The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - Competence Hierarchies

00:00:00.000 Thrive knows that quitting smoking is f***ing hard. You get advice like, just stop, go for a run,

00:00:06.460 go for 10 runs, run a marathon. Instead, start small with Thrive, which can lead to something

00:00:11.880 big. Start stopping with Thrive. Hey everyone, real quick before you skip, I want to talk to

00:00:19.320 you about something serious and important. Dr. Jordan Peterson has created a new series that

00:00:24.260 could be a lifeline for those battling depression and anxiety. We know how isolating and overwhelming

00:00:29.900 these conditions can be, and we wanted to take a moment to reach out to those listening who may be

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00:00:39.960 of why you might be feeling this way in his new series. He provides a roadmap towards healing,

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00:00:50.060 If you're suffering, please know you are not alone. There's hope, and there's a path to feeling better.

00:00:56.300 Go to Daily Wire Plus now and start watching Dr. Jordan B. Peterson on depression and anxiety.

00:01:02.560 Let this be the first step towards the brighter future you deserve.

00:01:14.700 Hi, I'm Mikayla Peterson, Dad's daughter and collaborator. Today's episode is a 12 Rules for Life

00:01:20.700 Lecture recorded in Birmingham, UK on November 7th, 2018. I've named it Competence Hierarchies.

00:01:27.440 You'll see why. This is a good one. Dad talks about dominance hierarchies or competence hierarchies

00:01:32.500 in the animal kingdom and how we've evolved and are part of these hierarchies whether we like it or

00:01:37.160 not. If we're not a fan of these hierarchies, I think it might be because we're at the bottom.

00:01:41.800 It's an interesting lecture. Weekly updates, not much on the parent side. Everything is still

00:01:46.300 slowly progressing in the right direction. Here's a Mikayla tip. Hopefully you've already figured this

00:01:50.760 out yourself. Stop sleeping with your phone in your bedroom and start exercising each morning.

00:01:55.060 I just started a couple of weeks ago. I wake up at 6. I bought an alarm clock with a light. I don't

00:01:59.660 need the alarm part. The light wakes me up. Fine. So I wake up at 6. Exercise for 45 minutes. I don't

00:02:05.000 think it'll always be that long. What I'm doing now, most people could do in their sleep. It's basically

00:02:09.260 rehab physio. My multiple surgeries and pregnancy have made me a very weak individual. But I do that for 45

00:02:15.500 minutes. Shower. Wake Scarlet up. And I don't look at my phone until 11. That's new. It's outside of

00:02:21.680 my room to avoid the temptation. I got the inspiration from someone named Chris Will X on social media.

00:02:28.160 Found him on Instagram. He has a podcast called Modern Wisdom that I quite like and think you would

00:02:33.120 too if you're interested in optimizing your life. He's fairly new, but I think the podcast will be quite

00:02:38.000 big. It's difficult to find true intellectuals and I think he's one of them. Check it out. If you enjoy

00:02:43.000 this podcast, I think you'll enjoy that one too. Modern Wisdom. These small changes have improved

00:02:47.680 my mornings an entire day dramatically. You could start by sleeping with your phone outside your

00:02:51.640 bedroom and just see how it goes. It's not good for your brain to check it first thing in the morning

00:02:55.300 and get overwhelmed by the list of tasks you need to do in that day anyway. That's it for Michaela

00:02:59.860 tips for now. Enjoy your day. Competence Hierarchies, a Jordan B. Peterson 12 rules for life lecture.

00:03:13.940 Before we do anything else, we just got incredible news just five minutes before the show started.

00:03:20.920 The foreign minister of Sweden, you know this lady, Margot Wallstrom? She just said that Jordan

00:03:29.260 Peterson should crawl back under the rock he came from.

00:03:37.960 So this is a very special show. Little does she know he crawled out of a lobster shell, but

00:03:43.160 how ridiculous. Foreign ministers are scared of this guy and you guys all came here. That is pretty

00:03:50.740 great. So make some noise for Dr. Jordan Peterson, everybody.

00:03:53.880 I think the Swedish foreign minister's comment actually had something to do with lobsters.

00:04:15.300 So maybe it was okay. I don't know. Maybe that's a hallmark of success

00:04:20.420 as a consequence of visiting Sweden. I was to annoy the Swedish foreign minister.

00:04:29.120 That might be a good thing.

00:04:30.660 So I had a discussion when I was there.

00:04:39.060 I don't remember actually if it was in Denmark or if it was in, if whether it was in Copenhagen

00:04:44.020 or whether it was in Stockholm, about the conundrum that the Scandinavians are facing.

00:04:50.220 You know, they've done more than any other nations in the world to produce a gender equal society.

00:05:03.420 And one of the consequences of that is that the differences between men and women have got much

00:05:09.020 larger rather than much smaller. And the scientific evidence for that now is so overwhelming that

00:05:16.100 even psychologists from Berkeley have admitted that it was true.

00:05:22.620 And so you know that that's

00:05:24.060 that's as true as something can get when it

00:05:28.720 when it defies

00:05:31.400 radical left-wing logic

00:05:33.880 so thoroughly and indisputably that

00:05:37.640 even people at Berkeley can't deny it

00:05:40.620 that it must be true.

00:05:42.300 So but it it it leaves the Scandinavians in somewhat of an awkward position, but it's in

00:05:49.880 it's the same position

00:05:51.260 that all of the countries in the West and then in the world are going to be in

00:05:55.760 as we become richer

00:05:57.520 and our societies become more egalitarian

00:06:00.820 in their provision of equality of opportunity

00:06:04.700 which is that men and women will get more different

00:06:08.260 because that seems to be what happens when you give people freedom of choice

00:06:13.160 and then that drives differences in occupational choice, for example.

00:06:17.780 And so one of the things we're really going to have to figure out over the next 20 years

00:06:24.000 is what to do now that it appears impossible

00:06:29.080 to simultaneously maximize all outcomes

00:06:33.460 and all opportunities

00:06:36.320 because for a while I think people hope that that was a possibility, right?

00:06:41.560 If you made your culture flat in some sense

00:06:45.480 and removed as many barriers as you possibly could

00:06:48.240 to advancement and to choice

00:06:52.160 that that would make people more the same

00:06:55.480 and that would make outcomes more the same

00:06:58.280 occupational choice

00:06:59.520 perhaps salary

00:07:02.040 distribution of income

00:07:03.760 and all of that

00:07:05.000 but it doesn't look

00:07:06.360 that isn't what the data are revealing

00:07:08.820 what they're revealing is quite the contrary

00:07:11.820 so

00:07:13.140 it was interesting to go to

00:07:15.680 the Scandinavian countries

00:07:17.520 and have a chance to talk about that

00:07:19.720 and it'll be interesting to see

00:07:21.140 how that rolls out politically

00:07:23.260 I mean, part of what's happening at the moment

00:07:25.280 is that there's quite a movement

00:07:27.580 in Scandinavia

00:07:29.460 and no doubt it's happening here

00:07:31.180 it's also happening in Canada

00:07:32.520 to develop gender-neutral kindergartens, for example

00:07:37.540 or gender-neutral parenting styles

00:07:39.640 and, you know, I think that that's quite appalling

00:07:42.980 personally

00:07:44.060 given that I don't actually think that there's anything wrong

00:07:46.900 with the fact that there's males and females

00:07:49.220 which is a good thing

00:07:51.220 since there actually are males and females

00:07:53.680 but I'm also not that concerned about it

00:07:58.360 in some sense

00:07:59.080 because I knew this 25 years ago

00:08:01.680 if you take avowed feminists, for example

00:08:06.140 who have become mothers

00:08:07.340 and who have decided

00:08:09.320 that they're going to treat their children

00:08:11.240 boys or girls

00:08:12.820 alike

00:08:14.120 and you compare how they interact with their children

00:08:17.960 if you compare them to people

00:08:20.060 who don't have the same doctrine

00:08:21.960 you find that there's very little difference

00:08:24.540 in the actual interactions

00:08:26.040 because, well, first of all

00:08:28.400 a lot of the way

00:08:29.580 that you interact with your children

00:08:31.700 is actually a consequence of your children

00:08:34.420 rather than your ideology

00:08:36.620 you know, unless you're a hideous parent

00:08:39.500 because, well, I mean that

00:08:42.300 I mean that technically, I suppose

00:08:44.640 because, you know

00:08:46.720 if you have a good relationship with someone

00:08:48.720 you actually personalize it to them

00:08:50.780 right?

00:08:51.540 and it does look like

00:08:52.540 in families that are functioning well

00:08:54.760 the dynamics between the parents

00:08:57.120 and the children

00:08:57.700 are very personalized

00:08:58.760 so even the micro environment

00:09:00.600 of each child

00:09:01.460 is quite substantially different

00:09:03.600 you can tell that

00:09:04.720 if you look at studies

00:09:05.700 they look at the similarity

00:09:08.040 of personality between siblings

00:09:10.100 so you could say

00:09:11.640 there's three reasons

00:09:12.600 that siblings might be the same

00:09:14.260 biological similarity

00:09:16.040 shared environment

00:09:18.100 so that would be

00:09:19.220 what they share in common

00:09:20.580 in the family

00:09:21.380 and then

00:09:22.300 and then

00:09:23.880 non-shared environment

00:09:25.300 that would be

00:09:26.020 what happens to them

00:09:26.980 that's individual

00:09:27.740 that their brothers and sisters

00:09:29.180 don't also experience

00:09:30.700 there's almost no effect

00:09:32.460 of shared environment

00:09:33.640 you think

00:09:35.220 well, what does that mean?

