The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - Why Your Resentment Is a Choice

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00:00:30.000 Hi, everybody. This is the eighth consecutive week of releases from my extensive tour archives.

00:00:38.640 We've been gratified to see that this return to the form that I initially relied on when I started

00:00:45.620 using YouTube is still capable of reaching people. More capable, perhaps, than it was in the beginning.

00:00:52.580 We're attaining combined views and listens across YouTube and the audio channels of about half a

00:00:57.940 million people a week so that's very satisfying and gratifying and thank you to all of you who

00:01:04.500 are listening consistently i also spent a lot of time this week contemplating peterson academy ads

00:01:12.280 we have a wonderful advertising team and have worked on developing cut lines and assessing

00:01:18.480 graphic images and realized this week that we're really reaching millions of people with these

00:01:23.840 advertisements far more in some ways than we reach with the lectures from Peterson Academy.

00:01:29.720 And it's an opportunity for us to send a cultural message in imagistic form to a huge audience of

00:01:37.460 people. And so we've been concentrating on developing themes of patriotism and respect

00:01:43.800 for the West and gratitude for our philosophical tradition and a harsher and more dramatic view

00:01:50.980 of Christianity that I think is more accurate than the kind of naive sentimentality that often

00:01:57.280 accompanies Christian messaging. And so it's been extremely interesting to think that through

00:02:01.800 philosophically and to work on the Peterson Academy advertisements. Bye-bye.

00:02:08.340 So I've been writing the introduction to this book. It's 95% done. It actually turned into

00:02:15.900 three books because it took longer to go through the material that I thought it might and so that's

00:02:21.540 good I was writing the intro today the introduction which is the hardest thing to do really I would

00:02:26.600 say and I started thinking about how to communicate the relationship between the transcendent and the

00:02:39.940 immediate

00:02:41.460 between our realm, you might say,

00:02:44.320 and the spiritual realm, how to communicate that

00:02:46.460 so that it's entirely

00:02:48.220 comprehensible.

00:02:53.560 And it

00:02:54.420 seems to me that this is something that's

00:02:56.440 now necessary. I mean,

00:02:58.480 I think we're at the point

00:03:00.600 in our technological

00:03:02.380 cultural development

00:03:04.500 where

00:03:04.920 we can't believe,

00:03:08.540 we can't just believe nothing

00:03:10.740 that doesn't work

00:03:13.460 you can't

00:03:14.680 make your way through life

00:03:16.740 believing in nothing

00:03:18.340 life is too difficult

00:03:20.280 for you to sustain yourself

00:03:23.120 without bitterness and resentment

00:03:24.860 without hopelessness

00:03:26.760 without succumbing to anxiety

00:03:28.220 if you believe in nothing

00:03:30.960 but you can't just believe

00:03:35.560 like someone believes in Santa Claus either

00:03:37.480 you have to

00:03:40.040 you have to be deeper than that

00:03:43.100 and I think we have to be deeper than that now

00:03:44.940 because we're too dangerous to be shallow

00:03:46.720 and I think everyone can feel that

00:03:49.840 we have

00:03:50.460 amazing tools at our disposal

00:03:54.320 but they're very very dangerous

00:03:56.800 and so

00:03:57.620 we have to be as wise as we are

00:03:59.880 technologically proficient

00:04:01.300 and we're pretty technologically proficient

00:04:04.480 and we're not very wise

00:04:06.480 and that's not a good combination

00:04:08.420 and that's why things are shaking

00:04:12.780 and they've been shaking for quite a while

00:04:14.380 they've really been shaking I would say

00:04:15.880 since the end of the second world war

00:04:17.440 when we developed the atomic technologies

00:04:20.980 that led to the nuclear bombs

00:04:25.540 to the fission bomb and the fusion bomb

00:04:29.240 world destroying technologies

00:04:31.680 and those aren't the only technologies of that sort

00:04:34.920 that we've developed

00:04:35.700 The birth control pill is a world-shattering technology.

00:04:40.340 The computer chip is a world-shattering technology.

00:04:44.160 The large language models we just developed this year, they have the same nature.

00:04:52.860 So we're going to take a look at the background of things tonight.

00:04:57.460 And we're going to start by investigating what's going on behind the scenes in a relatively everyday manner.

00:05:05.700 This introductory chapter that I'm writing, I started with a description of someone.

00:05:12.400 I imagined a man, so I'm a man, I imagined a man on a first date in a busy restaurant.

00:05:20.660 A typical situation of excitement and anticipation and nervousness.

00:05:29.560 Nothing out of the ordinary.

00:05:31.180 except insofar as everything's out of the ordinary

00:05:37.240 if you think about it

00:05:39.580 if you think about it sufficiently

00:05:42.780 imagine that

00:05:48.020 the scene is set in a restaurant that's extremely

00:05:53.620 it's busy and noisy

00:05:55.300 and the young man comes in

00:05:59.040 waiting to see the woman

00:06:04.460 that he's invited out for an evening

00:06:05.980 and maybe they've met online

00:06:07.940 and they decided to meet at this restaurant

00:06:11.080 and so

00:06:12.660 he sees her at the table

00:06:17.200 his initial impression, we'll say, is positive

00:06:20.800 he sits down

00:06:22.660 and they start to

00:06:25.680 well, they start to what?

00:06:27.340 they start to talk, they start to dance the way people do when they're talking. If you're

00:06:34.440 attending to someone when you're talking to them, you tend to match your movements with them. 1.00

00:06:42.280 Depressed mothers don't do that with their babies. If you film videotape mothers who aren't depressed

00:06:50.540 with their babies and are depressed with their babies and you speed up the films, you can see

00:06:55.340 that the mothers who aren't depressed dance as they're communicating with the babies the baby

00:07:00.660 moves the mother moves like there's a continual back and forth exchange of information but also

00:07:07.640 bodily maneuvering that characterizes an attentive relationship and you'll notice perhaps if you're

00:07:16.100 sitting with someone and you're talking to them and you're listening more importantly you're

00:07:20.400 listening much more importantly that you'll unconsciously mimic their posture and you'll

00:07:26.800 adjust their your rate of movement to theirs you start to dance when a couple dances together

00:07:36.000 that's actually one of the things they're checking each other out for it's like are you capable of

00:07:42.060 adjusting yourself in real time to the movements and subtle offerings of someone else that's what's

00:07:49.300 being evaluated. That's what children do when they meet each other in a playground and they

00:07:52.900 decide whether they can play. They send some signals back and forth and they see if they can

00:07:56.960 get into a communicative dance. And if they can do that, then they can scaffold off that and begin

00:08:01.860 to play. And we're doing that sort of thing all the time. And the couple who are just encountering

00:08:09.840 each other in the restaurant are undertaking to do that. And they're evaluating each other

00:08:14.840 while that is occurring now while they're doing that they have to solve another problem it's a

00:08:23.440 very complicated problem so imagine they're in the restaurant imagine it's a very busy place

00:08:28.280 noisy a lot of background activity kitchen noises maybe there's a dj there's 30 other couples or

00:08:36.000 families or groups of friends sitting there and they're all buzzing away talking and chatting and

00:08:40.660 And so there's like 40 conversations going on, plus the activity of the waiters and the waitresses and the music.

00:08:51.200 Now, what you have to do in a situation like that is you have to filter all that out and attend to the person that you're sitting with.

00:09:04.660 Now, that's a very complicated thing to do.

00:09:10.040 It's an amazing thing you can do at all.

00:09:12.260 Now, you can imagine that you're sitting there and...

00:09:15.680 Well, maybe you're nervous.

00:09:18.560 Then you might ask why.

00:09:20.700 But imagine you're nervous.

00:09:21.720 Your attention is distracted.

00:09:24.380 You're distracted by self-conscious thoughts.

00:09:28.500 That often happens.

00:09:29.720 You're wondering what the person thinks of you.

00:09:32.800 You're wondering if they think you're attractive.

00:09:35.440 You're wondering if you're impressing them.

00:09:38.800 You're wondering what you should say next.

00:09:45.280 You're wondering how to make the best display of yourself.

00:09:51.480 While doing that, you're focusing on yourself and not them.

00:09:55.520 And while you're doing that, if you're focusing on yourself, you're going to be anxious.

00:10:01.040 Because it turns out that there's no difference in a social situation between focusing on yourself and being anxious.

00:10:07.140 there's no difference between self-consciousness and anxiety that's why when the scales fall from

00:10:14.020 adam and eve's eyes in the garden of paradise they become aware of their nakedness and that

00:10:20.420 precipitates that's part of what precipitates the fall to become self-conscious is to

00:10:25.720 is to be miserable it's to descend and that's a very useful thing to know and so one of the things

00:10:32.600 you could take away from this talk tonight if you tend to be a socially anxious person is that

00:10:38.100 the next time you're anxious pay more attention to the person you're with don't pay less attention

00:10:44.640 to yourself that doesn't work because as soon as you start thinking that you should pay less

00:10:47.800 attention to yourself you're just thinking about yourself and then you get anxious but you can

00:10:52.320 really really increase the amount of attention you're paying to the other person and if you do

00:10:57.920 that which is a hospitable thing to do by the way then your anxiety will decrease and then

00:11:05.380 well then you might imagine too that you could get distracted by the conversations of the people

00:11:11.580 around you right and so your attention might wander so that you were eavesdropping on the

00:11:17.760 table next to you or two tables away or you hear the music or your your attention is fragmented

00:11:22.900 And as a consequence of that, you lose the thread of the conversation and you step out of sync with the person you're communicating with.

00:11:30.340 That sets up some awkwardnesses in the conversation. 0.98

00:11:34.280 You maybe have to ask the person to repeat what they said or you misunderstand something and then you say something foolish.

00:11:40.660 And the melody of the through line of the conversation starts to get disrupted and the dance becomes awkward.

00:11:50.380 You're stepping on each other's toes.

00:11:52.900 And that's a consequence of the fragmentation of your attention.

00:12:22.900 We figure we can offer people a high-quality university-level education for under $2,000.

00:12:28.820 Well, congratulations, Jordan. It's honestly brilliant.

00:12:31.000 I can't wait to enroll myself. I'll be doing that straight after this.

00:12:35.000 Fun, Joe.

00:12:52.900 Now that's where things get strange.

00:12:56.580 What does it mean to attend?

00:12:59.740 Why are you attending?

00:13:01.820 That's the first question.

00:13:03.140 What the hell are you doing there?

00:13:06.080 Right?

00:13:06.400 Because you can be sure that the person you're with wants to know that.

00:13:09.620 And you want to know that too.

00:13:12.200 And so, let's take apart why you're there.

00:13:17.340 You're there.

