12 Rules Seattle: Facts, Stories, and Values

[0] Welcome to the first episode of Season 2 of the Jordan B. Peterson podcast.

[1] My name is Michaela Peterson, and I've been working with my dad for the last year.

[2] We've decided to do this podcast as a joint project because we thought it might be something fun and meaningful to do together.

[3] For this episode, we're presenting Dad's 12 Rules for Life Tour lecture at the Moore Theater in Seattle on June 21st, 2018.

[4] The lecture covers the evolution of religious thinking, a true human universe.

[5] universal.

[6] Everyone has to deal with the problem of value.

[7] Everyone has to determine what is of more or less importance, what's a priority and what is not, or they can't act, or even perceive.

[8] So the problem of value has to be solved or at least addressed by everyone, and that's what makes it a universal issue deep enough to play a biological, as well as a social role.

[9] So, Dad, what goes into the prep for a lecture?

[10] sit backstage for about 45 minutes to an hour, sometimes sleeping a little bit, sometimes not.

[11] I usually try to pick a problem of some significance that I've been working on that's related to my book.

[12] So the problem has to be statable.

[13] It might be the problem of, well, for example, one of the most recent lectures I did was on why I don't like to answer the question whether or not I believe in God.

[14] So that's a specific problem.

[15] And then I put together a story that's composed of seven or eight, let's say, episodes from the collection of stories that I have in mind and formulate an argument that allows me to walk through addressing the problem.

[16] And then I go on stage and I'm, I try to address the problem.

[17] It's not like I know the answer to the problem to begin with, because otherwise it's not a real problem.

[18] So part of what makes the lectures compelling is the fact that it's an actual problem that I'm working on, that I'm trying to do something new.

[19] and it's not obvious to me that I'm going to come up with a coherent answer.

[20] So that's the prep.

[21] You stalk up on Perrier before you head out on stage, though.

[22] Yeah, and I stalk up on Perrier before I head up on stage.

[23] That's the other thing.

[24] That's my special treatment for being the headliner of the show.

[25] I think I have less of a request than any headliners they've ever had in any of these theaters because all I ask for is sparkling water.

[26] And then I usually have like 40 bottles of it.

[27] So you don't want a 42 -inch TV.

[28] or 72 -inch TV just some water?

[29] Just some water, yeah.

[30] Were there any highlights from the stop in Seattle?

[31] Well, I was preparing for my conversation with Sam Harris on religion.

[32] And so it gave me an opportunity to start to continue to think through some of the things that I wanted to talk to him about.

[33] I mean, one of the biggest differences I have with Sam is the degree to which the world that we perceive is pre -processed before you perceive it or the world that is is pre -processed before you perceive it.

[34] For me, you have to run the world that you perceive through a network of value that basically has a religious structure and that's part of the argument that I was laying out with Sam and the Seattle lecture gave me an opportunity to clarify that a little bit more before I went to meet him in Vancouver.

[35] When we return, Dr. Peterson's lecture from Seattle.

[36] Dad is going to be debating Slava Zhijek, April 19th at 7 .30 p .m. EST in Toronto.

[37] Tickets sold out at the Sony Center incredibly fast, so we're offering a live stream for the first time.

[38] Hopefully it'll go well.

[39] We figured people who weren't in Toronto would want a chance to see the debate, plus a lot of Zijek's fans are European, obviously.

[40] The debate's called Happiness, Marxism versus Capitalism, and should be extremely interesting.

[41] Tickets will be sold at jordan b peterson .com starting april first sign up on his blog for his mailing list at jordan b peterson and you'll be notified when tickets are available please welcome my father dr jordan b peterson thank you thank you thank you very much now there we go everyone can hear me so that's good hopefully um so i always use these lectures as an opportunity to extend what I'm thinking and I'm going to do that probably more tonight than I usually do I think Dave mentioned that I'm going to see Sam Harris in Vancouver for two days and so yeah and so I've been I've been reading a lot partly what Sam wrote and also auxiliary material trying to figure out exactly what his claims are and and and so that I can outline the arguments, see where we agree, see where we disagree, see where we can have a productive conversation.

[42] And what I'm going to do tonight, partly as a consequence of that, because I'm always working on some problem while I'm doing this tour, but I would say more generally it's part of intellectual life to have a problem that you're working on to try to make clear.

[43] And this is one of the problems that I was trying to work out, at least in part when I was writing 12 Rules for Life, and also my earlier book, Maps of Meaning, which is now out in audio version, by the way, it was published in June 12th.

[44] It was about a week ago.

[45] And so if you liked 12 Rules for Life, if you found it useful, I don't think liked is really the right term.

[46] I think if you found it useful, and if it was helpful to you, then you might want to think about taking a listen to Maps of Meaning, which is much harder, but contains a lot more information.

[47] Yeah, that's the right way of thinking about it.

[48] And see, what I've been trying to figure out, work on over the last 30 years or so, is I think the right way of thinking about it, and this is partly what I'm going to discuss with Sam, is the relationship between facts and values.

[49] And it's a very, very tricky relationship, and it's very difficult to get right.

[50] So I'm going to try walking through that tonight.

[51] I'm going to lecture about the evolution of religious thinking.

[52] think is, if you're thinking about the problem statement tonight, that's it, is how did religious thinking develop?

[53] And I'm trying to take that seriously.

[54] You know, I'm not, a lot of what happens with a lot of evolutionary biologist types is they take complex human phenomena like language or music or art or literature or religious thinking for that matter.

[55] And they tend to consider it like a secondary spin -off of some more fundamental issue, some more fundamental phenomena, let's say, some more fundamental reality.

[56] I don't think that's fair.

[57] We know that religious thinking, for example, is essentially a human universal.

[58] I mean, you can find exceptions to everything, and I think the reason that it's a human universal is because we have to live in a world of value.

[59] And the question is, is the world of value real?

[60] And that's a big problem, because it depends to some degree on what you mean by real.

[61] You know, when you say that, when you ask the question, is A, a variant of B, answer almost always is, well, it depends on how you define A and B, right, when you're trying to just lock two terms together like that.

[62] And so it's easy to get slippery when discussing those sorts of things.

[63] Is the world of value real?

[64] Well, you know, the ancient Greeks said, I think it was Plato himself, who said, or Socrates, who said, you have to define your terms.

[65] And that's no easy matter.

[66] So I sent out a tweet the other day asking people what just topics they wanted me to bring up with Sam or Sam and I to discuss.

[67] And one of them was the definition of God, and I have a definition that I've been working on, and it has to do with this hierarchy of value.

[68] It's based on the idea that you have to make a statement of faith in order to start any discussion, because you have to stop the questions.

[69] You can always ask the question, why.

[70] No matter what you're saying, you can ask why.

[71] And that's no good, because that's point you have to stop asking why and act and what that means is you have to put a stake in the ground somewhere and say this is what I live or die by something like that and I think that what God is from a psychological perspective is the most fundamental place that you put your stake in the ground and that's sort of a variant of Carl Jung's idea I mean many ideas about divinity and about the idea of God but one of them was that God for you was whatever the highest value in your value system.

[72] God was the highest value in your value system.

[73] And that could be something conscious or unconscious, because you can have a conscious value system, which means you've thought it out.

[74] Everyone has a partially conscious value system.

[75] But your value system can be unconscious as well, in large part, because like, what the hell do you know about yourself?

[76] You're really, really complicated.

[77] You can't even set the clock on your microwave, you know, and so, and you're super complicated.

[78] And so, and you act out a value system, and that value system is a hierarchy, and there's something at the top of the hierarchy.

[79] and you serve that, whether you know it or not, and you might say, well, that's not equivalent to God, but it's not a bad psychological equivalent, and it's a pretty damn good start.

[80] And so that's the sort of thing that I know that's kind of oblique, but that's the sort of domain that I want to investigate tonight.

[81] So, see, one of the things that...

[82] Okay, so let's start with a set of propositions.

[83] So here's the propositions as I've been working them out in this tour.

[84] It's something like this, is that you're tasked to action in life.

[85] It's not optional.

[86] Well, it is.

[87] You can just do nothing and degenerate and die painfully.

[88] But that's part of being tasked, that's part of being tasked to action.

[89] And it's part of what I mean by that is that the consequences of not acting in the world properly, let's say, is that you suffer and die.

[90] And you can say, well, that's okay.

[91] accept that and I won't act and I'll suffer and die.

[92] It's like, fine, but that's the price you pay for not acting.

[93] Now, you might be willing to pay that price, and you might say, well, I'm not compelled to act because of that, but generally speaking, yes, you are, because it's not pleasant to starve to death, and it's not pleasant to die of thirst, and it's not pleasant just to sit and do nothing.

[94] Like, there's a strong impulse to move out into the world and to live, but not only to live, but to thrive.

[95] And you could say, well, in some sense, that's built into you.

[96] And so the impetus to action is there from the beginning.

[97] That's why I think in the biblical stories, for example, I did some biblical lectures last year, about 15 of them, and I spent quite a bit of time studying the Abrahamic stories.

[98] And one of the constant narrative themes in the Abrahamic stories is that there's a call to adventure on the part of the protagonist.

[99] It's God calls to Abraham, in the most classic case, and says, get away from your comfort, get away from your family, get away from your tribe, get away from your country, get out into the world and have an adventure.

[100] And it's not have an easy life, it's not be happy, it's none of that.

[101] It's get out there and contend.

[102] And in the Abrahamic case, it's extremely interesting because Abraham is quite old when the call comes.

[103] I think he's 80.

[104] Of course, the biblical patriarchs in principle lived far long.

[105] longer.

[106] Whatever, but he's 80.

[107] He's still old.

[108] He's been hanging around the house for too long.

[109] And, you know, he gets called out into the world, and, you know, it's God that calls him out, whatever that means.

[110] And you'd think if it's God calling you out, that you'd step out the door and it'd be like, you know, petals of roses would drop from the sky and everything would be wonderful.

[111] But that isn't what happens at all.

[112] I mean, Abraham's initial adventures are just catastrophic.

[113] He first encounters a famine, and none of us have ever encountered a famine.

[114] I mean, maybe there's a person or two in this room that has, but most of you have never even been hungry once, you know, much less encountered a famine.

[115] A famine is a big deal, right?

[116] And then he goes to Egypt, and it's a tyranny, and people are conspiring to steal his wife, and it's like, it's just not good.

[117] I'm sure he's thinking all the time, I should have just stayed at home in my tent, you know.

[118] But it doesn't matter, because the call to adventure is there.

[119] And I think that's really useful.

[120] I think it's useful because it's also a way of conceptual, your life.

[121] It's like, well, what is your life?

[122] It's, well, it's not easy, that's for sure.

[123] It's certainly not something that you're going to be destined to be happy with.

[124] It's certainly got its tragic elements.

[125] It's characterized by malevolence and betrayal and all sorts of terrible things apart from tragedy.

[126] But one thing you could say is it might be an adventure.

[127] And maybe it's in the adventure that it's actually justified.

[128] And I think that's the, I think that's the underlying idea of those stories, is to be called out into the world, is to find an adventure that justifies the catastrophe.

[129] It's something like that.

[130] And that doesn't mean it's going to be easy or positive even, but it might mean that it's a worthy battle.

[131] It might mean something like that.

[132] You know, and I've often thought that about marriage, too.

[133] It's like when you marry someone, well, you should marry someone you want to contend with.

[134] You know, there's another narrative trope in the Old Testament, too.

[135] I think it's Isaac, if I remember correctly, is it Isaac who wrestles with the angel?

[136] It's Jacob, thank you.

[137] It's Jacob that wrestles with the angel.

[138] What does that mean?

[139] Well, you know, reality is something that you wrestle with, right?

[140] It's something that pushes you to your limit.

[141] And if you have a good relationship with someone, there's that in it.

[142] You want a worthy contender, you know?

[143] It's not all peace and lightness, not at all.

[144] And you'd be unhappy with that anyways.

[145] You'd go look for trouble if that was the case.

[146] You know, if everything was just too good, it's like, no, I'm out of here.

