The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - The Topic of Truth

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00:00:57.420 Welcome to Season 2, Episode 32 of the Jordan B. Peterson Podcast.

00:01:04.020 I'm Mikayla Peterson, Dad's daughter and collaborator.

00:01:06.980 Today's episode is a 12 Rules for Life lecture recorded in Edinburgh on October 28, 2018.

00:01:14.140 I'll admit it, I had to Google how to pronounce Edinburgh.

00:01:18.080 I haven't been saying Edinburgh, but I have been calling it Edinburgh-o, so that's embarrassing for me, but I figured I'd admit it.

00:01:25.400 I've named this lecture, The Topic of Truth, which is why, partly, I admitted the whole Edinburgh thing.

00:01:32.940 I really like this lecture. Telling the truth isn't easy, but it's easier than the repercussions that come from lying.

00:01:38.240 I've had a hard time learning that, to be honest. I keep relearning it.

00:01:41.780 That'll never stop, probably. Well, I hope it does one day.

00:01:44.900 You know when you're in a situation and it's easier to not say something, or to change the story just a tiny bit?

00:01:50.480 That doesn't seem to ever be a good idea, or a workout.

00:01:54.500 It's scary to tell the truth, but it's worth it.

00:01:56.740 Life can get really convoluted and confusing very quickly if you lie.

00:02:00.680 I've been trying to sort out my life, which you would assume would be easier with a father like mine, but it's still not easy.

00:02:06.140 I have a lot going on. Social media has been particularly vicious this month, with Dad's health problems and my relationship.

00:02:12.280 I've been separated since June 2018, but just started talking about it recently.

00:02:16.060 We co-parent my daughter, Scarlett. I just hired my ex as my business manager, and he helps me manage my dad as well.

00:02:22.660 We're going out for dinner tonight. We're good friends, and life is complicated.

00:02:26.680 But people like to throw judgments around and forget that people online are real people.

00:02:30.880 The best thing you can do, I think, in response to that, is to be honest.

00:02:34.960 Or, as Dad says, at least don't lie.

00:02:37.620 I'll try to update people soon about how he's doing.

00:02:39.980 If you're worried, please don't.

00:02:42.440 We're Petersons. We've got this.

00:02:44.640 By next year, we'll be joking about it.

00:02:51.960 The topic of truth.

00:02:53.900 A Jordan B. Peterson 12 Rules for Life lecture.

00:03:01.860 Thank you.

00:03:04.720 Thank you very much.

00:03:06.100 The first thing I'd like to say is that you have an absolutely amazing city.

00:03:14.760 I came here first about two years ago.

00:03:19.840 I only spent a couple of days.

00:03:22.380 But it's just...

00:03:25.640 The only city I've really been in, I think, that was more impressive was...

00:03:29.180 Or as impressive, let's say.

00:03:30.700 It was Bruges.

00:03:31.740 Bruges is staggeringly beautiful.

00:03:33.640 But Edinburgh is really, really something.

00:03:36.200 So, congratulations.

00:03:37.900 And I see that you're tearing down a fair number of those hideous 70s buildings that were built.

00:03:45.880 And the good riddance to those bloody things, man.

00:03:48.680 You know, one of the horrible things about being a psychologist in a university in North America

00:03:53.200 is that you're destined to occupy the most hideous building on campus.

00:03:58.640 It's usually because the older campuses are quite beautiful, you know,

00:04:02.560 to the degree that they were built on a church architectural, what would you say, ethos.

00:04:08.220 They have that kind of grand cathedral-like expanse.

00:04:12.420 And then the newer ones, well, they're more like knowledge factories.

00:04:16.400 And so they're kind of hideous.

00:04:18.640 And then the pinnacle of hideousness is always the psychology building

00:04:22.680 because it was built in like 1975 when, I don't know what happened to architects,

00:04:27.020 it's like they had a collective breakdown and built these horrible cinder block buildings

00:04:33.080 with windows that don't open because we were going to run out of oil, you know, back in 1975.

00:04:39.140 So people weren't going to be allowed to open up their windows.

00:04:42.040 And so seeing all those 70s monstrosities get demolished out of your beautiful city

00:04:48.140 and things put back in their proper perspective is really nice.

00:04:52.220 Anyways, it really is a remarkable place.

00:04:54.540 I'm always struck when I come to Europe because there's a dearth of beauty in North American cities.

00:05:01.280 Not all of them.

00:05:02.500 New York's a real exception.

00:05:04.640 And I would say also so is Montreal.

00:05:06.920 But after New York and Montreal, it's downhill pretty damn quick.

00:05:10.880 Well, there's Chicago.

00:05:11.860 Chicago has some great architecture. 0.81

00:05:13.700 But you come to Europe and I don't know what the hell it was with you people.

00:05:17.040 You got obsessed with beauty in some strange way and made it so staggeringly important for centuries and centuries

00:05:25.240 to make things beautiful beyond belief.

00:05:28.620 And, you know, it was expensive to do that and it required a tremendous input of manpower and a remarkable vision.

00:05:35.120 And it's paid off in spades, though, eh?

00:05:37.500 Because everybody comes all over, from all over the world to Europe to, it's like a pilgrimage to beauty.

00:05:44.320 And so that's really something.

00:05:45.700 So obviously it was a very wise idea.

00:05:47.700 And one of the rules that I'm working on for my next book is make one room in your house as beautiful as possible

00:05:56.700 because I think it's very important for people to have a relationship with beauty

00:06:00.860 because beauty is a strange thing.

00:06:03.640 It's hard to...

00:06:05.120 It's like music or any other art form, I suppose, which, of course, partake in beauty.

00:06:10.580 It's difficult to get a grip on exactly what it is.

00:06:15.500 What is beauty?

00:06:17.120 Who knows?

00:06:18.080 But it's something that calls you to be more than you are.

00:06:21.060 That's something.

00:06:21.940 And it's a celebration of the possibility of life as well.

00:06:25.320 And to surround yourself with what's beautiful is to set the stage for living a life that's aiming higher.

00:06:34.040 And whenever I come to Europe and see so many...

00:06:36.580 Also, I traveled with my wife through...

00:06:39.880 We drove from Amsterdam to Prague and then back a couple of years ago.

00:06:48.540 And we decided that we would use the UNESCO World Heritage Sites as a guide.

00:06:55.800 UNESCO has done a pretty good job of describing or protecting or marking out remarkable, natural,

00:07:03.980 and constructed parts of the world for special consideration.

00:07:09.680 And so if you use the UNESCO guide, there's UN sites that qualify all of Edinburgh.

00:07:16.880 I think the main square mile in the middle of Edinburgh is a UNESCO site, World Heritage Site.

00:07:23.120 And so we went through all these World Heritage Sites.

00:07:25.760 A lot of them were medieval villages as well in East Germany.

00:07:29.720 They put those all back together.

00:07:31.020 And they're so damn beautiful.

00:07:32.360 You go to those, they just bring tears to your eyes, you know.

00:07:35.040 It's really something to see that.

00:07:37.120 And so it's so magnificent.

00:07:39.280 So it's such a pleasure to be here and to...

00:07:41.900 Just to walk down the streets to see that.

00:07:45.020 It's really...

00:07:46.580 That sense that you should build something that would last.

00:07:50.100 That's part of what's here that isn't in North America.

00:07:52.760 Because things are so, well, you know, buildings are built to turn over quite rapidly there, mostly.

00:08:00.740 And there's no shortage of hideousness as a consequence of that.

00:08:04.880 And a kind of shallowness that's also alienating.

00:08:08.200 The other thing I really like about European cities is that you really feel that people belong in them.

00:08:13.380 And in really modern cities, people seem like, well, they kind of clutter the place up, you know.

00:08:20.100 There's all those clean lines and bright lights and shiny surfaces.

00:08:24.400 And it's all beautiful, except for the people.

00:08:26.380 They're kind of making it ugly.

00:08:28.100 And so if you just got rid of them, it would be all pristine and beautiful.

00:08:31.700 I never really feel that in a European city.

00:08:34.200 It feels like that's where people live.

00:08:36.020 And they've been there a long time.

00:08:37.500 And it's a good thing that they're there.

00:08:39.920 And so, anyways, it is a great pleasure to be here.

00:08:44.540 And so thank you for that, all of that.

00:08:51.960 Oh, it's my pleasure, man.

00:08:57.320 So I thought what I would, I always pick a question to talk about.

00:09:03.300 If you're going to organize a talk or if you're going to write an essay, you need to have a question.

00:09:09.140 You know, that's your topic question, I suppose, your topic statement.

00:09:13.400 Your grammar school teachers probably taught you about the necessity of those.

00:09:17.800 But you do have to have an organizational point.

00:09:20.880 You're aiming at something.

00:09:23.000 You have to be aiming at something to be vaguely coherent and to be on track.

00:09:26.800 And so, I thought I would concentrate on rule eight tonight.

00:09:31.780 And rule eight is tell the truth or at least don't lie.

00:09:37.600 In the original formulation, that rule was just tell the truth.

00:09:42.740 That was, I wrote 42 rules for a website called Quora.

00:09:47.340 I outlined that in the preface to 12 rules for life.

00:09:51.040 And I did that because some kid had written in what are the most important things that everyone in life should know.

00:09:58.340 And I'd been answering a lot of Quora questions.

00:10:01.140 Well, 50 or so, it's not a tremendous number.

00:10:03.940 But a fair number, mostly out of curiosity.

00:10:07.700 And I thought I'd take a crack at that one.

00:10:13.340 And so I wrote 42 rules.

00:10:16.340 And they were very popular.

00:10:18.240 It was interesting to see, you can track how many responses your Quora answers get.

00:10:25.960 And most of mine didn't get very many responses.

00:10:30.260 And a small minority got the overwhelming majority of responses.

00:10:33.960 And that's in keeping with a principle that I've discussed quite frequently in my YouTube videos.

00:10:39.300 And a fair bit in 12 rules for life called the Pareto principle.

00:10:42.100 And the Pareto principle is that almost everything fails completely.

00:10:45.940 And some things succeed overwhelmingly.

00:10:49.280 And it doesn't really matter what the domain is.

00:10:52.720 So I would say two of my Quora questions probably got 98% of the attention.

00:10:58.800 You know, and that's not atypical.

00:11:01.120 You think about pop music, right?

00:11:02.760 It's like how many pop music songs are written every day?

00:11:05.780 God only knows there's just, and put online, there's just, well, hundreds of thousands of them online.

00:11:12.460 And hardly any of them ever get listened to by anyone.

00:11:15.560 And then now and then you get one like the Gangnam style dancer who gets like two billion.

00:11:22.740 And that's the way of the world.

00:11:26.320 That's how things go.

00:11:28.360 And the Quora answer that I produced for what are the most important things in life that everybody should know

00:11:38.240 got a disproportionate amount of attention by the standard of my questions,

00:11:43.240 but by the standard of questions in general.

00:11:45.040 And I thought that was kind of interesting.

00:11:46.920 It's like people liked the list for some reason.

00:11:49.920 It was kind of half.

00:11:51.080 There was a bit of wit to it, as much as I could manage anyways.

00:11:53.740 And some of it was sort of commonplace, and some of it was a bit quirky, like Rule 12 is pet a cat when you see one on the street.

00:12:03.380 It doesn't seem like something that's that particularly important, but it's kind of a nice thing to meditate on for a while,

00:12:11.120 maybe to develop a bit of a theme on.

00:12:13.500 And anyways, in that rule list, the rule was tell the truth.

00:12:19.660 And then I started writing out the essays.

00:12:22.560 I thought, well, people like this list of rules.

00:12:24.960 Maybe I could write a book about it or write essays about these rules because, you know, it was already market tested, let's say.

00:12:33.320 One of the things you want to do, if you ever produce something creatively,

00:12:36.260 this is really useful to know if any of you have entrepreneurial ideas.

00:12:39.660 You know that old idea that if you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door?

00:12:44.240 That's wrong.

00:12:45.040 If you have a good idea, you're just, you barely got started, man.

00:12:50.080 You've probably cracked 5% of the problem.

00:12:52.520 It's really worth knowing this because there's, well, there's communication about the idea because other people have to know about it,

00:12:59.760 and that's really, really hard, and there's sales, and there's marketing, and there's customer support,

00:13:03.980 and there's your competition, and there's having to offer the product at the right time, at the right price point.

00:13:09.880 I mean, these things are really, really hard problems, and if you're sort of inventive,

00:13:15.580 you like to think, well, a good idea is enough, but it isn't even close to enough.

00:13:20.760 So one thing that's kind of useful to do, if you're developing a new idea,

00:13:24.860 a lot of tech firms do this when they're putting out new hardware, new software,

00:13:28.760 is they make a version of the whatever it is they're making, let's say the software,

00:13:32.960 and then they go test it out on their customers.

00:13:35.120 Say, well, like, hypothetically, would you buy this if we made it?

00:13:39.020 And if the answer is no, then they quit making it.

00:13:42.820 So you have to do this iterative discussion with your potential market to find out if what you're producing

00:13:48.360 has any possibility of monetization.

00:13:53.620 It's something you have to do, by the way, at least to some degree, if you're an artist,

00:13:57.720 unless you want to starve, which is pretty much what you're destined to do if you're an artist.

00:14:02.440 I mean, the probability that you can be a successful artist is so low

00:14:05.720 that it's absolutely amazing that there are any artists at all.

00:14:09.140 But one thing you can do is understand that you do need to actually communicate with people

00:14:16.420 and find a market and maybe communicate with your audience and see, well,

00:14:21.280 how they're responding to what you're doing.

00:14:23.080 And it isn't a matter of selling out.

00:14:24.860 It's a matter of engaging in a useful discussion with other people.

00:14:28.660 I mean, if you want to paint paintings and just stack them up in your basement, that's fine, too.

00:14:33.700 But that, and really, if you want to do that, truly, that's fine.

00:14:38.580 But that doesn't lead to the sort of success that allows you to exist autonomously as an artist.

00:14:44.540 And so if you want to be an artist and you want to exist successfully and autonomously as an artist,

00:14:50.600 then you have to take communication, you know, you have to treat communication seriously.

00:14:55.400 It's one of the pleasurable things about doing these lectures.

00:14:58.480 There's many pleasurable things, but one is that I get to test out my ideas in real time,

00:15:03.560 because I can discuss them, formulate them, extend them, and all of that.

00:15:08.180 And then I can watch everyone.

00:15:10.580 Well, one person at a time, usually, because you can't watch everyone.

00:15:14.220 That just makes you nervous.

00:15:15.960 You watch people one at a time, but you can listen to the whole audience

00:15:19.460 and see if they're quiet and focused, and then you can find out if you're on the right track.

00:15:24.120 And that's very helpful.

00:15:26.200 Anyways, I was formulating these 42 rules.

00:15:30.380 I started to write essays about them.

00:15:32.360 I originally thought I would write a small essay on all 42.

00:15:35.840 And I thought that would be kind of funny, because I knew this old book called

00:15:38.700 Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, right?

00:15:41.400 And the answer to life, the world, and everything was 42.

00:15:44.920 And I thought, well, I could write a book called 42.

00:15:47.180 And, you know, if you're a geek, that would be funny.

00:15:49.740 And so I thought that would be amusing.

00:15:53.480 But it turned out that I had more to say about each rule than 10 pages, or 7 pages, let's say,

00:16:03.400 because 42 times 7 would have made about a 300-page book.

00:16:06.360 And so I called them down to 12.

00:16:08.740 And one of them was, tell the truth, or at least don't lie.

00:16:12.140 And I added, or at least don't lie to it, because I realized that the statement, tell the truth,

00:16:19.000 wasn't really a very truthful statement.

00:16:21.420 And the reason for that was, it isn't really clear to me that that's within our power.

00:16:25.800 I mean, it depends on what you mean by the truth.

00:16:28.940 I mean, there's the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, that famous legal phrase.

00:16:34.300 And, well, none of us know that.

00:16:36.000 We don't know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

00:16:39.840 Someone asked me today, a journalist from Germany, if I thought Blasey Ford was telling the truth,

00:16:45.980 you know, the woman who testified against Kavanaugh in the United States.

00:16:50.400 And I read her testimony, and I listened to her.

00:16:53.720 And it didn't seem to me that she was lying.

00:16:57.280 It seemed to me that she believed what she was saying.

00:17:00.380 Now, whether or not that's the truth is a whole different matter.

00:17:03.380 Because, God, I mean, I can't remember things that happened in high school.

00:17:07.740 I mean, I can barely remember what happened to me yesterday.

00:17:10.780 And I know perfectly well, too, the way memory works.

00:17:13.660 If you remember something from a long time ago, and then you talk about it, and you think about it,

00:17:18.720 you change the memory.

00:17:20.460 And every time you do that, you change the memory quite dramatically.

00:17:23.480 Because memory isn't static.

00:17:26.060 It's a dynamic, living thing.

00:17:29.620 And the reason for that is that the purpose of your memory isn't to remember the past.

00:17:34.440 You know, that's what people think.

00:17:35.880 Well, why do we have memory?

00:17:36.960 To remember the past.

00:17:38.280 Well, who cares if you remember the past?

00:17:39.980 Why is that relevant?

00:17:41.520 It's not.

00:17:42.060 The reason you have memory is so that you can extract information out from the past that you can use to guide yourself wisely in the present and the future.

00:17:50.600 It's a very practical issue.

00:17:52.360 And so, and most things that have happened to you, once you understand them, you basically forget them, obviously.

00:18:00.160 Because you don't run around, like, you're not just cluttered up with your past memories solidly.

00:18:04.780 You don't remember every single thing that ever happened to you.

00:18:08.300 You couldn't possibly do that.

00:18:09.800 You abstract and extract out from your past what's relevant.

00:18:14.160 And then you use that to guide you into the future.

00:18:17.280 So, you're building a map as a, really, that's a really good way of thinking about it, is that what you do when you think is build a map.

00:18:24.300 And the map is of the present and the future, but it's predicated on your experience of the past.

00:18:29.960 And that's also very germane to tonight's topic about truth.

00:18:33.620 Because, well, one of the things we might want to point out first is that, well, do you want an accurate map or not?

00:18:39.400 Now, if you have an inaccurate map, it might tell you that a two-hour journey will only take ten minutes.

00:18:46.620 And if a two-hour journey will only take ten minutes, and let's say it's all downhill, well, then you don't have to pack and you don't have to prepare and it's going to be a cakewalk.

00:18:56.440 But the problem is, is when you go out to make the journey, you're going to find that it doesn't take ten minutes.

00:19:02.100 And you're not going to be prepared and that's not going to be good.

00:19:05.200 Even though it was lovely to contemplate the fact that it was going to be only ten minutes and downhill.

00:19:10.740 So the question is, do you want your map to be accurate or inaccurate?

00:19:15.020 And the answer to that is, well, how badly do you want to fall into a pit?

00:19:20.520 Because that's the consequence of having an inaccurate map.

00:19:24.140 So, first of all, you're not going to get to where you're going.

00:19:26.780 You might not, where you're going might not even exist.

00:19:30.080 That would be even worse.

00:19:31.140 But you're certainly not going to get there if your map isn't accurate.

00:19:34.240 And on the way, if you're following your map, you can't really see the world.

00:19:38.300 You see your map.

00:19:39.700 If it isn't based on the best information that you have at hand, then, like, woe is you to use a very archaic form of language.

00:19:48.800 And that's definitely the case.

00:19:50.120 And it's very useful to know that the structure that you look at the world through is map-like.

00:19:58.480 So, it's not surprising, right?

00:20:00.080 Because you have to go places if you're alive.

00:20:02.660 I mean, look at you.

00:20:03.360 You've got legs, right?

