The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - A Dialogue with Tom Amarque

Episode Date: April 3, 2017

Tom Amarque is a German philosopher, writer, publisher, and podcaster. With his podcast 'Lateral Conversations' he seeks out - with the help of a wide range of guests - new developments and perspectives in philosophy, psychology, and spirituality, trying to overcome the pitfalls of what is known as postmodernity. He currently lives in Mallorca, Spain. Links Tom's Podcast: Lateral Conversations Tom's Webpage Self Authoring Programs Dr Peterson's Patreon Support Page

Welcome to the Jordan B. Peterson Podcast. You can support these podcasts by donating the amount of your choice to Dr. Peterson's Patreon account, which can be found by searching Jordan Peterson Patreon or by finding the link in the description. Dr. Peterson's self-development programs, self-authoring, can be found at self-authoring.com. This week's episode features Tom Amark, a German philosopher, writer, publisher, and podcaster. With his podcast, Lateral Conversations, he seeks out new developments and perspectives

in philosophy, psychology, and spirituality, trying to overcome the pitfalls of what is known as post-modernity. You can find them at taum-amark.de Dr. Peterson, thank you very much for joining me in this podcast. It's a pleasure. You know, identity politics and gender and the whole issue is about gender pronouns. There's a heated debate on that, but here in Europe and Germany as well as I noted in Canada and the United States. So you posted some videos about your refusal to use this gender pronouns and about the problems of political correctness. So can you and short elaborate a little bit on this? Well, I made videos back in September because there was a move afoot in Canada which is still

progressing forward to make the use of these pronouns derived from postmodern philosophy, like Z and Zer, and so on. Essentially mandatory if someone requests them under, and the failure to use them, let's say, is punishable by a variety of rather punitive measures, including potentially jail time, if the charges work their way thoroughly through the system. But at minimum, the possibility for being brought before the Human Rights Commission in Canada, which have become social justice tribunals, essentially, brought before the human rights tribunal, not the Human Rights Commission. And these are, I would say, kangaroo courts that have been set out outside the standard traditional legal system to enforce these more radical new Marxist policies that are becoming extraordinarily prevalent in the legislative system.

So I made some videos about that, and I also about the University of Toronto and other large institutions attempts to essentially diagnose their workers using the implicit association test, which is hypothetically a test of unconscious racial bias and then to re-educate them out of that unconscious racial bias. So those videos caused a lot of commotion to say the least. So that was back in September and I've been involved in a I suppose philosophical battle that has political implications ever since. So these are the political aspects but for more psychological or sociological perspective what are the main problems of the obligation to use those generally? Well, there's never been legislation in Canada. Our legal code

is basically derived from English common law although we also we have a province that uses the French civil code, and so there's a bit of a conflict between the legal traditions in Canada. But basically, it's English common law derived, and there's never been legislation in Canada that compels the use of certain language. I mean, there are restrictions on free speech like you can't incite someone to commit a crime, for example, and you can't make a direct threat to someone's safety or life, but there's never been legislation that actually demands use of a certain kind of language. And that's a border. See, I don't really care so much about the gender

pronoun issue. It just happened to be the, what would you call it, the issue where this sort of thing came to a point, but I don't believe that the government should be in the business of compelling speech on any issue. I think it's an unbelievably dangerous line to cross, and I especially object to crossing it in service of postmodernist ideology about the social culture determination of such things as so-called gender identity. I very much object to having that viewpoint instantiated in the law. So in the relevant legislation, not only are, is there, is there a, moves afoot to make certain kind of speech mandatory, but there's a, a view of human identity that's also being instantiated into the legislation and the surrounding policy and that, that view is extraordinarily philosophically paradoxical and, and poorly formulated.

and poorly formulated, at best it insists that sexual or sexual identity, gender identity, gender expression and sexual proclivity vary independently, which they most certainly do not even though there are exceptions. And that's being taught as dogma in schools, in secondary schools. Now, it's that idea is invading the secondary schools because of a conscious push on the part of the postmodern ideologues who are pushing this sort of thing. And they've actually even weakened that to some degree because you can make a coherent case

that gender identity, which is a phrase I'm not very fond of, what we'll use it for the time being, you can make a case that gender identity has sociocultural, that sociocultural phenomena play a role in determining gender identity and gender expression, of course, because that's merely fashion. But the legislation, the way it stands, now the wording of the surrounding policies insists A, that there's no biological determination of such things whatsoever, B, that it is actually more dependent on personal choice and whim, even than on socio-cultural determination. So they weren't even able to make a coherent case for pure sociocultural determination. Now to water that down so that such things as gender identity have now become something

that you can transform by mere fiat of your own accord at any place or time for any reason and that everyone is required to go along with that. Yeah, but where does a notion come that we don't have a biological base for our gender? Yeah, well, apparently, you know, the people who are pushing this, I had a debate with a lecture at the University of Toronto named Nicholas Matt on Canadian public TV, and he stated forthrightly that there's no biological differences between men and women and said that that was the scientific consensus of research conducted over the last four decades.

And of course, nothing could be farther from the truth than that. There are innumerable biological differences between men and women, even though there is substantial overlap, obviously, given that we're the same species. So, but there's no admitting that because to admit for any sort of biolog, it's not even biological determination, right? It's not the right way to think about it. It's biological influence. And I mean, if you put enough cultural pressure on a biological organism, you can transform it in all sorts of different ways. But you're still transforming it within a set of, you might describe as universal human attributes.

I mean, a good example of that. A good analogy is language. Human beings have a innate proclivity for language, whatever that happens to be. Whatever that innate proclivity is, we don't really understand it. And then, of course, the form that language takes, the specific form And then, of course, the form that language takes, the specific form, depends on the sociocultural surround. But the fact that language is created socioculturally doesn't mean that the proclivity for language doesn't have biological roots. The idea that there's no biological influence on human behavior is pretty much the same idea as there's human beings have no body, which is, of course, a completely absurd proposition.

We have two eyes. That's biologically determined. We are hungry. We're thirsty. We have sexual desires. We have defensive aggression. There's all sorts of inbuilt systems way low in the brain that determine and that shape our behavior.

