The Topic of Truth

[0] Welcome to Season 2, Episode 32 of the Jordan Beat Peterson podcast.

[1] I'm Michaela Peterson, Dad's Daughter and Collaborator.

[2] Today's episode is a 12 Rules for Life lecture recorded in Edinburgh on October 28, 2018.

[3] I'll admit it, I had to Google how to pronounce Edinburgh.

[4] I haven't been saying Edinburgh, but I have been calling it Edinburgh.

[5] So that's embarrassing for me. I figured I'd admit it.

[6] I've named this lecture the topic of truth, which is why, partly, I admitted the whole Edinburgh thing.

[7] I really like this lecture.

[8] Telling the truth isn't easy, but it's easier than the repercussions that come from lying.

[9] I've had a hard time learning that, to be honest.

[10] I keep relearning it.

[11] That'll never stop, probably.

[12] Well, I hope it does one day.

[13] You know, when you're in a situation and it's easier to not say something or to change the story just a tiny bit, that doesn't seem to ever be a good idea or a workout?

[14] It's scary to tell the truth, but it's worth it.

[15] Life can get really convoluted and confusing very quickly if you lie.

[16] I've been trying to sort out my life, which you would assume would be easier with a father like mine, but it's still not easy.

[17] I have a lot going on.

[18] Social media has been particularly vicious this month with dad's health problems and my relationship.

[19] I've been separated since June 2018, but just started talking about it recently.

[20] We co -parent my daughter, Scarlett.

[21] I just hired my ex as my business manager, and he helps me manage my dad as well.

[22] We're going out for dinner tonight.

[23] We're good friends, and life is complicated.

[24] But people like to throw judgments around and forget that people online are real people.

[25] The best thing you can do, I think, in response to that, is to be honest.

[26] Or, as dad says, at least don't lie.

[27] I'll try to update people soon about how he's doing.

[28] If you're worried, please don't.

[29] We're Peterson's.

[30] We've got this.

[31] By next year, we'll be joking about it.

[32] The topic of truth.

[33] A Jordan B. Peterson 12 Rules for Life lecture.

[34] Thank you.

[35] Thank you very much.

[36] The first thing I'd like to say is that you have an absolutely amazing city.

[37] It's, and I came here first about two years ago.

[38] I only spent a couple of days, but it's just, the only city I've really been in, I think, that was more impressive was, or as impressive, let's say, was Bruges.

[39] Bruges is staggeringly beautiful.

[40] but Edinburgh is really, really something.

[41] So, congratulations.

[42] And I see that you're tearing down a fair number of those hideous 70s buildings that were built and the good riddance to those bloody things, man. You know, one of the horrible things about being a psychologist in a university in North America is that you're destined to occupy the most hideous building on campus.

[43] It's usually, because the older campuses are quite beautiful, you know, to the degree that they're...

[44] They were built on a church architectural, what would you say, ethos.

[45] They have that kind of grand cathedral -like expanse.

[46] And then the newer ones, while they're more like knowledge factories, and so they're kind of hideous.

[47] And then the pinnacle of hideousness is always the psychology building because it was built in like 1975.

[48] When I don't know what happened to architects.

[49] It's like they had a collective breakdown and built these horrible cinderblock buildings with windows that don't open because we were going to run out of oil you know back in 1975 so people weren't going to be allowed to open up their windows and so seeing all those 70s monstrosities get demolished out of your beautiful city and things put back in their proper perspective is really nice anyways it really is a remarkable place I'm always struck when I come to Europe because there's a dearth of beauty in North American cities not all of them New York's a real exception and I would say also so is Montreal but after New York and Montreal it's downhill pretty damn quick while there's Chicago Chicago has some great architecture but come to Europe and I don't know what the hell it was with you people you got obsessed with beauty in some strange way and made it so so staggeringly important for centuries and centuries to make things beautiful beyond belief and you know it was expensive to do that and it required a tremendous input of manpower and a remarkable vision and it's paid off in spades the way because everybody comes all over from all over the world to Europe to to it's like a pilgrimage to beauty and so that's really something so obviously it was a very wise idea and one of the rules that I'm working on for my next book is make your make one room in your house as beautiful as possible because I think it's very important for people to have a relationship with beauty because it Beauty is a strange thing.

[50] It's hard to, it's like, it's like music or any other art form, I suppose, which of course partake in beauty.

[51] It's difficult to get a grip on exactly what it is.

[52] What is beauty?

[53] Who knows?

[54] But it's something that calls you to be more than you are.

[55] That's something.

[56] And it's a celebration of the possibility of life as well.

[57] And to surround yourself with what's beautiful is to set the stage for living.

[58] living a life that's aiming higher.

[59] And whenever I come to Europe and see so many.

[60] Also, I traveled with my wife through, we drove from Amsterdam to Prague and then back a couple of years ago.

[61] And we decided that we would use the UNESCO World Heritage Sites as a guide.

[62] UNESCO has done a pretty good job of describing or protecting or marking out remarkable natural and constructed parts of the world for special consideration.

[63] And so if you use the UNESCO guide, there's UN sites that qualify all of Edinburgh.

[64] I think the main square mile in the middle of Edinburgh is a UNESCO site, World Heritage Site.

[65] And so we went through all these World Heritage Sites.

[66] A lot of them were medieval villages as well.

[67] in East Germany they put those all back together and they're so damn beautiful you go to those they just bring tears to your eyes you know it's really something to see that and so it's so magnificent so it's such a pleasure to be here and just to walk down the streets to see that it's really that sense that you should build something that would last that's part of what's here that isn't in North America because things are so well you know buildings are built to turn over quite rapidly there mostly and there's no shortage of hideousness as a consequence of that and a kind of shallowness that's also alienating.

[68] The other thing I really like about European cities is that you really feel that people belong in them and in really modern cities people seem like well they kind of clutter the place up you know.

[69] There's all those clean lines and bright lights and shiny surfaces and it's all beautiful except for the people.

[70] They're kind of making it ugly and so If you just got rid of them, it would be all pristine and beautiful.

[71] I never really feel that in a European city.

[72] It feels like that's where people live, and they've been there a long time, and it's a good thing that they're there.

[73] So, anyways, it is a great pleasure to be here.

[74] And so, and so thank you for that, all of that.

[75] Oh, it's my pleasure, man. So I thought what I would, I always, pick a question to talk about.

[76] If you're going to organize a talk, or if you're going to write an essay, you need to have a question.

[77] You know, that's your topic question, I suppose, your topic statement.

[78] Your grammar school teachers probably taught you about the necessity of those.

[79] But you do have to have an organizational point.

[80] You're aiming at something.

[81] You have to be aiming at something to be vaguely coherent and to be on track.

[82] And so I thought I would concentrate on Rule 8, tonight and Rule 8 is tell the truth or at least don't lie in the original formulation that rule was just tell the truth I wrote 42 rules for a website called Quora I outlined in that in the preface to 12 rules for life and I did that because some kid had written in what are the most important things that everyone in life should know and I'd been answering a lot of Quora questions Well, 50 or so, it's not a tremendous number, but a fair number, mostly out of curiosity.

[83] And I thought I'd take a crack at that one, and so I wrote 42 rules, and they were very popular.

[84] It was interesting to see you can track how many responses your Quora answers get, hey?

[85] and most of mine didn't get very many responses and a small minority got the overwhelming majority of responses and that's in keeping with a principle that I've discussed quite frequently in my YouTube videos and a fair bit in 12 Rules for Life called the Pareto Principle and the Preeto Principle is that almost everything fails completely and something succeed overwhelmingly and it doesn't really matter what the domain is So I would say two of my Quora questions probably got 98 % of the attention, you know, and that's not atypical.

[86] You think about pop music, right?

[87] It's like how many pop music songs are written every day?

[88] God only knows there's just, and put online, there's just, well, hundreds of thousands of them online.

[89] And hardly any of them ever get listened to by anyone.

[90] And then now and then you get one like the Gangnam style dancer who gets like two billion.

[91] And that's the way of the world.

[92] That's how things go.

[93] And the core answer that I produced for what are the most important things in life that everybody should know got a disproportionate amount of attention by the standard of my questions, but by the standard of questions in general.

[94] And I thought that was kind of interesting.

[95] It's like people liked the list for some reason.

[96] It was kind of half.

[97] There was a bit of wit to it.

[98] as I could manage anyways and some of it was sort of commonplace and and some of it was a bit quirky like rule 12 is pet a cat when you see one on the street doesn't seem like something that's particularly important but it's kind of a nice thing to meditate on for a while and maybe to develop a bit of a theme on and anyways in in that rule list the rule was tell the truth and then I started writing out the essays, I thought, well, people like this list of rules.

[99] Maybe I could write a book about it, or write essays about these rules because, you know, it was already market tested, let's say.

[100] One of the things you want to do, if you ever produce something creatively, this is really useful to know if any of you have entrepreneurial ideas.

[101] You know that old idea that if you build a better mouse trap, the world will beat a path to your door?

[102] That's wrong.

[103] If you have a good idea, you're just, you barely got started, man. You've probably cracked five percent.

[104] of the problem.

[105] It's really worth knowing this because there's, well, there's communication about the idea because other people have to know about it and that's really, really hard and there's sales and there's marketing and there's customer support and there's your competition and there's having to offer the product at the right time, at the right price point.

[106] And I mean, these things are really, really hard problems.

[107] And if you're sort of inventive, you like to think, well, a good idea is enough, but it isn't even close to enough.

[108] So one thing, that's kind of useful to do.

[109] If you're developing a new idea, a lot of tech firms do this when they're putting out new hardware, new software, is they make a version of the whatever it is they're making, let's say the software, and then they go test it out on their customers.

[110] Say, well, like, hypothetically, would you buy this if we made it?

[111] And if the answer is no, then they quit making it.

[112] So you have to do this iterative discussion with your potential market to find out if what you're producing has any any possibility of monetization.

[113] It's something you have to do, by the way, at least to some degree, if you're an artist, unless you want to starve, which is pretty much what you're destined to do if you're an artist.

[114] I mean, the probability that you can be a successful artist is so low that it's absolutely amazing that there are any artists at all.

[115] But what one thing you can do is understand that you do need to actually communicate with people and find a market, and maybe communicate with your audience and see, well, how they're responding to what you're doing.

[116] And it isn't a matter of selling out.

[117] It's a matter of engaging in a useful discussion with other people.

[118] I mean, if you want to paint paintings and just stack them up in your basement, that's fine, too.

[119] But that, and really, if you want to do that, truly, that's fine.

[120] But that doesn't lead to the sort of success that allows you to exist autonomously as an artist.

[121] And so if you want to be an artist and you want to exist successfully and autonomously as an artist, then you have to take communication.

[122] You know, you have to treat communication seriously.

[123] It's one of the pleasurable things about doing these lectures.

[124] There's many pleasurable things, but one is that I get to test out my ideas in real time, eh?

[125] Because I can discuss them, formulate them, extend them, and all of that.

[126] And then I can watch everyone, well, one person at a time usually, because you can't watch everyone.

[127] That just makes you nervous.

[128] You watch people one at a time, but you can listen to the whole audience and see if they're quiet and focused, and then you can find out if you're on the right track, and that's very helpful.

[129] Anyways, I was formulating these 42 rules.

[130] I started to write essays about them.

[131] I originally thought I would write a small essay on all 42, and I thought that would be kind of funny because I knew this old book called Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, right?

[132] And the answer to life, the world, and everything was 42.

[133] And I thought, well, I could write a book called 42.

[134] And, you know, if you're a geek, that would be funny.

[135] And so I thought that would be amusing.

[136] But it turned out that I had more to say about each rule than 10 pages, or 7 pages, let's say, because 42 times 7 would have made about a 300 -page book.

[137] And so I called them down to 12.

[138] And one of them was tell.

[139] the truth, or at least don't lie.

[140] And I added, or at least don't lie to it, because I realized that the statement, tell the truth, wasn't really a very truthful statement.

[141] And the reason for that was, it isn't really clear to me that that's within our power.

