12 Rules Kitchener: Hierarchy and Fair Play

[0] Welcome to Season 2, Episode 13 of the Jordan v. Peterson podcast.

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

[2] Today, we're presenting his lecture at the Center in the Square in Kitchener, Ontario, recorded on July 21st, 2018.

[3] It's one of his 12 Rules for Life lectures.

[4] If you haven't signed up to be a beta tester for ThinkSpot, the intellectual platform dad's backing, head over to thinkspot .com and sign up.

[5] I talked about it a bit last week, and Rogan and Dad also discussed it in their episode, but if you're new here, it's a platform that won't limit speech unless it breaks a U .S. law.

[6] That seems like a reasonable way to limit speech, rather than just using random and generally neurotic crowd mentality.

[7] You can form reading groups and podcast groups, and much more.

[8] It should be a great platform to have real intellectual conversations and maybe learn something.

[9] Dad's content will be put up there, with new announcements.

[10] A number of people from the intellectual dark web are already involved, and more people will be joining in August, once all the kinks are worked out.

[11] Mom's still recovering.

[12] Not only did she have major health trouble, but then she had a one in 20 ,000 surgical complication.

[13] Really?

[14] Really.

[15] She's still recovering from that, and it's been really tough, but things seem to be looking up again.

[16] Thank goodness.

[17] When we return, Dad's lecture at the center in the square in Kitchener, Ontario.

[18] Please welcome my father, Dr. George B. Peterson.

[19] A fine bunch of Wilfrid Laurier supporters you turn out to be.

[20] Just out of curiosity, how many people that are here that are here are Wilford Laurier students?

[21] Oh yeah, well, it's very brave of you to come, let's say that.

[22] So I'm going to walk through my whole book tonight, well, not every word of it obviously, but I'm I use these lectures to further my ideas, and I often concentrate on a single rule or two to flesh them out, but I think I'm going to try to run through the whole list of them today and make that coherent story, see if I can manage that.

[23] I think I've only got through all 12 rules one time in like 55 lectures, so we'll see if we can do it tonight.

[24] So, let's start with rule number one, which is, I suspect the one that's been most misunderstood purposefully or otherwise by the journalists that I've talked to.

[25] It's stand up straight with your shoulders back, and it's a meditation, I guess, on the relationship between existential philosophy.

[26] That might be one way of looking at it, and physical posture.

[27] Here's one way of conceptualizing the world.

[28] If you're a clinical psychologist, one thing that you might note is that people's fears fall into two broad categories.

[29] There's a fear of nature, of biology.

[30] So, for example, if someone has agoraphobia, which is often considered or defined as the fear of everything, it's a strange condition.

[31] The fundamental, so people who are agoraphobic, what happens to them usually is they develop a condition known as panic attacks.

[32] They develop panic attacks.

[33] There's actually a circuit for anxiety.

[34] You have a brain circuit, let's say, for anxiety, but you also have a brain circuit for panic.

[35] And panic seems to be something you experience.

[36] It's probably what you experience if you're in the grip of a predator.

[37] It's a get the hell away from there.

[38] circuit, whereas anxiety is a circuit that freezes you.

[39] And anxiety can transform itself into panic.

[40] And if you panic, you experience a very dramatic increase in psychophysiological activity, so your heart rate will go way up.

[41] And part of the reason for that is that, well, your heart rate goes up when you get emotional, because if you get emotional, especially if it's associated with negative emotions that are linked to escape, your heart rate goes up because you need to pump more oxygen to your muscles.

[42] And of course, that's what your heart does.

[43] So that's why your heart accelerates when you're excited or terrified.

[44] And what happens to people with agoraphobia is they'll go out.

[45] And for one reason or another, they'll have an attack of panic.

[46] And then their heart rate will go way up and, or they'll get anxious and their heart rate will go way up.

[47] And then they start thinking that they might die because they can feel their heart pounding away.

[48] They think maybe they're going to have a heart attack.

[49] And of course, having a heart attack isn't the sort of thought that you want to have when you're already really anxious.

[50] And so then to add to their anxiety, they add the terror of potentially dying right there and then.

[51] And that's part of the category of biological fears.

[52] With people with panic attacks, that's often triggered because they've experienced a very negative event recently, like a divorce or a death in the family, or maybe a heart attack amongst their group of friends.

[53] So the thought of mortality comes flooding back, or maybe appears really for the first time, and then that manifests itself in this proclivity to panic.

[54] And then as the agoraphobia develops, if you have panic attacks, that's not enough to give you agoraphobia.

[55] You have to have panic attacks and then start to avoid the places that you have the panic attacks.

[56] And then what tends to happen is, as you avoid and pull back, you have panic attacks more and more places, and then you end up not going anywhere at all.

[57] And you'd even run away from your house, if you could, but you can't run away from everywhere, so you end up somewhere, and that's usually in your house.

[58] And so one of the categories of fears is terrible things that might happen to you biologically.

[59] And it's perfectly understandable why people would be afraid of such things, because there are terrible things that can happen to you biologically.

[60] And so, symbolically speaking, that's associated with fear of the great mother.

[61] That's a fear of nature.

[62] That's another way of thinking about it, a fear of chaos.

[63] The other thing that agoraphobic people think about, because they're usually unfortunate enough to be simultaneously afraid of the two great categories of fear.

[64] So the other thing that people really don't like is social exclusion or social condemnation.

[65] And you can certainly see that play out on places like.

[66] like Twitter, you know, if you say something that you shouldn't say on Twitter, which is pretty much what Twitter is for, by the way, then there's a good possibility, and it seems like an increasing possibility that you'll attract a tremendous amount of negative attention.

[67] People really can't tolerate that.

[68] That's actually kind of a good thing in some sense, because, you know, one of the things that keeps us in line, because we're kind of crazy, one of the things that keeps us in line is that we do pay attention to what other people think, and we try to govern our behavior accordingly.

[69] And most of the time, that's a good thing, but some of the time it's a really bad thing.

[70] And so you can also be afraid of social alienation.

[71] So it's death, insanity, illness on the one side of the equation.

[72] That would be fear of nature.

[73] And then fear of social alienation would be on the other side.

[74] And the loneliness and isolation that might occur, the shame as well that might occur if you were socially alienated.

[75] People with agoraphobia actually suffer from both categories of fear simultaneously.

[76] because if you take apart an agoraphobic sphere, the person will usually say that, for example, they're very afraid of dying in a heart attack, dying of a heart attack, somewhere in public and making a terrible fool of themselves while they do it.

[77] And so there's both that terror of public exposure and also the terror of death and illness.

[78] And those are the two great categories of fears.

[79] And it's not surprising, you know, because we do.

[80] face genuine terrors on the biological front and there's nothing the least bit pleasant about social alienation and exclusion.

[81] And as a therapist, one of the things, and as a research scientist as well, one of the things that struck me was, I was never really struck by the mystery of fear, you know, because one of the things psychologists often try to figure out is why people are anxious.

[82] And to me, that was just never a mystery.

[83] It's like, what I couldn't figure out is why people weren't terrified out of their skulls about everything all the time.

[84] So it was security, the sense of felt security, and the ability for people to be calm ever that struck me as the mystery, you know, because my anxious clients would come to me and tell me why they were so terribly anxious.

[85] And it's like, well, you might die of a heart attack.

[86] It's certainly the case, especially if you have a family history of heart disease and lots of people who have agoraphobia do have a family of history of heart disease.

[87] That's partly why they're terrified of dying of a heart attack.

[88] It's like, well, how can you live under those conditions if you're always concerned that, you know, maybe you had a parent who died when he or she was 45 or 50 and you're approaching 45 or 50?

[89] It's like, why wouldn't that be in your mind all the time?

[90] Well, for some people it is.

[91] And, you know, the fact that we're not all constantly obsessed with death and the possibility of being alone is quite a bloody mystery as far as I'm concerned.

[92] And I think that's actually the right way of looking at things.

[93] I don't think that anxiety is a mystery.

[94] I think that calm, calm, I think that the miracle is that we're ever calm and secure.

[95] And the conditions under which we're calm and secure are very, very fragile, you know, collective peace, like the peace that obtains in a gathering like this, which is quite a remarkable thing, given that we're all here to discuss, you know, relatively serious issues.

[96] That's a real miracle that that can occur.

[97] So in chapter one, well, I'm considering such things.

[98] It's like, well, in a world that's characterized by twin abysses, the catastrophe of social alienation and fragility and mortality catastrophe socially isolation on one hand and fragility on the other hand, how is it that we should conduct ourselves.

[99] That's the real question.

[100] And, well, there's various answers to that.

[101] Now, interleaved in Chapter 1 is also a discussion of hierarchies.

[102] So I'm interested in the social world, and the social world is essentially a hierarchical world.

[103] And one of the fundamental elements of the world that you have to adapt to is the social world.

[104] One of the things I've tried to lay out in my in my writings and in my thinking is what are the most permanent elements of experience like if you had to categorize human experience and then you had to find what out what the fundamental categories were what exactly would they look like you know and when when we think materialistically we think of the fundamental categories of reality being material categories like well atoms are fundamental but it's not like you experience atoms you do at a at a great distance we didn't even know there were such thing until, well, maybe Democritus back in ancient Greece, but he didn't know, he just guessed.

[105] We didn't know there were atoms until, what, 120, 150 years ago, something like that.

[106] So it's not like that's what you directly experience.

[107] What do you directly experience?

[108] Well, you certainly experience the social world, like every single human being experiences the reality of other people, right?

[109] The reality of the social.

[110] And we certainly experience the reality of the natural world.

[111] And so those are the two big categories, the social world and the natural world.

[112] And then the other reality that we all experience is the reality of ourselves.

[113] So there's the natural world and the social world and there's the individual who's contending with those two things all the time.

[114] And then I further subdivided those into the positive social and the negative social and the positive natural and the negative natural.

[115] That seems about right.

[116] And you see that popping up conceptually in all sorts of places.

[117] So, for example, when you hear the radical, politically correct types talk about the social world, for example, all they talk about is the negative social world.

[118] That's the terrible tyrannical patriarchy.

[119] And the thing is, there's an element of that that's true, because, of course, every social structure is somewhat arbitrary and even tyrannical in its nature, because, you know, you have to behave, like everyone else, to behave and so to each of us.

[120] And so we're all subject as we grow up to the restricting and constricting force of socialization.

[121] And that can be quite brutal, you know, people in high school and junior high, it's the theme of many a movie, are bullied into shape or out of shape, depending on how you look at it.

[122] And every single one of us has sacrificed a fair bit of our potential in order to fit into, to conform to our society's norms.