So it's a crazy idea. And yes, I'm sorry. But I just had a thought. Do you think there is a relation between this denial of the realm of the physical body of those gender theories on the one side and on the other side this crazy aggressiveness which those people exhibit like I don't know if you have seen

this video of the German University in Markthelburg where there's supposed to be a gender conference and the guy was supposed to be having a lecture and there were like these radical leftist students who behaved more or less like Nazis. I just remember the idea of William Reich who observed these relations between suppression of sexuality and of body in a way and there's aggressiveness. So do you see the also relationship or is that something? Well, I think there's that's an interesting question. I think there's two things happening. One is that something? Well, I think there's, that's an interesting question. I think there's two things happening. One is that if the facts don't support your ideology, then all you have left is to enforce it,

is force or legal fiat. And that's what's happening in Canada, certainly, is the reason the postmodernists have taken the legal route is because they've failed on the scientific front. They've failed dread failed on the scientific front. They failed dreadfully on the scientific front. One of the best examples of that is that there's a very good literature now on personality differences between men and women, personality differences and differences in intrinsic interest. Large-scale studies have been carried out using psychometrically valid personality instruments. And they've looked cross-culturally at temperamental

and personality differences between men and women. And the social constructionist hypothesis would basically be that as a culture moves more towards egalitarian social policies, that the personality and interest differences between men and women would decrease. But that's actually the opposite of what happened. And so there are large scale population studies showing that the biggest personality differences between men and women in the world are manifested in the Scandinavian countries. And they've been increasing as their their policies have become more egalitarian.

The reason for that is that as you flatten out the socio-cultural differences between men and women, the genetic differences maximize. Because that's all that's left. The only source of variability that's left is biological. There's reason for them to use increasing, let's call it political pressure, to drive home their point because they can't do it any other way. And then there's another factor that I think is very interesting. This is more speculative, but I think it's relevant. We've been looking at political correctness

as a political ideology, trying to understand its psychometric structure, which means we've been examining how the set of ideas, whether the set of ideas loosely identified as politically correct, actually cohere in a regular manner. Because if they don't, then there's no such thing as a set of beliefs that you could describe as politically correct. So it's an empirical question. We analyzed a set of about 400 questions that were derived from media reports of political correctness and so forth, trying to establish the large network of potential relationships.

And we found that two tight sets of political ideas clumped together. So there's actually two forms of political correctness. One we described as political correct liberalism and the other as politically correct authoritarianism. But both of them are linked by a trait called agreeableness. Now agreeable people are compassionate and polite and women are more agreeable than men. And it looks like it's fundamentally the dimension of maternal behavior. Now the interesting thing about maternal behavior is that if you're operating on the maternal circuit, let's correct, is that any group that's tagged with the vulnerable descriptor, so any group hypothetically that has been oppressed or that is suffering

is instantly cast into the role of innocent infantile victim who can do no harm. And then anyone who is outside of that protected group is treated as a predator. And I think that people basically use the snake detection and eradication circuitry that deeply evolved part of our psyche to as the underlying metaphor for the predator. And then the logical response to the presence of a predator is to eliminate it, essentially, however, that might be necessary. And so you see that manifesting itself.

It's one of the things that manifests itself in these political displays. The idea that the opposition should just be shut down, terminated, never talk to, just eliminated. And obviously that's an unbelievably dangerous oversimplification. That's now, I mean that the opposition should just be shut down because the opposition actually has something to say that might be relevant.

Partly, all groups are not, all groups that are not thriving are not innocent victims. That's the first part. Everyone who is outside of that group is not automatically a predatory demon. I think it's common because the very people that deny the effects of biological determination are acting it out in their political action. So it's so yes, but black is the problem. Exactly. So this is one of those performative contradictions of modernism, I guess. But before we come to this, when you posted this video where you analyzed a little bit the game structure of the PC game, it reminded me a little bit about this old theory by Eric

Bern. I don't know if you know him games people play so he had this basic structure. You have a proposal for example you identify yourself as a victim this is would you work characterizing and then there's a trick and you can accuse and threat everybody who doesn't behave in the way you want them to. So what was it an inspiration for this? Think about yours. Well, I don't think it's hard to say

because I read Burn a Long Long Time ago. It's probably 30 years or something like that now. So you never know what influences you're thinking, but it wasn't a conscious influence. I've been thinking more in terms of political beliefs, especially over simplified ones, as compression algorithms. That's a way of thinking about it, because the world is a place that's so complex that it's really beyond human understanding. So what we do as a consequence of that is use simplifying heuristics to clump diverse things into homogenous groups so that we can treat them as if they're one thing. And that's very useful frequently, like it's useful to have a category of dog, for example,

which is you can think about that as a low resolution representation that averages the difference across all dogs into a single entity. Now, you know, the category dog is a good category unless you face a mean dog, in which case the category dog needs to be differentiated, it did to nice dogs and mean dogs. And you don't want to differentiate your categories more than is necessary for functional utility. But you do need to differentiate them enough so that you're not obscuring relevant differences. Now, that's a very tricky thing because what's relevant and what isn't is very, very difficult to calculate. But these political beliefs are hyper simplifying algorithms that can be applied not only to

not only to opinion. That's the thing that's interesting is that the simplifying algorithms actually structure perception itself. And so and that's been exaggerated to some degree I think by the rise of the internet. But if you see the world through your temperament, say, and that hasn't been modified by strenuous logical thought, then you're going to, your unconscious neural mechanisms are automatically going to highlight certain phenomena and suppress others. Make them truly make them invisible. And it has to happen that way because you need to make most of the world invisible

because otherwise you can't operate. But there's a danger in that in that now and then the things that you make invisible are the crucial phenomena. Now that's often why people make mistakes, but the problem is that it's happening at the level of perception. And so people, you imagine that you could present yourself with an unbiased field of facts.

You can't, but you could just imagine that that was possible. But then when you view the field of facts, your temperament highlights some and filters out others. And so, and then you might derive your conclusions based on those facts and feel that it's merely a consequence of logical operators, but it's not. It's the old problem, essentially, that Kant identified when he structured his critique of pure reason is that the facts don't array themselves in an unbiased manner, because you bring a perceptual structure to your field of apprehension.

And that a priori structures how the world manifests itself to you. Now you can change that, but it's hard. It takes effort and training and thought and all of those things. So that's very interesting because it leads us to another topic, namely postmodernism, that I mean there's no broad consens about what postmodernism or postmodernity is, but you can argue in a way that this thinking, which is in a way derived from P.A.G. and a lot of other guys, that this is like a discovery of postmodernism. You know, like, okay, we are constructing in this way by our temperament our own subjective

reality. That doesn't mean our objective reality, but our way how we perceive it. Sure. Yeah. So, go ahead. No, go ahead. So, no, and my question was because you are in a way critical about postmodernism. But in my understanding, you know, postmodernism is a worldview which emerged out of the horrors, so to speak, from modernity.

