The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 130. Maps of Meaning 2: Marionettes & Individuals (Part 1)

Episode Date: August 2, 2020

Here is the second episode in a 12 part series that could only be found on youtube until now! In this lecture, I begin using a particular piece of dramatic art -- the Disney film Pinocchio -- to provide a specific example of the manner in which great mythological or archetypal themes inform and permeate narrative.

Welcome to Season 3, Episode 17 of the Jordan B Peterson Podcast. I'm Westwood One Podcast Networks, Joey Salvia, and I help produce this series. We're honored that you've subscribed and downloaded the Jordan B Peterson Podcast, and we thank you for joining us for part 2 of these 2017 lectures based on the doctor's book, Maps of Meaning, the Architecture of Belief, this week we present part one of a three-part lecture called Marianets and Individuals. A personal favorite Dr. Peterson theme of mine, based on one of the all-time classic

Disney films, Pinocchio. And so, without further ado, Dr. Jordan B. Peterson. So I'm going to briefly review some of what I told you last time, and then I'm going to walk through, as I mentioned, I'm going to walk through the Disney film Pinocchio, and which I presume most of you have seen, how many of you have seen it? Yeah, okay, well that's, that's, so as I think I mentioned, that's something in and of itself, right?

I mean, the fact that you've all seen it means that it's a production of cultural significance, and because it's such a strange artifact, that's one way of looking at it, it might be worth trying to take it apart to understand why it is, for example, that you even understand it. And so I offered you the proposition last week

that we view the world essentially through a narrative lens. And I believe that we view the world through a narrative lens because of the fundamental problem that we have to solve as living creatures is how we should act in the world. And that means how we should act in the world. And that means how we should act to maintain ourselves, but also how we need to act in relationship to other people

and in relationship to the broader world in order to maintain ourselves across time. So that's a complicated problem, right? It's not just how you survive. It's how you survive now and next week and next month and next year and 50 years from now and maybe your descendants as well if the culture is going to stabilize. And then not only you across all those time frames but you and everyone else across all those time frames.

It's a viciously difficult problem. And so I would say that we have evolved mechanisms to solve that. I think that's self-evident in some sense, because for example, one of the mechanisms that animals have evolved to deal with the problem of social being, even if they're not particularly social animals, is the dominance hierarchy, right? Or you could call it a hierarchy of authority or power, because I think considering human structures, social structures as mirror power structures is a terrible mistake. It's a terrible oversimplification.

Because power is by no means the only like force. Is what I mean. Force is not a stable way of solving the problem of how to live together across time. The question is what is the stable way of solving how to live together across time? And that really is the question, and it's part of the question that I'm trying to answer partly because it's a perennial problem, right? We face the problem of how to organize ourselves in small social units without undue conflict,

and then we face the larger problem of how to organize ourselves into large social units without undue conflict, and that conflict can be absolutely devastating, and frequently is. So then I would also say that the first way of solving this problem isn't conscious. You see, not at all. And you may know, and you may not know, that there are different forms of memory, right? Really, technically different forms of memory.

So for example, there's short-term working memory, which is the memory that you use to hold things like telephone numbers in your active imagination. It decays very rapidly. It's only about four to seven bits, which is why, well, it's why phone numbers were at least seven digits long. You can kind of manage that as a loop. And then there's episodic memory, and that has two elements. One is semantic, and the other is episodic. It's how, what's the name of that? Someone said something.

Yes, well, there's procedural procedural memory and then there's another, the kind of memory that you use to represent your experiences to yourself. So let's say it's image-laden and the other one is semantic and semantic is your memory for facts and those are quite different. So for example, procedural memory, that's how you write a bike, that's how you play the piano, that's how you play jazz music if you're in a combo. It's the memory, it's a funny kind of memory because it's actually built right into you, you know, I mean, so is the kind of memory that you use to represent your own life, but it's much

more malleable in some sense. So what that means is that in your procedures, there is information that you don't know about. It's patterned information that you don't know about. Part of that is how to act. You know, like when you walk into a social gathering, you don't really think through how you're going to act. You know how to act. And if someone asked you exactly what it is that you're doing and why, you could formulate a story about it. But the probability that it's the existence of that story that enabled you to act that way is zero, because you have to react way faster than that.

And so you have social knowledge built into your nervous system because you've practiced being a social being for a very long period of time. And of course then that social being has been shaped forever really. It's the right way of thinking about it. We know that animals organize themselves into hierarchies and we'll say of dominance because it's more true the farther back you go in time, at least since the time of the crustaceans, you know, when we split from our common ancestor 300 million years ago. And so, and it's true for social animals and non-social animals. So, even animals that don't live together in groups have to organize themselves into a hierarchy in the space they inhabit. Songbirds are a good example, and they have dominance disputes all the time. Partly, that's, you can hear them having their little dominance disputes in the space they inhabit. Songbirds are a good example, and they have dominance disputes all the time.

Partly, you can hear them having their little dominance disputes in the spring when they're singing, because basically what they're singing is I'm pretty damn healthy, and I'm ready to go, and if you're another bird like me, you better steer clear of this tree. And the dominant songbirds,

you know, they don't live together, crows are social, but most songbirds are. The dominant songbirds get the best nest, and the best nest is the one that doesn't get rained on. It's not too windy, and it's close to food sources, and, you know, and so then they have the healthiest chicks, and they attract the best mates. And like, it's really important where you're positioned

in the hierarchy, even if you're not like a flock or herd creature. Now we're more like herd creatures, so it's even more relevant to us, but there's just no escaping a hierarchical arrangement in social being. That is social being, and it's evolutionarily ancient beyond conception. So 300 million years ago there weren't trees, you know? I mean so the dominant hierarchy is older than trees. So that's really something to think about. And then you know when you're thinking about the reality that shaped us, say from an evolutionary perspective, but also from a cultural perspective, what you have to understand is that the things that have shaped us most are the things that have been around

the longest. So you could say, those are the most real things. And you can't even see some of them. It's not like you can come in here. Well, it's not exactly true. You can't come in here and see the multiple dominance hierarchies that are at work. You can in a way because the chairs are set up to face this way, and I'm facing that way, that gives you some clues about the social order here, and you take the cues instantly, right?

You come down, you sit in the chairs, you organize yourselves according to mutual expectation, and that's part of your procedural knowledge about how to behave as a social creature. Now, that knowledge is really, really deep and a lot of it's coded in your behavior. Now, and another people's behavior as well. And that's, you know, that's the expectations you have of other people end of yourself. And a lot of those are implicit, right? So, when we're interacting, there's a very large number of things that you just don't get to do and you know that too And you won't do them and that way we can act as if we understand each other Even though we don't because you're really complicated and I'm really complicated and there's lots of situations where we might really be in conflict

But because we share a map of the culture, the cultural expectations, it makes part of our, it's built right into our perception. You will act out that set of expectations and so will I. And if neither of us can do that, even if one of us can't, we're going to stay, we're either going to immediately devolve into conflict or we're going to avoid each other like the plague. And that's exactly the right thing to do. And so one of the really useful things to understand, and this took me a long time to

formulate properly, you know. You hear the terror management theorists for example, and they have this idea that your meaning representation, the story you tell about the world, regulates your death anxiety. It's something like that. But that's not right. I mean, it's close to right,, it's something like that. But that's not right. I mean, it's close to right, and it's a smart idea. It came from Ernest Becker, by the way, who wrote a book called The Denial of Death, which is actually quite a good book, even though it's wrong.

You know, sometimes a book can be very useful. It can be usefully wrong, and Becker's book is usefully wrong, because he thought that it's the internal representation of your belief system that regulates your anxiety and that anxiety is fundamentally in the final analysis, anxiety about death. It's like, well, okay fine, it's a reasonable proposition, but that isn't how it works, you see. It isn't my beliefs right now that are regulating my emotion. You see, it isn't my beliefs right now that are regulating my emotion. It's the fact that I'm acting out those beliefs, which include implicit perceptions. I'm acting them out and so are you. And so what you're doing and what I expect more, more accurately, what you're doing and what I want you to do.

And the way I want you to react to me, that's working. So it's the match between my belief system and the way I want you to react to me, that's working. So it's the match between my belief system and the way everyone else is acting that's regulating my emotions. It's not the belief system. It's mediated by the social culture and you see if you understand this, then you understand more particularly why people are willing to fight to the bitter end to protect their culture. It's not a psychological structure that they're protecting. It's a psychological structure and a sociological structure simultaneously. So the social contract is you have a set of expectations and I have a set of expectations. They're actually desires. They're not merely expectations because as living creatures were desirous,

we don't just expect and so you desire an outcome and I desire an outcome. And we agree to act in accordance with that. That's the social contract and so people don't like having that disrupted. Well, it isn't because it psychologically destabilizes them, although it does, it's because it actually destabilizes the, right? If all of a sudden we can't occupy the same specified domain of territory, it isn't only that we're thrown into psychological disarray, although we will be, it's that we'll start

fighting with each other, like, and that can kill you. It's no joke, it kills people a lot. Like, it happens, it can happen very easily that a cohesive social group can fragment along some fracture line of identity, let's say, and all hell breaks loose. You know, that's what happened with the Tootsies and the Hutu and in Rwanda, you know, and those things can get out of control just so fast. It's just unbelievable. And so, and that wasn't death anxiety, that was death. That's a whole different thing. And that's the other thing that terror management people don't exactly get. It's like, it isn't just that your culture and your cultural beliefs protect you from anxiety and say anxiety about death.

Even, it's that they actually protect you from death as well as protecting you from death anxiety. I mean, look, it's warm in here. It's cold outside. The fact that the culture is intact means that you're not outside freezing. That's a hell of a lot more fundamental in some sense than mere anxiety, although I've not tried to underplay the role of anxiety. That's a major issue,

but there's something that's a lot more fundamental at stake than mere psychology. So it's the match between your map of the world and other people's actions that regulates your emotion, and it regulates it completely, because if someone in here started acting seriously deranged, like Brandish Tapistol, let's say, all of a sudden you would not be in the same place at all, not a bit. And so what would happen? Well, chaos would happen. And chaos isn't just that you would get anxious. That's not a good enough explanation. What would happen is more complex than that. What happens in some sense is that your body, and it does this, what would happen is that you would react the same way that a rack reacts to

a cat. It's exactly that. It's exactly that. You would respond as if a terrible predator had emerged in your midst. And so what is that reaction? Well, it's not just anxiety because when you encounter a predator, anxiety isn't the only thing that's useful. That just makes you freeze. It's like that could be the worst thing you could do. You freeze and well, you're a pretty easy target. So you have to be prepared for a lot broader range of responses than mere petrification. How about a little aggression? That might be helpful. You don't know, it also might get you killed, but maybe you can take the guy down and maybe

that's a good idea. Maybe you have to run, so that's disinhibited as well. Maybe you have to think really quickly and reflexively, so that's activated, disinhibited, I would say as well, and maybe you have to think really quickly and reflexively. So that happens, that's activated, disinhibited, I would say, as well. It's like your whole being is thrown into intense concentration on the moment, and you're burning up physiological resources like mad. And so what will happen after something like that, if you don't develop outright post-traumatic stress disorder, which some of you would, is that you'd assuming that the situation was brought under control, you'd walk out of here shaking with your heart rate at like

170, and it would take you like, well, it might take you the rest of your life, and maybe you would never recover, but you could bloody well be sure that it would take you the rest of the day, that's for sure. And so, it's no joke when someone steps outside the confines of the social contract, right? And that's kind of, there's a philosopher named Hobbes, who I suppose in some sense was a centrally conservative philosopher, as opposed to Russo, who's kind of his exact

opposite. Russo believed that people were basically good in their natural state. So he believed nature was basically good. And he believed that culture was what corrupted people. And so, and Hobbes, Thomas Hobbes, believed exactly the opposite. He believed that in the state of nature, let's say,

every person was at every other person's throat. And the only thing that prevented continual chaos was the imposition of a collective agreement that would be the social contract that essentially governed how people would interact and that would keep that underlying chaos at bay. And you know, my contention is is that Hobbes was correct and Rousseau was correct. And I think that if you add Rousseau and Hobbes together, you get a total picture of the world. And that's really, I think, the picture of the world that I'm trying to

relate to you. It's both at once. It's like, well, you can't just attribute human malevolence and unpredictability to society. It's an on-starter. It's like people build society. So all you're doing is pushing the problem back. It's like, built society. So all you're doing is pushing the problem back. It's like where did it come from? Well, society, the society before, well, then the one before that. It's like, well, you gotta tangle up the individual in there at some point because people created society.

And so you can't just blame human irrationality and malevolence on society. Well, and also it's ungrateful for God's sake. It's like society obviously also makes you peaceful. Part of the reason you're peaceful right now, all of you is because while you're not that hungry, you're certainly not starving to death. You would be a very, very different person if you were starving right now.

Or if you were enraged or if you were panicking or if you were terrified becauseged or if you were panicking or if you were terrified because your future was radically uncertain. I mean you're just not any of those people right now. You're satiated, and I mean that technically you're satisfied. None of your biological systems, except perhaps curiosity, which is a rather pleasant emotion, are activated in the least. And, you know, because of that, you all think, well, you're in control of yourself, but don't be thinking that. That's just not right.