00:09:36.520 does that mean

00:09:37.000 that parenting doesn't matter

00:09:38.360 because shared environment

00:09:39.500 doesn't have much of an effect

00:09:40.820 and

00:09:41.040 well, no

00:09:42.420 that isn't what it means

00:09:43.520 it means that

00:09:44.160 you don't treat

00:09:45.860 all your children

00:09:47.000 the same

00:09:47.860 because they're not

00:09:49.440 actually the same

00:09:50.720 and that's actually

00:09:52.180 a good thing

00:09:53.120 so

00:09:54.020 you know

00:09:54.800 these things

00:09:55.460 like so many things

00:09:56.600 that we discover

00:09:59.400 if we apply

00:10:00.460 scientific methods

00:10:01.560 to the analysis

00:10:02.560 of

00:10:02.980 various phenomena

00:10:04.560 it turns out

00:10:06.100 that they're much more

00:10:06.820 complex and tricky

00:10:07.860 than we'd ever imagined

00:10:09.060 and they don't necessarily

00:10:10.380 line up with

00:10:11.500 our a priori

00:10:12.660 empirical

00:10:13.780 or our a priori

00:10:15.200 ideological conclusions

00:10:16.660 and so

00:10:18.020 anyways

00:10:19.180 that's

00:10:19.680 that was

00:10:20.920 some reflections

00:10:21.940 on the visit

00:10:22.620 to Scandinavia

00:10:23.520 and it's kind of

00:10:24.380 a nice introduction

00:10:25.200 I would say

00:10:25.880 into what I want

00:10:26.500 to talk about tonight

00:10:27.320 I'm going to talk

00:10:28.260 about rule one

00:10:29.160 since I've come

00:10:30.440 to Europe

00:10:31.260 and I've done

00:10:32.680 a dozen lectures

00:10:33.420 now

00:10:33.680 this is the 12th one

00:10:34.840 and the last one

00:10:37.240 in the UK

00:10:37.740 I've been working

00:10:38.920 through my book

00:10:39.600 backwards

00:10:40.260 I've worked through it

00:10:42.260 this is like the 92nd city

00:10:44.560 I think I've been to

00:10:45.640 and so I've worked

00:10:46.800 through it forward

00:10:47.540 and I've worked through it

00:10:49.420 by grouping

00:10:50.500 different rules together

00:10:51.680 and you know

00:10:52.400 I've tried all sorts

00:10:53.240 of variants

00:10:53.740 because I like to

00:10:54.660 make the lecture

00:10:56.380 each night

00:10:57.380 unique and different

00:10:58.880 and get somewhere

00:11:00.160 new with it

00:11:00.820 but I'm down

00:11:01.940 to rule one

00:11:02.680 and it's

00:11:05.060 a strange rule

00:11:06.760 in some sense

00:11:09.320 because I talk

00:11:10.520 about things

00:11:11.020 that people

00:11:11.440 don't necessarily

00:11:12.200 expect

00:11:12.840 like the biochemical

00:11:14.240 similarity

00:11:14.940 between lobsters

00:11:15.960 and human beings

00:11:16.780 and that strikes

00:11:17.920 non-biologists

00:11:18.960 as rather strange

00:11:20.120 I mean

00:11:20.720 it's actually

00:11:21.560 the case

00:11:22.060 that you know

00:11:22.840 a fair bit

00:11:23.360 of what we know

00:11:23.940 about biology

00:11:25.240 and about human biology

00:11:26.340 actually comes

00:11:27.180 from studying

00:11:28.180 creatures

00:11:28.640 that are even

00:11:29.180 simpler than

00:11:29.960 lobsters

00:11:31.360 crustaceans

00:11:32.720 they're not that

00:11:33.540 simple actually

00:11:34.340 lobsters

00:11:34.940 I mean

00:11:35.260 try to assemble

00:11:37.280 one from scratch

00:11:38.240 in your basement

00:11:39.040 and you'll find

00:11:39.740 that out

00:11:40.240 you know

00:11:40.620 they're very

00:11:41.560 complicated creatures

00:11:42.580 and they've been

00:11:43.040 a long time

00:11:44.040 and so

00:11:44.500 and they're alive

00:11:46.240 just like we are

00:11:47.280 and you know

00:11:49.080 at some

00:11:49.660 unbelievably distant

00:11:51.320 point in the past

00:11:52.400 we shared a common

00:11:53.320 ancestor

00:11:53.900 and that looks like

00:11:54.780 about 350 million

00:11:56.240 years ago

00:11:56.840 which is

00:11:57.240 a long time

00:11:58.840 way before

00:11:59.900 there were trees

00:12:00.820 for example

00:12:01.580 it's a long time

00:12:03.060 but there are

00:12:05.620 evolution

00:12:06.480 like once

00:12:08.000 once biology

00:12:09.600 conjures something

00:12:12.520 up that works

00:12:13.520 it tends to

00:12:14.200 conserve it

00:12:14.820 and it tends to

00:12:15.540 conserve it

00:12:16.040 for very long

00:12:16.900 periods of time

00:12:17.800 and so

00:12:18.780 you can find

00:12:19.680 amazing similarities

00:12:20.840 between

00:12:21.600 creatures

00:12:22.640 that have

00:12:23.720 diverged

00:12:26.040 from one another

00:12:26.800 ages

00:12:28.540 eons

00:12:29.520 millennia

00:12:30.720 millions

00:12:31.520 billions

00:12:31.980 of years

00:12:32.520 ago

00:12:32.860 billions

00:12:34.020 is pushing it

00:12:34.880 hundreds of millions

00:12:36.000 and

00:12:36.840 and

00:12:37.780 and biologists

00:12:38.820 know this quite well

00:12:39.800 they study things

00:12:40.900 like learning

00:12:41.460 in flatworms

00:12:42.500 for example

00:12:43.020 and flatworms

00:12:43.760 are pretty damn

00:12:44.340 primitive

00:12:44.780 they study

00:12:45.700 fruit flies

00:12:46.400 and all sorts

00:12:47.020 of creatures

00:12:47.480 that have a

00:12:48.940 short gestation

00:12:49.840 period

00:12:50.240 so that

00:12:50.760 you know

00:12:51.160 you can look

00:12:51.680 at genetic

00:12:52.140 effects

00:12:52.580 over time

00:12:53.180 and nobody

00:12:53.920 ever questions

00:12:54.700 whether or not

00:12:55.340 the findings

00:12:56.520 that the biologists

00:12:57.900 produce as a

00:12:58.940 consequence of

00:12:59.620 studying creatures

00:13:00.300 other than human

00:13:01.040 beings

00:13:01.360 are applicable

00:13:02.220 to human

00:13:02.740 beings

00:13:03.160 they're not

00:13:03.800 exactly

00:13:04.560 perfectly

00:13:05.260 applicable

00:13:05.780 because obviously

00:13:06.620 there's variation

00:13:08.060 among animals

00:13:08.860 as well as

00:13:09.540 similarities

00:13:10.460 but you know

00:13:11.800 the general rule

00:13:12.660 is continuity

00:13:13.880 in life

00:13:14.600 and you can be

00:13:16.100 accused of

00:13:16.940 anthropomorphism

00:13:18.160 with regards to

00:13:19.280 animals

00:13:19.680 which is the

00:13:20.280 attribution of

00:13:21.100 human traits

00:13:21.720 to animals

00:13:22.260 but that

00:13:23.360 criticism

00:13:24.040 really died

00:13:25.500 a somewhat

00:13:26.340 painful death

00:13:27.480 back around

00:13:28.220 1960

00:13:29.060 when people

00:13:30.960 realized that

00:13:31.900 the criticism

00:13:34.980 was actually

00:13:35.840 reversed

00:13:36.500 you should

00:13:38.140 assume that

00:13:38.960 animals and

00:13:39.580 humans are

00:13:40.180 alike

00:13:40.580 unless you

00:13:41.340 have reason

00:13:41.940 to assume

00:13:42.580 otherwise

00:13:43.080 that's much

00:13:44.220 more in keeping

00:13:44.800 with the notion

00:13:45.460 of biological

00:13:46.120 continuity

00:13:46.840 across the

00:13:47.520 species

00:13:47.880 so I've

00:13:49.500 been accused

00:13:50.020 of anthropomorphizing

00:13:51.740 lobsters

00:13:52.380 for example

00:13:53.020 and they

00:13:53.700 are quite

00:13:54.140 a bit

00:13:54.460 unlike

00:13:54.980 human beings

00:13:55.780 but in

00:13:56.520 some

00:13:56.860 interesting

00:13:58.180 regards

00:13:58.860 they're quite

00:13:59.520 similar

00:13:59.980 and in

00:14:01.560 the first

00:14:02.280 chapter

00:14:02.640 I was actually

00:14:03.200 trying to make

00:14:03.720 a point

00:14:04.340 about that

00:14:05.060 like a

00:14:05.460 serious

00:14:05.980 variety

00:14:06.960 of points

00:14:07.500 but one

00:14:08.400 really serious

00:14:09.540 point

00:14:10.000 and it has

00:14:11.160 to do

00:14:11.520 with

00:14:11.820 hierarchies

00:14:13.200 and so

00:14:13.860 the first

00:14:14.940 thing I want

00:14:15.460 to do

00:14:15.760 is talk

00:14:16.380 to you

00:14:16.640 about

00:14:16.880 hierarchies

00:14:17.580 you know

00:14:18.380 the most

00:14:19.360 real things

00:14:20.360 that you

00:14:20.860 encounter

00:14:21.420 aren't

00:14:21.820 necessarily

00:14:22.400 the things

00:14:23.000 that you

00:14:23.360 can easily

00:14:24.040 see

00:14:24.740 you know

00:14:26.280 like numbers

00:14:27.300 are a good

00:14:27.820 example

00:14:28.300 it's like

00:14:28.780 mathematicians

00:14:30.380 like to

00:14:31.020 debate the

00:14:31.720 reality of

00:14:32.380 numbers

00:14:32.800 and normal

00:14:33.960 people are

00:14:35.260 included in

00:14:36.300 that discussion

00:14:37.180 to some

00:14:37.940 limited degree

00:14:38.800 and like numbers

00:14:39.960 are obviously

00:14:40.620 a form of

00:14:41.580 abstraction

00:14:42.280 but then there's

00:14:43.700 something that's

00:14:44.240 truly real

00:14:45.020 about them

00:14:45.560 right

00:14:45.780 I mean

00:14:46.140 once you

00:14:47.420 lay out

00:14:48.960 numbers

00:14:49.320 and you can

00:14:49.800 start to

00:14:50.220 manipulate them

00:14:51.020 man they give

00:14:51.640 you a grip

00:14:52.160 on the world

00:14:52.720 like nothing

00:14:53.400 else

00:14:53.820 and so

00:14:54.260 the discovery

00:14:55.660 or invention

00:14:56.840 of numbers

00:14:57.540 what was it

00:14:58.220 was it a

00:14:58.640 discovery

00:14:59.180 or was it

00:14:59.880 invention

00:15:00.420 well that's

00:15:01.820 not so obvious

00:15:02.640 but most

00:15:03.340 mathematicians I

00:15:04.480 would say

00:15:04.860 would go with

00:15:05.480 discovery

00:15:06.140 and it's like

00:15:06.980 well it's not

00:15:07.780 something that you

00:15:08.420 see a number

00:15:09.420 or you can

00:15:10.080 taste or feel

00:15:11.020 or sense

00:15:12.260 in any

00:15:12.740 concrete

00:15:13.540 way

00:15:15.200 the same

00:15:15.640 way you

00:15:16.740 would detect

00:15:17.320 an object

00:15:18.340 but number

00:15:19.700 is real

00:15:20.280 and really

00:15:21.980 truly real

00:15:23.240 and in that

00:15:24.120 it gives you

00:15:25.100 a grip on

00:15:25.680 the world

00:15:26.120 it's one way

00:15:26.960 of thinking

00:15:27.360 about what

00:15:27.880 constitutes real

00:15:28.880 real is useful

00:15:30.520 that's not the

00:15:31.720 only way of

00:15:32.360 thinking about

00:15:32.900 what's real

00:15:33.460 and so there

00:15:34.700 are lots of

00:15:35.180 things that

00:15:35.660 in the world

00:15:36.220 that are real

00:15:36.800 that aren't

00:15:38.120 evident to

00:15:38.780 your senses

00:15:39.360 and definitely

00:15:40.840 one of those

00:15:41.780 things is

00:15:42.560 hierarchy

00:15:43.660 hierarchy

00:15:43.780 and you

00:15:45.440 know

00:15:45.640 chimpanzees

00:15:47.120 for example

00:15:47.720 and this is

00:15:48.220 true for

00:15:48.580 lots of

00:15:49.000 primate

00:15:49.400 groups

00:15:49.720 they really

00:15:50.560 understand

00:15:51.240 hierarchical

00:15:52.060 position

00:15:52.580 and so

00:15:53.700 for example

00:15:54.340 there are

00:15:57.200 aristocrats

00:15:58.100 among most

00:15:58.900 primates

00:15:59.460 and there are

00:15:59.940 peasants

00:16:00.440 that's one way

00:16:01.260 of thinking

00:16:01.600 about it

00:16:02.040 it's quite

00:16:02.680 hereditary

00:16:03.480 and so

00:16:04.480 if you happen

00:16:05.440 to be a

00:16:05.860 rather large

00:16:06.880 juvenile

00:16:07.460 peasant

00:16:08.240 primate

00:16:09.200 and there's

00:16:10.940 a rather

00:16:11.360 small

00:16:12.180 juvenile

00:16:12.820 aristocrat

00:16:13.880 primate

00:16:14.460 you'll tend

00:16:15.600 not to

00:16:16.360 pick on

00:16:16.880 him

00:16:17.260 and the

00:16:18.400 reason for

00:16:18.920 that is

00:16:19.380 that your

00:16:20.060 nervous system

00:16:20.840 which has

00:16:21.200 done a

00:16:21.500 very good

00:16:22.020 job of

00:16:22.660 mapping the

00:16:23.300 hierarchical

00:16:24.020 relationships

00:16:24.640 between

00:16:25.160 everybody

00:16:25.580 in your

00:16:26.060 troop

00:16:26.380 knows

00:16:27.020 perfectly

00:16:27.560 well

00:16:27.920 that that

00:16:28.780 little

00:16:29.460 primate

00:16:30.120 that you

00:16:30.500 could take

00:16:30.900 out in

00:16:31.260 two seconds

00:16:31.780 is connected

00:16:32.480 to a bunch

00:16:33.140 of other

00:16:33.480 ones that

00:16:33.920 will tear

00:16:34.300 you apart

00:16:34.840 if you

00:16:35.160 make a

00:16:35.500 mistake

00:16:36.020 and so

00:16:37.140 primate

00:16:38.160 nervous

00:16:38.520 systems

00:16:38.940 are very

00:16:39.620 and not

00:16:40.700 just primate

00:16:41.420 nervous

00:16:41.740 systems

00:16:42.080 but complex

00:16:43.320 mammalian

00:16:43.980 nervous

00:16:44.360 systems

00:16:44.840 are wired

00:16:47.120 to respond

00:16:48.780 to the

00:16:50.380 existence of

00:16:51.080 hierarchies

00:16:51.640 with modulation

00:16:52.460 of motivation

00:16:53.440 and emotion

00:16:54.040 so the

00:16:54.800 perception

00:16:55.220 isn't direct

00:16:56.120 it's not

00:16:57.380 so much

00:16:58.140 that you

00:16:58.440 would see

00:16:58.980 something

00:16:59.520 but you

00:17:00.360 would certainly

00:17:01.460 experience it

00:17:03.140 emotionally

00:17:03.580 you'd be afraid

00:17:04.580 for example

00:17:05.120 or maybe

00:17:05.460 you'd have

00:17:05.800 respect

00:17:06.440 whatever

00:17:06.820 that might

00:17:07.980 be

00:17:08.300 whatever

00:17:09.020 that might

00:17:09.460 be

00:17:09.640 among

00:17:09.940 animals

00:17:10.920 and you

00:17:11.320 know

00:17:11.420 one

00:17:11.640 animal

00:17:11.940 if you

00:17:12.160 have

00:17:12.300 two

00:17:12.500 dogs

00:17:12.840 you know

00:17:13.120 one of

00:17:13.420 them is

00:17:13.600 dominant

00:17:13.980 it's almost

00:17:14.680 always the

00:17:15.160 case

00:17:15.480 and I

00:17:16.100 don't know

00:17:16.340 what the

00:17:16.780 non-dominant

00:17:17.620 dog feels

00:17:18.400 towards the

00:17:19.120 dominant

00:17:19.520 dog

00:17:20.020 but it's

00:17:20.780 something like

00:17:21.320 respect

00:17:22.160 it's something

00:17:23.320 maybe there's a

00:17:24.420 bit of fear

00:17:25.040 there but

00:17:26.000 it's still

00:17:26.880 a perception

00:17:28.660 that's embodied

00:17:29.520 in emotional

00:17:30.260 reaction

00:17:30.940 so anyways

00:17:33.060 you can

00:17:33.440 perceive

00:17:33.940 hierarchies

00:17:34.900 even though

00:17:35.840 you can't

00:17:36.300 see them

00:17:36.620 and you

00:17:37.240 do perceive

00:17:38.140 them

00:17:38.400 and it's

00:17:38.960 unbelievable

00:17:39.560 and deep

00:17:40.320 deep parts

00:17:40.980 of you

00:17:41.220 perceive

00:17:41.620 them

00:17:41.860 and now

00:17:42.720 I want

00:17:44.700 to talk

00:17:45.040 about for

00:17:45.600 first for a

00:17:46.840 minute about

00:17:47.380 about why

00:17:48.400 hierarchies in

00:17:49.220 some sense

00:17:49.740 are both

00:17:52.300 prevalent and

00:17:53.180 inevitable

00:17:53.640 so let's

00:17:55.080 start with

00:17:55.480 prevalent

00:17:56.060 see the

00:17:57.460 problem with

00:17:58.080 most animals

00:17:59.860 is that

00:18:01.440 they're competing

00:18:02.040 for scarce

00:18:02.640 resources

00:18:03.220 and so

00:18:04.640 you see

00:18:05.460 hierarchies

00:18:06.240 form

00:18:06.660 to allow

00:18:08.340 for preferential

00:18:09.300 access to

00:18:10.120 scarce resources

00:18:11.000 in the

00:18:11.540 absence of

00:18:12.980 continual

00:18:13.640 combat

00:18:14.160 and so

00:18:15.500 in chapter

00:18:16.360 one

00:18:16.700 I've been

00:18:17.280 criticized

00:18:17.720 by people

00:18:18.840 who haven't

00:18:19.880 read the

00:18:20.300 chapter

00:18:20.680 for only

00:18:22.600 for comparing

00:18:25.500 human beings

00:18:26.120 to lobsters

00:18:26.800 and for making

00:18:27.380 a case

00:18:27.820 that just

00:18:28.640 because lobsters

00:18:29.580 are hierarchical

00:18:30.500 doesn't mean

00:18:31.100 that all

00:18:31.860 other creatures

00:18:32.560 are

00:18:32.880 first of all

00:18:33.840 I never said

00:18:34.500 that all other

00:18:35.120 creatures were

00:18:35.780 I said that

00:18:36.340 a very large

00:18:37.600 preponderance

00:18:38.580 of creatures

00:18:39.160 across a variety

00:18:40.320 of species

00:18:40.880 are and that

00:18:41.940 human beings

00:18:42.520 are as well

00:18:43.280 chickens are

00:18:44.620 for example

00:18:45.300 so if you're

00:18:47.840 a farmer

00:18:48.260 and you go

00:18:48.740 out and you

00:18:49.080 feed your

00:18:49.480 chickens

00:18:49.900 there's the

00:18:51.760 chickens that

00:18:52.340 get the

00:18:53.180 the chicken

00:18:55.380 feed first

00:18:56.100 are the same

00:18:56.800 chickens

00:18:57.280 every morning

00:18:58.640 and then

00:18:59.140 so the

00:18:59.760 aristocratic

00:19:00.400 chickens get

00:19:01.100 their food

00:19:01.660 first and

00:19:02.300 then the

00:19:02.700 second rate

00:19:03.240 chickens get

00:19:03.900 their hangers

00:19:05.340 on get

00:19:05.800 theirs next

00:19:06.520 and then the

00:19:07.100 sort of

00:19:07.400 bedraggled

00:19:08.100 low status

00:19:09.000 chickens get

00:19:09.740 theirs last

00:19:10.540 and you might

00:19:11.540 ask well why

00:19:12.300 did the low

00:19:13.400 status chickens

00:19:14.540 put up with

00:19:15.620 the second rate

00:19:16.580 feed and the

00:19:17.860 answer to that

00:19:18.520 is that it's

00:19:19.320 better to be a

00:19:20.020 little hungry

00:19:20.660 and have

00:19:21.780 substandard food

00:19:23.240 than to be a

00:19:24.160 little hungry

00:19:24.760 and have

00:19:25.560 substandard food

00:19:26.700 and be pecked

00:19:27.740 to death

00:19:28.640 right and so

00:19:31.700 animals organize

00:19:32.880 themselves into

00:19:33.640 hierarchies around

00:19:35.020 scarce resources

00:19:36.120 so they don't add

00:19:37.700 continual combat

00:19:39.320 to the problem

00:19:40.920 of scarce resources

00:19:42.180 right so it's

00:19:44.420 better to know

00:19:45.100 your place

00:19:45.900 not that it's

00:19:46.980 necessarily pleasant

00:19:48.100 or good but it's

00:19:49.520 better to know

00:19:50.140 your place than to

00:19:51.060 be continually

00:19:52.100 fighting at risk

00:19:53.660 to your very

00:19:54.460 survival for that

00:19:56.080 place and so

00:19:57.400 it's also the

