The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - Our Emotions and the Social Hierarchy – Part One

Episode Date: March 1, 2020

Part One of a 12 Rules for Life Lecture. Recorded in Brisbane, Australia on February 17, 2019. Thanks to our sponsor: https://www.butcherbox.com/jbp

Welcome to episode 48 of the Jordan V Peterson podcast. I'm Michaela Peterson, Jordan's daughter. We're still in Florida for the next month. We've been doing NAD IV treatments, and dad tried an IV called exosone therapy as well. Both of these therapies are supposed to work for a neuro-region and neuro-rehab. We'll see if they can speed up dad's recovery. At least we're here enjoying the sun. I hope you enjoy this episode called Our Emotions and the Social Hierarchy Part 1. Recorded in Brisbane, Australia on

February 17th 2019. Our Emotions and the Social Hierarchy Part 1, a Jordan B. Peterson 12 Rules for Life Lecture. Well, thank you. It's remarkable to see all of you here in this amazing room. So, well, I hope we have an interesting and engaging time tonight. That's the plan. I have a lecture planned, so it's got a strange title. It's not that exciting, really.

The first part of it is the socialization of the value hierarchy, and the second is, and the estimation of the magnitude of an error. It's like you wouldn't think you'd come and sit in here and listen to that talk really, would you? I'm not sure I would, but it's interesting. It's a very, very interesting problem. And here's part of what the problem is, the part of the problem I'm trying to solve. Part is, part of it is, how is your emotional stability tied up with your social identity?

That's a really important question. And I think it might be the central question that I've been pursuing my entire, as long as I've been able to think intellectually, that might be the problem that I've been pursuing, because one of the things I've been interested in is, why is it that people are so committed to their group identity, let's say, or their group beliefs that they will, well, let's say, go to war to protect them or to spread them, or that they will commit atrocities hypothetically and defensive them.

So it's a very interesting problem, you know, because people, when people think about the motivation for war, for example, they often attribute it to economic causes. And that just never struck me as plausible. Sometimes it's plausible, but it's not a deep solution as far as I'm concerned. It's more psychological. It's our beliefs are important to us. And what does it mean? Well, there's a lot of questions there. What do you mean by belief? Exactly. You know, physicists generally don't go to war over their belief in one physical theory over another, so it can't be just as simple as belief.

It has to be more complicated than that. And people are committed to their beliefs too, and it isn't obvious what commitment means. And so those are the things that I've been trying to unpack. What does it mean to have a belief? And what does it mean? How does it, how does it, why is it important to you? Why is it crucial to you?

There's something associated deeply, there's a deep association between belief and value. And so then that brings up another question. What exactly do you mean by value? So that's three hard questions. And so that's part of it. And then so that's the value hierarchy question part of it. And then the error magnitude problem is, well let's say let's say you go to a party and you tell a joke and you think it's pretty funny joke and you tell your joke and no one laughs. And in fact, they look at you like your rather odd. And then the question is, well, how should you respond to that?

Like, what exactly does that indicate about you? I mean, does it indicate a minor flaw in an otherwise stellar personality? Because that's a possibility. Or does it mean that you're a creep? Right? And maybe right down to the core. And, you know, you could even think the less that you think that it means that you're a creep, the more likely it is that you are one. But it's very hard to estimate the magnitude of

an error. We have a set should you get when something that you don't want to happen happens. And it's very, very hard to figure that out. If you wake up in the morning and you have a pain, say, in your side, or you're not feeling particularly well, it's like, well, how upset should you get about that? And one answer is, well, maybe you're going to die in three months. Maybe that's the beginning of pancreatic cancer, and that's the end of you. So maybe you should just be terrified into paralysis when you have a pain that you can't

explain. Or maybe you should just brush it off and think, well, I'll get up and do what I usually do, and it's probably nothing. Sometimes you're right with the, it's probably nothing. And sometimes you're right with the, it's probably nothing, approach, and sometimes if you don't go to the physician right away because you have some relatively trivial pain, then you're dead. And so this problem of estimating magnitude of error, importance of error, it's unbelievably, it's unbelievably difficult problem.

And so I want to address both of those problems at the same time tonight, so that's the plan. So we'll see how that goes. And then I want to weave in there one more thing, which is this relationship between your own psychological structure, whatever that happens to be, your own value hierarchy because there's a very tight relationship between your value hierarchy and your psychological structure, which is why hierarchies, by the way, are necessary, which is part of the point I was trying to make, say, in Rule 1 in 12 Rules for Life, when I talked about hierarchies. There's no getting away from hierarchies. There's a hierarchy is a structure that tells you that one thing takes precedence over another, that one thing is more important than another,

right? And if everything is of equal import, then nothing is more important than anything else by definition. And then, well, what should you do? And the answer is, well, you can't tell, because nothing is any more important than anything else. And the definition of important fundamentally is something like that which you should do first. That constitutes importance. That's also something that's relevant, I would say, too, because a lot of the way that

we look at the world is as a place to. We look at the world as a place in which to act, and we make a lot of judgments about the nature of the world in terms of how we should structure our action. In fact, the theory that I am putting forth in general is a theory that's predicated on the notion that the essential way that we look at the world is as if it's a forum of action, like a dramatic forum, like a story that that's a good way of thinking about it, that we really do view ourselves and our place in the world as a story that's set in a narrative landscape. And you know, you might argue that that's not the case.

You could say with that viewpoint, for example, has been superseded by a scientific viewpoint. But it isn't obvious to me that that's the case. And it certainly isn't, it's certainly not the case that we act that way. And it's certainly not the case that we structure our political systems that way. And it's certainly not the case that we structure our political systems that way, and it's certainly not the case that we treat each other that way, or that we think that way, or that we react emotionally that way.

