The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - Maps of Meaning 4, 5, & 6

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00:00:54.540 Welcome to the Jordan B. Peterson podcast.

00:00:58.480 This podcast is an amalgamation of episodes four to six from Maps of Meaning, recorded

00:01:03.700 by TV Ontario. You can support these podcasts by donating the amount of your choice to Dr.

00:01:10.760 Peterson's Patreon account, which can be found by searching Jordan Peterson Patreon, or by finding

00:01:17.260 the link in the description. Dr. Peterson's self-development programs, Self-Authoring, can be found at

00:01:24.680 self-authoring.com.

00:01:25.900 Maybe you're 35 years old, and you've never had a job, and one of the things that's stopping

00:01:33.140 you is that you're so damn nervous that you can't pick up a phone and use it, because if

00:01:38.240 anything unexpected happens while you're talking, you get scared so badly, you have to hang up.

00:01:42.900 And so that would be characteristic of somebody with a severe anxiety disorder. So what do you

00:01:46.360 do with that person? So you say, well, are they afraid of the phone? Well, no. What are they

00:01:51.700 afraid of? Well, they're afraid of anomalies in human interaction, right? They're afraid of

00:01:56.480 something unexpected happening while they're trying to impose a structure. And the reason

00:02:00.420 they're afraid of that is because they never learned that they were capable of dealing with

00:02:05.340 the emergence of something new on an ongoing basis, which meant that, well, which meant in

00:02:11.280 all likelihood, that when they were children, they were so sheltered from any contact with

00:02:16.880 those aspects of being that transcend knowledge, that they never learned that there was something

00:02:21.520 inside of them that would reveal itself if they were allowed the opportunity to encounter

00:02:27.600 the unknown, to encounter fear, then to master it, then to extract out something of value.

00:02:33.160 So they can't get a job because they can't use the phone. And it isn't because they can't

00:02:36.880 use the phone, right? It's a deeper story than that. It's because they're terrified of this,

00:02:42.500 and they have no idea that they have some resource they could draw on to combat it. And you could

00:02:48.600 say, well, we can teach them to use the phone, right? Say, well, you know, here's a, here's

00:02:53.740 a repertoire of stock lines that you might use, you know, like small talk at a party. And

00:02:58.760 that would increase what they know and enable them to deal with the unknown. Or you could say,

00:03:04.120 look, you know, relax a little bit. When the person says something on the phone that

00:03:08.000 you don't understand, pause a little bit. Think about what they're saying. Pay attention

00:03:12.740 to them. Allow yourself the luxury of formulating a response. You'll do fine. And even if you

00:03:17.920 do it badly the first half a dozen times, well, you'll learn eventually. The person derives

00:03:22.880 from that the notion that not only can they cope on the phone, but that possibly there's more

00:03:28.840 to them that originally met the eye. We come into the world equipped with an array

00:03:39.300 of possibilities and limitations. Those possibilities and limitations are expressed most particularly

00:03:46.800 in our physical form. The fact that we have a specific kind of embodied form that allows

00:03:53.340 us to do certain things and that also doesn't allow us to do certain other things. Lao Tzu

00:03:59.340 has pointed out that it's the space inside a pot that makes the pot worthwhile. And what

00:04:07.340 he means by that is that those things that limit you give you as much form and possibility

00:04:14.340 as those things that enable you. What that means more broadly is the fact that you come to

00:04:19.580 a given circumstance with a set of possibilities and a set of limitations. It's that that allows

00:04:24.940 you to impose form on what you encounter. So that the whole notion of form is a tenant

00:04:30.080 in some peculiar way that we don't really understand yet on the necessity of limitation. And I think

00:04:36.820 the best way to understand that or to begin to understand that is to give some consideration

00:04:40.800 to the notion of a game. So for example, if you're playing chess, there's a virtually unlimited number

00:04:46.160 of things you can't do. And only a very narrow number of things that you can do. Yet when you're

00:04:52.800 playing chess, the arbitrary limitations that are imposed on each piece don't seem to be unfair in any

00:04:58.800 sort of cosmic sense. They seem to be part of the structure that enables you to actually play the game.

00:05:03.800 Without the imposition of those rules, which are of course relatively arbitrary in their structure,

00:05:08.800 there wouldn't be a game at all. Now, it's clear that for human beings, games and fantasy, for that matter,

00:05:16.800 shade up into reality so that the game structures that we engage in and the fantasy structures that we use

00:05:23.800 to undergird our stories and our pretend play, say when we're children, shade imperceptibly into real life.

00:05:30.800 We play games because there's something about games that make them deeply analogous to what we do in

00:05:36.800 day-to-day situations. And that means the observation that the rules of a game actually make the game

00:05:42.800 possible is an observation that's broadly applicable to consideration of your own limitation.

00:05:48.800 Some of those limitations and possibilities take the form of emotions and motivations.

00:05:53.800 And we know, I think, incontrovertibly, regardless of the claims of social scientists who are more relativist

00:06:01.800 in their orientation, that human beings come into the world with a standard set of biological predispositions,

00:06:07.800 emotions and motivations. And furthermore, I think we know that it's the fact of those shared emotions and motivations

00:06:14.800 that allow us to communicate at all.

00:06:21.800 And then imagine further that a consequence of that lengthy process of interpersonal negotiation

00:06:28.800 is the emergence of a tremendously complicated game. And not one that's arbitrary,

00:06:33.800 because the game has to have certain rules in order for it to be played at all.

00:06:37.800 So, for example, we know that even with rats, if rats, they like to engage in rough-and-tumble play.

00:06:43.800 And if you put two rats together, juvenile rats, one rat almost always dominates the other.

00:06:49.800 It only takes about a 10% gain in weight on the part of one rat for it to be pretty much stably dominant.

00:06:56.800 And it's always the subordinate rat that introduces play or asks for play.

00:07:02.800 But it turns out that even among rats, if the dominant rat pins or obtains victory over the subordinate rat,

00:07:11.800 more than 70% of the time, the subordinate rat will no longer play.

00:07:15.800 So then you could imagine likewise that if you're going to play a game with some other person,

00:07:19.800 whether it's a game of fantasy or the actual chance to engage in some cooperative real-world activity,

00:07:26.800 unless that person allows you a certain amount of space for the manifestation of your own emotional and motivational needs,

00:07:32.800 you're not going to play the game with them, right?

00:07:34.800 You're going to look for another game.

00:07:36.800 And that means that there's a certain set of difficult-to-describe constraints for all of you

00:07:41.800 on games that you're willing to play before you'll look for another game.

00:07:46.800 Well, and then you can start to conceive of revolutionary tendencies in that sense, right?

00:07:56.800 Imagine a human society that's got so unstable that the vast majority of the citizens within that society

00:08:02.800 are subjugated to starvation, so the society never, no longer provides their basic needs.

00:08:07.800 And constant tyranny, you could imagine as well that there's going to be an innate tendency

00:08:12.800 among the members of that society to start hypothesizing about what alternatives might be possible, right?

00:08:18.800 To start dreaming about alternative societies, and then also to take action if the situation becomes too extreme.

00:08:24.800 And I think this is part of the reason why you see stable mythological motifs across different cultures.

00:08:30.800 It's not so much like Jung said that we have archetypes of what might constitute social order deeply embedded in our unconscious.

00:08:38.800 I think the situation is more externalized than that, in that what's biological is what we bring to the situation,

00:08:45.800 our hopes and our desires, and the fact that we have hopes and desires.

00:08:49.800 Now, I think what happens with stories is something like this, is that as human societies increase in complexity and number,

00:08:57.800 so they become bigger and bigger, and more and more people engage in the negotiating process,

00:09:01.800 exchanging emotional and motivational information, the pattern that the society takes,

00:09:07.800 if it's going to be stable across long periods of time, starts to become encoded in the stories.

00:09:12.800 So imagine, you've got your emotions and your motivations, you make your case known,

00:09:17.800 ten thousand other people do that over a thousand years, and structure starts to emerge that satisfies,

00:09:23.800 more or less, all of these emotions and motivational states, and is also recognizable as a pattern.

00:09:29.800 So then you could say, for example, considering a story like Moses and the imposition of the Ten Commandments on the Ancient Hebrews,

00:09:41.800 prior to his imposition of those Ten Commandments, and of course there are actually many more than ten,

00:09:47.800 Moses, according to the mythological story, Moses spent years, literally years adjudicating conflict between the people that he was leading.

00:09:57.800 Eighteen hours a day, they'd come to him with their various problems, saying, we have a dispute, how should it be settled?

00:10:03.800 And he'd settle it.

00:10:04.800 Well, imagine doing that for ten years, right?

00:10:06.800 Becoming an expert at evaluating what constitutes an appropriate solution to an emotional problem between two people.

00:10:13.800 Imagine, as well, that as a consequence of doing that for such a long period of time,

00:10:18.800 you start to become able to abstract out lawful regularities in the manner in which people have to interact in order for peace to be maintained.

00:10:27.800 Imagine further that those could be codified in stories, but even more codified as law, eventually,

00:10:33.800 when consciousness became capable of grasping explicitly the nature of the interactions.

00:10:39.800 So, my point is, a point very much like Nietzsche's, because Nietzsche said at the end of the 19th century that,

00:10:45.800 it's a mistake to presume that most of our philosophies are rational in nature,

00:10:50.800 and I think that's a mistake that characterizes Western philosophical thinking, at least, at least since the Enlightenment.

00:10:56.800 It's a mistake to assume that there was a chaotic social state upon which a rational order was imposed as a consequence of rational action.

00:11:05.800 It's much more reasonable to presuppose that the order emerged naturally over lengthy periods of time,

00:11:12.800 and then was interpreted and codified and given structure in a secondary manner.

00:11:17.800 And so what I'm trying to outline for you in large part is the processes by which that order comes to be.

00:11:23.800 So you say, first, it's behavioral, emotional, motivational.

00:11:26.800 People and even animals communicate in a way that makes their motivational and emotional needs known to one another.

00:11:32.800 So even among wolves and chimpanzees and any kind of lower order social animal,

00:11:36.800 you have the emergence of dominance hierarchies, fundamentally, which are stable solutions to the entire set of emotional and motivational problems that besets the group.

00:11:46.800 And no one would ever say that the emergence of a chimpanzee dominance hierarchy is a consequence of rational deliberation.

00:11:53.800 So then imagine chimpanzees get the power to watch what they're doing and to start to represent it.

00:11:59.800 And then imagine, furthermore, that that representation takes the form of stories and then laws.

00:12:04.800 And then you have some idea about how human social order comes to be.

00:12:08.800 And this is an exciting possibility for me because it offers, it offers the potential solution to one major question,

00:12:17.800 which is how is it that people should act?

00:12:20.800 And because we're essentially rationalist in our presuppositions,

00:12:24.800 we believe that there are rationalist solutions to that,

00:12:27.800 but the solutions may be something that are much more akin to biological solutions.

00:12:31.800 First, I want you to consider the following hypothesis, okay?

00:12:41.800 So we're going to make the presupposition, a couple of presuppositions that I don't think are unreasonable.

00:12:45.800 First is that we are essentially animals, that we've evolved in a Darwinian fashion.

00:12:50.800 And second, that the consequence of that evolution, much of which was precognitive, right?

00:12:56.800 We were around as creatures before we were capable of thinking in words, say.

00:13:01.800 Much of that evolutionary history has conditioned the manner in which we think.

00:13:05.800 So we think more like biological entities than we think like computers.

00:13:09.800 Or we think more like biological entities than we think like rational machines.

00:13:13.800 And of course, we already know that rational machines cannot think very well,

00:13:17.800 except in very bounded environments because they don't have access to an embodied structure

00:13:22.800 or to emotions and motivations.

00:13:24.800 So let's, so then you might say, well, why is it that like in the Mesopotamian and Egyptian creation myths,

00:13:33.800 our most fundamental representations of the world tend to take story form?

00:13:39.800 And not only do they take story form, but they tend to utilize certain kinds of categories.

00:13:44.800 Now, I've showed you this diagram before.

00:13:47.800 This represents what I think are the three cardinal categories of experience.

00:13:52.800 So there's the great mother who's holding the world in her hand here.

00:13:55.800 And inside her, subordinate in a sense, is the great father.

00:14:00.800 This is a Christian representation, obviously.

00:14:02.800 And then the tragic son, of course, in the crowd here, representing society,

00:14:07.800 is adoring the figure of the tragic hero here because they regard his mode of being as necessary

00:14:15.800 to their own salvation, so to speak, their own proper mode of living.

00:14:19.800 Okay, so then you think, well, why these characters?

00:14:22.800 And I'd offer you this possibility is, first of all, every human being that's ever lived

00:14:30.800 has lived in an environment characterized by the presence of these three entities, right?

00:14:34.800 We have mothers, we have fathers, and we exist as individuals.

00:14:38.800 And then you think, well, when you're a child and you begin to comprehend the world,

00:14:43.800 the outside world, everything outside of the family is, of course, vague and ill-defined,

00:14:47.800 right?