[123] And so we're all subject to that tyrannical element of social pressure and you feel that internally too because you're guilty or ashamed because of your inadequacy and relationship to social norms and so you're stuck with that but you know it's only half the story because of course you're the beneficiary of social pressure as well I mean you couldn't speak you couldn't speak without social pressure it is not like you invented the words that you use right that's part of collective knowledge and the fact that you're of playing games with other people and cooperating and competing with them in a relatively civilized manner and that you've been socialized and basically that you were fed when you were child and that you were taken care of is all part of the positive aspect of being immersed in the social world and if you have any sense then you have some gratitude for that as well which is part of the reason I'm not very happy about the politically correct types because I see that they have a lot of irritation about the tyrannical element of the social structure and damn little gratitude And that's an unbalanced attitude.

[124] There's no reason for you not to be able to see both things and to be wary of the tyrant, but also to be grateful for the benevolent great father, let's say.

[125] And I think that's an appropriate way to orient yourself in the world.

[126] Now, obviously, things can get out of hand from time to time, and the social world can turn into something that's virtually nothing but a tyranny.

[127] You know, we've seen that lots of times.

[128] It happened in Nazi Germany, and it happened.

[129] certainly multiple times on the radical left end of the spectrum, under Stalin and under Mao and under Paul Pot and et cetera, et cetera.

[130] And so it's definitely the case that our social structures can turn into something that's completely indistinguishable from power, deceit, and outright tyranny.

[131] But to think about our social structures in the relatively free world and increasingly everywhere in the world, as somehow tantamount to nothing but a tyrannical patriarchy is absolutely preposterous.

[132] So, now, you have the natural world, and it's got a positive element and negative element, and you've got the social world, and it's got a positive element and a negative element.

[133] These things are often personified, by the way, in fiction and in mythological representations.

[134] And it's a really useful thing to know if you go see a movie.

[135] Or if you go see, or if you read a novel, especially a fantasy novel, you'll see the personifications of these permanent elements of experience all the time.

[136] Let's see.

[137] You also have a negative, a positive and a negative individual.

[138] And so, for example, in Harry Potter, you have, what's his name, Voldemort.

[139] He's the representation of the negative element of the social world, partly also the negative element of the individual.

[140] If you watch Sleeping Beauty, the Disney movie, you see the negative element of the natural world personified as the evil queen, Maleficent.

[141] You see that in Little Mermaid with, I can't remember her name, Ursula, right?

[142] The tentacled sea witch who lives at the bottom of the ocean.

[143] These personifications of these fundamental categories appear all the time.

[144] And they do that because the reason they appear in that manner is because we have to contend with the fundamental constituent elements of reality in order to make our way in the world.

[145] So how do you make your way in the world?

[146] Well, there's you, the good you, and the bad you, and you have to contend with both of those.

[147] And then there's the good element of society and the bad element of society, and you have to contend with both of those.

[148] And there's the good element of nature, which bestowed life on you and the terrible aspect of nature, which will definitely kill you, and you have to contend with both of those.

[149] And that's the permanent state of reality for human beings.

[150] And so those are the existential realities, as far as I can tell.

[151] And so then the question is, how best to contend with them?

[152] And that's what I was trying to address really in 12 Rules for Life in the entire book.

[153] And in my first book, Maps of Meaning as well, because I was trying to outline how it is you should conduct yourself in the world that has those fundamental realities.

[154] And that's why rule one is to stand up straight with your shoulders back.

[155] And I talked a fair bit about hierarchies in that chapter.

[156] Now, part of the nature of the social world is hierarchical structure.

[157] And it's really interesting to think about hierarchical structures, as far as I'm concerned, because they're sort of intrinsically fascinating, Partly because they're probably intrinsically fascinating, partly because of their complexity, but also because of their permanence, because we have to deal with them.

[158] Any account of them or any personification of them immediately grips our interest because we're so curious about how it is that people should move and maneuver in hierarchies.

[159] It's a really deep curiosity.

[160] So here's a funny story.

[161] So, you know, human beings like celebrities, you know, and we'll buy magazines about celebrities, and celebrities often grace the cover.

[162] of magazines, even ones that have very little to do with celebrities, because celebrities attract their attention.

[163] Now, celebrities are people who've managed to clamber up a hierarchy and who are sitting near the pinnacle, sort of why we call them stars, let's say.

[164] And there's something attractive about people who are near or at the top of a hierarchy, and often because attractive people get there, but also because people who are there are attractive.

[165] If you take a monkey troop and you take photographs of all the monkeys, and you show the monkeys, the photographs, they will look longer at the monkeys that are higher in the monkey hierarchy, just like we do with human beings.

[166] That's how deep our relationship is with hierarchies.

[167] You know, because we devolved, we diverged from monkeys probably 25 million years ago.

[168] That's a long, chimps about 7 million years ago, but monkeys about 20 million years ago.

[169] That's a long time.

[170] And despite that divergence, we have similar reactions to some.

[171] celebrity in photographs.

[172] So that's a good indication of just how deep our relationship with hierarchy goes.

[173] And it's also actually quite interesting that we would be attracted to people who occupy more prominent positions in hierarchies, because the other thing that that implies is that we're naturally interested in those who've been successful because one of the hallmarks of success is that you move up a hierarchy.

[174] It's almost identical with success, although along with that often goes wealth, too, and to some degree that protects you from the catastrophes of the natural world.

[175] The fact that we're attracted to people who are nearer at the top of hierarchies means that we're naturally attracted to those things that make for success.

[176] And it's part of our proclivity to imitate, right?

[177] Because hypothetic, you know, human beings have a very powerful proclivity to imitate.

[178] Language is an imitative function.

[179] I mean, because we all use the same word, so we're imitating each other talking.

[180] And, you know, we have heroes, too.

[181] If you're a sports fan, you have a sports hero.

[182] If you like movies, then there's movie stars you admire.

[183] If you like fiction or even nonfiction, there's writers that you admire.

[184] If you don't like any of that, perhaps you have a job, and there's somebody there who does a stellar job, and you admire them.

[185] And that capacity for admiration is actually a proclivity to imitate, right?

[186] Because you're gripped by that person, and you would like to be like them.

[187] That's what admiration means, and that's a very useful instinct because, well, because it's the instinct to admire what constitutes success.

[188] And one of the things that I've thought about very deeply is partly where our impulse for religious awe comes from.

[189] And one of the things that I've concluded, more or less, is that, so imagine that, imagine that, you know, our social structure is a hierarchy, but we could make it more sophisticated than that, because our social structure isn't a hierarchy.

[190] It's a whole lot of hierarchies, and they're probably all arranged into something like a meta -hierarchy, but there are many, many, many hierarchies.

[191] And if you stretch the idea of hierarchy across time, there's been all sorts of different hierarchies.

[192] hierarchies across time.

[193] But you might think that there's something in common across all those hierarchies that makes them hierarchies and unites the people who've been successful.

[194] So if you're successful in hierarchy A, there's something about you that's sort of like someone who's been successful in hierarchy, B, C, and D. And human beings are very good at generalizing, right?

[195] So we'll look at an example.

[196] We can extract examples out from across multiple instances.

[197] So I'll give you an example of that So when a kid, when you're a little kid You've seen little kids do this all the time Maybe they play house, right?

[198] And if you're going to play house Well, you usually have a mother You play mom and you play dad Maybe you play child and maybe you play pet You know, you play out the roles And you might think that what the child is doing When he or she plays out a role Is imitating The parent, right?

[199] So you're going to play dad when you play house But you don't really imitate your dad because, you know, if you're imitating somebody, like if I was going to imitate you, I just put my body in exactly the same position that your body is.

[200] That's an imitation.

[201] But that isn't what you do when you're playing.

[202] If you play house and you have the role of dad, what you actually do as a child is you've watched your dad manifest himself in a whole bunch of different situations, right?

[203] Multiple situations.

[204] And there's something about, there's something in common across all those situations that makes him dad.

[205] rather than someone else.

[206] And that commonality is actually what you have a relationship with, right?

[207] Because you have a different relationship with your father than with anyone else.

[208] And what you have a relationship with is the fatherness of your father.

[209] And that's whatever is in common across all the times he manifests himself as father.

[210] And that's what you imitate when you're a child.

[211] Right?

[212] Because what you're trying to do when you play house is to embody what it means to be a father.

[213] And that means you have to abstract that out from all those instances and then copy that.

[214] It's so sophisticated.

[215] Kids are so sophisticated when they engage in pretend play, that it's just absolutely beyond belief because they actually manage that.

[216] And then that's partly how they come to incorporate the idea of father and how they learn to be fathers themselves.

[217] And the same thing obviously plays out with little girls imitating their mothers or little boys imitating their mothers to that degree, because they do that from time to time, too, because they also have to learn how to understand and embody the maternal role.

[218] So my point is, we can abstract out commonalities across multiple instances, and we do that with hierarchies.

[219] And you think about how smart we are in doing this.

[220] It's like, well, we know that there are hierarchies, and we know that in order to succeed in life, you have to climb the hierarchy.

[221] But there's lots of different kinds of hierarchies.

[222] And what that means is that, since you don't know what hierarchy you're going to end up, in, you don't necessarily want to imitate how someone within a particular hierarchy acts.

[223] You want to imitate that pattern of behavior they manifest within that hierarchy that makes them successful.

[224] So, you know, when you see this, with sports heroes, let's say, when you admire a sports hero, that doesn't mean you carry around a baseball bat, right?

[225] You don't imitate directly in that manner.

[226] Maybe you admire their character.

[227] You admire the way they conduct themselves on the field.

[228] You admire the way they play the game.

[229] Wayne Gretzky was a good example, that in hockey, I would say, right?

[230] Because he was a very, obviously, an absolutely brilliant player, but he was also a player who was clearly a good sport in the broadest sense of the word.

[231] Right?

[232] He was good at helping develop his teammates and all of that.

[233] And he wasn't an egotistical person, and he didn't seem to have any negative personal characteristics.

[234] He was a good all -around person, and he was excellent.

[235] He was spectacular at what he did.

[236] So he's an admirable person.

[237] So as a sports figure and as a stellar sports figure, what made him a cultural hero was his character rather than his specific prowess at hockey.

[238] And that's a good example of how we can extract out what's admirable, the sets of features that make someone admirable within a given hierarchy.

[239] Then you could imagine that you could see that across the whole set of hierarchies.

[240] And so you come to mimic what it is that's most likely to make you successful, no matter where it is that you're placed in any hierarchy and no matter when.

[241] And the question might be, well, what would that be?

[242] And this is another reason why I'm not very happy with the social justice warrior, radical, politically correct types.

[243] Because their hypothesis is something like the hierarchy, so that's the patriarchy, is corrupt and present.

[244] predicated on nothing but power and domination.

[245] And so the secondary implication of that is that if you're going to be successful in a hierarchy like that, that means you have to be power -seeking tyrant.

[246] And it isn't actually the case that in functional hierarchies, power -seeking tyrant is the best strategy.

[247] In fact, all the evidence suggests that that's simply not true.

[248] It's not only...

[249] It's really deeply not true.

[250] This is the thing that's so cool about it.

[251] I mean, first of all, we could also point out that one of the presuppositions of the radical left critique of the modern West is that hierarchies are a consequence of Western civilization and, let's say, capitalism.

