My Pen of Light - Part Two
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
164.03789
Summary
My Pen of Light Part 2: A Jordan B. Peterson 12 Rules for a Good Life Lecture. Episode 51 was recorded in Christchurch, New Zealand on February 20th, 2019. In this episode, Dr. Peterson talks about his experience with depression and anxiety, and gives advice on how to deal with it. He also talks about the importance of a good life lecture, and how important it is to give yourself permission to be yourself. If you or someone you know is struggling with anxiety, depression, or another mental health problem, this lecture is for you. It's a must listen, especially if you're struggling with an anxiety or depression diagnosis, or have a family member or loved one in a similar situation. I hope this episode gives you some insight into how to manage your mental health and find a way to move forward, no matter what you may be going through. Thanks for listening and Happy New Year, everyone! - Jordan Subscribe to the podcast today using the promo code JORDAN10 and get 10% off your first month with promo code Jordan10. Get up to $200 off all mattress orders at helixsleep.co/jordan10 and 10% of a monthly subscription to Basis by visiting trybasis.co and using promo code jordan10.org/jordanspondent . Get the best night's rest you can get in the new year! by becoming a supporter of the podcast by clicking the link below. You re getting 10% discount code: JORDER10 and a discount of $200 when you sign up for a month of a month. Let s Talk About It's Jordan Peterson's 12 Rules For a Better Life lecture. by clicking here. . Jordan B Peterson is a podcast about depression and Anxiety by Dr. BONUS: and Anxiety and Depression and Depression & Depression by Jordan Peterson by is a free speech by Jordan Peterson is on YouTube. Here's a FREE Speech by , here's a copy of the lecture I'm giving you the chance to listen to the full lecture I did in this episode. and get a discount on the lecture on my book, I'll be giving you all a chance to review it on my website and get $200 of a $10 discount on my new book, My Pen Of Light and more! Let me know what you think of it!
Transcript
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.
00:00:20.100
With decades of experience helping patients, Dr. Peterson offers a unique understanding of why you might be feeling this way in his new series.
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.
00:01:02.540
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.
00:01:12.780
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.
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.
00:01:41.140
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.
00:01:52.380
I know many people in the biohacking community are hyper-focused on increasing their lifespan, but it's not just about that.
00:02:00.600
It's really about improving your health span, which is the number of years you can live as a healthy, functioning, disease-free person.
00:02:09.160
They translate breakthrough scientific advancements in aging research into health products you can buy right from their website.
00:02:17.640
It works by giving you more NAD and activating what scientists call our longevity genes.
00:02:23.320
I'm putting a video up on YouTube eventually about my experience with NAD, but it definitely improved my life.
00:02:29.780
Listeners can get 10% off of a monthly subscription to Basis by visiting trybasis.com slash Jordan and using the promo code Jordan10.
00:02:39.780
That's trybasis.com slash Jordan and the promo code Jordan10.
00:02:45.000
That's a great deal on a groundbreaking supplement.
00:02:53.160
Sleep is one of the most important things we can do for our health.
00:02:56.580
I can't think very well if I don't get enough sleep.
00:03:01.000
Apparently, a lack of sleep is equivalent in brain toxicity to alcohol.
00:03:05.300
This new year, I've made it a goal to increase my sleep quality, and that starts with the mattress.
00:03:12.300
They're the number one rated mattress by GQ and Wired, and CNN called it the most comfortable mattress they've ever slept on.
00:03:20.140
Just go to helixsleep.com slash Jordan, take their two-minute sleep quiz, and they'll match you to a customized mattress that will give you the best sleep of your life.
00:03:28.580
Start your new year's off right by giving yourself the rest you deserve.
00:03:31.800
Right now, Helix is offering up to $200 off all mattress orders at helixsleep.com slash Jordan.
00:03:39.580
Get up to $200 off at helixsleep.com slash Jordan.
00:04:06.040
There's about 30 of them, but I'm obviously not going to get through all 30.
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.
00:04:49.040
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
00:05:34.060
And there's no damn way that the state should deny us the possibility that that might happen.
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
00:05:57.160
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.
00:06:06.480
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
00:06:15.300
And it's hard to tell if someone's willfully blind or ignorant or biased or consciously
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.
00:06:53.460
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?
00:07:08.380
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
00:07:20.640
A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit and neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good
00:07:27.320
Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire.
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
00:07:55.040
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
00:08:15.480
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?
00:08:47.900
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
00:09:35.500
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?
00:09:47.080
It's going to be you against the fabric of reality, and you're going to come out as the
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,
00:09:58.000
it's naive, and besides that, no one even believes it.
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.
00:10:26.860
Replace him with the true seeker of enlightenment.
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,
00:10:55.780
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
00:11:27.780
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.
00:11:42.160
It said, someone who's enlightened isn't enlightened because they know.
00:11:53.840
Is that Socrates was regarded as the widest, wisest person in, in Greece, because he knew
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
00:12:23.760
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
00:12:43.400
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,
00:13:46.380
fundamentally insufficient and ignorant, and that as a consequence, what you need to do is to
00:13:52.520
admit to what's wrong, and to change, and to learn, and that that's the proper pathway forward.
