The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - Put Yourself Together

00:00:00.000 Hey everyone, real quick before you skip, I want to talk to you about something serious and important.

00:00:06.000 Dr. Jordan Peterson has created a new series that could be a lifeline for those battling depression and anxiety.

00:00:12.000 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.

00:00:19.000 With decades of experience helping patients, Dr. Peterson offers a unique understanding of why you might be feeling this way in his new series.

00:00:27.000 He provides a roadmap towards healing, showing that while the journey isn't easy, it's absolutely possible to find your way forward.

00:00:35.000 If you're suffering, please know you are not alone. There's hope, and there's a path to feeling better.

00:00:41.000 Go to Daily Wire Plus now and start watching Dr. Jordan B. Peterson on depression and anxiety.

00:00:47.000 Let this be the first step towards the brighter future you deserve.

00:00:52.000 Welcome to Season 2, Episode 42 of the Jordan B. Peterson Podcast.

00:01:01.000 I'm Mikayla Peterson, Dad's daughter and collaborator.

00:01:04.000 I hope your week went well. The Petersons are still in Russia.

00:01:08.000 If you're over on this side of the world, I would recommend visiting. It's gorgeous.

00:01:12.000 Maybe do your visiting in the summer when it's not this dark, though.

00:01:15.000 I looked it up, and there's the same amount of sunlight per day in Moscow as there is in Fairview, northern Alberta, where Dad is from.

00:01:22.000 It's pretty brutal. The sun comes up at around 9 and sets by 4.30, and it doesn't ever seem to be that bright out.

00:01:29.000 So come in the summer instead.

00:01:31.000 Today's episode is a 12 Rules for Life lecture recorded in Perth, Australia on February 9, 2019, named Put Yourself Together.

00:01:40.000 I hope you enjoy the podcast.

00:01:45.000 Put Yourself Together, a Jordan B. Peterson 12 Rules for Life lecture.

00:01:50.000 Thank you very much. That's much appreciated. It's great to see, it's great to see you all here.

00:02:11.000 It's such a lovely evening when there's so many other things that you could be doing.

00:02:15.000 I guess this is lovely here all the time in the summer, is it?

00:02:18.000 It's not like that in Canada, I'll tell you.

00:02:21.000 When I left, it was 35 below and blowing snow, and the city was a parking lot, and this is much better.

00:02:30.000 I was at the beach today, and it was very nice.

00:02:34.000 My wife got stung by some stinger thing, though, and I'm blaming all of you for that.

00:02:41.000 Anyway, she's okay. And it was still worthwhile going to the beach.

00:02:46.000 So, it's a pleasure to be here.

00:02:48.000 And thank you all very much for coming to, what, a serious psychological discussion.

00:02:55.000 What the hell?

00:02:59.000 You know, no, it's really something to see.

00:03:02.000 I don't really quite understand it, you know, because I've been traveling all over the world now.

00:03:06.000 I think this is like the 130th city I've been in since last January, something like that.

00:03:11.000 And, you know, this is a typical, approximately typical-sized crowd, and people are very enthusiastic about all of this.

00:03:19.000 And it's really quite surprising. It isn't something that you'd expect.

00:03:23.000 And so, I don't know what to make of it, except that I think maybe it's time, it seems to be time, that in the West, and in other parts of the world as well,

00:03:34.000 we're ready to have some serious discussions.

00:03:39.000 And I don't know why that is.

00:03:42.000 I have a suspicion, like, I think that things are out of kilter in our culture, for psychological reasons, important, deep psychological reasons.

00:03:54.000 I mean, because life is confusing and difficult, and so it's not easy to keep things straight.

00:03:58.000 But I think we have some things to put straight, and we all know it.

00:04:02.000 And I think we can put them straight.

00:04:05.000 And so, like, my sense is that, and this is partly what I'm trying to do.

00:04:10.000 It's like, I believe, from what I've studied, psychologically, is that we look at the world as if it's a story.

00:04:20.000 Like, and I don't mean that we've learned to do that exactly, or that we're taught to do that.

00:04:26.000 I mean that our brains are biologically constructed so that we see the world through the lens of a story.

00:04:36.000 And, you know, there's peripheral evidence for that.

00:04:41.000 There's some central evidence for that.

00:04:43.000 Because if you actually look at how cognition operates, it seems quite self-evident that we naturally use metaphors,

00:04:52.000 and we naturally use narrative tropes, but more importantly, we understand stories.

00:04:57.000 Like, we understand their structure.

00:04:59.000 We use stories to convey information, right?

00:05:02.000 And we tell children stories, for example.

00:05:05.000 And it's interesting, because it's not that easy to get children to listen.

00:05:08.000 You know, it's because they're smart.

00:05:10.000 They don't want to just listen to you.

00:05:12.000 They're too canny, in some sense, just to go out and do exactly what you say they should do.

00:05:18.000 Just like you're too canny to even go out and do exactly what you say you should do.

00:05:23.000 You know, because what do you know?

00:05:25.000 And so, you have some resistance to that.

00:05:27.000 But, you know, your children will drag a book over to you and ask you to read it to them.

00:05:33.000 Which is really quite a remarkable thing, right?

00:05:35.000 It shows you how profound and fundamental that impulse is.

00:05:40.000 It's an impulse that seems to be at the same level of fundamental necessity as water or hunger or any of the basic motivations.

00:05:51.000 And, of course, so that's children.

00:05:54.000 But, of course, adults are just as strange in that regard.

00:05:57.000 Because a lot of what we do for entertainment...

00:06:00.000 You know, entertainment is something you'll do spontaneously, right?

00:06:04.000 Without being forced, obviously.

00:06:06.000 It's something that you enjoy so that produces a certain amount of positive emotion.

00:06:10.000 It's a bit more complicated than that because you go watch horror movies.

00:06:14.000 And it isn't exactly obvious that what they produce is enjoyment.

00:06:19.000 But, whatever, you'll still go see them voluntarily.

00:06:22.000 And so, there's something about them that's integrally attractive.

00:06:27.000 I think what it is with horror movies is that we have a profound need to face things that we're afraid of and disgusted by.

00:06:38.000 We have to learn to do that because there's lots of things in life that are frightening and also that are disgusting.

00:06:46.000 And that you have to put up with anyways and that you have to do competently.

00:06:51.000 And so, if you're too frightened or too squeamish, then in a terrible situation where you have to deal with something frightening and potentially something disgusting,

00:07:03.000 then you're not good for anything and that's not good.

00:07:06.000 So, you have to...

00:07:09.000 What would you say?

00:07:10.000 You have to habituate yourself.

00:07:12.000 You have to learn to deal with those situations.

00:07:14.000 And so, we'll go watch horror movies, the frightening kind or the gory kind because, well, that's life.

00:07:22.000 And so, you bloody well better get used to it or you're too weak and then you're in trouble.

00:07:28.000 So, and then there's the other sorts of stories we go see.

00:07:33.000 We see heroic stories, adventures, and we see romances.

00:07:37.000 Those seem to be about the two real classes of stories, I would say.

00:07:40.000 There's a hero story and an adventure and sometimes they're mixed together because the hero has a romance.

00:07:47.000 And that's the sort of movie that I suppose attracts everyone to some degree.

00:07:53.000 And hopefully, that's the story of life.

00:07:55.000 It's that, you know, you have a heroic adventure and you have a romance and that's your life.

00:08:00.000 And that beats the hell out of not having a heroic adventure or a romance.

00:08:05.000 And so, and we're so interested in those representations that we don't even think of them as learning, really.

00:08:15.000 You know, because it's easy to think of learning, and some forms of learning are like this, as difficult and demanding.

00:08:23.000 And certainly not something that you would necessarily, well, line up for a long period of time and pay money for.

00:08:31.000 Right, and people will do that for, well, they did that for Star Wars.

00:08:35.000 And, well, that happens a lot in popular culture.

00:08:37.000 You know, that some story comes out that's so remarkably attractive that it's a world movement of some sort.

00:08:44.000 And, I mean, the Star Wars phenomena has lasted for, what, it's got to be 30 years now.

00:08:49.000 Something like that.

00:08:50.000 And, of course, the same thing is true of The Lord of the Rings.

00:08:53.000 And the same thing is true of the Harry Potter series, which made a woman who was a welfare recipient to begin with on social assistance richer than the Queen.

00:09:04.000 And able to, what, make tens of thousands of ten-year-olds read 700-page books.

00:09:12.000 And not just one, like seven.

00:09:14.000 They could hardly wait for the next 700-page book.

00:09:18.000 You know, it's really something to consider that that's the way that we're wired.

00:09:25.000 And it's deeply worth considering that.

00:09:30.000 It's like, you know, there's, at least in principle, if you're biologically, well, it doesn't matter if you're religiously oriented, like a creationist type or an evolutionary biologist, it doesn't matter.

00:09:43.000 You really come to the same conclusion.

00:09:46.000 There's something driving, there's something powerful, powerful, powerful, driving people's attractiveness to, or attraction to narratives.

00:09:58.000 And that, it's hard to imagine that that's, that there's just nothing to that.

00:10:05.000 You know, I mean, there's something to hunger.

00:10:07.000 If you don't eat, you die.

00:10:09.000 There's something to thirst, same thing.

00:10:11.000 There's something to lust.

00:10:13.000 If that doesn't exist, then there aren't any people.

00:10:15.000 I mean, these fundamental motivations exist because life itself depends on them.

00:10:21.000 And so we have this fundamental motivation to be attracted to and tell stories.

00:10:28.000 And, well, why?

00:10:30.000 Why would that be?

00:10:32.000 It must mean, it must mean at some level that we need them, right?

00:10:37.000 We need them so badly that they're, they're, they're burned into us as something of fundamental, that we, that we're fundamentally attracted to.

00:10:48.000 You know, we tell stories, we act them out, we enjoy listening to them.

00:10:53.000 We spend tremendous amounts of money on movies and, and video games too.

00:10:57.000 And they have a narrative structure, you know, participatory narrative structure, but still a narrative structure.

00:11:02.000 Um, you know, the most expensive computational equipment in the world, we devote to portraying stories.

00:11:10.000 You know, like most, the high-end computer systems now, the, the, the, the highest development of technology is put forward to build simulated realities.

00:11:22.000 Partly for movies, high-end, high-end, high-graphics movies, because the graphics processes are very, uh, technologically, uh, sophisticated.

00:11:32.000 But also in video games too, so we're bloody well obsessed if we, if you, you know, if you think, well, the medieval people spent all their money building cathedrals over 300 year periods.

00:11:42.000 You know, immense amounts of money trying to do whatever it was that they were trying to do with cathedrals.

00:11:48.000 To glorify something, put forward some idea, some value, or some, some, some ideal.

00:11:55.000 Well, we spend an immense amount of money, technologically, on building realistic narrative simulations of the world.

00:12:04.000 And, it's, it's, it's hard to believe that there's nothing behind that.

00:12:08.000 So, it's worth thinking about.

00:12:10.000 You know, and we don't, because we're scientifically minded, and, and, and, it's a good thing that we are.

00:12:16.000 It's, it's, it's been very helpful.

00:12:18.000 We tend to think of the world as objective, and, and, and that that's the correct way of, of looking at the world.

00:12:25.000 And it is a correct way of looking at the world.

00:12:29.000 But, it doesn't seem to me that it's the correct way of the world.

00:12:33.000 Or maybe it's not, or maybe there's more than one correct way of looking at the world.

00:12:37.000 That's the other possibility.

00:12:39.000 I don't exactly know how to, how to adjudicate between those two possibilities.

00:12:45.000 I personally think that the narrative mode of looking at the world is the most fundamental.

00:12:50.000 And that the scientific mode is nested inside that.

00:12:53.000 And the reason I think that is because we think scientifically for motivated reasons.

00:12:59.000 You know, and, and stories have a lot to do with motivation.

00:13:03.000 All the characters in stories are motivated to do things.

00:13:06.000 And, well, people are scientists for motivated reasons.

00:13:10.000 Like, at least in principle, the reason that we think scientifically is to make life better, right?

00:13:16.000 So the scientific enterprise itself is nested inside an ethical enterprise.

00:13:21.000 And so then, it's, it's an open question.

00:13:24.000 Is the scientific enterprise primary, or is the ethical enterprise primary?

00:13:29.000 And I had a huge, some of you know, I had a series of debates with Sam Harris about this.

00:13:35.000 And I would say they were somewhat inconclusive.

00:13:37.000 Because it's something like a cat chasing its tail.

00:13:40.000 It's, the, both of those levels of reality are extremely important.

00:13:44.000 You have to be a fool to dismiss one, you know, without thinking in favor of the other.

00:13:50.000 But, but you're still stuck in the final analysis, as far as I'm concerned,

00:13:55.000 with the problem that you wouldn't be pursuing a scientific interpretation of the world,

00:14:02.000 unless you were motivated to do so.

00:14:05.000 Carl Jung, when he, the psychoanalyst, studied the emergence of science,

00:14:12.000 he was very interested in why it was that people decided to devote themselves to the microanalysis of,

00:14:21.000 of, of, of narrow phenomenon, you know.

00:14:24.000 It's kind of strange.

00:14:25.000 You have, you have people now that spend their whole lives like studying the mating behavior of fruit flies.

00:14:31.000 You know, it's like, it's not the sort of thing that you'd expect an animal to do.

00:14:37.000 You know, if you think about us as animals, it's really focused behavior.

00:14:41.000 It's like, it's like, what, what the hell are you doing studying the mating behavior of fruit flies?

00:14:46.000 What, what are you up to?

00:14:47.000 You know, it's, it's not like it's, it takes a lot of training,

00:14:51.000 like seven or eight years of training, if you're going to get a PhD,

00:14:54.000 so that you get good at that.

00:14:56.000 And, and, and there's a tremendous amount of work goes into it.

00:14:59.000 So, there's something underneath it driving it.

00:15:02.000 And Jung's idea, Carl Jung's idea, it's a very complicated idea,

00:15:06.000 but he believed that, that in the first thousand years of Christianity,

00:15:13.000 there was a tremendous emphasis on the spiritualization of the human psyche, right?

00:15:19.000 Is that we were trying to elevate ourselves, in some sense, above our base physiological desires.

00:15:26.000 And, and those might be the sort of things that would have been on display in a Roman Colosseum.

00:15:30.000 You know, absolute bloodlust and, and, and extraordinarily casual attitude towards the quality of human life.

00:15:37.000 And really an impulsive and short-term mode of being.

00:15:41.000 And that we needed to be disciplined and trained in some manner that brought our psyches together,

00:15:49.000 and sort of elevated us above the, the, the, above being possessed by our immediate need for gratification.

00:15:58.000 And, and, and maybe it took a thousand years of Christianity to, to, to like, enforce that idea.

00:16:06.000 That there was an ideal, an abstract ideal that was more than mere physical gratification, more than mere power, right?

00:16:14.000 And then, but, and what was supposed to go along with that was the, what would you say, the, the redemption of humankind, right?

00:16:25.000 Because that was the promise of Christianity, that human beings would end up in something approximating, I don't know, the state of the kingdom of God on earth.

00:16:34.000 And, and in some sense that happened, things got better, but in some sense it didn't happen.

00:16:39.000 Everyone was still suffering to a degree that was, in some sense, untenable.

00:16:44.000 You know, we're still mortal, we're still fragile.

00:16:47.000 It wasn't enough, we're missing something.

00:16:50.000 Jung's idea, it's a great idea.

00:16:52.000 He was, he's an absolute bloody genius, that man.

00:16:55.000 His idea was that, well, we, we, we started to, we started to dream, in, in a sense.

00:17:01.000 Because Jung believed that dreams preceded thought.

00:17:05.000 Like, your imagination precedes your actions, you know?

00:17:08.000 Like, maybe you don't know what you're doing in your life, and you have some dreamy idea about some ambition you're going to manifest.

00:17:16.000 And maybe, it's like a daydream about who you could be.

00:17:20.000 And so that's sort of an outline of a potential future.

00:17:23.000 And it's not real, because it's only potential.

00:17:26.000 But the dream inspires you, right?

00:17:29.000 It fills you with spirit.

00:17:31.000 That's what inspiration means.

00:17:33.000 And then, that motivates you.

