The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 12 Rules Thousand Oaks: Truth in Speech, and Meaning

Episode Date: April 28, 2019

For this episode, we’re presenting Jordan’s lecture at the Civic Arts Plaza in Thousand Oaks, California on June 30, 2018.

Welcome to season 2, episode 6 of the Jordan B Peterson Podcast. I'm Michaela Peterson, Doctor Peterson's daughter and collaborator. Today, we're presenting Dad's lecture at the Civic Arts Plaza in Thousand Oaks, California, recorded on June 30, 2018. He discussed thinking as simulation of action, thinking as the ability to produce new avatars of the many possible subpersonalities that you could act out in the world, so that you can embody those which might be useful and productive, and let the ones that come to a dismal end in imagination fade away, never to appear in the real world.

He talked about thinking as tool production and use, making the case that clarity of thought, equivalent to the creation of well-honed tools, prepares people for a less sorrow-ridden and more meaningful and productive life. So Dad, what's been going on with you this week? Well, I was in New York earlier and I had a chance to talk to Ignat Sozhenitsyn, whose Alexander Sozhenitsyn's son and Sozhenitsyn's son, and Sozhenitsyn, of course, is the author of the famous book, The Gulag Archipelago. I wrote a forward to that book, the Abridged version, the 50th anniversary of the Abridged version, and the 100th anniversary of

the sentenary of Sozhenitsyn's birth, and I recorded the audio version of that forward for the audiobook in New York. But I also had a chance to talk to Ignat about his experiences with his father, his experiences working on his books, the effect that living in the shadow of his father and that book is had on his life and on some of the historical consequences of the publication of the Goulogarchipelago. That'll all be additional material associated with the audio version of the abridged version of the Goulogarchipelago. So I'm hoping that that's all very useful. I also spent a lot of time this week really

doing the second edit before I hand this to my editors, the second edit of rules 21, 22 and 23 that will be included in my next book, which will be a compilation of another 12 rules that title and all of that has yet to be announced. The rules are 21, if old memory still make you cry, write them down carefully and completely. And that's a description of the necessity of keeping up with the trouble from your past. If you run into trouble in your past, that means that you took a wrong turn in some sense. Even if it was someone else's fault, you ended up in a territory that you shouldn't have been in, and it's necessary to explain to yourself exactly how that happened and why so that you can avoid such things in the future. That's the purpose of memory. So that's

really the main function of that chapter. Is it true that if you've had a traumatic experience, you have to wait a certain amount of time before writing it out or you can relive it? Yeah, well, the evidence I know I've suggests that if you've had a traumatic experience that you should wait at least 18 months, that's right, because all that might happen, otherwise, is that you re-traumatize yourself. These are for older memories. Rule 22 is plan and work diligently to maintain the romance in your relationship. It's a bit of more of a tongue-in-cheek and a shorter chapter, but it describes the necessity of consciously planning

and negotiating with your partner, preferably your wife or husband, although perhaps whoever you're in a long-term relationship with, so that you can maintain the romantic and sexual element of your life in a high-quality quality manner so that the probability that your relationship will maintain itself and that there will be pleasure in it and the love that you need will be heightened and maintained. And so it's a pretty practical chapter. And then 23 is be grateful, in spite of your suffering. That's kind of self-explanatory, but it's an exploration of the idea that gratitude, in particular, and

thankfulness are actually forms of courage in the face of the existential trouble that people necessarily face in life. So I also spent some time with my UK publishers discussing the impending release of the paperback version of 12 rules for life in the Penguin Market for the international English community. That doesn't include Canada and the US. The paperback will be released earlier in the UK. We're using the theme,

you have a vital role to play in the unfolding destiny of the world. What will it be? And we're hoping that the paperback will be popular among people who couldn't afford or were otherwise unwilling to purchase the hardcover book. And I like paperbacks, especially Penguin paperbacks. They have a great back catalog, wonderful back catalog. It'll be really exciting for me. I would say to have my book added to that list. I'm going to the UK in early May to a conference, first in Oxford, and then first in Oxford and then to do a publicity tour for the paperback, including a talk at the Apollo theater in London. I believe there are still some tickets left for that. They can be found at jordanbpederson.com forward slash events if you're interested in that.

I should also mention that live stream tickets for the Slavoy G-Jek debate on April 19th are also available at the same site, JordanPeterson.com forward slash events. We thought that it was worth experimenting with a live stream to see if people would like to participate in as live a manner as possible given electronic communication in a debate of that sort. And so we'll see how that goes. But if you're interested in the tickets, that's where you can get them.

When we return, dad's lecture at the Civic Arts Plaza in Thousand Oaks, California. Please welcome my father, Dr. Jordan B. Peterson. Peter's name. This is the last talk of the tour that I've been taking with my wife through the United States. We've done, there was some smattering of European cities in there too. We went to London and we went to Rick Javik, which was really very interesting. I would highly recommend going there, by the way. It's a very cool place. Anyways, we've gone to 35 cities since May 3rd,

and this is where it ends for a couple of weeks. I'm going to London again to talk to Sam Harris in Dublin and then in London, but we get a bit of a break now, and so part of this has come to an end, and it's been really remarkable. And so I thought what I would do to begin with is just reflect a little bit on what I've learned from doing this. I've learned things from doing this because I use these opportunities to speak as an opportunity to learn and you learn partly by talking, but more importantly you learn by engaging in dialogue with people. And this is an extended dialogue. You might think, well, how can you have a dialogue with a passive audience?

And the answer is, audiences aren't passive by any stretch of the imagination. First of all, you can see individual people in the audience. And you can see if you're communicating with them. And you can hear the audience if they're rustling around and coughing and making noise. Then you're not where you should be, because everyone should be sitting silent and immersed in what's going on. And you can tell when you're dealing with wrestling with ideas, if you're watching people, you can see if they're on board with the ideas.

And so, like, it really, if it's a good talk, it's a dialogue. And every time I have the chance to talk, I try to talk about, it's not, I wouldn't say different things, exactly, because it's variations on a theme, you know, and there's only so much you can know, so you can't talk about something different every night. But I use these lectures as an opportunity to hone my thinking. And the reason that I do that is because, well, most fundamentally, because you should hone your thinking. And, well, you know, it's funny, it seems obvious, like, in fact, like so many things, I say, I think are quite obvious, but they don't seem to be

obvious anymore, but, but, you know, I often explain why obvious things are obvious, and that's helpful to people, because, and perhaps explaining why it's useful to hone your thinking is useful. The reason you think is so that you prepare to act, and you think out what you do before you do it, if you have any sense, that's what thinking is for.

In fact, your prefrontal cortex, which is the part of your brain, that mediates voluntary thought, grew out of the motor cortex over the course of evolution. And so, animals act, and they're smart so they can act intelligently, but human beings can formulate hypothetical actions before they implement them. Well, so then, what's the implication of that? Well, you want to act stupidly?

That's the first question, is what happens if you act stupid and that's easy, easy. A bunch of things happen. You get hurt or you get anxious and people around you get hurt and anxious and you don't do things very well. sort of like the definition of not good in fact. And so then hypothetically, you could rectify that by thinking, but you'd have to think properly so then you should hone your thinking. And so that's what I use these lectures to do because I'm hoping that I can move out into the world with a more effective toolbox because thoughts are tools and you use tools to act in the world.

And so this is always what I tell my students when I'm asking them to write, because I tell my undergraduate students, my graduate students, as well, don't write things you don't believe. And I have lots of students now, and this is one of the catastrophes of the academy. I certainly saw this with my daughter's friends when she was going to a relatively, like a very left- leading university in Montreal. Her friends would talk to me from time to time and tell me that they had to write

what the professor wanted them to write, or they wouldn't get a very good grade. And the first thing I told them was, look, even if your professor is pretty ideologically addled and plenty of them are, then they have to be pretty damn far gone before they'll grade a decent essay badly because they don't agree with it. Now some of them are, then they have to be pretty damn far gone before they'll grade a decent essay badly because they don't agree with it.

Now, some of them will, but most of them still have some sense that there's something, there's something to the idea of quality, independent of, say, political content. So you have to have a pretty far gone professor before they're really going to play that game on you. But even more importantly, don't write what other people want to hear. You say, it's like, what the hell's wrong with you? Well, they think, well, why not? Why not do that? Because after all, well, you have to get your grade and you have, it's a practical issue. You have to get your grade. You have to get through the course. Why not offer what's required? And the answer to that is, well, you're trying to learn to think.

And the reason you think is so that you can act properly, and the reason you can act properly is so that you don't suffer stupidly in your life, any more than you need to, like you're going to suffer. There's no doubt about that. But maybe you could suffer somewhat less and somewhat less stupidly if you didn't forsake your own words. And you don't write down things you don't believe, and you don't say things that aren't yours to say. And the reason you don't do that is because it corrupts you. And then when you act out that corruption, then you generate little pools of hell around you and within you. And there's, you don't do that. And for students to go to a university and then think that that's what the university is demanding of them is an absolute.

It's a, I don't even know what the right word is. It's a sin. It's an intellectual sin. It's worse than that. It's a moral sin to entice students into falsifying their words for the purpose of grades. There's no excuse whatsoever for it. So because the word is a sacred thing. Applause No, it's sacred. The word is a sacred thing because suffering matters. And if you think carefully and properly and thoroughly, then you can reduce that. And maybe you can also do some good.

You can just not avoid harm. That's something, man. If you could just avoid undue harm, that would be something. But maybe if you got your words together properly, you could go out and do some positive good for you and for your family and for your community. And that's all dependent on the integrity of your word. And so every chance you have to hone the integrity of your word, you should cling to like your life depends on it because it does.

And so it's been a privilege to have these opportunities, to speak to so many people because it gives me a chance to do that. And then you think, well, why can't you just do that in the privacy of your own psyche, let's say you could just sit in back room and think, and the problem with that is, well, no, actually, there are real limitations to that, because each individual comes equipped or possessed by a set of biases, as well as being bound terribly by their own ignorance, because we're all bound by our ignorance, our blind spots and all of that, and our malevolence

for that matter. And you can't contend with that in isolation. You can contend to some degree with that in isolation, because you can sit and think. But it's much better to test your ideas out in the world against other people's biases and ignorance but also knowledge. And so then you get the best of both worlds.

You can think through your thoughts and you can hone them. And then you can provisionally test them out there in the world where you're going to have to act anyways. And if they meet a receptive audience, and especially if they meet an audience that is also willingly engaged in the process of making the ideas better, then you can have some assurance, not complete, but some assurance that you're in the right place at the right time doing the right thing. And you want to be in that place.

And well, you also want to be in that place because that's the most meaningful place to be. So that's also something. And the reason it's the most meaningful place to be is because it is the place of maximum adaptation. That's why it's so easy to get engrossed in a great conversation. And this is something I've come to realize quite deeply. You're evolved. This is how your brain functions. Your brain functions to engage you meaningfully when you're doing the right thing at the right time. And so you find a conversation particularly engaging. It's because not only are you practicing what you already know and what you have developed

expertise in, so you're sort of glaring in your acquired ability, but you're also expanding that ability outward at a rate that's optimized, and that's what gives you that sense of meaning, and that's a real thing. It's the deepest instinct that you have in some sense manifesting itself saying, you're doing everything you possibly can

to put the structures around you into the proper musical-like balance, and that's facilitating your movement through the world. And that's something I've come to realize ever more clearly. I would say over the last 30 years and I certainly would think of it as one of the most important things that I've come to realize is that that sense of meaning is not only a real thing but the most real thing. It's actually genuine, solid, it's orienting you in the world.

And rule seven is do what is meaningful and not what is expedient. And it's a riff on that theme, essentially, that you have an instinct for meaning. And it's not an epithet phenomenon of something more real. It's the most real thing. It's the thing that your brain is adapted to produce. And you can follow it. You can have faith in it. You can have faith in the meaning that manifests itself to you spontaneously. But then, rule eight says, yeah, but tell the truth

or at least don't lie. And the reason for that is that you don't want to pathologize the mechanism that guides you through life. If know, if you have an instinct, it's capable of manifesting itself as a guiding instinct. The last thing you want to do is practice to warp it. And that's what you do if you lie. If you warp your words, if you bend and twist them, especially if you do it habitually, because you build new neurological mechanisms when you develop a habit.

