The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - October 2018 Q & A

Episode Date: November 7, 2018

Preorder The Gulag Archipelago: 50th Anniversary: https://bit.ly/2OxhiGW [1] 0:01:23 – Release of 50th Anniversary version of The Gulag Archipelago with a forward written by JBP [2] 0:03:11 – Finalized deal for next book “12 More Rules: Beyond Mere Order”

Welcome to the Jordan B. Peterson podcast. You can support these podcasts by donating to Dr. Peterson's Patreon, the link to which can be found in the description. Dr. Peterson's self-development programs, self-authoring, can be found at selfauthoring.com. music music Hi, everyone. Welcome to the October version of the Q&A. Hopefully all my technology will work. It's amazing that it ever does. Good. So let me catch

you up to date on some news first. That would be fun as far as I'm concerned. So the first thing I want to do is share something with you and that's this. So I got this in the mail yesterday from Penguin UK, from an editor Nick Skidmore, who I've been working with for several months. And so this is the 50th anniversary version of Alexander Solzhenitzin's Gouligarchipelago in its abridged form, one volume abridged form, which he approved. It's also published on the centenary of his birth. And I was invited to write a forward to it, which I completed, and which seemed to meet with the satisfaction of the editors,

and also Solzhenitsyn's family. It's about 500 pages long, which is much shorter than the original book, which was about 1800 pages. And Solzhenitsyn approved the abridgment. I think I might have said that. So it's a remarkable piece of literature and history, and arguably the most influential historical document of the 20th century. You could make that case. And so it was really unbelievably,

it was an unbelievable privilege to be asked to write the forward. And I hope that I did a credible job. We'll see about that. It's on sale as of November 1st. Now, I've also prepared a YouTube video for it where I've read the forward and some of the content of the book to provide people with an introduction. And I'm hoping that this will be something approximating a literary event. So I invite you to pick up the book if you'd like to and prepare to be shocked to your core, I suppose, is the proper way of thinking about it. So there you go. So that's that. Next thing. I was in New York the other day.

Yesterday, literally, finalizing what I hope is a deal for my second book and perhaps books after that, but certainly for the second book, which is tentatively entitled 12 more rules for life. There you go. Originally there were 42 rules and I haven't used them all up. So there's plenty of reason for continuing as far as I'm concerned. And I've written a fair bit of it. And it seems to be going well.

And I'm hoping that I can do a better job of the second book. That's the goal. And that's what I discussed with the editorial team is that I want the next book to be substantially better than the last one was. Hopefully I can manage that. So that's well and good as well. I'm hoping that I'd have that book done by next September, something approximating that,

maybe for publication, the following January. Now I've got a year after that if I need it, depending on what happens this year, but that's the plan. And then I'm going to tell you a little bit about what's happening with me over the next, I suppose, year, really. I might as well tell you that. Maybe you'd be interested in knowing. So the first thing is that tonight I'm going with Tammy, my wife who's been traveling with me this whole time. We've finished 85 cities in the tour so far, and they've gone really well, I would say.

So we've spoken to about 250,000 people. I've been traveling with Dave Rubin of the Rubin Report, and that's been entertaining. He's very comical and has been a good adjunct, addubid of levity, and also a certain degree of seriousness. So that's good. So on Sunday, I'm speaking in Dublin and on the 23rd, that's Tuesday on Oslo. I'll just go through the cities. You can look up the dates at JordanPeterson.com forward slash events if you want. Manchester Oxford Glasgow. Edinburgh Amsterdam Cambridge, Helsinki, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Birmingham, Oslo, Stockholm,

and Helsinki. So that ends November 11th. Then I'm off with Tammy to Spain in Portugal to talk to book publishers there. And then I'm going to speak to the trilateral commission in Slovenia, in Mubianca. And then we're going to Hawaii. I have a talk in Hawaii in that's at the end of November. Then to New York, maybe I'm going to talk to Dr. Oz again, that's not finalized, but it seems probable that I'm going to Washington to talk to some people there and then to Florida for a bit of a break from Canadian winter, even though I won't have experienced any of that so far this year. so far this year. And I have a speaking engagement there as well. And then in January, possibly, I'll be in California, we've applied for a tech incubator in California to further the development of our educational software, which is already at the prototype stage. I don't know for sure that we'll be accepted into the incubator. And I don't know for sure that will be accepted into the incubator and I don't know for sure if we are accepted, if that's the route we're going to take

because there are other options. We're also working with a private school consortium to test the software as we develop it because when you're developing a product, this is a good thing to know if you ever do build something. You want to build a product, test it with your potential customers, build it again because you've made all sorts of mistakes, test it with your

customers, and so on. And then after that, I'm going to Australia and New Zealand, probably to talk in about a dozen places there, and then back to Europe in March and April. And then I'm going to write non-stop, I hope, from May to September. And then with any luck, I'm going to start the biblical series again with Exodus. And so that's that, that's the plan. So it's exciting and daunting and all of those things. So now you're up to date and hopefully that was interesting.

I really am thrilled about this. This is really something, man. It's really something. So, and I'm the Solzhenitsyn family was happy with the forward. So, that was really positive. And hopefully, it'll bring a whole new audience to the book. That would be a good thing. This is not something that we should ever forget ever. Okay. So let's say, let's go to some questions here. Any advice for a young counselor soon to finish his degree? What do you wish you knew as a young therapist? Well, let's start with advice. Well, one thing I would say is you could go to my book list and read the books that are there. There's on my website, there is a list of recommended books, fiction, nonfiction, and

the nonfiction is categorized in different ways. There's a psychotherapy section. I would say, read those books. That would be helpful. Those people, young Freud, Rodgers, I think there's something by Adler, Henri Ellen Berger, some of the existentialists from the 1950s, a lot of neuroscientist types, very, very smart people, very, very useful to know what they had to say. So then the next thing I would suggest, and you've heard this from me before perhaps, is that

it's almost impossible to overestimate the degree to which merely listening is helpful if you're a counselor. Lots of people have no one to listen to, have no one that will listen to them. That's a real problem because people actually think by talking. For many people who are isolated, they have no one to talk to. So that means they don't think. And that means that their thoughts aren't straight and organized. And you might think, well, why does that matter? But the reason it matters is because the best analogy, I would say, to thoughts is the best way of conceptualizing the structure of your thoughts is to consider it in the same manner that you might consider

a map. Your map should be organized and things should be in the right place because otherwise when you use the map to navigate in the world, you don't end up where you want to be and you run into things that you don't want to encounter. And so it's actually extraordinarily necessary to get your thoughts in order since they help you simulate the world before you act in it. And so don't underestimate how important it is just to listen.

And then you think, well, let's think about listening, too. So someone comes to you and they come to you because they have a problem. Now you don't know what their problem is, and neither do they. All you know is that they have enough of a problem to come and talk to you. So then they might have a problem

because really terrible things have happened to them. And anyone with any sense would have a problem. And so then they have problems in life, say, or they have the existential problems, not really psychological problems, even though it might be psychologically demanding to adapt to the real problems. You want to listen and you want to find out, well, what exactly is the problem space? And how much of that is practical and how much of it is psychological?

