The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - My Pen of Light - Part One

00:00:00.940 Hey everyone, real quick before you skip, I want to talk to you about something serious and important.

00:00:06.480 Dr. Jordan Peterson has created a new series that could be a lifeline for those battling depression and anxiety.

00:00:12.740 We know how isolating and overwhelming these conditions can be, and we wanted to take a moment to reach out to those listening who may be struggling.

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00:00:27.420 He provides a roadmap towards healing, showing that while the journey isn't easy, it's absolutely possible to find your way forward.

00:00:35.360 If you're suffering, please know you are not alone. There's hope, and there's a path to feeling better.

00:00:41.780 Go to Daily Wire Plus now and start watching Dr. Jordan B. Peterson on depression and anxiety.

00:00:47.460 Let this be the first step towards the brighter future you deserve.

00:00:50.980 Welcome to episode 50 of the Jordan B. Peterson podcast.

00:01:00.900 I'm Michaela Peterson, Jordan's daughter.

00:01:03.420 I hope you enjoy this episode. It's called My Pen of Light, and was recorded in Christchurch, New Zealand, on February 20th, 2019.

00:01:12.580 I remember Dad playing with the pen he mentions in this podcast.

00:01:16.000 Someone gave it to him. It has a bulb that turns on when you press it into a piece of paper or something.

00:01:21.100 He really liked it, so if you were the one who gave him that pen, thanks for the pen.

00:01:26.460 Dad's still recovering, getting better and better.

00:01:28.660 We're going to publicize all the neuro-rehab treatments we're doing,

00:01:31.960 but if you want more information about some of them sooner, I have information on my Instagram, at Michaela Peterson.

00:01:37.740 When Dad's fully recovered, we'll come out and talk about it in greater detail.

00:01:42.120 Have you ever wondered where you came from, or your family's background?

00:01:45.080 I got into a bit of an obsession in 2014 about trying to figure out who I was related to.

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00:02:00.640 I traced my relatives back to the 1500s in the States, migrating from England.

00:02:05.080 We were surprised to learn about my grandpa's Irish background.

00:02:08.000 No one in my family would have guessed we thought he was Norwegian fully.

00:02:10.900 AncestryDNA doesn't just tell you which countries you're from, but also can pinpoint the specific regions within them.

00:02:17.880 You can trace the paths of your recent ancestors and learn how and why your family moved from place to place around the world.

00:02:24.060 No other DNA tests deliver such a unique, interactive experience.

00:02:28.220 Start exploring your family story today.

00:02:30.640 Head to my URL at Ancestry.com slash Jordan to get your AncestryDNA kit and start your free trial.

00:02:37.200 That's Ancestry.com slash Jordan.

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00:03:35.480 That's Uber.com slash safety.

00:03:37.520 You guys have heard Dad and I talk at length about the carnivore diet, and I know many of you want to give it a shot.

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00:04:54.160 My pen of light, part one, a Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life lecture.

00:05:00.480 Thank you.

00:05:30.460 That's very enthusiastic.

00:05:32.700 Thank you.

00:05:34.060 So I'm going to do something tonight that I haven't done before at all at any of these talks.

00:05:40.400 I have in my book, 12 Rules for Life, 12 rules, and hence the title.

00:05:50.020 And I've covered them in various ways in various places.

00:05:54.400 I think this is the 140th theater or something like that that I've spoken at since last January.

00:06:00.900 But, you know, there's an extra chapter at the end.

00:06:05.120 I called it a coda.

00:06:06.880 It's a musical term.

00:06:08.620 It's sort of a recapitulation of the themes in the book from a different perspective.

00:06:12.500 And I've never talked about them.

00:06:15.320 And so I thought that I might do that tonight for something new.

00:06:20.120 Because I try to do something new each night.

00:06:23.280 You know, I mean, I can't completely because I have a limited range, array of knowledge.

00:06:29.320 And so, you know, it's recapitulation of different themes and attempts to make problems I'm working on clearer and so forth.

00:06:36.960 But I do try to make it original enough so that it's forcing me to think on my feet, you know.

00:06:43.360 Because it's good to think on your feet and it's really good practice.

00:06:47.580 It's one of the wonderful things about what I've been doing is, you know, I'm going to a different town, city, every two days or three days.

00:06:54.860 And speaking with two or three thousand people generally.

00:06:58.700 And having to come up with a problem and then try to formulate it clearly and then try to make some headway on it, you know.

00:07:06.000 And then at the same time trying to see if the headway is communicable.

00:07:09.360 So it's a fun, engaging enterprise to attempt to do properly.

00:07:16.140 And it's a form of dialogue with the audience.

00:07:20.580 And so usually I stand up and face everyone like I am now and speak spontaneously.

00:07:26.860 And that way I can keep an eye on everyone and make sure that, you know, they're mostly listening.

00:07:33.220 And I can listen to the audience and make sure that it's mostly quiet.

00:07:36.900 Because that's a good sign that people are in fact all focused on the same thing.

00:07:41.140 And that whatever's happening is important enough to quell all the competing tendencies that might otherwise be preoccupying you with your complicated lives.

00:07:52.140 But tonight I'm going to sit down.

00:07:54.240 I think I'll probably move this chair a little bit closer.

00:07:56.920 However, I'm going to sit down and I'm going to, because I don't know the rules.

00:08:05.060 There's a bunch of rules in the 13th chapter.

00:08:09.400 15 or 16 or 20 or something.

00:08:12.060 Quite a few.

00:08:13.020 And I don't have them memorized.

00:08:15.180 And so I have to rely a bit more on notes tonight than I usually would.

00:08:19.560 So, but I've done this, I've sat like this before and it's worked, it's worked well.

00:08:25.840 So let's see if we can do this tonight and say some new things.

00:08:30.920 So that's the plan.

00:08:32.500 And then afterwards, after about 70 minutes or so, then I'm going to answer a variety of questions that you've submitted to that Slido system.

00:08:45.160 And so hopefully we'll have a productive evening as a consequence.

00:08:49.740 So let's see what happens.

00:08:54.840 All right.

00:08:55.400 So first I'll tell you the story about this chapter.

00:08:58.860 I wasn't really sure that I was going to include it.

00:09:02.600 I like the way the book ended.

00:09:05.000 Originally, it ended with the story of my daughter.

00:09:08.200 The chapter, chapter 12 is, pet a cat when you encounter one on the street.

00:09:15.720 And it's a morality tale, I suppose, about attempting to look for beauty during dark times.

00:09:25.460 To remember that it's there and to provide some solace for yourself and for the people around you.

00:09:32.340 If you can, by remembering and noticing that there are still things that are worthwhile and beautiful in the world.

00:09:40.240 Even though things are progressing in a difficult manner.

00:09:43.920 And the chapter ends, chapters about my daughter's illness.

00:09:47.380 And it ends pretty positively because she recovers substantially.

00:09:51.840 And that's still the case.

00:09:53.220 In fact, I would say she's doing better and better.

00:09:55.200 So that's, she was just in Switzerland a month ago.

00:10:00.320 We spent most of January, I spent much of January in a hospital room in Switzerland.

00:10:05.580 She had her ankle, which had been replaced when she was 16.

00:10:10.100 She had it redone because it was slipping sideways.

00:10:13.120 And we went and found the surgeon there who had designed the joint.

00:10:16.820 And he figured out why it was slipping and screwed it back in place.

00:10:23.800 And shaved off some of the bottom of her femur.

00:10:28.360 And while she was awake, all of that.

00:10:32.100 It's quite a complicated process.

00:10:34.560 And anyways, that all seems to be going very well.

00:10:37.140 So what the point is, is that the book had ended quite nicely with this rather personal story.

00:10:43.620 With a reasonably happy ending.

00:10:45.720 And then I went down to California.

00:10:48.800 And I met this friend of mine named Dale Ressi.

00:10:52.380 He runs this company called Founder Institute.

00:10:54.880 Which is a cool company, I think.

00:10:58.100 What Adeo has done, which is quite remarkable, is set up about 165 schools of sorts.

00:11:06.900 In cities all over the world.

00:11:08.620 In 165 cities.

00:11:10.580 Variety of different languages.

00:11:12.000 I think eight or nine different languages.

00:11:14.320 He did that all in about four years.

00:11:17.020 And what he does is gather together groups of people.

00:11:20.680 About 50.

00:11:21.940 Who all have entrepreneurial ideas.

00:11:24.120 Early stage entrepreneurial ideas.

00:11:27.080 Early enough so that they're not ready to quit their job.

00:11:29.560 To pursue their new potential occupation.

00:11:32.680 And then he brings them together and he matches them with entrepreneurs who've had a long history of success.

00:11:40.660 And teaches them how to go about generating a business plan into starting a small business.

00:11:47.080 And his goal, which is a fairly lofty goal, is to export Silicon Valley to the rest of the world.

00:11:55.300 And he's started about 2,500 new businesses over about a five-year period.

00:12:00.700 And I do the testing for his applicants.

00:12:05.020 Because I know, at least in principle, I have some of the psychometric knowledge necessary to identify people who are likely to be good entrepreneurs.

00:12:18.220 And good entrepreneurs, first of all, tend to be relatively intelligent.

00:12:22.180 Because you have to solve problems on a constant basis.

00:12:25.280 And they also tend to be high in a trait called openness.

00:12:29.120 And openness is the trait that's most, it's a big five trait.

00:12:32.180 There are five traits, by the way.

00:12:34.020 Hence the name big five.

00:12:36.720 And one of them is trait openness.

00:12:39.220 And it's essentially associated with creativity.

00:12:42.280 And high levels of creativity are relatively rare.

00:12:45.560 Despite what all the pop psychologists will tell you.