00:19:58.020 case once a

00:19:58.680 hierarchy is

00:19:59.260 established that

00:20:00.060 it tends to be

00:20:00.780 pretty stable

00:20:01.420 because the cost

00:20:02.420 of disrupting it

00:20:03.420 is extremely

00:20:03.980 high now

00:20:04.940 competitive animals

00:20:07.260 especially if

00:20:08.300 they're interested

00:20:09.060 in advancing

00:20:10.280 their mating

00:20:10.840 opportunities will

00:20:12.180 sometimes take

00:20:13.020 the risk to

00:20:13.760 make a move

00:20:14.400 up the hierarchy

00:20:15.320 but they do

00:20:16.280 that at extreme

00:20:17.180 peril and so

00:20:18.040 they do it very

00:20:18.700 carefully so

00:20:20.040 one of the

00:20:20.940 reasons that we

00:20:21.900 produce hierarchies

00:20:23.120 that hierarchies

00:20:24.140 are spontaneously

00:20:24.800 produced is to

00:20:26.360 produce something

00:20:27.500 approximating stable

00:20:28.980 peace in the face

00:20:30.300 of scarce resources

00:20:31.880 now you get

00:20:33.940 hierarchies that

00:20:34.720 form even in

00:20:35.900 animals that aren't

00:20:36.620 very social like

00:20:37.720 songbirds I also

00:20:38.860 use them as an

00:20:39.680 example in the

00:20:40.400 first chapter

00:20:41.120 wrens little

00:20:43.460 birds there I

00:20:44.440 don't know if you

00:20:44.800 have wrens in the

00:20:45.540 UK you have wrens in

00:20:46.940 the UK they're

00:20:48.260 little birds they're

00:20:49.140 very feisty they'll

00:20:50.460 knock other wrens

00:20:51.400 off their perches

00:20:52.180 they'll fill other

00:20:53.340 birds houses with

00:20:54.680 sticks they're very

00:20:56.240 territorial and

00:20:57.420 what the reason the

00:20:59.420 birds care about

00:21:00.640 territory is because

00:21:01.800 if you're a bird

00:21:02.620 well territory matters

00:21:04.660 and so what do you

00:21:05.560 want if you're a

00:21:06.380 bird well you want to

00:21:07.740 put your nest

00:21:08.280 somewhere and you

00:21:09.920 want it where it's

00:21:10.540 not too windy and

00:21:11.420 it's not too cold and

00:21:12.380 it's not too sunny and

00:21:13.840 where the rain isn't

00:21:14.640 going to rain on it

00:21:15.520 too much and it's

00:21:16.900 far away from

00:21:17.620 predators so those

00:21:19.060 are high quality

00:21:19.760 nesting and maybe

00:21:20.600 close to food that

00:21:21.700 would be a plus and

00:21:22.860 so there are high

00:21:23.540 quality nesting

00:21:25.100 places and you can

00:21:26.660 imagine instantly

00:21:27.760 there's a hierarchy

00:21:28.800 of high quality

00:21:29.660 nesting places right

00:21:30.800 because some are

00:21:31.780 going to be better

00:21:32.400 than others across

00:21:33.680 all those parameters

00:21:34.620 and then there has

00:21:35.680 to be some

00:21:36.640 competition that

00:21:38.280 determines who gets

00:21:39.360 access to the high

00:21:40.420 quality nesting

00:21:41.340 areas and that's

00:21:43.100 exactly what happens

00:21:44.120 and then the more

00:21:45.140 feisty physically

00:21:46.640 healthy dominant birds

00:21:48.620 that have the most

00:21:49.620 sort of threatening

00:21:51.480 song because that's

00:21:52.860 part of what a

00:21:53.460 wren song is it

00:21:54.480 means here I stand

00:21:56.220 attack a singer of

00:21:59.600 my prowess at your

00:22:01.280 peril right and so

00:22:03.700 and then those birds

00:22:05.640 attract mates that

00:22:07.600 are of high quality

00:22:08.520 because the mates are

00:22:09.440 looking for a high

00:22:10.780 quality nest and a

00:22:11.840 good place to have

00:22:13.220 some eggs and then

00:22:14.520 those chicks are more

00:22:16.280 likely to survive and

00:22:18.080 if an avian virus comes

00:22:21.020 sweeping through the

00:22:22.260 population the birds

00:22:23.540 die from the bottom

00:22:24.680 of the hierarchy

00:22:25.460 upwards and the

00:22:27.080 reason for that is

00:22:27.960 that the birds at the

00:22:29.500 bottom are stressed

00:22:30.600 they don't eat as well

00:22:32.380 they're more stressed

00:22:34.160 by predation they're

00:22:35.560 not sheltered as well

00:22:36.820 etc so they're

00:22:38.380 immunologically

00:22:39.340 compromised and so if

00:22:41.160 something comes along

00:22:42.140 that will affect birds

00:22:43.820 then the birds at the

00:22:45.660 bottom die and it's

00:22:47.480 the same with human

00:22:48.540 beings there's an old

00:22:49.700 saying when the

00:22:50.960 aristocrats catch cold

00:22:52.480 the working class dies

00:22:53.900 of pneumonia right and

00:22:55.760 that's that's actually

00:22:56.780 that's technically true

00:22:58.540 there's a great series of

00:23:00.800 studies done in the UK

00:23:02.040 called the Whitehall

00:23:03.080 studies they're very

00:23:04.060 cool so it was done on

00:23:06.220 two sets of civil

00:23:07.220 servants about 75 years

00:23:09.120 apart so imagine

00:23:10.540 there's a hierarchy of

00:23:11.560 civil servants and

00:23:13.980 there's like high

00:23:15.300 status civil servants

00:23:16.520 and then there's low

00:23:17.520 status civil servants

00:23:18.620 that are barely clinging

00:23:19.740 on to their job and

00:23:21.120 then you track them

00:23:21.940 across time and you

00:23:23.300 see who's most likely

00:23:25.020 to die and the answer

00:23:27.000 is the civil servants

00:23:28.420 along the bottom

00:23:29.260 okay so now that was

00:23:31.800 the first Whitehall

00:23:32.620 study and then the

00:23:33.440 second Whitehall study

00:23:34.440 was done 75 years

00:23:35.860 later and what was so

00:23:36.840 cool about it was that

00:23:37.900 by the time the second

00:23:39.580 study was done which

00:23:40.640 was in actually rather

00:23:41.780 modern times the the

00:23:44.400 average living standard

00:23:46.480 of the low status civil

00:23:49.600 servants in the second

00:23:51.080 study was probably higher

00:23:53.200 on average than the

00:23:54.240 high status civil servants

00:23:55.660 in the first study

00:23:56.740 right because everybody

00:23:57.860 had just got so much

00:23:58.920 richer so the absolute

00:24:00.540 level of wealth had gone

00:24:01.920 way up but the relative

00:24:03.660 risk of death remained

00:24:05.640 unchanged so one of the

00:24:08.320 things that's really rather

00:24:09.580 brutal about hierarchical

00:24:11.180 organizations is that they

00:24:12.940 are associated with

00:24:14.140 mortality risk and so

00:24:16.120 that's part of the reason

00:24:17.580 why we tend to regard

00:24:18.660 them as real now all right

00:24:22.940 so now the next question

00:24:24.480 might be well so you have

00:24:26.060 animals and the reason

00:24:27.460 they organize themselves

00:24:29.020 into hierarchies is because

00:24:30.300 they compete for scarce

00:24:31.480 resources and they have to

00:24:33.200 do that in a manner that

00:24:34.760 stabilizes the competition

00:24:36.360 without undue conflict right

00:24:38.200 so that makes reasonable

00:24:39.460 sense and you might think

00:24:41.180 you might think that the

00:24:42.860 same thing would be true of

00:24:44.080 human beings so it's a

00:24:45.360 matter of and you might

00:24:46.540 think well the the animals

00:24:47.860 do that by by by expressing

00:24:51.220 power and that the same

00:24:53.800 thing is true of human

00:24:54.720 beings well the first thing

00:24:56.440 is is that it's not exactly

00:24:57.940 obvious that the more

00:24:59.220 complex animals structure their

00:25:02.020 hierarchies purely as a matter

00:25:03.720 of power let's say physical

00:25:06.060 prowess and the ability to

00:25:07.720 physically dominate another

00:25:09.460 animal so there's a

00:25:11.200 primatologist who I admire

00:25:13.120 greatly named Franz de Waal

00:25:15.840 and he's studied chimpanzee

00:25:18.520 hierarchies to try to and

00:25:21.120 they tend to have a more

00:25:22.540 masculine structure so the

00:25:24.200 most dominant chimpanzees tend

00:25:25.800 to be masculine although

00:25:26.780 there's a female dominance

00:25:27.980 hierarchy as well and some of

00:25:29.540 the female chimps are far more

00:25:31.300 dominant than some of the male

00:25:32.700 chimps overlapping hierarchy

00:25:34.640 say but at the very top it

00:25:36.560 tends to be males and it is

00:25:39.220 the case that if you're like

00:25:41.540 a quite this staggering

00:25:43.720 physical specimen as a male

00:25:45.880 chimpanzee that's a non-trivial

00:25:47.660 advantage in establishing let's

00:25:50.320 call it dominance or prowess or

00:25:52.560 authority because you know we

00:25:54.720 might want to use a plethora of

00:25:56.760 words just to make sure we don't

00:25:58.240 close off our interpretations too

00:26:00.160 early it is the case that that

00:26:02.660 gives you a leg up in the

00:26:04.240 striving for position and that

00:26:06.460 that in turn gives you a leg up

00:26:08.500 with regards to access to food and

00:26:10.380 also to preferential mating

00:26:11.780 opportunities and so the more the

00:26:14.260 higher you are in the chimp

00:26:15.320 hierarchy the more you are likely

00:26:17.000 as a male to leave offspring it's

00:26:19.400 not because the chimp females are

00:26:21.240 choosy about who they mate with by

00:26:23.140 the way which is quite interesting

00:26:24.600 because a chimpanzee female that's

00:26:26.980 ready to mate because they have

00:26:28.520 mating cycles they have estrus cycles

00:26:31.420 they'll pretty much mate with any

00:26:33.120 male but the dominant males chase

00:26:35.940 away the subordinate males and so

00:26:37.820 they accrue the opportunities to

00:26:40.360 themselves it's one of the things

00:26:42.140 that makes human beings quite unlike

00:26:44.060 chimpanzees because human females

00:26:46.080 are selective maters and that's a

00:26:48.840 that's a that's a major perhaps even

00:26:51.740 the major difference that's driven us

00:26:54.400 apart over the evolutionary landscape

00:26:56.640 over the last seven million years

00:26:58.440 it may not be the only thing but

00:27:00.720 it's a major driver anyways one of

00:27:02.980 the things de Waal has showed quite

00:27:04.540 clearly is that brutally tyrannical

00:27:07.140 chimps tend to meet a terrible end

00:27:09.880 young and why is that well I don't

00:27:15.140 care how strong you are as a as a

00:27:18.400 as a particularly Arnold Schwarzenegger

00:27:22.800 esque chimpanzee but two subordinates

00:27:28.100 three-quarters your strength can easily

00:27:30.460 take you out on a bad day and so that's

00:27:33.940 exactly what happens and chimps are very

00:27:36.440 very strong and they're hunters and they

00:27:39.820 have very powerful teeth and they tear

00:27:42.460 each other apart so when two subordinate

00:27:45.400 chimps decide they'd have it enough

00:27:47.300 they've had enough and they go after top

00:27:50.220 tyrant it's not a good day for him and

00:27:54.280 de Waal has documented that in some

00:27:56.740 brutal detail in his multiple books on

00:27:59.260 on the emergence of morality and

00:28:01.620 chimpanzees actually very very good books

00:28:04.000 very readable and and well worth

00:28:05.940 attending to one of these he's one of

00:28:08.300 the scientists that's striving to produce

00:28:10.900 something approximating a biological a

00:28:14.080 biological account of the emergence of

00:28:16.540 morality and there's lots of biologists

00:28:18.260 working on that idea and and with a fair

00:28:21.140 bit of success as far as I'm concerned

00:28:23.520 what de Waal found instead was that the

00:28:25.980 chimpanzees males that tend to engage in

00:28:29.980 reciprocal interactions with other males so

00:28:32.860 friendly reciprocal interactions which means

00:28:36.060 they have friends you know from the

00:28:37.980 chimpanzee perspective and chimps do like

00:28:39.980 hang around together and they have relationships

00:28:42.460 relationships that can last for multiple

00:28:44.380 years and they do groom each other and they

00:28:47.260 do support each other in battles and all of

00:28:49.560 that and so there is there is a reciprocity at

00:28:53.560 work and so if you happen to be a male chimp and

00:28:57.580 you're pretty good at reciprocity and you have

00:28:59.540 like a bunch of allies then you know you're sort

00:29:02.120 of part of a nice chimp gang and that means that some big monster

00:29:08.160 solitary psychopath chimp can't take you out so easily and and that's that's a very

00:29:15.180 very interesting thing to contemplate when you're making claims for example that

00:29:19.720 human hierarchies are fundamentally based on power and that's a claim that's made

00:29:24.520 all too often in the modern world with our insistence that our culture for

00:29:28.560 example is nothing but a patriarchal tyranny which implies that it's unidimensional

00:29:33.760 hierarchy and that the only thing that regulates position in that hierarchy is

00:29:38.000 something like arbitrary power it's a very very

00:29:43.920 pathological view of human society i think it's motivated by very

00:29:50.480 questionable motivations and it's certainly predicated on an

00:29:54.320 anthropology that's under-informed to say the least now once you get to the

00:30:00.720 human level things get even more complicated because

00:30:04.960 a friend of mine i worked with for years i talked a lot about dominance

00:30:09.680 hierarchies in my lectures and in and even in 12 rules for life i talked

00:30:14.720 about dominance hierarchies and that was that was a mistake

00:30:17.600 my friend who's he has a just so you know he has a master's degree in engineering from

00:30:25.840 mit and a phd in psychology from harvard so he's a very bright guy

00:30:32.160 he said you shouldn't use the term dominance hierarchy and i said why not it's the standard

00:30:37.040 terminology that's used in the biological sciences and he said yeah but you know you don't know how much

00:30:42.240 marxist thinking had infiltrated the biological thinking and and and affected the terminology

00:30:48.960 because it's not obvious that hierarchies are predicated on dominance exactly hierarchies exist

00:30:54.400 but whether or not they're dominance hierarchies that's a whole different story that's an assumption

00:31:00.400 and i thought god i don't want to hear that i've been using the idea of dominance hierarchy for like

00:31:04.480 20 years i don't want to have to rethink that so i was annoyed at him for like

00:31:08.320 a month while i was rethinking this through and then i stumbled across the phrase competence hierarchy

00:31:15.840 and i thought oh that's much better that's much much much better you know and you see this in other

00:31:22.000 animals too this competence hierarchy so there's these cool birds you could look them up if you

00:31:27.200 if you want to look up a cool bird i don't know what you're doing later tonight but um there's

00:31:32.880 these birds called bowerbirds and they're fascinating birds and so they have hierarchies too and um the

00:31:41.840 males arrange themselves into a hierarchy and then they display themselves for the females and then the

00:31:47.280 females come by and check them out but they don't use power so what a bowerbird does is it makes this

00:31:54.560 really fancy nest that sort of hangs from a twig it's woven together and then it's lined with something

00:32:01.200 soft and it's really quite an architectural masterpiece given that a bird had to build

00:32:05.760 it out of sticks with its beak you know it's it's really something and then what they do is they they

00:32:11.840 make a front yard they sweep it clean and then they decorate it with like so maybe there'll be a

00:32:17.360 quarter of it that's covered with red petals and maybe they'll go find some green glass if they can

00:32:22.560 and then they make a little decoration out of green glass and they artfully display some twigs over here

00:32:28.080 and and it's a fairly big like the bird is a decent size and so the whole bowerbird yard is

00:32:33.760 about this big and then there's a fair number of bowerbirds in the same vicinity and then the females

00:32:39.520 come and visit each bowerbird art gallery and they stand there they look because birds look out of one

00:32:47.680 eye you know they have one eye for predators and one eye for things that they eat by the way which is

00:32:53.360 quite interesting um so if you ever see a bird eyeing you with the wrong eye and then your lunch um

00:33:02.160 or the bird is hoping you would be but anyways the females come and eye the display

00:33:08.720 and they fly off and you know check out another one and if the display attracts a mate then the bowerbird

00:33:14.320 the male bowerbird is all thrilled but if like five or six females come and go then the bowerbird has a

00:33:19.920 little fit and tears his nest apart and races all his artistic production and then he does it again

00:33:26.800 and so that's damn cool and then there's this other creature called a puffer fish you know what a puffer

00:33:32.160 fish is it's like it's a fish you know for god's sake it's a fish and this is what the bloody puffer fish

00:33:39.120 does you just can't believe this there's a great video of this some of you may have seen this it's

00:33:44.160 quite gone quite viral because no one can believe it this puffer fish he goes to the bottom of the ocean

00:33:51.520 as deep as he can go anyways there's still light down there and then he makes this amazing

00:33:57.200 like sculpture in the sand it's about eight feet he's this big it's about eight feet across

00:34:03.200 and it kind of looks like you know those rose stained glass windows it's kind of got i mean it's not

00:34:08.960 detailed like that doesn't have images of christ in it you know it's it's it's just made out of

00:34:14.720 waves and eddies in the sand but they're quite deep they're like this deep and they're very symmetrical

00:34:20.240 and the damn thing's almost perfectly round and that fish he goes in there and he picks up like stray

00:34:26.960 shells and stuff with his kind of like a beak and spits them out and he and he does all this by waving his

00:34:33.920 fins and his tail and he looks at his creation and he swims up and he adjusts this part of it and that

