The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - Dr. Oz - Jordan Peterson's Rules to Live By

Episode Date: October 22, 2018

In this exclusive, in-depth interview, author and clinical psychologist Dr. Jordan Peterson joins Dr. Oz to discuss how we can find meaning in our lives, challenge our thinking, and provide tactical w...ays we can reach our full potential. Take Dr. Peterson's full personality quiz: https://bit.ly/2yfmWSJ Dr. Peterson's book, 12 Rules for Life: https://bit.ly/2DSnDn1 Watch Dr. Jordan Peterson on The Dr. Oz Show: https://bit.ly/2E8V49B Subscribe to Dr. Oz's official YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/1QhiD

Transcript
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Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to the Jordan B. Peterson podcast. You can support these podcasts by donating to Dr. Peterson's Patreon, the link to which can little bit of the greatest intellectual phenomenon of our generation. Dr. Jordan Peterson's work as a clinical psychology professor at the University of Toronto has catapulted him to international fame with arguments that are challenging and changing the way we all think. He has captured the attention of millions, especially of young men, but some young women as well. And many of you, however, have never heard of them, but you will get to know them for the first time to this interview. Today he is here breaking down his provocative rules for life and the prescription
Starting point is 00:01:19 for success that will surprise many of you. Thank you for joining us. Thanks for the invitation. that will surprise many of you. Thank you for joining us. Thanks for the invitation. So it is an interesting group of insights that you offer us, and I can enter it in many ways, but let me just start with, for me, the props most obvious, which is, what is it that you're saying that's
Starting point is 00:01:36 resonating with so many people? What's, what is, are you scratching? I think there's probably two. We've had a long conversation in our culture about the necessity for self-esteem and happiness, and that's not what I'm talking about. I tell my audiences and my readers very straightforwardly that life is difficult and that there's a lot of suffering in it, and that you have to learn how to conduct yourself in the face of that. The problem with the pursuit of happiness is that when life storms
Starting point is 00:02:14 come along, happiness disappears and then you're left with nothing and so you need to pursue something that's deeper than happiness. And if happiness comes along, well then hooray for you. You don't want to despise it because it's fleeting, but it's much better to pursue things that are meaningful than things that make you happy. It's deeper, and it orients you more appropriately, and it keeps you centered in your own life.
Starting point is 00:02:38 It makes you more useful for your family and your community. So that's one thing. And it's a relief to young people to know that the baseline conditions of life are difficult, but that you can still prevail. So it's a funny message in some sense, or a strange message, because on the one hand, it's somewhat pessimistic.
Starting point is 00:02:54 Now I talk about suffering and malevolence also, but I also emphasize the fact that despite that being the base conditions of existence, people are tough enough to prevail. So that's one element of it. The other element is the necessity of responsibility. So a lot of what people find in life that provides them with a sustaining meaning
Starting point is 00:03:18 is a consequence of not the pursuit of rights or the pursuit of happiness or the development of self-esteem, but the adoption of responsibility. And the more responsibility, in some sense, the better. Responsibility for yourself, for making sure that your life lays itself out like it should. Responsibility for your family. Responsibility for the community.
Starting point is 00:03:40 It's people who take responsibility that are the ones that you admire. And that's the right pathway through life. That's where meaning is to be found. And I think that's probably the crucial issue, is that identification of a profound relationship between responsibility and meaning. And for many of the people that I'm talking with, it seems like that's the first time that that's been articulated for them. So speaking about responsibility and meaning and how to make sense of a world where so many people feel isolated, I'll come back to that. That seems so helpful. And yet you've been a lightning rod in many ways with a lot of harsh comments, especially
Starting point is 00:04:21 in the print media. What is it that your critics are arguing? Well, I got embroiled in some political dispute, I would say, in my home front in Canada, when our government introduced some legislation that purported to be about compassion, which, to my way of thinking, was about compulsion with regards to speech.
Starting point is 00:04:38 And so that's tangled me up. But I also think that people aren't necessarily that happy with a message of personal responsibility when they're really interested in the mechanics of social change. You know, my sense is that, well, life is unfair. Social structures are unfair. The arbitrary way that illness is distributed into the population is unfair. But despite that, the best level of analysis for rectifying that
Starting point is 00:05:07 in a practical sense, but also in the psychological sense, is the level of the individual. And so people who think in a collectivist manner or people who are playing identity politics games that insist that your group identity should be your hallmark, don't like what I have to say at all. And they have the reasons. I'm not a fan of identity politics types.
Starting point is 00:05:29 I think it's a very, very dangerous game, particularly because it makes us tribal. And tribal people are very dangerous. As we degenerate into our tribal groups, the probability of violence increases as far as I'm concerned. That's what the anthropological data would suggest as well. So the collectivist types don't like me very much. You have a clinical psychology.
Starting point is 00:05:53 It's a challenging profession. You chose it coming out of a rural town in central Canada. How did that advance your life journey? What are your life has inspired you to do what you do now? And especially to take some of the public steps now that are drawing criticism to you, which is always painful? Well, I've always been obsessed with totalitarianism and authoritarian governments, whether they're on the right
Starting point is 00:06:18 or the left. For years, decades, really. I spent almost all of my free time thinking about what happened in Nazi Germany and in Russia during the Soviet era, but also in Maoist China. There were other places as well, trying to understand how it was that we could have got off the rails so absolutely terribly. And I started studying that at the collectivist level, I would say, looking for political reasons or economic reasons. But as I investigated further, those levels of analysis became increasingly, they weren't providing the answers that I wanted. I think
Starting point is 00:07:01 partly because I was really interested in the notion that there's something to learn from what happens, say, a Nazi Germany. But there's something to learn at an individual level. That's my estimation. I don't think that there were innocent masses of people led astray by a single malevolent leader. I don't think the fundamental motivations for what happened in Nazi Germany were economic. And I don't think they fundamental motivations for what happened in Nazi Germany were economic. And I don't think they were in the Soviet Union either. As I read more and more about the situations, I realized that the proclivity of individuals to avoid responsibility and to lie, especially about their own lives and about their own experience,
Starting point is 00:07:40 were really the reasons that those systems went so far astray. Now, there were other reasons as well, but those were very important to me, because I also thought that the proper lesson in the aftermath of something like Auschwitz is, how do I ensure that I live a life such that if I was offered the opportunity to do something terrible by omission or by commission that I wouldn't do it, that I would have enough strength of character to resist. And so the lessons there for me were psychological. And that taught me an awful lot about, while the role of the individual, people like Victor
Starting point is 00:08:11 Frankel, for example, who wrote man's search for meaning, which is a perennial classic and a great book, insisted that a large part of the reason that Germany went off the rail so badly was because individual Germans were so willing to falsify their own experience. And Alexander Solzhenitsin who wrote the Gulaigarcapelego, the best document on what happened in the Soviet Union, also made exactly the same argument. So I got interested in the psychological causes of catastrophic governance, let's say. And that taught me a lot. It taught me about responsibility, about the responsibility of the sovereign individual.
Starting point is 00:08:46 And you know, we have an idea in our culture. It's a very powerful idea that each of us is of intrinsic value, but that associated with that value is a responsibility. And we have a responsibility, let's say, for our own integrity and for that of our families, but also of the state, because otherwise we wouldn't have the sovereign
Starting point is 00:09:04 responsibility and right to vote. Like our whole culture is predicated on the idea that each of us are sufficiently significant, so that we can entrust the destiny of the state itself to our decisions. It's like, well, I believe that, and I think that that's a correct idea, which is also why I think that systems that are based on that idea function so well, like our Western systems do. But that's a responsibility that has to be taken with dead seriousness, because it means that the good things that you do in your life are truly good and they matter. They ripple outward way more than you think, but so do the things you do that aren't good,
Starting point is 00:09:41 including the acts of deception that you engage in, perhaps above all else, which would include your willingness to evade responsibility to push it off to someone else or to play the short term against the long term. And so, well. I mean, they may end up in rapistil, because you're touching on a bunch of things, and I think they would all benefit us. So first of all, let me say, I appreciate that you actually put some of your thoughts down into two books that I've read. The latter is a best-selling book right now.
Starting point is 00:10:10 It's like number four, selling book in the country, 12 rules for life, and a dotto chaos. And I am curious how you put that all together. And let's start off with the basic, which is what's the goal of life? According to some of the more recent pieces you've been writing. I would say that the goal in life is to conduct yourself so that life improves, at least so that undue suffering is forced all, but more than that. So that's to constrain malevolence and suffering to the degree that that's possible. But then also to work for a positive improvement in things at every level. And that's how you should orient yourself.
Starting point is 00:10:49 So I saw some of your actually, it's in the book, in part as well, is to repeat actions that are worthy. Yes, total and worthy, that would be the thing. Noble and worthy, yes. So you sort of figure out what you should do and then you do it. Which I think that's an achievable goal. Most people would think that's lottery. That takes me to the next point,
Starting point is 00:11:05 which is what's the meaning of life. I think the meaning is to be founded that, and as you put things together, and as you take responsibility for things that meaning emerges from that. And so it emerges from that, the same way it emerges from a symphony, in some sense, because a symphony is composed of layers of patterns
Starting point is 00:11:23 and they're all working harmoniously together. And they speak directly to people of meaning, which is why people love music so much. I mean, every form of music does that. And it's a model for proper being, which is the placing of all the different levels of reality into harmonious relationship with one another. And meaning emerges out of that naturally. And meaning is actually an instinct. This is another thing that people don't understand,
Starting point is 00:11:46 and that's a case I've been able to make, because I know a fair bit about how the brain works. The twin hemispheres of your brain interact to guide you through life, which is a truism in some sense. You use your brain to guide you through life, but your brain does that fundamentally by instilling the proper
Starting point is 00:12:05 things that you do with a sense of meaning. And that meaning is it's not something that's just a surface, it's not on the surface of the world in some sense, it's the deepest instinct that you have. It's associated with a phenomenon that Russian neuropsychologist discovered back in the 1960s called the orienting reflex, and the orienting reflex is what orients you towards things of interest. And that happens unconsciously. And so if something happens around you that's of significance, often something you don't expect, say something somewhat chaotic,
Starting point is 00:12:35 you'll orient towards it and that attracts your attention. And then as you investigate what that is, that's associated with the sense of meaning. And if you put what you're investigating into proper order, then that meaning continues to reveal itself. So you can use meaning as a guide to proper being. But you have to also be very careful to conduct yourself, honestly, if you're going to do that,
Starting point is 00:12:54 because if you conduct yourself dishonestly, then you pathologize the mechanisms that orient you. So I'm thinking about in my own life, how I've tried to apply some of these insights. If I just try to be a little bit better today than I was yesterday, along the lines that you're speaking to, try to create that symphony. But you do better at it today and yesterday. And like everybody watching right now, not comparing myself to somebody else, but rather
Starting point is 00:13:20 comparing myself to the future version of me. Is that a rational way? That's rule four. That's rule four, right? That's rule four. I'll share yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today. Well, it's not only appropriate, but I think it's also practical. And one of the things about what I do, including my book,
Starting point is 00:13:36 is that I'm always trying to take high-level abstract truths, you know, fundamental truths, and to make them concrete and practical so that you can implement them in your day-to-day life because it's the connection between those abstractions and practical action that really cements their meaning and makes them comprehensible. And this idea of incremental improvement is a great one. You know, if there are things about your life that are bothering you, or things about the world that are bothering you, then you want to decompose them into solvable subproblems.
Starting point is 00:14:05 And if you have a child, this is the sort of thing that you do naturally, right? Because you want to set your child a challenge that's sufficiently challenging to push them forward in their development. So that makes it meaningful for the child. That puts them in the zone of proximal development, which is where proper maturation takes place.
Starting point is 00:14:24 They'll find that intrinsically meaningful. You want to make it challenging, but also with a reasonable probability of success. And there's an art to that. So you want to set yourself a task that's difficult, but not so difficult, you can't attain it. And then what happens is that you step up improvement across time incrementally. And there's also a certain element of humility to it, right, which is don't bite off more than you can chew. Don't set grandiose goals, but incremental improvement
Starting point is 00:14:49 will get you a tremendous distance. When you don't do that perfectly, and it's not easy to do, you suffer. And I run this stage off to the said that, you know, pain is inevitable. You're going to have pain. How much suffering comes in that pain? You actually have a fair amount of control over. Can't make it go away to your point. that you know, pain is inevitable. You're gonna have pain. How much suffering comes in that pain, you actually have a fair amount of control over.
Starting point is 00:15:07 Can't make it go away to your point. It's part of life. Your thoughts around suffering, that you began to touch on, have been incredibly provocative for a lot of people. Wildly debated. I think in part, because in our modern world, we don't like to acknowledge that kind of suffering
Starting point is 00:15:23 can afflict us. We think something's wrong with us if we acknowledge that kind of suffering can afflict us. We think something is wrong with us if we have that kind of suffering. So how is it productive to focus on suffering the way you do? Well there is something wrong with us if we're suffering. And there's something wrong with the world because it's an indication that things aren't set in the order they hypothetically could be set if there's undue suffering. And so that is a call to action.
Starting point is 00:15:43 And it's a painful call to action. You know, but it's a universal problem. Suffering is built into the structure of existence in some sense. And the fact that your suffering doesn't mean that there's something isolated about you that's at fault, right, which is, which is an important, this is why the doctrine of original sin was actually quite useful. Because everyone makes mistakes and everyone falls short of the glory of God's legacy. It's a rational sin if you don't mind and this is, again, all the monotheistic religious here, but it exists in other traditions as well. Well, it's a way of universalizing everyone's felt sense that they don't live up to the responsibility properly because you're not all you could be.
Starting point is 00:16:25 And unless you understand that that's everyone's problem. Every single person has that issue. Then it's easy to become discouraged and crushed by that. And the major advantage, I think, to making a case very strongly that one of the fundamental realities of life is its suffering, is that it's actually a relief to people to hear that, because they suspect it while they know it. But no one's forthright about it, it's like, yeah, life is suffering.
Starting point is 00:16:53 Okay, fine. So where does that leave us? Well, here's where it leaves us. It turns out that even though life is suffering, if you're sufficiently courageous and forthright and honest, let's say, in your approach and you forthright and honest, let's say, in your approach, and you don't shy away. What you'll find is that there's something within you that will respond to the challenge of suffering
Starting point is 00:17:13 with the development of ability that will transcend the suffering. So the pessimism is, yeah, well, life is right with problems at every level. But the upside is, if you turn and confront that voluntarily, that you'll find something in yourself that can develop and master that. And so the optimism is nested in the pessimism.
Starting point is 00:17:36 And that's extremely helpful to people, especially people who are struggling because they think, oh my god, life is so difficult. I don't know if I can stand this. There must be something wrong with me. Does anybody else feel this way? And you can say yes. Everyone feels that way at some time. But that's, and it is as bad as you think, but you're more than you think you are. You're more than you think you are. And what I really like about this too is it's very much in keeping with the
Starting point is 00:17:59 clinical data. So for example, what you do as a clinician, as a clinical psychologist, as a psychiatrist, as any mental health professional who's well trained is if people are afraid of something, afraid of something that's standing in their way as an obstacle, like maybe you're trying to develop your career and you're afraid of public speaking. Well, I could try to calm you down about your fear and protect you from the challenge that would be associated with public speaking, say, well, you never have to do that. Or I could say, no, no, look, you have to learn to present yourself more effectively in public if you're going to develop your career.
Starting point is 00:18:36 And you're afraid of it. So let's break down what you're afraid of into 10 steps or 20 steps until we can find a step that's small enough so that you can actually master it. Let's assume that with three years of diligent practice that you could become a competent public speaker, at least one that isn't terrified, and with five years you could become an expert. And let's decide how relevant that is to your future prosperity and thriving. And then let's assume that if you break it down properly and take it on step by step,
Starting point is 00:19:03 in this incremental way that we discussed, that you'll actually master every single bit of it. And the thing that's cool about that is all the clinical evidence shows it works. And not only that, that's actually how you learn in life. When you bring a child to the playground and the child is apprehensive about making new friends, you say, okay, well, look, kiddo, and stick around me for a minute or two, and just watch what's going on. It's like, and the child will calm down, and say, okay, no, go five feet away.
Starting point is 00:19:31 Just go out there a little bit, and just see how it goes. And stay out there as long as you can, and if you need to come back for a hug, then no problem. It's like, so then the child can go out 10 feet, and they come back, you say, okay, well, now, you know, maybe just go over there, and watch those kids and
Starting point is 00:19:45 the child to go out and then come back. And so that's it, it's the child's going out to where they're afraid, seeing that they can master it and then coming back. So this seems so self-evident that I'm left wondering, well, did people know those 100 years ago, this issue of taking responsibility, which I think is part of the pain that people feel, because that's not something we expect a lot. People don't realize that it seems to help a lot in most scenarios. If you sort of own it, because you control your destiny. So, there's this wisdom we had and forgot. You spoke about original
Starting point is 00:20:14 sin. These are stories that are thousands of years old, Adam and Eve, right? These are constructs that archetypal dust are fundamental to who our species is, and somehow it seems so slip from us. Well some you know knowledge is coded in different ways, so a good example someone who's a good example acts out for you how you should be and a good story portrays that dramatically but an articulated representation tells you exactly why it explains it and so some of this needs to be more articulated than it has been, because we've become detached in some sense from our underlying examples and our stories, partly because they've been criticized so much.
Starting point is 00:20:54 So, but I think we're at a point where developing this more articulated knowledge is necessary. Just so I make sure everyone's clear on this, what I'm taking away is, it's a bouncing act between the rights you deserve and the responsibility that you must take. And if that balances off in society and we do seem to folks a lot on people's rights, which is instinctive to who we are. But we often don't match it up with the response that comes along. Right. Which is exactly why I think that what I'm talking about
Starting point is 00:21:25 is falling on with a set of ears is because you actually cannot have a prolonged discussion of rights without having an equally prolonged discussion of responsibilities for a variety of reasons. First of all, the actual reason that you have rights is so that you can discharge your responsibilities. It's not the other way around. It's like you're granted rights by everyone around you,
Starting point is 00:21:46 or it's not granted exactly. It's part of the purpose of your rights in some sense is so that you can be given an autonomous space that's protected in which you can manifest what's necessary about you in the world that's a contribution to it. So I have to leave a space for you so that you can make your contribution for yourself, so you can take care of yourself, so that you can shoulder responsibility for your family, and so that you can serve the community the best way that you can.
Starting point is 00:22:19 And I don't want to set up a society that will interfere with that. But then, and then there's the association that we already talked about between responsibility and meaning, which is absolutely crucial. And so, the responsibility element is more important than the rights elements as far as I'm concerned, or it certainly is at this point in time. So, people know this. They instinctively know it. And yet, the role of the victim seems, which is a painful role to have,
Starting point is 00:22:48 because something bad happened to you to be a victim. But it's something that society struggles with. So what about people who feel like they're a victim? They're right. They're victimizers, too. Like everybody is a strange mixture of victim and victimizer. Lots of terrible things happen to people that aren't justifiable in some sense. You know, illness strikes people randomly.
Starting point is 00:23:13 I mean, not entirely randomly, obviously, but there's a large random element in it. Where you're thrown into existence as a consequence of your birth. That's existentialist, especially the 1950s, talked about all that all the time. And they talked about it as thrownness, that you're sort of thrown into reality with your particular set of predispositions and weaknesses. And then there's going to be times in your life where things twist in a manner that's unfair to you, that you're not getting your just desserts. But that goes along with all sorts of unequally distributed privileges as well.
Starting point is 00:23:50 And so that's the arbitrary nature of existence. But you can't allow those sorts of things to define you because it's not that useful strategically. When you're playing a card game, you're dealt a hand of cards. Well, what do you do? You play that hand the best you can. Why? Because all the hands are equal?
Starting point is 00:24:15 No. Because you don't have a better strategy than playing the hand that you're dealt the best you can. And that doesn't even mean it'll be a winning strategy. But because people don't always win, sometimes we lose and sometimes we lose painfully and sometimes we lose painfully and unjustly. That's not the point. The point is you don't have a better strategy and neither does anyone else. And then it's also not so obvious how privilege and victimization are distributed. You know, if you take someone who's doing quite well in life
Starting point is 00:24:46 and you scratch underneath the surface, you generally don't have to scratch very far until you find one or more profound tragedies of the past or perhaps of the present. No matter how well protected you are in the world, you're still subject to illness, you're still subject to aging, you're still subject to the dissolution of your relationships, the death of your dreams, death itself.
Starting point is 00:25:10 So vulnerability is built into the structure of existence. Now if you start to regard yourself as a hapless victim or even worse, an unfairly victimized victim, well then things go very badly sideways for you. It's not a good strategy. You end up resentful, you end up angry, you end up vengeful, you end up hostile. And that's just the beginning things can get far more out of hand than that. So strategically it's a bad game. It's better to take responsibility for the hand that you've been dealt. There's no better, you've got no better protection in life than doing that. This is where a lot of folks in the modern west get unsettled,
Starting point is 00:25:49 because we have been brought up to believe that we need to be compassionate to each other. And you point out that sometimes that compassion, I don't know if it encourages weakness, or it's another word for weakness. And I love if you could open that up one because it is the kind of discussion that gets folks really unsettled. A feeling, feeling sorry for someone is not a moral virtue. You know, morality is much more complex than mere reflexive empathy. So I would say, when is reflexive empathy useful? That's easy. You're a mother. Your child is under six months old. Reflexive
Starting point is 00:26:28 empathy is the right reaction, and I think that that's why it's such a powerful motivating force as well. A child under six months old is always right. The child is in distress, always right. You're wrong, the child's right, no matter what is, why the child is distressed, it's your problem, and you should do something about it, and it's not the infant's right no matter what is why the child is distressed, it's your problem and you should do something about it and it's not the infants fault. Okay now we have a very lengthy dependency period as human beings and that and that means that infants 30-40 years for some- Well well yes exactly exactly and so because of that intense dependency that empathic circuitry has to be very, very powerful. But it can easily be utilized in a domain that's outside of its proper purview. And unreflexive empathy is not a moral virtue.
