The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 131. Maps of Meaning 3: Marionettes & Individuals (Part 2)

Episode Date: August 9, 2020

Here is the third episode in a 12 part series that could only be found on youtube until now! In this lecture, I continue with the analysis of the Disney film Pinocchio to illustrate the manner in which great mythological or archetypal themes inform and permeate both the creation and the understanding of narratives. - Jordan Peterson See the full YouTube video: https://youtu.be/Us979jCjHu8 Thanks to our sponsors: http://trybasis.com/jordan/

Welcome to season 3 episode 18 of the Jordan B Peterson Podcast. I'm Wes Wood-Wan Podcast Networks Joey Salvia, and I help produce this series. We thank you for joining us for these 2017 lectures based on Jordan Peterson's book, Maps of Meaning, the Architecture of Belief. This week, we present part two of a three-part lecture called Marianette's and Individuals. In this lecture, Jordan continues with the analysis of the Disney film Pinocchio to illustrate the manner in which great mythological or archetypal themes inform and permeate both the creation and the understanding of narratives. We'll be back in a moment with Dr. Jordan B. Peterson. As you guys know, if you've been listening to this podcast, Dad and I have been getting

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Westwood One Podcast Network presents Mary Annette's and individuals, part two, and now Dr. Peter Sheen. Okay, so the last time we were here, we got about maybe a third of the way through this story, this story of Pinocchio and the transformation of a Marionette into something hypothetically real, and I'm going to backtrack a few slides and it'll get us into it again. So you remember that the Blue Fairy, so I would say the benevolent element of Mother Nature in the schematic that we're going to use to investigate mythology, had more or less been allowed her entrance because Jopetto was a good guy

and because he wished for the right thing. And so, in some sense, here's a way of thinking about that. You know, genetic studies, genetic slash environmental studies of children's temperament have revealed something quite interesting, which is that the shared environment that children have within a family, so that would be what's the same about your environment and your brother's environment to say, doesn't have that much effect on your temperament or his temperament. Because the presumption always was that within a family there is a shared environment, right? That something was common about the environment to every child within that environment. But there isn't much of a shared environmental effect on temperament. So then you could say, well, that makes it

appear as though parenting isn't that relevant in relationship to the development of temperament. But you could also suggest something else. You could suggest that if parenting is occurring properly, the effect of the shared environment should be very close to zero. And the reason for that is that you establish an individual relationship with each child. And the environment is actually a micro-environment that's composed of your observations of your child, and that specific child's interaction with you. And to some degree, if there is a shared environment, that means that you're enforcing the same principles on every child. And so my suspicions are, although I don't know this because, and the research hasn't

been done, that in bad families, there's a shared environmental effect, but in good families, there are, that minimizes. And so that lets the child's biological predisposition, roughly, manifest itself with support and in some positive manner. Well, I don't want to extend the analogy too far, but you could imagine that, and this is what this film proposes, is that if you aim properly in relationship to your child, what you're trying to do is to establish an individual relationship and to allow them to move towards whatever their particular expression of individuality happens to be. And that's, well, that would be the same as allowing nature to take its course in some

sense, at least nature in its positive guys. And that's exactly what happens here. Now, the other thing that happens, of course, is that the cricket, for reasons that aren't clear precisely, is knighted by the Blue Fairy and serves as Pinocchio's conscience, although he isn't very good at it, which is a very peculiar thing, and quite a marked point that the film is making, that that conscience actually has something to learn too. And there's actually a Freudian element to that, because Freud thought of the super ego as the internalization, roughly speaking of the father, and it could be very severe the super

ego, so it could be like a really strict father, really tyrannical father inside your head. Although I think it's better to think about the super ego as the internalized representation of society at large, mediated to some degree through your parents, because it's not as if your father, even assuming he's tyrannical, is the inventor of all those tyrannical rules. He's the propagator of them, but he's actually a proxy voice, even if it's just for the harsh side of society. He's a proxy voice for society, and because we're social creatures, the utility of having an internal social voice to guide you,

although, again, you seem to be able to follow it or not follow it, which I also find spectacularly interesting, because obviously if it was an unhearing guide, you could just follow it. And if it was an unhearing guide, well, you wouldn't need free will either, because you could just act out the dictates of this internal representation. and if it was an unnearing guide, well, you wouldn't need free will either, because you could just act out the dictates

of this internal representation, and that isn't what you do. So, anyways, the proposition here is that the conscience exists, but it's a relatively flawed entity, and it needs to be modified as well by nature, which is quite interesting, because the Blue Fairy knights him, because you also might think of the conscience as

only something that's socially constructed, right, which is the more typical viewpoint, but I don't buy that for a second because I believe firmly, and I think the Piagetian interpretation of child development more or less bears this out is that there are parameters within which conscience has to operate. And it's sort of like this. It's like the same parameters that govern fair play. We'll say that.

And so you can say there's fair play within a game, and there's fair play across sets of games. And the set of games is pretty much indistinguishable from the actual environment, right? If you think about all the things you do as nested games, at some point, the spread of that is large enough, so it encompasses everything you do, which includes the environment. And so I believe that you're adapted to the set of all possible games, roughly speaking, all possible playable games, something like that,

and that you know the rules for that, which is why we talked about this a little bit. Why you're so good at identifying cheaters. You have a module for that, according to the evolutionary psychologists, and you not only do you identify them, but you really remember them. It really sticks in your mind. And there's other evidence, too. So one piece of evidence that I love, I think it's so, well, there's a couple. One I would derive from friends to wall,

who's a famous primatologist, and he studied the prototype morality that emerges in chimpanzees. And it's very much nested in their dominant structures, because you could think of morality in some sense as the understanding of the rules by which the dominance hierarchy operates. And so you could say, well, the biggest ugliest, meanest, chimp, and the male dominance hierarchies in chimp seem to be the predominant ones,

although the females also have a dominance hierarchy in it. It's not quite so clear in Bonoboes, which seem to be more female-dominated. But in any case, the chim... primary chimp dominant structure is male, and you could think, well, it's like the caveman, chimped whose biggest and toughest, who necessarily rules and who rules longest. But that isn't what the wall found. See, the problem with being mean, let's say, and not negotiating your social landscape

and not trading reciprocal favors, is that no matter how powerful you are as an individual, two individuals, three-quarters of your power can do you in. And that happens with the chimps fairly regularly, if the guy on top is too tyrannical and doesn't make social connections, then weaker chimps may also make good social connections. And when he's not in such good shape they take him down and viciously too. DeWall has documented some unbelievably horrendous acts of let's call it regicide in among the chimpanzee troops that he studied mostly in the Arnhem Zoo. They have a big troop there that's been there a

long time. But he's very interested in prototypical morality and here's some other examples of prototypical morality emerging among animals. There's many of them. But one is, if two wolves have a dominance dispute, that again, that would be more likely among the male wolves. But it doesn't really matter. They basically display their size

and they growl for ausiously and puff up their hair so they look bigger. And you can see cats do that when they go into fight or flight, not only do they puff up including their tail but they stand sideways and and the reason they do that is because they look bigger right because they're trying to put out the most intimidating possible front. So anyways if two wolves are going at it they're what they're really trying to do is to size each other up and they're trying to scare each other into backing off fundamentally because See the worst case scenario is like your world for number one and I'm world number two

And we tear each other to shreds But I win but I'm so damaged after that that wolf number three comes in and takes me out So like there's a big cost to be paid even for victory in a dominance dispute if it degenerates into violence and animals and Human beings but animals in particular have evolved very, very specific mechanisms to escalate dominance disputes towards violence step by step so that the victor doesn't risk incapacitating himself by winning. So what happens with the wolves is that they grow know, they growling each other in posture and display and maybe they even snap at each other, but the probability that they're going to get into a full-fledged fight is pretty low. And what happens is one of the wolves backs off and flips over and shows his neck. And that basically means,

all right, tear it out, you know, and the other wolf says, of course he doesn't. Well, you're kind of an idiot and you're not that strong, but we might need you to take down a moose in the future. And so, despite your patheticness, I won't tear out your throat and then they've established their dominance position. And then from then on, at least for some substantial period of time, this subordinate wolf gives way to the dominant wolf. But at least the subordinate wolf is alive, and he might be dominant over other wolves. And so everyone in the whole hierarchy has sorted that out, either through mock combat or

through combat itself. The low ranking members aren't in the best possible position, but at least they're not getting their heads torn off every second of their existence. So, there's even some utility in the stability of the dominance hierarchy for the low ranking members, because at least they're not getting pounded, they're getting threatened, which is way better. I mean, it's not good, but it's way better than actual combat.

And then there's the example of rats, which I love. This is Yacht Panksepp's work, and he wrote a book called Effective Neuroscience, which I would highly, highly recommend. I have a list of reading, recommended readings on my website. It's a brilliant book and he's a brilliant psychologist, really. One of the top psychologists as far as I'm concerned, both theoretically and experimentally, a real genius. He's the guy who discovered

that rats laugh when you tickle them. They laugh ultrasonically, so you can't actually hear them, but if you record it and slow it down, then you can hear them giggling away when you tickle them with an eraser, which is sort of like their mother's tongue. It's often what lab people use as a substitute for the licking of the little rat by the mother. So, and he discovered the play circuit in mammals, which is like a major deal, right? He should get a Nobel Prize for that. That's a big deal to discover an entire motivational circuit whose existence no one had really predicted, apart from the fact that obviously Mammoth play. And even lizards, maybe some of the more social lizards seem to play. So anyhow, what Panks have observed, I think this is a brilliant piece of science, is that first of all, juvenile male routes in particular like to rough and tumble play, they like to wrestle.

And they actually pin each other just like little kids do or like adult wrestlers do. They pin their shoulders down and that basically means you win. And so, okay, so that's pretty cool, but what's even cooler, I think, well, there's three things. One is the rats will work for an opportunity to get into an arena where they know that play might occur.

And so that's one of the scientific ways of testing an animal's motivation, right? So imagine you have a starving rat and it knows that it's got food down the end of a corridor. You can put a little spring on its tail and measure how hard it pulls and that gives you an indication of its motivational force. Now imagine the starving rat that's trying to get to some food and you have a little spring on his tail and you Woffed in some cat odor. So now that rat is starving and wants to get out of there. He's gonna try to pull even farther towards the food. So getting away plus getting forward are separate motivational systems and if you can add them together, it's real potent and part of the reason why in the future authoring exercise that you guys are going to do

as the class progresses, you're asked to outline the place you'd like to end up, which is your desired future. And also the place that you could end up if you let everything fall apart is so that your anxiety chases you and your approach systems pull you forward. You're maximally motivated then. And it's important because otherwise you can be afraid of pursuing the things that you want to pursue. Right? And that's very common. And so then the fear inhibits you as the promise pulls you forward, but it makes you weak because you're afraid. You want to get your fear behind you, pushing you. And so what you want to be is a more afraid of not pursuing your goals than you are of pursuing them. It's very, very helpful. And lots of times in life, and this is something really

worth knowing. You know, and this is one of the advantages to being an autonomous adult, is you don't get to pick the best thing. You get to pick your poison. You have two bad choices and you get to pick which one you're willing to suffer through. And every choice has a bit of that element in it. And so if you know that, it's really freeing, because otherwise you torture yourself by thinking, well, maybe there's a good solution to this, you know, compared to the bad solution.

