The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - Dr. Oz - Jordan Peterson's Rules to Live By

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00:00:57.540 Hey everyone, real quick before you skip, I want to talk to you about something serious and important.

00:01:02.640 Dr. Jordan Peterson has created a new series that could be a lifeline for those battling depression and anxiety.

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00:01:18.480 Dr. Peterson offers a unique understanding of why you might be feeling this way in his new series.

00:01:23.580 He provides a roadmap towards healing, showing that while the journey isn't easy,

00:01:28.140 it's absolutely possible to find your way forward.

00:01:31.500 If you're suffering, please know you are not alone.

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00:01:43.620 Let this be the first step towards the brighter future you deserve.

00:01:47.220 Welcome to the Jordan B. Peterson podcast.

00:01:55.940 You can support these podcasts by donating to Dr. Peterson's Patreon,

00:01:59.900 the link to which can be found in the description.

00:02:03.000 Dr. Peterson's self-development programs, self-authoring, can be found at selfauthoring.com.

00:02:08.180 Thank you.

00:02:38.180 He's undeniably one of the greatest intellectual phenomenons of our generation.

00:02:44.340 Dr. Jordan Peterson's work as a clinical psychology professor at the University of Toronto

00:02:48.660 has catapulted him to international fame with arguments that are challenging and changing the way we all think.

00:02:55.900 He has captured the attention of millions, especially of young men, but some young women as well.

00:02:59.900 And many of you, however, have never heard of him,

00:03:01.860 but you will get to know him for the first time through this interview.

00:03:04.780 Today he is here, breaking down his provocative rules for life and the prescription for success that will surprise many of you.

00:03:11.940 Thank you for joining us.

00:03:13.260 Thanks for the invitation.

00:03:14.760 So it is an interesting group of insights that you offer us, and I can enter it in many ways,

00:03:21.340 but let me just start with, for me, perhaps the most obvious,

00:03:24.300 which is what is it that you're saying that's resonating with so many people?

00:03:29.680 What's, what itch are you scratching?

00:03:33.120 I think there's probably two.

00:03:35.120 We've had a long conversation in our culture about the necessity for self-esteem and happiness,

00:03:43.500 and that's not what I'm talking about.

00:03:47.460 I tell my audiences and my readers very straightforwardly that life is difficult and that there's a lot of suffering in it,

00:03:55.640 and that you have to learn how to conduct yourself in the face of that.

00:04:00.780 The problem with the pursuit of happiness is that when life's storms come along,

00:04:06.000 happiness disappears, and then you're left with nothing.

00:04:09.260 And so you need to pursue something that's deeper than happiness.

00:04:12.320 And if happiness comes along, well then, hooray for you.

00:04:15.760 You don't want to despise it because it's fleeting,

00:04:17.820 but it's much better to pursue things that are meaningful than things that make you happy.

00:04:22.620 It's deeper, and it orients you more appropriately,

00:04:26.140 and it keeps you centered in your own life.

00:04:28.480 It makes you more useful for your family and your community.

00:04:31.100 So that's one thing.

00:04:32.320 And it's a relief to young people to know that the baseline conditions of life are difficult,

00:04:38.200 but that you can still prevail.

00:04:39.760 So it's a funny message in some sense, or a strange message,

00:04:42.120 because on the one hand, it's somewhat pessimistic.

00:04:44.460 Now I talk about suffering and malevolence also,

00:04:47.120 but I also emphasize the fact that despite that being the base conditions of existence,

00:04:54.760 people are tough enough to prevail.

00:04:56.560 So that's one element of it.

00:04:58.000 The other element is the necessity of responsibility.

00:05:03.200 So a lot of what people find in life that provides them with a sustaining meaning

00:05:07.800 is a consequence of not the pursuit of rights, or the pursuit of happiness,

00:05:12.160 or the development of self-esteem,

00:05:16.060 but the adoption of responsibility.

00:05:18.600 And the more responsibility, in some sense, the better.

00:05:22.420 Responsibility for yourself,

00:05:24.020 for making sure that your life lays itself out like it should.

00:05:27.140 Responsibility for your family.

00:05:28.760 Responsibility for the community.

00:05:30.480 It's people who take responsibility that are the ones that you admire.

00:05:33.980 And that's the right pathway through life.

00:05:36.380 That's where meaning is to be found.

00:05:37.800 And I think that's probably the crucial issue,

00:05:40.840 is that identification of a profound relationship between responsibility and meaning.

00:05:45.720 And for many of the people that I'm talking with,

00:05:48.540 it seems like that's the first time that that's been articulated for them.

00:05:52.600 So speaking about responsibility and meaning and how to make sense of a world where so many people feel isolated,

00:06:00.340 I'll come back to that.

00:06:01.160 That seems so helpful.

00:06:03.660 And yet you've been a lightning rod in many ways with a lot of harsh comments,

00:06:10.940 especially in the print media.

00:06:12.280 What is it that your critics are arguing?

00:06:14.140 Well, I got embroiled in some political dispute, I would say,

00:06:18.120 in my home front in Canada,

00:06:19.620 when our government introduced some legislation that purported to be about compassion,

00:06:23.880 but which, to my way of thinking, was about compulsion with regards to speech.

00:06:28.920 And so that's tangled me up.

00:06:30.540 But I also think that people aren't necessarily that happy

00:06:33.400 with a message of personal responsibility

00:06:36.360 when they're really interested in the mechanics of social change.

00:06:40.040 Now, my sense is that, well, life is unfair.

00:06:43.340 Social structures are unfair.

00:06:46.140 The arbitrary way that illness is distributed into the population is unfair.

00:06:52.400 But despite that, the best level of analysis for rectifying that,

00:06:57.740 in a practical sense, but also in a psychological sense,

00:07:00.980 is the level of the individual.

00:07:02.740 And so people who think in a collectivist manner

00:07:05.420 or people who are playing identity politics games

00:07:09.640 that insist that your group identity should be your hallmark

00:07:12.540 don't like what I have to say at all.

00:07:14.840 And they have the reasons.

00:07:16.160 I'm not a fan of identity politics types.

00:07:19.400 I think it's a very, very dangerous game,

00:07:21.740 particularly because it makes us tribal.

00:07:24.260 And tribal people are very dangerous. 1.00

00:07:26.420 You know, as we degenerate into our tribal groups,

00:07:30.380 the probability of violence increases, as far as I'm concerned.

00:07:34.060 That's what the anthropological data would suggest as well.

00:07:36.580 So, the collectivist types don't like me very much.

00:07:41.940 You're a clinical psychologist.

00:07:43.500 I mean, it's a challenging profession.

00:07:45.840 You chose it coming out of a rural town in central Canada.

00:07:50.600 How did that advance your life journey?

00:07:52.960 What in your life has inspired you to do what you do now?

00:07:56.440 And especially to take some of the public steps now

00:07:58.920 that are drawing criticism to you, which is always painful.

00:08:01.680 Well, I've always been obsessed with totalitarianism

00:08:05.840 and authoritarian governments,

00:08:07.480 whether they're on the right or the left.

00:08:09.340 For years, decades, really,

00:08:11.640 I spent almost all of my free time

00:08:15.400 thinking about what happened in Nazi Germany

00:08:19.040 and in Russia during the Soviet era,

00:08:23.180 but also in Maoist China.

00:08:24.660 There were other places as well.

00:08:26.160 Trying to understand how it was

00:08:27.860 that we could have got off the rails

00:08:29.340 so absolutely terribly.

00:08:31.980 And I started studying that

00:08:34.000 at the collectivist level, I would say,

00:08:36.940 looking for political reasons or economic reasons.

00:08:39.840 But as I investigated further,

00:08:42.360 those levels of analysis became increasingly...

00:08:47.460 They weren't providing the answers that I wanted.

00:08:51.160 I think partly because I was really interested

00:08:54.340 in the notion that there's something to learn

00:08:58.080 from what happened, say, in Nazi Germany.

00:09:00.220 But there's something to learn at an individual level.

00:09:02.980 That's my estimation.

00:09:04.340 I don't think that there were innocent masses of people

00:09:07.920 led astray by a single malevolent leader.

00:09:10.840 I don't think the fundamental motivations

00:09:12.760 for what happened in Nazi Germany were economic.

00:09:15.580 And I don't think they were in the Soviet Union either.

00:09:18.280 As I read more and more about the situations,

00:09:21.100 I realized that the proclivity of individuals

00:09:24.040 to avoid responsibility and to lie,

00:09:26.920 especially about their own lives

00:09:28.340 and about their own experience,

00:09:30.280 were really the reasons that those systems

00:09:32.260 went so far astray.

00:09:33.560 Now, there were other reasons as well,

00:09:34.900 but those were very important to me

00:09:36.200 because I also thought that

00:09:37.380 the proper lesson in the aftermath

00:09:39.760 of something like Auschwitz

00:09:41.260 is how do I ensure that I live a life

00:09:44.000 such that if I was offered the opportunity

00:09:46.940 to do something terrible by omission

00:09:49.260 or by commission,

00:09:50.200 that I wouldn't do it,

00:09:51.260 that I would have enough strength of character to resist.

00:09:54.360 And so the lessons there for me were psychological.

00:09:57.220 And that taught me an awful lot about,

00:09:59.420 well, the role of the individual.

00:10:00.980 People like Viktor Frankl, for example,

00:10:02.720 who wrote Man's Search for Meaning,

00:10:04.060 which is a perennial classic and a great book,

00:10:06.480 insisted that a large part of the reason

00:10:09.520 that Germany went off the rails so badly

00:10:11.520 was because individual Germans

00:10:13.260 were so willing to falsify their own experience.

00:10:15.520 And Alexander Solzhenitsyn,

00:10:17.100 who wrote the Gulag Archipelago,

00:10:18.880 the best document on what happened in the Soviet Union,

00:10:21.780 also made exactly the same argument.

00:10:23.840 So I got interested in the psychological causes

00:10:27.020 of catastrophic governance, let's say.

00:10:30.160 And that taught me a lot.

00:10:31.440 It taught me about responsibility,

00:10:33.600 about the responsibility of the sovereign individual.

00:10:36.360 And, you know, we have an idea in our culture,

00:10:38.100 it's a very powerful idea,

00:10:39.620 that each of us is of intrinsic value,

00:10:42.720 but that associated with that value

00:10:44.620 is a responsibility.

00:10:45.800 And we have a responsibility, let's say,

00:10:48.740 for our own integrity and for that of our families,

00:10:51.300 but also of the state,

00:10:52.440 because otherwise we wouldn't have

00:10:53.840 the sovereign responsibility and right to vote.

00:10:57.180 Like our whole culture is predicated on the idea

00:10:59.040 that each of us are sufficiently significant

00:11:02.300 so that we can entrust the destiny

00:11:05.380 of the state itself to our decisions.

00:11:07.680 It's like, well, I believe that.

00:11:08.780 And I think that that's a correct idea,

00:11:11.040 which is also why I think that systems

00:11:13.760 that are based on that idea function so well,

00:11:16.740 like our Western systems do.

00:11:18.400 But that's a responsibility that has to be taken

00:11:20.420 with dead seriousness,

00:11:21.820 because it means that the good things

00:11:23.980 that you do in your life are truly good

00:11:25.800 and they matter.

00:11:26.820 They ripple outward way more than you think.

00:11:29.500 But so do the things you do that aren't good,

00:11:31.380 including the acts of deception that you engage in,

00:11:33.960 perhaps above all else,

00:11:35.440 which would include your willingness

00:11:37.300 to evade responsibility

00:11:38.740 or to push it off to someone else

00:11:40.340 or to play the short-term against the long-term.

00:11:45.800 And so, well.

00:11:47.520 Let me unwrap this a little bit,

00:11:48.600 because you're touching on a bunch of themes,

00:11:50.540 and I think they would all benefit us.

00:11:53.160 So first of all, let me say,

00:11:54.280 I appreciate that you actually put some of your thoughts

00:11:55.980 down into two books, two books that I've read.

00:11:58.640 The latter is a best-selling book right now.

00:12:01.080 It's a number four-selling book in the country,

00:12:03.120 12 Rules for Life, Anecdote to Chaos.

00:12:05.420 And I am curious how you put that all together.

00:12:09.980 And let's start off with the basic,

00:12:11.460 which is what's it all about?

00:12:12.240 What's the goal of life,

00:12:13.840 according to some of the more recent pieces

00:12:17.740 you've been writing?

00:12:18.980 I would say that the goal in life

00:12:20.720 is to conduct yourself so that life improves,

00:12:23.860 at least so that undue suffering is forestalled.

00:12:26.960 But more than that,

00:12:27.960 so it's to constrain malevolence and suffering

00:12:31.520 to the degree that that's possible.

00:12:33.340 But then also to work for a positive improvement

00:12:35.340 in things at every level.

00:12:36.860 And that's how you should orient yourself.

00:12:39.040 So I saw something you wrote,

00:12:40.380 actually it's in the book in part as well,

00:12:42.580 is to repeat actions that are worthy.

00:12:45.880 Yes, noble and worthy.

00:12:47.420 Noble and worthy, yes.

00:12:48.520 So you sort of figure out what you should do

00:12:50.120 and then just do it,

00:12:51.020 which I think that's an achievable goal.

00:12:53.340 Most people would think that's laudatory.

00:12:54.820 That takes me to the next part,

00:12:55.700 which is what's the meaning of life?

00:12:57.820 I think the meaning is to be found in that.

00:12:59.600 And as you put things together

00:13:02.400 and as you take responsibility for things,

00:13:05.260 meaning emerges from that.

00:13:07.600 And so it emerges from that

00:13:08.740 the same way it emerges from a symphony,

00:13:10.660 in some sense, you know,

00:13:11.660 because a symphony is composed of layers of patterns

00:13:13.800 and they're all working harmoniously together.

00:13:15.820 And they speak directly to people of meaning,

00:13:18.120 which is why people love music so much.

00:13:19.760 I mean, every form of music does that.

00:13:21.540 And it's a model for proper being,

00:13:23.640 which is the placing of all the different levels of reality

00:13:27.920 into harmonious relationship with one another.

00:13:30.520 And meaning emerges out of that naturally.

00:13:33.260 And meaning is actually an instinct.

00:13:34.860 This is another thing that people don't understand.

00:13:36.820 And it's a case I've been able to make

00:13:38.220 because I know a fair bit about how the brain works.

00:13:42.560 The two, the twin hemispheres of your brain interact

00:13:45.360 to guide you through life,

00:13:47.620 which is a truism in some sense.

00:13:49.700 You use your brain to guide you through life,

00:13:51.580 but your brain does that fundamentally

00:13:53.400 by instilling the proper things that you do

00:13:56.400 with a sense of meaning.

00:13:57.920 And that meaning is,

00:13:59.140 it's not something that's just a surface.

00:14:02.340 It's not on the surface of the world in some sense.

00:14:04.700 It's the deepest instinct that you have.

00:14:06.760 It's associated with a phenomenon

00:14:08.480 that Russian neuropsychologists discovered

00:14:10.800 back in the 1960s called the orienting reflex.

00:14:13.400 And the orienting reflex is what orients you

00:14:15.120 towards things of interest.

00:14:16.640 And that happens unconsciously.

00:14:18.580 And so if something happens around you

00:14:20.340 that's of significance,

00:14:21.700 often something you don't expect,

00:14:23.280 say something somewhat chaotic,

00:14:25.180 you'll orient towards it.

00:14:26.280 And that attracts your attention.

00:14:28.180 And then as you investigate what that is,

00:14:30.240 that's associated with the sense of meaning.

00:14:32.320 And if you put what you're investigating

00:14:34.560 into proper order,

00:14:35.640 then that meaning continues to reveal itself.

00:14:37.880 So you can use meaning as a guide to proper being.

00:14:40.620 But you have to also be very careful

00:14:42.360 to conduct yourself honestly

00:14:43.820 if you're going to do that.

00:14:44.900 Because if you conduct yourself dishonestly,

00:14:47.480 then you pathologize the mechanisms

00:14:49.140 that orient you.

00:14:50.900 So I'm thinking about in my own life

00:14:54.380 how I've tried to apply some of these insights.

00:14:56.980 If I just try to be a little bit better today

00:14:59.040 than I was yesterday,

00:15:00.160 along the lines that you're speaking to,

00:15:02.240 try to create that symphony.

00:15:03.500 But be a little better at it today than yesterday.

00:15:06.100 And like everybody watching right now,

00:15:08.040 not compare myself to somebody else,

00:15:09.680 but rather compare myself to the future version of me.

00:15:12.060 Is that a rational way?

00:15:14.360 That's rule four, right?

00:15:15.340 It's rule four.

00:15:15.840 Compare yourself to who you were yesterday,

00:15:17.620 not to who someone else is today.

00:15:19.420 Well, it's not only appropriate,

00:15:21.900 but I think it's also practical.

00:15:23.560 And one of the things about what I do,

00:15:25.580 including my book,

00:15:26.840 is that I'm always trying to take

00:15:28.780 high-level abstract truths,

00:15:30.920 you know, fundamental truths,

00:15:32.000 and to make them concrete and practical

00:15:34.000 so that you can implement them

00:15:35.320 in your day-to-day life.

00:15:36.480 Because it's the connection

00:15:38.320 between those abstractions

00:15:40.020 and practical action

00:15:41.220 that really cements their meaning

00:15:42.740 and makes them comprehensible.

00:15:44.400 And this idea of incremental improvement

00:15:45.940 is a great one.

00:15:47.260 You know, if there are things about your life

00:15:48.760 that are bothering you,

00:15:49.840 or things about the world

00:15:50.660 that are bothering you,

00:15:51.800 then you want to decompose them

00:15:53.840 into solvable sub-problems.

00:15:55.920 And you do this,

00:15:56.960 if you have a child,

00:15:57.840 this is the sort of thing

00:15:58.700 that you do naturally, right?

00:16:00.000 Because you want to set your child

00:16:01.540 a challenge

00:16:02.220 that's sufficiently challenging

00:16:04.080 to push them forward

00:16:05.580 in their development.

00:16:06.580 So that makes it meaningful

00:16:07.940 for the child.

00:16:08.600 That puts them in the zone

00:16:09.680 of proximal development,

00:16:11.040 which is where proper maturation

00:16:13.500 takes place.

00:16:14.320 They'll find that intrinsically meaningful.

00:16:16.200 You want to make it challenging,

00:16:18.060 but also with a reasonable probability

00:16:20.680 of success.

00:16:21.720 And there's an art to that.

00:16:23.480 So you want to set yourself

00:16:24.500 a task that's difficult,

00:16:25.700 but not so difficult

00:16:26.460 you can't attain it.

00:16:27.640 And then what happens

00:16:28.480 is that you step up improvement

00:16:30.280 across time, incrementally.

00:16:31.920 And there's also a certain element

00:16:33.140 of humility to it, right?

00:16:34.920 Which is,

00:16:35.940 don't bite off more

00:16:36.860 than you can chew, right?

00:16:38.500 Don't set grandiose goals,

00:16:39.980 but incremental improvement

00:16:41.260 will get you

00:16:41.780 a tremendous distance.

00:16:43.900 When you don't do that perfectly,

00:16:45.640 and it's not easy to do,

00:16:46.800 you suffer.

00:16:48.780 And I'm on this stage

00:16:49.740 often said that,

00:16:50.640 you know, pain is inevitable.

00:16:52.220 You're going to have pain.

00:16:53.600 How much suffering

00:16:54.900 comes in that pain,

00:16:55.840 you actually have

00:16:56.380 a fair amount of control over.

00:16:58.020 Can't make it go away,

00:16:59.200 to your point.

00:17:00.000 It's part of life.

00:17:01.500 Your thoughts around suffering

00:17:02.860 that you began to touch on

00:17:04.660 have been incredibly provocative

00:17:06.560 for a lot of people.

00:17:07.500 Wildly debated.

00:17:09.180 I think in part

00:17:09.760 because in our modern world

00:17:10.800 we don't like to acknowledge

00:17:12.040 that kind of suffering

00:17:13.160 can afflict us.

00:17:14.880 We think something's wrong with us

00:17:16.320 if we have that kind of suffering.

00:17:17.340 So how is it productive

00:17:18.240 to focus on suffering

00:17:19.960 the way you do?

00:17:20.880 Well, there is something

00:17:21.720 wrong with us

00:17:22.740 if we're suffering.

00:17:23.580 And there's something wrong

00:17:24.260 with the world

00:17:24.840 because it's an indication

00:17:27.060 that things aren't set

00:17:28.100 in the order

00:17:29.220 they hypothetically could be set

00:17:30.960 if there's undue suffering.

00:17:32.240 And so that is a call to action.

00:17:33.580 And it's a painful call to action.

00:17:36.240 But it's a universal problem.

00:17:39.820 Suffering is built

00:17:40.600 into the structure of existence

00:17:41.880 in some sense.

00:17:42.840 And the fact that you're suffering

00:17:44.040 doesn't mean

00:17:44.760 that there's something

00:17:46.380 isolated about you

00:17:48.700 that's at fault.

00:17:50.100 Right?

00:17:50.340 Which is an important...

00:17:51.340 This is why the doctrine

00:17:52.220 of original sin

00:17:53.000 was actually quite useful.

00:17:54.580 Because everyone makes mistakes

00:17:56.640 and everyone falls short

00:17:58.560 of the glory of God.

00:17:59.860 Speak to original sin

00:18:00.620 if you don't mind.

00:18:01.340 And this is, again,

00:18:02.560 all the monotheistic religions

00:18:03.880 share this

00:18:04.500 but it exists

00:18:04.940 in other traditions as well.

00:18:06.440 Well, it's a way

00:18:09.140 of universalizing

00:18:10.300 everyone's felt sense

00:18:11.580 that they don't live up

00:18:12.540 to their responsibility properly.

00:18:14.180 Because you're not

00:18:14.900 all you could be.

00:18:16.260 And unless you understand

00:18:17.340 that that's everyone's problem,

00:18:19.940 every single person

00:18:21.020 has that issue,

00:18:22.400 then it's easy

00:18:23.040 to become discouraged

00:18:24.060 and crushed by that.

00:18:25.080 And the major advantage

00:18:27.940 I think

00:18:28.400 to making a case

00:18:30.600 very strongly

00:18:31.340 that one of the

00:18:32.840 fundamental realities

00:18:34.320 of life

00:18:34.780 is its suffering

00:18:35.500 is that it's actually

00:18:36.320 a relief to people

00:18:37.280 to hear that.

00:18:38.440 Because they suspect it.

00:18:39.960 Well, they know it.

00:18:41.020 But no one's forthright about it.

00:18:42.700 It's like,

00:18:42.960 yeah, life is suffering.

00:18:44.000 Okay, fine.

00:18:44.680 So where does that leave us?

00:18:45.740 Well, here's where it leaves us.

00:18:46.960 It turns out that

00:18:47.820 even though life is suffering,

00:18:49.940 if you're sufficiently

00:18:51.820 courageous and forthright

00:18:54.660 and honest, let's say,

00:18:55.780 in your approach

00:18:56.620 and you don't shy away,

00:18:58.520 what you'll find is

00:18:59.520 that there's something

00:19:00.240 within you

00:19:00.780 that will respond

00:19:01.600 to the challenge of suffering

00:19:02.880 with the development

00:19:04.000 of ability

00:19:05.200 that will transcend

00:19:06.200 the suffering.

00:19:07.380 So the pessimism is,

00:19:09.140 yeah, well,

00:19:09.900 life is rife with problems

00:19:11.260 at every level.

00:19:12.840 But the upside is

00:19:14.080 if you turn and confront

00:19:15.800 that voluntarily,

00:19:17.220 that you'll find something

00:19:18.280 in yourself

00:19:19.460 that can develop

00:19:20.860 and master that.

00:19:22.240 And so the optimism

00:19:24.260 is nested in the pessimism.

00:19:26.380 And that's extremely helpful

00:19:27.640 to people,

00:19:28.160 especially people

00:19:28.780 who are struggling

00:19:29.320 because they think,

00:19:30.040 oh my God,

00:19:30.560 life is so difficult.

00:19:31.420 I don't know

00:19:31.740 if I can stand this.

00:19:32.620 There must be something

00:19:33.220 wrong with me.

00:19:34.040 Does anybody else

00:19:34.820 feel this way?

00:19:35.480 And you can say,

00:19:36.120 yes, everyone feels that way

00:19:38.200 at some time.

00:19:39.840 But that's,

00:19:40.580 and it is as bad

00:19:41.960 as you think,

00:19:42.580 but you're more

00:19:43.220 than you think you are.

00:19:44.540 You're more

00:19:44.980 than you think you are.

00:19:46.140 And what I really like

00:19:47.260 about this too

00:19:47.820 is it's very much

00:19:48.800 in keeping

00:19:49.260 with the clinical data.

00:19:51.320 So for example,

00:19:52.820 what you do

00:19:53.620 as a clinician,

00:19:54.400 as a clinical psychologist,

00:19:55.460 as a psychiatrist,

00:19:57.000 as any mental health professional

00:20:00.180 who's well trained

00:20:01.060 is if people

00:20:02.160 are afraid of something,

00:20:03.500 afraid of something

00:20:04.460 that's standing

00:20:05.060 in their way

00:20:05.560 as an obstacle,

00:20:06.120 like maybe you're

00:20:07.020 trying to develop

00:20:07.560 your career

00:20:08.040 and you're afraid

00:20:08.860 of public speaking.

00:20:10.220 Well, I could try

00:20:11.380 to calm you down

00:20:12.300 about your fear

00:20:13.100 and protect you

00:20:14.940 from the challenge

00:20:15.900 that would be associated

00:20:16.800 with public speaking.

00:20:17.640 You say,

00:20:17.880 well, you never have

00:20:18.560 to do that.

00:20:19.680 Or I could say,

00:20:20.380 no, no, look,

00:20:21.900 you have to learn

00:20:22.500 to present yourself

00:20:23.420 more effectively

00:20:24.060 in public

00:20:24.540 if you're going

00:20:24.940 to develop your career

00:20:25.780 and you're afraid of it.

00:20:27.260 So let's break down

00:20:28.480 what you're afraid of

00:20:29.520 into 10 steps

00:20:30.860 or 20 steps

00:20:31.760 until we can find

00:20:32.800 a step that's small enough

00:20:33.760 so that you can

00:20:34.280 actually master it.

00:20:35.100 Let's assume

00:20:35.600 that with three years

00:20:36.400 of diligent practice

00:20:37.320 that you could become

00:20:38.460 a competent public speaker,

00:20:40.000 at least one

00:20:40.440 that isn't terrified.

00:20:41.660 With five years,

00:20:42.360 you could become

00:20:42.820 an expert

00:20:43.280 and let's decide

00:20:44.440 how relevant that is

00:20:46.000 to your future prosperity

00:20:47.440 and thriving

00:20:48.060 and then let's assume

00:20:49.420 that if you break it

00:20:51.040 down properly

00:20:51.680 and take it on

00:20:52.440 step by step

00:20:53.180 in this incremental way

00:20:54.200 that we discussed

00:20:54.900 that you'll actually

00:20:55.980 master every single bit

00:20:57.120 of it.

00:20:57.740 And the thing

00:20:58.180 that's cool about that

00:20:59.040 is all the clinical evidence

00:21:00.420 shows it works

00:21:01.200 and not only that,

00:21:02.440 that's actually

00:21:02.960 how you learn in life.

00:21:05.480 When you bring a child

00:21:07.520 to the playground

00:21:08.220 and the child

00:21:08.840 is apprehensive

00:21:09.600 about making new friends,

00:21:10.980 you say, okay, well,

00:21:12.720 look, kiddo,

00:21:14.260 stick around me

00:21:14.980 for a minute or two

00:21:15.680 and just watch

00:21:16.220 what's going on.

00:21:17.180 It's like,

00:21:17.740 and the child will calm down.

00:21:18.880 You say, okay, now,

00:21:19.960 go five feet away.

00:21:21.440 Just go out there

00:21:22.220 a little bit

00:21:22.640 and just see how it goes

00:21:23.720 and stay out there

00:21:24.620 as long as you can

00:21:25.280 and if you need

00:21:25.780 to come back for a hug,

00:21:26.660 then no problem.

00:21:27.680 It's like, so then

00:21:28.240 the child can go out

00:21:29.040 ten feet and they come back.

00:21:30.520 You say, okay, well now,

00:21:31.620 you know, maybe just go over there

00:21:33.240 and watch those kids

00:21:35.020 and the child will go out

00:21:36.340 and then come back.

00:21:37.320 And so that's it.

00:21:38.160 It's the child's going out

00:21:39.640 to where they're afraid

00:21:40.500 seeing that they can master it

00:21:42.440 and then coming back.

00:21:43.380 So this seems so self-evident

00:21:44.600 that I'm left wondering,

00:21:45.880 well, did people know this

00:21:46.880 a hundred years ago?

00:21:47.900 This issue of taking responsibility,

00:21:49.800 which I think is part of the pain

00:21:52.220 that people feel

00:21:53.020 because it's not something

00:21:55.100 that we expect a lot

00:21:56.500 and people don't realize

00:21:57.600 that it seems to help a lot

00:21:58.940 in most scenarios

00:21:59.880 if you sort of own it

00:22:00.720 because you control your destiny.

00:22:02.240 So there's this wisdom

00:22:03.420 we had and forgot.

00:22:04.380 You spoke about original sin.

00:22:05.340 These are stories

00:22:05.940 that are thousands of years old,

00:22:07.240 Adam and Eve, right?

00:22:07.900 These are constructs

00:22:09.900 that are archetypal to us,

00:22:11.740 are fundamental

00:22:12.380 to who our species is

00:22:13.820 and somehow it seems

00:22:14.940 to have slipped from us.

00:22:16.020 Well, you know,

00:22:17.280 knowledge is coded

00:22:18.220 in different ways.

00:22:19.540 So a good example,

00:22:22.000 someone who's a good example

00:22:22.940 acts out for you

00:22:24.260 how you should be.

00:22:25.920 And a good story

00:22:27.000 portrays that dramatically.

00:22:29.040 But an articulated representation

00:22:30.820 tells you exactly why

00:22:32.240 and explains it.

00:22:33.020 And so some of this

00:22:34.480 needs to be more articulated

00:22:35.900 than it has been

00:22:36.980 because we've become detached

00:22:38.700 in some sense

00:22:39.740 from our underlying examples

00:22:41.120 and our stories,

00:22:42.280 partly because they've been

00:22:43.320 criticized so much.

00:22:45.020 So, but I think

00:22:45.980 we're at a point

00:22:46.900 where developing

00:22:48.400 this more articulated knowledge

00:22:49.980 is necessary.

00:22:51.020 But just so I make sure

00:22:52.400 everyone's clear on this,

00:22:53.400 what I'm taking away is

00:22:54.600 it's a balancing act

00:22:56.000 between the rights you deserve

00:22:57.420 and the responsibility

00:22:58.880 that you must take.

00:23:00.140 And if that balances off

00:23:02.060 in society

00:23:02.720 and we do seem to focus

00:23:04.860 a lot on people's rights,

00:23:06.100 which is, you know,

00:23:06.740 instinctive to who we are,

00:23:08.040 but we often don't

00:23:10.040 match it up

00:23:11.200 with the responsibility

00:23:11.740 that comes along with that.

00:23:12.600 Well, which is exactly

00:23:13.420 why I think

00:23:13.960 that what I'm talking about

00:23:15.180 is falling on

00:23:16.160 receptive ears

00:23:16.940 is because you actually

00:23:18.220 cannot have

00:23:19.200 a prolonged discussion

00:23:20.340 of rights

00:23:20.920 without having

00:23:22.320 an equally prolonged

00:23:23.080 discussion of responsibilities

00:23:24.320 for a variety of reasons.

00:23:26.240 First of all,

00:23:27.320 the actual reason

00:23:28.540 that you have rights

00:23:29.520 is so that you can

00:23:30.640 discharge your responsibilities.

00:23:32.480 It's not the other way around.

00:23:34.080 It's like you're granted rights

00:23:35.380 by everyone around you

00:23:36.440 or, no,

00:23:37.680 it's not granted exactly.

00:23:39.840 It's part of the,

00:23:41.300 part of the,

00:23:42.240 the purpose of your rights

00:23:44.000 in some sense

00:23:44.740 is so that you can be

00:23:46.240 given an autonomous space

00:23:48.520 that's protected

00:23:50.020 in which you can manifest

00:23:52.140 what's necessary

00:23:54.140 about you in the world

00:23:55.260 that's a contribution to it.

00:23:56.920 So I have to leave

00:23:58.640 a space for you

00:23:59.760 so that you can make

00:24:00.680 your contribution

00:24:01.200 for yourself

00:24:02.000 so you can take care

00:24:02.720 of yourself

00:24:03.060 so that you can

00:24:03.820 shoulder responsibility

00:24:05.120 for your family

00:24:05.980 and so that you can

00:24:06.820 serve the community

00:24:08.200 the best way

00:24:08.840 that you can.

00:24:09.580 And I don't,

00:24:10.120 I don't want to set up

00:24:10.980 a society

00:24:11.460 that will interfere

00:24:12.540 with that.

00:24:13.960 But then,

00:24:15.080 and then there's

00:24:15.960 the association

00:24:16.580 that we already talked

00:24:17.460 about between

00:24:17.980 responsibility and meaning

00:24:19.620 which is absolutely crucial.

00:24:20.940 and so it's,

00:24:23.020 the responsibility element

00:24:24.220 is more important

00:24:25.100 than the rights element

00:24:25.900 as far as I'm concerned

00:24:26.840 or it certainly is

00:24:27.520 at this point in time.

00:24:28.940 And people know this.

00:24:30.340 They instinctively know it.

00:24:31.860 And yet,

00:24:32.940 the role of the victim

00:24:34.400 seems,

00:24:36.400 which is a painful role

00:24:37.480 to have

00:24:37.960 because something bad

00:24:39.240 happened to you

00:24:39.700 to be a victim.

00:24:40.480 But it's something

00:24:41.320 that society struggles with.

00:24:43.860 So what about people

00:24:44.680 who feel like

00:24:45.240 they're a victim?

00:24:45.940 They're right.

00:24:48.520 They're victimizers too.

00:24:49.860 Like everybody

00:24:51.400 is a strange mixture

00:24:52.820 of victim and victimizer.

00:24:54.280 Lots of terrible things

00:24:55.200 happen to people

00:24:55.860 that aren't justifiable

00:24:58.020 in some sense.

00:24:59.640 You know,

00:25:00.580 well,

00:25:01.240 illness strikes people

00:25:02.600 randomly.

00:25:03.900 I mean,

00:25:04.120 not entirely randomly,

00:25:05.440 obviously,

00:25:05.880 but there's a very,

00:25:06.640 there's a large

00:25:07.140 random element in it.

00:25:08.940 Where you're thrown

00:25:10.200 into existence

00:25:11.140 as a consequence

00:25:12.000 of your birth.

00:25:13.520 That's,

00:25:14.240 existentialists,

00:25:15.460 especially in the 1950s,

00:25:16.660 talked about that

00:25:17.360 all the time.

00:25:18.000 They talked about it

00:25:18.700 as thrownness,

00:25:19.500 that you're sort of

00:25:20.100 thrown into reality

00:25:21.260 with your particular set

00:25:22.740 of predispositions

00:25:24.140 and weaknesses.

00:25:25.080 And then there's going

00:25:26.240 to be times in your life

00:25:27.280 where things twist

00:25:28.920 in a manner

00:25:29.620 that's unfair to you,

00:25:30.960 that you're not getting

00:25:31.660 your just desserts.

00:25:33.280 But that goes along

00:25:34.920 with all sorts of

00:25:36.620 unequally distributed

00:25:38.580 privileges as well.

00:25:40.120 And so that's the

00:25:40.840 arbitrary nature

00:25:41.620 of existence.