[147] I need some trouble it's like if you if you so so so okay so back to the back to the value idea you have to go out and you have to pursue something you can't just sit there and deteriorate away you're compelled out into life and so then what's the consequence of being compelled out into life is you have to do something worthwhile what do you have to it's like well actually yes yes you have to it's inevitable and here's the reason, as far as I can tell, there's a very large number of things that you could do, right?

[148] You could say in some sense that there's innumerable things that you could do.

[149] There's so many you can't count them.

[150] And so then, well, how do you choose between them?

[151] Well, part of the answer to that is things choose you, which is a complicated thing that I won't go into.

[152] Like maybe you're interested in something.

[153] And so, and you think, well, I'm interested in it's like, not exactly, no, the interest is manifesting itself in you, you don't have much voluntary control over that.

[154] You know what that's like?

[155] If you're interested in something, you can pursue it, you can study it, you can read about it, you can remember it, you can work on it, and you can really work on it without having to beat yourself up about it.

[156] It'll just grip you and pull you along.

[157] But it's really hard to make yourself interested in something.

[158] If you're not, you know, and you've had this experience, no doubt when you were studying or when you were doing a job, you didn't want to do.

[159] It's like, you have to do the job.

[160] It's necessary to do the job.

[161] You know it's necessary to do the job.

[162] You know it's necessary to do but that doesn't make you interested in it.

[163] And you might ask, well, why not?

[164] Wouldn't it be just simpler if you could just tell yourself, well, this has to be done, and so I should be interested in it, and poof, you were interested in it, and then away you went.

[165] But that doesn't work.

[166] And that's not a non -trivial fact, man. This is part of the secret of the psychoanalysts.

[167] See, the psychoanalyst, Freud and Jung in particular, they've figured out that you are not master in your own house.

[168] There are things going on inside you that are autonomous.

[169] us.

[170] They have their own way of manifesting themselves.

[171] And they're not just simple.

[172] They're not just simple drives like hunger or thirst or the desire for sexual gratification.

[173] They're way more complicated than that.

[174] I like to think about them as sub -personalities.

[175] And they grip you, and they grip you all the time.

[176] And the fact that you can be interested in something, even despite yourself, because sometimes you're interested in things you know you shouldn't be interested in.

[177] Right.

[178] And everyone laughs because they go, yeah, of course, that's right.

[179] This happens all the time.

[180] Yeah, and then you can't control that either.

[181] You think, geez, I wish I wasn't interested in that, but I sure am.

[182] I sure am.

[183] Right.

[184] So, well, that's all an indication that there are things going on inside you that, well, in some sense, aren't you, but in a less, what would you call it, a less dramatic sense, at least you don't control.

[185] And they're not random.

[186] I mean, random just makes you walk stupidly off the stage and die, you know.

[187] They're not random.

[188] They're directed.

[189] They're directed.

[190] So, okay.

[191] So anyway, so there's something that's impelling you out into the world.

[192] And then when you're out in the world, you have all these choices to make, perhaps a near infinite number of choices.

[193] It's the case, technically, that you can take a small number of entities like books, and you can classify those entities a near infinite number of ways.

[194] So, and that's just an indication of how complex the world is.

[195] So how might you classify books?

[196] Well, how thick they are, how heavy they are, how old they are, and how old the paper is, how thick the paper is, how many E's there are, how many E's there are in the first sentence, how many A's there are in the first chapter, right?

[197] Number of three -letter words, number of four -letter words, number of ten -letter words, number of sentences, number of clauses.

[198] Well, you get the point, right?

[199] It's like, you think, well, why would you classify books that way?

[200] It's like, look, fair enough, man. I didn't say that there would be any utility in classifying them that way, so you don't, but you could.

[201] So then the question is, well, why do you classify books in the tiny, limited number of ways that you actually classify them, maybe by author or by topic?

[202] And the answer to that is because there's utility in that classification, and the reason there's utility is because it serves some value.

[203] If you want to find a book in the library, it works out that if you classify them by author, that's one way of finding them, or perhaps by topic.

[204] And so the manner in which the books manifest themselves in a classification system is dependent to some degree on the purpose that you're going to put the books to.

[205] Now, that's something we're thinking about, because what that means, what it seems to mean is you're surrounded by an array of facts, like infinite number of facts, and you have to select from among those facts which ones you're going to act on.

[206] And the way that you select them is by valuing certain things.

[207] And so what that means, as far as I can tell, is that you see the world through a structure of value.

[208] So, and I mean that, I don't mean that metaphorically, although I also mean it metaphorically.

[209] I mean, actually, you see the world through a value system.

[210] It's the a -priority structure that determines what in the world manifests itself to you.

[211] And I would also say, just so that there's no mistake about this, there's plenty of evidence for this.

[212] And I outlined some of the evidence in Chapter 10, which is, be precise in your speech, I talk about this famous experiment that Dan Simon did, the experiment about the invisible gorilla.

[213] and what Simon did, essentially, was show people two teams, black team, white team, three people on each team, passing a ball back and forth between their team members for a minute, showed three minutes, showed this video to people.

[214] And in the middle of the video, they were supposed to count the ball, in the middle of the video, a guy came walking out in a gorilla suit, like a big guy, and beat his chest for a few seconds, three or four seconds, and then walked off the screen.

[215] It's like 50 % of the people who watched that video never saw the gorilla.

[216] And so then he rewinds it and shows it to them, and they go, Well, that's not the same video.

[217] It's like, yeah, it is.

[218] But you were busy counting basketballs while the dancing gorilla made its appearance.

[219] And the reason that's relevant is because you're focused on the balls because, well, that's what's valued in the context.

[220] That's what you're told to do.

[221] And that makes you blind.

[222] And not just a little blind.

[223] Right?

[224] To miss the damn dancing gorilla, you're pretty blind.

[225] And so it's a staggering demonstration, and there's many demonstrations of that type.

[226] It's not a single instance.

[227] And so it does appear that the way that you select what to perceive and what to act upon from an infinite menu of choices is by laying a value structure on top of the world and then using it as a screen, or perhaps it uses you as its mechanism of action.

[228] That's another way of thinking about it, because you might think, well, that's your value system.

[229] You know, and you created it, and then you're acting on it.

[230] But, you know, the degree to which you create your value system is questionable.

[231] You seem to participate in creating it.

[232] You know, you co -create it.

[233] Maybe that's another way of thinking about it.

[234] But there's lots of things that you value, well, because you don't really have much choice.

[235] Like you value food, for example.

[236] That's sort of a given, and you value shelter, and you value temperature regulation.

[237] you value companionship, you value sexual gratification, all of these things.

[238] Now, the degree to which you value them, and the manner in which you hierarchically arrange them seems to have something to do with your choice, but there's still, there's still, what would you call it, there's biological impetus behind the value structure, and to a degree that we can't quite fully grasp.

[239] So you co -create it.

[240] Okay, so, all right, so now, what I've tried to figure out to some degree.

[241] And this is where this gets really cool as far as I'm concerned.

[242] And this is actually the thing I really want to talk to Harris about, if I can manage it, if we can get to this, is that I think that the structure that you use to interpret the world, the value structure that you use to interpret the world, I think it's a story.

[243] I think it's a story.

[244] And so you see the world of facts through a story.

[245] Okay, now this is, I'll tell you why I think that in some detail.

[246] But this is a weird thing because, well, the first weird thing about it is that if you see the world through a story and you choose what to act on in the world as a consequence of that story, then in some sense the story is your life.

[247] Like, not completely, because there's the world of facts out there, but the facts that have their effect on you are mediated by your story.

[248] And you see, that seems to me to be the role that stories play.

[249] And then, you know, you think, well, you know, let's think about stories for a minute.

[250] What do you think of stories?

[251] And the answer is you absolutely love them, right?

[252] I mean, think about this.

[253] I mean, I know you're here at this lecture.

[254] I don't know like what the hell you're doing, but here you are.

[255] But most of the time, when you gather together like this, it's for a story, right?

[256] You go to a play, a musical concert's a different thing, and we won't talk about that.

[257] You go to a play or you go see a movie, and then you do the same thing.

[258] You buy books.

[259] You buy fiction books.

[260] You watch TV.

[261] You read stories to your kids.

[262] Your kids love stories, right?

[263] They'll work for stories.

[264] They'll harass you to tell them stories, right?

[265] And you'll, and we'll pay, like, the most expensive, some of the most expensive artifacts that our culture produces are stories, right?

[266] We'll spend $400 million on a special effects movie.

[267] It's a lot of money.

[268] And you, you know, you watch the credits at the end of those things.

[269] It's like 8 ,000 people in like 40 countries worked on this thing so you can go spend 15 bucks and be what amused for 90 minutes well maybe what you're doing in there isn't just amusement you know maybe you wouldn't be locked on to that to such a great degree if there wasn't a real reason for it and i mean a real reason it's like well why are people camping out to to be in the movie theater the first day the star wars movie opens it's like what the hell's with those people and you know why was harry potter such an unbelievable cultural event.

[270] You know, what's her name?

[271] Rolling?

[272] Got what?

[273] Untold hundreds of thousands of six to 10 year old's reading 600 -page books.

[274] She was doing readings in stadiums.

[275] It's like, what's up with that?

[276] Well, it's entertaining.

[277] It's like, well, what do you mean exactly?

[278] That's not a good analysis.

[279] It's entertaining.

[280] It's the beginning of an answer.

[281] Why is it entertaining is the real issue?

[282] it's like well it's a respite from real life something like that it's escapism it's like well what about horror movies you know and and even if you watch disney movies for example which i'm quite partial to at least some of them you know so they're made for kids it's not like they're all sweetness and light terrible things happen in those movies and so kids are still completely entranced transfixed by the movies so so so okay so so there's something about stories that that's very very interesting and then Here's another thing about stories, even about fiction.

[283] I think, well, fiction is the opposite of fact.

[284] People think that.

[285] I think, well, wait a second.

[286] Wait a second.

[287] Wait a second.

[288] Fiction is the opposite of fact.

[289] Fact is true.

[290] Fiction is the opposite fact.

[291] Fiction is therefore not true.

[292] Well, you think, yeah, that's true because something fictional never happened.

[293] So it's not factual.

[294] It's like, okay, well, wait a second.

[295] Does that make it less true?

[296] Well, it depends on what you mean by true.

[297] You think, well, true equals factual.

[298] It's like, no, no, no, no, no. No. True has only meant factual for about 300 years.

[299] True meant all sorts of things before that.

[300] It meant that your heart could be true.

[301] It meant that an arrow could fly.

[302] True, it meant that a blade could be true.

[303] It meant that a contract could be true.

[304] You know, character could be true to yourself, right?

[305] All of those things.

[306] That all is part of whatever truth is.

[307] So let's not make the mistake of, presuming that whatever we've been calling truth for all these thousands of years is identical to the set of empirical facts.

[308] It's like, no, that's a subset.

[309] So back to fiction, it's like, well, okay, fiction didn't happen, so it's not true.

[310] It's not true like history, that's for sure.

[311] But we do admit to gradations of fiction.

[312] You know, we say, well, that's trivial.

[313] That's just a trivial story.

[314] And then we say, well, there's great fiction.

[315] There's great literature.

[316] Right.

[317] There's deep, profound, great literature.

[318] And you know that there's difference in quality between movies.

[319] You know, when you go to a movie, it's just lighthearted idiocy, and you're there because you've worked enough, and, you know, you need to take a break, and fair enough, you know, but that's different than contending with a real, a real solid piece of drama.

[320] You know that there's a hierarchy of quality in stories, and that indicates, well, what does that indicate?

[321] It means, well, some stories are better stories than other stories.

[322] Well, what do you mean by better, exactly?

[323] And I mean exactly.

[324] We admit that the distinctions in quality exist, but we're not exactly sure what they're based upon.

[325] Well, that's part of what I want to address tonight.

[326] It's like, okay, so here's what I thought of as the minimum necessary requirements for a story.

[327] So the first requirement is that you have to be somewhere.

[328] But you are, so that's not a problem.

[329] It's like, there you are, you're somewhere.

[330] And wherever you go, this is an important thing.

[331] wherever you go, you're somewhere.

[332] You're located in time and space at a particular point.

[333] That's you.

[334] You're actually the localization at that point in time and space.