Starting point is 00:27:18 And just because you feel sorry for someone, you are not a good person. Now, that might be a subcomponent of being a good person, but it's very frequently the case that complex problems require sophisticated, complex planning, thinking, and analysis, which is why we invented science, for example, which is why we invented sophisticated social policy and all of that, and it's certainly not the case
Starting point is 00:27:41 that everything that's good in the medium to long run looks so good in the short term. I mean, you think about when you're disciplining a child, which you have to do, because one of your responsibilities as a parent is to produce a child, help produce a child, who is disciplined, and who's socially acceptable to everyone else, which is your fundamental responsibility. Whenever you discipline a child, you cause short-term distress for the benefit of the medium to the long run, and that runs contrary to reflexive empathy. You need more than empathy to get by in the world. So it's unsophisticated thinking to assume
Starting point is 00:28:23 that first of all, that reflexive empathy towards those who are hypothetically unfairly victimized constitutes a moral virtue. It's not that simple and it can be very, very dangerous because you can undermine people by inappropriately feeling sorry for them. It's not helpful. So as I was listening to a bunch of the different talk that you've given, I was caught off guard by a comment you made in a series on the Bible. And this is an important issue because a lot of folks read the Miqshan, Herothea, and have
Starting point is 00:28:57 a belief that it means the weak will inherit the earth. Certainly what I thought. And you stunned me by arguing that the word meek didn't really mean what we thought it would. I looked at a bunch of different translations. Yeah, and my conclusion was, well, you know, words get translated multiple times and they shift to meaning across time. And so ancient texts are hard to interpret. And it requires a fair bit of study, but my interpretation was those who have swords and know how to use them, but choose to keep them sheathed
Starting point is 00:29:30 will inherit the earth. And that's a very, that's a much better idea as far as I'm concerned, because it means that you have a moral obligation to be strong and dangerous, both of those. But to harness that and to use it in the service of good. So it's associated with a complex set of ideas. But that principle right there is a stark differentiator of you
Starting point is 00:29:59 from much of the material that I read. Generally it's purely about compassion. You used to work with them, but a lot of folks do feel to virtue, to feel sorry for others, because usually behind that is how you solve something. Not that easy. No. That's the problem, is that we wouldn't have to think
Starting point is 00:30:15 if empathy guided us properly, but it doesn't. It guides us properly in some very specific conditions. It can also make us very dangerous, because, and there's good, there's good experimental literature on this. If you're very sensitive to an in-groups claims, whatever they might be, that makes you very hostile to perceived out-group members. In-group out-group people within your tribe or outside of your tribe. Yeah, well within whatever group it is that you're identifying with at that moment. So empathy
Starting point is 00:30:43 drives that in-group identification. It's like, okay, well, what about the out-group? Oh, those are predatory. Those are predators. We better be hard on them. It's a mother bear's compassion that gets you eaten. So we can't be thinking that empathy is an untrammeled virtue. There's no evidence for that whatsoever.
Starting point is 00:31:02 The psychoanalysts knew this perfectly well as well when we were still wise enough to a little bit of a trauma that you're trying to get in the trauma that you're trying to get in the trauma that you're trying to get in the trauma that you're trying to get in the trauma that you're trying to get in the trauma that you're trying to get in the trauma that you're trying to get in the trauma that you're trying to get in the trauma that you're trying to get in the trauma that you're trying to get in the trauma that you're trying to get in the trauma that you're trying to get in the trauma that you're have to rely on yourself or anything. That's not good. No, there's rules, for example.
Starting point is 00:31:26 If you're dealing with the elderly in an old folks home, here's a rule. Never do anything for one of your clients they can do themselves. Why? Because they're already struggling with the loss of their independence. And you want to help them maintain that independence as long as possible. And that might mean sitting by while someone struggles to do up their buttons, for example, when you can, and this is the same if you're maybe helping your three-year-old dress themselves. It's like, yeah, yeah,
Starting point is 00:31:53 you can put on the buttons a lot faster. Let me help you with that. It's like, no, you struggle with that. You master it. And I'll keep my empathy to myself. Thank you very much, so that I can help you maintain your independence. So. And that suffocating mother is Ursula. That's right. And a little mermaid. Yes.
Starting point is 00:32:12 So these motifs still sneak into our culture. Sure, why? Why do you see it in Sleeping Beauty as well in the Disney movie where the evil queen keeps the prince locked, plans to keep Prince Charming locked into the king, locked in her basement, fundamentally, chained up until he's so old, he's useless. And she's the force that stops him from making an alliance with the young woman and having
Starting point is 00:32:34 his life. I'll just keep you chained up here where you'll be safe. It's like, no, you don't need that. What did Freud say? I think it was Freud. The good mother necessarily fails. Right? Because as your child emerges, as your child develops, you're a perfect mother up till six months.
Starting point is 00:32:51 You take care of your child's every need. Okay, well, that somewhere between six and nine months, the child starts to crawl around, starts to become a bit autonomous, starts to be able to do little things on his or her own. You back off. Every time the child steps forward, you step backwards. And maybe you step backwards a little faster even
Starting point is 00:33:08 to motivate your child to step forward. And then what you're saying is, it isn't you I care about. It's who you could be. And see, that's another thing that I'm talking to young men and then women about. It's like, it isn't you I care about. It's who you could be. You think, well, that's pretty harsh.
Starting point is 00:33:25 It's like, not when you're talking to 18-year-olds. It's like they have their whole life ahead of them. Whose side should you be on? The 18-year-old kid who's confused, oh, you're OK the way you are. It's like, no, you're not. You're not even close to OK the way you are. You haven't even started.
Starting point is 00:33:39 You're not who you could be physically. You're not who you could be spiritually. You're not educated to the degree you could be. You could really be something, man. You've got 60 years to work on it. Get the hell out of it. That's way better. That's a way more positive message.
Starting point is 00:33:53 Even though it's got that strange harshness about it, because it's judgmental. Every ideal is a judge. You can't get away with it. You can't get away from it, right? Or with it. You put something up as an ideal, that it stares down at you and says, you are not what you could be.
Starting point is 00:34:08 Every great piece of art does that. And to tell young people, it's like, no, no, you're not OK the way you are. That's why we have universities. That's why we have training programs. It's like, you don't know enough to go out there and change the world. You're not out there waving placards around and telling
Starting point is 00:34:23 people how to behave. Get your act together. Learn some skills. Educate yourself. Learn how to speak telling people how to behave, get your act together, learn some skills, educate yourself, learn how to speak, learn how to conduct yourself, learn how to stand up, make yourself a force in the world. There's way more to you than you think. You appreciate why that message would resonate with some, but scare the heck out of others. You scare the heck out of everybody. You know, with that what they say,
Starting point is 00:34:45 fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. There's real truth in that. And this is a, see, I think, and this is what scared me. I learned from studying Auschwitz and the terrible things that I studied for many, many years that I was responsible for them. And I believe that. Yes, because it comes down to individual integrity. All of these things. If the state is corrupting around you, that's on you.
Starting point is 00:35:14 It's your responsibility. You think, well, how can I take on that responsibility? It's like, be more than you are. So, and how could you not be afraid of that? Well, of course you'd want to shy away from that, but the alternative is far worse. It's far worse to let things degenerate. Like you have a chance, you have the opportunity to contend with the structure of reality and to set things right. You can do that if you take it on voluntarily.
Starting point is 00:35:40 And that's a terrible burden to confront suffering and malevolence, especially given the degree of malevolence. It's a terrible burden to confront suffering and malevolence, especially given the degree of malevolence. It's a terrible thing to confront. The alternative is worse. Let things slide. You just see where you end up there. At least you have a fighting chance if you're a contender.
Starting point is 00:35:56 You're in the ring. And you can do it. That's the thing. That's what makes me so fundamentally optimistic about people, is that the problems that confront us are most infinite in their catastrophic consequence. But there's something within us that's even greater than that. And so that's the fundamental reality. You don't get to that either unless you start with what's so terrible. Say, life is rife with suffering and injustice.
Starting point is 00:36:27 And we make it worse with our malevolence. It's terrible. Okay, well, that's horrible. Who can withstand that? It's like, yeah, well, if you look inside that, you see that something beckons, and what beckons is the possibility of what you could become if you confront that. And that's what we need to know. And that's, I think, integrity tied up
Starting point is 00:36:45 with our most fundamental religious convictions. We know that people have an indomitable divine spirit. Well, how do you call that forth? Well, by challenging it, it's not going to come out without that. You're not going to be who you could be without pushing yourself to your limit. Because why would you be?
Starting point is 00:37:04 It's not like it's easy. You have to be compelled in some sense. You have to your limit. Because why would you be? It's not like it's easy. You have to be compelled in some sense. You have to be challenged. And that's why you do your children no favors by overprotecting them. Quite the contrary. Why does that message make use so emotional? What will you like at age 18? You're just to sketch one.
Starting point is 00:37:22 Alberta at that time, yeah. Well, I was thinking about the sorts of things that we're talking about now. I've been thinking about them ever since I can remember, but you know, I've got better at thinking about them across time. But I was, I had a lot of the problems, I suppose that the typical 18-year-old would have. I drank a lot. I came, come from this little town in northern Alberta. Heavy drinking. I started drinking when I was 14. So I was quite a partier. I was confused. Existentially I would say I wasn't sure what the proper direction in life was. I was very much obsessed with the problem of the Cold War, that's never really gone away because that
Starting point is 00:38:06 seemed to me to be just a kind of insanity that I didn't know how to fathom. And you know, it was all of that, and I was obsessed with reading and obsessed with learning, and so that was what all drove me in this direction. And then as I started to develop these ideas, like I had to let go of things. You know, one of the ideas that I've been promoting to people is that you have to let the dead would burn off. And you do that, you do that as a consequence of necessity in the pursuit of responsibility. When I started writing seriously, I just stopped drinking.
Starting point is 00:38:42 Because I couldn't think properly. So that was it. It was either like, you're going to do one of these of the other. You're either going to continue wasting your time. I was having a fine time. I was in graduate school and I had a very social, I was very, very social. And a lot of that involved drinking and that sort of thing couldn't do both. Especially when I was editing. I couldn't get my thoughts down pristine enough, precisely enough. Plus, the emotional magnitude of the things that I was dealing with were more overwhelming
Starting point is 00:39:11 if I was, well, in the aftermath of a party. So my decided when I was like 25 or so to just stop. I've been caught off guard by how politicized you've become. And as I read of your youth, I know that you had your runners with religion, which a lot of people do. You actually got politically active, but on the left, not the right.
Starting point is 00:39:35 Help me understand what went down. Well, in the little town I grew up in, the member of parliament, the provincial parliament, equivalent to American state, was a democratic socialist. He was the only one in the entire province. Everyone else was conservative, which would be sort of modern Republican, I would say. And, you know, there's something to be said for political voice for the working class and for the dispossessed, and it certainly is the case that hierarchical structures, the hierarchical structures that compose our society, do produce dispossession.
Starting point is 00:40:11 They stack people up at the bottom. And so people at the bottom need to have a political voice. And so I was very attracted to that end of the political spectrum. But as I came to investigate some of the problems I've been discussing more deeply, I started to understand that mere economic rectification was insufficient. That that wasn't the level of analysis that was appropriate for my inquiry anyways.
Starting point is 00:40:38 Translated redistribution of income doesn't work. Well, think about it this way. The guaranteed basic income idea. It's like, well, that's predicated on the idea that man lives by bread alone. Well that isn't how it works. And I have certainly seen that in my clinical practice. I've had clients, especially addicts. If you gave them money, they would die.
Starting point is 00:41:00 And the reason for that, like one guy that I remember in particular, I liked him quite a bit. It had a bad cocaine problem. And as long as he was flat broke, he wasn't dead. But as soon as his, he was on disability, as soon as his disability check came in, he was faced down in the ditch three days later. So, well, and you think, well, maybe that's a consequence of his overwhelming poverty, etc. You could come up with some social reason for that path that you took, but it wasn't by any stretch of the imagination, that simple. It's like people need purpose more than money
Starting point is 00:41:37 even. I mean, obviously, we don't want people starving. And actually, we're doing a pretty good job of solving that problem worldwide. You know, either you end projects that there won't be anyone in absolute poverty by the year 2030, which is really quite the bloody miracle. That's for sure. So we're doing pretty good job of getting rid of abject privation. But then it isn't the provision of material well being with ease that allows people to live properly, even though a certain amount of material well-being with ease that allows people to live properly, even though a certain amount of material wealth is necessary precondition. It's purpose, and that's a much more difficult problem to solve.
Starting point is 00:42:17 It's like we need something to grapple with, we need a meaning to justify our lives, and some of that is to be found in, while the struggle against against privation and malevolence. The mere offering of material sustenance to people isn't going to solve the problem. Dostoevsky knew this 150 years ago. He said, if he gave people everything they wanted. So all they had to do was eat cakes and busy themselves with the continuation of the species. The first thing they do is smash it all to hell so that something interesting could happen. So that's our fatal, our fatal flaw and salvation, both of that, that wanting to contend rather than to sit back and have everything taken care of.
Starting point is 00:43:01 So how do we get an 18-year-old to understand what Doshievsky wrote 150 years ago? How do you get a 30-year-old or 58-year-old, which is my age, to understand how to take responsibility? No, we have discussions like this. You know, when you make the case to people as well, so I've been touring around my wife and I, I've gone to 60 cities now since January of this year, and I've been speaking
Starting point is 00:43:28 to audiences that average 2,500 people. And I have a, I deliver a lecture that's very much like this conversation. It's like layout, the structure of life, the fact that it's right for suffering and malevolence, that we erect hierarchies in an attempt to deal with that, to deal with those problems because they're too alike, that the hierarchies dispossess people and so we have to take care of the dispossessed as well, and to draw the relationship between meaning and responsibility. And the audiences are wrapped as a consequence of that.
Starting point is 00:44:00 And I'm always listening to my audiences, is when are they silent? Because when everyone in an audience is silent, then everyone's in the same place. of that. And I'm always listening to my audiences, is when are they silent? Because you know, when everyone in an audience is silent, then everyone's in the same place. That's a meaningful place. They're all lined up, and they line up on this axis of responsibility and meaning. So there's a hole in our culture where this information hasn't been provided. But it was there at times in our history, which is then the thing that I strike with, which is issue of sacrifice. It's so paradoxical, right? Why would me giving of myself to you make me feel better? It does seem like most times, if I have money, I give you some money, I have less money.
Starting point is 00:44:37 But you're arguing that if I understand true sacrifice and I sacrifice myself for something that has meaning. Well, part of it is, you know, human beings discovered time. That's one of the things that makes us very peculiar creatures. To be aware of our own mortality is a consequence of the discovery of time, right? We can see how we extend out into the future. And so that makes us very strange creatures as selfish creatures. Because you actually can't be narrowly selfish and survived. And here's the reason you have to take care of yourself now. So let's say, well, then you can pursue impulsive pleasure, perhaps at the expense of other people.
Starting point is 00:45:15 And why not? Well, here's one reason why not. There isn't just you now. There's you tomorrow. There's you next week. There's you next month, the next year, and 10 years from now. And so, if you conduct yourself in a manner in the present that interferes with your future selves, then that's a downhill trip for you. And so, taking care of yourself in the future and taking care of other people actually turns out to be exactly the same thing. Because you're actually a community of people that's distributed across time. And so if you act in your own best interest, then you're going to sacrifice some of the present for the future. And that was one of the great discoveries of mankind, right? Which is
Starting point is 00:45:55 something that I also concentrate on in 12 rules, because I'm really interested in the issue of sacrifice. Why would you give up something now? Why would you ever give up something now voluntarily? The answer is sometimes if you give up something now? Why would you ever give up something now voluntarily? The answer is sometimes if you give up something now and often something you love, something you're very in love with, even, perhaps not for the best reasons, then you can make a bargain with the future. And that bargain with the future isn't any different than the bargain you make with other people. So that narrow selfishness is blindness to time and context. And there's nothing about it that's good.
Starting point is 00:46:30 And I do think the musical example is a really good one. Like in a musical piece, every note has to fit with every other note across the entire span of the piece. Well, that's what your life needs to be like, is like how you act with me right now is has to be in harmony with what you want for yourself tomorrow. And that's going to be tangled in as well. It's not only that you repeat across time and have to take that into account. It's that you repeat across time in the context of your social life. And so all of that has to be
Starting point is 00:46:58 brought into the equation. And the sacrificial motif is a huge part of that. And that also is something that runs contrary in some sense to empathy because sometimes you have to, you know, you have to beat yourself on the back of the head with a stick to get yourself to move forward properly, even though you know I should be doing this, I should be doing this. Well, I don't want to, it's hard.
Starting point is 00:47:17 It's like no sympathy for that. It's, you have to do it because otherwise things are going to get worse. Well, I heard you say that, you're, you're, you're according one of the tank amendments saying you do under your neighbors as you have them do onto you. The word nice is not in that command. No, no, well, nice isn't enough. And this is not enough or is it not the right thing to expect because so many members of my
Starting point is 00:47:42 audience beat themselves up in a way they would never hurt others. Oh, yes, that's definitely. And they say they're thinking, but most thinking is self-flagulation. Oh, yes. The part of it is, right, is, you know, take it easy on yourself, be fair. Yes. And in other hand, sometimes you tolerate stuff from other people because you teach people
Starting point is 00:47:58 how to treat you. And if you don't do that, you get it. Well, getting that balance right is really hard. So in rule two, I think is treat yourself as if you're someone responsible for helping. And that I was really interested in that issue of people mistreating themselves. Because we are privy to our own weaknesses and faults.
Starting point is 00:48:23 We know them better than anyone else knows them. And so it's very easy for us to determine that we're not worthwhile because of all the ways that we don't live up to what we should live up to. And the painful knowledge we have of that, and to not regard ourselves as worthwhile and to not treat ourselves properly. And that's not good. You- you have to treat yourself as if you're valuable. And then that is the same attitude that you extend to other people. Well, it's because you are valuable.
Starting point is 00:48:50 And it's a necessity to adopt the responsibility that goes along with recognizing that. So even if you're not happy with who you are and even if you have your reasons, you still deserve presumption of innocence. You still deserve to have a good defense mounted on your own behalf. You still need to treat yourself as if you're someone valuable and someone worthy of love, even though you have all reasons to know why you fall short. That's absolutely crucial and it is hard for people to learn that. Hard for them to learn not to beat themselves up too much.
Starting point is 00:49:23 Why doesn't anyone ever get away with anything? That's one of your lines. Well, I think you imagine you have a plastic ruler, and you pull it back in front of your face. And you let go. It's like, you think, well, this is going pretty well so far, snap. Yeah, well, it's because you can't bend the structure of reality.
Starting point is 00:49:45 This is why, and this is, I think, also partly what in this message is frightening is everything that you distort, snaps back and often magnified, and everyone knows that. And one of the things I discuss with my audience is, it's like, well, just think about how you talk to people that you're trying to be trying to treat properly. You don't say to them, okay, here kid, here's the way you deal with life. This is you put your son in you and you say, look, lie every chance you get, falsify things, don't take any responsibility for anything. If you can sluff it off to someone else. If you can hide things where no one will find them, that's a hell of a good strategy. Like no one believes that, ever.
Starting point is 00:50:29 So we know that that doesn't work. Now, we're tempted because now and then you think, well, I can just cut a corner here or I can get away with this and no one will find out. It's like, yeah, they will. They'll find out or you'll find out. And I saw this in my clinical practice all the time. You know, people would be suffering for some consequence.
Starting point is 00:50:50 A lot. And we'd untangle it. Maybe we'd go back five years or ten years, and it would be something that was left undone, something that was done that shouldn't have been done. Not, and sometimes not even on the part of the person, you know, sometimes on the part of their parents, or maybe even on the part of their grandparents, like know, sometimes on the part of their parents, or maybe even on the part of their grandparents,
Starting point is 00:51:06 like these things stick around for a very long period of time. But it's like, if you produce a rift in the structure of reality, it's not going to go away until you rectify it. And often it breeds more demons, that's for sure. But if that's the case, why is it so hard for us to tell the truth?
Starting point is 00:51:22 What is it biologically enough? And I like to push you on these biologic issues because you're a psychologist. You understand how the brain works and how fundamental order versus chaos issue is in part reflected in our brain. All these balancing acts are pretty good at you. Truth is hard for us. Well, it's hard to confront things now when you could hypothetically put them off. It's discounted a bit. You know, a child who's called
Starting point is 00:51:52 onto the carpet for their actions is likely to think, well, if I lie about this, I'm not going to get punished for it now. I can get away with it. And they might not even really believe that, but they don't want to face the consequences of their actions right here and now. Well, we can just put it off a little bit. Well, it'd be nice if you could do that. And so you're tempted to do it. You can shunt it off into the future. That's just future you, you know.
Starting point is 00:52:13 You don't want to be that guy. Yeah. Yeah, but it's better. It's better to have the fight now. It's better to confront it now if you can manage it. You touched earlier on this issue of the evil within us. Yeah. And you stories a lot.
Starting point is 00:52:30 And some of them are stories that all of us are familiar with Harry Potter being a good one for this example. Where there's a little bit of evil in Harry Potter. Yeah, darkness. Darkness, the shadow. Yeah. I've voled them out. Yeah, right.
Starting point is 00:52:42 What is it about having or respecting that we all have evil, that you find is important for us living our lives? Well, I think the capacity for evil is something that is not easily distinguishable from strength. You know, and I mean, my knowledge runs out at this level of analysis in some sense. The world seems to be structured so that we have, that we can act for the good and we can act for evil. And I think that's associated with self-consciousness. And I think that's illustrated in this story of Adam and Eve. When Adam and Eve become self-conscious, the scales fall from their eyes.
Starting point is 00:53:20 They realize that they're naked. And to realize that you're naked is to understand your vulnerability. That's why Adam and Eve clothe themselves right away. Oh no, I'm naked. And to realize that your naked is to understand your vulnerability. That's why Adam and Eve closed themselves right away. Oh no, I'm naked. I can be hurt. Okay, I can be hurt. I have to close myself. I have to protect myself in the future. You actually become aware of that in a way that animals aren't.
Starting point is 00:53:37 Well, what does it mean that you're naked? Means that everyone else is too. What does it mean that you can be hurt? Means that everyone else can be hurt too. It means that you could hurt them. And that's why the knowledge of good and evil goes along with the knowledge of nakedness. That took me a long time to figure out. It took me about 30 years to figure that out. Why are those two things conjoined?
Starting point is 00:53:56 Oh, yes. When you understand that you're vulnerable, you understand that everyone else is vulnerable. And then you have the option of exploiting that. And so that's what transforms human beings to some degree from animals, because a predator just eats you, but a human being can play with you and will for all sorts of reasons. Now, the capacity to do that, though, why is the capacity to do that though. Why is the capacity to do that? Let's say useful.
Starting point is 00:54:26 Well, it's useful to be strong and not to have to use it. That reflects something that we talked about earlier. Because it makes you formidable. And I think that you have to be formidable in order to move forward properly in the world. Even to get through obstacles that aren't. Just to get through obstacles. You't, just to get through obstacles, you have to have some strength of character, you have to have some commitment. And some of that is, there will be a cost if you interfere with me. It'll be the minimal cost necessary,
Starting point is 00:54:59 let's say if you've got yourself under control. It will be the minimal cost necessary, but do not be thinking there won't be a cost. And I don't think, I don't believe that if that's not built into your character, then you have no strength, and you certainly have no strength when you're pushed by someone who's malevolent. A bully, if you're like that,
Starting point is 00:55:20 if the bully pushes you, and your response is, there will be a cost for pushing me, and you will pay it. Then the bully will go elsewhere. And we know that too from studies of bullies, you know, like even childhood bullies, they push around kids, and then they find the ones that retreat and withdraw, and they bully them.