And so that's a lot. And, you know, it's also the case that the other thing that's we're thinking about in this regard is, you know, we've only been thinking about the world as an objective place for 500 years, something like that. I mean, maybe you could chase it back to the ancient Greeks and go back 2000 years, but whatever, from a historical perspective, 500 years or 200 years is the same amount of time, and it's a tiny fraction of the amount of time that living creatures that were approximately like us have been around.

So we got along fine without thinking about the world as an objective place for a very, very long time. We survived, and here we are. It doesn't mean it's a bad idea, but it does imply that there are other ways of looking at the world that are highly functional and that have been conserved for, well, for, let's say, for evolutionary reasons. And so, you know, if you make the case, which you might, that what you evolve to match is reality. At least you match it well enough so that reality doesn't kill you, which is more or less the definition of evolution, if you evolve to match reality in some sense, and the manner in which you evolve predisposes you

to view the world as if it's a narrative of sorts, then possibly the world is a narrative of sorts, at least in so far as it concerns you. Now, what that means metaphysically, I don't know, but that's okay because who knows, anything metaphysically, virtually by definition, what's metaphysical is beyond what you know. You can speculate, and so I would speculate

that there is something narrative about the structure of the world, but it doesn't matter. We don't have to go down that route. We can just think about this practically. So the first thing I want to tell you about that I think is really important to lay out the structure of this argument is something about the relationship between perception and emotion and motivation.

And this is actually pretty simple, but people don't know it. And I guess it's simple in the way that complex things are simple when you think them through for a very long time and understand them and then can finally lay them out, you know, in some manner that's rather, let's say, clear, because you understand them. I derived a fair bit of this information from a book called the Neurocycology of Anxiety by a man named Jeffrey Gray, who I think was one of the two greatest Neurocycologists of the 20th century, two or three. And his Neurocycology of Anxiety,

which is on my list of recommended books, by the way, on my website, it's a really hard book. And I mean, it took me like six months to read that book, and all of it was painful. And the reason for that was, well, you know, books are interesting, some aren't. Often I doggie or the pages of books that I'm reading if I find a line or something, you know, that I'd like to remember that I think is important. And, you know, I have some books on my shelves that like, pages are dog ear double because there was a really amazing thought on one page, and there was a really amazing thought on the other page, the facing page. And so the whole damn thing is just nothing but dog ears. And then there's other books where there's zero.

When I read Nietzsche, for example, there was lots of dog ears, so beyond good evil, which is a great book. And Nietzsche actually, he came up with the most arrogant statement anybody ever made about himself as an author, which is really quite impressive. To come up with the most arrogant statement anybody ever made about himself as an author, which is really quite impressive to come up with the most arrogant statement. That's really something.

He was great at coming up with one-liners, philosophical one-liners. He said, I can write in a sentence what other people, what it takes other people, a book to write. And then he said, no, they, no, that they can't even write in a book. So that's pretty good, eh? It's like arrogant and then he topped it. It's like, yes, this is a man who could,

who could really write. Anyways, the problem with reading a book like that, beyond good news will say, is that every damn sentence is a thought, and a deep thought, and so reading beyond good evil, it's like just constantly being punched. I mean, partly, you're punched because you read part of it, and you don't know what the hell he says, and so then you know you're stupid, and so that's a punch, and then now, and then you stumble across something you understand. And it's like, it's hard on you. He said he philosophized with a hammer, you know, that he was breaking things apart.

And, and, and there's no doubt about that. So now, and then you run across something you understand, and, and then that breaks you apart, because you understand it. And so, and, and it takes a long time to go through the book, because you have to think about it. And, and, and God, that's not good thinking about things. Well, it isn't because when you think about, you already know everything in some sense. You've got a map that covers the whole world, which is why you can function. And so as long as everything's going fine, you don't really have to adjust your map and

you don't have to think. But then if you come across something that makes you think, then what that means is that part of the way you were thinking was wrong. And so when you think something, when you're forced to, then some little part of what you were, your map, the way you represent the world, it has to die because it was wrong. And then it has to be replaced by this new thing. And God only knows how much of what it was that was there has to die. That's part of the magnitude of error problem. And so people don't like to think.

And so it's hard to read difficult books, like Beyond Good Neville, because you're just forced to think and think. And it's just exhausting. You wish that he would just go away, which is why they're trying to not teach difficult books in universities anymore. So that people don't have to undergo the difficult process of actually having to think and transform themselves. Anyways, I read Jeffrey Gracebook, the neuropsychology of anxiety, and it was like that. He was something, man. Student of a psychologist named Hans Eising, who was the most cited psychologist in the 20th century. And really quite a good psychologist. He laid

a lot of the groundwork for modern theories of temperament and personality. They'd been modified since his work, but he got extroversion right. He was the first person to really identify extroversion in a manner that could be measured. Carl Jung actually invented the notion, but I think figured out how to measure it, which is a big deal. And he also noted that there was another important personality dimension, neuroticism, which is the tendency towards negative emotion. And he got that right too, because that actually happened to be the case, and you figured out how to measure it. So I think was the first person who really established conceptually the fact that our two fundamental, we have two fundamental emotional systems,

one positive and one negative, that they weren't, they're not opposites exactly. They're actually separate biological systems. So some people can be extroverted, which means they're quite happy and assertive, they smile a lot, they laugh a lot, they tell a lot of jokes, they like to party. They always like to be around people. That's an extroverted person.

And they can also be unhappy, worried, anxious, depressed, frustrated, disappointed. I mean, living with someone like that's quite a trip because they're just all over the place. But there are people like that because you can be high in negative emotion and you can be high in positive emotion or low in both or whatever. And it's useful to know that, it's useful to know that about your partner and about the people around you.

