The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 12 Rules Seattle： Facts, Stories, and Values

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00:00:57.420 Welcome to the first episode of Season 2 of the Jordan B. Peterson Podcast.

00:01:01.920 My name is Michaela Peterson, and I've been working with my dad for the last year.

00:01:05.840 We've decided to do this podcast as a joint project because we thought it might be something fun and meaningful to do together.

00:01:11.780 For this episode, we're presenting Dad's 12 Rules for Life Tour Lecture at the Moore Theatre in Seattle on June 21st, 2018.

00:01:19.140 The lecture covers the evolution of religious thinking, a true human universal.

00:01:25.320 Everyone has to deal with the problem of value.

00:01:28.880 Everyone has to determine what is of more or less importance, what's a priority and what is not, or they can't act or even perceive.

00:01:37.880 So the problem of value has to be solved or at least addressed by everyone,

00:01:42.380 and that's what makes it a universal issue, deep enough to play a biological as well as a social role.

00:01:49.520 So, Dad, what goes into the prep for a lecture?

00:01:53.400 I usually sit backstage for about 45 minutes to an hour, sometimes sleeping a little bit, sometimes not.

00:02:01.760 I usually try to pick a problem of some significance that I've been working on that's related to my book.

00:02:07.580 So the problem has to be statable.

00:02:10.140 It might be the problem of, well, for example, one of the most recent lectures I did was on

00:02:14.860 why I don't like to answer the question whether or not I believe in God.

00:02:18.520 So that's a specific problem.

00:02:20.240 And then I put together a story that's composed of seven or eight, let's say, episodes from the collection of stories that I have in mind

00:02:29.220 and formulate an argument that allows me to walk through addressing the problem.

00:02:35.840 And then I go on stage and I try to address the problem.

00:02:39.860 Well, it's not like I know the answer to the problem to begin with, because otherwise it's not a real problem.

00:02:44.180 So part of what makes the lectures compelling is the fact that it's an actual problem that I'm working on,

00:02:49.420 that I'm trying to do something new, and it's not obvious to me that I'm going to come up with a coherent answer.

00:02:54.880 So that's the prep.

00:02:55.800 You stock up on Perrier before you head out on stage, though.

00:02:59.800 Yeah, and I stock up on Perrier before I head up on stage.

00:03:02.340 That's the other thing.

00:03:03.020 That's my special treatment for being the headliner of the show.

00:03:08.320 I think I have less of a request than any headliners they've ever had in any of these theaters,

00:03:13.720 because all I ask for is sparkling water.

00:03:16.940 And then I usually have like 40 bottles of it.

00:03:19.240 So you don't want a 42-inch TV or 72-inch TV, just some water.

00:03:23.620 Just some water, yeah.

00:03:24.940 Were there any highlights from the stop in Seattle?

00:03:27.860 Well, I was preparing for my conversation with Sam Harris on religion.

00:03:36.860 And so it gave me an opportunity to start to continue to think through some of the things that I wanted to talk to him about.

00:03:44.360 I mean, one of the biggest differences I have with Sam is the degree to which the world that we perceive is pre-processed before you perceive it.

00:03:56.380 Or the world that is is pre-processed before you perceive it.

00:04:00.340 For me, you have to run the world that you perceive through a network of value that basically has a religious structure.

00:04:07.840 And that's part of the argument that I was laying out with Sam.

00:04:11.100 And the Seattle lecture gave me an opportunity to clarify that a little bit more before I went to meet him in Vancouver.

00:04:18.320 When we return, Dr. Peterson's lecture from Seattle.

00:04:25.100 Dad is going to be debating Slavoj Zizek, April 19th at 7.30 p.m. EST in Toronto.

00:04:31.600 Tickets sold out at the Sony Center incredibly fast, so we're offering a live stream for the first time.

00:04:36.960 Hopefully it'll go well.

00:04:37.880 Please welcome my father, Dr. Jordan B. Peterson.

00:05:07.880 Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you very much.

00:05:10.540 Now, there we go.

00:05:11.980 Everyone can hear me, so that's good, hopefully.

00:05:16.060 So, I always use these lectures as an opportunity to extend what I'm thinking.

00:05:25.600 And I'm going to do that probably more tonight than I usually do.

00:05:30.720 I think Dave mentioned that I'm going to see Sam Harris in Vancouver for two days.

00:05:37.800 And so, yeah.

00:05:39.140 And so, I've been reading a lot, partly what Sam wrote, and also auxiliary material,

00:05:47.280 trying to figure out exactly what his claims are,

00:05:50.320 and so that I can outline the arguments, see where we agree, see where we disagree,

00:05:56.920 see where we can have a productive conversation.

00:05:59.680 And what I'm going to do tonight, partly as a consequence of that,

00:06:04.360 because I'm always working on some problem while I'm doing this tour,

00:06:08.460 but I would say more generally, it's part of intellectual life to have a problem

00:06:12.520 that you're working on to try to make clear.

00:06:15.580 And this is one of the problems that I was trying to work out,

00:06:19.800 at least in part when I was writing Twelve Rules for Life,

00:06:22.380 and also my earlier book, Maps of Meaning, which is now out in audio version, by the way.

00:06:27.020 It was published in June 12th, so about a week ago.

00:06:30.660 And so, if you liked Twelve Rules for Life, if you found it useful,

00:06:33.800 I don't think liked is really the right term.

00:06:36.620 I think if you found it useful, and if it was helpful to you,

00:06:40.100 then you might want to think about taking a listen to Maps of Meaning,

00:06:43.180 which is much harder, but contains a lot more information.

00:06:49.940 Yeah, that's the right way of thinking about it.

00:06:51.680 And see, what I've been trying to figure out, work on over the last 30 years or so,

00:06:57.660 is, I think, the right way of thinking about it,

00:07:00.960 and this is partly what I'm going to discuss with Sam,

00:07:03.520 is the relationship between facts and values.

00:07:06.460 And it's a very, very tricky relationship,

00:07:09.420 and it's very difficult to get right.

00:07:14.460 So I'm going to try walking through that tonight.

00:07:16.540 I'm going to lecture about the evolution of religious thinking, I think,

00:07:19.980 if you're thinking about the problem statement tonight, that's it.

00:07:24.060 How did religious thinking develop?

00:07:26.220 And I'm trying to take that seriously.

00:07:28.700 You know, I'm not...

00:07:30.060 A lot of what happens with a lot of evolutionary biologist types

00:07:32.680 is they take complex human phenomena,

00:07:35.320 like language or music or art or literature,

00:07:38.240 or religious thinking, for that matter,

00:07:39.940 and they tend to consider it like a secondary spin-off

00:07:43.360 of some more fundamental issue,

00:07:45.820 some more fundamental phenomena, let's say,

00:07:48.040 some more fundamental reality.

00:07:49.640 I don't think that's fair.

00:07:50.720 We know that religious thinking, for example,

00:07:53.160 is essentially a human universal.

00:07:56.120 I mean, you can always...

00:07:56.820 You can find exceptions to everything, but...

00:07:59.620 And I think the reason that it's a human universal

00:08:01.620 is because we have to live in a world of value.

00:08:04.360 And so...

00:08:05.180 And the question is,

00:08:06.660 is the world of value real?

00:08:08.780 And that's a big problem,

00:08:09.940 because it depends to some degree on what you mean by real.

00:08:12.720 You know, when you say that...

00:08:14.180 When you ask the question,

00:08:15.440 is A a variant of B,

00:08:17.480 the answer almost always is,

00:08:19.140 well, it depends on how you define A and B, right?

00:08:21.840 When you're trying to just lock two terms together like that.

00:08:24.620 And so it's easy to get slippery

00:08:26.240 when discussing those sorts of things.

00:08:27.820 Is the world of value real?

00:08:29.660 Well, you know, the ancient Greeks said,

00:08:32.200 I think it was Plato himself who said,

00:08:33.980 or Socrates, who said,

00:08:34.900 you have to define your terms,

00:08:36.600 and that's no easy matter.

00:08:38.440 So I sent out a tweet the other day

00:08:41.320 asking people what topics they wanted me to bring up with Sam,

00:08:45.940 or Sam and I to discuss,

00:08:47.040 and one of them was the definition of God.

00:08:49.680 And I have a definition that I've been working on,

00:08:54.760 and it has to do with this hierarchy of value.

00:08:57.540 It's based on the idea that you have to make a statement of faith

00:09:06.200 in order to start any discussion,

00:09:08.340 because you have to stop the questions.

00:09:11.720 You can always ask the question, why?

00:09:13.960 No matter what you're saying, you can ask why.

00:09:16.300 And that's no good,

00:09:17.060 because at some point you have to stop asking why and act.

00:09:19.900 And what that means is you have to put a stake in the ground somewhere

00:09:22.560 and say, this is what I live or die by,

00:09:24.820 something like that.

00:09:26.360 And I think that what God is,

00:09:29.320 from a psychological perspective,

00:09:31.360 is the most fundamental place

00:09:33.160 that you put your stake in the ground.

00:09:34.900 And that's sort of a variant of Carl Jung's idea.

00:09:38.480 He had many ideas about divinity

00:09:40.000 and about the idea of God,

00:09:41.200 but one of them was that God, for you,

00:09:45.160 was whatever the highest value in your value system.

00:09:47.840 God was the highest value in your value system.

00:09:50.060 And that could be something conscious or unconscious,

00:09:52.460 because you can have a conscious value system,

00:09:54.060 which means you've thought it out.

00:09:55.780 Everyone has a partially conscious value system.

00:09:58.100 But your value system can be unconscious as well,

00:10:01.020 in large part,

00:10:01.660 because, like, what the hell do you know about yourself?

00:10:03.540 You're really, really complicated.

00:10:05.220 You can't even set the clock on your microwave.

00:10:08.240 You know, and so...

00:10:08.960 And you're super complicated.

00:10:10.960 And so...

00:10:11.560 And you act out a value system,

00:10:13.000 and that value system is a hierarchy,

00:10:14.840 and there's something at the top of the hierarchy.

00:10:16.660 And you serve that,

00:10:18.080 whether you know it or not.

00:10:19.580 And you might say,

00:10:20.260 well, that's not equivalent to God.

00:10:21.680 But it's not a bad psychological equivalent,

00:10:23.760 and it's a pretty damn good start.

00:10:25.300 And so that's the sort of thing that...

00:10:26.740 I know that's kind of oblique,

00:10:27.940 but that's the sort of domain

00:10:29.320 that I want to investigate tonight.

00:10:31.860 So, see, one of the things that...

00:10:36.020 Okay, so let's start with a set of propositions.

00:10:41.060 So here's the propositions

00:10:42.420 as I've been working them out in this tour.

00:10:44.220 It's something like this.

00:10:45.680 It's that you're tasked to action in life.

00:10:52.120 It's not optional.

00:10:53.580 Well, it is.

00:10:54.260 You can just do nothing

00:10:55.160 and degenerate and die painfully, right?

00:10:57.580 But that's part of being tasked to action.

00:11:03.360 And it's part of what I mean by that

00:11:04.700 is that the consequences of not acting

00:11:07.200 in the world properly, let's say,

00:11:10.980 is that you suffer and die.

00:11:13.080 And you can say,

00:11:13.840 well, that's okay.

00:11:14.880 I'll accept that,

00:11:15.800 and I won't act,

00:11:16.600 and I'll suffer and die.

00:11:17.500 It's like, fine,

00:11:18.140 but that's the price you pay for not acting.

00:11:21.500 Now, you might be willing to pay that price,

00:11:23.120 and you might say,

00:11:24.000 well, I'm not compelled to act because of that.

00:11:26.100 But generally speaking, yes, you are,

00:11:28.300 because it's not pleasant to starve to death,

00:11:31.120 and it's not pleasant to die of thirst,

00:11:32.720 and it's not pleasant just to sit and do nothing.

00:11:35.620 Like, there's a strong impulse

00:11:37.060 to move out into the world

00:11:39.000 and to live,

00:11:40.440 but not only to live,

00:11:41.440 but to thrive.

00:11:42.760 And you could say,

00:11:43.380 well, in some sense,

00:11:44.160 that's built into you.

00:11:45.220 And so, the impetus to action is there

00:11:48.640 from the beginning.

00:11:51.300 That's why I think in the biblical stories,

00:11:53.360 for example,

00:11:53.740 I did some biblical lectures last year,

00:11:55.620 about 15 of them,

00:11:56.920 and I spent quite a bit of time

00:11:58.560 studying the Abrahamic stories,

00:12:00.120 and one of the constant narrative themes

00:12:04.020 in the Abrahamic stories

00:12:05.000 is that there's a call to adventure

00:12:06.960 on the part of the protagonist.

00:12:08.820 It's God calls to Abraham,

00:12:10.400 in the most classic case,

00:12:12.340 and says,

00:12:13.240 get away from your comfort,

00:12:14.580 get away from your family,

00:12:16.000 get away from your tribe,

00:12:17.840 get away from your country,

00:12:19.200 get out into the world,

00:12:20.600 and have an adventure.

00:12:22.320 And it's not have an easy life,

00:12:23.980 it's not be happy,

00:12:25.080 it's none of that.

00:12:26.240 It's get out there and contend.

00:12:28.960 And in the Abrahamic case,

00:12:30.360 it's extremely interesting

00:12:31.340 because Abraham is quite old

00:12:33.000 when the call comes.

00:12:33.920 I think he's 80.

00:12:35.160 Of course, the biblical patriarchs,

00:12:37.220 in principle,

00:12:37.760 lived far longer.

00:12:39.700 Whatever.

00:12:40.400 But he's 80.

00:12:41.080 He's still old.

00:12:41.800 He's been hanging around the house

00:12:43.000 for too long.

00:12:44.280 And, you know,

00:12:45.080 he gets called out into the world,

00:12:47.420 and, you know,

00:12:47.940 it's God that calls him out,

00:12:49.140 whatever that means.

00:12:50.380 And you'd think

00:12:51.620 if it's God calling you out

00:12:53.120 that you'd step out the door

00:12:54.680 and it'd be like,

00:12:55.440 you know,

00:12:55.920 petals of roses would drop from the sky

00:12:57.980 and everything would be wonderful.

00:12:59.120 But that isn't what happens at all.

00:13:00.380 I mean,

00:13:01.240 Abraham's initial adventures

00:13:02.740 are just catastrophic.

00:13:03.780 He first encounters a famine,

00:13:05.800 and none of us have ever

00:13:06.660 encountered a famine.

00:13:07.860 I mean,

00:13:08.080 maybe there's a person or two

00:13:09.100 in this room that has,

00:13:09.960 but most of you

00:13:11.060 have never even been hungry once,

00:13:12.920 you know,

00:13:13.460 much less encountered a famine.

00:13:15.040 A famine is a big deal, right?

00:13:16.860 And then he goes to Egypt,

00:13:19.200 and it's a tyranny,

00:13:20.160 and people are conspiring

00:13:21.680 to steal his wife,

00:13:22.660 and it's like,

00:13:23.140 it's just not good.

00:13:24.760 I'm sure he's thinking all the time,

00:13:26.220 I should have just stayed at home

00:13:27.180 in my tent,

00:13:28.260 you know,

00:13:28.760 but it doesn't matter

00:13:30.340 because the call to adventure

00:13:31.540 is there.

00:13:32.060 And I think that's really useful.

00:13:34.520 I think it's useful

00:13:35.480 because it's also a way

00:13:37.620 of conceptualizing your life.

00:13:39.140 It's like,

00:13:39.440 well,

00:13:39.540 what is your life?

00:13:40.560 It's,

00:13:40.840 well,

00:13:41.340 it's not easy,

00:13:42.120 that's for sure.

00:13:43.020 It's certainly not something

00:13:44.160 that you're going to be destined

00:13:45.360 to be happy with.

00:13:46.500 It's certainly got its tragic elements.

00:13:48.680 It's characterized by malevolence

00:13:50.280 and betrayal

00:13:50.800 and all sorts of terrible things

00:13:52.520 apart from tragedy.

00:13:53.600 But one thing you could say

00:13:54.880 is it might be an adventure.

00:13:57.040 And maybe,

00:13:57.440 and maybe,

00:13:58.260 maybe it's in the adventure

00:13:59.880 that it's actually justified.

00:14:01.520 And I,

00:14:01.740 I think that's the,

00:14:02.940 I think that's the underlying idea

00:14:04.740 of those stories

00:14:05.540 is to be called out into the world

00:14:06.920 is to find an adventure

00:14:07.940 that justifies the catastrophe.

00:14:09.680 It's something like that.

00:14:11.120 And that doesn't mean

00:14:12.260 it's going to be easy

00:14:13.100 or positive even,

00:14:14.440 but it might mean

00:14:15.420 that it's,

00:14:16.000 it's a worthy battle.

00:14:17.980 It might mean something like that.

00:14:19.680 It's,

00:14:19.840 it's,

00:14:20.040 it's,

00:14:20.680 you know,

00:14:21.180 and I've often thought that

00:14:22.020 about marriage too.

00:14:23.140 It's like,

00:14:23.580 when you marry someone,

00:14:25.080 well,

00:14:25.340 you should marry someone

00:14:26.000 you want to contend with.

00:14:27.700 You know,

00:14:27.920 and you,

00:14:28.160 there's another,

00:14:28.760 another narrative trope

00:14:30.040 in the,

00:14:30.360 in the Old Testament too.

00:14:31.420 I think it's,

00:14:32.020 I think it's Isaac,

00:14:32.860 if I remember correctly,

00:14:33.860 who,

00:14:34.200 is it Isaac who wrestles

00:14:35.200 with the angel?

00:14:36.620 It's Jacob.

00:14:37.460 Thank you.

00:14:37.860 It's Jacob that,

00:14:38.760 that,

00:14:39.240 that wrestles with the angel.

00:14:40.840 So what does that mean?

00:14:41.980 Well,

00:14:42.720 you know,

00:14:43.880 reality is something

00:14:45.280 that you wrestle with,

00:14:46.780 right?

00:14:47.160 It's something that pushes you

00:14:48.380 to your limit.

00:14:49.600 And if you have a good relationship

00:14:50.720 with someone,

00:14:51.420 there's that in it.

00:14:52.340 You want a worthy contender,

00:14:54.040 you know?

00:14:54.820 And it's not all peace

00:14:56.060 and lightness.

00:14:58.240 Not at all.

00:14:59.020 And you'd be unhappy

00:15:00.180 with that anyways.

00:15:00.900 You'd go look for trouble

00:15:01.740 if that was the case.

00:15:02.920 You know,

00:15:03.120 if everything was just too good,

00:15:04.320 it's like,

00:15:04.660 no,

00:15:04.840 I'm out of here.

00:15:05.600 I need some trouble.

00:15:07.020 It's like,

00:15:07.520 if you,

00:15:08.160 so,

00:15:08.700 so,

00:15:09.600 so,

00:15:09.940 okay,

00:15:10.240 so,

00:15:10.520 so,

00:15:11.120 back to the,

00:15:12.400 back to the value idea.

00:15:13.600 You have to go out

00:15:14.360 and you have to pursue something.

00:15:16.280 You can't just sit there

00:15:17.200 and deteriorate away.

00:15:19.320 You're compelled out into life.

00:15:21.860 And so then what's the consequence

00:15:23.160 of being compelled out into life?

00:15:24.600 Is you have to do something worthwhile?

00:15:26.880 Well,

00:15:27.300 do you have to?

00:15:28.300 It's like,

00:15:28.840 well,

00:15:29.060 actually,

00:15:29.660 yes.

00:15:30.900 Yes,

00:15:31.340 you have to.

00:15:32.400 It's inevitable.

00:15:33.280 And here's the reason,

00:15:34.260 as far as I can tell.

00:15:35.780 There's a very large number of things

00:15:37.600 that you could do.

00:15:39.060 Right?

00:15:39.460 You could say in some sense

00:15:40.520 that there's innumerable things

00:15:42.420 that you could do.

00:15:43.180 There's so many,

00:15:43.740 you can't count them.

00:15:46.220 And so then,

00:15:47.160 well,

00:15:47.380 how do you choose between them?

00:15:49.420 Well,

00:15:49.920 part of the answer to that

00:15:50.880 is things choose you,

00:15:52.980 which is a complicated thing

00:15:54.200 that I won't go into.

00:15:55.060 Like,

00:15:55.200 maybe you're interested in something.

00:15:57.300 And so,

00:15:57.720 and you think,

00:15:58.220 well,

00:15:58.340 I'm interested in it.

00:15:59.160 It's like,

00:15:59.440 not exactly.

00:16:00.220 No,

00:16:00.420 the interest is manifesting itself in you.

00:16:02.900 You don't have much voluntary control

00:16:04.540 over that.

00:16:05.280 You know what that's like.

00:16:06.600 If you're interested in something,

00:16:07.960 you can pursue it.

00:16:08.760 You can study it.

00:16:09.500 You can read about it.

00:16:10.260 You can remember it.

00:16:11.040 You can work on it.

00:16:12.020 And you can really work on it

00:16:13.140 without having to beat yourself up about it.

00:16:14.820 It'll just grip you

00:16:15.720 and pull you along.

00:16:17.240 But it's really hard

00:16:17.980 to make yourself interested in something.

00:16:20.480 If you're not,

00:16:21.500 you know,

00:16:21.700 and you've had this experience,

00:16:22.780 no doubt,

00:16:23.180 when you were studying

00:16:23.880 or when you were doing a job

00:16:24.860 you didn't want to do.

00:16:25.760 It's like,

00:16:26.480 you have to do the job.

00:16:27.460 It's necessary to do the job.

00:16:29.340 You know it's necessary to do the job.

00:16:31.260 But that doesn't make you interested in it.

00:16:33.980 And you might ask,

00:16:34.580 well, why not?

00:16:35.460 Wouldn't it be just simpler

00:16:36.460 if you could just tell yourself,

00:16:37.980 well, this has to be done

00:16:38.960 and so I should be interested in it.

00:16:40.420 And poof,

00:16:41.060 you were interested in it.

00:16:42.320 And then away you went.

00:16:43.240 But that doesn't work.

00:16:45.480 And that's not a non-trivial fact, man.

00:16:48.740 This is part of the secret

00:16:50.200 of the psychoanalysts.

00:16:51.740 See,

00:16:51.940 the psychoanalysts,

00:16:52.840 Freud and Jung in particular,

00:16:53.840 they've figured out

00:16:54.980 that you are not master

00:16:56.180 in your own house.

00:16:57.720 There are things going on inside you

00:16:59.180 that are autonomous.

00:17:00.520 They have their own way

00:17:02.280 of manifesting themselves.

00:17:04.060 And they're not just simple.

00:17:05.300 They're not just simple drives

00:17:06.620 like hunger or thirst

00:17:07.820 or the desire for sexual gratification.

00:17:10.280 They're way more complicated than that.

00:17:12.700 I like to think about them

00:17:13.980 as sub-personalities.

00:17:15.480 And they grip you

00:17:16.400 and they grip you all the time.

00:17:17.500 And the fact that you can be

00:17:18.920 interested in something

00:17:19.800 even despite yourself

00:17:21.220 because sometimes

00:17:22.020 you're interested in things

00:17:22.960 you know you shouldn't

00:17:23.780 be interested in.

00:17:25.240 Right?

00:17:25.560 And everyone laughs

00:17:26.480 because they go,

00:17:26.980 yeah, of course, that's right.

00:17:28.240 This happens all the time.

00:17:30.340 Yeah, and then you can't

00:17:31.340 control that either.

00:17:32.180 You think,

00:17:32.480 geez, I wish I wasn't

00:17:33.320 interested in that.

00:17:34.260 But I sure am.

00:17:35.680 I sure am.

00:17:36.900 Right?

00:17:37.360 So, well, that's all

00:17:38.380 an indication

00:17:39.520 that there are things

00:17:40.200 going on inside you

00:17:41.080 that, well, in some sense

00:17:42.900 aren't you.

00:17:44.580 But in a less,

00:17:46.180 what would you call it?

00:17:48.100 A less dramatic sense

00:17:49.820 at least you don't control.

00:17:51.780 And they're not random.

00:17:53.500 I mean, random just makes you

00:17:55.340 walk stupidly off the stage

00:17:56.900 and die, you know.

00:17:58.220 They're not random.

00:17:59.260 They're directed.

00:18:00.300 They're directed.

00:18:01.780 So, okay.

00:18:02.480 So, anyway.

00:18:03.020 So, there's something

00:18:03.600 that's impaling you

00:18:04.940 out into the world.

00:18:06.100 And then when you're

00:18:06.620 out in the world

00:18:07.120 you have all these choices

00:18:08.180 to make.

00:18:10.100 Perhaps a near infinite

00:18:11.400 number of choices.

00:18:12.760 It's the case, technically,

00:18:14.120 that you can take

00:18:14.700 a small number of entities

00:18:16.120 like books.

00:18:17.040 And you can classify

00:18:18.140 those entities

00:18:18.740 a near infinite

00:18:19.380 number of ways.

