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

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 51 of the Jordan B. Peterson podcast.

00:01:00.340 I'm Michaela Peterson, Jordan's daughter.

00:01:02.540 I hope you enjoy this episode. It's called My Pen of Light Part 2 and was recorded in Christchurch, New Zealand on February 20th, 2019.

00:01:10.720 How about some good news for you?

00:01:12.780 Dad's recovering still, and I actually think he'll be back around and online in the next month.

00:01:17.900 That's a hopeful estimate, but it's been amazing to watch.

00:01:21.000 I hope you're out there staying positive given what's going on.

00:01:23.640 There's a lot of uncertainty right now, but I have a positive outlook for whatever that's worth.

00:01:27.760 China and Korea look a lot better, and I think that kind of shows us what's going to happen here. 1.00

00:01:32.020 It looks like we're in for a rough time for the next few months, and then we'll bounce back stronger than ever.

00:01:36.660 My family and my dad were self-quarantined in Florida.

00:01:40.140 We're lucky to be here.

00:01:41.140 We haven't driven each other mad yet either, or madder than we already are, that is.

00:01:46.020 So stay positive, enjoy this podcast, and if you missed the first part of this lecture, check out last week's podcast.

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00:03:49.880 My Pen of Light Part 2

00:03:51.960 A Jordan B. Peterson 12 Rules for Life Lecture

00:03:54.840 I think I'll tell you two more.

00:04:04.820 There's quite a few of these.

00:04:06.040 There's about 30 of them, but I'm obviously not going to get through all 30.

00:04:11.400 That's just not going to happen.

00:04:13.460 But that's okay.

00:04:14.300 Let's do a couple more.

00:04:15.940 Here's one that I like. 0.84

00:04:17.580 What shall I do with a lying man?

00:04:20.620 Let him speak so that he may reveal himself.

00:04:23.980 Well, that's a free speech issue as far as I'm concerned.

00:04:29.200 And I think it's the reason that free speech is so necessary.

00:04:32.380 It's like, well, on the one hand, you know, part of the reason that speech is free,

00:04:38.920 not that it's not without cost, that isn't what it means,

00:04:41.520 is that you have the right to listen to someone else.

00:04:46.920 You know, and that's actually really useful

00:04:49.040 because you're just not nearly as smart as you might be.

00:04:51.980 And someone that you don't even like might tell you something you really need to know.

00:04:56.140 And so the Americans have really done a good job of delineating this

00:04:59.740 because they made compelled speech illegal in the United States in the 1940s.

00:05:03.960 And part of the reason for that and compelled speech was, you know,

00:05:06.840 required by the government that you use certain forms of discourse,

00:05:10.340 which was something I was objecting to when that became law in Canada a couple of years ago.

00:05:15.220 And their argument was, well, you know, none of us are as smart as we could be.

00:05:19.840 And so if there's a fair bit of public discourse, even among people who hold clashing views,

00:05:25.680 even among people who have a fair bit of enmity in their heart,

00:05:28.780 there's always the possibility that one of us will pick up some sliver of information

00:05:32.420 that turns out to be crucial.

00:05:34.060 And there's no damn way that the state should deny us the possibility that that might happen.

00:05:39.520 And so that's worth thinking about.

00:05:41.880 It's related to rule nine in my book, which is assume the person you're listening to

00:05:46.140 might know something that you don't, you know, which you don't have to do if you think

00:05:51.140 you already know everything, but which you do need to do if you think that there are some

00:05:55.600 things that you need to learn.

00:05:57.160 And then the other thing with regards to people who lie is that, well, maybe, you know,

00:06:01.520 we could say, well, there should be no fake news.

00:06:03.700 There's no lies in the news.

00:06:05.120 It's like, forget that.

00:06:06.480 That's like, that's never, ever going, it's never happened.

00:06:09.940 And it's never going to happen because, well, it's not that easy to separate the wheat from

00:06:14.700 the chaff.

00:06:15.300 And it's hard to tell if someone's willfully blind or ignorant or biased or consciously 0.94

00:06:20.020 lying or unconsciously lying or, you know, or, or, or tired that day or, or under pressure.

00:06:26.980 God only knows there's all sorts of reasons for communicating poorly.

00:06:30.540 So you can't regulate all that, but you could believe that the truth will out over time,

00:06:36.620 you know, and that what is a lie, if it's allowed to manifest itself, will become clear

00:06:43.280 to people as a lie and then to become known as a lie and then to be discarded.

00:06:49.780 And there's another section from Matthew.

00:06:53.460 I didn't really expect to read all of these sections from Matthew today, but I guess that's

00:06:57.560 how it goes, um, what shall I do with a lying man?

00:07:01.960 Let him speak so that he may reveal himself.

00:07:05.820 Ye shall know them by their fruits.

00:07:08.380 Do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles?

00:07:13.240 Even so, every good tree bringeth forth good fruit, but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil

00:07:19.360 fruit.

00:07:20.640 A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit and neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good

00:07:25.860 fruit.

00:07:27.320 Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire.

00:07:32.860 That's a rough one, man.

00:07:34.980 And yeah, well, it, and you see, this is true.

00:07:38.020 It's so true. 0.84

00:07:39.000 It's, it's like, God, you know, another thing you learn from doing psychotherapy, you know,

00:07:44.340 people are having a miserable time of it for one reason or another.

00:07:46.980 And, you know, maybe they're not getting along with their family.

00:07:49.360 And, and, and I'm not talking about physiological illness and bad luck, and we're going to leave

00:07:54.000 those aside.

00:07:55.040 You know, and, and you start talking about it, and you dig and you dig and you dig.

00:07:59.320 And sometimes it's months and weeks, weeks and months of digging, or maybe even years.

00:08:04.220 And then you get to, to the bottom and you find some ugly little secret, you know, that's

00:08:08.880 been part of the family maybe for a couple of generations or part of this person's memory

00:08:13.300 structure for a couple of decades.

00:08:15.480 And they finally get to the horrible bottom of it, you know, and they find out that there's

00:08:21.980 something deceptive and, and wrong, some decision they made that put their life in a bad direction

00:08:28.260 and that's caused them grief and misery ever since.