And that will twist and distort the manner in which the world manifests itself to you. And then you're done. Because it isn't even a matter of opinion. It's worse than that. You've actually worked the manner in which you perceive things. It's far deeper than opinion. And that becomes automatic. You won't even be able to see it. And so, well, that's why lying is a great sin, so to speak.

That's why so many religious traditions have an incredibly tight stricter against lying. Don't practice what you don't want to become. Think, well, why shouldn't I lie? I can get what I want. It's like, well, yeah, for the next minute, but as a medium to long-term strategy, it's another catastrophe.

And not only because you can no longer rely on yourself ethically, because if you lie, well then how can you trust yourself? But because you build yourself the psychic substructure of someone who's deceitful, in which case you cannot rely on yourself even when you need to. And of course, you're going to wreak havoc on the people around you as well, just as a catastrophic side consequence.

So that's also terrible. So that's what I've been using these talks for. And then one of the things that I've been thinking about, I learned a couple of things, as I said on this tour, one of them is why I figured out why you're all here. I don't mean in some cosmic sense, but you're all here in some cosmic sense to set the suffering world right.

So that's the theme that runs through my first book, Maps of Meaning, and also 12 rules for life. That's what you're here for as far as I can tell. And I think you all know that too, because when you do what you can to set the suffering right, then you've accomplished something that you can take. I wouldn't say pride in. You can take solace in, you know,

that despite the conditions of your miserable existence and all of your insufficiencies, that you are still able to stumble forward with some degree of nobility and make things less terrible than they might have been. That's something. And that does, well, look, look man, if you're a flawed creature with a proclivity towards malevolence, you should aim low. And not making anything any worse than you could have, that's a good start.

And that would be, as everyone knows. So why you're here in the more proximal sense, the question that I've been trying to figure out, because I've been trying to make sense of what's been happening around me, because I've spoken, as I said, the total number of cities now is about 52, I think, and the average audience size has been approximately this,

and this is 2,500 to 3,000 people. And so I'm thinking, what the hell's going on here? Why are you people all coming out to hear a psychology professor talk about really intellectual ideas? And I would say in some sense, obscure intellectual ideas. It's like, no one was doing this five years ago or ever. And so something's changed. And then I saw that even more, what would you say?

Curious example of this when I was in Vancouver on the 24th and 25th of this month, I was there talking to Sam Harris about the distinction between facts and values or the relationship between science and religion or the relationship between facts and stories, depends on how you carve it up. And it was a pretty intense discussion and I would say it had approximately the same level of intellectual complexity as a pretty decent PhD thesis defense in the field of psychology.

When the PhD candidate is actually really capable of defending their thesis. And so it was a little different than a PhD defense because Sam was defending his position and I was defending my position. And so there was a dual element to it, both DUAL and DUEL. And I suppose that heightened attention to some degree. But what was so interesting, well there were three things that were interesting. The first was that the event ever happened. I guess there was four.

Just the mere fact that the event happened was really quite unfathomable. The second was, we were only supposed to speak to each other for an hour, and then we were supposed to go to Q&A for an hour. And when we got into the conversation an hour in, we were right in the thick of it, let's say. And we asked the audience if they wanted to go to Q&A, if they wanted us to continue the discussion. And the overwhelming response was continue the discussion,

and we talked for two and a half hours. And so that was night one, and then we did the same thing in night two. And I thought, wow, this is really weird. It's like there's 3,000 people out here, and they're participating in a high-level intellectual discussion focusing on the fundamental nature of morality. And it's a back and forth. There's no cheap victory at hand for either of us,

because we were trying to extend our knowledge substantially. The audience was dead on board for that, and we went over time, and it worked spectacularly well. And then it worked, I mean, as an event, I'm not commenting on necessarily the quality of the discussion, although I certainly believe that I honed by arguments as a consequence of the discussion. And I think Sam felt the same way.

So that was a great success from an intellectual and, let's say, moral perspective. But I was thinking, well, what in the world's going on? Why are people coming out to these events? And I've really been thinking about that, because something strange is happening. First of all, the space for public intellectual engagement seems to be opening up. Harris is obviously capitalizing on that, so to speak,

and so am I. And I've talked to about 150,000 people now, which is a lot of people. And I'd like to, you know, maybe the narrowly egotistical part of myself, which isn't a part that I'm particularly thrilled about. And I don't think has a tremendous amount of sway over me would like to say, well, there must be

something remarkable about you. And, well, I mean, it's tempting to think that, right? It's tempting to think that. And I mean, I'm a reasonably engaging lecturer, and I've thought about a lot of things. But you have to, if you have any sense, and this is actually one thing you learn as an experimental psychologist, is you never attribute to a personality what you can attribute to a situation.

You start with a situational analysis first. It's the proper, it's the proper, what, an analytic approach. And so I say, well, I'm not going to attribute this to me, and I'm not going to attribute it to Sam, because something similar is happening to to him and there's a handful of other people including the people on the so-called intellectual dark web like Joe Rogan who's pulling in. I got to tell you Yeah, well, so that's it exactly Rogan, so I just want to throw out some numbers here because it's quite Staggering and incomprehensible really the last time I saw Rogan, I asked him, so how many downloads do you get in the

month? Joe, podcast downloads, because that's about 10 times the market of YouTube, hey? So there's YouTube, which is big, but there's podcasts, and that's like immense and invisible in some sense. 150 million podcasts downloads a month. Right? So it's more than 1.5 billion a year, you think. I think Joe Rogan is the most powerful interviewer who's ever lived, and he might be the most powerful interview

who's ever lived by an order of magnitude, and so I asked him, well, what do you think about me the most powerful interviewer that ever lived? And he said, I try not to think about it, and which, because how do you make sense out of that? So he has the same problem in some sense, perhaps on a larger scale, than I do. It's like, what the hell is going on here? And so I've really been trying to think that through because I think it's important.

Here's what I've concluded. I think that we're smarter than we thought, all of us. Or at least a large proportion of us are smarter than we thought, all of us, or at least a large proportion of us are smarter than we thought. Were smarter than our technology allowed us to understand? And so I got clued into this because Dave Rubin was interviewing Sam Harris on his show, and Sam talked about using the classic television media,

and he said, look, if he goes on CNN, say, to layout a point, and if he's a really popular guest who go on John Anderson, let's say, and the network will trip over themselves to open up space for him because they want him to come on the show, and they'll grant him six minutes. Right? And that's an overwhelming amount of time, right? It's usually 15 seconds or 30 seconds, and so then the question is, well, how smart are you when I can only communicate with you in 30 second bites

with the possibility of radical extension under extreme circumstances to six minutes? How smart, how smart am I going to sound? And how smart am I going to think you are when I have to carve my message into something that will pass through that narrow bandwidth? And the answer might be, well, I'm not going to think you are when I have to carve my message into something that will pass through that narrow bandwidth? And the answer might be, well, I'm not going to think you're very smart at all because what kind of message, what kind of complex message can I deliver when the best shot I ever

have at it is six minutes. I'm going to have to make it simple enough to fit into six minutes. And not only to fit into six minutes, but to be entertaining in the way that TV has to be. I've been on the podcast shows and I've been on TV talk shows and TV talk shows are weird. They're weird. They're way weirder than they look when you watch them because you see when you're sitting back stage with the people that are on the talk show assuming there's a panel. Everybody's got a lot of energy up because they're only children gonna have six minutes distributed across the 45 minutes

to sort of show that they're not pathetic losers, you know? And so, and then the format itself turns you into something approximating an entertainer because well, you can't just sit there and be dull and you can't get 30 seconds into a 10 minute explanation and then get cut off because you just look like a bumbling moron in that situation. And so you have to become kind of fast-ciling light and witty and with it and that produces a degeneration in that, I mean, it's better than being boring and dull, perhaps, but it

produces a degeneration in the discourse. But the technology itself imposes that on the discourse. It's Marshall McCluen, the famous Canadian intellectual from the 60s, said the medium is the message. And what he meant by that was make no mistake. The technology forces a particular kind of discourse on you. And so we've had this discourse forced on us by technology, television in particular, and it's a very narrow bandwidth discourse.

Well, all of a sudden that's gone. No bandwidth limitations. No access limitations either. Anyone can make a YouTube video and you can put it up that day. And so here's what YouTube has done, the NAT really. But in terms of, in so far as it's been now used for video, as the bandwidth of the net has increased, we can use video, we can use video and audio. Okay, so what's happened? The bandwidth requirement

is gone. Poof, Joe Rogan, three hour interviews, no problem. Turns out that people will follow that. So that's pretty cool. It's like you have a, it turns out you have an attention span. Who the hell knew? I knew here all millennials, they have no attention span because of computer technology. It's like, no, turns out they have three hour attention span for incredibly complex political discussion. Well, about a wide variety of topics. So that's pretty interesting. And then you take the video and you think, well, you can extract audio out of that. Now you can make a podcast.

It's like, oh, well, that's interesting too, because for a bunch of reasons, here's some of them. Here's a thought. What if more people can listen than can read? Not that many people can read. I know you all can read, but not really, not really. Very few people buy books and a small fraction of the people that buy books by complex nonfiction. So it's a small fraction of people who read enough so they will actually buy books.

But maybe that's because reading at that level is actually prohibitively difficult. And it is. Like, remember, we've only been reading silently as a species, we've only been reading silently in any numbers for 500 years at the absolute outside and really 100 years for all intents and purposes. It's new, but we've been listening forever, and it's certainly possible that we're way better at listening than we are at reading. So maybe it's the case that there's 10 times the market for listening that there is for reading. So that would be cool. And then you can listen quickly because you can speed up the listening. So that's a real cool technology

and a revolution as well because you can ramp up the rate at which you absorb information. So that's very interesting. And here's another thing that's of crucial importance, that's a technological revolution. You spend maybe an hour and a half a day doing relatively boneheaded, necessary things, doing the dishes, going for a walk, exercising, commuting, you know, things that are vital importance, but they don't occupy you fully. You could do something else while you were doing them. But if you're driving, you can't read and you can't watch a video, but you can listen to a podcast.

So what does that mean? It means, hey, all of a sudden, there's 90 minutes a day in everyone's life where they could do something complex and long form. And so what's happened? Right away, everyone's doing it. So hooray for us, we're smarter than we think. And you might think, we're smarter

than our technology had here to for revealed to us. And we're hungrier for high level discourse than we knew. And thank God for that, because we need some high level discourse, because we've got some bad political polarization problems, be setting us at the moment that need to be dealt with. But even more crucially in some sense, things are changing really, really fast and the rate at which they're changing is increasing. And so we're going to have to stay on top of that, and that's not an easy thing. And maybe because we can now engage in long-form, complex discourse, we have a better chance of staying on top of the technological transformations.

So this has made me feel, laying this all out, has made me feel a lot more optimistic. First of all, it's put what's been happening to me in a context. It's like, oh, I see. This is a side effect in some sense of a more profound technological revolution. And that's the video and audio on-demand revolution,

which I would say is equivalent to a second Gutenberg revolution. Gutenberg invented the printing press. This is the printing press for the spoken word. And that might be, so for, that's the other thing. For the first time in human history, the spoken word has as much or more reach and permanence as the written word. It's like that's an absolute revolution.

