The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 286. Navy SEAL Mindset | Congressman Dan Crenshaw

Episode Date: September 8, 2022

In a world wrought with political deceptions, tribal entanglements, and the inequitable distribution of suffering, it’s no wonder that so many people feel completely lost in the search for purpose. Congressman Dan Crenshaw sits down with Dr Jordan B Peterson to discuss these dragons that we all face, and the kind of mindset it takes to defeat them.US Representative Dan Crenshaw was formerly a Navy SEAL, serving his country in five tours of duty, and achieving the rank of Lieutenant Commander. He famously lost his right eye after an IED explosion during his third tour, but still served for another four years thereafter. He is currently a Congressman and  public speaker, talking to the points of mental solidarity and ethics, even in the face of adversity. He has also recently published the novel, “Fortitude: American Resilience in the Era of Outrage.”—Links— For Dan Crenshaw:Congressman Crenshaw’s Website - https://crenshaw.house.gov/2022 Crenshaw Youth Summit - www.crenshawyouthsummit.com   (Book) Fortitude: American Resilience in the Era of Outrage - https://www.amazon.com/Fortitude-American-Resilience-Era-Outrage/dp/1538733307 // SIGN UP FOR DAILY WIRE+ //www.dailywireplus.com // SUPPORT THIS CHANNEL // Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/jordanbpeterson.co...Donations: https://jordanbpeterson.com/donate // COURSES // Discovering Personality: https://jordanbpeterson.com/personalitySelf Authoring Suite: https://selfauthoring.comUnderstand Myself (personality test): https://understandmyself.com // BOOKS // Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life: https://jordanbpeterson.com/Beyond-Order12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos: https://jordanbpeterson.com/12-rules-...Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief: https://jordanbpeterson.com/maps-of-m... // LINKS // Website: https://jordanbpeterson.comEvents: https://jordanbpeterson.com/eventsBlog: https://jordanbpeterson.com/blogPodcast: https://jordanbpeterson.com/podcast // SOCIAL // Twitter: https://twitter.com/jordanbpetersonInstagram: https://instagram.com/jordan.b.petersonFacebook: https://facebook.com/drjordanpetersonTelegram: https://t.me/DrJordanPetersonAll socials: https://linktr.ee/drjordanbpeterson

Music Hello everyone. I'm pleased today to be talking to Congressman Dan Crenshaw, who I've had the privilege to get to know. Over the last couple of years now, most recently, Congressman Khrinshaw set up an event for me in Washington where I had the privilege of speaking to a large group of Republicans concentrating on policymaking about the possibility of generating a positive message going forward as a bulwark, let's say, against the possibility of a kind of reactionary populism,

which is not optimal, unfortunate for everyone concerned. Dan and I talked after that about doing another podcast, concentrating on political issues, particularly focusing on the danger posed by the radicals on the left and the radicals on the right. He's had a lot of experience with the unpleasant radicals on the right. And I thought that would be really interesting.

But over the last few days, I've also read his book, New Book, Fortitude, something Dan knows something about, by the way, Fortitude, American resilience in the age of outrage. And I really liked the book. I thought it was a lovely balance of story, personal story, concept, encouragement, clear delineation of a political, and sometimes a theological philosophy, psychological philosophy. So I took a lot of notes and I thought what I would do after I read Dan's bio is walk through his book with him. There's a lot of places where are thinking dovetails I suppose which is why it's

easy for us to get along and I think we could have a very productive discussion as a consequence. So I'll start with the bio. Originally from the Houston area, Representative Dan Crenshaw is a sixth generation Texan. In 2006, he graduated from Tufts University, where he earned his Naval Officer Commission through Navy ROTC. Following graduation, he immediately reported to seal training in Coronado, California where he met his future wife Tara. After graduating seal training Dan deployed DeFaloujia Iraq to join seal team three his first of five deployments overseas. Dan was medically retired in September of 2016 as a Lieutenant Commander after serving

ten years in the SEAL teams. He left service with two bronze stars, one with veller, the Purple Heart and the Navy Commendation Medal with veller among others. Soon after Dan completed his Masters in Public administration at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He then returned to Houston, where his community had been devastated by Hurricane Harvey, inspired by their subsequent volunteer work, Dan and his wife Tara decided that the best way to serve the people of Texas would be in elected office. And so in November 2018,

Congressman Crenshaw was elected to represent Texas' second congressional district. In Congress, he serves on a number of important committees, including the House Energy and Commerce and the House Select Committee on the climate crisis, as well as the health and environment and climate change subcommittees. So, Congressman Khrinsha, thank you very much for agreeing to talk to me again. It's much appreciated and Kudos on your book. How is the book doing, by the way? A pleasure to be on, Jordan, appreciate it. It did really well.

It came out, it's a little old at this point, it came out in 2020, and it did quite well, because it wasn't a political book, I think. There's definitely a ceiling for politicians to write a book, as far as how many, a ceiling as far as how many it'll sell. Yeah, I think we did much better than that, simply because it's not a political book and it's not even a seal book.

It's a little mix of all of those things, but mostly it's a, like you mentioned earlier, it's an ethics book, it's an empowerment book, it's a self-help book, it's lessons and fortitude and also to come out at a time, right, in the beginning of the pandemic, which was, I think a prime time for those kind of lessons. So it did pretty well.

Yeah, well, the book starts with your discussion of both victimization, culture, and outrage culture. And you make a moral case, I would say, against both. And also, I would also attempt to do a diagnosis of why this has become front and center in some sense. And so on the victimization front, you make a case that in some ways, the sense of victimization and the sense of oppression and is opposite to a proper sense of gratitude and duty. And I thought that was extremely interesting because obviously there are situations where people

feel as if they're being oppressed justifiably. But you can make much of that in a way that's not productive. And by dwelling on that, especially if it's not deserved, let's say, you also deprive yourself of the values of duty and responsibility. And that's a way to undermine the meaning of your life in a most fundamental sense. You deprive yourself of the, you know, the sword I'm looking for. You deprive yourself of any ability to overcome it, right? You deprive yourself of agency. And that's a devastating thing psychologically for someone if they're deprived of the tools and the abilities to move forward, whether

that trauma is real trauma, whether that victimization is justified, as you said, because I mean, there's two types. The narratives that get built in our society about victimization, which can certainly be debated whether it's real or not. And then there's true victimization and true victimhood, or at least being a victim of some kind of injustice, but victimhood, I would say, is a bit more of a mindset. And you can either live that way, or you can decide to overcome it, and decide that you indeed are in charge of your own destiny.

Yeah, well, there's a difference, I think. There's a difference between being a seeker for justice and construing yourself as a victim. No, if you're a victim, in some sense, you're owed something, you're owed redress. But if you're a fighter for justice, then your decision is something like that you're going to move forward

to help yourself and others despite the injustices of the world. That's a better way of thinking about it. So you get your agency that way without falling into that pit of envy that victimization also seems to produce. You also have to define justice correctly. And I think that's where our society has qualms with one another is this redefining of the word justice and what injustice actually is. And so I think there is a classical definition of justice. And it usually sounds something like this. Maybe it's a violation of what we would consider due process. And we all have a pretty good idea of what do process is based on English common law and our own constitution and a lot of court precedent. Another way to define injustice might be

the the granting of some kind of status for any other reason besides merit, right? Maybe it's maybe it's heritage, maybe it's maybe it's a good old boy's club, whatever it is, that would feel like an injustice and you'd be right about that. Fundamentally injustice would be infringing on someone's rights, right? Curson A, infringing on the rights of person B, on their life, liberty, or property. That would be a certainly American classical way of defining an injustice. And infringing on especially inalienable rights, these negative rights, the left does not define justice that way. The left has come to define justice a very different way.

For instance, instead of negative rights, proposing that it's an injustice if you are not getting positive rights, and by positive rights, they mean services. They mean that there's an injustice against you because you don't make the same money as someone else. There's an injustice against you because you're house is smaller than someone else. There's an injustice against you because your health care is too expensive. They consider these things injustices. Now, it may be the case that we want everyone to have health care and affordable health care. But that doesn't mean it's an injustice. And when you start to use those morally fraught words, you make people really crazy.

And you go down a path where you're demanding so-called rights for someone. And that necessarily involves coercion. The coercion is a pretty bad path to go down because you then have to literally infringe on someone's rights in order to provide someone else the same kind of services. So while it seems like splitting hairs, this sort of redefining injustice, it's actually pretty important and it has pretty serious consequences. Yeah, well, if your definition of justice is predicated on something like a notion of equity, no one can have more than anyone else or it's unfair, it's unjust. The net consequence of that is no one can have more than anyone else or it's unfair, it's unjust.

The net consequence of that is no one gets to have anything at all, because there's not even a hypothetical way that we could distribute all things equally to everyone at once. That's literally impossible. And so it seems to me that the price of some prosperity for most is that some are more prosperous than others, and then hopefully to the degree that that's also just some of the reason for that excess of prosperity is also a consequence of, let's call it, effort and ability. And that's a form of justice too. It certainly is.

And in the book, and when I'm looking at these victimhood narratives that are so pervasive and how that's related to outrage culture, first of all, feeling like a victim makes you outraged. I think that's a pretty simple path to draw there. But I think what's worse about what we've seen recently is the elevation of victimhood. It's just where it's, you know, you talk about heroic archetypes a lot. I took a lot of influence from you actually in that chapter when I talked about who is your hero and what does self improvement look like?

Well, it looks like copying people who did really well. And maybe not in everything they do. Like if I want to be a great singer, a great pop star, maybe I'll look at Taylor Swift, but I'm not going to look at her for literally anything else. So it's identifying the attributes that make someone successful within a given hierarchy. That's fundamentally what defining your heroes looks like in a very practical way. And so I flush that out. But what concerns me is that this elevation of victimhood, and you know, Jesse Smallette was a great example of that because he found it so compelling to

pretend to be a victim that he would actually create this whole crazy conspiracy, hires two people to beat him up just so he can claim that these, you know, maga people beat him up. You know, it's a pretty shocking story, but what's more shocking is the underlying incentives that are prevalent in our culture. That's what actually scares me. And I see it on the right now too. When I was writing this book, I didn't see it as much on the right. Since I've written the book, I do see it on the right. And I want to lay out some sequence of events for you and you tell me who you think it applies to. So step number one, say something very provocative,

crazy, mean, stupid, whatever, but say it and say it really loud. Step two, watch as everyone reacts to what you just said and then feign disbelief that they would be so obsessed with you, that they would, that why are they talking about you? Number three, claim victimhood because they're attacking you, right? They're the ones paying attention to you and you're just trying to, you know, speak truth to power or whatever. Then use that victimhood as a club to wield and a tool to beat back your opponents.

And maybe that's through a fundraising email, maybe the person who said the provocative things of politician, or maybe they're a podcaster, maybe they have an influencer page on Instagram. And now they get more engagement because they're being attacked because they said something provocative and crazy. That's a sequence of events that you can see on both sides, right?