00:08:30.560 And they may have forgotten even that they've made that decision, you know.

00:08:34.420 And, and the truth of the matter is, is that when you do act in a deceitful manner, you

00:08:40.540 warp the structure of the reality around you and within you, and how could it be otherwise?

00:08:45.440 Because that's the very definition of deceit.

00:08:47.900 And then if you do enough of that, it takes your life apart piece by piece.

00:08:52.100 And that's what that phrase means, that it'll be hewn down, is that, you know, if you build

00:08:57.160 your life on, if you, if you build your house on sand, if you deceive yourself and other

00:09:03.180 people, then you will absolutely pay for that in every possible way.

00:09:08.200 And one of the things that I have learned as a clinical psychologist that certainly terrified

00:09:12.440 me, and continues to terrify me, is that you never get away with anything.

00:09:18.780 I've never seen anyone in my clinical practice, or in my life, when I really look into things,

00:09:25.140 and I can look into things quite deeply if I choose to, I've never seen anyone ever get

00:09:33.100 away with anything.

00:09:35.500 And it's not that surprising, because, like, what do you expect?

00:09:38.820 You're going to twist the fabric of reality to suit your, like, current self-interest?

00:09:45.220 And that's going to hold?

00:09:47.080 It's going to be you against the fabric of reality, and you're going to come out as the 0.92

00:09:50.920 victor? 0.99

00:09:51.580 I mean, that's, that's, well, it's, it's absurd, it's ridiculous, it's arrogant, it's self-serving, 0.99

00:09:58.000 it's naive, and besides that, no one even believes it. 0.99

00:10:01.860 So, what shall I do with a lying man? 0.58

00:10:07.780 Let him speak, so that he may reveal himself.

00:10:10.900 By their fruits you shall know them.

00:10:13.720 Yes, well, that's a very good reason for, for, for free speech.

00:10:18.520 And then this is the last one, I would say, that we'll deal with today.

00:10:22.420 How shall I deal with the enlightened one?

00:10:26.860 Replace him with the true seeker of enlightenment.

00:10:29.720 I really like that one.

00:10:31.300 It's, it's kind of a Buddhist question and answer there.

00:10:34.900 It's like, you know, now and then you, you meet someone who claims, perhaps, to be enlightened,

00:10:40.760 and, and, and maybe now and then you even think that you're that one.

00:10:46.640 And it's a mistake, because you can't be that one, because you don't know everything,

00:10:52.240 or, or worse, you hardly know anything.

00:10:55.780 And, and the more you learn, the more you know, you don't know anything.

00:10:59.820 And, and, and you also, the other thing you learn is that you can't do things only by yourself.

00:11:04.400 You know, so even if you were the enlightened one, like Buddha, even Buddha came back to help

00:11:10.220 everyone else become enlightened, because just being enlightened on his own didn't seem to be good enough.

00:11:15.880 Even if you were the enlightened one, which you aren't, you'd need other people around.

00:11:20.420 And so, and so, and so, but there is an idea of enlightenment, you know, and that it's something

00:11:25.960 we should pursue.

00:11:27.780 And so what's the idea that if you encountered the enlightened one, there's this old book called,

00:11:33.140 If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him, which is a 60s book, which is hardly surprising.

00:11:39.140 But it, it kind of, it kind of reflects the same idea. 0.84

00:11:42.160 It said, someone who's enlightened isn't enlightened because they know.

00:11:46.700 They're enlightened because they're seeking.

00:11:50.200 It's because they know they don't know.

00:11:51.900 That's the old Socratic idea, right? 0.97

00:11:53.840 Is that Socrates was regarded as the widest, wisest person in, in Greece, because he knew

00:11:59.700 that he didn't know anything.

00:12:01.420 And, and the answer to the, the reason that that's so useful is that instead of assuming

00:12:05.620 that you know, and that's good enough, when it isn't, given that your life is a mess, and

00:12:11.360 the lives of people around you are a mess, and the world's in a mess, which means that

00:12:15.700 you don't know, because it wouldn't be a mess if you knew enough, then you could start looking

00:12:21.860 at what you didn't know.

00:12:23.760 And you could start seeking out what you, you still needed to know.

00:12:27.560 And, and you could start to spend more attention, paying, you could start to pay more attention

00:12:32.800 onto what it was about you that was insufficient and lacking, even by your own standards, and

00:12:39.680 then you could start to learn and grow.

00:12:43.400 And then by participating in that process of letting go of what about you isn't valid

00:12:49.200 and useful, and letting that die, letting that burn off, and letting what's new about

00:12:54.740 you emerge and transform continually, which is something that human beings have the capability

00:13:00.260 of doing, then you're on the pathway to enlightenment, you know?

00:13:04.420 And that in some sense is as close to enlightenment as you get, is that you're a seeker of knowledge

00:13:10.260 and not the person that holds the knowledge, which, which is why, at least in part, I'm not

00:13:15.980 a fan of ideologues, because they tend to know about five things, and then assume that the

00:13:21.660 entire world can be crammed into the space defined by those five things, and that's just

00:13:27.180 not the case. It's much better to, to adopt a questioning attitude towards the world, and to

00:13:34.560 understand that because everything isn't the way that it should be, in your life, and in your

00:13:40.440 family's lives, and in the lives of your community, that that means that you are, in some sense, 0.94

00:13:46.380 fundamentally insufficient and ignorant, and that as a consequence, what you need to do is to 0.91

00:13:52.520 admit to what's wrong, and to change, and to learn, and that that's the proper pathway forward. 0.95

00:13:59.360 And I would hope that that's what we're doing when we have conversations like this. And I'm also

00:14:06.580 hoping that the reason that these conversations, which I've had in about 140 places, as I said, now with

00:14:13.540 about 300,000 people, are actually popular, as they are popular on YouTube, because people are

00:14:19.580 realizing, noticing, hoping, that there are things they don't know, and it's important that they don't

00:14:30.040 know them, and that there are things that they could know that are also important to know, which

00:14:34.600 implies that there are important things to know, and important things to do. And that all seems to me to

00:14:40.760 be entirely correct. And so, well, and so that that's what I'm hoping that that people

00:14:51.220 will do, is that they'll, let's say, they'll ask themselves the right questions. It's like,

00:15:01.140 my life isn't what it should be. My family's life isn't what it should be, and my culture isn't what

00:15:10.920 it should be. Why? Well, maybe that's on me. Like, you're a cornerstone of your community. That's why

00:15:19.800 you vote. Our culture has decided that each of us has whatever it takes, that spark of divinity that

00:15:26.500 enables us to steer the ship of state properly, that that capacity relies on our own intrinsic wisdom.

