The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - Structuring Your Perceptions (part two)

Episode Date: February 23, 2020

This is Part two of a Jordan B. Peterson "12 Rules for Life lecture" recorded in Canberra, Australia on February 15, 2019. Thanks to our sponsors: https://www.capterra.com/jbp https://www.ashford.edu/jordan http://trybasis.com/jordan/ https://www.ancestry.com/jordan

Welcome to episode 47 of the Jordan B Peterson podcast. I'm Michaela Peterson, Jordan's daughter. As you know, we've been in Russia for the last month and a half for emergency treatment for my dad, but guess what? We're in Florida. We're back in North America. I am so happy to see the sun. Dad's continuing to recover, but it's pretty unpleasant.

He's having some good days now though. I'll keep you posted on any new developments. I hope you enjoy this episode. It's called Structuring Your Perceptions Part 2, and was recorded in Canberra, Australia on February 15th, 2019. Structuring Your Perceptions Part 2. A Jordan B. Peterson 12 rules for life lecture. If you isolate animals and you set them up so that they can voluntarily give themselves electric shocks, if you isolate them, they will do that just for entertainment. So, well, boredoms, not such a great thing. So anyways, here you are.

You're going to this side of the room. You're going from point A to B. This is always what you're doing in your life. You think, that over there, that's way better. That's where I'm headed. Now, I've got an open pathway, and I'm flooded with positive emotion, knowing that my pathway towards that valued end is clear.

So why do you set up your room? It's a good example. I've talked to people about cleaning up their room. Well, a room is a machine, in a sense, it's a set of tools and obstacles. It's a place to do things in, right? Sleep, that's an important thing. You should set your room up so you can sleep. It should be dark.

You should have dark curtains, not too much light, not too much noise. Maybe it should be half ways comfortable and not completely god-offly, filthy. All of that, so that you can sleep there because hypothetically you have some things to do. And your closet should be organized because you got to put on your clothes

and your clothes signify who you are to yourself and other people. And so they're part of the toolkit that you use to interact with the world. And maybe there's other things that you're going to do in your room. Maybe you work in there a little bit. So your office needs to be set up in some intelligent way so that every time you have to do something difficult, you don't have to do 20 other stupid difficult things, like dig through 30 pens that don't work to find one that works, because that might be enough just to stop you in your tracks.

You want to set the place up so that the goals are there and the pathways are clear. And then when you go in that room, it makes you full of positive emotion. It's a place that's set up where someone sensible has planned to do valuable things. And by the way, that also makes you less anxious, which is a nice plus, because anxiety comes about when there's too many pointless choices in front of you. And so you want to set yourself up so that you have a certain elegance in the manner in which you've constructed your surrounding. It's

devoted towards something. Well then you have to figure out what should it be devoted towards. Okay so that's the next thing. What should it be devoted towards? Got to be devoted towards something. Why? Not devoted towards something. No positive emotion. That's not good. Not devoted to words something, anxious and upset. That's not good. And then it's worse because if you just sit there and do nothing, you try this for six months. Just don't get out of bed for six months

and see how you feel. And I've talked to people like that, the chronically depressed people, you know, who really haven't got up for months. And it is not good. Like your default mental state for not actively engaged in important things is nihilistic, pain-ridden, frustrated, disappointed, ashamed, guilt-ridden, and miserable.

And so it's not only that you need a valued place to go and a pathway there so that you're not anxious, it's that if you don't have that, then incomes the suffering. And there's no talking yourself out of that. And that's no picnic, no one wants that. And so this isn't optional in some sense. I mean, it is because you can be miserable. And I'm not saying that everyone's depressed for the reason I just laid out.

There's lots of reasons to be depressed. I'm not trying to oversimplify it. I'm just telling you one way that you could be depressed if you want to be. And so, okay, so this this is a pretty good pathway, and I'm pretty positive about it, but then if I go here, see, that's a lot more annoying,

because now there's something in the way, and I'm not that annoyed about it, and the reason for that is because I know that if I do this, this is a good trick, so watch this carefully, you can do this at home, see, I can just this is a good trick, so watch this carefully. You can do this at home. See, I can just go like that. See, and see.

And so that didn't bother me very much, eh? And thank you, thank you. I've practiced that for a very long time. And so the reason it didn't bother me very much was because I've already set out a frame of reference. That's what would you call structuring my perceptions. And the frame of reference was, well, I was over there, and it wasn't so good, and I was going to go over here,

and it was better. And there was an obstacle in the way, because at that moment, those things there that wasn't a table with two bottles on it, it was an obstacle to my progress. Now, you can tell this. This is how you respond in your day-to-day life, man. You're in your car, you're driving along.

Some person cuts you off. And what do you think? Oh, that's someone, man. If I met them in a bar, we'd have a beer. We'd be friends. They probably have a lovely family. We'd tell a few jokes. It's like, no, no.