00:12:48.260 Because they'll tell you that everyone is creative and that's complete bloody nonsense.

00:12:53.840 Well, I mean, how many of you have written a symphony?

00:12:58.320 Well, I'm just wondering.

00:13:02.800 How many of you have painted an oil painting, let's say, that's hanging in a, well, even in your own house, for that matter?

00:13:10.340 Or that anyone would allow to be hung in their own house?

00:13:15.080 Even more to the point.

00:13:16.080 You know how many paintings Pablo Picasso created, works of art in his life?

00:13:22.660 And then these weren't trivial works of art.

00:13:24.700 These are major works of art.

00:13:26.180 There's about fifth, well, I'm going to blow the story if I tell you right off the bat.

00:13:32.640 You might think he made a productive career of about 65 years.

00:13:36.500 And so, let's say, you know, he managed one a week.

00:13:40.000 That'd be 65 times 50, 3,500 paintings, something like that.

00:13:44.520 Which is not bad.

00:13:45.460 It's a hell of a lot more than zero.

00:13:47.580 I can tell you that.

00:13:49.080 But that isn't even close.

00:13:50.700 He created 65,000 pieces of art.

00:13:54.280 Three a day, every day, for 65 years.

00:13:56.660 And if you go online, you can go online to the Picasso, online Picasso project.

00:14:02.720 And you can see about 15,000 of them.

00:14:05.920 And, you know, it's impressive.

00:14:09.280 And Bach, J.S. Bach, he wrote so much music that it would take a competent modern copyist,

00:14:16.420 just transcribing the music by hand, 40 years of eight-hour days, just to copy what he composed.

00:14:24.340 And, you know, that's just a couple of examples among many.

00:14:28.120 See, people like Thomas Edison, who I think had 240 to 250 to 300 patents, which is an awful

00:14:36.460 lot of patents.

00:14:37.540 And, you know, some of those were major league patents.

00:14:39.880 And, you know, there are people who are, they're so damn creative that you can't, you

00:14:44.920 can't even really explain it.

00:14:46.820 Mozart used to claim that whole symphonies would just pop into his mind, complete.

00:14:52.360 All he'd have to do is write them down.

00:14:54.520 And, you know, he was a particular expert, taught intensively by his father, but obviously

00:14:59.760 also capable of, or what would you say, he had the, he had an integral musical genius

00:15:08.420 that was part and parcel of him that fortunately met excellent instruction.

00:15:12.960 And Nikolai Tesla, who invented many of the things that we take for granted, including

00:15:17.360 the electrical power grid systems that we use, which is kind of a big deal, as well as

00:15:21.520 the electrical motors, and many other things.

00:15:24.280 He said, he was a very strange person, he said that whole inventions would pop into his

00:15:32.480 imagination, basically in blueprint form, right down to the level of the,

00:15:38.420 the angle of the screws that held the mechanisms together, and that sometimes those ideas

00:15:43.840 came so quickly that he couldn't write them down fast enough before another idea would

00:15:49.200 come into his head and sort of obliterate the one that he was working on.

00:15:53.160 So, well, we don't understand that sort of thing at all.

00:15:56.960 But one thing we can understand is that those people were creative.

00:16:01.860 There's no doubt about that.

00:16:03.120 And it does turn out that if you want to be an entrepreneur, then it's good to be creative.

00:16:08.420 It's good to be high in openness.

00:16:09.720 And by the way, you can find out this.

00:16:11.500 It's not the only good trait, by the way.

00:16:14.120 And there's real disadvantages to being creative, like huge disadvantages.

00:16:18.780 It's very hard to settle on a single identity if you're a creative person.

00:16:23.200 And so it's easy to become a dilettante, especially if you lack discipline and instruction.

00:16:27.660 So that's a real problem for creative people.

00:16:30.320 It's almost impossible to monetize creativity.

00:16:33.600 I mean, there are a lot of musicians, and hardly any of them make any money.

00:16:37.860 And there are a lot of people who write fiction, and almost no one gets published.

00:16:42.460 And even of those who do get published, very few people sell enough books to make a living

00:16:48.640 at it, and certainly a much smaller fraction to make a living over any reasonable amount of

00:16:53.380 time.

00:16:53.660 Now, if you're creative and you're successful, you can be radically successful.

00:16:59.000 So it's like a high-risk, high-return investment, but it's very, very difficult.

00:17:05.900 And so we don't want to be thinking it's an untrammeled good, and that's part of the reason

00:17:11.220 why everyone isn't creative.

00:17:12.700 It's just too damn risky.

00:17:15.400 And then there's other jobs, many jobs, for which creativity really doesn't suit you.

00:17:19.940 So, for example, if you're a lawyer, manager, administrator, banker, even an academic, for

00:17:28.320 that matter, we found that the correlation between creativity and academic success among

00:17:33.020 graduate students was slightly under zero.

00:17:36.200 So, and also that their correlation between academic grades and creativity was zero.

00:17:41.120 So, you know, if you're creative, you're kind of a pain in the neck, because, well, because

00:17:47.000 if you're truly creative, you do things in such a radical manner that other people can't

00:17:51.860 really evaluate what you're doing.

00:17:54.040 And you might really be right, you know, but you're forcing them to take a big risk to accept

00:17:58.500 what you're doing on faith.

00:17:59.960 If they have to rejig their entire mode of evaluation, and given that there's a high probability that

00:18:07.240 you'll be wrong if you're creative, given, say, that most new businesses fail, for example, and

00:18:13.220 that it's very hard to monetize creativity, it's not surprising that creativity is a tough

00:18:19.200 route.

00:18:20.380 For most jobs, managerial, administrative jobs, academic jobs, banking and law, and that sort

00:18:26.420 of thing, conscientiousness is a much better predictor and a much safer bet.

00:18:31.840 And so, if you wanted to have a secure life, and one where you had the highest probability

00:18:37.100 of success, you would choose intelligence, because that's a good thing, all things considered,

00:18:43.040 and conscientiousness, which is dutifulness and orderliness and industriousness.

00:18:48.840 But if you wanted a high-risk, high-return life, well, then you'd choose creativity.

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00:21:48.360 Now, I have no idea why I was telling you that creativity story, to tell you the truth.

00:21:52.160 It doesn't, oh yes, yes, I do remember now.

00:21:59.560 I was adding this 13th chapter to the book, and it was a more creative chapter, I would

00:22:04.500 say, and I wasn't so sure that I should do it.

00:22:07.820 And I went down to, I was working on this chapter, I went down to California to talk to

00:22:12.560 my friend, Adeo, who worked with creative people.

00:22:15.140 And as I said, it started all these businesses, which is a big deal, right?

00:22:19.760 It's like, that's such an amazing thing.

00:22:22.200 He's such an amazing person.

00:22:23.620 He's this six foot four guy, he's completely bald, he's really, really charismatic, enthusiastic

00:22:28.900 like you wouldn't believe, unbelievably hardworking.

00:22:31.820 You know, and he decided that he was going to teach Silicon Valley entrepreneurial techniques

00:22:37.120 all around the world.

00:22:38.080 And then he set up 165 schools in four years and started 2,500 companies.

00:22:42.800 It's like, it's impossible, right?

00:22:45.200 That's, all of that's impossible.

00:22:47.200 And yet he did it.

00:22:48.620 And so, I had gone down to visit him, and we'd spent an evening together, a long evening,

00:22:54.520 because we hadn't talked for a long time.

00:22:55.860 And he gave me this pen, which was kind of a knick-knacky thing, you know?

00:23:00.660 It was just an ordinary pen, but it had an LED light on the end of it.

00:23:06.180 And so I was writing something in the dark.

00:23:09.320 We were in his, he had a Tesla, one of those new electric cars.

00:23:12.080 And I was writing something in the dark.

00:23:13.680 And I thought, well, this is kind of cool.

00:23:15.440 I've got this pen of light.

00:23:16.680 And I started using my imagination, which I suppose someone moderately creatively might.

00:23:22.640 And I thought, well, it's kind of interesting that I get this chance to write down things

00:23:26.460 with a pen of light.

00:23:27.280 I wonder if I could play a game with it.

00:23:29.320 And so I thought, I asked myself a question.

00:23:33.920 I said, what could I do with a pen of light?

00:23:38.920 Assuming I could write in light, you know, which I thought was a very cool sort of notion.

00:23:42.960 Now, you know, there were reasons I did this.

00:23:46.820 And it was partly because I was familiar with some of the stranger things that psychoanalytic

00:23:53.840 types and stranger people than psychoanalytic types had been experimenting with at the turn

00:23:59.460 of the 20th century.

00:24:00.840 Things like automatic writing and so forth.

00:24:02.980 Seances, seances and that kind of thing were very popular at the beginning of the 20th century.

00:24:07.280 And people would go to seances and the person who was leading the seance would fragment up

00:24:14.120 and the spirit would enter them, so to speak.

00:24:16.720 And they would become a different person.

00:24:19.020 And that person would act in a manner that was quite unlike the normal person that everyone

00:24:24.820 knew.

00:24:25.780 And it was quite common.

00:24:27.580 And it was, you know, a parlor, what would you say?

00:24:30.720 It was quite widespread through late Victorian Europe.

00:24:35.400 And Carl Jung studied those sorts of things.

00:24:39.300 And so did Sigmund Freud.

00:24:41.060 And it was part of the study of those, the ability of people to fragment themselves into

00:24:47.820 alternate personalities, let's say, that gave the psychoanalysts the idea that each of

00:24:52.860 us were, in some sense, relatively loose connections of aggregated personalities.

00:25:01.860 And, you know, it's definitely the case that we are that.

00:25:05.820 And you can tell that.

00:25:07.020 Because you see, if you think about it at all, you can tell that that's true.