It's like, no, no, sometimes there's just risky solution one and risky solution two. And sometimes both of them are really bad, but you at least get to pick which one you're willing to suffer through, and that actually makes quite a bit of difference, because you're also facing it voluntarily then, instead of it chasing you, and that is an entirely different,

entirely different, psychophysiological response. Challenge versus threat, it's not the same, even if the magnitude of the problem is the same. And so putting yourself in a challenging, let's call it mind frame, you can't just do that by magic. Putting yourself in a challenging mind frame is much easier on you psychophysiologically, because you don't produce,

you don't go into the generalized stress response to the same degree. And you're activating your exploratory and seeking systems which are dopamineurgically mediated and that involve positive emotion. So if you can face something voluntarily rather than having it chase you, it's way better for you psychophysiologically. So that's partly why, well it's worthwhile to go find the dragon in its lair instead of waiting for it to come and eat you. So and especially when you also add the idea that if you go find the dragon in its lair, you might find it when it's a baby instead of a full fledged bloody monster that is

definitely going to take you down. And so that's part of the reason why, well, there's a whole bunch of things that that emerge out of that observation like don't avoid small problems that you know are there, face them because they'll grow into big problems all by themselves. And you can think about, imagine the tax department sends you a notification. You owe them like $300. Well, it's, you know, that's annoying. Maybe you don't even want to open the letter. Or maybe if you do, you just put it on the shelf. But that damn thing doesn't just sit there like a piece

of paper on the shelf, right? You ignore that for five or six years. It's going to become attached to all sorts of horrible things. And if you ignore it long enough, you get the idea. It's going to turn into something that is completely unlike the little piece of paper that it's written on. And many, many problems in life are like that. You'll see that they popped their ugly little head up and you know and you might want to turn away, you might not want to think about it, which is the easiest way of turning away, right?

You just don't attend to it. It felt like you repress it or anything like that. You just fail to attend to it. And that's really, as a long-term strategy, it's dismal. It's also something I think that's more characteristic of people who are high in neuroticism and high in agreeableness because agreeable people don't like conflict. And people who are high in neuroticism or high negative emotion are hit harder per unit of uncertainty or threat. And so, you know, and that's partly why in psychotherapy, a lot of times the people you see need assertiveness training. So that would be the opposite of agreeableness or they need to help get their anxiety and emotional pain under control.

It's, those are not the only reasons. There's anti-social behavior, but you can't fix that in therapy, in all likelihood, there's alcoholism. There's lots of lots of other reasons, but those are two major reasons. So anyways, there is, that was all to tell you that, oh yes, back to the rats.

So okay, the rats are pulling on, you can measure rat motivation by how hard they pull on the spring, let's say. And they're more motivated if they're running away and running towards, but let's go back to play. So, you can take juvenile rats who haven't been able to play for a while, maybe they've been isolated, or maybe they just haven't been able to engage in physical activity, like many school children that you might be thinking about, neither allowed to play nor allowed to engage in physical activity. And there's a reason I'm telling you that.

So anyways, you get one of these little rats and you can measure how hard he wants, how hard he'll pull the golden play, or how many buttons he'll push. And that's gives you an indication of his motivation. So anyways, you can see that the play deprived juvenile rat will fight harder to play than a non-play deprived juvenile rat. And so you can infer that the rat wants to go play. And you know, you do that. You do the same measurement with everyone around you. If they want to do something, you're going to poke and prod out them to see what sort of things they're willing to overcome in order to go and do that. You'll object even if you don't really object. It's a measurement device. And if they're willing to overcome a bunch of your objections, then you think,

oh, well, maybe they really want to. And that's another thing to really know. If there's something you want, you need about five arguments about why you want it, because the probability that the person who's opposing you will have five arguments about why you shouldn't have it is very low. They just won't have thought it through enough. So the other thing that happens in the future authoring exercises that you're asked to articulate the reasons for all the goals that come out of your vision of the future.

So you're asked, like, why would it be good for you? Why would it be good for your family? Why would it be good for broader society? And so that gives you three levels of argumentation right there. And if you have it articulated down into detail, and it's related to other important goals, then you're a hell of a thing to argue with, because people just aren't that deep by which I mean,

they just don't have that many levels of explanation or objection. And it's also really useful in relationship to your own mind because if you want to do something that's difficult and that requires energy, a lot of different subsystems in your mind are going to throw up objections. It's like, well, maybe that isn't what you should be doing right now. Maybe you should be doing the dishes or vacuuming or watching TV or looking at YouTube. If you're really sneaky, when you're trying to do something hard, what your brain does is give you something else hard to do that's not quite as hard so that you can feel justified and not doing the thing you're supposed to because you're doing something else useful.

And if you give into that temptation, which you often will, then it wins and because it wins, it gets a little dopamine kick and it grows stronger. Everything, anything you let win, the internal argument grows and anything you let be defeated shrinks because it's punished. It doesn't get to have its way. So that's another thing really to remember. Don't practice what you do not want to become. And because those are, they're neurological circuits. You build those things in there, man.

They're they're not going anywhere. You can build another little machine to inhibit them. That's the best you can do. Once they're in there, you can't get them out. So and then the ones you build to inhibit can be taken out by stress and the old habits will come back up. So you've got to be careful what you say and what you do because you build yourself that way. So anyways back to the rats. Okay so the little rat gets to go out there and play. Now imagine one little rat is paired with another rat but the little other little rat is 10% bigger.

10% in juvenile rats is enough to attain permanent dominance. So the 10% bigger rat will win the first wrestling contest, okay? And so that's what happens. And then, so the little route gets pinned and maybe they play a bit, and then they're done with it, and so you separate them, then you let them play again. And the next time what happens is that the subordinate route does the invitation to play. And that's like, you know, like a dog does when it wants to play.

You can recognize that, it kind of plays its feet apart, and it looks up and looks interested and sort of dances around. And you can do it with any kid that has a clue, that hasn't been destroyed by adults. If you're a little three-year-old kid or four-year-olds are better for this, if you go like this, they know exactly what's gonna happen.

They're ready to dart back and forth and they'll usually smile and kids love rough and tumble play which is now basically illegal in all gay cares. And seriously it seriously is it kids need it so desperately because it teaches them the limits of their body and your body and it teaches them what's painful and what isn't and it teaches them the dance of play and without that they're just little disembodied blobs like Like, they have no finesse. That's what you're checking out when you dance with someone, you know. You're seeing if they have that fluency and facility for mutual reciprocal action embodied

in them. And if they're kind of like this, you know, and just have no sense of rhythm and don't pay any attention to you and all of that, you have reason to question whether they actually inhabit their body and whether they can engage in a mutual interaction, a physical interaction that's going to be reciprocal and mutually satisfying. It's really important to check out. And a lot of that rough and tumble play, even interactions between a child and its mother. If you have a happy mother and a happy infant and you videotape them and you speed up the videotape, you'll see that they're dancing. So one responds then the other responds then the other responds.

It might just be with iGays and movement and all of that, but there's a dynamic interplay, which you don't see with depressed mothers and their infants. So, okay, so back to play. So the little rat who got, is the subordinate one, he has to do the invitation. And then the big rat can agree to play because he's in the dominant position. But if you pair them repeatedly, and this is really worth thinking about, because see, morality emerges out of repeated interactions,

because you might say, well, if you're only gonna interact with someone once, you might as well just take advantage of them and run off. That's what a psychopath does, by the way. And there is room in the environmental niche for psychopaths, but they have to keep moving around. Because otherwise, people figure out who they are. So they just move around and they can take advantage of one person,

maybe five times or ten times or something. And then the reputation spreads and they go to get the hell out of there. But so it's not a good long-term strategy, unless you can't take up a better one. So anyways, if you repeatedly pair these routes, unless the big rat lets the little rat win at least 30% of the time, the little rat will not ask the big rat to play. And that is, it's a staggering discovery. It's a staggering discovery because you've

got the emergence there of an implicit morality essentially. That's even incarnated in rats that emerges across multiple play sessions. It's like, yes, exactly. That's exactly what P.A.J. said about the emergence of morality. It's exactly the same idea at the rat level. So it's a massively, and the fact that there's a circuit, a separate neurophysiological circuit that's actually specialized for that sort of thing is also a big deal. Now the other thing, Panks, have figured out is that if you deprive juvenile rats of the opportunity to engage in rough and tumble play, their prefrontal cortexes don't develop properly, and they become impulsive and restless, and then you can fix them with methylphenidate or riddle it. And those are the drugs that are used to fix hyperactive kids, most of whom are male.

And that's because, well, really, you're going to take your six-year-old, your five-year-old, you're going to put them in a desk, you're going to get them to sit there for six hours. That's your plan, right? That's a stupid plan. And they're denied the opportunity to engage in play. And that means that their ability to become social is being impaired. It may cause neurological impairment. That's what the rat evidence suggests.

And then you suppress that with infetimines. Because infetimines actually don't activate the play circuit. They activate a different circuit, which will suppress the play circuit. So it's very, very, it's not very wise. And I'm not going to go off on that tangent because I couldn't tell you why the school systems were set up that way, which I probably will at some point, because it's quite an interesting story in and of itself. And it's the reason all you guys are sitting in desks right now.

Somebody laughingly referred to this once as grade 15, which I thought was pretty funny given the look at the bloody place, you know, hideous. And okay, so now this is an interesting thing. So you got the emergence of morality and say, champ So you've got the emergence of morality and say chimps, you've got the emergence of morality and wolves, you've got the emergence of morality and rats, and the morality governs sequential interactions or group interactions, they have to repeat

because it's an emergent property of social or repetitive interactions. That's why you can't just localize it in one instance. It's repeated. And there's been computer simulations of this to help you figure out how you might attain victory across games, across time. Maybe you need a strategy.

And there's a very simple strategy, which I believe is called modified tit for tat. So if you're nice to me, I'm nice back. And if you do something bad to me, I do something bad back. But imagine you run that out in sequences of a behavior and see who who does best with what strategy across time or an alternative strategy. Here's the best strategy. I trust you. You trust me. We start interacting. You screw up. I whack you. And then I forgive you when we start again. That's modified tit for tat. And so, and there hasn't been in it.

It's a very simple algorithm. No one has come up with a better algorithm in computer game, in the computerized simulation of game space that not particular strategy. So it's like, trust, but don't be a pushover. If someone violates the rules, you've got to nail them. But then you don't hold a grudge. You open the door to further interactions.

So, pretty smart, pretty smart. And, okay, so anyways, so what this means, because rats can't talk and wolves can't talk and chimpanzees can't talk and what that means, Justice P.S.A. suggested was that the morality, the development of the morality precedes the development of the linguistic ability to describe the rules for the morality.

He said exactly the same thing about kids, right? Is they learn how to play games before they know what the rules are to the games. And so you see that with your playing peekaboo with a kid, they can pick that up like it really young. They get that right away. And you can play with kids almost immediately after they're born if you play simple enough games. And so they've got that deep and they're unbelievably playful. So they've got that circuitry ready to go right off the bat.

And it's one of the things that makes kids so much fun because they just like to play all the time. And so if you're, if the play circuit in you hasn't died, which is a bad thing, then you can use that a lot with your kids. And it's one of the things that helps you love them. So that's a good thing. So, okay, so the point is that the damn morality emerges before the representation of the morality. It's a big deal to know that and that it emerges as a consequence of repeated social interaction. So it's not a top-down thing. It's a bottom-up thing.

Now, Piaget says, well, it's not just bottom-up, because what happens with human beings is that they learn to play the games. His, one of his experiments was watch seven-year-olds. I think that's right, age. Play marbles. And then you notice that they can play with each other and that they can follow the rules.

But then if you take the individual seven-year-olds out of the game and you say, what are the rules? They give incoherent and incomplete explanations of the rules. So what that means is they don't really represent the rules, but they can act them out. And they have a partial representation of what they're acting out. Now when they get older, the rule representation starts to fall into alignment with the actual rules of the game. And you can imagine that's why, because when they're playing something the rule representation starts to fall into alignment with the actual rules of the game. And you can imagine that's why because when they're playing something like marbles, they're going to have discussions like you're cheating or you're not allowed to do that.

Because they're always going to be pushing the envelope a little bit. And then the group is going to render a judgment on whether or not that's appropriate. And out of that, the rules are going to emerge. But they're not rules to begin with. They're patterns of behavior. It's not the same thing as a rule. A rule describes a pattern of behavior. But a pattern of behavior is a pattern of behavior. It's something that's acted out.

