The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - The Master and His Emissary: Dr. Iain McGilchrist

Episode Date: February 21, 2018

While in the UK, recently, I had a chance to sit down for an all-too-short half-hour with Dr. Iain McGilchrist, author of The Master and His Emissary (description below). Our conversation was taped by Perspectiva (http://bit.ly/2EOCiU0), who described it as follows: "An extraordinary half-hour conversation about the brain, chaos, order, freedom, evil, mythology, being, and becoming between two of the leading thinkers of our time."

Welcome to the Jordan B. Peterson podcast. You can support these podcasts by donating to Dr. Peterson's Patreon, the link to which can be found in the description. Dr. Peterson's self-development programs, self-authoring, can be found at selfauthoring.com. Well, I have a question. I guess I'd like to know a little bit more about why you specifically chose the title, the master and the emissary. Yeah.

That's to, in an attempt to explain what I believe to be the relationship between the three brain hemispheres. And like most other things in life, they're inequal and asymmetrical. And that one of the brain hemispheres sees more than the other. That is the one that I've designated the master. And it's the right hemisphere. That's a weird inversion, because people often think of the left hemisphere as the one that's dominant.

They do. They do traditionally. That's been the case. But as is becoming ever clearer, the right hemisphere, Mae'n gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r fforddd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r fford So that's what I'm really saying there is there's a good reason why evolutionally speaking the two brain hemispheres are separate.

And when you say that doesn't get involved, what's the advantage of that detachment from the involvement? Well, it's that Ramoni Kakhal, who you known gwneud ysgryd hystopatholodio. Yn gwybod ymwch yn prymate sy'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud. Yn gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gw proportionately and there are more kinds as well. So we think that about 25% of the entire cortex is inhibitory. So it's a very strong effect and the corpus callosum seems to be very largely in the end inhibiting function in the other hemisphere. And that is, I think, because over time, the two hematophiles have had to specialise. There are reasons why I actually can't be, I'm not going to go into now, but

I was talking about just a few days ago at the evolutionary psychiatry meeting. But there are reasons why the Corpus callosum has had to become more selective and to inhibit quite a lot of what's going on in the other hemisphere because it enables the two to do distinct things. And of course they have to work together but usually good teamwork doesn't mean everyone trying to do the same role. So differentiation is very important for two elements to work together and inhibition is one way of doing that. So effectively the two takes on the world if you like ym yn ymwyr i'n gweithio'r ymwyr i'n gweithio. Mae'n gweithio'r ymwyr i'n gweithio'r ymwyr i'n gweithio'r ymwyr i'n gweithio'r ymwyr i'n gweithio'r ymwyr i'n gweithio'r ymwyr i'n gweithio'r ymwyr i'n gweithio'r ymwyr i'n gweithio'r ymwyr i'n gweithio'r ymwyr i'n gweithio'r ymwyr i'n gweithio'r ymwyr i'n gweithio'r ymwyr i'n gweithio'r ymwyr i'n gweithio'r ymwyr i'n gweithio'r ymwyr i'n gweithio'r ymwyr i'n gweithio'r ymwyr i'n gweithio'r ymwyr i'n gweithio'r ymwyr i'n gweithio'r ymwyr i'n gweithio'r ymwyr i'n gweithio'r ymwyr i'n gweithio'r ymwyr i'n gweithio'r ymwyr i'n gweithio'r ymwyr i'n gweithio'r ymwyr i'n gweithio'r ymwyr i'n gweithio'r ymwyr i'n gweithio'r ymwyr i'n gweithio'r ymwyr i'n gweithio'r ym experience, we don't feel we're in two different worlds, but effectively we are. And they have different qualities and different goals, different values, different takes on what is important in the world and what meaning or whatever it is. So let me ask you about, I've got, I've developed a conceptual scheme for thinking about the

relationship between the two hemispheres and I'm kind of, I've been curious about what you think about it and how it might map onto or not your ideas. So I've been really interested in the orienting reflex and discovered by Sokolov, I think, back in about 1962, right, he was a student of Luria. And the orienting reflexes manifested when something, at least in their terminology, something unpredictable happened.