00:20:04.480 I mean, away you go.

00:20:05.440 You're not a plant.

00:20:06.280 You're not a tree.

00:20:07.060 You don't stay in one place.

00:20:08.720 You're always moving around.

00:20:10.020 And you're moving around because you have to get from where you are to where you're going.

00:20:13.200 And you have to do that because, well, you have, you have, you have, there are things, important things that you need to accomplish.

00:20:20.360 And to accomplish them, you have to move around.

00:20:22.540 And to move around successfully, you have to know where you are and where you're going.

00:20:25.660 And so, you better have your map laid out properly.

00:20:30.880 And so, I would say, our deepest meditations, our deepest philosophical meditations, are actually meditations on the structures of the maps that guide us.

00:20:42.280 And that's why, in the first book I wrote, I called the first book Maps of Meaning because I had understood how important maps were by that point.

00:20:52.880 And also, their equivalence, in some sense, to stories.

00:20:58.120 When you watch someone on the screen, say, act out a drama, you're seeing what their map is and what the consequences of manifesting that,

00:21:08.460 and what are the consequences of manifesting that map in the world.

00:21:12.280 And the map is complicated because, you know, we don't just map territory.

00:21:16.900 Well, we do, but territory is more complicated than we think.

00:21:20.900 We don't just map territory in the geographic sense.

00:21:24.220 You know, the landscape, like you do when you're using a map in a car.

00:21:29.060 Most of our maps are maps of ourselves and other people.

00:21:31.860 And the reason for that is most of the territory that we have to contend with is actually made up of ourselves and other people. 0.65

00:21:39.120 So, our maps are psychological in a sense, as well as geographical and practical.

00:21:46.160 And so, a map of a person is a story.

00:21:49.480 That's a good way of thinking about it.

00:21:50.860 And you have a map of yourself, and that's your story of yourself.

00:21:55.440 And that's also very much worth knowing.

00:21:58.240 You want to map yourself accurately.

00:22:00.040 Well, only if you want to propel yourself through time and space with a minimum of hassle and a maximum of the probability of success.

00:22:06.780 And so, it actually turns out to be very important that you are a good cartographer and you get your map together.

00:22:13.740 And so, okay, so that's like point one, let's say.

00:22:17.300 Well, here's an interesting thing to think about.

00:22:20.200 It's pretty clear that people can lie.

00:22:25.460 And it's not so clear that animals can.

00:22:29.520 There's a little bit of evidence that chimpanzees can use rather rudimentary forms of deceit.

00:22:34.760 Like they can pretend not to have food.

00:22:38.520 Or maybe they can even hide food so that another chimp can't see it so they can go back and get it later. 1.00

00:22:43.380 But they're really not that good at it.

00:22:46.120 So, it's a rudimentary skill.

00:22:48.240 But people, man, we are unbelievably good at lying.

00:22:51.900 Unbelievably good at it.

00:22:53.400 And it's actually a skill we developed quite early.

00:22:56.160 Intelligent children learn to, and I mean children who are more intelligent in the technical sense,

00:23:01.000 learn to lie earlier than children who are less intelligent.

00:23:03.560 And so, it's obviously, or that's one piece of evidence at least,

00:23:07.720 that the capacity to lie is integrally associated with our higher order cognitive abilities.

00:23:13.080 And so, I think we should take that apart a little bit to begin with,

00:23:15.960 so that we just understand why it is that we can lie.

00:23:20.660 Because the point I'm trying to make is tell the truth or at least don't lie.

00:23:25.160 And then, of course, one question might be,

00:23:27.560 well, if you can lie, then why don't you?

00:23:32.200 You know, I mean, we seem to all share the idea at some level that,

00:23:37.920 yeah, lying is a bad idea.

00:23:39.800 I don't think that the majority of parents are likely to take a child that they are caring for

00:23:47.960 and say, look, kid, the best way to get through life is to just, look, you got a problem,

00:23:53.420 you hit an account, you encounter an obstacle, you're having trouble with someone,

00:23:57.620 your best bet is just lie, is lie about everything.

00:24:00.600 Don't let them know anything about what's going on.

00:24:02.680 The wilder the story, the better.

00:24:04.900 That'll aim you right in life.

00:24:07.560 It's like, no one believes that.

00:24:10.760 No one.

00:24:11.460 Even a psychopath doesn't believe that,

00:24:13.280 even though the psychopath might believe that they could use lies on a fairly regular basis

00:24:18.860 to acquire what they want.

00:24:21.220 That isn't necessarily the same as believing that that's the best pathway through life

00:24:25.580 or that that would be something that you would recommend to someone that you truly loved.

00:24:30.320 I don't think that we do that.

00:24:31.860 And I certainly don't think that we admire people who do that or that we would ever make,

00:24:36.480 or that anyone morally, no matter how immersed in moral relativism and nihilism they might be,

00:24:43.800 would make a credible case that the more deceit, the better.

00:24:49.900 I've never seen that anyway.

00:24:51.040 All right, so back to the truth and lies.

00:24:58.800 Okay, so why can we lie?

00:25:00.560 Well, I was thinking tonight about how animals hunt and how animals think,

00:25:06.480 because animals can clearly think in that they can manifest very, very complicated behavior.

00:25:12.500 And I think the most complicated behavior you probably see among animals is hunting in packs.

00:25:20.320 You know, like if you watch, you can watch National Geographic or BBC World specials

00:25:25.340 and watch lions or other pack animals, what would you say?

00:25:29.440 They cut a zebra out of the herd and then track it down in a group.

00:25:36.240 And obviously, as the animals are doing this, the lions, they're adjusting the way that they're moving

00:25:40.720 in relationship to the zebra itself, but also in relationship to all the other lions that are part of the hunt.

00:25:47.020 And wolves do the same thing. 0.82

00:25:48.520 And that's very complicated behavior.

00:25:50.200 And, you know, you see this in other animals, too, in ways that are actually, I think they're actually incomprehensible.

00:25:56.800 I don't understand them at all.

00:25:58.420 One of the animals that's very interesting to me are jumping spiders.

00:26:03.040 I mean, I'm not obsessed with them or anything, you know.

00:26:06.080 I have a little collection of jumping spiders, and it's not like I'm thinking about them every day.

00:26:10.300 But they are interesting.

00:26:12.480 And so a jumping spider is a hunting spider.

00:26:15.060 It often hunts other spiders.

00:26:16.940 And they're very tricky.

00:26:18.200 They're very, very tricky, these creatures.

00:26:22.240 Maybe there's a spider sitting in a web over here, and the jumping spider comes up, and it takes a look at that spider.

00:26:29.180 And it's got eight eyes, so it's taking a real good look.

00:26:32.280 And then it figures out how to jump on that spider.

00:26:36.680 And it doesn't just, like, run off the edge of the leaf and jump.

00:26:40.380 It's like it sits there, and it looks, and it moves back and forth.

00:26:43.840 It looks really mechanical.

00:26:44.980 It looks cybernetic, like a really sophisticated robot.

00:26:48.580 It's really something.

00:26:49.980 And then it'll do something like climb down the plant it's on, and then across the floor of the forest, and then up behind the spider, and then over top of it.

00:27:00.960 And then it'll spin a little web, and it'll drop down on the spider, and then jump on it. 0.92

00:27:05.780 And it's like, that's really smart.

00:27:08.880 This is a spider.

00:27:10.000 It's like it doesn't have a brain.

00:27:12.580 It's only this big.

00:27:14.280 It's impossible to imagine how it manages that.

00:27:17.420 Or another thing it will do is, let's say the spider is sitting in the middle of a web.

00:27:21.880 There's different parts of a web have different functions.

00:27:26.340 Like, there's some parts of a web are sticky to trap insects, and some of them are not sticky so the spider can walk on them.

00:27:33.180 And the hunting spider will come up to the web, and it'll pluck on the web fibers with its legs, that's what they're called.

00:27:47.680 With its legs, its front legs, it'll pluck on them and mimic an insect in trouble. 0.96

00:27:52.520 It's like it's playing a little harp, and the sound is insect in trouble, and then the spider in the middle of the web will come zipping over to find out about the insect that's in trouble, because it's going to eat it, and then the jumping spider jumps on it.

00:28:06.460 It's like, God, that's so smart.

00:28:09.260 It's like, it's just, it looks a lot like thinking, you know, but it's certainly not verbal thinking.

00:28:16.860 Well, we don't think so, because it doesn't look like spiders can talk.

00:28:19.840 So, as far as we know, or if they do talk, they're so smart, we don't understand what they're saying.

00:28:27.080 But it looks like thinking, and it looks like the kind of thinking that animals do when they hunt.

00:28:32.280 And I think the way to think about that is that that sort of thinking is the same sort of thinking you do when you play football, or when you play any team sport.

00:28:43.580 You know, like, if you watch people play hockey, which is, of course, the best sport in the world.

00:28:49.840 And then you see the speed of it first.

00:28:55.300 And hockey is a very fast game, because you're not just running, you're skating, and you can really move around on skates.

00:29:00.720 You zip around pretty damn fast.

00:29:03.100 And so, and the entire landscape is changing constantly.

00:29:06.180 And really what hockey is, like most sports of that type, is it's an abstracted form of hunting.

00:29:13.900 You know, so you think, well, what's hunting among humans?

00:29:17.060 Well, you get your bow and arrow or your spear, and we've been doing that for like two million years, a very, very long time.

00:29:23.640 You get your spear, and then you get your guys, and then you go and spear something. 0.74

00:29:29.260 And so what you have is a projectile, and you have a target, and you have a team.

00:29:34.340 And so that's what you do when you're hunting. 0.93

00:29:36.380 And when you're playing hockey, it's the same damn thing. 0.91

00:29:39.020 You have a spear, except it's a hockey stick. 0.94

00:29:42.200 And you have a projectile, and that's the puck.

00:29:44.420 And you have a target, and it's the net, you know.

00:29:47.200 But it's sort of the net, because someone's also guarding it, you know.

00:29:50.520 So it's the animal for all intents and purposes, and we're pretty excited about this, because we're based on a hunting platform, and we like to see people hurl projectiles at targets.

00:30:01.580 It's one of the things that really warms our hearts, is to see one of us really deftly hurl a nice projectile at a target, especially if it's moving.

00:30:10.420 And we get real thrilled about that, you know.

00:30:12.340 So if you're at your favorite sports event, and someone's playing football, and they make a particularly wonderful move, and get the ball in the net from, you know, 100 yards away, in some spectacular way.

00:30:23.380 You're so thrilled that the primate got the projectile into the mammoth, that you leap up and have a little celebration.

00:30:30.080 And then later you drink a tremendous amount of fermented beverage, and have a hell of a time about it, because it's like feast time.

00:30:38.600 And so that's us.

00:30:42.240 It's really true, all of this.

00:30:44.760 And it shows you how people abstract, too.

00:30:46.800 You know, how there's some fundamental biological level there that's driving things, but that it's abstracted up.

00:30:53.520 And so, you know, we've learned how to have competitive hunting matches as a great spectacle.

00:31:00.260 And it's amusing, but it's partly because we like to see people sharpen their aim, and perform brilliantly in that dynamic situation.

00:31:11.560 Anyways, in an athletic contest like that, people really, in some sense, people don't really have time to think, right?

00:31:19.020 Because on a hockey, on a rink, everything's in flux.

00:31:25.720 I mean, people are just moving non-stop, right?

00:31:28.120 I mean, first of all, your team player is there, your team member's there, and then he's there, and then he's there.

00:31:32.660 And there's another one behind you, and there's two over there, and the opponents are moving this way, and the goalie's shifting back and forth, and the time is running out.

00:31:39.280 And it's like you're watching, not one thing, but you're kind of watching everything at once, and then you're figuring out how to position yourself in relationship to everything else.

00:31:48.700 So it's a really complicated mapping exercise, a complicated, dynamic mapping exercise.

00:31:54.640 But it's not thinking the way we would normally think about thinking.

00:31:58.480 It's because you don't have enough time.

00:31:59.720 Like, you don't have enough time, if you're playing hockey or any other fast-paced game, to think about all the possibilities that you might manifest in the next few seconds as you traverse through time and space.

00:32:11.220 Because the time, you're not fast enough thinker to do that.

00:32:15.460 And so in some sense, you seem to be thinking with your body.

00:32:18.780 And we kind of know this is true, because here's an example.

00:32:21.900 You know, if you're a pro tennis player, and someone, your opponent, winds up to serve at you, the ball goes so fast off their racket that you actually cannot see it before you hit it back, not consciously.

00:32:38.000 So now your visual system is very complex.

00:32:40.620 See, you think that when you look at the world, what happens is you see something, and then you react to it, like you consciously see it.

00:32:47.600 But lots of times, things are happening so fast, that isn't how it works.

00:32:50.860 What happens is that you've developed a tremendous amount of expertise.

00:32:55.440 Maybe you've played tennis for 10,000 hours, so you're just an absolute bloody expert at it.

00:33:00.500 And even as the person is winding up, you can tell by the angle of their racket and how they're holding their arm and where they're positioned on the court and the way they have their legs and how fast the racket starts to move, where that ball is going to go.

00:33:14.820 And you're already there, ready to react before they even hit it.

00:33:18.300 And you hit it back reflexively.

00:33:21.080 So, and it's because your eyes are actually reporting to your nervous system at multiple levels of nervous, well, your nervous system is a hierarchy.

00:33:29.980 And the closer the hierarchy is to the direct visual input, the faster it can react, but the simpler it is.

00:33:37.840 And so you use a lot of simple reflexive systems once you're an expert, so you can be super fast.

00:33:43.440 And you don't have time to think about, well, you don't even have time to see the ball.

00:33:46.980 You do see it, but that's, you only use the visual record of the ball to update your habitual and automatic skill if you make an error.

00:34:00.140 Otherwise, it's pretty much all automatic.

00:34:02.940 And that's part of the loveliness of watching someone who's a true expert do something, especially athletically, because they're so good at it, it's just instantaneous, right?

00:34:13.520 They waste no motion.

00:34:15.360 That's why they don't exhaust themselves, even though they're moving much faster, generally speaking, than an amateur might.

00:34:20.420 So they're not thinking, they just don't have time to think.

00:34:23.460 Most of the time, in a crisis, when things are happening very rapidly, it takes like half a second to think something, you know?

00:34:32.440 Or at least a tenth of a second.

00:34:34.560 You can only read about ten words a second, even if you're super fast.

00:34:38.000 And that's just not that fast, when things are really moving.

00:34:41.120 So a lot of thinking is embodied thinking.

00:34:45.440 It's like dancing, too.

00:34:46.720 You know what that's like, if you can dance, or even more if you can't dance.

00:34:49.820 It's like, what are you going to do?

00:34:51.120 Think about how you're going to dance with your foot.

00:34:53.160 No one's going to want to dance with you if you have to think about it.

00:34:56.320 This foot goes here, and this foot goes here. 0.99

00:34:59.620 And you're just a complete bloody klutz, if that's the way you're dancing. 0.97

00:35:03.320 If you're good at it, and you've practiced, then you're using these subtle indications from your partner to move and to twist, 0.98

00:35:11.380 and in keeping with them in real time.

00:35:13.940 And that's not thinking.

00:35:15.300 It's whatever it is that you do with your body that's intelligent, that's like thinking, that animals do.

00:35:21.220 Whatever that is.

00:35:22.860 So, but we can think.

00:35:24.800 That's the thing about human beings, is that not only can we do all those other things, but we can also think.

00:35:30.600 And so then the question is, well, what are you doing when you're thinking?

00:35:33.580 And the answer is, first of all, is you're, and this is a consequence of rapid cortical development from an evolutionary perspective.

00:35:42.500 At some point, our capacity to represent the world got detached from our capacity to act in the world.

00:35:52.000 You know, and so the more primordial the brain system that's operating, the more deterministically you act.

00:35:59.180 So, imagine that you're angry.

00:36:01.120 You know how impulsive you get when you're really deeply angry?

00:36:03.840 You get really impulsive.

00:36:04.720 If you're really enraged, it's super impulsive.

00:36:07.660 And you'll do things, or maybe you'll hit someone, you know, and then think about it later.

00:36:12.620 And it's like you're in the grip of something that's driving you forward.

00:36:16.640 And the same thing might happen if you're hungry, or if you're thirsty, or if you're overwhelmed with sexual desire, or any of those sorts of things.

00:36:23.660 That can make you impulsive, and it's because you're under the sway of a fundamental biological system that's really got one goal,

00:36:32.380 and wants to attain that as fast as possible with the least amount of trouble, and taking the fewest number of other things into account.

00:36:42.500 And again, that's something sort of akin to how animals react, because they're driven by those underlying biological systems to a great degree.

00:36:49.340 Now, but human beings have a very complicated brain on top of those fundamental biological systems.

00:36:57.760 And the reason that we have it, in part, is because, well, what do you do if you're hungry and angry?

00:37:04.600 Or what do you do if you're hungry and tired?

00:37:06.560 Or what do you do when fundamental biological motivations conflict?

00:37:13.000 Or what do you do if, well, maybe you're starving and you need to steal something, but then you're going to go to jail.

00:37:17.900 It's like, or you're going to get punished and hurt for it.

00:37:20.780 So, it's highly probable that these single-minded drives that are part and parcel of your fundamental motivations and your emotions are going to produce conflict when considered over any reasonable span of time.

00:37:36.560 And so, we've evolved a more complicated brain because, well, for example, we don't want to just not be hungry today.

00:37:42.060 We also want to not be hungry tomorrow and next week and next month and next year.

00:37:47.500 And at the same time that we're not hungry, we don't want to be too tired and we don't want to be too thirsty.

00:37:51.660 And we don't want to be dying of exposure.

00:37:54.740 And we want to get along with other people and we don't want to be killed.

00:37:57.400 And so, to solve the problem of hunger, which is something that you could solve impulsively, to really solve it over the long run, you have to come up with an integrated, you have to come up with a way of integrating all those necessities into something harmonious that exists over a very long period of time.

00:38:14.940 And part of the reason that we have a brain, like a complex brain, is to solve that problem.

00:38:20.000 Not only do we have to fulfill our basic needs, let's say, we have to do it in a way that doesn't interfere so that each need doesn't interfere with each other.

00:38:27.880 That's hard enough.

00:38:29.540 But also so that each need doesn't interfere with each other's need being fulfilled over long spans of time in a community that consists of all sorts of other people who are trying to do exactly the same thing.

00:38:42.600 And so, that's complicated.

00:38:43.940 It's like, how many ways can you solve a set of problems that complex?

00:38:48.740 And the answer is, well, not that many ways.

00:38:52.100 And so, that's why, as far as I'm concerned, the moral relativists are wrong.

00:38:56.220 Because there just aren't that many ways of setting up a society where each person in the society can get more or less what they want and need, so that families also function, so that communities function, and so that that works over a long span of time.

00:39:12.180 A vanishingly small number of correct solutions.

00:39:16.180 One of those seems to be reciprocity.

00:39:18.060 You know, you do something for me, I return the favor and I'm very careful about that because then we can trust each other and we can cooperate and that's a very good thing for the long run.

00:39:27.900 And that's also predicated on honesty and truth, right?

00:39:30.960 I mean, one of the things that you really like in people, whether you know you like this or not, is their ability to track reciprocity.

00:39:37.420 You know, if you call a friend a couple of times to come over for dinner, and they come, you build up an expectation that they're going to call you a couple of times to come over for dinner.

00:39:46.780 Or repay you in kind in some manner.

00:39:50.300 Now, you don't keep a telly, you know, unless you're obsessive.

00:39:53.240 You know, bill, two dinners for bill, zero returns, X for bill.

00:39:58.360 But you don't really need to do that because you do do that.