00:13:18.200 let's let's let's presume this i'll tell you something about human

00:13:27.860 social and sexual patterns we'll we'll approach this from the biological perspective

00:13:34.340 in the most animals reproduce sexually there's there's complicated reasons for that it's not

00:13:44.400 strictly necessary there are animals that can essentially clone themselves it's not a good

00:13:49.000 strategy sexual reproduction is a much better strategy which is why virtually all species

00:13:54.220 species are sexually dimorphic dimorphic two sexes right two right right

00:14:02.520 there are various types of sexual strategies in the animal kingdom

00:14:12.960 Reproduction strategies. That's a better way of thinking about it.

00:14:19.120 On the one end of the distribution of sexual strategies are low investment, high reproduction rate strategies. 0.95

00:14:28.480 Puff balls have that strategy.

00:14:31.380 I don't know if you know the mushroom. That's a puff ball.

00:14:33.500 It dries, and if you step on it, it puffs out what looks like smoke,

00:14:37.640 but which is actually like hundreds of millions of spores.

00:14:40.400 an immense number of them and they just float on the wind and they land anywhere and even if

00:14:48.260 there's a hundred million of them there's actually more produced they all die except one on average

00:14:55.280 and so we maintain our number of puffballs but we don't end up knee deep in them which is what

00:15:03.340 would happen if the success rate was higher that's a high reproduction rate low investment strategy

00:15:10.340 on the other end of the distribution

00:15:14.180 are human beings as it turns out we're low reproduction rate high investment strategy

00:15:22.480 reproducers and so what does that mean well it means you don't have very many kids

00:15:29.460 i don't know what the world record for number of children 0.79

00:15:32.900 for a woman is it's something like 70 right right it's a lot it's a very rare woman who has 70 0.91

00:15:41.720 very very right the upper end for men is much higher but for women it's 70 but that but that's

00:15:50.900 not the typical number of children obviously the typical number of children well historically was

00:15:58.140 two on average because the human

00:16:02.360 population was very stable for a very long period of time

00:16:05.520 in the last hundred years as we've become

00:16:08.100 200 as we've become wealthier

00:16:11.960 the rate of survival of our children has increased dramatically

00:16:18.200 but it was quite dismal for a long time

00:16:20.700 even so we didn't have very many children

00:16:23.660 it's nine months of pregnancy it's quite difficult

00:16:28.000 The human infant is very, very dependent when it's first born.

00:16:36.000 There's a variety of reasons for that.

00:16:39.000 We have very large heads.

00:16:42.000 It's hard for the heads to pass through the pelvic structure. 1.00

00:16:46.000 Women's pelvic structure is very carefully balanced. 1.00

00:16:49.000 Its hips are wide enough so the baby can pass through, 1.00

00:16:55.000 but narrow enough so she can still run.

00:16:57.000 and that's a very tight competition and one of the ways we finesse that is that our infants are

00:17:05.460 born about a year younger than they might be for a mammal of approximately our size

00:17:10.400 and our infants heads are compressible often a baby after just after it's born has a like a cone

00:17:17.480 shaped head because the skull's compressible it's a very narrow passageway into life and

00:17:25.160 it's a consequence in part of our cortical evolution the expansion of our brain and the

00:17:33.000 price we pay for that is not only trouble in childbirth let's say and the requirement

00:17:39.640 for our infants to be born in essentially a quasi-fetal state you know as opposed to say

00:17:46.640 the baby calf that can stand up and walk within minutes after it's born

00:17:51.800 human infant is basically immobile for six months and barely mobile for nine and can't walk at all

00:17:59.780 for till about 12 months and then can't take care of itself till it's 40 and

00:18:07.000 and so they take a lot of investment and it's not just a single generation of investment it's

00:18:19.420 a multi-generational investment that's part of the reason why we're a longer lived species because

00:18:24.520 there's some utility from a reproductive i'm speaking purely biologically you understand

00:18:29.020 there's some utility in having grandparents around because the problem of raising children

00:18:34.020 is so difficult that it has to be born by a number of closely related people over a very long period

00:18:41.360 of time, very long period of time. And we are pair bonding. We're a pair bonding species for

00:18:49.280 the same reason, is that the burden of an infant and the opportunity, the burden and opportunity

00:18:56.180 of an infant is such that if it's born by only the mother, the chances of cataclysmic failure

00:19:05.760 are much much much much higher and so we tilt towards pair bonding so we're high investment

00:19:14.460 low reproducing species the long lifespan very dependent children our children require a lot of

00:19:22.780 investment. However, within the domain of human beings, there are low investment, there

00:19:38.760 are people who adopt low investment mating strategies and high investment mating strategies.

00:19:46.340 investment mating strategy is it's a hedonistic strategy it's a one-night-stand strategy and

00:19:56.180 you might ask well what's your point the point of attention let's say well you're sitting in

00:20:05.640 your restaurant you're having dinner with the person you invited out what's your strategy

00:20:11.300 and how do you direct your attention

00:20:15.160 in consequence of that strategy

00:20:16.940 and that is the question

00:20:19.340 because you direct your attention

00:20:21.340 in consequence of your aim

00:20:23.520 okay so let's imagine that your aim is

00:20:30.340 short-term mating strategy

00:20:32.060 right 0.99

00:20:32.860 one night stand

00:20:34.100 all right so

00:20:35.720 you're going to direct your attention

00:20:40.040 and you're going to organize your actions

00:20:44.580 in keeping with that goal.

00:20:49.080 Well, how are you going to do that exactly?

00:20:51.480 We know the goal you're serving now.

00:20:53.880 Well, do we?

00:20:54.720 What goal are you serving exactly?

00:20:58.280 Well, you might say you're trying to get what you want.

00:21:00.860 It's like, that's one way of thinking about it.

00:21:04.340 Depends on how you define you.

00:21:07.660 You're trying to get what a fraction of you wants.

00:21:10.040 let's say you're trying to get what a desire of yours wants so what you're doing if you're

00:21:15.480 pursuing a short-term mating strategy you want to get the girl in bed as fast as possible

00:21:19.740 let's say is that you're reducing who you are to that immediate demand to that narrow

00:21:28.740 demand for immediate self-gratification so that's the you that's having the conversation

00:21:35.540 okay so there could be all sorts of other use that might be there you might be lonely so you're

00:21:43.200 looking for a companion you might be lonely and serious in which case you're not only looking for

00:21:50.860 a companion but you're looking we'll step out of the sexual realm for a moment you're looking for

00:21:56.400 a friend and a friend think about a friend from the perspective of a child a friend is someone

00:22:01.120 you that you can play a game with but that you want to repeat the game with many times

00:22:05.920 that's a friend and so if you're lonesome and you're adopting a companionate strategy

00:22:12.360 you're going to be looking to make a friend that you can play with and that would be the dinner

00:22:17.300 but that would but with whom the game would go well enough so that well she would like to repeat 0.93

00:22:23.540 the game that would be the second date let's say and that the what would spiral up out of that

00:22:29.700 would be a sequence of games, let's say, and that sequence of games would be a relationship. And

00:22:34.620 in principle, that might move towards, well, then again, it depends on your aim. Move towards what?

00:22:44.000 Steady dating, living together, marriage. Those are very different aims, and they're going to,

00:22:50.680 the consequence of those different aims is going to direct your attention and your action

00:22:54.660 accordingly right and all that's sitting there in that dinner right at the beginning well let's say

00:23:02.580 that you're not you don't want the responsibility or opportunity of a long-term relationship long-term

00:23:13.220 committed relationship which is the awkward terminology we use to replace the much shorter

00:23:18.300 and to the point term marriage you're not looking for marriage what are you looking for well

00:23:24.580 in the extreme you're looking for short-term

00:23:27.120 sensual gratification

00:23:29.420 and that's 0.99

00:23:31.280 what's directing your attention so the you

00:23:33.020 that's there is the part of you that wants

00:23:35.240 short-term gratification

00:23:37.080 okay well what is that part like

00:23:39.280 well

00:23:40.080 it's hedonistically oriented

00:23:42.780 obviously because the goal

00:23:45.180 is sex and sex is pleasure

00:23:47.020 and it's 0.88

00:23:48.520 easily, it can easily

00:23:51.360 become pleasure

00:23:52.320 at the cost of the person you're with and it can also easily become pleasure

00:23:57.320 at your cost insofar as you are inadvertently sacrificing the possibility of long-term stable

00:24:06.240 committed marriage to the demands of the immediate moment and so by switching to a short-term mating

00:24:14.340 strategy so to speak not only are you already utilizing the other person as a tool for the

00:24:22.280 gratification of your immediate desires but you're also doing the same thing that impulse is also

00:24:29.240 doing the same thing to the broader you right it's not you can understand that more deeply if

00:24:37.520 you think about the difference between a two-year-old and a mature adult a two-year-old

00:24:41.920 wants what he or she wants no matter what right now and you can see that when two-year-olds have

00:24:49.560 temper tantrums which they do quite or or university students for that matter increasingly

00:24:56.140 and because they haven't matured past that point because our culture is pathologized enough now so

00:25:04.040 that that often happens and so that pattern of immature demand for immediate gratification

00:25:10.640 is maintained far past its due date because that should really disappear by about the age of four

00:25:16.460 and if it doesn't disappear by the age of four it tends not to disappear and so part of what

00:25:23.660 you're doing when you're a parent if you have any sense is that you're enticing and disciplining

00:25:31.340 your child towards the substitution of a medium to long-term orientation in time

00:25:39.160 and a communal

00:25:41.180 orientation, one that takes

00:25:43.580 other people into account

00:25:44.700 for, in exchange for

00:25:47.440 what they want for themselves

00:25:49.680 right now

00:25:50.840 and what you want

00:25:53.440 for yourself right now is a more

00:25:55.180 instinctive way of

00:25:56.980 approaching the world

00:25:58.460 your

00:26:01.140 drives, so to speak

00:26:03.220 your desires are part

00:26:05.380 and parcel of what you bring into the world

00:26:07.280 And if you're ruled by them, you're ruled by whim.

00:26:11.020 And you might think that if you're engaging in short-term mating strategies,

00:26:15.160 you're pursuing what you want, what you want,

00:26:18.480 but what you don't understand is that you're actually serving a master

00:26:24.360 who's a hedonistic fragment of your total self.

00:26:29.520 And you're doing that.

00:26:31.360 In doing that, you sacrifice the possibility of communal relationship,

00:26:35.880 and you sacrifice your own future okay so how do we know this think well that's you can say that

00:26:41.400 all you want you're just you know making what you're making a value judgment about the manner

00:26:46.500 in which people conduct themselves sexually it's yeah yes i'm definitely doing that what

00:26:51.980 why am i doing that on what grounds am i doing that well we actually know as psychologists

00:26:58.980 something about the people who default to short-term mating strategies.