So the first issue is, you don't know what the problem is and you want to ask a lot of questions to find out what it is. And also what it isn't because often people will come in and they're upset and they don't exactly know why they're upset and they might be upset about a whole bunch of things and it isn't until after they talk through all the things they might be upset about that they find out what they're upset about, and what they're not. So another reason to listen, especially at the stage of problem formulation, is to help people decide what their problems aren't.

Well, then the next thing you have to do to listen is like, okay, well, now we know what the problem is. Well, what would your client view as a potential solution? So assuming that this could be made better, in some manner, what would better look like? So you need to develop, co-develop a philosophy of what's better. And so that's a goal or a name. And it's almost like a personalized definition of mental health,

but it might be better to think about it as a personalized definition of a good life. And so that's the next thing you have to listen about. And then the last thing you have to listen about and negotiate as well as, okay, well, now we know what your problem is and we know hypothetically what the destination is with regards to solving that problem is what are the strategies that are necessary to implement in order to make that positive outcome occur? And then that's something that you negotiate by listening every week.

It's like, okay, well, here's the goal. What steps could we take that you would implement that would move you towards that goal? Can you take those steps in the world? Will you do that this week and then watch whether or not you do it and come back in report and also tell me and yourself whether or not implementing that actually worked. And then we can come back and we can have a discussion about whether you did it or not. And if you didn't, then how we could modify that. And if you did, how we could continue and expand it.

And if you did do it, whether it worked and what unexpected things occurred and what if any implications there are for understanding your problem and for your goal. And so, you need, it's a map. You have a starting point, you have to figure out what that is. You have a destination point, the desired future, you have to figure out what that is, you have to implement and design strategies that will move the person forward and then you have to test all those strategies. Very strategic thinking, very practical thinking.

And so that's an outline of how to do effective psychotherapy, I would say, effective, careful psychotherapy. Another bit of advice is people often who are young counselors are afraid and don't know how they cannot take their clients' problems home. And I've got a couple of things to say about that. The first is they're not your problems. And it's very important to remember that. It's partly you don't want to steal your clients' problems. I mean, you might think, well, if I could take my clients' problems on myself and lift the burden from them, well, wouldn't that be better? And the answer is,

well, no, because someone's problems are not that distinguishable from their life. And what you're there to do is facilitate their ability to learn to grapple successfully with the existential vagaries of their own existence. And you don't want to leap in there and steal it. Like, let's say you give a spectacular piece of advice, and you're going to give advice now in that, but it's not that advisable. Then let's say you advise someone to solve a problem in a certain way, and they go do it, and the problem

solved. It's like, well, the problems disappeared, but they didn't learn how to generate the solution to the problem. And so they're in worse shape with future problems and it's your victory in some sense instead of theirs and so you don't want to you don't want to steal from your clients destiny and so and that also frees you up to some degree because it also means that you're not morally obligated to take on those problems and carry them home

and the other thing is, is that it doesn't do your client any good for their problems to sink you. You have a moral obligation, an ethical obligation, a professional obligation, to remain sufficiently detached from the situation so that your head is clear and you remain healthy and your practice remains viable for the long run. And so don't forget to protect yourself. It's very, very important. Let your clients sort out their lives. You're there to help, you're there as a sounding board, you're there as a strategic advice,

you're there to shed light on the symptomatology and to lay out potential strategies for treatment, all of that. And so, and that's good enough. You don't take on any more than that. So, okay. Procrastination and instant gratification rule me. Nothing seems to motivate me. Nothing seems to motivate me.

What do I do? Well, I'm going to give you some practical advice. I would say you need a plan, like you need a plan, and not just a plan, you need a reason to implement the plan. You need both of those. So something motivates you. You already said instant gratification motivates you. So you'll do things for instant gratification. Now look, instant gratification is a particular form of reward. It's called incentive reward and it's mediated by dopamine orgic circuitry, the same circuitry that mediates reward as a consequence of using drugs like cocaine

or any of the drugs that people abuse. And so there are certain short-term activities that are pleasurable enough so they produce an intrinsic, they intrinsically produce a dopamine kick. And a lot of that's instantaneous gratification like, say, eating when you're hungry, at least the taste and flavor of the food because there's also a satiation element that comes along with food. And so there's those pleasures that speak for themselves. When you're looking at the long run, things that are rewards that

are delayed don't produce as much of a dopamine kick, so they're not as immediately gratifying, and they're not as gripping in the present. The way that you have to overcome that is to generate a vision of, it's really, it's not a plan or a strategy, it's a philosophical vision that justifies your life in some way that you deeply believe it has to be that. It can't be trivial because otherwise procrastination and instant gratification are going to rule you so We developed this program called the future authoring program and it's part of the self authoring suite and I'll run through it very rapidly because Even if you don't use that program, although you could because that's what it's designed for and I think it makes it easier

It outlines what's necessary in order to overcome the problem that you're describing. So the first question you might ask yourself is, well, what would you need to gain? And you have to have a real dialogue with yourself to understand this. You have to take yourself warts and all your useless, procrastinating, instant gratification, seeking self. And you have to sit down and say, all right, you know, you're talking to your inner badly behaved six-year-old It's like, okay, what is it that you would have to have in order to commit to something in the long run? What kind of Vision of the future would would justify sacrifices for you? And you might say, well, you don't know. It's like, okay, fine. That's why you have to break it down

So let me ask you some questions. So you might think, well, here's some things that people need in their life because your life is not going to be solid, grounded, gratifying, acceptable, meaningful, relevant, and devoid of earth-shaking anxiety without managing some of these things. Most people need an intimate relationship, a long-term intimate relationship because otherwise they get lonesome and bored and crazy. Crazy in a different way than you get if you have a long-term relationship. Worse crazy. They need friends, they need family. So that could be your birth family, your parents, your

extended family, your siblings, but also children. So you need to know, well, where does that fit into your life? What's your vision for that? Do you want to get along with your parents? You want to get along with your siblings? Do you have a strategy for that? Do you want to have kids at some point? Do you want to build yourself a family. Okay. You need a job or a career. Now, a career is intrinsically meaningful and usually very demanding in terms of commitment and hours, whereas a job at least can be engaging and worthwhile. It's usually more time limited, maybe you have more freedom outside of it, but you need a job because you need something to do and you need some routine and you need some financial support.

And if you can have a career and that's what you want so much the better, but at least you could have a trade, something worthwhile, not that a trade can't be a career and believe me, I've got nothing against trades. You need to take care of yourself mentally and physically. Like how do you want to present yourself in the world? No, you want to be healthy mentally and physically so that how do you want to present yourself in the world? No? You want to be healthy mentally and physically so that you're like a light among men. Let's put it that way. That would be a good goal. How are you going to handle the temptations of drugs and alcohol and whatever

procrastination and instant gratification are tilting you in the wrong direction? So those are, you know, seven things that you might consider. Sit down. Here's the question. You're taking care of yourself, like you're someone you care about. You can design a future that would be good for you if you were taking care of yourself. Right for 20 minutes, you can have what you want. It's three years down the road. You can have whatever you want. You have to aim for it and work for it. And you have to specify it. What is it? What do you want? What would make your life worthwhile? What would be good enough so that instant gratification would be an obstacle instead of a means for proceeding? Like, I can give you an example to some degree. You know, when I was kid in my early 20s, I did quite a bit of drinking and partying.

