The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - August 01, 2022


275. Beyond Order： Rule 3 - Do Not Hide Unwanted Things in the Fog


Episode Stats

Length

1 hour and 18 minutes

Words per Minute

164.37065

Word Count

12,902

Sentence Count

878

Misogynist Sentences

11

Hate Speech Sentences

8


Summary

In this episode, I sit down with author and philosopher Carl Jung to talk about the role of God as a judge and how to become a better version of yourself. We talk about what it means to be merciful, how to be kinder to others, and how we can all be better versions of ourselves. I hope you enjoy this episode as much as we enjoyed recording it. Thank you so much to our sponsor, Viking. Viking is committed to exploring the world in comfort, journey through the heart of Europe on an elegant Viking longship, with thoughtful service, cultural enrichment, and all inclusive fairs. Discover more at Viking.co/VikingLongship and listen to our new single song, "Viking's Song," out now on all of your favorite streaming platforms. If you like what you hear, please HIT SUBSCRIBE and leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts! Subscribe, Like, and Share to stay up to date with the latest episodes of Viking.co.uk and other great podcasting and social media platforms! Viking is a proud supporter of the Viking Longship and all things Viking! viking is an all-inclusive fairs, all inclusive fairies, all aboard Viking longships, all of their fairies and everything in between. Viking has everything you need to know about Viking's Viking is a Viking fairies! viking, you can be a Viking Fairies! . Learn more about Viking's mission and Viking's mission to travel the world on Viking's Longship. Viking's longship voyage, Viking Viking, Viking is Viking, a Viking Longship, Viking's journey to the farthest reaches, Viking, and more! Viking is an adventure. Viking's Song of Solve and more. . . . Viking's song: "I am a Viking in the heartland of the Old World" by Viking, I am Viking's Journey, Viking Song, by viking.org Viking Song of the Heartland, by Viking, by Viking.org/Song of the Spirit of the Soul, by the Viking Longboat, by Ibraving the North Pole, , by Viking and much more! . , Viking s Song of Odin, by The Old Man and the Old Man of the North Star, by Valkyries, by Sullivir, by Dervish,