If that sounds a lot like AOC, you're right. If it sounds a lot like Marjorie Taylor Green, you're right. Because they both do it. And I think they're quite self-aware of it, but it's a scam. Yeah, it's a claim of unearned moral virtue. And you know, I've been thinking about this a lot. I thought about it about this a lot. I thought about it again, reading your book. And so we all compete for reputation. And that competition can take place many ways, the proper way for it to take place

is that we compete on grounds of productivity and generosity. It's something like that. And then if we establish a very positive reputation as a consequence of our productivity and generosity, then we're stably placed in a functional social hierarchy and we're surrounded by people who will trade with us and will respect us and will treat us properly. And as a consequence, our negative emotion

can be controlled. So imagine you're virtuous, and so now you have a stellar reputation, and the consequence of that is that your nervous system views your positioning in the hierarchy as a consequence of that reputation and decreases your stress. So then when you go after someone's key beliefs, the things they stand for hypothetically, you're threatening their reputation and then you threaten their position, the hierarchy, and then you threaten their emotional regulation.

That's the chain. The problem with all that is it can be gained. And because there's nothing more important than reputation, and by the way, we pay attention to people who have a good reputation. Because there's nothing more important than reputation, and by the way, we pay attention to people who have a good reputation. Because there's nothing more important than reputation, people are motivated and willing to take shortcuts to attaining it. And that's the issue with virtue signaling, and so you say, well, you can point to and adjust this suffered on your behalf, and that elicits people's sympathy.

And then you can claim to be a moral crusader, whether or not that's true. And then you adopt the cloak of reputation and then you ratchet yourself up in a manipulative manner, up the hierarchy of social security and esteem. And that's the narcissism, Machiavellian psychopath game. And it's a game that threatens societies all the time, it always has. I think so, and I see it in politics quite often, I'm amazed by some of the people I thought I was close with who betrayed me or turned on me for the smallest of gains. I mean, you created an enemy for life for the smallest of gains. I would almost be more understanding of it if they gained something huge from doing what they did to me and I can point out

various cases. It's just unnecessary, but it's the incentive structure, unfortunately, in politics because that kind of conflict gains people's attention. And attention is currency in today's political atmosphere because we have unfortunately devolved into sort of this Jerry Springer-Rachmsok-Compolitics. It's tabloid politics. It's this news of the day politics is opposed to sticking us back and arguing over some very fundamental differences and ideas and governing philosophies.

There are some proper debates to be had and look sometimes they do get had, but it's not what people are interested in. If these debates get had at all, it's because the people you elect are actually doing their job in committees and going through the hard work, but it's not glamorous and they get no credit for it. The people who get credit are the ones who don't bother with any of that boring policy stuff, but who instead come out and yell and scream on the house floor about someone or other and gain a lot of attention and that's currency.

Yeah, well, it's very difficult. It's very difficult to keep that sort of, the attention that outrage can generate. It's very difficult to keep that under control, especially when it can spread so rapidly, let's say on social media systems. I mean, in your book, you talk about the alternative to outrage and victimization. You talked about outrage as something like a combination of wrath, which is a cardinal sin and envy, which is a cardinal sin and envy, which is a cardinal sin and pride, which is a cardinal sin. It attracts a lot of attention. It's what elevates you morally

in the face of your victimization. And you segue from that into, while into your experience in Iraq, in the terrible medical problems, the battle injuries that you sustained as a consequence. And you talked a fair bit in there about how it was that you were able to not construe yourself as a victim. And one of the things I found so striking in that section was the credit that you gave to your mother. And the example she said, you know, you talked a little earlier about finding heroes or about identifying your heroes. It's like one of the things you can do to identify a hero is not so much seek out for someone that you'd like to emulate in a voluntary way, but to watch yourself and see who you involuntarily admire just because of the way they are. And you make a very, you make a repeated case that that was the situation with your mother.

So maybe if you wouldn't mind, you could talk a little bit about that and then about how that experience shaped your ability to deal with catastrophe in your own life. Well, you know, the title of that chapter is perspectives from darkness. And I mean, the word darkness quite literally in this case, because I was blind from the explosion. This was in 2012, in Afghanistan. We were on a sort of an unplanned mission.

It's not really worth getting into exactly what we were doing while we were there, but it was Afghanistan and it was Hellman province, so you can imagine it's a bad place. And there's a lot of IEDs, there's IEDs everywhere in the southern Candahar and in Hellman regions. And one of my interpreters stepped on an IED right in front of me. You got all four of his limbs blown off right away. And I got knocked on the ground. I didn't quite know what happened. I immediately felt for my legs so that I knew it. That I wasn't the one who had stepped on it.

But I knew I was hit with something. I could hear him moaning in this. You know, people think that in because they watch war movies and when somebody gets their guts blown out or an arm blown off or something, a lot of times in war movies, the person is screaming. It's not really accurate. It's far more accurate when the person is sort of walking around in a day is kind of like moaning.

And it's a much deeper pain. You can't scream. You can't possibly have the energy to scream. It's a much deeper moaning, groaning sound that you just never forget. I've heard it a few times. And so I heard that and I put it together what had happened.

And then you can do it that point. I actually was incomplete denial. I thought I just had dirt in my eyes. So I couldn't see anything, but I didn't have a lot of pain in my face in hindsight just because it would have been so numb. But I had a severe pain throughout the rest of my body because it had been so numb, but I had a severe pain throughout the rest of my body because it was, frankly, the brunt of the blast was lower to the ground,

and so it hit the lower extremities of my body much harder. Just for anyone who's curious, I was wearing Kevlar underwear, so, you know, I was miraculously okay there, but a heavy, heavy scarring everywhere else. And for some reason, just never believed I was blind. And even when I woke up, never really believed I was going to be blind. And they told me the bad news, of course, when I woke up about five days later, they put me, to be clear, they put me into an induced coma

on the, on the air, on the Medevac helicopter right when I left that site. So I was conscious throughout the whole thing. I remember it pretty well, but I was out for five days after that. Look up in Germany and you know, got all the news. But for some reason kept a spirit and then and then there's and then there's that next step, which is well, I guess it's time to start feeling sorry for yourself. Because your life has changed pretty dramatically. And this kind of self-sense of self-pity is, it's like a warm cozy blanket.

You can wrap yourself in it. And you can think about how everybody else on the team may be screwed up or how maybe the mission itself was screwed up. Maybe you can turn it into some statement about foreign policy and endless wars. There's no end of reasons that you could claim victimhood. And I've unfortunately watched some veterans get into politics and do exactly that. But it's pretty unhealthy. And I can't imagine being happy doing that. And if I had to look to one person who had gone through severe hardship throughout her life, it was my mother.

And she got cancer, breast cancer when I was five years old, and she eventually lost that battle when I was 10. But in hindsight, I never saw her complain, I never saw her cry to us about it. She never lost her temper with us when she really should have. In hindsight, it's not that much of a greatest. But the amount of grace and grit that she demonstrated, it had always stuck with me. Maybe it got me further hard times too.

Maybe it was always subconscious. I'm not sure, in any case, it's a model. And what I encourage people to do is, if maybe you don't have, it's unlikely that you have that model in your life to that extreme extent. And thank God for it, because that would really suck if everyone had that particular experience. But you do have stories. You know, because again, there's real heroes that you know from your own life. There's

real heroes from history. And then there's fake, you know, that make-believe characters. And I mentioned Superman as one of those make-believe characters. He's like this. He never says or does anything wrong. And for some reason, you're drawn to him. And then you have to start asking yourself, why am I drawn to this person? And maybe that person is your boss or a leader in the military or Superman, but you're drawn to them for some reason. And it's worth doing some introspection and thinking to yourself, what are the traits that this person exhibits that I can emulate and be better as a result?

Right, why? And we should point out here too. Well, that's also the case. We should make a very clear distinction here that often when people are embittered and resentful and feel like they're victims, it's because really awful things have happened to them. Now, not always, but often. And so then the question is, well, and feel like they're victims. It's because really awful things have happened to them.

Now, not always, but often. And so then the question is, well, if you're in a situation and something really awful is happened to you or has happened to you, then why shouldn't you feel like a victim and is there a better alternative? And part of what you were trying to lay out in this part of the book is what those better alternatives are. So part of looking for that hero is to find out from someone else's example, in your

case it was your mother, but these other sources that you described, of people who were in a sort of hell, in an undeniable sense, but who chose in a very real way to make it as good as it could possibly be given the circumstances. And so they had to turn to sources of power, let's say in strength and fortitude and resilience that weren't in some sense obviously associated with the catastrophe. I mean, in your mother's case, it's pretty tragic situation. She's young mother. she has young kids. Now she has breast cancer and she fights a losing battle over a period of five years.

That's pretty bad. And then you have to ask yourself, given that that's obviously pretty bad, how is it even possible that someone could handle that with not only grace and courage, but the kind of grace and courage that leaves their children with an un... what would you call it? An immovable sense of the ability to prevail in the face of the deepest adversity. I mean, that's really something. You said here, thousands have come before you and they did just fine. So quit your complaining and it's not because you have nothing to complain about.

That's not the case. That's not the right approach. The fact is, and this is such an optimistic fact, as well as a judgment in some sense. The fact is that if someone else can do it, so can you. And that's something, right? If you're reading about the great heroes in history, people who are in these terrible situations and you see someone rise to the occasion,

and then you can say, well, that was a person who did that and I'm a person, and so maybe I have that capacity too, even though I don't know how to approach it. And then some of the rest of your book, much of the rest of your book, I would say, in some sense, is a guide to help people figure out how they could approach that. One of the things you point out first is, well, pick, notice who you admire. And then maybe try consciously, practicing, becoming like that. You said, I had many defensible reasons for bitterness

after grief and grievance, after getting blown up and losing an eye. Well, you were facedown after your surgery, right? You were facedown in a mobilized for six weeks. You said, you couldn't even move your neck because otherwise you might go blind, which is like a good reason not to move your neck. And you were all all blown up on the front, on your chest and so forth. And so you're also laying on these wounds. And so how in the world did

you manage that? You had your wife. That was obviously extremely helpful. Well, yeah, I'll talk about that. It's, yeah, six weeks was a long time. And the reason you're lying on your stomach, you have to be faced down. It doesn't necessarily mean you have to lie on your stomach. You can, in theory, walk around, you just have to be looking down the whole time. It's not like your aisle pop out. You know, take a break, and you're allowed to take a couple breaks. And naturally sleeping, it's very difficult to do this and so you're going to roll over.

The reason you do it is because when you when you do retina repairs they need to put a band date of sorts on your retina and you can't stick a bandage on your retina of course. So what they do is they stick a gas bubble in your eye and you have to face down so that gas bubble presses against your retina, holds it in place. It's quite the surgery. And in fact, I had a much worse surgery a year and a half ago. I went blind again because my retina fully detached this time due to the scar tissue from that earlier blast. And so, bam, I was right back on my stomach.

