The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - My Pen of Light - Part Two

Episode Date: March 22, 2020

Part two of a Jordan B. Peterson "12 Rules for Life" lecture from his book tour in New Zealand. Recorded February of 2019.

Welcome to Episode 51 of the Jordan B Peterson podcast. I'm Michaela Peterson, Jordan's daughter. I hope you enjoy this episode. It's called My Pen of Light, Part 2, and was recorded in Christchurch, New Zealand on February 20th, 2019. How about some good news for you? Dad's recovering still, and I actually think he'll be back around and online in the next month.

That's a hopeful estimate, but it's been amazing to watch. I hope you're out there staying positive given what's going on. There's a lot of uncertainty right now, but I have a positive outlook for whatever that's worth. China and Korea look a lot better, and I think that kind of shows us what's going to happen here. It looks like we're in for a rough time for the next few months, and then we'll bounce back stronger than ever. My family, my dad, were self-quarantined in Florida and we're lucky to be here. We haven't driven each other mad yet either or matter than we already are that is. So stay positive, enjoy this podcast and if you missed the first

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off all mattress orders at helix-sleep.com-slazjordan. Get up to $200 off at helix-six sleep dot com slash Jordan. Get up to $200 off at helix sleep dot com slash Jordan. My pen of light part two, a Jordan B Peterson 12 rules for life lecture. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'll tell you two more. There's quite a few of these. There's about 30 of them, but I'm going to, obviously, not going to get through all 30. That's just not going to happen. But that's okay.

Let's do a couple more. Here's one that I like. What shall I do with a lying man? Let him speak so that he may reveal himself. Well, that's a free speech issue as far as I'm concerned. And I think it's the reason that free speech is so necessary. It's like, well, on the one hand, part of the reason that speech is free, not that it's not without cost, that isn't what

it means, is that you have the right to listen to someone else. That's actually really useful because you're just not nearly as smart as you might be. Someone that you don't even like might tell you something you really need to know. The Americans have really done a good job of delineating this because they made compelled speech illegal in the United States in the 1940s. And part of the reason for that, and compelled speech was required by the government that you use certain forms of discourse, which was something I was objecting to when that became law

in Canada a couple of years ago. And their argument was, well, none of us are the smart as we could be. And so if was, well, none of us are the smart as we could be. And so if there's a fair bit of public discourse, even among people who hold clashing views, even among people who have a fair bit of enmity in their heart, there's always the possibility that one of us will pick up some sliver of information

that turns out to be crucial. And there's no damn way that the state should deny us the possibility that that might happen. And so that's worth thinking about. It's related to Rule 9 in my book, which is, assume the person you're listening to might know something that you don't, which you don't have to do if you think you already know

everything, but which you do need to do, if you think that there are certain things that you need to learn. And then the other thing with regards to people who lie is that, well, maybe we could say, well, there should be no fake news. There's no lies in the news. Just like forget that. That's never, ever going to, never happened.

And it's never going to happen because, well, it's not that easy to separate the wheat from the chaff. And it's hard to tell if someone's willfully blind or ignorant or biased or consciously lying or unconsciously lying or tired that day or under pressure. God only knows there's all sorts of reasons for communicating poorly so you can't regulate all that but you could believe that the truth will out over time. And that what is a lie, if it's allowed to manifest itself, will become clear to people as a lie, and then to become known as a lie, and then to be discarded.

And there's another section from Matthew. I didn't really expect to read all of these sections from Matthew today, but guess that's how it goes. What shall I do with a lying man? Let him speak so that he may reveal himself. You shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of thissles? Even so, every good tree brings forth good fruit, but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.

A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, and neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringseth not forth good fruit is hoondown and cast into the fire. That's a rough one, man. And yeah, well, it's, and you see this is true. It's so true. It's like, God, you know, another thing you learn from doing psychotherapy, you know, people are having a miserable time of it for one reason or another, and you know, maybe they're not getting along with their family.

And I'm not talking about physiological illness and bad luck, and we're gonna leave those aside. You know, and you start talking about it, and you dig, and you you dig and you dig. And sometimes it's months and weeks, weeks and months of digging or maybe even years. And then you get to the bottom and you find some ugly little secret that's been part of the family maybe for a couple of generations or part of this person's memory structure for a couple of decades and they finally get to the horrible bottom of it.

And they find out that there's something deceptive and wrong. Some decision they made that put their life in a bad direction and that's caused them grief and misery every sense. And they may have forgotten even that they've made that decision. And the truth of the matter is that when you do act in a deceitful manner, you warp the structure of the reality around you and within you. And how could it be otherwise? Because that's the very definition of deceit. And then if you do enough of that, it takes your life apart piece by piece.