I came from a hard drinking background up in Northern Alberta. And I was out three times a week, even when I was in graduate school. And I was beginning to write, seriously, scientific papers and also the work that became maps of meaning and eventually 12 rules for life. And it came to the point where I couldn't do both. I couldn't go out and be that social and have that much instant, instant gratifying fun and Be in good enough shape so that if I was editing something complex I was making it better instead of worse and I was really interested in what I was doing

I was learning a lot about the brain. I was learning a lot about alcohol and drug abuse I was laying out the platform for the relationship between Narrative and neuroscience and it was really engrossing and engaging, but it was hard and it was long-term plan. I had to make a choice. It was either continue the fund, which was fun. I really enjoyed it. Or do this thing that I really believe was more worthwhile.

And it was more worthwhile to do the more worthwhile thing, which is why I stopped with the instant gratification, like a lot of stopping. And this is true for most people, especially young men who tend to drink a fair bit and cries around a lot. Most young men stop that sort of thing, at least to some degree, around 25 or 26. And the reason they do that is because they pick up other responsibilities. They get a real job that has some future and they get a Relationship that's permanent they have a family and they decide well, that's more important than the procrastination and the instant gratification. Okay, so

Make yourself a damn plan make it into a strategy. You could use the future authoring program if you like I would highly recommend that do it badly. You might be intimidated by it. You know, I don't know how to plan. It's like, yeah, we know. You don't know how to plan. Make a bad plan. It's better than the one you've got. So do it badly and then try and modify it as needs be and see if that works. You need a philosophy code. That's the thing. You know, you're you're living a shallow life. And so short term avoidance, that's procrastination. You'll do that because you don't think it's important enough. You don't think that the negative consequences of not doing what you should do are severe enough.

You're not afraid enough of it. The other thing you do in the future authoring program, by the way, is write about just exactly what kind of hell you'd be likely to descend into three to five years in the future. If you let your bad habits procrastination and instant gratification, let's say rule you and take you out of the game completely because you also need to be terrified as well as hopeful about what you might do. If you got your act together, you need to be terrified about what you where you might end up.

If you kept being like lazy and useless, you know, and shallow. And that, none of that's good. So you need to be deeper and you need to look deeper. You need to, Nietzsche said, he who has a why can bear any how. And you need a why and the why is something like, well, imagine you could have the life, imagine you could have a life that would be worth giving up some of the instant gratification for. Even in principle, what would that look like?

So, all right. All right. What do you think the feminine hero journey is? Do you believe females have their own archetypal story to follow? Yes, they certainly do. I think the, first of all, they have the hero story like men do.

But I think the classic hero story, if imagine it this way, the classic hero story is the archetypal male story with the feminine lurking in the background, because like men are adventurous heroes, all things considered fundamentally, but they're also very maternal. Men take care of children, families for very long periods of time. So as far as if you think about this from purely biological perspective, human males are very maternal. So both males and females have an aspect to them that's archetypally masculine and archetypally feminine. And I would say in the typical male, the archetypally masculine dominates with the archetypally feminine in the background

and the typical female, it's the reverse. And so although there might be some variation in that, you get the relatively rare female who's more archetypally male in their orientation to the world and you get the relatively rare male who is more archetyply female feminine. So The dragon the conflict with the dragon is the archetypal male story go out confront the dragon get the gold bring it back to the community rescue the virgin Inobile the community Why make yourself wise as a consequence of the adventure and develop your character. That's a great story.

Um, the archetypal feminine narrative, at least to some degree, is beauty and the beast, which is to encounter the monstrous masculine and to tame and civilize it so that and to tame and civilize it so that a joint relationship can be established. That's part and parcel of the development of long-term intimacy. And that would be partly for the purposes of intimacy, which is particularly important to people say who are high in agreeableness and women are higher in agreeableness,

but also as the platform for raising children successfully. Now, you get a male variant of that, which is one of the male variants of the same story that Eric Neumann in particular talked about. He was a Jungian commentator. He wrote a book called Origins in History of Consciousness, which I would highly recommend. It's on my list of recommended readings. And another one called the Great Mother, another brilliant book. Neumann talked about something called the crystallization of the anima from the Great Mother Archetype, and so you might say that that men who've been dominated by women, a young boy who's been dominated by his mother, for example, or a man for who for some reason is dominated and intimidated by the idea of the rejecting feminine.

And if you're interested in that idea, you could watch a documentary called Crumb. You'll see exactly what I mean by dominated by the archetypal rejecting feminine. I've never seen a better example of it that then once laid out in that documentary, Crumb. It's a brilliant documentary. So the female is a hostile judge and very critical of men, the feminine speaking archetyply. And so the man has to steal himself to face that rejection, to develop his character just like Bill Murray does in Groundhog Day, exactly the same story. And then free the individual woman with whom he has a relationship from the archetypal judgmental feminine. So that's like the male version of Beauty and the Beast.

And so then, and the female version, obviously the hero archetype is the fact that women do have a heroic role to play in the world as well because they confront the unknown just like men do and garner wisdom, knowledge, riches as a consequence. But the way I look at it is that, well, for females, the feminine archetype is at the forefront and the masculine at the background and it's reversed for men. So that's how it looks to me. So you caught some Twitter flag for your comment on Brett Kavanaugh, care to address your comment and the blowback. Well I addressed the comment because I wrote a blog post and so that was probably the

right way not only to address it, but that would have been the right way to handle it to begin with. So I'll address it. Sure, I'll address it and I'll address the blowback as well. Look, just because you have an idea doesn't mean that it's the only idea. And just because you have an idea doesn't mean it's right. And so like it's weird for me in some sense to engage in public discourse, especially politically, because you see, I've been a researcher for a very long period of time. And so most of the people that I've talked to

about serious ideas, most of them, many of them, have been researchers, graduate students, for example. And when you're talking about a problem, whatever it might be, if you're research-oriented, what you do is kind of what you do. If you're a therapist, the way I laid out advice for a young therapist earlier, it's like, okay, well, what does everybody think the problem is? And so you assume that you don't know. It's like, okay, well, we have a big discussion about what everybody thinks the problem is? And so you assume that you don't know. It's like, okay, well, we have a big discussion,

but what everybody thinks the problem is. Well, what do you think the real problem is? Like, what's the real problem with the Kavanaugh situation? Well, one might be, well, Kavanaugh was accused of sexual impropriety when he was a high school student. And because of that, he's not, his suitability for the Supreme Court is in question. Maybe that's the problem. Yeah, maybe. And maybe that's not the problem. Who the hell

knows what the problem is. So here's a bunch of possibilities. We haven't had a reasonable discussion about what constitutes an acceptable statute of limitations with regards to accusations of misbehavior between individuals. It's like, well, can you accuse someone reasonably five years later, 10 years later, 15 years later, 40 years later? Like, is there a limit? Do you have a moral obligation if you're going to accuse someone or even seek justice to do that within a reasonable period of time. Who knows? We don't so that's a problem.

What exactly are the rules that govern the conduct of men and women when they're young, when they're drinking? Are we gonna have that conversation? No, we're not going to have that conversation either because no one wants to. Think of that through and they especially don't want to think it through with regards to the complicating additional feature of alcohol. Think about alcohol is the reason that people drink is so that they can act stupidly and have fun. Now, the problem with acting stupidly and having fun when you're sober is that it makes you anxious, and so you don't do it. But alcohol, especially for people for whom alcohol is a good drug, ramps up the excitement of impulsivity and quells the anxiety. And so people always drink, often drink, because they want to go out and be stupid and have fun. And look, I understand that. There's something to be said for stupid fun, but it's, But one of the things that also needs to be said about it is it's bloody well dangerous.

