Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs (4K)

You say you are morally obligated to do extraordinary things, well I think partly because life is so difficult and challenging that unless you give it

your

all, the chances are very high that it will make you bitter and then you will be a force for darkness. . and it's not good, then you know that the fact that life is short and can be brutal can terrify you into hiding and avoiding it, but you can also turn that around and understand that since you are everywhere, so too You could Well, take risks that are adventurous and that's very good to understand and what's also useful to understand in that way is that there is nothing more adventurous than the truth.

This is something that took me a long time to discover. well, you can craft

your

words to get what you want, you know, and people do that all the time, they craft their words to avoid taking responsibility for things they should be responsible for, they can craft their words to get an advantage that actually they do not have. You don't deserve it, that's what you do when you manipulate and the problem with that you could say, well why not do it if I can get what I want and the answer is you're not necessarily the best judge of what you need and it's easy ? be diluted in what you want and that's the kind of delusions that people chase if they chase power, if instead you decide that you're just going to say what you think is true, you have to put aside the consequences and you might think well no.

I want to let go of the consequences because I want to control what's happening but what you miss then is the Adventure because if you don't control what's happening you don't know what the hell is going to happen and maybe that's exciting and actually there's no doubt about it and then you have the added advantage if you try to say what you believe to be true and try to act in the way that you think is most appropriate, which is genuinely yours and you have the strength. of reality behind you and obviously that's what you have, if you're trying to say live in the truth, you have the force of reality behind you, that seems like a good deal, then you have reality and adventure, so, Why is that a moral? obligation because if you hide and do not let out what is inside you and do not bring to the world what you could bring and you become cynical and bitter you will begin to do very dark things so you will begin not only Won't you add to the world what you could add ?

But you'll start to get jealous of people who are competent and doing well and work to

destroy

them, so that's really the road to hell, one of the trends I've been railing against. The most recent thing has been cynicism is this generalized belief that everything is terrible and can't get better and the people who believe it can get better are stupid and delusional and the problem and I don't know where it comes from, I don't know. I don't know, it's the beginning of wisdom cynicism, this is part of the reason why it's hard to combat, you know, because people start out naive and naive people are optimistic, but in reality they're just naive. and naive people have no idea there is anything.

They say malevolence in the world they have no idea that there is malevolence in their own hearts they are protected and they are dependent and when that is broken it often turns into cynicism and then cynicism is actually an improvement the veils have fallen from your eyes exactly exactly the problem with cynicism is that, especially if it's allied with a kind of arrogance, you can end up there and that's a big mistake, so the question is what is it once you've been bitten hard and you're no longer naive, well, that is very difficult. As for your optimism, let's say it, then the question is how to restore that without reverting to naivety, which you can't do anyway without blinding yourself once you've been bitten and the answer is that you replace naivety with courage and you and You regain your optimism as a moral imperative, so one of the things you might ask yourself is: if the future is likely to be catastrophic in a variety of different ways, which is definitely the case both socially and personally, then what attitude should you adopt?

Be patient with that and the answer might be good, if you were brave and faithful and I can explain what that means, then you would behave in a way that you would face the future head on with the presumption that you can handle it and this is the presumption. We should politically assert now these people who are using fear to point out the various apocalypses that could befall us and it is difficult to counter them because the future is always an apocalyptic horizon as if everything could fall apart and has done so before and could well die again and, In fact, it will die in your life as you get older, so it's very easy to conjure up an apocalypse, then the question becomes isn't that apocalypse potentially real because the answer is yes, but what attitude should you have? towards that naïve that's not good cynical that's better but still not good it's another form of hell and it also tends to make potential apocalypses more likely, so what do you have when you move beyond cynicism and what do you have When do you move further?

Cynicism is wisdom and that is not naive, it is Brave. One of the things that religious people have done relatively poorly, especially in recent years, is that they have failed to delineate the relationship between faith and courage. You know, people like Dawkins and the new atheists point to Faith and describe it as something like believing in silly superstitions, but that's not really what faith means in the deepest sense: it means that you are willing to enact the proposition that you can ride the wave no matter how big it is and we all can. Let's do that together, especially if we do it in Goodwill and I think it is a much more appropriate way to face the future and it is also the right medicine for cynicism.

Now, the other thing that cynics see, the other thing about cynicism is It's also interesting that cynics are not cynical enough about their own cynicism, because you can become dubious enough to start doubting the validity of your own cynicism. It's like what makes you so smart, what makes you the judge of what you know the Coline children were like. So, you know, they decided that existence itself was unsustainable given its cruelty and that the appropriate response was to raise a giant middle finger to men, men and God, well, here's a way to be cynical about cynicism, right?

How does your cynicism free you? hook, how does your cynicism justify your desire to avoid necessary responsibility and pursue your own short-term hedonic benefits? It's like why aren't you cynical about your own doubts? And that is another place where wisdom begins. It's like that, so there are two. cynicism defeats naivety, but it is not the final destination and you should be cynical enough to question the moral validity of your own resentment and your own resentment and your own what would you say? of your withdrawal from the world the way I see it since we do not know the future since many of our motivations are invisible to us.

We are not a glass pool into which we can see. You have to have some kind of illusion about what will happen in the future. You are doing your best. to see how it will be, but given that the glass can be half empty or half full, why not have a delirium that will also serve as one of hope in your face and in the understanding that things can be difficult and that there will be obstacles, yes, there was a line of social psychology that followed that argument for quite a while and that argued that people had to have positive illusions about the future and that was the fundamental way that people avoided despair. and it boosted their self-esteem, but I don't think we don't need to separate the distinction between fantasy and deception.

You have a fantasy about the future. You have to do it because, like you said, it's not structured, so you have to do it. you have to provisionally map the future, that is what a plan is, a strategy is correct, but that does not make it an illusion, since it becomes an illusion when the map has no relation to the underlying territory, so If you have a strategy for the future, You know, maybe let's say your strategy for the future, just to argue, is that you have 5 million YouTube subscribers in three years. Well, you don't have strict evidence that it will because anything could happen between now and 3 years from now, say, but there's no reason to call that an illusion, it's a path of hypothetically possible potential and then you can make the necessary sacrifices. to achieve it, so even though it's a fantasy, it maps something that is It's not a hoax, it's a hoax.

When you ignore elements of your own experience that would inform your fantasy more effectively, you are ignoring them in order to live in a positive representation of the future without having to pay the appropriate price. Price for this reason one of my favorite ideas that I learned in recent years is Isaiah Belin's Inner Citadel, do you know this? So Isaiah Belin says that when the natural paths to human fulfillment are blocked, human beings withdraw into themselves and become self-involved. and to try to create internally that world which some evil destiny has denied you externally, that is a deception.

Many times, if you can't get from the world what you really want, you must teach yourself not to want it, if you can't get what you want, you must teach yourself. Wanting what you can get is a very common form of deep spiritual retreat in a kind of inner citadel in which you lock yourself up against all the terrible evils of the world. Mutual Rob Henderson explained it in a simpler way if your leg is injured you can try to treat the M leg and if you can't then you cut off the leg and announce that the desire to have legs is wrong and must be repressed and I think we see this everywhere, well, then imagine that.

You design a plan and it hits an impediment and eliminates the slots under the plan. Good, now you leave. Well, now you have a choice when you retire and one choice is to build a fantasy world in which you are. Getting revenge on those who wronged you and getting what you want is a path to madness, so often people who develop severe delusions develop, what would you call them, their compensatory fantasies and then begin to live in them and then often, for hundreds of years? hours, so the kids again who dropped out of Coline High School lived in a fantasy world for hundreds of hours before carrying out their terrible actions, but you can also turn to yourself, let's say, and you can this is how Confession and atonement is an appropriate way to think about it, you can think about what you did wrong or insufficiently that led to the collapse of your plan, so that's the first investigation.

I made some sacrifices. I tried to achieve something in particular. In the future it didn't happen, okay? Why? Well, the world is against me and the cosmos is evil and there is no God and I am bitter and cynical. That's a possible explanation, right, poor me, right, and I'm not trying to do it. Be flippant about it because sometimes people's dreams are quite realistic and they still fail catastrophically. You know it can be brutal. You know, maybe you made a lot of good decisions and suddenly you got sick or someone in your family did and everything went to hell.

For you, it doesn't have to be because you've done something incredibly stupid and you fail. You know it's built into the fabric of the world, but it doesn't matter. You can also retreat into yourself and say something like, "Okay." I need to restructure my conception of strategy but also potentially my conception of goal. You know, maybe I'm looking in the wrong place, maybe I have to look somewhere else and you may open yourself up to a revelation, so there is a gospel statement that is very relevant. To this, Christ tells his followers that if you knock on the door it will open, if you ask you will receive and if you seek you will find, and it sounds like magic, it sounds like the kind of thing the new atheists do.

I'd be very amused, but that's not a wise interpretation of that saying, the proper interpretation is something more like a recognition of the way thinking works, so imagine that your plans didn't work out. Now you sit and say. You yourself would like to know even if the world was conspiring against me and my failure was 95% the fault of external events and other people what I did that wasn't as good as it could have been and where I failed to look for the probability of my failure. I was older now to ask that question you have to want the answer that's what it means to touch or ask or search this this is not a joke it's like you have to want to know and It's a very painful thing because, especially if you've given it, you're in To the best of your ability and you have reasons to be bitter, you are going to look for the mistakes you still made and you will discover your own mistakes.

It's always extremely painful, especially if they're mistakes that you're in love with and that's why you have to be willing to bare yourself, that's what humility fundamentally means and then, but the upside is that's why it's so helpful to listen to people. You could find out where you are stupid and then you could stop being stupid and then one of the reasons why you confess your sins let's say it is because you want to find out where you are insufficient.now it is painful you know it is painful to find an impediment in the form of another person's opinion that could show you where you are blind and ignorant or even willfully blind but the advantage of this is that you can rectify the mistake and then as you go forward, you are stronger.

You know one of the things I taught my kids and I hope with at least some success was that you should always ask a stupid question and stuff. doesn't mean the kind of question someone who wasn't paying attention would ask if you're listening to someone and you don't understand what they're saying and you reveal that you're revealing your ignorance, you know that and maybe you're in a room full of people and you think you're the one. The only person stupid enough not to understand it, which is very rare, by the way, if you reveal that ignorance to yourself and others. person, they can rectify it and if you do that a thousand times you are no longer ignorant and this is also a real path to success.

You see, you do this because you ask real questions on your podcast and Rogan does this well. Rogan always trying to be a little bit smarter than he already is and then that works iteratively, like if you ask a thousand dumb questions and hear the answer, then you'll know a thousand things, some of them profound, that you didn't know before, so that's all. The ADV sets out to search your soul for, let's say, unrequited sins and try to atone for that. That's not a deception, right, it's an attempt to correct you, it's the opposite of a deception, although there may be a fantastical element to it, yes. , the conversation. around people who try their best do as many things right as they can and still fall short because the world is random and unfortunate things happen, happiness as far as I can see is found in the gap between your expectations and reality, but the problem here is that people who have high standards often end up feeling lacking, right?

How can people who strive like this avoid feeling dejected for not meeting their own high standards? I've heard you talk about the Statue of David saying something like not everyone that you could be is, yeah, and as soon as you put forward an ideal, you start comparing yourself to that ideal, so that's a good question, I mean, the ultimate ideal is also the ultimate judge, because the ultimate ideal is something you fall against. very short and that could be so painful that you can barely stand it, but then what you do is two things, I guess, you lower the ideal and you raise your estimate of your potential and what do I mean by lower?

Ideally, if you are comparing yourself to someone or even a future self and the Gap is so painful that it paralyzes you, then you have created a dragon that you don't have the tools to master and so what do you do? What you need to do is reduce the size of the dragon and you want to reduce the size of the dragon until it is a size that you are willing to move towards, no matter how small it is. Now you know that if you are here, your ideal is here and that. The gap is unbearable, so reduce the gap and reduce the gap and you will have to do it anyway because you will not move from where you are to perfect in one fell swoop, there will be incremental steps, so you have to complete that hierarchy of progression with a representation high enough resolution so you can start moving forward and then you should be a booster.

There is another comment on the gospel that is very interesting and has to do with the so-called principle of Matthew and the principle of Matthew is that those who have everything will be given more and those who have nothing will have everything taken away from them. Now it is brutal because it implies That's how reality works when you're ascending and you're doing well and that's quite nice. much better than this, but when you are going down, you go like this, it's like downhill, cliff, okay, so you should avoid the downhill path, well, if the uphill path is like this, which is like exponential, let's say, or geometric , so what?

What it means is that it doesn't matter how big the first steps you take uphill, even if they are trivial, even if they are embarrassing in their size, because you are so useless that if you are, if you are disciplined. in that you will accelerate extraordinarily fast and that's the good news you could say is that you can take very small steps, even ones that may be embarrassing in their size and you have to admit it to yourself, but once you start rolling it doesn't roll in any way. linear, it rolls geometrically and it's really good to know because it can ease the pain of realizing your own stupidity.

It's like, you know that everyone has their weak sides, let's say. things they were ashamed of when I started going to the gym. I was wondering: how old was he? 1985, 23, I think I was 135 lbs and was F 6'1, very very thin, a TW. I write a 27 inch waist, something like that. I smoked like crazy and drank too much like I wasn't in good shape the first few attempts I made at the gym I went to this swimming class Jesus, it was me and this very fat young guy is probably in no worse shape than me and like seven old ladies over 70 years old who could outswim me like it was pretty humiliating, so I did that for a semester and got in better shape and then I started going to the gym to work out. lifting weights and that was hard too because you know I'd be under the damn bench press trying to lift 75 pounds off the rest and you know some muscle bastard would come and tell me how to do it and it's like, yeah, thanks, but you know it's embarrassing and A lot of times people don't do things like go to the gym because they're embarrassed about how they look or what kind of shape they are in and it's a pain to begin with. from the bottom but you start from the bottom where you are weak and if you want to rectify what is weak you have to accept the fact that you are at the bottom and that the first steps are going to be painful you know it took me about 3 years but I quit smoking and then I stopped drinking and gained 40 pounds of muscle in about three and a half years, something like that.

Basically I had to stop doing that because I had to eat like six times a day, it was crazy, but I became much more physically confident and much more coordinated because training with dumbbells makes you coordinate well because it exercises all the small ligaments and tendons, so my lower body in particular was coordinated much more than I could dance. It was better when I went out dancing because I did a lot of that in grad school and but the point of all this is that if you are going to rectify your weaknesses you have to admit your inadequacy in the face of your own shame now if the gap between you and your ideal is so big it paralyzes you, you cringe, that's right, we'll talk to Jordan again in a minute, but first I need to tell you about the Maui Nei deer.

Maui Nei venison is the most protein and nutrient dense. red meat on the planet thank you and they are also the only stress free 100% wild harvested meat available my favorite method to cook it is straight from frozen salt on both sides 12 minutes in a deep fryer on high heat turn it over 12 minutes again and it's perfect every time. It's a life hack that Michaela, Jordan's daughter, taught me, and all she does is eat meat, so that's the way to do it. All the cuts are spectacular, but their venison sticks have been my new favorite while traveling, you can have the healthiest red meat on the planet delivered right to your door by following the link in the show notes below or by going to Maui venison tocom Widness using the code Modern Widness. at checkout you get 20% off by going to M Nui venison docomo, wisdom and modern wisdom at checkout, one of the things I've been talking about at live shows is that your comparison group is wrong , the fact that he knows we have the opportunity to sit down.

Go down and listen to anyone on the planet, the best minds, the best athletes, the best thinkers, the most articulate who are alive right now or listen to people who have died who existed when video cameras existed and you can compare yourself to that group. Yes, but that's not your comparison group, if you have the impetus to sit down and listen to me and talk for three hours about these deep topics, these interesting ideas, you're already selected from the normal group, hmmm, you're already wondering. questions that almost no one, almost no one else, is right about, but because of your comparison group of incredibly high-performing people.

I remember before I started my podcast, I listen to you or Sam or Joe and I think, God, their memory is. It's amazing, it's like they have this identical memory and everything they ever read can come to the surface and they can say it. this way it's completely transparent and everything else. Come on okay, are you really a person who never recorded a podcast before comparing yourself to Joe Rogan, the man who recorded a thousand and spent 10,000 hours on stage and did all these UFC commentary and did all these things in terms of television? That's really who are you going to compare yourself with and it's unfair and the problem I see is people who have big dreams for themselves and want to do big things they like to set their sights high yes and yet they feel dejected in the comparison so I think that there is also pride in that and how I can be, I want to be good or that's what I should compare myself to, right, that's pride and pride is something like how that should be or even could be that.