00:40:02.380 We're so good at reciprocity tracking that it's unbelievable and we really don't like it when that's violated.

00:40:10.420 And you don't have to violate that very often with people before they don't want to have much to do with you.

00:40:15.000 And that's also part of the reason that you should be honest.

00:40:18.100 It's like that reciprocity tracking, that ability to keep track of who you owe and why you owe them and what you owe is absolutely vital to successful social interaction over the long run.

00:40:32.080 So reciprocity and honesty are both fundamental.

00:40:37.120 And that's to treat someone else like you'd want to be treated yourself.

00:40:40.880 A fundamental ethical rule that goes along with truth.

00:40:44.380 And it's the fundamental rule of reciprocity.

00:40:46.360 And it might be the fundamental ethical rule.

00:40:49.420 It really might be.

00:40:52.180 It's partly, I think, because not only do you want to treat someone else as if they're you, let's say.

00:40:59.900 You even want to treat yourself as if you're you.

00:41:02.580 And you think, well, what the hell does that mean?

00:41:05.000 And, well, this is what it means, is that you're not stuck with the you that's here right now.

00:41:09.900 You're stuck with the you that's here right now and the you that's here tomorrow and next week and next month and next year.

00:41:15.120 Like there's an infinite number of, or not an infinite, there's a very large number of yous extending out into the future.

00:41:21.860 And they're quite different because they get older and maybe some of them are more ill than you are and, you know, they have different interests and all of that.

00:41:28.680 So you're actually, you're actually a slice of a community across time.

00:41:35.060 That's fundamentally what you are as an individual.

00:41:37.120 And if you're going to act properly in your life, you have to act right now in a manner that takes care of that entire community across time, even though that community is just you.

00:41:47.320 So even if it wasn't that you were being reciprocal with other people in order to get along, and you have to be, you at least have to be reciprocal with your future self to get along.

00:41:58.100 Because otherwise, it's a downhill path, and unless you want to auger face down into the ground at some point, that's a bad path.

00:42:07.180 So that's part of even being honest and reciprocal in relationship to yourself.

00:42:13.540 Okay, so, well, so we can think.

00:42:18.220 Well, so what does that mean?

00:42:19.300 Well, often we're driven by the same sort of fundamental motivations that drive animals, and we can think with our bodies the way animals do.

00:42:28.380 But then we have this additional ability, which I believe is associated with this more complex computational problem, how best to set things up in the long run.

00:42:37.680 And so we, who knows how this happened, but we could divorce our perception from our action.

00:42:45.500 And so that's what, that looks like it's associated with the development of the cortex, especially the front part of the cortex, which is the part that you use for abstract thinking.

00:42:53.460 You think, well, what does abstract thinking mean?

00:42:56.320 What is it exactly?

00:42:57.600 And what it is, in some sense, is the same thing that you do with a video game.

00:43:02.140 You know, when you're playing a video game, you have an avatar of yourself, and you place the avatar out in this fictional world, and then you run the avatar through a bunch of adventures, and you hope it lives.

00:43:12.380 But if it doesn't, it's like, well, what the hell?

00:43:14.140 You can just generate another avatar, right?

00:43:16.020 And hypothetically, hypothetically, and perhaps even actually, you can learn from the adventures and misadventures of your avatar, and what you learn, you can incorporate into your life and act out.

00:43:28.180 And so there's this old idea by Alfred North Whitehead.

00:43:32.500 I believe he was the first person who formulated this.

00:43:35.580 I believe that's the case.

00:43:36.820 It might have been Karl Popper, but anyways, it was one of the two.

00:43:41.160 He said, the purpose of thought is so that you can let your thoughts die instead of you.

00:43:46.640 So smart.

00:43:47.760 It's like dead on, man.

00:43:49.000 A great formulation.

00:43:50.340 And so, see, in the Darwinian world, what happens is that, let's take the case of mosquitoes.

00:43:57.040 Like, how many offspring does a mosquito have?

00:43:59.260 It's like, God, who knows, like 150,000.

00:44:02.800 It's like, if those mosquitoes were successful, we'd be like neck deep in mosquitoes in like two years.

00:44:09.140 Pigs are the same way. 0.98

00:44:10.280 I think they can have like nine litters of seven piglets a year, something like that.

00:44:15.960 We imported wild boar into Western Canada as a domestic animal about ten years ago.

00:44:24.140 And it's like, there's just tens of thousands of them everywhere now. 0.56

00:44:28.660 You can just shoot them whenever you want. 0.99

00:44:30.860 People pat you on the back. 0.99

00:44:32.600 It's like, I have a cousin.

00:44:34.180 I think he shot like 400 last year.

00:44:37.060 So, and, well, they're really hard on the terrain, those things.

00:44:41.300 And anyways, anyways, the point, there's a point here.

00:44:45.280 The point is that creatures tend to produce a very large number of variants of themselves, and most of them die.

00:44:54.860 And so, typically, each mosquito manages to produce another mosquito, another successful mosquito.

00:45:01.380 Obviously, if it was anything other than that, you'd get a geometric increase in mosquito mass, and soon the whole planet, very soon, the whole planet would just be one big cloud of mosquitoes.

00:45:13.360 And that doesn't happen.

00:45:14.640 So, mosquitoes produce a lot of variants, and each of them is a little different genetically, because mosquitoes don't learn a lot, so almost all their variation is genetic.

00:45:23.540 And now and then, one genetic variant of a mosquito, which is slightly different than the genetic variants of the other 10,000, is a trifle more successful, and doesn't perish.

00:45:35.420 And so, that's how, that's really how the Darwinian process works.

00:45:38.640 And it's actually why it seems to me that there is something that has to be correct about the Darwinian idea.

00:45:45.400 So, the Darwinian idea is something like this.

00:45:49.180 Things change in ways you can't predict.

00:45:51.420 And because of that, you don't know what solution is going to work.

00:45:58.400 And not only that, you can't know, because the unpredictability itself is unpredictable.

00:46:04.860 So, things can really radically shift on you.

00:46:07.620 And so, the best you can do is produce a bunch of variants, and then hope that one of them happens to match whatever is coming down the runway.

00:46:17.340 And, and it is the case that things change unpredictably, although not entirely unpredictability, unpredictable, unpredictably.

00:46:26.420 And it is the case that you can't completely see what's coming.

00:46:30.040 So, the idea that there has to be random variation in order for things to survive has to be correct, because there's random variation in the environment.

00:46:39.180 Now, I don't know if that's the whole story, but it's a very powerful argument for the necessity of something approximating Darwinian evolution.

00:46:46.920 And, and, and I'm telling you that for a reason.

00:46:48.880 And the reason I'm telling you that is because it's germane to how you think.

00:46:52.280 So, what human beings have learned to do, and this is so cool, we're so smart, it's unbelievable, is that we can separate our perception from the actual world.

00:47:02.200 And then we can perceive a fictional world.

00:47:05.500 And the fictional world is like the real world, except not completely.

00:47:09.300 It's the world in your dreams, for example.

00:47:11.080 You know how it is, you go to sleep at night, and you dream, and you can dream up a whole bloody world.

00:47:16.040 And it's so real that you think it's the real world.

00:47:18.780 Like, how you do that is just beyond me, because you can't do that just sitting there.

00:47:23.520 Some people have very powerful visual imaginations, but most people can't manage that.

00:47:27.900 But you can recreate everything, fictionally.

00:47:31.800 And then in your dreams, and this is partly why we dream, your dream, you, can do all sorts of crazy things.

00:47:39.120 And, well, what happens if you die in a dream?

00:47:41.700 It's like, well, nothing.

00:47:43.900 So what?

00:47:45.600 It's scary, maybe.

00:47:46.880 Maybe you wake up, and there you are.

00:47:49.360 And the reason that you're still there is because you built a fictional world, and you put fictional you in the fictional world.

00:47:57.180 And you had some fictional adventures, and, you know, maybe some of them turned out real well, and some of them not so well.

00:48:02.880 But fundamentally, you're still around.

00:48:05.240 And maybe you wake up from a nightmare, and you think, God, I'm never going to do that.

00:48:10.500 It's like, because you died in the nightmare, or you got torn apart, or something like that.

00:48:14.780 It's like, oh, no, not that.

00:48:17.300 It's like, good.

00:48:18.360 That was an avatar.

00:48:20.340 It acted out its particular map.

00:48:23.460 It perished.

00:48:24.500 Do not use that as a model for emulation.

00:48:28.940 And then, it's very useful to know that we think this way, because it sheds light on all sorts of strange things we do.

00:48:36.420 Well, we go to athletic contests to watch abstract hunters abstractly hunt.

00:48:42.660 And we go to movies to watch professional dreamers act out professional dreams.

00:48:50.320 And so, you go to a movie, you'll pay for it, strangely enough.

00:48:53.740 You find it intrinsically entertaining, which is not self-evident.

00:48:57.820 But, I mean, the reason for that isn't self-evident, although, obviously, you do feel that way.

00:49:02.460 Or you watch dramas on TV, or you read fictional accounts in books.

00:49:06.600 You read your children's stories.

00:49:08.120 And the reason you do that is because you get to show your child, on you, a fictional world that corresponds with the actual world in some interesting ways.

00:49:18.000 And then, you can watch avatars of yourself, and those would be the actors, act out certain ways of apprehending and understanding.

00:49:25.380 And you can see what happens to them.

00:49:27.360 And you can watch the good guys.

00:49:29.640 And you can watch the bad guys.

00:49:31.260 And generally, what you see is the bad guys spiral downward to a justifiable, horrible end, which you're quite happy about.

00:49:38.520 And the good guys prevail.

00:49:40.600 And that way, you think, well, what's a good guy and what's a bad guy?

00:49:45.040 Well, the good guy is someone who's organized his representation of the world and his actions in the world

00:49:53.820 that is of some substantive pattern of long-term, sustainable benefit.

00:50:01.500 And you don't know what that pattern is because the world is so damn complex.

00:50:05.160 And so, maybe you have to go to a movie and watch a hundred good guys do a hundred different adventurous things,

00:50:11.480 consummate a successful romance, and have a great adventure.

00:50:15.360 You have to watch that a hundred times or a thousand times before you can abstract out from that

00:50:20.300 the pattern that characterizes what's common across all the good guys.

00:50:25.920 And if you want to know how religions developed, I would say that's basically how they developed,

00:50:30.980 is that what we have strived to do over thousands of years of map-making and storytelling

00:50:38.180 is to tell stories about good guys.

00:50:41.700 And, you know, we couldn't call them good guys if they didn't belong to a category of some sort, right?

00:50:47.820 What's common about good guys, about heroes in the story?

00:50:51.640 Well, they're all good guys.

00:50:53.080 Well, what is it that defines that set of good attributes?

00:50:57.820 And the answer is, well, we can't fully articulate that.

00:51:00.480 It's too complicated.

00:51:01.680 But we can recognize it when we see it.

00:51:04.000 And even more deeply, it's more deep than mere recognition.

00:51:07.580 Because when you go see a movie, I used to tell my son, because now and then I took him to a movie

00:51:12.880 that was kind of scary, Lord of the Rings, for example. 0.99

00:51:15.780 He really hated those Nazguls, you know, those black, monstrous, soul-sucking things. 1.00

00:51:20.100 I can't imagine why he hated them. 1.00

00:51:22.200 He was very frightened of them, you know.

00:51:24.380 And I always said to him, keep an eye on the hero.

00:51:28.060 I never said, don't be afraid.

00:51:29.900 It's like, well, look at those things.

00:51:31.720 I mean, yeah, of course, you should be afraid of them.

00:51:35.100 I mean, that's what they're there for.

00:51:37.260 They're like symbols of what's terrifying about life.

00:51:40.680 Don't be afraid.

00:51:41.720 It's like, yeah, right.

00:51:43.100 No, no.

00:51:44.320 Keep an eye on the hero.

00:51:46.080 Because he'll find the proper pathway.

00:51:48.540 And then, you know, my son can tolerate all the tension because he can watch the good guy.

00:51:52.460 And, you know, he'd be very upset if something not so good happened to the good guy.

00:51:55.840 Because none of us like that.

00:51:57.200 That's a tragedy.

00:51:58.580 It's a moral injustice.

00:52:00.180 But then he could embody what was happening with that avatar and see his pathway through the world.

00:52:10.240 And so, maybe you do that a thousand times.

00:52:12.640 You do that ten thousand times.

00:52:14.240 You abstract out the pattern of what constitutes good.

00:52:17.860 And that doesn't mean that you can articulate it.

00:52:20.100 Like, it's very difficult to articulate something that complex.

00:52:23.320 We've been trying to do that.

00:52:24.340 But, well, our entire religious enterprise is an attempt to do that.

00:52:28.840 And so, and most of that isn't articulated.

00:52:32.300 Like, one of the things that's quite interesting about coming to Europe as well is that, you know,

00:52:36.620 all of your cities have these great cathedrals.

00:52:38.900 And they're part of this immense tradition that your culture is predicated upon.

00:52:43.300 And each of those cathedrals, a lot of them were built when people weren't literate.

00:52:48.640 And there's picture boards and stories inside them, paintings and sculptures and so forth.

00:52:54.800 And that's all an attempt to represent how it is that you should conduct yourself in the world.

00:53:00.900 And so, you people built these massive buildings, beautiful, spectacular, what forests of stone and glass and light.

00:53:08.980 And then to represent this striving towards the highest possible ideal.

00:53:14.200 And then inside of them, you populated them with these stories about how it is that you should conduct yourself. 0.99

00:53:20.640 And you don't understand the damn story. 0.98

00:53:22.920 I mean, that's why you built the cathedrals and made all these paintings. 0.99

00:53:25.980 It's like, well, we think it's something like this.

00:53:27.920 It's like, well, but we don't know.

00:53:30.460 And those images have, like, they have sacred significance because they speak to you at a level that's underneath your articulated intelligence.

00:53:37.780 It's more than you are.

00:53:39.740 There's something more there than you know, which is partly what makes it sacred.

00:53:45.020 And so, and we're in great danger of losing that and assuming that it has no value because we don't fully understand it because it's mysterious.

00:53:53.260 But it is mysterious because how to be good in the world is mysterious.

00:53:58.880 It's as mysterious as how to be evil in the world or perhaps even more mysterious.

00:54:02.580 All right.

00:54:06.320 So, well, so one of the things we can do is we can abstract away from reality.

00:54:12.620 And that's kind of cool because it makes us future-oriented instead of driven by the past.

00:54:17.960 And I would say animals and impulsive people are driven by the past and the present.

00:54:22.400 But people who are, what would you call, what would you say, awake, that's got to be about the right word.

00:54:33.860 It's a higher order of consciousness.

00:54:36.000 They're not driven by the past or the present.

00:54:38.320 They're contemplating the future.

00:54:40.860 That's a different thing.

00:54:41.840 And so, and I think the way that we operate as human beings is that what we see in front of us, what we actually perceive, isn't the present.

00:54:51.680 It isn't the reality of the present.

00:54:54.660 What we perceive and regard as most real is the potential of the future.

00:55:01.000 And so we're creatures that encounter potential, whatever that means.

00:55:05.180 Now, potential is a weird thing, right?

00:55:07.000 Because we know it exists, we'll certainly castigate each other for not living up to it.

00:55:12.760 You know, one of the things you definitely don't want for your children is that they don't live up to their potential.

00:55:17.920 And your parents told you that.

00:55:19.800 You're not living up to your potential.

00:55:21.420 You think, oh, I'm not living up to my potential.

00:55:24.500 And, you know, you take that seriously and so do they.

00:55:26.720 They think that's a real failure on your part and a betrayal of the deepest part of you.

00:55:32.020 It's no joke to not live up to your potential.

00:55:34.220 It's like, well, what the hell is that?

00:55:36.400 What is that?

00:55:38.100 Potential.

00:55:39.220 It's like it's not here.

00:55:41.020 It's not measurable.

00:55:42.860 It only might exist.

00:55:44.900 It's like, what is the reality of something that only might exist?

00:55:48.980 Well, I don't know.

00:55:50.660 But it's the thing that we seem to regard as most real.

00:55:53.920 We certainly treat each other that way.

00:55:55.620 And, you know, you wake up in the morning and there are things that you could do.

00:55:59.480 There's a world of possibility of different dimensions that reveals itself to you.

00:56:05.600 And you know perfectly well that how that potential is going to be transformed into reality

00:56:12.020 is a consequence, it seems to be, a consequence of the choices that you make.

00:56:17.260 And you know, you think, you act this way, that if you make good choices, the right choices,

00:56:24.140 then that potential will manifest itself in the best way that it can.

00:56:30.200 And if you make bad choices, then that potential will turn into something that is wretched and dismal and hellish.

00:56:37.240 And you know that.

00:56:38.420 And so, and so, and you call each other on that constantly.

00:56:41.760 And if you interact with someone else, even with yourself, you're very upset if you haven't made use of the potential of the day.

00:56:49.120 You go to sleep and you think, oh, well, you know, I really wasn't who I could be today.

00:56:53.460 And so you're this contender with potential.

00:56:56.200 And that's part of the hero myth.

00:56:57.760 Because that potential is the dragon of chaos.

00:57:00.440 That's the thing that could destroy you utterly.

00:57:03.880 But that hoards the treasure that's beyond compare.

00:57:07.400 That's the future.

00:57:08.500 It's like it's everything. 0.61

00:57:09.580 It's your death for sure.

00:57:11.600 And it's your fortune for sure.

00:57:13.940 And there it is in front of you all the time.

00:57:16.240 And the question is, well, how should you go about confronting it?

00:57:20.020 And to shrink away, well, that's not a good idea.

00:57:22.360 Because then the dragon part gets larger and you get smaller.

00:57:26.120 And that's a bad long-term decision.

00:57:29.340 So, you know, the first chapter in my book, which is stand up straight with your shoulders back,

00:57:34.980 is an injunction to meet that potential head on and with eyes awake, eyes front, and with a vision in mind.

00:57:42.680 And, well, in any case, you can conceptualize that potential in different ways.

00:57:49.340 You can think, well, what if I did, what if I, what if the world was like this?

00:57:52.740 What if this is how the world laid itself out because of a choice I made?

00:57:56.560 What would the world look like?

00:57:58.000 And what would I look like?

00:57:59.160 And you're thinking about that.

00:58:00.180 It might make you anxious, you know.

00:58:01.440 Maybe you have to go in and confront your boss. 1.00

00:58:03.260 You think, God damn it, I've got to go confront that son of a bitch. 1.00

00:58:06.060 He's just been on my case too much. 1.00

00:58:07.780 What if I just went in there and told him what I really thought of him?

00:58:10.400 And so you run that little fantasy.

00:58:12.600 It's like, well, you walk in, you tell him what you really think of him,

00:58:16.020 and then, well, then he fires you, and then you're divorced, and then now you live on the street.

00:58:21.980 And, oh, it's like, okay, well, that's a possible me.

00:58:25.780 It's like, X.

00:58:29.160 Banish that avatar to the netherworld.

00:58:31.500 We're not incorporating that.

00:58:34.120 Now, and so you let that idea die instead of you.

00:58:38.520 And, you know, maybe you play with a variety of ideas like that,

00:58:41.200 and that's partly how you guide yourself into the potential of the future.

00:58:45.760 And so what that means is you can generate up hypothetical worlds,

00:58:49.380 and then you can populate them with hypothetical you,

00:58:52.520 and then you can play out the consequences of that,

00:58:55.280 and then you can evaluate the outcome,

00:58:57.100 and then you can decide which of those you're going to implement.

00:58:59.600 And maybe you don't just do that by yourself, because it's quite complicated.

00:59:03.540 Maybe what you do is, you know, you've got a problem, and you need to confront it.