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,
00:16:42.180
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.
00:17:48.400
And so there's a hell underneath that hell, and there's another one underneath there, and there's
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
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
00:18:42.980
that would make it worse. I mean, virtually everyone agrees with that, and if that's the truth, then the
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.
00:20:15.820
Going online without ExpressVPN is like not paying attention to the safety demonstration on a
00:20:44.840
flight. Most of the time, you'll probably be fine. But what if one day that weird yellow mask drops
00:20:50.340
down from overhead and you have no idea what to do? In our hyperconnected world, your digital privacy
00:20:55.780
isn't just a luxury. It's a fundamental right. Every time you connect to an unsecured network in
00:21:00.620
a cafe, hotel, or airport, you're essentially broadcasting your personal information to anyone
00:21:05.720
with a technical know-how to intercept it. And let's be clear, it doesn't take a genius hacker to do
00:21:10.360
this. With some off-the-shelf hardware, even a tech-savvy teenager could potentially access your
00:21:15.340
passwords, bank logins, and credit card details. Now, you might think, what's the big deal? Who'd
00:21:20.740
want my data anyway? Well, on the dark web, your personal information could fetch up to $1,000.
00:21:26.640
That's right, there's a whole underground economy built on stolen identities.
00:21:30.700
Enter ExpressVPN. It's like a digital fortress, creating an encrypted tunnel between your device
00:21:36.140
and the internet. Their encryption is so robust that it would take a hacker with a supercomputer
00:21:40.620
over a billion years to crack it. But don't let its power fool you. ExpressVPN is incredibly
00:21:45.960
user-friendly. With just one click, you're protected across all your devices. Phones,
00:21:50.480
laptops, tablets, you name it. That's why I use ExpressVPN whenever I'm traveling or working from
00:21:55.580
a coffee shop. It gives me peace of mind knowing that my research, communications, and personal data
00:22:00.440
are shielded from prying eyes. Secure your online data today by visiting expressvpn.com
00:22:05.920
slash jordan. That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N dot com slash jordan, and you can get an extra three months
00:22:12.440
free. Expressvpn.com slash jordan. Starting a business can be tough, but thanks to Shopify,
00:22:22.160
running your online storefront is easier than ever. Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps
00:22:27.560
you sell at every stage of your business. From the launch your online shop stage, all the way to the
00:22:32.020
did we just hit a million orders stage, Shopify is here to help you grow. Our marketing team uses
00:22:37.500
Shopify every day to sell our merchandise, and we love how easy it is to add more items, ship products,
00:22:42.880
and track conversions. With Shopify, customize your online store to your style with flexible templates
00:22:48.420
and powerful tools, alongside an endless list of integrations and third-party apps like on-demand
00:22:53.620
printing, accounting, and chatbots. Shopify helps you turn browsers into buyers with the
00:22:58.480
internet's best converting checkout, up to 36% better compared to other leading e-commerce platforms.
00:23:04.360
No matter how big you want to grow, Shopify gives you everything you need to take control
00:23:08.200
and take your business to the next level. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at
00:23:13.060
shopify.com slash jbp, all lowercase. Go to shopify.com slash jbp now to grow your business,
00:23:20.120
no matter what stage you're in. That's shopify.com slash jbp.
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
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
00:30:14.860
Catholic if I just smartened up a little bit. And Protestants, they've pretty much completely
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,
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
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,
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
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,
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.
00:45:19.480
As a homeowner, some of the most tedious and easily forgotten maintenance tasks are often
00:45:30.100
the most important. Take gutter cleaning. It's one of those out of sight, out of mind chores that
00:45:35.080
can lead to serious issues if neglected. Leaf Filter offers an investment engineered to protect
00:45:40.480
your whole home. Clogged gutters aren't just a nuisance. They can cause extensive repairs,
00:45:45.360
costing thousands of dollars, and causing major headaches. Leaf Filter's patented technology is
00:45:50.900
designed to take care of everything from start to finish, making the process hassle-free for
00:45:55.120
homeowners. Their professionals will clean out, realign, and seal your existing gutters before
00:46:00.360
installing the Leaf Filter system, ensuring optimal performance from day one. Plus, every installation
00:46:05.900
comes with a free inspection, estimate, and lifetime guarantee. By choosing Leaf Filter, you're not
00:46:11.340
just solving a maintenance problem. You're investing in your home's long-term health and your
00:46:15.060
own peace of mind. Protect your home and never clean out your gutters again with Leaf Filter,
00:46:20.180
America's number one protection system. Schedule your free inspection and get up to 30% off your
00:46:25.340
entire purchase at leaffilter.com slash build. That's a free inspection and up to 30% off at
00:46:31.160
leaffilter.com slash build. See representative for warranty details. Promotion is 20% off plus a 10%
00:46:38.280
senior or military discount. One discount per household.
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.
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
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
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
00:56:57.440
leave for 18 years, right? That's going to occupy every second of your time. It's like an interferer
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.
00:58:59.300
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.