The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - Why You Should Treat Yourself as if You Have Value

Episode Date: August 25, 2019

Jordan's 12 Rules for Life lecture from July, 28 2018 in Edmonton, AB.

Welcome to season 2, episode 23 of the Jordan B Peterson podcast. I'm Michaela Peterson, Dad's daughter, collaborator, manager, and the member of the Peterson squad that has the most police tear. Though who knows, maybe Blancet's dad too. So if I sound a bit off, I have a cold from my toddler, but the show must go on. Huge weekly update this week. It was mum and dad's 30th anniversary, August 17th, and we got news that day that her surgical complication healed. So that was a good day for that kind of news, although any day is a good day for that kind of news. Thank goodness for flying to the States.

The actual procedure itself was unsuccessful. They couldn't surgically fix the chylous leak, but they injected some magical oil into mom and boom she's fixed. It'll take a while for her to recover fully. She was in the hospital for five weeks, but we're out of the woodwork. Is that the saying? I don't think that's the saying. So hooray for that.

The Q&A I mentioned on last week's podcast didn't actually go out. I was still out of source from this whole medical stress thing. When a family members on the verge of peril, it really messes with your productivity among other things. The Q&A will be out next week, though. Again, that's Michaela Peterson on YouTube. I'll talk a bit about what happened to Mum. Another thing, if you haven't signed it up for Think Spot yet, the intellectual social media platform dad's a part of, please head over and sign up. I'll be on there too, spreading my eat more meat and nonsense among other things, intermittent fasting, how to stop sucking at life.

Although you're doing a good job by listening to this podcast, not that I would suggest the people are sucking at life exactly, but I used to be. Anyway, please enjoy this podcast. A 12-Rules for Life Lecture from 2018 recorded in Edmonton, Alberta, where dad was born. When we return, why you should treat yourself as if you have value. A 12-Rules for Life Lecture by Jordan Peterson.

Join the Peters End! The Dave come out here and say this was Toronto. He doesn't know that that can get you killed. Anyways, it's very nice to be here and thank thank you, thank you very much for the warm welcome. I appreciate it a lot. It's quite shocking and to see you all here. And I'm extremely happy about it. It was nice to be an Edmonton today. It's nice to come back out to the prairies

and see the big sky and nice crisp cool days and nice hot sun. It's nice to be back. So, yeah. So, I thought I would start by talking tonight about the second rule in my book, 12 rules for life, which is treat yourself like you're someone responsible for helping. This is a rule I like quite a lot as a clinical psychologist, in my experience, that really hasn't been true. It's true for some people, but I don't really think it is true for most people.

We can act ego-tistically and selfishly. Often people do that when they're feeling hurt, I would say. But my experience, really, with people has been quite the opposite, is that many people, perhaps most, tend to treat other people better than they treat themselves. And I think the reason for that, and then they treat their pets better than they treat themselves too, which is technically true.

It's something that I learned this years ago, I was working on a, what would you call it, a psychomedical problem. And it's a serious problem. It had two parts. One part of it was we were trying to deal with medical error, because medical error is the fourth leading cause of death, which is quite a terrifying thing, if you think about it. And we were trying to figure out how we could help physicians

and nurses and pharmacists and so forth, decrease the probability that they would make a mistake. But we're always also looking into some of the common failings of the medical system, which aren't things that you would necessarily expect. So one of the common failings of the medical system is that if you go get a prescription, if you go to the physician and you get a prescription, but a third of you won't even fill the prescription. And then of the remaining two thirds,

half won't take the prescription properly. And so, well, so that's a big problem if the prescription is actually going to help you and you don't even fill it, obviously, that's not gonna help you very much. But then I was reading about that, trying to figure out why it was that people would not fill their prescription or take the drug properly.

And I came across a study that showed that they, if you take your pet to the vet, and your pet sick, and the vet gives you a prescription, then you're quite likely to go get the prescription filled much more likely than you would if it was just for you. And you're also quite likely to ensure that you give your pet the medication properly. And it's hard to conclude from that anything other than you like your pet better than you like you. And so, I thought a lot about that, why that might be the case. to conclude from that anything other than you like your pet better than you like you. And so I thought a lot about that, why that might be the case.

I mean, I can't see any other real explanation because you might say, well, you don't fill the prescription because you don't trust doctors. It's like, well, yeah, but why would you trust a vet then? It's the same thing, you know, so it can't be just mistrust. And you know, people do really like their pets. You can kind of tell why if you have a dog or a cat, but a dog, let's say for this example, you come home and your dog is insanely thrilled to see you. I know he's just a dog and maybe doesn't have the best of taste, but it is really nice. Well, dogs, they'll pretty much

eat anything. So it does put their taste in question, but they are spectacularly happy to see you. And so it's easy to have unconditional love for a pet. And it's not so easy to have that for yourself. And so the question is why? And I think part of the reason for that is that one of the problems with being as smart as we are as

self-conscious human beings is that we're very aware of our own inadequacies and you know you're aware of everyone's inadequacies. You're aware of your brothers inadequacies and your friends inadequacies and your partners inadequacies, but you're really aware of your own inadequacies like you got you've got a front-row seat to your own inadequacies, but you're really aware of your own inadequacies. Like you've got a front row seat to your own inadequacies. You have a tally of them in your mind, and they're there right in front of you every day. And so I think, and sometimes those inadequacies are pretty damn severe. You know, you stumble over your own errors as you make your way forward in life. And it's easy to be harsh and judgmental towards yourself. And a certain amount of that is justified, because you need to hold yourself to task and so forth.

But it doesn't necessarily mean that you'll come out all that positively inclined to yourself. And so maybe you don't take care of yourself that well. And one of the ways that that's reflected is maybe you go see a physician, maybe you wait a little too long, and then you don't take your medication properly and then you die, and that's not so good. And so, because there's people around that probably would just soon you're around. Your path too is just happy that you're around. So you can take your damn medication just for your path, you know?

So that's partly why I wrote the second rule, which is treat yourself as if you're someone responsible for helping. And there's a deep idea that's associated with that too, because you might say, well, why should I treat myself like I have any value? Because that's really what that rule boils down to. And the answer, here's an answer, it's not a complete answer, but it's a partial answer. And you know one of the things I've studied is the origin of the idea of

sovereignty. So sovereignty is as a concept, sovereignty is the concept of the rightful locale of power and authority, mostly authority, let's say, if it's proper sovereignty. And human beings have tried to figure out what constituted sovereignty for a very, very long time. You know, we've organized ourselves into hierarchies and for the longest time we lived under essentially monarchicals, tribal or monarchical structures with kings, let's say Amperus, Queens, and so forth.

But even then, even when our societies were both tribal and monarchical, there was an idea that the king didn't necessarily have absolute sovereignty. The king was subordinate to something else that was sovereign in and of itself. Now, that thing was usually some religious representation. So, even if you were an emperor, like if you were the emperor of ancient Mesopotamia, you were a manifestation of a god, and the god's name was Marduk, and he was the Mesopotamian Savior for better words.

If you were an Egyptian Pharaoh, then you were a manifestation of Horus and Osiris, both at the same time. Horus, the all-seeing eye and Osiris, sort of the god of tradition, very brilliant idea. But the point was that there was something that was sovereign and you were only representing that. And then as our societies developed, as they become, as they, as the Jewish influence

grew and the Greek influence and then the Christian influence grew, then we started to understand that sovereignty actually was a manifestation of everyone and that it was, it was, it was, it was, it, it was, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it least the capability for genuine authority, and that if you were going to establish a functional political system, the most functional, possible political system, that you would attribute sovereignty, divine sovereignty, essentially, you would attribute divine sovereignty to every single individual. And that's a hell of a revelation, because it's not, it's by no means obvious, right? What's more obvious is that the most powerful person

in the group rules, that's the basis of tyranny, let's say. But the idea that sovereignty is somehow an intrinsic attribute of everyanny, let's say. But the idea that sovereignty is somehow an intrinsic attribute of every individual, that's a crazy idea. And it flies in the face of self-evident truth to some degree, given the radical differences in ability between people. But nonetheless, that is what our society is predicated on the idea that each individual has something approximating,

at least a relationship with divine sovereignty. Now, that's why I've been insisting in 12 rules for life, and in my lectures and so forth, that our political system, which stresses the individual above all, is grounded in an underlying system that's essentially religious in structure, that makes a case that each person is properly conceptualized as manifesting something divine. It's intrinsic to them and that it's part of the structure that gives rise to being itself.

I really believe, after having studied this forever, at least forever in terms of my own life, I really believe that that's true. I don't think there's a more accurate way of stating it, even though it's kind of, what would you say? It fuses out into metaphysics, you can't get a grip on it completely. But we all act out the proposition that each of us has intrinsic worth. First of all, we have our rights enshrined

in our bill of rights, a document, by the way. I'm not very fond of, but it doesn't matter. The principles behind it are, I don't like it because it delineates the rights. In the English common law system, you have all the rights there are. They're not given to you by the government. You just have them. And then the government, yeah,

and that's a much better system. I don't like the Bill of Rights, particularly the Canadian Bill of Rights, because there's an idea implicit that the government, or at least some institution, is granting you these rights. It's like, no, sorry, that's not how it works. But in any case, in some sense, that's a side issue. And so I won't go there. But the fundamental issue is that you wouldn't have rights if there wasn't an underlying idea

that there was something about you that was of supreme value. And we really take this seriously in Western societies. We really take this seriously. It's oddly Seriously. So for example, even if you're a murderer, even if people see you kill someone Even if the evidence is overwhelming that you've done something reprehensible You're still protected against the intrusion of the state and other people because you have intrinsic value, right? Which even as a as a criminal, even if you're a convicted criminal, you there's still things the state and other people cannot do to you because no matter how far you fallen There's something that's still valuable about you and you might think well, do you believe that and well?

Believe that's a strange thing, you know people often ask me do you believe that? And, well, belief, that's a strange thing. People often ask me what I believe. And I think, well, I don't know what you mean when you ask that question. So it's very difficult to answer it. But we act out in our societies. We act out the belief that each of us has sovereign value. And then you think, well, is that actually a credible claim?

Well, our societies work pretty well. So from the perspective of pragmatic proof, if a society works well, you might think that the fundamental principles upon which it's founded are at least functionally useful. And so the idea of individual sovereignty seems to manifest itself in very, very functional, political, and economic systems.

