate and social environment can be saely trans-ormed into an ignorable constant: an axiom. Such limitation allows us to beneftrom the productivity o that environment. Te ideological structures we inhabit

perorm precisely the same purpose. In a practically simplifed world, we canignore complexity, while still gaining what is necessary. In a conceptually or per-ceptually simplifed world, howeveras in a gardenmuch remains both out-side and underneath.

It might also be pointed out that the proper balance between chaos and order,unpredictability and certainty, potential and actuality also produces a spiritualreincarnation o Eden, so to speak, at any experiential point in time and place.Tis spiritual reincarnation is a sense o involvement and awareness that mani-ests itsel both as genuine meaning and as existential justifcation or the vulner-abilities o being. Te individual who has discovered meaning and ollows it cancome to more or less permanently inhabit this state.

Te simplifed Logos inhabits a simplifed environmentbut the outside andthe underneath can never be completely eradicated. What is simplifed and

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ignored is still there, even i it has been rendered temporarily constant and invis-ible. Te simple biological act o curiosity is evidence o that. Even a rat, satiatedin motivation and emotion, will explore spontaneously (Rolls, 1999). His ner-

vous system deaults to a mildly interested state, as a consequence o the restingactivation o neurons in the subsystems o his brain devoted to exploration, andhe is driven to search or what he still does not know in his temporarily produc-tive and stable environment.

Te human being is likewise curious, characterized by original sin; charac-terized by the primary ault o Pandora. Tere is always something unknowablein every situation o putative absolute knowledge. Curiosity drives the explor-

atory system inexorably towards the unknowable, even when (and sometimesbecause) it has been justly orbidden ( justly because some boxes, once opened,can never be closed again). Tus, the stability o Eden is dependent on a certainlevel o ignorance, or unconsciousness. What is ignored still lurks, however, andcuriosity drives itsel precisely there, despite ear and tradition. Unortunately,the revelation attendant upon its discovery could well mean that nothing canever be the same again.

Te tree o the knowledge o good and evil is the classic world-tree o mythol-ogy, a structure which extends rom one domain (that o the earthly or even thehellish) to another (that o the heavenly). A tree can be climbed. Te individual

who inhabits a tree can move himsel rom one level to another, voluntarily. Weare not so ar rom our primarily arboreal ancestors that the image o the tree as

central to being has become undamentally incomprehensible. Imagine thatbounded conceptual systems are hung in hierarchical ashion, upon an axis,symbolically, one above the other, each amenable to construction, analysis andreconstruction by consciousness, by Logos. Imagine urthermore that such con-sciousness or Logos is shaped by the conceptual systems it inherits and producesbut that it also moves reely up and down that axis, theaxis mundi, the transor-mative rod o Asclepius, the cross, the Bodhi tree, stretching rom the lowestdepths o the hierarchy o being to the very highest reaches.

Imagine that each level o the hierarchy, productive and unctional, nonethe-less remains incomplete because o its exclusion o much o the worldand thatsuch incompleteness beckons and demands urther exploration. Te domesti-cated and habituated animal is amiliar with its cageor amiliar enough sothat it is not longer as araid,a priori, as it was when it was frst introduced there.Te cage is never so amiliar, however, that it has excluded all novelty. It is thisremaining novelty that attracts an animals attention when it is satiated and calmbut not sleeping. It is certainly possible that a rat too exploratory may poke its

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nose into trouble, and reveal in its interactions with the understood environ-ment some aspect that is dangerous or even atal. It even may be that such a rat

will endanger its entire social group (assuming the existence o such) by bringinghome a poisoned ood source or a parasite or by revealing its lair unwittingly toan alert predator, such as a snake.

Human beings are oragers, par excellenceand it is an interesting conse-quence o our evolutionary history that the systems that less large-brained mam-mals use or the discovery o ood and other necessary resources are preciselythose systems that our higher-order cognitive systems hijack, so to speak, whenthey are oraging not or sustenance but or inormation. Human beings are

inormation oragers. Tey are thus drawn inevitably both to what they do notknow, and to what is orbidden. Tus, original sin is indeed heritable, as theChristians have always claimed. Is this inherited curiosity and disobedience asin? Te classic Christian answer is, o course, yesand no. It is a sin, in that itinvolves the defance o God and the demolition o Eden. It is also the precondi-tion or sel-conscious being and historyand the potential maniestation inthat history o the ully incarnated redemptive hero, the Logos.

Te serpent

Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast o the eld which the LORD Godhad made.

Human beings, like chimpanzees, appear innately wary o and attentive toreptilian eatures, i not outright earul (Ohman & Mineka, 2003). Tus thereptile appears to implicitly maniest key eatures o divinity, mysterium tremen-dum and mysterium ascinansparticularly i it issubtil(OED: Chiey o uids:not dense, thin, rarefed; penetrating, et. by reason o tenuity). Why? Snakes areindeed dangerous. Tey strike suddenly, rapidly, and oen without warning. Tesight o a snake activates the same systems as anomaly, unpredictability, rustra-tion, disappointment and threat (Ohman & Mineka, 2003; LeDoux, 1996;Peterson, 1999). Reptiles, more generally, have been dangerous to mammals orsome sixty to two hundred million years. Te reptile can thus easily come tostand or (or isa priori indistinguishable rom, a more accurate notion) the cha-otic unknown lurking underneath and outside the current Eden or Paradise.