It's like, that son of a bitch just cut me off. Right, so you take that whole person and you turn them into an icon and an icon is an annoying thing in your way. And then like, who knows? Like, maybe you're just off to the corner store to buy some beer. You know, it's just not that vital, but that doesn't stop you from reducing the person to an annoying obstacle. And so, well, that's part of the way that you perceive. And so, this could be an annoying obstacle, but it's not very annoying because I can walk around it. Now, if there was somebody like a basketball player,

pro basketball player standing here, and every time I tried to get around him, blocked me. Well that would be a lot more annoying because I wouldn't be able to calculate a pathway to my goal and so then I would have to either learn to play basketball a lot better than I can which would take a long time and be rather pointless or I would have to reconceptualceptualize my goal-directed perceptual structure, and that would mean I'd have to flip my world upside down. Okay, so now we're going to talk about that. Flip in your world upside down a little bit.

So a simple story is I'm at point A, and I'm going to point B, and I went there. That's a simple story. And a little more complicated story, more interesting story is I was at point A and you know it wasn't so great. I was going to point B and I was pretty much on board with that. And as I went there, something I didn't really expect happened. And I had this little weird side adventure and then I calculated my way through it and I got either back on track or ended up in a better place. That's a metameth myth as far as I'm concerned.

That's a fundamental mythology of the human race. It's something like the fall from paradise and the recovery of paradise, fall into a catastrophic situation and then recovery. It's the same thing that happens when Moses leads his people from the tyranny of Egypt into the desert and then Hypothetically into the promised land. It's like you're going somewhere. It's good. You go You don't understand the world very well. The bottom falls out Down you plummet. Maybe your dad. That's the end of that story, but maybe not maybe down there You learn some things. You put yourself together

You make yourself stronger. You come back. You have a better vision even. You're more competent That's the story of the human race. It's really the story of the human race And so it's good to know that too because it's good to know that when you're going somewhere and you fall You'll fall somewhere you fall into chaos Technically speaking and that's a domain of dis-inhibited emotions and possibilities, dis-inhibited perceptions, and a dis-inhibition of the structure of the world. It can be really overwhelming and extraordinarily stressful, but it's also a place of great possibility

because new things can emerge from it, and your job is to confront that if you can, to know where you are, you're now in chaos, you're now in the underworld, you're not in Kansas anymore. And you need to know that, and you need to know that that's a place, and you need to know that you're the sort of person that can actually prevail in a place like that, if you keep your damn eyes open, and if you're paying attention. Well, it also helps if you articulate yourself very carefully and tell the truth in a situation

like that, because if you've fallen off the map, let's say what you want to do is put together a new map and you want to bloody well make sure that you got it right. So attention and truth will get you out of chaos. And that's useful to know, because you will definitely fall into chaos. Okay, so let's say, well, forget about me wanting to go over there. Let's talk about something that I want in a more profound way. So I'm built a little hierarchy of value. So you know how, if you're shooting an arrow and you shoot at a bullseye and you know how

some bullseys are, there's the center bullseye, which is quite small, and then there's a slightly bigger circle around it. That's a different color, and a bigger circle around it, and a bigger circle around it, and a bigger circle around it. And then there's an implication there that there's sort of a hierarchy of goals. The real goal of damn center, right? But better hit the edge than to miss the target altogether, and maybe better to draw back your bow and aim

than not to play it all. OK, so that's kind of a nice allegory that you can derive from archery. And it's interesting that the word sin, by the way, is an archery term from the Greek, Hamartia. Hamartia means to miss the target. And so it's good to think about the target. And it's really good to think about the target

because you are a target seeking creature, a visually in particular. Your eyes are pointed at whatever it is that you're after. And we're really interested in this. We're always looking at other people's eyes to find out what their eyes are pointing at, because we want to know what they're after, because that's how we understand them.

That's how we align ourselves emotionally with them. That's how we see how they see the world. And so, it's, aim is really, aim is of fundamental importance. themselves emotionally with them. That's how we see how they see the world. And so, it's, aim is really, aim is of fundamental importance. You gotta have an aim. Question is, what should aim for? Okay, and that's when you get into

a discussion of something approximating a value hierarchy. So let's try that. Here's a value hierarchy. So, this is my value hierarchy, part of it. I'm a writer. So, I'm sitting at the keyboard. What am I doing? Well. I'm a writer. So I'm sitting at the keyboard. What am I doing? Well, I'm not thinking, not at the highest level of resolution. At the highest level of

resolution, I am moving my fingers. I don't even really know how I'm doing that. It's automatic. You know, I don't know which muscles are moving. I just know how to move them. And so my abstract representation bottoms out at the level of motor movement. So that's at the bottom. That's sort of like where the mind hits the body. Okay, so I'm moving my fingers. And what I'm doing when I'm moving my fingers is producing words. But not words, like the right words, let's say I'm trying to produce the right words, but not just the right words. I'm not just typing letters. I'm not just typing words, although I'm doing both of those. I'm typing phrases, but not just phrases, sentences, and not just sentences, paragraphs, right, and not just paragraphs, but chapters. Okay, so that's a, you see that's a bullseye, right?