And if you are interested in this sort of thing, by the way, I have a personality test online at understandmyself.com and you can go there and it takes about 15 minutes and it gives you five dimensions of personality, extraversion, neuroticism, that's positive and negative emotion, agreeableness, which is probably the maternal instinct dimension, but at least it's the variance between compassion and competitive aggression. It's something like that, and that looks like a continuum. And there's another dimension which is trait conscientiousness, which is integrity and undutifulness, orderliness, industriousness. And then finally, the fifth dimension, which is openness, which is like a hybrid between

intellect, intelligence, openness, which is like a hybrid between intellect, intelligence, roughly, and creativity. And so you can go there and find out how you compare to other people. And that's kind of interesting and useful, because it's kind of useful to know who you are, and to know that that's actually who you are, you know, that you have a nature. And some of that stuff's movable, but it's not as movable as you think. And the farther you want to move it, the harder it is to move. Like you can take an introvert.

You know you're an introvert. If you're, if when you're around people, you get exhausted by it. You have to go off by yourself and recover. You know, then you're an introvert. And if you're an introvert, you don't really like being in groups. And so sales, you know, maybe that's not for you, you know. And that's a good thing to know, because if you're an introvert, why go be a salesperson and be miserable?

Do something where you can spend time alone and not be miserable, but that's better. You might as well match your occupation to your temperament rather than the other way around. Now, you can take an introvert. I've worked with lots of introverts who say had made pretty good progress in their careers and they were at a point where they had to do a lot of social networking, you know, and otherwise they were going to hit a plateau in their career.

And they could be taught the skills of extroversion, sort of one at a time, rather painfully. So they could learn them, they could accrue the skills, and that would broaden their personality outward into the, say, extroverted end of the continuum, but it didn't make them extroverts. And so they were still temperamentally introverts. And so, you know, if you're a neurotic person, high negative emotion, you can, you can learn to regulate your anxiety and so forth. And, and, and, but you hit a point of diminishing returns, and it's difficult. It's effortful. So anyways, back to Isaac, and then back to Jeffrey Gray.

So Isaac identified extroversion and interversion and neuroticism. And that's going to be very important in a minute. And Gray elaborated Isaac's theories to a large degree, but he did that neurologically. He was a master of the animal experimental literature. And a lot of that's being phased out of universities because the regulations for animal experimentation have become so onerous and difficult that it's much easier for beginning scientists just experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience, from PET scans and MRI scans and like that complicated technology that's used to study human beings and an unbelievable amount by studying animals. And you might think rats in particular, and you might think, well, you know, rats, they're not much like human beings, you know, but

that's wrong. You share, I don't know what it is, 98.5% of your genetic structure with rats. Some of you probably more than that. And, you know, we haven't devolved from the common ancestor with rats from an evolutionary perspective that long ago. I mean, like it's millions of years ago, you know, but it's short compared to how long ago we devolved, let's say, from, or we, we, yeah, devolved, I think that's good enough, from amphibians. And so we're a lot like rats, man, and we have the same skeletal structure, and our brains are quite similar, and the neurochemistry is very, very, very similar. I mean, the neurochemistry is similar right down to the level of crustaceans, which is why I wrote about lobsters in rule one, because I thought it was so bloody, amazing when

I came across that literature to see that when lobsters are defeated in a social contest and they lose their hierarchical position, that they undergo neurochemical changes that are analogous to the neurochemical changes that human beings undergo, that's so amazing, and that the same damn drugs that help us, antidepressants, essentially, also cheer up defeated lobsters. I mean, it's such a staggering demonstration of the continuity of biology across, you know, span, unbelievable spans of time, you know, critics have complained that I cherry-picked the data, but they don't know what the hell they're

talking about. So, they don't. They don't. I studied the serotonin system for a very, very long time, and I know perfectly well that one of the things that it does is monitor your position in a social hierarchy. And it's more important than that because the serotonin system is a master control neurochemical system.

It's like the conductor of an orchestra. Everything in your brain depends on the serotonin system, which is why you think about it, like an antidepressant decreases the rate at which neurons will re-uptake serotonin. You need serotonin to modulate the way your neurons work. You take an antidepressant and the serotonin works a little longer.

Okay, so what's the consequence of that? Well, let's say you're depressed. Okay, we got to think about being depressed for a minute. So when you're depressed, this is what happens. All you remember about the past is what's negative. So everything about the past is negative. All you can see in the present is what's negative. Everything about the present is negative.

And nothing about the future is positive at all. And so that's interesting, because it means that something has shifted inside you, let's say neurophysiologically, that changes the way you view everything, everything. Your entire past, the present and the entire future. And what it essentially does is exaggerate negative emotion to a tremendous degree, that's depression, and suppress positive emotion. Now there can be variants in that. Sometimes you see depressed people, and they come, you can think about your own mood

in this way, you know, you might say, well, I'm not that sad, but I've just sort of lost my interest in everything. Okay, so that means that what's happened is your positive emotion system has been suppressed, because the positive emotion system is what gives you that interest in things that pulls you forward to action. Okay, and the negative emotion system is what gives you that interest in things that pulls you forward to action. Okay? And the negative emotion system, that's anxiety, that's a huge part of it.

Frustration, disappointment, grief, pain, that kind of covers it. Anger as well. Though anger is a bit complicated because it's half a positive emotion and half a negative emotion, which is why it feels so good to get angry, by the way. And why it also impels you get angry, by the way. And why it also impels you to action, whereas most negative emotions stop you. So, in any case, if you're a serotonin system, if you're a serotonin function declines, then all of a sudden everything is negative. You think, well, isn't that interesting?

How the hell can it be that something can change within you, that changes everything? And the answer has to be, well, it must be a fundamental system that's been changed, right? Because if it changes everything, it has to be a system on which all other systems depend. And that is the case with the serotonin system. And that's really worth knowing, especially when you also know that the serotonin system counts where you are in the social hierarchy. And so there's this weird kind of one-to-one correspondence. Imagine a social hierarchy has 10 levels. I don't care what hierarchy you're in.

Most people's hierarchies are actually quite small. They sort of consist of the people that they compare themselves to, you know? Which is a strange thing too, because one of the things that they compare themselves to, you know, which is a strange thing too, because one of the things that you see happening with really successful people is they actually don't get a lot happier and a lot less unhappy as they climb the broad social ladder because the people they compare themselves to change. And so I can tell you a funny story about this.