00:14:48.800 Non-existent in a sense.

00:14:49.800 And all there is for you to observe is the mother, who for you really is the whole world,

00:14:56.800 and the father a secondary source of comfort and trouble, perhaps, and the fact of your own individuality.

00:15:03.800 And so you say, well, that's true from the perspective of individual development.

00:15:07.800 But then if you go way, way back in history, maybe 500,000 years when our cognitive capacities

00:15:13.800 were first starting to develop, and we were trying to figure out what the world was really

00:15:17.800 like, what categories would we have at our disposal to start to modify and change in order

00:15:23.800 to represent the outside world?

00:15:24.800 And then you might think, you can only talk about what you don't know in terms that you

00:15:29.800 know.

00:15:30.800 And since, for the child, the mother is the world, it isn't, it isn't absurd to presume

00:15:36.800 that, for the human being, the world is the mother, first, as a projection, right?

00:15:42.800 As a, as a, as a, as a, an a priori cognitive schema.

00:15:49.800 The hypothesis being, the natural world, which of course does manifest itself in truth in the mother,

00:15:55.800 partakes in many ways of the same properties as the mother.

00:16:00.800 It's a working hypothesis.

00:16:01.800 Just like you might presume, if you date a new woman, that she has aspects of your sister,

00:16:07.800 all things considered aspects of your mother, given that they were also female.

00:16:11.800 You take what you know to represent what you don't know.

00:16:14.800 So we use our fundamental social cognitive categories initially to portray the world.

00:16:23.800 And the world's nature is portrayed in personified or metaphorical form.

00:16:27.800 And so then the question is, what are the primary categories?

00:16:31.800 Well, we have three of them here.

00:16:33.800 But they're not the only three, because this is all good, this category system, the benevolent

00:16:37.800 mother, the benevolent father, and the hero.

00:16:40.800 While we know the world is not only benevolent, it's also malevolent.

00:16:44.800 Or at least we can say that because we're equipped with certain emotional possibilities

00:16:49.800 and certain motivational possibilities, the, the, the probability that we will encounter despair

00:16:56.800 and frustration and disappointment and anxiety is just as real as the possibility that we will

00:17:02.800 encounter elation and hope and satisfaction.

00:17:05.800 So for us, the world is bivalent.

00:17:07.800 It takes with one hand and gives with the other.

00:17:10.800 And that's true for the natural world, which produces us and destroys us.

00:17:14.800 As it is for the social world, which fosters our development and crushes our individuality.

00:17:19.800 And as well for the individual, who in many regards is as admirable a creature as you could

00:17:24.800 hope ever to propose.

00:17:26.800 And at the same time, someone who's capable of unbelievable depths of depravity.

00:17:31.800 So, a world that's not only divided into three fundamental categories, but each category divided

00:17:40.800 into a structure that's essentially ambivalent in its fundamental element.

00:17:45.800 And of course, that poses the central existential problem for human existence, doesn't it?

00:17:50.800 I mean, we're faced with the vagaries of the natural world and what we don't understand.

00:17:56.800 The vagaries of the social world and it's often arbitrary and unreasonable demands on us.

00:18:00.800 And the fact of our capacity for transcendence tied to our own vulnerability.

00:18:05.800 And you could say perfectly reasonably that regardless of where you're situated in time and space,

00:18:10.800 those are basically your problems.

00:18:12.800 And your goal through life, your path through life, is going to be characterized by the solutions

00:18:17.800 you either come up with or don't come up with to that set of problems.

00:18:21.800 Okay, so there's one more categorical element that complicates this picture.

00:18:31.800 And I think in many ways it's the most difficult thing there is to grasp.

00:18:35.800 So we'll take a shot at it first.

00:18:37.800 And I've showed you this representation before.

00:18:41.800 This is the Dragon of Chaos.

00:18:43.800 And you can think of the Dragon of Chaos as a symbol of totality.

00:18:47.800 And furthermore, you can think of it in relationship to this structure as the source of this structure.

00:19:00.800 Or even as the source of all structure.

00:19:02.800 So you see in the Sumerian creation myth, for example, the character of Tiamat, right?

00:19:07.800 And I told you that the word Tiamat is associated with the later Hebrew word Teom, which means chaos.

00:19:13.800 And Teom is the chaos that Yahweh makes order out of, makes the world out of.

00:19:18.800 So the idea lurking behind the Sumerian creation myth, and then later lurking behind the entire

00:19:23.800 edifice of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, for that matter, is that something that can be best represented

00:19:30.800 by this figure is best conceptualized as the ground of everything that exists.

00:19:35.800 Now what in the world can that mean?

00:19:37.800 Well, it means something like this.

00:19:40.800 Let's look at the concrete metaphorical representation.

00:19:43.800 First of all, you have a kind of totality here, right?

00:19:46.800 You have a thing that can live by devouring itself.

00:19:51.800 So it has no need of anything outside of it.

00:19:53.800 In fact, there is nothing outside of it.

00:19:55.800 It's a figure of absolute totality.

00:19:58.800 And it's characterized by a strange intermixture of metaphorical representations of matter,

00:20:05.800 because a snake is something that crawls on the ground, and spirit, because a winged serpent

00:20:10.800 is something that can fly and therefore partakes of the metaphorical realm of heaven.

00:20:14.800 Heaven and earth, right?

00:20:16.800 Totality.

00:20:17.800 Yin and yang from the Taoist perspective.

00:20:19.800 That's the entire world.

00:20:21.800 And it's also something that's characterized by the capacity for transformation, because

00:20:26.800 a snake can shed its skin and be reborn, so it's something that's constantly renewing

00:20:31.800 itself despite its absolutely archaic age.

00:20:35.800 And it's also something that presents a terrible danger and tremendous opportunity, because

00:20:40.800 a dragon is something that will burn you if you get anywhere near it, but also hoards

00:20:45.800 a treasure that's more valuable than anything else.

00:20:48.800 Iliad has pointed out that in traditional, classic creation myths, the Sumerian myth being

00:20:53.800 one example, when the hero, whoever the hero is, first encounters the great dragon of chaos,

00:21:01.800 he either runs away or is paralyzed by fright.

00:21:05.800 The world in itself is a complex array of patterns, and those patterns manifest themselves

00:21:12.800 in space, and they manifest themselves in time.

00:21:15.800 And I think the best way to get a grip on what those patterns might be like is to think

00:21:20.800 of them in terms of music.

00:21:21.800 And I think that's what music represents.

00:21:23.800 Music is this complex, three-dimensional structure full of interwoven patterns of different

00:21:29.800 dimensions and length that expends itself over time.

00:21:34.800 And if you listen to a piece of music, you can concentrate on one instrument or another,

00:21:38.800 or you can concentrate on a phrase, or you can concentrate on the entire melody or the voice.

00:21:43.800 You can parse out different elements from the complex background, and that's especially

00:21:47.800 the case with very sophisticated orchestral music, right, which is susceptible to multiple

00:21:53.800 reinterpretations and multiple encounters because of its complexity.

00:21:57.800 And this is to say only that what you look at is far more complicated than what you see,

00:22:04.800 or to say alternatively that there's more information in anything you perceive than you

00:22:09.800 could ever get complete access to.

00:22:12.800 And that's partly because, it's partly because your perceptual systems delude you.

00:22:18.800 So we think you look with your eyes or with your other senses, but that's only true when

00:22:23.800 you're looking at what you already know what to look at, right, when you've already built

00:22:27.800 perceptual machinery that enables you to detect a particular object.

00:22:31.800 But when you're looking at what you don't know what to look at, the way you look is by

00:22:36.800 getting nervous, right?

00:22:37.800 It's not, it's not precisely a perceptual function.

00:22:40.800 It's something much more deeper and primordial than that.

00:22:43.800 And it's more like, oh no, something that I cannot categorize either perceptually or cognitively,

00:22:50.800 something that I do not know how to respond to, has just occurred.

00:22:53.800 And the first categorization is this.

00:22:55.800 That's it.

00:22:56.800 There's nothing under that.

00:22:58.800 It's merely fear plus heightened attention.

00:23:02.800 And that prepares the ground for constructing a more detailed representation.

00:23:06.800 But that first encounter, that's the encounter with the Dragon of Chaos.

00:23:13.800 So then you take this figure, the source of all things, the Tao in some ways, and you say,

00:23:25.800 well, how does it manifest itself?

00:23:28.800 And the answer to that is something like this.

00:23:34.800 And we see this both in the, in the Mesopotamian and the Egyptian myths that I described to you.

00:23:43.800 The first division of the great Dragon of Chaos or the primordial egg is always into two subordinate elements.

00:23:50.800 The great father and the great mother.

00:23:53.800 Why is that?

00:23:54.800 Well, it's illustrative of a fundamental, of the fundamental binary nature of existence, I guess.

00:24:01.800 Partly you could say, if you're a cognizant being, a defined delimited being,

00:24:08.800 what you perceive always has a binary structure.

00:24:11.800 There's the aspect of you that's structured enough to allow the perceiving.

00:24:15.800 That's what you know, that's, that's the manner in which you're structured so that you can even,

00:24:20.800 so that you can even formulate a perception.

00:24:23.800 Something a child builds up over time from the primordial aspects, say, of his visual system or his auditory system.

00:24:29.800 Learns to parse up the world by generating machinery that allows the complex patterns that make up the world

00:24:35.800 to be turned into objects.

00:24:37.800 So there's the thing, the structure that allows the perceiving.

00:24:40.800 And then there's the thing that's being perceived or the thing behind that.

00:24:46.800 And this is a very complicated distinction.

00:24:48.800 You'd say, well, what's the difference between the Dragon of Chaos, say,

00:24:52.800 the representation of the cosmos as such and the great mother?

00:24:59.800 And I would say it's something like this.

00:25:03.800 The unknown that appears in relationship to a perceiver is different than the unknown as such.

00:25:10.800 So I would say this, for example.

00:25:12.800 There are going to be things that surprise you that wouldn't surprise me and vice versa.

00:25:17.800 And the things that would surprise you have to be construed in relationship to what you,

00:25:22.800 to what you already know.

00:25:24.800 Because you're only going to be surprised by things you don't know.

00:25:27.800 And likewise for me, I'm only going to be surprised by things I don't know.

00:25:30.800 But what we know is going to vary somewhat.

00:25:33.800 So the unknown for you is going to be different than the unknown for me.

00:25:37.800 And the great mother is a representation of the unknown for you or the unknown for me.

00:25:43.800 Different for everyone in some sense because we're all going to be,

00:25:48.800 we're all going to be stymied and stopped by different aspects of being.

00:25:54.800 But the same as well in that when you encounter things you don't understand

00:25:58.800 and you encounter things you don't understand, in many, many ways,

00:26:02.800 you're going to react to those different things the same way.

00:26:05.800 And I can give you a narrative illustration of this.

00:26:08.800 King Arthur's knights, they sit around the round table.

00:26:12.800 They're all equals.

00:26:13.800 That's why they sit around a round table, right?

00:26:15.800 They have a king, the king determines their destinies like Marduk does,

00:26:19.800 but they're still all equal.

00:26:20.800 They determine they're going to go look for the Holy Grail,

00:26:22.800 which is a symbol of redemption.

00:26:24.800 So they're off to find the highest value, like Pinocchio wishing on a star.

00:26:29.800 Highest value.

00:26:30.800 And they all enter the forest to begin their quest,

00:26:33.800 but they each enter it at the place that appears darkest to each of them, right?

00:26:36.800 So that means they all go on different, they all go in different directions.

00:26:39.800 Even though they're on the same quest and theoretically they're inhabiting the same space.

00:26:44.800 So it's only to say that every person has their demons, so to speak,

00:26:50.800 and that those demons differ from person to person,

00:26:53.800 even though there are things you can say about the demons that are common across people.

00:26:58.800 So we know, for example, from clinical work, from endless clinical work,

00:27:01.800 that if you want to help someone, you identify, okay, what do you want to do?

00:27:05.800 They need to know that, right?

00:27:07.800 That's this.

00:27:08.800 What do you want to do?

00:27:09.800 Where do you want to go?

00:27:10.800 What kind of structure do you want to impose on your world?

00:27:12.800 And then you identify, okay, well, what things are stopping you?

00:27:16.800 So then you look back at the Sumerian creation myth and you think,

00:27:19.800 well, there's Apsu, right?

00:27:21.800 God of the known, Tiamat's consort, right?

00:27:24.800 Culture.

00:27:25.800 But there's also Marduk, and Marduk is the power, the spirit, the entity,

00:27:29.800 representation of the Sumerian savior who goes out to confront this and to make the world.

00:27:37.800 Well, that's what you teach people in behavior therapy.

00:27:40.800 You teach them not so much that you don't teach them habituation.

00:27:45.800 You don't teach them to get used to things that they're afraid of.

00:27:48.800 You teach them that there's something within them that can respond to the things that they're afraid of

00:27:51.800 that's of as great a magnitude as the fears themselves.

00:27:55.800 you don't teach them to take them.

00:27:57.800 You don't teach them how they mightast find yourself.