[335] And so you're somewhere.

[336] And simultaneously, you're going somewhere.

[337] And I do mean simultaneously, because I don't think, and psychologists have speculated about this sort of thing for a very long period of time, but I don't think you're ever somewhere without going somewhere.

[338] And that's because that has to do with this impetus to action we already described.

[339] Like even you think, well, you're sitting in the theater and you're not going anywhere.

[340] It's like, yes, you are.

[341] You're going on the journey that is this event.

[342] And I know you're sitting there, but you're an abstract creature.

[343] You can have a little adventure just sitting there.

[344] Well, that's what you do when you go see a movie.

[345] It's what you do when you read a book.

[346] It's what you do when you think.

[347] It's what you do when you have a conversation.

[348] Like, we can go places without going places.

[349] That's thinking.

[350] That's abstraction.

[351] And so we're going somewhere and we're all hoping that where we're going right now is somewhere worthwhile and you're all sitting there wondering are we going to be going somewhere worthwhile tonight well then that's what you're hoping right and you're hoping too if it's a lecture like this you're hoping that it'll have a beginning in a middle and an end and the end will justify the investment of time and that it will generalize in some sense the quality of whatever happens will generalize beyond the event that's what you're hoping you know and that's obviously what I'm hoping too.

[352] And part of the, well, and part of the dramatic tension in the event is to determine whether or not that's going to happen.

[353] And I would say I play with that to some degree because I don't script these lectures.

[354] You know, I mean, I have a sense of what I'm going to talk about, but they're spontaneous.

[355] I'm trying to explore.

[356] And so I don't really know if we're going to go somewhere valuable too.

[357] I bloody well hope so, and I'm trying to.

[358] But the fact that the outcome is in doubt, heightens the adventure, right?

[359] So it does, it does.

[360] It absolutely heightens the adventure, man. So, yeah.

[361] Okay, so you're somewhere and you're going somewhere.

[362] And we already said that where you're going is valuable or why would you go there.

[363] And it's also not everywhere at the same time.

[364] It's just like a map in some sense.

[365] You've got a map open.

[366] The first thing you want to know when you a map is, where are you?

[367] Because if you don't know where you are, well, then you can't compute your trajectory to where you're going.

[368] So you have to know where you are.

[369] And I would say that's also metaphysically true.

[370] If you don't know where you are, it's very hard for you to plot your course forward.

[371] So I have an exercise I wrote in this suite called the self -authoring suite that helps people write an autobiography to bring themselves up to date.

[372] It's like, where are you?

[373] Where are you located in space and time?

[374] Are you still locked back in junior high school?

[375] You still locked in high school?

[376] Do you still have things that are plaguing you from when you were in college from a previous relationship?

[377] Like, are you spread all over your life?

[378] You know, are your pieces not integrated in together?

[379] Or are you right here and now, ready to make the next move?

[380] That's a big question, man. It's certainly something that you sort out in any decent course of psychotherapy, because partly what you do in psychotherapy is you tell your story.

[381] Where did I come from?

[382] What did that shaped me into and where am I right now?

[383] And sometimes that's really doubtful, right?

[384] You think, well, of course you know where you are.

[385] It's like, no, not of course.

[386] Lots of times you don't know where you are at all.

[387] If you're in a relationship and the thing catastrophically degenerates, you know, maybe you're betrayed or maybe your partner dies or something like that, it's like, you can easily end up in a place that you don't understand at all.

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

[389] And you'll say that.

[390] You'll tell people.

[391] I don't know where I am.

[392] It's like, well, what do you mean by that?

[393] Here you are, right there, sitting right there.

[394] It's like, no, that's not what I mean.

[395] And it's true.

[396] You can be physically localized without being psychologically and spiritually localized.

[397] It's very difficult to be psychologically and spiritually localized.

[398] Anyway, so you have to be somewhere, and it's better to know where you are.

[399] But it's not a foregone conclusion, that's for sure.

[400] And it's an estimate and a guess at best.

[401] Like, it can be informed, but you're taking your best crack at it.

[402] And then, because life is complicated, and sometimes you think you're somewhere and you're not there at all.

[403] And that realization can be absolutely devastating.

[404] You know, I thought I could rely on you.

[405] I thought you loved me. I thought I had a good job.

[406] I thought I was doing the right thing.

[407] You know, et cetera, et cetera.

[408] That's the voice of regret.

[409] And that's a problem with not being, you're not, that's a problem with not being where you thought you were.

[410] It's a terrible realization that.

[411] And so, you're somewhere, and hopefully you've got that set, and then you're going somewhere.

[412] Now, to go somewhere, same with the map, is, well, you have to figure out where that is.

[413] You have to specify a place, because you can't go everywhere at once.

[414] Or if you do, well, then you're all over the place, and everyone knows that you don't want to be all over the place.

[415] You want to be where you are going somewhere.

[416] And then you might think, well, going where?

[417] And the answer is, well, let's go somewhere worthwhile.

[418] So that's somewhere valued.

[419] And then what does worthwhile mean?

[420] Well, it's got to mean at least worth the trouble, because it's going to be some trouble, right?

[421] It's going to take some resources.

[422] It's going to take some time.

[423] There has to be a payoff that's commensurate with that, or it's a degenerating game.

[424] You know, like if you spend more money than you earn, that isn't going to work.

[425] If you keep going places that don't justify the journey, then you're just going to wear yourself to nothing.

[426] You know, even if you don't degenerate physiologically, you'll degenerate psychologically, because what will happen is the end destination isn't worth.

[427] the trouble and that will demoralize you.

[428] So it has to be a worthwhile place.

[429] So, and so that's the situation you're in.

[430] You're going, you're somewhere and you're looking up and you're climbing towards that place.

[431] And that's always the case.

[432] No matter where you are, that's always happening because wherever you are isn't good enough and you're trying to get to somewhere better.

[433] That's the promised land.

[434] That's the, that's the metaphysics of the idea of the promised land.

[435] It's also the archetype of the promised future, you know, and the utopia that might wait for us, or the better life that lays ahead if you play your cards carefully, or your dreams and visions for a relationship, or your hope for your children, all of that.

[436] It's like, here I am now, here's something better, that's what I'm pursuing.

[437] And without, if that structure, so that's the structure that you're looking at the world through, if that structure destabilizes, then all hell breaks.

[438] loose on you.

[439] And I'll talk about that in a minute.

[440] And that's a very literal way of thinking about it really and metaphorical at the same time.

[441] If that structure breaks down, all hell breaks loose.

[442] And I think that that's exactly the right way of thinking about it.

[443] And so you don't want that.

[444] You do not want all hell to break loose.

[445] That's for sure.

[446] And here's a hint about that.

[447] So I already made this claim, eh, that there's a lot of things that you could be doing.

[448] The world's very complicated.

[449] There's lots of ways of looking at it.

[450] There's a lot of lots of pathways through it.

[451] There's way too many, way too many for you to handle.

[452] You'd be absolutely overwhelmed by the choices.

[453] See, a lot of what you're doing when you place a value structure in the world is trying to delimit that insane complexity to a single valuable option.

[454] Because you kind of have to have that before you act.

[455] It's like, well, I want to walk across the stage.

[456] It's, well, I could go this way, or this way, or this way, or this way, or this like, you know, there's infinite number of gradations of pathways.

[457] I have to zero all those down to, nope, I'm going that way, right?

[458] And that collapses that entire multi -dimensional space of choice down to a single actuality.

[459] And that single actuality is that which you value most at that point in time.

[460] That's why the chicken crosses the road, right?

[461] It's because the chicken thinks the other side of the road is better because why otherwise it just stay on that's us that's the answer people have been asking you that your whole life it's like because the chicken thinks the other side of the road is better it's like maybe it isn't but you know it's a road crossing chicken so that's what it's going to think and so yeah yeah so okay so fine now so you're at point A and you're going to point B and that's how you see the world and that limits what now here's how this works this is so cool.

[462] So, and this is sort of back to the guerrilla example.

[463] So that actually structures you, it structures the way, here's how it structures the way the world manifests itself to you.

[464] First of all, it gets rid of all the other choices.

[465] Once you make a decision, it's like, okay, I'm going there.

[466] And then I don't have to go these other three billions of places I could go.

[467] Thank God, such a relief.

[468] I'm just going there.

[469] That's why it's such a relief to finally make a decision, right?

[470] Because that landscape of catastrophic choice collapses.

[471] And you think, oh, at least I made a decision.

[472] And you think, well, why would you be so relieved?

[473] It's like, well, how long do you want to think about something?

[474] Here's an example.

[475] Trivial, but it'll do.

[476] You know, you think, how many shampoos do you want to choose from?

[477] And you think, I want an infinite number of shampoos to choose from because I like consumer choice.

[478] So you go to the drugstore and there's like 500 shampoos, right?

[479] And they all, some of them have protein and some of them have orange juice and some of them have, like, vitamins, and some of them have gold, there's some with gold in it now in case you need gold.

[480] And not very much, though.

[481] And, you know, there's some that has no ingredients whatsoever.

[482] They're pure.

[483] And then, right, and so there's, right, right.

[484] And so there's just like shampoo.

[485] It's shampoo city, man. There's 500 of them.

[486] And here's, and you might think, well, that's way better than just having two shampoos to choose from, but actually it's not, because how much time do you want to spend choosing a shampoo?

[487] And if there's 500 of them, the probability that you chose the correct shampoo is like zero.

[488] It's one in 500.

[489] So, right.

[490] So no matter what choice you made, you're stupid.

[491] Right.

[492] And this is actually what the consumer literature reveals.

[493] It's like people say, well, more choice or less.

[494] Oh, more.

[495] It's like, really, think you go into a sandwich place, right?

[496] And it's lunchtime, and you're busy and you're hungry.

[497] And there's like 18 types of meat, and there's 50 types of toppings, and there's 10 types of bread.

[498] And it's like, that's a combinatorial explosion, right?

[499] That's a lot of different possible sandwiches.

[500] And the person says, well, how do you want your sandwich?

[501] And you think, just make me a damn sandwich and give it to me. Because I don't want to do the complex cognitive computations necessary to design the ideal sandwich.

[502] That's actually why I want you to do it.

[503] I want you just, maybe I want roast beef or ham, or maybe there's a vegan option.

[504] right something like that and there's three sandwiches and all have that one and that that's the right amount of choice and so so people don't like unconstrained choice you know they don't like no choice but they don't like unconstrained choice because it's just not worth the it's not worth the complexity that's the thing and so when you make a decision the complexity collapses when you choose a partner why is it a good thing to choose a partner well often it's not because you have to put up with partner but of course they have to put up with you so you probably got a better deal than they did so but but but but but but but you probably both got a pretty bad deal so you know so but what why do you do that it's like well people say marriage is the death of hope it's like have you heard that it's so so optimistic it's like yeah but it's also the death of cognitive complexity and thank god for that it's like there probably is the perfect person for you is probably out there somewhere.

[505] And let's say if you spend one second evaluating the 3 .5 billion options, you'd need 360 years.

[506] So good luck.

[507] You're going to sift through all those people?

[508] Man, well, you found her, so good for you.

[509] Hooray.

[510] So, but you're just not going to do it.

[511] And you pick a partner and you think, well, I'm going to put up with this person.

[512] And it's a relief, at least it should be, because it simplifies things to a great degree.

[513] Like there's complexity in the person, but there's not the complexity of an infinite array of potential partners at every corner and for better or for worse with regards to the infinite number of partners.

[514] So you're doing this a lot.

[515] You're delimiting the complexity of your environment with your choices.

[516] And a huge part of what your value structure does is do that.

[517] And it simplifies the world so that you can live in it.

[518] Now, here's how it works.

[519] So once I decide where I'm going, my perceptions fall into line.

[520] And this is something that I mentioned this, to an audience that I was talking to a couple of days ago.

[521] There's almost nothing more important that you could possibly ever learn than that that's the case.

[522] Once you decide what you value, your perceptions fall into line, you think, could that really be?

[523] It's like, well, who cares?

[524] Why is that such a big deal?

[525] Think about it.

[526] What it means is the way the world manifests itself to you is dependent on what you value.