00:27:04.620 Oh, let me tell you that story.

00:27:06.520 And here's the reason I'm telling you this.

00:27:09.200 It's like, with every glance you take, you serve a master.

00:27:15.460 Now, you might not know what that master is.

00:27:18.540 You might not want to know.

00:27:20.540 But there is no avoiding that.

00:27:24.480 It's built into the structure of perception itself.

00:27:29.820 Your perceptions serve your aims.

00:27:33.280 And that's really something to know.

00:27:35.200 If the world is unfolding for you as a place of dreadful misery,

00:27:40.000 if the world is unfolding for you as a valueless, hopeless,

00:27:44.100 obstacle-ridden, cluttered, friendless pathway forward,

00:27:48.820 you might want to ask, just what the hell is it you're aiming at?

00:27:52.400 your aim is short-term sexual gratification okay so what do we know about that well here's one

00:28:01.820 thing we know one of the most reliable markers of criminal proclivity in adolescence is early

00:28:12.180 multiple partner sexual experience so that's been known for 50 60 years independent of moral

00:28:21.940 judgment it's a clinical marker for antisocial personality for childhood conduct disorder

00:28:28.400 so that's interesting to know it's a reflection of a person's proclivity to use themselves and

00:28:37.700 other people as instruments of short-term gratification right so it's also a sign of

00:28:43.700 a radical kind of maturity immaturity it's also very stable as i said if it's if that's

00:28:51.380 Proclivity is evident after the age of four.

00:28:57.720 It tends to be very stable and permanent.

00:29:00.000 It characterizes most toddlers.

00:29:05.140 It's characteristic of immaturity.

00:29:08.640 I want what I want now, and look the hell out if you're in my way. 0.52

00:29:14.980 Now, that's not such a problem if the person you're dealing with is two.

00:29:19.100 Because they're this high.

00:29:21.380 Right? And they're not very dangerous.

00:29:23.940 Although two-year-olds are the most violent human beings.

00:29:28.320 They've been grouped together.

00:29:29.720 You can group children together in groups of different ages.

00:29:32.960 And by far the most violent group is two-year-olds.

00:29:37.000 So, but again, they're small and they can't do each other much damage.

00:29:41.080 So, and most of those, some of the two-year-olds are more violent than others.

00:29:45.180 But even the violent ones tend to be socialized by the age of four.

00:29:50.300 Not all of them.

00:29:51.380 The ones that aren't, the violent two-year-olds that aren't socialized by the age of four,

00:29:54.980 they tend towards a lifetime criminal path.

00:30:01.100 So, okay, so what else do we know about short-term mating strategies?

00:30:11.440 In the 1960s, psychologists started to develop what eventually became

00:30:16.560 the technologies that produced the large language models that have come out.

00:30:21.380 in recent months that what large language models do is analyze the statistical relationship between

00:30:28.500 words or sets of words and and so what does that mean well imagine that you read a thousand books

00:30:34.500 and in those books the word good appeared and multiple times in most books and then there was

00:30:40.980 some reasonable probability that with good other words would appear in close proximity so if you

00:30:48.100 If you were talking about what was good, you might talk about what was beautiful.

00:30:51.220 You might talk about what was evil.

00:30:53.420 If good shows up, some other words are likely to show up.

00:30:58.640 It's like when you're analyzing a word per se.

00:31:00.980 Like what makes a word cat, C-A-T.

00:31:06.140 That's a word.

00:31:06.980 C-I-T isn't a word. 0.83

00:31:09.460 C-I-T is more of a word than C-Q-T. 0.91

00:31:15.260 Why?

00:31:15.700 Well, because the pattern of consonant, vowel, consonant is much more common among words

00:31:21.320 than the pattern consonant, consonant, consonant.

00:31:24.160 There are statistical regularities between letters, between words, between groups of

00:31:30.020 words, between sentences, between paragraphs, between concepts that can be mapped at all

00:31:36.100 levels.

00:31:37.120 So maybe a paragraph about the beautiful is more likely statistically to be followed by

00:31:42.440 a paragraph about...

00:31:45.700 The beautiful.

00:31:48.020 These large language models, they map all those relationships.

00:31:51.440 Billions of parameters.

00:31:52.540 They map out the domain of statistical, conceptual similarity and difference.

00:32:01.100 They're maps of meaning, really.

00:32:02.980 Psychologists started to use very primitive technologies like that 50 years ago.

00:32:08.660 And they started to map out the domain of personality.

00:32:12.140 if you're if you smile imagine you're happy if you're happy it turns out you're statistically

00:32:24.100 more likely to be talkative if you're anxious you're statistically more likely to be frustrated

00:32:30.080 if you're agreeable if you're nice you're statistically more likely to be welcoming

00:32:36.320 If you're combative and competitive, you're statistically more likely to say no.

00:32:47.940 If you're interested in ideas, you're statistically more likely to read fiction.

00:32:55.580 If you're dutiful, you're more likely to be patriotic.

00:32:58.780 if you take all of the descriptors that you could use to describe human personality and you

00:33:05.700 analyze the relationships between the descriptors you can see that they clump into five dimensions

00:33:10.680 extroversion is one neuroticism that's the proclivity to experience negative emotion

00:33:17.480 that's another if you experience one negative emotion you're statistically more likely to

00:33:22.020 experience all of negative emotions agreeableness that's kind of the maternal dimension

00:33:27.220 conscientiousness that makes you orderly and industrious openness that's the creativity

00:33:31.860 dimension that was all mapped out when that mapping was occurring

00:33:36.360 the evaluative words were thrown out good and evil they didn't include those words and the

00:33:44.520 reason for that was that if they include evaluative words good evil criminal non-criminal

00:33:50.180 where there was a clear value judgment the whole statistical model tended to collapse into

00:33:55.700 something like good versus evil and that wasn't very helpful so they threw that out

00:34:00.560 now the problem sorry this is a roundabout way of getting to the point but i have to walk you

00:34:06.260 through it what the consequence of that was that the models of personality that we derive didn't

00:34:14.440 flesh out our understanding of so-called psychopathology abnormal behavior anti-social

00:34:23.340 behavior troublesome pathological narcissistic self-sabotaging socially undermining behavior

00:34:33.380 if you throw out the evaluative words you can't map that quite as well so what happened

00:34:38.900 once we established the map of normative personality is that some psychologists

00:34:43.340 started to study the evaluative dimension

00:34:47.800 the bad actors

00:34:56.600 and their analysis of

00:35:01.380 how what was antisocial

00:35:04.140 and self-serving

00:35:06.020 made itself manifest

00:35:08.460 revealed initially three dimensions

00:35:11.480 narcissism

00:35:17.020 so if you're narcissistic you want attention but you don't want to do any of the work that

00:35:24.340 would be necessary to validly obtain it you know if you're a good guy you're going to get

00:35:30.080 attention from your family and your community because you're productive and generous that's

00:35:34.500 a good start you're reliable honest productive and generous you can fake that you can claim

00:35:40.240 status that you don't deserve you can draw attention to yourself you can capitalize on

00:35:46.020 that attention without making any of the relevant sacrifices and if you do that then you're

00:35:51.560 narcissistic so that's one dimension another dimension is Machiavellian back to the date

00:35:59.380 well first of all if you're narcissistic in the date you're not going to be listening much to

00:36:05.360 your date you're going to be talking a lot about why you're so great and how much attention you

00:36:11.860 deserve and you're going to be checking that other person out pretty hard to see if they're

00:36:16.820 granting you the attention you deserve and if you're a man doing that you can often pull the

00:36:23.500 wool over your date's eyes especially if she's young and naive because narcissists mimic competence

00:36:31.120 young women who have some wisdom are looking for competent men but they assess competence with

00:36:39.020 confidence and narcissists mimic confidence right which is why you know there's a trope

00:36:45.800 romantic hollywood trope that the girls like the bad boys well why because they look confident and

00:36:52.420 the girls confuse that with competence and that's the narcissistic game it's one

00:36:57.920 element of the narcissistic game if you're ruled by the spirit of narcissism and you're on a date

00:37:05.480 then you're going to use the date as a stage

00:37:09.700 where you can display your hypothetical virtues

00:37:14.380 so that you can garner attention.

00:37:19.780 Machiavellianism is another one of these dark traits.

00:37:23.740 What do you do if you're a Machiavellian?

00:37:27.240 That's what a con man does, or a used car salesman, you know,

00:37:31.020 like go to a used car lot, maybe you go to a store.

00:37:35.060 not a store you'd go to twice and the person sees you as a means to an end and the end would be

00:37:43.260 we'll have your money thank you very much which is fine if there's some service returned for the 0.98

00:37:49.380 money because then it's a fair exchange but the Machiavellian thinks if you're enough of a sucker 0.97

00:37:54.280 so that I can talk you into opening your wallet then I should have your money because you're too 0.99

00:37:59.320 dumb to use it and so and that's a hell of a way of evaluating a social situation and so for for 0.99

00:38:06.440 a machiavellian in a conversation you're just something to be manipulated with words to deliver 0.99

00:38:12.500 the goods that's machiavellian manipulation right and a good machiavellian will watch you

00:38:22.660 so they can tell you what you want to hear so they can direct you to go where they want you

00:38:29.140 to go now in the case of the date and you're the unfortunate target of the machiavellian if

00:38:35.520 that's going to be into sexual exchange as rapidly as possible that's the example we're using

00:38:42.840 machiavellian that's not all there's another dimension that goes along with this psychopathy 0.79

00:38:51.700 what's a psychopath well you know what a psychopath is because you go to movies

00:38:56.620 and the psychopaths you see in movies are usually narcissistic and machiavellian too because that's

00:39:02.300 what makes them charming right and they're very cold-blooded and they want just exactly what they

00:39:08.500 want from you right now regardless of the cost to them or to you why to them being a psychopath

00:39:15.180 actually not a very good strategy lots of psychopaths end up in prison if you interact

00:39:20.940 with the psychopath a couple of times and doesn't work out so well for you which is kind of the

00:39:25.160 point you tend to remember that and so if you have your the option as you move forward you avoid that

00:39:33.040 person and so psychopaths are often wandering itinerants and the reason for that is because

00:39:38.840 they have to move from community to community because they burn their bridges and everybody

00:39:42.800 knows who the hell they are and so they have to move on and that's the kind of wandering

00:39:46.360 con man that's the origin of the wandering con man archetype right if you're gonna screw everybody

00:39:53.540 so to speak in your social circle then you have to make tracks for new territory 0.89

00:39:58.820 so what's a psychopath technically a predatory parasite so what does that mean predatory means 0.52