00:18:21.040 So, and that's just

00:18:21.740 an indication

00:18:22.280 of how complex

00:18:22.940 the world is.

00:18:23.480 So, how might you

00:18:24.200 classify books?

00:18:25.720 Well, how thick they are,

00:18:27.340 how heavy they are,

00:18:28.020 how old they are,

00:18:28.900 how old the paper is,

00:18:30.360 how thick the paper is,

00:18:31.380 how many E's there are,

00:18:32.600 how many E's there are

00:18:33.640 in the first sentence,

00:18:34.680 how many A's there are

00:18:35.700 in the first chapter.

00:18:37.160 Right?

00:18:37.520 Number of three-letter words,

00:18:38.860 number of four-letter words,

00:18:39.820 number of ten-letter words,

00:18:41.460 number of sentences,

00:18:43.100 number of clauses.

00:18:44.400 Well, you get the point.

00:18:45.280 Right?

00:18:45.600 It's like, you think,

00:18:46.460 well, why would you

00:18:47.220 classify books that way?

00:18:48.600 It's like, look, fair enough, man.

00:18:50.140 I didn't say that there would be

00:18:51.760 any utility in classifying them

00:18:53.980 that way.

00:18:55.640 So, you don't,

00:18:56.660 but you could.

00:18:58.040 So, then the question is,

00:18:59.200 well, why do you classify books

00:19:00.580 in the tiny, limited number

00:19:02.360 of ways that you actually

00:19:03.440 classify them?

00:19:04.320 Maybe by author

00:19:05.240 or by topic.

00:19:06.380 And the answer to that

00:19:07.180 is because there's utility

00:19:08.220 in that classification,

00:19:09.520 and the reason there's utility

00:19:10.880 is because it serves

00:19:11.900 some value.

00:19:12.700 If you want to find a book

00:19:13.780 in the library,

00:19:14.740 it works out that

00:19:15.480 if you classify them

00:19:16.340 by author,

00:19:17.020 that's one way of finding them

00:19:18.280 or perhaps by topic.

00:19:19.480 And so,

00:19:19.900 so, so the manner in which

00:19:21.600 the books manifest themselves

00:19:23.020 in a classification system

00:19:24.360 is dependent to some degree

00:19:25.660 on the purpose

00:19:26.720 that you're going to put

00:19:27.420 the books to.

00:19:28.600 Now, that's something

00:19:29.500 worth thinking about

00:19:30.320 because what that means,

00:19:31.700 what it seems to mean

00:19:32.700 is you're surrounded

00:19:33.800 by an array of facts,

00:19:35.400 like infinite number of facts,

00:19:36.900 and you have to select

00:19:38.540 from among those facts

00:19:39.980 which ones you're going

00:19:40.860 to act on.

00:19:42.400 And the way that you select them

00:19:44.160 is by valuing certain things.

00:19:46.220 And so what that means,

00:19:47.140 as far as I can tell,

00:19:48.000 is that you see the world

00:19:49.060 through a structure of value.

00:19:51.700 So, and I mean that,

00:19:53.080 I don't mean that metaphorically,

00:19:54.680 although I also mean it

00:19:55.760 metaphorically.

00:19:56.500 I mean, actually,

00:19:58.400 you see the world

00:19:59.600 through a value system.

00:20:00.940 It's the a priori structure

00:20:03.180 that determines

00:20:04.400 what in the world

00:20:05.840 manifests itself to you.

00:20:07.240 And I would also say,

00:20:08.320 just so that there's no

00:20:09.500 mistake about this,

00:20:10.940 there's plenty of evidence

00:20:12.180 for this.

00:20:13.240 And I outline some of the evidence

00:20:14.620 in chapter 10,

00:20:15.480 which is be precise

00:20:16.240 in your speech.

00:20:16.800 I talk about this famous experiment

00:20:18.500 that Dan Simon did,

00:20:19.940 the experiment about

00:20:20.640 the invisible gorilla.

00:20:22.460 And what Simon did,

00:20:23.380 essentially,

00:20:23.860 was show people two teams,

00:20:26.620 black team, white team,

00:20:27.560 three people on each team,

00:20:28.960 passing a ball back and forth

00:20:30.160 between their team members

00:20:31.100 for a minute,

00:20:31.740 three minutes,

00:20:32.520 showed this video to people.

00:20:34.020 And in the middle of the video,

00:20:35.080 they were supposed

00:20:35.460 to count the ball,

00:20:36.240 in the middle of the video,

00:20:37.100 a guy came walking out

00:20:38.020 in a gorilla suit,

00:20:39.280 like a big guy,

00:20:40.740 and beat his chest

00:20:41.760 for a few seconds,

00:20:42.720 three or four seconds,

00:20:43.500 and then walked off the screen.

00:20:45.240 It's like 50% of the people

00:20:46.620 who watched that video

00:20:47.320 never saw the gorilla.

00:20:49.060 And so then he rewinds it

00:20:50.080 and shows it to them,

00:20:50.780 and they go,

00:20:51.600 well, that's not the same video.

00:20:52.880 It's like, yeah, it is.

00:20:54.280 But you were busy

00:20:55.060 counting basketballs

00:20:56.600 while the dancing gorilla

00:20:57.500 made its appearance.

00:20:58.500 And so,

00:20:59.140 and the reason that's relevant

00:21:00.680 is because you're focused

00:21:02.180 on the balls

00:21:03.040 because, well,

00:21:03.960 that's what's valued

00:21:04.800 in the context.

00:21:05.560 That's what you're told to do.

00:21:06.960 And that makes you blind.

00:21:08.860 And not just a little blind.

00:21:11.780 Right?

00:21:12.140 To miss the damn dancing gorilla,

00:21:14.060 you're pretty blind.

00:21:15.520 And so,

00:21:16.400 and so it's a staggering demonstration,

00:21:18.400 and there's many demonstrations

00:21:19.600 of that type.

00:21:20.300 It's not,

00:21:20.640 it's not a single,

00:21:21.520 it's not a single instance.

00:21:23.420 And so,

00:21:24.960 so it does appear

00:21:26.100 that the way

00:21:27.740 that you select

00:21:28.800 what to perceive

00:21:30.980 and what to act upon

00:21:32.980 from an infinite menu

00:21:35.260 of choices

00:21:36.100 is by laying

00:21:37.640 a value structure

00:21:38.580 on top of the world

00:21:39.680 and then using it

00:21:40.880 as a screen.

00:21:42.160 Or,

00:21:42.340 or perhaps,

00:21:43.640 or perhaps,

00:21:44.780 it uses you

00:21:45.840 as its mechanism

00:21:46.780 of action.

00:21:47.800 That's another way

00:21:48.540 of thinking about it

00:21:49.280 because you might think,

00:21:50.060 well,

00:21:50.140 that's your value system.

00:21:51.980 You know,

00:21:52.180 when you created it

00:21:53.200 and then,

00:21:53.920 and then you're acting on it.

00:21:55.160 But,

00:21:55.700 you know,

00:21:56.500 the degree to which

00:21:57.520 you create your value system

00:21:59.420 is,

00:21:59.740 is questionable.

00:22:01.120 You seem to participate

00:22:02.320 in creating it.

00:22:03.920 You know,

00:22:04.160 you co-create it.

00:22:05.280 Maybe that's another way

00:22:06.080 of thinking about it.

00:22:06.760 But,

00:22:07.140 there's lots of things

00:22:07.940 that you value,

00:22:08.920 well,

00:22:09.300 because you don't really

00:22:10.020 have much choice.

00:22:11.020 Like,

00:22:11.400 you value food,

00:22:12.420 for example.

00:22:12.960 That's sort of a given.

00:22:13.860 And you value shelter.

00:22:15.360 And you value

00:22:15.900 temperature regulation.

00:22:17.180 You value companionship.

00:22:18.480 You value sexual gratification.

00:22:20.360 All of these things.

00:22:21.000 Now,

00:22:21.260 the degree to which

00:22:22.060 you value them

00:22:22.820 and the manner

00:22:26.020 in which you

00:22:26.720 hierarchically arrange them

00:22:28.100 seems to have something

00:22:28.960 to do with your choice.

00:22:30.140 But,

00:22:30.540 there's still,

00:22:31.500 there's still,

00:22:32.720 what would you call it?

00:22:33.680 There's like,

00:22:34.460 there's biological impetus

00:22:36.340 behind the value structure.

00:22:37.700 And to a degree

00:22:38.320 that we don't,

00:22:39.020 we can't quite fully grasp.

00:22:41.460 So,

00:22:41.760 you co-create it.

00:22:43.100 Okay,

00:22:43.440 so,

00:22:44.500 all right.

00:22:44.960 So,

00:22:45.040 now,

00:22:46.360 what I've tried

00:22:47.180 to figure out

00:22:47.620 to some degree,

00:22:48.800 and this is where

00:22:49.420 this gets really cool

00:22:50.420 as far as I'm concerned,

00:22:51.960 and this is actually

00:22:52.760 the thing I really

00:22:53.380 want to talk to Harris about

00:22:54.520 if I can manage it,

00:22:55.440 if we can get to this,

00:22:56.260 is that

00:22:56.520 I think

00:22:57.940 that the structure

00:23:00.100 that you use

00:23:01.320 to interpret the world,

00:23:03.180 the value structure

00:23:03.980 that you use

00:23:04.620 to interpret the world,

00:23:05.680 I think it's a story.

00:23:08.360 I think it's a story.

00:23:10.560 And so,

00:23:10.880 you see the world of facts

00:23:12.360 through a story.

00:23:14.540 Okay,

00:23:14.780 now this is,

00:23:15.480 I'll tell you why I think that

00:23:16.960 in some detail,

00:23:17.860 but this is a weird thing

00:23:19.420 because,

00:23:21.400 well,

00:23:21.980 the first,

00:23:22.400 the first weird thing

00:23:23.980 about it is

00:23:24.500 that if you see the world

00:23:25.800 through a story,

00:23:27.140 and you choose

00:23:28.500 what to act on

00:23:29.420 in the world

00:23:29.940 as a consequence

00:23:30.660 of that story,

00:23:31.780 then in some sense,

00:23:33.000 the story is your life.

00:23:34.760 Like,

00:23:35.000 not completely,

00:23:35.760 because there's the world

00:23:36.600 of facts out there,

00:23:37.340 but the facts

00:23:39.380 that have their effect

00:23:40.440 on you

00:23:40.960 are mediated

00:23:42.000 by your story.

00:23:43.560 And you see,

00:23:43.960 that seems to me

00:23:44.640 to be the role

00:23:45.300 that stories play.

00:23:46.500 And then you think,

00:23:47.060 well,

00:23:47.300 you know,

00:23:47.900 let's think about stories

00:23:48.920 for a minute.

00:23:49.440 What do you think of stories?

00:23:50.660 And the answer is

00:23:51.260 you absolutely love them.

00:23:53.480 Right?

00:23:53.960 I mean,

00:23:54.380 think about this.

00:23:55.700 I mean,

00:23:55.860 I know you're here

00:23:56.480 at this lecture.

00:23:57.260 I don't know,

00:23:57.780 like,

00:23:58.120 what the hell you're doing,

00:23:59.120 but here you are.

00:24:00.300 But most of the time

00:24:02.160 when you gather together

00:24:03.280 like this,

00:24:04.040 it's for a story.

00:24:05.580 Right?

00:24:05.780 You go to a play,

00:24:07.100 a musical concert's

00:24:08.220 a different thing,

00:24:08.780 and we won't talk about that.

00:24:09.920 You go to a play,

00:24:11.300 or you go see a movie,

00:24:13.220 and then you do the same thing.

00:24:14.560 You buy books,

00:24:15.220 you buy fiction books,

00:24:16.040 you watch TV,

00:24:17.160 you read stories to your kids.

00:24:18.360 Your kids love stories.

00:24:19.500 Right?

00:24:19.620 They'll work for stories.

00:24:21.040 They'll harass you

00:24:22.040 to tell them stories.

00:24:23.580 Right?

00:24:23.740 And we'll pay

00:24:25.420 like the most expensive,

00:24:27.080 some of the most expensive artifacts

00:24:29.460 that our culture produces

00:24:31.080 are stories.

00:24:33.040 Right?

00:24:33.320 We'll spend $400 million

00:24:34.300 on a special effects movie.

00:24:36.340 It's a lot of money.

00:24:37.620 And you know,

00:24:38.160 you watch the credits

00:24:39.000 at the end of those things.

00:24:40.220 It's like 8,000 people

00:24:42.580 in like 40 countries

00:24:43.840 worked on this thing.

00:24:44.780 So you can go spend 15 bucks

00:24:46.540 and be,

00:24:47.000 what,

00:24:47.360 amused for 90 minutes.

00:24:49.160 Well,

00:24:49.300 maybe what you're doing

00:24:50.020 in there isn't just amusement.

00:24:52.040 You know,

00:24:52.300 maybe you wouldn't be

00:24:53.000 locked onto that

00:24:54.100 to such a great degree

00:24:55.140 if there wasn't

00:24:55.920 a real reason for it.

00:24:57.120 And I mean a real reason.

00:24:58.420 It's like,

00:24:58.960 well,

00:24:59.600 why are people camping out

00:25:01.400 to be in the movie theater

00:25:04.040 the first day

00:25:04.760 the Star Wars movie opens?

00:25:06.240 It's like,

00:25:06.540 what the hell's with those people?

00:25:08.040 And,

00:25:08.700 you know,

00:25:09.080 why was Harry Potter

00:25:10.060 such an unbelievable

00:25:11.400 cultural event?

00:25:12.920 You know,

00:25:13.380 what's her name?

00:25:14.040 Rowling got,

00:25:15.060 what,

00:25:16.020 untold hundreds of thousands

00:25:18.220 of six to ten year olds

00:25:19.560 reading 600 page books.

00:25:21.440 She was doing readings

00:25:22.440 in stadiums.

00:25:24.100 It's like,

00:25:24.380 what's up with that?

00:25:25.480 Well,

00:25:25.800 it's entertaining.

00:25:26.900 It's like,

00:25:28.040 well,

00:25:28.380 what do you mean exactly?

00:25:29.580 That's not a good analysis.

00:25:31.720 It's not,

00:25:32.760 it's entertaining

00:25:34.420 is the beginning of an answer.

00:25:36.960 Why is it entertaining

00:25:38.340 is the real issue.

00:25:40.720 It's like,

00:25:41.160 well,

00:25:41.280 it's a respite from real life,

00:25:42.700 something like that.

00:25:43.340 It's escapism.

00:25:44.220 It's like,

00:25:44.820 well,

00:25:45.040 what about horror movies?

00:25:47.000 You know,

00:25:47.240 and even if you watch

00:25:48.540 Disney movies,

00:25:49.340 for example,

00:25:49.800 which I'm quite partial to,

00:25:51.260 at least some of them,

00:25:52.280 you know,

00:25:52.680 so they're made for kids.

00:25:53.620 It's not like they're all

00:25:54.380 sweetness and light.

00:25:55.860 Terrible things happen

00:25:56.640 in those movies.

00:25:57.920 And so kids are still

00:25:58.940 completely entranced,

00:26:01.260 transfixed by the movies.

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00:30:06.380 So,

00:30:09.340 so,

00:30:09.780 okay,

00:30:10.140 so,

00:30:11.300 so there's something

00:30:12.320 about stories

00:30:12.980 that's very,

00:30:13.820 very interesting.

00:30:14.340 And then,

00:30:14.700 here's another thing

00:30:15.540 about stories,

00:30:16.100 even about fiction.

00:30:17.520 Think,

00:30:17.800 well,

00:30:18.340 fiction is the opposite

00:30:19.240 of fact.

00:30:20.800 People think that.

00:30:22.180 I think,

00:30:22.500 well,

00:30:22.620 wait a second.

00:30:23.780 Wait a second.

00:30:24.620 Wait a second.

00:30:25.680 Fiction is the opposite

00:30:26.600 of fact.

00:30:27.220 Fact is true.

00:30:28.140 Fiction is the opposite

00:30:29.000 of fact.

00:30:29.520 Fiction is therefore

00:30:30.220 not true.

00:30:31.560 Well,

00:30:31.740 you think,

00:30:32.100 yeah,

00:30:32.260 that's true

00:30:32.760 because something

00:30:33.480 fictional never happened.

00:30:34.960 So it's not factual.

00:30:35.960 It's like,

00:30:36.680 okay,

00:30:37.020 well,

00:30:37.200 wait a second.

00:30:38.680 Does that make it

00:30:39.620 less true?

00:30:41.500 Well,

00:30:41.680 it depends on what

00:30:42.120 you mean by true.

00:30:43.320 You think,

00:30:43.840 well,

00:30:43.940 true equals factual.

00:30:45.100 It's like,

00:30:45.460 no,

00:30:45.680 no,

00:30:45.820 no,

00:30:46.020 no,

00:30:46.240 no.

00:30:47.300 No.

00:30:48.640 True has only meant

00:30:49.440 factual for about

00:30:50.220 300 years.

00:30:51.420 True meant all sorts

00:30:52.640 of things before that.

00:30:54.440 It meant that your heart

00:30:55.760 could be true.

00:30:56.480 It meant that an arrow

00:30:57.380 could fly.

00:30:58.480 True.

00:30:58.740 It meant that a blade

00:30:59.580 could be true.

00:31:00.440 It meant that,

00:31:01.000 it was that a contract

00:31:01.860 could be true.

00:31:03.280 You know,

00:31:03.560 character could be true.

00:31:04.860 You could be true

00:31:05.900 to yourself,

00:31:07.060 right?

00:31:07.300 All of those things.

00:31:08.120 That all is part

00:31:09.120 of whatever truth is.

00:31:10.460 So let's not make

00:31:12.080 the mistake of

00:31:12.940 presuming that whatever

00:31:13.920 we've been calling

00:31:14.620 truth for all these

00:31:15.380 thousands of years

00:31:16.000 is identical to

00:31:16.860 the set of

00:31:17.820 empirical facts.

00:31:19.000 It's like,

00:31:19.640 no,

00:31:19.820 that's a subset.

00:31:21.420 So,

00:31:21.740 so back to fiction.

00:31:23.340 It's like,

00:31:23.780 well,

00:31:24.000 okay,

00:31:24.420 fiction didn't happen,

00:31:25.540 so it's not true

00:31:26.280 and it's not true

00:31:27.100 like history.

00:31:28.180 That's for sure.

00:31:29.060 But we do admit

00:31:31.760 to gradations of fiction.

00:31:33.820 You know,

00:31:34.000 we say,

00:31:34.340 well,

00:31:34.400 that's trivial.

00:31:35.580 That's just a trivial story.

00:31:36.920 And then we say,

00:31:37.360 well,

00:31:37.460 there's great fiction,

00:31:38.460 there's great literature,

00:31:40.120 right?

00:31:40.300 There's deep,

00:31:41.220 profound,

00:31:41.900 great literature.

00:31:43.480 And you know that there's

00:31:44.240 difference in quality

00:31:45.040 between movies.

00:31:46.020 You know,

00:31:46.300 when you go to a movie,

00:31:47.080 it's just light-hearted idiocy

00:31:48.240 and you're there

00:31:49.060 because you've worked enough

00:31:50.520 and,

00:31:50.900 you know,

00:31:51.100 you need to take a break

00:31:52.480 and fair enough,

00:31:53.760 you know.

00:31:54.140 But that's different

00:31:54.980 than contending

00:31:55.720 with a real,

00:31:56.580 a real solid piece

00:31:57.900 of drama.

00:31:58.720 You know that there's

00:31:59.340 a hierarchy of quality

00:32:00.720 in stories

00:32:02.800 and that indicates,

00:32:04.500 well,

00:32:04.700 what does that indicate?

00:32:05.500 It means,

00:32:05.900 well,

00:32:06.020 some stories are better stories

00:32:07.180 than other stories.

00:32:08.200 Well,

00:32:08.380 what do you mean by better,

00:32:09.380 exactly?

00:32:10.320 Like,

00:32:10.640 and I mean exactly.

00:32:12.060 We admit that the distinctions

00:32:13.380 in quality exist

00:32:14.560 but we're not exactly sure

00:32:16.100 what they're based upon.

00:32:17.620 Well,

00:32:17.780 that's part of what I want

00:32:18.680 to address tonight.

00:32:20.140 It's like,

00:32:20.540 okay,

00:32:20.980 so here's what I thought of

00:32:23.040 as the minimum

00:32:23.900 necessary requirements

00:32:25.600 for a story.

00:32:27.900 So,

00:32:29.120 so,

00:32:29.820 the first requirement

00:32:30.600 is that you have

00:32:31.200 to be somewhere

00:32:31.920 but you are

00:32:33.380 so that's not a problem.

00:32:34.580 It's like,

00:32:34.920 there you are,

00:32:35.420 you're somewhere

00:32:35.940 and wherever you go,

00:32:38.000 this is an important thing,

00:32:39.500 wherever you go,

00:32:40.620 you're somewhere.

00:32:41.920 You're located in time

00:32:43.080 and space

00:32:43.500 at a particular point.

00:32:44.720 That's you.

00:32:45.640 You're actually

00:32:46.200 the localization

00:32:47.260 at that point

00:32:48.580 in time and space

00:32:49.740 and so you're somewhere

00:32:51.000 and simultaneously,

00:32:53.500 you're going somewhere

00:32:54.940 and I do mean simultaneously

00:32:57.220 because I don't think

00:32:58.700 and psychologists

00:32:59.340 have speculated

00:33:00.240 about this sort of thing

00:33:01.180 for a very long period of time

00:33:02.360 but I don't think

00:33:03.520 you're ever somewhere

00:33:04.180 without going somewhere

00:33:05.160 and that's because

00:33:06.740 that has to do

00:33:07.940 with this impetus to action

00:33:09.040 we already described.

00:33:10.340 Like even,

00:33:11.200 you think,

00:33:11.740 well,

00:33:11.820 you're sitting in the theater

00:33:12.640 and you're not going anywhere.

00:33:14.020 It's like,

00:33:14.240 yes,

00:33:14.440 you are.

00:33:15.260 You're going on the journey

00:33:16.400 that is this event

00:33:18.280 and I know you're sitting there

00:33:19.860 but you're an abstract creature.

00:33:21.280 You can have a little adventure

00:33:22.240 just sitting there.

00:33:23.040 Well,

00:33:23.460 that's what you do

00:33:23.900 when you go see a movie.

00:33:24.880 It's what you do

00:33:25.260 when you read a book.

00:33:25.980 It's what you do

00:33:26.400 when you think.

00:33:27.380 It's what you do

00:33:27.760 when you have a conversation.

00:33:29.260 Like we can go places

00:33:30.700 without going places.

00:33:32.380 That's thinking.

00:33:33.840 That's abstraction

00:33:34.580 and so we're going somewhere

00:33:36.160 and we're all hoping

00:33:37.180 that where we're going

00:33:38.060 right now

00:33:38.660 is somewhere worthwhile

00:33:39.500 and you're all sitting there

00:33:40.740 wondering,

00:33:41.300 are we going to be going

00:33:42.840 somewhere worthwhile tonight?

00:33:44.540 Well,

00:33:45.000 then that's what you're hoping,

00:33:46.280 right?

00:33:46.660 And you're hoping too

00:33:47.840 if it's a lecture like this,

00:33:49.160 you're hoping that

00:33:49.720 it'll have a beginning

00:33:51.320 and a middle

00:33:51.760 and an end

00:33:52.320 and the end will justify

00:33:53.720 the investment of time

00:33:54.920 and that it will generalize

00:33:56.360 in some sense.

00:33:57.200 The quality of whatever happens

00:33:58.400 will generalize beyond the event.

00:34:00.560 That's what you're hoping,

00:34:01.580 you know,

00:34:01.800 and that's obviously

00:34:02.620 what I'm hoping too

00:34:03.560 and part of the,

00:34:04.880 well,

00:34:05.280 and part of the dramatic tension

00:34:06.980 in the event

00:34:08.140 is to determine

00:34:09.720 whether or not

00:34:10.200 that's going to happen.

00:34:11.400 You know,

00:34:11.580 and I would say

00:34:12.100 I play with that

00:34:12.880 to some degree

00:34:13.520 because I don't script

00:34:15.620 these lectures.

00:34:16.480 You know,

00:34:17.560 I mean,

00:34:18.080 I have a sense

00:34:18.860 of what I'm going

00:34:19.440 to talk about

00:34:20.160 but they're spontaneous.

00:34:22.180 I'm trying to explore

00:34:23.300 and so I don't really know

00:34:24.560 if we're going to go

00:34:25.120 somewhere valuable too.

00:34:26.120 I bloody well hope so

00:34:27.020 and I'm trying to

00:34:27.980 but the fact that

00:34:29.820 the outcome

00:34:31.360 is in doubt

00:34:32.120 heightens the adventure,

00:34:34.560 right?

00:34:35.120 So it does,

00:34:35.940 it does,

00:34:36.400 it absolutely

00:34:37.360 heightens the adventure,

00:34:38.580 man.