I mean, if you look at how the brain is structured, for example, the hypothalamus, which is a really important part of the brain, it basically establishes the framework of reference and the actions, the framework of reference within which and the actions you take in order to fulfill basic biological needs. So the hypothalamus makes you thirsty and the hypothalamus makes you hungry and it makes you sexually aroused. It puts you into a state of defensive aggression and it actually also makes you explore and

be curious. All of that is hypothalamic. It's an amazing structure. And then it's really small and it's right at the base of the brain. And you can imagine it as something that has tremendously powerful projections upward throughout the rest of the brain

into the emotional systems and the cortical systems and all of that, like tree trunk-sized connections, metaphorically speaking. And then the cortex has these little vime-like tendrils going down to regulate the hypothalamus. And if it's when push comes to shove, man, the hypothalamus, that thing wins. And so you get people now and then who have a hypothalamic dysfunction and one of them produces a condition called, I can't remember it, it's not dip-somania,

although it's like that, it doesn't matter. It produces uncontrollable thirst, and so what will happen is that people who have this hypothalamic problem will drown themselves by drinking water, which you can do, by the way, and so they just cannot get enough water, and there's do, by the way. And so they just cannot get enough water. And there's no stopping them, no more than there would

be stopping you if you were suffering from raging thirst. It's like it's a happy day when the hypothalamus is not telling you what to do. And you live in such a civilized state that most of the time roughly speaking, you your tranquil and satisfied, and more or less, you can imagine yourself as a peaceful, you know, productive, well-meaning entity. But don't be thinking that that's what you'd be if you were put in the right situation, because that's just not right at all.

So, you know, lots of times, soldiers develop post-traumatic stress disorder because they go out of the battlefield. They're kind of naive, they're young guys, you know, and it actually is worse if they're not that bright. It turns out because having a lower IQ is one of the things that predisposes you to post-traumatic stress disorder. But anyways, they go out in the battlefield and they see what they're capable of under battlefield conditions. And like, you know, we've been fighting wars for a very long time,

millions of years, you know, chimps basically have wars with other chimps, the troops, right? Because the juveniles will patrol the perimeter of their territory. And if they find other chimps from other troops that they outnumber, they will tear them to pieces. Like, and chimps are really, really strong. And so, when I say they'll tear them to pieces, I mean that literally. You know, they tear them to pieces. And Jane Goodall discovered that originally in the 1970s. She didn't even report it for a while because she was so shocked.

You know, she kind of assumed, like most followers of Rousseau, that the human proclivity for warfare was part that part that was something that was uniquely human. You know, it had something to do with our unique self-consciousness or intelligence or something like that. She had no idea that it was rooted that deeply. We split from chimps about six, seven million years ago, something like that. And so we were patrol and territory, we were gang members seven million years ago. And you know, that's that's minimum estimation because of course that ancestor shaded back maybe 20 million years into entities that were roughly primate like. And so territoriality and proclivity to defend territories so deeply embedded in us, it's

like the control center for our whole brain. And so there isn't anything more important to us, I would say, than maintaining the match between what we want to have happen and what other people are doing in response to our actions. Like that's that, that's what we want. And as long as that match is maintained, then our emotional systems, and I would say anxiety is probably primary in that regard, our emotional systems remain inhibited. They're on. They're ready, like a nuclear reactor rods are on, and the rest of the brain dampens them down, but you don't want them to take time to start up, man. You want them to be on want them to take time to start up, man. You want them to be on at a 10th of a second's notice

when it's necessary. And so that's kind of why, well, if you look at a wild animal, it's alert. It's ready to dart this way or that way, especially a prey animal. Instantaneously, and it has reflexes built into it as you do that will respond way before your conscious. So for example, if you happen to be walking down a trail

and you detect something snake-like in the periphery, you'll leap away before you even know that you leapt. And that's because it takes a fair bit of time to actually see a snake by which I mean form a conscious representation of the snake. You know, maybe it takes a quarter of a second or something like that, or even longer. But it doesn't matter, maybe it takes 20th of a second.

But the thing about the damn snake is it's way faster than that. It's really fast that thing. And it co-evolved with primates by the way. And so it can nail you like way faster than you can look at it. So you have your eyes map, snake-like objects right onto your reflexes so that the eyes go, the eyes make you jump, and then they see, after that's like, yeah, well, now you can see, that's no problem, you know. So, all right, all right. Now, what I would say that what we do is we live in a shared story.

And the story is a way of looking at the world and its way of acting in the world at the same time. And that story has to operate within narrow parameters. And this is something that's extraordinarily important to understand. And this is something I think that Piaget figured out, John Piaget figured out better than anyone else. I think he really got this right. And by the way, one of the things that Piaget was trying to do, you never hear about how strange these great thinkers are,

but Piaget was a very strange guy, and he was a hyper genius. He was offered the curatorship of a bloody museum when he was 10 years old, you know, because he wrote this little paper on mollusks, which apparently was very good. So they offered him the curatorship of a museum and his parents wrote back and said, well, you know, no, probably not, because he's actually 10. And so that was P.S.J., man, the guy was a genius. And, you know, he was actually motivated by the desire to reconcile science and religion. That was that was actually his entire motivation for what he did. You never hear that, but that's the case.

And so Piaget was very interested in how you produce structures that enable you to regulate yourself, because you're like a colony of strange subanimals that have to figure out how to get along so that you can sort of be one thing. You kind of learn that, I would say, between the ages of two and four, as you're being socialized, you know how erratic two-year-olds are. I mean, they're a blast, and it's part because they're erratic. It's like, they're unbelievably happy, and then they're unbelievably hungry, and then they're really hot,

and then they're really upset and crying, and then they're really scared. It's like, and all of that's just untrammeled. And so it's really fun to be around them, especially when they're happy, because they're so happy that it's just you don't ever get to be that happy. And so it's nice to be around a two-year-old, because you can kind of feel that again. And a lot of the horrible things about being a parent

is that you spend a tremendous amount of your time making your child less happy. And the reason for that is that positive emotion is very impulsive. You know, because everybody says, well, you should be happy. It's like, well, no. When you're happy, you're actually quite stupid. And so because happiness makes you impulsive, happiness makes happiness says, hey, things are really good right now. Get wet if you can, well, the getting's good. And so, like if you're hyper optimistic, manic will say, it's like every stock investment looks like a really good stock

investment. It's like you won't spend all your money because look at those wonderful things everywhere and you could do such great things with them. And then, you spend all your money. And then you crash and you think, oh God, my life's over. Because I just spent all my money on all this useless stuff and it's all under the grip of impulsive, positive emotion. And so when you're telling your kids to be quiet and settle down, it isn't because they're making a lot of noise,

being in pain, it's because they're running around like wild baboons having a blast and disrupting things like mad. And so you've got kids, you've got to settle down, like quit having so much fun. And it's kind of awful that you do that, but you do. And that's because the emotions and the motivations have to be brought into like a relationship with one another within the person so that, you know,

one thing I remember with my son who is quite, he's quite disagreeable by temperament, which is actually a good thing as far as I'm concerned, although it brings its own challenges. And so with my daughter, when she was misbehaving, she was pretty agreeable. And if she was misbehaving, I could basically just look at her and then she'd quit. But my son, it was like, that was just nothing. You're looking at me.

It's like, no, that's just not going to go anywhere, man. And so then I'd tell him to stop. And that really wasn't having much of an effect either. And so then I'd like tell him to stop, and that really wasn't having much of an effect either. He just sort of maybe laugh or run away or whatever. I mean, he was a tough little rat. And what I would do with him is he would be doing something and I'd interfere, and he'd get upset and angry.

And so then I'd get him to sit on the steps, and I told him, this is when he was about two, I said, look, you're going to sit on the steps. That's time out. You're going to sit on the steps and I told him, this is when he was about two, I said, look, you're going to sit on the steps, that's time out. You're going to sit on the steps until you've got control of yourself and you can come back and play the family game again. I basically said, be a civilized human being and then you're welcome again. So he'd sit on the steps, it was so interesting to watch because he was just in rage. He'd sit there.

Like, have you ever seen a two-year-old have a temper tantrum? It's really quite the bloody phenomena. If you ever saw an adult do that, you'd like, you'd call 911 right away. It's like, oh my god, I'd have seen adults do that, you know, because people say with borderline personality disorder will have temper tantrums. And it's like, man, you want to be about 30 feet away from that person. That's for sure. It's really, but in kids, it's like, man, you want to be about 30 feet away from that person, that's for sure, it's really, but in kids it's like, well first of all, they're only this long, so how much trouble can they really cause? But it's like, you know, they're just completely gone, they're like on the floor, their face is red, they're just furious, like way more furious than you ever get if you're even vaguely

socialized. They're just outraged and they're kicking and hitting the ground. It's like a little epileptic fit of anger. They're completely controlled by their rage. We took care of one kid for a while who he was actually a push over that kid. You could get him to behave by kind of shaking your finger at him. But his mother thought he was really tough, because he had her figured out. And one of the things he would do is have a temper tantrum and during the temper tantrum,

he would hold his bloody breath until he turned blue. It's like try that. Like, you know, that's your homework. Go home and have a temper tantrum and while you're doing it, hold your breath until you actually turn blue. It's like you won't be able to do it. You don't have the willpower of a two-year-old. That's for sure.

That little varmant man, he just have a fit. Then he'd hold his breath, and then he'd turn blue. It was like, wow, that's amazing. And we would just like, let him do it. He'd turn blue, and everybody would be gone, and he'd come out of it. And it didn't work. So he just quit doing it.

I think he did it like twice and he figured out, oh well, that's a lot of work for very little outcome. And it's not like two-year-olds are stupid. They're not stupid. They're probably smarter than you, but they're not civilized by any stretch of the imagination. And so anyways, back to my son, I'd put him on the steps, and he'd be like, oh, I just like enraged,

and trying to get himself together. You know, and I'd wait a few, I got a strict rule, which was, as soon as you're done, you're welcome again. So it's completely under your control. You get yourself calmed down, you come and talk to me again,

if you're calm enough so I like you, then you're welcome back in the family. No grudge, nothing. And so it's harder than you, then you're welcome back in the family. No grudge, nothing. And so it's harder than you think, like people think they like their kids. It's like don't be thinking that. They're hard to like, they're little monsters, and they're very, very pushy and provocative. And so lots of parents do not like their children, and they do terrible things to them their whole life.

So it's no joke, and it's very common. And you know, that was Freud's observation, fundamental observation, that a lot of psychopathology is rooted in the family. And you can be sure of that. You know, and when you hear about some mother who's done something terrible to her child, which happens reasonably frequently, you know perfectly well that she has a very terrible capacity to discipline, that child's just provoked her and provoked her and provoked her and provoked her and it just happens to be a day where her new boyfriend left and she's quite hung over and she got fired and it's like that's the wrong day to provoke her. And then she does something that is not good.

And you read about it and you think, well, how could that happen? How could anyone do that? Well, that's how they do it. And so, and kids are very provocative, just like little chimps. Chimps, the adolescents will like throw little pebbles and sticks at the sleeping larger males and bun them. And that teasing, which it is, that teasing turns

into full-fledged dominance-challenge behavior. Once the adolescent males get big enough to do it. So when you're being provoked by a child, which they provoke you all the time, they're trying to figure out, well, just where are you exactly? What happens if I do this? What happens if I do this? How else are they going to figure it out? Anyways, he'd sit on the steps and just, he's just enraged and trying to control himself

and I'd watch that and then you know I'd come back after about two minutes or whatever and he'd still be urrrrrrr I'd say well you know have you got yourself under control or are you ready to get it off the steps? He'd go no not yet and then you know he'd get himself under control and then he'd come back and you know he contrite. And then I would like him right away. You know, you got to watch that, because you don't like being dominated by a two-year-old. No one does. And so if the child hasn't mastered himself and started to act in accordance with the prevailing

social norms, you won't like them while you think, oh, yeah, I will, because I'm a good person. It's like, no, you won't. And no, you're not a good person, so don't be thinking about that at all. It's just not true so When he was contrite then he'd come and then you know, we just go on like nothing had happened because that's what you want to do right as soon as you get compliance especially if the compliance is in the best interest of the child you want to reward it instantly, right? That's the right thing to do because so then and and especially if the compliance is in the best interest of the child, you want to reward it instantly, right? That's the right thing to do.

Because so then, and you could just see him gaining control over himself. And so really what was happening is, in his mind, in his brain, we'll say there was a war between the psyche, the ego that was starting to become integrated, and starting to become a continuous person, an identity. And it's fragile in two-year-olds, and it can be disrupted all the time. And it is. That's why they're so hyper-emotional. It's fragile, that little ego.

And it doesn't have a lot of power. And so what you want to do is reward it when it wins. You know, it's when he gets control over the underlying motivations, you want to say, hey, good work, man, good work, kid, you did it. You know, you got yourself under control way to be. And the kid's really happy about that because it's actually not that much fun to have a temper tantrum. It's exhausting, you know, it takes you over.

Question? Yeah. Do you get an example of what you would reward him with? Oh, just pat on the head, or, you know, that's good. There's kind word, you know, or whatever. Perfect. Yeah, notice it. Pay attention.

That's it. That's it. Pay attention. And that's a great thing to know with people, like in your relationships, here's the key to a good relationship. It's not the only one, but watch your person carefully, carefully, carefully. And whenever they do something that you would like them to do more of, tell them that that was really good.