Snakes and reptiles are also deeply ascinating. Children requently becomeobsessed with dinosaurs (Google accesses almost one and a hal million web-

pages devoted to the juxtaposition o the two). Chimpanzees encountering apython will utter a specifc call, a snake wraa. Te group will then come near,to stare at the snake. ypical acial expressions are those o ear and curiosity.

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Physical reassurance contact is oen made (especially mutual embracing), andeye contact among individuals is requent. Aer tens o minutes, members fnallybegin to disperse. Some individuals, however, show exaggerated and prolongedinterest (Wallauer, 2002). In addition to its ability to righten and ascinate, thereptile also sheds its skins and transorms, like chaos, which maniests itselchiey in transormation. Structure is static (hence the state), but it is in changethat the chaotic makes itsel known. Te combination o these three attributesmakes the reptilian orm a powerul tool or representation.

Te lurking serpent is iamat, the original dragon o chaos, revealing her-sel in initially reduced or microcosmic orm within the confnes o Eden. In

the Mesopotamian myth, iamat reappears only when her consort, Apsu, isdestroyed, through the ignorant and destructive acts o the elder gods (Peterson,1999; 2006). Chaos re-emerges when order is destroyed, even i it is destroyedunconsciously. iamat, explicitly eminine, lurks subtilely in the chaotic waterso the beginnings. Eve, the frst woman, partakes in the capacity o the eminineiamat to produce existential chaos and to bring about both sel-consciousnessand change.

Te woman and the serpent

And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat o every tree o thegarden?

Why is the woman originally allied with the serpent? First, her physical ormmakes her the involuntary embodiment o chaos, in addition to her role as thedaughter o Logos. Like chaos, the eminine eternally gives birth to new orms.Furthermore, and perhaps more importantly, the eminine makes man eternallysel-conscious. Her very existence illuminates his most egregious aults. Tismakes her mans most necessary companion, his biggest challenge, and his mor-tal enemy, simultaneously. Woman is allied with nature, mythologically. What isnature? From the Darwinian perspective, nature is the orce o natural selection.

Women are selective maters, in contradistinction to their closest relatives, emalechimpanzees. It is even possible that this selectivity was the primary driving orcebehind the rapid dierentiation o human beingsbut not chimpanzees(Wade, 2006)rom their mutual ancestor. Tis means that the terrible orce o

natural selection is mediated in the case o humanity (and most particularly inthe case o human males) through the individual and highly judgmental selectiveemale. Tus, the woman judges each man she encounters as ft or unft or repro-duction. Most requently, she fnds him lacking. A more complete judgmentcan hardly be imagined. Te reection o this ound lack is a defnite aid to the

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development o enhanced sel-consciousness among men (as can be observed atany social situation involving single men and women). Is this a good thing ? Per-haps sel-consciousness motivates necessary change. Regardless, as an emotional

phenomenon sel-consciousness loads with anxiety, pain and anger in actoranalysis o undamental trait personality eatures (McCrae & Costa, 1997). Isel-consciousness is a good, thenan aid to transormation and developmentit is nonetheless rooted frmly within the domain o the negative emotions and

produces inormation painully through that root.Te emale is also the producer o sel-consciousness within her own soulas

the ideal emale body, youthul and ecund, appears innately attractive to both

genders (Chivers, Rieger, Latty & Bailey, 2004). It is thus the archetypal stan-dard o comparison against which all proximal emales are driven to comparethemselves (much to their specifc and eternal sel-conscious pleasure (Joshe,Herman & Polivy, 2004) and dissatisaction (Besseno, 2006; Strahan, Wilson,Cressman, Buote, 2006)).

Te serpent and wisdom

And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth knowthat in the day ye eat thereo, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods,knowing good and evil.

Every hypothetically closed and stable system still remains open to the out-

side. Something is always intrinsically not in the plan, because the planexcludesbut what is excluded still exists. Tus, it is not possible or God tomake Eden without a serpent lurking within it. Te limited Logos can only exist

within a simplifed and productive place, but what is simplifed is still presentand will produce unexpected events. Te Father can orbid, out o concern orhis childrens saety, but what is still present but hidden inevitably beckons tocuriosity, even i it is orbidden and eared. Tis is because what is still presentbut hidden also promises. Te discovery o what is not yet understood is what

produces an expansion o personality, as the inormation generated by explora-tion is assimilated and accommodated to. Such expansion is necessary to urthermastery and understanding. However, what is still present and hidden and prom-ises and transorms also destroys. New inormation demolishes old knowledge

structures, old paradigms. Failure undermines nave sel-confdence, but mayproduce a more resilient personality, i the reasons or ailure are revealed andmastered. Rejection produces pain, but may also inspire the eradication o weak-ness and insuciency and teach more careul seeking.