00:34:39.320 So,

00:34:39.960 yeah.

00:34:46.280 Okay,

00:34:46.920 so you're somewhere

00:34:48.080 and you're going somewhere

00:34:49.260 and we already said

00:34:50.760 that where you're going

00:34:51.420 is valuable

00:34:52.120 or why would you go there?

00:34:54.080 And it's also

00:34:54.840 not everywhere

00:34:55.500 at the same time.

00:34:56.820 It's just like a map

00:34:57.940 in some sense.

00:34:58.640 You've got a map open.

00:34:59.800 The first thing

00:35:00.360 you want to know

00:35:01.000 when you open a map

00:35:02.060 is where are you?

00:35:03.380 Because if you don't know

00:35:04.520 where you are,

00:35:05.600 well,

00:35:06.000 then you can't compute

00:35:07.300 your trajectory

00:35:08.040 to where you're going.

00:35:09.480 So you have to know

00:35:10.140 where you are

00:35:10.680 and I would say

00:35:11.680 that's also

00:35:12.160 metaphysically true.

00:35:13.440 If you don't know

00:35:14.120 where you are,

00:35:15.340 it's very hard

00:35:16.260 for you to plot

00:35:16.820 your course forward.

00:35:18.200 So I have an exercise

00:35:19.080 I wrote in this suite

00:35:20.720 called the self-authoring suite

00:35:21.880 that helps people

00:35:22.560 write an autobiography

00:35:23.560 to bring themselves

00:35:24.860 up to date.

00:35:25.640 It's like,

00:35:25.880 where are you?

00:35:26.600 Where are you located

00:35:27.640 in space and time?

00:35:28.680 Are you still locked

00:35:29.540 back in junior high school?

00:35:30.680 Are you still locked

00:35:31.320 in high school?

00:35:32.000 Do you still have things

00:35:32.740 that are plaguing you

00:35:33.600 from when you were in college

00:35:34.540 from a previous relationship?

00:35:36.540 Like,

00:35:36.740 are you spread

00:35:37.600 all over your life?

00:35:39.320 You know,

00:35:39.520 are your pieces

00:35:40.180 not integrated in together?

00:35:42.580 Or are you right here

00:35:43.400 and now,

00:35:44.260 ready to make the next move?

00:35:45.660 That's a big question, man.

00:35:47.720 It's certainly something

00:35:48.500 that you sort out

00:35:49.260 in any decent course

00:35:50.900 of psychotherapy

00:35:51.680 because partly

00:35:52.360 what you do

00:35:52.860 in psychotherapy

00:35:53.500 is you tell your story.

00:35:55.400 Where did I come from?

00:35:57.600 What did that shape me into?

00:35:59.180 And where am I right now?

00:36:00.400 And sometimes

00:36:00.800 that's really doubtful, right?

00:36:02.300 You think,

00:36:02.780 well,

00:36:02.900 of course you know

00:36:03.460 where you are.

00:36:03.940 It's like,

00:36:04.460 no,

00:36:04.760 not of course.

00:36:05.940 Lots of times

00:36:06.520 you don't know

00:36:06.900 where you are at all.

00:36:08.260 If you're in a relationship

00:36:09.400 and the thing

00:36:09.960 catastrophically degenerates,

00:36:13.140 you know,

00:36:13.360 maybe you're betrayed

00:36:14.120 or maybe your partner dies

00:36:15.900 or something like that,

00:36:17.120 it's like,

00:36:17.720 you can easily end up

00:36:18.560 in a place

00:36:18.960 that you don't understand

00:36:20.400 at all.

00:36:21.120 You don't know

00:36:21.500 where you are.

00:36:22.360 And you'll say that.

00:36:23.220 You'll tell people,

00:36:23.920 I don't know where I am.

00:36:25.280 It's like,

00:36:25.560 well,

00:36:25.680 what do you mean by that?

00:36:26.540 Here you are,

00:36:27.120 right there,

00:36:27.660 sitting right there.

00:36:28.340 It's like,

00:36:28.660 no,

00:36:28.860 that's not what I mean.

00:36:30.380 And it's true.

00:36:32.020 You can be physically localized

00:36:33.560 without being psychologically

00:36:35.440 and spiritually localized.

00:36:37.120 It's very difficult

00:36:37.860 to be psychologically

00:36:38.860 and spiritually localized.

00:36:40.640 Anyway,

00:36:40.980 so you have to be somewhere

00:36:42.020 and it's better

00:36:42.500 to know where you are.

00:36:43.920 But it's not a foregone conclusion,

00:36:46.120 that's for sure.

00:36:46.960 And it's an estimate

00:36:47.780 and a guess at best.

00:36:49.280 Like,

00:36:49.440 it can be informed,

00:36:50.460 but you're taking

00:36:51.500 your best crack at it.

00:36:52.720 And then,

00:36:53.380 because life is complicated.

00:36:54.480 And sometimes you think

00:36:56.020 you're somewhere

00:36:56.800 and you're not there at all.

00:36:59.040 And that realization

00:37:00.000 can be absolutely devastating.

00:37:02.460 You know,

00:37:02.800 I thought I could rely on you.

00:37:05.120 I thought you loved me.

00:37:07.180 I thought I had a good job.

00:37:09.200 I thought I was doing

00:37:10.160 the right thing.

00:37:11.380 You know,

00:37:11.880 et cetera,

00:37:12.440 et cetera.

00:37:12.860 That's the voice of regret.

00:37:14.780 And that's the problem

00:37:15.480 with not being,

00:37:16.640 you're not,

00:37:17.160 that's the problem

00:37:17.620 with not being

00:37:18.320 where you thought you were.

00:37:19.680 It's a terrible realization,

00:37:21.160 that.

00:37:21.800 And so,

00:37:22.320 you're somewhere

00:37:22.960 and hopefully you've got that set

00:37:25.180 and then you're going somewhere.

00:37:26.880 Now,

00:37:27.360 to go somewhere,

00:37:28.860 same with a map,

00:37:29.900 is,

00:37:30.180 well,

00:37:30.280 you have to figure out

00:37:30.920 where that is.

00:37:31.480 You have to specify a place

00:37:33.000 because you can't go everywhere

00:37:33.920 at once.

00:37:34.820 Or if you do,

00:37:36.060 well,

00:37:36.220 then you're all over the place.

00:37:37.340 And everyone knows that

00:37:38.240 you don't want to be

00:37:39.020 all over the place.

00:37:40.220 You want to be where you are

00:37:41.120 going somewhere.

00:37:42.020 And then you might think,

00:37:42.980 well,

00:37:44.080 going where?

00:37:45.180 And the answer is,

00:37:46.420 well,

00:37:46.600 let's go somewhere worthwhile.

00:37:48.880 So that's somewhere valued.

00:37:50.560 And then what does worthwhile mean?

00:37:52.120 Well,

00:37:52.220 it's got to be at least

00:37:53.080 worth the trouble

00:37:54.260 because it's going to be

00:37:55.580 some trouble,

00:37:56.240 right?

00:37:56.380 It's going to take some resources.

00:37:57.560 It's going to take some time.

00:37:59.120 There has to be a payoff

00:38:00.340 that's commensurate with that

00:38:01.680 or it's a degenerating game.

00:38:03.960 You know,

00:38:04.120 like if you spend more money

00:38:05.360 than you earn,

00:38:06.280 that isn't going to work.

00:38:07.560 If you keep going places

00:38:09.140 that don't justify the journey,

00:38:11.920 then you're just going to

00:38:12.680 wear yourself to nothing.

00:38:14.600 You know,

00:38:14.860 even if you don't degenerate

00:38:16.160 physiologically,

00:38:17.080 you'll degenerate psychologically

00:38:18.320 because what will happen is

00:38:19.520 the end destination

00:38:21.440 isn't worth the trouble

00:38:22.640 and that will demoralize you.

00:38:24.280 So it has to be

00:38:24.900 a worthwhile place.

00:38:26.760 So that's the situation

00:38:28.540 you're in.

00:38:28.920 You're going,

00:38:29.440 you're somewhere

00:38:29.920 and you're looking up

00:38:31.700 and you're climbing

00:38:33.040 towards that place.

00:38:35.020 And that's always the case.

00:38:36.840 No matter where you are,

00:38:37.680 that's always happening

00:38:38.460 because wherever you are

00:38:40.620 isn't good enough

00:38:41.580 and you're trying to get

00:38:43.380 to somewhere better.

00:38:44.100 That's the promised land.

00:38:45.280 That's the metaphysics

00:38:47.280 of the idea

00:38:47.940 of the promised land.

00:38:48.960 It's also the archetype

00:38:51.320 of the promised future,

00:38:53.400 you know,

00:38:53.600 and the utopia

00:38:54.240 that might await for us

00:38:55.680 or the better life

00:38:57.800 that lays ahead

00:38:58.500 if you play your cards carefully

00:39:00.740 or your dreams and visions

00:39:02.200 for a relationship

00:39:03.160 or your hope for your children.

00:39:04.620 All of that.

00:39:05.280 It's like,

00:39:05.780 here I am now.

00:39:06.900 Here's something better.

00:39:08.180 That's what I'm pursuing.

00:39:10.020 And without,

00:39:10.980 if that structure,

00:39:12.460 so that's the structure

00:39:13.300 that you're looking

00:39:13.860 at the world through,

00:39:14.820 if that structure destabilizes,

00:39:17.240 then all hell breaks loose on you.

00:39:20.140 And I'll talk about that

00:39:21.060 in a minute.

00:39:21.820 And that's a very literal way

00:39:24.140 of thinking about it really

00:39:25.080 and metaphorical

00:39:25.900 at the same time.

00:39:26.860 If that structure breaks down,

00:39:28.180 all hell breaks loose.

00:39:29.740 And I think that that's exactly

00:39:32.040 the right way of thinking about it.

00:39:33.560 And so you don't want that.

00:39:34.700 You do not want all hell

00:39:35.840 to break loose.

00:39:36.520 That's for sure.

00:39:37.940 And here's a hint about that.

00:39:40.380 So I already made this claim,

00:39:42.720 that there's a lot of things

00:39:45.200 that you could be doing.

00:39:46.140 The world's very complicated.

00:39:47.300 There's lots of ways

00:39:47.820 of looking at it.

00:39:48.580 There's lots of pathways

00:39:49.420 through it.

00:39:49.860 There's way too many,

00:39:51.460 way too many

00:39:52.400 for you to handle.

00:39:54.720 You'd be absolutely overwhelmed

00:39:56.200 by the choices.

00:39:58.000 See,

00:39:58.640 a lot of what you're doing

00:39:59.680 when you place

00:40:00.440 a value structure

00:40:01.260 in the world

00:40:01.760 is trying to delimit

00:40:03.020 that insane complexity

00:40:04.980 to a single valuable option.

00:40:07.540 Because you kind of have to have that

00:40:08.560 before you act.

00:40:09.440 It's like,

00:40:09.740 well,

00:40:09.820 I want to walk across the stage.

00:40:11.020 Well,

00:40:11.300 I could go this way

00:40:12.120 or this way

00:40:12.960 or this way

00:40:13.740 or this way

00:40:14.340 or this.

00:40:14.800 Like,

00:40:15.180 you know,

00:40:15.740 there's infinite number

00:40:16.740 of gradations of pathways.

00:40:18.800 I have to zero all those down

00:40:20.900 to,

00:40:21.480 nope,

00:40:21.720 I'm going that way.

00:40:23.220 Right?

00:40:23.580 And that collapses

00:40:24.660 that entire

00:40:25.640 multi-dimensional space

00:40:28.920 of choice

00:40:29.580 down to a single actuality.

00:40:31.360 And that single actuality

00:40:32.520 is that which you value most

00:40:34.420 at that point in time.

00:40:36.360 That's why the chicken

00:40:37.160 crosses the road.

00:40:38.500 Right?

00:40:38.680 It's because the chicken thinks

00:40:39.900 the other side of the road

00:40:41.000 is better.

00:40:42.580 Because why,

00:40:43.000 otherwise it'd just stay on that side.

00:40:44.320 That's the answer.

00:40:45.160 People have been asking you that

00:40:46.020 your whole life.

00:40:47.280 It's like,

00:40:47.920 because the chicken thinks

00:40:49.220 the other side of the road

00:40:50.100 is better.

00:40:50.940 It's like,

00:40:51.260 maybe it isn't,

00:40:51.980 but,

00:40:52.280 you know,

00:40:52.700 it's a road crossing chicken.

00:40:54.120 So that's what it's going to think.

00:40:55.840 And so,

00:40:56.440 yeah,

00:40:57.280 yeah.

00:40:57.740 So,

00:40:58.100 okay,

00:40:58.420 so fine.

00:40:58.940 Now,

00:40:59.660 so you're at point A

00:41:00.820 and you're going to point B

00:41:01.760 and that's how you see the world.

00:41:03.420 And that limits what,

00:41:04.880 now,

00:41:05.260 here's how this works.

00:41:06.520 This is so cool.

00:41:07.760 So,

00:41:08.000 and this is sort of back

00:41:08.760 to the gorilla example.

00:41:10.420 So that actually structures you,

00:41:12.120 it structures the way,

00:41:14.080 here's how it structures the way

00:41:15.280 the world manifests itself to you.

00:41:17.140 First of all,

00:41:17.720 it gets rid of all the other choices.

00:41:19.140 Once you make a decision,

00:41:20.100 it's like,

00:41:20.440 okay,

00:41:20.920 I'm going there.

00:41:22.280 And then I don't have to go

00:41:23.220 these other

00:41:23.660 billions of places

00:41:25.500 I could go.

00:41:26.260 Thank God.

00:41:26.860 Such a relief.

00:41:27.560 I'm just going there.

00:41:28.860 That's why it's so,

00:41:29.600 such a relief

00:41:30.120 to finally make a decision.

00:41:31.920 Right?

00:41:32.220 Because that landscape

00:41:34.240 of catastrophic choice

00:41:36.200 collapses

00:41:36.880 and you think,

00:41:37.660 oh,

00:41:38.240 at least I made a decision.

00:41:39.900 And you think,

00:41:40.220 well,

00:41:40.380 why would you be so relieved?

00:41:41.900 It's like,

00:41:42.260 well,

00:41:42.760 how long do you want to think

00:41:43.840 about something?

00:41:44.740 Here,

00:41:44.960 here's an example.

00:41:46.180 Trivial,

00:41:46.620 but it'll do.

00:41:47.880 You know,

00:41:48.200 you think,

00:41:48.860 how many shampoos

00:41:50.380 do you want to choose from?

00:41:51.940 And you think,

00:41:52.340 I want an infinite number

00:41:53.540 of shampoos to choose from

00:41:54.680 because I like consumer choice.

00:41:56.380 So you go to the drugstore

00:41:57.960 and there's like 500 shampoos,

00:42:00.540 right?

00:42:01.060 And they all,

00:42:01.960 some of them have protein

00:42:03.340 and some of them have orange juice

00:42:05.020 and some of them have like vitamins

00:42:07.280 and some of them have gold.

00:42:08.880 There's some with gold in it now

00:42:10.000 in case you need gold

00:42:11.640 and not very much though.

00:42:14.260 And,

00:42:14.320 and you know,

00:42:14.960 there's some that has

00:42:15.540 no ingredients whatsoever.

00:42:17.120 They're pure.

00:42:18.320 And then,

00:42:18.940 right?

00:42:19.320 And so there's,

00:42:20.120 right,

00:42:20.840 right.

00:42:21.420 And so there's just like shampoo.

00:42:22.980 It's shampoo city,

00:42:23.980 man.

00:42:24.180 There's 500 of them.

00:42:25.120 And here's,

00:42:27.020 and you might think,

00:42:27.680 well that's way better

00:42:28.380 than just having two shampoos

00:42:29.780 to choose from.

00:42:30.480 But actually it's not

00:42:31.420 because how much time

00:42:32.440 do you want to spend

00:42:32.980 choosing a shampoo?

00:42:34.300 And if there's 500 of them,

00:42:36.000 the probability that you chose

00:42:37.400 the correct shampoo

00:42:38.260 is like zero.

00:42:39.420 It's one in 500.

00:42:41.140 So,

00:42:41.880 right.

00:42:42.620 So no matter what choice you made,

00:42:44.240 you're stupid.

00:42:45.300 Right.

00:42:46.020 And so,

00:42:47.140 so,

00:42:47.460 and this is actually

00:42:48.160 what the consumer literature

00:42:49.280 reveals.

00:42:50.380 It's like people say,

00:42:51.220 well,

00:42:51.440 more choice or less.

00:42:52.700 Oh,

00:42:52.900 more.

00:42:53.640 It's like,

00:42:53.960 really?

00:42:54.180 You think you go

00:42:55.080 into a sandwich place,

00:42:56.200 right?

00:42:56.740 And it's lunchtime

00:42:58.040 and you're busy

00:42:58.820 and you're hungry

00:42:59.400 and there's like

00:43:00.360 18 types of meat

00:43:02.780 and there's 50 types

00:43:04.080 of toppings

00:43:04.560 and there's 10 types

00:43:05.700 of bread

00:43:06.200 and it's like,

00:43:07.680 that's combinatorial explosion,

00:43:09.740 right?

00:43:09.940 That's,

00:43:10.200 that's a lot of different

00:43:11.160 possible sandwiches

00:43:12.160 and the person says,

00:43:13.500 well,

00:43:13.760 how do you want

00:43:14.820 your sandwich?

00:43:15.820 And you think,

00:43:16.620 just make me a damn sandwich

00:43:18.420 and give it to me

00:43:19.400 because I don't want

00:43:20.700 to do the complex

00:43:21.700 cognitive computations

00:43:23.240 necessary to design

00:43:24.840 the ideal sandwich.

00:43:26.040 That's actually why

00:43:26.860 I want you to do it.

00:43:28.280 I want you just,

00:43:29.060 maybe I want roast beef

00:43:30.680 or ham

00:43:31.340 or maybe there's

00:43:32.000 a vegan option,

00:43:33.460 right?

00:43:33.680 Something like that

00:43:34.500 and there's three sandwiches

00:43:35.900 and I'll have that one

00:43:37.260 and that's the right amount

00:43:38.980 of choice

00:43:39.580 and so,

00:43:40.740 so people don't like

00:43:41.720 unconstrained choice.

00:43:43.420 You know,

00:43:43.700 they don't like

00:43:44.280 no choice

00:43:45.180 but they don't like

00:43:46.180 unconstrained choice

00:43:47.140 because it's just not worth

00:43:48.820 the,

00:43:49.140 it's not worth

00:43:49.980 the complexity.

00:43:51.480 That's the thing

00:43:52.280 and so,

00:43:53.580 when you make a decision,

00:43:54.640 the complexity collapses.

00:43:56.340 When you choose a partner,

00:43:58.240 why is it a good thing

00:43:59.180 to choose a partner?

00:44:00.440 Well,

00:44:00.680 often it's not

00:44:01.520 because you have to put up

00:44:02.280 with a partner

00:44:02.760 but of course,

00:44:03.280 they have to put up

00:44:03.760 with you

00:44:04.160 so,

00:44:04.960 you probably got a better deal

00:44:06.760 than they did

00:44:07.420 so,

00:44:09.040 but,

00:44:09.220 but,

00:44:09.880 but,

00:44:10.120 but you probably both

00:44:11.320 got a pretty bad deal

00:44:12.380 so,

00:44:12.760 you know.

00:44:15.480 So,

00:44:16.000 but what,

00:44:16.460 why do you do that?

00:44:17.340 It's like,

00:44:18.260 well,

00:44:19.040 people say

00:44:19.660 marriage is the death

00:44:20.780 of hope.

00:44:21.900 It's like,

00:44:22.440 have you heard that?

00:44:24.100 It's so,

00:44:24.700 so optimistic.

00:44:26.020 It's like,

00:44:26.620 yeah,

00:44:26.860 but it's also the death

00:44:28.100 of cognitive complexity

00:44:29.720 and thank God for that.

00:44:30.900 It's like,

00:44:31.380 there probably is,

00:44:32.240 the perfect person for you

00:44:33.540 is probably out there somewhere

00:44:34.800 and let's say

00:44:35.780 if you spend one second

00:44:37.300 evaluating the 3.5 billion options,

00:44:40.580 you'd need 360 years

00:44:42.380 so good luck.

00:44:44.140 You're going to sift through

00:44:44.920 all those people,

00:44:45.800 man,

00:44:46.120 well,

00:44:46.340 you found her

00:44:46.900 so good for you,

00:44:47.760 hooray.

00:44:48.640 So,

00:44:50.000 so,

00:44:50.240 but you're just not going to do it

00:44:51.460 and,

00:44:52.000 and,

00:44:52.220 and you pick a partner

00:44:53.540 and you think,

00:44:54.020 well,

00:44:54.080 I'm going to put up with this person

00:44:55.320 and it's a relief,

00:44:56.820 at least it should be

00:44:58.020 because it simplifies things

00:45:00.320 to,

00:45:00.640 to a great degree.

00:45:01.400 Like,

00:45:01.620 there's complexity in the person

00:45:03.080 but there's not the complexity

00:45:04.640 of an infinite array

00:45:05.740 of potential partners

00:45:06.740 at every corner

00:45:08.100 and for,

00:45:09.100 for better or for worse

00:45:10.580 with regards to the infinite number

00:45:12.180 of partners.

00:45:12.880 So,

00:45:13.200 you're doing this a lot.

00:45:14.120 You're delimiting

00:45:14.940 the complexity of your environment

00:45:16.720 with your choices

00:45:17.420 and a huge part

00:45:18.600 of what your value structure does

00:45:20.040 is do that

00:45:20.940 and it simplifies the world

00:45:22.480 so that you can live in it.

00:45:23.420 Now,

00:45:23.560 here's how it works.

00:45:24.440 So,

00:45:24.760 once I decide

00:45:25.860 where I'm going,

00:45:27.600 my perceptions fall into line

00:45:29.380 and this is something that,

00:45:31.860 I mentioned this to an audience

00:45:33.640 that I was talking to

00:45:34.400 a couple of days ago.

00:45:36.760 There's almost nothing more important

00:45:38.260 that you could possibly ever learn

00:45:39.740 than that that's the case.

00:45:41.380 Once you decide what you value,

00:45:42.920 your perceptions fall into line.

00:45:45.140 You think,

00:45:45.640 could that really be?

00:45:46.540 It's like,

00:45:46.880 well,

00:45:47.060 who cares?

00:45:47.740 Why is that such a big deal?

00:45:49.260 Think about it.

00:45:49.960 What it means is

00:45:50.680 the way the world manifests itself to you

00:45:53.880 is dependent on what you value.

00:45:57.720 God,

00:45:58.080 like,

00:45:58.420 you could just think about that forever

00:45:59.760 because what it means is,

00:46:01.160 what it implies

00:46:02.080 is that if the world

00:46:03.960 isn't manifesting itself to you

00:46:05.620 in a manner that you approve of,

00:46:08.560 and I don't mean in a shallow way,

00:46:10.260 I mean,

00:46:10.860 because sometimes,

00:46:11.700 you know,

00:46:11.920 people are suicidal,

00:46:13.000 right?

00:46:13.200 It's like they're suicidal.

00:46:14.280 The world is not manifesting itself

00:46:16.440 to them in a manner

00:46:17.300 that's commensurate

00:46:18.400 with their continued survival.

00:46:20.240 It can get really brutal.

00:46:22.360 If the world isn't manifesting itself

00:46:24.260 to you in a manner

00:46:25.140 that you find desirable,

00:46:26.260 there's some possibility

00:46:27.220 that it's because your value structure

00:46:28.640 isn't oriented properly.

00:46:30.280 And it isn't,

00:46:30.960 this isn't trivial.

00:46:31.820 It's actually the case.

00:46:33.500 Now,

00:46:33.940 look,

00:46:34.440 I understand,

00:46:35.220 having said that,

00:46:36.600 I don't mean that you can just

00:46:38.060 wish yourself out of everything,

00:46:39.880 and I also don't mean that

00:46:41.020 terrible things might not happen to you

00:46:42.840 that you can't control.

00:46:44.060 That happens,

00:46:44.880 right?

00:46:45.400 No matter how oriented you are

00:46:47.180 with regards to your values,

00:46:48.640 you can get pancreatic cancer,

00:46:50.400 and you're gone in three months.

00:46:51.780 Like,

00:46:52.060 I understand that we're mortal

00:46:53.440 and finite,

00:46:54.260 limited,

00:46:54.820 and all those things,

00:46:55.580 and everything isn't within our purview

00:46:58.020 or our power,

00:46:59.460 right?

00:46:59.660 But within the framework

00:47:02.020 of our mortality,

00:47:03.360 let's say,

00:47:04.040 and our subjugation

00:47:05.140 to the essential tragedy of life,

00:47:07.280 it's still the case

00:47:08.240 that the manner in which

00:47:09.020 the world manifests itself

00:47:10.300 is dependent to some indeterminate degree

00:47:13.000 on what you value.