Little easier this time because it didn't have all the other wounds you're referring to and frankly it was a nice break from politics if I'm being perfect. It's a really, really time. The only time I fully detached, you know, so to speak. So, you know, I want to hit one thing you said just one more time because it's important as a foundation and that's what I tried to do in the book is the foundations are perspective and these heroes. And from there, now it's time to start giving lessons on how to be those heroes. But the perspective part is important

and that quote you read is important. And I say it in speeches a lot too, if I'm giving sort of a non-political speech. So say, look, here's the truth. Whatever you're going through now, you've probably been through something more difficult. So deal with this. Now, it may be true that you've actually never been through something more difficult. But here's another truth. Somebody else has been through something more difficult. So deal with this. Now, it may be true that you've actually never been

through something more difficult. But here's another truth. Somebody else has been through something more difficult and they've dealt with it a lot better than you're dealing with it now. That's a hard truth, but it's. Yeah, but it's a, it's a, but it's also an optimistic truth, right?

Because when you see someone in the depths of genuine suffering, hopefully what you're trying to do is to throw a lifeline and one possible lifeline is compassion. And that's probably the right lifeline to throw an infant, you know, who's suffering, that sort of overwhelming compassion. But for someone who is an adult or making progress towards being an adult, the lifeline that might be thrown is,

there's something within you that would let you be more than you are, and much more, and maybe enough more, so that you could actually deal with this suffering, so it didn't turn into hell and take everything along with it. And that's, there isn't anything more optimistic than that. You say something here, which I think is extremely, I'm going to read something from your book here. It is true that character is, to some extent, innate.

I would say what that does is that it provides each of us with a range of talents and a range of temptations. And it's something like that, so it's the hand-wredelt, and there's certainly a genetic element to that. Our genetic makeup imbues in us certain proclivities, but it is as true that character is mostly a consequence of choices, strangely enough. We all make them, and we should make them, deliberately, with the knowledge that these choices are part of our responsibility toward a purpose other than our own selfish aims.

That responsibility is to your family, friends, community, and country. That's something that conservatives put forward as a pathway to virtue. You know, and what's so interesting about that as far as I'm concerned as an antidote to atomistic liberalism, let's say, that hyper-privileges the individual is that it's definitely been my observation as a clinical psychologist that in the depths of misery, the capability that you have to be of service to other people, your family, your friends, your community, your country, that's actually a saving grace under such circumstances. You know, and that people really find a deep and abiding meaning in

that service. So it's not just finger wagging and the pointing towards duty. It's like, no, no, you don't understand that if you're in desperate straits, if your life has fallen apart, if you're nihilistic and miserable, and maybe you have your bloody reasons, because maybe you do, that's still the case that if you step outside yourself and you try to make the lives of other people better, that's the best possible thing that you can do for yourself. And so I really liked that. It's defining what Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence,

this right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And those words get thrown around a lot and some people might say, well, pursue my happiness. That means pursue whatever ends I want, right? Pursue whatever, it gives me that short-term gratification, pursue whatever makes me just feel good. But there's a different, right.

And I don't think that's what the founders meant. And there's a lot of evidence for that because what they meant was the pursuing of purpose. The idea that some sort of purpose in your life is what makes you happy, and that there is a given set of traditions and social interactions and standards of living that genuinely make people happier. One of those, you mentioned mentioned is doing good for others. It's kind of service, having some kind of responsibility to feel useful.

So it's not, we rely on the Bible a lot for this moral framework, but you don't have to if you don't want to, because you can look to basic psychology, I think, to derive the same conclusions. There's just happens to be a lot of truth. Well, one of the conclusions that you can draw, and we know this psychologically and psychophysiologically now, we know it neuropharmacologically. It's known from multiple dimensions simultaneously that the system that produces happiness, let's say, in the founder's sense, produces that emotion in relationship to the observation of movement towards a valued goal. And so, you can derive some conclusions from that. The first is that, without a goal,

there's no happiness by definition, because happiness marks movement towards a valued goal. The next is, well, the higher the goal, the more value there is in the observation of movement towards it. And so out of that, you might ask, well, then what's the highest goal? Because why don't we go for that? Well, then you could say, well, you should do your best for the best. You might say, well, that's just to make me hedonically happy. It's like, well, wait a second. Cocaine will work for that, because India actually even activates this system. But what about tomorrow and next week and next month? And so the problem with hedonism as a goal

is, first of all, it vanishes when you're suffering, but even failing that, if you're serving yourself hedonically in the narrow sense, it's just about me and my pleasure. It's like, okay, which you? Today's you, tomorrow's you, next week's you, next month's you. What about next year? Five years from now, ten years from now, you're going to lead a hedonic and disillute life and what are you going to be? A burnt-out shell and a wreck,

a dismal wreck in ten years, because that's what will happen. And so, if you don't construe yourself as a community stretched out across time, then you're not even serving yourself. And if you don't construe yourself as a community stretched out across time, then you're not even serving yourself. And if you do construe yourself as a community stretched across time, then serving other people and serving yourself turn out to be exactly the same thing. I have a question for you as I was hearing you go through this and maybe I would have liked to maybe flesh this out in the book, but I didn't. Well, I'm also not a therapist, so probably best that I didn't try.

But how do you advise people on how much they should give in to that pleasure seeking? That short-term gratification, just for the, because it does seem to me that just for the sake of sanity, there has to be some balance there. It's very difficult to be perfect. Well, it's a mistake. And you know, one of the things I just did a seminar, I just did a course on the sermon on the Mount and Christ in one of the sections of that sermon, he says to people that you shouldn't lose your saltiness,

you shouldn't lose your saver. And you're the salt of the earth, and without that salt, everything loses its flavor. And salt is a preservative, and it's a spice, and that's often conceptualized that phrase, as referring to the salt of the earth, you know, the solid, reliable types who bear all burdens. But that is not what it means. I looked at a lot of different translations. I talked to a lot of people about that verse and really what it means is,

well, there should be some spiciness and unpredictability and humor about you. And there should be some play in the system, right? Because that's what stops you from just being the narrow, dead past letter of the law with no spirit. There should be some snake inside the tree, right? There should be some fire inside the bush. Those are all ways of construing that that are symbolically equivalent. There should be some dynamism in you, and a fair bit of that's associated with, well, enthusiasm, that's fun, but enthusiasm means to be imbued with the spirit of God.

That's why people like comedians so much, too, because that's fun, but enthusiasm means to be imbued with the spirit of God. That's why people like comedians so much too, because that's what they do. And so you have to leave in the duty with humor, and your book does a lovely job of that too, because your book, which is very conservative book in the best possible way, and is a call to duty and responsibility. But you constantly return to themes of both stoicism and humor, which are tied together in some sense. I was just in Newfoundland for the last week doing a documentary there. Newfoundlands are Ralph Rock and it's beautiful and harsh, and the people there are tough and resilient, man, because they had to be. And new fees have a great sense of humor and they're always making fun.

And that's a necessary leaven, right? That ability to deal with serious matters in a light touch. And it's something I'm trying to learn to do more and more, even in the most serious of conversations, you know, to, because if you're a master, you've got both. You've got that light touch and that sense of humor. You really see that in military people who've been through rough situations. I was going to say that the best kind of humor is dark, military humor. And it's, it is not for public consumption. It is. Yeah.

Because it's everything that it's supposed to be. It's offensive, and it's dark in ways you can't even comprehend. Yeah, unless you've been in that darkness. So you said here too, let's go for another quote here. Throughout your life, this is very practical advice too, and I think it's very wise from a therapeutic perspective. Throughout your life, you have people you look up to. Okay, so let's think about that. You look up.

What does that mean? Why up? Well, up is something that beckons from a distance. It's like a light on a hill, and we automatically assume that those who we admire are people we look up to, so that specifies a distance and a direction, and it's uphill, it's up toward a higher vista, let's say. So there are automatically people who elicit that spirit in you. You have noticed the way.

Might also imply that there's some sense of struggle required to get to that point, because it seems to go downhill than it is uphill. Yes, definitely, that's right. It's an uphill, it's easy to go downhill than it is uphill. Yes, definitely. That's right. It's an uphill, it's an uphill trek. And it's also implies judgment because if someone's above you, then they also serve as a judge or you serve as a judge

in relationship to them because you compare yourself unfavorably with them. And that can also inspire you to tear them down. That's really the story of Kane and Abel and that's a major story. You have noticed the way a teacher, parent, coworker, mentor, or friend interacts with others and you come away thinking, hmm, that behavior simply works better. They are respected, admired, and successful. And you find yourself wondering why that is. You do, if you're

a little bit humble instead of being envious, right? Because otherwise you think, that damn crook he just stole his position. And that's why he's got it. But if you're a bit humble, you might think, well, no, that guy looks successful. Maybe he knows something I don't. You are noticing attributes and character traits that are good and worth aspiring to. You are noticing attributes that make certain people more successful than others. You are noticing what a hero looks like. And in the process, you are discovering a path made up of desirable personality traits that helps you ascend in social hierarchies. That's Jacob's ladder, by then there are intermediary structures all the way up

and beings inhabiting those structures. And this isn't metaphysical. It's like if you find someone you admire, the reason you admire them is because they're higher up in that heavenly hierarchy, so to speak, than you are. And your whole nervous system tells you that. You're compelled to listen, you're compelled to pay attention by your own, by the action of your own unconscious mind You know, what's interesting about this point of identifying these heroes or or at least role models

You call them either one. I just thought heroes was a more compelling word to use for for the sake of writing it But what's interesting about it too is how pop culture actually plays a pretty important part of this because like there's plenty of people who simply don't have these good role models in their lives, and you have to acknowledge that. And so where are they supposed to turn? And it's maybe one of the reasons that it's so important to fight these cultural wars that you and I engage in on a fairly regular basis, that they become a serious part of our politics, which at the same time is necessary, but also deeply, deeply unfortunate. I do think the attack on pop culture from this progressive victimhood has reached a ceiling.