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Te snake oers the ruit o the tree o knowledge o good and evil. Tis is noordinary snake and no ordinary tree, as we have seen, but it is also no ordinaryruit. It has the capacity to entirely transorm moral understanding, o the world,o the relationship between the absolute and man, and o the sel. It is in theinvestigation o the unknown, or in the encounter with the unknown, that moraltransormation fnds its genesis. Te ateul ruit o the Garden o Eden is neces-sarily derived romoered bythe lurking serpent.

Nakedness and the uit o the tree o knowledge o good and evil

And when the woman saw that the tree was good or ood, and that it was pleasantto the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took o the uit thereo, anddid eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. And the eyeso them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed

g leaves together, and made themselves aprons.Evidently the ruit, incorporated, produces a phenomenological transor-

mation o sucient magnitude to orever change the nature o experiencetomake it sel-conscious experience. Tis is the ruit whose ingestion is motivatedby curiosity (and more particularly, by curiosity about what was orbidden). Teruit is oered, paradoxically, by the snake. Tis means that the terriying andorbidden is also eternally nourishing. Tis is why the roots o Ygdrasil are gnawedby serpents and replenished by water. Tis is why the healing sta o Aesclepius

is intertwined by snakes. Contact with the eternally upsetting domain o theunknown provides the inormation whose ingestion produces transormation.

Te transormation produces immediate enlightenment. Adam and Eve canfnallysee. Teir now-transcendent vision, produced by incorporation o what

was orbidden, produces within them a vastly heightened sel-consciousnessaterrible catastrophe, or a limited being, but a precondition or genuine indi-

vidual existence. Adam and Eve instantly realize their individual naked vul-nerability (a realization that emerges during cognitive development at a very

young age; a act that only human beings seem cognizant o, in any complexsense). What does knowledge o naked vulnerability mean? It means that humanbeings are painully conscious o their limitations. We know that we are awedin relationship to our ideals. We understand that our being is limited in place and

in time. We know we are vulnerable to death, disease, and insanity. We knowthat we can be betrayed by our embodied being, and undermined, socially, byour peers and even by our riends. All o this makes us ashamed, earul, and sel-conscious.

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Why is this specifcally moral knowledge?or, why is specifcally moralknowledge apparently attendant on this? Perhaps knowledge o limitationand vulnerability is a genuine precondition or the capacity to dierentiate goodrom evil. Animal aggression and predation is mere territoriality and survival,and there is no clear animal ethic. Non-human creatures are beyond or, moreaccurately, beore good and evil. Evil, however, is not mere aggression or anger.It involves the sel-conscious exposure and exploitation and enhancement o

vulnerability. Te predators o the animal kingdom are dangerous and deadlybut they are not evil. Tey are not resentul o their own limitations and donot seek revenge. Neither are they goodbecause goodness is not mere peace-

ulness and cooperation, and it is not merely the absence o aggression. An actionthat is good involves the conscious rejection o evil and, in some important man-ner, the simultaneous acceptance o and transcendence over vulnerability. Goodand evil are traits that are specifc to human beings and it makes sense that theyare dependent on or intertwined with sel-consciousness, another specifcallyhuman trait.

Nakedness, ear and voluntary alienation om God

And they heard the voice o the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool o theday: and Adam and his wie hid themselves om the presence o the LORD God

amongst the trees o the garden. And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said

unto him, Where art thou? And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I wasaaid, because I was naked; and I hid mysel. And he said, Who told thee that thouwast naked? Hast thou eaten o the tree, whereo I commanded thee that thou shoul-dest not eat? And the man said, Te woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she

gave me o the tree, and I did eat.It is the nature o man to embody Logos, to a lesser or greater degree (rom the

instinctively religious perspective). Tus, we believe, intrinsically, that illumina-tion and enlightenment are possible, and that such states are to be both intenselyand validly desired and worked diligently towards. We can climb theaxis mundi,and enter the domain o the gods. Why, then, is illumination so rare?

Adam and Eve immediately clothe themselves aer they wake up, and becomeable to see their own vulnerability. Tey interpose the most basic implements o

culture between themselves and a world whose essential danger to vulnerablesel-conscious being has been suddenly and terribly revealed. Consequently, theyhide rom God, who is accustomed to walking with Adam in Eden. Te God

who created man is Logos, and that Logos is reected in his created being, withwhom he consorts. Tus, to hide rom God is to reuse to continue the relation-

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ship with Logos, which is the process by which order and chaos are continuallydierentiatedthe process by which being itsel is generated.