Because the center is, well, A, B, E, D. But the next thing out of that is the word, and then the next thing around that is the phrase, and then the sentence, and then the paragraph, and then the chapter. And then let's say the book, well, the book hypothetically has a point, right? What's more annoying than reading a book? You think, well, that didn't have any point. And you think, well, that's kind of an interesting way of putting it. A point?

Why would a book have a point? And the answer is, because it should point you somewhere. And you think about all the things we do that point us places. We watch sports all the time. Team sports. Why? Well, because we see people pointing and aiming, cooperating and competing

together in a civilized manner, most of the time, pointing and aiming at things. And we're so thrilled about the fact that people are pointing and aiming at things that will go and watch them do it and will pay for it. And then they point and aim at something and they hit it. And we're so thrilled that they hit it that we all stand up and clap. It's like, well, look, he pointed at something and aimed and hit it. It's like, it's time for like, a dozen beer at the pub

and, you know, an an a riot in the street. It's like, what the hell? Well, the issue is, it's actually rather important. It's so important to point in aimed things that it constitutes the basis of most of our entertainment. It's really important. So, okay, so what do you do? So, letter, word, phrase, sentence, paragraph, chapter, book. Okay, so why might I write a book? Well, I wrote 12 rules of life because, well, partly out of curiosity,

I wanted to see what would happen, but partly because I'm a clinical psychologist and a professor, and I thought, well, I could use my academic knowledge and I could provide practical information to people and I could distribute to a lot of people and then their lives would be maybe somewhat less horrible and

slightly better that that would be a reasonable aim so that was the frame within which the book fit and So that would be also there's a superordinate frame outside that well It was part of my duty as a scientist say and a practitioner it frame outside that. Well, it was part of my duty as a scientist, say, and a practitioner. So that was outside of that. And then what was outside of that? Well, maybe I was trying to be a good citizen. How about that? You know, what would that mean? Well, you take care of yourself, you take care of your family, take care of your community. That's not a bad

start. So to be a good citizen, that's a higher order goal. Why am I moving my fingers on the keyboard? To be a good citizen? Like it's a small part of it, but it's not nothing. In fact, it's everything. That's where the tire hits the road, right? That's the reality, that tiny point where your mind meets the world through your body. That's what changes things. And then you think, well, what might be on top of that? Well, how is it that you're a good citizen?

What are the characteristics of being a good citizen? Being a good person, that'd be the next thing. Be a good person. You think about the good people that you see on movies, heroes that you see on movies. Okay, well, what's the characteristic of someone who's heroic? Well, here's one.

They try to get themselves under control. You know, they try to make themselves a little less ignorant, because we're all a little more ignorant than we could be, so it might be nice to rectify that. And then we try to get our own malevolence under control. You know, to some degree, they say it's harder to rule yourself than a city. And anyone with any sense knows that. It's like, you're not everything you could be. You know, you're not trying as hard as you could. You're not focusing as well as

you should. You're not articulating as well as you might. And you do things that are cruel, unnecessary, deceitful, arrogant, and deceptive. resentful too. And cruel, all of that. Like a little less of that would be good. So that's part of that moral structure. Then you might think, well, fine, work on yourself, your plenty of trouble. Then there's the society around you, your family and broader society. Same thing, it's not like your family is characterized by entirely injellic dispositions. No doubt there's all sorts of trouble that in principle you could be at least not making worse.

You could be rectifying and you might think, well, that would be worth devoting some time to. I could make my family function better. And then maybe I could also face the tyrannical and malevolent element of my culture a little bit more effectively. You know, and that might be, while by standing up for yourself a bit more at work,

by having a strategy at work for the development of your career, or for the development of the company itself, or a vision for the enterprise itself. It depends on the scale of your ambition, but part of your job and make no mistake about this. This is part of your job. You know, our culture is predicated on the idea that we're all sovereign individuals, right?

That sovereignty itself, which is authority, political authority, but authority in general and competence resides in each of us, not the king, not the emperor, not the aristocracy. None of that. It's reverted down to us. Each of us has that divine value that makes us the cornerstone of the state.

And whether or not the state moves towards something approximating habitable or degenerates into something approximating hell is dependent on you. Now and you and everyone, it's how the world structured. Each of us is a center of the world and we're all charged with that responsibility. So that's the next part of the bullseye, let's say. And then outside of that, there's more. It's like, well, you got culture. You're trying to put it in order wherever you can within the confines of your ability.

Without thinking about that as trivial because it's not, you think, well, there's some natural problems that might need to be solved. People are hungry. people are sick. You know, there's lots of problems with the world, environmental problems for that matter. There's diseases we could get rid of. You know, nature for all its beauty has got its hands around our neck and is squeezing constantly. There might be things that you could do to improve your own life, your own health, the

health of your family, but also to push back against the detrimental forces of nature itself so that there's a bit more positive breathing space for you and the people around you. That'd be good. Why not do that? It beats the hell out of the alternative as far as I can tell. And then it imbues those little things that you're doing with meaning. It's like, well, what am I doing?