And so we don't want to have that conversation. We don't have that conversation on campuses. We talk about the rape crisis. Nobody talks about the alcohol sexual assault crisis. If men and women didn't drink together, there'd be virtually no sexual assault. And in fact, if people didn't drink at all, there'd be almost no violent crime, because alcohol contributes to violent crime in a manner that you can hardly imagine. But 50% of the people who are murdered are drunk, and about 50% of the people who do the murdering

are drunk. And that's probably an underestimate because the stats aren't kept that well, and it also depends on how you define drunk. So that can also be a problem. Well, the liberals left types, let's call them the left-leaning progressive types, don't want to conservative on the Supreme Court. The left-leaning types aren't happy that Trump won the election. The conservatives want to rush our candidate onto the Supreme Court, come hell or high water because of the November election. Then there's another problem. Well, is this about Kavanaugh at all or is this about Ro and Wade and about abortion? Well, who knows? It's about all those things. So it's an unbelievably complicated, god-awful situation. And so,

Eric Weinstein and Brett Weinstein were tweeting about this and it was late at night and Eric said, as far as I can tell, either way, this is not going to end well. And I thought, oh, he said, is there an alternative? Is there a way out of that? And I thought, oh, that's an interesting question. What might be a way out of that? And I thought, well, Calvin was in a rough position because he can't withdraw, obviously, and perhaps shouldn't, without his reputation being shattered. And if he doesn't get nominated, the same thing his life is basically over. So, but on the other hand,

he's tangled up in a scandal that's of sufficient murk and mud so that it isn't self-evident that he can serve as a Supreme Court justice without having every single one of his decisions, especially in contentious cases, as a Supreme Court justice, without having every single one of his decisions, especially in contentious cases, produce a tremendous amount of social upheaval over the next two or three decades.

And it isn't obvious that that's a great move forward. Now, it might be fine. I mean, there's been controversy around other Supreme Court justice nominations, and that seems to have basically sorted itself out and I already said just because you're thinking something through doesn't mean you're right. It's a simulation. So I thought, well, if I was in Kavanaugh's position and I felt that my candidacy had been compromised, perhaps through no fault of my own, I have not saying anything about his innocence

or guilt, but that my candidacy had been compromised by this interminable and ugly scandal. And that meant that my tenure on the Supreme Court might be marked by culturally divisive controversy in the long run. Maybe it would be better for me to be nominated to say, look, it's too murky, it's too muddy. And I don't think the country is best served by my accepting the nomination. Then the conservatives can nominate another candidate, get their person on the Supreme Court. So there's no necessary loss there.

And perhaps we could move forward with a minimum relative minimum of divisiveness. Now, look, in my blog, I laid out all the reasons why that isn't a good idea. Like, here, maybe if you just give me five seconds, I can read some of them because I tried to make a steel man case for why my idea wasn't a good one, my idea about him withdrawing. So just give me one second and I'll read all the potential objections just so that you know that I've thought them through. So perhaps the Democrat opposition would mount a similar campaign against my putative successor. Well, that's certain impossible. I said, well, that would provide virtually unassailable evidence for the purely manipulative and political motivation of the accusers forcing them to duplicate their strategy

a second time. That would help reveal the machinations for what they were in a manner that would be virtually undeniable. Perhaps time is of the essence and there'd be no way to place another candidate of conservative leaning on the bench before the November elections, as they say, however, act in haste, repent, and leisure. Okay. And then other arguments against my position. Here they are. Oh, yes. If Kavanaugh withdrew after being nominated, here's what might happen.

It would be read as an admission of guilt on his part. It would embolden those who would use reputation destruction as a political maneuver. It would weaken the generally and vitally important idea of the presumption of innocence. It would indicate weakness on the part of the Republicans at a key moment prior to the November elections. It would mean that an innocent man has been successfully pilloried by a mob. It would validate the use of allegations of past behavior, well past any reasonable expiry date as a weapon. It would destroy the Republican opportunity to choose a Supreme Court justice, hand the

Democrats an unearned victory, embed a large percentage of the conservative base who would regard the withdrawal as a betrayal, and last and perhaps least violate my own personal adage for what that's worth of don't apologize if you haven't done anything wrong. Okay, so I understand the weaknesses of that position. I was putting it forward as a potential third alternative. Now, look, it's perfectly reasonable to put things forward as alternatives. That's thinking. Now, having said that, I made some mistakes. OK, so the first mistake was don't tweet complicated ideas

in 140 characters about contentious issues in the midst of a controversy at 2 in the morning. Right? Bad idea. And so one of the consequences of this for me is that I withdrawn quite a lot over the last three weeks from Twitter. It's Twitter is a very dangerous platform. And so I'm taking a break from it while I'm re-evaluating its utility. And so I, because I talked to my son about this before and other members of

my family. And we had agreed that I wasn't going to post anything on Twitter that should be made into a blog. But the problem with Twitter is that it, or the problem with me, who knows where the problem is, is that Twitter invites and facilitates impulsive responding. And so I'm not convinced that it's necessarily a good platform for me. I, of all the places that I tend to get into trouble,

Twitter is sort of at the top of the list. Now, I laid out in my blog why I still use it. I feel some moral obligation to the, almost a million people who follow me on Twitter, for example. And there's an addictive quality to it too. I'm following a lot of these people in the intellectual dark web and seeing what they're up to and trying to keep an eye on the cultural climate, let's say. And it's not easy to figure out for me as it sure is the case for all of you, exactly

how much you should be exposed to such things and how much you should protect yourself. I mean, a case could certainly be made that I should stay the hell off Twitter and do nothing but write for the next year, because it's not like I have any shortage of things to write about. So I'm trying to sort that out. So that's my explanation. And it could easily be that, as I said, it could easily be that the idea that I put forward wasn't the best idea.

Who knows what the best idea is. Maybe the best idea was for Kavanaugh to do exactly what he did. Who knows? So and more, you know, good luck to him into the Supreme Court. I hope it all stabilizes. That would be lovely. And it has happened before. And so maybe it will again.

So all right. I took the understand myself test and have a question. Okay. So the understand myself test at understandmyself.com for all of those of you who don't know is a personality test. It's based on the big five extroversion, neuroticism, agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness. It breaks each of them down into two fundamental aspects that have been empirically validated. And so you can take that test. I put a code in the description of this video. I think the code is October.

You can use that code for self-authoring and for Understand myself and there's a 20% discount for that. So if you want to do that, it only takes about 15 minutes to do The understand myself test by the way. The self-authoring program that requires more effort. You have to do that over a number of days. But you can do it badly, as I said. And you need a plan, man.