00:34:44.160 part of it that's also how he tracks mates and so the idea that that it's that it's that hierarchical

00:34:52.800 position based on power is the only regulating factor for the construction of hierarchies that

00:35:01.120 allow access to scarce resources turns out to be quite wrong now even in animals and it's really

00:35:08.560 wrong in people as far as i'm concerned because first of all and this is part of taking the idea

00:35:13.920 of the patriarchal tyranny apart i hate both parts of that phrase i don't like the patriarchal part and i

00:35:20.720 don't like the tyrannical part i don't like the patriarchal part because it isn't obvious to me that

00:35:27.440 human culture is solely the creation of men that seems to me to be somewhat of a sexist

00:35:32.800 presupposition um to begin with because i don't think women were just sitting around doing nothing

00:35:38.080 except being oppressed until 1962 when betty for dan wrote the feminist mystique and all of a sudden

00:35:43.840 they emerged onto the world stage that doesn't strike me as a plausible description of the course of

00:35:49.200 human history and uh the tyranny part is like well this is our culture of the tyranny that's what

00:35:57.120 we're describing it's tyranny compared to what exactly it's like it's not perfect no society is

00:36:04.240 perfect that's for sure every society tends towards blindness and towards stultification towards a certain

00:36:10.400 degree of corruption and a given hierarchy can definitely be taken over by people who only use brute

00:36:17.920 force and power but that's actually a sign of the degeneration of the hierarchy not a signal of

00:36:24.800 its appropriate effectiveness what we do as human beings first of all we don't exactly live in a world

00:36:31.520 where we're competing like animals for a finite set of scarce resources i mean scarce resources can be

00:36:38.480 a problem there are some zero-sum games but we're we're also pretty damn good at coming up with new games

00:36:45.200 with new rewards and new rules and also producing a whole plethora of goods that we didn't have

00:36:50.560 before so it's not a zero-sum game and what that means is we don't have one hierarchy we have many diverse

00:36:59.120 hierarchies and there's many ways that you can climb to the top or hope to climb to the top or at least

00:37:05.360 move slightly upward in many different hierarchies and so i like to take apart the idea of the

00:37:15.040 tyrannical patriarchy by thinking about it in a more high resolution manner and i always think plumbers

00:37:21.280 are a good example you know because plumbers have a hierarchy there's successful plumbers and unsuccessful

00:37:28.240 plumbers and so there's a hierarchy in terms of wealth let's say some plumbers have a whole like

00:37:34.800 sequences of plumbing shops right they become like plumbing magnets and well why would that be it's

00:37:41.200 like well hypothetically they know how to fix pipes that might be like requirement number one but then

00:37:48.960 obviously they know how to hire employees and then they know how to keep them and and reasonably happily

00:37:54.800 because you don't hear very often of sweatshop plumbers being or or plumber slavers who have their

00:38:02.640 plumber employees laboring away in the basement with someone cracking the whip at them you know it's

00:38:07.680 it's usually a fairly what would you say free exchange among a plumber and his and his employees

00:38:15.120 and then generally if you're going to be a plumber and you're you're going to survive for any length of

00:38:20.240 time you also have to treat your customers with a certain degree of decency and respect and honesty you

00:38:25.920 have to do the job you were hired to do for the money you were promised that you promised to charge

00:38:32.880 and then it actually has to work because otherwise people write bad reviews on yelp and so forth and

00:38:38.640 then soon you're not successful and so and then it's pretty obvious that if you hire a plumber

00:38:47.440 you're not doing it to to participate in some sort of power game except perhaps in the most abstract

00:38:53.440 possible way you hire a plumber because well you don't want sewage in your house and that seems

00:38:58.880 important right we could all more or less agree that that's an individual and a collective good

00:39:06.080 and so the plumber is servicing that particular need and then you might phone some people that

00:39:11.920 you know or some contractors you know or whatever and you say well do you know a good plumber you don't

00:39:17.200 say do you know the most powerful plumber in the neighborhood you say do you know a good plumber

00:39:22.320 and then you get a recommendation and the good plumber gets even a little bit more business which

00:39:27.520 puts them even a little higher in the hierarchy of plumbers and you don't have roving bands of

00:39:35.200 tyrannical plumbers linked arm to arm in a patriarchal what would you call phalanx coming to your door

00:39:44.480 insisting that you hire them or else and i would say as ridiculous as that image is our society is

00:39:55.360 composed of many overlapping hierarchies of that type almost all of them based to some degree on

00:40:03.920 competence and usually a competence that we can measure to some degree and that we collectively agree

00:40:10.080 upon is a form of competence i mean sometimes it's arbitrary you know there's a hierarchy of

00:40:16.400 basketball players obviously some can do it professionally and very few tiny tiny percentage

00:40:24.640 of basketball players can do it professionally and then if you take that tiny percentage of

00:40:29.440 basketball players who can do it professionally there's even a tinier percentage who happen to be

00:40:35.200 superstars of the type that can manage a multi-million dollar career over over several

00:40:41.360 years right a vanishingly small proportion of people and it's pretty obvious that being able

00:40:46.800 to bounce a basketball and put it through a hoop is a rather arbitrary skill right i mean it could

00:40:53.280 have been a different game in which case that particular athlete might not have been that good at it but

00:40:59.040 even if we just generate some arbitrary standard of value like basketball which isn't entirely

00:41:04.560 accurate it has to do with athletic prowess and the ability to to hit the target which is a very

00:41:09.840 important thing in life but you get a hierarchy that's produced around something as arbitrary as

00:41:15.280 that instantaneously and no one ever questions that it's just it's it's built into the structure of

00:41:21.440 things that as soon as and and here's the reason for hierarchies this is what's built into the structure of

00:41:26.800 things you have a problem actually have a whole set of them right you need to eat you need to have

00:41:36.640 fresh water you need to have shelter you need to have company you you want some luxury you want some

00:41:42.640 adventure like there are things that and and some of these aren't like strictly necessary they're things

00:41:48.720 you want but a lot of them are necessary if you don't have them you're in pain you're anxious you

00:41:54.400 suffer so you want to address the suffering that's a problem in order to address the suffering you need

00:42:01.680 a solution to the problem what people are going to offer you and what you might offer other people

00:42:07.920 is the possibility of solving a problem you know an individual problem and one that we identify

00:42:13.920 collectively as soon as you admit that there's a problem and that a solution needs to be put in place and

00:42:20.320 someone could offer it you immediately produce a hierarchy of value because it becomes valuable

00:42:25.920 to fulfill that requirement and as soon as you produce that hierarchy you also produce a hierarchy

00:42:32.480 of talent because it turns out that no matter what pursuit you determine to pursue and then implement

00:42:41.360 collectively you will inevitably produce an unequal distribution of talent and instantaneously construct a

00:42:48.240 hierarchy and of course you're going to do that how how else would you do it if it's an important

00:42:56.000 problem like if it's how to design computer chips for example which turns out to be a very difficult

00:43:03.440 thing and you get a hundred people together and you want to design a computer chip the first thing you

00:43:08.560 should do is figure out which of those hundred people actually knows how to design a computer chip

00:43:15.120 and then that's the person that you should put in the forefront of the hierarchy unless you don't want

00:43:21.360 to design a computer chip and it's pretty obvious at that sort of level of technical prowess who's barely

00:43:29.520 able to manage it whatsoever and who is absolutely stellar in comparison and if your company or your project

00:43:38.960 is operating in a let's call it in a in a functional and honest manner and it's pursuing a valuable goal

00:43:48.720 then it organizes itself so the people who are best at pursuing that goal occupy the positions of not

00:43:54.880 power but authority and how else would you do it the alternative is well everyone is the same well

00:44:02.720 that doesn't work because the talent is unequally distributed and it also doesn't work with regards to

00:44:07.360 decision making it's like if you're in a company and you've got a hundred people and maybe you have

00:44:11.680 to make i don't know how many decisions a day more than one that's for sure let's say 50 so you're going

00:44:18.720 to get everybody together all hundred people and they're all going to discuss all 50 options and then

00:44:25.920 what are they going to do they're going to vote or are you going to come to a consensus it's like well

00:44:29.760 voting even then you you have a hierarchy you have the people who won the vote against the people who

00:44:34.800 lost so we do have to come to a universal consensus about every decision in the absence of a hierarchical

00:44:40.960 structure well if you want to drive yourself absolutely stark raving mad then you set up an

00:44:47.680 organization like that and the empirical literature actually suggests quite clearly that people are

00:44:53.280 happier at work more satisfied and less anxious when they're in a functional hierarchy where the lines

00:44:58.800 of authority are clearly delineated now that assumes that people observe that there's some relationship

00:45:05.840 between the hierarchical structure and competence right because that's what validates the hierarchy

00:45:12.080 at least in principle it's competence okay so now having said that i would also say

00:45:21.040 so we need hierarchies then i would say well this can help us understand political ideation to some

00:45:27.280 degree there are differences between people who think in a conservative manner and who think in a

00:45:33.040 liberal left manner there are temperamental differences and some of them have to do with

00:45:38.080 attitude towards hierarchies and some of them have to do with attitude towards borders so the liberal

00:45:42.800 left types are rather skeptical of borders they're skeptical of conceptual borders around words or concepts

00:45:50.000 because they they don't like things to be locked into one place they like a dynamic interplay between

00:45:54.800 ideas because they like new things to be generated and there's real utility in that especially

00:45:59.840 if you're locked in a problem that you cannot solve you need to disintegrate your categorical structures and

00:46:05.840 restructure them so that you can get yourself out of being stuck and move forward so there's real utility in that

00:46:12.240 whereas the where there's the more conservative people they think look we've got these things in their boxes

00:46:16.960 in their nested boxes even and things aren't working too badly so let's not muck about with the

00:46:25.040 categorical structure any more than we have to let's keep the borders between things intact at every level

00:46:32.160 of conceptualization right up to the political itself because the conservative types tend to be more

00:46:39.280 more supportive of the idea of solidity of borders let's say where the liberal types think no we want to make the

00:46:44.800 borders permeable because we want a free flow of goods and ideas and it's like who's right and the answer is

00:46:51.440 well it depends on the circumstances sometimes the border should be tighter and the wall should be higher and

00:46:57.520 sometimes the border should be looser and more ideas should move back and forth it depends on where you are in your

00:47:04.400 culture right if if things are getting too structured and rigid time to release the the borders time to make them more

00:47:12.800 permeable but what if everything's falling apart and everyone's confused it's like well maybe you want

00:47:16.960 to shore up the institutions to some degree and the question is well how the hell do you know when to do

00:47:23.040 what and the answer is by arguing about it and i'm absolutely dead serious about this this is why i think

00:47:31.040 fundamentally why i think that free speech is the canonical freedom and responsibility because if there are

00:47:38.640 these two goods hierarchical structure or borders like i'm using borders as an example at the moment

00:47:46.880 border solidity versus border permeability each of which is advantage advantageous at different stages

00:47:55.440 in cultural development as the years roll by then the only way to decide if you're positioned properly as

00:48:02.480 as a culture on that continuum between those two opposing views is to have it out and that's what we do

00:48:09.280 that's exactly that's what we have elections is the left wingers they have what they say what they have to say it's oh my god

00:48:15.760 they also do the same with hierarchies so the right wing tends to and it's associated with this this idea of maintaining

00:48:22.800 categorical integrity the system is working pretty damn well the way it is and mostly it's based on competence so don't muck about with it

00:48:30.480 it and the left wingers say yeah but it's tilting towards tyranny it's kind of stultified and blind and

00:48:37.360 the people at the bottom don't have as much opportunity to rise to the top as might be good for everyone

00:48:43.760 right and they also criticize even the idea of hierarchy itself because one of the consequences of

00:48:49.120 producing a hierarchy this is an inevitable consequence is that the bulk of the well there's two things

00:48:56.800 if you produce a hierarchy the bulk of the creative work is done by a small minority of people that's

00:49:02.160 the first thing the square root of the number of people who are doing a job do half the work

00:49:06.960 that's the rule that's the Pareto principle and so it's a really it's a killer rule man because it

00:49:11.760 means if you have 10 employees three of them do half the work everyone understands that but if you have

00:49:16.800 a hundred ten of them do half the work and if you have a thousand thirty of them do half the work

00:49:21.920 and so and so that's a killer principle it also explains why large companies tend to collapse

00:49:28.960 right because once you get up to a thousand you've got 970 people who are only doing half the work and

00:49:33.760 30 that are doing the other half and then your company waivers a little bit you know you have a bad

00:49:38.960 quarter and the 30 that are doing half the work think ciao man we'll see you later i've got opportunities

00:49:44.960 elsewhere and then you're left with the 970 people who are only doing half the work that's right

00:49:50.720 instant death spiral and that happens to companies way faster than you think

00:49:56.000 in any case you get this creativity distribution which i just described and that's rough but you

00:50:01.040 also get an income distribution problem that's the same and so that's why it's exactly the same principle

00:50:07.280 so and it isn't necessarily that the creative hard workers are also the ones that get the most income

00:50:12.640 it's not like there's a one-to-one relationship between those things you want it to be close because

00:50:17.680 otherwise your hierarchy isn't functioning worth a damn but it's not going to be identical because

00:50:22.000 no system works that way and people gerrymander the system and sometimes people get paid more than they

00:50:26.960 should and sometimes people get paid less and you know because no system is perfect but in any case

00:50:32.960 one of the consequences of producing hierarchical entities is that a disproportionate amount of the

00:50:39.280 revenue revenue the goods the wealth flow to a tiny minority of people and so that's why you have the

00:50:46.640 richest 13 people have as much money as the bottom i think it's two billion something like that and you

00:50:52.000 have the infamous one percent you know that control the the vast majority of wealth um you're all in

00:51:02.400 that one percent by the way just just so you know uh because all you maybe not all of you but pretty much all of

00:51:09.120 you to be in the top one percent worldwide you need an income of thirty two thousand dollars a year

00:51:14.400 so you know who's in the one percent depends very much on how large you make the population pool and

00:51:23.040 it's a little bit disingenuous i would say to say well let's reduce the geographical locale across which

00:51:33.120 we're calculating comparative incomes until we're poor despite the fact that we're actually not and so

00:51:39.280 that there's a one percent that's way above us and we can assume that they're rich in some pathological

00:51:44.400 manner it's like if they're rich in some pathological manner then so are you they're richer so maybe

00:51:51.920 they're better at it than you in their pathological manner but historically speaking and even in terms

00:51:58.240 of comparison across the world it's definitely you so and and i don't think that that's necessarily such

00:52:05.440 a bad thing in some sense because some people have to be rich first before everybody can be rich at all

00:52:11.840 and you might think well that's a hell of a thing to say but i don't really think it is because

00:52:16.160 if you look at what happens to consumer prices for example you want some gadget like a 55 inch tv

00:52:22.560 it's like what you can get one of those things now for probably 200 pounds they i mean they're they're

00:52:28.000 they're very inexpensive but when they first came out they were like 20 000 pounds or 50 000 pounds

00:52:35.040 right early on 100 000 pounds and so only the rich guy up the street had one well it's a good thing

00:52:42.000 there were some people around that had excess pools of capital because they would have never bought

00:52:46.320 things to begin with and driven the price down so that the rest of us could afford them and so

00:52:50.880 one of the things that's useful about rich people is they can produce a market for really cool things

00:52:56.000 that you get to have a little later and you don't get as much status for it but at least you get the

00:53:01.760 damn thing not something so okay so the right supports hierarchies and and borders and conceptual

00:53:12.480 categories and likes to keep them relatively intact and there's reasons for that and the left says

00:53:18.080 wait a second the categories are too rigid we're not letting information flow the hierarchy is too

00:53:24.240 corrupt and plus there's all these people who are stacking up at the bottom and that's the other

00:53:28.720 thing that happens in hierarchies is that not only does a disproportionate amount of the goods let's

00:53:34.320 say flow to the top but the largest number of people stack up close to the bottom and so then you have

00:53:40.720 this eternal problem of this inequality and that can get so that can get so steep that it actually

00:53:49.680 threatens the stability of the hierarchy itself because one of the things we know is that if inequality

00:53:55.520 steepens too much especially if there's no way of moving from the bottom to the top then the young

00:54:01.520 men that are trapped at the bottom get violent and so even if you're a conservative type one of the

00:54:07.600 things you might think is well we don't want to steep in the damn hierarchy too much and we don't want