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Viking, committed to exploring the world in comfort, journey through the heart of Europe
00:00:05.480 on an elegant Viking longship with thoughtful service, cultural enrichment, and all-inclusive
00:00:11.660 fairs.
00:00:12.540 Discover more at viking.com.
00:00:23.020 The Christ in the Gospels is quite merciful.
00:00:26.660 And one of Jung's propositions was that there's an ancient line of religious thinking that
00:00:32.340 has mercy and justice as the two hands of God.
00:00:36.160 Too much mercy is the devouring mother.
00:00:38.580 Everything's okay.
00:00:39.560 No one's ever called to account.
00:00:41.240 And so no one ever matures and takes responsibility.
00:00:44.400 But justice without mercy is too harsh because we all fall short of the mark.
00:00:49.280 So God rules with a balance of justice and mercy.
00:00:52.480 And the Christ in the Gospels, although there's hints of temper and judgment, he's presented
00:00:57.420 in quite a merciful manner.
00:00:58.700 But in the Revelation, he's a judge.
00:01:00.940 It's like, no, you're unworthy and the select are few.
00:01:05.240 And you think, well, what does that mean?
00:01:06.840 It's like, well, imagine sorting yourself out into the select and the unworthy.
00:01:13.940 Perhaps most of you is select, but I doubt it.
00:01:16.760 And you certainly aren't going to start that way.
00:01:19.920 You know, nothing that isn't approximating the ideal is select.
00:01:23.960 So in any case, his proposition was that every ideal is a judge.
00:01:31.720 And that makes perfect sense because an ideal is something to which you aspire.
00:01:38.380 And the gap between you and that ideal, if it's your ideal, is felt as judgment.
00:01:45.340 And so that's one of the reasons people are very afraid to have an ideal to make it.
00:01:49.280 That's why I wrote, do not hide things in the fog.
00:01:51.860 It's like, well, you should lay out an ideal.
00:01:54.180 You should pursue an ideal.
00:01:55.340 Why wouldn't you?
00:01:56.160 Well, when you make your ideal explicit, it turns into your judge.
00:02:00.080 Well, then you can listen to that judge and move forward and transform.
00:02:04.880 But, you know, it's pretty damn harsh.
00:02:08.800 Because especially to begin with, we posit an ideal, especially if you're in a mess.
00:02:14.280 God, every bit of you is being judged as unworthy.
00:02:19.920 There's endless reasons not to want that.
00:02:24.300 And then the way forward is to have that ideal because those ideals are in some ways noble truths.
00:02:30.720 These things about loving the collective because the collective is the same.
00:02:35.180 It's true whether people want to adopt it or not, at least in my opinion, that there's things that our consciousness knows to be true.
00:02:42.440 So those are ideals that exist.
00:02:43.920 I think it's true because you are, in fact, a community across time.
00:02:47.820 Right.
00:02:48.480 So there's no difference between what's good for you and what's good for other people.
00:02:53.560 There's actually no difference.
00:02:54.960 Not if you extend it far enough.
00:02:57.140 They are technically the same thing.
00:02:59.060 So you have this ideal that is there, whether you acknowledge it or not, and you feel it, and you feel that thing.
00:03:06.720 But where you get tripped up is when you have an expectation that you're going to magically travel and teleport from where you are, which is full of your own corruptions and full of your own selfishness, to meet that ideal immediately.
00:03:20.680 So the mercy comes from saying, this is the ideal, but the expectation of judgment that I'm going to be at that right away is false.
00:03:29.420 So let me appreciate myself right here where I am in this journey with all of my faults, however many they are, open up my entire closet of internal monsters, pet them on the head and say, okay, here we go, eliminating more of those and becoming more like the ideal, surrendering to the journey rather than that expectation.
00:03:47.500 And there the judge no longer carries the sting and the harshness because it's, you're judging yourself according to a timeline where you're hoping to get closer to this.
00:03:58.380 Yes.
00:03:58.600 Well, and the hallmark starts to become improvement.
00:04:01.000 Right.
00:04:01.780 Right.
00:04:02.100 Exactly.
00:04:02.580 And that's great.
00:04:03.160 That's a, that's, that's, that's, that's a, that's a really sustaining, um, um, that's a really sustaining process too, because technically speaking again, um, seeing yourself move towards a desired goal is the essence of the positive emotion that nourishes us.
00:04:19.940 And I mean that technically that's dopaminergically mediated incentive reward.
00:04:24.820 And so you don't have to get to the goal, you have to aspire to the goal and move towards it.
00:04:32.560 And that, then that doesn't even matter if the goal recedes, which it will, as you approach it, because you're, you know, your ability to conjure up what constitutes the ideal is going to become more sophisticated as you move towards it.
00:04:43.900 And you might think, well, that's terrible, but it isn't because it means the game doesn't have to end.
00:04:50.400 Right.
00:04:50.860 Because if you may hit the ideal, it's like, oh, well, game over, reset, you know.
00:04:54.720 But no, no, that isn't going to be how it works.
00:04:56.460 It's just, it's going to get better and better and better.
00:05:00.740 And it's, it's why it's life is the perfect game.
00:05:03.860 I mean, if you have a really good, for those of us who've played video games, you have a really good video game or even a really good book or even a really good movie series or a show.
00:05:11.760 And it comes to the end and you're like, oh, there's a huge letdown at the termination of this thing.
00:05:17.740 That's been incredibly engaging, especially if you win.
00:05:20.780 Yeah, exactly.
00:05:21.400 You win and you get this moment satisfaction, but it's replaced almost immediately by the disappointment of the cessation of the game and the recognition that you're in a finite game when you really want to be playing the infinite game.
00:05:32.700 And that's what life is, the infinite game of renewal of life.
00:05:36.260 And that's why it's so good.
00:05:37.620 We'll never replace it.
00:05:38.640 It can't get better.
00:05:39.440 And it's hard as hell and it's hard as hell at the same time.
00:05:43.660 And that's, that's the way we would want it.
00:05:45.500 Well, it seems like that's the way we want it.
00:05:47.660 I mean, that's another thing I talk about a little bit in the new book is like, well, when you look back on your past, it's generally having done something difficult that you remember positively, I would say.
00:06:01.940 So, so then there's something about you that craves difficulty, optimal difficulty, at least, strangely enough.
00:06:11.900 Going online without ExpressVPN is like not paying attention to the safety demonstration on a flight.
00:06:18.740 Most of the time, you'll probably be fine.
00:06:20.740 But what if one day that weird yellow mask drops down from overhead and you have no idea what to do?
00:06:26.420 In our hyper-connected world, your digital privacy isn't just a luxury.
00:06:30.220 It's a fundamental right.
00:06:31.380 Every time you connect to an unsecured network in a cafe, hotel, or airport, you're essentially broadcasting your personal information to anyone with a technical know-how to intercept it.
00:06:40.760 And let's be clear, it doesn't take a genius hacker to do this.
00:06:44.060 With some off-the-shelf hardware, even a tech-savvy teenager could potentially access your passwords, bank logins, and credit card details.
00:06:51.440 Now, you might think, what's the big deal?
00:06:53.560 Who'd want my data anyway?
00:06:55.100 Well, on the dark web, your personal information could fetch up to $1,000.
00:06:59.480 That's right, there's a whole underground economy built on stolen identities.
00:07:03.780 Enter ExpressVPN.
00:07:05.540 It's like a digital fortress, creating an encrypted tunnel between your device and the internet.
00:07:09.800 Their encryption is so robust that it would take a hacker with a supercomputer over a billion years to crack it.
00:07:15.880 But don't let its power fool you.
00:07:17.680 ExpressVPN is incredibly user-friendly.
00:07:20.040 With just one click, you're protected across all your devices.
00:07:23.060 Phones, laptops, tablets, you name it.
00:07:25.240 That's why I use ExpressVPN whenever I'm traveling or working from a coffee shop.
00:07:29.380 It gives me peace of mind knowing that my research, communications, and personal data are shielded from prying eyes.
00:07:35.100 Secure your online data today by visiting expressvpn.com slash jordan.
00:07:40.100 That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N dot com slash jordan, and you can get an extra three months free.
00:07:46.480 Expressvpn.com slash jordan.
00:07:48.360 Do not hide unwanted things in the fog, which seems to me we live in a constant state of distraction.
00:07:58.540 Now, you've mentioned Twitter a couple times.
00:08:00.460 It's like, is Twitter bringing any of us happiness, or is it keeping us all in a constant state of fog?
00:08:05.460 Any, you know, the overload and the endless obsession with politics, that all seems like a fog to me.
00:08:11.860 You know, I do my August off the grid, and I do that to get out of the fog.
00:08:18.420 So, what was it so key?
00:08:19.300 Distraction is definitely fog, and you'll distract yourself.
00:08:25.580 I think you distract yourself mostly when your conscience is bothering you, because you don't want to face what it is in your life that is uncomfortable.
00:08:35.560 That chapter is, again, quite practical.
00:08:37.680 It's a reminder to pay attention often to negative emotion, resentment, and that sort of thing, because it can tell you, well, resentment is very useful.
00:08:49.700 Maybe you get, maybe your partner is talking to someone, and they're a little bit more animated than you'd like, and you get jealous.
00:08:56.600 And that jealousy is associated with a whole set of insecurities.
00:09:00.380 Or maybe they're flirting, and they shouldn't be.
00:09:05.980 It's not that easy to determine, and maybe you'll have a big fight about that.
00:09:09.320 But you could just as well pretend that didn't happen.
00:09:13.020 You know, the emotion comes up.
00:09:14.620 I'm jealous.
00:09:15.400 I'm resentful.
00:09:16.320 It's associated with experiences like that in the past.
00:09:19.100 The psychoanalysts would have called that a complex.
00:09:21.600 You could notice that.
00:09:22.920 You could think, well, should I be jealous?
00:09:24.620 Is there something wrong with me, or is there something wrong with my partner, or is there something wrong with the relationship?
00:09:30.560 And you have to untangle that.
00:09:33.760 And who knows what you'll have to untangle to get that straight.
00:09:36.820 Or you can bear the jealousy and see what will happen in the relationship.
00:09:39.900 Or maybe it'll disintegrate because your partner is flirting, and you ignore that.
00:09:43.860 It's not like you repress it exactly.
00:09:46.120 And this chapter is an attempt to distinguish repression from this hiding in the fog.
00:09:50.600 It's that you get a hint that something's wrong.
00:09:53.180 And then you have to unpack that hint to pull the information out.
00:09:59.880 You know, so maybe your partner is flirting, and they shouldn't be.
00:10:04.360 And so then you have to find out why they're dissatisfied with the relationship, or what's tempting them, or what is crooked in their soul at the moment, or what they're dissatisfied about.
00:10:16.360 Terrible journey of exploration and discovery.
00:10:20.260 You know, that's always presented as something that's positive.
00:10:22.440 It's often not at all.
00:10:25.240 It's so hard.
00:10:26.220 It's like doing surgery on a separating wound.
00:10:29.240 And it's no wonder people avoid it.
00:10:31.380 But it's not helpful.