It's also the case that if you have a relationship with someone, I don't care who it is. It could be your wife or your husband, could be your brother, could be a friend, co-worker, doesn't matter. Anybody that you interact with on a regular basis, relatively intimate basis, if you don't act like they have intrinsic value, then you're not going to have much of a relationship.

That's sort of like the relationship between a psychopath and his target. If the relationship is predicated on the idea that the person you're interacting with is a locus of worth in and of themselves, then you can actually have a relationship. You can listen to them, they can listen to you, you can negotiate, you know, you can, you can make the most out of each other that that might be another way of thinking about

it. And so if you don't believe that each person has value, then you can't really have a good relationship with someone. And so you can't have a, and you can't, this is, this is more germane, let's say, to rule two, which is that you should treat yourself like you're someone responsible for helping. It's like you actually can't have a very good relationship with yourself unless you make the assumption that you have intrinsic worth. And so you think, well, if you assume that people you two have have individual worth, then you can get along with yourself, you can actually have an okay life.

In the absence of that belief, you're gonna think, well, what am I doing here? I'm suffering away stupidly, and I'm not worth anything, there's no point to my life, I'm not good for anything, like, why should I even be here? That doesn't seem like a very good recipe for happy, continued, meaningful, productive existence,

and it's certainly other people around you that love you aren't going to be happy about the fact that that's how you regard yourself. You know, that's a non-starter as far as they're concerned. If you have a child, if you have a son or a daughter, and they're down on themselves so hard that they doubt their intrinsic worth, that's going to make you extremely unhappy as a parent.

You can hardly imagine anything worse that can possibly happen than that. There are worse things, but there's always worse things, you know, but that's still pretty bad. And so, if you abandon the idea of individual value and intrinsic individual value, you can't get along with yourself, you can't make relationships with other people that are intimate and you're no good and you're and you're and you can't found a community that works properly for everyone. And so that's pretty good evidence as far as I'm concerned that the hypothesis of intrinsic value is a solid one. And I also think it has extraordinarily deep philosophical and even theological underpinnings.

Well, I would say philosophical, biological and theological underpinnings, all pointing in the same direction. And maybe I can discuss that a little bit tonight. We'll see if I get there. But back to rule two, treat yourself like you're someone responsible for helping. I phrased that rule very carefully actually. I didn't say treat yourself nicely. I didn't say feel sorry for yourself. I didn't say raise yourself a steam. None of that.

I use the word responsible because I think it's the right word, because if you have intrinsic worth, and that intrinsic worth is so fundamental that it actually constitutes the cornerstone of our civilization, which it does, then you're responsible for responding properly to that. And I think that's independent of what you think of yourself in some sense. It means in some ways you have to detach yourself from yourself, despite the fact that you know all your inadequacies and all that.

You have to think, well, even though I know all the ways that I'm unworthy, let's say, and I'm up at night at sometimes at three in the morning, you know, worrying about how I'm manifesting myself in the world much more poorly than I could, and I have things that I'm ashamed of, and that I do badly in all that, even though all that's true, I'm still morally bound to take responsibility for myself as if I have some value. And so then I wanted to tell you about some work we've done on that idea. So I teach this course at the University of Toronto

in a course called Maps of Meaning. And it's based on the first book I wrote, which provided the groundwork, let's say, for 12 rules for life. It's a much more complex book and it's deeper, I would say. It's harder. I released an audio version of that book on June 12th, and so if you found 12 rules for life useful and meaningful, then you could give maps of meaning of crock. It's hard going. When I reread it, it took me about 60 hours to reread it out loud. There were chapters in it that I had a hard time understanding, even though I wrote them 25 years ago. Well,

they were really, when I wrote them, like I was spending, like literally hours, hours, certainly hours on each paragraph. And certainly, for some sentences, 20 or 35 minutes each sentence crafting it. So I was really pushing myself to the limits of my intellectual ability. And so going back over it, wasn't the casual thing. And I still had to really think through what I was saying because I didn't have it right at

hand. So it's a hard book. But I taught a course on that book for 28, 25 years. Most of the people who have taken the course, the vast majority of students have found it very engaging, I would say, and very meaningful. And lots of people have watched it very engaging, I would say, and very meaningful, and lots of people have watched it online. And it was turned into oddly enough, into a 13-part TV series on TV Ontario,

a number of years ago. And then the more popularized version of it, let's say. And in some sense, a more articulate version turned into 12 rules for life, and that's become very popular. And so anyways, there's a hypothesis in 12 rules for life, and that's become very popular. And so, anyways, there's a hypothesis in 12 rules for life, and the hypothesis is something like, the best way to understand your life is as a story. And maybe the best way to understand reality is as a story.

Because your life is reality, you know? It's really the reality that you have. And we tend to tell stories about our lives, and we tend to understand lives as if their stories. And maps of meaning is about stories, about their structure. And one of the things, and about what it means to be the protagonist of your own plot, let's say,

or the hero of your own story, because there's a rule that I sort of learned from the psychoanalysts, particularly from Carl Jung, was that if you're not the hero of your own story, then you're a bit part in someone else's. And that part is one that's assigned to you, and it's probably not one that you would pick. And that's sort of the moral of, well, you see that idea laid out, for example. You see that idea laid out now and then in popular fiction, like in the movie Pinocchio, you know, because the main character in Pinocchio is someone who's a marionette, right, whose strings are being pulled from behind the scenes. And so the idea there is if you're not

your own person, you're someone else's puppet, or something else's puppet, and that's even worse. One of the things Carl Jung also said about ideas, which just staggered me when I started to understand it. He said, people don't have ideas. Ideas have people. It's like, you can think about that for about ten years. That's a terrifying idea. And you know, you think, well, you see when people are possessed by an ideology,

all the people have the same idea. You know, and think, well, if they're it, if all the people have the same idea, what makes you think that they have the idea? It's exactly the other way around. The idea has them. And unless you understand that, unless you understand that to some degree, you can't understand the sorts of things that happen, say in Nazi Germany or in Soviet Union or in Maoist China, where whole populations were gripped by an idea and acted it out.

They were in the thrall of that idea. So it's really important that you have your own story, because, well, if you're without a story, some other damn story is gonna pick you up. That's for sure. And one of the things Jung said, for example, was you should figure out what your story is because it might be a tragedy. And if it is, you might wanna rethink it.

And that's very much worth thinking. That's very much worth thinking through. And it's partly worth thinking through because the easiest sort of life to have is a tragedy. I don't mean it's easy on you because it's not. But if you just fall forward into life sort of thoughtlessly, the probability that what you're going to have is a tragedy is virtually certain. And so perhaps you don't want that. Well, especially not if you decide that you're going to take care of yourself, like you're someone that you're responsible for helping. So, I was thinking a lot about this when I was teaching this map, so meaning course, because I was

teaching people about the structure of hero mythology, essentially, which is the hero myth is really the story of human beings. It's the story of individuals. And the hero myth is the story about what the world's like and how to conduct yourself in the world. And we have hero myths everywhere. We never, we're never without them, unless things fall apart, absolutely cataclysmically. Whenever you go see a movie, unless it's a romance, what you're watching

is some variant of a hero's story because there's a hero, the protagonist, and he or she encounters all sorts of obstacles and deals with them either successfully or unsuccessfully. If it's unsuccessfully, then, well, that's sort of a negative hero, that's something to avoid, not something to be, but it's still salutary, it's still educational. So I tried to lay out in maps of meaning and also in 12 rules, the basis of the hero's story, because I think it's the best description, not only of reality,

but of how to conduct yourself in the world. It's an ancient story. Well, because human beings have been working on it for as long as we've been able to reflect on our own being and to represent it. And so that's who knows how long that is. In articulated form, it's probably 150,000 years. In dream form, God only knows how long. Maybe a million years, maybe longer than that. We don't know. It stretches back into the dim mists of prehistory.

But one of the things I realized when I was dealing with my students was that they never asked, they were never asked to craft their own story. And so the realization came for a bunch of reasons. So it was a bunch of threads. So I was at the same time, I had been working with corporations, trying been working with corporations, trying to work with corporations, which is a different thing.

I had figured out how you could hire people effectively. I figured that out when I was working at Harvard with a student of mine who wrote a PhD on predictors of human performance, a really, really good thesis. And we realized we figured out the most efficient way of hiring people, selecting people for complex jobs, and we produced some technology that would allow that to occur in a relatively straightforward manner, which if used properly had tremendous economic value, and then we tried to sell it to corporations, which was impossible.

We tried for like 15 years and just essentially got nowhere with it. It was quite an amazing learning experience because we had a good product and We had great scientific evidence that it worked and it was still impossible to sell We did end up using the technology. I Partnered with this company in California called the founder institute, which is the world's largest early-stage tech incubator. And they've produced 3,000 companies in the last five years. And I select my colleagues, and I select the entrepreneurs

that they're training. They have 165 entrepreneurial schools all over the world now. So we didn't find a niche for it, but so that's a bit of a side story. But one of the things that happened when I was talking to middle managers, and I talked to hundreds of them, talking about how to select people properly for employment, they would always say, well, what do I do about the people that I have that I've already hired that aren't doing very well?

You know, and what's interesting, if you're a manager, if you manage people, you spend almost all your time dealing with the small proportion of people that you have, maybe 10%, who aren't doing very well. And it doesn't work. All the management literature suggests that you do exactly the opposite. If you're managing people, you ignore the people who aren't doing well, and you spend all your time with your most productive employees. But no one ever does that. And so for all sorts of reasons.

And maybe it's not even possible, but that's still what you should do if you're if you're interested in maximizing productivity and The evidence also suggests that there isn't much you can do with your employees who aren't doing very well because Well, they have complicated problems and you don't have much time and like and what the hell do you know? Anyways, how are you going to help sort out their lives here? There's just not enough of you, especially if you have lots of employees to even make a dent in it.

Anyways, what people kept asking me was, well, what do I do with the people around me that aren't doing very well? And my answer was, don't hire any more of them. That's all I can do. But then people kept asking me the question. And I thought, well, that's not a very good answer That's all I can do. But then people kept asking me the question, and I thought, well, that's not a very good answer

because it actually doesn't address the problem. So I went into the psychological literature, and I thought, OK, is it possible to come up with an intervention of some sort that would actually help people? And so I only found two. That was practical that you could actually do. I only found two.

