Dr. Jordan B. Peterson has created a new series that could be a lifeline for those battling depression and anxiety. 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. With decades of experience helping patients, Dr. Peterson offers a unique understanding of why you might be feeling this way. In his new series, he provides a roadmap towards healing, showing that while the journey isn t easy, it s absolutely possible to find your way forward. If you re suffering, please know you are not alone. There s hope, and there s a path to feeling better. Season 3, Episode 5: Cain and Abel, the Hostile Brothers: A Jordan B Peterson Lecture. In this episode, I read from a poem written in a female voice written by a female initiate. I have no idea what this is about, but it s a question I ve been getting a lot of mail about, so I thought I d give you a run down of what it s about. If you d like to learn more about the Ayahuasca ceremony, I d love to hear your thoughts on it, so tweet me and let me know what you think! Timestamps: 1:00 - What does it mean to you? 2:30 - What do you think of it? 3:40 - Is it a female-authored poem? 4:00 5:15 - What would you like to see in a poem 6:20 - What is it about? 7:00 -- How do you know of a female shaman? 8:30 -- What is your favorite type of plant medicine? 9:40 -- what is your first encounter? 11:15 -- what does it have to do with a plant? 12:30 13:20 -- is it a feminine plant medicine ceremony? 14:00 | What is a woman s role model? 15:40 16:30 | What s your favorite aspect of a plant medicine plant medicine 17:40 | What are you looking for? 15, what s your first experience with an ayahuasca experience? 16, 17, what do you dabbled in? 18, is she a female plant medicine or plant medicine ? 19, does she have a story about her first encounter with the plant medicine she s been drinking?
00:00:00.960Hey everyone, real quick before you skip, I want to talk to you about something serious and important.
00:00:06.480Dr. Jordan Peterson has created a new series that could be a lifeline for those battling depression and anxiety.
00:00:12.740We 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.
00:00:20.100With decades of experience helping patients, Dr. Peterson offers a unique understanding of why you might be feeling this way in his new series.
00:00:27.420He provides a roadmap towards healing, showing that while the journey isn't easy, it's absolutely possible to find your way forward.
00:00:35.360If you're suffering, please know you are not alone. There's hope, and there's a path to feeling better.
00:00:41.800Go to Daily Wire Plus now and start watching Dr. Jordan B. Peterson on depression and anxiety.
00:00:47.460Let this be the first step towards the brighter future you deserve.
00:00:57.420Welcome to Season 3, Episode 5 of the Jordan B. Peterson Podcast.
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00:05:53.640He is here to invoke and initiate the divine masculine principle on earth at this time.
00:06:01.140So I'm up here to thank you deeply and profoundly on behalf of the great mother herself, the goddess, the divine feminine principle,
00:06:18.240who has been eagerly awaiting the awakening of the masculine principle into divinity and service.
00:06:25.440So, you know, you don't get a letter like that every day.
00:06:29.580Actually, I get a letter or two like that every day.
00:06:34.320So, you know, what went through my head when I read this, and this is, of course, a completely crazy parallel.
00:06:44.940But, you know, one of the things I learned to do as a psychotherapist was just to tell people who were talking to me what came into my head.
00:06:53.820It isn't what I'm thinking exactly, because that's not exactly the same thing, you know.
00:06:58.640So, what comes into your head is more like a dream.
00:07:04.680If you're thinking, there seems to be like a voluntary element of that, right?
00:07:08.740I mean, some of, who God only knows how we think, but it seems partly voluntary at least.
00:07:15.120And Jung thought about it, Carl Jung thought about it like a dialogue between the conscious mind and the unconscious mind.
00:07:21.240There was a continual dialogue, but when things just pop into your mind, it's not much different than walking into a room and having something there,
00:07:30.180which is an observation I also derived from Jung, by the way, because he pointed out, quite rightly, that people don't really think that thoughts appear to them.
00:07:39.480Now, you can think, because you can take the thoughts that appear to you, and then you can subject them to criticism and elaboration and so on,
00:07:46.540instead of just assuming that they're true right off the bat.
00:07:48.600But people often don't do that, they just, something just pops into their head, and then they assume that it's true.
00:07:55.100Anyways, one of the things that I tend to do in psychotherapy is just to tell people what pops into my head, because,
00:08:16.200It's not really an opinion, I don't think.
