Introduction

Jordan B. Peterson: I've been digging underneath the story of Jacob to try to find out what other themes are being developed. He says that even before his twins were born they were in a state of competition with their older brother Esau. This is symbolic of first the enmity that exists within people's psyche between the part of them you might say that's aiming at the light and the one that's aiming for darkness, he says. The idea of self-consciousness produces that division within us because more than any other creature we're intensely aware of our finitude and suffering which tends to turn us at least to some degree against being itself.