The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast XX
[0] The Christ in the Gospels is quite merciful.
[1] And one of Jung's propositions was that there's an ancient line of religious thinking that has mercy and justice as the two hands of God.
[2] Too much mercy is the devouring mother.
[3] Everything's okay.
[4] No one's ever called to account.
[5] And so no one ever matures and takes responsibility.
[6] But justice without mercy is too harsh because we all fall.
[7] short of the mark.
[8] So God rules with a balance of justice and mercy and the Christ in the Gospels, although there's hints of temper and judgment, he's presented in quite a merciful manner, but in the revelation, he's a judge.
[9] It's like, no, you're unworthy and the select are few.
[10] And you think, well, what does that mean?
[11] It's like, well, imagine sorting yourself out into the select and the unworthy.
[12] Perhaps most of you is select, but I doubt it.
[13] And you certainly they aren't going to start that way.
[14] You know, nothing that isn't approximating the ideal is select.
[15] So in any case, his proposition was that every ideal is a judge.
[16] And that makes perfect sense because an ideal is something to which you aspire.
[17] And the gap between you and that ideal, if it's your ideal, is felt as judgment.
[18] And so that's one of the reasons people are very afraid.
[19] to have an ideal to make it that's why I wrote do not hide things in the fog it's like well you should lay out an ideal you should pursue an ideal why wouldn't you well when you make your ideal explicit it turns into your judge well then you can listen to that judge and and move forward and transform but you know it's pretty damn harsh because especially to begin with we posit an ideal especially if you're in a mess god every bit of you is being judged as unworthy.
[20] There's endless reasons not to want that.
[21] And then the way forward is to have that ideal because those ideals are in some ways noble truths.
[22] These things about loving the collective because the collective is the same, it's true whether people want to adopt it or not, at least in my opinion, that there's things that our consciousness knows to be true.
[23] So those are ideals that exist.
[24] I think it's true because you are in fact a community across time right so so there's no difference between what's good for you and what's good for other people there's actually no difference not if you not if you extend it far enough they are technically the same thing so so you so you have this ideal that is there whether you acknowledge it or not and you feel it and you feel that thing and then but where it gets you get tripped up is when you have an expectation that you're going to magically travel and teleport from where you are which is full of your own corruptions and full of your own selfishness, to meet that ideal immediately.
[25] So the mercy comes from saying, this is the ideal.
[26] But the expectation of judgment that I'm going to be at that right away is false.
[27] So let me appreciate myself right here where I am in this journey with all of my faults, however many they are, open up my entire closet of internal monsters, pet them on the head, and say, okay, here we go, eliminating more of those and becoming more like the ideal.
[28] surrendering to the journey rather than that expectation.
[29] And there, the judge no longer carries the sting and the bite and the harshness because it's your judging yourself according to a timeline where you're hoping to get closer to this.
[30] Yes, well, and the hallmark starts to become improvement.
[31] Right.
[32] Right.
[33] And that's great.
[34] That's a really sustaining, that's a really sustaining process too, because technically speaking again, seeing yourself moving.
[35] towards a desired goal is the essence of the positive emotion that nourishes us.
[36] And I mean that technically.
[37] That's dopaminergically mediated incentive reward.
[38] And so you don't have to get to the goal.
[39] You have to aspire to the goal and move towards it.
[40] And then that doesn't even matter if the goal recedes, which it will as you approach it.
[41] Because your ability to conjure up what constitutes the ideal is going to become more sophisticated as you move towards it.
[42] And you might think, well, that's terrible.
[43] But it isn't because it means the game doesn't have to end.
[44] Right?
[45] Because if you may hit the ideal, it's like, oh, well, game over, reset, you know.
[46] But no, no, that isn't going to be how it works.
[47] It's just, it's going to get better and better and better.
[48] It's why it's life is the perfect game.
[49] I mean, if you have a really good, for those of us who've played video games, you have a really good video game or even a really good book or even a really good movie series or a show.
[50] and it comes to the end and you're like, oh, there's a huge letdown at the termination of this thing that's been incredibly engaging, especially if you win.
[51] Yeah, exactly.
[52] You win.
[53] And you get this moment's satisfaction, but it's replaced almost immediately by the disappointment of the cessation of the game and the recognition that you're in a finite game when you really want to be playing the infinite game.
[54] And that's what life is, the infinite game of renewal of life.
[55] And that's why it's so good.
[56] We'll never replace it.
[57] It can't get better.
[58] And it's hard as hell.
[59] And it's hard as hell at the same time.
[60] And that's the way we would want it.
[61] Well, it seems like that's the way we'd want it.
[62] I mean, that's another thing I talk about a little bit in a new book.
[63] It's like, well, when you look back on your past, it's generally having done something difficult that you remember positively, I would say.
[64] Yeah.
[65] So then there's something about you that craves difficulty, optimal difficulty at least.
[66] Strangely enough Do not hide unwanted things in the fog Which seems to me we live in a constant state of distraction now You've mentioned Twitter a couple of times It's like is Twitter bringing any of us happiness Or is it keeping us all in a constant state of fog?
[67] Any you know the overload and the endless Obsession with politics that all seems like a fog to me You know I do my August off the grid And I do that I do that to get out of the fog So what was so key?
[68] Distraction is definitely fog.
[69] And you'll distract yourself.
[70] I think you distract yourself mostly when your conscience is bothering you because you don't want to face what it is in your life that is uncomfortable.
[71] That chapter is again quite practical.
[72] It's a reminder to pay attention often to negative emotion, resentment and that sort of thing because it can tell you, well, resentment.
[73] is very useful.
[74] Maybe your partner is talking to someone and they're a little bit more animated than you'd like and you get jealous.
[75] And that jealousy is associated with a whole set of insecurities.
[76] Or maybe they're flirting and they shouldn't be.
[77] It's not that easy to determine.
[78] And maybe you'll have a big fight about that.
[79] But you could just as well pretend that didn't happen.
[80] You know, the emotion comes up.
[81] I'm jealous.
[82] I'm resentful.
[83] It's associated with experience.
[84] like that in the past, the psychoanalysts would have called that a complex.
[85] You could notice that.
[86] You could think, well, should I be jealous?
[87] Is there something wrong with me?
[88] Or is there's something wrong with my partner?
[89] There's something wrong with the relationship.
[90] And you have to untangle that.
[91] And who knows what you'll have to untangle to get that straight?
[92] Or you can bear the jealousy and see what will happen in the relationship.
[93] Or maybe it'll disintegrate because your partner is flirting.
[94] And you ignore that.
[95] It's not like you repress it exactly.
[96] And this chapter is an attempt to disdemeanor.
[97] distinguish repression from this hiding in the fog.
[98] It's that you get a hint that something's wrong.