00:17:35.000 And then you go out and pursue that dream, and then all of a sudden the dream becomes real.

00:17:39.000 And that, and that's a bloody weird thing, too, if you think about it.

00:17:43.000 That you can dream something up, and then you can enact it, and then it happens.

00:17:48.000 And then, what it implies, at least to some degree, is that we do, in fact, dream up the world.

00:17:53.000 And that's, that's, that's a strange one.

00:17:57.000 All right.

00:17:58.000 It's as if we can see, and I think there's something, I think there's something to this.

00:18:03.000 I think this is actually how we interact with the world.

00:18:06.000 It's as if we can see multiple branching potential pathways that stretch out in front of us.

00:18:12.000 This is, this is how I think our consciousness works.

00:18:15.000 Because you do a lot by habit.

00:18:19.000 As a habitual person, you're deterministic, right?

00:18:22.000 You do things by habit, and A follows B, and B follows C, and you don't think much about it.

00:18:27.000 You've built sophisticated neurological machinery in your, in your brain that works deterministically.

00:18:35.000 And so you can just do what you've learned to do.

00:18:38.000 But, and you're not conscious of it, really.

00:18:41.000 Like, you know, if you're a pianist, and you know a piano piece really well, you're playing it, and you get conscious about it, it's not good.

00:18:48.000 You stumble right away.

00:18:49.000 Or if you're speaking, and you get self-conscious, that's not good.

00:18:52.000 Or if you're typing, and you notice that you're typing, that doesn't work worth a damn.

00:18:56.000 It's like, once you've built the habitual machinery, you want it to run, you want it to run automatically.

00:19:03.000 If you're dancing, and you get self-conscious, then you start to stumble over your feet.

00:19:07.000 There's lots of things you don't want consciousness to do.

00:19:09.000 But, one of the things you do want consciousness to do, is to do what's new.

00:19:16.000 What's never been done before.

00:19:18.000 And so, part of what it is that we do when we're conscious, is to do what's never done before.

00:19:24.000 And it looks to me like the way that operates, is that we awaken to consciousness, let's say in the morning.

00:19:32.000 And what we see in front of us, we're not driven by the past like deterministic machines.

00:19:37.000 I mean, we are to some degree, but forget about that.

00:19:40.000 That's the habit part I was already talking about.

00:19:43.000 It's not that.

00:19:44.000 What you see in front of you, and you perceive this with your imagination.

00:19:50.000 You think, okay, well here's the day.

00:19:52.000 And maybe you think about the week, and you think about the month.

00:19:55.000 But mostly you think about the day when you wake up.

00:19:58.000 You think, well, what do I have to do today?

00:20:01.000 And that sort of means, what do I have to contend with today?

00:20:05.000 And you think, well, here's the array of possibilities.

00:20:10.000 You think, well, here's how the ship could sink, or at least list in the water, if there are some things that I don't do.

00:20:19.000 Right?

00:20:20.000 You wake up and you have a set of obligations waiting for it.

00:20:23.000 Well, there are pathways I could take, and if I take them in the proper manner, then things will be set somewhat more, what, straighter by the end of the day, or at least less crooked.

00:20:37.000 I'll be in less trouble.

00:20:39.000 Things won't have got out of hand.

00:20:41.000 That's sort of to control the negative end of things.

00:20:44.000 And then on the positive end, you might think, well, here's a variety of opportunities and possibilities that await me, and I can choose to interact with them.

00:20:53.000 And that's quite a remarkable thing, that that's what you're like, is that you can look into the future, and you can see a set of possible futures.

00:21:05.000 They're not infinite, right?

00:21:06.000 They have to be within your grasp, because you can't just do anything, at least not in one day.

00:21:12.000 But you have a pretty decent array of possibilities waiting for you, and then somehow you're able to decide which of those possibilities you're going to manifest.

00:21:24.000 And the consequence of that is that a world comes into being, out of the potential, right?

00:21:32.000 You take what could be, that's what you're interacting with, and then you act, and then it's not one-to-one relationship, because you can make mistakes, but fundamentally, you more or less manage what you set out to manage, you know, subject to error.

00:21:49.000 Generally, when you decide to go to work, you actually make it to work.

00:21:53.000 Like, you can transform the potential into actuality, and that seems to be what consciousness does.

00:22:01.000 That's part of the hero adventure, that's part of the story of humankind, is that that's what we do.

00:22:08.000 We contend with the world.

00:22:10.000 And so, I've been thinking a lot about stories, and about why it is that the story is the fundamental element of human cognition, rather than the descriptive element of science.

00:22:25.000 Well, Jung's idea, with regards to alchemy, was that, well, we had this dream, it was the dream of the philosopher's stone.

00:22:32.000 And the philosopher's stone was a substance, a magical substance, let's say, that could confer on people health, permanent health, wealth, because it could turn base metals into gold, and longevity, so that you could live forever.

00:22:49.000 You say, well, so what was the dream there?

00:22:52.000 I mean, it's a crazy idea, but the dream was that, well, there was some material substance that, there was something lurking in matter, let's say, that you could discover, that would confer upon you those benefits.

00:23:08.000 Well, he believed that that dream, crazy as it was, was the fantasy that motivated the emergence of the scientific revolution.

00:23:21.000 It wasn't enough just to spiritualize the world.

00:23:24.000 That wasn't the weight of full redemption, let's say.

00:23:28.000 You couldn't just escape into a, like a monastery, or some sort of beyond, and leave the rest of the world in its suffering condition, and have that be okay.

00:23:39.000 You had to contend with the material of the world, and try to do something with it that would also bring it, what would you say, that would improve its quality for everyone.

00:23:53.000 And that it was that crazy dream, that that was possible, that motivated the first scientists.

00:24:00.000 And then, science grew out of alchemy as a consequence of that.

00:24:04.000 And the alchemical fantasy was thousands of years old before science emerged out of it.

00:24:11.000 It takes a long time to dream about something before you can turn it into a reality.

00:24:16.000 And, you know, and this isn't fiction. I mean, Newton, for example, and everybody pretty much admits that Newton was a scientist, you know.

00:24:25.000 He wrote an immense amount of material on alchemy.

00:24:31.000 He's a real mystical person.

00:24:33.000 It's something you often don't know about great scientists.

00:24:36.000 They're very, very, very peculiar people.

00:24:39.000 All you hear about is their rational side, you know, and their scientific side.

00:24:43.000 But if you read about them, they're, well, geniuses are extremely strange people.

00:24:48.000 You know, obviously, because they wouldn't be geniuses otherwise.

00:24:52.000 They're very strange people.

00:24:54.000 And Newton was certainly like that.

00:24:56.000 And he was interested in, well, the transmutation of the world for...

00:25:03.000 The transmutation of the world in a positive manner.

00:25:06.000 And he believed that that's what he was doing.

00:25:08.000 He was pursuing some sort of divine mission to make things better.

00:25:13.000 You know, and that's part of the story.

00:25:15.000 And then, anyways, that's part of the reason that I believe that the scientific endeavor,

00:25:20.000 which is the description of the objective world,

00:25:23.000 is nested in something more biologically fundamental,

00:25:29.000 which is how to conduct yourself in the world, how to act.

00:25:34.000 Because I would say that the fundamental purpose that...

00:25:37.000 The fundamental problem that we have, because we're living creatures,

00:25:41.000 isn't what the world is made out of.

00:25:43.000 It's how to act in the world, regardless of what it's made of.

00:25:48.000 And I don't see that, I don't think that that's arguable.

00:25:52.000 I think that that's just factual.

00:25:55.000 Like, once you have an organism, no matter how simple that can move,

00:26:00.000 its fundamental problem is how to move in the world, what to do.

00:26:04.000 And the problem of meaning, you know, what's the meaning of life?

00:26:09.000 That's the fundamental problem.

00:26:11.000 And I do think that is the fundamental problem of life.

00:26:14.000 Is how to act in the world.

00:26:17.000 How should you act in the world?

00:26:19.000 And it's a very dreadful thing to think something like,

00:26:24.000 well, every way of acting in the world is equally okay.

00:26:28.000 That's sort of a morally relativistic viewpoint.

00:26:31.000 And it sounds good, but it leaves you with nothing.

00:26:33.000 Because if you could do A or B or C or Z,

00:26:36.000 or it doesn't matter if you lay in bed for two weeks,

00:26:40.000 or if you, you know, get up and conquer Europe,

00:26:42.000 if those things are both the same,

00:26:45.000 then why bother choosing between them?

00:26:50.000 It's not helpful, right?

00:26:52.000 You drown in possibility.

00:26:54.000 Not useful.

00:26:56.000 And so, there has to be a hierarchy of value

00:26:58.000 in order for you to act in any reasonable manner.

00:27:01.000 And if there's no difference between how to act,

00:27:04.000 if nothing's valuable, then, well, you have the same problem.

00:27:08.000 What do you do?

00:27:10.000 What should you do?

00:27:12.000 Well, it's a big problem,

00:27:13.000 because actually doing things is hard,

00:27:15.000 and you might fail,

00:27:16.000 and there's pain involved,

00:27:17.000 and frustration, and disappointment,

00:27:19.000 and inertial difficulty, all of that.

00:27:22.000 And so, you can't just say,

00:27:25.000 well, everything's the same,

00:27:27.000 and what the hell difference does it make what you do?

00:27:30.000 Because, well, then that just leaves you

00:27:33.000 with an insoluble and tragic problem

00:27:37.000 that produces a lot of misery and suffering.

00:27:40.000 And unless that's what you want,

00:27:42.000 unless that's what you're aiming for,

00:27:44.000 it's not a very good answer.

00:27:46.000 And, you know, you can get cynical,

00:27:48.000 and you can say, well, there is no answer to that problem,

00:27:51.000 but you might be wrong about that.

00:27:56.000 You know, and I think that is wrong.

00:28:00.000 I really, I truly believe the moral relativists are wrong.

00:28:04.000 I think their thinking is 150 years out of date.

00:28:07.000 They're so far behind what we now know about

00:28:12.000 how people operate in the world,

00:28:15.000 neurologically and philosophically, say, psychologically,

00:28:19.000 that it's like arguing with, I don't know,

00:28:22.000 it's like arguing with physicists who still believe in ether,

00:28:25.000 or phrenologists who still read head bumps,

00:28:29.000 or something like that.

00:28:30.000 It's just not a, it's not a tenable,

00:28:33.000 it's not a reasonable,

00:28:35.000 it's not a reasonable discussion.

00:28:37.000 We're way past that.

00:28:38.000 And so, oh, so then you think, well, all right,

00:28:42.000 you need something to do in the world,

00:28:44.000 and you need to know how to act.

00:28:47.000 And the way that we figure out how to act,

00:28:50.000 or the way we describe ways to act,

00:28:54.000 is by telling stories.

00:28:56.000 And that makes sense, I think.

00:28:59.000 I mean, I'm trying to tell you things

00:29:01.000 that I've beat to death, you know.

00:29:04.000 I'm trying to tell you things that I've,

00:29:07.000 I always think of, you know,

00:29:09.000 a workman out in the street with a crowbar,

00:29:11.000 and there's a manhole cover in the street,

00:29:14.000 and he's trying to put the crowbar under the manhole

00:29:16.000 and lift it up, you know.

00:29:18.000 If I have a thought that I can put a crowbar underneath

00:29:21.000 and lift up and find a hole underneath it,

00:29:23.000 then I don't think it's much of a thought.

00:29:26.000 And so, I'm trying to tell you things that I've tried to

00:29:29.000 put crowbars underneath and couldn't move.

00:29:32.000 They're solid.

00:29:33.000 At least I can't move them.

00:29:35.000 It doesn't mean they can't be moved,

00:29:36.000 but I haven't been able to move them.

00:29:38.000 And I've been very motivated,

00:29:39.000 because I'm not interested in having things under my feet

00:29:44.000 that will shift.

00:29:45.000 I'm interested in having things under my feet that won't shift,

00:29:49.000 so that I can stand in a solid place.

00:29:52.000 And so far, the things that I've told you, I think, fit into that category.

00:29:56.000 They don't seem that disputable to me.

00:29:59.000 We have to know how to act.

00:30:01.000 Well, that seems reasonable.

00:30:03.000 If we don't know how to act, then we're miserable.

00:30:06.000 Well, that's partly because the...

00:30:08.000 Well, it's partly because that just demonstrates how important it is to know how to act.

00:30:13.000 If you don't know how to act, if you're not oriented in the world,

00:30:16.000 if you don't have an aim, then you're bloody miserable and wretched.

00:30:20.000 And, like, it's no trivial thing, right?

00:30:23.000 You can be so miserable and wretched under those conditions

00:30:26.000 that your biggest desire will be not to exist.

00:30:30.000 And people act that out.

00:30:32.000 They'll commit suicide because they don't know how to act.

00:30:35.000 And it's not that uncommon.

00:30:38.000 And so it's an illness that can...

00:30:40.000 You know, if you're depressed, which isn't that uncommon,

00:30:43.000 you have a pretty decent chance of committing suicide.

00:30:46.000 And to commit suicide is a pretty effective indication

00:30:50.000 that there's something intolerably horrific

00:30:54.000 about not being properly oriented in the world.

00:30:57.000 It's no joke.

00:30:58.000 And even if you're not suicidally depressed,

00:31:00.000 even if you're just run-of-the-mill miserable and confused,

00:31:04.000 it's still no joke.

00:31:06.000 It's still no picnic.

00:31:07.000 And it's not like you make things easier for the people around you either.

00:31:11.000 So I really do think about it as a...

00:31:13.000 Well, I think about it as a...

00:31:15.000 I think it's reasonable to conceptualize it,

00:31:17.000 perhaps not as a physical illness,

00:31:19.000 although it is that to some degree,

00:31:21.000 but certainly as a moral or psychological illness.

00:31:24.000 It's not desirable.

00:31:25.000 That's for sure.

00:31:27.000 So you need to know what to do.

00:31:28.000 You need to have a purpose.

00:31:29.000 And you know how good it is to have a purpose.

00:31:32.000 You know, if you're at work or with your family

00:31:35.000 or maybe you're listening to music or doing something you enjoy

00:31:38.000 and you're purposefully engaged in that,

00:31:41.000 it's like...

00:31:42.000 It's sort of...

00:31:43.000 That's the same as saying that life is worth living.

00:31:46.000 Those statements aren't different.

00:31:49.000 You're so thrilled to be engaged in something

00:31:53.000 in a sort of unselfconscious way.

00:31:55.000 Like even if you're contending with what's coming at you.

00:31:58.000 You know, you're immersed in the moment.

00:32:01.000 And that's a good thing.

00:32:03.000 It's...

00:32:05.000 People love that.

00:32:07.000 And I'm willing to take that at face value.

00:32:10.000 Alright, so...

00:32:12.000 So you have to act in the world.

00:32:14.000 And the way that we figure out how to act is...

00:32:18.000 Well, we think about it and we consult our consciences

00:32:22.000 and we look at our dreams and we look at our visions

00:32:26.000 and we look at our ambitions.

00:32:28.000 And then we look at other people as well.

00:32:30.000 And we listen to what other people tell us

00:32:32.000 and we watch how other people act.

00:32:34.000 We're unbelievably imitative.

00:32:37.000 That's one of the things that isn't as well known

00:32:42.000 about human beings as it should be known.

00:32:46.000 You know, there's lots of things that distinguish us from animals.

00:32:50.000 Poseable thumbs.

00:32:52.000 That's a big one.

00:32:54.000 Upright posture.

00:32:56.000 The ability to speak.

00:32:57.000 These are big things.

00:32:58.000 The ability to look into the future.

00:33:00.000 The ability to conceptualize the world abstractly.

00:33:04.000 Those are huge.

00:33:06.000 And the absolute, what would you say, polyvalent potential of our physical being.

00:33:15.000 I mean, you watch people on the internet doing all those strange things that they do.

00:33:20.000 Parkour and those crazy gymnastic routines and extreme sports.

00:33:28.000 I mean, man, people can stretch themselves in ways that are just absolutely unbelievable.

00:33:32.000 So we have a tremendous physical range of possibility.

00:33:37.000 But we have this imaginative capacity as well.

00:33:41.000 And that enables us to orient ourselves so nicely in the world.

00:33:47.000 And so we need to know how to act.