00:40:08.900 who whatever you have that can be mine thank you very much that's the predatory aspect the

00:40:16.740 parasitical element is more subtle it's more long-term someone with a parasitical lifestyle

00:40:22.720 will manipulate you by whatever means necessary so they can live without effort off the fruits of

00:40:29.340 your labor right so that's the parasitical element and the real criminal types one percent of the 0.95

00:40:36.940 criminals are responsible for 65 percent of the crimes by the way the real dark criminal types

00:40:43.460 tend towards the psychopathic you know you get the odd person in prison who did something 0.97

00:40:48.120 spectacularly stupid once and you know that's not okay but that's way different than the repeating

00:40:56.020 pattern that characterizes the the personality whose traits i'm enumerating now so that was 0.97

00:41:02.780 called the dark triad and people studied that her first person to study this really was a guy named

00:41:08.640 dale paulis at the university of british columbia and he studied the dark triad for a number of

00:41:14.120 years. Then he started figuring out what it was associated with. Short-term mating

00:41:20.060 strategies. Right. So that's entertaining. So then you might think, well, let's add 0.85

00:41:31.800 another layer just for amusement. Turned out that didn't exhaust the network of

00:41:37.720 meaning on the dark side of the personality in the personality realm it didn't exhaust the

00:41:45.540 full manifestation of what was dark in the personality realm

00:41:50.900 as the research into the dark triad progressed and more and more questions were asked about

00:41:59.800 just exactly what this pattern of behavior

00:42:03.100 just exactly how this pattern of behavior

00:42:08.060 could be characterized

00:42:08.900 another term

00:42:11.820 entered the

00:42:13.300 diagnostic lexicon

00:42:15.480 sadism

00:42:17.400 sadism

00:42:19.660 the positive delight in the suffering of others 1.00

00:42:22.380 that's the dark ketrad 0.98

00:42:24.360 right

00:42:25.300 a lovely

00:42:25.980 ketrad 0.97

00:42:28.000 striving for undeserved attention 0.76

00:42:32.320 with no reciprocity

00:42:34.160 using language and action

00:42:36.660 instrumentally to gain

00:42:38.800 a narrow end

00:42:40.240 predatory and parasitical orientation

00:42:43.920 plus 0.97

00:42:44.780 if I can hurt you 0.97

00:42:47.040 so much the better

00:42:49.080 how much of that spirit's in the date

00:42:55.260 so these are the things that lurk behind

00:43:00.380 everything we do at every moment of our lives that's on the dark side of things

00:43:06.640 right so so i said your aim determines your pattern of attention

00:43:13.480 right your aim determines your pattern of attention so if you're aiming at

00:43:21.200 short-term

00:43:24.820 hedonic self-gratification

00:43:26.340 then the spirit that you've

00:43:28.680 invited in

00:43:29.420 to direct your attention

00:43:32.300 and orchestrate your actions

00:43:34.820 is the spirit

00:43:36.680 that's at the core of

00:43:38.340 narcissism

00:43:40.040 Machiavellianism, psychopathy

00:43:42.800 and sadism

00:43:43.880 and you might say, well, that's a dark

00:43:46.540 spirit indeed

00:43:47.520 right

00:43:48.640 that's a

00:43:51.720 psychoanalytic

00:43:54.060 now

00:43:54.780 conceptual

00:43:57.800 descent into the underworld

00:44:00.120 under human

00:44:02.040 interactions right that's the character

00:44:04.140 behind the scenes

00:44:05.260 you might ask yourself

00:44:07.980 well how do you

00:44:10.000 become that

00:44:11.180 spirit and the answer to that is

00:44:14.260 you invite it in

00:44:17.400 I'll give you an example

00:44:18.620 of that.

00:44:23.920 In the story

00:44:24.800 of Cain and Abel,

00:44:27.160 it's the second biblical story.

00:44:30.820 It occurs after Adam and Eve

00:44:32.820 are expelled from the Garden of Paradise

00:44:34.560 for the sin of pride. 0.72

00:44:37.540 God tells Adam

00:44:38.680 and Eve that they're going to have to work

00:44:40.200 now because they've fallen.

00:44:43.280 Here's a way of thinking about that.

00:44:46.280 You can

00:44:46.880 work in your life or you can play in your life,

00:44:48.960 let's say. When do you

00:44:50.880 play? Well, you play when

00:44:52.420 you play with others when they want

00:44:54.860 to play with you. You play when

00:44:56.840 you're pursuing something

00:44:58.620 good and communal

00:45:00.520 joyfully. You work when

00:45:02.960 you work

00:45:08.700 brutally

00:45:10.140 in the aftermath of an error that

00:45:14.580 has made your life much worse than it

00:45:16.860 might have otherwise been say that's an error of pride you bite off more than you can chew you end

00:45:23.040 up in a situation where you have to toil madly to rescue you yourself from the hole that you dug

00:45:32.820 there's a insistence in the judeo-christian ethical pantheon that suffering enters the life

00:45:38.940 which enters life with sin it's a hard idea to swallow given the omnipresence of death let's say

00:45:46.500 and the reality of pain but if you understand that story in the manner that i just described

00:45:51.620 then you also understand very rapidly that a lot of the very difficult work that you have to do and

00:45:57.220 a lot of the suffering that befalls you is a consequence not so much of the structure of

00:46:01.940 existence itself but of your proclivity to cause for yourself because of misdirected aim way more

00:46:11.580 trouble than you would actually have to have. And that's what happens to Adam and Eve. And that's

00:46:16.700 why they have to struggle forward. Work is established as the pattern of life in that

00:46:23.300 story. And then Eve gives birth to Cain and Abel. They're the first two human beings, really,

00:46:29.860 speaking biblically. Adam and Eve are made by God. They don't count. Cain and Abel are the

00:46:35.440 first two human beings. They're the first two. They're the brothers, the first brothers who

00:46:40.900 emerge in the profane world of

00:46:42.900 history, right? They established

00:46:44.800 two patterns, very deep patterns,

00:46:47.260 two opposed patterns.

00:46:50.160 Cain,

00:46:51.980 Abel.

00:46:53.780 Abel aims

00:46:54.780 up, and he

00:46:56.820 brings his

00:46:58.940 best to the table.

00:47:00.480 That's a good thing to think about in relationship to the

00:47:02.780 date.

00:47:04.520 The man who's there

00:47:06.240 with the woman that he

00:47:08.820 has an interest in,

00:47:12.040 could aim up and bring his best to the table.

00:47:14.940 That's one strategy.

00:47:18.260 Cain, by contrast,

00:47:21.000 offers what's second rate.

00:47:24.220 Well, you can understand that

00:47:25.920 in the confines of your own life.

00:47:27.320 You could imagine that, first of all,

00:47:29.060 you could imagine aiming up or not.

00:47:32.160 That's easy to imagine.

00:47:33.820 Sometimes you're aiming up

00:47:35.080 and sometimes you're not.

00:47:36.740 And then even independent of that,

00:47:38.820 to some degree, is how much sacrificial effort you're willing to put into the attempt, right?

00:47:47.260 Because you could imagine at the best times of your life that you're all in. You put your best

00:47:52.900 on the table. You hit it with everything you had. And perhaps, if you were fortunate,

00:47:58.720 the consequence of that was that you had some success commensurate with your effort.

00:48:02.900 or alternatively you could take

00:48:05.100 the variant

00:48:07.040 route and you could

00:48:07.920 pull the wool over your eyes and

00:48:10.760 the eyes of your fellow men and God

00:48:12.800 himself and you could bring what was

00:48:14.980 second rate to the table

00:48:16.140 presuming that the ease

00:48:19.260 that that allows

00:48:20.580 if

00:48:24.820 the effort was successful would

00:48:26.940 justify the deception and that's

00:48:28.980 what people do who bring what's

00:48:31.260 second rate to the table.

00:48:35.680 They

00:48:35.960 make the prideful presumption

00:48:41.600 that the offering of what is less than

00:48:43.380 is best will be

00:48:45.420 sufficient. And it's a foolish 1.00

00:48:47.900 notion because 0.98

00:48:49.220 a moment's

00:48:51.380 reflection informs

00:48:53.460 everyone that life is far too challenging

00:48:55.560 and difficult for anything but everything

00:48:57.420 you have to be enough.

00:48:58.600 and so what happens to Cain

00:49:01.360 is that he fails

00:49:02.720 and he could fail and learn

00:49:06.680 because you can fail and learn

00:49:09.120 and then the next time

00:49:09.920 you don't fail quite as much

00:49:11.180 or maybe even you partially succeed

00:49:12.920 and you can keep doing that

00:49:14.060 you have to do that

00:49:15.780 you do that if you have some humility

00:49:19.640 right because you know your failure

00:49:21.900 you presume that maybe

00:49:23.700 you know you've got some sorting out to do

00:49:27.240 you make the sacrifice necessary to sort yourself out and you start walking however

00:49:36.040 awkwardly and poorly uphill. Cain doesn't do that. He gets resentful instead. And he gets resentful

00:49:47.900 enough to call out God. Now people do this all the time. And it's understandable. You know,

00:49:53.340 there'll be times in your life for example where something dreadful happens someone you love

00:49:57.720 becomes seriously ill for example and seems entirely unfair perhaps i'm not making a

00:50:04.420 suggestion that it isn't in this case and you're so upset disheartened by that that

00:50:12.460 you lose faith not only do you lose faith in yourself and in existence but you see within you

00:50:20.080 emerge a strong proclivity to shake your

00:50:22.200 hand at the sky and curse

00:50:23.540 and

00:50:25.100 that's what happens to

00:50:28.280 Cain although with much less

00:50:30.120 provocation

00:50:30.880 he's bitter because

00:50:33.760 he made second rate sacrifices

00:50:36.000 and they were rejected

00:50:37.040 he's not bitter because life itself

00:50:40.060 has an

00:50:42.120 element of arbitrariness and misery

00:50:43.760 associated with it and so he has a

00:50:46.080 little chat with God because

00:50:47.680 that's the sort of guy Cain is

00:50:50.580 It's not his fault that he isn't proceeding happily in the world like his undeserving, successful brother Abel.

00:51:00.520 It's, well, whose fault is it?

00:51:03.280 Well, obviously the creator of all things.

00:51:05.960 And so he has it out with God.

00:51:07.540 And he says, essentially, I'm paraphrasing the story.

00:51:11.440 It's a consequence of familiarizing myself with multiple translations.