[99] And then you have to unpack that hint to pull the information out.
[100] You know, so maybe your partner is flirting and they shouldn't be.
[101] And so then you have to find out why they're dissatisfied with the relationship or what's tempting them or what is crooked in their soul at the moment or what they're dissatisfied about terrible journey of exploration and discovery.
[102] You know, that's always presented as something that's positive.
[103] It's often not at all.
[104] It's so hard.
[105] It's like doing surgery on a separating wound.
[106] And it's no wonder people avoid it.
[107] But it's not helpful, you know, because all it does is leave that, those things grow and multiply in the dark.
[108] And if you ignore them, they just cascade.
[109] Do you think that's just self -pacade?
[110] protection for most people, that most people, they see it, they know that, that truth behind them, whether it's about their partner or whatever it might be, but they just, it's just self -protection, like, oh, I just got to keep moving on as things are, that were just creatures of habit or something like that.
[111] Well, sometimes it's that, and it especially gets to be that if it's, if it's accumulated for a long time, because if you wouldn't have, if you wouldn't deal with it when it was a kitten, you're not going to deal with it when it's a full -grown lion.
[112] Yeah.
[113] And so, But I think mostly it's something else I return to in the book is it's deceit, resentment, and arrogance.
[114] I already know what I need to know.
[115] That's arrogance.
[116] Deceit is I don't have to pay attention to that.
[117] And resentment is, well, things can go to hell and so can he or she.
[118] You know, and that's a pretty dark triad.
[119] And you don't want the spirit that embodies that to take over your life.
[120] that's for sure well motherhood isn't as high status an occupation as it should be that's a cultural failing but we're also you just got so many moms following you you just got so many more fans when my wife had little kids it was often the case that she wasn't well treated in restaurants and so forth especially if i wasn't there so and that wasn't good i thought that was a sign of real cultural sickness that a mother with a young child isn't is treated badly that's very bad idea and that's part of this casual contempt so anyways when you're 18 or 17 or 19 or 22 it's like what do you want exactly what what do you want and that's that's I wrote about that in chapter three of this new book beyond order don't hide things in the fog you have to let yourself know what you want well so you make a list of what you want and and what is that well you want someone who's productive and generous and honest that's a real good start you want someone that you're physically attracted to yes um you want someone who's education and intelligence roughly match or exceed your own i should stop reading daddy peterson's dating rules can't keep going well and then if you find someone like that and then that's who you want right and and you should know that and you should you should notice that because then at least you're looking in the right place like there's some maybe you could also put into one of your podcasts or things because you I know a lot of young men follow you to ask the girls out I do I do say that okay I don't listen to all of yourself all the time you know a little extra bump I tell them all the time so I get out there and ask and say in my clinical practice too It's like you're not going to find someone unless you ask.
[121] And, you know, for all there, there's a lot of criticism aimed at the, you know, those the men's movements that teach men how to be a player, how to attract women, how to, there's a lot of negative press aimed at those.
[122] And I can understand why, because there's kind of a psychopathic element to it.
[123] But one of the things those movements do do is to really encourage young men to overcome their fear of approaching women and even ask.
[124] asking them for their phone number or for a date or for a conversation or for a coffee and put a profile up on on a dating profile dress up nicely get a professional photograph taken you know put your best foot forward and have enough courage to approach some women and maybe get over your fear and yeah it's so but I would say to young women if you find someone who you think fits your criteria and you're not being asked out ask them.
[125] I'll do it.
[126] Well, what's the alternative?
[127] To wait and wither on the vine?
[128] That doesn't seem very useful.
[129] I don't want to do that.
[130] No. That sounds horrible.
[131] What would you say would be the keys to your success of 50 years of loving each other and being in what seems to be a healthy functional relationship when in society today, it doesn't seem like many of those?
[132] Well, we really do.
[133] are best not to lie to each other about anything.
[134] And we also have fights when they're necessary.
[135] We don't let things.
[136] We don't hide things in the fog.
[137] That's the title of chapter three of my new book.
[138] Don't hide things in the fog.
[139] And we work through our issues.
[140] If we have a dispute, we do our level best to get to the bottom of it, to find out what in the world's causing it, who's needs to change and why and how and when and then how we can progress forward into the future without having that issue dog us or drag behind us or interfere with us at all and that means a fair bit of confrontation I would say but less so over the years as we've settled more and more things, but everything's out in the open.
[141] Everything that we can get is out of, out in the open.
[142] You can't have a relationship without trust.
[143] And you trust your partner courageously, if you're not naive, knowing that you can be hurt and that you can be deceived and that you can also do both of those things.
[144] So you offer your partner, your trust as an invitation to them to be honest and forthcoming and, well, and then issues come up and you delve into them and straighten them out.
[145] In my marriage and in my relationship with my children and in my clinical practice, it's, you have to negotiate.
[146] That's what men and women have to do.
[147] And so I talk about that, particularly in chapter three of my new book, which is don't hide things in the fog.
[148] It's like, well, let's talk about sex.
[149] for example.
[150] That's a good one.
[151] There's a stumbling block in a relationship.
[152] Let's talk about sex.
[153] Well, that's hard.
[154] People don't do it.
[155] They're uncut—you know, like they'll have sex.
[156] They'll engage in sexual acts, but they won't represent them abstractly and discuss them.
[157] You know, so, well, how often should we have sex?
[158] Well, how are you going to solve that problem?
[159] Well, first of all, each person has to admit how often they'd like to have sex?
[160] sex.
[161] They might be uncomfortable with that right off the bat.
[162] They might not even know because they're so uncomfortable about it.
[163] They never even asked themselves.
[164] And then you have to ask yourself, well, what will I do if I don't get that?
[165] And people don't like that question either because it means why you're going to get bitter and you're going to get resentful and you're going to get mopey and whiny and you're going to justify having an affair or at least looking elsewhere.
[166] And you don't want to admit that about yourself so you won't have the damn discussion.
[167] Like as soon as you know that you're flawed deeply, and if you're sexually frustrated, you're more likely to stray, well, then you can be afraid of yourself enough to overcome the fear, to have the conversation.
[168] It's like, look, a woman, if we don't make love three times a week, I'm so whiny and immature that I'm going to go to strip bars, and that doesn't work out well for our relationship.
[169] And, you know, and she might say, well, why don't you grow the hell up?
[170] And, you know, I'm so, overworked, I have 50 hour a week work week because I'm a lawyer and I have three small kids and they're clamoring for my attention and my goddamn husband is such a miserable wretch that he threatens me with, you know, marital disintegration if I don't pull out another four hours of week to please him.
[171] It's like, fair enough, those are two good arguments and who the hell wants to have that discussion?
[172] But my sense is it's tyranny, slavery, or negotiation.