I've thought much more recently that it's actually when something undesired happened, happens, and the laboratory constraints obscured that, and that turned out to actually be important. So I kind of put together the ideas of the oranting reflex with some of the things I learned from Jung's observations on the function of art and dreams. So imagine that you have a conceptual scheme laid out and we could say that it's linguistically mediated, it's enforced on the world and then there are exceptions to that to that conceptual scheme and those are anomalies, those are the things that are unexpected and the Oranting Reflects orient you towards those. And so those are things that aren't fitting property in your conceptual scheme that you have to figure out.

So the first thing you do is react defensively essentially because it might be dangerous. And then your exploratory systems are activated. So and the exploratory systems, first of all, are enhanced attention, just from an intentional perspective. But then, and this is where the art issue sort of creeps into it, the idea would be something like the right hemisphere generates an imaginative landscape of possibility that could map that anomaly. So you can kind of experience that if it's at night, you know, like say you're sitting

alone at night, it's two or three in the morning, you're kind of tired, maybe you're in an unfamiliar place, and there's a noise that happens that shouldn't happen in another room. You can play with that, so for example, if you open the door slightly and put your hand in to turn on the light, and you watch what happens, your mind will fill with imaginative representations of what might be in the room, right? So it's like the landscape of anomaly will be populated with something like imaginative demons. And that's a first pass approximation. And it seems to me that that's a right hemispheric function.

And then that, as you explore further, that imaginative domain, which circumscribes what might be, is constrained and constrained and constrained and constrained until you get what it actually is. And that's specialized and routinized. It's something like that. Does that seem like a reasonable, what do you think about that? I love that. For a whole host of reasons, one is you mentioned defense.

And one of the ideas behind my hypothesis is that the right hemisphere is on the lookout for predators. Right. Whereas the left hemisphere is looking for prey. And this has been confirmed in many species of... I'd never heard that second part. Amphibians and mammals, yes. So when you're in the left hemisphere mode, you're more in predator mode, and when you're in right hemisphere mode, you're more in...

Well, of course we are not lizards or toads or mamasets or whatever, but in animals generally speaking, this is the case. Getting and grasping, and after all, our left hemisphere is the one that controls the grasping head, is left hemisphere. And exploring, which you mentioned, is more right hemisphere.

And when a frontal function is deficient, a'r ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn y like to gloss that a little, you seem to suggest that it would be good. We can't get rid of chaos, but you seem to imply that it would be better if we could. Whereas my view is that chaos and order are necessary to one another, and there is a proper sort of harmony or balance. Yeah, well, okay. I think that's as deep a question as you could possibly ask, I would say in some sense. I mean, I would say there's a central theological issue there. In Genesis, the proper environment of humanity is construed as a garden. And so I see that as the optimal balance of chaos in order. Nature is flourishing, and it's prolific in its chaotic. Then if you add harmony to that, you have garden. So you live in the garden, you're supposed to tend the garden.

Okay, so now the garden is created. It's a walled space because even as a walled space, it's a paradise, it's a walled garden. Now the thing is, as soon as you make a wall, you try to keep what's outside out, but you can't because the boundaries between things are permeable. So if you're going to have reality and you're going to have a bounded space, you're going to have a snake in the garden. Now then the question is, what the hell should you do about that? Should you make the walls so high that no snake can possibly get in? Or should you allow for the possibility of snakes but make yourself strong enough so that you can contend with them?

And I think there's an answer there that goes deep to the question of even maybe why theological question of why God allowed evil to exist in the world. I agree with you. It's like, well, do you make people say for strong? And strong is better. And safe might not be commensurate with being. It might not be possible to exist and to be safe. Well, existence is predicated on the fact that we die. Well, it's never safe. Well, it's certainly predicated on the fact that we die, so it's never safe.