Sel-conscious knowledge o vulnerability makes the individual too araid towalk with God. Tis is avoidance o meaning, responsibility and destiny. Suchavoidance has catastrophic consequences. Existence, properly undertaken, pro-duces a condition o being that makes knowledge o fnitude tolerable. Tat

properly undertaken existence means embodiment o Logos, in spite o vulner-ability. o hide rom God, as a consequence o revealed nakedness, is to destroythe incarnation o Logos and to immediately become subject to the privations omerely human existence.

Adams sin, which is partly his curiosity-inspired rebellion, is also more thanthatand what is more may also be more signicant. Adam reuses to continuehis relationship with Logos, because he is awake and araid, and he blames thearchetype o emininity, Eve, or his enlightened cowardice. Aer all, she madehim sel-conscious. His immediate abandonment o courage and responsibilityendears him neither to God nor to woman. Perhaps this is the real sin o Adam.Had he not compromised himsel urther, aer eating the apple, God might haverelented, and allowed him to stay in Paradise.

Pain, work and the dawn o history

Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in

sorrow thou shalt bring orth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, andhe shall rule over thee. And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened untothe voice o thy wie, and hast eaten o the tree, o which I commanded thee, saying,Tou shalt not eat o it: cursed is the ground or thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat oit all the days o thy lie; Torns also and thistles shall it bring orth to thee; and thou

shalt eat the herb o the eld; In the sweat o thy ace shalt thou eat bread, till thoureturn unto the ground; or out o it wast thou taken: or dust thou art, and untodust shalt thou return.

Eves essential sel-conscious tragedy is the necessary reliance on Adam, andon the social order that the dependence o her children orces upon heraccom-

panied or perhaps oreshadowed by the pain o childbirth. Tis punishmenthas nothing to do with any spiritual inadequacy, intrinsically characteristic o

emales. Even among chimpanzees (although not among bonobos) the essentialsocial hierarchy is patriarchal, and the emales live somewhat outside and apartrom that.

Te large brain o the human beinga precondition or his emergent sel-consciousnessbrings with it dramatic and lasting consequences or the human

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mother. A babys skull is too big or the birth canal, even though emale hips arealmost too wide to allow or easy running. Te skull is compressibleincom-

pletely ormedto partially compensate or this. Furthermore, the baby is bornmuch earlier, much less developed, than are the babies o smaller brained butequally sized mammals. Te proper gestation period or a human baby is in theorder o one and a hal years, not nine months (Passingham, 1975). Tus, thehuman inant is stunningly dependent, to his own detriment (given his depen-dence on the sel-conscious benevolence o the mother and the social surround),but also to the lasting disadvantage o the woman, who gives birth in pain and isthen primarily responsible or sheltering and protecting her externalized etus.

Given this burden, she is inevitably vulnerable, dependent on her mate or pro-tection and resources, and alienated rom the patriarchal power structure.Tus, the description in Genesis 3:16 is not so much proscriptive, as sel-inter-ested but threatened Judeo-Christian (and Islamic?) patriarchs might have it, asit is tragically descriptive.

Adams essential sel-conscious tragedy is the necessity o work. Animals havebiology and they have social structures, i they are social. Sometimes their socialstructures have rituals and traditions that are somewhat specifc to that structure.However, these structures are not remembered. Tey are merely embodied. Fur-thermore, their construction is not conscious. It is emergent. Human beings,cursed with the knowledge o their own fnitude and vulnerability, painullyaware not only o the present but o the past and the uture, must make plans and

act to deend that vulnerability. Tey must continually discount the pleasures othe present in avor o the security o the uture. Tis is particularly true o men,at least historicallyand not only to reduce uncertainty. Womens child-induceddependence makes the productivity or potential productivity o a mate a criticalactor in emale selection. Furthermore, male productivity and utility is key tomale status, which provides additional access to the resources o other males.Tus, as women are doomed to subservience, men are doomed to toil. Perhapsthe dierence is not that great.

Te irreversibility o the loss o Paradise

Tereore the LORD God sent him orth om the garden o Eden, to till the ground

om whence he was taken. So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east o thegarden o Eden Cherubims, and a faming sword which turned every way, to keepthe way o the tree o lie.

Once the cat is out o the bag, it can never be put back in. Te bag shrinksorthe cat grows. Tis means not only that a particular orm o novel inormation or

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knowledge may demolish a previously stable and Edenic state o being and con-ception, but that the capacity or such curiosity-inspired knowledge acquisitionis permanent, once acquired. Tus, any stable state, any walled garden, will be atemporary abode at best or those who inhabit it. Even i anomaly does notemerge, o its own accord, utopia will be pulled down by the instincts and desireso its inhabitants. It was Dostoevskys revelation that no Utopian state was pos-sible, even in principle, that demolished his socialist belies (and simultaneously

propelled him to the literary heights). Is the situation thereore hopeless? Is mancursed by his very nature? Pandora retained hope in her box as a comort tomankind when she released evil and uncertainty upon the world. Is there an ana-

log in Genesis? Perhaps not. However, it was the Christian revelation that suchhope was Christ.

Cain and Abel: Adversary and Logos

And Adam knew Eve his wie; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I havegotten a man om the Lord. And she again bare his brother Abel.