[252] And that's complete bloody rubbish.

[253] That isn't true even a bit.

[254] And the reason that we know it's not true is because it isn't only human beings.

[255] that, first of all, human beings have organized themselves into hierarchies for hundreds of thousands or millions of years.

[256] And that's way before there was Western civilization or whether where or or there was capitalism.

[257] So to lay hierarchy at the feet of Western civilization or capitalism is preposterous.

[258] But it's even worse than that because there were hierarchies way before there were human beings.

[259] And so it's not only that human hierarchies aren't a consequence of anything that's particular to the West, but hierarchies themselves aren't even particular to people.

[260] And so, and one of the reasons this actually concerns me is for what you might regard as a left -wing reason.

[261] Let's say that one of the reasons that you're concerned about hierarchies is that you're concerned that they oppress and dispossess people, which they certainly do, and we'll get to that.

[262] Because once, you know, you make a hierarchy, what happens is a few people at the top do most of the productive work that the hierarchy produces.

[263] That's the first thing.

[264] And maybe that's not so bad.

[265] But the other thing that happens is that if a hierarchy does produce something like money, almost all the money goes to the top people in the hierarchy.

[266] And it's true, not just of money.

[267] Like if you look at sports figures, for example, if you look at the – it's a very small percentage of people who manage to – make most of the shots in basketball.

[268] And it's a very small percentage of hockey players who score most of the goals.

[269] And it's a very small percentage of music composers who compose all the music that all the orchestras play.

[270] And it's a very tiny proportion of rock musicians who play the rock songs that everybody listens to.

[271] And it's a tiny proportion of people who write books, who write the books that everyone reads.

[272] It's like, it doesn't matter where...

[273] It's a very tiny proportion of cities that have all the people.

[274] It's a very tiny proportion of stars that have all the mass. Like there's a rule at work here that I outlined in 12 rules for life called Price's Law.

[275] It was discovered much earlier than that by an economist named Vilfred Paredo that basically showed that if you make a hierarchical structure, almost all of the spoils of the structure, but almost all also of the productive labor is performed by a very small minority of the people.

[276] And you see that very clearly in what people commonly complain about, which is the unbelievably skewed distribution of money.

[277] Right?

[278] So I think that richest 13 people in the world have more money than the bottom three billion Something like that.

[279] It's unbelievably skewed But it's like that for every hierarchy no matter what it produces And so it's in the nature of hierarchies to do that and one of the consequences of that is that hierarchies Dispossessed people because people stack up at the bottom and that's actually a problem because well, you know it's a problem because you walk down the street Maybe it's an urban street and there are homeless people there and alcoholic people and people who are drug addicted and they fall out of the bottom of the world, and it's not good for anyone, right?

[280] You don't like to see it.

[281] They certainly don't like to experience it.

[282] You don't like to see it.

[283] You're not happy about abject poverty, but it's one of the consequences of arranging things in a hierarchy.

[284] That doesn't mean you can dispense with hierarchies.

[285] It doesn't mean that at all.

[286] And so one of the reasons that the shallow critique of hierarchies that comes from the radical left disturbs me is because it doesn't get to the heart of the problem.

[287] It makes the problem much easier than it really is.

[288] Like, if it was actually the case that hierarchies are merely a function of capitalism or the West, then maybe we could adjust capitalism and the West, and the hierarchies would go away, and there wouldn't be any more dispossessed people.

[289] It's like, no, sorry, it's way worse problem than that.

[290] You could get rid of the West completely.

[291] You could get rid of capitalism completely, and you wouldn't touch hierarchies.

[292] In fact, what you would do, and the evidence for this is crystal clear, you would make them a lot steeper and a lot worse than they are.

[293] So, even if you're on the left, and mostly what you're propelled by, let's say, is compassion for the dispossessed, then you better update your damn theory, because you're not going to get anywhere with, like, 19th century Marxism, and it's, and it's clueless critique of capitalism.

[294] So, okay, so back to standing up straight with your shoulders back.

[295] So here's another thing that's kind of cool.

[296] So in hierarchies, even animals have hierarchies.

[297] And so the question is, what makes animals successful in hierarchies?

[298] And if you look at really, really simple animals like lobsters, like crustaceans, which we diverged from 350 million years ago, common ancestor, 350 million years ago, a lot of what seems to make one lobster more dominant than another does have to do with size, strength, power, let's say.

[299] But not entirely, not entirely, because, you know, the larger lobster was actually better at finding food.

[300] So there's a competence element there too.

[301] But once you get to, say, mammals, it's pretty clear that peer power doesn't do the trick.

[302] So, and there's some really interesting data on that from the biological sciences.

[303] So one thing that's quite interesting is there's a guy named Franz de Val, whose work I would highly recommend.

[304] He's a primatologist, and he's been studying chimpanzees for a very long time.

[305] And chimpanzees are our closest biological relative.

[306] We share a tremendous amount of genetic material with chimpanzees.

[307] It's about 99 .9%.

[308] I mean, I think we share 90 % with yeast, so it's not that overwhelming, because there's tremendous continuity in life.

[309] But chimpanzees are our closest biological relatives, and so in principle it's interesting to study them, to shed light on where we came from.

[310] We diverged from the common ancestor about seven million years ago.

[311] You know, you kind of have this idea.

[312] Chimps are organize themselves into hierarchies.

[313] And the hierarchies tend to be male dominated.

[314] So that's, that's, that's something that is arguably similar between chimpanzees and human beings, although it's quite complicated.

[315] And you might think, you know, it's the biggest, ugliest, meanest chimp with the, with the hardest bite and the most ferocious roar who ends up being on the top of the chimpanzee dominance hierarchy.

[316] But what Franz de Valle has shown is that that's actually not true.

[317] And so the reason for that is quite straightforward.

[318] Like, Chimpanzees are very, very strong, and they're very brutal.

[319] And they hunt, they'll hunt columbus monkeys, they're about 40 -pound monkeys.

[320] They'll eat them alive.

[321] And so there's no limit to chimp brutality.

[322] And chimps do raiding, so juvenile chimps will sort of patrol the borders of their territory.

[323] And if they find a foreign chimp, if there's a group of them and they find a foreign chimp, and they outnumber the foreign chimps, let's say, then they'll tear them to pieces.

[324] And so they can be extraordinarily brutal.

[325] And you see, when two chimps face off in a dominance dispute, the aggression will mount and mount and mount, but usually it's within the confines of the rest of the chimpanzee group, and the rest of the group will get increasingly agitated as the aggression spirals upward, and that tends to keep it dampened down.

[326] But there's no real intrinsic limitation on the amount of aggression that two male chimps will manifest in a dominance dispute, not in principle.

[327] And so what that means is something actually quite straightforward, which is that if you're the meanest, roughest, power chimp who's most power hungry, and you clamber up to the top of the hierarchy, and you have no friends and you have no allies, and you don't engage in any reciprocal interactions, you're going to have a bad day, and two chimps that are three -quarters as powerful as you are going to band together and take you out.

[328] and that happens all the time.

[329] And so what Deval found was that power is not a very stable basis for the construction of hierarchies, even among chimpanzees, because power is unstable.

[330] And that the chimps who clamber to the top and who stay their longest, so who produce, let's say, the most stable hierarchies that also produce the least probability of being torn to shreds by their political enemies are actually the chimps who are really good in engaging in reciprocal interactions.

[331] So they're chimps with friends.

[332] And the male chimps that rise to the top of the hierarchy are pretty good at maintaining reciprocal interactions with the females and with the infants.

[333] And so they're actually kind of peaceful and cooperative.

[334] Like, they're no pushovers, no. But they're not tyrants.

[335] Even among chimps, it's not a good idea to be a tyrant.

[336] And here's another example from rats.

[337] I love this study.

[338] This was done by Yak Panksep, who was the affective, of neuroscientist, so a neuroscientist of emotions, who discovered the play circuit in mammals.

[339] And that's a big deal, eh?

[340] Like to discover a whole biological circuit devoted to a class of behavior is approximately equivalent, I would say, in magnitude to discovering a new continent.

[341] It's a big deal.

[342] He should get the Nobel Prize for it, but he probably won't.

[343] But in any case, he discovered play circuitry in mammals.

[344] So mammals have a play circuit.

[345] And that's why we're so playful, or at least in part.

[346] And so he liked to study play among rats and to try to figure out what play was for and he was motivated at least in part by the same motivations that propelled another psychologist Jean Piaget, who's developmental psychologist, who intensely studied play behavior in children because he believed that when children were playing, partly pretend play, you know, when they were learning to be parents, let's say, but partly reciprocal play and the play of games.

[347] they were actually producing microcosms of society.

[348] So the way that we learn to be social is that we learn to play games with others and then we scale up those games and the largest scale games are actually our societies.

[349] So there's no real difference between a child's game and an adult society except at the level of scale.

[350] And so that's why it's so important that your children learn how to play well with others.

[351] There's really, I would say, nothing more important that they can learn to do because if they can play well with others, then others will invite them to play throughout their entire life, and then they'll have a good life.

[352] So it's of unbelievably fundamental importance.

[353] And if your kids don't learn how to play properly by the time they're four, then they never will.

[354] So there's a critical period of development between two and four where that ability to play has to be properly encouraged and developed.

[355] And that ability to play is partly the ability to take someone else's position which is to take turns, right?

[356] Because if I know that I have to take turns, then now and then I have to make you as important as me. I have to be able to flip my perspective.

[357] It's unbelievably important, apart from also the ability to adopt a fictional world and to engage in pretense, which is to think abstractly and all of that.

[358] And so Pankset was really interested in play because it was so important.

[359] And he noticed that even among rats, who are highly social, who organize themselves into complex family units and then social hierarchies, that a fair bit of the way that they learn how to become social is through play.

[360] And some of that play is actually rough and tumble play, because rats wrestle, just like human children wrestle.

[361] And children love to wrestle.

[362] They absolutely love that.

[363] And it's really, really good for them.

[364] So those of you, fathers are particularly prone to wrestle physically with their kids.

[365] and I can tell you from the perspective of a psychologist interested in the development of children and the regulation of antisocial and aggressive behavior, that there's really nothing better you can do if you're a father than to engage in rough and tumble play with your kids.

[366] It's really, really, really good for them.

[367] And you can tell that by how unbelievably excited they are to have the opportunity to do that, right?

[368] because they'll do virtually anything to have an opportunity to wrestle with, well, with their father.

[369] Mothers don't do that as much.

[370] They have a different role, it appears, but not that they don't ever do it, but it's really something that fathers are likely to do, and it's really important for kids that that happens.

[371] It teaches them how to engage in reciprocal interaction right at the level of the body.

[372] You know, it's not abstract, right?

[373] It's like you're teaching them to dance.

[374] It's really important.

[375] And so I can tell, when I walked down the street, I can see kids who were played with and who weren't.

[376] I can identify them on site because the kids who weren't played with properly are kind of, they're uncertain and they're kind of, it's like they're not there, really.