Starting point is 00:55:45 So, and you know, you might think, well, usually children are bullied because of some abnormality. That's a very common idea. It's like, there's a guy named Dan Olwius, a very smart Norwegian psychologist, and he studied bullying for a long time as a precursor to fascism, by the way. So that was his interest. He said, his analysis indicated that at least three quarters of children have some obvious abnormality that could be the focus of bullying attention. It might even be your name. It doesn't take much of a genius bully to come up with a good way of making fun of your name. Or your two-toler, or your two-short, or, you know, or, or your brother's two-toler, two-short, or there's something.
Starting point is 00:56:23 It isn't the abnormality that is the cause of the bullying. It's the abnormality might become the focus of the bullying, but part of the cause is the withdrawal in the face of the bullies, because the bully thinks he can get away with it. Well, if you're... and it's also the case with children who are preyed upon by adult predators, like adult predators of children look for children who are easily cowed and who won't put up a fight.
Starting point is 00:56:49 So for example, if you're teaching your children to be terrified of strangers, that's really not a very good strategy. You want kids who are confident and who will make a noise if someone messes about with them and who are, who are, and so that, that, that, that, that, that characterological strength has to be built in.
Starting point is 00:57:07 We've played through that that the evil side of that equation we do a lot of shows on Shukrion through the lens of a doctor I'm interested in the forensics of what like down emotions psychologically what creates evil what is the nature of evil. I mean so Shukrion wrote about this. Yeah. There are unbelievable evil that he witnessed and lived through in Soviet Russia. So some people see it and can react to it. Welcome to the Jordan B. Peterson podcast. You can support these podcasts by donating to Dr. Peterson's Patreon,
Starting point is 00:57:38 the link to which can be found in the description. Dr. Peterson's self-development programs, self-authoring can be found at selfauthoring. Dr. Peterson's self-development programs, self-authoring, can be found at selfauthoring.com. He's undeniably one of the greatest intellectual phenomenon of our generation. Dr. Jordan Peterson's work as a clinical psychology professor at the University of Toronto has catapulted him to international fame with arguments that are challenging and changing the way we all think.
Starting point is 00:58:34 He has captured the attention of millions, especially of young men with some young women as well. And many of you, however, have never heard of him, but you will get to know him for the first time to this interview. Today, he is here, breaking down his provocative rules for life and the prescription for success that will surprise many of you. Thank you for joining us. Thanks for the invitation. So it is an interesting group of insights that you offer us and I can enter it in many
Starting point is 00:58:59 ways, but let me just start with for me the most obvious which is what is it that you're saying that's resonating with so many people. But let me just start with for me the props the most obvious, which is what is it that you're saying? That's resonating with so many people. What's What it's I use scratching? I think there's probably two We've had a long conversation in our culture about the necessity for self-esteem and happiness and That's not what I'm talking about. I tell my audiences and my readers very straightforwardly that life is difficult and that there's a lot of suffering in it
Starting point is 00:59:35 and that you have to learn how to conduct yourself in the face of that. The problem with the pursuit of happiness is that when life storms come along, happiness disappears, and then you're left with nothing. And so you need to pursue something that's deeper than happiness. And if happiness comes along, well, then hooray for you. You don't want to despise it because it's fleeting, but it's much better to pursue things that are meaningful than things that make you happy. It's deeper, and it orients you more appropriately appropriately and it keeps you centered in your own life.
Starting point is 01:00:07 It makes you more useful for your family and your community. So that's one thing. And it's a relief to young people to know that the baseline conditions of life are difficult, but that you can still prevail. So it's a funny message in some sense, or a strange message, because on the one hand,
Starting point is 01:00:21 it's somewhat pessimistic. Now I talk about suffering and malevolence also, but I also emphasize the fact that despite that being the base conditions of existence, people are tough enough to prevail. So that's one element of it. The other element is the necessity of responsibility. So a lot of what people find in life that provides them with a sustaining meaning is a consequence of not the pursuit of rights or the pursuit of happiness or the development of self-esteem, but the adoption of
Starting point is 01:00:55 responsibility. And the more responsibility in some sense, the better. Responsibility for yourself, for making sure that your life lays itself out like it should, responsibility for your family, responsibility for the community, it's people who take responsibility that are the ones that you admire, and that's the right pathway through life. That's where meaning is to be found. And I think that's probably the crucial issue is that identification of a profound relationship between responsibility and meaning. And for many of the people that I'm talking with, it seems like that's the first time that that's been articulated for them. So speaking about responsibility and meaning and how to make sense of a world where so many
Starting point is 01:01:37 people feel isolated, I'll come back to that. That seems so helpful. And yet you've been a lightning rod in many ways, with a lot of harsh comments, especially in the print media. What is it that your critics are arguing? Well, I got embroiled in some political dispute, I would say, in my home front in Canada, when our government introduced some legislation
Starting point is 01:02:00 that purported to be about compassion, which, to my way of of thinking was about compulsion with regards to speech. And so that's tangled me up. But I also think that people aren't necessarily that happy with a message of personal responsibility when they're really interested in the mechanics of social change.
Starting point is 01:02:18 My sense is that, well, life is unfair. Social structures are unfair. The arbitrary way that illness is unfair, social structures are unfair. The arbitrary way that illness is distributed into the population is unfair, but despite that, the best level of analysis for rectifying that in a practical sense, but also in the psychological sense, is the level of the individual.
Starting point is 01:02:41 And so people who think in a collectivist manner or people who are playing identity politics games that insist that your group identity should be your hallmark don't like what I have to say at all. And they have the reasons. I'm not a fan of identity politics types. I think it's a very very dangerous game particularly because it makes us tribal. And tribal people are very dangerous, you know, as we degenerate into our tribal groups, the probability of violence increases as far as I'm concerned.
Starting point is 01:03:13 That's what the anthropological data would suggest as well. So the collectivist types don't like me very much. You have a clinical psychology. It's a challenging profession. You chose it coming out of a rural town in central Canada. How did that advance your life journey? What is, what are your life has inspired you to do what you do now?
Starting point is 01:03:35 And especially to take some of the public steps now that are drawing criticism to you, which is always painful. Well, I've always been obsessed with totalitarianism and authoritarian governments, whether they're on the right or the left. For years, decades, really, I spent almost all of my free time thinking about what
Starting point is 01:03:56 happened in Nazi Germany and in Russia in during the Soviet era, but also in Maoist China. There were other places as well. Trying to understand how it was that we could have got off the rails so absolutely terribly. And I started studying that at the collectivist level, I would say, looking for political reasons or economic reasons. But as I investigated further, those levels of analysis
Starting point is 01:04:22 became increasingly, they weren't, they weren't providing the answers that I wanted. I think partly because I was really interested in the notion that there's something to learn from what happened, say a Nazi Germany, but there's something to learn at an individual level. That's my estimation. I don't think that there were innocent masses of people led astray by a single malevolent leader.
Starting point is 01:04:50 I don't think the fundamental motivations for what happened in Nazi Germany were economic. And I don't think they were in the Soviet Union either. As I read more and more about the situations, I realized that the proclivity of individuals to avoid responsibility and to lie, especially about their own lives and about their own experience
Starting point is 01:05:09 were really the reasons that those systems went so far straight. There were other reasons as well, but those were very important to me, because I also thought that the proper lesson in the aftermath of something like Auschwitz is how do I ensure that I live a life such that if I was offered the opportunity to do something
Starting point is 01:05:26 terrible by omission or by commission that I wouldn't do it, that I would have enough strength of character to resist. And so the lessons there for me were psychological. And that taught me an awful lot about, well, the role of the individual, people like Victor Frankel, for example, who wrote man's search for meaning, which is a perennial classic and a great book, insisted that a large part of the reason that Germany went off the rail so badly was because individual Germans were so willing to falsify their own experience. And Alexander Solzhenitsin, who wrote the Goli-Gulagar Copelago, the best document on what happened in the Soviet Union, also made exactly the same argument.
Starting point is 01:06:02 So I got interested in the psychological causes of catastrophic governance, let's say. And that taught me a lot. It taught me about responsibility, about the responsibility of the sovereign individual. And you know, we have an idea in our culture. It's a very powerful idea that each of us is of intrinsic value, but that associated with that value
Starting point is 01:06:23 is a responsibility. And we have a responsibility, let's say, for our own integrity and for that of our families, but also of the state, because otherwise, we wouldn't have the sovereign responsibility and right to vote. Like our whole culture's predicated on the idea that each of us are sufficiently significant,
Starting point is 01:06:41 so that we can entrust the destiny of the state itself to our decisions. It's like, well, I believe that and I think that that's a correct idea. Which is also why I think that systems that are based on that idea function so well, like our Western systems do. But that's a responsibility that has to be taken with dead seriousness because it means that the good things that you do in your life are truly good and they matter. They ripple outward way more than you think. But so do the things you do that aren't good, including the acts of deception that you engage in, perhaps above all else.
Starting point is 01:07:14 Which would include your willingness to evade responsibility to push it off to someone else or to play the short term against the long term. And so, well. I mean, they may end up rapist a little bit because you're touching on a bunch of things and I think they would all benefit us. So first of all, let me say, I appreciate that you actually put some of your thoughts down into two books that I've read.
Starting point is 01:07:37 The latter is a best-selling book right now. It's like number four, selling book in the country, 12 rules for life, and a dota chaos. And I am curious how you put that all together. And let's start off with the basic, which is what's the goal of life? According to some of the more recent pieces you've been writing. I would say that the goal in life is to conduct yourself
Starting point is 01:08:00 so that life improves, at least so that undue suffering is forced all, at least so that undue suffering is forced all, but more than that. So that's to constrain malevolence and suffering to the degree that that's possible, but then also to work for a positive improvement in things at every level. And that's how you should orient yourself. So I saw some of your actually, it's in the book in part as well, is to repeat actions that are worthy. Which is sort of, That would be the way to do it. Yes, right? So you sort of figure out what you should do and then you do it.
Starting point is 01:08:30 Which I think that's an achievable goal. Most people will think that's lawatory. That takes me to the next point, which is what's the meaning of life? I think the meaning is to be founded that. And as you put things together and as you take responsibility for things that meaning emerges from that. And so it emerges from that the same way it emerges from a symphony in some sense, you know, because a symphony is composed of layers of patterns and they're all working harmoniously together.
Starting point is 01:08:54 And they speak directly to people of meaning, which is why people love music so much. I mean, every form of music does that. And it's a model for proper being, which is the placing of all the different levels of reality into harmonious relationship with one another. And meaning emerges out of that naturally. And meaning is actually an instinct.
Starting point is 01:09:13 This is another thing that people don't understand, and that's a case I've been able to make, because I know a fair bit about how the brain works. The twin hemispheres of your brain interact to guide you through life, which is a truism in some sense. You use your brain to guide you through life, but your brain does that fundamentally by instilling the proper things that you do with a sense of meaning. And that meaning is, it's not something that's just a surface, it's not on the surface of the world in some sense.
Starting point is 01:09:43 It's the deepest instinct that you have. It's associated with a phenomenon that Russian neuropsychologist discovered back in the 1960s called the orienting reflex. And the orienting reflex is what orient you towards things of interest. And that happens unconsciously. And so if something happens around you that's of significance, often something you don't expect.
Starting point is 01:10:02 Say something somewhat chaotic. You orient towards it, and that attracts your attention. And then as you investigate what that is, that's associated with the sense of meaning. And if you put what you're investigating into proper order, then that meaning continues to reveal itself. So you can use meaning as a guide to proper being. But you have to also be very careful to conduct yourself,
Starting point is 01:10:21 honestly, if you're going to do that, because if you conduct yourself dishonestly, then you pathologize the mechanisms that orient you. So I'm thinking about in my own life, how I've tried to apply some of these insights. If I just try to be a little bit better today than I was yesterday, along the lines that you're speaking to, try to create that symphony.
Starting point is 01:10:42 But you'd be a little better at it today than yesterday. And like, everybody watching right now, not comparing myself to somebody else, but rather comparing myself to the future version of me. Yeah. Is that a rational way? That's rule four, right? It's rule four.
Starting point is 01:10:54 I'll tell you who you were yesterday, not who someone else is today. Well, it's not only appropriate, but I think it's also practical. And one of the things about what I do, including my book, is that I'm always trying to take high-level abstract truths, you know, fundamental truths, and to make them concrete and practical so that you can implement them in your day-to-day life, because it's the connection between those abstractions and practical action that really cements their meaning and makes them comprehensible. And this idea of incremental improvement
Starting point is 01:11:24 is a great one. You know, if there are things about your life that are bothering you, or things about the world that are bothering you, then you want to decompose them into solvable subproblems. And you do this, if you have a child, this is the sort of thing that you do naturally, right? Because you want to set your child a challenge that's sufficiently challenging to push them forward in their development. So that makes it meaningful for the child.
Starting point is 01:11:47 That puts them in the zone of proximal development, which is where proper maturation takes place. They'll find that intrinsically meaningful. You want to make it challenging, but also with a reasonable probability of success. And there's an art to that. So you want to set yourself a task that's difficult, but not so difficult, you can't attain it.
Starting point is 01:12:06 And then what happens is that you step up improvement across time incrementally. And there's also a certain element of humility to it, which is don't bite off more than you can chew. Don't set grandiose goals, but incremental improvement will get you a tremendous distance. When you don't do that perfectly, and it's not easy to do, you suffer.
Starting point is 01:12:27 And I run this stage off to the said that, you know, pain is inevitable. You're going to have pain. How much suffering comes in that pain, you actually have a fair amount of control over. You can't make it go away to your point. It's part of life. Your thoughts around suffering,
Starting point is 01:12:41 that you began to touch on, have been incredibly provocative for a lot of people. But while they debated, I think in part because in our modern world we don't like to acknowledge that kind of suffering can afflict us. We think something's wrong with us if we have that kind of suffering. So how is it productive to focus on suffering the way you do? Well there is something wrong with us if we're suffering. And there's something wrong with the world because it's an indication that things aren't set in the order that hypothetically could be set if there's undue suffering.
Starting point is 01:13:11 And so that is a call to action. And it's a painful call to action. But it's a universal problem. Suffering is built into the structure of existence in some sense. And the fact that your suffering doesn't mean that there's something isolated about you that's at fault, right, which is, which is an important. This is why the doctrine of original sin was actually quite useful
Starting point is 01:13:33 because everyone makes mistakes and everyone falls short of the glory of God's legs. It's a rational sin if you don't mind and this is, this is again, all the monotheistic religions here, this, but it exists in other traditions as well. Well, it's a way of universalizing everyone's felt sense that they don't live up to the responsibility properly, because you're not all you could be. And unless you understand that that's everyone's problem, every single person has that issue,
Starting point is 01:14:01 then it's easy to become discouraged and crushed by that. And the major advantage, I think, to making a case very strongly that one of the fundamental realities of life is its suffering, is that it's actually a relief to people to hear that, because they suspect it while they know it. But no one's forthright about it. It's like, yeah, life is suffering. Okay, fine. So where does that leave us?
Starting point is 01:14:24 Well, here's where it leaves us. It turns like, yeah, life is suffering. Okay, fine. So where does that leave us? Well, here's where it leaves us. It turns out that even though life is suffering, if you're sufficiently courageous and forthright, and honest, let's say, in your approach, and you don't shy away, what you'll find is that there's something within you that will respond to the challenge of suffering with the development of ability that will transcend
Starting point is 01:14:45 the suffering. So the pessimism is, yeah, well, life is right with problems at every level. But the upside is, if you turn and confront that voluntarily, that you'll find something in yourself that can develop and master that. And so the optimism is nested in the pessimism. And that's extremely helpful to people, especially people who are struggling because they think, oh my god, life is so difficult. I don't know if I can stand this. There must be something wrong with me. Does anybody else feel this way? And you can say, yes, everyone feels that way at some time.
Starting point is 01:15:18 But that's, and it is as bad as you think, but you're more than you think you are. You're more than you think you are. And're more than you think you are. And what I really like about this too is it's very much in keeping with the clinical data. So for example, what you do as a clinician, as a clinical psychologist, as a psychiatrist, as any mental health professional who's well trained is if people are afraid of something, afraid of something that's standing in their way as an obstacle, like maybe you're trying to develop your career and you're afraid of public speaking. Well, I could try to calm you down about your fear
Starting point is 01:15:52 and protect you from the challenge that would be associated with public speaking and say, well, you never have to do that. Or I could say, no, no, look, you have to learn to present yourself more effectively in public if you're gonna develop your career and you're afraid of it. So let's break down what you're afraid of into ten steps or twenty steps until we can find a step that's small enough so that you can actually master it.
Starting point is 01:16:14 Let's assume that with three years of diligent practice that you could become a competent public speaker, at least one that isn't terrified, and with five years you could become an expert. And let's decide how relevant that is to your future prosperity and thriving. And then let's assume that if you break it down properly and take it on step by step in this incremental way that we discussed that you'll actually master every single bit of it.
Starting point is 01:16:36 And the thing that's cool about that is all the clinical evidence shows it works. And not only that, that's actually how you learn in life. When you bring a child to the playground and the child is apprehensive about making new friends, you say, okay, well, look, kiddo, stick around me for a minute or two and just watch what's going on. It's like, and the child will calm down and say, okay, no, go five feet away. Just go out there a little bit and just see how it goes.
Starting point is 01:17:02 And stay out there as long as you can and if you need to come back for a hug, then no problem. It's like, so then the child can go out 10 feet, and they come back. You say, okay, well now, you know, maybe just go over there and watch those kids, and the child will go out and then come back. And so that's it. It's the child's going out to where they're afraid,
Starting point is 01:17:19 seeing that they can master it, and then coming back. So this seems so self-evident that I'm left wondering, well, the people know this a hundred years ago? This issue of taking responsibility, which I think is part of the pain that people feel, because that's not something we expect a lot. People don't realize that it seems to help a lot in most scenarios.
Starting point is 01:17:38 If you sort of own it, because you control your destiny. So there's this wisdom we had and forgot. You spoke about original sin. These are stories that are thousands of years old, Adam and Eve, right? These are constructs that archetypal dust are fundamental to who our species is and somehow it seems so slip from us.
Starting point is 01:17:54 Well, some, you know, knowledge is coded in different ways, eh? So a good example, someone who's a good example, acts out for you how you should be. And a good story acts out for you how you should be. And a good story portrays that dramatically, but an articulated representation tells you exactly why it explains it. And so some of this needs to be more articulated than it has been, because we've become detached
Starting point is 01:18:17 in some sense from our underlying examples and our stories, partly because they've been criticized so much. So, but I think we're at a point where developing this more articulated knowledge is necessary. Just so I make sure everyone's clear on this. What I'm taking away is it's a balancing act between the rights you deserve and the responsibility that you must take. And if that balances off in society, and we do seem to focus a lot on people's rights, which is instinctive to who we are. But we often don't match it up with the response that comes along.
Starting point is 01:18:51 Right, which is exactly why I think that what I'm talking about is falling on receptive ears, is because you actually cannot have a prolonged discussion of rights without having an equally prolonged discussion of responsibilities for a variety of reasons. First of all, the actual reason that you have rights is so that you can discharge your responsibilities. It's not the other way around. It's like you're granted rights by everyone around you, or or no, it's not granted exactly. It's part of the purpose of your rights in some sense, is so that you can be given an autonomous space that's protected in which you can manifest what's necessary about you in the world that's a contribution to it. So I have to leave a space
Starting point is 01:19:38 for you so that you can make your contribution for yourself so you can take care of yourself so that you can shoulder responsibility for your family and so that you can serve the community the best so that you can shoulder responsibility for your family, and so that you can serve the community the best way that you can. And I don't want to set up a society that will interfere with that. But then, and then there's the association that we already talked about between responsibility and meaning, which is absolutely crucial. And so, the responsibility element is more important than the right's elements,
Starting point is 01:20:04 as far as I'm concerned. It certainly is at this point in time. So, people know this. They instinctively know it. And yet, the role of the victim seems, which is a painful role to have, because something bad happens to you to be a victim. But it's something that society struggles with.
Starting point is 01:20:22 So, what about people who feel like they're a victim? They're right. They're victimizers too. Like everybody is a strange mixture of victim and victimizer. Lots of terrible things happen to people that aren't justifiable in some sense. You know, well, illness strikes people randomly. I mean, not entirely randomly, obviously,
Starting point is 01:20:44 but there's a large random element in it. Where you're thrown into existence as a consequence of your birth. That's existentialist, especially in the 1950s, talked about all that all the time. And they talked about it as thrownness, that you're sort of thrown into reality with your particular set of predispositions and weaknesses. And then there's going to be times in your life where things twist in a manner that's unfair to you, that you're not getting your just desserts.
Starting point is 01:21:12 But that goes along with all sorts of unequally distributed privileges as well. And so that's the arbitrary nature of existence. And but you can't allow those sorts of things to define you because it's not that useful strategically. When you're playing a card game, you're dealt a hand of cards. Well, what do you do? You play that hand the best you can. Why? Because all the hands are equal? No. Because you don't have a better strategy than playing the hand that you're dealt the best you can. And that doesn't even mean it'll be a winning strategy.
Starting point is 01:21:52 But because people don't always win, sometimes we lose, and sometimes we lose painfully, and sometimes we lose painfully and unjustly. That's not the point. The point is you don't have a better strategy, and neither does anyone else. And then it's also not so obvious how privilege and victimization are distributed. If you take someone who's doing quite well in life and you scratch underneath the surface, you generally don't have to scratch very far until you find one or more profound tragedies of the past or perhaps of the present. No matter how well protected you are in the world,
Starting point is 01:22:28 you're still subject to illness, you're still subject to aging, you're still subject to the dissolution of your relationships, the death of your dreams, death itself. So vulnerability is built into the structure of existence. Now, if you start to regard yourself as a hapless victim or even worse, an unfairly victimized victim, well, then things go very badly sideways for you. It's not a good strategy. You end up resentful.
Starting point is 01:22:54 You end up angry. You end up vengeful. You end up hostile. And that's just the beginning. Things can get far more out of hand than that. So strategically, it's a bad game. It's better to take responsibility for the hand that you've been dealt.
Starting point is 01:23:09 There's no better, you've got no better protection in life than doing that. This is where a lot of folks in the modern West get unsettled because we have been brought up to believe that we need to be compassionate to each other. And you point out that sometimes that compassion, I don't know if it encourages weakness or it's another word for weakness. And I love if you could open that up one because it is a kind of discussion that gets folks
Starting point is 01:23:37 really unsettled. A feeling, a feeling sorry for someone is not a moral virtue. You know, morality is much more complex than mere reflexive empathy. So I would say, when is reflexive empathy useful? That's easy. You're a mother. Your child is under six months old. Reflexive empathy is the right reaction. And I think that that's why it's such a powerful motivating force as well. A child under six months old is always right. The child's in distress, always right. You're wrong, the child's right. No matter why the child is distressed,
Starting point is 01:24:13 it's your problem and you should do something about it and it's not the infant's fault. Okay, now we have a very lengthy dependency period as human beings and that means that infant's... 30, 40 years for someone. Well, well, yes, exactly, exactly. And so, because of that intense dependency, that empathic circuitry has to be very, very powerful.