00:08:17.880An opinion, maybe, is what I think later, and there's this personal flavor to it.
00:08:23.060What popped into my head was the story about Socrates, you know.
00:08:29.240He had this, when he was being put on trial by the Athenians for corrupting the nation's youth,
00:08:36.040something I've been accused of, by the way.
00:08:37.820Although it's not self-evident to me that it's me doing the corrupting.
00:08:42.320He said that somebody had asked him once, had asked the Delphic Oracle once, and the Delphic Oracle was this retreat that you could go to if you were an ancient Greek citizen.
00:08:56.000And you'd be there, and you'd have a dream, and then you'd go ask the Delphic Oracle to interpret it.
00:09:01.940And nobody really knows what was up with the Delphic Oracle today, how that worked exactly.
00:09:07.420But she would interpret your dream in any case.
00:09:11.420And somebody once asked her who the wisest man in Greece was, and the Delphic Oracle said it was Socrates because he knew he didn't know anything.
00:09:23.640It's a crazy comparison, but, you know, I have a crazy mind, so I guess that's how it works out.
00:09:29.920So, now one of the things I'm going to do today, which I haven't done before, is I'm going to read you a little bit of, I told you I finished my book last week.
00:10:29.760This is a very strange Old Testament story, right?
00:10:31.960This is one of the stories that's contained in the Old Testament that makes modern people think that maybe we should just not have that much to do with the Old Testament per se at all.
00:10:41.940And especially with regards, and maybe we shouldn't have anything to do with the God of the Old Testament either.
00:10:46.660Because, I mean, as far as Abraham is concerned, God tells him to sacrifice his own son.
00:10:53.120Now, it turns out that God was just kidding, so to speak.
00:10:57.100You know, I'm obviously being flippant.
00:10:58.960But, you know, it does raise the question, what do you make of a divine being who would require such a thing?
00:11:08.140Or, conversely, what do you make of Abraham who would have such delusions?
00:11:12.420Either way, it's a little hard on the, what would you call, modern believability and moral integrity of the Old Testament.
00:11:20.600But these are very, very strange stories, and they're not what they seem to be, or they are, but, and they're more.
00:11:26.880So, we're going to talk a lot about sacrifice tonight.
00:11:31.220And here's some of the things that I've been thinking about sacrifice.
00:11:34.400So, this is from, this book is called Twelve Rules for Life, an Antidote for Chaos.
00:11:41.020And it's coming out in January, which I think I mentioned.
00:11:43.820And this is from Rule 7, which is, do what is meaningful, not what is expedient.
00:11:52.700And so, here's, here's some of the writing I've been doing over the last three years on the, on the motif of sacrifice.
00:12:01.460I'll start with just a brief intro before I read this.
00:12:06.220It took me a long time to understand what was meant in the Old Testament by sacrifice.
00:12:11.620And, which is strange, because once I figured it out, it seemed bloody obvious.
00:12:14.900It seemed like, oh yeah, obviously, that's what it means.
00:12:17.600But, lots of times, if you figure something out correctly, it seems self-evident as soon as you figured it out correctly.
00:12:25.680But, you know, it seemed to work for me, anyways.
00:12:30.680I knew that, of course, at least implicitly, I knew of the modern usage of the idea of sacrifice.
00:12:38.220Everyone understands that motif, is that, if you want to make things better in the future, then you make sacrifices in the present.
00:12:47.500And, maybe you even do that multi-generationally.
00:12:50.380In fact, you most definitely do if you're a good parent.
00:12:53.420I mean, you, and that's, I would say that's really particularly typical of, of, of immigrants, right?
00:13:00.000Because immigrants often come from terrible places and have to undergo terrible things to come to a new community where they get a rough reception
00:13:08.900and have a hard time getting their life going.
00:13:11.360And, a big part of the reason that they do it is to make their lives of their children better.
00:13:17.180And, luckily, when they come to Canada, usually given where they came from, that actually works.
00:13:21.700Because, where they came from is worse and here is better, even though, you know, immigrants often have to struggle to, to get on their feet again.
00:13:29.460They have to learn a new language and become enculturated and face the fact that they're not part of the mainstream culture.
00:13:34.660And, well, you know, many of you know the whole story.