So for example, if you want to make people smarter, found two, you know, that was practical that you could actually do. I only found two. So, for example, if you want to make people smarter, so if you want to make yourself smarter, by the way, the best thing to do is exercise. Oddly enough, you know, you see these lumeosity programs and cognitive training programs and that sort of thing online. Those things don't work at all. So, there's no evidence whatsoever. there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that engaging in cognitive training will increase your cognitive ability. You can get better at the tests that you practice and you will get way better, but doesn't make you generally any smarter. And it's actually quite a catastrophe because psychologists have been trying to figure

out for, well, 50 years, how to raise IQ. And education raises verbal IQ, but we don't know how to raise IQ. We know how to lower it, but we don't know how to raise it. And well, it makes sense too, because it's easy to make something worse, but it's not so easy to make it better, especially if it's complex. So, but as you get older, your fluid IQ, which is the central measure

of your ability to utilize abstractions, to generate them and manipulate them, your fluid IQ declines quite precipitously. And so that's not so good. But you can really stave that off with exercise. So both aerobic exercise and weight lifting. If you're 50, you can restore your cognitive ability to about the level it was when you were 30 if you engage in relatively rigorous exercise on a regular schedule. So that's, I thought I'd tell you that because it kind of counterintuitive, you think, well, how do you get smarter? Lift some weights. It's like, no, but yes, it's,

and the reason for that, it's, it's strange, but the reason for that, it's strange, eh? But the reason for that, the reason for that is bluntly physiological. Your brain is an incredibly demanding organ, and so, and it requires a very functional cardiovascular system, and so if you start to degenerate physiologically, the first thing that goes is your highest order, your highest order abs, your ability for high order abstraction.

So it makes sense because you know, your biological organism after all, and you have a brain and it's a biological organism, and it's a resource, hungry enterprise. And so if you're in good physical shape, then it works better. Okay, so that was one thing. The second thing was I found two other branches of literature that were very interesting, that bore directly on the subject. One was produced by a group spearheaded by a psychologist, Gary Latham, at the University of Toronto, at the business school there. And he was interested in how to make people more productive in enterprises. And so he had people do a goal setting, basically, personal goal setting.

And so here'd be a, there's two research questions embedded in that. The first would be, if you set goals, does that make you a better employee? And so that'd be the first question. And the second question would be, what sort of goals should you set if you're going to be a better employee? Okay, so the answer to the first question was, yes, if you set personal goals, that makes you a better employee. You might ask, well, how do you measure whether or not someone's a good employee? And, well, if they're directly involved in sales, then you can look at their sales and

you can get reports from their peers, you can get reports from their subordinates, you can get reports from their managers. So there's ways of calibrating the measurement to see if you're accurately determining whether someone is doing a good job And if people set goals then they do a better job Then the next question this is a more subtle one would be well if you're gonna get people to do a better job at whatever They're doing which seems like a worthwhile thing assuming that what they're doing is useful They might as well do it better right that's sort of a general rule for life, if you're going to do something, you might as well do it better, if you could. Then the next question would be, well, do you get your people to set goals for their work,

or do you get them to set goals for their life? And so they did the experiments, like Group A would do goals that were personal and Group B would do goals that were oriented only towards work performance and the answer was people who set personal goals turned out to do better than people who set business goals. And that's very interesting to me It's very interesting because you might think well what motivates you to be productive in whatever you're doing? And the answer to that is something like, you have something worthwhile to do. You have a life. You're actually committed to it. You have a life and you think it's worth committing to. And then within that life, so the life, the fact that you want to have a life, that's the top thing.

And then the secondary thing is, well, you have to work, you know, because you need to generate resources so that you can have a life. And so if you're, if you're going to have a life and you're aiming at something that you find meaningful and useful, and your work is facilitating that in some way, then your work becomes part of the worthwhile enterprise of your life. And so that makes you motivated. And it works two ways, which is quite cool. One is that, you know, let's say you have a rather mundane job, and that's often the

case, because lots of people have mundane jobs, because mundane things need to be done, and they need to be done well. And you might say, well, you know, why should you commit to that? And that's a really good question. And the answer might be, well, because should you commit to that? And that's a really good question. And the answer might be, well, because it's serving a higher order purpose. But you have to have the higher order purpose before that's the case.

And so one thing having a life does is give you, it produces the possibility of real engagement. So if you're pursuing something worthwhile, the way this works neurologically, essentially, is that if you set a goal that's worthwhile, then the systems that produce positive emotion, that they run on a neurochemical called dopamine, you set a goal and the world transforms around that goal so that everything becomes related to the goal. Everything that isn't relevant, you don't see, and everything that's relevant either becomes a facilitator towards the goal or an obstacle. So you need to specify the goal to organize the world.

Then whenever you see that you're making progress towards the goal, the systems that produce positive emotion kick in. And so that's how being meaningfully engaged in the world works, set a goal that arranges the world, then when you see yourself moving towards the goal, that produces a sense of engagement and meaning. That's why in rule eight, rule seven, do what is meaningful and not what is expedient, is based upon precisely those principles. In rule 10 is, be precise in your speech.

And the reason for that is that with precision of speech, you can specify a target. And you need a target because you have to aim at a target. If you don't aim at a target, nothing worthwhile happens in your life. And the more particularly and precisely you specify the target, the sharper the world gets, and the more likely it is that you're going to be engaged in what you do.

So it actually really matters that you're precise in your speech. And then the other thing that happens is if you organize a goal, and the world gets organized around that goal, it simplifies the world to some degree, because if you have a sharp goal, you can tell what's relevant and what's not. And what happens when you get anxious is you get flooded with things that might be relevant. And that's not good. You don't want that. When everything becomes important, you're done, man. You don't know where to turn.

What should I do next? Everything's coming at me. It's like, it's too much. So a sharp goal also simplifies the world and keeps your anxiety down. So you win two ways. You sharpen up your goal, letting you experience more positive emotion, but you also keep your negative emotion under control. And so that's some of the advantage of being precise in your speech. And so that was interesting. That was the goal setting

literature. And so then I came across this writing by a psychologist named James Pennebaker. And Pennebaker, he did some interesting work. He was trying to do experimental test of a hypothesis that was generated by Sigmund Freud. So Freud believed that if you had negative past experiences, childhood experiences, but not just childhood experiences, things in your past that were still bothering you, crises, traumas, that sort of thing, that if you talked about them and you had a chance

to express the emotion that was associated with that experience, then that would be curative. That's the catharsis model of psycho dynamic cure, express the emotion. And so, Penn Baker decided to test that. So what he did, it's a very cool set of experiments. He had students come in, university students come in, and for 15 minutes a day, for three days in a row,

they would write about the worst thing that happened to them or the worst thing they did. And then he had a control group just right for the same amount of time about some trivial daily occurrences so that he could test whether or not it was the writing or if it was the specific writing. And what Pena Baker found was that if you did that,

first you felt worse. That lasted for about two weeks. But if you followed people up for about six months, they got physically healthier. That was the biggest effect. They got less anxious. That was, and their mental health improved. But they got physically healthier.

There are immune systems even improved. There's about 40 studies demonstrating this now. It's been generalized actually to the point where it turns out that if you get people to write about anything in their life that's uncertain, it has that curative effect. And in some sense, that's not surprising because, well, obviously, uncertainty is stressful, whether it's about the past or the present or the future. And just as obviously, one of the things you could do about what's uncertain is think about it.

I mean, that's what thinking is for. You think about things you don't know, and hopefully that clarifies them. Hopefully that's useful. And if it's useful and it simplifies the world, then perhaps you can be less stressed. And if you're less stressed, you don't produce cortisol,

which is a primary stress hormone. And cortisol overproduction makes you age. So if you're, if you can reduce the uncertainty in your life through thinking, then you get healthier. And that, that happens. That happens. And so, and a really good way of thinking is writing. One way of thinking, good way of thinking is to think, but thinking is very hard, and it's not clear how many people can do it, because to think, thinking isn't just having something occur in your head. That's just the first part.

A thought occurs to you. To think you have to let thoughts occur to you or allow them to, then you have to notice the thoughts, then you have to generate an avatar that isn't you that takes a counter position to the thoughts, then you have to have an argument between the thoughts and you have to do that all inside your head. And that's hard.

The easiest thing to do is just assume that what you thought up is correct. It's like, it's not. It needs some work, man, like plenty of it. And so it's not easy to think. It's a lot of internal conflicts, very stressful. And so what people usually do to think is talk. They talk to other people, because other people will help you clarify your stupid idea.

And so then you won't walk off a cliff while you're enacting it, right? And so this is part of the reason why free speech is a paramount responsibility, not only a right. Because yeah, well, the reason is, the fundamental reason is life is very hard, so you have to think. And mostly you think by talking to other people. And so if you don't let people talk stupidly, which is how you talk to begin with, then

you don't let them think. And if you don't let them think, then they don't think, then they do stupid things, and then everything goes to hell. And so that's why free speech isn't another right. That isn't how it works. It's the fundamental process by which everything else manifests itself properly. And so to misunderstand that is to misunderstand

what's most fundamental. So anyways, so Penn Baker showed that if you had people right about what was uncertain, they got physically healthier. And then it turned out whether it didn't matter whether you wrote about the past and terrible things that had happened to you or things you were uncertain about in the present or where you wrote about the future. And so I could see the parallel between

Pennabaker's work and the goal setting work. And then there was another thing Pennabaker showed too, which was really cool. So he was testing the catharsis hypothesis, right? Right about terrible things that happened to you. Express the emotion that's associated with that and be better. So what Pentebaker did, and he kind of pioneered this, was he went in and analyzed the words that people used when they were writing about things that happened to them that weren't

good. And he classified them. He classified them into emotion words. That was one category. He used a bunch of categories, but the ones were concerned about he used emotion words and cognitive words. So an emotion word would be hate or anger or fear, joy, something like that.