[142] I mean, it depends on what you mean by the truth.

[143] I mean, there's the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, that famous legal phrase.

[144] And, well, none of us know that.

[145] We don't know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

[146] Someone asked me today, a journalist from Germany, if I thought Blaise Ford was telling the truth, you know, the woman who testified against Kavanaugh in the United States.

[147] And I read her testimony, and I listened to her, and it didn't seem to me that she was lying.

[148] It seemed to me that she believed what she was saying.

[149] Now, whether or not that's the truth is a whole different matter, because God, I mean, I can't remember things that happened in high school.

[150] I can barely remember what happened to me yesterday.

[151] And I know perfectly well, too, the way memory works.

[152] If you remember something from a long time ago, and then you talk about it and you think about it, you change the memory.

[153] And every time you do that, you change the memory quite dramatically.

[154] Because memory isn't static.

[155] It's a dynamic, living thing.

[156] And the reason for that is that the purpose of your memory isn't to remember the past.

[157] You know, that's what people think.

[158] Well, why do we have memory?

[159] to remember the past.

[160] Well, who cares if you remember the past?

[161] Why is that relevant?

[162] It's not.

[163] The reason you have memory is so that you can extract information out from the past that you can use to guide yourself wisely in the present and the future.

[164] There's a very practical issue, and most things that have happened to you, once you understand them, you basically forget them, obviously, because you don't run around, like, you're not just cluttered up with your past memories solidly.

[165] You don't remember every single thing that ever happened to you.

[166] You couldn't possibly do that.

[167] You abstract and extract out from your past what's relevant, and then you use that to guide you into the future.

[168] So you're building a map.

[169] Really, that's a really good way of thinking about it, is that what you do when you think is build a map.

[170] And the map is of the present and the future, but it's predicated on your experience of the past.

[171] And that's also very germane to tonight's topic about truth because well one of the things we might want to point out first is that well do you want an accurate map or not now if you have an inaccurate map it might tell you that a two -hour journey will only take 10 minutes and if a two -hour journey will only take 10 minutes and let's say it's all downhill well then you don't have to pack and you don't have to prepare and it's going to be a cakewalk but the problem is is when you go out to make the journey you're going to find that it doesn't take 10 minutes and you're not going to be prepared and that's not going to be good, even though it was lovely to contemplate the fact that it was going to be only 10 minutes and downhill.

[172] So the question is, do you want your map to be accurate or inaccurate?

[173] And the answer to that is, well, how badly do you want to fall into a pit?

[174] Because that's the consequence of having an inaccurate map.

[175] So first of all, you're not going to get to where you're going.

[176] you might not, where you're going might not even exist.

[177] That would be even worse, but you're certainly not going to get there if your map isn't accurate.

[178] And on the way, if you're following your map, you can't really see the world, you see your map.

[179] If it isn't based on the best information that you have at hand, then, like, woe is you to use a very archaic form of language.

[180] And that's definitely the case.

[181] And it's very useful to know that the structure that you look at the world through, is map -like.

[182] So, it's not surprising, right?

[183] Because you have to go places if you're alive.

[184] I mean, look at you.

[185] You've got legs, right?

[186] I mean, the way you go, you're not a plant, you're not a tree, you don't stay in one place.

[187] You're always moving around, and you're moving around because you have to get from where you are to where you're going, and you have to do that because, well, you have, you have, there are important things that you need to accomplish.

[188] And to accomplish them, you have to move around.

[189] And to move around successfully, you have to know where you are and where you're going.

[190] And so you better have your map laid out properly.

[191] And so I would say, our deepest meditations, our deepest philosophical meditations are actually meditations on the structures of the maps that guide us.

[192] And that's why in the first book I wrote, I called the first book Maps of Meaning because I had understood how important maps were by that point.

[193] and also their equivalence in some sense to stories.

[194] When you watch someone on the screen, say, act out a drama, you're seeing what their map is and what the consequences of manifesting that, and what are the consequences of manifesting that map in the world.

[195] And the map is complicated because, you know, we don't just map territory.

[196] Well, we do, but territory is more complicated than we think.

[197] we don't just map territory in the geographic sense, you know, the landscape, like you do when you're using a map in a car.

[198] Most of our maps are maps of ourselves and other people, and the reason for that is most of the territory that we have to contend with is actually made up of ourselves and other people.

[199] So our maps are psychological in the sense, as well as geographical and practical.

[200] And so a map of a person is a story.

[201] That's a good way of thinking about it.

[202] And you have a map of yourself, and that's your story of yourself.

[203] And that's also very much worth knowing.

[204] Do you want to map yourself accurately?

[205] Well, only if you want to propel yourself through time and space with a minimum of hassle and a maximum of the probability of success.

[206] And so it actually turns out to be very important that you are a good cartographer and you get your map together.

[207] And so, okay, so that's like point one, let's say, well, here's an interesting thing to think about.

[208] It's pretty clear that people can lie.

[209] And it's not so clear that animals can.

[210] There's a little bit of evidence that chimpanzees can use rather rudimentary forms of deceit.

[211] Like they can pretend not to have food.

[212] Or maybe they can even hide food so that another chimp can't see it so they can go back and get it later.

[213] But they're really not that good at it.

[214] So it's a rudimentary skill.

[215] But people, man, we are unbelievably good at lying.

[216] Unbelievably good at it.

[217] And it's actually a skill we developed quite early.

[218] Intelligent children learn to, and I mean children who are more intelligent in the technical sense, learn to lie earlier than children who are less intelligent.

[219] And so it's obviously, or that's one piece of evidence, at least, that the capacity of the lie is integrally associated with our higher order cognitive abilities.

[220] And so I think we should take that apart a little bit.

[221] to begin with, so that we just understand why it is that we can lie.

[222] Because the point I'm trying to make is tell the truth, or at least don't lie.

[223] And then, of course, one question might be, well, if you can lie, then why don't you?

[224] You know, I mean, we seem to all share the idea at some level that, yeah, lying is a bad idea.

[225] I don't think that the majority of parents are likely to take a child that they are caring for and say, look, kid, the best way to get through life is to just, look, you got a problem, you hit an encounter an obstacle, you're having trouble with someone, your best bet is just lie, is lie about everything.

[226] Don't let them know anything about what's going on.

[227] The wilder, the story, the better.

[228] That'll aim you right in life.

[229] It's like, no one believes that.

[230] No one.

[231] Even a psychopath doesn't believe that, even though the psychopath might believe that they could use lies on a fairly regular basis to acquire what they want.

[232] That isn't necessarily the same as believing that that's the best pathway through life, or that that would be something that you would recommend to someone that you truly loved.

[233] I don't think that we do that, and I certainly don't think that we admire people who do that, or that we would ever make, or that anyone morally, no matter how, immersed in moral relativism and nihilism they might be, would make a credible case that the more deceit the better.

[234] I've never seen that anyway.

[235] So, all right.

[236] So back to back to the truth and lies.

[237] Okay, so why can we lie?

[238] Well, I was thinking tonight about how animals hunt and how animals think, because animals can clearly think.

[239] in that they can manifest very, very complicated behavior.

[240] And I think the most complicated behavior you probably see among animals is hunting in packs.

[241] You know, like if you watch, you can watch National Geographic or BBC World Specials and watch lions or other pack animals, what would you say, cut a zebra out of the herd and then track it down in a group.

[242] And obviously as the animals are doing this, the lions, they're adjusting the way that they're moving in relationship to the zebra itself but also in relationship to all the other lions that are part of the hunt and wolves do the same thing and that's very complicated behavior and you know you see this in other animals too in ways that are actually i think they're actually they're actually incomprehensible i don't understand them at all one of the animals that's very interesting to me are are jumping spiders i mean i'm not obsessed with them or everything or anything you know i have a little collection of jumping spiders and it's not like i'm thinking about them every day, but they are interesting.

[243] And so a jumping spider is a hunting spider.

[244] It often hunts other spiders.

[245] And they're very tricky.

[246] They're very, very tricky these creatures.

[247] Maybe there's a spider sitting in a web over here, and the jumping spider comes up, and it takes a look at that spider.

[248] And it's got eight eyes, so it's taken a real good look.

[249] And then it figures out how to how to jump on that spider.

[250] And it doesn't just like run off the edge of the leaf and jump.

[251] It's like it sits there and it looks and it moves back and forth.

[252] It looks really mechanical.

[253] It looks cybernetic like a really sophisticated robot.

[254] It's really something.

[255] And then it'll do something like climb down the plant it's on and then across the floor of the forest and then up behind the spider and then over top of it and then it'll spin a little web and it'll drop down on the surface.

[256] spider and then jump on it and it's like that's really smart this is a spider it's like it doesn't have a brain it's only this big it's impossible to imagine how it how it manages that or another thing it will do is let's say the spider is sitting in the middle of a web there's different different parts of a web have different functions like there's some parts of a web are sticky to trap insects and some of them are not sticky so the spider can walk on them and and the the hunting spider will come up to the web and it'll pluck on the web fibers with its what is it what legs that's what they're called with its legs its front legs it'll pluck on them and mimic an insect in trouble it's like it's playing a little harp and the and the sound is insect in trouble and then the spider in the middle of the web will come zipping over to find out about the insect that's in trouble because it's going to eat it and then the jumping spider jumps on it.

[257] It's like, God, that's so smart.

[258] It's like, it's just, it looks a lot like thinking, you know, but it's certainly not verbal thinking.

[259] Well, we don't think so, because it doesn't look like spiders can talk.

[260] So as far as we know, or if they do talk, they're so smart.

[261] We don't understand what they're saying, but it looks like thinking, and it looks like the kind of thinking that animals do when they hunt.

[262] And I think the way to think about that is that that sort of thinking is the same sort of thinking you do when you play football or when you play any team sport.

[263] You know, like if you watch people play hockey, which is, of course, the best sport in the world, then you see the speed of it first.

[264] And hockey is a very fast game because you're not just running, you're skating, and you can really move around on skates.

[265] It's, you zip around pretty damn fast.

[266] And so, and the entire landscape is changing constantly.

[267] And really what hockey is, like most sports of that type, is a, it's an abstracted form of hunting.

[268] You know, so you think, well, what's hunting among humans?

[269] Well, you get your bow and arrow or your spear, and we've been doing that for like two million years, a very, very long time.

[270] You get your spear, and then you get your guys, and then you go and spear something.

[271] And so what you have is a projectile, and you have a target, and you have a team.

[272] And so that's what you do when you're hunting.

[273] And when you're playing hockey, it's the same damn thing.

[274] You have a spear, except it's a hockey stick, and you have a projectile, and that's the puck, and you have a target, and it's the net.

[275] But it's sort of the net, because someone's also guarding it.

[276] So it's the animal for all intents and purposes, and we're pretty excited about this, because we're based on a hunting platform, and we like to see people, hurl projectiles at targets.

[277] It's one of the things that really warms our hearts is to see one of us really deftly hurl a nice projectile at a target, especially if it's moving.

[278] And we get real thrilled about that, you know, so if you're at your favorite sports event and someone, someone's playing football and they make a particularly wonderful move and get the ball in the net from, you know, a hundred yards away in some spectacular way.

[279] You're so thrilled that the primate got the projectile into the mammoth that you leap up and have a little celebration and then later you drink a tremendous amount of fermented beverage and have a hell of a time about it because it's it's like feast time and so and so that's that's that's us it's really true this all of this and it shows you how people abstract too you know how there's some fundamental biological level there that's driving things but that it's abstracted up and so you know we've learned how to have hunting matches as a great spectacle and it's and it's amusing and but it's partly because we like to see people sharpen their aim and and perform brilliantly when in that in that dynamic situation anyways in an athletic contest like that people really in some sense people don't really have time to think right because on a hockey on on on a rink everything's in flux I mean people are just moving non -stop, right?