00:25:43.060 And,

00:25:43.460 but you can't allow

00:25:44.740 those sorts of things

00:25:45.580 to define you

00:25:46.300 because it's not,

00:25:47.040 it's not that useful

00:25:48.020 strategically.

00:25:50.020 You're,

00:25:50.660 when you're playing

00:25:51.340 a card game,

00:25:52.040 you're dealt,

00:25:52.780 you're dealt a hand

00:25:53.900 of cards.

00:25:55.120 Well,

00:25:55.660 what do you do?

00:25:56.860 You play that hand

00:25:59.180 the best you can.

00:26:01.280 Why?

00:26:01.940 Because all the,

00:26:02.940 all the hands

00:26:04.500 are equal?

00:26:05.240 No.

00:26:06.040 Because you don't

00:26:06.760 have a better strategy

00:26:07.740 than playing the hand

00:26:08.840 that you're dealt

00:26:09.520 the best you can.

00:26:11.080 And that doesn't even

00:26:11.860 mean it'll be

00:26:12.300 a winning strategy.

00:26:13.940 But,

00:26:14.280 because people

00:26:15.000 don't always win,

00:26:15.940 sometimes we lose

00:26:16.720 and sometimes we lose

00:26:17.580 painfully and sometimes

00:26:18.480 we lose painfully

00:26:19.560 and unjustly.

00:26:20.840 That's not the point.

00:26:22.180 The point is,

00:26:22.760 you don't have

00:26:23.220 a better strategy

00:26:24.100 and neither does

00:26:25.040 anyone else.

00:26:26.700 And,

00:26:27.000 then it's also

00:26:28.040 not so obvious

00:26:28.900 how privilege

00:26:30.140 and victimization

00:26:31.320 are distributed.

00:26:32.840 You know,

00:26:33.180 if you take someone

00:26:34.180 who's doing quite well

00:26:35.500 in life

00:26:35.920 and you scratch

00:26:37.520 underneath the surface,

00:26:38.520 you generally don't

00:26:39.200 have to scratch

00:26:39.820 very far

00:26:40.300 until you find

00:26:41.020 one or more

00:26:42.240 profound tragedies

00:26:43.780 of the past

00:26:44.800 or perhaps

00:26:45.280 of the present.

00:26:46.660 No matter how well

00:26:47.660 protected you are

00:26:48.500 in the world,

00:26:49.220 you're still subject

00:26:50.060 to illness,

00:26:52.300 you're still subject

00:26:52.940 to aging,

00:26:53.660 you're still subject

00:26:54.340 to the dissolution

00:26:55.120 of your relationships,

00:26:56.540 the death of your dreams,

00:26:58.400 death itself.

00:27:00.100 So,

00:27:02.060 vulnerability is built

00:27:03.320 into the structure

00:27:04.000 of existence.

00:27:04.740 Now,

00:27:04.900 if you start to regard

00:27:05.800 yourself as a hapless

00:27:06.880 victim or even worse

00:27:08.080 an unfairly victimized

00:27:10.000 victim,

00:27:10.720 well then things go

00:27:11.560 very badly sideways

00:27:12.440 for you,

00:27:12.880 it's not a good strategy.

00:27:14.440 You end up resentful,

00:27:15.740 you end up angry,

00:27:16.580 you end up vengeful,

00:27:18.040 you end up hostile

00:27:18.860 and that's just

00:27:20.320 the beginning.

00:27:20.980 Things can get far

00:27:22.040 more out of hand

00:27:22.900 than that.

00:27:23.840 So,

00:27:24.080 strategically,

00:27:24.720 it's a bad game.

00:27:26.520 It's better to take

00:27:27.320 responsibility for the hand

00:27:28.580 that you've been dealt.

00:27:30.360 There's no better,

00:27:31.140 you've got no better

00:27:31.720 protection in life

00:27:32.540 than doing that.

00:27:33.380 This is where

00:27:34.160 a lot of folks

00:27:35.120 in the modern West

00:27:37.080 get unsettled

00:27:38.660 because we have been

00:27:40.880 brought up to believe

00:27:41.860 that we need to be

00:27:42.680 compassionate to each

00:27:43.680 other.

00:27:45.120 And you point out

00:27:45.900 that sometimes

00:27:46.400 that compassion,

00:27:47.880 I don't know if it

00:27:48.320 encourages weakness

00:27:49.120 or it's another word

00:27:51.020 for weakness.

00:27:52.040 And I'd love if you

00:27:52.940 could open that up

00:27:53.780 for me because

00:27:54.260 it is the kind

00:27:55.860 of discussion

00:27:57.140 that gets folks

00:27:58.320 really unsettled.

00:27:59.560 Well,

00:27:59.580 feeling sorry for someone

00:28:01.120 is not a moral virtue.

00:28:02.280 You know,

00:28:04.420 morality is much

00:28:05.220 more complex

00:28:05.940 than mere reflexive

00:28:06.980 empathy.

00:28:08.000 So,

00:28:08.480 I would say,

00:28:09.420 when is reflexive

00:28:10.320 empathy useful?

00:28:11.440 That's easy.

00:28:12.920 You're a mother,

00:28:14.840 your child is under

00:28:16.000 six months old.

00:28:18.360 Reflexive empathy

00:28:19.180 is the right reaction.

00:28:20.840 And I think that

00:28:21.400 that's why it's such

00:28:22.220 a powerful,

00:28:23.000 motivating force as well.

00:28:24.560 You know,

00:28:24.960 a child under six months

00:28:26.100 old is always right.

00:28:27.460 If a child's in distress,

00:28:28.800 always right.

00:28:29.580 You're wrong,

00:28:30.420 the child's right.

00:28:31.160 No matter what is,

00:28:32.040 why the child is distressed,

00:28:33.900 it's your problem

00:28:35.000 and you should do

00:28:35.880 something about it

00:28:36.500 and it's not

00:28:37.140 the infant's fault.

00:28:38.580 Okay,

00:28:39.100 now,

00:28:39.480 we have a very lengthy

00:28:40.820 dependency period

00:28:42.160 as human beings

00:28:43.060 and that,

00:28:44.540 and that means

00:28:45.200 that infants,

00:28:45.900 30,

00:28:46.220 40 years for some.

00:28:46.900 Well,

00:28:47.380 yes,

00:28:48.660 exactly,

00:28:49.500 exactly.

00:28:50.100 And so,

00:28:51.080 because of that

00:28:51.860 intense dependency,

00:28:53.780 that empathic circuitry

00:28:55.320 has to be very,

00:28:56.040 very powerful.

00:28:56.860 But it can easily

00:28:57.800 be utilized

00:29:00.400 in a domain

00:29:01.700 that's outside

00:29:02.380 of its proper purview

00:29:03.480 and unreflexive empathy

00:29:06.260 is not a moral virtue

00:29:08.260 and just because

00:29:09.360 you feel sorry

00:29:10.120 for someone,

00:29:11.140 you are not

00:29:11.700 a good person.

00:29:13.040 Now,

00:29:13.260 that might be

00:29:13.820 a subcomponent

00:29:14.760 of being a good person

00:29:15.900 but it's very frequently

00:29:17.320 the case that

00:29:18.140 complex problems

00:29:19.560 require sophisticated,

00:29:22.220 complex planning,

00:29:23.520 thinking,

00:29:23.980 and analysis.

00:29:24.980 Well,

00:29:25.120 which is why

00:29:25.540 we invented science,

00:29:26.580 for example,

00:29:27.060 which is why

00:29:27.460 we invented

00:29:27.960 sophisticated social policy

00:29:29.540 and all of that

00:29:30.080 and it's certainly

00:29:31.120 not the case

00:29:31.800 that everything

00:29:32.680 that's good

00:29:33.320 in the medium

00:29:33.920 to long run

00:29:34.600 looks so good

00:29:35.780 in the short term.

00:29:38.240 I mean,

00:29:38.420 you think about

00:29:38.900 when you're disciplining

00:29:39.760 a child,

00:29:40.760 which you have to do

00:29:41.800 because one of your

00:29:43.340 responsibilities

00:29:44.180 as a parent

00:29:45.220 is to produce a child,

00:29:47.960 help produce a child

00:29:48.820 who is disciplined

00:29:49.920 and who's socially

00:29:51.140 acceptable to everyone else,

00:29:52.520 which is your

00:29:52.980 fundamental responsibility.

00:29:54.840 Whenever you discipline

00:29:55.840 a child,

00:29:56.860 you cause short-term

00:29:59.140 distress

00:30:00.200 for the benefit

00:30:01.460 of the medium

00:30:02.080 to the long run

00:30:02.780 and that runs

00:30:03.640 contrary to

00:30:04.400 reflexive empathy.

00:30:05.800 You need more

00:30:06.560 than empathy

00:30:07.040 to get by

00:30:08.040 in the world.

00:30:09.320 So it's unsophisticated

00:30:12.480 thinking

00:30:12.980 to assume that,

00:30:14.640 first of all,

00:30:16.480 that reflexive empathy

00:30:18.180 towards those

00:30:19.000 who are hypothetically

00:30:20.200 unfairly victimized

00:30:21.480 constitutes a moral virtue.

00:30:23.220 It's not that simple

00:30:24.240 and it can be

00:30:24.700 very, very dangerous

00:30:25.520 because you can

00:30:26.200 undermine people

00:30:27.100 by inappropriately

00:30:27.920 feeling sorry for them.

00:30:29.140 It's not helpful.

00:30:30.920 So,

00:30:32.120 as I was listening

00:30:33.300 to a bunch

00:30:34.100 of the different

00:30:34.640 talks that you've given,

00:30:35.680 I was caught off guard

00:30:37.320 by a comment you made

00:30:38.380 in a series

00:30:39.100 on the Bible.

00:30:40.960 And,

00:30:41.940 this is an important issue

00:30:43.640 because a lot of folks

00:30:44.740 read,

00:30:45.800 the meek shall inherit 1.00

00:30:46.540 the earth

00:30:46.920 and have a belief

00:30:48.440 that it means

00:30:48.960 the weak will inherit

00:30:50.020 the earth.

00:30:50.940 Certainly what I thought.

00:30:52.660 And you stunned me

00:30:54.160 by arguing

00:30:55.020 that the word meek

00:30:56.900 didn't really mean

00:30:57.580 what we thought it meant.

00:30:58.220 I looked at a bunch

00:30:59.280 of different translations.

00:31:01.020 Yeah,

00:31:01.340 and my conclusion was,

00:31:03.060 well,

00:31:03.320 you know,

00:31:03.600 words get translated

00:31:04.640 multiple times

00:31:05.520 and they shift

00:31:06.080 their meaning

00:31:06.440 across time

00:31:07.160 and so ancient texts

00:31:08.220 are hard to interpret

00:31:09.900 and it requires

00:31:11.280 a fair bit of study.

00:31:12.640 But my interpretation

00:31:13.860 was those who have swords

00:31:16.980 and know how to use them

00:31:18.180 but choose to keep them sheathed

00:31:20.560 will inherit the earth.

00:31:21.900 And that's a very,

00:31:23.700 that's a much better idea

00:31:25.160 as far as I'm concerned

00:31:26.160 because it means

00:31:26.860 that you have

00:31:27.400 a moral obligation

00:31:28.260 to be strong

00:31:29.840 and dangerous,

00:31:31.680 both of those.

00:31:33.260 But,

00:31:33.900 to harness that

00:31:35.460 and to use it

00:31:36.400 in the service of good.

00:31:38.660 So,

00:31:39.200 it's,

00:31:39.500 it's,

00:31:40.400 it's associated

00:31:41.280 with a complex set

00:31:42.300 of ideas.

00:31:43.480 If you're not...

00:31:44.440 But that,

00:31:44.840 but that principle

00:31:45.580 right there

00:31:46.140 is a,

00:31:46.900 is a stark

00:31:47.820 differentiator of you

00:31:49.480 from much of the material

00:31:51.180 that I read.

00:31:52.400 Generally,

00:31:52.940 it's purely about compassion.

00:31:54.160 You use the word victimhood

00:31:54.960 but a lot of folks

00:31:55.660 do feel it's a virtue

00:31:57.240 to feel sorry for others

00:31:58.420 because usually behind that

00:32:00.140 is I'll do something.

00:32:00.720 Virtue's not that easy.

00:32:01.640 No.

00:32:02.240 Hmm,

00:32:02.520 that's the problem

00:32:03.300 is that we wouldn't have to think

00:32:05.120 if empathy guided us properly

00:32:06.780 but it doesn't.

00:32:08.460 It guides us properly

00:32:09.320 in some very specific conditions.

00:32:11.280 It can also make us

00:32:12.040 very dangerous

00:32:12.660 because,

00:32:13.640 and there's good,

00:32:14.160 there's good experimental literature

00:32:15.880 on this,

00:32:16.920 if you're very sensitive

00:32:18.800 to an in-group's claims,

00:32:21.200 whatever they might be,

00:32:22.280 that makes you very hostile

00:32:23.680 to perceived out-group members.

00:32:26.260 In-group,

00:32:26.700 out-group,

00:32:27.120 people within your tribe

00:32:28.000 versus outside your tribe.

00:32:28.860 Well,

00:32:29.520 within whatever group it is

00:32:30.780 that you're identifying

00:32:31.520 with at that moment.

00:32:33.260 You know,

00:32:33.480 so empathy drives

00:32:34.460 that in-group identification.

00:32:35.920 It's like,

00:32:36.160 okay,

00:32:36.360 well,

00:32:36.500 what about the out-group?

00:32:37.440 Oh,

00:32:37.600 those are predatory.

00:32:38.740 Those are predators.

00:32:39.840 We'd better be hard on them.

00:32:42.380 You know,

00:32:42.640 it's,

00:32:42.840 it's a mother bears compassion

00:32:44.380 that gets you eaten

00:32:45.300 so we can't be thinking

00:32:49.140 that empathy

00:32:49.720 is an untrammeled virtue.

00:32:51.080 There's no,

00:32:51.460 there's no evidence

00:32:52.160 for that whatsoever.

00:32:53.060 The psychoanalysts

00:32:53.920 knew this perfectly well as well

00:32:55.340 when we were still wise enough

00:32:57.040 to,

00:32:57.340 to attend to their

00:32:58.520 more profound realizations

00:33:00.420 and that's the motif

00:33:01.840 of the devouring parent,

00:33:03.340 the devouring mother

00:33:04.020 is the,

00:33:04.480 is a more general trope

00:33:05.680 and that's someone

00:33:06.800 who will do absolutely

00:33:08.140 everything for you

00:33:09.460 all the time

00:33:10.260 so that you never have

00:33:11.440 to rely on yourself

00:33:12.280 for anything.

00:33:13.140 That's not good.

00:33:14.560 No,

00:33:14.720 there's rules

00:33:15.440 for example

00:33:16.060 if you're dealing

00:33:17.000 with the elderly

00:33:17.620 in an old folks home

00:33:18.620 here's a rule

00:33:19.480 never do anything

00:33:21.280 for one of your clients

00:33:22.200 they can do themselves.

00:33:24.480 Why?

00:33:25.680 Because they're already

00:33:26.740 struggling with the loss

00:33:27.960 of their independence

00:33:28.800 and you want to help them

00:33:30.680 maintain that independence

00:33:31.740 as long as possible

00:33:32.780 and that might mean

00:33:34.100 sitting by

00:33:34.940 while someone struggles

00:33:35.920 to do up their buttons

00:33:37.060 for example

00:33:37.720 when you can

00:33:38.460 and this is the same

00:33:39.160 if you're maybe helping

00:33:40.500 your three-year-old

00:33:41.660 dress themselves.

00:33:42.500 It's like,

00:33:43.020 yeah,

00:33:43.200 yeah,

00:33:43.400 you can put on

00:33:43.960 the buttons

00:33:44.300 a lot faster.

00:33:45.180 Let me help you

00:33:45.900 with that.

00:33:46.360 It's like,

00:33:46.720 no,

00:33:47.340 you struggle with that.

00:33:48.740 You master it

00:33:49.700 and I'll keep my empathy

00:33:51.280 to myself.

00:33:52.260 Thank you very much

00:33:53.140 so that I can help you

00:33:54.200 maintain your independence.

00:33:55.220 And that suffocating mother 1.00

00:33:58.600 is Ursula.

00:34:00.080 That's right.

00:34:00.700 In Little Mermaid.

00:34:01.400 Yes.

00:34:02.000 So these motifs

00:34:02.740 still sneak into

00:34:04.300 our culture.

00:34:05.920 Sure.

00:34:06.280 Why?

00:34:06.440 You see it in Sleeping Beauty

00:34:07.480 as well in the Disney movie

00:34:08.640 where the evil queen

00:34:09.540 keeps the prince locked

00:34:10.880 plans to keep Prince Charming

00:34:12.960 locked into the king

00:34:13.800 locked in her basement

00:34:15.240 fundamentally

00:34:16.300 chained up

00:34:17.240 until he's so old 0.99

00:34:17.980 he's useless. 0.99

00:34:19.060 Right? 1.00

00:34:19.580 And he

00:34:19.840 and she's the force 0.96

00:34:20.720 that stops him

00:34:21.740 from making an alliance

00:34:23.180 with the young woman

00:34:24.020 and having his life.

00:34:25.360 Right?

00:34:25.720 I'll just keep you

00:34:26.460 chained up here

00:34:27.060 where you'll be safe.

00:34:28.620 It's like,

00:34:28.960 no,

00:34:29.120 you don't need that.

00:34:30.300 You know,

00:34:30.660 what did Freud say?

00:34:31.780 I think it was Freud.

00:34:33.300 The good mother

00:34:33.980 necessarily fails.

00:34:36.460 Right?

00:34:36.960 Because as your child

00:34:37.920 emerges,

00:34:38.680 as your child develops,

00:34:40.400 you're a perfect mother

00:34:41.300 up till six months.

00:34:42.220 You take care of your child's

00:34:43.100 every need.

00:34:43.900 Okay?

00:34:44.140 Well,

00:34:44.360 at somewhere between

00:34:45.640 six and nine months

00:34:46.520 the child starts to crawl around,

00:34:47.880 starts to become

00:34:48.480 a bit autonomous,

00:34:49.340 starts to be able to do

00:34:50.080 little things on

00:34:50.920 his or her own.

00:34:52.640 You back off.

00:34:53.500 Every time the child

00:34:54.540 steps forward,

00:34:55.280 you step backwards.

00:34:56.540 And maybe you step backwards

00:34:57.560 a little faster even

00:34:58.700 to motivate your child

00:35:00.180 to step forward.

00:35:01.180 And then what you're saying is,

00:35:02.780 it isn't you I care about.

00:35:04.360 It's who you could be.

00:35:06.340 And see,

00:35:06.740 that's another thing

00:35:07.400 that I'm talking to young men

00:35:08.520 and young women about.

00:35:09.640 It's like,

00:35:10.160 it isn't you I care about.

00:35:12.200 It's who you could be.

00:35:13.980 You think,

00:35:14.440 well,

00:35:14.540 that's pretty harsh.

00:35:15.300 It's like,

00:35:15.580 not when you're talking

00:35:16.240 to 18-year-olds.

00:35:17.540 It's like,

00:35:17.900 they have their whole life

00:35:18.580 ahead of them.

00:35:19.440 Whose side should you be on?

00:35:21.000 The 18-year-old kid

00:35:22.360 who's confused?

00:35:23.060 Oh,

00:35:23.220 you're okay the way you are.

00:35:24.460 It's like,

00:35:24.760 no,

00:35:24.920 you're not.

00:35:25.520 You're not even close

00:35:26.560 to okay the way you are.

00:35:28.100 You haven't even started.

00:35:30.140 You're not who you could be physically.

00:35:31.620 You're not who you could be spiritually.

00:35:33.040 You're not educated

00:35:33.780 to the degree you could be.

00:35:35.140 You could really be something,

00:35:36.780 man.

00:35:37.460 You got 60 years to work on it.

00:35:39.400 Get the hell at it.

00:35:41.120 That's way better.

00:35:42.240 That's a way more positive message,

00:35:43.640 even though it's got

00:35:44.240 that strange harshness about it.

00:35:45.780 Because it's judgmental.

00:35:47.580 Every ideal is a judge.

00:35:50.000 You can't get away with it.

00:35:51.220 You can't get away from it, right?

00:35:52.760 Or with it.

00:35:53.980 You put something up as an ideal

00:35:55.440 that it stares down at you

00:35:56.920 and says,

00:35:57.560 you are not what you could be.

00:35:59.040 Every great piece of art does that.

00:36:01.060 And to tell young people,

00:36:02.420 it's like,

00:36:02.660 no, no,

00:36:02.980 you're not okay the way you are.

00:36:04.280 That's why we have universities. 0.92

00:36:05.720 That's why we have training programs.

00:36:07.240 It's like,

00:36:07.520 you don't know enough

00:36:08.100 to go out there

00:36:08.580 and change the world.

00:36:09.900 You're not out there

00:36:11.680 waving placards around

00:36:12.780 and telling people how to behave.

00:36:14.200 Get your act together.

00:36:15.800 Learn some skills.

00:36:17.000 Educate yourself.

00:36:17.840 Learn how to speak.

00:36:18.820 Learn how to conduct yourself.

00:36:20.080 Learn how to stand up.

00:36:21.440 Make yourself a force in the world.

00:36:23.180 There's way more to you

00:36:24.100 than you think.

00:36:25.060 You appreciate why

00:36:26.520 that message would resonate with some

00:36:28.520 but scare the heck out of others.

00:36:30.200 It should scare the heck out of everybody.

00:36:33.440 You know,

00:36:33.700 that's what they say.

00:36:35.200 Fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.

00:36:38.060 There's real truth in that.

00:36:39.260 And this is a,

00:36:40.320 see, I think,

00:36:41.300 and this is what scared me.

00:36:42.580 I learned from studying Auschwitz 0.86

00:36:47.400 and the terrible things

00:36:48.920 that I studied for many, many years

00:36:50.600 that I was responsible for them.

00:36:54.360 And I believe that.

00:36:55.980 Yes, because it comes down

00:36:58.220 to individual integrity.

00:36:59.940 All of these things.

00:37:01.000 If the state is corrupting around you,

00:37:02.900 that's on you.

00:37:04.260 It's your responsibility.

00:37:05.960 You think,

00:37:06.360 well, how can I take on that responsibility?

00:37:07.860 It's like,

00:37:08.660 be more than you are.

00:37:11.460 So,

00:37:11.720 and how could you not be afraid of that?

00:37:14.080 Of course you'd want to shy away from that.

00:37:16.240 But the alternative is far worse.

00:37:18.840 It's far worse

00:37:19.860 to let things degenerate.

00:37:21.660 Like,

00:37:21.900 you have a chance,

00:37:22.740 you have the,

00:37:23.280 you have the opportunity

00:37:24.540 to contend with the structure of reality

00:37:26.660 and to set things right.

00:37:28.020 You can do that

00:37:28.700 if you take it on voluntarily.

00:37:30.140 And that's a terrible burden

00:37:31.320 to confront suffering and malevolence,

00:37:33.640 especially given the degree of malevolence.

00:37:35.640 It's a terrible thing to confront.

00:37:38.740 The alternative is worse.

00:37:40.080 Let things slide.

00:37:41.480 You just see where you end up there.

00:37:43.460 At least you have a fighting chance

00:37:44.760 if you're a contender.

00:37:46.640 Right?

00:37:46.920 You're in the ring.

00:37:48.160 And there's,

00:37:48.720 and you can,

00:37:49.560 and you can do it.

00:37:50.940 That's the thing.

00:37:51.780 That's,

00:37:52.060 that's the,

00:37:52.600 that's what makes me

00:37:53.580 so fundamentally optimistic about people.

00:37:56.880 Is that,

00:37:57.580 that problems that confront us

00:37:59.520 are,

00:38:00.500 are most infinite

00:38:02.040 in their catastrophic consequence.

00:38:04.300 But there's something within us

00:38:06.320 that's even greater than that.

00:38:08.080 And so that's,

00:38:09.700 that's the fundamental reality.

00:38:11.560 You don't get to that either

00:38:12.560 unless you start with what's so terrible.

00:38:14.400 Say,

00:38:14.860 life is rife with suffering and injustice.

00:38:17.640 And we make it worse with our malevolence.

00:38:19.580 It's terrible.

00:38:21.100 Okay,

00:38:21.480 well that's horrible.

00:38:22.200 Who can withstand that?

00:38:23.180 It's like,

00:38:23.500 yeah,

00:38:23.640 well if you look inside that

00:38:24.840 you see that something beckons.

00:38:26.860 And what beckons is

00:38:27.860 the possibility

00:38:29.180 of what you could become

00:38:30.440 if you confront that.

00:38:31.500 And that's what we need to know.

00:38:33.600 And that's,

00:38:34.220 I think,

00:38:34.480 integrally tied up

00:38:35.420 with our most

00:38:36.020 fundamental religious convictions.

00:38:38.880 We know that people have

00:38:40.180 an indomitable divine spirit.

00:38:43.480 Well how do you call that forth?

00:38:45.120 Well by challenging it.

00:38:46.640 It's not going to come out without that.

00:38:48.480 You're not going to be

00:38:49.280 who you could be

00:38:49.940 without pushing yourself

00:38:50.920 to your limit.

00:38:52.160 Because why would you be?

00:38:54.260 It's not like it's easy.

00:38:55.960 You have to be compelled

00:38:57.140 in some sense.

00:38:58.320 You have to be challenged.

00:38:59.240 And that's why you do

00:39:00.180 your children no favors

00:39:01.200 by overprotecting them.

00:39:04.380 Quite the contrary.

00:39:06.400 Why does that message

00:39:07.040 make you so emotional?

00:39:09.160 And what were you like

00:39:09.900 at age 18?

00:39:11.560 You're in Saskatchewan,

00:39:12.600 I believe.

00:39:12.800 Alberta at that time,

00:39:13.960 yeah.

00:39:15.980 Well I was thinking

00:39:16.920 about the sorts of things

00:39:17.860 that we're talking about now.

00:39:19.040 I've been thinking about them

00:39:20.020 ever since I can remember.

00:39:21.300 But you know,

00:39:21.780 I've got better at thinking

00:39:22.820 about them across time.

00:39:24.460 But I was,

00:39:24.980 I had a lot of the problems

00:39:28.720 I suppose that the typical

00:39:29.920 18-year-old would have.

00:39:31.620 I drank a lot.

00:39:32.600 I came,

00:39:33.060 come from this little town

00:39:33.860 in northern Alberta.

00:39:35.240 Heavy drinking.

00:39:36.240 I started drinking

00:39:36.820 when I was 14.

00:39:38.660 So I was quite a partier.

00:39:41.220 I was confused existentially,

00:39:44.000 I would say.

00:39:44.480 I wasn't sure

00:39:44.940 what the proper direction

00:39:45.980 in life was.

00:39:46.600 I was very much

00:39:47.840 obsessed with

00:39:52.360 the problem of the Cold War.

00:39:55.080 That's never really gone away

00:39:56.260 because that seemed to me

00:39:57.220 to be just

00:39:57.740 a kind of insanity

00:39:59.580 that I didn't know

00:40:00.440 how to fathom.

00:40:02.260 And you know,

00:40:02.880 it was all of that

00:40:03.520 and I was obsessed

00:40:04.700 with reading

00:40:05.200 and obsessed with learning

00:40:06.200 and so that was what

00:40:06.980 all drove me

00:40:07.540 in this direction.

00:40:09.080 And then as I started

00:40:10.120 to develop these ideas

00:40:11.140 like I had to let go

00:40:12.140 of things,

00:40:13.900 you know,

00:40:14.160 one of the

00:40:15.740 ideas that I've been

00:40:18.120 promoting to people

00:40:18.880 is that you have to let

00:40:19.960 the dead wood burn off

00:40:21.280 and you do that by,

00:40:23.420 you do that

00:40:24.080 as a consequence

00:40:24.980 of necessity

00:40:25.720 in the pursuit

00:40:27.300 of responsibility.

00:40:28.000 When I started writing

00:40:29.040 seriously,

00:40:29.680 I had to stop drinking

00:40:30.440 because I couldn't

00:40:32.600 think properly

00:40:33.240 so that was it.

00:40:34.060 It was either like

00:40:34.660 you're going to do

00:40:35.060 one of these

00:40:35.420 or the other.

00:40:37.260 You're either going

00:40:37.860 to continue

00:40:38.340 wasting your time.

00:40:39.640 I was having a fine time.

00:40:40.720 I was in graduate school

00:40:41.620 and I had a very social,

00:40:44.240 I was very,

00:40:44.800 very social

00:40:45.260 and a lot of that

00:40:46.160 involved drinking

00:40:47.780 and that sort of thing.

00:40:50.040 Couldn't do both.

00:40:51.520 Especially when I was editing.

00:40:52.700 I couldn't get my thoughts

00:40:53.460 down pristinely enough,

00:40:54.880 precisely enough.

00:40:55.940 Plus,

00:40:56.440 the emotional magnitude

00:40:58.300 of the things

00:40:58.960 that I was dealing with

00:40:59.880 were more overwhelming

00:41:01.620 if I was,

00:41:03.240 well,

00:41:03.560 in the aftermath

00:41:04.160 of a party.

00:41:06.180 So I decided

00:41:07.200 when I was like 25

00:41:08.240 or so

00:41:08.720 to just stop.

00:41:10.100 I've been caught off guard

00:41:11.740 by how politicized

00:41:13.140 you've become

00:41:13.780 and I,

00:41:15.040 as I read

00:41:16.300 of your youth,

00:41:17.020 I know that

00:41:17.500 you had your

00:41:18.680 runnings with religion,

00:41:19.740 which a lot of people do.

00:41:21.680 You actually got

00:41:22.380 politically active,

00:41:23.240 but on the left,

00:41:23.960 not the right.

00:41:25.960 Help me understand

00:41:26.840 what went down.

00:41:28.640 Well,

00:41:28.960 in the little town

00:41:30.300 I grew up in,

00:41:31.740 the member of parliament,

00:41:34.220 the provincial parliament,

00:41:36.580 equivalent to American state,

00:41:38.280 was a democratic socialist.

00:41:40.300 He was the only one

00:41:40.920 in the entire province.

00:41:41.960 Everyone else

00:41:42.440 was conservative,

00:41:43.140 which would be

00:41:43.920 sort of moderate republican,

00:41:46.140 I would say.

00:41:47.560 And,

00:41:47.840 you know,

00:41:49.720 there's something

00:41:50.140 to be said

00:41:50.700 for political voice

00:41:52.140 for the working class

00:41:53.040 and for the dispossessed.

00:41:54.220 And it certainly

00:41:54.880 is the case

00:41:55.560 that hierarchical structures,

00:41:57.280 the hierarchical structures

00:41:58.340 that compose our society,

00:42:00.280 do produce dispossession.

00:42:02.020 They stack people

00:42:02.700 up at the bottom.

00:42:04.220 And so people

00:42:05.340 at the bottom

00:42:05.880 need to have

00:42:06.360 a political voice.

00:42:07.240 And so I was very attracted

00:42:08.500 to that end

00:42:10.400 of the political spectrum.

00:42:11.820 but as I

00:42:13.960 came to

00:42:15.120 investigate

00:42:15.920 some of the problems

00:42:16.760 I've been discussing

00:42:17.580 more deeply,

00:42:18.160 I started to understand

00:42:19.200 that mere economic

00:42:20.620 rectification

00:42:21.920 was insufficient,

00:42:23.320 that that wasn't

00:42:23.880 the level of analysis

00:42:24.740 that was appropriate

00:42:25.780 for my inquiry

00:42:27.600 anyways.

00:42:28.240 Translated,

00:42:28.920 redistribution of income

00:42:30.020 doesn't work.

00:42:31.240 Well,

00:42:31.560 think about it this way.

00:42:33.480 The guaranteed basic income idea.

00:42:35.860 It's like,

00:42:36.240 well,

00:42:36.340 that's predicated

00:42:37.080 on the idea

00:42:37.680 that man lives

00:42:38.480 by bread alone.

00:42:40.800 Well,

00:42:41.240 that isn't how it works.

00:42:42.400 And I've certainly seen

00:42:43.240 that in my clinical practice.

00:42:44.280 I've had clients,

00:42:45.560 especially addicts,

00:42:46.780 if you gave them money, 1.00

00:42:48.380 they would die. 0.85

00:42:50.240 And the reason for that,

00:42:51.360 like one guy

00:42:51.960 that I remember

00:42:52.660 in particular,

00:42:53.480 I liked him quite a bit.

00:42:54.900 He had a bad cocaine problem.

00:42:57.100 And as long as

00:42:58.320 he was flat broke,

00:42:59.980 he wasn't dead.

00:43:03.360 But as soon as his,

00:43:04.460 he was on disability,

00:43:05.500 as soon as his disability check

00:43:06.780 came in,

00:43:07.980 he was face down

00:43:09.360 in a ditch

00:43:09.820 three days later.

00:43:11.880 So,

00:43:13.080 well,

00:43:13.340 and you think,

00:43:13.740 well,

00:43:13.840 maybe that's a consequence

00:43:14.720 of his overwhelming poverty,

00:43:16.560 et cetera.

00:43:16.820 You could come up

00:43:17.460 with some social reason

00:43:18.680 for that path

00:43:19.920 that he took.

00:43:20.380 But it wasn't

00:43:20.820 by any stretch

00:43:21.660 of the imagination

00:43:22.340 that simple.

00:43:23.440 It's like,

00:43:24.000 people need purpose

00:43:26.180 more than money even.

00:43:28.420 I mean,

00:43:28.780 obviously,

00:43:29.460 we don't want people starving.

00:43:31.340 And actually,

00:43:32.260 we're doing a pretty good job

00:43:33.120 of solving that problem worldwide.

00:43:34.660 You know,

00:43:34.840 the UN projects

00:43:35.680 that there won't be anyone

00:43:36.620 in absolute poverty

00:43:37.440 by the year 2030,

00:43:38.880 which is really

00:43:39.660 quite the bloody miracle,

00:43:41.160 that's for sure.

00:43:42.260 So,

00:43:42.800 we're doing a pretty good job

00:43:44.060 of getting rid

00:43:44.620 of abject privation.

00:43:46.700 But then,

00:43:47.680 it isn't

00:43:48.340 the

00:43:49.260 provision

00:43:50.520 of material well-being

00:43:51.860 with ease

00:43:52.580 that

00:43:53.360 allows people

00:43:54.760 to live properly

00:43:55.800 even though

00:43:56.380 a certain amount

00:43:57.520 of material

00:43:58.100 wealth

00:44:01.880 is a necessary

00:44:03.000 precondition.

00:44:04.120 It's purpose.

00:44:05.200 And that's a much more

00:44:05.920 difficult problem

00:44:06.560 to solve.

00:44:08.000 It's like,

00:44:08.340 we need something

00:44:09.020 to grapple with.

00:44:09.880 We need a meaning

00:44:10.660 to justify our lives.

00:44:12.260 And some of that

00:44:12.960 is to be found in,

00:44:14.260 well,

00:44:14.540 the struggle against

00:44:15.500 privation

00:44:17.500 and malevolence.

00:44:19.160 The mere

00:44:19.940 offering of

00:44:22.300 material sustenance

00:44:23.620 to people

00:44:24.080 isn't going to

00:44:25.100 solve the problem.

00:44:25.740 Dostoevsky

00:44:27.240 knew this

00:44:27.700 150 years ago.

00:44:28.880 He said,

00:44:29.140 if you gave people

00:44:29.740 everything they wanted,

00:44:32.000 so all they had to do

00:44:32.900 was eat cakes

00:44:33.580 and busy themselves

00:44:34.520 with the continuation

00:44:35.340 of the species,

00:44:36.900 the first thing they do 0.99

00:44:37.880 is smash it all to hell 0.99

00:44:39.040 so that something 0.99

00:44:39.680 interesting could happen.