Well, maybe you could, but you certainly aren't going to do it as you already pointed out without the right to learn, so you could say that discouragement is actually proportional to false Pride. Now I wrote a chapter in I. Think about my first book, which was comparing yourself to who you are today, not who someone else is. Sorry, I trashed it to some extent, but you understand that the right comparison group for you is you yesterday because, first of all, you can do yourself. You are the only control group that is appropriate for you because you have a certain set of talents, possibilities, limitations, and tragedies that are truly unique to you, and therefore you could be comparing yourself to someone else on some dimension. but it is not a reasonable comparison because you do not know what talents they were blessed with and you also do not know what opportunities they had that you did not have.

Etc. It's just not a reasonable comparison, it's much better to think about who you are. were and then think well, could you be something better in some Dimension and the positive thing about that is that the answer is almost always yes? Now you can Orient that transformation towards some Star Target and that is a reasonable thing, but that does not exactly mean that you should compare yourself with that Target, aiming at something and comparing yourself with it are not exactly the same, plus your damn comparison is also an illusion, you know That's another thing you have to understand is that you look at the person you're jealous of and really what you're doing is you're looking through a very narrow aperture at a very thin slice of their life.

You're looking at the thin slice of his life that's turning out to be the best, but you. You're also looking at a small portion of their life that is marketed as the best and you have no idea what the horror of that person's life as a whole might be and you have no idea if the deal was to say you wanted to know Russell Brand, There is a good example, you want it to be Russell Brand, you want it to be as charismatic and famous as him, well, your real wish is to have everything that Russell Brand has, but none of his problems, welcome.

I mean, it's no wonder a sight like that puts you off because he's naive, resentful, jealous, bitter, and unreasonable. You have to take the good with the bad. You have to take the bad with the good. and people rarely think about that when they think about the famous people they think they would like to be. There was a recent interview with Elon Musk where he said something: "My mind is a storm." I don't think most people would want to be me, right? They might think they would want to be me, but they don't know, they don't know, they don't understand, what do you think of that Elon?

He is someone who people probably look up to, look up to, and aspire to be like. One of the disadvantages of the high-level genius is that you could describe him as hyperactive, so here is a simple test people can do. This is a test of something called verbal fluency and verbal fluency is associated with creativity, so here's a simple verbal verb. fluency test write as many four letter words as you can in three minutes that start with t okay, that's pretty limited four letters in t or write as many words as you can in 3 minutes to start with S, that's less restricted right, so there's a pretty powerful correlation between the large number of words you produce and your life's creative achievements, especially in the artistic and verbal domains, that's different than vocabulary.

Vocabulary is how many words you understand. Fluency is how many words you can produce. a given Dey, those yes, well, people vary to a degree that you can hardly imagine, so some people, if you ask them to do the four letter test in three minutes, they will write like 12 words and others will write 150 and those who do they write 150 their minds go at a hypomanic pace, they just think five times faster bing bing bing yeah, without any remission and you know when that gets completely out of control you have manic you have someone who is manic and there is nothing fun about manic, That's where the word m comes from and someone who is manic has a thousand different plans, each one of them.which is only one sentence long, so they are very excited, they will spend every whiff of their money chasing them and things will immediately go to hell, so that's the external. borderline pathology on the creative front and someone like Musk who is clearly a genius, that's what he's dealing with in his internal landscape now.

I'm not saying he's manic because I don't see any signs of that, but someone that creative is on that borderline or you are. see someone like Ben Shapiro. I mean, it's very interesting to talk to Ben because Russell Brand is the same way Shapiro talks. I think faster than anyone I've ever met, but if you're with him you see very clearly that he's probably thinking five times. that fast and that's a lot and when I was writing maps of meaning, which was my first book, I had a hard time turning my mind off. I was obsessed with that book, so I wrote about 3 hours a day and then I thought. on the material for 12 hours and the thoughts came much faster than I thought, they probably came as fast as I can read.

I can read about 12,200 words per minute if the material isn't overwhelmingly dense, so it was non-stop thinking. for about 16 hours a day, that's part of the reason I started lifting weights because if I lifted enough, think 12200 words per minute while I have 100 pounds on my back, it was enough to turn it off and it was also one. of the reasons why I drank because that was another thing that would close it, yeah, well I think the price that people pay to be the person you admire is a very interesting framework to look at someone like Elon Musk, my mind is a storm.

I don't think most people would want to be me. The price you would have to pay to be me is not one you would want, but you are one of the richest men on the planet and you know how to dance on stage. and launching bulletproof cars and putting rockets into space and stuff, well yeah, but what about all the baggage? What is the problem? He also seems very conscientious to me and I know people who have worked with him like Musk. Not only is he a creative genius, he is also an extremely conscientious engineer and really conscientious engineers have very interesting minds.

I like talking to engineers because my brother-in-law is a great engineer and when he understands something, Jim when he understands something. he understands how to build it from atoms just as he understands it on every level and Musk strikes me as someone who is a rare combination of hypercreativity but also hyperawareness. I know he works all the time, yeah, that kind of hypertrophied executive. The feature helps wrangle some of the diffuse creative energy or we'll put it into this thing at least for a while and then move on to something else. Yes, I will definitely define you.

Eric Weinstein is a good example of someone. I hope Eric doesn't get upset about this, but Eric is incredibly creative, but he's not particularly conscientious, so I think he found an occupation that he works extremely well at because I don't know if he's still doing this, but I worked with Peter Teal for quite a while because your idea was right and Eric is an extremely interesting person. Musk is hyper-creative and, as far as I can tell, hyper-aware and conscientious, Focus knows this and many people who are. Creative people are not conscientious, well, it is strange that if you are one in a thousand, there is no correlation between creativity and conscientiousness.

Okay, so if you're one in a thousand, if you're the most creative person in a thousand and you're the most conscientious person in a thousand you're one person in a million and Musk is probably more like one person in 100 million, right, something like that. , maybe more, but or maybe a billion, right, maybe yes, it's interesting to consider the changes that happen to people like Furthermore, they say that their platforms as the scrutiny around them continues to increase, obviously, this has been a journey for you for the last, you know, almost 10 years, it was in 2006, it was that pH c16 2016 2016 yeah, sorry, how did you find it?

Fame changes you what has been impacted or changed because of scrutiny and surveillance and Adoration and criticism. Well, the first thing that changed I think was that I saw misery on a scale that I hadn't really seen before. I had worked as a doctor for a long time and I worked with, say, 20 people a week and I was always in the realm of difficult existential problems, I rested fighting with my clients' problems alongside them and I really liked that and then I had my research and I had my family and various business interests, so the misery was somehow contained and locked in and I had a lot of structure around that to be able to function despite the fact that I was up to my neck in the serious business of 20 people. problems which, by the way, I really like when I started speaking on a larger scale and meeting more and more people, the scale of the demoralization really hit me.

I didn't know I didn't know how deep the demoralization had become in our culture. and I think that was especially obvious to me at that time among young men. Now it seems that Jonathan Height's research indicates that possibly young women are even in worse shape, but for some reason most of the people I met were at least young men to begin with, I think it was probably because most of them , a lot more people on YouTube, are young men, so it was shocking and brutal to see how much demoralization, how widely widespread demoralization was in our culture, apart from this and that.

That was a real shock and was very hard for me. I'd say everything else has been, to say the least, ridiculously interesting. I have an incredible wealth of opportunities. I would be a fool not to be abjectly grateful. I mean misery. What I saw was a shock and it hurt me and it was part of what made that impact change the way you see the world. It made me understand more deeply how important it was to offer. people a word of encouragement. I could see that many people were dying psychologically or actually for lack of a word of encouragement, so being in the position to provide that was that much more necessary.

I mean, part of the reason why Tammy and I are also constantly is because it seems to be good, it seems to be a good thing, you know, we've even seen changes in the audience, so five years ago, six years ago, when we did our first tour, many of the people who attended the talks were quite happy. Generally speaking, there were more men than there are now, like the ratio of men to women was higher and the men were generally there alone and a lot of them looked pretty ragged and now, five years later, half the audience.

Outfits as if they were dressed for a wedding. Most of the guys are there with some woman. Audience members are doing much better and the lectures are extremely positive. You know, if you look at my life from the outside. I would think I'm in a constant storm of, you know, aggravated controversy, but all of that, pretty much all of that is virtual, it's just in the online world, now it touches the real world from time to time because I'm being persecuted by my regulatory institute . Yes, yes, yes, which is, for the most part, just an absurd, expensive, time-consuming annoyance, but other than that, everything that has happened around me has been positive. , something strange, too positive with such intensity that even that intimidates you.

I know you would think it's hard to imagine that you could be in a situation where things are so positive that you can barely stand them, but I'm in that situation and it's something to deal with. I was lucky, I guess to a certain extent. It didn't happen to me until I was older because I never got used to it. I've thought about this by watching what happened to you and you know the Weinsteins are a good example of this. We also often hear the dangers of getting fame too young, the McCauley Culkin of the world, the Britney Spears of the world, you know, individuals who have no sense of identity being thrust into an experience not representative of the world and them.

You're completely disarmed, but I think there's an equally interesting question to ask, okay? What if you think you know who you are? If you have spent decades, five decades, six decades of your life understanding your place, your status, the trajectory you are following. And then, out of nowhere, all the reference areas, all the markers that you thought you knew, are ripped away from you and now you're just floating in the air. I imagine that could be even more disturbing in some ways, well, when everything exploded around me to begin with, it was stressful, I would say because my job was on the line, my university work and I never thought that would happen, I mean When I worked at Harvard and the University of Toronto, everything was positive.

I really liked working with my graduate students. I had at least cordial relations with my faculty colleagues at Harvard; they were more than cordial at the University of Toronto. Most of the faculty members I started developing friendships with were also the ones who broke up. I moved and often they were people who would get offers from other places and, you know, they would disappear, so a lot of the friends I made at the University of Toronto went elsewhere, so I didn't become as closely connected. Regarding friendship networks among my peers like the ones I had at Harvard, for example, but I had excellent relationships with undergraduates and with my graduate students, that was quite a lot because I loved working with my graduate students, so It wasn't like he was pining and alone. at all and I had a good network of friends and then that was threatened and it really disappeared in 2016 um and my clinical practice was threatened and that was disturbing.

I think there were things that continued even when I was teaching as a college professor the way I taught was not typical the things I taught were not typical For decades I thought that eventually someone would find out what I'm teaching and that there would be problems. I could not believe it. They allowed me to be encouraged to teach what I was teaching, but you know the universities and this was particularly true at Harvard in the '90s, that's how they were structured, which was so rebellious about what you taught, well, there wasn't really anyone It was focusing on the nexus between, say, archetypal ideas, archetypal ideas, and religious ideas in neuroscience, so that wasn't a thing.

I mean, there were some people, Yak PP, was one of them and a lot of the researchers who were interested in the neuroscience of emotion became interested. into a deep narrative because they began to understand that our emotional life is a story, that it's a good way to think about it and that we are guided, you know, we are guided by our emotional instinct and what our emotional instincts do is put us in certain situations. . stories, that's what it means to be in love, for example, is that you're in a love story and yes, it's not, it's not a particular balance of oxytocin and endorphins that you're aware of, it's not broken down into its constituent parts, No, definitely not.

It's part of a narrative that you tell yourself about what this means and how it feels good and it's interesting that the Instinct manifests itself as a story, so I was very interested in the narrative and the story and I don't see any study of the psychologist Carl Yung. like literally virtually none really now oh yeah, yeah, no, definitely not, I mean psychology, psychology really developed in some ways as the materialist antithesis of psychoanalysis, so Freud and Yung and even Adler, to some extent , were beyond the reach of scientifically trained behavioral psychology psychologists and that is. how I was and am I trained at Migel there were no courses in psychoanalytic theory at Migel I read Freud and Yung completely on my own eh, facing the advice I was receiving from my well-intentioned graduate supervisor who was a great guy and who never got in the way in my path in the least, quite the opposite, but I was warned, for example, when I entered the job market not to talk about the things that really interested me and I ignored that, by the way, and What that meant is that some places The ones I went to to apply for a job didn't want me, but then Harvard did it and it worked out pretty well, you know?

And that's one of the advantages too of being true to your own vision, is that you won. You don't get what you don't want, see. I didn't want to go to work somewhere where they didn't want me. I wanted to go to work somewhere where they wanted me, so my strategy was good. This is who I am and if you don't want me, you know, that's a bummer because I'm looking for a job, but in the same way I'm not going to pretend to be someone other than who I am in order to work here, what a stupid way to start your career.

Well, that comes back to the truth, right, telling the truth, what are you going to do if you tell a lie that's seductive enough? What's the best thing you can do? You can expect something right, the person you're telling lie falls in love with a projection, absolutely fine, when I applied to graduate school, I wrote a crazy admission letter and basicallyI explained who I was, my flaws, everything and what. I was interested and two people, three people I liked and the one I liked the most partly because he was at Mcgill and I wanted to be in Montreal with my graduate supervisor Robert Peele and he knew what he was getting and we had a great time.

I still work with him like I have one of the best relationships with Bob that I've ever had with anyone in my life and it's lasted four decades and it was because Bob is a very honest person, we were very different, he's very hands-on, he's a very good manager, managerial type, although super smart, had a thorough knowledge of the relevant psychological research literature and I came in, you know, flying on a carpet of psychoanalytic theory and very, very different philosophy and religious ideas, although we shared a real and deep interest in the practical aspects of research and taught me how to fall in love with the more scientific end of the research layout, but what I mean is that he knew what he was getting from the beginning and so did I and that worked like a charm, there was no reason for any kind of subterfuge and it turned out that our talents and mine fit extremely well, so we had a great time, I loved working with them, that's why we've been working together for 40 years.

Journey. in North America with Bob because we also started a business and it was great, it was great. The thing is that if you tell people who you are and an opportunity opens up, it opens up for you, yes, not for this thing you have. I created this LIE, there is a story that Douglas Murray told me about one of his first bosses at one of the first newspapers he worked at. I don't remember the gentleman's name. This guy is a legend within the industry he has been working in for a long time. He has accumulated several enemies and fans, and towards the end of his career, as Douglas begins his, he decides that he wants to launch a West End play about the life of Prince Charles in rhyming couplets, as adventurous as the West End plays. .

Obviously there was all this scrutiny because he was a very well-known individual in the publishing world and on opening night, at the halftime interval, there was no one left in the entire Auditorium to include the cast and this guy was devastated and they made fun of him . the press and everything else apparently Douglas saw him soon after and asked him kindly if he wanted to look like what you were thinking in the West End play about the life of Prince Charles and rhyming couplets and he said: well Douglas, I followed my instincts and the instincts that can sometimes guide you badly mhm, but they are the only thing that has guided you well, well, well, and that sticks in my mind because yes, well, there is also something very relevant on the instinctive front.

Okay, so things will call and call to you. to you and you will have intuitions about which path to take and in all likelihood you will follow them because what else do you have? You have these guiding instincts. This is another reason why you don't lie, because if you do lie and practice lying. you pathologize your instinct and then your intuitions lead you wrong and there is a sin that is exposed in the gospels, it is the sin against the Holy Spirit and it is unforgivable and people have been debating for about 2,000 years about what this particular sin is, but It is something like the pathologization of the instincts that guide you, if you sacrifice your relationship with the truth, you distort your vision and then you cannot see and then one day it will be dark and there will be sharp things in the fog in front of you. you and you will go into them because you have pathologized your own Vision, yes, you don't want to lie because you falsely program yourself and then you automatically see what is not there and then of course the world will slap you in the face. in your face continually and you'll think, oh my god, the world is such a pathological place when the truth of the matter is no, you just keep running into things you refuse to see and then you think the world is made of nothing but obstacles It's like you put obstacles in your own path and you did it by developing these complex selfish delusions a story you tell other people about who you are that's not true you're trying to draw a map that has no relationship to reality and you keep wondering why. that you deviate from the path and fall into a pit, it's like, well, how could it be any other way if you look at whether these people have actually commented to me many times about my bravery and I don't like it. that's not okay I'm afraid of different things than the typical person maybe that's a good way to think about it I'm much more afraid than I am of the consequences of saying something that is false or deviating from the proper path of the consequences that may arise from say what I believe and do what I believe to be the case.