00:15:38.460 And you know that you're responsible for yourself, and for your family, and that you could be responsible

00:15:42.620 for your community. You think, well, it's not what it should be. It's bothering me. Maybe it's bothering

00:15:49.460 me so much that I can hardly stand being alive. You know, that's despair. You think, well, what's the

00:15:56.080 way out of the despair? It's like, well, maybe I'm doing something wrong. Well, first of all, what's

00:16:04.620 the probability of that? It's like 100%. You can be absolutely certain. If you need a certainty,

00:16:11.680 there's one. There's at least one thing that you're doing wrong. There's a lot bigger list than that.

00:16:18.660 And of those things that you're doing wrong, there's probably a couple of things that you could

00:16:23.540 stop doing wrong, that you would stop doing wrong. You know, and then maybe you might ask yourself,

00:16:30.580 this is rule six, put your house in perfect order before you criticize the world. It's like,

00:16:39.140 okay, everything's not to my satisfaction.

00:16:42.180 but I'm doing some things wrong. Maybe before I complain, I'll stop doing those things wrong and

00:16:54.140 just see what happens. Maybe things will improve. And I would say, well, that's confession. That's

00:17:02.720 atonement. That's redemption. That's all of that. It's like, God only knows what your life would be

00:17:07.820 like if you stop doing the things that you knew to be wrong. It's a really good start. And it's

00:17:12.600 also the case, you know, that you stop doing the things that you know to be wrong. That's a

00:17:16.680 disciplinary practice. That's penitential chastisement. Then all of a sudden, you can start

00:17:21.220 to see the things that you should do, that you should do, that are good. And then God only knows

00:17:26.580 what you can manage. You know, I mean, one thing I learned from the 20th century, from reading 20th

00:17:31.320 century history, was that there's absolutely no limit to how much hell you can create around

00:17:35.640 yourself. That's why hell's a bottomless pit. I don't care how terrible it is where you are.

00:17:42.360 There is a stupid thing that you could willfully do, or blindly do, that would make it worse. 1.00

00:17:48.400 And so there's a hell underneath that hell, and there's another one underneath there, and there's 1.00

00:17:52.300 no bottom. And what I also learned, I think, as a consequence of that, was that the reverse was also

00:17:58.060 the case, that, you know, that the world is structured in that sort of moral hierarchy, and that as you

00:18:03.220 start to do things that are good, and put your life together, well then, the probability that you'll

00:18:08.360 do something good again, maybe better, increases, and then maybe something even better, and then maybe

00:18:15.540 something even better. And it isn't obvious to me that just as there's no bottom to hell, that there's any

00:18:20.940 top to heaven. And it seems to me that that's a, well, that's a good thing to know, and it's a good

00:18:27.560 thing to think about, whether, like, I don't know, I don't know, you have to think about it, I mean,

00:18:32.720 I don't know anybody, really, who I've ever had a serious conversation, who would deny the fact that 0.97

00:18:37.820 there isn't a situation they can be in that's so bad, that there isn't something stupid they can do 0.99

00:18:42.980 that would make it worse. I mean, virtually everyone agrees with that, and if that's the truth, then the 0.97

00:18:48.280 opposite has to be the truth, or if there's a down like that, which there clearly is, there has to be

00:18:53.640 an up in the opposite direction, whatever that opposite direction is. And I think that's why we

00:18:58.800 have to understand the world as a moral place, and as a place that is dependent for the manner in

00:19:05.400 which it manifests itself on the quality of our moral decisions. And to ask ourselves, well, if the

00:19:11.140 world isn't everything that it should be, by our own standards, and that we're desperate and unhappy

00:19:17.900 and nihilistic and cruel and resentful because of that, then perhaps the appropriate place to start

00:19:23.660 is with the kind of humility that allows you to ask the question properly, which is, well, am I doing

00:19:32.360 am I doing something wrong? And if so, God grant me the fortitude to set it right before I judge

00:19:50.160 and then to see. That's faith, you know. Do you believe in truth and do you believe in courage? It's

00:19:58.560 like, well, what happens if you manifest that in the world? Well, at least it's going to be less like

00:20:03.900 hell. That's something. And God only knows where you could end up. Well, so, that's some of the

00:20:13.260 things I learned when I was playing with my pen of light.

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00:23:28.540 Okay, so now, but not for very long, because I talked longer than I was supposed to,

00:23:34.140 I'm going to answer some questions. So, John, will you set the timer again? I suppose I'm out

00:23:40.000 of question time as well already. What have we got? 20. Excellent. All right, so you've submitted a

00:23:48.880 number of questions, and so I'm going to go through them and see what I can come up with and see if

00:23:54.760 that's useful. I start a few here. This is a good one. Might as well start with this. Are you okay?

00:24:05.300 Yeah, and it's all capped, you know, so this is anonymous, and nine people upvoted this,

00:24:19.280 probably more since 723, and I don't bloody well know. I mean, sometimes I think yes, and sometimes

00:24:27.480 I think no, and I mean, I think in some profound ways no, because there's plenty I have to learn,

00:24:33.580 and plenty I have to do better. If you mean by, and then it might be political, are you okay?

00:24:40.100 It's like, well, not everybody thinks so. So, you know, and I could be wrong, although,

00:24:47.560 God, it's hard for me to believe that I'm as wrong as the people who think I'm wrong are.