00:44:41.200 So,

00:44:41.460 that's our fatal

00:44:42.240 flaw

00:44:44.440 and salvation,

00:44:45.720 both of that,

00:44:46.940 that wanting

00:44:48.020 to contend

00:44:48.980 rather than

00:44:49.660 to sit back

00:44:50.380 and have everything

00:44:51.020 taken care of.

00:44:52.540 So,

00:44:52.700 how do we get

00:44:53.900 an 18-year-old

00:44:55.480 to understand

00:44:56.280 what Dostoevsky

00:44:57.820 wrote 150 years ago?

00:44:59.000 How do you get

00:44:59.400 a 38- or a 58-year-old,

00:45:00.960 which is my age,

00:45:01.720 to understand

00:45:02.440 how to take responsibility?

00:45:04.000 No,

00:45:04.200 we have discussions

00:45:04.880 like this.

00:45:06.420 You know,

00:45:06.740 and you make the case

00:45:07.540 to people as well.

00:45:08.460 So,

00:45:08.640 I've been touring around.

00:45:10.600 My wife and I

00:45:11.740 have gone to 60 cities

00:45:13.340 now since January

00:45:15.680 of this year

00:45:16.600 and I've been speaking

00:45:18.140 to audiences

00:45:18.800 that average

00:45:19.580 2,500 people

00:45:20.980 and I have a,

00:45:23.440 I deliver a lecture

00:45:24.480 that's very much

00:45:25.160 like this conversation.

00:45:26.500 It's like,

00:45:27.180 lay out the structure

00:45:28.020 of life,

00:45:29.020 the fact that it's

00:45:29.740 rife with suffering

00:45:30.560 and malevolence,

00:45:31.340 that we erect hierarchies

00:45:32.840 in an attempt

00:45:33.860 to deal with that,

00:45:35.820 to deal with those problems

00:45:36.980 because they're too alike,

00:45:38.120 that the hierarchies

00:45:38.920 dispossess people

00:45:39.800 and so we have to take care

00:45:40.880 of the dispossessed as well

00:45:42.040 and to draw out

00:45:43.560 the relationship

00:45:44.180 between meaning

00:45:44.940 and responsibility

00:45:45.720 and the audiences

00:45:47.460 are wrapped

00:45:49.200 as a consequence

00:45:50.080 of that.

00:45:50.640 You know,

00:45:50.960 and I'm always listening

00:45:51.660 to my audiences

00:45:52.320 is when are they silent?

00:45:54.320 Because you know,

00:45:55.340 when everyone

00:45:55.840 in an audience

00:45:56.460 is silent,

00:45:57.220 then everyone's

00:45:57.900 in the same place.

00:45:58.800 That's a meaningful place.

00:46:00.220 They're all lined up

00:46:01.280 and they line up

00:46:02.480 on this axis

00:46:03.120 of responsibility

00:46:03.920 and meaning.

00:46:05.560 So,

00:46:06.100 there's a hole

00:46:06.740 in our culture

00:46:07.420 where this information

00:46:08.800 hasn't been provided.

00:46:10.320 But it was there

00:46:11.220 at times

00:46:12.180 in our history

00:46:12.860 which has been

00:46:13.660 the thing

00:46:14.800 that I struggle with

00:46:15.940 which is the issue

00:46:16.500 of sacrifice.

00:46:17.620 It's so paradoxical,

00:46:18.720 right?

00:46:18.900 Why would me

00:46:19.760 giving of myself

00:46:21.100 to you

00:46:22.020 make me feel better?

00:46:23.800 It does seem

00:46:24.420 like most of the time

00:46:25.180 if I have money

00:46:25.940 I give you some of my money

00:46:26.540 I have less money.

00:46:27.860 But you're arguing

00:46:28.660 that if I understand

00:46:29.920 true sacrifice

00:46:30.660 and I sacrifice myself

00:46:32.000 for something

00:46:32.340 that has meaning.

00:46:33.680 Well,

00:46:34.180 part of it is,

00:46:35.000 you know,

00:46:36.020 human beings

00:46:36.700 discovered time.

00:46:38.340 That's one of the things

00:46:39.160 that makes us

00:46:39.740 very peculiar creatures.

00:46:41.680 To be aware

00:46:42.540 of our own mortality

00:46:43.400 is a consequence

00:46:44.160 of the discovery

00:46:44.940 of time,

00:46:45.580 right?

00:46:45.700 We can see

00:46:46.180 how we extend

00:46:46.880 out into the future.

00:46:48.580 And so that makes

00:46:49.320 us very strange creatures

00:46:50.760 as selfish creatures.

00:46:52.680 Because you actually

00:46:53.740 can't be narrowly selfish

00:46:56.060 and survive.

00:46:57.280 And here's the reason.

00:46:58.940 You have to take care

00:46:59.860 of yourself now.

00:47:01.640 So let's say,

00:47:02.400 well,

00:47:02.620 then you can pursue

00:47:03.460 impulsive pleasure

00:47:04.360 perhaps at the expense

00:47:05.460 of other people.

00:47:06.640 And why not?

00:47:08.120 Well,

00:47:08.440 here's one reason

00:47:09.260 why not.

00:47:10.240 There isn't just you now.

00:47:12.440 There's you tomorrow.

00:47:14.120 There's you next week.

00:47:15.180 There's you next month

00:47:16.340 and next year

00:47:16.880 and ten years from now.

00:47:17.960 And so if you conduct

00:47:19.300 yourself in a manner

00:47:20.320 in the present

00:47:21.180 that interferes

00:47:22.260 with your future selves,

00:47:23.860 then that's a downhill

00:47:24.980 trip for you.

00:47:26.580 And so taking care

00:47:27.540 of yourself in the future

00:47:28.680 and taking care

00:47:29.460 of other people

00:47:30.240 actually turns out

00:47:31.160 to be exactly

00:47:31.860 the same thing.

00:47:32.940 Because you're actually

00:47:33.740 a community of people

00:47:34.960 that's distributed

00:47:35.660 across time.

00:47:36.960 And so if you act

00:47:37.820 in your own best interest,

00:47:39.480 then you're going

00:47:40.100 to sacrifice

00:47:40.800 some of the present

00:47:41.740 for the future.

00:47:42.320 And that was one

00:47:42.920 of the great discoveries

00:47:43.760 of mankind, right?

00:47:44.820 Which is something

00:47:45.780 that I also concentrate

00:47:46.760 on in 12 Rules

00:47:47.760 because I'm really

00:47:48.500 interested in the issue

00:47:49.440 of sacrifice.

00:47:50.600 Why would you give up

00:47:52.020 something now?

00:47:53.960 Why would you ever

00:47:54.860 give up something now

00:47:55.680 voluntarily?

00:47:56.320 And the answer is

00:47:56.920 sometimes if you give up

00:47:57.980 something now,

00:47:58.800 and often something

00:47:59.660 you love,

00:48:00.500 something you're very

00:48:01.280 in love with even,

00:48:03.000 perhaps not for the best

00:48:04.420 reasons,

00:48:05.300 then you can make

00:48:06.360 a bargain with the future.

00:48:07.720 And that bargain

00:48:08.400 with the future

00:48:08.960 isn't any different

00:48:09.740 than the bargain

00:48:10.280 you make with other people.

00:48:11.320 So that narrow selfishness

00:48:14.600 is blindness

00:48:16.420 to time and context.

00:48:18.960 And there's nothing

00:48:19.600 about it that's good.

00:48:20.900 And I do think

00:48:21.700 the musical example

00:48:22.700 is a really good one.

00:48:24.640 Like in a musical piece,

00:48:25.780 every note has to fit

00:48:26.880 with every other note

00:48:27.800 across the entire span

00:48:28.960 of the piece.

00:48:29.840 Well, that's what your life

00:48:30.700 needs to be like.

00:48:31.540 It's like how you act

00:48:32.640 with me right now

00:48:33.640 has to be in harmony

00:48:35.620 with what you want

00:48:36.700 for yourself tomorrow.

00:48:37.700 And that's going

00:48:38.660 to be tangled in as well.

00:48:40.020 It's not only

00:48:40.620 that you repeat

00:48:41.380 across time

00:48:41.960 and have to take

00:48:42.560 that into account.

00:48:43.360 It's that you repeat

00:48:44.620 across time

00:48:45.220 in the context

00:48:46.100 of your social life.

00:48:47.580 And so all of that

00:48:48.500 has to be brought

00:48:49.160 into the equation.

00:48:50.380 And the sacrificial motif

00:48:51.500 is a huge part of that.

00:48:53.160 And that also is something

00:48:54.340 that runs contrary

00:48:55.200 in some sense to empathy

00:48:56.300 because sometimes

00:48:57.000 you have to,

00:48:57.580 you know,

00:48:58.000 you have to beat yourself 0.95

00:48:58.900 on the back of the head 1.00

00:48:59.780 with a stick 0.99

00:49:00.320 to get yourself

00:49:01.000 to move forward properly

00:49:02.160 even though you know

00:49:03.080 I should be doing this.

00:49:04.760 I should be doing this.

00:49:05.840 Well, I don't want to.

00:49:06.700 It's hard.

00:49:07.160 It's like no sympathy

00:49:08.460 for that.

00:49:09.720 It's you have to do it

00:49:11.020 because otherwise

00:49:11.520 things are going

00:49:12.120 to get worse.

00:49:12.860 I heard you say

00:49:13.460 that you're quoting

00:49:15.120 one of the Ten Commandments

00:49:16.260 saying you do unto your

00:49:17.300 neighbors as you have

00:49:19.180 them do unto you.

00:49:20.480 And the word nice

00:49:21.240 is not in that commandment.

00:49:22.780 No.

00:49:23.440 No.

00:49:23.780 Well, nice isn't enough.

00:49:25.780 You know,

00:49:26.060 and this...

00:49:28.400 Is it not enough

00:49:29.080 or is it not the right

00:49:30.120 thing to expect

00:49:30.900 because so many members

00:49:32.880 of my audience

00:49:33.380 beat themselves up

00:49:34.540 in a way they would

00:49:35.700 never hurt other people.

00:49:36.580 Oh, yes.

00:49:37.060 That's definitely...

00:49:37.580 And they say

00:49:38.040 they're thinking

00:49:38.720 but most thinking

00:49:39.540 is self-flagellation.

00:49:41.140 Oh, yes.

00:49:41.720 Part of it is, right,

00:49:42.580 is take it easy

00:49:43.580 on yourself.

00:49:44.440 Be fair.

00:49:45.580 On the other hand,

00:49:46.760 sometimes you tolerate

00:49:47.580 stuff from other people

00:49:48.420 because you teach people

00:49:49.140 how to treat you.

00:49:50.040 Mm-hmm.

00:49:50.320 And if you don't do that,

00:49:52.640 you get it.

00:49:53.320 Well, getting that balance

00:49:54.140 right is really hard.

00:49:55.140 So in rule two,

00:49:56.520 I think is treat yourself

00:49:57.960 as if you're someone

00:49:58.740 responsible...

00:49:59.380 Treat yourself like

00:50:00.140 you're someone

00:50:00.520 responsible for helping.

00:50:01.920 And that...

00:50:02.780 I was really interested

00:50:03.960 in that issue

00:50:04.700 of people mistreating

00:50:06.720 themselves.

00:50:08.040 You know,

00:50:08.320 so...

00:50:08.840 Because we are privy

00:50:11.220 to our own weaknesses

00:50:13.160 and faults.

00:50:14.140 We know them better

00:50:14.900 than anyone else

00:50:15.740 knows them.

00:50:16.260 And so it's very easy

00:50:17.660 for us to determine

00:50:18.680 that we're not worthwhile

00:50:19.900 because of all the ways

00:50:20.920 that we don't live up to

00:50:22.780 what we should live up to

00:50:23.860 and the painful knowledge

00:50:25.120 we have of that

00:50:25.820 and to not regard ourselves

00:50:27.320 as worthwhile

00:50:27.980 and to not treat ourselves

00:50:29.420 properly.

00:50:30.220 And that's not good.

00:50:31.440 You have to treat yourself

00:50:32.880 as if you're valuable.

00:50:35.100 And then that is

00:50:36.140 the same attitude

00:50:37.040 that you extend

00:50:37.800 to other people.

00:50:38.880 Well, and it's because

00:50:39.680 you are valuable.

00:50:40.920 So...

00:50:41.480 And that it's a necessity

00:50:43.020 to adopt the responsibility

00:50:44.940 that goes along

00:50:45.840 with recognizing that.

00:50:47.200 So even if you're not happy

00:50:48.500 with who you are

00:50:49.220 and even if you have

00:50:49.980 your reasons,

00:50:51.200 you still deserve

00:50:52.440 presumption of innocence.

00:50:53.940 You still deserve

00:50:54.660 to have a good defense

00:50:55.780 mounted on your own behalf.

00:50:57.360 You still need

00:50:58.080 to treat yourself

00:50:58.860 as if you're someone valuable

00:51:00.060 and someone worthy of love

00:51:02.180 even though you have

00:51:03.540 all the reasons

00:51:04.420 to know why you fall short.

00:51:06.740 And that's absolutely crucial

00:51:08.260 and it is hard

00:51:08.960 for people to learn that.

00:51:10.100 Hard for them to learn

00:51:11.500 not to beat themselves up

00:51:12.620 too much.

00:51:14.040 Why doesn't anyone

00:51:15.760 ever get away

00:51:16.880 with anything?

00:51:18.120 That's one of your lines.

00:51:19.120 Well, I think,

00:51:19.780 imagine you have

00:51:20.420 a plastic ruler,

00:51:21.480 you know,

00:51:21.720 and you pull it back

00:51:22.500 in front of your face

00:51:23.480 and you let go.

00:51:25.780 It's like...

00:51:27.300 You think,

00:51:28.180 well, this is going

00:51:28.800 pretty well so far.

00:51:30.280 Right.

00:51:30.800 Snap.

00:51:31.920 Yeah, well,

00:51:32.480 it's because you can't...

00:51:33.640 You can't bend

00:51:34.440 the structure of reality.

00:51:35.780 This is why...

00:51:36.580 And this is, I think,

00:51:37.280 also partly

00:51:37.940 what in this message

00:51:40.780 is frightening

00:51:41.840 is everything

00:51:43.500 that you distort

00:51:45.680 snaps back

00:51:47.800 and often magnified

00:51:49.260 and everyone knows that.

00:51:50.920 And one of the things

00:51:51.540 I discuss with my audience

00:51:52.680 is like,

00:51:53.280 well, just think about

00:51:54.000 how you talk to people

00:51:55.480 that you're trying to be...

00:51:57.140 trying to treat properly.

00:51:59.460 You don't say to them,

00:52:00.520 okay, here, kid,

00:52:01.880 here's the way

00:52:02.580 you deal with life.

00:52:03.500 This is,

00:52:03.800 you put your son

00:52:04.340 on your knee

00:52:04.720 and say, look, 0.90

00:52:05.820 lie every chance you get.

00:52:08.180 Falsify things.

00:52:09.000 Don't take any responsibility

00:52:10.320 for anything.

00:52:11.080 If you can slough it off

00:52:12.020 to someone else,

00:52:12.840 if you can hide things

00:52:14.020 where no one will find them,

00:52:15.260 that's a hell of a good strategy.

00:52:17.160 Like, no one believes that,

00:52:18.460 ever.

00:52:19.440 So, we know

00:52:20.760 that that doesn't work.

00:52:21.960 Now, we're tempted

00:52:22.900 because now and then

00:52:23.760 you think,

00:52:24.460 well, I can just cut a corner here

00:52:25.840 or I can get away with this

00:52:26.860 and no one will find out.

00:52:28.260 It's like,

00:52:29.640 yeah, they will.

00:52:31.260 They'll find out.

00:52:32.340 Or you'll find out.

00:52:33.180 And I saw this

00:52:33.780 in my clinical practice

00:52:34.660 all the time.

00:52:35.680 You know, people would

00:52:36.520 be suffering

00:52:38.060 for some consequence

00:52:39.400 a lot

00:52:41.260 and we'd untangle it.

00:52:43.840 Maybe we'd go back

00:52:44.580 five years or ten years

00:52:45.820 and it would be

00:52:46.320 something that was left undone

00:52:47.980 or something that was done

00:52:49.080 that shouldn't have been done.

00:52:50.140 Not,

00:52:50.640 and sometimes not even

00:52:51.540 on the part of the person,

00:52:52.760 you know,

00:52:52.960 sometimes on the part

00:52:53.760 of their parents

00:52:54.920 or maybe even on the part

00:52:56.100 of their grandparents.

00:52:57.040 Like, these things stick around

00:52:58.040 for a very long period of time.

00:52:59.760 But it's like,

00:53:00.860 if you,

00:53:01.400 if you produce a rift

00:53:03.320 in the structure of reality,

00:53:04.620 it's not going to go away

00:53:05.920 until you rectify it.

00:53:07.200 And often it breeds

00:53:08.480 more demons,

00:53:09.360 that's for sure.

00:53:10.040 If that's the case,

00:53:10.860 why is it so hard

00:53:11.680 for us to tell the truth?

00:53:12.740 What is it biologically in us?

00:53:14.620 And what I,

00:53:16.120 I like to push you on

00:53:17.180 these biologic issues

00:53:18.060 because you're a psychologist.

00:53:19.000 You actually understand

00:53:19.580 how the brain works

00:53:20.360 and how,

00:53:21.100 you know,

00:53:21.500 in fact,

00:53:21.860 the fundamental order

00:53:23.140 versus chaos issue

00:53:24.420 is in part reflected

00:53:25.720 in our brain.

00:53:26.460 So all these balancing acts

00:53:28.220 our brain's pretty good at,

00:53:29.160 yet truth is hard for us.

00:53:30.580 Yeah.

00:53:31.340 Well,

00:53:32.260 you know,

00:53:33.040 it's hard to confront

00:53:35.120 things now

00:53:36.640 when you could hypothetically

00:53:37.940 put them off.

00:53:39.100 It's discounted a bit.

00:53:40.640 You know,

00:53:40.880 a child who's called

00:53:42.200 onto the carpet

00:53:43.040 for their actions

00:53:43.880 is likely to think,

00:53:44.940 well,

00:53:45.180 if I lie about this,

00:53:46.040 I'm not going to get punished

00:53:47.140 for it now.

00:53:47.740 I can get away with it.

00:53:48.800 And they might not even

00:53:49.560 really believe that,

00:53:50.300 but they don't want to face

00:53:51.140 the consequences

00:53:51.740 of their actions

00:53:52.340 right here and now.

00:53:54.060 Well,

00:53:54.460 we can just put it off

00:53:55.300 a little bit.

00:53:56.420 Well,

00:53:56.680 it'd be nice

00:53:57.200 if you could do that.

00:53:58.760 And so you're tempted

00:53:59.480 to do it.

00:54:00.360 You can shunt it off

00:54:01.340 into the future.

00:54:02.060 That's just future you.

00:54:03.340 Yeah.

00:54:03.540 You know,

00:54:04.300 you don't want to be that guy.

00:54:05.520 There you go.

00:54:05.920 Yeah.

00:54:06.560 But,

00:54:07.240 but,

00:54:08.520 it's better.

00:54:10.400 It's better to have

00:54:11.060 the fight now.

00:54:11.920 It's better to confront it now

00:54:13.180 if you can manage it.

00:54:14.240 You touched earlier

00:54:14.840 on this issue

00:54:15.460 of the evil within us.

00:54:17.000 Yeah.

00:54:18.100 And you use stories a lot.

00:54:20.480 And some of them are stories

00:54:21.460 that all of us

00:54:22.260 are familiar with,

00:54:22.800 Harry Potter being a good one

00:54:23.800 for this example,

00:54:25.020 where there's a little bit

00:54:25.720 of evil in Harry Potter.

00:54:27.180 Yeah.

00:54:27.500 Darkness.

00:54:28.180 Darkness.

00:54:28.780 The Shadow.

00:54:29.420 Yeah.

00:54:29.800 Right.

00:54:30.040 Voldemort.

00:54:30.800 Yeah,

00:54:30.940 right.

00:54:32.600 What is it about having,

00:54:34.680 or respecting that we all

00:54:36.000 have evil that you find

00:54:37.000 is important for us

00:54:38.760 living our lives?

00:54:41.080 Well,

00:54:41.580 I think the capacity

00:54:42.660 for evil is something

00:54:44.060 that is not easily

00:54:45.840 distinguishable from strength.

00:54:49.140 You know,

00:54:49.380 and,

00:54:49.600 I mean,

00:54:50.280 my knowledge runs out

00:54:51.900 at this level of analysis

00:54:53.140 in some sense.

00:54:54.120 The world seems

00:54:54.840 to be structured

00:54:55.460 so that we have,

00:54:57.040 that we can act

00:54:57.980 for the good

00:54:58.840 and we can act

00:54:59.480 for evil.

00:54:59.920 And I think that's

00:55:00.840 associated with

00:55:01.560 self-consciousness.

00:55:02.740 And I think that's

00:55:03.460 illustrated in the story

00:55:04.660 of Adam and Eve.

00:55:05.560 When Adam and Eve

00:55:06.260 become self-conscious,

00:55:08.100 the scales from,

00:55:09.020 fall from their eyes.

00:55:10.060 They realize

00:55:10.720 that they're naked.

00:55:11.900 And to realize

00:55:12.680 that you're naked

00:55:13.240 is to understand

00:55:14.060 your vulnerability.

00:55:15.280 That's why Adam and Eve

00:55:16.260 clothe themselves right away.

00:55:17.400 Oh no,

00:55:17.760 I'm naked.

00:55:18.280 I can be hurt.

00:55:19.580 Okay,

00:55:20.000 I can be hurt.

00:55:21.060 I have to clothe myself.

00:55:22.180 I have to protect myself

00:55:23.140 in the future.

00:55:23.960 You actually become aware

00:55:24.900 of that in a way

00:55:25.820 that animals aren't.

00:55:27.620 Well,

00:55:27.880 what does it mean

00:55:28.400 that you're naked?

00:55:29.580 It means that

00:55:29.980 everyone else is too.

00:55:31.280 What does it mean

00:55:31.980 that you can be hurt?

00:55:33.360 It means that

00:55:33.820 everyone else

00:55:34.300 can be hurt too.

00:55:35.560 It means that

00:55:36.000 you could hurt them.

00:55:37.580 And that's why

00:55:38.100 the knowledge of

00:55:38.840 good and evil

00:55:39.700 goes along with

00:55:40.380 the knowledge of nakedness.

00:55:41.720 That took me a long

00:55:42.560 time to figure out.

00:55:43.380 It took me about

00:55:43.860 30 years to figure that out.

00:55:45.120 So why are those

00:55:45.680 two things conjoined?

00:55:47.300 Oh yes.

00:55:48.740 When you understand

00:55:49.580 that you're vulnerable,

00:55:51.420 you understand

00:55:52.320 that everyone else

00:55:53.060 is vulnerable.

00:55:53.900 And then you have

00:55:54.900 the option of

00:55:55.540 exploiting that.

00:55:57.000 And so that's what

00:55:58.200 transforms human beings

00:55:59.360 to some degree

00:56:00.080 from animals.

00:56:01.200 Because a predator

00:56:02.140 just eats you.

00:56:03.860 But a human being,

00:56:05.420 a human being

00:56:06.280 can play with you

00:56:07.080 and will

00:56:07.620 for all sorts of reasons.

00:56:09.640 Now,

00:56:10.860 the capacity

00:56:11.800 to do that though,

00:56:13.100 why is the capacity

00:56:14.160 to do that,

00:56:15.300 let's say,

00:56:15.900 useful?

00:56:16.800 Well,

00:56:17.240 it's useful

00:56:17.820 to be strong

00:56:18.820 and not to have

00:56:19.820 to use it.

00:56:20.380 That reflects

00:56:20.840 something that we

00:56:21.460 talked about earlier.

00:56:22.560 Because it makes you

00:56:23.720 formidable.

00:56:26.180 And I think that

00:56:27.100 you have to be

00:56:27.780 formidable in order

00:56:28.680 to move forward

00:56:29.600 properly in the world.

00:56:30.580 Even to get through

00:56:31.260 obstacles that aren't...

00:56:32.580 Just to get through

00:56:35.300 obstacles.

00:56:36.240 You have to have

00:56:36.940 some strength of character.

00:56:38.640 You have to have

00:56:39.180 some commitment.

00:56:39.980 And some of that is

00:56:40.680 there will be

00:56:43.640 a cost

00:56:44.380 if you interfere

00:56:45.320 with me.

00:56:46.940 It'll be the

00:56:47.780 minimal cost

00:56:48.600 necessary.

00:56:49.300 Let's say,

00:56:49.740 if you've got

00:56:50.460 yourself under control.

00:56:51.940 It will be the

00:56:52.600 minimal cost

00:56:53.260 necessary.

00:56:54.020 But do not be

00:56:54.980 thinking there

00:56:55.500 won't be a cost.

00:56:57.060 And I don't think,

00:56:57.980 I don't believe

00:56:58.680 that if that's not

00:56:59.820 built into your

00:57:00.580 character,

00:57:01.320 then you have

00:57:02.120 no strength.

00:57:03.720 And you certainly

00:57:04.300 have no strength

00:57:04.980 when you're

00:57:05.800 pushed by someone

00:57:06.740 who's malevolent. 0.98

00:57:07.600 A bully, 0.98

00:57:09.060 if you're like 0.98

00:57:10.080 that,

00:57:10.640 if the bully

00:57:11.120 pushes you,

00:57:12.040 and your response

00:57:12.880 is,

00:57:13.820 there will be

00:57:15.260 a cost for

00:57:15.840 pushing me,

00:57:16.780 and you will

00:57:17.660 pay it.

00:57:18.420 Then the bully

00:57:18.980 will go elsewhere.

00:57:20.880 And we know

00:57:21.420 that too from

00:57:22.040 studies of bullies.

00:57:23.460 You know,

00:57:23.720 like even

00:57:24.480 childhood bullies.

00:57:25.780 They push

00:57:26.660 around kids.

00:57:29.220 And then they

00:57:29.540 find the ones

00:57:30.420 that retreat

00:57:31.800 and withdraw.

00:57:33.240 And they bully

00:57:34.100 them.

00:57:35.760 So,

00:57:36.200 and you know,

00:57:36.480 you might think,

00:57:36.940 well,

00:57:37.120 usually children

00:57:38.080 are bullied

00:57:38.520 because of

00:57:38.980 some abnormality.

00:57:40.040 That's a very

00:57:40.500 common idea.

00:57:41.260 It's like,

00:57:42.500 there's a guy

00:57:42.980 named Dan Olwys,

00:57:43.920 a very smart

00:57:44.480 Norwegian psychologist,

00:57:45.700 and he studied

00:57:46.220 bullying for a

00:57:46.880 long time as a

00:57:47.500 precursor to

00:57:48.100 fascism,

00:57:48.660 by the way.

00:57:49.100 So that was

00:57:49.480 his interest.

00:57:50.540 He said,

00:57:51.520 his analysis

00:57:52.200 indicated that

00:57:53.020 at least three

00:57:54.700 quarters of

00:57:55.260 children have

00:57:55.860 some obvious

00:57:57.240 abnormality that

00:57:58.560 could be the

00:57:59.200 focus of

00:57:59.740 bullying attention.

00:58:00.720 It might even

00:58:01.100 be your name.

00:58:02.200 It doesn't take

00:58:02.720 much of a genius

00:58:03.760 bully to come up

00:58:04.580 with a good way

00:58:05.240 of making fun

00:58:06.000 of your name

00:58:06.780 or you're too

00:58:07.680 tall or you're

00:58:08.320 too short or,

00:58:09.460 you know,

00:58:09.740 or your brother's

00:58:11.020 too tall or too

00:58:11.740 short or there's

00:58:12.760 something.

00:58:14.380 It isn't the

00:58:15.300 abnormality that

00:58:16.240 is the cause of

00:58:17.840 the bullying.

00:58:18.520 It's the

00:58:19.400 abnormality might

00:58:20.220 become the focus

00:58:20.960 of the bullying,

00:58:21.700 but part of the

00:58:22.200 cause is the

00:58:22.840 withdrawal in the

00:58:23.620 face of the

00:58:24.160 bullies because the

00:58:25.000 bully thinks he

00:58:25.580 can get away with

00:58:26.240 it.

00:58:26.780 And it's also the

00:58:29.500 case with children

00:58:30.380 who are preyed

00:58:31.080 upon by adult

00:58:31.900 predators.

00:58:33.040 Like adult

00:58:33.420 predators of

00:58:34.060 children look for

00:58:34.880 children who are

00:58:35.620 easily cowed and

00:58:37.160 who won't put up

00:58:37.960 a fight.

00:58:39.300 So for example,

00:58:40.140 if you're teaching

00:58:40.680 your children to be

00:58:41.520 terrified of

00:58:42.240 strangers, that's

00:58:43.440 really not a very

00:58:44.180 good strategy.

00:58:46.020 You want kids who 0.99

00:58:46.940 are confident and

00:58:48.340 who will make a

00:58:49.060 noise if someone

00:58:49.900 messes about with

00:58:50.800 them and who are,

00:58:51.520 who are, who are,

00:58:52.400 and so that

00:58:53.580 characterological

00:58:55.320 strength has to be

00:58:56.260 built in.

00:58:57.100 Let me play to

00:58:57.820 that, the evil side

00:58:58.940 of that equation.

00:58:59.540 We do a lot of

00:59:00.080 shows on true crime

00:59:01.020 through the lens of

00:59:02.320 a doctor.

00:59:03.140 I'm interested in

00:59:03.540 the forensics and

00:59:04.240 what went down

00:59:04.740 emotionally,

00:59:05.200 psychologically.

00:59:06.540 What creates evil?

00:59:08.180 What is the nature

00:59:08.900 of evil?

00:59:10.420 I mean, Solzhenitsyn

00:59:11.000 wrote about this

00:59:11.820 after unbelievable

00:59:13.560 evil that he

00:59:14.300 witnessed and lived

00:59:15.220 through in Soviet

00:59:16.200 Russia.

00:59:16.860 So some people see

00:59:18.260 it and can react.

00:59:21.500 Welcome to the

00:59:22.360 Jordan B.

00:59:23.080 Peterson podcast.

00:59:24.980 You can support

00:59:25.560 these podcasts by

00:59:26.680 donating to Dr.

00:59:27.580 Peterson's Patreon,

00:59:28.960 the link to which

00:59:29.600 can be found in

00:59:30.280 the description.

00:59:31.920 Dr. Peterson's

00:59:32.800 self-development

00:59:33.660 programs, self-authoring,

00:59:35.480 can be found at

00:59:36.100 self-authoring.com.

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01:02:26.220 Bye.

01:02:26.840 Bye.

01:02:31.920 He's undeniably one of the greatest intellectual phenomenons of our generation.

01:03:00.340 Dr. Jordan Peterson's work as a clinical psychology professor at the University of Toronto has catapulted him to international fame with arguments that are challenging and changing the way we all think.

01:03:12.380 He has captured the attention of millions, especially of young men, but some young women as well.

01:03:16.380 And many of you, however, have never heard of him, but you will get to know him for the first time through this interview.

01:03:21.880 Today he is here, breaking down his provocative rules for life and the prescription for success that will surprise many of you.

01:03:28.440 Thank you for joining us.

01:03:29.220 Thanks for the invitation.

01:03:31.300 So it is an interesting group of insights that you offer us, and I can enter it in many ways, but let me just start with, for me, perhaps the most obvious, which is what is it that you're saying that's resonating with so many people?

01:03:46.140 What itch are you scratching?

01:03:48.560 I think there's probably two.

01:03:51.600 We've had a long conversation in our culture about the necessity for self-esteem and happiness, and that's not what I'm talking about.

01:04:03.040 I tell my audiences and my readers very straightforwardly that life is difficult and that there's a lot of suffering in it, and that you have to learn how to conduct yourself in the face of that.

01:04:16.720 The problem with the pursuit of happiness is that when life's storms come along, happiness disappears, and then you're left with nothing.

01:04:25.740 And so you need to pursue something that's deeper than happiness.

01:04:28.400 And if happiness comes along, well, then, hooray for you.

01:04:32.220 You don't want to despise it because it's fleeting, but it's much better to pursue things that are meaningful than things that make you happy.

01:04:38.560 It's deeper, and it orients you more appropriately, and it keeps you centered in your own life and makes you more useful for your family and your community.

01:04:47.560 So that's one thing.

01:04:48.780 And it's a relief to young people to know that the baseline conditions of life are difficult, but that you can still prevail.

01:04:55.940 So it's a funny message in some sense, or a strange message, because on the one hand, it's somewhat pessimistic.

01:05:00.900 Now, I talk about suffering and malevolence also, but I also emphasize the fact that despite that being the base conditions of existence, people are tough enough to prevail.

01:05:13.000 So that's one element of it.

01:05:14.480 The other element is the necessity of responsibility.

01:05:18.920 So a lot of what people find in life that provides them with a sustaining meaning is a consequence of not the pursuit of rights or the pursuit of happiness or the development of self-esteem, but the adoption of responsibility.

01:05:35.080 And the more responsibility, in some sense, the better.

01:05:38.940 Responsibility for yourself, for making sure that your life lays itself out like it should.

01:05:43.600 Responsibility for your family.

01:05:45.240 Responsibility for the community.

01:05:46.500 It's people who take responsibility that are the ones that you admire, and that's the right pathway through life.

01:05:52.880 That's where meaning is to be found.

01:05:54.440 And I think that's probably the crucial issue, is that identification of a profound relationship between responsibility and meaning.

01:06:02.200 And for many of the people that I'm talking with, it seems like that's the first time that that's been articulated for them.

01:06:09.080 So speaking about responsibility and meaning and how to make sense of a world where so many people feel isolated, I'll come back to that.

01:06:17.640 That seems so helpful.

01:06:20.520 And yet you've been a lightning rod in many ways with a lot of harsh comments, especially in the print media.

01:06:28.840 What is it that your critics are arguing?

01:06:30.600 Well, I got embroiled in some political dispute, I would say, in my home front in Canada, when our government introduced some legislation that purported to be about compassion, which to my way of thinking was about compulsion with regards to speech.

01:06:45.400 And so that's tangled me up.

01:06:46.980 But I also think that people aren't necessarily that happy with a message of personal responsibility when they're really interested in the mechanics of social change.

01:06:55.900 You know, my sense is, is that, well, life is unfair, social structures are unfair, the arbitrary way that illness is distributed into the population is unfair.

01:07:08.600 But despite that, the best level of analysis for rectifying that in a practical sense, but also in a psychological sense, is the level of the individual.

01:07:18.960 And so people who think in a collectivist manner or people who, who are playing identity politics games that insist that your group identity should be your hallmark don't like what I have to say at all.

01:07:30.980 And they have the reasons.

01:07:32.580 I'm not a fan of identity politics types.

01:07:35.860 I think it's a very, very dangerous game, particularly because it makes us tribal.

01:07:40.660 And tribal people are very dangerous. 1.00

01:07:42.500 You know, as, as we degenerate into our tribal groups, the probability of, of violence increases, as far as I'm concerned.

01:07:50.500 That's what the anthropological data would suggest as well.

01:07:53.820 So the collectivist types don't like me very much.

01:07:57.940 You're a clinical psychologist.

01:07:59.960 I mean, it's, it's a challenging profession.

01:08:02.320 You chose it coming out of a rural town in central Canada.

01:08:07.060 How did that advance your life journey?

01:08:09.080 What is, what is, what in your life has inspired you to do what you do now?

01:08:12.900 And especially to take some of the public steps now that are drawing criticism to you, which is always painful.

01:08:18.900 Well, I've always been obsessed with totalitarianism and authoritarian governments, whether they're on the right or the left.

01:08:25.780 I mean, for years, decades, really, I spent almost all of my free time thinking about what happened in Nazi Germany and in Russia.

01:08:36.860 In, in, in the, during the Soviet era, but also in Maoist China.