And a cognitive word would be understand or see or illuminated or enlightened or something something like that. And what he found was it wasn't the use of emotion words that predicted whether or not people got better. It was use of cognitive words. So when you face your past, the terrible things in your past or when you face uncertainty, it isn't the fact that you express emotion that is what does the trick. It's that you understand what the experience was,

that you come to comprehend it, and then you might ask, well, what does it mean to understand a terrible experience? Well, it's sort of like coming to master fire. Like, if you don't know how to deal with fire, you stick your hand in the fire and you get burnt, and that's a terrible thing, and then you might think, well, fire is dangerous

and you should stay away from it. But if you learn to master fire, well, fire is dangerous and you should stay away from it. But if you learn to master fire, well then it's not dangerous at all. Then it's a tool and an unbelievably powerful tool. And so the terrible things in your past are sort of like that. It's like what you want to do is you don't want to express the emotion that's associated with them. You want to figure out how it was that you were in a position where that terrible thing

happened. What caught what were all the causal connections that led up to it manifesting itself. And then you want to retool yourself so the probability that that thing won't happen to you again in the future. So there's a high probability that won't happen to you again in the future. So the issue is why do you remember the past? And the answer isn't to form a record of the past. The answer is so that you can extract from the past information needed to not repeat stupid things

that happened to you in the past. So basically, it's a mapping function, right? You're walking through life, like it's a territory. Now and then you fall into a pit. And when you come out of the pit, you think, OK, here's a bunch of reasons I fell into that pit. How about if I don't do that again? And so then even though there's pits everywhere, because the world is full of sharp places and nasty turns, you can maybe learn how to negotiate

through it so that you don't fall prey to it. And so if you do that, well, that's understanding. Then you don't have to be anxious about those situations anymore. And so then you don't have to be afraid of them. So the emotions disappear. But not because you expressed the secondary consequence. So that was extremely useful as well. Pen and Baker's discovery and his clarification of what the curative process was in facing things that made you uncertain or afraid.

So I read all that stuff and I thought, oh, and then the other thing I had picked up, this really, really shocked me when I realized it, partly because it was a shock of realization, but it was also a shock that I hadn't realized it before. I have all these students and they'd been in school for 19 years because these were third year students or 15 years, 12 years of school, obviously, and then three years

of university. I realized that nobody had ever sat them down, not even once in their whole life, and made them write out what the hell they were going to do with their life and why, with the same degree of seriousness that they were maybe called on to write an essay about the War of 1812. And the more I thought about that, the stranger it got. I thought, well, what the hell, why is that? Why didn't, how can we set up a whole education system and never ask students at any point to say, okay, well, what are you aiming at at life in a sort of a detailed way?

And, well, how about you justify that? How about you don't just say, this is my, well, I think I want to be a nurse. It's like, great. That's how, you got a whole sentence there as a plan for your life, a whole sentence, congratulations. And what's terrible about that is that most people don't even have the sentence. And so it's a good when someone can come out and say, well, here's a sentence about what my future's going to be.

It's like, good for you. You've done some work. It's not like a 20 page document, but it is your life after also. Maybe it's worth a 20 page document, like at least once, to think it through. And so that just blew me away when I realized that. I thought, what the hell could we be so dumb as to not help compel students to do that? It's like, you

got a plan? Okay, let's hear it. And how about if I tell you 50 stupid things about it so that you can think through how you would justify it, how you would overcome those objections, so that it's not just some little one sentence plan, it's a plan, man, it's formulated and solid. It's like it's your life. How is it that that couldn't be of primary importance? So then I read this guy named John Gatto, and Gatto won the award for the best teacher in New York City and then in New York State and then he quit teaching. Yeah, right. And he did a history of the education system.

And this is what he laid out. He said the education system, the public education system, was developed in the United States in Chicago to begin with and it was based on the Prussian education system, the public education system, was developed in the United States in Chicago to begin with, and it was based on the Prussian education system, which is by the way, is the same education system that the Japanese used before World War II, when they were trying to modernize. Now the question is, what was the purpose of the Prussian education system, and the purpose was to produce good soldiers,, what's a good soldier? Good soldier is obedient above all, because a good soldier marches into gunfire when you

tell them to. And that's obedience. And it's actually the case. We did some work to see what was the best predictor of success among military personnel. And by far the best predictor is conscientiousness, which is, it's not obedience exactly, but it's, it's, it's dutifulness, let's say. And so, the Prussians wanted to produce soldiers, obedient soldiers, and they were still monarchical under this situation, so they really wanted, that's what they wanted, they didn't want autonomous individuals, they wanted. They didn't want autonomous individuals. They wanted soldiers. And the people who started the public education system in the United States,

and it spread into Canada, weren't exactly interested in producing soldiers, although that was part of it. They were interested in producing workers. Okay, now why? Well, the Industrial Revolution was in full swing, and lots of rural people were moving to the cities to work in the factories, and they needed factory workers. And factory workers needed to be working by the bell. They needed to attune themselves to the clock.

That's why there's factory bells in schools. You know, that's what they are when the bell rings, and it's time to sit down in your neat rows. That's all factory work ethos, let's say. And so the idea was, well, rural people were flooding into the cities, A, something had to be done with their children because they needed to work. So partly schools are warehouses for the children of workers.

And second, the idea was that, well, the children of workers were gonna grow up to be workers. And so it was fine to fundamentally put them through the same kind of education process that you would put soldiers through. Well, so that was like 1880. And now it's like 2018. And no one noticed that 130 years has gone by. And so we're not, we haven't tooled our schools

to produce autonomous individuals. We've produced, we tooled them to produce obedient workers. And that's fine except that that's all gone. And what we need now are autonomous individuals increasingly. And people don't have one job for their whole life, you know? On average, now people switch jobs every five years. And the probability that that's going to, that rate is going to increase is quite high, because things are changing very, very rapidly.

And so a little training for autonomy might be a good thing. So, so that was very shocking to me when I read all that. So I built this program with some of my colleagues and my students and it's online, it's called self-authoring. And if you guys are interested in this program, if you go to online and you use this code 12 rules, then you can use the programs for half of their normal price, for whatever that's worth to you. But the programs do three things. So they're designed to help people reduce the uncertainty and anxiety in their life to map their paths and to plot their course into the future. So the first program is an autobiography program.

So if I just say, will you write your autobiography? You'll say no because you don't write and writing is very hard. And so what the program does is ask you smaller questions like, well, can you break your life up into six epochs, six stages? Well, you can usually figure that out. Maybe birth to kindergarten or something in elementary school, junior high. You can kind of parse your life up into six.

Then maybe you ask, well, can you list eight experiences in each of these stages or epochs that had emotional significance to you? And don't worry about writing it well, just scroll it down, man, get it out. You can edit it later. The important thing first is to get the damn story out and then to organize it. And so people can do that.

And then, you know, we ask, well, why were these emotionally emotional experiences particularly important and how did they come about and so forth? And you know, you can trudge your way through the document. And the purpose there is in order to orient yourself in the world so that you can take care of yourself properly, one thing you have to know is where you are and who you are. And in order to know that, you have to understand where you've been. Because otherwise, you're all over the place. And if you're all over the place, then you can't figure out how to get to where you're going.

Any more than you could, if you're in a car and you're driving somewhere and you didn't know where you were to start with. So you have to collect yourself to begin with, so that you're in one place and figure out who you are, and then perhaps you can figure out who it is that you want to be, which would be part of taking care of yourself. And so, well, that's the first program. The second program uses a big five model of personality, which is a kind of well-established personality model, to outline what your virtues might be and what your faults might be. And it's something you do yourself, you know, what elements of your personality have got in your way

that might need to be rectified, and what's good about you that you could use to prevail in the world, and how could you capitalize a bit more on what's good about you, and how could you perhaps rectify those things that aren't so good about you. And so that's the second program, that's called present-authoring. The third program is the one I really want to concentrate on.

So because I think it's a nice way of delineating out what it would mean to take responsibility for yourself as if you were someone that you were responsible for helping. So here's the first suggestion. And you can do this in your life without having to do this exercise. The reason I'm bringing it up is because we did a lot of scientific work looking to see whether this program worked and I wanted to tell you about that to give it some credibility because we weren't going to assume that just because we made this stupid program that it was going to work because most things that people make to help other people don't

work. And so that this is part of the reason I became a traditionalist once I became a social scientist. It's like the evidence is overwhelming in the clinical intervention literature that your stupid intervention to help people is not going to work and probably will make it worse. And so you have to be damn careful. You know, the faculties of education have been absolutely horrible about that sort of thing over the last 20 years. They've done all sorts of things that were absolutely counterproductive.

They used whole word reading in California, for example. Based on the idea, if you study expert readers, expert readers read whole words or even whole phrases at once. So the idea was, well, let's teach children not the alphabet, not phonetics. We'll just teach them to recognize whole words, because then they'll be expert readers. Without understanding that an expert doesn't do things the same way that a beginner does.

And so by studying experts, that doesn't mean that you know how to train people who don't know what they're doing. So they started to train, they started this in California, and it started to train kids to read whole words. And what happened was California went from number one in literacy tests in the US to number 50, right? And so whole word reading was a catastrophe,

and it took over the whole school systems for about 10 years. Then there was the self-esteem movement, and mostly what training in self-esteem did for kids was make them narcissistic, because that's what happened, because you can't make people have self-esteem did for kids was make them narcissistic. Because that's what happened. Because you can't make people have self-esteem. That isn't how the world works. Like maybe you can make them competent, maybe you can help them be competent

so that now and then they can feel that their miserable existences are justified, but you can't train them to have self-esteem. Well, for all sorts of reasons that I won't go into. So then there was multiple intelligence theory, that was Howard Gardner, that was a complete bloody catastrophe. Then there was learning styles,

none of which exist, no evidence whatsoever that that works. And now there's implicit bias and what unconscious bias retraining. The implicit association test is a sham mostly, especially when it's applied politically, and there's no evidence whatsoever that unconscious bias retraining programs work

even a little bit, and a fair bit of evidence that they are counterproductive. It's a complete bloody scam. APPLAUSE I'll tell you another little story about intervention. So I knew this woman named Joan MacLeod and she was a criminology PhD. She was an elderly woman when I met her and was one of the first women in the United States to get a PhD in criminology. She was a tough cookie and she was really smart. And she was involved in this project called the Summerville Study, a very famous study that was done in the 1930s in Summerville, Massachusetts.

So here's what people wanted to do. They took kids who were anti-social, who were likely to become anti-social, rough neighborhoods, right? So they had a higher probability of growing up criminal, let's say. They decided, well, we're going to intervene and see if we can deflect them so that they grow up better. And so they divided the kids in the rough neighborhood in Somerville into two groups, the control group

and the intervention group. And they just threw the book at the intervention group, man, they had their parents trained in more effective parenting. They put literacy programs in place. They did nutrition counseling. Everything that a well-meaning social scientist might throw at a child to improve

their lives, they did it. It was one of the first studies of this sort. And to top it all off, they set up a camp out of the city so that the inner city kids, the deprived inner city kids, could go to summer camp for two weeks a year and enjoy the outdoors and have a little chance to get away from it all and have a vacation and maybe learn some skills and make some friends. And so everyone was thrilled about this, the kids were thrilled about it, the parents were thrilled about it, the social scientists were thrilled about it until they analyzed

the results. And the results were that the kids in the intervention group did worse on virtually every measure, more drug abuse, more alcoholism, more criminality, more insanity, like you name it, they were worse. Why? Don't put anti-social kids together in a group in this summer. Right? It turns out to be a very bad idea.