[280] I mean, first of all, your team player is there, your team member's there, and then he's there, and then he's there, and there's another one behind you, and there's two over there, and the opponents are moving this way, and the goal is shifting back and forth, and the time is running out, and it's like you're watching, not one thing, but you're kind of watching everything at once, and then you're figuring out how to position yourself in relationship to everything else, so it's a really complicated mapping exercise, a complicated dynamic mapping exercise, but it's not thinking, the way we would normally think about thinking.

[281] It's because you don't have enough time.

[282] Like, you don't have enough time if you're playing hockey or any other fast -paced game to think about all the possibilities that you might manifest in the next few seconds as you traverse through time and space.

[283] Because the time, you're not fast enough thinker to do that.

[284] And so in some sense, you seem to be thinking with your body.

[285] And we kind of know this is true because here's an example.

[286] You know, if you're a pro tennis player and someone, your opponent, winds up to serve at you, the ball goes so fast off their racket that you actually cannot see it before you hit it back, not consciously.

[287] So now your visual system is very complex.

[288] See, you think that when you look at the world, what happens is you see something and then you react to it, like you consciously see it.

[289] But lots of times things are happening so fast, that isn't how it works.

[290] What happens is that you've developed a tremendous amount of expertise, Maybe you've played tennis for 10 ,000 hours, so you're just an absolute bloody expert at it.

[291] And even as the person is winding up, you can tell by the angle of their racket and how they're holding their arm and where they're positioned on the court and the way they have their legs and how fast the racket starts to move where that ball is going to go and you're already there ready to react before they even hit it.

[292] And you hit it back reflexively.

[293] So, and it's because your eyes are actually reporting to your nervous system.

[294] at multiple levels of nervous...

[295] Well, your nervous system is a hierarchy.

[296] And the closer the hierarchy is to the direct visual input, the faster it can react, but the simpler it is.

[297] And so you use a lot of simple reflexive systems once you're an expert so you can be super fast.

[298] And you don't have time to think about...

[299] Well, you don't even have time to see the ball.

[300] You do see it, but that's...

[301] You only use the visual record of the ball to update your habitual and automatic skill if you make an error.

[302] Otherwise, it's pretty much all automatic.

[303] And that's part of the loveliness of watching someone who's a true expert do something, especially athletically, because they're so good at it, it's just instantaneous, right?

[304] They waste no motion.

[305] That's why they don't exhaust themselves, even though they're moving much faster, generally speaking, than an amateur might.

[306] So they're not thinking.

[307] They just don't have time to think.

[308] Most of the time, in a crisis, when things are happening very rapidly, it takes like half a second to think something, you know, or at least a tenth of a second.

[309] You can only read about ten words a second, even if you're super fast.

[310] And that's just not that fast when things are really moving.

[311] So a lot of thinking is embodied thinking.

[312] It's like dancing, too.

[313] You know what that's like if you can dance or even more if you can't dance.

[314] What are you going to do?

[315] Think about how you're going to dance with your...

[316] No one's going to want to dance with you if you have to think about it.

[317] This foot goes here and this foot goes here And you're just a complete bloody clots if that's the way you're dancing If you're good at it and you've practiced Then you're using these subtle indications from your partner to move and to twist And in keeping with them in real time And that's not thinking It's whatever it is that you do with your body that's intelligent That's like thinking that animals do whatever that is.

[318] But we can think.

[319] That's the thing about human beings, is that not only can we do all those other things, but we can also think.

[320] And so then the question is, well, what are you doing when you're thinking?

[321] And the answer is, first of all, is you're, and this is a consequence of rapid cortical development from an evolutionary perspective.

[322] At some point, our capacity to represent the world got detached from our capacity to act in the world.

[323] You know, and so the more primordial the brain system that's operating, the more deterministically you act.

[324] So imagine that you're angry.

[325] You know how impulsive you get when you're really deeply angry.

[326] You get really impulsive.

[327] If you're really enraged, it's super impulsive.

[328] And you'll do things, well, maybe you'll hit someone, you know, and then think about it later.

[329] And it's like you're in the grip of something that's driving you forward.

[330] And the same thing might happen if you're hungry or if you're thirsty or if you're overwhelmed with sexual desire or any of those sorts of things that can make you impulsive.

[331] And it's because you're under the sway of a fundamental biological system that's really got one goal and wants to attain that as fast as possible with the least amount of trouble and taking the fewest number of other things into account.

[332] And again, that's something sort of akin to how animals react because they're driven by those underlying biological systems to a great degree.

[333] Now, but human beings have a very complicated brain on top of those fundamental biological systems.

[334] And the reason that we have it in part is because, well, what do you do if you're hungry and angry?

[335] Or what do you do if you're hungry and tired?

[336] Or what if you do, what do you do when fundamental biological motivations conflict?

[337] Or what do you do if, well, maybe Maybe you're starving and you need to steal something, but then you're going to go to jail.

[338] It's like, or you're going to get punished and hurt for it.

[339] So it's highly probable that these single -minded drives that are part and parcel of your fundamental motivations and your emotions are going to produce conflict when considered over any reasonable span of time.

[340] And so we've evolved a more complicated brain because, well, for example, we don't want to just not be hungry today.

[341] We also want to not be hungry tomorrow and next week and next month and next year and at the same time that we're not hungry We don't want to be too tired.

[342] We don't want to be too thirsty and we don't want to be dying of exposure and we want to get along with other people and we don't want to be killed And so to solve the problem of hunger, which is something that you could solve impulsively To really solve it over the long run you have to come up with an integrated You have to come up with a way of integrating all those necessities into something harmonious that exists over a very long period of time.

[343] And part of the reason that we have a brain, like a complex brain, is to solve that problem.

[344] Not only do we have to fulfill our basic needs, let's say, we have to do it in a way that doesn't interfere so that each need doesn't interfere with each other.

[345] That's hard enough.

[346] But also so that each need doesn't interfere with each other's need being fulfilled over long spans of time in a community that consists of all sorts of other people who are trying to do exactly the same thing.

[347] And so that's complicated.

[348] It's like, how many ways can you solve a set of problems that complex?

[349] And the answer is, well, not that many ways.

[350] And so that's why, as far as I'm concerned, the moral relativists are wrong, because there just aren't that many ways of setting up a society where each person in this society can get more or less what they want and need, so that families also function, so that communities function, and so that that works over.

[351] a long span of time.

[352] Vanishingly small number of correct solutions.

[353] One of those seems to be reciprocity.

[354] You know, you do something for me. I return the favor and I'm very careful about that because then we can trust each other and we can cooperate and that's a very good thing for the long run.

[355] And that's also predicated on honesty and truth, right?

[356] I mean, one of the things that you really like in people, whether you know you like this or not, is their ability to track reciprocity.

[357] You know, if you call a friend a couple of times to come over for dinner, and they come, you build up an expectation that they're going to call you a couple of times to come over for dinner.

[358] Or repay you in kind in some manner.

[359] Now, you don't keep a telly, you know, unless you're obsessive.

[360] You know, Bill, two dinners for Bill, zero returns, X for Bill.

[361] But you don't really need to do that because you do do that.

[362] We're so good at reciprocity tracking that it's unbelievable, and we really don't like it when that's violated.

[363] And you don't have to violate that very often with people before they don't want to have much to do with you.

[364] And that's also part of the reason that you should be honest.

[365] It's like that reciprocity tracking, that ability to keep track of who you owe and why you owe them and what you owe is absolutely vital to successful social interaction over the long run.

[366] So, reciprocity and honesty are both fundamental, and that's to treat someone else like you'd want to be treated yourself.

[367] A fundamental ethical rule that goes along with truth, and it's the fundamental rule of reciprocity, and it might be the fundamental ethical rule.

[368] It really might be.

[369] It's partly, I think, because not only do you want to treat someone else as if they're you, let's say, you even want to treat yourself as if you're you.

[370] And you think, well, what the hell does that mean?

[371] And well, this is what it means is that you're not stuck with the you that's here right now.

[372] You're stuck with the you that's here right now and the you that's here tomorrow and next week and next month and next year.

[373] Like there's an infinite number, or not an infinite, there's a very large number of U's extending out into the future.

[374] And they're quite different because they get older and maybe some of them are more ill than you are.

[375] And, you know, they have different interests and all of that.

[376] So you're actually a slice of a community across time.

[377] That's fundamentally what you are as an individual.

[378] And if you're going to act properly in your life, you have to act right now in a manner that takes care of that entire community across time, even though that community is just you.

[379] So even if it wasn't that you were being reciprocal with other people in order to get along, and you have to be, you at least have to be reciprocal with your future self to get along, because otherwise it's a downhill path, and unless you want to auger face down into the ground at some point, that's a bad path.

[380] So that's part of even being honest and reciprocal in relationship to yourself.

[381] Okay, so, well, so we can think.

[382] Well, so what does that mean?

[383] Well, often we're driven by the same sort of fundamental motivations that drive animals, and we can think with our bodies the way animals do, But then we have this additional ability, which I believe is associated with this more complex computational problem How best to set things up in the long run?

[384] And so we who knows how this happened?

[385] But we could divorce our perception from our action And so that's what that looks like it's associated with the development of the cortex Especially the front part of the cortex, which is the part that you use for abstract thinking You think, well, what is abstract thinking mean?

[386] What is it exactly?

[387] And what it is, in some sense, is the same thing that you do with a video game.

[388] You know, when you're playing a video game, you have an avatar of yourself, and you place the avatar out in this fictional world, and then you run the avatar through a bunch of adventures, and you hope it lives.

[389] But if it doesn't, it's like, well, what the hell, you can just generate another avatar, right?

[390] And hypothetically, hypothetically, and perhaps even actually, you can learn from the adventures and misadventures of your avatar, and what you learn you can incorporate into your life and act out.

[391] And so there's this old idea by Alfred North Whitehead.

[392] I believe he was the first person who formulated this.

[393] I believe that's the case.

[394] It might have been Carl Popper, but anyways, it was one of the two.

[395] He said, the purpose of thought is so that you can let your thoughts die instead of you.

[396] So smart.

[397] It's like dead on, man, a great formulation.

[398] And so, see, in the Darwinian world, what happens is, that let's take the case of mosquitoes.

[399] Like, how many offspring does a mosquito have?

[400] It's like, God, who knows, like 150 ,000.

[401] It's like, if those mosquitoes were successful, we'd be, like, neck -deep in mosquitoes in, like, two years.

[402] Pigs are the same way.

[403] I think they can have, like, nine litters of seven piglets a year, something like that.

[404] We imported wild boar into western Canada as a domestic animal about 10 years ago and it's like there's just tens of thousands of them everywhere now you can just shoot them whenever you want people pat you on the back it's like I have I have a cousin I think he shot like 400 last year so and well they're really hard on the terrain those things and and anyways the point that there's a point here the point is that Creatures tend to produce a very large number of variants of themselves, and most of them die.

[405] And so typically, each mosquito manages to produce another mosquito, another successful mosquito.

[406] Obviously, if it was anything other than that, you'd get a geometric or a geometric increase in mosquito mass, and soon the whole planet, very soon, the whole planet would just be one big cloud of mosquitoes, and that doesn't happen.

[407] So mosquitoes produce a lot of variance, and each of them is a little, genetically, because mosquitoes don't learn a lot, so almost all their variation is genetic.

[408] And now and then one genetic variant of a mosquito, which is slightly different than the genetic variants of the other 10 ,000, is a trifle more successful and doesn't perish.

[409] And so that's really how the Darwinian process works.

[410] And it's actually why it seems to me that there is something that has to be correct about the Darwinian idea.

[411] So the Darwinian idea is something like this.

[412] Things change in ways you can't predict.

[413] And because of that, you don't know what solution is going to work.

[414] And not only that, you can't know, because the unpredictability itself is unpredictable.

[415] So things can really radically shift on you.

[416] And so the best you can do is produce a bunch of variants and then hope that one of them happens to match whatever is coming down the runway.

[417] And it is the case that things change unpredictably, although not entirely unpredictability, unpredictably.

[418] And it is the case that you can't completely see what's coming.

[419] So the idea that there has to be random variation in order for things to survive has to be correct because there's random variation in the environment.

