Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning | Lex Fridman Podcast #313

Don't fight monsters lest you become a monster and if you look into the abyss the abyss also looks back at you but I would say go ahead if you look into the abyss long enough for you to see the light not the darkness are you sure about that? I'm betting my

life

on it. The following is a conversation with Jordan Peterson, an influential psychologist, speaker,

podcast

er, and author of

meaning

maps. 12 rules for

life

and beyond. Order. This is Lex Friedman's

podcast

. To support him, check out our sponsors in the description and now dear friends here is

jordan

peterson

dostoevsky wrote in the idiot spoken through the character of prince mishkin that beauty will save the world soulja nissan actually mentioned this in his award acceptance speech Nobel, what do you think this yes game meant by that?

Well, I guess it's the divine that saves the world. Let's say you could say that by definition and then you could say, "Well, are there hints of what will save the world or what will eternally save the world?" and the answer to that in all likelihood. is yes and that is perhaps truth and love and justice and the classical virtues beauty perhaps in some sense the most important among them it is a difficult case to make but it is definitely an indicator of which direction the arrow points well, the arrow points up no, I think that what it points to is what it points to beauty transcends beauty is more than beauty and that speaks of the divine it points to the divine yes and I would say it again by definition because we could define the divine in some real sense, so one way to Define the divine is what is divine to you is your most fundamental axiom and you might say well, I don't have a fundamental axiom, so I would say that's fine, but then you're confused because you have a bunch of contradictory axioms and I might say, well, I don't have any axioms at all and then I'd say, well, you're just epistemologically ignorant beyond comprehension if you think that because that's just not true at all, but you don't believe that a being human can exist within contradictions, well, yes.

We have to exist within a contradiction, but when contradictions manifest, say in confusion regarding direction, then the consequence technically is anxiety, frustration, disappointment and all kinds of other negative emotions, but the cardinal negative emotion

meaning

multiple paths forward is anxiety. It's a sign of entropy, but you don't think that kind of sign of entropy can be channeled into beauty and into love. Why do beauty and love have to be clear, orderly, simple? Well, I would say it probably doesn't have to be that way, it can't be that way. It should come down to clarity and simplicity because when it is structured optimally it is a balance between order and chaos not the order itself if it is too ordered if the music is too ordered it is not it is not acceptable it sounds like a box of Rhythms It's too repetitive It's too predictable It has to Well, it has to have some fire along with the structure.

I was in Miami giving a seminar on the exodus with several scholars and this is a beautiful discussion when Moses first encounters the burning bush, it is not a conflagration that demands attention, it is something. That catches his attention, it is a phenomenon and that means shining and Moses has to stop and attend to it and he does so and he sees this fire that does not consume the tree and the tree, the tree is a structure, true, it is a tree - as a structure, it is a branched structure. it is a hierarchical structure it is a self-similar structure it is a fractal structure and it is the tree of life and it is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the fire in it is the transformation that always occurs within each The structure and the fact of That the fire does not consume the bush in that representation is an indication of the balance of the transformation with the structure and that balance is presented as god and what attracts Moses in a certain sense is the beauty, now it is the novelty. and all that, but like a painting is like a burning bush, that's a good way to think about it, a big painting, it's too much for people, you often know my house was and soon will be again completely covered in paintings inside and It was difficult. that people come there because, well, my mother, for example, says: well, why would you want to live in a museum?

They are terrified of buying art, for example, because their taste is on display and they should be terrified because in general people now have terrible taste, that doesn't mean they shouldn't encourage and develop it, but you know when you put your taste on it. showing that it's real really exposes even yourself when you walk past it, oh dear, every day, this is what I am, yeah, well, and look how mundane that is and look how trite that is and look how cliche it is and look how sterile or too orderly it is or too chaotic or how quickly you start taking it for granted because you've seen it so many times well, if it's a real work of art, that doesn't happen, you notice the little details , the set is larger. that the sum of the parts, I mean, there are images, religious images in particular, so we could call them profound images that people have been unpacking for 4000 years and still have.