00:27:58.800 How can they see a person who's in mind as a builder?

00:27:59.800 How can I prove that they're afraid of omitting and refusing to have a door?

00:28:00.800 You can find a person who's in our world.

00:28:01.800 The result of every way, they don't want to be scared for these animals

00:28:02.800 Thank you.

00:28:32.800 Thank you.

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00:31:38.160 You know, when a computer starts up, it has to boot.

00:31:43.560 Bootstrap is what that means.

00:31:45.400 And bootstraps itself by continuing to engage in more and more complex processes as it starts

00:31:51.700 up.

00:31:52.080 So it starts up with a simple process, and that triggers a more complex process, and

00:31:56.320 that triggers a more complex process.

00:31:58.260 And that way, the computer boots itself into existence.

00:32:00.860 Well, that's exactly what we did, except we did it over like 3 billion years, right?

00:32:05.420 We started out as these unbelievably simple organisms that could pretty much do nothing

00:32:10.060 at all except replicate and develop much more and more complex forms over this tremendously

00:32:16.900 long period of evolutionary history, right?

00:32:20.060 So that's how we solved the problem that you can't know anything without knowing something,

00:32:24.940 and that you can't have knowledge without generating it.

00:32:27.560 It's a little knowledge, a little more generation, a little knowledge, a little more generation,

00:32:31.600 a little knowledge.

00:32:32.660 This huge spiraling process that extends over vast amounts of time, information encoded in

00:32:39.400 your body, right, as part of your, as part of the nature of your being, and information

00:32:44.400 encoded in your culture, reflected inside you and acted out in the world.

00:32:48.240 And as scientists, you know, with this 500-year history of science behind us, we always believe

00:33:01.080 that it's the material substrate of things that's the reality.

00:33:04.940 But it is more complicated than that, because even the material substrate that we consider

00:33:09.780 as scientists isn't merely unformed stuff, right?

00:33:14.340 It has structure, it's patterned, it's full of information, and there are physicists working

00:33:19.860 now who believe that conceptualization of the ground of being, the material ground of being,

00:33:26.060 as information is a more fruitful metaphor than conceptualization of the ground of being

00:33:31.760 as, like, unformed matter.

00:33:33.680 It's not unformed, right?

00:33:35.160 It's patterned and regular, informative, so that if you investigate it, it reveals order.

00:33:40.740 That's not just a material structure.

00:33:43.260 So if you go back to Democritus, right, the person who originated the atomic hypothesis,

00:33:48.160 Democritus actually says two things, not one.

00:33:50.780 He says everything's made out of atoms, little bits of stuff.

00:33:54.380 But the other thing he says is atoms array themselves in space, array themselves.

00:34:00.080 And what that means is that the atomic structure of things is patterned, and that the pattern is

00:34:05.600 just as real as the atoms themselves.

00:34:07.700 It's the pattern that's the knowledge, right?

00:34:09.940 It's the pattern that's the information.

00:34:16.700 So what we encounter as conscious beings is this complexly patterned array, which we then

00:34:23.620 turn into knowledge, usable knowledge.

00:34:26.220 I said, well, how would this metaphorical representation work?

00:34:30.100 And so the way I want you to look at this figure is like this.

00:34:32.640 Imagine this as distant, right, as lurking in the background.

00:34:36.780 So this is the ground of all being manifesting itself as one primordial archetype, or one

00:34:43.040 standard mode of metaphorical representation.

00:34:48.900 Why this figure?

00:34:50.460 Well, this is complicated, I think.

00:34:52.020 If you show men a picture of a beautiful woman with her eyes averted while you're doing a

00:35:00.600 brain scan mapping of their nucleus accumbens, nothing happens.

00:35:05.980 Why is that relevant?

00:35:07.960 Well, the nucleus accumbens is part of the underlying emotional circuitry that governs approach behavior

00:35:13.160 and pleasure.

00:35:14.620 And approach behavior and pleasure are very tightly intertwined.

00:35:17.180 If you show the same man a picture of a beautiful woman with her eyes locked on his, his nucleus

00:35:22.780 accumbens will light up.

00:35:24.280 Why is that?

00:35:25.820 Well, it's partly because men are innately attuned to female beauty.

00:35:31.440 Female beauty has a standard form.

00:35:33.160 It's replicable cross-culturally.

00:35:35.160 It constitutes the averaged human female form.

00:35:39.940 But more than that, the gaze locking is an indication of shared attention.

00:35:44.620 And it's also the indication of the initial establishment of a shared attentional space.

00:35:49.320 And it's an invitation.

00:35:51.120 And that invitation activates approach circuitry, even if it's just a picture.

00:35:55.180 So when you can see this, if you walk into any drugstore or any, any, any drugstore that

00:35:59.840 sells magazines, what do you see?

00:36:01.860 Well, in the men's magazines, you see an infinite array of beautiful women.

00:36:05.860 And in the female magazines, the women's magazines, you see an infinite array of beautiful

00:36:10.620 women.

00:36:11.200 Now, just exactly why is that?

00:36:13.100 Well, there's something absolutely compelling about female beauty.

00:36:17.000 And then you have to ask yourself, what the hell does compelling mean?

00:36:21.320 Okay, so what compelling means is, you're busily engaged in a goal-directed task, and something

00:36:28.420 happens in your peripheral vision, so to speak, that attracts your attention.

00:36:33.320 Now, that attention is attracted by processes that are fundamentally unconscious, which means

00:36:38.240 there's a lot of these processes that occur before you can think.

00:36:41.320 So you can imagine a loose collection of college-aged males having a conversation in a bar when

00:36:50.740 someone beautiful walks by, and one or more of them catch her out of the corner of their eyes.

00:36:57.640 Orientation, right?

00:36:59.140 Unconscious.

00:36:59.740 Unconscious.

00:37:00.740 Why?

00:37:01.740 Because there's something about that pattern form that grips attentional systems and directs

00:37:06.240 observation towards it.

00:37:07.960 So then you think, okay, human beings are really, really complicated pattern processors.

00:37:18.140 And you think, well, partly what we're trying to get a handle on here is the nature of the

00:37:22.460 world, and partly what we know already is that there are aspects of the world that you

00:37:26.400 can't understand, always.

00:37:28.280 And then you think, well, people are trying to get a grip on the fact that there are parts

00:37:33.560 of the world that you can't understand, so that there's this transcendent element of being

00:37:37.260 that always escapes encapsulation.

00:37:40.180 How would you represent it?

00:37:42.300 Well, it's the transcendent element of things that always attracts your attention, implicitly,

00:37:47.880 beyond your control.

00:37:49.400 So a loud noise, or a scream, or the cry of a baby, or anything horrific, right?

00:37:56.720 Blood, broken bodies, these are stimuli that are so representative of trouble, that you

00:38:06.720 can't help but attend to them.

00:38:10.420 And then you can imagine that all the stimuli, so to speak, that you can't help but attend

00:38:16.220 to, can be amalgamated into representations of the transcendent aspect of reality.

00:38:24.060 And that's what you see in this representation right here.

00:38:27.380 So you see a weird intermingling of female sexuality, plus some very distinct genital symbolism.

00:38:38.160 Why genital?

00:38:39.060 So imagine that that's a vulval opening.

00:38:41.640 Why?

00:38:44.020 Before we had any scientific knowledge at all, let's go 10,000 years ago, what the hell's inside

00:38:49.760 a body?

00:38:51.640 Well, we knew that, I guess, a little bit from hunting, right?

00:38:53.880 We knew the interior of a body.

00:38:55.580 What is it about the interior of a body that allows new forms to be generated?

00:38:59.180 How is it that mothers can give birth to children?

00:39:02.080 How is it that one form that's complex and attractive and mysterious can give rise to another form?

00:39:08.140 Why is that useful knowledge from a representational perspective?

00:39:12.160 Because there's some association between the feminine form from a metaphorical perspective

00:39:17.320 and the capacity for nature to give rise to new forms.

00:39:22.880 And then you see a representation of a typical monstrous form.

00:39:26.880 That's Kelly, the Hindu goddess, the devourer.

00:39:30.620 And in this representation, so she's like a more developed version of Tiamat.

00:39:37.320 That's a good way of thinking about her.

00:39:39.460 She's not so much unspeakable anymore.

00:39:42.560 You could actually say a few things about Kelly.

00:39:45.460 You could say, well, she's like a spider because she has eight legs and she weaves a web of fate.

00:39:50.520 And you could say, well, her web is made out of fire because if you get too near to her,

00:39:54.640 you'll burn up.

00:39:56.080 And you could say, she glares at you with eyes that are unblinking.

00:39:59.720 And you could say, she has a tongue like a tiger.

00:40:02.620 And you could say that she carries weapons of destruction and has a headdress of skulls

00:40:08.120 and that her hair is on fire.

00:40:10.200 And you could say that she's giving birth to this guy as nature gives birth to human beings

00:40:15.080 and is devouring him at the same time, intestines first.

00:40:20.440 And then you could say, well, you could imagine that the first few people

00:40:24.540 that made a representation like that shocked themselves quite badly, right?

00:40:31.280 Because this is a representation of fear itself in a sense, but not exactly.

00:40:37.180 It's also a representation of those stimuli that if you're human are going to make you

00:40:42.500 both afraid and compelled, just like it's hard to look away from fire,

00:40:47.360 even if it's burning something down that you wanted to have around.

00:40:50.580 Rats, if you raise a rat to juvenile status and then waft in cat odor,

00:41:01.500 it will completely short circuit.

00:41:04.800 Why?

00:41:05.600 Well, the rat's never seen a cat.

00:41:07.980 So exactly what the hell is it responding to, you think?

00:41:10.640 Well, you could say, well, it's not a conditioned stimulus, right?

00:41:13.440 Because the rat's never encountered a cat.

00:41:15.060 There's something deep in the brain of that rat that knows something about cat odor.

00:41:20.900 It's never encountered a cat.

00:41:22.480 So exactly what is it perceiving?

00:41:25.280 Well, in some sense, I think the notion that it's perceiving is wrong.

00:41:29.280 It isn't perceiving.

00:41:30.620 It's just going like this.

00:41:32.520 That's the representation.

00:41:34.960 Well, and with chimpanzees who are more complex,

00:41:37.120 there are other stimuli that evoke exactly that kind of response.

00:41:40.640 Chimps don't like snakes, dead or alive, plastic, rubber, doesn't matter.

00:41:45.720 They don't like snakes.

00:41:46.740 If you put one in their cage, they get as far away from the snake as they can,

00:41:49.860 as quickly as possible, and then they look at it.

00:41:52.220 Because I suppose if you're a chimpanzee, even if you don't like snakes,

00:41:55.500 it's a good idea to know where they are, right?

00:41:57.280 So it's simultaneously repelling, ah, snake, plus attractive.

00:42:02.760 Yeah, well, you better look at it and see where it's going to go.

00:42:05.980 Chimpanzees don't like unconscious chimpanzees.

00:42:09.140 So if you knock a chimpanzee out with anesthetic and you bring the body of the chimpanzee back

00:42:14.120 into the chimpanzee cage, the chimps do exactly the same thing.

00:42:17.180 Away from the body, but they look at it.

00:42:19.280 They don't like masks made of chimpanzee faces.

00:42:23.200 Well, three-year-old kids don't like masks either.

00:42:24.960 There are these underlying perceptual primitives, so to speak,

00:42:29.200 that likely activate lower limbic mechanisms in our brains that say to us,

00:42:34.700 this is a place suddenly where something unexpected that you probably do not like

00:42:42.500 or will not like is very, very likely to happen.

00:42:44.780 So you can imagine that an environment characterized by unconscious bodies or blood

00:42:51.220 or the presence of spiders or snakes, etc., might be a place where a primate such as yourself

00:42:56.740 may encounter things that they don't know how to cope with.

00:42:59.480 Therefore, afraid, right?

00:43:01.980 Same with fear of the dark.

00:43:03.600 And then you can imagine that the dark is populated with all of these monsters of the unknown,

00:43:08.960 and you get some notion of what's happening to children who are afraid of the dark.

00:43:12.220 Why are they afraid of the dark?

00:43:14.040 Because in the dark, which is the place you don't know, lurk things that could hurt a creature

00:43:19.820 like you.

00:43:20.780 What things?

00:43:22.160 Well, we can't exactly say.

00:43:24.480 But if you give children exposure to books and to adult conversation and to television,

00:43:29.140 soon those limbic structures that are populating the darkness with unnameable fear

00:43:34.660 start to populate it up with skeletons and vampires and monsters and so forth and so on.

00:43:41.080 As the representational structures that the brain is capable of generating say,

00:43:46.520 well, fear-inducing things are like that.

00:43:49.520 They're bloody.

00:43:50.240 They're dangerous.

00:43:51.060 They look like serpents.

00:43:52.020 They look like insects.

00:43:53.260 They lurk in the dark.

00:43:54.400 They sneak up on you, etc.

00:43:55.980 All mangled together into some sort of monstrous form.

00:44:00.840 Now I want to read you a story.