You know, like feminism and constructivism, all the good things that emerged in that time span of the last hundred years more or less. But then something happened. And Habermas spoke about those performative contradictions, but now what is happening, that those contradictions invade our life in a way which we have never known before, you know, like constructivism leads to fake news and feminism deconstructing itself. What is your take on that in real life? Well, first of all, I mean, I understand what the postmodernists, the postmodernists got caught up in a very complicated technical problem. And the technical problem is essentially

that there's a very large number of ways to categorize any set of entities, even a small set of entities. So, for example, if you wanted to categorize a set of six books, there's a virtually unlimited number of ways you could do it. You could do it by height, thickness, width, date of publication, alphabetically by author, alphabetically by name, what topic? Number of E's, number of A's, length of the average word, length of the average sentence, length of the average paragraph, etc. You can multiply the number of categorical schemes that you could apply to that set of entities by all the properties of the entities.

There's endless numbers of properties of the entities, especially when you also consider them as elements of a larger set. So there's the problem, and that's back to the problem of the infinite complexity of the world. Now, to deal with that, you have to impose an interpretive structure. And so the postmodernist sent it up thinking, well, if you have to impose an interpretive structure, who's to say which interpretive structure is correct? There's an endless number of them. Well, that's a big problem. I mean, it's also a problem that's bedeviled artificial intelligence. So for a long time, the artificial intelligence researchers assumed that perception was a relatively

straightforward matter, and that the problem that needed to be solved with regards to building, like, say, intelligent robots that could act autonomously was to determine how to act upon the entities that were perceived, but as they started to build machines that could perceive, they discovered, and this was back in the early 60s, that perception was such a complicated problem that it actually looked impossible. So what's happened, the way that's been solved essentially, is that robots, artificial intelligence entities, have had to become embodied and instantiated with specific purposes so that the problem of perception could be solved as a consequence of goal-directed action. So because what happens is that it's goal-directed action that sets the pragmatic frame for perception.

Perception is a tool used to attain certain goals. It's not a way of observing, dispassionately observing, an infinite set of variables. And so the postmodern is stumbled across that problem. It's, oh my God, there's an infinite set of interpretations. Well, then, for example, how can we be sure that any interpretation of a text is canonically correct? And if we can't be sure that we're interpreting a text in any canonically correct matter, how can we be sure that we're interpreting the world in a canonically correct matter? And the answer to that is, well, all interpretations are therefore equal, which is the next postmodernist move, or that all interpretations are arbitrary, or that all interpretations necessarily only serve political ends, and that's where the postmodernist see. What happened with postmodernism is that if you take the philosophy to the logical conclusion, you can't act. But you can't not act because then you die. So that's not an option. And so what's

happened is that postmodernism has been remained nested inside the neo-Marxism out of which it partially emerged. And with a postmodernistists default to Marxist presuppositions, value structures whenever they need to act. And they just cover that over with a wave of the hand. It's like, well, yeah, everything's an interpretation except the idea that there are oppressed and oppressors. That's true. That's a canonical truth. And now we can use that to guide our action. And we're not going to broke any criticism of that idea

because well, then we would be paralyzed into an action. So, and the fact that that's logically contradictory, we'll just wash that away with the hand waving movement that claims, well, logic is a tool of the oppressor anyways. So, it's an appallingly contradictory philosophy, but it doesn't matter because the postmodernists do claim that logic, they claim this forthrightly, Derrida in particular, that logic is part of fellow-go-centrism, and that it's just the way that the patriarchal

structure justifies its claims to power. So the postmodernists said that they dispensed with interpretation, but they kept a few basic axioms. This is also true of Foucault. It's like, well, everything's interpretation except power, power is real. And that's derived directly from the underlying Marxism. It's an appallingly in coherent philosophy and it's extraordinarily dangerous, but these people also build themselves little airtight enclave to keep inconvenient inconvenient contradictions from themselves or other people hidden and so then they act out their contradictions in the world. Interesting. Okay, so you you talked a lot about PNG and your lectures and the stages of development. So and I guess he stopped with a formal operational level of adult

development. So but I was wondering how much your worldview is informed by more differentiated view is informed by more differentiated stages models because there are like models who say okay there's there's like a pluralistic or even more post conventional or there are more post-conventional stages up to being and construct aware how we how we deal with narratives and and all that stuff how much are you influenced by those? Well I'll talk about PGA a little bit being in construct aware, how we deal with narratives and all that stuff. How much are you influenced by those? Well, I'll talk about PGA a little bit. So PGA believed that children basically entered the world with sets of reflexes at hand.

And that the reflexes were the precursors to a bootstrapping operation. So that brought the child into being as a fully fledged entity. And so in some sense, he viewed the world as a field of information that the child could interact with and absorb the information, model it, imitate it, both in an embodied sense and also then in a conceptual sense, embodiment first and then conceptualization. So for Piaget, the fundamental embodiment of a cup would be this, right? Because that's how you grip a cup and so a cup is something to grip. And then once you've got the grip-cup relationship, then you can conceptualize the grip relationship

and you can start talking about grip as an abstraction. But it's basically embodied. Okay, so now there's a problem with that. And the problem is that PSJA didn't give enough credence to the underlying psychophysiological structure of the brain in addition to the reflexes. He thought about the reflexes as a set of, say, motor tendencies that were built in or even sensory motor tendencies. But we know a lot more about the underlying biological substructure of the brain than we did when PHA was formulating his theories.

We know now that there are sets of hypothalamic circuits, essentially, but other subcortical circuits that we share with animals going way down the phylogenetic chain. Some of them as far back as crustaceans, so that's 350 million years. That would be the systems that keep track of dominance relationships, the serotonergic systems, which are extraordinarily ancient. And so, Piaget didn't understand, I don't think that the child who's constructing his or her world is constructing it within axiomatic games whose rules are already set to some degree. And one of those would be hunger, for example, in-built value structures like hunger or thirst, or temperature, discomfort, or pain. Those things are there to begin with.