[173] And I've walked couples through this process many times there's a part in chapter three um where you talk about fear and you talk about the fog and um and i wrote down a sentence it says that sometimes you're so afraid that you will not allow yourself to even know what you want uh i think that's very common it really hit me hard because sometimes i you know i admit i'm afraid to like i'm afraid to even map even to really write down and map out what I want but I don't know exactly I tried to really drop down and figure out what the fear was like why am I afraid like and I had some I've had some trouble really figuring that out like am I afraid that I'll have to then do it am I afraid that I'll then feel inadequate based upon what I really want and where I currently am so I just wanted to you to maybe expound on that a little bit and and and Just kind of share, like, what did you think?
[174] Why do I get afraid to really admit, even admit to myself what I really want?
[175] If you know what you want, then you know when you're failing.
[176] If you don't allow yourself to know what you want, you can keep that foggy.
[177] If you don't set out the conditions for your success, then you can avoid your responsibility because, again, that's not clear.
[178] And the problem with wanting something is that in all probability, you're going to have to work for it.
[179] you're going to have to make sacrifices, and it's certainly possible that you want to avoid that.
[180] You might be afraid to make it clear because other people could deny it to you too, which is something I write about a fair bit in that chapter.
[181] The problem is, and failing to make any of that clear, protects you right now, but it's really hard on you over the medium to long term, because if you don't make it clear to yourself, what you want or to other people, the probability that you're just going to stumble into it is pretty low.
[182] And you can put that off indefinitely day after day, but the problem with that is that you age while you're doing that.
[183] And there's obviously a price to be paid for that.
[184] So that chapter, that's chapter three, do not hide things in the fog.
[185] I mean, it's a warning about failing to pay attention, you know, knowledge emerges in a very strange way.
[186] It emerges obviously when we learn something, we started out by not knowing it.
[187] And so what that means is that knowledge goes through a transformation process from being absolutely not there to being explicit and fully detailed.
[188] And one step of that process is emotion.
[189] And so, for example, you might find yourself frustrated and disappointed about the events of the day, but be unable to exactly specify why.
[190] That's extremely common.
[191] You know, you'll go home to your partner and you be in a bad mood and, you know, you'll snap at them for something and they'll say, well, what's up with you?
[192] And you'll say, well, nothing.
[193] You're just being annoying when it's perfectly clear to both of you that there is actually something up with you.
[194] And then that disappointment and frustration, anger and sadness, let's say, or anxiety, is a sign that something isn't right.
[195] But it isn't necessarily that you're repressing knowledge of what's not right.
[196] It's that you actually don't know.
[197] And the emotion is the first step in the process by which that knowledge emerges.
[198] And you might have to sit and think and talk to your partner or to a friend for God only knows how long before you're actually going to put your finger on what it is that you're upset about.
[199] and it could be very far removed from whatever happened to trigger you in the moment.
[200] And so that's the fog.
[201] And you can keep things in the fog just by not doing that.
[202] It's really easy.
[203] It's no more difficult than just sitting there doing nothing because creating knowledge is active and difficult.
[204] Yeah.
[205] Well, it's, you know, we've created such a perfect fog these days.
[206] Like really the fog has been.
[207] it's become such a bit the fog is such a business every little thing that they can that that can be created to take away your attention from uh or that can take away our attention from figuring out who we are or like kind of spulunking inside of ourselves and trying to get some answers um has really been created it's almost it's pretty masterful how much has been created out here on the outside to keep our attention um away from delving inside of ourselves well you know what you You know, attention is the basic currency, right?
[208] Everyone fights for it, and it's incredibly valuable, and it certainly is the case that it's also very tempting to turn your attention to things that grasp your short -term interest rather than, say, pursuing the causes of negative emotion.
[209] That's a good example.
[210] And, of course, we have massive corporations working night and day to continually attract our attention and there's something sinister about that obviously but but you can't exactly lay responsibility at their feet because there isn't that there's a tremendous overlap between educating people informing them and and making them attend to you and and the lines between all of those things are very foggy let's say and difficult to lay out it's certainly the case that one of the ways that you can keep yourself in a fog about yourself is by distracting is through distraction with external uh with anything in the external world and obviously computer technology cell phones games well not negative in and of themselves perhaps are there at any moment to distract you at any moment yeah there's yeah the little things that are time consumers like yeah It's, yeah, there's companies.
[211] There are businesses where that is their, that's their business, is to get your attention.
[212] Everything's trying to get our attention.
[213] Sometimes I worry that the forces that are out there that have like started to, you know, really create algorithms even on how to get our attention and how to keep it.
[214] That those forces are stronger than our human abilities to keep them away from us.
[215] Do you feel like that that's true or do you feel like that that's just a fear?
[216] I really do believe that that's true.
[217] Look, as far as I can tell, we are teaching computers to read our minds as fast as we possibly can.
[218] And they're way better at it than they were 10 years ago.
[219] And they're going to be so much better at it in five years that we won't even be able to imagine it.
[220] And when I say read our minds, I'm not talking about something magical, but...
[221] Oh, yeah.
[222] For example...
[223] You're not talking about, like, guess what's happening?
[224] It's not like they're going to guess what...
[225] we're thinking or guess what we want for dinner or anything like that probably well they might but they won't do it by directly reading our brainwaves or anything like that um they'll they're already algorithms that target advertisements to send at you are pretty good at deciding what it is that you're motivated to pursue and now oh yeah I just got an ad on my phone for your new book actually so yeah well good so I'm involved in the same process the same nefarious process I'm just I've read that I think it's Facebook, but I might be wrong about this, that owns Oculus and the headset, the VR headset company.
[226] Now, you can track eye movements with VR headset, and psychologists use the tracking of eye movements to map attention in high detail.
[227] Now, look, if you look at our eyes, you see that there's a colored circle and a dark circle in the middle and then that's surrounded by white and that makes your eye very visible to other people animals too but to other people particularly human eyes are quite unique in that regard and it looks like we've evolved to have highly visible eyes and the reason for that is that other we communicate with other people and they can read our motivations by watching our eyes so if you stand on the corner and you look up at nothing in the sky and you stand there long enough someone else will join you and then if there's two people then there'll be 10 right away and the reason for that is that we and this is again something uniquely human we attend to where other people point their eyes assuming that if they're interested in it we might be interested in it too and so that's and human beings are visual animals about half our brain is is taken up with visual processing.
[228] We're much more visual than virtually any other animal.
[229] And so computers are soon going to be able to track where we place our eyes, which of course advertisers are incredibly interested in.
[230] And that's going to speed up the ability of high -powered computational devices to understand human beings as a group, but also each of us individually to an immense degree, immense degree.
[231] And so, and I think we're probably 10 years.