01:08:41.040 There were other places as well, trying to understand how it was that we could have got off the rails so absolutely terribly.

01:08:47.440 And I started studying that at the collectivist level, I would say, looking for political reasons or economic reasons.

01:08:56.420 But as I investigated further, those levels of analysis became increasingly, they weren't, they weren't providing the answers that I wanted.

01:09:07.340 I think partly because I was really interested in the notion that there's something to learn from what happened, say, in Nazi Germany.

01:09:16.620 But there's something to learn at an individual level.

01:09:19.360 That's my estimation.

01:09:20.800 I don't think that there were innocent masses of people led astray by a single malevolent leader.

01:09:26.740 I don't think the fundamental motivations for what happened in Nazi Germany were economic.

01:09:32.160 And I, I don't think they were in the Soviet Union either.

01:09:34.760 As I read more and more about the situations, I realized that the proclivity of individuals to avoid responsibility and to lie,

01:09:43.440 especially about their own lives and about their own experience, were really the reasons that those systems went so far astray.

01:09:49.860 Now, there were other reasons as well, but those were very important to me because I also thought that the proper lesson in the aftermath of something like Auschwitz is,

01:09:58.080 how do I ensure that I live a life such that if I was offered the opportunity to do something terrible by omission or by commission,

01:10:06.660 that I wouldn't do it, that I would have enough strength of character to resist.

01:10:10.820 And so the lessons there for me were psychological.

01:10:13.600 And that taught me an awful lot about, well, the role of the individual.

01:10:17.100 People like Viktor Frankl, for example, who wrote Man's Search for Meaning, which is a perennial classic and a great book,

01:10:22.960 insisted that a large part of the reason that Germany went off the rails so badly was because individual Germans were so willing to falsify their own experience.

01:10:32.060 And Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who wrote the Gulag Archipelago, the best document on what happened in the Soviet Union,

01:10:38.260 also made exactly the same argument.

01:10:40.300 So I got interested in the psychological, psychological causes of, of catastrophic governance, let's say.

01:10:46.360 And that taught me a lot.

01:10:47.940 It taught me about responsibility, about the responsibility of the sovereign individual.

01:10:52.840 And, you know, we have an idea in our culture.

01:10:54.660 It's a very powerful idea that each of us is of intrinsic value, but that associated with that value is a responsibility.

01:11:02.780 And we have a responsibility, let's say, for our own integrity and for that of our families, but also of the state,

01:11:08.880 because otherwise we wouldn't have the sovereign responsibility and right to vote.

01:11:13.240 Like our whole culture is predicated on the idea that each of us are sufficiently significant so that we can entrust the destiny of the state itself to our decisions.

01:11:24.160 It's like, well, I believe that.

01:11:25.260 And I think that that's a correct idea, which is also why I think that systems that are based on that idea function so well like our Western systems do.

01:11:34.620 But that's a responsibility that has to be taken with dead seriousness, because it means that the good things that you do in your life are truly good and they matter.

01:11:43.300 They ripple outward way more than you think.

01:11:46.020 But so do the things you do that aren't good, including the acts of deception that you engage in, perhaps above all else,

01:11:51.820 which would include your willingness to evade responsibility or to push it off to someone else or to play the short term against the long term.

01:12:01.120 And so, well, let me unwrap us a little bit, because you're touching on a bunch of themes, and I think they would all benefit us.

01:12:09.640 So, first of all, let me say I appreciate that you actually put some of your thoughts down into two books, two books that I've read.

01:12:15.100 The latter is a best-selling book right now.

01:12:17.560 It's the number four-selling book in the country, 12 Rules for Life, Anecdote to Chaos.

01:12:21.840 And I am curious how you put that all together.

01:12:26.420 And let's start off with the basic, which is what's it all about?

01:12:28.720 What's the goal of life, according to some of the more recent pieces you've been writing?

01:12:35.460 I would say that the goal in life is to conduct yourself so that life improves, at least so that undue suffering is forestalled.

01:12:43.280 But more than that, so it's to constrain malevolence and suffering to the degree that that's possible.

01:12:49.800 But then also to work for a positive improvement in things at every level.

01:12:53.400 And that's how you should orient yourself.

01:12:55.540 So I saw something you wrote, actually it's in the book in part as well, is to repeat actions that are worthy.

01:13:02.480 Yes, noble and worthy.

01:13:03.860 Noble and worthy, yes.

01:13:04.960 So you sort of figure out what you should do and then just do it, which I think that's an achievable goal.

01:13:09.820 Most people would think that's laudatory.

01:13:10.980 That takes me to the next point, which is what's the meaning of life?

01:13:14.320 I think the meaning is to be found in that.

01:13:16.320 And as you put things together and as you take responsibility for things, meaning emerges from that.

01:13:24.060 And so it emerges from that the same way it emerges from a symphony, in some sense.

01:13:27.960 Because a symphony is composed of layers of patterns and they're all working harmoniously together.

01:13:32.300 And they speak directly to people of meaning, which is why people love music so much.

01:13:36.240 I mean, every form of music does that.

01:13:37.660 And it's a model for proper being, which is the placing of all the different levels of reality into harmonious relationship with one another.

01:13:47.000 And meaning emerges out of that naturally.

01:13:49.720 And meaning is actually an instinct.

01:13:51.320 This is another thing that people don't understand.

01:13:53.280 And it's a case I've been able to make because I know a fair bit about how the brain works.

01:13:57.920 Because the twin hemispheres of your brain interact to guide you through life, which is a truism in some sense.

01:14:06.180 You use your brain to guide you through life.

01:14:08.160 But your brain does that fundamentally by instilling the proper things that you do with a sense of meaning.

01:14:14.460 And that meaning is, it's not something that's just a surface.

01:14:18.800 It's not on the surface of the world in some sense.

01:14:21.100 It's the deepest instinct that you have.

01:14:23.020 It's associated with a phenomenon that Russian neuropsychologists discovered back in the 1960s called the orienting reflex.

01:14:29.880 And the orienting reflex is what orients you towards things of interest.

01:14:33.020 And that happens unconsciously.

01:14:35.040 And so if something happens around you that's of significance, often something you don't expect, say something somewhat chaotic, you'll orient towards it.

01:14:42.800 And that attracts your attention.

01:14:44.200 And then as you investigate what that is, that's associated with a sense of meaning.

01:14:48.820 And if you put what you're investigating into proper order, then that meaning continues to reveal itself.

01:14:54.340 So you can use meaning as a guide to proper being.

01:14:57.100 But you have to also be very careful to conduct yourself honestly if you're going to do that.

01:15:01.440 Because if you conduct yourself dishonestly, then you pathologize the mechanisms that orient you.

01:15:07.380 So I'm thinking about in my own life how I've tried to apply some of these insights.

01:15:13.100 If I just try to be a little bit better today than I was yesterday, along the lines that you're speaking to, try to create that symphony.

01:15:19.960 But be a little better at it today than yesterday.

01:15:22.580 And like everybody watching right now, not compare myself to somebody else, but rather compare myself to the future version of me.

01:15:28.840 Is that a rational way?

01:15:30.860 That's rule four, right?

01:15:31.800 It's rule four.

01:15:32.320 Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.

01:15:35.860 Well, it's not only appropriate, but I think it's also practical.

01:15:39.820 And one of the things about what I do, including my book, is that I'm always trying to take high-level abstract truths, you know, fundamental truths,

01:15:48.540 and to make them concrete and practical so that you can implement them in your day-to-day life.

01:15:52.940 Because it's the connection between those abstractions and practical action that really cements their meaning and makes them comprehensible.

01:16:00.320 And this idea of incremental improvement is a great one.

01:16:03.740 You know, if there are things about your life that are bothering you, or things about the world that are bothering you,

01:16:08.300 then you want to decompose them into solvable sub-problems.

01:16:12.360 And you do this, if you have a child, this is the sort of thing that you do naturally, right?

01:16:16.480 Because you want to set your child a challenge that's sufficiently challenging to push them forward in their development.

01:16:22.860 So that makes it meaningful for the child.

01:16:25.200 That puts them in the zone of proximal development, which is where proper maturation takes place.

01:16:30.780 They'll find that intrinsically meaningful.

01:16:32.680 You want to make it challenging, but also with a reasonable probability of success.

01:16:38.180 And there's an art to that.

01:16:39.980 So you want to set yourself a task that's difficult, but not so difficult you can't attain it.

01:16:44.100 And then what happens is that you step up improvement across time, incrementally.

01:16:48.240 And there's also a certain element of humility to it, right, which is don't bite off more than you can chew, right?

01:16:54.960 Don't set grandiose goals, but incremental improvement will get you a tremendous distance.

01:17:00.340 When you don't do that perfectly, and it's not easy to do, you suffer.

01:17:05.220 And I've on this stage often said that, you know, pain is inevitable.

01:17:08.680 You're going to have pain.

01:17:10.060 How much suffering comes in that pain, you actually have a fair amount of control over.

01:17:14.500 Can't make it go away, to your point.

01:17:16.440 It's part of life.

01:17:17.260 Your thoughts around suffering that you began to touch on have been incredibly provocative for a lot of people, wildly debated.

01:17:25.660 I think in part because in our modern world, we don't like to acknowledge that kind of suffering can afflict us.

01:17:31.320 We think something's wrong with us if we have that kind of suffering.

01:17:33.820 So how is it productive to focus on suffering the way you do?

01:17:37.360 Well, there is something wrong with us if we're suffering.

01:17:39.900 And there's something wrong with the world because it's an indication that things aren't set in the order they hypothetically could be set if there's undue suffering.

01:17:48.700 And so that is a call to action, and it's a painful call to action, you know.

01:17:52.940 But it's a universal problem.

01:17:56.300 Suffering is built into the structure of existence in some sense.

01:17:59.180 And the fact that you're suffering doesn't mean that there's something isolated about you that's at fault, right?

01:18:06.780 Which is an important...

01:18:07.800 This is why the doctrine of original sin was actually quite useful.

01:18:11.100 Because everyone makes mistakes and everyone falls short of the glory of God, let's say.

01:18:16.320 It speaks to original sin, if you don't mind.

01:18:17.580 And this is, again, all the monotheistic religions share this, but it exists in other traditions as well.

01:18:22.780 Well, it's a way of universalizing everyone's felt sense that they don't live up to their responsibility properly.

01:18:30.660 Because you're not all you could be.

01:18:32.760 And unless you understand that that's everyone's problem, every single person has that issue,

01:18:38.860 then it's easy to become discouraged and crushed by that.

01:18:41.540 And the major advantage, I think, to making a case very strongly that one of the fundamental realities of life is its suffering,

01:18:52.080 is that it's actually a relief to people to hear that.

01:18:54.880 Because they suspect it.

01:18:56.420 Well, they know it.

01:18:57.480 But no one's forthright about it.

01:18:59.140 It's like, yeah, life is suffering.

01:19:00.460 Okay, fine.

01:19:01.160 So where does that leave us?

01:19:02.200 Well, here's where it leaves us.

01:19:03.380 It turns out that even though life is suffering, if you're sufficiently courageous and forthright and honest, let's say, in your approach,

01:19:13.360 and you don't shy away, what you'll find is that there's something within you that will respond to the challenge of suffering

01:19:19.340 with the development of ability that will transcend the suffering.

01:19:23.860 So the pessimism is, yeah, well, life is rife with problems at every level.

01:19:28.780 But the upside is, if you turn and confront that voluntarily, that you'll find something in yourself that can develop and master that.

01:19:38.700 And so the optimism is nested in the pessimism.

01:19:42.920 And that's extremely helpful to people, especially people who are struggling because they think, oh, my God, life is so difficult.

01:19:47.900 I don't know if I can stand this.

01:19:49.080 There must be something wrong with me.

01:19:50.520 Does anybody else feel this way?

01:19:51.960 And you can say, yes, everyone feels that way at some time.

01:19:55.500 But that's, and it is as bad as you think, but you're more than you think you are.

01:20:01.020 You're more than you think you are.

01:20:02.600 And what I really like about this, too, is it's very much in keeping with the clinical data.

01:20:07.780 So, for example, what you do as a clinician, as a clinical psychologist, as a psychiatrist,

01:20:13.460 as any mental health professional who's well-trained, is if people are afraid of something,

01:20:19.980 afraid of something that's standing in their way as an obstacle,

01:20:22.580 like maybe you're trying to develop your career and you're afraid of public speaking,

01:20:26.860 well, I could try to calm you down about your fear

01:20:29.560 and protect you from the challenge that would be associated with public speaking.

01:20:34.100 You say, well, you never have to do that.

01:20:36.020 Or I could say, no, no, look, you have to learn to present yourself more effectively in public

01:20:41.000 if you're going to develop your career.

01:20:42.580 And you're afraid of it.

01:20:43.720 So let's break down what you're afraid of into 10 steps or 20 steps

01:20:48.220 until we can find a step that's small enough so that you can actually master it.

01:20:51.500 And let's assume that with three years of diligent practice

01:20:53.800 that you could become a competent public speaker, at least one that isn't terrified.

01:20:58.100 And with five years, you could become an expert.

01:20:59.760 And let's decide how relevant that is to your future prosperity and thriving.

01:21:05.000 And then let's assume that if you break it down properly and take it on step by step

01:21:09.660 in this incremental way that we discussed, that you'll actually master every single bit of it.

01:21:14.080 And the thing that's cool about that is all the clinical evidence shows it works.

01:21:17.680 And not only that, that's actually how you learn in life.

01:21:21.900 Like when you bring a child to the playground and the child is apprehensive about making new friends,

01:21:27.860 you say, okay, well, look, kiddo, stick around me for a minute or two and just watch what's going on.

01:21:33.640 It's like, and the child will calm down.

01:21:35.360 You say, okay, now go five feet away.

01:21:37.900 Just go out there a little bit and just see how it goes.

01:21:40.320 And stay out there as long as you can.

01:21:41.800 And if you need to come back for a hug, then no problem.

01:21:43.820 It's like, so then the child can go out 10 feet and they come back.

01:21:46.980 You say, okay, well now, you know, maybe just go over there and watch those kids.

01:21:52.020 And the child will go out and then come back.

01:21:53.760 And so that's it.

01:21:54.620 It's the child's going out to where they're afraid, seeing that they can master it, and then coming back.

01:21:59.860 So this seems so self-evident that I'm left wondering, well, did people know this 100 years ago?

01:22:04.380 This issue of taking responsibility, which I think is part of the pain that people feel.

01:22:09.480 Because it's not something that we expect a lot.

01:22:13.380 And people don't realize that it seems to help a lot in most scenarios, if you sort of own it, because you control your destiny.

01:22:18.880 So there's this wisdom we hadn't forgot.

01:22:20.840 You spoke about original sin.

01:22:21.800 These are stories that are thousands of years old, Adam and Eve, right?

01:22:24.880 These are constructs that are archetypal to us, are fundamental to who our species is.

01:22:30.320 And somehow it seems to have slipped from us.

01:22:32.540 Well, you know, knowledge is coded in different ways.

01:22:35.600 So a good example, someone who's a good example, acts out for you how you should be.

01:22:42.400 And a good story portrays that dramatically.

01:22:45.500 But an articulated representation tells you exactly why and explains it.

01:22:49.560 And so some of this needs to be more articulated than it has been.

01:22:53.640 Because we've become detached, in some sense, from our underlying examples and our stories.

01:22:58.740 Partly because they've been criticized so much.

01:23:00.900 So, but I think we're at a point where developing this more articulated knowledge is necessary.

01:23:07.500 But just so I make sure everyone's clear on this, what I'm taking away is, it's a balancing act between the rights you deserve and the responsibility that you must take.

01:23:16.920 And if that balances off in society, and we do seem to focus a lot on people's rights, which is, you know, instinctive to who we are.

01:23:24.400 Yeah.

01:23:24.600 But we often don't match it up with the responsibility that comes along with that.

01:23:28.980 Well, which is exactly why I think that what I'm talking about is falling on receptive ears.

01:23:33.560 It's because you actually cannot have a prolonged discussion of rights without having an equally prolonged discussion of responsibilities for a variety of reasons.

01:23:42.720 First of all, the actual reason that you have rights is so that you can discharge your responsibilities.

01:23:48.960 It's not the other way around.

01:23:50.140 It's like you're granted rights by everyone around you or, or, no, it's not granted exactly.

01:23:56.020 It's part of the, part of the, the purpose of your rights in some sense is so that you can be given an autonomous space that's protected in which you can manifest what's necessary about you in the world that's a contribution to it.

01:24:13.380 So I have to leave a space for you so that you can make your contribution for yourself, so you can take care of yourself, so that you can shoulder responsibility for your family and so that you can serve the community the best way that you can.

01:24:26.040 And I don't, I don't want to set up a society that will interfere with that.

01:24:29.640 But then, and then there's the association that we already talked about between responsibility and meaning, which is absolutely crucial.

01:24:37.960 And so it's, the responsibility element is more important than the rights element as far as I'm concerned, or it certainly is at this point in time.

01:24:45.380 And people know this.

01:24:46.800 They instinctively know it.

01:24:47.920 And yet, the role of the victim seems, which is a painful role to have, because something bad happened to you to be a victim, but it's something that society struggles with.

01:25:00.340 So what about people who feel like they're a victim?

01:25:02.440 They're right.

01:25:04.900 They're victimizers too.

01:25:07.380 Like everybody is a strange mixture of victim and victimizer.

01:25:10.600 Lots of terrible things happen to people that aren't justifiable in some sense.

01:25:15.480 You know, well, illness strikes people randomly.

01:25:20.400 I mean, not entirely randomly, obviously, but there's a very, there's a large random element in it.

01:25:25.420 Where you're thrown into existence as a consequence of your birth.

01:25:30.000 That's, existentialists, especially in the 1950s, talked about that all the time.

01:25:34.460 They talked about it as thrownness, that you're sort of thrown into reality with your particular set of predispositions and weaknesses.

01:25:41.240 And then there's going to be times in your life where things twist in a manner that's unfair to you.

01:25:47.440 That you're not getting your just desserts.

01:25:49.740 But that goes along with all sorts of unequally distributed privileges as well.

01:25:56.700 And so that's the arbitrary nature of existence.

01:25:59.580 But you can't allow those sorts of things to define you because it's not that useful strategically.

01:26:05.280 You're, when you're playing a card game, you're dealt, you're dealt a hand of cards.

01:26:11.660 Well, what do you do?

01:26:13.540 You play the hand the best you can.

01:26:17.720 Why?

01:26:18.440 Because all the, all the hands are equal?

01:26:21.700 No.

01:26:22.520 Because you don't have a better strategy than playing the hand that you're dealt the best you can.

01:26:27.560 And that doesn't even mean it'll be a winning strategy.

01:26:29.780 But, because people don't always win, sometimes we lose and sometimes we lose painfully.

01:26:34.640 And sometimes we lose painfully and unjustly.

01:26:37.300 That's not the point.

01:26:38.680 The point is, you don't have a better strategy.

01:26:41.000 And neither does anyone else.

01:26:43.160 And then it's also not so obvious how privilege and victimization are distributed.

01:26:49.340 You know, if you take someone who's doing quite well in life and you scratch underneath the surface,

01:26:54.860 you generally don't have to scratch very far until you find one or more profound tragedies of the past or perhaps of the present.

01:27:03.140 No matter how well protected you are in the world, you're still subject to illness.

01:27:08.780 You're still subject to aging.

01:27:10.140 You're still subject to the dissolution of your relationships, the death of your dreams, death itself.

01:27:16.620 So, vulnerability is built into the structure of existence.

01:27:21.000 Now, if you start to regard yourself as a hapless victim, or even worse, an unfairly victimized victim,

01:27:27.140 well, then things go very badly sideways for you.

01:27:29.380 It's not a good strategy.

01:27:30.980 You end up resentful.

01:27:32.220 You end up angry.

01:27:33.060 You end up vengeful.

01:27:34.520 You end up hostile.

01:27:35.940 And that's just the beginning.

01:27:37.440 Things can get far more out of hand than that.

01:27:40.240 So, strategically, it's a bad game.

01:27:42.960 It's better to take responsibility for the hand that you've been dealt.

01:27:46.820 There's no better, you've got no better protection in life than doing that.

01:27:49.720 This is where a lot of folks in the modern West get unsettled.

01:27:55.780 Because we have been brought up to believe that we need to be compassionate to each other.

01:28:01.600 And you point out that sometimes that compassion, I don't know if it encourages weakness,

01:28:05.880 or it's another word for weakness.

01:28:08.760 And I'd love if you could open that up for me,

01:28:10.480 because it is the kind of discussion that gets folks really unsettled.

01:28:15.820 Well, feeling sorry for someone is not a moral virtue.

01:28:20.280 You know, morality is much more complex than mere reflexive empathy.

01:28:24.460 So, I would say, when is reflexive empathy useful?

01:28:27.920 That's easy.

01:28:29.380 You're a mother.

01:28:31.300 Your child is under six months old.

01:28:34.920 Reflexive empathy is the right reaction.

01:28:36.760 And I think that that's why it's such a powerful, motivating force as well.

01:28:41.080 You know, a child under six months old is always right. 0.93

01:28:43.940 If a child's in distress, always right.

01:28:46.060 You're wrong.

01:28:46.900 The child's right.

01:28:47.700 No matter why the child is distressed, it's your problem,

01:28:51.640 and you should do something about it.

01:28:53.100 And it's not the infant's fault.

01:28:55.280 Okay.

01:28:55.600 Now, we have a very lengthy dependency period as human beings.

01:29:00.140 And that means that infants...

01:29:02.380 30, 40 years for some.

01:29:03.380 Oh, well, yes, exactly, exactly.

01:29:07.000 And so, because of that intense dependency,

01:29:10.180 that empathic circuitry has to be very, very powerful.

01:29:13.300 But it can easily be utilized in a domain that's outside of its proper purview.

01:29:20.420 And unreflexive empathy is not a moral virtue.

01:29:24.720 And just because you feel sorry for someone, you are not a good person.

01:29:28.980 Now, that might be a subcomponent of being a good person.

01:29:32.500 But it's very frequently the case that complex problems require sophisticated,

01:29:38.680 complex planning, thinking, and analysis.

01:29:41.320 Well, which is why we invented science, for example.

01:29:43.540 Which is why we invented sophisticated social policy and all of that.

01:29:46.820 And it's certainly not the case that everything that's good in the medium to long run

01:29:51.080 looks so good in the short term.

01:29:54.120 I mean, you think about when you're disciplining a child, which you have to do,

01:29:58.660 because one of your responsibilities as a parent is to produce a child,

01:30:04.340 help produce a child who is disciplined and who's socially acceptable to everyone else,

01:30:08.980 which is your fundamental responsibility.

01:30:11.360 Whenever you discipline a child, you cause short-term distress

01:30:16.480 for the benefit of the medium to the long run.

01:30:19.240 And that runs contrary to reflexive empathy.

01:30:22.320 You need more than empathy to get by in the world.

01:30:25.780 So it's unsophisticated thinking to assume that, first of all,

01:30:32.960 that reflexive empathy towards those who are hypothetically unfairly victimized

01:30:37.940 constitutes a moral virtue.

01:30:39.740 It's not that simple.

01:30:40.780 And it can be very, very dangerous.

01:30:42.000 Because you can undermine people by inappropriately feeling sorry for them.

01:30:45.600 It's not helpful.

01:30:46.560 So, as I was listening to a bunch of the different talks that you've given,

01:30:52.160 I was caught off guard by a comment you made in a series on the Bible.

01:30:57.520 And this is an important issue because a lot of folks read,

01:31:02.280 the meek shall inherit the earth, 1.00

01:31:04.180 and have a belief that it means the weak will inherit the earth.

01:31:07.320 Certainly what I thought.

01:31:09.100 And you stunned me by arguing that the word meek didn't really mean what we thought it meant.

01:31:14.680 I looked at a bunch of different translations.

01:31:17.520 Yeah.

01:31:17.840 And my conclusion was, well, you know, words get translated multiple times,

01:31:22.080 and they shift their meaning across time.

01:31:23.700 And so ancient texts are hard to interpret.

01:31:26.840 And it requires a fair bit of study.

01:31:29.060 But my interpretation was,

01:31:31.600 those who have swords and know how to use them,

01:31:34.740 but choose to keep them sheathed,

01:31:37.240 will inherit the earth.

01:31:38.360 And that's a very, that's a much better idea as far as I'm concerned,

01:31:42.740 because it means that you have a moral obligation to be strong and dangerous,

01:31:48.140 both of those.

01:31:49.740 But to harness that and to use it in the service of good.

01:31:55.140 So it's associated with a complex set of ideas.

01:31:59.940 If you're not...

01:32:00.360 But that principle right there is a stark differentiator of you

01:32:05.960 from much of the material that I read.

01:32:08.860 Generally, it's purely about compassion.

01:32:10.640 You use the word victimhood,

01:32:11.500 but a lot of folks do feel it's a virtue,

01:32:13.860 to feel a story for others,

01:32:15.040 because usually behind that is,

01:32:16.840 I'll do something.

01:32:17.200 Virtue's not that easy.

01:32:18.120 No.

01:32:18.840 That's the problem,

01:32:19.920 is that we wouldn't have to think if empathy guided us properly.

01:32:23.880 But it doesn't.

01:32:24.940 It guides us properly in some very specific conditions.

01:32:27.540 It can also make us very dangerous,

01:32:29.340 because, and there's good experimental literature on this,

01:32:33.400 if you're very sensitive to an in-group's claims,

01:32:37.680 whatever they might be,

01:32:38.700 that makes you very hostile to perceived out-group members.

01:32:42.540 In-group, out-group, people within your tribe versus outside your tribe.

01:32:45.440 Well, within whatever group it is that you're identifying with at that moment.

01:32:49.740 You know, so empathy drives that in-group identification.

01:32:52.380 It's like, okay, well, what about the out-group?

01:32:53.900 Oh, those are predatory.

01:32:55.200 Those are predators.

01:32:55.880 We'd better be hard on them.

01:32:58.900 You know, it's a mother bears compassion that gets you eaten. 0.99

01:33:03.600 So, we can't be thinking that empathy is an untrammeled virtue.

01:33:07.540 There's no evidence for that whatsoever.

01:33:09.520 The psychoanalysts knew this perfectly well as well,

01:33:12.320 when we were still wise enough to attend to their more profound realizations.

01:33:17.120 And that's the motif of the devouring parent,

01:33:19.820 the devouring mother, is a more general trope.

01:33:22.160 And that's someone who will do absolutely everything for you all the time,

01:33:26.800 so that you never have to rely on yourself for anything.

01:33:29.620 That's not good.

01:33:31.020 No, there's rules.

01:33:32.020 For example, if you're dealing with the elderly in an old folks home, 0.99

01:33:35.300 here's a rule.

01:33:37.000 Never do anything for one of your clients they can do themselves.

01:33:39.620 Why?

01:33:42.140 Because they're already struggling with the loss of their independence.

01:33:46.120 And you want to help them maintain that independence as long as possible.

01:33:49.780 And that might mean sitting by while someone struggles to do up their buttons,

01:33:53.660 for example.

01:33:54.600 And this is the same if you're maybe helping your three-year-old dress themselves.

01:33:59.140 It's like, yeah, yeah, you can put on the buttons a lot faster.

01:34:01.620 Let me help you with that.

01:34:02.740 It's like, no, you struggle with that.

01:34:05.200 You master it.

01:34:06.440 And I'll keep my empathy to myself.

01:34:08.720 Thank you very much.

01:34:09.680 So that I can help you maintain your independence.

01:34:13.060 And that suffocating mother is Ursula. 1.00

01:34:16.540 That's right.

01:34:17.180 In Little Mermaid.

01:34:17.880 Yes.

01:34:18.460 So these motifs still sneak into our culture.

01:34:22.380 Sure.

01:34:22.760 Why?

01:34:23.020 You see it in Sleeping Beauty as well in the Disney movie,

01:34:25.120 where the evil queen plans to keep Prince Charming locked in her basement,

01:34:31.720 fundamentally chained up until he's so old he's useless. 0.77

01:34:35.880 Right?

01:34:36.060 And she's the force that stops him from making an alliance with the young woman

01:34:40.480 and having his life.

01:34:41.820 Right?

01:34:42.180 I'll just keep you chained up here where you'll be safe.

01:34:45.100 It's like, no, you don't need that.

01:34:46.760 You know?

01:34:47.140 What did Freud say?

01:34:48.260 I think it was Freud.

01:34:49.760 The good mother necessarily fails. 1.00

01:34:52.880 Right?

01:34:53.320 Because as your child emerges, as your child develops,

01:34:56.840 you're a perfect mother up till six months.

01:34:58.700 You take care of your child's every need.

01:35:00.120 Okay, well, at somewhere between six and nine months,

01:35:03.100 the child starts to crawl around, starts to become a bit autonomous,

01:35:05.820 starts to be able to do little things on his or her own.

01:35:09.120 You back off.

01:35:10.260 Every time the child steps forward, you step backwards.

01:35:13.000 And maybe you step backwards a little faster even

01:35:15.160 to motivate your child to step forward.

01:35:17.640 And then what you're saying is,

01:35:19.240 it isn't you I care about.

01:35:20.820 It's who you could be.

01:35:22.820 And see, that's another thing that I'm talking to young men and young women about.

01:35:26.100 It's like, it isn't you I care about.

01:35:27.800 It's who you could be.

01:35:30.440 You think, well, that's pretty harsh.

01:35:31.780 It's like, not when you're talking to 18-year-olds.

01:35:34.020 It's like, they have their whole life ahead of them.

01:35:35.920 Whose side should you be on?

01:35:37.660 The 18-year-old kid who's confused.

01:35:39.540 Oh, you're okay the way you are.

01:35:40.980 It's like, no, you're not.

01:35:41.980 You're not even close to okay the way you are.

01:35:44.600 You haven't even started.

01:35:46.580 You're not who you could be physically.

01:35:48.080 You're not who you could be spiritually.

01:35:49.500 You're not educated to the degree you could be.

01:35:51.580 You could really be something, man.

01:35:53.980 You've got 60 years to work on it.

01:35:55.880 Get the hell at it.

01:35:57.580 That's way better.

01:35:58.720 That's a way more positive message, even though it's got that strange harshness about it.

01:36:02.320 Because it's judgmental.

01:36:04.040 Every ideal is a judge.

01:36:06.440 You can't get away with it.

01:36:07.680 You can't get away from it, right?

01:36:09.180 Or with it.

01:36:10.540 You put something up as an ideal that it stares down at you and says,

01:36:14.020 you are not what you could be.

01:36:15.480 Every great piece of art does that.

01:36:17.540 And to tell young people, it's like, no, no, you're not okay the way you are.

01:36:20.760 That's why we have universities. 0.92

01:36:22.200 That's why we have training programs.

01:36:23.720 It's like you don't know enough to go out there and change the world.

01:36:26.380 You're not out there waving placards around and telling people how to behave.

01:36:30.700 Get your act together.

01:36:32.260 Learn some skills.

01:36:33.520 Educate yourself.

01:36:34.300 Learn how to speak.

01:36:35.280 Learn how to conduct yourself.

01:36:36.560 Learn how to stand up.

01:36:37.920 Make yourself a force in the world.

01:36:39.640 There's way more to you than you think.

01:36:41.780 You appreciate why that message would resonate with some but scare the heck out of others.

01:36:46.580 It should scare the heck out of everybody.

01:36:49.700 You know, that's what they say.

01:36:51.660 Fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.

01:36:54.520 There's real truth in that.

01:36:56.120 And this is a...

01:36:56.820 See, I think...

01:36:57.780 And this is what scared me.

01:37:00.540 I learned from studying Auschwitz and the terrible things that I studied for many, many years 0.60

01:37:07.060 that I was responsible for them.

01:37:10.820 And I believe that.

01:37:12.440 Yes, because it comes down to individual integrity.

01:37:16.040 All of these things.

01:37:17.420 If the state is corrupting around you, that's on you.

01:37:20.620 It's your responsibility.

01:37:22.460 You think, well, how can I take on that responsibility?

01:37:24.560 It's like, be more than you are.

01:37:27.900 So, and how could you not be afraid of that?

01:37:30.540 Well, of course you'd want to shy away from that.

01:37:32.700 But the alternative is far worse.

01:37:34.260 It's far worse to let things degenerate.

01:37:37.920 Like, you have a chance.

01:37:39.220 You have the opportunity to contend with the structure of reality and to set things right.

01:37:44.460 You can do that if you take it on voluntarily.

01:37:46.680 And that's a terrible burden to confront suffering and malevolence, especially given the degree

01:37:51.320 of malevolence.

01:37:52.120 It's a terrible thing to confront.

01:37:55.080 The alternative is worse.

01:37:56.500 Let things slide.

01:37:57.940 You just see where you end up there.

01:37:59.920 At least you have a fighting chance if you're a contender, right?

01:38:03.380 You're in the ring.

01:38:04.620 And there's, and you can, and you can do it.

01:38:07.400 That's the thing.

01:38:08.260 That's, that's the, that's what makes me so fundamentally optimistic about people.

01:38:13.060 Is that the problems that confront us are, are most infinite in their catastrophic consequence.

01:38:21.420 But there's something within us that's even greater than that.

01:38:24.540 And so that's, that's the fundamental reality.

01:38:28.020 You don't get to that either unless you start with what's so terrible.

01:38:30.880 Say, life is rife with suffering and injustice.

01:38:33.960 And we make it worse with our malevolence.

01:38:36.040 It's terrible.

01:38:37.580 Okay, well, that's horrible.

01:38:38.660 Who can withstand that?

01:38:39.620 It's like, yeah, well, if you look inside that, you see that something beckons.

01:38:43.420 And what beckons is the possibility of what you could become if you confront that.

01:38:48.340 And that's what we need to know.

01:38:50.060 And that's, I think, integrally tied up with our most fundamental religious convictions.

01:38:55.340 We know that people have an indomitable divine spirit.

01:38:59.940 Well, how do you call that forth?

01:39:01.560 Well, by challenging it.

01:39:03.120 It's not going to come out without that.

01:39:04.920 You're not going to be who you could be without pushing yourself to your limit.

01:39:07.940 Because why would you be?

01:39:10.920 It's not like it's easy.

01:39:12.440 You have to be compelled in some sense.

01:39:14.860 You have to be challenged.

01:39:16.080 And that's why you do your children no favors by, by overprotecting them.

01:39:20.860 Quite the contrary.

01:39:22.880 Why does that message make you so emotional?

01:39:25.640 And what were you like at age 18?

01:39:28.040 You're in Saskatchewan, I believe.

01:39:29.280 Alberta at that time, yeah.

01:39:32.440 Well, I was thinking about the sorts of things that we're talking about now.

01:39:35.440 I've been thinking about them ever since I can remember.

01:39:37.800 But, you know, I've got better at thinking about them across time.

01:39:41.000 But I was, I had a lot of the problems, I suppose, that the typical 18-year-old would have.

01:39:48.080 I drank a lot.

01:39:49.060 I came, come from this little town in northern Alberta.

01:39:51.620 Heavy drinking.

01:39:52.700 I started drinking when I was 14.

01:39:54.220 So I was quite a partier.

01:39:57.680 I, I was confused existentially, I would say.

01:40:00.960 I wasn't sure what the proper direction in life was.

01:40:03.360 I was very much obsessed with the problem of the Cold War.

01:40:11.500 That's never really gone away because that seemed to me to be just a kind of insanity that I didn't know how to fathom.

01:40:17.620 And, you know, it was all of that.

01:40:20.240 And I was obsessed with reading and obsessed with learning.

01:40:22.800 And so that was what all drove me in this direction.

01:40:25.400 And then as I started to develop these ideas, like I had to let go of things.

01:40:30.240 You know, one of the ideas that I've been promoting to people is that you have to let the dead wood burn off.

01:40:38.020 And you do that by, you do that as a consequence of necessity in the pursuit of responsibility.

01:40:44.480 When I started writing seriously, I had to stop drinking because I couldn't think properly.