Starting point is 01:24:35 But it can easily be utilized in a domain that's outside of its proper purview. And unreflexive empathy is not a moral virtue. And just because you feel sorry for someone, you are not a good person. Now, that might be a subcomponent of being a good person. But it's very frequently the case that complex problems require sophisticated, complex planning, thinking, and analysis, which is why we invented science, for example, which is why we invented science, for example, which is why we invented sophisticated social policy, and all of that.
Starting point is 01:25:09 And it's certainly not the case that everything that's good in the medium to long run looks so good in the short term. I mean, you think about when you're disciplining a child, which you have to do, because one of your responsibilities as a parent is to produce a child, help produce a child who is disciplined and who's socially acceptable to everyone else, which is your fundamental responsibility. Whenever you discipline a child, you cause short-term distress for the benefit of the medium to the long- run, and that runs contrary to reflexive empathy. You need more than empathy to get by in the world.
Starting point is 01:25:48 So it's unsophisticated thinking to assume that first of all, that reflexive empathy towards those who are hypothetically unfairly victimized constitutes a moral virtue. It's not that simple and it can be very, very dangerous, because you can undermine people by inappropriately feeling sorry for them. It's not helpful. So, as I was listening to a bunch of the different talk to you given, I was caught off guard by a comment you made in a series on the Bible.
Starting point is 01:26:19 And this is an important issue, because a lot of folks read the Miqshan herothe earth and have a belief that it means the weak will inherit the earth. Certainly what I thought. And you stunned me by arguing that the word meek didn't really mean what we thought it was. I looked at a bunch of different translations. Yeah, and my conclusion was, well, words get translated
Starting point is 01:26:43 multiple times and they shift to meaning across time, and so ancient texts are hard to interpret. And it requires a fair bit of study. But my interpretation was, those who have swords and know-how to use them, but choose to keep them sheathed will inherit the earth. That's a very, that's a much better idea as far as I'm concerned because it means that you have moral obligation to be strong and dangerous, both of those. But to harness that and to use it in the service of good. So it's associated with a complex set of ideas. If it's not... Sorry, but that principle right there is a stark differentiator of you
Starting point is 01:27:28 from much of the material that I read. Generally, it's purely about compassion. You used to work with victimhood, but a lot of folks do feel a virtue to feel sorry for others, because usually behind that is all just something. It's not that easy. No.
Starting point is 01:27:41 That's the problem, is that we wouldn't have to think if empathy guided us properly, but it doesn't. It guides us properly in some very specific conditions. It can also make us very dangerous because, and there's good experimental literature on this, if you're very sensitive to an in-groups claims, whatever they might be, that makes you very hostile to perceived outgroup members. In group outgroup? People within your tribe or stuff like that.
Starting point is 01:28:08 Well within whatever group it is that you're identifying with at that moment. So empathy drives that in group identification. It's like, okay, well what about the outgroup? Oh, those are predatory. Those are predators. We better be hard on them. It's a mother bears compassion that gets you eaten. So we can't be thinking that empathy is an untrammeled virtue. There's no evidence for that whatsoever. The psychoanalyst knew this perfectly well as well. When we were still wise enough to attend to their more profound realizations. And that's the motif of the devouring parent, the devouring mother, is the more general trope. And that's someone who will do absolutely everything for you all the time so that you never
Starting point is 01:28:50 have to rely on yourself or anything. That's not good. No, there's rules, for example, if you're dealing with the elderly in an old folks home, here's a rule. Never do anything for one of your clients they can do themselves. Why? Because they're already struggling with the loss of their independence. And you want to help them maintain that independence as long as possible. And that might mean sitting by while someone struggles to do up their buttons,
Starting point is 01:29:15 for example, when you can, and this is the same if you're maybe helping your three-year-old dress themselves. It's like, yeah, yeah, you can put on the buttons a lot faster. Let me help you with that. It's like, yeah, yeah, you can put on the buttons a lot faster. Let me help you with that. It's like, no, you struggle with that. You master it.
Starting point is 01:29:28 And I'll keep my empathy to myself. Thank you very much, so that I can help you maintain your independence. So. And that's suffocating mother is Ursula. That's right. And the mermaid. Yes.
Starting point is 01:29:41 So these motifs still sneak into our culture. Sure, why? You see it in Sleeping Beauty as well in the Disney movie, where the evil queen keeps the prince locked, plans to keep Prince Charming locked into the king, locked in her basement, fundamentally, chained up until he's so old, he's useless. Right, and she's the force that stops him
Starting point is 01:30:00 from making an alliance with the young woman and having his life, right? I'll just keep you chained up here, well, you're where you'll be safe. It's like, no, you don't need that. What did Freud say? I think it was Freud. The good mother necessarily fails.
Starting point is 01:30:15 Because as your child emerges, as your child develops, you're a perfect mother up till six months. You take care of your child's every need. Okay, well, somewhere between six and nine months, the child starts to crawl around, starts to become a bit autonomous, starts to be able to do little things on his or her own. You back off.
Starting point is 01:30:32 Every time the child steps forward, you step backwards. And maybe you step backwards a little faster even to motivate your child to step forward. And then what you're saying is, it isn't you I care about. It's who you could be. And see, that's another thing that I'm talking to young men and then women about. It's like, it isn't you I care about.
Starting point is 01:30:51 It's who you could be. You think, well, that's pretty harsh. It's like, not when you're talking to 18-year-olds. It's like, they have their whole life ahead of them. Who's side should you be on? The 18-year-old kid who's confused, oh, you're okay the way you are. It's like, no, you're not.
Starting point is 01:31:04 You're not even close to okay the way you are. You haven't even started. You're not who you could be physically. You're not who you could be spiritually. You're not educated to the degree you could be. You could really be something, man. You've got 60 years to work on it. Get the hell out of it. That's way better. That's a way more positive message. Even though it's got that strange harshness about it, because it's judgmental. Every ideal is a judge. You can't get away with it. You can't get away from it, right? Or with it.
Starting point is 01:31:33 You put something up as an ideal that it stares down at you and says, you are not what you could be. Every great piece of art does that. And to tell young people, it's like, no, no, you're not OK the way you are. That's why we have universities. That's why we have training programs. It's like you don't know enough to go out there and change the world.
Starting point is 01:31:48 You're not out there waving placards around and telling people how to behave. Get your act together. Learn some skills, educate yourself. Learn how to speak. Learn how to conduct yourself. Learn how to stand up. Make yourself a force in the world. There's way more to you than you think.
Starting point is 01:32:04 You appreciate why that message would resonate with some, but scare the heck out of others. You scare the heck out of everybody. You know, with that what they say, fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. There's real truth in that. And this is a, see, I think, and this is what scared me. I learned from studying Auschwitz and the terrible things
Starting point is 01:32:27 that I studied for many, many years that I was responsible for them. And I believe that. Yes, because it comes down to individual integrity. All of these things. If the state is corrupting around you, that's on you. It's your responsibility. You think, well, how can I take on that responsibility?
Starting point is 01:32:46 It's like, be more than you are. So how could you not be afraid of that? Of course, you'd want to shy away from that, but the alternative is far worse. It's far worse to let things degenerate. You have a chance, you have the opportunity to contend with the structure of reality and to set things right. You can do that if you take it on voluntarily. And that's a terrible burden to confront suffering and malevolence, especially given the
Starting point is 01:33:13 degree of malevolence. It's a terrible thing to confront. The alternative is worse. Let things slide. You just see where you end up there. At least you have a fighting chance if you're a contender, right? You're in the ring and there's and and you can and you can do it. That's the thing That's that's the that's what makes me so fundamentally optimistic about people is that the problems that confront us are
Starting point is 01:33:38 are most infinite in their catastrophic consequence, but there's something within us that's even greater than that. And so that's the fundamental reality. You don't get to that either unless you start with what's so terrible. Say, life is rife with suffering and injustice. And we make it worse with our malevolence. It's terrible. Okay, well, that's horrible. Who can withstand that? It's like, yeah, well, if you look inside that,
Starting point is 01:34:03 you see that something beckons, and what beckons is the possibility of what you could become if you confront that. And that's what we need to know. And that's, I think, integrity tied up with our most fundamental religious convictions. We know that people have an indomitable divine spirit. Well, how do you call that forth?
Starting point is 01:34:23 Well, by challenging it, it's not going to come out without that. You're not going to be who you could be without pushing yourself to your limit. Because why would you be? It's not like it's easy. You have to be compelled in some sense. You have to be challenged. And that's why you do your children no favors by by overprotecting them. Quite the contrary. Why does that message make use so emotional? What were you like at age 18? You're just a sketch one, I believe.
Starting point is 01:34:51 Alberta at that time, yeah. Well, I was thinking about the sorts of things that we're talking about now. I've been thinking about them ever since I can remember, but I've got better at thinking about them across time. But I was, I had a lot of the problems, I suppose that the typical 18-year-old would have. I drank a lot, I came from this little town
Starting point is 01:35:12 in northern Alberta, heavy drinking. I started drinking when I was 14. So I was quite a part of your, I was confused. Existentially, I would say, I wasn't sure what the proper direction in life was. I was very much obsessed with the problem of the Cold War. That's never really gone away because that seemed to me to be just a kind of insanity that I didn't know how to fathom. And you know, it was all of that, and I was obsessed with reading and obsessed with learning,
Starting point is 01:35:45 and so that was what all drove me in this direction. And then as I started to develop these ideas, like I had to let go of things, you know, one of the ideas that I've been promoting to people is that you have to let the dead would burn off, and you do that, you do that as a consequence of necessity in the pursuit of responsibility when I started writing seriously, I just stopped drinking because I couldn't think properly. So that was it. It was either like you're going to do one of these of the other. You're either going to continue wasting your time.
Starting point is 01:36:18 I was having a fine time. I was in graduate school and I had a very social, I was very, very social and a lot of that involved drinking and that sort of thing couldn't do both, especially when I was editing. I couldn't get my thoughts down pristine enough, precisely enough. Plus, the emotional magnitude of the things that I was dealing with were more overwhelming if I was, well, in the aftermath of a party. So my decided when I was like 25, in the aftermath of the party.
Starting point is 01:36:45 So my decided when I was like 25 or so to just stop. I've been caught off guard by how platissized you've become. And as I read of your youth, I know that you had your run-ins with religion, which a lot of people do. You actually got politically active, but on the left not the right. Help me understand what went down. Well in the little town I grew up in, the member of parliament, the provincial parliament, equivalent to American state, was a democratic socialist.
Starting point is 01:37:19 He was the only one in the entire province. Everyone else was conservative, which would be sort of moderate Republican, I would say. And, you know, there's something to be said for political voice for the working class and for the dispossessed. And it certainly is the case that hierarchical structures, the hierarchical structures that compose our society, do produce dispossession. They stack people up at the bottom.
Starting point is 01:37:43 And so people at the bottom need to have a political voice. And so I was very attracted to that end of the political spectrum. But as I came to investigate some of the problems I've been discussing more deeply, I started to understand that mere economic rectification was insufficient. That that wasn't the level of analysis that was appropriate for my inquiry anyways. Translated redistribution of income doesn't work. Well, think about it this way. The guaranteed basic income idea.
Starting point is 01:38:14 It's like, well, that's predicated on the idea that man lives by bread alone. Well, that isn't how it works. And I've certainly seen that in my clinical practice. I've had clients, especially addicts. If you gave them money, they would die. And the reason for that, like one guy that I remember in particular, I liked him quite a bit. It had a bad cocaine problem. And as long as he was flat broke, he wasn't dead.
Starting point is 01:38:42 But as soon as his, he was on disability, as soon as his disability check came in, he was faced down in the ditch three days later. So well, and you think, well, maybe that's a consequence of his overwhelming poverty, et cetera. You could come up with some social reason for that path that he took, but it wasn't by any stretch of the imagination, that simple. It's like people need purpose more than money even. I mean, obviously we don't want people starving. And actually we're doing a pretty good job
Starting point is 01:39:11 of solving that problem worldwide. You know, either you end projects that there won't be anyone in absolute poverty by the year 2030, which is really quite the bloody miracle, that's for sure. So we're doing pretty good job of getting rid of abject privation. But then it isn't the provision of material well-being with ease that allows people to live properly, even though a certain amount of material wealth is a necessary precondition. It's purpose.
Starting point is 01:39:44 And that's a much more difficult problem to solve. It's like we need something to grapple with, we need a meaning to justify our lives. And some of that is to be found in, well, the struggle against, against privation and malevolence. The mere offering of material sustenance to people isn't going to solve the problem. Dostoevsky knew this 150 years ago he said if he gave people everything they wanted, so all they had to do was eat cakes and busy themselves with the continuation of the species. The first thing they do is smash it all to hell so that something interesting could happen.
Starting point is 01:40:19 So that's our fatal flaw and salvation, both of that, that wanting to contend rather than to sit back and have everything taken care of. So how do we get an 18-year-old to understand what Doshievsky wrote 150 years ago? How do you get a 38 or a 58-year-old, which is my age, to understand how to take responsibility? No, we have discussions like this. You know, when you make the case to people as well, so I've been touring around my wife and I have gone to 60 cities now since January of this year, and I've been speaking to audiences that average 2,500 people.
Starting point is 01:41:00 And I have a, I deliver a lecture that's very much like this conversation. It's like layout, the structure of life, the fact that it's right with suffering and malevolence, that we erect hierarchies in an attempt to deal with that, to deal with those problems, because they're too alike, that the hierarchies dispossess people, and so we have to take care of the dispossessed as well, and to draw the relationship between meaning and responsibility. And the audiences are wrapped as a consequence of that. And I'm always listening to my audiences,
Starting point is 01:41:31 is when are they silent? Because when everyone in an audience is silent, then everyone's in the same place. That's a meaningful place. They're all lined up, and they line up on this axis of responsibility and meaning. So there's a hole in our culture where this information hasn't been provided. But it was there at times in our history, which has been the thing that I
Starting point is 01:41:54 struggle with, which is issue of sacrifice. It's so paradoxical, right? Why would me giving of myself to you make me feel better? It does seem like most times if I have money, I give you some money, I have less money. But you're arguing that if I understand true sacrifice and I sacrifice myself for something that has meaning. Well, part of it is, you know, human beings discovered time. That's one of the things that makes us very peculiar
Starting point is 01:42:19 creatures to be aware of our own mortality as a consequence of the discovery of time, right? We can see how we extend out into the future. And so that makes us very strange creatures as selfish creatures. Because you actually can't be narrowly selfish and survive. And here's the reason you have to take care of yourself now. So let's say, well, then you can pursue impulsive pleasure, perhaps at the expense of other people.
Starting point is 01:42:45 And why not? Well, here's one reason why not. There isn't just you now. There's you tomorrow. There's you next week. There's you next month, the next year, and 10 years from now. And so, if you conduct yourself in a manner in the present that interferes with your future selves, then that's a downhill trip for you. And so taking care of yourself in the future and taking care of other people actually turns out to be exactly the same thing. Because you're actually a community of people that's distributed across time.
Starting point is 01:43:15 And so if you act in your own best interest, then you're gonna sacrifice some of the present for the future. And that was one of the great discoveries of mankind, right? Which is something that I also concentrate on in 12 rules, because I'm really interested in the issue of sacrifice. Why would you give up something now? Why would you ever give up something now, voluntarily?
Starting point is 01:43:35 The answer is sometimes if you give up something now and often something you love, something you're very in love with even, perhaps not for the best reasons, then you can make a bargain with the future. And that bargain with the future isn't any different than the bargain you make with other people. So, that narrow selfishness is blindness to time and context. And there's nothing about it that's good.
Starting point is 01:43:59 And I do think the musical example is a really good one. Like in a musical piece, every note has to fit with every other note across the entire span of the piece. Well, that's what your life needs to be like, is like how you act with me right now, has to be in harmony with what you want for yourself tomorrow. And that's going to be tangled in as well. It's not only that you repeat across time and have to take that into account. It's that you repeat across time in the context of your social life. And so all of that has to be brought into the equation.
Starting point is 01:44:29 And the sacrificial motif is a huge part of that. And that also is something that runs contrary in some sense to empathy because sometimes you have to, you know, you have to beat yourself on the back of the head with a stick to get yourself to move forward properly, even though you know I should be doing this. I should be doing this. Well I don't want to, it's hard, it's like no sympathy for that, you have to do it because otherwise things are going to get worse. I heard you say that you're according to what the Ten Commandments say, do you do under your neighbors as you have them do on to you? The word nice is not in that command.
Starting point is 01:45:01 No, well nice isn't enough, you know, and this is not enough or is it not the right thing to expect because so many members of my audience beat themselves up in a way they would never hurt others. Oh, yes, that's definitely. And they say they're thinking, but most thinking is self-flagulation. Oh, yes. The part of it is, you know, take it easy on yourself, be fair. Yes. And in other hand, sometimes you tolerate stuff
Starting point is 01:45:26 about the people, because you teach people how to treat you. And if you don't do that, you get it. Well, getting that balance right is really hard. So in rule two, I think is treat yourself as if you're someone responsible for helping. And that, I was really interested in that issue of people mistreating themselves, you know, so because we are pri- pri- privy to our own weaknesses and faults. We know them better than anyone else knows them. And so it's very easy for us to determine that we're
Starting point is 01:45:57 not worthwhile because of all the ways that we don't live up to what we should live up to. And the painful knowledge we have of that. And to not regard ourselves as worthwhile and to not treat ourselves properly. And that's not good. You have to treat yourself as if you're valuable. And then that is the same attitude that you extend to other people. Well, it's because you are valuable. And it's a necessity to adopt the responsibility that goes along with recognizing that.
Starting point is 01:46:26 So even if you're not happy with who you are and even if you have your reasons, you still deserve presumption of innocence. You still deserve to have a good defense mounted on your own behalf. You still need to treat yourself as if you're someone valuable and someone worthy of love, even though you have all reasons to know why you fall short. And that's absolutely crucial. And it is hard for people to learn that. Hard for them to learn not to beat themselves up too much.
Starting point is 01:46:52 That why doesn't anyone ever get away with anything? That's one of your lines. Well, I think you imagine you have a plastic ruler, and you pull it back in front of your face. And you let go. It's like, you think, well, this is going pretty well so far. Snap. Yeah, well, it's because you can't, you can't bend the structure of reality.
Starting point is 01:47:14 This is why, and this is, I think, also partly what in this message is frightening is everything that you distort, snaps back and often magnified, and everyone knows that. And one of the things I discuss with my audience is like, well, just think about how you talk to people that you're trying to be, trying to treat properly. You don't say to them, okay, here kid, here's the way you deal with life.
Starting point is 01:47:42 This is you put your son in, you say, look, lie every chance you get. Falsify things. Don't take any responsibility for anything. If you can sluff it off to someone else, if you can hide things where no one will find them, that's a hell of a good strategy. Like, no one believes that, ever. So we know that that doesn't work.
Starting point is 01:48:00 Now, we're tempted because now and then you think, well, I can just cut a corner here or I can get away with this and no one will find out. It's like, yeah, they will. They'll find out or you'll find out. And I saw this in my clinical practice all the time. People would be suffering for some consequence. A lot and we'd untangle it. Maybe we'd go back five years or 10 years
Starting point is 01:48:24 and it would be something that was left undone, something that was done that shouldn't have been done. Not, and sometimes not even on the part of the person, you know, sometimes on the part of their parents, or maybe even on the part of their grandparents, like these things stick around for a very long period of time. But it's like, if you produce a rift in the structure of reality, it's not going to go away until you rectify it. And often it breeds more demons, that's for sure. But that's the case.
Starting point is 01:48:49 Why is it so hard for us to tell the truth? What is it biologically in us? What I like to push you on, these biologic issues, because you're a psychologist, you actually understand how the brain works, and how, in fact, the fundamental order versus chaos issue is in part reflected in our brains. So all these bouncing acts are brains pretty good at.
Starting point is 01:49:08 Yet, what truth is hard for us? Yeah. Well, it's hard to confront things now when you could hypothetically put them off. It's discounted a bit. A child who's called onto the carpet for their actions is likely to think, well, if I lie about this, I'm not going to get punished for it now.
Starting point is 01:49:26 I can get away with it. And they might not even really believe that, but they don't want to face the consequences of their actions right here and now. Well, we can just put it off a little bit. Well, it'd be nice if you could do that. And so you're tempted to do it. You can shunt it off into the future. That's just future you, you know.
Starting point is 01:49:43 You don't want to be that guy. Yeah, but it's better. It's better to have the fight now. It's better to confront it now if you can manage it. You touched earlier on this issue of the evil within us. And you stories a lot. In some of them stories that all of us are familiar with Harry Potter being a good one for this example, where there's a little bit of evil in Harry Potter. Yeah, darkness. Darkness, the shadow. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:50:09 I've voldamort, the story. What is it about having or respecting that we all have evil that you find is important for us living our lives? Well, I think the capacity for evil is something that is not easily distinguishable from strength. You know, and I mean, my knowledge runs out at this level of analysis in some sense. The world seems to be structured so that we have, that we can act for the good and we can act for evil. And I think that's associated with self-consciousness. And I think that's illustrated in this story of Adam and Eve.
Starting point is 01:50:44 When Adam and Eve become self-conscious, the scales fall from the rise. They realize that they're naked. And to realize that your naked is to understand your vulnerability. That's why Adam and Eve closed themselves. Anyway, oh no, I'm naked. I can be hurt.
Starting point is 01:50:58 OK, I can be hurt. I have to close myself. I have to protect myself in the future. You actually become aware of that in a way that animals aren't. Well, what does it mean that you're naked? Means that everyone else is too. What does it mean that you can be hurt? Means that everyone else can be hurt too.
Starting point is 01:51:14 Means that you could hurt them. And that's why the knowledge of good and evil goes along with the knowledge of nakedness. That took me a long time to figure out. It took me about 30 years to figure that out. Why are those two things conjoined? Oh, yes. When you understand that you're vulnerable, you understand that everyone else is vulnerable,
Starting point is 01:51:32 and then you have the option of exploiting that. And so that's what transforms human beings to some degree from animals. Because a predator just eats you. But a human being, a human being can play with you and will for all sorts of reasons. Now, the capacity to do that, though, why is the capacity to do that?
Starting point is 01:51:54 Let's say useful. Well, it's useful to be strong and not to have to use it. That reflects something that we talked about earlier because it makes you formidable. And I think that you have to be formidable in order to move forward properly in the world, even to get through obstacles that aren't just to get through obstacles. You have to have some strength of character.