I'm much more afraid of that. You know, I've been reading the gospel of Saint Matthew. I'm writing a book at the moment called We Who Wrestle With God and one of the things that Christ continually tells people is not to damage your vision is not to put that's the best way to say it don't hide your eyes, you can See what is in front of you if you are willing to see it, and if you are willing to see it, the terrible OB, many of life's terrible obstacles, you can simply get around them, but if you blind yourself on purpose to follow your own narrow illusion selfish, you will leave. running into terrible things and terrible people and the terrible part of your own soul all the time that's what you should be afraid of, well the best you can hope for if you do it is to succeed by chance living someone else's life correctly. great, wonderful, yes, exactly, you become, you become a successful fraud.

I remember this documentary about Ron Jeremy. I think they called him Hedgehog. He was a famous porn star. I've seen a music video with him. Yeah, yeah, okay, none. one of the most physically attractive people in the world and you know he lived in this very interesting world, he lived in this world, he was constantly stopped on the street by people who thought Ron Jeremy was a hero, so he was in hell because the people who What admired him were the people who admired him, he was surrounded by people who thought he was an avatar of success, so he got what he wanted.

I guess he had easy access to easy women. In other news, this episode is brought to you by manscaped if you're a gentleman who still uses an old facial razor from three Christmases ago to trim your gentleman's area what are you doing? join us here in the modern world there are tools specially designed for the job and the new 5.0 Ultra lawnmower is the tool you need it has a cutting-edge ceramic blade to reduce shaving accidents a 90-minute battery so you can shave longer time waterproof technology so you can shave in the shower and an LED light that illuminates the shaving areas for a closer shave and more precise trimming or if you just want to do it in the dark like a ninja would do in the holiday season, You may want to give the man in your life a gift or hint to him that he is a little hairier than you would like and The 5.0 Ultra Modern Design Lawn Mower is the perfect combination of these two worlds, since we are on YouTube.

I can't show you how this actually works, but what I can show you is that transformation that is there, gentlemen, that unwraps the gift of softness. season by going to the link in the description below or heading to manscaped.com wisdom using code wisdom at checkout for 20% off and free shipping that's manscape.com wisdom and wisdom at checkout well let me give you let me give you this This is why I believe the beginning of the incel movement and the blackpill movement were born out of pickip partisanship. The origin, if you trace it using the internet history of the Insel blackpill uh ideology, was a subreddit or a website called Pua hate pickup.

I hate artists and what it was was a group of men who had gone through the Artistry pickup process, yeah, and came out the other side with a very jaded and even more jaded, even more jaded, yeah, worldview. and I'll tell you why. So what happens if a guy learns to pick up mid2 norts the old school way? Artistry m is that you realize that there is a particular set of actions, a script that you can execute, that makes a woman more likely to go to bed with you. true, but what you realize when you do that, when you learn to deny and escalate Kino and tell them that story about the fight outside or whatever script you're running, then you start to see how far away that is.

The persona belongs to the person you actually show to be who you are and this extravagant Persona that you need to create to get this woman into bed makes you feel worse, even feeling the gap between where you are and what you have. do to achieve what you want now, what you don't realize is that there are a million other ways you could make yourself charming enough for this person to like you by doing it, for example, this is just one. that turns out to be solid enough and easy enough to write in a book and easy enough for basically a written form of psychopathy, so what a psychopath does is feign competence, which is why most psychopaths are very emotionally stable and , therefore, one of the markers of competence in the early stages.

It is self-control and calmness, so if you are not an anxious person, you already have an advantage in that and most psychopaths have very high emotional stability and therefore appear confident because confident people They tend not to be as nervous as if you're doing something you're an expert at. Well, you're not nervous because you know how to do it well. So a lack of nervousness is an indication of competence. Well, you can fake it. You can fake competence. You can fake confidence. That's it. What Pickup Artists Teach Now I would say that there is even some usefulness in what they do well because if you are dependent and bitter and resentful and charmless and self-destructive and nervous and socially unfit the likelihood that you will be successful with women is very, very very low, okay, then you should be different from what you are now, if you start putting on this Persona, then you could think of it as a new suit and you could learn through that how to fill in the gaps, take it until you do.

It's absolutely absolutely, but if you assume that without making the effort to integrate it in a genuine way, then all that happens is that you're being rewarded for being fake, yeah right, and that's part of the problem too. that you are practicing how to manipulate people in a psychopathic way and if you practice that, of course, you will get tired like there is nothing more jaded than a psychopath, I mean, that is the ultimate extreme of boredom and if you practice manipulating especially if the women turn out to be reasonably good women, if you practice manipulating them and you are successful then you are learning to be a horrible person, now you know that you are a completely useless, unproductive and undesirable ex.

You weren't exactly stellar to begin with, but substituting that for psychopathy, what's like substituting cynicism for naivety? Now, that is a complex problem. I mean, part of the reason people like Andrew Tate are so attractive to young people is because they put Tate is a complicated guy because not everything is fake, you know, real people are complicated in the same way that movie villains are. In the comics, Tate is not a fighter, he clearly has a certain degree of physical bravery. Actually, okay, there's an element to what he says that's very attractive to losers who live in dorms, basements, because at least he's out there in the world, you know, taking the hits and he's got a fast car and he's flashy. and he is attractive to women, but very much so. of what he has done, especially with women, not only borders on psychopathic, but it crosses the line and that is not a good model, it is not an optimal model for people who are trying to progress, but it is something strange because just as cynicism is an improvement over Naivete, the ability to be dark is an improvement over the lack of ability to be dark, so Tate is attractive in the way that shadow attracts people who are not developed, because it's like you're neurotic. and you're dependent and you're repressed because you're immature and harmless, well one way out of that is to stop being harmless and one of the things you can say about Tate is that he's not harmless, well that's it, it's a virtue now it's a virtue that needs to be bracketed it's like cynicism is a virtue compared to naivety but it's not, it's not virtuous in itself, it's a step along the way and then maybe you can learn to be confident. and you can learn how to do that.

It works and maybe that's an improvement. I had a guy in my clinical practice who got involved with the pickup artist community and he told me that he taught me a lot about it and that one of the exercises his initiates had to do was go out and ask 50 women for their phone number in one day and that's a great exercise, you know, and I'm not an exposure therapy approach to anxiety, absolutely, absolutely overcome your fear of rejection, and 50 times they will because you're going to get rejected the vast majority of the time Well , probably 50 times, although that generally wasn't people's experience, you know,if they were even vaguely skilled, they would at least get a fake phone number out of the deal, but then they might learn that the rejection wasn't as catastrophic as they thought, but more importantly, they learned that they could keep moving forward in the face of rejection, so what What makes me think is intellectual humility and how firmly people hold on to their

beliefs

, that if you believe that you are always going to be right, that there is nothing to learn outside of yourself and that any kind of admission that you could be wrong is equivalent to destruction, does exactly the same thing you need and asks again stupidly. be prepared to ask stupid questions and not look like the most informed person in the room, but also, more importantly, far from the stupidest person in the room because you are the one asking the question right, the stupidest person in the room. the room is the person who doesn't know and doesn't ask or, even worse, who doesn't know and doesn't ask and acts like he knows, yes, that's not good at all, yes, there is something in your opinion that is part of that idea that you should love your enemy so you could say well why you should do so well your enemy will be your toughest critic now it is possible that if you have a very good enemy he will show you flaws in your character that you didn't know existed and then that is a very strange way of to see the world think that you should welcome an attack, you should do it and this is, but this is correct, yes, I say this with due caution, let's say the more the more vicious the attack, the more potential hidden flaws could be revealed.

Have you found that to be true? Oh, definitely, but I also found that the attacks force you to fight to finish him off to see if he's there to try. I suppose the attacks that have been most successful after me are almost always journalists and they are usually British journalists, but we don't always produce a nation of tough journalists, yes, well, and faith in journalists is the lowest in the UK and anywhere in the Western world and I can see why you know, but there is some advantage, there is a real advantage in confronting someone, it is a problem of the Pharisees in the gospels, Christ was always contending with these Pharisees and what they Pharisees were always trying.

What he had to do was set a verbal trap for her. So is he a Pharisee? A person. The Pharisee was a Jewish sect. Okay, and the Pharisees were very legalistic in their interpretation of the Mosaic law, so they were hypocritical in their ways. portrayed in the gospel SS are hypocrites by the moralists of the book and part of what they were and most of their morality was to show that they like to pray in public they like to be seen as saints at least those are the criticisms imposed on them and What they are always trying to do in the gospel accounts is set a verbal trap for Christ so they can expose him as a heretic and kill him, so everything they say is a trap of some kind and there are many journalists. like Nelly Bulls who wrote an article about me for the New York Times that was a very devastating article in many ways and very serpentine and subtle.

Three years later she wrote another article about what it was like to work for the New York Times. when she worked there and the tricks that journalists, including her, pulled, and she said the game was to devastate someone else's reputation in an attempt to improve your own, so you could think of it as a game of comparative moral standing, then the journalist's trick. is tricking you into saying something that will end your career, essentially their social status falls on your shoulders AB absolutely, so now the advantage of being in a situation like that is that you have to take a step if you do it very carefully and you get lucky, then you evade the traps and then the interview leans heavily in your favor, yeah, so most of the interviews that have done me the most good in the long run were the two interviews that were most hostile, one of the channels 4, Griff Kathy.

Kathy Newman Kathy Newman Kathy Griffin and Kathy Kathy at least had a sense of humor, another Helen Lewis who had no sense of humor at all and doesn't seem to have learned anything at all in the meantime, but I think I think one has 80 million views now , twice as many as Kathy Newman's interview, like it was still racking up views and it was because Helen Lewis has like 50 tricks or 100 tricks. Kathy had about four, you know, and they were pretty blunt and had a sense of humor about them, but Helen Lewis she was all tricks and a lot of them and smart, you know, and it's quite a bit to talk to someone who's pretty smart and quite Polite, but all tricks and stuff, but how does it feel to remember those two?

They were very formative moments, it was kind of a turning point or one of the turning points. I guess for you too, yeah, how does it feel to remember that? I remember you said at the time that it took you many days to recover from that guy. Kind of a confrontational and cantankerous interview is that it seems like a different life or it's still kind of like that with you. Well, I'm much healthier than I was then, so that kind of thing wouldn't have the same effect on me. Now, like they did then, because I was sick, it took me a long time to recover from a serious fight.

I mean, the first time I talked to Sam Harris, it's not that Sam played tricks on me, like I like Sam and we've had a very productive situation. conversations I was so sick the first time I talked to Sam that I could barely sit in my chair talking to Sam Harris makes you that's the No No, not at all, no, Sam and I have had very productive conversations, that was another good example. I guess about the usefulness of a confrontational conversation, yeah, you know, I mean, Sam comes into a conversation like that pretty well armed, but it's very useful because it forces you to look at corners that you might not have looked in and be very clear. . to the extent that that's possible about what you're actually saying, the idea of ​​loving your enemy is something I've been playing with a bit recently.

I think my platform is getting to a level now where there's a reason for someone to have a bullseye pointed at least remotely in my direction because there's no point in trying to take down someone who has nothing, who has no status, why? what would you spend your time? You are the step you are going to take. The terms of your status standing on his shoulders are so small that no one, so it's a backhanded compliment, yeah, in a way, um, but you're right, man. Some of the criticism I have received. A friend recently reminded me about These have been some of the best turning points, very uncomfortable and to see it as a gift, to think of it as a gift is like knowing that you weren't doing this to make me better, yes I know you weren't doing. this to try and try to benefit me and yet, yes, on reflection it is like Alchemy, it is what Rory Sutherland calls it Alchemy taking something that was bad.

I also had this reflection and we learned that my family learned like when, when. a public attack occurs there is a huge opportunity nested in it if you can retarget okay this is bad this is cruel this is not this does not look good and maybe you could delete me delete us there is a way there is a way we can play with this that not only It will not neutralize it but will turn it in the other direction. I think what we did that was most effective on that side of things was when they wrote to me in Captain America while I was speaking to them that day.

I told you that day about what happened, yeah, the magical, magical, super-Nazi, floating Nazi or whatever, yeah, yeah, yeah, well, it was shocking, wasn't it, it was very shocking, and then Olivia Wild, yeah, that was shocking too, yes, yes, there's a litany of yes, yes. well, it got more and more absurd and Olivia's wild episode was one of the ones that was so absurd that almost immediately, fortunately, the movie was so poorly made and I'm pretty sure she had chosen her boyfriend as one of I got rid of someone who was super competent and put someone in who was pretty incompetent, uh, and I think that caused a mistake, but yeah, man, the enemy thing.

I ended up becoming very good friends with one of my toughest. critics, it's so strange, uh, and yet it makes so much sense after, uh, you had a how did you end up making friends, so I got criticized by a couple of podcasters who, um, do this, they kind of knock it down or have a very critical eye? a lot of the podcasting world and they did an episode about an episode that I had done and they have the right to respond, oh yeah, Sam's been around to do it, who else has been around to do it?

I did. There's a couple of other kissing constants to do and um, I went on and there was a little bit like I heard that show. I think it's a very enlightening way to see how people who have a different perspective on what's going on in your world saw it and uh, I thought, yeah, I had the opportunity to go ahead and have a conversation, and I did and I found out that They were both much more charming than I thought they were going to be and I ended up with both. Chris and Matt are not so much, but with Chris we have to talk once a month, every two weeks, one of us will just call and catch up on what's been happening in the world and he has a very different way of life . worldview to me, he lives in a different area of ​​the world, he's a psychologist who studies religion I think and, uh, sacred rituals and things like that, rituals instead of religion and now he's pointing out a blind spot that I don't see and that particular case . it was and it was really awkward because this was still three years ago or something like that now maybe and I'm still very uncomfortable with it and oh my gosh these people are going to tear me down and they're both academics and they're really very well educated and they're going to be They're smart, they're going to say things that make me look dumb and I said things that made me look dumb and I picked one episode in particular where blah blah blah, and yet on reflection it's been like that.

A moment and the subsequent reflection on it was one of the biggest turning points for me, going from having blind spots that I had not seen to that and I almost believe that the degree of discomfort I went through was mandatory because otherwise I would have felt it. as much as fear and anxiety and shame about the fact that I'm going to be out there and there's going to be all this focus and attention in a not-nice way and there's going to be tweets and all the rest of the stuff that was uncomfortable enough to force me to genuinely look at the things. things that I was doing that I was doing wrong and I'm sure there are a million things that I'm still getting wrong, but yeah, it was a gift.

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Goggins about this last year about how I was bullied as a kid and I was pretty unpopular at school and I was an only child so I didn't really have many people to have my back, you know, in the schoolyard or whatever, and I for a long time had a resentment about kids who mistreated me at school, unsurprisingly, and then I came around, maybe a few years ago, and really started to reflect on it and realized that a lot of the things that I valued in myself with the light side of something dark that had been created during that time at school, so my complete preparation to spend time alone means that I don't mind moving to a country where I didn't know anyone and I was trying to make this podcast work or I was spending hours and hours working or researching or recording podcasts or doing intros or whatever, all that stuff.

Not having a super tight social network as a kid meant I was missing out. I'm not beholden to anyone growing up, I didn't feel the need to have as much support as I move forward to do things, now other aspects haven't been as good because I'm still looking for validation. I still look for a lot of validation because that was something I lacked as a kid, but yeah, realizing that not only would you not be here if it wasn't for the things that you went through, okay, there's step one and then step two, and I'm very grateful for what I did and then step three would be something like wow, I'm proud of myself for turning something that was

negative

into something positive, but then another level up would be wow, so maybe I should be grateful, yes, of course, well, we know.

We were talking earlier on the podcastabout what is the appropriate attitude towards the future and I would say that we could put the past, the present and the future in the same container. Well, one of the things you want to do is practice gratitude, which is one of the primary religious rituals you could say is the practice of gratitude and you could say well, my life is so horrible, why do I have to being thankful? I'd say for better or worse, it's still a form of blindness, right? I mean, people can have very, very difficult situations they can be very, very difficult situations and it is in those difficult situations where the search for gratitude becomes something that is necessarily deeper and more difficult, but that doesn't mean it's not appropriate, you know, and there is a very very difficult situation.