00:10:33.880 You know, because all it does is leave that, those things grow and multiply in the dark.
00:10:39.180 And if you ignore them, they just cascade.
00:10:41.140 Do you think that's just self-protection for most people, that most people, they see it, they know that truth behind them, whether it's about their partner or whatever it might be, but it's just self-protection.
00:10:53.320 Like, oh, I just got to keep moving on as things are, that we're just creatures of habit or something like that.
00:10:58.120 Well, sometimes it's that, and it especially gets to be that if it's accumulated for a long time.
00:11:05.080 Because if you wouldn't deal with it when it was a kitten, you're not going to deal with it when it's a full-grown lion.
00:11:11.040 And so, but I think mostly it's something else I return to in the book is it's deceit, resentment, and arrogance.
00:11:20.480 I already know what I need to know.
00:11:23.940 That's arrogance.
00:11:25.340 Deceit is I don't have to pay attention to that.
00:11:28.540 And resentment is, well, things can go to hell, and so can he or she.
00:11:33.500 You know, and that's a pretty dark triad.
00:11:36.120 And you don't want the spirit that embodies that to take over your life.
00:11:42.300 That's for sure.
00:11:45.060 Well, motherhood isn't as high status and occupation as it should be.
00:11:50.160 That's a cultural failing.
00:11:52.080 But we're also.
00:11:52.980 You just got so many moms following you.
00:11:55.100 You just got so many more fans.
00:11:57.160 Well, I saw this.
00:11:58.160 You know, when my wife had little kids, it was often the case that she wasn't well treated in restaurants and so forth,
00:12:04.760 especially if I wasn't there.
00:12:07.300 So, and that wasn't good.
00:12:09.040 I thought that was a sign of real cultural sickness that a mother with a young child isn't, is treated badly.
00:12:15.640 That's a very bad idea.
00:12:17.320 And that's part of this casual contempt.
00:12:19.140 So anyways, when you're 18 or 17 or 19 or 22, it's like, what do you want exactly?
00:12:24.660 What, what do you want?
00:12:26.440 And that's, that's, I wrote about that in chapter three of this new book, Beyond Order.
00:12:32.360 Don't hide things in the fog.
00:12:34.060 You have to let yourself know what you want.
00:12:36.800 Well, so you make a list of what you want.
00:12:41.400 And what is that?
00:12:42.780 Well, you want someone who's productive and generous and honest.
00:12:45.600 That's a real good start.
00:12:46.960 You want someone that you're physically attracted to.
00:12:49.520 Yes.
00:12:51.960 You want someone who's education and intelligence roughly match or exceed your own.
00:12:57.780 I should stop reading.
00:12:58.640 Daddy Peterson's dating rules.
00:13:02.940 Can't keep going.
00:13:04.340 Well, and then if you find someone like that, and then that's who you want.
00:13:09.960 Right.
00:13:10.620 And, and you should know that.
00:13:12.100 And you should, you should notice that.
00:13:14.020 And because then at least you're looking in the right place.
00:13:16.800 Like there's some.
00:13:17.780 Um, maybe you could also put into one of your podcasts or things.
00:13:25.240 Cause you, I know a lot of young men follow you to ask the girls out.
00:13:29.940 I do.
00:13:30.600 I do.
00:13:31.180 I do say that.
00:13:32.020 Okay.
00:13:32.320 I don't listen to all of this stuff all the time.
00:13:34.480 Give them a little extra bump.
00:13:36.480 I tell them all the time.
00:13:37.740 So I get out there and ask and say in my clinical practice too, it's like, you're not going to
00:13:41.260 find someone unless you ask.
00:13:42.400 And, you know, for all there, there's a lot of criticism, uh, aimed at the, uh, um, you
00:13:51.380 know, those, those, the men's movements that teach men how to be a player, how to attract
00:13:55.380 women, how to, there's a lot of negative press aimed at those.
00:13:58.760 And I can understand why, cause there's kind of a psychopathic element to it.
00:14:02.360 But one of the things those movements do do is to really encourage young men to overcome
00:14:07.600 their fear of approaching women and, and even asking them for their phone number or
00:14:12.060 for a date or for a conversation or for a coffee and put a profile up on, um, on a dating
00:14:19.200 profile, dress up nicely, get a professional photograph taken, you know, put your best foot
00:14:25.300 forward and have enough courage to approach some women and maybe get over your fear.
00:14:30.980 And it's so, but I would say to young women, if you find someone who you think fits your
00:14:37.100 criteria and you're not being asked out, ask them.
00:14:42.640 Fine.
00:14:43.200 I'll do it.
00:14:43.760 And I will report.
00:14:44.260 What's the alternative to wait and wither on the vine.
00:14:47.600 That doesn't seem very useful.
00:14:49.680 I don't want to do that.
00:14:50.740 No, that sounds horrible.
00:14:52.400 What would you say would be the keys to your success of 50 years of loving each other and
00:14:59.760 being in a, what seems to be a healthy functional relationship when in society today, that doesn't
00:15:05.420 seem like many of those.
00:15:07.560 Well, we, we really do our best not to lie to each other about anything.
00:15:14.140 And we also have fights when they're necessary.
00:15:20.120 We don't let things, we don't hide things in the fog.
00:15:24.220 That's the title of chapter three of my new book.
00:15:26.720 Don't hide things in the fog.
00:15:28.260 And we work through our issues.
00:15:31.500 Our, if we're, if we have a dispute, we do our level best to get to the bottom of it,
00:15:36.520 to find out what in the world's causing it, whose needs to change, and why, and how, and
00:15:42.960 when, and then how we can progress forward into the future without having that issue dog
00:15:50.580 us or drag behind us or interfere with us at all.
00:15:55.720 And that means a fair bit of confrontation, I would say, but less so over the years as we've
00:16:05.120 settled more and more things, but everything's out in the open.
00:16:10.220 Everything that we can get is out of, out in the open.
00:16:13.080 You can't have a relationship without trust.
00:16:16.540 And you trust your partner courageously if you're not naive, knowing that you can be hurt
00:16:22.920 and that you can be deceived and that you can also do both of those things.
00:16:26.280 So you offer your partner your trust as an invitation to them to be honest and forthcoming
00:16:34.240 and, and, well, and then issues come up and you delve into them and straighten them out.
00:16:42.140 In my marriage and in my relationship with my children and in my clinical practice, it's,
00:16:48.820 you have to negotiate.
00:16:50.480 That's what men and women have to do.
00:16:52.400 And so I talk about that particularly in chapter three of my new book, which is Don't Hide
00:16:56.980 Things in the Fog.
00:16:58.460 It's like, well, let's talk about sex, for example.
00:17:02.460 That's a good one.
00:17:03.000 There's a stumbling block in a relationship.
00:17:05.740 Let's talk about sex.
00:17:07.580 Well, that's hard.
00:17:09.220 People don't do it.
00:17:10.740 They're, you know, like they'll have sex, they'll engage in sexual acts, but they won't
00:17:14.480 represent them abstractly and discuss them.
00:17:18.060 You know, so, well, how often should we have sex?
00:17:23.600 Well, how are you going to solve that problem?
00:17:28.720 Well, first of all, each person has to admit how often they'd like to have sex.
00:17:33.380 They might be uncomfortable with that right off the bat.
00:17:35.540 They might not even know because they're so uncomfortable about it.
00:17:38.300 They never even asked themselves.
00:17:41.260 And then you have to ask yourself, well, what will I do if I don't get that?
00:17:47.760 And people don't like that question either because it means, well, you're going to get bitter
00:17:51.020 and you're going to get resentful and you're going to get mopey and whiny and you're going
00:17:54.700 to justify having an affair or at least looking elsewhere and you don't want to admit that
00:17:59.200 about yourself so you won't have the damn discussion.
00:18:01.800 Like, as soon as you know that you're flawed deeply and if you're sexually frustrated,
00:18:07.620 you're more likely to stray, well, then you can be afraid of yourself enough to overcome
00:18:13.600 the fear to have the conversation.
00:18:15.100 It's like, look, woman, if we don't make love three times a week, I'm so whiny and
00:18:22.620 immature that I'm going to go to strip bars and that doesn't work out well for our relationship.
00:18:28.140 And, you know, and she might say, well, why don't you grow the hell up?
00:18:31.560 And, you know, I'm so overworked.
00:18:33.420 I have 50 hour a week work week because I'm a lawyer and I have three small kids and they're
00:18:38.560 clamoring for my attention.
00:18:39.860 And my goddamn husband is such a miserable wretch that he threatens me with, you know,
00:18:45.120 marital disintegration if I don't pull out another four hours a week to please him.
00:18:49.820 It's like, fair enough.
00:18:51.040 Those are two good arguments.
00:18:52.420 Who the hell wants to have that discussion?
00:18:55.240 But my sense is it's tyranny, slavery or negotiation.
00:19:00.720 And I've walked couples through this process many times.
00:19:05.380 Starting a business can be tough, but thanks to Shopify, running your online storefront
00:19:09.700 is easier than ever.
00:19:11.380 Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business
00:19:15.480 from the launch your online shop stage all the way to the did we just hit a million orders
00:19:19.780 stage?
00:19:20.580 Shopify is here to help you grow.
00:19:22.840 Our marketing team uses Shopify every day to sell our merchandise and we love how easy
00:19:26.920 it is to add more items, ship products and track conversions.
00:19:30.760 With Shopify, customize your online store to your style with flexible templates and powerful
00:19:35.300 tools alongside an endless list of integrations and third party apps like on-demand,
00:19:39.700 printing, accounting, and chatbots.
00:19:42.260 Shopify helps you turn browsers into buyers with the internet's best converting checkout
00:19:46.220 up to 36% better compared to other leading e-commerce platforms.
00:19:50.660 No matter how big you want to grow, Shopify gives you everything you need to take control
00:19:54.460 and take your business to the next level.
00:19:57.020 Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash jbp, all lowercase.
00:20:03.060 Go to shopify.com slash jbp now to grow your business no matter what stage you're in.
00:20:07.960 That's shopify.com slash jbp.
00:20:10.720 There's a part in chapter three where you talk about fear and you talk about the fog
00:20:20.440 and I wrote down a sentence that says that sometimes you're so afraid that you will not
00:20:28.220 allow yourself to even know what you want.
00:20:30.660 Uh, I think that's very common.
00:20:33.740 It really hit me hard because sometimes I, you know, I admit I'm afraid to like, I'm afraid
00:20:39.500 to even map out even to really write down and map out what I want.
00:20:45.160 Um, but I don't know exactly.
00:20:47.500 I tried to really drop down and figure out what the fear was.
00:20:50.920 It's like, why am I afraid?
00:20:52.100 Like, and I, and I had some, I've had some trouble really figuring that out.
00:20:56.080 Like, am I afraid that I'll have to then do it?
00:20:59.060 Am I afraid that I'll then feel inadequate based upon what I really want and where I currently
00:21:04.020 am?
00:21:05.080 Um, so I just wanted to, you to maybe expound on that a little bit and, and just kind of
00:21:10.880 share like, what did you think?
00:21:12.080 Why do I get afraid to, to really admit, even admit to myself what I really want?
00:21:18.880 If you know what you want, then you know, when you're failing, if you don't allow yourself
00:21:25.040 to know what you want, you can keep that foggy.