00:33:51.000 And it's a complicated problem.

00:33:54.000 And we do a lot of thinking about it.

00:33:57.000 And we do a lot of imitating of ourselves.

00:33:59.000 That's one of the things the psychologist Jean Piaget pointed out.

00:34:04.000 It's one of the ways we learn is, you know, when we're little kids and we interact with the world.

00:34:08.000 Maybe we have some sort of aim.

00:34:11.000 And we do something that works by accident.

00:34:14.000 And then we notice that we did it.

00:34:16.000 And then we practice doing that over and over again.

00:34:19.000 Which means that we imitate ourselves, right?

00:34:21.000 So we see ourselves.

00:34:23.000 We see ourselves act.

00:34:24.000 We act in a way that works.

00:34:26.000 And then we imitate the thing that works.

00:34:28.000 And we practice it until we get really good at it.

00:34:30.000 So we imitate ourselves.

00:34:32.000 And that's how we bring ourselves into being.

00:34:34.000 But then we also imitate other people.

00:34:36.000 And we're crazily imitative.

00:34:38.000 I mean, we're watching other people just like mad all the time.

00:34:42.000 You know?

00:34:43.000 And we're watching what they're up to.

00:34:45.000 And we're watching what they're doing.

00:34:47.000 I mean, if you think about how you watch a person, it's quite interesting.

00:34:51.000 Because mostly what you do when you watch a person is you look at their face.

00:34:56.000 Right?

00:34:57.000 I mean, there's lots of places you could look.

00:34:59.000 And there are places that sometimes you do look that aren't the face.

00:35:02.000 But most of the time you look at people's faces.

00:35:05.000 And not just their faces.

00:35:08.000 You look at their eyes.

00:35:09.000 You know?

00:35:10.000 And you look at the space right around their eyes.

00:35:11.000 And the reason you do that is because you want to see where they're pointing their eyes.

00:35:14.000 And our eyes are actually evolved so that other people can tell where you're pointing them.

00:35:20.000 This is one of the things that is really quite cool about human beings.

00:35:23.000 Other apes, because we're basically an ape variant.

00:35:27.000 Other apes don't have whites in their eyes.

00:35:30.000 We do.

00:35:31.000 And the reason for that seems to be is that because we have whites in our eyes,

00:35:36.000 you can see the iris really set against the white.

00:35:40.000 And you can see the pupil.

00:35:41.000 Right?

00:35:42.000 So we can really see people's eyes extremely well.

00:35:45.000 And that means we can tell where they're pointing them.

00:35:48.000 And so basically what you're doing when you're looking at people all the time

00:35:51.000 is you're looking to see where they're pointing their eyes.

00:35:53.000 And the reason you're doing that is because, well, where are they pointing their eyes?

00:35:58.000 Well, they're pointing their eyes at something they're interested in.

00:36:02.000 And the thing they're interested in is what they're after.

00:36:06.000 Right?

00:36:07.000 Because, well, that's what you're interested in.

00:36:09.000 What you're after.

00:36:10.000 You know?

00:36:11.000 And so even if you go to a movie and you're watching the main hero on the screen,

00:36:15.000 the reason you're doing that is because that's what you're after.

00:36:17.000 You're putting yourself, while you're watching the movie,

00:36:20.000 you're putting yourself in the position of the hero in the movie.

00:36:23.000 And you're doing that physiologically.

00:36:25.000 We've come to understand actually how people do that.

00:36:28.000 You know, if I'm talking to you and I'm watching where you're pointing your eyes,

00:36:33.000 then I infer what it is that you're up to.

00:36:36.000 Because I can infer what you're interested in.

00:36:38.000 And once I can infer what you're interested in, then I can act out being interested in the same thing.

00:36:45.000 And because we share a physiological platform and an emotional platform and a motivational platform,

00:36:52.000 because we're basically the same sort of creature, as soon as I know what you're up to,

00:36:57.000 and I act as if that's what I'm up to too, then I have the same emotional responses as you, roughly speaking.

00:37:04.000 Same motivational responses.

00:37:06.000 And then I can understand you.

00:37:08.000 And so that's how we understand each other, is that it's like we're capable of being,

00:37:13.000 we're capable of being inhabited by a multitude of spirits.

00:37:18.000 That's one way of thinking about it.

00:37:20.000 Or you could say that we're a computational platform on which many other devices can be run.

00:37:26.000 And those devices are other people.

00:37:29.000 I like the spirit idea better, because I actually think it's richer metaphorically.

00:37:33.000 But every time I interact with someone, I'm using my body to simulate them,

00:37:39.000 and then I understand what they're up to.

00:37:41.000 That's what you do when you come to an understanding of someone.

00:37:45.000 And we like to see that people are able to do that,

00:37:47.000 which is why perhaps we like to dance with them when they can dance.

00:37:51.000 You know, because if you can dance with someone and that works,

00:37:53.000 it means they can adjust their output to your output in some harmonious manner.

00:37:59.000 And there's some indication that they can, what would you say?

00:38:03.000 They can bring themselves into alignment with the emotions and motivations of someone else,

00:38:09.000 at the same time that they're also bringing themselves into alignment with the pattern,

00:38:15.000 the complex patterned structure of reality, which is what music represents.

00:38:21.000 And so to dance with someone is to pay attention to the background patterns of reality,

00:38:27.000 that's the music, abstracted,

00:38:29.000 and then to see if you can move together in a graceful and harmonious way, doing that,

00:38:35.000 and maybe enjoy it at the same time.

00:38:37.000 It's really complicated, and it's kind of a nice test to see if someone's actually up to that.

00:38:43.000 But it's another example of how good we are at imitating.

00:38:47.000 And so, we go to movies, and we watch plays, and we write plays, and we write scripts,

00:38:55.000 and we all do that because we want to watch how it is that we act.

00:39:01.000 You know, and you have a great...

00:39:03.000 We're better than just merely imitating, too.

00:39:06.000 That's another thing that's quite cool.

00:39:09.000 It's not just stupid imitators.

00:39:11.000 It's actually just annoying to be imitated.

00:39:13.000 You know, little kids do that when they're trying to annoy you.

00:39:16.000 They'll just...

00:39:17.000 They'll sit there, and they'll do this.

00:39:18.000 Let's see.

00:39:19.000 I'll get you imitated here.

00:39:20.000 It's sort of like that.

00:39:22.000 And then you go like that, you know.

00:39:23.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:39:24.000 And so, you know, and now we have this stupid game,

00:39:26.000 and you think, quit imitating me because it's annoying.

00:39:28.000 But we're good at it, right?

00:39:29.000 I can use my body to replicate your body very rapidly.

00:39:32.000 And it's a very fundamental way of understanding.

00:39:36.000 It's pre-linguistic.

00:39:37.000 You know, we can learn a lot from each other merely by watching and copying.

00:39:43.000 And we don't just do it directly.

00:39:45.000 You know, one of the things that's really cool about kids,

00:39:48.000 and their remarkable intelligence is underestimated in this regard,

00:39:55.000 because we don't have a lot of appreciation for the sophistication of dramatic play.

00:40:00.000 But you think about what kids are doing, say, when they play house.

00:40:04.000 It's a pretty common game for people to...

00:40:06.000 for kids to play, hypothetically, because they're going to set up a house,

00:40:09.000 and they're trying to figure out what the hell a house is, you know.

00:40:12.000 And they don't need much of a house.

00:40:14.000 When I used to take my kids to the beach, sometimes, you know, we'd be there for a few hours,

00:40:20.000 and they'd want to play, and I'd draw them a house on the beach.

00:40:25.000 You know, I'd just take my foot and make a box and put a couple of rooms in it,

00:40:30.000 and a couple of doors, and, you know, a bed here and a stove there.

00:40:33.000 And that was good.

00:40:34.000 And they'd walk through the door, which was quite cool,

00:40:37.000 because, actually, in a sand house, you don't have to walk through the door.

00:40:41.000 You can just walk right through a wall, right?

00:40:44.000 But the kids wouldn't do that.

00:40:46.000 They'd walk through the door, and they'd walk through the doors of the room,

00:40:48.000 and so, as far as they were concerned, that was a house, and then they'd play house.

00:40:52.000 So, they just needed the basic schema of a house to have the whole house there,

00:40:57.000 and then they'd play out mom and dad and the cat or whatever it is

00:41:02.000 they were interested in that day.

00:41:04.000 And it was interesting to consider that, too, because when they were playing out dad,

00:41:10.000 say, when my son was acting out dad, it wasn't like he was doing what I just did to you.

00:41:18.000 He wasn't watching me and then duplicating me exactly while I was walking around on the beach.

00:41:24.000 It was as if what he had done was he'd observed me being whatever dad was

00:41:31.000 over a very large number of instances, right?

00:41:34.000 And then, remember, he's like three. He's doing this when he's three years old.

00:41:38.000 This is what dad is across a bunch of instances.

00:41:42.000 And so, that's an interesting thing, because it's as if he was abstracting out something like the spirit of the father.

00:41:50.000 If you think about it this way, it's that, you know, you're a man, you're in the house,

00:41:54.000 and your kid watches you for a hundred days, and you're always dad,

00:42:00.000 but sometimes you're acting like dad, and sometimes you're just acting like whoever the hell you are.

00:42:04.000 And so, you're acting like dad, and your kid is figuring out,

00:42:08.000 okay, well, exactly what is this dad thing that dad happens to be?

00:42:12.000 And he watches this little episode here, and he thinks, oh, there's some dad-like behavior there,

00:42:17.000 and then there's some dad-like behavior there, and there, and there, and there, and there.

00:42:21.000 And he abstracts out something that's common across all of those instances of behavior that characterizes dad,

00:42:30.000 and then that's what he imitates.

00:42:32.000 And so, that's just, it's so sophisticated.

00:42:35.000 It's just beyond belief, right?

00:42:37.000 To be able to take those multiple instances of behavior and to decide what's common across them,

00:42:43.000 and then to embody that without really being able to say anything about it, to act it out.

00:42:49.000 But then, even more importantly, especially maybe he's playing house with his sister,

00:42:53.000 and she's being mum, and part of the rule would be, well,

00:42:58.000 in order to play house successfully with your sister, then you have to play it so that it's fun.

00:43:05.000 And this is also kind of an important thing to know if you happen to be married.

00:43:09.000 You know, you should be playing house so that it's fun.

00:43:14.000 And there's a rule for fun, and the rule is sort of like, well, you want the game to continue, and so do you, right?

00:43:21.000 Because that's sort of the nature of play, is that, well, I can't just grab you by the neck and say,

00:43:26.000 look, you're bloody well going to play.

00:43:28.000 It's like, that's not a game.

00:43:30.000 A game is when you want to play, and you want to play.

00:43:33.000 And so then, one of the rules about a game is that it has to be conducted in such a way,

00:43:39.000 so that both of the people that are playing want to keep playing.

00:43:44.000 And that's a very, this is an observation that developmental psychologist Jean Piaget made about play.

00:43:52.000 It's one of the most fundamental philosophical discoveries of the 20th century, as far as I was concerned.

00:43:58.000 And really, as far as he was concerned as well, Piaget was interested in mediating between science and religion,

00:44:05.000 joining them together, trying to come up with a, maybe something like a scientific account of the emergence of ethics.

00:44:12.000 And one of the things he said about games was, well, we got to remember that if it's a good game, then everybody wants to play it.

00:44:19.000 It's the definition of a good game.

00:44:22.000 And that's a cool idea.

00:44:23.000 It means that everybody is pointed in the same direction.

00:44:28.000 We've all decided, roughly, that we're going to do the same thing, which is whatever the game is.

00:44:32.000 And then, we're going to conduct ourselves while we're all doing the same thing, so that everybody is on board voluntarily.

00:44:40.000 And one of the things Piaget claimed about that, first of all, he said, well, that's the basis of ethics,

00:44:46.000 is to figure out how to, how to formulate a game that unites everyone's motivations and emotions,

00:44:52.000 everyone's purpose, everyone's desire to act, so it unites it, so that we're all doing the same thing.

00:44:58.000 But even more importantly, it's united so that everyone, if they had their choice, would just as soon continue to do it.

00:45:07.000 He said, well, that occupies a very, it's a very constrained way of, it's a very constrained, there aren't very many ways you can manage that successfully.

00:45:19.000 And you can see this with successful children, because successful children are really good at conjuring up games that everybody wants to keep playing.

00:45:28.000 And so that's, that's an ethical construct. It's like, okay, now we've come together, we've united ourselves with purpose, in such a way that it's spontaneously engaging.

00:45:40.000 And so, this is what kids are doing when they're playing house, is, well, they, they look at the father, and they abstract out the spirit of the father, and then they embody it.

00:45:49.000 And then they do the same with the mother, and they embody that, and then they come together, and they assign each other roles.

00:45:56.000 And the role is, well, you have to play father, and you have to play mother, but you have to play each of those roles in a way that makes both of us want to keep playing the game so that it's fun.

00:46:06.000 It's like, God, that's just bloody impossible, and yet they manage it quite remarkably, and have a hell of a fine time doing it.

00:46:14.000 And, and the more they do it, then it's the other thing we know, is the more they do it, because pretend play is incredibly important, the more they do it, the better they get at it.

00:46:23.000 And kids who are good at pretend play, which is why it's very useful to allow or even insist that your children have time to engage in spontaneous pretend play,

00:46:34.000 is that that's how they learn to get along with other people.

00:46:37.000 And you think, well, they're just getting along with other people.

00:46:40.000 It's like, no, no, no, no, no, it's not, it's not that they're just getting along with other people.

00:46:45.000 That's the fundamental substructure of civilized society, right?

00:46:50.000 You learn how to play games together when you're young, and you get, you get more and more sophisticated at that as you get older and older.

00:46:58.000 And if you're really good at it, then you're the sort of person that people want to play games with all the time, your entire life.

00:47:06.000 And what that means is that you've extracted out the pattern, whatever that pattern is, from all your interactions with other people,

00:47:16.000 that enable you to organize your actions cooperatively and competitively with other people in a way that makes them want to continue being with you, right?

00:47:28.000 Doing things with you.

00:47:30.000 And there isn't anything, there isn't anything you can do that's more important than that.

00:47:34.000 The childhood developmental literature is actually pretty clear on that, is that between the ages of two and four, kids are fairly egocentric at two.

00:47:41.000 They can't play with other kids. They're still trying to get themselves together, you know?

00:47:46.000 Because they're sort of a morass of emotions and motivations, very short-term and impulsive in their behavior.

00:47:52.000 Very fun because of that, because they're so spontaneous and active, but very difficult to organize.

00:47:58.000 And, but by the time they're four, they can bring their idiosyncratic view of the world together with the view of another person or several other people,

00:48:09.000 set a joint goal, and cooperate towards it, and compete as well in a civilized manner.

00:48:15.000 And the kids that are really good at that, then they have friends.

00:48:19.000 And then the friends socialize them, and then those kids have a pretty good life.

00:48:24.000 And the kids that don't manage that by the time they're four, for one, maybe they're temperamentally aggressive,

00:48:30.000 or they're really high in negative emotions, so they're hard to socialize.

00:48:34.000 Or maybe their parents just don't socialize them, and they don't have friends.

00:48:38.000 They're basically, they're out of it by the age of four.

00:48:42.000 Like, if you're not capable of playing socially, by the time you're age four, you almost never learn to do it for the rest of your life.

00:48:56.000 So, it's really, really important.

00:49:00.000 All right, so, so that's the, well that's what you have to do, is you have to learn how to act.

00:49:08.000 And you don't only have to learn how to act, you have to learn to act with other people.

00:49:15.000 And there's not, see, this is part of the solution to the problem of moral relativism, as far as I'm concerned.

00:49:22.000 It's also part of the reason, or maybe the entire reason, possibly, though there's many reasons, that the post-modernists are wrong.

00:49:32.000 Because the post-modernists, especially the ones that are more oriented towards Marxist philosophy,

00:49:39.000 I like to think that the way that we organize our societies is by power.

00:49:44.000 We have hierarchies, and the people at the top have the power.

00:49:47.000 And they impose that on the people underneath them.

00:49:50.000 They impose their will on them.

00:49:52.000 And that's how the world is structured.

00:49:54.000 It's like, actually, no.