Close association between loving your enemy and being grateful despite the terrible things that happen in your life. I have been writing about the Book of Job and Job is a story of unjust suffering. Basically, God considers Job to be a good man, so we have him. God's word that Job is actually a good man and then all hell breaks loose partly because God makes a bet with Satan, which is, you know a hell of a lot what to do and he says, do your worst, he won't turn back. against me no matter what. you do it and you work despite his torment he gets very sick he loses everything he has his friends he gets sick in a way that disfigures him his friends come and laugh at him and tell him that he is a bad man and that's why all these Terrible things have been happening to Him and it's brutal and Job refuses to lose faith in himself and says, look, I'm not perfect, I am, but when it comes to men, I've done what I was supposed to do and I didn't. am.

Being punished in some way that is obviously related to my sin is more like the random play of tragic forces in the world. "I'm not going to lose faith in myself no matter what and I'm not going to go to your wife either," he says, shakes his fist at God, she curses him and he dies because things have gone so bad for Job, she believes that's all he has left and he refuses to do it, so she keeps the faith regardless of what has happened to him and that's really the moral of the story of Job, which is that you are morally obligated to keep the faith no matter what happens to you and that has a practical side, so imagine that God and Satan conspire against you, there will be times in your life when You will feel that happening and then imagine that your reaction is to become bitter, resentful and hostile, well, whatever hell you find yourself in simply as a consequence of the confluence of tragic events, you have opened up an entirely different hell beneath you. him, the hell of bitterness, resentment and ingratitude, and well, and that.

It turns into a desire for revenge very, very quickly, you think that things are bad just because they are bad, you wait until you see how bad they can be if you allow yourself to be corrupted by your unjust suffering, so it's fair, and I think that That this is the most practical advice possible that can be given to people, which is that you are morally obligated to keep the faith to target and treat other people the way you would like to be treated, no matter what. that happened to you, you know, and that's a great thing to say and you know you could say well, that's impossible.

Physical education. Some people have such brutal lives that they are destined to be corrupt, but I would say that is not true, as I have met many people, especially in my clinical practice. who had lives so brutal you couldn't even listen to them without being torn to shreds, brutal, brutal childhoods of a depth of malevolence you can hardly conceptualize, who decided despite that that they were going to aim up and were going to keep the faith. in themselves and in the world and that's like that's on the table for people, it seems like a strange paradox that people who have been raised under lives of the most privileged are often the ones who have the most complaints about the world. and people who have been brought up in deprivation most of the time can be perfectly grateful.

It seems very strange that that is the way, yes, well, one of the things that I saw at the University, I saw the members of the faculty. my peers recoil at the advancement of the Administration over about three decades to the point where the universities really became corrupt, and that didn't happen at Harvard when I was there in the 1990s, although it was starting to wear thin. a little bit, but I really saw it at the University of Toronto in the 20 years I was there, the administration kept making demands on us and every time they made a demand, we made 10,000 micro withdrawals each time, so the administrators took over the university and then the woke guys took over the administration and that was the reason I saw my faculty members do the academics I worked with is that that's how corruption starts, it's like when you're a college student, you write what you think the professor wants to hear to get the grade and then you're a graduate student and you have to, let's say, get along with your professors and your supervisor, you have to tell them what you think they want to hear so you can get your PhD. and then maybe you're on the academic track and you're an assistant professor.

There are three levels to be a teacher. You're not tenured as an assistant, so you can't really say what you think or do what you think you should do. because you have to get tenure and then when you're tenured, you're not a tenured professor yet, so you don't talk and in the back of your mind you have this idea, well, at some point I'll be confident enough to be able to tell the truth, but that's based on this strange idea that courage to tell the truth is based on safety, well courage is not based on safety, that's a stupid theory, you're not brave if there's no risk, so your idea is that you will be brave when there is no risk, well, obviously, that is a contradiction in terms of you are only brave if there is a risk and not only that when you have sacrificed your word for an illusory security. 15 years there's nothing left of you that's true you already did it a long time ago you probably look back at your old self who was naive and thought you could say what you thought just fine you're bitten you're It's cynical about it, you know that person just I didn't know how the world worked and then it's the same thing you pointed out the idea that you become good because you have material in abundance, that's a dumb idea, why would you do it?

If that's the case, it's the same as assuming that all the rich have good taste, the poor that they have beautifully designed interiors and the rich that they have a messy gym, yeah, well then the poor actually are absolutely rich huh, there's a report that I wanted to present to you, it's very interesting, so the recent report was published by the Harvard Graduate School of Education that details the factors that drive anxiety in young adults ages 18 to 25. 34% reported feelings of loneliness. 51% said. achievement pressure

negative

ly affected their mental health 58% reported a lack of meaning or purpose in their lives in the last month 50% reported that their mental health was negatively influenced by not knowing what to do with my life the well-being of Adolescents has been heavily scrutinized From ages 14 to 17, not much is known about those who occupy the critical years of young adulthood, and yet young adults report approximately twice the rates of anxiety and depression as adolescents.

Young adults are not well. mhh yes, I think I even saw it with mine. Kids who were like when I was a kid, probably the time between 13 and 15 was the hardest transition, but I saw that come into play when my kids were in their 30s, basically when my kids were young adults. I see that transition to adulthood was the place where difficulties began to accumulate. I think perversely that the therapeutic world has a lot to do with this, partly because therapists who are basically secular liberal Protestants, that's a good way to think about them, tend to conceptualize mental health as something mental as subjective, it's as if Mental health is something you carry around in your head like you carry your identity, which is why we have these ridiculous ideas that you can just define your own identity.

I am who I say, well, obviously. You are not because other people other people have to play your game their friend and they are either going to do that, they are not going to do it or they are going to do it voluntarily or they are going to do it by force if they are not going to do it you are screwed if you have to use the Force that's not going to work and if you want them to do it voluntarily then it won't be all about you obviously not even four A 2 year old can find someone to play with if he can always choose the game.

So why might young adults miss out? Well, part of it is that they think I'm not trying to judge an entire generation, it's a way of thinking that your mental health doesn't depend on you, that's not the right way to think about it. I don't think you can be mentally healthy in the absence of a stable long-term relationship, so you have to be married. Let's say, let's make that part of the precondition for a successful adjustment as a young adult, you have to be married, so you have to establish a relationship with someone who integrates sexuality, who is there for the long term, because in the long term is the same. sane there for tomorrow there for the next minute that is not sanity that is impulsivity that is aimlessness they are the same if it is what if it is about what you want now or more exactly what something in you wants at this moment that is the definition of immature insanity you have to commit so you commit to someone else you commit to your family you commit to your community as if there are multiple levels of identity that extend into the social world and voluntarily adopting those levels of hierarchical responsibility gives you an identity that it gives you a purpose, it protects you from anxiety, it does that in many ways, as you know, you said before that one of the things you do is seek validation and you related that to an uncomfortable experience that you had when you were very young, well, It's not exactly that you're looking for validation, but you might be properly researching how you should be integrated into a social hierarchy at every possible level, it's like people think that their mental health is something they just carry around in their heads and that if they just got the way they saw the world right or if other people just played their game they would suddenly be mentally healthy it's like there's no difference between thinking about yourself and being miserable technically if you look you can you can group descriptive statements about yourself statistically all descriptives all descriptors that reflect self-awareness negative emotion load can't you think of yourself in a positive way probably not really not well, let's separate that what you like? you're doing your podcast and you're feeling positive about it, okay, but your podcast isn't about you, so if you're thinking about how you're useful to a large number of people you know, maybe you'll feel good about that, but That's not exactly thinking about yourself, it's thinking about the relationship you have established with other people and it is a relationship of responsibility.

Why do you like your podcast? You can dedicate yourself to what interests you, but you shouldn't have to. that publicly is fine, so why do you do it publicly for various reasons? The first is that it makes me responsible. That was one of the main reasons he held me accountable because he knew if I didn't do it, I wouldn't do it. rigorous and precise and aligned with what I said and did before, that there was an external eye that observes, stay well, very well, that is very interesting, so I would also say that it is not exactly about you, but about your ability to live to establish harmony. between what you say and how you act and the expectations that an ever-widening social community has of you as a consequence of what you say and how you act, okay, that's not about you, it's about your nest in a social hierarchy, true, and I believe that.

I think you can and then you could say too well maybe you're thinking about yourself when you're setting an objective or a goal well, not if they're good objectives or goals because if they're good objectives or goals and I would say that good means technically it's an objective or goal that will develop well in the medium and long term in a multitude of situations that include many people, so it is a solution that is repeated over time and that is independent of the situation and that is socially inclusive in general terms. It is a better objective, true, it is a higher objective because it integrates more.

Right now you may want to set goals and be happy with how you're progressing against those goals, but if those goals aren't like that, don't do it. have the characteristics that I just described, then if the objectives have the characteristics that I just described, they do not refer to you and then we could also ask what it means about you exactly what are you talking about this? Know? So we play these identity games in the modern world that make people feel anxious and desperate and an identity gameen I'm defined by my sexuality, okay, so let's assume I'm defined by my sexuality, okay? but what exactly do you mean by your sexuality?

Do you mean the opportunity to have sex? Are you reducing sexuality as such to the sexual act? Okay, let's say you are. Now what you're telling me is that who you are is who. You are when you have sexual desires, that is what you have reduced yourself to, but it is even more than that, it is the type of sexual desire that wants gratification right now without any relationship, so you have not only reduced who you are to your sexual level. . desire, you have reduced your sexual desire to the minimum set of preconditions that would satisfy it well, then the first question that might arise is why not use porn, it is much simpler and the answer is that is what people are doing.

Well, it's no wonder they're anxious, lonely, and aimless because they've reduced themselves to a short-term desire, found the easiest possible way to gratify it, and abandoned everything that would be so much more. a broader conceptualization of what sexuality would be if it were properly integrated, how about a relationship to start with? And not only, these are not just opinions, so there are two different reproduction strategies broadly in the animal world, one is zero investment. fish, mosquitoes, millions of babies, all die but one, so you can reduce reproduction in mosquitoes to basically sex and you generate a million baby mosquitoes, all you need is one to survive.

The problem is solved well, on the opposite end of the spectrum, literally, we are human beings because we. we have the longest dependency period of any animal by a wide margin, we have a high investment strategy, sexual reproduction strategy, so whatever the sex is for human beings, you're not out and that's over, that's not what it is for human beings, it is embedded in a relationship now you could say, well, we could take the sexuality out of the relationship and just enjoy it for the pleasure, okay, now let's forget about all the other animals, now that we have two types of human beings, we have the more nocturnal human. being repetitive one night St and we have the long term committed relationship with the human being and then we might ask, what are the personality characteristics of the people in those containers?

So let's get into the types of short-term sequential one-night-stand relationships. Well, who are they? Psychopaths, narcissists, Mellians and sadists, one-night stands, if they don't start that way, they will end that way, because you can't use yourself or other people for short-term gratification. Look at the definition. of a psychopath is someone who uses someone for short-term gratification, okay, that's the definition, so you could say well, I'm not like that, I just like sex, it's like yeah, but if you practice that for five years , you're It won't become what you practice, you know, and I talked to Russell Brand a little bit about this and I can say this because I was in his podast, so it's not like this is a secret.

You know, Russell had what Andrew Tate promises to his fans. He was famous, charismatic, and had more or less unlimited access to short-term sexual gratification. Okay, in combination with, you know, the chemicals that make that even more likely. Alcohol and cocaine, let's say, what are the consequences? Well, I asked him what the consequences were. consequences you had this he said uh desperation anxiety and hopelessness true but not only that because you know Russell got in trouble here a month and a half ago he almost got it right, it was his past coming back to haunt him and he had to go through his psyche and see what you know Well all these short-term relationships, these binges of short-term sexual gratification that I indulged in.

Did I ever cross the line? Well, the answer is, well, you're going to have like 200 encounters like you're not going to cross the line when you're drunk, when you do cocaine, you're going to cross a bunch of lines and then it's going to come back and haunt you, so it's very interesting to see it in Our culture goes back to the hopelessness and desperation that we mentioned that characterizes the lives of young adults, it's like, well, it's all about me, that's the self-esteem movement, but then it makes me all about what I want and then it becomes all about what I want right now. so that's what the lowest part of me wants right now and to hell with everyone else, okay, how are you going to play that game without being desperate?

You will despair as soon as you start playing that game and the other one. Which is even worse than that because you're going to end up with Jeremy, the porn star problem, whoever, you're not going to be very happy to be with the people who want to play that game with you because they're not going to be the people who are going to actually make you feel like you. life is worth living, it will be people, especially on the female side, women who are willing to take advantage of themselves for short-term sexual gratification. Happy women are usually damaged women and if they're not damaged when they start playing that game, they'll be pretty damaged when they're done last time we talked to me and you talked about it.

Population decline and the Census Bureau just released today that they predict the US population will decline for the first time by 2100 after peaking in 2080, so their estimates showed that it is expected The US population, which is currently about 333 million, will reach 370 by 2080, but will drop back to 366 by 2100 and even immigration cannot offset this decline in the birth rate over the last 2 years. Do you think things have gotten better or worse than you anticipated from a birth rate and marriage rate standpoint? I think so. You're probably still getting worse, uh, and I think Musk is one of the few people that Elon Musk is one of, in case anyone's wondering, he's one of the few people that has called attention to the danger of the one child policy or the idea. that we should decrease the population, I mean things that don't grow die but they die for all kinds of reasons and we could link this with Identity, you know what my identity is, I could say, well, it's how I feel about myself, that's that. the line used everywhere now you can't tell me who I am I know who I am I can I am who I feel I'm okay first of all I don't even know what you mean by feel what what Damn what does that mean?

You are your emotional state right now and you can impose it on everyone. That's your theory. That's the theory of a 2 year old. Literally, it's a very bad theory. Well, where could your identity be? Aside from that, well, one of my identities when I was teaching at Harvard was a professor, obviously, and that was a good identity, but you know it wasn't exactly, it wasn't something I carried around in my head, it was a relationship pattern that I had. with a lot of people, all my students, right, it wasn't inside my head now there was a concordance between my representation of myself and how I acted in the world and that concordance was health, it was not what I thought of myself. you like part of the reason you can get something, let's call it gratification, from being a successful podcaster is that you're actually a successful podcaster, it's not in your head, it's in 1.5 million subscribers, it's how many podcasts you've made . 700, okay, so it's on the podcast 700 is not something you carry around in your head, remember?

I love the 42 rules that created the 24 that you came up with, but there's one that you didn't use, uh, if you have to choose to be the one that does things right, not the one that is seen to do things exactly, I absolutely love it. that rule, oh yeah, that's a great rule, yeah, well the thing is, you can do almost anything you want if you're willing to do it. take responsibility for it if you don't want credit, one of the most effective political maneuvers I have ever seen. Woman who is so brilliant. I won't tell you who she is, but she's so smart, she's so bright and she told me the last thing.

The time I saw her, she was in it for 30 years, showing up in places you'd never expect. I thought I asked her how the hell you did this and she said, "Oh, I decided 30 years ago that she could do it." what I would want if I didn't want credit and that's exactly what she did and she had a stellar stellar career and I've worked with other people who have done the same thing it's very interesting it's very interesting to realize that you could Say well, why Would you like the responsibility without the glory? It's like, hey, do you want the glory?

Are you so sure that wouldn't get in your way? You know there's something to be said for anonymity and secondly, maybe you want accountability because that's the adventure where you can actually do something that someone else just wants to take credit for, well maybe doing so is a great reward in itself with respect to Identity, you know, when I was a teacher, I was also a husband and I was also a father, well, those were identities, but they were not in my head, they were integrated in the relationship I had with my kids and that was a meaningful relationship built into the relationship I had with my wife, you can't be, you know?

It's almost heretical to say this in the modern world you can't be isolated alone with no responsibility and pursue your hedonistic nonsense and not be crazy and miserable, that's all the same thing, so you know he's gotten to the point. I've said things that have made me somewhat unpopular, like that it's very difficult for people to grow up until they have a child. You find a big part of who you are in that relationship. It makes you responsible. It makes you grow. It gives you the opportunity to mentor someone. you have someone around who is more important than you, well, that's part of being mentally healthy, that's a big part of it.