[377] They're sort of doughy and they're sort of uncertain and they don't really know how to look at you properly and they don't know how to hold their bodies, like they're awkward in their bodies.

[378] And other kids pick that up right away and won't play with them.

[379] And it's really, really bad for the kids because then they don't get played with.

[380] and that's a horrible thing if you're a kid.

[381] Well, so Banksep took rats, juvenile rats, and he first of all did what other psychologists did was to try to find out how motivated a rat might be to play, and you can figure out how motivated an animal is to do something by how much work they'll do to do it.

[382] And so you can imagine that you put a rat out in this little field, you know, a little area, where he had a chance to wrestle with another rat.

[383] So he kind of learns that that's the wrestling ring, and then you put a little gait to the wrestling ring, and you teach the rat to push a button a lot to open the gate.

[384] And then you can see how fast he'll push the button to open the gate, and then you can get some estimate of how interested the rat is in playing.

[385] And what you find out is rats are really interested in playing.

[386] So if you see a rat, and you know, you want to play with it, then, well, anyways, you know, it's motivated.

[387] It's, it's, you know, well, and you know this already if you interact with animals, because you see it with dogs, you know, and if you're kind of savvy about dogs, and you're out in a dog park and you're around some dogs that are clued in that wrestled a bit with their masters or maybe with other dogs when there are puppies.

[388] You know how to get a dog to play.

[389] You kind of go like this, right?

[390] And if it's a stupid dog, then it'll whine or howl or move away or bite you or do some damn thing.

[391] But if it's a smart dog, you go like this, and it goes like this.

[392] And then, right, it knows, and it puts its paws down.

[393] It looks at you expectantly.

[394] Then maybe you cuff the dog, not too hard, and maybe it bites you, but not too hard.

[395] hard and, you know, you wrestle around and you're both having a good time.

[396] You'll push a button a lot to get an opportunity to go out on the field and play with the dog.

[397] So, anyways, rats want to go play.

[398] So now you throw two rats out there and they're going to have a wrestling match.

[399] And so, but one rat's 10 % bigger than the other.

[400] And so what happens is the 10 % bigger rat pins the other rat.

[401] And that's what rats do.

[402] They actually pin just like worldwide wrestling federation guys.

[403] Exactly the same thing.

[404] They pin the shoulders down.

[405] And that means, ha -ha, you're the loser rat.

[406] And so you put two rats together, and one rat obtains dominance over the other if it's a bit bigger.

[407] And so if you're watching that, and you're kind of a naive social scientist, you'd say, aha, the rat that uses power wins.

[408] And then maybe you draw some conclusions about how games manifest themselves and how power is the basis for victory in games.

[409] that's wrong, because game isn't something you only play once.

[410] And this is absolutely crucial, because life is a sequence of days, you know, they repeat.

[411] And you don't just have people around you that you only see once.

[412] Well, you do, you drive by them and all of that.

[413] But there's people in your life, you see all the time.

[414] So you're not playing a one -off game with them.

[415] You're playing a reciprocal game.

[416] And maybe you could use power once to win, but try using that reciprocal.

[417] And you're not going to get very far because people kick back, you know, if you try to dominate people continually over some period of time, it's not like they're happy with you.

[418] It's not like they're going to cooperate with you.

[419] They're waiting for their, you're either going to crush them completely, in which case they're not good for anything.

[420] And what good is that, unless you just want to be around people who are crushed, which seems kind of pointless, unless you're a complete bloody psychopath.

[421] And then, you know, you want to be around people who are good for something.

[422] And so there's a demand for reciprocity that emerges because, of repeated games.

[423] This is fundamentally important because it looks like it's the basis of the evolution of ethical behavior.

[424] The fact that you have to reciprocate over repeated interactions.

[425] Out of that emerges ethics.

[426] And even among rats, so what happened, Panksep would pair the rats together multiple times.

[427] The two rats, one had already established dominance.

[428] They thought, okay, what happens if you put those out in the ring the second time?

[429] Well, the second time, the little rat, the one who lost, has to go ask the big rat to play.

[430] That's the price he pays for having been dominated.

[431] So he has to be the sort of enticing rat, whereas the big rat, who one gets to be the cool hanging back rat that doesn't have to ask anybody to play.

[432] So the little rat has to bounce up and, you know, kind of coax the big rat to play.

[433] And then the big rat will play.

[434] And so, but if you pair the rats together, now we know the big rat can stomp the little rat because he already did.

[435] But if you Compare them together repeatedly, what you find is that if the big rat doesn't let the little rat win, 30 % of the time, then the little rat stops asking him to play.

[436] And I read that, and I, well, I knew Piaget's work on play already, and the emergence of reciprocal ethic out of play.

[437] I knew that human literature.

[438] Then I saw that in the animal literature, that study, it just absolutely blew me away.

[439] I thought, wow, that's so, that's absolutely unbelievable.

[440] among a rather, well, a non -human mammal, like rats have some affinity with human beings, because we're both mammals.

[441] But even among non -human animals, across that great divide of species and type, a reciprocal play -based ethic emerges.

[442] And one of the rules is, play fair, or no one will play with you.

[443] And that's just absolutely mind -boggling that that's the case, because it's one of the pieces of evidence that our ethical behavior, which was essentially our value structure, isn't just arbitrary.

[444] You know, you hear constantly claims, and this has been certainly something that intellectuals are responsible for, especially over the last 150 years, you hear claims of radical moral relativism.

[445] There's no real ethical system, and there's no real commonality across ethical systems.

[446] Like, that's wrong.

[447] Not only is it wrong for human beings, but it's wrong even if you go across species.

[448] There's an emergent ethic, and that ethic involves, for social animals, that ethic involves a playful reciprocity as a means of manifesting yourself in the world.

[449] So that's really something that's worth knowing.

[450] Well, so what does that have to do with standing up straight with your shoulders back?

[451] Well, the question is, how do you want to orient yourself in the world to face the two major categories of fear, let's say, but also to be able to engage in something like a playful reciprocity.

[452] Well, we know, for example, if you want to be playful, that you can't be overcome by fear.

[453] Fear inhibits play.

[454] And so one of the things that you actually want to do if you're a parent is you want to make your household stable enough, so to keep the uncertainty at bay enough, so that the kids that are ensconced within the walls of your castle, let's say, have the opportunity to play in front of the fireplace so that they can develop.

[455] And so that's a big deal, because fear inhibits play.

[456] And so what that means is that to play properly, well, you have to be, you have to be, in some sense, without fear.

[457] Now, that doesn't mean that you're naive or incapable of anxiety.

[458] It actually means something more like that you have a certain kind of courage.

[459] And this is one of the things I would say that we admire about people who are, let's say, great athletes, is that they have a certain amount of courage.

[460] You know, you certainly see that in real martial arts.

[461] the fighting arts, because you have to be pretty damn courageous to step in the ring.

[462] But it's not like going out to play a game of hockey is without its attendant risk, or to skateboard, or to engage in anything that's kind of active, complex game.

[463] There's a fair bit of physical risk, and there's reputational risk, and all of that as well.

[464] And so there's a certain courageous stance that you have to take towards the world to not be overcome by the fear of the natural world or the fear of the social world, and then to play in a properly reciprocal manner.

[465] You also have to trust other people, and not naively, you know.

[466] Naive trust means you'd never do anything to hurt me. It's like, you have to be naive to believe that.

[467] You can't even believe that about yourself.

[468] And if you've been around a bit, well, you've been betrayed by people, including yourself.

[469] And so you can't just have that naive trust.

[470] You have to have a courageous trust, which is, well, I know that you could hurt me and I could hurt you, but we can put out a hand of trust to each other, and hypothetically we can entice the best out of each other that way.

[471] And that'll work best for both of us, but it's not because we're stupid and naive.

[472] It's because knowing full well what the danger is, we're still willing to engage in the activity.

[473] And that's a kind of courage.

[474] And the proposition that I put forward in the first rule, in 12 Rules for Life, was it's best to stand up straight with your shoulders back, because that constitutes the posture that indicates that courageous, that willingness to take a courageous stance on the world.

[475] And you see this among kids, too.

[476] You know, there's a couple of things that's kind of useful to know about kids.

[477] It's not the fearful kids who have been taught to be or who are terrified of everything, strangers included, who are the desirable play partners on the playground.

[478] It's the confident kids.

[479] And here's something else you might want to know.

[480] Let's say that you're a predatory, pedophilic psychopath, and you're on the hunt for a child.

[481] Who are you going to target?

[482] We know this, by the way.

[483] This has been nicely studied.

[484] Fearful children.

[485] So if you teach your children to be afraid of everything, and that's how they act, to be afraid of every stranger, to be afraid of the world, and there's someone on the hunt, then that's the child they're going to go after, because they don't Don't go after the confident children who are likely to put up a bit of a scrap if something happens that's untoward.

[486] They go after the children who are too afraid to deal with the world properly.

[487] And so that's something to think about if you're obsessed with protecting your children, because the best way to protect them is to make them competent, not to make them afraid and protected, because there is no protecting them in some sense except insofar as you can make them competent.

[488] So the injunction in Rule 1 was, stand up straight with your shoulders back because it's the best tack to take on the world, right?

[489] To manifest courage in the face of the terrible realities of biological necessity and also the possibility of social alienation and disgrace.

[490] You still have to open yourself up so that you trust, despite knowing the danger.

[491] and that puts you in the best possible position to interact with other people, and that's the best possible position to take within a hierarchy.

[492] You know, here's another way of thinking about it.

[493] You know how you have a kid, and the kid's a sports person, maybe a hockey player, and they're out there playing hockey, and they're playing really hard, and they lose a game, and they get off the ice, and they're all upset about it, and, you know, maybe they're having a bit of a tantrum about it, and you say something like, and you don't like to see that, even though you want your kid to win and you want your kid to want to win.

[494] But you don't want them to have a fit when they lose.

[495] It's like, well, why not?

[496] If you want them to win, why is it wrong if they have a fit when they lose?

[497] Because you shouldn't lose.

[498] And so shouldn't that make you upset?

[499] You're supposed to care.

[500] But that isn't how you act.

[501] You say, it doesn't matter whether you win or lose.

[502] It matters how you play the game.

[503] And the kid says, what do you mean by that?

[504] And you say, I don't know, really, what that means.

[505] But it's true.

[506] And here's what it means.

[507] Life isn't a game.

[508] Life is a sequence of games.

[509] And whether you win or lose is not as important as whether or not people invite you to play the game.

[510] And if you conduct yourself properly and nobly, which is you're a good sport, let's say, it matters how you play the game.

[511] If you conduct yourself properly, then people are going to line up to invite you to play games.

[512] And that's winning.

[513] You never sacrifice the opportunity to play many games for victory at one game.

[514] Right?

[515] That's a basis of the emergence of ethics itself.

[516] And so that's part of the reason why you stand up straight with your shoulders back.

[517] And so it's so nice to know these things, you know, because it helps remove doubt.