And mean it, and it's not manipulative, because if it's manipulative, it won't work. It's like you have to say, wow, I'm so glad you did that. And you have to be precise. Here's what you just did that I thought was great. And oh boy, that's so nice that you've noticed. I can't believe that you've noticed. It's like, you do that 20 times,

and the person will be like the rat that's just pushing the lever for cocaine. So, but no, I'm serious. It's a Skinner established, this BF Skinner, noticed this a long time ago. Reward is intensely useful in terms of modifying behavior, but the problem is that it's really hard to notice when things are going right, right? Because you're kind of primed to notice when things are going wrong, and so you use threat and punishment more often as agents of shaping the people that you're around.

Because, you know, when everything's going right, it's like, what are you going to say? Everything's going right. It turns to zero. You just assume it. And that's not good. That's not good. You want to pay attention. And if you're person, your children, your wife, your whoever, your mother, your sister, if you want them to, if you want to rectify your relationships with them, and I'm not saying to do this in a manipulative way, it won't work. But if they do something that's promoting harmony and peace and good will, it's like, tend to tell them that you noticed. It's so useful.

And you have to get rid of your grudges and your resentment to do that, right? Because you don't want to kind of mad at your sister and then you notice she does something good. You think, there's no goddamn way I'm going to reward her for that. So you ignore you know she does something good you think there's no god damn way I'm gonna reward her for that so you ignore her when she does something good it's like that's brilliant that is because then you've just punished her for doing what you want and people do that with her kids all the time you know because they let the kids dominate them then they get resentful then the kid will run up to them to show them something that's kind of spectacular and they're not happy. They'll like, oh yeah, that's, you know, I'm working, you know, little kid, all sad about that and he's just learned something.

So, and it's not perhaps what you want him to learn. And so you have to keep your relationship with your children pristine. And that means that you can't hold a grudge or resent them, and that means that you have to help them learn how to behave so that you like them. And that way, if you like them and you're kind of sensible, and maybe your partner also likes them, so you know, you've got a consensus going there, there's a reasonable possibility that other people will actually like them too, including other children, and then the world will open up to them. Then you'll bring them to people's houses and the people will actually smile at them and

give them a pat on the head instead of thinking, oh my god, that brat's coming to visit again. I wonder what he'll break this time. That's just a horrible thing for your child to experience repetitively in situation after situation. All they learn is that adults have a false smile but they're really lying all the time. God, it's like a bit of hell and there's a lot of children who are trapped in that. It's really awful to see. I can see kids like that when I walk down the street.

It's like they're little doomed things and there they are. They're screwed in 15 different ways and there's no way out of it. It's really awful. So I would not recommend that you do that. It's better to notice that you're a bit of a monster or a lot of a monster. And notice that you are much happier with the people around you when they behave in accordance with reasonable social norms. And then you actually feel genuinely connected to them.

You want to work on their behalf so that everything works out. But if you think you're a good person and that you'd never do anything that was harmful to your children, then you can just forget about that because you'll never take it seriously enough to actually learn. So, all right. So anyways, we live inside this story as far as I can tell. And, you know, we kind of put the story together inside us to begin with, and that happens between two and four when you're integrating those motivations and emotions

into a relatively functional unity, right? And that does happen between two and four. If you don't have your kids socialized by the time they're four, you might as well just forget it. And I know that sounds terribly pessimistic and all of that, but I know the literature on trying to rectify anti-social behavior in children. And after the age of four, it's virtually impossible,

no matter what you do. And the reason for that is that kids who are still acting like two-year-olds, when they're four, that, you know, their twice is old age as a two year old. That's a lot of difference, like, a four year old is an adult as far as a two year old is concerned. And so if the four year old is still acting like a two year old, that's really not good.

And other four year olds will come up and, you know, do a little play invitation like a dog. And, you know, the kid, the two yearyear-old, four-year-old has no idea how to react to that. And so the more mature kid thinks, oh well, how about I play with you? And then that kid is isolated from the peers. And after four, you're mostly socialized by your peers.

And so you just fall farther and farther and farther behind. You're more and more alienated. You're more bitter and angry and no wonder. And it's just not, you can't rectify it. So that's useful to know. It's like your job from two to four is to turn your child, help turn your child into a functional unity. And by three, they should be functional enough

as a unity within themselves so that they can concentrate on a voluntary goal for some reasonable length of time, which is also why it's useful to let them spend some time alone so that they can learn to amuse themselves, because if they can't amuse themselves, they're not going to be able to play with other kids. And then by three, they're sorted together enough. So if another three-year-old comes along, they can at least play in parallel. And may also start, maybe able to start, playing a cooperative game. And so that's often a fantasy game, you know, pretend. And so what the kids will do, sometimes they mediate it verbally, but sometimes it's more acted out. It's a combination of the two. They'll assign each other roles, they'll do this with you too. It's like let's have a tea party. Well, what does that mean? Well, it means let's sit down and act out the act of sharing food

and see if we can get that right. That's what the kids say, I'll have a little tea party. You know, it's very important because human being share food. Like, this is a major thing to get right, man. And so the kid will say, well, you be the mom and I'll be the dad. And you know, we'll make little fort, and that'll be our house. And we'll go in there and we'll run our roles. And, you know, we're acting out, we're acting out family. And if we're both reasonably civilized as three-year-olds,

we can concentrate on that goal, we can establish that little fictional world, we can negotiate a mutual goal, and then we can run the simulation. And that's what kids are doing when they're pretending. It's bloody brilliant. That's play, man. It's brilliant. It's absolutely unbelievable. Because, you know, if you're going to play mom, let's brilliant, it's absolutely unbelievable, because if you're gonna play mom, let's say,

it isn't like you imitate your mom, because imitation would be how annoying it is when someone copies you, so you're sitting like that, and then I do the same thing, it's like that's really annoying. And that isn't what kids do. They don't act out the precise actions that they've seen the target of their fantasy display. They're way more sophisticated than that. They watch their mother, let's say, like hawks. And then they start to extract out regularities in their behavior, which is

mum behavior, let's say. That's what makes you mum, whatever that is. And then, so it's like they look at you across time and they extract out the regularity that makes you mother, and then they try to embody that regularity in their pretend play, and then they sort of encapsulate or incorporate the spirit of being a mother or being a father or whatever, or an animal because they'll play it that.

So that's what they're doing. They're using their body as, and their mind is dramatic forums. It's really amazing. You know, it's so sophisticated. And no other animal does that as far as we know. And it's the platform on which language is based. First of all, we imitate. And language is imitation, right? Because we use the same words, right? So it's imitation. It's a big deal. So you can act out someone else,

and then you can conceptualize them in fantasy. And it's only way after that that you could maybe articulate it. Like, what does it mean to be a mother? So I could have you write an essay about that. Well, you'd have to think about it, right? You wouldn't just automatically know, but if someone hands you a baby,

and you know, you're not completely socially blind, you roughly know what to do after you're done with your initial nervousness, you roughly know what to do. Don't drop it, that's a good rule, you've probably figured that one out at least. You know, don't yell at it, don't startle it, give it a little pat maybe, try hugging it. Maybe you go like this, you know, you make eyes at it. You know what to do? It's built into you. It's built into you, but that doesn't mean you could lay it out as a series of rules about how to be a mother.

It's like you could write a whole damn book about that. So, all right, so anyways, you live in this story. And first of all, you get your own story together. And that's by integrating your motivations and emotions together under social influence. Piaget kind of states that before the age of three, kids can't really play. They're egocentric.

And it's not exactly right because you're actually playing with your mother from the time you're born. So even with breastfeeding, that's a social interaction. And it's a complex, cooperative endeavor. And it's often hard for mother and infant to get that right. Because it's complicated. And it requires a lot of social interaction. Like, well, the child has to learn not to bite, for example. And the mother has to learn not to be too nervous. And there's a lot of social bonding. It's really complicated social interaction. So the child, the infant, even at the earliest stages, is already engaged in a complex social dynamic

that's essentially play oriented. But it's pretty primordial. It has to do mostly with the mouth. And child's mouth and tongue are already hardwired at birth. So your child is most, this is a Freudian observation as well. Your child is almost all mouth and tongue when it's born. The rest of its body, while you watch infants, like even when they're, how old? Seven months, six months, four months, I can't even remember now. You know, they'll move their arm and they kind of go

like this. It's like they have no fine control. It's more like they have clubs on the ends of sticks. It's like that. Their nervous system isn't thoroughly myelinated. They don't have control over themselves. But their mouth and tongue are already wired up. And so otherwise they wouldn't be able to swallow or nurse. So the oral element is extraordinarily important for a young child.

That's why kids put everything in their mouth, you know, even when they're a bit older. It's like they see with their tongue, which of course everyone can do. You know, if you put a block in your mouth, you can tell that it's like a cube. You can tell that it's a cube without looking at it. So you can see with your tongue and see with your hands. You can even see to some degree with your ears. Anyways, so there's social interaction right from the beginning, but for the point of simplification,

you might say, well, first the child organizes themself into a functional unity under the pressure of social dynamics, and then they get unified enough so that they can attain unity with another child by setting up a fictional world and cooperating and competing within that. Because that's quite interesting, too, because people often juxtapose cooperation and competition as if they're opposites, but that they're not opposites at all, another

P.A.J. in observation. So you say, well, it's hockey, a competitive game. And people would say, well, yeah, But then you think, well, really? Really? No one brings a basketball, right? So we're going to play by the rules. That's cooperation. Well, are the teams competing against each other?

Well, yes, but they agree to compete within a particular landscape. And they all cooperate to maintain that landscape. And so you do the same thing when you're playing monopoly. It's like you're trying to win, but at the same time you're cooperating. That's society, man. That's society right there. You're cooperating. That's the big enclosure. And within that, there are regulated competitions.

But to separate those artificially and say, well, one's competition in the other's cooperation. It's just not very smart. It's not observant. That isn't how it works. And games are intensely cooperative, even if they're intensely competitive. I mean, the hockey teams are playing the same game. That's the cooperation. Then each team, there's competition within the team to be the best player, let's say. But everyone wants that, because everyone wants good players to emerge, but you still cooperate like mad with your teammates. And if you don't pass and play like a reasonable person,

then they're going to not be happy with you. So even within that competition, cooperation is regulating the interactions. And then you can think, this is a really good thing to think too. It's like, you know, people often say to their kids, doesn't matter whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game. And the kid, of course, has no idea what that means. It's like, what do you mean? I'm trying to win. And the parents says, no, no, no idea what that means. It's like, what do you mean? I'm trying to win.

And the parent says, no, no, it matters how you play. And the kid pushes them, and the parents really can't come up with a good explanation of why that's the case. They might say, well, other kids won't play with you if you. There you go. Because you could say, this is something to think about. So there's a game, and there's a victory within the game. But then there's the set of all games.

And there's victory across the set of all games. And the victory that you attain across the set of all games isn't winning all the games. It's being invited to play all the games. And so if you play fair, then you're playing a meta game. And the meta game is how to win across the set of all games. And so if you teach your child how to behave properly, then they always get invited to play.

And that makes them winners. And that's that. And so if you understand that, you understand something phenomenally important about the emergence of morality, because people, moral relativists in particular, think that morality is relative. And of course, human beings are diverse, just like languages are diverse, and there's more than one playable game, but there's not really more than one playable medigate.

It's like you're either the kind of person that other people want to play with, or you're not. And if you're not the kind of person that other people want to play with, then you're a loser. It's as simple as that. And that's true of all cultures. They might be playing different individual games within their culture, undoubtedly they are.

But the set of all games that they play is still common across cultures. That's part of what makes us human. And then you could say as well, But the set of all games that they play is still common across cultures. That's part of what makes us human. And then you could say as well, we're actually evolved to detect people who are good at playing the set of all possible games. And we actually know that. That's not theoretical. We know, for example, some things are easy to remember, and some things are hard to remember. Here's something that's easy to remember. You play with someone and they cheat. Man, you will remember that.

That's like in your mind, that's not going anywhere. And so you're great at detecting cheaters. And you remember. And that's because you can't trust a cheater. And you shouldn't invite a cheater to play a game with you because they might cheat. And so that's part of the innate morality system. You remember cheaters because they aren't good at playing the meta game.

And of course you're evolved. Of course you're adapted to the meta game because you're the product of this immense evolutionary history, right? And whoever your ancestors were, which is an unbroken string of successful reproducers going back three and a half billion years. You think about that every single one of your ancestors successfully reproduced. It's mind-boggling. The chances against that are so it's billions, billions to one. And here you are, the line of three and a half billion years of success.

The whole world was trying to kill you that whole time. And here you are. But you're still loading it in the last about 80 years. But that's still good for you. So anyways, there were lotsan games, you know, that huge set of games, and you're adapted to win across those games. All of them, and that's built into you, man, that's your central human nature, that's what makes you social, and it's not some mere cultural construct, quite the contrary. It's so deeply embedded in you, it's what you are. All right, so, well, this is a story, it's a game too, that's another way of

thinking about it, you know, like that's a monopoly game. Well, what's the frame? Well, that's the rules of the game and are they, why do you accept them? Well, it's kind rules of the game. And are they, why do you accept them? Well, it's kind of arbitrary, right? It's like that happens to be the rules. Hawkeye has different rules. Basketball has different rules. But what they share is that they have rules. Okay, so there's a frame. That's the rules. And then within the frame, there's a goal. And the goal is whatever the rules dictate, you know, there's usually, it's usually the construction of a hierarchy of success within a frame. And so that's what you play. And so you play monopolies like, well, we'll accept the rules, that's the social contract, and then we'll each try to win. And that'll be fun. We find that amusing.

And if you lose, what do you say? Well, you say, well, there's always another game. And so that's great. So if you have that attitude and you play fair, then it doesn't matter that much that you whether you win or lose, although you still want to try to win, because otherwise you're not a good player, but you accept defeat gracefully, because you can play again.

