On January 16, 2018, Channel 4 aired the now infamous interview between Kathy Newman and Dr. Jordan B. Peterson. In the interview, Dr. Peterson said that men need to, "Grow the Hell Up." And, as it turns out, that's exactly what he's been telling young men since the very first time he met them. In this episode, we discuss why this is a bad idea, and why it's so important that men grow the hell up. Dr. B.P. offers a detailed analysis of the first interview and an elaboration of five central points to his philosophy on how to be in the world, and what it means to be a good human being. To support these podcasts, you can go to Self Authoring.me/understandmyself or understandmyself.org/jordanbpeterson and click here to become a supporter of these podcasts. If you're struggling with depression or anxiety, Dr Jordan B Peterson's new series could be a lifeline for those battling these conditions, and we wanted to take a moment to reach out to those listening who may be struggling. Let this be the first step towards the brighter future you deserve. Thank you so much for listening to the Jordan Peterson Podcast, and may God bless you and your recovery. -Jonah B. Petersen The Daily Wire Plus Podcast. Subscribe to Dailywireplus to receive notifications when new episodes are available! Subscribe on Apple Podcasts Subscribe on iTunes Learn more about this podcast Subscribe on Audible Subscribe on Podcoin Subscribe on PODCAST Connect with Anchor Subscribe on Stitcher Subscribe on Mixer Become a Friended On Podcoin.fm Connect with Jonah Peterson Connect with me on LinkedIn Learn more on Social Media and become a Friend on Poshmark Linktr.fm Use the Podcoin Join my profile Share a Review & Share the Podcast Leave Us On Social Media Links Support Me On The Vineyard Thanks & Share this Podcasts & Support Us on Podcasts & Share Us On The Podcasts Listen to My Story on Insta! Subscribe & Share This Podcasts On It Will Lead Me Out There I'll Be Reviewed On The Journey Through The Journey To Reach Out To You Will Be In The Future You Will Have A Better Place On The Other Side Of This Will Be A Positive Place
00:00:01.000Hey everyone, real quick before you skip, I want to talk to you about something serious and important.
00:00:06.000Dr. Jordan Peterson has created a new series that could be a lifeline for those battling depression and anxiety.
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00:00:57.000Welcome to the Jordan B. Peterson podcast.
00:01:04.000This is episode 38, the Kathy Newman interview and analysis.
00:01:10.000On January 16th, 2018, Channel 4 aired the now infamous interview between Kathy Newman and Dr. Peterson.
00:01:17.000This podcast will be comprised of two parts. First, the original interview, and then the interview between Dr. Peterson and Timon Diaz of Geenstiel.
00:01:28.000The second interview is an analysis of the first and is followed by an elaboration of five central points to Dr. Peterson's philosophy on how to be in the world.
00:01:37.000To support these podcasts, you can go to self-authoring.com or understandmyself.com for Dr. Peterson's personality assessment tool.
00:01:48.000Part two of this podcast starts at the 30-minute mark.
00:01:52.000Jordan Peterson, you've said that men need to, quote, grow the hell up. Tell me why.
00:01:58.000Well, because there's nothing uglier than an old infant. There's nothing good about it.
00:02:04.000People who don't grow up don't find the sort of meaning in their life that sustains them through difficult times, and they are certain to encounter difficult times.
00:02:13.000And they're left bitter and resentful and without purpose and adrift and hostile and resentful and vengeful and arrogant and deceitful and of no use to themselves and of no use to anyone else and no partner for a woman.
00:02:32.000You're saying there's a crisis of masculinity. I mean, what do you do about it?
00:02:35.000You tell, you help people understand why it's necessary and important for them to grow up and adopt responsibility, why that isn't a shake your finger and get your act together sort of thing, why it's more like a delineation of the kind of destiny that makes life worth living.
00:02:56.000I've been telling young men, but it's not, I wasn't specifically aiming this message at young men to begin with. It just kind of turned out that way.
00:03:03.000And it's mostly, you admit, it's mostly men listening.
00:03:06.000I mean, 90% of your audience is a male, right?
00:03:07.000Well, it's about 80% on YouTube, which is a, YouTube is a male domain primarily.
00:03:13.000So it's hard to tell how much of it is because YouTube is male and how much of it is because of what I'm saying.
00:03:18.000But you, what I've been telling young men is that there's an actual reason why they need to grow up, which is that they have something to offer.
00:03:28.000You know, that, that, that people have within them this capacity to set the world straight and that's necessary to manifest in the world.
00:03:37.000And that also doing so is where you find the meaning that sustains you in life.
00:06:51.000There are whole disciplines in universities forthrightly hostile towards men.
00:06:54.000These are the areas of study dominated by the postmodern stroke neo-Marxist claim that Western culture in particular is an oppressive structure created by white men to dominate and exclude women.
00:14:13.000I mean, there's a lot of money, it's an interesting job.
00:14:16.000There's a certain number of men, although not that many, who are perfectly willing to sacrifice virtually all of their life to the pursuit of a high-end career.
00:14:26.000So they'll work, these are men that are very intelligent, they're usually very, very conscientious, they're very driven, they're very high energy, they're very healthy, and they're willing to work 70 or 80 hours a week, non-stop, specialized, at one thing, to get to the top.
00:14:41.000So you're saying women are just more sensible, they don't want that because it's not an isolate?
00:14:44.000I'm saying that's part of it, definitely.
00:14:54.000I mean, to get to the top of any organization is an incredibly competitive enterprise, and the men that you're competing with are simply not going to roll over and say, please take the position.
00:15:40.000And approximately the same male engineers to female engineers.
00:15:44.000And that's a consequence of the free choice of men and women in the societies that have gone farther than any other societies to make gender equality the purpose of the law.
00:16:41.000Let me put something else to you from the book.
00:16:43.000You say the introduction of the equal pay for equal work argument immediately complicates even salary comparison beyond practicality for one simple reason.
00:18:59.000I've had to fight to succeed, therefore I'm an honorary man.
00:19:01.000If they're going to compete against men, certainly, masculine traits are going to be helpful.
00:19:04.000I mean, one of the things I do in my counseling practice, for example, when I'm consulting with women who are trying to advance their careers,
00:19:12.000is to teach them how to negotiate, and to be able to say no, and to not be easily pushed around, and to be formidable.
00:19:26.000The male bosses, shall we say, adopt some female traits, so that women don't have to fight and get their sharp elbows out for the pay rises?
00:19:33.000It's just accepted if they're doing the same job, they get the same pay.
00:19:37.000Well, I would say partly because it's not so easy to determine what constitutes the same job.
00:19:42.000But that's because, arguably, there are still men dominating our industries, our society,
00:19:49.000and therefore they've dictated the terms for so long that women have to battle to be like the men.
00:27:52.000Well, the first chapter I have in my book is called Stand Up Straight With Your Shoulders Back.
00:27:58.000And it's an injunction to be combative.
00:28:01.000Not least to further your career, let's say.