01:40:49.880 So that was it.

01:40:50.500 It was either like you're going to do one of these or the other.

01:40:53.760 You're either going to continue wasting your time.

01:40:56.100 I was having a fine time.

01:40:57.200 I was in graduate school and, and, and, and I had a very social, I was very, very social.

01:41:02.040 And a lot of that involved drinking and, and, and that sort of thing.

01:41:06.420 Couldn't do both, especially when I was editing.

01:41:09.160 I couldn't get my thoughts down pristinely enough, precisely enough.

01:41:12.120 Plus the, the emotional magnitude of the things that I was dealing with were more overwhelming if I was, well, in the aftermath of a party, you know.

01:41:22.840 So I decided when I was like 25 or so to just stop.

01:41:26.560 I've, I've been caught off guard by how politicized you've become.

01:41:30.400 And I, you know, as I read of your youth, I know that you had your run is with religion, which a lot of people do.

01:41:37.200 You actually got politically active, but on the left, not the right.

01:41:42.460 Help me understand what went down.

01:41:44.920 Well, I, in the, in the little town I grew up in, the, the member of parliament, the, the provincial parliament, equivalent to American state, was a democratic socialist.

01:41:56.760 He was the only one in the entire province.

01:41:58.280 Everyone else was conservative, which would be sort of moderate Republican, I would say.

01:42:04.060 And, you know, there's something to be said for political voice for the working class and for the dispossessed.

01:42:10.680 And it certainly is the case that hierarchical structures, the hierarchical structures that compose our society, do produce dispossession.

01:42:18.500 They stack people up at the bottom.

01:42:19.780 And, and so people at the bottom need to have a political voice.

01:42:23.760 And so I was very attracted to that end of the political spectrum.

01:42:28.840 But as I came to investigate some of the problems I've been discussing more deeply, I started to understand that mere economic rectification was insufficient.

01:42:39.780 That that wasn't the level of analysis that was appropriate for my inquiry anyways.

01:42:44.680 Translated, redistribution of income doesn't work.

01:42:47.660 Well, think about it this way.

01:42:48.940 The guaranteed basic income idea.

01:42:52.440 It's like, well, that's predicated on the idea that man lives by bread alone.

01:42:57.240 Well, that isn't how it works.

01:42:58.880 And I've certainly seen that in my clinical practice.

01:43:00.760 I've had clients, especially addicts, if you gave them money, they would die.

01:43:06.720 And the reason for that, like one guy that I remember in particular, I liked him quite a bit.

01:43:11.420 He had a bad cocaine problem.

01:43:12.820 And as long as he was flat broke, he wasn't dead.

01:43:19.820 But as soon as his, he was on disability, as soon as his disability check came in, he was face down in a ditch three days later.

01:43:27.060 So, well, and you think, well, maybe that's a consequence of his overwhelming poverty, etc.

01:43:33.180 You could come up with some social reason for that path that he took.

01:43:36.840 But it wasn't, by any stretch of the imagination, that simple.

01:43:39.840 It's like, people need purpose more than money, even.

01:43:44.400 And, I mean, obviously, we don't want people starving.

01:43:48.220 And actually, we're doing a pretty good job of solving that problem worldwide.

01:43:51.140 You know, the UN projects that there won't be anyone in absolute poverty by the year 2030, which is really quite the bloody miracle, that's for sure.

01:43:58.740 So, we're doing a pretty good job of getting rid of abject privation. 0.92

01:44:02.520 But then, it isn't the provision of material well-being with ease that allows people to live properly, even though a certain amount of material wealth is a necessary precondition.

01:44:20.500 It's purpose.

01:44:21.660 And that's a much more difficult problem to solve.

01:44:24.460 It's like we need something to grapple with.

01:44:26.360 We need a meaning to justify our lives.

01:44:28.400 And some of that is to be found in, well, the struggle against privation and malevolence.

01:44:35.920 The mere offering of material sustenance to people isn't going to solve the problem.

01:44:43.280 Dostoevsky knew this 150 years ago.

01:44:45.340 He said if he gave people everything they wanted, so all they had to do was eat cakes and busy themselves with the continuation of the species,

01:44:53.380 the first thing they do is smash it all to hell so that something interesting could happen. 0.61

01:44:57.060 He said that's our fatal flaw and salvation, both of that, that wanting to contend rather than to sit back and have everything taken care of.

01:45:09.040 So, how do we get an 18-year-old to understand what Dostoevsky wrote 150 years ago?

01:45:15.480 How do you get a 38- or a 58-year-old, which is my age, to understand how to take responsibility?

01:45:20.500 No, we have discussions like this.

01:45:22.960 You know, and you make the case to people as well.

01:45:24.840 So, I've been touring around.

01:45:27.160 My wife and I have gone to 60 cities now since January of this year.

01:45:33.660 And I've been speaking to audiences that average 2,500 people.

01:45:38.160 And I have a, I deliver a lecture that's very much like this conversation.

01:45:42.960 It's like lay out the structure of life, the fact that it's rife with suffering and malevolence,

01:45:47.740 that we erect hierarchies in an attempt to deal with that, to deal with those problems because they're too alike,

01:45:54.580 that the hierarchies dispossess people.

01:45:56.380 And so, we have to take care of the dispossessed as well and to draw out the relationship between meaning and responsibility.

01:46:03.000 And the audiences are wrapped as a consequence of that.

01:46:07.280 You know, and I'm always listening to my audiences as, when are they silent?

01:46:10.160 Because, you know, when everyone in an audience is silent, then everyone's in the same place.

01:46:15.260 That's a meaningful place.

01:46:16.700 They're all lined up.

01:46:18.020 And they line up on this axis of responsibility and meaning.

01:46:22.020 So, there's a hole in our culture where this information hasn't been provided.

01:46:26.780 But it was there at times in our history, which has been the thing that I struggle with, which is the issue of sacrifice.

01:46:34.020 It's so paradoxical, right?

01:46:35.380 Why would me giving of myself to you make me feel better?

01:46:40.240 It does seem, like most of the time, if I have money, I give you some of my money, I have less money.

01:46:44.360 But you're arguing that if I understand true sacrifice and I sacrifice myself for something that has meaning.

01:46:50.180 Well, part of it is, you know, human beings discovered time.

01:46:54.820 That's one of the things that makes us very peculiar creatures.

01:46:58.200 To be aware of our own mortality is a consequence of the discovery of time, right?

01:47:02.180 We can see how we extend out into the future.

01:47:04.300 And so, that makes us very strange creatures as selfish creatures.

01:47:09.260 Because you actually can't be narrowly selfish and survive.

01:47:13.820 And here's the reason.

01:47:15.420 You have to take care of yourself now.

01:47:18.180 So, let's say, well, then you can pursue impulsive pleasure, perhaps at the expense of other people.

01:47:23.100 And why not?

01:47:24.600 Well, here's one reason why not.

01:47:26.740 There isn't just you now.

01:47:29.100 There's you tomorrow.

01:47:30.640 There's you next week.

01:47:31.920 There's you next month and next year.

01:47:33.440 And ten years from now.

01:47:34.420 And so, if you conduct yourself in a manner in the present that interferes with your future selves, then that's a downhill trip for you.

01:47:42.440 And so, taking care of yourself in the future and taking care of other people actually turns out to be exactly the same thing.

01:47:49.400 Because you're actually a community of people that's distributed across time.

01:47:53.480 And so, if you act in your own best interest, then you're going to sacrifice some of the present for the future.

01:47:58.900 And that was one of the great discoveries of mankind, right?

01:48:01.280 Which is something that I also concentrate on in 12 Rules, because I'm really interested in the issue of sacrifice.

01:48:07.060 Why would you give up something now?

01:48:10.440 Why would you ever give up something now voluntarily?

01:48:12.780 And the answer is sometimes if you give up something now, and often something you love, something you're very in love with even, perhaps not for the best reasons, then you can make a bargain with the future.

01:48:24.200 And that bargain with the future isn't any different than the bargain you make with other people.

01:48:27.800 So, that narrow selfishness is blindness to time and context.

01:48:35.560 And there's nothing about it that's good.

01:48:37.480 And I do think the musical example is a really good one.

01:48:41.160 Like, in a musical piece, every note has to fit with every other note across the entire span of the piece.

01:48:46.300 Well, that's what your life needs to be like.

01:48:48.020 It's like, how you act with me right now has to be in harmony with what you want for yourself tomorrow.

01:48:54.420 And that's going to be tangled in as well.

01:48:56.180 Well, it's not only that you repeat across time and have to take that into account.

01:48:59.820 It's that you repeat across time in the context of your social life.

01:49:04.000 And so, all of that has to be brought into the equation.

01:49:06.780 And the sacrificial motif is a huge part of that.

01:49:09.620 And that also is something that runs contrary, in some sense, to empathy.

01:49:12.900 Because sometimes you have to, you know, you have to beat yourself on the back of the head with a stick to get yourself to move forward properly.

01:49:18.640 Even though you know, I should be doing this.

01:49:21.200 I should be doing this.

01:49:22.280 Well, I don't want to.

01:49:23.160 It's hard.

01:49:23.800 It's like, no sympathy for that.

01:49:26.180 It's, you have to do it because otherwise things are going to get worse.

01:49:29.300 I heard you say that you're quoting one of the Ten Commandments saying you do unto your neighbors as you have them do unto you. 0.82

01:49:36.960 And the word nice is not in that commandment.

01:49:39.220 No, no.

01:49:40.260 Well, nice isn't enough.

01:49:42.300 You know, and this...

01:49:44.880 Is it not enough or is it not the right thing to expect?

01:49:47.520 Because so many members of my audience beat themselves up in a way they would never hurt other people.

01:49:53.060 Oh, yes, that's definitely.

01:49:54.020 And they say their thinking, but most thinking is self-flagellation.

01:49:57.560 Oh, yes.

01:49:58.200 Part of it is, right, is, you know, take it easy on yourself.

01:50:00.920 Be fair.

01:50:02.020 On the other hand, sometimes you tolerate stuff from other people because you teach people how to treat you.

01:50:06.280 And if you don't do that, you get it.

01:50:09.880 Well, getting that balance right is really hard.

01:50:11.620 So in rule two, I think, is treat yourself as if you're someone responsible for helping.

01:50:18.680 And that, I was really interested in that issue of people mistreating themselves, you know.

01:50:24.860 So, because we are privy to our own weaknesses and faults.

01:50:30.620 We know them better than anyone else knows them.

01:50:32.720 And so it's very easy for us to determine that we're not worthwhile because of all the ways that we don't live up to what we should live up to.

01:50:40.660 And the painful knowledge we have of that.

01:50:42.620 And to not regard ourselves as worthwhile and to not treat ourselves properly.

01:50:46.700 And that's not good.

01:50:47.920 You have to treat yourself as if you're valuable.

01:50:50.320 And then that is the same attitude that you extend to other people.

01:50:55.460 Well, and it's because you are valuable.

01:50:57.400 So, and that it's a necessity to adopt the responsibility that goes along with recognizing that.

01:51:03.680 So even if you're not happy with who you are and even if you have your reasons, you still deserve presumption of innocence.

01:51:10.440 You still deserve to have a good defense mounted on your own behalf.

01:51:13.560 You still need to treat yourself as if you're someone valuable and someone worthy of love.

01:51:18.860 Even though you have all the reasons to know why you fall short.

01:51:23.220 And that's absolutely crucial.

01:51:24.860 And it is hard for people to learn that.

01:51:26.580 Hard for them to learn not to beat themselves up too much.

01:51:30.560 Why doesn't anyone ever get away with anything?

01:51:34.620 That's one of your lines.

01:51:35.600 Well, I think, imagine you have a plastic ruler, you know, and you pull it back in front of your face.

01:51:39.940 And you let go.

01:51:42.260 It's like, you think, well, this is going pretty well so far.

01:51:47.100 Snap.

01:51:48.360 Yeah, well, it's because you can't bend the structure of reality.

01:51:52.260 This is why, and this is, I think, also partly what in this message is frightening.

01:51:58.960 Is everything that you distort snaps back and often magnified.

01:52:05.860 And everyone knows that.

01:52:06.940 And one of the things I discuss with my audience is like, well, just think about how you talk to people that you're trying to be, trying to treat properly.

01:52:15.940 You don't say to them, okay, here, kid, here's the way you deal with life.

01:52:19.960 This is, you put your son on your knee and say, look, lie every chance you get.

01:52:24.640 Falsify things.

01:52:25.480 Don't take any responsibility for anything.

01:52:27.560 If you can slough it off to someone else.

01:52:29.360 If you can hide things where no one will find them.

01:52:31.720 That's a hell of a good strategy.

01:52:33.620 Like, no one believes that.

01:52:34.800 Ever.

01:52:35.920 So, we know that that doesn't work.

01:52:38.440 Now, we're tempted because now and then you think, well, I can just cut a corner here or I can get away with this and no one will find out.

01:52:44.680 It's like, yeah, they will.

01:52:47.740 They'll find out.

01:52:48.820 Or you'll find out.

01:52:49.640 And I saw this in my clinical practice all the time.

01:52:51.700 You know, people would be suffering for some consequence.

01:52:56.020 Yeah.

01:52:57.060 A lot.

01:52:58.280 And we'd untangle it.

01:53:00.220 Maybe we'd go back five years or ten years and it would be something that was left undone.

01:53:04.700 Something that was done that shouldn't have been done.

01:53:06.580 Not, and sometimes not even on the part of the person, you know.

01:53:09.420 Sometimes on the part of their parents or maybe even on the part of their grandparents.

01:53:13.480 Like, these things stick around for a very long period of time.

01:53:15.940 But it's like, if you produce a rift in the structure of reality, it's not going to go away until you rectify it.

01:53:23.680 And often it breeds more demons, that's for sure.

01:53:26.480 If that's the case, why is it so hard for us to tell the truth?

01:53:29.220 What is it biologically in us?

01:53:31.100 And what I, I like to push you on these biologic issues because you're a psychologist.

01:53:35.480 You actually understand how the brain works and how, you know, in fact, the fundamental order versus chaos issue is in part reflected in our brain.

01:53:42.840 So, all these balancing acts our brain's pretty good at, yet truth is hard for us.

01:53:47.160 Yeah.

01:53:47.800 Well, you know, it's hard to confront things now when you could hypothetically put them off.

01:53:55.580 It's discounted a bit.

01:53:57.100 You know, a child who's called onto the carpet for their actions is likely to think, well, if I lie about this, I'm not going to get punished for it now.

01:54:04.180 I can get away with it.

01:54:05.280 And they might not even really believe that, but they don't want to face the consequences of their actions right here and now.

01:54:10.440 Well, we can just put it off a little bit.

01:54:12.840 Well, it'd be nice if you could do that.

01:54:15.140 And so you're tempted to do it.

01:54:16.820 You can shunt it off into the future.

01:54:18.520 That's just future you, you know.

01:54:20.760 You don't want to be that guy.

01:54:22.000 There you go.

01:54:22.420 Yeah.

01:54:23.060 But, but it's, it's better.

01:54:26.800 It's better to have the fight now.

01:54:28.360 It's better to confront it now if you can manage it.

01:54:30.640 You touched earlier on this issue of the evil within us.

01:54:33.600 Yeah.

01:54:33.700 And you use stories a lot.

01:54:36.940 And some of them are stories that all of us are familiar with.

01:54:39.280 Harry Potter being a good one for this example.

01:54:41.300 Yeah.

01:54:41.560 Where there's a little bit of evil in Harry Potter.

01:54:43.620 Yeah.

01:54:44.000 Darkness.

01:54:44.640 Darkness.

01:54:45.240 The shadow.

01:54:45.880 Yeah.

01:54:46.260 Right.

01:54:46.540 Voldemort.

01:54:47.200 Yeah.

01:54:47.400 Right.

01:54:47.760 What is it about having or respecting that we all have evil that you find is important

01:54:54.160 for us living our lives?

01:54:57.500 Well, I think the capacity for evil is something that is not easily distinguishable from strength.

01:55:05.600 You know, and I mean, my knowledge runs out at this level of analysis in some sense.

01:55:10.460 The world seems to be structured so that we have, that we can act for the good and we

01:55:15.600 can act for evil.

01:55:16.400 And I think that's associated with self-consciousness.

01:55:19.220 And I think that's illustrated in the story of Adam and Eve.

01:55:22.040 When Adam and Eve become self-conscious, the scales fall from their eyes.

01:55:26.540 They realize that they're naked.

01:55:28.420 And to realize that you're naked is to understand your vulnerability.

01:55:31.740 That's why Adam and Eve clothe themselves right away.

01:55:33.840 Oh, no, I'm naked.

01:55:34.760 I can be hurt.

01:55:36.040 Okay, I can be hurt.

01:55:37.540 I have to clothe myself.

01:55:38.640 I have to protect myself in the future.

01:55:40.440 You actually become aware of that in a way that animals aren't.

01:55:44.100 Well, what does it mean that you're naked?

01:55:45.580 It means that everyone else is too.

01:55:47.740 What does it mean that you can be hurt?

01:55:49.800 It means that everyone else can be hurt too.

01:55:52.020 It means that you could hurt them.

01:55:54.000 And that's why the knowledge of good and evil goes along with the knowledge of nakedness.

01:55:58.100 That took me a long time to figure out.

01:55:59.840 It took me about 30 years to figure that out.

01:56:01.600 So why are those two things conjoined?

01:56:03.460 Oh, yes.

01:56:05.080 When you understand that you're vulnerable, you understand that everyone else is vulnerable.

01:56:10.300 And then you have the option of exploiting that.

01:56:13.480 And so that's what transforms human beings to some degree from animals.

01:56:17.620 Because a predator just eats you.

01:56:20.140 But a human being, a human being can play with you and will for all sorts of reasons.

01:56:25.400 Now, the capacity to do that, though, why is the capacity to do that, let's say, useful?

01:56:33.260 Well, it's useful to be strong and not to have to use it.

01:56:36.840 That reflects something that we talked about earlier.

01:56:38.760 Because it makes you formidable.

01:56:42.680 And I think that you have to be formidable in order to move forward properly in the world.

01:56:47.020 Even to get through obstacles that aren't...

01:56:50.880 Just to get through obstacles.

01:56:52.720 You have to have some strength of character.

01:56:55.100 You have to have some commitment.

01:56:56.440 And some of that is, there will be a cost if you interfere with me.

01:57:03.420 It'll be the minimal cost necessary.

01:57:05.780 Let's say if you've got yourself under control.

01:57:07.880 It will be the minimal cost necessary.

01:57:10.740 But do not be thinking there won't be a cost.

01:57:13.520 And I don't think, I don't believe that if that's not built into your character,

01:57:17.740 then you have no strength.

01:57:20.180 And you certainly have no strength when you're pushed by someone who's malevolent.

01:57:24.600 A bully, if you're like that, if the bully pushes you,

01:57:28.480 and your response is, 0.97

01:57:30.240 there will be a cost for pushing me.

01:57:33.240 And you will pay it.

01:57:34.900 Then the bully will go elsewhere.

01:57:36.620 And we know that too from studies of bullies.

01:57:39.940 You know, like even childhood bullies.

01:57:42.080 They push around kids.

01:57:45.400 And then they find the ones that retreat and withdraw.

01:57:49.740 And they bully them.

01:57:52.240 So, and you know, you might think,

01:57:53.480 well, usually children are bullied because of some abnormality.

01:57:56.500 That's a very common idea.

01:57:57.680 It's like,

01:57:58.360 there's a guy named Dan Olwius,

01:58:00.400 a very smart Norwegian psychologist.

01:58:01.920 And he studied bullying for a long time as a precursor to fascism, by the way.

01:58:05.520 So that was his interest.

01:58:06.700 He said, his analysis indicated that at least three quarters of children have some obvious abnormality

01:58:14.740 that could be the focus of bullying attention.

01:58:17.200 It might even be your name.

01:58:18.660 It doesn't take much of a genius bully to come up with a good way of making fun of your name.

01:58:23.240 Or you're too tall or you're too short or, you know,

01:58:26.220 or, or your brother's too tall or too short or there's something.

01:58:30.660 It isn't the abnormality that is the cause of the bullying.

01:58:34.960 It's the abnormality might become the focus of the bullying.

01:58:38.020 But part of the cause is the withdrawal in the face of the bullies.

01:58:40.980 Because the bully thinks he can get away with it.

01:58:43.520 Well, if you're,

01:58:44.960 and it's also the case with children who are preyed upon by adult predators.

01:58:49.480 Like adult predators of children look for children who are easily cowed

01:58:53.240 and who won't put up a fight.

01:58:55.680 So for example,

01:58:56.520 if you're teaching your children to be terrified of strangers,

01:58:59.200 that's really not a very good strategy.

01:59:02.400 You want kids who are confident

01:59:04.100 and who will make a noise if someone messes about with them

01:59:07.420 and who are, who are, who are.

01:59:08.880 And so that, that, that characterological strength has to be built in.

01:59:13.600 Let me play to that, that the evil side of that equation.

01:59:16.040 We do a lot of shows on true crime through the lens of a, of a doctor.

01:59:19.600 I'm interested in the forensics and what went down emotionally, psychologically.

01:59:22.820 What creates evil?

01:59:24.660 What is the nature of evil?

01:59:26.860 I mean, Solzhenitsyn wrote about this.

01:59:28.380 Yeah.

01:59:28.620 The unbelievable evil that he witnessed and lived through in Soviet Russia. 0.89

01:59:33.240 So some people see it and can react and respond and,

01:59:36.560 and they survive, others wilt away.

01:59:40.940 What, but what caused the evil?

01:59:41.880 There are levels. 0.98

01:59:42.660 Well, some of it, some of it's like moronic evil, you might say.

01:59:46.360 It's like, well, someone has something you don't and you want it. 0.85

01:59:49.700 That's just theft, bicycle theft or something like that.

01:59:52.680 It's pure material greed.

01:59:54.940 And then I guess the level after that would be something like, well, the, the, the desire to cause harm because you're vengeful.

02:00:01.560 And that's where the idea that you're a victim starts to play a real role.

02:00:05.320 If you're a victim and things are unfair, then it's okay for you to react and to, and to lash out and to hurt.

02:00:11.260 And so then there's the, the conscious desire to actually produce suffering.

02:00:16.180 And then that can just expand beyond anyone's imagination until what you're trying to do is take, I think, like the, that, that, that maximizes out when you're trying to take revenge against God for the structure of reality itself.

02:00:31.080 And I think that's the right language.

02:00:33.880 So when, when people, and you see approximations of this with the high school shooters and people like that, especially the guy who shot up the elementary school.

02:00:42.580 You have Sandy Hook.

02:00:43.380 Yeah, you bet.

02:00:44.240 You got to, you got to go to a pretty damn dark place before you think that the right thing to do with your life is to make people fundamentally identifiable because of their innocence and lack of wrongdoing, the target of your vengeful hatred.

02:00:59.180 You've gone somewhere unbelievably dark to get there, but that's not the darkest place you can go.

02:01:04.600 It's certainly a suburb of the darkest place you can go.

02:01:08.480 You know, you can, you can go to where Hitler went and try to cook up a strategy for destroying everything. 0.92

02:01:14.520 You know, I mean, everyone says, well, Hitler was trying to dominate the world.

02:01:18.060 It's like, well, maybe Hitler was trying to set up a particularly dramatic for dramatic forum for suicide with Europe in flames. 0.75

02:01:27.820 That's what he did.

02:01:28.760 You know, you've mentioned totalitarian governments, Nazis in particular, several times.

02:01:33.480 One of the knocks on you is that Nazis come to your rallies.

02:01:37.400 Oh, yes. 0.99

02:01:37.780 It's such complete, utter nonsense. 0.93

02:01:40.660 It's absolutely reprehensible, all of that. 0.59

02:01:43.560 Why do they, why do they come to your rallies?

02:01:45.140 What are they looking for?

02:01:46.620 There's no evidence for that at all.

02:01:48.320 The alt-right types don't like me at all.

02:01:51.000 There's lots of documentation of that.

02:01:52.720 And the reason they don't like me is because I don't like people who play identity politics.

02:01:56.800 And I don't care if they're on the left or the right.

02:01:59.860 You know, the left says, here's the victimized groups.

02:02:03.360 And our society is basically an oppressor, oppressed society.

02:02:07.120 And we should do everything we can to lift up the oppressed.

02:02:09.980 And I don't know what we're doing with the oppressors, but I don't imagine it'll be that pleasant.

02:02:13.920 And the identity politics types on the right say, oh, yes, we should play identity politics, but we'll be white ethno-nationalists and look for white superiority or a white ethno-state.

02:02:25.120 It's like, as far as I'm concerned, none of those, none of that's even vaguely, it's reprehensible.

02:02:30.760 It's thoroughly reprehensible on all fronts.

02:02:33.520 The reason that this all came about, there's complicated reasons, but because I'm not a fan of the collectivist left, let's say.

02:02:42.040 It's been in the interest of people who push that doctrine to paint me as the most radical of opponents, which, of course, would put me in the far-right camp.

02:02:51.100 But just because you're no fan of people who play identity politics doesn't mean you're part of the alt-right.

02:02:56.960 So that's been a strategy, I think, that's been, what would you say, put into play against me for a variety of reasons that has been somewhat successful, but not very in the final analysis.

02:03:10.280 Maybe it's the wrong axis to put you on, but if zero is ultra-liberal and 100 is the ultra-conservative, alt-right, where are you on that spectrum?

02:03:20.480 Do you think of yourself as more conservative, more liberal? I know in your life you've changed.

02:03:25.060 Well, I'm a traditionalist in many senses, you know, but I'm a very creative person, so it's very difficult, temperamentally, for me to place myself on the political spectrum.

02:03:36.500 It's not like I don't think that the dispossessed deserve a political voice. 0.99

02:03:41.460 You know, that's why I was interested in socialist politics when I was a kid, and I understand perfectly well that hierarchies dispossess, and that something has to be done about that.

02:03:50.260 But I'm also, I also think that we mess with fundamental social structures at our great peril.

02:03:56.140 I think we've destabilized marriage very badly, and that that's been, that's not been good for people, especially not good for children, but I don't think it's been good for adult men and women either. 0.64

02:04:05.620 And I certainly, as a social scientist, one of the things you learn if you're a social scientist, and you're well-educated and informed, is that if you take a complex system, let's imagine you have a complex system and you have a hypothesis about how to intervene so that it will improve.

02:04:23.080 Okay, so what will you learn? 0.71

02:04:25.340 You'll learn, once you implement the intervention, that you didn't understand the system, and that your stupid intervention did a bunch of things you didn't expect it to, many of which ran counter to your original intent. 0.97

02:04:37.180 And you will inevitably learn that. 0.81

02:04:39.080 So, I learned that, I had a whole series of very wise mentors who insisted to everyone they talked to, who was interested in public policy, for example, that when they put in place a well-meaning public policy initiative, that they put aside a substantial proportion of the budget to evaluate the outcome of the initiative.

02:05:02.060 Because the probability that the initiative would produce the results desired was virtually zero.

02:05:07.380 And I believe that that's technically true.

02:05:10.640 And so, that tilts me in the conservative direction, because I think, well, that's sort of working, that system.

02:05:16.120 And I'm also not a utopian.

02:05:17.960 So, I don't expect systems to work perfectly.

02:05:20.320 If they're not degenerating into absolute tyranny, I tend to think they're doing quite well.

02:05:25.920 Because if you look worldwide, and you look at the entire course of human history, degeneration into abject tyranny is the norm.

02:05:33.660 And so, if you see systems like our systems, say, in the democratic Western world, that are struggling by not too badly, it's like you should be in awe of those structures.

02:05:45.200 Because they're so difficult to produce and so unlikely.

02:05:48.480 And then I think, well, you take a system that's working not too badly.

02:05:52.980 You think, well, I'm going to radically improve it.

02:05:54.700 It's like, no, you're not.

02:05:59.080 You're not going to radically improve it.

02:06:00.780 You might be able to improve it incrementally if you devoted a large part of your entire life to it.

02:06:06.500 And you were very humble about your methods and your ambition.

02:06:12.640 But if you think that some careless tweak of this complex system, as a consequence of the ideological presuppositions you learned in three weeks in your social justice class at university, 0.71

02:06:24.840 and that's going to produce a radical improvement, it's like, you can't even begin to fathom the depths of your ignorance.

02:06:32.640 You mentioned marriage as an example of this.

02:06:35.760 As a social psychologist, what happened to marriage?

02:06:40.160 Well, I think a bunch of things happened.

02:06:42.100 I mean, one thing that happened might be that we live a lot longer than we did.

02:06:48.380 So, the problem of having a relationship that extends over decades is a different problem than having the problem of having a relationship that extends over the period of time where you might have kids.

02:07:00.680 So, I think there's that.

02:07:01.740 I think that women have clearly become more autonomous. 0.99

02:07:07.720 And so, they've been able to transcend their more limited roles.

02:07:13.080 Those roles, by the way, weren't imposed upon them by patriarchal men.

02:07:17.860 I think that's a reprehensible view of history.

02:07:21.040 Because I think men and women fundamentally served as mutually sustaining partners throughout the course of history, despite their continual disagreements and the difficulties of life.

02:07:33.440 Women were relegated to a more restricted role because they lacked sanitation, they lacked tampons, they lacked birth control. 1.00

02:07:47.480 And those problems have been solved in the last hundred years, essentially, since about 1895.

02:07:52.840 And so, that's freed women to participate in a much broader sense than they were able to before. 0.92

02:07:59.060 But we don't want to underestimate the power of those technological revolutions, even though they sound rather mundane.

02:08:06.100 They're not mundane at all, especially not the birth control pill.

02:08:09.120 That's put a certain amount of stress on marriage because the traditional roles have been expanded.

02:08:16.720 And you might think, well, that's great.

02:08:18.680 It's like, yeah, it is.

02:08:19.580 It is.

02:08:19.940 It is great in that a broader range of people have access to the expression of a fuller range of their talents.

02:08:28.280 And in principle, that's good for them.

02:08:30.440 And definitely, it's good for the rest of society.

02:08:33.160 Because now we have access to the genius of women, let's say, too. 1.00

02:08:36.580 But that's made negotiating the marital role more difficult. 0.88

02:08:40.240 And then the other thing that's happened, as far as I'm concerned, is that we got a little too careless about liberalizing the divorce laws and changing the structure of marriage in general.

02:08:51.840 I don't think that that was good for people, especially not for children.

02:08:55.460 Because the evidence that children do better in intact two-parent families is overwhelming.

02:09:02.040 No credible social scientist that I know of disputes that.

02:09:05.600 So, and it might be because the minimal viable social structure is actually the minimal nuclear family.

02:09:14.760 Two people.

02:09:15.600 One isn't enough.

02:09:16.860 Two is barely enough.

02:09:18.600 But it's a minimum, especially.

02:09:20.660 And I think the reason for that is, this is how I look at it.

02:09:24.760 Everybody has lots of flaws and tilts towards insanity in at least one direction.

02:09:31.100 And so, partly what you want to do is you want to link up with someone over the long run.

02:09:35.060 Because they're, they might be sane where you're not and vice versa.

02:09:40.000 So, if you have a partner and you put yourself together, and this is also how marriage works symbolically, by the way.

02:09:46.480 It's the reunion of the original man before the separation into man and woman.

02:09:50.820 You put yourself together.

02:09:52.540 You have one person who's basically sane.

02:09:56.080 And so, that maximizes the probability that you'll do reasonably well throughout your life course.

02:10:01.420 But it also makes the pair of you, especially if you're communicating, sufficiently sane so that you're a foundation for the raising of children who will be socially competent and acceptable.

02:10:14.300 Because if they have parents, if they have a parental unit, let's say, that's communicating and that's straightening each other out, then the child can adapt to that unit as a microcosm of broader society.

02:10:26.540 And so, if the child can figure out how to get along with the parents, in the best possible sense, then they're also simultaneously figuring out how to get along with everyone else.

02:10:37.400 So, and I think if you go below that pairing, things fragment in a way that can't be easily rectified.

02:10:45.600 I know that you're getting emotional talking about some parts of this discussion, in part where you talk about meaning and responsibility.

02:10:54.440 I don't know if that touches you more personally than others.

02:10:57.420 Well, I think it's a consequence, actually, of many of the things that I've experienced over the last, especially the last six or seven months.

02:11:04.900 So, I meet 150 people or so at each of these events, personally.

02:11:10.800 And many of them have stories to tell me, and they tell me overwhelming stories.

02:11:15.380 And that has a cumulative effect on you.

02:11:18.760 So, one kid, for example, he was in his early 20s, I would say.

02:11:24.100 He came up to me and he said, I don't want to take up too much of your time, but a year and a half ago, I just got out of jail and I was homeless.

02:11:31.120 I started watching your lectures.

02:11:32.620 He said, I'm married, I have a daughter, and I just bought my first apartment.

02:11:37.800 It's like, good work.

02:11:39.920 And I was in L.A., and I was outside the Orpheum Theatre, and it's kind of rough in downtown L.A.

02:11:45.820 And I was walking down the street with my wife, and this car pulled up beside us, and this kid hopped out, Latino kid, about 19 or so.

02:11:52.460 And he said, are you Dr. Peterson?

02:11:53.760 I said, yes.

02:11:54.420 He said, oh, I'm really happy to meet you.

02:11:56.620 And he shook my hand, he said, and I've been watching your lectures, and just wait a minute, wait a minute.

02:12:01.880 And I said, okay, okay.

02:12:03.280 And then he ran back to his car and he got his dad out.

02:12:05.440 And they came over and they had, he had his arm, they had their arms around each other.

02:12:18.540 And they were just smiling away, you know, like with a real Duchenne smile, a real smile.

02:12:24.340 And he said, I've been watching your lectures, and I've really been working on putting my relationship with my father together, and it's really worked.

02:12:33.340 And so I thought, well, that's a lovely thing to have happen when you're walking through a rough neighbourhood, is that some kid jumps out of his car and comes rushing over and tells you how much better his life is because he's been working hard on the basis of your recommendation to fix his relationship with his father.

02:12:57.520 And people are telling me stories like this all the time.

02:13:02.520 And the thing that's sad about it, I think, and this is what makes me emotional, is not only that this is so good, and good at a level that transcends politics, absolutely, but that people require so little encouragement.

02:13:20.980 You know, there's so many people I see in my lectures, and I have a very diverse range of people who come to my lectures.

02:13:30.480 They're starving for encouragement, and they don't need much.

02:13:34.720 I said, I had this kid talk to me at a barbecue I was at this weekend, and he's working with delinquent kids, 13 and 14 years old.

02:13:42.720 And he said, they were pulled out of other delinquent camps and brought to his camp, which was for the worst delinquents.

02:13:49.640 And he started talking to them about my lectures.

02:13:52.460 And so they've been watching him, and now they have a little fan club that's based around my lectures.

02:13:56.360 And they're doing things like talking to each other about making their beds and cleaning up their rooms.

02:14:01.460 It's like, it's unbelievable how little genuine encouragement many people need and how they had none.

02:14:12.120 No one ever said to them and meant it. 0.99

02:14:15.440 It's not okay for you to be a weak loser. 0.99

02:14:19.860 It's not okay. 0.99

02:14:21.460 And the reason it's not okay is because you could be way more than that.

02:14:25.740 And it's a crime, an ethical crime, for you to allow all that necessary potential to go to waste.

02:14:36.760 It hurts you.

02:14:38.100 It hurts your family.

02:14:39.280 It hurts the world.

02:14:40.840 Really.

02:14:42.120 Really, it does.

02:14:44.440 And people think, oh, okay.

02:14:47.000 I get it.

02:14:48.080 And they do get it because they know at some level.

02:14:51.040 The other thing people tell me, you know, they say, well, I've been paying attention to your lectures.

02:14:57.340 Developing a vision for my life.

02:14:58.740 Trying to tell the truth.

02:14:59.720 Trying to adopt more responsibility.