00:44:05.420 All right.

00:44:06.060 So let me give you a little background of this story.

00:44:09.900 This story popped into my head in one chunk, like complete,

00:44:14.340 which I thought was kind of interesting.

00:44:15.660 But it was also a story that emerged in solution to a problem I'd been thinking about for a long time.

00:44:22.940 Because I was dealing with this guy who didn't want to grow up.

00:44:26.020 So he's caught in a kind of Peter Pan situation.

00:44:28.740 And Peter Pan, Pan means everything.

00:44:31.040 Pan, like pantheistic.

00:44:33.440 And Peter Pan is a child who won't grow up.

00:44:35.700 Now he's magical.

00:44:36.680 Well, okay, fine.

00:44:37.600 Children live in a magical world, right?

00:44:39.260 They're rife with possibility.

00:44:41.200 He's magical.

00:44:41.920 He doesn't want to grow up.

00:44:44.680 So he lives in Neverland with the lost boys.

00:44:47.200 Neverland doesn't really exist.

00:44:48.640 And the lost boys are obviously boys who haven't managed to establish some mode of being.

00:44:54.240 And he's in constant battle with Captain Hook.

00:44:57.120 And Captain Hook's a tyrant, right?

00:44:58.700 A pirate.

00:44:59.300 A negative, a manifestation of the negative archetype of social order.

00:45:04.440 And Captain Hook is always fighting Peter Pan because Peter Pan represents childhood and vulnerability.

00:45:10.080 And he doesn't want to be vulnerable.

00:45:11.300 So they're locked in this sort of eternal battle.

00:45:13.700 And lots of people, I think more commonly men, but not necessarily get caught in this Peter Pan problem.

00:45:24.060 So I was dealing with a person who was caught in this situation.

00:45:29.240 Didn't want to grow up.

00:45:30.580 Wouldn't sacrifice childhood.

00:45:32.060 And so this story popped into my head.

00:45:37.640 It's called Cock-a-Doodle-Doo.

00:45:39.280 Once upon a time, there was a man who had a long, hard journey ahead of him.

00:45:43.300 He was trudging along the way over boulders and through brushes when he saw a little shiny gnome with big white teeth and a black toupee sitting by the side of the road.

00:45:50.680 He was drumming on a log with two white bones and humming oddly to himself.

00:45:57.260 The little gnome said,

00:45:59.140 John, why work so hard?

00:46:01.340 Why walk so fast?

00:46:03.040 Who knows if you'll ever get there anyway?

00:46:05.200 Come over here.

00:46:05.980 I have something to show you.

00:46:08.120 So John walked off the road.

00:46:09.820 He was sick of walking anyway because people kept throwing sticks and stones at him.

00:46:13.500 The little gnome said,

00:46:15.540 I have a shiny red jewel that I would like to sell you.

00:46:19.120 Cheap.

00:46:20.340 Here it is.

00:46:22.300 And from beneath his cloak, he pulled the biggest ruby that the man had ever seen.

00:46:26.360 It must have weighed 100 pounds and it shone like the sun.

00:46:30.500 The gnome said,

00:46:31.620 Do you like it?

00:46:33.140 It's an enchanted stone.

00:46:34.840 What will you offer me for it?

00:46:36.980 And the man said,

00:46:38.140 I don't have much, much money, but I'll give you everything I have.

00:46:42.360 The gnome looked displeased.

00:46:44.880 So John added,

00:46:45.920 I could pay some more monthly.

00:46:48.460 So the gnome accepted.

00:46:49.860 Fair enough.

00:46:50.480 Buy now, pay later.

00:46:52.260 Sounds good for me.

00:46:53.640 I'm all for the installment plan.

00:46:56.060 So the man gave the gnome all his money and promised to pay the rest later.

00:46:59.740 And the gnome walked back into the bush by the road,

00:47:01.980 clacking his teeth and giggling and twitching.

00:47:04.900 The more the man thought about this ruby,

00:47:07.620 and the great deal he got,

00:47:08.840 the happier he became.

00:47:09.840 He started back on the road with a light heart.

00:47:12.360 But soon discovered that he couldn't make much progress,

00:47:15.100 because 100 pounds was a lot to carry.

00:47:17.540 He said to himself,

00:47:19.060 Why continue anyways?

00:47:20.340 I have what I want.

00:47:21.560 I'll just stand here holding my ruby,

00:47:23.580 and when people walk by,

00:47:24.600 they can see how well I've already done.

00:47:27.600 So he stopped.

00:47:29.500 A little while later,

00:47:31.260 one of his friends came along and saw him standing there.

00:47:34.000 His friend said,

00:47:35.120 John, why don't you come along with me?

00:47:37.420 I've just opened a new business,

00:47:38.940 and I could really use some help.

00:47:40.600 Come along quick.

00:47:42.080 It will be opening soon.

00:47:44.460 John thought that sounded good,

00:47:45.920 but his friend was in a hurry.

00:47:47.440 Besides, couldn't he see the ruby?

00:47:50.080 How could he speed along beside him?

00:47:52.140 Where would he put his jewel?

00:47:54.320 So he said,

00:47:54.980 Thanks, but I have to take care of my jewel.

00:47:56.920 Maybe I'll see you later.

00:47:58.360 His friend looked at him like he was crazy,

00:48:00.460 but he was trying to get somewhere quick.

00:48:02.500 So he just shrugged a bit and said,

00:48:04.160 Okay, John, see you later.

00:48:06.840 Then he sped on down the road.

00:48:08.480 A little while later,

00:48:09.220 another friend came by and he said,

00:48:10.620 John, nice to see you.

00:48:12.040 I'm going back to school.

00:48:13.740 There are lots of wonderful things to learn,

00:48:15.640 great things to do.

00:48:17.040 The world is full of unsolved problems.

00:48:19.200 I could use some company.

00:48:20.780 Would you like to come along?

00:48:22.940 John thought that sounded pretty good,

00:48:24.320 but this friend too looked like he was in a hurry.

00:48:26.780 Besides, standing beside the road holding the jewel

00:48:28.960 was tiring,

00:48:29.680 and he needed all the energy he had for that.

00:48:31.960 So he said to his friend,

00:48:33.360 Thanks, but I have to take care of my jewel.

00:48:36.280 Isn't it beautiful?

00:48:37.840 Maybe I'll see you later.

00:48:39.220 His friend looked at him like he was crazy,

00:48:41.200 but he was trying to get somewhere quick.

00:48:42.880 So he just shrugged and said,

00:48:43.980 Hope everything goes all right with you.

00:48:46.280 See you later.

00:48:49.480 Many friends came and went,

00:48:50.760 and the years went by.

00:48:51.880 The jewel got heavier and heavier,

00:48:54.140 but the man got more and more attached to it.

00:48:57.000 The only thing was,

00:48:58.080 nobody seemed to notice how beautiful it was.

00:49:00.040 People would rush by and talk about their plans,

00:49:02.860 and nobody had a ruby as big,

00:49:04.440 and nobody seemed likely to get a ruby as big,

00:49:07.620 and you'd think that someone might have said something like,

00:49:10.940 at least,

00:49:11.640 Nice ruby, John.

00:49:13.200 Sure wish I had one like that,

00:49:15.080 but it never happened.

00:49:17.160 Then one day,

00:49:17.960 someone new came down the road.

00:49:19.680 He was bent over,

00:49:20.500 and he was thin,

00:49:21.100 and his hair was gray,

00:49:22.380 although he didn't look that old.

00:49:23.580 He was carrying a big dirty rock carefully in his arms,

00:49:26.640 and he wasn't making much progress.

00:49:29.000 The strange figure approached and glanced up at John.

00:49:32.100 Then he grinned and said,

00:49:33.540 Why are you standing there so stupidly

00:49:35.580 with a big ugly rock in your tired old hands?

00:49:38.240 You look pretty daft.

00:49:39.740 I bet you wish you had a big ruby,

00:49:41.620 like the one I am carrying.

00:49:43.120 And John thought,

00:49:44.160 This poor man is deluded.

00:49:45.860 He's carrying a rock.

00:49:47.720 It is I who have the ruby.

00:49:48.960 So he said,

00:49:49.660 Excuse me, sir,

00:49:50.380 but you are sadly mistaken.

00:49:51.980 I'm the one with the jewel.

00:49:53.580 I met a little gnome by the side of the road,

00:49:55.720 and he sold it to me.

00:49:57.620 I'm still paying for it,

00:49:59.740 although not so very much.

00:50:01.140 You are carrying a rock.

00:50:03.660 The tired stranger looked annoyed.

00:50:05.240 He said,

00:50:05.500 I don't know what game you're playing, mister.

00:50:07.360 You have a rock.

00:50:08.520 I have a jewel.

00:50:10.340 The little gnome you described sold it to me,

00:50:12.620 and he said it was the only one.

00:50:14.600 I've been carrying it for 20 years,

00:50:17.000 and I'll never let it go.

00:50:18.960 And John said,

00:50:19.760 But I've been carrying mine for 20 years, too.

00:50:21.820 It can't be just a rock.

00:50:23.940 Rock or jewel.

00:50:25.540 On and on they argued.

00:50:27.060 Suddenly out stepped the little gnome,

00:50:28.580 as if he'd never left.

00:50:30.060 Only this time he wasn't so little.

00:50:31.760 He was bigger and redder and menacing,

00:50:33.600 and his laugh sounded like the rattling of chains.

00:50:37.020 Quit arguing, you two.

00:50:38.720 I've never seen a sight quite so pathetic.

00:50:41.480 You're carrying rocks, both of you.

00:50:44.160 And if you would have ever had the sense

00:50:45.420 to put them down for a second or two,

00:50:47.520 you would have seen that.

00:50:49.880 Oh, well, at least you were diligent.

00:50:52.420 I played a mean trick.

00:50:54.120 I feel bad.

00:50:55.640 So I'm going to give you what you really deserve.

00:50:59.140 Do you want what you really deserve?

00:51:01.000 And John and the thin stranger nodded eagerly.

00:51:04.520 Finally, they thought,

00:51:05.940 You haven't seen anything yet.

00:51:08.820 Throw down your rocks.

00:51:10.620 So John and the thin stranger obeyed.

00:51:13.660 Each rock split down the middle when it hit the ground.

00:51:16.340 Out flowed a river of ravenous white worms,

00:51:19.280 which rushed towards the men and devoured them whole,

00:51:22.100 while they thrashed about and screamed.

00:51:25.140 Soon nothing was left except a leg bone from each.

00:51:28.620 The little gnome picked them up and walked off the road.

00:51:32.640 He sat down by a hollow log and started to drum.

00:51:36.400 He drummed and he waited.

00:51:38.460 And he hummed an odd little tune.

00:51:39.880 A picture of food feeds the whole hungry clan.

00:51:45.920 The image of good makes the whole healthy man.

00:51:49.520 Why walk for miles?

00:51:51.700 Why do the work?

00:51:53.320 Just smile the smile.

00:51:55.560 Success, after all, is a quirk.

00:51:57.900 Life isn't real.

00:51:59.220 That's the message I give.

00:52:00.880 It's easy that way.

00:52:02.320 Plus, who wants to live?

00:52:10.620 So needless to say,

00:52:11.960 the guy that I was telling this story to

00:52:13.940 never listened to it,

00:52:15.160 and things really didn't go well for him

00:52:17.140 for a long, long time.

00:52:18.940 And they really didn't go well for him

00:52:20.680 until he was willing to give up

00:52:22.140 some of the things he was carrying along.

00:52:24.440 So he had acquired, for example,

00:52:27.240 a number of things that he couldn't afford.

00:52:29.700 And the fact that he was carrying them, right,

00:52:32.360 paying for them month after month

00:52:34.160 meant he couldn't afford to get an education.

00:52:36.620 He was perfectly willing to sacrifice

00:52:38.440 the possibility of getting an education

00:52:40.360 for the image of success

00:52:42.300 rather than the reverse, right?

00:52:44.460 And he was completely irritated at the world

00:52:46.740 because he had all these trappings of success

00:52:50.020 which no one he admired also admired,

00:52:52.660 and he absolutely wasn't getting anywhere.

00:52:55.080 And he thought that was tremendously unfair.

00:52:57.660 But the truth of the matter was

00:52:59.020 that had he put down what he was carrying

00:53:01.040 for even a moment,

00:53:02.580 then he would have been able to get

00:53:03.720 to where he wanted to go.

00:53:04.820 And that's a motif that succinctly

00:53:10.620 and dramatically describes

00:53:12.380 the necessity for sacrifice.

00:53:15.220 One of the things you see in psychotherapy

00:53:22.980 very, very commonly is that

00:53:25.860 the person who's coming for help

00:53:27.860 does the same damn thing

00:53:31.260 over and over and over.

00:53:33.160 And every time they do it,

00:53:34.380 it has the same consequence.

00:53:36.360 Bad.

00:53:37.160 So they end up with the same kind of...

00:53:39.220 They end up in the same kind of relationship, right?