And that the unexpected consequences of doing that outweighed all of the positive interventions. And so Joan McCord spent a lot of her career after that, because she was so shocked by the results going around talking to social scientists to say, don't be thinking that your stupid good intentions are good enough to make the world a better place. You turn your good intentions into a concrete plan,

that's hard, then you implement it, that's hard. Then you evaluate whether your implementation worked because it probably didn't, because it's not easy to make things better and it's really easy to make them worse. Right, and if you know social scientists, or politicians that don't follow that doctrine, that means they're ignorant and arrogant, that's it. Those are the, see, one or the other

or both. The ignorance is they just don't know that good intentions aren't enough. And the arrogance is they know that they're not enough, but they think they're good intentions are good enough. And they're not. And one of the things you learn, even working in a lab, even doing small interventions with people, is that you don't understand your intervention and you can't predict how people are going to respond to it. Because your intervention is more complicated than you think, and people are way more complicated than you think.

So it's easier to make things worse than it is to make them better. So you have to be cautious. So anyways, so we built this program based on this data, and then we tested it, right, because that was what we were duty bound to do. So in the first part of the program, you're asked to adopt this particular attitude toward yourself, which is sort of detached, And the attitude is, let's assume that you're worth having around. Despite your flaws, it's okay that you're here. Maybe it's even a good thing that you're here, hypothetically. And so because of that, maybe it would be a good thing that your life wasn't full of more dreadful suffering than

necessary. That would be the next thing. So be okay if things worked out all right for you. It wouldn't be a blot on the structure of the cosmos, if you weren't being tortured to death all the time. So be okay if you could set things up for you so that it was good. And I don't mean by being easy on yourself or any of that because that doesn't make things good and everyone knows that.

It's more complicated than that. But if you could set up a life for yourself like you would set up a life for someone that you cared about and that would be a laudable thing. Okay, so that's proposition number one. Proposition number two, that's rule 10. Be precise in your speech or do or what rule eight seven. Do what is meaningful, not what is expedient. Let's assume that you should do something worthwhile.

You can define it, but it should be something worthwhile. And that if you decide to do something, there's a better chance that it will happen that if you didn't decide to do it. That doesn't seem completely unreasonable, right? You don't have to be painfully optimistic to make the case that if you aim at something and then work towards it, there's a higher probability that it will occur than if you don't aim at all and act randomly. Okay, so that's all you need to accept in order to do this. But there's something profound about that because basically what it suggests is that if you laid out a vision

for yourself, that it could manifest itself in reality. That could happen. That's echo. There's a new testament statement that's quite mysterious. It says something like, knock in the door, we'll open and ask and you will receive. It's like, you think, well, no way that can't happen. It's like, yeah, actually, one of the things I really noticed as a clinician was that a lot of the time people didn't get what they needed and wanted was because they wouldn't specify it.

And partly they were afraid. You know, because if you keep your goals vague, then you can't exactly tell when you're failing. And it's harder to be fundamentally disappointed, right? Because if you're not after anything concrete, you can't tell when you fail. So in some sense, you don't fail. But in another sense, you just fail all the time. It's just, you're failing small ways all the time rather than risking like a really blunt and clear failure. So you'll obscure the world so that you don't have to face the consequences of your error. But it's a very bad strategy. And the other thing I noticed was that if people started

to clarify what they were after, the probability that some of that would happen ramped way the hell up. I had one client. This client was so afraid, socially afraid, even though I was her therapist, she couldn't go and have coffee with me in a cafe. That was one of the things she was afraid about. And she worked on that for like 10 years, and by the end of that, she could do stand-up comedy.

And like, that's a lot different, man. That's a lot of improvement. You know, and I saw people once they had set their mind to something, pulled themselves out of pretty damn catastrophic circumstances. Not always, like, it doesn't work for everyone, you know, because life is hard and you can't actually fail, but people can pull themselves out of some pretty vicious holes, man. And they do that by, well, first of all, deciding not to dig further down, which is a bad idea if you're in a hole, but to actually try to get out of it, specify

what you want. So, the program asks you to imagine that you could take care of yourself, and then to ask yourself, like you're asking someone that you cared for, well, if you could have what you needed and wanted, if you were taking care of yourself, what would it look like, and so then that's broken down. It's like, okay, you get to have what you want, but you have to specify it. You can have the family you want, siblings, parents,

children, but you have to decide what that's going to be. What would your family look like if it was put together the way you wanted it to be? What about your intimate relationship? How would that look if you could have it the way you wanted it? What about your job or your career? What about how you're going to educate yourself? Because you don't know enough, so you should learn some more.

So how are you going to deal with that? If you had to deal properly with temptations, like drug and alcohol abuse, and maybe sexual temptation, if you're going to deal with that properly, can use your own judgment, but by your own standards, what would that look like? How could you and might you use your time outside of work productively and meaningfully? I think that's it. I think there's the seven questions that we ask. And so there's other important questions that are relevant to your life, but that's not a bad start, you know, and say, okay, just write a sentence or two about what your life could be like three to five years

in the future, if, along each of those dimensions, if you could have what you needed. And don't worry about whether or not you're right about it, because you're not going to be right. You're going to be a little more right than you are now. That's rule four. Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today. Right? So you make a plan, and you're not omniscient, so your plan is going to be flawed, but

a flawed plan is way better than no plan. Partly, because when you execute a flawed plan, well, first of all, because you will execute it, and then if you do execute a flawed plan, you can tell exactly why it's flawed, instead of hypothetically why it might be flawed. And if you configure it exactly where it's flawed, then you can fix the plant. So partly you make a plan knowing that you're gonna have

to fix the plant. But, so really what you're making is a meta plan, and a meta plan is a plan to make a bunch of plans. And to start with a stupid plan because you're not very bright, and so all you're going to do is be able to start with a stupid plan. But hopefully, your ability to plan will get better as you continue to plan. So it doesn't matter. Okay, so then you write out these seven sentences.

Then you can sit for 15 minutes and you just write, do it badly. Don't get obsessive about it. You have what you want in three to five years. What does it look like? sit for 15 minutes and you just write, do it badly, don't get obsessive about it. You have what you want in three to five years. What does it look like? So you read all that out. Then we reverse it because it's one thing to be motivated because you're going for something that you want.

That's good, that's motivation, that's positive motivation, that's meaning, a promise, that's hope. But another thing is really useful is to be terrified, because terror is also one hell of a motivator. And often people are terrified about what might happen if they do something. But often they're not nearly terrified enough about what might happen if they don't do something. And so you got to think that through too. It's like whatever course you're on right now has a cost. Like you might have written the cost off already, because you're not being attacked on all sides right at the moment, so you feel you're safe.

But if your life isn't engaging, and it's not meaningful, and you don't have a vision, then the clock is ticking, tick, tick, tick, and your time is running out, and that's costly. And so one of the things that we ask people to do next is, okay, take stock of your weaknesses and your inadequacies and your faults, you know what they are. And imagine that they get that per hand for the next three to five years. So you're a little bitter, you get real bitter, you're a little cruel, you

get real cruel, you're anxious, you get terrified, you drink a little bit too much, you're an alcoholic, you know. You fall apart in that particular horrible way that only you would fall apart and that you only you know about. You write out that. It's like, okay, I don't get my act together. What the hell does my life look like in three to five years? That's a little concrete vision of your own personal hell. And now you have that, you have, and then that's useful, because you can always refer to that, because you get up in the morning and think,

oh, God, I got some difficult things to do. Why should I do them? Oh yes, it's to stay away from hell. Right? That'll get you out of bed, especially if you make that vision real. It's going to be something you believe in. It's like, yeah, this is where I could end up. And people know bitter, alone, alcoholic, anxious, depressed, suicidal, self-destructive, you name it, man. Hard on you, hard on your family, a terror to your community, a hole in the world, instead of a presence in the world, you know, someone that's doing everything they can to make things worse.

That's certainly a possibility. So you've got to make that real. And then the next part of the program, I'm asked people to make a plan to bring the pause division into being, break it into eight parts, and to make a little plan for fulfilling each goal and justifying why if you managed to make goal one, your life would be better, and your family's life would be better, and maybe the community around you would be better, because you want to lock that down like it's important because it is. So then we tested it. So the first thing we did was we used this on students at McGill and we took 80 students

who were on academic probation. So they're bright kids because they wouldn't have gone into McGill, but they were failing. So we had 40 of them do the future authoring program and we had 40 of them do a bunch of psychological assessments that took about as much writing. And then we tracked them for six months. And the kids who did the future authoring program were 30% less likely to drop out, none of them dropped out in the intervention group actually, and they got, in their grades went up by about 25%.

So we were pretty damn thrilled about that. So then this woman in Holland named Michaela Schippers picked up the program. She works at this business school at Arasmus University called the Rotterdam School of Management. And so they had all their first-year students do the program, about a thousand per year. And so that's been going on for about ten years. And we studied about 6,000 students and what happened was the same thing. People who completed the self-authoring program, they did it as part of a course assignment. Oh, they got about 15% of their course grade or 5%, I don't remember some small amount

for doing the assignment. And their academic achievement improved by about 30%. Then we stratified it because we were kind interested. So we were looking, we did a basic demographic analysis, did it work better for females or males, and did it work better for Dutch nationals or non-western ethnic minority people. So those were the stratifications. So we had four groups, Dutch women, Dutch men, non-western ethnic minority women, non-western ethnic minority men. Before they did the self-authoring program,

the Dutch women were doing the best, then the Dutch men, then the non-Western ethnic minority women, then the non-Western ethnic minority men, and they were underperforming the Dutch women by about 83% a walloping difference. Something usually attributed to sociological factors, like oppression and prejudice and all of those things. When we broke the groups down in terms of their

post-intervention performance, the non-western ethnic minority men, two years after doing the future authoring program, were outperforming the Dutch women. So the psychological intervention obliterated the ethnic difference. And so that just blew us away because we didn't expect that at all. So that was really exciting. The future authoring program actually didn't have much of an effect on the women, the Dutch women. But I think that was because they were already doing very well.