[518] I think, well, is there a proper way of behaving in the world?

[519] Well, no, everything's morally relative.

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

[521] That's not true.

[522] It's not even a little bit true.

[523] And those lots of variation in how you could conduct yourself as a decent person in the world.

[524] You know, it's like there's lots of ways of playing a good chess game, but there's way more ways of playing a bad chess game.

[525] It's still a bounded world, and we're perfectly capable of identifying across people those who are playing properly.

[526] And we do elevate them in the hierarchy, because we're not stupid.

[527] You know, if we produce hierarchies, we don't put the tyrants at the top.

[528] Sometimes they clamber to the top, because they get the upper hand, and they've got the weapons.

[529] You know, and we're in a place where only the psychopaths win.

[530] But that isn't the normative situation and certainly isn't what we desire.

[531] And it's not what we teach our children, generally speaking.

[532] We teach them to be competent and decent and trusting and good sports.

[533] And we hope that everyone around them will have the good sense that if they manifest themselves like that in the world, that will produce success.

[534] And it does.

[535] And so so much for the idea that what we inhabit is a tyrannical, patriarchal hierarchy.

[536] It's not the case.

[537] even though it can degenerate into that.

[538] All right, so that's you, and that's your ethic, and that's how you should behave in the world.

[539] And so that's why I wrote Chapter 2, too, in Chapter 2 is, treat yourself like you're someone responsible for helping.

[540] It's like, well, you know, you've got this ability to play properly in the world and to bring your talents to bear, and we actually need your talents, whatever they happen to be.

[541] The rest of us need them.

[542] You need them, your family needs them, your community needs them, and despite all your inadequacies, which are manifold, then it would be good to treat yourself like you're a decent player in a good game.

[543] And that's an ethical responsibility, I would say.

[544] And so it doesn't mean be nice to yourself, and it doesn't mean elevate your self -esteem, and it doesn't mean you should never be ashamed of yourself, because you should be ashamed of yourself.

[545] Plenty.

[546] It's actually a good thing if it doesn't go too far, because it helps tilt you into better behavior.

[547] But having said all that, it's still appropriate that you regard yourself as a valuable player in a good way.

[548] good game and that you treat yourself in that manner.

[549] And that's one of the things I would say that you help people aspire to in psychotherapy, is to say, well, why don't we see if we can set up your life so that it would be good for you?

[550] You know, like you had some intrinsic value.

[551] And, of course, our whole society, this is one of the wonderful things about what we've discovered in the West, I believe.

[552] Our entire society is predicated on the fundamental idea that every single one of us have a sovereign value.

[553] And, you know, our society works pretty well, and so to me that indicates that that's a pretty good proposition.

[554] And if it's a good proposition and it stabilizes our society, then probably applies to you from you.

[555] Okay, so you should treat yourself like you're someone who you're responsible for helping.

[556] That's a reasonable attitude.

[557] And the rule three is make friends with people who want the best for you.

[558] And it's the same idea.

[559] It's like, well, if you're a good player and you have a part to play and you should treat yourself properly, then you should, and should, meaning you have a moral obligation to, also surround yourself with people who watch you move up and are happy when that happens.

[560] And if they see you slip down, they're not pleased about it, as opposed to the opposite, because you can certainly be around people who are not happy in the least when something good happens to you or you do something good, and are perfectly thrilled when you fall and stumble, because it makes their falling and stumbling seem less appalling, let's say.

[561] And so that's another element of obligation is to surround yourself with people who are aiming up in the manner that you're aiming up, So at least you're all aiming up, and who are supporting you in that endeavor, who celebrate your victories, and who commiserate with you in your undeserved and perhaps even your deserved defeats.

[562] And that's also a moral obligation.

[563] And then rule four, that's compare yourself to who you were yesterday and not to who someone else is today.

[564] Well, we talked about this instinct that you have to admire people, And that that's a good instinct.

[565] It helps you be motivated to mimic what makes people successful, in the broadest sense.

[566] There's a problem with that comparison capacity, though, because when you see people who are spectacularly successful at something, that can produce a certain amount of disenchantment and envy, especially if you think the game is rigged.

[567] But even if you don't think that, you know, even if you think it's a fair contest and some people, someone else is performing at a stellar level, it's easy to become envious and bitter about that.

[568] And I think that's understandable, but I also think it's a big mistake because it's not so easy to compare yourself to other people, especially when you get a little older.

[569] It's different, I think, when you're 16 or 17 and just starting off your life.

[570] And the people you're comparing yourself to at your age are pretty much like you.

[571] So they haven't diverged a lot.

[572] But by the time you're 30, your life is so much different from everyone else's life.

[573] It's so peculiar and so idiosyncratic, your combination of strengths and weaknesses and the particularities of your social relationships and the idiosyncrasies of your job and all of that.

[574] It's like, you're enough like other people so you can communicate with them, but you're really different from other people.

[575] And, you know, this is another thing you learn working as a therapist is that there aren't a lot of generic solutions for people and their particular problems.

[576] You have to talk through how it is that someone came to be where they are in detail, so you know exactly where they are and why, and then you have to come up with a very particularized plan for that person to move ahead.

[577] High -resolution, detailed, particularized plan.

[578] And that sort of implies that comparing yourself casually to other people just isn't very helpful.

[579] And I also think it's kind of blind, you know.

[580] I've worked with lots of very, very successful people in my clinical and consulting practice, and also with people who are really on the other end of the distribution entirely.

[581] So I've sort of seen the whole range of human ability.

[582] One of the things that I've been struck by at the lower end is how remarkable people who aren't doing well can still be at certain things.

[583] You know, one of the most admirable people I ever met was someone who was living at one level above a demolished street person.

[584] And I saw her do ethical things that were really quite beyond my capacity to believe, you know, even in her completely crushed and her.

[585] humble form.

[586] She was still capable of engaging in reciprocal interactions with other people, hadn't been consumed completely by envy and hatred.

[587] It was really something to see.

[588] And then at the top end, what I've been struck by is the fact that, you know, even people who are radically successful, they still have really hard lives.

[589] You know, they have, well, they had a terrible bullying father who beat them very badly when they were young.

[590] That's one possibility.

[591] Or, you know, they have a child who's schizophrenic.

[592] That's rough, man. That's a 30 -year trip through hell, that.

[593] You know, but they were able to manage it nonetheless, or, you know, maybe they have a father with Alzheimer's disease, or they have a wife or a husband with alcoholism, or they have some terrible physiological disease that runs in the you don't have to scratch underneath the surface in most people's lives very far before you hit some fundamental catastrophe, you know, and so if you're comparing yourself to other people, and you're falling prey to envy, then you're making a mistake because you're doing only a unidimensional analysis.

[594] You see this person, and they're sort of stellar along that one dimension.

[595] You think, oh, my God, wouldn't it be wonderful to be like that?

[596] But you make the assumption immediately of assuming that every single dimension of their life is like that, and it's just, that's just not true.

[597] And it would actually be kind of nice if it was true, because you'd sort of hope that if some person clambers up the success hierarchy high enough, that they'd take care of all the problems in their life, It's like, that doesn't happen.

[598] And I'm not saying that some people's lives aren't worse than other people's, because clearly they are.

[599] You know, I mean, I've also worked with people who were, like, wiped out on every dimension of life that you can be wiped out on, virtually.

[600] They're still alive.

[601] That was about the best you could say.

[602] So I know that there are very big differences in the difficulties that people face.

[603] But it's not that helpful to compare yourself to other people in that sense, because you don't know.

[604] know enough about their lives to see the tragedy of their existence.

[605] And if you knew the full, what would you say?

[606] If you knew the full story, your envy would be, your envy would be attenuated substantially.

[607] That's how it is.

[608] But then, but, and so then you might think, well, who should you compare yourself to then?

[609] Because you kind of need something to compete with and you need some target to move towards.

[610] It's like comparing yourself to who you are.

[611] That's, that's a good one.

[612] Because you're a lot like you, and you have the same strengths and weaknesses that you do.

[613] And so you're running a pretty neck -and -neck competition with yourself.

[614] And that, well, it's also practical, because if you're trying to improve your life, you might say, well, what should I use as a measure of improvement?

[615] And what should I use as a baseline, even for that matter?

[616] How do I measure my starting place?

[617] It's like, that's easy.

[618] Where you are now.

[619] That's a good starting point.

[620] And where could you go?

[621] And the answer would be, well, somewhere better than where you are now.

[622] And if you can't get a clear sense of what that is, you could at least get a clear sense of, well, where I am has the following inadequacies.

[623] That's pretty easy to lay out.

[624] And here's some of the inadequacies that are my fault.

[625] That's also pretty easy to determine.

[626] And some subset of those inadequacies that are your fault you could conceivably do something about and might even be inclined to.

[627] And so you could just do something about that.

[628] And it's kind of humble and minor because, you know, with your characteristics and talents, you're not going to do anything too great and wonderful when you first start off, but you might be able to adjust some little peccadillo that you have a proclivity for, you know, and make some minor improvement to some small element of your life.

[629] And that would be enough for the day.

[630] And if you do that every day, things get better unbelievably quickly.

[631] It's a hallmark of behavioral psychology, essentially, because one of the things you do as a behavioral psychologist is say, okay, well, people come and talk to you because they're not, their lives aren't going like they want them to.

[632] And sometimes that's because they have hard lives, you know, not because they're doing anything particularly stupid, though sometimes that plays into it.

[633] Say, okay, well, let's take a good stock of where you are.

[634] Let's have some idea about what things might be like for you if they were better.

[635] We could have a discussion about that, right?

[636] Well, okay, it's not good.

[637] Can you imagine how some things might be better?

[638] You might be wrong about it, but at least it gives us a target.

[639] And then, like, could we put in place small improvements that you could make that would lead you in that direction, that you would actually make?

[640] Because that's also a part of doing the behavioral process properly.

[641] There's not much sense in you and I agreeing about how you might do something to improve your life if you're actually not going to do it.

[642] So it's a good thing to know when you're negotiating with yourself and with other people.

[643] You should negotiate with yourself to do better things that you would do.

[644] That's also a humbling experience.

[645] because you're probably not ready to leap out and do magnificent things, but you might, like I said, do something trivial, sort of trivial, that would get you on the way, and you have to be humble enough to accept that as sufficient, but what's so good is that it actually is sufficient, that actually works.

[646] And so it's better to compare yourself to who you were yesterday than to someone, than to who someone else is today, and keeps the envy and resentment at bay, too.

[647] And that's a good thing, because my sense is, I've watched how people destroy themselves across time.

[648] Here's three things to engage in if you want to destroy yourself.

[649] Deceit.

[650] That'll do you in.

[651] Resentment.

[652] That'll do you in.

[653] Arrogance.

[654] That'll do you in.

[655] You get all three of those working together, you're in a very dark spot.

[656] And so if you cease comparing yourself to other people and you can keep the envy and resentment at bay, that's a really good thing.