And you win some, and you lose some, and so that's not so bad. And even if you lose, well, maybe you learn something, and you're doing a lot more than one thing while you're playing monopoly, you're having a conversation and learning how to interact with people and learning how to regulate your emotions. And so even if you lose, if you have any sense, you win,

and if your kids have any sense, they know that. And so that way you buffer them against defeat. It's like, yeah, yeah, I get old next time. It's like, it's okay. You should try, but it's okay. And that's that's that's useful information for people to know. So, all right, so you're always in one of these little frameworks and there's just no getting an out of it. So, and that's because, you know, at any given moment, this is like, it's like field theory. There used to be psychological theories that talked about the field of human experience, something like that.

And this is kind of what that is. This is a field. And basically what happens is you parse out a little part of the world, say. And so, an amount you can handle. So let's say it has some duration. You're not aiming at something 50 years in the future, let's say it has some duration. You're not aiming at something 50 years in the future.

It's because how the hell are you going to do that? There's too many variables, you know. So, you're aiming at some handleable amount of time, and you posit a goal in there, and you plot your route, and then that tells you what's up, and tells you what's down, because up moves you towards the goal, and down moves you away from the goal and that sets up your motivational framework so that you have some worth attaining. You know, that's a really interesting thing to know too. It's like, why have a goal? Well, it's easy. No goal, no positive emotion. Because you experience positive emotion by noticing that

you're moving towards a goal. And so if you don't have a goal, well, you can't have any positive emotion. So you better have a goal. And so you might say, well, what should the goal be? Well, we could start by saying, well, any goal is better than none. And then we might say, well, it should be a goal that other people will let you pursue, because otherwise it's going to be kind of difficult. Maybe they'll be even happy to help you pursue it. That would even be better.

And maybe it's a goal that would enable you to learn how to pursue other goals. Well, you pursue that goal. Boy, that would really be good. And so you can see that your goal is parameterized. But that doesn't mean that any old goal works. It means there's some goals that work nicely and some not so nicely. There are playable games and non-playable games. That's a good way of thinking about it. And you want to have a playable game. And there's a lot of them, lawyer, plumber, you know, actor, whatever. They're playable games. And it's not obvious which one's better, but

it's certainly obvious which ones are sustainable and which ones are worth. So there's a set of playable games and you need to extract from that set of playable games a game that suits you. And that would be partly due to your temperament, you know, because extroverted people want to play an extroverted game and highly neurotic people want to play a safe game and agreeable people want to play a generous game and disagreeable people want to play a generous game and disagreeable people want to play a game that's highly competitive so they can win and you know fine but they're all within the realm of playable games and that means they're socially acceptable as well.

And so that means it isn't just arbitrary, it isn't just relative what you decide to do. It's heavily parameterized. There's only a set of playable games and it's large. The set is large, but there are commonalities within it. And that's why there are commonalities. That's why morality has a common basis fundamentally. And so that's partly what we're trying to investigate is like, what does it mean? What does it mean? Is there such a thing? Now, one thing to remember is that if you don't direct a hierarchical structure with

something to aim at, you got no positive motivation because you experience positive motivation in relationship to a goal, not from attaining the goal. That's satisfaction. And besides, it's fleeting, you know perfectly well. You graduate from university, poof, next day you have a problem, which is what do you do next. And that's a tough problem. It's not like you've solved your problems by winning that game. You just introduced the problem of having to introduce another game. So it's unreliable as a source of positive emotion, but what's reliable is you set a goal and you try to attain it and then that gives your life that literally provides your life with meaning.

That's what meaning is. Now it's more than that, but that's that's what it is. And so then you might ask yourself, well, what's a really good goal? Well, that's what we're trying to figure out. What's a really good goal. And now, okay, so you got that. So now I'm going to walk through, at least partly through, we'll see how far we get. I'm going to walk through Pinocchio with you because that's what the movie is about. And it's hard to say how it came about, like it was written, a story by a guy named Colody, a CLL or DI.

It's quite a bit different, that story, the written one from the Disney version. The Disney version was a product of the collaboration of geniuses of animation essentially, so they were artistic geniuses, great at capturing motion and emotion and all of that be stellar at that. And imaginative, tremendously imaginative, but collectively imaginative. And so they put together a collective product. And you might say, well, how did they do that exactly? It's like, well, they were good storytellers. And what does that mean? Well, it means you know the story that works and the story that doesn't.

And maybe partly what you do is you kind of think out a story and you think, well, what if this happens? Well, maybe this should happen. Oh, that's the thing. Oh, that would work. It's like the little flash of inspiration, right? It's like you got a piece of the puzzle that fits. You think, yeah, that would work there. And then you talk to the other people and and you generate ideas, and someone says, well, what if they do this, and everyone goes,

no, no, no, that's just not believable. No one's going to buy that. And someone else has a little revelation. They say, well, it makes some sense somehow, if they do this, and everybody goes, oh, yeah, that really works. It's like, why? Why?

Why? Well, you don't know. You don't know why it works. It's like, why? Why? Why? Why? You don't know. You don't know why it works. But it works because it works because it's the right story. And so what does that mean? Well, it's kind of associated with this metagame idea. It's like there's a story that you should be acting out that works across games and you have an inkling of it, you have a notion of it, you have a vague apprehension of it. It's sort of built into you, that's archetype, that's an archetype. And so then when you read a story that works, you're just entranced by it, and you all know that, you go to a movie and it's a great movie,

and it's like you're just blown away, you know, a movie can pull you in and turn you into one of the screen characters, and I can run you through a huge set of emotions. I saw this movie once about South America. It started with this guy running out of a subway naked. And he didn't know where he was. And it turned out that he had been absconded by the totalitarian death squads.

And he couldn't remember anything about himself. And he went back to his village. And basically basically what happened was that he ended up back in the totalitarian death grip. And it showed how the fascist state had saturated the village completely. And so it was a tragedy, and you could see with every action that this amnestic guy, as he recreated himself and remembered his identity, was going to travel down exactly the same road because nothing had changed.

And by the time I wish, I've looked for what that movie was for years, I've never been able to find it again, but when the movie was over, every single person in the theater was crying, and not just a little bit, It was like they were just out of it. It was brilliant, terrifying movie. And that meant there was something right about it, man. And it got people. And you might say, you know, you have dim apprehensions about the world. And some of those are instinctual. And some of those are a consequence of your of your experience. And it's like the pieces are fragmented. But if you get away from them, a long ways,

you could see how they fit together, but they're fragmented. And then you go see a story in those pieces, go click, click, click, click, click, and you think, wow, that's what, that's how that works out. That's what that means. And that produces that overwhelming emotion. And that's partly how you make yourself transparent to yourself. You go experience the story, you go watch the story,

you tell a story, and you start to find out who you are by doing that. My nephew had a dream at one point. Someone made a little animated thing out of it and put it on the internet, which is quite cool. So anyways, he was having night terrors and he ran around like a little night, you know, K.I. A Keneget K.N.

IGHT night, and he had a little, you know, armor and sword and he'd run around the house with a little night hat on, being a night. And he was only like four or something, and he'd watched a lot of Disney movies, a lot of movies. So he kind of got the night idea. It was, it was his acting that out and he was having his terrors at night, right? And so he'd go to bed with his little night hat and his sword and he put him on his bed. And then at night he'd wake up screaming and that happened for a very long time. And so when I went to visit, you know, I found out that this was happening, and he had a night tear. So the kid wakes up with night tears screaming, but can't remember

anything generally speaking. So, anyways, this was happening, and so it happened one day, and I was sitting with him and his family at the breakfast table, and I said, did you have a dream? And he said, oh yes, I had a dream. I said, well, we know what was your dream? And he said, well, I was out on this field. And I was surrounded by these dwarfs and they came up to my knees and they were, they didn't have any arms, they had big feet. And they were covered with hair and there was a cross-shaved at the top of their head and they were all greasy and they had huge beaks. And everywhere I went, they jumped at me with their beaks. And there was lots of them.

And everybody was very quiet after he said this because it was like, that, oh, that's why you're screaming at night. It's like, yeah, okay. And so, and then he said, but at the background, there was a dragon and the dragon would blow out smoke and fire and then it would turn into these dwarfs. So it's like, man, that kid was a dragon, and the dragon would blow out smoke and fire, and then it would turn into these dwarfs.

So it's like, man, that kid had a problem, right? It was like, well, what are you going to do? You fight off a dwarf who cares. It's like puff, ten more. That's life, man. That's life. Really, that's the Hydra. You cut off one head, seven more grow.

That's life. Snakes everywhere. And you get rid of one, they'll be more. And so he figured that out. It's a hell of an existential shock when you're four. And so he's like, he's a knight, he's thinking, what do I do about these dwarfs? Well, there's too many of them, but there's a dragon. Well, so I said, well, you could do something about that. Well, he kind of knew that, which is why he was running around like a night. He kind of figured that out, and he said, well, I get my dad, and I jump up on the dragon, and I poke out both of its eyes with my sword, and then I go right down its stomach to the

place where the fire came out, the fire box, and then I carve a piece of the fire box out of it. I make a shield, and that would be the end of that, the fire box, and then I carve a piece of the fire box out of it, I make a shield. And that would be the end of that, and I thought, wow, good work, kid, like you really got it, right? It's the central human story. There's the terrible unknown, right? Fire breathing, generating trouble, and what do you do? You confront that, you confront that, and by confronting it, you get stronger. That's the shield.

And that's what a human being is. And that's right. It's exactly right. And that was the end of his night terrors, by the way, which seems too good to be true. But it is actually true, because I followed up with his mother for a long time. And that was that. He catalyzed that part of his identity. He adopted the role of the mythological hero. And that's what he needed to do because like there was lots of drag, there's a dragon and a bunch of dwarfs. Like what the hell are you going to do about that? Run? That's not going to help. You know, if you run in a dream like that, the dwarfs multiply and they get bigger and you get smaller as you run. It's like that's not a good, that is not a good solution. And people do that in their life all the time. And so the dwarves get bigger until they're giants and they get smaller until there's nothing left of them.

And then there's no recovery, that is not good. Now okay, so now I also propose to you that there's a symbolic structure to the world. It's a meta-structure, I would say. I think these categories are truly real, and they're basically this. There's unexplored territory, there's explored territory, and there's you. And unexplored territory is the source of great riches, and it probably will kill you, and explored territory is your culture, and it crunches you into submission and conformity,

and turns you into a civilized being. And you're stuck with both of those, and then there's you, and you know, you're kind of admirable and cool, and you do a lot of decent, wonderful, amazing things, and there's things about you that are just horrible, and you know about them, and you're stuck with them, and there's things about you that are just horrible. And you know about them and you're stuck with them and that's the world. And that's the landscape of the world.

And what you'll see if you pay attention is that people who are ideologues like Russo or say like Hobbes, but it doesn't matter. Ideologues will tell you part of that story. So environmentalists, for example, will say, nature, that's pristine beauty, natural harmony, French landscape. It's a paradise, especially if there are no people, it's a paradise.

And then culture is a rapacious monster. And human beings driving that culture against nature are monsters of a sort, and perhaps there should be fewer of them. It's like, yeah, yeah, that's all true. Exactly, did it, did it on, right on, exactly right. Is that movie called Avatar? Yes, that's James Cameron's movie, right? That's that story. Yeah. And, hey, it's

a good story. It's even a mythological story, but it's only half the story. The other story, you could think about it as a frontier myth, that's Star Trek, or Star Wars, for that matter, mostly Star Trek. It's like, but we'll put it in context to the frontier myth, the myth that drew settlers into America say it's well, there's a wild savage landscape out there that can be conquered by and settled and stabilized by civilization and it'll be the heroic pioneer who does it. It's exactly the opposite story of the environmental story, which is actually why I think the environmental story of eventually emerged. It was, you know, the frontier story, how to lack it, it missed half of the world. And so the other story had to come up, and it did.

And if you take both of those stories, even though they're exactly opposite to one another, if you know both of those stories, then you know the whole story. And it's really weird, you know, because one of the propositions of formal logic is, it's a fundamental proposition, is that something can't be itself and it's opposite at the same time. It's like, that's true for some sorts of things. It's true for logical claims. But it's completely wrong in this particular situation because things are than what they are and their opposite at the same time. And that makes it very, very difficult to, that's why a dragon horde's gold. It's like, what's up with that?

Well, it'll eat you, and it will, but it has gold. Well, so what do you do about that? Because it's paradoxical demands. Well, what you want to do is face the dragon and get the damn gold. That's what you want to do. Well, you have to be a paradoxical being even to do that. So in a Hobbit, for example, when

what's his name, Frodo, right? It's not, or it's Bilbo, it's Bilbo in the Hobbit. You know, he's kind of this little underdeveloped, overprotected, shired dweller, and he's called on a great adventure to go and find the dragon. And he has to become a thief in order to manage it. Well, that's pretty weird.

Well, it's because as a good citizen, he's just not enough to conquer a dragon. He has to also become a bad citizen in some sense. He has to incorporate the part of himself that's monstrous, let's say, and develop that and hone it. And that's to say that, well, if you're harmless, you're not virtuous, you're just harmless. You're like a rabbit.

A rabbit isn't virtuous. It just can't do anything except get eaten. It's not virtuous. If you're a monster and you don't act monstrously, then you're virtuous. But you also have to be a monster. Well you see this all the time, Harry Potter is like that too. He's flawed, he's hurt, he's got evil in him, he can talk to snakes, man.