00:28:05.000But also to adopt a stance of ready engagement with the world and to reflect that in your posture.
00:28:12.000And the reason that I write about lobsters is because there's this idea that hierarchical structures are a sociological construct of the Western patriarchy.
00:28:24.000And that is so untrue that it's almost unbelievable.
00:28:27.000And I use the lobster as an example because the lobster, we divulged from lobsters in evolutionary history about 350 million years ago, common ancestor.
00:28:37.000And lobsters exist in hierarchies and they have a nervous system attuned to the hierarchy.
00:28:42.000And that nervous system runs on serotonin, just like our nervous systems do.
00:28:46.000And the nervous system of the lobster and of the human being is so similar that antidepressants work on lobsters.
00:28:52.000And it's part of my attempt to demonstrate that the idea of hierarchy has absolutely nothing to do with sociocultural construction, which it doesn't.
00:29:27.000You have a mechanism in your brain that runs on serotonin that's similar to the lobster mechanism that tracks your status.
00:29:33.000And the higher your status, the better your emotions are regulated.
00:29:37.000So as your serotonin levels increase, you feel more positive emotion and less negative emotion.
00:29:42.000So you're saying like the lobsters, we're hardwired as men and women to do certain things, to sort of run along tram lines and there's nothing we can do about it.
00:29:50.000No, I'm not saying there's nothing we can do about it, because it's like in a chess game, right?
00:29:55.000There's lots of things that you can do, although you can't break the rules of the chess game and continue to play chess.
00:30:00.000Biological, your biological nature is somewhat like that, is it sets the rules of the game.
00:30:06.000But within those rules, you have a lot of leeway.
00:30:09.000But the idea that, but one thing we can't do is say that hierarchical organization is a consequence of the capitalist patriarchy.
00:31:03.000Well, let's take a more general perspective on that.
00:31:06.000So I've had 25,000 letters since June, something like that, from people who told me that I've brought them back from the brink of destruction.
00:31:15.000And so I'm perfectly willing to put that up against the rather vague accusations that my followers are making the lives of people that I've targeted miserable.
00:31:47.000Every 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.
00:31:57.000And let's be clear, it doesn't take a genius hacker to do this.
00:32:00.000With some off-the-shelf hardware, even a tech-savvy teenager could potentially access your passwords, bank logins, and credit card details.
00:32:07.000Now, you might think, what's the big deal?
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00:45:49.000I had become somewhat angry, a little bit, at that point.
00:45:55.000Because she had violated the rules that make journalism possible by suggesting that I didn't have the right to make people uncomfortable with my speech.
00:46:06.000Like, she had broken a rule that she shouldn't have broken, in my estimation.
00:56:05.000I think that it's evidence of the instability of the times that we're in.
00:56:11.000It would have been much better for me, and for everyone else, if what we would have had was a real conversation.
00:56:18.000So, it's not good. It's not good. And I asked Kathy, in a variety of different ways now, if she would sit down and have an actual conversation.
00:56:28.000Because the right way for this to end is not for me to declare victory, because I don't regard it as a victory.
00:56:36.000I mean, I'm not saying that I would have liked to have the tables turned.
00:56:40.000I'm not saying that I would have been happy with a loss.
00:56:43.000But what happened in there was not an optimized victory.
00:56:47.000What we need to do, what would be best, is if she would sit down with me for about an hour.
00:58:19.000But, you know, if the tables were turned, you know, and if I had done an interview, and then 50,000 people had written critical comments about me in two days, ranging from, like, pretty severely critical to pretty damn vitriolic,
00:59:13.000Yeah, exactly. Viva feminism, really. And I mean, what my impression of the response to her interview is that virtually everyone watching it online, and I'm judging this response by the number of likes to dislikes and the comments, which are running about 80 to 1 against her, which is like 50 to 1 against you is not good.
00:59:38.000Like 80 to 1 against you is really, really not good. There's something wrong.
00:59:43.000And so, and these aren't trolls. These aren't my army of trolls. These three million people who've watched the video, or it's more than that actually, that's all sorts of people everywhere.
00:59:56.000And they're not happy with the way the interview went. And that would crush me.
01:00:06.000You know, and I think that's the right response to that. It's like, when you're, when you receive overwhelming public criticism like that, the right response should be not glee at stirring up the hornet's nest, but careful reanalysis of what you did.
01:00:31.000It's not as hard as the alternative. Because if you're riding high, and there's a correction coming, and you keep forestalling it, the correction will get larger and larger and larger and larger.
01:00:46.000And finally, when it comes, you will not be able to tolerate it. And that's the situation. I believe that she's in. The correction is coming.
01:00:55.000Has she responded to your request to sit down again?
01:00:57.000No, but it's been made very, very recently. So I've had a colleague of hers contacted me and said that he would do what he could to put us in touch. And other people have been working behind the scenes.
01:01:13.000And I suggested it on Twitter. And, you know, I'm likely going to contact my press agents at Penguin and see if they want to contact her and ask. But, because that's the right outcome. The right outcome is, we have a, we had this bit of combat, let's say.
01:01:31.000It produced a scandal. Now we actually talk about it. No tricks. Just a conversation. And then everybody wins. Right? Because I can admit whatever mistakes I made. She can admit whatever mistakes she made. We can drop the persona, which is what she had. It was an animus possessed persona, technically speaking. She could drop that. We could actually have a discussion.
01:01:58.000Like, I would open the discussion by asking her why she was taken aback when I asked her about her treatment of me in the interview. You know, and people have also been spinning that as my claims to have been victimized in the interview. You know, so, which is another sign of how pathological the discourse has become.
01:02:20.000Yeah. Because pointing out what's happening and claiming some kind of victim status are by no means the same thing. So, what you're saying that although it might look as a, as a, as a victory for you and the, in the attention it has generated.
01:02:46.000Yeah. What do you mean by this? Can you, can you elaborate?
01:02:48.000Well, things go wrong in cultures all the time, right? You get, you get the polarization increases until people start to act it out. You know, I mean, I'll give you an example.
01:03:05.000You know, I always pay attention to what happens at the back of my mind, to the bottom of my mind, let's say. And what I learned from Carl Jung, for example, one thing was that if you watch what happens in your imagination while you're speaking, while things are happening to you, you'll see little dreamlike fragments happening all the time.
01:03:24.000They're not in words. They're really more like, they're more like brief dreams. Jung thought we were dreaming all the time, even when we were awake.
01:03:31.000And, you know, today I was reviewing maybe 10 or 11 of these newspaper articles that had played this twisty game and accused me of like sicking my internet trolls on the poor hapless journalist.
01:03:45.000And I thought, this was the dark part of me, right? That's the shadow part. I thought, if I wanted to sick my internet trolls on Channel 4, then there'd be nothing but broken windows and riots.
01:03:57.000And then there's a little part of me that thinks, wouldn't that be fun? Right. And that's where we're at. It's like, because I'm a reasonable person, a very reasonable person, even though I can.