And so I think this is a relatively small side effect of that revolution. And that's a relief to me because it puts it in context. And so I can think, well, I was in the right place at the right time to some degree and am capitalizing on this technology. But, you know, a huge part of this is the technology itself in some sense, finding its voice. So, so that's quite cool. And then I would say, when you're trying to see if a proposition is true, one of the things you do is you look for additional, well often, counter examples, but in this case I'm going to use additional evidence from a different domain. So think about what happened when Netflix blew the bandwidth limitations off drama. It's like everybody thought,

oh man, you're lucky if you can get that audience of dimwits out there to concentrate for 20 minutes on a light-hearted sitcom and you better provide them with a laugh track so they have enough sense to know when something's funny. And maybe you can really push your damn limit and you can get them to sit and watch an hour and a half movie if the plot isn't too complex, which is kind of a standard routine for television movies. And then we blew the bandwidth limitations off on demand drama. And what are you guys demanding? It's like 40 hours of solid, complex drama, right, with a multitude of characters. Like there have been plots that have been derived since the 1960s in the radical increase

in narrative complexity as television has developed. And it's, well, especially in the last five or six years, that, you know, I would say that there has been a series of shows whose narrative complexity starts to approach that of great literature. You know, and people are dead starving for that, and they'll binge on it for, like, you know, you'll sit there for like three days and just watch it like mad. It's like not only do you have an attention span, it's way longer than any what he possibly imagined. And it's so powerful that you can actually monetize it. And so it's a real thing. And so hooray for us. That's one thing I've learned on this tour is,

we are smarter than we thought. So yes. And. smarter than we thought. So yes. And... Applause You know, and it's not just smart either. It's also wise because the other thing that's happening, and you see this, this is another thing that characterizes these IDW types as far as I can tell. And Rogan again is a good example. You don't know at the beginning of one of his podcasts where he's going to go. It's really a journey, you know. It isn't like he's sitting around thinking, okay, well here's how I want to manipulate

you into thinking. I've got an ideological framework that I'm going to impose on you and I'm going to craft the narrative. You see this happening in the mainstream media all the time. It's like they've done this to me, although I've had lots of good journalists cover me, by the way, but many times NBC was the worst at this, by the way, just to name someone. They took a... And they had some real strong contenders for worse, I'll tell you, so it was the worst

of a bad bunch. They came up to my house and did a 70 minute interview with me that was quite rude and pushy. And then they collapsed it to a three minute trailer that bore no resemblance whatsoever to what I was saying, except that the words had been taken from the interview because they edited it and cut it and cut it. And so there was this a priori story that had to be told and I was just a means by which that story was going to be propagated. And it was really, it was appalling. But people took it apart on YouTube and compared it with the actual interview.

And I don't think it did NBC any good whatsoever. In fact, I think it sped up their inevitable demise by a tenth of a percent or something. So. of a percent or something. So, but with people who are using this long form properly, they're taking you along on a journey, and to take someone along on a journey is actually the hallmark of true intellectual engagement, moral intellectual engagement. You see that with a great novelist. For example, this is why

InRan is not a novelist in the same league as Dostoevsky. So I like reading her books by the way. They really carried me along, especially when I was a teenager, and I read them after that as well. And she's got a narrative gift. There's no doubt about it. But all her good people are the same person, and all her bad people are the same person, and they're all different people. You know, so you might be the good guy, and all her bad people are the same person, and they're all different people. You know, so you might be the good guy, and you might be the bad guy in an enraged novel, and you're bad, and you're good.

Where is in a real novel, let's say, in a work of literature, it's like you're a mixture of bad and good. And so is everyone else. And then there isn't an ideological framework that's being validated by this story. There's an investigation of a profound moral problem, and the author doesn't know how the investigation is going to go until he's finished or she is finished writing the book.

And so you see that in Dostoevsky, for example. He sets himself a moral problem like, well, what is the significance of murder or are there conditions under which it might be justified? That's a real question, because it's a complex question and then crime and punishment for example is an investigation of that question and Dostoevsky didn't know the answer before he started writing the book and so real intellectual engagement is you're along for the ride man and we don't know where we're going and that's partly what I'm trying to do in my lectures as well and so So now the second thing that I've learned I hope is to have honed my arguments better and we'll see about that what I'm trying to do in my lectures as well. And so now the second thing that I've learned, I hope, is to have honed my arguments better. And we'll see about that because I'm going to now that I've introduced this,

I'm going to lay out some of the condensed versions of what I've learned over the last, say, 50 lectures. So I'll walk through that 12 rules, and we'll see how that goes. And I've been trying to both make my arguments tighter and more concise, so sort of pack more punch per word, let's say. And for each of the rules, because there's 12 of them, and then also to see if I could tie the rules together in an overarching narrative that made them coherent as a unit. Now, I tried to do that in the book, right,

because that's why it's a book and not just a collection of essays. Each essay was designed to stand on its own, but each essay was also designed to fit into a meta-narrative that was informed by the relationship between all of the chapters. You do that when you write. When I grade students essays, you might think,

well, where's the meaning in an essay? Well, it's in the words. It's like, well, no, no, no, wait a second. It's way more complicated than that. Well, it's in the letters because they make up the words, and then it's in the words, and then it's in the phrases, and then it's in the way the phrases are arranged into sentences, and then it's in the way the sentences are arranged into paragraphs, and then it's in the way the paragraphs are sequenced, and then it's in the way, if it's a multi essay book, then it's in the way the essays are sequenced in the book. The meaning is in all of those levels simultaneously,

which is why translating is so difficult. Literal translations, like, literal at what level of analysis? Literal word by word, then it's awkward as hell. Literal phrase by phrase, you lose a lot of the poetics there, sentence by sentence, or do you take the gist of the paragraph and try to convey that, very complicated. Just as complicated as trying to make sense out of a book.

Of course, then the meaning is also in your relationship with the book, because you're going to bring an A priori framework to the book, and the meaning is actually a consequence of the book because you're going to bring an A priori framework to the book, and the meaning is actually a consequence of the framework that you believe interacting with all those levels of meaning in the book. So when I grade students essays, generally what I do, as I say, well, you know, the essay succeeded as a whole and that I got the idea, but like the paragraph level sequencing was dreadful, you can't string sentences together coherently in a paragraph, your phrasing is awkward and unpoetic,

and you use words that you don't understand to look smarter than you are, so that you make which might work for people who are stupider than you, but doesn't work very well for people who can see what you're doing. And so the point is, is that you can do a critical analysis at all of those levels, right? And also, the point is, is that you can do a critical analysis at all of those levels, right? And also, the point is, is that when you write and when you speak, all of those levels of analysis simultaneously are equal importance. And it's very hard to get that whole structure right, right?

Right from the word up to the gist of the entire conversation itself. I would say, here's an interesting thing, it's another thing I tell students when they're trying to write. How can you tell if you've got that right, or even more importantly, because you'll never get it perfectly right? How can you tell if you're on the pathway to get that right?

And I would say you're compelled and engaged by what you're writing. And that's another indication of the manifestation of that instinct for meaning. I told my students over and over. If your essay borrows you, just imagine what it's doing to me. Right, and so, and this is something really worth knowing because if you're working on something, I don't really care what it is. If you're bored by it, there's a lie somewhere in there. There's a lie somewhere because the question is, why the hell are you doing it if you don't

find it meaningful? And you might say, well, because I have to. It's like, maybe, maybe we should take a really close look at what you mean when you say to yourself, I have to, because if you find what you're doing dull and uninteresting, then a bunch of you is not on board with it. That's the evidence. That's the, you know what that's like. If you're not engaged by what you're doing, you have to beat yourself with a stick in

order to get you to do it. You have to play the tyrant in order to get you to concentrate. Say, well, I can't concentrate on this task. I can't concentrate on this essay. It's then, well, then the value system that you've structured at all those levels of analysis that we just described isn't set upright. There's something that you're doing wrong.

With my students, I would say, well, if you're bored by your essay, then you picked the wrong topic. You should pick something that's so gripping that you can barely stand writing about it. Right? And then it's worth the effort. And I would say, well, that's the same thing that you should do in your life.

Is you should pick something that interests you so much that you can barely stand it. And that will grip you. And it's in that grip that you find the meaning of life. And this is something that I've been trying to offer to people as a hypothesis. Another thing that I've learned, so, you know, in motif that runs through maps of meaning

and also 12 rules for life, is a description of the fundamental realities of existence, let's say, and that isn't a theory about the materialist substrate of the world. That's a different domain as far as unconcerned. It's a more existential idea or more phenomenological idea. It's an analysis of life as it's experienced. What's the fundamental reality of life as experienced

or one of the fundamental realities? And the reality is the reality of suffering. That's a classic religious proclamation. The first noble truth of Buddhism is that life is suffering. You see the intense suffering of life expressed in Judaism, and of course in Christianity, the central symbol of Christianity is an agonized crucifixion. And so that's putting something right in front of your face.

It's an agonized crucifixion brought about by malevolence and betrayal, so it's even worse, or it's even worse than that. It's an agonized crucifixion brought about by malevolence and be trail, perpetrated on someone who's innocent. So it's sort of like it's an archetype of tragedy and catastrophe. And it's put forward as the basic reality of life. It's like, well, what do you have as an antidote to that? And what you have is the sense of meaningful engagement in life.

That's what lifts you out of that. And you know that because now and then you're doing something and you think you experience, you don't think, you experience the sense that that was deeply worthwhile. You think, well, what do you mean? And you mean something like, despite the fact that life is fundamentally a tragic catastrophe that's tainted by malevolence, that manifested itself as worth doing. And there's a bunch of things that you do that are like that.

It's like that when you love someone, like a parent or a child. They have their bounded fragile existence and all of their flaws, all of that. And the fact is you're still happy they're around. So that's a deep judgment. Love is very interesting that way, especially with family members,'re still happy they're around, right? So that's a deep judgment. Love is very interesting that way, especially with family members, because you know they're foibles, say. And you know their insufficiencies and all of that.

And yet you're still grieved when they die. And you think, well, what does that mean? It means that you've made a judgment at the deep level of your being that despite the insufficiency of their existence, it was better that they existed than that they didn't exist. Because otherwise you wouldn't grieve, you'd have a party that they weren't,

it's thank God, he finally died. Better for him and better for everyone else, you know? And but that isn't what you do. And you know, and even if it's a person that you've had a contentious relationship with in your family, you'll see that when they die, some of the things that you thought of as faults, and maybe that even were faults, are part and parcel of that thing that you loved.

And so that is a deep judgment about the validity of being. And so that's a meaningful, active engagement. And you know that because the close relationships that you make in life, the intimate relationships, genuinely sustain you, if you talk to people who are terribly nihilistic and depressed, they're often also extremely isolated, right? It's not only that they're hopeless, is that they don't have anyone. They don't have a friend. I've had lots of clients who had no family and no friends. And like, never had any friends. And sometimes, essentially, never had any family. Jesus, rough man, it's

very difficult to orient yourself in the world without those fundamental connections and so you value them and you find them intrinsically meaningful and that's despite the catastrophe of life. And then so that's a good, that's an interesting thing because it, it shows you that there are spontaneous, there are what there are, there are spontaneous involvements in life that lift you out of the malaise. And certainly, the love that you have for the people that you love is one of those things. It's certainly the case.

And it's like, no one ever says, well, I just have too many people that I love. No one says that. You can say, I have all the friends I can stand, which is a different thing. But you don't say, well, there's just too many people around here that I love. That's just not a problem. So that's a good thing. And you love the people despite their insufficiency and their vulnerability,

or maybe even because of it. Because I've thought that about my own children, especially when they were little, because they're vulnerable as hell. You know, when you think, oh, it would be good if they're not so vulnerable. But you think, well, wait a second, is their charm, the vulnerability that's so intense as part of their charm, it's like you get rid of the vulnerability, you get rid of the person, that's not helpful. And so what that means is that you can find yourself in situations where you observe something as of transcendent

value despite its subjugation to tragedy and malevolence. And so that's worth noting, because if you start with the a priori assumption that life is suffering tainted by malevolence, that can be very pessimistic. And that can take you down a very nihilistic road. And it's in-controvertibly true at some level. And so then you think, that's why we never talk about it. But then you think, well, wait a second. if there are things that lift you out of that, and not because you're rationalizing

them, but because when you experience them, they lift you out of that, then you think, well, wait a second. That means that there are things that are more powerful that manifest themselves in the confines of your life, more powerful than death and suffering and evil. And so I've taken a very close look at all of the things I didn't want to take a close look at. And based on the chemical dictum of Jung, in stir-quilinus invaniture, which is, what you most need will be found where you least want to look. It's like, so you look at the darkest possible place

and the strange thing is, that's where you discover the light. You contend with how terrible the world is. You find out what is exactly that terrible, but there's something in you that beckons to you to adopt a mode of being that transcends that, and that you can do that. And what that means is that no matter regardless of how terrible the reality is, the thing that allows you to transcend it

is more powerful than that. And that's an unbelievably optimistic vision. And I do believe that, I do believe not only that it's true, I also believe that we actually know it's true. And so the first bit of evidence for that would be the reaction that you have to the people that you love. But here's another bit of evidence. So, and this is something that I've been, this is an idea that I've been honing. One of the things I've noticed when I've been addressing crowds as I listen to the reaction of the crowd. And I'm really interested in those periods where it's dead silent, where you could hear a pin drop.