[232] years away from computers that understand us better than we understand ourselves.
[233] AI machines are going to get extremely good at this because it's so lucrative to be able to gauge attention.
[234] There's nothing that's more valuable than that.
[235] And so do you feel like it do you feel like there should be let it's hard to say there should be legislation because I hate to put anything on the, you know, that the go it's the government's responsibility.
[236] but should there be like rules or legislation between allowing computers and AI to get that advanced or is it still just fall on the feet of us as humans just to battle kind of the dark arts of of these machines that can sort of like take us into a trance and then monetize the trance at the same time I think I think that legislation in some sense is it's going to be playing catch -up and it's going to be farther and farther behind all the time because this is moving so fast and with such power and it's so distributed that no one is going to be able to even keep track of it, much less regulated.
[237] I mean, the interconnected environment is changing so rapidly that even if you're reasonably tech -savvy, you can't keep up with all the major changes.
[238] and there's there's no evidence whatsoever that that's going to do anything but accelerate and so I can't see how legislators have the ghost of a chance at keeping up with this even if they knew what to target or what to legislate yeah and you know more and more engineers are I think China now graduates more engineers every year than the United States has engineers oh yeah China you could be eight years old and China and be a damn engineer I've been over there and I've seen a six -year -old build a damn bridge in front of me. You know what I'm saying?
[239] They're highly capable.
[240] Yes.
[241] Well, and lots of other cultures are coming online very rapidly.
[242] And so we're at, well, and there's no shortage of unbelievably proficient amateurs online as well and programming.
[243] And so we ain't seen nothing yet.
[244] And I really do believe computers are going to, your computer is going to understand you so well.
[245] I think it won't be long till it knows.
[246] what you're going to do more accurately than you do.
[247] I think that's already true to some degree.
[248] Well, then we're at a real loss because then if I've been afraid to make a plan for myself in my life and I've been afraid and I've been living in the fog and I've been just, you know, kind of sidestepping really putting my fucking pants on as a human and taking some action if I'm in that fog and then the computer is able to figure out what I'm going to do before I've even done it but I haven't even made a plan then surely the computer is going to make a plan for me it feels like I think the computer is making a plan for you all the time already with by default look that's exactly what advertising is is advertising makes a plan for you it's there's no difference between those two things except maybe one of sophistication so you know I mean when you're watching something and an ad pops up that's a little world that you could visit And the advertiser obviously wants you to visit that.
[249] And the problem there, because you might think, well, it would be really good.
[250] The computer can help you make a plan.
[251] But I think what's more likely to happen, because at least to begin with, the computer, is going to be paid, so to speak, by the advertisers to capitalize on your short -term impulsivity, is that ever more attractive distractions are going to be dangled in front of you.
[252] And that's likely to keep you in the fog.
[253] and what can i do to battle the fog like what can i do you know as a human to retain my humanity as things get more tech and more and and as tech becomes far smarter in some ways you know in in technical ways than i'll ever be well you know i wish i knew the answer to that I don't, partly because the landscape that's unfolding in front of us, because it changes so rapidly, it's unpredictable.
[254] You know, other rules in my two books address that to some degree.
[255] I think your best bet, the best bet you have virtually all the time is to try not to lie to yourself.
[256] In my first book, 12 Rules for Life, I said, do not lie, or no, I said, The rule was tell the truth, or at least do not lie, because, you know, you might, I mean, can you tell the truth?
[257] You'd have to know the truth.
[258] You know, you might be able to tell some partial truths, but you can't tell the truth.
[259] But you can not say things that you know to be false.
[260] And in the second book, the new one, rule five is do not do things that you hate, which is also a kind of lie.
[261] And I don't mean don't do difficult things.
[262] like get out of bed at six in the morning and exercise.
[263] You know, you might say, well, I hate going to the gym.
[264] And that isn't what I mean.
[265] You don't really hate going to the gym.
[266] You just find it difficult.
[267] I'm thinking more that you might observe yourself engaging in activities that you find despicable even right then, but certainly later when your conscience dwells on them and that you should stop doing that because that's a form of behavioral lie.
[268] I think the only thing we have to orient ourselves is, as individuals is our willingness to to live to live a life that's relatively free of of unnecessary deceit or of deceit at all.
[269] For better or worst life is short, how can we add a sense of urgency to it?
[270] Well, I would say by reminding yourself that life is short, that's, that'll add a sense of urgency See, by noticing, you know, I calculated, I don't know, my parents are, when my parents were in their 70s, 60s, perhaps, I usually saw them about once every two years.
[271] We communicate a lot more than that, but we live a long ways apart.
[272] So I calculated, you know, well, my dad's probably going to live until his mid -80s or late, you know, somewhere in there.
[273] And he's 60, let's say, I'm going to see him 40 more times.
[274] it's like okay 40 more times that's urgent so you better get it right because you don't have it you don't have that many opportunities you know it's the same when you're formulating relationships in your adolescence late adolescence and early adulthood you don't have that many experiments to run you know and you get you get old a lot faster than you think so attention attention attention.
[275] Attention is an underrated faculty.
[276] It's not the same as thinking.
[277] It's watching to see what's there in front of your eyes and to guide yourself as a consequence of what you perceive.
[278] It's the faculty that transforms thought if you let it.
[279] And your conscience alerts you as well.
[280] Tick, tick, tick, you know, you're wasting time.
[281] And very few people are happy with that.
[282] Some are burdened by it more than others, but virtually no one escapes that voice of conscience.
[283] I suppose to some degree that's the willingness not to engage in self -deception.
[284] Chapter 3 and Beyond Order is about that.
[285] People don't really repress the things they don't want to face.
[286] They just fail to unpack them.
[287] you know like maybe you're on youtube regularly and every time you shut the computer off you feel somewhat disgusted but you don't pay any attention to that for a while for two years but then you decide you're going to pay attention then you find out well the reason you're disgusted is because you're wasting your life and you know it and that disgust is indicating that but unless you attend to the disgust and unpack it let it reveal itself as informative you don't know what the message is You just have a sense of disquiet.
[288] It's not easy to transform that sense of disquiet into an actionable plan.
[289] And often you have to talk to someone about it as well.
[290] You have to discover.
[291] So it's not like you're repressing the emotion exactly.
[292] It's that you don't undergo the difficult process necessary to unpack it.
[293] It's effortful.
[294] It comes back to that assessing assumptions that we said before.
[295] If the goal of life is to live a life which in retrospect we are glad that we lived, it's important to give ourselves perspective, to develop that metacognizance, to step away from the urgent, to step away from the phenomenological day -to -day existence, because the present self is a petulant child.
[296] It's lazy and it wants the path of least resistance and that glass of wine and that new movie on Netflix and the couch looks really comfortable.