Starting point is 01:52:17 You have to have some commitment. And some of that is there will be a cost if you interfere with me. It'll be the minimal cost necessary, let's say if you've got yourself under control. It will be the minimal cost necessary, but do not be thinking there won't be a cost. And I don't think, I don't believe that if that's not built into your character,
Starting point is 01:52:40 then you have no strength and you certainly have no strength when you're pushed by someone who's malevolent. A bully, if you're like that, if the bully pushes you and your response is, there will be a cost for pushing me and you will pay it, then the bully will go elsewhere. And we know that too, from studies of bullies, you know, like even childhood bullies. They push around, kids, and then they find the ones that retreat and withdraw, and they bully them.
Starting point is 01:53:14 So and you know you might think, well usually children are bullied because of some abnormality. That's a very common idea. It's like, there's a guy named Dan Olways, a very smart Norwegian psychologist, and he studied bullying for a long time as a precursor to fascism, by the way. So that was his interest. He said his analysis indicated that at least three quarters of children have some obvious abnormality that could be the focus of bullying attention. It might even be your name.
Starting point is 01:53:40 It doesn't take much of a genius bully to come up with a good way of making fun of your name, or your two-toler, or your two-short, or your brother's two-toler two-short, or there's something. It isn't the abnormality that is the cause of the bullying. The abnormality might become the focus of the bullying, but part of the cause is the withdrawal in the face of the bullies, because the bully thinks he can get away with it. Well, if you're... and it's also the case with children who are preyed upon by adult predators, like adult predators of children look for children who are easily cowed and who won't put up a fight.
Starting point is 01:54:18 So for example, if you're teaching your children to be terrified of strangers, that's really not a very good strategy. You want kids who are confident and who will make a noise if someone messes about with them and who are, who are, who are, and so that, that, that, that characterological strength has to be built in. We played through that, that the evil side of that equation. We do a lot of shows on Choucran
Starting point is 01:54:40 through the lens of a doctor. I'm interested in the forensics. And what, like, down emotions psychologically, what creates evil? What is the nature of a doctor. I'm interested in the forensics. And what, like, down emotions psychologically, what creates evil, what is the nature of evil? I mean, so Shnishkin wrote about this, that they're unbelievable evil that he witnessed and lived through in Soviet Russia. So some people see it and can react and respond
Starting point is 01:54:58 and they survive. Others will do it. But what caused the evil? There are levels. Well, some of it's like, moronic evil, you might say. It's like, well, someone has something you don't, and you want it. That's just bicycle theft or something like that.
Starting point is 01:55:15 It's pure material greed. And then I guess the level after that would be something like, well, the desire to cause harm because you're vengeful. And that's where the idea that you're a victim starts to play a real role. If you're a victim and things are unfair, then it's okay for you to react and to lash out and to hurt. And so then there's the conscious desire to actually produce suffering.
Starting point is 01:55:38 And then that can just expand beyond anyone's imagination until what you're trying to do is take, I think, like that maximizes out when you're trying to take revenge against God for the structure of reality itself. And I think that's the right language. So when people, and you see approximations of this with the high school shooters and people like that, especially the guy who shot up the elementary school. Yeah, Sandy Hooker. Yeah, you bet. You gotta go to a pretty damn dark place
Starting point is 01:56:08 before you think that the right thing to do with your life is to make people fundamentally identifiable because of their innocence and lack of wrongdoing, the target of your vengeful hatred. You've gone somewhere unbelievably dark to get there, but that's not the darkest place you can go. It's certainly a suburb of the darkest place you can go. You can go to where Hitler went and try to cook up
Starting point is 01:56:34 a strategy for destroying everything. I mean, everyone says, well, Hitler was trying to dominate the world. It's like, well, maybe Hitler was trying to set up a particularly dramatic for dramatic form for suicide with Europe in flames. That's what he did. You mentioned to Tau Turing government's Nazis in particular several times. One of the knocks on you is that Nazis come to your rallies. Oh yes, it's such
Starting point is 01:57:00 complete utter nonsense. It's absolutely reprehensible all of that. Why do they come to your rather than to come to your own fore? There's no evidence for that at all. The alt-right types don't like me at all. There's lots of documentation of that. And the reason they don't like me is because I don't like people who play identity politics. And I don't care if they're on the left or the right.
Starting point is 01:57:22 The left says, here's the victimized groups, and our society is basically an oppressor, oppressed society, and we should do everything we can to lift up the oppressed, and I don't know what we're doing with the oppressors, but I don't imagine it will be that pleasant.
Starting point is 01:57:36 And the identity politics types on the right say, oh yes, we should play identity politics, but we'll be white ethno-nationalists and look for white superiority or white ethno-state. It's like, as far as I'm concerned, none of those, none of that's even vaguely, it's reprehensible. It's thoroughly reprehensible on all fronts. The reason that this all came about, there's complicated reasons, but because I'm not a fan of the collectivist left, let's say. It's been in the interest of people who push that doctrine to paint me as the most radical of opponents,
Starting point is 01:58:11 which of course would put me in the far right camp, but just because you're no fan of people who play identity politics doesn't mean you're part of the alt-right. So that's been a strategy, I think, that's been, what would you say, put into play against me for a variety of reasons that has been somewhat successful, but not very in the final analysis. If maybe it's the wrong, actually, the put you on, but if zero is ultra-liberal and 100 is the ultra-conservative, alt-right, where are you on that spectrum? You think of yourself as more conservative, more liberal.
Starting point is 01:58:45 I know that your life you've changed. Well, I'm a traditionalist in many senses, but I'm a very creative person. So it's very difficult, temperamentally, for me to place myself on the political spectrum. It's not like I don't think that the dispossessed deserve a political voice. That's why I was interested in socialist politics when I was a kid.
Starting point is 01:59:06 And I understand perfectly well that hierarchy is dispossessed and that something has to be done about that. But I also think that we mess with fundamental social structures at our great peril. I think we've destabilized marriage very badly and that's not been good for people, especially not good for children. But I don't think it's been good for adult men and women either. And I certainly, as a social scientist, one of the things you learn if you're a social scientist and you're well educated and informed is that if you take a complex system, let's imagine you have a complex system and you have a hypothesis about how to intervene so that
Starting point is 01:59:44 it will improve. Okay, so what will you learn? You'll learn once you implement the intervention that you didn't understand the system and that your stupid intervention did a bunch of things you didn't expect it to, many of which ran counter to your original intent. And you will inevitably learn that. So I learned that I had a whole series of very wise mentors who insisted to everyone they talked to who was interested in public policy, for example, that when they put in place a well-meaning public policy initiative that they put aside a substantial proportion of the budget to evaluate the outcome of the initiative. Because the probability that the initiative would produce the results desired was virtually zero.
Starting point is 02:00:30 And I believe that that's technically true. And so that tilts me in the conservative direction because I think, well, that's sort of working that system. And I'm also not a utopian. So I don't expect systems to work perfectly. If they're not degenerating into absolute tyranny, I tend to think they're doing quite well. Because if you look worldwide and you look at the entire course of human history, degeneration into abject tyranny is the norm.
Starting point is 02:00:56 And so if you see systems like our systems, say in the Democratic Western world, that are struggling by not too badly. It's like you should be in awe of those structures because they're so difficult to produce and so unlikely. And then I think, well, you take a system that's working not too badly. I think, well, I'm going to radically improve it.
Starting point is 02:01:17 It's like, no, you're not. You're not going to radically improve it. You might be able to improve it incrementally if you devoted a large part of your entire life to it You're not, you're not gonna radically improve it. You might be able to improve it incrementally if you devoted a large part of your entire life to it and you were very humble about your methods and your ambition. But if you think that some careless tweak
Starting point is 02:01:39 of this complex system as a consequence of the ideological presuppositions you learned in three weeks in your social justice class at university and that's gonna produce a radical improvement. It's like you can't even begin to fathom the depths of your ignorance. You mentioned marriage as an example of this. As a social psychologist, what happened to marriage?
Starting point is 02:02:02 Well, I think a bunch of things happened. I mean, one thing that happened might be that we live a lot longer than we did. So, the problem of having a relationship that extends over decades is a different problem than having the problem of having a relationship that extends over the period of time where you might have kids. So I think there's that. I think that women have clearly become more autonomous. And so they've been able to transcend their more limited roles. Those roles, by the way, weren't imposed upon them by patriarchal men. I think that's a reprehensible view of history, because I think men and women fundamentally served as mutually sustaining partners
Starting point is 02:02:49 throughout the course of history, despite their continual disagreements in the difficulties of life. Women were relegated to a more restricted role, because they lacked sanitation, they lacked tampons, they lacked birth control. And those problems have been solved in the last 100 years, essentially, since about 1895. And so that's freed women to participate in a much broader sense than they were able to before. But we don't want to underestimate the power of those technological revolutions,
Starting point is 02:03:26 even though they sound rather mundane. They're not mundane at all, especially not the birth control pill. That's put a certain amount of stress on marriage because the traditional roles have been expanded. And you might think, well, that's great. It's like, yeah, it is. It is great in that a broader range of people have access to the expression of a fuller
Starting point is 02:03:49 range of their talents. And in principle, that's good for them. And definitely, it's good for the rest of society. Because now we have access to the genius of women, let's say, too. But that's made negotiating the marital role more difficult. And then the other thing that's happened, as as I'm concerned is that we got a little too careless about liberalizing the divorce laws and changing the structure of marriage in general.
Starting point is 02:04:14 I don't think that that was good for people, especially not for children, because the evidence that children do better in intact to parent families is overwhelming. No credible social scientist that I know of disputes that. So, and it might be because the minimal viable social structure is actually the minimal nuclear family, two people. One isn't enough. Two is barely enough, but it's a minimum, especially. And I think the reason for that is, this is how I look at it.
Starting point is 02:04:46 Everybody has lots of flaws and tilts towards insanity in at least one direction. And so partly what you want to do is you want to link up with someone over the long run. Because they're, they might be saying where you're not and vice versa. So if you have a partner and you put yourself together. And this is also how marriage works symbolically, by the way. It's the reunion of the original man before the separation into man and woman. You put yourself together. You have one person who's basically sane.
Starting point is 02:05:18 And so that maximizes the probability that you'll do reasonably well throughout your life course. But it also makes the pair of you, especially if you're communicating, sufficiently sane so that you're a foundation for the raising of children who will be socially competent and acceptable. Because if they have parents, if they have a parental unit,
Starting point is 02:05:40 let's say, that's communicating and that's straightening each other out, then the child can adapt to that unit as a microcosm of broader society. And so if the child can figure out how to get along with the parents in the best possible sense, then they're also simultaneously figuring out how to get along with everyone else. So, and I think if you go below that pairing, things fragment in a way that can't be easily rectified. I know that you're getting emotional talking about some parts of this discussion, and part when you talk about meaning and responsibility.
Starting point is 02:06:17 I know that touches you more personally than others. Well, I think it's a consequence actually actually, of many of the things that I've experienced over the last, especially the last six or seven months. So I meet 150 people or so at each of these events personally, and many of them have stories to tell me, and they tell me overwhelming stories. And that has a cumulative effect on you. So one kid, for example, he was in his early 20s, I would say. He came up to me and he said, I don't want to take up too much your time.
Starting point is 02:06:49 But year and a half ago, I just got out of jail and I was homeless. I started watching your lectures, said, I'm married, I have a daughter, and I just bought my first apartment. It's like good work. And I was in LA, and I was outside the Orphium Theater. It's kind of rough and downtown LA.
Starting point is 02:07:08 And I was walking down the street with my wife. And this car pulled up beside us. And this kid hopped out, Latino kid about 19 or so. And he said, are you Dr. Peterson? I said, yes, he said, oh, I'm really happy to meet you. And he shook my hand. And he said, and I've been watching your lectures. And just wait a minute, wait a minute.
Starting point is 02:07:24 And I said, OK, OK. And then he ran back to his car and he got his dad out, and they came over and they had his arm, they had their arms around each other, and they're just smiling away, you know, like with a real duchin smile, a real smile. And he said, been watching your lectures, and I've really been working on putting my relationship with my father together, and it's really worked. And so I thought, well, that's a lovely thing to have happened when you're walking through rough neighborhood is that some kid jumps out of his car and comes rushing over and tells you how much better his life is
Starting point is 02:08:12 because he's been working hard on the basis of your recommendation to fix his relationship with his father. And people are telling me stories like this all the time. And then, and the thing that's sad about it, I think. And this is what makes me emotional. It's not only that this is so good. And, and, and say at good at a level that transcends politics,
Starting point is 02:08:37 absolutely, but that people require so little encouragement. You know, there's so many people I see in my lectures, and I have a very diverse range of people who come to my lectures. They're starving for encouragement, and they don't need much. I said, I had this kid talk to me at a barbecue I was at this weekend, and he's working with delinquent kids,
Starting point is 02:09:03 13 and 14 years old. And he said they were pulled out of other Delinquent camps and brought to his camp, which was for the worst delinquents. And he started talking to them about my lectures. And so they've been watching them. And now they have a little fan club that's based around my lectures. And they're doing things like talking to each other about making their beds and cleaning up their rooms. It's like it's it's unbelievable how little
Starting point is 02:09:29 genuine encouragement many people need and how and how they had none. No one ever said to them and meant it. It's not okay for you to be a weak loser. It's not okay. And the reason it's not okay is because you could be way more than that. And it's a crime, an ethical crime for you to allow all that necessary potential to go to waste. It hurts you, it hurts your family, it hurts the world. Really, really, it does the world, really, really, it does. And people think, oh, okay, I get it.
Starting point is 02:10:10 And they do get it because they know at some level, the other thing people tell me, you know, they say, well, I've been paying attention to your lectures, developing a vision for my life, trying to tell the truth, trying to adopt more responsibility, and things are way better. But the other story is, you've been able to help me put into words things I always knew to be true, but didn't know how to say. Which is a good role for an intellectual to play. And so, well, so those are, that's why this all makes me emotional. It's so, it's so good. And so much of this has been covered as if it's political.
Starting point is 02:10:47 It's not political what I'm doing. It's not political. It's something that politics is nested inside. Politics is nested inside the healthy sovereignty of the individual. I'm working to buttress and sustain the healthy sovereignty of the individual, the great idea of the West.
Starting point is 02:11:06 So. Is it worth it? Is the pain that you must feel with some of the biting criticism that you witness here about yourself? Is it worth it? Oh, absolutely. And absolutely. And I'm not so naive as to think you
Starting point is 02:11:22 can get the good without the bad. I've had discussions with my publicists and the people who are working on my book. And sometimes the discussions are such that, well, maybe a little less controversy would be a good thing. It's hard to say what's a good thing. You know, and what's happened to me over the past two years, fortunately, is that every time I've been attacked, the net outcome has been in my favor. Even though it's very painful in the immediate, when it's happening with the mobs of students, for example, or with particularly reprehensible press piece, some of which some of the press pieces,
Starting point is 02:12:14 people who were very close to me told me, they thought they sunk me. I mean, I watched people respond to these things and very frequently now, if someone's mobbed in social media, they they apologize. They're done with one episode, you know, and this has probably happened to me a hundred times in the last two years. So it's very stressful, but I'm kind of detached from it because we'll see how it plays out, you know, and you can't do difficult things without them being difficult. And so I'm not I don't feel that it's been, we say, how to how to say it exactly. I'm perfectly satisfied with the way things are going, especially with these lectures, because they're so positive.
Starting point is 02:13:04 So how do you want to be remembered? The years from now when the world looks back on what we're witnessing right now. What should people say about Jordan Peterson? That he wanted the best for people, not the worst. And the reason I want the best, I think, is because I know a fair bit about what the worst is like. And I definitely don't want that. And that's a conscious decision to turn away from that. It's like enough hell. That's the lesson of the 20th century. And so it means that we take responsibility for that. We put the world together and we start with ourselves. We do that by adopting
Starting point is 02:13:57 responsibility, not by fixing someone else and not even by fixing social structures. They're not that easy to fix. It's like start with yourself. You're a fixer upper man. You got work to do. Get at it. Then maybe you'll develop enough wisdom so that you'll be good for someone other than you. And then you can expand that outward. So I would like the best for people.
Starting point is 02:14:20 I think when people look back on you, they'll also see that you began to tie together seemingly disparate parts of who we are as a species. And I like the to get into that because it's deep stuff but you are articulated in a way that I think people will understand. Let's start with the soul. This idea that we have something that for most people is this amorphous part of us, but you argue that it was in our parents, that it's out through all of us.
Starting point is 02:14:52 It's a much bigger concept than I had heard. Yeah, well, I think, see, this is how I think reality lays itself out. I think we all know this. You're not driven by your past like clock. You're not deterministic. You are at a some degree because you're limited. You're a limited creature.
Starting point is 02:15:13 You've got rules that you run by and all of that. You're not a miscient. But you're not driven by the past. What you do instead is confront the potential of the future. That's what's in front of you. So it's a domain with multiple pathways. And that's what's always in front of you. You could go there, you could go there, you could go there.
Starting point is 02:15:36 There's an array of choices that confront you. You confront that as soon as you wake up and become conscious in the morning. And then there's all this potential that's there in front of that, as soon as you wake up and become conscious in the morning. And then there's all this potential that's there in front of you. And you use your ethical choice to determine which of those possibilities will become actual. And it's through that mechanism that you participate in the creation of reality. And that's the making of you in the image of God, because that's what God did at the beginning of time
Starting point is 02:16:05 according to our old stories, right? Spoke and transform potential into the being that was good, and that was dependent on using truthful speech. So that's what you do if you act properly, as you confront potential, and you translate it into reality. And it's your soul that does that. Your soul makes that translation. But the soul for you is bigger than just in me, right?
Starting point is 02:16:30 It's a part of almost like our collective unconsciousness touches all of us. Our soul seems to be bigger than just what's inside of us. It's kind of- That's also the thing that's the same between us in some sense, right? I mean, it's a funny thing because you're a singular being possessed of this creative consciousness, but so am I. So it's a strange kind of singularity because we share it. And it's the thing that unites us in some sense as sovereign individuals.
Starting point is 02:17:02 So how does faith play a role in all this? And faith again, I gather that if you act appropriately, you'll have a better life. Good stuff will happen to you. Is that what faith is? I think you make a decision about whether, about what your fundamental attitude towards being is going to be.
Starting point is 02:17:24 I think that's faith. It's like, well, are things bad or good? There's a lot of evidence they're bad. There's a lot of evidence they're good. Where are you going to come down on that? Should you work to make things better? Should you work for the annihilation? These are decisions that you make.
Starting point is 02:17:42 And I think they're fundamentally based on something like faith. Your decision to confront the unknown and the things that frighten you. It's like, well, do you have faith in your potential? Do you have faith in what you could call forward out of you? Because you need that in order to move forward with confidence. You want to instill faith.
Starting point is 02:17:59 I mean, we know this. If you're trying to raise a child, you want to instill faith in them. Now, you might not say, well, I'm instilling faith in God. It's like, well, it's not so easy to decide when you're doing that, but to instill in your child the faith in the ability of their own potential to unfold in a positive direction. Well, that's faith. That's what you want for someone who's confidence. Like, yes, in absence of evidence, in the absence of certain evidence,
Starting point is 02:18:28 I believe that my commitment to this path of action will bear fruit. All right, so let's take this discussion and I think make it practical. So one of the biggest battles that I sense in America, North America, I'll throw the West, is that between religion and science. And many ways, this is a fracture
Starting point is 02:18:47 that you quote Nietzsche is speaking to when he said God was dead. That is a good thing. And led to the totalitarian ideology of much of the last century. But let's just take it right till today to North America in particular. And our brains hardwired to look at this information
Starting point is 02:19:04 differently. Religion made it possible to have inquisitive minds that led to science. North American particular. And our brains hardwired to look at this information differently. Religion made it possible to have inquisitive minds that led the science. Religion also placed in all of us this belief that there's some divinity in us, especially in all of us. And you very thoughtfully speak about how science talks about what is, and how can people watch us right now
Starting point is 02:19:22 or see us or hear us, the technology is remarkable, but religion is not what it means. What should be? What should be. Yes, that's what's... There has to be something beyond that. You know, and I believe that, like I believe that the description that I just gave you of human consciousness is actually scientifically accurate.
Starting point is 02:19:43 I think that we do confront potential and that we do cast it into reality. I think if you understand how the brain works from its ability to first grapple with what's unknown in physical representation and then to represent it in image and then to represent it in word, I think that what you see is the process of potential coming into reality. So I don't think that there's anything that's not commensurate with the scientific viewpoint there.
Starting point is 02:20:12 I also think that if we act as if we're each divine centers of consciousness of that sort, then we treat ourselves properly, think, well, you've got some intrinsic value. You treat other people properly, because I'm duty bound to treat you as if you have some intrinsic value. We build social structures on that predicate, they work. So the idea that the individual is sovereign in some divine sense.
Starting point is 02:20:40 If you act that out politically, it's like, pay your society functions and people don't starve and things aren't an absolute abject tyranny. And your rulers have something to bow to, that principle of intrinsic sovereignty. Now the question is, how that might be related to some metaphysical reality? Because that's the question of God. And the way, I don't know exactly how to answer that except that I've seen this relationship say between the opening statements in Genesis which describe God as this being that uses communicative
Starting point is 02:21:13 intent to call forth being out of possibility and that that's the essence of God as portrayed in Genesis and that's built into us as an image. I think, okay, well, that's what our whole society is predicated on in that work. So it seems to me that there's something true about that. I don't know what the fundamental relationship is between consciousness and the soul and the metaphysics of being, but I'm certainly unwilling to assume that this is all meaningless and random. I don't believe that. I don't think that's a good theory. I don't think it works at all when you act it out. So there's something wrong with it. And I don't think there's any evidence that it's true.
Starting point is 02:21:53 So people say, well, do you believe in God? And I think a bunch of things when I'm asked that question, it's like, why are you asking? What do you mean God? What do you mean believe? It's like, there are you asking? What do you mean God? What do you mean believe? It's like, then there are those are reasonable objections for questioning that complex. But I think a better answer is, I act as if God exists.
Starting point is 02:22:14 Say, well, does that mean you believe? It's like, well, what you believe is most appropriately expressed in your action. So, and I think what's the saying, by their fruits, you will know them. That's an action-oriented idea. It's like, so that's enough belief to stake my existence on. That doesn't mean I'm certain of it. How could you be certain of it?
Starting point is 02:22:43 It's not within the human, it's not within the realm of human capacity to be certain about such a thing. And so you have to stake something on it. It's like, I act as if it's true. That's as good as I can manage. And I don't think there's a more appropriate answer than that. It's like it's up to you to take it from there in some sense. I think part of the reason that you've become so popular is because you take religion and you allow us to see the fundamental grammar that is offered
Starting point is 02:23:23 by different religions without people having to first make the very important step of deciding whether they believe or not. I know for a lot of people listening there, that's going to be a bit of a struggle, but it is one of the more rewarding aspects of reading or listening to you. And I do think that a lot of people will come to either conclusion just to offer, which is I can live my life that way, and the fruits of my action will be bestowed on my family, my life.