He breaks rules all the time, all the time. He's not obedient at all, but he has a good reason for breaking the rules. And if he couldn't break the rules, him and his little clique of rule-breaking, you know, trouble-makers, if they didn't break the rules, they wouldn't attain the highest goal. So it's very peculiar, but it's very there. It's a very, very, very, very common mythological notion. You know, the hero has to be a monster, but a controlled monster. Batman is like that, you know?

I mean, it's everywhere. It's the story you always hear. Is this where morals become ethics? Meaning you have to be more precise. I feel like, because everyone's moral, but in order to come ethics, you have to refine the morals, and she have to go into it. Well, that's a good question. Because one question is, you're implicitly moral in so far as you're socialized, but that sort of procedural, it's just built into you.

This is different. This is also becoming conscious of it, and expanding out your personality into dimensions that it wouldn't normally occupy. This happens to people all the time. For example, lots of my clients, my clinical clients are too agreeable. And they're generally women because women are more agreeable than men, but not always because I've had agreeable men as clients as well. And what happens is they're resentful and they don't know how to stand up for themselves. And it's because they're very compassionate

by nature. And so, if you're entering into a negotiation with them, they'll let you win. Well, that's not so good because, you know, you need to win too. Especially if you're entering into a negotiation with them, they'll let you win. Well, that's not so good, because you need to win too, especially if you're in an organization of adults, where there's a struggle, right? When you have kids, you can let them win, especially infants, like you have to let them win, and that's partly why compassion is so necessary. But as a basis for negotiation between adults, it's like, sorry, it's insufficient. You have to be a bit of a monster so that you can say no. And so a lot of what you do in psychotherapy

is treat people's anxiety and depression. That's a huge chunk of it. Help them straighten out the way they think. That's a huge chunk of it. But another chunk of it is, well, let's toughen you up. Let's put you in a position where you can bargain. Let's teach you how to assert yourself and stand up for yourself. And that's assertiveness training.

And it's a huge chunk of psychotherapy. And you need to learn it. It's like, because part of how you regulate your interactions with other people is to negotiate. And you cannot negotiate unless you can say no, you can't do it. And it causes conflict to say no, and if you don't like conflict, which is basically the definition of being agreeable, then you can't tolerate the conflict, and so then you can't negotiate on your own behalf, and so then you keep losing, and you're bullied, and you know, it's not good.

Then you get resentful, and it's really not good. So you have to develop your inner monster a little bit. And and then that makes you a better person, not a worse person. It's weird. It's weird, but, but that's just how it is. Outside of that diagram is chaos itself and that's the chaos from which things emerge. Now I can't tell you much about that yet because it's too damn complicated. But I think the best way to think about chaos is as potential. That's one way of thinking about it. It's also that place you end up when you don't know what to do. It's the source

of all things, but it's also the terrible predator, the terrible eternal predator that lurks beyond the explored domain. It's a winged dragon, and it's winged. Who knows why? Matter and spirit, that's partly what it is, and I'll explain that later. It's also potentially the predatory beast that's been after us forever, and the winged predator that picked us off from the sky. So primates, for example, monkeys have some monkeys have three specialized alarm cries. One is for snakes, and that usually means hit the trees, and then once for leopards, and that means hit the trees and go out on a skinny branch because the leopard can't get

you. And then there's one for like birds of prey, which means hide somewhere on the ground so that you don't get picked off. And it's like, well, that's what that is. That's what that is. And that's chaos. And it's expanded into much more than that. And then I showed you, I don't remember if I showed you this, but this is a symbolic representation of Mother Nature, Father Culture, and the suffering individual. But it's all, that's all positive.

There's no negative elements there. But that's okay. That's a partial representation. And those things are sacred in some sense because they are representative of an ultimate reality, of an ultimate reality. Of an ultimate reality. The sacrificial individual here, the suffering individual, well that's pretty straightforward. It's like, that's life. That's suffering, that's life. That's what happens to the individual.

And so, everyone is looking at that. It has power that idea. Well, it's because culture supports the suffering individual and culture's nested inside benevolent nature and that's part of the story of the world. And it's just part of the story we're trying to figure out and make articulate.

We've been doing that for thousands of years trying to make this story articulate. And it's not yet articulate. It's only, we're only getting it, we're only getting it. And we basically do that now, mostly with movies and stories and fiction and that sort of thing. We still don't have it articulated. I think Jung went closer, came closer than anyone else.

Jung and Eric Neumann, who is one of his students, came closer than anyone else ever has to actually articulate that, and that's what Jung was trying to do, is to take all these images, archetypal images, instinctual images, and say, what do they mean? What do they mean? What do they mean?

And he got a long ways on that, although his writing is quite obscure, and it's obscure because, how the hell are you going to explain an image like that, without being obscure? It's like like it's insanely complicated and it's not linear. It's not a linear thing. That's why it's in a picture. Because a picture presents everything at once and you want to take that apart linearly. Jesus,

it's just impossible. But we've been struggling to do that. Really, we've been struggling to do that. From the time we became self-conscious. What is the world about? How should we live in it? Well, that's a partial answer, and it's a culture-bound answer, obviously, but you see archetypal representations like this in many cultures. So for example, the image of the Virgin and Child,

that way predates Christianity. Like the Egyptians, that was ISIS and Horace, that goes back, oh, we have no idea how far, thousands and thousands of years before the emergence of Judaism and Christianity, way back before that, and no doubt, back into prehistory itself, because a culture that doesn't hold the mother and child

as sacred dies, obviously, because obviously, so it has to be held as something that you revere, which at least means you don't kill mothers and children, and at least means that. And that's an instinct, you know? It's an instinct. It violates you to do that and thank God. So I told you about this a little bit last week, but you know, one of the motivations I had for thinking the things that I've thought through,

the motivation I had for thinking them through was because well, it seemed self-evident to me, let's say. And I think that was partly from reading Jung, but not, but that just helped me clarify it was that, you know, it was sort of Jung's contention that we had an organic development of a metaphysical ethic that was embedded in religious tradition, and that basically unfolded, let's say, in the West, till about 1,600, 1,500, something like that, and then science emerged, and we got unbelievably technologically powerful and using a certain view of the world.

You know, we're so technologically powerful, but we're view of the world, you know, we're so technologically powerful but we're still not very wise and that just seems to me to be a bad combination. And I thought about that a lot, it's like, okay, well, how do you handle the combination of exceptional technological power and an impaired ethic, let's say, something like that, underdeveloped ethic, or one even in which you have no faith, because it seems the foundational elements of it are irrational, they're in mythology, they're in religion, they don't fit well with the scientific worldview.

How do you rectify that problem? And well, that's a tough problem, it's a crazy problem, and certainly it was the problem that Jung was trying to address. There's no doubt about it. Along with that, an associated problem, which was what happened in the 20th century, which was so awful. In so many places, it was just so unbelievably brutal and terrible. It was perpetrated by millions of people.

They were individual people. They weren't that much different from normal people. In fact, they were normal people. And so the other thing that struck me was that it would be better if that sort of thing didn't happen anymore. And so I was trying to figure out what the hell could possibly be done about that. And you know, part of Jung's contention was, well, you had to understand yourself as a monster. If you were ever going to maintain some control over the fact that you are in fact a monster and that that could come forth if the situation is correct.

It's like, okay, that seems reasonable. And so, well, it seemed to me that people had to become wiser. And of course, that's a very difficult thing to figure out because you could even question whether there is such a thing as wisdom. And then I thought, well, that's what the universities are supposed to do, especially the humanities, mostly, in particular. It's supposed to make you wise.

That's what it's for. And it's doing a terrible job of that, in my estimation. It's more decimating people, as far as I can tell, and undermining whatever ethic they have rather than making people wise. And but I think that we have to become wise. I don't think there's a choice. I think it's a matter of survival.

And it's more than that because if you're wise in your own life, you're going to have a way better life, like incomparably better because you're going gonna sleep soundly with a good conscience at night, and you know, people say that's worth more than money, and that's worth more than money. I know lots of people who have lots of money, and let me tell you, money protects you. You're as well protected from the world by money right now, as you ever will be for the rest of your life, because there's most of life's fundamental problems can't be solved with money. You know, like rich people get divorced. they have affairs, their children get sick, they have all the problems you have and that's part because you're already rich.

And so you might think that if you had a bunch more money, things would be better, but it's just not true. In fact, in some ways, they might be worse. Because money can open up the possibility of all sorts of temptations to you that you just can't afford at the moment. So, well, so like economic, economics, we've already solved that problem fundamentally. And we're rapidly solving it everywhere in the world, right? I mean, the world economy is growing so damn fast

that you can't even imagine how you could possibly make it grow any faster. It's crazy. We've lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty in the last 15 years. The UN set a goal by 2015. I think it was to cut poverty by half, if I remember correctly,

and they reached it two years early. It's unbelievable. So. and they reached it two years early. It's unbelievable. So, well, so then I started to try to understand what it might be to live and really what I was looking for. It was not so much to live a life that was wise, but at least to live a life that wasn't pathologically unwise. And I thought of the sorts of things that people were doing to one another in the Auschwitz

camps and in the Goulart Gart Capella go and all of that horror that was perpetrated on people as definitely unwise. Whatever else you might say about it was unwise. And so then I thought, well, maybe there's a way to figure out how you could not do that. And so that's, and well, maybe there's a way to figure out how you could not do that. And so that's, and I think that that's my sense is that when you come to university to learn how to be a civilized person, which is what's supposed to happen at university, otherwise

it's just a trade school. And you might as well go to trade school as far as I'm concerned, if you want to learn something that will get you a job. It's like it's a lot faster and it's more certain and it's useful. If you're not being taught to be a citizen at university, then why bother with it? So, well, so that's what we're trying to figure out. And that's part of that cloud of mythological fantasy that surrounds our culture. It's part of its deep history that we're trying to, you know, if you grapple with the humanities and with art and all of that, that you're trying to master and incorporate and pull into

you so that you're situated properly in history, and you're not just floating in the void of tiny individuality that's divorced from everything else. You're weak in that circumstance. All right, so that's more of an explanation of why I'm trying to puzzle through these things and trying to puzzle through them with you. So anyways, we talked about this song last week. You know, I made a hypothesis to you, we'll go through this quickly.

It's dog-er-roll. It's not great poetry, but it's irrelevant. It was a very popular song. It's quite beautiful. In the movie, it's actually sung by like a heavenly choir. That's what it sounds like. So, it's got this cathedral. You could imagine people singing it in a cathedral, essentially. And so, that's not accidental. It's purposeful. You know, it partakes of that. What would you call it? It partakes of that. What would you call it? It partakes of that aesthetic. That's it.

So the filmmakers are implying that what is about to be shown to you has this divine element, essentially, in that that's signified by the choir of voices that sings this song. and that that's signified by the choir of voices that sings the song. And the song says, fundamentally, something like this, is that if you lift up your eyes above the temporal into the transcendent, and so that's what exists in the heavenly world, in the stars, if you pick an ultimate goal, if you pick the right ultimate goal, then anyone can do this.

That's the other thing. It's democratic. It's anyone can do this. So that's the second proposition. It doesn't matter who you are. You can do this. And so I think that's a reflection of the idea of the divinity of the individual. It's like there's something about each individual that's valuable, regardless of their idiosyncrasies. And so they have this potential that they can manifest. And how do

you manifest it? Well, you pick the right goal, and what's the right goal? Well, it's high. It's elevated. It's above the mundane. Now, what does that mean? Well, you don't really know. You don't really know. That's why it's signified by a star. A star is something that glimmers in the night. So it's a source of light in the darkness. And so there's a metaphor there. Obviously, there's a metaphor there. And the star is the star that's the star of Hollywood,

the person that you emulate. That's part of it. Because an ideal is, it's going to be a human ideal of some sort that you're aiming at. And so the ideal human being is the star that you're aiming at. Maybe it's something like that. If that's what you're aiming at, you might say, well, what should you aim at in life?

And one answer is, well, why don't you aim at being whatever you could be that would be the best? Now, you don't know what that is exactly, because how do you know? But you could think, well, that would be really good if I could have it. And then you could say, well, can I think of anything better than that? And if the answer is no, then why not go for that? You know, and you might say, well, it's too ambitious. It takes too much responsibility.

It's like, yeah, yeah, those are definitely problems. And one of the things that I've figured out over the years is that if you offered the person the opportunity, because people say, well, life doesn't really have any ultimate meaning, it's like, yeah, okay, fine. So fine. Let's say it has an ultimate meaning, but that in order to experience that ultimate meaning,

you have to take on ultimate responsibility for what you do. Well, that's a heavy price to pay to have a meaningful life. You know, and you might say, there's no damn way I'm going to do that. I'll just go for the pointless, I'll go for the trivial, pointless perspective, which is kind of hard on me, existentially, but it frees me up. I can do whatever the hell I want moment to moment. I don't have any ultimate responsibility. And so then you think, well, that's kind of a good deal.

And then, but that raises this weird spectre of doubt, which is well, when you hear people talk about the ultimate futility of life, is it because life is ultimately futile? Or is it because they've decided that they would just assume not adopt the responsibility, and they use that real decision, which is to not adopt the responsibility. They rationalize that by proposing that life is ultimately meaningful, meaningless. And like, you know, I kind of buy that.