[527] God, like you could just think about that forever, because what it means is what it implies, is that if the world isn't manifesting itself to you in a manner that you approve of, and I don't mean in shallow way, I mean, because sometimes, you know, people are suicidal, right?

[528] It's like they're suicidal.

[529] The world is not manifesting itself to them in a manner that's commensurate with their continued survival.

[530] It can get really brutal.

[531] If the world isn't manifesting itself to you in a manner that you find desirable, there's some possibility that it's because your value structure isn't oriented properly.

[532] And this isn't trivial.

[533] It's actually the case.

[534] Now, look, I understand, having said that, I don't mean that you can just wish yourself out of everything, and I also don't mean that terrible things might not happen to you that you can't control.

[535] That happens, right?

[536] No matter how oriented you are with regards to your values, you can get pancreatic cancer, and you're gone in three months.

[537] Like, I understand that we're mortal and finite, limited in all those things, and everything isn't within our purview or our power, right?

[538] But within the framework of our mortality, let's say, and our subjugation to the essential tragedy of life, it's still the case that the manner in which the world manifests itself is dependent to some indeterminate degree on what you value.

[539] And then the question is, then, what should you value?

[540] And that is the question, man. That's the question.

[541] So, okay, so here's how perception works, at least in part.

[542] So let's say I'm deciding that I'm going to walk parallel to this stage border, right off the stage.

[543] Now, what happens?

[544] Well, as soon as I specify that goal, I point my eyes at the goal, something that you do, you point your eyes at goals.

[545] That's why our eyes have evolved the way they have.

[546] By the way, we have very acute vision, and we have whites surrounding our irises, and that's so that I can tell where you're pointing your eyes.

[547] Because all of our ancestors whose eyes weren't easily readable, were either killed or didn't success.

[548] successfully reproduce.

[549] Because one of the things I want to know about you is where the hell are you pointing your eyes.

[550] And the reason I want to know is because I want to know what you value.

[551] And the reason I want to know that is because I want to know what you're up to.

[552] Because then I can understand you.

[553] So if I can tell where you're pointing your eyes, I know what you want, and then I can understand you.

[554] And then we don't have to fight.

[555] Then maybe we can cooperate.

[556] Like it's a big deal.

[557] It's a major deal.

[558] So you point your eyes at what you want.

[559] And then that sets up your visual perception.

[560] And so when I'm looking straight ahead, there's an observation.

[561] in my path, and that's that stool.

[562] It's not a stool at the moment.

[563] You say, well, of course it's a stool.

[564] It's like, no, it's not.

[565] No, it's not.

[566] It's an obstacle to my progress forward.

[567] And you think, imagine you're driving, eh?

[568] You're in a hurry to get somewhere, and maybe you're a bit on the temperamental side, and so you're late.

[569] It's your fault, but it doesn't matter.

[570] You're late.

[571] And so, you're at a crosswalk, and you're like raring to go, and this old lady in a walker is going, across the crosswalk.

[572] And it's like the little hand is there and it's time for her to be on the damn sidewalk.

[573] But she's not.

[574] She's just hobbling along and you think, God damn it, I wish she'd get across.

[575] It's like, is that a poor old woman in a stroller or an obstacle in your path?

[576] It's like, well, just think about how you're acting.

[577] Maybe you're a bit guilty about it because you also recognize that it's a poor old woman in a stroller.

[578] But there's part of your brain going obstacle, obstacle, obstacle, obstacle, obstacle, right?

[579] And that's what makes you curse and mutter away under your breath in your car.

[580] No one can hear you, and you're in there alone so you can say whatever you want.

[581] But the reason that I'm laying that out is because if something's in your way, it's an obstacle.

[582] And that is how you parse up the world.

[583] As soon as you have a goal, then the world divides itself into, well, irrelevant things, and that's most things, because everything that isn't directly related to that goal is now irrelevant, and thank God for that.

[584] And then there's obstacles that get in your way, and then there's facilitators or tools that get you on your way.

[585] And some of those can be quite simple.

[586] So let's say, this is even associated with emotion.

[587] So if I'm looking at this pathway, I want to get over there.

[588] Now there's an obstacle in my way, and that actually produces a small amount of negative emotion because the pathway isn't clear.

[589] And so I'm actually less happy, if I want to go over there, I'm less happy standing here than I am standing here.

[590] Because the phenomena that manifest themselves as a consequence of me laying out a value structure have an emotional meaning.

[591] It's built right into them.

[592] So you don't see neutral objects in the world.

[593] You see something like obstacles and tools.

[594] You don't see most things.

[595] You're blind to almost everything.

[596] But what you do see are obstacles and tools.

[597] and tools make you happy because they get you to where you're going and obstacles they make you unhappy and that's actually what your emotional systems are for because you're trying to get somewhere and so the positive emotion system gets you going towards your desired goal and the negative emotion system says watch it there's an obstacle watch it there's an obstacle and that's your emotions and so not only it's more complicated than that but that's the basic foundations of your emotions are positive and negative moving forward positive stop moving away negative that's the basic structure now those branch out because there's different kinds of positive emotions and there's different kinds of negative emotions but that's the groundwork and so not only does your goal determine your perception actually the things you literally see in the world it also determines your emotional response so that's pretty that's pretty wild so so that that means that your value structure co -determines your reality.

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

[599] Okay, so now, okay, so, a little dragon noise, I guess, there.

[600] So, that's a simple story.

[601] So here's the simple story.

[602] I was at point A, and I went to point B. And so that's a story that a kindergarten kid might tell.

[603] It's just a fragment of a narrative.

[604] What did you do today?

[605] Well, Mom and I walk to school.

[606] Okay.

[607] That's an acceptable unit of communication and you might dig a little bit.

[608] You might say, well, did anything interesting happen along the way, right?

[609] Which is really, that's an interesting question is, well, what do you mean interesting exactly?

[610] I mean, you're trying to get the kid to think that up on his own, but you have a theory in mind, something interesting, something what, unexpected maybe?

[611] Who knows?

[612] And the kid says, well, you know, I was walking to school and I walked by this yard and a big dog.

[613] jumped out at the fence and barked at me and I was this I was scared and then you might say well what happened and the kid says well you know I I went to school anyways and you give them a pat and you say good work kid and right because that's what you'd say you know you'd say well you something scary happened remember I mean when you're this high and it's a dog like a German Shepherd that's like you being chased by an eight -foot German Shepherd it's a major deal that right it's a major deal that this kid that's how wolf, right?

[614] It's a wolf.

[615] And so, you know, maybe it's not that hungry, but still, still, it's, so it bounces out, scares the kid half to death, but he perseveres.

[616] And he goes to school anyways, and you might say, well, you know, how did you feel afterwards?

[617] Said, well, you know, okay, okay.

[618] I started to play and I forgot about it.

[619] It's like, so you give the kid a little, you know, you're happy about that story.

[620] Well, why?

[621] Well, the kid had laid out a pathway, and specified the objects, just the sidewalk to school.

[622] That's all that's relevant.

[623] It's known territory, something he can easily master.

[624] And then something leapt out of the darkness and threatened that.

[625] And the kid reacted.

[626] That's negative emotion.

[627] It's like the manifestation of something unexpected.

[628] That's a special category of negative that we'll get to in a moment.

[629] Then he recovered, and he went along the way.

[630] That's a better story.

[631] See, that's a much better story.

[632] In fact, when you go see a story, that's usually the story.

[633] story.

[634] The story is, I thought I was at point A, and I was going to point B, on the way something really unexpected happened, and it knocked the whole damn story for a loop, and then I was somewhere I didn't expect to be at all.

[635] And then, well, perhaps I just died there.

[636] That's what happens in Hamlet, for example.

[637] It's not just Hamlet.

[638] Everybody dies there.

[639] And that's a tragedy, right?

[640] Because you're in your pathway.

[641] The world's all fixed and set.

[642] and then something emerges and throws you for a loop, and that's it, you're done.

[643] That's a tragedy.

[644] And a comedy is, well, the little kid's story is a comedy.

[645] I mean, it's not funny, but comedies aren't technically funny.

[646] Like, a comedy is the encounter with something that's catastrophic, and then the regrouping and the transcending of that catastrophe.

[647] And that's the story that everyone loves.

[648] Okay, and so what's the story?

[649] Well, here's a story.

[650] So I think of the first thing.

[651] I was at point A, going to point B. I think about that as a normal story.

[652] And then this next story, which is I is at point A, was cruising along, unaware, something knocked me off my feet.

[653] I ended up somewhere I didn't expect.

[654] Then I reconstituted myself, and I got back together.

[655] I think that's a revolutionary story.

[656] That's the kind of story that people are really, really interested in.

[657] And so, you know, that's the sort of story that you hear in psychotherapies.

[658] if the psychotherapy works out, at the end, the story will be something like, you know, I was happily married, or I thought I was.

[659] I trusted my partner, and, you know, we'd have a couple of kids.

[660] We had a pretty good marriage, maybe it was a little rocky from time to time, but everything was pretty secure, and I relied on this person, I trusted them, and then I found out that they had had two affairs in the last four years.

[661] and maybe a history of them before that.

[662] And they never told me about that at all.

[663] And I found that out accidentally, and it just blew me into bits.

[664] So you think about what happens when something like that has happened to all of you.

[665] It might not be an affair, it might not be a betrayal, but you've been pursuing some dream.

[666] You're in the little space encapsulated by that dream, let's say, and something comes along and blows it into pieces.

[667] Maybe you think you deserve a raise at work and it goes to someone else, or maybe your boss is embezzling and you trusted him.

[668] Or maybe you want to be a physician and you write the MCAT and you get like 15th percentile on the thing.

[669] And so that's the end of that.

[670] Or maybe you get sick, you know, you're doing quite well and all of a sudden your physiology kicks out on you and, you know, you lose your job and, God, who knows?

[671] Maybe you lose your house and maybe you're going to lose everything.

[672] You don't know.

[673] And like these things happen to people all the time.

[674] So what's happening when something like that happens?

[675] Well, the betrayal is a good example.

[676] It's like you're in this little encapsulated safe world and you've got your perceptual objects specified and you've got your emotional responses mapped out.

[677] But the problem is, there's a lot of the world that you weren't taken into account.

[678] And that's the case because you can't, right?

[679] You can't take the whole world into account.

[680] You ignore almost everything.

[681] And sometimes that works out fine.

[682] You can get away with it.

[683] It's hard to understand how, but you can get away with it at least for short periods of time.

[684] And it's a good thing, because you're just not cognitively complex enough to take on the whole world.

[685] So if your simplifications didn't work, you'd be doomed.

[686] Well, you'd doomed anyways, but you know what I mean.

[687] You'd be doomed faster.

[688] But, you know, if you're in a marriage, and partly what you're doing to the person with the person that you're married to, is you're simplifying each other.

[689] You're saying, well, here's, I have this immense range of behavioral potential.

[690] which would include going out with other people, say, behind your back, and with all the complexity that would entail, but I'm not going to do that.

[691] That's the promise.

[692] And so now I'm half as complicated as I was.

[693] And, you know, if you're my partner, then you agree to do the same thing.

[694] And so now you're half as complicated as you were, or maybe 70 % less complicated.

[695] Who knows?

[696] And maybe that makes you simple enough so I can live with you and vice versa.

[697] Right?

[698] So we've made a decision to delimit the way that we're going to interact with the world.

[699] We've made a decision to live out a certain kind of story and to bind it together.

[700] And that means that we can inhabit the same space with a certain amount of security and simplicity.

[701] But then you have an affair.

[702] It's like, okay, what happens?

[703] Well, that's not a good question.

[704] The better question is, well, what doesn't happen?

[705] Because everything happens.

[706] It's like, well, I thought, I understood my past, clearly I didn't.

[707] That's a strange thing, eh, because you think the past is fixed.

[708] Of course you understand the past.

[709] It already happened.

[710] It's like, really?

[711] Really?

[712] Well, you know, sometimes you go to a movie and something happens at the end that changes the way you looked at the beginning completely?

[713] It's weird because you already watched the whole movie.

[714] It's like, you saw what happened.

[715] That happened.