I think there's a serious backlash. You know, you look at movies like Top Gun, the recent one, Top Gun, but maybe like the highest grossing of all time. Absolutely phenomenal movie. really fun to watch. Why? Because it just had all of these classical virtues infused within it about relationships and about how you treat people and what the consequences are for treating people as such. These things speak to people in a deeper way. They can't necessarily articulate them, but they understand it when they see it. And there's these sort of radical minorities

that are very loud that want that changed. You know, they want something else to be on that hill. But people react against it because it's not true. But there's no truth to that. Yeah, well, yeah, and something cries out from inside of them. Then, and that can be appealed to by a storyteller. I saw the same thing in the Marvel Avengers series, is that there is a return to any wide range

of classical virtues, certainly brotherhood, a kind of a military ethos, sacrifice, a striving upward, certainly masculine virtues, the combination of the Hulk and Iron Man, for example. That's a, that's a, that's a, that there's a monstrous element to the Hulk, but he's a hero in a strange sense. And he's also the revitalizing force, fire in man, when he just about dies. And, and that's all the reason those movies were so necessary

and so attractive is because they are, in fact, addressing a radical conceptual void in the culture. And it's a void that, well, that you're addressing in your book, especially with your appeal, well, trifled appeal, let's say, to duty, responsibility, and humor at the same time, right? Which is a kind of stoicism in the face of catastrophe. Here's a model. So, for everyone who's listening and watching, you know, if you don't know what you should do with your life, you don't know who you should be. Sometimes you think about that is what career you should pursue, but here's another way of thinking about it. It's

kind of a seal that ethos that Congressman Crenshaw detailed out. Here's some things you could be. Those are my words. These are his. You'll be someone who's never late. You will be someone who takes care of his men, gets to know them, and puts their needs before yours. You'll be someone who does not quit in the face of adversity. You will be someone who takes charge and leads You will be someone who takes charge and leads when no one else will. You will be detailed oriented, which you discuss a lot in later sections of the book, always vigilant, attentive. You will be aggressive in your actions, but never lose your cool. You will have a sense of humor because sometimes that is all that can get you through the darkest hours. You will work hard and

perform even when no one is watching. You'll be creative and think outside the box even if it gets you in trouble. You're a rebel but not a mute near. You are a jack of all trades and master of none. And then you follow that a little later with this paragraph, these paragraphs. Be aggressive enough to kill the enemy, but immediately calm enough, not to scare little old lady. You'll be that man who's mentally tough enough to operate in horrific chaos,

then immediately transition to tranquility, all without mentally breaking. You will effectively transition from hyper-masculine aggressor to gentle caretaker. You'll be both a warrior and a gentleman. The qualities that made seal leaders great were rarely physical in nature. They listened. They empowered their team to be successful, carefully and trusting individuals with additional responsibility.

It's a real conservative ethos there. They highlighted good performance publicly and criticized bad performance privately. And so, well, those are lists of virtues, and maybe they're not the only list of possible virtues, probably not, but if you're lost and you don't know where to start, practicing, you also talk about this idea that,

this is nearest to Tilly and idea, we are our habits, We become what we practice. And if you're lost in your listing, you think, well, you'll find some things admirable, well, you can practice those things, and you can practice them locally and minimally in your own relationships. And you can start to get good at them. And as you get good at them, well, you get better at them, right? And then you can broaden out the scope of your action into a wider purview. And like, I just can't see how you can go wrong if you're miserable. By starting to work hard on making other people's lives better, especially if you do it to some

degree in secret, you know, without trumpeting it. Yeah, and then being able to deal with it when you're not necessarily rewarded for it right away. It's certainly true in politics. You know, what you were reading there was, a combination of, I think, some general advice, but also the warrior refus, which is a little bit more extreme, right? This ability to move from chaos to tranquility very quickly. It's always a phrase that stuck with me, maybe from buds instructors, as we were going through training, which is, they're always telling you who they want you to be. And it's a mission statement, right? It's an ethos. And there's a seal ethos, which is a little long to read, but it's incredible because it's telling you who you should be, not what you should do,

necessarily, not what outcomes you're looking for. And I tell this to corporations who have a mission statement on their website, they're going to be like the number one seller on the West Coast. Well, that's an outcome you might be looking for, but that's not telling you anything about who you want to be. And if you don't tell that to the team, they have nowhere to aim to it. They also can't switch outcomes when it's necessary. You know, so, because this is a big problem in life, imagine you're aiming for something and then something happens to make it impossible, or you find out that it's the wrong thing, because you're aiming in the wrong direction. So then what do you have to rely on to set you right? It's not your aim, obviously, but it might be your capacity to take new aim, and that's bloody well-dependent on your character. That's for sure. And so I don't think there

is a more fundamental aim than what you should be. And there is no better way of characterizing what you should be than that you should fortify your character. Also worth noting, the outcomes you want will come more easily if you're striving to be something that is a known good, that is a good quality, at least. And, you know, I hope this book, at least, details some ideas of what that better person might look like. And it is certainly untrue that I live up to every one of those points that I've just

discussed, but we're all sinners. But that's also part of the point of an ideal, right? I mean, the ideal should be beyond you or what the hell kind of ideal is that. If it's not an uphill walk, then there's nothing to do. And of course, you're going to be in sufficient relationship to that. You list some other attributes here too that all continue with here. And you want to be someone who could take a joke. That's an amazingly important thing, A. And it's been so interesting to me,

especially when I interacted with physically laboring men in particular, have very, very difficult jobs, and the military jobs can be paramount among those, is that that's a prime way that men size each other up. I think the question of whether or not you can take a joke is something like, are you humble enough to be able to rapidly and with good humor admit to your own stupidity? And in a fundamental sense, right? Because if you do something funny, people will call you on it. It's like, look at how useless you are.

And you go, yeah, yeah, yeah, look, I'm pretty, you think that's useless. Here's something else I did, do you ask for it? It was like twice as useless as that. And then people think, oh, well, he's not afraid, he's bigger than his flaws. Yeah, and he's secure.

You know, there's a sense of insecurity when you can't take a joke. And of course, the partner of that idea would be, tell good jokes, okay? Yeah, right. If you're gonna hit somebody for something, make sure it's at least 20% funny, and not just insulting,

and that requires judgment, it requires a bit of balance, and practice to be honest, timing, and just being in those moments. My sense of humor is perhaps a little too dry and sarcastic for some, especially outside the military, but you adapt and you learn and you take social cues and you will become better at this.

Shouldn't shy away from humor because it's hard to imagine anything that gets you through difficult times better than humor. Yeah, well that's a lovely thing if it was true isn't it that that there isn't anything better to get you through difficulties than humor. It'd be lovely if the world was actually set up that way. You want to be someone who can take a joke. You want to be productive. Yeah, the best definition I ever read of Christian charity, maybe just of charity in general. Generosity plus productivity. And look, people like to

stress the first, especially when they aren't the second. It's like, I'm generous, it's like, yeah, but you don't have anything. So that's, you know, now I'm not talking about the people who truly have nothing and are still willing to share. I'm talking about the people who pull down the productive while hyping their own generosity and forgetting that you'd be even better at being generous if you were also productive. So I hear from Socialists a lot that Jesus was a Socialist.

This is a common refrain from progressive left and the idea of being that. It's not true. That you should want to give charity. And I said, Jesus wasn't saying that you should take from others and make them give charity. That wasn't what this, he said,

you need to be generous with your belongings, with your time, with your labor. That's what he was saying. It was a generosity of the heart, not a demand on others. That's right. That's absolutely 100% correct. It's an injunction towards the highest form

of self-sacrifice, period, the end. Obviously, that's what the crucifixion means, the acceptance of that catastrophic death, all of that, what would you say, the tragedy of life, and then even a further radical acceptance of the necessity to confront hell, that self-sacrifice, that is not calling for moral actions on the part of others on your behalf.

Definitely, 100% not. And that self-sacrifice is called upon even if you're innocent. Right, so it's even more than that. You wanna have the ability to delay gratification. You know, that ties in with what we talked about earlier about being able to treat yourself as if you're a community across time because to delay gratification means to sacrifice the hedonism of the present to the security

and iterability of the future. And so that is a hallmark of maturity. That's also the ability to make sacrifices. That's why the sacrificial motif is stressed so hard in the Old Testament. You have to make sacrifices to what? Well, to whatever you value, or what's the highest value? Well, by definition, that's God.

So do you sacrifice to God? Well, if you sacrifice at all, you sacrifice to a God. Maybe you don't sacrifice. Well, then you're immature. Maybe you sacrifice to a lesser God. Then maybe you should get your act together. That's all tied together, integrally, with the notion of the ability

to delay gratification. That's why God tells Adam and Eve that they're condemned to work when they get thrown out of the Garden of Eden. It's like, well, now you have to work because you're aware of the future. Well, that's a call to sacrifice because work is a sacrificial act.

And then the question is, in service of what? And there's another chapter in the book called Do Something Hard. It's very pretty direct. And then it's straightforward there. But what we're getting at is that there's a problem in our society where we do our best to alleviate any kind of suffering. As if we feel that there's this utopia available to us

where suffering can be completely removed from our lives. But that's a false promise. That's a false God. It's impossible. And worse than that, it prevents that sacrifice that you're talking about. It prevents that uphill climb. Because people feel are told to feel that there's some sense of injustice. If you have to work harder than anything else or something else or something and they're blinded as to why, and look, maybe you do have to work harder than someone else to get to the same point.

Not saying that's impossible, but we all do. That's true for all of us, right? Because with our genetic inheritance, let's say some things come relatively easy to us and some things are virtually impossible and have to be strived for mightily. And I'm also not saying that some people aren't, what would you say condemned in some fundamental way in multiple dimensions simultaneously. I mean

I've had people in my clinical practice and met people in my private life who's who are burdened by so many difficulties simultaneously that it's almost incomprehensible. So I'm not saying there's something even handed about this, but all of us have to work very hard on certain fronts to be better and to do better. And it's also not obvious to me that that's actually, that's an unbearable price in some sense, but it's also the most fundamental, disciplining adventure. Right, and we know, I know, I don't know what it's like for you. I suspect it's the same, but when I look back in my life, I think when I'm thinking in a positive way, I think, well, that was really difficult, but it was worth it. And those two things are intagrally associated, right?

Because you don't generally say, well, that was easy, but it was worth it. You know, and so, well, that was easy, but it was worth it. And so what that seems to mean is that the difficulty is intrinsically bound up with the reward. And then, of course, we know that, right? Because how happy are you, even for someone else, when you see them overcome immense odds to attain something of value? Everyone stands up in cheers when that happens, you know?

That's every, that's every feel good family movie, every made. I think one of the hardest parts about this concept is choosing which suffering to engage in, like which challenge to embark upon. And I think it's a bigger problem for my generation, in particular, because we see everything on the internet. And we see how on the internet.

And we see how quickly some people made it, and then we feel behind, for 10 years older than I would say. And I wonder if that's what's behind the millennial habit of changing between jobs extremely rapidly. It's hard for people to commit to a certain place, because they're so unsure if this is worth it, if this, maybe they are engaging in the challenge, maybe they are working hard, but they're unsure if it's worth it. And I don't know how to give that kind of advice. I don't know what the right path is for you. What I can tell you is if you're giving 90%

instead of 110% that whatever it is you're engaged in now, the opportunities to do what you really want to do probably won't materialize. I've got another principle there too. If you're uncertain about what you're doing and you don't know if you should change course, set yourself the obligation to choose something more difficult before you change course. Because there's a moral hazard, right? It's like, well, am I am I unhappy or am I just useless? It's like, well, am I am I unhappy or am I just useless? It's like, well, a little of a column A and a little of a column B. Well, how do I fortify myself against my uselessness? I don't allow myself to switch course unless the challenge increases. And that works, you know, it's a it's a check against your own laziness and inertia and envy and resentment because you know then too you can say to yourself

Well, I I moved from there. I didn't fail. I didn't quit. I chose something more difficult and so I can have some Faith in my choice Maybe maybe I can have some faith in my choice because you accepted a bigger challenge We talk about quitting. This gets to another chapter called No Plan B. And what I lay out as a concept there is not necessarily that you shouldn't have Plan B defined as contingencies in your life, you should always have contingencies. But there's a mindset where that contingency becomes a crush.