00:54:12.320 to restrict access to mobility too much because then the people at the bottom they have nothing to lose

00:54:20.240 and one if you have something the only person that can beat you is the person who has nothing

00:54:26.960 because they have nothing to lose and so you don't want to have too many people around that have

00:54:31.200 nothing if you have something because they don't have anything to lose and so even if you're just selfish

00:54:36.720 capitalist you might think well you know let's keep the painful inequality to to some moderate minimum so

00:54:44.560 that the whole damn thing doesn't destabilize all right part of the reason so so there's a bit of

00:54:50.400 a validation for a left wing and a bit of a validation for a right wing and and even more validation for

00:54:56.800 the idea that you need to communicate across those different political viewpoints and one of the things you

00:55:02.480 might also be interested to know is that those political viewpoints are not entirely but in large part

00:55:09.360 influenced by biological factors so this is a cool thing and it's only been figured out in about the

00:55:14.640 last 15 years so once we got a decent personality model the same models by the way that have been

00:55:20.640 used to show that there are gender differences in personality and that they maximize as societies

00:55:26.400 become more egalitarian same line of research we found that conservatives tend to be high in a

00:55:34.400 trait called conscientiousness and conscientiousness is the second best predictor of socioeconomic success

00:55:41.840 after intelligence it's an important predictor and it's a predictor of marital stability and and

00:55:47.440 life satisfaction and like it's good to be conscientious makes you a little square that's a good way of

00:55:54.640 thinking about it but as a long-term strategy it's a good one orderliness and industriousness and the

00:56:01.440 conservatives are particularly high in orderliness and that seems to be that proclivity to keep

00:56:06.880 things where they're supposed to be right and conservatives orderly types it isn't that they're

00:56:13.120 afraid of disorder exactly that was a theory that was very current among psychologists for a long period

00:56:19.200 of time but it turned out that conservatives are actually less neurotic than liberals they're lower

00:56:24.560 in negative emotion and so the whole fear thing didn't didn't pan out very well but what seems to

00:56:29.840 maybe be the case is that conservative types who are orderly are sensitive to disgust and so that

00:56:36.400 when category boundaries are violated the emotion that they experience is disgust kind of a judgmental

00:56:42.640 disgust and so i found that extremely interesting when i was reading biography of hitler i read this book

00:56:49.760 called hitler's table talk it's a very interesting book it was a collection of his spontaneous speeches

00:56:56.480 diatribes uh diatribes let's say at at mealtimes in the evening for from i think 1939 to 1942 and they

00:57:05.360 were just they were just recorded by by secretaries and so you just got a sense of what hitler thought

00:57:11.760 about everything and he was a very strange person because he was very high in trait openness which

00:57:17.440 actually is a liberal trait he's a very creative person surprisingly enough but he was also extremely

00:57:24.160 orderly and so a devotee of willpower right so he was very proud of his ability for example to stand

00:57:31.760 in the back of a car going through the hordes of people that were worshiping him and to stand like

00:57:36.880 this for like eight hours at a time he saw that as a signal application of will and he was also obsessed

00:57:43.680 with hygiene right he he bathed four times a day for example and a lot of i i learned this as i i took

00:57:51.360 apart what happened as hitler what would you say accelerated his purification strategies

00:58:01.120 so one of the things the germans did right off the bat was to institute public health programs

00:58:06.400 and so they they produced these vans that would go around and do tb screening so they're trying to get

00:58:11.280 rid of tuberculosis seems like a good thing pathogen concern driven by disgust and then the next thing

00:58:18.800 they did was decide well we want to clean up the damn factories too many rats too many mice not enough

00:58:25.200 flowers too much dirt and so they had the germans fumigate the factories to get rid of the vermin they

00:58:32.560 used zyklon zyklon i think a there were two variants one zyklon was used in the death camps and

00:58:39.520 the other was used as a general insecticide pesticide and so that's where that started and so they started

00:58:46.720 to clean up the factories which seemed like an okay thing but then they decided they're also going

00:58:50.880 to clean up the mental institutions and that was starting to push the envelope let's say a little

00:58:56.800 bit too far right and then that just went completely out of hand and if you read what hitler said it's

00:59:03.200 absolutely fascinating because he he regarded the the aryan race as a body that was his central metaphor

00:59:12.160 body that was under assault by pathogens and so that's why he was always talking about purity of

00:59:18.320 blood and so his desire to eradicate wasn't driven by fear it was driven by disgust and it was a

00:59:24.640 consequence of excess orderliness so and you know you can tell that too i mean if you look at look at how

00:59:30.720 the nazis arrayed themselves in in their in their political displays you know at nuremberg for example which

00:59:36.880 was this massive display area huge grounds where all the nazis would gather in perfect squares right

00:59:45.440 absolutely perfect thousands of people lined up in absolute precision and then when they go stepped

00:59:52.720 and marched it was everyone was exactly the same it's orderliness gone mad you know and and orderliness is

01:00:00.160 actually one of the sign of a of a industrialized society and that's one of the things that makes

01:00:06.320 that so terrifying because it also means that part of what drove the germans to for example to their

01:00:12.400 high levels of engineering excellence for which they were absolutely renowned not only in world war ii

01:00:17.440 but certainly even now was that orderliness that that unbelievable orderliness and the thing is it can

01:00:23.200 get seriously out of hand and so that's a fascinating thing to know it was one of the most shocking

01:00:28.800 things i ever stumbled across as a social scientist and really i really found it quite

01:00:34.640 alarming because there's a reason to be orderly and disgust sensitive and the reason to be disgust

01:00:40.160 sensitive is because you want to protect yourself from from from foreign pathogens you have to because

01:00:46.160 you'll die you know and it's certainly the case that many times in human history where cultures came together

01:00:52.080 that had been separated the results were absolutely catastrophic that happened to europe with the bubonic plague

01:00:58.640 for example it happened to the north american indians when the europeans showed up right

01:01:02.800 rife with syphilis and all sorts of other diseases mumps and measles and smallpox right 95 of the native

01:01:10.560 americans died so many of them died that by the time the pilgrims came to the east coast the indians were

01:01:16.800 desperate to have new people because they couldn't even get their crops off so well so that was all very

01:01:23.520 frightening because it showed that what happened in the case of germany was at least in part the

01:01:28.640 elaboration of an instinct that was designed in fact to protect people from from from actual pathogenic

01:01:35.440 pathogenic exposure it just gone too far and of course everything can go too far conservatives are

01:01:42.640 higher in conscientiousness especially orderliness and they're lower in trait openness and openness is

01:01:48.400 the creativity dimension and if you're an open person um you tend to like aesthetics you tend to

01:01:54.160 like philosophy you tend to like movies you tend to like literature you tend to like art you have a sense

01:01:59.440 of it you know and you also are interested in ideas for their own sake and that also makes you someone

01:02:05.440 who you know if someone throws you an idea it'll six or seven ideas will make themselves manifest in your imagination

01:02:12.400 so the boundaries between ideas are more permeable for creative people and so so to be conservative you have to be

01:02:19.440 relatively non-creative and you have to be orderly and to be liberal

01:02:24.480 especially on the left as you move towards the left then orderliness goes down and openness goes up

01:02:29.920 because all you see then is the utility of

01:02:34.240 moving laterally across borders something like that and now that what's so interesting about that is that both of those are

01:02:41.440 extremely useful sets of traits because sometimes you should just do the way things exactly the same

01:02:47.280 way that everyone has always done them for time immemorial it's a hell of a fine strategy if it's

01:02:52.800 already worked keep doing it but sometimes that's fatal and so then you need a creative person who's

01:02:58.640 willing to transgress against the boundaries and generate something new so that you can get out of your

01:03:04.800 now counterproductive box and so it's the same thing with regards to

01:03:10.160 the political dialogue that i described earlier except now it's a dialogue between biological types

01:03:15.680 should we stay the same or should we change we don't know so we better talk about it

01:03:21.760 and so and that's why again free speech is so absolutely necessary because that's the mechanism by which

01:03:27.440 people who truly differ like truly differ can come to some reasonable consensus and keep the whole ship of

01:03:35.440 state relatively on course now

01:03:39.520 the reason that i

01:03:42.320 talked about

01:03:44.880 lobsters in particular with regards to hierarchies is because i was trying to make a criticism

01:03:51.440 i was trying to put forward a criticism of marxism but it was a funny thing because this is in chapter one

01:03:59.360 still it was a criticism of marxism that i was actually trying to make from the leftist perspective

01:04:06.080 so let's say for a minute that you accept this proposition there's going to be hierarchies

01:04:11.520 and they're they're problem solving tech social technologies

01:04:15.440 okay now but they have a problem and the problem is is that the problem of inequality and the problem

01:04:21.600 of dispossession of those at the bottom it's a big problem

01:04:28.080 and maybe you want to do something about that and maybe you should because why not have some

01:04:32.560 compassion for people who are dispossessed especially the case for you know children because

01:04:36.960 it's not obvious maybe you're dispossessed because you've never done a lick of work in your

01:04:40.640 life and you deserve to be barely clinging to the edge of reality because of that you know

01:04:44.640 and i'm not saying that that's the primary reason that people become dispossessed but it is one of

01:04:50.960 them there's many many reasons ill health bad luck god there's there's an endless array of reasons that

01:04:58.240 that can throw you down to the bottom old age can do that um and so can extreme youth and you know

01:05:05.440 it's not necessarily such a good thing that dispossessed children stack up at the bottom because they

01:05:11.200 don't have the opportunities they might need and even if you're just a greedy capitalist well that's

01:05:15.760 kind of foolish because maybe you want those kids to grow up and invent something like new and luxurious

01:05:20.800 that you can have that no one else can have right so so it's it's a fool's game to keep people at the

01:05:27.200 bottom if you can allow them access through their competence and talents to to something approximating

01:05:33.280 the top and so what that means in part is we can agree that something should be done on behalf of

01:05:42.640 the dispossessed and so we can say well there's a valid reason for the existence of the left wing as

01:05:48.960 long as it doesn't go too far just like there's a valid reason for the existence of the right wing if

01:05:54.080 it doesn't go too far and so and but if you're a leftist and you actually care about the dispossessed

01:06:01.920 then you need to understand how hierarchies work and you don't get to be all marxist about it because

01:06:09.360 the problem with marxism as far as i can tell the problem there are many problems with marxism but this

01:06:15.680 is a big one is that it attempts to lay the blame for hierarchical hierarchical dispossession at the

01:06:25.040 feet of the west and capitalism and that's wrong it's a way worse problem than that it's a far worse

01:06:36.560 problem than that so hierarchies are unbelievably ancient and the problem of dispossession therefore

01:06:43.360 equally ancient and the idea that a radical restructuring of society among lines that for

01:06:50.160 example aren't capitalist is somehow going to magically rectify hierarchical inequality that's

01:06:57.360 a fool's errand and we even we know this i would say anthropologically as well you know

01:07:05.760 for example if you study paleolithic grave sites and paleolithic times let's say that's 10 to 25

01:07:12.640 thousand years ago something like that you already see massive evidence for inequality some of the

01:07:19.120 people in the grave sites are buried with a substantial amount of paleolithic treasure often

01:07:25.040 metal you know because you could imagine that metal especially gold silver very hard to come by and a very

01:07:31.840 tiny proportion of paleolithic corpses are buried with almost all the gold and silver and you can't

01:07:39.040 attribute that to the vagaries of capitalism it's a much much deeper problem and then you put that in

01:07:45.040 the context of the entire almost entire animal kingdom where you also see hierarchical structures and you

01:07:51.760 see radical dispossession and radical inequality in the distribution of resources you come to the

01:07:57.520 understanding that this is a far deeper problem than can be rectified by mere

01:08:04.080 criticism of say the west or capitalism this iron law of unequal distributions it applies to all sorts of

01:08:12.800 weird things say so it's not just it's not just animals and people man it's it's stranger than that

01:08:18.480 so a tiny proportion of all the stars in the galaxy have almost all the mass

01:08:25.360 right it's the same with planetary bodies even in the solar system a small number of planets have

01:08:30.240 almost all the mass even though there's lots of planets to those who have more will be given it even

01:08:36.560 works on a cosmic scale it's the same with plant size in the amazon jungle same with the size of cities a tiny

01:08:44.480 proportion of the cities have almost all the people so there's a there's an iron law of distribution

01:08:51.040 here that pareto this pareto his name was an economist originally mapped out and something that marx noted

01:08:57.520 when he said that capital tended to accumulate in the hands of fewer and fewer people but he didn't

01:09:02.160 really understand as we should understand that it was a it was a single example of a much much broader and

01:09:08.480 more complex problem so i could take a second even just to outline the problem and how it works out

01:09:18.880 um here think think about this imagine we did this imagine we give everybody in this room uh

01:09:25.600 ten ten dollars and then you had to play a game with each other and uh this is the game you and you play

01:09:35.120 the game and you're going to sell him you're going to exchange invisible bananas because you don't

01:09:40.080 actually have a banana so you have to use invisible ones and what you do is you flip a coin and if uh

01:09:46.720 if you win then you have to pay a dollar to him and you get the invisible banana and you get to eat it

01:09:52.080 but now you don't have a dollar and so we just have all of you play this game randomly okay and soon

01:09:58.160 what we find is everybody starts out equal because everybody has ten dollars but pretty soon like some

01:10:03.840 people have eight dollars and some people have twelve dollars and then you're in a little bit

01:10:07.760 of trouble because if you have eight dollars you've only got eight good bets left but if you have

01:10:11.520 12 you've got 12 good bets left and then you play a little longer and well as soon some people have

01:10:17.280 eighteen dollars and some people have two and then you play a little longer and some people hit zero

01:10:23.440 and there's a big problem with zero because as soon as you hit zero you don't get to play

01:10:27.680 you're out of the game and then if you keep playing the game you just run it right to the

01:10:33.140 end then everybody stacks up at zero and one person has all the money and you've all experienced that

01:10:37.720 because you've played monopoly right that happens in every monopoly game mostly it's a game of chance

01:10:45.080 and you know that because the same person doesn't always win it doesn't matter that it's just a game

01:10:50.100 of chance what happens is you get a very rapid development of a Pareto distribution everybody

01:10:54.520 stacks up at zero and one person takes everything and and and it's not like our economy is as simple

01:11:01.600 as a monopoly game but it's not a bad low resolution analogy which is actually why we find it somewhat

01:11:08.700 amusing as a game okay so that's all about hierarchies and boundaries and political differences

01:11:16.540 and the reason for free speech and all of that and i'll close with this um the purpose of chapter one

01:11:24.480 was to make those points at least in part that that was the purpose but it was also to set the

01:11:31.700 stage in some sense for the rest of the book because there's a claim in chapter one and the claim is that

01:11:36.540 you should stand up straight with your shoulders back and the critics of my book um who who usually

01:11:43.760 criticize chapter one because well i said before because they hadn't read it but if they have read it

01:11:49.980 that's all they read because there's certainly plenty to object to in the rest of the book um

01:11:55.120 they they seem to assume and maybe this was my own flaw as a writer that i'm trying to make a case that

01:12:03.440 you should use power to be dominant and that's not the case that i'm making at all the case that i'm making

01:12:10.360 is that that's actually a very unstable way of achieving position in a hierarchy especially if it's a

01:12:17.120 competence hierarchy because if it's a competence hierarchy then the best way to attain authority

01:12:23.060 status is to be competent and then the question is well what does it mean to be competent we already

01:12:28.880 kind of talked about that with regards to being a plumber it's like well first of all it might not

01:12:33.160 be such a bad idea to have a skill that you could trade with other people that seems to be kind of

01:12:38.500 pro-social you know it requires a little discipline on your part and makes you useful to other people

01:12:43.500 doesn't seem to be anything particularly wrong with that but that's not enough you also have to

01:12:48.280 be able to trade honestly in continual reciprocal interactions right so you have to be a fair player

01:12:55.800 let's say and and it i think there's plenty of evidence that the most stable way of positioning

01:13:00.600 yourself properly in the long term in a reasonable hierarchy is actually to be a fair player i think

01:13:07.320 there's an echo of that when you tell your children it doesn't matter whether you win or lose it

01:13:11.120 matters how you play the game because what you're actually telling your children is don't sacrifice

01:13:17.160 the opportunity to be a major player in a series of games for the opportunity to win a single game

01:13:25.240 it's very wise advice because really what you're telling your kids is

01:13:29.000 it doesn't matter if you win this game it matters if people bloody well want to play with you