So there's the individual within the group and then the interactions of the individuals within the groups produces a hierarchical arrangement or multiple hierarchical arrangements. Those are games, roughly speaking, or stories nested inside an overarching story, which is the fundamental culture. Right? And then that's nested in a whole bunch of competing cultures that have some commonalities

or they would just be at war all the time, which, you know, to some degree they are. So okay, now you see that back to the movie. You see that happening in this movie. I mean, it's very, very quick, but the blue fairy turns the bug into the conscience. And then the bug tries to explain to Pinocchio what the rules of morality are. But the thing is the bug doesn't know,

because he's just a bug, and he's just not omniscient. So the best he can do is to come up with like a propaganda semantic verbal representation that's internally contradictory. And when he tells Pinocchio, Pinocchio has no idea what he's talking about. And neither does the bug. That's the thing. And so, well, so what happens is this, the cricket says, well, Pinelope, maybe you and I had better have a little heart to heart talk. And the puppet says, why? And the cricket says, well, you want to be a real boy, don't you?

All right, sit down, son. Now you see the world is full of temptations. Temptations? Yes, temptations. They're the wrong things that seem right at the time. But even though the right things may seem wrong sometimes, sometimes the wrong things may be right at the wrong time or vice versa. Understand? No! No! And neither did the cricket. And that's actually very nicely done in that piece of the movie because as soon as you just want to slap him as soon as he starts talking like that

because while he gets up on his little matchbox and lectures and he's dull and tyrannical both at the same time. And so there's nothing genuine about what he's saying. He's sort of imitating, he's imitating something that isn't him. So he's really acting like a puppet at that point too. And it doesn't work at all. And so Pinocchio says, I'm going to try to be a good boy. And the cricket says, well, that's the spirit son. And then a way they go. So, all right. So then,

we're at the next day, because this all happens in one night. We're at the next day. And you know, it's a nice day. And there's these birds flying around. That's actually, that's a bit of foreshadowing there, you know. So, um, not, you have to remember when you watch something like this movie, not a single bit of it is random or accidental, none of it, because, you know, they had to draw, I don't remember how many frames per second these things are, 30 maybe, maybe it's a little less than that, but it's high quality animation. And so, someone had to paint 30 pictures to get a second of this. You're not doing that accidentally. It's really expensive, and everyone has to agree on exactly what's going to happen. And you might say, well, the people who are doing this consciously know what they're doing,

and the answer to that is, well, sort of, just like you do. Yes, they know, and no, they don't. And they know because they're really smart and gifted and all that, but they don't know because it's not all articulated plus they're working in a group. So they know and don't know just like you do when you're watching it and so and when you do anything else. they're also guided by what you might call, they're guided by their unconscious in the Freudian and in the cognitive way, partly because your unconscious value structures determine the direction and content of your perceptions. And so it's built right into the way you move your eyes because you tend to look at things you value, right?

Or at things you're afraid of, like you look at things with valence and part of the decision about what has value is dependent on the implicit structure of your moral system, because morality is about what's good and what isn't. And that's been partly a conscious construction of you, but it's partly something you've been, you've picked up by interacting with people like mad ever since you were born. You don't know all the rules any more than the damn cricket did. You just don't and you can't because you're too complicated. But you act them out. And then you also have representations of how people act in your imagination. Dreams are, that's what a dream is, that's what a fantasy is.

That's what that little movie that plays inside your head when you remember what you did is. And you only remember the gist, you know? So even the the imagistic representation of your behavior in your past, which is basically your episodic memory, it's already selecting and molding and turning it into a relatable story. It can't help but do that. It's the only way you can represent it. And so you don't know how you do that or why you do that, but part of it's governed by this implicit morality

that's part of your procedural memory system, part of the way you act and part of the way you move your eyes and listen to things and focus on them. And that's all being instantiated inside of you because of this immense social, your biology, but also this immense social project that you're continually engaged in. And so that informs what you remember.

It informs what you imagine. it informs what you imagine, it informs what we collectively imagine, it informs what we can collectively understand. And partly what you're doing, well you become conscious of yourself, is to map the implicit structures that already constitute you from society into explicit representation. That's what self understanding means. And you know, when you have that moment of insight about something you've done, it's like you're watching this repetitive behavior that you've manifested, probably that got you in trouble.

You know, it's your characteristic way of falling accidentally into chaos, and you talk about it, your problems, you talk about them with your friends, you talk about them, and maybe you have dreams about them, and you're trying to relate them, and you have memories about them that you can't get rid of because they're negatively toned so you talk about them and then someone comes up with a a little statement that links them together causally and you think, ah, that's what I'm doing and then maybe you can stop doing it or at least you or at least maybe then you can think up some strategies for not doing it anymore

but it's not like you know it's like you're acting it out you know it that way or at least maybe then you can think up some strategies for not doing it anymore. But it's not like you know. It's like you're acting it out. You know it that way. But until the representation matches that pattern, that click of insight doesn't occur. And that's like a revelation. It's a really good way of thinking about it.

Because the knowledge is there in its implicit form and all of a sudden bang, it's been made explicit as a fantasy, maybe, or also as a set of semantic statements. You know, maybe you have a crush on someone and you don't notice it, and maybe you find yourself having a fantasy about them, you think, oh, that means something, that indicates something, maybe you don't want to know that that's what you want, but the fantasy will tell you. And one of the things Jung suggested, and this is sort of out of the Freudian tradition of free associations, is watch yourself, watch your fantasies, because they're

always happening. And so, and they'll tell you something. And so one of the things I do when I'm interacting with my clients is we'll have a discussion and then their eyes will drift a little bit and I'll know that there's that something's flitted through their mind, you know you laugh, or you drifted at least. It's like, it's because some other thought has entered your field of consciousness. And then if you can get the person to grab those thoughts, to notice them, then you can often figure out the avenues along which that particular conversation might unfold. That's a complex. That's a union complex or a psychoanalytic complex. It's like, there's an emotional core that produces a whole range of associated ideas, and that thing's got a life. It's like there's an emotional core that produces a whole range of associated ideas and that thing's got a life. It's like a micro personality and it might have

resentment in it, might have anger. It's often negative emotion tinged because though negative emotion tinged episodes are still problems and they will emerge automatically because your threat detection systems force them onto your consciousness, essentially. So you watch and when you drift, you'll drift and the fantasy is partly a representation of the problem space, you know that happens when you wake up at three in the morning and you're worried about things, right? Because actually what happens is you wake up during threat processing. And if you're depressed, actually, that gets so intense, you can't sleep. So then you just lay there all night worrying, not fun. And those are fantasies about

the negative elements of your past, present, and future. And the fantasies can also breed solutions. And that's partly why Freud regarded dreams as wish for filaments. It's partly, and he wasn't, fulfillment. It's partly, and he wasn't, that was where he stopped. It's not correct. It's partially correct. It's like the fantasy will provide you with a problem and a potential solution, but there are more like problem identification mechanisms, the fantasies, with the possibility of a solution built in. And so a way of thinking about that is that you can generate potential futures. So they're like each segregated environments, according to the rules of your fantasy, then you can generate little avatars of yourself that inhabit each of those little universes

and you can run them as simulations. And then you can watch what happens in the simulation. And if it's a catastrophe, then you don't have to act it out. And that's exactly, not exactly. That's akin to what you're doing when you go watch a movie, except that is much more coherent and well thought through, you know, than just a dream, which is often quite fragmentary. And that's partly because the dream is willing to sacrifice coherence to play with category structures. And that's why in dreams, things can change

from one thing into another really weirdly, or scenes can change from one scene into another. Without a logic, the logic gets loosened so that the expanse of your thinking can widen. And it's dangerous to do that. And that's partly why you do it when you're asleep and paralyzed. You don't run around and act out your suit of poddle fantasies, you know, where

you're stretching yourself out into the world. There's no risk exactly. And so, although it can be bad enough, so you wake up in terror, you know, but that's better than being in a crocodile's mouth by a large margin. Anyways, back to these, these birds, these are used later in the movie as a manifestations of the Holy Spirit, roughly speaking. And of course, that's a standard Christian symbol, although as I mentioned, the dub often represents the Holy Spirit. And we'll talk about that later, but this movie has very strong pagan elements in it, as I mentioned before, as opposed to strictly

Christian symbolism. But that's a foreshadowing. And what it foreshadows is that, well, a new day has dawned. It's the emergence of new consciousness. And everything last night went well, really well. Everything in the, let's call it the unconscious, say, after time stops. That all went well. And so the new day is full of promise.

And so the birds are singing and the sun is shining and like hooray. And so that's exactly... So that sets... This is the next scene, right? So it sets the tenor for that scene just like the introductory song does. So... So anyways, then you see all these kids playing and enthusiastic. So they're off to school, which is presented in a positive light. and so that's how where you get socialized. So, his Pinocchio is ready to go beyond the boundaries of the familial home, and he's ready because his father prepared him and because his mother prepared him. And so he goes off, and he's not going off alone, he's going with his conscience, and which is sort of the

inter- you could think about it again as the internalized representation of nature and society. And so he's not going out there alone, even though he's not very good at it. And so he's pretty excited about this, and so is Jepetto. See, Jepetto is standing there paralyzed with terror, and the kid isn't phobic of the outside world. And so that's, he's treating it as an adventure.

I mean, even though, well, it's an adventure, but adventures can be dangerous. What if the other, you can imagine a kid, especially one who's like high in neuroticism, who hasn't been encouraged sufficiently to overcome that, let's say, their primary idea might be, well, what if the other kids don't like me? That's a big one.

What if the teachers don't like me? What if the other kids won't play with me? It's like, yeah, what if the other kids don't like me? That's a big one. What if the teachers don't like me? What if the other kids won't play with me? It's like, yeah, what if? That's rough, man. And if you're not a playful kid, it could easily be the case. So, but that's not Pinocchio. He's like spinning out ready to go.

And so, good, good. He's got naive, but enthusiastic. Okay, well, that at least gets the ball rolling. Now, you've got these two evil creatures here, the fox and the cat. I think this one's based on one of the marks brothers, actually, Harpo Marx, who I believe never said anything, but be that as it may, they're these near-do-well characters,

the fox in particular. Now, fox is a standard, trickster animal, right? It's a classic animal, maybe because it's good at hiding, and it's good at hunting. I don't know exactly why, but it's, and coyotes are like that too. They're classic trickster animals. He's kind of like Wily Coyote in fact,

the Warner Brothers character, who's genius at large, and of course whose arrogance continually gets him walloped. And this character has a lot of features like that, but he's, he fains being an English gentleman of like the 1890s and pretends to be educated and and it has a kind of high blown way of talking and he's a fraud through and through. He's got this sidekick who is barely there at all, and he doesn't treat him that well, but he's got someone to lord it over, so that keeps his dominance harky thing going well. And the fact that he's like a second rate companion, well, he never really notices that,

although he'll treat him contemptuously whenever he gives a chance. So anyways, they're walking down the street and the fox is bragging away about some crooked thing that he's done and how he pulled the wool over someone's eyes, and he confuses that with wisdom and intelligence. And one of the things that you see, this is worth knowing too, because if you're preyed upon by a psychopath, which you will be to some degree at some point in your life, the psychopath who will be narcissistic will presume that you're stupid and that you deserve to be taken advantage of because you're not even stupid.

So it's actually a good thing that he's doing it. And his proof for, and I'm saying he, because there are more male psychopaths, the proof that you're stupid naive is that he can take advantage of you. And so, like if you were a wiser, you'd know his tricks, and then it wouldn't be morally necessary for him to show you just exactly who knows what about what. And so the psychopath will use his ability to fool you as proof of his own grandiose omnipotence, omniscience, and narcissism. And the problem with that is that you can be fooled by a psychopath

and virtually anybody can so that Robert Hare, for example, who studied psychopaths for a long time and interviewed a lot of them, like hundreds of them, and videotaped many of the interviews. He said, when he was talking to the psychopath, he always believed what they were saying. And then he'd watch the video afterwards and see where the conversation went off the rails. But, you know, the proclivity to be polite

in a conversation is very strong. And if you're polite, you don't object to the way that the person unfolds their strategy. And psychopaths are pretty good at figuring out how to manipulate, obviously, how to manipulate people. And the probability that you will be immune to that is extraordinarily low. Go watch Paul Bernardo being interviewed

by policeman on the YouTube. That's bloody, that's enlightening, man. Paul Bernardo, he's like the CEO of a meeting in that video. He gives the cops hell, he gives the lawyers hell, he protests his innocence, he basically tells them that they're rude and untrustworthy because they don't trust him because he did a few little things 17 years ago. And he gets away with a few little things, right? I mean, he killed a bunch of people, including the sister of his girlfriend at the time.