01:04:06.000But you do have these thoughts in the back of your mind. Oh, yes. And I pay attention to them because I know that they're part of the collective unconscious, right?
01:04:14.000They're the shadow part. And when there's part of me thinking, well, wouldn't that just be perfectly goddamn delightful?
01:04:20.000Then there's lots of people who are not only thinking that way sometimes, but thinking that way all the time.
01:04:25.000And they're just waiting for that to be the proper response. Well, you see this with the Antifa violence in the United States and with the Charlottesville thing as well.
01:04:34.000But basically what you're saying is that when you have these dark thoughts in the back of your mind, you kind of tap into the collective unconscious of the culture you're embedded in.
01:04:44.000Definitely, definitely. There's no doubt about it. The dark part of me and the dark part of you is the same thing in some ways.
01:04:51.000And we live in the same culture. And so it's going to manifest itself in a similar manner.
01:04:56.000Yeah. So you're saying the polarization that we're seeing right now, that we are speaking out, it's not in the future we will act out that polarization.
01:05:06.000If we keep accelerating it, especially if we keep accelerating it with lies, you know, and this whole Channel 4 rat's nest is like 90% lies, maybe more.
01:05:21.000And, you know, a lot of it's ideologically motivated lies, but it doesn't matter. It still lies.
01:05:26.000Like Kathy, as I said, there was virtually nothing she said in that interview that was actually coming from her, like a deep part of her, the soul of her.
01:05:40.000It was all persona. It was all persona. It was all persona. And, and, and all use of words in a, in a expedient manner as tools to obtain, I think probably, probably status, dominant status and reputation.
01:05:56.000Yeah. So this is kind of the part where I want to go to the next part of this talk, because what people know you from your, but it's not, it's not actually activism, but your, your stand against postmodernism and identity.
01:06:11.000My refusal to abide by the dictates of compelled speech.
01:06:15.000That's what most people know you from. But what fewer people know is your philosophy, is your philosophy on how to be in the world properly as an individual.
01:06:23.000And I think that I don't know which people know more about. I mean, I would say that, that the typical person, like there's people who live in the old media world, and there's people who live in the new media world.
01:06:36.000And the people who live in the old media world, they know me for that. But the people who live in the new media world, I wouldn't say that's the case for.
01:06:43.000That's a good point. I was referring to the people in the old.
01:06:46.000Yeah. Okay. Well, it's weird that we have to make that distinction, but it's necessary because we're in the time where those distinctions are the case.
01:06:52.000Yeah. So the thing is, my view on this is, if you implement your philosophy on how to be in the world, you become less susceptible to ideological possession.
01:07:04.000Yeah, which is kind of the meta importance of that part of your work, I think. As I told you, I've watched most of your lectures, and I've distilled it, I've tried to distill it back to five points, which in my view are the five strongest points.
01:07:17.000I will list them now in summary, and then we'll unpack them more.
01:07:21.000Yeah, well, you nailed one of them right away. It's like, I mean, I have my conscious goal since learning what I've learned, which I would say occurred back in the mid to late 80s,
01:07:33.000you know, when I learned the basic principles that I've been elaborating upon over the last 30 years or so. Once I learned those, then the hope was that sharing that knowledge would make people immune to ideological possession.
01:07:53.000I think this is one of your closing remarks in Maps of Meaning. You say that the problem to society's ails is the integrity of the individual.
01:08:00.000Yeah. Okay, so I'm going to list the five points.
01:08:04.000Yeah. So, point one, the absolute centrality of the archetypical hero's myth. Point two, your main instrument during this hero's narrative is the logos.
01:08:14.000Point three, the way to be in the world is to orient yourself towards the highest possible good you can conceive of, because it's not as if you have anything better to do.
01:08:23.000Four, make the right sacrifices to walk with God, and in this sentence, the concept of God as a judgmental father is an articulation of the discovery of being able to bargain with the future.
01:08:34.000And five, minimize your persona, cultivate your essence, and live in its closest possible proximity.
01:08:41.000You know, for a distillation into five, that's pretty good.
01:08:46.000Yeah. So, first, let's start with the first point, the centrality of the archetypical hero's myth.
01:08:52.000What is the archetypical hero's myth? What makes it archetypical? And what is a hero? Could you elaborate on this?
01:08:58.000Well, imagine that you have a problem, and then imagine that you want a solution.
01:09:07.000And imagine that there's a particular solution to that particular problem.
01:09:12.000But then imagine that you have what you might describe as a bigger problem, and that's not the problem.
01:09:19.000It's the fact that you have problems, because that's the real problem.
01:09:22.000The real problem is the fact that you have problems.
01:09:25.000And then you might say, well, you don't want a solution to a problem.
01:09:29.000You want a solution to the fact that you have problems.
01:09:32.000And so it's a leap of abstraction, right?
01:09:35.000So then you might say, well, is there a way of conceptualizing the set of all problems that's universal?
01:09:41.000And I think there is. That's what religious stories try to do.
01:09:45.000And they do it using drama, dramatic means, because the problem is so complex.
01:09:52.000So that's the meta-problem. It's so complex that we don't really know how to formulate it.
01:09:56.000But that's what we're struggling towards.
01:09:58.000So it's like, well, what's the problem of life? Something like that.
01:10:02.000Well, you could say that the problem of life, and I outlined this quite carefully in 12 Rules for Life.
01:10:08.000The problem of life is this. We're finite and mortal. That's problem number one.
01:10:16.000So the first problem is that life is essentially tragic. It's little us against infinity. And we lose.
01:10:26.000And not only do we lose, but we lose in a manner that produces a substantial amount of suffering.
01:10:32.000And sometimes an unbearable amount. So it's a big problem. So that's problem number one.
01:10:36.000Problem number two is that that's not the worst problem. The worst problem is that that's true.
01:10:42.000Plus malevolence exists in the world. Evil exists in the world.
01:10:46.000And makes that first problem even worse than it would have to be.
01:10:49.000And that's universally true for everyone all the time. That's archetypal.
01:10:54.000So when you formulate a situation archetypally, you speak about it in a manner that's eternally true.
01:11:02.000So there's lots of ways that you and I differ. But there's many ways that we're the same.
01:11:08.000And so that would be what constitutes our essential humanity, let's say.
01:11:13.000And what constitutes, what makes us the same is that, like you, I'm mortal.
01:11:20.000And my life is finite. And my existence is characterized by suffering.
01:11:25.000And I have to contend with the fact of malevolence in the world.
01:11:29.000And it's the terribly destructive character of the natural world.
01:11:36.000It's the tyrannical element of the social world.
01:11:39.000And it's the adversarial element of myself and every other individual.
01:11:44.000So that's the malevolent element. And so we're stuck with that.
01:11:48.000Okay, fine. That's the archetypal formulation of the problem.
01:11:51.000You could say that's the mythic landscape, right? And it's something like good and evil in a world of chaos and order.