This is this company that I set up in London and helped create the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship. We are trying to present a governance model. It's called the subsidiary model and the idea is that people have multiple social roles that escalate, they know they have to take care of themselves, integrate, which means they can behave appropriately in the medium and long term, be self-sufficient and then maybe they can extend it. to your partner and then to your family and then to your local community and then to broader communities as you become more and more competent and able to take on that responsibility, that is the alternative to isolated hedonistic slavery, you enslave yourself to your own whims and it's the alternative to tyranny because if you take on all that responsibility you don't need someone to govern you and that's another example of how I blamed the therapists a little bit.

I called them liberal Protestant secularists and that's because they think of the locust of the psyche as subjective inside that's what a liberal would do it's just not accurate that's not like that it's not the way the psyche works it's not in your head you know it is in your head and in the world at the same time. At this moment, it is really true that your sanity is the agreement between you as an individual and the world, that is sanity, it is not the proper structure of your psyche or your brain, in fact, inside your skull you are distributed in the world and you should know and that's what you want to be that's where the adventure is you want to be a solipsist the masturbator solipsist porn Jesus, no wonder you're miserable and aimless well God, it's so pathetic why I'm so unhappy is because you think about yourself you don't think about the lowest impulses in yourself all the time that's why you feel miserable while you're Arc.

What I thought was particularly interesting was your live event you guys did at the O2 in the evening and they were all great, but Douglas I thought it was just a chance. strength that night, what have you learned since becoming friends with Douglas? How did it impact or influence you? Well, Douglas Douglas is very, very unpleasant, you know? And he likes combat and that's not something that really characterizes him. I don't enjoy combat at all. I mean, part of the reason it's wicked. I guess in some ways part of the reason I'll engage in difficult conversations is because I don't want to have them forever and so, you know, one of the rules that I had in my marriage and It was a rule that to me wife also liked to go on: if we have a problem, we will solve it right now and we will work it out to the core, and that is very unpleasant, but if you do, sometimes you only have to do it once and the problem goes away and then you don't have that damn problem every day for the rest of your life and sometimes it takes you 20 times to know it before it's fixed before you get to the bottom of things and that can be very unpleasant.

Douglas is very, very good at not letting people get away with things, he's very tough and very good at defending himself and there's a cruelty about him that's extraordinarily admirable, a judicious cruelty, you know, and it's It's a dangerous game because there is another realization of the gospel, let's say that the standards by which you judge other people will be the standards by which you yourself are judged and the reason for this is, well, how are you going to judge others and not apply the same standards to yourself? That is not going to happen because you become what you practice and you will turn your gaze, the hostile eye that you will turn towards others.

Absolutely, turn on yourselfhimself, there's no way around it, so Douglas plays a dangerous game because he's very combative, but he's also extremely careful, he's very careful with his words and we've been on tour with me in Europe. I think we did nine shows. together we divided the questions and answers the introduction made a small introduction before my lectures. I really liked it. I thought it was great. It has been a privilege to know you. Super smart. A very cultured person. Very ingenious. So he has a great sense of humor that is also funny, which is also one of the things that makes him a very dangerous opponent in a debate because not only does he have the facts at hand like Bun Lomberg but he is devastatingly witty and cutting. and it's fun to watch. which he's a master at that so it was uh it's interesting to think about the fact that all you really need in a live debate.

I think I learned this from you and Sam years ago, if you're doing a live debate now, that's not an appropriate way. opening comments with intellectual format and so on, if you manage to get two or three real zingers, you will win regardless of the content, if you get two or three real Zingers, the whole crowd laughs, guess what you got, yeah, well, the big intellectuals Publics have a vicious sense of humor, right, and I mean, I also think that's why a lot of the successful podcasters have been good comedians at the ark conference. I think Constantine Ken's speech was the overwhelming success of the convention.

I think it has 600,000 views as of today. 650 on the ark side and around 600 on his own channel and Constantine did a beautiful job of fusing intellectual content with wit, the interesting thing about my live tour that I'm about to start, many of my comedian friends have told me Yo Dude, I'm so jealous of the tour you're going on because no one expects you to be funny. If you can be funny four times in 90 minutes, you've killed it. If I'm not funny, once every 7 seconds. a comedian so the bar is set and obviously having Constantine's comedy background means that he can be by far funnier than most public speakers uh but he doesn't necessarily hold back on the same. standards that he doesn't expect to be one liners all the time one of the things that Douglas mentioned when you guys were talking on stage that I thought was particularly interesting was The dangers of smart people being captured by culture wars, any do you think?

How long over the last decade have some of the smartest people on the planet had their attention taken away, their cognitive power taken away, yeah, arguing about whether or not men are men and women are women or whatever? the severe idea of ​​the day, yes, well, this? Time has been wasted, so I've been associated with Daily Wire for about a year and a half now and it's been a huge success. It's been a pleasure to work with them, but what they constantly struggle with, all of them, all of the principles. One of the principles of the Daily Wire would prefer, in some way, to concentrate on philosophical, theological or dramatic matters, which is why the Daily Wire is heading towards entertainment for children, but also for adults who are starting to make films, for example , and television programs.

I'd rather do that. I had Ben Shapiro. He participated in this seminar on Exodus that I produced with nine other extraordinarily interesting thinkers. It is a nation under God for a reason because the political the political is not the Pinnacle it is never the Pinnacle and if you are able to speak at the Pinnacle political speech is secondary there it is also evanescent there are ways it can fall like Well, too there are degrees of depth of political things because what works on YouTube most of the time is and reacts exactly to Tik Tok woke and it's easy to get pigeonholed that way, yeah, yeah, and it's a waste.

It's not optimal, but it's an interesting question to ask correctly about how much kind of ankle, skirt, or need do you need to show from an algorithmic perspective to keep the numbers moving because ultimately you're producing what people make click. You don't want to be completely beholden to your audience, i.e. audience capture, but you also don't want to be so unaware of having your finger on the pulse of what's hot that you become obscure and obsolete at that very moment and that's Well. , in that line that you're trying to follow when it comes to matters that are at the highest level and also making them accessible to the public, that's a very, very narrow line to follow.

I mean, Jonathan Paso has done a good job at that, although his Mercado is still relatively niche and certainly more esoteric, say, than the newspaper guys who tend to get political and that occasionally leads to cheap politics, the blow for the blow or the chase of the algorithm and me. I mean, that's the danger that all politicians have too and I've seen it with a lot of political types who have developed a Persona. This is particularly true in the United States, I would say because Americans are very salesy and I'm not saying that. disdainfully it is very difficult to sell to Market to communicate.

I watched the Elvis movie recently and I thought he did a beautiful job of laying this out because Elvis was a star talent, but his manager, who is a real Shyer, was also a star talent as he would. He wouldn't have been who he was without his corrupt manager and you know it's kind of a deal with the devil, but you also have to give the devil what he deserves and the sales side of American culture can easily degenerate into a kind of narcissistic manipulation, there it is. where it would disappear if it became pathological, but as you said, you have to be aware of your audience and you have to offer what there is a market for and it is very, very difficult to do those things well.

This is a question I have about your new book coming out next year. I haven't seen any of that and it sounds like from what you're reading right now you're trying to deal with religious texts, especially the Bible, We Who Wrestle With God is the name of the book We Who Wrestle With God. Yes, that is what the word Israel means. Israel means we who fight with God and well, it is very interesting because it means that the chosen people are the people who fight with God and you could say who fights. with God and the answer to that is well, everyone struggles with God, well why can't you act without making moral decisions?

Every step forward is based on a moral decision and that is why we are all wrestling with God. Is God a moral decision? God is the spirit that guides you when you make the right moral decisions, so I wouldn't say that God is a moral decision. He is the spirit of moral decision. Actually, that's not a bad definition, as part of who I am. What I'm trying to do with this book is point out that a lot of what's happening in the Biblical Corpus is actually a correct definition, well, modern people think the fundamental question is whether you believe in God, but that's not the fundamental question. , the fundamental question is what you believe in God.

You mean God so let me give you an example of this that will make everything clear, there is a medieval idea that God is the sum bonum which means the sum of all that is good or the essence of all that is good, okay you could say . Well I don't believe in that now, remember this is a definition of God, right, God is the sum of all that is good, okay, so you don't believe in that, okay, let's take that apart, do you believe that some things are better ? than other things, well, people will say yes, okay, so do you think there is a scale of good, okay, is there something that all good things have in common and the answer has to be yes, because otherwise Don't you have a conception? of true good, the word good implies that through good things there is some Essence good, well, the medieval definition of God is the essence of good, well, let's say you don't believe in that, okay, does that mean you don't do you think?

In whatever is good, it is fine, so how do you act? Because acting means doing something that is better than what you are doing now. There is no action without movement towards good and good, you might say, well, I don't. you believe there is a good unitary good, you believe there is a good fractional good, so what do you do when those things oppose each other? Which would be in a conflict of duty. How do you mean? What do you mean to help you decide? between different goods, in general, what you do is if you can pursue a higher good or B, which is good and they conflict, then you choose the higher good, okay?

Do you believe in a higher good? Well, if you don't, you can't decide. between goods, which means you are paralyzed if you believe in the highest good then do you believe in the highest good? Well, the supreme good is God. What do you mean by definition? Okay, now you have a definition. So the next question. could be good, what is your relationship with the highest good? and you might say well, I'm not in a relationship, it's like well, you actually have one because you act on it, you can't help it, one of the interesting things about the Bible.

Corpus is that it is based on the insistence that you have a relationship with being and becoming a relationship as a personal relationship when you say biblical culus you mean the collection of texts that make up the Bible yes, because it is a library of books essentially true The Bible is actually the first library of books, it's written by a lot of different people and added to over thousands of years and then sequenced, actually sequenced into a narrative, which is quite interesting because no one really sequenced it or by no one, I mean no individual person.

It was the effort of the collective or the spirit that possessed the collective for thousands of years, but the narrative is coherent, which is really extraordinary, so the narrative is an investigation number one into the nature of God and number two about the nature of the relationship with God. God and then the number three in the nature of the right relationship with God, all those things and God is the sum of all that is good, so the Bible is an analysis of H the human relationship with good, what would have to happen after publication. of us who wrestle with God so that you look back on that publication and consider it a success what do you want to happen what do you want people to feel or take away from that work I think we are at the beginning of counter-enlightenment, the propositions that The Enlightenment view of man is incorrect and this, you know, from the Enlightenment view came science, but science now indicates that the Enlightenment view of man is incorrect, what do you mean?

Enlightenment types believe that we could Orient ourselves in the world, let's say empirically that and this is Sam Harris' proposition, you can meet the facts, you can orient yourself as a consequence of the dispassionate analysis of the facts, you cannot and I would say that artificial intelligence engineers have discovered that postmodern literary critics Perceptual psychologists and physiologists have discovered it and neuroscientists have discovered it, so it is not only the evidence that this vision is necessarily incorrect, it is overwhelming and multidimensional, you cannot orient yourself by the facts, why, because there are as many facts as there are things, in fact, if you combine things, the nature of the combination is also a fact, so there are as many facts as there are things and combinations of things, well, you can't get your bearings because that's because you're drowning in chaos, it's like If you were standing in the desert and there are an infinite number of directions that you could go well, how do you choose a direction and that's shown in the most recent survey that I just mentioned?

I am overwhelmed, lost in the desert, they are lost in the desert, that is, and the desert is the desert, in fact, they are dead facts, especially considering that few people can agree on whether this is a fact or is this counter, that's also a problem. It is not that the facts are necessarily evident, some are and I suppose that to a certain extent what the scientific Corpus is is the elaboration of a set of incontrovertible facts. I read recently that the entire Big Bang narrative is starting to fall apart. That was a fact for a long time.

I don't know if it is like that. I don't know enough about it, but my feeling is that the new Web Telescope discoveries have made many of the assumptions on which the Big Bang model was based. It had a questionable basis, so now I don't want you to go down a postmodern rabbit hole because, although the question of what constitutes a fact is a very complicated question anyway, you can get to the point by pointing out that we organize facts in a hierarchy. of value and look what I'm trying to lay out here in the book, you do this when you look at the world, you can't look at the world except through a hierarchy of values, for example, as we sit here.

There are an infinite number of places we could be pointing our eyes like I could be talking to you and looking at this little dot on the concrete floor or the dot next to it or the infinite number of dots that constantly surround it but I'm not. , I'm looking at your eyes, okay? Why? because I'm giving thempriority, so the fact that dominates in this landscape is the fact of your eyes, why can I use your eyes to evaluate our Shared Focus correctly and that is why we look at other people's eyes, it is also why humans have white around the head, exactly, that's how it is. so we can see what other people are paying attention to so we can get an idea of ​​the story a story is a description of a hierarchy of values ​​stories can be fantastic but correct if they are not tied to anything I can make up a Harry Potter story Now well, if they are not tied to anything, you will not find them interesting because they will not resonate, they will not grab you m, yes, they are tied, the stories are tied to reality in a very, very complicated way because reality is not what is presented moment by moment, it is our mathematics, there is a great debate among philosophers about mathematical abstractions, are they really good?

You could argue that a mathematical abstraction is more real than what it is abstracted from, how would you do that? In that case, if you are a master at mathematics, you dominate the world, so mathematical abstractions are more or less real. Narrative abstractions are abstractions, but you could say this is what an archetype is. An archetype is a narrative abstraction that is more real than the world. the apparent world is behind the scenes and the biblical Corpus is a narrative it is a hyperreal narrative that is the correct way to think about it it is more real than real it is more real than reality how could something that is not the thing be more real ? that the thing well, that's exactly the problem with abstraction, right, is the idea of ​​a church more real than a given Church, well, in a way it's CU, it encapsulates what is similar in all churches, so it's like a Platonic ideal, a category is like a The Platonic ideal is more or less real.

Well, you could say reality. This is what Plato said. Reality is a faint shadow of the essence. Reality is less real than the ideal and we, certainly, and that is somehow integrated into our perception, how we criticize the things that are presented to us because they are bad reflections of the hypothetical ideal, you could say well, the ideal is not real. Well, you could make the opposite argument which is that the ideal is more real than the thing itself and I mean I can give you an example of these patterns, so in the story of Cain and Abel you have two patterns of sacrifice.

Why is sacrifice a problem? The reason it is a problem is because people exist in a sacrificial relationship. For the world, what does that mean? It seems to mean something like human beings are aware of their extended self, you know that you will be present tomorrow and next week and next month and next year and 5 years from now and 10 years from now. It's less certain now when you go out, but you have the feeling that you are something that extends over decades, and what that means is that you have to behave in a way that is not merely immediate, you have to conduct yourself in a way a way that will work over time now how do people work?

Work is a gesture of sacrifice so, by definition, you work virtually. Work is the sacrifice of the present for the future. I mean, maybe someone can come up with a better definition of work than that, but I don't think so, it's like if you put in the time and effort right now, it's something, even if it is something, maybe it's not what you'd like. What the hell does that mean that you think will give good results is that a contract with the future is a pact because the relationship that the biblical Corpus insists characterizes human effort is a pact is a deal the deal is that you make the right sacrifices and they pay, that's the deal now, you could say it's just part of the social contract, but the biblical Corpus insists that it goes deeper than it is built into the structure of reality itself and that if the sacrifices are made well, the future would be paradisiacal.

I have that K Young quote in my head, beware of unearned wisdom, which seems to play a role here, like the work you need to do in order to genuinely come to know the difference between actually being attracted because who you are is attractive. and being able to be a pick-up artist who is able to make the mouth noises and hand gestures that cause those are the fruits of false sacrifice. One could say that undeserved and undeserved moral reputation is the consequence. of false sacrifice well, this is performative empathy, sure, exactly on the Internet, definitely, that is the same as praying in public, look how good I am, if the look comes before how good I am, true, true, true, it really sucks. havoc on good affirmation.

I also talked to Douglas about this. He seems almost like a predictor. He is an identifier that you should be a little more cautious with what he is doing this person. You definitely know if each person is super sweet and kind. nice lizo, see lizo was in the news recently? No, so she is a singing artist. She is the one who got in trouble for abusing her fellow dancers close to her. Yes, she made her dancers eat bananas from Amsterdam vaginas and strippers. Douglas said that he, oh yeah, that's a little bit on the hedonistic side of crazy power, well, she was supposed to be, you know, this bass like the girls and body positivity and all that, but it turned out that behind scene was treating his dancers terribly.