00:51:14.740 he says something like what sort of cosmos did you create here i'm breaking myself in half which

00:51:23.780 is a complete lie trying to get ahead and nothing's working out for me and i've got my brother and

00:51:29.220 no matter where he goes the sun shines on him and everything's perfectly bloody delightful

00:51:33.540 it's like how do you account for that that's the spirit of resentment orienting his aim

00:51:41.600 and god says if you did well you'd be accepted that's actually kind of a definition you know

00:51:49.260 it's an interesting definition because the the impetus there is that if things aren't working

00:51:55.340 out for you in the most fundamental sense that's on you now you might think that's a pretty dreadful

00:52:02.620 judgment it's like yeah it's not as dreadful as the alternative because if you're miserable

00:52:07.460 because the cosmos itself is structured badly and set against you,

00:52:12.220 well, you must not just throw in the towel now. 1.00

00:52:16.000 But if it turns out that there's some stupid thing you're doing, 0.99

00:52:19.020 no matter how trivial, that's tilted you in a direction that you shouldn't be going, 0.99

00:52:22.740 and you could be on your knees with sufficient humility to discover it,

00:52:26.900 there might be the possibility that you could set it right

00:52:29.180 and start wandering uphill instead of farther down.

00:52:32.500 And that's essentially what God suggests to Cain,

00:52:36.480 but he's already possessed so to speak as we'll see and that's just not going anywhere

00:52:43.580 and so and then God says something even worse to him and that's not so good

00:52:48.380 because what's already been said is not good he says to him

00:52:53.120 if you did well you'd be accepted and you've brought what's insufficient to the table and

00:53:02.960 that accounts for your misery and more than that sin crouches at your door like a predatory 0.96

00:53:12.660 sexually aroused animal and you've invited it in to have its way with you it's a brutal metaphor

00:53:21.540 and it's very interesting one so sin is an archery term it has to do with aim to sin is to miss the

00:53:29.880 target. Three different languages. Greek is hamartia. It means to miss the center of the

00:53:35.280 target. It means you can miss by not aiming, or you can miss by not being skillful, or you can

00:53:39.820 miss by aiming in the wrong direction, or not aiming at all. To sin means to miss the target.

00:53:47.480 Sin crouches at your door. The temptation to miss the target, and you invited it in. So what does

00:53:53.880 that mean? It's not like you're possessed exactly by the spirit of resentment. It's not like it

00:53:58.420 visited you by some accident while you were unaware, for something like that to gain control

00:54:05.720 of your aim, you have to open the door and invite it in. And so that's what God tells Cain.

00:54:12.260 It's your, you're miserable in account of your failure, but you're resentful and bitter and

00:54:18.980 unhappy because you invited that spirit to take possession of you. And then it's worse than that

00:54:25.080 even because it's not exactly possession you know you might think well you're kind of naive and you

00:54:29.260 don't know what you're doing and you open the door and something comes in so to speak and now

00:54:32.900 it's in you and that's the you know it's got you and in a sense you're innocent in proportion to

00:54:39.940 your naivety but that isn't what God tells Cain he says you invited it in to have its way with you

00:54:48.400 It's a sexual metaphor.

00:54:51.320 And what it means is that God accuses Cain of inviting in the spirit of resentment

00:54:56.780 and entering into a creative relationship with it.

00:55:01.180 Brooding on it.

00:55:02.660 Brooding on it, right?

00:55:04.200 Brooding on resentment.

00:55:05.520 People do this all the time.

00:55:06.800 They're angry.

00:55:07.980 They're unhappy.

00:55:09.760 They fantasize.

00:55:11.260 They fantasize about revenge.

00:55:12.920 They fantasize about how the world has treated them brutally.

00:55:15.440 they fantasize about what they could do to all those people who did them wrong if they only had

00:55:20.840 the opportunity they dwell on that they revel in it they brood on it maybe for thousands of hours

00:55:27.340 if you ever wonder how someone gets to the point when they're 15 that they can take a

00:55:32.900 high-powered automatic rifle and shoot up an elementary school that's how a couple of thousand

00:55:40.840 of hours a couple thousand hours of brooding and you'll end up in one hell of a dark place

00:55:47.440 right and so that's the pattern of Cain and God tells Cain all that and you can bet that doesn't

00:55:54.240 make him very happy because it's exactly the last thing he wants to hear all right your failure is

00:56:02.620 to be laid at your own feet you've multiplied your failure by the invitation you offered to sin

00:56:10.940 which you conspired with to magnify your bitterness and that's all on you so what happens to Cain

00:56:22.620 he kills Abel right he destroys his own ideal and he does that to shake his fist at God and

00:56:34.500 Cain says my punishment is more than I can bear which is always the case for someone who destroys

00:56:40.820 his own ideal because how are you going to live without an ideal you've got nothing to aim at

00:56:44.800 you've got no pathway forward you've severed your tie with everything that could give you hope

00:56:49.280 you're done but that isn't where the story ends

00:56:52.600 cain's descendants become genocidal

00:56:55.620 right and so that's a story of how what would you say

00:57:00.120 second-rate sacrifices open the door to a creative union with sin

00:57:05.700 that expands into fratricidal murder and morphs into the genocidal impulse

00:57:14.040 and the next story is

00:57:16.220 the flood

00:57:18.680 right

00:57:21.600 back to the restaurant

00:57:26.560 well now we've opened a door right we can see

00:57:34.040 the background of the forces that are directing the attention of the participants in the dinner

00:57:48.680 If I want nothing more than what something low in me demands this second, I'm going to direct my intention in accordance with that aim, and that aim is a reflection of what I've allowed to possess me.

00:58:06.920 And that's a manifestation of the Machiavellian narcissistic psychopathic sadism that I've brooded over and allowed to take possession of me sufficiently to justify my manipulative aims.

00:58:27.420 that

00:58:30.100 battle with temptation

00:58:35.280 that's going on inside you

00:58:38.020 every time you move your eyes

00:58:40.500 you can imagine this, imagine this, imagine this

00:58:44.340 so maybe your date is wearing something provocative

00:58:48.600 somewhat provocative

00:58:50.020 and your eyes slip down from her face to her 0.92

00:58:53.000 to her displayed breasts 0.97

00:58:56.900 and she says something like my eyes are up here now you know that so that can be a game on her 1.00

00:59:06.640 part and she can be provoking that response and she can be playing the same manipulative game that

00:59:11.480 you're playing although in the sexual situation it's less likely for women to do that because 1.00

00:59:16.540 they pay a much higher cost for sex and so in that particular domain they're less likely women 0.99

00:59:24.520 are less likely to engage in short-term mating strategies because the cost for them is way way 1.00

00:59:29.520 higher that doesn't mean that women aren't characterized by their own set of proclivities 0.95

00:59:33.960 and temptations but they vary with sex imagine the couple goes dancing right now and the 0.98

00:59:43.500 woman is evaluating the man and what's she evaluating him for well let's assume for a

00:59:52.840 moment that her aim is higher and that she'd actually like to find a decent man and who is 0.69

01:00:02.580 pursuing a longer-term goal who's communally oriented who is not willing to sacrifice his

01:00:10.980 future self for his whim-predicated hedonic desires in the present well how does she evaluate that

01:00:18.020 well she's going to evaluate in the dance to some degree because one thing she's going to find out

01:00:22.720 is whether her partner has the self-control, discipline, maturity, aim 0.99

01:00:30.080 to keep his damn hands to himself. 0.98

01:00:32.800 Or at least to proceed with next-stage exploration 0.99

01:00:38.980 in a manner that's voluntary, playful, awake, wise, cautious,

01:00:46.240 and not too precipitous.

01:00:48.680 and that's all being evaluated in the exchange of movements that characterizes a dance and all of

01:00:55.820 that's a reflection of it's an attempt to use the interaction of the moment to assess the

01:01:04.380 nature of the spirit that characterizes the people in the dance that's what we're doing when we

01:01:13.080 try to get to know each other can i trust you that's really what i'm trying to figure out

01:01:18.520 can i trust you can we play together reciprocally and productively across a long span of time

01:01:25.640 right are you mature enough to take your turn at bat and then to give me mine right to dance in this

01:01:33.120 way that's mutually beneficial across time particularly relevant if you want to establish

01:01:37.480 a marriage because it's an infinitely repeating game that at least has to be stable and with

01:01:45.660 god's grace you might say can be a game that improves as it's played which is the ideal

01:01:51.560 situation that's the ideal friendships the ideal relationship if that's the sort of relationship

01:01:57.340 you want that aim is going to dominate your patterns of attention and action right from

01:02:02.260 the beginning and when people are evaluating each other for first impressions they're trying

01:02:09.080 to get a snapshot of the person's character your character is your aim across time

01:02:13.300 that's a good way of thinking about it we really want to know what someone's aim is across time

01:02:20.040 because that's how we understand them that's how we evaluate them that's also how we understand

01:02:25.280 ourself when you go watch a movie what you're seeing is the revelation of the character's aim

01:02:32.840 across time right so you see the person in a variety of different situations in a variety

01:02:38.300 of different snapshots of aim and you infer from that their overarching aim is he a good guy or a

01:02:45.720 bad guy that's the evaluation you're making let's say in the typical movie is this a hero or a

01:02:50.540 villain and you extract that realization by watching how his character manifests itself

01:02:57.560 in different situations his patterns of attention his patterns of action and you do that

01:03:02.040 you might say you do that

01:03:07.380 so you can figure out who to cheer for

01:03:09.640 but that bears

01:03:11.700 examination too because cheer for

01:03:13.500 means something like admire

01:03:14.820 you admire the hero

01:03:16.960 if your head's screwed on straight in a movie

01:03:19.620 admire

01:03:23.120 what do you do with someone

01:03:25.480 you admire

01:03:26.080 admiration is the

01:03:28.740 instinct to imitate

01:03:30.920 and so if you go see a movie and you watch the hero and you realize he's a hero and

01:03:35.860 he makes himself manifest on the screen as a hero and you admire that pattern that's an impetus to

01:03:41.200 imitate and what you're attempting to do this is why you want to go to the movie to begin with is

01:03:45.280 you want to figure out how to embody that spirit that's what fiction does fiction presents you with

01:03:50.580 a sequence of spirits to embody.

01:03:54.580 And the dramatist characterizes the aim of the hero.

01:04:01.780 What's the aim of the hero?

01:04:05.000 That's the question that the stories of the Bible are trying to tell.

01:04:14.040 What's the characterization of the proper aim?