You need to know where you are. That's the autobiographical part. And you need a plan for the future. So it's worth it, even though it's hard. It's not as hard as stumbling through your life blindly. OK, I took the understand myself test and have a question. Should I take the results as is and live trying to cope with them, or can I try to change them to some degree? All right. So the first thing is, I would say, well, take the results

as they are to some degree. Now, it depends. Look, you got to be careful because if you take a personality test like this and you're depressed, so, you know, the future looks really bleak to you, the present looks bleak, when you look into the past, almost everything looks negative, you know, you're not taking any pleasure in things, you feel bad, perhaps even worse in the morning, you, you're, you're, you can't see any light in your life, you're very self-critical, perhaps you're depressed, then if you're depressed, your personality scores are going to look, they're going to be skewed as a consequence of that. And so they might be more negative because of the mindset that you have when you take

the test, then they truly are. So I'm assuming with this answer that you're not depressed. So should I take the results as is and live trying to cope with them? Well, one thing is you should at least give yourself some credit. It's like you're a particular way. So let's say you're low in openness, just for the sake of argument. Let's say you're low in openness and moderately high in conscientiousness. You're a more conservative person.

You're probably going to be happier if you take a more conservative path in life. You're not, if you're low in openness, you're not that creative. You're not going to be interested in aesthetics. You're not going to be interested even in ideas to that graded degree. It's not your area of fascination. You're more practical and concrete. And perhaps, and also less flighty and less prone to creative error. There's advantages too, you know, because most creative people are fonts of ideas that won't work and that will occupy a tremendous

amount of counterproductive time in their implementation. That's the downside to creativity, false positives. If you're disagreeable, well, then you're going to try to work somewhere where competent competitiveness is useful. If you're high in neuroticism, then you're probably going to have to find a job where the stress levels aren't too high. If you're introverted, you want to find a place where you can work and spend a fair bit of time by yourself. You want to match your environment to your personality. That's adaptation to some degree. Now, if you're really high in neuroticism, for example, and you're too anxious,

and then there are things that you can do about that. That's something you might want to, if it's really out of hand, say if you're 98% taller above something like that, and it's also making you suffer because you're too anxious and too risk averse and too volatile, you might want to consider something like counseling to see if you can get your anxiety levels down or to learn to meditate or to learn to control your breathing or to talk to someone

to see if there's some physiological reason for that. Now you can change, but like if you're introverted you can develop social skills, but you kind of have to do them one at a time, you know, because it's not something that comes naturally to you, and it might not be something that you developed as a child. You have to consciously plan a social strategy, so you might say, well, I'm introverted. I should go out with someone for lunch once a week. I should see friends twice a week, right? You should, you need to make a plan for social interactions. And if you're extroverted and you can't stand being alone, well, then you might practice being alone a little bit

so that you can learn how to spend some quality time on yourself and not be so dependent on the company of others. If you're an agreeable person to agreeable, then you'll need to figure out what it is that you want, what you're resentful about and what you need to negotiate about on your own behalf. And if you're really disagreeable, then you might want to think hard about consciously deciding that once a week or so, you're going to try to do something for someone

else. And there's a research literature on that actually. It indicates quite clearly that if you consciously plan to do something altruistic on a regular basis, it does seem to improve overall well-being. And I think that's particularly important for disagreeable people because they don't do that naturally. It doesn't come to them naturally. So I think that the general advice is find an environment where your temperament works. And then the more specific advice is, while having said that, it doesn't hurt to expand your

temperament. If you're introverted, you should be able to do what extroverted people do. And if you're extroverted, you should be able to spend time alone. You should develop those as skills. If you're an agreeable person, you should learn how to negotiate for yourself in a tough minded manner. And if you're disagreeable, you should learn how to negotiate for yourself in a tough-minded manner, and if you're disagreeable, you should learn to take other people into consideration more. If you're unconscious, wouldn't hurt to have a schedule like a Google Calendar to start working on that, because low-consciousness is going to interfere with your long-term success.

If you're hyper-conscious, well, you might need to learn to relax a little bit and to make that a priority. So, and if you're high in openness, well, I don't have a quick answer for what you do if you're high in openness. Oh, I do, I guess I do to some degree. Try to focus it on one thing, to some degree, on one thing and get good at that, because when you you're open you're flying out all over the place laterally and you can easily become a dilatant. So one of the things you have to do if you're high in openness is develop true expertise in at least one place. You can even pick at someone arbitrarily given that you're interested in everything, commit to something. If you're low in openness and a little closed off compared to what you should be, a little narrow-minded, let's say, and conventional. Maybe you should read a book a week, join a book club. That's

a good thing to do. That's a good start. Join a book club and open yourself up a little bit. Go see a movie now in that as well. That would also be helpful. You know? And that'll widen you out a bit. And that's important. You know, it's important for your career and all that sort of thing. You want to, you know, your temperament puts you in a certain place in the distribution. And it isn't so much that you want to move the place, is that you want to move the variability so that you can be what you need to be when the situation demands it. That doesn't mean to blow in the wind. It means to be adaptable instead of constrained tightly by your biological predisposition. And you can learn that.

It's painstaking. It requires a lot of effort, but you can learn it. So, my daughter's school is now teaching gender as a social construct, four sexes, avoids naming boys and girls. What do we do? Leaving is not an option. Well, I guess the first question is, I'll just take you at your word that leaving is not an option, it certainly might not be an option.

I would say your best bet, and this is a casual piece of advice because I don't know your particular situation, is to find out how many parents there are around who are also not happy about this and then start to strategize. I mean, look, to some degree what people just define as gender is a social construct. So let's look at it this way. So there are things that make men, men, and that make women women that are universal across cultures. So let's say except for tiny variations external genitalia

so But then there are things that do vary across culture with regards to whether they're regarded as masculine or feminine or male or female, and those are more learned. So let's say that external genitalia is not a social construct. It's not learned. If we can't agree on that, then we're not going to be able to have a discussion at all. But there are some things about male behavior and some things about female behavior that are culture- specific and learned.

And so to that degree, gender is a social construct. So you have to give the devil his due. But the problem isn't teaching that gender is a social construct. The problem is teaching that gender is only a social construct, and that's just wrong. It's absolutely wrong. As soon as someone's doing that, then you know that you're dealing with an ideologue. And the research evidence on that, for example, is crystal clear, apart from the fact that there are morphological differences between men and women,

which are quite obvious. You can name a variety of them. Men have wider jaws, they have larger teeth, they can bite harder, they have thicker skulls, as women certainly can attest to. From a psychological perspective, they are more powerful in the upper body. They can punch a lot harder. They can throw more naturally. They tend to weigh more, they tend to be taller. That's sexual dimorphism.

Human beings are relatively sexually dimorphic as far as primates and other mammals go. There's difference in obviously waist to hip ratio. Women's elbows are at a different angle. They have finer bones. Women have a subcutaneous layer of body fat that men don't have. Women are a little bit more pain resistant, more pain tolerant, they also have very high levels of stamina, women tend to have a little edge in verbal ability, men tend to have a little edge in spatial ability, and then there are,

apart from the straight physiological differences, there are psychological differences, there's a variety of them. Women are more enthusiastic, men are more assertive. That's extroversion. Women are higher in withdrawal and in volatility. That's on the neuroticism front. Women are more agreeable and more polite. That's on the agreeableness front. Men are more industrious, slightly, and women are more orderly. That's on the conscientious front. And women are higher in openness, proper, and men are higher in interest in ideas.

And that's on the openness front. And those differences aren't huge. There's more overlap between the genders, the sexes, than there are. Then there is lack of overlap, but the differences magnify at the extremes. And they also maximize in societies that are egalitarian. And then the biggest difference between men and women that we know of psychologically is that men are more prone to be interested in things and women are more prone to be interested in people.