[420] Now, I don't know if that's the whole story, but it's a very powerful argument for the necessity of something approximating Darwinian evolution.

[421] And I'm telling you that for a reason, and the reason I'm telling you that is because it's germane to how you think.

[422] So what human beings have learned to do, this is so cool, we're so smart, it's unbelievable, is that we can separate our perception from the actual world, and then we can perceive a fictional world.

[423] And the fictional world is like the real world, except not completely.

[424] It's the world in your dreams, for example.

[425] You know how it is, you go to sleep at night, and you dream, whole bloody world.

[426] And it's so real that you think it's the real world.

[427] Like how you do that is just beyond me because you can't do that just sitting there.

[428] Some people have very powerful visual imaginations, but most people can't manage that.

[429] But you can recreate everything in fictionally.

[430] And then in your dreams, and this is partly why we dream, your dream, you can do all sorts of crazy things.

[431] And well, what happens if you die in a dream?

[432] It's like, well, nothing.

[433] You're so well.

[434] So what?

[435] But it's scary, maybe.

[436] You wake up and there you are.

[437] And the reason that you're still there is because you built a fictional world and you put fictional you in the fictional world.

[438] And you had some fictional adventures.

[439] And, you know, maybe some of them turned out real well and some of them not so well.

[440] But fundamentally, you're still around.

[441] And maybe you wake up from a nightmare and you think, God, I'm never going to do that.

[442] It's like, because you died in the nightmare.

[443] or you got torn apart or something like that.

[444] It's like, oh, no, not that.

[445] It's like, good.

[446] That was an avatar.

[447] It acted out its particular map.

[448] It perished.

[449] Do not use that as a model for emulation.

[450] And then, it's very useful to know that we think this way because it sheds light on all sorts of strange things we do.

[451] While we go to athletic contests to watch abstract hunters abstractly hunt, And we go to movies to watch professional dreamers act out professional dreams.

[452] And so you go to a movie, you'll pay for it, strangely enough.

[453] You find it intrinsically entertaining, which is not self -evident.

[454] But, I mean, the reason for that isn't self -evident, although obviously you do feel that way.

[455] Or you watch dramas on TV, or you read fictional accounts and books.

[456] You read your children's stories.

[457] And the reason you do that is because you get to show your child and you, a fiction.

[458] world that corresponds with the actual world in some interesting ways, and then you can watch avatars of yourself, and those would be the actors, act out certain ways of apprehending and understanding, and you can see what happens to them.

[459] And you can watch the good guys, and you can watch the bad guys, and generally what you see is the bad guys spiral downward to a justifiable, horrible end, which you're quite happy about, and the good guys prevail, and that way you, and you think, well, what's a good guy and what's a bad guy.

[460] Well, the good guy is someone who's organized his representation of the world and his actions in the world that is of some substantive pattern of long -term sustainable benefit.

[461] And you don't know what that pattern is because the world is so damn complex.

[462] And so maybe you have to go to a movie and watch a hundred good guys do a hundred different adventurous things, consummate a Successful romance and have a great adventure.

[463] You have to watch that a hundred times or a thousand times Before you can abstract out from that the pattern that characterizes what's common across all the good guys And if you want to know how religions developed, I would say that's basically how they developed Is that what we have strived to do over thousands of years of map making and storytelling is to tell stories about good guys and And, you know, we couldn't call them good guys if they didn't belong to a category of some sort, right?

[464] What's common about good guys?

[465] About heroes in the story?

[466] Well, they're all good guys.

[467] Well, what is it that defines that set of good attributes?

[468] And the answer is, well, we can't fully articulate that.

[469] It's too complicated.

[470] But we can recognize it when we see it.

[471] And even more deeply, it's more deeper than mere recognition, because when you go see a movie, I used to tell my son, because now and then I took him to a movie that was kind of scary.

[472] Lord of the Rings, for example.

[473] He really hated those Nazgles, you know, those black, monstrous soul -sucking things.

[474] I can't imagine why he hated them.

[475] It's very frightened of them, you know.

[476] And I always said to him, keep an eye on the hero.

[477] I never said, don't be afraid.

[478] It's like, well, look at those things.

[479] I mean, yeah, of course, you should be afraid of them.

[480] I mean, that's what they're there for.

[481] They're like symbols of what's terrifying about life.

[482] Don't be afraid.

[483] So yeah, right.

[484] No, no. Keep an eye on the hero.

[485] Because he'll find the proper pathway.

[486] And then, you know, my son can tolerate all the tension because he could watch the good guy.

[487] And, you know, he'd be very upset if something not so good happened to the good guy because of none of us like that.

[488] That's a tragedy.

[489] It's a moral injustice.

[490] But then he could, he could embody what was happening with that avatar and see his pathway through the world.

[491] And so, maybe you do that a thousand times, you do that 10 ,000 times, you abstract out the pattern of what constitutes good.

[492] And that doesn't mean that you can articulate it.

[493] Like, it's very difficult to articulate something that complex.

[494] We've been trying to do that.

[495] Well, our entire religious enterprise is an attempt to do that.

[496] And most of that isn't articulated.

[497] Like, one of the things that's quite interesting about coming to Europe as well is that, you know, all of your cities have these great cathedrals.

[498] and they're part of this immense tradition that your culture is predicated upon.

[499] And each of those cathedrals, a lot of them were built when people weren't literate.

[500] And there's picture boards and stories inside them, paintings and sculptures and so forth.

[501] And that's all an attempt to represent how it is that you should conduct yourself in the world.

[502] And so people built these massive buildings, beautiful, spectacular, what forests of stone and glass and light and then to represent this striving towards the highest possible ideal and then inside of them you populated them with these with these stories about how it is that you should conduct yourself and you don't understand the damn story I mean that's why you built the cathedrals and made all these paintings it's like well we think it's something like this it's like well but we don't know then those images have like they have sacred significance because they speak to you at a level of that's underneath your articulated intelligence.

[503] It's more than you are.

[504] There's something more there than you know Which is partly what makes it sacred and so and we're in great danger of losing that and and and and assuming that it has no value because we don't fully understand it because it's mysterious, but it is mysterious because how to be good in the world is mysterious this is mysterious as how to be evil in the world or perhaps even more mysterious all right.

[505] So well, so one of the things we can do is we can abstract away from reality and that's kind of cool because it makes us future oriented instead of driven by the past and I would say animals and impulsive people are driven by the past and the present but people who are what would you call what would you say awake that's got to be about the right word it's a higher order of consciousness They're not driven by the past or the present.

[506] They're contemplating the future.

[507] That's a different thing.

[508] And I think the way that we operate as human beings is that what we see in front of us, what we actually perceive, isn't the present.

[509] It isn't the reality of the present.

[510] What we perceive and regard as most real is the potential of the future.

[511] And so we're creatures that encounter potential.

[512] Whatever that means.

[513] potential is a weird thing right because we know it exists we'll certainly castigate each other for not living up to it you know one of the things you definitely don't want for your children is that they don't live up to your potential and your parents told you that you're not living up to your potential you think oh I'm not living up to my potential and you know you take that seriously and so do they they think that's a real a real failure on your part and a betrayal of the deepest part of you it's no joke to not live up to your potential it's like well what the hell is that?

[514] What is that?

[515] Potential.

[516] It's like it's not here.

[517] It's not measurable.

[518] It only might exist.

[519] It's like, what is the reality of something that only might exist?

[520] Well, I don't know, but it's the thing that we seem to regard as most real.

[521] We certainly treat each other that way, and you know, you wake up in the morning, and there are things that you could do.

[522] There's a world of possibility of different dimensions that reveals itself to.

[523] you, and you know perfectly well that how that potential is going to be transformed into reality is a consequence, it seems to be, a consequence of the choices that you make.

[524] And you know, you think, you act this way, that if you make good choices, the right choices, then that potential will manifest itself in the best way that it can, and if you make bad choices, then that potential will turn into something that is wretched, and dismal and hellish and you know that and so and so and you call each other on that constantly and if you interact with someone else even with yourself you're very upset if you haven't made use of the potential of the day you go to sleep and you think oh well you know i really wasn't who i could be today and so you're this contender with potential and that's part of the hero myth because the potential is the dragon of chaos that's the thing that that could destroy you utterly, but that hordes the treasure that's beyond compare.

[525] That's the future.

[526] It's like it's everything.

[527] It's your death for sure.

[528] And it's your fortune for sure.

[529] And there it is in front of you all the time.

[530] And the question is, well, how should you go about confronting it?

[531] And to shrink away, well, that's not a good idea, because then the dragon part gets larger and you get smaller.

[532] And that's a bad, long -term decision.

[533] So, you know, the first chapter in my book, which is stand -up, up straight with your shoulders back is an injunction to meet that potential head on and with eyes awake, eyes front, and with a vision in mind.

[534] Well, in any case, you can conceptualize that potential in different ways.

[535] You can think, well, what if I did, what if the world was like this?

[536] What if this is how the world laid itself out because of a choice I made?

[537] What would the world look like?

[538] And what would I look like?

[539] And you're thinking about that.

[540] It might make you anxious.

[541] You know, maybe you have to go in and confront your boss.

[542] You think, God damn it, I got to go confront.

[543] That son of a bitch, he's just been on my case too much.

[544] What if I just went in there and told him what I really thought of him?

[545] And so you run that little fantasy.

[546] It's like, well, you walk in, you tell him what you really think of him, and then, well, then he fires you, and then you're divorced, and then now you live on the street.

[547] And, oh, it's like, okay, well, that's a possible me. It's like, X. Banish that avatar to the nether world.

[548] We're not incorporating that.

[549] Now, and so you let that idea die instead of you.

[550] And, you know, maybe you play with a variety of ideas like that, and that's partly how you guide yourself into the potential of the future.

[551] And so what that means is you can generate up hypothetical worlds, and then you can populate them with hypothetical you, and then you can play out the consequences of that, and then you can evaluate the outcome, and then you can decide which of those you're going to implement.

[552] And maybe you don't just do that by yourself because it's quite complicated.

[553] Maybe what you do is, you know, you've got a problem and you need to confront it.

[554] And so you sit with your wife or your husband at the breakfast table and you say, look, you know, I've got a complicated fork in the road in front of me. And, you know, I think, well, maybe I could deal with it this way and you lay out your plan, which is a fictional world.

[555] And then, you say, maybe I could deal with it this way and here's what I think might happen.

[556] And what do you think?

[557] and then you jointly engage in the mutual construction of a couple of fictional worlds and you evaluate them and you come to some negotiated agreement about which pathway you're going to take.

[558] And hopefully that works.

[559] Hopefully it decreases the probability that you're going to be fired and homeless and increases the probability that you're going to be broadly successful.

[560] And you know you probably want to inform those around you who are relatively close about which of these fictions you're going to transform into actuality because generally they have some implications for them.

[561] So we do this jointly.

[562] And so that's partly why, in my estimation, free speech is so important because what we have to do in order to perform this task properly is we have to be free to generate a variety of alternative worlds, even those ranging from horrifying to beatific, let's say, the entire emotional range and then we have to be free to explore the consequences of doing so even though that's very emotionally challenging before we implement them in action and we need to be able to do that because otherwise we implement into action precipitously and then we collapse and it's not easy you know one of the things i noticed with my clients i always tried to tell them it's like look we're going to talk about some of the ways things could be but you have to remember this is a really useful thing to do with your partner if you guys are facing a complex decision.

[563] You say something like this.

[564] Look, it's a complicated decision.

[565] It might go really wrong.

[566] Let's think of 10 ways we could deal with it.

[567] But let's remember that just because we're thinking about these things, that does not mean they're going to happen.

[568] You know, because we have a proclivity, because our thought isn't that much divorced from our reality, to act as if what we think is immediately real.

[569] And so, in order to think, you can't do that.

[570] You have to pull yourself away.

[571] You have to say, well, look, let's lay out this plan, think about it, and then this plan too, and also this plan, and also this plan, and then let's sleep on it for a couple of days, knowing that we don't even have to implement any of those plans.