Those aren't constructed. Now, those loose, you could call those, they have loose, low resolution categories, like things to potentially eat. I mean, the child, when the child is putting things in its mouth, which it does or mouthing things before it can even put things in its mouth, it's basically using an inbuilt schema to categorize the world. Things you can put in your mouth and things you can't. You can think about that as the lowest resolution

representation of the world, you know, so and then once you get things you can put in your mouth you can use your mouth and your tongue to start to differentiate those things into subcategories. Okay. Now, okay so that's the first thing. So P.S.Jet's theory suffers from a lack of grounding in these in a lack of consideration of these underlying deep biological structures that act as a priori, um, uh, categorizers of the world. And the world is categorized in terms of categorizers of the world and the world is categorized in terms of the thing and its implication for action Because that's the basic category structure. It's not it's not objective reality

There isn't an objective reality for human beings what there is is a pragmatic reality and the pragmatic reality is the functional utility of category structures. And it's pragmatic because we want to use our category structures to aid our survival and aid our reproduction. If you want to think about it from a Darwinian perspective, it's value laden from the beginning. Okay, so there's that. So that's a nice modification of PHA, and it's necessary because otherwise it just becomes arbitrary construction. But PGA was also smart enough to know that the construction project wasn't arbitrary and the reason for that was that it was social.

And so, for example, while you two, you and I are having this conversation, we're mutually constructing the category systems that we're using to structure the conversation because otherwise we wouldn't build to understand each other. And so you can't just arbitrarily construct the world. You have, in so far as you're living with other entities, you have to engage in a joint construction strategy because otherwise you're autistic, philosophic. And the the if you if you take the fact of the necessity of joint construction, then that imposes certain limitations on the category structures that are going to be imposed. And so that's partly a solution to the postmodern dilemma. It's like, okay, so I read

Dostoevsky. Well, how do I interpret it? Well, there's an infinite number of ways to interpret it. Okay, what if I want to interpret it and communicate with other people in a meaningful manner? Aha! Well, then all of a sudden all sorts of limitations on the interpretation start to emerge. So I have to interpret it in a language we both share to begin with.

And then I have to interpret it in ways that you're going to find relevant. So I'm not going to talk about the thickness of the pages, even though I could. You're going to look at me like there's something wrong with me because I've stepped outside of our implicitly shared axiomatic framework. And I'm off on some tangent that no sane human being would regard as relevant. The postmodernists don't understand that these shared networks of relevance are deeply biologically grounded

and socially instantiated, even though they should understand that and that puts a very unbelievably strict constraints on the interpretive framework. Now, the A.J. said one more thing, which was absolutely brilliant, and this is part of the reason I admire and his work so much, is that you can consider the construction of one of these shared frames of reference as a

game. Now, the games have certain rules, and one of them is that, for example, that we both have to want to play it. And the fact that we both have to want to play it means that the space of all possible games is radically limited. You're going to play a game that has utility for you. And I'm going to play one to play a game that has utility for me. And the intersection of those two desires is where we can play a joint game. And the space of all joint games is actually quite highly regulated. As you can tell, even by playing with a child, like there's instant rules that emerge when playing a game. And one of them is reciprocity.

The other is something like an equal chance to win. Another is that the one who's more skilled gets to win. And without having those expectations built into the game, then people will reject the game. And that's partly how PHA started to conceptualize the emergence of a genuine morality. Because a genuinely moral system consists the J started to conceptualize the emergence of a genuine morality. Because a genuinely moral system consists of a set of hierarchy arranged games that everyone

is playing voluntarily. And then he went one stage further, which was absolutely brilliant. He said, a set of playable games of that sort will beat another set of games that's imposed by force because the set of games that's imposed by force requires extra energy to enforce. So it's less efficient. It's like God it's brilliant, you know, because it gives you a way of conceptualizing the organization of moral systems as the emergent an a socially interactive space and describes the constraints on the emergence of those systems.

And you can see that echoed in animal behavior in the construction of animal dominance hierarchies, especially in complex animals like wolves or chimpanzees. There's a finite space within which the chimpanzees can organize playable games. And so friends toal, for example, has documented quite nicely. And so of other primatologists now that brute force on the part of the most dominant chimpanzee is an unstable dominance hierarchy game. The brute force chip gets torn apart by the subordinates. Very much like tyrants tend to die a painful death. It's a non-stable game across large scale spans of time.

It reminds me a little bit that there are quite a few posse modern theories and philosophies and what they have in common, like performatism and metamodernism and digging modernism and all that forms is that they are solving that problem of postmodernity, what you just laid out. So everything is being relative and you don't have a frame of reference, but the postmodern philosophies say, argue, well, you can create some new meaning, although you know you can't find any truth, you can create some truth together in a way. And this is like a similar argument. Right. Well, they're right. Well, okay, so that's that's part of the issue. But, but there's a there's a it's lacking the biology that that perspective because the other thing is is that the truth that you

the truth that you construct jointly Have to their their practical truths Roughly speaking. They have to be have to be able to act them out in the world in a manner that produces what they intend. And that intention is going to be grounded in desire. And so it isn't merely the idea that you and I have to agree on what the truth say, say you and I come up with a plan. Okay, so we've constructed the plan jointly.

But now we have to go implemented in the world. Any category scheme is a plan. That's the thing. Any category scheme is a plan. It's not a description of the objective entities in the world. That's a mistake. And it's a bad mistake because it actually rests, for example, it rests on a misapprehension of human perception from a scientific perspective, but also from a practical perspective. Okay, so you and I conjure up a plan, and that's a way of

viewing the world, and it's a value structure at the same time, because if it's a plan, it's oriented towards a name. And we're always going to be oriented towards a name, because otherwise, we're not going to be interested in the plan. And the reason for that from a neural science perspective is that interest only manifests itself in relationship to a goal. Roughly speaking, if it's if it's interest that you're going to act upon because the system that mediates interest is the dopamine energy system and it's grounded in the hypothalamus and it's an exploratory circuit. And so it kicks in when you specify a goal. exploratory circuit. And so it kicks in when you specify a goal. And then it's the system that produces the positive emotion

necessary to move towards the goal. And it's monitoring the environment to ensure that the category system that you're using to orient yourself towards the goal is functioning properly to move you towards that goal. So then we take the shared truth that we generated, and we'd act it out in the world. And if the action in the world invalidates the theory, then we have to return to the drawing board.