Well, it's certainly bounded, right? Yeah, yeah, it's inevitably wrapped up with this sort of finitude. So there's this old, there's a lovely, lovely Jewish idea, ancient ideas. It's one of the most profound ideas I've ever come across. And so it's kind of a Zen cone, and here it is, is that, so it's a question about the classic attributes of God, omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent. What is it being with those three attributes, lack? What kind of question is that? The answer is limitation. And the

second answer is that's the justification for being, is that the unlimited lacks the limited. Exactly. And so the limited is us. For anything to come into existence, there needs to be an element of resistance. And so things are never predicated on one pole of what is always a dipole. Right. Everything has that dipole. Yeah, it's like a prerequisite for me. It is.

And it's imaged in the yin-yin idea. But it seems to me very important, because in our cult too, we often seem to suppose that a'r ysg and therefore you can carry on with things as normal. And the other is... That's the hopeful, that's what you hope will happen. That's the typical left hemisphere approach. It doesn't want anything to have to shift. Yeah. And quite reasonably, you don't want to be chaoticly shifting if you're onto a good thing. Yeah, it's too stressful. Exactly.

It takes too much work. And you might actually be mistaken. So in a way, it's perfectly correct to be wary. But it's not correct to be so wary that you blot out anomalous Mae'n gweithio'r gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn gweithio yn important element in the right hemisphere going hang on but there may be another way of thinking that will accommodate this better and actually good science needs yes to be skeptical about anomalies otherwise the becails but it also needs to be able to shift when an anomaly is and they large enough or there are quite a lot of them and they don't really fit very well into this. Exactly, yes, yes. So there's another observation that Jung made, which I love that I love this observation, he was trying to account for radical personality transformation. Right. And so his idea was this and I think it's it's it's commensurate with the ideas of

inhibition between the two hemispheres. So let's imagine the left is habitually inhibiting the function of the right to keep fear under control. It does that all sorts of ways. the function of the right to keep fear under control. It does that all sorts of ways. So imagine that the right is reacting to anomalies and it's aggregating them. The left can't deal with them, so the right is aggregating anomalies. Maybe that's starting to manifest itself in nightmarish dreams, for example. These anomalies are piling up. It's indication that you're on shifting sand. So then imagine that the right hemisphere aggregates anomalies, and then it starts to detect patterns in the anomalies. And so now it starts to generate what you might consider

a counter hypothesis to the left hypothesis. If that counter hypothesis gets to the point where the total sum, in some sense, of the anomalies plus the already mapped territory can be mapped by that new pattern, then at some point it will shift, and the person will kick into a new personality configuration. It's like a Piagetian stage transition, except more dramatic. It is, and what a Piagetian stage transition is also like, and it subsumes both, is hegelian a'r hygaelion a'r ffordd, a'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd or fforddr ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o ffordd o'r Here's a question for you. When I read Thomas Kuhn, I was reading Piaget at the same time.

And I knew that Piaget was aware of Kuhn's work, by the way. And the problem I had with Kuhn and the interpreters of Kuhn is they don't seem to get something who interpret Kuhn as a moral relativist in some sense. They don't seem to get the idea of increased generalizability of plan. So let's say I have a theory and a bunch of anomalies accrue

and I have to wipe out the theory. And so then I wipe out the theory and I incorporate the anomalies and now I have another theory. So that's a descent into chaos. That's my estimation, that's the old story. So the anomaly disruption is the mythical descent into chaos. And then you reconfigure the theory with the chaos

and you come up with a better theory. Yes. Okay, the question is, why is it better? And the answer is, well it accounts for everything that the previous theory account has been plus the anomalies. Exactly. So there's progress.

Oh, it is. Yes, exactly. But Koon is often read as stating that there is no progress. That, you know, there's in commensurate paradigms and you have to just shift between them. But there isn't cumulative knowledge in some sense. Well, I think one thing that when we probably Mae'n gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r ysgwch i'n gweithio, a'r ysgwch i'n gweithio. Mae'n gweithio'r ysgwch i'n gweithio, ac mae'n gweithio'r ysgwch i'n gweithio. Mae'n gweithio'r ysgwch i'n gweithio. Mae'n gweithio'r ysgwch i'n gweithio.