And so the program seems to work better, weirdly enough. And this is the answer to that management problem. What should I do with my employees that aren't doing very well? Have them write out a plan for their life. That actually works. Now, it's not a cure-all, and it won't necessarily work forever, but it does work. And so their performance went way up, and so that was we're absolutely thrilled about that. Then we did it again at Mohawk College in Ontario,

vocational college. We had kids come in during their summer orientation and just do this for an hour, cold. They had no instruction about it. They just sat down on the computer and did it. So they did it badly because they only took an hour. So, and then it increased the probability that the men would stay in college

in the first semester by 50%. So, it was walloping effect. Again, it had a bigger effect on the males, but they were more likely to drop out. So, anyway, so that was sort of, I'll tell you a funny story about that too. So, we implemented this program at Mohawk, and it really worked. And so then, they decided, some of the people decided that they would make it part of the coursework, which is much harder thing to do than you think. And so they tortured us to death for about six months rewriting the software so that it would fit into their bureaucratic regime.

We didn't really want to do it because it took a lot of work. And there was no funds available for that, so it was expensive and difficult. And so we did that, and then they used it for a year and then dropped it completely. Even though the evidence that it worked, which was generated in their own institution, was absolutely overwhelming, there was no bureaucratic buy-in in the long run to decrease the probability that young men in the college would drop out by 50%. But that's another example of how difficult it is to design an intervention that works, because even if it works, doesn't mean you'll have institutional buy-in, because it's

really hard to get institutional buy-in. God only knows how you get it, but mirror demonstration that something works is not sufficient. You think it would be, but it's certainly not. So, okay, so what's the upshot of all that? Well, it's a meditation on rule two. And rule three, too. Rule three is make friends with people who want the best for you. It's the same thing, right?

If you're going to take responsibility for your own life, as if you're something of value, then one thing you do is you surround yourself with people who are unhappy when you do things for yourself that aren't good and who are pleased, pleased is can be when you're moving upward. And so you want to think hard about whether those are the people that you have in your life because those are the people that you should have in your life. Because you need to be bolstered in your willingness to presume that you're a divine locus of value, let's say, just like our entire political and economic system and religious system for that matter, insists that that's the case. And so, well, I think it is the case. And I think part of

the reason that the lectures that I've been doing, including this one, perhaps, have been popular and have hit home, it's part because the new technology has enabled longer form discourse, and it turns out that people actually have a bit of a hunger for philosophical discussion, even longer form philosophical discussion.

Who would have guessed that seems to be the case, but even more importantly, I think that it is possible for people to realize that there is, you know, that it's necessary to pursue meaning in your life. You need a meaning to offset the catastrophe of life, and it has to be a profound meaning because life is profoundly catastrophic, and so you need something real to set against that.

And one of the things that's real to set against that is the responsibility that you have towards yourself. And our whole society, our whole philosophical tradition, as I said, our religious tradition as well, insists that you are in fact something of incalculable value. And that as a consequence of that, you have a responsibility to act towards yourself as if that was the case.

And one of the things that's so interesting about that is that if you, and this is something that I don't think has been made clear to people properly, is that you need a meaning in life. And the best and the most effective way of making that meaning manifest is not to insist upon your rights and not to insist upon your instantaneous impulse gratification

or anything like that, which sort of goes along with the dialogue, endless dialogue about rights, but conversely to take as much responsibility for the state of things as you possibly can, starting with yourself. And that's a meaningful thing to do. And I think this is rule eight. Do it as, you know, rule seven. Do it as meaningful, not what is expedient.

Here's the kicker. You have an instinct for meaning. It's deep. It's not a shallow thing. It's not just cognitive. It's deep. It's embedded in your nervous system, sort of all the way down at multiple levels. And that instinct tells you when you're on the right path.

And that instinct tends to kick in when you're doing things that are difficult and responsible. Because you know, you think about the people that you admire, or even yourself when you admire yourself, you know, in the rare moments when you actually do that. It's almost inevitable that the people that you admire are at least people who take responsibility for themselves, because you don't admire someone. It's like he doesn't take any responsibility for himself, you know. There is an admirable character. It's like no one ever thinks that, ever.

So you think people who take responsibility for themselves, that spontaneously produces admiration, and it's even more if they can take responsibility for themselves. That spontaneously produces admiration. And it's even more if they can take responsibility for themselves in a way that's also a benefit for their family. It's all right, that's something. That's something you could be happy about. You help someone out, your sister, your father, your mother, you genuinely do it.

It's like, yes, that shows there's something to you, man. And then maybe you can take responsibility for yourself and your family in a way that also benefits the community. Then you've got a nice weight on your shoulders, and then you think, oh, look, man, I'm the thing that can bear up under that weight. And then you notice something even more is that as you bear up under that weight, you get stronger. Now, I mean, you can be crushed by it.

If something too heavy is dropped on you, well, you know, too bad for you. But you don't go to the gym and crush yourself with a one ton weight, you know. You go to the gym and you lift progressively more difficult weights and what happens is you get stronger and stronger. Why the hell wouldn't that work ethically? There's no reason that doesn't work ethically. It's exactly the same thing. So, well, in conclusion, rule two, treat yourself like you're someone responsible for helping.

Why? What helps you? Helps your family? Helps your community? It's the foundation of the world. It's the pillar of society, all of that, and it's on you as the sovereign individual. It's your responsibility. There's the reason that you have rights as far as I can tell, is to allow you to

exercise that responsibility. And it's necessary to exercise that responsibility because everything depends on it. Literally everything depends on it. Thank you very much. Yeah! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh!

Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh!

Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! First off, I'm going to feel guilty for the rest of the year. I called Edmonton Toronto. It's bad. You have no idea.

Because you're an American, eh? That's like, that's like, that's like, confusing something in the Midwest with New York. Like, it's just, you just don't, or worse, San Francisco, or worse, LA. Like, it's not good, Dave. So, anyways. But it was funny.

So that's something. Yes, yes, it was funny. Yeah. Yeah. So we've got this one a couple times while we've been doing this, but I haven't asked it to you in a couple weeks. Was there a 13th rule that didn't make the book? Oh, there's a bunch of them. I wrote, I wrote, well, the original list from which the 12 were derived is 40 rules.

And originally I was going to write a book. I was actually going to write a book called 42. If you remember there was the life, the universe and everything, I think the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Yeah, and the answer to the riddle of life was 42. And so I thought I'd write a book called 42 and lay out the rules. But I started writing them.

And I was writing longer essays. And so like 42 would have been this thick. And so I wrote 25 and then it was 16 and then 12. So I kept cutting it down. Which is a good way to write, by the way, if you're interested in writing, this is something you use, a couple of things that are useful to know. 90% of what you write, you will throw away. Okay, so you've got to just get used to that right off the bat, because you're lazy,

A, and so you think, well, I'm going to write a sentence and I'm going to keep it, because it's hard to write a sentence. I'm not just throwing the damn thing away once I've, like, put all the blood and sweat into creating it. It's like, no, that's wrong. You're going to throw at least 90% of what you write away. If you have any sense, because you only want to keep the 10% that's the best. But that also frees you up.

Because if you know you're going to throw most of it away, then you can just write down what you think. You don't have to get so obsessive about editing while you're producing. And you shouldn't you should produce and Then you should edit and so so anyway, so that is a great thing to know if you if you need to write something Write a whole bunch and throw most of it away. That's what you do So I threw away a lot of the rules and some of it was because I tried to make a book where every rule related to every other rule So there was a demand for coherence. But there was lots of other rules, like make one room

in your house as beautiful as possible. That's a good rule. And I started writing the next book, because I'm going to write another book. I think it's going to be called another 12 rules for life, beyond mere order. I think that's the working title anyways. And so make one room in your house as beautiful as possible

is one of the rules which I really like because it's really necessary to establish a relationship with beauty. And that's what art enables you to do if it's genuine art, is it enables you to establish a relationship with what's beautiful. And beauty is a window into the transcendent and it's soul-sustaining, which is one of the

reasons why everybody goes to Europe. Like everyone makes a pilgrimage to Europe, right? It doesn't matter where you are in the world. Everyone goes to Spain and everyone goes to France. There's more tourists in Spain in France than there are people by a huge margin while tourists are people too. I mean, citizens. So when people go there because the beauty is overwhelming and you need, that isn't optional,

because the transcendent isn't optional. That's the place from which you derive the sustaining meaning in life and to establish a relationship with beauty is to bring that into your life. Now, it's very daunting because the first thing that will happen if you attempt to bring beauty into your life is that you'll find out that you have a pauling taste. And so, and no wonder, because you had, it's like you're not a good cook when you first start to cook, you're a terrible cook. And when you start to engage with the world of artistic production, you're going to do

a bad job of it, but it's really necessary to grapple with that. And if you can learn to make one room beautiful, then you learn how to make a relationship with beauty. And that's, it's not optional. That's the thing. Because man does not live by bread alone. You have to be associated with something that's beyond you. And beauty is a window into that. Believers are non-believers.

It doesn't matter from a religious perspective. Beauty is still a window into the transcendent. And so that would be the 13th rule. Make one room and that's after you clean it up, right? Right. Clean up your room so it's functional, right? So you don't feel like a degenerate being there. And then the next, because unless you want to feel like a degenerate, like, and I don't

know why you would, unless you were bitter and resentful and were hating yourself and looking for an excuse to be violent and cruel, it's like, why would you want to feel like a degenerate? And so, clean up your damn room and then maybe your house. And then if you can manage that, see if you can make part of it beautiful. That's really something, man. It's a great thing to practice, and so that would be the 13th rule. I like this one. What's the biggest load of bulls you've ever heard? The best way to choose your cabinet is on the basis of gender. You had that ready to roll. We did not set that up. That was right, that was spontaneous spite.

How do you like your steak done? Hmm, medium. Yeah, well look, if you ate three pounds of steak a day, facing another piece of raw, slightly raw meat would be too daunting. So I started out medium rare, but it's medium now. So I like how that's the one thing that was gonna turn you guys against him. Yeah, no.

Well, they are all burdensome. Yeah. They take their beef seriously here. Apparently. Will you run for Prime Minister of Canada? I thought about that, you know, I thought about that at various times in my life. And I really thought about it quite seriously. One of the things I thought about a couple of years ago was throwing my hat in the ring when the conservatives were choosing a new leader. And.