Starting point is 02:23:51 And many will just decide they believe, period, because it makes sense, because there's so much wisdom in these writings. What religion is this? And I've talked to folks in every discipline about how they feel about what you're saying, and most find a way into them. But the reality that there is wisdom out there
Starting point is 02:24:07 beyond what a scientist like me can offer. And I'd like you, I look at the brain. I see that left hemisphere is pretty good at some types of processing, and the right hemisphere is different. And one is better about things of order, and one's better about things of chaos. You know, I'm making sense of what that just happened, paying attention to things that
Starting point is 02:24:22 are unexpected. The other one's pretty good at just automating my life. And I start to see that much of my behavior is hardwired. More than I would have normally anticipated, expected. And I suspect that when you read some of the wisdom, I've stopped thinking about people who wrote these beautiful old treatises as, you know,
Starting point is 02:24:42 like many scientists think about them, is you know, simple things who didn't really understand how the stars and the planets worked, and this is their best effort at it. Yeah. They were trying to answer very different questions. Yes, yes, they're not superstitious scientific theories. They're something different.
Starting point is 02:24:53 Well, and the thing about belief, I think you put your finger on it is, well, do you follow the story? That's a fundamental religious question, you know, when people go to see a movie like Pinocchio, this is a movie I've taken apart online in some detail, it's like they suspend disbelief. No one thinks that a wooden puppet has become alive. No one questions why the wooden puppet should rescue his father from the chaos of the whale. It just all just makes sense. It's like,
Starting point is 02:25:22 well, yeah, but why does it make sense exactly? And isn't it interesting to notice that it makes sense? And these stories have a pattern in them, and the pattern has a function. And that's a religious function. You say, well, I don't know whether I believe. It's like, well, you follow the story. The Harry Potter books are a good example of that, because they have a deeply, deeply religious substructure.
Starting point is 02:25:45 And that's why they were so insanely popular. You know, they have to speak for a book to become that popular. It has to speak to something that's in everyone. Because otherwise, why would they become that popular? You know, in the second volume, Harry confronts the basalist, the thing that turns you to stone that lurks underneath the magic castle. It's like, well, that's life, that's jaws. It's the same story.
Starting point is 02:26:09 It's like, we have a structure. It's kind of magical. We live inside it. It's a hierarchy. But underneath, there's chaos and terror. And that can come up at any time and paralyze you with its gaze, right? Turn you to stone because it's so awful.
Starting point is 02:26:23 And every building is like that. And so what do you have to do is you have to go down into the depths and confront that thing voluntarily. And then you find, and that's what you'll find what's of great value in that pursuit. And be reborn. It's like, well, that's the Harry Potter story. That's the second volume. It's like, well, everyone knows that story. Do you believe it? Well, Everyone knows that story. Do you believe it? Well, do you act it out? That's the question.
Starting point is 02:26:48 Do you act it out? It's the right pattern. I think, and maybe it's not even the right pattern. Maybe the human race is a hopeless race, and there's no destination for us. But for better or worse, that's our pattern. Our pattern is, the snakes are after us. Well, we can cower in our dens,
Starting point is 02:27:08 or we can go out and we can find the source of the snakes, and we can contend with it. And that's what we decided to do. And God only knows how long ago, millions of years, we decided we weren't going to cower in our dens, we were gonna go out and root out the snakes, it's like St. Patrick or St. George. And then we found, well, there was the snakes
Starting point is 02:27:27 that will eat you. And then there were the snakes that were in other people's hearts. And then there were the snakes that were in your hearts. And all those had to be contended with and rooted out. And that's part of the, that's part of the even deeper mythology. Is that there's an association and Christianity between the snake and the Garden of Evil in Eden and Satan.
Starting point is 02:27:47 It's like, where did that come from? What kind of crazy idea is that? Well, I just laid out the idea. It's like there's always a snake. What's the worst possible snake? Well, it isn't an actual snake. It's a metaphorical snake. It's the snake that's in the heart of your enemy
Starting point is 02:28:03 when he comes to burn down your city. Well, what if you get rid of your enemies? Well, the snake's still there. Well, then it's in your heart. So what's the ultimate battle? The ultimate battle is with the snake in your heart. It's like yes true true metaphorically But more than that metaphysically as true as anything can be that statement is as true as anything can be We live in a society where the dividing line between good and evil is
Starting point is 02:28:29 Between my tribe and someone else's tribe, right? Yes, maybe it's inside each and every one of our hearts. Yes. Well, that's so in it since comment, right? That's its conclusion from the analysis of the Gula Gara compelago. It's like constrain the evil within That's your primary moral obligation. That's why I don't like identity politics. It's like, it's not my tribe and your tribe. Don't be thinking that. That's a mistake.
Starting point is 02:28:54 It's more sophisticated than that. You have to understand it as a spiritual battle, not as an economic battle, not as a physical battle. You have to conceptualize it as a spiritual battle. That abstracts it. That puts it up into the level of abstraction where it's properly dealt with. Because otherwise it degenerates into tribal violence.
Starting point is 02:29:13 Right, so to take that abstract and reduce it to practice, religions are able to provide a grammar. Science is provided a grammar for some as well, but religion provides the basic building blocks for a lot of folks. What do you say about the argument that God is dead? Look out for what we'll replace him. That's the thing.
Starting point is 02:29:34 This is why I'm such an admirer of Nietzsche and Dostoevsky, both of them in particular. Because Nietzsche famously announced in the late 1800s that God was dead, but it was also that wasn't the announcement. The announcement was God is dead and we have killed him and we but it was also, that wasn't the announcement. The announcement was, God is dead, and we have killed him, and we'll never find enough water to wash away the blood. And he thought everything would fall because that foundation piece had been torn away.
Starting point is 02:29:54 And I believe that. So I'm trying to find out, well, what is that foundation piece? See, now Carl Jung, the great psychoanalyst, was a student of Nietzsche. Nietzsche thought that human beings would have to create their own values in the aftermath of the death of God.
Starting point is 02:30:07 And there's a utopian idea associated with that, the Dostoevsky. He wouldn't, that wasn't an idea that he would allow. He didn't believe that human beings could do that. Jung, following Freud, discovered that, let's say, that you can't create your own values. Because you are a certain, you are a certain sort of being, you have a nature. And the best you can do is go down into the depths and rediscover the values. And that's the same as the revivification of God. It's the same thing.
Starting point is 02:30:36 It's the rescuing of the Father from the belly of the beast. It's the same thing that Pinocchio does. And it's an eternal return to the depths and reclamation of the relationship with the divine spirit, let's say. And that's religious or metaphysical language, but I mean it most concretely in the sense we already discussed. It's like, well, that's your ability to contend with potential, and it turns it into reality. it's your fundamental responsibility. It's actually what you do as a living self-conscious being. And we elevate that to the highest values, say, that's divine. It's like, yes, that's divine. Well, how is that related to the transcendent divine?
Starting point is 02:31:16 I don't know, but it seems related to it. I also think that that's a perfectly reasonable claim. And there's all sorts of experiences that people have under all sorts of different conditions that seem to indicate some relationship between their isolated consciousness and being as such. It's outside of our grasp for some reason, but that doesn't mean it's not there.
Starting point is 02:31:39 It doesn't mean that people haven't reported on it. So one thing that you've raised to my consciousness is whether we would even have a civilization if we were unable to believe in things bigger than us. So I'm of Turkish origin and I went back to Turkey this summer. I'm part because I was visiting the Syrian refugees but within an hour drive of this refugee camp was the oldest civilization known to mankind. It's called Gebek Tepe, the little translation is Pat Belli Hill. The refugee camp was the oldest civilization known to mankind. It's called Gebek De Tepe. The literal translation is Pat Belly Hill.
Starting point is 02:32:09 It's 12,000 years old. Three times older than the pyramids. Four times older than Stonehenge. And they had big sculptures. And the reason I was stunned by it is, I was always taught in school. I don't know what you learned. But I'd be an farming community, you probably had
Starting point is 02:32:26 some discussion of how farming came about. But I learned farming happened, and then because of that, we had free time. We sent off a couple of people to be religious leaders. They went off and wrote all the religious tomes, and that's how civilization evolved. But Gebeketepe didn't have a agricultural community. It was a hunter-gatherer community, which meant that hunter-gatherers were able to build
Starting point is 02:32:49 temples to their gods. And because they could believe in things bigger than themselves, they began to think they can control the world around themselves. So follow this is important. Agriculture came because of a belief in deities, not the opposite. Completely fips everything that I had ever. Well, if you're a hunter, the question is,
Starting point is 02:33:10 what should you hunt? See, and we're built on a hunting platform, human beings, because we can throw an aim. So then the question is, once your brain starts to develop, is, OK, what's the ultimate aim? Right, and you might think, well, it's to hunt, it's like, no, it's to provision. Okay, so how do you provision
Starting point is 02:33:31 by aiming at transcendent things? Because then everyone cooperates and everyone shares, and we all work together, and we get rid of hunger as such, instead of aiming at a particular animal. Right, we aim at something higher, and it works. And so that's encapsulated in our narratives. And then the aim issue is really fundamental to that.
Starting point is 02:33:53 What's at the center? What's the point that we're aiming at? And that's the ultimate point. It's the highest possible aim. It's even in our language. And everything we do has to do with aim. It shows you how deeply the idea of hunting is in us. A carnivorous chimpanzee is fundamentally... But use the word sin. That's right, too.
Starting point is 02:34:13 That's sin is to miss your target. Miss your target, yeah, it's an archery term. Hamartia means to miss the mark. Yeah, that's a really useful thing to know. It's like, well, what's the sin? Well, it's when you miss your target. How do you miss your target? How about you don't aim? How about you don't know how to aim? How about you refuse to aim? How about you have no aim? No one can live under those conditions. We need an aim. It orients us. It gives us direction. It gives our life meaning. Like literally, does that neurologically? So the big question, without culture, you know,
Starting point is 02:34:46 70,000 years ago, you believe, humans started a diaspora from more than Africa. At least 12,000 years ago, you have Gebeketepa. Abraham, by the way, was born there. Not surprisingly, a lot of the Christophe disciples were in that area. It means you start to begin to realize that there's lots of layers of culture that got
Starting point is 02:35:05 us to where we got. And if I'm hearing you correctly, you're seeing there's a collective unconscious that senses thousands of years of human evolution and that culture cannot be discarded. You throw that culture, that faith away, those traditions, even if you're not quite sure why they exist. You toss them away and you discard them, there will be consequences. Okay, so the first thing is that some of the best scientists that I knew, like Yacht Panksepp,
Starting point is 02:35:30 who was a great neuroscientist who studied emotion, I think it was probably one of the five greatest scientists of emotion. He was really interested in archetypal ideas. The people who study the emotional and motivational systems in the brain are the ones that are most convinced about the reality of archetypal issues. So for example, people will understand how our brains work. Emotionally and motivate, who look at the emotion and motivational systems.
Starting point is 02:35:54 So the deep layers, not the cortical tissue. They're killing in part of old parts. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're convinced that these archetypes are vital to us. Yeah, well, not all of them, but many of them. Explain what an archetype is. An archetype say, well, it's a behavioral pattern. That's what it would be most fundamentally.
Starting point is 02:36:10 A behavioral proclivity. And then the secondary archetype would be the reflection of that in a story. So let's say one of our behavioral proclivities is to react in a certain way to a predator. So how do we react to a predator? Two ways, terror, freezing, to be turned to stone when you look at the Medusa.
Starting point is 02:36:32 That's the response of a prey animal to a predator. That's archetypal. It's wired into us. It happens way before you think, way faster than you can think. But then that's secondarily reflected in a story and that story becomes abstracted. So the ground of the archetype would be the biology and then the secondary manifestation would be the manifestation of that biology in action. And the archetypes are the most important things, I gather, because if they weren't important we wouldn't be hardwired to react to them. That's right, that's exactly right.
Starting point is 02:37:04 Some of these archetypes aren't running away from it, they're also respecting your parents. Yes, some- Yes, but you better respect your parents or you die. I mean, you're dependent on your parents for 18 years. It's like, yeah, there's there's fillial, there's fillial respect built in. Now it's pliable because sometimes you have parents and if you respect them, you die.
Starting point is 02:37:26 So there has to be some plasticity there. But as a, as a fundamental rule of thumb, it's there as a pattern. And I guess an archetype would also be something like the proclivity to learn language. No one really understands that, but it's obviously built into us. Even children who are quite impaired intellectually with the general exception of really severely autistic kids, learn to speak. It's built into our biology in a way that we really don't understand. Fear of snakes is built into our biology. For a long time, psychologists thought it was just no, we just learned fear, and then psychologists thought no, we learned to be afraid of some things more easily than others.
Starting point is 02:38:06 So you could condition fear to pictures of spiders faster than you could condition fear to pictures of pistols, for example. But then it went farther than that. It's like, no, no, you're not just conditionable. You're actually innately afraid of snakes. But I don't think it's snakes. I think it's tooth reptilian predators,
Starting point is 02:38:23 which is a broader category than snakes. So, and that's the dragon, fundamentally, because the dragon looks like an amalgam of predatory cats, predatory birds, and predatory snakes, and maybe fire as well, which would have been an ancestral friend and enemy, right, because fire is an ancestral friend and enemy. There's evidence, I think it was Richard Rangham,
Starting point is 02:38:42 wrote a very good book on fire a while back, a very good anthrop our primatologist. He figured we'd been using fire for two million years, something like that. And that we traded, we traded in testin' all-tracked for brain. Once we learned to cook, and that was a secondary consequence of hunting, let's say, or at least associated with hunting, because our diet became so much more nutritious and calorie-rich, especially eating meat and fat, that we could afford to shrink our digestive system
Starting point is 02:39:08 and trade it in for brain. Chimp spend about eight hours a day chewing, because mostly what they eat is leaves. It's like, go out and try to eat leaves. It's like, all you're going to do is chew, because they have no nutrition. So anyways, we're built on a hunting platform. We throw an aim.
Starting point is 02:39:23 Even our perceptions are very aimed at something. And the metaphysical question, you see how the biology transforms itself into the abstractions, like, well, you have to have an aim because you're a hunter. It's like, well, what's the ultimate aim? That's the religious question. What should you hunt above all else?
Starting point is 02:39:41 What should you devote your life to pursuing? So why are these stories the best way for us to articulate these negotiated rules that we all have with each other? Because the principles are so complex that we weren't able to articulate them and understand them. So one of the things Nietzsche pointed out was, you know, you tend to think that morality emerges in thought and then is imposed on behavior. We think up the rules and then is imposed on behavior. We think up the rules and then we apply them. It's like, no, we evolve the rules. Then we observe them in behavior.
Starting point is 02:40:13 Then we tell stories about them. And then out of the stories, we can abstract general principles. And then maybe we can get to the point of an articulated morality, but it's bottom-up. Now, there's top-down effects, because as you articulate, you start to change your behavior, but a lot of this is moved up from the bottom. One of the things I lecture about in my public appearances is the emergence of proto-morality in animals.
Starting point is 02:40:37 So here's a great example. This is from Yacht Panks'ept, the scientist that I mentioned earlier. He wrote a book called Effective Neuroscience, which is a great book. He said, here's what he did. Rats like to rough and tumble play. So if you take a juvenile rat, especially the males, they'll work to enter an arena where they can wrestle
Starting point is 02:40:54 with another rat, and they really like it. It's play behavior. It's not aggression, it's distinguishable from aggression. Okay, so you put your two rats together, one's 10% bigger than the other, the 10% big rat just flattens the little rat. Pins him, just like kids. But then you see, you don't play with someone once.
Starting point is 02:41:13 You play with them multiple times in life. So the game isn't one bout. The game is repeated bouts. Okay, so now you pair the rats together. So the next time you pair them together, the little rat has to ask the big rat to play. That's the rule. Then if you pair them repeatedly, if the big rat doesn't let the little rat win 30% of the time, 30 or 40% of the time, it's some substantial amount of the time. The little rat won't play with them anymore. And so, Panksett is high, is right. That's for sure. That's a major discovery because it's the emergence of
Starting point is 02:41:45 it's the emergence of fair play. At the mammalian level. It's like if the big rat plays unfair because the little rat doesn't get a chance, then the little rat won't play. So then you think, well, here's the morality. And this is what you say to your kids when you say, it doesn't matter whether you win or lose, it matters how you play the game. You don't know what the hell you mean. It's like, What do you mean by that? It doesn't matter to win. Of course it matters to win. OK, but let's define winning. There's the game.
Starting point is 02:42:11 You can win the game. OK, but the game isn't isolated because there's a whole bunch of games because it's a tournament. But then it's a tournament of tournaments because it's many games. So what you have your whole life. Your whole life, that's right, is the sequence of games. So what do you tell your kid?
Starting point is 02:42:25 Play so that you will be invited to play. Because the winner is the person who's invited to play the most games. And so then, so what does that mean? It means, well, try to win because you're no fun if you don't try to win. Sharpen your skills because you're no fun if you don't try. Help your damn teammates because it's a team effort.
Starting point is 02:42:44 And you want to push them up as you don't try. Help your damn teammates because it's a team effort and you want to push them up as you put yourself up. Distribute the spoils. Don't hog all the glory, right? If you're ahead when you're playing soccer, pass the damn ball, right? Act, act in this admirable sportsman-like manner. Well, what's that? Prototypical morality. So then you think, well, there's, he's a good sport. He does this well. Well, he's a good sport over here too. Here's another person who's a good sport, and it's something different, and here's another person.
Starting point is 02:43:13 And then we get a picture of what the good sport looks like, and that's the good citizen, and we start telling stories about that. But it's not like we understand, right? We can't understand. We have to build the story up from the behavior. And so if you look at these old stories, there's behavioral wisdom encoded in the stories. Here's an idea. Moses leads his people through the desert. And they're all fractious.
Starting point is 02:43:34 They got out of a tyranny, but now they're in a damned desert. It's like out of the tyranny, out of the frying pan into the fire. So that's what happens. You go from a tyranny into a desert, not to the promised land, which is why people will stay in a tyranny. It's like, why do you stay in that tyranny? What we'd rather be here than in the desert, because that's the next place. So okay, well now you're in the desert. So what do you do? Fragment and fight over what's important. So that's what Moses faces, it's like all these Israelites, they're fighting like mad. So they come to him, is lie outlined in the story. So he adjudicates their disputes and he spends like 10,000 hours come to him, is like outlined in the story. So he adjudicates their disputes,
Starting point is 02:44:05 and he spends like 10,000 hours listening to all these Israelites whine about everybody and the desert and complain about God. And so this is driving Moses crazy, he's trying to figure out, well how should these people live? And he's actually adjudicating the cases. Well then all of a sudden he goes up at a mountain and poof, the rules appear. It's like those are the rules by which you live. They're discoveries. It's like, oh, this is how you have to conduct yourself behaviorally in order for everyone to prosper. It's bottom up.
Starting point is 02:44:36 If he wouldn't have gone out of the tyranny into the desert and done all that adjudication, the rules wouldn't have been revealed. Or you could say, let's say you're watching a wolf pack, or a troop of chimps, they have structure, behavioral structures, so that would be acting out the archetype. You're the anthropologist, or the ethylogist, and you're watching, or the primatologist.
Starting point is 02:44:58 Think, well, it's as if the chimps are following these rules. Well, that's us. That's us. We're watching ourselves over thousands of years. It's like, okay, what are we up to? Well, that's us. That's us. We're watching ourselves over thousands of years. It's like, OK, what are we up to? Well, here's an interesting story about how things go badly. It's like, yeah, you're extracting out
Starting point is 02:45:12 the essence of the behaviors. And you turn them into a story and the story's compelling because you want to imitate it, right? Just like a child acting out as father or a child acting out her mother. You want to imitate it. So that you get the drama down. You imitate the pattern. But then you can start to think, okay, well there are principles that can
Starting point is 02:45:28 be articulated that underlie these patterns. Oh, that's natural ethics. So it's, and this is a wonderful thing because it means that the natural ethic in some sense isn't just a rational construct, it's not just a floating abstraction. It's like the articulated ethic matches the image, it matches the story, and the story matches the behavior, and the behavior matches the biology, and the biology reflects the structure of being. It's just, that's the musical layering of all these layers, one on top of another.
Starting point is 02:45:58 So if we get that it's not just random chance, not just a bunch of rules, but it's actually tens of thousands or maybe even hundreds of thousands of years of us seeing stuff, observing stuff, and our biology matches it. What's going on today? Why do we live in a society, I think the biggest epidemic is isolation and loneliness. But it's manifested a lot of disagreeable behavior.
Starting point is 02:46:24 I've heard you use the word complexity management as opposed to mental illness. A lot of people think I'm depressed, I'm borderline, I'm personality, I've got this issue, I've got issue. But it's actually, if I understand you correctly, something that's much more common, something much more ubiquitous, something much more understandable
Starting point is 02:46:43 that we have a complexity management problem. Yeah, well, the doctrine of turning to face that which confronts you is a complexity management solution. It's like what do you do when horrible things are chasing you? Turn around, chase them back. That's your best bet. And then I think that is an unbelievably ancient human decision.
Starting point is 02:47:05 Well, so that's the classic story of the dragon fight. You go out, the hero goes out to confront the dragon and rescues the virgin from her clutches. Well, what does that mean? It means that the standard human pattern of sexual attraction is for the person who decides to confront the predator in its lair to be reproductively successful. That's what that story means. It's like, well that's worked for us. That's our fundamental story. And who knows how old that is? It's as old as it's as old as predator primates. That's how old it is. Maybe it's older than that. So that's at least several million years old. But it goes back. It's like, Lynn Isbell, who's an anthropologist at UCLA,
Starting point is 02:47:54 she makes the case that the reason that human beings have acute vision is because we were preyed upon by predatory snakes over a 60 million year period. So we have unbelievably acute vision is because we were preyed upon by predatory snakes over a 60 million year period. So we have unbelievably acute vision. And we're particularly good at seeing the kind of camouflage patterns that snakes have on their skin in the lower half of our visual system.
Starting point is 02:48:16 It's like snakes gave people vision. That's Lynne Isbel's theory. And the way she established that was she went around the world and she looked at the acuity of primate vision and correlated it with the prevalence of predatory serpents. So the more snakes, the better our vision. Exactly.
Starting point is 02:48:30 So that and that's such a cool principle too because there's a metaphysical principle there too, which is, you know, why does reality have an adversarial nature? Why would God set something on you, say, an enemy. An adversary makes you stronger. Well, isn't that cruel? It's like, not if the person who sets the adversary on you believes that you could win. Now, maybe that's an insufficient explanation, but there's something about it that's, you know,
Starting point is 02:48:58 you could think about this biologically, too. I was reading the Master in his Emissary, which is quite an interesting book about hemispheric function. And the author pointed out that if you want to make a very small movement with your right hand, the best way to do that is to put your left hand up, and then to push against your right hand and to push. Opponent processing. Precision in action is a consequence of opponent processing. You have opponent processing between the right and left hemispheres. To make things function, you need this opposition between powerful forces.