Moving my fingers on a keyboard. It's like, no. Words, paragraphs, word, sense, paragraphs, chapters, books, right? To restructure the tyranny of things, to straighten myself out and maybe to help other people with that. To push back the catastrophe of nature, that as well. And so that imbues that with meaning. And you want things to be imbued with meaning, right? Because life is hard.

Life is suffering. Life is mortal suffering, right? You're in this, you're all in, right? You're betting your life on outcome. You need something to make the fact that this is your life worthwhile. And maybe you need, and it's death we're talking about in the suffering that goes along with that. You might need something pretty damn potent as an antidote to that to stop you from despair and all the terrible things that go along with it. And so you're called upon to

do things that are beyond you in order to have to be engaged in something that meaningful. And then you make the world a better place too. And so then we come to the very outside of that. And I think this is the outside, this is as far as it goes, or at least as far as I can tell. So you confront yourself and you confront nature and you confront culture. But fundamentally, you confront the unknown itself. You confront potential itself,

and that's what you are integrity as a being. That's what your consciousness is. You know, like people, scientists will tell you, well, we're deterministic creatures. You know, we follow the Newtonian laws of physics, A causes B and B causes C, and it's like, that does not look like how your brain is set up. So things that you've practiced intensely, you're pretty deterministic.

Like when you're driving, you're not thinking or walking, you're not thinking consciously a lot about what you're doing. You might be thinking about where you're going, that's fine. But you're not thinking about the micro movements and all that. That's all become automated. It's deterministic. But when you wake up in the morning, man, and your consciousness reappears on the scene, you know, like the sun rising in the morning, which is a very

common metaphor for the reemergence of consciousness, what you see in front of you is the day, and the multiple pathways of the day, the multiple opportunities of the day, right? Some branching off into what's clearly positive and some branching off into what's clearly negative. And you know what those are, you think, you know, there's some things I should get to today. Because if I don't, tomorrow's gonna be worse. And maybe you shrink away from that, right? You put the blankets back underneath your head

or maybe that's the time for the first joint of the morning because you don't wanna give that any consideration. But you know, it's like there's some things I need to get at or things are going to get worse. And so there's some real existential terror in that. And then there's the positive part too, which is, hey, look, there's field of opportunity here in front of me. And if I was careful and awake and articulate

and I had my vision intact and I got up and put myself to it, then who knows what I could transform the potential that's in front of me into. And so you've got both of that. What is that? Well, I think it's a choice between good and evil. That would be in terms of your own personal morality. It's not good to shirk your responsibility and to let things deteriorate

and to avoid doing the good that you could do. That's not good, and it is good to do the reverse. And so that's the story of good and evil, and it's the story of heaven and hell to some degree too, because you could be working at making things slightly more heavenly than they are, and at least somewhat less hellish, and that would be a start, and

that would seem to be something that might grip and motivate you and make it worthwhile to get out of bed. And so, and so, and that's what your consciousness does. It literally, that this is how I think it works, is that what you see in front of you, it's you're not determined by the past, and you're not a a clockwork machine and the world isn't made out of objects. That's not how it is. The world that you confront is made out of potential. It's made out of possibility. That's how you treat each other too.

You know, you bother your kids. You're not living up to your potential. What the hell does that mean? You're potential. Where's that? Well, it's what could be. Oh, I see. It's, it's some reality that isn't here, that could be, that's so important, that that's what I'm calling you on. And your kid is completely taken in by that, if they have any sense, they're ashamed. It's like, yeah, you're right, I'm not living up to my potential. As they don't doubt that that's a reality, and you tell yourself the same thing, you know,

when you wake up at three in the morning, I'm not living up to my potential. Well, who's calling you on that? If it's not your own conscience, if it's not your own knowledge that there's more to you than you're allowing out into the world for cowardice and for whatever reason. So you have this potential in front of you. Okay, and so, and then, and then this is how this ends. So I've been very interested in mythological stories. I did a biblical series last year.

The first lecture was on the first sentence in Genesis, a three-hour lecture on the first sentence of Genesis. Turns out to be a relatively important sentence. There's an idea in Genesis, the beginning. And the idea is this. The idea is that here's how to look at the world, being, here's how to look at reality. It's a field of potential, it's unstructured, it hasn't yet been called forth into existence. There's a structure that can call

it forth into existence. That's represented as God in the Old Testament. Whatever God is, is the structure that can interact with potential, Tohu-Abohu, and call it into being, to generate order from chaos. And there's a process that is involved in that, and that process is logos. It's the word, it's courageous truth. It's something like that.

It's the ability to confront the word, it's courageous truth, it's something like that. It's the ability to confront the potential, to make a determination that you're going to make it good, to pay attention to it carefully, and then to speak it into being in the proper manner. And so that's what happens in Genesis, and God does that over about a seven-day period. And every time he does it, he says, and it was good. And that's a very interesting thing too.