00:49:59.000 That's wrong.

00:50:00.000 That's not how the world is structured.

00:50:02.000 That's how the world is structured, when things aren't going very well.

00:50:06.000 You know, like, if you have a family, and you probably do, and someone in the family is a tyrant,

00:50:14.000 and the tyrant says, you bloody well better do what I want, or else.

00:50:18.000 You know, and there's lots of or else's.

00:50:20.000 Or else I'll drink too much.

00:50:21.000 Or else I'll be addicted.

00:50:23.000 Or else I'll be so passive-aggressive that you'll wish I was dead.

00:50:26.000 Or else I'll be violent, you know.

00:50:29.000 I mean, there's all sorts of ways of imposing your idiosyncratic will on other people, right?

00:50:35.000 All sorts of power games that you can play.

00:50:38.000 Conscious, unconscious, underhanded, sophisticated, unsophisticated.

00:50:42.000 But none of them work very well.

00:50:45.000 You know, you generate a tremendous amount of resistance as a consequence of the arbitrary imposition of power.

00:50:52.000 It's a really sub-optimal means of organizing a society.

00:50:59.000 And the Marxist post-modern critique that there's a very large number of ways of interpreting the world.

00:51:10.000 And that what we do is organize ourselves into groups of self-interest,

00:51:16.000 although they never explain exactly why that happens.

00:51:19.000 Usually has something to do with sex, or ethnicity, or race, or gender,

00:51:23.000 or some arbitrary grouping that somehow unites us.

00:51:27.000 Although, I really don't understand that at all.

00:51:29.000 It isn't like it seems obvious to me that all women get along better than men and women get along on average, you know.

00:51:38.000 I don't buy that for a second.

00:51:40.000 But in any case, the idea is that we organize ourselves into hierarchical groups.

00:51:46.000 We learn how to interact with other people.

00:51:48.000 And the people who are most successful at that are those who are the most successful at exercising power.

00:51:58.000 And I think that's complete bloody rubbish.

00:52:01.000 I don't think it works on the playground.

00:52:03.000 Like, I've watched kids who don't...

00:52:05.000 I've watched kids a lot.

00:52:07.000 I've watched kids who don't know how to play a lot.

00:52:09.000 Because it's quite painful to me to see kids that can't play.

00:52:13.000 It's really sad to see that, you know.

00:52:17.000 Because they're so alienated, and they're so isolated, and they're so unhappy.

00:52:21.000 And often the reason that they can't play is because they don't know how.

00:52:28.000 Like, what they do is they try to force other kids to do what they want.

00:52:33.000 And that just doesn't work.

00:52:34.000 I'll give you an example.

00:52:36.000 So, there's been lots of studies of how kids sort of organize themselves spontaneously into play groups on the playground.

00:52:46.000 And so, here's an example.

00:52:48.000 This is an example taken from popular kids.

00:52:51.000 So, even popular kids can't necessarily get into a game once it's started.

00:52:56.000 You know, because you don't necessarily want someone jumping into the middle of your game, right?

00:53:00.000 Because your game kind of has a beginning, and a middle, and an end.

00:53:04.000 And it has a point.

00:53:05.000 And you can't just hop into it in the middle.

00:53:07.000 And so, once the game is started, you have to be canny if you're going to interweave yourself into the game.

00:53:13.000 And so, maybe there's a bunch of kids, and they're on the school ground.

00:53:18.000 And they're playing helicopter.

00:53:20.000 And they have erasers.

00:53:22.000 And they're just buzzing their erasers around like they're helicopters.

00:53:27.000 Which is actually a pretty remarkable thing to be able to do, too.

00:53:30.000 And they're making helicopter noises.

00:53:32.000 And I don't know what they're doing.

00:53:33.000 They're rescuing each other or attacking each other.

00:53:36.000 Whatever you do with your eraser helicopter when you're five years old, you know.

00:53:40.000 But they've all got themselves together.

00:53:42.000 And they've made a little play, a little drama.

00:53:45.000 And they're playing helicopter.

00:53:47.000 And, you know, an unpopular kid will come along kind of in a klutzy way.

00:53:53.000 Because you see that with kids that haven't been played with enough.

00:53:56.000 They're kind of physically awkward, you know.

00:53:58.000 They can't dance well.

00:54:00.000 They haven't been rough and tumble played with enough.

00:54:03.000 That's part of it.

00:54:04.000 And they're not, they don't really know where their bodies are.

00:54:08.000 And they certainly don't know where their boundaries are.

00:54:11.000 And so, it makes them, and it makes them immature.

00:54:14.000 And kids don't like to play, kids will play with young kids if they know they're young.

00:54:20.000 And they'll take care of them.

00:54:21.000 But they don't like to play with immature kids their same age.

00:54:24.000 They're not interested in that.

00:54:25.000 Because they like to play with kids that challenge them so that they mature.

00:54:30.000 And adults are the same way.

00:54:32.000 So, anyways, if there's these kids standing together.

00:54:36.000 And they're all playing helicopter.

00:54:38.000 And a popular kid comes along.

00:54:40.000 The popular kid will stand there and watch.

00:54:44.000 And see what the hell is going on.

00:54:46.000 Sort of clue into the drama, you know.

00:54:49.000 And then they'll take out a pencil eraser, if they have one.

00:54:53.000 Or some reasonable substitute thereof.

00:54:55.000 And they'll watch what's happening.

00:54:57.000 And then maybe they'll start to make a helicopter noise with it.

00:55:01.000 And that's sort of, well, it's an entry point, right?

00:55:04.000 It's like, you're playing helicopter?

00:55:06.000 I'm playing helicopter.

00:55:07.000 And then they see if there's an entry point into the drama.

00:55:10.000 Where they can do something like amusing or playful or interesting.

00:55:15.000 And the group will open up and let them in.

00:55:18.000 And exactly the same thing happens at cocktail parties.

00:55:21.000 You know, you go to a cocktail party.

00:55:23.000 And there's four or five people standing around.

00:55:25.000 And you're sitting there with your drink.

00:55:27.000 And wondering what the hell you're doing at this cocktail party.

00:55:30.000 Or maybe you're having a cigarette.

00:55:32.000 But people don't smoke anymore very much.

00:55:34.000 So you don't get to do that.

00:55:36.000 And there's these people standing around and talking.

00:55:38.000 And you're sort of a foot and a half away.

00:55:40.000 And you're feeling kind of awkward and stupid.

00:55:42.000 But maybe you're listening.

00:55:44.000 And maybe at some point,

00:55:47.000 there's a little opening.

00:55:49.000 And you have something, like,

00:55:51.000 to do with your helicopter eraser.

00:55:53.000 And you can just do it.

00:55:55.000 And then it opens up.

00:55:56.000 And you get to talk.

00:55:57.000 And you think, well, that's a lot better than standing there stupidly on the outside.

00:56:00.000 It's not much different than being in a playground.

00:56:03.000 And you have to be sophisticated to do that.

00:56:05.000 You can't just bloody well blunder up to the group of four people.

00:56:08.000 And start talking about, like,

00:56:10.000 I don't know, what your, your, your,

00:56:13.000 the, the, the bad sexual experience you had last week.

00:56:17.000 You know?

00:56:19.000 That's, that's a sign of not good boundaries.

00:56:23.000 You know?

00:56:24.000 And, and, and it isn't gonna work.

00:56:26.000 And so, you have to be aware enough of the game in order to enter into it.

00:56:34.000 And so, well, that's, that's so, that's part of how people get socialized.

00:56:41.000 And it's a really useful thing to know.

00:56:43.000 Is that, you know, the world's a very complicated place.

00:56:47.000 And there's a bunch of things we have to do in it to stay alive.

00:56:52.000 Because it's, it's a difficult place.

00:56:54.000 And one of the ways that we learn to do that is by learning to organize ourselves

00:57:01.000 with other people towards a goal.

00:57:04.000 Which is pretty much what we do with our games.

00:57:07.000 Forget about stories for a minute.

00:57:10.000 We could talk about games.

00:57:12.000 They're very, very similar stories in games.

00:57:17.000 You know, like, like a,

00:57:19.000 I watched this very, very cool documentary a while back.

00:57:23.000 Called Hitman Hart.

00:57:25.000 Which I would highly recommend.

00:57:27.000 It's, it's, it's a brilliant documentary.

00:57:29.000 And it's about, um, a guy named, uh, Bret Hart.

00:57:34.000 Yeah?

00:57:35.000 Who was, uh, for a long while the world's most famous Canadian.

00:57:39.000 Um, and he was part of the Worldwide Wrestling Federation.

00:57:42.000 And he was a wrestling hero.

00:57:44.000 You know, there's bad guys and good guys in wrestling.

00:57:46.000 And, you know, wrestling is a, I wouldn't call it sophisticated drama exactly.

00:57:53.000 But it's a, but it's a nice, it's an, it's interesting though.

00:57:56.000 Because it's a nice intermingling of narrative and sport.

00:57:59.000 Because it's a drama of good against evil.

00:58:03.000 And it's a pretty primordial drama.

00:58:06.000 It's like, you know, if it's a, if it's a sophisticated story of good against evil.

00:58:11.000 Maybe it's like Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, right?

00:58:14.000 It's 800 pages long and there's 200 characters and they each have six names.

00:58:19.000 And, you know, it's complicated.

00:58:21.000 Or maybe it's Breaking Bad, you know?

00:58:23.000 You have to watch it for a long time.

00:58:25.000 It takes a lot of cognitive ability to follow a story like that.

00:58:29.000 A story about the interaction between good and evil.

00:58:33.000 But wrestling, it's, it's, it's there for everyone, man.

00:58:36.000 There's like the bad guy.

00:58:38.000 And you can tell he's bad because he comes out in a bad cape.

00:58:42.000 And, you know, he's like narcissistic and he insults people.

00:58:45.000 And he, he's clearly the bad guy.

00:58:47.000 As soon as you see him, you want to hit him with a chair.

00:58:50.000 And, and even if you don't want to, you definitely want someone to hit him with a chair.

00:58:55.000 And, and Bret Hart was a good guy.

00:58:58.000 And the good guy, you want to win.

00:59:00.000 And so then the good guy and the bad guy go into the wrestling ring.

00:59:03.000 And they, like they have it out.

00:59:05.000 It's like Christ against Satan in the, in the wrestling ring.

00:59:08.000 It's good against evil.

00:59:09.000 And it's half story and it's half, it's half sport.

00:59:14.000 There's an overlap between story and sport.

00:59:17.000 And you see the same thing in other forms of sports.

00:59:20.000 You know, they're the, if it's basketball or, or, or, or football or, or any of the games.

00:59:27.000 You get, those sorts of competitive, um, social games.

00:59:32.000 Have, have things in common.

00:59:35.000 That, that are quite interesting.

00:59:36.000 They have a point.

00:59:38.000 Right?

00:59:39.000 The point is usually to put something small in a, it's to hit a target.

00:59:45.000 That's, that's the point of, of one form or another.

00:59:47.000 There's all sorts of different ways of hitting the target.

00:59:49.000 But that's basically, that's basically the issue.

00:59:51.000 It's like, okay, well, we need to hit a target.

00:59:54.000 We need to hit a target.

00:59:55.000 You guys need to hit a target.

00:59:57.000 And we're going to have a competition about who can hit the target.

01:00:00.000 We're going to kind of get in each other's ways.

01:00:01.000 But we're going to have some rules about it.

01:00:03.000 And then we're going to see who's good at it under this system of constraints.

01:00:07.000 And it's important because, well, you need to hit a target in your life.

01:00:11.000 You know, you need to orient yourself towards some purpose.

01:00:16.000 You need to cooperate and compete with other people.

01:00:19.000 You need to do it in a landscape of cooperation and competition.

01:00:23.000 You have to do it in a civilized manner.

01:00:25.000 You have to do it in a way that the game is interesting.

01:00:27.000 You have to do it in a way that everyone wants the game to progress.

01:00:31.000 You have to do it in a way that the game can be played over and over and over.

01:00:37.000 And so that there's a sequence of victories across time.

01:00:40.000 Right?

01:00:41.000 It's all very sophisticated.

01:00:42.000 You've got to have an aim.

01:00:43.000 You've got to play with other people properly.

01:00:45.000 You've got to cooperate.

01:00:46.000 You've got to compete.

01:00:47.000 And you can't just play one game.

01:00:49.000 You have to play each game in a way that allows you to continue to play the games properly.

01:00:55.000 It's very, very sophisticated and complicated.

01:00:58.000 And so that's the story that people are out watching when they go see pro sports.

01:01:03.000 And it's just as bloody curious and peculiar as it is that you line up to see movies.

01:01:08.000 It's like, what the hell are you doing out there watching these characters kick around a ball?

01:01:12.000 You know, it's, what are you up to?

01:01:15.000 And then why are you so thrilled about it?

01:01:17.000 You wear their damn uniforms.

01:01:19.000 Maybe even they have you, you have the name of their, of the hero of the soccer team on your chest.

01:01:24.000 And you're all puffed up about that.

01:01:26.000 You know that if you watch a soccer game, if you're male, if you watch a soccer game and your team wins,

01:01:34.000 your testosterone levels go up.

01:01:37.000 If your team loses, well, it's a, it's a drab night for you.

01:01:44.000 Let's put it that way.

01:01:45.000 But, but I mean, that's how tightly wired you are to the game, you know.

01:01:49.000 And then you think about the sorts of things that people do.

01:01:52.000 You're watching a soccer game and, and you know, some character who's been practicing, aiming for, God only knows how many thousands of hours,

01:02:02.000 does some absolutely insane thing that no one in their, in, no, no one could ever possibly imagine doing.

01:02:10.000 You know, maybe they flip in the air, and kick the ball upside down, and it goes right into the net, four feet away from the goalie.

01:02:17.000 And you think, what do you think?

01:02:19.000 You don't even think.

01:02:20.000 You just leap up, spontaneously, like it's the greatest thing that's ever happened to you in your life, which is pretty weird.

01:02:28.000 But that's what you do.

01:02:29.000 Well, it is.

01:02:30.000 It's like, what the hell are you doing?

01:02:31.000 It's an, and it just grips you, right?

01:02:33.000 Everybody stands up at the same time, and it's like you're cheering away.

01:02:36.000 You think, that's what a human being is like, man.

01:02:39.000 We can hit the goddamn target, flipped upside down, moving at, at an impossible rate.

01:02:47.000 That's what we're like.

01:02:48.000 Hooray.

01:02:49.000 And we've just seen it demonstrated.

01:02:51.000 And, and, and, and, and that's a testament to our indomitable spirit.

01:02:55.000 And it grips you way deep inside, way before you think.

01:03:00.000 And you stand up and you think, bloody right, man.

01:03:02.000 That's what we've got to bring to bear against the world, right?

01:03:06.000 And so you see all these people.

01:03:09.000 This is why these, you know, there's movements now to get rid of competitive games.

01:03:14.000 There's something wrong with competitive games, right?

01:03:16.000 Everyone, no one should win and no one should lose.

01:03:19.000 It's like, well, that's a stupid goddamn theory.

01:03:21.000 If I ever heard one, well, think about it, man.

01:03:24.000 It's like, okay, no one should win and no one should lose.

01:03:27.000 It means nothing's worth doing, right?

01:03:30.000 Because even when you're trying to do something, you're trying to be better than the loser that you are right now.

01:03:36.000 Well, it's true.

01:03:38.000 Because otherwise, why would you do it?

01:03:40.000 You think, oh, I'm a, I'm just, I don't need to compete with myself.

01:03:45.000 I'm perfectly fine the way I am.

01:03:47.000 It's like, fine, just lay in bed, mold, you know?

01:03:50.000 Because there's, there's nothing worth doing.

01:03:53.000 You've already managed everything.

01:03:54.000 It's like, of course, someone's got to win and someone's got to lose.

01:03:58.000 Because if there's no winning and losing, there's nothing worth doing.

01:04:01.000 And then why bother getting out of bed?

01:04:04.000 And so what you do is you celebrate the people who win correctly.

01:04:08.000 And then be, and winning correctly is a complicated thing.

01:04:12.000 Because it means, well, you won for you.

01:04:14.000 And like, good for you, man.

01:04:16.000 Hooray.

01:04:17.000 I read this story about a coach the other day.