And that's actually quite a large difference by psychological standards. And there isn't any evidence that that is socially constructed. The counter evidence is that as you make societies more egalitarian, those differences actually get bigger rather than smaller. And even the London Times three weeks ago wrote an editorial describing, and not yet another study that demonstrated that. So that's like six, and there are huge scale studies pointing out that the fact that the differences between men and women get bigger in more egalitarian societies is now one of the most well-established findings in all of the social sciences, thus demonstrating, for example, that poor James DeMore was correct, despite the fact that Google

fired him for being accurate in his analysis of the scientific literature. Okay, so you've got the facts on your side. Problem is, is you don't know what to do. Well, there's only one of you. That's not a good number. If you're going to amount to campaign, you annoyed about this. Well, write down exactly what you're annoyed about. What bothers you about this?

Okay. What would you about this? What would you like to have happen? Because you need to know what the problem is and you need to know what the solution is. Then you have to start thinking about strategy. One strategy is you need some allies. You need some people on your side. If this is bothering you, the probability that it's bothering most people is very high.

It's very rare, especially with something like this. I mean, I would say, and I think the data support this, is that the overwhelming majority of people do not believe that gender is a social construct, that there are four sexes and that avoiding naming boys and girls is a good idea. So you've got, unless you're in a very progressive place, in which case, that's its own problem. You've got to find some people who would be willing to go to bat with you. And then you have to find, it's a political struggle. It's a bit of a war. It's like, okay, who's pushing this? Who's the ring leaders

for this? You know, it's certainly possible that most of the teachers don't want to do this either, but they're afraid to say anything. So I would say, this is probably a two-year campaign, and you have to decide if this is something that you want to put your time and effort into. And if you do, you have to conduct it like a war, you know, without the violence, obviously. But that's the right metaphor. It's like, what's the set of problems? Who's causing them?

What do you want to have happen as an alternative? How are you going to tackle this? You're going to talk to your local public authorities, school authorities. You're going to talk to the local politicians. You're going to talk to the principal. Are you going to face down the teachers? Are you going to do that with more than one of you? Are you going to have down the teachers? Are you going to do that with more than one of you? Are you going to have your arguments in order? And then on a more personal front, what are you going

to do with your daughter? How are you going to educate her? Let's say you decide not to take this on on the political or public front, then you have to have a conversation with her and find out what she thinks, because she'll be doubtful and dubious about all of this. So a lot of that should be asking her questions. So yeah, that's the best I can do with that. Would you consider adding a list of recommended movies to your website? Yes, I thought about that. Also a recommended list of books for young people. It's on the hypothetical list of things to do, but I haven't done it yet. So, and I don't think that it's likely to make it up the priority list

for a while because I'm pretty booked out for the next, who knows how long a while. Can I understand myself or other big five tests be retaken after some time? EG1 to 2 years and be fairly accurate? I ask because I believe I have changed. Well, you might have changed. I mean, look, first of all, people do change as they mature. Personality is relatively stable across time, but relatively stable doesn't mean completely stable. It means that, you know, if you are extremely extroverted, the probability that in five years you're going to be extremely introverted is very low. But if you are extremely extroverted, it's conceivable that, you know, in one or two years

you'll be moderately extroverted. You can move, and of that's situational, some of it's learning, some of it's maturation. So one of the most reliable findings in the personality literature is that as people get older, they get more conscientious, more agreeable, and more emotionally stable, less neurotic. And those three traits clump to make a super trait called, we call it stability. So people get more stable as they get older. You know, and I've seen people learn to be more conscientious. That's for sure.

That happens. That happens, I think whenever you take people who are young and sort of flighty and put them through a rigorous apprenticeship program, you know, where they discipline themselves. And I've seen people become certainly, become less lower in neuroticism and less agreeable for that matter. So yes, you can take them, sure, take it again two years later and see, you know, the other

thing you can do, if you're really curious about your personality, is have some other people take the personality test about you, because you know some things about your personality, and they're accurate to some degree, self-report has some degree of accuracy, but then you can get information from other people as well. And so that's another way of determining, you know, of helping get an accurate

picture of who you are. So you can change. The more dramatic the change, the more effort is required. That's a good way of thinking about it. So we know, for example, that you can change IQ with shift in socioeconomic status. So imagine that you have identical twins separated at birth. And you put one twin into a relatively well-off family and one twin into a relatively poor family.

And let's assume that being rich has some advantages with regards to intellectual development. You need a three standard, if I remember correctly, you need a three standard deviation might be four, but you need a three or four standard deviation, move upward in socioeconomic status to produce a one standard deviation increase in IQ. So you have to move from something like the fifth percentile,

I might have the stats a bit wrong because I'm trying to do this on the fly. You have to move from the bottom fifth percentile to the top fifth percentile in wealth to move from average intelligence to 85th percentile in intelligence. So you can change as a consequence of the situation, but the bigger the change, the more costly, and that could be costly in terms of resources or effort. So would you like doing a podcast with Elon Musk?

Let's start an initiative for this. Yes, I would like to do a podcast with Elon Musk. I know people who know him, but we've never met. Yes, I'm sure that would be ridiculously fun. So, if you want to start an initiative for that, you go right ahead and who knows, maybe it'll bear fruit. for that, you go right ahead and who knows, maybe it'll bear fruit. I am going to be concentrating more on my podcast in a few months. I'm contracting with a professional company to develop it so that it, well, for a variety of reasons, so that it moves higher up on the priority list. So I have a better studio so that I have some staff to help me schedule interviews. There's lots of people I want to talk to, authors and scientists and politicians and so I'm quite excited about that. I would love to talk to Elon Musk.

I'm sure that would be ridiculously fun. I would love to find out. I'd like to ask him about his thought process. Also, I'm really curious about how in the world he manages to do multiple, impossible things, because doing one impossible thing is impossible, but doing like five impossible things is the product of five impossibilities, and that just seems like hyper-impossible. But he's managed it. You know what I mean? Think about it. Think about what he did. He built an electric car, He's managed it. You know, I mean, think about it. Think about what he did.

He built an electric car, which is like hard. And then he built a rocket and then he blasted the car into space on his rocket. Like that, that's not real. That doesn't happen. But it did happen and he did it. And so I would really, yeah, I would love to talk to him. I think that would be extremely, extremely interesting.

How do you fight a monster without becoming one yourself? You don't. You become a monster by fighting with a monster, but it's actually a good thing to become a monster. You see, the difference is, and really this is the answer to your question. You can stay naive and that's not good because you're vulnerable and you're not useful if you're naive. So that's a bad situation.

So let's say, well, instead of being naive, you decide you're going to go confront the monster. Okay, well, the problem with that is that you become the monster. All right, so how do you deal with that? And the answer is to do it voluntarily. To do it voluntarily. Because if you develop your monstrousness voluntarily, then perhaps you can bring it under civilized control. Right, you can integrate those, those that capacity for mayhem and destruction that you

develop within yourself, you can integrate that within a comprehensive and properly directed practical philosophy. And so that means that you're disciplined, you know, like a warrior isn't a monster. So you have to, you have to align, you have to discipline your monstrosity. And you do that by developing it voluntarily. Look, you see this sort of thing happening all the time in classic hero stories. Like if you look at the story of the Hobbit, for example, like Bilbo. I think Bilbo is the Hobbit, right? Photos the next one. Let me just look that up. Yeah, okay, it's Bilbo. Good. That's what I thought. Now, Bilbo, when he starts, when this Hobbit starts the book, Bilbo lives in this little protected area.