00:13:38.320So, the idea that you make sacrifices for the future and you make sacrifices for your children, and that's, everyone understands that.
00:13:46.420And, it's part of being responsible and mature and shouldering the burden of being properly.
00:14:25.800And, you concentrate on something that you think will bear fruit in the medium to long run.
00:14:30.800And, so, you look into the future and you decide that by making today a little less impulsively pleasurable, shall we say, you'll make tomorrow a little bit more secure and productive.
00:17:51.880And so, that puts the child in quite a conundrum because they're being asked to trade an actual, concrete, tangible marshmallow for two hypothetical future marshmallows.
00:18:02.700And it's not that easy to conjure up a hypothetical future reality that has the same tangible significance as something real right in front of you.
00:18:13.740And so, it's an amazing thing that people can do that.
00:18:32.100You know, they try to distract themselves.
00:18:33.720Of course, they're eyeing that marshmallow like a squirrel eyeing a nut and trying to restrain themselves.
00:18:41.580And, you know, what I see in that is that the child's prefrontal cortex, the higher cortical systems, are warring with the underlying motivational systems,
00:18:51.720more primordial motivational systems that govern such things as hunger.
00:18:55.580The hunger system, hypothalamic system, says there is something sweet and fat right sitting there, right bloody now.
00:19:02.300Grab that thing and stuff it down now.
00:19:04.460And I'm sure many of you have a constant battle with your hypothalamus with regards to sweet and fat things and often lose.
00:19:12.100So, you can feel some sympathy for the child.
00:19:15.320But the hypothalamus has these tremendously powerful tendrils upward into the brain, into the parts that we would associate more with voluntary control.
00:19:26.220And the voluntary control centers have these little weak ribbons going down to control the hypothalamus.
00:19:32.440It's pretty obvious if you know something about neuroanatomy, what part is actually in charge when the chips are down.
00:19:38.960And it's not easy for children to learn to regulate those underlying primordial impulses, the ones that are wired in, the ones that we share with animals.
00:20:09.360Now, it's likely that that's associated with trait conscientiousness, although that specific connection has not yet been established.
00:20:18.400But they seem conceptually very, very similar.
00:20:23.260So, anyways, this emerges in children probably between the ages of two and four, something like that.
00:20:32.100They should have it in place by four, because it's very difficult for them to really interact well with other children without having that delay of gratification in place.
00:20:41.460Because if you can't delay gratification, other kids don't like you, because you want everything your way and you want it now.
00:20:47.980And you're liable to temper tantrums and that sort of thing.
00:20:50.700You haven't got the kind of self-control necessary to make you fun to play with.
00:20:53.780So, you can see that emerging in children, and it's pretty interesting.
00:20:58.460And not only that, if it emerges, it predicts positive long-term outcomes, just like trait conscientiousness does, by the way,
00:21:06.220because trait conscientiousness is the second best predictor of long-term success over the lifespan.
00:21:11.820In Western cultures, it's second after intelligence.
00:21:15.180And so, in our societies, the people who do best across time are the people who have high IQs and who work hard.
00:21:21.600And I would say that's a pretty decent, what would you call it?
00:21:26.780It's a validation in some sense that our cultures are working properly.
00:21:30.360Because what you would want, I would say, if the system is working meritocratically, like it should,
00:21:37.040and if you're trying to extract resources from those who can contribute at a higher rate,
00:21:42.100then what you would want to have happen is that the hard-working, smart people do better.
00:21:48.100Hopefully, if that's the case, then everyone does better. Hopefully.
00:21:53.100Anyways, so you can see this developing in children.
00:21:56.560First were the endless tens or hundreds of thousands of years prior to the emergence of written history and drama.
00:22:02.040The twin practices of delay and exchange began to emerge slowly and painfully.
00:22:06.880Then they became represented in metaphorical abstraction as rituals and tales of sacrifice.
00:22:14.400It's as if there's a powerful figure in the sky who's judging you.
00:22:19.420You better keep him happy or look the hell out.
00:22:22.960We've been watching ourselves deal with him for a long time.
00:22:26.420He seems to like it when you give up something you value.
00:22:30.200So, practice sharing and sacrificing until you get good at it.
00:22:36.880No one actually said any of this so long ago, although they said something very similar.
00:22:43.340But it was implicit in the practice and then in the stories.