And that's what that phrase means, that it'll be hewn down, is that, you know, if you build your life on, if you build your house on sand, if you deceive yourself and other people, then you will absolutely pay for that in every possible way. And one of the things that I have learned as a clinical psychologist that certainly terrified me and continues to terrify me is that you never get away with anything. I've never seen anyone in my clinical practice or in my life when I really look into things and I can look into things quite deeply if I choose to. I've never seen anyone ever get away with anything. And it's

not that surprising because like what do you expect? You're going to twist the fabric of reality to suit your like current self-interest and that's going to hold. It's going to be you against the fabric of reality and you're going to come out as the Victor. I mean that's that's well, it's it's absurd, it's ridiculous, it's arrogant, it's self-serving, it's naive, and besides that no one even believes it. So, what shall I do with a lying man? Let him speak so that he may reveal himself. By their fruits, you shall know them. Yes, well, that's a very good reason for free speech. And then this is the last one, I I would say that we'll deal with today.

How shall I deal with the enlightened one? Replace him with the true seeker of enlightenment. I really like that one. It's kind of a Buddhist question and answer there. It's like, now and then you meet someone who claims perhaps to be enlightened. And maybe now and then you even think that you're that one. And it's a mistake because you can't be that one because you don't know everything or worse. You hardly know anything. And the more you learn, the more you know you don't know anything. And the more you learn, the more you know, you don't know anything.

And the other thing you learn is that you can't do things only by yourself. So even if you were the enlightened one, like Buddha, even Buddha came back to help everyone else become enlightened because just being enlightened on his own didn't seem to be good enough. Even if you were the enlightened one, which you aren't, you'd need other people around.

And so, but there is an idea of enlightenment, and that it's something we should pursue. And so what's the idea that if you encountered the enlightened one, this old book called, if you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him, which is a 60s book, which is hardly surprising. But it kind of reflects the same idea. He said, and someone who's enlightened isn't enlightened because they know they're enlightened because they're seeking.

It's because they know they don't know. That's the old socratic idea, right, is that socrates was regarded as the widest person in Greece, because he knew that he didn't know anything. And the answer to the reason that that's so useful is that instead of assuming that you know and that's good enough, when it isn't, given that your life is a mess

and the lives of people around you are a mess and the world's in a mess, which means that you don't know, because it wouldn't be a mess if you knew enough, then you could start looking at what you didn't know, and you could start seeking out what you still needed to know, and you could start to spend more attention paying, you could start to pay more attention onto what it was about you that was insufficient and lacking even by your own standards, and then you could start

to learn and grow. And then by participating in that process of letting go of what about you isn't valid and useful, and letting that die, letting that burn off, and letting what's new about you emerge, and transform continually, which is something that human beings have the capability of doing, then you're on the pathway to enlightenment, you know?

And that in some sense is as close to enlightenment as you get, is that you're a seeker of knowledge, and not the person that holds the knowledge, which is why, at least in part, I'm not a fan of ideologues, because they tend to know about five things and then assume that the entire world can be crammed into the space defined by those five things, and that's just not the case.

It's much better to adopt a questioning attitude towards the world and to understand that because everything isn't the way that it should be in your life and in your family's lives and in the lives of your community, that that means that you are in some sense fundamentally insufficient and ignorant and that as a consequence what you need to do is to admit to what's wrong and to change and to learn and that that's the proper pathway forward. And I would hope that that's what we're doing when we have conversations like this. And I'm also hoping that the reason that these conversations, which I've had in about

140 places, as I said now, with about 300,000 people, are popular as as they are popular on YouTube because people are realizing noticing hoping that There are things they don't know and it's important that they don't know them and that there are things that they could know that are also important to know which implies that there are important things to know and important things to do and that all seems to me to be entirely correct and so Well, and so that that's what I'm hoping that

That people will do is that they'll Let's say they'll ask themselves the right questions. It's like my life isn't what it should be. My family's life isn't what it should be, and my culture isn't what it should be. Why? Well, maybe that's on me, like you're a cornerstone of your community. That's why you vote. Our culture has decided that each of us has whatever it takes.

That spark of divinity that enables us to steer this ship of state properly. That capacity relies on our own intrinsic wisdom. And you know that you're responsible for yourself and for your family and that you could be responsible for your community, you think, well, it's not what it should be. It's bothering me. Maybe it's bothering me so much

that I can hardly stand being alive. You know, that's despair. You think, well, what's the way out of the despair? It's like, well, maybe I'm doing something wrong. Well, first of all, what's the probability of that? It's like 100%. You can be absolutely certain. If you need a certainty, there's one.