So it's like the castle that the Buddha grows up in. All the bad things are outside of it. And the reason for that actually is because the kingdom is guarded by these descendants of great kings, the striders, who the Hobbits have some contempt for because they kind of look like tramps. Erragorn is one of them. So the descendants of great kings patrol the borders and keep the naive inhabitants of the Shire safe.

And they're naive and they go about their day to day work and nothing really threatens them and there's no monsters around. And because they don't have any real challenges and because they're peaceful in their wealth and security, they think they're good. But they're not. They're just naive and undisciplined and relatively weak. And so they're not prepared for anything. When all hell breaks loose, they're like, they're like, they're like, bait, they're like prey, you know? So, and of course, the wizard Gandalf knows this. Now, despite the fact that the

Shire folk are rather small and a bit comical and tremendously naive, they do have a latent ability for courage and forthrightness. Gandalf can really see this in the one hobbit, Bilbo. And so he tells Bilbo that darkness is brewing on the outland's outside of protected territory, absolutely classic mythological representation. It's the same in the Lion King where Mustafa tells Simba that his kingdom is everything that the light falls on and that he's not to journey outside of that domain, right? That's out in the elephant graveyard and death and all of that. That's outside of the shire, let's say it's outside of paradise, it's outside of the walled city. It's outside of your domain of knowledge.

Well, that's where that's where that's where malevolence and chaos brews. Now you see that again in the Lion King because that's where scar and the hyenas go off to to conspire and turn into what are essentially jack booted Nazis before they take over the the Pride Land land same idea okay well so what happens to Bilbo when he goes off to confront the dragon um he has to become a thief right which is very it's very it's very strange ethically because while Bilbo wasn't a thief and you think what's better to be to not be a thief than to be a thief, and the answer to that, it's very hard answer, very complicated answer, and it's not one to be dealt with lightly. It's not good to be moral

if the reason that you're moral is because you cannot be otherwise. That's the naivety issue, right? So naivety is not morality. And if you're terrified to be a thief and you have no skill at it and you're not a thief, that doesn't mean you're good. Now, if you could be the best thief in the world, man, you were one sneaky character and fast on your feet and a real strategic thinker and capable of breaking rules when necessary and scaling walls and climbing houses and infiltrating parties and plotting for the long run. And then you decided not to do it.

Well then, then that's a whole different story. Then you're a moral animal, right? So you need that capacity for criminality. You need the capacity for criminality. You need the capacity for criminality. You need the capacity of evil and you need to have mastered that. And that's what makes you good. And so, well, that's what happens in the Hobbit is that Bill will has to develop his dark side, his shadow.

And he does that. And while he's a thief in a variety of ways, he ends up stealing the ring, which is really interesting. And of course, that leads into the Lord of the Rings. So, and, but, you know, the look, he doesn't get away scarred free from developing his dark side. Like, he's touched by evil from then on in. He's got the ring problem, and that's a big one,

that thing that might possess him because he's got too close to it. It's like Harry Potter and his scar, and the fact that he has a bit of Voldemort in him. It's exactly the same idea. Or the strange affinity that the Joker insists upon in Joker and Batman. When Billbo comes back to the Shire, like he's never one of the Hobbits again. He's always an outsider. He's got a glimmer of magic and danger about him. That makes people respect him. but they also think that he's unconventional in an unacceptable way,

and you know, kind of make a wide birth around him, because now he's contaminated with evil and the unknown. Even though that makes him a much better character, all things considered, and a real fighter in the battle between good and evil, and the person who's gone out and confronted the dragon and got the treasure, all of that. So well, the pathway to, from naivety to the full development of character is associated

with the development in the union sense of the shadow, and that's that capacity for mayhem and malevolence that needs to be brought under control. So yes, it's complicated. And that doesn't mean that you're justified in going out and breaking rules because you think that you're building your character. You know, it's not that simple. If you look at stories like Harry Potter, you know, all of Harry's crew breaks rules, but they only break a rule when not breaking it would break a higher order rule.

And that's still morally ambivalent, right? Because the best pathway forward is to violate no conventions, to do the right thing and violate new conventions, no conventions. But now and then you're in a terrible situation where you can you can do a small bad thing or a large bad thing, or you can allow a large bad thing to happen by not by failing to break a rule. That often happens in Harry Potter. So then you're in trouble. And part of being wise and oriented towards the good is to know when breaking a rule is the right thing to do even though you shouldn't break rules. So

Canada has legalized marijuana. What are your thoughts? It's about time. That's my thoughts. I think that once a certain number of people break a law, then it's not reasonable to have the law. That's part of it. It isn't obvious to me that it was irrational in some sense to have for marijuana to be illegal especially given that alcohol is legal because alcohol is way more dangerous than marijuana I'm more or less libertarian on this front. It's like Smoke your damn pot and try not to act like too much of a moron when you're stoned. That's what it looks like to me So and I kind of feel that way across the spectrum of consciousness altering substances.

It's like you, I think that the danger of restricting people's freedoms unnecessarily is more dangerous than the danger of not restricting them. And so you're entitled to go to hell in a hand basket in your own manner. And hopefully, but I do think that if you're entitled to go to hell in a hand basket in your own manner. And hopefully, but I do think that if you're going to engage or indulge in your favorite drug of abuse that you should be as little amount of annoying to everyone around you as you possibly can be.

Then I would also say with regards to drug trade in general is that And I would also say with regards to drug trade in general is that here's a bunch of consequences of the war on drugs, a lot of them unexpected. First of all, terrible incarceration rates, especially in the United States. That's not so good. Second is the dumping of hundreds of millions or billions of dollars into the hands of like serious criminals and the destabilization of much of Central America as a consequence, tremendous violence as a consequence. And then the enriching of people who are, these are seriously committed, dangerous criminals.

And to give them that much power is a bad idea. So maybe the government has to tax and regulate like it does with cigarettes and it does with alcohol and to some degree it does with gambling. Then the next issue is one of the consequences now of the classification of certain drugs as illegal is that the chemists are faster than the legislators, and so what they do is they keep making variants of addictive drugs. And now instead of a dozen drugs of abuse, which is what we had say 20 years ago, we have like 300, and some of them are way more addictive than the original drugs.

And so it doesn't look like good policy to me. And I know that places like Portugal, for example, have decriminalized every drug of abuse. And it doesn't look like it's been a catastrophe. So, well, we'll see, right? We legalized marijuana yesterday. There's no... The streets aren't full of stone people bumping into walls. Nothing's changed. I hope it works. I hope that the government regulates it properly, that they derive tax revenue from it and that people use pot a little and that people use alcohol a little less. That would be good because alcohol is a very dangerous drug. Okay, so I'm going to go for eight more minutes. I have to stop comparatively early today because I have to pack and then I have to go to Dublin. And so just to warn you all.