[297] very rarely does it do...
[298] Yeah, well, that's the danger with impulsive happiness is that it does have that present -bound quality.
[299] And in retrospect, that can lead to a life that's not well -lived?
[300] Generally, that yes, yes, yes.
[301] Life definitely places philosophical demands on you, whether you want it to or not.
[302] And so it is useful to step back.
[303] I mean, that's likely why the trait openness evolved.
[304] That's the creativity dimension.
[305] That's the dimension that allows people to engage in philosophical discourse and to think laterally.
[306] And it does allow you to step back and look at things on a broader scale and to generate creative alternatives.
[307] The problem with examining your assumptions is it's very disquieting, you know, because you want things to act the way.
[308] you predict and desire them to act and you work within a set of axioms and you act them out in order to maintain that predictability that desirable predictability if you mess around the more fundamental the axiom that you question the more uncertainty you release and some of that can be positive but a plenty of it can be anxiety provoking i mean just imagine that you're in a relationship and you know it's it's maybe a year into it you haven't formalized and finalized it but then one day you allow yourself to ask the question is this the relationship i want to be in well that's a fundamental question but just imagine now you're destabilizing your entire future you're destabilizing your present you're destabilizing your past because while engaging in the relationship you're acting out the assumption that it's the proper relationship but now you question that that means the story you told yourself about what was happening while it happened, even though it's already happened, was wrong and something else had happened.
[309] And then you have to think through what actually happened.
[310] So it's unbelievably demanding.
[311] And the more axiomatic the assumption, the more certainty is cast into troublesome chaos.
[312] Now, you could say, yeah, but the alternative is worse.
[313] And I believe that often that's true.
[314] But the thing about the thing about the alternative is that you can always forestall it, right?
[315] Manana, manana.
[316] You can ask that question tomorrow.
[317] Mm -hmm.
[318] You bet, you bet.
[319] And it's a very powerful temptation and no wonder, you know, do you want to dig up the body now or do you want to wait a month?
[320] It's like, well, it'll be more rotten in a month, but it's not a month.
[321] It's not now, right?
[322] It's not now.
[323] And so I understand why people don't want to delve into things, even if their emotions indicate that they should.
[324] mean i will see this all the time if you're trying to settle an important issue with your partner let's say that can be a tremendously troublesome excavation process and there's no shortage of pain but if you sort it out then maybe things can be better doesn't mean it's easy or or uh or pleasant quite the contrary it's like surgery and it's not it's not it's like like surgery to remove something, you know, that shouldn't be there.
[325] It's necessary, but man, still surgery.
[326] I think it's possible to develop a cathartic emotion towards that.
[327] I think it's possible to downregulate the level of discomfort that you feel when you do assess your assumptions.
[328] on this show a lot of the time I try and present uncomfortable truths so insights that are accurate but disquieting to learn and that to me gradually exposing people and myself to more and more of these and learning that it's not an existential threat it's not going to destroy my ego or learning or learning that it is an existential threat but that you can handle it correct which is really what people learn in exposure therapy that's effective is the thing they're afraid of is frightening but they're tougher than they think and so and that's very useful to learn it and yes I do believe well it's also the case that if you decide that you're going to delve into trouble as it arises you're likely not to avoid the delving process more than necessary so the thing won't grow into a monster that's quite so large, you know, and so once the relationship you have with your intimate partner is reasonably well constituted and you decide that you're going to address problems as they arise, then it's less burdensome than the total reconfiguration that might be necessary before any of that has been started.
[329] It's like, it's a form of mental hygiene, I would say, in some sense.
[330] And so, and you do get better at that with practice.
[331] And, perhaps you also get less likely to jump to the worst possible negative conclusion you know so so and that's also useful you don't catastrophize so much if you feel like you're built for more if you want to grow if you want to improve if you want to become a better human but you don't have people around you that also want to you're scared that you're going to lose friends you're scared that you're going to be alone as you start to go out on a journey of self -improvement.
[332] How can people find the courage to do that?
[333] Well, one thing they can do is contemplate the consequences of not doing it.
[334] You lose friends.
[335] Well, you're going to lose the friends who don't want the best for you.
[336] Those are the friends you want in 10 years?
[337] I mean, you lose friends.
[338] Well, maybe you gain new friends.
[339] Maybe you gain better friends.
[340] or maybe miracle of miracles your friends pick up their mess too and move forward maybe not and I'm not naively optimistic about such things but you have to contemplate the price you pay for inaction and this is something I did with my clients all the time it's like well I don't want to change jobs well no wonder it's like you have to go put yourself out to be interviewed you have to send out 500 resumes you have to be rejected 400 99 times.
[341] You have to polish your interview skills.
[342] You have to update your CV, which means you have to take a real look at the inadequacies in your preparation.
[343] And maybe you won't find a better job.
[344] It's like, no wonder you're afraid of that.
[345] Okay, you're in this job you hate and it's 10 years from now.
[346] How does that look?
[347] Think about that.
[348] You already know you're in a little hell.
[349] You know perfectly well.
[350] going to get worse which is more frightening action or inaction well the thing about inaction is you're blind to it hey so you can hide from it well that's chapter three again do not hide things in the fog do not make the assumption that inaction has no price and so then you think i'm terrified of this but i'm even more terrified of that and you know people have asked me for example i suppose why i was willing or am willing to engage in the troublesome process of objecting when I think something isn't going well, because I'm more afraid of the consequences of inappropriate silence.
[351] It's not that I'm brave.
[352] It's that I'm more terrified of the alternative.
[353] So I don't engage in the alternative.
[354] And I don't know, maybe I have a knack for that to some degree.
[355] Maybe it's a consequence of clinical training, but you know, I can walk into people's houses and look around and I think okay there's something up here and I mean people have that ability you know I walked into a house once and and the dishwasher was in the middle of the kitchen and and it was undone and had obviously been there for a couple of weeks and the fridge had food in it that shouldn't was no longer food and the cupboards had unopened wedding gifts in them like five years after the marriage i thought there's a lot of things in this household that are being swept under the rug and that was all laid out in in the in the practical environs it's like they hadn't negotiated who was responsible for cleaning the fridge they hadn't even been able to open their wedding gifts it's like something's rotten deeply so and so So I could see where that was headed without a tremendous amount of effort on the part of the...
[356] And it didn't work.
[357] They were divorced, you know, a couple of years after that in a very ugly manner for very ugly reasons.
[358] Well, I knew where that was headed.
[359] You know, and under different circumstances, I would have said, what the hell is that box doing there?
[360] Oh, you know, it's nothing.
[361] Yeah, no, wrong.
[362] It's not nothing.