They were body shamed all the time, but she was the one at the front, M, who was the vanguard of this particular movement, but you'd seen the same thing with Jimmy Fallon. I think he recently got caught up in a rage. a tyrant to work for and yet in front Ellen degenerates again the same thing it's almost like someone is it's a lot like that overloading the kind darling I'm here for the subordinates you're going to I'm a little suspicious of what's going on going on there if you need to proclaim your purity and your good reputation if it's all words and opinions and not deeds one of the commandments one of the ten commandments is not to use God's name in vain okay, now people think that means not to swear and in a way it means that that is one of its similar tangential meanings, but what it really means is not claiming divine motivation for correct selfish behavior and that is performative compassion, so what you do is you elevate compassion to the highest place to make it your goal, which is a big mistake because whatever God is, he is not just compassion, you elevate compassion to the highest place and then you say, I feel sorry for people and what that does is elevate your status. morality to the highest possible place, it is completely undeserved because this is something that JK Rowling got so precise with her character Dolores Umbridge right, he was an absolute power M with kittens he had kittens on plates it's like this toxic sentimentality I'm so kind it's like, I'd like to stay away from you and you're devouring kindness and the Freudians knew this very, very, in a very sophisticated way, very early on because the devouring mother, the edle mother, is the dark side of compassion.

I've been trying to find a term for this for a while although I like to spice things up by giving them useful names uh and at the moment the best one I have is the shallow pond of empathy, which right now is something that appeases the people and does not immediately cause them any discomfort, it is always prioritized. Even if the net effect of that in the long term results in their suffering, that is exactly what the edle situation is, it is the prioritization of short term emotional comfort over medium and long term prosperity, because the mother who kicks the child out of the nest says this is going to hurt now, but the iterative consequences are positive.

Michelangelo's personal assistant got it right exactly that's right and it's exactly right and the moral of that story is that if you give your children to the world, you will keep them right, that's Abraham's sacrifice. Abraham is called by God to sacrifice his son and he says yes, so he doesn't have to do it. You have to offer your children for the world to break them or you will lose. you undermine them you

destroy

them it is very it is a very paradoxical truth we were talking about patterns Cain is the pattern of inappropriate sacrifice he does everything second rate he lies, omits, prevaricates he pretends he does not offer the best of himself Capable is the opposite he offers the best he It means his light shines on the hill, there is no way to hide, he is giving it everything he has.

The covenant with God is that if you give him everything you have, you will prevail and that is what God tells Cain who to go to. through some of today's threads Instinct stay true to that instinct honesty say what you mean don't prioritize avoiding someone else's discomfort or your discomfort in the short term to believe that it's something that will make you feel better in the long term I have a well that is a kind of sacrifice right there is that you are willing to sacrifice your short-term physiological and psychological comfort for a medium and long-term benefit it is the essence of sacrifice to offer this is something that atheists What I don't understand about the biblical narrative is that the narrative insists that we live in a sacrificial relationship it is the essence of humanity to live in a sacrificial relationship is like that, is it true or not, as you mature your relationships are more sacrificial, it is less about what you, in your strict sense, want at this moment and it is more about what is good in the medium and long term, including other people, well, that is a sacrificial relationship, now the Covenant, you know, and this is a question of Faith, it is a question of the deepest Faith.

Are you willing to enact the proposition that the way to have the world revealed to you in its most positive form is to adopt the most appropriate sacrificial relationship? Well, it's a big risk, isn't it because you have to give up? everything that is that's the deal you renounce everything that is under everything everything good that's what Christian passion is because Christian passion is an archetypal story because Christ is the person who sacrifices everything completely 100% And the notion biblical is that there is no difference between that and the Descent of the Old Testament god into the space of human reality, so God is elaborated as a spirit in the Old Testament, that is the way to think about it, developed directly in the law and the prophets and Christ presents himself. like the ENT of that so imagine here's a way to think about it you can invite various spirits to possess you that's what you do when you give way to anger that's what you do when you give way to lust let's say you allow the spirits to possess Well, what would you be like if you did nothing more than allow the higher spirits to possess you?

That is the question posed in the New Testament and part of the answer is whether you would allow the highest possible spirits to possess you. You would be able to face everything that life can throw at you and that is what happens in Christian passion because the worst that life can throw at you is the worst tragedy and the worst tragedy is the worst death, the worst and most painful death. inflicted. on the least deserving person, right, that's the full extent of the tragedy, okay, that's not enough. Christ has to face that and he has to face malevolence, which is the heartbreaking thing about hell, so the idea is that to fully adapt to life you have to allow yourself to be possessed. for the spirit that will allow you to willingly face unjust suffering, death and evil, it's like you have an argument against that, how could it be otherwise?

One of the things I think I see people respond to this degree of prayer pressure is when they think about what's going to happen long term. I have a discomfort that is in front of me now that I need to face and that I must go through if I am going to get to Something in the future that I think I am supposed to do and one of the solutions that you come up with, which is not the solution, but Yes it is for them, it's just that I'm not going to do anything. Yes, you know, no decision is the same as a neutral one a neutral choice one of my friends Alex has this quote that I love and he says that the heaviest things in life are not iron and gold but decisions not made.

The reason you are stressed is that you have decisions to make and you are not making them. They yeah, yeah, that's it, yeah, yeah, there's no doubt about it, well, there's no indecision, right, just because you get older, you pay for your, you pay for your indecision, it's a decision, it's a decision that you should avoid. Fundamentally known mentally and part of the moral that is embedded in the story of Job And in the Christian passion is that you can master what you will face and maybe that's true maybe that's true. I mean, the clinical literature seems to indicate that's true because one of the things that you do if you're a competent clinician, you look at what people are trying to accomplish and maybe that needs some modification, but let's assume they have a goal in mind.

What would work? Well, you have talked strategically with them, they have a well-designed Vision. Well, now you are presenting the vision and you find impediments that stop you and maybe they are impediments that scare you and paralyze you, and so on. what you do isbreak down the impediment just like we talked about before until you find a way for them to move forward that constitutes genuine progress that they will actually make, so what you do is you take the problem and limit it until they can deal with it well, then deal with it, then what It happens, they become more competent, that's what happens, and then they get better at dealing with all the problems, so they don't just learn how to deal with that specific problem, they learn a lesson that generalizes to all the problems they face.

Braver when you do it when you use exposure therapy. People are no less afraid. They become braver. That is much better because the bravest move from one situation to another. Well then the question is here. Here's the question if you faced everything that came your way. who would you be? well the answer the biblical answer is you would be a true Son of God that's the biblical answer is how good you believe that well it depends on what you mean by believe you believe you have a better It's better to gamble than face what's there, well just you have to be sensible about it for a moment.

It's as if your theory would suit you better using falsehood and avoidance because that's the opposite theory. Either you face it and you do it based on faith that something in you will respond if you do or you don't face it those are the options if you don't face it that is also faith that is faith in the notion that avoidance and deception will be enough I think for a lot of people it's born out of fear, it's born out of people pleasing, yeah, and not wanting to hurt other people around you and not wanting to tell them things that they don't want to hear or not doing or saying things.

You know that you are going to bother the people around you, right, but in the short term again yes, in the short term again you know if if you look at a good mother, a good mother bothers her children a lot, stop doing that, why? well why Why not let your children do exactly what they want when the answer is good? First of all, it terrifies them because kids really want, they want walls, they don't want to be in the desert doing whatever they want, they want a walled space. in which they have the optimal amount of freedom, so a person who truly loves another person does not go out of his way at all costs to never bother them, that is the devouring mother, if you love someone well, that is the biblical quote, it You punish well, what does it do?

I mean, it's like if you love someone and they're doing something stupid and self-destructive and you can see it, it's up to you to say that you know this is going to bother you, but as far as I can tell, you're doing something. stupid and self-destructive and then there will be a fight about it because they are going to say who are you to judge and that is a perfectly good question: what makes you think you are right? And these are the reasons why I'm doing this, you know that these are the terrible experiences that I've had that have led me to go down this path and sometimes that can be really compelling.

You know, you meet bitter and resentful people and then they tell you about their lives and about you. Think hard, yes, but then you know people who have had just as terrible a life, who aren't bitter and resentful, and they're doing better, so even if it seems justifiable, maybe even if it's justifiable, it's not. The most common situations where I think this people-pleasing tendency would appear is someone who maybe thinks they should break off a relationship but doesn't and stays to protect their partner from it and I found a thread on Reddit. Those were five questions you should ask yourself if you are unsure about your relationship.

If someone told you that you look a lot like your partner. Would this be a compliment to you? Are you truly satisfied or just less lonely? Are you able to go unnoticed? Or do you feel the need to present yourself differently to please your partner? Are you in love with who your partner is right now as a whole or are you just in love with their good side, their potential or the idea of ​​them and would you want your future or imagined child to date someone as their partner and this thread was full of people who were having existential crises and seemed to me to be a group of people who had managed to believe that continuing until Manana Manana with the short-term postponement of MH the discomfort of the decision they wanted to make with their partner was somehow the noblest thing they could do. do or the good thing they could do or the virtuous thing they could do or what would ultimately result in the best outcome even though they knew that if you spread it out long enough and then it will be hidden, they will just sweep it under the rug, so yeah, that list of five questions, I think well, in most relationships you can break up or you can have a thousand fights, you know, and if you have a thousand.

You fight, then you don't have to fight, you make peace that way, you know because you are different from your partner, so there are things to resolve and you could think of it as a compromise, but it is not, it is that you are different from your partner. You and your partner have to find a game that you both want to play that is not a compromise, that is a solution, it's like you bring your skills to the table and I bring mine to the table and then we figure out some game we can play where We are both optimally used and it is a better game than the one we could play alone, it is not a commitment, but getting there is very difficult and people bring all kinds of burdens to a relationship and it has to be done, it is like disciplining children, it's really the same.

What are your children, you notice that your children are bothering you, you can notice that, oh they, my child is bothering me, okay, so what questions do you ask? Am I a tyrannical child of someone who is touchy? Well that's why you need your wife because you can go ask her my kids are annoying I'm a tyrannical son who's touchy and she said yeah you probably need something to eat or you're a bit of an idiot that way and you have to listen because maybe Maybe it's you or maybe she says yes, that damn kid has gotten into my case too and then they wonder if we're mutual tyrants.

It's like no, that kid is annoying. Okay, do we want him to be annoying? Well, if you love your child, then the answer would be no CU. If he's bothering you, he'll bother other people, he'll bother his potential friends, he'll bother other adults, he'll go around being annoying and everyone will frown at him, that's not helpful, so then you might as well fix it and you. That's going to cause some discomfort in the short term. You know maybe you have a very outgoing, obnoxious 13-month-old who likes to call the shots and every time her mother moves more than a foot away from her.

She has a squawking fit because she has learned to control, maybe the mother you know was still busy with childcare and can't set limits, so now you have to do something about this emerging monster of a 14 month old. and one of the things you do is every time the child is bossy, first of all, you don't do it and you know you don't appreciate yourself very much for being bullied by a 14 month old, that's as much of a status coup as it should be. If that's the case you have to notice that I'm upset with this kid so I should do something about it Well, it's going to cost emotional distress in the short term.

The same thing happens when you are dealing with your partner. It's like you're bothering me. Well now maybe that's me so I should damn maybe we should talk about it you're bothering me convince me it's me and I should listen because maybe it's me and if I'm mad at you and I shouldn't be . I should fix that, but maybe it's you, so let's figure out exactly what's going on, you know, and that's usually going to be, man, that's, there's a constant push and counterattack in an argument like that and usually, you know that The conversation will revolve around whatever.

The problem is until you get to the bottom of it and only God knows where he is, but then maybe you can fix it, you know? And if you solve enough things, you will live in peace and that is something worth achieving, you know what about me? I have always thought that in my marriage there is nothing, there is nothing too small to fight about, now you know, I put some rules that I used to have with my clients, it's like if someone bothers you, you should keep that in mind and you shouldn't do anything . probably if they bother you twice in the same way, then you think, "Okay, that's twice," but you probably still shouldn't do anything about it, but if they bother you three times, then you can say this is what you just did. do and they will tell you. well no I didn't do that and then you say yes you did and you did the exact same thing in this other situation and you did the exact same thing in this other situation so don't tell me you didn't do it.

Because you did it three times and I saw it. Well now they can think of reasons why they did it and maybe some of them have to do with how stupid you are and you should listen because maybe they are right but that's at least. the beginnings of the process by which you unravel the problems you want to solve well, we don't want to do this, this is not the way we want to treat each other, we want to get to a place we want to get to. a place where our whole life is like the best moments of the best dates we've ever had, that's a good goal and that's achievable, you gotta work man, there's a scene in Genesis, God throws Adam and Eve out of paradise . because of their pride, their sin of Pride, each has their own particular version of that sin, the sin of Eve and Adam, but anyway they are expelled from paradise out of pride and God puts cherubim at the gates of paradise and cherubs are something like that.

Monstrous angels terrifying figures and they hold swords that are on fire that spin in every direction of the witches and burn and you could say well, what does that mean? And it means that well, a sword is something that directly cuts a sharp blade and a fire is something. that burns and a sword that burns burns and cuts and a sword that burns and spins in all directions is a burning sword from which nothing can escape, okay, now you want to walk towards paradise, everything that is not worthy in you has to be burned. and cut right, that's what conflict is in a relationship, you know, it's like that's not suitable for Paradise, what does it have to do, it has to be thrown into the Outer Darkness where there will be a gnashing of teeth, right, must be. cut and destroyed and everything that is not worthy has to turn out right the Michelangelo effect is about you and your partner becoming the idealized version of each other, right?

You are going to do for me the things I want within your parameters of control. that you want to be the best partner for me and I want to do the same for you and we will both communicate with each other and we will stand firm where we have boundaries and we will continue to compromise that's what love should do that's what love should do if you love to someone if it's genuine love you see you see their hidden Soul that's a good way to think about it you can glimpse the light they could reveal to the world if they revealed it that's what you see and then acting with love is encouraging it to come forward and discouraging any anything that gets in your way.

That's why I love the Michelangelo effect that I had heard about and been using. Ok, so why the Michelangelo effect? This is why Michelangelo sees this huge block UNH Mar. I see, I see, and within that he can see David MH and over time, slowly, it will crumble and crumble and crumble. Then you see something that's not there and that's inside the thing that's rough and UNH Hune and uncivilized and untamed and unruly and sometimes terrible and you were able to make it out of that, yeah, that's actually part of the blow of the block without carve, so a child.

It is an uncarved block in the downward view and you eliminate everything that is left until the perfect remains correct and that is to see the logos in the Old and New Testament, the logos that creates the world is the faculty of judgment, what would you say ? separate the wheat from the chaff correctly and it is not compassion in a sense because if you are compassionate to someone you want the best for them all things considered, but that compassion in the highest sense cannot exist without judgment because judgment is this a part of you is not worthy of continuing and surely that is what you are doing with your children when you see them misbehaving you think that no that is not that no that no that something more sophisticated even with my little granddaughter the other day she is very very playful and she is a very nice girl, she's very playful and very fun and funny and not neurotic so she's a pleasure to be around but she hasn't seen me for a while and that's why she was pushing me to chase her and pushing her.

Me and her would come over and hit me, you know, and at one point she hit me too hard and I knew it and I told her that's not fun, that's not acceptable and then she started, but I was playing with that advantage trying to find Find out where the fun is and you know how hard I can hit grandpa.Damn, I know she knows, but she needs to know exactly right. I can't let her get away with it because then it's not fun to play with. She has to learn to come and hit her grandpa exactly the way she provokes it. a playful, non-annoying response, then there's a very, you know, response, you might think, well, that's a pretty harsh judgment for a 5-year-old, it's like no, it's not.

I wish she was the most fun girl to play with. With that she could be right and then I'm not going to pretend that she's okay when she's not okay.sets that limit it's almost like a curse it's a curse yes, there you go, we were yes, because then how is she going to play? another with other children if she doesn't know that they will be as lenient as grandpa definitely not yes, we were talking before we started. I had this conversation with Robert Spolski and it was really, really deep. I mean, I know he's a brilliant guy and this new book of his is about sort of free will and deterrence, which has an upper limit on how interesting it is to me, but he gave this quote to Andrew Hubman where he said that dopamine is not about the pursuit of happiness. it's about the happiness of the pursuit, right, that's definitely true and I haven't been able to stop seeing this everywhere, so, Morgan Housel, a friend told me this great story, he's an investor, he has a fund, He's an author, he has a family, he got all these things, they plan to go on vacation and they've been planning it for a long time and with the kids, the wife, him and all his businesses it was a tough thing to do. themselves out there and they finally get there after the trip and the plane and the kids and the crying and everything else and he goes out on the balcony on the first night of this vacation that they have planned forever and his first thought to himself was: Wouldn't it be great if we came back here next year?