00:47:14.680 And then the question is,

00:47:15.720 then,

00:47:16.120 what should you value?

00:47:18.280 And that is the question,

00:47:19.640 man.

00:47:19.780 That's the question.

00:47:21.280 So,

00:47:21.660 okay,

00:47:21.980 so here's how perception works,

00:47:23.380 at least in part.

00:47:24.000 So let's say I'm deciding

00:47:25.020 that I'm going to walk,

00:47:26.800 you know,

00:47:27.280 parallel to this stage border

00:47:30.280 right off the stage.

00:47:33.300 Now,

00:47:34.260 what happens?

00:47:35.780 Well,

00:47:35.980 as soon as I specify that goal,

00:47:37.380 I point my eyes at the goal,

00:47:39.460 something that you do,

00:47:40.320 you point your eyes at goals.

00:47:41.940 That's why our eyes

00:47:42.840 have evolved the way they have,

00:47:44.700 by the way.

00:47:45.180 We have very acute vision,

00:47:46.420 and we have whites

00:47:47.500 surrounding our irises,

00:47:49.500 and that's so that I can tell

00:47:50.780 where you're pointing your eyes.

00:47:52.260 Because all of our ancestors,

00:47:54.120 whose eyes weren't easily readable,

00:47:57.040 were either killed

00:47:57.720 or didn't successfully reproduce.

00:48:00.220 Because one of the things

00:48:01.040 I want to know about you

00:48:01.920 is where the hell

00:48:02.600 are you pointing your eyes?

00:48:03.860 And the reason I want to know

00:48:05.000 is because I want to know

00:48:05.920 what you value,

00:48:06.880 and the reason I want to know that

00:48:07.880 is because I want to know

00:48:08.660 what you're up to.

00:48:09.640 Because then I can understand you.

00:48:11.160 So if I can tell

00:48:11.860 where you're pointing your eyes,

00:48:13.020 I know what you want,

00:48:14.160 and then I can understand you,

00:48:15.440 and then we don't have to fight.

00:48:16.800 Then maybe we can cooperate.

00:48:18.300 Like,

00:48:18.440 it's a big deal.

00:48:19.460 It's a major deal.

00:48:20.740 So you point your eyes

00:48:21.600 at what you want,

00:48:22.640 and then that sets up

00:48:24.100 your visual perception.

00:48:25.720 And so when I'm looking

00:48:26.460 straight ahead,

00:48:27.600 there's an obstacle in my path,

00:48:29.780 and that's that stool.

00:48:32.020 It's not a stool at the moment.

00:48:34.620 You say,

00:48:34.920 well, of course it's a stool.

00:48:35.840 It's like,

00:48:36.100 no, it's not.

00:48:37.400 No, it's not.

00:48:38.240 It's an obstacle

00:48:39.040 to my progress forward.

00:48:41.120 And you think,

00:48:41.840 imagine you're driving, eh?

00:48:43.180 You're in a hurry

00:48:44.140 to get somewhere,

00:48:45.440 and maybe you're a bit

00:48:46.040 on the temperamental side,

00:48:47.120 and so you're late.

00:48:48.480 It's your fault,

00:48:49.300 but it doesn't matter.

00:48:50.000 You're late.

00:48:51.100 And so,

00:48:52.360 you're at a crosswalk,

00:48:53.680 and you're like raring to go,

00:48:55.340 and this old lady in a walker

00:48:56.920 is going

00:48:58.220 across

00:49:00.120 the crosswalk,

00:49:03.220 and it's like

00:49:04.120 the little hand is there,

00:49:06.240 and it's time for her

00:49:07.500 to be on the damn sidewalk.

00:49:09.800 But she's not.

00:49:10.920 She's just hobbling along,

00:49:13.200 and you think,

00:49:13.820 God damn it,

00:49:14.520 I wish she'd get across.

00:49:15.560 It's like,

00:49:16.220 is that a poor old woman

00:49:17.400 in a stroller

00:49:17.980 or an obstacle in your path?

00:49:19.860 It's like,

00:49:20.160 well, just think about

00:49:20.780 how you're acting.

00:49:22.040 Maybe you're a bit guilty about it

00:49:23.340 because you also recognize

00:49:24.560 that it's a poor old woman

00:49:25.520 in a stroller,

00:49:26.440 but there's part of your brain

00:49:27.360 going obstacle,

00:49:28.100 obstacle,

00:49:28.500 obstacle,

00:49:28.880 obstacle,

00:49:29.280 obstacle,

00:49:30.060 right?

00:49:30.380 And that's what makes you

00:49:31.160 curse and mutter away

00:49:32.420 under your breath

00:49:33.220 in your car.

00:49:34.020 No one can hear you,

00:49:34.880 and you're in there alone,

00:49:35.720 so you can say

00:49:36.300 whatever you want.

00:49:37.420 But the reason

00:49:38.540 that I'm laying that out

00:49:39.840 is because

00:49:40.260 if something's in your way,

00:49:42.100 it's an obstacle.

00:49:44.600 And that is how

00:49:45.780 you parse up the world.

00:49:47.420 As soon as you have a goal,

00:49:49.680 then the world divides itself

00:49:51.180 into, well,

00:49:52.320 irrelevant things,

00:49:53.320 and that's most things

00:49:54.220 because everything

00:49:55.000 that isn't directly

00:49:55.980 related to that goal

00:49:57.380 is now irrelevant,

00:49:58.340 and thank God for that.

00:49:59.760 And then there's obstacles

00:50:01.400 that get in your way,

00:50:02.780 and then there's facilitators

00:50:04.640 or tools

00:50:05.260 that get you on your way.

00:50:06.800 And some of those

00:50:07.300 can be quite simple.

00:50:08.160 So let's say,

00:50:09.180 this is even associated

00:50:10.260 with emotion.

00:50:10.980 So if I'm looking

00:50:12.060 at this pathway,

00:50:13.220 I want to get over there.

00:50:15.080 Now, there's an obstacle

00:50:16.000 in my way,

00:50:16.700 and that actually produces

00:50:17.960 a small amount

00:50:18.840 of negative emotion

00:50:19.820 because the pathway

00:50:21.780 isn't clear.

00:50:23.020 And so I'm actually

00:50:23.800 less happy,

00:50:25.120 if I want to go over there,

00:50:26.400 I'm less happy

00:50:27.440 standing here

00:50:28.380 than I am standing here

00:50:30.720 because

00:50:32.300 the phenomena

00:50:35.740 that manifest themselves

00:50:37.200 as a consequence

00:50:38.040 of me laying out

00:50:39.380 a value structure

00:50:40.300 have an emotional meaning.

00:50:43.060 It's built right into them.

00:50:44.640 So you don't see

00:50:45.700 neutral objects

00:50:47.060 in the world.

00:50:47.880 You see something

00:50:48.640 like obstacles and tools.

00:50:50.580 You don't see most things.

00:50:51.820 You're blind

00:50:52.200 to almost everything,

00:50:53.000 but what you do see

00:50:53.820 are obstacles and tools.

00:50:55.740 So,

00:50:56.380 and tools make you happy

00:50:57.580 because they get you

00:50:58.700 to where you're going,

00:50:59.360 and obstacles,

00:51:00.200 they make you unhappy.

00:51:01.640 That's actually

00:51:02.180 what your emotional systems

00:51:03.320 are for

00:51:03.880 because you're trying

00:51:05.100 to get somewhere.

00:51:06.440 And so,

00:51:07.040 the positive emotion system

00:51:08.260 gets you going

00:51:09.600 towards your desired goal.

00:51:11.520 And the negative emotion system

00:51:12.740 says,

00:51:13.260 watch it,

00:51:13.760 there's an obstacle.

00:51:14.640 Watch it,

00:51:15.140 there's an obstacle.

00:51:16.180 And that's your emotions.

00:51:17.360 And so not only,

00:51:18.520 it's more complicated than that,

00:51:19.980 but that's,

00:51:20.800 the basic foundations

00:51:22.160 of your emotions

00:51:23.080 are positive and negative.

00:51:25.480 Moving forward,

00:51:26.780 positive.

00:51:27.520 Stop moving away,

00:51:29.320 negative.

00:51:30.180 That's the basic structure.

00:51:31.420 Now those branch out

00:51:32.420 because there's different kinds

00:51:33.340 of positive emotions

00:51:34.140 and there's different kinds

00:51:35.020 of negative emotions,

00:51:35.940 but that's the groundwork.

00:51:38.420 And so not only

00:51:39.080 does your goal

00:51:39.940 determine your perception,

00:51:41.980 actually the things

00:51:43.020 you literally see

00:51:44.260 in the world,

00:51:45.260 it also determines

00:51:46.420 your emotional response.

00:51:48.100 So that's pretty,

00:51:48.800 that's pretty wild.

00:51:50.300 That's pretty wild.

00:51:51.480 So,

00:51:52.280 so that,

00:51:53.280 that means that

00:51:53.860 your value structure

00:51:54.940 co-determines your reality.

00:51:57.820 That's a good way

00:51:58.520 of thinking about it.

00:51:59.780 Okay,

00:52:00.100 so now,

00:52:01.120 okay,

00:52:02.420 so,

00:52:03.420 a little dragon noise

00:52:04.620 I guess there.

00:52:07.960 So,

00:52:08.680 that's a simple story.

00:52:11.140 So here's the simple story.

00:52:12.380 I was at point A

00:52:13.680 and I went to point B.

00:52:15.360 And so that's a story

00:52:16.100 that a kindergarten kid

00:52:17.660 might tell.

00:52:18.820 It's just a fragment

00:52:19.660 of a narrative.

00:52:20.660 What did you do today?

00:52:22.060 Well,

00:52:22.280 mom and I walked to school.

00:52:23.940 Okay,

00:52:24.340 that's a,

00:52:24.780 that's an acceptable

00:52:25.440 unit of communication.

00:52:26.940 And you might,

00:52:27.660 you might dig a little bit.

00:52:28.640 You might say,

00:52:29.480 well,

00:52:29.600 did anything interesting

00:52:30.700 happen along the way?

00:52:32.740 Right?

00:52:33.020 Which is really,

00:52:33.900 that's an interesting question

00:52:35.160 is,

00:52:35.460 well,

00:52:35.680 what do you mean

00:52:36.440 interesting exactly?

00:52:38.740 I mean,

00:52:39.200 you're trying to get the kid

00:52:40.040 to think that up

00:52:40.700 on his own,

00:52:41.220 but you have a theory in mind,

00:52:42.760 something interesting.

00:52:43.900 Something what?

00:52:44.800 Unexpected maybe?

00:52:45.820 Who knows?

00:52:46.320 And the kid says,

00:52:47.000 well,

00:52:47.840 you know,

00:52:48.120 I was walking to school

00:52:49.580 and I walked by this yard

00:52:53.080 and a big dog jumped out

00:52:54.740 at the fence

00:52:55.180 and barked at me

00:52:55.960 and I was just,

00:52:56.920 I was scared.

00:52:58.520 And then you might say,

00:52:59.620 well,

00:52:59.960 what happened?

00:53:00.940 And the kid says,

00:53:01.660 well,

00:53:02.360 you know,

00:53:02.760 I went to school anyways.

00:53:05.540 And you give them a pat

00:53:06.480 and you say,

00:53:06.900 good work,

00:53:07.420 kid.

00:53:08.280 And,

00:53:08.660 right?

00:53:08.940 Because that's what you'd say.

00:53:10.300 You know,

00:53:10.940 you'd say,

00:53:11.480 well,

00:53:11.700 something scary happened.

00:53:13.500 Remember,

00:53:13.960 I mean,

00:53:14.140 when you're this high

00:53:15.000 and it's a dog

00:53:16.140 like a German shepherd,

00:53:17.420 that's like you being chased

00:53:18.520 by an eight foot German shepherd.

00:53:20.140 It's a major deal that,

00:53:21.480 right,

00:53:21.760 it's a major deal

00:53:22.680 that this kid,

00:53:23.420 that's a wolf,

00:53:24.940 right?

00:53:25.200 It's a wolf.

00:53:26.520 And so,

00:53:27.120 you know,

00:53:27.560 maybe it's not that hungry

00:53:28.680 but still,

00:53:29.920 still,

00:53:30.720 so it bounces out,

00:53:32.140 scares the kid half to death

00:53:33.400 but he perseveres

00:53:35.740 and he goes to school anyways

00:53:37.820 and you might say,

00:53:38.660 well,

00:53:38.920 you know,

00:53:39.400 how did you feel afterwards?

00:53:40.520 Well,

00:53:40.880 you know,

00:53:41.280 okay,

00:53:42.280 okay.

00:53:42.740 I started to play

00:53:43.560 and I forgot about it.

00:53:44.520 It's like,

00:53:45.060 so you give the kid a little,

00:53:46.440 you know,

00:53:46.660 you're happy about that story.

00:53:48.340 Well,

00:53:48.520 why?

00:53:50.040 Well,

00:53:51.340 the kid had laid out a pathway,

00:53:53.520 right,

00:53:54.120 and specified the objects,

00:53:55.400 just the sidewalk to school,

00:53:56.820 that's all that's relevant,

00:53:58.000 it's known territory,

00:53:59.300 something he can easily master

00:54:00.320 and then something leapt out

00:54:01.880 of the darkness

00:54:02.600 and threatened that

00:54:03.680 and the kid reacted,

00:54:06.160 that's negative emotion,

00:54:07.160 it's like the manifestation

00:54:08.320 of something unexpected,

00:54:09.820 that's a special category

00:54:11.120 of negative

00:54:11.780 that we'll get to in a moment.

00:54:13.500 Then he recovered

00:54:14.200 and he went along the way.

00:54:16.860 That's a better story.

00:54:18.460 See,

00:54:18.720 that's a much better story.

00:54:20.080 In fact,

00:54:20.900 when you go see a story,

00:54:22.740 that's usually the story.

00:54:24.620 The story is,

00:54:26.380 I thought I was at point A

00:54:27.480 and I was going to point B.

00:54:30.060 On the way,

00:54:30.880 something really unexpected happened

00:54:33.100 and it knocked the whole damn story

00:54:35.740 for a loop

00:54:36.440 and then I was somewhere

00:54:38.300 I didn't expect to be

00:54:39.500 at all

00:54:40.420 and then,

00:54:42.100 well,

00:54:42.280 perhaps I just died there.

00:54:43.960 That's what happens

00:54:44.560 in Hamlet,

00:54:45.220 for example.

00:54:45.700 It's not just Hamlet,

00:54:46.480 everybody dies there

00:54:47.600 and that's a tragedy,

00:54:49.960 right,

00:54:50.200 because you're in your pathway,

00:54:51.860 the world's all fixed and set

00:54:53.520 and then something emerges

00:54:55.000 and throws you for a loop

00:54:56.600 and that's it,

00:54:57.360 you're done.

00:54:58.100 That's a tragedy

00:54:58.820 and a comedy is,

00:55:00.500 well,

00:55:00.820 the little kid's story

00:55:01.640 is a comedy.

00:55:02.480 I mean,

00:55:02.720 it's not funny

00:55:03.400 but comedies

00:55:04.520 aren't technically funny.

00:55:06.560 Like,

00:55:07.220 a comedy is

00:55:08.340 the encounter

00:55:09.380 with something

00:55:10.040 that's catastrophic

00:55:11.220 and then the regrouping

00:55:13.200 and the transcending

00:55:14.200 of that catastrophe

00:55:15.240 and that's the story

00:55:16.840 that everyone loves.

00:55:18.520 Okay,

00:55:18.760 and so what's the story?

00:55:19.760 Well,

00:55:19.920 here's the story.

00:55:22.000 So,

00:55:22.600 I think of the first thing.

00:55:23.920 I was at point A

00:55:24.760 going to point B.

00:55:25.820 I think about that

00:55:26.400 as a normal story

00:55:27.460 and then this next story

00:55:28.720 which is,

00:55:29.160 I was at point A

00:55:30.000 was cruising along

00:55:31.600 unaware

00:55:32.480 something knocked me

00:55:33.880 off my feet.

00:55:34.960 I ended up somewhere

00:55:35.760 I didn't expect

00:55:36.780 then I reconstituted myself

00:55:38.740 and I got my,

00:55:40.200 I got back together.

00:55:41.780 I think that's

00:55:42.320 a revolutionary story.

00:55:43.720 That's the kind of story

00:55:44.700 that people are really,

00:55:45.860 really interested in

00:55:46.780 and so,

00:55:48.300 you know,

00:55:48.600 that's the sort of story

00:55:49.940 that you hear

00:55:50.460 in psychotherapies.

00:55:51.720 If the psychotherapy

00:55:52.900 works out,

00:55:53.700 at the end

00:55:54.220 the story will be

00:55:54.800 something like,

00:55:56.260 you know,

00:55:57.000 I was happily married

00:55:58.540 or I thought I was.

00:56:00.920 I trusted my partner

00:56:02.200 and,

00:56:03.140 you know,

00:56:04.100 we'd have a couple kids

00:56:05.400 we had a pretty good marriage

00:56:07.920 maybe it was a little rocky

00:56:08.980 from time to time

00:56:09.720 but everything was

00:56:10.860 pretty secure

00:56:11.500 and I relied on this person

00:56:13.360 I trusted them

00:56:14.060 and then I found out

00:56:15.620 that they had had

00:56:17.140 two affairs

00:56:19.120 in the last four years

00:56:20.700 and maybe a history

00:56:22.980 of them before that

00:56:23.680 and they never told me

00:56:24.380 about that at all

00:56:25.060 and I found that out

00:56:26.640 accidentally

00:56:27.140 and it just blew me

00:56:28.320 into bits.

00:56:29.100 Okay,

00:56:29.300 so you think about,

00:56:30.140 think about what happens

00:56:31.180 when something like,

00:56:32.160 something like that

00:56:33.240 has happened to all of you.

00:56:34.640 Might not be an affair,

00:56:36.360 might not be a betrayal

00:56:37.220 but you've been pursuing

00:56:38.640 some dream,

00:56:40.360 you're in the little space

00:56:41.700 encapsulated by that dream

00:56:43.420 let's say

00:56:44.000 and something comes along

00:56:45.940 and blows it into pieces.

00:56:47.620 Maybe you think

00:56:48.200 you deserve a raise at work

00:56:49.460 and it goes to someone else

00:56:50.600 or maybe your boss

00:56:51.600 is embezzling

00:56:52.200 and you trusted him

00:56:53.020 or maybe,

00:56:54.060 you know,

00:56:54.540 maybe you want to be

00:56:55.360 a physician

00:56:56.080 and you write the MCAT

00:56:57.460 and you get like

00:56:58.440 15th percentile

00:56:59.720 on the thing

00:57:00.440 and so that's the end of that

00:57:02.020 or maybe,

00:57:04.560 maybe you get sick,

00:57:05.620 you know,

00:57:05.880 you're doing quite well

00:57:06.880 and all of a sudden

00:57:07.500 your physiology

00:57:08.600 kicks out on you

00:57:09.560 and you know,

00:57:10.640 you lose your job

00:57:11.480 and God,

00:57:12.300 who knows,

00:57:12.760 maybe you lose your house

00:57:13.600 and maybe you're going

00:57:14.100 to lose everything,

00:57:15.080 you don't know

00:57:15.720 and like,

00:57:16.480 these things happen

00:57:17.100 to people all the time.

00:57:19.060 So what's happening

00:57:20.020 when something like that happens?

00:57:21.520 Well,

00:57:21.640 the betrayal is a good example.

00:57:22.920 It's like,

00:57:23.480 you're in this little

00:57:24.220 encapsulated safe world

00:57:27.160 and you've got

00:57:27.720 your perceptual object specified

00:57:29.500 and you've got

00:57:30.060 your emotional responses

00:57:31.320 mapped out

00:57:32.020 but the problem is

00:57:33.380 there's a lot of the world

00:57:34.660 that you weren't

00:57:35.080 taking into account

00:57:36.040 and that's the case

00:57:38.460 because you can't,

00:57:39.380 right?

00:57:39.580 You can't take

00:57:40.140 the whole world

00:57:40.680 into account.

00:57:41.320 You ignore

00:57:41.840 almost everything

00:57:43.480 and sometimes

00:57:44.320 that works out fine.

00:57:45.380 You can get away with it

00:57:46.340 for,

00:57:46.940 it's hard to understand how

00:57:48.520 but you can get away with it

00:57:49.560 at least for short periods

00:57:50.480 of time

00:57:50.840 and it's a good thing

00:57:51.840 because you're just not

00:57:53.400 cognitively complex enough

00:57:55.340 to take on the whole world

00:57:56.420 so if your simplifications

00:57:57.800 didn't work

00:57:58.640 you'd be doomed.

00:57:59.940 Well,

00:58:00.080 you're doomed anyways

00:58:00.860 but you know what I mean.

00:58:02.360 You'd be doomed faster

00:58:03.380 but you know,

00:58:04.620 if you're in a marriage

00:58:06.140 and partly what you're doing

00:58:08.260 to the person

00:58:09.080 with the person

00:58:10.180 that you're married to

00:58:10.860 is you're simplifying each other.

00:58:12.620 You're saying,

00:58:13.620 well here's,

00:58:14.060 I have this immense range

00:58:15.300 of behavioral potentials

00:58:16.860 which would include

00:58:17.780 going out with other people

00:58:18.900 say behind your back

00:58:20.380 and with all the complexity

00:58:22.320 that would entail

00:58:23.120 but I'm not going to do that.

00:58:25.060 That's the promise

00:58:25.840 and so now

00:58:26.720 I'm half as complicated

00:58:27.860 as I was

00:58:28.600 and you know,

00:58:29.180 if you're my partner

00:58:29.820 then you agree

00:58:30.720 to do the same thing

00:58:31.840 and so now

00:58:32.180 you're half as complicated

00:58:33.280 as you were

00:58:34.440 or maybe 70% less complicated

00:58:36.880 who knows

00:58:37.460 and maybe that makes you

00:58:38.980 simple enough

00:58:39.720 so I can live with you

00:58:41.180 and vice versa.

00:58:42.640 Right?

00:58:42.840 So we've made a,

00:58:43.540 we've made a decision

00:58:45.100 to delimit the way

00:58:47.140 that we're going to interact

00:58:48.240 with the world.

00:58:48.720 We've made a decision

00:58:49.800 to live out

00:58:51.200 a certain kind of story

00:58:52.220 and to bind it together

00:58:53.420 and that means

00:58:54.540 that we can inhabit

00:58:55.520 the same space

00:58:56.360 with a certain amount

00:58:57.340 of security

00:58:59.240 and simplicity

00:59:00.440 but then you have

00:59:02.000 an affair.

00:59:03.700 It's like,

00:59:04.120 okay,

00:59:04.340 what happens?

00:59:05.600 Well,

00:59:06.360 that's not a good question.

00:59:08.120 The better question is,

00:59:09.180 well,

00:59:09.340 what doesn't happen?

00:59:11.560 Because everything happens.

00:59:13.100 It's like,

00:59:14.820 well,

00:59:15.380 I thought I understood

00:59:16.740 my past.

00:59:19.000 Clearly,

00:59:19.580 I didn't.

00:59:20.580 That's a strange thing,

00:59:21.700 eh?

00:59:21.780 Because you think

00:59:22.240 the past is fixed

00:59:23.160 of course you understand

00:59:24.140 the past.

00:59:24.820 It already happened.

00:59:25.840 It's like,

00:59:26.480 really?

00:59:27.920 Really?

00:59:29.080 Well,

00:59:29.380 you know,

00:59:29.660 sometimes you go to a movie

00:59:30.680 and something happens

00:59:31.560 at the end

00:59:31.940 that changes the way

00:59:32.760 you looked at the beginning

00:59:33.540 completely?

00:59:34.280 It's weird

00:59:34.900 because you already

00:59:35.360 watched the whole movie.

00:59:36.580 It's like,

00:59:37.040 you saw what happened,

00:59:38.020 that happened.

00:59:38.620 It's like,

00:59:39.000 no.

00:59:40.020 What you thought

00:59:40.840 was happening

00:59:41.320 wasn't what was happening

00:59:42.400 and it is the little twist

00:59:43.600 at the end.

00:59:44.120 That's a twist ending

00:59:44.960 and it makes everything

00:59:46.240 fall into a different

00:59:47.200 configuration

00:59:47.700 and if a director

00:59:48.920 pulls that off

00:59:49.620 properly,

00:59:50.580 sometimes it's a real,

00:59:51.480 it's a real deception

00:59:53.600 and it's a trick,

00:59:54.940 you know,

00:59:55.540 you find out the person

00:59:56.380 was dreaming

00:59:57.160 or some idiot thing

00:59:58.120 like that,

00:59:58.900 you know,

00:59:59.400 but sometimes someone

01:00:00.280 really pulls it off

01:00:01.300 and there's something

01:00:01.780 you didn't expect

01:00:02.740 and it just,

01:00:03.680 it just makes,

01:00:04.260 everything else

01:00:04.740 make sense.