I'd actually thought about it before that when the liberals were choosing a new leader, too. So, but there were a variety of reasons that I didn't do it. Well, yeah, well, the thing is, I thought it also thought it through with regards to what's happening in Ontario, you know, because the Conservative Party fell apart very badly there a couple of months ago, and so there was a lot of people who suggested that I run then, and I thought, okay, let's think this through. All right, the first is, I'm not a professional administrator, and running a province is actually

very hard. You have to know things. You have to know something about the power grid, for example, or you end up with a situation that we have in Ontario, where electrical prices spiked way the hell out of range, well, the world market price for electricity plummeted. Like, there's actual consequences if you're stupid about such things. And it's really, it's really hard to run something as complicated as a whole province. And so I thought, well, if I was going to bring myself up to speed,

I'd probably have to work 16 hours a day for about a year just to get vaguely in the ballpark. And then I'd have to drop everything else. I'd have to quit writing. I'd have to quit touring. I'd have to quit speaking. I'd have to drop my YouTube channel. I'd have to retool my whole life. And then, well, that was just the beginning,

because I actually thought it through. And I thought, I wasn't sure that I had this stamina to do that, that was the first thing. Even though it would be very interesting. And the second thing I thought was, well, it isn't clear that I'm finished doing whatever it is that I'm doing right now. Because this is pretty useful, as far as I thought was, well, it isn't clear that I'm finished doing whatever it is that I'm doing right now. Because this is pretty useful as far as I can tell, you know, like...

Applause So I thought I would just keep doing this and see what it is and where it goes and that that would be better. And I haven't seen any reason so far to assume that that was the wrong decision, even though the other idea is tempting. It would be attempting challenge, you know, but it isn't exactly what I've prepared, so to speak. It's not what I've prepared in my life to do. And there's some danger in just making a lateral move

into a complex domain that you're not prepared for. Well, that's what Justin Trudeau did. You know, like, I don't know why he thought it was ethically acceptable for him to present himself as qualified to be Prime Minister, because there was no evidence. It's actually a really hard job, and it's really hard job, and you need to know what the hell you're doing. It seems to me that in order to know what you're doing, you should have done a lot

of other really, really difficult things, like a whole bunch of them, extremely well. And then maybe you could tentatively assume, well, I was successful at this and this and this and this and all of that was rather unlikely and so maybe I could tentatively assume that I would be less awful than the other people that are running. That's what you could assume but you should do that with trepidation and so well and as I said I think what I'm doing now is useful is sufficiently useful to continue to investigate because God only knows where it's leading and why. So I just assume do this.

So what you're saying is you're going to run. Do you pray? It depends on what you mean by that. I don't ask God for favors, and that's usually what people mean. But I do engage in what's a kind of meditative practice, I would say, especially when things go wrong around me. I usually sit on the edge of my bed, that's usually where, and I close my eyes and I try to clear my head, and I try to think, okay, I would like to know what stupid things I've done to radically increase the probability

that this undesirable outcome has occurred. And then I get an answer, and it's usually not what I like. And so, now, does that constitute prayer? Probably. I think it does if you consider the word properly. Because I think that it's the same idea that I referred to earlier. If you ask, you can have what you need. But that assumes that you want it.

And if you want something, that means there's other things that you're willing to give up to get it. Right? And so if you really want something, and this is a prayerful posture, let's say, here's what I need. I'm willing to give up anything to have that occur. Okay. That means you want it. Otherwise, it's a lie. And so, if you're trying to figure out what stupid things you've done to make your life miserable

and you want the answer, then you'll get the answer, but you have to want it. So that's part of the reason why so many religious traditions emphasize humility. Because if you want the answer, you want it. So that's part of the reason why so many religious traditions emphasize humility. Because if you want the answer you need, it isn't going to be one that it isn't going to be the one you hoped for. Because it's going to point to something in you that isn't right. That's going to be painful to give up.

And painful to realize as well, you know, because it's bad enough that something not so good is happening to you. But then when you realize how it was that you were at fault for bringing it about that's even more bitter But at least then you could rectify it and move forward into the future and so the humility attitude is I Probably did something stupid at least in part to bring this on myself You know, and I that isn't I don't I'm not trying to imply that like if you are diagnosed with pancreatic cancer tomorrow, that it's somehow your fault. Like I understand that people get cut off at the knees.

I know that life has a tragic element. That's not my point. My point is that you can want to know about how it is that you're at fault. And if that's the basis of your prayer, then it will be answered. So if that's prayer, then that's what I do. And that works. But it's not, I wouldn't call it pleasant, but it's useful.

That's for sure. Here, you can try this. Here, you can try this at home. So the next time you have an argument with someone that you love, and it's a bad argument, go into your room and sit on your bed and think, okay, despite the fact that I live with the most unbearable human being that's ever been created by God, there's some possibility that I've contributed to this in some tiny way. So you can sit on the edge of your bed and you can think,

all right, I wanna know what I've done stupid in the last six months that increased the probability of this argument. And then once I realize that I'm going to go tell the person that I'm arguing with. So that's like two bitter pills, right? First of all, you have to figure out why you're the stupid one. That's really annoying when you know you're 100% right. And then you have to go to the person who's torturing you to death with no cause and tell them why you're in moron So that's it's very unpleasant

But one of the things that will happen if you do that is that you'll you'll move through the argument Because you can go off of that person something you can say look, you know despite your bullheaded ignorance and unbearable temperament. I'm also at fault here. Here's how, you know, and that, what is, it's an offering, it's a piece offering,

that's what that is. And maybe if you have any sense, you want peace and not victory, especially over someone that you live with, because there's no victory over someone you live with, that's for sure. So. I feel like after the personal way you answered that, we should give a shout out to your wife

who's in the crowd here somewhere tonight. What's the best way to overcome regret? Well, that's a really good question. The first thing to realize is you might have wasted a lot of your life. You probably did, but people do, and better late than never. So if you're going to get your act together and you're going to start now, that's not so bad. One of the things I learned when I was doing these biblical lectures last year, I learned this from the story of Abraham, which is a very profound story and a foundational story.

Abraham is like 83 when God calls him out to adventure. And so forget about the God bit for a minute. The story has something to say is that Abraham is hung around his father's tent till he's like 80. He's old. And it isn't until it's way past time that he decides he's gonna go venture out in the world.

But he does. Even though he wasted all that time and he's going to go venture out in the world. But he does. Even though he wasted all that time and he's still regarded in this story, in this foundational narrative, as one of God's chosen. And so better late than never, man, if you're 40 and you're just waking up, it's like, well, you're not 80 and if you're 80, well, maybe you can put things together in the next five or six years. And that's something. Well, look, you know sometimes you go to a movie and it's not a very good movie. You're just not very happy for being there the whole damn time. Then all of a sudden the writer puts a twist in it and ends it and the ending is perfect

and the whole movie justifies itself. You can do that with your life. Maybe you can do that even at the last moment. Now, the longer you wait, the harder it's going to be. No doubt about that. But that doesn't mean that it's impossible. And so I would say the first thing is to have a certain element of mercy in your judgment towards yourself. It's like just because you're ignorant and just because you've made mistakes doesn't mean you're irredeemable. And if you're going to start now good for you, it really better late than never. And I've seen that with lots of my clinical clients, like it'd be better if they would

have started earlier, but later is okay too. So the next thing is, well, if you regret things, you know, I just wrote the preface for this Solzhenitz and Skooligarchipaligo is going to come out in its 50th anniversary You know, I just wrote the preface for this Solzhenitz and Skulaj Garke Palagow is going to come out in its 50th anniversary form this fall in the abridged version and I got invited to write the introduction which I just finished and so that was a great thing That was a great thing for me to be able to do and One of the things one of the things that Solzhenitz and did when he was in the prison camps in the Soviet Union

is he was watching people that he really admired in the camps. So there was rare people who conducted themselves nobly while they were being tortured to death. And I'm sure everyone is called upon to act in that manner, you know, because it's asking a lot. But he did see people who did that. And Victor Frankl saw that too in the concentration camps in Nazi Germany. And so it looks like it's possible for people to conduct themselves nobly, even under conditions of unbelievable privation.

And so Solzhenitsyn watched these people, and it really made him ashamed. And so one of the things he decided when he was in the camps was that he was responsible for being there. And in the same way that you're responsible when you have a fight with someone that you love, it's not like all the fault is yours precisely, you know, because the world is a complicated place.

But some of the fault is yours, and certainly a lot of the responsibility is yours. And so one of the things Solshnitson decided to do was to go over his whole life and to see if he could figure out where he had gone wrong in his life. And then as far as he was concerned, right, it wasn't relying on external sources of judgment, it was him and his own conscience. And then to see if he could put things right now in the present.

And that's why I wrote the Goulagar Capelago. And that had an unbelievable effect on the world. And so I would say, well, if you regret things, figure out what you regret. Make a list, man. Here's things I regret. Make it as complete as you can. Don't get too obsessive about it, but make it as complete as you can. Here's things I really regret. Okay, those are things you regret. OK, so those are things you shouldn't do again. Because that's really what regret means,

is that's something I shouldn't repeat. OK, then you've got to figure out, well, why did I do those things that I regret? What led me down that path? And then how could I improve my character so that I wouldn't do that again? That's what you're trying to figure out when you regret. It's like when should you forgive yourself?

It's easy. When you figured out what you did wrong and you decide that you're not going to do it anymore, then you let yourself off the hook because why beat yourself up after that? You've learned your lesson. That's also the same condition that you might apply when you're going to forgive someone. Someone's done you wrong and they come to you and say, here's exactly what I did wrong. Okay, first of all, you want to hear that,

because you want to know that the person knows what they did wrong. You want to know they thought it through. And then you want to hear them say, here's why I did it, and not in the way that justifies it exactly, but in a way that explains it, because then you know that they thought it through.

And then they say, and here's how I'm going to change so that it doesn't happen again, and here's some evidence that that's already happening. Will you give me another chance? And your, the probability under those conditions is, even if they've done something quite horrible, the probability that your heart will open up, let's say, and you'll say, yeah, okay, you know, okay, you can have another chance. The probability you'll do that's really high. And it's the right thing to do, because everyone's a damn fool, and we all make mistakes, and if you beat to death,

because you make an error, then everyone's dead. And so you can't beat yourself to death, either. You know, you have to balance judgment with mercy and with the possibility of development. So what you do is you figure out why you're a damn fool exactly precisely and then decide that you're not going to do that again. And then you let it go. Say, I'm a fool, like everyone else. That's actually one of the advantages of the doctrine of original sin. It's like, yeah, you're a bad person.