It would be great if we could come back here next year, literally, during the supposed enjoyment of the destination, I was already thinking about the trip and you know, it's not the trip it's not the destination it's the trip it's kind of TR but it gives a new perspective there is no destination each destination is simply the beginning of the next journey and I have not been I have not been able to see it I see it I see it everywhere I see it everywhere in my own life well there are technically two different forms of reward there are a consummatory reward and that's the reward that's what an orgasm is it's a consummatory reward that's what brings the behavior and the perceptual sequence stops, it ends right at the climax, it ends, but then it's over, that journey ends, so There's the dopaminergic reward that Spolski was talking about, and the dopaminergic reward is evidence of progress toward a goal, okay? a corollary of that, well, how can you optimally engage because dopamine facilitates Eng engagement and concentration, so drugs like amphetamines can be used for children with attention deficit disorder? fixating on a goal aimed at pursuing the problem with amphetamines is that they can fixate you so strongly that you cannot get out of the frame, so, like children who take amphetamines, they will become obsessed with, for example, cleaning out their closet, they can't switch to the next activity, okay, dopaminergic reward is a reward that is obtained in relation to a goal, okay, so what is the implication of that, we will pursue the highest possible goal, well, because the momentum of advancement is greater, now you have to balance that you may not have it. move to the right because imagine that rewards have two components: number one is that you are moving towards something valuable, okay, so you want it to be as valuable as possible, okay, but you have to be moving so that it can't be so valuable that it ends. your scope you're going to walk to the moon I'm not going to be able to see every increment it makes yes you want to get to the moon that's true you can't walk there so it's a bad plan you need something extremely valuable that you can move towards okay , so part of the reason you establish a relationship with God, let's say, is because that's what sets the upper limit of your vision, it's like he wants things to be as good as possible, that's a vision of paradise , well, that has to be broken down into, you know your upcoming decisions, but behind that should be this continuous movement towards what you would say, a sky that recedes as you get closer, that is the proper vision of Heaven.

A Heaven is a place that is perfect and gets better and better both at the same time, that is what music shows you because a great piece of music is perfect but it gets better as it develops and you need this to be part of the problem with a static utopian vision, something Dovi criticized if you gave to people. Nothing more than a consummatory reward, the famous phrase goes so that they can do nothing but sit in hot tubs, eat cake and worry about the continuation of the species, human beings would all go to hell in a moment just to have something interesting. do what was that quote you said about Rogan years ago?

If we were to make perfect enough, the only desired lack would be the desire for the lack itself. what is that card? what is the right thing to do? can you remember well? Kard pointed out that if we do as we make the world easier and easier, this is perhaps part of the problem with the material abundance we have at hand is that at some point what is missing is the lack itself yes, yes, exactly, Exactly, it's optimal deprivation, you know, and if everything is handed to you on a plate it's like what the hell are you doing there?

This happens in the story of Abraham, so Abraham, who is the father of nations, is right, so Abraham does it right, he has everything at the beginning of the story, he has rich parents. He is about 70 years old when the story begins. They have held his hand throughout his life and the voice of God comes to him and says: I am the god of your ancestors, telling you to go. From your comfort zone you go out into the world and Abraham is quite old at this point, but for some reason he decides that he is going to give up comfort for adventure and then, as Abraham progresses, he makes the necessary sacrifices, each of the which gets more difficult as you go up. and he adopts this pattern of relationship with the god that calls him to Adventure that literally makes him the father of Nations, so you can even think of it biologically if you want, you could also think that people like Dawkins think that reproduction is sex and that is why we can talk, for example, about the selfish gene that manifests itself in sexual reproduction, it is not sex, sex is a necessary but insufficient precondition for reproduction.

Abraham adopts a motive, being a sacrificial motive, that establishes the optimal environment for his children, who then established the optimal environment. environment for his children and his children and his children, so you can imagine that what Abraham is doing, this is what the story means, is that he is adopting a mode of behavior that works best on All Things Considered across multiple generations and sacrifices everything for that, it's incredibly expansive vision given that we're in a world that's comfortable and we've created buildings where there are heavy things that are picked up and left in the same place because it's very rare that you have to lift heavy things properly. . the obstacles on our roads for the same reason the proliferation of ice baths and saunas and even reading to a certain extent you know how to read difficult things difficult things where should people go given that they are in a world that is more comfortable than ever where should they go they go to encourage them to find difficult things the truth the truth is what is optimally difficult the truth is optimally difficult that is something really wonderful to know the truth is Adventure there is no distinction partly because if you are going to simply say what you believe to be true you have that leaving aside the consequences you cannot predict the consequences well there is no difference between not being able to predict the consequences and having an affair they are the same truth because if you knew the consequences not being an adventure is not an adventure yes yes the consequences are lost just like It is not sacrifice or courage if there is no risk right is exactly the same and that is why it is wonderful to know that the optimized adventure must be In truth, he had thought about each given situation, that is why Christ says in The Sermon on the Mount that to orient yourself appropriately and is often seen as this hippie, pay up, don't think about morality, morality will take care of itself, you know, God takes care of it. from The Sparrows he will certainly take care of you it's like a hippie wet dream that's not what that's not what that's not the core of the message the core of the message is very simple Christ says aim for the highest thing you can imagine, that's the relationship with God.

You put what is on the Pinnacle correctly on the Pinnacle and you aim for that and then you focus on that and it is that, and you treat other people the way you would like to be treated yourself. set the moral framework, then attend to the day and the concerns of the day. Once you have established the proper moral framework, you pay attention to the day and live in the truth and that takes you towards that destination. You have to have the right orientation, you have to point up, but then it's just a matter of what would you say, respect the truth, those are the logos that set people free and that's doing it correctly, there was one of the other rules that didn't They did it.

In your book, uh, nothing well done is insignificant, right, right, right, yeah, well, you have a team, so Christ tells his followers in the gospels to store up treasures in heaven, not in the places where Moths can eat and rust can destroy. Well, what is that? Well, it means the same thing, it means the same thing that you just pointed out, which is that if you go through a disciplinary process to achieve something, maybe no, you don't achieve the goal that you were aiming for. but you get a new way of seeing the world in one set of skills, well if you keep doing that you have multiple ways of seeing the world with more and more skills, that's your treasure store, you know the reason women. using wealth as an indicator of attractiveness is because wealth is an indicator of competition, it is not competition because now you can be rich and useless, it is not that easy but at least it can happen temporarily, but women use wealth markers to evaluate competition and competition is treasure, not wealth because if you are competent you could be thrown into the desert and you will make it flourish.

I've said this about people who go to the gym, so from the outside someone who goes to the gym and has I have a good body, whatever the body is and this is what you can touch during sex when you are intimate, but the story Having someone who has a good body tell you about the type of person they are is much more important. I think the way he manifests physically is someone who is reliable, able to get through difficult things, self-disciplined, it's just this long list of things that he can deal with pain and discomfort, which is kind. sexy in a uh perfect way it's the perfect materialistic disciplinary strategy because it's very concrete well, you change your body it's like a spiritual quest well, it is to the extent that it requires you to know long-term discipline and sacrifice and you could wait, and I think this is probably the case, that you know you can get stuck in the body self-improvement niche and focus on that too obsessively, but you can also use it as a springboard to discipline the pursuit itself and a lot of people do that.

That's what I think I told you last time we chatted about the pause. Hand, this thing that occurred to me, so I noticed towards the end of my 20s that a lot of guys who had been training with a particular modality, usually bodybuilding, usually exclusively for the The way they looked, when they were approaching 30 they realized that they were getting out of breath walking up some stairs and maybe they couldn't touch their toes and they looked fantastic, but I don't know, they just felt like maybe they should start valuing different things and then change their training and do Brazilian jiu-jitsu or yoga or CrossFit or you know some other form of whatever and that precipitated a change in everything else and I saw this in myself. , TRUE?

I am towards the end of my 20s. I have achieved success in many of the ways that society tells a young person that he should value success. There was a disagreement. Something fell out and then you think, "Okay, well, maybe I need to evaluate yes or no." the things I've been told I should want are things I really want to want and very quickly you realize I don't know, it feels like a quarter life crisis. I think a lot of men go through this and leave. Or I did. or I didn't succeed in a game where I was told I was supposed to rate the game and upon reflection I don't really care as much as I thought, maybe there were some elements I was really proud of.

After I broke up with my business partners, I was very proud of the things we had accomplished, but then there were other things that I thought about: why have I put so much of my sense of self-worth into this and this and? then you start, you have to evaluate and this is what happens in the Exodus story when Moses encounters the burning bush, so he just goes about his business as a shepherd and he does well, he has two wives, he likes his father. father-in-law, is well regarded in this new country he finds himself in, left Egypt where there is a price on his head for essentially killing an Egyptian who was Tor tormenting one of the Hebrews anyway, Moses just takes care of his matters as a shepherd, which was very hard work in those days and this thing catches his attention this shine this flash and he goes to investigate well, so what does that mean?

As you move forward in life, something will capture yourinterest and in history I just told myself that it's like someone deciding they're going to start going to the gym. There's something about being in good physical shape that catches their attention, which is an interesting thing because it catches their attention. It's not even necessarily a decision they make. It's more of a possibility that manifests itself, that's of interest, so they decide to follow it, so they look deeper into it, so Moses approaches the burning bush and gets closer and closer, and a bush is a symbol of life, as if it were a tree. of life and a tree of life that is on fire is being, that is life, the tree and becoming, that is fire, transformation, so a burning bush is a symbol of being and becoming as such now is something that calls, okay, okay, now pursue your physique.

Fitness CU is a calling for you and you focus more and more on it, you get more and more discipline, but as you get more and more discipline, you start to transform properly and then your vision starts to change. Now, what happens to Moses is that as he gets closer and closer to the burning bush, he begins to realize that he is on sacred ground, so he goes deeper, the investigation is taking him deeper, so that takes off its shoes and keeps coming closer, keeps going down the same path, chasing this thing and then. the voice of God himself speaks to him from the middle of the burning bush and that is what makes him a leader and so what does the story mean?

It means that as you walk through life in your normal mode, things will call to you and if you chase them, they will take you deep, it really doesn't matter what it is that calls, what matters is that you chase it and chase it to the depths and as you that you pursue it to the depths, you will transform and if you do that. without reservation that will make you the person who frees the slaves and opposes the tyrants and that is how it works, that is the calling and that can happen in any direction, practically in any direction, you just have to pursue it with enough Faith, one of the things that I suppose has been abrogated a lot by almost everyone at the moment is university education and I had a very interesting time at university almost exclusively outside of my education, all the good things that happened to me while I spent 5 years at Newcastle, I didn't include what I was taught, it was never inside the lecture hall, it was all I was doing outside of that and many of my friends it's very fashionable on the internet to mock higher education as useless pieces of paper , uh, not that you don't need it in order to be successful, certainly what I ended up doing on this podcast didn't require me to go to college, maybe in some ways it did, but also from a definite standpoint. from a grading perspective, it wasn't, but I think I still have a relatively professional experience at the University, uh, and yeah, you know you have the launch of Peterson Academy, which is the new thing.

I was wondering how you thought, well, basically, they are recoverable universals given that so much. That's good about the college experience, it has almost nothing to do with the educational side, they are redeemable, some I imagine, Hillsdale is doing very well, what is it, it's a conservative college in the northeast US .directed by Larry AR? They have a 1% attrition rate in comparison. at the typical 50% dropout rate and they provide a classic IAL, what used to be a liberal education, liberal arts education, is a more conservative endeavor given how the Overton window has changed, but Larry's students focus In physical fitness, their philosophy department tends to meet in the weight room, which is quite interesting, they have weight benches spread throughout the campus, about a third of the students take music courses, so the place is very musical.

It is a very disciplined place, the quality of education is extremely high, so there are institutes that fulfill their mandate, I think that is rare and I think that, in general, universities have become hopelessly corrupt, as far as I know , so we were hoping to be able to offer something resembling an alternative, but you point out one of the complexities of doing that. It's easy to think that a university is the transmission of knowledge from experts to empty vessels, say students, it's lectures, exams and accreditations, but that's not really what a university is, it's learning if you're lucky when you go to the University.

Find a teacher or two that you can work with and who will really teach you how to think. Usually those professors are pretty rare and you're lucky if you establish a relationship like that, especially at a big university where the student faculty ratio is absurdly high, like 200 to 1. I've been in lecture halls that were 300 to 1. . Yeah, no, I didn't have a relationship like that with any of my rights and that's really not good because you need, you need. a learning relationship to educate yourself fundamentally um we started this we are formulating the Peterson Academy we hope to be able to provide people with very high quality lectures.

I'm fortunate like you to be able to reach charismatic, well-educated people and we give them a good financial deal and we treat them very well and they come to Miami and record a series of relatively short eight-hour lectures and we're implementing state-of-the-art testing procedures and We are going to award a certificate that you will have to obtain to acquire it, so we hope that the quality of our graduates will be such that the certificate speaks for itself as a marker of conscientiousness and educated experience. We're also developing the social side because, as you pointed out, a big part of what happens to you when you go to university is social and socializing allows you to make a whole new group of friends, it's very important, right? huge, it's one of those times in your life where you can separate who you were and become something new, well you remember it every summer, at least for me, maybe this is because I was chronically so unpopular at school that I would return every summer. uh imagining that I could reinvent myself I'm going to be the cool kid this year I'm going to be the sporty kid this here or whatever but the great one is because you're not even in the same thing In the city, nobody even knows who you are, nobody even knows what thinking about who you're right and, yeah, that for me was the big turning point in going from the kid that I was to the kind of young adult that I was becoming. to end well, well, if you're lucky, you have several occasions where that happens in your life where you can make a relatively clean break and you can invent a new right, this just to interject that, like, there's an idea called Mode monk, which has become something of an online meme, but I first read about this years ago and it involves a prolonged period of isolation to work on yourself, reflect on your flaws and do inner work.

To introspect, it's usually related to meditation, to improving your diet, to improving your physical condition, your mental condition, all these different things and, uh, I've almost seen it as if you do that and concentrate on yourself for a short period of time. very, you know, maybe it's a couple of months, really focusing on yourself, continuing to do your job and doing the rest of the things, but outside of that, just trying to be the best you can, periodizing that for me was one of the most powerful inflections apart from the change in lifestyle and well that is what confession is fundamentally supposed to be, that is, when you take stock of yourself you confess you confess to yourself and make your sins a reality you evaluate yourself for your insufficiency and you proclaim your inadequacies and that well then you can start working on them it's like it's painful here are all the things that I'm not here are all the things that I'm not that I would like to be right that's painful self-examination but the advantage is you put all your problems on the table and the advantage of that is that, problem by problem, there is probably some hope, like for example, you said you were unpopular when you were a teenager, but that doesn't mean you had to take that to college. right, there was a chance that then, how did you get out of that?

What did you do? The main reason, I think, was that I didn't really understand how to relate to other kids, so I became obsessed with how other kids would dress. their shirts or their ties or the type of shoes they would wear or the right then you were looking at external models or yes and that's why they had friends and I wasn't okay and I didn't realize that it was just I wasn't socially savvy, no. I understood very well how to relate to other kids and I think I got to a point where, especially by the time I went to college, I had put in enough time to learn at least something.

HED's approximate social skills and now I was finally able to throw away some of the presuppositions that maybe he had been following me, because what were the starting points for you? Do you remember the first friendship you made in college? Oh yes, the boys. that I lived with very well, so these were these were roommates yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, so yeah, that's a good operation, look, it's a hard thing to duplicate online, because having a group of roommates fourth is a formative experience, it was crazy for me. I didn't know because, again, only child, two parents living in a small house.

I didn't know you were supposed to knock on someone's room door before entering. I had never done it. I spent my 18 years. I've never had to knock on anyone's CU bedroom door as if Mom and Dad were down, like there was someone else there. I'm going to knock on the dogs like the kitchen door to see if the dogs would mind if I went to the kitchen, uh and a lot of those things, looking back on it now, are so ridiculous without knowing that that was something that was done. you were supposed to do, yes, well, without knowing those elemental skills, although that can be a big impediment.