00:53:42.200 It starts out well,

00:53:43.580 then the person turns against them

00:53:45.000 and starts to abuse them.

00:53:46.540 They get abused repeatedly,

00:53:47.740 then it ends,

00:53:48.400 then they meet someone else

00:53:49.320 and the cycle continues.

00:53:50.420 It doesn't seem to matter

00:53:51.220 who they're out with.

00:53:52.320 Either they pick a person like this

00:53:53.700 or they turn the person

00:53:54.540 into someone like that.

00:53:56.400 They lose jobs the same way

00:53:57.920 or their educational hopes

00:53:59.260 fail the same way.

00:54:00.700 Why?

00:54:01.620 Well, the person thinks,

00:54:02.980 man, the structure of the world

00:54:05.240 is so unfair.

00:54:06.240 Everyone else seems

00:54:07.060 to be getting along just fine.

00:54:08.500 But me, I get hit in the head

00:54:10.040 over and over.

00:54:11.080 Exactly the same way.

00:54:12.660 And then you think,

00:54:13.380 well, what is the structure

00:54:15.760 of the world exactly?

00:54:17.700 And then you remember,

00:54:18.820 well, you know,

00:54:20.580 there's the things you don't understand

00:54:22.480 and there's the things you do understand.

00:54:24.460 And the things you do understand

00:54:26.320 structure you and protect you.

00:54:28.800 But, you know,

00:54:29.320 sometimes the things you do understand

00:54:31.240 aren't the right things, right?

00:54:33.740 You're valuing something.

00:54:35.240 You're carrying something

00:54:36.140 that's an impediment

00:54:37.300 to your further progress.

00:54:38.860 And it's frequently the case

00:54:40.380 that it's the kind of impediment

00:54:42.300 that under no conditions

00:54:43.580 do you want to give up.

00:54:44.920 Because there's something about you

00:54:46.260 that says,

00:54:46.840 like John says about the ruby,

00:54:49.080 look, it's a ruby.

00:54:50.960 Who the hell cares

00:54:51.780 if it weighs 100 pounds

00:54:52.920 and I have to stand by the road, right?

00:54:54.760 I still got the ruby.

00:54:56.220 And all you'd ever have to do

00:54:57.660 is put the damn thing down

00:54:58.840 and wander off

00:54:59.580 and everything would be just fine.

00:55:01.300 But you won't do it.

00:55:02.840 Why?

00:55:04.100 Because you don't want

00:55:04.680 to give up what you know.

00:55:05.580 Because you don't want

00:55:06.420 to sacrifice anything.

00:55:08.040 Well, long before people

00:55:10.500 had any psychological acumen

00:55:12.280 or any psychological knowledge,

00:55:13.800 they'd already figured out

00:55:14.840 that if you were going

00:55:15.960 to take on a figure like this

00:55:18.120 and expect to get

00:55:20.260 absolutely anywhere with her, right?

00:55:23.200 The horrors of the world.

00:55:24.860 You bloody well better

00:55:25.820 be willing to sacrifice

00:55:27.040 whatever is necessary

00:55:28.100 to keep you going

00:55:28.960 along your path, right?

00:55:30.480 Unfortunately,

00:55:31.180 the things that you have

00:55:31.980 to sacrifice

00:55:32.560 are often those things

00:55:33.620 that you're most

00:55:34.360 particularly compelled by

00:55:37.120 or gripped by

00:55:37.960 or value

00:55:38.660 the things that you want

00:55:39.800 to give up least.

00:55:41.080 Which is why

00:55:41.780 in archaic societies

00:55:44.160 where all this is dramatized,

00:55:46.280 people sacrifice

00:55:47.420 an animal

00:55:50.420 that they value particularly.

00:55:53.540 Or earlier than that,

00:55:55.000 even a child

00:55:56.080 that they value particularly,

00:55:57.380 dramatically portraying

00:56:00.400 the idea of sacrifice.

00:56:02.240 You have to give something up

00:56:03.660 if you want to make

00:56:04.540 an inroad on what she represents.

00:56:08.620 And so then you say,

00:56:10.260 the purpose of sacrifice

00:56:11.460 is to turn the terrible aspect

00:56:13.540 of the world

00:56:14.300 into the benevolent aspect

00:56:16.140 of the world.

00:56:16.800 And this is Diana,

00:56:18.100 not a Hindu goddess,

00:56:20.720 but a Greek

00:56:21.280 or Roman goddess.

00:56:22.800 The same idea applies

00:56:27.180 in the Hindu case.

00:56:28.560 If you make

00:56:29.220 the appropriate sacrifices,

00:56:31.440 then the terrible aspect

00:56:32.680 of the world

00:56:33.340 turns into the benevolent

00:56:34.960 aspect of the world.

00:56:37.080 And it is the case

00:56:37.960 that even empirical studies

00:56:39.440 of success

00:56:40.160 indicate that

00:56:40.940 intelligence is a handy

00:56:42.300 thing to have,

00:56:43.240 but hard work

00:56:43.940 and dedication

00:56:44.440 is a handy thing

00:56:45.460 to have too.

00:56:46.120 And what that means

00:56:46.840 is that you're constantly

00:56:47.740 willing to sacrifice

00:56:48.880 the impulsive pleasure

00:56:50.940 of the present

00:56:51.760 for the hopes

00:56:52.720 of payback

00:56:53.440 in the future.

00:56:54.580 For example,

00:56:55.720 you sacrifice

00:56:56.360 immediate gratification

00:56:57.600 to obtain

00:56:58.180 an appropriate social role

00:56:59.560 to take your place

00:57:00.400 in society.

00:57:01.280 It's definitely

00:57:02.040 a sacrifice, right?

00:57:03.500 Because you put off

00:57:04.460 pleasures in the moment

00:57:05.620 to obtain

00:57:07.080 long-term stability

00:57:08.280 and productivity

00:57:09.460 to turn the world

00:57:13.020 into this.

00:57:17.360 And so then you can say,

00:57:18.940 this is how the world

00:57:21.860 falls apart

00:57:22.820 as it's explored, right?

00:57:24.520 So first of all,

00:57:25.760 there's the thing

00:57:26.440 that you can't even name

00:57:27.620 that only fills you

00:57:28.540 with dread,

00:57:29.260 but also with

00:57:30.340 the sense of possibility.

00:57:31.940 And that manifests itself

00:57:33.540 in your life

00:57:34.220 as something concrete

00:57:35.260 that you don't know

00:57:36.760 promising and threatening.

00:57:38.540 And that divides itself

00:57:39.700 up into those aspects

00:57:40.820 of the world

00:57:41.360 that you value

00:57:42.060 and admire

00:57:43.620 and that hold

00:57:44.340 promise for you

00:57:45.280 and those aspects

00:57:46.240 of the world

00:57:46.880 that don't.

00:57:48.500 And that's

00:57:49.040 a differentiation

00:57:50.120 as a consequence

00:57:51.200 of exploration.

00:57:52.640 It's not a differentiation

00:57:53.840 of the world

00:57:54.760 into objects, though.

00:57:56.180 It's a differentiation

00:57:57.040 of the world

00:57:57.960 into categories

00:57:59.560 of emotion,

00:58:00.700 those things

00:58:01.280 that are good for you,

00:58:02.520 those things

00:58:02.940 that are bad for you,

00:58:03.920 and the source

00:58:04.800 that they're derived from.

00:58:06.680 That's the background

00:58:07.820 of the world.

00:58:10.220 When a woman

00:58:11.120 experiences

00:58:11.740 an unplanned pregnancy,

00:58:13.240 she often feels

00:58:14.000 alone and afraid.

00:58:15.560 Too often,

00:58:16.180 her first response

00:58:17.020 is to seek out

00:58:17.720 an abortion,

00:58:18.520 because that's what

00:58:19.480 left-leaning institutions

00:58:20.580 have conditioned her to do.

00:58:22.480 But because of the generosity

00:58:23.820 of listeners like you,

00:58:25.160 that search may lead her

00:58:26.340 to a pre-born network clinic,

00:58:28.080 where, by the grace of God,

00:58:29.420 she'll choose life,

00:58:30.540 not just for her baby,

00:58:31.780 but for herself.

00:58:33.300 Pre-born offers God's love

00:58:34.700 and compassion

00:58:35.300 to hurting women

00:58:36.060 and provides a free ultrasound

00:58:37.480 to introduce them

00:58:38.420 to the life

00:58:38.920 growing inside them.

00:58:40.460 This combination

00:58:41.180 helps women

00:58:41.820 to choose life,

00:58:43.100 and it's how pre-born

00:58:44.020 saves 200 babies

00:58:45.260 every single day.

00:58:46.900 Thanks to the Daily Wire's

00:58:47.940 partnership with Pre-Born,

00:58:49.140 we're able to make

00:58:49.860 our powerful documentary,

00:58:51.500 Choosing Life,

00:58:52.520 available to all

00:58:53.420 on Daily Wire Plus.

00:58:55.040 Join us in thanking Pre-Born

00:58:56.600 for bringing this important work

00:58:58.120 out from behind our paywall,

00:58:59.720 and consider making a donation today

00:59:01.460 to support their life-saving work.

00:59:03.600 You can sponsor one ultrasound

00:59:04.980 for just $28.

00:59:06.420 If you have the means,

00:59:07.500 you can sponsor Pre-Born's

00:59:08.680 entire network for a day

00:59:10.060 for $5,000.

00:59:11.660 Make a donation today.

00:59:13.020 Just dial pound 250

00:59:14.140 and say the keyword baby.

00:59:15.940 That's pound 250 baby.

00:59:17.980 Or go to preborn.com

00:59:19.600 slash Jordan.

00:59:20.720 That's preborn.com

00:59:22.080 slash Jordan.

00:59:26.740 We'll stop.

00:59:27.580 go to 81 yards.

00:59:33.400 We'll stop.

00:59:34.180 Mmm.

00:59:34.580 Let's take more.

00:59:35.600 Let's clear.

00:59:37.020 Also,

00:59:37.120 we'll see you next page.

00:59:38.780 Thank you.

01:00:08.780 We've had written history for 5,000 years, right?

01:00:26.580 People have been generally literate for less than 500 years.

01:00:31.940 But we've had culture for 150,000 years.

01:00:36.400 It's identifiable culture for at least 25,000.

01:00:40.800 So the vast period of our enculturation was preliterate enculturation

01:00:45.520 before we could write down the rules and transmit them.

01:00:49.640 How were they transmitted, assuming we had culture?

01:00:52.120 Well, there's a variety of mechanisms.

01:00:55.120 We have a tendency to see elements of the world in personified form

01:01:00.020 because most of the interrelationships we have with the world

01:01:03.280 are actually social or interpersonal relationships.

01:01:05.560 So that's basically how our brain is structured.

01:01:07.400 And as we evolved, we developed the capacity to extend our cognitive ability

01:01:11.480 beyond the merely social to take in the world as such.

01:01:15.320 But the categories that we used to do that were still fundamentally social.

01:01:18.480 Now, the reason the unknown per se is symbolized as feminine

01:01:22.220 is because the critical feature of the feminine,

01:01:26.040 and I don't mean the female individual, I mean the feminine as a category,

01:01:29.600 is its capacity to generate new forms.

01:01:32.500 And the unknown as such is logically and appropriately symbolized by the feminine

01:01:38.520 because it's the bringer forth of all things,

01:01:42.140 which is to say that the background of existence,

01:01:44.760 the unknowable background of existence is the thing that generates everything.

01:01:49.300 Paired with that, of course, according to the schema that we've been working with,

01:01:53.060 is the archetype of the great father.

01:01:56.160 And the archetype of the great father is the archetype of tradition, fundamentally,

01:02:00.560 the great weight of the past.

01:02:02.800 Because as you incorporate your past, the past of your culture,

01:02:07.240 through the intermediation of your parents,

01:02:09.480 you learn routines and rituals for structuring the unknown.

01:02:13.160 Now, those routines and rituals are patterns of action that you use in the world as such,

01:02:19.400 and also complex patterns of action that you use to structure your own interpretations

01:02:24.080 and your own motor output and your own conceptualizations

01:02:26.800 when you're dealing with other people.

01:02:28.660 And so that would be the absorption most fundamentally of your cultural rules.

01:02:33.620 And the fact of those cultural rules and their incarnation in you

01:02:37.480 essentially keeps chaos at bay,

01:02:40.180 which means if two of you share the same cultural structure,

01:02:44.440 assuming you're playing the same game, so to speak,

01:02:46.860 that means that you can each predict each other's responses,

01:02:49.640 which is very, very useful,

01:02:50.860 because that way you can be sure that you can trust the other person.

01:02:54.680 You can more or less infer their goals,

01:02:57.060 because after all, their value structure is similar to yours.

01:02:59.420 And if you can infer their goals, that means you can embody their emotions.

01:03:03.380 So that's the benevolent aspect of tradition, right?

01:03:06.120 The part that protects and shelters you and structures the nature of your being

01:03:09.400 in the face of existential terror and doubt, so to speak.

01:03:13.380 But there's also an aspect of tradition that's terrible, tyrannical.