01:11:57.000It's something like that. It's very interesting.
01:11:59.000You know, there are games online that have that as their basic structure, right?
01:12:03.000The game developers have figured this out. So that's pretty interesting.
01:12:06.000Okay, so then the question is, well, how do you comport yourself in a landscape of chaos and order
01:12:12.000and when the game is good versus evil? Something like that.
01:12:16.000Well, then that's where the idea of the archetypal hero emerges.
01:12:19.000And the archetypal hero is the person whose eyes are open and whose speech is true.
01:12:25.000And who faces both the chaos of the unknown and the tyranny of the known and balances them.
01:12:32.000Right? And then you think, well, that's the antidote to the problem.
01:12:36.000That's the meta solution to the meta problem.
01:12:39.000And it's something like, in a more straightforward form, and this is something that I spoke about
01:12:45.000because I was speaking in Holland here in the Netherlands two nights ago about European and Dutch identity.
01:12:55.000And how to solve, let's say, the conundrums that are associated with the multicultural world and immigration.
01:13:04.000And my suggestion was, well, it's a very complex problem.
01:13:41.000But then there's another element to that, which is there's way more to you than you think you are.
01:13:48.000And that you have something necessary and vital to contribute to the world.
01:13:52.000And if you don't contribute it, then things will happen that aren't good.
01:13:55.000And that's terrible for you and everyone else.
01:13:57.000So it's not only that you need to do this because it's your responsibility, but you need to understand that there isn't anything better that you could do for yourself or for anyone else.
01:14:08.000And people are dying to hear that message.
01:14:37.000Like when I got to England, for example, to London, my wife and I were staying at this little Airbnb and we went out to get some groceries.
01:14:46.000And so I walked into the grocery store.
01:14:48.000We were only out for about an hour and somebody recognized me in the grocery store and came up and said,
01:14:53.000like, you know, I was in a kind of desperate situation and I was feeling pretty nihilistic and depressed and I really wasn't paying attention to my life.
01:15:00.000And I was watching your videos and like, thank you.
01:15:02.000It's really helped me straighten myself out.
01:15:04.000It's like, oh, hell, you know, hey, great.
01:15:07.000And so then I went into the electronics store next door and some guy came up to me and he said exactly the same thing.
01:15:13.000And so like wherever I go now, it's, well, people come up to me, so they're just, I wouldn't call them random strangers, but you know what I mean.
01:15:21.000I think they are, and they say they have their own personal take on it, you know, because they usually tell me in which particular way they were feeling nihilistic and revengeful and saddened and unable to pull themselves together.
01:15:37.000And then, you know, when I did this talk, I did three talks in London and, you know, we started with one theater of 300 people, which was, you know, Penguin UK was hoping that we'd do a credible job
01:15:50.000and sell some tickets and I could talk to about the book and it sold out instantly.
01:15:54.000And then, yeah, it said that they told me that it sold out faster than any event they'd ever hosted.
01:15:59.000And it's like, so they put up another one with a thousand people and it sold out right away.
01:16:02.000And then they put up another one with a thousand people and it sold out right away.
01:16:05.000And so then I went and talked to these, you know, at these venues and people are overwhelmingly welcoming.
01:25:31.000And what literally happened at the party was one woman brought forward a small group of other women, all very attractive,
01:25:40.000and basically told the sports legend that he could just pick one of them and she would go home with him.
01:25:46.000And so that had all been arranged beforehand.
01:25:48.000And he said that he's been in many situations where something like that has happened.
01:25:53.000And I thought, well, you know, that sort of is appealing to the Hugh Hefner, playboy, 14-year-old fantasy
01:26:00.000that sort of gripped our culture from the 1960s onward.
01:26:03.000But imagine that you sleep casually with 100 women in a six-month period, or a three-month period, for that matter, or a three-week period.
01:26:27.000It's not nothing to be attractive to women like that.
01:26:30.000It's really something to be attractive to women like that.
01:26:33.000But it isn't obvious to me that your choice to conduct yourself in that manner enriches your life,
01:26:41.000and the life of other people more in any way than picking one person and actually having a relationship with them.
01:26:48.000It's only true that that promiscuous pathway, let's say, is better if you can actually divorce sexuality from all the other elements of life.
01:26:59.000Say, well, it's about variety and it's about impulsive pleasure.
01:27:02.000Or maybe it could be even slightly deeper than merely impulsive pleasure.
01:27:07.000It could be shared impulsive pleasure.
01:27:09.000But I don't think you can do that, because sexuality isn't divorceable from family and from morality and from all the other elements of your life.
01:27:24.000You make a decision not to capitalize on your opportunity, not to misuse your opportunities.
01:27:30.000And, you know, a huge part of the Me Too phenomena, a huge part of this battle that's being played out in our culture is a consequence of the failure of men to recognize that.
01:27:42.000Now, it's not only the failure of men. Let me be absolutely clear about that.
01:27:46.000Because, for example, with the example of the sports superstar, the women who are lining up in front of him parading themselves and offering themselves are deeply complicit in this pathological game.
01:27:59.000And so it's pretty clear anthropologically as well that, you know, sexual choice tends towards a Pareto distribution, especially for men.
01:28:09.000So most men have very little selection at their disposal, and a small number of men have excess opportunities.
01:28:19.000The question is, what should that small number of men do?
01:28:22.000And you might say, capitalize on it, and to hell with the consequences.
01:28:26.000And, like, it's a powerful argument, but I do believe it's wrong.
01:28:34.000And so, and I also don't think it does your soul any good, because the problem with treating other people as casual sexual partners, let's say, is that you also treat yourself that way simultaneously.
01:28:44.000And I don't think that that does you any good, because you're not, unless that's what you want to be.
01:28:50.000If you want to be a casual partner, it's like, well, that's, I wouldn't say that's a particularly noble ambition.
01:28:57.000You should be able to do better than that.
01:29:00.000So we just discussed the centrality in your philosophy of the archetypical hero's myth, which is basically, one descends into the underworld, you go where you least want to look, you face the dragon goddess of chaos, you fight with all you have and a little more.
01:29:14.000And if you survive, you retrieve something of supreme value, and you escort it back into the daylight.
01:29:19.000And then you share it with everyone else.
01:29:25.000So, the second point is actually, that within your philosophy, it seems that during this narrative that I just described, the logos is your premier instrument.
01:29:48.000Which is like an elaboration that I kind of figured out last year when I was doing the biblical lectures, right?
01:29:53.000Because one of the things I came to understand when I was reanalyzing the earliest chapter in Genesis is that there's this idea in Genesis that the creative force, God, uses this process, employs this process, the logos, to extract habitable order from chaotic potential.
01:30:18.000And so there's an idea there, which is that it's a deep idea, it's the deepest idea of the West, I would say, and it's the deepest religious idea.
01:30:25.000So, but I think it's been, I don't know if it's been articulated best in the West, but I would say you could make a case for that.