Starting point is 02:49:30 And I think that's built into the opposition between chaos and order. That's hemispherically represented. But also something like the opposition between good and evil. Maybe you get a higher good when there's opposition between good and evil. I mean obviously these are ideas that are at the absolute extent of my cognitive ability to try to think them through but maybe the good you get when good and evil are both possibilities is a higher good than the good you get with just good. That tug of war, which you actually are you artists do brilliantly right? They stand on the border between ordering chaos and looking the chaos, these sea
Starting point is 02:50:04 patterns and then they tell the people on the other side ordering chaos, they look in the chaos, they see patterns, and then they tell the people on the other side, hey, I just noticed a couple things over there. So if that's where we need to be, they're modern society. Why is it that we can't get those two groups talking to each other, people who are primary, left-brain, organized, order folks,
Starting point is 02:50:21 and the folks on the right side are more chaos folks. What's this? Good question. Well, that's something I've really been struggling with in my lectures. I try to make a case for left to left in the right wing. OK, so the right wing, the right wing, there's a variety of things that distinguish them, but we'll talk about one in
Starting point is 02:50:39 particular. You have to accomplish useful things in the world, just to survive. Okay, and if you're going to do that in a social space, you do that by constructing a hierarchy. And if you construct a hierarchy, it's going to be of a certain steepness, because the people at the top are going to be more successful than the people at the bottom. There's also hierarchies of productivity, so the people at the top are more productive than the people at the bottom. And those overlap to some degree. So, you have to do useful things to survive.
Starting point is 02:51:05 If you're going to do useful things in the social system, you have to build a hierarchy. OK, so hierarchies are necessary and valuable. That's what the right says. The left is, yeah, wait a minute, though. The hierarchy tends towards ossification and corruption. And it dispossesses people at the bottom. Sir, California fires. Sorry, go ahead.
Starting point is 02:51:31 No problem. Well and those are both true and that's part of that opponent processing. You need the hierarchy. Social animals organize themselves hierarchically. Hierarchies are way older than capitalism, way older than the West. They're older than trees. They're unbelievably ancient. There's no getting rid of the hierarchy, but hierarchies tend towards corruption and dispossession. And those are tied by the lobster?
Starting point is 02:51:54 Yes, exactly. Yes, someone gave me this. Yeah, exactly. It's 350 million years of hierarchies. Now, that doesn't mean we should organize our societies on the lines of the lobsters. That's not the point. The point is that you can't attribute the existence of hierarchy to the West or to capitalism. So that's a foolish critique. That's the basic Marxist critique, at least part of it. Okay, so the left wing says, wait a second now, the hierarchies tend towards corruption, and they dispossess people and they need to be taken care of. It's like, yes, how much should we take care of them?
Starting point is 02:52:26 Versus how much should we sustain the hierarchy? And the answer is, we don't know, and it changes. So that's why you need political dialogue. Okay, so what's the fundamental necessity for political dialogue? Freedom of speech. So freedom of speech is the mechanism that keeps the opponent process balanced. And so you don't mess with freedom of speech. So freedom of speech is the mechanism that keeps the opponent process balanced. And so you don't mess with freedom of speech, which is why I opposed the legislation that I opposed in Canada,
Starting point is 02:52:51 which started all this political. The transgender legislation. Just for two seconds on this. So there was a law that said you must refer to transgender people the way they want you to, right, picking the pronoun they use. Yes, that was part of the legislation, background part of the legislation. And do you have any problems with transgender people
Starting point is 02:53:08 being identified by what the pronoun they use? In private settings in your practice or in your classrooms? My proclivity when people ask me to address them in a certain way is that if I believe that they are being straightforward in their communication, then I tend to exceed to the demand, like a reasonable person does.
Starting point is 02:53:25 So that wasn't the issue, the issue was the compulsion of speech and also the government's insistence that it was all right to build a social constructionist view of gender into the law, which is now the case in New York, it's also the case in Canada, and that's not appropriate because gender is not socially constructed in its entirety. It has a biological basis, so you don't build that into the law. But anyways, it was the compelled speech issue that really got me. It's like, no, you don't have sovereign control over my speech. Never in the history of English common law has a,
Starting point is 02:53:58 has the legislative branch produced legislation that compelled voluntary speech. There has been restrictions on hate speech. There's more of those in Canada than there are in the U.S. And I don't agree with them either. I think that's a mistake, but that's a separate issue. Compulsion in speech, your Supreme Court deemed that invalid in 1942. No compulsion in speech in the private sphere, no matter what the reason. And I think that's the correct principle.
Starting point is 02:54:23 And what's the issue with hate speech? Well, hate speech exists clearly. The question is, it's the fundamental issue. Who defines hate? And that's like the Achilles tendon of the Achilles heel of the law. It's like the answer is, those people who you least want to define it. So what you want is you want to have people say they're hateful things out in the open where you can
Starting point is 02:54:51 keep an eye on them and where they can invalidate their own viewpoint which is generally what happens. Invalidate their viewpoint. Yes. They say something hateful racist for example. The society said you guys you're missing the boat. You're completely off target with this. Yeah, right. You're reprimanded, spanked, you get back in line. Right, exactly, exactly that. That's how it's supposed to work.
Starting point is 02:55:11 Well, that's a good way of putting it, because what it also means is that the people who espouse those opinions for whatever reason get appropriately subjected to social correction. That's good. You want them to be subjected to social correction. So what happens if the government passes a law saying you can't save those words? Then where do they go? Underground. And psychologically and socially.
Starting point is 02:55:32 And that's not good. Because then you don't know what's going on. Like this thing that happened with Alex Jones is a good example of that. It's like leave Alex Jones alone. Why? Because you want to see what he's up to. Not because you like him, but you want to see what he's up to. Not because you like him, but you want to see what he's up to. Yeah, absolutely. You want to see what people are up to.
Starting point is 02:55:53 You know, because sometimes extremists are correct. Almost never. They're almost always dangerous beyond belief. But like one time in 1,000, things have changed so radically that someone who appears extreme is correct. Well, you got to be able to know when that's the case. You got to keep an eye on it. You know, and it's not clear to me at all that most of the followers of Alex Jones
Starting point is 02:56:13 necessarily agree with him. Maybe they're mildly entertained by his antics. Whatever it might be, but it was a mistake to go after him. It's got to keep an eye on it. Plus, you shouldn't persecute people who are paranoid. Yeah. That was Kissinger's big statement to Nixon, about Nixon.
Starting point is 02:56:32 If imparinoid people have enemies. Right. Right, right. Confirm their bias. Right, that's exactly right. Yes, that's not a good idea. Why is every person watching us right now, and they're quite a few,
Starting point is 02:56:43 suffering from anxiety, depression, addiction, all three together even. How is the possible, we're not all there in that quandary? Oh well, first of all, many people are at different periods in their life, right? It's a rare person who doesn't have a severe bout of anxiety at some point in their life, often because things collapse around them,
Starting point is 02:57:01 like they encounter some real catastrophe. Even with depression, if you look at the epidemiological studies, most people who eventually suffered depression had their first episode precipitated by something truly awful. So, you know, we move in and out of states of terrible negative emotions throughout our life. Why don't we, why don't we stay there? What makes us better? Almost subconsciously, we have a resilience.
Starting point is 02:57:28 Yeah, well, some of it, some of it's the grace of God and blind luck. You know, some people are just healthier than other people, and that makes a big difference. So, you know, you don't want to be too morally self-righteous about the absence of anxiety in your life. It could easily be due to your character, logical strengths, and your willingness
Starting point is 02:57:46 to confront things voluntarily and all that, but health plays a big role. Health and good fortune, you know, I mean, you meet people now and then who are in their 40s and they've never suffered a serious loss from death, for example. Do you think part of the reason that people find their path is because they know the story they're in?
Starting point is 02:58:06 Oh, definitely. And some folks, they don't know what story they're in. Or they're in someone else's story is a bit player as you've articulated. Yeah, well, we've produced some things, some exercises online to help people get their story straight. There's one exercise called future authoring. Yeah, speak about that. I did that.
Starting point is 02:58:23 Yeah, well, you know, the idea was that it's based on exactly the questions you asked, which is, well, what's the story of your life? Is it a comedy or a tragedy? Comedy is something with a happy ending, fundamentally, and a tragedy as well. It starts bad and gets worse. And is it a tragedy that someone else is imposing on you or some bit of view that you don't understand.
Starting point is 02:58:45 What's the story of your life? Part of that is, well, what do you want? What are you aiming at? That's the reverse of sin, right? You're aiming at something. Well, the future authoring program helps you determine what it is that would be good for you to aim at. What do you hope for? What do you hope for? And if you so the exercise basically assumes that you treat yourself as if you're someone that you're taking care of. So that's the presupposition. You're valuable, despite your flaws, it would be okay for you and maybe all right for the universe as a whole. If your life wasn't any less, any more wretched than it has to be, so we could set it up for that. Okay, so so now if you were looking three to
Starting point is 02:59:25 five years down into the future and you could you could have what you needed within the bounds of reason what would it be? What do you want? What do you want from your family? What do you want from your friends? How are you going to educate yourself? What are you going to do for your career? How are you going to take care of your mental and physical health? How are you going to resist temptation? What are you going to do with your career. How are you going to take care of your mental and physical health? How are you going to resist temptation? What are you going to do with your time outside of work that's productive and meaningful? You get to have it.
Starting point is 02:59:49 It's like knock and the door will open. Okay, you go to knock first. Well, and then you go to pick the door. And like, I really like this because it is, you cannot catch something you're not pursuing. So now if you're pursuing it, that doesn't mean you'll catch it. But generally, you'll catch something interesting along the way. You know, that's the thing that's so cool about this, let's say you said out of vision, you start pursuing it, you don't get what you were after.
Starting point is 03:00:16 But you learn a lot as you move towards that destination. And as you learn, your vision is going to change and you may end up with something that's better than what you're aiming at to begin with. But that won't happen unless you initiate the journey. That's partly something I learned from the Abrahamic stories, with the story of Abraham in particular, because God calls Abraham to an adventure when he's like 85. It's like, get out of your father's tent for God's sake. Get out there in the world, right? Really, that's how the story is set up. Leave your family and your tent. It's time to get out in the world.
Starting point is 03:00:45 Well, what do you see in front? Famine is the first thing, tyranny, and the potential loss of his wife. It's like Abraham must have been going. It's like the tent was, tents looking pretty good. But it's this call to adventure. Okay, so you put together a vision,
Starting point is 03:01:00 that's your call to adventure. Get out there in the world and contend with it. Well, you might not get what you want, but you might find what you need, but it won't happen without the pursuit. And that's part of faith, right? Faith is, I'm going out in the world to seek my fortune. And if I do that properly, then the fates will cooperate with me. How do the archetypal stories that we in our subconscious have? These are these, these, I mean archetypal questions are the ones that everyone really is trying to ask, even if they can't put words to it right.
Starting point is 03:01:32 How do they help us maintain our sanity? And do you think that's part of what we're struggling with right now that we've lost touch with ancient wisdom, again, part of our collective unconscious that should be there, should be part of us that we've distanced ourselves from either from technology or modern culture, whatever. Well, look, we have the capacity for abstraction, right? And so, to abstract means you can think without acting, because otherwise it's useless. It's not abstraction then.
Starting point is 03:02:01 So you can, you can peel reality away and represent it abstractly and then you can start manipulating it. And you can criticize what you're representing. And we're doing an awful lot of that. A lot of that subsidized, I would say, this intense criticism of our own structure. It's like fair enough, you know, but you don't want to throw the baby out with the bath water, so to speak, especially if it's the divine child that you're throwing out, which is what it is. It's like criticism. This is where the left goes too far when it's criticizing. It's like, well, you can criticize the hierarchy.
Starting point is 03:02:33 You can criticize the current instantiation of the hierarchy. It isn't obvious that you can criticize the idea of hierarchy itself. You're pushing a little too far then. You can describe the tyrannical nature, the partial tyrannical nature of the current societal structure. You can't say all hierarchies are patriarchal tyrannies. That's too far. You have to use some judgment and so the proclivity for, and the thing is what are you trying to do when you criticize? Well, if you're smart, like when I get my students
Starting point is 03:03:07 to read Freud, it's like, or Nietzsche. Well, these guys had, A, they were bound by their time in place, and so they had presumptions that we no longer share. And B, they said things that were regrettable. Nietzsche said a variety of things about women that were regrettable, partly I think, because variety of things about women that were regrettable. Partly, I think, because he didn't have that much success on the romantic front partly,
Starting point is 03:03:29 because he was very ill partly, because he was isolated. Like, he had his reasons, but it's not that helpful. Maybe you read Nietzsche, it's like you get rid of 10 percent of it. But you keep the rest. You read Freud, it's the same thing. You read these people who were flawed humans, and you think, well, let's separate the wheat from the chaff. We're going to put it all in a pile and burn it.
Starting point is 03:03:49 It's like, oh, Freud made a mistake. Burn him. That's what we're doing with people on social media. It's like, no, discriminate. There's a horrible word for people. Don't discriminate. It's like, yeah, discriminate, man. Like your life depended on it.
Starting point is 03:04:04 You read these old thinkers, and you think, yeah, discriminate, man. Like your life depended on it. You read these old thinkers and you think, well, no, no, yes, that goes in the keep pile. That goes in the keep pile. We're not doing that with our culture. And it's partly because we don't have any gratitude as far as I can tell. And this is another thing I talked to my audience that's about, here's the story.
Starting point is 03:04:20 Here's how to survive an Indonesia. Okay, so you live on a mountain, but it's a story. Here's how to survive an Indonesia. Okay, so you live on a mountain, but it's a volcano. All right, so you get to climb up the volcano at night. It has to be at night because it's too hot otherwise. So you have to climb up this volcano, and it's a mountain. Then you have to go inside the volcano down to near where the volcano was active, because it's active. So it's belching out sulfuric clouds
Starting point is 03:04:45 at you all the time. And if you encounter a bad one, then you just die. So when you have a mask around your face, that's just a wet rag, and you go down to the volcano, and you pick up a 40-pound clump of sulfur, and then you carry it out of the volcano at night, because otherwise it's too hot, and then you carry it down the mountain,
Starting point is 03:05:02 and you get it a couple of dollars so that you can do it again. Yeah, that's not your life, but someone has that life. And you don't have that life because look around you, man, this is a remarkable place that we've built. It's absolutely unbelievable.
Starting point is 03:05:18 And most of the time it works and you should be on your knees in gratitude for it. Even though you can also say, well, look, we don't have fully quality of opportunity. We're not making the use of full use of the talents that everybody's bringing to the table. The system tilts towards tyranny from time to time and we have to keep an eye on it.
Starting point is 03:05:36 It's like, yeah, but you're not hauling 40 pounds sulfur boulders out of volcanoes at night. That's something, you know? So a little gratitude would temper the criticism. You made the point that part of the reason people get bitter is because they don't think they can be as good as they should be able to be. And a lot of it comes back to self-esteem.
Starting point is 03:06:03 How do we build self-esteem at any age? Because I see that slip away in a lot of it comes back to self-esteem. How do we build self-esteem at any age? Because I see that slip away in a lot of people. And without that, they don't have the confidence to act as some of the things you're speaking to. Okay, so self-esteem is a tricky concept because the best predictor self-esteem is trait neuroticism. So the higher you are in trait neuroticism, the more you look at it.
Starting point is 03:06:22 There are five cardinal personality traits, extroversion, neuroticism, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness. I have a test that people can take, understand myself, that allows them to assess those five traits broken down into two additional aspects. I took mine, by the way. Results were scary.
Starting point is 03:06:39 Well, the test is designed so that everybody's results get to be scary. It's scary to find out who you are. So, but how the trait neuroticism is a measure of the proclivity for negative emotion, anxiety and emotional pain essentially. And the higher you are in that, the lower you score on tests of self-esteem. So, self-esteem is not a very good measurement because basically it's a misnamed reverse neuroticism.
Starting point is 03:07:06 So it's not easy to deal with that proclivity for anxiety, but there's a separate question, which is more like how do you encourage people? So it's not a matter of bolstering their self-esteem. It's actually, it's really important to get these things right because if you don't get the conceptions right, then the implementations fail. So it's about reducing neuroticism?
Starting point is 03:07:24 Well, if you could, I don't think you can, what really? What you can do is make people more courageous. That's different. So even if you're treating people who are phobic, like agrophobic, it isn't obvious that you make them less phobic, what is obvious is that you make them more courageous. So if you're treating someone who's agrophobic
Starting point is 03:07:42 and they won't go on an elevator, so they're afraid of an elevator, and they won't go on an elevator, so they're afraid of an elevator, and you slowly expose them to the elevator negotiating that and they get to the point where they can get on the elevator, they don't really, they're not really less afraid of death than they were. They're more confident of their ability to prevail in the face of adversity, and that you can teach that. And you do that by challenge.
Starting point is 03:08:07 You do that through challenge. So if you want to build someone's self-esteem, let's say, but I would say encourage them, then set them a set of optimal challenges. And allow them to watch themselves succeed at those challenges. And that will build it right into their bones. All right, so let's go back to this lobster story since you were in the lobster tie. All right, so 250 million years ago you had a hierarchy.
Starting point is 03:08:30 Yeah. Those hierarchies and most everything it seems. Some lobsters win the hierarchy. Yeah. They get to have all the female lobsters like us. Yes. What do you do with the lobsters at the bottom of the hierarchy? Now today you say we have to talk about them, can't ignore them.
Starting point is 03:08:43 Yeah. But it's not easy just to engineer society to automatically manifest a better life. Although I think a lot of people say we can do better than we are for a lot of people. Don't really get a chance. But what is the beta lobster? How do they get coos? Well, I think we do a lot of, I think we have done a lot of things successfully in our society.
Starting point is 03:09:03 So, the first is that it's not a monolithic hierarchy by any stretch of the imagination. As we've made society more complex, the number of sub-hierarchies has multiplied tremendously. And so let's say each of us comes to the table with a different set of weaknesses and strengths, is it's highly probable that you'll be able to find a sub-hierarchy where
Starting point is 03:09:24 your particular pattern of weaknesses and strengths is it's highly probable that you'll be able to find a sub hierarchy where you're predicted a pattern of weaknesses and strengths actually constitutes the crucial element. So if you're high in agreeableness, for example, well, healthcare is a good field for you. And if you're really conscientious, then you can be a manager. And if you're open, then you can be entrepreneurial
Starting point is 03:09:38 or creative. You're playing a different hierarchy. Find a hierarchy that matches your temperament. That's a really good rule. And then we could say, well, let's diversify the hierarchies and we are doing that and and a very rapid rate God, there's an endless number of diverse hierarchies online for example so you Now a sophisticated society produces a
Starting point is 03:09:59 subset of hierarchy that's matched for as many people as possible Okay, but then there's additional complications in some of them we don't know how to deal with. So for example, one of the things that predicts the ability to succeed in hierarchies across hierarchies seems to be associated with intelligence. So all things considered across most hierarchies it's better to be intelligent.
Starting point is 03:10:22 So then the question is, well, what do you do with people who are of less cognitive power? And that's an increasingly complex problem. So, and I don't think we have a straightforward solution to that, because one of the dangers is that as our society becomes more technological and more cognitively complex, the effective intelligence actually grows, and that's what the literature is. But what do you do with members of our society who cannot compete? Because we have an obligation.
Starting point is 03:10:48 That was one of the basic insights I gained from reading and listening to you was that we all have that spark of divinity. That you can't leave. When Nietzsche said God is dead, because science had prospered, it only happened because religion first respected our specialness. Yeah, each of us. Yeah.
Starting point is 03:11:07 And only after that, can we begin to transcend it. Okay, well this is the way I look at this is that let's say that you're blessed with success, like you've been blessed with success. Okay, so you have a lot of resources at your disposal. Okay, now you can feel guilty about that and perhaps to some degree that you should. That's between you and your conscience. But let's say that you've generated your resources in a fair game and that a lot of people have benefited along with you.
Starting point is 03:11:34 So you've played a straight game. Now you have all these resources. Okay, so what should you do with resources? Well, impulsive pleasure. It's like, well, little of that goes a long ways and it's liable to take you down in a very, very short period of time. Okay, so how about that? So many shows on that, so. Right, okay, so how about not that?
Starting point is 03:11:50 Doesn't work. Doesn't work. Right, it's not a good medium to long-term solution. Okay, how about your ethical responsibility grows in proportion to the resources that you have at your control? And the right thing to do is that as you become more competent, authoritative, and able is to expand the range in which you're operating to do more good.
Starting point is 03:12:14 It's like you've got a problem. You see some something in the world that's bothering you. You think, well, that's a problem. It's bothering me. Because that's an interesting thing. Not everyone bothers everything. Some things bother each of us. That's your problem. Whatever bothers you. It's like, that's like interesting thing, not everyone bothers everything. Some things bother each of us. That's your problem, whatever bothers you.
Starting point is 03:12:27 It's like, that's like a little marker. I don't know why it emerges. That's your problem. You should go out there and do something about that. Okay, so you have some excess resources. It's like, great. Get at it. And this is one of the things I like about someone like Bill Gates, for example.
Starting point is 03:12:42 It's like, what's he doing? Well, how about combating malaria? Yeah. Okay, you got $60 billion, you want to wipe out malaria? That's, it might be a good thing that you have $60 billion if one of the consequences is that you're going to wipe out malaria, or at least you're going to try. And he's after the five major diseases, right?
Starting point is 03:13:00 And actually, from what I've been able to read, it's like making some headway. It's like, great. So what is winning, losing from what I've been able to read, is like making some headway. It's like great. So what is winning, losing, what is success? How does that all fit into this hierarchy game? It's musical. Musical. Sure. It's like multiple layers.
Starting point is 03:13:15 You bet. It's like, you know, maybe it's a stress wall, say, it's beautiful. And you're dancing with someone you love. And the orchestra is being conducted. And everyone's dancing around you. And everything is stacked up harmoniously. It's like you're winning with someone you love, and the orchestra is being conducted, and everyone's dancing around you, and everything is stacked up harmoniously. It's like you're winning at every level, simultaneously. That's where the maximal meaning is.
Starting point is 03:13:32 It's like there isn't anything better than that. Why would you pursue anything else? You wanna win at every level, and that means that not only do you win, but the fact of your winning is related intagrely to the fact of everyone else's winning. That's a perfect game. It's like, not only are you winning,
Starting point is 03:13:51 so is everyone that's playing with you. It's like, great. And that is, and I do believe, I believe we're wired for that to be a meaningful experience. God, look at us. You go to a sports game, and you see a remarkable display of athletic prowess and sportsmanship at the same time.
