12 Rules Hamilton: Courage

[0] Welcome to Season 2, Episode 8 of the Jordan B. Peterson podcast.

[1] I'm Michaela Peterson, Dad's daughter and collaborator.

[2] Today, we're presenting Dad's lecture at the First Ontario Concert Hall in Hamilton, Ontario, recorded on July 20th, 2018.

[3] Many of you guys know, Dad announced on YouTube that my mom had had surgery this week.

[4] So we've been dealing with that.

[5] This has probably been the most stressed out period of my entire.

[6] entire life, and Dad kind of looks like he's been hit with a bus.

[7] So that's been our week.

[8] But we're staying positive, and it looks like everything went well so far.

[9] Thank God.

[10] There's been an outpouring of support, which I know has helped me with this fairly difficult time.

[11] So thanks everybody for that.

[12] That's why, again, Dad's not part of this intro.

[13] So we'll see how long that lasts, but it looks like things are looking up.

[14] So thank goodness.

[15] When we return, Dad's 12 Rules for Life lecture in Hamilton, Ontario.

[16] Please welcome my father, Dr. Jordan B. Peterson.

[17] Thank you all very much for coming tonight.

[18] It's a real pleasure to be here back in Canada.

[19] And on the second part of my...

[20] I have a nine -city Canadian tour.

[21] This is the second city, and I just came back from Dublin and London.

[22] I talked to Sam Harris and Douglas Murray, so that was very interesting.

[23] And hopefully those videos will be out in August.

[24] that's the plan once they're all properly edited for sound quality and all of that they're not going to be edited for content just for for quality that's the plan anyways so it's very nice to see all of you here and and to partake in what i hope will be a well will be a serious and hopefully useful and meaningful talk i wanted to talk to you tonight i thought i'd take you through 12 rules for life through the lens of courage It's a nice virtue to contemplate a good entry point into the content of the book.

[25] And I use these lectures as an opportunity to think past what I've already written and to try to make it more coherent and to try to push my thinking in new directions so that it stays fresh and vital and so that I learn something because you can learn something by thinking, which is generally why people do it.

[26] So I wanted to tell you some things, first of all, about fear.

[27] Fear is an instinct.

[28] We have a separate neural circuit for fear.

[29] It's the circuit that's affected by drugs that you might take like alcohol, because alcohol is a very powerful anti -anxiety agent.

[30] Anxiety and fear are very similar.

[31] Technically, people think of anxiety as a fear of something that's somewhat non -specific.

[32] You know, you might feel anxiety about going to a party or about new job or something like that, where you might have a phobia, might be afraid of spiders or snakes or mice or elevators, or being exposed out in the outside world.

[33] That would be agoraphobia.

[34] So fear is usually of something specific and anxiety is of something more general.

[35] but in any case we have a fierce circuit it's very old it's designed to stop us from being damaged so essentially you become afraid of things that might damage you that might hurt you you become afraid of things that might punish you and you have a separate circuit for pain too which is a response to punishment so pain is usually a signal that something's about to damage you in some manner or something is damaging you in some manner that's more accurate and pain is, pain can be staved off with opiates, right?

[36] Those are technically analgesics, and fear and anxiety can be staved off by anxiolytic, technically speaking, and those include alcohol and benzodiazepines like Valium, Zanax, and so forth, and barbiturates, which are not very commonly used anymore medically or for non -medical, say, recreational purposes.

[37] but alcohol is a drug that people really like because it dampens fear and anxiety which is why people it's one of the many reasons that people use alcohol in social circumstances alcohol is a variety of neurochemical effects that vary substantially depending on who it is that's drinking because people are differentially sensitive to the neurochemical effects of alcohol some people especially people with social anxiety who are sensitive to the anxiolytic properties like to drink if they are in a social circumstance because it makes them less afraid, less anxious.

[38] Other people also get a stimulant kick out of alcohol.

[39] If you're one of those people that has a hard time stopping when you start drinking, then you probably get a stimulant kick from alcohol.

[40] That's dangerous.

[41] That's one of the things that can easily predispose you to alcoholism.

[42] So if you have that response, beware.

[43] But it also means that you really enjoy alcohol, so it's harder to be careful under those circumstances.

[44] because it's such a wonderful drug, if that's the situation that you're in.

[45] So you have a separate fear circuit, and the point of fear and anxiety is to stop you when you see things that might damage you.

[46] Pain signals that you are being damaged, and fear signifies that you might be damaged.

[47] And so it's a newer circuit from an evolutionary perspective than the pain circuit, because it takes a smarter animal.

[48] It's one thing to get the hell out of there when you're in pain, but it's another thing to be wary when you might be in pain.

[49] That's what fear is for.

[50] And so it's a very unpleasant emotion, of course, although perhaps not as bad as pain.

[51] And I guess that's the logical substitute, isn't it?

[52] It's not so bad in emotion compared to pain.

[53] You need fear to protect you because you can be hurt.

[54] So, and there's plenty of things to be afraid of and anxious about in the world because not only can you be hurt, you know that you can be hurt.

[55] And that's one of the things that really distinguishes human beings from other creatures.

[56] We have a very, very clear apprehension of our borders and limitations.

[57] We know that even if there's nothing that's making us anxious right here and right now, we know that there are things that might come our way that are quite negative in the future.

[58] And so to some degree, part of the reason that human beings are always so conscious, so hyper -conscious, is because we know that safe as we are right now, something is still lurking around the corner that might do us in.

[59] You know, if you watch animals like zebras out on the African veld, they're pretty strange in some ways.

[60] Their cognitive resources and their emotional responses are quite limited.

[61] You know, a zebra herd can be surrounded by lions, and as long as the lions aren't in a hunting configuration, the zebras don't really seem to mind the lions, which seems a little bit short -sighted on the part of the zebras.

[62] They don't seem to be able to figure out that those sleeping lions are also the same lions that are going to eat them tomorrow.

[63] But I guess maybe the advantage of being a zebra and not caring about the sleeping lions is that while you don't have to be nervous except when you're being hunted, whereas human beings in a situation like that would be thinking, those damn lions, they look like they're sleeping, but you know what they'll be up to tomorrow?

[64] And, of course, we do know what things will be up to tomorrow.

[65] And that means we can protect ourselves against what's coming tomorrow but it's at the cost of eternal vigilance and so that's part of the reason why we're susceptible to drugs like benzodiazepines and barbiturates and alcohol because those drugs do help us quell our eternal anxiety and so now when when psychologists first started to study fear they thought about it wrong but I'm going to go through the way they thought about it Because sometimes if you think about something wrong, you think about it wrong in an interesting way.

[66] And if you think about something in detail wrong, at least then you can learn exactly why you're wrong, and maybe you can figure out how not to be wrong if you keep thinking.

[67] Which is part of the reason, by the way, that free speech is so important, because in order to get to the truth, you have to do a lot of wandering through error.

[68] And so you have to be allowed or even encouraged to be stumbling around and stupid and careless and objectionable and offensive and all of those things in your speech because if you can't stumble around stupidly, you're never going to be able to think anything through because you'd have to know how to speak properly to begin with about something complex if you're going to do it properly.

[69] and you don't know how to do complicated things that you don't understand properly and so you're not going to speak about them very well and so if you get to speak about them at all which you have to learn about them then you have to be encouraged to stumble around badly I have this program that some of you might be interested in it's part of the self -authoring suite which is a sequence of writing programs that my colleagues and I generated to help people clinically I would say we were trying to figure out how we could bring clinically powerful technologies to amass market at a very low cost and we discovered through reading the relevant literature and through our own scientific research that if you had people write about uncertainty then that would make them more productive and more engaged and healthier many people have done research of that sort not all of it by any means conducted in my lab the first program is a past authoring program and it helps people write a structure autobiography, so it helps you divide your life up into six epochs and then write about the emotionally significant events in each of those epochs or sections.

[70] There's a hint, and this is something to really think about, and it's very relevant to the topic of tonight's talk, if you have a memory that's older than about 18 months, and there's a reason for that, by the way, but we'll say 18 months for now, and when you bring that memory to mind, it still causes an emotional reaction, and I'm thinking mostly about a negative emotional reaction.

[71] That means that you haven't fully processed that memory and it's still weighing down on you.

[72] And, I mean, one of the things your brain is always trying to do is try to calculate how dangerous the current environment is.

[73] And the answer to that is something like your brain assumes the current environment is dangerous in proportion to the number of things that have occurred in your life that you haven't been able to figure out.

[74] So the more things that you haven't figured out, more dangerous your brain assumes the environment is and the price you pay for that is you're more anxious and not only that you you produce more stress hormones especially cortisol and the problem with producing excess cortisol you need to produce some it helps wake you up in the morning but if you produce excess cortisol that makes you old and so it contributes to virtually every degenerative physiological process that we know of and so cleaning up your past is actually a really good idea.

[75] You know, if something that happened to you a long time ago still bothers you, the reason for that is, is that the emotional systems, the underlying emotional systems that help you process the world, especially the emotions that are associated with fear and anxiety, are telling you that you have encountered something in your pathway, in your past, that you did not master, and that still would present a danger to you if you would.

[76] encountered it again and so it's interesting to contemplate that because you know we don't often think about the purpose of memory we think well the purpose of memory is to remember the past and that's actually not true the purpose of memory is to extract information out from the past so you don't do the same damn stupid thing more than once and that that truly is the purpose of memory that is how your that's how your memories are constructed that's how your mind looks at the past what you're trying to do is to map out the world and you use your past experience to elaborate up that map and then you use that map to orient yourself into the future right so that's the derivation of wisdom from the past and so you know once you master fire you don't have to be burned right you can encounter truly dangerous things and you can learn how to master them and then when you encounter them in the future they're not dangerous and so that's perfect but if you have something in your past and it still bothers you.

[77] That means that as far as your underlying emotional systems are concerned, you are not master of that event, and that bothersome emotion will never go away until you go back to that memory and you figure out how it was that you were rendered vulnerable in that situation and what you would have to do now in order to reconfigure the way you look at the world or the way that you act so that that vulnerability would disappear.

[78] And so if you do the past authoring program and you do it reasonably carefully, reasonably thoroughly, let's say, then you can find all those things in your past that you haven't mastered or overcome, and that will update you, right?

[79] It'll make your map more differentiated.

[80] It'll make you more skillful, and it'll drop your stress levels.

[81] And it's also a useful thing to do from a conceptual perspective, because, as I said already, partly what you're trying to do in your life is map your way forward, right?

[82] because people are forward -moving creatures.

[83] We're always going from point A to point B. We're on a journey or an adventure.

[84] And you need to map out your journey or your adventure.

[85] Well, you need to know where you're going, obviously, but you also have to know where you are.

[86] You know, if you're using a map, like an actual map, it's completely useless to just know where you're going.

[87] You also have to know where the hell you are.

[88] And if you're scattered all over the place, which is really the case if there's a lot of...

[89] lot of things in your past that are unresolved, then it's extraordinarily hard to map your way forward because you don't even know where to start.

[90] And so that's a useful exercise.

[91] And I often encourage people to do that exercise badly.

[92] And that reflects, that's a reflection of what I just said about speech and about thinking.

[93] You have to stumble around a lot if you're going to get to where you're going.

[94] And so if you want to write about your past and bring yourself up to date, you don't have to do it perfectly, but you definitely have to do it.

[95] You have to confront those things in your past that are weighing you down and making you bitter and making you resentful and freezing you in place and all of that.