00:24:51.940 And then, I guess the other issue is, are you okay? Well, I have the odd health problem,

00:25:07.140 which I'm trying to keep under control, but it seems to be working fairly well, and

00:25:10.820 I seem to be okay enough so that I can continue doing whatever it is that I'm doing. And what I'm

00:25:19.460 doing, as far as I'm concerned, is that I am trying, see, I believe that, well, and so I'll

00:25:26.540 tell you this, and then you can decide if I'm okay, because, you know, God, who knows? I believe that

00:25:32.880 the way that we look at the world, we look at the world through a story, and we can't help it.

00:25:40.580 And that's the way our psyches are structured. That's the way our cycle, that's our, that's the

00:25:46.800 nature of our psychophysiological being. There's no way out of the story, which is why we love stories

00:25:53.960 so much, and why we tell them, and why we teach children with stories, and why we watch them for

00:25:59.700 entertainment, and, and, and why we love them, because we're in a story. And if you're not in a

00:26:06.620 story, then you're in trouble, man. You're, you're, you're actually, you're just in a different kind of

00:26:11.460 story. You're in a, you're in a story about chaos, and, and, and disarray. And that's the story of the

00:26:17.160 desert. And sometimes it's the story of hell. And, and those aren't good stories. And so I don't even

00:26:22.920 think you have the option of being in a story or not. You have the option of being in a good story,

00:26:28.260 or a bad story. And a bad story can be very bad indeed. Our culture is predicated on a story.

00:26:37.100 And it sort of sits between what we know and what we don't know. You know, scientifically advanced as

00:26:43.400 we are, technologically intelligent as we are, there's an infinite amount about the nature of

00:26:49.500 being that we don't understand. I mean, God, it was what's been 10 years since we figured out that we

00:26:54.440 don't know what 95% of the universe is made of, right? A dark matter, dark energy. Like that's

00:27:01.380 actually, that's actually a fair chunk of reality to just overlook and then not notice, you know?

00:27:10.540 And so, and we also know that our scientific theories, as credible as they are, tend to become

00:27:18.440 radically revised, less rapidly now, say, in domains like physics. But I suspect there's still a shock

00:27:24.800 or two to be found there. We're in, so we have this technological knowledge, but outside that,

00:27:33.540 we're ignorant about the fundamental nature of being and the fundamental nature of reality and

00:27:38.080 consciousness. And we need a buffer between what we know and what we don't know. We need a zone that's

00:27:45.020 sort of, that we sort of know and sort of don't know. And the dream is the buffer, by the way, in

00:27:50.500 your own daily life. The dream is the buffer between what you know and what you don't know. And every

00:27:56.100 night, to maintain your sanity, you have to move from what you know, the conscious world, into the dream

00:28:02.720 world, and to re-emerge from that. And if that doesn't happen, you lose your sanity. So, in some sense,

00:28:08.900 the sanity of your consciousness is dependent on the insanity of your dreams. And the stories of our

00:28:16.360 cultures, the great underlying stories in Judeo-Christian tradition, the biblical stories in

00:28:21.420 particular, but not only the biblical stories, are the dream in which our culture is embedded.

00:28:26.880 And we've lost a relationship with those stories. And we can't. Because our sanity is predicated on

00:28:35.820 their integrity. And if we lose the stories, then, well, then we'll end up, we'll end up in a story that

00:28:42.780 none of us want to inhabit. And so, what I'm trying to do is to put the Judeo-Christian story back 0.98

00:28:50.500 underneath the substructure of Western culture. And so, I don't know if that makes me okay or not.

00:28:57.980 Probably not. But it's worked for me, and it seems to have worked for my family, and it seems to be

00:29:14.380 working for people around the world to a degree that's really quite incomprehensible. I have people

00:29:24.260 write me all the time. You know, I did a series on the Bible in Genesis a year and a half ago.

00:29:32.040 I think the first lecture, it's got about three million views. It's three hours on the first

00:29:37.440 sentence in Genesis. It takes a long time to get through the Bible if you spend three hours on each

00:29:43.240 sentence. But it's really been interesting, the consequence of that, man. You wouldn't believe

00:29:48.160 the letters I've got. I've got letters from, like, groups of Orthodox Jews in Germany, and from monks

00:29:55.700 in, like, in the Orkneys, and from lots of Muslims who are watching the Genesis stories and describing

00:30:05.220 the effects on them. And Orthodox Christians, in particular, seem to be happy with me, which is

00:30:10.000 quite a strange thing, although I kind of like their doctrine. And Catholics think that I would be a good 1.00

00:30:14.860 Catholic if I just smartened up a little bit. And Protestants, they've pretty much completely 0.98

00:30:20.060 decided that it isn't necessary to believe in God, so they're ignoring me completely. And that's fine.

00:30:28.320 But it's very interesting to see the consequences of telling these stories again and watching what

00:30:34.040 happens and to try to bring the abstraction of the story down to earth, so to speak, so that

00:30:39.800 people can understand, at least as insofar as I understand or think I understand what the stories

00:30:46.000 mean. And all of it seems to be good. I mean, it's creating an awful lot of havoc around me, especially

00:30:52.760 in the press, although that's not all that worrisome in some sense, especially because it's become

00:30:59.360 dreadfully boring and repetitive. After you've been called the full set of 30 names, several dozen

00:31:09.500 times in all possible orders, the impact decreases substantially. One of the funniest days, so to

00:31:22.540 speak, I had two funny days two years ago. It's kind of an indication of what my life was being

00:31:28.840 like. My son came home one day and I said, God, Julian, you won't believe what happened today.