And, you know, he was a repeat sexual offender and murderer. It's like, but he basically goes, well, you know, that's a long time ago. It's like, we're past that, aren't we? I mean, I'm having a discussion with you. I'm trying to solve, help you solve some crimes, which by the way, I committed, but we won't bring that up. You know, and you're accusing me of being a liar. Like, you're not playing fair. What's up with you?

And then when they answer, he looks at his fingernails, which is like, that's a lovely little manipulative thing because it basically means whatever happens to be under my fingernail at the moment is much higher priority than listening to your foolish story. And you watch, you'll see people do that to you. And then you get a little insight into what they're up to. He's very good at that.

And so, or he looks outside, or he just looks at his hands, or he looks out the window, immediately dismissive in his nonverbal behavior. It's brilliant. The courts were forced to release that, by the way. But look it up, Paul Bernardo on YouTube. Wow, it's just mind-boggling. He's so good at what he does. And he's good looking and he's charismatic, and you know, he can really pull it off.

And you can't tell what's happening with the cops and the lawyers, whether they're just letting them play as a routine to get some information from them or whether he's actually setting them back on his heels. And I suspect it's a bit of boat, but it's masterful performance. If you didn't know who he was, and you were watching it without the audio, you'd think he's the CEO of some company given his employees' hell for not being up to scratch. That's all his body language. His eye contact, everything just speaks that.

It's amazing. So anyways, you got these two bit hoods here who think they're really something. They also think they're tough and dangerous and they're not. They're just cowardly and cornered dwellers and they confuse their unwillingness to abide by reasonable rules as indication of their heroic courage, which is something else that low-rent hoods like to do. as indication of their heroic courage, which is something else that low-rent hoods like to do, you know? And it's partly because lots of people who just attend to the law do do that because they're cowardly, which is a niche in observation. Are you good? Are you just afraid? Let's start with afraid first before we proceed to good. And that the reason that you follow the rules is because you're

afraid of getting caught. Yeah, well, you know those kids who, often university kids who are in like a hockey riot and they end up breaking windows and stealing things and, you know, they get nailed for it and afterwards they're really blown away by their own behavior. It's like, well, they're in that camp. It's like they think they're good people, but they're not. They're just never anywhere where you could be bad. And as soon as you put them somewhere where they could be bad, it's like, oh, it comes just like that. And that's really worth thinking about because most of you, many of you, but not all of you, I suspect, have never really been somewhere that you could be really bad

and get away with it. And so you might think, well, you wouldn't do it, but, you could be really bad and get away with it. And so you might think, well, you wouldn't do it, but people do it all the time. So anyways, they're talking about some exploits, and then they see that this character named Stromboli, who's a millionaire, he has a puppet show, right? And he's kind of a wheeler dealer too. And remember, I showed you that mask

that was glaring at Pinocchio when he got his voice. It's like Stromboli is one of his manifestations. These, the Fox here is another one of his manifestations. All the negative characters throughout the movie are manifestations of the same thing. It's partly the adversarial individual, and it's partly the tyrannical aspect of society. It's the negative masculine. That's one way of thinking about it. So, and you know, when men go bad,

they often go bad by being anti-social and tyrannical. So, you know, whether it's way more anti-social men than there are anti-social women, which is why there's 20 times as many men in jail as there are women, you know. So each gender, let's say each sex, has its own path, characteristic pathologies. And there are some anti-social women, you know, and there are some high neuroticism guys who are,

who are, or some guys who are really agreeable as well. So, but they're rare. So anyways, he sees this, this poster advertising, Strong Bowley's puppet show. So, Strong Bowley'sies puppet show. So strong bowlies are puppet master. Now that's really worth thinking about because that's an archetypal theme or at least attached to an archetypal theme. Some things behind the scenes pulling the strings and everybody always wonders what that is, right? What's actually going on? What's actually going on with Trump? Who's actually in control? Is it Putin? I mean, that's the fantasies of the left. It's Putin. It's like, well, the question always is what's going on behind the scene, right? And the question is, that's the case, certainly, on the political landscape, business landscape,

interpersonal relation. What are you really up to? Everyone's always wondering that, right? That's why they're watching your eyes because your eyes point at things and they can infer what you're interested in and then what you're up to by looking at what you look at. And that's why your eyes have whites is so that we can see where you're pointing. Because gorillas don't.

And so what that means, roughly speaking, is that all of your ancestors, whose eyes couldn't be reliably tracked, were either killed or didn't mate, it's a big deal for us to see where people's eyes are pointed. And so we're always watching each other's eyes constantly. What are you up to? What are you up to? What are you looking at? What do you want? And I want to know because if I know what you want, I can predict how you're going to behave.

And that also means I can cooperate with you or I can compete with you or I can lie to you. But all the information is in the eyes that's surrounded by the facial display, right? Because that's also an indication of motivation and emotion. And so we're like, our eyes are so good at that that for you guys sitting there in the back,

I can tell if you're looking at my eyes or at my chin and the deviation in your eyes is so tiny that it's a kind of miracle that we're capable of making that perceptual observation. It's really important to us. So, and we have really good eyes. So, that's another thing about us. So anyways, what's going on behind the scenes? Well, if you look at Stromboli, you might be thinking it's not clear he's someone you'd want to have pulling your strings. Like there's a little bit of forced enthusiasm, let's say, there, and he's just not a very savory-looking character. So anyways, the Fox knows him, and they start talking about strong bully, that old joker, and then what they could, how they could possibly involve him and him in some sort of scam because he's back in town. And then they see the puppet.

And the Fox does his equivalent of thinking, which is, you know, pretty sad, but, and nasty, but that's what he does. And then they see this puppet with no strings, and they think, hey, man, a puppet master would pay a lot for something that is capable of semi-autonomous movement like that. It would be kind of a miracle. And so they decided that they're going to take him to Stromboli. And so they grab him. And he's got an apple to take to the teacher, which I think it's the cat promptly eats. And the fox acts out this sort of false enthusiasm about what Pinocchio is up to and pretends that he's his friend, which is, of course, what your typical pedophile will do. And so this is in the same kind of category, and it truly is.

So one of the things that's interesting to know about pedophiles is that they're predatory, right? And so, they don't go after kids that are assertive and likely to be noisy. They watch, and they watch to see if they can find a kid who's defeated, and that's good enough, who's defeated, and who's going to to need a friend and who's not going to object. And so when they check out, these are the ones who do the stranger abductions, which are by the way extraordinarily rare, they look for a victim type, they look for a kid who's going to be easy to take down. And so, you know, that's one thing you don't want. So you might think, well,

one of the things that was really big and it's probably even worse now when I was a parent of young children was to teach your kids how to be afraid of strangers. It's like, no, wrong. That is not what you teach them. Because all you do is teach them then to be timid and fearful and the real predatory types. They're pretty much thrilled about that.

Because you'll also make them sheltered in naive. So that isn't, you make your kids courageous and you get their day on my's open and that's the best thing you can do to protect them against people who are truly dangerous. So none of that terrifying. That is not good idea. Anyways, the fox befriends the puppet and then they come up with this evil scheme to get them off to strong bully, the puppet master, and the way they go. And they sing a little song about being an actor, an actor's life for me. And this took me a long time to figure out, I thought it. They're taking Pinocchio a way to be an actor.

Now, why in the world are actors getting such a rough time in this movie? It's like it's a Hollywood movie. It's acting, obviously, the voiceovers and all that are acting. Why is this thing about being an actor? And then I thought, oh, I get it. I see what's going on. They seem to Pinocio about the delights of unearned celebrity.

So he doesn't have to go and get an education. He doesn't have to take the difficult route. He can take the easy way to dominance, to success, to dominance success. He can circumvent all the hard work and go right to the top. And when you think about phenomena like the Kardashian family and how popular they are,

part of that is this desire that people have for unerun celebrity because you can get to the top without any sacrifices and without any work. And if you're really cynical, you think that the people at the top are just there by accident anyways and it might as well be you. And of course, there's a lot of naivety in that as well. And a fair bit of, you know, not a fair lack of wisdom and all of that. But the actor idea here is that you can pretend to be something you're not, and that that's the proper root of anyone wise to success. It's the ultimate incinusism, and it's a nihilistic perspective as well.

And that's how they entrap him. They say, look, where are you going, where are you bartering to go to school? That's going to take 18 years. With all of your talents, you can just go on the stage, your name will be up in lights, you'll be at the top in no time. And what is the puppet? No. And plus he does have some talents. He is after all a semi-autonomous puppet. Now, he doesn't exactly know how special that makes him But the Fox can obviously see something in him and he's good at playing that naivety often and offering these false promises but see the thing is One of the things that Carl Jung said that I thought was really interesting when he was talking about the Edible situation in families

I never forgot this so the Edible situation in families. I never forgot this. So the Edible situation, roughly speaking, is when, layout, the classic story is when a child is seriously overprotected, usually a male child by his mother. Now the reverse can be the case and it can be a female child by the mother and all of that. But I'll just talk about the classic case to begin with. Now what Freud observed was that there were usually not very good boundaries in families like that. And so the relationship between the husband and the wife was either strained or non-existent.

And the wife would often turn to the child to be what she isn't getting from the husband. And so there's a great South Park episode about this. A wonderful South Park episode where they were. I don't remember that horrible little guy is the that's him. Yeah. Yeah. And his mother brings in the dog whisperer to train him. And it's a brilliant, it's brilliant episode. If you want to learn about Freudian, the Freudian Edible situation, you watch that. You've got it down cold because she brings in this expert who then she wants to have an affair with, so that's a boundary issue.

He basically separates her son from him and imposes the same discipline on him that he would impose on a bad dog, although he also trains the dog's owners all the time because maybe it's not the dog, maybe it's the owner. There's a horse whisperer movie too about the original horse whisperer that does a beautiful job of laying that out too, because he's very good at fixing problem horses and unbelievably good at diagnosing psychopathology on the part of the owner.

It's, he's got a gift for it. But anyways, what happens in the South Park episode is that the dog whisper gets cardin' yeah, straightened out. And he starts like dressing properly and doing his homework and the mother is pursuing an affair with the dog whisper, but he's professionally, he keeps his distance, like he keeps boundaries around him. And then he leaves, and then the first thing that she does when he leaves is bribe Cartman basically out of doing his homework so that he can accompany

her to, I don't know, fast food restaurant or something like that. And so the reason she does that is because she's lo and some and doesn't have anybody else around. And, you know, maybe she's also deeply, deeply, deeply terrified that if she helps that boy grow up, he will leave and she'll have nothing. You know, and so mothers who don't have something say outside their infants, not merely their children, are more likely to fall into that. And it's no wonder. You've got to think that through. And lots of women, really most women, really fall in love with their babies.

So even if they start growing into larger children, that can be threatening because If they start growing into larger children, that can be threatening. Because when the child turns into a toddler, the infant is dead, the toddler is there now. And you can radically interfere with that process. That happens all the time, all the time. That's the classic Freudian eatable nightmare. And that episode is bloody brilliant. It just nails it. And some of you have been in my personality class

and watched Crum, the documentary Crum. And that's another staggering exposition of exactly that kind of pathology. Anyways, one of the things Jung pointed out, so I knew this guy once who had a mother who basically was trying that trick. And she had lots of, she was very smart and had lots of tricks up her sleeves. And there's just no way he was going to go for it. He would rebel at every possible moment, and he basically became, I would say, somewhat hyper-masculine in response, which is an interesting lesson with regards to the hyper-masculinity that boys often develop if they're raised by single mothers, because they tend to go one of two ways. And he just fought her at every step of the way and it didn't happen.