01:03:19.200 It's the part that marches young men off to war, say,

01:03:22.220 in defense of the structures that it's protecting.

01:03:24.920 It's the part that says, when you're a teenager,

01:03:27.380 wear this and not this,

01:03:28.560 or you'll be the target of mockery for all your peers.

01:03:32.000 It's the part of the structure that crushes the creative life out of you,

01:03:35.480 because the tyrannical aspect of social order

01:03:38.580 doesn't want your creative life, so to speak.

01:03:41.700 What it wants is your obedience,

01:03:43.260 because your obedience is what makes the machine run smooth.

01:03:46.900 And so you're always in an ambivalent relationship

01:03:50.440 with regards to security, to authority.

01:03:54.060 On the one hand, it provides you shelter and what you need

01:03:56.820 and allows you to gain the benefits of literally thousands and thousands

01:04:00.640 of years of cultural evolution.

01:04:02.560 On the other hand, it's the thing that makes you obey

01:04:05.020 or face the painful consequences thereof,

01:04:07.940 which can range from, you know, mere social exclusion

01:04:10.580 and consequent re-exposure to the unknown,

01:04:13.400 to truly oppressive practices designed to make you

01:04:16.900 be exactly like everyone else, or else.

01:04:21.940 And so you could say, most particularly, again,

01:04:25.000 that that's a standard existential problem.

01:04:28.320 It's a problem that's faced by people in every place

01:04:31.180 and in every culture,

01:04:32.520 balancing the appropriate attitude towards culture.

01:04:35.200 So the most fundamental representation of culture

01:04:43.160 can be portrayed essentially in this manner, I think.

01:04:47.580 And what you see here is the dragon of chaos,

01:04:50.920 of course, lurking in the background.

01:04:52.360 And what that means is that all forms come from the formless

01:04:55.620 and that the father itself is a primary form,

01:04:59.440 a representation of God the father.

01:05:01.820 And God the father in the Christian trinity

01:05:03.880 is the representation of the positive

01:05:06.560 and the security-inducing

01:05:08.780 and the tyrannical aspect of social order, right?

01:05:11.620 God has a set of rules for you.

01:05:13.600 You bloody well better listen to those rules.

01:05:15.860 If you don't, all hell's going to break loose.

01:05:17.860 And, you know, that's a pretty reasonable summary

01:05:19.800 of how things work, unfortunately.

01:05:21.780 So on the one hand, God offers security.

01:05:24.040 On the other hand, he offers tyranny.

01:05:25.960 And in total, that basically represents order.

01:05:28.380 So you can see this representation is quite useful.

01:05:31.680 It shows God's standing over this city,

01:05:34.420 which, of course, is a city committed to him fundamentally.

01:05:39.040 So it operates under the moral principles that he represents.

01:05:42.360 And behind him is a representation of the sun,

01:05:44.960 which is partly a representation of the source of all life,

01:05:49.540 partly a representation of the source of consciousness

01:05:52.060 and illumination, right, because you're conscious during the day,

01:05:55.180 and partly a halo representing the sort of transcendent nature

01:05:59.420 of the social order that structures existence.

01:06:03.820 So it's a primary phenomenon,

01:06:06.460 and it's only to say that in all human experience,

01:06:09.520 there's a cultural aspect and a natural aspect.

01:06:12.660 And the funny thing is, the cultural aspect,

01:06:14.900 in some ways, is as natural as the natural aspect, right?

01:06:17.580 Because we're social beings.

01:06:19.380 We can't exist without society.

01:06:21.120 Society structures is our very nature.

01:06:24.460 We're beneficiaries and victims.

01:06:31.720 And so then, just as is the case with the feminine,

01:06:38.640 there's two aspects that can be represented metaphorically

01:06:41.960 with regards to the masculine.

01:06:44.080 You can say, well, the security aspect of social order

01:06:48.180 is the wise king, and you can see a medieval representation of him here,

01:06:51.820 sitting on his throne calmly in a relatively open posture.

01:06:55.020 That means he's ready to listen to supplicants,

01:06:57.560 to people who are coming to talk to him.

01:06:59.580 He's holding an orb with a cross on top of it,

01:07:02.180 which means essentially that he's in control of the world

01:07:04.580 and that the world is subordinated to something else

01:07:06.980 that's represented by the cross,

01:07:08.760 a wise and just ruler.

01:07:10.460 And then his mirror image here is the sun-devouring king,

01:07:15.020 a very common mythological theme,

01:07:17.400 the father who wants to destroy his son.

01:07:20.040 And there's shades of the Oedipal conflict in that,

01:07:22.240 of course, if you remember your Freud.

01:07:23.960 But basically what it means is this,

01:07:25.580 is that despite the fact that every human being

01:07:28.440 is an offspring of culture by nature,

01:07:30.900 every human being is also in the terrible position

01:07:35.760 of facing the fact that their very individuality

01:07:38.320 is likely to be crushed out of them

01:07:39.700 during the socialization process.

01:07:42.380 And that, in a sense, that's really not avoidable.

01:07:45.800 I mean, if you're subject to really tyrannical socialization,

01:07:49.220 it's obviously a much more cardinal problem, right?

01:07:52.520 But even if you're subject to socialization

01:07:54.480 under normal circumstances,

01:07:56.200 you are still what you are

01:07:58.180 rather than the manifold things

01:08:00.180 that you could have otherwise been.

01:08:01.880 And just to give you some sense

01:08:03.540 of how dramatic a process this really is,

01:08:06.900 one of the things you should know

01:08:08.800 is that you actually die into your brain.

01:08:12.680 So one of the things you might wonder is,

01:08:14.460 why is it that death evolved?

01:08:16.680 It doesn't really make that much sense

01:08:18.160 from a Darwinian perspective, right?

01:08:19.640 Because you'd make the presupposition

01:08:20.960 that if you could just stick around

01:08:22.840 and father children, say, for 250 years,

01:08:25.560 you'd be doing a lot better job

01:08:26.820 than the poor sap who only lived to be 30.

01:08:28.840 So why is it that you only live to be 70

01:08:31.380 and really your, you know,

01:08:32.760 your period of fertility is over,

01:08:34.260 say, by the time you're 40?

01:08:35.640 Why would that be?

01:08:36.720 What's the utility of death?

01:08:39.060 And then you remember, well,

01:08:41.020 the environment's always changing, right?

01:08:42.840 In this chaotic manner

01:08:43.960 that's represented by the great mother.

01:08:46.620 Can you change with it?

01:08:48.940 And the answer to that is yes,

01:08:51.000 but only to a certain point,

01:08:52.900 which is why as people age,

01:08:54.760 they tend to become more and more alienated

01:08:57.220 from the current culture, right?

01:08:58.660 They've adopted their position of being,

01:09:02.320 say, which is more or less fixed

01:09:03.940 by the time they're 25 or so,

01:09:06.180 once their prefrontal cortex matures,

01:09:07.940 and then after that,

01:09:08.940 the world gets away from them.

01:09:10.040 They don't have enough biological resources left

01:09:12.260 to constantly undergo new revolutionary

01:09:14.540 neurological processes.

01:09:16.480 And part of the reason is this.

01:09:17.720 You have more neural connections in your brain

01:09:21.840 when you're first born

01:09:23.340 than you do for the rest of your life,

01:09:25.620 any other time in your life.

01:09:26.960 And as you learn when you're an infant,

01:09:29.360 and as you learn, say, over the first two years,

01:09:31.620 what happens is that there's a plenitude of circuits,

01:09:34.900 and they die off,

01:09:36.240 leaving only those circuits that have a function.

01:09:38.420 And you think about that

01:09:39.360 as kind of a quasi-Diarwinian process.

01:09:41.580 And so what that means is that as you mature

01:09:43.620 and become fixed in your form,

01:09:45.880 you know, to adopt your personality,

01:09:47.740 whatever it becomes,

01:09:49.480 what's happening is that

01:09:50.780 the excess possibility, in some sense,

01:09:53.500 is being demolished by experience.

01:09:57.000 So the tyrannical aspect of enculturation

01:10:00.560 is something that's real

01:10:01.620 because it makes you, in large part, what you are.

01:10:05.120 And you have to understand as well

01:10:07.320 that that's necessary

01:10:08.280 because it's better to be something.

01:10:11.240 In the final analysis,

01:10:12.580 it's better to be something

01:10:13.880 than to be nothing.

01:10:15.720 But, you know,

01:10:16.620 we still have residual dreams

01:10:18.880 like those expressed by Peter Pan, say,

01:10:21.260 who's the boy that never wants to grow up

01:10:22.900 because he doesn't want to attain

01:10:24.120 any final and fixed form.

01:10:26.500 And it's interesting

01:10:27.200 because in one respect,

01:10:29.620 as you progress through your life,

01:10:31.220 you're climbing,

01:10:32.180 assuming things are going well,

01:10:33.520 you're climbing to ever new heights.

01:10:35.760 But on the other hand,

01:10:36.720 the direction that you're going in

01:10:38.760 constantly narrows as you age.

01:10:40.980 So there's a real trade-off there.

01:10:42.980 And I think the existential angst

01:10:45.420 that's caused as a consequence

01:10:46.660 of that trade-off is often real.

01:10:49.200 And I also think that adolescents

01:10:50.580 and early adults feel this most intently,

01:10:53.100 which is part of the reason

01:10:53.920 why they tend to rebel

01:10:54.960 against social structures in general,

01:10:57.900 you know,

01:10:58.200 whether it's the military-industrial complex

01:11:00.340 or the corporate world

01:11:01.740 or globalization or what have you,

01:11:03.600 is that you have these large structures

01:11:05.540 that represent the tyrannical aspect

01:11:07.600 of social being.

01:11:08.800 And it's no wonder

01:11:10.080 that the fact of those structures

01:11:12.720 engenders rebellion.

01:11:14.320 It should.

01:11:15.280 On the other hand,

01:11:16.100 it's also no wonder

01:11:16.920 that structures like that exist

01:11:18.320 because if they didn't exist,

01:11:19.600 then people would have no way

01:11:21.120 of interrelating their social being.

01:11:24.120 And we would revert back

01:11:25.500 to the sort of Hobbesian state of war

01:11:27.900 where everybody's arms

01:11:29.020 are around everybody else's throat.

01:11:31.180 And that doesn't mean

01:11:31.900 the payoff is always good.

01:11:33.060 So, the Freudians, of course,

01:11:36.840 had a real field day with this

01:11:38.260 and were most fundamentally concerned by it.

01:11:41.880 Now, part of the reason

01:11:42.680 that Freudian psychology

01:11:43.800 has had such an immense impact

01:11:45.360 on Western and world culture

01:11:47.200 is because Freud came along

01:11:48.880 just when classical Judeo-Christian

01:11:50.840 mythological structures

01:11:52.000 were on a serious decline in the West.

01:11:54.620 And Freud stepped in

01:11:55.580 with a secularized mythological version

01:11:58.180 of reality which said,

01:12:00.580 well, there's nature,

01:12:02.620 and that's the id, right?

01:12:03.580 That's the wild and untamed impulses

01:12:05.460 that spring up from the animal mind.

01:12:08.180 And there's the ego,

01:12:09.180 which is the individual

01:12:10.640 who's in many ways

01:12:12.800 a pawn of these id-like forces.

01:12:14.620 And then on top of the ego,

01:12:16.740 crushing it down into the id,

01:12:18.280 so to speak,

01:12:18.880 is the superego,

01:12:19.900 which is the internal

01:12:21.740 and external embodiment

01:12:23.060 of social order and morality.

01:12:24.900 So, you can see

01:12:25.900 the mythological substructure

01:12:27.680 underlying Freud.

01:12:28.680 Freud said,

01:12:29.180 well, the ego is always being shaped

01:12:31.000 by the superego

01:12:31.800 and it's always compulsion.

01:12:33.020 It's don't, don't.

01:12:34.520 It's always no.

01:12:35.840 It's like Old Testament morality, right?

01:12:37.580 In the incarnation of the Ten Commandments.

01:12:40.140 Whatever you want to do,

01:12:41.100 if it feels good,

01:12:41.860 the probability is high

01:12:42.980 that it's immoral

01:12:43.780 from the perspective

01:12:44.660 of the social world.

01:12:45.660 And you can really see this

01:12:47.020 with children, you know?

01:12:48.280 It's really remarkable

01:12:49.440 to watch them

01:12:50.220 because my sense is,

01:12:52.100 and I don't think this is just

01:12:53.340 because I'm a particularly

01:12:54.380 tyrannical father,

01:12:55.500 is that children often

01:12:57.580 get in more trouble

01:12:58.460 for having fun

01:12:59.360 than they do

01:12:59.820 for any other reason

01:13:00.720 because their capacity

01:13:02.080 for unbridled enjoyment

01:13:03.380 is so unbridled

01:13:04.940 that it actually poses

01:13:06.240 a threat

01:13:06.760 to orderly structures.