So I know this guy, I worked with him for a long time. His name is Atteo Ressi. And he's a hell of a guy. He's like six foot seven, and he's like really charismatic. And he's been pretty successful. He built this company in San Francisco called Founder Institute. And it's only one of many things he's done. And it's operating one of many things he's done and it's operating in a

165 cities. It's a school to teach people how to be entrepreneurs. He's trying to export Silicon Valley, what would you call it, know how, technological and financial to the rest of the world. And in like five years he built 165 schools, not physical schools, but school-like organizations around the world. And like, go try that. That's really hard, you know, just to build one is hard, but to do that in multiple languages all over the world. It's bloody well-impossible.

And then, at the same time, he built his organization, started 2,500 successful companies as a consequence of building this school. It's pretty good. And he was having a rough time and was talking to me on the phone about, he wasn't so happy about what he'd done with his life and he said, I compare myself with my roommate and I've hardly done anything. And his roommate was Elon Musk. It's like I just laughed out of my thought, Jesus, really, that's what you're going to do. You haven't done anything compared to Elon Musk

and you're depressed about it. It's like, yeah, well, you and the rest of the planet, I mean, look, what did Musk, what did he do? He invented an electric car, that's impossible. Then he made it work, that's impossible. And then he built an entire infrastructure to charge it. And that worked, and that's impossible. And then, and they're good cars.

And then he made them faster than any cars have ever been and cheap, and so that's impossible. And then that wasn't good enough. So then he decided that he would compete with NASA, which is impossible, and build rockets at one tenth the price they were building them, except bigger. And then he would shoot his car on his rocket out into space. Right.

And he did all that. And it's like a day I was thinking, well, I've hardly done anything with my life. It's like, oh, so, but well, I've hardly done anything with my life. It's like, ah! But my point is, is that, you know, primates of our type sort of have a group size that we think about as our group of about 200 people. So like on Facebook, for example, the probability that you're in something approximating reasonable,

constant communication with more than 200 people is low. You just don't have the time and you can't keep track of it. So our natural group is something like 200 and our groups tend to fragment when they get bigger than that. And that's also associated by the way with cortical size. You see this in primates is that as primates develop larger brains, the group size that they seem to be able to manage also increases.

And that might be part of the reason why they develop larger brains. Who knows? But anyways, it's about 200 people. And the problem is, is that as you get more successful, say, in the global hierarchy of 100 million people, the 200 people that you compare yourself changes, and so that you end up with 100 million dollars, and you're not very happy because your 50 million dollar yacht is like 20 feet shorter than your friends, you know, 150 million dollar yacht. And so, and you're high in neuroticism so that makes you frustrated

and disappointed you know so anyways anyways it's important to understand it's the message here the point of this is that you have a system this serotonin system base of your neurophysiology it also sets your brain up during embryonic development. So it's really is the master control system in many, many ways. And it counts where you are in your hierarchy. And then it decides how much positive emotion and how much negative emotion you should feel on average because of your position. And so like if you're, let's say number one is at the top and number 10 is at the bottom. So your number 10, you're barely clinging to the bottom of reality.

Your brain says, look, it's dangerous where you are at the bottom of the hierarchy. You don't have a lot of friends. It's precarious down there. And so that means any little thing that goes wrong, any little error you make, that might be the end of you. And so you better be on guard and alert. And if something small happens, it better hurt because it might be the straw that breaks the camel's back. And there's nothing pleasant about that. Like, of course, why would there be? Why would there be anything pleasant about a process that magnifies everything negative you feel

about anything that might be wrong? And not just on one small dimension of negative emotion, not just anxiety, which is bad enough, but anxiety and the pain-related emotions. So pain-related emotions are pain, obviously. It generally indicates damage to a psychophysiological system, but grief is a pain-like emotion, and frustration is a pain-like emotion,

and so is disappointment and loneliness as well. Those are all pain-like emotions, and I've elaborated out of an underlying pain system. So the negative emotion system is like a tree that has branches, and each of the branches is the separate negative emotion, but they're all tied together at the root. And positive emotions are like that as well, except they're not quite as differentiated. And so if your serotonin levels fall, because you've suffered a hierarchical defeat, then the positive emotion system gets flattened so that good things

no longer feel good because it's dangerous to take risks, perhaps if you're at the bottom of the hierarchy, and you're not doing very well, which is why you're at the bottom, why should you have any trust in yourself, and you don't have any friends, and you're not well situated in the social world, you're not going to be enthusiastically moving forward to do new things, and so your motivation for engaging in life declines, and it can decline pretty much to zero. If you see people who are seriously depressed, they say, well, I can't even listen to music anymore.

It just sounds flat and dead. You know, if you talk to someone who says that about music, they're pretty damn depressed, because music is one of those things that virtually everybody always enjoys, you know, at least one genre or another, and a depressed person will describe even that the sensory quality has changed. And so, and then they also say they're absolutely overwhelmed with negative emotion. And so, okay, so that's a good thing. So that's a very interesting thing to know, is that the manner in which one of your fundamental

neurochemical systems is tracking your position in a hierarchy is crucial to the maintenance of your emotional stability. Okay, so now you wanna keep that in mind because that's the first important point. Okay, so now the next thing I'm gonna do is explain to you how it is that the way you look at the world is related to the emotions that I just described. And then I'm gonna talk about how that in itself is related to the emotions that I just described. And then I'm gonna talk about how that in itself

is related to the idea of hierarchy. And we're gonna explore from there. So, when you look at the world, you don't, you see, you think that the world is made of obvious objects and that you look at them, and then you think about what they are, and then you think about how do you evaluate them them and then you think about what they are and then you think about how to evaluate them

and then you think about how you use them and then you decide to act. And that's not the case because the world doesn't come segregated neatly into objects. And it took people a long time to figure this out because when you look at the world, there it is, segregated neatly into objects, right? It takes no effort at all, except takes half your damn brain

to do that, right? And we're very visual creatures. We have great visual systems. And so a tremendous amount of metabolic energy and evolutionary expenditure of time has gone into providing us with a visual system that just breaks the world up into obvious objects for us. And that isn't even right because we don't actually see objects.