01:30:32.000But in any case, the idea is that there's a way to bring order into being that makes the order good, and that's to bring it into being by spoken truth.
01:30:44.000So you can bring, you can bring new, you can extract new being out of potential by lying.
01:31:01.000It's tyrannical order, generally speaking.
01:31:02.000Well, and we know that to be the case.
01:31:03.000It's not like this is some metaphysical speculation.
01:31:05.000If you read Solzhenitsyn, for example, or Viktor Frankl, people like that, who've deeply meditated on the relationship between malevolence and tyranny.
01:32:37.000I mean, well, because the individual has sovereignty in the West, we have a rule here, a meta rule, which is that the individual is not above the rules.
01:32:52.000It's that the rules encounter a boundary where they hit the individual.
01:32:55.000So that even if you're a murderer, even if everyone knows you did it, say, you still have to be treated with the dignity that you would grant to someone who possesses the capacity to conquer chaos and revitalize tyrannical order.
01:33:24.000And that's, people don't understand how amazing it is that that principle ever emerged.
01:33:31.000Because the impulsive, correct response to the revelation of a murderer in your midst is to just kill him as brutally and rapidly as possible.
01:33:56.000The point is that there's something even deeper at stake that's real.
01:34:00.000And I believe that that respect for that logos, let's say, which is something that's a co-creator of being and also something that is possessed of free will.
01:34:13.000Those are the ideas that without that respect, you cannot establish a harmonious relationship with yourself because you don't know who you are.
01:34:23.000You cannot establish a real friendship or intimate relationship with anyone else.
01:34:43.000When your relationships are working, whether they're with yourself or with one or many people, if they're working, they're working to the degree that they're guided by that principle.
01:36:25.000Well, and we're having this conversation that's going to be watched by many people.
01:36:28.000So we're bringing, by having this discussion, we're bringing, we're reshaping the potential that lies in front of us into something actual.
01:36:39.000And we're determining with every gesture, every word, what that order is going to be.
01:36:46.000And you're doing that all the time with people.
01:36:49.000And, you know, one of the things that's really struck me is that people know this.
01:36:54.000And I talk to people, I say, well, your parents are going to say to you, people who love you will say, you're not living up to your potential.
01:37:01.000And if they're serious about that, then that strikes at your heart.
01:37:05.000You think, oh my God, I'm not living up to my potential.
01:38:15.000And so sometimes, and you see this in the story of Christ quite clearly, because first, especially in the extended version, let's say, where Christ is also the logos that exists at the beginning of time.
01:38:25.000It's like, well, that's the word that brings forth order from chaos, but the incarnate Christ, let's say, the logos made flesh, that's a way of looking at it, has a social revolutionary element to him.
01:38:37.000So he's standing up constantly against the Pharisees and the lawyers, right, the forces of tyranny.
01:38:42.000And so he's more in the actual passion story.
01:38:47.000He's more of a combatter of corrupt order than someone who's calling forth order from chaos.
01:41:28.000You know, I'm not necessarily engaging in metaphysical speculation.
01:41:32.000When I did the biblical lectures, for example, I tried to stay on psychological grounds.
01:41:36.000Say, look, just read psychologically. These stories are sufficient.
01:41:41.000I do believe that there's a metaphysical reality to the experiences of the intimations of immortality and divine unity that people are capable of having.
01:41:53.000I believe there is metaphysical grounds for those.
01:41:56.000I believe they're reflective of a deeper reality.
01:41:58.000But you don't have to believe that in order to view this from a psychological or pragmatic perspective.
01:42:06.000Yeah. So what I really enjoyed, I actually thoroughly enjoy it in my day to day life when I started to articulate the concept of the logos for myself.
01:42:16.000Every morning when I wake up, I think, hey, I have a logos and I can start to create order out of something chaotic.
01:43:51.000My reading of this was that, now it's actually your reading, but what constitutes meaning
01:43:57.000is the right balance between chaos and order.
01:43:59.000And this is actually what you describe as paradise on earth, being a walled garden where both chaos, the chaotic potential, and the logos mediate supreme beauty.
01:45:40.000It's like, those actually are the problems.
01:45:43.000See, I've started to think, well, I thought for a long time, there are truths of drama and literature.
01:45:51.000And there are material truths of science.
01:45:55.000But there are times when those two align, and they're true literally and metaphysically, literally and metaphorically, at the same time.
01:46:05.000And the idea that being is a place of tragedy and evil is literally and metaphorically true, both at the same time.
01:46:17.000And the idea that there's a way of dealing with those both at the same time, and that that's meaningful, that's also literally and metaphorically true at the same time.
01:46:26.000And the reason for that is that because it's true that our eternal enemies are tragedy and malevolence, we've adapted to them, and we can feel, so to speak, when we're contending with them properly.
01:46:43.000And that feeling of contending with them properly is the feeling of meaning.
01:52:15.000And it's so interesting, because I would say that what happened in the Channel 4 interview was that I was trying to use my speech in a meaningful manner.
01:52:24.000And, you know, I'm not saying that I have no lingering elements of expediency, you know.
01:52:31.000I'm not saying that, but I was trying to utilize my speech in a meaningful manner.
01:52:36.000I wasn't trying to manipulate the conversation.
01:52:38.000I didn't have a plan for the interview.
01:52:40.000I didn't think, oh, I'm going to go on here and sell a million books.
01:53:31.000That's the thing that's so fun about it.
01:53:33.000And I think this is also why it's not merely you should bow down to the rules, because that's sort of a slave mentality in some sense, right?
01:53:41.000I mean, you have to be a slave to things.
01:54:06.000And then it was so exciting to me last year when I was doing the biblical lectures to understand, finally, that the link between the idea of God employing the logos to create habitable order and saying that it was good.
01:54:41.000I've actually come to think during the past two years that if you honestly speak the truth, it makes you, well, not indestructible, but it does kind of make your soul indestructible.
01:54:53.000And I think the archetypes are referred to, you know, Maximus, Hector, Leonidas, all men who spoke the truth, they were all defeated in the end, but their soul was not broken when they were defeated.
01:55:03.000Socrates is the best example of that because we know the thing about Socrates that's so cool is that many things is that, you know, there's arguments about the historical reality of Christ and there's arguments about the historical reality of the Buddha and Mohammed as well.
01:55:18.000There's no arguments about the historical reality of Socrates. He lived. And we have two transcripts of his trial from two different people. And they basically, and I outlined this again in the same chapter about doing what is meaningful and not what is expedient.
01:55:33.000You know, when Socrates, when he was accused of corrupting the youth of Athens, there was a game that was going on. It was a political game. And Socrates was a gadfly, right?
01:55:43.000He bothered people because he kept asking them questions, you know, he wanted to know the answers. He'd ask them questions. And then the people he was questioning would find out that they didn't know the answers.
01:55:52.000And that was very disturbing to them, you know. And so they all got together. Athens was a small city by our standards, only 25,000 people. Everyone knew everyone, like seriously, right?