Because that means everybody's moving as if movement will disrupt what's happening. And so that's an indication that something of significance is happening. Everyone seems to be doing it at once, so it's maybe it's delusional, but probably not. Well, you never know, but it doesn't seem to be. And so one of the things that I've noticed is that audiences now go dead silent whenever I talk about responsibility. And I've thought about that a lot. And I think there's a right, and 12 rules for life, if it's about anything, it's about responsibility.

It's really about that. But it's about responsibility for a very specific reason that's associated with meaning, I would say. So we've already laid out the first axiomatic structure, the description of life is suffering, so it made worse by malevolence, which is a good thumbnail sketch of human history, in some sense, or at least the negative elements

of human history, what do you have to set against that? We think, well, let's take a look at that. See, the problem with most moralizing, which is you should accept responsibility, right? You should be a good person, there's a kind of finger-waving element to it. And there's no explanation. It's like an authority has imposed this requirement on you. And perhaps the requirement is legitimate, but there's no explanation for why.

So I've been trying to come up with an explanation for why. And because it's a lot easier to get to people to, what would you say? People are much more motivated if they know why they're doing what they're doing. Nietzsche said, he who has a why can bear any how. And so that's lovely. And if the how is how are you going to trudge through the catastrophe of life, let's say, with head held high so that you can stand up straight with your shoulders back, how are you going to do that? And the answer has to be, well, you have to find something worthwhile to do in the face of that. And that's the why.

It's okay. So where do you find your why? And, well, we said, one answer is in the people that you love. And so you have your family members, you have your children, and you do your best by them. And, but there's responsibility in that, especially, well, with parents and with children. Right? There's heavy responsibility with children. It's perhaps the heaviest of responsibilities, but people also generally think, yeah, but that's, it's worth it.

And I've certainly noticed that with my own kids, is that, of course, they're heavy responsibility, not least because they're so fragile, not least because you can have a walloping influence on them for harm, right? Which is kind of a terrifying thing, not least because it's kind of up to you to show them the proper pathway forward, like it's on you, man. No doubt about it, and children make that absolutely crystal clear, like nothing else, I think. But it's also, at least, can be the most rewarding thing that you ever do. And so, certainly, the deep, having the relationship that you have with your children is among the deepest relationships

that you're going to have. And, you know, people, I certainly felt that the relationship I had with my children, the quality of the relationship I had with my children, partly because of what they revealed to be as children, did more than pay me for the responsibility that I adopted in choosing to take care of them. And so that was really interesting. You think, well, here's a weird idea. What if the meaning in life that you need to help lift you out of the tragedy is to be

found not in rights and inulsive freedom, let's say, which has been the dam dialogue in our culture for at least five generations, as far as I can tell. Maybe it's only four, but whatever, it's many. Maybe we got that wrong. Maybe the fundamental meaning of your life is to be found in responsibility. And so that the reason that you should adopt responsibility isn't so that you can be good in some abstract tyrannical follow the damn rules way, but because the best pathway that you have to move forward given the terrible burden that you have to bear is one where you pick up that burden and bear it to the greatest degree that you possibly can and perversely that serves as the cure and what's so interesting about that many things But one of the things that so interesting about that, many things,

but one of the things that's interesting about that is, this is one of the things you do with people in psychotherapy. If they're afraid of something, you don't say, here's a safe space, you never have to encounter it. Seriously, this drives me crazy as a clinical psychologist. It's like, what are you doing? You dimwits.

You know? You know? Because, well, we're trying to improve our students' mental health. I see, here's your theory. You're going to act contrary to the fundamental principle of clinical psychology and psychiatry. Because the fundamental principle, there's probably two. One is help the person get their story straight. Okay, so that's rule number one. That's what you're doing.

That's what you're doing in a good relationship. But it's certainly what you're doing in a therapeutic relationship. What happened to you? Why did it happen? Where are you now? Where are you going? Articulated, laid out, made clear. Okay, so that's part of the psychotherapeutic relationship. The next part would be what is it that you're afraid of that stopping you from moving forward? It has to be both of those because you're afraid of going to play in traffic, but that doesn't mean you should go play in traffic. Right? Maybe you're afraid of public speaking, and you have to conquer that because your career ambitions require that you become a flexible and adequate public speaker.

And so you don't, you don't, you got to face it. And you don't say to your client, oh, look, man, too bad you're afraid of public speaking. We don't want to upset you. Why don't you just stay in your bedroom because then you'll never have to talk to anyone. Right? You don't say that. You say, look, no wonder you're afraid of public speaking. Everybody's afraid of it. So let's take a look.

Do you have the skills? And if not, well, can we generate a strategy that would help you develop them? And then, well, let's have you practice. Maybe you can stand up in my office and deliver me a one-minute speech, 30-second speech, 10-second speech. I don't care on what you did yesterday.

And that's quite a demand for people who are terrified of public speaking, even in safe confines, relatively speaking, not safe in the will protect you from everything's sense, but safe in the, let's play with danger sense, which is the right sense, because that's what safety really is, let's play with danger so we can master it, right?

And so you get the person to stand up and say some things about what they did, and that's the first introduction to public speaking, and then you just extend that. It's like, well, next week, you can do it for 30 seconds. And the week after that, why don't you come in with something you prepared for two minutes? And you know, you get the person to practice, biting off a little more than they can chew and then they get braver

and braver they don't get less afraid that's the thing that's cool and well why should you get less afraid it's like life is dangerous no bloody wonder you're terrified it's no wonder you're afraid to speak to people because they judge you it's like it has real consequences You'd be a fool if you were to frayed. It's like, but don't let it stop you That's the thing Don't let it stop you and then you see the university say well We're gonna protect students from their fear by isolating them from anything that might upset them It's like you there isn't anything you could do to them

Psychologically that would be Arguably that would be more damaging than that if you set out to design a process that would make students worse, and what's so interesting about this is that we debate this. It's like, if you said, does graduated exposure to what makes you afraid cure people, if they said no, all that would mean was they weren't qualified. Right? It's that fundamental. It's that it's one of the thing, you know, we've been doing psychotherapy for 100 years

and studying how it works. Across all sorts of different approaches, medical and psychological and so forth, and from all sorts of different schools of psychology. And everyone's converged on those two things. Get your story straight and expose yourself voluntarily and gradually to things that are impediments to your development that you're afraid of. That cures you. And of course, if you think about it, A, that's how you learn to do everything. Right? Because, so it's the learning mechanism itself here, because what you do when you learn something is you take on something that's a little more difficult than you could do before,

with some trepidation, and you practice it. And so that's how you get better at it. And then be, well, what do you do with your kids? You use graduated exposure. It's like, well, maybe they're afraid to stay over at a friend's house for an overnight. It's the first time away from home. Well, what do you do? You don't say, hey, you never have to leave home.

Well, maybe you do, but maybe you shouldn't, right? Because then you end up with someone who never leaves home. And that might be good for you because you don't have to undergo the separation anxiety, which is really the problem that you've got to begin with. But it's not so good for them because you've crippled them, what you'd, and purposefully so,

so they won't leave. And that is exactly what I see happening in the university campuses. It's a manifestation of that pathological attempt to cripple the spirit of adventure that drives people out into the world. And I see that as a boneological reflection of the proposition that to take your place in the world is to attempt to participate in the patriarchal tyranny, and so any way that you manifest yourself bravely in the world is actually indistinguishable from your participation in that tyranny and should be crippled.

And that's what people are learning in the universities. It's like it's absolutely sickening. It makes me appalled to be a member of that establishment. And so there's no excuse for it. Not when the whole goal is to what? In chapter 11 I say, don't bother children when they're skateboarding. Well, why not? Well, is it dangerous? Yes. Is it dangerous and stupid? Sometimes.

You know, well, I watched the kids outside the St. George, I have this building perversely enough on St. George Street, which I think is really funny, and that's where I work at the University of Toronto. I think it's funny because of St. George and the Dragon, and that's against my joke, because you don't think it's very funny, but I think it's funny. Well, St. George and the Dragon is a very old story. It's the oldest story of humanity, not in that form, but old story. It's the oldest story of humanity, not in that form, but it's a variant of the oldest story of humanity. And the oldest story of humanity is,

go out and confront the eternal enemy and the night. Go out forth rightly and confront it. And you'll gain what you need as a consequence. And that's St. George. It's an ancient, it's the ancient story. And so, and so there's no getting rid of that story. It's unless you get rid of courageous human beings themselves. And of course we could certainly do that.

But these kids used to skateboard out on the St. George steps where I worked. And it was kind of fun to watch them. They were usually guys, not always, but usually 13 to 16, something like that. And the steps were wide and shallow and cement, and not that smooth sort of cement, but the rough cement, so that if you fall on it,

it doesn't just hurt, but it tears you up quite nicely. And there were these tubular handrails that would go down the steps, and they were like 25 feet long or something. And these damn kids would move from the wall, and they'd scoot forward really fast. There's board, it's called board sliding. This is, I think that's called what they were doing.

They'd zoom towards the rail, and then they jump up on the rail, and they'd have their feet on their boards, and they try to slide down the damn rail on top of this cement. And you know, it was just painful watching them because, of course, they fell all the time and they fell and it hurt. You know, they'd limp away and sometimes they'd do the splits on the bar, which was particularly which was particularly hard to take and you know what they'd limp away and they were smiling and their friends were laughing at them and with them and then they'd sort of nurse their wounds well and

then they didn't go home which is what the smart person would do. It's like I'm going home. The pain says go home. No, they'd go back and do it again and then they do it again. And they do it again. And you think, well, OK, what's the right attitude towards that? And it's like, well, how about a helmet? How about a helmet?

How about some body armor? Well, how about we just take the damn wheels off your skateboard. And then the whole thing isn't going to happen, right? Or maybe we make it so you can't skateboard there, which is what the university eventually did. It's like, you can't skateboard here. It's like, okay, why exactly can't you skateboard here? Well, I think the reason was liability, but if you're looking for a cowardly response to something, just look for something labeled, we won't do this because of liability, and then you'll find a cowardly

excuse for it. And so when I was watching those kids, and I was watching the same sort of thing on YouTube at the time, I like watching parkour. I don't know if you know what parkour is. That, those people are absolutely insane, right? They just, they run across buildings. And I've seen people on YouTube jump down what looks like three stories and not die. It's like, I don't know how they do it, and I'm sure many of them have died doing it. But they do this high-speed running across obstacles and cities, and it looks superhuman.

And it is in some sense superhuman, because no one was doing it 30 years ago. And now all sorts of people can do it, and they can do it spectacularly. And you see these people on YouTube doing crane climbing, which is also a form of absolute insanity. You know, they go into buildings that are under construction and climb up the buildings, and then they climb up the crane, and then they take a video of themselves on top of the Russians really seem to be into this.

And you know, you think, Jesus, that's stupid. really seem to be into this. Huh. Huh. And you know, you think, Jesus, that's stupid. But there's a part of you that thinks, wow, really? You did that. You climbed up a building, and then you climbed up the crane. You overcame your fear of, you're justifiable fear of heights. And you were willing to, you were willing to take the risk to extend your competence.

You were willing to take that greater risk to extend your competence. You are willing to take that greater risk to extend your competence. It's like, man, it's just magnificent. There's something about that that's absolutely magnificent. And you see that on a small scale with the kid's skateboarding. It's like, of course, it's dangerous. It's like, and what do you do? How are you going to make it safer? Well, you can't really. I mean, you know, I know there's stupidity, right? You can take something too far, but those kids are out there practicing to thrive in a dangerous world. That's what they're trying to do.