Starting point is 03:14:10 Everybody spontaneously gets up in the plodds. Before they think, it's like, yes, you got it. I'd see that picture, but I also see pictures often on the set of men and women coming in, not getting each other. And a lot of times it's hard to understand what the guy's up to. Something just, because I think we're all as humans like Mazorotis, immunized as a surgeon,
Starting point is 03:14:32 I see the inner workings of this. When one little spark plugs off, everyone can hear it. Sometimes you can't hear it over the noise, but it's there. So when a woman is not happy, for example, with what she needs out of life, most of horses these days, the middle-aged couples are initiated by the women. That's a consequence of higher trait neuroticism in all likelihood.
Starting point is 03:14:53 Explain. Well, women are higher in trait neuroticism than men. And I think it's because they have to take care of infants. And so I don't think women's adult women's nervous systems are attuned to the needs of women. I think they're attuned to the needs of woman and infant. That's different. Mother and infant, yeah.
Starting point is 03:15:09 Mother and young infant too. And so there's more sensitivity to threat than might be good for a woman's mental health across the span of her individual life. But it's the price she pays for being hyper-vigilant for her infants. And it's driving the sorts of things that we know that one of the predictors of divorce, for example, is high-trade neuroticism and
Starting point is 03:15:27 at least one of the partners. Because they're more unhappy. So how does an unhappy woman express that in a successful way to get the guided change? Because he doesn't have trait neuroticism, right? Yeah, he's not all worried about being a father of a young child. Yeah. hard-wired for aiming at the target. Yeah, well, it might be worth having a discussion about what target to aim at. You know, again, that's why we developed the future authoring program.
Starting point is 03:15:53 It's like, okay, what are you both up to? What are you aiming at? We need to establish that. And you say, well, I'm not aiming at anything. It's like, yes, you are. If you don't know what you're aiming for, that just means you don't know what you're aiming for. You can't live without an aim. It also't know what you're aiming for, that just means you don't know what you're aiming for. You can't live without an aim.
Starting point is 03:16:06 It also might mean that you're aiming at 25 things at the same time, so you're polytheistic in some sense, and 10 of those aims are working at cross purposes to the other 10, so you're a house divided amongst itself. I think a lot of times women are bit players in their family story, and they figured out, and that's not fulfilling. You wanna be the main character,
Starting point is 03:16:30 protagonist of your story. Well, that's also perhaps associated with higher trade agreeableness. It's another big five trade, so if you're agreeable, you tend to defer to others and you're compassionate. Now, deferring to others isn't necessarily a virtue. We tend to think of compassion as a virtue,
Starting point is 03:16:45 but we already discussed that. It's like, well, one of the things that you do if you're a clinician, like clinicians basically do two things. They help people deal with anxiety and negative emotion. That's a big part of it. And the other is they do assertiveness training. And that's usually for people who are too high in agreeableness.
Starting point is 03:17:02 It's like, okay, what do you, I've had clients who are so agreeable, they couldn't say what they wanted. It's like, what do you want? I don't know. They've been so other centered that they don't know what it is that they're crying out for. And that's often a very lengthy process of discovery. But then you have to find out what you want,
Starting point is 03:17:22 then you have to figure out how to fight for it because you don't just get what you want. It's like, that isn't how things work. This is, since you're talking about fighting for what you want, this came up in your channel for interview in the UK, about the fundamental difference between women and men. And a hot topic that we've talked about in the show is the fact that women aren't paid in a way
Starting point is 03:17:44 that it seems equitable to the't paid in a way that it seems equitable to the men in a similar job. And you made arguments that there are fundamental differences between men and women where women need to play some of the role. And assertiveness is part of it. Yeah, well, agreeable people get paid less for the same job than disagreeable people. Because they don't ask. Sure. Look, if you do your job very competently, you might expect that your boss should notice that, and probably he or she should.
Starting point is 03:18:08 But the problem with doing things well is that it's invisible. What's visible is mistakes. So then you just work really hard and you're invisible. It's like, well, you're invisible. That's not helpful. And like, did you ask? And maybe asking isn't good enough. Like, I've counseled lots of people who've tripled their salaries in two or three years.
Starting point is 03:18:25 Like it's work, man, it's work. It's a strategy, it's a war to do that. But you can do it. I mean, the first thing you do is, well, the first thing we do is, well, are you actually doing a good job? Let's say yes. Okay.
Starting point is 03:18:38 Fine. Are you documenting it? Generally no. Yes. If you're documenting, are you communicating the documentation? Well, no. Okay. Is documenting, are you communicating the documentation? Well, no. Okay, is your CV up to date and prepared?
Starting point is 03:18:50 Are you ready to move laterally? Are you looking for other positions? Are you looking for other opportunities within the workplace? How often do you talk to your boss about what you're doing? What are your salary goals? Well, I want a 15% raise. Did you ask? No.
Starting point is 03:19:04 Well, sorry, man. You're not going to get it if you don't ask. Unless you're assuming that your boss is on nissient and benevolent, which is highly improbable, especially if you're doing a good job and you can be ignored. And then it's not only a matter of asking. It's a matter of negotiating. Because if I want something from you and it's somewhat of a
Starting point is 03:19:22 zero sum game, and often the distributable pile of money is somewhat of a zero sum game, it's like, here's six reasons why you should pay me 15% more. And here's two things that aren't good that will happen if you don't. So, and then usually you're not even negotiating with your boss, you're negotiating with your boss's boss. So what you're trying to do is to give your boss a story so that he can or she can go to the next person up and say, well, we have to give this person 15% more
Starting point is 03:19:49 because if we don't, first they're doing a good job. But here's the documentation which they so helpfully supplied me for. And here's the negative costly thing that will happen if we don't. So like, yeah, I give them their money because it's cheaper than hiring someone else. So like, you have to think strategically and you have to be disagreeable. And the disagreeable part is you have to negotiate on your own
Starting point is 03:20:10 behalf. What's the fundamental difference between met and woman? Well, the temperamental traits are women are higher in trait and radicism, so they feel more negative emotion, anxiety and emotional pain primarily, and their higher in agreeableness, which is compassion and politeness. And that's about half a standard deviation, which isn't a lot, so men and women are more the same than they are different by a substantial margin,
Starting point is 03:20:36 but at the extremes, those differences really make a difference. So for example, women's higher trait neuroticism, negative emotionality is reflected reflected in the fact that cross-cultry they're more likely to be diagnosed with depression and anxiety disorders, whereas men's disagreeableness is reflected in the fact that they're more likely to be arrested and imprisoned. So, it's 10 to 1 male convicts to female. You think that's a matter of socialization? You think this court system is stacked against men? We're going to have an equity program for men and women in prison? Or we're going to accept the fact that men tend to be more violent than women, which is also, by the way, women commit women attempt suicide more often than men. That's a reflection of their higher levels of anxiety and depression. But men commit suicide more often because they use lethal means, yes,
Starting point is 03:21:25 and that's a reflection of their lower levels of agreeableness and their proclivity towards physical aggression. So, and you think, well, that's all sociologically constructed. No, the data are in. So, you rank order countries by how egalitarian their social policies are. And you put the Scandinavian countries at the top because they have by how egalitarian their social policies are.
Starting point is 03:21:45 And you put the Scandinavian countries at the top because they have the most egalitarian social policies. If we know what egalitarian means, you know, if it's not the Scandinavians, then we don't know what egalitarian means because that's what they've been trying to do. Then you look at personality differences across those countries. If it's sociological, then the smallest personality differences across those countries. If it's sociological, then the smallest personality differences are in Scandinavia, because they've been obliterated
Starting point is 03:22:10 by the egalitarian policies. That's exactly the opposite of what happened. The biggest personality differences in the world are between Scandinavian men and women. Why? Because when you take out the sociological variability, you maximize the biological variability. Right, it's exactly the opposite of what virtually everyone
Starting point is 03:22:33 predicted. No one saw that coming, but that's what happened. And it's not like a few little studies done by some right-wing professors of psychology and some little po-dunk institution. First of all, there are no right-wing professors of psychology. So no one-dunk institution. First of all, there are no right-wing professors of psychology. So no one's been happy about this.
Starting point is 03:22:47 Second, these are studies with thousands of people. They're among the most credible psychological studies that have ever been done. And it's not only personality, it's interest. This is the big one. The biggest difference between men and women in the Scandinavian countries isn't trade neuroticism or agreeableness. Those are personality dimensions. The biggest difference is men and women in the Scandinavian countries isn't trade neuroticism or agreeableness.
Starting point is 03:23:06 Those are personality dimensions. The biggest difference is in interest. And women tilt towards people and men tilt towards things. It also turns out that if you're in a thing oriented job, you tend to make more money because they're scalable. You know, it's like how many people can you take care of? So, a thing is you're building machines, cars, gadgets, gadgets, tools.
Starting point is 03:23:26 People you're helping people, hot circles, psychology. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. That tends to be more one-on-one. It's hard to scale health care. And you don't make a lot of money in most enterprises that aren't scalable.
Starting point is 03:23:38 So taking a step back from this, should we be following our bliss? That's the message that we've been putting out there a lot. And I, there's a comment that I've heard from others as well that we've rebelleder off following our blisters than our bliss. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is that an important part of your message? That the promise of bliss is a false promise?
Starting point is 03:24:01 Yeah, it's not the right term. And you've got to get your terms right. Precision in speech, right? Speech matters, because that's how you turn potential into reality. Right. Meaning, if you pursue what's meaningful, then sometimes you'll encounter bliss.
Starting point is 03:24:16 Perhaps as often as it's possible to, which I would say isn't that often. Those are sort of peak experiences. Meaning, and I do believe that meaning is a fundamental instinct. In fact, I think it's the most fundamental instinct. It's what you've got. Meaning is real. It might be the most real thing. I pick on that theme because it's an example of how people aren't getting you, because they're amongst the critics. And another example, because people say, well, my voice is going to be happy, I'm going to be light, I want to be, it's like the bubbly sparkly water on my tongue. How about you want to be good?
Starting point is 03:24:50 That'd be way better. Pursue what makes you good as opposed to evil? Bless, sorry, no. And what about the issue of political correctness, much of which I think came about? Because a lot of my generation grew up when reprehensible things could easily be stated about women in the workplace,
Starting point is 03:25:10 about folks of different gender, color. You know, that was... Vietnam War. The Vietnamese War. Yes, which really tore the country apart? I think a lot of my generation is PTSD, just watching the news at age five, and wondering why I've won,
Starting point is 03:25:24 thought everyone was lying and it still has impacted us. But there are groups that have a sensitivity to how they are portrayed. And political practice allows you to be polite if nothing else, good at a higher level. You've criticized political practice. I gather because you think it chases people on...
Starting point is 03:25:43 It's a wrong narrative. It's a group oriented narrative. It's like, so people have social groups, obviously, and their individuals. And the question is, first individual second or individual first, group second. And the answer is individual first, group second, or else.
Starting point is 03:26:06 And the politically correct types who play identity politics say, no, your fundamental characteristic is your group. Now, there's all sorts of problems with that, is like, well, the first problem, and this is the intersectional people within the politically correct camp has already realized this. Well, which group? Oh, it turns out that people belong to like five groups.
Starting point is 03:26:23 Okay, so do you make all of their groups the number one thing? Well, that doesn't work because there's an infinite number of groups. So that just can't work. Actually, you see what the West discovered was that you have to fractionate the groups to get justice. Where do you stop fractionating them? Individuals, that's exactly right. I get that they're emotional, he will feel the x out there where there's a lot of sensitivity that you may not be able to control as a person's speaker.
Starting point is 03:26:52 You're not going to please everybody, I get it. But for me, a lot of the speech that we would call politically correct is polite speech. I'm giving you a break, I don't want to be guilty. No problem with polite speech. It depends on how it's enforced and who's enforcing it. That's the thing. It's like you want to be polite.
Starting point is 03:27:10 No problem. First of all, you should reserve the right to be in polite when necessary. Because otherwise you've been deprived of your defenses. And that's not good. So it's not, for example, it's not like I don't believe there's hate speech. There is.
Starting point is 03:27:30 The question is how should it be regulated? It's not like I don't believe that there's prejudice. There is. That's not the issue. The issue is how do you conceptualize the world? Or that's it. And the identity politics types, they have a fundamental tribal conception.
Starting point is 03:27:44 They try to make group identity, the fundamental issue. And the identity politics types, they have a fundamental tribal conception. They try to make group identity the fundamental issue. They assume that the best narrative is oppressor versus oppressed, and they play up the victim issue. And I don't think that's good for anyone. I think all it does is divide society, and return us to a fractionated tribal existence. It's the wrong. the whole story is wrong. That's the problem with political correctness.
Starting point is 03:28:09 It's like you put the group first. No. No. Wrong. The thing that we got right in the West is that we put the individual first. And I'm not willing to see that eroded. It's a mistake.
Starting point is 03:28:30 And it's not because of rights. It's because of responsibility. So the way out of the oppressive structure of history is through maximal adoption of individual responsibility. It's the best way forward. So, it's like how we passed that along, the best that we are along to the next generation. There's a line that you've offered that really caught me off guard. There are many, but this one was particularly provocative.
Starting point is 03:29:00 You said, don't give your children a reason for you to hate them. Right, right, that's rule five, right. Don't let your children a reason for you to hate them. Right, right, that's rule five, right? Don't let your children do anything that makes you dislike them. Yeah, well, and that's another, most of the book, 12 rules for life, is about responsibility and meaning. I would say those are the two. Responsibility, meaning, and truth. That's probably the interplay of the principles. Well, the question is, what are you doing if you're a parent? And the answer is preparing your child
Starting point is 03:29:28 to be maximally socially welcome. That's your job. And it's the job of the two of you, because the two of you together make one reasonable person. Okay, so now you're a reasonable person because you've kinda ironed out your ideacies with each other, right? Through that opponent process, that contentious relationship, that wrestling that's part of
Starting point is 03:29:49 a real relationship. You're both smarter and wiser than you would have been otherwise because you, and that's part of the reason for the vow, it's like, I'm not leaving you. Oh my God, you mean we're stuck with each other? Yes, for how long? Six decades. Oh, so this stupid problem we have isn't going to go away for six decades? It's like what we've been right. No kidding. We better do something about it. So there's going to be contention there.
Starting point is 03:30:12 So let's say we fix each other up. So we're kind of 80% functional as a unit. Okay, now we have a child. A child has this 80% functional unit and to the degree that the child can establish a relationship with that unit, that will generalize to other people. And so you want your child to be a good play partner for other children, because by the time he or she is four, their primary source of socialization will be other children.
Starting point is 03:30:39 So if they're not prepared to take their place in the world of children, they fall farther and farther behind. That's very well documented. And you want them to respect adults. Why? Well, firstly, because they're going to become an adult. So they should obviously respect adults because they're going to spend two-thirds, three-quarters
Starting point is 03:30:57 of their life as an adult. So that better be worthwhile. So that better be respectable. Otherwise, you devalue their future, and that's pretty counterproductive and mean. And then the second thing is if they respect adults and can listen to them, then adults who kind of naturally like children are more likely to teach them things and give them opportunities. And so that's a good deal.
Starting point is 03:31:19 And so if your child is doing something that makes you dislike them, assuming you're in a relationship and you've ironed out most of your idiocy, then other people will also dislike that. And so if you allow or encourage your child to continue in such behavior, you turn them into someone who's miserable and socially isolated. Now, if you don't want them to leave home ever, that's probably good strategy. If you cripple them badly enough,
Starting point is 03:31:47 they won't be able to drag themselves out of your door. But if you love your child and you want them to thrive, then you do everything you can to have the world open up its arms to them. And that's a huge part of that is discipline, careful, minimal force discipline. Fuse number of rules. Few rules, few rules.
Starting point is 03:32:08 Minimal enforcement. That's right. Just the least you have to do. That's right, that's exactly right. Minimal rules, because it gets too complicated otherwise, enforced with minimal necessary force. Those are excellent principles. See, part of what got me on that statement
Starting point is 03:32:21 is the possibility that if you are unsuccessful, you will hate your children. And we see times when parents are rooting their children. And vice versa. And vice versa. Yeah. Because they fall in out of love with them.
Starting point is 03:32:34 Yes. I see this at the end of life quite a bit when Oh, yes. Father's dying and all these strange children are coming back into the picture and you see horrible fighting. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, the picture and you see horrible fights. Oh, absolutely, absolutely. Well, I can tell you a quick story.
Starting point is 03:32:47 So when my mother-in-law died, she had prefrontal dimension. It started quite young. So she died when I believe she was just in her early 70s. And so it was kind of a brutal death. And her husband really went beyond, above and beyond, the call of duty with her. I mean, he just made my jaw drop, man, because as she deteriorated, he stepped in
Starting point is 03:33:11 and allowed her to preserve her autonomy, too. Like, he wasn't overcarrying. He was really attentive. And when someone offered help, he would take it. He wasn't so proud, you know, in the arrogant way. He would take help. And so, and he kept her at home until he was getting old too. He couldn't get her off the chair anymore.
Starting point is 03:33:28 And so then she went into the old age home where she eventually died. And her whole family gathered around her death bed. We were there for about the last week. And, you know, that's pretty rough. She was dying of hunger and thirst, really, but the disease. And one of her daughters, a palliative care nurse, was making sure that her mouth was wet and
Starting point is 03:33:50 taking care of her. And they all pulled together. They all pulled together. It was really something to watch. And so, and then she died. And so what happened? Well, that was awful, but it wasn't hell. Hell would have been her dying in everyone around fighting and everyone walking away, embittered and full of enmity as a consequence of her life and death. But what happened instead was that all her kids had a newfound respect for their father, which has prevailed over the intervening 10 years. And all the siblings got tighter. And so they lost their mother, which was no trivial thing. But because they handled it so well, they gained something that I'm not going to say in some naive way that it was equivalent to the loss or that they came out better.
Starting point is 03:34:41 You don't have to make that case. They certainly didn't come out worse. And so these end of life scenes, the ones you're describing, it's like those things can, bad can get so horrible if it's contaminated by enmity and deceit and misbehavior. And that's the difference between tragedy and hell. Since I'm a doctor, let me ask you one medical question.
Starting point is 03:35:02 I know that your diet has become an issue of interest. Mm-hmm. You're obviously real thin. You could take the Jordan Peterson diet probably, and maybe I look like you, but I know that the medical issues forced you to be careful about your diet. Yes. So what specifically do you eat?
Starting point is 03:35:18 Do you not eat, and how has it benefited you? Well, it's mostly been a benefit to my daughter who had a very complex autoimmune disease with about 30 extremely severe symptoms. And she learned over about a three-year period of experimentation what she could eat, which was virtually nothing, and what she couldn't eat, which was virtually everything.
Starting point is 03:35:41 All she eats is beef and water. Beef and water. That's it, and she's been eating that only that for a year, and she never cheats, because cheating has very severe consequences for her. And so her mother has some of the autoimmune symptoms, and I have some of them, and so it looks like she got all of them.
Starting point is 03:36:01 And so when this worked for her, and we watched very carefully over a number of years while she was doing this, and like the improvement in her is, I just can't believe it every time I see it. I literally can't believe it. It doesn't compute. And I can't believe that it was diet either, you know, because that went against many, many things that I believe.
Starting point is 03:36:21 But I decided to try her more restricted diet. And first of all, it was just meat and greens, and then I stopped eating greens to about five months ago, and her mother has been doing the same thing for about eight months. And the consequences have been, they're hard to believe. I don't even really like to talk about them, because I'm not a dietary expert, and it sounds so completely insane. But, I lost 52 pounds in seven months. 52 pounds?
Starting point is 03:36:49 Yeah, and I wasn't overweight while I was, but not by modern standards. No, and you know, a year before that I had cut all the sugar out of my diet, but I was still the carbohydrates of all sorts. And I lost like three pounds, nothing. And then I tried this diet, it was still the carbohydrates of all sorts. And I lost like three pounds, nothing. And then I tried this diet. It was like the first, here's what happened. This is what happened. In the first week, I tried this diet.
Starting point is 03:37:12 This was just meat and greens, essentially. I quit snoring. That was way before any weight loss. It's just like it just off. And I was snoring a lot. It was disrupting my way of sleep. So I thought, oh, that's really interesting. I quit snoring.
Starting point is 03:37:26 Isn't that weird? Then I lost seven pounds the first month. I thought, hmm, that's quite a lot. Then I stopped having to have a nap in the afternoon because I was napping a lot. Then my gastric reflux disorder went away. Then I lost another seven pounds. Then the psoriasis that I had on my foot and my scalp, that started to go away. So, and then
Starting point is 03:37:50 over the course of seven months, I stopped taking anti-depressants because I didn't need them anymore. My mood isn't perfectly regulated, but it's it's pretty damn good. And I lost 50 pounds in total. And I wake up in the morning and I've never woken up well in the morning in my entire life. So I don't know what to make of that. I can't. First, and I wouldn't recommend it. This is not something you do lightly.
Starting point is 03:38:18 No, I'm not. Obviously, there are issues that are going on in your gut, but it does make me curious as a physician. As you point out, you learn from the extremes as well. Well, here's a hypothesis. You can make of it what you will. This is a hypothesis I formulated over the last year. And like I said, this came as an absolute shock to me,
Starting point is 03:38:34 and it still is a shock. And I wouldn't recommend it, because it's hell on your social life. And it really makes traveling difficult. So it's not to be done lightly, and there are other consequences too. So it's not to be done lightly, and there are other consequences too. But here's a hypothesis.
Starting point is 03:38:49 Let's say you have a patient who has multiple, complex medical symptoms of unspecified etiology. Okay, so what might you do? How about if you reduce their complexity? How about if you regard every single thing they eat as a variable? Because maybe it is. So then you take them down, well people use elimination diets, but that's... Right. You got it down to one thing, basically.
Starting point is 03:39:14 One thing. And what's weird is it appears that you can live on that one thing. So either people say, well, you can't live on an old meat diet. It's like, hmm, that's not so obvious. It defies the conventional wisdom. Yeah. Well, here's the other thing that's worth thinking about, maybe. There are a lot of people who are overweight. There are way more people who are overweight than there should be.
Starting point is 03:39:41 And we don't know why. Like, I've read some literature that suggests that maybe it's a secondary consequence of the multipliers disrupting our gut lining. There's lots of theories. It's your point. If you simplify the variables, you can have one. Well the other issue is what's the harm? So you eat nothing but beef for two months.
Starting point is 03:40:03 Who cares? It doesn't work? Quit doing it. But maybe, like if you see symptom reduction, and I've heard stories, and these are what do they say. The plural of anecdote is not data. That's right. It's like, yeah, but the plural of anecdote might be hypothesis.
Starting point is 03:40:19 I really appreciate all the information you share. I've taxed you. There's lots more to discuss, but it's wisdom that's worth thinking about. Well thank you. I agree with everything you're saying but I think a lot of folks will be stimulated to think further on things that matter. Well thanks very much for the invitation and it was a pleasure to be here and to have the opportunity to talk with you. Jordan Peterson. to one piece or so. you

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