So it doesn't have to be correct the theory because it isn't going to be. It's never going to be 100% correct. It just has to be good enough to get you to where you're going. So for example, if you have a map of the world, which is what your category scheme is, it's not a representation of the objective world. It's not finally differentiated enough to be that. If it was, the map would be the same size as the territory. And then it would be unwieldy, because the map wouldn't provide a functional simplification of the territory. So you might say, well, is the map that you have of the territory correct or is it interpretation?

And the answer is, well, it's interpretation because you're leaving all sorts of things out. But it's correct in so far as if you use the map, you get to where you're going. So that's what the North American pragmatists realized at the end of the 19th century. They were brilliant, and that they knew that Darwinian theory was partly the key to the problem that the postmodernists were trying to solve, is that category schemes are subordinate to goal-directed action. And so, my category schemes are constrained by the necessity of formulating them in a shared social space with you.

But then, for example, one of the things that we will figure out, post-hawk, both you and I, is whether the category scheme that we applied to this conversation, not only served the function of our conversation, but when released into the world, finds an audience. And if it doesn't find an audience or people find it incomprehensible, then that's evidence that the category scheme that we use to structure our conversation was insufficient. Sure.

And there's no escaping from that because you can't step outside motivated frames. You can, to some degree, if you apply scientific methodology because you're kind of averaging across motivated frames then. But even then, you know, scientists don't spend time looking for generally speaking, looking for useless facts. They're generally motivated. So science allows you to jump outside of it to some degree. But, and this is something that I've been arguing about, say, with Sam Harris, who's one of the, one of the people who made atheism up, you know, kind of what intellectually hot topic again in America.

Even scientific truth is bounded by Darwinian considerations in some complex manner. I mean, Sam always used for the existence of objective facts. And I buy that. This was an interesting conversation. Your point basically was you can't arrive and not for me, and he said, well, you can. This was amazing.

Well, the reason you can't is because there's too many isses. That's the problem. The argument was that you can. Yeah, but he never says how. That's the problem. This is something we never got to in the conversation because Sam says, for example, while we should work to, um, to increase the wellbeing of human beings. It's like, okay, Sam, no problem.

I agree. Try measuring it. See how far you get because I know the measurement literature on wellbeing. And it's appalling. It's unbelievably oversimplified. It basically boils down to extroversion minus neuroticism, which is to say that happy people who aren't sad are happy. It's like, yeah, no kidding, but like that's not useful. And so the well-being problem becomes

unbelievably difficult technically because here's the set of problems. Okay, good for you. problems. Okay, good for you. All right, good for you when today, like this minute, this hour, today, this week, this month, those are not the same issues because cocaine is really good for you right now, but it's probably not good for you over a five-year period. And, you know, the thing about impulsive pleasure is that impulsive pleasures put before you the problem of time frame. Okay, so P.S.A. would say something like that. If it's good, it has to be good across the set of time frames. So it has to be good for you now in a way that's good for you in an hour, in a way that's

good for you for a day, etc. up to the limit of conceivable time frames. So that puts stringent restrictions on what constitutes good. And then we might also say, well, it has to be good for you now in a way that's good for you tomorrow and in a week and in a month, but that's also good for your family in a way that's good for the community, in a way that's good for the polity. And then I'll do it from that. And so then what you get is a stacking of ethical requirements. And once you stack up those ethical requirements, the number of games that you can play to meet those ethical requirements becomes extraordinarily limited. And it's my contention that it's the solutions to that set of stacked ethical games that's expressed in religious mythology that's evolved across

millennia millennia. So one example would be for and this is something the ancient Mesopotamians figured out when they were trying to figure out Who should be which deity should rule? Imagine that a bunch of tribes come together and they all have gods and the gods are representations of their moral structure come together and they all have gods and the gods are representations of their moral structure. They're more than that, but we'll call them that for now. Then the question becomes, whose God will rule, but even more practically, which God should rule? And so see this idea, emergent Mesopotamian mythology, which actually describes the battle of the gods for supremacy and the emergence of the of the Medagod. And their Medagod, the name of their Medagod was Marduk. And Marduk had eyes all the way around his head. So the Mesopotamians realized that visual attention was one of the highest virtues. And he could speak magic words. And so the Mesopotamians realized that the capacity for voluntary speech

associated with the ability to pay attention was what's in the realm of the highest virtues. And then Mardek was also the the God who would go out and fight the dragon of chaos. That was tire-mount. Who is one of them? Who is one of the ancient gods who was one of the two primal forces that created the world. She's actually the goddess of chaos. Her husband, Absu, was the god of order.

So there's order in chaos that produce everything. And chaos sometimes re-emerges to pull everything back down. So Mardek goes out to confront chaos voluntarily, and he cuts out into pieces and makes the world and that's a constructiveist idea So the idea is that the highest God should be the capacity to pay attention The ability to speak voluntarily and the willingness to confront chaos and generate order. Mm-hmm. Well that idea is implicitly That idea becomes implicit in Genesis because the opening lines of Genesis where Yahua creates the world. He creates it out of something called Tohu, Wabohu, or Teyam.

And that's derived from the word Tiamat. And so there's the idea and the Old Testament that it's the word of God that extracts order from chaos. And that's the word of God that extracts order from chaos. Then that's the mystery. Do you think we're facing now, like a chaotic time? I mean, when you look at the world, you have like a crazy person in the White House, you have nationalistic, populist movements everywhere, basically.

You have no great narratives how to describe our social reality. So, and everything, everybody tries to figure out what is going on. So, do you think this is like the beginning of the end of postmodernism, the chaos, rains and okay, well, how? I think that's exactly right. I mean, you see this in this strange idea that's become current among people obsessed within the internet that the current God is Keck, K-E-K, Egyptian God of chaos, who is a frog.

The frog is something that doesn't fit into categories, right? Because it transmutes as it grows, because it starts as a tadpole, but it's half in the water and half on the land. And so, yeah, we're in a time of extreme chaos. And we're trying to sort out whether we're going to degenerate further into chaos, whether we're going to, what would you call it, devolve into a state of strict order. That's the call from the right, I would say, or in my estimation, whether or not we're going to follow the pathway of logos, which is the pathway that's laid forward in the ideas that I just described.