[96] And it's also the case, and we'll get to this in more detail as we progress.

[97] So the second part of the self -authoring suite helps you identify your virtues and your faults.

[98] And it's a funny way of stating it.

[99] Virtues in particular.

[100] We talk about faults.

[101] the modern world, but we don't often talk about virtues.

[102] It's kind of an old -fashioned term, but I picked it specifically for that reason, because virtue is a useful term.

[103] And virtue isn't, it's an unbelievably useful term.

[104] In fact, it's fundamentally a useful term rather than a moral term, because your virtues are precisely that kit of tools that's, that you have at hand that help you contend with the world.

[105] It's best to think of virtues as tools rather than characteristics.

[106] And so if you can identify your faults, well, those are the things that are obstacles to your progress.

[107] And so by your own definition, let's say, that's how the exercise is set up, at least.

[108] Assuming you want and need something, you're pursuing it, there's going to be elements of your own character that get in the way.

[109] You probably want to do something about that, assuming that you want to get to where you're going.

[110] And of course you do, because if you didn't want to get there, you wouldn't have posited as a destination to begin with.

[111] So obviously you want to get there.

[112] and if you are, if you do want to get there, and there are things about the way you're behaving in the world that are in the way, then obviously it would be better for you to rectify them.

[113] So that's fairly self -evident.

[114] And then equally, it's equally the case that some of the characteristics that you have that will move you forward into the world are going to be useful, and you should know how to capitalize on them, and you should be conscious of that, because why not be conscious of it?

[115] It's useful to know yourself so that you can use yourself, more effectively.

[116] And then the final exercise is the future authoring program.

[117] And we've had lots of fun with that.

[118] I designed that years ago when I noticed in my class, I had this class on, called Maps of Meaning, which is about a book I wrote a while ago, which just came out an audio version, by the way.

[119] If you like 12 rules, you might like Maps of Meaning, except it's a lot harder.

[120] But it's also a lot deeper.

[121] So if you want to go deeper, well, that's going to be.

[122] harder, obviously.

[123] But, you know, if you found 12 rules for life useful, then going deeper might even be more useful.

[124] And so the audio version might be good for that.

[125] When I, that's a, it's a book about the story of your life, because your life is a story.

[126] And a story is a description of how you move from point A to B and what sort of pitfalls you might encounter along the way, how you fall apart in your journey towards a higher good and how you put yourself back together.

[127] that's a story and maps of meaning is about what stories are and what perhaps what the greatest story is which is a good thing to know since you have to act out a story you might as well act out a great one since well since you don't have anything better to do fundamentally well it's it's worth thinking about so because maps of meaning was about stories and because i believe that people's lives are best construed as stories and perhaps even reality itself is best construed as a story, because otherwise we wouldn't use stories to represent it.

[128] So continually, I had people start to write out the story of their future life.

[129] And so it's kind of an interesting exercise.

[130] It's related to Rule 10 in 12 Rules for Life, which is be precise in your speech.

[131] And no one's ever told, no one's ever really told why you should be precise in your speech, but the reason is, for the same reason that when you shoot a rifle at a target, you aim at the center, right?

[132] It's not random, you know, just sort of point your gun and shoot approximately in the direction of the target.

[133] You specify it as precisely as you can, and then you pull the trigger, and you might think, well, it's a strange thing to use a, say, a military analogy, an analogy with weapons.

[134] But it's not a strange thing at all, because if you think about the things that people do, if you think about the dramatic things that people do, we're trying to hit the center of targets all the time, and we love to see people do that.

[135] We do that with hockey.

[136] We do that with soccer.

[137] We do it with baseball.

[138] We do with basketball.

[139] Like the idea of specifying a target and then hitting the center of it, there's something that we're absolutely obsessed about that.

[140] We're so obsessed that we'll gather together in huge stadiums and watch people do it, right?

[141] Right, without even really, without ever really contemplating what we're doing, you see a sports team, it's a cooperative and competitive attempt to specify and hit a target.

[142] And we're so excited about that, probably, because at least in part, we're built physiologically on a hunting platform and a throwing platform, right?

[143] I mean, human beings can throw, and we can throw a punch, and we can throw a ball, and we can throw a spear.

[144] And that's a big deal.

[145] That's a big part of what we are.

[146] And so we're target -seeking creatures.

[147] And so to be precise in your speech is to specify the target, and to specify the target is to have an aim, and to have an aim is to have a purpose, and to aim properly is to attain your purpose, at least in principle.

[148] And so partly what you're doing in the future authoring exercise is to specify your purpose with your precise speech and so we ask people to well here's another thing to contemplate we are aiming creatures we are built on a hunting platform we like to hit targets it's possible that we're good at it and then what that also means is that well if we are good at it and if that's part of what we are then if you specify a target you might be able to hit it and that's a hell of a thing there's a there's a statement in the New Testament.

[149] It's quite a strange statement.

[150] And it's a, it's a suggestion.

[151] The suggestion is that if you knock, the door will open, and if you ask, you will receive.

[152] And you think, well, that seems highly unlikely.

[153] And, well, it does seem highly unlikely, right?

[154] I mean, sure, that's the way the world is set up.

[155] It's like, you know, that is actually the way the world is set up.

[156] It's a very strange thing.

[157] And it's not that surprising if you start to think it through.

[158] Because, I mean, after all, hypothetically you're adapted to the world evolution has been working three and a half billion years to produce you and so you know i think maybe it could have done a better job but that's not but but maybe it didn't do such a bad job man and so maybe you could attain your aim and one of the things i certainly learned as a clinical psychologist was that a lot of the people that i saw who were unhappy with their lives say in their 40s and sometimes earlier than that and who hadn't attained what they wanted hadn't attained it often in large part because they never specified it and the probability that you're going to hit a tiny target precisely without aiming at it is zero that's not going to happen and so well so what would happen if you would aim at it that's a question and how should you best aim that's another question and that's part of what 12 rules for life is about in the second rule for example is treat yourself like you're someone responsible for helping which is kind of a nice start it's like can imagine imagine that again if you're aiming a rifle you have to put yourself in a certain physiological state right you why not take some deep breaths and calm down and you want to make sure your hands aren't shaking and jiggling and so forth you know you've got to put yourself in the right frame of mind and if you're going to take aim with your life it's the same thing you have to put yourself in the right frame of mind and what's the right frame of mind and it might be something like, well, you could assume that you're actually hypothetically a valuable creature, even though you might not think that about yourself, because you're so absolutely knowledgeable about your own flaws and insufficiencies.

[159] But independent of that, you might think, well, you could lend yourself a hand and you could do something good for yourself, just out of the goodness of your heart, you know, like you might do for someone that you cared about.

[160] And that's actually very difficult for people, you know.

[161] Like most of us love someone or a couple of people, at least half -heartedly.

[162] We at least manage that with our children.

[163] Well, you know, it's hard to be fully committed to something.

[164] But generally, we do a pretty good job with our partners, our husbands and wives, and a pretty good job with our children, though it's a little more iffy there, and a decent job with our parents.

[165] Well, you know, it's 70, 30 or whatever, but maybe you can, maybe you can elevate it more than that with a lot of effort.

[166] But I don't know how good we are about doing that for ourselves.

[167] I would say much less so.

[168] And part of that is definitely the fact that we're very aware of our own flaws and insufficiencies, personally.

[169] You know more about how wretched and useless you are fundamentally than about anyone else.

[170] And so that's rather disheartening.

[171] And given that it's disheartening, then it's not so easy to take care of yourself properly.

[172] But it isn't obvious to me that you really have that right not to take care of yourself.

[173] I think you have a responsibility to take care of yourself as if you're something of value.

[174] which you are, and so that's a responsibility.

[175] And so when you fill out the future authoring program, you're asked to adopt, for the sake of experimentation, the frame of reference, a frame of reference within which you give yourself the benefit of the doubt and assume that there's something about you that might be usefully brought forward into the world.

[176] and you know it's an axiom of our society that there is something about you that would be usefully brought forward into the world because our whole society is predicated on the notion of the sovereign individual or even of the divine individual and we wouldn't have exceeded political power to each and every one of us and that wouldn't work unless there was actually something to the proposition that each individual is in fact something approximating a divine locus of value despite our insufficiencies.

[177] And so allowing yourself the benefit of the doubt seems like a philosophically appropriate thing to do.

[178] And it takes a certain amount of love and it takes a certain amount of courage.

[179] And so we ask people to think, okay, well, here, here's a game.

[180] You can have it if you aim at it.

[181] It's a possibility.

[182] If you aim it at proper.

[183] And well, that makes sense, because if you aim it something improperly, you're not going to hit it.

[184] So you could hit what you can hit what you aim at if you aim properly.

[185] The question would be, how would you aim properly?

[186] The answer might be, well, imagine you decided to take care of yourself like you were something worth taking care of.

[187] So then you could say, well, if you could have what you wanted three to five years down the road, what would it be, wanted it needed, assuming you were taking care of yourself, like if you, you can think about it like you might take care of it.

[188] child.

[189] If you're going to take care of a child, you wouldn't just grant him or her, his or her every whim.

[190] That's not care.

[191] So that isn't how you would treat yourself.

[192] You have to be more sensible than that, but we could say, well, okay, you get to have what you need, three to five years down the road.

[193] What do you want from your family?

[194] If you could put your family together the way you wanted it to be put together.

[195] So you had what you wanted from your father and your mother and your siblings and your kids.

[196] Just hypothetically, what would that look like?

[197] Probably wouldn't look like the situation where you're all around Thanksgiving dinner with your hands around each other's necks, squeezing slowly, which is the condition that many families are in at Thanksgiving dinner.

[198] You probably wouldn't wish for that, and it would probably not be for the best.

[199] And then you might ask, well, what would you want from your intimate partner if you could have what you needed?

[200] And what would you want from your career?

[201] And how would you educate yourself if you could do that the way that an optimal way, you know, or at least better than you're managing now.

[202] How would you take care of your mental and physical health?

[203] What would you do outside of work that would be meaningful and engaging and productive?

[204] What do you want from your friends?

[205] That's rule three in 12 Rules for Life.

[206] Make friends with the people who want the best for you.

[207] That's a hell of a thing to do.

[208] That'd be useful, you know, because it's not that easy to do what's best, even though it's best to do what's best, by definition, it'd be useful, perhaps, to be surrounded by people who are happy when something good happens to you, genuinely pleased, because they know that life is bitter and short and tragic, and that the probability that good things will happen to people is somewhat low, and that, as a consequence, when they do, it's something to celebrate, and who would also perhaps be not so happy if something bad happened around you, and wouldn't necessarily entice you into such situations so that would be a good thing to consider with regards to your friends and so there's seven things that you could think about how to put your life in the kind of order that would make you actually want to have your life and not be bitter about it and and and and and degenerate because of that bitterness and then we ask people to write for 15 minutes and say okay you get to have what you want what does your life look like and so that would be a life that you'd maximally acceptable, let's say.

[209] But realistically, you know.

[210] And so then you have something to aim at, and then we added this after we worked on the program for a while.

[211] And then we had people write for 15 minutes a counter vision, which was, okay, that's where you're headed, that's where you're aiming, what you're aiming at, and you kind of flesh it out.

[212] But here's another useful thing to think about.

[213] So you have bad habits and you're resentful about things and you're not trying as hard as you might in some dimensions and you have weaknesses that might take you apart and pretty much everybody knows what those weaknesses are.