02:15:01.640 And things are way better.

02:15:02.640 But the other story is, you've been able to help me put into words things I always knew to be true but didn't know how to say.

02:15:10.740 Which is a good role for an intellectual to play.

02:15:13.800 And so, well, so those are, that's why this all makes me emotional.

02:15:17.380 It's so, it's so good.

02:15:19.140 You know, and so much of this has been covered as if it's political.

02:15:24.640 It's not political what I'm doing.

02:15:26.840 It's not political.

02:15:28.740 It's something that politics is nested inside.

02:15:32.060 Politics is nested inside the healthy sovereignty of the individual.

02:15:36.400 I'm working to buttress and sustain the healthy sovereignty of the individual.

02:15:42.080 The great idea of the West.

02:15:44.900 Is it worth it?

02:15:46.000 Is the pain that you must feel with some of the biting criticism that you witness, hear about yourself, is it worth it?

02:15:54.820 Oh, absolutely.

02:15:55.980 And, absolutely.

02:15:57.260 And, you know, I'm not so naive as to think you can get the good without the bad.

02:16:02.080 You know, I've had discussions with my publicists, say, and the people who are working on my book.

02:16:09.020 And sometimes the discussions are such that, well, maybe a little less controversy would be a good thing.

02:16:16.560 It's like, it's hard to say what's a good thing.

02:16:22.100 You know, and what's happened to me over the past two years, fortunately,

02:16:26.480 is that every time I've been attacked, the net outcome has been in my favor.

02:16:37.060 Even though it's very painful in the immediate, well, when it's happening with the mobs of students, for example,

02:16:43.920 or with a particularly reprehensible press piece, some of which, some of the press pieces,

02:16:52.480 people who were very close to me told me they thought they sunk me.

02:16:55.080 And, I mean, I watch people respond to these things, and very frequently now,

02:16:58.860 if someone's mobbed in social media, they apologize.

02:17:03.420 They're done with one episode.

02:17:06.580 You know, and this has probably happened to me a hundred times in the last two years.

02:17:10.560 So it's very stressful.

02:17:12.700 But I'm kind of detached from it because we'll see how it plays out.

02:17:18.580 You know, and you can't do difficult things without them being difficult.

02:17:22.120 And so I'm not, I don't feel that it's been, what do we say, how to say it exactly?

02:17:34.240 I'm perfectly satisfied with the way things are going, especially with these lectures, because they're so positive.

02:17:41.900 So how do you want to be remembered years from now when the world looks back on what we're witnessing right now?

02:17:48.040 What should people say about Jordan Peterson?

02:17:57.880 That he wanted the best for people, not the worst.

02:18:03.560 And the reason I want the best, I think, is because I know a fair bit about what the worst is like.

02:18:13.020 And I definitely don't want that.

02:18:15.540 And that's a conscious decision, to turn away from that.

02:18:18.080 It's like, enough hell.

02:18:22.260 That's the lesson of the 20th century.

02:18:24.180 And so it means that we take responsibility for that.

02:18:30.660 We put the world together and we start with ourselves.

02:18:34.100 And we do that by adopting responsibility, not by fixing someone else.

02:18:38.320 And not even by fixing social structures.

02:18:40.660 They're not that easy to fix.

02:18:42.440 It's like, start with yourself.

02:18:44.180 You're a fixer-upper, man.

02:18:45.640 You got work to do.

02:18:46.920 Get at it.

02:18:47.600 And then maybe you'll develop enough wisdom so that you'll be good for someone other than you.

02:18:52.680 And then you can expand that outward.

02:18:55.200 So I would like the best for people.

02:18:59.800 I think when people look back on you, they'll also see that you began to tie together seemingly disparate parts of who we are as a species.

02:19:09.740 And I'd like to get into that because it's deep stuff, but you articulate it in a way that I think people will understand.

02:19:18.280 Let's start with the soul.

02:19:19.900 This idea that we have something that for most people is this amorphous part of us.

02:19:25.920 But you argue that it was in our parents, that it's through all of us.

02:19:30.760 It's a much bigger concept than I had heard.

02:19:34.200 Yeah, well, I think, see, this is how I think reality lays itself out.

02:19:39.060 I think we all know this.

02:19:41.900 You're not driven by your past like a clock.

02:19:45.440 You're not deterministic.

02:19:48.180 You are to some degree because you're a limited creature.

02:19:51.580 You've got rules that you run by and all of that.

02:19:53.780 You know, you're not omniscient.

02:19:56.580 But you're not driven by the past.

02:19:59.740 What you do instead is confront the potential of the future.

02:20:02.980 That's what's in front of you.

02:20:04.080 So it's a domain with multiple pathways.

02:20:09.660 And that's what's always in front of you.

02:20:10.920 You could go there.

02:20:11.520 You could go there.

02:20:12.240 You could go there.

02:20:14.180 There's an array of choices that confront you.

02:20:17.120 You confront that as soon as you wake up and become conscious in the morning.

02:20:20.040 And then there's all this potential that's there in front of you.

02:20:23.800 And you use your ethical choice to determine which of those possibilities will become actual.

02:20:30.760 And it's through that mechanism that you participate in the creation of reality.

02:20:37.300 And that's the making of you in the image of God.

02:20:40.720 Because that's what God did at the beginning of time, according to our old stories.

02:20:44.120 Spoke and transformed potential into the being that was good.

02:20:50.240 And that was dependent on using truthful speech.

02:20:52.940 So that's what you do if you act properly.

02:20:55.420 You confront potential and you translate it into reality.

02:20:59.040 And it's your soul that does that.

02:21:02.140 Your soul makes that translation.

02:21:04.220 But the soul for you is bigger than just in me.

02:21:07.660 It's a part of almost like our collective unconsciousness touches all of us.

02:21:12.060 Our soul seems to be bigger than just what's inside of us.

02:21:15.960 It's connected.

02:21:16.180 And it's also the thing that's the same between us in some sense, right?

02:21:19.460 I mean, it's a funny thing because you're a singular being possessed of this creative consciousness.

02:21:26.960 But so am I.

02:21:28.320 So it's a strange kind of singularity because we share it.

02:21:31.840 And it's the thing that unites us in some sense as sovereign individuals.

02:21:39.460 All right, so how does faith play a role in all this?

02:21:43.140 And faith, again, is I gather that if you act appropriately, you'll have a better life.

02:21:49.880 Good stuff will happen to you.

02:21:50.920 Is that what faith is?

02:21:53.960 I think you make a decision about whether, about what your fundamental attitude towards being is going to be.

02:22:01.340 I think that's faith.

02:22:03.200 It's like, well, are things bad or good?

02:22:06.760 It's like, there's a lot of evidence they're bad.

02:22:09.320 There's a lot of evidence they're good.

02:22:12.240 Where are you going to come down on that?

02:22:15.280 Should you work to make things better?

02:22:17.020 Should you work for their annihilation?

02:22:18.880 These are decisions that you make.

02:22:20.500 And I think they're fundamentally based on something like faith.

02:22:25.260 Your decision to confront the unknown and the things that frighten you is like, well, do you have faith in your potential?

02:22:30.560 Do you have faith in what you could call forward out of you?

02:22:33.020 Because you need that in order to move forward with confidence.

02:22:35.880 You want to instill faith.

02:22:37.300 I mean, we know this.

02:22:38.380 If you're trying to raise a child, you want to instill faith in them.

02:22:42.660 Now, you might not say, well, I'm instilling faith in God.

02:22:45.180 It's like, well, it's not so easy to decide when you're doing that.

02:22:49.440 But to instill in your child the faith in the ability of their own potential to unfold in a positive direction, well, that's faith.

02:22:58.820 That's what you want for someone who's confident.

02:23:01.160 It's like, yes, in absence of evidence, in the absence of certain evidence, I believe that my commitment to this path of action will bear fruit.

02:23:10.080 All right, so let's take this discussion and, I think, make it practical.

02:23:14.340 So one of the biggest battles that I sense in America, North America, so I'll throw the West, is that between religion and science.

02:23:22.580 In many ways, this is a fracture that you, Colt Nietzsche, is speaking to when he said God was dead.

02:23:29.120 Not as a good thing.

02:23:30.460 No, not as a good thing.

02:23:31.640 And led to the totalitarian ideology of much of the last century.

02:23:36.020 But let's just take it right till today to North America in particular.

02:23:39.360 And our brains hardwired to look at this information differently.

02:23:42.540 Religion made it possible to have inquisitive minds that led to science.

02:23:46.940 Religion also placed in all of us this belief that there's some divinity in us, something special in all of us.

02:23:52.580 And you very thoughtfully speak about how science talks about what is.

02:23:58.580 How can people watch us right now or see us or hear us?

02:24:01.140 The technology is remarkable.

02:24:02.780 But religion is not really designed, but science is not designed to talk about what it means.

02:24:07.200 It's what should be.

02:24:08.320 What should be.

02:24:08.900 Yes, there has to be something beyond that.

02:24:12.600 You know, and I believe that, like, I believe that the description that I just gave you of human consciousness is actually scientifically accurate.

02:24:20.880 I think that we do confront potential and that we do cast it into reality.

02:24:25.760 I think if you understand how the brain works from its ability to first grapple with what's unknown in physical representation and then to represent it in image and then to represent it in word,

02:24:39.300 I think that what you see is the process of potential coming into reality.

02:24:44.720 So I don't think that there's anything that's not commensurate with the scientific viewpoint there.

02:24:50.380 I also think that if we act as if we're each divine centers of consciousness of that sort, then we treat ourselves properly.

02:25:01.860 Think, well, you've got some intrinsic value.

02:25:04.240 You treat other people properly because I'm duty bound to treat you as if you have some intrinsic value.

02:25:08.960 We build social structures on that predicate.

02:25:12.440 They work.

02:25:13.720 So the idea that the individual is sovereign in some divine sense, if you act that out politically, it's like, hey, your society functions and people don't starve and things aren't an absolute abject tyranny.

02:25:27.700 And your rulers have something to bow to, that principle of intrinsic sovereignty.

02:25:32.140 Now, the question is how that might be related to some metaphysical reality because that's the question of God.

02:25:38.400 And the way, I don't know exactly how to answer that, except that I've seen this relationship, say, between the opening statements in Genesis,

02:25:46.880 which describe God as this being that uses communicative intent to call forth being out of possibility.

02:25:54.520 And that that's the essence of God as portrayed in Genesis.

02:25:59.680 And that's built into us as an image.

02:26:02.140 I think, okay, well, that's what our whole society is predicated on and that works.

02:26:05.580 So it seems to me that there's something true about that.

02:26:08.440 I don't know what the fundamental relationship is between consciousness and the soul and the metaphysics of being.

02:26:15.200 But I'm certainly unwilling to assume that this is all meaningless and random.

02:26:20.680 I don't believe that.

02:26:21.840 I don't think that's a good theory.

02:26:23.140 I don't think it works at all when you act it out.

02:26:25.860 So there's something wrong with it.

02:26:27.340 And I don't think there's any evidence that it's true.

02:26:31.240 So people say, well, do you believe in God?

02:26:34.280 And I think a bunch of things when I'm asked that question.

02:26:37.760 It's like, why are you asking?

02:26:38.840 What do you mean God?

02:26:41.940 What do you mean believe?

02:26:43.440 It's like, then those are reasonable objections for a question that complex.

02:26:47.460 But I think a better answer is, I act as if God exists.

02:26:51.980 You say, well, does that mean you believe?

02:26:53.760 It's like, well, what you believe is most appropriately expressed in your action.

02:27:00.000 So, and I think, what's the saying?

02:27:04.460 By their fruits, you will know them.

02:27:06.500 That's an action-oriented idea.

02:27:09.580 It's like, so that's enough belief to stake my existence on.

02:27:15.960 But that doesn't mean I'm certain of it.

02:27:19.100 How could you be certain of it?

02:27:20.880 It's not within the human, it's not within the realm of human capacity to be certain about such a thing.

02:27:27.340 And so, you have to stake something on it.

02:27:32.080 It's like, I act as if it's true.

02:27:36.060 That's as good as I can manage.

02:27:38.960 And I don't think there's a more appropriate answer than that.

02:27:42.280 It's like, it's up to you to take it from there in some sense.

02:27:47.560 I think part of the reason that you've become so popular is because you take religion.

02:27:54.340 And you allow us to see the fundamental grammar that is offered by different religions without people having to first make the very important step of deciding whether they believe or not.

02:28:10.240 I know for a lot of people listening there, that's going to be a bit of a struggle.

02:28:12.660 But it is one of the more rewarding aspects of reading or listening to you.

02:28:18.400 And I do think that a lot of people will come to either a conclusion you just offered, which is I can live my life that way and the fruits of my action will be bestowed on my family and my life.

02:28:29.080 And many will just decide to believe, period, because it makes sense, because there's so much wisdom in these writings.

02:28:33.520 No matter what religion it is. 0.72

02:28:34.620 And I've talked to folks in every discipline about how they feel about what you're saying.

02:28:39.080 And most find a way into it.

02:28:41.160 But the reality that there is wisdom out there beyond what a scientist like me can offer.

02:28:47.580 And I'd like you, I look at the brain.

02:28:48.780 I see the left hemisphere is pretty good at some types of processing.

02:28:51.900 The right hemisphere is different.

02:28:53.020 And one is better about things of order.

02:28:55.240 And one's better about things of chaos.

02:28:57.300 You know, making sense of what just happened, paying attention to things that are unexpected.

02:29:00.600 The other one's pretty good at just automating my life.

02:29:02.460 And I start to see that much of my behavior is hardwired, more than I would have normally anticipated or expected.

02:29:10.260 And I suspect that when you read some of this wisdom, I've stopped thinking about people who wrote these beautiful old treatises as, you know, like many scientists think about them, as, you know, simpletons who didn't really understand how the stars and the planets worked and this is their best effort at it.

02:29:25.680 They were trying to answer a very different question.

02:29:27.520 Yes, yes.

02:29:27.840 They're not superstitious scientific theories.

02:29:30.060 They're something different.

02:29:30.880 Well, and the thing about belief, I think you put your finger on it, is, well, do you follow the story?

02:29:39.800 That's a fundamental religious question.

02:29:41.560 You know, when people go to see a movie like Pinocchio, which is a movie I've taken apart online in some detail, it's like they suspend disbelief.

02:29:49.540 No one thinks that a wooden puppet has become alive.

02:29:52.680 No one questions why the wooden puppet should rescue his father from the chaos of the whale.

02:29:58.080 It all just makes sense.

02:29:59.500 It's like, well, yeah, but why does it make sense exactly?

02:30:04.000 And isn't it interesting to notice that it makes sense?

02:30:07.100 And these stories have a pattern and the pattern has a function.

02:30:10.900 And that's a religious function.

02:30:12.640 You say, well, I don't know whether I believe.

02:30:14.540 It's like, well, you follow the story.

02:30:17.360 The Harry Potter books are a good example of that because they have a deeply, deeply religious substructure.

02:30:22.440 And that's why they were so insanely popular.

02:30:25.540 You know, they have to speak.

02:30:26.580 For a book to become that popular, it has to speak to something that's in everyone.

02:30:31.600 Because otherwise, why would they become that popular?

02:30:35.300 You know, in the second volume, Harry confronts the basilisk, the thing that turns you to stone that lurks underneath the magic castle.

02:30:43.300 It's like, well, that's life.

02:30:44.580 That's Jaws.

02:30:45.520 It's the same story.

02:30:47.180 It's like we have a structure.

02:30:48.960 It's kind of magical.

02:30:49.940 We live inside it.

02:30:50.860 It's a hierarchy.

02:30:52.020 But underneath, there's chaos and terror.

02:30:55.220 And that can come up at any time and paralyze you with its gaze, right?

02:30:58.760 Turn you to stone because it's so awful.

02:31:01.180 And every building is like that.

02:31:02.540 And so what do you have to do is you have to go down into the depths and confront that thing voluntarily.

02:31:08.000 And then you find, and that's what, you'll find what's of great value in that pursuit.

02:31:12.800 And be reborn.

02:31:14.180 It's like, well, that's the Harry Potter story.

02:31:15.680 That's the second volume.

02:31:17.220 It's like, well, everyone knows that story.

02:31:18.860 Do you believe it?

02:31:20.660 Well, do you act it out?

02:31:25.000 That's the question.

02:31:26.480 Do you act it out?

02:31:27.320 It's the right pattern.

02:31:29.020 I think, and maybe, you know, maybe it's not even the right pattern.

02:31:31.640 Maybe the human race is a hopeless race and there's no destination for us.

02:31:36.400 But for better or worse, that's our pattern.

02:31:39.820 Our pattern is the snakes are after us.

02:31:43.260 Well, we can cower in our dens.

02:31:45.920 Or we can go out and we can find the source of the snakes.

02:31:49.280 And we can contend with it.

02:31:51.240 And that's what we decided to do.

02:31:52.940 And God only knows how long ago.

02:31:54.420 Millions of years.

02:31:55.460 We decided we weren't going to cower in our dens.

02:31:57.600 We were going to go out and root out the snakes.

02:32:00.460 It's like St. Patrick or St. George.

02:32:02.760 And then we found, well, there was the snakes that will eat you.

02:32:06.080 And then there were the snakes that were in other people's hearts.

02:32:08.820 And then there were the snakes that were in your hearts.

02:32:11.520 And all those had to be contended with and rooted out.

02:32:14.680 And that's part of the even deeper mythology.

02:32:18.380 Is that, like, there's an association in Christianity between the snake in the Garden of Eden and Satan.

02:32:24.620 It's like, well, where did that come from?

02:32:26.320 What kind of crazy idea is that?

02:32:28.420 Well, I just laid out the idea.

02:32:30.700 It's like, there's always a snake.

02:32:32.980 What's the worst possible snake?

02:32:35.120 Well, it isn't an actual snake.

02:32:36.720 It's a metaphorical snake.

02:32:38.720 It's the snake that's in the heart of your enemy when he comes to burn down your city.

02:32:42.780 Well, what if you get rid of your enemies?

02:32:44.800 Well, the snake's still there.

02:32:46.300 Well, then it's in your heart.

02:32:47.580 So what's the ultimate battle?

02:32:49.280 The ultimate battle is with the snake in your heart.

02:32:51.480 It's like, yes, true, true, metaphorically, but more than that, metaphysically.

02:32:59.720 As true as anything can be.

02:33:01.200 That statement is as true as anything can be.

02:33:03.840 We live in a society where the dividing line between good and evil is between my tribe and someone else's tribe.

02:33:09.580 Right.

02:33:10.600 Yes.

02:33:11.320 And maybe it's inside each and every one of our hearts.

02:33:13.320 Yes.

02:33:13.620 Well, that's Solzhenitsyn's comment, right?

02:33:15.280 That's his conclusion from the analysis of the Gulag Archipelago.

02:33:18.120 It's like, constrain the evil within.

02:33:21.480 That's your primary moral obligation.

02:33:23.240 That's why I don't like identity politics.

02:33:25.060 It's like, it's not my tribe and your tribe.

02:33:27.480 Don't be thinking that.

02:33:29.020 That's a mistake.

02:33:31.420 It's more sophisticated than that.

02:33:33.680 You have to understand it as a spiritual battle, not as an economic battle, not as a physical battle.

02:33:40.180 You have to conceptualize it as a spiritual battle.

02:33:42.720 That abstracts it.

02:33:44.300 That puts it up into the level of abstraction where it's properly dealt with.

02:33:48.320 Because otherwise it degenerates into tribal violence.

02:33:50.960 Right.

02:33:51.080 So to take that abstract and reduce it to practice, religions are able to provide a grammar.

02:33:57.240 Science has provided a grammar for some as well.

02:33:59.360 But religion provides the basic building blocks for a lot of folks.

02:34:03.300 What do you say about the argument that God is dead?

02:34:07.060 Look out for what will replace him.

02:34:08.860 That's the thing.

02:34:11.660 This is why I'm such an admirer of Nietzsche and Dostoevsky, both of them in particular.

02:34:16.020 Because Nietzsche famously announced in the late 1800s that God was dead.

02:34:19.660 But it was also, that wasn't the announcement.

02:34:21.700 The announcement was, God is dead and we have killed him and we'll never find enough water to wash away the blood.

02:34:27.300 And he thought everything would fall because that foundation piece had been torn away.

02:34:31.900 And I believe that.

02:34:32.880 So I'm trying to find out, well, what is that foundation piece?

02:34:37.040 See, now Carl Jung, the great psychoanalyst, was a student of Nietzsche.

02:34:40.560 Nietzsche thought that human beings would have to create their own values in the aftermath of the death of God.

02:34:45.280 And there's a utopian idea associated with that.

02:34:48.040 That Dostoevsky, he wouldn't, that wasn't an idea that he would allow.

02:34:52.440 He didn't believe that human beings could do that.

02:34:54.840 Jung, following Freud, discovered that, let's say, that you can't create your own values.

02:35:01.100 Because you are a certain, you are a certain sort of being.

02:35:05.260 You have a nature.

02:35:06.680 And the best you can do is go down into the depths and rediscover the values.

02:35:10.660 And that's the same as the revivification of God.

02:35:13.200 It's the same thing.

02:35:14.040 It's the rescuing of the Father from the belly of the beast.

02:35:16.740 It's the same thing that Pinocchio does.

02:35:18.800 And it's an eternal return to the depths and reclamation of the relationship with the divine spirit, let's say.

02:35:27.620 And that's religious or metaphysical language, but I mean it most concretely in the sense we already discussed.

02:35:34.720 It's like, well, that's your ability to contend with potential and turn it into reality.

02:35:39.380 It's your fundamental responsibility.

02:35:41.140 It's actually what you do as a living, self-conscious being.

02:35:44.920 And we elevate that to the highest value.

02:35:47.400 Say, that's divine.

02:35:48.580 It's like, yes, that's divine.

02:35:51.240 Well, how is that related to the transcendent divine?

02:35:53.820 I don't know, but it seems related to it.

02:35:57.680 I also think that that's a perfectly reasonable claim.

02:36:01.360 There's all sorts of experiences that people have under all sorts of different conditions

02:36:05.420 that seem to indicate some relationship between their isolated consciousness and being as such.

02:36:12.220 It's outside of our grasp for some reason, but that doesn't mean it's not there.

02:36:16.280 It doesn't mean that people haven't reported on it.

02:36:18.100 So one thing that you've raised to my consciousness is whether we would even have a civilization

02:36:22.880 if we were unable to believe in things bigger than us.

02:36:26.680 So I'm of Turkish origin, and I went back to Turkey this summer, in part because I was visiting the Syrian refugees,

02:36:33.480 but within an hour drive of this refugee camp was the oldest civilization known to mankind.

02:36:42.440 It's called Gobekli Tepe.

02:36:44.200 The literal translation is Potbelly Hill.

02:36:47.000 It's 12,000 years old, three times older than the pyramids, four times older than Stonehenge.

02:36:53.340 And they had big sculptures.

02:36:56.580 And the reason I was stunned by it is I was always taught in school.

02:36:59.860 I don't know what you learned, but you're in a farming community.

02:37:03.440 You probably had some discussion of how farming came about.

02:37:05.560 But I learned farming happened.

02:37:07.360 And then because of that, we had free time.

02:37:09.040 We sent off a couple people to be religious leaders.

02:37:11.220 They went off and wrote all the religious tomes.

02:37:14.600 And that's how civilization evolved.

02:37:17.780 But Gobekli Tepe didn't have an agricultural community.

02:37:21.620 It was a hunter-gatherer community, which meant that hunter-gatherers were able to build temples to their gods.

02:37:29.120 And because they could believe in things bigger than themselves, they began to think they can control the world around themselves.

02:37:36.620 So follow this.

02:37:37.780 It's important.

02:37:38.260 And agriculture came because of a belief in deities, not the opposite.

02:37:44.480 Completely fits everything that I had ever learned.

02:37:46.880 Well, if you're a hunter, the question is, what should you hunt?

02:37:50.300 See, and we're built on a hunting platform, human beings, because we can throw an aim.

02:37:54.220 So then the question is, once your brain starts to develop, is, okay, what's the ultimate aim?

02:38:01.740 Right?

02:38:02.140 And you might think, well, it's to hunt.

02:38:04.620 It's like, no, it's to provision.

02:38:07.240 Okay, so how do you provision?

02:38:09.140 By aiming at transcendent things.

02:38:11.200 Because then everyone cooperates and everyone shares.

02:38:14.880 We all work together.

02:38:16.160 And we get rid of hunger as such, instead of aiming at a particular animal.

02:38:20.960 Right?

02:38:21.160 We aim at something higher.

02:38:22.820 And it works.

02:38:24.560 And so that's encapsulated in our narratives.

02:38:27.320 And then the aim issue is really fundamental to that.

02:38:30.240 Like, what's at the center?

02:38:32.540 What's the point that we're aiming at?

02:38:34.360 And that's the ultimate point.

02:38:35.920 It's the highest possible aim.

02:38:37.380 It's even in our language.

02:38:38.880 And everything we do has to do with aim.

02:38:41.100 It shows you how deeply the idea of hunting is in us.

02:38:44.160 We're carnivorous chimpanzees, fundamentally.

02:38:47.800 You use the word sin.

02:38:49.680 That's right.

02:38:50.460 Sin is to miss your target.

02:38:51.900 Miss your target.

02:38:52.600 Yeah, it's an archery term.

02:38:54.000 Hamartia.

02:38:54.840 It means to miss the mark.

02:38:56.660 Yeah, that's a really useful thing to know.

02:38:58.640 It's like, well, what's a sin?

02:38:59.760 Well, it's when you miss your target.

02:39:01.160 Well, how do you miss your target?

02:39:02.060 How about you don't aim?

02:39:04.360 How about you don't know how to aim?

02:39:06.340 How about you refuse to aim?

02:39:07.960 How about you have no aim?

02:39:10.440 And no one can live under those conditions.

02:39:12.520 We need an aim.

02:39:13.180 It orients us.

02:39:14.000 It gives us direction.

02:39:15.080 It gives our life meaning.

02:39:16.940 Like, literally.

02:39:18.100 It does that neurologically.

02:39:20.300 So that begs the question.

02:39:21.640 Without culture, you know, 70,000 years ago, we believe,

02:39:26.380 humans started the diaspora from northern Africa.

02:39:29.560 At least 12,000 years ago, you have Gebeketepe. 1.00

02:39:32.520 Abraham, by the way, was born there.

02:39:34.360 Not surprisingly, a lot of Christ's disciples were in that area.

02:39:38.820 I mean, you start to begin to realize that there's lots of layers of culture

02:39:42.680 that got us to where we got.

02:39:44.760 And if I'm hearing you correctly, you're saying there's a collective unconscious

02:39:47.260 that senses thousands of years of human evolution,

02:39:51.320 and that culture cannot be discarded.

02:39:53.720 You throw that culture, that faith away, those traditions, 1.00

02:39:56.980 even if you're not quite sure why they exist.

02:39:59.640 You toss them away, and you discard them.

02:40:01.700 There will be consequences.

02:40:03.200 Okay.

02:40:03.340 So the first thing is that some of the best scientists that I knew,

02:40:06.300 like Yach Panksepp, who was a great neuroscientist who studied emotion,

02:40:10.580 and I think he was probably one of the five greatest scientists of emotion,

02:40:14.880 he was really interested in archetypal ideas.

02:40:18.020 The people who study the emotional and motivational systems in the brain

02:40:21.340 are the ones that are most convinced about the reality of archetypal issues.

02:40:25.180 So for example...

02:40:25.600 So let's say again, so the people who understand how our brains work specifically...

02:40:28.860 Emotionally and motivated, who look at the emotion and motivational systems,

02:40:31.980 so the deep layers, not the cortical tissue...

02:40:34.520 Right, the reptilian parts, old parts.

02:40:35.660 Yeah, that's right, yeah, yeah.

02:40:36.440 They're convinced that these archetypes are vital to us.

02:40:40.020 Yeah, well, not all of them, but many of them.

02:40:41.860 Explain what an archetype is.

02:40:43.580 An archetype, say, well, it's a behavioral pattern.

02:40:46.360 That's what it would be most fundamentally, a behavioral proclivity.

02:40:49.820 And then the secondary archetype would be the reflection of that in a story.

02:40:55.760 So let's say one of our behavioral proclivities is to react in a certain way to a predator.

02:41:01.400 So how do we react to a predator?

02:41:03.500 Two ways.

02:41:04.720 Terror, freezing.

02:41:06.700 To be turned to stone when you look at the Medusa.

02:41:09.120 That's the response of a prey animal to a predator.

02:41:12.580 That's archetypal.

02:41:13.480 It's wired into us.

02:41:15.040 It happens way before you think.

02:41:16.940 Way faster than you can think.

02:41:18.420 But then that's secondarily reflected in a story.

02:41:22.820 And that story becomes abstracted.

02:41:24.460 So the ground of the archetype would be the biology.

02:41:27.620 And then the secondary manifestation would be the manifestation of that biology in action.

02:41:33.340 And the archetypes are the most important things, I gather.

02:41:36.720 Because if they weren't important, we wouldn't be hardwired to react to them.

02:41:39.520 That's right.

02:41:40.080 That's exactly right.

02:41:41.480 But some of these archetypes aren't running away from it.

02:41:43.940 They're also respecting your parents.

02:41:46.880 Yes. 1.00

02:41:47.220 Well, you better respect your parents or you die.

02:41:51.840 I mean, you're dependent on your parents for 18 years.

02:41:54.740 It's like, yeah, there's filial respect built in.

02:41:59.100 Now, it's pliable because sometimes you have parents and if you respect them, you die.

02:42:04.580 So there has to be some plasticity there.

02:42:06.840 But as a fundamental rule of thumb, it's there as a pattern.

02:42:11.340 And I guess an archetype would also be something like the proclivity to learn language.

02:42:17.200 No one really understands that, but it's obviously built into us.

02:42:20.140 Even children who are quite impaired intellectually, with the general exception of really severely autistic kids, learn to speak.

02:42:27.380 It's built into our biology in a way that we really don't understand.

02:42:31.700 Fear of snakes is built into our biology.

02:42:35.240 For a long time, psychologists thought it was just, no, we just learned fear.

02:42:40.240 And then psychologists thought, no, we learned to be afraid of some things more easily than others.

02:42:43.860 So you could condition fear to pictures of spiders faster than you could condition fear to pictures of pistols, for example.

02:42:50.100 But then it went farther than that.

02:42:51.600 It's like, no, no, you're not just conditionable.

02:42:54.420 You're actually innately afraid of snakes.

02:42:56.520 But I don't think it's snakes.

02:42:58.080 I think it's toothed reptilian predators, which is a broader category than snakes.

02:43:03.760 So, and that's the dragon fundamentally, because the dragon looks like an amalgam of predatory cats, predatory birds, and predatory snakes.

02:43:10.640 And maybe fire as well, which would have been an ancestral friend and enemy, right?

02:43:15.120 Because fire is an ancestral friend and enemy.

02:43:17.260 There's evidence, I think it was Richard Wrangham, wrote a very good book on fire a while back.

02:43:22.000 A very good anthropo- or primatologist.

02:43:24.120 He figured we'd been using fire for two million years.

02:43:27.020 Something like that.

02:43:27.960 And that we traded, we traded intestinal tract for brain. 0.93

02:43:33.280 Once we learned to cook, and that was a secondary consequence of hunting, let's say.

02:43:37.060 Or at least associated with hunting, because our diet became so much more nutritious and calorie-rich, especially eating meat and fat, that we could afford to shrink our digestive system and trade it in for brain.

02:43:47.540 Chimps spend about eight hours a day chewing, because mostly what they eat is leaves.

02:43:51.800 It's like, go out and try to eat leaves.

02:43:53.400 It's like, all you're going to do is chew, because they have no nutrition.

02:43:56.960 So, anyways, we're built on a hunting platform.

02:43:59.500 We throw and aim.

02:44:00.280 Even our perceptions are very aimed at something.

02:44:05.800 And the metaphysical question, you see how the biology transforms itself into the abstraction.

02:44:10.880 It's like, well, you have to have a name because you're a hunter.

02:44:12.700 It's like, well, what's the ultimate aim?

02:44:14.520 That's the religious question.

02:44:16.380 What should you hunt above all else?

02:44:19.080 What should you devote your life to pursuing?

02:44:21.580 So, why are these stories the best way for us to articulate these negotiated rules that we all have with each other?

02:44:28.600 Because the principles are so complex that we weren't able to articulate them and understand them.

02:44:35.400 So, one of the things Nietzsche pointed out was, you know, you tend to think that morality emerges in thought and then is imposed on behavior.

02:44:42.780 We think up the rules and then we apply them.

02:44:44.700 It's like, no.

02:44:45.960 We evolve the rules.

02:44:48.500 Then we observe them in behavior.

02:44:51.060 Then we tell stories about them.

02:44:53.420 And then out of the stories, we can abstract general principles.

02:44:56.320 And then maybe we can get to the point of an articulated morality.

02:44:59.440 But it's bottom up.

02:45:00.420 Now, there's top-down effects because as you articulate, you start to change your behavior.

02:45:05.420 But a lot of this is moved up from the bottom.

02:45:08.040 One of the things I lecture about in my public appearances is the emergence of proto-morality in animals.

02:45:14.600 So, here's a great example.

02:45:15.720 This is from Yak Panksepp, the scientist that I mentioned earlier.

02:45:18.300 He wrote a book called Affective Neuroscience, which is a great book.

02:45:21.200 He said, here's what he did.

02:45:24.880 Rats like to rough and tumble play. 0.63

02:45:27.120 So, if you take a juvenile rat, especially the males, they'll work to enter an arena where they can wrestle with another rat.

02:45:32.580 And they really like it.

02:45:33.600 It's play behavior.

02:45:34.820 It's not aggression.

02:45:35.680 It's distinguishable from aggression.

02:45:37.300 Okay. 0.61

02:45:37.600 So, you put your two rats together.

02:45:39.500 One's 10% bigger than the other.

02:45:41.160 The 10% big rat just flattens the little rat. 0.93

02:45:44.280 Pins them, just like kids.

02:45:45.780 Yeah.

02:45:46.480 Okay.

02:45:47.920 But then, you see, you don't play with someone once.

02:45:50.980 You play with them multiple times in life.

02:45:53.280 So, the game isn't one bout.

02:45:55.260 The game is repeated bouts.

02:45:57.020 Okay.

02:45:57.240 So, now you pair the rats together.

02:45:58.960 So, the next time you pair them together, the little rat has to ask the big rat to play.

02:46:02.720 That's the rule.

02:46:04.840 Then, if you pair them repeatedly, if the big rat doesn't let the little rat win 30% of the time, 30 or 40% of the time,

02:46:12.420 it's some substantial amount of the time, the little rat won't play with them anymore.

02:46:16.780 And so, Panksept is right.

02:46:18.840 That's for sure.

02:46:20.020 That's a major discovery.

02:46:21.800 Because it's the emergence of fair play.

02:46:25.660 At the mammalian level.

02:46:27.360 It's like if the big rat plays unfair because the little rat doesn't get a chance, then the little rat won't play.

02:46:32.680 So, then you think, well, here's the morality.

02:46:34.860 And this is what you say to your kids when you say, it doesn't matter whether you win or lose.

02:46:37.900 It matters how you play the game.

02:46:40.020 You don't know what the hell you mean.

02:46:41.200 It's like, well, what do you mean by that?

02:46:42.460 Yeah, it doesn't matter.

02:46:42.780 It doesn't matter to win?

02:46:43.660 Of course it matters to win.

02:46:45.500 Okay, but let's define winning.

02:46:47.520 There's the game.

02:46:48.940 You can win the game.

02:46:50.320 Okay, but the game isn't isolated because there's a whole bunch of games because it's a tournament.

02:46:54.900 But then it's a tournament of tournaments because it's many games.

02:46:58.440 Your whole life.