What we see are more like tools and obstacles. We just think they're objects. Like when you come in here, I can give you an example of that. Okay. Think about a bean bag. Think about a stump.. Think about a stump and think about a stool. See, those are all chairs. What do you mean they're all chairs?

What do they have in common? Objectively speaking, a bean bag doesn't have legs. A stump is rock hard and solid. A stool is something almost completely unlike a bean bag. Well, they're all chairs. Well, why? Well, the answer is you can sit on them. And so most of the things that we group together

as objects, we group together as a consequence of functional utility and not because they share a set of features that are objectively similar. And the reason that we perceive in that manner is because we don't really care that much about the objective features of the world because we have to care about being alive. And so what we actually care about is what things do. And so we tend to see things that do things and group together perceptually things that

do things and group together perceptually things that do things. And so when you walk into a room like this, there are as a trillion things you could look at. You could look at the color variation in the carpet forever. If you came in here on a psychedelic, you might even do that. Well, it's interesting because one of the things psychedelics do is they decrease the degree

to which you view the world in an iconic manner. And then you see the incredible complexity that's underneath everything and it's absolutely fascinating. Now, it's not good because you shouldn't come in here and just look at the carpet for an hour. It's not that productive unless you're trying to equate yourself, re-equate yourself with the fundamental wonder of the world. And there is some utility in that. Artists do that. But practically speaking, it's not that useful. What happens when you come in here,

you have a goal in mind, you're going to watch what happens on the stage, you're going to listen. And so you only see what's relevant to that. And so what you see are chairs. And chairs are things you sit on. And so they pop up into your perceptual field, just like that. And then you know what to do with a chair. You sit on it. And partly the reason you know what to do with a chair

isn't because you look at the chair and you think, oh, look, a chair. Because you didn't do that when you came in here. Right? There wasn't a single one of you that came in here and looked at the rows here and said, oh, look, a chair, because you didn't do that when you came in here, right? None, there wasn't a single one of you that came in here and looked at the rose here and said, oh, look, chairs, right? It's self-evident that they're there.

What happens is that you look at the chair and the chair maps itself onto your body. Like you prepare yourself, that the perception prepares you for the action. So as soon as you see the chair, which has a certain shape, imagine it's a pattern that sustains itself in time, right? Because that's what a chair is. It's a pattern that sustains itself across time. And that pattern is transformed into a pattern of light, and then that's transformed into a pattern on your retina, and that's transferred into a pattern on your optical nerve, and that's transferred into a pattern on your optical nerve,

and then that's transferred into patterns all over your brain. And some of those patterns are the patterns that allow you to perceive the chair consciously, and some of them are patterns that enable your body to prepare to take this position in the chair, because part of what your eyes do is map right onto your motor system so that you look and you know what to do. It makes you look faster, right?

You look at something, you know what you're supposed to do with it, your body is prepared to do it. And that's kind of also what it means to understand something. You know, if you look at it and you know what it is, you know how to use it, it means you can just map the thing right onto your body. And so people are very, very good at that. And especially as you develop expertise at something, you just get better and better and better at that.

There are people that have certain forms of brain damage. Lermite syndrome, I think it was called, if I remember correctly, also known as utilization syndrome. And these are people who have a degeneration of the prefrontal cortex, which is the part of your brain that organizes your behavior, I would say, at the highest level of abstraction. So when you're thinking voluntarily about what you might do, and then you go do it, it's your prefrontal cortex that's thought that up voluntarily, and then organized the rest

of your brain to go do it. And so it kind of, one of the things it does is inhibit all the other things you might do. So, one of the things that happens to people who have prefrontal damage, especially if it's on the right hand side, is they get very socially inappropriate because they have all sorts of whims and motivations and emotions that would normally be inhibited by attention to context, let's say, and the desire for voluntary activity, and they lose that part of the brain,

and so they get disinhibited. They can get disinhibited to the point where they have to be institutionalized or jailed because they start acting so inappropriately that they can't be controlled. And so, anyways, LearnMit syndrome is utilization syndrome, and one of the things that happensMit syndrome is utilization syndrome. And one of the things that happens to people who have utilization syndrome,

let's say they're in an old folks home, maybe it's consequence of a degenerative neurological disease, and they're walking down the hallway and there's an open door. And they walk through it, they can't help it, because what do you do with a door that's open? You walk through it. Now you don't, if you're doing something else, right? But if you're not doing something else, because you haven't got the part of you that is helping you do something else, then the object just tells you what to do. You know, and you see this with little kids too, because whenever you present them with

an object, you know, they grab it right away. They often grab it and put it in their mouths, and they do that because their mouths are already wired up completely when they're born, right? From a sensory perspective and from a motor perspective, and so kids are always cramming things into their mouth so that they can investigate them with their tongue and map what they are.

It's important for them to, well, that's how they learn about the world. And so, anyways, if you have utilization syndrome, you can't not utilize things. So you can hand someone a bottle or a cup of water who has utilization syndrome, and they're not thirsty, and they'll drink it because it's a cup of water. And what is that?

It's not an object. It's a thing to grip and drink. And know, and it's, it's, how else can you look at this? This isn't a cliff. It's a falling off place, right? And if you're, if you're one of those strange creatures who just think it's a cliff and, and, you know, you're, I don't know, what are your abstracted and thought and you walk off it, then you're dead. It's a lot better to perceive it as a falling off place, which is what you do, because you know, you know what it's like, you go somewhere that's steep

and you kind of play with the edge a little bit, and you can feel the falling off place, map itself on your whole body. It's kind of a strange, I suppose, an interesting experiment to play with that. You know, you might be back here and you think, oh, that's not too bad. I wonder if I can get a little closer.