I really do think that's what's going on. So, but maybe not. But it could be that if you want to have an ultimately meaningful life that you have to adopt ultimate responsibility, make sense, what might that mean? One thing it might mean is that, and I do think it means this, is that I think it was Alexander Pope, but I might be wrong about that, who said, nothing human is foreign to me. And that's a hell of a statement, right?

Because if you think about all the things that human beings are capable of, and they're capable of some, like if you really want to know what people are capable of, you should read about Unit 730-What, but I would not recommend it. Because if you read it, you will never forget it, and you will be sorry that you read it. But you'll know, anyways, to say that nothing human is foreign to you, that's a hell of a thing to say, because that means that what

other people have done, you could do. And that also means you need to take responsibility for that. That's no joke, you know, it's a big deal to do that in even a trivial manner. Anyway, so the idea is that you can elevate, if you elevate your viewpoint to some transcendent ethic, you want what's ultimately good, you really want that, whatever that is. You don't know, but that's what your aim in that. It says that, well, then it says this strange thing that, well, what you want will all of a sudden come to you. Well, that's a proposition, and it's the proposition that's basically played out in the movie. It's a hypothesis. The hypothesis is, the best way to orient yourself in life is to orient

yourself towards the highest good that you're capable of imagining, and then aim at that, and then things will work out the best way they can for you. And I think, I believe that's correct. My observation of life has led me to see that that seems to be correct. So for example, you don't get something, you don't aim at. That just doesn't work out, and so lots of people aim

at nothing, and that's what they get. So if you aim at something, you have a reasonable crack at getting it. You tend to change what you're aiming at a bit along the way because like what do you know? You aim there, you're wrong, but you get a little closer and then you aim there, and you're still wrong. You get a little closer and you aim there.

And as you move towards what you're aiming at, your characterization of what to aim at becomes more and more sophisticated. And so it doesn't really matter if you're wrong to begin with as long as you're smart enough to learn on the way and as long as you specify a goal. So specify a vague what? I want things to be the best they could be. And I'm willing to learn what best means as I go along. Okay, so fine. And then you get what you truly need. We'll say. Well, maybe not. No, if your heart is in your dream, what does that mean? Well, that to me reflects this idea of a kind of integrated viewpoint.

One of the things young proposed was that as you integrate yourself psychologically, what happens is that your rationality integrates with your emotions. They stop being opposed forces, like the enlightenment ideas that rationality integrates with your emotions. They stop being opposed forces, like the enlightenment ideas that rationality and desire are opposites and enemies, in a sense. And the Jungian notion is, and the psychoanalytic notion, I would say, in general.

And the humanist notion, even, perhaps, is that, oh, that's not right. What you want to do is you want to integrate your rationality with your emotions and your motivations. They're not separable even in technically. They have to work together and that all has to be integrated with your body. Not only do you have to take your heart into account and notice what it is that you want and don't want,

but you also have to embody that. You have to act that out in the world. So fine, so that's what that means. And if you do that, then, well, then your horizons open up. And I also believe that's true. I've known people in my life who are insanely successful, like insanely successful. And those people are pretty damn together, man. Like they're tough, smart, strategic, generous.

You know, they're always given people opportunities. Honest, like they've got it all. You know, and sometimes, not, no, I'm not saying that everyone who's wildly successful is wildly successful because they've got themselves together. But, you know, because there are crooks and, you know, there are people who gain status one way or another by nefarious means. But that's a lot more unstable than you might think. And I can't say exactly if you pursue that route, you're going to pay for it.

Like, you'll have your money or whatever it is, but it's not going to do much good for you. And so it does seem to me to be the people that have integrated themselves and that are pursuing a noble goal, a high goal, who actually are able to do remarkable things. And remarkable things can be done at every level. It isn't like you have to change the world. As a whole, it could be that you do something remarkable within your family, you know, and that can be tremendously admirable. You know, someone's got to take care of a family member if they're sick, you

know, like there's heroic acts that you can undertake in the local environment, and maybe that will go unheralded, let's say, but that doesn't mean that it isn't remarkable. I mean, I've met people who are so damaged. You just can't imagine it, and yet, well, one person I met when I was in Montreal was this woman, and she was just ruined, man. She looked like a street person, and she was so shy. She couldn't even look at you. Like, she basically looked at the ground because it was like there was light emanating from everyone else and she was way too timid and humble to even bear it. And partly what I was doing was trying to get her to straighten up and not look so street personish because it wasn't going very well for her in social interactions. But it turned out that that isn't what she came to the Behavior Therapy Unit 4. And she had her, I think she lived with her aunt, who was like schizophrenic.

And then her aunt's boyfriend was an alcoholic who like went on long-harangs about the devil. And it's like, really, man. And she wasn't bright this woman. She really wasn't. And she didn't really have a job. And it was just like, it was just not good in every way. And then she also had this unbelievable humility.

But then it turned out what she wanted. I just couldn't bloody well believe this. She had this dog and she used to walk it around. She took care of the dog. And that was a good thing. And she'd actually been an inpatient at the Douglas Hospital, which is where I was working. And the Iranian patients in the Douglas Hospital,

and this was back in the 80s, and those people were, like, she was like superwoman compared to the inpatients at the Douglas Hospital. Those people looked like they were from a high-ronomous, Bosch painting, because they had deinstitutionalized everyone that could possibly be deinstitutionalized.

And so the only people that were left were people who couldn't be deinstitutionalized. And so those would have been people who were in the psych wards for like 30 years. All of the hospitals were connected by tunnels underground. And the patients used to hang out down there by the Coke machine and so forth. And one day I took my brother down there. He was visiting. Like, it was just like, he just turned white, you know, because it was just really.

I don't know if you know, Heronymous Bosch. He's very an interesting painter to say the least. But that's what it was just really. I don't know if you know, Heronymous Bosch, he's very an interesting painter to say the least, but that's what it was like. And so, here was her idea. She'd come to the Behavior Therapy Unit because she'd been in the inpatient ward for a while and she met some of these like ruined people. And she tried to get the hospital.

She thought, well, I'm walking my dog, you know, and well, maybe I could take one of these patients out for a walk, you know, and she'd been talking to the hospital administrators trying to get her allow her to dog, you know, and well maybe I could take one of these patients out for a walk. You know, and she'd been talking to the hospital administrators, trying to get her, allow her to go, you know, take out one of these patients and go for a walk with her dog. And basically she had come to the Behavior Therapy Unit because that's what she wanted to do. It's like, man, that person, she just blew me away.

Like, it's like, I just couldn't believe it. Like, she had nothing going for her, like nothing. And yet she wanted to help some people that were worse off. And like there just weren't that many people that were worse off than her. Mind boggling, mind boggling. And I never forgot it. And it really blew me away.

So there are opportunities for elevating your sights within your realm of capability wherever you happen to be. And that's interesting. It's strange that that's the case. She brings those who love. That's what that should say. The sweet fulfillment of their secret longing, like a bolt out of the blue, fate, characterized here as feminine. And that's what happens in the movie. The movie's got a Christian underbelly, like it's quite pronounced, but it's really a pagan movie in many ways. So for example, there's no blue fairy, and the reason I'm speaking of Christianity,

of course, is because this movie was created in a culture where Christianity was still reasonably intact, and of course it was fully informed by that, but the underlying mythos is not precisely Christian, even though it's informed by Christian imagery. There is this old idea, I think it's a gnostic idea, that the wisdom of God is feminine, something like that, an anima, which means soul is feminine. And so there's an idea like that lurking here. And anyways, that's fate, and that's the Blue Fairy in this particular movie. You know, she comes down from the star, which kind of makes her an avatar of God. That's the idea.

And she's the transformative agent. She's really Mother Nature, you know, in her positive guise. And that's why she can animate. To animate something means to infuse it with soul. That's what it means. And she animates Pinocchio, right? She's the force that frees him from his strings. And so that's her, fate, like a bolt out of a blue, the blue fate steps in and sees you through.

Well what that means, it means something means, it means something like this, is that if you orient yourself properly in the world, and we'll say that you do that by trying to attain the ultimate goal, whatever that happens to be, then it's as if the world is on your side. And things go well for you. And I also believe that's true, because certainly, one of the things that's more or less self-evident is that, generally speaking, if you tell the truth, things go a lot better for you. And I also believe that's true because certainly one of the things that's more or less self-evident is that, generally speaking, if you tell the truth, things go

a lot better for you. And the reason for that is, well, you want to be, you want to have reality opposed to you, or do you want to have reality backing you up? It's like it's pretty straightforward question. If you're truthful to the degree that you can be truthful, then reality is on your side. That's a good thing because there's a lot of it and there isn't much of you. Whereas if you take a deceitful approach to things, then well, then you're challenging reality. It's like good, good luck with that, man. It's like you're holding a plastic ruler in front of your face bending it, you know. And at some point, you're going let go and it's gonna, all that force that you've stored up

and it's gonna snap back and nail you. And that, that happens. I have just never seen anyone in my clinical practice ever get away with anything. Nothing. And it's not surprising. It's like, if you're gonna mess with the structure of reality, like it's gonna mess back and it does. And it might not surprising. It's like, you're going to mess with the structure of reality. It's going to mess back, and it does.

And it might not happen for years. And you might not even notice the connection. I mean, part of what you do in psychotherapies actually make those connections. It's like, why did this horrible thing happen to me? Well, who knows? It's like, let's take it apart. Who knows how far back we have to go? It might even have things to do, not even with you.

It might have things to do with the errors in your parents' relationship. Like, you just can't mess with the structure of reality. It stays warped until you straighten it out. And it's not good. So there's an injunction here, which is that that if you follow this path, you pick a high goal and you put your heart in it, you commit to it, believe in it, believe means to love, believe and be loved.

It's the same thing. It means to act out. And that's what the belief means. We think belief means to accept a set of propositions as true. Well, that is one form of belief. But that's more like factual knowledge, right? Belief is more like you decide that you're going to act something out. You make a decision and then you act it out. And that's a reflection of your belief. You know, it's you're staking yourself on something. Do you know? Well, no, because you can't. You can't know.

You're bounded by ignorance. You can make your best guess and move forward. And you can do that with commitment. But you have to believe in order to do that. I guess that's why it's a wish. Okay, so fine. Well, then we have Jiminy Cricket. That's how the New S slang for Jesus Christ, by the way, and the initial overlap isn't

a fluke. I mean, I'm sure the animators thought that was funny, and of course it is funny. And, you know, in the Lion King, you know that Baboon, who's the shaman, basically? Well, to begin with, he was kind of just a comic relief character like a fool You know, but one of the things Jung mentioned about the fool is that the fool tends to turn into the savior It's an it's an archetypal reality bugs bunny is sort of like that. You know, he's a trickster and as the As the movie developed the character of the fool baboon took on the full-fledged, you know, shaman priest element. And, you know, okay, well, Jimny Cricket, he's this little Cricket, and he turns out to be the conscience,

which is pretty damn weird. It's like a bug is your conscience, and a bug is JC, and it's like, that's a very strange juxtaposition of ideas. Conscience, insect, savior. It's like, what's up with that? And so, well, what bugs you? That's part of it. Well, your conscience certainly bugs you, and you should pay attention to it. It's just a little niggling, annoying thing that you can't quite... You can override it, right? Obviously, but it's this swell, and he says, when he talks to Pinocchio later, he says, it's that still small voice, you know? And I've asked people before, like in my personality class, like, because conscience is a weird thing. And like, if I said to you, if you're about to do something that you know you shouldn't do, do you have a voice in your

head that tells you that you shouldn't do it? So how many people have had that experience? Okay, good. Now, so other people have a feeling instead of a voice. And so, is there anybody here who's willing to admit it who has neither the feeling nor the voice? Okay, so, and you know, it's a very understudied phenomena in psychology, this conscience.

I mean, people can be conscientious. And maybe those are people who listen to their conscience more. I don't know, but nobody's ever investigated it. And the fact that you do have this little voice, whatever it is, inside your head, it's like, what the hell's up with that? You know, and it doesn't tell you what you want to hear, at least as far as I can tell. Now, you could say, well, that's the internal representation of society operating within you. That'd be a Freudian view, that's the super ego. And certainly, there's something to that. But I don't think it's necessary

to presume that that's all there is to it. And even if it is, you still wouldn't have the voice, if you didn't have the biological potential to have that voice embed itself in you. So even if it is socioculturally constructed, which it is in part, it's like language. It's like your language is socioculturally constructed, but the reason you can speak is because human beings can speak. And if you have a conscience, it's because human beings have a conscience. And the contents of that conscience might differ, but the fact that it exists, what seems

to me to be to be universal. Okay, so well that's the conscience and that's Jimini cricket. And then the cricket opens this book and then you look at the book and you think well what kind of book is that? Well it's got a spotlight on it, so it's being highlighted. This is an important book and what kind of book is it? Well it's leather bound, it has a lock on it, you know. It's not some cheap book, it's being highlighted. This is an important book. And what kind of book is it? Well, it's leather bound. It has a lock on it. You know, it's not some cheap book. It's kind of like a, you might think about it.

It looks like something from an old library or maybe it looks biblical. Whatever, it's a major league book. And this bug is the introduction to the book. So does that mean your conscience is the introduction to the book? Well, maybe that is what it means. It's certainly what's being played out in the movie. Well, then the cricket opens the book. And so then what do you see? Well, what does that look like? What does it look like? What does it remind you of?

Sorry, I think. Okay, so that's the Van Gogh painting. It's a nativity scene. It's the Christmas star. And you know that because what's going to happen? Well, the hero is going to be born. That's what happens. And so a star signifies that. Why does a star signify the birth of an infant, let's say? Well, because there's something miraculous about the birth of an infant. And why would the infant be a savior, which is the Christian notion, say? Well, because that's what the infant is, potentially, every infant.