[214] Some people would smoke too much pot and some people would drink too much and some people would be unfaithful and have counterproductive affairs and some people would end up on the street because they would degenerate with regards to their discipline.

[215] Everybody kind of knows how they'd fall apart if they fell apart in their own idiosyncratic and spectacular manner.

[216] Those are the sorts of things that keep you awake at night if you if you if you contemplate them deeply.

[217] Um, where would you be in three to five years if you let everything go directly to hell?

[218] That's useful man. That's useful because then see it's one thing to motivate yourself because you see that what you're doing is moving you ahead to something that you want, but that's hope.

[219] And hope is a powerful emotion.

[220] But terror, that's even a more powerful emotion.

[221] And so, you know, one of the things I often do with my clinical clients is maybe they don't have a job they really like, you know, and it's grinding away at their soul.

[222] And it's not like you can just leap out of your job into another job.

[223] That's actually a really complicated problem, right?

[224] If you don't like your job, it's not just a psychological problem.

[225] You have to have a job.

[226] Otherwise, you die.

[227] And so it's not just a psychological problem.

[228] And so just changing jobs isn't a matter of just adjusting yourself psychologically.

[229] You might have to do a lot of planning to change your job.

[230] You have to update your CV and maybe you have to update your skills and maybe you've got to figure out how to be a little bit more credible in an interview and you have to overcome your fear of rejection.

[231] Like there may be all sorts of things that you have to do to actually set yourself up to move laterally or up, let's say, to a different position, one that's more engaging and you know you might be you might be loath to do that and so you're afraid of doing that and you think well if i'm afraid of it why should i do it people ask themselves the same question when they have a difficult conversation to have with their wives or their children or their parents you know because a lot of us are very conflict diverse and so there are difficult conversations to have but we won't have them and the reason is is because they're awkward and they make us afraid And so you might think, well, why the hell bother if it makes you afraid?

[232] Why not just not do it?

[233] Which is one of the ideas that keeps people in jobs they hate and in relationships and stops them from repairing their relationships, which is a very difficult thing to do.

[234] And the answer is, well, let's imagine that you just keep doing the thing that you don't like.

[235] You don't change it because you're afraid to.

[236] well are you afraid of what happens if you don't change it and if you lay out this little hell that I described really in a blunt way so you know where you would degenerate if you were going to degenerate and then you look at your life and you think well here's a bunch of things that I'm not doing because I'm afraid and that's you know keeping me secure it's like no it's not it's just taking you to that place that you laid out that's an absolute catastrophe and so sometimes the answer to why should I do this thing that I've been putting off is well otherwise they end up in this particular hell but I already know and I already know the parameters of it and so hope can help you move out of that it would be better if I did this but fear of not doing it and the consequences that's way better and what's better yet is to have both of them working in tandem so psychologists figured this out when they were looking at fear years ago because they're trying to figure out how to motivate animals to do things like run down a maze to obtain a reward.

[237] Turns out that a hungry rat will run down a little maze quite rapidly to get a piece of cheese.

[238] But if that rat is, if you, if you have the hungry rat and you waft in some cat odor, because rats really are terrified of cats, they really don't like them, even if they've never met a cat, even if they've never smelled a cat, they know what cats smell like and they don't like it.

[239] And so if you take your hungry rat and you throw in a little cat odor, he'll zip down that runway like mad, much faster than one that's just hungry.

[240] So, running away from something that you're terrified of, avoiding something that you're properly terrified of, and running towards something you want is a good way of being maximally motivated.

[241] And so in the second part of that program, we have people lay out a very detailed plan about their vision, You know, about maybe you could break it into eight goals and you could prioritize the goals and you could figure out Why would your life be better if you attained the first goal?

[242] And how would your family's life be better also?

[243] And maybe how would you be of more benefit to the community if you attained that goal?

[244] Because it'd be nice if you could sort yourself out in a way that also sorted out your family and that also sorted out your community.

[245] And since you're making a plan, well, why the hell not aim for all three?

[246] It's more sustainable anyways, right?

[247] So, the famous psychologist, Jean Piaget, called that an equilibrated state.

[248] He said that it's like a game that everyone wants to play.

[249] It's better if you're going to play a game to play a game that everyone wants to play.

[250] And that's a good indication that it's a good game.

[251] And so if you could figure out how to fix yourself up in a way that would simultaneously fix up your family and your community, it's like, hey, everybody wins.

[252] And maybe it would be good to play a game.

[253] that everybody wins.

[254] So we don't think of games that way very often, but it's certainly possible that games like that exist.

[255] And so, well, back to courage and back to free speech.

[256] One of the things that I do recommend to people who try these programs is that they do them badly because a bad plan is better than no plan at all.

[257] And you're going to come up with a bad plan because what the hell do you know?

[258] And so it's either a bad plan or no plan.

[259] and no plan is way worse than a bad plan.

[260] At least when you implement a bad plan and you start walking towards what the plan lays out, you'll see specifically where it is that you're in error, like specifically.

[261] And you'll learn from that, and then you can use what you learned while you're making the mistakes, implementing your bad plan, to make a better plan.

[262] And if you keep doing that, eventually, like there'll be a lot of failure along the way, that's the adventure of your life, by the way.

[263] If you do that and you keep laying out a plan, and learning painfully from your failures and then correcting the plan, what'll happen is that you get on target as you move through life.

[264] And even though you're hitting a moving target, because life is complicated.

[265] And so we have found, because we studied this scientifically, because we weren't convinced that our theories were necessarily accurate, we found, for example, this was at Mohawk College in Ontario, So people who did the future authoring program before they went to college were the young men in particular, especially the aimless young men, because we sort of categorized them into people who were pursuing something that was career -oriented or something that was just sort of vaguely defined.

[266] The young men who had vaguely defined goals, if they did the future authoring program, they were 50 % less likely to drop out of college in the first semester.

[267] Because it was quite staggering.

[268] So it's useful to aim at something.

[269] That's the moral of that story.

[270] And so back to courage, which is where I started.

[271] So originally, when psychologists were studying fear, they assumed that fear was something that you learned.

[272] And you might think that because there you are sitting down and you're pretty calm, you're not afraid of anything.

[273] And so you might believe that the normal state of a human being is calm and that we have to learn to be afraid.

[274] And, you know, psychologists could teach animals how to be afraid.

[275] So one way you can teach an animal how to be afraid, this was done with rats, is have your rat in its cage, and it's like a calm rat.

[276] And then you turn on a light, and then you electrify the floor.

[277] A little bit, right?

[278] Because you want to have the rat around for a while.

[279] And so, just enough to shock them, you know.

[280] And that shock, that causes pain.

[281] That's a punishment.

[282] turn on the light, shock the rat.

[283] You do that a few times, and when the light goes on, the rat freezes.

[284] Because the rat has learned that the light signifies shock, and what the rat is experiencing when the light goes on is fear or anxiety.

[285] And so psychologists did that with rats, and they thought, aha, animals learn to be afraid.

[286] That's actually not true.

[287] But I'll talk about that in a while.

[288] And so then they generalized that to human beings, and so maybe you have a phobia of a mouse or something like that, or maybe you're afraid of something.

[289] The idea was, well, you learn to be afraid, and we can teach you how to not be afraid.

[290] And so what the psychologist did, the behaviorists, was, let's say you were afraid of balloons.

[291] Some people are afraid of balloons, as it turns out.

[292] It's kind of an absurd fear, but that's okay.

[293] You know, maybe they were little, and a balloon was popped too close to their face, and they learned to be afraid of it.

[294] And so that was conditioned.

[295] It was learned.

[296] And so what you do is you sit the person down and you have them do a relaxation exercise.

[297] And so they take deep breaths and they pay attention to different parts of their body, their feet, their ankles, their knees, so forth, all the way up the body and relax all the muscles.

[298] You put them in a state of relaxation.

[299] They're breathing deeply.

[300] And then you have them think about balloons or maybe you show them some balloons or maybe you fill the whole damn room with balloons.

[301] That's called flooding, by the way.

[302] And that can be effective if you have to get someone over their fear of balloons like right now.

[303] But it's a little drastic.

[304] But anyways, the point is that you introduce them to the thing they're afraid of.

[305] Well, they're relaxed.

[306] And then the idea is that's counter -conditioning.

[307] The idea is that, well, you can't be relaxed and afraid at the same time.

[308] And so if you can learn to relax in the face of the thing that you're afraid of, then you won't be afraid anymore.

[309] But then someone knows.

[310] So that's a pretty good theory, but it's wrong.

[311] It's a good theory.

[312] Just like the theory that animals learn to be afraid.

[313] Actually, the theory is exactly wrong because you don't learn to be afraid.

[314] You bloody well know how to be afraid.

[315] What you learn is how to be calm.

[316] And it turns out that's even true for rats because the psychologist gerrymandered the experience a little bit.

[317] The question is, when do you have your normal rat?

[318] You might think, well, here's the rat.

[319] He's in a cage, and he's kind of at home there, so he's calm.

[320] Then you can teach him how to be afraid of a light.

[321] So you take a calm rat, the normal rat, the rat that's like you, and then you teach him how to be afraid.

[322] But it's kind of arbitrary when you decide that the rat is normal.

[323] Because if you take a rat, pick him up by the tail, let's say, and you drop him in a new cage, when he goes in that new cage, he is not a calm rat.

[324] He's this sort of rat.

[325] Now, you guys have probably had cats, some of you.

[326] Had a house infested with cats.

[327] Anyways, you have cats, and some of you have probably moved your cat to a new house.

[328] And cats don't like that.

[329] Like your cat at home is a calm, by cat standards, which isn't all that calm.

[330] But you move.

[331] It's one of the delightful things about cats that you can scare them half to death by just making noises, you know, and they puff up, which is really a lovely.

[332] You know, when a cat's hair stands on end like that?

[333] You know, that's the same experience you have when you feel awe?

[334] Do you know that your hair stands on end when you feel awe?

[335] It's the same response that an animal has to a predator.

[336] You know, imagine you're like a mouse and you see a coyote.

[337] Well, and you're a mouse, let's say, so you're six feet high.

[338] So you scale up the coyote.

[339] So that cow is like 70 feet high.

[340] If you saw a 70 -foot -high coyote, you'd feel awe, and your hair would stand on end.

[341] So that's what happens to.

[342] And the reason your hair stands on end is so you look big.

[343] I mean, a mouse puffs up and it doesn't really bother a coyote.

[344] But if a cat puffs up, it does look, and that's why they stand sideways, too, and dance backwards, all puffed up.

[345] It's like, look how big I am.

[346] I'm a sideways cat with a tail this big.

[347] Yeah.

[348] So, anyways, you put a rat in a new cage, and it's like this.

[349] It's frozen.

[350] That's a normal rat, as far as I'm concerned.

[351] That frozen rat, the thing that's absolutely terrified out of its mind because it doesn't know what the hell it's doing or where it's going or what's going to eat it next, that's normal.

[352] that's the fear circuit on completely that's the standard condition of existence as far as i'm concerned because existence is characterized by terror and death and the idea that the normal condition is calm that's insane that's not true at all and so you put a rat in a cage and it's frozen man because it thinks god only knows what's here and then what it does is it's so it's frozen and it sniffs a bit and if nothing kills it when it's sniffs, then it sniffs a little bit more.