01:04:20.000 And he was talking about how he picked professional athletes.

01:04:23.000 You know, how he, how he drafted them.

01:04:26.000 He said, well, obviously skill has a tremendous amount to do with it.

01:04:30.000 Let's make no mistake about that.

01:04:31.000 If you're going to play a game, you should bloody well be able to play the game.

01:04:35.000 You should be able to put the ball through the net, right?

01:04:37.000 And better than anyone else.

01:04:38.000 But better is complicated.

01:04:40.000 And he said one of the things he would watch is like,

01:04:43.000 well, if one of the star players managed a remarkable goal,

01:04:47.000 and he was down in his end, like having a little dance all by himself,

01:04:51.000 and his teammates were ignoring him, he wasn't very interested in that player.

01:04:55.000 But if the player scored a goal, you know, hit, hit the target,

01:05:00.000 and everyone came together and mobbed him and like put him up in the air and had a little celebration,

01:05:06.000 then he thought, man, that's someone I want on my team.

01:05:09.000 Because he's not only winning for himself, which is important,

01:05:13.000 but he's winning for himself in a manner that makes everyone else on the team thrilled that he's winning.

01:05:19.000 Which implies that his victory is more than merely a victory for himself, right?

01:05:23.000 It's also a victory for the team in some comprehensive way.

01:05:27.000 Is that he's great at what he does in a way that makes everyone else admire it,

01:05:33.000 or want to be great in that way, or maybe he's great in a way that he shares,

01:05:38.000 so that the rest of the team becomes greater.

01:05:41.000 And so he's not just great because he managed to make that one goal,

01:05:44.000 he's great because he makes a bunch of goals in a variety of spectacular ways,

01:05:49.000 at the same time that he develops all of his teammates so that the team is much better,

01:05:55.000 so that they're much more likely to win across a set of games,

01:06:00.000 and that they're championship material, right?

01:06:02.000 And that's all embodied in the actions that he takes while he's undertaking each of his skillful actions.

01:06:09.000 And so the skillful action isn't just merely hitting the goal because you need to hit the goal,

01:06:14.000 it's hitting the goal in a way that hits the goal for you,

01:06:17.000 and hits the goal for, let's say, your family.

01:06:19.000 That's a nice additional constraint.

01:06:21.000 Why not bring them along for the ride?

01:06:23.000 And then maybe it's a way of hitting the goal so that you do it for your family,

01:06:29.000 and for your broader community.

01:06:31.000 That would be good.

01:06:32.000 It's harder, but who cares?

01:06:35.000 Why shouldn't it be harder?

01:06:37.000 Maybe it'd be more worthwhile if it was harder.

01:06:39.000 It's like, I'm going to do good things for me,

01:06:41.000 but I'm only going to do good things in a way for me that are also good for my family,

01:06:46.000 and then I'm only going to do good things in a way that are good for me and my family,

01:06:49.000 that are also good for my community.

01:06:51.000 It's like, that's something worth getting up in the morning,

01:06:54.000 and looking at the array of possibilities that confronts you,

01:06:58.000 and considering, could I do that?

01:07:01.000 You know?

01:07:02.000 Because, well, maybe you could.

01:07:05.000 You get all those things stacked up.

01:07:07.000 That's sort of like dancing, right?

01:07:09.000 You got the patterns of the world behind you,

01:07:11.000 and you're dancing with all sorts of people at the same time,

01:07:14.000 and all in the right direction.

01:07:16.000 And how could you not think that that was worthwhile?

01:07:19.000 You know, you might be cynical and you think,

01:07:21.000 ma, Christ, man, it's only for me.

01:07:23.000 You know?

01:07:24.000 And to hell with the rest of those people.

01:07:25.000 But it doesn't work.

01:07:27.000 It's not helpful.

01:07:28.000 It's not a good game.

01:07:30.000 You should have got over that when you were like three.

01:07:32.000 And there's a reason for that.

01:07:34.000 There's even a technical reason for that.

01:07:36.000 It's like, well, imagine that you are selfish,

01:07:39.000 for the sake of argument.

01:07:41.000 Well, selfish about who?

01:07:48.000 Because, you know, there's you right now,

01:07:53.000 and you might say,

01:07:55.000 I'm going to do everything I can to make myself feel as impulsively pleasured

01:08:01.000 as I possibly can right now.

01:08:04.000 And to hell with everybody else.

01:08:07.000 And maybe that's a pretty good definition of selfish.

01:08:09.000 But it's kind of a stupid definition of selfish.

01:08:12.000 You know?

01:08:14.000 I saw this Simpsons episode a while back,

01:08:17.000 which I thought was really quite funny.

01:08:19.000 Homer was mixing up a quart jar of vodka and mayonnaise.

01:08:25.000 And Marge, he was mixing it away.

01:08:31.000 And Marge said,

01:08:33.000 well, do you really think that's a good idea?

01:08:35.000 And Homer said,

01:08:38.000 that's a problem for future Homer.

01:08:40.000 Man, I sure don't envy that guy.

01:08:44.000 Then he drank the whole thing.

01:08:46.000 It's like, it's so funny.

01:08:47.000 It's like, well, it's great.

01:08:48.000 So he's selfish.

01:08:49.000 And he, you know, he gets impulsively drunk.

01:08:52.000 But it's like, it's not really very intelligently selfish.

01:08:55.000 Because good old future Homer's going to be there the next morning.

01:08:59.000 And he's actually you.

01:09:01.000 And so if you were halfways intelligently selfish,

01:09:04.000 you might think, well, there's you now.

01:09:07.000 But there's also you in half an hour.

01:09:09.000 You might as well take care of him.

01:09:11.000 He's probably still going to be there.

01:09:13.000 And then there's tomorrow you.

01:09:16.000 And he's a little bit not quite you.

01:09:19.000 A little distant.

01:09:20.000 You don't know him quite as well.

01:09:21.000 But you still might want to give him some consideration.

01:09:23.000 And there's next year you.

01:09:25.000 And there's ten year from now you.

01:09:27.000 And then there's old you.

01:09:29.000 And so you're this community that stretches across time.

01:09:33.000 And so even if you're selfish, being a human being,

01:09:35.000 it doesn't work out very well.

01:09:36.000 Because you're a community.

01:09:38.000 The fact that you're aware of the future means that you're a community.

01:09:42.000 And that immediately places a very tight system of constraints on what constitutes your ethical behavior.

01:09:48.000 Because you have to act in a way that's good for you.

01:09:51.000 But good for tomorrow you.

01:09:52.000 And good for next week you.

01:09:54.000 And good for next month you.

01:09:55.000 And next year you.

01:09:56.000 And all of that.

01:09:57.000 And maybe old you as well.

01:09:59.000 Which kind of means, you know, you should be maybe thinking about how you treat old people.

01:10:03.000 Because hey, you're one of them.

01:10:06.000 Just not yet.

01:10:08.000 But it's coming.

01:10:09.000 Or you're dead.

01:10:10.000 Then you're dead you.

01:10:11.000 And I guess you don't have to worry about that then.

01:10:13.000 But hopefully you're trying to avoid that.

01:10:16.000 So the problem of community is built right into the singularity of human being.

01:10:23.000 Because we're aware of the future.

01:10:25.000 I think that's why, you know, one of the fundamental religious injunctions is

01:10:28.000 treat your neighbor like you would treat yourself.

01:10:33.000 Why?

01:10:34.000 Well, because you're the same thing.

01:10:37.000 Because you're a community that's extended across time.

01:10:40.000 And so if you're going to act wisely, let's say in your life,

01:10:45.000 you don't just act like there's today and there's today and there's nothing else.

01:10:50.000 Because there isn't.

01:10:51.000 There's you stretched across time.

01:10:53.000 And you want to optimize the manner in which you behave.

01:10:56.000 You want to play a game with yourself that you can iterate across your entire life

01:11:01.000 that you would like to play.

01:11:03.000 And the probability that that's much different

01:11:06.000 than the game that you would play with people that were close to you.

01:11:09.000 Your siblings or your family or even your broader community for that matter.

01:11:13.000 The probability that those games converge is unbelievably high.

01:11:18.000 So that's another reason that it's reasonable to consider that there's such a thing as a natural ethic.

01:11:24.000 Right? And I was talking a bit earlier about what an antidote to moral relativism or to nihilism.

01:11:31.000 Or to the idea...

01:11:32.000 Well, those are the basic problems.

01:11:36.000 Moral relativism and nihilism.

01:11:38.000 Nothing's worth doing.

01:11:39.000 Good.

01:11:40.000 Well, try that out for a while and see how it works.

01:11:42.000 All that does is produce suffering.

01:11:44.000 And if you think suffering is okay, well, then there's no arguing with you.

01:11:48.000 But no one thinks suffering is okay.

01:11:51.000 So that argument just goes nowhere.

01:11:53.000 So, sitting around doing nothing...

01:11:56.000 That's not good.

01:11:57.000 That's not gonna do it, man.

01:11:59.000 That's not gonna work.

01:12:00.000 So...

01:12:01.000 And then, well, one thing is as good as another.

01:12:03.000 It's like, yeah...

01:12:05.000 No.

01:12:06.000 It's not...

01:12:07.000 It's not as good as...

01:12:09.000 It's not as good as another.

01:12:11.000 And there's a very tightly arranged, narrow range of manners in which you can conduct yourself appropriately across time.

01:12:21.000 It's a...

01:12:22.000 That's the straight and narrow path.

01:12:24.000 You know?

01:12:25.000 And...

01:12:26.000 And I would say, not only does that make sense conceptually because you're a community, you know, that...

01:12:31.000 That...

01:12:32.000 That stretches across time and you have to take care of yourself across that entire time.

01:12:36.000 I mean, that's sort of the minimal necessary precondition for being a reasonably admirable person.

01:12:44.000 At least you can take care of yourself.

01:12:46.000 And if you can add to that the ability to take care of your family, well...

01:12:50.000 Another thumb up for you.

01:12:52.000 Because that's not so easy.

01:12:53.000 You know?

01:12:54.000 And then if you can do that in a way that also benefits your community...

01:12:57.000 Hey, man.

01:12:58.000 You're...

01:12:59.000 You're batting 750.

01:13:00.000 You know?

01:13:01.000 You've...

01:13:02.000 You've got it together.

01:13:03.000 Pretty damn strikingly.

01:13:04.000 And the probability that that's going to feel worthwhile to you is extremely high.

01:13:10.000 And that's another thing that's extraordinarily interesting.

01:13:13.000 And I also think true.

01:13:15.000 One of the things that I've been very curious about...

01:13:18.000 There's a chapter in 12 Rules for Life called...

01:13:23.000 Do what's meaningful, not what's expedient.

01:13:26.000 Expedient is sort of for the moment, you know?

01:13:29.000 Or maybe expedient is...

01:13:31.000 Well, you and I are going to have a conversation and I want something from you.

01:13:35.000 And so I'm going to craft my conversation so that I get what I want.

01:13:38.000 That's expedience.

01:13:40.000 And it's a very bad way of proceeding in the world.

01:13:43.000 It's very manipulative.

01:13:44.000 And it doesn't work.

01:13:45.000 That's actually why it's a bad way.

01:13:48.000 Like, the things that we actually consider ethical, as far as I'm concerned...

01:13:52.000 The reason we consider them ethical is because they actually work.

01:13:55.000 They're practical.

01:13:56.000 It's not, well, you should do this because that's what a good person does.

01:14:00.000 You know?

01:14:01.000 And...

01:14:02.000 But if you're really going to have some fun, you'd go off and do this.

01:14:04.000 It's not that sort of arbitrary issue at all.

01:14:08.000 It's that there are ethical rules.

01:14:11.000 And the reason that the rules are there are ethical patterns.

01:14:14.000 Ethical instincts, for that matter.

01:14:16.000 And deep ones is because they're the ones that actually work.

01:14:20.000 And you violate them at your great peril.

01:14:23.000 And so...

01:14:25.000 The...

01:14:26.000 So, okay.

01:14:27.000 So we've walked through the idea of cooperation a bit.

01:14:29.000 And the idea of competition.

01:14:30.000 The idea of shared aim.

01:14:31.000 The idea of imitation.

01:14:33.000 But...

01:14:34.000 We could add to that other evidence.

01:14:36.000 Like...

01:14:37.000 The evidence of guilt and shame.

01:14:38.000 And this is associated, let's say, with the phenomenology of meaning.

01:14:42.000 You know...

01:14:43.000 I said, well, if you could set yourself up so you were being good to yourself.

01:14:47.000 You were taking care of yourself like someone you had responsibility for.

01:14:52.000 That's rule two, right?

01:14:53.000 Treat yourself like you're someone you have the responsibility of taking care of.

01:14:58.000 Um...

01:14:59.000 Well...

01:15:01.000 What does that mean?

01:15:02.000 It means you have a certain innate value.

01:15:05.000 And that you have to structure your life so that you're taking that into account.

01:15:08.000 Well, so what happens if you don't?

01:15:10.000 Well, the first thing that happens, as far as I can tell, is...

01:15:14.000 Well, you suffer.

01:15:15.000 So, you're in pain.

01:15:16.000 You're frustrated.

01:15:17.000 You're disappointed.

01:15:18.000 You're nihilistic.

01:15:19.000 You're depressed.

01:15:20.000 You're anxious.

01:15:21.000 None of that's good.

01:15:23.000 And worse than that, you're ashamed and full of self-contempt.

01:15:28.000 You know, and you know that because you wake up at like three in the morning or two in the morning or whenever you're alone and feeling miserable.

01:15:34.000 And you have these feelings...

01:15:36.000 Guilt's another one.

01:15:37.000 You have these feelings that are running through your head, half-formed thoughts about all the bloody opportunities that you're not taking advantage of.

01:15:44.000 And, you know, your contempt for your inability to regulate your habits.

01:15:49.000 And then that sort of turns into a bitter cynicism because it's too damn painful to think that it's actually your doing.

01:15:56.000 And so you start blaming other people and it's just like a spiraling trip down to hell.

01:16:01.000 And I mean that, you know, if you go down that loop far enough, you can get to places that are so awful that that's the only way to describe them.

01:16:10.000 And people go there and quite often and very often they don't get back.

01:16:15.000 And so that's another indication that there's something like a natural ethic.

01:16:19.000 It's like, well, if there wasn't, what the hell are you doing torturing yourself for it?

01:16:24.000 You know, why bother with the conscience?

01:16:27.000 Why do you have shame and contempt?

01:16:30.000 And what, do you think that's just some sort of pathology that you learn because, you know, your father ruled over you with too much of an iron fist?

01:16:37.000 It's like, no, it's not, that's not how it is at all.

01:16:40.000 It's way more complicated than that.

01:16:42.000 It's because, you know, you're not at your core.

01:16:46.000 There's something at your core that's wise.

01:16:50.000 It's not smart.

01:16:51.000 It's not intelligent.

01:16:52.000 It's not, it doesn't think.

01:16:54.000 Like, it's not a rational thing in some sense.

01:16:57.000 It's this sense of where you should be positioned in the world.

01:17:02.000 And I think it's the instinctive meaning.

01:17:05.000 And it's deep.

01:17:06.000 It's not a newly evolved phenomena.

01:17:09.000 It's a deep, deep, deep instinct.

01:17:12.000 And it places you in the world.

01:17:15.000 And again, I think the idea of the example of music and dance is a really good one because, you know,

01:17:21.000 even if you don't dance with someone else, you know, people like to go to concerts.

01:17:26.000 Almost everybody loves to go to a concert.

01:17:28.000 And you know, a concert's great when the performer gets everybody hopping.

01:17:32.000 You know, it's like the instruments, the performers are all harmonized together.

01:17:38.000 They're all doing the same thing at the same time, which is an amazing thing to do, especially if they're improvising.

01:17:43.000 I can't figure out how they do that at all.

01:17:44.000 It just seems impossible.

01:17:45.000 But they're improvising, right?

01:17:47.000 And they're just tight as hell.

01:17:48.000 They're on the beat.

01:17:49.000 The patterns are coming out just perfectly.

01:17:51.000 And then they've got the whole stadium kind of reverberating.

01:17:56.000 Because if they're really good musicians, they can hear the acoustics of the instruments and the amphitheater itself.