There's at least one thing that you're doing wrong. There's a lot bigger list than that. And of those things that you're doing wrong, there's a lot bigger list than that. And of those things that you're doing wrong, there's probably a couple of things that you could stop doing wrong, that you would stop doing wrong. And then maybe you might ask yourself, this is rule six, put your house in perfect order before you criticize the world. It's like, okay, everything's not to my satisfaction. But I'm doing some things wrong. Maybe before I complain, I'll stop doing those things wrong and just see what happens. Maybe things will improve. And I would say, well, that's confession, that's atonement, that's redemption, that's all

of that. It's like God only knows what your life would be like if you stop doing the things that you knew to be wrong. It's a really good start. And it's also the case, you know, that you stop doing the things that you know to be wrong. That's a disciplinary practice. That's penitential chastisement. Then all of a sudden you can start to doing the things that you know to be wrong. That's a disciplinary practice. That's penitential chastisement. Then all of a sudden you can start to see the things that you should do that you should do that are good. And then God only knows what you can manage. You know, I mean one thing I learned from the 20th century, from reading 20th century history was that there is absolutely no limit to how much hell you can create around yourself. That's why hell is a bottomless pit.

I don't care how terrible it is where you are. There is a stupid thing that you could willfully do or blindly do that would make it worse. And so there's a hell underneath that hell and there's another one underneath there and there's no bottom. And what I also learned, I think, as a consequence of that, was that the reverse was also the case,

that the world is structured in that sort of moral hierarchy, and that as you start to do things that are good and put your life together, well, then the probability that you'll do something good again may be better, increases, and then maybe something even better, and then maybe something even better. And it isn't obvious to me that just as there's no bottom to hell that there's any top to heaven.

And it seems to me that that's a good thing to know. It's a good thing to think about whether like I don't know, I don't know. You have to think about it. I mean, I don't know anybody really who I've ever had a serious conversation who would deny the fact that there isn't a situation they can be in that's so bad that there isn't something stupid they can do that would make it worse. I mean virtually everyone agrees with that. And if that's the truth, then the opposite has to be the truth, or if there's a down like that, which there clearly is, there has to be an up in the

opposite direction, whatever that opposite direction is. And I think that's why we have to understand the world as a moral place, and as a place that is dependent for the manner in which it manifests itself on the quality of our moral decisions. And to ask ourselves, well, if the world isn't everything that it should be by our own standards and that we're desperate and unhappy and nihilistic and cruel and resentful because of that,

then perhaps the appropriate place to start is with the kind of humility that allows you to ask the question properly, which is, well, am I doing... Am I doing something wrong? And if so, God grant me the fortitude to set it right before I judge. And then to see, that's faith, you know, do you believe in truth and do you believe in courage? It's like, well, what happens if you manifest that in the world? Well, at least it's going to be less like hell. That's something.

And God only knows where you could end up. Well, so that's some of the things I learned when I was playing with my pen of light. Okay, so now, but not for very long because I talked longer than I was supposed to. I'm going to answer some questions. So John, will you set the timer again? I suppose I'm out of question time as well already. What have we got? 20. Excellent. All right. So you've submitted a number of questions, and so I'm going to go through them and see What if we got 20 excellent?

All right, so you've submitted a number of questions, and so I'm going to go through them and see what I can come up with and see if that's useful. I start a few here. This is a good one. Muzzle start with this. Are you okay? Ha ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. Yeah, and it's all capped, you know? So this is anonymous, and nine people upvoted this, probably more since 723.

And I don't bloody well know. I mean, sometimes I think, yes, and sometimes I think, no. And I mean, I think in some profound ways, no, because there's plenty I have to learn and plenty I have to do better. If you mean by, and then it might be political, are you okay? It's like, well, not everybody thinks so. So, you know, and I could be wrong, although God, it's hard for me to believe

that I'm as wrong as the people who think I'm wrong are. Ha-ha-ha. Ha-ha-ha. Ha-ha-ha. Ha-ha-ha. Ha-ha-ha. Ha-ha-ha. Ha-ha-ha.

And then, I guess the other issue is, are you okay? Well, I have the odd health problem, which I'm trying to keep under control, but it seems to be working fairly well. And I seem to be okay enough so that I can continue doing whatever it is that I'm doing. And what I'm doing as far as I'm concerned is that I am trying, see, I believe that,

well, I'll tell you this, and then you can decide if I'm okay because, you know, God, who knows? I believe that the way that we look at the world, we look at the world through a story, and we can't help it. That's the way our psyches are structured. That's the way our cycle, that's the nature of our cycle physiological being.