00:59:07.040 And so you sit with your wife or your husband at the breakfast table,

00:59:09.960 and you say, look, you know, I've got a complicated fork in the road in front of me.

00:59:16.140 And, you know, I think, well, maybe I could deal with it this way.

00:59:19.680 And you lay out your plan, which is a fictional world.

00:59:22.500 And then you say, maybe I could deal with it this way,

00:59:25.000 and here's what I think might happen.

00:59:26.900 And what do you think?

00:59:28.260 And then you jointly engage in the mutual construction of a couple of fictional worlds,

00:59:33.360 and you evaluate them, and you come to some negotiated agreement

00:59:36.400 about which pathway you're going to take.

00:59:38.780 And hopefully that works.

00:59:40.680 Hopefully that decreases the probability that you're going to be fired and homeless,

00:59:45.360 and increases the probability that you're going to be broadly successful.

00:59:50.400 And, you know, you probably want to inform those around you

00:59:53.480 who are relatively close about which of these fictions you're going to transform into actuality,

00:59:59.680 because generally they have some implications for them.

01:00:02.940 So we do this jointly.

01:00:05.180 And so that's partly why, in my estimation, free speech is so important,

01:00:09.380 because what we have to do in order to perform this task properly

01:00:14.840 is we have to be free to generate a variety of alternative worlds,

01:00:19.640 even those ranging from horrifying to beatific, let's say, the entire emotional range.

01:00:25.920 And then we have to be free to explore the consequences of doing so,

01:00:30.400 even though that's very emotionally challenging,

01:00:33.380 before we implement them in action.

01:00:35.120 And we need to be able to do that,

01:00:36.440 because otherwise we implement into action precipitously,

01:00:39.580 and then we collapse.

01:00:41.220 And it's not easy, you know, one of the things I noticed with my clients,

01:00:45.220 I always try to tell them, it's like,

01:00:47.240 look, we're going to talk about some of the ways things could be,

01:00:50.920 but you have to remember,

01:00:52.300 this is a really useful thing to do with your partner,

01:00:54.440 if you guys are facing a complex decision,

01:00:56.460 you say something like this,

01:00:57.500 look, it's a complicated decision, it might go really wrong,

01:01:01.660 let's think of ten ways we could deal with it.

01:01:03.980 But let's remember that just because we're thinking about these things,

01:01:09.820 that does not mean they're going to happen.

01:01:13.100 You know, because we have a proclivity,

01:01:15.300 because our thought isn't that much divorced from our reality,

01:01:19.440 to act as if what we think is immediately real.

01:01:23.960 And so, in order to think, you can't do that,

01:01:26.380 you have to pull yourself away,

01:01:27.760 you have to say, well, look, let's lay out this plan,

01:01:31.300 think about it,

01:01:32.720 and then this plan too,

01:01:34.060 and also this plan,

01:01:35.000 and also this plan,

01:01:35.940 and also this plan,

01:01:36.880 and then let's sleep on it for a couple of days,

01:01:40.060 knowing that we don't even have to implement any of those plans.

01:01:43.420 It's a great thing to learn to do,

01:01:44.920 to get that sort of detachment,

01:01:46.480 because then you can run much more effective simulations of yourself,

01:01:50.480 and hopefully, well, you suffer less.

01:01:52.740 It's a very difficult thing to learn.

01:01:54.400 It's also why people have such a difficult time negotiating with one another,

01:01:57.860 and even thinking,

01:01:58.740 because it's so easy to take the first plan that comes to mind,

01:02:02.880 and treat it like it's reality,

01:02:04.380 and get so damn terrified by it, 0.51

01:02:05.940 that you just can't,

01:02:07.060 you know, you can't loosen yourself up to consider other alternatives.

01:02:10.700 But you need to.

01:02:12.400 You need to, desperately.

01:02:15.740 So, okay,

01:02:16.760 so what does that have to do with lying?

01:02:19.000 Well, here's what seems to have happened.

01:02:21.820 You can generate fictional representations of the future,

01:02:26.060 and you can do that because you can detach your thinking from your action.

01:02:30.740 Now, it's kind of painful in some sense that you can do that,

01:02:33.360 because life, you'd think life would be easier.

01:02:36.100 You know, people are very peculiar,

01:02:37.540 because you'll tell yourself something like,

01:02:40.160 I need to go to the gym every morning at 7 o'clock,

01:02:43.520 three days a week,

01:02:44.620 and I have to stop eating desserts.

01:02:47.420 And then you think, 0.99

01:02:48.180 and I need to do that because I'm ugly and fat, 1.00

01:02:50.080 and I'm going to die. 0.99

01:02:51.460 And so,

01:02:51.980 and so,

01:02:52.840 those are good reasons to stop doing it.

01:02:55.300 And then,

01:02:55.960 and then,

01:02:56.680 and well,

01:02:56.960 and then what happens?

01:02:58.120 Well,

01:02:58.620 nothing.

01:02:59.400 You go to the gym like once,

01:03:01.540 and you know,

01:03:02.420 and maybe you eat a bag of,

01:03:03.700 of like chips on the way,

01:03:05.560 and then you sort of move very slowly on the treadmill while you're watching TV,

01:03:10.160 and then you're satisfied,

01:03:11.940 and you never do it again.

01:03:13.860 And so,

01:03:14.400 and so,

01:03:15.180 and so,

01:03:15.620 the reason I'm telling you that is because

01:03:17.220 one of the prices you pay for

01:03:20.020 detaching your ability to think

01:03:22.960 from,

01:03:24.000 from,

01:03:24.620 from your capacity for action

01:03:26.020 is that you can think up a bunch of things

01:03:27.700 and then not act them out.

01:03:29.620 Right?

01:03:30.060 Because it might be easier

01:03:30.780 if you could just tell yourself what to do

01:03:32.820 and then do it.

01:03:34.480 But you don't.

01:03:36.380 And,

01:03:36.680 and you can't.

01:03:37.400 If you're going to think,

01:03:38.180 that can't happen

01:03:38.900 because you have to be able to detach the thinking from the action.

01:03:42.180 And then if it's detached,

01:03:43.660 well,

01:03:43.860 then it's detached.

01:03:45.260 And so,

01:03:45.640 you can't just command yourself.

01:03:47.360 It's,

01:03:47.520 it's not so simple.

01:03:48.820 It's not so simple to turn yourself into the more successful avatar.

01:03:52.520 Right?

01:03:52.800 Because you're already sort of a,

01:03:54.100 the way that you are.

01:03:55.120 And it's painful that you can't just command yourself into doing things,

01:03:59.000 but whatever.

01:03:59.900 You can't.

01:04:00.860 So why can you lie?

01:04:03.100 Well,

01:04:03.460 if you can fictionalize the future,

01:04:05.460 which you clearly can,

01:04:07.540 then you can also fictionalize the present,

01:04:09.820 and you can fictionalize the past.

01:04:12.060 Now,

01:04:12.460 that doesn't mean that you should,

01:04:15.140 but it definitely means that you can.

01:04:18.780 And,

01:04:19.080 and that's,

01:04:19.660 that's very dangerous.

01:04:20.860 Because,

01:04:22.120 you know,

01:04:22.720 maybe the past,

01:04:23.600 maybe you went over some pretty damn wicked cliffs,

01:04:27.220 and down to some pretty deep holes. 0.98

01:04:30.140 You barely got out of the damn things in the past, 0.99

01:04:32.400 and you'd rather, 0.99

01:04:33.780 and maybe you,

01:04:34.540 like,

01:04:34.800 threw yourself into the hole.

01:04:36.540 Because that certainly happens.

01:04:37.680 And maybe you don't want to think about that.

01:04:39.540 And so,

01:04:39.880 you replace it with a different version of what happened.

01:04:42.720 And you certainly can.

01:04:43.820 And you know you don't really believe it,

01:04:46.160 but if you talk about it enough,

01:04:47.520 well,

01:04:47.700 it starts to become real,

01:04:48.920 and you can tell other people.

01:04:50.140 And,

01:04:50.160 and the back of you thinks,

01:04:51.580 well,

01:04:51.940 I can get away with that.

01:04:53.000 I don't really have to face what happened.

01:04:54.600 I don't really have to learn my lesson.

01:04:56.560 I'll just pretend that things were better than they actually were.

01:05:02.000 And you can,

01:05:02.880 and because a bolt of lightning doesn't come out of the sky,

01:05:05.580 and crisp you right on the spot,

01:05:07.940 usually,

01:05:09.020 you think,

01:05:10.220 ah,

01:05:10.520 I got away with that.

01:05:12.400 But you didn't,

01:05:13.600 because you did fall in that hole,

01:05:16.640 and it might have been because you weren't navigating very carefully.

01:05:20.180 And it's certainly possible that you'll hit the same geography in the future.

01:05:25.160 And had you,

01:05:26.140 since you haven't learned your lesson,

01:05:28.440 which is how to walk around that particular pit,

01:05:30.980 then you'll just fall in it again.

01:05:33.060 And so that's not a very wise plan.

01:05:37.380 And so that's really,

01:05:38.600 in the final analysis,

01:05:40.500 why you shouldn't lie.

01:05:41.720 There's other reasons as well,

01:05:43.160 but that's a big one,

01:05:44.160 is that,

01:05:44.960 well,

01:05:46.160 if you're going to,

01:05:46.980 if you falsify your experience,

01:05:48.640 then you can't,

01:05:50.860 if what you're trying to extract from your experience,

01:05:54.500 is a reliable indicator of how to move forward,

01:05:58.500 which is clearly the point of memory,

01:06:01.520 and then you falsify your past experience,

01:06:04.580 or your present experience,

01:06:06.440 then you don't produce a cartographically accurate map,

01:06:12.200 of your future trajectory.

01:06:15.320 And what that means is,

01:06:17.080 that you'll fail.

01:06:19.400 And so,

01:06:20.260 well,

01:06:20.600 why shouldn't you lie?

01:06:22.220 Well,

01:06:22.500 the answer is,

01:06:23.660 because,

01:06:24.220 you'll fail.

01:06:26.460 It's as simple as that.

01:06:28.560 Now,

01:06:29.200 it's not quite so simple,

01:06:30.800 because,

01:06:31.820 telling the truth is actually,

01:06:33.360 a rather daunting proposition.

01:06:36.960 You know,

01:06:37.340 because,

01:06:38.000 if you tell someone,

01:06:39.680 what you really think,

01:06:41.240 well then,

01:06:42.100 all sorts of terrible things happen.

01:06:44.100 The first thing is,

01:06:45.160 you figure out what you think.

01:06:47.720 And that can be a horrifying experience.

01:06:51.400 You know,

01:06:51.660 it's like,

01:06:52.680 well,

01:06:53.100 maybe there's some things you think about your boss.

01:06:55.860 And you don't really think about the things that you think about your boss,

01:06:58.760 because you don't want to go there.

01:07:01.180 And no wonder,

01:07:02.300 or maybe it's your partner,

01:07:03.660 maybe it's your sister,

01:07:04.600 maybe it's your mother,

01:07:05.460 your father,

01:07:06.060 maybe it's you.

01:07:06.860 You've got some dark conceptions lurking around there.

01:07:11.080 You know,

01:07:11.280 and it's easy,

01:07:12.780 in some sense,

01:07:13.620 to just not attend to those,

01:07:16.160 and not articulate them.

01:07:17.600 They're still there.

01:07:18.840 They're embedded inside you,

01:07:20.540 in a non-articulate form,

01:07:22.680 that might make you moody,

01:07:23.900 and irritable,

01:07:24.740 and hard to get along with,

01:07:26.420 and full of perverse decisions,

01:07:29.000 as those quasi-formed,

01:07:32.240 monstrous thoughts possess you,

01:07:34.700 when you're not paying attention.

01:07:36.200 Because that happens all the time.

01:07:38.240 But that doesn't mean that,

01:07:39.580 owning up to what you actually think,

01:07:41.860 is an easy matter.

01:07:42.840 It's not easy at all.

01:07:43.980 Because then you have to discover what you are.

01:07:46.620 You know, 0.98

01:07:46.980 and you're quite the monstrous creature, 0.75

01:07:49.380 with this massive capacity, 0.96

01:07:51.180 for both good and evil,

01:07:52.320 and to really become aware of what you think.

01:07:54.720 It's like,

01:07:55.460 oh my god,

01:07:56.220 really?

01:07:56.500 I really think that?

01:07:57.840 It's useful to know.

01:07:59.380 You know,

01:07:59.660 it's useful,

01:08:00.320 for example,

01:08:00.840 to discover how aggressive you are.

01:08:03.300 Because now,

01:08:04.060 then you can tap into that,

01:08:05.380 and use it.

01:08:05.880 Like,

01:08:06.060 if you really know

01:08:06.840 how unbelievably irritated you are

01:08:10.220 at your tyrannical boss,

01:08:12.280 and you let those fantasies of

01:08:14.100 God only knows what they might be.

01:08:16.180 You know,

01:08:16.460 these people who go into office buildings,

01:08:18.620 and shoot their, 0.94

01:08:19.320 shoot their employee, 1.00

01:08:21.120 or their peers, 1.00

01:08:22.580 and their boss.

01:08:23.880 It's not like they haven't been thinking about that

01:08:25.680 for like 10 years.

01:08:27.400 You know,

01:08:27.660 and it starts out,

01:08:28.660 something like,

01:08:29.260 geez, 0.57

01:08:29.540 I really hate my boss. 0.61

01:08:30.980 And then the next thing is,

01:08:32.000 geez,

01:08:32.220 I'm not very fond of my co-workers.

01:08:34.100 And then maybe they could think that through.

01:08:36.920 It's like,

01:08:37.320 I hate my boss,

01:08:38.140 I'm not very fond of my co-workers.

01:08:39.920 It's like,

01:08:40.240 well,

01:08:40.340 do I want to work somewhere

01:08:41.340 where I actually hate everyone?

01:08:43.460 And why is it that I hate everyone?

01:08:45.200 Is it everyone?

01:08:46.060 Or is it me?

01:08:47.940 Because if it's everyone,

01:08:48.900 it's probably me.

01:08:50.240 And then,

01:08:50.600 well,

01:08:50.780 if it's me,

01:08:51.460 and I hate everyone,

01:08:52.340 well,

01:08:52.500 maybe there's something really wrong with me.

01:08:54.560 And so then you have to go digging around,

01:08:56.380 and you have to find out what's wrong with you.

01:08:58.020 And maybe you were unpopular as a kid, 1.00

01:08:59.700 because you're just miserable piece of the earth. 1.00

01:09:01.960 And, 0.99

01:09:02.460 you know,

01:09:02.720 you're resentful, 0.52

01:09:03.700 and you don't carry your own weight.

01:09:05.420 And every chance you get,

01:09:06.980 you irritate people.

01:09:08.520 And,

01:09:08.560 and,

01:09:09.140 well,

01:09:09.340 there's people like that,

01:09:10.480 man.

01:09:10.660 There's no doubt about it.

01:09:11.780 And maybe you're one of them,

01:09:12.760 and we're all partly one of them.

01:09:15.480 And so you have to get to the bottom of it.

01:09:17.340 And God,

01:09:17.900 that's just an absolutely miserable thing to do.

01:09:20.600 But,

01:09:21.080 you know,

01:09:21.740 what's the alternative?

01:09:23.760 You're going to work with people that you hate,

01:09:26.120 and have an absolutely dreadful time every day,

01:09:29.380 and let your unconscious fantasies become darker,

01:09:32.760 and darker,

01:09:33.280 and more bitter,

01:09:34.020 and take you out?

01:09:35.880 Like,

01:09:36.140 that's the alternative.

01:09:36.980 And you think,

01:09:38.020 well,

01:09:38.160 I'm not going to go shoot up an office,

01:09:39.820 and well,

01:09:40.180 you know,

01:09:40.500 congratulations to you. 0.97

01:09:41.660 And maybe that's partly a consequence of your cowardice, 0.99

01:09:44.880 and not your morality. 0.94

01:09:46.500 So,

01:09:47.100 well,

01:09:47.440 don't,

01:09:47.720 don't be so sure about that,

01:09:49.440 you know.

01:09:50.080 So,

01:09:50.740 but,

01:09:51.060 you know,

01:09:51.260 you're married to someone,

01:09:52.640 and,

01:09:53.000 and,

01:09:53.320 you know,

01:09:53.500 a lot of marriages end in divorce,

01:09:55.080 and,

01:09:55.540 and,

01:09:55.840 and why is that?

01:09:57.380 Well,

01:09:57.720 I mean,

01:09:58.040 it's partly because people,

01:09:59.540 they don't tell the truth to each other,

01:10:01.640 you know.

01:10:02.040 And so,

01:10:02.780 they don't take a problem when it's still a small pit,

01:10:05.980 a small hole,

01:10:06.820 and say,

01:10:07.140 look,

01:10:07.640 look,

01:10:07.940 I don't know,

01:10:08.400 man,

01:10:08.980 this is what I'm thinking.

01:10:10.060 It's kind of ugly,

01:10:10.860 and it's not very flattering to you,

01:10:12.620 and it's not very flattering to me either,

01:10:14.320 and it doesn't bode well for our life together,

01:10:17.860 and maybe it's not true,

01:10:19.800 you know,

01:10:20.200 but it's certainly what I think,

01:10:21.780 and maybe we should have a talk about this.

01:10:24.600 And like,

01:10:25.020 that's one nasty talk,

01:10:26.700 that is,

01:10:27.240 boy.

01:10:27.740 The probability that you're going to get out of that without a scrap,

01:10:30.860 and with some tears is like very,

01:10:32.660 very low.

01:10:33.120 But there's some possibility you might find out why you're in that hole together,

01:10:38.000 or separately,

01:10:39.180 and figure a way out of it.

01:10:40.800 And when it's still the kind of hole that you could actually climb out of,

01:10:44.300 at least hypothetically.

01:10:45.620 And if you don't think that you're going to fall in holes like that with someone you're married to,

01:10:49.380 then,

01:10:50.060 well,

01:10:50.340 you're either not married,

01:10:52.120 or you're absolutely blind.

01:10:55.400 Because this just happens all the time,

01:10:57.820 not least because life is really hard,

01:11:00.660 and just because of its mere difficulty,

01:11:03.140 you're going to end up in places that are not,

01:11:05.400 that are dark and difficult to get out of,

01:11:07.540 even if both of you are doing a pretty decent job together.

01:11:10.640 That's just part of the difficulty of life.

01:11:13.180 And so you can go in there and contend with that darkness,

01:11:16.200 you can tell the truth,

01:11:17.300 and maybe you can,

01:11:18.800 you can,

01:11:19.400 you can fix your map,

01:11:20.720 you can,

01:11:21.260 you can figure out,

01:11:22.120 oh,

01:11:22.380 here's how we got here,

01:11:23.560 you know,

01:11:23.800 and like,

01:11:24.540 is this a place we want to be?

01:11:26.760 Well,

01:11:27.220 no,

01:11:28.120 no,

01:11:28.560 we don't hate each other that much yet,

01:11:31.340 you know,

01:11:31.760 so,

01:11:32.460 so that I'm in a pit and I'll drag you in,

01:11:35.020 rather than take myself out,

01:11:36.500 because I'd like to see the misery extend to you,

01:11:38.760 rather than to make myself better.

01:11:40.600 It's like,

01:11:40.940 again,

01:11:41.180 if you don't understand that sort of thing,

01:11:42.960 then you've never had a family,

01:11:44.380 and you've never had a marriage.

01:11:46.360 So,

01:11:47.140 because people are definitely that dark, 0.77

01:11:49.300 and very frequently they end up like that permanently,

01:11:52.100 and that's partly why they end up divorced.