And so that's how you should act about them. And you know, one of the things that really is interesting about having little kids, and I loved having little kids, is that you have this opportunity, you have this pristine relationship with someone, like a relationship you've never had with anyone because the kid really

is just there to love you. You're like, if you don't screw it up, you've got that. And then you can keep that going, you know? And you can try to keep that relationship like pristine. And that's so fun. It's so fun to try to do that. It's really, it's amazing. It's an amazing thing.

And you know, kids get a bad rap in our society, but it's an amazing thing to have little kids. And they are remarkable. And they give you back far more than they require from you. And partly because they treat you like you're valuable beyond belief. That's what the kid thinks about you. That's pretty good. So yeah, it's like something divine is going to happen. It's okay, fine, you know, fair enough. Well, there's the star signifying that, and that's associated

in some way with this star that you're supposed to wish upon. Well, that's kind of odd. Like there's this relationship that's implicit, the star that signifies the birth of the hero is the same star that you wish upon. Well, perhaps the star that you're wishing upon is the wish that the hero will be born in your soul. It's something like that. You're aiming at the ideal. It's the ideal you, whatever that would be. Well, you can

certainly figure out what it isn't. That's where you start as far as I can tell, you know, you know what you shouldn't be doing and you could at least stop doing those things and then see what happens, you know, and if you ask yourself, it's a meditative exercise, you know, and you do this with the autobiography, to some degree, it's like, OK, sit down for 10 minutes and have a little dialogue with yourself. You actually wanted to know the answer. So you ask, well, I'm probably doing something stupid

that if I quit doing, my life would be better, that I could quit doing, that I would quit doing. And maybe it's not a very big thing, because you're not very disciplined. But maybe there's something to ask yourself that question, man, you'll have an answer no time flat. Well, I should start doing this. Like, yeah, I know, and I could, and I won't, or maybe I would, but if I did, I know my life would be better.

It's like, you can figure that out immediately. And if you do that a hundred times, well, you'll be in way better shape. So if you don't know what to do that's good, you could at least figure out what you shouldn't do that's just moronically pathetic. And you can be sure you're doing like a dozen of those things, at least procrastinating or you know, you know, everyone, that's what the conscience tells you. And if you ask it, it'll just tell you why you're stupid and insufficient. And so who wants to hear that? But maybe you could do something about it.

Okay, so the cricket comes into the village there, and he sees this little house, and there's a little fire in it, and so it's kind of got a welcoming place. It's a light in the darkness, this house, just like the star. And so he hops towards it and then he ends up inside it. And, you know, there's a nice fire. And you get to see the inside. And the inside, it's cozy. You know, it's welcoming. And then when you look around, you see that everything's

kind of in its place. It's not hyper organized or anything like that. It's friendly and welcoming. And there's a lot of wood and there's a nice fire. And then there's toys everywhere, and they're well constructed. So you know that whoever lives there likes children. And so if someone likes children, well, someone doesn't like children. It's like you should run away from them very rapidly.

But if they like children, well, then that's a good sign that, you know, Jesus, they're at least human, it's a start, you know. And then these things are all high quality. They're made very well. And then there's, and he's looking around to are all high quality. They're made very well. And then there's, and he's looking around to see all of this. And there's, there's toys and there's clocks. And they're all handmade. And so he's sort of in first that maybe there's a wood carver

who lives there. And a wood carver is someone who can build things. And if you build things that work and that are beautiful, that's a kind of truth, right? It's like, it's built right into the object. That's what quality is. Quality is the building into an object of truth. The thing works.

It's does what it's supposed to. It has integrity. And so you see that everywhere in here. And so you're getting a sense of the filmmakers are setting the stage. And so, well, so they set the stage by showing you the stage. And the cricket tells you what he sees. And he's pretty happy to be there, because,

and this is also someone who's concerned about time, right? Because there's a lot of clocks. There's a lot of clocks. And so time turns out to be an important sub-element of this story. And then he sees the puppet. He's a Marianette. And so what's a Marianette?

Well, a Marianette, and then he's sitting on the shelf, a marionette is something that's quasi-animated because it can move. It doesn't really have a soul, but it sort of acts like it has a soul. It's in the sense of anima and soul that animated. But a marionette is something that is being manipulated by something else behind the scenes, right? It doesn't have its own volition. It's dependent on the will of something behind the scenes. And so there's a strong implication that whatever this thing is is half-formed and that it's being manipulated by unseen forces behind, unseen forces behind the facade. Well, that's a Freudian idea. That's you. That's all of you. You know, you're pulled hither and fro by unconscious forces. And some of those are biological. And

some of them are cultural, you know. And you think about people who are swept up in great ideological movements like the communists or the fascists. Those those people are marionettes that's exactly what they are they all say the same thing they all mouth the same words they all act the same way and some things behind it and the question is what well that is the question and that's partly what this movie tries to figure out so you see this marionette he's a half-formed wooden-headed puppet and he has a little bit of potential. And the cricket goes up and interacts with him and sees that he's made out of pretty good wood, and makes a little joke about having a wooden head.

And that's kind of obvious what that means. And you notice the cricket is dressed like a tramp. And when he first saw him, he wasn't. He was dressed like a 1920s millionaire. But here he's a tramp. And this is so interesting. It's like, so this bug that's a messiah that's the introduction to the book

that's the conscience is also a tramp with no home. It's like, what does that mean? And it took me a long time to sort that out. And it's like, he's been everywhere, this tramp. He's been everywhere. And he knows like he's been everywhere, this tramp. He's been everywhere. And he knows he's traveled the world. And he doesn't have a place, he doesn't have a home. He hasn't made a relationship with anything real yet. He's kind of a potential. And this is one of the things that's really interesting about this movie. Because if you think about the

cricket as a fragment of the hero and say a reflection of the savior, which is his relationship with JC, of course, and the person who introduces the book, then the story gets strange because if it was merely a representation of the perfect person, the archetype of the hero, then the conscience would know everything, right? And it would just tell the puppet what to do, and that would be the end of it. But that, first of all, that's a dull story. It's like, perfect conscience comes along, puppet does everything it says, bingo, perfection. But that isn't what happens. There's this weird idea that this thing that's got all these attributes needs a home and has to enter into a learning relationship

with the thing that it's trying to transform. It's so sophisticated because, you know, I could say, you should do what your conscience tells you. It's like, well, maybe not. Maybe that's not exactly how it works. Maybe your conscience isn't omniscient and omnipotent. Maybe it's not God, right? It's a guide, but it's maybe smarter than you sometimes,

maybe because it's society in your head, and obviously it's smarter than you sometimes, because it tells you not to do something and you go do it, and then you get into trouble and you think, well, if I would have just listened, but you don't, and that's interesting too, it's something that you don't have to listen to, which seems to be associated with free will. It's weird, it's like that you don't have to listen to, which seems to be associated with free will.

It's weird. It's like if your conscience knows what to do, why aren't you just a deterministic puppet of your conscience? Christ, that would work a lot better. You wouldn't have to torture yourself and you wouldn't make any mistakes. So why the separation? Well maybe it's because the conscience is generic. And so it has to be taught.

It has to learn too. And so what you do is you have a dialogue with your conscience. It's something like that. And then you expose yourself to more and more of the world. And you get wiser and your conscience gets wiser and you mature together. And that's what happens in this story because the cricket starts out as a this tramp that you know is smarter than the puppet, but not as smart as he thinks he is, that's for sure. And when he first starts to operate as a conscience, he's completely useless at it.

He babbles off a lot of cliches about morality and then he's late the first day for his job and he's just not very good at it. And so there's this weird idea that the conscience, which is part of what puts you towards redemption, is something that you actually have to interact with over the course of your life in order for it to develop as you develop. And so then I would also say that the cricket represents at least in part what Jung described as the self,

which is like the potential fully developed human being that sort of exists within you as a possibility. But it has to be It has to be manifest in the actual conditions of your life And so the conscience has to learn how to position itself here and now and it's got generic advice and that's not good enough And so that's why the cricket is looking for a home and so he needs a home Even though he's all these other things we already said he was he has to find a specific home before he can become who he could be. Well, so then, Jepetto shows up and he's a kindly old guy, which is pretty much exactly

what you'd expect. And, you know, he's a careful craftsman and he likes kittens and, you know, that's always a good thing. And he has some fish and, you know, he's, and he's good at making things and he's got a sense of humor and he's kind of playful and so he's the good father, fundamentally. He's the wise king, he's the positive archetype of the masculine. That's what he is and so he's culture and it's positive manifestation and he gives rise to this creation which is his puppet, which is what culture does, because you're a puppet of your culture.

You're a marionette of your culture. And so maybe you could be more than that. And that's the other thing that's strange about this movie, and it's strange about the mythological way of looking at the world, because scientifically, deterministically, there's nature, and there's culture, and you are the deterministic product of the interaction between nature and culture. There's nothing else to you than that, that's that. But the mythological world doesn't say that, it says something different, it says that there's nature and culture, and then there's you. And the you that's in there has choices and a destiny, and that you actually affect the interplay of nature and culture and determining your own character. And it insists upon that, the oldest stories we have, there's always the hero and the

archetypal mother and the archetypal father. There's always those three things. There's never just two. So from the narrative perspective, there's always the implication that there's something autonomous about the hero of the story. And you know, you can't account for that. We don't have a good way of accounting that, for that from a scientific perspective. I was having a discussion with Sam Harris the other day, which was very, what would you say? He said, we got wrapped around an axel, which is pretty much, Hassan Harris is one of the four famous atheists, along with Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins

and Dan Dennett, so we were having a discussion. He's a determinist, just right down to the bottom. It's like you're determined, you're determined, there's no free will, you're a deterministic machine. And, you know, if you're a coherent scientist and you're a Newtonian, roughly speaking, you don't really have much choice other than to think that way, but that isn't how it seems to people. And we don't treat each other that way. And our entire legal system is predicated on the idea that you do in fact have free will. So, well, can we account for it? Well no, and do we have a scientific model for it? No.

But then I would also say we do not have a scientific model for consciousness. We don't know a damn thing about consciousness, which is why Dan Danett's book, which was called Consciousness Explained, was referred to by its critics as Consciousness Explained Away, which is exactly right as far as I'm concerned, because he took a mechanistic approach, and I just don't think he get to do that, because there's something really weird about consciousness. I mean, the phenomenologist, like Heidegger, who tried to radically transform Western philosophy right from the bottom up, he basically said, well, you know, you can treat the

world as if consciousness is primary and that human experience is reality, that's reality, and that it doesn't exist independently of consciousness in any explicable way. It's like, well, what's out there if there's nothing to experience it? Well, everything at once, it's something like that. It's not really comprehensible, as without a subject, the subject defines it and makes it real. Now, you don't have to believe that, but at least I'm telling you that there are thoroughly coherent philosophical positions that make that case very strongly, and that allow consciousness

to exist as a phenomenon, to take it seriously. And you certainly act like you take it seriously. You act like there's a you and that you make choices and you certainly treat other people that way, deterministic or not, you're still going to get angry when they're being rude to you. And you're going to act as if they had some choice in the matter.

Now, maybe that's an illusion possibly, but maybe it's not. And I would say the oldest stories that we have always include that as not only our fundamental element, but even as the fundamental element. So well, so you can think about that however you want. But anyway, so Jepetto comes along and he's going to finish off the puppet. And so what does he do to finish off the puppet? He gives it a voice. He gives it a mouth. Well, that's really, really interesting. So, in Genesis, in Genesis, this is a very, very,

very complex idea. And it took people thousands of years to figure this idea out. And it's something like this. So, at the beginning of everything there was chaos and that was like potential it was something like potential the potential for being and God who's God the Father in the Genesis account uses a faculty that he has which is the word to call being from chaos and that's the creation of being, right? It's the manifestation of order from chaos, and it's the word, the logos, that it's the logos, that's the tool that God uses to do that, and that logos in Christianity is associated with Christ, which is a very weird thing, and but the reason for

that is that there's an idea that the divine element of the individual is the thing that uses language, communicative language, to call the world into being. And that is what we do. As far as we can tell, it's like you make a decision, you think it through, you talk it over with your friends, you plot a course, and the world manifests itself in relationship to your choice. And it's for that reason, and it is for that reason that in Genesis and in many other accounts, that logo's capacity is identified with human beings.

It's like you have a small bit of that in you, whatever that means, and you participate in the process of continually generating order out of chaos and sometimes the reverse. you mediate between them. And so, and that in our, in Western culture, and it's certainly the case at other cultures as well, that that's why you have rights, fundamentally. That's why the law has to respect you,

is because you've got this spark of divinity in you, that's transcendent, that nobody gets to transgress against. And you say, well, do you believe that? It's like, well, you act like you believe it. You treat other people like you believe it. Or they're not very happy with you. So it depends on what you mean by believe.