Individuals have to confront the chaos with their own character and parse it back into habitable order. But that's a matter of individual characterological development in my estimation, and that's the alternative to the radical left-wing postmodernist chaos and the call to a return to, you know, restrictive Nationalistic identities that's characteristic of the call from the right. But yes, it's very dangerous time. Yes, isn't I mean the danger which may lie ahead maybe tremendous, you know, it's like a time where a whole world view collapses in a way and all the good things that, that, possibly that you started with, you know, I mentioned this, this,

an outtumbling down and you said this in your book, okay, that culture is always Describable with these two archetypes, the good king and the the the by the tyrant now and when I see postmodernism It's like okay feminism is eating its children now and and all yeah, well tie about is come back time out It's a female god, right in the Mesopotamian creation myth and she decides to eat her children. That's what happens. She's tired of all the noise they're making. So it's like a feminist critique of the patriarchy fundamentally. That's what's acted out at the Enumaylish.

But the problem is that chaos is just as destructive a force as order. The balance has to be struck between them. I believe that, well, the classic story when chaos reigns is that the hero has to be struck between them. And I believe that, well, the classic story when chaos reigns is that the hero goes to the underworld to rescue his father. And what that means is that you go back into your culture and you find the values that have been lying dormant and you revivify them.

And the value that's lying dormant in our culture is logos, essentially, because the idea that logos was the ultimate deity was criticized out of existence by the scientific revolution, roughly speaking, because the scientists confused and so did the religious people, the scientists and the religious people confused the idea of logos with a scientific description of a set of facts. And it's not. Well, one of the things that PSJ said was that when you look at the history of facts, you find that facts dissolve and change as time transforms. Now, it's kind of a view that Thomas Kuhn shared. Now, that's not exactly true because

some facts are more robust across time than others. Like the idea that things are made of protons is a pretty damn robust fact, and it's true across almost all possible frames of reference. So Piaget was wrong, and so was Cune, I think, because they failed to take into account that some sets of propositions are more robust to transformation than others. But be that as it may. There is still the case that sets of facts tend to transform. And so that it's difficult to say what fact is permanent. But Piaget performed a slight of hand in respect to that and he said, okay, the facts themselves might not be able to regard the regarded as permanent. But the process by which we derive the facts is permanent.

Okay, that's, and he thought of that as this exploratory tendency that that underlined the constructivist act. There's something in you that's constructing. Okay, well, that thing that's in you is a permanent fact. That's the logos. And the question is whether or the fundamental question, and this is something Christianity has been putting forward as the Cardinal question for thousands and thousands of years in Imagistic and implicit form

Are you going to identify it with the logos? That's the key to salvation Mm-hmm, and the logos is the thing that uses communication to balance order and chaos Okay, so for example in the in the classic dragon slayer type logos myths, the hero is the person who goes out beyond the confines of the community, comes into contact with the dangerous unknown, often given predatory form, because that's the circuit we use to conceptualize the unknown, and receives something of great value which is then distributed to the community. because that's the circuit we use to conceptualize the unknown and and receive something of great value which is then distributed to the community. Okay, that's that's the oldest that's one of the oldest stories of mankind. You can think

about as the central story of mankind. It's the it's the expression in narrative of our of our evolved being. And then there's a there's an adjunct to that story which is well sometimes the hero goes out in confronts chaos and generates order. But sometimes the hero goes out and confronts a too rigid order, demolishes it and recasts it. And so like the the Mesopotamian hero, for example, that's aarduk, is basically a St. George dragon slayer type. But Christ is more of a social reformer. Even though Yahweh in the Old Testament is more like Marduk, he's the force, the logos force that creates order out of chaos using the divine word. But when Christ emerges on the mythological scene, let's say, he opposes the tyrannical state and poses the notion that it's adherence to truth and to

spoken, it's adherence to spoken truth and orientation towards the highest good that's actually superordinate to the state. And that makes the state subordinate to the individual, to the logo settlement of the individual. And that's the fundamental proposition upon which Western culture base rests. If you confront radical leftists and you want to confront the problems of postmodernity and all we have spoken about,

so what is your solution to be that hero, to enact that logus and speak the truth? Or? Yeah, that's exactly it. Well, I could say to the pros modernists, and the identity politics people too, you can just take their argument, push it to its logical conclusion.

It's like you fractionate group identities until you come down to the level of the individual. See, the problem with group identity idea is that the group identity, so that's identity politics, is predicated on the idea that a group of people is a homogenous unit. But that's incorrect because you can take your homogenous unit, let's say black people, Okay, black people, homogenous unit. Well, it's a racist proposition to begin with that constitutes a homogenous unit. It's actually the key element in racism is to treat a group of individuals as if they're isomorphic using a single category structure.

It's the definition of racism. But anyways, forget about that for a moment. Okay, black people. All right, fine. Well, what about women and men? Okay, black women and men. Okay, well, what about middle class versus lower class? Okay, lower class black women and lower class black men and upper class black women and upper class black men?

It's like, well, okay, what about people with health problems? Okay, well, how many health problems? Okay, well, let's say there's 40 serious health problems. Okay, so now we've fractionated that. Okay, what about attractiveness? Okay, what about age? What about physical prowess? What about intelligence?

What about temperament? It's like, yeah, those are all relevant. Okay, where do we stop? That's easy. We stop at the level of the individual. Because you can't fractionate past that. And so if I'm going to take your identity seriously, I take all of the differentiation that characterizes you

and treat that all as relevant. Okay, how do I do that? I meet you as an individual. We meet logos to logos. Right. Right. And so I don't see any way out of that from a logical perspective, unless you're willing to say, no, there are certain categories that are canonical.

Well, what are those? Race. Okay, you want to say race is canonical, do you? Well, welcome to the world of white suprematism, because that's an inevitable consequence of that perspective. And you can see that plague itself out right now. If there are black people, there are white people. Sure. And first of all, you know, people play itself out right now. If there are black people, there are white people. Sure. And first of all, people aren't black and white. They're actually brown and tan. Really, I mean, you think about that.

You think about that. I know that seems, there are only, yeah, Jung wrote kind of a good deal about that. Well, about the representation of the uses of the word black and what. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, obviously it's an insane oversimplification. And so it's not like there isn't utility from time to time in considering people's ethnic origins. Sometimes you have to do that even if you're looking at the effects of drugs on biological systems.