01:11:55.340 So,

01:11:55.900 it's no joke to contend with the vagaries of life.

01:12:00.720 If you do that honestly,

01:12:01.980 then you can take on the monster when it's still relatively small,

01:12:06.300 and that's a good thing,

01:12:07.900 even though it's a monster,

01:12:09.100 it's,

01:12:09.320 it's better to take it on when it's relatively small,

01:12:11.920 because maybe you can defeat it,

01:12:13.300 and maybe you can also become stronger in the combat,

01:12:15.920 and then when a larger monster comes along,

01:12:18.580 well,

01:12:18.760 maybe you're more ready to deal with it,

01:12:20.340 and that's,

01:12:21.080 and that's part of the truth,

01:12:22.560 and so,

01:12:23.220 that's another reason not to lie.

01:12:24.880 Then I'll end with this,

01:12:26.020 I think.

01:12:26.980 So,

01:12:28.380 Socrates,

01:12:29.500 you know,

01:12:30.320 when,

01:12:30.480 when,

01:12:31.040 when Socrates was put,

01:12:32.400 was going to be put to death,

01:12:33.580 I wrote about this in 12 Rules for Life,

01:12:35.840 the guys who wanted to put him to death,

01:12:38.800 really didn't want to put him to death.

01:12:40.660 They,

01:12:40.880 it was a little town,

01:12:42.000 Athens,

01:12:42.460 25,000 people,

01:12:43.740 everybody knew each other,

01:12:44.800 right,

01:12:45.020 and it was corrupt in the same way that little towns get corrupt,

01:12:48.620 and,

01:12:49.020 no,

01:12:49.300 Socrates was a pain in the neck, 0.59

01:12:50.940 because, 0.96

01:12:51.660 you know,

01:12:52.040 well,

01:12:52.260 first of all,

01:12:52.760 he would make young people think,

01:12:54.760 and there's nothing more annoying than that,

01:12:57.400 and,

01:12:58.320 you know,

01:12:58.600 people would stop to talk to him,

01:13:00.060 and,

01:13:00.420 and they'd have some story about how they were conducting their life,