You act it out. Well, do you accept it as a proposition? Well, I don't care if you accept it as a proposition frankly because I think the best indicator of what you believe is how you act, not what you say. Because what do you know about what you know? Hardly anything. And so, actions speak louder than words. And if you want to be treated properly by someone, what that means is that you want to treat them, you want them to treat you as a valuable, autonomous entity. That's what you want. And so maybe you're not that, maybe you're a deterministic puppet. And what this strange movie suggests is that you are kind of a deterministic puppet,

but that you don't have to be. All right? Well, the mouth goes on. And then, Jepetto's happy about that, and then they have a little dance, you know, they turn the music on, and all these little music boxes, and they all play together, and it's like harmony of some sort has been established, because that's what the music represents, and there's layers of reality that are communicating with one another, because that's what the music represents, and then they have a little dance and the idea is that well it's a good thing to let this puppet have

its own voice. Well that's an interesting idea because what the hell does it? No it's a wooden-headed marionette. Why the hell would you want something like that to talk? Well it's the same question you have in relationship to your children. It's like what do they know? They're two or three, you know? They don't know anything. Well, so should you just like tyrannize them and make them do everything you want or are you gonna let them have a bit of a voice?

And the question is, it depends on whether we want them to be a puppet or not. And if you don't want them to be a puppet, if you want them to grow up autonomous, then you let them have a voice. And you facilitate the development of that voice. And so, and that's what you do if you don't want a marionette. So, and Jopetto doesn't want a marionette, so he gives the puppet a voice, even though he knows it's just a puppet, and that it's,

it doesn't know anything. And then this is fantastic. So, the cricket sitting up there watching that, he's pretty happy with it, that's the first little scene you see there So the cricket's sitting up there watching that. He's pretty happy with it. That's the first little scene you see there. And he's sitting by this other thing that is just not happy at all. And that's the terrible father. And you see it's a character that repeats throughout the entire movie. You see manifestations of the tyrannical father continually through the movie in different characters, like he's played out by different roles. And so, first of all, the cricket is so thrilled about this and then he looks at the frowning king there who is not happy that the puppet has been given a voice. He's a tyrant, right?

He's the representation of a tyrant, and a tyrant does not want you to have a voice. And so the cricket looks at him and says, well, you can't please everybody all the time. And it's just this tiny little fragment of a joke, you know, but it's, there's this old idea. I think it comes from check-off and the idea is that if you set a play up and there's a gun, a rifle or a pistol on a table in the first act, it better have been used by the third act or it shouldn't have been there at all.

And the idea is you don't put anything in your play that's random. You never do that. Because this isn't life. This isn't life. This is the work of art. And everything is connected. And it's there by intent.

And so this isn't accidental that this little king character doesn't like what's going on, Ornady shows up. So anyways, all the clocks go off, and the music boxes go, and they have a little dance, and everybody's happy about it. And then, Jupetto notices what time it is. And so there's a tremendous emphasis on time in this part of the movie, because there are all these clocks are going off, and they're all telling him what time it is.

Like, 30 clocks go off, and then he takes this they're all telling him what time it is, like 30 clocks go off and then he takes his watch out and notices what time it is. It's like the idea that there's something about time going on is like whacked at you, you know, dozens of times so that you get it. And it's a little joke that he, you know, pulls out his watch and he figures out its time for bed. Well, so now we're making a transition between the conscious world and the unconscious world. Okay, so there's an intimation in the movie that everything that happens now is in the unconscious world. And the way you know that is that it's strange, because the movie moves in and out of this underworld. But at the very end, when Pinocchio is transformed into a real boy, the last thing Jepetto does is, I think it's Jepetto, is hit one of the pendulums and start all the

clocks again. So it's as if what happens from here onwards is part of a dream. Now it's murky because Pinocchio goes to school and there's the next day and all of that. So those are sort of realistic elements, but then there's also the whole going down into the ocean to find the whale thing, which seems completely dreamlike. And, but there's an intimation that we're in a different kind of world. And so, we go to sleep, including the cricket.

And so, then, Jepetto notices the star. And, because he's a good guy, he makes a wish on the star. We've already explained why you might wish on a star and what that might mean. And he makes a very interesting wish. It's not a self-serving wish. In fact, it's quite the contrary. He doesn't wish that Pinocchio is an obedient son.

He doesn't wish that he's produced someone who will work for him. He doesn't wish any of that. He wishes what a good father would wish, which is that the creation that he's brought forth would develop its capacity for autonomy. He wants them to become real. He wants them to become an actual living creature and not a wooden-headed marionette. And so you'd say, well that is what your father should wish for you, you know. And I have clients frequently whose fathers weren't like that at all. They were tyrannical or they were neglectful or they punished this,

then the person every time they did something good, that's a real fun game. They competed with them and undermined them at every opportunity. They didn't want to produce someone strong and autonomous. They wanted to give birth to a slave and then diminish it as much as possible. And so that's bad. It's not good. And that's so, Japan does not like that. So he says, well, I'm going to wish for something completely unreasonable, which is that

part of that ideal idea, right? And the unreasonable thing is that this puppet could become real, could actually take on its autonomy and move forward. And so that's what he wishes. And then they go to sleep. And then the cricket starts to become driven mad by the noises of the clock. And so it's like he's going into the sort of state of hyper alertness. And the clocks are clanging at him.

And jupetto was snoring. And he can even hear the little grains of sand falling out of the hour-hour glass. He's becoming hyper alert, hyper alert. And then he yells stop and all the clock stop, which is a pretty good trick for a cricket, you know. It's like he's the master of time, but also we're in a place now where time has come to a stop or outside of time. And one of the things that Freud pointed about dreams is that dreams are kind of outside of time. Now, here's what that means is first of all, they draw on eternal themes.

That's part of it. But you must have had this experience in Freud noted this carefully in the interpretation of dreams where you're sleeping and the alarm goes off. And the alarm noise is incorporated into your dream. And it's like the dream has been going on for an hour in subjective time. And you wake up and you realize that it's the alarm clock. It's like, and there's no reason why your dream time should be the same as real time because it's all going on in your imagination. But it's amazing in some sense how much can happen in such a short period of time in your imagination. And so it's outside of time. The world of fantasy is in some sense outside of time. And so the cricket tells time to stop and it does.

And then the star enlarges and it turns into this blue fairy who's got a celestial gown covered with stars and who's got wings so she's kind of some ethereal being and like you don't have a problem with that in the movie it's like yeah sure I mean you know it's a ferry it came from a star that makes perfect sense which of course it does it makes no sense whatsoever right it makes no sense but you're willing to go along with it because on the one hand it makes no sense and on the other hand it makes makes sense, no sense, and on the other hand, it makes perfect sense. It's like the fairy godmother idea. It's like, yeah, yeah, fairy godmother, no problem. We got that. And the idea there is that, well, nature comes to your aid.

It's something like that. It's the benevolent force of nature is on your side. Now, not obviously only on your side, because it opposes you as well. But, and there's your own mother as well, who's also nature, who's on your side because it opposes you as well. But, and there's your own mother as well, who's also nature, who's on your side. And so, but there's an idea here and the idea is that if the father gets the wish right, the aim right for the child, then nature will cooperate. Right, and that's true, I believe that's true, is that if you set up your relationship, your cultural relationship with your child properly,

then they're far more likely to flourish. And so you get the magic of nature on your side by establishing the proper aim. And so that's what happens. Jepetto says, well, this is what I'm aiming at. And because he's aiming at it, and because it's within the realm of possibility, nature comes to his service. And that is how it works.

That's exactly how it works, because when you aim at something, then you muster your biological forces towards that goal, and if the goal is feasible and attainable, then you will cooperate with yourself. And so that's quite cool. Karl Rogers would call that, what's the word for that? I think he called it genuineness, which is kind of weak. But I think that's still what he called it. And he sort of meant that, well, that's sort of what

happens when your goals and your physiological and your biological being are aligned well, and you can communicate both. You're not full of internal contradictions. And so your conscious aims and your biological possibilities are manifesting themselves in the same direction. And so, well, that would be good. So anyways, the fairy shows up and she's quite sexually attractive.

She's quite provocative and she charms the cricket and who gets all blushes and is all, you know, embarrassed and overwhelmed by this figure of celestial beauty and decides to cooperate, the conscience decides to cooperate and gets some responsibility. And so the fairy allows the puppet to move without strings. So that's kind of interesting. So it's the intervention of nature. Culture focuses the aim. And then it's the intervention of nature that produces the autonomy.

And that seems to be right. I mean, even though it's not that understandable, it seems to be right. And then, so, she takes the strings off Pinocchio. And you might say, well, that's partly because your child is not certainly not just a creature of culture. By no means, your child has a temperament. You'll see that right away. And that temperament will unfold.

And hopefully it will unfold in a cultural context that's amenable to it. And that the combination of those two things will produce something new. You can talk. You can walk. And so the good fairy basically tells him that he's got a bit of autonomy. And now it's up to him to like, clue in a bit and act properly and learn the difference between good and evil

and to speak truthfully and all that. It's a bit propagandistic that part of the movie I would say, but it doesn't really matter. It's kind of in Caucasian of conventional morality. And there's a fair bit to it, especially that he's supposed to tell the truth. And he says he will and the cricket's listening. And then the puppet asks, well, what does conscience mean? Because the fairy says, always let your conscience be your guide. And he says, well, what does conscience mean? Because the fairy says, always let your conscience be your guide. And he says, well, what does conscience mean?

And then the bug, who's like, all puffed up because he wants to impress the fairy, pops down and gets on his little matchbox and gives this like horrible little lecture about how to behave properly. That's just like ideological chatter. You can hardly even stand listening to it. And it's supposed to be like that. It's generic moral advice that anyone could give that's kind of dull and also puffed up and grandiose.

And he's just not very good at it. So and that's why he's on his little match box there with his chest puffed out. So he says, that's just the trouble with the world today. And I think that's his opening line. He's diagnosing the whole world. And the fairy, she thinks he's kind of funny because he is. And it's sort of, there's a really interesting thing here

going on because he's male. And he's all puffed up with his knowledge, which is completely shallow. And then he's put in contact with this celestial, feminine ideal, and he just turns into a contact with this celestial, feminine ideal, and he just turns into a complete moron, and that's exactly what happens to man. It happens to them all the time. So anyways, she decides to give him a chance, and turns him into this conscience, and all

of a sudden he's this like 1920s millionaire, so he's been in no mood. But then she tells him that, you know, he has to journey along with Pinocchio in order for things to go properly. And he promises that he'll be a good conscience and do it. And he already thinks that he can do it, and that's why he's on the matchbox podium, you know, espousing his morality. But the reality turns out to be much more complex. So, the bug has a little talk with the cricket. The bug has a little talk with the puppet and the bug tries to tell Pinocchio explicitly what it means to be good. And he gets completely tangled up in the explanation because what the hell does

he know. And the puppet doesn't understand anything that he says anyways. And so there's a message there and the message is, the kind of knowledge that the conscience and the puppet are supposed to co-create is not something that you can articulate easily as a table of rules. It's not like that, because life is too complicated to just have five rules that you live by,

and that will solve every problem. Partly, because the rules will conflict. That's a huge part of the problem, right? One moral guideline contradicts another in a situation, it's like, you don't know what to do. So anyways, they decide that they're just going to... He says, Pinocchio says, well, I'll be a good boy. And the cricket says, well, that's the spirit.

And then, well, then, Jopetto gets wind of it. And they have a little horror episode. And then he finds out that the puppet can is autonomous, and they have a little party, which tells you exactly what Jopetto is up to, is the autonomy emerges, and he's happy about it. So it's stamping home the notion that Jopetto is, in fact, a good guy, and that that is, in fact, what he wants.

So it's like the encouragement of your father is a precondition for the emergence of your individuality. And it also allows the feminine to play a role, both as nature and perhaps as mother. And the combination of those two things produces the autonomous individual. It's like, well, that seems perfectly reasonable. So, off they go to sleep. Next day they wake up, and it's a new day, and Pinocchio is off to school. And that's a good thing, too, because

Jepetto isn't, and he's really excited about it. And so, what that means is that he's been parented properly, and he's going to go out into the world of his peers, which is where he belongs. And Jepetto isn't too worried about it. In fact, he's pushing him out the door. It's like, go, you can do it. This is the next thing. The kid isn't cowering in the corner and overcome

by terror with the parents freaking out about all the things that are going to go wrong. There's some faith in his ability. So he sees all the kids wandering by and Jopetto dresses up and sends them off to school. And so that's good. So that's a happy family story. It's like mom and dad got together. They decided that the kid was going to be competent and autonomous and ready to face the world and so out he goes

and so he's like five years old at this point or something like that and that's where we get, that's where we're at in the story. And I think that's a good place to stop because the next thing that happens is anomaly essentially. It's like Pinocchio goes off to be a good boy but it turns out that's a hell of a lot more complicated Then he might think because there are actually complications in the world but also malevolence Right the desire for things not to go right there are people who are not oriented towards The ideal in any way at all and Pinocchio's young and naive, and so he has no defense whatsoever

against this malevolence, and that's not expected. And it also turns out that the conscience, the cricket, who is still not very clued in over sleeps, and so he's just not there at a critical moment. But I think we'll pick that up, we'll pick that up next week because this is a good point in the plot to stop. The child has entered the broader world

and has to cope with it. And so he's prepared because he had a wonderful father and he had a magical mother. And so he's as prepared as you can be. He's not even completely a marionette anymore. But now it's up to him, that's the thing. Now it's up to him, his parents have done basically what they could.

And that's really about right, you know. It's wise, I would say psychologically. So, all right, that's that. We hope you enjoyed this episode. We'll be back next week with Part 2 of Marionettes and Individuals. Michaela? If you found this conversation meaningful, you might consider 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 JordanB Peterson.com for audio, e-book, and text links, or pick up the books at your favorite bookseller. I hope you enjoyed this podcast. If you did, please let a friend know or leave a review. 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 www.cfm.com you