And I talk about this in terms of seal training called buds, basic underwater demolition slash seal training. That's the famous training that everybody is familiar with with hell week and the boats on your heads running miles miles with you and you wet and sandy and coming in and out of the cold Pacific Ocean. That's buds. And if you go into buds with any other idea than you will die before you quit, then you will probably quit because the contingency is pretty obvious.

It's warm coffee and donuts. If you just go ring the bell three times and you say you've quit, that's your plan B. You will reduce your suffering to a minimum if you do that. But if that is truly an option for you in your head, then you'll probably take it, especially in the face of great adversity, which is training certainly is. Yeah.

And so, Plan B doesn't mean don't have a backup plan. It does mean have a mindset where you're gonna aim higher, where you're gonna aim for your fundamental purpose. And quitting is a tricky word, because really you know if you quit, changing courses, as you mentioned, it's not necessarily quitting. You know you want to be an artist and this has been your dream for God knows how long, but honestly you suck at it. And that your talent just cannot catch

up with your aspirations and that's a reality. And if you move to something else, is that make you a quitter? I'm not sure. I'm not so sure it does. Yeah, exactly. Well, then that's just learning from experience. You know, and I was thinking when you were talking about no plan B, I thought, oh, yes, well, that's marriage, you know, because the great psychologist Carl Jung, he thought, well, marriage has to be an unbreakable vow. Why? Because you have to be in 110%.

And if you have a backup plan, which is, well, if this doesn't work out, I can always find someone else. It's like, when adversity comes, which it will, because you're bound together with this person for life and life is adversity, then if you have this lurking way out, you're not going to do the work necessary to struggle through what you have to struggle through to continue to forge the relationship with your wife. And so we even know this, I would say clinically, in some real sense. So imagine there's two competing hypotheses.

One is, well, you have to learn to be married, and maybe you should give it a trial run. And so before you get married, which is this full 110% commitment with no plan B, you live together. Then you learn if you're compatible and if it works, you proceed to marriage. And in that case, if that theory is right, the people who live together before they got married would be less likely to be divorced. But they're not. They're more likely to be divorced. Really? Absolutely. And I think the reason for that is... Because they were testing it out the whole time.

Well, it's hard to say. Well, that's one possibility is that people more likely to get divorced are almost so more likely live together. So they just don't have as much respect for the conventions. But the other possibility is, well, what are you saying when you live with someone? What are you really saying? And I know what you're saying. I know what it is. It's like, I find you, acceptably attractive for now, but there's some real possibility that I could do better. And maybe you could too. And if you'll allow me the possibility that I can trade up, I'll allow you that possibility. And in the meantime, we'll just exploit each other

and see how it goes. It's like, well, how the hell are you going to forge a lasting relationship on that basis? You know, maybe it has to be something like, well, I'm pretty bloody thrilled to have you given all my flaws. And hopefully you feel the same way about me if I'm fortunate.

And let's go all in on this, like 100%. Knowing it's gonna be a catastrophe because life is a catastrophe, we're not gonna step outside. We're gonna make the best of this and we're gonna swear to do that because that'll give us the fortitude necessary to actually be desperate enough to make it work.

And so that's no plan B, man. And it doesn't mean you should die if you're, you know, if your, if your marriage happens to, well, if your partner dies, for example, it doesn't mean you're obligated to end your life or anything like that. But there's lots of games you can't play if you're not all in. It's a great point. On marriage, it's funny because It's a great point on marriage. It's funny because my wife, we took wedding photos on the Buds grinder, which is sort of the central location of this hellish training that happens

and inscribed them a big plaque on one of the walls there is a famous seal quote, the only easy day was yesterday. And it's speaking to a major truth, I think, in combat and the SEAL teams, which is don't rest on your laurels. Everything before you thought that was hard, just wait till what's next. And it's just mentally preparing you for it.

And sort of tongue in cheek, we took a wedding photo in front of that sign because it'd be replies the same way. Well, it does apply in the same way. I mean, the thing about being married to someone is that you face the worst of life with them. No, the best, perhaps, as well, and maybe that's dependent on how well you face the worst. But if you have a mistress, it's all parties and roses, you know, at least in principle, because you don't have to do anything difficult with that person.

You parse all the difficulty off to your poor wife who has to bear the responsibility of the catastrophe of the children's lives and the domestic economy and the fact that she has to live with you and all the things that go along with that. So she has all that burden and this other person is just a vacation. It's like, well, that's not a very good plan. And how in the world can you have to swear a felty to someone in order to abide by them when the catastrophes come to your door. And the thing is, man, the catastrophes are going to come to your door. And if you want to be alone and miserable when that

happens, then I guess you're going to find out what that's like. But if you, if you have that bond that won't break, then maybe you can guide each other through the darkest places. I'm going to read something else you said here, and this is very, very much worth stressing. Why duty and how is that associated with happiness? Well, maybe we find our happiness in pursuing our highest duty. I was reading Exodus, did a seminar in Exodus in Miami last week, and I had great scholars there to help me walk through it. And one of the things that's very

interesting about Exodus is that when God tells the pharaohonic tyrant to free the Israelites, he always uses the same phrase, and you only ever hear half the phrase. He has Moses say, let my people go. Now, you hear that phrase all the time, but you don't hear the second half of the phrase, which is repeated, I think nine times, one for each plague, perhaps 10 times, because there's actually 10 plagues.

If you count the devastation of the firstborns, that's the tenth plague. God has Moses say, let my people go, that they may serve me in the wilderness. And that's really interesting, because it's not and Dennis Prager pointed out that the word freedom isn't used once in the Exodus narrative. And it's because the freedom from tyranny isn't hedonism. It's not the blind pursuit of passions. It's the servitude to a higher purpose. Proper freedom is servitude to a higher purpose. Volunteerly accepted servitude to a higher purpose. Perhaps the highest purpose, which is what God calls the Israelites to.

And you say in your book here, purpose is meaning. That's a hell of a thing if it's true. Purpose is meaning, especially if you find purpose and duty and responsibility. And I think you genuinely do in sacrifice. I think that's true,'s true. Purpose is meaning, especially if you find purpose in duty and responsibility, and I think you genuinely do in sacrifice. I think that's true. Deeply true. Purpose is meaning, and meaning is happiness. We don't think about happiness enough, and when we do, we do not necessarily think about it properly. Happiness is neither joy nor entertainment. It is an ontological condition, fundamental to our existence as

humans. It's notable that when the founders drafted the Declaration of Independence, they listed up front three things to which we are all entitled, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. A little later you say, you need to understand that your purpose may be great in the eyes of the world, or it may be commonplace and seemingly, seemingly small. Your purpose might be your family, your children. It might be tutoring a child and changing their life. It might be the business you started. It might be cleaning up your block.

It might be in the help you give others. It might be in the help you give others. It might be in the example you set. And then you say, as John Adams said, our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. And so I loved the way that was that's all tied together, you know, that happiness is to be found in the pursuit of meaning and purpose and that's tied up with duty and responsibility, responsibility to others. I think that's fundamentally true. And I do think that's the way out of the deepest suffering. And then the idea that accepting that and striving for it

individually is the precondition for the survival of a constitutional state like the US. I think that's also, that's literally metaphorically, theologically and philosophically true as well as politically. Right, bringing the politics into this, it's fundamental, and it's part of the fundamental battles that we have right now. There's definitely some truth to the idea that if you're looking for that proper moral framework and that proper path toward happiness,

the Judeo-Christian tradition is a pretty good place to look for that. Even if you're not a believer, and many people are not, it's hard to deny that that same moral framework isn't used, that you use it on a daily basis to do good and to make yourself happy. And I think there's been a movement for a quite a long time, ever since Marx wrote his famous works that I think set off this revolution, or maybe it was since the French Revolution in 1789, maybe that's the real start of it, where this hubris takes over. This ingratitude for what is tried and true takes over, and the worship of reason starts to occur.

And it's the French Revolution, of course, and where they they tear down these these iconic Christian symbols and replace them with the with the idols of reason and worship that instead. Where worship our own ability to create our own utopia and it didn't turn out so well. And recently it happened again in 2020 where you get these autonomous zones that were created in places like Portland and Seattle, they called them Chaz. It really was in the end, it was all just a good laugh

for the rest of us as we watched this complete chaos unfold in front of us. But a chaos that was guided by this highly irrational, but also highly egotistical and narcissistic idea that you could find your own utopia and do away with any of the institutions and traditions that laid the framework and laid the groundwork for where you are today. And of course it ended in chaos and had to be, there was murder, the murders happened in there, the drug use. It was just complete nonsense.

And it's certainly not what the founders meant by the pursuit of happiness. I know we already talked about that. You have another quote here from John Paul II, a generation back in 1995, St. John Paul II reminded an audience of Americans at Camden Yards in Baltimore that the meeting of those necessary tasks and responsibilities is the very essence of our national character. Every generation of Americans needs to know that freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought. That's a lovely phrase that to have the right to do what we ought, right? So that's such an interesting twist on what freedom means, and it is very

much akin to this idea that God frees the Israelites so that they can serve the highest purpose in the desert. And you think, well, what in the wilderness? Well, the wilderness is the wilderness of the soul, obviously, and in despair and and catastrophe. That's the wilderness in exile. You want to serve what's highest in that situation, because that's the way through. That's the wilderness in exile. You want to serve what's highest in that situation. Because that's the way through. That's the Exodus, because Exodus means exhodos, which means way forward. The way forward out of the desert and out of the tyranny is by the adoption of the highest possible level of responsibility. And that's the right to adopt that responsibility is there for the site. What is it? Sign Quenon? Is that the right to adopt that responsibility, is there for the sign, what is it, sign

quenon, is that the right word? Of freedom, not the freedom to engage in hedonistic excess, which isn't the freedom at all, it's just self-destructive. You know, psychopaths say they don't learn from experience, they're really hard on their future selves, they have to move from locale to locale because everybody figures them out. Like they betray themselves just exactly and is badly with their hedonistic pursuit of power and licentiousness, they betray themselves just as badly as they betray everyone else. And the clinical literature on that is crystal clear.