01:13:03.060 and he'd ask them 10 questions,

01:13:04.400 and then he,

01:13:05.880 then they knew that they were just lying about everything,

01:13:09.100 and that was absolutely dreadful,

01:13:11.060 and so then they hated him,

01:13:12.440 and so that was Socrates,

01:13:14.000 and,

01:13:14.720 and maybe the first person who actually really thought,

01:13:19.380 and so,

01:13:20.220 well, 1.00

01:13:20.400 you've got to kill someone like that, 1.00

01:13:21.860 because you don't want that to spread, 1.00

01:13:23.900 that's for sure,

01:13:25.080 so,

01:13:25.720 you know,

01:13:25.940 they told him,

01:13:26.540 look,

01:13:27.220 you're corrupting the youth, 1.00

01:13:29.180 we're going to kill you, 1.00

01:13:30.680 we're going to put you on trial, 1.00

01:13:31.700 but,

01:13:32.000 it's just a show trial,

01:13:34.400 death,

01:13:36.300 and,

01:13:37.620 but it's not going to happen for six months,

01:13:39.940 it's like,

01:13:40.300 well,

01:13:40.480 why the delay,

01:13:42.060 well, 1.00

01:13:42.260 you just come and stab him at night, 1.00

01:13:44.800 you know, 1.00

01:13:45.060 if you're going to do it,

01:13:47.000 no,

01:13:47.240 they wanted to delay,

01:13:48.060 because they didn't want to kill him,

01:13:49.160 they just wanted to get him the hell out of town,

01:13:50.860 it's like,

01:13:51.280 go away, 0.99

01:13:51.860 you old goat, 1.00

01:13:52.520 we're tired of you, 0.99

01:13:53.180 go bother the Stoics, 1.00

01:13:54.580 or the Spartans,

01:13:55.740 you know,

01:13:56.200 and,

01:13:57.260 and,

01:13:57.700 and everyone knew this,

01:13:59.000 all of Socrates' friends knew this,

01:14:00.700 and so they all got together,

01:14:01.680 and they said,

01:14:02.060 look,

01:14:02.160 we got to get,

01:14:02.780 we got to get you out of town,

01:14:04.560 and,

01:14:04.920 because,

01:14:05.980 you know,

01:14:06.280 these guys are serious,

01:14:07.360 you know them,

01:14:07.940 and,

01:14:08.140 and they're going to go through with this whole thing,

01:14:09.780 if you force them to,

01:14:11.500 and,

01:14:11.980 we'd rather that you weren't dead,

01:14:15.200 and,

01:14:15.800 probably you feel the same way,

01:14:17.500 and,

01:14:18.260 and so,

01:14:18.980 Socrates listened to that,

01:14:20.440 and he knew that that was the story,

01:14:22.100 and,

01:14:22.400 but he went out and meditated,

01:14:23.840 which he was wont to do,

01:14:25.720 thought about it,

01:14:27.120 asked himself,

01:14:29.060 asked himself,

01:14:30.700 that's a useful skill to,

01:14:32.000 to learn,

01:14:32.960 you know,

01:14:33.200 because you,

01:14:33.680 you like to tell yourself things,

01:14:35.780 you should do this,

01:14:37.260 you know,

01:14:37.480 you like to command yourself,

01:14:38.740 like you're sort of your own slave,

01:14:40.240 it's like,

01:14:40.500 it doesn't work,

01:14:41.540 but you can ask yourself,

01:14:43.460 you know,

01:14:43.680 like if you want to improve your life,

01:14:46.100 maybe there's a bad habit you need to stop,

01:14:48.220 or there's a good habit you need to develop,

01:14:49.720 you could sit yourself down,

01:14:50.740 and you could say,

01:14:51.740 yeah,

01:14:52.180 look,

01:14:52.480 I know we haven't got along that well in the past,

01:14:54.700 and we don't trust each other that much,

01:14:56.740 and I tend to be a bit of a tyrant,

01:14:58.540 and you tend to procrastinate,

01:14:59.960 and not,

01:15:00.620 you know,

01:15:00.920 pick up after yourself, 0.97

01:15:02.100 and we're all together quite useless, 0.90

01:15:03.980 but, 0.84

01:15:04.280 I'm thinking that,

01:15:06.040 maybe we could make things slightly better,

01:15:08.380 if you would be willing to communicate,

01:15:10.060 to cooperate,

01:15:10.660 is there something I could offer you,

01:15:13.660 that would entice you,

01:15:15.060 to behave in a slightly better manner,

01:15:17.760 and,

01:15:18.380 you know,

01:15:18.600 if you're careful,

01:15:19.360 and humble,

01:15:19.880 and don't aim too high,

01:15:21.020 then you can usually figure out something,

01:15:22.740 that you can convince yourself to do,

01:15:25.160 that will work,

01:15:26.460 and so that's,

01:15:27.260 this sort of meditation,

01:15:28.800 that Socrates engaged in,

01:15:30.740 and he claimed,

01:15:32.660 someone asked him,

01:15:33.980 I think at his trial,

01:15:36.120 at his trial,

01:15:36.820 that's correct,

01:15:38.400 leaping ahead,

01:15:39.340 he went out,

01:15:40.600 and,

01:15:40.700 and,

01:15:41.180 and had a discussion,

01:15:42.480 with himself,

01:15:43.320 and he realized,

01:15:44.800 that he wasn't going to run,

01:15:46.440 and he thought,

01:15:47.980 this was a real shock to him,

01:15:49.360 he thought,

01:15:49.740 what,

01:15:50.040 what do you mean,

01:15:51.640 don't run,

01:15:52.800 it's like,

01:15:53.320 well,

01:15:53.500 you shouldn't run away from this,

01:15:55.060 well,

01:15:55.400 what do you mean,

01:15:55.800 I shouldn't run away from this,

01:15:56.820 I'm going to die,

01:15:59.060 well, 0.96

01:16:00.620 it doesn't matter,

01:16:01.240 you shouldn't run away from this,

01:16:03.560 so,

01:16:04.980 he went back,

01:16:05.600 and he told his friends,

01:16:06.380 I'm not running away from this,

01:16:08.100 so,

01:16:09.780 then he went to trial,

01:16:10.760 they tried to convince him to leave,

01:16:12.280 but he wouldn't,

01:16:13.180 and,

01:16:13.760 he went to trial,

01:16:14.640 and,

01:16:15.280 the,

01:16:15.580 the Athenian,

01:16:17.840 judges,

01:16:18.380 were actually kind of curious,

01:16:19.500 about what the hell he was doing there,

01:16:20.820 because they expected,

01:16:21.860 that he'd just leave,

01:16:22.920 because that was the plan,

01:16:23.840 and so they asked him about himself,

01:16:26.340 or he told them,

01:16:27.040 he said,

01:16:27.800 you know,

01:16:28.120 I've lived this kind of,

01:16:29.160 exemplary life,

01:16:30.620 people come from all over,

01:16:31.700 to listen to what I have to say,

01:16:33.180 and,

01:16:33.620 you might want to know why that is,

01:16:36.080 and he said,

01:16:36.440 well,

01:16:36.560 I've got this daemon,

01:16:38.760 spirit,

01:16:39.940 that inhabits me,

01:16:41.840 that I communicate with,

01:16:43.020 on a regular basis,

01:16:44.160 and,

01:16:44.780 he,

01:16:46.860 first of all,

01:16:47.260 he said,

01:16:47.580 well,

01:16:47.840 you know,

01:16:48.020 people come and talk to me,

01:16:49.180 and,

01:16:49.300 you know,

01:16:49.420 I don't,

01:16:49.880 I don't,

01:16:50.460 I'm not really rewarded for that,

01:16:52.020 although,

01:16:52.760 I make my living that way,

01:16:54.260 from what people,

01:16:55.740 gather up for me,

01:16:56.700 and I'm always trying to,

01:16:58.200 seek for the truth,

01:16:59.260 I don't really believe,

01:17:00.040 that I have it,

01:17:00.600 but I'm trying to seek for it,

01:17:01.940 and,

01:17:02.200 and people seem to recognize that,

01:17:04.500 and,

01:17:04.700 and the Delphic Oracle herself,

01:17:07.040 said that I was the wisest man,

01:17:08.780 in Greece,

01:17:09.640 because I knew,

01:17:10.720 that I didn't know,

01:17:12.220 that I didn't know anything,

01:17:13.720 I was aware of my own ignorance,

01:17:14.980 and so,

01:17:15.380 even the gods,

01:17:16.420 admit that,

01:17:17.180 I'm doing something right,

01:17:18.860 and everyone,

01:17:19.500 no one disagreed with that,

01:17:21.540 and,

01:17:21.900 and,

01:17:22.100 and then Socrates,

01:17:23.000 sort of explained,

01:17:24.040 what it was that he did,

01:17:25.580 that was right,

01:17:26.140 and he said he had this internal daemon,

01:17:28.240 which is really like the voice of conscience,

01:17:30.160 I think that's the right way,

01:17:31.280 to think about it,

01:17:32.080 and it's interesting,

01:17:33.260 because people do seem to have,

01:17:34.560 a voice of conscience,

01:17:35.460 I've asked my students,

01:17:37.980 for years about this,

01:17:39.640 how many of you,

01:17:41.700 have,

01:17:42.700 what you might describe,

01:17:43.740 as little voice,

01:17:44.540 inside of your head,

01:17:46.060 that tells you, 1.00

01:17:47.860 when you're about to do something stupid, 1.00

01:17:50.300 that you don't necessarily listen to, 0.99

01:17:53.300 but that you know is right,

01:17:55.360 it's like,

01:17:56.520 and is,

01:17:57.240 and I said,

01:17:57.860 well how many of you have that voice,

01:17:59.160 well so let's just ask,

01:18:00.140 how many of you have that voice,

01:18:01.480 in your head,

01:18:01.940 okay okay,

01:18:04.360 now how many of you don't have a voice,

01:18:05.860 but have a feeling,

01:18:06.900 that's approximately equivalent,

01:18:09.460 okay,

01:18:09.820 and how many of you,

01:18:10.840 just have no idea whatsoever,

01:18:12.400 what I'm talking about,

01:18:13.460 okay so,

01:18:16.200 so okay,

01:18:16.980 so so so,

01:18:18.560 anyway,

01:18:20.040 so that's the daemon,

01:18:21.440 at least in part,

01:18:22.180 and Socrates said,

01:18:22.940 here's what makes me different,

01:18:23.940 from other people,

01:18:25.300 I always listen to that,

01:18:29.220 now it doesn't tell me,

01:18:30.200 what to do,

01:18:31.080 but it tells me what not to do,

01:18:33.540 and so that's don't lie,

01:18:34.840 I would say,

01:18:35.620 tell the truth,

01:18:36.440 or don't lie,

01:18:37.700 I don't think you can necessarily tell,

01:18:40.160 when you're telling the truth,

01:18:41.220 because you just don't have access,

01:18:42.960 to the truth,

01:18:43.760 because what the hell do you know, 0.70

01:18:45.340 you're limited in your knowledge, 0.78

01:18:47.380 you're limited in your perceptions,

01:18:49.300 there's, 1.00

01:18:49.980 you're ignorant beyond belief, 1.00

01:18:51.720 you're biased, 1.00

01:18:52.800 truth,

01:18:55.180 you can do your best,

01:18:57.340 but I do believe,

01:19:00.100 that it's a universal human experience,

01:19:02.700 to know,

01:19:03.700 that at some time,

01:19:05.020 you're about to lie,

01:19:06.940 which is,

01:19:07.620 to say something,

01:19:08.460 that you know full well,

01:19:10.120 is not true,

01:19:11.340 whatever true is,

01:19:13.140 well Socrates dictum was,

01:19:14.740 don't do that,

01:19:17.200 ever,

01:19:18.620 if you know,

01:19:19.540 that it's a lie,

01:19:21.240 don't say it,

01:19:23.340 don't act it out,

01:19:24.480 and that's the pathway to wisdom,

01:19:27.320 and I believe,

01:19:28.560 that that's the case,

01:19:29.580 and one of the things,

01:19:30.860 that I learned from Carl Rogers,

01:19:33.140 very famous psychotherapist,

01:19:35.340 was,

01:19:36.600 he believed you should be integrated,

01:19:38.600 in your body,

01:19:39.540 and your mind,

01:19:40.340 and so that not only,

01:19:41.380 should you say things,

01:19:42.380 that you believe to be true,

01:19:44.120 or at least weren't lies,

01:19:45.280 but you should act them out as well,

01:19:46.780 so that you're kind of a unified thing,

01:19:49.220 you know,

01:19:49.500 because you should act in a manner,

01:19:51.560 that makes it unnecessary,

01:19:52.660 for you to lie about what you did,

01:19:55.780 because otherwise,

01:19:56.400 that's just a lie,

01:19:57.440 it's just a different version of a lie,

01:19:59.420 and so that's another problem,

01:20:00.800 with not lying,

01:20:01.920 because then you have to stop doing things,

01:20:03.760 that you have to lie about,

01:20:05.040 and of course,

01:20:05.500 that's very annoying,

01:20:06.720 because most of the things,

01:20:08.140 that you have to lie about,

01:20:09.020 are really fun,

01:20:10.220 especially in the impulsive way,

01:20:11.920 and so then you have to give those up,

01:20:13.420 and that's very irritating,

01:20:15.900 and so,

01:20:17.000 but Socrates point was,

01:20:19.440 well,

01:20:20.040 he always listened to this voice,

01:20:21.560 and Roger's point was,

01:20:25.380 he developed quite a nice theory of this,

01:20:27.420 that you could actually detect,

01:20:29.440 when you were about to say something false,

01:20:32.480 and that you could learn to listen to yourself,

01:20:35.140 and you could learn to feel,

01:20:37.080 whether what you were saying,

01:20:38.460 was making you stronger,

01:20:40.440 or weaker,

01:20:42.140 and I think it has to do with,

01:20:43.820 you know how if you're in a strange city,

01:20:45.900 and the map isn't working,

01:20:48.080 then you're sort of disoriented,

01:20:49.360 and you don't know where you are,

01:20:50.660 well, you don't know where you are,

01:20:51.500 and you don't know where you're going,

01:20:52.740 and so you sort of feel all over the place,

01:20:55.100 you know,

01:20:55.340 you're not gathered together,

01:20:56.580 solidly,

01:20:57.220 ready to act,

01:20:58.140 it's an anxiety-provoking experience,

01:21:00.160 and that sense,

01:21:01.460 that sense of weakness,

01:21:03.240 that comes with uttering a lie,

01:21:05.020 produces exactly the same consequences,

01:21:07.500 and for the same reason,

01:21:08.580 because you're disrupting,

01:21:10.220 your representation,

01:21:12.000 of where you are in time and space,

01:21:14.300 where you are,

01:21:14.880 and where you're going,

01:21:15.900 and so then you could be anywhere doing anything,

01:21:18.100 and that's too much,

01:21:18.880 it makes you anxious and weak,

01:21:20.380 and you can learn to feel,

01:21:22.720 you can learn to listen to what you say,

01:21:25.800 and you can feel whether,

01:21:27.380 what you're saying is making you stronger,

01:21:29.520 and more positioned,

01:21:31.460 or whether it's making you weak and fragmented,

01:21:33.700 now,

01:21:34.120 the weakness often has the benefit,

01:21:36.140 of allowing you to do something impulsively pleasurable,

01:21:39.720 and so there's a high payoff for it,

01:21:42.420 in the short term,

01:21:43.240 but it's a catastrophe in the long run,

01:21:45.420 you can learn to center yourself,

01:21:47.520 and I think what's happening when you do that,

01:21:49.720 is that you're aligning yourself,

01:21:53.120 from the bottom up,

01:21:54.580 and I don't mean from your feet upward,

01:21:56.440 I mean from the deepest recesses of your being,

01:21:59.340 I mean from all the way from down at the atomic level,

01:22:02.400 all the way up through,

01:22:03.520 all the levels of your interacting being,

01:22:06.060 everything is lined up,

01:22:07.300 and pointing in the same direction,

01:22:09.140 and that makes you,

01:22:09.860 it makes you diamond-like,

01:22:12.000 it makes you sharp and hard,

01:22:14.300 and able to move towards something,

01:22:16.500 without anything getting in its way,

01:22:18.280 and to be something that seeks,

01:22:20.300 a precise and pristine target,

01:22:22.780 and to be implacable,

01:22:24.240 and unstoppable,

01:22:25.480 and to be without excess fear,

01:22:28.240 and to be courageous,

01:22:29.340 all of that,

01:22:30.380 that the truth tempers you,

01:22:32.500 like metal is tempered,

01:22:33.840 and I think that you have the option to do that,

01:22:37.000 and I'll close with an observation,

01:22:39.660 there's this idea in Genesis,

01:22:42.800 it's a very interesting idea,

01:22:44.660 that God is that which confronts potential,

01:22:50.480 with truth,

01:22:52.240 that's the deepest idea,

01:22:54.620 that's embedded in the biblical corpus as a whole,

01:22:58.200 so the idea is,

01:22:59.440 well there's God,

01:23:00.580 the father,

01:23:01.440 whatever,

01:23:01.940 that means,

01:23:02.980 some,

01:23:03.460 some,

01:23:04.080 some,

01:23:04.540 something,

01:23:05.100 something that,

01:23:05.760 that has an intrinsic structure,

01:23:07.640 and some possibility of creativity,

01:23:09.720 and that entity,

01:23:12.440 divine entity,

01:23:13.040 has a function,

01:23:14.360 and that function is the logos,

01:23:16.280 and that's the truth,

01:23:18.000 and that,

01:23:19.060 that structure applies that function,

01:23:22.060 the truth to potential,

01:23:23.500 that's the tohu vabohu,

01:23:24.900 that exists,

01:23:25.800 before anything else exists,

01:23:27.160 that's potential,

01:23:28.840 it's just what could be,

01:23:30.800 and that,

01:23:31.940 the application of that logos,

01:23:34.060 to the potential,

01:23:34.920 creates reality,

01:23:36.400 creates order,

01:23:37.780 that's how order comes to be,

01:23:39.860 and I believe that's true,

01:23:41.180 I believe it's a,

01:23:41.940 it's a description of the actual structure,

01:23:44.600 of the manner in which being manifests itself,

01:23:46.940 and I think that you partake in that,

01:23:48.660 when you confront potential yourself,

01:23:50.520 you see the potential of the world,

01:23:52.440 and you act on it,

01:23:53.660 and you transform it into reality,

01:23:55.760 and then the question is,

01:23:56.740 well,

01:23:56.960 what sort of reality do you transform it into,

01:23:59.420 and it's literally the case,

01:24:00.860 because that's what you're doing,

01:24:01.920 is you're,

01:24:02.360 you're taking what could be,

01:24:04.320 and making it into what is,

01:24:05.860 to the degree that you're capable of doing that,

01:24:08.040 and in the biblical narrative,

01:24:10.000 God does that with the truth,

01:24:11.960 and so then,

01:24:14.120 order comes into being,

01:24:15.460 sequentially,

01:24:16.520 and there's this repetitive idea,

01:24:19.540 that's also part of the poetic structure,

01:24:21.580 of the first chapter of Genesis,

01:24:23.620 every time God uses the truth,

01:24:25.860 to extract order out of potential,

01:24:28.540 he says,

01:24:29.340 and it was good,

01:24:31.100 and so,

01:24:31.560 and here's the idea,

01:24:32.680 it's a great idea,

01:24:33.960 it might be the great idea,

01:24:35.580 but it's definitely a great idea,

01:24:38.260 the reality that you produce,

01:24:39.800 as a consequence of confronting potential with truth,

01:24:42.440 is good,

01:24:42.980 it's the fundamental statement of faith,

01:24:48.140 and it's worth thinking about,

01:24:50.060 because it could be the case,

01:24:51.440 is that you have the option of bringing the world,

01:24:55.020 into being for better or worse,

01:24:57.300 and if you want to bring it into being for better,

01:24:59.440 then the way you do it,

01:25:00.680 is with the truth,

01:25:02.040 and there's going to be a price,

01:25:03.520 because the truth has a price,

01:25:06.020 but so does falsehood,

01:25:07.580 it's just a delayed price,

01:25:10.360 maybe the price of the truth,

01:25:11.540 is something you confront almost immediately,

01:25:13.640 but then it's over,

01:25:14.620 and then things are better,

01:25:16.660 and then there's another idea in Genesis,

01:25:19.360 that human beings are made in the image of God,

01:25:21.580 and it's a very difficult thing to understand,

01:25:23.600 but it's easier to understand,

01:25:24.880 if you know what the first part of the story means,

01:25:27.300 and it means something like what I've outlined,

01:25:29.380 although no doubt tremendously more than that,

01:25:31.960 means that whatever you are,

01:25:35.420 whatever your consciousness is,

01:25:37.500 whatever that capacity is,

01:25:39.640 that's part and parcel of you,

01:25:42.220 having that ability to grapple with potential,

01:25:45.140 and transform it into reality,

01:25:47.180 that's how you partake in the divine,

01:25:49.600 and it seems reasonable to me to,

01:25:52.360 posit that,

01:25:53.360 if what you're doing,

01:25:54.700 is actually transforming potential into actuality,

01:25:58.500 because I can't think of anything,

01:25:59.900 that's more like what divinity might be than that, 0.98

01:26:03.520 that's quite the damn trick, 0.98

01:26:04.820 and you seem to pull it off all the time, 0.99

01:26:06.640 the question is,

01:26:07.660 well how should you go about doing that,

01:26:10.020 well the answer seems to be,

01:26:11.180 with the truth,

01:26:12.780 and then there's one final thing,

01:26:14.380 I keep saying that,

01:26:15.980 yes there were three final things,

01:26:18.540 here's something so interesting,

01:26:20.860 I learned this when I did the biblical lectures last year,

01:26:23.580 when I was looking at the Abrahamic stories,

01:26:25.480 there's a call to adventure,

01:26:27.320 that's part and parcel of every great narrative,

01:26:29.480 is you're called out of your slumber,

01:26:32.220 to undertake the adventure of your life,

01:26:34.580 and so a great life is not a happy life,

01:26:37.840 and it's not an easy life,

01:26:39.040 it's a great and meaningful adventure,

01:26:42.200 and you're partaking in the process,

01:26:44.160 of bringing something magnificent into being,

01:26:47.240 that's life,

01:26:48.460 that's far more than happiness,

01:26:51.380 and happiness might be part of that,

01:26:53.620 or satisfaction,

01:26:54.820 meaning might be part of that,

01:26:56.040 but this is much grander than all of that,

01:26:59.080 and you do that,

01:27:00.140 we do that most effectively with truth,

01:27:03.120 and partly that's because telling the truth,

01:27:05.440 is actually a tremendous adventure,

01:27:07.680 it's like because maybe you're aiming at something,

01:27:09.840 you think well look,

01:27:10.540 I can tell person X this,

01:27:12.400 and I'll get what I want,

01:27:13.980 it's like that's fine you know,

01:27:15.500 except what the hell do you know about what you want,

01:27:18.480 you might be wrong about that,

01:27:20.540 and you probably are,

01:27:21.620 because what's your vision of the ultimate future,

01:27:25.480 is it fully developed,

01:27:26.560 if you really got a handle on that fundamental utopia,

01:27:31.060 maybe it's something more like this,

01:27:32.540 is that whatever the truth brings into being,

01:27:34.960 that's the right,

01:27:36.040 that's what's right,

01:27:38.060 and so you have to subordinate yourself to that,

01:27:40.240 and then you have to tell the truth,

01:27:41.460 and what's so interesting about that,

01:27:42.820 is that you instantly are on an adventure,

01:27:45.900 because there's absolutely nothing more unpredictable,

01:27:49.020 in a profound and meaningful way,

01:27:51.320 than what happens to you,

01:27:52.420 if you actually start,

01:27:54.020 well at least to begin with,

01:27:55.100 not to lie,

01:27:56.560 it transforms your life completely,

01:27:59.720 and all sorts of insanely strange things happen to you,

01:28:03.840 because you're not exactly like a typical person anymore,

01:28:08.920 if you stop lying,

01:28:10.420 there's something to you that is kind of uncanny,

01:28:12.980 that might be a way of thinking about it,

01:28:14.540 and it changes the way you react to yourself,

01:28:17.040 and it changes the way other people react to you,

01:28:19.300 and then weird things come your way,

01:28:21.740 in all sorts of ways,

01:28:23.160 and they're the things that if handled properly,

01:28:27.940 would actually constitute the justifying adventure of your life,

01:28:32.380 that's how you encounter it,

01:28:33.760 there's this idea,

01:28:35.480 it's in the New Testament,

01:28:36.860 Christ,

01:28:37.540 who's an image of the truth,

01:28:39.480 regardless of the religious issue,

01:28:41.760 is an image of the truth embodied,

01:28:44.020 says,

01:28:44.480 I am the way and the life and the truth,

01:28:46.940 no one comes to the Father except through me,

01:28:49.200 which is a hell of a thing for someone to say,

01:28:51.660 you know,

01:28:51.900 it's not something that someone just says to you,

01:28:54.960 when they walk by you on the street,

01:28:57.060 it's a very strange thing to say,

01:28:59.420 but it means something,

01:29:01.420 and it means something deeply mysterious,

01:29:03.380 it means if you're willing to put yourself on the line,

01:29:08.280 and to stop lying,

01:29:10.700 and to strive towards the truth,

01:29:13.240 you'll encounter the adventure of your life,

01:29:15.800 and the consequence of that will be that that will call forth out of you the best in you,

01:29:21.980 and that won't be conjured out of you by some trivial wish,

01:29:25.620 like if you want to make yourself into what you could be,

01:29:28.020 you have to contend with something,

01:29:29.780 just like if you want to become powerful,

01:29:32.300 you go to the gym,

01:29:33.260 you lift heavy weights,

01:29:34.480 it's light weights,

01:29:35.960 it makes you a light weight,

01:29:37.200 you have to push yourself,

01:29:38.720 you have to push yourself to your limit,

01:29:41.300 and to engage in the adventure that the truth produces,

01:29:44.680 is to push yourself to your limits,

01:29:46.600 and to push yourself to your limits,

01:29:48.000 is to force yourself to become what you could be,

01:29:51.660 and to become what you could be,

01:29:52.980 is the ancestral you,

01:29:55.780 that's the Father,

01:29:57.200 that's the full manifestation of what it could be,

01:29:59.560 to be a human being,

01:30:01.140 and we don't even know the limit to that,

01:30:03.840 and so that's why you should tell the truth,

01:30:06.160 or at least not lie.

01:30:09.320 Thank you.

01:30:14.520 Thank you.

01:30:15.420 Thank you once again.

01:30:16.660 All right,

01:30:17.220 so you offered a substantial number of questions here,

01:30:24.100 so I'll try to find some that are interesting,

01:30:28.000 and maybe somewhat comical now and then,

01:30:31.080 and also that I can answer.

01:30:34.420 So here's one that was upvoted by 45 people.

01:30:45.480 I'm an autistic male struggling to understand the concept of love.

01:30:49.600 I hear you discuss responsibility, giving meaning to life.

01:30:53.900 How important is love to meaning?

01:30:56.320 I hear you.

01:31:00.780 So,

01:31:02.340 you know, it's a hard,

01:31:06.980 it's a challenge to discuss truth.

01:31:11.360 I mean,

01:31:12.200 you have to be pretty presumptuous to discuss truth.

01:31:15.160 You probably have to be even more presumptuous to discuss love.

01:31:21.400 Partly because it's a word that's,

01:31:24.880 it's like it's an old beautiful building

01:31:28.400 that's been overlaid with centuries of grime and dirt

01:31:31.400 and hasn't been cleaned properly for forever,

01:31:35.000 and so you can just barely see it through all the pollution.

01:31:39.780 trepidation.

01:31:42.240 So,

01:31:43.360 I discuss it with trepidation.

01:31:47.260 You can't,

01:31:48.540 you seem to have a high probability of

01:31:51.520 becoming false the moment that you even utter the word.

01:31:59.180 So I'm going to tread very carefully.

01:32:04.820 I think that

01:32:06.000 what love is

01:32:08.100 at its base is

01:32:11.420 well, it's what you feel

01:32:17.800 when you have a child

01:32:19.760 and

01:32:21.820 you're clear-headed

01:32:23.500 and

01:32:24.580 you,

01:32:26.460 you actually want the best for that child.

01:32:31.800 Like, if you could have your wish,

01:32:33.280 that's what it would be.

01:32:34.140 And

01:32:37.000 it's not easy to have that

01:32:39.160 in the purest form that

01:32:41.120 it should be

01:32:42.280 because

01:32:42.680 people are jealous of their children

01:32:45.860 because of their youth

01:32:47.260 and

01:32:47.520 they're jealous of their children

01:32:49.300 because

01:32:49.760 of their misspent adult life

01:32:52.700 and the fact that someone new has entered the world

01:32:55.120 that has

01:32:55.680 a full realm of possibilities

01:32:57.680 that they've already

01:32:58.820 squandered,

01:33:00.140 squandered,

01:33:01.360 let's say.

01:33:03.140 And then

01:33:03.860 a child is someone

01:33:05.980 who you can easily target

01:33:08.340 with your capacity for malevolence

01:33:10.380 and use as a scapegoat

01:33:14.740 for all the resentment

01:33:15.780 that you've accrued in your life.

01:33:18.360 But

01:33:21.540 having said that,

01:33:23.840 I think that

01:33:24.420 for most people,

01:33:26.120 the closest they come to

01:33:27.500 a connection with

01:33:31.540 what love could be

01:33:32.760 in its

01:33:33.140 purest essence is

01:33:35.380 through contact with

01:33:38.320 their

01:33:40.080 child or children

01:33:42.440 and

01:33:42.900 the desire that

01:33:45.700 everything work out well for them.

01:33:47.460 Now,

01:33:48.140 that's a complicated

01:33:49.440 desire

01:33:50.580 because

01:33:51.020 you know,

01:33:54.220 a child is a vulnerable thing,

01:33:57.760 can be hurt,

01:33:58.780 will be hurt,

01:33:59.680 that's for sure.

01:34:01.880 And

01:34:02.220 that's part of the horror of life,

01:34:06.340 really,

01:34:06.720 that

01:34:06.960 children can be hurt.

01:34:09.900 It might be

01:34:10.580 one of the primary horrors of life

01:34:12.560 or

01:34:13.360 maybe a worse one

01:34:14.380 is that you could be the agent

01:34:15.720 of their destruction

01:34:16.660 you could be the thing

01:34:18.220 that does the hurting.

01:34:19.760 But it's tied in.

01:34:21.340 It's the same idea.

01:34:24.220 So you might think of a child

01:34:25.780 as something that's

01:34:26.680 representative

01:34:27.380 of the fragility

01:34:28.840 and potential

01:34:29.580 of being.

01:34:34.080 Characterized

01:34:34.560 very much fundamentally

01:34:36.820 by potential

01:34:37.720 but also very much

01:34:39.760 by limitation.

01:34:40.560 and the limitation

01:34:42.300 of being

01:34:43.780 is what gives it

01:34:44.600 its fragility

01:34:45.480 and its vulnerability

01:34:46.320 and its tragic element

01:34:48.780 and its susceptibility

01:34:50.700 to exploitation

01:34:51.840 by malevolence.

01:34:52.900 and so to love a child

01:34:55.600 means that you have to

01:34:57.040 want the best

01:34:58.720 for something

01:34:59.500 despite the fact

01:35:00.880 that it's

01:35:01.720 limited

01:35:02.320 and vulnerable

01:35:03.260 and mortal

01:35:04.200 and susceptible

01:35:05.740 to destruction

01:35:07.660 by malevolence

01:35:08.620 and even

01:35:09.240 characterized

01:35:11.760 by the potential

01:35:12.840 to go wrong

01:35:14.160 itself.

01:35:16.240 And so

01:35:16.600 then you could think

01:35:17.640 of a child

01:35:18.200 as

01:35:18.680 a representation

01:35:21.220 of existence

01:35:23.080 or experience

01:35:23.980 or being itself.

01:35:26.480 But it still seems

01:35:27.920 that the proper attitude

01:35:29.420 towards a child

01:35:31.880 is love

01:35:33.240 and that is

01:35:34.180 the desire

01:35:34.940 that things

01:35:36.300 turn out

01:35:37.300 the best

01:35:38.100 for that

01:35:38.780 being.

01:35:41.680 And maybe

01:35:42.240 you can

01:35:42.780 abstract past that

01:35:44.900 and say that

01:35:45.580 in the most

01:35:47.780 philosophical

01:35:48.620 and abstract sense

01:35:49.920 then love

01:35:51.100 is the desire

01:35:52.000 that being

01:35:53.660 turn out

01:35:54.220 for the best.

01:35:56.240 And

01:35:56.360 you might think

01:35:58.060 of that

01:35:58.400 in some sense

01:35:59.140 as a truism

01:36:00.020 but it's not

01:36:01.400 because

01:36:01.880 life is so

01:36:04.380 difficult

01:36:05.440 and so cruel

01:36:06.680 and so

01:36:09.060 and so dark

01:36:11.940 so often

01:36:13.560 that it's

01:36:15.260 very difficult

01:36:16.140 to wish it

01:36:16.980 well

01:36:17.380 and it's

01:36:19.060 very easy

01:36:19.700 to adopt

01:36:20.880 a resentful

01:36:22.380 and cruel 0.72

01:36:24.360 and

01:36:24.840 vengeance

01:36:25.840 seeking

01:36:27.540 stance

01:36:28.380 towards yourself

01:36:30.100 and towards

01:36:30.740 other people

01:36:31.340 but

01:36:31.600 on a more

01:36:32.800 fundamental level

01:36:33.720 towards

01:36:34.220 existence

01:36:35.360 itself

01:36:36.040 towards the

01:36:36.720 fact that

01:36:37.380 there's being

01:36:38.240 itself.