01:13:34.820 right right now so now you know that when you tell your kid the next time it doesn't matter

01:13:41.020 whether you win or lose it matters how you play the game and they look at you like they have no

01:13:45.380 idea what you're talking about you can tell them you want to be invited to play as many games as you

01:13:50.720 possibly can and the way you do that is that you play fair you play reciprocally and so that's

01:13:57.020 predicated also on a certain kind of ethic you know and that was the ethic that well i tried to

01:14:02.120 outline that in 12 rules for life like generally but to at least provide the bare bones of that in the

01:14:07.860 beginning chapter there's a certain amount of courage that that requires like a certain amount

01:14:11.920 of of the willingness to open yourself up to the possibility of the world to trust other people

01:14:17.420 for example which is something that you have to do if you're going to engage in reciprocal

01:14:21.320 interactions with them you have to extend your hand in trust even if you've been bitten a few times

01:14:26.860 you know you don't stop petting dogs because a couple of dogs bit you it just deprives you of the

01:14:32.180 pleasure of having some some interactions with dogs and it's the same with human beings you've been

01:14:37.680 bit a couple of times no doubt but you still extend your hand in trust and you hope you can start to

01:14:42.680 establish a reciprocal relationship and if you have some skills and you're good at establishing a

01:14:47.540 reciprocal relationship and you play fair and you have the courage that's necessary to do that

01:14:52.340 and to take on important problems and to solve them which is part of i would say adopting a proper

01:14:59.680 stance in the world which i tried to portray metaphorically as standing up straight with your

01:15:05.700 shoulders back then you have the opportunity to take your place properly in a hierarchy and also

01:15:11.900 to ensure that it functions optimally and maybe it's even the case that if you do that particularly

01:15:16.880 well you'll generate enough wealth so that the people who are dispossessed at the bottom won't fall

01:15:22.740 completely off the edge of the planet and that you can set up the situation so that you can

01:15:27.760 provide the means by which people can move up the hierarchy if they have the talent and ability

01:15:34.100 and if they don't to provide them with other opportunities which is something that people

01:15:38.240 are also quite good at if you can't play basketball maybe you can play chess you know we've got many

01:15:44.560 games that people can participate in and so hopefully at least to some degree everyone has the

01:15:51.580 possibility of finding a place now i know that that's not entirely true and that some people

01:15:56.580 labor under so many sets of restrictions that they're pretty much impaired in relationship to

01:16:02.920 any conceivable game and something has to be done to to stop the suffering that's associated with that

01:16:10.680 i mean we can agree on that but that doesn't mean that that doesn't mean that our culture is

01:16:16.420 fundamentally a patriarchal tyranny and it doesn't mean that the fundamentally the fundamental way that you

01:16:22.640 consort yourself for example if your male is through power and it doesn't mean that the proper or even

01:16:28.400 most common route to authority and position in our highly functional hierarchies is tyrann is the

01:16:35.320 tyrannical expression of arbitrary domination i don't buy any of that i don't think it's valid

01:16:41.260 biologically i don't think it's valid sociologically i don't think it's valid anthropologically i think it's

01:16:46.620 a very narrow and motivated viewpoint and i think it's a very very hard on people and so i would say

01:16:53.200 instead as i did in chapter one that better to adopt a stance on the world where you stand up straight

01:17:00.140 with your shoulders back and open yourself up to the possibility of interacting with each other

01:17:05.100 and acting appropriately in the world and take your proper position in a hierarchy of competence in that

01:17:11.820 manner and keep everything moving forward in the proper way so thank you very much

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01:20:14.500 that's shopify.com slash jbp all right let's dive right into it my friend i i love this first

01:20:22.900 question and i don't know how we have not gotten it before how strictly do you adhere to the 12 rules

01:20:30.220 turn just to go through them

01:20:38.180 well you know i when i wrote the original series of rules there were 42 of them um on and i i published

01:20:49.780 them on a site called quora and they became very popular and you know i wrote down things that i felt

01:20:56.660 that were were true and also practical and valid and they were maxims let's say that i had attempted to

01:21:07.900 abide by um mostly i think because i decided that bringing excess misery on myself and my family was

01:21:19.900 probably a rather counterproductive strategy and so i think i abide by them

01:21:26.940 as well as i am able to

01:21:32.780 and hopefully as i practice i get slightly better

01:21:37.660 you know moment by moment day by day at doing so

01:21:43.600 and

01:21:44.680 and

01:21:44.700 everyone makes mistakes that's for sure

01:21:49.360 um but by and large

01:21:53.400 like i said i'm not interested in any more misery than necessary i'm hoping so i try to

01:22:02.200 live a

01:22:03.600 straight but not too narrow life

01:22:08.620 that's some serious silence right there

01:22:15.500 do you believe that finding a romantic partner for life is a human necessity

01:22:26.460 well it's obviously not a necessity because people swap romantic partners quite frequently