01:04:17.320 i outlined already the nature of the improper aim let's say just in relationship to the date

01:04:23.400 what might be the proper aim

01:04:27.420 we could start with something that's essentially indistinguishable from maturity

01:04:35.000 okay so when you're a toddler an infant you your mode of being in the world is very

01:04:45.060 instinctively predicated you know this if you have two-year-olds because two-year-olds are

01:04:48.700 fascinating creatures because they're they're sort of all in every moment they're exciting to be

01:04:53.680 around although it's quite tiring they're unbelievably happy when they're happy one of

01:05:01.540 the things that was painful about being a parent was i found myself stopping my children from being

01:05:08.040 so damned happy all the time why because they run around and they're really noisy and they cause all

01:05:14.780 sorts of trouble and they exhaust themselves and they get hurt and so you're always calming them 0.92

01:05:18.220 down it's like don't be quite that happy right and positive emotion is associated with impulsivity

01:05:25.000 and so it actually does need to be not so much inhibited that's not the right that's not the

01:05:30.620 right approach regulate it regulated in relationship to what well a child might impulsively grab the

01:05:38.400 spoon from like say a two-year-old got a two-year-old child and a one-year-old child and

01:05:42.600 and the two-year-old impulsively grabs the spoon from the one-year-old.

01:05:45.760 And they do that in a fit of enthusiasm, but it's not a good strategy,

01:05:48.800 because if you grab other people's stuff, they don't like you.

01:05:53.500 And so it's a bad long-term strategy.

01:05:55.660 And so one of the things you're doing with your kids is you're telling them,

01:05:58.700 don't let your momentary enthusiasms motivate you to act in a manner

01:06:05.140 that other people find undesirable.

01:06:08.520 Well, why is that arbitrary?

01:06:10.120 It's like, not if you want them to have friends.

01:06:12.600 right? Because the definition, having a friend, means that you've entered into a reciprocal

01:06:17.360 relationship, right? A child, children actually can't really have friends until they're about

01:06:21.460 three. And the reason for that is they're actually not, you know, it varies to some degree, but

01:06:26.060 the reason for that is they're actually not capable of reciprocity until they're three.

01:06:30.760 They can't take turns. You can put two-year-olds together in a room, and if you're not paying

01:06:35.500 attention, you think they're playing together, but they're not. They're playing side by side.

01:06:39.060 each child is playing their own game when a child hits the age of three they can start what what

01:06:45.240 three-year-olds will do like a boy and a girl let's say they'll get together and they'll have

01:06:49.840 a little negotiation like you have with your wife all the time about how to play house and

01:06:56.940 the boy will ask the girl or vice versa do you want to play house and that's the first invitation 0.57

01:07:01.840 and in order for the play to occur the answer has to be yes it has to be voluntary children who force

01:07:08.400 other children to play their games don't have friends they're just bullies and they're not

01:07:13.740 popular and it's not a good strategy and it's not a good strategy because it doesn't work out very

01:07:18.020 well for the bullies there's no reciprocity in it it won't sustain itself the other kids will

01:07:24.440 try to get away and if your kid is a bullying is an impulsive bully adults won't have anything to

01:07:32.200 do with him either and then he won't learn anything because adults you know they know

01:07:35.720 things that's what makes them adults and if the adults around your child don't like your child

01:07:40.940 it's like your child's in for a dismal time and so they have to children have to learn to integrate

01:07:46.560 their impulses in a manner that allows for the expression of those instincts in accordance with

01:07:57.000 reciprocity with other people and in relationship to the long term you can't do something that you

01:08:04.820 want today that's going to cost you tomorrow you can't do that all the time because you end up 0.96

01:08:09.140 paying doing nothing but paying tomorrow for your for today's idiocy you know that sort of defines 0.99

01:08:14.460 teenagehood in some ways right teenagehood is the state of paying today for yesterday's idiocies 0.99

01:08:19.960 and hopefully as you mature you stop doing that right and there's a sacrifice in that you sacrifice

01:08:26.160 your immaturity and there's there's no real difference between that and cortical maturation

01:08:30.460 psychophysiologically speaking so as you mature the newer and more sophisticated parts of your

01:08:42.400 brain mature the parts of your brain that are capable of regulating your behavior in relationship

01:08:48.900 to other people your friends your family the broader community all of those things and also

01:08:54.720 regulating what you do now in relationship to what you need to do tomorrow and next week and

01:08:59.820 next month the next year and five years down the road and you might say in some ways the more mature

01:09:04.920 you are the longer a span of time across which you calculate the consequences of your behavior

01:09:11.240 and the broader the range of people across which you calculate your impact and so you know if you're

01:09:18.200 starting the process of maturation you know maybe you get yourself to the point where you can plan

01:09:22.780 a week ahead and you can take care of yourself and maybe if you push it and you mature further

01:09:28.360 then you can plan a year ahead and you can you can start to take care of your wife and maybe if

01:09:34.020 you get that together to some degree the two of you can plan five years ahead and you can take

01:09:38.600 care of your kids right and so you're you can see that you're establishing a kind of harmony

01:09:43.300 of function across multiple levels of community and time and that's a good way of defining the

01:09:50.840 target of maturation the okay now imagine you're back in the date and you decide that

01:10:00.300 you're tired of being alone you're looking for someone to what to what let's let's say your aim

01:10:07.580 is high so what are you looking for now because your aim is high you're looking for someone to

01:10:11.880 love and vice versa and so what does it mean to love someone well it means to it means to care

01:10:19.160 for them it doesn't mean to protect them and make them secure precisely because that's not good

01:10:23.440 enough if you love someone you care for them you offer them security and predictability you're

01:10:29.920 honest with them but you also encourage them and you can see the love that you might have for a

01:10:34.580 child if it's optimized is there's a certain amount of protection that goes along with that

01:10:38.340 because children need a certain amount of shelter but a fair bit of that is you know get the hell

01:10:45.360 out there get out there in the world and push yourself and develop yourself and dance on the

01:10:49.980 edge so that you become who you can become and it's the balance of those two things that's sort

01:10:54.900 of the balance of the maternal and the paternal by the way that balance between security and

01:10:59.420 encouragement that's like the essence of love that's a good way of thinking about it

01:11:03.160 that's one of the characterizations of god in the old and new testament

01:11:08.760 right so you could think about that as a spirit that's like the spirit we talked about already

01:11:15.120 Except on the other side of the universe, so to speak

01:11:17.280 That you could invite in and have possess you

01:11:19.760 Right?

01:11:21.220 And that's what you're called upon to do

01:11:22.880 That's the essence

01:11:24.400 That's one of the ways that the essence

01:11:27.120 Of religious practice can be conceptualized

01:11:29.300 How

01:11:30.860 So you're in your

01:11:33.140 You're at your date and you decide that you

01:11:35.020 Want to find someone to love

01:11:36.200 And then that directs your actions

01:11:38.680 And your attention because now at the date

01:11:41.420 The frame of reference

01:11:43.080 That you're using to

01:11:44.320 elicit the words you speak

01:11:46.980 and the glances you take

01:11:48.360 and the pattern of dancing

01:11:50.180 the pattern of attention is that

01:11:52.060 this could be someone

01:11:54.560 I could love

01:11:55.220 well that's going to be a very different date

01:11:58.680 now obviously

01:11:59.860 if you're wise

01:12:04.380 that initial investigation

01:12:06.540 is tentative

01:12:07.640 and you look for

01:12:09.840 a dance like response

01:12:12.260 And the possibility of that love expands as the relationship develops.

01:12:19.880 But it's important to get the aim right at the beginning.

01:12:26.020 That's why this is a leap.

01:12:28.340 Maybe it's worth making now.

01:12:30.100 There's an insistence in the biblical corpus that the firstborn is to be sacrificed to God. 0.94

01:12:35.600 Right? Dedicated to God. 0.71

01:12:37.380 Why?

01:12:37.800 Well, because how you establish your aim determines how things go.

01:12:43.520 Right.

01:12:44.220 And so when you undertake something, if you want to do it properly,

01:12:47.720 you aim at what's highest right at the beginning.

01:12:52.700 Right.

01:12:53.840 Right.

01:12:54.520 What's highest?

01:12:55.440 Well, one of the ways we characterize this,

01:12:58.900 you know, if the short-term mating strategy that's associated with the dark tetrad

01:13:04.500 that is, exploitation for narrowly self-centered hedonic purposes,

01:13:10.740 then love would be the opposite of that.

01:13:13.820 It's something, obviously, in and of itself.

01:13:16.060 We talked about that a little bit.

01:13:19.000 Security, predictability, an honest relationship,

01:13:22.760 honest words, forthright actions, no deception, encouragement.

01:13:28.640 And, you know, if you were aiming high,

01:13:31.720 you'd think, if you could stand yourself,

01:13:34.500 That's what you'd want for yourself, right?

01:13:36.940 So it's funny because you might think that if you are doing nothing but manipulating someone to get them to crawl in bed with you as soon as possible, you're being selfish.

01:13:50.220 But it's a very strange use of the word self because it's not any better for you than it is for them.

01:13:57.040 If you were being properly selfish, you'd search with every glance for everything that was best for you, as well as for them.

01:14:07.020 And that's a real optimization.

01:14:10.060 Aiming up and treating the other person as if they're you.

01:14:14.560 Right.

01:14:15.340 That's the great commandment to do both of those.

01:14:18.280 That's the commandment that Christ posits as the source of the Ten Commandments that are handed to Moses themselves.

01:14:26.160 right upward aim radical reciprocity right and that's the opposite of the spirit of

01:14:34.260 bitter exploitation and that's operating in the background while you're at the date too as it is

01:14:40.940 operating in the background with everything you do in every word you utter and that's the

01:14:46.880 underlying religious landscape now that spirit that aims up i'll characterize it some other ways

01:14:53.620 it's the spirit towards which proper sacrifice is directed these are definitions that's what

01:15:03.760 happens in the story of cain and abel abel offers his sacrifices upward well if you're going to

01:15:09.580 establish a long-term beneficial reciprocal relationship with someone you love you have to

01:15:17.320 offer what's best in order to manage that and you have to sacrifice everything that interferes to

01:15:23.340 pursue that goal that's also why there's such emphasis in on sacrifice in the biblical corpus

01:15:29.380 is because there's no difference between sacrifice and work and the work you engage in towards an end

01:15:37.120 is the sacrifices that you make in relation to that aim and that's the pattern of your life

01:15:42.020 human life is sacrificial because we work there's no difference between work and sacrifice

01:15:47.840 right work is the sacrifice of the moment to the community and the future

01:15:52.080 right right so what's the highest form of sacrifice well that's the other mystery that

01:15:57.280 the biblical stories attempt to unfold in the final analysis the offering is child and self

01:16:04.140 right that's why abraham is called upon to sacrifice his son everything is to be given

01:16:09.760 up to what's highest and the pattern of the crucifixion is self-sacrifice and the crucifixion

01:16:15.120 itself is the combination of the sacrifice of son and self right it's an exemplification of

01:16:21.220 the highest conceivable form of sacrifice and what does it represent it means everything is

01:16:28.220 to be offered up in service to what's properly highest that's the core of community that's why