01:18:03.000 And they get to get the whole thing vibrating in the same manner.

01:18:07.000 And then, with any luck, they can get all the people in the place doing the same thing, right?

01:18:12.000 And so, all of a sudden, you put yourself in a position where you're in harmony with this immense construction of patterns.

01:18:19.000 And it's so deeply meaningful.

01:18:21.000 It's people just absolutely bloody love it.

01:18:23.000 It's a primary religious experience to have that happen.

01:18:26.000 Which is why people will pay so much money to experience it.

01:18:31.000 And it's beneath criticism.

01:18:33.000 Like, nobody comes out of a concert that has any sense and goes,

01:18:38.000 What the hell was that all about?

01:18:40.000 Like, you just look at them like there's something wrong with them.

01:18:43.000 It's like the person in the movie that taps you on the shoulder and says,

01:18:46.000 You know, none of this is real.

01:18:48.000 It's like, what do you want?

01:18:50.000 You want to slap?

01:18:51.000 It's like, what's wrong with you?

01:18:52.000 I mean, I know it's...

01:18:53.000 And what do you mean it's not real?

01:18:55.000 It's actually hyper real.

01:18:57.000 It's more than real.

01:18:59.000 Right?

01:19:00.000 It's condensed real.

01:19:01.000 So, it's not that it's not real.

01:19:03.000 If it wasn't real, you wouldn't be watching it.

01:19:06.000 It's just not dull.

01:19:08.000 It's the most...

01:19:10.000 It's the most real that things can be condensed together so you can watch it all at once.

01:19:15.000 It's way more real than just real.

01:19:17.000 And so, it's a foolish argument.

01:19:19.000 And to rationally criticize a musical experience.

01:19:22.000 Like, you just have to be out of your bloody mind to...

01:19:24.000 You have to be so divorced from who you are to do that that...

01:19:28.000 That...

01:19:29.000 Well, that you...

01:19:30.000 That it should be against the law for you to go to concerts.

01:19:34.000 Right?

01:19:35.000 Because you're just annoying.

01:19:36.000 And so...

01:19:37.000 And so, there is this intrinsic sense of being in alignment with things.

01:19:42.000 You know?

01:19:43.000 And I don't know how deep it goes.

01:19:45.000 Because I think if you're healthy, you're aligned way down into your structure.

01:19:49.000 You know?

01:19:50.000 Your cells are healthy.

01:19:51.000 And your organs are healthy.

01:19:52.000 And they interact together in a healthy manner.

01:19:54.000 And they're put together in a unified way.

01:19:57.000 And then you take that unified you, which hopefully comes together somewhere around three years of age.

01:20:02.000 And then you unify it with other people.

01:20:04.000 And then you unify it across time.

01:20:06.000 And then you unify it with the layers of the world.

01:20:09.000 And then...

01:20:10.000 And you can tell when that's happening.

01:20:12.000 And in two ways.

01:20:13.000 One is...

01:20:14.000 Your conscience isn't torturing you to death for not being in the right place at the right time.

01:20:20.000 Right?

01:20:21.000 And you wake up in the morning.

01:20:22.000 Or you wake up in the middle of the night.

01:20:23.000 And, you know, maybe you're doubtful about some of the things that you've done in your life.

01:20:26.000 But at least you can say,

01:20:27.000 Look, man.

01:20:28.000 I'm trying to get myself together.

01:20:29.000 I'm pursuing something that seems to be important.

01:20:31.000 And I'm kind of trying to take someone along with me.

01:20:33.000 You know?

01:20:34.000 Maybe it's my partner.

01:20:35.000 My intimate partner.

01:20:36.000 Maybe it's a friend.

01:20:37.000 Maybe it's my family.

01:20:38.000 Like, it's not just for me.

01:20:40.000 Or even if it is because you're isolated.

01:20:42.000 It's not just for me right now.

01:20:44.000 I'm trying to set my life up.

01:20:46.000 So there's some grander sense of continuity there.

01:20:50.000 You know?

01:20:51.000 That's extending beyond you.

01:20:53.000 And God only knows how far that can extend beyond you.

01:20:56.000 And what seems to happen is the more of those layers that you get stacked up.

01:21:01.000 So the more it is beyond the you that's just here and now.

01:21:05.000 The better it is.

01:21:06.000 You know?

01:21:07.000 And you can wake up and you can think,

01:21:08.000 God damn it.

01:21:09.000 You know?

01:21:10.000 I can justify my life.

01:21:11.000 Miserable as I am.

01:21:12.000 Wretched as I am.

01:21:13.000 Ignorant as I am.

01:21:15.000 Knowing so little and being so full of error.

01:21:18.000 Well, at least I'm pursuing something of value.

01:21:21.000 You know?

01:21:22.000 And I'm doing my best for myself.

01:21:24.000 I'm taking care of myself.

01:21:25.000 You know?

01:21:26.000 I'm not being a burden to anyone else.

01:21:27.000 That's at least something.

01:21:29.000 And then I've got something left over for some other people.

01:21:32.000 And there's a sense of meaning in that.

01:21:34.000 It's like...

01:21:35.000 And you can be cynical about that, but it doesn't help.

01:21:37.000 All the cynic...

01:21:38.000 All the cynicism about that does is leave you in something that approximates hell.

01:21:43.000 And that's not helpful.

01:21:45.000 That's just a place where things go from bad to worse.

01:21:48.000 And so you'll torture yourself for not acting properly.

01:21:52.000 And you'll reward yourself, at least to some degree, for acting properly.

01:21:57.000 And if you do act properly, then other people want to be around you.

01:22:01.000 At least more than they otherwise would be.

01:22:03.000 And then you can cooperate with them.

01:22:05.000 And you can compete with them.

01:22:06.000 Because that can be fun.

01:22:07.000 You know?

01:22:08.000 If we're friends.

01:22:09.000 We're trying to do something.

01:22:10.000 I might see if I can outdo you.

01:22:11.000 And you might see if you can outdo me.

01:22:13.000 But it's not like we're doing it as enemies.

01:22:16.000 We're doing it as beneficial adversaries who are pushing each other forward.

01:22:21.000 Right?

01:22:22.000 There's something to be said for that.

01:22:23.000 And that's what competition does.

01:22:25.000 And that's what...

01:22:27.000 You know?

01:22:28.000 That's within our grasp.

01:22:29.000 And so we can wake up in the morning as conscious beings.

01:22:33.000 And we can look at this array of potential that stands in front of us with our newly awakened consciousness.

01:22:40.000 And we can say, well look, we can put the world in order.

01:22:43.000 We can stack things up layer on layer.

01:22:46.000 And we can make things harmonious.

01:22:48.000 And we can make things better for ourselves.

01:22:50.000 You know?

01:22:51.000 We can stop doing some of the foolish things that we're doing.

01:22:53.000 And we can make things better for ourselves.

01:22:55.000 And we can make things better for our family.

01:22:57.000 And we can improve the quality of our communities.

01:23:00.000 And we can find the meaning in our life that's associated with that.

01:23:03.000 That's a meaning that's associated with responsibility.

01:23:06.000 Which is also a very interesting thing to know.

01:23:09.000 And that I don't think people know very well.

01:23:11.000 It's like...

01:23:13.000 People were told so often...

01:23:15.000 I'll probably close with this.

01:23:16.000 We're told so often that...

01:23:18.000 Well, you know, really the purpose of life is to be happy.

01:23:21.000 And I think...

01:23:22.000 I don't know who the hell came up with that.

01:23:24.000 I really don't.

01:23:26.000 It's like...

01:23:27.000 It's so obviously wrong.

01:23:30.000 That it's barely worth considering.

01:23:32.000 Partly because there's a bunch of times you're just not going to be happy.

01:23:36.000 Right?

01:23:37.000 Because bad things happen.

01:23:38.000 It's like...

01:23:39.000 What the hell are you going to do then?

01:23:41.000 Well, seriously, man.

01:23:43.000 It's like...

01:23:44.000 There's going to be times in your life where you're like...

01:23:45.000 You're dealing with someone who's sick for like three years.

01:23:48.000 That's going to happen to you.

01:23:50.000 It might be you.

01:23:51.000 It might be someone you love.

01:23:52.000 And like they're going to be in bad shape.

01:23:55.000 They're going to be suffering.

01:23:56.000 And God only knows if it's going to get worse.

01:23:58.000 It's like...

01:23:59.000 What?

01:24:00.000 Are we going to be like dancing through the rose fields at that point?

01:24:02.000 It's like...

01:24:03.000 No.

01:24:04.000 And if the purpose of your life is happiness at that point...

01:24:06.000 It's like...

01:24:07.000 And you're useless too.

01:24:08.000 Because you're just going to be whiny and miserable and cynical and bitter.

01:24:11.000 Because you've got this sick person to take care of.

01:24:13.000 And that's really going to be helpful.

01:24:15.000 It's like...

01:24:16.000 No.

01:24:17.000 That's not it at all.

01:24:18.000 It's like...

01:24:19.000 There's something about this getting things in alignment.

01:24:21.000 Right?

01:24:22.000 You take some responsibility for yourself.

01:24:25.000 And get yourself together.

01:24:26.000 Because God only knows what you're capable of.

01:24:28.000 You know?

01:24:29.000 I mean...

01:24:30.000 You're probably not doing too bad the way you are.

01:24:31.000 And you're nowhere near as good as you could be.

01:24:33.000 So God only knows what you could be like if you really got your act together.

01:24:36.000 You think...

01:24:37.000 Man...

01:24:38.000 Let's see what happens if I really concentrated on something.

01:24:40.000 One of the chapters I'm writing right now in my new book is...

01:24:43.000 Concentrate on one thing as hard as you can.

01:24:45.000 And see what happens.

01:24:47.000 That's a nice disciplinary strategy.

01:24:49.000 It's like...

01:24:50.000 Pick something.

01:24:51.000 I don't care what it is.

01:24:52.000 Who the hell cares?

01:24:53.000 Pick something.

01:24:54.000 See if you can get really good at it.

01:24:56.000 See what it's like to be really good at something.

01:24:58.000 Then maybe you could be really good at two things.

01:25:00.000 And then maybe ten things.

01:25:01.000 And it starts to multiply, you know?

01:25:03.000 It's hard to get good at one thing.

01:25:05.000 But once you're good at one, it's easier to get...

01:25:07.000 It's easier to get good at two.

01:25:09.000 And once you've got two down, four is not so hard.

01:25:11.000 And once you hit four, eight's like within your grasp.

01:25:15.000 And then it really starts to accelerate upward.

01:25:17.000 And you think, well...

01:25:18.000 Who the hell could you be?

01:25:19.000 Maybe the world wouldn't be such a miserable, wretched, bitter, unsightly place.

01:25:23.000 You know?

01:25:24.000 Where you're consumed by nihilism and prone to addiction.

01:25:28.000 And all of that.

01:25:29.000 If...

01:25:31.000 If you got your act together.

01:25:33.000 If you're aiming at something worth aiming at.

01:25:35.000 And then you bring other people along for the ride.

01:25:37.000 You think, well, I can make my family's life a little less wretched.

01:25:40.000 You know?

01:25:41.000 Or maybe a little better.

01:25:42.000 And I've got something left over for the community.

01:25:44.000 I've got something left over for the long run.

01:25:46.000 And all of that's...

01:25:47.000 That deprives me of all that self-contempt and guilt that's normally tormenting me.

01:25:52.000 And then I can wake up and I can think.

01:25:55.000 Useless as I am.

01:25:56.000 Bounded as I am by my own mortality and finitude.

01:26:00.000 Ignorant as I am.

01:26:01.000 Right?

01:26:02.000 Prone to error as I am.

01:26:03.000 I've still got this extremely difficult thing that I'm pursuing.

01:26:08.000 That's worthwhile.

01:26:09.000 It's meaningful.

01:26:10.000 And that gives me some sense of purpose.

01:26:13.000 And that's something.

01:26:14.000 But more than that.

01:26:15.000 It's not just psychological.

01:26:16.000 It's not just a sense of purpose.

01:26:18.000 It's actually the case that you're quite useful.

01:26:21.000 You know?

01:26:22.000 Like if there's someone in your family that's sick.

01:26:24.000 And you're halfways together.

01:26:26.000 You can make them a lot less miserable than they would otherwise be.

01:26:29.000 I mean, it might be pointless in the final analysis.

01:26:32.000 They still might be fatal.

01:26:34.000 But it could be a lot less like hell than it would have been if you wouldn't have been there.

01:26:38.000 And that's not nothing.

01:26:40.000 And we all know that we're capable of making things better.

01:26:43.000 And so you think, well, what the hell would happen if we just tried to make things better?

01:26:47.000 And then stopped asking about it in some sense.

01:26:50.000 It's like it's not good that things aren't good.

01:26:52.000 Everyone knows that.

01:26:54.000 And they especially know that about themselves.

01:26:56.000 It's like, okay, wake up in the morning and think.

01:27:02.000 Well, I'm going to orient myself towards the highest thing that I can conceptualize at that moment.

01:27:08.000 I'm going to try to make the world a better place.

01:27:11.000 I'm going to try to improve the fabric of being.

01:27:14.000 And I'm not going to go out and advertise about it, you know?

01:27:17.000 I'm just going to start today, locally, with me.

01:27:20.000 I'm going to start not doing some of the stupid things that I do that I know I could quit doing if I was willing to do it.

01:27:28.000 I'm just going to experiment and I'm going to see what would the wretched, miserable world be like

01:27:33.000 if I wasn't so useless, incompetent, and malevolent.

01:27:37.000 It's a good, it's a great, it's a great question.

01:27:41.000 Because it's within your grasp you could actually do that.

01:27:44.000 You could try that for two years and think, okay, I'm just going to stop doing all the stupid things I'm doing.

01:27:49.000 You know, one at a time, because God knows I'm not going to stop all hundred of them at once,

01:27:53.000 but I could stop them one at a time.

01:27:55.000 I'm going to suspend judgment, that's rule six, right?

01:27:58.000 Don't criticize the world until you put your house in order.

01:28:02.000 Put your house in perfect order before you criticize the world.

01:28:05.000 That's a good one, it's a nice hypothesis.

01:28:07.000 It's like, well, what would it be like if you put yourself in order?

01:28:10.000 Well, there's a bloody goal.

01:28:12.000 That'd be worth trying.

01:28:14.000 And now, and so, well, why are we all here listening to this?

01:28:19.000 Well, who the hell knows?

01:28:20.000 It's not an easy thing to figure out.

01:28:22.000 But I think it's, I think it's because, like I've watched, I'm a psychologist,

01:28:26.000 and I've watched how psychological knowledge has developed over the last 300 years, say.

01:28:32.000 You know, that's been my purview of study.

01:28:34.000 And, you know, we're waking up to our own being to some degree.

01:28:39.000 We're starting to understand what we're like.

01:28:41.000 We're starting to put things together.

01:28:43.000 Things like the ethical conduct that I'm talking about today.

01:28:46.000 And we're starting to become more aware of what it is that we are and who we could be.

01:28:51.000 And it's about time, because we're very technologically powerful.

01:28:54.000 And we have a world that's, you know, this realm of possibility

01:28:59.000 that's open in front of you all the time that you're interacting with.

01:29:02.000 It's growing in magnitude, because you're growing in power.

01:29:06.000 You know, when we have this opportunity right now, I think, to really make things terrible,

01:29:11.000 or really make them think, or really make things good.

01:29:14.000 And I also think, and I believe this firmly, that which of those two things happen

01:29:20.000 is dependent on the choices that each of us make.

01:29:24.000 There's an idea. Solzhenitsyn wrote this in the Gulag Archipelago.

01:29:27.000 He said there's this old idea.

01:29:29.000 It's the idea that's at the basis of Western civilization, fundamentally.

01:29:32.000 You know, that each of us is a center of the cosmos, right?

01:29:36.000 With a spark of divinity within us.

01:29:39.000 Something that's made in the image of God.

01:29:41.000 And God is the thing that creates out of nothing, right?

01:29:44.000 Is to create out of potential.

01:29:45.000 And that's what we do.

01:29:47.000 That is what our consciousness does.

01:29:49.000 That's really what we are.