01:13:08.060 So, you know,

01:13:08.740 if a child really gets

01:13:09.760 in an active mood

01:13:10.700 and is playing

01:13:11.240 a very active game,

01:13:12.340 I mean,

01:13:12.840 especially if they're

01:13:13.660 somewhere between,

01:13:14.420 say, three and five,

01:13:15.440 they can tear your house

01:13:16.320 to shreds

01:13:16.880 in no time flat

01:13:18.480 and you're always

01:13:19.020 following them around

01:13:19.700 going,

01:13:20.080 no, no, no,

01:13:21.220 quiet down,

01:13:21.920 don't do that.

01:13:22.840 And, you know,

01:13:23.240 they're smiling away

01:13:24.160 and they're happier

01:13:24.760 than any adult

01:13:25.520 you're ever going to see

01:13:26.280 in your entire life

01:13:27.140 and you're doing

01:13:27.820 everything you can

01:13:28.540 to push them down

01:13:29.420 so that they can sit quietly

01:13:31.180 and read a book

01:13:31.880 or whatever it is

01:13:32.540 you think they should be doing

01:13:33.500 and that's really nasty

01:13:34.780 and horrible

01:13:35.280 but by the same token,

01:13:36.560 it's absolutely necessary

01:13:37.700 because if they don't learn

01:13:39.320 to bring their impulses,

01:13:40.700 even their impulses,

01:13:41.680 their ludic impulses,

01:13:42.860 right,

01:13:43.020 their impulses to play

01:13:44.060 under control,

01:13:45.240 then nobody else

01:13:46.200 can stand them

01:13:46.940 and if they don't get access

01:13:48.000 to the resources

01:13:48.820 that are in the social world,

01:13:50.320 man,

01:13:50.580 they have one dismal life

01:13:51.760 laid out in front of them.

01:13:52.600 So,

01:13:53.640 anyway,

01:13:54.080 so that's an early description

01:13:55.660 of the genesis of the conflict,

01:13:57.680 say,

01:13:57.880 between the ego

01:13:58.560 and the superego

01:13:59.260 and I just wanted to point that out

01:14:00.780 because it's not just sex

01:14:01.940 and aggression

01:14:02.440 that gets regulated,

01:14:03.660 right,

01:14:04.160 I mean,

01:14:04.340 we can understand

01:14:05.000 why that might happen

01:14:06.040 but it's also playfulness

01:14:07.500 and creativity

01:14:08.400 and spontaneity

01:14:09.440 and all the things

01:14:10.060 that we associate

01:14:10.700 with the joy of being

01:14:12.280 that the terrible,

01:14:13.700 tyrannical social structure

01:14:15.160 puts a clamp on.

01:14:16.560 So,

01:14:17.340 Jack Panksepp,

01:14:18.400 for example,

01:14:19.020 has recently demonstrated

01:14:20.240 that children,

01:14:21.500 boys,

01:14:22.120 because it's usually boys,

01:14:23.640 who have attention deficit disorder

01:14:25.820 which is generally diagnosed

01:14:27.780 in the schoolroom

01:14:28.760 do much better

01:14:29.740 if they're placed on methylphenidate

01:14:31.300 which is a kind of amphetamine fundamentally

01:14:34.020 but normal kids do better

01:14:35.460 on amphetamines too,

01:14:36.820 by the way,

01:14:37.260 they can focus more

01:14:39.580 and they can pay attention more.

01:14:41.160 Mostly what methylphenidate does

01:14:42.840 is suppress play.

01:14:44.640 So,

01:14:45.140 Panksepp's notion is that

01:14:46.460 well,

01:14:46.740 what's happening

01:14:47.220 with these ADHD kids,

01:14:48.820 hyperactive kids,

01:14:49.760 is they're more playful,

01:14:51.820 more boisterously playful

01:14:53.460 which tends to be

01:14:54.580 a masculine attribute

01:14:55.500 in the juvenile forms

01:14:57.360 of many mammals.

01:14:58.200 They're boisterously playful.

01:14:59.560 Give them a little methylphenidate

01:15:01.200 that shuts down

01:15:01.920 their play behavior

01:15:03.100 and they can sit down

01:15:04.060 and focus,

01:15:04.800 you know,

01:15:05.080 and well,

01:15:05.900 you can understand

01:15:06.640 how even if you might think

01:15:08.100 that's necessary

01:15:08.980 because apparently

01:15:10.020 many people do,

01:15:11.340 you can also still understand

01:15:12.740 that by the same token

01:15:14.060 that probably represents

01:15:15.120 some kind of loss,

01:15:16.540 right?

01:15:16.780 Because we like to see kids play

01:15:18.420 and it's good for them besides.

01:15:20.360 So,

01:15:21.400 anyways,

01:15:21.940 Freud says

01:15:22.500 the ego pops up,

01:15:23.920 it's all thrilled to death

01:15:24.860 with the world,

01:15:25.460 the superego comes along

01:15:26.460 and shuts it down

01:15:27.560 and that's a fate

01:15:28.340 that befalls all of us

01:15:29.440 and not only that

01:15:30.480 because Freud's a pretty wise man

01:15:32.260 all things considered.

01:15:33.120 He doesn't say

01:15:33.620 that's all to the bad,

01:15:35.120 he says that's the price

01:15:36.020 we pay for social being

01:15:37.500 and fair enough.

01:15:40.020 You see this happening

01:15:44.380 in children all the time

01:15:45.380 where part of what they do

01:15:47.420 as they mature

01:15:48.140 is to adopt roles

01:15:49.320 so they'll play being a father

01:15:50.860 or being a mother,

01:15:51.800 say,

01:15:52.020 and what they're doing

01:15:52.620 is pulling in

01:15:53.660 what they see

01:15:54.300 as the world view

01:15:56.020 that characterizes parenthood,

01:15:58.440 embodying the father,

01:16:00.040 playing out the role

01:16:00.960 and trying to organize

01:16:02.540 their motivational structures

01:16:03.860 within the observed framework,

01:16:05.600 say,

01:16:05.800 that the father provides

01:16:06.800 and that's an interjection

01:16:08.600 of social wisdom.

01:16:09.640 If you can imagine

01:16:10.580 that the role of father,

01:16:11.900 say,

01:16:12.620 has a structure,

01:16:14.060 like one structure would be,

01:16:15.900 well,

01:16:16.160 if you're a father

01:16:16.900 and you're around to model,

01:16:19.380 then you have to be

01:16:20.140 taking care of the children

01:16:21.140 or at least you have to be there

01:16:22.660 often enough

01:16:23.300 so that you can be

01:16:24.020 a target of modeling.

01:16:25.540 And so you can imagine

01:16:26.640 that the spirit of the father

01:16:28.800 that's modeled,

01:16:29.640 at least in the optimal circumstances,

01:16:31.600 is one that deals out rules

01:16:33.700 and order

01:16:34.180 but that also provides

01:16:35.340 nurturing care and support

01:16:37.180 and that's a kind of story.

01:16:39.520 We know fathers

01:16:40.100 who aren't like that

01:16:41.120 and maybe we know fathers

01:16:42.460 who are too much like that

01:16:43.680 but all things considered,

01:16:45.380 on the average,

01:16:46.280 you have a father role

01:16:47.420 and children attempt

01:16:48.620 to interject that

01:16:50.580 and that's part of the way

01:16:51.640 that they learn

01:16:52.120 to modulate

01:16:52.680 their own motivational resources.

01:16:54.100 So, for example,

01:16:56.300 if the child observes

01:16:57.540 the father and the mother sharing,

01:16:59.640 which means taking

01:17:00.440 each other's motivational states

01:17:02.240 into account,

01:17:03.100 then they can act out

01:17:04.240 the game of sharing

01:17:05.400 with a doll, say,

01:17:06.760 representing a child

01:17:07.780 and what they're doing

01:17:08.600 is trying to imagine

01:17:09.880 what it's like

01:17:10.940 inside that doll's head,

01:17:12.800 treating it like a person,

01:17:14.140 by embodying

01:17:15.600 the potential motivations

01:17:16.860 and emotional states

01:17:17.880 of that pretend object

01:17:19.140 in their own body

01:17:20.000 and then by trying

01:17:21.200 to organize

01:17:21.800 a higher order structure

01:17:23.140 which would be like

01:17:23.940 the tea party

01:17:25.060 where tea is shared,

01:17:26.380 a higher order structure

01:17:27.360 where you have a turn

01:17:28.820 because you want a turn

01:17:29.960 because you're thirsty

01:17:30.760 like me

01:17:31.340 and then I have a turn

01:17:32.660 and we both get what we want

01:17:33.880 and we can exchange information

01:17:35.320 and, well,

01:17:36.760 that's a little bit

01:17:37.540 more optimistic representation

01:17:39.040 of the tyranny

01:17:39.980 of social order

01:17:40.720 than pure compulsion, right?

01:17:42.300 Because what it suggests

01:17:43.540 is there's a way

01:17:44.660 that you can organize

01:17:45.840 the way you are,

01:17:47.280 genuinely,

01:17:47.960 and the way I am,

01:17:49.700 genuinely,

01:17:50.180 so that we both

01:17:51.380 are genuine

01:17:52.340 yet we get something

01:17:53.620 more than we would get

01:17:55.260 if we were just by ourselves

01:17:56.800 and so you think that

01:17:58.100 with kids.

01:17:58.940 They like to play

01:17:59.660 by themselves

01:18:00.300 but by the time

01:18:01.480 they're about three and a half

01:18:02.600 or four,

01:18:03.220 boy,

01:18:03.660 like they have a hunger

01:18:04.760 for other children

01:18:05.720 and they'll do anything

01:18:07.020 in order to go out

01:18:08.180 and play with other kids

01:18:09.300 so you can say to them,

01:18:10.500 well,

01:18:10.780 if you take all the toys

01:18:12.780 off your bed,

01:18:13.340 I'll go and let you play

01:18:14.060 with your friend

01:18:14.600 and like the toys

01:18:15.380 are off there

01:18:15.860 in two tenths of a second

01:18:16.780 and they're out the door

01:18:17.540 because they have

01:18:18.180 this primary need

01:18:19.460 to go out

01:18:20.080 and experiment

01:18:20.880 with the social world

01:18:21.900 and in large part

01:18:23.700 that's how they build

01:18:24.640 the complex,

01:18:25.640 higher order,

01:18:26.340 more abstract structures

01:18:27.680 that enable them

01:18:28.860 to regulate

01:18:29.860 their motivational states

01:18:32.360 and their emotional states

01:18:33.400 without just no.

01:18:35.840 It's a more sophisticated

01:18:37.300 way of doing it, right?

01:18:38.720 It's better to play

01:18:39.620 a game with someone

01:18:40.520 than to engage

01:18:41.340 in a battle of wills

01:18:42.540 with them

01:18:42.940 because then there's

01:18:43.900 no compulsion,

01:18:45.240 there's just mutual

01:18:46.040 participation

01:18:46.680 and that's critical

01:18:48.120 because one of the things

01:18:49.740 that the notion

01:18:51.460 of the tyranny

01:18:52.200 of the social order

01:18:53.180 brings up as a question

01:18:54.700 is all right,

01:18:55.300 all right,

01:18:55.660 so you have to take part

01:18:57.200 in society, right?

01:18:58.640 You have to take your part

01:18:59.440 in the social world

01:19:00.400 yet the social world

01:19:02.220 wants its pound of flesh

01:19:03.660 or its 60 pounds of flesh

01:19:05.280 depending on where you live.

01:19:07.960 On the one,

01:19:08.960 so you're damned if you do,

01:19:10.480 so to speak,

01:19:11.080 and you're damned if you don't,

01:19:12.600 what do you do

01:19:13.360 as a consequence

01:19:14.320 of facing that challenge

01:19:15.960 and so you remember

01:19:17.380 with the great mother

01:19:18.400 with chaos and the unknown,

01:19:20.780 the way you meet the challenge

01:19:22.120 is to understand

01:19:23.140 that the things

01:19:23.880 you don't understand

01:19:24.800 are dangerous and frightening

01:19:26.340 and that if you encounter them,

01:19:27.780 they can hurt you

01:19:28.660 and that this is real

01:19:29.780 but you don't run away

01:19:31.300 all the same, right?

01:19:32.660 If you're trying

01:19:33.240 to get somewhere

01:19:33.940 and things you don't understand

01:19:35.400 happen,

01:19:35.900 you can't shut yourself down.

01:19:37.060 You have to explore cautiously

01:19:38.740 and try to gain new knowledge.

01:19:45.800 Well, how do you organize

01:19:47.060 your social being?

01:19:48.480 Well, let's make the presupposition

01:19:50.080 that you've got

01:19:50.760 half a dozen or so

01:19:52.660 fundamental motivational states,

01:19:54.900 right?

01:19:55.120 So what they are is

01:19:56.220 your subjugation

01:19:58.060 to a world

01:19:58.880 of a priori deities, right?

01:20:01.660 You see in children,

01:20:02.580 rage, fear, hunger,

01:20:06.100 anger, affiliation,

01:20:08.180 love, the capacity to play,

01:20:10.480 all value sets

01:20:12.220 which have their own goal-like

01:20:15.260 behavioral patterns,

01:20:17.360 their own worldview,

01:20:18.480 their own way

01:20:18.920 of manifesting themselves.