And they're trying to master their physiology and they're trying to master their fear. The same thing you do when you go to a horror movie, in some sense. It's why do people think about that. People go to horror movies. It's like, why do you go to a horror movie? You like to be disgusted,

because that's the splatter end of it, right? That's disgust. Or what do you like to be terrified out of your skull? It's like, no, you don't. You normally you'll avoid that. So why do you go and pay? The Blair Witch Project is a good example of that. That was quite frightening, or I found it so.

All it was was like this, it's like an hour, it's like, oh my god, nothing happens, right? But something might happen. It's like, and so they did that brilliantly because the whole movie is, oh my god, something might happen, something might happen. So you're just on the edge of your seat, you know, and yet, and yet you'll pay for that. Well, it's the same with this bladder movies. It's like death and decay and disgust. It's like, oh, horrible. Well, we'll line up for that because we need some more of that. It's like, well, actually you do.

Because you have to expose yourself to terror. And you have to expose yourself to disgust. Because otherwise, you can't live in the world. So, and you're so driven to do that, so perversely driven to do that, that even though it's unpleasant, well, because it's unpleasant to do that, so perversely driven to do that, that even though it's unpleasant, well, because it's unpleasant to be afraid, yes, and it's unpleasant to be disgusted, yes,

and so but you'll pay to go have someone professional, do that to you for like two hours. And then you think, well, it's not interesting because what it means is the pleasure you take in the mastery of the fear and the pleasure that you take in the mastery of the disgust is more valuable and intense than the fear and the disgust itself. And then you think, well, that's a good motif for your life.

It's like that's what you want, is you want the pleasure that you take in your life and pleasure is really the wrong word because I think meaning is the right word. You want the meaning in your life to be so intense that it supersedes the fear and the disgust. And I think that that's possible. So that's the other thing I've been trying to lay out in maps of meaning and 12 rules for life.

And I think it's in some sense the answer to the conundrum of nihilism and postmodernism. And those things are very tightly allied. So the nihilists say, well nothing's worth doing. It's like like, well, wait a minute or nothing means anything. That's even worse. But that's an easy one to take apart. Nothing means anything. Wrong. Pain means something. You just try to argue yourself out of your pain with your Nileism and see how far you get. It's like, no, it doesn't move, man. I'm in pain. And you can't argue yourself out of your terror with nihilism, either.

So there's meaning that cannot be moved by skepticism. The meaning is all on the negative end, but that's OK. It's still a demo, this is worth it, it isn't what I'm doing isn't worth it. Therefore, there's something wrong with life. It's like, no, wait a second. That's not the right conclusion. It's a conclusion. But another conclusion is, no, there's something wrong with what you're aiming at. If what you're aiming at doesn't justify you getting out

of bed on a miserable morning, then perhaps there's something wrong with what you're aiming at. And so why not? You might as well. There's this famous section from a play, The Cocktail Hour, like T.S. Eliot, woman in the play. She's talking to a psychiatrist at a cocktail party. I believe, if I remember correctly.

And she says, I'm having a terrible time of it. My life is unbearable. And she outlines why. And she says, I really hope there's something wrong with me. And the psychiatrist says, why would you really hope there's something wrong with me. And the psychiatrist says, why would you hope that there's something wrong with you? And she says, well, look it this way. If I'm having a terrible time of it

and the world is at fault, then I'm done. Because when am I going to do about that? I'm what am I going to do? Fix the world? That's not going to happen. But if there's something wrong with me, well, hypothetically, I could fix that. And so, well, I loved that. I thought it was an extra, and by the way, that's what happens in the Old Testament all the time with the archaic Jews. That's

always what happens to them. They get absolutely flattened by God. Like, constantly flattened, flattened, flattened. It's the whole, the whole testament is flattening the Jews by God. And they get up and they say, we must have done something wrong. Right, we think about that. Think about how opposite that is to the current state of political discourse. I'm flattened, someone is at fault.

It's like, that's the victimization narrative, that's the victim narrative. It's someone's fault. It's no,ization narrative. That's the victim narrative. Someone's fault. No, it's built into the structure of existence, actually. So maybe it's God's fault. But the Jews, they wouldn't do that. It wasn't God's fault. It was their fault.

It was that they didn't aim high enough. They broke the eternal covenant. They didn't aim high enough. Their sins came home to roost. And you think, well, is that a pessimistic viewpoint? It's like, yes, because it's your bloody fault. But is it an optimistic viewpoint? It's, yes, it's an optimistic viewpoint

because it means you might be able to do something about it. And one of the things I outlined in chapter 10, which is, be precise in your speech, is a series of findings from the neuroscience literature that indicate that this is really a mind-boggling set of discoveries. And it's spanned about 50 years, I would say, because we started to caught on to it in the early 1960s.

The things you see in the world are profoundly determined by your aims in the world. And I don't mean the things you think about. I mean the things you literally see, because you can't see everything in the world, obviously, because there's a lot of world and there isn't very much of you. And like when I'm looking at you, I can see you, but I can hardly see you too, and you guys are just blurs. And so even in this tiny domain here, in order to see you, I have to move my head a lot to get a picture of the landscape and looking at all you, I don't see any of you.

And there's all of LA is outside of this, and I don't see that, and I don't see the micro parts of you and God, I'm so blind. And so the question is, what's the mechanism that selects out what I perceive? This is a major question. And the answer is, your value structure, your value structure determines what you see. Well, why is that? Well, because you value, you aim at what you value or you value what you aim at. It's the same thing. And so those are the things you're after, right? Because you pursue what you value, it's sort of the definition of value. And so, well, why do you have vision?

Well, so you can see what you need to see when you pursue what you value. That's why you have vision. And so what happens is if you decide that you value something, then the world organizes itself into those things that will move you along on the pathway towards that value. And you actually literally, and I really wanna emphasize this,

literally, that determines really want to emphasize this, literally, that determines what you see. Now, it's not the only determinant because the world's there too, right? So it can get in the way and it can interfere and it can screw up your perceptions or your perceptions can fail. But the world's very complicated and lots of things are happening and at least you filter all that through your value structure and what gets through the filter is what you see. So what you value determines what you see. So then you think about this.

What if you don't like what you see? Well, then you think maybe you should do something about what you value. Now you could think about that for 20 years, well I would recommend that in fact. In fact, likely that's all you should ever think about. I don't like what I see. Therefore, I'm not valuing things properly. It's a proposition, a hypothesis. Well, what if it's true?

It might be true. I do believe it's true. I think the science indicates that it's true. But I also think that it's one of the most profound revelations of our ancestral systems of meaning, right? and syndicates that it's true. But I also think that it's one of the most profound revelations of our ancestral systems of meaning, because you need to get your values right. You need to get your values straight.

And then this ties back into the idea of responsibility and meaning. So you think, well, what should you value? Let's leave that aside. What do you value if you look at what you value? That's a better question because you can sort of consult yourself. It's not like what should I value. No, it's like how does value manifest itself to me? And then you think, well, when are you engaged in something meaningful? We walk through this a little bit. When you are in

a relationship with someone you love, there's's one answer when you're doing something meaningful That's another answer Okay, when are you doing something that's meaningful? Well, let's think about the times that you're not doing something that's meaningful You're not doing something that's meaningful when you're wasting time on the internet and you all know that right because you should be doing Something that's engaging but you're not you're wasting time right you should be doing something that's engaging, but you're not. You're wasting time, right? You're procrastinating.

And it's sort of minorly amusing in a pathetic way, moment to moment. But as you do it, you feel more and more sick. And after three or four hours of it, it's like you need to go have a shower. You're just not happy with yourself, right? And that's interesting because you could think, well, why don't you just tell yourself

that it's perfectly okay if you fritter away your time, you know, doing whatever it is, pathological thing that you're doing on the internet, you know, but that doesn't work, you can't bargain yourself out of that, you can't tell yourself, oh, anything I do is okay, that just doesn't work. You deviate from that path of engaged meaning and you suffer for it by your own judgment. And so that's something that's really interesting. Think, well, when are my wasting time on the internet or procrastinate? Well when I'm not doing what I'm supposed to do, it's like, okay, well that's not a bad answer.

When I'm not bearing the proper responsibility for my life, there's an answer. It's like, how do I know when I'm playing too many video games? Well, you get that sickening feeling of time slipping by. Think, well, what is it indicating? You know it on the right path. By your own judgment. I mean, other people might say to you too, like what the hell are you doing?

You're playing video games for 20 hours a day. You know, and they'll shake their finger at you. And you can ignore that. Maybe you shouldn't, but you can. But that own, your own internal voice of conscience, especially the one that manifests itself in that physiological discomfort.

It's like gonna argue with that. Well, you can't. That's one of the things that's so interesting is you'd think that you could tell yourself that it was all right, and you would listen, because obviously you wanna be doing that listen because obviously you want to be doing that because otherwise you wouldn't be doing it. But you can't, you can't get away with it. And that's because you're violating that sense of meaning. And so then you think,

well, that's when you're violating it. So you can tell that that's wrong, say, well, what's right then? Well, what's right is whatever you're supposed to be doing. And that might be, well, maybe you should be studying. Maybe that it or maybe have work to do or you got a clean your room. I don't know what it is But there's something you should be doing that isn't that and what are all those very and stuff? Well the first thing would be Well, are you taking care of yourself? That's like your first responsibility Because if you don't do it well you suffer and that, and that's not so good, and degenerate. And but that's not all.

You take people down around you, right? Because if you're in a family and you suffer and degenerate stupidly, then there's collateral damage. And if you really do a good job of suffering stupidly, you could probably take two or three other people with you. So if you're really spectacular at it, you can have a pathological effect on the community at large. So that's something to practice. Shooting up a school

will do that for you, by the way. And so that's a nice route, if that's what you want to take, and certainly a large number of people seem to want to take that route. So, but anyways, like the antidote to that sense of meaninglessness that envelops you when you're wasting time is to bear some responsibility. And first for you, at least that, get your act together. That's why this idea I have about, you know, you start by cleaning up your room. It's like, of all the weird things to become a popular meme. It's like, haven't you heard that before?

People have told you that before. But I think what I did was suggest why. Oh, I see, that's part of being that I have under my control. It's not such a big domain, but it's not so little. You have a whole room that's pretty spectacular, that's extraordinarily wealthy by the standards of human beings across the stretch of history. You could make that place perfect.

And then you'd have made one place perfect, and then you'd have practiced making something perfect, and then you'd kind of know how to do it, and then you'd set up your room so that you could be properly there, so that when you walked into it, walked into your room, it would tell you how to exist properly, it would reflect that back to you. You know, when your clothes could be in order, and you could have a plan that goes along with the room, it would tell you how to exist properly. It would reflect that back to you. You know, when your clothes could be in order, and you could have a plan that goes along with the

room and you could sleep properly in there, and then maybe you could even take the next gigantic step and you could think, God, you know, I could not only make this orderly, I could make it beautiful. Then you'd have to learn how to make something beautiful, and then you'd have something beautiful and orderly, and it would just be your room, but then that would spread like mad. And interestingly too, you might have a terrible fight with your family trying to make your room orderly and beautiful because when you started doing that, especially if the rest of the house was utter bloody chaos, then as soon as you started to put that right, it

would highlight the degree to which everything else was utter bloody chaos. And then that would make everybody who was participating in the chaos feel guilty and horrible about being so useless, and so instead of changing what they would do is try to stop you from cleaning up your room, and that will happen a lot, and that's sort of what happens in life, and that's kind of the story of Kane and Abel, and so it's a lot more difficult to do that, especially in a really pathological circumstance than you might ever dream, and it's a lot more difficult to do that, especially in a really pathological circumstance, then you might ever dream. And it's a lot more difficult to do it right. But if you do it right, despite those over, and then there's all your own internal object,

I don't have to clean up my room. I don't have to make my bed. It's just a stupid room. What difference does it make? Anyways, I've got better things to do. Yeah, blah, blah. You know, all that nonsense. You have to overcome all that in your own psyche as well.

To humble yourself enough to make your damn bed, you know, like your mom told you ever since you were four. So, well, so what's the point? Well, the point here is that, this is the point of 12 rules for life. It's not the damn rules that are the point. The point is to bear up under the burden that the rules produce is to lift up something

that's heavy and the value, because that strengthens you, right? And it brings out your character, and it enables you to thrive in a tragic and malevolent world without becoming better and malevolent. Not stops you from working towards hell, and maybe it helps you to work towards whatever the opposite of that is.