Mae'n gweithio'r ysgwch i'n gweithio. Mae'n gweithio'r ysgwch i'n gweithio. Mae'n gweithio'r ysgwch i'n gweithio. Mae'n gweithio. Mae'n gweithio. Mae'n gweithio. Mae'n gweithio. Mae'n gweithio. a'r ysgwch, a'r ysgwch, a'r ysgwch, a'r ysgwch, a'r ysgwch, a'r ysgwch, a'r ysgwch, a'r ysgwch, a'r ysgwch, a'r ysgwch, a'r ysgwch, a'r ysgwch, a'r ysgwch, a'r ysgwch, a'r ysgwch, a'r ysgwch, a'r ysgwch, a'r ysgwch, a'r ysgwch, a'r ysgwch, a'r ysgwch, a'r ysgwch, a'r ysgwch, a'r ysgwch, a'r ysgwch, a'r ysgwch, a'r ysgwch, a'r ysgwch, a'r ysgwch, a'r ysgwch, a'r ysgwch, a'r ysgwch, a'r ysgwch, a'r ysgwch, a'r ysgwch, a'r ysgwch, a'r ysgwch, a'r ysgwch, a'r ysgwch, a'r ysgwch, a'r ysgwch, a'r ysgwch, a'r ysgwch, a'r ysgwch, a'r ysgwch, a'r ysgwch, a'r ysgwch, a'r ysgwch, a'r ysgwch, a'r I think we would agree about that, but I think that maybe a slight point of difference between us in the time, very willing to embrace the idea of uncertainty.

And I may be wrong, perhaps you could expand on that, but sometimes you come across as a man who has certainties that... Well, it's a peculiar kind of certainty. I'm certain that standing on the border between the order and chaos is a good idea. Good. That's a weird certainty, because... Exactly. You need to be in the sort of slightly unstable position. Yeah, you have to.

You have to be, what would you say, encountering as much uncertainty as you can voluntarily tolerate. I think that's equivalent to Vygotsky's zone of proximal development. And I also, so when we talked a little bit earlier about the idea of an instinct for meaning. So I think what meaning is, it's the elaborated form of the oranting reflex. But what meaning does, it's function, it's biological function, which I think is more real in some sense than any other biological function, is to tell you when you're in the place where you've balanced the stability, let's say, of

your left hemisphere systems, with the exploratory capacity of your right, so that not only are you master of your domain, but you're expanding that domain simultaneously. And when you, I think that when you're there, it's a kind of a metaphysical place in some sense, that you're imbued with a sense of meaning and purpose, and that's an indication that you've actually optimized your neurological function. Yes, and perhaps we could gloss the idea of purpose, because I think there's a difference between people get very confused, I think, about the idea of purpose, particularly whether Mae'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r fwy'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r

gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r things are unfolding, they have overall a direction, but actually exactly what that direction

is, isn't known. That's what it looks like. It's a fool who says anything positive about the nature of God, but I'm not convinced that God is omniscient and omnipotent either. I think God is in the process of is becoming. God is not only just becoming, but is becoming, it's a dummy. Yeah, so being and becoming. God is not only just becoming, but is becoming, it's just a dummy. Yeah, so being and becoming. More becoming, I think becoming is important thing.

Why do you think that? It's also a strange segue. I mean, I'm not criticizing, but I'm curious what drove you to that conclusion. An awful lot of things really. I think that everything is a process. In fact, I'm writing a book called There Are No Things. Oh, why are there instead? There are processes. Yes. And there are patterns. Patterns, that's why I think music is so powerful. Music is one of the most mysterious and wonderful things in the universe. And I don't think it's a tool foolish of people to have thought that the planetary motions were in some way like that. No, not all throw food in the shadows. No, it's a great insight. Kind of music. I think it is very important inside.