01:36:40.780 Goethe

01:36:41.100 who wrote

01:36:41.740 Faust

01:36:42.920 has a character

01:36:45.440 in his great

01:36:46.440 play

01:36:46.920 Mephistopheles

01:36:48.120 who's

01:36:48.640 a variant

01:36:49.580 of Satan

01:36:50.240 and Mephistopheles

01:36:51.700 has a credo

01:36:52.780 which he repeats

01:36:54.040 twice

01:36:54.600 in the play

01:36:55.560 in the first

01:36:56.160 part

01:36:57.440 and the second

01:36:58.060 part

01:36:58.340 written many

01:36:58.880 years later

01:36:59.840 and his

01:37:01.000 credo

01:37:02.120 is

01:37:02.580 things are

01:37:06.260 so compromised

01:37:07.060 by their

01:37:07.760 limitations

01:37:08.400 and the

01:37:09.420 suffering

01:37:09.820 that that

01:37:10.340 produces

01:37:10.800 that it

01:37:11.260 would be

01:37:11.540 better

01:37:11.820 if nothing

01:37:12.380 existed

01:37:12.900 at all

01:37:13.460 and I

01:37:15.960 would say

01:37:16.400 that that's

01:37:16.900 the opposite

01:37:17.580 of love

01:37:18.360 that doesn't

01:37:21.980 make love

01:37:22.380 a trivial

01:37:22.780 thing

01:37:23.180 because it

01:37:24.080 means that

01:37:24.520 you have

01:37:24.820 to embrace

01:37:25.560 the catastrophe

01:37:27.260 but I

01:37:30.960 think that

01:37:31.360 is what

01:37:31.740 you do

01:37:32.080 when you

01:37:32.420 love

01:37:32.720 someone

01:37:33.280 deeply

01:37:34.880 you

01:37:35.560 you decide

01:37:37.700 at the deepest

01:37:38.440 level of

01:37:38.980 your being

01:37:39.600 that for

01:37:41.060 all the

01:37:41.900 fragility

01:37:43.060 inadequacy

01:37:44.740 and error

01:37:46.240 of that

01:37:47.140 particular

01:37:47.700 person

01:37:48.300 it's

01:37:49.920 spectacularly

01:37:51.600 wonderful

01:37:52.760 that they

01:37:53.500 existed

01:37:54.160 that's

01:37:54.980 certainly

01:37:55.340 what you

01:37:55.940 decide

01:37:56.860 I think

01:37:57.480 when you

01:37:57.860 grieve

01:37:58.520 you know

01:37:59.220 because you

01:37:59.700 could imagine

01:38:00.360 that when

01:38:01.760 someone dies

01:38:02.620 that that

01:38:03.100 was a

01:38:03.460 celebration

01:38:04.080 that they

01:38:04.640 were released

01:38:05.360 from the

01:38:06.540 catastrophe

01:38:07.060 of their

01:38:07.640 existence

01:38:08.080 and from

01:38:08.580 the darkness

01:38:09.200 of the

01:38:10.580 world

01:38:11.000 and I

01:38:12.540 know there

01:38:12.880 is an

01:38:13.180 element

01:38:13.460 sometimes

01:38:14.060 like that

01:38:14.620 when someone

01:38:15.140 dies

01:38:15.500 if they've

01:38:15.980 been suffering

01:38:16.500 for a long

01:38:17.080 time

01:38:17.440 but that

01:38:18.480 isn't really

01:38:18.900 what I

01:38:19.220 mean

01:38:19.540 when someone

01:38:21.000 dies

01:38:21.360 even

01:38:21.680 someone

01:38:22.380 close to

01:38:22.900 you

01:38:22.980 even if

01:38:23.340 it's

01:38:23.540 someone

01:38:23.860 with whom

01:38:24.740 you've

01:38:24.980 had a

01:38:25.300 somewhat

01:38:25.600 fractious

01:38:26.260 relationship

01:38:26.960 which is

01:38:27.500 of course

01:38:27.920 typical

01:38:28.520 of the

01:38:29.460 relationships

01:38:29.940 that you

01:38:30.380 have with

01:38:30.820 people

01:38:31.120 that are

01:38:31.420 close to

01:38:31.860 you

01:38:32.080 and you

01:38:33.060 grieve

01:38:33.620 you still

01:38:34.880 seem to

01:38:35.500 be acting

01:38:36.280 out the

01:38:36.980 proposition

01:38:37.620 that it

01:38:39.680 was a good

01:38:40.200 thing that

01:38:40.820 they were

01:38:41.540 and that

01:38:43.780 is love

01:38:44.780 I would

01:38:47.640 say that

01:38:48.180 truth is

01:38:49.000 nested

01:38:49.740 inside

01:38:50.160 love

01:38:50.560 or they

01:38:51.080 have a

01:38:51.400 reciprocal

01:38:51.840 relationship

01:38:52.520 it's been

01:38:53.140 very difficult

01:38:53.680 for me

01:38:54.160 to determine

01:38:55.080 which is

01:38:55.920 the higher

01:38:56.480 order

01:38:57.340 virtue

01:38:57.860 I think

01:38:58.780 that they

01:38:59.400 have to

01:38:59.880 act in

01:39:00.600 a dynamic

01:39:01.220 way

01:39:01.800 that to

01:39:03.640 orient

01:39:05.440 your truth

01:39:06.260 properly

01:39:06.780 you have

01:39:07.300 to decide

01:39:08.080 that

01:39:08.560 being

01:39:10.060 for all

01:39:10.980 its

01:39:11.320 limitations

01:39:14.260 perhaps

01:39:15.560 necessary

01:39:16.220 limitations

01:39:16.840 is

01:39:18.440 something

01:39:18.800 that

01:39:19.100 most

01:39:19.440 certainly

01:39:20.100 should

01:39:20.620 be

01:39:21.180 and I

01:39:22.860 think

01:39:23.060 that

01:39:23.300 might

01:39:23.620 be

01:39:23.820 the

01:39:24.040 primary

01:39:24.580 commitment

01:39:25.740 of

01:39:26.080 faith

01:39:26.620 that

01:39:27.520 in

01:39:28.300 spite

01:39:28.660 of

01:39:28.920 the

01:39:29.120 evidence

01:39:29.660 of

01:39:29.920 the

01:39:30.100 world's

01:39:30.540 inadequacies

01:39:31.480 existence

01:39:33.780 is

01:39:35.080 good

01:39:35.480 I

01:39:37.540 think

01:39:37.780 that

01:39:38.020 this

01:39:38.280 is

01:39:38.400 what

01:39:38.580 you

01:39:38.740 decide

01:39:39.160 if

01:39:39.360 you're

01:39:39.520 a

01:39:39.660 woman 0.99

01:39:39.860 when

01:39:40.100 you

01:39:40.240 decide

01:39:40.560 to

01:39:40.700 have

01:39:40.860 a

01:39:41.000 child

01:39:41.380 you

01:39:41.920 know

01:39:42.020 because

01:39:42.340 women 1.00

01:39:42.640 are

01:39:42.840 often

01:39:43.140 tormented

01:39:43.620 by

01:39:43.940 the

01:39:44.220 notion

01:39:45.240 that

01:39:45.640 it's

01:39:46.360 perhaps

01:39:46.740 immoral

01:39:47.240 to

01:39:47.480 bring

01:39:47.700 a

01:39:47.860 child

01:39:48.140 into

01:39:48.440 a

01:39:49.340 world

01:39:49.600 such

01:39:49.940 as

01:39:50.140 this

01:39:50.400 you

01:39:50.900 see

01:39:51.120 that

01:39:51.400 in

01:39:51.600 the

01:39:52.240 great

01:39:52.480 statue

01:39:52.980 of

01:39:53.240 the

01:39:53.440 Pieta

01:39:54.020 the

01:39:54.440 Pieta

01:39:54.880 the

01:39:55.100 Michelangelo

01:39:55.900 statue

01:39:56.400 where

01:39:57.440 you

01:39:57.620 see

01:39:57.860 Mary

01:39:58.260 holding

01:39:58.940 Christ

01:40:00.000 as

01:40:00.280 an

01:40:00.420 adult

01:40:00.760 her

01:40:01.280 son

01:40:01.720 who's

01:40:02.520 been

01:40:02.900 broken

01:40:03.280 and

01:40:03.560 destroyed

01:40:04.020 by

01:40:04.480 malevolence

01:40:05.780 and

01:40:06.000 betrayal

01:40:06.460 and

01:40:06.880 catastrophe

01:40:07.720 and

01:40:08.180 I

01:40:08.780 always

01:40:09.020 think

01:40:09.260 of that

01:40:09.560 as the

01:40:09.880 female 0.86

01:40:10.860 of the

01:40:11.140 crucifixion

01:40:11.860 or

01:40:12.200 a

01:40:12.620 female 0.86

01:40:13.000 equivalent

01:40:13.560 of the

01:40:13.880 crucifixion

01:40:14.500 because

01:40:14.820 if you're

01:40:15.640 a mother

01:40:16.060 you have

01:40:17.500 to offer

01:40:17.960 up your

01:40:18.440 children

01:40:18.820 to be

01:40:19.240 broken

01:40:19.560 by the

01:40:20.020 world

01:40:20.360 and

01:40:20.680 that's

01:40:21.060 a

01:40:21.240 price

01:40:21.560 you pay

01:40:21.940 for

01:40:22.160 bringing

01:40:22.440 them

01:40:22.680 into

01:40:22.940 existence

01:40:23.660 but

01:40:25.160 it

01:40:26.080 still

01:40:26.400 seems

01:40:26.860 the

01:40:27.120 proper

01:40:27.440 thing

01:40:27.740 to

01:40:27.900 do

01:40:28.180 and

01:40:29.420 I

01:40:29.580 suppose

01:40:29.880 you

01:40:30.100 counterbalance

01:40:30.940 that

01:40:31.260 catastrophe

01:40:31.980 of their

01:40:32.620 life

01:40:32.960 with

01:40:33.280 hopefully

01:40:34.620 with

01:40:34.940 love

01:40:35.260 and

01:40:35.480 truth

01:40:35.800 and

01:40:36.040 courage

01:40:36.480 and

01:40:36.880 we

01:40:37.140 all

01:40:37.380 hope

01:40:37.660 that

01:40:37.920 those

01:40:38.400 are

01:40:39.100 enough

01:40:39.700 to

01:40:40.480 balance

01:40:41.620 the

01:40:41.880 scales

01:40:42.280 and

01:40:42.540 I

01:40:43.060 think

01:40:43.280 they

01:40:43.460 are

01:40:43.720 in

01:40:43.940 fact

01:40:44.180 enough

01:40:46.360 I mean

01:40:47.600 I think

01:40:48.580 in many

01:40:49.040 ways

01:40:49.320 I'm a

01:40:49.680 deeply

01:40:49.940 pessimistic

01:40:50.740 person

01:40:51.240 and the

01:40:52.640 reason for

01:40:53.100 that

01:40:53.400 is because

01:40:53.940 I've

01:40:54.260 looked

01:40:54.520 into

01:40:55.000 very dark

01:40:56.760 places

01:40:57.280 I've been

01:40:57.880 in very dark

01:40:58.540 places

01:40:58.900 in my life

01:40:59.500 from time

01:40:59.940 to time

01:41:00.420 myself

01:41:01.320 with my

01:41:02.220 family members

01:41:02.900 and with

01:41:03.240 my clients

01:41:03.880 and I've

01:41:05.180 investigated

01:41:05.840 dark

01:41:06.220 places

01:41:06.600 in my

01:41:07.420 intellectual

01:41:08.000 adventure

01:41:08.540 because I

01:41:09.060 studied

01:41:09.540 totalitarianism

01:41:11.540 for years

01:41:12.960 somewhat

01:41:13.940 obsessively

01:41:14.860 and most

01:41:16.420 particularly

01:41:16.920 the atrocities

01:41:18.080 that were

01:41:18.660 associated

01:41:19.360 with the

01:41:20.300 totalitarian

01:41:20.920 states

01:41:21.420 and most

01:41:21.960 particularly

01:41:22.520 the manner

01:41:23.860 in which

01:41:24.320 those atrocities

01:41:25.200 were conducted

01:41:25.880 by identifiable

01:41:27.340 individuals

01:41:28.040 and that

01:41:28.580 makes that

01:41:29.740 part of

01:41:30.540 the reality

01:41:31.580 of your

01:41:31.940 own

01:41:32.140 life

01:41:32.500 because

01:41:32.820 you

01:41:33.020 understand

01:41:33.560 that the

01:41:33.920 people

01:41:34.140 who did

01:41:34.580 those sorts

01:41:35.100 of things

01:41:35.540 were people

01:41:36.380 and you're

01:41:38.180 one of them

01:41:39.180 and that's

01:41:40.300 very dark

01:41:41.400 very dark

01:41:43.420 but

01:41:44.660 nonetheless

01:41:46.620 what has

01:41:47.640 emerged for me

01:41:48.580 as a consequence

01:41:49.380 of that study

01:41:50.320 is two things

01:41:51.340 one is

01:41:51.980 that

01:41:53.340 the darkness

01:41:54.860 does not

01:41:55.480 overcome the light

01:41:56.580 despite

01:41:57.320 how much

01:41:58.520 darkness

01:41:58.920 there is

01:41:59.580 and that

01:42:00.960 what we

01:42:05.020 are as

01:42:06.040 potential

01:42:06.760 can transcend

01:42:08.720 even the

01:42:10.260 darkest

01:42:11.080 spirit

01:42:11.760 of malevolence

01:42:12.700 that what

01:42:13.620 you discover

01:42:14.320 in the darkest

01:42:15.000 places

01:42:15.480 is your

01:42:16.620 greatest

01:42:17.160 possibility

01:42:17.980 and I think

01:42:19.500 that

01:42:19.820 love

01:42:21.180 which is

01:42:22.380 the desire

01:42:23.100 that things

01:42:24.960 work out

01:42:26.120 for the best

01:42:26.780 is a

01:42:27.280 precondition

01:42:28.060 for that

01:42:28.700 investigation

01:42:30.420 and

01:42:31.060 discovery

01:42:32.440 and then

01:42:34.780 what constitutes

01:42:35.600 responsibility

01:42:36.440 is your

01:42:37.120 decision to

01:42:37.860 take on

01:42:38.920 the burden

01:42:39.420 of working

01:42:40.220 for that

01:42:41.320 best

01:42:41.900 in whatever

01:42:43.060 manner

01:42:43.520 you can

01:42:44.120 conceptualize

01:42:44.900 it

01:42:45.020 to work

01:42:46.000 for it

01:42:46.380 and to

01:42:46.700 update

01:42:47.220 your

01:42:47.520 conceptualization

01:42:48.460 of the best

01:42:49.140 so that

01:42:49.580 it becomes

01:42:50.280 a better

01:42:51.500 and better

01:42:52.120 conceptualization

01:42:53.300 of the best

01:42:53.960 as you

01:42:54.360 become

01:42:54.720 wiser

01:42:55.320 and wiser

01:42:56.140 in your

01:42:57.060 truth

01:42:57.640 and your

01:42:58.680 responsibility

01:42:59.960 and so

01:43:02.040 that's

01:43:03.620 what I think

01:43:07.000 about that

01:43:07.720 question

01:43:09.620 going online

01:43:20.860 without express

01:43:21.600 VPN is like

01:43:22.440 not paying

01:43:22.960 attention to

01:43:23.460 the safety

01:43:23.820 demonstration

01:43:24.320 on a

01:43:24.720 flight

01:43:24.980 most of

01:43:25.860 the time

01:43:26.140 you'll

01:43:26.360 probably

01:43:26.720 be fine

01:43:27.320 but what

01:43:28.120 if one

01:43:28.500 day that

01:43:28.940 weird

01:43:29.300 yellow

01:43:29.580 mask

01:43:29.900 drops down

01:43:30.440 from overhead

01:43:30.920 and you

01:43:31.620 have no

01:43:32.100 idea what

01:43:32.620 to do

01:43:32.940 in our

01:43:33.500 hyper

01:43:33.780 connected

01:43:34.140 world

01:43:34.520 your

01:43:34.820 digital

01:43:35.220 privacy

01:43:35.640 isn't

01:43:36.000 just a

01:43:36.340 luxury

01:43:36.620 it's a

01:43:37.380 fundamental

01:43:37.840 right

01:43:38.180 every time

01:43:38.740 you connect

01:43:39.120 to an

01:43:39.400 unsecured

01:43:39.900 network

01:43:40.300 in a

01:43:40.620 cafe

01:43:40.960 hotel

01:43:41.640 or airport

01:43:42.360 you're

01:43:42.800 essentially

01:43:43.140 broadcasting

01:43:43.780 your

01:43:44.040 personal

01:43:44.340 information

01:43:44.860 to anyone

01:43:45.580 with a

01:43:45.960 technical

01:43:46.300 know-how

01:43:46.740 to intercept

01:43:47.340 it

01:43:47.560 and let's

01:43:47.980 be clear

01:43:48.380 it doesn't

01:43:49.080 take a

01:43:49.380 genius

01:43:49.620 hacker

01:43:49.920 to do

01:43:50.240 this

01:43:50.540 with some

01:43:51.240 off-the-shelf

01:43:51.840 hardware

01:43:52.240 even a

01:43:52.800 tech-savvy

01:43:53.340 teenager

01:43:53.840 could potentially

01:43:54.560 access your

01:43:55.200 passwords

01:43:55.740 bank logins

01:43:56.680 and credit

01:43:57.280 card details

01:43:57.960 now you might

01:43:59.020 think what's

01:43:59.760 the big deal

01:44:00.280 who'd want

01:44:00.740 my data

01:44:01.280 anyway

01:44:01.640 well on

01:44:02.420 the dark

01:44:02.720 web your

01:44:03.260 personal

01:44:03.660 information

01:44:04.200 could fetch

01:44:04.680 up to

01:44:05.000 $1,000

01:44:05.780 that's right

01:44:07.000 there's a

01:44:07.380 whole underground

01:44:08.120 economy built

01:44:08.960 on stolen

01:44:09.580 identities

01:44:10.200 enter

01:44:10.860 expressvpn

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01:44:13.500 creating an

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01:44:16.340 internet

01:44:16.620 their encryption

01:44:17.500 is so robust

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01:44:19.640 with a

01:44:19.980 supercomputer

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01:44:21.240 billion years

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01:46:04.400 Franz Kafka said the