[353] And so then it's sniffing and it's seeing if there's anything in there like a cat.

[354] And that would really drive a rat, you know, to drink.

[355] And you can get terrified animals to become alcoholic, by the way.

[356] So another thing psychologists do.

[357] It's like, let's terrify some animals and see if we can turn them into alcoholics.

[358] It's like, yeah, we can.

[359] Oh, isn't that interesting?

[360] So the ethics committees are pretty much putting a stop to that though.

[361] So yeah, despite the fact that we learned almost everything we know about how the brain works from doing such things.

[362] It's like, well, we don't want to scare any rats.

[363] So drive them to drink.

[364] Anyway, so the rat, as he sniffs and nothing kills him, he gets a little braver and he starts to move around and then he just explores the whole damn cage, every nook and cranny.

[365] And then if there's nothing there that will kill a rat, then he'll calm down.

[366] And then then you think well that's the normal rat it's like well no it isn't the terrified rat was the normal rat the calm rat is the rat that's explored everything now it's a really useful thing to know it's unbelievably useful thing to know now rats don't generally live by themselves in cages they live in a hierarchy of other rats in a social group and so they're sort of like people and so the reason that you're not terrified out of your skull right now even though you could be is that You're in a hierarchy with other people who basically share your culture, which means they share your goals, they share your aims, and you can predict them.

[367] You don't know all these primates that you're surrounded with, and there's probably, there's 3 ,000 people in here, there's least 30 of you who are seriously deranged, at least 30.

[368] Probably more since you came to this talk.

[369] But everybody's behaving properly, and everybody's pointed in the same direction.

[370] You know, like if someone was turned around completely at their sea, their seat and looking at you right you wouldn't like that that would make you uncomfortable because you'd think what the hell is this primate up to not what all these other primates are up to and we have an agreement here the agreement is everybody sits in their chair and everybody faces the front and no one makes too much noise and you don't wave your elbows around it's like there's lots of rules here and everybody and you wear clothes that's a rule too and you keep them on that's another there's lots of rules and you don't talk a lot to your partner, let's say, while the lecture is on.

[371] And you don't talk to yourself while the damn lecture is on.

[372] And you certainly don't mutter to yourself and hit your forehead, right?

[373] So there's lots of rules that are keeping your anxiety circuitry under control in this circumstance.

[374] And everybody around you is being polite enough to act out the rules, and so your fear stays off.

[375] and one of the reasons, and this is something that was, see, it was really important to me when I finally figured out that the calm rat wasn't the normal rat.

[376] The terrified rat was the normal rat.

[377] And then the terrified rat had to learn how to be calm, and the way that it learned how to be calm was to explore its territory, but in a natural environment to organize a hierarchy in that territory so that every rat knew exactly what every other rat was doing at all times.

[378] Come to a nice rat agreement, that's the hierarchy, and they explore the environment, keep their terrorist circuits off.

[379] And the reason that people don't like to have their belief systems disrupted is because it turns the terrorist circuits back on.

[380] And no one likes that.

[381] Not even a bit.

[382] It's absolutely horrifying.

[383] And so that's partly why people are so invested in their belief systems.

[384] So, back to how you treat someone if they're afraid.

[385] So you flood them with balloons while they're relaxed.

[386] and then they're not afraid of balloons anymore.

[387] And that actually works.

[388] If you do it five or six times, then they'll be able to tolerate balloons or mice or needles.

[389] I had a client with a needle phobia.

[390] He had a needle phobia that was so severe that he would undergo dental surgery with no anesthetic.

[391] Right, right.

[392] So that's something, right?

[393] I mean, you've had a dentist drill in your tooth.

[394] It's like, drill away, man, but no needles.

[395] And so I treated him behaviorally.

[396] for his needle phobia so what i did was first of all he trusted me and i have rules in my therapy session like i am not going to do anything that we do not agree on period ever okay so that's a crucial issue if you're going to treat help someone with a fear so i said well you you probably need to get over this needle phobia because well the whole dental surgery thing seems a little much and he needed to get blood tests and other things because you need to get a needle down then so i said well let's see if we can get rid of this needlephobia and he said okay we'll give to try.

[397] And I said, okay, well, the first thing I'm going to do next session is I'm going to bring in a hyperdermic needle.

[398] I'm just going to put it on the shelf.

[399] And I showed him exactly where on the shelf I was going to put it.

[400] I said, just look at that place in the shelf.

[401] And I said that because if you're afraid of something, you don't like to look at it.

[402] So you'll avoid it.

[403] Right.

[404] So one way of not being afraid of something is to not avoid it.

[405] So I said, well, just look on the shelf and get familiar with that.

[406] So he said, okay.

[407] And I said, well, okay, next time he came in, I said, look that you have a seat make yourself comfortable you see that spot i told you about last time if you look there you'll see a needle and it's got a sheath on it it's got a little orange capsule on it and so um i want you just to look at the needle just look at it he said okay i said well how's that going you said well i'm kind of nervous and i said well just look at it till you're bored because boredom is a form of learning if you're afraid of something what you want to do is become bored by it and so and if you look at a needle long enough you'll get bored by it because it doesn't do anything.

[408] It just sits there and it's not very exciting.

[409] And so, so, and he got, he said, okay, I'm, I'm, I'm going to pick up the needle.

[410] I'm not going to bring it towards you.

[411] I'm just going to pick it up.

[412] I know, lifted four inches off the shelf because I wanted him to know what the hell was going on.

[413] So I lifted it up and that made him kind of nervous.

[414] I said, okay, I'm just going to hold this needle.

[415] And we're going to do the same thing.

[416] He just watch it until you're okay.

[417] And he said, okay.

[418] And I said, well, and then we did the next thing.

[419] I said, well, I'm going to move it.

[420] Then I said, well, I'm going to move it closer to you and, you know, in increments.

[421] And you can stop me whenever you want, but I'll just move it an inch at a time.

[422] And how will that be?

[423] And he said, well, I think we can do that.

[424] And anyways, by the end of the session, I had the needle with the sheath touching his arm.

[425] And he'd leave me, man, he would have run out of the room screaming if that would have happened, you know, the session before that.

[426] And that was enough.

[427] I didn't want to push him too far.

[428] But curiously enough, I didn't have him relax.

[429] Now, it turned out when the behaviorists did their experiments, they found out that you actually didn't have to have the person relax in order for the balloons to, for voluntary exposure to the balloons to have the effect.

[430] All you do is have them voluntarily expose themselves to what they were afraid of.

[431] It's like, man, that was a major league discovery.

[432] And it turns out that pretty much every school of clinical psychology has come to agree on that.

[433] How do you help someone with what they're afraid of?

[434] And this is important because we're afraid of life.

[435] Right?

[436] So if you figure out how you help someone overcome their fear, like that's a big deal because you're afraid of life and you should be because life will kill you.

[437] And so it's no wonder you're afraid of it.

[438] And so what are you going to do about that?

[439] And it's not like people who have phobias and so far and aren't afraid of things that are harmful.

[440] They're often afraid of things that are harmful.

[441] And the mystery is often why other people aren't afraid, not why they are.

[442] So, well, how do you help someone become less afraid?

[443] You actually don't.

[444] You actually help them become more courageous.

[445] That's a cool thing, because that's not the same thing.

[446] It's like, because life actually is dangerous.

[447] And if your ability to prevail in life is dependent on you not being afraid of life, it's like, well, that's kind of a non -starter, because there's lots of things in life to be afraid of.

[448] And so, if you, to be successful, you had to be not afraid of life.

[449] it's like, well, forget about that, because, you know, if you're at someone's deathbed, then there's going to be some emotion associated with that.

[450] We're actually afraid of death, and we're afraid of insanity, and we're afraid of betrayal, and we're afraid of pain, and no bloody wonder, that's for sure.

[451] And so if not being afraid was necessary, well, then we're lost, but that isn't what's necessary.

[452] What's necessary is to be courageous.

[453] And that's very, very cool, because it turns out that you could be more courageous than you, think.

[454] It also turns out that if you put yourself in a situation where you face the things you're afraid of, you find out that there's way more to you than you thought.

[455] And what's also cool about that is it doesn't seem to be any upper limit to that, because it isn't obvious that there's anything that you can't face without learning how to face it.

[456] And I mean anything.

[457] And you think about it, right?

[458] People work at emergency wards, right?

[459] So think about that.

[460] What they do is have emergencies all the time.

[461] And you think, well, an emergency is something you can't tolerate, almost by definition.

[462] It wouldn't be an emergency otherwise.

[463] But people specialize in that.

[464] So obviously they get used to it.

[465] People work in palliative care wards.

[466] That's rough.

[467] Everybody there is suffering and is going to die soon.

[468] And then they do die.

[469] So not only are you dealing with that, you deal with loss, just endless loss.

[470] People work in funeral parlors.

[471] So they're dealing with death all the time.

[472] It's like people are bloody tough.

[473] So my client, he was pretty happy about that.

[474] And so the next session, I told him I was going to take the sheath off the needle, you know, and he was all right with that, and then I waved it around, but not too maniacly, you know, and, and then I did the same thing, and I got to the point where I could hold the needle half an inch away from his arm without him being, without, with him watching, without him flinching, without him turning away, without, with him watching, because that's the thing, is you actually have to face the thing you're afraid of, and so that was enough for that session, and then the next session, and then the next Part of it was trust, because he'd had a bad experience with dentists when he was a kid, and that was partly what produced his phobia.

[475] And so he didn't really trust people in authority, deeply, like a scared animal.

[476] And that's what he said he felt like was a scared animal, and that was really about right.

[477] And so the other thing I had in practice was telling me to stop and leaving.

[478] I said, look, you tell me to stop what I'm doing, and then leave.

[479] And I won't stop you.

[480] And no, I could just tell him that.

[481] And he would have believed me. but that's not the same thing as actually practicing it, watching it happen.

[482] So he'd say, I'd move the needle, you know, and around, and he'd say, stop doing that, and I'd stop, and he'd say, I'm leaving, and then he'd get up and leave, and I'd just let him leave.

[483] So we did that five or six times, like you would do a pretend -play thing with a kid, you know?

[484] And so then that got the idea deep in him that he could just get the hell out of here, there, and no one would bug him if he wanted to.

[485] It was part of increasing the trust that he had with me. And so by the end of that session, I was able to cover the needle with a piece of paper so he couldn't see it and touch his skin with the sharp edge.

[486] And so that was pretty damn good because that was both the needle.

[487] Like, a needle that you can see is one thing, and a needle that you can see that's held by someone you can trust is another thing.

[488] But a needle that you can't see that's being moved by someone that you sort of trust, that's a whole different thing.

[489] And he could manage that.

[490] And then he went off to the doctor and he had his needles.

[491] and so hooray for him.

[492] And the moral of that story is you don't have to relax in order to face the things that you're afraid of.

[493] You just have to bloody well face them.

[494] And that's so cool.

[495] So, okay, now let me tell you a different story.

[496] So, and that's partly Rule 1.

[497] So that's partly Rule 1.

[498] Like, Rule 1 is, you know, rule 1 is stand up straight with your shoulders back.

[499] And people have criticized that chapter, misread it or not read it, just assumed it, which is more like it, and they assume that what I'm talking about, because I'm talking about hierarchies, is power, you know, that to stand up straight with your shoulders back is to somehow be dominant and powerful.

[500] And that's complete rubbish.

[501] That isn't what that chapter is about at all.