Prototypes o sel-conscious being

According to the tradition crystallized in Genesis, Cain and Abel are the frst

two human beings born in the normal mannerborn o a woman, rather thancreated by God. Furthermore, they are the frst inhabitants o the allen world,rather than Eden. In a very important sense, thereore, they are the frst realhuman beings. Tis, and their privileged placement at the very dawn o history,mythologically speaking, makes them prototypes. Cain and Abel represent twoattitudes, two patterns o behavior, two modes o being, one set againstthe other, generated in response to the new conditions o sel-conscious being.Tey are the orerunners o all other men, and their respective and opposedmodes o being are played out now in diverse and particularized orm by everyliving individual.

Cain is the eldest brother. In many cultures, including that o ancient Israel,the eldest brother occupied a position o high status, by birthright alone. Te

frst-born male typically inherited his athers land and property. Tis made himthe accidental benefciary o tradition. Although such a division seems arbitraryto the modern sensibility, the practice existed or important reasons, and waslikely an emergent ethic, rather than one that was planned. Land divided up tooairlyequally among all the brothers o a given amily, or examplewould

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over the course o only a ew generations be parsed into plots too small to sup-port anyone. A society that handled the intergenerational transmission o prop-erty in this manner would soon be characterized by permanent scarcity andconict. Old, stable societies settled, by a quasi-evolutionary process, intoconfgurations that did not allow or such rapid dissolution. It was arguably bet-ter or the second and later born sons to know rom the start that they weregoing to have to make their own way in the world. In addition, the act that thisate was arbitrarily bestowed upon them meant it could not be attributed tosome intrinsic aw in their own makeup, by themselves or others, but owednaturally rom the mysterious workings o divine law and tradition.

Surprisingly, this law o primogeniture is broken very requently in the Oldestament, which is a very radical book. Te preerence o God is requentlygranted to the interloper, the younger brother, rather than to the individual

whom tradition typically blesses. Many o the Old estaments most revolution-ary heroesIsaac, Jacob, Joseph and Davidare younger sons. In some mannerthis appears indicative o narrative insistence on the ree will o God, o His abil-ity to transcend both human tradition and His own rules. However, somethingdeeper is also at work.

Te older son, an arbitrarily chosen benefciary o tradition, is or that reasonalso prone to two cardinal temptations. First, he can identiy sel-servingly withtradition, because o the avoritism it has shown him, and become unthinkinglyconservative. Second, he can all victim to pride, because o his high and privi-

leged status. Te blindness and arrogance o the older brother is or those reasonsa very common theme in airy tales and olk stories. Frequently, or example, the

privileged elder is the frst to set o on a special quest (or the water o lie, orthe hidden kingdom, or the ortune in ar lands). His most common mistake iscontempt. Over-confdent, he does not deign to take advice rom the trees andthe rocks and the animals and the gypsy women and the dwarves, and he ends upentrapped or entombed or devoured by some monster. Te younger brother, bycontrast, less rewarded by nature and society, is also less likely to presume that hehas all the answers. He is oen a bit o a ool, at least by reputation, but he alsoknows that everything that needs knowing is not already in his hands. Tis makeshim more likely to pay attention and to listen. He is ignorant and humble, andbecause o this, he can learn. Te gypsies and the dwarves give him advice andmagic tools. Te small and useless animals he beriends, without hope o reward,later come to his rescue. Tis means that the younger brother, although generallyless, can sometimes be much more. It is when he adopts the latter role that he isa revolutionary, and highly avored by God.

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Multiple valid modes o being are simultaneously possible

And Abel was a keeper o sheep, but Cain was a tiller o the ground.Tere are commentators who regard the act that Abel was a keeper o sheep

and Cain a tiller o the ground a reection o an underlying conict in historybetween pastoralists and armers. Perhaps this is true. Furthermore, the act thatChrist has also been regarded as a shepherd and as a younger brother (to Satan,or example, by Milton) is by no means irrelevant. Te density o content in suchstories, and in the interrelationship between them, makes their archaeologicalexcavation and textual analysis endlessly ruitul. For the present purposes, how-

ever, the particulars o the brothers occupations are not as important as the acto their existence. Abel has a proession, and so does Cain. Proessions, whichcan be considered mere jobs, mere means to an end, can also be regarded morebroadly as substantive modes o being or paradigms, determining in large partthe manner in which an individual conronts the world. Such broader modes obeing can dier rom one another dramatically in both means and ends, unctionsuccessully despite this dierence, and yet not necessarily exist in opposition.Te world is complex in orm and content, and complexly productive. Tismeans that people with very dierent views and behaviors can all conront the

world, in their dierent manners, and still thrive.A plumber and a lawyer can both live, despite the act that they inhabit

dierent conceptual and behavioral worlds. Tis is an essentially pragmatic view

o human existence. Perhaps the world would be a more peaceul place i wecame to realize that Christians and Jews or Jews and Muslims are more like law-

yers and plumbers than they are like philosophers o being. Tis all means thatCain and Abel could both unction in the world in the protective and narrowedcocoons o their proessions. Te brothers are not destined by God or conict.Nonetheless, conict emerges.