But one of the things Jung said, which I loved and you can really see this in the crumb documentary, is that the Edelple mother basically entices the child, says, look, here's the deal. You don't have to do anything, but you don't get to leave. But if you don't leave and you don't do these difficult things, then I'll take care of you. And the child has a choice all the way along there. I mean, obviously, he's outclassed in some sense, but it's not as obvious as you'd think. Little kids are tough, and they make decisions all the time. And so Jung thought about it more as a conspiracy than as something imposed on the child by the mother.

And I really like it's actually a conspiracy between mother, father and child actually. And I think that's a good way of looking at it, even though it's really rough, because it's, well, should you hold the child responsible? Well, yes, but judiciously and not completely, because then if you deal with someone like that as an adult and they're trying to escape from it, you have to go all the way back and figure out how the hell it happened and then they have to adjust, they have to figure out where they opened the door like inviting a vampire in because they can't come in unless you invite them in.

So don't invite them in because once they're in they're really hard to get rid of and they'll take all your blood. So that's a cautionary tale. So anyways, Pinocchioope does know any better. And he's got the egotism of youth and he's offered the easy way to success, which is exactly what the fox tells him, and off they go to see Stromboli.

So this is the song, I'm not gonna read it all. It's great to be a celebrity in actor's life for me. It's great to be a celebrity in actor's life for me. You sleep till after two, you promenade a big cigar, you two are the world in a private car, you dine on chicken and caviar in actor's life for me. So it's all this idea of wealth and public exposure and zero attention whatsoever to anything regarding responsibility or discipline or learning. And so it's a dual attraction, right? You get everything you want and you don't have to do anything.

Jays, what a deal. And so that's what the actor represents. It's a liar, fundamentally. It's someone who's acting out a deception. They're a persona in the union sense. So the persona is the mask you wear in public that you might even think you are, but you're not. It's this mask and that's the actor, that's the persona. So the fox and the cat are inviting the puppet to only become a persona. And that's, see, for a young, you start as a persona.

And then when you start to investigate the parts of you that don't really fit in that persona, that would be the shadow, then you start understanding who you really are. And that's shocking. Because the persona contains everything roughly speaking, that you think is good. It may be even that your immediate culture thinks is good. And then the shadow contains everything that's not part of that. And some of that's really bad. But some of it is good disguised as bad. And you can't break out of the persona and transcend it until you incorporate a lot of what's in the shadow. And so, for example,

if you're an extraordinarily compassionate person, let's say, 98 percentile will say, you're going to be sacrificing yourself to other people all the time. And there are people who will find that extraordinarily endearing, and it will be under some circumstances. But the problem is, is that you will sacrifice yourself, and that's a really bad attitude to have, for example, towards adult males. It's a great thing for infants, but for adult males, it is the wrong approach. And so you will get taken advantage of continually by people who are looking for someone like you until you grow some teeth.

And you'll think, no, no, that's the opposite of compassion. Being able to bite hard is the opposite of compassion, which it is. And so you'll have that pushed into the predatory category. I'm not doing that. I'm not getting angry. I don't like conflict. It's like until you bring that pushed into the predatory category. I'm not doing that. I'm not getting angry. I don't like conflict. It's like until you bring that out of the depths and put it on so you can use it, you're going to be in trouble.

And that's kind of Nietzsche's idea of the revaluation of good and evil. You have a sense of what's good and a sense of what isn't with your conscience, but it's not very smart. It's got things in the wrong boxes. And a lot of the things that even nature itself, a lot of the things that you accept as untrammeled goods like compassion, let's say, have a very dark side, first of all,

and second are not enough to get you through life. You need the opposite virtues too, and so you have to develop them. And so you get outside the persona to do that. But anyways, Pinocchio is invited to be a false persona to take the gains of celebrity without having to do anything to be educated. He's just going to go right to the top from right where he is.

And people are kind of fascinated by that idea. That's why you watch America's Got Talent or the X-Factor, which are shows I actually love, by the idea. That's why you watch America's Got Talent or the X Factor, which are shows I actually love, by the way. You never see narcissism in its pure forms, then you see it when you watch people who display an absolute lack of talent and become homicidal when someone dares pointed out, right? Accusatory and homicidal instantly. It's really something. And then now in the NUDs, do you see one of these people who's so introverted and so out of society and have this unbelievable gift, which is also something really remarkable to see?

And it's no wonder those things are so popular. They're psychologically extraordinarily interesting. So, okay, so that's the actor, first of the NELCIO's temptations. And of course, it's the first one because he's entering the social world and the temptation in the social world is to be exactly what other people want you to be. And the thing that's cool about that is that is what you should be doing, right? When you go out in your peers, you should be not subjugating your individuality to your peers because that's not exactly right.

That's kind of based on an inhibition model. You know, you've got aggression, you've got bad habits, they have to be inhibited. You learn that by interacting with your peers. It's not the right model. P-A-J, that's a Freudian model. P-A-J was correct about that. He basically pointed out that what should happen is,

let's say, with your aggression, and hopefully you have some, is that it gets socialized. And so you learn how to play games, but you don't drop your drive to win. You integrate that in the games. And so you try to win. You try to play hard, but if you're defeated or you hit something negative, you don't respond negatively.

And you can keep that all bounded within being a fair, a good player, a fair player. And that means what's happened is you just learned how to play a game or a set of games that also includes the darker parts of you and they actually become part of your force of character. It's way better if you can pull that off. And that's what you definitely want to do as an adult. All you people are going to have to learn to negotiate on your own behalf.

And that, that's really hard. It means that you have to learn to negotiate on your own behalf and that that's really hard It means that you have to know what you want You have to be able to communicate it and you have to be able to say no and to say no You have to be built on a solid foundation. You have to have options So you got to remember that as you go through your life is like if you don't have options You can't negotiate with someone and if you're not willing to use them, they win. Period. Because if you're asking your boss for more money, say, the answer is no, because he doesn't have any spare money lying around that he can just give to you and lots of other people are asking. So some of that zero sum stuff, you know, not all of it,

because often you cooperate with people and the whole pot can grow, but some of it's zero sum. And so you better have a case made. It's like, here's why I should, here's how much money I should have, here's why, here's the benefit to you that will accrue if you don't, if you do it. Here's the consequences that you don't, they're actually real, they will cost you and I will do them. It's like, then you can negotiate and you don't do that rudely, but those arguments, you better have them

in order. Like so, for example, if you're going to negotiate for a raise or a status shift, you better have your resume at hand, all polished up and nowhere else you're going to look for a job and you better be able to get one. Because otherwise you're just, you're weak and you will not win the negotiation. And if you're too agreeable, so your conflict avoidant, you will make less money across time. That's already been well established.

And that's because you don't have teeth, not enough. And so in the little microcontests that you're going to have every day, you're going to incrementally lose to people who are more aggressive, who have bigger teeth, and that's what happens. So so Don't let that happen. You want to you place yourself so you can negotiate because otherwise You're just a facade and in a real battle a facade is just torn down right away. So

Yes, well Say no more, right? Well the cricket he's supposed to be helping to pop it out, but he overslapped. It's like That's just another indication that he's not everything he could be yet and that's really ah That took me a long time to puzzle out with regards to interpreting this movie. I could not figure out. All right, I told you this.

If the bug is the person who opens the hero narrative and who can guide the transformations of time and who has the same initials as Jesus Christ, it's like, and is like knighted by nature herself. Why is he such an idiot? It's a very difficult thing to figure out. But the idea that the conscience isn't omniscient, even though it has that sort of voice of, let's say, common sense. And that fits very nicely, and with the Freudian idea of the super ego, again, because the

super ego can be flawed, can be too harsh, it cannot be properly developed. You see that often with people who are orderly, so they're high in conscientiousness, conscientiousness, fragments into industriousness and orderliness. Orderly people like willpower, they're very judgmental, and they like things to be exactly where they're supposed to be, but they're also very self punitive. So conservatives are much more likely to be orderly, by the way. It's one of the best predictors of conservative low openness is the best predictor. But right after that is high, high orderliness.

So, and it's associated with disgust sensitivity, which is really an amazing thing. We'll talk about that later. Anyways, this cricket, well, he falls down his first day on the job. He's not as conscientious, a job. He's not as conscientious, he's not as conscientious, a conscience as he should be. So he's feeling pretty stupid, he's got his little millionaire clothes on there, but he's really not living up to them.

So he does catch up to the fox in the puppet, however, and tries to dissuade Pinocchio from going down this road. And of course, the cat, well, you can see what the cat's doing there. He's got a big hammer, big mallet, and he also shows you just exactly how much of a clue he has. He's going to wall up the bug, I'm sitting on the fox's hat, which I think he actually does. And then the fox can't get out of his hat and has to talk through his hat, which I think he actually does. And then the fox can't get out of his hat and has to talk through his hat, which basically is what he's doing the whole time anyways.

So this I really like. So you see on the left here, the cricket is speaking inside this flower. And like I said, there's nothing accidental in these representations. So these are artists who are coming up with these compositions, and their fantasy has a structure. And so the cricket is speaking out of this flower

that has, well, you could think about it as, it has a sexualized element, so you could think about that as a phallic part of it, and that part of the feminine part of it, well, they are flowers after all. They are the sex organs of plants. And so, and that's very much the same over here as this is the Yolian lingam. This is from from from Hindu cultures and so, and you see there's a snake

wrapped around that. And so that's masculine and feminine with the snake wrapped around it. And that's that's a holy representation, you know, sacred representation. And it represents, it represents the deepest reality. That's one way of thinking about it, like chaos in and it represents the deepest reality. That's one way of thinking about it, like chaos in order surrounded by the snake. It's the same, exactly the same idea. And so the cricket speaks out of that. Well, we already know that because the cricket is the conscience, and he's been awakened in part by, by Jepetto and the good father and awakened in part by the good, very,

a nature. And so he speaks with those voices and he's also a manifestation of the underlying chaos itself because nature and culture spring out of chaos. We know, I already showed you that schematic representation. Okay, so I'll just end this scene and then we'll have like a 15 minute break, okay? So, anyways, the cricket tries to make a case for why Pinocchio shouldn't go off to be a celebrity, but you know, it's a hard case to make because the fox is very manipulative and Pinocchio is naive and it sounds like a good offer. And also the fox is actually quite forceful, You know, he basically takes him by the hand. So the temptation is, and this is something else

I like about the movie, you can't just say, well, the puppet gets what he deserves because he's little naive. And what he's facing is really malevolent, truly malevolent, and physically overpowering. And so the movie does a nice job of not minimizing the threat that's posed by this particular temptation,

and that's part of what makes it art. OK, good. So we'll stop there. We'll have a break for 50 minutes, and then we'll start with the stage. So all right. So here we are at the big event, and Pinocchio's off to be a celebrity.

at the big event and Pinocchio is off to be a celebrity. And the cricket is watching. And Pinocchio basically, well, he's got some natural talent because he's a puppet, he doesn't have strings and he goes on stage and with strings and then he drops his strings and the whole crowd is amazed. And the crowd should be amazed when that happens, right? You can imagine when a kid goes to school and shows some independence that that's actually gonna, people are gonna notice that.

His peers are gonna notice that, the teachers are gonna notice that. Maybe it's too much independence even, right? But it's still a, it is a remarkable thing too. Like, it's so interesting. You can see mark signs of independence and children, well, right from the time they're born basically. Because what's one of the things that's really funny about infants is that, you know, when

they're crying, you always think, oh, the baby's, well, you're crying. It's baby sad. It's like, no. A lot of the time that baby is angry. And the way that we know that is because you could do facial expression coding on infants, just like on adults, and you can tell what emotion they're expressing, and very frequently,

like when the kid starts to recognize his mom explicitly, because he or she knows the smell right away, pretty much in the sound of the voice. But visually, if someone comes in and it isn't who the baby wants, so generally it isn't mom, the baby will start to cry. But it's not because the baby's sad generally, it's because it's angry that mom didn't show up. And that's an early sign of will.

It's like this kid wants things. Like, and it's perfectly willing to tell you about that. And of course, a two-year-old who's having a temper tantrum is, in some sense, doing the same thing. It's poorly integrated will and independence, obviously. But it certainly runs contrary to what you want. You don't want your two-year-old having a temper tantrum in the middle of the toy store. It's extraordinarily embarrassing for you and, well, for you.