That's really an interesting thing because here's a theory. And man, this theory might be true and if it's true, it's like the most important theory that there is. It's like life is hard, it's brutal, it can take you out, it can imbiter you, it can make you cynical and cruel, it can motivate you to do things that are so high-ness that if you watched yourself doing them, they would permanently damage you. That's what happens when you develop post-traumatic stress

disorder. It's no damn joke. And you need something to combat that and say, well, what do you combat that with? Well, you got this potential in front of you. So what do you do? You confront it. What with, courage, attention, and truth,

what's the consequence? Then it's good. What if that was the case? What if that was the case? If that was how the world was literally structured is that we have the potential in front of us. And the decisions that we make day-to-day as conscious beings, determine whether things tilt off into some hellish direction or move towards the

good. You say, well, what's the evidence for that? Well, it does seem to be how your consciousness works. It is the reason that our whole culture has decided that you're the cornerstone of the state and that you have the right and the responsibility to vote and to make decisions about the direction of society itself. It's the way that you treat each other properly. I mean, you want your friends to assume that you have moral responsibility and capability. You want people that you love, your children, to adopt responsibility, to live a proper life, and to tell the truth and all of that, you assume that they have, that they are responsible moral agents at least to some degree. And if you don't do that, you don't get along with people. And you don't get along with yourself.

And if your society doesn't assume that you should do that, then your society doesn't work. And so that's all pretty powerful evidence that there's something to this. So okay, so that's you. You're, and then it's capped off in the first chapter because the way about, about, oh, third of the way in, after God's done making the world, he makes human beings, and then he says something, so we've already decided, well, you confront potential and you make order out of chaos,

that's the structure of reality, and then if you do that with truth and courage and attention, then what you make is good. And then there's the capstone which is men and women are made in the image of God. Well the question is, well, okay, do we believe that? And people ask me, do I believe in God? And I hate that question. And I always answer it. I usually answer it by saying that I act as if God exists, which I think is a perfectly bloody good answer, by the way. And I would say, well, let's assume just for

the moment that there's something to that, is that you're made in the image of God. Well, here you are, you're a conscious being. We don't know how that happened. Without that consciousness, we couldn't even conceptualize reality. The fact of your consciousness is what gives reality, its tangibility, the fact of your consciousness, it's the wrestling of your consciousness with the potential that's yet to be, that seems to transform the world into what it is. It's like, why is it so unreasonable to assume that it isn't, it's inappropriate metaphorically to think while men and women are made in the image of God. I don't know

a better way of putting that, and it puts a heavy moral responsibility on you, but that's a good thing because now you have something to do. Think, well, I need something to do. What's the meaning of life? Well, there you go. There's the meaning of life. You've got potential in front of you. Infinite in scope. Enough to kill you. That's for sure. And to take you out in every possible way.

But full of possibility that God only knows the degree to which you could unravel and develop. You have both of those. That's the dragon and the gold. You have that right in front of you all the time. And that's your adventure. And you're not called on to be happy and to mildly amuse yourself, right?

You're called on to get the hell up and add it and to confront yourself and to confront nature and to confront society and to confront the unknown and to combat the dragon and to find the gold that it hides and to share that with everyone and to move the world away from hell and to move the world towards heaven. and to move the world towards heaven. And that's the purpose of existence. And that's enough purpose.

If you pursued that whole heartedly, then the despair would go. It would be replaced by a burden, that's for sure, right? Because it's no joke to conceptualize that, to understand that it's really on you. You know, those little mistakes youize that, to understand that it's really on you. Those little mistakes you make that you know are mistakes. You think, well, I'm just one person among 7 billion. It's like, no, no, no. That's not how it's structured. It's not how it's structured. You're a center of the world, just like everyone else.

And the way to the world rests on your shoulders. And it's time in the morning to get up and get at it. And to make things better, because there's lots of things that could be made better and you're the creature that could make them better. And we need to know that. We need to understand this from the bottom up and we need to start taking ourselves with the requisite seriousness

and to find that meaning in our lives, that meaning that's associated not with happiness, a foolish notion disappears as soon as you're not happy, but with something like ultimate responsibility, because we have an ultimate possibility that resides within us in ways we don't understand, and there's no limit Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Applause You're feeling good here in Australia. Yeah, yeah, I'm getting healthier again, man. Maybe by the time that Q&A rolls around, I'll be in top shape. Yeah, and we'll see how that goes.

You ready to roll for that thing? A lot of people have been asking about it. Well, it's strange because I haven't been interested or excited in talking to journalists for a very long time. I found it very stressful, but I am, and I gotta be careful, because I don't wanna get cocky about this, because that's a big mistake, but I am looking forward to the Q&A, so, well, we'll see how it goes. And I'm gonna be careful, you know? But I'm curious to see how it's going to work out. I think I can keep my temper regulated, and I think I can concentrate on the questions. And I also

think that the epithets have been exhausted. And so now the playing field in some sense has reversed because people have thrown every accusation that they could manage at me and it's not working. And it's starting to turn around. So we'll see what happens and we'll try to be careful and have some fun maybe. All right, you're not seeing moving on. To what extent can you forgive someone? Is there a limit based upon damage or harm that is unforgivable or should you always forgive people? There are places you can go that it would require a miracle to come back from. There's this guy named John Wayne Gacy.