00:21:28.080 Um, if you don't set out the conditions for your success, then you can avoid your responsibility
00:21:33.060 because again, that's not clear.
00:21:34.620 And the problem with wanting something is that in all probability, you're going to have
00:21:38.580 to work for it.
00:21:39.340 You're going to have to make sacrifices.
00:21:40.720 And it's certainly possible that you want to avoid that.
00:21:44.260 Um, you, you, you might be afraid to make it clear because other people could deny it
00:21:49.960 to you too, which is something I write about a fair bit in that chapter.
00:21:53.660 Um, the problem is, and, and failing to make any of that clear protects you right now, but
00:22:02.580 it's really hard on you over the medium to long term, because if you don't make it clear
00:22:08.340 to yourself what you want or to other people, the probability that you're just going to
00:22:13.320 stumble into it is pretty low.
00:22:15.720 And, and you can put that off indefinitely day after day.
00:22:19.940 But the problem with that is that you age while you're doing that.
00:22:23.560 And there's a, obviously a price to be paid for that.
00:22:28.140 So that chapter, that's chapter three, do not hide things in the fog.
00:22:32.540 I mean, it's a, it's a warning about failing to pay attention.
00:22:38.080 You know, knowledge emerges in a very strange way.
00:22:42.100 It, it emerges, obviously, when we learn something, we started out by not knowing it.
00:22:48.200 And so what that means is that knowledge goes through a transformation process from being
00:22:53.980 absolutely not there to being explicit and fully detailed.
00:22:59.360 And one step of that process is emotion.
00:23:02.580 And so, for example, you might find yourself frustrated, disappointed about the events of
00:23:08.080 the day, but be unable to exactly specify why.
00:23:11.160 That's extremely common.
00:23:12.600 You know, you go home to your partner and you'd be in a bad mood and, you know, you'll
00:23:16.660 snap at them for something and they'll say, well, what's up with you?
00:23:19.700 And you'll say, well, nothing.
00:23:21.240 You're just being annoying when it's perfectly clear to both of you that there is actually
00:23:24.800 something up with you.
00:23:26.440 And then that disappointment and frustration, anger and sadness, let's say, or anxiety is a sign
00:23:32.280 that something isn't right.
00:23:33.960 But it isn't like, it isn't necessarily that you're repressing knowledge of what's not
00:23:39.660 right.
00:23:40.040 It's that you just, you actually don't know.
00:23:42.380 And the emotion is the first step in the process by which that knowledge emerges.
00:23:47.620 And you might have to sit and think and talk to your partner or to a friend for God only
00:23:53.860 knows how long before you're actually going to put your finger on what it is that you're
00:23:57.800 upset about.
00:23:58.460 And it could be very far removed from whatever happened to trigger you in the moment.
00:24:05.320 And so that's the fog.
00:24:07.380 And you can keep things in the fog just by not doing that.
00:24:10.780 It's really easy.
00:24:11.640 It's no more difficult than just sitting there doing nothing because creating knowledge is
00:24:17.020 active and difficult.
00:24:18.880 Yeah.
00:24:19.160 Well, it's, you know, we've created such a perfect fog these days.
00:24:26.240 Like, really, the fog has been, it's become such a, the fog is such a business.
00:24:32.100 Every little thing that can be created to take away your attention from, or that can take
00:24:39.380 away our attention from figuring out who we are or like kind of spelunking inside of ourselves
00:24:44.220 and trying to get some answers has really been created.
00:24:48.040 It's almost, it's pretty masterful how much has been created out here on the outside to
00:24:53.400 keep our attention away from delving inside of ourselves.
00:24:57.540 Well, you know, attention is the basic currency, right?
00:25:01.700 Everyone fights for it.
00:25:03.660 And it's incredibly valuable.
00:25:05.500 And it certainly is the case that it's also very tempting to turn your attention to things
00:25:15.180 that grasp your short-term interest rather than, say, pursuing the causes of negative emotion.
00:25:21.180 That's a good example.
00:25:22.660 And, of course, we have massive corporations working night and day to continually attract
00:25:28.840 our attention, and there's something sinister about that, obviously, but you can't exactly
00:25:34.920 lay responsibility at their feet because there isn't that, there's a tremendous overlap between
00:25:40.580 educating people, informing them, and making them attend to you.
00:25:47.880 And the lines between all of those things are very foggy, let's say, and difficult to lay out.
00:25:55.380 It's certainly the case that one of the ways that you can keep yourself in a fog about
00:25:59.980 yourself is by distracting, is through distraction with external, with anything in the external
00:26:08.040 world.
00:26:08.540 And, obviously, computer technology, cell phones, games, well, not negative in and of themselves,
00:26:16.220 perhaps, are there at any moment to distract you.
00:26:21.580 At any moment, yeah.
00:26:22.240 Yeah, the little things that are time consumers, like, yeah, there's companies, there are businesses
00:26:27.160 where that is their, that's their business, is to get your attention.
00:26:31.660 Everything's trying to get our attention.
00:26:33.660 Sometimes I worry that the forces that are out there that have, like, started to, you know,
00:26:39.620 really create algorithms, even, on how to get our attention and how to keep it, that those
00:26:44.840 forces are stronger than our human abilities to, to keep them away from us.
00:26:51.680 Do you feel like that that's true, or do you feel like that that's just a fear?
00:26:54.760 I think, I really do believe that that's true.
00:26:56.800 I, look, as far as I can tell, we are teaching computers to, to read our minds as fast as we
00:27:04.840 possibly can.
00:27:05.680 And they're way better at it than they were 10 years ago.
00:27:09.660 And they're going to be so much better at it in five years that we won't even be able
00:27:12.880 to imagine it.
00:27:13.680 And when I say read our minds, I'm not talking about something magical, but.
00:27:20.280 Oh, yeah.
00:27:20.980 For example.
00:27:21.400 You're not talking about, like, guess what's happening.
00:27:23.260 It's not like, like, they're going to guess what we're thinking or guess what we want for
00:27:26.860 dinner or anything like that, probably.
00:27:28.700 Well, they might, but they won't do it by directly reading our brainwaves or anything
00:27:33.460 like that.
00:27:35.360 They'll, they're already algorithms that target advertisements to send at you are pretty good
00:27:40.960 at deciding what it is that you're motivated to pursue.
00:27:44.600 And now, I've heard recently.
00:27:46.360 Oh, yeah.
00:27:46.380 I actually just got an ad on my phone for your new book, actually.
00:27:49.220 So, yeah.
00:27:49.560 Oh, well, good.
00:27:50.240 So, I'm involved in the same process, the same nefarious process.
00:27:53.980 I'm just joking.
00:27:54.800 Go on.
00:27:55.360 That, that I think it's Facebook, but I might be wrong about this, that owns Oculus and the
00:28:01.860 headset, the VR headset company.
00:28:03.760 Now, you can, you can track eye movements with a VR headset and psychologists use the
00:28:12.720 tracking of eye movements to map attention in high detail.
00:28:17.320 Now, look, if you look at our eyes, you see that there's a colored circle and a dark circle
00:28:23.760 in the middle, and then that's surrounded by white, and that makes your eye very visible
00:28:29.260 to other people, animals too, but to other people particularly.
00:28:33.080 Human eyes are quite unique in that regard, and it looks like we've evolved to have highly
00:28:38.740 visible eyes.
00:28:40.420 And the reason for that is that other, we communicate with other people, and they can
00:28:45.540 read our motivations by watching our eyes.
00:28:47.940 So, if you stand on the corner, and you look up at nothing in the sky, and you stand there
00:28:54.240 long enough, someone else will join you, and then if there's two people, then there'll
00:28:58.300 be ten right away.
00:28:59.740 And the reason for that is that we, and this is, again, something uniquely human, we attend
00:29:06.840 to where other people point their eyes, assuming that if they're interested in it, we might be
00:29:12.940 interested in it too.
00:29:14.740 And so, that's, and human beings are visual animals.
00:29:17.880 About half our brain is taken up with visual processing.
00:29:21.500 We're much more visual than virtually any other animal.
00:29:24.260 And so, computers are soon going to be able to track where we place our eyes, which of course
00:29:29.080 advertisers are incredibly interested in.
00:29:31.540 And that's going to speed up the ability of high-powered computational devices to understand
00:29:38.580 human beings as a group, but also each of us individually to an immense degree, immense
00:29:44.400 degree.
00:29:45.400 And so, and I think we're probably ten years away from computers that understand us better
00:29:51.740 than we understand ourselves.
00:29:53.880 AI machines are going to get extremely good at this, because it's so lucrative to be able
00:30:00.000 to gauge attention.
00:30:02.260 There's nothing that's more valuable than that.
00:30:04.600 And so, do you feel like it, do you feel like there should be, it's hard to say there should
00:30:11.920 be legislation, because I hate to put anything on the, you know, that it's the government's
00:30:17.600 responsibility, but should there be like rules or legislation between allowing computers and
00:30:25.600 AI to get that advanced?
00:30:28.040 Or is it still just fall on the feet of us as humans just to battle kind of the dark arts
00:30:35.040 of, of, of these machines that can sort of like take us into a trance and then monetize
00:30:43.140 the trance at the same time?
00:30:45.720 I think, I think that legislation in some senses, it's going to be playing catch up and it's going
00:30:52.160 to be farther and farther behind all the time because this is moving so fast and with such
00:30:57.000 power, and it's so distributed that no one is going to be able to even keep track of it,
00:31:03.440 much less regulate it.
00:31:04.500 I mean, the, the, the, the interconnected environment is changing so rapidly that even
00:31:10.460 if you're reasonably tech savvy, you can't keep up with all the major changes.
00:31:15.260 And there's, there's no evidence whatsoever that that's going to do anything but accelerate.
00:31:21.480 And so I can't see how legislators have the ghost of a chance at keeping up with this,
00:31:28.320 even if they knew what to target or what to legislate.
00:31:31.920 And you know, more and more engineers are, I think China now graduates more engineers every
00:31:36.940 year than the United States has engineers.
00:31:39.380 Oh yeah.
00:31:40.660 China, you could be eight years old in China and be a damn engineer.
00:31:43.280 I've been over there and I've seen it, bro.
00:31:44.860 I've seen a six-year-old build a damn bridge in front of me.
00:31:47.380 You know what I'm saying?
00:31:48.500 They're highly capable.
00:31:50.340 Yes.
00:31:50.740 Well, and lots of other cultures are coming online very rapidly.
00:31:53.820 And so we're at, well, and there's no shortage of unbelievably proficient amateurs online as
00:32:00.580 well and, and, and programming.
00:32:02.840 And, and so we ain't seen nothing yet.
00:32:05.940 And I really do believe computers are going to, your computer is going to understand you so well.
00:32:10.300 I think it, it won't be long till it knows what you're going to do more accurately than you do.
00:32:17.640 I think that's already true to some degree, but.
00:32:20.700 Well, then we're at a real loss because then if I've been afraid to make a plan for myself in my life