[716] It's like, no. What you thought was happening wasn't what was happening.

[717] And it is the little twist at the end.

[718] That's a twist ending.

[719] and it makes everything fall into a different configuration.

[720] And if a director pulls that off properly, sometimes it's a real deception, and it's a trick.

[721] You know, you find out the person was dreaming or some idiot thing like that.

[722] You know, but sometimes someone really pulls it off and there's something you didn't expect, and it just makes everything else make sense.

[723] It's like, so, well, so my point is is that sometimes what happens now can affect the past.

[724] It's like, well, if you have a partner, and they betray you, that affects the past.

[725] You thought you knew where you were.

[726] You thought you knew where you were going.

[727] Ha!

[728] You didn't know where you were or where you were going.

[729] And you didn't know your partner.

[730] And that means you really didn't know you because you thought that you were smart enough to figure out what was going on, but you weren't.

[731] And so if you were stupid enough to make that mistake, just how stupid are you?

[732] And, you know, I'm not being mean about this.

[733] Like, this is how people react when they're in a situation like this is like if you're fundamentally betrayed in dante's inferno which is like a map of hell the the deepest part of hell was reserved for people who betray right because that's the thing that throws everyone for a loop the hardest it's like if you're betrayed it's like everything is up for grabs all those things that your story protected you from all come rushing back and that's your past you're present well it's gone it's like you're present what it isn't what you thought it was that's for sure and your future well you know that was kind of unspecified to begin with but now it's completely in disarray and so everything has come flooding back your story broke down everything has come flooding back and then you have to re -align yourself and so that might take a long time because you know if you're if you're doing this with somebody therapeutically you might say well where do you think where do you because you want to help the person figure out what happened so that they know what happened, but so that the probability that the same thing will happen again is decreased.

[734] That's actually the whole utility of your memory.

[735] Your memory isn't there so that you remember what happened, because who cares what happened?

[736] That's not the point.

[737] The point is to extract out from the terrible occurrences of the past, the information necessary to help you avoid the same terrible occurrences in the future.

[738] So it's like you're updating your map.

[739] It's like you might ask the person, okay, well, where do you think your marriage went wrong?

[740] You might even ask them, well, do you think that is there some manner in which you contributed to this?

[741] It's kind of a rude question, but you want to know that, because if you're going to have another relationship, maybe you don't want to bring the same damn mistakes forward, right?

[742] Plus, you can control, to some degree, the mistakes you made.

[743] You can't really control the mistakes the other person made, but you want to map out what happened.

[744] And then you think, okay, so you start, you go back to the beginning and you think, okay, well, it's very rare that something like that happens, and people don't think, well, there were warning signs that I ignored.

[745] Sometimes it comes out of the blue.

[746] But often people know, no, no, I could, there was unhappiness here, here's something we didn't deal with, I saw this happening, et cetera, et cetera.

[747] You can line up the events.

[748] Then maybe you have to go over them and you think, okay, well, when did it start?

[749] What did I avoid?

[750] What should have I attended to?

[751] How could have I said it right?

[752] How many times did that happen?

[753] And you weave a narrative.

[754] And so what you're doing is you're re -exploring the complexity of the past that was hidden from you when it was happening.

[755] And as you're re -exploring that, you're acquiring a palpable increase in wisdom.

[756] And wisdom would be the restructuring of your value system so that you can act more appropriately as you move forward into the world.

[757] And if you're lucky, and this is when the story is a comedy, what happens is you really figure it out.

[758] You really figured out.

[759] You think, I see, here's 10 things that I did wrong.

[760] Three of them are deep and profound.

[761] You know, six of them are kind of trivial, and I can take care of them, but I really need to fix these three things up.

[762] I really need to fix them up.

[763] And so you practice and you get your act together again, and you fix them up, and then maybe you start a new relationship, if you're lucky, and maybe it's better if you're lucky.

[764] And then five years later, that's the story you can tell.

[765] The story is, well, I was kind of naive, and I had this relationship, and it went catastrophically wrong, and then I was somewhere terrible for, like, a long time.

[766] and things fell apart.

[767] And I didn't know if life was worth living.

[768] And I didn't know about the past.

[769] And I didn't know about the present.

[770] I didn't know about the future.

[771] And I was hopeless and depressed and anxious and angry and bitter and unhappy and vengeful and vengeful and, you know, murderous because that happens.

[772] And it's a dark place, man, that you go when things fall apart.

[773] And it can be really dark if you let it become that dark.

[774] And then that's the tragic story.

[775] And the real tragic story is you don't get out of that.

[776] And that happens to people all the time, right?

[777] But the comedy is, but I learned my damn lesson.

[778] And I figured out what I did wrong, and I put myself back together, and now I'm in a new place, and it's better.

[779] Here, down, up.

[780] And the second up is higher than the first one.

[781] And that's the real story.

[782] That's a death and rebirth, by the way.

[783] And that's well worth knowing.

[784] Because there's an idea, one of the ideas that's at the basis of our culture, is that the Redeemer is he who dies and is reborn.

[785] right and that's really worth knowing now i'm speaking about this psychologically obviously i'm not speaking about this from a religious perspective but i said that i would investigate the genesis of the origin of religious ideas well as far as i can tell that's the origin of that idea now it's a deep deep idea okay so let me see if i can flesh this out a little bit more so see because it isn't just that you have to get your story straight you have to get your story straight you have to get your story straight.

[786] Why?

[787] Because the world reveals itself to you through your story.

[788] So you better get your story straight.

[789] But you can't.

[790] Why?

[791] Well, because you're ignorant and limited and malevolent, right?

[792] You have character flaws that you know you have.

[793] There are things that you're doing wrong, that you know you're doing wrong, that you haven't fixed.

[794] So that's the, that's the worm at the core of the apple.

[795] It characterizes everyone.

[796] That's Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote about that.

[797] And when he said the line between good and evil passes down the heart, passes through the heart of every individual.

[798] So you've got to put up, you've got to contend with your own unwillingness to stay on target.

[799] And that would be hatred and malevolence and the desire for revenge and all of that, you know.

[800] You know how you go wrong when you go wrong.

[801] And the kind of wrong I'm talking about is when you know that it's wrong and you do it anyways, and that characterizes everyone.

[802] So you've got that to contend with, and then you've got just the fact of the catastrophe of life to contend with.

[803] Things are more complicated than you can actually handle.

[804] So you actually can't get your story straight.

[805] Okay, so, well, so that's kind of bloody hopeless, isn't it?

[806] It's a nihilistic view.

[807] It's, you know, the world is tragic, and it's contaminated by malevolence, and there's nothing you can do about it because you're ignorant and And evil.

[808] It's like, end of that discussion.

[809] But, you know, people think that.

[810] They think that when they get really depressed.

[811] They think that when they get really nihilistic.

[812] It's like, you think that when you get hopeless.

[813] It's like, so it's not like this whole set of ideas is foreign to people.

[814] If things really fall apart around you, you might not only think that of you.

[815] You might think that of everything.

[816] So it's a real thing.

[817] But that's when the other story comes in.

[818] See, because the question is, what does it mean to get your story straight?

[819] And it doesn't mean that you're right because you can't be right because what the hell do you know?

[820] That was the whole statement at the beginning of the lecture, right?

[821] You can't even set the clock on your microwave.

[822] So what hope do you have?

[823] It's like, well, that's where the second story comes in because, see, one of the things...

[824] Let's see, how can I state this properly?

[825] Getting your story straight is a process, not a fixed state.

[826] okay so so imagine here here's one way of thinking about it so so you're here you're going from point A to point B and then things fall apart catastrophically and you're here so you're in the upper world and then you're in the underworld maybe you're even in hell because that's a little section of the underworld and then you bounce back up and you're here again so you can think well I'm who I was that would be one kind of identity I'm the person I thought I was that blows apart then you're in this terrible place and you think, oh, I'm the sort of person who's in this terrible place.

[827] That's another form of identity.

[828] And then you can think, no, no, I'm not the old person or the person who was in the catastrophe.

[829] I'm the new person.

[830] But the problem is, is the new person can fall apart too.

[831] Okay, so, but then there's a third way of thinking.

[832] This is a better way of thinking.

[833] I'm not this or this or this.

[834] I'm the process by which this occurs.

[835] Right?

[836] It's like I know something it's not quite right it collapses it causes trouble the collapse but i regroup i learn i regenerate i put myself back together and then it happens again and it happens again but each time it happens maybe you're a little wiser you're a little more put together and you think well i'm not any of these fixed states i'm the process by which the transformation occurs that's the critical thing is that are you who you are you are you the thing that falls apart or are you the thing that moves between the states and that's the thing to speak metaphorically that's identification with the spirit that dies and is reborn right and that's the key to redemption to let the old part of you die when it's necessary and to let the new part be reborn so you identify with that thing that can die voluntarily and be reborn and that's the key to redemption that's a matter That's the getting your story straight.

[837] You see, and the reason it's a process is, well, it's not only that there's too much of the world for you to get right, so you can't, and it's not only that you're kind of warped and bent so you can't, it's also that things change around you very rapidly.

[838] So even if you're right now, correct, I mean, that doesn't mean that you're going to be correct in two years if you stay the same.

[839] You know, like, if you have a nine -year -old kid who's pretty mature and together, and they don't change at all, and now they're 15, they're going to be a pretty immature 15 -year -old, even though they were perfectly fine, nine -year -old.

[840] So you're tasked not only with contending with your own ignorance and your own malevolence, but you're also tasked with contending with the fact that the world is transforming like mad while you're trying to adapt to it.

[841] And so you say, well, you need to hit a target.

[842] You need to specify a target, that's for sure.

[843] But the damn target moves, and not only does it move, it even moves in ways that you can't predict.

[844] And then you say, well, if the target keeps moving in ways that I can't predict, then why should I bother hitting the target at all?

[845] But we've already gone through that.

[846] You don't have an option.

[847] Well, you could just sit there and degenerate painfully and die.

[848] That's your option.

[849] So you have to follow the target that moves unpredictably, even though you can't necessarily manage the tracking.

[850] And the way you do that is by paying attention and updating as you move forward, you know.

[851] So, you know, if I'm, this is a trivial example, but, you know, I'm walking forward, maybe I close my eyes, I don't have to, and I trip over this rug.

[852] It's like, okay, I'm going to do that again.

[853] So this time, I know where that is, I'm going to step over it.

[854] Okay, well, that's, it's a tiny little improvement.

[855] It's a tiny transformation in my map of the world, but it, it, it smooths my pathway forward, right?

[856] And I would say one of the ways to avoid hellish catastrophes is to make micro -improvements constantly to see, and this is why you want to see where you're wrong all the time if you can, because if you can see where you're wrong all the time in little ways, and you fix up those little ways that you're wrong, then you don't have to collect all the ways that you're wrong and have one big catastrophe.

[857] And that's sort of the story of divorce, as far as I can tell, is that, you know, people, every relationship has friction, because life is hard, and you two are different, and you want different things, and there's difficult decisions to make and like it's hard.

[858] And so there's conflict that's necessary to work out the complexity.

[859] And you think, well, I'm not going to engage in the conflict.

[860] I'm not going to rock the boat.

[861] It's like, that's fine, except all it does is accumulate.

[862] And at some point, it'll accumulate.

[863] You'll have 50 ,000 fights that you haven't had.

[864] And then one day you'll have all 50 ,000 of them.

[865] And then you're done.

[866] You'll never recover from that.

[867] So, and I've seen people fall into that pit because that is a pit and it's a deep pit and there's a nasty monster at the bottom of it which is made up of all the tiny little monsters that you could have taken on one by one 50 ,000 times all emalgamated into one massive monster and then you fall into the pit and it eats you and you're done then you're in divorce court for 10 years fighting over your kids and spending a third of a million of a third of a million dollars on lawyers because they're part of that monster that's at the bottom of the pit so okay so so here let me let me tell you one more thing you tell me what you think about this so I'm going to go laterally for a minute because I was talking about the evolution of religious ideas so this is like a religious you obviously there's a religious component to this idea of death and rebirth I mean clearly so but let me let me twist it a little bit and so let's go back to the example of the dog and the kid okay so kids walking along dog leaps out kid goes like this right startles, freezes.