There's no way out of the story, which is why we love stories so much and why we tell them and why we teach children with stories and why we watch them for entertainment and why we love them because we're in a story. And if you're not in a story, then you're in trouble, man. You're actually, you're just in a different kind of story.

You're in a story about chaos and disarray. And that's the story of the desert. And sometimes it's the story of hell. And those aren't good stories. And so I don't even think you have the option of being in a story or not. You have the option of being in a good story or a bad story, and a bad story can be very bad indeed. Our culture is predicated on a story, and it sort of sits between what we know and what we don't know.

You know, scientifically advanced as we are technologically intelligent as we are, scientifically advanced as we are technologically intelligent as we are, there's an infinite amount about the nature of being that we don't understand. I mean, God, it was what's been ten years since we figured out that we don't know what 95% of the universe is made of, right? A dark matter, dark energy. Like, that's actually a fair chunk of reality to just overlook and then not notice. And we also know that our scientific theories, as credible as they are, tend to become radically revised, less rapidly now, say in domains like physics, but I suspect there's still a shock or two to be found there. So we have this technological knowledge, but outside that, we're ignorant about the fundamental nature of being and the fundamental nature of reality and consciousness.

And we need a buffer between what we know and what we don't know. We need a zone that's sort of, that we sort of know and sort of don't know. And the dream is the buffer, by the way, in your own daily life. The dream is the buffer between what you know and what you don't know. And every night, to maintain your sanity, you have to move from what you know, the conscious world, into the dream world,

and to re-emerge from that. And if that doesn't happen, you lose your sanity. So in some sense, the sanity of your consciousness is dependent on the insanity of your dreams. And the stories of our cultures, the great underlying stories in Judeo-Christian tradition, the biblical stories in particular, but not only the biblical stories,

are the dream in which our culture is embedded. And we've lost a relationship with those stories, and we can't, because our sanity is predicated on their integrity. And if we lose the stories, then, well, then we'll end up in a story that none of us want to inhabit. And so what I'm trying to do is to put the Judeo-Christian story back underneath the substructure of Western culture. And so I don't know if that makes me OK or not. Probably not, but it's worked for me and it seems to have worked for my family and it seems to be working for people around the world to a degree that's really quite incomprehensible.

I have people write me all the time, you know, I did a series on the Bible in Genesis. Year and a half ago, I think the first lecture, it's got about three million views, it's three hours on the first sentence in Genesis. It takes a long time to get through the Bible if you spend three hours on each sentence. But it's really been interesting, the consequence of that man, you wouldn't believe the letters I've got. I've got letters from groups of Orthodox Jews in Germany and from monks in the Orkneys and from lots of Muslims

who are watching the Genesis stories and describing the effects on them. And Orthodox Christians in particular seem to be happy with me, which is quite a strange thing, although I kind of like their doctrine. And Catholics think that I would be a good Catholic if I just smartened up a little bit. And Protestants, they've pretty much completely decided

that it isn't necessary to believe in God, so they're ignoring me completely. And that's fine. But it's very interesting to see the consequences of telling these stories again and watching what happens and to try to bring the abstraction of the story down to Earth, so to speak, so that people can understand, at least in so far as I understand or think I understand

what the stories mean. And all of it seems to be good. at least in so far as I understand or think I understand what the stories mean. And all of it seems to be good. I mean, it's creating an awful lot of havoc around me, especially in the press. Although, that's not all that worrisome in some sense, especially because it's become dreadfully boring and repetitive. After you've been called the full set of 30 names, several dozen times in all possible orders, the impact decreases substantially.

One of the funniest days, so to speak, I had two funny days two years ago. It's kind of an indication of what my life was being like. My son came home one day and I said, God Julian, you won't believe what happened today. I said, 200 of my fellow faculty members at the University of Toronto signed a petition requesting that I be dismissed and my union delivered it to the administration without even notifying me. And it was my union, you'd think they would have just politely mentioned to me that this was being planned. And Julian said, oh, yeah, don't worry about it, it was only 200 people. So, yeah, well, think about that.

That was the situation at that point. It was like, well, just 200 colleagues, that's nothing compared to what sort of attacks you've been subject to over the months before that. So that was funny, and then not really. And then another day, this was a good one. Two articles both came out in the UK press the same day. One was written by a Jewish magazine, which

accused me of being Hitler essentially, or at least put in my picture right beside Hitler, and then talked about how I was kind of like Hitler in various ways, not just because we were both featherless bipeds, either. And another alt-right site, the same day, detailed out in great detail why I was a Jewish shill. And I figured, well, that's it, that's pretty much, we've pretty much covered the territory. It's like Nazi or Jewish shale. I thought, well, you know, the only possible,

the only worst possibility would be that I was somehow both at the same time. And, you know, who knows? It kind of goes back to this question about whether or not I'm okay. I guess. I guess. So, yeah. So that's that answer, I guess. Meaning is to be found at the intersection between the known and the unknown.