00:31:35.900 He said, 200 of my fellow faculty members at the University of Toronto signed a petition requesting

00:31:45.580 that I be dismissed and my union delivered it to the administration without even notifying

00:31:52.440 me. And it was my union. You'd think they would have just politely mentioned to me that this was

00:31:57.900 being planned. And Julian said, oh, dad, don't worry about it. It was only 200 people. So yeah,

00:32:06.540 well, think about that. That was the situation at that point. It was like, well, it was just 200

00:32:11.020 colleagues. That's nothing compared to what sort of attacks you've been subject to over the months

00:32:17.020 before that. So that was funny. And then, not really. And then, and then another day, this was a good

00:32:24.200 one. Two articles, both came out in the UK press the same day. One was written by a Jewish magazine,

00:32:30.520 which accused me of being Hitler, essentially, or at least put my picture right beside Hitler,

00:32:35.740 and then talked about how I was kind of like Hitler in various ways. Not just because we were both

00:32:41.160 featherless bipeds, either. And another alt-right site, the same day, detailed out in great detail

00:32:51.860 why I was a Jewish shill. And I figured, well, that's it. That's pretty much, we've, we've pretty

00:32:58.680 much covered, covered the territory. It's like, it's like Nazi or Jewish shill. I thought, well, 0.92

00:33:05.760 you know, the only possible worst, the only worst possibility would be that I was somehow both at the

00:33:13.200 same time. And, you know, who knows? And that kind of goes back to this question about whether or not

00:33:19.180 I'm okay. I guess. So, yeah. So that's, that's that answer, I guess.

00:33:34.000 Meaning is to be found at the intersection between the known and the unknown. Do you think

00:33:38.540 this relates to early attachment, where a child's main purpose is to push the boundaries? Nikita asked

00:33:44.180 that. And the answer to that is, yes. Exactly. You got it exactly right. There is this developmental

00:33:50.700 psychologist named, now I can't remember his name, of course. He, he's a Russian. He came up with the

00:34:00.860 concept of the zone of proximal development. The second greatest development. There we go, Vygotsky.

00:34:07.360 Yes, yes, exactly. And so when you hear that people are in the zone, it's partly influenced by

00:34:13.060 Vygotsky. And the zone of proximal development is a, is a place. And it's a place that's very much

00:34:19.040 worth knowing. It's the place that the Taoists have studied forever. And I would also say that

00:34:23.440 it's the kingdom of God on earth that Christ states that is there that people don't see. I think

00:34:29.960 these are the same ideas fundamentally. The zone of proximal development. So one of the things Vygotsky

00:34:36.300 noticed was that, or, or students of Vygotsky, I can't remember precisely, was that when adults

00:34:44.000 talked to children, they tended to speak to them at a level that slightly exceeded their current level

00:34:52.080 of comprehension. Which is really a cool ability, right? Because it's not like you write out a lexicon

00:35:00.020 of your child's vocabulary and then, you know, think, well, here's 15 extra words that juniors should

00:35:05.340 learn today. It's like, you don't do, you don't know how you teach your child to talk.

00:35:10.560 You just do. And, but part of the way you do is that you, you, you don't only say to them things

00:35:18.920 they understand. You say things to them that they kind of understand, but that pull them forward into

00:35:25.020 what they don't yet know. And so that's that boundary between chaos and order, or between known

00:35:32.060 and unknown. And it's the right place to be. It's the exciting place to be. Because if you're just

00:35:37.760 where you know, then, well, first of all, that's not good because you don't know enough and, and

00:35:43.360 something's going to shift around you and reveal your ignorance and then, you know, you're in, you're in,

00:35:47.920 you're in trouble. This is a problem with tyrannies, right? They regulate everything until it's just 0.90

00:35:52.940 absolutely rigid and made out of stone. And then the ground shifts and everything collapses.

00:35:59.560 There's no flexibility. That's not good. And if you're out there just in chaos, it's nihilistic and

00:36:05.380 you have no direction, there's no order. Well, you can hardly tolerate that. It's so stressful

00:36:10.440 and so disorienting. That's no place to be, even though there's no shortage of what's new out there.

00:36:16.060 It's, it's too much. And so what you have to do is to find the boundary. And what's so cool about

00:36:22.480 this, and this is, this is truly something that's, it's a miracle of sorts, I would say. This is from

00:36:29.340 rule seven, which is do what's meaningful and not what is expedient. It's pretty damn clear, I would

00:36:37.400 say, from the mythological writing and the literary writing and the neuropsychological, neuropsychological

00:36:43.420 investigations conducted by well-qualified human neuropsychologists and animal experimentalists,

00:36:51.400 that you have a deep instinct for meaning and for that boundary. So imagine that it's good to be

00:36:59.440 where you know what you're doing. And so that's a place, that's the known. And the known, that place,

00:37:06.220 it's like you're around the campfire with your friends. That's the known. It's not the forest outside,

00:37:11.200 right? It's, it's your tribe. And, and you know that, you know where you are because you're joking

00:37:17.660 and you're laughing and you're with people and when, and you're doing things and when you do them,

00:37:22.420 they work. And so that's the known. The known is the place where when you do things, they work.

00:37:29.540 And that's kind of a funny place because we don't think of that sort of place as a place, you know,

00:37:34.820 because we think sort of geometrically, but it's a, it's a psychological place, let's say,

00:37:39.220 and it's the place that's very comfortable to be. And then there's the place you don't know.

00:37:43.540 You go to a party, it's out of your league in some manner. You don't know anyone there. And you're,

00:37:49.200 you know, you're underdressed or overdressed and you're awkward as hell. And you make a couple of

00:37:53.160 jokes and they fall flat. And you, you know, you just wish that you were not there or maybe even

00:37:58.420 dead. And, and that's the unknown. And that's where what you're doing isn't producing what you

00:38:06.140 want. And you don't want to be there, especially you don't want to be there in any radical manner

00:38:11.360 because if you're out where you don't know and you don't know enough, then it's fatal. And so too far

00:38:19.540 out into the unknown, you're done. And so the known has a certain amount of comfort and the unknown has a

00:38:27.000 certain amount of discomfort and they both have their disadvantages. One's too rigid and the other

00:38:31.340 is too chaotic. And so then the question is, what do you do about that? And the answer is,

00:38:35.460 you find that line right in the middle. That's the straight and narrow path, right? That you walk on

00:38:40.820 and there's chaos on one side and there's order on the other. And you have one foot in order

00:38:46.500 because then you're stable, you know, you're secure. You're not, you're not pushing yourself so far

00:38:52.040 that you can't tolerate it. There was another question in there about, well, how do you know if you're

00:38:56.100 taking on too much responsibility? Well, then too much chaos in your life, too much burden, you can't

00:39:01.280 handle it. And so you got to pull back because, you know, you got to be comforted to some degree.