[657] So, I'm not going to get through all 12 rules, not by any stretch of the imagination.

[658] I think I'll go to Rule 5, and I'll close with that.

[659] And it's a nice closing to where I started anyway, so that works out quite nicely.

[660] Rule 5 is don't let your children do anything that makes you dislike them.

[661] And it was a meditation on disciplinary strategies, and not just for kids, because we're all kids in some sense, you know, although a lot of us are, you know, larger and older and more beat up and bashed than your typical child.

[662] But the principles that work for children tend to work for adults, too.

[663] Don't let your children do anything that makes you dislike them.

[664] Well, there's a couple of pieces to that.

[665] One is, you have to admit that children can do things that make you dislike them.

[666] That's hard.

[667] And then you have to admit that you could dislike your own children.

[668] Now, everyone knows that, but no one likes to admit it.

[669] So it's better just to admit it and to notice that not only can children do things that make you dislike them, but your children can't.

[670] And sometimes that's because there's something wrong with you.

[671] You know, you're too damn touchy or you're too tyrannical, you're too short -tempered, or whatever it is.

[672] And so your children are doing perfectly good things, and you get mad at them, and that's on you.

[673] And that's partly why it's a good idea to have someone else around if you have children, which is, you know, generally why societies are in favor of monogamous relationships, because that's good for children, and a lot of it's because you have faults, and they'll manifest themselves when you have children, and your partner will also have faults that will manifest themselves when he has a child, let's say.

[674] But if you put the two of you together, your stupidities will more or less cancel out.

[675] And so, well, and it's a deep principle, actually, you know, because the reason that sex, itself evolved, is because there's a variety of reasons, but one of the reasons is that you have some genetic inadequacies, and so does your possible sexual partner, but the probability that you have the same inadequacies is very low.

[676] And so if you can put the two of you together, your inadequacies won't compile.

[677] They'll cancel.

[678] And the same thing applies when you form a permanent relationship with someone.

[679] You're going to have weaknesses, and so are they, but hopefully they won't overlap too much.

[680] And what that basically means, means that is as a unit, mother and father, let's say, as a unit you make one reasonably sane person.

[681] And then that reason, hopefully, and that assumes that you can communicate with each other as well and all of that.

[682] But at least you make one person who's saner than either of you would be alone, at least most of the time.

[683] And so that's very good for children, because then they have a person, a composite person around who's basically sane.

[684] And then you might say, well, what does the same person do for a child?

[685] And the answer is, act as a proxy for the rest of the world, right?

[686] This is a really useful thing to know.

[687] What are you as a parent?

[688] You're a judicious and merciful proxy for every other person.

[689] Why?

[690] Well, when you have a little child, mostly the only people they interact with, you know, fundamentally, well, first their mother, and then maybe their mother.

[691] and their father and then they're family members, but it's a small number of people to begin with, and then that number of people grows.

[692] And what you want to do, if you have children, is you want to teach them how to get along with other people, with other people.

[693] Because they're going to have to deal with other people for their whole life.

[694] So your fundamental goal as a parent is to produce a person that other people really want to have around.

[695] And that starts with them as children.

[696] So there's nothing more miserable than a child who can't find anyone to play with.

[697] right that is not good it is seriously and it's way worse than you think actually because the literature on this is crystal clear so there are kids who are hard to socialize at two most of them are male they tend to kick hit bite and steal two -year -olds now not all two -year -olds are like that but some of them are and most of the ones that are like that are male most of those kids are socialized by the age of four because they they're fortunate in their parents and so they're tough little ornery kids but the parents hem them in and teach them how to behave, regulate their behavior.

[698] And it isn't oppressive tyranny that's manifesting as discipline.

[699] It's the encouragement of reciprocal interactions.

[700] Play fair.

[701] Play fair, take turns, share, all of that, as the platform for reciprocal play.

[702] Most of those kids are socialized by four.

[703] Then they make a bunch of friends, and then the friends socialize them for the rest of their life.

[704] So that's basically what you're trying to do as a parent, with your kids, between the birth and age four, you want to turn your child into some child that other children like.

[705] And then when they hit four, they make friends, and then they have friends forever, and the friends socialize them.

[706] And then you can hang around in the background, judiciously refereeing, you know, when the friendship interactions go out of kilter.

[707] And that's your goal.

[708] If you don't socialize your child by the age of four, you will never see.

[709] socialize them.

[710] The research literature on that is horribly clear.

[711] So it's crucially important.

[712] And so, okay, so why should you not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them?

[713] Well, it's annoying for you, if your children are annoying, obviously, but we don't really care about you in this discussion.

[714] We care about your child.

[715] Now, if you and your spouse, make one reasonable person, and that reasonable person dislikes that child, then other people are going to dislike the child.

[716] And that's a really bad, unless you want your child not to be liked.

[717] Now, why would you want that?

[718] Well, if your child has no friends, maybe they'll never leave you.

[719] And, you know, that's a horrible thing.

[720] And that's the Freudian Oedipal nightmare.

[721] And if you're a therapist and you've worked with people for a long time, you see people in that horrible situation a lot.

[722] They were emotionally crippled by parents who did not want them to be successful and leave.

[723] And that is one ugly game.

[724] And it's very, very common.

[725] I never saw someone in my therapeutic practice who came and told me, my parents made me too independent.

[726] That never happened.

[727] Not even once.

[728] So the opposite, man, that happened a lot.

[729] And it wasn't pretty.

[730] So, well, so, you know, if you're allowing your children to be, dislikeable, then you might ask yourself exactly what the hell are you up to.

[731] And it might just be ignorance, and it might be cowardice, but it also might be malevolence.

[732] And those things are all worth considering.

[733] You don't let your children do anything that makes you dislike them, because if you dislike them, despite the fact that you love them and they're your children, then the probability that other people will dislike them is almost certain.

[734] And that is just not a good way to send them forward into the world.

[735] What you want to do instead is to contend with them.

[736] So you're watching them.

[737] And so when they're acting in a manner that makes you unbelievably happy that they're around, then you reward them for that.

[738] And you pat them on the head and you tell them that they're doing a good job.

[739] And when they break the rules and they whine and they and they and they and they act inappropriately and they refuse to share and they have temper tantrums and they won't act civilly and they won't say thank you and they won't behave in a manner that's attractive, then you let them know that that's a very bad idea, and you do that at a great level of detail, because then you make them extremely socially fluent, and then when you bring them to the playground, other kids will flock around them, and they will have as fine a life as they can have.

[740] And that's part of teaching them to do what I said at the beginning, which is to be courageous, and to know how to engage in reciprocal interactions, and to be brave.

[741] And so that's why you make them competent.

[742] And that's why you don't bother them when they're skateboarding, for example, which is Rule 11.

[743] You want to encourage your children and you want to make them competent.

[744] And so you want to, what would you say, encourage them to take their place in the world as competent and desirable human beings.

[745] And that's partly also to teach them to stand up straight with their shoulders back.

[746] And that's the end of the talk.

[747] Thank you very much.

[748] I like that ending.

[749] It was very Farris Gump.

[750] That's all I'm to say about that.

[751] Well, I am from Northern Alberta, you know.

[752] All right, here we go.

[753] We've got a whole bunch of great stuff.

[754] How do I recommend, how do you recommend that I introduce my left -leaning girlfriend to your content?

[755] Well, your best bet is probably to forbid her from watching any of it.

[756] That'd be my guess.

[757] If you want to get someone to do something, especially if there's someone you have an intimate relationship with it, to forbid it completely.

[758] That's a sure bet, man. There's an enforced monogamy joke here somewhere.

[759] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[760] Look, I have a lecture called a left -wing case for free speech.

[761] So that's a good introduction because somebody who's left -leaning isn't going to object to that in all probability.

[762] So you never know.

[763] but I think that's a good way in.

[764] And it's not like, you know, I already made the case tonight, for example.

[765] It's not like I don't see the utility of the left.

[766] The left proper, when the left is constituted properly, they provide a voice for people who are dispossessed by hierarchies.

[767] You need someone to do that because people get dispossessed by hierarchies all the time.

[768] And so you need part of the political distribution.

[769] And this is actually the case for people temperamentally, is to lay out a critique of power structures.

[770] Now, if you have any sense, you can criticize something without holding it in absolute contempt, you know.

[771] And so that's why I also make a case for hierarchies.

[772] We need hierarchies, but they can degenerate, and they do, and they do dispossess people.

[773] So we have to deal with that, and part of the eternal dialogue between the conservatives and the liberals is, well, is the hierarchy healthy in performing its proper function or has it become corrupt and is too steep and non -negotiable?

[774] You can't move in it and does it need to be does its health need to be restored?

[775] So anyways, the more specific answer is try the left -wing case for free speech lecture because that would be a good intro and perhaps one she wouldn't object to.

[776] And then, you know, if that doesn't work, you can find a different girlfriend.

[777] I got a nice bonus applause on that.

[778] What do you believe is the largest detriment Justin Trudeau could potentially cause Canada?

[779] This is also where people demand that you run for prime minister, so.

[780] I think the biggest permanent danger is to let the judiciary become too, active in the legislative process.

[781] That would really be hard on the country, and that's happening a lot, as far as I can tell.

[782] Increasingly, the legal system and the judiciary have taken it upon themselves to play the legislative role.

[783] And, you know, I think that's a consequence, at least in part of the introduction of the Bill of Rights under the previous Trudeau, which I think was a big mistake, and which we're going to pay for for a long time.

[784] But insofar as Trudeau, what would you say, abandons his legislative responsibilities, and also doesn't hem in the activist judiciary.

[785] That's the longest term danger that I see for Canada.

[786] So we'll see.

[787] Everything else can be undone, if necessary, but that would not be good.

[788] When's the last time you got really drunk?

[789] It was about eight months ago.

[790] I was with a friend in L .A., a novelist that I know there, and he, he, one of the characters in one of his books, the character's name is Even Smoke, and he's an aficionado of rare vodka.

[791] And one of the consequences of that is that this novelist is now flooded with rare vodkas from all over the world, because the vodka manufacturers are hoping that he might mention their vodka in one of his books.

[792] and he doesn't have a propensity to do that but he's quite appreciative of all the rare vodka and so he made me a lot of martinis and I had a great time although I was not very healthy when I did that and I was so just about dead the next day that it was absolutely painful and I don't think it was worth it but it was close man it was close as a high school teacher and department head of social science I have an opportunity to have a voice that matters.

[793] How do I help my department clean their room?

[794] God, that's a hard question, man. Well, I think what you have to do in a situation like that when you're trying to orient a group.

[795] The best way to orient a group is to begin by orienting yourself.

[796] You know, if you have a job, there's going to be some things about the job.

[797] that really grind against your conscience.

[798] And that's especially the case if the job starts to tilt in an ideological direction or in a corrupt direction.

[799] And, you know, usually what happens is the job tilts a little bit and people don't say anything.

[800] And then because they don't say anything, the people who tilted it get a little braver and they tilt it a little more.