Do you think this relates to early attachment where a child's main purpose is to push the boundaries? Nikita asked that, and the answer that is, yes. Exactly. You got it exactly right. There is this developmental psychologist named... Now I can't remember his name, of course. He's a Russian. He came up with a concept of the zone of proximal development. The second greatest development. There we go, the godsky, yes, yes, exactly. And so when you hear that people are in the zone, it's partly influenced by Volgotsky.

And the zone of proximal development is a place. And it's a place that's very much worth knowing. It's the place that the Taoists have studied forever. And I would also say that it's the kingdom of God on earth that Christ states that is there that people don't see. I think these are the same ideas fundamentally. The zone of proximal development. So one of the things Vagatsky noticed was that, or students of Vagatsky, I can't remember precisely, was that when adults talked to children, they tended to speak to them

at a level that slightly exceeded their current level of comprehension, which is really a cool ability, right? Because it's not like you write out a lexicon of your child's vocabulary. And then, you know, think, well, here's 15 extra words that Junior should learn today. It's like, you don't do, you don't know how you teach your child to talk. You just do. And, but part of the way you do is that you don't only say to them things they understand.

You say things to them that they kind of understand, but that pull them forward into what they don't yet know. And so that's that boundary between chaos and order, or between known and unknown, and it's the right place to be. It's the exciting place to be, because if you're just where you know, then, well, first of all, that's not good, because you don't know enough, and something's going to shift around you and reveal your ignorance, and then your ignorance and then you're in trouble. This is a problem with tyrannies, right? They regulate everything until it's just absolutely rigid and made out of stone and then

the ground shifts and everything collapses. There's no flexibility. That's not good. And if you're out there just in chaos and it's nihilistic and you have no direction, there's no order. Well, you can hardly tolerate that. It's so stressful and so disorienting. That's no place to be even though there's no shortage of what's new out there. It's too much. And so what you have to do is to find the boundary. And what's so cool about this, and this is truly something that's a miracle of sorts, I would say. This is from Rule 7, which is do what's meaningful and not what is expedient.

It's pretty damn clear, I would say, from the mythological writing and the literary writing, and the neuropsychological investigations conducted by well-qualified human neuropsychologists and animal experimentalists that you have a deep instinct for meaning and for that boundary. So imagine that it's good to be where you know what you're doing. And so that's a place, that's the known. And the known, that place, it's like you're around the campfire with your friends. That's the known, it's not the forest outside, right? It's your tribe.

And you know that you know where you are because you're joking and you're laughing and you're with people and you're doing things and when you do them, they work. And so that's the known. The known is the place where when you do them, they work. And so that's the known. The known is the place where when you do things, they work. And that's kind of a funny place because we don't think of that sort of place as a place, you know, because we think sort of geometrically, but it's a psychological place, let's say,

and it's the place that's very comfortable to be. And then there's the place you don't know. You go to a party, it's out of your league in some manner. You don't know anyone there, and you're underdressed or overdressed, and your awkward is hell, and you make a couple of jokes, and they fall flat, and you just wish that you were not there, or maybe even dead.

And that's the unknown. That's where what you're doing isn't producing what you want. And you don't want to be there, especially, you don't want to be there in any radical manner. Because if you're out where you don't know, and you don't know enough, then it's fatal. And so too far out into the unknown, you're done. And so the known has a certain amount of comfort, and the unknown has a certain amount of discomfort,

and they both have their disadvantages, ones too rigid, and the others too chaotic. And so then the question is, what do you do about that? And the answer is, you find that line right in the middle. That's the straight narrow path that you walk on. And there's chaos on one side, and there's order on the other. And you have one foot in order because then you're stable, you know, you're secure, you're not, you're not pushing yourself so far

that you can't tolerate it. There was another question in there about, well how do you know if you're taking on too much responsibility, well then too much chaos in your life, too much burden, you can't handle it. And so you got to pull back because you know, you got to be comforted to some degree, you want to have a bit of routine in your life another thing that with my clinical clients I always insist on it's like look man If you're anxious and chaotic and nihilistic and disorganized It's like put some damn order into your life here. Here's some things you could try How about getting up at the same time every day just as a disciplinary strategy Pick a time.