00:25:12.160 Because, you know, you find yourself doing strange things that you wouldn't think that

00:25:16.900 you would do, or that you don't want to do, or that you're ashamed of doing.

00:25:20.100 And maybe that you can't stop doing.

00:25:22.020 And it's very funny that it's you that's doing it.

00:25:24.660 And it's you that doesn't want to.

00:25:26.000 And it's you that's telling you not to.

00:25:28.260 And yet, you go ahead and do it anyways.

00:25:30.520 And so, there's a real fragmentation there.

00:25:34.180 And, you know, or maybe you're talking to someone and you're very angry with them.

00:25:38.220 And so, you know, you get angry and you love them, hypothetically.

00:25:42.520 Except when you're angry at them.

00:25:44.500 And as soon as you get angry, especially if you're really angry, all you can remember

00:25:48.580 when you look at them is all the things they've done in the past that have annoyed you.

00:25:52.180 And all the things they're likely to do in the future that annoy you.

00:25:55.100 And then you say all sorts of things that, you know, are quite harsh and perhaps cruel.

00:25:59.740 And that half an hour later you regret.

00:26:02.040 And you think, well, what the hell, you know?

00:26:04.140 It's like, here's this person that I'm married to.

00:26:07.040 And, you know, and I have to stay married to, hypothetically.

00:26:10.400 And, you know, I said all these nasty things.

00:26:13.220 And now I'm sorry about it.

00:26:15.220 It's like, well, which person are you exactly?

00:26:17.780 Are you the angry, cruel, vindictive person who may well have also said some things that had to be said, by the way?

00:26:25.840 Or are you the penitential, sorrowful person?

00:26:29.320 And the answer is, well, you're one at one moment and one at another at the next moment.

00:26:35.380 And you're not very well integrated into a single personality.

00:26:38.940 And then, of course, there's the possibility that, and it's necessary for us to be like this, you know, to be dissociable in this manner.

00:26:49.140 So, for example, part of the reason that we can think is because we're dissociable.

00:26:55.240 We can dissociate from ourselves.

00:26:57.080 So, for example, you know, you ask your children, why don't you just do what I tell you to do?

00:27:03.180 And the answer is, well, you're not that bright.

00:27:05.480 And if your children just exactly did instantly everything adults told them to do, they'd never live to see tomorrow, right?

00:27:14.900 And neither would you.

00:27:16.400 And so there has to be some gap between the words, the commands, and the actual implementation of the commands.

00:27:23.600 And the same thing's true when you're thinking.

00:27:25.940 So, you know, when you dream, I don't know if you know this or not, but when you dream, you're paralyzed, except for your eyes.

00:27:34.300 And your eyes move back and forth, and they move back and forth in keeping with what you're seeing.

00:27:39.160 So your eyes are moving, looking at whatever it is that you're looking at in the dream.

00:27:43.300 And there's been very interesting experiments indicating that, because researchers have taught people to dream lucidly,

00:27:51.680 which means that they can become conscious in their dreams, but not wake up.

00:27:56.360 And that means they can signal with their eyes to the experimenters, because they're asleep, but they're conscious.

00:28:02.960 And so they know they're dreaming, and then they can move their eyes three times to the left and two times to the right, let's say.

00:28:09.040 And they can signal to the experimenters that they're in there.

00:28:12.580 And anyways, there's lots of ways that people have found out that.

00:28:16.380 And then they can look at different things, and the researchers can infer that the eye movements are associated with what they're looking at.

00:28:23.440 The rest of your body is paralyzed.

00:28:26.440 And there's been experiments done on cats.

00:28:30.060 People figured out which part of the brain shuts off your body when you dream, and they took that out of cats.

00:28:39.900 Cats are often used, or were often used, as neurological, surgical animals, partly because they have a fairly complex visual system.

00:28:49.900 And it turns out that if you take this part of the brain out of a cat, and then it dreams, it runs around while it's dreaming, acting out its dreams.

00:28:57.520 You know, and you might do this if you sleepwalk, for example.

00:29:00.280 Now, it's not good for the cat, obviously, because the cat can't see, because it's streaming.

00:29:06.480 And so it tends to run into something and wake up in a relatively rude manner.

00:29:10.860 And so, which is, of course, exactly what would happen to you if you ran around when you're dreaming, but you don't, because you're paralyzed, except for your eyes.

00:29:18.300 And the reason your eyes aren't paralyzed, because, well, it doesn't make any difference if you move your eyes.

00:29:22.720 That isn't going to get you in trouble, but the rest of you is paralyzed.

00:29:27.020 And sometimes you wake up.

00:29:28.800 Sometimes people wake up, especially if they go to sleep in the afternoons on their back, and they wake up in sleep paralysis.

00:29:35.840 So they're awake, mostly, not completely, but they find that they can't move.

00:29:41.220 And this is often a time when people hallucinate things like alien abductions and so forth, often, which is something that people experience more often than you might like to think.

00:29:53.260 But one of the more advanced theories about why this sort of thing happens is because people wake up in sleep paralysis, and they're half awake and half asleep and still dreaming.

00:30:04.840 And so they can't tell the difference between the dream and the reality, and they're paralyzed.

00:30:09.160 And so then they report all sorts of strange things.

00:30:12.060 So, anyway, so when you're dreaming, you act out what you think, what you imagine.

00:30:18.720 You're not dissociable.

00:30:20.540 The thoughts and the actions are the same thing, which sort of indicates that you're dreaming with the part of your brain that moves your body.

00:30:28.480 But when you're thinking abstractly, that isn't what you're doing, right?

00:30:32.560 Because what you do, if you think abstractly, if you can, in fact, think abstractly, is you think up what might be and lay out the options, and then you go act it out.

00:30:45.160 And that means you have to fragment yourself into at least two parts.

00:30:49.220 You have to fragment yourself into the part that does the abstract thinking, which is a part that prefrontal cortex does that.

00:30:55.820 That's roughly this part of the brain.

00:30:57.600 And it's very tightly wired to the visual cortex.

00:31:00.040 So you can imagine, let's say, the future.

00:31:02.860 You can imagine a multitude of futures that you might inhabit.

00:31:05.540 And you can do that in principle without immediately acting them out, and which is why, and which is a good idea, because, at least in principle, right, because then you can lay out a complex potential pattern of action that might characterize your personality.

00:31:20.760 And you can think it through to the end, like a simulation, like you're telling yourself a story.

00:31:26.300 And then if it works out well, then you can implement it in the real world.

00:31:30.100 And if it's a failure, then you cannot implement it in the world.

00:31:33.700 And that's actually, at least in principle, why we evolved the ability to think.

00:31:37.580 It was Alfred North Whitehead, I think, who said, the reason we evolved thought was so that our thoughts could die instead of us.

00:31:46.660 And so it's a great advance, because, you know, in animals, who maybe think like we think when we're dreaming, tend to act out what they think.

00:31:55.840 And then when they make a catastrophic error, then they just die.

00:31:59.460 But we can generate alternative selves of all sorts, and we can run them as simulations, and then we can kill off the ones that don't seem to do very well, and act out the ones that do seem to do very well, and then we don't seem to have to die as often.

00:32:15.540 And so that's the purpose of thinking.

00:32:18.660 And that's all to say that we are very dissociable.

00:32:21.880 We're made up of multiple personalities and personality fragments that are unified to some degree by memory, and by the coherency of our value structure, and what we've thought through, and so forth.

00:32:35.740 And then we also have to be dissociable to a large degree, because we have to understand other people.

00:32:41.900 And so, for example, the way you understand someone else, even though this isn't obvious, is that you watch them,

00:32:49.260 and then you notice what it is that you think they're up to.

00:32:53.940 You do that mostly by watching their eyes, but their emotional display in general, which is why you watch their face.

00:33:01.260 Because you notice when you're talking to people, you almost always watch their face.

00:33:05.440 And you watch their face because you can see where they're pointing their eyes, and if you can see where they're pointing their eyes, then you can tell what they're interested in.

00:33:13.620 And then, if you can infer what they're interested in, then you can act like you're interested in it, too.

00:33:19.940 And if that happens to be the case, and maybe you are, and then if you're also acting like you're interested in it, then your body will react to that like their body is reacting to it.

00:33:31.620 And then you can read off your body, your emotional responses to whatever that is, and then you can infer what the other person is feeling and thinking.

00:33:40.500 And that's how you understand people, and so it's, what really happens is that if you're interacting with someone else,

00:33:46.820 you run their personality as a simulation on your own body, and you read off that simulation.

00:33:54.200 And so, and we're unbelievably good at that.

00:33:56.460 Now, look, think about it, you know, you go to a movie, and you can follow all the characters, right?

00:34:00.680 And it's, you know, it's like living the characters, otherwise why would you go to the movie?

00:34:06.220 And you're even willing to live some pretty awful lives at movies, including deaths and murders and all sorts of things that hopefully you don't try at home.

00:34:13.940 But you go to the movie, and you watch the characters on the screen, and you figure out what they're up to, you figure out what their motivations are, if the screenwriter's any good.

00:34:23.940 You get some sense of their motivation, and then you can adopt that motivation, you can embody it, and then you can live out the whole range of experiences of that character on your own body.

00:34:33.920 And, like, that's really exciting for people, and so you can go to a, well, let's say you watch Game of Thrones or something like that, or maybe Breaking Bad, and there's, what, a hundred characters, and they all have these complex narrative arcs, and you're every single one of those people while you're watching it.

00:34:49.580 And it's an amazing ability that our nervous systems, our nervous systems, our bodies, are like places that many, many different spirits can inhabit.

00:34:59.180 You know, and there's you, you're the central spirit that you are, that's coherent across time, but, God, there's just all sorts of things that you could be, and, you know, and so that's all part of dissociability.