02:46:59.420 Your whole life, that's right, is a sequence of games.

02:47:01.620 So, what do you tell your kid?

02:47:03.440 Play so that you will be invited to play.

02:47:05.400 Because the winner is the person who's invited to play the most games.

02:47:11.200 And so then, so what does that mean?

02:47:12.640 It means, well, try to win because you're no fun if you don't try to win.

02:47:16.180 Sharpen your skills because you're no fun if you don't try. 0.99

02:47:19.240 Help your damn teammates because it's a team effort. 0.99

02:47:22.780 And you want to push them up as you put yourself up. 1.00

02:47:26.460 Distribute the spoils.

02:47:27.760 Don't hog all the glory.

02:47:29.500 Right? 1.00

02:47:29.760 If you're ahead when you're playing soccer, pass the damn ball. 1.00

02:47:34.000 Right? 0.99

02:47:34.500 Act, act in this admirable sportsman-like manner.

02:47:38.860 Well, what's that?

02:47:39.500 It's prototypical morality.

02:47:41.560 So then you think, well, there's, he's a good sport.

02:47:43.800 He does this well.

02:47:45.240 Well, he's a good sport over here too.

02:47:47.100 Here's another person who's a good sport and it's something different.

02:47:49.680 And here's another person.

02:47:50.840 And then we get a picture of what the good sport looks like.

02:47:53.540 And that's the good citizen.

02:47:54.620 And we start telling stories about that.

02:47:56.440 But it's not like we understand.

02:47:58.280 Right?

02:47:58.520 We can't understand.

02:47:59.520 We have to build the story up from the behavior.

02:48:02.060 And so if you look at these old stories, there's behavioral wisdom encoded in the stories.

02:48:06.720 Here's an idea.

02:48:07.700 Moses leads his people through the desert.

02:48:10.480 Right?

02:48:10.740 And they're all fractious.

02:48:11.600 They got out of a tyranny. 1.00

02:48:12.860 But now they're in a damn desert. 0.99

02:48:14.380 It's like out of the tyranny, out of the frying pan, into the fire. 0.99

02:48:17.800 Right?

02:48:18.280 So that's what happens.

02:48:19.140 You go from a tyranny into a desert.

02:48:20.940 Not to the promised land.

02:48:22.080 Which is why people will stay in a tyranny.

02:48:24.480 It's like, why do you stay in that tyranny?

02:48:26.000 Well, we'd rather be here than in the desert.

02:48:27.720 Because that's the next place.

02:48:29.740 It's okay.

02:48:30.100 Well, now you're in the desert.

02:48:31.340 So what do you do?

02:48:32.540 Fragment and fight over what's important.

02:48:34.860 So that's what Moses faces.

02:48:36.180 It's like all these Israelites, they're fighting like mad. 0.98

02:48:38.480 So they come to him.

02:48:39.940 It's outlined in the story.

02:48:41.500 So he adjudicates their disputes.

02:48:43.680 And he spends like 10,000 hours listening to all the Israelites whine about everybody in the desert. 0.90

02:48:48.640 And complain about God.

02:48:49.620 And so this is driving Moses crazy.

02:48:51.620 He's trying to figure out, well, how should these people live?

02:48:54.860 And he's actually adjudicating the cases.

02:48:57.700 Well, then all of a sudden he goes up on a mountain and poof, the rules appear.

02:49:00.980 It's like, those are the rules by which you live.

02:49:03.660 They're discoveries.

02:49:05.540 It's like, oh, this is how you have to conduct yourself behaviorally in order for everyone to prosper.

02:49:12.020 It's bottom up.

02:49:13.000 If he wouldn't have gone out of the tyranny into the desert and done all that adjudication, the rules wouldn't have been revealed.

02:49:21.500 Or you could say, let's say you're watching a wolf pack or a troop of chimps.

02:49:26.820 They have structure, behavioral structure.

02:49:29.140 So that would be acting out the archetype.

02:49:30.980 You're the anthropologist or the ethologist and you're watching, or the primatologist.

02:49:35.700 You think, well, it's as if the chimps are following these rules.

02:49:39.480 Well, that's us.

02:49:40.980 That's us.

02:49:41.580 We're watching ourselves over thousands of years.

02:49:43.860 It's like, okay, what are we up to?

02:49:45.080 Well, here's an interesting story about how things go badly.

02:49:48.240 It's like, yeah, you're extracting out the essence of the behaviors.

02:49:52.000 And you turn them into a story and the story is compelling because you want to imitate it.

02:49:55.320 Right?

02:49:55.620 Just like a child acting out his father, a child acting out her mother.

02:49:58.880 You want to imitate it.

02:50:00.360 So that you get the drama down.

02:50:01.860 You imitate the pattern.

02:50:02.820 But then you can start to think, okay, well, there are principles that can be articulated that underlie these patterns.

02:50:08.460 Oh, that's natural ethics.

02:50:10.260 And this is a wonderful thing because it means that the natural ethic, in some sense, isn't just a rational construct.

02:50:18.240 It's not just a floating abstraction.

02:50:20.380 It's like the articulated ethic matches the image.

02:50:24.100 It matches the story.

02:50:25.180 And the story matches the behavior.

02:50:26.880 And the behavior matches the biology.

02:50:28.460 And the biology reflects the structure of being.

02:50:32.500 It's just, that's the musical layering of all these layers, one on top of another.

02:50:36.200 So if we get that it's not just random chance, not just a bunch of rules, but it's actually tens of thousands or maybe even hundreds of thousands of years of us seeing stuff, observing stuff, and our biology matches it.

02:50:50.860 What's going on today?

02:50:52.680 Why do we live in a society?

02:50:54.580 I think the biggest epidemic is isolation and loneliness.

02:50:57.140 But it's manifested in a lot of disagreeable behavior.

02:51:01.880 I've heard you use the word complexity management as opposed to mental illness.

02:51:06.460 Because a lot of people think I'm depressed, I'm borderline, I'm personality, I've got this issue, I've got that issue.

02:51:12.560 But it's actually, if I understand you correctly, something that's much more common, something much more ubiquitous, something much more understandable, that we have a complexity management problem.

02:51:22.860 Yeah, well, the doctrine of turning to face that which confronts you is a complexity management solution.

02:51:31.580 It's like, what do you do when horrible things are chasing you?

02:51:34.100 Turn around, chase them back.

02:51:37.060 That's your best bet.

02:51:38.620 And then I think that is an unbelievably ancient human decision.

02:51:42.840 Well, so that's the story of, that's the classic story of the dragon fight.

02:51:46.680 You go out, the hero goes out to confront the dragon and rescues the virgin from her clutches.

02:51:52.960 Well, what does that mean?

02:51:53.820 It means that the standard human pattern of sexual attraction is for the person who decides to confront the predator in its lair to be reproductively successful.

02:52:08.600 That's what that story means.

02:52:10.600 It's like, well, that's worked for us.

02:52:12.200 That's our fundamental story.

02:52:13.460 And who knows how old that is?

02:52:14.600 It's as old as, it's as old as predator primates.

02:52:19.920 That's how old it is.

02:52:21.320 Maybe it's older than that.

02:52:22.660 So that's at least several million years old.

02:52:29.240 But it goes back.

02:52:30.660 It's like Lynn Isbell, who's an anthropologist at UCLA, she makes the case that the reason that human beings have acute vision is because we were preyed upon by predatory snakes over a 60 million year period.

02:52:44.600 So we have unbelievably acute vision.

02:52:47.180 And we're particularly good at seeing the kind of camouflage patterns that snakes have on their skin in the lower half of our visual system.

02:52:54.620 It's like snakes gave people vision.

02:52:56.740 That's Lynn Isbell's theory.

02:52:58.340 And the way she established that was she went around the world and she looked at the acuity of primate vision and correlated it with the prevalence of predatory serpents.

02:53:05.300 So the more snakes, the better our vision.

02:53:07.800 Exactly.

02:53:08.600 So that, and that's such a cool principle too, because there's a metaphysical principle there too, which is, you know, why does reality have an adversarial nature?

02:53:17.280 Why would God set something on you, say?

02:53:20.600 An enemy.

02:53:22.240 An adversary makes you stronger.

02:53:24.280 Well, isn't that cruel?

02:53:25.200 It's like, not if the person who sets the adversary on you believes that you could win.

02:53:30.480 Now maybe that's an insufficient explanation, but there's something about it that's, you know, you can think about this biologically too.

02:53:38.720 I was reading The Master and His Emissary, which is quite an interesting book about hemispheric function.

02:53:42.700 And the author pointed out that if you want to make a very small movement with your right hand, the best way to do that is to put your left hand up and then to push against your right hand and push.

02:53:54.380 Opponent processing.

02:53:56.160 Precision in action is a consequence of opponent processing.

02:53:59.160 You have opponent processing between the right and left hemispheres.

02:54:01.460 To make things function, you need this opposition between powerful forces.

02:54:07.780 And I think that's built into the opposition between chaos and order.

02:54:10.980 That's hemispherically represented.

02:54:13.600 But also something like the opposition between good and evil.

02:54:16.720 Maybe you get a higher good when there's opposition between good and evil.

02:54:21.360 I mean, obviously, these are ideas that are at the absolute extent of my cognitive ability to try to think them through.

02:54:27.540 But maybe the good you get when good and evil are both possibilities is a higher good than the good you get with just good.

02:54:34.120 That tug of war, which you actually argue artists do brilliantly, right?

02:54:38.300 They stand on the border between order and chaos.

02:54:41.200 They look in the chaos.

02:54:42.140 They see patterns.

02:54:43.740 And then they tell the people on the other side, hey, I just noticed a couple things over there.

02:54:47.580 Right?

02:54:47.980 So if that's where we need to be, then in modern society, why is it that we can't get those two groups talking to each other?

02:54:55.440 The people who are primarily left-brain, you know, organized order folks and the folks on the right side are more chaos folks.

02:55:01.520 Good, good, good question.

02:55:03.160 Well, that's something I've really been struggling with in my lectures.

02:55:07.280 I try to make a case for the left and the right wing.

02:55:10.940 Okay, so the right wing, the right wing, there's a variety of things that distinguish them.

02:55:15.880 But we'll talk about one in particular.

02:55:17.200 You have to accomplish useful things in the world just to survive, okay?

02:55:23.300 And if you're going to do that in a social space, you do that by constructing a hierarchy.

02:55:26.860 And if you construct a hierarchy, it's going to be of a certain steepness because the people at the top are going to be more successful than the people at the bottom.

02:55:33.600 There's also hierarchies of productivity.

02:55:35.680 So the people at the top are more productive than the people at the bottom.

02:55:38.260 And those overlap to some degree.

02:55:39.600 So you have to do useful things to survive.

02:55:43.480 If you're going to do useful things in the social system, you have to build a hierarchy.

02:55:48.200 Okay, so hierarchies are necessary and valuable.

02:55:51.180 That's what the right says.

02:55:52.760 The left says, yeah, wait a minute though.

02:55:55.280 The hierarchy tends towards ossification and corruption.

02:55:58.740 And it dispossesses people at the bottom.

02:56:03.300 California fires.

02:56:08.220 Sorry, go ahead.

02:56:08.860 No problem.

02:56:09.600 Well, and those are both true.

02:56:11.520 And that's part of that opponent processing.

02:56:13.940 You need the hierarchy.

02:56:15.960 Social animals organize themselves hierarchically.

02:56:18.480 Hierarchies are way older than capitalism, way older than the West. 0.94

02:56:22.700 They're older than trees.

02:56:24.080 They're unbelievably ancient.

02:56:25.900 There's no getting rid of the hierarchy.

02:56:27.440 But hierarchies tend towards corruption and dispossession.

02:56:30.400 And those are tied, by the way, with the lobster.

02:56:32.200 Yes, exactly.

02:56:33.140 Someone gave me this.

02:56:35.020 Yeah, exactly.

02:56:35.800 350 million years of hierarchies.

02:56:37.640 Now, that doesn't mean we should organize our societies on the lines of the lobsters.

02:56:41.420 That's not the point.

02:56:42.160 The point is that you can't attribute the existence of hierarchy to the West or to capitalism. 0.98

02:56:47.600 So that's a foolish critique.

02:56:50.120 That's the basic Marxist critique. 0.96

02:56:51.940 It's at least part of it.

02:56:53.640 Okay.

02:56:53.800 So the left wing says, wait a second now, the hierarchies tend towards corruption and they dispossess people and they need to be taken care of.

02:57:00.820 It's like, yes.

02:57:02.020 How much should we take care of them versus how much should we sustain the hierarchy?

02:57:06.040 And the answer is, we don't know and it changes.

02:57:10.100 So that's why you need political dialogue.

02:57:12.160 Okay, so what's the fundamental necessity for political dialogue?

02:57:17.600 Freedom of speech.

02:57:19.420 So freedom of speech is the mechanism that keeps the opponent process balanced.

02:57:23.740 And so you don't mess with freedom of speech, which is why I opposed the legislation that I opposed in Canada, which started all this political...

02:57:30.480 The transgender legislation.

02:57:31.500 Mm-hmm.

02:57:31.900 Just for two seconds on this.

02:57:33.340 Yeah.

02:57:33.440 So there was a law that said you must refer to transgender people the way they want you to, right, picking the pronoun they use. 0.96

02:57:41.400 Yes, that was part of the legislation, background part of the legislation.

02:57:44.640 And do you have any problems with transgender people being identified by what pronoun they use in private settings in your practice or in your classrooms?

02:57:52.420 My proclivity when people ask me to address them in a certain way is that if I believe that they're being straightforward in their communication,

02:57:58.940 then I tend to accede to the demand like a reasonable person does.

02:58:02.480 So that wasn't the issue.

02:58:04.260 The issue was the compulsion of speech and also the government's insistence that it was all right to build a social constructionist view of gender into the law,

02:58:12.740 which is now the case in...

02:58:13.860 Well, it's the case in New York.

02:58:15.120 It's also the case in Canada.

02:58:16.960 And that's not appropriate because gender is not socially constructed in its entirety.

02:58:21.660 It has a biological basis.

02:58:23.220 So you don't build that into the law.

02:58:25.500 So...

02:58:26.060 But anyways, it was the compelled speech issue that really got me.

02:58:28.960 It's like, no, you don't have sovereign control over my speech.

02:58:31.900 Never in the history of English common law has the legislative branch produced legislation that compelled voluntary speech.

02:58:42.800 There has been restrictions on hate speech.

02:58:44.540 There's more of those in Canada than there are in the U.S.

02:58:46.880 And I don't agree with them either.

02:58:48.460 I think that's a mistake, but that's a separate issue.

02:58:51.100 Compulsion in speech, your Supreme Court deemed that invalid in 1942.

02:58:55.720 No compulsion of speech in the private sphere, no matter what the reason.

02:58:59.280 And I think that's the correct principle.

02:59:01.600 And what's the issue with hate speech?

02:59:04.800 Well, hate speech exists, clearly.

02:59:07.580 The question is, it's the fundamental issue.

02:59:10.440 Who defines hate?

02:59:11.460 And that's like the Achilles tendon, the Achilles heel of the law.

02:59:17.000 It's like, the answer is, those people who you least want to define it.

02:59:22.260 So what you want is you want to have people say their hateful things out in the open, where you can keep an eye on them.

02:59:30.420 And where they can invalidate their own viewpoint, which is generally what happens.

02:59:35.100 Invalidate their viewpoint.

02:59:35.960 When they say something hateful, racist, for example, the society says, you guys, you're missing the boat.

02:59:41.260 You're completely off target with this.

02:59:43.000 Yeah, right.

02:59:43.520 You get reprimanded, spanked, you get back in line.

02:59:46.300 Right, exactly, exactly that.

02:59:47.800 That's how it's supposed to work.

02:59:48.440 Well, that's a good way of putting it.

02:59:50.040 Because what it also means is that the people who espouse those opinions, for whatever reason, get appropriately subjected to social correction.

02:59:58.400 That's good.

02:59:58.940 You want them to be subjected to social correction.

03:00:01.260 So what happens if the government passes a law saying you can't say those words, then where do they go?

03:00:05.980 Underground.

03:00:08.100 And psychologically and socially.

03:00:10.200 And that's not good.

03:00:11.600 Because then you don't know what's going on.

03:00:13.980 Like this thing that happened with Alex Jones is a good example of that.

03:00:17.120 It's like, leave Alex Jones alone.

03:00:19.100 Why?

03:00:20.540 Because you want to see what he's up to.

03:00:24.120 You want to know.

03:00:25.060 Not because you like him, but you want to see what he's up to.

03:00:27.540 Yeah, absolutely.

03:00:28.660 You want to see what people are up to.

03:00:29.860 You know, because sometimes extremists are correct.

03:00:34.320 Almost never.

03:00:35.780 They're almost always dangerous beyond belief.

03:00:38.200 But like one time in a thousand, things have changed so radically that someone who appears extreme is correct. 0.96

03:00:43.840 Well, you've got to be able to know when that's the case.

03:00:46.300 You've got to keep an eye on it.

03:00:47.880 You know, and it's not clear to me at all that most of the followers of Alex Jones necessarily agree with him.

03:00:53.640 Maybe they're mildly entertained by his antics.

03:00:56.520 Whatever it might be.

03:00:57.740 But it was a mistake to go after him.

03:01:00.040 You've got to keep an eye on it.

03:01:01.300 Plus, you shouldn't persecute people who are paranoid.

03:01:03.620 That was Kissinger's big statement to Nixon, about Nixon.

03:01:09.960 Even paranoid people have enemies.

03:01:11.480 Right.

03:01:12.500 Right, right.

03:01:13.140 Now you can confirm their bias.

03:01:14.580 Right, that's exactly right.

03:01:15.740 Yes, that's not a good idea.

03:01:17.000 Why is every person watching us right now, and there are quite a few, suffering from anxiety, depression, addiction, all three together even.

03:01:24.820 How is it possible we're not all there in that quandary?

03:01:27.580 Oh, well, first of all, many people are at different periods in their life, right?

03:01:33.000 It's a rare person who doesn't have a severe bout of anxiety at some point in their life, often because things collapse around them.

03:01:39.040 You know, like they encounter some real catastrophe.

03:01:41.440 Even with depression, if you look at the epidemiological studies, most people who eventually suffered depression had their first episode precipitated by something truly awful.

03:01:52.900 So, you know, we move in and out of states of terrible negative emotion throughout our life.

03:01:59.820 Why don't we stay there?

03:02:01.360 What makes us better?

03:02:02.720 Almost subconsciously, we have a resilience.

03:02:06.100 Yeah, well, some of it's the grace of God and blind luck.

03:02:10.860 You know, some people are just healthier than other people, and that makes a big difference.

03:02:14.600 So, you know, you don't want to be too morally self-righteous about the absence of anxiety in your life.

03:02:19.960 It could easily be due to your characterological strengths and your willingness to confront things voluntarily and all that.

03:02:26.540 But health plays a big role.

03:02:29.660 Health and good fortune, you know.

03:02:31.720 I mean, you meet people now and then who are in their 40s, and they've never suffered a serious loss from death, for example.

03:02:37.660 Do you think part of the reason that people find their path is because they know the story they're in?

03:02:43.880 Oh, definitely.

03:02:44.480 And some folks, they don't know what story they're in, or they're in someone else's story as a bit player, as you've articulated.

03:02:52.440 Yeah, well, we've produced some things, some exercises online to help people get their story straight.

03:02:57.420 There's one exercise called future authoring.

03:02:59.520 Speak about that.

03:03:00.340 I did that, actually.

03:03:01.360 Yeah, well, you know, the idea was that it's based on exactly the questions you asked, which is, well, what's the story of your life?

03:03:08.900 Is it a comedy or a tragedy?

03:03:10.940 Comedy is something with a happy ending, fundamentally, and a tragedy is, well, it starts bad and gets worse.

03:03:16.780 You know, and is it a tragedy that someone else is imposing on you, or some bit of you that you don't understand?

03:03:22.680 What's the story of your life?

03:03:24.660 Part of that is, well, what do you want?

03:03:28.020 What are you aiming at?

03:03:29.040 That's the reverse of sin, right?

03:03:30.740 Right.

03:03:30.980 You're aiming at something.

03:03:32.440 Well, the future authoring program helps you determine what it is that would be good for you to aim at.

03:03:37.240 What do you hope for?

03:03:38.060 What do you hope for?

03:03:39.800 So the exercise basically assumes that you treat yourself as if you're someone that you're taking care of.

03:03:47.280 So that's the presupposition.

03:03:48.900 You're valuable, despite your flaws.

03:03:51.000 It would be okay for you, and maybe all right for the universe as a whole, if your life wasn't any more wretched than it has to be.

03:03:58.500 So we could set it up for that.

03:03:59.960 Okay.

03:04:00.280 Okay.

03:04:00.560 So now, if you were looking three to five years down into the future, and you could have what you needed within the bounds of reason, what would it be?

03:04:10.400 What do you want?

03:04:11.500 What do you want from your family?

03:04:13.440 What do you want from your friends?

03:04:15.280 How are you going to educate yourself?

03:04:16.760 What are you going to do for your career?

03:04:18.660 How are you going to take care of your mental and physical health?

03:04:20.920 How are you going to resist temptation?

03:04:22.720 What are you going to do with your time outside of work that's productive and meaningful?

03:04:25.760 You get to have it.

03:04:27.160 It's like knock and the door will open.

03:04:28.860 Okay, you've got to knock first, and then you've got to pick the door.

03:04:32.860 And like, I really like this, because it is, you cannot catch something you're not pursuing.

03:04:40.160 So now, if you're pursuing it, that doesn't mean you'll catch it.

03:04:44.580 But generally, you'll catch something interesting along the way.

03:04:47.500 You know, that's the thing that's so cool about this.

03:04:49.660 Let's say you set out a vision, and you start pursuing it.

03:04:52.140 You don't get what you were after.

03:04:53.660 But you learn a lot as you move towards that destination.

03:04:56.600 And as you learn, your vision is going to change.

03:04:58.960 And you may end up with something that's better than what you were aiming at to begin with.

03:05:02.160 But that won't happen unless you initiate the journey.

03:05:04.980 That's partly something I learned from the Abrahamic stories,

03:05:08.240 with the story of Abraham in particular,

03:05:09.940 because God calls Abraham to an adventure when he's like 85.

03:05:13.180 It's like, get out of your father's tent, for God's sake.

03:05:16.040 Get out there in the world, right?

03:05:17.760 And really, that's how the story is set up.

03:05:19.760 Leave your family in your tent.

03:05:21.820 It's time to get out in the world.

03:05:23.200 Well, what does he confront?

03:05:24.720 Famine is the first thing.

03:05:26.140 The tyranny and the potential loss of his wife.

03:05:28.980 It's like Abraham must have been going.

03:05:31.420 It's like the tent was tense, looking pretty good.

03:05:34.560 But it's this call to adventure.

03:05:36.740 Okay, so you put together a vision.

03:05:38.300 That's your call to adventure.

03:05:39.720 Get out there in the world and contend with it.

03:05:42.920 Well, you might not get what you want, but you might find what you need.

03:05:46.260 But it won't happen without the pursuit.

03:05:48.180 And that's part of faith, right?

03:05:50.140 Faith is, I'm going out in the world to seek my fortune.

03:05:52.880 And if I do that properly, then the fates will cooperate with me.

03:05:58.660 How do the archetypal stories that we in our subconscious have?

03:06:02.920 These are these, these, I mean, archetypal questions are the ones that everyone really is trying to ask.

03:06:07.740 Even if we can't put words to it, right?

03:06:09.780 How do they help us maintain our sanity?

03:06:12.020 And do you think that's part of what we're struggling with right now?

03:06:14.700 That we've lost touch with ancient wisdom.

03:06:18.480 Again, part of our collective unconscious that should be there, should be part of us.

03:06:24.080 That we've distanced ourselves from, either from technology or modern culture, whatever.

03:06:27.560 Well, look, we have the capacity for abstraction, right?

03:06:32.440 And so to abstract means you can think without acting.

03:06:35.560 Because otherwise it's useless.

03:06:36.940 It's not abstraction then.

03:06:38.500 So you can, you can peel reality away and represent it abstractly.

03:06:42.900 And then you can start manipulating it.

03:06:44.880 And you can criticize what you're representing.

03:06:47.360 And we're doing an awful lot of that.

03:06:48.880 A lot of that's subsidized, I would say, this intense criticism of our own structure.

03:06:53.160 It's like, fair enough, you know?

03:06:54.480 But you don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak.

03:06:57.460 Especially if it's the divine child that you're throwing out, which is what it is. 1.00

03:07:01.800 It's like, criticism, this is where the left goes too far, when it's criticizing.

03:07:06.960 It's like, well, you can criticize the hierarchy.

03:07:11.000 You can criticize the current instantiation of the hierarchy.

03:07:14.500 It isn't obvious that you can criticize the idea of hierarchy itself.

03:07:19.520 You're pushing a little too far then.

03:07:21.680 You can describe the tyrannical nature,

03:07:23.940 the partial tyrannical nature of the current societal structure.

03:07:27.900 You can't say, all hierarchies are patriarchal tyrannies.

03:07:33.500 That's too far.

03:07:34.780 You have to use some judgment.

03:07:36.660 And so the proclivity for...

03:07:39.220 And the thing is, what are you trying to do when you criticize?

03:07:42.160 Well, if you're smart, like when I get my students to read Freud,

03:07:45.560 it's like...

03:07:46.940 Or Nietzsche.

03:07:47.480 Well, these guys had...

03:07:50.660 A, they were bound by their time and place.

03:07:53.280 And so they had presumptions that we no longer share.

03:07:56.280 And B, they said things that were regrettable.

03:07:59.080 Nietzsche said a variety of things about women that were regrettable.

03:08:02.560 Partly, I think, because he didn't have that much success on the romantic front.

03:08:07.080 Partly because he was very ill.

03:08:08.580 Partly because he was isolated.

03:08:09.820 Like, he had his reasons.

03:08:11.240 But it's not that helpful.

03:08:12.240 Maybe you read Nietzsche, it's like you get rid of 10% of it.

03:08:16.400 But you keep the rest.

03:08:18.960 You read Freud, it's the same thing.

03:08:20.760 You read these people who were flawed humans.

03:08:23.320 And you think, well, let's separate the wheat from the chaff.

03:08:25.700 We're not going to put it all in a pile and burn it.

03:08:27.940 It's like, oh, Freud made a mistake. 0.99

03:08:29.560 Burn him.

03:08:30.560 That's what we're doing with people on social media. 0.97

03:08:32.940 It's like, no.

03:08:34.920 Discriminate.

03:08:35.500 There's a horrible word for people.

03:08:37.520 Don't discriminate.

03:08:38.480 It's like, yeah, discriminate, man.

03:08:40.320 Like your life depended on it.

03:08:41.840 You read these old thinkers and you think, well, no, no.

03:08:45.760 Yes.

03:08:46.400 That goes in the keep pile.

03:08:47.940 That goes in the keep pile.

03:08:49.160 We're not doing that with our culture.

03:08:51.060 And it's partly because we don't have any gratitude as far as I can tell.

03:08:54.440 And this is another thing I talk to my audiences about.

03:08:57.280 Here's the story.

03:08:58.420 Here's how to survive in Indonesia.

03:09:02.240 Okay.

03:09:02.840 So you live on a mountain, but it's a volcano.

03:09:05.720 All right.

03:09:06.220 So you get to climb up the volcano at night.

03:09:08.780 It has to be at night because it's too hot otherwise.

03:09:11.860 And so you have to climb up this volcano.

03:09:13.420 And it's a mountain.

03:09:15.080 Then you have to go inside the volcano down to near where the volcano is active because

03:09:19.900 it's active.

03:09:20.460 So it's belching out sulfuric clouds at you all the time.

03:09:23.880 And if you encounter a bad one, then you just die.

03:09:26.300 So when you have a mask around your face that's just a wet rag and you go down to the volcano

03:09:31.060 and you pick up a 40-pound clump of sulfur and then you carry it up out of the volcano

03:09:36.760 at night because otherwise it's too hot.

03:09:38.820 And then you carry it down the mountain and you get a couple of dollars so that you can

03:09:42.660 do it again.

03:09:43.900 Yeah.

03:09:44.200 That's not your life.

03:09:46.660 But someone has that life.

03:09:48.740 And you don't have that life because look around you, man.

03:09:51.480 This is a remarkable place that we've built.

03:09:54.220 It's absolutely unbelievable.

03:09:56.260 And most of the time it works.

03:09:57.580 And you should be on your knees in gratitude for it.

03:10:00.660 Even though you can also say, well, look, we don't have full equality of opportunity.

03:10:05.480 We're not making the use of full use of the talents that everybody's bringing to the table.

03:10:09.780 The system tilts towards tyranny from time to time and we have to keep an eye on it.

03:10:14.580 It's like, yeah, but you're not hauling 40-pound sulfur boulders out of volcanoes at night.

03:10:22.160 That's something, you know?

03:10:23.400 So a little gratitude would temper the criticism.

03:10:29.960 You've made the point that part of the reason people get bitter is because they don't think

03:10:35.320 they can be as good as they should be able to be.

03:10:38.300 And a lot of it comes back to self-esteem.

03:10:40.480 How do we build self-esteem at any age?

03:10:43.860 Because I see that slip away in a lot of people.

03:10:46.640 And without that, they don't have the confidence to act on some of the things you're speaking to.

03:10:50.120 Okay.

03:10:50.400 So self-esteem is a tricky concept because the best predictor of self-esteem is trait neuroticism.

03:10:57.480 So the higher you are in trait neuroticism, there are five cardinal personality traits.

03:11:02.700 Extroversion, neuroticism, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness.

03:11:06.600 I have a test that people can take, understand myself, that allows them to assess those five

03:11:11.600 traits broken down into two additional aspects.

03:11:14.060 I took mine, by the way.

03:11:15.180 My results were scary.

03:11:16.280 Yeah, well, the test is designed so that everybody's results get to be scary.

03:11:20.640 It's scary to find out who you are.

03:11:22.780 So, but how, trait neuroticism is a measure of the proclivity for negative emotion, anxiety

03:11:28.640 and emotional pain, essentially.

03:11:30.260 And the higher you are in that, the lower you score on tests of self-esteem.

03:11:34.660 So self-esteem is not a very good measurement because basically it's a misnamed reverse neuroticism.

03:11:43.780 So it's not easy to deal with that proclivity for anxiety.

03:11:46.880 But there's a separate question, which is more like, how do you encourage people?

03:11:50.640 Right.

03:11:50.760 Because that's, so it's not a matter of bolstering their self-esteem.

03:11:53.740 It's actually, it's really important to get these things right because if you don't get the

03:11:57.720 conceptions right, then the implementations fail.

03:12:00.100 So it's about reducing neuroticism?

03:12:01.540 Well, if you could, I don't think you can, what really, what you can do is make people

03:12:06.800 more courageous.

03:12:08.400 That's different.

03:12:09.240 So even if you're treating people who are phobic, like agoraphobic, it isn't obvious

03:12:13.900 that you make them less phobic.

03:12:15.800 What is obvious is that you make them more courageous.

03:12:18.300 So if you're treating someone who's agoraphobic and they won't go on an elevator, so they're

03:12:22.700 afraid of an elevator, and you slowly expose them to the elevator, negotiating that, and they

03:12:28.420 get to the point where they can get on the elevator.

03:12:30.140 They don't really, they're not really less afraid of death than they were.

03:12:35.760 They're more confident of their ability to prevail in the face of adversity.

03:12:40.240 And that, you can teach that.

03:12:42.580 And you do that by challenge.

03:12:44.880 You do that through challenge.

03:12:45.780 So if you want to build someone's self-esteem, let's say, but I would say encourage them,

03:12:50.260 then set them a set of optimal challenges, and allow them to watch themselves succeed at

03:12:59.020 those challenges, and that will build it right into their bones.

03:13:02.360 All right.

03:13:02.480 So let's go back to this lobster story, since you're wearing the lobster tie, all right?

03:13:05.180 So 250 million years ago, you had a hierarchy.

03:13:08.700 There's hierarchies in most everything, it seems.

03:13:11.280 Some lobsters win the hierarchy.

03:13:12.740 They get to have all the female lobsters, I guess. 1.00

03:13:15.020 What do you do with the lobsters at the bottom of the hierarchy?

03:13:18.100 Now, today you say we've got to talk about them.

03:13:20.560 Can't ignore them.

03:13:21.560 Yeah.

03:13:21.780 But it's not easy just to engineer society to automatically manifest a better life.

03:13:27.240 Although I think a lot of people say we can do better than we are for a lot of people.

03:13:30.080 They don't get a chance.

03:13:32.040 Yeah.

03:13:32.400 What is the beta lobster?

03:13:34.980 How do they get courageous?

03:13:35.680 Well, I think we do a lot of, I think we have done a lot of things successfully in our society.

03:13:40.600 So the first is, is that it's not a monolithic hierarchy by any stretch of the imagination.

03:13:44.780 As we've made society more complex, the number of sub-hierarchies has multiplied tremendously. 0.67

03:13:52.400 And so, let's say each of us comes to the table with a different set of weaknesses and strengths.

03:13:58.460 It's highly probable that you'll be able to find a sub-hierarchy where your particular pattern of weaknesses and strengths actually constitutes the crucial element.

03:14:07.940 So if you're high in agreeableness, for example, well, healthcare is a good field for you.

03:14:11.400 And if you're really conscientious, then you can be a manager.

03:14:13.500 And if you're open, then you can be entrepreneurial or creative.

03:14:16.440 So play in a different hierarchy.

03:14:17.780 Find a hierarchy that matches your temperament.

03:14:20.140 That's a really good rule.

03:14:21.180 And then we could say, well, let's diversify the hierarchies.

03:14:23.560 And we are doing that at a very rapid rate.

03:14:26.540 Thank God, there's an endless number of diverse hierarchies online, for example.

03:14:31.240 So a sophisticated society produces a subset of hierarchy that's matched for as many people as possible.

03:14:40.880 Okay.

03:14:41.280 But then there's additional complications, and some of them we don't know how to deal with.

03:14:44.760 So, for example, one of the things that predicts the ability to succeed in hierarchies across hierarchies seems to be associated with intelligence.

03:14:55.140 So all things considered across most hierarchies, it's better to be intelligent.

03:14:59.400 So then the question is, well, what do you do with people who are of less cognitive power?

03:15:04.300 And that's an increasingly complex problem.

03:15:07.380 So, and I don't think we have a straightforward solution to that, because one of the dangers is that as our society becomes more technological and more cognitively complex, the effect of intelligence actually grows.

03:15:18.520 And that's what the literature means.

03:15:19.480 So what do you do with members of our society who cannot compete?

03:15:24.440 Because we have an obligation.

03:15:25.660 That was one of the basic insights I gained from reading and listening to you was that we all have that spark of divinity.

03:15:33.280 Yeah.

03:15:33.640 That you can't leave.

03:15:34.380 Well, Nietzsche said God is dead because science had prospered, but it only happened because religion first respected our specialness.

03:15:44.040 Yeah.

03:15:44.340 Each of us.

03:15:44.960 Yeah.

03:15:45.400 And only after that could we begin to transcend it.

03:15:48.820 Okay.

03:15:49.120 Well, this is, the way I, the way I look at this is that, let's say that you're blessed with success, like you've been blessed with success.

03:15:55.500 Okay.

03:15:55.780 So you have a lot of resources at your disposal.

03:15:58.400 Okay.

03:15:58.900 Now, you can feel guilty about that, and perhaps to some degree that you should.

03:16:02.740 But that's between you and your conscience.

03:16:04.880 But let's say that you've generated your resources in a fair game, and that a lot of people have benefited along with you.

03:16:12.060 So you've played a straight game.

03:16:13.480 Now you have all these resources.

03:16:15.240 Okay.

03:16:15.500 So what should you do with the resources?

03:16:17.500 Well, impulsive pleasure.