00:32:25.560 and I've been afraid and I've been living in the fog and I've been just, you know,
00:32:30.660 kind of sidestepping, really putting my fucking pants on as a human and taking some action.
00:32:40.820 If I'm in that fog and then the computer is able to figure out what I'm going to do
00:32:45.620 before I've even done it, but I haven't even made a plan,
00:32:49.020 then surely the computer is going to make a plan for me.
00:32:51.420 It feels like.
00:32:52.420 I think the computer is making a plan for you all the time already.
00:32:55.560 By default, look, that's exactly what advertising is, is advertising makes a plan for you.
00:33:02.120 It's, there's no difference between those two things, except maybe one of sophistication.
00:33:06.960 So, you know, I mean, when you're watching something and an ad pops up,
00:33:11.460 that's a little world that you could visit.
00:33:14.120 And the advertiser obviously wants you to visit that.
00:33:16.920 And the problem there, because you might think, well, it would be really good.
00:33:20.500 The computer can help you make a plan.
00:33:21.880 But I think what's more likely to happen, because at least to begin with,
00:33:26.260 the computer is going to be paid, so to speak, by the advertisers to capitalize on your short-term impulsivity,
00:33:32.480 is that ever more attractive distractions are going to be dangled in front of you.
00:33:38.340 And that's likely to keep you in the fog.
00:33:43.960 And what can I do to battle the fog?
00:33:46.760 Like, what can I do, you know, as a human to retain my humanity as things get more tech and more,
00:33:57.640 and as tech becomes far smarter in some ways, you know, in technical ways than I'll ever be?
00:34:07.500 Well, you know, I wish I knew the answer to that.
00:34:11.260 I don't.
00:34:12.960 Partly because the landscape that's unfolding in front of us, because it changes so rapidly, it's unpredictable.
00:34:19.040 You know, other rules in my two books address that to some degree.
00:34:24.780 I think your best bet, the best bet you have virtually all the time, is to try not to lie to yourself.
00:34:32.720 In my first book, Twelve Rules for Life, I said, do not lie.
00:34:38.840 Or, no, I said, the rule was, tell the truth, or at least do not lie.
00:34:43.420 Because, you know, you might, I mean, can you tell the truth?
00:34:47.680 You'd have to know the truth, you know.
00:34:49.600 You might be able to tell some partial truths, but you can't tell the truth.
00:34:53.480 But you can not say things that you know to be false.
00:34:58.360 And in the second book, the new one, rule five is, do not do things that you hate.
00:35:04.380 Which is also a kind of lie, and I don't mean, don't do difficult things like get out of bed at six in the morning and exercise.
00:35:12.960 You know, you might say, well, I hate going to the gym.
00:35:15.000 And that isn't what I mean.
00:35:16.120 You don't really hate going to the gym.
00:35:17.620 You just find it difficult.
00:35:20.500 I'm thinking more that you might observe yourself engaging in activities that you find despicable, even right then,
00:35:28.960 but certainly later when your conscience dwells on them, and that you should stop doing that.
00:35:34.380 Because that's a form of behavioral lie.
00:35:37.100 I think the only thing we have to orient ourselves is, as individuals, is our willingness to live a life that's relatively free of unnecessary deceit, or of deceit at all.
00:35:52.980 For better or worse, life is short.
00:35:56.620 How can we add a sense of urgency to it?
00:35:59.200 Well, I would say by reminding yourself that life is short, that'll add a sense of urgency.
00:36:11.180 By noticing, you know, I calculated, I don't know, my parents are, when my parents were in their 70s, 60s perhaps, I usually saw them about once every two years.
00:36:23.160 We communicate a lot more than that, but we live a long ways apart.
00:36:26.580 So I calculated, you know, well, my dad's probably going to live until his mid-80s or late, you know, somewhere in there.
00:36:32.740 And he's 60, he's 70, let's say.
00:36:35.140 I'm going to see him 40 more times.
00:36:36.540 It's like, okay, 40 more times.
00:36:42.580 That's urgent.
00:36:45.320 So you better get it right, because you don't have it, you don't have that many opportunities.
00:36:50.460 You know, it's the same when you're formulating relationships in your adolescence, late adolescence and early adulthood.
00:36:55.300 You don't have that many experiments to run, you know, and you get old a lot faster than you think.
00:37:04.060 So attention, attention, attention is an underrated faculty.
00:37:14.920 It's not the same as thinking.
00:37:17.900 It's watching.
00:37:19.980 To see what's there in front of your eyes.
00:37:22.820 And to guide yourself as a consequence of what you perceive.
00:37:27.640 It's the faculty that transforms thought if you let it.
00:37:32.940 So, and your conscience alerts you as well.
00:37:36.020 Tick, tick, tick.
00:37:37.300 You know, you're wasting time.
00:37:39.840 And very few people are happy with that.
00:37:43.440 Some are burdened by it more than others.
00:37:45.760 But virtually no one escapes that voice of conscience.
00:37:51.400 I suppose to some degree that's the willingness not to engage in self-deception.
00:37:56.680 Chapter 3 in Beyond Order is about that.
00:37:59.280 People don't really repress the things they don't want to face.
00:38:02.060 They just fail to unpack them.
00:38:05.000 You know, like maybe you're on YouTube regularly.
00:38:10.260 And every time you shut the computer off, you feel somewhat disgusted.
00:38:16.120 But you don't pay any attention to that for a while, for two years.
00:38:20.000 But then you decide you're going to pay attention.
00:38:21.560 Then you find out, well, the reason you're disgusted is because you're wasting your life and you know it.
00:38:26.200 And that disgust is indicating that.
00:38:27.960 But unless you attend to the disgust and unpack it, let it reveal itself as informative,
00:38:33.040 you don't know what the message is.
00:38:34.280 You just have a sense of disquiet.
00:38:37.160 It's not easy to transform that sense of disquiet into an actionable plan.
00:38:42.060 And often you have to talk to someone about it as well.
00:38:45.140 You have to discover.
00:38:47.260 So it's not like you're repressing the emotion exactly.
00:38:49.920 It's that you don't undergo the difficult process necessary to unpack it.
00:38:55.700 It's effortful.
00:38:59.540 It comes back to that assessing assumptions that we said before.
00:39:03.540 If the goal of life is to live a life which, in retrospect, we are glad that we lived,
00:39:10.420 it's important to give ourselves perspective, to develop that metacognizance,
00:39:15.180 to step away from the urgent, to step away from the phenomenological day-to-day existence.
00:39:20.840 Because the present self is a petulant child.
00:39:24.560 It's lazy and it wants the path of least resistance and that glass of wine and that new movie on Netflix
00:39:29.800 and the couch looks really comfortable.
00:39:32.140 Very rarely does it do...
00:39:33.220 Yeah, well, that's the danger with impulsive happiness is that it does have that present-bound quality.
00:39:39.680 And in retrospect, that can lead to a life that's not well-lived.
00:39:46.700 Generally that, yes, yes, yes.
00:39:50.840 Life definitely places philosophical demands on you, whether you want it to or not.
00:39:58.780 And so it is useful to step back.
00:40:01.280 I mean, that's likely why the trait openness evolved.
00:40:05.240 That's the creativity dimension.
00:40:06.900 That's the dimension that allows people to engage in philosophical discourse and to think laterally.
00:40:13.260 And it does allow you to step back and look at things on a broader scale and to generate creative alternatives.
00:40:21.280 The problem with examining your assumptions is it's very disquieting.
00:40:25.540 You know, because you want things to act the way you predict and desire them to act.
00:40:33.660 And you work within a set of axioms and you act them out in order to maintain that predictability, that desirable predictability.
00:40:42.940 If you mess around, the more fundamental the axiom that you question, the more uncertainty you release.
00:40:50.900 And some of that can be positive, but a plenty of it can be anxiety-provoking.
00:40:56.120 I mean, just imagine that you're in a relationship and, you know, it's maybe a year into it and you haven't formalized and finalized it.
00:41:03.020 But then one day you allow yourself to ask the question, is this the relationship I want to be in?
00:41:08.820 Well, that's a fundamental question, but just imagine now you're destabilizing your entire future.
00:41:15.360 You're destabilizing your present.
00:41:17.820 You're destabilizing your past.
00:41:20.260 Because while engaging in the relationship, you're acting out the assumption that it's the proper relationship.
00:41:25.640 But now you question that, that means the story you told yourself about what was happening while it happened,
00:41:31.140 even though it's already happened, was wrong and something else had happened.
00:41:35.820 And then you have to think through what actually happened.
00:41:38.140 So it's unbelievably demanding.
00:41:40.440 And the more axiomatic the assumption, the more certainty is cast into troublesome chaos.
00:41:46.940 Now, you could say, yeah, but the alternative is worse.
00:41:53.460 And I believe that often that's true.
00:41:55.940 But the thing about the alternative is that you can always forestall it, right?
00:42:00.560 You can ask that question tomorrow.
00:42:03.380 You bet, you bet.
00:42:04.680 And it's a very powerful temptation.
00:42:07.480 And no wonder, you know, do you want to dig up the body now or do you want to wait a month?
00:42:12.380 It's like, well, it'll be more rotten in a month.
00:42:14.740 But it's not a month.
00:42:17.380 It's not now, right?
00:42:18.820 It's not now.
00:42:19.720 And so I understand why people don't want to delve into things, even if their emotions indicate that they should.
00:42:27.080 I mean, I would see this all the time.
00:42:28.920 If you're trying to settle an important issue with your partner, let's say, that can be a tremendously troublesome excavation process.
00:42:38.760 And there's no shortage of pain, but if you sort it out, then maybe things can be better.
00:42:48.220 It doesn't mean it's easy or pleasant.
00:42:52.420 Quite the contrary.
00:42:54.180 It's like surgery.
00:42:55.640 It's like surgery to remove something, you know, that shouldn't be there.
00:43:01.020 It's necessary, but man, still surgery.
00:43:06.600 I think it's possible to develop a cathartic emotion towards that.
00:43:15.020 I think it's possible to downregulate the level of discomfort that you feel when you do assess your assumptions.
00:43:22.060 On this show, a lot of the time, I try and present uncomfortable truths.
00:43:26.160 So insights that are accurate, but disquieting to learn.
00:43:33.340 And that, to me, gradually exposing people and myself to more and more of these and learning that it's not an existential threat.
00:43:41.740 It's not going to destroy my ego.
00:43:43.960 Or learning that it is an existential threat, but that you can handle it.
00:43:48.600 Correct.
00:43:48.920 Which is really what people learn in exposure therapy that's effective, is the thing they're afraid of is frightening.
00:43:57.580 But they're tougher than they think.
00:44:01.060 And that's very useful to learn.
00:44:03.480 Yes, I do believe.
00:44:06.780 Well, it's also the case that if you decide that you're going to delve into trouble as it arises, you're likely not to avoid the delve-in process more than necessary.
00:44:19.220 So the thing won't grow into a monster that's quite so large, you know.
00:44:23.520 So once the relationship you have with your intimate partner is reasonably well-constituted, and you decide that you're going to address problems as they arise, then it's less burdensome than the total reconfiguration that might be necessary before any of that has been started.