So there's places, you know, there are situations where one categorical scheme is more appropriate than the other. But to you to to privilege to use the postmodernist phrase to privilege race above all other distinctions is To fall prey to the precise error that the postmodernists were complaining about. Okay, privilege rates. What does that mean? Oh, you're not privileging a bunch of other things. Well, what if they're relevant? It's like, yeah, what if they are? Because they are. So it's a crazy game. And part of the reason that the radicals are playing it is because it enables them to divide the world up into people they can hate and blame. And that means that they don't have to take responsibility for their own lives. They don't ever view themselves as, okay, you're a perpetrator. It's like, okay, that means I'm not. Well, that's a problem

because I'm a perpetrator too. All these Western postmodernists who are complaining about the unfair division of resources, they're already in the top 1%. Right? Because they live in North America, they live in Europe. So then they say, well, what about the 1% that's above me? It's like, yeah, well, why don't you clean up your own house first? It's true. One last question I had, the maps of meaning videos videos where they're already that popular before you started the political the professor against political correctness or just no there's been no there's been an absolute skyrocketing of of their popularity since since I released is well I think what happens is that people, people, look, I've been accused of over exaggerating the importance of the pronoun issue.

Okay, well, fundamentally, the pronoun issue is a tiny sideshow in a very massive game. I think the reason that it attracted attention when I opposed it was because I actually said there was something I wasn't going to do, no matter what. I wasn't going to use this language that the postmodernist created. And so I took something universal and large and made it concrete and specific. And that made it real. And it made it dramatic. I mean, I didn't intend that. What I intended was to clarify my thoughts on the matter, but also to state that there is no way I was going to use that language and to make it public, partly to clarify my own thinking, but also to

indicate that there was some opposition to this idea that I thought it was very sensible. Well, obviously that struck a nerve because I don't know, maybe 20 million people have watched on you to the some derivation of the consequences of that, perhaps more. All right. And so then people have come to my website to figure out what's going on. And then they watch something else that I'm doing and they think, oh, I see, there's more to the story than meets the eye, which is, of course, the case, and everyone knows it because if it was just a matter of preferred pronouns, this would have been a 15-minute

flurry of activity. No, I think so because the philosopher Cheech, he posted a similar five-minute video about the totalitarian character of political reckons, and it doesn't create that disturb. You know, so... Yeah, well, I thought for a long time about why it caused such a stir, and I do believe that, you see, I made an archetypal statement, but an archetypal statement has no meaning and lets it's confined to a particular time and space. See, I can give you an example of that.

This is a very strange example. But see, there's an archetypal reason why Christ was a carpenter in the Middle East. And the archetypal reason is because the logos is a transcendent reality. But it's so abstract that unless you embody it, it doesn't have sufficient meaning. Because it's not localized. And you can say that on the grandest of all possible scales. The logos is meaningless without embodiment. Right.

And so that's a key to the secret of being itself. So each of us is an embodiment of the logos and that's what makes it real. The logos is something of infinite power, but it has no reality until it's limited, strangely enough. It's like a genie. What genie has to live inside that little lamp, genie is the same word as genius. That's another manifestation of the idea of the logos. Well, I took a universal problem, which is, let's say, this postmodern chaos, that's one way of thinking about it. And I made it concrete.

I said, here is something I will not do. And that turned the political philosophical issue into a human drama. Exactly, this is what I was thinking. And it's kind of a personal question you don't have to answer it. But when I was thinking about this it's kind of a personal question you don't have to answer it, but when I was thinking about this, it seems to me that the attraction stems from the fact that there is a representation of an eternal fight.

You know, the hero against that bad tyrant, and that everybody recognizes that fight, because it's like so deep grounded and that you in a way and body that archetype would you well without that without you can be sure that when something receives wide attention that there's an archetypal story at the bottom of it because otherwise It's archetypal. Archetypal stories are always the stories that receive wide attention by their nature. I mean you you can see that. Go ahead. Did you choose that knowingly or was it something that happened? It's hard to know what you know and what you don't know. Okay. You know, be well. And I'm not.

I mean, so I can tell you what the phenomenology was. Sure. Like I can feel, and I have felt for several years this bubbling up of of of intense opposition to what's been happening in the political landscape. So for for example I just finished a book and in one of the chapters one of the chapters deals with the chapters called don't bother children when they're skateboarding. And it's actually a discussion of I would say to some degree the repression of exploratory masculinity. And so I was thinking hard about that for several months. And so that and but that's also an extension of things that I've been thinking about for decades.

And so that I've been working on this underlying set of ideas intensely for 30 years, for longer than 30 years. And so part of the reason that I was feeling so intensely opposed to what was happening politically was because of what I had done philosophically. Now the way that manifested itself was as an inarticulate frustration. And so I decided to make these videos. I thought, well, this is really bugging me. I better say what I have to say so that I can figure out what I have to say. And I thought

from a, let's call it marketing perspective, you know, that was more exploration. I have this , had this YouTube channel. By September, it had attracted about a million views. And that was nearly from what I had posted from my classes. And you know, that was also bubbling around in the back of my mind because I thought, wow, that, you know, that's, if I sold a million books, I'd be doing the same dance that football players do when they score a touchdown, you know, it's like that's a big deal. And now my lectures have been watched by a million, or they have been watched a million times, perhaps not by a million people. I thought, wow, that, that YouTube, that's a whole new phenomena. That's a good revolution. Because now the spoken word has as much reach

as the written word never happened before in human history. So that was bubbling around in the back of my mind too. And so I thought, all these things came together in this sense of frustration. And I thought, well, I'll make these videos. I got something to say. I'll throw them on YouTube and see what happens. And so then you say, well, did I know what I was doing? Well, I would say 70% yes and 30% no. And then, you know, I launched a product or maybe I could have known to the bottle and I launched it out onto an ocean and I thought, well, see what happens.

And of course, my supposition was very little will happen. People will watch it, they'll agree with me or not agree with me, but at least I'll have said my piece and I'll know more about that actually has two meanings to say. Then that will move me to whatever will be next. Well, you know. Sure. And then everybody will be elected to this. Yeah, it's absolutely crazy. It's crazy what's happened. But that also indicates that something deeper has been stirred. And one of the things that's so interesting about this, that one of the things that I

can really, it's really been difficult for me to wrap my head around. And there's a political party congress that's going to occur in Canada in a couple of months where the second major party in Canada, which is the conservative party, is going to elect a new leader. And I've been talking to a number of the people who are running for the leadership about observations that I've made. So this is something that's really cool. So about 90% of the people who watched my YouTube videos are men. And that was true even before the political issue hit. It tilts a little harder to man after the political issue hit, but even before it was about 85% man. And that's interesting because most psychology classes are radically female dominated.