He was a serial killer of children and a clown, lovely combination. He got caught and he asked for the death penalty and no wonder, how do you come back from that? You know, like there's a religious idea that at any point you can be forgiven and redeemed, but it also, the requirement for that is that you've atoned for your sins, you know, and like, just for an ordinary person to really think about that, that you, in order to put yourself together

and to place yourself where you should be placed in the order of being that you have to have taken responsibility for all the things you did that were beneath you. That's rough, man. That's psychotherapy in part, you know. It's not just that. It's moral reflection, and it's the desire to live a proper life. But when you've gone those places, like how do you atone for that? And then if you can't, how can you expect anyone else to forgive you?

It's not it maybe people could if they knew how But they don't you don't know how how would they know how maybe God knows how maybe not too There are some dark places that people can go having said that You don't want to carry more burden than you have to. If someone's being terrible to you, well, first of all, maybe you need to get away. And second of all, maybe you need to understand how and why that happened. You need a philosophy of evil, often, to understand that, let's say, generically. Then you need to understand the particulars of that

for your own life. And then maybe that rebuilds your map a bit. But maybe you stay away from that person, you know, because, but you let it go if you can, because otherwise they just keep hurting you. You know, that's the thing is Freud said that his neurotic subjects, patients, suffered from reminiscences. They were burdened by the past.

They couldn't let it go. The memories kept flooding back. Not helpful. Now I don't know if it's precisely forgiveness that enables you to free yourself from that, but you do need to be freed from it. And at least letting go is some of that freeing. But the darker the crime, the more the saint is necessary to perform the active forgiveness, and often it's just too much to ask for.

So generally it's just too much to ask for. So generally, it's better. If you can trust the person, everybody makes mistakes. The best game is you cooperate with me. I cooperate with you. You make a mistake. I whack you in proportion to the seriousness of the mistake. You tell me why you made the mistake and how you're not going to do it again,

and you mean it, and then we cooperate again. That's tit for tat, that's modified. I think it's modified tit for tat that's come out on top of those sorts of game simulations of morality. That's a good one. You need trust, but God, you know, I think they to forgive in an unqualified sense, it's beyond the scope of a normal person. What do you forgive Hitler? It seems to me that it's a sin to forgive Hitler. You know what I mean, especially given the lack of atonement, it's not like he was sorry for what he had done. And I would also think that someone like that to become cognizant of what you've done and then to be sorry for it would kill you.

You know, it's just too much to become aware of that. I don't know how you would bear that. It would be, it would be hell. If there are any politicians in the crowd right now, is there anything you'd like to say directly to them? If you guys want to raise your heads, feel free. Sure, I could, there's lots of things I could say. Don't think that your constituents are stupid, because they're not. That's right.

That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right.

That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. dark web, so-so-called loose group that sort of emerged spontaneously. The reason that it's been successful, A, reason that it's been successful, is because we don't

think our audience is stupid. We think they'll come along for the ride and it turns out that they do. And so, and then what else would I say to politicians? Don't think, oh, well, I'll do what I need to to get elected and then things will change. It's like, no, that won't happen because what you'll do is you'll do what you need to get elected and then you'll become what it was that you needed to become to get elected

and then you'll never recover from that. And that's how life works. A lot of you people at work are thinking the same way. It's like, well, I have to go along with the game for now. It's like, and look, I know there are times when you have to buy your time, you have to think strategically. You can't be impulsive, you have to be careful, you have to be a warrior, you know, if you're trying to set things right. But don't be thinking that, well, I'll just go along with it for now, and then at some point I'll be in a position where I can

really change things, because by that time there will be very little left of you. And I see this, like I've seen this in universities all the time. The undergraduate say, Jesus, I got to write what the professor wants, because otherwise I won't get a good grade, which by the way is mostly a lie, because there are very few professors that are so corrupt that they will downgrade you if you write a good essay that they don't agree with. There are some, but not most of them. And if they do that, there are ways of calling them on it. But anyways, you say, well, whatever, I'll just write what the professor wants.

It's like, no, you won't. You'll change the way you think while you do that, because that's how it works when you write. And then you're a graduate student and you think, well, I can't make waves, man, because I got to publish papers. And so I better do what I'm supposed to do and keep the truth for later. And then you're an assistant professor. You haven't made tenure and you think, Jesus, I better keep my head down because if I get myself in trouble, then I won't make tenure. And then you make tenure and you're coward because you've trained yourself to be

a coward for 20 years, not everyone, by the way. But you've trained yourself to be a coward for 20 years. And even though now you're secure, man You've got like the most secure position Maybe in the Western world being a tenured professor. It's like what are you gonna do? You're gonna be brave and stand up to the administration. It's like I can tell you. I see damn little of that and So you think isn't that interesting? You give people maximal protection, right? They really can't be gone after, they have secure jobs,

and they can pursue pretty much what they want, and by the time they get them, they've sold themselves out so badly that there's nothing left of them. So, that's a bad strategy, and it's the same if you're a politician. It's like, if you think that there's something more powerful, if you think that there's something more powerful