[868] Why?

[869] Or maybe runs away, but not in this case.

[870] Freezes.

[871] What does a rabbit do when it sees a wolf?

[872] Freezes.

[873] Okay.

[874] What does a prey animal do when it sees a predator?

[875] Freezes.

[876] Okay, so here's a cool thing.

[877] You know the medusa, the symbol of the medusa?

[878] Head of snakes?

[879] What happens when you see the medusa?

[880] It turned to stone.

[881] Right.

[882] Some of you saw the second Harry.

[883] Potter movie, maybe you read the second Harry Potter book.

[884] Remember, there's a magic castle that all the magic kids live in.

[885] And then, I know, and you went and watched this.

[886] And you think you know what you're doing.

[887] And underneath the castle, well, what else?

[888] Giant snake.

[889] Lives in the sewer pipes, essentially.

[890] It's this giant ancient snake.

[891] You swallow that, no problem, because it's obvious be the case that if there's a magic castle full of magic kids, that there's a snake under it.

[892] I mean, everyone knows that.

[893] It makes perfect sense.

[894] And so when the snake manifests itself, the kids turn to stone.

[895] Right.

[896] Now, Harry Potter fixes that, right?

[897] And he fixes that by going down into the basement, way down underneath everything, where the snake is.

[898] So that's where that monster is.

[899] and then by dying and coming back to life.

[900] That's that story.

[901] It's a phoenix.

[902] Remember, he has a fight with the snake, and then he gets poisoned by it.

[903] He rescues a virgin down there, Virginia.

[904] Ginny.

[905] It's not her name, Virginia.

[906] What's her name?

[907] Genevaver, yeah, it's the same name.

[908] It's just a variant of it.

[909] But so it's the same name.

[910] It's just a variant of it.

[911] So it's the St. George's story, right?

[912] St. George encounters the dragon and overcomes it and frees the virgin.

[913] It's exactly the same.

[914] story.

[915] That's the oldest story of mankind, by the way.

[916] That story has been around as a story for like, as a written story for like 5 ,000 years.

[917] It is literally the oldest story we know, and it's way older than its written form.

[918] Who knows how old it is?

[919] Like I think in its physiological incarnation, it's probably as old as the relationship between snakes and human beings.

[920] And that's 60 million years old, because we co -evolved with snakes.

[921] and part of the reason that we can see so well is because our vision evolved to detect snakes.

[922] So that's something, that's something.

[923] Okay, so in the Harry Potter movie, well, when the snake comes up, you turn to stone, and then someone has to redeem you.

[924] And so now the phoenix, well, what the hell is a phoenix?

[925] It's like, well, it's this bird that bursts into flames, turns back into an egg and is reborn.

[926] And it's the phoenix tears that cure Potter, And so the idea there is, the spirit that immolates itself and is reborn is the cure for the disease that the snake produces.

[927] That's the story.

[928] It's like, that's true.

[929] It's true in the fictional sense.

[930] It's true in the fictional sense that's more true than truth.

[931] It's more than true.

[932] So I've been thinking about that as meta -true.

[933] It's truth extracted from sets of truth.

[934] Well, little kid, he goes to school.

[935] The dog comes rushing forward.

[936] he freezes.

[937] It's like the story could be looked at.

[938] I went back home and I hid under my bed and I never came out again.

[939] And you think, that's not a good story, kid.

[940] That's not going to serve you well.

[941] Well, you know, like there's lots of ways of handling that, you know.

[942] Let's say that you're walking along with your kid and you're pretty nervous and the wall and the dog comes bounding out and when it does, you just melt down.

[943] So not only is your kid frozen, but you melt down and your kid's watching you.

[944] It's like, well, is that going to help or hurt?

[945] And what it's going to do is magnify the trauma of the event immensely, because what a child will do in a situation like that is freeze and then reference.

[946] And what they reference is the expression on their parents' face.

[947] And if it's abject terror, that's not good.

[948] Because, well, because, you know, the kid is wired so that if something happens that exceeds his or her level of competence, that they refer to the parent and see if it also exceeds their level of competence.

[949] And if the answer is, it does, then that's not good, because that means that whatever came bounding out is more powerful than mum or more powerful than dad.

[950] And you don't want things around that are more powerful than mum or dad.

[951] And so the right thing to do is to, you know, watch the kid, and the kid gets all afraid, and you say, hey, look, man, you give him a little pat, you know, maybe give them a hug, and you say, look, that was scary, but you can handle it.

[952] Then you take their hand and you walk them to school.

[953] Now, it's a little hero's story.

[954] It's like the great predator came bounding out of the unknown and fixed you with its eye, and you could prevail.

[955] You could continue.

[956] You're not just a prey animal.

[957] You're something that can prevail.

[958] And that's what you teach your kids, is that they're something that can prevail.

[959] Right?

[960] And the symbolism that we use to represent that which emerges to pull you down is the symbol of the eternal predator.

[961] That's the narrative trope, essentially.

[962] So the idea that in the magic castle there's a terrible snake that lurks underneath that freezes you is the same story I told you about how your life falls apart when something unexpected happens.

[963] It's just the concretization of that idea in image.

[964] That's about all I can explain tonight.

[965] The only other thing that I could touch on briefly to maybe flesh this out somewhat is the idea of the snake itself, Because you think, well, if the snake is the thing that eternally comes out of the unknown to attack you, both practically and conceptually, then what does the snake consist of?

[966] Well, part of that is just the thing that devours you.

[967] That's the tragedy of life, right?

[968] There's that.

[969] But, you know, in the Judeo -Christian tradition, we've also associated the snake with malevolence, because there's this deep idea.

[970] This took me like 30 years to figure out, literally, because I was thinking about it all the time.

[971] You know, there's an idea that the snake in the Garden of Eden is Satan.

[972] It's a very weird idea because it's not in the story.

[973] It's something that was, who knows how old that story is, but it was built on top of the story much afterwards.

[974] And was the consequence of a lot of thinking.

[975] It's like, well, why?

[976] What's the worst snake?

[977] Well, you think, well, just a snake that, like, an actual snake is a bad enough thing, but, you know, a good stick, you'd chase away a snake.

[978] It's like, what about the snakes and other people?

[979] those are harder to chase away and what about the snake in you that's really hard to chase away well on the snake and other people that's the thing that betrays you right so the thing that really can knock you for a loop like you might have think of this in some sense as the ultimate predator from the metaphysical perspective isn't just the tragedy of life the fact that you're vulnerable but the fact that it's something like the fact that other people and you too can maneuver things to make them far worse than they are.

[980] You say that that's the human capacity for evil.

[981] So the thing that lurks in the garden and makes things fall apart is not just the catastrophe of life, the tragedy of life, say.

[982] The fact that we're physiologically fragile and mortal, but also the fact that the worst form of falling apart is at the hands of someone who's trying to take you apart on purpose.

[983] and that would also include you and so that accounts for that association so the snake which is the primordial predator which is the thing that lurks underneath everything is not only the complexity of the world the tragedy of existence but also the malevolence of you and other people and that's the best I can do in 70 minutes about the evolution of religious ideas so thank you I'll be back right away Jordan Peterson everybody he sort of ended that like Forrest Gump and that's the best I can do about that the guy is truly unbelievable like every single show that we've done has been completely different keep it going for Jordan everybody we're gonna give him just a second or two to stretch his legs I'll take this so you guys submitted this might be the most we've ever got the most amount of questions I mean there were literally probably thousands of questions questions here.

[984] But I realized Jordan did that whole thing.

[985] No mention of enforced monogamy, was there?

[986] Should we enforce a little monogamy real quick here?

[987] How many single people do we have?

[988] That was kind of a depressed mattering right there.

[989] It's funny because these audience, they skew a little bit male, right?

[990] It's probably about 60, 40 male, so we may have to enforce little gay monogamy.

[991] Is that cool?

[992] All right, one guy up there.

[993] All right, guys, let's bring him out.

[994] everybody.

[995] You even shaved for these good people.

[996] What happened to the beard?

[997] It's a long, complicated story, so I don't think I'm going to tell it.

[998] It'll be back.

[999] They do grow.

[1000] All right.

[1001] They like the scruff.

[1002] Oh, thank you.

[1003] Thank you.

[1004] Thank you.

[1005] Thank you.

[1006] That's one person in 2000.

[1007] All right, so we got a ton here, but I actually want to ask you one first.

[1008] The big show tomorrow night, or two nights from now with Sam, do you get nervous at all?

[1009] Oh, yeah, I'm nervous about that.

[1010] Yeah, because it's the problem with the sorts of things that I was talking about tonight is that it's not, they're not easy to summarize.

[1011] You know, and so, I mean, it took 70 minutes, and like it's taken me 30 years to get that thing compressed down to something approximating 70 minutes.

[1012] And I don't know how successful that was or not, but, you know, I think, well, okay, Okay, good.

[1013] Good.

[1014] Well, I'm glad it was comprehensible because, like, there's a lot, there's a lot in it and a lot of weird leaps, you know, and trying to lay out the pathways to make those leaps comprehensible is very tricky.

[1015] And so I'm going to talk to Sam about the value facts distinction.

[1016] You see, I think where, I think what he's missing, I think what people who think the way that he thinks are missing is a appreciation for the reality of stories.

[1017] One of the things I didn't tell you, I guess I can use this as a brief opportunity to do that.

[1018] You see, here's where it gets even more complicated.

[1019] So there's the world of facts, so we could call that material reality, and then there's the world of value that you overlay on top of that, and you can think, well, that's not really real, it's just an overlay.

[1020] It's like, well, it depends on what you mean by real.

[1021] And here's the rub.

[1022] So we've been overlaying a structure of value on top of the world of facts for, who knows how long, at least 200 ,000 years, because human beings roughly equivalent to us have been around for that long.

[1023] And, you know, like obviously our existence as living forms goes back three and a half billion years.

[1024] So we can't exactly tell when this happened, but the structure of value has been around for a long time.

[1025] And it's not like animals don't inhabit a structure of value because they do.

[1026] It's all implicit.

[1027] They don't articulate it.

[1028] They're not conscious of it, but that doesn't mean it's not there.

[1029] It's there.

[1030] So the structure of value is really, really, really, really old.

[1031] It's old enough so that we've actually adapted to it, as if it's part of reality.

[1032] And then you think, well, if you've adapted to something, that sort of makes it reality because from a Darwinian perspective reality is that to which you are adapted like it's it's definitional so so the story is so real that it's woven into the fabric of reality itself and we don't know exactly how they overlay exactly and how they interplay and it's really a mystery like let me give you one more example you can think about this I've been thinking about this for a long time So, you know, the classic biological trope is something like evolution is a random process.

[1033] It's like, no, it's not.

[1034] Variation is random.

[1035] Okay, that's different.

[1036] And so, like, here, the technical idea is you have an organism, a mated organism.

[1037] They produce offspring.

[1038] The offspring varies.

[1039] The offsprings vary.

[1040] And some of those variations are more suited to the same.

[1041] the present environment, they're more likely to survive and reproduce.

[1042] And so that's how evolution walks forward.

[1043] It's like, okay, you might say, well, the variations are random.

[1044] That's part of the theory.

[1045] You might say the selection is random, too.

[1046] It just depends on the random walk of the environment.

[1047] But the environment does not walk randomly.

[1048] Here's why.

[1049] I'll give you a specific example.

[1050] So, and Darwin knew this, by the way.

[1051] This is what Darwin talked about when he talked about sexual selection.

[1052] and Darwin knew there were two selection mechanisms.

[1053] There was natural selection and sexual selection.

[1054] And he was very interested in sexual selection, and biologists basically ignored that for like 100 years after Darwin was gone, even though there was really no excuse for that.

[1055] Okay, so here's one way of looking at it.

[1056] So our closest biological relatives are chimpanzees, or bonobos, but whatever.

[1057] It doesn't matter for purposes of this explanation.

[1058] Female chimpanzees are not selective mating.

[1059] Okay, so they go into heat, and they'll mate with any male.

[1060] And so the high -status males are more likely to have to successfully mate, but that's because they chase the low -status males away.