And maybe you can, and maybe you can get, well, maybe you can get too close, and then you're an evolutionary mistake. So, but you get close enough. Maybe you peer over and you think, yeah, that's enough. And you can feel the falling off place map itself onto your body. That's how you perceive with your emotions and your motivations and your action systems way more than you think.

So you don't, it isn't object, picture on your eye, picture in your brain, thought, emotion, and then action. That's not how it works. You're representing the world at multiple levels in your nervous system at the same time, and you need to, and one of those levels is emotional. So, okay, so here goes for the emotional part. Now, look, and this is just as important as the serotonin idea, I would say, which means it's really important

because the serotonin idea is really important to know that your position in the social hierarchy determines the balance between your positive and negative emotion. That's like a crucial insight into human behavior and that we have a positive emotion system and that we have a negative emotion system and that they're separate. Those are unbelievably important, important discoveries all made by the way, virtually all made by animal experimentalists, just so you know, because they deserve some credit. So now the issue is how is your perception related to your emotion? And so it looks like it, and this is much, much of this I learned from Jeffrey Gray.

Now Gray was a student of Isaac, but he's also a student of someone named Norbert Winer who was a cyberneticist at MIT. He established the field of cybernetics, and he was one of the first people who, he was one of the founders of computational science. He was a big deal, Norbert Wynner, and his work had tremendous impact on all sorts of fields. He was trying to figure out how to generate autonomous self-correcting systems, so let's say intelligent

systems, and us among them them because we're autonomous, self-correcting systems, and so Gray knew about Norbert Winder's work, and he integrated that with Isaac's work, and then with all the psychobiology, and he came up with a lovely set of ideas that are extraordinarily useful. And so here's one of them. We live inside, we perceive, this is part of perceiving the world as a story. We perceive the world as a place to go from one location to another. So you can imagine that we're on a journey. That's our life. It's a journey. And it might be a 10-minute journey. It might be a 15-minute journey. it might be a journey of a week, it might be the journey of a month or the journey of a lifetime.

And, you know, maybe what you would want is that the journey of a minute and 10 minutes and a week and a month and a year culminate into the journey of a lifetime. You know, you could imagine that you would want some continuity across all that so that there was some integrity to your existence so that each part of what you're doing was related in some intelligible way to the whole. That would be an ideal. When you think of someone as being integrated, as having character, something like that, that's really what you mean, is you mean that all the parts of what they do fit somehow into an integrated hole. And so that's kind of interesting to know too, because if you have a value system that's well-structured, then all the little things you do are part of the big thing that you're doing, whatever that big thing is, and you are doing that big

thing. Okay, so that's another thing to keep in mind. Now, so you're looking at the world, you're a creature of action, you have to be a creature of action because you have to act in order to live because if you don't act, well then you fall apart and you're overwhelmed by despair and negative emotion and you starve to death and you die. And so emotion and you starve to death and you die. And so not acting, not an option. So unless you're willing to take the consequences I just described, so you better look at the world as a place to act. And so how do you act? Well, you're somewhere. You should know where you are by the way. That's very helpful psychologically. You know, imagine you have a map, you're in a car, and you don't know where you are.

You're trying to get somewhere. The map's not helpful because you don't know where you are. Even if you know where you're going, but you don't know where you are, the map isn't useful. The same applies, the same really does apply to your life. If you don't know where you are,

it's very hard to map out where you're going. Well, that has consequences for emotion as well because going somewhere is actually what activates the positive emotion system. That's what it's for. The positive emotion system is to facilitate movement forward to a better place. That's its function. So that's so interesting because it means that if you're not moving forward to a better place, that's its function. So that's so interesting because it means that if you're not moving forward to a better place, then you don't have any

positive emotion. And so there's another conclusion that you can derive from that too, which is that if you don't have a value system, you don't have any positive emotion. Because a value system is what posits that one thing is worth doing more than another. And if one thing isn't worth doing more than another, then you don't have any place valuable to go.

And if you don't have any place valuable to go, then you don't have any positive emotion. And so that's, so when people are criticizing hierarchies, which they do a lot, especially politically, there shouldn't be hierarchies. It's like, really, really, There shouldn't be hierarchies, it's like, really? Really, there shouldn't be hierarchies, eh? Well, how is it that you propose to look at the world? Because you look at the thing that you think is most important to look at at that point.

And if you couldn't, you wouldn't even know what to look at. Maybe you've seen, I've seen YouTube videos of cameras that have been dropped from space accidentally. Maybe it wasn't accidentally. It might have been part of an advertising campaign for maybe one of those, you go things, what do they call those? What is it? Yeah, GoPro, that's it.

So they dropped one, I think, from like 30 miles up and it spun around all the way down and videotaped. It's like pretty dull because why? dropped one, I think, from like 30 miles up and it spun around all the way down and videotaped. It's like pretty dull because why? Well, because it's not pointed at anything. It's not directed towards anything. Like it's a perfectly objective portrait of reality that's absolutely pointless, right? Because there's nothing is zeroing in on anything. You know, and you,

even to organize your damn vision, even to focus your eyes, you have to have a value hierarchy because you have to be focusing on something that you think is important. And if you think it's important, it has to be more important than other things. In fact, it has to be more important than everything else at that moment because otherwise you wouldn't be focusing on it. And so there's no getting rid of hierarchies, not unless you want to disregulate your perceptual structures entirely and sacrifice your emotional stability, no more positive emotion, plenty of confusion though, and be immobilized. And then also sit there and do nothing and suffer and die.

And so the idea that there's something intrinsically wrong with hierarchies, that's wrong. It's wrong. It's wrong. It's really deeply wrong. It's deeply and stupidly wrong at multiple levels. And so then the question becomes more appropriately, well, what should the hierarchy be?