So the fact that it was man between the ages of 18 and 40 that were watching, I was watching that and thinking, that's really interesting. I don't know what's going on exactly, But then I've been talking to more and more groups of people and most of the people who come out and see me are man. So I thought, that's interesting. There's something going on there. And then I've been talking to them about responsibility, not right, right. The opposite of rights, responsibility. And what's really cool is that their eyes light up. And you can see that if you're lecturing to an audience, when you make a point, people make a little like it's a little flash of recognition and you can see it.

It's like a surprise or it's a moment of insight. You can see it registering on people's faces. And the more I talk about responsibility to these groups of people, the more excited they get, the more excited they get, the more focused they get, and so, and so, and so, so one of the things that I've learned is that we've talked about rights and freedom for so long, that there's a counter, okay.

Yes. There's a counter requirement emerging, and the counter requirement is gonna look for two things. It's either gonna look for order,. It's either going to look for order. Or it's going to look for responsibility. If it looks for order, then we're in trouble. Because that means the rise of the state. But if it looks for responsibility, then that's great because responsibility produces flexible and benevolent order. Yes, and so I've been

Cagitating thorough writes a great deal about those things I'm just reading something from him and slavery and Massachusetts and some essays of them. It's exactly this you know Take responsibility and an act from that logos. Yeah, well, the thing about responsibility is people, okay, so let's say the fundamental question in life is how to regulate suffering. Suffering of others and their own suffering because your own suffering can make you nihilistic, suicidal, resentful, genocidal, murderous, all those terrible things. And you feel you have justification for it because of the suffering of yourself and other people. Because you can say, well, the suffering of the world is an indication that the world should not exist.

And that's a very powerful argument. It's actually the argument that Memphis Toffles makes to Gerthe, to a spouse in Gerthe's spouse. It's like Satan is the spirit that eternally says being is so corrupt, it should not exist. And that's a very powerful argument. That's why he's the eternal adversary. So the question is, and man, worse than neilism, it's neilism is only the first step. The next step is the destruction of things, including yourself. That's why the school, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's Well, non-being is one antidote. But another antidote is the voluntary acceptance of suffering. That's what it means. That's what the Christian symbol of raising the cross means.

It's like, accept it, accept it. See what happens if you accept it. And that's the same as accepting responsibility. Because accepting responsibility is the same as accepting responsibility for the alleviation of suffering. That's the same argument. Sorry, that the same argument from Jung, you said, okay, psychology is not there to make you happy, but to be able to deal with stress and conflict and suffering.

So, this is the thing. Right, psychological integration is there to prepare you for the dragon fight Mm-hmm. Or to the fight against the tyrant and the tyrant can be the dragon can be outside or inside It's both And the tyrant is outside and inside it's both But the purpose of psychological integration is to strengthen you for that battle Not to eliminate the battle because there's no eliminating the battle And so and so paradoxically the meaning in life that will help you overcome the suffering in life is to be found in

Adopting voluntary responsibility for the suffering that being entails So that's that's that's that's the implicit message in Christianity It it it's implicit because the story had to be formulated and acted out long before we could understand it explicitly. What we need to understand it explicitly, that's partly what Jung was trying to do. He was trying to make the story explicit. What does the story mean? The story means you need to voluntarily adopt responsibility for the suffering of being.

And in that, you'll find sufficient meaning in life so that that will justify life. And that's true. I believe this is possible. But this is only possible on a specific stage of development that you can integrate that, and that you can anticipate that dragon, you know, in any place in your life, you know, and not to run away, but to, you know, to embrace it, and to know that object, which in us, used the way to go. Yeah, well, it's very, you, well, you,

it's very difficult to get to a point where you can formulate that abstractly, and then use that abstract formulation as a guideline to your, to your action. But people do that, they do that performatively, right? I mean, admirable people do that performatively. And they're, they acted out. Okay.

And so you see kids, there are kids who are admired by other kids. And if you ask the kids why they're admired, they don't can't really tell you, they say, well, he's cool. Or, you know the kids why they're admired, they don't really tell you, they say, well, he's cool, or, you know, I really like the way he acts. It's very low resolution representation. But those kids are usually courageous and forthright and brave and tough. And so there's a there's an affinity. There's an affinity for the next stage of development that underlies admiration, right? That's hero worship roughly speaking and that that can occur

Mementically, which is of course one of P.S.A.'s ideas as well as that you act out things before you understand them And of course people do For millions of years we had no language Obviously we're acting things out before we understood them. Obviously, just like animals do. Now we need to understand as well, because we're past... How you did it with the videos you said that you acted that out to see what it's all about. So it's quite interesting. Well, and we're all engaged in a process of self-regulation.

Obviously, there's far more to us than we can understand. Otherwise, we would need a psychology or a sociology or any of the human sciences. So we're always trying to figure out what we're up to. So Dr. Petersen, what are your upcoming things? I have heard that you will publish a book. Yes, I have a book coming out in 2018 called 12 Rules for Life and Antidote to Chaos.

And it's actually a elaboration of some maxims that I put forth on a website called Quora response to a kid who asked what are the most valuable things that people should know. Okay. I made a list of about 40. And then I thought I would write an essay on each of them, but that would have turned into not a book by the library. So I honed it down to 12, and that's in the process of being edited and all of that.

Now I'm done writing it, except for maybe a polish. And I'm going to Harvard in for maybe yeah, except for maybe a polish and I'm going to Harvard in a week to talk there and I'm going to Oxford in June and and I'm going back on the Joe Rogan podcast in May and so Fantastic. This was the best podcast I've ever heard this Joe Rogan Yeah, I was we had a conversation. It was it was good. So I'm looking forward to the second one and Well, this one went pretty well Thank you. Okay. Yeah, I think so too. Yeah, I think I think we got a long way is with it. So that's really cool sure sure so

Dr. Pieces and thank you very much for taking the time. I know you are you have a full schedule so I wish you all the best best in your archetypal fight and in your endeavors. Yeah, well, thank you for helping me push it forward, you know. It was a good conversation and so I think it'll be helpful to people and was helpful to me because I got to clarify things a little bit more. Thank you for listening to episode 14 of the Jordan B. Peterson Podcast. This was a conversation with Tom Amark. Dr. Peterson's self-development programs can be found at self-authorin.com. Thank you.

Thank you.