[572] It's a great thing to learn to do to get that sort of detachment, because, well, then you can run much more effective simulations of yourself and hopefully, well, you suffer less.

[573] It's a very difficult thing to learn.

[574] It's also why people have such a difficult time negotiating with one another and even thinking because it's so easy to take the first plan that comes to mind and treat it like its reality and get so damn terrified by it that you just can't, you know, you can't loosen yourself up to consider other alternatives.

[575] But you need to.

[576] You need to desperately.

[577] So, okay, so what does that have to do with lying?

[578] Well, here's what seems to have happened.

[579] You can generate fictional representations of the future.

[580] And you can do that because you can detach your thinking from your action.

[581] Now, it's kind of painful in some sense that you can do that because you'd think life would be easier.

[582] You know, people are very peculiar because you'll tell yourself something like, I need to go to the gym every morning at 7 o 'clock, three days a week, and I have to stop eating desserts.

[583] and then you think, and I need to do that because I'm ugly and fat, and I'm going to die.

[584] And so, those are good reasons to stop doing it.

[585] And then, well, and then what happens?

[586] Well, nothing.

[587] You go to the gym like once, and, you know, and maybe you eat a bag of, like, chips on the way, and then you sort of move very slowly on the treadmill while you're watching TV, and then you're satisfied, and you never do it again.

[588] And so, and so, and so the reason I'm telling you, that is because one of the prices you pay for detaching your ability to think from your capacity for action is that you can think up a bunch of things and then not act them out, right?

[589] Because it might be easier if you could just tell yourself what to do and then do it, but you don't.

[590] And you can't.

[591] If you're going to think that can't happen because you have to be able to detach the thinking from the action, and then if it's detached, well then it's detached.

[592] And so you can't just command yourself.

[593] It's not so simple.

[594] It's not so simple to turn yourself into the more successful avatar Right, because you're already sort of the way that you are and it's painful that you can't just command yourself into doing things, but whatever.

[595] You can't.

[596] So why can you lie?

[597] Well, if you can fictionalize the future, which you clearly can Then you can also fictionalize the present and you can fictionalize the past Now that doesn't mean that you should But it definitely means that you can.

[598] And that's very dangerous because, you know, maybe the past, maybe you went over some pretty damn wicked cliffs and down to some pretty deep holes.

[599] You barely got out of the damn things in the past, and you'd rather...

[600] And maybe you, like, throw yourself into the hole because that certainly happens, and maybe you don't want to think about that.

[601] And so you replace it with a different version of what happened.

[602] And you certainly can.

[603] And you know you don't really believe it, but if you talk about it enough, well, it starts to become real, and you can tell other people.

[604] And the back of you thinks, well, I can get away with that.

[605] I don't really have to face what happened.

[606] I don't really have to learn my lesson.

[607] I'll just pretend that things were better than they actually were.

[608] And because a bolt of lightning doesn't come out of the sky and crisp you right on the spot, usually, you think, ah, I got away with that.

[609] but you didn't because you did fall in that hole and it might have been because you weren't navigating very carefully and it's certainly possible that you'll hit the same geography in the future and had you, since you haven't learned your lesson which is how to walk around that particular pit then you'll just fall in it again.

[610] And so that's not a very wise plan and so that's really in the final analysis why you shouldn't lie.

[611] There's other reasons as well, but that's a big one, is that, well, if you're going to, if you falsify your experience, then you can't, if what you're trying to extract from your experience is a reliable indicator of how to move forward, which is clearly the point of memory, and then you falsify your past experience or your present experience, then you don't produce a cartographically accurate, map of your future trajectory and what that means is that you'll fail and so well why shouldn't you lie well the answer is because you'll fail it's as simple as that now it's not quite so simple because telling the truth is actually a rather daunting proposition you know because if you tell someone, what you really think, well, then all sorts of terrible things happen.

[612] The first thing is you figure out what you think.

[613] And that can be a horrifying experience.

[614] You know, it's like, well, maybe there's some things you think about your boss.

[615] And you don't really think about the things that you think about your boss, because you don't want to go there.

[616] And no wonder, or maybe it's your partner, maybe it's your sister, maybe it's your mother, your father, maybe it's you.

[617] You've got some dark conceptions lurking around there.

[618] You know, and it's easy, in some sense, to just not attend to those and not articulate them.

[619] They're still there.

[620] They're embedded inside you in a non -articulate form that might make you moody and irritable and hard to get along with and full of perverse decisions as those quasi -formed, monstrous thoughts possess you when you're not paying attention, because that happens all the time.

[621] But that doesn't mean that owning up to what you actually think is an easy matter.

[622] It's not easy at all because then you have to discover what you are.

[623] And you're quite the monstrous creature with this massive capacity for both good and evil and to really become aware of what you think.

[624] It's like, oh my God, really?

[625] I really think that?

[626] It's useful to know.

[627] It's useful, for example, to discover how aggressive you are.

[628] Because then you can tap into that and use it.

[629] Like, if you really know how unbelievably irritated you are at your tyrannical boss, and you let those fantasies of God only knows what they might be, you know, these people who go into office buildings and shoot their employee or their peers and their boss, it's not like they haven't been thinking about that for like 10 years.

[630] You know, and it starts out something like, geez, I really hate my boss.

[631] And then the next thing is, geez, I'm not very fond of my coworkers.

[632] and then maybe they could think that through.

[633] It's like, I hate my boss.

[634] I'm not very fond of my co -workers.

[635] It's like, well, do I want to work somewhere where I actually hate everyone?

[636] And why is it that I hate everyone?

[637] Is it everyone, or is it me?

[638] Because if it's everyone, it's probably me. And then, well, if it's me and I hate everyone, well, maybe there's something really wrong with me. And so then you have to go digging around and you have to find out what's wrong with you.

[639] And maybe you're unpopular as a kid because you're just miserable piece of the earth and you're resentful, and you don't carry your own weight, and every chance you get, you irritate people.

[640] And, well, there's people like that, man. There's no doubt about it.

[641] And maybe you're one of them, and we're all partly one of them.

[642] And so you have to get to the bottom of it, and God, that's just an absolutely miserable thing to do.

[643] But, you know, what's the alternative?

[644] You're going to work with people that you hate and have an absolutely dreadful time every day and let your unconscious fantasies become darker and darker and more.

[645] bitter and take you out?

[646] Like, that's the alternative.

[647] And you think, well, I'm not going to go shoot up an office and, well, you know, congratulations to you.

[648] And maybe that's partly a consequence of your cowardice and not your morality.

[649] So, well, don't be so sure about that, you know.

[650] So, but, you know, you're married to someone and, and, you know, a lot of marriages end in divorce and, and why is that?

[651] Well, I mean, it's partly because people, they don't tell the truth to each other, you know?

[652] And so they don't take a problem when it's still a small pit, a small hole, and say, look, look, I don't know, man, this is what I'm thinking.

[653] It's kind of ugly, and it's not very flattering to you, and it's not very flattering to me either, and it doesn't bode well for our life together, and maybe it's not true, you know, but it's certainly what I think, and maybe we should have a talk about this.

[654] And like, that's one nasty talk, that is, boy, the probability that you're going to get out of that without a scrap and with some tears is like very very low but there's some possibility you might find out why you're in that hole together or separately and figure a way out of it and when it's still the kind of hole that you could actually climb out of at least hypothetically and if you don't think that you're going to fall in holes like that with someone you're married to then well you're either not married or you're absolutely blind because this just happens all the time not least because life is really hard, and just because of its mere difficulty, you're going to end up in places that are dark and difficult to get out of, even if both of you are doing a pretty decent job together.

[655] That's just part of the difficulty of life, and so you can go in there and contend with that darkness, you can tell the truth, and maybe you can fix your map, you can, you can figure out, oh, here's how we got here, you know, and like, is this a place we want to be?

[656] Well, no. No. We don't hate each other that much yet, you know, so that I'm in a pit and I'll drag you in rather than take myself out because I'd like to see the misery extend to you rather than to make myself better.

[657] It's like, again, if you don't understand that sort of thing, then you've never had a family and you've never had a marriage.

[658] So, because people are definitely that dark and very frequently they end up like that permanently, and that's partly why they end up divorced.

[659] So it's no joke to contend with the vagaries of life.

[660] If you do that honestly, then you can take on the monster when it's still relatively small.

[661] And that's a good thing, even though it's a monster.

[662] It's better to take it on when it's relatively small because maybe you can defeat it and maybe you can also become stronger in the combat.

[663] And then when a larger monster comes along, well, maybe you're more ready to deal with it.

[664] And that's part of the truth.

[665] And so that's another reason not to lie.

[666] Then I'll end with this.

[667] think.

[668] So Socrates, you know, when Socrates was going to be put to death, I wrote about this in 12 Rules for Life, the guys who wanted to put him to death really didn't want to put him to death.

[669] It was a little town, Athens, 25 ,000 people.

[670] Everybody knew each other, right?

[671] And it was corrupt in the same way that little towns get corrupt.

[672] And no, Socrates was a pain in the neck because, you know, well, first of all, he would make young people think and there's nothing more annoying than that.

[673] And, you know, people would stop to talk to him and they'd have some story about how they were conducting their life and he'd asked them 10 questions and then he, then they knew that they were just lying about everything.

[674] And that was absolutely dreadful.

[675] And so then they hated him.

[676] And so that was Socrates.

[677] And maybe the first person who actually really thought.

[678] And so, well, you got to kill someone like that because you don't want that to spread.

[679] That's for sure.

[680] So, you know, they told him, look, you're corrupting the youth.

[681] We're going to kill you.

[682] We're going to put you on trial, but it's just a show trial.

[683] Death.

[684] But it's not going to happen for six months.

[685] It's like, well, why the delay?

[686] Well, you just come and stab them at night, you know, if you're going to do it.

[687] No, they wanted to delay because they didn't want to kill them.

[688] They just wanted to get them the hell out of town.

[689] It's like, go away, you old goat.

[690] We're tired of you.

[691] Go bother the stoics.

[692] the Spartans, you know?

[693] And everyone knew this.

[694] All of Socrates's friends knew this.

[695] And so they all got together and they said, look, we got to get you out of town.

[696] And because, you know, these guys are serious.

[697] You know them.

[698] And they're going to go through with this whole thing if you force them to.

[699] And we'd rather that you weren't dead and probably you feel the same way.

[700] And so Socrates listened to that.

[701] And he knew that that was the story.

[702] But he went out and meditated, which he was want to do, thought about it, asked himself, asked himself.

[703] That's a useful skill to learn, you know, because you like to tell yourself things.

[704] You should do this.

[705] You know, you like to command yourself like you're sort of your own slave.

[706] It doesn't work.

[707] But you can ask yourself, you know, like if you want to improve your life, maybe there's a bad habit you need to stop or there's a good habit you need to develop.

[708] You could sit yourself down and you could say, yeah, look, I know we haven't got along that well in the past.

[709] We don't trust each other that much, and I tend to be a bit of a tyrant, and you tend to procrastinate and not, you know, pick up after yourself, and we're altogether quite useless, but I'm thinking that maybe we could make things slightly better if you would be willing to communicate, to cooperate.

[710] Is there something I could offer you that would entice you to behave in a slightly better manner?

[711] And, you know, if you're careful and humble and don't aim too high, then you can usually figure out something that you can convince yourself to do.

[712] that will work.

[713] And so that's this sort of meditation that Socrates engaged in and he claimed, someone asked him, I think at his trial, at his trial, that's correct, leaping ahead.

[714] He went out and had a discussion with himself and he realized that he wasn't going to run.

[715] And he thought, this was a real shock to him.

[716] He thought, well, what do you mean?

[717] Don't run.

[718] It's like, well, you shouldn't run away from this.

[719] Well, what do you mean?

[720] I shouldn't run away from this.

[721] I'm going to die.

[722] Well, it doesn't matter.

[723] You shouldn't run away from this.