01:56:03.000And all the local aristocracy got together and said, God, you know, we're sick of this guy. Why don't we tell him we're going to put him on trial?
01:56:12.000And sort of hint that he should get the hell out of town. That was the game. So, you know, they announced the trial and everyone knew it was going to be a fixed outcome.
01:56:20.000But the idea was, well, we'll announce it six months ahead of time and he can have a colloquy with his friends and get out of town and then we'll be rid of him and that'll be the end of that.
01:56:29.000Well, and Socrates knew that this was the game and so did his friends. And they all got together and said, well, you know, we've got to get you out of town.
01:56:36.000And Socrates was thinking, yeah, that's probably a good idea because, like, I don't want to be dead. And then he went off and had a little consultation with his conscience, his daemon, he called it.
01:56:45.000I think you actually pronounce it demon, but it means conscience for our purposes. And he went and had a conference with it.
01:56:54.000A little, you know, and he was thinking internally, consulting his conscience. And it said, don't run away.
01:57:00.000And he thought, well, really? What do you mean don't run away? These people want to kill me. They're going to kill me. What do you mean don't run away?
01:57:09.000And his conscience said, don't run away. Don't run away. That's how it is. You're not to run away.
01:57:17.000And Socrates came back and told his friends, okay, I went and talked to my conscience and he said, you know, the one thing that makes me different from all other men is that when my conscience tells me not to do something, I stop.
01:57:29.000It doesn't tell me what to do. It tells me what not to do. And then I don't do it, no matter what. That's what made me who I am.
01:57:38.000And he said, you know, the Delphic Oracle had said for her part, he said that as trial that he was the wisest man and she was very highly regarded, right?
01:57:47.000Whatever she was doing with her hallucinogenic tricks, she was the mouthpiece of the gods and said that Socrates was the wisest man in Greece.
01:57:54.000And we still remember him. He didn't run. He didn't run. And then he thought, okay, well, if my conscience is correct, let's assume that for a minute.
01:58:03.000Weird as that is, because how could it be correct? But it's always been correct before. He said, well, look, and he said this at his trial.
01:58:09.000I'm old. I'm old. I've been renowned for my clarity of thought. I'm going to die not so long from now.
01:58:17.000And so now I have this opportunity to put my affairs in order and to say goodbye to everyone and to live the remainder of my life with integrity and to say what I have to say.
01:58:28.000And then at his trial, he just flips the table and he goes after the people who are prosecuting him. And you see why they want him dead. It's devastating. It's devastating.
01:58:38.000And so, you know, we know the story 2,000, 2,500 years later, 3,000 years later. And well, and that's a reflection of exactly what you said, is that that part of the spirit doesn't die.
01:58:50.000Now, what does that mean? I think it means that it dies when you corrupt yourself.
01:58:56.000Well, that's what Solzhenitsyn said in the Gulag Archipelago. You know, he said there's something worse than death. That's a good thing to know.
01:59:05.000And that's the death of your soul. And that's whether the soul is immortal or not. It's a psychological idea.
01:59:11.000It's like there are conditions under which it would be better not to live. Well, that's the cry for freedom, I would say.
01:59:18.000You know, so because life without truth is hell. That's the right way of looking at it.
01:59:28.000Yeah. Strong stuff. That's for sure. Yeah, I know. Life is hard. I know. And because life is hard, we're going to the fourth point, which might make it a little less hard.
01:59:39.000It's from your biblical series. I think this is from Noah. Yeah. The floodman. Make the right sacrifices to walk with God.
01:59:46.000Yeah. And within this conception, the concept of God is a judgmental father, which is an articulation of our discovery of being able to bargain with the future.
01:59:55.000Yeah. Right. What does it mean to make the right sacrifices when bargaining with the future?
02:00:01.000It means that as you, let's say you conceptualize what you're pursuing as good. And you asked a bit about putting things in alignment.
02:00:10.000And I would say, okay, well, here's a technical description of what's good. It's what's good for you now in a way that's good for you tomorrow and next week and next month and next year.
02:00:21.000So it can be iterated. Right. So you can't do impulsive things because the problem with doing impulsive things is they're really good right now, but you're dead tomorrow.
02:00:28.000That's not a good solution. And if it's impulsive now and you're dead in a year, that's also not a good solution. So you're bounded by the necessity of preserving yourself across time.
02:00:40.000But that's not the only boundary because it has to be good for you, but it also has to be good for the people around you in ever widening concentric circles.
02:00:48.000And that's not much different from it being good for your future self. So it's a very, it's a very constrained set of procedures, but people are signaling to each other what these things are all the time.
02:00:59.000So, you know, if you're in a conversation at a party and you behave properly, then people are happy to have you around and they laugh at your jokes and they tell you interesting things and it's engaging.
02:01:09.000And if you're off the path at all, then they frown at you or they ignore you or you're boring and people are signaling your position on the line between chaos and order at you all the time, all the time, nonstop.
02:01:22.000Everyone's broadcasting at everyone else always. And so to align yourself with the highest good is to figure out how to conduct yourself so that all things are working as well as they can because of what you're doing right now.
02:01:36.000Because of what you're doing right now. Now, you're aiming at that. That doesn't mean you can do it. But that's what you're aiming at. And then you get better at doing it.
02:01:43.000And then while you're doing that, in principle, you concentrate on the day, right? So that you can pay real attention to the moment. Orient yourself properly so you're looking in the right direction.
02:01:53.000You're aiming at the right thing and then concentrate locally. That's what the Sermon on the Mount, that's the message of the Sermon on the Mount, by the way.
02:02:02.000The initial question was, what does it mean to make the right sacrifices?
02:02:11.000Right. OK. So now let's say you're aiming at what you're aiming at. You're walking towards it.
02:02:16.000Well, you may find that there are things that you're doing that you just have to stop doing.
02:02:20.000For example, when I was writing Maps of Meaning, I was going out and partying a lot.
02:02:25.000Three times a week. Yeah. And I particularly liked alcohol. And I think it had something to do with my proclivity towards depression.
02:02:33.000But if I had a couple of drinks, that just disappeared. And I came from a pretty hard drinking childhood culture, you know, where I grew up.
02:02:42.000And I smoked as well. And especially when I was drinking. And that was fine. I was pretty immune to hangovers when I was young.
02:02:50.000But as I got older, that wasn't so much the case. But more than that, when I was working on Maps of Meaning, it was very, very...
02:02:56.000It was really stretching me like to the limits of my tolerance. And lots of times when I was rewriting and thinking, it was so stressful that if I was hungover, I just couldn't tolerate it.
02:03:08.000But worse than that, I couldn't think clearly. Not as clearly as I had to.
02:03:12.000When you were hungover. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It was like, especially if I had, you know, maybe I'd taken a paragraph and written it 15 times or 20 times, trying to get it right.
02:03:20.000Well, now I had to write it the 21st time. But it was already almost as good as I could make it.
02:03:25.000And so if I wasn't in tip-top shape when I was looking at it, and I edited it, I'd make it worse.