than the truth, all that means is that you're better at lying than you are at telling the truth, because how the hell can there possibly be anything more powerful than the truth? Like if the truth is a reflection of reality, what is it? You against reality? Well, good luck. You know, like you can contend with reality and you can shape it as we already pointed out, but there's a lot of reality, and there's not that much of you. And if you have the truth, which is not an easy thing to align yourself carefully with the truth, then you have that on your

side. And there isn't anything more powerful than that. And if carefully with the truth, and you have that on your side. And there isn't anything more powerful than that. And if you have the truth on your side and you lose the election, that doesn't mean you lost the war. It just means you lost the battle. You might be way better. You might be in way better position in the year or two years, because the truth is a funny thing. It doesn't necessarily manifest itself like a genie who grants his wishes right in this second. Well, years because the truth is a funny thing, you know, it doesn't necessarily manifest itself like a genie who grants his wishes right in this second. Well, I told the truth and I got in trouble and I'm never going to do that again. It's like no, that isn't how it works. It's a lifetime commitment to a certain mode of being, you know, and it's associated with the last thing I said in the lecture

tonight. It's like, and this is the this is the requirement of faith, I would say. You need faith because you don't know everything. So you have to have faith because you don't know everything and it fills the gap. And so here's something to have faith in. The truth will prevail. Now you think, oh my God, you know, I've told the truth and it's got me in trouble. So like, where's the prevailing there? And the answer is, well, it isn't going to prevail like this second and each time.

It's a lifelong strategy. It's the strategy of a warrior. It's a strategy of someone who wants to win the war and his willing to lose some battles, which you will definitely lose. And maybe they'll make you stronger the loss of the battles. And why is there, it's like, so if you're a politician out there, it's like, don't be thinking that your people are stupid. That's a mistake.

And don't be pandering to the worst in them, because you want to call forth the best in them, and you as well, and they'll appreciate that. And don't be afraid to allow yourself with the truth and say what you have to say, because you'll find that if you do that, and you do it well, that you'll have more allies than you know what to do with, and those who come after you will be defeated.

So that's what I would say to the politicians in the crowd. Applause This is a strange transition, but do you ever think of retiring? I have no idea what that means. I mean, I had this client, eh? I liked him quite a bit. He was a guy. He was one of these guys who took quite a while for him

to get his life together. He didn't really grow up till he was like 40. But he did. Then he got a job, and he had a wife and kid, and he was doing pretty good job of it. He had a good job, and he was doing a good job of it. And he was thinking about retiring as when he was 50 or 55 or some damn thing.

And I said, well, what are you envision when you retire? He said, well, I see myself on a tropical beach with a mity in my hand. And I thought, well, I think I told him this. I said, that's not a retirement plan. That's like a travel poster. It's like, OK, let's think this through since it's your life. OK, so now you're 55, right?

And you're a white Canadian guy. Okay, so first of all, you go down to a tropical beach and you strip down to your swimsuit and you sit out there with like an endless days worth of my ties. And the next day, you're so damn hungover that you wish you were dead and your son burnt to a crisp

and you look like a complete bloody fool, right? Your nose is peeling and you're laying in bed thinking, I don't know what you're thinking, time for another dozen my ties or something. Who knows? Well, what's that? How long is that going to work? Like it doesn't even work a day. It's not a plan.

It's the delusion of a 16 year old, you know? And so, and not a very bright one at that. So, so, I don't know what it would mean to retire. And I think it's important when people are thinking about, I mean, retire used to mean, you'd worked in the coal mine till you were 42, you had black lung, you could hardly stand up, and soon you were going to die.

Okay, so you retired. Well, why? Well, what else were you going to do? You know, but now maybe you're 60, you've got 30 years ahead of you. You know, because I think that's about life expectancy for a 60-year-old person, 30 years. It's like, better have a plan, plan man because that's a long time and and sitting on the beach with a my tie in your hand. That's not a good plan. That's just cirrhosis. So, you know, I'm gonna keep doing interesting things until I'm done whenever that is. And, you know, I want to pay as much attention as I can to my family while I'm doing all these other things.

But I'm not out of, long as my health holds out, I'm not out of things to do. There's all these problems we talked about tonight to solve. And I want to stagger forward against that as long as possible because there isn't anything better to do than that. And I'm after what there isn't anything better to do then. Because why not? You know, again, like I said tonight, this is an all-in game.

You've all staked your life on it. Right? It's dead serious. You should do the best thing you can conceptualize. Why not? What are you going to lose? Is it going to kill you? Well, yes. At least you have the nobility of the effort and God only knows what you might be able to accomplish in the meantime. I read Socrates' apology, which I would very much recommend. It's very short. The people of Athens wanted to kill them, the aristocrats, because he was always asking questions and telling the truth. And so he's very annoying, corrupting the youth

with his truth seeking. Well, that's what they said. You're corrupting the youth. And they told him, look, we're going to put you on trial. You old goat in six months. And what that meant was get out of town. Because otherwise, they would just come and murder him in his sleep.

They didn't want to kill him. They just wanted the old goat to go away. So they gave him lots of warning. And he went off and had this consultation with this faculty, internal faculty, he called his Damon, which I think we would equate with conscience. He said he had a voice in his head, a voice that always told him that if what he was doing was wrong.