00:35:11.660 Anyways, the psychoanalysts were very interested in that back in the late, early 20th century, late 19th century, and they started thinking very seriously about what it meant to be dissociable.

00:35:22.660 They're also very interested in hypnotism, and hypnotism is really, I've had some remarkable experiences with hypnotism in my clinical practice, I've only done it a couple of times, and it turns out that you don't really hypnotize people.

00:35:38.220 Some people are hypnotizable, and if they are, it's easy to hypnotize them.

00:35:43.280 Basically, all you do is you, you ask them to sit, and get comfortable, and then you count back from 10 to 1, and ask them to relax different parts of their body, and suggest to them that they're getting more and more comfortable and relaxed, and at some point you suggest that they fall into a trance.

00:36:02.820 And then you can ask them to remember things about their past that perhaps they wouldn't otherwise be able to remember, or to do things in a dreamlike condition that they wouldn't ordinarily do.

00:36:14.820 And I had some remarkable success in my clinical practice with a couple of clients, one who had psychogenic epilepsy, which wasn't real epilepsy, but was hysterical, which was, I wouldn't say faked exactly, but it was psychogenic in origin rather than physiological.

00:36:33.740 And another woman who had, a very naive person, who had post-traumatic stress disorder, and I had her relive the post-traumatic experience under hypnosis, which took about 90 minutes, and I couldn't get her out of the trance while it was happening, which was quite frightening, because it was the first time I'd ever hypnotized anyone.

00:36:54.220 But it fixed her right away.

00:36:56.280 It fixed her.

00:36:57.400 She only came back.

00:36:58.840 She only came back once after that.

00:37:00.340 It took 90 minutes to go through the, and it wasn't because it was a failure, by the way.

00:37:06.040 It took her 90 minutes to get through the experience the first time.

00:37:11.560 She lived it in real time, so she was in her chair like this, and her eyes were moving back and forth like someone was asleep, and she was speaking, but very quietly.

00:37:21.080 I had to put my mouth right up to her, or my ear right up to her mouth to hear what she was saying. 0.97

00:37:25.960 And she was pointing to what was happening in the room as this assault took place, and she lived it out in real time, and remembered a number of things that she hadn't remembered.

00:37:38.820 And then she disappeared for a couple of weeks, which really frightened the hell out of me.

00:37:43.180 And then she came back, and we did the same thing, and she ran through it in about 15 minutes the second time, as if the memory had been compressed, which was exactly the case.

00:37:52.520 So that was all cool.

00:37:53.600 So that's all the background to this whole pen of light thing, believe it or not.

00:37:57.920 Well, it really is.

00:38:00.120 It really is.

00:38:01.480 It's like some things are complicated.

00:38:03.600 So I was going to play with this pen.

00:38:09.280 I thought, well, I'm going to ask.

00:38:10.520 I have this pen of light, which is kind of a funny thing metaphorically.

00:38:13.680 And you've got to notice when poetic things happen to you in your life.

00:38:17.060 It was quite a beautiful pen, actually.

00:38:20.460 You know, I mean, it was something that couldn't have even existed 20 years ago.

00:38:23.820 And so even though they're a dime a dozen now, it was still quite a beautiful artifact.

00:38:27.980 And it had this quality of being able to write with light.

00:38:30.640 And this idea entered my imagination, which was, well, if I could write with a pen of light, what would I, what would be the appropriate thing to write with it?

00:38:40.920 And, see, I was working on this hypothesis, which was that I could ask myself questions, and I would get answers.

00:38:48.480 And, you know, that's also kind of a strange thing, right?

00:38:50.740 Because you think, well, what do you mean you can ask yourself questions and you can get answers?

00:38:54.940 It's like, aren't you transparent to yourself?

00:38:57.700 Don't you know what the answers are already?

00:38:59.820 And the answer to that is, well, obviously not.

00:39:02.980 Because you ask yourself questions all the time when you think, right?

00:39:07.600 I mean, when you're trying to think, you have a problem.

00:39:10.920 It's a question.

00:39:11.840 You don't know the answer to it.

00:39:13.920 And so you ask yourself the question.

00:39:15.780 That's what you're doing when you're thinking.

00:39:17.540 And then you think up something you didn't know.

00:39:20.080 And it's like, it's not obvious how you do that.

00:39:21.880 I mean, how in the world do you think up something that you didn't know?

00:39:24.780 You think you just know it.

00:39:26.560 But no, you have to think it up.

00:39:28.360 And you don't even know how you're doing it when you're thinking it up.

00:39:31.260 You know, well, I sit there and concentrate.

00:39:33.780 It's like, oh, that's a hell of an explanation.

00:39:35.640 But fundamentally what you're doing is the multiplicity of spirits that constitutes you is having an internal discussion.

00:39:46.360 And the probability that you're asking part of you a question that you didn't listen to before,

00:39:53.200 like a part that you hadn't listened to before, when you're thinking is very, very high.

00:39:58.140 Because, well, where else would the information come from?

00:40:01.280 It doesn't just emerge out of the clear void.

00:40:05.000 You know, there's a source for it and a reason for it.

00:40:08.480 It's not like we understand it very well.

00:40:10.740 But you are, like it isn't like every part of your brain is connected absolutely to every other part.

00:40:18.180 And that's also partly why you have to think.

00:40:20.840 Because you have to, it's effortful for some parts of your brain,

00:40:26.120 all of which have our personality, like to communicate with the other parts and to regulate them.

00:40:31.380 It's a complicated business and that's part of thinking.

00:40:34.140 So anyways, you can ask yourself questions.

00:40:36.140 So we can settle that.

00:40:37.220 That's what you do when you think.

00:40:39.040 And if you really want to think, then you ask yourself a question that you really want the answer to.

00:40:44.140 Because if you really want the answer to it, well,

00:40:46.460 maybe you're willing to give up the preconceptions that you need to give up in order to come up with a new idea.

00:40:51.880 Because sometimes, you know, it's hard to come up with a new idea

00:40:54.460 because, well, you're just not that bright and you can't think up a new idea.

00:40:57.960 But sometimes it's because something you already think is in the way and you don't want to let go of it.

00:41:03.040 You don't want to make the sacrifice, right?

00:41:05.120 And to think often means that you have to make a sacrifice.

00:41:08.100 It means you have to figure out why you're wrong and let go of that before whatever's new can come along.

00:41:15.340 Which is a good explanation, by the way, of why people don't like to think.

00:41:20.460 Because it, almost always when you think, you end up thinking, sometimes it's a eureka moment.

00:41:26.100 It's just a thrill that you come up with something so new that you've been working on for a long time.

00:41:30.840 And it's obviously nothing but good.

00:41:32.800 But often if you're thinking, especially about something complicated and troublesome,

00:41:36.800 especially if something's going wrong in your life,

00:41:38.840 and you're thinking, you're asking yourself, well, you know, what's going on?

00:41:42.060 What's going wrong?

00:41:42.920 What am I doing wrong?

00:41:43.820 Well, the answers you get aren't necessarily going to be ones that you're all that thrilled to get.

00:41:48.920 So, you have to want to have the answer.

00:41:53.120 And so, there's this line from Matthew 7.

00:41:57.520 It's a New Testament line which I'm going to read because it's a very strange line.

00:42:03.400 It's part of what Christ told his disciples in principle.

00:42:07.280 And there's a variety of very strange lines in the New Testament.

00:42:10.920 It's one of the things that, to me, makes it a very bizarre document in all sorts of ways.

00:42:16.400 Because, see, if I was going to create a religion that was going to, like, dominate and exploit people,

00:42:24.240 the first thing I would do is I, and it was, say, based on Christianity,

00:42:28.120 is I would take the New Testament and I'd edit out about 50% of it.

00:42:31.920 Because there's all sorts of things in there that are very, very strange

00:42:35.580 and that don't even necessarily cast the main figure, Christ himself, in a very positive light.

00:42:41.760 So, for example, there's one scene where he curses a fig tree for not, you know, bearing fruit,

00:42:47.480 which is obviously a metaphor, but still seems like a rather petty thing for the Son of God to be doing.

00:42:53.340 You know, and I would think that, you know, somebody would have prettified that at some point in the last 2,000 years,

00:42:59.220 but they didn't.

00:42:59.900 And here's one of those lines that's a very peculiar one.

00:43:04.980 It sounds completely mad.

00:43:08.080 Ask, and it shall be given to you.

00:43:10.840 Seek, and ye shall find.

00:43:12.900 Knock, and it shall open unto you.

00:43:15.540 For everyone who asks receives.

00:43:18.040 The one who seeks finds.

00:43:20.340 And to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

00:43:23.240 Well, you know, that sounds like, that's a hell of a fine deal if it's true.

00:43:27.360 But, you know, really, who believes that?

00:43:29.980 And all you have to do is ask.

00:43:31.460 All you have to do is knock.

00:43:33.000 All you have to do is seek.

00:43:35.240 And, but, you know, it's funny.

00:43:38.460 One of the things I've learned about people is that they start out naive, you know.

00:43:42.720 They trust people.

00:43:43.800 They're naive.

00:43:44.200 And they think they're good because they're naive and they trust people. 0.72

00:43:47.840 But they're not. 0.96

00:43:48.460 They're just naive and not very bright.

00:43:50.580 And, and then, and then they get hurt either by themselves or by other people.

00:43:54.800 And then they get cynical.

00:43:56.600 And then they think they're smart because, you know, now they're not like those naive people.

00:44:00.460 They've been around.

00:44:01.200 They've been kicked around a bit.

00:44:02.240 And now they're cynical and kind of hard-bitten.

00:44:04.740 And that's a hell of a lot more wise than being naive.