01:00:05.540 It's like,

01:00:06.180 so,

01:00:07.160 well,

01:00:08.340 so my,

01:00:08.920 my point is

01:00:10.040 is that sometimes

01:00:10.780 what happens now

01:00:11.480 can affect the past.

01:00:12.800 It's like,

01:00:13.200 well,

01:00:13.320 if you have a partner

01:00:14.380 and they betray you,

01:00:16.060 that affects the past.

01:00:17.580 You thought you knew

01:00:18.380 where you were.

01:00:19.600 You thought you knew

01:00:20.360 where you were going.

01:00:21.300 Ha!

01:00:21.840 You didn't know

01:00:22.560 where you were

01:00:23.000 or where you were going

01:00:23.980 and you didn't know

01:00:25.440 your partner

01:00:26.040 and that means

01:00:27.680 you really didn't know you

01:00:28.600 because you thought

01:00:29.620 that you were smart enough

01:00:30.640 to figure out

01:00:31.700 what was going on

01:00:32.480 but you weren't

01:00:33.540 and so if you were

01:00:34.820 stupid enough

01:00:35.660 to make that mistake,

01:00:37.400 just how stupid are you?

01:00:39.500 And,

01:00:39.700 and you know,

01:00:40.240 I'm not being mean

01:00:41.260 about this,

01:00:41.900 like this is how people

01:00:42.900 react when they're

01:00:44.160 in a situation like this

01:00:45.200 is like,

01:00:45.500 if you're fundamentally

01:00:47.040 betrayed,

01:00:48.440 in Dante's Inferno

01:00:49.500 which is like a map

01:00:50.380 of hell,

01:00:51.320 the,

01:00:51.480 the deepest part of hell

01:00:52.940 was reserved for people

01:00:54.060 who betray,

01:00:55.580 right,

01:00:56.200 because that's the thing

01:00:57.040 that throws everyone

01:00:57.760 for a loop the hardest.

01:00:59.420 It's like,

01:00:59.740 if you're betrayed,

01:01:00.680 it's like,

01:01:01.300 everything is up for grabs.

01:01:02.540 All those things

01:01:03.320 that your story

01:01:04.100 protected you from

01:01:05.320 all come rushing back

01:01:07.020 and that's your past.

01:01:08.360 Your present,

01:01:09.040 well,

01:01:09.200 it's gone.

01:01:10.100 It's like,

01:01:10.480 your present,

01:01:11.720 what,

01:01:12.100 it isn't what you thought

01:01:13.080 it was,

01:01:13.420 that's for sure

01:01:14.040 and your future,

01:01:16.060 well,

01:01:16.900 you know,

01:01:17.200 that was kind of

01:01:17.760 unspecified to begin with

01:01:18.920 but now it's completely

01:01:19.960 in disarray

01:01:20.840 and so everything

01:01:22.260 has come flooding back.

01:01:24.540 Your story broke down,

01:01:25.500 everything has come flooding back

01:01:26.840 and then you have to

01:01:28.240 realign yourself

01:01:29.720 and so,

01:01:30.320 that might take a long time

01:01:31.600 because,

01:01:32.380 you know,

01:01:32.600 if you're in,

01:01:33.200 if you're doing this

01:01:33.860 with somebody therapeutically,

01:01:35.360 you might say,

01:01:36.500 well,

01:01:37.200 where do you think,

01:01:38.860 where do you think,

01:01:39.800 because you want to help

01:01:40.600 the person figure out

01:01:41.520 what happened,

01:01:42.920 not so that they know

01:01:44.560 what happened

01:01:45.260 but so that the probability

01:01:47.320 that the same thing

01:01:48.160 will happen again

01:01:48.840 is decreased.

01:01:49.940 That's actually the whole utility

01:01:51.260 of your memory.

01:01:52.300 Your memory isn't there

01:01:53.140 so that you remember

01:01:54.340 what happened

01:01:54.860 because who cares what happened?

01:01:56.020 That's not the point.

01:01:57.460 The point is to extract out

01:01:59.020 from the terrible occurrences

01:02:00.200 of the past

01:02:00.880 the information necessary

01:02:02.060 to help you avoid

01:02:03.020 the same terrible occurrences

01:02:04.740 in the future,

01:02:05.960 right?

01:02:06.140 So it's like you're updating

01:02:06.980 your map.

01:02:08.060 It's like you might ask

01:02:08.780 the person,

01:02:09.180 okay,

01:02:09.360 well,

01:02:09.500 where do you think,

01:02:10.440 where do you think

01:02:11.120 your marriage went wrong?

01:02:12.340 You might even ask them,

01:02:13.240 well,

01:02:13.340 do you think that,

01:02:14.480 is there some manner

01:02:15.440 in which you contributed

01:02:16.540 to this?

01:02:17.460 It's kind of a rude question

01:02:18.680 but you want to know that

01:02:20.120 because if you're going

01:02:20.600 to have another relationship,

01:02:21.600 maybe you don't want

01:02:22.180 to bring the same

01:02:22.840 damn mistakes forward,

01:02:24.180 right?

01:02:24.600 Plus,

01:02:25.020 you can control

01:02:25.780 to some degree

01:02:26.620 the mistakes you made.

01:02:28.480 You can't really control

01:02:29.300 the mistakes

01:02:29.740 the other person made

01:02:30.680 but you want to map out

01:02:32.180 what happened

01:02:32.900 and then you think,

01:02:34.380 okay,

01:02:34.580 so you start,

01:02:35.140 you go back to the beginning

01:02:36.000 and you think,

01:02:36.840 okay,

01:02:37.000 well,

01:02:37.820 it's very rare

01:02:39.140 that something like that happens

01:02:40.420 and people don't think,

01:02:41.880 well,

01:02:41.980 there were warning signs

01:02:43.220 that I ignored.

01:02:44.760 Sometimes,

01:02:45.960 it comes out of the blue

01:02:47.360 but often,

01:02:49.940 people know,

01:02:50.740 no,

01:02:50.980 no,

01:02:51.260 I could,

01:02:52.120 there was unhappiness here,

01:02:53.460 here's something

01:02:53.940 we didn't deal with,

01:02:55.080 I saw this happening,

01:02:56.500 et cetera,

01:02:56.980 et cetera.

01:02:57.560 You can line up the events

01:02:59.040 and then maybe you have

01:03:00.120 to go over them

01:03:00.740 and you think,

01:03:01.200 okay,

01:03:01.500 well,

01:03:02.160 when did it start?

01:03:03.860 What did I avoid?

01:03:05.440 What should have I attended to?

01:03:07.160 How could have I set it right?

01:03:08.500 How many times did that happen?

01:03:10.240 And you weave a narrative

01:03:11.500 and so what you're doing

01:03:12.520 is you're re-exploring

01:03:13.700 the complexity of the past

01:03:15.480 that was hidden from you

01:03:17.700 when it was happening

01:03:18.720 and as you're re-exploring that,

01:03:21.660 you're acquiring

01:03:22.560 a palpable increase in wisdom

01:03:24.760 and wisdom would be

01:03:26.540 the restructuring

01:03:27.540 of your value system

01:03:28.660 so that you can act

01:03:29.860 more appropriately

01:03:30.520 as you move forward

01:03:31.440 into the world

01:03:32.020 and if you're lucky

01:03:33.200 and this is when the story

01:03:34.240 is a comedy,

01:03:35.220 what happens is

01:03:35.900 you really figure it out,

01:03:37.560 you really figure it out,

01:03:38.360 you think,

01:03:38.700 I see,

01:03:39.440 here's ten things

01:03:40.860 that I did wrong,

01:03:42.060 three of them are deep

01:03:42.900 and profound,

01:03:43.960 you know,

01:03:44.180 six of them are kind of trivial

01:03:45.340 and I can take care of them

01:03:46.220 but I really need to fix

01:03:47.120 these three things up,

01:03:48.480 I really need to fix them up

01:03:49.720 and so you practice

01:03:51.180 and you get your act together again

01:03:52.780 and you fix them up

01:03:53.600 and then maybe you start

01:03:54.680 a new relationship

01:03:55.280 if you're lucky

01:03:55.920 and maybe it's better

01:03:57.040 if you're lucky

01:03:57.800 and then five years later

01:03:59.020 that's the story you can tell.

01:04:00.740 The story is,

01:04:01.400 well I was kind of naive

01:04:02.300 and I had this relationship

01:04:03.400 and it went catastrophically wrong

01:04:05.760 and then I was somewhere terrible

01:04:07.300 for like a long time

01:04:08.980 and things fell apart

01:04:10.560 and I didn't know

01:04:11.720 if life was worth living

01:04:12.680 and I didn't know

01:04:13.500 about the past

01:04:14.140 and I didn't know

01:04:14.540 about the present

01:04:15.100 and I didn't know

01:04:15.600 about the future

01:04:16.180 and I was hopeless

01:04:17.020 and depressed

01:04:17.560 and anxious

01:04:18.020 and angry

01:04:18.500 and bitter

01:04:18.940 and unhappy

01:04:19.800 and vengeful

01:04:20.840 and resentful

01:04:21.560 and, you know,

01:04:22.660 murderous

01:04:23.180 because that happens

01:04:24.240 and it's a dark place,

01:04:26.220 man,

01:04:26.380 that you go

01:04:26.840 when things fall apart

01:04:27.800 and it can be really dark

01:04:29.240 if you let it become

01:04:30.100 that dark

01:04:30.720 and then that's the tragic story

01:04:33.340 and the real tragic story

01:04:35.180 is you don't get out of that

01:04:36.300 and that happens to people

01:04:37.440 all the time,

01:04:38.540 right?

01:04:38.860 But the comedy is,

01:04:40.180 but I learned my damn lesson

01:04:41.520 and I figured out

01:04:43.340 what I did wrong

01:04:44.020 and I put myself back together

01:04:45.300 and now I'm in a new place

01:04:47.180 and it's better.

01:04:50.340 Here,

01:04:51.180 down,

01:04:52.660 up

01:04:53.080 and the second up

01:04:54.520 is higher than the first one

01:04:55.640 and that's the real story.

01:04:57.260 That's a death and rebirth

01:04:58.620 by the way

01:04:59.780 and that's well worth knowing

01:05:01.660 because there's an idea,

01:05:03.100 one of the ideas

01:05:03.760 that's at the basis

01:05:04.500 of our culture

01:05:05.120 is that

01:05:05.600 the Redeemer

01:05:08.760 is he who dies

01:05:09.880 and is reborn,

01:05:11.540 right?

01:05:12.420 And that's really worth knowing.

01:05:14.180 Now,

01:05:14.340 I'm speaking about this

01:05:15.160 psychologically,

01:05:16.200 obviously.

01:05:17.040 I'm not speaking about this

01:05:18.120 from a religious perspective

01:05:19.160 but I said that I would

01:05:20.060 investigate the genesis

01:05:22.080 of the origin

01:05:22.900 of religious ideas.

01:05:24.520 Well,

01:05:24.700 as far as I can tell,

01:05:25.620 that's the origin

01:05:26.260 of that idea.

01:05:27.560 Now,

01:05:27.860 it's a deep,

01:05:28.760 deep idea.

01:05:29.620 Okay,

01:05:29.840 so let me see

01:05:30.360 if I can flesh this out

01:05:31.400 a little bit more.

01:05:32.960 So,

01:05:34.460 see,

01:05:36.680 because

01:05:36.920 it isn't just

01:05:39.120 that you have to get

01:05:39.840 your story straight.

01:05:41.980 You have to get

01:05:42.820 your story straight.

01:05:43.840 Why?

01:05:45.340 Because the world

01:05:46.320 reveals itself to you

01:05:48.200 through your story.

01:05:49.780 So,

01:05:50.220 you better get

01:05:50.660 your story straight

01:05:51.480 but you can't.

01:05:55.580 Why?

01:05:56.460 Well,

01:05:56.760 because you're ignorant

01:05:57.980 and limited

01:05:58.940 and malevolent,

01:06:01.420 right?

01:06:01.860 You have character flaws

01:06:03.180 that you know you have.

01:06:04.520 There are things

01:06:04.880 that you're doing wrong

01:06:05.660 that you know you're doing wrong

01:06:06.880 that you haven't fixed.

01:06:08.180 So,

01:06:08.620 that's the worm

01:06:10.140 at the core of the apple.

01:06:11.200 It characterizes everyone.

01:06:12.320 That's

01:06:12.720 Alexander Solzhenitsyn

01:06:13.800 wrote about that

01:06:14.500 when he said

01:06:14.920 the line between good and evil

01:06:16.140 passes down the heart,

01:06:17.700 passes through the heart.

01:06:18.200 the heart of every individual.

01:06:19.380 So,

01:06:19.540 you've got to put up,

01:06:20.560 you've got to contend

01:06:21.260 with your own

01:06:22.080 unwillingness

01:06:23.800 to stay on target

01:06:24.960 and that would be hatred

01:06:26.260 and malevolence

01:06:27.600 and the desire for revenge

01:06:29.620 and all of that,

01:06:30.480 you know.

01:06:30.920 You know how you go wrong

01:06:32.160 when you go wrong

01:06:32.960 and the kind of wrong

01:06:34.440 I'm talking about

01:06:35.040 is when you know

01:06:35.820 that it's wrong

01:06:36.660 and you do it anyways

01:06:37.440 and that characterizes everyone.

01:06:39.440 So,

01:06:39.880 you've got that

01:06:40.420 to contend with

01:06:41.080 and then you've got

01:06:41.700 just the fact

01:06:42.920 of the catastrophe

01:06:44.200 of life

01:06:44.680 to contend with.

01:06:46.260 things are more complicated

01:06:47.720 than you can actually handle.

01:06:49.300 So,

01:06:49.480 you actually can't

01:06:50.080 get your story straight.

01:06:51.780 Okay,

01:06:52.080 so,

01:06:53.420 well,

01:06:53.680 so that's kind of

01:06:54.320 bloody hopeless,

01:06:55.960 isn't it?

01:06:56.520 It's a nihilistic view.

01:06:58.760 It's,

01:06:59.140 you know,

01:06:59.380 the world is tragic

01:07:00.260 and it's contaminated

01:07:01.120 by malevolence

01:07:01.940 and there's nothing

01:07:02.840 you can do about it

01:07:03.860 because you're ignorant

01:07:04.520 and evil.

01:07:06.160 It's like

01:07:06.500 end of that discussion.

01:07:10.180 But,

01:07:10.440 you know,

01:07:10.900 people think that

01:07:11.660 is,

01:07:11.860 they think that

01:07:12.260 when they get

01:07:12.660 really depressed.

01:07:13.420 They think that

01:07:13.840 when they get

01:07:14.240 really nihilistic.

01:07:15.760 It's like,

01:07:16.300 you think that

01:07:16.820 when you get hopeless.

01:07:18.120 It's like,

01:07:18.440 so it's not like

01:07:19.060 this whole idea,

01:07:20.280 set of ideas

01:07:20.900 is foreign to people.

01:07:22.240 If things really

01:07:23.240 fall apart around you,

01:07:24.680 you might not only

01:07:25.380 think that of you,

01:07:26.140 you might think

01:07:26.580 that of everything.

01:07:27.480 So,

01:07:28.020 so it's a real thing.

01:07:30.380 But that's when

01:07:31.100 the other story comes in.

01:07:32.500 See,

01:07:33.340 because the question is,

01:07:34.920 what does it mean

01:07:35.760 to get your story straight?

01:07:36.980 And it doesn't mean

01:07:38.300 that you're right

01:07:39.620 because you can't be right

01:07:41.420 because what the hell

01:07:42.460 do you know?

01:07:43.320 That was the whole statement

01:07:44.280 at the beginning

01:07:44.860 of the lecture,

01:07:46.020 right?

01:07:46.300 You can't even set

01:07:47.040 the clock on your microwave.

01:07:48.160 So what hope do you have?

01:07:49.500 It's like,

01:07:50.360 well,

01:07:50.680 that's where the second story

01:07:51.900 comes in

01:07:52.420 because,

01:07:53.660 see,

01:07:54.060 one of the things,

01:07:55.320 let's see,

01:07:55.940 how can I,

01:07:56.320 how can I,

01:07:56.780 how can I state this properly?

01:08:05.800 Getting your story straight

01:08:06.960 is a process,

01:08:08.240 not a fixed state.

01:08:11.180 Okay,

01:08:11.740 so,

01:08:12.280 so imagine,

01:08:13.500 here,

01:08:13.820 here's one way

01:08:14.300 of thinking about it.

01:08:14.960 So,

01:08:15.980 so you're here,

01:08:17.580 you're going from point A

01:08:19.400 to point B

01:08:19.920 and then things fall apart

01:08:21.080 catastrophically

01:08:21.880 and you're here.

01:08:22.680 So,

01:08:23.180 you're in the upper world

01:08:25.060 and then you're in the underworld.

01:08:26.860 Maybe you're even in hell

01:08:27.940 because that's a little section

01:08:29.100 of the underworld.

01:08:30.200 And then you bounce back up

01:08:31.440 and you're here again.

01:08:32.220 So you can think,

01:08:33.100 well,

01:08:33.260 I'm who I was.

01:08:34.640 That would be one kind

01:08:35.560 of identity.

01:08:36.320 I'm the person

01:08:36.900 I thought I was.

01:08:38.600 That blows apart.

01:08:39.860 Then you're in this terrible place

01:08:41.180 and you think,

01:08:41.560 oh,

01:08:41.640 I'm the sort of person

01:08:42.440 who's in this terrible place.

01:08:44.100 That's another form of identity.

01:08:46.200 And then you can think,

01:08:46.900 no,

01:08:47.060 no,

01:08:47.220 I'm not the old person

01:08:48.600 or the person

01:08:49.360 who was in the catastrophe.

01:08:50.360 I'm the new person.

01:08:52.400 But the problem is,

01:08:53.220 is the new person

01:08:53.900 can fall apart too.

01:08:55.800 Okay,

01:08:56.140 so,

01:08:56.360 but then there's a third way

01:08:57.460 of thinking.

01:08:58.700 This is a better way

01:08:59.700 of thinking.

01:09:00.780 I'm not this

01:09:01.840 or this

01:09:02.560 or this.

01:09:03.560 I'm the process

01:09:04.620 by which this occurs.

01:09:06.880 Right?

01:09:07.400 It's like,

01:09:08.200 I know something.

01:09:09.180 It's not quite right.

01:09:10.740 It collapses.

01:09:12.660 It causes trouble.

01:09:14.080 The collapse.

01:09:14.560 But,

01:09:15.460 I regroup.

01:09:17.560 I learn.

01:09:18.580 I regenerate.

01:09:19.160 I put myself back together.

01:09:20.500 And then it happens again.

01:09:22.340 And it happens again.

01:09:23.100 But each time it happens,

01:09:24.640 maybe,

01:09:26.060 you're a little wiser.

01:09:28.920 You're a little more put together.

01:09:30.140 And you think,

01:09:30.540 well,

01:09:30.680 I'm not any of these fixed states.

01:09:33.480 I'm the process

01:09:34.260 by which the transformation occurs.

01:09:37.040 That's the critical thing.

01:09:38.460 Is that,

01:09:38.880 are you the,

01:09:39.480 are you,

01:09:39.960 are you who you are?

01:09:41.160 Are you the thing

01:09:42.060 that falls apart?

01:09:43.020 Or are you the thing

01:09:43.980 that moves between the states?

01:09:45.840 And that's the thing

01:09:46.600 to speak metaphorically.

01:09:49.400 That's identification

01:09:50.280 with the spirit

01:09:51.180 that dies

01:09:52.320 and is reborn.

01:09:53.800 Right?

01:09:54.260 And that's the key to redemption.

01:09:55.800 To let the old part of you die

01:09:57.620 when it's necessary.

01:09:59.760 And to let the new part

01:10:00.780 be reborn.

01:10:01.940 So you identify

01:10:02.760 with that thing

01:10:03.460 that can die voluntarily

01:10:04.640 and be reborn.

01:10:06.060 And that's the key to redemption.

01:10:07.660 That's a matter.

01:10:08.580 That's the getting

01:10:09.460 your story straight.

01:10:11.200 You see,

01:10:11.500 and the reason it's a process

01:10:12.540 is,

01:10:13.180 well it's not only

01:10:13.760 that there's too much

01:10:15.100 of the world

01:10:15.560 for you to get right

01:10:16.500 and so you can't.

01:10:19.200 And it's not only

01:10:19.900 that you're kind of warped

01:10:20.960 and bent

01:10:21.480 so you can't.

01:10:22.900 It's also that things

01:10:23.960 change around you

01:10:25.140 very rapidly.

01:10:26.000 So even if you're right now,

01:10:27.780 correct,

01:10:28.360 I mean,

01:10:28.720 that doesn't mean

01:10:29.360 that you're going to be

01:10:29.880 correct in two years

01:10:30.780 if you stay the same.

01:10:32.440 You know,

01:10:32.760 like,

01:10:33.720 if you have a nine-year-old kid

01:10:35.000 who's pretty mature

01:10:35.820 and together

01:10:36.360 and they don't change at all

01:10:38.160 and now they're 15,

01:10:39.980 they're going to be

01:10:40.520 a pretty immature

01:10:41.160 15-year-old

01:10:42.080 even though

01:10:42.740 they were perfectly fine

01:10:43.780 nine-year-olds.

01:10:44.440 So you're tasked

01:10:46.100 not only with contending

01:10:47.180 with your own ignorance

01:10:48.060 and your own malevolence

01:10:49.040 but you're also tasked

01:10:49.980 with contending

01:10:50.920 with the fact

01:10:51.420 that the world

01:10:51.860 is transforming like mad

01:10:53.260 while you're trying

01:10:54.100 to adapt to it.

01:10:55.380 And so you say,

01:10:56.020 well,

01:10:56.100 you need to hit a target.

01:10:58.440 You need to specify a target.

01:11:00.320 That's for sure.

01:11:01.780 But the damn target moves.

01:11:03.860 And not only does it move,

01:11:05.440 it even moves in ways

01:11:06.660 that you can't predict.

01:11:08.520 And then you say,

01:11:09.160 well,

01:11:09.300 if the target keeps moving

01:11:10.460 in ways that I can't predict,

01:11:11.980 then why should I bother

01:11:12.720 hitting the target at all?

01:11:13.880 But we've already

01:11:14.520 gone through that.

01:11:15.180 You don't have an option.

01:11:16.540 Well,

01:11:16.820 you could just sit there

01:11:18.480 and degenerate painfully

01:11:20.140 and die.

01:11:20.740 That's your option.

01:11:21.700 So you have to,

01:11:22.660 you have to follow

01:11:23.700 the target

01:11:24.300 that moves unpredictably

01:11:25.980 even though you can't

01:11:27.380 necessarily manage

01:11:28.420 the tracking.

01:11:29.320 And the way you do that

01:11:30.120 is by paying attention

01:11:31.380 and updating

01:11:31.940 as you move forward.

01:11:33.460 You know,

01:11:33.660 so,

01:11:34.420 you know,

01:11:34.720 if I'm,

01:11:35.740 this is a trivial example,

01:11:37.000 but, you know,

01:11:37.440 I'm walking forward,

01:11:38.240 maybe I close my eyes,

01:11:39.980 I don't have to,

01:11:40.980 and I trip over this rug.

01:11:42.700 It's like,

01:11:43.100 okay,

01:11:43.260 I'm going to do that again.

01:11:45.080 So this time,

01:11:45.900 I know where that is,

01:11:46.660 I'm going to step over it.

01:11:48.160 Okay,

01:11:48.440 well,

01:11:48.580 that's,

01:11:48.800 it's a tiny little improvement.

01:11:51.260 It's a tiny transformation

01:11:52.600 in my map of the world,

01:11:54.380 but it,

01:11:54.680 it,

01:11:55.060 it,

01:11:55.460 it smooths my pathway forward.

01:11:58.740 Right?

01:11:59.200 And I would say,

01:11:59.920 one of the ways

01:12:00.600 to avoid hellish catastrophes

01:12:03.000 is to make micro improvements

01:12:04.900 constantly

01:12:05.560 to see,

01:12:06.600 and this is why

01:12:07.140 you want to see

01:12:07.720 where you're wrong

01:12:08.560 all the time

01:12:09.520 if you can.

01:12:10.740 Because if you can see

01:12:11.440 where you're wrong

01:12:12.040 all the time

01:12:12.560 in little ways

01:12:13.080 and you fix up

01:12:13.700 those little ways

01:12:14.260 that you're wrong,

01:12:14.880 then you don't have to

01:12:15.480 collect all the ways

01:12:16.380 that you're wrong

01:12:17.060 and have one big catastrophe.