00:44:43.400 It's a form of mental hygiene, I would say, in some sense.
00:44:47.200 And you do get better at that with practice.
00:44:50.280 And perhaps you also get less likely to jump to the worst possible negative conclusion.
00:45:00.260 You know, and that's also useful.
00:45:03.120 You don't catastrophize so much.
00:45:05.900 If you feel like you're built for more, if you want to grow, if you want to improve, if you want to become a better human, but you don't have people around you that also want to, you're scared that you're going to lose friends.
00:45:17.680 You're scared that you're going to be alone as you start to go out on a journey of self-improvement.
00:45:23.440 How can people find the courage to do that?
00:45:26.360 Well, one thing they can do is contemplate the consequences of not doing it.
00:45:35.100 You lose friends.
00:45:36.600 Well, you're going to lose the friends who don't want the best for you.
00:45:41.740 Those are the friends you want in 10 years?
00:45:44.540 I mean, you lose friends.
00:45:45.880 Well, maybe you gain new friends.
00:45:47.500 Maybe you gain better friends.
00:45:48.720 Or maybe, miracle of miracles, your friends pick up their mess too and move forward.
00:45:55.780 Maybe not.
00:45:56.460 And I'm not naively optimistic about such things.
00:45:59.860 But you have to contemplate the price you pay for inaction.
00:46:03.200 And this is something I did with my clients all the time.
00:46:05.180 It's like, well, I don't want to change jobs.
00:46:07.940 Well, no wonder.
00:46:09.480 It's like you have to go put yourself out to be interviewed.
00:46:13.480 You have to send out 500 resumes.
00:46:15.980 You have to be rejected 499 times.
00:46:20.820 You have to polish your interview skills.
00:46:23.180 You have to update your CV, which means you have to take a real look at the inadequacies in your preparation.
00:46:30.720 And maybe you won't find a better job.
00:46:32.960 It's like, no wonder you're afraid of that.
00:46:34.640 Okay, you're in this job you hate and it's 10 years from now.
00:46:40.460 How does that look?
00:46:43.200 Think about that.
00:46:44.440 You already know you're in a little hell.
00:46:47.640 You know perfectly well it's going to get worse.
00:46:50.360 Which is more frightening?
00:46:52.860 Action or inaction?
00:46:54.440 Well, the thing about inaction is you're blind to it, eh?
00:46:57.800 So you can hide from it.
00:46:59.220 Well, that's chapter 3 again.
00:47:00.560 Do not hide things in the fog.
00:47:02.680 Do not make the assumption that inaction has no price.
00:47:07.400 And so then you think, I'm terrified of this, but I'm even more terrified of that.
00:47:13.740 And, you know, people have asked me, for example,
00:47:19.700 I suppose why I was willing or am willing to
00:47:26.180 engage in the troublesome process of objecting when I think something isn't going well.
00:47:34.660 Because I'm more afraid of the consequences of inappropriate silence.
00:47:44.840 It's not that I'm brave.
00:47:46.280 It's that I'm more terrified of the alternative.
00:47:52.720 So I don't engage in the alternative.
00:47:56.120 And I don't know, maybe I have a knack for that to some degree.
00:47:58.740 Maybe it's a consequence of clinical training.
00:48:00.500 But, you know, I can walk into people's houses and look around and I think, okay, there's something up here.
00:48:04.860 And, I mean, people have that ability.
00:48:08.600 You know, I walked into a house once and the dishwasher was in the middle of the kitchen and it was undone.
00:48:17.040 And had obviously been there for a couple of weeks.
00:48:19.640 And the fridge had food in it that was no longer food.
00:48:23.540 And the cupboards had unopened wedding gifts in them.
00:48:26.800 And, like, five years after the marriage, I thought, there's a lot of things in this household that are being swept under the rug.
00:48:36.280 And that was all laid out in the practical environs.
00:48:42.540 It's like they hadn't negotiated who was responsible for cleaning the fridge.
00:48:47.580 They hadn't even been able to open their wedding gifts.
00:48:50.480 It's like something's rotten deeply.
00:48:55.100 So, and so, I could see where that was headed without a tremendous amount of effort on the part of the people.
00:49:04.940 And it didn't work.
00:49:05.840 They were divorced, you know, a couple of years after that in a very ugly manner for very ugly reasons.
00:49:12.180 Well, I knew where that was headed.
00:49:13.980 And, you know, under different circumstances, I would have said, what the hell is that box doing there?
00:49:22.520 Oh, you know, it's nothing.
00:49:24.340 Yeah, no, wrong.
00:49:26.380 It's not nothing.
00:49:28.220 That's a little portal to hell.
00:49:30.820 I can see it.
00:49:31.720 And so could you if you looked.
00:49:33.620 But you won't.
00:49:34.780 And I mean that literally because people won't look.
00:49:37.240 They'll walk into a room like that.
00:49:38.680 And they will not look at that thing.
00:49:41.160 Absolutely.
00:49:41.640 And that's because if they look, they'd see.
00:49:46.500 And they don't want to see.
00:49:47.940 And no wonder.
00:49:48.780 But the consequence of blindness is worse.
00:49:51.420 It's worse.
00:49:53.600 I mean, I have this, you know, my family would like some peace.
00:49:59.220 Because I seem to be embroiled in one thing after another.
00:50:02.620 And, you know, they have a point.
00:50:07.920 But peace is very hard to obtain.
00:50:10.200 And I can't be blind to what I see in the broader world around me.
00:50:15.180 Not if I see it.
00:50:17.060 If I see it, it's like, there it is.
00:50:20.180 I'm going to say something.
00:50:22.160 Who could you be?
00:50:23.920 Exactly.
00:50:24.600 You see that in children.
00:50:25.800 I watch little children play.
00:50:27.480 And what they're doing, you know, they're attempting to grow forward.
00:50:33.700 But they toy with identities.
00:50:37.580 I'm my little granddaughter.
00:50:39.640 I wrote about her in this book, too.
00:50:41.000 It's so funny watching her.
00:50:44.280 She had Pocahontas, the Disney movie.
00:50:46.800 And she had a Pocahontas doll.
00:50:48.320 And she watched that movie a number of times.
00:50:50.800 And then for, well, it's been a year now.
00:50:53.260 She's only three and a half.
00:50:54.320 For a whole year, she has two names.
00:50:56.340 Scarlett and Ellie.
00:50:58.440 And one's her middle name.
00:51:00.800 But she's called one or the other.
00:51:03.060 And seems to be perfectly comfortable with both.
00:51:07.460 If you ask her if she's Ellie, she'll say yes.
00:51:10.440 And if you ask her if she's Scarlett, she'll say yes.
00:51:13.340 But if you ask her if she's Pocahontas, she'll also say yes.
00:51:17.180 And then if you ask her if she is Scarlett, Ellie, or Pocahontas, she'll say she's Pocahontas.
00:51:23.980 And she's been insisting on that for a whole year.
00:51:28.480 And so she's playing out this role.
00:51:32.200 I don't know how much of her imagination is devoted to it.
00:51:35.000 But enough for this.
00:51:36.800 Like that's if you're how old are you?
00:51:39.160 40?
00:51:39.720 40.
00:51:40.120 Just turned 40.
00:51:40.740 Yeah.
00:51:40.960 Okay.
00:51:41.600 So, you know, imagine that you had a fictional identity for 15 years.
00:51:46.020 That's approximately the same relative length of time.
00:51:50.480 And the kids, you know, they weave up a fantasy world.
00:51:55.060 And then they play out an identity in that.
00:51:58.120 And then they weave out another fantasy world.
00:52:00.080 And they play out an identity with that.
00:52:01.680 And they shape that identity by their interactions with other children and adults.
00:52:06.700 And hopefully they find an identity that suits them that other people also accept.
00:52:11.400 Because your identity has to be something that other people accept.
00:52:14.420 Or it isn't going to work for you.
00:52:16.020 But that's all part of this exploration of who they could be.
00:52:21.060 You know, it's the play is, in fact, the exercising of that realm of possibilities.
00:52:27.480 And so a good father, a good parent for that matter.
00:52:30.740 But I think this, I think at least is an archetypally paternal role, puts a border of security around
00:52:36.960 the child.
00:52:38.080 You know, and the mother might be inside that border of security when she has young children.
00:52:42.440 And play can take place there.
00:52:44.660 And the play is the investigation of multiple identities with the hope of finding one that
00:52:51.980 is functional, that is also socially desired.
00:52:55.920 Because those things can't be dissociated.
00:52:58.120 One of the reasons I think that the identity politics has bothered me so much, speaking of
00:53:02.920 snitches, you know, it's bothered me.
00:53:04.680 It's like, this bothers me.
00:53:06.280 And I've only recently realized that some of it had to do with what I saw as limitations
00:53:11.100 on free speech.
00:53:12.140 Which is, I have to say the words that, you know, some authority or some population demands
00:53:18.500 that I say.
00:53:19.200 Which I don't like.
00:53:20.260 But there's something else too, which is that it's based on a very misleading theory of identity.
00:53:28.180 Your identity is not just how you feel about yourself at this moment.
00:53:34.320 And you can't impose that on other people because they don't know how to deal with that.
00:53:39.900 Like, even if they wanted to, they wouldn't know the rules of the game.
00:53:43.420 You have to negotiate your identity with other people.
00:53:45.760 And so then you have to think of identity as something that's negotiated with other people.
00:53:51.180 And so if you have an implicit theory of identity, like the one that seems to be increasingly
00:53:56.660 dominating the cultural landscape, which is identity is something that's only subjectively
00:54:02.260 determined and can also change from moment to moment, then you're misleading people as
00:54:08.560 they develop because they come up with a very unsophisticated notion of what identity
00:54:12.640 is.
00:54:13.140 And that's not good because that's core.
00:54:18.120 And part of your identity is your value to other people.
00:54:21.900 That's a huge part of it.
00:54:23.440 And that's not subjective.
00:54:25.300 That's other people make that decision.
00:54:27.740 Yeah.
00:54:28.200 And you talk about that in, I think it's chapter three, where you say that's one of the ways
00:54:33.000 we keep our sanity is talking to other people and the interaction with our community and all
00:54:39.840 of these other things that isolate us more and more to a single subjective perspective is
00:54:45.300 going to lead to a certain madness.
00:54:47.400 It is definitely.
00:54:48.940 Well, exactly.
00:54:50.220 Well, I tried to impress upon some of the trans activists that were after me when I first
00:54:56.480 made some public statements.
00:54:58.020 I said, look, I don't think, I didn't say it this eloquently, unfortunately.
00:55:02.480 I said, what I would have liked to have said now, at least, was it isn't obvious to me
00:55:09.220 at all that your theory of identity is going to serve the function that you assume it is.
00:55:15.560 It's not psychologically sophisticated enough.
00:55:18.680 It's not sociologically sophisticated enough.
00:55:21.140 You can't insist that other people play a game that they don't know how to play, especially
00:55:27.240 when you also don't know how to play it, except to say that it exists.
00:55:32.140 So, and this sanity issue is, you know, a lot of us is externalized because we're such
00:55:39.280 social creatures.
00:55:40.180 And everyone has weaknesses, you know, you're going to degenerate along your weakest axis.
00:55:49.180 And if you're fortunate, and you won't be able to control yourself because some of your
00:55:52.440 weakness will be precisely that inability to control yourself on that axis.
00:55:56.840 Like maybe, maybe you have a biological predisposition to alcoholism and, you know, you have three