Well music, you know, I've thought, and I've said this in public lectures, that music is the most representative of the arts. Because the world has made out of patterns. Music describes how those patterns should be arranged. You're using representatives in a very different way. I know, but it depends on what you mean by representative. And what is so? It's representing the ultimate reality of the cosmos. Well, I would like to say,

representative, in that it's not representing anything. It is actually when we're in the presence of music, something is coming into being, which is at the core of the whole cosmic process. I think that's where people love music. They do, and I mean, it's hardly a originality in the idea, because lots of physicists say that the movements of atoms and the movements of planets and so forth are more like a dance or music than they are like things bumping into it.

Right, right, right, right. So, I thought of things as patterns that people have made into tools. I agree with you, and tools are what the left handbister is always looking for. It's always looking for something to grasp. It rayifies processes that, it's all on matter of time. Every single thing, including the mountain behind my house. If you were able to, which is billions of years old, Mae'n gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweith So what a lot of the history of more recent Christianity has done is to think if I, God and heaven perfect states that are unaltered and so on.

And I think that it is an ever more wonderfully self exploring, self actualising process that requires a degree of opposition, you know, as a stream in order to have the movement and the, and the, the ideas and patterns in it. Are there intimations like that in all the death? Death. When I experienced, I'm sorry to describe these experiences, but when I contemplated death deeply,

it's as struck me as a me as a fundamental repair mechanism, like it's part of the mechanism by which new things that are better are brought into being. Absolutely. And I mean, you see that in your own being, because of course, without death, you couldn't live. Yes. Because you're dying, the things about you that aren't right,

even at a physiological level, are dying all the time. They are. Unfortunately, you also completely die, which is to be able to be on the unfortunate side. But more cosmically speaking, it does seem to me that death is the... I don't know, man, I've had intuitions or intimations that death is the friend of being. And that's... It's hard to get my head around that, but... I can keep the agreement with you. And indeed, that's being said by many, many

wise people than myself, maybe even the new yourself. i'n gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r negatwch. Mae'r negatwch yn ymwyr i'n proses o'r byddech yn ymwyr i'n byddech yn ymwyr i'n byddech. A'r ysgwch yn ymwyr i'n byddech yn ymwyr i'n byddech yn ymwyr i'n byddech yn ymwyr i'n byddech yn ymwyr i'n byddech yn ymwyr i'n byddech yn ymwyr i'n byddech yn ymwyr i'n byddech yn ymwyr i'n byddech yn ymwyr i'n byddech yn ymwyr i'n byddech yn ymwyr i'n byddech yn ymwyr i'n byddech yn ymwyr i'n byddech yn ymwyr i'n byddech yn ymwyr i'n byddech yn ymwyr i'n byddech yn ymwyr i'n byddech yn ymwyr i'n byddech yn ymwyr i'n byddech yn ymwyr i'n byddech yn ymwyr i'n byddech yn ymwyr i'n byddech yn ymwyr i'n byddech yn ymwyr i'n byddech yn ymwyr i'n byddech yn ymwyr i'n byddech yn ymwyr i'n byddech yn ymwyr i'n byddech yn ymwyr i'n byddech yn ymwyr i'n byddech yn ymw i we come from a place, but also as a culture we have history, we can't detach ourselves from it, we're expressions of it, but we're also inevitably dependent as all organisms are on the environment, where I end and where the quote environment begins is, I don't like the word environment, it's just nature, which suggests something that's always being born, where it's environment,

it's only around me from which I'm separate. But anyway, all of that is connected. And you can oppose to. Yes, yes. So I would see us as like an Eddie in a stream, or like a wave in the sea, that it's never separate. Shrodinger talking about life. Well, well, I mean, the coming together of physics with this, with the process of philosophy, a very strong. So when does that book come out? When I finish writing it. Oh, yeah. And I'm very worried that it's getting bigger