[502] It's about something else.

[503] It's about the idea that, well, if you're going to be successful in your hierarchy, because most things are hierarchically arranged, the best thing that you can be is courageous.

[504] And because people admire courage, and they promote it, and they admire.

[505] And they admire.

[506] And they admire.

[507] and they, and they, uh, they mimic it.

[508] And, and if you're a courageous person, then people are happy with you and, and, and you can lead them and so forth.

[509] And, and to stand up straight with your shoulders back is to maximally expose yourself to the world.

[510] That's actually a stance of courage.

[511] And so that's, that's, that's why that's a, that's a useful thing.

[512] And it turns out that our hierarchies don't so much reward power, for example, as they reward, well, a variety of things, competence, and so forth.

[513] But you develop competence as a consequence of courage, because you develop your competence by facing things that you haven't yet mastered, overcoming your fear and learning to master them.

[514] And then you become competent, and that moves you up the hierarchy.

[515] And our functional hierarchies are predicated on competence, and competence is predicated in part on courage.

[516] And so we should facilitate that.

[517] courage because it's a good way it's a very good way of being in the world now so what does courage do for you well you think there's not a lot of you and there's a lot of the world and the world's a pretty dangerous place and maybe what you should do is go hide but it doesn't really help to hide which is why if you have parents and all they do is encourage you to hide then you have bad parents and they just make you weak and then you're weak and maybe you're hiding but it doesn't matter because no matter where you hide you're never going to be able to hide from what you're afraid of.

[518] Because wherever you are, no matter how much you hide, the thing that you're afraid of will find you.

[519] And even if it doesn't find you in the world, in the near future, it will find you in your nightmares.

[520] It doesn't matter.

[521] There's no hiding from it at all.

[522] And so when, as a parent, you don't try to protect your children, you try to make them strong, and you do that by exposing them to the world.

[523] And that's why you don't bother children when they're skateboarding.

[524] And that's rule, That's rule, if I remember correctly, rule 11, it's rule 11, because skateboarding is dangerous, but doing it involves mastery, and you want your child to master the world not to be protected from the world, because there's no protection from the world.

[525] And if you try too hard to protect your child from the world, then you are the thing they should be protected from.

[526] So, you encourage people.

[527] Now, what happens when you go out in the world and you test yourself against it?

[528] Well, the first thing is, you learn something.

[529] And so, this psychologist, Pige, that I told you about before, he watched how children learned, and he noticed that, you know, a child would try new things and experiment with the new things.

[530] And, you know, when my daughter was young, for example, I saw her do two things that I thought were quite cool.

[531] She had this little box, cardboard box, and it was full of books, cardboard books, that were solid.

[532] Only about this big.

[533] They were Disney books.

[534] And about four of them would fit into the little book box, and they fit very tightly.

[535] and what she would do is shake them out of the box and then put them in and it was hard and what she was doing was learning how to use her hands which is actually quite useful you may notice you use your hands quite a bit and so learning how to use them is a good thing and so she would sit there literally for an hour dumping out the books and then putting them in and she could get three out of four in no problem but that fourth one man that was a pain and she just worry it worry it and worry it and eventually it would go in and then the first thing she'd do is shake it out again and she could really concentrate on that.

[536] So she was mastering that technique, and that was hand -eye coordination, which is very useful, unless you want to stumble into things and be awkward.

[537] So that's what she was trying.

[538] And then I watched her on the monkey bars in our backyard.

[539] When she was very little, she was only maybe 18 months old, and these monkey bars were too high for her.

[540] But she wanted to try them anyways, and we would watch her with some apprehension, but we didn't run out, we didn't wait until she was three rungs out, up, and then run out and go, oh, my God, be careful.

[541] so that she would fall and learn to never do that again, which is what you do if you're a bad parent.

[542] And bad parents definite, and then they say, see, I told you so.

[543] Right.

[544] It's like you can't, you can't do those things you think you can do.

[545] You'll fall, just like I said, especially if I scare you, it's exactly the right time, and show you that I'm right.

[546] So she'd be on the first rung, and then she'd do this.

[547] Each time she'd lifted up her foot, she'd lift it up her foot, she'd Like an inch higher, right?

[548] She's just playing right on that edge of disaster, which is the best place to play.

[549] Everyone knows that.

[550] You play on the edge of disaster because that's where you learn.

[551] That's where it's exciting.

[552] And the reason it's exciting is because that's where you're learning.

[553] And your brain is wired to make you excited when you're learning.

[554] And so she was on the ragged edge of disaster.

[555] But being calm about it, and she'd get her foot up and get to the next rung, and then up she'd go, and then she'd do the same thing with her next foot.

[556] Very, very careful, eh?

[557] So we just left her alone And she managed to go across the top of the monkey bars And that was a good day for her and a good day for us And hopefully that made her More courageous and more competent than she would be So she learned something from doing that You know, and you could say Well, she absorbed information from the world And built herself out of it That's a way of thinking about it You know, the more things you do The more you go around the world and you do things And you bang yourself up against other people In other situations And you learn what you shouldn't do and you learn what you should do, and you make yourself sharper and more informed, right?

[558] Information.

[559] That's what information means.

[560] You put yourself in formation with the world by incorporating the information of the world, and you do that by exposing yourself to things that you haven't yet mastered, and you expand your mastery, and that's deeply meaningful.

[561] In fact, the instinct of meaning is exactly that instinct that tells you when you're optimizing the rate at which your competence is developing.

[562] And that's a really lovely thing to know, because you know you'll find sometimes that you're engaged in what you're doing that's a meaningful thing that you're doing and you might think well there isn't any meaning in life but actually there is you just have to look around and see when it manifests itself and when it manifests itself is when you're expanding your zone of competence because that's what meaning is there to signify and so it's actually a very reliable instinct and it's really real it is telling you that you're in the right place at the right time doing the right thing so that's that's a great thing to know so so you inform yourself and so here's a here's a cool thing so in the short cathedral a cathedral is a cross and a cross is a symbol a symbol an x and you're at the point of the x so that's the x marks the spot and the spot is u and if it's a cross at least in the christian world it's also a place of suffering and that makes sense because the x that marks the spot that's you is characterized by suffering so that's the idea there and then the question is well what should you do about that suffering because well you're stuck with it there's no avoiding it but it's worse than that it's not only that there's no avoiding it and that it exists it's that if you don't know how to deal with it and it just grinds you up which it certainly will if you don't know how to deal with it then that will make you bitter and resentful and that will make you cruel and once you're bitter and resentful and cruel well then you'll start to become destructive and then you'll suffer even more and you'll spread that everywhere.

[563] So you actually need to know how to deal with this.

[564] And so in the Shart Cathedral, there's this very cool thing, which is a big labyrinth.

[565] It's a maze.

[566] It's a circle.

[567] It's divided into four parts.

[568] And it's a symbolic pilgrimage.

[569] Okay, so what happens if you're a medieval type and you go in a pilgrimage?

[570] It's sort of what you do when you go to Europe, or whatever.

[571] Southeast Asia is real common for kids to go to now, too.

[572] It's sort of they grow up and they leave their parents, and they go out on this pilgrimage, and they go where they haven't been and what happens when they go where they haven't been is hypothetically they grow up they have some adventures they do some stupid things but they have some adventures and they take care of themselves and so when they come back they're more than they were because they went somewhere they hadn't been so there's a thing you want to be more than you are then you should go somewhere you haven't been and that's the idea of going on a pilgrimage to go to the center of the world you have a big adventure on the way there and then on the way back and then you're not the same when you come back.

[573] You're more than you were.

[574] And so everyone should go on a pilgrimage once in your life.

[575] And while if the pilgrimage is structured properly, then you go to the center of things.

[576] And that's the idea of a holy pilgrimage, let's say.

[577] That's something that people would act out.

[578] But not everybody can afford to go on a pilgrimage, and maybe you can do it symbolically.

[579] So in the Shart Cathedral, which is a cross, there's a maze.

[580] It's a big maze, about 40 feet across.

[581] And it's a circle divided into four parts.

[582] So it's the world, northwest.

[583] east and south, and you can get to the center of the labyrinth.

[584] But the way you get to the center is you enter the labyrinth, and then you have to walk in these pathways that demarcate all of the quadrants.

[585] And to get to the center, you have to go everywhere.

[586] Well, that's an idea.

[587] To get to the center, you have to go everywhere.

[588] And that's exactly right.

[589] And why?

[590] Why?

[591] Well, if you go everywhere, and that takes courage, obviously, to go everywhere, because you have to confront what you're afraid of to go everywhere, then you get to the center of things.

[592] Well, why?

[593] Well, here's one reason.

[594] You gather a lot of information when you go places.

[595] That's pretty straightforward.

[596] You know, and I'm sure, if you think about it, maybe I'm wrong about this, but I don't think so.

[597] what I've noticed in my life is that every time I try to do something that I actually try to do, that works.

[598] It doesn't necessarily get me where I was planning to go with that plan, but I've never regretted picking up a skill.

[599] You know, I pick up a skill for a reason, and maybe that reason doesn't work out.

[600] But then I've got the skill, and then inevitably that skill comes in useful for something along the way.

[601] And so my sense is the things that I've actually attempted to do, you know, and put some spirit into it, have paid off, even though they didn't necessarily pay off the way that I expected they would.

[602] But that's okay.

[603] That doesn't matter so much.

[604] It's whether or not they paid off that matters.

[605] So, the more things you bang yourself up against voluntarily, the more courageous you become, the more skilled you become, the more you're able to deal with your own suffering, and that means the less corrupt you're going to be, because suffering that you can't manage makes you corrupt.

[606] and suffering that you can bear, maybe even bear nobly and honorably, well, then, well, that's the definition of a well -lived life.

[607] But here's something else that's cool.

[608] So there's this idea that if you, that you can confront the abyss, and that in the abyss there's a monster, and in the belly of the monster is your father, and your father is laying there asleep or dead.

[609] You see that in the story, Pinocchio.

[610] It's a very, very old idea.

[611] It's a very, very, very old idea.

[612] It's at least 5 ,000 years old.

[613] In recorded form, which means it's way older than that, but it's really old idea.

[614] You look into the abyss, that's what terrifies you.

[615] And in the abyss, there's a terrible monster, and in the monster, there's your father, and he's half dead or asleep.

[616] And you see that in Pinocchio, and Pinocchio is a puppet, a marionette.

[617] Someone else is pulling his strings.

[618] And if you remember in the Pinocchio movie, you may remember this.

[619] When Pinocchio goes to rescue his father from the depths, not only is he a marionette, but he's also a jackass.

[620] That's a bad combination.

[621] So not only is something else pulling his strings, he's still wooden -headed puppet, but he brazed nonsense, because he's pathologized his capacity for truthful speech.

[622] So he's really in rough shape, but he goes down to the depths, right to the bottom, to see the thing that everything is most afraid of.

[623] That's the whale, monster.

[624] And weirdly enough, what he finds inside the whale, even though there's no explanation in the story at all, about.

[625] how Geppetto got there is his father and then he rescues his father from the belly of the whale and they go back up to the surface and Pinocchio becomes a real boy so that's very interesting and it's really interesting because you go see that movie right all of you pretty much have seen that movie it's like what the hell are you doing going to see that movie you're watching drawings of a puppet led by a cricket go to the ocean to find a whale to rescue his father and somehow that makes him real and you're all okay with that It's like, yeah, that makes perfect sense.