01:16:34.700 in town based on the european model which is in turn based on the judeo-christian model

01:16:43.020 you have a cathedral at the center of the town or church in the shape of a cross

01:16:47.720 right that's the place of self-sacrifice the cross there's an altar in the church and the

01:16:53.600 altar is the place of sacrifice why because community is founded on sacrifice right and

01:17:00.820 then the question is what's the highest form of sacrifice well we walked through that already

01:17:04.640 it's the willingness to offer your best well what's the core of your best everything you are

01:17:10.660 right right and that's the what does that mean a society that's pro that's

01:17:20.040 predicated on the spirit of voluntary self-sacrifice does not require a tyrant

01:17:26.400 to govern itself right that's something to know and so one of the things you

01:17:33.640 might ask yourself when the tyrants looming like now is to what degree do you make manifest the

01:17:44.320 sacrifice that no longer no longer requires the hand of the tyrant and that's literally the

01:17:50.720 sacrifice of everything right that's the willingness it's very straightforward all the

01:17:55.700 responsibility that you do not take upon yourself will be taken from you by tyrants and used against

01:18:02.380 you right in your country i'm a canadian i've watched your country a lot your country knew

01:18:08.280 this better than any country that's ever been i would say the reason that you have been so

01:18:13.080 stunningly free and prosperous for so long even though that's threatened now is because

01:18:18.140 your country was predicated on that sacrificial responsibility right and you weren't

01:18:26.180 inhabitants of the land of Cain

01:18:29.520 because one of the things that's remarkable about your country

01:18:32.700 and I've been in many countries

01:18:34.240 is that you people actually admire genuine success

01:18:39.140 now there's variability in that

01:18:41.380 there's no shortage of resentment even in your culture

01:18:43.620 but all things considered

01:18:45.140 this was the shining city on the hill

01:18:48.140 where the spirit of Abel was celebrated

01:18:51.780 right, right, and look what happened

01:18:55.180 look at the miracles that took place as a consequence of that right the freest and richest

01:19:01.020 and fairest nation that was ever established established not on the basis of the rights that

01:19:07.200 every fool now clamors to have re what would you say respected and regarded but on the

01:19:15.160 responsibilities that made the citizens of the united states neither slaves nor tyrants 0.95

01:19:21.380 right and that's a reflection and we'll stop with this this is another characterization of god

01:19:27.200 in the in the opening chapters of genesis god is presented as the spirit of logos that broods upon

01:19:35.680 the waters prior to the emergence of the order that's good these waters it's a mystery because

01:19:44.260 the waters are there before creation occurs and so a critical reader will be stumped by the order

01:19:50.720 of affairs but water in the biblical context in the initial act of creation it isn't water in the

01:19:59.640 sense that we understand water now the word is actually tohu vabohu and then the hebrew that

01:20:05.880 word means something like confusion and possibility right and it's it's presented as water because

01:20:13.820 possibility is deep like water is deep and possibility gives rise to form like water bears

01:20:22.140 form right and water out of water life emerges and out of possibility creation emerges and what

01:20:32.100 do i mean by that possibility is what you confront when you wake up in the morning

01:20:36.120 it's what you can wrestle into the shape of the world as a consequence of your decisions during

01:20:42.960 the day the logos that inhabits you which is the spirit that's made in the image of god is the

01:20:49.180 consciousness within you that wrestles like god himself at the beginning of time with possibility

01:20:55.460 and brings forth order in consequence the order that's good if the aim is upward if the aim is

01:21:02.860 towards love and the effort is undertaken in the spirit of truth the order created is good or very

01:21:09.260 good that's what you do if you're a good father in the confines of your home you establish a

01:21:13.760 little walled garden that's what paradise is a walled garden right where everyone a walled garden

01:21:20.860 that keeps everyone secure and encourages them to the point where they can play forever so to speak

01:21:29.400 the same idea is walking with god there's an insistence in genesis 1 that human beings are

01:21:36.400 made in the image of that creator and there's an insistence that that creative spirit is

01:21:45.100 the same spirit that bears the cross of catastrophe up the hill of suffering

01:21:53.140 and what does that mean it means that insofar as you bear the responsibility for the world

01:21:59.000 on your shoulders that you're participating as an image of god in the creation of the order

01:22:05.080 that's good that's what that all means right and the idea that you have intrinsic value which is

01:22:11.920 the idea that your society is predicated upon right made in the image of god with inviolable

01:22:18.160 rights and responsibilities that transcend even the state this isn't a gift from the government

01:22:23.400 it's not a gift from other people it's a reflection of your intrinsic nature why

01:22:28.340 because your aim is the

01:22:33.580 because the world depends on your aim

01:22:37.080 that's why

01:22:38.840 that's true

01:22:40.200 and that's a terrible thing to know

01:22:43.080 and now you know it

01:22:44.540 thank you very much

01:22:58.340 Well, thank you for putting up with that.

01:23:06.580 All right, Mick.

01:23:08.460 Away we go.

01:23:18.120 Is it working now?

01:23:19.360 Yep.

01:23:19.480 It's working now.

01:23:22.060 Thanks for the claps.

01:23:24.040 The two people.

01:23:24.840 oh thanks that's not that i didn't mean to ask for that accidentally

01:23:34.040 i didn't know if i get from the restaurant to heaven and hell and back yeah

01:23:39.020 yeah every day basically okay i've chosen some questions we have i have been told we have 17

01:23:52.380 minutes so we're going to get through as many questions as we can which knowing dad will be one

01:23:57.600 okay uh so a bunch of people wanted this question and i'm curious about it too

01:24:18.060 Is there something specific that you've wrestled with God about, something that comes to mind?

01:24:35.460 Well, yes. It's a hard question to answer because it's true all the time.

01:24:43.060 you know i mean one thing i do for example when i'm speaking on stage is

01:24:50.200 weigh the words you know so what's the aim

01:24:57.120 well my aim in part is to get somewhere further right further in my investigation

01:25:05.060 because it's a communal enterprise my aim is also to take everybody along with me

01:25:10.620 and that's a challenge so that's ridiculously entertaining it's it's it's it's like juggling

01:25:18.240 plates or it's more like juggling fire really but and so that's a wrestling match you can you

01:25:27.320 can come to learn that you wrestle with God when you speak your aim with your words your words are

01:25:37.260 arrows that should be striking the center of the target and you can feel that you can and you can

01:25:44.860 really learn to you can really learn to feel that the words that are true put the foundation that

01:25:52.220 is firm under your feet the words that are false fragment you and and allow you to be washed away

01:26:00.240 when the storms come and you can feel that with every word it's a terrifying thing to learn

01:26:05.700 because the first thing you learn

01:26:07.400 is that almost everything you say is a lie.

01:26:09.860 And that's a terrifying thing to learn.

01:26:13.520 When God banishes,

01:26:18.640 no, when God bars the way to Adam and Eve,

01:26:24.480 bars the way to paradise from Adam and Eve,

01:26:29.280 that story is often interpreted

01:26:31.040 as God banishing Adam and Eve because of their sin.

01:26:33.700 But that's not exactly right, you see.

01:26:35.700 That's not exactly right.

01:26:38.120 Adam and Eve are outside paradise because of their pride.

01:26:41.820 They bit off more than they could chew.

01:26:44.740 And now they're alienated from God, because pride alienates people from God.

01:26:50.480 Now, there's a pathway back to God, so to speak,

01:26:53.300 pathway back to the paradise, back to the kingdom of heaven.

01:26:56.480 That's another way of thinking about it. 0.73

01:26:58.880 But the pathway is barred by a sword that, by terrible monsters, cherubim,

01:27:04.140 and by a sword that is on fire that turns every which way.

01:27:10.160 Well, why?

01:27:12.000 Well, what's a sword that turns every which way?

01:27:14.660 Well, it's a blade.

01:27:15.720 And what does a blade do?

01:27:16.720 Well, a blade slices and cuts.

01:27:19.000 And what does something on fire do?

01:27:21.500 It burns.

01:27:22.600 And so what does a burning blade do?

01:27:25.140 It cuts and burns.

01:27:26.320 And what does a burning blade that turns every which way do?

01:27:30.240 It cuts and burns everything away.

01:27:34.140 what do you mean everything everything not fit to be in paradise

01:27:38.420 so you pay attention to your words and you learn 95 of what you say is a lie

01:27:45.120 all that has to go and so that's a terrible thing to understand

01:27:50.460 the alternative is worse because the pathway to hell is paved with lies

01:27:59.000 and hell itself is the dominion of the lie

01:28:02.700 and you might say well i don't believe that

01:28:06.180 it's like first of all that's only because you don't have any idea what you're talking about

01:28:10.480 and second you can make the case in a manner that's not the least theological

01:28:16.900 a totalitarian state isn't freedom-loving innocence striving toward the light

01:28:23.900 dominated by the brute hitler or stalin

01:28:26.700 one man can't control 20 million people a totalitarian state is the state that exists

01:28:33.080 when every single person in the state bar none lies about absolutely everything

01:28:40.300 all the time to themselves and to everyone else and that's hell and if that's not hell enough

01:28:49.160 for you it's like well you know have it your way have it your way you know when god comes to abraham

01:28:58.720 and tells him that he's going to destroy sodom and gomorrah he tells abraham that if well abraham

01:29:06.660 makes a bargain with god and he says well i don't think you should destroy the the cities regardless

01:29:13.980 of their sin and god says yeah i think they think it's time to lay some waste and abraham says what

01:29:22.100 if there's innocent people in the city and god says well yeah i don't think there is and abraham

01:29:27.760 says well what if i find 40 and god says hey 40 no problem if you can find 40 i'll spare the city

01:29:36.000 And Abraham, who's kind of pushy, says, well, how about 30?

01:29:41.040 And God says, okay.

01:29:45.220 And I think Abraham bargains him down to 10.

01:29:48.940 If there's 10 people who tell the truth in the city, then it'll escape destruction.

01:29:56.220 Well, what does that story mean?

01:29:57.820 You're called upon to be one of the 10.

01:30:00.240 Right, that's what that story means.

01:30:02.240 It means more than that.