You know, I had people in my clinical practice. spend hours practicing how to introduce them and shake their hand because you want to be an expert at it, because if you're not good at it at all, if you're really bad at it you're screwed, you can't even tell anyone. your name and then how are you going to make a friend then you announce yourself as incompetent with your first move and then if you do it if that happens to you 10 times you're so terrified disincentive oh god terribly terribly terribly and then you should become an expert at it, that's it something you can do with your kids so they can become experts at introducing themselves, you know, shake hands, do it with a bit of a firm grip, look at the other person, try to smile, you know, match your Tempo to the other person's. person.

Another dynamic I've been thinking about recently. I was at a retreat in Los Angeles a few months ago and one of the guys who was there said he had stopped talking and writing on the Internet because he realized that the story he was telling in public, he started to feel the need to be around. height privately and I think if you're a writer or just someone who has 500 followers on your old Instagram and Facebook or whatever, there's a Persona online. that people present something that they then almost feel is more real than they are and then try to reverse engineer it to accommodate this novelty, well that's the problem with writing essays that contain what your professor wants to hear and you don't.

You can do that without altering your soul, you can't do that, you can't build yourself a fake Persona designed to extract resources from the world without it becoming part of you as if there were no one, it's so sophisticated, no one can have two selves like that. . Part of the reason you have to be very careful about what you say and do is that when you practice falsehood you become false, not that those are

beliefs

that are just in your head, you reconnect and start to literally see the world through the framework of your falsehoods, that is a very bad plan.

I've heard you say that if you say things long enough you're going to believe them you're going to become them it's even worse than believing them it's deeper than them they' They are constructed as unquestionable implicit axioms and, as we said earlier, this can go in either direction. You can fake it until you take one small step at a time towards a vision that you know is positive and that you continually re-evaluate to make sure you're not being hijacked and going in the wrong direction, yes or generate a look at the Pinocchio movie I analyzed to death in the Disney movie Pinocchio Mr.

Pinocchio, yes, the world's leading Sun Pinocchio, so Pinocchio exactly. exactly in part, Pinocchio is trying to get rid of the threads that are pulling him in all directions and that he doesn't are under your control and become something genuine, okay, so you have three basic temptations, one is to lie correctly so that that is the nose and the other. is being an actor and when I first encountered that in the movie I thought, what the hell is going on here? One of Pinocchio's temptations is to be an actor. Why would people in Hollywood do that? Why would they denigrate the actor? and then I thought. oh it's not an actor it's a fake Person be the actor instead of the real thing be the appearance instead of the reality take the credit instead of doing the job well befake the next temptation is to be neurotic is very interesting especially in In the world we have now, how insightful were these animators, Pinocchio is literally lured to pleasure island by a fake doctor who diagnoses him with an illness he doesn't have and the story is : look how sick you are. working too hard you have to go to Pleasure Island, well Pleasure Island is run by slavers so it's perfect, be careful what you practice, be careful what you practice well, you can be the actor of your own ideal and that's one way to take a step forward. but when you make false claims about who you are to gain status, you are consequently perverting your soul.

What is the soul? The soul is something like the structure through which the world reveals itself to you. It's something like that, so don't do it. you see a lot of the world correctly, you see it through narrow openings, you see what you let in, that's another way to think about it, you better make sure it's the bright part of the world. The world is revealing itself to you and that is not going to be the case. The case, if you lie, is one of the problems. I think a lot of people who listen to this podcast and certainly a lot of my friends, who are smart and cerebral, find themselves struggling and having a hard time using their intuition because they're capable. find a reason as to why they should or shouldn't at any time, you know, talking about the soul or the inner voice or the conscience, or you know you could refer to it as God coming through the best version of yourself, People who reflect and introspect are very capable of convincing themselves to get in or out of something they feel because they worship intellect.

How would you advise someone who likes to think deeply about things to put it aside and be able to hear themselves a little more clearly? There is a difference. between attention and intellect there is something to be said about paying attention, it is not the same as intellect, let's say intellect produces thoughts, attention collects information correctly, so if I'm okay, if I'm making a podcast, let's say I'm paying attention to what I don't understand I'm not thinking it's not the same I mean sometimes I think because the person will say something and it will trigger a series of thoughts but often what I'm doing is like well do I understand what you just said?

It's a matter of attention. I have to note my ignorance. I am attending to my ignorance. This is what Rogan is great at. You are excellent at this too. If you pay attention to your ignorance, then you know. what to do you just ask the question it's like well I don't understand this is a form of humility addressing your ignorance that's good for those who worship the Luciferian intellect it's addressing your own ignorance it's not about what you know it's about what you don't know you already know what you know so why not investigate well what you don't know how you do to attend to your ignorance what is the definition of humility humility is to attend to your ignorance and you can do that wherever you are, that is not yet an intellectual exercise , here are the holes in what I know, so I will continue to ask the questions until I fill them in well, it's not a completely divorced thing, it's the difference. between questions and answers how I would say this is let's say defining the Luciferian intellect has an answer what is it when you say Luciferian intellect what is it that the Luciferian intellect is the intellect that wants to place itself in the highest position and there are many people who tend to be intelligent ? be Luciferians because they think that their fundamental value is their intelligence and they think that intelligence is the fundamental value and then many times they get very upset if they are very bright and the world does not put itself at their feet because Think well, I am so intelligent that everything should come to me because they have taken pride in it, which is like an intellectual pride.

Well, that could be the cardinal sin. The Luciferian intellect is the intellect that wants to put itself in the highest position. defies God that is Satan that is what Lucifer is literally in the Miltonian story it is Lucifer is the spirit that tries to usurp God that is what the communists did that is what the fascists did that is what we do when we build towers of Babel and we can easily raise their intellect to the highest possible place, especially intelligent people, they do that all the time, it is better to attend to what you don't know, that's why Rogan is a very good example of this, because Rogan is not an intellectual , is a search engine, those are not.

The same Rogan is always like a bloodhound, he's on the path of what he doesn't know and the consequence of that is that he knows a lot, you know, 2000 podcasts, 2200 podcasts, he's done like 2500 high-level graduate seminars and something like that. , it's crazy. and then his questions get better and better as he fills in the gaps: is he intellectual? How am I stupid? How can I solve that? You know one of the things that I really taught my kids I tried to teach them was to ask stupid questions correctly and that means you have to admit your own inadequacy, that's humility and then you have to admit it publicly.

Announce it this is how stupid I am, can you fix me? And you know, sometimes that's embarrassing, although much less often than people normally think, if you're in a crowd and you have a stupid question and you've been paying attention 80% of the time. The crowd has the same question and they are relieved that you know you and that you asked it. In fact, they will think that you are brave, it is very interesting and because you are afraid when you ask a question if you are in a university. seminar you are afraid that what you are going to do is expose your stupidity and be ashamed of what you would say and what happens is exactly the opposite is that everyone who is too cowardly to ask that question now thinks that you are brave, it is exactly what Contrary to what you think, yes, that happens all the time, always in my graduate seminars, the kids who asked the most ignorant questions assumed that they were paying attention because you can ask a stupid question, you know, the stupid question is, don't you know.

You're playing on your phone and you and the class just covered something and you didn't realize and you ask well, you know that's not a real question, you're just wasting people's time, but if you're genuinely ignorant I never had a student to ask a genuine question that I thought was a stupid question, I would never and would never treat a student that way, it's like no, no, if you are, if you are, it's also cool because sometimes the stupidest questions go Straight to the point. The heart of the persecution, you know, is the kids asking a really basic question, which also forced me to really understand what he was teaching and that's a reflection of their humility, it's that humility in the pursuit of humility in the search for the ideal.

It is not an intellectual exercise no, no, in the strict sense, it is definitely what generates knowledge, although it seems to be a good step towards earned wisdom, that's right, earned wisdom, yes, wisdom earned through humility, is it? what comes next? People are waiting for you for the next few months. Well, what I'm working on now is finishing this book, hopefully by the end of December it will be published in November, but I'm going on tour in a weird way. Enough about the book, probably starting in January I'll do a tour of the United States and then I think I'll go to Africa, South America and Southeast Asia, that's the plan and, um, I'm very excited about this. new book um, I hope it's the best book I've ever written.

It will be a more difficult book than the last two, but not as difficult as Maps of Meaning, which is my first book. Yes, it's more. It's heavy, it's deeper, have you been struggling with trying to make it accessible? No, it's not really correct. I've been, I've been, I've just been trying to lay out the argument as clearly as possible and I think it'll do the trick and I have to go over it again and edit it and make sure it's not darker than absolutely necessary. No, I want to design it in a way that is understandable and I have had a lot of success with the Bible ventures that I have already embarked on.

I did a series on Genesis in 2017 that turned out to be quite influential and then I did a seminar on Exodus with a group of thinkers and I know there is a hunger for deep story analysis and I also have good people around me who can help me navigate my way through of the stories and understand them, so I am very attentive. I have had quite a good time writing this book, in fact it is very difficult to write, but it has been extremely exciting and interesting and I hope you have asked me before what I would consider success with this book.

I don't think you can read this book and understand it and be an atheist. I think I can demolish the atheist argument permanently. and partly it's a strange thing because it's not that suddenly people are going to throw themselves at the feet of God and worship, it's like it requires a reconsideration of what we mean by belief and I analyze some of that, it's like you believe in good Well, the difference between believing in good and believing in God is that it is a very narrow difference. Now there are important differences, but it is still a narrow difference and the point is that if you do not believe in good, you have no goal and if you have no goal, you have no hope and if you have no goal and you have no hope, you are anxious and fractured and People cannot unite in their beliefs as if the alternative is not good, reversing enlightenment is not an easy task.

Hopefully, we can also save the best of the Enlightenment. It's like, uh, the Cheston fence of the Cheston fence, like how many, how many different fences are there in the field, so to speak, and if we remove this one and we're trying to cover it up. going back, but it's going back, one of the things that's very interesting and I think people like Dawkins have started to realize this and I know people like Douglas Murray and Ion Hery, Eli and Neil Ferguson have recognized that this It is that with the death of God many other things die, things that you do not expect and one of the things that dies when God dies is science and no one expected that, because science as a practice is a religious practice, it is based on religious axioms, is it?

Alright? You have to believe that there is something called truth. You have to believe that the truth is understandable. You have to believe that understanding the truth is good. You have to believe that there is something called good. So imagine being a scientist. I have to imagine that, first of all, the world is understandable to the human intellect, but more so, if you investigate the mysteries of the material world, that will be beneficial. Those are not scientific statements, they are metaphysical statements and that metaphysical statement is nested. in a story that you already know and the types of the Enlightenment have portrayed the Scientific Revolution as something contrary to the religious substratum and that is not accurate, it is a French Revolution, it is a history of the Luciferian intellect, it is not true, the universities emerged from the monasteries, that is where Universities emerged and science as a widespread enterprise began in the universities and grew until it reached the monasteries.

That's not questionable, like if you go to Harvard or if you go to Oxford and Cambridge, the design of the universities is clearly evident. It's a monastic design, so the idea that there's some fundamental contradiction between religious belief and the scientific enterprise is that there's nothing in that that's true and part of the reason we're losing the scientific enterprise, right? ? Now it is because we have torn it from its metaphysical substrate and it cannot survive. If you are going to be a scientist, you have to put the truth above all else. Scientists are very strange. You have to believe in the truth to be a scientist.

I think Dawkin believes in true, by the way, so he is an atheist, but he is much less of an atheist than he thinks. That's my impression, lying scientists are atheists or simply evil. Dawkins is a truthful scientist and, until now. As long as you seek the truth and to the extent that you believe that seeking the truth will set you free, then you are walking a path that is Christian to the core. I know you don't like that idea, but you also don't like the fact that the company Science seems to be collapsing in terms of what you would call reliability and validity everywhere, so I appreciate that, my friend.

I appreciate the moment we get to spend it always seems to be a very interesting inflection uh again this time yeah the inflection this time is you're out of t I'm what's your advice to me how am I going to survive life on the road ? Make sure that when you step into that stage that you understand how unlikely it is that you will have the privilege of doing this and make sure that you remember that all those people who came to see you expect something from you and put some time and energy into coming to see you. no matter what you do, you go out on that stage with gratitude, right, that will help you a lot, you have to remember that it also keeps you grounded, you should be very happy that they are not throwing stones at you, right, how ridiculous?

Can you do this? How unlikely is that exactly? So keep that at the forefront of your mind. Remember that you should be incredibly grateful for the miracle of having the opportunity to do this because it is ridiculously unlikely. Yes, yes, try it. Doing that without becoming overwhelmed is becoming an increasingly difficult task. Yeah, well, part of the way you handle it is by looking at jobs that other people can do.When you're on tour, the social element can be overwhelming. so you have to protect yourself from that to some extent, but the other thing you have to do is whatever someone else can do, get someone to do That and get someone competent and trustworthy so that everything you're focusing on gets to the point. next program on time. the right frame of mind that's your job other people have their jobs make sure you're surrounded by people who do their jobs like our tour so far they have become more and more well managed I don't worry about travel hotels meals transport none of that I worry get to the venue 1 hour in advance, get my head in the right place, which has to do with this attitude of gratitude that I described and then try to address a serious problem with all the people who are participating in the hearing and So, If it's too much, then spread the responsibility out a little more.

How do you relax after a show? I saw the Trailer Park Boys, of course I did, yeah, yeah, well, after being so good, you shouldn't be that good for a while and Trailer Park. Guys, that's a really good way to do it, which counteracts a little Yeah, I texted Rogan about this yesterday and I thought he'd let you know God knows how many shows that guy's done. I thought he would have some wisdom for me. every time I do a show, I'm so excited after finishing that I find it hard to relax and I have four shows in a row, then we fly to Dubai and then we have all these shows. around the US and Canada and I'm nervous because I'm not going to be able to sleep and then if I don't sleep I won't be able to perform as well tomorrow and then everything will skyrocket. uh and I thought he would just have some wisdom and he said he's a difficult man to be honest.

I've never had any trouble sleeping, well, I guess you already know that, uh, but no, I'm excited, I'm excited and I'll get back to you once, once everything is done, we'll record one of them properly, record it properly, like a special, so maybe we'll put it up, maybe it'll just stay for posterity, I don't know, but we're going to have it, so yeah, I'm excited, yeah, well, good luck, thanks man, well, Lu should be a marvel, yes, yes, yes. I'm definitely going to learn a lot as we go along. I've said today, overcoming discomfort and doing different things, and following something close to Instinct, many of the things I say are vulnerable in some ways.

I guess you know those are things that are meaningful to me, and yes, I hope. People take a lot away from that and I hope they have done it from today too, so one of the things I do when I go on stage is spend the first 10 or 15 seconds looking at the audience as if I didn't want to say, Would I have seen you? do this a lot? Technically I would refer to it as stalking, um, but it's not far from a St., it's good. I look everywhere and this is an exposure technique. Technology you don't want to be afraid of. from the audience and that at all and you don't want to talk to the audience, so I look at the people and I see, you know, I look everywhere and, like you know, you can't see in the back rows if it's a big place. but fundamentally I look everywhere I can and I look at individuals and I mark them as people and then I remember, you know, I'm talking to all these individual people who have come here and then that's easy because you can talk to people and they are your guests, say that's another thing your staff needs to know too, it's like everyone who attends one of your events has to be treated as positively as possible because they're looking for something in you.

You know, it's very difficult for them if they're treated in an inhospitable way, so one of the things we've tried to do. I travel with quite a few people now, but everyone knows that rule number one is to treat audience members. even the ones that have some problems and maybe even are problematic, it's like treating them like your guests because they are guests and you are very lucky that they are here so don't get so high and mighty because they put in their time and effort to come here and they're looking for something, so that's part of that gratitude, that and then it's fun, that keeps it fun, it's like you have the privilege of being there talking to them, that's what you have to have. that in mind, what a privilege it is to have these people come listen to what you're doing, it's a good deal man, it's the best thing ever, so you want to have that firmly in the back of your mind and the front too yeah, I'll do my best Jordan Peterson ladies and gentlemen Jordan, thank you very much for today.

I look forward to the next time we catch up. Nice talking to you Chris, thank you so much for tuning in. You enjoyed that episode with Jordan. You'll love my conversation with Douglas Murray, which is available here. Playing.