00:39:06.220 You want to have a bit of routine in your life. Another thing that with my clinical clients, I always

00:39:10.560 insist on, it's like, look, man, if you're anxious and chaotic and nihilistic and disorganized, it's like, 0.98

00:39:16.860 put some damn order into your life. Here's some things you could try. How about getting up at the same 0.95

00:39:22.880 time every day? Just as a disciplinary strategy. Pick a time. Maybe it's three in the afternoon.

00:39:29.600 Like, I wouldn't, I wouldn't recommend that, but it's better, three in the afternoon is way better

00:39:33.840 than 11 o'clock one morning and four o'clock the next day and, you know, two o'clock the next day and

00:39:39.400 just, you can't live like that. Your brain can't even organize itself with regards to its fundamental

00:39:46.200 circadian rhythms if you don't get your sleep-wake cycles right. It's so like, pick a time to get up.

00:39:51.420 That's something. It's also something you don't have to think about anymore. You think about every

00:39:55.800 day. What time am I going to get up? It's like, Jesus, don't you have anything better to think

00:39:59.100 about? It's just like, bloody well, get up. It's eight o'clock. Get up and go think about something

00:40:03.620 else. And then maybe you could think about going to bed at approximately the same time, which isn't

00:40:08.580 as important, by the way. And then you might think, well, you could probably eat now and then on

00:40:14.540 something approximating a regular basis and maybe with some other people because we are social eaters and

00:40:20.100 people don't eat well alone. And so, you know, people kind of think you have to eat three meals

00:40:25.180 a day and, well, maybe three isn't right, but zero is wrong and 50 is wrong. So three's not bad. And

00:40:33.600 I would also recommend, which is a rule I haven't written about, which is you should do what everyone

00:40:40.100 else does unless you have a very good reason not to. Well, seriously, it's like, if you have a good

00:40:46.420 reason, you're that guy, man, you got some new idea. It's revolutionary. It's like, hey, break a

00:40:52.000 rule. Go ahead. It'll be of benefit to everyone because it's time for that rule to go. But if you're

00:40:57.060 not that guy and you're just all over the place haphazardly because you have no discipline, it's

00:41:02.940 like, you're not a free spirit or free agent or some sort of rebel. You just have no discipline.

00:41:07.640 And you stand in dangerous opposition to the stability of the state. It's like, so, and even

00:41:16.100 if you are going to have a great adventure and do some really different things, you know, like you're

00:41:20.440 going to put yourself bloody well out there on the edge, I would also say, and I learned this from

00:41:24.760 Jung, you should nail down some good habits and a lot of them, routines. Because if you're going to push

00:41:30.920 yourself really hard in one direction and risk exhausting yourself, you better make sure that you have some

00:41:36.280 comforting routines and rituals to return to so that you can reconstitute yourself when you've

00:41:43.280 gone a little bit too far out into the unknown. So anyways, you don't want to be too much in the

00:41:48.960 known because, well, you don't know everything. You need to learn some new things and you don't want

00:41:53.160 to be too far out in the unknown because it's too damn chaotic. And so you want to be in the middle.

00:41:58.740 And you can tell when you're in the middle because you're kind of secure in what you're doing.

00:42:03.660 You know, you're not overwhelmed with anxiety. That's a good sign. You're not overwhelmed with

00:42:07.700 anxiety or negative emotion. You might be a little apprehensive. You know, like when I come out on

00:42:12.080 stage, before I come out on stage, I'm a little apprehensive. And that's a good thing because if

00:42:17.120 this was, if I knew this, if it had become rote, it would have started to become dead. There'd be no

00:42:24.120 animating spirit left in it. And so a little anxiety, that's okay. It wakes you up, you know,

00:42:29.040 but not too much. Just, just enough to sharpen you up, keep you on edge. And then you want to be out

00:42:36.000 there in the unknown a fair bit, in chaos, because, well, that's exciting. You know, we're adventurers,

00:42:41.840 us human beings, right? We're, we go boldly where no man has gone before. That's what we do,

00:42:47.800 you know? We go into the unknown and we find the dragon, the dreaded beast, the terrible predator

00:42:52.820 that, that, that contains the gold. And we gather what we can from the unknown and we bring it back

00:42:58.420 and we distribute it to the community. That's what we are. And you can tell when you're doing that,

00:43:03.820 because you're in the right place on that line, the zone of proximal development, where children are

00:43:09.160 when they're pushing the boundaries, because that's what they're trying to do. Well, okay, mom,

00:43:13.540 here's a boundary. What if I break this rule? Just a bit. Well, how about this one? Just a bit.

00:43:19.160 How about this one? My son, God, he was, God, that kid, he'd find a line and he would just worry that

00:43:26.060 line to death for like two weeks. Well, can I do this? Can I do this? What about this? It's like,

00:43:33.780 push him back, push him back, push him back. Keep him, keep him solidified. My wife and I used to talk

00:43:39.700 and say, look, damn kid, getting out of control again. It's time to, time to crack down on him, 1.00

00:43:45.580 because he's, he's pushing the boundaries too much. It's like, okay, okay, what are we going

00:43:50.540 to do about this? Don't let your kids do anything that makes you dislike them. Right? That was the

00:43:55.260 rule. What are we going to do? All right, for the next two weeks. He was like two when we were doing

00:44:00.140 this, two and a half. It's like, he doesn't get away with anything. Zero. Every time he breaks a

00:44:06.380 rule, it's like we, we stop him. So we did that. And it was so weird because he was a tough kid

00:44:12.520 and he's still a tough kid. And every time we tightened up the boundary on him, he liked us way

00:44:22.300 better. It was so cool because while, you know, he was testing for, I guess, for something he could

00:44:27.680 also admire to some degree. Right? And he's two and a half. And like, if, if, if you're two and a half

00:44:33.220 and you can push your father over, there's just not that much admiration there. Right? He wants to

00:44:39.100 come up, come up against like a wall. Think, oh, look, a wall's there. Okay. Well, there's 3,000

00:44:45.120 other directions I can go in. You know, I can't go there. That's not such a big limitation. You know

00:44:51.240 how it is when kids are learning to walk. You know, they stand up underneath a table and bang. It's

00:44:58.660 like, and it's painful. And what do you, don't go buy an adjustable table. You know, you notice that

00:45:07.200 they do that like twice. And because the table doesn't negotiate, they don't do that anymore. After

00:45:16.420 twice, it's like the table is like, it's a wall. Well.