Maybe it's three in the afternoon. I wouldn't recommend that, but it's better three in the afternoon is way better than 11 o'clock one morning and four o'clock the next day and two o'clock the next day. You can't live like that. Your brain can't even organize itself

with regards to its fundamental circadian rhythms if you don't get your sleep wake cycles, right? It's so like pick a time to get up. That's something, it's also something you don't have to think about anymore. You think about every day, what time am I gonna get up? It's like Jesus, don't you have anything better

to think about? It's just like bloody well, get up, it's eight o'clock, get up and go think about something else. And then maybe you could think about going to bed at approximately the same time, which isn't as important, by the way. And then you might think, well, you could probably eat now and then

on something approximating a regular basis. And maybe with some other people, because we are social eaters, and people don't eat well alone. And so, you know, people kind of think you have to eat three meals a day. And well, maybe three isn't right, but zero is wrong, and 50 is wrong, so three is not bad, and I would also recommend, which is a rule I haven't written about, which is, you should do what everyone

else does unless you have a very good reason not to. Well, seriously, it's like, if you have a good reason, you're that guy, man. You got some new idea. It's revolutionary. It's like, hey, break a rule. Go ahead. It'll be of benefit to everyone because it's time for that rule to go. But if you're not that guy and you're just all over the place, haphazardly because you

have no discipline, it's like you're not a free spirit or free agent or some sort of rebel. You just have no discipline. It's like you're not a free spirit or free agent or some sort of rebel, you just have no discipline. And you stand in dangerous opposition to the stability of the state. It's like so. And even if you are gonna have a great adventure and do some really different things, you know, like you're gonna put yourself bloody well out there on the edge,

I would also say, and I learned this from Jung, you should nail down some good habits and a lot of the edge. I would also say, and I learned this from Jung, you should nail down some good habits and a lot of the routines. Because if you're going to push yourself really hard in one direction and risk exhausting yourself, you better make sure that you have some comforting routines and rituals to return to so that you can reconstitute yourself when you've gone a little bit too far out into the unknown. So anyways, you don't want to be too much in the known because, well, you don't know everything. You need to learn some new things and you don't want to be too far out and unknown because it's too damn chaotic. And so you want to be in the middle. And you can tell when you're in the middle because you're kind of secure in what you're doing.

You're not overwhelmed with anxiety. That's a good side. You're not overwhelmed with anxiety, you're negative emotion. You might be a little apprehensive, you know, like when I come out on stage, before I come out on stage, I'm a little apprehensive. And that's a good thing because if this was,

if I knew this, if it had become wrote, it would have started to become dead. There'd be no animating spirit left in it. And so a little anxiety, that's okay. It wakes you up, but not too much. Just enough to sharpen you up, keep you on edge. And then you want to be out there in the unknown, a fair bit in chaos, because, well, that's exciting.

We're adventures, us human beings, right? We go boldly where no man has gone before. That's what we do, you know? We go into the unknown and we find the dragon, the dreaded beast, the terrible predator that contains the gold. And we gather what we can from the unknown and we bring it back and we distribute it to the community.

That's what we are. And you can tell when you're doing that because you're in the right place on that line, the zone of proximal development where children are when they're pushing the boundaries. Because that's what they're trying to do. Well, okay, mom, here's the boundary. What if I break this rule? Just a bit. How about this one? Just a bit. How about this one? My son, God, he was, God, that kid. He'd find a line.

And he would just worry that line to death for like two weeks Well, can I do this can I do this what about this it's like Push him back push him back push him back keep him keep him solidified my wife and I used to talk and say look damn kid getting out of control again It's time to time to crack down on them because he's pushing the boundaries too much It's like okay, okay. What are we gonna do about this? Don't let your kids do anything that makes you dislike them Right that was the rule. What are we gonna do? All right for the next two weeks He was like two when we're doing this two and a half

It's like he doesn't get away with anything. It's zero. Every time he breaks a rule, it's like we stop him. So we did that, and it was so weird because he was a tough kid and he's still a tough kid. And every time we tightened up the boundary on him, he liked us way better. It was so cool because, well, you know, he was testing for, I guess, for something he could also admire to some degree, right?

And he's two and a half. And like if you're two and a half and you can push your father over, there's just not that much admiration there, right? He wants to come up against like a wall, think, oh, look, a wall's there. Okay, well, there's 3000 other directions I can go in. I can't go there.

That's not such a big limitation. You know how it is when kids are learning to walk? They stand up underneath a table and bang. It's like, and it's painful. And what do you don't go by an adjustable table? You notice that they do that like twice and because the table doesn't negotiate, they don't do that anymore after twice. It's like the table is like it's a wall. Well, so anyways, yes, children do find that place to push the limits.