[626] It's like, it doesn't make any sense at all.

[627] But nonetheless, you're gripped by it and you're engaged by it, and it's because it's actually true.

[628] So here's how it's true.

[629] This is something geneticists have discovered recently.

[630] So first of all, there's the thing is that if you face what you're afraid of, the abyss, you're going to find all sorts of information, right?

[631] You're going to gather all sorts of information.

[632] You're going to map that information into you, and that's going to make you informed.

[633] and so that's part of that's part of becoming who you are then some of that information you're going to gather from other people and those people because you're interacting with all the time they're telling you all the time about how to behave and how to be an optimal person and how not to be an optimal person and the more you reflect that the more you take on the characteristics that are demanded of you in some sense in the way that an ideal is demanded of someone so you think about that as a paternal ideal at least in part you should be the great father.

[634] That's who you should be.

[635] You should grow up.

[636] That's what you should do.

[637] And everyone's telling you that all the time, including you.

[638] And so the more you hit yourself against the world, the more of that information you're going to incorporate and the more of that you're going to become.

[639] And that's something like rescuing your father from the abyss.

[640] But here's this thing that's even cooler.

[641] And it's associated with this idea of the labyrinth as well.

[642] So the labyrinth, which is the pilgrimage, you have to go everywhere to get to the middle.

[643] So here's what happens.

[644] If I take you out of your comfortable environment, and I put you something new, put you somewhere new, or even better, you put yourself somewhere new.

[645] And that's the only thing that really works, by the way.

[646] So if I present you with a challenge and it's involuntary, you'll produce a lot of stress hormones, and it'll paralyze you.

[647] But if you take on the same challenge voluntarily, you have an entirely different psychophysiological response to it.

[648] It's a completely different thing, to do it voluntarily.

[649] Okay, so you have to confront the abyss voluntarily.

[650] What happens?

[651] You put yourself in a radically new situation.

[652] Your genes turn on new proteins and manufacture different structures in your brain.

[653] You turn yourself on.

[654] And we don't know the limit to that.

[655] And so you have a potential, you know, and the potential is part what you could learn as a consequence of being informed.

[656] But there's also a potential.

[657] Genuinely, there's a potential locked inside of you at the molecular level.

[658] And the way you turn that potential on is by stressing yourself, by challenging yourself, right, by adopting a stance of courage in the world, and by pushing yourself beyond where you are, into new domains.

[659] And the consequence of that is that the genes in your neural structures code for new proteins, and they make a new thing out of you.

[660] And we have no idea what the limit of that is.

[661] And so you think, well, what's that new thing that's being turned on?

[662] Well, obviously, you know, you've been around for three and a half billion years.

[663] stupid, even though you may act stupid from time to time.

[664] You have this limitless biological potential in some sense that's ready to manifest itself, but it's not going to manifest itself without being pushed.

[665] It needs a reason to turn on.

[666] And so you go somewhere new voluntarily and things that would help you cope with that new thing turn on.

[667] And then you might think, well, what would happen if you just got it all turned on?

[668] And the answer then might be, well then you would be who you should be.

[669] And that would be equivalent to rescuing your father from the belly of the beast, right?

[670] That would be the same thing as taking on that, that archetypal, what would you call it, that archetypal and desirable structure of authority and incorporating that.

[671] It's something like that.

[672] Well, and what you need in order to do that is courage.

[673] And faith, too, faith that if you manifest courage, that the consequences of that will be positive.

[674] And the only way you will ever find out is if you try, because no one else can tell you.

[675] They can hint at it, but you can't do, this is something the existentialists in the 1950s realized, is it's on you.

[676] The only person that can find out if this is actually true is you, because you're the one that has to face the things that you're particularly afraid of.

[677] And you're the one, there's an old story, King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, they're off to look for the Holy Grail, which is the container of what everyone needs, whatever that is.

[678] And of course, they don't know where they hell to go look for the Holy Grail.

[679] Who knows where you go look for the Holy Grail?

[680] They move away from the round table and they all enter the forest.

[681] And each of them enters the forest at the place that looks darkest to him.

[682] And that's where you start the search for the Holy Grail.

[683] And so that's very much worth knowing as well.

[684] So, courage.

[685] Well, why do you need courage?

[686] Well, because life is terrible.

[687] It's suffering and it's malevolence.

[688] And so you have every reason to be terrified.

[689] And there's no real way out of that because that's...

[690] the ground of existence.

[691] But it turns out that that's okay because there's more to you than you think.

[692] And the way you find out if there's more, and what that more is, is by facing that thing that's terrifying and maybe facing that thing that's malevolent as well, because that could be your fundamental moral obligation, right, to face the suffering of the world and to constrain the malevolence within it.

[693] And it turns out that, even though that's an overwhelming task by definition that you're probably up to it and if you took on the responsibility of doing that voluntarily then what would happen is that you would discover that you were up to it and the consequence of that would be at least in part is not so much that the suffering in life would disappear although God only knows how much we could constrain it if we all seriously tried but that in the attempt to face it and constrain it you'll find a meaning that's so engaging and so overwhelming that that in its will serve as a medication against the suffering and malevolence that exists.

[694] And all of that appears to be just simply true.

[695] Thank you.

[696] All right.

[697] So someone named Zachary Henderson said, in your opinion, who is the handsomest man in the front row tonight?

[698] Well, obviously that's Zachary Henderson.

[699] Okay.

[700] All right.

[701] Anonymous says, do you believe in aliens?

[702] And the answer to that is, no, but they exist whether I believe in them or not.

[703] All right.

[704] So, someone said, how do you reconcile the very strong interest in your work, my work, I presume, with what is otherwise a generally apathetic and disengaged approach to life?

[705] So someone, so that's a nihilism question.

[706] Right?

[707] Because, you know, there's kind of two broad categories of existential catastrophe, and one would be the escape into a rigid totalitarianism that sort of crushes with its strictures, and the other is to let everything fall apart and to become nihilistic.

[708] And the nihilistic attitude is generally predicated on the presumption that, you know, life is fundamentally meaningless.

[709] so there's no superordinate meaning and because life is short and painful and so what's the point and I think the answer to that is well a process of discovery because you you can discover the point but you have to first of all assume that you're too ignorant to begin to with to know what it is, and also to question your doubt itself.

[710] Because if you believe that life is pointless, then you believe that what you believe is correct.

[711] And that means you believe your beliefs.

[712] And it seems to me that you're probably not smart enough to unquestioningly believe your beliefs.

[713] And you might start with questioning your doubt.

[714] Why do you doubt that life has meaning?

[715] well you might say well it's just self -evident given it's suffering infinitude it's like well no that's not so self -evident maybe you're just useless and irresponsible and you're justifying that by making the case that life is meaningless so that you don't have to do anything and you don't have to bear any responsibility that's actually quite hopeful if you discover that because you think that everything is pointless and horrible and it's just that you're useless and that's way better because if you're just useless you could forget you could fix that but if life is is pointless and horrible, then you're basically doomed.

[716] So you can substitute nihilism for humility.

[717] You can substitute humility for nihilism.

[718] That would be a good start.

[719] And then the person who asked this question, obviously has a generally apathetic and disengaged approach to life, but finds that they're very strongly interested in my work.

[720] Okay, so then the first thing to do about that is to notice that while you're not completely apathetic and disengaged, You're apathetic and disengaged, but there's some spark in the darkness, and you don't know why, but it's there at least, and this is a useful thing if you're feeling hopeless, and I mean there's lots of reasons why someone might be feeling hopeless, and sometimes people are feeling hopeless because they're physically ill in one manner or another.

[721] So I'm not thinking about this as a universal panacea, and I know there's lots of reasons for being depressed, and that that's not that easy to distinguish from being nihilistic.

[722] But if you notice that, there are some things that grip you that's a useful place to start it's like oh look I'm interested in something well that's a mystery right because you can't make yourself interested in something you can notice that you're interested in something and then you can pursue it interest is sort of like it's like a beacon that glimmers in the darkness and if you follow what you're interested in especially if you do it honestly which is actually crucial which is why I wrote rule 8 8 Tell the truth, or at least don't lie.

[723] If you're going to follow what you're interested in, then you better not lie, because if you lie, you'll pathologize the mechanism of interest, and then it will lead you off a cliff.

[724] So if you're going to follow what you're interested in, then you better be honest, because otherwise you're following someone dishonest.

[725] That's a very bad idea.

[726] But in any case, if you don't notice that you're interested in something, even if you're interested in something like music, I don't care what it is.

[727] If you're interested in something, then that thing that you're interested in can guide you.

[728] you know in the in the harry potter movies you know they play that quidditch game and you know that's a funny game because there's the normal game which is sort of like basketball except you play it on brooms and then there's a game that rises out of that which is the game that the seekers play there's two seekers and they chase this little golden ball with wings on it and that's actually an ancient symbol it's the alchemical chaos and it's a it's the container of the unrevealed world That's what the alchemical chaos is.

[729] That's what that snitch is, interestingly enough.

[730] And I don't know how the hell J .K. Rowling ever figured that out because it's unbelievably obscure knowledge, but she did figure it out.

[731] And the seekers chase that, and that thing flits around, right?

[732] It goes everywhere.

[733] It's like Mercury, the winged messenger of the gods.

[734] It's the same idea.

[735] And the seekers follow this thing that flits around that's golden and glitters and gleams.

[736] And that's meaning itself.

[737] And the idea that's expressed in the game of Quidditch is that the person who pursues meaning and finds it is win something of such colossal magnitude that the entire game is, that everyone who's playing, what would you say, attained something of such colossal magnitude that he is declared victorious right at that moment.

[738] That's really what that is symbolizing in the structure of the movie, which is so cool that she managed that.

[739] There's such a stroke of genius But you can do that in your own life You know, there'll be things that glimmer and glitter for you in the darkness And you said, Andrew, this is the person who asked this question That you have a strong interest in my work And well then I would say be a little more precise about that Right, exactly what is it that you're interested in Precisely what is it that's gathering your attention Because that's a marker to the That's a door, that's the door, that's the door, that's the door, doorway through which you must pass into your life.

[740] That's what that is.

[741] And that's what meaning marks out for people.

[742] You know, it's like we see, we see in front of us a set of doors.

[743] That's the, that's the world.

[744] In front of us is an infinite set of doorways.

[745] And we can open the doorways and all sorts of things will come out.

[746] We don't face some, we're not determined by the material reality around us, although we are to some degree.

[747] That isn't the world that confronts us.

[748] The world that confronts us is a vast expanse of potential and possibility.

[749] You all know that.

[750] You wake up in the morning and you think, well, there are things to do.

[751] There are ways that I can behave that will produce certain consequences, some negative and some positive.

[752] It's this expanse of potential.

[753] And that's really what you confront as a human being, is you confront the expansive potential with your consciousness.

[754] And your consciousness is exactly that which transforms that potential into actuality and your moral and your moral and your morality determines whether you transform that potential into a good world or a bad world.

[755] And you all know that too because you know that you can make bad decisions and make things worse and you can make good decisions and make things better.

[756] And so that's an echo too.

[757] That's an echo of what happens in Genesis when God creates the world out of chaos.

[758] It's a decision to speak the truth and to interact with the chaotic potential and to produce habitable order out of it.

[759] And it's in that image that we're made.

[760] That's the story.

[761] And it's a great story.

[762] And we all believe it because we treat each other like that.