[801] And then the people who didn't say anything have already learned not to say anything and they're a little more intimidated.

[802] So they really don't say anything.

[803] Then it tilts a little bit more and so forth until the whole thing is completely.

[804] completely out of kilter.

[805] That can happen.

[806] That does happen all the time and it can be catastrophic.

[807] That's certainly what happened in the terrible totalitarian communist regimes in places like Russia, right?

[808] I mean, things started to go out of hand and people didn't say anything and by the time, well, and they just got so out of hand that it was beyond comprehension and no one could ever say anything true about anything ever.

[809] And that was hell and that's what people lived in.

[810] And so what I would say is if you're trying to clean up an organization, the first thing you want to do is, have a discussion with your own conscience and figure out what it is that the organization is doing that you just can't tolerate in good conscience.

[811] You know, and you can think about that.

[812] Like I said already, I mentioned already that one of the worst, that there are three things that can really do you in in life.

[813] It was resentment, that was one.

[814] Arrogance.

[815] Arrogance means you think you already know and deceit lying.

[816] Those three things, man, they're deadly.

[817] But resentment is actually unbelievably useful.

[818] That's the thing that's quite cool, especially if you're an agreeable person, by the way, who tends to put other people before you, because that's sort of the definition of being agreeable.

[819] It's a personality trait.

[820] Your resentment is actually a really good friend, because if you get resentful about something, there's only one of two things that can mean.

[821] One is, you should grow the hell up and stop whining.

[822] And the second is, you're being oppressed and taken advantage of and you have something to say.

[823] And so then you've got to figure out which of those it is, you know, and hopefully you have somebody around you can talk to, and you can say, look, this is really irritating me at work.

[824] Like, I'm finding it difficult to do my job without always being angry, or I find it difficult to be in this relationship without always being angry.

[825] Is it me, or is there something rotten here that I need to do something about?

[826] And that's really worth sorting out, because if it's you, well, then maybe you could fix that.

[827] And if it's the situation, well, then maybe you have some things that you have to say.

[828] And so the first thing you do when you're trying to clean up an organization is to figure out, well, what is it that you find intolerable about the organization?

[829] What makes you resentful?

[830] Then you've got to go have a discussion with someone.

[831] You say, look, here's all the things about this organization that are just making it hard for me to do anything but go to work and make things worse.

[832] Because if you're really resentful at work, it's not like you're going to do a good job.

[833] You can easily get to the point where the primary, the primary, function you have at work is sabotage, right?

[834] That's a good indication that something's going wrong.

[835] So you need to talk this through with someone or think it through, which is harder, but maybe you can talk it through with someone.

[836] You have to figure out what is it about this situation that's intolerable, what makes it intolerable?

[837] You've got to get a detailed analysis of that, and then you have to think, okay, which of those intolerable things could I start to address carefully?

[838] You know, without too much cost to me or to anyone else, because you probably can't go after the whole problem at once.

[839] You know, if it's deeply rooted rot, you're going to have to start on the periphery.

[840] Think, okay, well, are there other people that I can...

[841] Are there other people that I know who I think might be equally annoyed about this set of occurrences?

[842] Could I talk to them?

[843] Could we figure out a potential alternative?

[844] Could we start to talk about it?

[845] And then you generate allies, you generate people who are, well, who have the same problem and who might be willing to take somewhat of a risk to fix it.

[846] And then you expand that outward, you know.

[847] So you tell yourself the truth about your situation, you make a strategic plan that's dedicated to make things better, and you start to communicate that carefully to people that you think might be suffering from the same problem.

[848] and then hopefully that can scale upward.

[849] And that can really work.

[850] Like I've seen people turn pretty corrupt organizations around with caution and truth, you know, but they had to think through the situation very carefully.

[851] And that's the situation you're in.

[852] But it's a good situation to be in in some sense because it can make you tough and smart to undertake something like that, right?

[853] Because you have to be real awake to manage that kind of improvement.

[854] you know and the other thing too is if you're skeptical about something and it's bothering you this is what I used to tell my students all the time if they had a question it's like you have a question you think it's stupid but if you have it might be and if you weren't paying attention it's probably stupid and then if you feel stupid when you ask it it serves you right because you weren't paying attention but assuming you were paying attention if you have a question it's probably not because you're stupider than everyone else if you have the question and so does everyone else, then they're afraid to ask it.

[855] But if you ask it, everybody will be happy.

[856] And so, and this is the thing in a rotten organization, too, is that if something's really bugging you, assuming that you're not too pathological and you've learned to play well with others, then there's an unbelievably high probability that's bothering almost everyone and no one's saying anything about it.

[857] And so then if you come out and you say something about it carefully, you'll often find that you have way more supporters than detractors.

[858] And that's very, very frequently the case.

[859] You know, and if you don't, well, then maybe you're wrong, or maybe you just, maybe you're also very sensitive, and you notice when things go wrong before other people.

[860] Probably, though, you're wrong.

[861] So, you know, if you don't get support, if you're careful and truthful, and you don't get support, well, then maybe something else is wrong.

[862] But generally, you will.

[863] And so, I would also say, the other thing that's worth knowing is that corrupt ideologues are cowardly and weak.

[864] and so if you stand up to them and you don't apologize when they go after you they will go away and you will win but you have to be able to withstand that initial flash of outrage and if you apologize during that flash of outrage you are done and that isn't to say you should never apologize but you should never apologize to a mob you can apologize to a person and you can tell them what you did wrong and how you would fix it in the future and then hopefully they will forgive you, but you can't apologize to a mob and you shouldn't.

[865] So if you're going to take on the responsibility of trying to straighten something out and you're going to say what you think, then be prepared for the backlash and don't get too terrified and don't apologize.

[866] If you don't get too terrified and you don't apologize, it'll probably blow over in a couple of weeks or maybe a couple of months and you'll live through it.

[867] But if you lose your nerve and you apologize, you are so dead.

[868] So don't do that.

[869] That's a mistake.

[870] You don't backtrack once you've started.

[871] That's the thing.

[872] Is that the beauty of sort of surviving all the hit pieces that they've put out on you over the past couple months?

[873] You never apologize for anything.

[874] You may have clarified something, but you survived.

[875] And just by surviving, all of these people get a little more room to stand up and say what they've been.

[876] Well, so far so good.

[877] You know, I've been fortunate because I haven't said anything fatally stupid yet, apparently.

[878] So that, you know, I think being careful with what you say also really matters, but yeah, it's like, well, that's what I've learned over the last couple of years, is that you say something, it's controversial, there'll be a real flash of outrage and a tremendous amount of venom directed at you.

[879] And it's very easy to lose your nerve then.

[880] But if you do, and you apologize.

[881] The thing is, is that the mob is, the mob is, the same people, eh?

[882] That's the thing that's so interesting.

[883] So let's say you say something and a mob comes after you.

[884] And so you're thinking, oh, well, that isn't good.

[885] And maybe I'm wrong because, look, a whole mob is coming after me. And, you know, maybe that's worth thinking about.

[886] So then you apologize.

[887] Well, maybe that mob is satisfied with your apology.

[888] But then there's another mob that will mob because you apologized.

[889] And it's a different mob, but you don't care because one mob with pitchforks is the same as the next mob with pitchforks as far as you're concerned.

[890] And so because you can't have a dialogue with them.

[891] This is why groups don't have rights as far as I'm concerned.

[892] Groups don't have rights because they don't have responsibilities.

[893] You can't hold a group accountable for anything.

[894] So obviously a group can't have rights because rights and responsibilities are the mirror image of one another.

[895] And so, well, it's why you can't have a discussion with a mob.

[896] Is the mob morphs and changes and get rid of one mob by apologizing you just get another one?

[897] You see this happening on Twitter all the time now, you know?

[898] happened with Scarlett Johansson recently, right?

[899] She was going to, she was an actress, is an actress, and was going to play a trans woman, I think, right?

[900] And, you know, the Twitter mob said, actresses can't play roles that they aren't, which seems a bit, seems like pushing it a little bit to me. And, you know, she backed off.

[901] And that was exactly the wrong thing to do.

[902] I know why she did it and all of that, but it was the wrong thing.

[903] to do.

[904] You don't back down to an idiot mob because then you get weak and they get stronger.

[905] And I don't know if you want to get weaker when you're being chased by a mob.

[906] And you certainly don't want it to get stronger.

[907] So you know, put your staff in the sand carefully and don't abandon your post.

[908] Is there any part of your life that you miss before this newfound thing?

[909] I have moments of of thoughtless nostalgia, but, you know, I did these biblical lectures last year, and I concentrated in the last part on the Abrahamic stories, and they were really interesting to me. I didn't know them that well before I started doing the lectures, although I knew the first part of the biblical stories quite well.

[910] And what I was really struck by in those stories was how much they were adventure stories.

[911] I didn't really realize that.

[912] You know, with Abraham himself, for example, he was called forward by God to go out into the world, even though he was kind of old and stayed in his mother's basement for far too long.

[913] And, because he's like 80 when he finally went out into the world.

[914] And, you know, he's called forward to an adventure by, by God.

[915] And he goes out into the world to have his adventure.

[916] And the first thing he runs into is a famine and then a tyranny and then people try to take his wife and you got to think he's thinking jesus i just should have stayed in the tent man because what what's this you know and but what i liked about those stories was their essential insistence that life is an adventure and not a safe adventure well what's a safe adventure that's not an adventure right that's that's a safe space that's not an adventure and life is an adventure and so you play your cards let's say and the game unfolds and as it unfolds you let go of those parts of yourself that aren't along for the adventure and so I don't miss my previous life because I'm in for the adventure and it would be ungrateful to pine for the past especially when I've been granted It's been stressful and demanding, but that's not so bad for things to be stressful and demanding.

[917] I mean, life is stressful and demanding, for God's sake.

[918] It's like, that's just how it is.

[919] But I've been rewarded in all of that by these unbelievable opportunities.

[920] And so it would be ungrateful in the extreme to pretend that, well, you know, all of this notoriety and opportunity, well, it's pretty weighty.

[921] and it would be nice just to go back to the sort of peaceful life I had before.

[922] Like, someone should just slap me if I say that, you know?

[923] Because it's ungrateful.

[924] And it has been very challenging and demanding and dangerous because I've been in a situation, although it's less the case now, but I've been in a situation for about two years where if I said anything stupid, I was dead.

[925] And luckily that didn't happen, and that meant that I had to be awake.

[926] a lot and careful.

[927] But the consequences of that are so overwhelmingly positive that I'd have to be an ungrateful fool to wish for anything other than what I have.

[928] You know, and well, you've been part of this and you've watched these lectures and like, there is positive a thing not only as ever has ever happened to me, but really as I could imagine.

[929] And so that's great.

[930] And so, and thank all of you for coming and participating in this and all of that because it's an amazing thing, you know.

[931] And I should also say, I'm also fortunate, you know, because my wife travels with me, and she's also in for the adventure, and she just let go of her old life completely, just let it go, and she's on the road with me and helping me out and planning and helping me be a reasonable person.