And what's so interesting about that, what's so cool about that, what's so cool about that is that the cure to the catastrophe isn't found in the solution. It's found in the willingness to embark upon the solution. That's so cool because it means that in some sense you can have what you want right now. All you have to do is decide to aim at something noble. Take care of yourself. Take care of your family.

Take care of your community. Really amid that. And as soon as you start doing that, you're on the right path. And the whole trick isn't to do it. The whole trick is to be on the right path. And so that's the thing. And so that's what I've learned to hone better in the last 50 lectures. Life is a tragic catastrophe tainted by malevolence. What's the cure to be on the right path? And that's right in front of us. And so we could be on the right path and it would mean take as much responsibility as you can possibly bear. And that will cure the catastrophe, not only psychologically, but will actually help you address the realities of suffering and malevolence. And God only knows how much of that we could address if we actually decided that's what we were going to do.

You know bloody well that you can make things way worse than they are. Everyone knows that. No doubt you've tried. And it's been successful. And so you think, well, what if you just, you stop doing that? And you aim in the opposite direction. How far could you get? And part of the answer is it doesn't matter because merely as a consequence of you trying, like wholeheartedly, right, with your full soul in it. I know I don't mean some some cynical attempt to justify yourself merely for the excuse of producing a failure. I mean to be in it wholeheartedly as soon as you do that you've got the answer to the problem of life. Thank you very much

So good job, man. Thank you. Thanks for the intro. So my first question is, you're now done with your 25 city tour. So how does it, are you relieved or you? What is the, this is now the only time that anyone can ask this question of how you feel completing a 25 city tour, which is the type of tour that has never before really been done in history?

Well, I'm tired. So, and I think that, well, you know, you kind of aim for the end of something to some degree, you know, and so I think I had calibrated in my mind how much energy I could expand over this period of time. And now that there's some ending, I'm done with that. I've expanded all that energy and it'll be really useful to go home for a little while and rest to some degree or at least do something different and then to engage in some different things.

And the other thing too is that I'm looking forward to that because one of the dangers of this is that it becomes routine. And one of the things I noticed in my clinical psychology practice was that this is something that's useful to know too. It's sort of a little joke. If you have a lot of boring conversations, that's because you're boring. Yeah, I know, it's a horrible thing to realize, you know. It's what I've told young men, too, is, are all those women rejecting you? Yes.

It's not the women. Right. It's your fundamentally working, being rejected. Well, that's it. It's like, you know, so, so, well, so know, so the point of that with regards to these lectures is that I want to keep them vibrant and alive. I want to keep the living spirit in them, let's say. And the way to do that is to speak on the edge, right?

And you can tell when that's happening because that engages everybody. You have to be there. You have to be present. You have to be there, you have to be present, you have to be stretching your ideas outward, you have to be doing what a novelist does in some sense in real time, it has to be a creative act, because otherwise it's not engaging. And with any creative act comes the spectacular risk

of constant failure, which is partly what it makes it engaging, because you don't know, right? Well, if I go way out on the limb, you know, verbally, am I going to be able to get back to the main track? And sometimes I'm not so sure. I wander off and I think, oh, oh, now I'm way the hell out here. Where was I going? And not being tired is a good way of getting back to the center, you know? So I'm looking forward to the break, but it's not because I'm done with this or tired of it. It's impossible to be tired of this because it's so insanely positive. You know, they're and it's so interesting. I went to the Aspen Ideas Festival a couple of

days ago and I wasn't very happy there. I wanted to I wanted to leave. People, the people that invited me were hospitable and everything, but there was an undertone to it that I didn't like. But when I, in these venues, it's like there isn't anything about this that isn't good. Everybody's coming here to have a hard discussion. They're here to be thoroughly engaged. They're not here primarily for political reasons. They're here because they would like to aim higher, I would say. That's what it looks like to me is that people are here because they would like to figure out how to aim higher and they believe that's possible and they'd like

to put it into practice. And then a whole bunch of people that come have already done that. And so one of the things about this that's so incredibly engaging, the most engaging that anything can be is that people will tell you a story. I was in LA, and well I am now too, fancy that. I was at the Orphium downtown and was the day after, and you know downtown LA is kind of ratty, you guys should do something about that, by the way. And there's places that you, there's places that you sort of wander around at your peril, and my Canadian wife and I found a couple of those places. Because, and so, but anyways, we're wandering around the street. The next morning, and this car pulled up,

he saw this, and this kid jumped out. He was a Latino kid, about 19 or 20, something like that. A good looking kid, and he hopped over, and he was all happy to see me, and he said, are you Dr. Peterson? And I said, yes, and he said, oh, I'm so happy to see you. I can't believe you're here and all of that, which is kind of an interesting thing to have happen.

And he was all smiling when he said, look, I've been watching your lectures for the last six months. And they've really helped me put my life together. And I've got some plans. And I'm trying to say what I believe to be true. And I'm taking responsibility. And things are way better. And so I thought, now look, that's how you want to get mugged

in downtown LA, right? That's the perfect sort of mugging. And so then he was all happy about that, and he said, hey, wait, wait a minute, wait a minute. And so I was standing there with my wife, and he ran back to his car, and he got his father out. And so his father came over and they had their arms around each other. they're smiling away and he said look I can't tell you I put my relationship back together with my father and it's like we're doing just great and they're

just smiling away you know in that full smile that's an actual smile and it was so absolutely perfect and what's happening with this tour is that I just hear stories like that all the time in airports and in restaurants and after these talks and so You know and as a I'm a clinical psychologist in an educator and so I'm hoping that Educating people about the dictates the fundamental dictates of psychology, especially on the clinical end, are actually helpful. That would be the hope, right? And they seem to be helpful, but to have that manifest itself, like that constantly, you can't get tired of that. You know, people talk to me at the meet and greets after this, and they say, well, you know, I know a lot of people have thanked you, and they're all kind of apologetic about that, because they have a story to tell about,

you know, how they put their life together. And it's like, how can you ever be cynical enough so that a story like that doesn't just cut you to the bone every time. It's something, man. So I'm not tired of this, but I'm tired. So it's a good time for a rest. All right, so let's do a question that can't conceivably get you in any trouble.

Let's open with that, which is, have you ever done any psychedelic drugs? Well, part is legal in Canada now, and so I've actually smoked some pots surprisingly enough. So I'm sure that's not true of any of you, and unlike many of your presidential candidates, I inhaled. Because that was like the point, hey? And so, and I've tried other things as well. Most notably, psilocybin mushrooms, which I would say, if you have any sense that you should stay the hell away from, I'm absolutely insanely curious about them for all sorts of reasons that I can't go into, but that doesn't mean I'm recommending them because...

Well, I told one of my friends about hallucinogenic mushroom experience, and he said, well, is it interesting? And I said, I think he said fun, which is certainly not the right word. I said, well, imagine that you're in a canoe on the ocean, and you're looking over in the water. And all of a sudden, a massive whale shark comes right up from the bottom of the deep. And it opens its mouth right in front of you. It's like 15 feet across the mouth. It's open, and you can see right down to the bottom of the deep and it opens its mouth right in front of you. It's like 15 feet

across the mouth. It's open and you can see right down to the bottom and then it closes and dives down. You think, well, was that fun? It's like, no. That's not fun. But it's interesting. And I remember that story because I was that friend that you told us. While we're just outing shit up here on stage. Okay. Anonymous asks, and curiously this is anonymous, would you call a marriage without sacks a marriage? I would call it a marriage with a, that's very likely to have a short lifespan. Look, I mean, people come to their, it depends, hey, people come to their own arrangements and there are a lot of differences in sex drive.

And certainly that's the case also as people age. And if it turns out that you, both of you, haven't just shut yourself off out of resentment and spite and horror and anger and habit and carelessness and stupidity, all of those things, then you've come to a point in your relationship where you're basically living as intimate, as close friends, and that's actually okay

with both of you, with no lies, then, hey, it's your marriage, man. And you have the right and the responsibility to arrange it however you see fit. But I would say there is a high probability in most situations that some of those other factors have killed your romance. And that's not good. And you could tell that really because you would say,

well, if you're in a relationship like that, and you're resentful, then, and you can tell if you're resentful because you have fantasies of revenge or maybe here's another way of telling, well, that's one way. You know, and people won't notice that. They'll deny it to themselves. A little fantasy of revenge will flash through their minds like, I could have an affair, you know, it's like that's a fantasy of revenge.

And so if that isn't happening, but, or maybe Greg said earlier, that one of the hallmarks of a good friend is that you can tell good news to a good friend. And if you tell good, it was a rule I was going to write about, maybe I'll put that in my next book, is be careful who you tell good news to. That's one rule, another rule is be careful

who you tell bad news to. But if you tell good news to a real friend, then the friend is really happy that you have some good news. And if you tell good news to someone who really isn't your friend, then they come up with a bunch of reasons why other things happen to them that were better, or they deflect the conversation. They can't just celebrate along with you

because it generates resentment at envy. And so if you're in a relationship that doesn't have any physical intimacy, it generates resentment at envy. And so if you're in a relationship that doesn't have any physical intimacy, and you're still able to respond to good things that happen to your partner in a positive way, then that might be some genuine indication that you're actually not bitter and resentful.

But you probably are. So because it's so easy to be that way, you know, and so if you've managed it and you've negotiated it and it's okay with both of you and that's genuinely true and none of those other conditions apply and you're not lying and you're not resentful and angry and nursing a grudge and you can still celebrate with your partner, then more power to you. So that's a lot of conditions, man. That's quite a needle of the thread. Yeah. Yeah. OK, so Tammy asks, why do you allow yourself

to be roasted and harrained by so-called journalists like Kathy Newman? And before you answer, I'd like to point out that this is not Tammy your wife who asked the question. This is another Tammy. Sure. My wife is here. Tammy is here in the audience. She travels with me and she's been very helpful.

Is very helpful. Well, first of all, you never know what's going to happen in an interview, so it's not like I can tell beforehand. So with Newman, for example, when I first sat down with her, first of all Tammy and I were in the dressing room with her and she was getting all sprit stop, you know, and hair sprayed and all of that, which is what happens when you're on television all the time. And she was quite friendly and chatty and we were having a pretty decent little conversation.

And then we went out onto the stage and the cameras turned on and it was like different person. And so what do you do in a situation like that? Well, you try to adjust. You try to watch what's going on and you try to adjust. And so that's the first rule. It's like you can't tell whether the journalist is going to be honest. Now I would say in support of journalists, I've had many journalists who have been very

helpful to me. They've played it straight. I would say there's like five journalists in Canada who are the top journalists, most of them print journalists, but not all of them. The top journalists in Canada, the most well-known journalists in Canada, and the ones with the most independent opinions, have been firmly on my side with after about three weeks into this, once they realized when I was commenting

on this compelled speech legislation in Canada, that I'd actually read the damn legislation and the policies and understood it and was revealing what was there. There was confusion about that for a while. So answer one, you don't know, understood it and was revealing what was there. There was confusion about that for a while. So answer one. You don't know. And then I've had journalists who sounded just fine when they were interviewing me and that wrote bitter pieces and misquoted me purposefully and

did all sorts of, you know, underhanded things. But my sense generally is that, you know, underhanded things. But my sense generally is, is that, you know, if the best way to operate in life is this is, you know, when you're young and naive, you trust everyone. And you think, well, that's good. Kids are good because they trust everyone. It's like, no, they're not good. They're just naive. And it looks like goodness, but it's not. It's just naivety. And then you get burned, maybe you get burned a number of times and then you get cynical and you think, I'm a lot smarter now that I'm cynical. It's like, yeah, you're not naive. So in so far as you're cynical, that's actually a step forward, even though it's also in

some sense a step down. But there's something after cynicism and what's after cynicism is, while I know that you're a, what would you say? You're a nest of serpents just like me. And what's the best way to deal with you? And the answer to that is to extend a hand in trust knowing perfectly well. There's potential for corruption and betrayal because to extend a hand in trust is the best antidote to that. Now that doesn't mean it's always going to work. You're still going to get nailed from time to time by people who aren't wise enough to

respond to that properly. But if you don't do that, if you cut yourself off, then you treat everyone as if they're untrustworthy and bitter and cynical. And then you can't communicate with anyone. So you have to take the risk. And then, so that's the next reason. And then the third reason is, there's no evidence,

there's no evidence, there's no necessary evidence that being attacked is a bad thing. Like sometimes it is, sometimes it's a really good thing. Like the thing, it depends on, you know, your measurement obviously, but there's been three or four instances, like I've been scandal plagued for two years, at least one major scandal, probably every two or three days for two years, something like that. It's really, really, we keep thinking it'll stop, but it doesn't, weirdly enough.