And some of them are in politics. But the, now the, that, that, that quote's important because it gets to the idea of order of liberty, which is fundamental to the American sense of freedom. And I, I, I, I, I think we fleshed out pretty well at this point. Freedom is, freedom has a deeper meaning than just hedonistic pleasures and short-term gratification. And the American experiment is fundamental to this, this idea of order of liberty. I always point to the Statue of Liberty as some good symbolism for this, because she holds her torch,

which is supposed to illuminate the path towards freedom, but nobody really sees what she has in her other hand, which is a tabula on Sara. It's a book of law. And it's described on that book of law is our independent stage, July 4th, 1776. And that's interesting. I think that symbolism is interesting because one, it's

a book of law. So it is this idea that you can't really have freedom, unless there's some sense of law here. Because if you have anarchy, of course, the natural extreme there is anarchy. And hard to be truly free in anarchy, because there's a high there's a high likelihood that stronger people will just infringe on your rights and destroy you and end up in this sort of post-apocalyptic war

lords scenario. But authoritarianism is of course the other end of that in which you clearly don't have freedom either. And so ordered liberty in this social contract where people agree to live by some sense of moral standards. And then the question is where do we get those moral standards from? And I think that's why we put in God we trust those words on everything from our coins to our dollar bills to describe right above the chair of the speaker of the house. Oh no you know an ordered liberty, a wall garden is ordered liberty. That's a standard image of paradise. It has to be culture, that's the walls right and then it has to be freedom, that's the walls, right? And then it has to be freedom, natural freedom, even within, but it has to be balanced.

And it has to be balanced in the way that signifies the deepest possible meaning. So that's another thing that's very interesting psychologically is what's the phenomenology of getting the balance between order and chaos, right, or between law and freedom, let's say? And I know the answer to that. The answer is meaning, because that's what meaning signifies.

So when you're gripped by that sense of meaning, this is literally the case. When you're gripped by that sense of meaning, what your nervous system is signaling to you from the lowest depths is that you're somewhere secure enough so you don't have to be panicking, but on the edge enough so that you're maximally learning. And so you're benefiting from the walls and the rules, that's the predictability, but then you extend yourself out into the unknown. And when you do that enough, your interest intensifies, and your attention intensifies, and your engagement life intensifies.

And if you do that maximally, well, then you're on the line between Yen and Yang. Right? Hey, Jonathan Pazio told me something very interesting about this. It's so cool. It's just blew me into bits when I heard it. You know, when the Israelites are going out of Egypt into the desert after the Red Sea, God appears to them as a column of fire at night and a column of cloud during the day. And I asked Pazure what that meant because I couldn't quite figure it out. He said,

what's the same thing as the Yen in Yang. Is the calm of fire is light in the darkness, and the calm of cloud is darkness in the light. It's shade and the provision of what would you call protection from the sun when it's too bright, and then at night the fire is what lights your way. And so you have these two pillars. They're just like the two circles in the Yen in Yang. And if you're guided by the light at night and the darkness during the day, balanced in

proper proportions, then you're on God's path out of the tyranny and the desert. It just blew me away, because right there you have the union of the Taoist philosophy and the Judeo-Christian philosophy and a single dramatic image. It's absolutely spectacular. That was like one of a hundred things I learned at this seminar. But that's so cool, if you imagine, if that was really the cases that, you know, when you're suffering and miserable,

there's a potential pathway of meaning that beckons forward, even in the depths of that misery. And that's, if you can find that, it means, literally means you found the pathway out. And that's the pathway that's marked by the proper balance between predictability and unpredictability and law and spirit and structure and fire and tree and snake, all of those opposites.

They all line up and then that imbues you with the sense that your life is worth it, that existence is worth it, despite the suffering and the malevolence. It's phenomenal, man, it's phenomenal, literally phenomenal. Yeah. And it's the balance of politics too, or at least it should be.

I mean, what we should be arguing about when we argue in politics is this balance between chaos and order, and this balance between too much order and too much government control, based in this idea that the government can create this utopia for people. Based on this idea that the government might even know what utopia is for everyone.

And that's the amount of humorous involved in that presumption is enormous. And on the other side, this idea that, well, you should just let everyone be free and heednistic or anarchic in his sense. And of course, the balance is the right place for that. If I write another book, I think it would be about defining this philosophy of freedom and how we think about it and how best to obtain it. Maybe that would be a good direction to go, but fundamentally, that's the, and it's Thomas Sol's conflict of visions.

The unconstrained versus the constrained vision, this unconstrained vision being that there is no limit to what government can accomplish if we just do it together and we just want the nice things, okay? That's the unconstrained vision. And the constrained vision is a little bit more humility about what we think government can accomplish to make your life better, to help you pursue your own happiness.

And so the conservative angle on this is, have a sense of gratitude for institutions that existed before us. Know the foundations that we stand upon to be where we're at right now, and know that we wanna reach higher, and that it might be difficult to reach higher, but do not set a flame. The foundations beneath you just because you haven't reached that higher point yet, which I believe is what the left does. And the unfortunate reality on the on the far right would be they have begun to agree with the left that that any problem with an institution means it must be torn down immediately.

to agree with the left that any problem with an institution means it must be torn down immediately. You're seeing this with the military, because there's some woke problems in the military. It's true. I'm probably one of the people on the cutting edge of this trying to fight it and actually get examples of it, send them to the Department of Defense so that they know the problem from the top. But on the radical right, what they would want is to just defund the military. Defund our military. Go to defund the military because they're doing silly things and silly diversity and inclusion exercises for some soldiers, which are stupid, and they should go away. But does it mean you tear down the institution itself?

Similar with media. People see and have good reason to distrust certain media outlets. And they make mistakes. They construct narratives that are false. Does it mean you never trust anything again from any of these outlets? No, it means you should be skeptical, but there's a difference between being skeptical and the desire to completely tear down an institution. Because the problem that I see is that because people don't,

because people distrust some of these legacy media outlets, they now think that the truth must lie consequently in the deepest, darkest corners of the internet. And the most random of websites that you've never even heard of, where it's usually some, you know, 21 year old trying to cut their teeth and get some kind of sensationalist headline out there That's not true either Well, you see this odd this odd rising

Conceptual problem on the right and it's something I've been observing. It's made me concerned about It's one of the concerns. I have about about Trump's strategic approach. Let's say about Trump's strategic approach, let's say. You know, he appealed to a sense of resentment and a sense of desire for justice on the part of the excluded working class. I think the Democrats made a catastrophic strategic error throwing the working class to the wind. And I think the environmentalists

are doing an even worse job of that now. And Trump appealed to them, which is odd, because what was odd for a whole variety of reasons, but he did appeal to them. But the appeal has a danger, right? The upside is he's a man who is hypothetically standing for a movement towards justice and even inclusion for the working class.

But that can easily slide into an appeal to resentment, and the appeal to resentment then starts to become identical with the appeal to resentment that's made by the radical left. And it touches on the issues that you raised, which is, well, the institutions are so corrupt that we should just tear them down. You can't trust the politicians. You can't trust the media.

You can't trust the judiciary. It's like, okay, how are you different from the radical leftists that aren't you just, and aren't you by saying all that? Aren't you also saying that they're correct? And then I have another comment about that that maybe you'd like so we could go in two directions here. I mean, think a lot about Trump and his brand and what it means for the Republicans. And for me, Trump, part of Trump's attraction was that he was Trump, even in that literal sense, right? He's the guy at the top. He's not the sort of guy that a low level operative can screw around with. He's a guy that gets things done. He's not the guy that has things taken from him by fools. He's the guy who can see what's in front of his eyes. He's a guy

you can trust in, as a, what would you say, an icon of competence and stability in a sea of chaos. That's his brand. And then the election doesn't go so well. he loses. And then he says, well, it was stolen from me. And I think, well, every political system is subject to a certain degree of corruption. And the margins of victory are small. And so leaving that aside for a moment, it's like, I thought you were the guy that this sort of thing didn't happen to.

I thought you were the guy who couldn't have things stolen from am easily. I thought you were the guy who didn't happen to. I thought you were the guy who couldn't have things stolen from am easily. I thought you were the guy who didn't turn into a victim when he didn't get what he wanted. And so now that's the big story, right? The election fraud and that seems to be the basis of his hypothetical return to the political scene. And Jesus, that's pretty dismal story. And I think it's going to have an even more dismal outcome if it prevails. And what you said earlier about the claiming that the courts are corrupt, the system is corrupt. This is corrupt.

That's corrupt. Politicians are corrupt. You're completely right in that. It ends up justifying the left's position fundamentally because it becomes this sort of outcome-based philosophy as opposed to a process-based philosophy. The servicism is a process-based philosophy where we believe the point of being a politician is to adhere to and construct a governing system that allows us to disagree and then reach a point of consensus, the best possible way. That's the point. But the more that people believe that the point is really beating the other side and then twisting institutions in order to do so, well, it shows that you don't have any respect for precedent or unintended consequences. And that's our criticism of the left.

Because we're like, okay, you want to pack the Supreme Court. Well, how do you think that's going to go when we take over? So, by the end of the decade, we're going to have 30 Supreme Court justices. How's that going to go? That's a conservative way of thinking. Or you're only going to move the filibuster, then what do you think that's going to do when we take over? We're going to destroy you. And we didn't remove the filibuster because we didn't want you to destroy us. You know, and the election thinks this has been a problem with everybody. I mean, it seems this is a new, I don't know how new it is, but it got extreme obviously in the most recent election, but Stacey Abrams still claims she won,

the governorship of Georgia. And this tit for tat, this escalation ladder that's occurred on both sides is unbelievably toxic, and it's made them both look like the same people. I could list a whole number of ways by disposition where I think the radical right is the same as the radical up. And I'm not sure Trump is the face of the radical right, the way I define them. You know, it's almost like one of the problems is Trump is no longer leading because when

he was actually governing, he governed pretty mainstream conservative. There's this sort of mythology about him, like he was different, he really, he governed like a mainstream conservative, he was just very bold about it, which is why a lot of us, like me, say, like, love the way he got, he was, the bold about it, which is why a lot of us, like me, say, love the way he got, he was, the policy wise was excellent. Even on the foreign policy front, I thought he was excellent, but the radical right hates foreign policy.

I mean, just as a, as a, I think they would do away with the State Department if they could. They do not want any foreign policy. They're irrational and emotionally averse to any kind of American involvement in the world. They call it globalism. They call it, you know, America lasts. And I'm like, well, you know, last I checked,

I'm not sure that it's America first. If China and Russia get to form their own world order while we just sit back and take it. Now, and then the other similarities, I would say between the radical right and radical left, or these victimhood grievances, these grievance narratives, this appeal to that kind of grievance, this outcome-based philosophy.

Now, ironically, with the outcome-based philosophy, this win-it-all-cost philosophy, ironically, they don't want to win. You can see that over and over again. They'd rather die on a hill and engage in that kamikaze mission than win, because winning means some sense of responsibility to go. Yeah, yeah. And that is not something they want.