00:44:08.440 And that's true.

00:44:09.580 It is.

00:44:10.140 Like, there's nothing good about being cynical.

00:44:12.160 But it's better than being naive.

00:44:15.180 So, but, but there's a place past cynicism, which is, let's say, with regards to trust.

00:44:22.860 That's a good example.

00:44:24.260 And if you go past cynicism, you decide that, well, yes, clearly people are capable of betraying

00:44:30.040 you and you're capable of betraying yourself.

00:44:32.620 But we can't go around assuming the worst of everyone.

00:44:35.820 And we can't go around assuming that everyone is chock full of snakes, even though they are,

00:44:39.940 including yourself, because it's just too damn complicated.

00:44:43.620 And we want to draw out the best in each other so that we can cooperate and compete intelligently.

00:44:49.080 And so, once you're cynical and you know that you can be hurt, but then you also realize

00:44:54.320 that trust is necessary, then you start to trust people because you're courageous.

00:44:59.500 And you say, well, look, I'll enter into an agreement with you and you, with me.

00:45:03.300 And, you know, we'll rely on each other's word.

00:45:06.200 And hopefully we'll, you know, put our, what would you call it, our best interests in

00:45:12.160 alignment, because that's also safe.

00:45:14.120 But what we're doing is we're encouraging the probability that trust will be validated by

00:45:21.100 using the courage to interact with each other.

00:45:24.620 And therefore, we increase the probability that trust will actually come to play its proper

00:45:28.840 role in the world.

00:45:29.620 And that's way better than cynicism.

00:45:32.320 And so, well, the same is true with regards to asking yourself questions and wanting, you

00:45:38.520 know, say, well, if you're naive, you think, well, maybe you think of God in this way when

00:45:43.980 you're four years old or five years old and you hear stories and you pray, you've lost something

00:45:49.160 that you need and you pray and, you know, that God will help you find it and God doesn't

00:45:53.860 because that doesn't seem to be the sort of thing that he does.

00:45:58.280 It doesn't seem to be a wish fulfillment machine exactly that you can just call on whenever

00:46:05.380 you need a wish fulfilled.

00:46:07.380 And that doesn't seem completely unreasonable to me because it would be a pretty damn weird

00:46:11.720 world if you could just, like, wish for something and poof, there it would appear right in front

00:46:16.560 of you.

00:46:18.400 Whatever.

00:46:18.800 I think that would be a weird world.

00:46:21.320 I'm not sure it would be one that would work, but it doesn't matter because that isn't the

00:46:24.920 world anyways.

00:46:26.160 But, but, one thing I have noticed as a clinical psychologist, and I think this is really, really,

00:46:32.000 really worth knowing, is that most of the times when I see people unhappy with their lives

00:46:38.320 and having not accomplished what they feel in their souls they should have, might have or

00:46:45.880 should have accomplished, it's in large part because they didn't aim at what they wanted

00:46:51.500 to accomplish.

00:46:52.700 You know, they pursued something they didn't want to pursue, or they pursued something they

00:46:56.940 did want to pursue, but they just did it half-heartedly, or they just left their aims so vague

00:47:03.480 and so much in the fog.

00:47:05.960 That's a rule for my next book, don't leave things in the fog.

00:47:09.740 They left things around them so ill-defined and vague and foggy to protect themselves

00:47:15.240 against knowledge of their own failure that they never did figure out what they were up

00:47:18.780 to, and so they're sort of wandering blindly around in the dark, and they never get to where

00:47:23.600 they want to go.

00:47:24.560 And it's hardly surprising, because what's the probability that you're going to get to

00:47:28.880 where you want to go randomly?

00:47:31.380 Or, let's say, what's the probability that you're going to get to where you want to go

00:47:34.820 or need to go if you just sit there?

00:47:37.660 It's like, that isn't going to happen.

00:47:39.860 So, no one thinks it's going to happen.

00:47:42.140 And so, at least we know that if you do want something, that you need to aim at it, and

00:47:49.140 you need to ask for it, in a sense.

00:47:51.260 You need to have a vision for it, and then you need to make a plan, and then you need to

00:47:54.920 implement the plan, and it might be that that's what asking actually means.

00:48:00.220 You know, like, let's say you have an ambition.

00:48:02.060 Well, I could give you an example from my own life, you know, like, when I was in graduate

00:48:07.060 school, I hate wearing short socks, when I was in graduate school, I liked to drink a

00:48:16.780 lot, and I came from northern Alberta, which was a small town, well, it's a province, but

00:48:23.880 I came from Fairview, which was a small town in northern Alberta, and it was a heavy drinking

00:48:27.380 culture, and I liked alcohol, and I had a very active social life when I was in graduate

00:48:33.360 school, and I was out, you know, carousing about three nights a week, likely, something

00:48:38.240 like that, which meant I was basically hung over all the time.

00:48:41.740 Well, it does mean that, by the way, because if you drink more than three or four drinks a

00:48:45.820 night, let's say, alcohol withdrawal takes 72 hours to clear, and a hangover is alcohol

00:48:53.100 withdrawal, by the way, and so if you're drinking two nights a week or three nights a week, you're

00:48:58.200 always hung over, whether you know it or not, and if you're having some mood problems and

00:49:03.120 you drink that much, it's highly probable that the mood problems are being exaggerated by

00:49:08.320 the alcohol.

00:49:09.300 And that was fine.

00:49:11.020 I was doing my PhD, and I was working on this book, Maps of Meaning, which was my first

00:49:16.200 book, and, but it got to the point where I had a problem, and the problem was that the

00:49:22.780 book I was working on in particular was so difficult that I couldn't write it and tolerate it either

00:49:30.700 emotionally, I couldn't tolerate it emotionally because it was too intense, and I couldn't edit

00:49:36.600 it intelligently if I was hungover at all, especially as I really started to work on

00:49:41.980 it, and it got better, you know, because if you, if you write something, and you keep

00:49:46.020 editing it, it keeps getting better, and that means every time, hopefully, every time you

00:49:50.760 go back to it, and you re-edit it, you better be sharper than you were the last time you edited

00:49:56.540 it, or you'll just edit it worse, and then that's not fun because you spend an hour editing,

00:50:02.500 you know, what you wrote, and now it's stupider than it was before, it's not, that's not helpful,

00:50:08.800 and I was wrestling with things that I thought were of, you know, reasonably intense psychological 0.74

00:50:14.420 significance, except for me, or as far as I was concerned, and I couldn't handle the emotional

00:50:22.380 stress of doing that, so I had to decide at one point whether or not I wanted to write

00:50:26.880 this book, which took about three hours a day, every day, or whether or not I wanted

00:50:33.440 to continue having the great amount of fun that I was having, and I was having a great

00:50:38.300 amount of fun, and so I decided that I was going to stop having that amount of fun, and

00:50:44.200 there were other reasons, you know, my reasons weren't all that pure and noble, there, you

00:50:49.200 know, there were other reasons as well, but, but that was, so I stopped doing that, and I

00:50:55.220 didn't drink anything for like 25 years, something like that, long time, almost the whole time

00:50:59.940 my kids were growing up, and that was a pain because I enjoyed it quite a bit, but, but I

00:51:06.260 did write the book, and, and, and, and I didn't make a fool of myself in situations where I

00:51:11.300 might otherwise have, which was also a very relevant issue at the time, because I was trying

00:51:16.060 to pursue a complex, what would you say, professional career, and I had to be careful about that,

00:51:23.560 and so, you know, to ask for something doesn't just mean to make a casual wish that it will

00:51:29.340 appear before you in completed form, it means that you decide that there's something that

00:51:34.460 you want, and that it's necessary for you, if you want it, to do absolutely everything

00:51:40.280 you possibly can to get rid of everything that's in your way that's stopping you from

00:51:45.800 doing it.

00:51:47.040 Otherwise, you're not asking for it, you're just playing a game.

00:51:50.960 It's like, well, you sort of want it, it's like, no, no, that, that isn't how it works.

00:51:55.940 If you sort of want 50 things, you're going to end up with none of them, you know, if you

00:52:01.320 want something, if you're really aiming at something, you have to decide how it is that

00:52:06.940 you have to discipline yourself.

00:52:10.340 And the word discipline comes from, it's an old word, it's a French word, and it's related

00:52:16.800 to the idea of penitential chastisement, which is quite interesting, morphed into something

00:52:22.740 like instruction later, but penitential self-chastisement.

00:52:27.620 And it basically means, well, let's say you want something, you have to think, well, what

00:52:35.120 are the impediments to me obtaining that?

00:52:39.280 And some of those might be impediments in the world, you know, maybe you don't have a

00:52:44.020 degree, or you don't have the right qualifications, or something like that.

00:52:47.440 But then there's also all sorts of internal impediments, which is that you're just not

00:52:51.780 who you need to be in order to attain that goal.

00:52:54.540 Maybe you can't speak well enough, you can't write well enough, you don't dress well enough,

00:52:58.440 you know, you're not disciplined enough, you don't have a good enough social network, you

00:53:01.740 don't have a family that supports you well enough, you don't get up in the morning, you're

00:53:05.540 not very hardworking, you avoid things when you shouldn't be avoiding them, you're willfully

00:53:10.020 blind.

00:53:11.600 What else might be wrong with you?

00:53:13.720 Oh, God.

00:53:14.360 You know, it's a long list, and I'm sure you could all add another dozen things without

00:53:19.080 that much thought.

00:53:20.680 So, and so, if you do want something, then you have to think, well, what is it that I

00:53:26.060 need to change?

00:53:27.680 Sacrifice, that's the key issue.

00:53:30.400 What do you sacrifice in order to have fate smile upon you in the manner that it might?