[724] So, he went back and he told his friends, I'm not running away from this.

[725] So, then he went to trial.

[726] They tried to convince him to leave, but he wouldn't.

[727] And he went to trial.

[728] And the Athenian judges were actually kind of curious about what the hell he was doing there, because they expected that he'd just leave, because that was the plan.

[729] And so they asked him about himself or he told them.

[730] He said, you know, I've lived this kind of exemplary life.

[731] People come from all over to listen to what I have to say.

[732] And you might want to know why that is.

[733] And he said, well, I've got this Damon, a spirit that inhabits me that I communicate with on a regular basis.

[734] And he first of all, he said, well, you know, people come and talk to me. And, you know, I don't, I'm not really rewarded for that.

[735] although I make my living that way from what people gather up for me, and I'm always trying to seek for the truth.

[736] I don't really believe that I have it, but I'm trying to seek for it.

[737] And people seem to recognize that, and the Delphic Oracle herself said that I was the wisest man in Greece because I knew that I didn't know anything.

[738] I was aware of my own ignorance, and so even the gods admit that I'm doing something right.

[739] And everyone, no one disagreed with that.

[740] And then Socrates sort of explained what it was that he did that was right.

[741] And he said he had this internal daemon, which is really like the voice of conscience.

[742] I think that's the right way to think about it.

[743] And it's interesting because people do seem to have a voice of conscience.

[744] I've asked my students for years about this.

[745] How many of you have what you might describe as a little voice inside of your head that tells you when you're about to do something stupid?

[746] that you don't necessarily listen to, but that you know is right.

[747] It's like, and I say, well, how many of you have that voice?

[748] Well, so let's just ask, how many of you have that voice in your head?

[749] Okay, okay.

[750] Now, how many of you don't have a voice but have a feeling that's approximately equivalent?

[751] Okay, and how many of you just have no idea whatsoever what I'm talking about?

[752] Okay, so, okay, so, so, so, anyway, so that's, the Damon, at least in part, and Socrates said, here's what makes me different from other people.

[753] I always listen to that.

[754] It doesn't tell me what to do, but it tells me what not to do.

[755] And so that's don't lie, I would say.

[756] Tell the truth or don't lie.

[757] I don't think you can necessarily tell when you're telling the truth because you just don't have access to the truth.

[758] Because what the hell do you know?

[759] You're limited in your knowledge.

[760] You're limited in your perceptions.

[761] You're ignorant beyond belief, you're biased, truth, you can do your best.

[762] But I do believe that it's a universal human experience to know that at some time you're about to lie, which is to say something that you know full well is not true, whatever true is.

[763] Well, Socrates' dictum was, don't do that, ever.

[764] If you know that it's a lie, don't say it, don't act it out.

[765] And that's the pathway to wisdom.

[766] And I believe that that's the case.

[767] And one of the things that I learned from Carl Rogers, a very famous psychotherapist, was he believed you should be integrated in your body and your mind.

[768] And so that not only should you say things that you believed to be true or at least weren't lies, but you should act them out as well.

[769] so that you're kind of a unified thing, you know, because you should act in a manner that makes it unnecessary for you to lie about what you did.

[770] Because otherwise that's just a lie.

[771] It's just a different version of a lie.

[772] And so that's another problem with not lying because then you have to stop doing things that you have to lie about.

[773] And of course, that's very annoying because most of the things that you have to lie about are really fun, especially in the impulsive way.

[774] And so then you have to give those up, and that's very irritating.

[775] And so, but Socrates's point was, well, he always listened to this voice, and he, and Roger's point was, he developed quite a nice theory of this, that you could actually detect when you were about to say something false, and that you could learn to listen to yourself, and you could learn to feel whether what you were saying was making you stronger or weaker.

[776] And I think it has to do with, you know how if you're in a strange city.

[777] and the map isn't working, then you're sort of disoriented.

[778] You don't know where you are.

[779] Well, you don't know where you are, and you don't know where you're going, and you sort of feel all over the place.

[780] You know, you're not gathered together solidly ready to act.

[781] It's an anxiety -provoking experience.

[782] And that sense of weakness that comes with uttering a lie produces exactly the same consequences and for the same reason, because you're disrupting your representation of where you are in time and space, where you are and where you're going.

[783] And so then you could be anywhere doing anything, and that's too much.

[784] It makes you anxious and weak.

[785] And you can learn to feel, you can learn to listen to what you say, and you can feel whether what you're saying is making you stronger and more positioned, or whether it's making you weak and fragmented.

[786] Now, the weakness often has the benefit of allowing you to do something impulsively pleasurable.

[787] And so there's a high payoff for it in the short term, but it's a catastrophe in the long run.

[788] You can learn to center yourself.

[789] And I think what's happening when you do that is that you're aligning yourself from the bottom up, and I don't mean from your feet upward.

[790] I mean, from the deepest recesses of your being.

[791] I mean, from all the way from down at the atomic level, all the way up through all the levels of your interacting being, everything is lined up and pointing in the same direction.

[792] And that makes you, it makes you diamond -like it.

[793] It makes you sharp and hard and able to move towards something without anything getting in its way and to be something that seeks a precise and pristine target and to be implacable and unstoppable and unstoppable and to be without excess fear and to be courageous, all of that, that the truth tempers you like metal is tempered.

[794] And I think that you have the option to do that.

[795] And I'll close with an observation.

[796] There's this idea in Genesis, it's a very interesting idea, that God is that which confronts potential with truth.

[797] That's the deepest idea that's embedded in the biblical corpus as a whole.

[798] So the idea is, while there's God, the father, whatever, that means something that has an intrinsic structure and some possibility of creativity, and that entity, divine entity, has a function, and that function is the logos, and that's the truth, and that that structure applies that function, the truth to potential.

[799] That's the Tohu -Vabohu that exists before anything else exists.

[800] That's potential.

[801] It's just what could be, and that the application of that logos to the potential creates reality, creates order.

[802] That's how order comes to be.

[803] And I believe that's true.

[804] I believe it's a description of the actual structure of the manner in which being manifest itself.

[805] And I think that you partake in that when you confront potential yourself.

[806] You see the potential of the world and you act on it and you transform it into reality.

[807] And then the question is, well, what sort of reality do you transform it into?

[808] And it's literally the case because that's what you're doing is you're taking what could be and making it into what is to the degree that you're capable of doing that.

[809] And in the biblical narrative, God does that with the truth.

[810] And so then order comes into being sequentially.

[811] And there's this repetitive idea that's also part of the poetic structure of the first chapter of Genesis.

[812] Every time God uses the truth to extract order out of potential, he says, and it was good.

[813] And here's the idea.

[814] It's a great idea.

[815] It might be the great idea, but it's definitely a great idea.

[816] The reality that you produce as a consequence of confronting potential with truth is good.

[817] It's the fundamental statement of faith, and it's worth thinking about, because it could be the case, is that you have the option of bringing the world into being for better or worse, and if you want to bring it into being for better, then the way you do it is with the truth.

[818] And there's going to be a price because the truth has a price, but so does falsehood.

[819] It's just a delayed price.

[820] Maybe the price of the truth is something you confront almost immediately, but then it's over, and then things are better.

[821] And then there's another idea in Genesis that human beings are made in the image of God, and it's a very difficult thing to understand.

[822] But it's easier to understand if you know what the first part of the story means, and it means something like what I've outlined, although no doubt tremendously more than that.

[823] It means that whatever you are, whatever your consciousness in, Whatever that capacity is that's part and parcel of you having that ability to grapple with potential and transform it into reality.

[824] That's how you partake in the divine.

[825] And it seems reasonable to me to posit that if what you're doing is actually transforming potential into actuality.

[826] Because I can't think of anything that's more like what divinity might be than that.

[827] That's quite the damn trick, and you seem to pull it off all the time.

[828] The question is, well, how should you go about doing that?

[829] Well, the answer seems to be with the truth.

[830] And then there's one final thing.

[831] I keep saying that.

[832] Yes, there were three final things.

[833] Here's something so interesting.

[834] I learned this when I did the biblical lectures last year, when I was looking at the Abrahamic stories.

[835] There's a call to adventure that's part and parcel of every great narrative.

[836] You're called out of your slumber to undertake the adventure of your life.

[837] and so a great life is not a happy life and it's not an easy life it's a great and meaningful adventure and you're partaking in the process of bringing something magnificent into being that that's life that's that's that's far more than happiness it's it's and happiness might be part of that or satisfaction meaning might be part of that but this is much grander than all of that and and you do that we do that most effectively with truth and partly that's because telling the truth is actually a tremendous adventure.

[838] It's like, because maybe you're aiming at something, you think, well, look, I can tell person X, this, and I'll get what I want.

[839] It's like, that's fine, you know, except what the hell do you know about what you want?

[840] You might be wrong about that.

[841] And you probably are, because what's your vision of the ultimate future?

[842] It is fully developed?

[843] If you really got a handle on that fundamental utopia, maybe it's something more like this, is that whatever the truth brings into being, that's what's right.

[844] And so you have to subordinate yourself to that, and then you have to tell the truth.

[845] And what's so interesting about that is that you instantly are on an adventure, because there's absolutely nothing more unpredictable in a profound and meaningful way than what happens to you if you actually start, well, at least to begin with, not to lie.

[846] It transforms your life completely and all sorts of insane.

[847] Strange things happen to you because you're not exactly like a typical person anymore if you stop lying.

[848] There's something to you that is kind of uncanny.

[849] That might be a way of thinking about it and it changes the way you react to yourself and it changes the way other people react to you and then weird things come your way in all sorts of ways and they're the things that if they're the things that if handled properly would actually constitute the justifying adventure of your life.

[850] That's how you encounter it.

[851] There's this idea.

[852] It's in the New Testament.

[853] Christ, who's an image of the truth, regardless of the religious issue, is an image of the truth embodied, says, I am the way and the life and the truth.

[854] No one comes to the Father except through me. Which is a hell of a thing for someone to say.

[855] You know, it's not something that someone just says to you when they walk by you on the street.

[856] It's a very strange thing to say, but it means something.

[857] And it means something.

[858] It means something deeply mysterious.

[859] It means if you're willing to put yourself on the line and to stop lying and to strive towards the truth, you'll encounter the adventure of your life.

[860] And the consequence of that will be that that will call forth out of you, the best in you.

[861] And that won't be conjured out of you by some trivial wish.

[862] Like if you want to make yourself into what you could be, you have to contend with something.

[863] Just like if you want to become powerful, You go to the gym, you lift heavy weights.

[864] It's light weights.

[865] It makes you a light weight.

[866] You have to push yourself, you have to push yourself to your limit.

[867] And to engage in the adventure that the truth produces is to push yourself to your limits.

[868] And to push yourself to your limits is to force yourself to become what you could be.

[869] And to become what you could be is the ancestral you.

[870] That's the father.

[871] That's the full manifestation of what it could be, to be a human being.

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

[873] And so that's why you should tell the truth, or at least not lie.

[874] Thank you.

[875] Thank you.

[876] Thank you once again.

[877] All right.

[878] So you offered a substantial number of questions here.

[879] So I'll try to find some that are interesting and maybe somewhat comical now and then, and also that I can answer.

[880] So here's one that was upvoted by 45 people.

[881] I'm an autistic male struggling to understand the concept of love.

[882] I hear you discuss responsibility giving meaning to life.

[883] How important is love to meaning?

[884] So, you know, it's a hard, it's a challenge to discuss truth.

[885] I mean, you have to be pretty presumptuant.

[886] to discuss truth.

[887] You probably have to be even more presumptuous to discuss love.

[888] Partly because it's a word that's it's like it's an old beautiful building that's been overlaid with centuries of grime and dirt and hasn't been cleaned properly forever.

[889] And so you can just barely see it through all the pollution.

[890] So I discuss it with trepidation.

[891] You can't, you seem to have a high probability of becoming false the moment that you even utter the word.

[892] So I'm going to tread very carefully.

[893] I think that what love is at its base is, well it's what you feel when you have a child and you're clear headed and you actually want the best for that child.