But it's also embarrassing for the two-year-old. This is one of the reasons I think that that sort of thing should be carefully socialized rapidly because it's actually humiliating for the kid because other people don't like that. And they're very judgmental about, like they won't say anything usually, but sometimes they will. But they're not happy about the fact that that's happening, and they will judge the child negatively. And so you don't want your child to be behaving in a way in public that makes other people

think badly of them. It's really not good. And so your part of your job as a parent is to not expose your child to that sort of experience, especially not repeatedly. It's really hard on them. Are they getting narcissistic, which is also really hard on them. It's just it takes a lot longer to manifest itself. So anyways, he's off on stage and Stromboli introduces him and talks about how wonderful this is going to be. And Pinocchio comes out on stage with the strings on and drops him and

then he falls down the steps and put his nose in the hole It makes a fool out of himself and that's when Stromboli first time Stromboli shows this true character because he just really Yells and screams at him and he has his back to the audience Stromboli while he's doing this so he's not noticing how the audience is reacting typical tyrannical parent, right? He's not noticing that society is reacting a different way than him. And he's not happy about it. And Pinocchio, of course, is dazed and feels like a fool.

And he is a fool. So that's appropriate. But then Stromboli hears the crowd laughing. And as soon as he turns around, he's like all smiles again. And so that's the first time you get insight into what sort of puppet master He is. He's there to please the crowd and that's all and he's there to look good in public But fundamentally he's a tyrant and so and I guess that's the problem a bit the problem with false celebrity is that The negative spirit of the crowd becomes your master, right? Because to be a celebrity you have to be a crowd

pleaser and if you're pleasing the kind of crowd who likes a celebrity like you, which is, and there's not much reason for that, then it's not exactly like you're appealing to the proper side of the crowd, and you've become its puppet one way or another, and maybe it's rewarding you with wealth, perhaps, and with attention, but fundamentally,

it's not something I would recommend if you want to stay reasonably psychologically healthy for any reasonable amount of time. You're gonna sell yourself out, and I don't mean that in any casual way, you know. All right, so anyways, Stromboli changes from the tyrant to the good father and half a second he gives Pinocchio pat on the head

despite the fact that he's made a mistake, looks all kind and the show continues. Now, the cricket is not very happy about this. He's sitting in the stage watching. He's very angry and let's say disgusted by what's happening partly because Pinocchio is making a fool of himself. Now that's an interesting thing, you know,

a human being's blush. In fact, if I remember correctly, the name Adam, you know, like Adam and Eve, is related to the capacity to blush. Now that comes from something I read a long time ago, and that might be wrong, but Adam does manifest shame in the sight of God. So there is a relationship there. But anyways, a shame in the sight of God. So there is a relationship there. But anyways, people do make fools of themselves for public display. And you can tell you've done that in some sense,

not always, if you blush. Because you've either said something you shouldn't have and you realize that, which is more like you've tried to be funny and gone a little bit too far. And sometimes that can be really funny. Or you've said something that you know to be false, manipulative, deceitful, beneath you, any of those things, and you'll have an automatic response to it. Be ashamed and blush.

One theory about that is that you can trust people who blush. And so because you know that their conscience will betray them. And so that even if they are lying, they tell you. And so it's an interesting theory, you know, because blush is definitely, like it's a facial display, you know, it's right out there where people can see it. So, you know, maybe that's true, maybe it isn't, but it's kind of an interesting idea. Anyways, the cricket is not happy with what's going on. He's not happy about Stromboli. And he's not happy about the willingness of Pinocchio to make a fool of himself to support this false celebrity. And so I actually think that's why the celebrity types

like that often get narcissistic and arrogant. It's because they aren't paying attention. They're not paying attention really to what's happening inside of them. They drown it out because the glory and the money and all that is so attractive and enticing. They refuse to notice what price they're paying for it and they magnify up their grand deocity and their arrogance to keep that stuff all under control. And then, of course, they get surrounded by sick offense, which is a really bad thing, right?

They get surrounded by people who will tell them exactly what they want to hear. And that's really bad if what you want to hear from other people is not good for you. Just surround yourself with people who won't offer you genuine criticism or even genuine reward. It's the same thing.

Like you want for me that I differentiately reward and punish you in approximately the way that the good part of the crowd will. That's what you want from all your friends, because then your interactions with them can generalize out to the broader community in a productive way. And so a good friend, you know, your friends tend to be on the supportive side, and perhaps that's appropriate, assuming there's reciprocity, but a good friend will also tell you

when one way or another, when your behavior is starting to tilt in a direction that's going to make you unpopular with them and likely unpopular with other people. And of course, that's what a parent is supposed. That's the prime job of a parent in my estimation. It's like, don't do that. Other people will hurt you if you do that. By exclusion, by threat, by failure to offer you an opportunity, bad things will happen

to you. So you can't do that. And then you're a representative of the social situation, which is exactly what you should be, not a friend. So... Or at least not precisely a friend. So, or at least not precisely a friend. That doesn't make you an enemy, it makes you better than a friend. Well, so Pinocchio's on stage making a fool of himself, and then he gets all tangled up in other puppet strings. That's what happens to him, and

then it all ends rather badly with everything being a tangled mess on stage, but it also turns out to be rather funny. It's funny because he's surrounded by angry Russians. You know, which, you know, you could kind of view that as a potential lesson, is that if you're a puppet on a stage and you mess around too much, you just might get tangled up with a bunch of angry Russians. That's like, these are caustacks. That's exactly what happens. So anyways, of course, no, that's not what's happeningics. That's exactly what happens. So anyways, of course, no, that's not what's happening here, but it's still funny. So,

Stromboli is not happy with the tangled mess, but then the crowd reacts very positively and then that confuses the conscience because he thinks, well, look, this is horrible. This guy is a tyrant, like Pinocchio is making a full of himself. Everything turns into a tangled mess, but the crowd goes crazy. And, well, being a fool, that can be entertaining, right? So it's hard to tell when a crowd especially out is spectacle, because this crowd is out of spectacle. You just don't know exactly why it is that they're responding positively, but you've definitely given them what you want. And you can see this look on Stromboli's face. It's like this false, again, this false kindness and generosity, public facing. And, oh well, anyways, the conscience is very confused. And I really think

this is an important thing, because I've often thought, I spent a lot of time thinking about Hitler, and I was thinking, well, how do you get into a state like that, you know? And you think, well, he's a dictator and he led his people down a bad path. It's like, that's not right. That is not what happened. They had a conspiracy together and went down a bad path. Now, think about it this way. If one person thinks something about you, it's like whatever, right? But if five people tell you that, well, what? Then to start not taking that seriously, it's kind of narcissistic, right? And if it isn't five, let's say it's 15 people, tell you the same thing or act the same way towards you.

It's like, probably you should clue in. Well, what if you're a politician, and you're trying out a bunch of different ideas, and you're good at interacting with the crowd, you're charismatic, you watch the crowd, but you're not necessarily all that articulate. You don't have your values all straight now, but you're kind of angry too.

And maybe that's because you spent a bunch of time in World War One in the trenches, which was like no joke, and all your friends got blown up. And then you were unemployed, and then you tried to be an artist, and that didn't work out, even though you were moderately talented. And then maybe the economy fell apart completely on you, hyperinflation. And then maybe there was a communist menace coming in from the east, and there genuinely

was. And so you're not the world's happiest clam at that point. And you're talking to people who aren't that happy either because they were also badly defeated in World War I. And then they had a terrible treaty they had decided. They lost part of their territory. And so the crowd's not happy and neither are you. And there's reason for it.

And so you start talking to them. You don't know what you're upset about. And neither does the crowd. So you start to articulate some things about why you might be upset. And some of them fall flat, but you're paying attention to the crowd. So you stop saying those things, and some of the things make the crowd really wake up and listen. And so you start saying more of those things, right? It's an unconscious dialectic between you and the crowd.

It's mediated by consciousness, but it's not like you're sitting there saying, although you might be, I'm going to tell this crowd more what it wants to hear. It's more sophisticated than that. And so you do that thousand times and you do that to ever increasing crowds. And the crowd really starts to go mad. And they basically tell you that you're the savior of the nation. It's like at what how many bloody people have to tell you that before you start to believe it? You know, I would say with a typical person, a hundred will do it. Now that'll get you going, man. A hundred people tell you specifically why you're special. You're going to be thinking,

even if you're kind of humble to begin with, you're going to be thinking, even if you're kind of humble to begin with, you're going to be thinking, geez, there's got to be something to this, man. But if it's a million people and they're roaring their approval, well, and then when it's a whole nation, it's like good luck with standing that. There's just not a chance. How are you going to withstand that? Now you could be like Gandhi and you could have taken that into account beforehand, because he did.

He read Tolstoy, by the way. He was a student of Tolstoy, and that's very interesting, because Tolstoy was the person who developed the techniques of nonviolence that Gandhi used. And Tolstoy was also a deeply religious writer, apart from his novels, which are not, I wouldn't say, really in the religious category, although they're profound. Tolstoy stressed humility with nonviolence. He really stressed it, and that's what Gandhi took to heart.

So he lived a very, very, very, very simple bare bones ascetic life. And that was to kind of see if he could keep his damn ego tamped down. Well, the groundswell was building behind him, you know, and he dressed really simply and he didn't own much and he ate very simply and he just tried to stay away from the whole materialistic success element that would be an element of what would turn him into an actor and also inflate his ego. And, you know, he seemed to do that pretty well. He certainly, well, he led a nonviolent revolution that resulted in the independence of India. It also produced a terrible civil war in the

separate, separation of the Muslim Indians from the Hindu Indians. But I don't think you can precisely lay that at the feet of Gandhi, right? But what I'm saying is that you have to be an extraordinary person. You have to be extraordinarily wise, and you have to take ridiculous precautions if you're going to put yourself in the public sphere like that and expose yourself to that kind of adulation without becoming a puppet of the crowd. And that's what happened to Hitler. I mean, it's not like he wasn't also a conscious manipulator and surrounded himself by people who were propagandists and all of that. So there was a conscious element, but you've got to think these things through and see how

that dialectic develops. He learned how to appeal to the darkest fantasies of the crowd. He was really, really good at it. And that was a dialectic process, right? The crowd told him what they wanted to hear, and it's the crowds amaw at that point. So I don't have to take responsibility for the fact that I'm screaming my approval when I'm surrounded by a million people. So I can scream my approval for whatever I want, for whatever whatever dark, revengeful fantasy might be playing out in my imagination, because I'm not going to be held accountable for it.

Anyways, the crickets confused, and it's no wonder it's like the public has rendered because I'm not going to be held accountable for it. Anyways, the crickets confused and it's no wonder it's like the public has rendered its judgment and the judgment is positive. So, when I wrote the book on which this course is based, I was thinking, how am I going to judge its success? And then I thought, well, there's sort of four, there's a two by two matrix of success. You could say, it's a great book, no one reads it. That happens. So what do you do about that? It's like Nietzsche sold virtually nothing in his lifetime, right? And you know, that's happened to lots of artists.

So then it's a terrible book, and everyone loves it. That happens, too. And then it's a great book, and everyone loves it. And then it's a terrible book, and everyone hates it. That's probably a better category, actually, that like, it's a great book and everyone loves it. And then it's a terrible book and everyone hates it. That's probably a better category actually that like it's a terrible book that and everyone loves it. I mean, you wouldn't pick a terrible book that everyone hates if you had a choice. But at least the quality and the response match, at least it's truthful, like great book, good response. But the problem with those four categories

is you can't really tell which category your production falls into, right? Because how do you know? And I think you should assume horrible book, bad response because that's the most likely, of all four of those categories, that's the one that's most likely to be true. But just purely on actuarial grounds, let's say.

So, all right, so anyways, the cricket wanders away because he obviously not only was he late for work that day, but he turned out to be wrong about everything. So he lets Pinocchio go off on his adventure and Stromboli puts him in this little kind of like a traveling, a touring wagon, you know, and away they go. And the cricket thinks, well, he isn't in the conscience, he's needed anymore on this journey towards unearned celebrity. Well, meanwhile, back at the ranch, as they say, the puppet is supposed to come home after school.