And not whether or not there should be one. It's like, and you know, it's not like I'm not cognizant of the negative consequences of hierarchies. It's not like they're all positive. You know, I mean, no matter what hierarchy we set up to pursue what goal, it doesn't matter what the goal is, some people turn out to be better at doing that and some people turn out to be worse. And the people who turn out to be worse pay a fairly heavy price for being worse. And so you set up a hierarchy,

there are people, and more people at the bottom that are worse pay a fairly heavy price. And so it's not like hierarchies are without cost. And I would say to the degree that the left end of the political spectrum has a valid point, their valid point is, pay some attention to the people at the bottom of the hierarchies because it's a rough place to be. And keep the hierarchies fair so that people can move up

and keep them focused on their tasks so they're doing useful things and aren't corrupted by people who are only seeking power. All of that. Fine. No hierarchy? That's a bad idea. That's a non-starter. Okay, so now you're deciding to go somewhere and it doesn't matter where it is. Small scale journey or large scale journey, because a large scale journey is composed of a multitude, a small scale journey. So I'll give you an example of this. I'm gonna build up a moral hierarchy for you

from the bottom, okay? And here's one of the things that's kind of cool about doing this because it actually solves to some degree the mind-body problem if you do that. And so if you're sitting there thinking, geez, I wish that I could solve the mind-body problem tonight, then maybe tonight's your lucky night because maybe that's what's going to happen.

So imagine that you're going to do something like prepare dinner. You might think that's a good thing. So that's interesting. So it's an action, but we'd also put a moral dimension on it. It's good to feed hungry people, but you're self-included. Maybe you do a good job of making dinner. That'd even be better. Not only are you making dinner, but you're making a good dinner.

And so that makes making dinner an even more impressive moral feat because you could make some wretched, cold, dismal, massive, glutinous catastrophe and serve it with contempt and hatred to the people that are around you. You could do that. it would still be dinner But you know it'd be it be a low quality it'd be a low quality and and all too common occurrence But let's say that you do it right, you know, it's like you're gonna put some effort into it. It's gonna be delicious That'd be nice. It's gonna be nutritious. It's gonna be attractive And it's going to be served with the proper attitude.

You know, you're happy that you have some food. That's kind of nice. Hasn't been all that long that everybody had food. And certainly hasn't been all that long that everybody had a vast variety of high quality food, and so a little gratitude would be nice. So, you got your... So, even... So, back to the task at hand, you're going to make dinner. So the question is, well, what exactly do you do to make dinner? And it's kind of an abstract idea to make dinner.

Let's go make dinner. You can say that abstractly. But when you actually go to make dinner, it's not abstract anymore. You go into the kitchen hand and open the door. That's where your mind runs out. It knows how to operate your voluntary musculature. But it's not a physical thing.

It's not a physical thing. It's not a physical thing. It's not a physical thing. It's not a physical thing. It's not a physical thing. That's where your mind runs out. It knows how to operate your voluntary musculature, but it doesn't know how. So your mind grounds out in your body. And I'm going to make the case that morality does that as well.

It's part of this idea that the world is an action oriented place. You open the fridge, you think, hey, carrots, we're gonna need some carrots. So you take the bag of carrots out of the fridge and you put them on the counter and you peel the carrots. And again, same thing, bit of expert behavior there, you know, because you've peeled carrots before and it's a bit deterministic

because you've learned how to do it habitually. And so you peel the carrots and you take out the parts that aren't so edible if you have any sense. And then you take out your knife and maybe you have a nice knife with a nice wide blade at the end so you can chop up carrots. It's kind of fun to do that if you're good at it because you can, you know, make 100 slices in 20 or 30 seconds if you've practiced it and you take your carrot and you go, and then you have all these, you don't have to make that noise by the way.

But you can if you want. And then if you're good at it, then have to make that noise, by the way. But you can, if you want. And then if you're good at it, then all the carrots are pretty much the same thickness. And that's kind of cool. You got a little expertise there, and you got all the carrots lined up. And maybe then you put them in some foil, and you add a little butter, and some, I don't know, cumin, and a bit of pepper, and make them into a foil packet. This is what we do in Canada. You might do that.

You guys, barbecue, I've heard. And then you throw the things on the barbecue and you wait till their steam puffs up the foil and you think, done. And if you have any sense at the same time, you're cooking the steak and it's done at the same time and the potatoes. It's all done at the same time.

And it's caramelized nicely, so it's got a bit of sweetness, and you've got the right amount of butter for the potatoes, and you serve it, and that's good. That's good, and it took you a long time to learn that. And there's a hierarchy there, so the hierarchy is, the lowest part of the hierarchy is, the muscular movements say that you employ when you're slicing up the carrots.

There's nothing abstract about that. And then there's the sequencing of the carrots and the foil and the placing them on the grill and all of that. And that's where the rubber hits the road. And you think, well, hey, I made a good dinner. And then might think well What's making a good dinner a subset of you might think well? You know if you're a good friend Good parent Maybe one of the things that you could do is make a good dinner like it's not the only thing that

I make a good dinner and so I'm a good friend. It's like no I make a good dinner and so I'm a good friend. It's like no, but maybe that's one-fifth of it or a tenth of it. It's some non-trivial proportion of it, necessary but not sufficient. Is that right? No, no, that's not right. It's not necessary. Anyways, it's one of the things you could do to be a good friend. And then if you have a friend, maybe he makes you a good dinner now.

And then there's some reciprocity there. So that's, and so you're capable of engaging in that reciprocity. And that's another thing that might make you a good friend and, and, or a good parent, let's say, so let's say there's 10 things like that at that level that make you a good parent. It's like, well, what? You can make a good meal. You can, you can clean up the kitchen.

That's a good thing to be able to do. You can clean up the bathroom and the rest of the house. So there's maybe five, you know how to clean. Well, that's part two of being a good parent. You get along with your partner. You know how to negotiate with them. And some of the things you negotiate about are those lower level tasks that you're going to engage in.