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00:46:41.160 So anyways, yes, children do find that place to push the limits. And the thing is, they want to

00:46:49.560 find the limits, you know? And the limit is partly encouragement of their continued growth, but also

00:46:55.600 the walls around them that need to be there so that they can feel secure enough to play. And you can tell,

00:47:01.540 actually, if you've got the balance between chaos and order proper in your house, then your children will

00:47:07.240 play. Because play only emerges, it's a very fragile psychophysiological process, very necessary

00:47:15.640 one, but it can be suppressed by virtually any other emotional or motivational state. And so if you've

00:47:22.080 got your house set up properly, and I do believe that this is a particularly important function of

00:47:26.720 fathers. If you've got your house set up properly, it's secure enough so that the children can risk

00:47:33.000 playing inside the house. And they really need to play. And when they're playing, they are on the

00:47:38.980 border between order and chaos. And they need that. It's what pushes their development forward.

00:47:46.600 And it's the same with us as adults. You know, we have this instinct for meaning. Say, well,

00:47:51.720 what's meaningful? Well, let's say, well, doing what you can do, that can be meaningful. But it's not

00:47:56.920 enough, because you want to stretch yourself, you know? If you're really good at your job, but it's the

00:48:00.960 same old thing every day. There's something about that that makes you feel like there's a lack.

00:48:06.380 You want to be good at it, but you want to be getting better at it. And that's that line. And

00:48:12.720 you have an instinct for meaning. And the instinct for meaning puts you there. It puts you where

00:48:17.060 you're good at something, or as good as you can be, but now you're pushing yourself beyond what you're

00:48:23.420 good at, at a rate that exhilarates you, makes you anxious enough to be awake, but keeps you intensely

00:48:30.300 engaged. And that's meaning. And that's an instinct. It's the instinct of transformation.

00:48:37.200 And it's not something arbitrary. You know, you hear, well, what's the meaning of life? It's like,

00:48:41.420 well, it's something invented. It's like, no, it's not. There's no evidence for that. The evidence is

00:48:46.600 that it's something that's discovered. And one of the things that's very interesting to do,

00:48:52.040 if you're interested in meaning, is to watch yourself for a couple of weeks, you know, and say,

00:48:56.420 well, you're kind of miserable. You're not having such a great time of it. And maybe you should find

00:49:01.400 out if you're sick, because sometimes that can contribute to that. But let's say you're not.

00:49:05.580 It's like, watch yourself. You'll find that some period of time over the next two weeks,

00:49:11.420 you'll be engaged in something. You know, time, you won't notice that time is ticking by slowly.

00:49:18.920 You'll be engaged as if what you're doing is meaningful. And who knows what it'll be. It might be a

00:49:23.380 conversation. It might be encountering someone that you love that you didn't even know you loved.

00:49:28.640 It might be reading something. It might be a video game. It might be a hobby. Who, God, it might be

00:49:34.800 shopping for clothes, cleaning up your room, messing up your room. I don't know. Whatever. But you'll find

00:49:42.800 that there will be periods of time when you're where you should be doing what you should be doing.

00:49:49.320 And that will be marked by that process of engagement. Then the trick is to notice and then

00:49:59.700 to think, okay, what the hell did I do to get here? Like, what were the preconditions? I'm in the

00:50:04.940 right place all of a sudden. I'm halfway between chaos and order. And I'm not sure how I got here.

00:50:10.460 I need to meditate on what I did that enabled me to be in this place. And now I have to figure out

00:50:16.760 how to be here longer periods of time. And then the trick is to practice so that you're there

00:50:23.120 more and more and more and more and more and more and more of the time. And then you're in the right

00:50:29.740 place at the right time. And then things justify themselves, right? Because you have that ongoing

00:50:36.040 sense of intrinsic meaning that is associated exactly with children's natural tendency to learn

00:50:42.240 and progress. And it has exactly the same function for you. And your nervous system is set

00:50:48.520 up to reward you with psychological stability and with engagement in life when you've positioned

00:50:56.560 yourself personally and socially in a place where you're making the most of what you've got

00:51:02.800 and you're getting better at it all the time. And that way you serve yourself in the optimal way

00:51:09.500 and you serve your family in the optimal way because we're social creatures. And perhaps you serve your

00:51:14.140 cultural in the optimal way. All of those things stack up nicely together because we are social beings.

00:51:19.980 And then you're in a state of harmony with the structure of the world. And it works psychologically

00:51:25.760 because it's meaningful psychologically. Constrains suffering and adds positive engagement.

00:51:31.200 And it also works collectively. And so it's a hell of a thing to know, especially when you know that

00:51:36.680 it's an instinct and not merely something that's arbitrary or constructed. Something that you can

00:51:42.040 discover if you're careful enough to attend and to notice. Not to think so much about it, but to attend.

00:51:50.720 You know, there's a difference. The Egyptians, they worshipped the eye of Horus and that was the eye that

00:51:55.680 paid attention to willful blindness and to evil. And it was the redemptive

00:52:01.180 eye as far as they were concerned. And the idea that the eye is redemptive is a very old idea. And

00:52:06.460 it's partly there because you can learn to be where you should be by paying attention. And it's not the

00:52:14.240 same thing as thinking. You pay attention first and then you think. It's like, oh look, what I'm doing

00:52:21.500 is working. There are characteristics of this place. It's a desirable place. There are characteristics of it.