01:30:03.360 it means if there's 10 people in a city who still tell the truth that's enough to save the city from

01:30:12.380 destruction right that's how important it is to say what you have to say you want that hammered

01:30:18.680 home you look at the story of jonah jonah is called upon by god to utter the words of the

01:30:23.760 of truth that will redeem the city of his enemies nineveh and job jonah thinks yeah i don't think

01:30:30.000 so i'm not going to the city of my enemies 150 000 of them to tell them god is outraged and that

01:30:36.800 they're in trouble i just assume they were wiped out anyways and there's 150 000 people 150 000

01:30:43.840 of them like one of me so he does what any sensible person would do hypothetically and

01:30:50.360 makes tracks in the opposite direction jumps on a boat and gets the hell out of there and

01:30:55.880 unfortunately god is not so easily thwarted and the ship is enveloped by a storm and what that

01:31:04.020 means is that if you run away when you have something to say then the ship that bears you

01:31:09.340 will be threatened that's what that means and so the sailors are concerned about this occurrence and

01:31:17.040 they decide there's probably someone on board who isn't right with their god and they cast lots and

01:31:22.840 they choose Jonah as the victim of interrogation and he's asleep because that's what people do

01:31:29.120 when they flee from their conscience is they fall into unconsciousness so that they don't have to

01:31:34.360 contend with the reality of their refusal and they wake him up and they say well the ship's in peril

01:31:40.660 and the waves are rising and we think maybe you're not exactly right with your God and

01:31:45.300 Jonah says matter of fact I was told to do something and that's the voice of conscience

01:31:51.200 by the way and and i didn't and this the sailors say well who's your god because they're thinking

01:31:59.620 it's like god of the local cavern or something and jonah says well he created the heavens and

01:32:06.660 the earth and the sailors think well you probably shouldn't piss him off then and

01:32:13.000 he tells them to throw them throw them overboard because he knows there's no hope and the sailors

01:32:19.980 try mightily to reach the shore but they can't because god's not so easily thwarted so they

01:32:26.660 throw joan overboard and you know the story could end there because what that story means is that

01:32:32.820 if you flee from the dictates of your conscience if you refuse to bring forth the words that you're

01:32:38.960 called upon to say then you put the ship of state in peril and you'll end up in and your own life

01:32:46.760 will end up threatened and you might think well that's pretty damn dismal it's like that's not

01:32:52.440 nearly bad enough that isn't even that's just where it starts because the beast from hell itself

01:32:59.980 comes up and takes jonah in its jaws and pulls him down to the bottom of things where he's

01:33:04.280 where he lies for three days right in hell because that's the next thing that happens

01:33:11.000 if you're quiet when you're called upon to speak, right?

01:33:16.200 And so, no, we'll leave it at that.

01:33:32.580 Okay, we got two in.

01:33:41.000 How do you forgive someone that's wronged you greatly

01:33:47.520 without becoming a martyr and continuing to let them

01:33:50.200 have a negative impact on your life?

01:33:56.600 Well, forgiveness is...

01:33:59.520 Forgiveness is a very complicated matter.

01:34:05.940 You know, if you're pursuing the religious path,

01:34:11.000 in the traditional Judeo-Christian manner,

01:34:15.980 when you ask God for forgiveness,

01:34:18.000 you confess, repent, and atone.

01:34:24.500 Right? What does confess mean?

01:34:26.260 Well, look, if you and I have had a scrap about something,

01:34:29.520 and I feel betrayed,

01:34:30.980 and I want to set things right,

01:34:33.580 I want to find out, like,

01:34:34.860 well, what's the story here?

01:34:37.620 What happened?

01:34:38.800 And if I have any sense,

01:34:40.620 i'm going to confess my part in it too right because if there's something that's standing

01:34:44.080 between us it'd be convenient if it was just you but there's a reasonable probability well there's

01:34:51.280 some probability that it was just me right and if i don't want to replicate the mistake i want might

01:34:56.460 want to find that out it's a very useful thing to know if you're fighting with your wife or your

01:34:59.940 husband it's like well it's probably them but it might be you and so why bother finding out well 0.97

01:35:08.320 because then you don't have to be stupid again right so you want to confess here's what i think 0.96

01:35:15.620 happened and you know if you're if you have a real dispute with someone and they just tell you 0.99

01:35:19.620 exactly what happened like honestly you're 80 of the way to repairing the relationship right there

01:35:27.080 like often what you want to know from someone is do they at least understand what the hell happened

01:35:33.000 right and then and but but then let's assume that i don't know we have a scrap and we decide it's

01:35:40.200 like 60 you and 40 me and so then what do we do it's like well i figure out what i have to offer

01:35:46.580 you to i have to indicate that i'm sorry that's the repentance then i have to atone for it it's

01:35:53.160 like well what what do i need to do to set things right and that's kind of a two-pronged issue it's

01:35:57.120 like what do i have to do so i feel i can forgive myself right because you you hold yourself

01:36:02.780 accountable if you have any sense and then i have to figure out well what do you need so that we can

01:36:07.340 put this behind us and then we have to negotiate that and then you put it behind you and then you

01:36:13.160 have a friend instead of an enemy and that's a good deal unless you want to collect enemies and

01:36:17.100 that's that's not wise one enemy is a lot of enemies but you know five or six and you're pretty

01:36:23.400 much done and so that's the process of forgiveness it's very very complicated now you might say well

01:36:31.480 someone did me wrong long ago and i need to let go that's that's different that's a different i

01:36:38.640 mean that's that's you you can't have the repentance or the atonement then on the part

01:36:44.180 of that person maybe they're no longer alive for example then usually what you have to do is

01:36:48.500 well you have to figure out what you contributed to it the same way that you would if you were

01:36:52.880 actually discussing it with someone and then you have to understand what it was that brings

01:37:00.600 of a state of affairs like that about so that when you move forward into the future you're not

01:37:05.660 likely to fall prey to the same circumstance because otherwise it'll it'll just haunt you

01:37:11.360 it haunts you partly because you're set up so that once you fall into a pit once

01:37:16.500 anytime you approach the territory defined by that pit you're going to be apprehensive

01:37:22.120 if you haven't figured out a way of navigating around that obstacle the obstacle signals threat

01:37:28.520 to you forever forever it'll never go away it'll never go away and so you can clean all that up but

01:37:35.540 you have to do a very careful analysis i'll give you an example of that so often soldiers who

01:37:42.260 suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder it's always often conceptualized by the way as a severe

01:37:47.280 moral injury they often develop ptsd because not because of something terrible that happened to

01:37:53.020 them but because of something terrible they saw themselves do right because you can be a naive

01:38:00.060 you know corn-fed iowan and end up in a foreign land in a very dreadful circumstance and watch

01:38:05.600 yourself do something absolutely ungodly and really enjoy it and then you'll understand very

01:38:11.880 rapidly that you know absolutely nothing about yourself or the depth of the soul or the nature

01:38:16.640 of human beings and your attempt to live forward in that state of ignorance will be indistinguishable

01:38:25.000 from trauma and then you might say well how do you recover from that and the answer is

01:38:29.860 you develop a philosophy of evil that's as deep as your sin that's how yeah and then maybe you

01:38:37.040 can forgive yourself because you can see your capacity for the commission of sadistic atrocity

01:38:43.720 you know in the light of the eternal battle between good and evil that characterizes the

01:38:49.340 cosmic landscape it's something like that you know and the atheist types think well no it's like

01:38:55.300 if you think that you've never dealt with someone who's had a severe moral injury because

01:39:02.080 if you ever have you'll find out very soon that the landscape of good and evil is a lot more real

01:39:07.360 than you might think and if you don't know that you should be on your knees every second of your

01:39:12.400 bloody life thanking god that that terrible knowledge has not been yet revealed to you 0.97

01:39:17.440 and yeah that's for sure

01:39:20.400 one more sure even though i was told not to do that okay okay i'll be quick okay find a quick

01:39:34.580 one if you can okay this is kind of a cute one we'll see if we can keep it cute

01:39:39.260 my wife and i are having our first kid in four weeks congratulations neither of us have a

01:39:47.800 relationship with god but want to raise our kids in church please give your advice

01:39:51.720 oh you can do a good thing badly yeah i mean that i mean that look look it's very much in keeping

01:40:01.440 with what we talked about tonight it's it be regardless of the state of your religious belief

01:40:07.280 or lack thereof you can make the decision to place your child in a situation where he or she

01:40:13.800 can learn the fundamental stories of our culture and you can't be you can't be a citizen of the

01:40:22.380 west without knowing those fundamental stories those are the same thing like inhabiting that

01:40:28.000 narrative world and being a citizen of the west those are the same thing and so you can provide

01:40:34.820 them with that and every single person

01:40:36.900 and this will include your own children

01:40:38.740 have to wrestle

01:40:40.940 with God

01:40:41.560 within the confines

01:40:44.900 of their own soul and you can

01:40:46.640 facilitate that process by

01:40:48.440 educating them in the

01:40:51.000 traditions of your people

01:40:52.960 so to speak and

01:40:54.740 so go to church and

01:40:58.580 listen and see

01:41:02.820 if you can learn and

01:41:04.060 participate in the community and if the church isn't everything you think it

01:41:10.280 could or should be then you can work to rectify that and that's a useful thing to do too and

01:41:17.940 you know i didn't bring my kids to church when they were kids and that was a mistake

01:41:24.800 there was one time we went to church mom brought us to church

01:41:27.840 and we went to a church in toronto and they're all woke they're really woke now but this was

01:41:36.040 like 15 years ago i think i was in grade six and they started the lord's prayer with our mother

01:41:40.720 father who art in heaven and we just got up and left now that was our that was our experience

01:41:46.420 with church growing up right right well and you know you could say too and and i certainly would

01:41:53.320 have been likely to think that way at that time that if you go to a church and it's woke then you

01:41:58.240 should leave and that might be the case unless they're all like that in which case you're in

01:42:03.080 some trouble but the alternative strategy is to take back the territory right and if you don't

01:42:12.700 well all of you all of you have to think about this in relationship to your duty to your community

01:42:19.780 Because part of the reason that the woke mob has prevailed is because the responsible people abdicated their responsibility.

01:42:31.500 And so why are the school boards full of woke, of confused woke activists?

01:42:42.380 Well, because they took the job.

01:42:46.400 And so there you have it.

01:42:48.720 And if you want to do something about that, think, what should be done?

01:42:51.760 It's like, take the job, right?

01:42:55.000 And so, and that's the only way out of this mess.

01:42:58.260 So, it's the same on the church front.

01:43:03.640 You know, you have a responsibility to rebuild.

01:43:08.000 Well, what are you going to do?

01:43:08.780 You're either going to rebuild the damaged institutions of your community,

01:43:11.540 or you're going to abandon them.

01:43:13.160 Those are your options.

01:43:14.420 and if you abandon them

01:43:16.600 well then what?

01:43:20.400 then what do you have?

01:43:22.120 you're in the desert then

01:43:23.180 and the idol worshippers 0.99

01:43:26.280 come calling pretty quickly

01:43:27.760 when you're lost in the desert

01:43:29.060 as you can see if you look

01:43:31.680 and on that cheery note

01:43:34.260 thank you everyone

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The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - August 09, 2026

Why Your Resentment Is a Choice

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