01:22:33.460 um so you know you don't die when you do it

01:22:38.840 um

01:22:39.840 although sometimes people wish they would

01:22:43.620 sometimes they wish the person who departed would die too

01:22:48.300 so

01:22:50.440 but i do like humans are a pair bonding species that's quite clear

01:22:55.760 and there's some variation between individuals in that proclivity

01:22:59.580 you know i i think

01:23:03.180 the biological reason for that is that

01:23:06.580 there's a variety of them but

01:23:09.420 because our children are dependent for so long

01:23:12.400 they're just

01:23:14.200 too much for one person

01:23:16.340 and so

01:23:17.220 in order for us to survive

01:23:19.480 men had to become

01:23:21.500 quite domesticated

01:23:23.300 and quite maternal

01:23:25.300 and

01:23:26.220 that's made us

01:23:27.920 all

01:23:28.840 susceptible to

01:23:30.460 extremely

01:23:31.800 tight bonds

01:23:33.240 you know one of the things that's quite interesting

01:23:35.720 the circuit that bonds you

01:23:38.220 circuit

01:23:38.880 we don't have circuits

01:23:39.960 but it's not a bad shorthand

01:23:41.500 the circuit that bonds you to your partner

01:23:45.240 is

01:23:47.000 the

01:23:48.080 adult

01:23:49.260 remnant

01:23:50.400 or the adult continuation

01:23:52.940 of the same circuit that bonds mother to infant

01:23:55.860 and you can tell that

01:23:58.140 by the language that people use when they

01:24:00.660 when they talk

01:24:02.040 fondly

01:24:04.780 of the romantic partners

01:24:06.840 you know they use baby for example

01:24:09.760 and

01:24:10.080 they use the same terms of endearment for their romantic partner

01:24:13.440 that they might for a very young child

01:24:15.280 it's the same underlying

01:24:17.340 circuitry

01:24:18.540 it's part of the care circuit

01:24:20.800 it was outlined very nicely by a

01:24:23.360 neuroscientist named

01:24:24.560 Yach Panksepp

01:24:25.680 if you're interested in that

01:24:27.460 he wrote a great book called

01:24:29.140 Affective Neuroscience

01:24:30.540 which is on my reading list

01:24:31.840 which is on my website

01:24:32.920 and it's

01:24:33.420 it's actually

01:24:34.220 like it's a serious text

01:24:35.880 but it's actually very readable

01:24:37.260 it's

01:24:37.680 it's accessible to

01:24:39.360 I would say it's accessible to

01:24:41.280 committed lay people

01:24:43.420 you know who don't have expertise in that area

01:24:45.360 and it's a really wonderful

01:24:46.760 wander through the

01:24:48.220 biology of love

01:24:50.320 and pair bonding

01:24:51.160 and so

01:24:52.260 so that's sort of on the biological end

01:24:54.340 we've got the

01:24:55.160 we've got the

01:24:56.140 the nature for it

01:24:58.100 but then on the

01:25:00.780 spiritual end

01:25:02.160 you know most societies have attempted to

01:25:04.980 sacralize

01:25:06.100 instinct

01:25:07.400 and to

01:25:08.300 to make it cultural and psychological

01:25:10.840 as well as biological

01:25:12.000 and so we do that with

01:25:13.380 with marriage

01:25:14.800 and we

01:25:15.700 we make the claim

01:25:16.860 that perhaps

01:25:17.620 it's better

01:25:18.360 all things considered

01:25:20.200 to

01:25:21.460 ally yourself

01:25:22.820 with someone

01:25:23.420 in some permanent sense

01:25:25.020 it

01:25:25.260 disciplines you

01:25:26.980 it

01:25:28.140 provides you with someone

01:25:29.540 to depend on

01:25:30.480 in sickness

01:25:31.040 and in health

01:25:32.100 which is a very useful thing

01:25:34.000 and it can help you

01:25:36.680 by the

01:25:39.460 like a

01:25:40.360 good marriage

01:25:41.300 is sort of like

01:25:41.960 an endless

01:25:42.800 wrestling match

01:25:43.920 and

01:25:44.920 because you

01:25:45.500 you want someone

01:25:46.220 to contend with

01:25:47.100 right

01:25:47.400 it isn't that people

01:25:49.560 are looking necessarily

01:25:50.600 for ease and comfort

01:25:51.860 with their partners

01:25:52.720 they often wander

01:25:54.120 apart from one another

01:25:55.140 if things get too easy

01:25:56.320 and comfortable

01:25:56.860 you want someone

01:25:57.960 you can wrestle with

01:25:59.000 and contend with

01:25:59.900 and the reason for that

01:26:01.220 in part is because

01:26:02.120 there's development

01:26:03.140 in that

01:26:03.880 you know

01:26:04.700 to have that optimal

01:26:06.100 challenge

01:26:06.600 and hopefully

01:26:07.700 what happens

01:26:08.360 if you ally yourself

01:26:09.620 with someone

01:26:10.120 is

01:26:10.380 well you have someone

01:26:11.640 that can continually

01:26:13.040 challenge you

01:26:13.800 to

01:26:14.060 to be better

01:26:15.820 than you are

01:26:16.560 so that you together

01:26:17.940 can be better

01:26:18.580 than you were

01:26:19.300 and then you have

01:26:20.480 someone to

01:26:21.060 like you know

01:26:21.760 you have the story

01:26:22.600 of your life

01:26:23.280 and it can get

01:26:23.900 kind of frayed

01:26:24.680 but

01:26:24.920 you want it

01:26:25.880 to be continuous

01:26:26.620 and you want it

01:26:27.340 to be aiming

01:26:27.820 at something

01:26:28.380 and

01:26:28.640 you want it

01:26:29.520 to have some

01:26:30.220 tensile strength

01:26:32.120 and some resilience

01:26:32.960 and

01:26:33.280 and if you can

01:26:34.900 wind that together

01:26:35.720 with someone else's story

01:26:37.100 then

01:26:37.340 you have a

01:26:38.420 you have a

01:26:39.660 you have a cable

01:26:41.180 that

01:26:41.480 the cable

01:26:42.960 that makes up

01:26:43.600 your life

01:26:44.120 to stretch a metaphor

01:26:45.240 I suppose

01:26:45.920 is

01:26:47.140 it can withstand

01:26:49.080 more tension

01:26:49.900 it can withstand

01:26:50.760 more

01:26:51.160 more trouble

01:26:52.560 and so

01:26:54.140 there are

01:26:55.520 and it gives a depth

01:26:57.160 to your life

01:26:57.900 you know

01:26:58.180 this is why

01:26:58.760 you know

01:26:59.740 people think of marriage

01:27:00.720 as a trap

01:27:01.540 especially when they're young

01:27:03.200 sometimes when they're older

01:27:05.440 they think about it

01:27:08.000 as old fashioned

01:27:08.880 they think about it

01:27:09.680 as just a piece of paper

01:27:10.980 which is an unbelievably

01:27:11.960 shallow way of looking at it

01:27:13.540 if anyone ever says that to you

01:27:15.240 you should just slap them

01:27:16.240 right

01:27:16.520 right then and there

01:27:17.340 that's nothing but a piece of paper

01:27:19.320 it's like

01:27:19.560 whap

01:27:20.120 it's like

01:27:21.160 so

01:27:21.540 so

01:27:22.080 because it gives a profund

01:27:24.380 don't tweet that

01:27:25.760 yeah

01:27:26.280 I haven't been in trouble

01:27:30.780 for like 10 minutes

01:27:31.740 so

01:27:32.200 yeah

01:27:33.440 so

01:27:33.920 so

01:27:35.040 it gives a profundity

01:27:36.600 to your life

01:27:37.260 you know

01:27:37.560 to

01:27:37.760 to share it

01:27:38.920 with someone

01:27:40.500 over a long period

01:27:41.820 of time

01:27:42.360 it

01:27:43.420 it gives it a gravity

01:27:44.960 and it gives it a reality

01:27:46.280 that it otherwise lacks

01:27:47.720 the fragmented relationships

01:27:50.580 are by necessity

01:27:51.680 superficial

01:27:52.380 and

01:27:52.720 it's

01:27:53.560 it's not that

01:27:54.340 you don't want your life

01:27:55.660 to be superficial

01:27:56.520 because

01:27:57.020 it's

01:27:58.660 superficiality

01:28:01.380 is no defense

01:28:02.180 against pain

01:28:03.000 that's really

01:28:04.400 that's really why

01:28:05.500 and so

01:28:07.080 and it's good for you

01:28:08.020 to care for someone

01:28:09.500 you know

01:28:09.800 it's

01:28:10.380 like one of the things

01:28:11.660 I realized a long time ago

01:28:12.940 was that people don't grow up

01:28:14.140 until they have children

01:28:14.980 of course people who don't have children

01:28:16.720 hate to hear that

01:28:17.700 and

01:28:17.840 you can grow up

01:28:19.540 if you don't have children

01:28:20.540 but it's very difficult

01:28:21.720 because

01:28:22.240 in order to grow up

01:28:23.920 someone has to care

01:28:24.960 you have to care more about

01:28:26.700 someone else

01:28:27.360 than yourself

01:28:28.020 it's like the definition of

01:28:30.240 it's

01:28:31.160 it's not

01:28:31.700 it's a necessary

01:28:32.620 but not sufficient

01:28:33.620 precondition for maturation

01:28:35.060 and you tend not to care

01:28:36.700 for someone

01:28:37.360 more than yourself

01:28:38.580 till you have a child

01:28:39.440 and then it really hits you

01:28:40.620 it's like

01:28:41.000 no no no

01:28:41.580 it's like

01:28:42.020 this person is more important

01:28:43.960 than me

01:28:44.480 but you can get some of that

01:28:46.220 with a

01:28:46.680 with someone that you're committed to

01:28:48.400 you know

01:28:48.720 and

01:28:48.920 I think that

01:28:49.960 attempt to

01:28:51.020 pay attention

01:28:52.340 to the other person

01:28:53.140 and

01:28:53.340 try to ensure

01:28:54.380 that their life

01:28:55.100 isn't any more wretched

01:28:56.240 and miserable

01:28:56.860 than necessary

01:28:57.780 is actually

01:28:58.760 it's good for your

01:28:59.700 spiritual development

01:29:00.700 and

01:29:01.060 you know

01:29:01.700 that's an old fashioned idea

01:29:03.100 spiritual development

01:29:04.180 but

01:29:04.500 it's not much different

01:29:05.740 than psychological development

01:29:07.180 and

01:29:07.520 to develop your spirit

01:29:09.180 is to become a

01:29:10.380 a more

01:29:11.520 potent

01:29:12.420 force

01:29:13.120 for good

01:29:13.740 in the world

01:29:14.340 and there isn't anything

01:29:15.220 better than that

01:29:16.020 and you can definitely

01:29:16.860 practice that

01:29:18.100 with someone

01:29:19.000 to whom you've

01:29:20.000 to whom you've

01:29:21.500 committed yourself to

01:29:23.560 it's a good sacrifice too

01:29:25.680 it's like

01:29:26.200 and sacrifice

01:29:27.600 is necessary

01:29:28.640 it

01:29:29.100 it marks things out

01:29:30.980 as important

01:29:31.580 and

01:29:32.780 it's

01:29:33.460 it's also something

01:29:34.280 to have someone

01:29:34.960 do that for you

01:29:35.840 it's like

01:29:36.300 I've decided

01:29:37.160 that you're so important

01:29:38.180 that I'm not going to

01:29:39.480 have a relationship

01:29:41.220 of this depth

01:29:42.380 with anyone else

01:29:43.260 it's like

01:29:43.660 oh well

01:29:44.160 you know

01:29:44.520 that's kind of

01:29:45.380 it's kind of like

01:29:46.260 a compliment

01:29:46.820 that

01:29:47.280 you know

01:29:48.120 and

01:29:48.340 and

01:29:48.740 it is an affirmation

01:29:50.480 of fundamental value

01:29:51.840 and

01:29:52.100 you can use an affirmation

01:29:53.680 of fundamental value

01:29:54.740 when you're surrounded

01:29:56.020 by all the doubts

01:29:57.420 that you accumulate

01:29:58.460 about yourself

01:29:59.360 you know

01:29:59.720 it's interesting

01:30:01.740 my

01:30:02.040 my wife and I

01:30:03.800 had a conversation

01:30:04.600 just a little while ago

01:30:05.560 and

01:30:05.740 I told her

01:30:06.720 I couldn't believe

01:30:07.880 how much trouble

01:30:09.460 she's put up with

01:30:10.500 in the last two years

01:30:12.600 I thought

01:30:12.980 because she's just been

01:30:13.880 a complete bloody rock

01:30:15.560 about it

01:30:16.040 you know

01:30:16.360 and

01:30:17.180 has been there

01:30:18.000 really

01:30:18.400 every step of the way

01:30:19.620 and

01:30:20.560 and so I've

01:30:21.600 and it was

01:30:22.360 some of it was

01:30:22.980 absolutely

01:30:23.800 bloody brutal

01:30:24.740 because it was a combination

01:30:25.860 of

01:30:26.340 extreme social pressure

01:30:28.260 and

01:30:28.660 extreme instability

01:30:30.020 of

01:30:30.540 future

01:30:31.160 and

01:30:31.740 really bad health

01:30:33.240 like all at once

01:30:34.360 and

01:30:35.160 and for a long time too

01:30:36.920 and I said

01:30:38.180 Jesus

01:30:38.520 I'm really

01:30:39.140 impressed

01:30:39.820 that you managed

01:30:40.380 to put up with this

01:30:40.980 I can't

01:30:41.380 I can't

01:30:42.040 believe you could do it

01:30:42.920 she said

01:30:43.380 well

01:30:43.580 I'm equally happy

01:30:45.240 that now that you have

01:30:46.260 all the opportunities

01:30:47.080 that you have

01:30:47.880 that you've chosen

01:30:48.660 to stay with me

01:30:49.600 and

01:30:50.320 it was really

01:30:51.060 it was really good

01:30:52.060 conversation

01:30:52.740 because

01:30:53.220 I was really grateful

01:30:54.760 that she

01:30:55.360 had stuck it out

01:30:56.980 and

01:30:57.540 she was really happy

01:30:59.000 that

01:30:59.300 you know

01:30:59.960 our bond had lasted

01:31:01.280 in the other direction

01:31:02.300 and so

01:31:02.700 we

01:31:03.360 kind of concluded

01:31:04.460 that two sorry

01:31:05.300 sons of bitches

01:31:06.080 like us

01:31:06.600 were pretty damn lucky

01:31:07.580 that we had each other

01:31:08.600 and that's a good

01:31:09.700 that's a good thing

01:31:10.940 to reflect on

01:31:11.760 when you're

01:31:12.220 when you start

01:31:14.500 to think about

01:31:15.000 how alone

01:31:15.500 and isolated

01:31:15.980 you could be

01:31:16.880 so

01:31:17.820 yeah

01:31:19.440 Tammy's here

01:31:21.220 somewhere

01:31:21.540 by the way

01:31:21.940 give her a round

01:31:22.480 of applause

01:31:23.000 for sticking up

01:31:24.100 with this guy

01:31:24.740 are you managing

01:31:34.400 any fun

01:31:35.040 on the tour

01:31:35.700 no

01:31:39.240 not

01:31:40.980 not much

01:31:41.820 but

01:31:42.380 but

01:31:42.720 but I would say

01:31:43.840 having said that

01:31:44.960 I mean

01:31:45.280 like

01:31:46.000 I'd like to put that

01:31:46.880 in context

01:31:47.620 I mean

01:31:48.040 first of all

01:31:49.160 when

01:31:49.840 when Tammy and I

01:31:50.820 decided to do this tour

01:31:52.200 although we didn't realize

01:31:53.260 it was going to be

01:31:53.920 quite so extensive

01:31:54.780 we

01:31:55.540 we talked this through

01:31:56.620 like this was not

01:31:57.720 fun

01:31:58.320 that wasn't the point

01:31:59.940 we knew that it was

01:32:01.060 going to be

01:32:01.760 very

01:32:02.400 very

01:32:03.520 structured

01:32:04.740 and strict

01:32:05.580 because we're

01:32:06.400 in a different city

01:32:07.440 well often every day

01:32:09.000 a different country

01:32:10.120 and

01:32:11.160 and there's no messing about

01:32:13.600 there's no drinking

01:32:14.880 there's no

01:32:16.040 there's no

01:32:17.180 there's no mistakes

01:32:18.900 because

01:32:20.080 we can't afford

01:32:21.700 mistakes

01:32:22.380 like

01:32:22.720 I have to be at the theater

01:32:24.320 on time

01:32:24.720 I have to think about

01:32:25.820 what I'm going to say

01:32:26.720 I have a

01:32:27.360 moral obligation

01:32:28.580 to my audience

01:32:29.520 so

01:32:30.360 it's

01:32:31.040 and it's an amazing

01:32:32.640 and remarkable

01:32:33.760 privilege and opportunity

01:32:35.500 to be able to do this

01:32:36.980 and so

01:32:37.460 so fun was

01:32:39.500 not on the table

01:32:41.000 now

01:32:41.300 we also agreed

01:32:42.720 that you know

01:32:43.320 if we could take

01:32:44.100 an hour to go for a walk

01:32:45.460 and go see something cool

01:32:46.600 and see a bit of the city

01:32:47.800 and

01:32:48.060 and take a break

01:32:49.180 when the opportunity arose

01:32:50.700 that we were definitely

01:32:51.500 going to do that

01:32:52.320 and we have

01:32:53.340 and that's great

01:32:54.960 and

01:32:55.240 there's no complaints

01:32:56.420 in this

01:32:56.840 but

01:32:57.100 we have

01:32:58.880 there's time for fun

01:33:00.640 this isn't the time

01:33:03.440 for fun

01:33:03.920 but

01:33:04.480 this is better

01:33:05.400 than fun

01:33:05.980 so

01:33:07.700 you know

01:33:08.380 this is such a

01:33:09.360 ridiculous

01:33:10.060 unlikely

01:33:11.120 remarkable

01:33:12.540 opportunity

01:33:13.380 that you have to be

01:33:14.820 an absolute

01:33:15.360 damn fool

01:33:16.500 to squander it

01:33:17.540 in any possible way

01:33:19.080 and so

01:33:19.520 we both decided

01:33:20.820 right at the beginning

01:33:21.780 that we were like

01:33:22.860 100%

01:33:24.320 close as 100%

01:33:25.620 as we could manage

01:33:26.460 dedicated

01:33:27.400 just to doing this right

01:33:29.660 and like we've got

01:33:30.840 a good crew

01:33:31.460 Dave has been

01:33:32.140 unbelievably reliable

01:33:33.360 and helpful

01:33:33.900 and

01:33:34.260 and I have a great

01:33:35.440 stage manager

01:33:36.280 John

01:33:36.760 who did the voice of God

01:33:38.340 and he's unflappable

01:33:39.720 and

01:33:40.080 when problems arise

01:33:41.660 he solves them

01:33:43.480 with no resentment

01:33:44.400 he's a very helpful person

01:33:45.820 and

01:33:46.560 you know

01:33:47.320 we've had people

01:33:48.180 along on the crew

01:33:49.180 from time to time

01:33:50.720 who weren't

01:33:52.140 right

01:33:53.500 centered

01:33:54.780 on what we were doing

01:33:55.740 and we just

01:33:56.280 pulled away from them

01:33:57.160 right away

01:33:57.600 because there's no

01:33:58.540 time for mistakes

01:33:59.860 and

01:34:00.260 there's no time

01:34:01.300 for casual fun

01:34:02.660 but it's been

01:34:03.680 an unbelievably

01:34:04.960 remarkable adventure

01:34:06.440 and so

01:34:07.660 that's

01:34:08.980 that's worth

01:34:10.100 the sacrifice

01:34:11.000 of a lot of fun

01:34:12.100 so

01:34:13.000 yeah

01:34:13.840 and you're fun

01:34:15.320 you're funny

01:34:16.020 we have fun

01:34:17.220 I was gonna say

01:34:18.120 I dragged you on stage

01:34:20.420 to a comedy club

01:34:21.280 in Salt Lake City

01:34:22.220 that was fun

01:34:22.880 that's true

01:34:23.420 yeah

01:34:23.960 45 minutes of this guy

01:34:25.580 basically telling jokes

01:34:26.720 it was

01:34:27.140 yeah yeah

01:34:27.600 that was good

01:34:28.200 that was good

01:34:28.820 and we

01:34:29.140 we get to play a little bit

01:34:30.340 you know

01:34:30.660 you

01:34:30.860 you do a nice intro

01:34:32.040 that's kind of comical

01:34:32.980 and we get to play a bit

01:34:34.000 now and then

01:34:34.500 with the Q&A's

01:34:35.380 and

01:34:35.540 kind of comical

01:34:36.880 thanks dad

01:34:37.680 guess all

01:34:39.720 all right

01:34:46.120 I'll take it

01:34:46.860 fine

01:34:47.360 what will you write

01:34:51.700 your next book about

01:34:52.700 well I've already

01:34:56.000 written about

01:34:56.680 I've actually written

01:34:57.860 three quarters

01:34:58.580 of about three

01:34:59.440 or four books

01:35:00.300 now that are all

01:35:01.040 sitting sort of

01:35:02.380 in their unfinished

01:35:03.300 form

01:35:03.840 and so

01:35:04.880 I think I'm going

01:35:05.580 to do a book

01:35:06.260 of Q&A's

01:35:07.480 because I have

01:35:08.740 collected a lot

01:35:10.120 of them

01:35:10.500 and a lot of the

01:35:11.260 questions are really

01:35:12.000 good

01:35:12.260 and some of the

01:35:12.860 answers are okay

01:35:13.840 too

01:35:14.200 and so