01:29:51.000 I've never read a better description of consciousness than that, because once you've made a habit,

01:29:58.000 and you're deterministic, you're not conscious anymore.

01:30:02.000 Like, you're not dealing with potential.

01:30:04.000 You're dealing with actuality.

01:30:05.000 It's already established.

01:30:06.000 Your consciousness is there to help you deal with that which has not yet come into being.

01:30:11.000 And so that's what you are.

01:30:12.000 You're the thing that confronts what hasn't yet come into being,

01:30:15.000 and determines what that's going to be.

01:30:18.000 You know, and that's on you.

01:30:20.000 And in some sense, and this is the thing I don't really understand, you know,

01:30:23.000 it's on each of us.

01:30:25.000 Equally.

01:30:26.000 That's partly what gives us that spark of divinity,

01:30:28.000 or that sovereign value that our culture attributes to us as,

01:30:32.000 like as citizens, as people with the right and the responsibility to vote,

01:30:37.000 and to determine the direction of the state.

01:30:39.000 We wouldn't have that if we didn't have the conception that there was something intrinsically valuable about us.

01:30:44.000 You think, well, God only knows what you could do to make the world a less hellish place.

01:30:49.000 That'd be a good start.

01:30:50.000 I mean, if you're looking for meaning, let's make things slightly less wretched.

01:30:55.000 That'd be a good start.

01:30:56.000 But there's no sense stopping there.

01:30:59.000 We can expand beyond that.

01:31:00.000 Maybe to the limits of our imagination.

01:31:03.000 It's like, put yourself together and see what happens.

01:31:06.000 One of the things that's been really fun about this tour, and I think part of the reason that I keep doing it,

01:31:12.000 apart from the fact that it's such a miracle that people come and have this sort of discussion,

01:31:17.000 is that people keep, they come up and talk to me afterwards, you know, groups of 150 people.

01:31:22.000 So I've met 10,000 people, or 15,000 people.

01:31:26.000 And so many of them, and some of them have had, like, bloody miserable times of it, you know?

01:31:31.000 Like, you just can't imagine.

01:31:33.000 Well, some of you can't.

01:31:34.000 And they said, look, well, I decided I was going to develop a vision.

01:31:39.000 You know, I'm going to have an ambition.

01:31:41.000 I thought I was going to have an ambition.

01:31:42.000 So I started to pursue it, and I thought I'd take some responsibility.

01:31:45.000 See if I could put my family together a bit, and start telling the truth.

01:31:49.000 You know, and get rid of some of my bad habits.

01:31:51.000 The ones that are kind of obvious, you know, that I thought maybe I could dispense with.

01:31:54.000 I thought I'd just try it.

01:31:56.000 And it's way better.

01:31:58.000 It's way better than it was.

01:32:00.000 And it's really something to hear thousands of people say that.

01:32:03.000 And you think, well, what would happen, what would happen if everyone did that?

01:32:10.000 Well, maybe things would be a lot better.

01:32:12.000 And that would be good, because there's a lot better to be had yet.

01:32:16.000 And God only knows what we could manage to attain.

01:32:18.000 And so, and there isn't a better adventure than that, you know?

01:32:22.000 And that's the difference.

01:32:23.000 That's not happiness.

01:32:24.000 It's like, that's...

01:32:26.000 Happiness is for...

01:32:28.000 It's for people who aren't too bright at an amusement park.

01:32:31.000 That's what happiness is for.

01:32:33.000 It's like, that's not your life, man.

01:32:35.000 Your life's an adventure.

01:32:37.000 You got things to contend with, you know?

01:32:39.000 You got death to contend with.

01:32:40.000 You got illness to contend with.

01:32:42.000 You got tyranny to contend with.

01:32:43.000 You got malevolence to contend with.

01:32:45.000 The malevolence of other people, and the malevolence in your own heart.

01:32:48.000 You've got adversaries, man.

01:32:50.000 And they're powerful.

01:32:51.000 And your adventure is to stand up against that, and to push back, and to transform that

01:32:57.000 into something that's...

01:32:58.000 Well, God only knows what it could be.

01:33:01.000 That's your adventure.

01:33:02.000 That's something worth getting up for, man.

01:33:05.000 That's something worth living for.

01:33:07.000 Thank you.

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01:37:35.000 Yeah, I guess then, you know, maybe if you're lucky,

01:37:37.000 then you have a little bit of music in your life,

01:37:39.000 because you put things together the way they should be put together.

01:37:42.000 And, you know, you're okay for yourself.

01:37:45.000 You can wake up with a bit of self-respect, not self-esteem.

01:37:50.000 Self-respect, a little bit anyways, for something as wretched as you are, you know?

01:37:55.000 You're struggling against impossible odds with a certain amount of success.

01:37:58.000 There's something to be said about that, you know?

01:38:00.000 And it's good that you have a kid or two, and they're depending on you, and you're helping them out.

01:38:05.000 Like, more power to you, and you know, that you're halfway decent to your wife.

01:38:09.000 It's great, and maybe you're kind of useful to your employer.

01:38:12.000 That'd be all right. He or she could probably use the help.

01:38:15.000 And then, society itself, well, it's stumbling along blindly like it always is,

01:38:19.000 it might not be so bad if someone else with open eyes was added to it.

01:38:26.000 So, what the hell, man?

01:38:30.000 That'd be a good thing to do.

01:38:32.000 And that's what I've discovered to be the truth.

01:38:35.000 And it seems to be resonating with people.

01:38:38.000 And you don't have anything better to do anyways,

01:38:40.000 because you're bloody well all in in this, right?

01:38:43.000 This is something you devote your whole life to, whatever it is you're doing.

01:38:46.000 You stake your whole life on it.

01:38:48.000 And so that's what you're looking for.

01:38:50.000 You're looking for something that's so bloody worthwhile that you could say,

01:38:54.000 it's worth staking my life on this.

01:38:56.000 And keeping things away from hell and moving them a little bit closer to heaven,

01:39:01.000 that's probably worth staking your life on.

01:39:03.000 Thank you very much.

01:39:04.000 Thank you.

01:39:05.000 Thank you.

01:39:06.000 Much appreciated.

01:39:07.000 Thank you.

01:39:08.000 You're feeling good, my friend.

01:39:09.000 The two longest shows that we've done these last two nights.

01:39:21.000 It's all that sun and beach.

01:39:22.000 Yeah.

01:39:23.000 Beats the hell out of 35 below and blizzardy.

01:39:25.000 Fair enough.

01:39:26.000 You know what they say about Canada,

01:39:27.000 it's the league,

01:39:29.000 the country.

01:39:30.000 Thank you.

01:39:32.000 It's all that time,

01:39:33.000 it's all the country.

01:39:34.000 It's all the time,

01:39:35.000 it's all the time I was so happy.

01:39:37.000 Fair enough.

01:39:37.440 You know what they say about Canada.

01:39:38.840 It's the largest uninhabitable country in the world.

01:39:46.000 All right, here we go.

01:39:47.020 There's a ton of good ones.

01:39:48.340 I thought this would be a nice way to start because of the tweet that I've been reading at the beginning of the show for this past year.

01:39:55.540 I'm thrilled to be here tonight to watch you think, but I'm terrified that I'll be seen by colleagues.

01:40:02.020 What does this say about me and society?

01:40:04.980 I mean, if they're here, you're probably okay.

01:40:10.620 That's right.

01:40:11.480 You can harass them for being here.

01:40:15.100 But that does seem to be a theme that we've come across.

01:40:19.700 It's hard to say.

01:40:21.400 I don't know what it is that...

01:40:24.980 Okay.

01:40:27.160 I've been trying to think about why I bother so many people.

01:40:29.920 I mean, I'll tell you a few things about that, though, first.

01:40:36.280 Like, I meet people out in public all the time now.

01:40:41.280 You know, it's rare now that if I go out that someone doesn't stop me.

01:40:45.940 And it usually happens, I don't know, a couple of times an hour when I'm out.

01:40:51.080 And it doesn't really matter where.

01:40:54.200 And what's really interesting about that is that...

01:40:59.600 So I don't know how many times that's happened.

01:41:03.060 Say it's happened for two years, and maybe that's ten times a day.

01:41:07.360 So it's eight or nine thousand times.

01:41:10.980 Probably something like that.

01:41:12.400 Every single one of those interactions has been positive, except two.

01:41:19.620 One, I met some horrible drunk-haired woman in Dublin.

01:41:24.500 And she was toting along her completely crushed husband.

01:41:28.940 And she had some rude things to say.

01:41:31.260 But she was mildly intoxicated by Dublin standards,

01:41:37.620 which meant completely unconscious, even by Australian standards.

01:41:42.400 And then, when I first came to Australia, when I landed in Perth,

01:41:49.240 I met this young guy who had a rather sour look on his face.

01:41:55.380 And he walked by me, and he said,

01:41:57.300 Jordan Peterson?

01:41:58.100 And I said, yes.

01:41:59.040 And I put up my hand, because usually people want to shake my hand.

01:42:03.180 He said, I wouldn't shake your hand.

01:42:04.740 And he, you know, trounced on by,

01:42:06.280 which will probably be the highlight of his life, I presume.

01:42:09.440 So, but, and part of me is hoping that that will be the case.

01:42:17.020 But other than that, man, I tell you, it's been unbelievably positive.

01:42:20.700 People are very careful when they come and talk to me.

01:42:27.380 They are alert and paying attention.

01:42:30.840 And they're very polite.

01:42:32.280 And they're happy to see me.

01:42:34.380 And they usually apologize for interrupting me,

01:42:37.640 although I don't regard it as an interruption.

01:42:40.640 And they usually have some good thing to tell me, you know.

01:42:43.680 They've read my book, or they've been listening to my lectures.

01:42:45.980 And they tell me something positive that's happened in their life as a consequence.

01:42:50.380 And that's absolutely wonderful.

01:42:53.120 And then there's all these talks.

01:42:55.540 And we figure that's about 300,000 people now, something like that,

01:43:00.460 which is a lot of people, man, in a lot of different cities.

01:43:03.400 And the response is always the same, which is really quite interesting.

01:43:07.700 And so, but then there's this small minority of people

01:43:11.160 that really, they don't like me.

01:43:14.380 And some of the feeling's mutual, you know.

01:43:16.920 Because I'm no fan of Marxists.

01:43:20.120 And I'm no fan of post-modernists either.

01:43:22.700 And so, you know, if you're a Marxist or a post-modernist

01:43:25.840 or some ungodly, monstrous combination of both,

01:43:30.200 then it's no wonder.

01:43:36.920 But apart from that, which is kind of political,

01:43:41.640 I think that at the bottom of what's happening in our culture wars

01:43:48.800 is something like an assault on the idea of competence itself.

01:43:53.600 Because, like I truly believe, imperfect as our structures are,

01:43:58.660 that we've organized hierarchies in the West

01:44:02.240 and increasingly in the rest of the world

01:44:04.140 that are fundamentally based on competence.

01:44:06.900 Like a hierarchy is like a game, you know.

01:44:08.980 It's got an aim.

01:44:09.940 And the aim is whatever the business, the venture is producing.

01:44:14.020 And some people are better at it than others.

01:44:16.220 And by and large, the people who are better

01:44:19.600 occupy positions of authority.

01:44:23.260 You know, it's not perfect.

01:44:25.180 Correlation's probably only about 0.5, something like that.

01:44:27.980 There's plenty left over for luck and arbitrariness and all that.

01:44:31.660 But by and large, it works pretty damn well.

01:44:36.160 Um, I think people are afraid of the responsibility.

01:44:40.000 And then what they think is,

01:44:44.420 well, you know, you think that it's all about personal responsibility,

01:44:47.420 and so you're not taking into account the fact that our social structures are corrupt.

01:44:51.600 It's like, yeah, yeah, I know they're corrupt.

01:44:56.080 Social structures are corrupt.

01:44:57.400 Like, what do you think?

01:44:58.080 That's news?

01:44:59.140 It's like, all you have to do is read history and you know that.

01:45:01.380 That's not the point.

01:45:02.940 The point is, it's like, you don't have a better option than to get your act together.

01:45:08.400 And that's also how you undo the corruption.

01:45:10.840 So, what's your bloody point?

01:45:13.360 It's an excuse for you to be miserable and wretched and useless and bitter and resentful

01:45:19.160 and cynical and dangerous because your culture is not perfect?

01:45:23.840 Well, then everyone has that excuse, and no one fixes it, and that's that.

01:45:32.180 So, that's the reason, I think, is that there's a substantial minority of people

01:45:36.520 who are very angry at the idea that the problems are on them.

01:45:41.900 And then there's this weird twist that goes along with that, that if you believe that,

01:45:50.480 like if you dare to believe that Western culture isn't a fundamentally oppressive and corrupt

01:45:56.820 patriarchy, and it is in part, but I mean fundamentally, then you're immoral.

01:46:03.720 And if you're immoral, there's something wrong with you and you shouldn't be.

01:46:07.520 And so, that's why you get glared at, let's say, or treated unkindly if you happen to come

01:46:13.520 to an event like this.

01:46:14.880 And then you have to think it through, I guess, and you think, well, what the hell are you

01:46:19.580 doing here?

01:46:20.720 It doesn't look to me like it's exactly casual entertainment.

01:46:26.080 You know, you're not coming here and being told, in some sense, how intrinsically wonderful

01:46:33.220 you are or how easy the world is.

01:46:35.140 It's like, I don't think they're saccharine pills to swallow.

01:46:39.240 I think a lot of it's quite bitter.

01:46:41.880 It's like, so then you're embarrassed about that because people might see it.

01:46:51.880 Well, some of that means that you're just human and social, you know, because no one

01:46:57.720 likes to be the target of mob outrage.

01:47:02.520 You know, normally if a mob is outraged at you, it's because you deserve to be ridden

01:47:07.240 out of town on a rail under normal circumstances, right?

01:47:11.040 And if you're completely opaque to that, you're probably a psychopath.

01:47:13.840 It's pretty easy to feel bad when people are judging you harshly, even if their judgment

01:47:19.380 is inappropriate.

01:47:25.200 You decide what side you're on and you put up with it, you know.

01:47:28.500 I think it's better to be on the side of difficult endeavor, courageous movement forward, truth

01:47:38.780 and responsibility.

01:47:40.520 And to do what you can not to be apologetic about that.

01:47:43.640 And to give yourself a bit of a break if you happen to be, because it's very easy to be

01:47:51.560 the, it's very easy to feel bad when people are arbitrarily judging you.

01:48:00.420 You know, when I had all this trouble with the press, which seems to have decreased to

01:48:06.260 a substantial degree recently, which I don't miss.

01:48:09.520 You know, a typical contentious interview would pretty much do me in for like three days.

01:48:19.260 It's not pleasant to be grilled like that, you know, to have your fundamental morality questioned.

01:48:27.840 But I don't think there's anything wrong with what we're doing here.

01:48:36.060 I can't see it, man.

01:48:37.420 It's like, what the hell is the problem?

01:48:40.600 What's the problem with suggesting to people that they should get their act together and

01:48:44.500 that the weight of the world rests on their shoulders and that their malevolence and willful

01:48:50.980 blindness and inability or unwillingness to contend with the world makes things worse.

01:48:55.380 It's like, isn't that true?

01:48:58.880 Well, and if it is true, it's going to generate resistance because it's asking a lot of people,

01:49:04.200 man, you know, the world's a pretty brutal place and it's your fault, a lot of it.

01:49:11.380 It's my fault too, you know, but it's our fault.

01:49:14.580 And so it's not surprising that people are resistant to that.

01:49:18.540 And people have always been resistant to that idea.

01:49:21.960 So I would say, yeah, have a little sympathy for yourself, but don't stop, but don't stop.

01:49:33.640 Don't stop reading and don't stop thinking about the sorts of things that you're thinking about and

01:49:38.520 presume that calmer minds and wiser heads are going to prevail because I think they will.

01:49:45.780 And that'll also depend to some degree on how you act.

01:49:49.980 And the other thing I would say too, just to close this, is if you're ever attacked by a mob,

01:49:58.540 don't apologize.

01:50:03.700 You know, you can scour your conscience and you can figure out what you did wrong or what

01:50:08.000 you didn't do right enough, but if you didn't do anything wrong, don't apologize.