00:52:29.140 There's ways I have to act in order to maintain this. What exactly are they? Well, that's a humble

00:52:34.140 question too because it means that you don't know, right? You didn't know who you were. You didn't know

00:52:38.660 that was the place you needed to be. You're not sure how to be there. But you can learn. And you set

00:52:43.540 things in order. In a kind of harmonious order. And it's an order that, well, it's the music of the

00:52:51.000 spheres. It's the proper order of the world. It's the order that music speaks of when it lays

00:52:56.680 everything out in its ordered harmony and patterns. It's why people like music. It speaks of that,

00:53:02.960 of being in that place. It's why we play music in churches, you know. And why there's something,

00:53:10.320 why there's something of religious, deeply religious significance and meaning about music,

00:53:15.260 even for people that are secular. It speaks of that possibility of order. And so, yes, that's why

00:53:22.600 children push the limits, you know. And why they need to find them as well. And also to be encouraged

00:53:28.820 to experiment with them, right? To dance on that edge. And my son got really good at it with his

00:53:34.180 pushiness, you know. Because he was one of those kids that, tough kid, he'd worry that line, worry the

00:53:40.500 line, worry the line. He wanted to know exactly what the damn rule was. Not vaguely, but precisely. 0.99

00:53:45.260 What can I get away with? You know. And we'd push back against him. And he got unbelievably socially

00:53:51.120 facile. He's very, very good with people. Because he can read subtle social cues. You know, we always

00:53:58.240 tried with him. The rule was, funny's good, but don't push it. Right? And that's a nice line, right?

00:54:06.980 To be witty, and to be playful, and to be able to tease, but not to shift over into arrogance, or cruelty, or

00:54:17.480 malicious teasing, or any of that. You get your kid on that line. It's a tight, really tight line. And then,

00:54:25.840 they're popular, and people like them, and their lives expand nicely. And hopefully, you can also stand to

00:54:33.240 have them around, which is also something that still characterizes my relationship with my son. Thank God.

00:54:39.740 So, well, guys, that's, that's pretty much, oh, I'll ask, answer one more. Have you got advice for why

00:54:55.260 young people should focus on having a family? My wife and I, 33, wish we had a kid when we met seven 0.96

00:55:01.460 years ago, rather than trying now. Well, 33 is not too bad. So, you know, good luck to you. That's the first

00:55:08.740 thing I would say. I would also say that one couple in three over 30 have fertility problems, defined as 1.00

00:55:16.640 inability to conceive when desiring to do so after one year. And that's something that no one's taught,

00:55:23.780 because our culture is blind in remarkable ways. You should focus on having a family when you're young,

00:55:33.860 if you can, because that's when you're the most fertile. So that's, that's basically that. And

00:55:40.600 fertility rates tend to decline rather precipitously, especially in women from the ages of 30 onward.

00:55:47.160 And the downhill track from 30 to 40 is pretty damn steep, you know. And you hear about assisted

00:55:53.180 reproductive technologies, but that's a hell of a road to go down. Because, you know, if you're ambivalent

00:55:59.160 about children during your 20s, and you decide at 30 that it's time to start a family, and then you

00:56:04.340 discover that you can't, and you spend several hundred thousand dollars, or at least tens of

00:56:09.440 thousands of dollars, wandering down the assisted fertilization route for like a decade, and that

00:56:15.060 doesn't work, that's roughly equivalent, I would say, in misery to having a pretty damn serious disease,

00:56:22.220 or undergoing a very bad lawsuit. It's not something I would recommend. And you know, it is the case that

00:56:30.860 life is short, that's for sure, and that you have to get things together, and get moving quickly. And so I

00:56:38.960 would say, when's a good time to have a baby? Well, never. Right? Well, obviously. I mean, of all the

00:56:48.620 stupid things you could possibly do, is to saddle yourself with a $350,000 debt, that isn't going to 1.00

00:56:57.440 leave for 18 years, right? That's going to occupy every second of your time. It's like an interferer 1.00

00:57:05.220 with your ability to make a living as well. It's like, when's a good time to do that? That? Well, never.

00:57:12.860 But on the opposite side is, well, what do you do in your life? You know, you have an intimate

00:57:22.140 relationship. You have a family. You contribute to your community, with your career, or your job,

00:57:29.100 and what you do outside of that. And that's life, man. That's your life. Those three things. Like,

00:57:36.680 you know, there's decorations on the side, there's adventure, and travel, and that sort of thing. But

00:57:41.460 fundamentally, that's that. And I would say, don't miss it. Especially with young children,

00:57:50.860 because young children, you don't have them for very long. It's not a very long period of

00:57:54.920 your life. And it's a delightful period. And if you miss it, you don't get it back. And so,

00:58:03.640 if you're 33, good luck. You know, you're not so old. You'll probably be okay. If you're wondering

00:58:14.100 whether or not you should have a child, the answer is, as I said, not if you have any sense. But

00:58:20.220 definitely, you should. Because that's life. And that's a good place to stop.

00:58:28.140 Thank you.

00:58:29.320 Thank you very much.

00:58:59.300 Thank you very much, everyone. It was a pleasure to be here in your lovely little town. I hope you get the earthquake damage all fixed up. It's terrible to see that, but maybe you'll be able to build something spectacular on the ruins. Good night.

00:59:11.000 Thank you.

00:59:13.000 Thank you.

00:59:15.000 Thank you.

00:59:17.000 Thank you.

00:59:19.000 Thank you.

00:59:21.000 Thank you.

00:59:23.000 Thank you.

00:59:25.000 Thank you.

00:59:27.000 Thank you.

00:59:29.000 Thank you.

00:59:31.000 Thank you.

00:59:33.000 Thank you.

00:59:35.000 Thank you.

00:59:37.000 Thank you.

00:59:39.000 Thank you.

00:59:41.000 Thank you.

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01:00:01.000 Thank you.

01:00:03.000 I'll see you.

01:00:05.000 Thank you.

01:00:07.000 Bye.

01:00:10.000 Thank you.

01:00:11.000 Bye.

01:00:13.000 This.

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01:00:28.000 Bye.

01:00:29.000 can be found at selfauthoring.com.

01:00:31.900 That's selfauthoring.com.

01:00:34.160 From the Westwood One Podcast Network.

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - March 22, 2020

My Pen of Light - Part Two

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