01:35:15.280 I think people

01:35:16.960 would be interested

01:35:17.960 in that

01:35:18.340 because when I do

01:35:19.120 a Q&A on

01:35:20.240 YouTube

01:35:20.940 that's the most

01:35:22.620 those get the

01:35:23.700 fastest views

01:35:24.620 and often the

01:35:25.280 most views

01:35:25.800 of anything I do

01:35:26.660 so

01:35:26.900 so people really

01:35:28.000 like that

01:35:28.660 interestingly enough

01:35:29.900 so I think I'll

01:35:31.120 do a book

01:35:31.740 on Q&A book

01:35:33.360 I have a

01:35:34.460 follow-up book

01:35:35.160 to Maps of

01:35:35.860 Meaning

01:35:36.140 so that's a

01:35:37.160 more serious

01:35:37.760 scholarly work

01:35:38.660 and a more

01:35:39.140 difficult work

01:35:40.220 I've recorded

01:35:43.460 all of these

01:35:44.280 lectures

01:35:44.760 and gone

01:35:46.240 far afield

01:35:47.420 in many of

01:35:48.100 them

01:35:48.240 and I think

01:35:48.780 that there's

01:35:49.220 probably

01:35:49.700 and had them

01:35:51.280 transcribed

01:35:51.860 I think there's

01:35:52.400 another book

01:35:52.920 in that

01:35:53.280 and then

01:35:53.680 the next book

01:35:54.960 is likely

01:35:55.700 a tentative

01:35:59.960 working title

01:36:00.660 is Beyond

01:36:01.320 Mere Order

01:36:02.140 12 More Rules

01:36:03.600 for Life

01:36:04.160 and I said

01:36:05.820 I had written

01:36:06.380 42 rules

01:36:07.360 to begin with

01:36:08.120 you know

01:36:08.460 and each of

01:36:09.260 them seemed

01:36:09.780 to be worthy

01:36:10.860 of further

01:36:11.860 consideration

01:36:12.380 and so

01:36:13.720 I packaged

01:36:15.180 12 together

01:36:16.020 that made

01:36:16.640 a coherent

01:36:17.180 story

01:36:17.760 for the first

01:36:19.160 book

01:36:19.460 but I think

01:36:21.040 that I'm

01:36:21.980 going to do

01:36:22.420 I'm going

01:36:23.820 to take

01:36:24.140 the same

01:36:24.580 tack

01:36:25.240 for the

01:36:26.120 next book

01:36:26.800 there's an

01:36:27.900 established

01:36:28.360 market

01:36:28.840 there's a

01:36:29.280 clear demand

01:36:29.960 I've got

01:36:30.760 more to say

01:36:31.320 about it

01:36:31.740 and I would

01:36:32.200 like to

01:36:32.840 try again

01:36:34.500 and see if

01:36:35.140 I can do

01:36:35.660 something similar

01:36:37.020 but better

01:36:37.800 you know

01:36:38.640 I don't want

01:36:39.620 to just do

01:36:40.200 a rehash

01:36:41.040 obviously

01:36:41.620 so I'm

01:36:43.800 going to try

01:36:44.180 to write

01:36:44.540 another book

01:36:45.280 another 12

01:36:46.080 rules book

01:36:46.720 that's a

01:36:47.680 counterpart

01:36:48.020 to this

01:36:48.660 that is

01:36:50.820 well hopefully

01:36:52.300 at least

01:36:52.720 the same

01:36:53.160 quality

01:36:53.560 but with

01:36:54.340 any luck

01:36:54.780 higher

01:36:55.520 and that

01:36:57.000 should

01:36:57.340 I'm slated

01:36:59.440 to submit

01:37:00.900 that next

01:37:01.560 September

01:37:02.040 but I have

01:37:03.180 a year's

01:37:03.720 worth of

01:37:04.820 grace around

01:37:05.500 that

01:37:05.840 so that's

01:37:06.940 the long

01:37:08.760 term writing

01:37:09.400 plan at the

01:37:10.180 moment

01:37:10.540 so and then

01:37:12.180 not quite

01:37:13.720 there's another

01:37:14.280 one

01:37:14.600 well I also

01:37:16.120 did a set

01:37:16.860 of biblical

01:37:17.320 lectures last

01:37:18.220 year

01:37:18.520 15 of

01:37:19.800 them

01:37:19.920 and they

01:37:20.200 turned out

01:37:20.640 to be

01:37:20.880 very popular

01:37:21.540 and then

01:37:21.960 in the

01:37:22.240 fall

01:37:22.520 next year

01:37:23.180 I'm going

01:37:23.540 to do

01:37:23.900 a sequence

01:37:25.000 of lectures

01:37:25.540 on Exodus

01:37:26.120 and so

01:37:26.600 that'll give

01:37:27.120 me 30

01:37:28.280 20,000

01:37:29.800 word lectures

01:37:30.580 on the

01:37:32.320 first two

01:37:33.040 sections of

01:37:34.680 the biblical

01:37:35.100 corpus

01:37:35.580 that's about

01:37:36.080 600,000

01:37:36.940 words

01:37:37.360 so that's

01:37:37.820 about

01:37:38.100 four books

01:37:39.880 and I could

01:37:40.320 probably winnow

01:37:41.000 that down

01:37:41.620 to one

01:37:42.120 really tight

01:37:42.780 book

01:37:43.160 and I think

01:37:44.000 that might be

01:37:44.580 also useful

01:37:45.400 and challenging

01:37:46.880 and all

01:37:47.320 of that

01:37:47.740 so those

01:37:48.740 are all

01:37:49.240 in the realm

01:37:50.140 of future

01:37:50.800 possibility

01:37:51.560 so

01:37:52.600 this is sort

01:38:01.420 of interesting

01:38:01.800 relative to

01:38:02.420 something

01:38:02.780 that happened

01:38:04.200 to you personally

01:38:04.760 just in the

01:38:05.180 last day or so

01:38:05.880 how would you

01:38:07.020 quantify and

01:38:08.320 qualify a good

01:38:09.600 life and a

01:38:10.620 good death

01:38:11.280 good death

01:38:12.660 well I've

01:38:16.240 thought about

01:38:16.660 that a lot

01:38:17.260 you know I

01:38:18.180 think

01:38:18.720 I wrote about

01:38:19.980 a little bit

01:38:20.460 in 12 rules

01:38:21.180 about Socrates

01:38:22.040 and his

01:38:22.920 choice to

01:38:24.580 die in

01:38:25.220 Athens

01:38:25.780 you know

01:38:27.920 the

01:38:29.160 Athenian

01:38:30.320 elite

01:38:31.720 didn't really

01:38:32.880 like him

01:38:33.380 much because

01:38:33.840 he was a

01:38:34.260 troublemaker

01:38:34.860 I guess

01:38:36.200 someone I can

01:38:36.820 identify with

01:38:37.620 to some

01:38:38.020 degree

01:38:38.400 and they

01:38:41.280 they brought

01:38:43.260 up charges

01:38:43.820 against him

01:38:44.440 said he was

01:38:44.980 corrupting the

01:38:45.620 youth

01:38:45.940 and the

01:38:47.740 punishment for

01:38:48.320 that

01:38:48.640 some of

01:38:49.840 that was

01:38:50.280 there was a

01:38:53.080 religious element

01:38:53.780 to the charge

01:38:54.400 and some of

01:38:55.200 that carried

01:38:56.400 the death

01:38:56.800 penalty

01:38:57.160 so they're

01:38:57.780 going to

01:38:58.000 kill him

01:38:58.380 but they

01:39:00.160 said we're

01:39:00.520 going to

01:39:00.700 take you to

01:39:01.120 trial in

01:39:01.600 six months

01:39:02.280 you know

01:39:03.140 so it

01:39:04.080 really meant

01:39:04.480 get out of

01:39:04.960 town because

01:39:05.620 we're tired

01:39:06.120 of you

01:39:06.500 and everyone

01:39:07.100 knew that

01:39:07.600 including

01:39:08.000 Socrates

01:39:08.500 and he

01:39:09.860 decided

01:39:10.340 he went

01:39:11.900 and meditated

01:39:12.800 on that

01:39:13.360 all his

01:39:13.760 friends were

01:39:14.180 preparing his

01:39:15.120 escape route

01:39:15.820 to a different

01:39:16.880 city

01:39:17.200 and they of

01:39:18.180 course wanted

01:39:18.640 him to live

01:39:19.220 because they

01:39:19.940 thought he was

01:39:20.380 extremely valuable

01:39:21.300 but he went

01:39:22.820 and meditated

01:39:23.940 in some sense

01:39:24.720 he consulted

01:39:25.760 this faculty

01:39:26.600 he called

01:39:27.140 his daemon

01:39:27.840 and you might

01:39:29.700 think about that

01:39:30.360 as your conscience

01:39:31.140 it's the same

01:39:31.920 thing in some

01:39:32.920 sense

01:39:33.320 and Socrates

01:39:34.680 said that

01:39:35.360 the thing that

01:39:36.340 made him

01:39:36.740 difference

01:39:37.260 different from

01:39:38.120 other people

01:39:38.640 was that he

01:39:39.140 always listened

01:39:39.920 to his daemon

01:39:40.780 it didn't tell

01:39:41.860 him what to

01:39:42.340 do

01:39:42.620 it told him

01:39:44.080 what not

01:39:44.560 to do

01:39:45.000 it would warn

01:39:46.320 him if he was

01:39:46.960 about to take

01:39:47.500 a false step

01:39:48.420 and you know

01:39:49.460 that was something

01:39:50.000 I experienced

01:39:50.860 very intently

01:39:51.740 when I was in

01:39:52.380 my early 20s

01:39:53.180 I started to

01:39:53.860 learn that

01:39:55.680 that faculty

01:39:56.660 existed

01:39:57.260 and this was

01:39:58.020 independent

01:39:58.500 of knowing

01:39:59.320 anything about

01:39:59.940 Socrates

01:40:00.400 I learned that

01:40:02.020 I could pay

01:40:03.620 attention

01:40:04.020 and I had

01:40:05.440 a faculty

01:40:06.480 that would

01:40:07.740 note when

01:40:09.420 I was saying

01:40:09.980 something false

01:40:10.760 or when I was

01:40:11.320 about to do

01:40:11.820 something false

01:40:12.520 and then if I

01:40:13.080 paid attention

01:40:13.660 and it was saying

01:40:14.320 that I was doing

01:40:14.880 that all the time

01:40:15.660 which was very

01:40:16.220 disconcerting

01:40:16.900 if I paid

01:40:18.240 attention to it

01:40:19.100 that I could

01:40:19.500 stop doing

01:40:20.360 those things

01:40:21.060 and Socrates

01:40:21.980 said that what

01:40:22.800 made him

01:40:23.180 different from

01:40:23.680 other men

01:40:24.100 was that he

01:40:24.500 always listened

01:40:25.060 to this daemon

01:40:25.760 and so he

01:40:27.820 went out

01:40:28.320 thought about

01:40:29.360 you know

01:40:29.820 getting out

01:40:30.500 of Dodge

01:40:31.280 City

01:40:31.600 and he

01:40:34.320 went to

01:40:34.700 consult his

01:40:35.260 daemon

01:40:35.540 and it

01:40:35.940 said

01:40:36.560 don't run

01:40:37.960 away

01:40:38.180 and he

01:40:40.240 thought

01:40:40.500 what do

01:40:42.020 you mean

01:40:42.300 don't run

01:40:42.720 away

01:40:43.000 what kind

01:40:43.480 of stupid

01:40:44.420 advice is

01:40:45.020 that

01:40:45.260 these people

01:40:45.800 want to

01:40:46.120 kill me

01:40:46.560 they will

01:40:47.760 they're serious

01:40:49.040 and I could

01:40:49.940 just go away

01:40:50.720 and then I

01:40:51.180 wouldn't be

01:40:51.540 dead

01:40:51.860 that's a

01:40:52.460 good outcome

01:40:53.320 but

01:40:54.560 well as I

01:40:56.160 said he'd

01:40:56.700 already decided

01:40:57.480 that he

01:40:58.180 wasn't going

01:40:58.880 to violate

01:40:59.440 this

01:41:00.720 voice

01:41:02.940 so they

01:41:06.040 put him

01:41:06.300 on trial

01:41:06.780 and

01:41:07.940 you could

01:41:09.260 sure see

01:41:09.700 why they

01:41:10.060 killed him

01:41:10.540 it's really

01:41:11.640 interesting to

01:41:12.260 read this

01:41:12.600 it's the

01:41:12.920 apologia

01:41:13.640 of Socrates

01:41:14.800 there's two

01:41:15.380 versions

01:41:15.820 one written

01:41:16.760 by Plato

01:41:17.200 and one

01:41:17.580 written by

01:41:18.020 Xenophon

01:41:18.580 and they're

01:41:18.860 both worth

01:41:19.380 reading

01:41:19.660 because they're

01:41:20.020 a little

01:41:20.220 different

01:41:20.560 they're like

01:41:20.920 court

01:41:21.220 transcripts

01:41:21.900 well that is

01:41:22.320 what they are

01:41:22.780 in some sense

01:41:23.380 and they're

01:41:23.900 a little

01:41:24.080 different

01:41:24.460 so that's

01:41:24.980 kind of

01:41:25.240 cool

01:41:25.500 because it

01:41:26.480 gives you

01:41:26.740 that sense

01:41:27.280 of really

01:41:27.640 being there

01:41:28.200 the first

01:41:29.720 thing Socrates

01:41:30.360 does he's

01:41:31.280 decided he's

01:41:31.880 not afraid

01:41:32.320 of death

01:41:32.860 or if he

01:41:33.800 is he's

01:41:34.140 not afraid

01:41:34.580 enough to

01:41:34.980 run away

01:41:35.580 which is

01:41:36.940 kind of like

01:41:37.340 not being

01:41:37.880 afraid

01:41:38.340 it's not

01:41:38.900 so bad

01:41:39.420 he just

01:41:40.640 rips these

01:41:41.560 people into

01:41:42.220 shreds

01:41:43.060 it's just

01:41:43.520 horrible

01:41:44.160 I mean

01:41:44.560 instead of

01:41:45.580 them being

01:41:46.080 the judges

01:41:47.840 and jury

01:41:48.380 and him

01:41:48.780 being the

01:41:49.200 accused

01:41:49.500 he flips

01:41:49.940 the table

01:41:50.400 and he

01:41:50.660 tells each

01:41:51.140 one of

01:41:51.440 them

01:41:51.540 because he

01:41:51.820 knows them

01:41:52.160 very well

01:41:52.660 just exactly

01:41:53.600 he accuses

01:41:54.500 one of

01:41:54.920 having this

01:41:55.440 wastrel

01:41:56.120 of a son

01:41:56.640 who was

01:41:57.380 definitely

01:41:57.720 going to

01:41:58.260 destroy the

01:41:59.260 entire family

01:42:00.000 enterprise

01:42:00.420 because his

01:42:01.120 father had

01:42:01.660 mistreated him

01:42:02.280 so badly

01:42:02.760 because he

01:42:03.160 was such a

01:42:03.660 terrible human

01:42:04.360 being and he

01:42:04.940 just lays it

01:42:06.020 out in painful

01:42:06.820 detail and you

01:42:08.040 think god it's

01:42:09.080 no wonder they

01:42:09.600 wanted to get

01:42:10.060 rid of you

01:42:10.720 man you could

01:42:11.960 see what was

01:42:13.000 happening and

01:42:13.660 you'd say it

01:42:14.560 but anyways

01:42:16.040 Socrates comes up

01:42:18.280 with an explanation

01:42:19.080 for why he

01:42:19.820 decided that his

01:42:21.320 damon must be

01:42:22.240 right because it

01:42:22.860 was always right

01:42:23.600 it's like how

01:42:24.260 could it be right

01:42:24.840 about me dying

01:42:25.680 and he thought

01:42:26.060 well you know

01:42:27.800 I've had a pretty

01:42:29.580 good life

01:42:30.240 it's been full

01:42:31.980 people have

01:42:33.320 revered me

01:42:34.820 and I've had

01:42:37.640 very many

01:42:38.180 valuable relationships

01:42:39.160 and it's been a

01:42:40.620 full life you

01:42:41.560 know and soon

01:42:43.220 I'm going to be

01:42:43.860 old because he

01:42:44.800 was getting old

01:42:45.480 and maybe I'll

01:42:46.480 lose my faculties

01:42:47.540 and things will

01:42:48.060 start to fall

01:42:48.720 apart you know

01:42:49.420 what happens

01:42:50.180 when you get

01:42:50.660 really old

01:42:51.260 and maybe I've

01:42:53.900 been offered a

01:42:54.560 gift from the

01:42:55.220 gods that I

01:42:56.320 could be wise

01:42:56.940 enough to take

01:42:57.620 I can bow

01:42:59.120 out faculties

01:43:00.340 intact I can

01:43:01.260 put my house

01:43:01.820 in order before

01:43:03.060 I depart I can

01:43:03.840 say goodbye to

01:43:04.400 all my friends

01:43:05.000 I can have my

01:43:05.740 final words and

01:43:07.260 I can depart

01:43:08.840 with the

01:43:09.620 satisfaction of

01:43:10.500 having lived a

01:43:11.200 complete life and

01:43:12.600 so that's what he

01:43:13.280 did and I thought

01:43:14.740 about that a lot

01:43:15.540 because you know

01:43:16.860 like I'm not that

01:43:17.880 interested in getting

01:43:18.720 old I'd rather

01:43:20.260 maintain my youth

01:43:21.940 and to some degree

01:43:23.140 I do what I can

01:43:24.220 to ensure that

01:43:25.400 and you know

01:43:27.840 you can have

01:43:28.540 now especially

01:43:29.500 people might

01:43:30.160 imagine living

01:43:31.260 for 200 years

01:43:32.720 or 500 years

01:43:33.780 or maybe forever

01:43:34.740 although that I

01:43:35.900 think is beyond

01:43:36.660 anyone's any real

01:43:39.320 possibility but

01:43:40.180 you can imagine

01:43:40.920 extending your life

01:43:41.800 a very long time

01:43:42.820 then I wonder

01:43:45.000 you know I had

01:43:47.840 kids and I

01:43:51.280 don't think I'd

01:43:51.840 have them again

01:43:52.520 I don't mean that

01:43:54.800 I didn't love them

01:43:55.740 and I didn't enjoy

01:43:56.660 it I really did

01:43:57.400 but it's like I

01:43:58.180 did that you know

01:43:58.980 and there's a bunch

01:43:59.460 of things I've

01:43:59.960 already done and

01:44:01.620 they were really

01:44:02.140 worthwhile but it

01:44:02.920 isn't clear to me

01:44:03.520 that I'd want to

01:44:04.180 re-establish a whole

01:44:05.380 new career you know

01:44:06.660 I have sub

01:44:07.280 adventures that take

01:44:08.380 me here and there

01:44:09.080 and like this for

01:44:10.100 example but I

01:44:12.000 don't know if I'd

01:44:12.600 go back to

01:44:13.060 university and do

01:44:13.820 another PhD like

01:44:15.460 there's something

01:44:16.080 about having done

01:44:17.180 something that sort

01:44:18.180 of finishes it you

01:44:19.520 know and I kind of

01:44:21.220 wonder is it

01:44:23.300 possible that if

01:44:24.140 you lived your life

01:44:25.640 completely you could

01:44:26.980 let it go and it

01:44:29.580 seems to me that

01:44:30.300 there's something to

01:44:31.040 that I think it

01:44:34.620 might be I think

01:44:35.840 that might be the

01:44:36.560 way that things are

01:44:37.600 is that if you if

01:44:39.340 you took the

01:44:39.980 advantages that

01:44:40.880 were offered to

01:44:42.120 you if you exploited

01:44:43.700 the opportunities that

01:44:44.920 you had at hand if

01:44:46.480 you made use of the

01:44:47.460 potential that was in

01:44:48.440 front of you you

01:44:49.720 would exhaust yourself

01:44:51.520 in your life and

01:44:53.120 then you'd be done

01:44:53.940 and and and that

01:44:56.380 would be okay and

01:44:58.220 the older I get the

01:45:01.940 more I think that

01:45:02.740 might be true so so

01:45:06.400 that would be a good

01:45:07.200 death I suppose a

01:45:08.340 good death would be

01:45:09.300 what would be

01:45:10.320 attendant on a

01:45:11.320 thoroughly lived life

01:45:12.860 and I mean I

01:45:17.480 can't I can't tell

01:45:18.460 that for sure I've

01:45:19.660 watched people die

01:45:20.580 now older people and

01:45:22.200 you know they are

01:45:25.660 often more often

01:45:28.760 you might think of

01:45:32.660 the opinion that

01:45:36.800 they had their life

01:45:37.640 so maybe that's

01:45:41.780 how it is if

01:45:42.640 you're if you're

01:45:45.700 careful so that

01:45:47.940 would be a good

01:45:48.520 death and I

01:45:50.640 suppose a good life

01:45:51.400 would be preparing

01:45:52.080 for that right

01:45:54.820 all right well I

01:46:06.460 don't think there's

01:46:07.100 any possible way we

01:46:08.560 could top that

01:46:09.280 question so on that

01:46:10.880 note I'm gonna scooch

01:46:12.220 out of the way and

01:46:13.260 make some noise for

01:46:14.020 dr. Jordan Peterson

01:46:14.860 everybody thank you

01:46:16.400 guys very much

01:46:17.140 thank you Mr.

01:46:25.140 Ruben

01:46:25.540 thank you very much

01:46:49.720 everyone it was a genuine

01:46:52.600 pleasure to speak with

01:46:53.760 all of you

01:46:54.320 good night if you

01:47:06.160 found this

01:47:06.500 conversation

01:47:07.000 meaningful you might

01:47:08.080 think about picking up

01:47:08.880 dad's books maps of

01:47:09.960 meaning the architecture

01:47:10.780 of belief or his

01:47:12.020 newer bestseller 12

01:47:13.060 rules for life an

01:47:13.940 antidote to chaos both

01:47:15.300 of these works delve

01:47:16.120 much deeper into the

01:47:17.200 topics covered in the

01:47:18.260 Jordan B.

01:47:18.800 Peterson podcast see

01:47:20.180 jordanbpeterson.com for

01:47:21.720 audio ebook

01:47:22.580 and text links or

01:47:23.880 pick up the books at

01:47:24.580 your favorite book

01:47:25.140 seller I really hope

01:47:26.280 you enjoyed this

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The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - November 10, 2019

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