It's us versus them. It's this loyalty. It's this constant testing and heretic hunting within the movement. Again, person the left, person the radical right. On the right, we actually have words for it. We call them rhinos. You know, rhinos wanting. You know, words for it. We call them rhinos. You go rhino hunting.

You go to Eric Ritans, make this deplorable ad and it just utterly beclown himself by getting a gun and say, this is my rhino hunting gun, I'm gonna go hunt rhinos. Right, Republican name only. It's so ridiculous, you kind of have to laugh at it a little bit, but it's also created a toxicity that is really, really unfortunate. So let's return to this issue of criticism of the fundamental institutions,

because there's a lot of that going on. There's a huge cultural movement in the US and the West more broadly to make the case that the very principles upon which our great nations were founded are in and of themselves corrupt. That America, for example, is fundamentally a nation built on what would you call it, that built slavery into its system right from the onset. And should be understood primarily as an oppressive structure who is continuing to propagate itself across time. On the right, too, you have this problem, is if you're gonna criticize the institutions,

how far do you go down? And I look at the institutions, and I think, well, America was founded on the principles that were originated in no small part in Great Britain, and Great Britain fought for more than 150 years to end the slave trade, even though they had participated in it, like virtually every other society since the dawn of mankind. Somehow they decided it was wrong, and then they fought for more than a century, almost two centuries, to stop the slave trade.

And they did that because they're predicated, they're predicated, like the US on the idea that each individual is a divine, is a locus of divinity in some inalienable sense. And I'm not willing to criticize that proposition. I think that when the criticism of the institution goes that far, then well, what exactly are you throwing out here? Because you're very then, well, what exactly are you throwing out here? Because you're very claim that there's something wrong with slavery is predicated on acceptance of the proposition that each individual is made in the image of God. And that's an institutional claim.

And so is that corrupt? And if it's corrupt, well, then why isn't slavery okay? If it's just about power, if it's about some other principle. So the criticism has to go far enough, obviously, but it can't go too far. And we can't lose this as part of your reference to tradition and responsibility. We can't use lose sight of the balance between the law book, the statute of liberty is holding in the flame that's held aloft. And part of that is the tension, the proper tension between the people on the left and the right, you know, the right are going to say, well, don't forget about the walls and the left

is going to say, well, don't forget about the garden. It's like, hey, fair enough. And where should the walls be and how much should be garden? Well, we have to talk about that all the time. There used to be a little bit more agreement in America on what that looked like. There was a little bit more agreement on our foundations, our constitution, our Judeo-Christian heritage. And so there's very little agreement on that now. Maybe more than we realize. Look, I actually still am somewhat optimistic that maybe 70% of the public is still largely

on the same page and this very exhausted silent majority that has just tuned out from politics. I think it's probably more than that. I think it's probably 90%. That you just hardly need any radicals, especially if they're given free reign. You hardly need any radicals to destabilize the society. Plus, we've subsidized a whole number of generations of people who do nothing but criticize. And I would say those are the academics, particularly in the woke humanities.

It's like they're paid to do nothing but criticize. So it's no wonder that everything's under assault. Well, social media allows that very small number of people to congregate rather quickly, affirm each other's beliefs rather quickly. And then make it appear as though there is some movement happening when there's really no movement. And to mob and to mob everyone who dares disagree

in a very effective manner. Like I've watched, I bet I bet I know 250 people now who've been mobbed. So I've watched what happened. Well yeah, like yes. What's interesting too is I'll've been mobbed. For some, what happened? Well, yeah, like, yes. What's interesting, too, is I'll head out of my view. So I think the first video you posted with me, whenever we did our last podcast, you were mobbed quite

viciously online. And that was not from the left. That was from the radical right. And so this is from this mostly disenchanted young men, frankly, that are so incensed by the idea that you might be supportive of me, because they're mad at me for some reason. They're not even sure why.

It's actually one of the more hilarious things about my fight with this group of kind of populist types, is that if you actually ask them questions about it, they usually are deriving their hatred from some kind of conspiracy. Like I work for the World Economic Forum, or I voted for Red Flag Laws, which is again, as a trivote of the opposite.

I'm not part of the World Economic Forum. Obviously, they always default to these very strange conspiracies. What they, if they were telling the truth, what they would say is that Dan calls us out. Dan calls us out and we don't like that because fundamentally, we're more mafia so than we are 1776 and fundamentally

it's about loyalty. And you know what, if we want to move the goalpost a little bit and test your loyalty by seeing if you'll say the next thing that is more extreme and more provocative, then we'll test your loyalty and if you don't concede, well you're no longer with us. And worse, if you criticize us for it, well, we'll do everything we can to destroy you because you've got too much influence and we don't like that. So that's what's fundamentally behind that kind of mobbing on the radical, right? It's like it's a loyalty test more than anything else.

And what's frustrating about it is it's very little separating us policy-wise. Again, I think the foreign policy is probably the key thing. But other than that, it's difficult to find actual differences. Well, you told me that you've actually faced, this isn't the case for me. I've faced way more trouble from the radicals on the left than the radicals on the right. I've had my trouble with the radicals on the right. But, you know, there's no radicals on the right. I've had my trouble with the radicals on the right, but you know, there's no radicals on the right causing trouble in the universities, like zero. And so because mostly I was in the universities,

all the enmity that was devoted towards me, and everything that's undermined my profession and my ability to conduct my business has come from the radical left. But the radical writers come after me now, and then, but you told me that, etli, especially in more recent years, you've actually had more trouble from the radical right than from the radical left. Well, I don't know if it's more, it's not like I'm popular with the left. You know, in

part of it, it's like it's primary season. And this is just what happens. But I did tap into this. I tapped a nerve with some of these people. And a very, because they're threatens, they're threatens that what I want, which is the Reagan revolution of conservatism, is going to displace what they want, which is, I mean, it's hard to say who their hero is. Again, I don't even actually think it's Trump. Well, I think their hero is probably something like

a warrior type, you know, like at least in imagination. I think they fit that archetype. I know, I know, I know, I know, but that they seem to really hate any veterans who, because veterans tend to have a sense of loyalty to institutions and they hate that. And they, it's a strange thing, whatever the right-winged popular. So I can't actually call them the woke right. They're woke because there's so many similarities with the left, and I went over some of them,

but some of those similarities, again, are untethering from long-standing principles. Again, it's about winning in the moment, so that hyper-loyalty. It's contrairing is for the sake of being a contrarian. Okay, so that might be part of it, that might be part of it then, because if the moral virtue is to be derived from merely being contrary, right to the point of conspiratorial thinking, and then they run across someone like you who is capable of being contrary, but who isn't conspiratorial or contrary in an arbitrary sense.

And then you say, well, here's the limits to being contrary. Well, then that's annoying, because what that means is that you make a better moral case for your stalwart reasonableness than they can make for their arbitrary contraryness. And that arbitrary contraryness, that's just a kind of out, that's the kind of outrage that you already described. Just look how virtues I am because I'm so upset about this. I'm so upset I want to tear everything down. Well, how come you're, how are you different than a radical

Marxist been because they want the same bloody thing? And for the same moral reasons. And I'm unconvinced that many of the people that are loudest on this, they usually have a, when I say the people who am I reason. And I'm unconvinced that many of the people that allowed us on this, they usually have a, when I say the people who am I talking about, I'm talking about mostly, like, there are some politicians that fit this bill. Mostly I'm talking about influencers who run Instagram accounts or run Twitter accounts, maybe they're, maybe they write for some sort of fringy online website, whatever it is. Maybe there are Fox News hosts named Tucker Carlson.

In any case, their goal is contrainism for the sake of it. And the word outsider means everything to them. So they create this incentive structure because they know that the people respond to words like outsider for some of the reasons that we're talking about, right? create this incentive structure because they know that the people respond to words like outsider for some of the reasons that we're talking about, right? Because everybody who wants to go to Washington just talked about how corrupt Washington is. But that's what people have.

But that's what people have. That's what belief that it's terrible. And then it's just like self-fulfilling prophecy. It's a pretty bad situation that we're in. We've cast a lot of doubt on the integrity of the institution there by nature of this election process and how we talk about it. But I don't think that these people really believe a lot of the words that they're saying.

I believe that they're engaging in the incentive structure just to be contrarians because there is an incentive structure there, it's good for their business. Well, sometimes Dan, sometimes being a rebel is the most honorable thing you can do, but almost never. But sometimes it is because you're standing up against the mob, you know, and you said, as part of the seal code, or at least associated with it is that you can be a rebel, but not a mute near. It's like, so you're a rebel when you really need to be.

And the thing is, if you're a rebel, when you really need to be, and I think you are exactly that, then that casts a dim light on those who are just rebels all the time and who are bringing to themselves the moral virtue that's attendant on the stance of the rebel, right? Because that has to be done judiciously, like exceptionally judiciously, because most of the time, if you believe something that everyone doesn't leave, you're wrong most of the time. Sometimes everyone is wrong, but boy, that better not be the case very often.

And if it is the case, and you're the one who's opposing that, that's not a place you wanna be, even though that's a place you need to be. There is virtue in that. But so, I think the reason you're so annoying to these people is because as far as I can tell, I hate to compliment people because it's worse than an insult in some sense. But I do always get the sense talking to you that you're the real thing.

You've been fire hardened in a very interesting way. And so these rebel types who view themselves as saviors of the institutions or of the democracy, they'd like to have you in their camp, but they don't, because you're not that guy. And I think that's very galling, because it also cast them in an extremely dim light. And they feel betrayed

in one of the worst human motions you can feel is betrayal. Because they had this idea that you were just gonna, you were gonna be that 100% of the time, Rebel, it's a good way to put it. Yeah. And when I say, well, no, I mean, I used a ductive reasoning. I analyze the situation in front of me

and I say, look, this is worth your time fighting. And this isn't as true as you think. And telling somebody who holds a very strong belief about a given issue that it isn't as true as they think, or that the situation that they're angry about isn't as true as they think. I get this a lot about world economic formula. It's a terrible institution, but I have people like, is it worth 100% of your time? Is the conspiratorialness about me associated with this really worth your time? What effect does this thing have on you? And once people get wrapped up into it,

they get wrapped up into it. So I thought I would, if you don't mind, because we're coming to the end of this, I thought I might close with some real practical advice you gave. So hopefully some of the people who are listening to our conversation are people who are attracted to and compelled by and even in grossed in some sense in this more conspiratorial and destructive thinking that's characteristic of the radical right. And so, and so we might say to those

people, look, you have a concern with the fact that there is corruption and that it should be ameliorated. And you don't want to inflate your moral virtue in relationship to that because like, who do you think you are and how good do you think you are? You could do something instead that would be more productive. And so we could say first, political organizations at every level, so like business communities in small towns and churches and these low levellevel distributed but crucial social networks

are desperate to have people come and participate. So you could get involved civically and you should because without that immediate practical on-the-ground civic involvement the whole bloody game grinds to a halt. And then you say, all right, you want to do something political, young people. And listen to this young people. Politics, take it slow. Don't choose a side. Just keep learning. And take pride in having an open mind.