[763] And we predicate our entire political system on the idea that that's what we are.

[764] And then you might say, well, you have all those doorways in front of you.

[765] And which one should you open?

[766] The answer is, well, how about you open the one that glitters?

[767] And it attracts your attention.

[768] And that's a deep manifestation of the instinct for meaning, and so something beckons to you, and then you can open it, and then something comes out of it, and that changes everything, and then what beckons will change.

[769] And that's what happens when you follow your instinct for meaning.

[770] But you have to be humble to do that.

[771] You have to be willing to see what it is that glitters in the darkness, and you have to lower yourself so that you're willing to pursue it.

[772] Because it won't be something high and mighty to begin with.

[773] Because why the hell should it be?

[774] If you don't know what you're doing, and you don't know who you are, and you're enveloped in chaos and you're what would you say hopeless and undisciplined and useless why would something magnificent manifest itself for you to begin with it's going to be something small enough so someone like you would have to get on their hands and knees to to approach maybe you have to clean up your room maybe you have to scrape the dust bunnies underneath your bed you know maybe you have to do those things that you know you should do that you've been putting off because they're beneath you It's no, they're not.

[775] Not in the least.

[776] Not if you have to do them.

[777] They're exactly what you have to do if you have to do them, no matter how small they are.

[778] And so, you adopt your responsibility and you follow what beckons as meaningful.

[779] And you do that in humility, knowing that you're not in a position to judge the world.

[780] And you say, I have a generally apathetic and disengaged approach to life.

[781] It's like, well, what makes you think you're a reliable judge of the structure of being?

[782] well it's a good question man so before you dismiss the cosmos as insignificant you might want to make sure that you put yourself together to the degree that you can because you may be missing something you never know so well if if everything you believe makes you hopeless then maybe you could question the utility of what you believe that's humility look there's this story that I read in a book called The Cocktail Hour by T .S. Eliot.

[783] And in the Cocktail Hour, a woman talks to a psychiatrist, I believe at a party, hence the cocktail hour.

[784] And she's kind of asking him for professional advice, and she says, look, I'm having a pretty rough time of it.

[785] My life is not what it should be, and I'm suffering unbearably.

[786] And I really hope there's something wrong with me. And the psychiatrist is sort of taken aback, And he says, well, why do you hope that there's something wrong with you?

[787] And she says, well, as far as I can tell, there's only two possibilities.

[788] Either there's something wrong with me, and that's why I'm suffering unsupportably.

[789] Or there's something wrong with the structure of existence, and that's why I'm suffering unacceptably.

[790] And if there's something wrong with the structure of existence, well, then I'm, what am I going to do about that?

[791] Nothing.

[792] I'm just doomed.

[793] But if there's something wrong with me, then I could fix it.

[794] and so well that's chapter six right which is a dark chapter in 12 rules for life because it's a meditation on the motivation of people who do such things as shoot up elementary schools and the rule is put your house in perfect order before you criticize the world and if everything is around you is meaningless because of your beliefs the first thing you might think is well maybe it's your beliefs and not the world and so that's that's an unbelievably helpful thing to realize you can doubt your own doubt.

[795] Who designed your logo?

[796] As seen on your website and passes, and what drew you to it?

[797] Well, I designed it.

[798] I drew it.

[799] It's a six -foot piece of art. So that's about six feet.

[800] It's square.

[801] It's made in four pieces, like the labyrinth that I described.

[802] And it's layered.

[803] It's about a foot thick.

[804] And it's made out of quarter.

[805] quarter inch layers of foam core and foam core is a it's a layer of styrofoam with two a layer of paper on each side and it's often used to as backing for for prints and so forth or framed art works but I decided back in the 1980s that I was going to make foam core sculptures that were half sculptor and half paintings and I made a half a dozen of them before I ended up doing other things and one of the things that I made back then was this sculpture that I called the meaning of music and I was really interested in music at that point partly because I was trying to sort out the phenomenology of meaning which is what is meaning and and is it something real and if it's something real what does it represent or what is it all of that and one of the things I had noticed was that people found me music intrinsically meaningful and that was very interesting to me because even nihilistic people couldn't help but find music meaningful.

[806] And so it was 1983 or 1984, and punk rock movement was still pretty, what would you say, powerful, still a going concern.

[807] I actually liked the sex pistols quite a bit.

[808] And I noticed that even the nihilistic punk rock types found their nihilistic punk rock extremely meaningful, which I thought was extremely comical.

[809] Because at the same time, they were celebrating their anarchic nihilism, they were really into their music.

[810] And so you can't, and music is, because it's an art form, it goes underneath thinking.

[811] It's also a good antidote to rational skepticism, which is why music has become such a powerful force in our culture.

[812] People love music, and I think without music, many people would just die.

[813] And it's because music speaks of meaning directly.

[814] when you listen to music, when you're into it, when you're enjoying it, you're not really enjoying it, you're finding the experience meaningful.

[815] And it's fun to watch people play music because they entrain themselves.

[816] It's really good to watch people improvise, you know, because they're all entrained together doing this novel thing.

[817] They're out on the edge where they should be, and they're doing it beautifully.

[818] And so I thought a lot about what music represented.

[819] and I spent about four months making this painting and I thought what I would try to do is to make a piece of art that represented visually what music represented in the auditory realm and so if you look at that logo you'll see that it's like a necker cube a necker cube is one of those reversing cubes and I made the painting so that you couldn't resolve it visually so that if you look at it If you kind of gaze at it without focusing too much, you'll just see that it moves and moves and moves and moves as your brain tries to resolve what it is.

[820] What it actually is is a cube set on end with a tunnel down the middle of it broken into four fragments.

[821] So another thing that it is, it's a three -dimensional representation of a two -dimensional representation of a four -dimensional object.

[822] That's actually, because music is a four -dimensional object, right?

[823] because it has three dimensions, spatial, those are the spatial dimensions, because, you know, music is arrayed in space.

[824] That's what happens when you listen to stereo.

[825] You can see, feel, or hear how it's arrayed in space, and then it unfolds across time.

[826] So it's got four dimensions.

[827] And the reason music is meaningful, and this took me an awful long time to figure out, is because the things that you see in the world that you think are objects aren't objects.

[828] They're actually patterns, and there are patterns that you, interact with in a manner that makes them into tools and so often into tools.

[829] So you're a pattern because you maintain your structure across time.

[830] So that's a pattern.

[831] A pattern is something that maintains its structure across time.

[832] And so all the things that we perceive are patterns.

[833] And patterns, all the patterns of the world, and they're meant, I mean, you think about all the patterns you're made out of, right?

[834] You go down to the subatomic level and there's an array of patterns and then about that at the atomic level there's another array of patterns and then at the molecular level there's another array of patterns and then your organs are patterns and then there's you that's a pattern and then there's you moving through space with all these other people and that's a pattern and then there's the political system or let's say the town that you're in and that's a pattern and the political system that's a pattern and then the ecological system and that's a pattern and then there's the cosmos itself and that's a pattern and that's the harmony of the spheres and all those patterns are interacting in a harmonious way, and that's what music represents.

[835] It represents the harmonious interaction of the patterns of the world.

[836] And then when you go out to a bar and you dance, then what you're doing is you're arraying your body along with that pattern, and you find that deeply meaningful like you should, because you should array your body in alignment with the patterns of the world.

[837] And then when you dance with someone else, and maybe that's someone that you love, then you mutually produce a pattern and you're improvising with each other to produce that pattern and you're simultaneously aligning the pattern that you're both producing with all the patterned reality of the music and so you're acting out the action you're acting out the act of engaging in a dialogue dialogue which is dialogos right so you're engaging in a dialogue that produces a pattern that adapts you to the structure of the patterns of the world and that's what you're doing when you're dancing.

[838] And so I figured all that out with regards to music and tried to portray that in that logo, in that symbol.

[839] And then since then I've been experimenting with that symbol, trying to see how many different forms I can get it to manifest in the world.

[840] And so it's propagating like mad.

[841] And that was part of what I wanted to do when I made it 35 years ago.

[842] I thought, I'll make this thing and see how many different ways it will manifest itself in the world.

[843] And so that's the story of that logo.

[844] I have a question I did not submit.

[845] Okay.

[846] Talk a lot about the transcendence of life being considered tragedy.

[847] And as myself, I'm struggling with the concept of being someone who might consider themselves, as you might put in, a winning lobster.

[848] And from that perspective, for somebody who might be considering themselves quite good at pursuing happy, I'd like you to maybe elaborate a little bit on how the pursuit of happiness is subordinate it to the pursuit of purpose.

[849] Well, you're not going to be happy around someone's deathbed, so we have to be extraordinarily careful with our terminology.

[850] You know, when people say that they want to be happy, first of all, they don't mean that.

[851] When you say you want to be happy, that's not actually what you mean.

[852] There's plenty of psychological evidence for that, because if you take measures of well, being and you analyze them statistically what you find is that what people really don't want is to be anxious and in pain so happiness is a positive emotion over and above that but if you if you force people to make a trade off they'll they'll pick absence of misery and anxiety that's that's the fundamental that's the fundamental motivation and so and then well with regards to happiness it's a happiness is something that comes upon you if you're fortunate and it's more likely to come upon you if you're pursuing something that's worthwhile and meaningful and also responsible and the problem with assuming that the emotional state is actually the goal is that when you're in situations where that emotional state can't possibly be the goal and so that would be when you're dealing with the tragic realities of life and your ethos is the pursuit of happiness then you're bereft you know let's say you have a sick child for three or four years or more say well good luck with your happiness hypothesis because that's not going to get you through it not in the least not that and i'm not saying that you should be cynical about happiness or that you should despise it if it comes your way but it's just not the proper pursuit it's not a noble pursuit and it will it will leave you bereft in in situations of dire necessity you need something much more profound to orient yourself in the world.

[853] And that's why I talk more about suffering and malevolence, because those things are undeniable realities, and they cause an undue amount of trouble.

[854] And at minimum, you can orient yourself properly in the world if you take aim against both of those and attempt to constrain them.

[855] And that's something that you can do even in the most dire of circumstances, and so if you're dealing with someone who's in pain, or if you're dealing with someone who's dying, or you're dealing with the catastrophes of your own life, you still have the meaningful option of trying to reduce the suffering to the maximum possible degree.

[856] And that's a worthwhile endeavor, and you'll find meaning in that.

[857] And so it's a much more adult way of orienting yourself in the world.

[858] And if happiness happens to come your way, well, then good for you.

[859] And isn't that wonderful?

[860] And that's something to be thankful for, but it's a side effect and not a pursuit.

[861] Damien says doing what you do must be stressful how do you unwind unwind that's a good one all right some people think I'm already completely unwound well it's it's stressful I suppose in some ways I mean these I don't find these these talks particularly stressful because they're so positive You know, I like to come out and talk about the things that I've learned and to see all of you people here and to have a serious discussion about things that would help orient us in the world and to push what I know farther ahead.

[862] And so it's so positive that I don't really think about this, certainly this part of it, as stressful.

[863] Facing journalists is stressful.

[864] so not always usually um and often and so um i don't know how i unwind from that i usually go sleep afterwards i guess is what i do that's helpful um what i do to uh increase my ability to tolerate the activities that i'm engaged in is i travel with my wife and she's extremely helpful because she's very level -headed and I have an extra brain along, which is a useful thing.