[363] that's a little portal to hell I can see it and so could you if you looked but you won't and I mean that literally because people won't look they'll walk into a room like that and they will not look at that thing absolutely and that's because if they look they'd see and they don't want to see and no wonder but the consequence of blindness is worse it's worse I mean I have this you know my family would like some peace because I seem to be embroiled in one thing after another and you know they have a point but peace is very hard to obtain and I can't be blind to what I see in the broader world around me not if I see it I see it's like there it is I'm going to say something who could you be exactly you see that in children I watched little children play And what they're doing, you know, they're attempting to grow forward, but they toy with identities.
[364] I'm my little granddaughter.
[365] I wrote about her in this book, too.
[366] It's so funny watching her.
[367] She had Pocahontas, the Disney movie, and she had a Pocahontas doll, and she watched that movie a number of times.
[368] And then for, while it's been a year now, she's only three and a half, for a whole year, she has two names, Scarlett and Ellie.
[369] and one's her middle name, but she's called one or the other, and it seems to be perfectly comfortable with both.
[370] If you ask her if she's Ellie, she'll say yes.
[371] And if you ask her if she's Scarlet, she'll say yes.
[372] But if you ask her if she's Pocahontas, she'll also say yes.
[373] And then if you ask her if she is Scarlet, Ellie, or Pocahontas, she'll say she's Pocahontas.
[374] And she's been insisting on that for a whole year.
[375] And so she's playing out this role.
[376] I don't know how much of her imagination is devoted to it, but enough for this, like that's, if you're, how old are you?
[377] 40, something?
[378] 40, just turn 40.
[379] Yeah, okay.
[380] So, you know, imagine that you had a fictional identity for 15 years.
[381] That's approximately the same relative length of time.
[382] And the kids, you know, they weave up a fantasy world and then they play out an identity in that and then they weave out another fantasy world and they play out an identity with that and they shape that identity by their interactions with other children and adults and hopefully they find an identity that suits them that other people also accept because your identity has to be something that other people accept or it isn't going to work for you but that's all part of this exploration of who they could be you know it's the play is in fact the exercising of that realm of possibilities.
[383] And so a good father, a good parent, for that matter.
[384] But I think this, I think, at least is an archetypally paternal role, puts a border of security around the child, you know, and the mother might be inside that border of security when she has young children.
[385] And play can take place there.
[386] And the play is the investigation of multiple identities with the hope of finding one that is functional that is also socially desired because those things can't be dissociated one of the reasons I think that the identity politics has bothered me so much speaking of snitches you know it's bothered me it's like this bothers me and I've only recently realized that some of it had to do with what I saw as limitations on free speech which is I have to say the words that you know some authority or some population demands that I say which I don't like but there's something else too, which is that it's based on a very misleading theory of identity.
[387] Your identity is not just how you feel about yourself at this moment.
[388] And you can't impose that on other people because they don't know how to deal with that.
[389] Like even if they wanted to, they wouldn't know the rules of the game.
[390] You have to negotiate your identity with other people.
[391] And so then you have to think of identity as something that's negotiated with other people.
[392] And so if you if you have an implicit theory of identity, like the one that seems to be increasingly dominating the cultural landscape, which is identity is something that's only subjectively determined and can also change from moment to moment, then you're misleading people as they develop because they come up with a very unsophisticated notion of what identity is.
[393] And that's not good because that's a that's core.
[394] And part of your identity is your value to other people.
[395] That's a huge part of it and that's not subjective that's other people make that decision yeah so and you and you talk about that and I think it's chapter three where you say that's one of the ways we keep our sanity is talking to other people and the interaction with our community and and all of these other things that isolate us more and more to a to a single subjective perspective is going to lead to a certain madness it is definitely well exactly well I tried to impress upon some of the trans activists that were after me when I first made some public statements.
[396] I said, look, I don't think, I didn't say it this eloquently, unfortunately.
[397] What I would have liked to have said now, at least, was it isn't obvious to me at all that your theory of identity is going to serve the function that you assume it is.
[398] It's not psychologically sophisticated enough.
[399] It's not sociologically sophisticated enough you can't insist that other people play a game that they don't know how to play especially when you also don't know how to play it except to say that it exists so and this sanity issue is you know a lot of us is externalized because we're such social creatures and everyone has weaknesses you know you're going to degenerate along your weakest axis and if you're fort and you won't be able to control yourself because some of your weakness will be precisely that inability to control yourself on that axis like maybe maybe you have a biological predisposition to alcoholism and you know you have three shots of vodka in 20 minutes and you're like on top of the world you know there are people like that they often have extensive family histories of alcoholism it's a biological phenomenon you can tell if you're like that if it's really difficult for you to stop drinking once you start.
[400] It's a real warning sign.
[401] It means alcohol is a great drug for you, subjectively speaking.
[402] But, you know, hopefully when you drink too much, other people are going to start telling you.
[403] It's like, no, you're, and that's actually how you start diagnosing alcohol abuse.
[404] Are you getting in trouble with the law?
[405] Is it interfering with your intimate relationships?
[406] Is it interfering with your ability to hold a job?
[407] It means that the addictive substance is starting to dominate your life in a manner that's counterproductive and other people are there to ensure that you stay balanced enough so that you don't deteriorate entirely you're lucky if you have that and part of the point I make in that chapter and I would say in both books and in maps of meaning as well is that the primary obligation of a parent is to serve as a proxy for the social and the natural world.
[408] But let's say the social world.
[409] Why?
[410] Well, because you want to train your child to be not only acceptable socially, but highly desirable socially.
[411] And the reason for that is that by the time they're about three, three to four is the transition period, they're going to be spending more time being socialized by their peers than by you.
[412] And that will increasingly be the case as they develop.
[413] And if you haven't made them, if you haven't encouraged them through judicious attention to be socially desirable, they're going to be rejected by their peers.
[414] And then they fall farther and farther behind on the developmental trajectory.
[415] So, well, so that's partly how you help them with their identity.
[416] They can't be the sort of person that insists that everyone else always play the game they chose.
[417] And it's honoring that they, they can play.
[418] whatever game they want for themselves like your like your granddaughter she can play pocahontas and you know if she wants to have that identity as pocahontas great but to demand and to shame anybody who decides to call her ellie for example you know who just doesn't know anybody knows that name that's where i think it gets really that's where the ugliness of it comes out like the the freedom to express ourselves how we want but then softening the edges of this of this thing and just recognizing, okay, you know, if you know somebody and they really prefer to be called something.
[419] It was like when I was 30, I changed my name from one of my middle names was Chris and the other middle name was Aubrey.
[420] My legal name was Michael and it was all a big mess.
[421] I decided to take my grandfather's name Aubrey.
[422] So there was a window there where my identity changed, well, at least the name, from Chris to Aubrey.