02:03:30.000So I had to make a choice. It was like, well, you want to make this better? Or do you want to keep going out three times a week?
02:03:36.000Because you can't do both. It's like, okay, well, enough of that. So I stopped doing that.
02:03:41.000And there's lots of things I stopped doing. Because they were incommensurate with the goal.
02:03:47.000And that's a sacrifice. And you make the sacrifices necessary to trans...
02:03:54.000There's no difference between making sacrifices and transforming. It's the same thing.
02:03:58.000So you think, well, this is what I want. Okay, well, if that's what you want, then you can't also have this.
02:04:04.000Make your choice. Okay, I'll give that up. Well, does that please God?
02:04:10.000Well, that's the archetypal way of thinking about it. Well, you'll find out.
02:04:15.000What you also say in your flood myth lectures is that the flood is kind of a metaphor for natural atrophy.
02:04:26.000Things decay. But by making the right sacrifice, you can build the ark to withstand the decay around you.
02:04:32.000Well, I really experienced that this year. So in a synchronous way, you know, while I was lecturing about Noah, you know, I was in this intense political controversy.
02:04:45.000And I mean, I've been in a situation for 15 months now where if I say anything wrong, I'm done.
02:04:54.000And, you know, I've said things that were more wrong than they might have been. It skirted that edge, you know.
02:05:00.000So I've been hyper-vigilant about what I've been saying and what I've been doing for this extended period of time with real catastrophe lurking as a consequence of making an error.
02:05:13.000Well, luckily, well, during that time, especially when it was really intense at the beginning, it's not so threatening now as it was, even though it's still very strange and intense.
02:05:25.000You know, I was very fortunate because my parents were at my house when all this broke and my wife and my kids are around.
02:05:34.000They're adults. And we'd had, we were sorted out. You know, like, I have a good relationship with my father. We've straightened it out.
02:05:43.000I have a good relationship with my mom. I trust them both. They tell me the truth. They're on my side. Same with my wife. Same with my kids.
02:05:50.000And then I have a circle of friends outside that that are people. Same thing. We have, our relationship is solid. We tell each other what we think.
02:05:59.000And so I had people who were supporting me, helping me figure out when I was making mistakes, telling me when they thought what I was doing was working and when it wasn't.
02:06:07.000We were analyzing this very carefully. And it was maximally stressful. But there wasn't additional stress because of unresolved issues in the family.
02:06:17.000And that was good because like three or four additional pieces of stress, I would have started to make mistakes and the whole bloody thing would have spiraled down.
02:06:23.000So let's say that the outside conditions, they were, they were tragedy, but there was no malevolence within your own structure. So you can handle it.
02:06:30.000There was, there was, it was restricted to the degree that goodwill had restricted it over about a 25 year period.
02:06:36.000You know, so you never say none because there's always a snake in the garden, you know, but it was, it was as good as we could make it with our honest attempts to do so.
02:06:46.000Yeah. And that was good enough. And then, you know, when I read about Noah, it was a story that I hadn't delved into as deeply as I had into some of the earlier stories in Genesis.
02:06:57.000There's one line says that Noah was perfect in his generations. And I thought, I don't know what the hell that means. So I went and looked up every biblical phrase, you know, as comments on it from centuries of commentators.
02:07:10.000So you can really dig into these and figure out what they mean. And, you know, basically what it meant was that because he was a good man, he had structured his family in a manner that was healthy, you know, and, and, and sustaining.
02:07:21.000And so then when all hell break broke loose, the arc was, was there and ready. And that's a lesson. It's like, you're going to hit things in your life.
02:07:30.000Like my daughter, for example, was very, very ill and horribly ill for, for a long time, deathly ill and suffering terribly. She was on high doses of, of opiates for two years.
02:07:42.000She was basically walking around on two broken legs. And that was, that was only one of the things that was bothering her, you know, so she was in agony, it just about broke her at one point.
02:07:52.000And so we were completely distraught by this ongoing catastrophe, you know, and had there been any additional trouble between my wife and I, or between my daughter and I, or between my son and I, like, God only knows what would have happened.
02:08:09.000You know, because we barely squeaked through that, but we did, we did, we did get through it.
02:08:14.000You know, and I told her one thing, for example, which is apropos in this world of victimization. I said, look, kid, she was about eight, I said, you're, you're in real trouble, man, you're in real trouble.
02:08:24.000It's like, here, you're, you're, you have these terrible physical illnesses. And there's something worse, is that you're going to be tempted to use your illness as an excuse to not engage in life.
02:08:36.000And it's going to be hard for you to tell when you can't do something because you're sick, and when it would just be convenient of you to use your illness as an excuse for not doing it.
02:08:47.000I said, look, if you ever do that, you'll not only be sick physically, you'll be sick spiritually, and then you're done. That'll be worse.
02:08:54.000And to her credit, her great credit, she, she listened, and she didn't ever play victim. Thank God.
02:09:02.000How old was she when you told her this?
02:09:04.000Oh, probably eight. Yeah, well, the chips were down already. That was about, she was about that old, too, if I remember correctly, when I taught her how to give her own injections, you know, and that was, so she had to use this chemical that was basically.
02:09:17.000And killer injections? No, it was an anti-cancer, it was a, it was a chemotherapy agent. She didn't have cancer, but it was a chemotherapy agent. And, you know, we could have administered it to her, she had to do it, I think, three times a day. And, you know, part of our theory was, well, we want to give her as much control over her fate as possible, you know, and so when she was about eight, I sat her down, she was pretty motivated by money, she's an evil little capitalist. And I sat her down, I said, look,
02:09:46.980look, kid, here's your needle, see if you can do this, give your own injection. I said, I'll pay you 50 bucks. And you sit there and you see if you can do it. If you can do it, I'll give you 50 dollars. She sat there, like, on the steps for 45 minutes trying to do it. It's quite harsh to watch.
02:10:08.980She was eight years old at the time? Yeah, and she did it. And she said, I did it. I said, here's your money, kid. And so the next time, she, she had to do it. I said, it's 50 bucks again, but you only got 15 minutes. So she did it. I paid her. And then it was the next, it was like, you got five minutes, and then you got 30 seconds, then you got five seconds, because like, what, do you want her to sit there and torture herself with the needle for half an hour? It's like, get it over with. And she got so she could do it immediately.
02:10:38.980She gave herself an injection pretty much for then on, you know, but, well, you know, there was no choice. She was either going to climb on top of that goddamn illness, or it was going to do her in.
02:10:51.680She recovered? Yeah. Not only did she recover, she figured out what was wrong. And she fixed it. And then she fixed me. So diet changes. Both Tammy and I, my wife, we have autoimmune problems.
02:11:06.040I mean, hers are of one sort. My wife has celiac disease, and mine are of another sort, which is not quite specified, but seems to be associated with kind of an inflammation-caused depression that runs in my family.