Rejection o necessary sacrice

And in process o time it came to pass, that Cain brought o the uit o the groundan oering unto the Lord. And Abel, he also brought o the rstlings o his fock ando the at thereo.

Tis description o sacrifce is the pivotal point o the whole narrative. Unor-tunately, this is just where understanding the story o Cain and Abel becomesdicult or the modern individual, because o its archaic nature. We do notunderstand, anymore, what it means to make an oering unto the Lord. In act,the whole notion o sacrifcing to the Lord seems not only incomprehensible but

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also downright unseemly, given the requent involvement o death and sueringand the deep background echoes o human sacrifce that surround the ancientidea. However, there is more to the story than meets the modern eye.

Ideas come rom the bottom up even more oen than they come rom the topdown. Te revelatory orce o an idea is requently a consequence o the second-ary recoding in language o some deep, pre-existing pattern o behaviour and

presumption, rather than the generation o that pattern in language, ex nihilo.Tat is why Plato believed that all knowledge was remembering, and whyNietzsche knew that rationality was inextricably grounded in morality. Children

play games beore they know what they are playing. Societies are much more

complex than games. Tis means that societies o people act out patterns that areso complex it might take centuries or even millennia o observation beore thenature o the pattern can become implicitly coded in stories, let alone codedmore explicitly in philosophy or law.

Rituals o sacrifce are extremely common among archaic people. Perhapsthey have their ultimate origin in the behavioral practice o human sacrifce. In

pre-Columbian meso-America, or example, up to twenty-fve thousand humanbeings a year were sacrifced to keep the sun on its eternal course. In India, rightup to the end o the nineteenth century, the sacrifcial rituals perormed to pro-

pitiate Kali, the Goddess o Destruction, involved the daily bloody death o hun-dreds o animals (Neumann, 1955). Kali demanded the sacrifce o these animals,to appease her terrible side, so that she could then maniest her benevolent

aspect, and shower blessings on the world. Te identifcation o psychologicaltraits with the sacrifced animals (the goat with lust, or example, and the bull

with pride) was not uncommon among the participants in such rituals. Tus,when a goat was sacrifced, so was lustand this appeased the terrible aspect othe unknown. Tis trait attribution is an indication o the increasing psychologi-zation or abstraction o the sacrifcial practice.

Among the people o the Old estament, the idea o human sacrifce was stillso real that the story o God asking Abraham to oer up his son, Isaac, remainedeasily comprehensible. Te idea expressed in this story is that a truly aithul man

will let nothing stand between himsel and his moral obligation to the transcen-dent (even, and most particularly, that which he loves most). God, o course,takes mercy on Abraham, because o his aith and devotion, and allows him tosacrifce a ram, in Isaacs stead. Tis story presents a narrative condensation o

part o the process whereby the ritual act became the psychological transorma-tion. First it is a human, then a valued animal, substituting or the human, thenthe value itsel. Te idea underlying all o these variants is that God, whenangered, requires the sacrifce o what is most loved beore he will maniest his

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benevolence. Tis is all acted outand very seriously. Te most dramatic (and,to the modern mind, most horrifc) enactment is that o the ritual killing o ahuman being. Te next most visceral dramatization is the sacrifce o an animal.Ten it is the painul psychological act o oering up o a close connection or

value or dream or wish. Tis was not frst an idea, and then something clothed indramatic orm. Te ideaeven the capacity or the psychological transorma-tionis derived rom the drama, and not the reverse.

Why would God be pleased by the voluntary oering o what is currentlymost loved? Why would such a sacrifce have to involve bloodas certain Chris-tian undamentalist sects insist, even today? Te answers to these dicult ques-

tions are right in ront o us (see also Mark 10:17-25, where the idea is moreabstractly re-presented). We already know. We just do not see the equivalencebetween our now abstract ideas and actions, and their behavioral and dramatic

precursors. Te Japanese o World War II, or example, commonly held that aleader who had ailed in battle or whose ideas were wrong (the two concepts

were not really distinguishable) was morally obligated to kill himsel. Te erroro the ideas and the error o the embodiment o those ideas in the particular manhad not yet been clearly dierentiated, even in such a complex society, even sorecently. Te Japanese did not understand Poppers (1985) dictum: a mans ideascan die (like Christ2although Popper did not say that) in his stead. Perhaps theidea o the dying and resurrecting savior has to become universal beore such aconception can be clearly ormulated and grasped.

Survival demands that leaders who are not successul no longer be ollowed.I a ailed leader is put to death, then his mode o being will no longer be imi-tated, and his path no longer trodden. However, it is not beyond reason to pre-sume that a person might learn rom his ailures, and change his ideas, regardlesso his pride and his sentimental attachment. Tis means he has to sacrifce whathe previously held as ideal, as sacrosanct.