[423] And so lots of people would call me Chris and I would just gently say, hey, you know, I changed my name to Aubrey.
[424] But whatever, it wouldn't like cause it wouldn't be a screeching halt to the to the day or anything like that and it would just be gentle encouragement that I didn't take personally because I wasn't attached to that identity as the end all be all I attached to I am an infinite being of a point a locus of consciousness that is embodying a certain identity at this transitory time this is my own personal spiritual belief and that to me is the solid ground right so these other things this is this is how we play this is the way as ramda said this is us being god and drag right like this is us playing out our role and it's in my opinion it's fine to play out another role but the moment you get so attached to that infinitesimal aspect of self and build these walls rather than opening up the community that's where i think it it leads to the result as you said it leads to a result that you're not actually desiring in trying to and trying to you know do this change this identity Well, that's what I saw as a danger, I would say, is that it was the use of force, which is what happens when you put something into law.
[425] Force is not only implied, but relatively, you know, stated relatively explicitly.
[426] And then there was the problem with the, you know, posity of identity and the interference with free speech.
[427] And I don't think that those concerns were misplaced.
[428] I think that there's something about that issue that's central to the continuing culture war.
[429] It is a war to some degree about what constitutes identity.
[430] But at least we should have a more sophisticated notion of identity.
[431] It's just not helpful otherwise.
[432] I mean, part of what I was doing constantly as a clinical psychologist was helping people craft an ever more sophisticated identity.
[433] And what you want, you want to have the kind of identity that makes people line up to want to place.
[434] with you and if you ever have to use force well that's look sometimes force is inescapable but if you have to use force to get people to comply it is a sign that you're not playing a very good game now maybe you don't you can't think up a better one there's nothing that's going to work a state of emergency might you know because we allow governments to use extra force during a state of emergency but nobody thinks that's optimal so if people won't play because you're inviting them, then the game isn't configured very well, and it's very unlikely to be stable.
[435] Rule three is Michaela's favorite.
[436] Do not hide unwanted things in the fog, right?
[437] And this is the opposite of hiding unwanted things in the fog.
[438] This is confronting them.
[439] And that's a variant of St. George and the Dragon, which is an unbelievably pervasive, mythological and artistic motif.
[440] And perhaps also the old.
[441] oldest story that we have, the oldest stories that we know are variants of King George or St. George and the Dragon.
[442] So tell me about this one.
[443] That was difficult because there were too many items that shouldn't look separated, although the woman should be separated.
[444] So what I've done is It's using a fabric, fabric of hers and fabric of his, flying into the same direction, and that's the connecting point.
[445] Castle should be separated, so I wasn't worried about the castle.
[446] But the dark sky and the dragon work in 45 degrees, yeah?
[447] Right, absolutely.
[448] So the mass of the dragon and the mass of the sky are balanced against the figure of the rider.
[449] and it gives it a symmetry across the from the top left corner to the bottom right corner to draw a line there it's symmetrical across that axis and the castle had to be there and the dragon had to be there and the woman had to be there all those elements are crucial and so this is what you do when you don't hide things in the fog you confront them and you free something of value as a consequence that's that's a that's the most, one of the most magnificent discoveries of human beings that human beings have ever made.
[450] And images like this are an attempt to make that conscious, to serve to, to, they're, they're, they're a guide to a particular kind of action in the world.
[451] That's the voluntary confrontation with things you don't understand and that you are afraid of.
[452] and the promise that something of extreme value will emerge as a consequence of that, even though it looks dire initially and can be.
[453] I mean, this is no joke because if you go off to fight dragons, there's always the possibility that you'll die or worse, and that's a real possibility.
[454] It's not something that can be hand -waved away with any amount of psychological nonsense, let's say.
[455] rule three do not hide unwanted things in the fog maybe you could tell us a bit about that one jordan that sounds interesting well you know there's this Freudian idea of repression right and that's sort of you do something wrong and then you decide you're going to put that away you have a full model of it you put it away and you don't you know you force it down into the unconscious and it rattles around down there causing trouble um that isn't exactly that can happen i think but that isn't generally the key to what makes what Freud was trying to get at with repression so clinically and practically valid.
[456] What it's more reasonable to think about it as a form of voluntary inattentiveness.
[457] So let's say, I use this example in the book, let's say you find yourself irritated at your wife when she's showing some attention to a neighbor and you're in a bad mood because of that.
[458] And you know you're in a bad mood and you notice it, but you don't go there.
[459] You know, you can have discussions with people and you think, well, I'm not going there.
[460] And the reason you're not going there is because it's sort of surrounded by negative emotion, anger, defensiveness and all that.
[461] And you know that there's something under the surface that hasn't been made explicit.
[462] And if you delved into it, it would cause a lot of trouble.
[463] And, you know, maybe you'd figure out what was wrong, but there would be a lot of trouble.
[464] well that's the fog it's like you you you react in a way that you don't want so let's let's step one step backwards you're acting why because you want to get what you want you want to get what you desire all right well you perform your action and you don't get what you desire you don't get your wife's attention let's say um maybe you're trying to pick up someone in a bar and you keep getting rebuffed.
[465] Well, the rebuff is a kind of fog.
[466] Right.
[467] You don't know why you're being rebuffed.
[468] If you're rebuffed 50 times in a row, there's going to be a lot of information in all those rejections.
[469] And you're going to have to think for a long time about what the patterns are that characterize those rejections.
[470] And then you're going to have to extract from that a picture of why you're inadequate or why the opposite sex is corrupt and deceitful and prejudicial, which is the wrong conclusion to drive.
[471] And you build a picture of your own inadequacy and then you have to notice how far you are away from the ideal as a consequence of that inadequacy and then you have to rectify it.
[472] So you see, you can extract out information that would be salutary for the development of your personality from doing pattern analysis of repeated failures.
[473] Right, sure.
[474] Or you can just not do that.
[475] I mean, that relates very much to, you know, when you talk about internal versus external locus of control, let's suppose I have failed three times in businesses, so to link back to your story about, you know, the rejections of the bar.
[476] But in this case, I'm an entrepreneur who has failed on three separate occasions in three separate business endeavors.
[477] If I am someone who is going to attribute each of those failures externally, it's God.
[478] It's because consumers are dumb.
[479] It's because they're not, they weren't sufficiently ready.
[480] The market wasn't ready for me. So I always attribute those failures externally.
[481] I am removing the possibility of having a feedback loop of learning where I attribute some of those failures to decisions that I made so that when I go to my fourth business endeavor, I actually don't implement some of the reasons why I failed.
[482] So in a sense, your attribution style, internal versus external, could be contributing to you either going into the fog or getting out of the fog, correct?
[483] Yeah, I think that's a, that's a useful way of looking at it.
[484] We could talk about internal versus external there too.