01:12:19.300 And that's,

01:12:19.800 that's sort of the story

01:12:20.800 of divorce

01:12:21.480 as far as I can tell

01:12:22.580 is that,

01:12:23.280 you know,

01:12:23.620 people,

01:12:24.480 every relationship

01:12:25.580 has friction

01:12:26.340 because life is hard

01:12:27.480 and you two are different

01:12:29.120 and you want different things

01:12:30.300 and there's difficult

01:12:31.160 decisions to make

01:12:32.080 and like,

01:12:32.680 it's hard

01:12:34.000 and so there's conflict

01:12:35.740 that's necessary

01:12:36.520 to work out

01:12:37.500 the complexity

01:12:38.720 and you think,

01:12:39.900 well,

01:12:40.080 I'm not gonna

01:12:40.680 engage in the conflict,

01:12:43.020 I'm not gonna rock the boat.

01:12:44.220 It's like,

01:12:44.420 that's fine

01:12:44.900 except all it does

01:12:45.880 is accumulate

01:12:46.420 and at some point

01:12:47.720 it'll accumulate,

01:12:48.520 you'll have 50,000 fights

01:12:50.680 that you haven't had

01:12:52.120 and then one day

01:12:53.660 you'll have all 50,000 of them

01:12:55.320 and then you're done,

01:12:56.840 you'll never recover from that.

01:12:58.780 So,

01:12:59.140 and I've seen people

01:13:00.100 fall into that pit

01:13:01.160 because that is a pit

01:13:02.020 and it's a deep pit

01:13:02.920 and there's a nasty monster

01:13:04.120 at the bottom of it

01:13:05.000 which is made up

01:13:05.980 of all the tiny little monsters

01:13:07.500 that you could have taken on

01:13:08.660 one by one

01:13:09.460 50,000 times

01:13:11.000 all amalgamated

01:13:12.000 into one massive monster

01:13:13.600 and then you fall into the pit

01:13:15.200 and it eats you

01:13:16.120 and you're done.

01:13:16.900 Then you're in divorce court

01:13:17.860 for 10 years

01:13:18.560 fighting over your kids

01:13:19.900 and spending a third

01:13:21.000 of a million dollars

01:13:22.800 on lawyers

01:13:23.520 because they're part

01:13:24.520 of that monster

01:13:25.200 that's at the bottom

01:13:25.920 of the pit.

01:13:27.000 So,

01:13:27.080 okay,

01:13:32.520 so,

01:13:32.820 so here,

01:13:34.120 let me,

01:13:34.680 let me tell you

01:13:35.320 one more thing.

01:13:36.000 You tell me what you think

01:13:36.820 about this.

01:13:37.740 So,

01:13:38.180 I'm going to go laterally

01:13:39.080 for a minute

01:13:39.520 because I was talking

01:13:40.360 about the evolution

01:13:41.100 of religious ideas.

01:13:41.980 So,

01:13:42.100 this is like a religious,

01:13:43.340 obviously there's a religious

01:13:44.400 component to this idea

01:13:45.460 of death and rebirth,

01:13:46.500 I mean clearly.

01:13:47.700 So,

01:13:48.220 but let me,

01:13:48.720 let me twist it a little bit

01:13:49.960 and so,

01:13:51.420 let's go back

01:13:53.040 to the example

01:13:53.740 of the dog

01:13:54.420 and the kid.

01:13:56.380 Okay,

01:13:56.700 so,

01:13:57.320 kid's walking along,

01:13:59.220 dog leaps out,

01:14:00.760 kid goes like this,

01:14:01.820 right,

01:14:02.360 startles,

01:14:03.240 freezes.

01:14:04.220 Why?

01:14:06.240 Or maybe runs away

01:14:07.240 but not in this case,

01:14:08.380 freezes.

01:14:09.080 What does a rabbit do

01:14:10.000 when it sees a wolf?

01:14:11.960 Freezes.

01:14:12.920 Okay,

01:14:13.320 what does a prey animal do

01:14:14.840 when it sees a predator?

01:14:18.060 Freezes.

01:14:18.980 Okay,

01:14:19.340 so here's a cool thing.

01:14:20.680 You know the Medusa,

01:14:21.820 the symbol of the Medusa,

01:14:23.800 head of snakes?

01:14:25.320 What happens when you see

01:14:26.400 the Medusa?

01:14:27.920 It turns to stone.

01:14:29.840 Right,

01:14:30.280 some of you saw

01:14:31.360 the second Harry Potter movie,

01:14:32.640 maybe you read

01:14:33.020 the second Harry Potter book.

01:14:34.660 Remember,

01:14:35.980 there's a magic castle

01:14:37.040 that all the magic kids

01:14:38.580 live in

01:14:39.060 and then,

01:14:41.000 I know,

01:14:41.340 and you went and watched this

01:14:42.340 and you think you know

01:14:44.240 what you're doing

01:14:44.900 and underneath the castle,

01:14:49.640 well,

01:14:50.060 what else?

01:14:51.100 Giant snake

01:14:51.980 lives in the sewer pipes,

01:14:54.640 essentially.

01:14:55.580 It's this giant ancient snake.

01:14:58.080 You swallow that,

01:14:59.040 no problem,

01:14:59.560 because it's obvious

01:15:00.300 to be the case

01:15:01.600 that if there's a magic castle

01:15:02.880 full of magic kids

01:15:04.200 that there's a snake under it.

01:15:06.020 I mean,

01:15:06.220 everyone knows that.

01:15:07.320 It makes perfect sense.

01:15:09.080 And so,

01:15:09.860 when the snake

01:15:10.480 manifests itself,

01:15:12.800 the kids

01:15:13.280 turn to stone.

01:15:15.720 Right.

01:15:16.520 Now,

01:15:17.200 Harry Potter fixes that,

01:15:18.460 right,

01:15:18.620 and he fixes that

01:15:19.420 by going down

01:15:20.720 into the basement,

01:15:22.120 way down

01:15:23.000 underneath everything

01:15:24.160 where the snake is,

01:15:25.760 so that's where

01:15:26.200 that monster is,

01:15:27.560 and then by dying

01:15:28.500 and coming back to life.

01:15:30.220 That's,

01:15:30.600 that's,

01:15:31.040 that story.

01:15:31.980 It's a phoenix,

01:15:32.820 remember?

01:15:33.440 He has a fight

01:15:34.140 with the snake

01:15:34.940 and then he gets

01:15:36.340 poisoned by it.

01:15:37.260 He rescues a virgin

01:15:38.400 down there,

01:15:38.920 Virginia,

01:15:39.720 Ginny.

01:15:40.320 It's not her name,

01:15:41.020 Virginia,

01:15:41.720 it's,

01:15:42.100 what's her name?

01:15:44.660 Ginevra.

01:15:45.100 Yeah,

01:15:45.240 it's the same name,

01:15:45.960 it's just a variant of it,

01:15:46.920 but,

01:15:47.240 but,

01:15:47.800 so it's,

01:15:48.380 it's,

01:15:48.740 it's the same name,

01:15:49.740 it's just a variant of it.

01:15:50.620 So,

01:15:50.920 it's the St. George story,

01:15:52.220 right?

01:15:52.440 St. George encounters the dragon

01:15:53.780 and overcomes it

01:15:55.380 and frees the virgin.

01:15:56.320 So,

01:15:56.480 it's exactly the same story.

01:15:57.660 That's the oldest story

01:15:59.260 of mankind,

01:16:00.160 by the way.

01:16:01.220 That story has been around

01:16:02.260 as a story

01:16:03.660 for like,

01:16:05.460 as a written story

01:16:06.340 for like 5,000 years.

01:16:07.600 It is literally

01:16:08.280 the oldest story we know

01:16:09.460 and it's way older

01:16:10.880 than its written form.

01:16:12.280 Who knows how old it is?

01:16:13.700 Like,

01:16:13.840 I think

01:16:14.240 in its physiological incarnation,

01:16:17.240 it's probably

01:16:17.820 as old

01:16:19.060 as the relationship

01:16:20.120 between snakes

01:16:20.980 and human beings

01:16:21.900 and that's 60 million years old

01:16:24.700 because we co-evolved

01:16:26.540 with snakes

01:16:27.180 and part of the reason

01:16:28.640 that we can see so well

01:16:30.320 is because our vision

01:16:32.100 evolved to detect snakes.

01:16:34.360 So,

01:16:34.840 that's something.

01:16:36.020 That's something.

01:16:37.280 Okay,

01:16:37.600 so in the Harry Potter movie,

01:16:39.100 well,

01:16:40.240 when the snake comes up,

01:16:42.240 you turn to stone

01:16:43.640 and then someone has to

01:16:45.000 redeem you

01:16:46.720 and so,

01:16:47.960 now the phoenix,

01:16:49.040 well,

01:16:49.200 what the hell is a phoenix?

01:16:50.120 It's like,

01:16:50.500 well,

01:16:50.600 it's this bird

01:16:51.140 that bursts into flames,

01:16:52.660 turns back into an egg

01:16:53.680 and is reborn

01:16:54.360 and it's the phoenix tears

01:16:55.960 that cure Potter

01:16:57.040 and so,

01:16:57.580 the idea there is

01:16:58.460 the spirit

01:16:59.780 that immolates itself

01:17:01.240 and is reborn

01:17:01.980 is the cure

01:17:02.880 for the disease

01:17:03.980 that the snake produces.

01:17:05.200 That's the story.

01:17:06.520 It's like,

01:17:07.240 that's true.

01:17:08.860 It's true

01:17:09.580 in the fictional sense.

01:17:11.300 It's true

01:17:11.840 in the fictional sense

01:17:12.820 that's more true

01:17:13.960 than truth.

01:17:15.340 It's more than true.

01:17:17.180 So,

01:17:17.540 I've been thinking about that

01:17:18.600 as meta-true.

01:17:20.100 It's truth extracted

01:17:21.620 from sets of truth.

01:17:23.500 Well,

01:17:23.740 little kid,

01:17:24.360 he goes to school.

01:17:25.660 The dog comes rushing forward.

01:17:27.200 He freezes.

01:17:28.360 It's like,

01:17:28.600 the story could be looked at.

01:17:29.840 I went back home

01:17:30.580 and I hid under my bed

01:17:32.080 and I never came out again.

01:17:34.160 And you think,

01:17:34.640 that's not a good story,

01:17:35.900 kid.

01:17:36.220 That's not going to serve you well.

01:17:38.180 Well,

01:17:38.460 you know,

01:17:39.540 you know,

01:17:40.040 like,

01:17:40.500 there's lots of ways

01:17:41.320 of handling that,

01:17:42.540 you know.

01:17:43.360 Let's say that

01:17:44.140 you're walking along

01:17:45.420 with your kid

01:17:46.040 and you're pretty nervous

01:17:47.400 and the wolf,

01:17:48.780 and the dog

01:17:49.300 comes bounding out

01:17:50.240 and when it does,

01:17:52.260 you just melt down.

01:17:53.740 So,

01:17:54.000 not only is your kid frozen,

01:17:55.340 but you melt down

01:17:56.480 and your kid's watching you.

01:17:58.160 It's like,

01:17:58.860 well,

01:17:59.060 is that going to help

01:17:59.840 or hurt?

01:18:00.680 And what it's going to do

01:18:01.960 is magnify the trauma

01:18:03.780 of the event immensely

01:18:05.040 because what a child

01:18:06.240 will do in a situation

01:18:07.180 like that

01:18:07.680 is freeze

01:18:08.400 and then reference.

01:18:09.920 And what they reference

01:18:10.620 is the expression

01:18:11.640 on their parent's face.

01:18:13.860 And if it's abject terror,

01:18:15.660 that's not good.

01:18:17.120 Because,

01:18:17.520 well,

01:18:17.900 because,

01:18:18.380 you know,

01:18:19.020 the kid is wired

01:18:20.100 so that if something happens

01:18:21.500 that exceeds

01:18:22.120 his or her level

01:18:22.920 of competence,

01:18:24.260 that they refer

01:18:24.860 to the parent

01:18:25.460 and see if it also

01:18:26.660 exceeds their level

01:18:27.760 of competence.

01:18:28.720 And if the answer is

01:18:29.720 it does,

01:18:30.960 then that's not good

01:18:32.120 because that means

01:18:32.740 that whatever came

01:18:33.380 bounding out

01:18:33.900 is more powerful

01:18:34.820 than mom

01:18:35.560 or more powerful

01:18:36.760 than dad.

01:18:37.500 And you don't want

01:18:38.380 things around

01:18:39.440 that are more powerful

01:18:40.420 than mom or dad.

01:18:41.680 And so the right thing

01:18:42.420 to do is to,

01:18:43.280 you know,

01:18:43.640 watch the kid

01:18:44.480 and the kid gets all afraid

01:18:46.260 and you say,

01:18:46.820 hey, look, man,

01:18:47.840 you give him a little pat,

01:18:49.280 you know,

01:18:49.500 maybe give him a hug

01:18:50.200 and you say,

01:18:50.600 look,

01:18:51.900 that was scary,

01:18:53.520 but you can handle it.

01:18:54.860 Then you take their hand

01:18:55.840 and you walk them

01:18:56.400 to school.

01:18:57.240 Now it's a little hero story.

01:18:58.520 It's like the great predator

01:19:00.260 came bounding out

01:19:01.320 of the unknown

01:19:02.080 and fixed you

01:19:03.960 with its eye

01:19:04.860 and you could prevail,

01:19:06.900 you could continue.

01:19:08.200 You're not just

01:19:08.740 a prey animal.

01:19:10.400 You're something

01:19:10.880 that can prevail.

01:19:12.460 And that's what

01:19:12.900 you teach your kids

01:19:13.640 is that they're

01:19:14.240 something that

01:19:15.520 can prevail.

01:19:16.480 right?

01:19:17.700 And the symbolism

01:19:19.140 that we use

01:19:20.260 to represent

01:19:21.200 that which emerges

01:19:23.100 to pull you down

01:19:24.400 is the symbol

01:19:25.500 of the eternal predator.

01:19:27.380 That's the narrative

01:19:28.360 trope,

01:19:29.120 essentially.

01:19:30.000 So the idea

01:19:30.680 that in the magic castle

01:19:31.880 there's a terrible snake

01:19:32.920 that lurks underneath

01:19:33.700 that freezes you

01:19:34.500 is the same story

01:19:35.760 I told you

01:19:36.280 about how your life

01:19:37.060 falls apart

01:19:37.680 when something

01:19:38.560 unexpected happens.

01:19:39.980 It's just,

01:19:40.540 it's the concretization

01:19:41.760 of that idea

01:19:43.160 in image.

01:19:44.840 That's about all

01:19:45.500 I can explain tonight.

01:19:47.480 The only other thing

01:19:48.840 that I could touch on

01:19:49.700 briefly to maybe

01:19:50.700 flesh this out somewhat

01:19:52.060 is the idea

01:19:52.880 of the snake itself

01:19:53.900 because you think,

01:19:55.080 well,

01:19:55.540 if the snake

01:19:56.180 is the thing

01:19:56.820 that eternally

01:19:57.420 comes out of the unknown

01:19:58.360 to attack you,

01:19:59.600 both practically

01:20:00.940 and conceptually,

01:20:03.040 then what does

01:20:03.640 the snake consist of?

01:20:05.240 Well,

01:20:05.540 part of that

01:20:06.440 is just the thing

01:20:07.300 that devours you.

01:20:08.140 That's the tragedy

01:20:08.860 of life, right?

01:20:10.100 There's that.

01:20:10.660 But, you know,

01:20:11.240 in the Judeo-Christian

01:20:12.940 tradition,

01:20:13.900 we've also associated

01:20:15.180 the snake with malevolence

01:20:16.500 because there's

01:20:16.920 this deep idea.

01:20:17.920 This took me like

01:20:18.560 30 years to figure out,

01:20:19.940 literally,

01:20:20.620 because I was thinking

01:20:21.100 about it all the time.

01:20:22.280 You know,

01:20:22.760 there's an idea

01:20:23.420 that the snake

01:20:24.060 in the Garden of Eden

01:20:24.860 is Satan.

01:20:26.260 It's a very weird idea

01:20:27.320 because it's not

01:20:28.000 in the story.

01:20:29.380 It's something that was,

01:20:30.180 who knows how old

01:20:30.880 that story is,

01:20:31.680 but it was built

01:20:32.380 on top of the story

01:20:33.420 much afterwards

01:20:34.260 and was the consequence

01:20:35.380 of a lot of thinking.

01:20:36.540 It's like,

01:20:36.800 well, why?

01:20:37.920 What's the worst snake?

01:20:40.740 Well, you think,

01:20:41.240 well, just a snake

01:20:42.000 that, like,

01:20:42.920 an actual snake

01:20:43.960 is a bad enough thing,

01:20:45.060 but, you know,

01:20:45.420 a good stick

01:20:46.260 could chase away a snake.

01:20:47.420 It's like,

01:20:48.260 what about the snakes

01:20:49.080 in other people?

01:20:51.300 Those are harder

01:20:52.100 to chase away.

01:20:53.840 And what about

01:20:54.260 the snake in you?

01:20:56.220 That's really hard

01:20:57.100 to chase away.

01:20:58.620 Well, the snake

01:20:59.220 in other people,

01:20:59.880 that's the thing

01:21:00.400 that betrays you,

01:21:02.540 right?

01:21:03.260 And so the thing

01:21:03.800 that really can knock you

01:21:05.020 for a loop,

01:21:05.780 like, you might think

01:21:06.680 of this in some sense

01:21:07.860 as the ultimate predator

01:21:08.900 from the metaphysical

01:21:09.820 perspective

01:21:10.400 isn't just

01:21:12.080 the tragedy of life,

01:21:13.880 the fact that you're

01:21:14.520 vulnerable,

01:21:15.020 but the fact that

01:21:15.600 it's something like

01:21:17.080 the fact that other

01:21:17.900 people,

01:21:18.620 and you too,

01:21:19.660 can maneuver things

01:21:20.880 to make them far worse

01:21:22.260 than they are.

01:21:23.780 You say that

01:21:24.660 that's the human

01:21:25.400 capacity for evil.

01:21:26.900 So the thing

01:21:27.360 that lurks in the garden

01:21:28.520 and makes things

01:21:29.340 fall apart

01:21:30.060 is not just

01:21:31.300 the catastrophe of life,

01:21:32.540 the tragedy of life,

01:21:33.560 say.

01:21:34.320 The fact that,

01:21:35.980 well,

01:21:36.420 that we're

01:21:36.700 physiologically

01:21:37.540 fragile and mortal,

01:21:39.420 but also the fact

01:21:40.760 that the worst

01:21:42.860 form of falling apart

01:21:44.080 is at the hands

01:21:44.880 of someone

01:21:45.360 who's trying to

01:21:46.080 take you apart

01:21:46.760 on purpose,

01:21:48.200 and that would

01:21:48.680 also include you.

01:21:50.400 And so that accounts

01:21:51.120 for that association.

01:21:52.420 So the snake,

01:21:53.500 which is the

01:21:53.940 primordial predator,

01:21:55.320 which is the thing

01:21:55.980 that lurks

01:21:56.620 underneath everything,

01:21:57.800 is not only

01:21:58.700 the complexity

01:21:59.540 of the world,

01:22:01.000 the tragedy

01:22:01.700 of existence,

01:22:02.380 but also

01:22:04.100 the malevolence

01:22:05.140 of you

01:22:05.720 and other people.

01:22:07.900 And that's

01:22:08.540 the best I can do

01:22:09.900 in 70 minutes

01:22:11.300 about the

01:22:13.040 evolution

01:22:14.800 of religious ideas.

01:22:16.480 So thank you.

01:22:27.380 Thank you.

01:22:28.020 I'll be back right away.

01:22:32.380 Jordan Peterson,

01:22:36.060 everybody!

01:22:45.260 He sort of ended

01:22:46.320 that like Forrest Gump.

01:22:48.040 That's the best

01:22:48.980 I can do about that.

01:22:51.440 The guy is

01:22:52.340 truly unbelievable.

01:22:53.900 Like,

01:22:54.100 every single show

01:22:55.320 that we've done

01:22:55.960 has been completely different.

01:22:57.360 Keep it going

01:22:57.920 for Jordan,

01:22:58.400 everybody.

01:22:58.720 We're going to give him

01:23:07.720 just a second or two

01:23:09.000 to stretch his legs.

01:23:11.320 I'll take this.

01:23:11.960 So you guys submitted,

01:23:13.240 this might be the most

01:23:14.120 we've ever got,

01:23:14.860 the most amount of questions.

01:23:15.820 I mean,

01:23:15.980 there were literally

01:23:16.560 probably thousands

01:23:17.220 of questions here.

01:23:19.160 But I realize

01:23:19.920 Jordan did that whole thing.

01:23:21.940 No mention of

01:23:22.600 enforced monogamy,

01:23:23.480 was there?

01:23:25.600 Should we enforce

01:23:26.520 a little monogamy

01:23:27.200 real quick here?

01:23:27.880 How many single people

01:23:29.820 do we have?

01:23:33.600 That was kind of

01:23:34.520 a depressed

01:23:35.160 smattering right there.

01:23:37.620 It's funny

01:23:38.200 because these audience,

01:23:39.100 they skew a little bit male,

01:23:40.240 right?

01:23:40.420 It's probably about

01:23:40.920 60, 40 male,

01:23:41.840 so we may have to

01:23:42.620 enforce a little

01:23:43.220 gay monogamy.

01:23:44.040 Is that cool?

01:23:46.500 All right,

01:23:47.020 one guy up there.

01:23:48.200 Ho-ho!

01:23:49.220 All right, guys,

01:23:50.200 let's bring him out.

01:23:50.880 Jordan Peterson,

01:23:51.540 everybody!

01:23:51.800 Thank you.

01:23:51.960 Thank you.

01:23:52.000 Thank you.

01:23:52.060 Thank you.

01:23:52.100 Thank you.

01:23:52.180 Thank you.

01:23:52.200 Thank you.

01:23:52.240 Thank you.

01:23:52.300 Thank you.

01:23:53.100 Thank you.

01:23:54.100 Thank you.

01:23:54.140 Thank you.

01:23:57.880 You even shaved

01:24:03.280 for these good people.

01:24:04.520 What happened to the beard?

01:24:05.660 It's a long,

01:24:08.180 complicated story,

01:24:09.560 so I don't think I'm going

01:24:11.560 to tell it.

01:24:13.700 It'll be back.

01:24:14.980 They do grow,

01:24:16.440 so...

01:24:17.320 All right.

01:24:19.040 They like the scruff.

01:24:20.800 Oh, thank you.

01:24:21.520 Thank you.

01:24:22.180 Thank you.

01:24:22.700 Thank you.

01:24:23.240 Thank you.

01:24:23.920 That's one person in 2,000.

01:24:25.680 All right,

01:24:29.140 so we got a ton here,

01:24:30.000 but I actually want to ask you one first.

01:24:32.420 The big show tomorrow night with,

01:24:34.640 or two nights from now with Sam.

01:24:36.820 Do you get nervous at all?

01:24:39.080 Oh, yeah,

01:24:39.540 I'm nervous about that.

01:24:41.100 Yeah,

01:24:41.540 because it's,

01:24:42.440 the problem with the sorts of things

01:24:43.760 that I was talking about tonight

01:24:45.020 is that it's not,

01:24:46.960 they're not easy to summarize.

01:24:49.300 You know,

01:24:50.080 and so,

01:24:51.060 I mean,

01:24:51.300 it took 70 minutes,

01:24:52.480 and like,

01:24:52.780 it's taken me 30 years

01:24:53.920 to get that thing compressed down

01:24:55.460 to something approximating 70 minutes,

01:24:58.360 and I don't know how successful that was or not,

01:25:00.500 but,

01:25:00.900 you know,

01:25:01.080 I think,

01:25:01.780 well,

01:25:02.080 okay,

01:25:02.500 okay,

01:25:03.380 good,

01:25:03.860 good.

01:25:04.460 Well,

01:25:05.200 I'm,

01:25:05.420 I'm glad,

01:25:06.940 I'm glad it was comprehensible,

01:25:08.620 because,

01:25:09.240 like,

01:25:09.480 there's a lot,

01:25:10.720 there's a,

01:25:11.320 there's a lot in it,

01:25:12.700 and a lot of weird leaps,

01:25:14.200 you know,

01:25:14.880 and,

01:25:15.140 and trying to lay out the pathways

01:25:17.320 to make those leaps comprehensible

01:25:19.120 is very tricky,

01:25:20.560 and so,

01:25:21.100 I'm going to talk to Sam

01:25:22.280 about the value facts distinction,

01:25:24.140 you see,

01:25:24.460 I think where,

01:25:25.500 I think what he's missing,

01:25:27.320 I think what people who think the way that he thinks are missing,

01:25:30.900 is appreciation for the reality of stories.

01:25:35.120 One of the things I didn't tell you,

01:25:36.520 I guess I can use this as a brief opportunity to do that,

01:25:40.460 you see,

01:25:41.380 here's where it gets even more complicated.

01:25:46.180 So,

01:25:46.620 there's the world of facts,

01:25:48.040 so we could call that material reality,

01:25:50.260 and then there's the world of value that you overlay on top of that,

01:25:53.180 and you could think,

01:25:53.680 well,

01:25:53.760 that's not really real,

01:25:54.840 it's just an overlay.