Even in a more general sense it is obvious that success requires the capacity tomake the right sacrifces. We will say, without reection, that all our sacrifces

paid o in the case o our success. By this we mean that our willingness to giveup ideas or actions or possibilities that truly mattered (or it was no sacrifce atall) ser ved as a precursor to our eventual triumph. Te successul modern entre-

preneur is successul because he invests blood, sweat and tears. Te successulmother sacrifces her individual interests and comort to the care o her children.

2 See, or example, Whitefeld, G. (ca 1750). Sermon 16: Te Observation o the Birth o Christ.Retrieved rom Te Anglican Library, October 16, 2006, at http://www.anglicanlibrary.org/

whitefeld/index.htm.

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Conversely, it is oen the hopeless clinging to a previous idealhowever dys-unctional that has now becomethat holds back progress now, and in theuture. Tus, what is and what was loved can easily become an impediment to

walking with God.Something analogous is necessary, on an even more undamental level. Te

human inant is born with more neural connections than he or she ever hasagain. Tese connections are ruthlessly pruned between the ages o two and our,

when the particular tracts that are utilized, practiced and rewarded survive andthe remainder degenerate. Te well adapted our-year old child has alreadysacrifced an immense amount o potential to become what he actually is. A sim-

ilar process occurs during late adolescence, when adult identity is catalyzed.Another round o drastic pruning takes place, as the personality dies into what isin many ways its fnal orm. Sacrifce is necessary to the development o a com-

plex, particularly adapted individual, even at the neuronal level.Stories such as Barries Peter Pan (1904/2006) warn us about the conse-

quences o reusing this process o continual specialization and actualization.Pan reuses to abandon the pluripotentiality o childhood. He remains leader ohis magic kingdom, in consequencebut the kingdom is Neverland, a place thatdoes not really exist. Neverland is inhabited only by other lost boys and tyrantsand even its putative ruler can never get the girl, Wendy. As a child, Wendy is

very much attracted by Pans ability to y, his apparent reedom, but she growsup, accepts her particularized and limiting responsibilities, and leaves him ar

behind. Peter Pan is the archetype o the individual who has allen prey to theOedipal process, frst outlined by Freud. In an odd way, his sin is the reverse oAdams. He reuses to eat the atal apple, and never allows himsel to be cast outo the privileged but ultimately unreal Eden o childhood. Adam lives in hopeand sueringbut Pan never lives at all.

It is absolutely impossible to overestimate what pain the development o thecapacity or sacrifce has cost the race o man. Human beings are the only crea-tures who must voluntarily give up the paradisal state o absolute immersion inthe present to concentrate on an eternally distal goal. Te capacity to disciplineourselves in this terrible mannerthe capacity to enslave ourselves and give upeeting but very real pleasureswas bought at a terrible price. We had to prac-tice sacrifce in ritual long beore it became an internalized and psychologicalcapacity. Modern people have by no means stopped making sacrifces to God,regardless o what they think. Our very belie that hard work and discipline willbring success is a precise but abstracted and refned restatement o the idea thatGod will shower his grace on the individual who makes the right oering. Tis is

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the Protestant work ethic. Furthermore, our belie that we are justifed in enjoy-ing the success that disciplined hard work brings (despite the suering o lessortunate others) is derived rom the idea that such success is a unction o divine,and thereore moral, will. Otherwise, property is merely the, as Marx claimed

with no little success.What do Cain and Abel sacrifce? In the Biblical version cited here, the nature

o Cains sacrifce is le unclear, except that it is o the ground, vegetativeand,thereore, bloodless. Every canonical tale, however, carries with it a surroundingcloud o similar storiessome derivative, some the product o a dierent devel-opmental path and tradition, some intermingled with other stories. In many

such variants, Cains sacrifce is not only o the ground but also o low quality.Cain is unwilling to oer up the fnest ruits o his labors to God. Tus, he doesnot really sacrifce anything. He wants to keep everything to himselso he isselfsh, as well as aithless. Abel, by contrast, continually oers up the best o

what he has. What does this mean? Once again, we already know. We say to ourchildren, do your best. Do not hide your light under a bushel (Matthew 5:15).

We do not say, Conserve your best, or hide your best. We mean, Oer the bestyou have. Do it in good aith. You will not be absolutely assured o success,but your chances will be increased to the degree that such increase is possible.Certainly, it is no overstatement to say that i you do not believe this, you at least

wish with all your heart that it was true. Tis is hope. o not believe this is to riskdescent into the deepest chasms o cynicism.

So what happens? God accepts Abels sacrifce, oers him respect, and rendershis lie acceptable, despite its terrible limitations. Cains sacrifce, however, Herejects. Tis drives Cain into a murderous rage.

Revenge against God

And the LORD had respect unto Abel and to his oering. But unto Cain and to hisoering he had not respect.