[485] So if you have an external locus of control, you view yourself as that which is being acted upon.
[486] Right.
[487] Now, you know, that can be useful in many, many circumstances.
[488] So because you might say, for example, about this entrepreneur, that he should take failure base rates into account.
[489] Three failures is nothing.
[490] Maybe you need a dozen failures before you've gathered enough information to be a successful entrepreneur, right?
[491] So that's where external locus of control is actually useful.
[492] So you can't necessarily tell to begin with which one is going to work.
[493] If you always use an external locus of control, the problem then is, is that you're never driven to change anything about your fossilized ideas and the old dead king that is operating your thoughts never gets dethroned.
[494] So that's a problem.
[495] The problem is if you have an internal locus of control and it always operates, the probability that you're going to get depressed is quite high because every failure is your fault.
[496] It's right.
[497] You know, it might be indicative of a fundamental flaw.
[498] So it's really tricky to get this balance right.
[499] As a matter of fact, and I mean, of course you would know this.
[500] since you, and you just hinted at it, when I tell my students about this fundamental attribution error of attributing successes internally and attributing failures externally, the only group that doesn't suffer from that glowing rosy fundamental attribution error are depressives, right?
[501] And I'm not sure if the research now has said it clearly, whether it's because I start off with a non -rosy view of the world, that causes me to be more likely to be depressed, or is it when I am in a bout of depression, the glossy goes away.
[502] Have they resolved the chicken leg?
[503] Okay, so this is a good place to talk about something else that's somewhat archetypal.
[504] Every time you learn something, generally speaking, it comes as a surprise, right?
[505] There's no, and this is technically true, that which is not surprising contains no information.
[506] It's virtually a definition of information.
[507] Right.
[508] Okay.
[509] If it surprises you, it means it violates one of your presuppositions.
[510] Okay, so then, now that means that presupposition has to die.
[511] And I mean die because it's actually instantiated on a biological platform.
[512] Let's say it's a neural structure or a neural pattern.
[513] I don't care.
[514] It's still a structure, even if it's a pattern.
[515] It'd be the interconnections between neurons.
[516] That thing has to be punished out of existence.
[517] It has to be extinguished.
[518] now exactly how much of it has to be extinguished that's a very very difficult question like if you get rebuffed when you try to pick someone up in a bar it might be because you are the most undesirable creep in the world that's actually true for one person somewhere right so and it might be you hopefully you don't leap to that conclusion immediately and you start with smaller presupposition there might be some externalization in that in any case a little part of you every time you are surprised by something a little part of you has to die some part of you has to die sometimes that now imagine the presuppositions are in a hierarchy so some are essentially irrelevant to your continued actions and some are crucial so a crucial one imagine you're planning the future and you're married okay the existence of your wife is a critical presupposition to your future plans or many of them and so if your relationship becomes in danger or if her life is put in danger then that's going to be very impactful because her absence is going to destroy a huge chunk of your map of the world all right the price we pay for learning is to die a little bit the trick is to not die too much and that's so I think it was Alfred North Whitehead said that you know we have to let her ideas die instead of us that's the purpose of abstract thought we can let our ideas die instead of us but that needs to be built rebuilt to some degree because your ideas are you and they're actually alive too and so when one of your ideas dies that's a part of you and it might be a big part of you and it actually on some sometimes might be such a big part of you that you actually can't survive the experience And that's a traumatic experience.
[519] It's like it's blown out so much of your presupposition network that you might not be able to get yourself back up and going again.
[520] If you look at the genesis of depression, major depressive disorder, it's very, very frequently the case that the first episode is brought on by some major trauma, like some genuinely horrible event.
[521] And then the nervous system is somewhat compromised after that and lesser events can produce an equal.
[522] response so wow so it's no wonder we hide things in the fog yeah but sometimes when you hide something in the fog it just grows and then when it does come out it's trauma like instead of having an argument about slurting you end up in divorce court you know debating who's going to have custody of your kids for the next 10 years well on a very on a very pragmatic level i i could tell you that in my own marriage the way that my wife and I deal with I mean we we rarely truly frankly have any conflicts but the equivalent of your story about the flirtatious sorry there's a haircut flirtatious neighbor if that were to happen I'm someone who doesn't let things fester in me and so I will confront the negative emotions that I'm feeling at the moment deal with them and then we hug it out and we move on and I'm very very intolerant internally to an environment of stress, of poutiness, of turning, I just, maybe it's part of my openness, maybe it's my gregariousness, maybe, so I can't function in that environment.
[523] So if I'm angry, you'll know it.
[524] I speak.
[525] How sensitive are you to negative emotion?
[526] I mean, you're, you're very enthusiastic.
[527] You're obviously very extroverted, but how sensitive are you to negative emotion?
[528] So meaning that if I experience a negative emotion, how, how catastrophic will it be for me?
[529] Yeah.
[530] I mean, I think I could handle it well.
[531] I mean, probably the most negative feedback that I ever can receive is one that is created in my own mind, meaning that I am my worst critic.
[532] I am my worst, right?
[533] I am a pathological perfectionist person.
[534] So most of the, what I call the looping thoughts, right, the intrusive looping thoughts that would constitute the majority.
[535] of my lived experience in terms of negative emotions internally stem from me imposing this on myself well i was wondering because you know you said you're someone who's intolerant of poutiness and that sort of thing and that that i'm like that too to the degree that i engage in conflict it's usually because i see something like that happening and i want to get it cleared up exactly and i think that might also be true on a social basis you know in so far as at least my temperament operates that way.
[536] I think, oh, oh, I can see where this is going.
[537] It doesn't look good.
[538] I'd rather say something about now than later.
[539] And if I were going to, if I were going to kind of do a Freudian thing of linking it back to childhood and so on, I would say that, and I've never shared this ever publicly in the past, my home life with my parents was such that my parents, although they were married for 60 plus years, they got married in 1950.
[540] they're still both alive, had an acrimonious relationship with one another in that there was a lot of, if not overt, hostility, certainly latent under, you know, I used to always joke that whatever, all the horrors that I experienced in the Lebanese Civil War was nothing compared to some of the horrors of the conflicts between them, which wasn't always, it's not like they were beating each other up, but there was this constant hostility.
[541] And so maybe in part because of that, I seek to exactly never recreate that in my own home.
[542] And so, you know, my wife and I have a lot of public displays of affection towards each other.
[543] And I think, my God, I mean, my children see the love that my wife and I express to each other in a given day more than the amount that I've seen my parents exhibit towards one another in 50 years.
[544] And so maybe that is part of the intolerance, which is I live that and I don't want to replicate that.
[545] so maybe that certainly seems plausible so the fog is what's created when you engage in acts of willful blindness when you could know but you decide that you don't want to beautiful