01:50:22.880 No, if you don't apologize and you can stand it for two weeks, which is a long time when you're

01:50:30.640 being mobbed, they'll go the hell away and you'll win.

01:50:36.720 So, you see what happened with Jeff Bezos the other day?

01:50:39.780 Did you read about that?

01:50:41.420 It's so cool.

01:50:43.000 So, he's being blackmailed, right, by the National Enquirer.

01:50:46.200 He has some goods on them about some underhanded interactions they were involved in.

01:50:53.140 Had evidence for it.

01:50:54.420 And they had got some photographs of Bezos, he runs Amazon, sexual photographs, you know,

01:51:02.500 what do they call them, bottom half selfies or some goddamn thing, you know.

01:51:09.900 Dick pics, Peterson.

01:51:15.420 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:51:17.860 Bottom half selfies.

01:51:19.100 Well, they said, okay, now I'm embarrassed.

01:51:22.560 They actually said that in the article.

01:51:24.860 Dick pics, yeah, that's a lot more, that's a lot more elegant, man.

01:51:30.440 So, they got a few of these.

01:51:32.320 And he came out yesterday, wrote an article in Medium, and he said, go ahead, you sons of

01:51:38.040 bitches, publish them, up yours.

01:51:41.540 I'm not going to lie about your corruption.

01:51:44.100 And that was that.

01:51:45.140 And I think he'll come out, you know, he's married, there's going to be some trouble.

01:51:49.580 So, this was with his, well, it was with his mistress, apparently, and God only knows about

01:51:54.020 his marital status.

01:51:55.160 I don't know anything about that.

01:51:56.760 But he wasn't willing to be cowed.

01:51:59.700 And, you know, he's probably, I mean, he's quite the remarkable person, and no doubt he

01:52:03.800 has his flaws, and perhaps now we have some photographic evidence of them.

01:52:07.500 But, but, I don't mean physiological flaws.

01:52:14.720 Well, maybe that was the reason for his marital trouble, I don't bloody well know.

01:52:18.140 But, but he didn't, he didn't apologize.

01:52:22.840 And so, and I think he's going to come out as ahead as he possibly could have.

01:52:27.400 And I would say the same thing to all of you.

01:52:29.100 It's like, there's nothing to be apologetic about for this.

01:52:32.060 So, sometimes you have to make enemies.

01:52:38.420 Not unnecessary ones, but sometimes you have to make enemies, and sometimes that's the best

01:52:43.840 thing you can do.

01:52:45.600 Not usually.

01:52:48.140 So, basically, you're saying rule 13 is don't send bottom half selfies.

01:52:58.580 That's what we're doing.

01:52:59.380 No, the rule 13 is don't say bottom half selfies.

01:53:02.220 There you go.

01:53:03.080 Jesus.

01:53:03.720 There you go.

01:53:04.220 Yeah.

01:53:05.160 This one, this one's actually not a question.

01:53:07.260 I just thought this was nice.

01:53:08.340 There's someone who's in the front area over here who's sitting with a friend, and he wrote

01:53:12.360 that he's had a brutal few years, and tonight is huge for him.

01:53:16.060 He actually named his son after you.

01:53:19.040 I just thought, we'll just give you some accolades there on that one.

01:53:22.700 Well, that's really something.

01:53:25.860 So, I can't really say thank you for that, because that's a rather weak comment.

01:53:34.540 So, hopefully, the name suits him well.

01:53:39.000 Or her, I suppose, because sometimes it's Jordan.

01:53:42.040 It's a woman's name.

01:53:43.000 How do you get over betrayal?

01:53:52.720 You develop a philosophy of good and evil.

01:53:57.020 That's how you get over trauma.

01:54:00.020 You know, one of the things that's been quite interesting about the last couple of years is

01:54:05.880 I've talked to a lot of soldiers, and they've given me a lot of their military paraphernalia,

01:54:12.440 which is quite interesting.

01:54:13.460 Somebody gave me his second lieutenant's bars the other day.

01:54:16.120 He had worn them through Afghanistan.

01:54:18.320 And so, a lot of military people have given me their insignia, and a lot of people who've

01:54:25.080 been in service.

01:54:25.740 And they told me that watching my lectures has helped them get over their post-traumatic

01:54:31.440 stress disorder.

01:54:32.700 And I've treated people with post-traumatic stress disorder.

01:54:35.420 And it's, you know, you kind of hear that it happens when people encounter something like

01:54:43.080 tragic and terrible.

01:54:44.380 But that isn't what happens.

01:54:47.800 You develop post-traumatic stress disorder when you encounter something malevolent.

01:54:51.720 Something like, if you're touched by evil, that hurts you.

01:54:58.600 And it's not just psychological.

01:55:00.580 Like, it changes your brain structure.

01:55:02.460 And in a way that's not that easy to change back.

01:55:05.100 You can modify it to some degree, but there's a certain degree of permanence to it.

01:55:09.360 You have to start to understand the world as deeply polarized, you know?

01:55:14.340 It's like, you can understand the natural world.

01:55:18.260 And you think, well, the natural world, it's a French Impressionist painting, man.

01:55:22.160 It's beautiful, right?

01:55:23.080 It's a sunny day at the beach.

01:55:24.800 It's beautiful and generous beyond compare.

01:55:29.460 But man, there's part of it that's just trying to kill you.

01:55:34.000 And so it's brutal.

01:55:35.700 And you need to know that.

01:55:37.880 You know, in the story Sleeping Beauty, in the Disney movie, you remember maybe when the

01:55:43.120 princess is born, her parents are older and they're really happy to have her born.

01:55:47.200 And they have her christening.

01:55:49.280 And they don't invite the evil queen to the christening, Maleficent.

01:55:53.920 And she's the dark side of Mother Nature.

01:55:57.280 And extraordinarily powerful.

01:55:58.860 And you think, well, why the hell would you invite the evil queen to your daughter's christening?

01:56:02.980 And the answer is because you need to toughen her up.

01:56:06.880 You cannot protect your children from the catastrophe of reality.

01:56:11.240 You have to expose them to it carefully, right?

01:56:13.640 That's the point of being a parent, is that you do it judiciously.

01:56:17.880 And then the child starts to understand that terrible as things are, they can be dealt with.

01:56:26.540 And it's the same with culture.

01:56:28.320 Like, culture is the same thing.

01:56:30.620 Well, that's why there is the patriarchal oppression narrative.

01:56:34.020 It's one-sixth of a religious story.

01:56:37.320 Who's in charge?

01:56:38.220 The evil king.

01:56:39.800 Well, obviously, the evil king is always in charge.

01:56:43.300 But he's not the only thing that's in charge.

01:56:45.500 There's the good king, too, you know.

01:56:47.080 And there's a war between them, like there always is.

01:56:49.360 And there's awake people that are trying to help the good king win.

01:56:52.820 And we can't forget about them, either.

01:56:55.020 And then, you know, there's the malevolence in your own heart that you have to contend with.

01:57:00.620 Now you have to tell me the question again.

01:57:02.520 I am coming to answer it, though.

01:57:04.980 Hold on.

01:57:05.520 I was with you.

01:57:06.160 What was the question, guys?

01:57:07.080 Somebody yell it out.

01:57:12.660 Betrayal.

01:57:13.280 How do you deal with betrayal?

01:57:13.740 Oh, yes.

01:57:14.840 Betrayal.

01:57:15.600 Well, yeah.

01:57:16.400 Okay.

01:57:16.660 Well, so, no, it's important.

01:57:18.480 The thing is you have to understand the structure of the world.

01:57:22.400 You know, nature is brutal.

01:57:25.540 Culture is a bloodthirsty tyranny.

01:57:28.920 And human beings are, what did Jung say?

01:57:31.580 A tree that wants to grow to heaven has to have roots that go all the way down to hell.

01:57:38.420 You know, and he believed that the encounter with the shadow, that's the dark side of the human psyche, was literally, it was as close to a journey to hell as anything can possibly be.

01:57:50.340 Because to undergo that journey properly, you have to understand what it is to be human, how dark that is.

01:57:57.400 You have to understand, like, people read about World War II, they read about the Nazis, they read about the Soviets, they read about the people who ran the Maoist Inquisitions, and the people who conducted the torture.

01:58:12.900 And they never think of themselves as those agents.

01:58:17.640 They think that's someone else.

01:58:19.660 You know, maybe they think they read the stories or they don't even read them at all because they're too horrifying.

01:58:24.200 They think, well, I'd be the good guy.

01:58:25.920 It's like, no.

01:58:28.060 No, you wouldn't.

01:58:29.820 Probably not.

01:58:31.580 Maybe you wouldn't be the worst person.

01:58:34.260 But maybe you would be.

01:58:36.640 You know, and that's a hell of a thing to come to terms with.

01:58:39.220 And you think, well, how the hell does that help you with betrayal?

01:58:43.020 It's like, this polarity is built into the structure of the world.

01:58:51.060 You know, this terrible tension, let's say, between good and evil.

01:58:56.080 It's there.

01:58:57.360 It's not just, it's not, it's you.

01:58:59.800 You're in it, and you're responsible for it.

01:59:02.920 But it's not of you in some sense.

01:59:06.580 It's of everything.

01:59:07.880 It's built into the structure of reality.

01:59:09.860 And now and then, you stumble across some of the malevolence, and it takes you out.

01:59:16.020 And if you're naive, and you don't understand that, it takes the bottom out of your world.

01:59:22.160 You think, well, everything's good.

01:59:23.320 People are good.

01:59:24.160 Society's basically good.

01:59:25.480 Nature's basically good.

01:59:26.840 It's like, you sound like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, right?

01:59:29.920 Who put all five of his children in orphanages, where they all died.

01:59:38.520 You need to understand that malevolence exists in the world, and that it's there in you, and

01:59:45.560 it's there in others.

01:59:46.580 And then you have to learn to accept that as a reality, and you have to decide that you're

01:59:51.920 going to begin to contend with it.

01:59:54.060 And then that's a way out.

01:59:56.860 It's a way out.

01:59:58.440 So look, you're much more likely to be betrayed if you're naive.

02:00:05.560 You think everyone's good.

02:00:07.680 No one would hurt a fly.

02:00:09.060 The person who loves you only loves you.

02:00:11.780 And then you miss all the warning signs.

02:00:14.320 You're just a patsy.

02:00:16.860 You're just there to be plucked and picked and exploited.

02:00:21.480 Christ, you invite it.

02:00:23.020 Because you're so damn blind.

02:00:24.300 You don't stand up for yourself when you're supposed to.

02:00:26.440 You don't tell the other person to go to hell when they really need to be told to go to hell.

02:00:30.780 When they're pushing against you in ways they shouldn't.

02:00:33.620 You bend over backwards to be nice and friendly and easy to get along with and to never have

02:00:37.620 butter melt in your mouth.

02:00:38.580 And it's all the other person can do not to betray you.

02:00:42.180 You just need it just so you'll grow up.

02:00:44.940 You know, I'm not justifying it.

02:00:46.640 I know that that can be incredibly cruel.

02:00:48.880 And you can run into people that are so malevolent that it's just beyond absolute comprehension.

02:00:54.120 But naivety definitely increases the probability that that will happen.

02:00:57.540 Or that you'll run into your own malevolence, which is what happens to soldiers a lot.

02:01:01.840 Because they think they're good people.

02:01:04.000 And then they go out in the battlefield and they find out that, well, good people they might

02:01:07.980 be.

02:01:08.240 But they're also the same sort of bloodthirsty soldier that's been roaming the earth for

02:01:14.300 the last, like, three million years.

02:01:16.720 So it's a hell of a shock to encounter that in yourself.

02:01:21.440 And then you go from naivety to being hurt and cynical, right, about everything.

02:01:26.000 It's like, oh my God, the world, it's so terrible.

02:01:28.120 How can I possibly live in it?

02:01:29.540 And that's no good.

02:01:30.960 Then you're in the post-traumatic hell.

02:01:33.360 And then maybe you get out of that and you think, well, things are as bad as I thought.

02:01:38.480 And I can be betrayed.

02:01:39.900 And I can betray myself.

02:01:42.280 And that's all in the structure of the world.

02:01:44.440 But there's more to me than I thought.

02:01:47.560 There's more to courage than I thought.

02:01:49.100 There's something to being awake.

02:01:50.580 And then you replace your naive, what would you call it, your naive defenselessness with

02:02:00.060 the courage to reintegrate with the world.

02:02:03.620 It's like, yeah, you were hurt once or twice or five times.

02:02:08.400 It's like, wake the hell up.

02:02:12.000 Back into the world.

02:02:13.280 Extend your hand again, not because you're naive, not because you're unaware that you

02:02:21.540 can be burnt.

02:02:23.160 You extend your hand in courage despite the fact that you've been burnt.

02:02:27.780 Because you need to make contact with people.

02:02:30.220 And it's the best thing you can do for someone.

02:02:32.680 Say, I know what you're like, but I still want to be with you.

02:02:38.200 It's best for both of us.

02:02:39.720 It elevates both of us.

02:02:41.180 It's the best way out of it, even though there's always the possibility for misunderstanding

02:02:45.840 and betrayal and all of that.

02:02:48.780 It's still that the hand of trust, courage, and truth is the best antidote for the catastrophe

02:02:54.740 of malevolence and betrayal.

02:02:56.540 And that's what moves you out of that despair and cynicism.

02:03:00.140 It's courage, right?

02:03:02.880 It's, I was hurt.

02:03:04.980 It was real pain.

02:03:06.140 And maybe you didn't deserve it, because like I've seen people hurt very badly by people

02:03:10.580 and not because, not particularly because they were naive.

02:03:15.740 They just were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

02:03:19.120 What gets you out of that?

02:03:21.560 It's courage, man, and truth.

02:03:23.460 And that works.

02:03:24.700 And so, and the knowledge that that's how the world is structured.

02:03:27.480 And the knowledge that that's not an excuse to, to withdraw and, and, and be permanently

02:03:34.140 hurt and to be bitter and cynical.

02:03:35.860 It's like, you got your reasons, man, for sure.

02:03:38.400 But it's not a solution.

02:03:43.680 Courage.

02:03:45.220 Go back out again.

02:03:47.080 Risk getting hurt again.

02:03:48.080 But, this time, man, keep your eyes open.

02:03:52.340 And defend yourself as soon as you need to.

02:03:54.440 And then maybe you'll have a chance at the kind of relationship that will heal the betrayal.

02:03:58.880 That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you end a show.

02:04:14.400 So, I'm going to get out of the way and make some noise for Dr. Jordan Peterson, everybody.

02:04:18.920 Thank you very much, everybody.

02:04:20.120 Thank you.

02:04:25.360 Thanks, Dave.

02:04:28.880 If you found this conversation meaningful, you might think about picking up Dad's books,

02:04:33.120 Maps of Meaning, The Architecture of Belief, or his newer bestseller, 12 Rules for Life,

02:04:37.380 and Antidote to Chaos.

02:04:38.700 Both of these works delve much deeper into the topics covered in the Jordan B. Peterson podcast.

02:04:43.520 See jordanbpeterson.com for audio, e-book, and text links, or pick up the books at your

02:04:48.380 favorite bookseller.

02:04:49.200 Remember to check out jordanbpeterson.com slash personality for information on his new course.

02:04:55.360 Tag Jordan or I on Instagram to share your results from Discovering Personality.

02:04:58.880 I really hope you enjoyed this podcast.

02:05:01.600 If you did, please leave a rating at Apple Podcasts, a comment, a review, or share this

02:05:06.660 episode with a friend.

02:05:07.900 Thanks for tuning in.

02:05:09.160 Talk to you next week.

02:05:10.020 Follow me on my YouTube channel, Jordan B. Peterson, on Twitter, at Jordan B. Peterson, on Facebook,

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02:05:23.300 Details on this show, access to my blog, information about my tour dates and other events, and my list

02:05:30.180 of recommended books can be found on my website, jordanbpeterson.com.

02:05:35.260 My online writing programs, designed to help people straighten out their pasts, understand

02:05:40.760 themselves in the present, and develop a sophisticated vision and strategy for the future, can be found

02:05:46.220 at selfauthoring.com.

02:05:48.520 That's selfauthoring.com.

02:05:50.700 From the Westwood One Podcast Network.

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - January 19, 2020

Put Yourself Together

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