and all the time I'm writing it, I'm seeing more and more of things that I really must get to know more about. And it's an ever-receding. Well, it's a danger of a book that aims at something fundamental because you never hit the proper boundaries. That's it. I need that wall. Yes. Yeah, well, I also had experiences, I would say, when I was trying to understand, I still imagine it

of experiences when I was trying to understand, let's say, the necessity of evil. Because that's also a fundamental theological conundrum and a metaphysical conundrum. Why is it that being is constituted such that evil is allowed to exist? It's Ivan Karamazov's critique of allotious Christianity essentially. What kind of God would allow for this sort of thing? It's an ancient question. Part of what I thought about the adversarial element to that, which is that you need a challenge,

because you're not forced to bring forth what you could bring forth without a challenge. And the greater the thing that you're supposed to bring forth, the greater the challenge has to be. So you need an adversary, something like that. But then I also thought that it's possible that being requires limitation. You might say optimal being requires free choice. I know I'm going through a lot of things quickly.

Free choice requires the real distinction between good and evil, without that you don't have choice. Also, maybe it's possible to set up a world where evil is a possibility, but where it isn't something that has to be manifest, where it's an option open to you and a real option and it has to be, and the challenge that was presented to you, but it's something that you cannot move towards if you so desire, and that seems to me to be something like the ethical requirement, that's the fundamental ethical requirement to avoid evil. That doesn't mean it shouldn't exist. It's not the same issue.

No, it isn't. It isn't. And I wonder, one could recast it as the need for otherness. God needs something other. And that other, if it's not going to be just part of God, has got to be free. Otherwise, there will be no creation. I mean, the nature that there is something

other than God. It may in the end come from and come back to that God, or that divine essence or that whatever. But there's a one of the cool things I can't figure out either. Like in the Christian idea, there's the end of time where the evil is separated from God. And I think about that as a metaphysical... Well, you might think if it's a form of... Imagine it's a form of perfection, a form of striving for perfection. You fragment yourself, you challenge yourself, throw what's not worthy into the fire of elastic, something like that.

And so what you end up with retained is much better than what you started with through the trials, something like that. Well that sounds a bit like the dialectical process that we were talking about. Right. And you've alluded to a couple of very good Jewish myths. And there's one in the Lurean Kavala about the creation, which I don't know if you know it, but it's absolutely riveting to me. The idea is that the primary being ends off the ground of all being, needs something other to come into being the creation and that creation What does that aims off do?

Was this his first act? Is it to stretch out a hand and make something? Not a bit. The first act is to withdraw to create a place in which the can be something other than veins off and so the first stage is called Sim Sum and it sounds negative as so many creative things do with draw. And then in that space there are vessels and a spark comes out of veins off and falls into the vessels and they all shatter. And that's called Shefford Attakeni, the chapter in the verse. Yes, you're right. Yes. And then there is the third stage, repair,

in which what has just been fragmented is restored into something greater. And so this process carries on. And it's, in my terms, very like what happens with the hemisphere. The right hemisphere is the one that is first accepting. It is sort of actively receptive, if you can put it that way, to whatever is new. You were talking about golden and goldbark and so. And then whatever that is is then sort of processed by the left hemisphere at the next stage

into categories, so it's bit of that and try to understand it. But of course, whatever it is is much bigger than any of the categories, so they all break down. And it gets restored in the right hemisphere into a new hole that to cool them, the repair. And it's too cool, right? T-I-K-K-U-F. T-I-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K- easy way of thinking about is learning a piece of music. Your first of all attracted to it as a whole. You then realize that you need to practice that piece at bar 28 and you realize that at bar 64 there's a return to the dominant or something.

And then actually when you go on stage, you've got to just forget all about that. But it's not that that work was lost. It's just that it's no longer present. Right, Right. Thank you for listening to the Jordan D. Peterson podcast. To support these podcasts, you can donate to Dr. Peterson's Patreon account, the link to which can be found in the description of this episode.

Patreon account, the link to which can be found in the description of this episode. Dr. Peterson's self-development programs can be found itself authoring the dot com.