[865] And we swim, and sometimes we work out, and sometimes we go for a drive when we can do that, and we go for a walk, and I spend time with my family, and those are all good things.

[866] But I don't, life is stressful.

[867] And at least I'm in a position where whatever I'm doing that's stressful is counterbalanced by exactly what I talk to all of you tonight about it's deep what I'm doing what I'm engaged in is deeply meaningful and so it's a pleasure to be able to share that with other people and to see that sense of meaningful engagement envelop more people and that it I can't think of anything better to do than that which is what I'm doing what I'm doing tonight for example because I can't think of anything better than sitting here and talking to all of you about these things that are necessary to understand and to lay out in the world.

[868] And so what do I do to unwind?

[869] I think I do what you should do if you want to unwind.

[870] I'm trying my best to make things better because it seems to me that it would be better if they were better.

[871] It's simple and I have some sense of how bad things can be because I've studied how bad things can be and I've experienced some of it in my own personal life and some of it with my clients because I've been in very dark places with my clients and in my own life from time to time and certainly in my studies and I would rather that everything didn't go to hell in a handbasket like it could and I would like it if everyone got on board and we all decided to make things better each.

[872] of us starting with our own lives and facilitating that is the antidote to the catastrophe of life and so that's a continual unwinding in a sense so and it's a privilege to be able to take part in it and to also see this amazing thing that i've been enveloped in for a long time now you know i started doing these lectures well public lectures really last year i did a series of on the Bible, which I thought was really quite comical that that worked because, well, think about it is I decided to do a series of lectures, so I rented a theater, and I decided that I would do lectures on Genesis, lectures about responsibility starting with Genesis, and that I would do that publicly.

[873] And then a whole bunch of people came, you know, so that was pretty weird, and a lot of them were young men who were exactly not the people who would ever come and do that.

[874] And so, they did and then lots of people have about two million two and a half million people have watched the first of those lectures and it's on the first sentence of Genesis so two million two and a half million people have watched a three -hour lecture I think it's three hours long on one sentence from the from the first story in the Bible it's completely ridiculous and then I when I my book launched the publicists in in London rented a theater so that I could talk about it, and sold out right away.

[875] So then they rented another one for the next day, and it sold out right away, and so they rented one the next week, and it sold out too.

[876] And then the same thing happened in Amsterdam.

[877] And then I thought, well, that's interesting.

[878] I sold out 15 theaters and 15 theatrical performances in Toronto, and then four in Europe, I can probably go wherever I want in the world and book a theater and go talk about what I want to talk about, and a whole bunch of people will come.

[879] So I thought, well, I might as well, I might as well, try that.

[880] That seems absurd.

[881] We might as well try that.

[882] And so then I've been in, my wife and I, Tammy, have been in, I think this is the 58th city in four months.

[883] And so, and here you all are.

[884] And we're having a very serious conversation about how to orient ourselves properly in the world.

[885] And so that's not stressful, man. That's great.

[886] So it compared to There's so much horror and catastrophe in the world to be involved in a continual conversation with thousands of people about how each of our individual lives might be better and how that could spread into our families and into the broader community.

[887] It's like, that's not stressful.

[888] That's the opposite of stressful.

[889] It's great.

[890] It's wonderful.

[891] It's so positive.

[892] I can't believe it.

[893] You know, I was talking to my son the other day this morning.

[894] I think.

[895] And it was this morning.

[896] And he came to the UK with Tammy and I. And we had a hell of a trip, man. We went from New York to Dublin and then to London.

[897] And so in Dublin, I talked to Sam Harris and Douglas Murray.

[898] And 8 ,500 people showed up.

[899] We're in this big stadium.

[900] It was like the biggest philosophical discussion.

[901] We think it was the biggest public philosophical discussion.

[902] Not like those are common it's not like there's it's not like there's an olympics of philosophical discussions but if there was that would have been the biggest event and there was like all these people showed up a cavernous arena to hear a very difficult discussion about the relationship between facts and values and religion and science and they're like right into it you know we were going to switch to q and a after an hour of discussion but the audience voted overwhelmingly with you know by clapping to continue the conversation so we talked for two and a half hours and everyone was like right on board and so it turns out that people are a lot smarter than we thought and that there's a huge huge well i think tv the narrow bandwidth of tv made made us think we were stupid and we're actually not and so there's this massive public hunger for detailed and and and reasonably deep philosophical discussion it's like well that's a hell of an amazing thing so that was just beyond belief and then so we're in Dublin and we did that and that was crazily exciting and ridiculously adventurous and the talk went really well and we taped it and hopefully like I said that'll be out in August and then people can see what they and when it was a discussion about the relative merits of an atheist materialist viewpoint and a let's call it a religious a traditionalist religious viewpoint and we had a good discussion because there's some there's things to be said on both sides of that argument and then you know, with any luck, a couple of million people will watch those videos and they can have a discussion about it.

[903] Maybe we can sort ourselves out properly.

[904] And then we went to London and did the same thing again and along with a variety of other activities.

[905] And like I said, I was talking to my son about it this morning.

[906] And he's a pretty tough kid and pretty level -headed.

[907] And, you know, when he was talking about it, it made him, he broke down and it made him cry.

[908] And, you know, and the reason for that is because it's absolutely overwhelming to watch this.

[909] happen I can't believe it so it's not stressful it's it's it's a privilege to be doing this it's an absolute bloody privilege to be doing this and I'm so pleased that you're all here how do you move forward in life after having made and regretted a huge mistake well you know this is one of the reasons that I that I think that the biblical lectures I did last year were so helpful to me and and I think to other people one of the things that's quite interesting about those stories the abrahamic stories in particular is that those bloody people they just made mistakes all the time absolutely you know so abraham for example you know he was chosen by god hypothetically like all the people in in those narratives were and i mean he just made one absolutely catastrophic mistake after another and so that's life man making and regretting huge mistakes Now that doesn't mean that you should just go on propagating the mistakes, right?

[910] So you have to take responsibility for it, but the people that I've watched in my life who lived properly, let's say, they learned from their mistakes, but they didn't beat themselves to death because of them.

[911] You know, and you think, well, so this said, well, this was a regretted infidelity.

[912] It's like, well, we don't take adulterers out in the public square and stone them.

[913] and so you probably shouldn't do that to yourself you know if you regret it well then what you have to do is you have to repent and you have to atone and so what does repent mean it means well it means you have to go over what you did and you have to figure out now that you know it was a mistake you have to figure out why you were so damn clueless and so damn stupid and exactly what you did wrong like with each little decision point like you know when you first met the person that you had the affair with, you probably flirted with them a little bit more than you, than you, you probably flirted with them to a degree that you regarded as risky and excessive.

[914] But you did it anyways.

[915] And so now you have to figure out, well, okay, why in the world did I think that was a good idea?

[916] And you have to know exactly.

[917] So if you're walking down a path and you get lost, and you wander off the path and you get lost, you have to figure out how it is that you wandered off the path because the purpose of repenting, let's say, is so that when you're back on the path, first of all, you can find your way back, that would be the first purpose, and the second is so you don't wander off again.

[918] And if you wandered off once, then you're prone to wandering off in that manner.

[919] And so then you have to figure out why you're prone to wandering off in that manner, right down to the most painful level of deep, detail, and then you have to figure out how not to do it again.

[920] And then as soon as you figure out how not to do it again, then you should stop beating yourself up, you know, because you've learned your lesson.

[921] And that's sort of the principle.

[922] I tried to outline some principles of discipline for children in Chapter 5.

[923] And one of the best principles is use no more force than is necessary.

[924] Minimal necessary force.

[925] It's a great, it's a great rule of thumb.

[926] and you use that on yourself when you make mistakes.

[927] You know, and maybe you...

[928] So you have to figure out exactly what you did wrong.

[929] By your own criteria, like you said you did something wrong, you said you regretted it.

[930] Okay, you did something wrong, because otherwise you wouldn't regret it, or unless maybe you're just regretting the fact that it mucked up your life, and you actually, you know, and that's feeling sorry for yourself, that's not regretting it, so you're going to have to sort those things out because you don't get to feel sorry for yourself.

[931] You just get to regret it.

[932] And if you great regret it, it means you did something wrong.

[933] And then you have to figure out what you did wrong, exactly, right down to the detail levels, and what was wrong with your perception and your beliefs that led you in that direction, and what you have to do to put that right.

[934] And then you have to put it right.

[935] And then maybe you have to go around and make amends to all the people that you hurt.

[936] And then you have to be back, and then perhaps you'll find yourself back on the path, and then you have to stay on the path as best you can.

[937] and and that's okay in some sense because if we all had to pay the ultimate price for our sins every single one of us would be dead so you are this is partly why the concept of original sin is so useful and everyone feels it because everyone's guilty and everyone's ashamed of themselves so we have this inbuilt sense of something gone wrong and if we can't name it then it just haunts us and that's why the idea of original sin is so useful even though it has perhaps some conceptual problems associated with it or perhaps it's not all good but in this particular situation you know you're a bad person but so is everyone else so it doesn't mark you out as particularly horrible that doesn't mean the horribleness isn't real but it's not just you and then what you do about it is you try to be better and that's what you do about what's wrong with you to begin with every one of us we've all got things to learn man and plenty of them the world isn't what it could be and that's our fault and so we've got lots to learn and so do you and you try to learn it and you you treat yourself with a firm enough hand so that you learn and not a harsh enough hand so that you die while you're learning so that's that and I have to stop because the clock has hit zero and that's the end of the night thank you very much thank you all very much for coming out it was a pleasure to be here in Hamilton good night if you found this conversation meaningful you might think about picking up dad's books maps of meaning the architecture of belief or his newer bestseller 12 rules for life and antidote to chaos.

[938] Both of these works delve much deeper into the topics covered in the Jordan B. Peterson podcast.

[939] See jordan B .Peterson .com for audio, e -book, and text links or pick up the books at your favorite bookseller.

[940] Next week, we're releasing a conversation between Milo Yiannopoulos and Dad.

[941] The conversation was recorded April 11, 2019.

[942] For those of you who don't know him, Milo is a journalist, performance artist, comedian, amongst other more provocative things.

[943] You know, you've been less in the public eye.

[944] I've been retired.

[945] Look, I saw a quarter of a million books.

[946] I made millions of dollars.

[947] I have more nice stuff than I know what to do with.

[948] I have a husband I am deeply in love with.

[949] I could die happy tomorrow.

[950] I help to get a present in office.

[951] I'm one of the seven people that put Trump in office.

[952] And that's not egotism, that's the fact, right?

[953] I'm one of the seven people that put Donald Trump in office.

[954] I can die happy.

[955] It might be you, too, in purgatory for you as a consequence.

[956] Yeah, no. I mean, maybe, you know, what happens after I die for that particular crime?

[957] who knows.

[958] But the fact is, like, I have accomplished more than the vast majority of people walking this earth.

[959] He's caused more of an uproar than most people.

[960] A couple of weeks after this conversation took place, Milo was kicked off of Instagram and Facebook.

[961] Dad wanted to have a conversation to get his backstory, how he came to be who he is now.

[962] And next week's episode delves into that.

[963] So talk to you guys then.

[964] Hope you've enjoyed this week's episode.

[965] Bye.

[966] Follow me on my YouTube channel, Jordan B. Peterson.

[967] On Twitter, at Jordan B. Peterson, on Facebook at Dr. Jordan B. Peterson, and at Instagram at Jordan