[894] Like if you could have your wish, that's what it would be.

[895] And it's not easy to have that in the purest form that it should be because people are jealous of their children because of their youth and they're jealous of their children because of their misspent adult life and the fact that someone new has entered the world that has a full realm of possibilities that they've already squandered, let's say.

[896] And then a child is someone who you can easily target with your capacity for malevolence and use as a scapegoat for all the resentment that you've accrued in your life.

[897] but having said that I think that for most people the closest they come to a connection with what love could be in its purest essence is through contact with their child or children and the desire that everything work out well for them.

[898] Now that's a complicated desire Because, you know, a child is a vulnerable thing.

[899] Can be hurt, will be hurt.

[900] That's for sure.

[901] And that's part of the horror of life, really, that children can be hurt.

[902] It might be one of the primary horrors of life.

[903] Or maybe a worse one is that you could be the agent of their destruction.

[904] You could be the thing that does the hurting.

[905] But it's tied in.

[906] It's the same.

[907] idea.

[908] So you might think of a child as something that's representative of the fragility and potential of being, characterized very much fundamentally by potential, but also very much by limitation.

[909] And the limitation of being is what gives it its fragility and its vulnerability and its tragic element and its susceptibility to exploitation by malevolence.

[910] And so to love a child means that you have to want the best for something despite the fact that it's limited and vulnerable and mortal and susceptible to destruction by malevolence and even characterized by the potential to go wrong itself.

[911] And so then you could think of a child as a representation of existence, existence or experience or being itself.

[912] But it still seems that the proper attitude towards a child is love, and that is the desire that things turn out the best for that being.

[913] And maybe you can abstract past that and say that in the most philosophical and abstract sense, then love is the desire that being turn out for the best.

[914] And you might think of that in some sense as a truism, but it's not because life is so difficult and so cruel, and so dark, so often, that it's very difficult to wish it well.

[915] And it's very easy to adopt a resentful, and cruel and vengeance -seeking stance towards yourself and towards other people, but on a more fundamental level, towards existence itself, towards the fact that there's being itself.

[916] Gerta, who wrote Faust, has a character in his great play, Mephistopheles, who's a variant of Satan, and Mephistopheles has a credo, which he repeats twice in the play in the first part and the second part written many years later.

[917] And his credo is, things are so compromised by their limitations and the suffering that that produces, that it would be better if nothing existed at all.

[918] And I would say that that's the opposite of love.

[919] That doesn't make love a trivial thing because it means that you have to embrace the catastrophe.

[920] But I think that is what you do when you love someone deeply.

[921] You decide at the deepest level of your being that for all the fragility, inadequacy, and error of that particular person, it's spectacularly wonderful that they existed.

[922] That's certainly what you decide, I think, when you grieve, You know, because you could imagine that when someone dies, that that was a celebration, that they were released from the catastrophe of their existence and from the darkness of the world.

[923] And I know there is an element sometimes like that when someone dies, if they've been suffering for a long time.

[924] But that isn't really what I mean.

[925] When someone dies, even someone close to you, even if it's someone with whom you've had a somewhat fractious relationship, which is, of course, typical of the relationships that you have with people that are close to you, and you grieve, you still seem to be acting out the proposition that it was a good thing that they were, and that is love.

[926] I would say that truth is nested inside love, or they have a reciprocal relationship.

[927] It's been very difficult for me to determine which is the higher order virtue.

[928] I think that they have to act in a dynamic way, that to orient your truth properly, you have to decide that being for all its limitations, perhaps necessary limitations, is something that most certainly should be.

[929] and I think that might be the primary commitment of faith that in spite of the evidence of the world's inadequacies existence is good.

[930] I think that this is what you decide if you're a woman when you decide to have a child because women are often tormented by the notion that it's perhaps immoral to bring a child into a world such as this.

[931] You see that in the great statue of the Pieta, the Pieta, the Michelangelo's statue, where you see Mary holding Christ as an adult, her son, who's been broken and destroyed by malevolence and betrayal and catastrophe.

[932] And I always think of that as the female equivalent of the crucifixion, or a female equivalent of the crucifixion.

[933] Because if you're a mother, you have to offer up your children to be broken by the world.

[934] and that's a price you pay for bringing them into existence.

[935] But it still seems the proper thing to do.

[936] And I suppose you counterbalance that catastrophe of their life with, hopefully, with love and truth and courage, and we all hope that those are enough to balance the scales.

[937] And I think they are, in fact, enough.

[938] I mean, I think in many ways I'm a deeply pessimistic, mystic person.

[939] And the reason for that is because I've looked into very dark places.

[940] I've been in very dark places in my life from time to time, myself, with my family members and with my clients.

[941] And I've investigated dark places in my intellectual adventure because I studied totalitarianism for years, somewhat obsessively, and most particularly the atrocities that were associated with the totalitarian states, and most particularly the manner in which those atrocities were conducted by identifiable individuals.

[942] And that makes that part of the reality of your own life, because you understand that the people who did those sorts of things were people, and you're one of them.

[943] And that's very dark.

[944] Very dark.

[945] But nonetheless, what has emerged for me as a consequence of that study is two things.

[946] One is that the darkness does not overcome the light despite how much darkness there is and that what we are as potential can transcend even the darkest spirit of malevolence.

[947] That what you discover in the darkest places is your greatest possibility.

[948] And I think that love, which is the desire that things work out for the best is a precondition for that investigation and discovery.

[949] And then what constitutes responsibility is your decision to take on the burden of working for that best in whatever manner you can conceptualize it, to work for it and to update your conceptualization of the best so that it becomes a better and better, conceptualization of the best as you become wiser and wiser in your truth and your responsibility.

[950] And so that's what I think about that question.

[951] Franz Kafka said the meaning of life is that it stops.

[952] What are your thoughts on this?

[953] Well, I think that the meaning of life is that it stops might be an overstatement but there's something to that I mean the meaning of a symphony is not that it stops it does stop and the fact that it's a bounded performance let's say is integral to its existence but that doesn't provide it with its meaning I think what Kafka meant was that there's some necessary relationship between finitude and existence.

[954] And I'll tell you a story.

[955] It's a series of thoughts that I encountered while reading Jung.

[956] It's old commentary, Jewish commentary on the nature of God.

[957] And it's like a Zen Cohen, except it's the Hebrew equivalent of a Zen Cohen, I suppose.

[958] You take a being with the classical attributes of God, omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence.

[959] Be anything, do anything, be everywhere, unlimited, in every way.

[960] What does it lack?

[961] and the obvious answer is well nothing by definition it lacks nothing but lacking nothing is a form of lack and so the answer to the question is well it lacks limitation and then the question is well are there advantages to limitation that limitlessness does not possess and it seems to me that the answer to that is clearly yes there's nothing to strive for if you're unlimited there's no adventure if you're unlimited there's nothing new to build if you're unlimited there's nothing new to do there's no frontiers to discover maybe there's no being if you're unlimited and so maybe and the conclusion that was drawn by these wise men who formulated this paradox was that man was created by God because limitation had advantages that limitlessness did not.

[962] And that seems to be tied into the idea of the great adventure of life.

[963] Then the question becomes, well, if being and adventurous being requires limitation, but limitation produces suffering, which it certainly does, then how is it that you can have your adventurous being without falling unbearably prey to the suffering?

[964] And the answer to that seems to be depends on how you live.

[965] And we addressed that already with the first answer.

[966] If you live guided by love courageously and truthfully, then you can have the adventure that justifies the suffering of your being.

[967] And I think that's true.

[968] I think that's what makes me not pessimistic at all in the final analysis, but overwhelmingly optimistic because I do believe that the potential strength of people, and the strength that's often manifested, is a more potent force than the catastrophic limitations of existence.

[969] And I think that that discovery is in some sense waiting there for each of us to discover if we will it.

[970] And that discovery is made by the faith It's made possible by the faith that allows for the courageous and truthful confrontation with the terror and catastrophe and malevolence of limitation.

[971] That confrontation transcends it, both psychologically, by providing you with a purpose for your life that you might regard as worth the trouble, but also, solving the trouble itself because not only is it worthwhile to have a purpose for your life but if the purpose for your life is of sufficient quality then not only does that elevate you psychologically and fortify you in your movement forward but it actually directly addresses the problem of suffering and malevolence and so it's possible that the world is So that we can have the advantages of limited being and simultaneously overcome and transcend many of the disadvantages that can make it unbearable and I think that that's a very good goal and one that I do believe that we implicitly desire and share and that we could formulate explicitly and work diligently towards I'm a male engineering student Class is 85 % men and girls have female scholarships and opportunities.

[972] Grad recruitment is 50 -50.

[973] Is that really true?

[974] Is grad recruitment designed to produce a 50 -50 gender balance in your engineering program?

[975] Okay, so people think no. Well, then I would have to say that the question is, how can I stand a chance?

[976] And I would have to say, I'm afraid I don't know enough about the specifics of that situation to offer an intelligent commentary, so I won't.

[977] So, at 25, how do I find a balance between trying to take on maximum responsibility, pushing productivity, and enjoying my youth and not taking myself too seriously?

[978] That's a good question.

[979] Well, I think that's not a question just for a 25 -year -old.

[980] So let me tell you a story.

[981] I think one of the things that you need to do when you're young is, well, you have to do enough stupid things so that you can figure out that doing too many stupid things is stupid.

[982] That's necessary.

[983] You have to learn a certain amount of that through painful experience.

[984] There's an old doctrine that you cannot be redeemed from any sin you didn't commit, which is part and parcel of a relatively profound line of Christian thinking.

[985] But one of the things you really want to do when you're young is you want to find out what you can do like I think it's necessary to push yourself in at least one direction past your limits of tolerance so that you can find out what those limits are once you do that you have to pull back and you have to do it carefully obviously because you don't want to exhaust yourself but one of the one of the adventures of being youthful is to find out okay well what am I made of what can I do And the only way you can find that out is to take on a challenge.

[986] And that's not much different than taking on a responsibility.

[987] And so there's a great adventure in that.

[988] I mean, you want to have an adventure when you're young.

[989] That's a very good adventure to find out who you are.

[990] When I was a graduate student, you know, I...

[991] And I think that was probably perhaps the best part of my youth.

[992] I was about 25, about the age of the questionnaire.

[993] And I was taking my clinical PhD program and I was reading a tremendous amount, scientific papers, educating myself in the fields of neuropsychology and psychopharmacology and animal behaviorism and child development and drug and alcohol motivation and Jungian psychology and Freudian psychoanalysis and Nietzschean philosophy.

[994] and Rogerian psychotherapy and a very large number of fields simultaneously reading as much as I could get my hands on writing a lot I started to write a book at that point which turned into maps of meaning so I was writing about three hours a day I was also doing my scientific research I published about 15 papers in the five or six years I was at McGill which was a lot of papers and at At the same time, I had a very active social life.

[995] I was out at least three or four times a week.

[996] And the clinical psychology students, who were my peers, were a very social group of people.

[997] And they really liked to, they were very extroverted, and they really liked to have a party and have a good time.

[998] And so there was a tremendous amount of that.

[999] And it was ridiculously.

[1000] entertaining and fun.

[1001] And I was also going to the gym because I decided I was going to try to put myself in something approximating some reasonable physical shape.

[1002] And so that was a lot.

[1003] And it was very useful to try to do all those things at the same time, partly to find out how much I could do.

[1004] And one of the things I learned was that you can get very efficient if you push yourself beyond your apparent limits.

[1005] You learn ways of doing the same with less.

[1006] You can get crazily, crazily efficient.

[1007] And you can learn how to make five -minute sections of your life productive.

[1008] And that's a way of stealing more time in some sense.

[1009] But I also learned what I could and couldn't do.

[1010] So, for example, when I was writing maps of meaning, which pretty much laid the foundation, let's say, for everything I've done since.

[1011] All my YouTube lectures and my university lectures and 12 Rules for Life and all of these lectures all really stem in large part from the writing I did on Maps of Meaning because I wrote for three hours a day for 15 years.