00:53:36.260 And, you know, that's a hell of a discovery that human beings made a long time ago, was

00:53:40.240 that we're the only creatures that have really figured this out, is that you can give something

00:53:44.180 of value up in the present to obtain something of greater value in the future.

00:53:48.900 That's really the discovery of the future.

00:53:51.180 It's also the discovery of delay of gratification.

00:53:53.760 It's even the discovery of work itself.

00:53:56.720 It's the discovery that the future can be bargained with, and that the future is somehow

00:54:00.580 malleable, and that you have some, what would you call it, iota of free will and choice about

00:54:06.460 how your life is going to turn out.

00:54:07.920 I mean, these are major discoveries, and as far as we can tell, no other creature has

00:54:13.260 managed it.

00:54:14.280 But the notion is, well, if you want something, then, so let's assume you're asking, here's

00:54:20.040 what I want.

00:54:21.600 You engender a vision.

00:54:23.380 Here's the conditions under which my life would be worth living.

00:54:26.800 Something I would really like to pursue.

00:54:28.840 Some adventure I would really like to undertake.

00:54:30.780 It's like, well, what do you have to give up in order to get it?

00:54:38.020 Well, that's a hard question.

00:54:39.540 My sister was a very, is a very adventurous type, and she came from the same little town

00:54:43.960 that I came from, and she had all sorts of ridiculous adventures. 0.99

00:54:46.680 She, she smuggled Mercedes trucks down through the Sahara Desert from France into Niger.

00:54:54.380 Niger, I think, I don't remember how to pronounce that properly, but they did that for a while

00:54:58.840 until they, the two red tribesmen in the desert got a little bit too violent, and that became 1.00

00:55:04.520 a bad idea, and she, or, she babysat orphaned baby gorillas in the Congo, and worked in Norway,

00:55:10.580 and, and was a tour guide in Africa on safaris for years, and her friends were quite jealous

00:55:17.320 of her, her friends from this little town, and they always told her how lucky she was

00:55:21.240 that she got to go off and do these things, and as far as she was concerned, there was some

00:55:26.000 luck, because she was in good health, but it wasn't so much luck, it was just the decision

00:55:30.520 that she was going to go do it, and that meant there was a bunch of other things she wasn't

00:55:34.800 going to do, and so she made the sacrifices that were necessary to have these adventures,

00:55:39.960 and so you got to ask yourself, and this is back in relationship to this Matthew line about

00:55:45.140 asking, and it will be given to you, and knocking, and the door will open.

00:55:49.440 And it's like, well, if you're asking, and it's not being given to you, maybe you're

00:55:54.220 not asking very carefully, and maybe you don't want it very badly, and you're not knocking

00:56:00.460 even on the right door, and that's, I tell you, man, that's worth thinking about, because

00:56:06.580 as I said, with my clinical clients, it was pretty damn obvious that most of the time,

00:56:12.240 barring catastrophe and bad luck, which, you know, is always lurking around the corner, that

00:56:17.440 people didn't get what they want, because didn't get what they wanted and needed, because

00:56:21.340 they never aimed at it, you know, and so I'd have people in my practice that were 35 or

00:56:25.500 40 years old, and their lives really hadn't got going, and it was because they kind of

00:56:30.240 desultorily pursued one thing or another in a kind of haphazard manner, they never really

00:56:37.240 finished anything, and they never really ended up anywhere, and, you know, they kind of

00:56:42.820 consoled themselves with the idea that, well, maybe nothing was really worth doing anyways,

00:56:47.440 which isn't, by the way, a helpful thought if you're actually going to go out and do something,

00:56:51.320 and also not one that works very well, because if nothing is really worth doing, then life

00:56:56.240 isn't really worth living, and that's not a very comforting thought at 4 in the morning

00:57:00.920 when you're 40, and you're facing the failure of your life.

00:57:06.400 So none of that's all that helpful.

00:57:09.440 So, and then, there was another thing I learned about asking yourself questions, and this had

00:57:16.840 to do with arguing with my wife, and we have a fairly combative relationship, I would say,

00:57:22.320 although it's a very good one, and it's combative in a good way, because I think that you should

00:57:26.920 be, you're fortunate if you're associated with someone that you have to contend with a bit,

00:57:32.440 you know, that have got a little bit of spirit, and we kind of know this from, I think, reasonable

00:57:36.760 psychological experiments, showing that if you, imagine I asked you to document how many

00:57:42.720 positive and negative interactions you had with your partner in a day, and you did that

00:57:47.060 for like a month, and what you'd find is if it's like fewer than five positive interactions

00:57:52.800 to one negative interaction, then you guys, your relationship is probably not going to last.

00:58:00.280 It's too much negative.

00:58:02.500 But, then you might think, well, what about those people, you know, none of whom exist,

00:58:07.220 by the way, who have like a hundred positive interactions to one negative interaction?

00:58:12.800 It's like, well, their marriages don't last either.

00:58:16.400 And I think the reason for that is, is that there has to be some balance, right?

00:58:21.180 Like, you want the other person, the person you're with, to constrain you a little bit.

00:58:24.660 You want them to have some standards, and you want to have some standards, and you want

00:58:28.660 to impose those standards on each other, maybe so that you both get less wretched than you

00:58:34.240 are, and easier to live with, and more productive in all of that, and if your partner is just

00:58:39.400 all sweetness and light, and everything you do is perfect, which you can bloody well be

00:58:43.800 sure it isn't, then, you know, it's very difficult to have any respect for them.

00:58:47.840 So, it kind of looks like for every eleven smiles, you have to deliver one slap.

00:58:52.460 And so, um, and, and now I'm sure that'll be the headline in some New Zealand newspaper

00:58:59.360 tomorrow, so, you know.

00:59:05.380 Yeah.

00:59:07.540 Dr. Peterson recommends slapping your wife or husband at least one time in eleven interactions.

00:59:14.160 It's like, it's a problem of not really understanding metaphor.

00:59:17.320 So, um, so, but, you know what it is, you know perfectly well that you like your wife 0.63

00:59:23.700 better, and she likes you better if you stand up for yourself now and then, and that requires 0.92

00:59:27.900 a certain amount of conflict, and you need the damn conflict, because, you know, you try 0.94

00:59:32.440 to think things through, and that's conflictual and hard, but it's just you, and your wife 1.00

00:59:37.420 tries to think things through, but it's just her, and you're both ignorant, and there's 0.99

00:59:40.680 a million, you know, there's a million things you don't know, and you're full of biases 0.99

00:59:44.320 and blind spots, and, and, and, oh, God, just trouble.

00:59:49.720 And, um, and so, you know, and, but you have serious problems to deal with, and so when

00:59:55.500 you get together and you put your heads together to deal with a serious problem, there's going

00:59:59.060 to be some conflict, because to think through a serious problem is to set up a sequence of

01:00:04.980 arguments that don't come to the same conclusion and battle them out.

01:00:09.460 And so, if you're not doing that in a relationship, then you're not solving hard problems, and that's

01:00:14.040 a really bad thing, because if you're in a relationship, you have hard problems.

01:00:19.000 If you don't right now, you certainly will, so, um, because hard problems come along in

01:00:24.340 life.

01:00:24.960 So, one of the things my wife and I learned to do was that if we were having a scrap, and 0.84

01:00:29.840 it wasn't going very well, you know, it was, it was several hours, and we were auguring

01:00:34.420 in to more and more serious, you know, recriminations and so forth, that we would separate ourselves

01:00:40.720 and go sit, you know, her on one something vaguely, hopefully uncomfortable, at least

01:00:46.940 that was my hope, and me sitting on the edge of my bed, and, of course, I was hoping that

01:00:53.120 I was completely right about everything I was saying, and that she was absolutely wrong,

01:00:57.200 even, you know, failing to notice entirely that, do you really, do you really want to

01:01:01.160 be married to the person who's absolutely wrong?

01:01:04.240 I mean, it doesn't even reflect that well on you, so, um, yeah, yeah, yeah, this is my 1.00

01:01:14.420 wife, she's wrong about everything, and I picked her, it's like, you're a real bloody 1.00

01:01:18.760 genius, you are. 0.83

01:01:19.760 Yeah, so, um, so, our, the deal was, well, um, you go to your room, and I'll go to my 0.99

01:01:26.160 room, and, uh, you go think about what you did that was stupid that made us have this 0.82

01:01:31.480 argument, um, and I'll go think about what I did that was stupid that made us have this 0.99

01:01:36.900 argument, and, of course, I'd go to my room, and I'd think, well, like, I'm 95% right, at 0.98

01:01:40.800 least, I know it, that's maybe more, maybe 99%, but maybe there's 1% stupid thing I did 0.61

01:01:47.180 that I can think up that I could admit to, and, and then I'd have the 99% victory, and 0.79

01:01:53.120 she'd have the 1% victory, and that'd be a good outcome, and so, I'd sit there and think,

01:01:58.820 okay, and this is asking, it says, all right, perfect as I am, perhaps there is something

01:02:10.100 foolish that I did or failed to do in the last two, three months, or maybe even before

01:02:17.180 that, that slightly increased the probability that we're in this mess that we're in. 0.97

01:02:25.160 What was it?

01:02:27.020 And I actually wanted to know, which is a very, rather terrifying thing, and, and I'd sit

01:02:31.840 there and, uh, just as sure as hell, see, this is prayer, eh, you think, are prayers answered?