01:46:10.660 meaning of life is

01:46:11.880 that it stops what are

01:46:15.200 your thoughts on this

01:46:16.380 well I think that the

01:46:20.700 meaning of life is that

01:46:22.460 it stops might be an

01:46:25.180 overstatement but there's

01:46:28.960 something to that I

01:46:30.780 mean the meaning of a

01:46:32.200 symphony is not that it

01:46:33.460 stops it does stop and

01:46:37.420 the fact that it's a

01:46:39.260 bounded performance let's

01:46:41.700 say is integral to its

01:46:44.240 existence but that

01:46:47.200 doesn't provide it with

01:46:49.280 its meaning I think what

01:46:51.840 Kafka meant was that

01:46:53.860 there's some necessary

01:46:58.040 relationship between

01:47:00.140 finitude and existence

01:47:02.620 and I'll tell you a

01:47:06.580 story it's it's a it's a

01:47:11.400 it's a series of thoughts

01:47:12.960 that I encountered while

01:47:15.100 reading Jung it's old

01:47:17.940 Jew old commentary 0.69

01:47:20.240 Jewish commentary on on

01:47:23.360 the nature of God and

01:47:24.800 it's like a Zen

01:47:25.580 Cohen except it's the

01:47:27.620 Hebrew equivalent of a 1.00

01:47:28.900 Zen Cohen I suppose you

01:47:32.200 take the being take a

01:47:34.480 being with the classical

01:47:35.460 attributes of God

01:47:36.740 omniscience omnipotence and

01:47:41.040 omnipresence be anything do

01:47:45.300 anything be everywhere

01:47:47.240 unlimited in every way

01:47:50.000 what does it lack and the

01:47:54.240 obvious answer is well

01:47:55.360 nothing by definition it

01:47:57.440 lacks nothing but lacking

01:48:00.180 nothing is a form of lack

01:48:01.920 and so the answer to the

01:48:03.760 question is well it lacks

01:48:05.960 limitation and then the

01:48:09.460 question is well are there

01:48:10.820 advantages to limitation that

01:48:12.880 limitlessness does not

01:48:14.980 possess and it seems to me

01:48:18.100 that the answer to that is

01:48:19.740 clearly yes there's nothing to

01:48:23.860 strive for if you're unlimited

01:48:27.120 there's no adventure if you're

01:48:29.900 unlimited there's nothing new to

01:48:32.180 build if you're unlimited there's

01:48:34.340 nothing new to do there's no

01:48:35.640 frontiers to discover maybe

01:48:38.260 there's no being if you're

01:48:41.220 unlimited and so maybe and the

01:48:46.840 conclusion that was drawn by

01:48:48.540 these wise men who formulated this

01:48:51.460 paradox was that man was created

01:48:55.880 by God because limitation had

01:48:57.680 advantages that limitlessness did

01:48:59.660 not and that seems to be tied into

01:49:03.400 the idea of the great adventure of

01:49:05.260 life then the question becomes well

01:49:10.040 if being an adventurous being

01:49:14.720 requires limitation but limitation

01:49:17.900 produces suffering which it

01:49:21.060 certainly does then how is it that

01:49:24.360 you can have your adventurous being

01:49:27.020 without following falling unbearably

01:49:30.880 prey to the suffering and the answer

01:49:34.320 that seems to be what depends on how

01:49:37.660 you live and we address that already

01:49:40.600 with the first answer if you live

01:49:44.500 guided by love courageously and

01:49:48.760 truthfully then you can have the

01:49:51.860 adventure that justifies the suffering

01:49:54.340 of your being and I think that's true

01:49:58.760 I think that's what makes me not

01:50:02.940 pessimistic at all in the final

01:50:05.420 analysis but overwhelmingly optimistic

01:50:08.760 because I do believe that the potential

01:50:12.920 strength of people and the strength

01:50:15.660 that's often manifested is more is a more

01:50:20.040 potent force than the catastrophic

01:50:22.320 limitations of existence and I think

01:50:26.720 that that discovery is in some sense

01:50:30.480 waiting there for each of us to discover

01:50:33.400 if we will it and that discovery is made

01:50:37.120 by the faith it's made possible by the

01:50:42.400 faith that allows for the courageous and

01:50:45.840 truthful confrontation with the terror and

01:50:50.540 catastrophe and malevolence of limitation

01:50:53.720 that confrontation transcends it both

01:51:00.160 psychologically by providing you with a

01:51:03.120 purpose for your life that you might

01:51:06.340 regard as worth the trouble but also

01:51:10.320 solving the trouble itself because not

01:51:15.540 only is it worthwhile to have a purpose

01:51:17.440 for your life but if the purpose for your

01:51:21.720 life is of sufficient quality then not only

01:51:27.520 does that elevate you psychologically and

01:51:31.600 fortify you in your movement forward but

01:51:35.040 it actually directly addresses the problem of

01:51:37.680 suffering and malevolence and so it's

01:51:40.160 possible that the world is constituted so

01:51:42.520 that we can have the advantages of limited

01:51:45.280 being and simultaneously overcome and transcend

01:51:51.160 many of the disadvantages that can make it

01:51:54.960 unbearable and I think that that's a very

01:51:57.720 good goal and one that I do believe that we

01:52:02.300 implicitly desire and share and that we could

01:52:05.660 formulate explicitly and work diligently towards

01:52:09.460 I'm a male engineering student

01:52:35.060 class is 85% men and girls have female scholarships and

01:52:41.440 opportunities grad recruitment is 50-50 is that

01:52:45.440 really true is is grad recruitment designed to

01:52:48.620 produce a 50-50 gender balance in in your

01:52:51.080 engineering program

01:52:51.940 okay so people think no

01:52:57.060 well then I would have to say that the

01:53:01.280 question is how can I stand a chance and I

01:53:03.720 would have to say I'm afraid I don't know

01:53:05.620 enough about the specifics of that situation

01:53:08.140 to offer an intelligent commentary so I

01:53:11.120 won't so

01:53:13.000 at 25 how do I find a balance between trying to

01:53:23.460 take on maximum responsibility pushing

01:53:26.000 productivity and enjoying my youth and not

01:53:29.000 taking myself too seriously that's a good

01:53:31.900 question well I think that's not a question

01:53:33.860 just for a 25 year old

01:53:35.420 so so let me tell you a story I think one of

01:53:40.460 the things that you need to do when you're

01:53:42.120 young 1.00

01:53:42.420 is well you have to do enough stupid things so 1.00

01:53:47.340 that you can figure out that doing too many 1.00

01:53:49.760 stupid things is stupid 1.00

01:53:51.360 that's necessary you have to learn a certain 1.00

01:53:55.080 amount of that through painful experience

01:53:57.000 there's an old doctrine that you cannot be

01:54:00.260 redeemed from any sin you didn't commit

01:54:02.520 which is part and parcel of a relatively

01:54:06.140 profound line of Christian thinking

01:54:08.080 but one of the things you really want to do

01:54:12.180 when you're young is you want to find out

01:54:13.800 what you can do

01:54:15.140 like I think it's necessary to push yourself

01:54:19.660 in at least one direction past your limits of

01:54:23.560 tolerance so that you can find out what

01:54:26.460 those limits are once you do that you have to

01:54:28.620 pull back and you have to do it carefully

01:54:30.240 obviously because you don't want to exhaust

01:54:32.020 yourself but one of the one of the

01:54:36.100 adventures of being youthful is to find out

01:54:39.500 okay well what am I made of what what can I

01:54:41.840 do and the only way you can find that out

01:54:43.800 is to take on a challenge and that's not

01:54:49.500 much different than taking on a

01:54:50.700 responsibility and so there's a great

01:54:52.400 adventure in that I mean you want to have

01:54:54.680 an adventure when you're young that's a very

01:54:57.320 good adventure to find out who you are

01:54:59.060 when I was a graduate student you know I

01:55:02.060 which and I think that was probably perhaps

01:55:07.500 the best part of my youth I was about 25

01:55:10.580 about the age of the questioner and

01:55:12.400 I was taking my clinical PhD program and I was

01:55:18.380 reading a tremendous amount scientific papers

01:55:21.240 educating myself in the fields of

01:55:24.780 neuropsychology and psychopharmacology and

01:55:28.260 animal behaviorism and child development and

01:55:31.760 drug and alcohol motivation and Jungian

01:55:37.160 psychology and Freudian psychoanalysis and

01:55:40.360 Nietzschean philosophy and Rogerian psychotherapy

01:55:45.360 and a very large number a very large number of

01:55:48.540 fields simultaneously reading as much as I

01:55:51.260 could get my hands on writing a lot I

01:55:55.180 started to write a book at that point which

01:55:56.960 turned into maps of meaning so I was writing

01:55:58.680 about three hours a day I was also doing my

01:56:03.520 scientific research I published about 15

01:56:05.740 papers in the five or six years I was at

01:56:08.020 McGill which was which was a lot of papers and

01:56:11.700 at the same time I had a very active social

01:56:16.000 life I was out at least three or four times

01:56:18.780 a week and the clinical psychology students

01:56:25.080 who were my peers were a very social group

01:56:27.200 of people and they really liked to they were

01:56:29.940 very extroverted and they really liked to

01:56:31.880 have a party and have a good time and so

01:56:34.980 there was a tremendous amount of that and

01:56:38.720 it was it was ridiculously entertaining and

01:56:43.160 fun and I was also going to the gym because I

01:56:48.380 decided I was going to try to put myself in

01:56:50.320 something approximating some reasonable

01:56:52.000 physical shape and so that was a that was a lot

01:56:57.320 and it was very useful to try to do all those

01:57:03.140 things at the same time partly to find out how

01:57:06.800 much I could do and one of the things I learned

01:57:09.640 was that you can get very efficient if you push

01:57:12.160 yourself beyond your apparent limits you learn

01:57:17.260 ways of doing the same with less you can get

01:57:21.760 crazily crazily efficient and you can learn how

01:57:25.360 to make five minute sections of your life

01:57:27.740 productive and that's a way of stealing more

01:57:31.420 time in some sense but I also learned what I

01:57:34.320 could and couldn't do so for example when I was

01:57:38.020 writing maps of meaning which pretty much laid the

01:57:41.740 foundation let's say for everything I've done

01:57:43.900 since all my youtube lectures and my university

01:57:46.320 lectures and 12 rules for life and all of these

01:57:48.500 lectures all really stem in large part from the

01:57:51.720 writing I did on maps of meaning because I wrote for three

01:57:55.340 hours a day for 15 years that's a lot of writing and I

01:57:59.020 decided I was going to make that sacrosanct that I was

01:58:03.500 going to put that time away and nothing was going to stop me

01:58:06.940 from using that time not love not money nothing and and so I

01:58:13.660 was trying to do all those things and I had to give some of

01:58:16.540 them up because they started to interfere with one another so for

01:58:21.020 example I found that I had a pretty capacious capacity for for alcohol

01:58:26.700 coming from northern Alberta where drinking was essentially the

01:58:31.020 national sport and I really enjoyed it a lot it was a very good drug for me

01:58:37.580 not necessarily because of what it enticed me to do because I did learn that

01:58:47.580 almost all the times that I acted in a manner that I regretted it was under the

01:58:52.940 influence of alcohol and so I had to come to terms with that and I also had to

01:58:57.420 come to terms with the fact that the topics that I was dealing with while I

01:59:02.460 was writing were so deep that I couldn't handle them if I wasn't in

01:59:09.260 pristine mental condition they were too daunting mentally emotionally

01:59:17.500 especially when I was studying totalitarian atrocity it was just too much

01:59:21.820 hungover that was just too much and also if I was writing and trying to

01:59:28.060 formulate my thoughts clearly then especially if I was editing and had

01:59:34.300 edited a lot if I wasn't in pristine intellectual condition

01:59:39.820 then when I edited what I was writing I would make it worse

01:59:43.500 which seemed counterproductive and so I realized when I was about 27

01:59:48.620 or so that if I was going to continue to pursue

01:59:53.020 what I felt to be most important and I had sort of figured that out by pushing

01:59:57.420 myself in various directions simultaneously and

02:00:00.620 looking at the consequences that I was going to have to radically

02:00:04.060 regulate my social behavior and so I think when I was 27 I

02:00:09.340 stopped drinking completely I stopped smoking

02:00:12.460 I also smoked cigarettes and I quit that as well

02:00:16.620 and I didn't drink anything for 25 years

02:00:20.140 and that was necessary because there's no way I could have done the other things

02:00:24.940 that I did had I not made that sacrifice

02:00:28.140 and it was a sacrifice you know I mean I loved my social life

02:00:31.580 I still

02:00:35.980 I still I still miss it to to a large degree although I've replaced it with

02:00:41.020 many other things but but it was worth it

02:00:44.620 and so I would say but incomparably worth it

02:00:48.380 um so and you know you have to make sacrifices in your life

02:00:53.100 and that's fine and and because you have to prioritize and that means that you have

02:00:59.100 to make sacrifices and I decided that I wanted to see what I was capable of doing

02:01:05.740 and that meant that I had to eradicate everything

02:01:09.020 that was in the way that was interfering with me

02:01:12.380 discovering that so I would say if you're young

02:01:16.140 you should try five or six things that are way outside your domain of

02:01:21.660 competence and and you should try to hit at least one of

02:01:25.900 those as hard as you've ever hit anything with as much dedication as you

02:01:29.980 could possibly muster and push yourself beyond

02:01:33.660 the limits of your capability so that you can find out what those limits are

02:01:38.940 and then pull back enough so that you can sustain

02:01:42.860 that level of intensity across a very long period of time

02:01:46.540 and then you have a a life that you might regard as

02:01:50.140 worth having and and there's and you have to

02:01:53.900 make mistakes while you do that because in order to push yourself

02:01:58.060 beyond your capacity you have to push yourself too far

02:02:01.900 and so then you have to find out what too far is and there's error in that but

02:02:06.540 that's there's always error you know

02:02:09.820 one of the things that's really useful to know I always told my my clients this

02:02:13.900 very often they were in a tough position I said oh I see what what your situation is

02:02:18.780 you're screwed no matter what you do and it's so useful to know that at some times in your life

02:02:24.860 which is that you don't like there's no good option here you can have this option and it's

02:02:29.820 not hard and and difficult or you can have this option and it's also hard and difficult and that's all you've got

02:02:37.980 and that's really useful to know sometimes because otherwise you torture yourself about the fact that you can't see your way clear

02:02:44.220 sometimes you don't have that luxury at least then you get to pick your poison

02:02:49.740 and I think a large part of having a successful life is exactly that it's like

02:02:54.060 pick your pathway to doom

02:02:56.220 you know

02:02:57.020 well it's you're headed that way anyways and so you might as well pick one that's worth having

02:03:01.980 and and and and that's back to kafka's point as well it's like

02:03:05.980 look you're all in in life

02:03:07.660 so you might as well do something

02:03:11.740 you might as well do something that's as spectacular as you can manage because

02:03:20.060 what are you going to do increase your risk

02:03:22.860 you've already got the full risk the full risk is there

02:03:27.020 you it's already upon you the full risk

02:03:29.820 risk so push yourself discipline yourself take your adventures pull back enough so that you

02:03:38.780 can have a life that you can maintain and then see what the hell you can manage

02:03:43.260 and that's that's a very entertaining way to progress through the tragedy of your existence

02:03:49.340 one more how does one become more disagreeable

02:04:07.420 and less neurotic well that's a good question and it is a good one to to end with

02:04:13.340 um well the best way to become more disagreeable and this is part of the integration of your shadow

02:04:21.980 let's say you're an agreeable person which means you're quite suited for taking care of it of

02:04:27.100 dependent creatures um because agreeableness suits you for that and it's a necessary ability

02:04:34.460 although it's not so useful when you're not taking care of dependent creatures

02:04:38.380 um if you're too agreeable then you find it very difficult to negotiate on your own behalf

02:04:45.100 because you tend to self-sacrifice yourself for the perceived benefit of others

02:04:51.980 um you err too much on the side of cooperation let's say and not enough on the side of competition

02:04:58.860 so you don't give yourself a fair shake well how can you figure that out well the best way to

02:05:03.740 figure that out i think is to notice your resentment and i've i often counsel my clinical

02:05:09.820 clients to notice their resentment i talk about this a little bit in 12 rules if you're resentful 0.97

02:05:16.300 there's basically two reasons one is you're whiny and immature and you should just grow the hell up 0.79

02:05:24.780 and the other is is that you're being taken advantage of or you're allowing yourself to be

02:05:30.220 taken advantage of and those two things functionally aren't different and so you want to sort the

02:05:36.620 first one out maybe by talking to someone that you care about you say well i've got this problem

02:05:40.700 i'm kind of resentful here's the problem this is what's driving my resentment do you think i'm just

02:05:46.300 whiny and immature and should get on with it and you know it's got to be a bit more sophisticated than

02:05:51.820 that but and and all of us are less mature than we could be so you want to get the parts of yourself

02:05:58.940 that are still that have retained that childhood immaturity without any of the childhood charm you

02:06:06.780 want to get that under control and then if you find out that it's not immaturity but you are in fact

02:06:14.380 either being taken advantage of or allowing yourself to allowing yourself to be taken advantage of then

02:06:21.180 it's useful to understand that you have a moral obligation to put that to a halt

02:06:25.820 and so then what you need to do is figure out okay well why am i resentful what's the problem

02:06:33.660 that's that's complicated you have to think it through then you have to think well what would a

02:06:38.140 possible solution look like or an array of solutions maybe you're being exploited by your boss

02:06:43.740 maybe you need a new job maybe you have to retype your resume maybe you have to overcome your fear of

02:06:48.620 interviews you know who knows what it is but you have to come up with a potential solution

02:06:54.860 and then you have to develop a strategy and that strategy might mean well first of all at least

02:07:00.780 admitting to the fact that you're not negotiating on your own behalf courageously and truthfully

02:07:08.780 and then setting yourself up piece by piece so that you can do that so for example if you feel that

02:07:16.860 you're being underpaid at work um well the first thing you might want to do is investigate whether

02:07:23.100 or not you actually are you know and and that might take a month or two of concerted digging and thinking

02:07:29.420 but then it may turn out that you are then you have to ask yourself well have you actually asked for a

02:07:36.220 raise because it's very frequently the case that people don't and if they're agreeable they think well i'm

02:07:42.460 working really hard and like a nice person would notice all the good things i'm doing and they

02:07:46.940 would just give me a raise it's like good luck with that theory you know first of all if you're

02:07:53.420 doing your job and you're easy to get along with no one even notices you you know you know what i mean

02:07:59.580 it's like you don't notice things that are going well you notice things that aren't going well

02:08:05.100 managers spend almost all their time with the tiny fraction of people who torture them to death

02:08:11.260 they spend almost none of the time with the people who are doing a decent job and

02:08:15.660 far less time than they should with the people that are doing a stellar job if you're a manager

02:08:21.100 you should ignore the people who are torturing you to death completely because there's no fixing them

02:08:27.420 and you should spend all your time with your excellent people and no one does that so so don't be

02:08:34.140 thinking that you're going to get noticed necessarily if you do a good job you have to call

02:08:39.580 the attention of your superior to your stellar performance and say look you know

02:08:46.460 here's what i'm doing because they might not even know i'm doing this in a really good way i'm

02:08:52.140 doing this in a really good way i'm doing this in a really good way and this and this and this

02:08:55.260 and this and i've done it for a long time and here's the benefit it's bringing to you and i'm

02:09:01.020 finding that the fact that i haven't been recognized for this is starting to interfere

02:09:06.700 with my motivation in a serious way it's making it harder for me to come to work it's making me more

02:09:12.940 likely to drag my heels and less likely to put a hundred percent in and i've been thinking about

02:09:18.060 how to rectify that because it seems like a really bad long-term solution for me and for you and i

02:09:23.420 figure well like 25 percent salary increase over the next three years might go a long way to

02:09:29.020 rectifying that and here's why it's a financial benefit to you and here's the whole story that

02:09:35.180 you can take to your boss to justify paying me and you know that might work and it might not maybe you'll

02:09:42.540 get 10 percent or 15 percent or two percent or maybe the person will come back and say well we

02:09:47.580 can't do that but you know thank you for your service and we'll certainly promote you and we

02:09:52.460 can consider doing something financially in the in the in the longer term if you're willing to uh

02:09:58.540 you know to cooperate with us a bit and and then at the same time you should have a backup plan which is

02:10:05.660 another job really it's like you're negotiating it's like i'm not happy here so what what are you

02:10:12.860 going to do about it nothing well then go away i've got more serious problems than that to deal with

02:10:21.100 i'm unhappy here so what what are you going to do about it well you know i prepared my resume and it's

02:10:27.740 really quite uh substantive professionally done i've outlined all the wonderful things i've done at this

02:10:33.980 uh institution for the last 10 years and i've already mailed it to 50 companies three of them

02:10:39.100 have inter i've had an interview scheduled with three of them it's like oh you're on fire

02:10:46.860 right i better put you out you're a real problem i better deal with you and the probability it's very

02:10:52.620 expensive to lose a good employee and hire a new one and so you have to

02:10:57.500 figure out what the problem is what's making you resentful figure out what a solution might be

02:11:06.060 so that you could be thrilled about going to work or at least not dreadfully resentful and miserable

02:11:10.460 but thrilled would be good you might want to come home and have a big party you think jesus

02:11:14.700 i just nailed that man i got a promotion i got a raise things are way better aim for that things are way

02:11:21.740 better that's the right thing to aim for well that'll that'll help you be less agreeable it's

02:11:28.540 like you want to live in resentment and misery while you trudge through your job going downhill

02:11:35.660 with your blood pressure rising and you aging faster than you need to for the next 20 years

02:11:41.180 while you take it out on your family because you don't have enough courage to confront the actual

02:11:45.340 situation is that what you want or do you want to come up with a plan and and get what you need and

02:11:51.100 want which is a high probability i've seen this happen to people over and over i've had lots of

02:11:56.540 clients who tripled their salary in three or four years and i mean they worked at it man it was no joke 0.94

02:12:02.140 they worked they put their damn hours in they put out their hundreds of resumes they filled in the 0.55

02:12:07.580 gaps in their education but like if you make it a priority and you're willing to make the proper 0.97

02:12:14.620 sacrifices then you radically increase the probability that you will succeed and so that's

02:12:21.980 one of the strategies for becoming less disagreeable and then i would say if you're more successful and

02:12:27.500 less resentful you'll automatically be less neurotic and so that'll solve that problem too

02:12:37.180 thank you very much if you found this conversation meaningful you might think about picking up dad's

02:12:41.660 books maps of meaning the architecture of belief or his newer bestseller 12 rules for life an antidote

02:12:46.700 to chaos both of these works delve much deeper into the topics covered in the jordan b peterson podcast

02:12:52.140 see jordanbpeterson.com for audio ebook and text links or pick up the books at your favorite bookseller

02:12:58.060 i hope you enjoyed this podcast as much as i did if you did please leave a rating at apple podcasts a

02:13:03.500 comment to review or share this episode with a friend thanks for tuning in talk to you next week

02:13:08.940 follow me on my youtube channel jordan b peterson on twitter at jordan b peterson on facebook at dr

02:13:16.860 jordan b peterson and at instagram at jordan dot b dot peterson details on this show access to my blog

02:13:25.260 information about my tour dates and other events and my list of recommended books can be found on my

02:13:31.020 website jordanbpeterson.com my online writing programs designed to help people straighten out their

02:13:37.900 pasts understand themselves in the present and develop a sophisticated vision and strategy for

02:13:43.380 the future can be found at self-authoring dot com that's self-authoring dot com from the westwood one

02:13:51.700 podcast network

02:13:53.020 in today's chaotic world many of us are searching for a way to aim higher and find spiritual peace

02:14:05.340 but here's the thing prayer the most common tool we have isn't just about saying whatever comes to

02:14:10.580 mind it's a skill that needs to be developed that's where hallow comes in as the number one prayer and

02:14:16.340 meditation app hallow is launching an exceptional new series called how to pray imagine learning how

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The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - October 27, 2019

The Topic of Truth

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