And the thing is they want to find the limits, you know? And the limit is partly encouragement of their continued growth, but also the walls around them that need to be there so that they can feel secure enough to play. And you can tell, actually, if you've got the balance between chaos and order proper in your house, then your children will play. Because play only emerges. It's a very fragile, psychophysiological process, very necessary one. But it can be suppressed by virtually any other emotional or motivational state.

And so if you've got your house set up properly, and I do believe that this is a particularly important function of fathers, if you've got your house set up properly, it's secure enough so that the children can risk playing inside the house and they really need to play. And when they're playing, they are on the border between order and chaos. And they need that. It's what pushes their development forward. And it's the same with us as adults. You know, we have this instinct for meaning.

Say, well, what's meaningful? Well, let's say, well, doing what you can do. That can be meaningful, but it's not enough because you want to stretch yourself. If you're really good at your job, but it's the same old thing every day, there's something about that that makes you feel like there's a lack. You want to be good at it, but you want to be getting better at it.

And that's that line, and you have an instinct for meaning, and the instinct for meaning puts you there. It puts you where you're good at something, or as good as you can be, but now you're pushing yourself beyond what you're good at something or as good as you can be, but now you're pushing yourself beyond what you're good at at a rate that exhilarates you, makes you anxious enough to be awake, but keeps you intensely engaged. And that's meaning, and that's an instinct.

It's the instinct of transformation. And it's not something arbitrary. You know, you hear, well, what's the meaning of life? It's like, well, it's something invented. It's like, no, it's not. There. You know, you hear, well, what's the meaning of life? It's like, well, it's something invented. It's like, no, it's not. There's no evidence for that. The evidence is that it's something that's discovered. And one of the things that's very interesting to do,

if you're interested in meaning, is to watch yourself for a couple of weeks, you know, and say, well, you're kind of miserable, you're not having such a great time of it. And maybe you should find out if you're sick because sometimes that can contribute to that, but let's say you're not. such a great time of it. And maybe you should find out if you're sick, because sometimes that can contribute to that, but let's say you're not. It's like, watch yourself. You'll find that some period of time over the next two weeks, you'll be engaged in something.

You won't notice the time is ticking by slowly. You'll be engaged as if what you're doing is meaningful. And who knows what it'll be. It might be a conversation. It might be encountering someone that you loved, that you didn't even know you loved. It might be reading something. It might be a video game.

It might be a hobby. Who got it? It might be shopping for clothes. Cleaning up your room. Messing up your room. I don't know. Whatever. But you'll find that there will be periods of time

when you're where you should be doing, what you should be doing. And that will be marked by that process of engagement. Then the trick is to notice and then to think, okay, what the hell did I do to get here? Like, what were the preconditions? I'm in the right place, all of a sudden. I'm halfway between chaos and order. And I'm not sure how I got here. I need to meditate on what I did that enabled me to be in this place. And now I have to figure out how to be here longer periods of time.

And then the trick is to practice so that you're there more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more of the time. And then you're in the right place at the right time. And then things justify themselves, right? Because you have that ongoing sense of intrinsic meaning that is associated exactly with children's natural tendency to learn and progress, and that has exactly the same function for you. And your nervous system is set up to reward you with psychological stability and with

engagement in life when you've positioned yourself personally and socially in a place where you're making the most of what you've got and you're getting better at it all the time. And that way you serve yourself in the optimal way and you serve your family in the optimal way because we're social creatures and perhaps you serve your cultural in the optimal way. All of those things stack up nicely together because we are social beings. And then you're in a state of harmony with the structure of the world. And it works psychologically because it's meaningful psychologically, constrained, suffering, and adds positive

engagement. And it also works collectively. And so it's a hell of a thing to know, especially when you know that it's an instinct, and not merely something that's arbitrary or constructed, something that you can discover if you're careful enough to attend and to notice, and not to think so much about it, but to attend. You know, there's a difference. The Egyptians, they worshiped the eye of Horus, and that was the eye that paid attention to, to willful blindness and to evil.

It was the redemptive eye as far as they were concerned. And the idea that the eye is redemptive is a very old idea. And it's partly there because you can learn to be where you should be by paying attention. And it's not the same thing as thinking. You pay attention first, and then you think. It's like, oh, look, what I'm doing is working. There are characteristics of this place.

It's a desirable place. There are characteristics of it. There's ways I have to act in order to maintain this. What exactly are they? Well, that's a humble question, too, because it means that you don't know, right? You didn't know who you were. You didn't know that was the place you needed to be.