[1061] It's not because the females are selecting the high -status males.

[1062] Human females, it's not the same.

[1063] Not at all.

[1064] They're hypergamous.

[1065] They select for status, and the prevailing evolutionary theory, of them is that the reason we diverged from chimpanzee so rapidly was because of female sexual selectivity.

[1066] Females reject most males.

[1067] So, which is, well, we won't get into that, but well it's part of the eternal war between the sexes, but the consequence is an increase in the rate of evolution, let's say.

[1068] But that's not the whole story.

[1069] So then you think, well, that's actually choice on the part of the females.

[1070] Female choice is driving human evolution.

[1071] Okay, so that's interesting.

[1072] That's a cognitive act.

[1073] That's a conscious act.

[1074] That means that the spirit, so to speak, is selecting.

[1075] The variations are random, but the selection mechanism is not.

[1076] It's not random at all, unless you think women sleep with men randomly, which they do not.

[1077] Okay, now, but it's more complicated than that.

[1078] So that's the female contribution.

[1079] It's not easy for females to size.

[1080] men up and men are tricky so you know they can use false signals to fool females that's what you do if you learn to be a pickup artist by the way is you learn to use false signaling not entirely but maybe you work on your confidence too so the women are trying to figure out who the high status men are or the high value men it's another way of thinking about it but the men help because here's what men do they get together in groups hierarchies and they vote on who the best men are that is what they do.

[1081] It's like you know perfectly well, because you know that you think that patriarchy is an oppressive tyranny.

[1082] It's like, no, it's not.

[1083] That's not how it works.

[1084] Like, if you're on a team with a bunch of other guys, everybody knows who the good players are, and it's not the ones who will pound you flat in the parking lot after the game, right?

[1085] That isn't how you get to be the best player.

[1086] And in any collective enterprise that men are engaged in, there's hierarchical structure and the men communicate among one another and the high value men in that domain rise to the top and then the women peel off the top and so here's another way of thinking about sexual selection is the men vote on which men should reproduce and so then you think well then there's a spirit of masculinity operating in the background for an untold amount of years tens of thousands of years hundreds of thousands of years determining who's going to rise to the top and propagate and the women are participating the men vote the women peel from the top so then you think well what's driving evolution well how is that not choice how is that not the action of consciousness across time I think well we have this idea that you know God is the creative force that's an idea it's like well see that's a place where I think the metaphor and the and the reality start to touch because the masculine spirit selects for propagation and females participate in that as well and so well so that's a deeper what would you call it a deeper investigation into the evolution of religious ideas that's an amazing thing so you could say well here's a metaphorical way of thinking about it as god the father selects It's like, well, we have no idea how true that is.

[1087] That might be really true.

[1088] Then you think, well, what makes a good man?

[1089] Well, is it power?

[1090] It's like, no, it's not.

[1091] That doesn't even make a really good animal.

[1092] Like, if you look at sophisticated animals, and you look at their hierarchies, and you look at which animals kind of move up the hierarchy, if it's a complex social hierarchy, it isn't the brutes that dominate.

[1093] Like, that's one pathway to domination.

[1094] But it's not a stable one.

[1095] It's not an optimal one, and certainly not optimal among human beings.

[1096] So what's optimal?

[1097] That's the question.

[1098] What constitutes a good man?

[1099] What constitutes that aggregation of character traits that increases the probability of rising to the top of hierarchies if there's a large set of hierarchies?

[1100] So how would you have to conduct yourself, for example?

[1101] If I put you down anywhere and you wanted to increase your...

[1102] your probability of being successful.

[1103] I would say one thing you'd have to do, one thing that would work, two things that would work very well.

[1104] One, you would be able to engage in reciprocal interactions, so that if I did something for you, you'd do something for me, and the second is I could trust you.

[1105] Reciprocity and trust.

[1106] There isn't any more powerful ways up functional hierarchies.

[1107] And so I think we're selected for that.

[1108] That's part of the basis of our innate ethic.

[1109] And that's coded in stories.

[1110] it's like so well so there's all of that well this turned into the segue of segue how did you know you loved your wife well first of all I would say I don't know because I don't think you do know you know I mean there's there's manifestations of it but it's not like you know I mean I told my father when I was in grade five that I was going to marry her So, like, I met her when she was eight, and I was seven, I guess she was eight, so she's an older woman.

[1111] Don't know.

[1112] I don't know.

[1113] I mean, it's, it's, who can articulate attractiveness, you know?

[1114] I mean, I mean, I found her attractive right from the time we were little kids.

[1115] I wanted to be around her.

[1116] She was very teasy and provocative, something that hasn't changed.

[1117] but I can't say more than that it's one of these mysteries that I talked about earlier you know things grip you and you don't know what they are you know a little bit about what they are and hopefully they grip you for better rather than for worse you know and that's part of the adventure of life and so something gripped me but I knew very young and I don't know why that is exactly so so there were a whole bunch with this theme, but I thought this one was worded the best.

[1118] How can we get Seattle to not be so fucked up?

[1119] That's easy.

[1120] That's, that's easy.

[1121] Stop contributing to it.

[1122] But that, that is what I think, you know.

[1123] It's like, I mean, that's the one of the major themes in 12 Rules for Life.

[1124] And it's like, and it's, it's, it's, it's the theme of this tour, I would say, to the degree that there's a theme is that, you know, It's so funny because all of the journalists that have covered what I'm doing, virtually all of them, especially the negative ones.

[1125] But not only, they always, they have their value template.

[1126] And it's politicized, it's right.

[1127] Well, this is a political thing.

[1128] It's like, no, it's not.

[1129] Maybe it's collectivist versus individualist.

[1130] It might be that.

[1131] But I don't think that's political.

[1132] I think that's metaphysical.

[1133] It's way deeper than political.

[1134] If you think that your community is not oriented properly, then get your act together because there's more to you than you think you know and you think well what does it mean to get your act together and this is sort of part of this issue of value structures what should your value structure be well there's minimum preconditions you should take care of yourself like you're someone worth helping that's rule number two by the way but you should take care of yourself like you're someone worth helping in a way that would benefit your family that adds an additional set of constraints right it's it's also a set of interest challenges to take care of yourself in a way that works for you, but also for your family.

[1135] And then if you manage that, if you can get that organized, then you do what you can for yourself and your family in a way that benefits the community.

[1136] And if you don't like the direction that the community is going, it's like, that's your problem, man. And seriously, but it's also your adventure.

[1137] That's the other thing.

[1138] And I would say that the way you fix that, as far as I can tell, because you also want to do as little harm as possible.

[1139] You know, you could go out and try to muck around with the macro structures, but I think that's not good idea, generally speaking, unless you're a real domain expert, and even then, man, tread lightly.

[1140] I think you start by cleaning up your damn room, you know, get the pathways.

[1141] Well, you get the pathways, like you think a room is a complicated thing.

[1142] It's a place that you inhabit.

[1143] It's a place that you sleep.

[1144] It's a place that you wake up and prepare for the day.

[1145] It's a place where you get dressed.

[1146] It's a place where much of life occurs.

[1147] It's like if you can get that organized so that it helps you be the person you need to be when you're in the room, then you started to play with the fabric of reality in a manner that could have beneficial repercussions if expanded.

[1148] And if you can't see the opportunity in your own room, then you're blinded by your value structure.

[1149] Because there's way more there than you think.

[1150] First of all, it's way harder to get your room together than you think.

[1151] It's a variant of the idea that, you know, a house divided against itself will not stand.

[1152] Well, maybe you can't fix the whole house because it's full of other people, but you might be able to fix your room, and then you're not a house divided against itself.

[1153] That's a start.

[1154] And then maybe if you're not a house divided against itself, you could help your family, and then they'll be solid, and then maybe with their support and their careful, watchful eye, you'll be able to tentatively move out beyond that and do some things for the community that are actually good rather than self -aggrandizing or corrupt or incompetent or grandiose or vengeful or resentful or hostile or damage.

[1155] You get the point.

[1156] So if you're not happy with the direction, then you've got to think, well, that's actually your fault.

[1157] Or even if it's not your fault, it's your responsibility.

[1158] That's a better way of thinking about it.

[1159] It's probably also your fault, but it's definitely your responsibility.

[1160] And then you think one of the things I didn't write about this rule it's probably going to go in my next book this is a good thing to know opportunity lurks where responsibility has been abdicated you think well yeah you think well why isn't someone doing something about that it's like well if you think that well then there you have a problem why are you thinking that there's a million things you could be thinking but you happen to be thinking that well maybe that's your problem in some small way or maybe a big way because it's selected you as something that you're attending to.

[1161] It's a concern.

[1162] Now, maybe you're all warped and bent and you can't trust your own concerns.

[1163] That's certainly possible.

[1164] That's actually why I think it's so important not to lie to yourself.

[1165] You see, because I think one of the things that happens if you lie to yourself is you pathologize the mechanism that generates the value structure through which you see the world.

[1166] And you do not want to do that.

[1167] Because if you pathologize that structure, you're you're done because you make it habitual that structure and if it's full of deception and falsehood then you can't trust yourself and then what are you going to do you know you're in a leaky boat and the sails are tattered and and the storms are coming you're done so but if you if you're careful and you try to encounter the world in a in a in a truthful manner then i think you can rely on your value structure to guide you to your adventure something like that and so fix it, man. If you don't like it, fix it.

[1168] If you don't like it, fix it.

[1169] That's what to do.

[1170] If you could learn a new skill, what would it be and why?

[1171] Computer programming.

[1172] Yeah, absolutely.

[1173] Absolutely.

[1174] Because that's a place, you know, it's a terrible place of ignorance for me because there's lots of things I could do if I could code, but I can't.

[1175] So it slows me down.

[1176] And so that's one thing.

[1177] That was literally the shortest answer you've ever given, period, on a anything my god probably ever have you felt any changes within yourself since becoming famous oh god of course i'm not crazy you know yeah i mean well first of all i've been like terrified out of my skull for two years so there's that you know i mean i've been in a situation where i'm still in the situation to some degree where if i made a mistake you know which is highly probable because everybody makes mistakes, that all of this would come crashing down very, very rapidly.

[1178] My job was in danger, and had it gone, and my clinical practice would have gone soon afterwards.

[1179] And so I just escaped from that, you know, by the skin of my teeth.

[1180] And had I had any, well, even this, you know, like I'd put up about 200 hours of my lectures.

[1181] And, of course, once I got infamous, let's say, people were going over those lectures with a fine -tooth comb.

[1182] and if I would have said anything vaguely reprehensible even out of context across those hundreds of hours then that would have sunk me and so, you know, and then I've been contending with the press for a substantial amount of time for the last while and it's the same thing, it's a high -stakes game and so I've been, you know, I've been careful with how I speak for a long time but I've really become careful over the last two years and that's probably a good thing but it's not without its attendant stresses and then just having to adapt to whatever the hell is happening because I don't really understand it so I'm still not adapted to it because how can you adapt to something you don't understand?

[1183] I don't know what's happening.

[1184] I mean, what I think is happening is that I'm a clinical psychologist and a professor and I've been working on ways to scale that, right?

[1185] So that I learned a lot about clinical practice.

[1186] It's my area of expertise.

[1187] that personality theory, and the great clinicians of the 20th century, some of whom were also fantastic scientists and philosophers, learned all sorts of things that were useful in relationship to individual personal development, and I've been synthesizing those and teaching about them.

[1188] I think that's what's happening, and it looks like there's a market for that.

[1189] Well, it looks like it, right?

[1190] It's not that surprising because you'd expect that these people might have learned something in 100 years of thinking.

[1191] If you took the the greatest people who are really working hard on it.

[1192] And so what I think is happening is that I'm teaching people profound clinical wisdom that's abstract and metaphysical but also applicable to their lives and that many people are trying to implement that and it's working.

[1193] I think that's what's happening.

[1194] But it's a very strange thing to adapt to, especially given all the rapid technological change that's happening at the same time, right?

[1195] Because, you know, like I'm a very curious person.

[1196] I'm always poking at things.

[1197] And so that's what I did on YouTube.

[1198] I thought, well, what do you think will happen if I put my lectures on YouTube?