00:56:01.640 shots of vodka in 20 minutes and you're like on top of the world.
00:56:05.260 You know, there are people like that.
00:56:07.220 They often have extensive family histories of alcoholism.
00:56:09.900 It's a biological phenomenon.
00:56:13.180 You can tell if you're like that, if it's really difficult for you to stop drinking once
00:56:16.800 you start.
00:56:17.800 It's a real warning sign.
00:56:19.280 It means alcohol is a great drug for you, subjectively speaking.
00:56:23.300 But, you know, hopefully when you drink too much, other people are going to start telling
00:56:29.160 you.
00:56:29.800 It's like, no, you're, and that's actually how you start diagnosing alcohol abuse.
00:56:34.960 Are you getting in trouble with the law?
00:56:37.100 Is it interfering with your intimate relationships?
00:56:39.220 Is it interfering with your ability to hold a job?
00:56:42.140 It means that the addictive substance is starting to dominate your life in a manner that's counterproductive.
00:56:48.700 And other people are there to ensure that you stay balanced enough so that you don't deteriorate
00:56:54.720 entirely.
00:56:55.220 You're lucky if you have that.
00:56:57.220 And part of the point I make in that chapter, and I would say in both books, and in Maps of
00:57:02.600 Meaning as well, is that the primary obligation of a parent is to serve as a proxy for the social
00:57:10.780 and the natural world.
00:57:12.420 And the reason for that is that by the time they're about three, three to four is the transition
00:57:28.800 period, they're going to be spending more time being socialized by their peers than by you.
00:57:36.280 And that will increasingly be the case as they develop.
00:57:39.000 And if you haven't made them, if you haven't encouraged them through judicious attention to be socially
00:57:47.200 desirable, they're going to be rejected by their peers.
00:57:50.220 And then they fall farther and farther behind on the developmental trajectory.
00:57:53.700 So that's partly how you help them with their identity.
00:58:00.900 They can't be the sort of person that insists that everyone else always play the game they
00:58:06.200 chose.
00:58:07.640 And it's honoring that they can play whatever game they want for themselves.
00:58:11.400 Like your granddaughter, she can play Pocahontas.
00:58:14.680 And if she wants to have that identity as Pocahontas, great.
00:58:18.640 But to demand and to shame anybody who decides to call her Ellie, for example, you know, who
00:58:25.060 just doesn't know any better, knows that name.
00:58:26.760 That's where I think it gets really, that's where the ugliness of it comes out.
00:58:30.200 Like the freedom to express ourselves how we want, but then softening the edges of this
00:58:36.080 thing and just recognizing, okay, you know, if you know somebody and they really prefer to
00:58:41.760 be called something.
00:58:42.480 It was like when I was 30, I changed my name from one of my middle names was Chris and the
00:58:47.760 other middle name was Aubrey.
00:58:49.000 My legal name was Michael and it was all a big mess.
00:58:51.800 I decided to take my grandfather's name, Aubrey.
00:58:54.340 So there was a window there where my identity changed, well, at least the name from Chris
00:58:59.080 to Aubrey.
00:59:00.180 And so lots of people would call me Chris and I would just gently say, hey, you know,
00:59:03.740 I changed my name to Aubrey and, but whatever, it wouldn't like cause a, it wouldn't be a
00:59:08.000 screeching halt to the, to the day or anything like that.
00:59:11.180 And it would just be gentle encouragement that I didn't take personally because I wasn't attached
00:59:15.740 to that identity as the end all be all.
00:59:18.620 I attached to, I am an infinite being of a point, a locus of consciousness that is embodying
00:59:25.560 a certain identity at this transitory time.
00:59:28.520 This is my own personal spiritual belief.
00:59:30.520 And that to me is the solid ground, right?
00:59:33.060 So these other things, this is, this is how we play.
00:59:36.000 This is the way, as Ram Dass said, this is us being God in drag, right?
00:59:39.880 Like this is us playing out our role and it's, in my opinion, it's fine to play out another
00:59:45.560 role.
00:59:45.840 But the moment you get so attached to that infinitesimal aspect of self and build these
00:59:51.740 walls rather than opening up the community, that's where I think it, it leads to the result.
00:59:57.820 As you said, it leads to a result that you're not actually desiring in trying to, in trying
01:00:03.440 to, you know, do this, change this identity.
01:00:05.520 Well, that's what I saw as a danger, I would say, is that it was the use of force, which
01:00:12.160 is what happens when you put something into law.
01:00:14.840 It's forces, not only implied, but relatively, you know, stated relatively explicitly.
01:00:20.920 And then there was the problem with the, you know, paucity of identity and the interference
01:00:25.100 with, with free speech.
01:00:26.560 Um, and I, I don't think that those concerns were misplaced.
01:00:35.560 I think that there's something about that issue that's central to the continuing culture
01:00:40.780 war.
01:00:41.140 It is a war to some degree about what constitutes identity, but at least we should have a more
01:00:46.560 sophisticated notion of identity.
01:00:49.220 It's, it's, it's just not helpful otherwise.
01:00:51.440 I mean, part of what I was doing constantly as a clinical psychologist was helping people
01:00:55.460 craft an ever more sophisticated identity.
01:00:59.340 And what you want, you want to have the kind of identity that makes people line up to want
01:01:05.120 to play with you.
01:01:06.580 And if you ever have to use force, well, that's, look, sometimes force is inescapable, but if
01:01:14.180 you have to use force to get people to comply, it is a sign that you're not playing a very
01:01:19.460 good game.
01:01:20.500 Now, maybe you don't, you can't think up a better one.
01:01:22.760 There's nothing that's going to work.
01:01:23.900 A state of emergency might, you know, because we allow governments to use extra force during
01:01:28.760 a state of emergency, but nobody thinks that's optimal.
01:01:33.440 So if people won't play because you're inviting them, then the game isn't configured very well
01:01:38.820 and it's very unlikely to be stable.
01:01:42.360 Rule three is Michaela's favorite.
01:01:45.200 Do not hide unwanted things in the fog.
01:01:47.960 Right.
01:01:48.340 And this is the opposite of hiding unwanted things in the fog.
01:01:51.960 This is confronting them.
01:01:53.780 And that's a variant of St.
01:01:56.280 George and the dragon, which is an unbelievably pervasive mythological and artistic motif.
01:02:02.740 And perhaps also the oldest story that we have.
01:02:07.200 The oldest stories that we know are variants of King George and the, or St.
01:02:11.860 George and the dragon.
01:02:13.440 So tell me about this one.
01:02:17.060 That was difficult.
01:02:18.340 Because there were too many items that shouldn't look separated, although the woman should be separated.
01:02:29.140 So what I've done is using a fabric, fabric of hers and fabric of his, flying into the same direction.
01:02:40.360 And that's the connecting point.
01:02:43.460 Castles should be separated.
01:02:45.580 So I wasn't worried about the castle.
01:02:48.340 But the dark sky and the dragon work in...
01:02:53.140 Sure.
01:02:56.740 45 degrees, yeah.
01:02:58.100 Right, absolutely.
01:02:59.140 So the mass of the dragon and the mass of the sky are balanced against the figure of the rider.
01:03:05.240 And it gives it a symmetry across the, from the top left corner to the bottom right corner.
01:03:12.520 Yeah, absolutely.
01:03:13.000 Draw a line there.
01:03:13.760 It's symmetrical across that axis.
01:03:16.340 And the castle had to be there.
01:03:18.360 And the dragon had to be there.
01:03:19.580 And the woman had to be there.
01:03:20.720 All those elements are crucial.
01:03:21.980 And so this is what you do when you don't hide things in the fog.
01:03:26.920 You confront them and you free something of value as a consequence.
01:03:32.640 That's one of the most magnificent discoveries of human beings that human beings have ever made.
01:03:39.360 And images like this are an attempt to make that conscious, to serve.
01:03:45.940 They're a guide to a particular kind of action in the world.
01:03:49.760 That's the voluntary confrontation with things you don't understand and that you are afraid of.
01:03:54.800 And the promise that something of extreme value will emerge as a consequence of that, even though it looks dire initially and can be.
01:04:05.180 I mean, this is no joke because if you go off to fight dragons, there's always the possibility that you'll die or worse.
01:04:11.740 And that's a real possibility.
01:04:13.240 It's not something that can be hand-waved away with any amount of psychological nonsense, let's say.
01:04:22.540 Rule three, do not hide unwanted things in the fog.
01:04:26.220 Maybe you could tell us a bit about that one, Jordan.
01:04:28.040 That sounds interesting.
01:04:28.820 Well, you know, there's this Freudian idea of repression.
01:04:34.860 Right.
01:04:35.300 And that's sort of you do something wrong and then you decide you're going to put that away.
01:04:40.380 You have a full model of it.
01:04:41.660 You put it away and you don't, you know, you force it down into the unconscious and it rattles around down there causing trouble.
01:04:46.980 So that isn't exactly, that can happen, I think, but that isn't generally the key to what makes, what Freud was trying to get at with repression so clinically and practically valid.
01:05:01.840 It's more reasonable to think about it as a form of voluntary inattentiveness.
01:05:06.280 So let's say I use this example in the book.
01:05:12.600 Let's say you find yourself irritated at your wife when she's showing some attention to a neighbor and you're in a bad mood because of that.
01:05:24.140 And you know you're in a bad mood and you notice it, but you don't go there.
01:05:30.680 You know, you can have discussions with people and you think, well, I'm not going there.
01:05:34.460 And the reason you're not going there is because it's sort of surrounded by negative emotion, anger, defensiveness, and all that.
01:05:41.040 And you know that there's something under the surface that hasn't been made explicit.
01:05:45.260 And if you delved into it, it would cause a lot of trouble.
01:05:48.580 And, you know, maybe you'd figure out what was wrong, but there would be a lot of trouble.
01:05:51.940 Well, that's the fog.
01:05:53.740 It's like you react in a way that you don't want.
01:05:58.840 So let's step one step backwards.
01:06:02.280 You're acting.
01:06:03.520 Why?
01:06:03.820 Because you want to get what you want.
01:06:07.020 You want to get what you desire.
01:06:08.720 All right.
01:06:09.100 Well, you perform your action and you don't get what you desire.
01:06:12.400 You don't get your wife's attention, let's say.
01:06:16.860 Maybe you're trying to pick up someone in a bar and you keep getting rebuffed.
01:06:21.500 Well, the rebuff is a kind of fog.
01:06:26.300 Right.
01:06:26.720 You don't know why you're being rebuffed.
01:06:29.340 If you're rebuffed 50 times in a row, there's going to be a lot of information in all those rejections.
01:06:35.920 And you're going to have to think for a long time about what the patterns are that characterize those rejections.
01:06:43.060 And then you're going to have to extract from that a picture of why you're inadequate or why the opposite sex is corrupt and deceitful and prejudicial, which is the wrong conclusion to derive.
01:06:55.320 And you'll build a picture of your own inadequacy and then you have to notice how far you are away from the ideal as a consequence of that inadequacy.
01:07:04.840 And then you have to rectify it.