You are. But so is everyone else. And so it's on you. It's your responsibility to do something about it. But it's also a universal part of human nature. And so you're not obligated to beat yourself to death for it. And so that's helpful to know that. And it helps you also sort of live with this sort of universal sense of guilt that people

have. Everyone feels that they're not who they could be. You know, and that they've fallen short of the, their arrow hasn't hit the mark. Everyone feels that. And that's why the doctrine of original sin was originally codified. It was to kind of make that concrete. It's like, yeah, yeah, you're a bad person. So am I. So is everyone that's ever lived. It's not an excuse. It doesn't alleviate your responsibility,

but it does mark out that you're not alone in your sin, let's say, because to sin, by the way, means to miss the target. That's what the word means, which I think is lovely thing to know. So let yourself off the hook when you've learned your lesson. Because otherwise, you just accrue your your errors and that will crush you. And having another crushed person around is just not that useful, even if it's you.

So, yeah. What's the most heartwarming experience you've had with a person impacted by your words? Oh, man. Well, we had one today, so we were driving along in the car up from Calgary, and my phone rang, and it was a face time. And I don't use face time, and so I thought, what the hell is this? Someone's calling me on FaceTime. It must be someone I know. So I handed the phone to my wife, Tammy,

and I said, well, you answer this, and so she answered it. And it was this woman who'd been going to my biblical lectures, and her son had died a few years ago. And he was buried in a cemetery, in an ugly spot that was dismal and unpleasant, and kind of not cared for. And she'd mentioned that to the person who ran the cemetery, and he wasn't inclined to do anything about it. And so this was really bothering her. And she said that one of the things that she'd learned from watching my lectures was that if something is bothering you, then you should do something about it. So she went and had a really elaborate Celtic stone cross made, very, very fancy and beautiful,

and she had a grave marked with it, and she had them exhumed and put into this beautiful spot. And so she was telling us today, she was all in tears about that, about, you know, because she was all broken up, her son wasn't very old when he died, and she was all crushed by that, obviously, and so that was something that she brought herself to do.

And so she was all in tears and told us about that today. So that was one of the things that happened today. And like these sorts of things, that was pretty dramatic, but these sorts of things happened all the time. You know, I was down in LA, I think this is the best thing that's... Or I can tell you, the funniest story. This is a good one. I think this was in Vancouver.

Some guy came up to us, and my wife and I, and he said, I got to tell you what's happened to me in the last six months. He said, six months ago, as 50 pounds overweight, I was alcoholic, and I worked for the NDP. He said, he said, now I have it head. I haven't had a drink for six months. I've lost 50 pounds and I work for the conservatives. So that was unbelievably funny. It was so witty and said, yeah. And then I was in LA. This was a lovely story.

So I was in LA walking along with Tammy again. And downtown LA is pretty rough. We were down by the Orphium Theater. And there's places downtown LA. You're not so happy if you're walking down those streets. And so anyways, we were walking around. And this car pulled up, he saw this and this kid hopped out and he was about 19 or 20. Kind of a good-looking Latino kid and he rushed over and he said, are you Dr. Peterson? I said, yes. And he said, oh, I'm really happy to meet you. And he was sort of bouncing around, being happy. And he said, my life has really changed because I've been watching your lectures. And things are much better. And he said, oh, I'm really happy to meet you. And he was sort of bouncing around being happy. And he said, my life has really changed

because I've been watching your lectures. And things are much better. And he said, could you wait a minute? Could you wait a minute? And I said, yeah. And so he ran back to his car, and he got his father out of his car. And then his father came over with him.

And they were like smiling away. And they stood there, and they had their arms around each other. And the kid said, ever since I've watched your lectures, I've really been working on my relationship with my father and we're getting along great, and I really want to thank you. And you could tell that it was true,

because they were just beaming away. They had that full smile that people have when they're actually happy about something. And so that was also really good. That's a lovely thing to have happen when you're wandering around in the city and the stranger hops out of his car and tells you that his life is better, and that his relationship with his father is better.

And it's like, that's the kind of interaction you want to have with people you don't know. That's so. It's another world war inevitable. How's that for a segue? Well nothing's inevitable. And we've managed to stave it off through some pretty rough times for how long now it's 50, 55, almost 70 years and the rate of warfare has gone way down over the last 70 years. Like if you look at number of deaths in battle, it's just down and down and down and down and down and down and down. So like things are, you know, there's no wars in the Western hemisphere right now.

That's the first time that's ever happened that people know of zero wars. So that's really something. And so, you know, and, you know, the levels of absolute poverty around the world are falling precipitously, incredibly rapidly. So between the year 2000 and 2012, we have the number of people in the world that were in absolute poverty by UN standards. Three years ahead of the UN Millennium goal. And so child mortality rates are way down. Maternal mortality rates are way down. The child mortality rate in Africa is now the same as it was in Europe in 1950.

That's an absolute bloody miracle. It's absolutely beyond belief. So, I think that's the most important thing to do. The proud mortality rate in Africa is now the same as it was in Europe in 1950. That's an absolute bloody miracle. It's absolutely beyond belief. So there's no starvation in the world anymore except where it's politically produced. So we have enough food for everyone. We still have some distribution problems, but there's plenty of food for everyone. There are more fat people now than there are starving people by a large margin.

So that's a real marker of success. It's a comical marker of success, but it's still a marker of success. And so the best projection suggested by the year 2030, there'll be no one in the world in absolute poverty. So that's absolutely, absolutely unbelievable. And so it looks to me like with dedicated effort and with collective will, we could continue

to make things incrementally better at quite a rapid rate and that we could have a situation where we didn't need to have wars. Now, you know, that's a tough needle to thread. But by the same token, we don't have anything better to work toward than that. That's a noble goal, a world of peace, a world where the potential that every child brings into the world is capable of being fully maximized. That would be of such immense benefit to all of us, because there's untapped genius out there

everywhere that could be of unbelievable immense benefit to all of us because there's untapped genius out there everywhere that could be of unbelievable value to us. And we could make a concerted effort to foster that. There's a guy named Bjorn Lomburg who I would highly recommend. You know about Lomburg? He wrote a book called How to Spend $75 billion to make the world a better place. That sounds like a lot of money, but when you're spending it on the whole world, that's like 10 bucks a person.

It's not that much money. And one of the things he pointed out, because Longberg's a very smart guy, and he takes all those high-flown goals that people have, like, and then does a rigid cost benefit analysis trying to figure out where if you're going gonna devote resources, you'd get the best return.

And by far the best return is to increase the nutrition levels and the medication levels for young children. The return on that is something like 250 to one. It's unbelievably valuable and it's dirt cheap. And so we could do that. Bill Gates is heading a foundation that's trying to get rid of the world's five world's

worst five communicable diseases. We could do that. We got rid of smallpox, polios just about gone. We could get rid of malaria. That would be a big deal. That would do Africa a lot of good to get rid of malaria. And so Gates is after another four diseases. And I don't remember which diseases they are, but they're deadly killers, and we could get rid of those.

We're becoming unbelievably technologically powerful. God only knows what we could do. I think we could make this place hum everywhere. And we could have our cake and eat it too. If that's what we decided to do, I don't see anything stopping us, except lack of will and bitterness and resentment and all the things that drag people down. And I understand why people get dragged down

because the world's a harsh place, but we could improve it a lot. And we are improving it a lot and we could accelerate that. So that'd be a great old William James, great, great moral philosopher and psychologist. He said something very, very insightful, many things, but this is one of them. People need a moral equivalent to war. Like war is exciting, you know, like the people who are called into ISIS, nihilistic, leading useless lives,

the ideological radical say, here is something to live and fight for. And when they're in their bitter, resentful, nihilistic state, that sounds pretty good. And it tracks the best and the worst at the same time. It's like, well, people need a call to action, because you need something to justify your miserable existence, and it has to be something noble. And the vision of making things better, that's something that is a call to war. You could do that. You

could fight to make things better everywhere in your own life, in your family's life, in your community's life. You could dedicate yourself to doing that. And there's meaning in that. And it actually works. Like, you're way more powerful force for evil than you think, way more, but also a way more powerful force for good. And so you could decide that. You were going to try to do good in the world. You know, not to live according to some restricted set of rules or to do what other people think

is right or any of that. I don't mean any of that. I mean you could decide for yourself how you could address the problem of the suffering and the malevolence in the world and you could devote your life to that. And if we all did that, a little bit more than we're doing it even, man we'd put things together so fast it would stagger the most cynical of us. So that would be a lovely thing to see. And that would be a good alternative to war. And I think it's something that could actually happen.

So yeah. Yeah. Applause. All right, last one. Are you going to do something really great for yourself at the end of the tour? This is great. This is great.

I'd like to have a rest, but there isn't anything that I would rather do than what I'm doing. I have a month off in August with a bit of exceptions, and that's not being the case for a while, but this isn't a burden. Or if it is a burden, and it's unbelievably, it's a burden to be unbelievably thankful for. Why wouldn't I be, what was not pleased isn't the right word. Why would I rather be anywhere at all

than talking to 2,000 people about how they could put their lives together and make the world a better place? Why would you want to do anything other than that? Well, on that note, I just want to say to you guys here in Edmonton that you were way better than the Toronto crowd, okay? That note, I'm getting out of the way, make some noise for Jordan Peterson, everybody! 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 Antenote to Chaos.

Both of these works delve much deeper into the topics covered in the Jordan B Peterson podcast. See JordanBepeterson.com for audio, e-book, and text links, or pick up the books at your favorite bookseller. I really hope you enjoyed this podcast. If you did, please leave a rating at Apple Podcasts, a comment, a review, or share this episode with a friend. If you didn't like it, don't leave a review, we're trying to keep it at five stars. Thanks. Next week's episode is another 12 rules for life lecture from

Winnipeg, making our way through the 12 rules Canadian tour from 2018. Also, I should mention, Dad's working on his next book, so that's exciting. And other news, did you hear that Kora removed Dad's answer that started his 12 rules for life book? It was called 42 Rules for Life. They told him it violated some policy. Some guy named James emailed him. Little did James know that that wasn't a very good idea. Anyway, I'll talk to you next week.

Thanks for tuning in. 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 Peterson.com. My online writing programs designed to help people straighten out their pasts, understand themselves in the present, and develop a sophisticated vision and strategy for the future can be found at selfauthoring.com. That's selfauthoring.com.

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