01:25:56.340 It's like,

01:25:56.880 well,

01:25:57.220 it depends on what you mean by real,

01:25:59.380 and here's,

01:26:00.140 here's the rub.

01:26:01.720 So,

01:26:02.680 we've been overlaying a structure of value on top of the world of facts

01:26:09.280 for,

01:26:11.640 who knows how long,

01:26:12.980 at least 200,000 years,

01:26:16.000 because human beings roughly equivalent to us have been around for that long,

01:26:21.500 and,

01:26:21.840 you know,

01:26:22.180 like our,

01:26:22.760 our,

01:26:23.440 obviously,

01:26:24.160 our,

01:26:24.480 our existence as living forms goes back three and a half billion years,

01:26:29.280 so,

01:26:29.580 we can't exactly tell when this happened,

01:26:31.780 but,

01:26:32.340 the structure of value has been around for a long time,

01:26:34.920 and it's not like animals don't inhabit a structure of value,

01:26:37.920 because they do,

01:26:38.780 it's all implicit,

01:26:39.900 they don't articulate it,

01:26:41.520 they're not conscious of it,

01:26:42.760 but that doesn't mean it's not there,

01:26:44.300 it's there.

01:26:45.440 So,

01:26:45.740 the structure of value is really,

01:26:47.640 really,

01:26:48.100 really,

01:26:48.480 really old.

01:26:49.860 It's old enough so that we've actually adapted to it,

01:26:53.080 as if it's part of reality.

01:26:55.160 And then you think,

01:26:55.840 well,

01:26:56.520 if you've adapted to something,

01:26:58.600 that sort of makes it reality,

01:27:00.480 because,

01:27:01.440 from a Darwinian perspective,

01:27:02.920 reality is that to which you are adapted,

01:27:05.740 like it's,

01:27:06.380 it's definitional.

01:27:08.320 And so,

01:27:09.640 so,

01:27:11.340 the story is so real,

01:27:15.460 that it's woven into the fabric of reality itself.

01:27:19.300 And we don't know exactly how they overlay exactly,

01:27:22.080 and how they interplay.

01:27:23.160 And,

01:27:23.380 and it's really a mystery.

01:27:25.300 Like,

01:27:25.520 let me give,

01:27:26.000 let me give you one more example.

01:27:27.160 You can think about this.

01:27:28.060 I've been thinking about this for a long time.

01:27:30.000 So,

01:27:30.560 you know,

01:27:31.160 the classic biological trope is something like,

01:27:33.980 evolution is a random process.

01:27:35.740 It's like,

01:27:36.460 no,

01:27:37.600 it's not.

01:27:40.760 Variation is random.

01:27:43.180 Okay,

01:27:43.640 that's different.

01:27:44.600 And so,

01:27:45.100 like here,

01:27:45.580 the technical idea is,

01:27:47.300 you have an organism,

01:27:49.900 a mated organism.

01:27:51.120 They produce offspring.

01:27:52.640 The offspring varies.

01:27:54.300 The offsprings vary.

01:27:56.560 And,

01:27:57.560 some of those variations are more suited to the present environment.

01:28:00.580 They're more likely to survive and reproduce.

01:28:02.640 And so,

01:28:02.960 that's how evolution walks forward.

01:28:04.600 It's like,

01:28:06.040 okay.

01:28:08.300 You might say,

01:28:09.280 well,

01:28:09.500 the variations are random.

01:28:10.920 That's part of the theory.

01:28:12.300 You might say,

01:28:13.040 the selection is random too.

01:28:14.560 It just depends on the random walk of the environment.

01:28:16.880 But the environment does not walk randomly.

01:28:19.920 Here's why.

01:28:21.460 I'll give you a specific example.

01:28:23.880 So,

01:28:24.740 and Darwin knew this,

01:28:25.960 by the way.

01:28:26.400 This is what Darwin talked about when he talked about sexual selection.

01:28:29.420 And Darwin knew there were two selection mechanisms.

01:28:31.920 There's natural selection and sexual selection.

01:28:34.600 And he was very interested in sexual selection.

01:28:36.620 And biologists basically ignored that for like 100 years after Darwin was gone.

01:28:41.040 Even though there was really no excuse for that.

01:28:43.380 Okay.

01:28:43.680 So,

01:28:43.980 here's one way of looking at it.

01:28:45.400 So,

01:28:46.920 our closest biological relatives are chimpanzees or bonobos.

01:28:51.360 But whatever.

01:28:51.860 It doesn't matter for the purposes of this explanation.

01:28:56.020 Female chimpanzees are not selective maters.

01:29:00.600 Okay.

01:29:01.040 So,

01:29:01.160 they go into heat.

01:29:02.220 And they'll mate with any male.

01:29:04.520 And so,

01:29:05.240 the high status males are more likely to have to successfully mate.

01:29:09.540 But that's because they chase the low status males away.

01:29:12.540 It's not because the females are selecting the high status males.

01:29:18.140 Human females,

01:29:20.080 it's not the same.

01:29:21.540 Not at all.

01:29:22.900 They're hypergamous.

01:29:24.420 They select for status.

01:29:26.460 And the prevailing evolutionary theory,

01:29:29.300 one of them,

01:29:29.880 is that the reason we diverged from chimpanzees so rapidly

01:29:33.540 was because of female sexual selectivity.

01:29:37.680 Females reject most males.

01:29:40.380 So,

01:29:40.860 which is,

01:29:42.160 well,

01:29:42.500 we won't get into that.

01:29:43.600 But,

01:29:44.060 well,

01:29:45.280 it's part of the eternal war between the sexes.

01:29:47.740 But the consequence is

01:29:48.940 an increase in the rate of evolution,

01:29:52.620 let's say.

01:29:53.300 But that's not the whole story.

01:29:55.400 So,

01:29:55.500 then you think,

01:29:56.020 well,

01:29:56.120 that's actually choice on the part of the females.

01:29:58.480 female choice is driving human evolution.

01:30:02.520 Okay.

01:30:03.380 So,

01:30:03.620 that's interesting.

01:30:04.560 That's a cognitive act.

01:30:06.180 That's a conscious act.

01:30:07.760 That means that the spirit,

01:30:09.380 so to speak,

01:30:09.920 is selecting.

01:30:11.540 The variations are random,

01:30:12.760 but the selection mechanism is not.

01:30:14.620 It's not random at all.

01:30:16.700 Unless you think women sleep with men randomly,

01:30:18.880 which they do not.

01:30:21.240 Okay.

01:30:21.600 Now,

01:30:22.100 but it's more complicated than that.

01:30:24.060 So,

01:30:24.460 that's the female contribution.

01:30:26.360 It's not easy for females to size men up.

01:30:28.980 And men are tricky.

01:30:30.300 So,

01:30:30.880 you know,

01:30:31.120 they can use false signals to fool females.

01:30:33.540 That's what you do if you learn to be a pickup artist,

01:30:35.300 by the way,

01:30:35.760 is you learn to use false signaling.

01:30:38.140 Not entirely,

01:30:38.900 but maybe you work on your confidence too.

01:30:41.600 The women are trying to figure out who the high status men are.

01:30:45.500 Or the high value men.

01:30:46.940 It's another way of thinking about it.

01:30:48.640 But the men help.

01:30:50.180 Because here's what men do.

01:30:52.260 They get together in groups,

01:30:53.820 hierarchies,

01:30:54.500 and they vote on who the best men are.

01:30:57.380 That is what they do.

01:30:58.800 It's like,

01:30:59.080 you know perfectly well,

01:31:00.100 because you know,

01:31:00.540 you think that patriarchy is an oppressive tyranny.

01:31:02.580 It's like,

01:31:02.820 no,

01:31:02.980 it's not.

01:31:03.880 That's not how it works.

01:31:04.900 Like,

01:31:05.160 if you're on a team with a bunch of other guys,

01:31:07.700 everybody knows who the good players are,

01:31:10.100 and it's not the ones who will pound you flat in the parking lot after the game.

01:31:13.860 Right?

01:31:14.080 That isn't how you get to be the best player.

01:31:16.480 And in any collective enterprise that men are engaged in,

01:31:20.860 there's a hierarchical structure,

01:31:22.520 and the men communicate among one another,

01:31:26.660 and the high value men in that domain rise to the top.

01:31:31.120 And then the women peel off the top.

01:31:33.680 And so here's another way of thinking about sexual selection,

01:31:36.080 is the men vote on which men should reproduce.

01:31:38.380 And so then you think,

01:31:40.840 well,

01:31:40.940 then there's a spirit of masculinity operating in the background for an untold amount of years.

01:31:49.100 Tens of thousands of years.

01:31:50.480 Hundreds of thousands of years.

01:31:52.900 Determining who's going to rise to the top and propagate.

01:31:56.880 And the women are participating.

01:31:58.520 The men vote.

01:31:59.540 The women peel from the top.

01:32:01.340 So then you think,

01:32:02.100 well,

01:32:02.180 what's driving evolution?

01:32:03.820 Well,

01:32:03.980 how is that not choice?

01:32:05.060 How is that not the action of consciousness across time?

01:32:11.240 I think,

01:32:11.700 well,

01:32:11.820 we have this idea that,

01:32:13.040 you know,

01:32:13.660 God is the creative force.

01:32:15.860 That's an idea.

01:32:16.680 It's like,

01:32:17.080 well,

01:32:17.720 see,

01:32:18.000 that's a place where I think the metaphor and the reality start to touch.

01:32:22.160 Because the masculine spirit selects for propagation.

01:32:27.220 And females participate in that as well.

01:32:30.200 And so,

01:32:31.140 well,

01:32:31.460 so that's a deeper,

01:32:33.720 what would you call it?

01:32:35.100 A deeper investigation into the evolution of religious ideas.

01:32:39.680 That's an amazing thing.

01:32:40.680 So you could say,

01:32:41.320 well,

01:32:41.600 here's a metaphorical way of thinking about it.

01:32:44.420 As God the Father selects.

01:32:47.320 It's like,

01:32:47.800 well,

01:32:48.600 we have no idea how true that is.

01:32:50.480 That might be really true.

01:32:52.920 Then you think,

01:32:53.480 well,

01:32:53.660 what makes a good man?

01:32:55.620 Well,

01:32:55.820 is it power?

01:32:57.020 It's like,

01:32:57.400 no,

01:32:58.260 it's not.

01:32:59.080 That doesn't even make a really good animal.

01:33:01.320 Like,

01:33:01.460 if you look at sophisticated animals,

01:33:03.020 and you look at their hierarchies,

01:33:04.340 and you look at which animals kind of move up the hierarchy,

01:33:07.100 if it's a complex social hierarchy,

01:33:08.700 it isn't the most,

01:33:10.080 it isn't the brutes that dominate.

01:33:12.820 Like,

01:33:13.040 that's one pathway to domination.

01:33:15.140 But it's not a stable one.

01:33:17.460 It's not an optimal one.

01:33:18.880 And certainly not optimal among human beings.

01:33:22.320 So,

01:33:22.820 what's optimal?

01:33:23.740 That's the question.

01:33:25.260 What constitutes a good man?

01:33:26.740 What constitutes that aggregation of character,

01:33:32.100 character traits,

01:33:33.360 that increases the probability of rising to the top of hierarchies,

01:33:38.380 if there's a large set of hierarchies?

01:33:40.560 So,

01:33:41.240 how would you have to conduct yourself,

01:33:43.320 for example,

01:33:43.940 if I put you down anywhere,

01:33:46.160 and you wanted to increase your probability of being successful?

01:33:49.120 I would say,

01:33:49.760 one thing you'd have to do,

01:33:50.820 one thing that would work,

01:33:52.520 two things that would work very well.

01:33:54.940 One,

01:33:55.200 you would be able to engage in reciprocal interactions,

01:33:57.840 so that if I did something for you,

01:33:59.380 you'd do something for me.

01:34:00.380 And the second is,

01:34:02.260 I could trust you.

01:34:04.680 Reciprocity and trust.

01:34:06.380 There isn't any more powerful ways up functional hierarchies.

01:34:10.040 And so,

01:34:10.300 I think we're selected for that.

01:34:11.520 That's part of the basis of our innate ethic.

01:34:14.400 And that's coded in stories.

01:34:17.100 It's like,

01:34:17.560 so,

01:34:18.940 well,

01:34:20.180 so,

01:34:20.860 there's all of that.

01:34:21.600 Well,

01:34:30.160 this turned into the segue of segues.

01:34:33.780 How did you know you loved your wife?

01:34:46.820 Well,

01:34:47.360 first of all,

01:34:47.900 I would say I don't know,

01:34:49.460 because I don't think you do know,

01:34:50.980 you know,

01:34:51.920 I mean,

01:34:52.340 there's manifestations of it,

01:34:55.180 but it's not like you know.

01:34:57.140 I mean,

01:34:58.000 I told my father when I was in grade five,

01:35:00.340 that I was going to marry her.

01:35:02.900 So,

01:35:03.620 like I met her when she was eight,

01:35:05.260 and I was seven,

01:35:06.480 I guess she was eight,

01:35:07.300 so she's an older woman.

01:35:19.520 Don't know.

01:35:20.140 I don't know.

01:35:21.540 I mean,

01:35:22.000 it's,

01:35:22.360 it's,

01:35:24.280 who can,

01:35:25.080 who can articulate attract,

01:35:26.760 attractiveness,

01:35:28.080 you know?

01:35:28.400 I mean,

01:35:29.760 I mean,

01:35:30.580 I found her attractive right from the time we were little kids.

01:35:33.180 I wanted to be around her.

01:35:35.000 She was very teasy and provocative,

01:35:37.200 something that hasn't changed.

01:35:38.660 But I can't say more than that.

01:35:45.980 It's,

01:35:46.140 it's one of these mysteries that I talked about earlier,

01:35:48.400 you know,

01:35:48.640 things grip you,

01:35:50.200 and you don't know what they are.

01:35:53.020 You know a little bit about what they are,

01:35:54.600 and,

01:35:54.800 and hopefully they grip you for better rather than for worse,

01:35:57.840 you know?

01:35:58.760 And,

01:35:59.180 and that's part of the adventure of life,

01:36:00.800 and so something gripped me,

01:36:02.100 and,

01:36:02.440 and,

01:36:03.160 but I knew very young,

01:36:06.360 and I don't know why that is exactly.

01:36:09.940 So.

01:36:10.200 So there were a whole bunch with this theme,

01:36:20.300 but I thought this one was worded the best.

01:36:22.800 How can we get Seattle to not be so fucked up?

01:36:36.820 That's easy.

01:36:38.040 That's,

01:36:38.420 that's easy.

01:36:39.340 Stop contributing to it.

01:36:44.420 But that,

01:36:45.140 that is what I think,

01:36:46.280 you know?

01:36:46.600 It's like,

01:36:47.060 I,

01:36:47.280 and I mean that's the,

01:36:48.480 one of the major themes in 12 Rules for Life,

01:36:51.280 and it's like,

01:36:53.340 and,

01:36:53.920 and it's,

01:36:54.520 it's,

01:36:54.960 it's the theme of this tour,

01:36:56.740 I would say,

01:36:57.580 to,

01:36:57.980 to the degree that there's a theme,

01:36:59.380 is that,

01:37:00.560 you know,

01:37:01.800 it's so funny because all of the journalists that have covered what I'm doing,

01:37:05.140 virtually all of them,

01:37:06.260 especially the negative ones,

01:37:07.840 but,

01:37:08.180 but not only.

01:37:09.340 They,

01:37:09.860 they always,

01:37:11.120 they,

01:37:11.320 they have their value template,

01:37:12.800 and it's politicized.

01:37:15.060 It's right.

01:37:15.420 Well,

01:37:15.520 this is a political thing.

01:37:16.720 It's like,

01:37:17.140 no,

01:37:17.320 it's not.

01:37:18.740 It,

01:37:18.840 it,

01:37:19.120 maybe it's collectivist versus individualist.

01:37:22.060 It might be that,

01:37:22.780 but I don't think that's political.

01:37:23.820 I think that's metaphysical.

01:37:25.600 It's way deeper than political.

01:37:27.960 If you think that your community is not oriented property,

01:37:32.040 then get your act together.

01:37:35.000 Because there's more to you than you think.

01:37:37.880 You know,

01:37:38.140 and you think,

01:37:38.640 well,

01:37:39.040 what does it mean to get your act together?

01:37:40.720 And this is sort of part of this issue of value structures.

01:37:43.600 What should your value structure be?

01:37:45.560 Well,

01:37:46.520 there's minimum preconditions.

01:37:48.020 You should take care of yourself,

01:37:49.440 like you're someone worth helping.

01:37:51.120 That's rule number two,

01:37:52.120 by the way.

01:37:53.100 But you should take care of yourself,

01:37:54.520 like you're someone worth helping,

01:37:55.800 in a way that would benefit your family.

01:37:57.960 That adds an additional set of constraints,

01:37:59.980 right?

01:38:00.160 It's also a set of interesting challenges to take care of yourself in a way that works for you,

01:38:05.420 but also for your family.

01:38:06.860 And then if you manage that,

01:38:08.340 if you can get that organized,

01:38:09.560 then you do what you can for yourself and your family in a way that benefits the community.

01:38:14.240 And if you don't like the direction that the community is going,

01:38:16.800 it's like,

01:38:17.180 that's your problem,

01:38:18.080 man.

01:38:18.940 And seriously,

01:38:20.020 but it's also your adventure.

01:38:21.460 That's the other thing.

01:38:22.360 And I would say that the way you fix that,

01:38:24.560 as far as I can tell,

01:38:25.440 because you also want to do as little harm as possible.

01:38:28.820 You know,

01:38:29.680 you could go out and try to muck around with the macro structures,

01:38:32.700 but I think that's not a good idea,

01:38:35.620 generally speaking,

01:38:36.400 unless you're a real domain expert.

01:38:38.060 And even then,

01:38:38.740 man,

01:38:39.000 tread lightly.

01:38:39.960 I think you start by cleaning up your damn room,

01:38:44.000 you know,

01:38:44.420 get the pathways.

01:38:45.540 Well,

01:38:46.180 you get the pathways,

01:38:48.400 like you think a room is a complicated thing.

01:38:50.460 It's a place that you inhabit.

01:38:51.780 It's a place that you sleep.

01:38:52.980 It's a place that you wake up and prepare for the day.

01:38:55.200 It's a place where you get dressed.

01:38:56.900 It's a place where much of life occurs.

01:38:59.800 It's like,

01:39:00.980 if you can get that organized,

01:39:03.220 so that it helps you be the person you need to be when you're in the room,

01:39:09.220 then you started to play with the fabric of reality in a manner that could have beneficial repercussions if expanded.

01:39:17.780 And if you can't see the opportunity in your own room,

01:39:20.460 then you're blinded by your value structure,

01:39:23.040 because there's way more there than you think.

01:39:25.440 First of all,

01:39:25.980 it's way harder to get your room together than you think.

01:39:29.680 It's a variant of the idea that,

01:39:31.220 you know,

01:39:31.660 a house divided against itself will not stand.

01:39:35.100 Well,

01:39:35.360 maybe you can't fix the whole house because it's full of other people,

01:39:38.000 but you might be able to fix your room,

01:39:39.500 and then you're not a house divided against itself.

01:39:42.560 That's a start.

01:39:43.960 And then maybe if you're not a house divided against itself,

01:39:46.280 you could help your family,

01:39:47.400 and then they'll be solid,

01:39:49.600 and then maybe with their support and their careful, watchful eye,

01:39:53.900 you'll be able to tentatively move out beyond that

01:39:56.120 and do some things for the community that are actually good,

01:39:58.740 rather than self-aggrandizing,

01:40:00.500 or corrupt,

01:40:01.620 or incompetent,

01:40:02.500 or grandiose,

01:40:04.060 or vengeful,

01:40:05.280 or resentful,

01:40:06.080 or hostile,

01:40:07.560 or damaging.

01:40:08.340 You get the point.

01:40:10.040 So,

01:40:10.800 if you're not happy with the direction,

01:40:13.880 then you've got to think,

01:40:14.880 well,

01:40:14.960 that's actually your fault.

01:40:17.160 Or even if it's not your fault,

01:40:18.840 it's your responsibility.

01:40:20.020 That's a better way of thinking about it.

01:40:21.920 It's probably also your fault,

01:40:23.900 but it's definitely your responsibility.

01:40:26.780 And then you think,

01:40:27.620 one of the things,

01:40:28.680 I didn't write about this rule,

01:40:30.120 it's probably going to go in my next book.

01:40:31.720 This is a good thing to know.

01:40:34.560 Opportunity lurks where responsibility has been abdicated.

01:40:38.460 You think,

01:40:38.820 well,

01:40:39.220 yeah.

01:40:43.740 You think,

01:40:44.480 well,

01:40:44.600 why isn't someone doing something about that?

01:40:46.540 It's like,

01:40:47.140 well,

01:40:47.280 if you think that,

01:40:49.320 well,

01:40:49.580 then,

01:40:50.400 there you have a problem.

01:40:51.540 Why are you thinking that?

01:40:53.620 There's a million things you could be thinking,

01:40:56.380 but you happen to be thinking that.

01:40:58.600 Well,

01:40:58.740 maybe that's your problem,

01:41:00.460 in some small way,

01:41:01.600 or maybe a big way,

01:41:02.560 because it selected you as something that you're attending to.

01:41:07.040 It's a concern.

01:41:08.480 Now,

01:41:08.720 maybe you're all warped and bent,

01:41:10.020 and you can't trust your own concerns.

01:41:12.460 That's certainly possible.

01:41:13.840 That's actually why I think it's so important not to lie to yourself.

01:41:17.260 You see,

01:41:17.560 because I think one of the things that happens if you lie to yourself,

01:41:20.080 is you pathologize the mechanism that generates the value structure through which you see the world.

01:41:24.520 And you do not want to do that.

01:41:27.400 Because if you pathologize that structure,

01:41:29.540 you're done.

01:41:30.960 Because you make it habitual,

01:41:32.820 that structure.

01:41:33.400 And if it's full of deception and falsehood,

01:41:35.440 then you can't trust yourself.

01:41:37.460 And then what are you going to do?

01:41:39.780 You know,

01:41:40.080 you're in a leaky boat,

01:41:41.100 and the sails are tattered,

01:41:42.340 and the storms are coming.

01:41:44.000 You're done.

01:41:45.340 So,

01:41:45.640 but if you're careful,

01:41:47.600 and you try to encounter the world in a truthful manner,

01:41:51.400 then I think you can rely on your value structure to guide you to your adventure.

01:41:56.980 Something like that.

01:41:58.480 And so,

01:42:00.380 fix it, man.

01:42:01.280 If you don't like it,

01:42:02.120 fix it.

01:42:02.680 If you don't like it,

01:42:03.580 fix it.

01:42:04.420 That's what to do.

01:42:05.260 Thank you.

01:42:14.120 If you could learn a new skill,

01:42:16.280 what would it be,

01:42:17.180 and why?

01:42:19.960 Computer programming.

01:42:21.400 Yeah,

01:42:23.800 absolutely.

01:42:24.640 Absolutely.

01:42:25.280 Because that's a place,

01:42:26.100 you know,

01:42:26.340 it's a terrible place of ignorance for me,

01:42:28.400 because there's lots of things I could do if I could code,

01:42:30.720 but I can't.

01:42:31.460 So,

01:42:32.100 it slows me down.

01:42:34.260 And,

01:42:34.380 so that's one thing.

01:42:37.140 That was literally the shortest answer you've ever given,

01:42:39.760 period,

01:42:40.440 on anything.

01:42:41.340 My God.

01:42:41.820 Probably ever.

01:42:45.800 Have you felt any changes within yourself since becoming famous?

01:42:49.780 Oh God,

01:42:51.820 of course.

01:42:52.800 I'm not crazy.

01:42:54.700 You know,

01:42:55.060 yeah,

01:42:56.000 I mean,

01:42:57.040 well,

01:42:57.360 first of all,

01:42:58.020 I've been like terrified out of my skull for two years,

01:43:01.380 so there's that.

01:43:02.880 You know,

01:43:03.320 I mean,

01:43:03.600 I've been in a situation where,

01:43:05.120 I'm still in this situation to some degree,

01:43:07.780 where if I made a mistake,

01:43:10.000 you know,

01:43:10.340 which is highly probable,

01:43:11.740 because everybody makes mistakes,

01:43:13.440 that,

01:43:13.680 that all of this would come crashing down very,

01:43:16.700 very rapidly.

01:43:17.500 You know,

01:43:17.680 my job was in danger,

01:43:18.800 and had it gone,

01:43:20.280 then my clinical practice would have gone soon afterwards.

01:43:22.680 And so I just escaped from that,

01:43:25.260 you know,

01:43:25.640 by the skin of my teeth.