02:11:19.640But Michaela, my daughter, seemed to get both of them. And it really, well, she developed juvenile rheumatoid arthritis and had her hip destroyed when she was 16, and then her ankle on the other leg the next year.
02:11:31.740So it was vicious. But she figured out herself it was a diet issue.
02:11:37.340That's for sure. And here it's worse than that even, because her dietary response to something that she eats but shouldn't doesn't occur until four days after she eats it.
02:11:49.900Oh, Jesus. And then it lasts a month. So imagine you're trying to figure out your diet. You eat something, you have no idea whether you react to it until four days later.
02:11:59.240So that's virtually impossible to figure out to begin with. And then if you make a mistake, you're screwed for a month.
02:12:05.240And so that means that, you know, three weeks into the month, you might eat something that you don't even know you shouldn't eat.
02:12:11.380And then it's another month. You don't even know. So it's a miracle she figured it out.
02:12:16.460It does sound miraculous for her to have articulated order into this chaotic mode.
02:12:22.940Yeah, it is. It's unbelievable. I mean, it's really, she was sleeping 18 hours a day. She could only stay awake using Ritalin. Like, she was seriously depressed, like terribly depressed.
02:12:34.340And that was actually, I asked her at one point, the depression was partly associated with pain. But not only that, I asked her at one point, and this is something to think about regard to depression.
02:12:45.340I asked her one day when she was about 13, I said, look, kid, no, no, it was after her ankle had fallen apart on her and she'd undergone all this pain.
02:12:52.740She had 38 affected joints. And the prognosis was multiple early joint replacements. So we found that out when she was quite young.
02:13:00.840But I asked her one day, okay, you got a choice, kid. You can either have the arthritis or the depression. Which would you pick?
02:13:09.500She said she'd pick the arthritis. So that gives you some indication of what the depression was like.
02:13:53.720So her brother, more power to him, I always treated him, Julian is his name, ever since he was a little kid, I treated him like he was, what would you say, capable of wisdom.
02:14:09.780And when he was little, I used to ask him, you know, hard questions, and ask him about how we should structure things in the household, ask him about how chores should be distributed, bring him into the conversation.
02:14:21.480And he was always very judicious, very diplomatic, and very mature.
02:14:25.780And right from the time he was a little kid, I never played any games with him, and any tricks on him, you know?
02:14:36.380And, you know, when he was about 14, which is sort of prime troublemaking time, and he certainly had the temperament for it, he was a bloody rock, you know?
02:14:49.240He didn't cause any extra trouble, or if he did, he kept it private and didn't involve us in it, and he accepted the fact that we didn't have as much time to pay attention to him as we would have liked to, and he let his sister rely on him.
02:15:03.580And he didn't go out with his friends as much as he might have, and he did that for multiple years.
02:15:25.620It says, minimize your persona, cultivate your essence, and live in its closest possible proximity, referring to the essence.
02:15:32.580I think there's one lecture of you on existentialism and authenticity, and this is a theme throughout Maps of Meaning, especially the Pinocchio series.
02:16:04.340And he doesn't want to hear about yours.
02:16:05.920You want to walk in there in a suit, and you want to see him or her in business attire, and you want to do your financial transaction, you want to say hello, and be polite, and you want to leave.
02:16:15.680And so what that means is that you have to have a public face for your complexity, and you have to simplify yourself so that other people can interact with you.
02:16:29.840It's politeness to do that, and it's politeness not to poke behind that unless people ask.
02:16:34.940And then we can, it's part of being civilized, domesticated even, that's the downside, that's the side that subjects you to tyranny, but it's part of being civilized.
02:16:46.060So you go from the state of nature to possession by the persona, let's say.
02:16:55.240But that's not where it should stop, because then if you're only persona, that's not good, because you're too tightly associated with the state and the culture.
02:17:02.400There's nothing about you that's really individual.
02:17:04.880There's no, the spirit, your individual spirit hasn't been integrated into your personality.
02:17:09.440So you have to, you have to go beyond the persona.
02:17:12.840It doesn't mean you don't have to have one.
02:17:14.980God, you're no good at all if you don't have a persona.
02:17:21.400But if you only know how to behave, you're just a domesticated house cat or a lap dog.
02:17:27.040You have to be, you have to push beyond the persona, and that's what the integration of the shadow does from the Jungian.
02:17:32.400It's like to pull that monster that's being edited out of you, to pull that back in, and to allow that to reveal itself within your, within your increasingly sophisticated way of being.
02:18:21.840And the persona, if you're a persona, then you're an obedient citizen.
02:18:27.940But the problem with being an obedient citizen is that if the society tells you to march the Jews off to the death camp, for example, and you're obedient, then that's what you'll do.
02:18:38.740And it doesn't, it isn't like society is civilized, then all of a sudden you're performing some act of atrocity.
02:18:59.940And so, a little more obedience is demanded, and you say, okay, well, then you're a little bent, because the society is becoming a little bent.
02:19:07.360And then you're a little weaker, and then you're asked to violate your conscience a little bit more.
02:19:12.100And you think, well, there's a little less of me, and the pressure's on a little more, and I could have said no before, but I didn't.
02:19:17.000So you say yes again, and then you say yes again, and then you have a society where one-third of the population is informing on the other two-thirds.
02:19:29.520It's like, and that's, see, the reason that the video I did about Bill C-16 and its compelled speech provisions went viral was because I said no.
02:19:44.640What I meant was, there isn't anything that you can do to me that I can imagine that will force me to utter the words that you want me to utter.
02:20:09.360And so, and that's part of the incorporation of the shadow.
02:20:12.240But in this regard, the shadow is actually benevolent, not malevolent.
02:20:16.220Well, once it's incorporated, yeah, well, that's the thing.
02:20:19.340And I don't know what to make of that in its entirety because it sort of means that if you, it means something like, because one of the old metaphysical problems is why would God allow evil into the world?
02:20:32.260I think, well, maybe God didn't allow evil into the world.
02:20:34.620Maybe God allowed the possibility of evil into the world.
02:20:38.900And maybe the world with the possibility of evil is actually a better world than the world without the possibility of evil.
02:20:44.640So, it's something like that, you know, in that maybe a man is better when he's a dangerous man who's being good than he would be if he was just a good man who wasn't capable of being dangerous.
02:20:55.240And I believe that because the best men that I've ever met are very dangerous men.
02:21:37.940So maybe that's the reason that metaphysically speaking, you know, and I don't know where you are when you're speaking metaphysically exactly, but the question of why is there evil in the world is a constant question.
02:21:50.120It's like, it's possible that without the possibility of evil, there cannot be good.
02:21:56.160Good requires the possibility of evil.
02:21:58.540And maybe good is so good that the fact that it requires the possibility of evil is acceptable.
02:24:09.300It's better than weakness, but it's not as good as what's good.
02:24:12.420So if you follow this doctrine, actually the people that are accusing you of instantiating, like, toxic masculinity, well, let's say that it's true that you're promoting male strength.