It didn't tell him what was right, it just told him what was wrong. And he said, he always listened to it. That was what made him different than other people. If his Damon said, that's wrong, then he shut up or he didn't do it. And it made a vow, you know, like it was a divine vow. And that's what made him socrates. And that's what made the Delphi Choracle said that he was the wisest man in Greece. And that's why we still remember him. And he went off and had a little chat with his Daemon once he got the court order.

And it said, don't leave. And he thought, what the hell do you mean don't leave? These people are going to kill me. It's like, what kind of suggestion is that? It would be wrong to leave. That was the response. So, Socrates did what a philosopher would do, who had already made a vow. He said, well, you know, in for a penny, in for a pound, I already decided that I'm going to listen to this voice no matter what.

I must be wrong somehow. And he thought, well, okay, if I was wrong and I should stay, why? Well, he said, I'm old because he was in his 70s, maybe older at that point. He thought, well, that's not so good. I'm a philosopher. It's like next 10 years, you know It's gonna be kind of rough on me. I'll start losing my faculties so that's gonna be kind of miserable and

Well now I can put my affairs in order I can say goodbye to everybody that I love I can tie up my, and I can say to the jurors what I have to say when I am put on trial. And so he thought, he told all his friends, no, not leaving. And they weren't happy, man, they wanted him to leave because they liked having him around. No, he said, I,

Damon said, stay, I'm staying. So he stayed, then he went to court. And the transcripts, there's two of them, Plato wrote one and what is the other one? It'll come to me in a moment. There's two separate transcripts very short. They're like court transcripts. And it's amazing because Socrates now having decided that he wasn't afraid of death Or he was more afraid of something else, I suppose, which is different, just flipped the table. It's no wonder they wanted him gone.

He just went from jurist to jurist, telling them everything he had seen that they were doing that was corrupt and wrong. You know, he told one guy, well, you're corrupt and you've been a horrible father and your son is a waste trolling an alcoholic and everybody knows it. Six months after I'm dead, he's gonna destroy your life and you're gonna deserve it richly. And that was like one story and he had like a dozen of those. And then he went through everyone and said, what he had to say and then you knew why they wanted to kill him. And he said, you know, bring on the hemlock and that was that.

And what, well, so what's the point of the story? If you live your life enough, maybe that's enough. Because that's another way of thinking about death. You know, I'm perfectly happy to try to maintain my youth to the degree that that's possible and my health, but I have a suspicion that if you lived your life fully, if you exhausted yourself, if you made use of all the potential

that was around you and within you, that when you were done, you'd be done. And you could be done. And you could say, enough. Now, I don't know that, right? But I can feel that more as I get older. That because I've had kids, and I wouldn't have kids again. Not because I didn't love having kids.

I did, but I did that already. And it doesn't call to me anymore. I don't have an ambition to have kids again. Grandkids, that's fine. And I've had one career, and I wouldn't have that career again, because I already had that career. And so maybe you can exhaust yourself. And I guess that would be the hope for retirement

is that I can just exhaust myself. And so that when I'm done, I'm done. And I can just let go and think, you know, that was a hell of an adventure, which is I think the right thing to think about your life. Not about happiness. That's weak. It's like it was a hell of an adventure, you know?

Maybe it'd be worth doing it again, even, if I had the option. That was Nietzsche's idea, the myth of the eternal return. You should live your life so that if you had to live it again and again into eternity, that you would say yes to that as a possibility. That's something, something frightening to behold. So if you have your adventure, well that's what I want. I want to continue my adventure. And there's no retirement in that. There's transformation.

That, that seemed like the right ending, but you want one bonus one. Alright, I like this one. Have you thought about just giving free copies of 12 rules for life to the protesters outside? You give them free copies. You know, I've been in situations where I've faced like this animus possessed naked hostility, you know often with journalists and often with protesters and I don't like it What I see isn't the person I See what they're possessed by And I don't like to encounter that and so I'm not inclined to especially not in a mob, one on one it's different. Sometimes you can get underneath the puppet master, let's say, and have a conversation

with the person. But that ideological possession, especially in a group. It's like a league of demons. It's not something I'm interested in, in exposing myself to any more than necessary. And generally, it's not productive. It's responded to as if it's curing favor. And so they can buy the damn book just like everybody else.

That's the 13th rule by the way, buy the damn book yourself. On that note, guys, I'm going to get out of the way and make some noise for Dr. Jordan Peterson. Thank you guys very much Thanks, Steve Thank you very much everyone. It was a pleasure to be here. Good night. If you found this conversation meaningful, you might think about picking up Dad's books, maps of meaning the architecture of belief, or his newer bestseller, 12 rules for life and antidote to chaos. Both of these works delve much deeper into the topics covered in the Jordan B Peterson podcast.

See JordanBeePeterson.com for audio, e-book, and text text links or pick up the books at your favorite bookseller. Remember to check out JordanBe Peterson dot com slash 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, JordanBPeterson.com.

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