01:07:06.060 So, you see, you can extract out information that would be salutary for the development of your personality from doing pattern analysis of repeated failures.
01:07:17.480 Right, sure.
01:07:18.520 Or you can just not do that.
01:07:20.780 I mean, that relates very much to, you know, when you talk about internal versus external locus of control, let's suppose I have failed three times in businesses.
01:07:32.180 So, to link back to your story about, you know, the rejections of the bar.
01:07:37.240 But in this case, I'm an entrepreneur who has failed on three separate occasions in three separate business endeavors.
01:07:44.780 If I am someone who is going to attribute each of those failures externally, it's God.
01:07:51.620 It's because consumers are dumb.
01:07:53.340 It's because they're not, they weren't sufficiently ready.
01:07:55.640 The market wasn't ready for me.
01:07:57.000 So, I always attribute those failures externally.
01:07:59.120 I am removing the possibility of having a feedback loop of learning where I attribute some of those failures to decisions that I made so that when I go to my fourth business endeavor, I actually don't implement some of the reasons why I failed.
01:08:14.720 So, in a sense, your attribution style, internal versus external, could be contributing to you either going into the fog or getting out of the fog, correct?
01:08:24.720 Well, yeah, I think that's a useful way of looking at it.
01:08:28.820 We could talk about internal versus external there, too.
01:08:31.520 So, if you have an external locus of control, you view yourself as that which is being acted upon.
01:08:38.220 Right.
01:08:38.320 Now, you know, that can be useful in many, many circumstances.
01:08:42.240 So, because you might say, for example, about this entrepreneur, that he should take failure base rates into account.
01:08:48.120 Three failures is nothing.
01:08:49.860 Maybe you need a dozen failures before you've gathered enough information to be a successful entrepreneur, right?
01:08:56.780 So, that's where external locus of control is actually useful.
01:09:00.540 So, you can't necessarily tell to begin with which one is going to work.
01:09:04.240 If you always use an external locus of control, the problem then is that you're never driven to change anything about your fossilized ideas.
01:09:13.000 And the old dead king that is operating your thoughts never gets dethroned.
01:09:17.520 So, that's a problem.
01:09:18.400 So, the problem is, is if you have an internal locus of control and it always operates, the probability that you're going to get depressed is quite high because every failure is your fault.
01:09:28.780 That's right.
01:09:29.620 You know, it might be indicative of a fundamental flaw.
01:09:32.480 So, it's really tricky to get this balance right.
01:09:35.300 As a matter of fact, and I mean, of course, you would know this since you just hinted at it.
01:09:39.860 When I tell my students about this fundamental attribution error of attributing successes internally and attributing failures externally, the only group that doesn't suffer from that glowing, rosy fundamental attribution error are depressives, right?
01:09:54.700 And I'm not sure if the research now has said it clearly, whether it's because I start off with a non-rosy view of the world, that causes me to be more likely to be depressed, or is it when I am in a bout of depression, the glossy goes away?
01:10:11.300 Have they resolved the chicken and egg?
01:10:12.860 Well, Jesus, okay, so this is a good place to talk about something else that's somewhat archetypal.
01:10:17.560 Every time you learn something, generally speaking, it comes as a surprise, right?
01:10:24.960 There's no, and this is technically true, that which is not surprising contains no information.
01:10:30.900 It's virtually a definition of information, right?
01:10:34.040 Okay, if it surprises you, it means it violates one of your presuppositions.
01:10:39.420 Okay, so then, now that means that presupposition has to die.
01:10:43.600 And I mean die, because it's actually instantiated on a biological platform.
01:10:50.760 Let's say it's a neural structure, or a neural pattern.
01:10:53.560 I don't care, it's still a structure, even if it's a pattern.
01:10:55.840 It'd be the interconnections between neurons.
01:10:58.260 That thing has to be punished out of existence.
01:11:01.720 It has to be extinguished.
01:11:03.520 Now, exactly how much of it has to be extinguished, that's a very, very difficult question.
01:11:07.720 Like, if you get rebuffed when you try to pick someone up in a bar, it might be because you are the most undesirable creep in the world.
01:11:16.300 That's actually true for one person somewhere, right?
01:11:20.620 So, and it might be you.
01:11:22.640 Hopefully, you don't leap to that conclusion immediately, and you start with a smaller presupposition.
01:11:27.680 There might be some externalization in that.
01:11:29.560 In any case, a little part of you, every time you are surprised by something, a little part of you has to die.
01:11:38.020 Some part of you has to die.
01:11:39.800 Sometimes that, now, imagine that presuppositions are in a hierarchy.
01:11:45.740 So, some are essentially irrelevant to your continued actions, and some are crucial.
01:11:52.280 So, a crucial one, imagine you're planning the future and you're married, okay?
01:11:57.900 The existence of your wife is a critical presupposition to your future plans, or many of them.
01:12:05.000 And so, if your relationship becomes endangered, or if her life is put in danger, then that's going to be very impactful,
01:12:12.020 because her absence is going to destroy a huge chunk of your map of the world, all right?
01:12:20.480 The price we pay for learning is to die a little bit.
01:12:25.820 The trick is to not die too much.
01:12:30.040 And that's, so, I think it was Alfred North Whitehead said that, you know, we have to let our ideas die instead of us.
01:12:36.400 That's the purpose of abstract thought.
01:12:38.260 We can let our ideas die instead of us.
01:12:40.360 But that needs to be built, rebuilt to some degree, because your ideas are you, and they're actually alive, too.
01:12:46.620 And so, when one of your ideas dies, that's a part of you, and it might be a big part of you.
01:12:52.020 And it actually, on some, sometimes might be such a big part of you, that you actually can't survive the experience.
01:13:00.520 And that's a traumatic experience.
01:13:02.780 It's like it's blown out so much of your presupposition network that you might not be able to get yourself back up and going again.
01:13:09.660 If you look at the genesis of depression, major depressive disorder, it's very, very frequently the case that the first episode is brought on by some major trauma, like some genuinely horrible event.
01:13:24.900 And then the nervous system is somewhat compromised after that, and lesser events can produce an equal response.
01:13:31.220 So, it's no wonder we hide things in the fog.
01:13:37.660 But sometimes when you hide something in the fog, it just grows.
01:13:41.580 And then when it does come out, it's trauma.
01:13:44.540 Like, instead of having an argument about flirting, you end up in divorce court, you know, debating who's going to have custody of your kids for the next 10 years.
01:13:54.640 Well, on a very, on a very pragmatic level, I could tell you that in my own marriage, the way that my wife and I deal with, I mean, we rarely, truly, frankly, have any conflicts.
01:14:06.860 But the equivalent of your story about the flirtatious, sorry, there's a haircut, a flirtatious neighbor.
01:14:12.640 If that were to happen, I'm someone who doesn't let things fester in me, and so I will confront the negative emotions that I'm feeling at the moment, deal with them, and then we hug it out and we move on.
01:14:28.760 I'm very, very intolerant internally to an environment of stress, of poutiness, of turning, I just, maybe it's part of my openness.
01:14:39.920 Maybe it's my gregariousness, maybe, so I can't function in that environment.
01:14:44.780 So if I'm angry, you'll know it.
01:14:47.860 How sensitive are you to negative emotion?
01:14:50.120 I mean, you're very enthusiastic, you're obviously very extroverted, but how sensitive are you to negative emotion?
01:14:56.360 So meaning that if I experience a negative emotion, how catastrophic will it be for me?
01:15:02.400 Yeah.
01:15:03.500 I mean, I think I could handle it well.
01:15:05.820 I mean, probably the most negative feedback that I ever can receive is one that is created in my own mind, meaning that I am my worst critic, I am my worst, right?
01:15:17.140 I am a pathological perfectionist person.
01:15:20.360 So most of the, what I call the looping thoughts, right?
01:15:25.980 The intrusive looping thoughts that would constitute the majority of my lived experience in terms of negative emotions internally stem from me imposing this on myself.
01:15:37.360 Well, I was wondering because, you know, you said you're someone who's intolerant of poutiness and that sort of thing.
01:15:43.100 And that, that I'm like that too, to the degree that I engage in conflict, it's usually because I see something like that happening and I want to get it cleared up.
01:15:54.320 Exactly.
01:15:54.960 And I think that might also be true on a social basis, you know, insofar as at least my temperament operates that way.
01:16:02.040 I think, oh, I can see where this is going.
01:16:05.040 It doesn't look good.
01:16:06.300 I'd rather say something about now than later.
01:16:08.420 And if I were going to, if I were going to kind of do a Freudian thing of linking it back to childhood and so on, I would say that, and I, I, I've never shared this ever publicly in the past.
01:16:21.140 My, my home life with my parents was such that my parents, although they were married for 60 plus years, they got married in 1950.
01:16:29.160 They're still both alive, had an acrimonious relationship with one another and that there was a lot of, if not overt hostility, certainly latent under, you know, I used to always joke that whatever, all the horrors that I experienced in the Lebanese civil war was nothing compared to some of the horrors of the conflicts between them, which wasn't always, it's not like they were beating each other up, but there was this constant hostility.
01:16:55.080 And so maybe in part because of that, I seek to exactly never recreate that in my own home.
01:17:03.220 And so, you know, I, I, my wife and I have a lot of public displays of affection towards each other.
01:17:09.600 And I think, my God, I mean, my children see the love that my wife and I express to each other in a given day, more than the amount that I've seen my parents exhibit towards one another in 50 years.
01:17:21.060 And so maybe that is part of the intolerance, which is, I lived that and I don't want to replicate that.
01:17:26.780 So maybe that, that's, let me, let's.
01:17:28.900 Certainly seems plausible.
01:17:30.320 So the fog is what's created when you engage in acts of willful blindness, when you could know, but you decide that you don't want to.
01:17:37.800 Beautiful.
01:17:39.780 Hey everyone, real quick before you skip, I want to talk to you about something serious and important.
01:17:45.120 Dr. Jordan Peterson has created a new series that could be a lifeline for those battling depression and anxiety.
01:17:51.060 We know how isolating and overwhelming these conditions can be, and we wanted to take a moment to reach out to those listening who may be struggling.
01:17:58.800 With decades of experience helping patients, Dr. Peterson offers a unique understanding of why you might be feeling this way in his new series.
01:18:06.560 He provides a roadmap towards healing, showing that while the journey isn't easy, it's absolutely possible to find your way forward.
01:18:13.960 If you're suffering, please know you are not alone.
01:18:17.140 There's hope and there's a path to feeling better.
01:18:19.800 Go to Daily Wire Plus now and start watching Dr. Jordan B. Peterson on depression and anxiety.
01:18:26.180 Let this be the first step towards the brighter future you deserve.