Te sacrifcial worker oers up to the unknown the ruits o his diligent andcommitted actions, in the hope that doing such will obtain avor. Te whole

point o working is to transorm the transcendent into something benevolent. Itis certainly true that many people work, and things still do not go that well orthem. Tey make sacrifces, and do what they claim they have to do, and theirlives nonetheless appear as catastrophe ollowed by catastrophe. Business ails.Te economy collapses. Illness rears its ugly head. All o this, painully con-trasted with success, can easily appear arbitrary, unreasonable, and completely

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out o individual control. It is also dangerous or the external judge to attributesuch catastrophe to the moral ailings o the person who experiences them(although the temptation do so is very much evident), as all the relevant acts arenever in the possession o the observer. However, the human capacity or trans-ormation makes the idea o the individual as a simple victim o circumstanceessentially untenable. Every situation allows or a multitude o valid interpreta-tions. Te idea o the sel as victim is always coherent and plausible, but alsoultimately unproductive. Tis is a standard theme in the Old estament, and inmany ways constitutes the spiritual strength o the early Jews: no matter what

punishment Yahweh dealt out, the proper response was We have strayed rom

the path o righteousness and it is our responsibility. Everything else makes mana victimand victims rapidly become resentul, spiteul and murderous.

Abel is a diligent and aithul worker, and he makes the correct sacrifces.In consequence, ortune smiles on him. He is a avored son o Yahweh. omake matters worse, he appears to deserve this avor. He has the right attitude.His social peers like and admire him (i they are not jealous and resentul).He gets everything he needs, and it is easy to construe his success as easy andundeserved.

Te existence o the leader who is wiseis barely known to those he leads.

He acts without unnecessary speech,

so that the people say,It happened o its own accord.3

Cain, by contrast, is constantly working at cross-purposes to himsel. Hissacrifces are grudging, because he has no aith in himsel or in the divine. Hedoes not believe that genuine eort on his part will be rewardedor, moredeeply, does not believe that such eort should be orthcoming regardless oapparent reward or punishment. Tus he always holds something in reserve, sothat no ailure is a genuine ailure. But lie is too dicult to be mastered i any-thing is held in reserve. Tus his caution (which will not protect him in the longrun anyway) inevitably leads to ailure.

3 Lao-se. Leadership by Exception. ranslated on-line by Seth Rosenthal. ao teh Ching(Verse 17).

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Victimization and resentment

And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance ell.I an individual works diligently, according to his own opinion, and thus eels

deserving, ailure and obstacle become painul and anxiety-provoking. Constantpain and anxiety conspire to produce anger and depression. Tis all contributesto resentment and an enhanced sense o victimization, and then to violence,

viewed as righteous and necessary. Furthermore, an individual who turns awayrom his own ideal in rustration and ear thus becomes judged harshly by thatideal (at least by comparison) and will thereore become very hostile to it (and all

who genuinely embody it). Each personal act o rebellion against that ideal istantamount to the murder o Abel by Cain, rom a mythological perspective,and oreshadows Satans conspiracy against Christ.

Tis painul, anxiety-provoking and angry psychological state is made all themore unbearable by the absolute implacability o Yahweh, who is entirely capableo laying entire nations, men, women and children, to absolute waste. Such aGod seems inappropriate to the modern rational consciousness, and it is no won-der. However, reality truly is a wall seven miles thick. Te individual and thestate dash themselves against it, at their own risk. God is absolutely merciless tothe individual who voluntarily reuses to learn rom his own mistakes.4 Perhapsthis is the unorgivable sin against the Holy Ghost (Matthew 12:30-32). Suchreusal, aer all, removes all hope o redemption.

Arrogance

And the Lord said to Cain, Why are you angry and downcast? Surely, i you doright, you ought to hold your head high. Sin crouches at the door, lusting or you, yet

you can master it.5

It is this realization on the part o Cain, orced by God, which turns hisresentment rom unbearable psychological burden to homicidal intent. Cain,

who holds something in reserve, who is arrogant and inexible, who challengesGod without humility, learns to his own deep chagrin that all his suering is nota consequence o the arbitrary and essentially unjust structure o reality. It isinstead frst, something o his own making; second, something he could change,

4 Te Epistle to the Hebrews (6:49) contains a variant o the same theme:I we deliberately keepon sinning aer we have received the knowledge o the truth, no sacrice or sins is le, but only a earulexpectation o judgment and o raging re that will consume the enemies o God.

5 ranslation o these six lines rom Miles, J. (1995), p. 39.

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i he wanted to; and third, something he knows he could change, but reuses to.It is also or these reasons that Cain is a precursor to Miltons Satan (just as Abelis a literary precursor to Christ):

Farewell happy FieldsWhere Joy or ever dwells: Hail horrors, hail

Inernal world, and thou prooundest HellReceive thy new possessorone who bringsA mind not to be changed by place or time.6

Te Lord, never one to mince wordseven towards those who are sueringdreadullysays to Cain: It is very convenient or you to blame the structure oreality or

55 2007 peterson jb a psychoontological analysis of genesis 2-6 arch psychol religion

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