The puppet is supposed to come home after school. But he doesn't. He doesn't show up. And the kitten, and the fish, and the japaedo are all waiting there for him. Ready to eat. Excuse me. But he doesn't show up. And so, Jepetto goes out into the rain to look for him, and he can't find him.

And then we see the inside of the traveling show, Cart, and Stromboli is having a snack, and counting all the money that he's made from tonight's performance and hypothetically dividing it up with a puppet. So he's got this little stack of gold and some of its faults, so somebody paid with looks like a little washer, like a mechanical washer and it's bent. And so he curses about that for a while, even though it's interesting, because he's made

all this money. It's been really successful, but this one little error is enough to enrage him, which is very ungrateful and tyrannical. It's like, look, he got 100 gold pieces, someone slipped you a fake one. It's like, you could have had 101, it's still a pretty good day, all things considered.

You've got to make a bit of a lounce for error, which is something that Tyrant does not do. So, and that's perfect because if you don't make a lounce for error at all, then people are always guilty of something. And if you're a tyrant, that's exactly what you want. And people are always guilty of something. So the tyrant who's willing to exploit that is always on solid ground. So anyways, he doesn't share with Pinocchio, and he puts them in a bird cage, a jail. And then he also shows them this other puppet that has an ax through them,

that was the previous puppet who didn't precisely perform as he was supposed to. And so there's a big threat there. It's like you stay in that jail, you do exactly what I want, or it's off to the wood pile for you to be burned. And so, well, that's just worth thinking about, because that's kind of what happens with tyrants. And literally, not just metaphorically. So, the cricket is basically wondering what in the world he should do, and then the

cart rolls by, and he gets an inkling or hears, and I don't quite remember this, that Pinocchio is in there and might be in trouble. Or he thinks that up. I'm sorry, I can't remember that. But he ends up, anyways, he ends up inside the cart. He finds the traveling cart and he goes inside. And then he tries to pick the lock, because he's a bug, he can climb inside.

He tries to pick the lock, he tries to get Pinocchio out of the jail that he's sort of collaborated himself into. And it's interesting, because if you read, for example, if you read Solceneitz in school like Archipelago, which I would highly recommend, one of the things you find is that if you were arrested by the KGB, by the secret police in the Soviet Union, and you were hauled off to a like a tribunal before a judge. They wanted you to admit that you were guilty.

You had to, like they torture you until you confessed, or you could just confess. And that I always found that so mysterious. It's like they kicked down your door. They know perfectly well that they haven't got any more on you than they've got on anyone else. And yet you have to go through the damn trial and you have to admit that they're right. It's like why do they even bother with that? Why don't they just throw your sorry ass into the camp, which is essentially what's going to happen. Anyways, why do they need your collaboration? You know, I've never quite figured that out.

I think it's partly because they're not willing to let you stand in opposition to the rules because the mere fact that you'll do that means that you exist as something that is allowed to exist outside the rules. And they're not having any of that. So that's part of it. But there's more to it. There's more to it than that. It's like the drama of collaboration. So one of the things I learned about societies like the Soviet Union, and this is true of

all tyrannical societies, is that the idea that that's top down and that people are just following orders, they're good people, but they're just following orders, it's like you can forget about that, so that's a stupid theory. When a society becomes tyrannical like that, the tyranny exists at every single level of the society. You tyrannize your own conscience, so let's say you're a true believer, you're a true believer in Marxist utopia, let's say, or national socialist third right that's going to last a thousand years

and be racially pure. You really believe that. And that's supposed to be a perfect state. And that's already been delivered to you. And so what that means is that in so far as you're a true believer, your own suffering becomes heretical. Because to the degree that you're suffering, you're living proof of the fact that the system is not delivering what it promised to deliver.

And so you have to suppress that. You have to become your own tyrant. You can't admit that anything's gone wrong. And of course, you can't talk about it to your family because one out of three of them are government informers, just like one out of three of everyone. And you're certainly not going to mention it in the workplace because unless you're a devout, communist party member, you're not going anywhere. And if any of your ancestors were like landowners or bourgeoisie,

it's like you're done, you're done. Class guilt, man. You're not going anywhere. And then every single level of the bureaucracy is exactly the same as that. And on the top, there's a tyrant, but the tyrant is everywhere, everywhere, from the peak to the soul. It's all tyranny and everyone participates in that by lying about everything and that's why you see what happens next in the movie. So Pinocchio is in jail and he's there because he was naive and he allowed himself to be enticed and because he did something that would have run contrary to his conscience. But the movie doesn't put up straw man, you know, the poor damn puppet got tangled into this. His conscience wasn't even around.

So you have to have some sympathy for him, but doesn't matter. It doesn't matter because he ends up in jail and he can't get out. And the fact that it in some ways wasn't his fault, doesn't change the fact that he's in jail and he can't get out. And then he's, I was watching Louis CK the other night. And he was talking about children lying. He was talking about his nine-year-old daughter lying.

And he said, well, it's no wonder your children lie. It's no wonder it's impossible for you to stop them. Because, you know know you're talking to someone whose his head would scrape the roof. They weigh like three times as much as you and they're capable of force and they're intimidating and they say to you something like did you take that last cookie after I told you not to and you you're thinking, oh no, I took the cookie. What am I gonna do? And then you get a genius idea in your head,

which children, smarter children learn to lie earlier, children with high IQs learn to lie younger. And CK says, well, it's like you've just been handed a magic get out of jail free card. You can just say, no, I didn't take that cookie, and worse than that, it works in every single situation if you get away with it. And now you're supposed to learn not to do that.

Said, well, great, or that's the thing about comedians. They'll tell you the underlying truth, which is why people think they're so funny, like the gesture in a King's Court. He's the only one who's allowed to tell the King the truth, because he's beneath contempt. That's what comedians do. And so, well, so what happens is, well, Pinocchio, he's not very happy about this, right? It's really breaking him up. And the Blue Fairy appears again from the star, same way. So, what

this means is, and I think this is right. This is something Jung talked about. And it was also extraordinarily brilliant. He said that it's one thing to break a rule when you don't really know the rule. You can, for whatever reason, you seem to get a bit of a free pass for that. But if then you know the rule, and then you break it anyways, you get hit a lot harder.

And I know that's true. And I even think I figured out why it was true at one point. But I can't remember at the moment. But there's something about, it's like the severity of a moral error isn't quite as massive if you're genuinely ignorant and unconscious about the rule. And maybe it's because you're not violating your own belief system as much when you engage in the misactivity. It's something like that. So anyways, Pinocchio is

in there and he's partly at fault, at least because he's naive, and he's very desperate about it. But it's also because his conscience isn't functioning very well. So he has his reasons. And so whatever the Blue Fairy shows up again, Mother Nature steps in to aid him. And so, and that is true, I would say, because it's not like you get walloped or killed every time you make a mistake, right? It's kind of interesting.

And especially that's the case with kids, is like we have more leeway from for them. Whether nature does, that's a different issue. But I would say yes, because you know, kids are really cute and they're appealing. And so, and they're naive, and they're kind of helpless. They have those motions, even that indicate helplessness. And that's associated with the natural apprehension

of cuteness, right? So cuteness is big eyes, small nose, symmetrical features, babylike features, helpless movements. That elicits sympathy and compassion. And it does it cross species. And so does the cry. And my roommate, when I was in college, had a niece who was quite young about year and half old, I think. And we had a cat, wild cat. And it was a really fighting cat, partly because of me, because I would always play with

it. And I let it fight with me quite a lot. So it was a fighting cat. And that little girl would come over and maybe she'd cry. That cat was like there right now trying to figure out what was wrong. And like the cat would use its claws on me, but it would never use its claws on the little kid. And I thought, well, that's indication of that cross species' cuteness. And you're all attracted to that more or less. And the more maternal you are, the more you're attracted to such things. But you see something on YouTube and you go, ah, and that's like, that's so cute. It's like, yeah, it is. It appeals to exactly this,

it appeals to this concomitation of infantile features and it brings out compassion unless you're psychopathic. So it's a good thing, but it can be manipulated. That's for sure. Women actually manipulate it with makeup, which is quite sneaky and good of them. So anyways. So the Blue Fairy shows up, so that's nature. So what I'm saying is that nature will cut kids a break.

If you think of nature in the guys of, well, their mother, for example, but even the biology of other people, because we're wired to accept behavior from children that we wouldn't accept from other people. So nature will forgive. So she shows up in your heavenly guys and says, what's going on? And Pinocchio, again because he's naive, but also because he's not good. He's not evil either. He's neither, or both. It depends on how you look at it. And he also has no idea how smart he is and how smart he isn't, or how smart the person he's talking to is. And instead of admitting what he's done, he lies about it. And that's interesting because it does suggest that he understands at some level that he set himself up for this.

Because you know, he could just say, he could have just told the truth, this horrible fox kidnapped me and sold me to this slaveholder, which is true. It's a lot more true than the story he tells. He tells a story about some monster, you know, a fictional monster. He could have told even three quarters of the truth and had it work, but he doesn't. He just obscures the story entirely. And this is the part of the movie that people remember. And I'd edited this out for years when I was talking about this movie. I forgot why it was so significant. His nose grows, right? And it grows to ridiculous length. And why is that? I think it was Mark Twain, Samuel Clements, I think, who said,

one of the advantages to telling the truth is that you don't have to remember what you said. And that, God, that's worth listening to, because, so there's a bunch of things I've learned as a clinician. And one of them is, because you're often in really weird situations with people if you're a clinician, because things happen that don't happen normally, and you don't know what to do.

And so what I've learned is I just say what's happening, whatever it is, regardless of what it is. I'll just try to describe it as accurately as I can and not worry about, in some sense, not worry about the consequences. You know, like I'm not going out of my way to cause trouble, but if you're in a really, and I'm telling you, this can save your life at times,

especially if you're dealing with someone who's paranoid, who's really paranoid. You do not lie to someone who's paranoid and violent. Because as soon as you lie, you're aligned with the forces that are persecuting them. And they're going to be what? Because paranoia makes people hyper-vigilant, like they're on emphetamines. In fact, you can make people paranoid by giving them enough emphetamines. And you can make paranoid people more paranoid by giving them enough infetome and you can make paranoid people more paranoid by giving them infetome So they're hyper-vigilant because they feel that everything is predatory and against them

And so they're watching you like you would not believe way more than you're watching them and if you flicker Alive while you're talking to them and they're really on the edge you you're done So it's what it's one thing to really know, if you're ever in a really bad situation, and you don't know what to do, you tell the truth minimally, you don't disclose too much, that's just another lie. You tell the truth minimally and carefully and hopefully,

and you might get out of it, you might get out of it. But if you falsify it, look the hell out. So the truth is a real mechanism of protection in dangerous situations. So if someone's trying to intimidate you and you think they might get violent and they ask you if you're afraid, then you tell them that you're terrified

and that you hope that things will go okay or you say I'll give you an example One time I was in an airport and We're in this lineup to fly back to Canada that said international flights And so it was long lineup like 50 people and we got it I got about three from the front and there was still like 40 people behind me, and the guy behind the counter decided that he was just going to shut down the line,

and that we could all go to this other line, which was like 300 people long. And I suggested that he not do that, because we'd been standing there for half an hour, and that he could just deal with the 20 of us that were left, and like have a clue. So he called the sheriff right away. And this was down in Florida and it wasn't that long after 9-11.

And so these guys came up and they were armed. And they came and said, looked at me because of course he told them that I was causing trouble, which I wasn't. I was just trying to not let what would you say? An arrogant bureaucratic scum rat take advantage of me. So, which is not the same as causing trouble. So anyway, as soon as the cops came up, I said, look, I'm going to do exactly what you tell me to do right now.

And I'm not going to cause any trouble. But I would like you to hear what actually happened. And so that's a good example of a situation like that. It's like if someone's got you, no bravo, bravado. It's a very bad idea. And I was going to do exactly what they told me, because they didn't know who I was. And I didn't know what they had been told.