But in any case, I've had the first thing that happened to me that really went viral, let's say, was a video that was recorded by a bunch of activist types outside the University of Toronto building where I work. It was after a free speech protest, a couple hours after. It was in favor of free speech, but it was very badly disrupted by professional activist types, a couple of whom were clearly quite psychopathic. Not all of them, but there were some people there that were quite dangerous. I could see who they were. There was two or three of them, and they pop up at these events. They're people who are waiting for the mayhem, so they can party. And most people aren't like that, but some people are really like that.

Anyways, I went out about two hours after the protest to talk to the cops to see if anything particularly stupid had happened and it hadn't. And when I was walking back in, I got accosted by a group of activist types and they had their cell phones out. They recorded the whole damn thing and then they put it up on YouTube and they figured, well, that's the end of Professor Peterson. But it wasn't at all because I think it's got 4 million views now and the comments in favor of me were running 100 to 1. And so I've been attacked a lot and all that's happened is that it's redounded badly on the attacker. Now not all because my reputation isn't stellar in certain circles, but you know what's so cool is that the circles in which my reputation isn't stellar are losing their reputation very, very, very rapidly. So, and this is another one of the advantages of free speech.

It's like, well, do people get to attack you and be offensive to you? It's, well, yes, within the bounds of legal acceptability. Why is that okay? Because the motives of those who attack without cause reveal themselves in the attack. And then you think, well, are people wise enough to pick that up? And the answer is, eventually, yes. And so the fact that I'm being attacked in an unwarranted way lays bare the structure of the unwarranted attacks. And that's actually likely way better than not being attacked at all, assuming that there are, you know, pathological things occurring. So it's been, I've been very fortunate. That's the first thing, you know, and I know how this could

go south and I've seen it happen to other people. And so I've been very fortunate and I don't take that for granted. But if you're, you're in the fray, you're in the fray, and you can't whine about the consequences. And I especially can't because the consequences have been overwhelmingly positive, even though there's always been a price to pay along the way. So you can't have the good. You know, it's funny because I talk to my publishers sometimes,

and they're kind of concerned about me being so controversial. And I think, okay, this is what you want. You want a risk-free bestseller with no controversy. Right, it's like, well, good luck with that. That's not happening. So it's okay. So far, it's okay. So this is a very serious question, which I wanna put out while you still have

a good amount of time to answer, if you need to take a little longer. This person says, I'm a local firefighter paramedic and blame myself for the loss of a particular patient. It keeps me up many nights. How do I go about forgiving myself? Well, if I was seeing you, I would get you to tell me exactly what happened. So we could go through it and we would see if you made any mistakes that need to be rectified,

because what you really want to learn from what happened, let's assume you did make a mistake. We'll do it both ways. We'll assume you made a mistake, and then we'll assume you didn't make a mistake and you're just torturing yourself. So because that sort of spans the realm of possibility. If you did make a mistake, well you have to figure out what the mistake was, then you have to figure out what you have to do to decrease the probability that you will make that mistake again in the future. That's too atone. So let's say you made a mistake, you have to a tone for it. How do you a tone for it?

By not propagating the mistake into the future. How much should you beat yourself up for it? Enough so that you learn. Should you beat yourself up any more than that? No, because it's just counterproductive. Hypothetically, you're useful. You're a paramedic. You're a firefighter.

It's like, well, good for you, man. That's like hooray for you. You've got a useful function in the world and the necessary function, you don't want to beat yourself to death any more than necessary to learn because you're valuable. And that's like a rule of thumb for dealing with yourself, period. It's like, how much should you suffer for your stupidity? Enough to learn so that you don't repeat it. No more than that. Minimal necessary force. It's the so that you don't repeat it. No more than that.

Minimum necessary force. It's the same thing you do with your kids. How much should you punish your child for a transgression? Well, the punishment should match the crime, and it should only be implemented to the point where the child learns that that's not acceptable behavior, right? And then you can forgive them and let them go into the future. So that's, I would say, don't use a hand that's too heavy. Don't use a hand that's too heavy even on yourself. And so, because someone was taken out, let's say, because of something you did or didn't do,

you're going to take yourself out too? That's not helpful. And when you say, well, I made a mistake, it's like, well, yeah, you and the rest of the medical world, you know, medical error is the fourth leading cause of death. You're in a big club, man. People make mistakes all the time and it's no bloody wonder because you're dealing with life and death situations and in life and death situations, sometimes people die and sometimes the reason they die is because the people

trying to save the mart fast enough or smart enough or good enough for any of those things. It's like it's the price of doing business and it's absolutely catastrophic. But that doesn't mean that the right thing for you to do is torture yourself to death about, you know. And then there's the possibility too that you just made, you know, that you just weren't enough in that situation, but that many other people wouldn't or maybe everyone wouldn't have been enough in that situation, but that many other people wouldn't, or maybe everyone, wouldn't have been enough in that situation. And so you might need to talk to someone about it. That's what I would recommend to begin with.

It's like if it's really keeping you up at night, you know, there's a bunch of possible reasons for that. You made a terrible mistake. That's one reason. You made a terrible, unforgivable mistake. Less likely, but also possible. You're really stressed by your job and you're depressed and so you're fixating on something you did because your mood is dysregulated because you're too stressed. And if your sleep is disrupted that

could easily be a sign of that. It could be that you're guilty but it could be that you're just overwhelmed by your job and because you're feeling depressed you're getting obsessive about an error that happens to depressed people all the time. So you're going to watch that. I would say, you can go talk to somebody, find a professional, probably a behavioral psychologist because they're generally quite well trained. Look for someone who has a PhD. Look for someone who has a PhD from a American psychological association accredited school. And just go tell them. Here's what happened. Here's what I think I was at fault for. Here's what's happening in my life as a consequence and lay it out

but the goal should be to return to your productive life because having you take it out isn't helpful. Right? Adding another catastrophe to the catastrophe isn't helpful. So, and you're going to have to forgive yourself to some degree if you're going to work in a nightmare because you're going to make mistakes. So, that's the price, man. So, I would say lighten up, nurse the possibility that you're too stressed and torturing yourself because of that and seriously consider, go talk to a psychologist once. If it doesn't work, if it isn't good, find another one, try it again.

If it doesn't work three times, then don't do it. But what the hell do you have to lose? You've got your misery to lose. That's all. So lose it. So, yep. So Peter of Calabasas inquires, do you have groupies? I don't think so. Well, you know, because groupies are young women who are lining up to sleep with you mostly, right?

And so, I don't think so. Might be something that would trip your awareness. Oh, it might. Although it's amazing how blind you can be to that sort of thing. I think partly you have groupies also if you're looking for them, you know, if you sort of broadcast that idea and you can do that in all sorts of ways and I don't think I'm broadcasting the idea that I'm looking for groupies. So, so no, I don't think so.

I have had people go kind of fan girl on me from time to time, much to their chagrin, but they've generally turned out to be quite sensible people. I was at a hotel a while back, I don't know what city we were in, walked outside to get in an Uber. And there was a girl waiting beside a car and she just went completely fan girl. She started getting that high pitched voice and she was sort of flapping about. And she was all excited. And so I talked to her for a while, and then we were looking around for the Uber, and she was the Uber driver. So we figured that out, and then she was all embarrassed about it.

She said, oh, no, I went to all fan girl on you, and we got in the car, and she drove us to where we're going. And she turned out to be quite a sensible person. So I guess that was, she was sort of proto-groupy, I suppose, but she turned sensible very quickly, so that was quite nice. Could have been an awkward silence drive. Yeah, yeah, no, no, it was okay. It was okay. It's pretty weird though though I'll tell you. Is it possible to get your life together without becoming a square? Serious question, much internal tension related to

striking yourself. Oh you don't have your life together if you're a square. That's not together. Like it's better than not having, it's better, probably it's better to be a square than to be a disorganized catastrophe. So I figured that out, I think when I was reading maps of meaning, you start as a disorganized catastrophe, then you have to impose a disciplinary structure on that. And the risk of imposing a disciplinary structure is that you get all disciplined and orderly in square and dull and all of that. But at least you're not completely useless and chaotic. But then there's something past that, which is you take your discipline, personage, and

you introduce the right amount of chaos and catastrophe into that, right? And that's the risk taking, that's sort of what I was talking about with regards to the kids that were skateboarding. It's like you structure your habitable and disciplined space, but then you start to extend that. So you should be a square that takes risks. It's something like that, because then you expand your squared of, you're continually expanding your squared of,

and that makes you not a square. So that's the thing. That's why you have to be on the line between chaos and order, right? And not in chaos, that's no good. And not in order, that's no good either. You want to be in order with a foot in chaos. And then that makes you the thing that's always getting better than it already is.

And there's nothing about that that's dull or boring or if there is, then you're not doing out of this sufficient rate. You should do it out of rate that you can barely tolerate. That's what it looks like to me. Maybe that's wrong, maybe that's my own peculiarity. But it seems to me, look, imagine you see a great athletic performance, like a gymnast. This always comes to mind because I've watched the Olympics.

Now, and then you see a gymnast come out, do a gymnast. This always comes to mind because I've watched the Olympics. You know, now and then you see a gymnast come out, do a floor exercise. Perfectly. They're in order. You can tell they put their 15,000 hours of practice into that routine because it's just flawless. And everybody in the audience claps away and the judges give them, you know, like 95%

how scores and it's perfect. And then the next person comes out and it's like, what the hell are they gonna do? Because that was perfect. And you can't be better than perfect. It's like, yes, you can. And so that person comes out and it's like they give the performance of their life.

And you can tell when you're watching them that not only are they doing everything perfectly, they're pushing themselves right to the brink of catastrophe. With every move, and you can tell that, because that's another time when the crowd goes dead silent, and everybody's on the edge of their chair, because you can see that they're just by the little wobbles in their movement, even, that they're stretching themselves to perform better than they've ever performed, and they're taking the risk of failure to do it. And so, and they stop at the end of the performance and they go like that, you know, there's that

triumphant gesture and everybody stands up and claps like mad and that's better than order, right? And then the judges, they say, it's 9.9 and they're the gold metal winner because not only were they perfect, they were better than perfect. And everyone participates in that. That's why we watch sports in large part to see that happen now and then. You know, and everybody jumps up in the stadium and they hug each other when they see that. It's like, what's with you people? Why are you doing that? It's like someone hit a ball.

Who cares? It's like, no. Well, seriously, it's arbitrary, right? You think, well, what are you all doing? Are you deluded? It's like, no, you're celebrating the extension of the humanly possible. And you're doing that in the athletic realm. And that's better than perfect.

And you live for those moments. And not only that, you live for those moments in your life. Or you could say that the only moments in your life when you're really living are those moments. You want to have them as often as possible. So no, if you're just a square, then you're too much in the domain of order. You want to push yourself out to where the adventure is. And then you have the adventure and the stability. And that keeps the dynamism

in your life. Because you're not there just to be secure. It's like, secure. You're secure in the grave. You're not secure when you're alive. You're on the edge when you're alive, right? And you're dancing on the edge, and that's better than just order. But you don't get there without the order. You talk a great deal about Young's shadow and the importance of integrating these aspects into everyday being. How do you know when you're done? Other people tell you when you're done.

You're not done. You know, it's the edge thing again. It's that you're never done because the proper form of being is an internal form of becoming. And we don't line that to some degree in the lecture, right? Because the idea was that, well, just by starting on the path, you're in the right place. I mean, it's a funny thing, because you're still going somewhere, if you're trying to make your life better, and your family's life life better and your community's life better, there is a better that you're trying to go to,

but weirdly enough, you inhabit that better as soon as you start on that path, especially if you're committed to it. And that path is a pathway of continual improvement, it's continual transcendence, right? And the meaning in life is to be found in the continual transcendence, right? And the meaning in life is to be found in the continual transcendence of what you have. And so there's no end to that.