[1199] It's like, it was a new technology.

[1200] It was easy to upload them.

[1201] It was easy to tape them.

[1202] I had done some programs for public television Canada that seemed to work out quite well.

[1203] So I knew there was, for some reason, there was a market for it, an audience, not a market, an audience.

[1204] I thought, well, that's pretty cool.

[1205] I can put up these lectures.

[1206] the only people that will watch them are the people who want to learn from them.

[1207] It's like, that's a good deal.

[1208] It's like, how could you want something better if you were an educator?

[1209] You have an audience that is only watching what you're doing because they want to learn.

[1210] It's like, that's the university right there, man. That's where it is.

[1211] And so, and then that just exploded.

[1212] Well, and then the podcast market exploded, and there's all these technological transformations in communication.

[1213] And I don't know what to make.

[1214] of it.

[1215] But what I'm hoping is just what I said.

[1216] I'm hoping that I've synthesized a hundred years worth of clinical wisdom as well as I could because I wanted to scale psychological interventions.

[1217] That was the plan to bring that wisdom to as many people as possible.

[1218] Well, to as many people as possible.

[1219] So maybe that's what's happening.

[1220] I don't know what the consequence of that's going to be.

[1221] it'll be good.

[1222] You know, people come to these talks.

[1223] I talk to about 150 people afterwards, and most people have a really good story to tell me. You know, and I don't mean that it's a, I don't mean it's interesting, although it is.

[1224] I mean, they say, here's a bunch of ways my life wasn't going very well.

[1225] You know, there's variance on that.

[1226] And then I've been trying to adopt more responsibility, and I've been trying to tell the truth and get my act together, and I'm feeling a lot more hopeful and everything is better.

[1227] It's like, good, good, great, great.

[1228] Everywhere I go, people tell me that story.

[1229] And so I think that's a great place to be.

[1230] If you're the place where everyone is telling you that story, that seems like a good place to be.

[1231] And so I'm using that to judge what's happening.

[1232] And as long as that's the story that keeps emerging, then this looks good.

[1233] And so I'm hoping it's good.

[1234] Is there really a moderation when it comes to using drugs.

[1235] Is there really a moderation?

[1236] Yeah.

[1237] Oh, well, obviously.

[1238] You know, I mean, first of all, what drugs are you talking about?

[1239] Because it's not like drugs is kind of a...

[1240] Let's start with weed at Seattle.

[1241] Yeah.

[1242] Yeah.

[1243] Well, look, I mean, I've seen lots of people messed up by marijuana.

[1244] You know, I had a friend who I think it probably, it certainly contributed to his suicidal psychosis, I would say.

[1245] Now, it's not exactly clear because he might have been using it to self -medicate.

[1246] So I couldn't tell if it was, you know, a chicken or egg problem, if it was the pot driving the slowly developing psychosis or the reverse.

[1247] But I don't think pot was good for him.

[1248] And I've seen a number of people like that.

[1249] That doesn't mean that I think it should be illegal because it isn't obvious to me that the best thing to do with dangerous things is to make them illegal.

[1250] It doesn't seem to work very well.

[1251] And it's not like alcohol isn't a bloody catastrophe.

[1252] You know, about 5 % of people who take a single drink, you know, who start with a single drink, become alcoholic.

[1253] There isn't a drug you can possibly use that's worse than alcohol.

[1254] And I know the drug literature.

[1255] I'm not saying that lightly.

[1256] Alcohol is the only drug we know that makes people aggressive.

[1257] Almost all violent crime.

[1258] Huge proportion of violent crime is committed by people who are drunk.

[1259] Often on people who are drunk, by the way.

[1260] If you're murdered, there's a 50 % trans.

[1261] chance you were drunk.

[1262] And if you're the murderer, there's about a 50 % chance you were drunk, too.

[1263] Actually, the best way to get murdered is to drink with family members.

[1264] So, it's actually, I know it's funny.

[1265] I know it's funny, but it's also true.

[1266] It's also true.

[1267] That's the one thing that's going to be recorded from today.

[1268] So, well, yeah, so if you're looking to get murdered, that's how to do it.

[1269] Try it on a special occasion.

[1270] That's the best time to really pull it.

[1271] Look, if you're using a substance, you know, and it's interfering with your life, then that's not good, right?

[1272] So that's how you judge it, but it's kind of, it's the case, because then you're starting to overvalue it, because values have to be balanced, you know?

[1273] It's like, well, if you want to smoke pot once a week and, you know, and relax or listen to music or whatever, it's like, well, okay, go ahead.

[1274] If you want to have a couple of drinks at a party with your friends, fair enough, you know.

[1275] But you want to belt down 40 ounces of vodka day for 20 years.

[1276] That's probably not a very good idea.

[1277] And people do that, by the way.

[1278] I studied alcoholism when I was a PhD student, and we studied people.

[1279] So these were men, and to be in our study, you had to be non -alcoholic, but your father had to be alcoholic, and so did at least two other first - or second -degree male relatives.

[1280] We had lots of people in our sample whose fathers would buy one, four -four -year -old.

[1281] 40 ounce bottle of vodka a day and two on Saturdays because they needed one for Sunday and they've been doing that for years so that that's not a recipe for a good life You know so if it gets out of hand Well, first of all it might get out of hand because drugs tend to get out of hand But if it does get out of hand then obviously that's not good.

[1282] It has to be balanced You have to be in control of it rather than the other way around and like with the with the with the wicked drugs like cocaine or methamphetamine It's like you think you're in control.

[1283] It's like, yeah, yeah.

[1284] You do it 50 times and see who's in control.

[1285] And what happens, here's what happens.

[1286] It's really awful.

[1287] So when you take a drug like methamphetamine, it produces a dopamine kick, and that's a neurochemical.

[1288] And the neurochemical makes you feel like you're doing something worthwhile because dopamine is the system that mediates goal -directed action, and so it makes you feel like you're doing something worthwhile.

[1289] So that's why people love to take those drugs.

[1290] But the problem is that, so imagine that there's a chain of neural events that occurs just before you get the hit from the drug.

[1291] And then imagine that what happens is that the dopamine makes those circuits grow in proportion to how close they are temporarily to the drug experience, because that's what happens.

[1292] And so basically what happens is imagine there's a set of habits that you engage in, cognitive, emotional, behavioral, that precede the drug use.

[1293] and that that constitutes like a little family of biological circuits.

[1294] It's a little personality.

[1295] It's a little drug -seeking personality.

[1296] Every time you hit it with the drug, that grows and grows and grows.

[1297] And as it grows, it learns how to inhibit all the rest of you.

[1298] And then what happens is that if, so let's say, here's what happens to chronic drug users.

[1299] So that's in you.

[1300] It's not psychological.

[1301] You've built it.

[1302] It's a biological circuit, and it's there.

[1303] and it's alive, and it wants to stay alive, and it wants to dominate.

[1304] Okay, so now you're all screwed up on methamphetamine, so someone throws you in a rehab center, and you go through withdrawal, and you're no longer physiologically dependent on the drug, right?

[1305] So you're not going through withdrawal anymore.

[1306] Maybe that takes, like, a week or two weeks, or whatever.

[1307] You're not craving it.

[1308] You're in the rehab center.

[1309] Fine.

[1310] Then you go home.

[1311] Then you see your methamphetamine friend, poof, that queues that biological circuit.

[1312] That thing hasn't gone away.

[1313] That's the monkey on your back.

[1314] It's not on your back.

[1315] It's in your brain.

[1316] That thing comes flying back in full force.

[1317] And the probability that it's going to grip your behavior and take you down the same pathway is unbelievably high.

[1318] Everybody relapses.

[1319] So you put them in a rehab center, they're fine.

[1320] You take them out and you put them back with their half -witted drug -abusing friends.

[1321] they're back addicted just like that and so that bloody system won't go away until it until another system is built to inhibit it right and that's very very effortful like it'll degenerate it'll decay across time but it's like months or years and you have to build other systems to inhibit it and then if you get stressed those newer systems collapse first and the old one will pop back up so be careful what you do habitually especially if you reinforce it with drugs, because that increases the rate at which the habit sets in.

[1322] So beware.

[1323] You know, and the most dangerous drugs, alcohol, for sure, that's a killer.

[1324] The real dopaminergic kick drugs, heroin, cocaine, methamphetamines, especially in injected form, man. Those things are dangerous.

[1325] You play with them at your peril.

[1326] So the hallucinogens, they're not addictive, but what did Jung say?

[1327] Beware of unearned wisdom.

[1328] Right.

[1329] All right.

[1330] This is going to be the last one.

[1331] I thought this would be a nice way to end it.

[1332] All right.

[1333] We'll stay all night.

[1334] They would stay all night.

[1335] That's got to be a nice feeling, you know?

[1336] It just means they don't have a life.

[1337] He gets real at the end.

[1338] All right.

[1339] What does a really great day off look like for you?

[1340] Well, I don't...

[1341] Now, that's a hard question to answer.

[1342] I wouldn't say, see, it's hard to answer this question without sounding like vaguely ridiculous.

[1343] Well, well, maybe I sound vaguely ridiculous.

[1344] I'm actually better working than I am not working.

[1345] Like I'm a person that needs to be like working flat out pretty much all the time.

[1346] I don't seem to have more than two speeds.

[1347] One speed is full on and the other one is off.

[1348] And I don't like off very much.

[1349] So full on is better.

[1350] I do do things that I enjoy doing, but most of that involves spending time with my family.

[1351] I would say that's my recreation.

[1352] You know, I have two adult kids.

[1353] My daughter has a child now, so we have a granddaughter.

[1354] I like to spend time with my kids.

[1355] I like their two partners, so thank God for that.

[1356] I spend time with my wife.

[1357] I have this car that I like to drive around in and listen to loud music, but I don't do that very often.

[1358] um we have a cabin that we go to sometimes up north but we haven't been there i've been there like one day in the last two years i think so that doesn't count much but um but even then under those conditions i'm usually thinking about something you know but that's okay because i don't know leisure for me i would say leisure is overrated i i'm i'm i'd rather be working on something It keeps me occupied properly.

[1359] And so, but when I do try to relax, I play ping pong with my son.

[1360] We go to the driving range sometimes.

[1361] We barbecue.

[1362] You know, they're just family things.

[1363] It's almost all family things.

[1364] So that's what it looks like for me. So.

[1365] All right.

[1366] This is a funny mini goodbye for me because I'm taking three days off now.

[1367] And I just lay in the pool, basically.

[1368] So that's why you've written more books than me. But I'm leaving, you know, it's so funny, we've been doing this for a while now, and you're going to debate Sam, and Sam's been instrumental for me and my success and my growth and all that.

[1369] Now I feel like I'm leaving you guys to have my parents, like, kick the shit out of each other.

[1370] But that's what it's all about.

[1371] That's what the Battle of Ideas is all about.

[1372] So on that note, guys, I'm going to get out of the way and make some noise for Dr. Jordan Peterson.

[1373] Thank you very much.

[1374] It was a pleasure to see all of you tonight.

[1375] Thank you for coming to the lecture.

[1376] Good night.

[1377] Consider picking up Dad's latest book, 12 Rules for Life, an antidote to chaos, or his first book, Maps of Meaning, The Architecture of Belief, available in text, e -book, and audiobook format wherever you buy books.

[1378] Next week, a crucial conversation with U .S. General Stanley McChrystal, former commander of the U .S. forces in Afghanistan.

[1379] We had an important and careful discussion about what leadership might really mean, both to current leaders and to those who are hoping to cooperatively and competitively accomplish the goals they truly value in the future.

[1380] I founded Special Operating Forces.

[1381] You had big, experienced personalities, and I found it would be better to say, we have this problem, how would you solve it?

[1382] And if they were anywhere close to what I thought was a workable solution, I would accept their solution because it was theirs.

[1383] They owned it.

[1384] They would then implement it with a completely different level than if I had told them, here's exactly what I want you to do, this, this, this.

[1385] And the reality is often they had a much better sense of it than I did.

[1386] 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.

[1387] 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.

[1388] 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.

[1389] That's self -authoring .com.

[1390] From the Westwood One podcast network.