01:43:27.020 And had I had any,

01:43:28.520 well,

01:43:28.740 even this,

01:43:29.360 you know,

01:43:29.560 like I'd put up about 200 hours of my lectures,

01:43:32.300 and of course,

01:43:32.900 once I got infamous,

01:43:34.220 let's say,

01:43:34.880 people were going over those lectures with a fine-tooth comb,

01:43:38.280 and if I would have said anything vaguely reprehensible,

01:43:42.120 even out of context across those hundreds of hours,

01:43:45.180 then that would have sunk me.

01:43:47.480 And so,

01:43:47.900 you know,

01:43:48.120 and then I've been contending with the press,

01:43:50.100 for a substantial amount of time for the last while,

01:43:53.260 and it's the same thing.

01:43:54.180 It's a high-stakes game.

01:43:56.160 And so,

01:43:57.420 so I've been,

01:43:58.320 you know,

01:43:58.580 I've been careful with how I speak for a long time,

01:44:01.520 but I've really become careful over the last two years.

01:44:04.320 And that's probably a good thing,

01:44:05.660 but it's not without its attendant stresses.

01:44:08.520 And then,

01:44:09.300 just having to adapt to whatever the hell is happening,

01:44:12.920 because I don't really understand it,

01:44:14.460 so I'm still not adapted to it,

01:44:16.060 because how can you adapt to something you don't understand?

01:44:18.500 I don't know what,

01:44:19.400 what's happening.

01:44:20.340 I mean,

01:44:20.680 what I think is happening,

01:44:22.840 is that,

01:44:24.140 I'm a clinical psychologist,

01:44:25.940 and a professor,

01:44:27.500 and I've been working on ways to scale that,

01:44:31.840 right,

01:44:32.100 so that I learned a lot about clinical practice.

01:44:35.320 It's my area of expertise,

01:44:38.200 that personality theory,

01:44:39.520 and the great clinicians of the 20th century,

01:44:42.600 some of whom were also fantastic scientists and philosophers,

01:44:46.660 learned all sorts of things that were useful,

01:44:48.540 in relationship to individual personal development.

01:44:51.780 And I've been synthesizing those and teaching about them.

01:44:56.000 I think that's what's happening,

01:44:57.220 and it looks like there's a market for that,

01:44:59.980 you know.

01:45:00.400 Well, it looks like it,

01:45:01.620 right?

01:45:01.820 It's not that surprising,

01:45:02.920 because you'd expect that these people might have learned something in a hundred years of thinking,

01:45:07.100 if you took the greatest people who were really working hard on it.

01:45:10.100 And so what I think is happening is that I'm teaching people profound clinical wisdom

01:45:16.860 that's abstract and metaphysical,

01:45:20.280 but also applicable to their lives,

01:45:22.120 and that many people are trying to implement that,

01:45:24.980 and it's working.

01:45:26.200 I think that's what's happening.

01:45:27.540 But it's a very strange thing to adapt to,

01:45:39.860 especially given all the rapid technological change that's happening at the same time, right?

01:45:44.700 Because, you know,

01:45:45.700 like I'm a very curious person,

01:45:48.380 I'm always poking at things.

01:45:50.580 And so that's what I did on YouTube.

01:45:52.360 I thought,

01:45:53.000 well, what do you think will happen if I put my lectures on YouTube?

01:45:55.880 It's like,

01:45:56.620 it was a new technology.

01:45:58.420 It was easy to upload them.

01:45:59.940 It was easy to tape them.

01:46:01.080 I had done some programs for Public Television Canada that seemed to work out quite well,

01:46:05.900 so I knew there was,

01:46:07.000 for some reason,

01:46:07.840 there was a market for it.

01:46:09.260 An audience,

01:46:10.000 not a market,

01:46:10.680 an audience.

01:46:11.660 And I thought,

01:46:12.000 well,

01:46:12.080 that's pretty cool.

01:46:12.800 I can put up these lectures.

01:46:14.480 And the only people that will watch them are the people who want to learn from them.

01:46:18.220 It's like,

01:46:18.800 that's a good deal.

01:46:20.160 It's like,

01:46:20.640 how could you want something better if you were an educator?

01:46:23.560 You have an audience that is only watching what you're doing because they want to learn.

01:46:27.840 It's like,

01:46:28.140 that's the university right there,

01:46:30.620 man.

01:46:30.940 That's where it is.

01:46:32.380 And so,

01:46:33.280 and then that just exploded.

01:46:36.120 Well,

01:46:36.780 and then that's a company's,

01:46:38.320 and then the podcast market exploded,

01:46:40.040 and there's all these technological transformations in communication,

01:46:43.120 and I don't know what to make of it.

01:46:45.140 But what I'm hoping is just what I said.

01:46:47.380 I'm hoping that I've synthesized 100 years worth of clinical wisdom as well as I could

01:46:54.960 because I wanted to scale psychological interventions.

01:46:59.700 That was the plan to bring that wisdom to as many people as possible.

01:47:06.280 Well,

01:47:06.820 to as many people as possible.

01:47:08.420 So,

01:47:09.700 maybe that's what's happening.

01:47:11.200 I don't know what the consequence of that's going to be.

01:47:14.240 Hopefully,

01:47:14.740 it'll be good.

01:47:15.400 You know,

01:47:16.100 people come to these talks.

01:47:17.460 I talk to about 150 people afterwards,

01:47:20.020 and most people have a really good story to tell me.

01:47:24.020 You know,

01:47:24.520 and I don't mean that it's a,

01:47:27.140 I don't mean it's interesting,

01:47:28.640 although it is.

01:47:29.280 I mean,

01:47:29.540 they say,

01:47:30.700 here's a bunch of ways my life wasn't going very well.

01:47:33.980 You know,

01:47:34.240 there's variance on that.

01:47:35.680 And then I've been trying to adopt more responsibility,

01:47:38.760 and I've been trying to tell the truth,

01:47:40.180 and get my act together,

01:47:41.480 and I'm feeling a lot more hopeful,

01:47:42.980 and everything is better.

01:47:43.860 It's like,

01:47:45.220 good,

01:47:46.180 good,

01:47:47.060 great,

01:47:48.140 great.

01:47:48.980 Everywhere I go,

01:47:49.700 people tell me that story.

01:47:51.680 And so,

01:47:51.980 I think,

01:47:52.520 that's a great place to be.

01:47:54.220 If you're the place where everyone is telling you that story,

01:47:56.880 that seems like a good place to be.

01:47:59.160 And so,

01:47:59.540 I'm using that to judge what's happening.

01:48:02.120 And as long as that's the story that keeps emerging,

01:48:04.980 then,

01:48:05.500 then this looks good.

01:48:09.360 And so,

01:48:10.200 I'm hoping it's good.

01:48:18.780 Is there really a moderation when it comes to using drugs?

01:48:23.180 Is there really a moderation?

01:48:25.440 Yeah.

01:48:26.100 Oh,

01:48:26.300 well,

01:48:26.500 obviously.

01:48:28.100 You know,

01:48:28.460 I mean,

01:48:28.920 first of all,

01:48:30.840 what drugs are you talking about?

01:48:32.980 Because it's not like drugs,

01:48:34.680 it's kind of a weird.

01:48:35.400 Let's start with weed at Seattle.

01:48:37.860 Yeah.

01:48:38.300 Yeah.

01:48:38.840 Well,

01:48:39.220 look,

01:48:39.540 I mean,

01:48:40.060 I've seen lots of people messed up by marijuana.

01:48:43.140 You know,

01:48:43.420 I had a friend who I think it probably,

01:48:45.440 it certainly contributed to his suicidal psychosis,

01:48:48.520 I would say.

01:48:49.140 Now,

01:48:49.440 it's not exactly clear because he might have been using it to self-medicate.

01:48:55.040 So,

01:48:55.440 I couldn't tell if it was,

01:48:56.660 you know,

01:48:56.860 a chicken or egg problem,

01:48:58.080 if it was the pot driving the slowly developing psychosis or the reverse.

01:49:03.360 But I don't think pot was good for him.

01:49:05.720 And I've seen a number of people like that.

01:49:08.840 That doesn't mean that I think it should be illegal because it isn't obvious to me that the best thing to do with dangerous things is to make them illegal.

01:49:17.420 It doesn't seem to work very well.

01:49:19.320 And it's not like alcohol isn't a bloody catastrophe.

01:49:22.380 You know,

01:49:22.580 about 5% of people who take a single drink,

01:49:26.160 you know,

01:49:26.600 who start with a single drink become alcoholic.

01:49:28.820 It's an alcohol.

01:49:29.820 There isn't a drug you can possibly use that's worse than alcohol.

01:49:32.680 And I know the drug literature.

01:49:34.580 I'm not saying that lightly.

01:49:35.960 Alcohol is the only drug we know that makes people aggressive.

01:49:39.720 Almost all violent crime,

01:49:41.240 huge proportion of violent crime is committed by people who are drunk.

01:49:45.580 Often on people who are drunk,

01:49:47.700 by the way.

01:49:48.640 You've about 50%,

01:49:49.580 if you're murdered,

01:49:50.320 there's a 50% chance you were drunk.

01:49:53.120 And if you're the murderer,

01:49:54.540 there's about a 50% chance you were drunk too.

01:49:57.080 Actually,

01:49:57.500 the best way to get murdered is to drink with family members.

01:50:00.680 So,

01:50:01.300 it's actually,

01:50:06.840 I know it's funny.

01:50:09.020 I know it's funny,

01:50:10.040 but it's also true.

01:50:11.380 It's also true.

01:50:12.600 So,

01:50:13.740 That's the one thing that's going to be recorded from today.

01:50:15.740 Yeah,

01:50:16.000 yeah,

01:50:16.440 yeah.

01:50:16.940 So,

01:50:17.440 well,

01:50:17.720 yeah,

01:50:17.980 so if you're looking to get murdered,

01:50:19.160 that's how to do it.

01:50:19.780 Try it at a special occasion.

01:50:21.360 That's the best time to really pull it.

01:50:22.840 look,

01:50:24.680 if you're,

01:50:25.100 if you're using a substance,

01:50:28.180 you know,

01:50:28.580 and it's interfering with your life,

01:50:31.700 then that's not good,

01:50:33.860 right?

01:50:34.620 So,

01:50:35.040 that's how you judge it,

01:50:36.420 but it's kind of,

01:50:37.420 it's the case,

01:50:38.440 because then you're starting to overvalue it,

01:50:40.580 because values have to be balanced,

01:50:42.320 you know?

01:50:42.560 It's like,

01:50:42.920 well,

01:50:43.060 if you want to smoke pot once a week,

01:50:44.560 and,

01:50:45.060 you know,

01:50:45.520 and,

01:50:45.740 and relax,

01:50:47.060 or listen to music,

01:50:47.840 or whatever,

01:50:48.420 it's like,

01:50:48.840 well,

01:50:49.280 okay,

01:50:49.800 go ahead.

01:50:50.520 If you want to have a couple of drinks at a party with your friends,

01:50:53.520 fair enough,

01:50:54.220 you know,

01:50:54.460 but you want to belt down 40 ounces of vodka a day for 20 years,

01:50:58.060 that's probably not a very good idea,

01:50:59.540 and people do that,

01:51:00.620 by the way.

01:51:01.400 I studied alcoholism when I was a PhD student,

01:51:03.940 and we studied people,

01:51:05.580 so these were men,

01:51:06.700 and to be in our study,

01:51:08.140 you had to be non-alcoholic,

01:51:09.380 but your father had to be alcoholic,

01:51:10.820 and so did at least two other first or second degree male relatives.

01:51:14.840 We had lots of people in our sample whose fathers would buy,

01:51:18.580 one 40 ounce bottle of vodka a day,

01:51:22.300 and two on Saturdays,

01:51:23.400 because they needed one for Sunday,

01:51:24.980 and they've been doing that for years,

01:51:26.940 so that,

01:51:27.480 that's not a recipe for a good life,

01:51:30.180 you know,

01:51:30.460 so,

01:51:31.300 if it gets out of hand,

01:51:34.340 well,

01:51:34.900 first of all,

01:51:35.280 it might get out of hand,

01:51:36.260 because drugs tend to get out of hand,

01:51:38.860 but if it does get out of hand,

01:51:40.540 then obviously that's not good.

01:51:42.200 It has to be balanced.

01:51:43.640 You have to be in control of it,

01:51:45.260 rather than the other way around,

01:51:46.480 and like with the wicked drugs,

01:51:49.080 like cocaine or methamphetamine,

01:51:50.660 it's like you think you're in control.

01:51:52.560 It's like,

01:51:53.260 yeah,

01:51:54.200 yeah,

01:51:55.100 you do it 50 times,

01:51:56.600 and see who's in control,

01:51:58.000 and what happens,

01:51:58.880 here's what happens,

01:51:59.800 it's really awful,

01:52:01.060 so,

01:52:01.520 when you take a drug like methamphetamine,

01:52:04.760 it produces a dopamine kick,

01:52:07.160 and that's a neurochemical,

01:52:08.680 and the neurochemical makes you feel like you're doing something worthwhile,

01:52:11.640 because dopamine is the system that mediates goal-directed action,

01:52:15.860 and so it makes you feel like you're doing something worthwhile,

01:52:18.140 so that's why people love to take those drugs,

01:52:20.500 but the problem is,

01:52:21.440 is that,

01:52:22.120 so imagine that there's a chain of neural events that occurs,

01:52:26.240 just before you get the hit from the drug,

01:52:28.880 and then imagine that what happens is,

01:52:31.480 that the dopamine makes those circuits grow,

01:52:34.520 in proportion to how close they are temporally to the drug experience,

01:52:39.620 because that's what happens,

01:52:41.480 and so basically what happens is,

01:52:43.540 imagine there's a set of habits that you engage in,

01:52:46.360 cognitive,

01:52:47.000 emotional,

01:52:47.600 behavioral,

01:52:48.260 that precede the drug use,

01:52:50.480 and that that constitutes like a little family of biological circuits,

01:52:54.720 it's a little personality,

01:52:56.160 it's a little drug-seeking personality,

01:52:58.120 every time you hit it with the drug,

01:53:00.560 that grows,

01:53:01.880 and grows,

01:53:03.020 and grows,

01:53:03.900 and as it grows,

01:53:05.100 it learns how to inhibit all the rest of you,

01:53:08.800 and then what happens is that if,

01:53:10.720 so let's say,

01:53:11.540 here's what happens to chronic drug users,

01:53:13.680 so that's in you,

01:53:14.760 it's not psychological,

01:53:16.280 you've built it,

01:53:17.520 it's a biological circuit,

01:53:18.940 and it's there,

01:53:20.060 and it's alive,

01:53:21.200 and it wants to stay alive,

01:53:22.600 and it wants to dominate,

01:53:24.340 okay,

01:53:24.680 so now,

01:53:25.060 you're all screwed up on methamphetamine,

01:53:28.360 so someone throws you in a rehab center,

01:53:30.240 and you go through withdrawal,

01:53:31.840 and you're no longer physiologically dependent on the drug,

01:53:35.640 right,

01:53:35.940 so you're not going through withdrawal anymore,

01:53:37.640 maybe that takes like a week,

01:53:39.140 or two weeks,

01:53:39.680 or whatever,

01:53:40.520 you're not craving it,

01:53:41.760 you're in the rehab center,

01:53:44.100 fine,

01:53:45.500 then you go home,

01:53:46.900 then you see your methamphetamine friend,

01:53:49.080 poof,

01:53:51.300 that cues that biological circuit,

01:53:53.820 that thing hasn't gone away,

01:53:55.420 that's the monkey on your back,

01:53:57.280 it's not on your back,

01:53:58.380 it's in your brain,

01:53:59.480 that thing comes flying back in full force,

01:54:02.520 and the probability that it's going to grip your behavior,

01:54:06.020 and take you down the same pathway,

01:54:07.640 is unbelievably high,

01:54:09.780 everybody relapses,

01:54:12.240 so you put them in a rehab center,

01:54:14.720 they're fine,

01:54:15.500 you take them out,

01:54:16.180 and you put them back,

01:54:16.880 with their half-witted drug-abusing friends,

01:54:20.080 they're back addicted,

01:54:21.800 just like that,

01:54:23.180 and so that bloody system won't go away,

01:54:25.680 until another system is built to inhibit it,

01:54:30.920 right,

01:54:31.280 and that's very,

01:54:32.900 very effortful,

01:54:33.940 like it'll degenerate,

01:54:35.040 it'll decay across time,

01:54:36.220 but it's like months or years,

01:54:38.580 and you have to build other systems to inhibit it,

01:54:41.120 and then if you get stressed,

01:54:42.440 those newer systems collapse first,

01:54:44.300 and the old one will pop back up,

01:54:46.180 so be careful what you do habitually,

01:54:49.080 especially if you reinforce it with drugs,

01:54:51.420 because that increases the rate at which the habit sets in,

01:54:54.500 so beware,

01:54:57.320 you know,

01:54:57.580 and the most dangerous drugs,

01:54:58.800 alcohol for sure,

01:54:59.840 that's a killer,

01:55:01.060 the real dopaminergic kick drugs,

01:55:03.580 heroin,

01:55:04.120 cocaine,

01:55:05.020 methamphetamines,

01:55:05.740 especially in injected form,

01:55:07.300 man,

01:55:07.480 those things are dangerous,

01:55:08.960 you play with them at your peril,

01:55:11.000 so the hallucinogens,

01:55:12.740 they're not addictive,

01:55:14.420 but,

01:55:15.340 what did Jung say,

01:55:18.080 beware of unearned wisdom,

01:55:20.480 right,

01:55:22.980 all right,

01:55:30.740 this is going to be the last one,

01:55:31.780 I thought this would be a nice way to end it,

01:55:33.640 all right,

01:55:35.440 we'll stay all night,

01:55:36.520 all right,

01:55:37.080 they would stay all night,

01:55:40.080 that's got to be a nice feeling,

01:55:41.240 you know,

01:55:41.540 it just means they don't have a life,

01:55:44.580 he gets real at the end,

01:55:48.820 all right,

01:55:49.480 what does a really great day off look like for you?

01:56:06.660 Well,

01:56:07.780 I don't,

01:56:09.920 I,

01:56:10.780 now that's a hard question to answer,

01:56:13.760 I wouldn't say,

01:56:17.960 see,

01:56:18.260 it's hard to answer this question without,

01:56:19.840 without,

01:56:21.300 sounding,

01:56:22.400 like,

01:56:22.760 vaguely ridiculous,

01:56:23.960 well,

01:56:24.140 well,

01:56:24.320 maybe I sound vaguely ridiculous,

01:56:26.820 I'm actually better working than I'm,

01:56:30.320 than I am not working,

01:56:31.500 like,

01:56:31.720 I'm a person that needs to be,

01:56:33.700 like,

01:56:33.980 working flat out pretty much all the time,

01:56:35.900 I don't seem to have more than two speeds,

01:56:38.660 one speed is full on,

01:56:40.540 and the other one is off,

01:56:41.900 and I don't like off very much,

01:56:44.200 so full on is better,

01:56:45.380 I do do things that I enjoy doing,

01:56:49.840 but most of that involves spending time with my family,

01:56:52.700 I would say,

01:56:53.280 that's,

01:56:53.620 that's my recreation,

01:56:54.760 you know,

01:56:56.660 I have two adult kids,

01:56:58.320 my daughter has a,

01:56:59.920 a child now,

01:57:00.980 so we have a granddaughter,

01:57:02.200 I like to spend time with my kids,

01:57:04.060 I like their two partners,

01:57:05.320 so thank God for that,

01:57:06.980 I spend time with my wife,

01:57:09.720 I have this car that I like to drive around in,

01:57:12.420 and listen to loud music,

01:57:13.400 but I don't do that very often,

01:57:15.720 we have a cabin that we go to sometimes up north,

01:57:20.260 but we haven't been there,

01:57:21.100 I've been there like one day in the last two years,

01:57:22.940 I think,

01:57:23.360 so that doesn't count much,

01:57:24.640 but,

01:57:25.260 but even then,

01:57:27.600 under those conditions,

01:57:28.400 I'm usually thinking about something,

01:57:30.680 you know,

01:57:31.160 but that's okay,

01:57:32.120 because,

01:57:34.000 I don't know,

01:57:36.560 leisure,

01:57:37.680 for me,

01:57:39.000 I would say leisure is overrated,

01:57:41.820 I'm,

01:57:42.880 I'm,

01:57:43.540 I'd rather be working,

01:57:45.560 on something,

01:57:46.880 it keeps me occupied properly,

01:57:49.120 and so,

01:57:50.340 but when I do try to relax,

01:57:51.820 I play ping pong with my son,

01:57:53.560 we go to the driving range sometimes,

01:57:55.860 we barbecue,

01:57:57.760 you know,

01:57:58.000 they're just family things,

01:57:59.060 it's almost all family things,

01:58:00.360 so that's,

01:58:01.300 that's,

01:58:01.720 that's what it looks like for me,

01:58:03.580 so.

01:58:05.460 All right.

01:58:06.100 This is a funny mini goodbye for me,

01:58:17.980 because I'm taking three days off now,

01:58:20.600 and I just lay in the pool basically,

01:58:23.100 so,

01:58:23.640 that's why you've written more books than me,

01:58:25.980 but,

01:58:27.460 I'm leaving,

01:58:28.160 you know,

01:58:28.340 it's so funny,

01:58:28.860 we've been doing this for a while now,

01:58:30.640 and,

01:58:31.680 you're going to debate Sam,

01:58:33.520 and Sam's been instrumental for me,

01:58:35.200 and my success,

01:58:35.980 and my,

01:58:36.320 my growth,

01:58:37.040 and all that,

01:58:37.440 and now I feel like I'm leaving you guys,

01:58:39.200 to have my parents,

01:58:40.300 like,

01:58:40.540 kick the shit out of each other,

01:58:42.100 but that's what it's all about,

01:58:45.100 that's what the battle of ideas is all about,

01:58:46.800 so on that note guys,

01:58:47.760 I'm going to get out of the way,

01:58:48.980 and make some noise,

01:58:49.980 for Dr. Jordan Peterson.

01:58:51.120 Thank you very much,

01:59:19.280 it was a pleasure to see all of you tonight,

01:59:22.600 thank you for coming to the lecture,

01:59:25.140 good night.

01:59:26.860 Consider picking up dad's latest book,

01:59:28.840 12 Rules for Life,

01:59:29.980 An Antidote to Chaos,

01:59:31.100 or his first book,

01:59:32.200 Maps of Meaning,

01:59:32.960 The Architecture of Belief,

01:59:34.500 available in text,

01:59:35.580 e-book,

01:59:36.040 and audio book format,

01:59:37.340 wherever you buy books.

01:59:39.300 Next week,

01:59:40.220 a crucial conversation,

01:59:41.600 with U.S. General Stanley McChrystal,

01:59:44.880 former commander of the U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

01:59:47.500 We had an important and careful discussion,

01:59:50.880 about what leadership might really mean,

01:59:53.100 both to current leaders,

01:59:54.420 and to those who are hoping,

01:59:55.600 to cooperatively and competitively,

01:59:57.400 accomplish the goals,

01:59:58.720 they truly value,

01:59:59.940 in the future.

02:00:00.780 I founded Special Operating Forces,

02:00:02.740 who had big,

02:00:03.900 experienced personalities,

02:00:05.520 and I found it would be better to say,

02:00:07.840 we have this problem,

02:00:08.980 how would you solve it?

02:00:10.020 And if they were anywhere close,

02:00:12.360 to what I thought was,

02:00:13.940 a workable solution,

02:00:15.580 I would accept their solution,

02:00:17.560 because it was theirs,

02:00:18.620 they owned it,

02:00:19.380 they would then implement it,

02:00:20.360 with a completely different level,

02:00:21.880 than if I had told them,

02:00:23.300 here's exactly what I want you to do,

02:00:24.860 this, this, this,

02:00:25.760 and the reality is,

02:00:26.940 often they had a much better sense of it,

02:00:28.620 than I did.

02:00:29.520 Follow me on my YouTube channel,

02:00:31.740 Jordan B. Peterson,

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02:00:40.240 and at Instagram,

02:00:41.520 at Jordan.B. Peterson.

02:00:44.200 Details on this show,

02:00:46.300 access to my blog,

02:00:48.020 information about my tour dates,

02:00:49.780 and other events,

02:00:50.720 and my list of recommended books,

02:00:52.840 can be found on my website,

02:00:54.680 JordanBPeterson.com.

02:00:56.940 My online writing programs,

02:00:59.400 designed to help people,

02:01:00.620 straighten out their pasts,

02:01:02.280 understand themselves in the present,

02:01:03.960 and develop a sophisticated vision,

02:01:06.220 and strategy for the future,

02:01:07.940 can be found at,

02:01:08.920 selfauthoring.com.

02:01:11.160 That's,

02:01:11.760 selfauthoring.com.

02:01:15.680 From the Westwood One Podcast Network.

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - March 24, 2019

12 Rules Seattle： Facts, Stories, and Values

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