01:02:38.900 I'll tell you, if, here's a prayer that will be answered all the time, sit on the edge of 0.99

01:02:43.820 your bed and ask yourself, how am I stupid? 0.98

01:02:51.140 Man, I tell you, you'll get an answer to that question, like, so fast that it's just terrifying, 0.99

01:02:59.620 and, and it's really about the best thing you could possibly pray for, because if you are 1.00

01:03:04.140 stupid, um, you should, you should know, because if you, if you know you're stupid, if you figured 1.00

01:03:11.640 out some way you're stupid, then you don't have to act that stupid thing out, and then 1.00

01:03:15.740 you don't get, have to get walloped for it, and so really, maybe all you should be doing 1.00

01:03:20.400 is praying for, praying to figure out why you're so damn stupid, like every day, and hoping 0.99

01:03:26.060 that you learn, and I think that that's, well, that's definitely one of those things that 1.00

01:03:32.020 if you ask, it will be given to you, no doubt about it, and so that's pretty cool, and, you

01:03:37.680 know, you don't need to think about it all metaphysically, although you can, um, you can

01:03:42.880 just think that, well, you know, you're, you're set up biologically to note your own errors,

01:03:49.920 and you know that, because you wake up in the middle of the night, and you're guilty and 0.99

01:03:52.820 ashamed, and you're thinking about all the stupid things that you've done, and that happens 0.99

01:03:56.140 pretty, there's a part of your brain that, that deals with mistakes you've made, and, and, and it 1.00

01:04:02.040 uses negative emotion, it uses guilt, shame, disappointment, frustration, and anxiety to track

01:04:08.100 errors that you've made, and it's always knocking at the door, which is why you get anxious and

01:04:12.540 depressed, and, you know, if you sit there on the edge of your bed, and you open the door and say,

01:04:17.840 okay, God, what did I do wrong? It's like, hey, that thing, that alarm system,

01:04:22.700 it's ready to report a whole litany of sins, and the reason for that is it would actually 0.99

01:04:27.500 like you to stop being stupid in that particular way, so that you don't, like, die painfully, 0.98

01:04:33.220 and, and so you can get an answer, and so I learned that you could ask yourself questions 0.99

01:04:38.460 and get answers like that, and, and that's all the background, and so then I thought, well,

01:04:43.400 I have this pen of light, and now I'm going to ask some quests, see, I am talking about that,

01:04:48.340 what, what, what would I do with this pen of light? I said, what could I do with it? So I'm going to do

01:04:54.480 something important with it, because I'm writing in light, it's like, let's not mess about here, and so

01:04:58.760 I wrote down, I was actually writing, and, and allowing myself to, let's say, dissociate

01:05:04.760 imaginatively, and I wrote, what could I do with my pen of light? And the answer came, write down the

01:05:11.440 words I want inscribed on my soul, and I thought, hey, well, that's not so bad, you know, it's a

01:05:17.620 little old test in the mentee, if that's a word, um, little, maybe, maybe, maybe a little over the

01:05:24.520 top, but, you know, it was okay, yeah, for a start, um, that, why not have words of light inscribed

01:05:32.140 on your soul? That's a nice poetic idea, so I thought, good, that's a good starter, and, um, then I thought

01:05:39.300 I'd ask myself some questions, uh, real questions, like questions I actually wanted the answer to,

01:05:44.820 and so I, it was like a meditative exercise, you know, um, and, and so I asked, I wrote down these

01:05:52.660 questions, and then I'd sit, and just sort of open up my space of imagination, let's say, and see what

01:05:59.280 came in, which is, I guess, what you do when you think, because I don't know how the hell you think,

01:06:05.740 as you think, and what words appear in your imagination, whatever that means, and then you

01:06:12.840 have them, and then you can write them down, and it's certainly the case, like, when you're writing,

01:06:18.100 when you're creating, when you're writing, and artists say this as well, it's, it's, they often

01:06:23.280 say that it's not so much that they're doing it, it's that something is flowing through them,

01:06:28.100 and that they allow that, and, you know, that's a metaphor too, and God only knows what it means,

01:06:33.300 means the muse is, is, is at work in them, and it's, it's a creative spirit, and it's not just

01:06:39.280 their creative spirit, because there is a creative spirit that, in, in, what would you say, it occupies

01:06:45.920 all of us, which is why we can define such a thing as creativity, and it's been working over a very

01:06:51.040 long period of time, and it inhabits us to a lesser or greater degree, and it has a history, and all of

01:06:56.600 that, and its own opinions, and, and, and you can communicate with that, and so that's what I was trying

01:07:01.860 to do, so here's some of the questions, and some of the answers, and so I'll read some of them, not all

01:07:07.940 of them, but some of them, and talk about them a little bit, and so the first question was, and, you

01:07:14.080 know, this was all happening sort of in the middle of a lot of this political crisis, and weirdness that

01:07:19.860 I'd got involved in about two years ago, when my life had got flipped upside down, and I was starting

01:07:24.860 to become, let's say, notorious for, for reasons that, no doubt, were somewhat deserved, and somewhat

01:07:31.760 weren't, but were certainly happening, and so I was in a rather chaotic state, and I was curious about

01:07:37.820 what sorts of things I might be up to, and what I should do, and so the first question was,

01:07:42.600 what shall I do tomorrow, and the answer was, the most good possible in the shortest period

01:07:52.080 of time, and I thought, I like that quite a bit, I mean, you might as well have an ambition

01:07:59.880 for tomorrow, I mean, you got to go to all the trouble of getting out of bed, you know, there's

01:08:05.820 that first, and maybe you need a reason, I mean, frequently you need a reason to get out

01:08:10.580 of bed, especially if you're not, if things aren't going that well for you, for all sorts

01:08:15.360 of reasons, because your life has become unduly complicated, and, and so you need a reason,

01:08:20.820 and you think, well, if you're going, if you need a reason, well, why not have a good reason, and a

01:08:25.920 good reason might be, well, what could I do to seize the day, what could I do to do the best I possibly

01:08:33.860 could in this day, in that period of time, because you can also conceptualize

01:08:40.160 your life across different spans of time, and you generally do, but a day is a nice

01:08:46.380 span, because it's not that long, it'll end, you know, not too long, you'll get to go to sleep, and

01:08:53.040 it'll be over, for better or worse, and in a time that isn't unbearable, but it's also enough so that

01:08:59.720 you could do something during the day, and it's obviously the logical unit of the

01:09:06.740 conceptualization of consciousness, because we're conscious for 16 hours in the day, and

01:09:11.860 then not for eight, and so our life is actually made up of 16-hour chunks of consciousness, and

01:09:17.840 it's easy to think of your life as a stack of papers, you know, each paper is a 16-hour time

01:09:24.300 of consciousness, and that your job is to maximize the quality of that entire sheaf of papers, and

01:09:30.780 that's really useful to know, too, because what it means is that, you know, you duplicate the day

01:09:36.800 over and over, kind of like Groundhog Day with Bill Murray, you duplicate the day over and over,

01:09:42.880 and what that actually means is that the things that you do each day that you might consider mundane

01:09:50.260 because you do them each day are actually the most important things in your life, and that's a really

01:09:56.420 important thing to know, too, you know, it's like you spend, say, three hours eating, and maybe you

01:10:00.700 spend three hours eating with your family, and it's like three hours of unrequited hell, and that's,

01:10:06.500 and maybe not, you know, but probably, you know, that's 21 hours a week, or 100 hours a month, or let's say

01:10:16.280 1,000 hours a year, or it's six months of work weeks a year for your whole bloody life, you know, and so

01:10:26.620 then you think, well, geez, I have to eat three times a day, maybe I should get my act together around

01:10:31.240 that, and, you know, pay a little attention to the quality of what I have eating, and also the quality

01:10:35.900 of how it is that we're interacting as a family while we're eating. A lot of socialization does take

01:10:41.640 place around the dinner table, and you think, well, God, you know, if we could bat 750 at the

01:10:47.920 breakfast, lunch, and dinner table, then we've basically taken care of 20% of the totality of

01:10:56.240 our lives, you know, it's really something to consider, and so that's some, that's a good thing

01:11:00.820 to know, if you only remember one thing from today, remember that the important things that you do in

01:11:06.720 your life are those things that you do every day, because you do them every day. It's not

01:11:11.620 vacations, it's not the exceptional experiences in your life, it's the things you repeat, it's how

01:11:17.600 you're greeted when you come home after work, you know, it's how you put your kids to bed at night,

01:11:22.900 and how that goes, anything repeated, get that right, get it right, you know, and you can, you can

01:11:29.040 adjust like 80% of your life by playing with those habitual routines until they're pristine and

01:11:35.260 well-practiced and well-put-together, so that's a good thing, and so that's part of doing

01:11:40.640 what's good today, figure out how you might have a good day, and then you might figure out how you

01:11:45.860 would have a good day that you could repeat, and that might mean that there's some things that are

01:11:50.020 annoying that you need to attend to, that you know you need to attend to, that you go and attend to,

01:11:54.800 even though you don't want to. Maybe only do a bit of it, because that's all you can handle, but

01:11:58.860 at least tomorrow's a little better than today. And then in the shortest period of time, that's kind of nice,

01:12:04.920 because, well, if you're going to set yourself an ambition, and you're going to do something good,

01:12:09.580 why not do it efficiently? That would be good, because then you could do more of it, and it's kind

01:12:15.760 of a better challenge, and so I often tell my graduate students, for example, that if they're going to run

01:12:21.060 an experiment, that they should design the experiment, then they should sit down and figure out if there is

01:12:26.220 some way, they could do it ten times faster. And they almost always can. And so, a lot of good,

01:12:32.680 efficiently. Sounds like a hell of a fine plan, so that was question and answer one. What shall I do

01:12:39.240 next year? Try to ensure that the good I do then, next year, will be exceeded only by the good I do the

01:12:46.980 year after that. Well, that was good, I thought. It's a nice aim. It's a nice kind of an elaboration on

01:12:54.880 the first idea, you know, that you're going to try to do something good during the day. Well, what

01:12:59.380 would you do in a year? You try to make the year better, so that you have a better year this year

01:13:03.920 than you had last year. That's a nice plan, and it doesn't mean that you're necessarily competing with

01:13:08.980 someone else, or jealous, because someone else has something you don't. It's just an improvement on

01:13:14.400 the miserable wretch that you were. And then it's an improvement. The year is better, and you can 0.98

01:13:19.960 probably do that, like my suspicions are, and I've seen this with my clients. You can probably make

01:13:24.140 tomorrow like one one-hundredth of a percent better than today. And that's not very much,

01:13:31.120 but man, that compounds quick. And if you do that on a yearly basis, then hopefully your years get

01:13:36.160 better. And so that's a good goal. Things are going to get better, and the rate at which they're

01:13:40.920 going to get better is going to improve. Hey, that's a nice aim. What shall I do with my life?