[932] The two of us together make one reasonable person, as I said before.

[933] And, you know, she's, I've also really been struck by her ability to just let go.

[934] That's sacrifice, right?

[935] That's what a sacrifice is in part, is to let go of the parts of you that are no longer useful in your current endeavor.

[936] He's let go and let go and let go and let go.

[937] That's a good thing, not to look backwards or you'll be turned into a pillar of salt.

[938] Right.

[939] What do you think is the greatest negative consequence of demographic group disparity?

[940] It's probably the generation of envy and hatred.

[941] I would say that.

[942] that's the biggest danger.

[943] The second biggest danger is probably the absolute poverty that might be associated with it, and then the third biggest danger would probably be the relative poverty.

[944] But I think the biggest existential danger is probably the envy and hatred that it generates, because that's very, very dangerous.

[945] So that's what it looks like to me. I guess there's one other thing though I guess I don't exactly like the question and the question is ill -formed to some degree because demographics sounds like something but it's a box into which you can put a very large number of things in fact an indefinite number of things and so no matter how egalitarian the world is there are there will inevitably be dimensions along which people radically differ.

[946] There's no getting rid of the inequality.

[947] And so you say demographics and you think, well, age, sex, ethnicity, race.

[948] It's like, yeah, those are the four that everyone is noticing at the moment.

[949] But they're not even necessarily the four canonical demographic differences.

[950] Attractiveness, height, health, intelligence, education.

[951] et cetera, et cetera, prowess, talent, and there's multiple talents.

[952] So people differ.

[953] People can be grouped into an indefinite number of groups.

[954] And there's going to be profound differences in the performance, privilege, and oppression along every one of those divisions.

[955] And so that's why I think that it's the envy and the hatred that's the worst.

[956] because the consequence of breaking up the world like that and then viewing the inequalities is that that's going to generate envy and hatred and that'll take everyone down.

[957] So one of the things I figured out, I've been writing the preface to the 50th anniversary edition of the Guleg Archipelago.

[958] And so I've been working on that for about the last month.

[959] And I've been trying to figure out why the Russian Revolution went so wrong, so quick, because it went wrong right away, even though, hypothetically, it was motivated by the highest of ideals.

[960] I figured something out about that, too.

[961] The highest of ideals requires the most extreme sacrifices and justifies them, right?

[962] The more, what would you say, the more stellar the target, the more the sacrifice is justified.

[963] Okay, but you could flip that, so then the question is, well, who or what do you sacrifice?

[964] And the answer might be, well, all the people that are in the way.

[965] Well, then you might say, well, maybe you don't have any utopian vision.

[966] You just have, you've just generated an excuse to sacrifice everyone who's in your way.

[967] And so that's part of the reason why the Russian Revolution went wrong.

[968] It's because we think, oh, the utopian vision, oh, that justifies the sacrifice.

[969] It's like, yeah, if you assume that the people who hold the utopian vision are saints, and that all that's motivating them is the purity of their vision, and that they're actually only after what they're after, and they're only after that for good things.

[970] It's like, you know anyone like that?

[971] No. And if you think you're someone like that, then you're definitely not.

[972] So maybe the utopian vision is generated to justify the murder rather than the other way around.

[973] And I really think that that's, I really think there's something to that.

[974] And then I was thinking, too, well, we need a vision of the future to work towards, and we have to make sacrifices to make that vision a reality.

[975] You know, you have to make sacrifices to improve your life.

[976] Everyone knows that.

[977] Well, so then what's wrong with the sacrifice on a mass scale?

[978] Well, the question is, something has to be sacrificed.

[979] What's the proper answer to what should be sacrificed?

[980] and the proper answer seems to be you, not them.

[981] That's why I think the Judeo -Christian substructure that our society fits into is correct, because what it demands is individual sacrifice.

[982] It's you that's not good enough.

[983] It's your fault.

[984] You should improve yourself.

[985] You don't sacrifice other people to your utopian vision.

[986] If it's someone else, if it's the class enemy, if it's someone else, then your vision is suspect.

[987] And so, and that's all buried in that question, hey, because it assumes that you can divide people into groups, that you can get the division right.

[988] They can divide them into the haves and the have -nots, and that that fundamental inequality is somehow unjust.

[989] Now, sometimes there is injustice, but it's a very dangerous way of parsing up the world.

[990] So then the perfect follow -up, which I was going to get to anyway, can individualism then go too far?

[991] bar.

[992] Oh, well, definitely.

[993] But I'm not talking about individualism, fundamentally.

[994] I'm talking about individual responsibility.

[995] You know, so that's different because individualism is often your privileges and your rights.

[996] You know, and that's often our conversation about individualism, especially in the last 60 years, has all been about our individual rights.

[997] Well, that can go way too far.

[998] That's just narcissism if it's pushed too far.

[999] Say, no, Forget about that.

[1000] Individual responsibility.

[1001] Can that go too far?

[1002] Well, usually it doesn't.

[1003] Because, you know, you don't meet someone very often.

[1004] You say, that person's just too responsible.

[1005] But that can happen.

[1006] That can happen.

[1007] You know, because it's okay to share the burden.

[1008] Right?

[1009] You don't have to do every, you should try to do everything you can yourself.

[1010] You should try to do that.

[1011] It's shoulder as much responsibility as you can.

[1012] But what's important is the you can part of that.

[1013] You know, and I've tested this with a lot of my clients.

[1014] So one of the populations of people I worked with were people who were very, very, they were stellar lawyers in very high functioning firms.

[1015] And so they were people who were working 70 or 80 hours a week flat out all the time.

[1016] And they were kind of wired for that.

[1017] They wouldn't have never been in a position like that or what would you had, had the ambition for a position like that, unless that was the sort of people they were, very, very conscientious.

[1018] And the question.

[1019] And the question is, well, how much should I work?

[1020] Well, and part of the answer is, well, you should work flat out.

[1021] Well, okay, what does that mean?

[1022] Well, do you work yourself to exhaustion today?

[1023] Well, that doesn't bode very well for tomorrow.

[1024] So, no, maybe you work yourself to exhaustion over a week, but then you've got the next week to deal with.

[1025] And so one of the things that I worked out with these people who were prone to take excess responsibility was how much can you tolerate if you're playing an iterated game that sort of goes back to the discussion we had at the beginning of this lecture about you know the fact that things iterate and so the ethic that emerges has to be an iterated ethic it has to work across situations you shouldn't work so hard that you wear yourself out because then you can't work I mean there's other reasons you shouldn't do it as well but you can't work any harder You can't take any more responsibility than you can sustain.

[1026] And so there's a bit of mercy in that.

[1027] And so even individual responsibility can go too far.

[1028] But it usually doesn't.

[1029] And so generally individualism goes too far because people harp on about their rights and their privileges.

[1030] So you counteract that and you say, no, forget about that.

[1031] The only reason you have rights to begin with in some sense is so that you can bear your responsibility properly.

[1032] And then if you do that, you work for yourself, but you also work for your family at the same time and you work for your family and yourself at the same time as you're working for your community.

[1033] So that kind of binds the individual into the collective in the proper manner.

[1034] And then you don't take more responsibility than you can sustainably bear.

[1035] And that means that you're being fair to yourself.

[1036] And then that also means that you can be productive over the longest period of time.

[1037] So that works out quite nicely.

[1038] What I did with most of these lawyer types what I did with them usually was they couldn't work fewer hours a day because that just wasn't in the cards if you have a really demanding job working fewer hours a day that ain't going to happen but what we would often do is schedule four day weekends three months in advance you know fairly regularly say no you've got to take four days off scheduled out so far that you can and then what we did was track their billable hours which is an indication of their productivity and almost inevitably what happened was the more time they took off in vacation, the higher their billable hours became.

[1039] They actually got more productive by backing off a bit.

[1040] And so that was a good example of the proper binding of excess individual responsibility.

[1041] Sometimes if you're better to yourself, like in a fundamental way, then you actually doesn't make that much, you know, it's not that mysterious.

[1042] You get more productive and things work out better for you.

[1043] So.

[1044] All right, one more.

[1045] Well, a lot of people ask about boxers or briefs again, but I'm going to let it fly tonight.

[1046] do you do for fun peterson hang out with alt -right gateway comedians no names i can i'll lead you on one when we had dinner a couple weeks ago you you drove me home in a convertible blast in the radio yeah i could tell the way you were taking those turns through the hollywood hills you like driving yeah that was fun yeah absolutely yes yeah driving sports cars with loud music that's that's that's that's that's definitely fun.

[1047] I thought if there's a way to go, it's with Peterson right off the Hollywood time.

[1048] I'll remember that.

[1049] I'll remember that next time we're driving.

[1050] Yeah.

[1051] Yeah.

[1052] Anything else for fun?

[1053] I like to spend time with my kids and my wife mostly.

[1054] So that, and I have friends and I have a grandchild now and we weren't sure that was going to happen because my daughter hasn't been particularly healthy, but she is now and she has a child.

[1055] And so that's really cool.

[1056] And So those are good things.

[1057] Those are good things indeed.

[1058] On that note, I'm going to get out of the way.

[1059] Shout out to my man in the Rubin Report shirt right over there, by the way.

[1060] And give it up, guys.

[1061] For Jordan Peterson, everybody.

[1062] If you enjoyed this lecture, please rate this podcast five stars at Apple Podcasts.

[1063] Leave us a comment or review and share the link to this episode with a friend.

[1064] You might think about picking up Dad's books, Maps of Meaning, the Architecture of Belief, or his newer bestseller, 12 Rules for Life and Antidote to Chaos.

[1065] Both of these works delve much deeper into the topics covered in the Jordan v. Peterson podcast.

[1066] See Jordan B. Peterson .com for audio, e -book, and text links, or pick up the books at your favorite bookseller.

[1067] Next episode on the Jordan B. Peterson podcast will be a conversation between Bishop Barron and Dad.

[1068] Bishop Robert Emmett Barron was a professor of systematic theology at the University of St. Mary of the Lake.

[1069] He founded the Catholic Ministry Word on Fire and has published a number of books, including Catholicism, a journey to the heart of the faith.

[1070] He has a large YouTube and Facebook presence and is among the rare religious figures managing a substantial public impact in the present world.

[1071] Their conversation took place March 26th, 2019.

[1072] Religion speaks to these deepest longings of the heart, and I think you've, for a lot of people, made that again possible, at least to think coherently and rationally about those things.

[1073] So I found that very uplifting and helpful, and I think a lot of people have too.

[1074] Enjoy your week.

[1075] Hopefully you enjoyed this lecture, and you're also enjoying the sun.

[1076] Toronto's finally sunny.

[1077] It's wonderful.

[1078] I'll talk to you next week.

[1079] 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.

[1080] 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.

[1081] dot com.

[1082] 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.

[1083] That's self -authoring .com.

[1084] From the Westwood One podcast network.