So anyhow, the problem with lying is that it's a hydra. And kids find this out very early because you tell one lie and what happens is it has one of the consequences that you expect. Maybe you get away with it, but it has three or four others that you don't expect. And so it's like it grows some complexity. And then you have to tack a lie on each of those

little complexity outcrops and then they grow three more complexities. And soon this little lie turns into a great big ball of lies, and at some point it becomes painfully evident to everyone. And by that time, you see this with politicians, like that guy who was sexting. Anthony Weiner, yeah, perfect name for him, man. It's so funny. I shouldn't make that comment because it's so obvious,

but it's still funny. But you know, he, that's exactly what happened to him. It's like, it wasn't even so much the event because people are stupid, they make mistakes. And actually, the public is somewhat forgiving if you say, yeah, geez, I'm a real moron. And like, really, seriously, how could I do that? But I did. And like, I'll try not to do it again.

But what happens with politicians is, and I'm not speaking specifically of politicians, is they'll make an error, and it gets exposed, and then they make three others trying to cover it up. Helping with Nixon, for example, and then the whole thing just turns into a complete scandal. And maybe they could have got out of it at the beginning by just telling the truth. It's like, yes, I'm an idiot, you know. I'll try not to do it again. Well, that isn't what happens in this case. In Pinocchio grows this elaborate series of lies, and the ferry is willing to be a little generous to him because he's little in cute and he's still a puppet and she tells him

not to do that and that she's gonna give them a pass this time, but that she isn't going to be able to intervene on his behalf again. And that's partly one of the things that's quite interesting about people who have Rousseau and ideas about children. So children are all good and they get corrupted by society, which is half true, because they're also not good and they get shaped and disciplined by society. But the Russoian types of are very interesting when their kids hit teenage years

or when they're judging, like, say, criminal teenagers. It's like the child is perfect until they hit like 11, then they turn into a teenager, and then they're like thugs. So they go from good to thug in one move, you know? And you often see that in families too, that have treated, especially their daughters, like a princess, you know, and then they hit puberty. And the parents who have princessed them to death

have no idea what to do with them. And so then they become demonized. And so the overly good child turns into the overly wicked teenager. And sometimes they'll act that out too. One of the things I've seen with girls who are held in princesses steam when they're little and their parents have to tight grip on them. And too much of a demand for good behavior is they'll find some nasty character to associate with who

will tear them out of the family. You know, bikers are really good for that sort of thing. So, and especially if you have some vengeful thoughts towards your parents, nice biker is your perfect solution to that problem. Okay, we'll go through this scene and then I think we'll call it a day. Okay, so now Pinocchio has gone free. He's been united with his conscience. He's learned a couple of lessons.

Don't be an actor and don't lie. And those things are quite similar, right? And especially once you're caught in your actor trap, don't lie to get out because that will just make it worse. So that's the first of his trials, his moral trials on the road to becoming real. All right, now here we're in a different place. We're at this, I think it's called the Red Lobster Inn and it's a shadowy place, right, and it's kind of cave-like. So it's like the,

it's an underground entrance to somewhere that's not good. And so, and it's a foggy night and you can't really see. So everything's murky and gloomy there. And so inside, we see the coachman and the fox and the cat. And the coachman, the coachman's a bad guy. He's that mask that we saw first of all. He's the archetype of that mask that was judgmental about Pinocchio having a voice. And it's like, one of the things Jung said about the shadow, and this is, I would say, one of the primary impediments to enlightenment is that if you start looking at your motives for misbehaving, and I mean by that something very specific, I mean, I don't mean that you're

misbehaving by someone else's standards. I don't mean that you're misbehaving by someone else's standards. I don't mean that. I mean, when you know by your own standards that you're doing something that's devious or malevolent or underhanded, you know it, and you still do it. So it's your own judgment you're bringing to bear on yourself. If you look at why you're doing that, the longer you look at it, the deeper a hole you dig. And so, this is the motif of Dante's inferno, fundamentally.

So Dante's inferno is a story about, I can't remember his name, unfortunately, might be Dante, in fact, although I don't remember. He's led into hell by Virgil, who's an ancient philosopher, thinker. And hell has levels. And so the outer level is, and this is a Christianized version of hell, because there's hells of all sorts, but this is a Christianized version. And so the, on the outermost levels of hell, which is sort of like normal life, are the ancient philosophers. And they're still in hell because they were at Christian, but it's kind of like it's like cheap motel hell instead of the full

pit thing, you know. And so then Dante goes deeper and deeper into hell until he gets right to the bottom of it. And I it's been a while since I read it, but if I remember correctly Satan himself is encased in ice at the bottom of hell, surrounded by people who betray others. And so Dante's notion was that the worst of all possible violations of moral behavior was betrayal and that they're in the deepest levels of hell. And I really like that idea. I think it's true because if you trust me then you're manifesting the necessary courage that puts someone through life. If you're smart, you don't trust me because you're naive.

You trust me knowing that I've full of snakes and so are you, but maybe we could cooperate and move things along nicely, and we could reduce each other to the word, to our word, and we could cooperate. But you're awake. And then I betray that, then I'm undermining your necessary faith in life and humanity. And you can really hurt someone that way. Like sometimes it's self-betrayal,

but you can really do someone in that. We can really traumatize them so that they can't recover. And so it's a really terrible thing to do to someone. And maybe it's the worst thing, and that was Dante's idea. And it's tied in. That makes very interesting reading, if you read it at the same time, is Milton's paradise lost,

because those are metaphysical explorations. This is what they are. They're metaphysical explorations of the terrible places you can end up, and that people do end up. And also a metaphysical explanation of what spirit takes you there. So, because you might ask, well, why do you betray someone? And that is a deep question. And so you'll have your specific reasons, but under that there'll be some other reasons.

And under that there'll be some other reasons. And under that there'll be some other reasons. And if you go all the way to the bottom, you come up with the ultimate reasons why you betrayed someone. And when you look at the way to the bottom, you come up with the ultimate reasons why you betrayed someone. And when you look at that, that will not be pretty. That's when your proclivity for evil, let's say, unites with the general human proclivity for evil and you discover just exactly what you're capable of. And so Jung's notion was that, well, that was a full encounter with the shadow, which is, I suppose, partly what this course is about, because one of the things that I believe I told you at the beginning was that I was going to try to help you understand how it might be that you could be in Auschwitz guard.

And to really understand that, that's a horrifying thing to understand, but I'll tell you, if you want to grow some teeth, that's a really good thing to understand. So we were talking about your capacity to negotiate before. Like if you aren't a monster, you cannot negotiate. But if you've got that under control, then you don't have to be a monster. It's a really paradoxical. So if you're just naive, well, you end up in jail and marrying at Baster has control over you.

That's not helpful. So that's not good. That just means you're useless and you can be manipulated. You won't go out of your way to be malevolent, but it's most of Because you just don't have the skills, the organizational skills, Or even the depth to do that. You're good because you're harmless. That's not good.

That's easily manipulated. And so you think, well, how do you get out of that? Well, partly you watch people, because you know what they're like, because you know what you're like. And that, but you also know what you could do and would do if you were pushed. And so you don't have to show much of that when you're negotiating with someone for them to take you really seriously. So it's a strange thing, you know, but one of the things you pointed out too was that what you most need to know will be found where you least want to look. And that's because you haven't already looked there. And so it's a little different for everyone,

right? Because your particular place you don't want to look isn't going to be the same as your place. But you're going to have a place you don't want to look. And what you haven't discovered, that's where it is. And so that's all partly going to be discovered by you looking at what you're capable of, what you're truly capable of. And people, especially on the compassionate, and say, well, no, I could never be brutal like that.

And that could be true, but you can kill people with compassion, no problem. That's the Freudian-Eedical situation. So think about working in a nursing home. So there's actually a rule of thumb, which I also use to guide my interactions with children and also with my clients. And I would say with people in general,

do not do anything for anyone that they can do themselves. All you do is steal it from them. So imagine you're working with really elderly people. They have Alzheimer's. It's like really easy to do things for them because it isn't because it's really a hard job. But it might be easier to do something for them than to let them struggle through it. But you just speed their demise by taking away the last vestiges of their independence

and you do the same thing with kids. It's like struggle through it, man. Did you ever see my left foot? That's a great movie. It's about this author whose name escapes me at the moment. Brilliant, it's brilliant movie. And the person who played the part, Staniel Day Lewis, I think he won a Academy Award for it,

but it's about this author in Ireland who was, I think he had cerebral palsy, and all he could really do was use his left foot. That was it. The rest of him was pretty spastic and not controllable. But he was there, he was very intelligent, and he was with it, and his dad would not help him. He had to drag himself up the damn stairs with his left foot. He just would not help him. And what happened was he learned how to live. You know, he actually, he could function.

And the movie does the book, which is called My Left Foot, and the movie does a lovely job of laying that out. But you have to be one hard-hearted son of a bitch to let your son crawl up the stairs with his left foot over and over. You think about that, but what's the alternative? You know, if he would have been, and of course he lays this out in the book, if he would have been catered to, he would have ended up just like you'd expect someone who was always catered to so it's a very nice lesson in the triumph of fostering independence over the over two-casual Compassion that's what I would say well, so you look at the coachman here

Kind of looks like a demented Santa Claus, you know, doesn't have a beard But he's it's a nice touch on the animators party's even got the pipe and the red suit And so he's listening to the pipe and the red suit. And so he's listening to the fox in the cat, brag about how much money they made selling Pinocchio to the puppet bastard, how evil and terrible they are, they're bragging way, and he's the real thing, hey, he's the real thing.

And he can see through their little petty, narcissistic, grandiose tales of quasi criminality and has nothing but contempt for it. And you can see that in his facial expressions, like he's sitting back a bit thinking, keep talking Bucco, pretty soon I'm going to have you right where I want you. And so the fox and the cat are drinking beer and smoking cigarettes and talking about how evil they are and bragging about how they got one over on the water, like a four-year-old, real impressive guys, real impressive, and

the the the coachman is thinking up his own nefarious schemes right now, what he might do with that puppet if he got his hands on him. And so that's what he reveals himself, right? So what you see, filmmakers just do it for a second, and that's an archetypal trip. It's like you've got the fox in the cat, There's sort of petty examples of criminality and evil. And then you've got the coachman and he's the real thing. But he's not really showing anybody who he is. And then at one scene in the bar, he lets his guard down and he lets them see what he's really like.

And so you see this all teeth and predatory eyes and glee all at the same time, right? That's a bad combination. I'm going to eat you and it's going to make me very happy. That's insanity. You do not want to see that look on someone's face. And so that's the look and the fox is traumatized by that. He just, like, he thinks he's a bad guy and he's not.

He just can't be a good guy. He hasn't got the talent to be a bad guy. So, and then he's talking to the coachman and bragging and the coachman's had enough of it and shows his real face and it's like that's not good. The fox gets a real glimpse into hell and that just terrifies him like he's and the and the coachman, the other thing the coachman does is reveal his plans and his plans are to kidnap Pinocchio along with a bunch of other boys and to take them to this place called Pleasure Island and the Fox knows what's going on there and so it's it's the

foreshadowing of the next stage of the adventure and so after the fox and the cat are terrified, the coachman who takes you along with him has a little chat with them and they describe exactly what they're going to do next. And the fox and the cat know perfectly well that they're over their head, but at this point in their misadventures, there's no pulling back. And I think we'll stop there even though it's a little early because that was a lot of material and this is a really good place to stop. So we'll see you in a week. We'll return next week with part three of Marionettes and individuals. Michaela? Consider picking up Dad's latest book, 12 Rules for Life, an antidote to chaos, or his first book, Maps of Meaning, the Architecture of Belief. Available in text, e-book, and audio book format wherever you buy books. 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, JordanBPederson.com. My online writing programs designed to help people straighten out their pasts, understand themselves in the present, and develop a sophisticated vision and strategy for the future can be found at selfauthoring.com. That's selfauthoring.com. From the Westwood One Podcast Network.