That's a humility, right, that allows for learning. You're young. You don't know anything. The world's really complicated. It's even more complicated than you think, even if you think it's complicated. But you could learn and you could get better. Your opinion on complex matters should come to you slowly over time within the context of new facts and experiences. And you put that in a broader context too,

which is attention to detail. So you imagine in your life, especially if you don't have a lot of authority, especially if you're not high up in a given hierarchy, a lot of your life is mundane detail. And you might think, well, what's the value of that? And the answer is, well, those details are more important than you think if you pay attention to them and so you say

Attention to detail is a mantra in the seal teams that is repeated over and over for good reason details matter In life and death situations You ever wonder why we're always doing inspections in the military? Why do we obsess over perfect creases, shiny shoes, and crisply made beds? It's simple, and this is a call to adventure and duty and to proper attention to the details of your life. If you can't get the small stuff right,

if it's beneath you, let's say, you won't get the big stuff right, we allow ourselves to sweat the small stuff, to pay attention to detail, because we strive to be beautiful and detail oriented. And so I thought that was extremely important. I've tried to do this to some degree in my books and my writings just tell people, you know, that you have us. Here's another thought I had down. You tell me what you think about this. So imagine you're trying to go out there and figure out what size dragon you should be

confronted. So how do you figure that out? How big are you? What challenge should you take on? Well, you want to take on a pretty big are you? What challenge should you take on? Well, you want to take on a pretty big challenge, a challenging challenge, but you don't want to get eaten and burnt.

And so how do you figure that out? Well, so imagine that you take on a dragon. Maybe it's the environmental apocalypse. And you see the environmental apocalypse looming in front of you. And it scares you so badly that you're paralyzed in fear and now you're willing to use compulsion, right? So power starts to attract you. I would say, you've just learned

that that dragon is too big for you because you're paralyzed and because now you're willing to turn to tyranny as an antidote to your terror. As opposed to legislation. As opposed to a persuasive strategy forward, which you would be able to formulate if you were the size of the apocalypse. And so then I would say, well, if you're terrified out of your mind by the looming catastrophe

and you're willing to turn to tyranny to deal with it, because it's an emergency, and we have to do what's necessary now, and we have to make everyone comply. Then that's evidence from your own nervous system that you've bitten off more than you can chew, and that you are possessed by pride as a consequence. And so then what would you do? It's like, I don't know exactly, Because when I was dealing with my clinical clients, and they were looking for a pathway forward,

we were always trying to figure out, well, what should you do next? And the answer was always, well, if it's too terrifying, you won't do it. So let's say you had challenge. Maybe you're socially anxious. You have to say, high to your, to the storekeeper in your corner store

And you have to shake his hand and you have to say your name So why don't you go do that try that this week and come back and tell me what happened and you come back and say well I was so afraid I couldn't do it. It's like okay, man. The dragon's too big How about you go into the store and you just say hi. Try that this week. And then you scale back, you see, you scale back on dragon size till you find one that you could beat and you could get some treasure from, but that doesn't paralyze you into immobility and force you to rely on compulsion. Well, this thing, the too big of a drag and pathology seems to be a pretty good,

I think, description of our politics, where nobody's interested, unless it's the big thing that's highly unattainable. On the left, that's a good one. It's climate change, right? It's fixing everybody's, fixing inequality. It's these big, enormous... Yeah. It's fixing everything now at all cost.

We have to fix everything right now at whatever cost. It's like, no. Otherwise we're in crisis. Right. And a key attribute of that is to exaggerate the crisis as much as possible. Well, and the moral hazard there is, well, look at me. I see this emergency and here it comes, and it's a big emergency. And wouldn't it be something if I had enough power

that, and I'm the only one who can do anything about it. So why don't you just see all the power to me? Because I'm gonna take emergency action. It's like, that's a bit of a moral hazard, don't you think? Isn't it just kind of a little bit too convenient that your moral claim happens to dovetail with your demand for what unlimited power? You know, Trudeau said in Canada, our prime minister, he said he admired the Chinese Communist

Party because they could take efficient action on the climate front. It's like, okay, fair enough, maybe you mean that. There's some prominent Americans who have said the same thing. It's terrifying. When you were talking about attention to detail and my advice for young people got me thinking I listened to last night to your podcast with the president of Hillsdale College. Oh, aren't, Larry aren't. Yeah.

And he was talking about how the students were demanding that he debate them about constitutional convention. And I loved how he walked through this. And it struck home with me because there is this tendency, again, because of this loyalty to this constant loyalty testing, this constant competition on the right of who's the most conservative. It's like, well, I want to secure the border. Well, I want to stop all immigration, so I'm more conservative.

And so there's this very strange shit for tat, and then you start to question, like, I'm sorry, what principal are you tethered to? And how does that make you more conservative? And so that's the story he was telling, basically. But he didn't say this, but it was pretty obviously true. And I know that the young people inflamed with being that the best conservative they can be, say, look, if you're a real conservative,

you wanna go real hard for it, you wanna a constitutional convention. And the way he dealt with that was saying, look, I'll debate you on this. But let it go after that. Well, that's not spent too much time on this because the truth is you don't really know what you're talking. They didn't say that.

I'm not quoting him, but it gets to my point of, by definition, you can't possibly know really what you're talking about. You just don't have the life experience for it. Well, that's why you're a student. Like, why the hell are you at the university if you're not a student? Like, are you a student or a professor?

If you're a student, then you don't know. And if you don't know, you don't know, then you're not a student. And you should be somewhere else. And the professors, too, is like, are you the guy who knows? At least something or not. Are you the equal of the students? Well, then why are they paying you? It's like, why is the hierarchy set up this way?

And the thing is, there is nothing more demoralizing you can tell young people than you already know everything you need to know now. I mean, Jesus, I don't want to know that about me. It's like, I know everything I need to know now. It's like, what the hell am I going to do for the next 20 years then? There's no horizon of ignorance to overcome. I do think there's a crisis of humility in our current generation.

And I do think it comes from exposure to the internet and exposure to quite a bit information and a total lack of gratitude and appreciation for elder wisdom. And look, there's an argument to be made that many say the baby-beaver generation really screwed some things up for us. But there's a counter-argument to be made that this is still the best time to be made that many say the baby-beer regeneration really screwed some things up for us. But there's a counterargument to be made that this is still the best time to be alive in

history. That's an important counterargument, the whole best time in history argument. And it's just just having a sense of humility about what state you're really in and what you really know. And there's a calming factor to that too, that's a preventative measure to outrage culture. Because if you do think you know everything and you're so self-righteous that you'll die for that belief, well, then you're going to be pretty mad about it. And you're going to tweet about it.

And you're going to chastise others. You don't necessarily agree with you or have some questions at least as to why you feel so strongly about this. And so that outrage also serves as a shortcut to argumentation. And that's pretty dangerous too. And on the right, what's happened is that shortcut is usually is usually a some kind of epithet like rhino, or I'm more conservative than you. So as opposed to an actual argument about say whether a constitutional convention makes sense to deliver or principles or makes sense for moving the ball forward on the field, which is a perfectly fine conversation to have, it just becomes about who's more conservative,

which is really just a form of insulting somebody in order to bypass strong debate. Well, I really enjoyed your book. Thank you, Jordan. It means a lot to me. And I should also point out for everybody who's listening is that, Dan, maybe you can say a few words about this. You have a youth conference every year. You want to just talk about that. Maybe we'll close with that because this is something you do that's quite unique and I think it's quite remarkable. And it's also fun. It's leavened with that sense of humor that we described earlier. And it's an invitation to young people to participate civically in a positive manner

that isn't a hallmark greeting card too. No, no, I love doing it. This is the third year doing it in October. You appeared virtually last year and answered questions for a lot of the students. Last year we also had Ben Shapiro. We had Michael Knowles, Megan Kelly came. This year is gonna be even more eclectic.

We're gonna have Dennis Prager, and we'll have Michael Knowles again. We'll have conservative comedians like JP Sears. We'll also have Randy Howzer plays a big country star. He'll play Saturday night, so I wanted to be fun. We have the Wolf of Wall Street, Jordan Belfork coming. He's gonna give you financial advice. It's just what I'm trying to create here is a conservative TED Talk series, more or

less, is every speaker, I work with them, I'm going to make sure we have a particular message to deliver. And this is different from most conservative events, because if you go to most conservative events, it's political speech after political speech. I'm not so sure you're getting a hugely different message with each one. They can be fun. It's a, those are, I'm just different from those things, right? I'm not criticizing, say, with CPAC.

Yeah, it's just, it's for a different reason. I want a liberal students to be able to walk into my event and come away thinking, those conservatives aren't as evil and crazy as I thought they were. I want that to be possible. And more importantly, I want, because it's majority conservators, students coming to this, I want them to walk away with better ideas and better ways to formulate their ideas. Because a lot of people these days,

gets to that, when I tell young kids, like don't make decisions too early, don't get to, if you're too quickly to an ideology, because what a lot of people end up doing is putting on a red jersey or a blue jersey, and then thinking, and then screaming, okay, wait, what do I say and why do I say it? Like after they put on the jersey and that's just not how it's supposed to work, right? It should take a while for you to get to the decision of what team you want to be on. And this is why the radical left radical

right have such similar traits because on the radical right they're wearing red jerseys, but they're basically Bernie bros. They have the same disposition, the same kind of animated thought processes, and that's a problem. So I want people to have a better idea of how to work through those things. This year I'm actually upping the age too. If you're older, you can just pay money and come to it. So I really want to open it up. It's really fun. And I hope you'll appear at least virtually this year as well. Yeah, well, I'd like to attend. I think, as I all definitely attend virtually, I'd like to attend in person at some point. I think I'm touring, but, but I do think too that on the conservative front, I mean, you're, you're an interesting figure because you're an adventurous guy and you're a creative

guy and you got a wicked sense sense humor and real sense of fun And you know that that adds that kind of libertarian spice in some sense to that conservative persona And so there's a nice balance of like of of of of Tree and snake in that in that combination and so and I think that really comes out in that youth convention If you're interested in these summits, it's crensha-youth-summit.com. That was the only thing I realized we loved out. Crensha-youth-summit.com. Well, thank you.

And like I said, I really appreciated your book. And also, the broader philosophical and motivational context, that needs to be addressed to you because the fundamental culture war isn't happening within the political domain. It's superordinate to that. And I see your work and the way you conduct yourself in the political domain as reflective of something much deeper and more profound and necessary. Hello, everyone. I would encourage you to continue listening to my conversation with my guest on dailywireplus.com.

Listening to my conversation with my guest on dailywireplus.com.