01:20:20.140 All those are innate, right?

01:20:21.460 They're all dependent

01:20:22.120 on pre-wired

01:20:23.400 neural architectural systems.

01:20:26.500 They have to unfold

01:20:27.720 in experience

01:20:28.280 but they're there.

01:20:29.580 Okay, and so let's say

01:20:30.320 that's what you come

01:20:30.980 into the world with

01:20:31.900 and that's what you

01:20:32.560 come into the world with

01:20:33.360 and that's what you

01:20:33.920 come into the world with

01:20:34.720 but then the fact

01:20:35.800 that you're in the world

01:20:36.700 poses a more complex problem

01:20:39.600 which is,

01:20:40.480 well, yeah,

01:20:40.880 you've got one

01:20:41.580 motivational state happening.

01:20:43.660 You're angry

01:20:44.140 but then you've got

01:20:45.600 another one you have

01:20:46.200 to worry about

01:20:46.660 which is you'd like

01:20:47.360 to be affiliated with someone

01:20:48.780 like your sibling.

01:20:50.280 So you've got a real conflict

01:20:51.400 with your sibling.

01:20:52.180 It's like you really hate them

01:20:53.680 but you really like them too

01:20:55.380 and you want to play with them

01:20:56.340 so what do you do about that?

01:20:58.160 Well, you'd say

01:20:59.380 a behaviorally dysregulated child

01:21:01.520 who isn't well socialized

01:21:02.680 say they're impulsive.

01:21:04.360 They don't act as if

01:21:06.700 they take the future

01:21:07.780 into account

01:21:08.360 so they heavily

01:21:08.940 future discount.

01:21:09.820 They're impulsive.

01:21:10.520 What does that mean?

01:21:11.980 If you watch a child

01:21:12.740 have a temper tantrum

01:21:13.720 which around two

01:21:14.860 they're really prone to

01:21:15.960 it's like,

01:21:17.000 it's a phenomena,

01:21:18.060 you know,

01:21:18.240 it's like a tornado

01:21:19.100 on a real small scale.

01:21:20.640 The child's just flipped out.

01:21:23.400 If you saw an adult do that

01:21:24.680 you'd run away screaming, right?

01:21:27.000 And they're completely dominated

01:21:29.260 by this emotional state.

01:21:31.300 And my sense watching that

01:21:33.080 has always been

01:21:33.680 to kind of try to help the kid

01:21:34.920 not have that happen to them

01:21:36.280 because it looks like

01:21:36.920 a terrible catastrophe

01:21:38.000 for their emerging ego, right?

01:21:39.700 I mean,

01:21:40.140 they're trying to get

01:21:40.860 their world together

01:21:41.740 and something frustrates them

01:21:43.220 and whomp,

01:21:43.860 up come these like

01:21:44.720 amygdalic projections

01:21:46.300 that are governing anger,

01:21:47.840 hypothalamic,

01:21:48.660 even more primitive,

01:21:49.780 and just like

01:21:50.360 bowl them over

01:21:52.420 and then they're on the floor

01:21:53.340 and they're holding their breath

01:21:54.300 and they're turning blue

01:21:54.980 and they're having a fit

01:21:55.820 and then it takes them

01:21:56.760 like 15 minutes to recover.

01:21:58.760 So they have to

01:21:59.680 take themselves into account

01:22:01.620 as total,

01:22:02.440 as complete beings

01:22:03.380 and that's the emergence

01:22:04.640 of a higher order morality

01:22:05.680 but it's more complicated

01:22:06.940 than that

01:22:07.360 because not only

01:22:08.380 do they have the problem

01:22:09.200 of themselves

01:22:09.840 which is a bad enough problem

01:22:11.180 but then they have the problem

01:22:12.240 of the other person.

01:22:14.400 So what's the proper

01:22:15.520 response of the individual

01:22:17.660 given that he or she

01:22:19.160 is threatened by

01:22:20.200 the natural world

01:22:21.640 and the unknown

01:22:22.260 on the left hand

01:22:23.120 and threatened

01:22:23.820 by the social order

01:22:24.840 and its tyranny

01:22:25.760 on the right hand

01:22:27.060 but also dependent

01:22:28.520 on the natural world

01:22:30.160 and chaos

01:22:30.720 for all good things

01:22:32.000 and all new information

01:22:33.020 and dependent

01:22:33.860 on the social order

01:22:34.720 for their very mode

01:22:35.940 of being, right?

01:22:36.940 Caught between

01:22:37.760 four paradoxes

01:22:39.280 all at the same time.

01:22:40.800 How can that route

01:22:42.600 be properly negotiated?

01:22:44.300 Well then you can look

01:22:45.120 at hero mythology

01:22:47.200 and the most common plot

01:22:51.720 and I would say

01:22:52.640 in some ways

01:22:53.320 the only plot

01:22:54.740 although there are

01:22:55.480 variations of this

01:22:56.480 that are endless

01:22:57.140 romantic variations

01:22:58.440 or adventure story variations

01:23:01.100 or variations

01:23:01.880 of failed heroic endeavor

01:23:03.800 still the only plot

01:23:05.400 goes something like this.

01:23:07.280 There's a current state

01:23:08.440 of being

01:23:09.080 now that can be represented

01:23:10.760 by a psychological state

01:23:12.760 your current personality

01:23:14.180 it can be represented

01:23:15.340 by your family

01:23:16.260 it can be represented

01:23:17.780 by your extended

01:23:18.620 social group

01:23:19.560 your city

01:23:20.380 your town

01:23:21.260 your country

01:23:22.400 your ecosystem

01:23:23.720 your

01:23:24.420 in science fiction

01:23:27.040 frequently

01:23:27.460 the entire global community

01:23:29.240 right

01:23:29.860 a structure

01:23:30.660 is threatened

01:23:31.560 by what?

01:23:33.360 Well

01:23:33.740 you name it

01:23:34.940 if it's dangerous

01:23:36.200 it can threaten

01:23:37.320 the structure

01:23:37.980 that can be

01:23:39.080 one of various forms

01:23:40.760 of barbarian

01:23:41.580 right

01:23:41.840 any person

01:23:42.640 from another culture

01:23:43.620 an alien

01:23:44.540 in science fiction

01:23:45.580 a terrible monster

01:23:47.320 that lives in the deep

01:23:48.280 that had been

01:23:48.840 dominated and oppressed

01:23:50.020 before but has come back

01:23:51.300 for more

01:23:51.900 an agent of horror

01:23:54.180 that's a common theme

01:23:55.620 in modern horror movies

01:23:56.600 right

01:23:56.840 an object that moves

01:23:58.420 the ghosts in the basement

01:23:59.760 because the dead

01:24:00.960 were improperly buried

01:24:02.360 etc.

01:24:03.420 etc.

01:24:04.020 etc.

01:24:04.780 anything uncanny

01:24:06.020 anything fear inspiring

01:24:07.720 anything reptilian

01:24:09.200 anything that smothers

01:24:12.260 or entrances

01:24:13.820 or seduces

01:24:15.960 or you name it

01:24:17.740 if it's change

01:24:19.060 or some metaphoric

01:24:20.500 representation

01:24:21.000 of anything

01:24:21.840 that can change

01:24:22.920 then it's this

01:24:24.140 the dragon of chaos

01:24:25.620 and that's the thing

01:24:26.620 that always threatens

01:24:27.420 the stable state

01:24:29.260 in its multiple

01:24:30.600 potential manifest forms

01:24:32.780 and what does that mean?

01:24:34.420 it means

01:24:35.060 the apocalypse

01:24:36.100 is always happening

01:24:37.220 right

01:24:37.660 the end of the world

01:24:38.720 is always before us

01:24:40.460 which is why you see

01:24:41.540 apocalyptic imagery

01:24:42.920 for example

01:24:43.760 throughout the new testament

01:24:44.960 Christ says

01:24:45.600 the world is coming

01:24:46.920 to an end

01:24:47.520 and people are waiting

01:24:48.340 around for it to happen

01:24:49.440 but what they

01:24:50.060 don't precisely understand

01:24:51.640 is that

01:24:52.020 the world is always

01:24:53.240 coming to an end

01:24:54.040 always

01:24:54.580 and that's because

01:24:55.340 what you think

01:24:56.560 now

01:24:57.340 is not good enough

01:24:58.700 for the next second

01:24:59.760 right

01:25:00.400 you have to change

01:25:01.440 because change is coming

01:25:02.700 and what change means

01:25:03.960 is you have to let go

01:25:05.000 of what you know

01:25:05.800 that's the apocalypse

01:25:07.020 and it's always on us

01:25:08.380 the structure is threatened

01:25:12.020 well what do you do

01:25:12.800 about that

01:25:13.420 well

01:25:14.040 you can run

01:25:16.820 but you can't hide

01:25:18.300 right

01:25:18.620 that's the theory

01:25:20.180 and the reason for that

01:25:21.200 is that

01:25:21.580 even if you

01:25:22.600 are unwilling to face

01:25:24.800 the threat

01:25:25.980 that's right in front of you

01:25:27.360 no matter where you run to

01:25:28.660 that threat's going to be there

01:25:30.020 so you see

01:25:30.660 in the case of an agoraphobic woman

01:25:32.220 who starts to run away

01:25:33.500 from the shopping mall

01:25:34.400 when she has heart palpitations

01:25:36.260 that then she runs away

01:25:37.660 from the subway

01:25:38.280 and then she runs away

01:25:39.180 from taxis

01:25:39.860 and then buses

01:25:40.480 and then other people

01:25:41.340 and then finally she's at home

01:25:42.860 and there's nowhere to run

01:25:43.660 but her heart's still palpitating

01:25:45.200 and the fear of death

01:25:46.520 is still on her

01:25:47.320 and there's no place to go

01:25:48.560 so hiding isn't much of a help

01:25:51.480 or you can pretend

01:25:52.500 that the chaotic thing

01:25:53.640 isn't there

01:25:54.120 and refuse to change

01:25:55.320 but all that does

01:25:56.520 is make the threat bigger

01:25:57.860 and bigger

01:25:58.360 and bigger

01:25:58.840 and bigger

01:25:59.220 so just like

01:26:00.480 simply put

01:26:01.240 well say you only have

01:26:03.240 $100 in the bank

01:26:04.260 and you have

01:26:04.840 a $110 telephone bill

01:26:06.760 and you think

01:26:07.220 well I'd like that $100

01:26:08.980 I'm not going to pay

01:26:09.820 that telephone bill

01:26:10.640 it's just a little threat

01:26:12.140 right

01:26:12.560 but then you don't pay it

01:26:13.900 and the next month

01:26:14.820 it's a $125 telephone bill

01:26:16.840 and then they slap

01:26:17.560 a $50 charge on you

01:26:18.780 and then they cut off

01:26:19.380 your phone

01:26:19.820 so then you don't have a phone

01:26:21.340 then you miss a job appointment

01:26:23.000 and that's not so good

01:26:24.320 and then it's $250

01:26:25.660 to pay your phone bill

01:26:27.340 and another $200

01:26:28.120 to get it hooked back up

01:26:29.220 then your credit record

01:26:30.500 goes all to hell

01:26:31.300 because you haven't paid

01:26:32.200 any of that

01:26:32.740 then you can't buy a house

01:26:34.040 when you're 25

01:26:34.780 and you think

01:26:35.860 kind of weird eh

01:26:36.880 little bitty chaos

01:26:38.160 turns into a great big monster

01:26:40.020 and partly that's because

01:26:41.860 everything that looks separate

01:26:44.100 from everything else

01:26:45.100 isn't

01:26:45.720 it just looks that way

01:26:47.400 and when you ignore anything

01:26:49.440 especially if it's

01:26:51.100 impeding your progress

01:26:52.500 you know it's impeding your progress

01:26:54.100 you know you have to deal with it

01:26:55.920 step away from it

01:26:57.080 and see what its true nature really is

01:26:59.280 so you can hide

01:27:00.460 and you can not change

01:27:01.720 or you can pretend

01:27:02.680 that the threat doesn't exist

01:27:04.140 but in the final analysis

01:27:06.720 that just stores up

01:27:07.840 the catastrophe for later

01:27:09.420 thank you for listening

01:27:17.100 to the Jordan B. Peterson podcast

01:27:18.860 this was an amalgamation

01:27:21.720 of episodes 4 to 6

01:27:23.040 from Maps of Meaning

01:27:24.320 recorded by TV Ontario

01:27:25.940 to support these podcasts

01:27:31.840 you can donate to

01:27:32.620 Dr. Peterson's Patreon account

01:27:34.400 the link to which can be found

01:27:36.040 in the description of this episode

01:27:37.560 Dr. Peterson's self-development programs

01:27:42.700 can be found at

01:27:43.780 self-authoring.com

01:27:45.260 thank you

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - March 06, 2017

Maps of Meaning 4, 5, & 6

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