So Do you have any advice on how to vet a potential marriage partner during the dating relationship phase? God, that's a hard question. Okay, so while I can tell you what I've observed as a consequence of watching, you know, all the married people successful and unsuccessful, who I know, but also watching all my clients, and giving this a fair bit of thought, here's some of what's necessary for a successful marriage. You have to trust the person.

That doesn't mean they can't make mistakes, because you're going to make mistakes and so are they. But fundamentally, you have to trust them. And what that means is that you have to trust that if things go wrong, if they make a mistake, they'll do what was necessary in conjunction with you to set it right. You have to be able to negotiate with the person and those two things are tied very, very close together.

So if you guys have to be able to have a conversation about what it is that you want to do, come to a conclusion, moderate your differences, move forward and have that work. You have to be able to fight and make up both of those. If you can't fight with your potential marriage partner, then you're not communicating because there's just no bloody way that you're going to get along. There's no way you're not communicating because there's just no bloody way that you're going to get along. There's no way you're going to agree on everything. That's just not going to happen. So you have to be honest with one another enough to have some conflict, but then you have to be able to make up. That's a huge deal, man, because well, then you get to have conflict and solve problems and make up. So trust, negotiation, conflict resolution, the next thing I would say is, it's kind of nice if you're attracted to each other, you know, if there's a strong sexual attraction

there. It isn't obvious to me that that's something that can be conjured up if it doesn't exist. I haven't seen that happen successfully. That seems to depend on factors that aren't really under voluntary control. I mean, obviously people can modify themselves to some degree to be more or less attractive, staying in physical shape and that sort of thing dressing nicely and having a certain amount of sex appeal and charisma and provociveness, that's all there, but that's all well and good, and it's important, but I do believe that that spark that's outside of voluntary control

is a necessary precondition for a long lasting relationship. I do believe though that if it's there, you still have to work very hard to maintain it. As hard in your marriage as you would when you're dating and you need to know that Then I it's also helpful if you actually like the person, you know if they're your friend that you actually like to go do things with them sort of independent of the romantic element, you know if there are you don't need to Want to do everything together, but you should have some things that you like to do in common. So some similarity and personality is useful. The personality scale is useful for that.

Like look, here, here, it's really hard for an extreme extrovert and an extreme introvert to live together. Because the extreme extrovert wants to be with people all the time and the extreme introvert is immediately exhausted by that. And it's neither of those things are precisely under voluntary control. It's really hard for someone super agreeable and super disagreeable to get along together because the agreeable person isn't going to be able to stand up very well to the disagreeable person.

And the disagreeable person is going to think that the agreeable person is a pushover. That's rough. It's very hard for someone high in openness and someone very low in openness to be together because the open person is like fascinated by ideas and really interested in aesthetics and art and philosophy and poetry and all of that. And the person who's low in openness, it's like their colorblind to that. It's not in their realm of involuntary interest. Conscientiousness, the same thing, if you're a very conscientious person, very diligent, knows to the grindstone, industrious and orderly, and your partner can while away the time with no problem whatsoever and doesn't mind a mess and disorder,

then that's the conscientious person is going to think that the unconscious person is useless and the unconscious person is going to think that the conscientious person is an uptight tyrant. And that's very, very hard to overcome. It's like a fatal flaw. So those extreme personality differences across more than one or two traits is going to make your relationship extraordinarily difficult. So the only place where that might be different is that you know, you probably don't want to both be high in neuroticism.

So like if one of you's high in neuroticism and the other isn't, that's kind of a nice balance because one of you will be a little alert to threat and the other one will calm the one who's alert to threat down. If you're both low in neuroticism, well, then that's not going to be too much of a problem, although you might be a little bit less risk averse than you should be. But mostly you want a fair bit of similarity in terms of personality. Then I guess the other thing is, is that, well, do you have something like a shared vision of the future, like how are you going to mediate the inevitable conflict between whose

career takes priority? And what about kids? Do you both want kids? And if you do want kids, when do you want them? And how many do you want? And what's your sense about who's responsible for what when with regards to the kids? And the same when you're running a household.

It's like, do you have some sense of, do you have enough shared belief so that running a household together is something that is with a peaceful household and a productive household is within the realm of possibility. So there, that's what it looks like to me. So that's a lot of things. So you said you act as if God exists. Do you also act as if the devil exists?

Man, I think I probably act also act as if the devil exists? Man, I think I'd probably act even more as if the devil exists because it's a lot, in some sense, it's a lot more easy for me, and I think it is for most people. It's easier for me to believe in the reality of malevolence and evil and to be terrified about that, getting a grip on me, then it is to be optimistic and naive about the possibility of transcendent good. It's not that I am skeptical about the reality of transcendent good. I mean, fundamentally, I believe that good is more powerful than evil. I do believe that, but there's something palpable about evil that is and that's also undeniable. It's like, well, you can debate about whether or not heaven exists, you know, and you can

even be skeptical, but you can't debate about whether the gulagar capaligo exists and you can't debate about Auschwitz. And you can't debate about the fact that people's proclivity towards blindness and malevolence produced those horrors and the horrors that people often encounter in their day-to-day world and in their relationship. So it's very easy for someone like me to be a believer in evil and to try to turn away from that. And so, but through deep contemplation, I've come to the conclusion that the ability of human beings to turn away from evil and to pursue good is more powerful than malevolence itself, but that's more of, it's funny. That's more of a that fills me with with hope and and and and awe. I guess is the right word.

And awe, I guess is the right word. When I can bring it to mind and think that we can, in fact, defeat malevolence. But sort of on a moment-to-moment basis, the malevolence is so palpable and so real that it's a more powerful motivator for avoidance. I don't mean avoidance of responsibility. I mean avoidance of walking down that path. And I think that's probably in keeping with the well-known psychological doctrine that people are more loss of verse than they are gained sensitive.

So a loss of ex, it upsets you more to lose $5 than it does make you happy to gain $5. That's a well-known psychological fact. And it's because we're more sensitive to punishment and negative emotion. And that's because, well, you can die in agony, but you can only be so happy. So, yes, I certainly act as if the devil exists, I would say. And I think I probably believed in the devil so to speak, speaking metaphorically before I believed in God, speaking metaphorically. I became convinced of the reality of evil. And that really, and not only that, not only convinced of the reality of evil, but also convinced that everyone was destined to play their part in that, including me, and that it would be better if I

played the least part in that as possible. And all that sort of brings us back to this book, you know, as Solzhenitsyn said, the line that divides good from evil runs down that divides good for me will, runs down the heart of every individual. Right? It's an internal thing, not a, it's not between states, it's not between groups, it's between elements of our psyche and our individual responsibility is to work to ameliorate suffering and to constrain malevolence and to start with ourselves. And so that's a good place to end. So thank you all very much for your continued support, for paying attention to this Q&A, for everything that you've offered to me over the last few years. It's been an absolutely overwhelming experience, for example, to go out and do these lectures. They're unbelievably positive experiences

to see all these thousands of people come out to engage in a serious discussion about vision and strategy and responsibility and individual sovereignty and the possibility that we could all aim together acting individually towards at least a less hellish future. That's really something. So that's good guys. So until next time, till November. And I'll put out this video on the Sojournits and Prefits. I'll put that out before November 1st. That'll probably be next on the list. Next on the list.

And so it's off to Europe. And we'll talk to you all soon. Thanks very much. Bye for now. Thank you. you