I've had visions of heaven, you know. And I thought, well, heavens are placed when everyone meditates on how the heaven that they inhabit currently could be made into an even more spectacular heaven. And that's heaven. It's just the continual revelation of one heaven that supersedes the previous heaven. And that's heaven. It's just the continual revelation of one heaven that supersedes the previous heaven. And that's a vision for, that's a vision for the, I would say the, perhaps the

ultimate destiny of, perhaps the ultimate destiny of consciousness is to inhabit something like that. But you start that in your own life. It's like, well, it's good. It's good. It's great. See if you can make it a little better. And not in a greedy way, it's the adventure of your life to see if you can do that. And if it's a little better, you want to make it a little better. And then you want to make it a little better. And in a deep way, in a way that, because to make something better is to struggle with the depths of things. And so, and then the shadow integration, it's like, well, what's that about?

It's, well, you have to be tough to do this. You know, and that's why I've told, this is something I've told young men in particular, but I think that's because I don't think you have to tell that to women right now, even though it's also equally important for women, men are being told consistently that their competence and their ability is the major contributor, so to speak, to the tyrannical patriarch, and so the best in them is associated with the worst. It's like, that's just wrong. It's like, it's bitterly and horribly wrong, and it's terrible for everyone to believe that.

It's terrible for men, and it's terrible for women as well, unless what you want from your men is absolute emasculation and pathetic uselessness, which will only manifest itself in rage and catastrophe. That's the outcome for that. So, say, well, you think strong men are dangerous. You wait till you see what weak men can do. So, you want... So, I'll give you an example. I've given you an example. I met Douglas Muriel while back, and Muriel is a very interesting person. I don't know if you know about him, but he's written some very contentious books. And he's had the same experience in the UK, I would say, in some sense that I've had in North America. He's been attacked by the press. He's a conservative

gay guy, and it was really interesting meeting him because he's very soft spoken and he is absolutely immovable Like you're not going to intimidate him or even if you do You're not going to scare him into not saying what he thinks and you can just tell that just by Even though he's very calm. He's very polite. He's very self-possessed, kind of reminded me a bit of Stephen Fry. He's got that same kind of elegant control, you know, very impressive. And he's got a spine of bloody steel.

The guys are monster. And Lindsay Shepard, you know, that girl that's suing Wilford Laurie at University, some of you know about that. She was a teaching assistant at Wilford Laurie at University in Canada who was showed a clipped dared to show a clip of me from public television to her communications class and got just raked over the coals for it

by her idiot, profet by her idiot professors and an administrator hired for that purpose. She's another person like that. She's got a bloody spine of steel that girl. She's only 22 and she don't mess with her. You can't move her. And those are people that have their shadow integrated. It's like, we have a great capacity for mayhem and evil. Make no mistake about it. And you can, but you can take that and you can put it in you and then

behind you. You know, if you take stock of it, if you can see it, if you're willing to contend with it, you can make it part of you. And then it becomes something that makes you immovable in the pursuit of good. And it's not because you're naive and weak, it's not that at all. It's because you are an absolute bloody monster, but you're oriented in the right direction. And that's the incorporation of the shadow. And that's to get the anger, the aggression working for you, to get the fear working for you, to get the sexual attractiveness and charisma working for you, all lined up behind your aims.

That's an integrated character. And this isn't abstract philosophical music, quite the contrary. One of the things that you do in psychotherapy, very, very frequently. So there's get your story straight. There's face what you fear. But there's something else too, which is,

integrate your anger well enough so that you can say what you have to say. And so think about it this way. Imagine that you're conflict avoidant. You're not assertive enough. You're conflict avoidant. How can you tell? You're resentful.

Right, and so here's two reasons why you're resentful. There's only two. One is, you're immature and pathetic and you should get your act together. That's reason number one. And the other is, you're being oppressed. You're being bullied and you have something to say and you're not saying it.

Those are the two reasons. Now, you should start with the first one because you're a mass of contradictions and you're not everything you could be. So maybe you're just whiny and resentful. So how do you figure that out? Talk to some people and say, look, here's the situation.

This is what's happening at work. This is the person I think that is mistreating me, whatever. Here's my list of grievances. Is it me? Or is something not good here? And maybe the person will say, well, here's some of it that's you, but look, it really looks like this is not a good situation. You have something to say. It's like, okay, you have something to say.

It's going to make you resentful and better not to say it. And if you don't say it, you're going to stay oppressed and unhappy, victimized. So you're going to have to learn to say it and if you don't say it you're going to stay oppressed and unhappy, victimized. So you're going to have to learn to say it. How are you going to have to learn? You're going to have to get that aggression that's manifesting itself in the resentment and all the fantasies of revenge that go along with that. You're going to have to integrate that and you're going to have to start to use it to your strategic advantage.

And that's a sort of this training. It's like the third most popular thing that psychologists do. It's like, okay, you've got something to say. We're going to help you figure out how to put your damn case forward. And that means you're not going to lose when it happens. It means that you're going to have a strategy. You're going to have five reasons to do what you're doing. And you're going to have thought through exactly what you're going to do with each

if each of those reasons fail, and you're not going to lose. And so what that is is that, see, when you raise a child and you do that properly, you don't raise a child who isn't aggressive. All you've got then is a scared, overgrown infant. What you do when you raise a child properly is you raise someone who has integrated their aggression into their character. So for example, maybe they're playing on a sports team. You want no aggression, no aggression on the sports team.

It's like, of course you don't want that. It's like, think about it. What you want is the kid to be aggressive and master it, play by the rules, right? Play in an ethical manner, to be a good sport, to help develop the rest of the team, to know that winning the series of games is more important than winning any singular game, but to play the game with his or her whole heart. Well, the aggression is integrated, not suppressed or inhibited. It's integrated. And to integrate your shadow is exactly that,

is to take that immense capacity you have for hatred and anger and bitterness and resentment and mayhem and to pull it into the game and have it serve the good that you're pursuing. And that's the integration of the Jungian shadow. And the way through that is terrible because you have to realize, if you're resentful, man, you can bet on this.

If you are resentful, you are doing all sorts of things to take revenge, but they're all underground. They're all unconscious. They're all acted out in a passive, aggressive way because you don't have the damn gall to make it conscious and to put it right. And so you integrate that, and it's horrible because you have to look at your own capacity

for anger. And lots of people make a decision in their life, anger is wrong. I will never be angry. It's like, sorry, that's not good enough for life, man. That's a major motivation. And you dispense with it, You can't dispense with it. It's a living thing. There's no dispensing with it. You can either be its master or its servant. Those are your options, but there's no getting rid of it. So that's the shadow and that's the reason How do you reconcile with family members that have untreated mental illnesses?

Oh, well, sometimes you can't. I mean, sometimes you can't, you know, I mean, the thing about illnesses is sometimes they're, well, first of all, sometimes they're fatal, right? People die. And sometimes they're catastrophic. Like if you have a family member who's a paranoid schizophrenic, and they're untreated, generally far proclodically,

it's like it's just gonna be absolute hell for you. And you can do your best. You can try to help the person out. You can open up your heart and your house to them, but you've got a hell of a problem on your hands. There isn't any reason whatsoever to assume that you'll be able to do it without being part and parcel of the catastrophe. It's just brutal. And then I would say, and this also makes the commentary in some sense, I wouldn't say useless, but the devil's in the details.

You know, each person's mental illness is quite the idiosyncratic catastrophe, and how you're going to deal with that, and your family is going to be something that's very difficult to think through. I would say that's another situation where you might want some professional help to go talk to someone and to strategize because sometimes one of the problems with having a family member who's really mentally ill is that you can't tell where their mental illness stops and your insanity begins.

It gets really confusing. And so sometimes you need someone from the outside who's seen a lot of that, who can tell you, oh, yeah, it's no wonder you're completely overwhelmed by that. That's completely overwhelming. No one could deal with that. And to help you put proper boundaries around it so that you don't get,

there's this old rule if you're a lifeguard, you know, and someone's drowning in their panicking, you swim up to them like this, right? And you basically tell them, calm down or I'm not going to rescue you. And the reason you do that is because you get close and they grab you around the neck and then you both die. And that's one drowning person is two drowning people is not better than one drowning person, is two drowning people, is not better than one drowning person. And that's a rule of thumb that you have to use too,

when you're trying to deal with a family member who's enveloped in that kind of catastrophe. It's like, you going down for the count with them is not helpful. That's why you put an oxygen mask on first if you're an adult in an airplane before you put it on your child. And so you might need to talk to someone and say, well, you know, here's what we can offer

without the catastrophe spreading. And sometimes that's just not enough to. It's all you can do to encapsulate it, and it's still a bloody tragedy, and that's the best you can manage. And that's horrible, but it's not as horrible as it could be without the management. So lots of times, the reason that people are suffering isn't because they're doing something wrong, although that can certainly exaggerate. Sometimes you're suffering just because those are the brutal facts on the ground right in

front of you. And your best task under those circumstances is to endure. That's what you've got. Chapter 12 is about that. Peta Cat would you encounter one on the street. It's like, well, what do you do when it's just too bloody much? And the answer is something like, narrow your time frame. I can't cope with the next month. Okay, can you cope with the next week? No. Can you cope with the next day? No, can you cope with the next day? Maybe. Can you cope with the next hour? Yes. Cope with the next hour.

Then cope with the next hour. You know, sometimes you're in that situation. And if you have a very ill family member, sometimes you're in that situation for a long time. And then you get through the bitter hours the best you possibly can. And that's the best you can do. And it's not because there's something wrong with you, it's because a tragedy is unfolding. It's real. So, yeah, that happens a lot to people, it's too bad.

So. Okay. Well. Okay, well. I want to be the first to congratulate you upon finishing your tour of 25 cities. And let's have another continued round of applause for the sendoff for Dr. Jordan Peterson. Thank you very much. It was a pleasure to speak with all of you. So good night. If you found this conversation meaningful, you might think about picking up dad's books, maps of meaning the architecture of belief, or his newer bestseller, 12 Rules for Life

and Antidote to Chaos. Both of these works delve much deeper into the topics covered in the Jordan B. Peterson Podcast. See JordanBeePeterson.com for audio, e-book, and text links, or pick up the books at your favorite bookseller. Next week, Dad will be speaking to Dr. Stephen RC Hicks, Professor of Philosophy at Rockford University, Illinois, Executive Director of the Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship, and senior scholar at the Atlas Society. Dr. Hicks received his Bachelor in Master's Degrees from the University of Guelph in Canada and his PhD in Philosophy from Indiana University in the U.S. He has published four books translated into 16 different languages including explaining

postmodernism, skepticism and socialism from Rousseau to Foucault. That book discussed his take on the state of the humanities, in particular, and the origin of the strange blend of skeptical postmodernism and Marxist political philosophy that seems increasingly to be characterizing so much of the modern university. Yeah, Dr. Hicks' book explaining postmodernism has been quite controversial. The professional philosophy community has taken to it quite warmly, I would say, but scholars from the disciplines that are characterized by postmodernism have been very critical of his thought.

The people who are just already critical of everything. Well, I guess they're particularly critical of his analysis of postmodernism and its relationship to Marxism. Anyways, we discussed the current state of the universities and also the effect on his personal life of having written this book and his plans for the future. I think the discussion was very interesting and I hope people will find it extraordinarily worthwhile. So we hope to see you all so to speak next week. Thanks very much. Thank you. Bye bye. Follow me on my YouTube channel Jordan B Peterson on Twitter at Jordan B Peterson on Facebook at

Dr. Jordan B Peterson and at Instagram at Jordan.b. Peterson details on this show access to my blog information about my tour dates and other events and my list of recommended books can be found on my website JordanB Peterson.com my online writing programs designed to help people straighten out their pasts, understand themselves in the present, and develop a sophisticated vision and strategy for the future can be found at selfauthoring.com, that selfauthoring.com From the Westwood One Podcast Network. From the Westwood One Podcast Network.