[1012] That's a lot of writing.

[1013] And I decided I was going to make that sacrosanct that I was going to put that time away and nothing was going to stop me from using that time, not love, not money, nothing.

[1014] And so I was trying to do all those things, and I had to give some of them up because they started to interfere with one another.

[1015] So, for example, I found that I had a pretty capacious capacity for alcohol, coming from northern Alberta, where drinking was essentially the national sport.

[1016] And I really enjoyed it a lot.

[1017] It was a very good drug for me. although not necessarily because of what it enticed me to do, because I did learn that almost all the times that I acted in a manner that I regretted, it was under the influence of alcohol.

[1018] And so I had to come to terms with that.

[1019] And I also had to come to terms with the fact that the topics that I was dealing with while I was writing were so deep that I couldn't handle them if I wasn't.

[1020] in pristine mental condition.

[1021] They were too daunting mentally, emotionally, especially when I was studying totalitarian atrocity.

[1022] It was just too much hungover.

[1023] That was just too much.

[1024] And also, if I was writing and trying to formulate my thoughts clearly, then especially if I was editing and had edited a lot, if I wasn't in pristine intellectual condition then when I edited what I was writing I would make it worse which seemed counterproductive and so I realized when I was about 27 or so that if I was going to continue to pursue what I felt to be most important and I had sort of figured that out by pushing myself in various directions simultaneously and looking at the consequences that I was going to have to radically regulate my social behavior.

[1025] And so I think when I was 27, I stopped drinking completely.

[1026] I stopped smoking.

[1027] I also smoked cigarettes, and I quit that as well.

[1028] And I didn't drink anything for 25 years.

[1029] And that was necessary because there's no way I could have done the other things that I did had I not made that sacrifice.

[1030] And it was a sacrifice, you know?

[1031] I mean, I loved my social life.

[1032] I still, I still, I still, I still miss it to a large degree, although I've replaced it with many other things.

[1033] But it was worth it.

[1034] And so I would say incomparably worth it.

[1035] And, you know, you have to make sacrifices in your life.

[1036] And that's fine.

[1037] Because you have to prioritize, and that means that you have to make sacrifices.

[1038] And I decided that I wanted to see what I was capable of doing.

[1039] And that meant that I had to eradicate everything that was in the way that was interfering with me discovering that.

[1040] So I would say if you're young, you should try five or six things that are way outside your domain of competence.

[1041] And you should try to hit at least one of those as hard as you've ever hit anything with as much dedication as you can possibly muster and push yourself beyond the limits of your capability so that you can find out what those limits are and then pull back enough so that you can sustain that level of intensity across a very long period of time and then you have a life that you might regard as worth having and there's and you have to make mistakes while you do that because in order to push yourself beyond your capacity you have to push yourself too far And so then you have to find out what too far is, and there's error in that, but that's, there's always error, you know.

[1042] One of the things that's really useful to know, I always told my clients this very often.

[1043] They were in a tough position.

[1044] I said, oh, I see what your situation is.

[1045] You're screwed no matter what you do.

[1046] And it's so useful to know that at sometimes in your life, which is that you don't, like, there's no good option here.

[1047] You can have this option, and it's not hard.

[1048] difficult or you can have this option and it's also hard and difficult and that's all you've got and that's really useful to know sometimes because otherwise you torture yourself about the fact that you can't see your way clear sometimes you don't have that luxury at least then you get to pick your poison and I think a large part of having a successful life is exactly that it's like pick your pathway to doom you know well it's you're headed that way anyways and so you might as well pick one that's worth have And that's back to Kafka's point as well.

[1049] It's like, look, you're all in in life.

[1050] So you might as well do something.

[1051] You might as well do something that's as spectacular as you can manage because what are you going to do?

[1052] Increase your risk?

[1053] You've already got the full risk.

[1054] The full risk is there.

[1055] It's already upon you the full risk.

[1056] So, push yourself, discipline yourself, take your adventures, pull back enough so that you can have a life that you can maintain and then see what the hell you can manage.

[1057] And that's a very entertaining way to progress through the tragedy of your existence.

[1058] So, one more.

[1059] How does one become more disagreeable and less neurotic?

[1060] Well, that's a good question, and it is a good one to end with.

[1061] Well, the best way to become more disagreeable, and this is part of the integration of your shadow, let's say you're an agreeable person, which means you're quite suited for taking care of dependent creatures, because agreeableness suits you for that, and it's a necessary ability, although it's not so useful when you're not taking care of dependent creatures.

[1062] If you're too agreeable, then you find it very difficult to negotiate on your own behalf, because you tend to sacrifice yourself for the perceived benefit of others.

[1063] You err too much on the side of cooperation, let's say, and not enough on the side of competition.

[1064] So you don't give yourself a fair shake.

[1065] Well, how can you figure that out?

[1066] Well, the best way to figure that out, I think, is to notice your resentment.

[1067] and I often counseled my clinical clients to notice their resentment.

[1068] I talk about this a little bit in 12 rules.

[1069] If you're resentful, there's basically two reasons.

[1070] One is you're whiny and immature and you should just grow the hell up.

[1071] And the other is that you're being taken advantage of or you're allowing yourself to be taken advantage of.

[1072] And those two things functionally aren't different.

[1073] And so you want to sort the first one out, maybe by talking to someone that you care about, you say, well, I've got this problem, I'm kind of resentful, here's the problem, this is what's driving my resentment, do you think I'm just whiny and immature, and should get on with it?

[1074] And, you know, it's got to be a bit more sophisticated than that, and all of us are less mature than we could be, so you want to get the parts of yourself that are still, that have retained that childhood immature, without any of the childhood charm, you want to get that under control.

[1075] And then if you find out that it's not immaturity, but you are, in fact, either being taken advantage of or allowing yourself to be taken advantage of, then it's useful to understand that you have a moral obligation to put that to a halt.

[1076] And so then what you need to do is figure out, okay, well, why am I resentful?

[1077] What's the problem?

[1078] that's complicated.

[1079] You have to think it through.

[1080] Then you have to think, well, what would a possible solution look like or an array of solutions?

[1081] Maybe you're being exploited by your boss.

[1082] Maybe you need a new job.

[1083] Maybe you have to retype your resume.

[1084] Maybe you have to overcome your fear of interviews.

[1085] You know, who knows what it is, but you have to come up with a potential solution.

[1086] And then you have to develop a strategy.

[1087] And that strategy might mean, well, first of all, at least admitting to the fact that you're not negotiating on your own behalf courageously and truthfully and then setting yourself up piece by piece so that you can do that.

[1088] So, for example, if you feel that you're being underpaid at work, well, the first thing you might want to do is investigate whether or not you actually are, and that might take a month or two of concerted digging and thinking, but then it may turn out that you are.

[1089] Then you have to ask yourself, well, have you actually asked for a raise?

[1090] Because it's very frequently the case that people don't.

[1091] And if they're agreeable, they think, well, I'm working really hard.

[1092] And like a nice person would notice all the good things I'm doing.

[1093] And they would just give me a raise.

[1094] It's like, good luck with that theory.

[1095] You know, first of all, if you're doing your job and you're easy to get along with, no one even notices you.

[1096] You know what I mean?

[1097] It's like you don't notice things.

[1098] that are going well.

[1099] You notice things that aren't going well.

[1100] Managers spend almost all their time with the tiny fraction of people who torture them to death.

[1101] They spend almost none of the time with the people who are doing a decent job and far less time than they should with the people that are doing a stellar job.

[1102] If you're a manager, you should ignore the people who are torturing you to death completely because there's no fixing them.

[1103] And you should spend all your time with your excellent people.

[1104] And no one does that.

[1105] So don't be thinking that you're going to get noticed necessarily if you do a good job.

[1106] You have to call the attention of your superior to your stellar performance and say, look, you know, here's what I'm doing, because they might not even know.

[1107] I'm doing this in a really good way.

[1108] I'm doing this in a really good way.

[1109] I'm doing this in a really good way.

[1110] And this and this and this and this.

[1111] And I've done it for a long time.

[1112] And here's the benefit it's bringing to you.

[1113] And I'm finding that the fact that I haven't been recognized for this is starting to interfere with my motivation in a serious way.

[1114] It's making it harder for me to come to work.

[1115] It's making me more likely to drag my heels and less likely to put 100 % in.

[1116] And I've been thinking about how to rectify that because it seems like a really bad long -term solution for me and for you.

[1117] And I figure, well, like a 25 % salary increase over the next three years might go a long way to rectifying that.

[1118] And here's why it's a financial benefit to you.

[1119] And here's the whole story that you can take to your boss to justify paying me. And, you know, that might work and it might not.

[1120] Maybe you'll get 10 % or 15 % or 2%.

[1121] Or maybe the person will come back and say, well, we can't do that.

[1122] But, you know, thank you for your service and we'll certainly promote you.

[1123] And we can consider doing something financially in the longer term if you're willing to, you know, to cooperate.

[1124] with us a bit and then at the same time you should have a backup plan which is another job really it's like you're negotiating it's like I'm not happy here so what what are you going to do about it nothing well then go away I've got more serious problems than that to deal with I'm unhappy here so what what are you going to do about it well you know I prepared my resume and it's really quite substantive, professionally done.

[1125] I've outlined all the wonderful things I've done at this institution for the last 10 years, and I've already mailed it to 50 companies.

[1126] Three of them have an interview scheduled with three of them.

[1127] It's like, oh, you're on fire, right?

[1128] I better put you out.

[1129] You're a real problem.

[1130] I better deal with you.

[1131] And the probability, it's very expensive to lose a good employee and hire a new one.

[1132] And so you have to figure out what the problem is, what's making you resentful, figure out what a solution might be so that you could be thrilled about going to work or at least not dreadfully resentful and miserable, but thrilled would be good.

[1133] You might want to come home and have a big party.

[1134] You think, Jesus, I just nailed that, man. I got a promotion, I got a raise.

[1135] Things are way better.

[1136] Aim for that.

[1137] Things are way better.

[1138] That's the right thing to aim for.

[1139] Well, that'll help you be less agree.

[1140] It's like you want to live in resentment and misery while you trudge through your job going downhill with your blood pressure rising and you aging faster than you need to for the next 20 years while you take it out on your family because you don't have enough courage to confront the actual situation.

[1141] Is that what you want?

[1142] Or do you want to come up with a plan and get what you need and want, which is a high probability?

[1143] I've seen this happen to people over and over.

[1144] I've had lots of clients who tripped.

[1145] their salary in three or four years and I mean they worked at it man it was no joke they worked they put their damn hours in they put out their hundreds of resumes they filled in the gaps in their education but like if you make it a priority and you're willing to make the proper sacrifices then you radically increase the probability that you will succeed and so that's one of the strategies for becoming less disagreeable And then I would say if you're more successful and less resentful, you'll automatically be less neurotic.

[1146] And so that'll solve that problem too.

[1147] Thank you very much.

[1148] 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.

[1149] Both of these works delve much deeper into the topics covered in the Jordan B. Peterson podcast.

[1150] See Jordan B. Peterson .com for audio, e -book, and text links, or pick up the books at your favorite bookseller.

[1151] I hope you enjoyed this podcast as much as I did.

[1152] If you did, please leave a rating at Apple Podcasts, a comment, a review, or share this episode with a friend.

[1153] Thanks for tuning in.

[1154] Talk to you next week.

[1155] Follow me on my YouTube channel, Jordan B. Peterson, on Twitter at Jordan B. Peterson, on Facebook at Dr. Jordan B. Peterson, and at Instagram at jordan .b. Peterson.

[1156] Details on this show, access to my blog, information about my tour dates and other events, and my list of recommended books can be found on my website, jordan b peterson .com.

[1157] My online writing programs, designed to help people straighten out their pasts, understand themselves in the present, and develop a sophisticated vision and strategy for the future, can be found at self -authoring .com.

[1158] That's self -authoring .com.

[1159] From the Westwood One podcast network.