01:13:47.580 That's a much broader question. Aim for paradise and concentrate on today. Paradise, that means

01:13:56.880 walled garden. That's kind of a cool thing, because we live in walled gardens, you know. That's the

01:14:04.060 natural habitat of human beings, according to the stories in Genesis, that human beings live in

01:14:10.020 paradise, walled garden, or Eden, which is a well-watered place. And so the right place for a person is a

01:14:16.120 well-watered, walled garden. And, you know, basically that's what people want. You know, you want a house

01:14:21.960 with a, like a fence around it, and you want some land in there where you can grow some plants and have

01:14:27.440 some peace, and a little bit of water would be good, because otherwise, you know, you, you, you

01:14:31.920 desiccate, and all your plants die, and so water would be good. And so you aim to have that balanced

01:14:39.880 properly, and, and, and to do that, and to do that well as a superordinate aim. And, and you want to

01:14:46.720 make that as good as you can. And you aim, you aim for that, and then you, and the second part of that

01:14:52.460 was aim for paradise and concentrate on today. And that reminded me of another part of the, uh, New

01:14:58.920 Testament, which is another very strange section, because it, it's, it's, it sounds like some hippie 1.00

01:15:04.580 that you should never listen to is actually telling you the story. And so I'm going to read it to you,

01:15:09.880 because it, it isn't that, it's something else. Um, it's from the Sermon on the Mount.

01:15:16.680 And why take ye thought for raiment clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow.

01:15:23.340 They toil not, neither do they spin. And yet I say unto you that even Solomon in all his glory,

01:15:28.920 was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothed the grass of the field, which today

01:15:35.080 is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?

01:15:41.500 Therefore, take no thought, saying, what shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or wherewithal

01:15:47.480 shall we be clothed? For your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.

01:15:53.660 But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.

01:15:58.960 Of course, there had to be a kicker at the end, you know. And it's a kicker that people really

01:16:03.620 don't pay any attention to. And, and the thing about it is that I believe that it's actually

01:16:07.620 psychologically accurate. It's, it's, it's dead on accurate. You know, um, many of you have seen the

01:16:13.300 movie Pinocchio, it's a favorite movie of mine. Um, and there's a very cool scene in Pinocchio,

01:16:18.980 there's a number of them, that everyone just sort of takes for granted. And, you know, Pinocchio, or Geppetto,

01:16:24.180 makes this puppet marionette, wooden-headed thing, and he paints its mouth on, that's the

01:16:29.680 last thing he does, so that it has its own voice. Then he has a little dance with it, to signify that

01:16:35.360 things are in good order, and he puts it on the shelf. And then he goes to bed, and when he goes

01:16:40.080 to bed, um, he sees a star, and it's the same star that, at the beginning of the movie, announces

01:16:46.220 Pinocchio's birth, which, you know, you should be able to figure out what that means, if you use your

01:16:50.220 imagination a little bit. And, um, Geppetto sees this star, and he opens the window, and the starlight

01:16:56.800 comes in, and he looks up at the star, and he makes a wish, which is a strange thing, you know. We wish on

01:17:02.540 stars. Everybody kind of knows what that means, and maybe you play that little game with your kids,

01:17:06.500 and it's a bit archaic, but you might still do it, and, and we kind of understand that, even though

01:17:11.140 it doesn't make any sense. It's like, well, what do you mean you wish on a star? What, what, what the

01:17:18.100 hell does that mean? Um, and then you think, well, poetically, because part of you is poetic, and you

01:17:24.340 think about what a star is, and a star is something that glitters in the darkness, so that's the first

01:17:28.700 thing. It's light in the darkness, and that's cool. And a star is something by which you orient

01:17:34.020 yourself, right? Once people figured out that there was a north star that was fixed in the sky, man, then we

01:17:40.020 could travel all over the planet, so we could guide ourselves by the stars, and that, that was quite

01:17:45.820 cool. And then, you know, we worship stars, Hollywood stars, and we call them stars, and that's a funny

01:17:52.320 thing, or sports stars, and so, and why are they stars exactly? It's not like they glitter at night, although I

01:17:58.600 suppose some of the Hollywood starlets do that, but that's not really the issue. Why do we call

01:18:03.560 them stars? Well, it's because they're targets of emulation, or models of emulation, or something

01:18:10.540 like that, and, and so, and then there's something that above, they're above the horizon, too, you

01:18:15.200 know? And so, Geppetto's idea was that, well, he had made this puppet, which was the, the, the,

01:18:23.840 uh, prisoner of the forces of other, of other forces, that was, it was something controlled by, by

01:18:31.460 strings that were, that were played by other people, that were moved by other people. It wasn't an

01:18:37.060 autonomous being, but that what he would want, if he could have anything, was that his son could be an

01:18:43.200 autonomous being, and so he raised his eyes above the horizon, and wished for this absurd outcome, that a

01:18:50.220 puppet, a materialistic object, let's say, could develop into an autonomous being, and, uh, you

01:18:56.680 know, and then told himself that he was being foolish, and went to bed, and, you know, fair 0.79

01:19:00.780 enough, man, but, you know, if you're a parent, or you're a father, if you have any sense, that's what 0.74

01:19:05.340 you wish, you hope that your new son, let's say, or your new daughter, for that matter, you know, is

01:19:12.080 imbued with the spirit that allows them to develop beyond their limitations, into something that's

01:19:17.780 truly autonomous and, and, and individual, and so what it means is that you have to aim high. It's

01:19:23.980 necessary to aim as high as you can conceptualize, and then having done that, to concentrate on the

01:19:31.620 day, and that, that, that gives a relationship between the mundane things that you do during the

01:19:37.160 day, and the, and the ultimate, you know, the transcendent ultimate, and human beings, because we're such

01:19:43.000 strange creatures, we're finite and infinite in the same way, in some sense, we need to be

01:19:48.680 grounded across that entire array of reality, we have to pay attention to the mundane realities

01:19:55.360 of, of here and now, but we have to be aiming at something that's far beyond us, like, as far

01:20:00.860 beyond us as we can imagine, and then, and then that, that imbues what we do during the day with

01:20:06.680 significance, but by the same token, also enables what we do day by day, that's mundane, you know, as

01:20:15.080 mundane as what the day by day things are, to contribute to something of tremendous significance in the

01:20:22.080 future. A friend of mine who's trying to rebuild a large tech company and I were talking about

01:20:26.500 medieval bricklayers, you know, and you could be kind of a depressed bricklayer back in like 1538,

01:20:32.420 and think, Jesus, you know, it's just another brick, man, another brick, and it's another brick, and

01:20:37.840 tomorrow it's like 200 more bricks, and you know, who, who wants to spend their whole day

01:20:42.860 laying bricks, or you could notice that you're building a cathedral, and it's going to take 350

01:20:49.320 years, and that you're not building, you're not laying bricks, you're building a wall that's part of

01:20:54.260 the supporting structure for this absolutely magnificent edifice that's going to last for a thousand

01:20:59.580 years, that's aimed at illustrating something of profound value, whatever that is, you know,

01:21:08.140 conceptualized as God, but, but, but the highest value to which people can aspire, all immense,

01:21:15.920 amazing stonework, and, and, and imbued with light, and music, and, and aimed at the good, and then you're

01:21:23.140 not just a bricklayer, man, you're someone who's building a cathedral, and you know, you build it brick by

01:21:28.140 brick, and so it's paradise you're aiming at, but you do it brick by brick, and that's worth knowing,

01:21:35.080 and so that's a good thing.

01:21:40.020 If you found this conversation meaningful, you might think about picking up Dad's books,

01:21:44.240 Maps of Meaning, the Architecture of Belief, or his newer bestseller, Twelve Rules for Life,

01:21:48.660 and Antidote to Chaos. Both of these works delve much deeper into the topics covered in the Jordan

01:21:54.020 B. Peterson podcast. See jordanbpeterson.com for audio, ebook, and text links, or pick up the books

01:22:00.660 at your favorite bookseller. Remember to check out jordanbpeterson.com slash personality for

01:22:05.520 information on his new course. I really hope you enjoyed this podcast. Talk to you next week.

01:22:11.020 Follow me on my YouTube channel, Jordan B. Peterson, on Twitter, at Jordan B. Peterson,

01:22:18.260 on Facebook, at Dr. Jordan B. Peterson, and at Instagram, at jordan.b.peterson. Details on this

01:22:26.000 show, access to my blog, information about my tour dates and other events, and my list of recommended

01:22:32.480 books can be found on my website, jordanbpeterson.com. My online writing programs, designed to help people

01:22:40.220 straighten out their pasts, understand themselves in the present, and develop a sophisticated vision

01:22:45.660 and strategy for the future, can be found at selfauthoring.com. That's selfauthoring.com.

01:22:53.420 From the Westwood One Podcast Network.

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - March 15, 2020

My Pen of Light - Part One

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