It's like, well, I may dinner, maybe you could clean up the kitchen. And, you know, there'd be some reciprocity there. And if you're a good person, which is getting a little higher up in the value hierarchy, then you can engage in that kind of negotiation. So, and that is exactly what you would be negotiating is those tasks. So maybe you're the sort of partner that can communicate with your partner and maybe you're the sort of parent that can bring their children into the kitchen and teach them the mechanical elements of food preparation starting at the bottom.

I mean, maybe you're not going to give them the sharp knife to begin with, but you might get them to set the table. It's like they're 2.5, it's like table needs to be set. Here's a spoon. Kid, take the spoon. The kid can do that. It knows what a spoon is. You don't say set the table for a dinner party of 20 to a 2.5 year old, right? Because they haven't got that level of abstraction mastered. You say, you see this? Yes, pat pat. Here's a spoon. Yes. Can you say spoon? Spoon. Good. Good. Take the spoon. Take it. Good. You know where the table is? Yes. How about if you go put the spoon on the table? It's like, yeah, I can do that. So the kid wanders over and puts the spoon on the table and then maybe comes back and looks at you.

And they look at you to think, is, well, did I get the spoon on the table right? Did I do it right? That's one thing. Did I undertake the action correctly? That's one thing. And was it a good action, right? Did I do something that was morally appropriate? They're trying to check both of those out at the same time.

And you pat them on the head and you say, hey, good job, man. You're growing up. And by that, you also signify to them that growing up is a good thing. And that's also important. And then you say, well, here's another spoon. You're going to encounter lots of spoons in your life. Why don't you go put it on the table, too?

And so they put the spoons on the table, and then maybe you show them how the spoons might be arranged, and then maybe you trust them with a fork. And then they can do the same thing. And then with the knife, and a dull butter knife sort of thing, at least to begin with, and with the dishes. And you teach them, bottom up, right?

Reflex upward, you teach them the mechanics of preparing something complex. And so they have all those micro skills embedded in them, so to speak, and they're part of their psychophysiological ability. And at some point with a certain amount of training might take three months, four months, six months, you can say, set the table. And then the kid knows

exactly what to do. But they don't know what to do until they have all those micro-routines mastered. And so that's kind of cool, because what it indicates is that the command, the macro command, set the table, is only something that has a meaning when the microprocesses that are motoric have already been mastered. And that's a really good way of thinking about how you're constituted. Like you have a lot of skills, things you can do with your body, action-oriented skills and perceptual skills. And once you have them as part of you, then other people can refer to them

and you understand each other. And that's partly how we understand each other, is that we share a hierarchy of skill and perception that's built from the bottom up to a very high level of abstraction and also a very high level of isomorphism, meaning it's the same for everyone. So, so, so, okay, I'll explain that momentarily here.

So, now, we already established that you have to do things and I'm going to elaborate on that claim a little bit. So, you have to do things And you have emotional systems that help you decide whether you're on the right path. Because if you have to do things, you're on a path. And if you're going somewhere, you better be on the right path. And so then you need something to tell you whether or not you're on the right path. And that's what your emotions do, your positive emotion, and your negative emotion. They're orienting systems that tell you whether you're on the right path and the path is defined by the goal.

So you need a goal. So that's the first thing to think about. It's really, really, really, really important to think about this. If your life is not the way you want it to be, it's possible that your goal is not what it should be. And that's a fundamental religious teaching, by the way. I would say that might be the fundamental religious teaching of Buddhism. Because the Buddha is teaching in some sense that everything is Maya or illusion. And it's a complicated idea.

But partly what it means is the way the world manifests itself to you is in large part determined by your aim within the world. And so by switching aim, you can switch whether something is positive or negative. Like, let's say you come home and you find your wife's having an affair. It's like, man, you're not happy. You're one bitter, twisted, angry person. And you know, you go down to the bar and you have a few drinks and you thought God, you know, I really never liked her and you think hey, this is the best day of my life My wife had an affair. It's like I'm free. I know this is a ridiculous story But you get my point, you know, it's like you you can make a switch like that

You think well isn't it so strange? It's like half an hour ago I was like bitter and twisted and angry and resentful and anxious and frustrated and disappointed because there was something I wanted and I wasn't getting it. And now all of a sudden I've decided I didn't want that and everything is switched around. And so that's a miracle that that can happen. And so in rule six, you know, I, the rule is put your house in perfect order before you criticize the world. Well, so what's the idea? It's like, well, if the world isn't up to

your standards, let's say, first of all, you might ask yourself about that to begin with. It's like, the world isn't up to your standards. Really, that's, and That's the world's problem somehow. It's not more likely that it's given that you're talking about the world here. It's not more likely that there's some chance that it's your problem. And that if you put yourself right, then the world wouldn't appear to be a problem. And I mean, it's a profound question. And I'm not throwing that out cynically or sarcastically. I mean, I've been disenchanted with the world a fair number of times personally.

I'm including myself in the list of people who make that error. But knowing that your emotional reactions are dependent on your aim, and that that's actually technically true. Does immediately open up the question, hey man, if things aren't laying themselves in front of you, out in front of you, the way that is necessary for you to live a full and engaged life and not be cynical and bitter and twisted and cruel and vengeful and disappointed and all of that it's just possible that you're not

aiming at the right thing. And man, that is a question, that is a question worth asking. Well return next week with part two. If you found this conversation meaningful, you might think about picking up dad's books, maps of meaning the architecture of belief, or as newer bestseller, 12 rules for life and added out to chaos. Both of these works delve much deeper into the topics covered in the Jordan V. Peterson podcast. See JordanV. Peterson.com for audio, e-book, and text links, or pick up the books at your

favorite bookseller. Remember to check out JordanV. Peterson.com's last personality for information on his new course. Tag Jordan or I on Instagram to share your results from the Discovering Personality Course. 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 at Instagram, at Jordan.B. Peterson. Details on this show, access to my blog, information about my tour dates and other events, and my list of recommended books can be found on my website, JordanB.Pederson.com.

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