03:16:20.340 It's like, well, a little of that goes a long ways, and it's liable to take you down in a very, very short period of time.

03:16:25.940 There's many shows on that.

03:16:27.400 Right.

03:16:27.780 Okay.

03:16:28.060 So how about not that?

03:16:29.100 It doesn't work.

03:16:29.720 Right.

03:16:29.980 It's not a good medium to long-term solution.

03:16:32.100 But, okay, how about your ethical responsibility grows in proportion to the resources that you have at your control?

03:16:39.580 And the right thing to do is that as you become more competent, authoritative, and able, is to expand the range in which you're operating to do more good.

03:16:51.800 It's like you've got a problem.

03:16:52.740 You see something in the world that's bothering you.

03:16:55.480 You think, well, that's a problem.

03:16:56.580 It's bothering me.

03:16:57.660 Because that's an interesting thing.

03:16:58.900 Not everyone bothers everything.

03:17:01.160 Some things bother each of us.

03:17:02.880 That's your problem.

03:17:04.080 Whatever bothers you.

03:17:05.180 It's like, that's like a little marker.

03:17:07.240 I don't know why it emerges.

03:17:08.700 That's your problem.

03:17:09.820 You should go out there and do something about that.

03:17:11.620 Okay.

03:17:11.820 So you have some excess resources.

03:17:13.600 It's like, great.

03:17:14.780 Get at it.

03:17:16.200 And this is one of the things I like about someone like Bill Gates, for example.

03:17:19.720 It's like, what's he doing?

03:17:20.560 Well, how about combating malaria?

03:17:23.280 Okay.

03:17:24.320 You got $60 billion.

03:17:26.000 You want to wipe out malaria?

03:17:27.900 That's, it might be a good thing that you have $60 billion if one of the consequences is that you're going to wipe out malaria.

03:17:35.140 Or at least you're going to try.

03:17:36.080 And he's after the five major diseases, right?

03:17:38.100 And actually, from what I've been able to read, is like making some headway.

03:17:41.620 It's like, great.

03:17:42.740 So what is winning, losing?

03:17:45.160 What is success?

03:17:46.260 How does that all fit into this hierarchy game?

03:17:48.640 It's musical.

03:17:51.420 Musical.

03:17:52.120 Sure.

03:17:52.700 Multiple layers.

03:17:53.540 You bet.

03:17:54.080 It's like, you know, maybe it's a Strauss waltz, eh?

03:17:56.700 It's beautiful.

03:17:57.580 And you're dancing with someone you love.

03:17:59.520 And the orchestra is being conducted.

03:18:01.120 And everyone's dancing around you.

03:18:02.380 And everything is stacked up harmoniously.

03:18:04.580 It's like you're winning at every level.

03:18:07.140 Simultaneously.

03:18:08.220 That's where the maximal meaning is.

03:18:10.440 It's like, there isn't anything better than that.

03:18:13.520 Why would you pursue anything else?

03:18:15.420 You want to win at every level.

03:18:17.200 And that means that not only do you win, but the fact of your winning is related integrally

03:18:23.740 to the fact of everyone else's winning.

03:18:25.840 That's a perfect game.

03:18:27.620 It's like, not only are you winning, so is everyone that's playing with you.

03:18:30.620 It's like, great.

03:18:31.760 And that is, and I do believe, I believe we're wired for that to be a meaningful experience.

03:18:37.300 God, look at us.

03:18:38.520 You go to a sports game, and you see a remarkable display of athletic prowess and sportsmanship at the same time.

03:18:47.900 Everybody spontaneously gets up and applauds.

03:18:50.400 Before they think, it's like, yes, you got it.

03:18:54.160 I see that picture, but I also see pictures, often on the set, of men and women coming in, not getting each other.

03:19:00.140 And a lot of times, it's hard to understand what the guy's up to.

03:19:05.100 Something just, because, you know, I think we're all, as humans, like Maseratis.

03:19:09.780 As a surgeon, I see the inner workings of this.

03:19:11.880 When one little spark plugs off, everyone can hear it.

03:19:14.740 Sometimes you can't hear it over the noise, but it's there.

03:19:17.220 So, when a woman is not happy, for example, with what she needs out of life, most divorces these days in middle-aged couples are initiated by the women. 0.87

03:19:26.440 Yep.

03:19:26.940 That's a consequence of higher trait neuroticism, in all likelihood.

03:19:30.660 Explain.

03:19:31.580 Well, women are higher in trait neuroticism than men. 0.98

03:19:34.380 And I think it's because they have to take care of infants.

03:19:36.820 And so, I don't think women's, adult women's nervous systems are attuned to the needs of women.

03:19:42.060 I think they're attuned to the needs of woman and infant.

03:19:45.340 That's different.

03:19:45.840 Mother and infant.

03:19:46.300 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

03:19:47.480 Mother and young infant, too.

03:19:49.160 And so, there's more sensitivity to threat than might be good for a woman's mental health across the span of her individual life.

03:19:56.320 But it's the price she pays for being hypervigilant for her infants. 1.00

03:19:59.280 And it's driving the sorts of things that, we know that one of the predictors of divorce, for example, is high trait neuroticism in at least one of the partners.

03:20:06.420 Because they're more unhappy.

03:20:08.540 So, how does an unhappy woman express that in a successful way to get the guy to change? 0.98

03:20:13.360 Because he doesn't have trait neuroticism, right?

03:20:16.780 Yeah.

03:20:17.020 He's not all worried about being a father of a young child.

03:20:19.220 Yeah.

03:20:19.920 He's hardwired for aiming at the target.

03:20:22.620 Yeah.

03:20:22.860 Well, it might be worth having a discussion about what target to aim at.

03:20:28.620 You know, again, that's why we developed the future authoring program.

03:20:31.500 It's like, okay, what are you both up to?

03:20:33.840 What are you aiming at?

03:20:34.960 We need to establish that.

03:20:36.520 And you say, well, I'm not aiming at anything.

03:20:37.860 It's like, yes, you are.

03:20:38.800 If you don't know what you're aiming for, that just means you don't know what you're aiming for.

03:20:42.560 You can't live without an aim.

03:20:43.980 It also might mean that you're aiming at 25 things at the same time.

03:20:47.380 So, you're polytheistic in some sense.

03:20:49.560 And 10 of those aims are working at cross purposes to the other 10.

03:20:53.080 So, you're a house divided amongst itself.

03:20:55.620 See, I think a lot of times women are big players in their family story. 1.00

03:21:03.020 And they figure it out.

03:21:04.740 And that's not fulfilling.

03:21:06.340 You want to be the main character, protagonist of your story.

03:21:09.300 Well, that's also perhaps associated with higher trait agreeableness.

03:21:13.300 It's another big five trait.

03:21:14.720 So, if you're agreeable, you tend to defer to others.

03:21:17.720 And you're compassionate.

03:21:19.360 Now, deferring to others isn't necessarily a virtue.

03:21:21.620 We tend to think of compassion as a virtue, but we already discussed that.

03:21:24.740 It's like, well, one of the things that you do if you're a clinician.

03:21:28.100 Like, clinicians basically do two things.

03:21:31.080 They help people deal with anxiety and negative emotion.

03:21:33.920 That's a big part of it.

03:21:35.300 And the other is they do assertiveness training.

03:21:37.560 And that's usually for people who are too high in agreeableness.

03:21:40.020 It's like, okay, what do you want?

03:21:41.940 I've had clients who are so agreeable, they couldn't say what they wanted.

03:21:45.540 It's like, what do you want?

03:21:46.360 I don't know.

03:21:48.100 They've been so other-centered that they don't know what it is that they're crying out for.

03:21:54.460 And that's often a very lengthy process of discovery.

03:21:57.320 But then you have to find out what you want.

03:22:00.280 Then you have to figure out how to fight for it.

03:22:01.860 Because you don't just get what you want.

03:22:03.420 It's like, that isn't how things work.

03:22:06.640 This is, you know, since you're talking about fighting for what you want.

03:22:08.780 This came up in your Channel 4 interview in the UK.

03:22:12.820 About the fundamental difference between women and men.

03:22:15.720 And a hot topic that we've talked about on the show is the fact that women aren't paid in a way that it seems equitable to the men in a similar job.

03:22:25.740 And you made arguments that there are fundamental differences between men and women where women need to play some of the role.

03:22:31.920 And assertiveness is part of this.

03:22:33.340 Yeah, well, agreeable people get paid less for the same job than disagreeable people.

03:22:36.880 Because they don't ask?

03:22:38.160 Sure.

03:22:38.600 Look, if you do your job very competently, you might expect that your boss should notice that.

03:22:43.620 And probably he or she should.

03:22:45.740 But the problem with doing things well is that it's invisible.

03:22:48.900 What's visible is mistakes.

03:22:50.700 So then you just work really hard and you're invisible.

03:22:53.160 It's like, well, you're invisible.

03:22:54.640 That's not helpful.

03:22:56.180 And like, did you ask?

03:22:58.060 And maybe asking isn't good enough.

03:22:59.420 Like, I've counseled lots of people who've tripled their salaries in two or three years.

03:23:03.000 Like, it's work, man.

03:23:04.300 It's work.

03:23:05.020 It's a strategy.

03:23:05.900 It's a war to do that.

03:23:07.860 But you can do it.

03:23:09.280 I mean, the first thing you do is, well, the first thing we do is, well, are you actually doing a good job?

03:23:14.420 Let's say yes.

03:23:15.200 Okay, fine.

03:23:16.120 Are you documenting it?

03:23:18.580 Generally, no.

03:23:19.600 Yes.

03:23:19.960 If you're documenting it, are you communicating the documentation?

03:23:23.560 Well, no.

03:23:24.740 Okay, is your CV up to date and prepared?

03:23:27.340 Are you ready to move laterally?

03:23:29.120 Are you looking for other positions?

03:23:30.480 Are you looking for other opportunities within the workplace?

03:23:33.660 How often do you talk to your boss about what you're doing?

03:23:36.080 What are your salary goals?

03:23:38.080 Well, I want a 15% raise.

03:23:39.700 Did you ask?

03:23:40.940 No.

03:23:41.780 Well, sorry, man.

03:23:43.460 You're not going to get it if you don't ask.

03:23:44.980 Unless you're assuming that your boss is omniscient and benevolent, which is highly improbable.

03:23:49.820 Especially if you're doing a good job and you can be ignored.

03:23:52.840 You know, and then it's not only a matter of asking.

03:23:56.000 It's a matter of negotiating.

03:23:57.460 Because if I want something from you and it's somewhat of a zero-sum game,

03:24:01.080 and often the distributable pile of money is somewhat of a zero-sum game.

03:24:04.800 It's like, here's six reasons why you should pay me 15% more.

03:24:09.740 And here's two things that aren't good that will happen if you don't.

03:24:12.560 So, and then, usually, you're not even negotiating with your boss.

03:24:16.820 You're negotiating with your boss's boss.

03:24:19.240 So, what you're trying to do is to give your boss a story so that he can or she can go to the next person up and say,

03:24:24.420 well, we have to give this person 15% more because if we don't, first they're doing a good job.

03:24:29.340 But here's the documentation which they so helpfully supplied me for.

03:24:33.280 And here's the negative costly thing that will happen if we don't.

03:24:36.180 It's like, oh, yeah, give them their money because it's cheaper than hiring someone else.

03:24:40.460 It's like, you have to think strategically and you have to be disagreeable.

03:24:44.800 And the disagreeable part is you have to negotiate on your own behalf.

03:24:50.100 What's the fundamental difference between men and women? 0.97

03:24:52.700 Well, the temperamental traits are women are higher in trait neuroticism, 1.00

03:24:56.920 so they feel more negative emotion, anxiety, and emotional pain primarily.

03:25:01.320 And they're higher in agreeableness, which is compassion and politeness.

03:25:05.060 And that's about half a standard deviation, which isn't a lot.

03:25:09.380 So, men and women are more the same than they are different by a substantial margin.

03:25:13.720 But at the extremes, those differences really make a difference.

03:25:18.160 So, for example, women's higher trait neuroticism, negative emotionality, 0.92

03:25:24.000 is reflected in the fact that cross-cultury, they're more likely to be diagnosed with depression and anxiety disorders.

03:25:29.140 Whereas men's disagreeableness is reflected in the fact that they're more likely to be arrested and imprisoned.

03:25:35.060 So, it's 10 to 1, male convicts to female.

03:25:39.020 You think that's a matter of socialization?

03:25:41.080 You think this court system is stacked against men?

03:25:44.160 Are we going to have an equity program for men and women in prison?

03:25:47.340 Or are we going to accept the fact that men tend to be more violent than women? 0.85

03:25:50.820 Which is also, by the way, women commit... 1.00

03:25:53.600 Women attempt suicide more often than men.

03:25:55.720 That's a reflection of their higher levels of anxiety and depression.

03:26:00.000 But men commit suicide more often because they use lethal means.

03:26:03.720 Yes, and that's a reflection of their lower levels of agreeableness and their proclivity towards physical aggression.

03:26:09.700 So, and you think, well, that's all sociologically constructed.

03:26:12.520 No, the data are in.

03:26:17.720 So, you rank order countries by how egalitarian their social policies are.

03:26:22.900 And you put the Scandinavian countries at the top because they have the most egalitarian social policies.

03:26:27.980 If we know what egalitarian means, you know, if it's not the Scandinavians, then we don't know what egalitarian means.

03:26:34.720 Because that's what they've been trying to do.

03:26:36.300 Then you look at personality differences across those countries.

03:26:40.760 If it's sociological, then the smallest personality differences are in Scandinavia.

03:26:46.940 Because they've been obliterated by the egalitarian policies.

03:26:50.740 That's exactly the opposite of what happened.

03:26:54.600 The biggest personality differences in the world are between Scandinavian men and women.

03:26:59.760 Why?

03:27:00.140 Because when you take out the sociological variability, you maximize the biological variability.

03:27:08.340 Right.

03:27:08.880 It's exactly the opposite of what virtually everyone predicted.

03:27:11.800 No one, no one saw that coming.

03:27:13.360 But that's what happened.

03:27:14.420 And it's not like a few little studies done by some right-wing professors of psychology in some little podunk institution.

03:27:20.580 First of all, there are no right-wing professors of psychology.

03:27:23.540 So no one's been happy about this.

03:27:25.600 Second, these are studies with thousands of people.

03:27:27.640 They're among the most credible psychological studies that have ever been done.

03:27:32.560 And it's not only personality.

03:27:34.220 It's interest.

03:27:35.160 This is the big one.

03:27:37.320 The biggest difference between men and women in the Scandinavian countries isn't trait neuroticism or agreeableness.

03:27:43.740 Those are personality dimensions.

03:27:45.020 The biggest difference is in interest.

03:27:46.980 And women tilt towards people. 1.00

03:27:49.160 And men tilt towards things.

03:27:51.540 It also turns out that if you're in a thing-oriented job, you tend to make more money.

03:27:55.460 Because they're scalable.

03:27:56.280 You know, it's like how many people can you take care of?

03:28:00.160 So a thing is you're building machines, cars.

03:28:02.780 Gadgets.

03:28:03.160 Gadgets.

03:28:03.660 Yeah, tools.

03:28:04.120 And people, you're helping people.

03:28:05.500 Hospitals, psychology.

03:28:06.640 Yeah, exactly.

03:28:07.340 Exactly.

03:28:07.780 And that tends to be more one-on-one.

03:28:09.480 It's hard to scale healthcare.

03:28:11.840 And you don't make a lot of money in most enterprises that aren't scalable.

03:28:16.140 Taking a step back from this, should we be following our bliss?

03:28:20.100 That's the message that we've been putting out there a lot.

03:28:24.160 And I, there's a comment, and I've heard it from others as well, that we're better off following our blisters than our bliss.

03:28:30.560 Yeah, yeah.

03:28:31.100 Yeah, yeah.

03:28:31.620 Is that an important part of your message, that the promise of bliss is a false promise?

03:28:39.180 Yeah, it's not the right term, and you've got to get your terms right.

03:28:41.640 Precision and speech, right?

03:28:42.920 Speech matters, because that's how you turn potential into reality.

03:28:46.500 Right?

03:28:47.020 Meaning.

03:28:49.540 If you pursue what's meaningful, then sometimes you'll encounter bliss.

03:28:54.180 Perhaps as often as it's possible to, which I would say isn't that often.

03:28:58.840 Those are sort of peak experiences.

03:29:01.360 Meaning.

03:29:02.200 And I do believe that meaning is a fundamental instinct.

03:29:05.060 In fact, I think it's the most fundamental instinct.

03:29:07.300 It's what you've got.

03:29:08.400 Meaning is real.

03:29:09.720 It might be the most real thing.

03:29:11.120 I pick on that theme because it's an example of how people aren't getting you.

03:29:15.940 Amongst the critics.

03:29:18.360 And another example, because people say, well, follow my bliss.

03:29:21.200 I want to be happy.

03:29:21.760 I want to be light.

03:29:22.380 I want to be, you know, it's like the bubbly, sparkling water in my tongue.

03:29:26.160 How about you want to be good?

03:29:28.360 That'd be way better.

03:29:30.160 Pursue what makes you good, as opposed to evil.

03:29:34.080 Bliss?

03:29:35.240 Sorry, no.

03:29:36.680 And what about the issue of political correctness?

03:29:38.960 Much of which I think came about, because a lot of my generation grew up

03:29:44.200 when reprehensible things could easily be stated.

03:29:47.080 About women in the workplace, about folks of different gender, color.

03:29:51.240 You know, that was...

03:29:51.780 Vietnam War.

03:29:52.600 The Vietnamese War.

03:29:53.560 Yes, which really tore the country apart.

03:29:55.300 I think a lot of my generation has PTSD just watching the news at age five

03:30:00.260 and wondering why everyone thought everyone was lying.

03:30:02.780 And it still has impacted us.

03:30:04.340 But there are groups that have a sensitivity to how they are portrayed.

03:30:09.640 And political correctness allows you to be polite, if nothing else.

03:30:13.680 Good at a higher level.

03:30:15.640 And yet, you've criticized political correctness.

03:30:17.780 I gather because you think it chases people...

03:30:20.460 It's a wrong narrative.

03:30:21.460 It's a group-oriented narrative.

03:30:24.580 It's like...

03:30:25.880 So people have social groups, obviously.

03:30:29.560 And they're individuals.

03:30:31.100 And the question is, group first, individual second?

03:30:35.120 Or individual first, group second?

03:30:36.560 And the answer is, individual first, group second.

03:30:41.700 Or else.

03:30:44.000 And the politically correct types, who play identity politics, say,

03:30:46.940 no, your fundamental characteristic is your group.

03:30:49.140 Now, there's all sorts of problems with that.

03:30:51.260 It's like, well, the first problem, and this is the intersectional people

03:30:54.120 within the politically correct campus have already realized this.

03:30:57.320 Well, which group?

03:30:58.500 Oh, it turns out that people belong to, like, five groups.

03:31:01.620 Okay, so...

03:31:02.820 Do you make all of their groups the number one thing?

03:31:05.920 Well, that doesn't work because there's an infinite number of groups.

03:31:08.880 So that just can't work.

03:31:10.400 Actually, you see, what the West discovered was that...

03:31:13.140 You have to fractionate the groups to get justice.

03:31:17.240 Where do you stop fractionating them?

03:31:19.820 Individuals.

03:31:20.380 That's right.

03:31:21.040 That's exactly right.

03:31:21.720 Well, I mean, I get that there are emotional hemophiliacs out there

03:31:24.560 where, you know, there's a lot of sensitivity

03:31:26.860 that you may not be able to control as a speaker.

03:31:30.180 You're not going to please everybody.

03:31:31.440 I get it.

03:31:31.860 But for me, a lot of the speech that we would call politically correct

03:31:35.920 is polite speech.

03:31:37.520 I'm giving you a break because I don't want to be mean to you.

03:31:39.120 No problem.

03:31:39.660 No problem with polite speech.

03:31:41.080 It depends on how it's enforced and who's enforcing it.

03:31:44.580 That's the thing.

03:31:45.320 It's like, you want to be polite?

03:31:47.860 No problem.

03:31:49.060 First of all, you should reserve the right to be impolite when necessary

03:31:52.440 because otherwise you're...

03:31:55.000 You've been deprived of your defenses.

03:31:59.740 And that's not good.

03:32:01.440 So it's not, for example, it's not like I don't believe there's hate speech.

03:32:06.540 There is.

03:32:07.480 The question is how should it be regulated?

03:32:09.360 It's not like I don't believe that there's prejudice.

03:32:12.580 There is.

03:32:13.240 That's not the issue.

03:32:14.240 The issue is how do you conceptualize the world?

03:32:16.980 Or that's...

03:32:17.540 And the identity politics types,

03:32:19.960 they have a fundamental tribal conception.

03:32:22.520 They try to make group identity the fundamental issue.

03:32:25.320 They assume that the best narrative is oppressor versus oppressed.

03:32:29.660 And they play up the victim issue.

03:32:31.960 And I don't think that's good for anyone.

03:32:33.320 I think all it does is divide society and return us to a fractionated tribal existence.

03:32:41.480 It's the wrong...

03:32:42.440 The whole story is wrong.

03:32:44.780 That's the problem with political correctness.

03:32:46.640 It's like you put the group first.

03:32:48.400 No.

03:32:50.920 No.

03:32:51.880 Wrong.

03:32:53.140 The thing that we got right in the West is that we put the individual first. 0.64

03:32:57.700 And I'm not willing to see that eroded.

03:33:06.240 It's a mistake.

03:33:08.400 And it's not because of rights.

03:33:10.840 It's because of responsibility.

03:33:14.060 So, the way out of the oppressive structure of history is through maximal adoption of individual responsibility.

03:33:22.700 It's the best way forward.

03:33:24.020 So, let's talk about how we pass that along, the best that we are, along to the next generation.

03:33:32.560 There's a line that you've offered that really caught me off guard.

03:33:35.340 There are many.

03:33:36.060 But this one was particularly provocative.

03:33:38.180 You said, don't give your children a reason for you to hate them.

03:33:42.200 Right, right.

03:33:42.880 That's rule five, right?

03:33:43.980 Don't let your children do anything that makes you dislike them.

03:33:46.760 Yeah, well, that's another...

03:33:49.300 Most of the book, 12 Rules for Life, is about responsibility and meaning.

03:33:52.900 I would say those are the two.

03:33:54.580 Responsibility, meaning, and truth.

03:33:55.960 That's probably the interplay of the principles.

03:33:59.920 Well, the question is, what are you doing if you're a parent?

03:34:03.480 And the answer is, preparing your child to be maximally socially welcome.

03:34:08.900 That's your job.

03:34:10.620 And it's the job of the two of you.

03:34:12.880 Because the two of you together make one reasonable person. 0.64

03:34:16.460 Okay, so now you're a reasonable person because you've kind of ironed out your idiocies with each other.

03:34:20.640 Through that opponent process, that contentious relationship, that wrestling that's part of a real relationship.

03:34:28.400 You're both smarter and wiser than you would have been otherwise.

03:34:31.420 And that's part of the reason for the vow.

03:34:33.500 It's like, I'm not leaving you.

03:34:35.540 Oh my God, you mean we're stuck with each other?

03:34:37.500 Yes.

03:34:38.080 For how long?

03:34:38.880 Six decades. 1.00

03:34:40.180 Oh, so this stupid problem we have isn't going to go away for six decades? 1.00

03:34:44.480 It's like, well, we... 1.00

03:34:45.220 Right.

03:34:45.920 No kidding.

03:34:47.080 We better do something about it.

03:34:48.860 So there's going to be contention there.

03:34:50.640 So let's say we fix each other up.

03:34:52.200 So we're kind of 80% functional as a unit.

03:34:55.140 Okay, now we have a child.

03:34:56.760 A child has this 80% functional unit.

03:34:59.200 And to the degree that the child can establish a relationship with that unit, that will generalize to other people.

03:35:05.800 And so you want your child to be a good play partner for other children.

03:35:09.440 Because by the time he or she is four, their primary source of socialization will be other children.

03:35:16.520 So if they're not prepared to take their place in the world of children, they fall farther and farther behind.

03:35:20.940 That's very well documented.

03:35:22.180 Okay, and you want them to respect adults.

03:35:25.780 Why?

03:35:26.940 Well, firstly, because they're going to become an adult.

03:35:29.920 So they should obviously respect adults because they're going to spend two-thirds, three-quarters of their life as an adult.

03:35:36.020 So that better be worthwhile.

03:35:37.940 So it better be respectable.

03:35:39.800 Otherwise, you devalue their future.

03:35:41.620 And that's pretty counterproductive and mean.

03:35:44.140 And then the second thing is if they respect adults and can listen to them, then adults who kind of naturally like children are more likely to teach them things and give them opportunities.

03:35:54.920 And so that's a good deal.

03:35:56.940 And so if your child is doing something that makes you dislike them, assuming you're in a relationship and you've ironed out most of your idiocy, then other people will also dislike that. 0.95

03:36:08.960 And so if you allow or encourage your child to continue in such behavior, you turn them into someone who's miserable and socially isolated.

03:36:17.460 Now, if you don't want them to leave home ever, that's probably a good strategy. 0.80

03:36:22.960 If you cripple them badly enough, they won't be able to drag themselves out of your door. 1.00

03:36:27.940 But if you love your child and you want them to thrive, then you do everything you can to have the world open up its arms to them.

03:36:35.340 And that's a huge part of that is discipline, careful, minimal force, discipline.

03:36:42.660 Fewest number of rules.

03:36:44.180 Few rules.

03:36:45.360 Few rules.

03:36:46.040 Minimal enforcement.

03:36:46.940 That's right.

03:36:47.420 Just the least you have to do.

03:36:48.520 That's right.

03:36:48.980 That's exactly right.

03:36:49.920 Minimal rules, because it gets too complicated otherwise, enforced with minimal necessary force.

03:36:55.420 Those are excellent principles.

03:36:57.160 See, part of what got me on that statement is the possibility that if you are unsuccessful, you will hate your children.

03:37:03.080 And we see times when parents are ruining their children.

03:37:08.880 And vice versa.

03:37:10.000 And vice versa.

03:37:10.780 Yeah.

03:37:11.160 Because they've fallen out of love with them.

03:37:12.560 Yes.

03:37:12.960 I see this at the end of life quite a bit when your father's dying and all the strange children are coming back into the picture and you see horrible fights at that level.

03:37:21.660 Oh, absolutely.

03:37:23.000 Absolutely.

03:37:23.600 Well, I can tell you a quick story.

03:37:25.360 So when my mother-in-law died, she had prefrontal dementia and it started quite young.

03:37:30.360 So she died when I believe she was just in her early 70s.

03:37:33.280 And so it was a kind of a brutal death.

03:37:35.440 And her husband really went beyond, above and beyond the call of duty with her.

03:37:42.080 I mean, he just, he just made my jaw drop, man.

03:37:44.920 And because as she deteriorated, he stepped in and allowed her to preserve her autonomy, too.

03:37:51.040 Like, he wasn't over-caring.

03:37:52.500 He was really attentive.

03:37:53.620 And when someone offered help, he would take it.

03:37:55.980 He wasn't so proud, you know, in the arrogant way.

03:37:58.520 He would take help.

03:37:59.920 And so, and he kept her at home until, he was getting old, too.

03:38:04.180 He couldn't get her off the chair anymore.

03:38:05.780 And so then she went into the old-age home where she eventually died.

03:38:09.440 And her whole family gathered around her deathbed.

03:38:11.760 We were there for about the last week.

03:38:13.140 And, you know, that's pretty rough.

03:38:16.600 She was dying of hunger and thirst, really, but the disease.

03:38:22.060 And one of her daughters, a palliative care nurse, was making sure that her mouth was wet and taking care of her. 0.97

03:38:28.860 And they all pulled together.

03:38:31.620 They all pulled together.

03:38:33.560 It was really something to watch.

03:38:35.880 And so, and then she died.

03:38:37.780 And so what happened?

03:38:38.960 Well, that was awful.

03:38:40.320 But it wasn't hell.

03:38:43.140 Hell would have been her dying and everyone around fighting.

03:38:46.300 And everyone walking away, embittered and full of enmity as a consequence of her life and death.

03:38:53.140 But what happened instead was that all her kids had a newfound respect for their father, which has prevailed over the intervening 10 years.

03:39:01.520 And all the siblings got tighter.

03:39:04.440 And so they lost their mother, which was no trivial thing.

03:39:08.140 But because they handled it so well, they gained something.

03:39:12.960 And I'm not going to say in some naive way that it was equivalent to the loss or that they came out better.

03:39:17.800 You know, you don't have to make that case.

03:39:20.460 They certainly didn't come out worse.

03:39:23.200 And so these end-of-life scenes, the ones you're describing, it's like those things can, bad can get so horrible if it's contaminated by enmity and deceit and misbehavior.

03:39:34.620 And that's the difference between tragedy and hell.

03:39:37.700 Since I'm a doctor, let me ask you one medical question.

03:39:40.000 I know that your diet has become an issue of interest.

03:39:43.040 You're obviously rail thin.

03:39:45.920 People could take the Jordan Peterson diet, probably, and maybe they'll look like you.

03:39:50.340 But I know that some medical issues forced you to be careful about your diet.

03:39:54.400 Yes.

03:39:55.000 So what specifically do you eat, do you not eat, and how has it benefited you?

03:39:58.980 Well, it's mostly been of benefit to my daughter, who had a very complex autoimmune disease with about 30 extremely severe symptoms.

03:40:08.100 And she learned over about a three-year period of experimentation what she could eat, which was virtually nothing, and what she couldn't eat, which was virtually everything.

03:40:19.300 All she eats is beef and water.

03:40:22.340 Beef and water.

03:40:23.100 That's it.

03:40:23.640 And she's been eating that, only that, for a year.

03:40:26.480 And she never cheats because cheating has very severe consequences for her.

03:40:31.920 And so her mother has some of the autoimmune symptoms, and I have some of them, and so it looks like she got all of them.

03:40:39.020 And so when this worked for her, and we watched very carefully over a number of years while she was doing this, and, like, the improvement in her is I just can't believe it every time I see it.

03:40:49.040 I literally can't believe it.

03:40:51.340 It doesn't compute.

03:40:53.140 And I can't believe that it was diet, either, you know, because that went against many, many things that I believed.

03:40:59.380 But I decided to try her more restricted diet.

03:41:02.700 And, first of all, it was just meat and greens, and then I stopped eating greens, too, about five months ago.

03:41:07.120 And her mother has been doing the same thing for about eight months. 0.67

03:41:09.560 And the consequences have been, they're hard to believe.

03:41:14.340 I don't even really like to talk about them because I'm not a dietary expert, and it sounds so completely insane.

03:41:19.340 But, but, I lost 52 pounds in seven months.

03:41:25.460 52 pounds?

03:41:26.620 Yeah.

03:41:27.480 And I wasn't, I wasn't, I wasn't overweight.

03:41:30.560 Well, I was, but not by modern standards.

03:41:33.420 No.

03:41:33.880 And, you know, a year before that, I had cut all the sugar out of my diet, eh?

03:41:37.620 But I was still eating carbohydrates of all sorts.

03:41:39.920 And I lost, like, three pounds, nothing.

03:41:41.960 And then I tried this diet.

03:41:43.240 It was like the first, here's what happened.

03:41:45.180 This is what happened.

03:41:45.940 In the first week, I tried this diet.

03:41:50.380 This was just meat and, and greens, essentially.

03:41:53.540 I quit snoring.

03:41:55.760 That was way before any weight loss.

03:41:57.460 It's just like, it just, off.

03:41:59.020 And I was snoring a lot.

03:42:00.060 It was disrupting my wife's sleep.

03:42:01.540 So, I thought, oh, that's really interesting.

03:42:03.360 I quit snoring.

03:42:04.160 Isn't that weird?

03:42:06.040 Then I lost seven pounds the first month.

03:42:08.080 I thought, hmm, that's quite a lot.

03:42:10.780 Then I stopped having to have a nap in the afternoon, because I was napping a lot.

03:42:16.520 Then my gastric reflux disorder went away.

03:42:19.240 Then I lost another seven pounds.

03:42:21.440 Then the psoriasis that I had on my foot and my scalp, that started to go away.

03:42:27.700 So, and then over the course of seven months, I stopped taking antidepressants, because I

03:42:32.320 didn't need them anymore.

03:42:34.000 My mood isn't perfectly regulated.

03:42:35.480 But, it's, it's pretty damn good.

03:42:39.500 And, and I lost 50 pounds in total.

03:42:42.160 And, I wake up in the morning, and I've never woken up well in the morning in my entire life.

03:42:47.600 So, so I don't know what to make of that.

03:42:51.700 Like, I can't, first, and I wouldn't recommend it.

03:42:54.680 This is not something you do lightly.

03:42:56.560 No, I mean, obviously there were issues that were going on in your gut, but it does make

03:42:59.380 me curious as a physician.

03:43:00.600 As you point out, you learn from the extremes as well.

03:43:03.280 Well, here's a hypothesis you can make of it what you will.

03:43:06.560 This is a hypothesis I've formulated over the last year.

03:43:09.360 And, like I said, this came as an absolute shock to me, and it still is a shock.

03:43:14.360 And I wouldn't recommend it, because it's hell on your social life.

03:43:18.260 And it really makes traveling difficult.

03:43:20.360 So, it's, it's not to be done lightly.

03:43:22.500 And there are other consequences too.

03:43:24.320 But, here's a hypothesis.

03:43:27.000 Let's say you have a patient who has multiple complex medical symptoms.

03:43:32.520 Of unspecified etiology.

03:43:35.940 Okay, so what might you do?

03:43:37.300 How about if you reduce their complexity?

03:43:40.180 How about if you regard every single thing they eat as a variable?

03:43:44.100 Because maybe it is.

03:43:45.800 So, then you take them down.

03:43:47.380 Well, people use elimination diets, but that's...

03:43:50.680 You got it down to one thing, basically.

03:43:52.280 One thing.

03:43:53.300 And what's weird is, it appears that you can live on that one thing.

03:43:57.520 So, the people say, well, you can't live on an all-meat diet.

03:44:00.300 It's like, mmm.

03:44:02.800 That's not so obvious.

03:44:04.500 It defies the conventional wisdom.

03:44:06.780 Yeah.

03:44:07.860 Well, here's the other thing that's worth thinking about.

03:44:10.660 Maybe.

03:44:13.360 There are a lot of people who are overweight.

03:44:15.220 There are way more people who are overweight than there should be.

03:44:19.300 And we don't know why.

03:44:21.080 Look, I've read some literature that suggests that maybe it's a secondary consequence of emulsifiers disrupting our gut lining.

03:44:28.920 There's lots of theories.

03:44:29.780 To your point, if you simplify the variables, you only have one.

03:44:33.960 Well, the other issue is, what's the harm?

03:44:38.000 So, you eat nothing but beef for two months.

03:44:40.600 Who cares?

03:44:41.500 If it doesn't work, quit doing it.

03:44:43.440 But maybe, like, if you see symptom reduction, and I've heard stories, and these are, what do they say?

03:44:50.120 The plural of anecdote is not data.

03:44:52.540 That's right.

03:44:52.840 It's like, yeah, but the plural of anecdote might be hypothesis.

03:44:57.020 I really appreciate all the information you shared.

03:44:59.960 I've taxed you.

03:45:01.540 There's lots more to discuss.

03:45:03.360 But it's wisdom that's worth thinking about.

03:45:06.180 Well, thanks.

03:45:06.560 I agree with everything you're saying, but I think a lot of folks will be stimulated to think further on things that matter.

03:45:11.980 Well, thanks very much for the invitation.

03:45:14.480 It was a pleasure to be here and to have the opportunity to talk with you.

03:45:17.960 Jordan Peterson.

03:45:18.560 Thank you very much.

03:45:39.320 We'll be right back.

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - October 22, 2018

Dr. Oz - Jordan Peterson's Rules to Live By

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