You're not sure how to be there, but you can learn. And you set things in order in a kind of harmonious order. And it's in order that, well, it's the music of the spheres. It's the proper order of the world. It's the order that music speaks of when it lays everything out in its ordered harmony and patterns. It's why people like music. It speaks of that, of being in that place.

It's why we play music in churches, you know? And why there's something, why there's something of religious, deeply religious significance and meaning about music, even for people that are secular. It speaks of that possibility of order. And so, yes, that's why children push the limits, and why they need to find them as well,

and also to be encouraged to experiment with them, to dance on that edge. My son got really good at it with his pushiness, because he was one of those kids that, tough kid, he'd worry that line, worry the line, worry the line, he wanted to know exactly what the damn rule was, not vaguely, but precisely what can I get away with. You know, and we'd push back against him and he got unbelievably socially fast-sile. He's very, very good with

people because he can read subtle social cues. You know, we always tried with him. The rule was, funny is good, but don't push it, right? And that's a nice line, right? To be witty and to be playful and to be able to tease, but not to shift over into arrogance or cruelty or malicious teasing or any of that. You get your kid on that line. It's a really tight line. And then they're popular and people like them

and their lives expand nicely. And hopefully you can also stand to have them around, which is also something that still characterizes my relationship with my son, thank God. So, well, guys, that's pretty much, oh, I'll ask sensor one more. Have you got advice for why young people should focus on having a family? My wife and I, 33, wish we had a kid when we met seven years ago rather than

trying now. Well, 33 is not too bad, so you know, good luck to you. That's the first thing I would say. I would also say that one couple in three, over 30, have fertility problems to find as inability to conceive when desiring to do so after one year. And that's something that no one's taught because our culture is blind in remarkable ways. You should focus on having a family when you're young if you can, because that's when you're the most fertile. So that's basically that. And fertility rates tend to decline rather precipitously, especially in women from the ages of 30 onward.

And the downhill track from 30 to 40 is pretty damn steep, you know, and you hear about assisted reproductive technologies. But that's a hell of a road to go down, because, you know, if you're ambivalent about children during your 20s and you decided 30 that it's time to start a family, and then you discover that you can't and you spend several hundred thousand dollars or at least tens of thousands of dollars wandering down the assisted fertilization route for like a decade, and that doesn't work, that's roughly equivalent, I would say, in misery to having a pretty damn serious disease or undergoing a very bad lawsuit. It's not something I would recommend. And you know, it is the case that life is short.

That's for sure, and that you have to get things together and get moving quickly. And so I would say, when's a good time to have a baby. Well, never. Right? Well, obviously, I mean, of all the stupid things you could possibly do is to saddle yourself with a $350,000 debt that isn't going to leave

for 18 years, right? That's gonna occupy every second of your time. It's like an interfere with your ability to make a living as well. It's like, wins a good time to do that. That, well, never. But on the opposite side is, well, what do you do in your life? You know, you have an intimate relationship. You have a family. You contribute to your community with your career or your job and what you do outside of that. That's life, man. That's your life, though. Those three things. Like, you know, there's decorations on the side. There's adventure and travel and that sort of thing, but fundamentally, that's that. And I would say, don't miss it, especially with young children, because young children,

you don't have them for very long. It's not a very long period of your life. And it's a delightful period and if you miss it, you don't get it back and so If you're 33 good luck, you know, you're not so old you'll you'll probably be okay If you're wondering whether or not you should have a child The answer is as I said not if you have any sense, but definitely you should, because that's life. And that's a good place to stop. Thank you very much everyone. It was a pleasure to be here and you're a lovely little town. I hope you get the earthquake damage, all fixed up. It's terrible to see that, but maybe you'll be able to build something spectacular on the runes. Good night.

If you found this conversation meaningful, you might think about picking up Dad's books, maps of meaning the architecture of belief, or his newer bestseller, 12 Rules for Life and Antidote to Chaos. Both of these these works delve much deeper into the topics covered in the Jordan B Peterson podcast. See JordanB Peterson.com for audio, e-book, and text links or pick up the books at your favorite bookseller. Remember to check out JordanB Peterson.com slash personality for information on his new course.

Tag Jordan or I on Instagram to share your results from the Discovering Personality Course. And if you're curious why your quarantine buddy is driving you crazy, check out understandmyself.com to learn more about their personality. I really hope you enjoyed this podcast. Talk to you next week. Follow me on my YouTube channel Jordan B. Peterson on Twitter at Jordan B. Peterson on Facebook at Dr. Jordan B. Peterson and on Facebook, at Dr. Jordan B. Peterson, and at Instagram at Jordan.b. Peterson. Details on this show, access to my blog, information about my tour dates

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