I'll give you an example. This is a terrible example, so I did a lecture series on Genesis and I have a lot of it unpacked, but by no means all of it. When God throws Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden, he puts cherubim with flaming swords at the door to prevent human beings from re-entering paradise. I thought what the hell does that mean cherubs and why do they have flaming swords? I don't understand what that is exactly and then I discovered from Matthew Pagio, who wrote a great book on the symbolism in Genesis, that the cherubim are God's support monsters.

It is a very complicated idea and they are partly a representation of what is difficult to fit into conceptual systems. They also have an angelic or demonic appearance. Choose why they have fire swords. Well, a sword is a symbol of judgment. and and and the separation of the wheat from the chaff use a sword to cut to cut and to carve and a sword of fire is not only the one that carves but the one that burns and what cuts and burns well what you want to get in paradise eliminates everything that is not perfect in you and then what does that mean?

Well, here's part of what it means. This is something terrible. So you could say that the entire Christian narrative is embedded in that image. Because? Well, let's say. that flaming swords are a symbol of

death

, that seems pretty obvious, let's also say that they are a symbol of apocalypse and hell, which doesn't seem entirely unreasonable, so here's an idea: not only do you have to face

death

, but you also have to face death and hell before you can reach the infernal judgment paradise and everything that is embedded in that image and a work of art with an image like that has all that information and shines in some fundamental sense if It reaches into the back tendrils of your mind on levels you can't even comprehend and it grabs you, I mean, that's why people go to museums and gays see paintings they don't understand and that's why they'll pay for the most expensive objects in the world. world if not carbon fiber racing. yachts, they are definitely classical paintings, right, they are high-level technological implements or they are classical art, well, why are those things so expensive?

Why do we build temples to house images? Even secular people go to museums. I am secular. Well, are you in a museum? If these? looking at art, yes, well, what makes you think that you are secular, then it is arguable that what in many centuries will remain of all human civilization will be our art, not even words, well you know, a book is still very A long time ago, true, the biblical reasons for that long time, uh, humanity, that's true, but that's in the full arc of living organisms, maybe not. We have images, we have artistic images that are at least 50,000 years old, that have survived and some of those.

Are they already deep in their symbolism? Yes, we found them and they have lasted. They have lasted so long and then and then think about Europe. Secular people from all over the world make pilgrimages to Europe. Good because? Because of the beauty, obviously. I mean, that goes without saying and it's partly because there are things in Europe that are so beautiful that they take your breath away, make your hair stand on end and fill you with a sense of wonder and we need to see those things, it's not. Optional, we need to see those things. The cathedrals were in Vienna Cathedral and it was terribly beautiful.

You know very well that it was terribly beautiful. Beauty is painful for you. It's just that the highest form of beauty really challenges you. Oh, definitely, yes, yes. I got a good analysis of the statue of David Michelangelo, it says you could be much more than what you are, that's what that statue says and this cathedral, you know, we went down to the lower structure and there were three stories of bones from the plague and there they all are and then that cathedral is on top, it's no joke to go visit a place like that, no, it's what shakes you to the core and our religious systems have become propositionally dubious, but you can't argue with the architecture. although modern architects like it with its sterility and its giant middle fingers sticking up all over the place, but beauty is a terrible indicator of God and you know a secular person will say well I don't believe in God, it's like you do it on your own. way, you have to do it I can't move towards the unforeseen horizon of the future except with faith and you could say well, I don't have faith, it's like well, good luck with the future, so because what are you then nihilistic, desperate and full of anxiety And if not, is something guiding you?

Go ahead, it is faith in something or several things that makes you a polytheist, which I would not recommend. Let me ask you a bag of short-lived biological meat to another who is god, so let's try to sneak up on this question, if it is. possible, is it even possible to talk about this? Well, it better be because otherwise there will be no communication about it. It has to be something that can be brought down to earth. Well, we might be too dumb to turn it down. Not only is it ignorant, it is also sinful, of course, because there is no knowledge and then one does not want to know or refuses to know, yes, and then one could say: "Well, could you extract God from a description of the objective world?" ?" reality and I would say well, in a sense, there is some truth in that, but not exactly because god in the highest sense is the spirit that you must emulate in order to prosper.

How's that for a biological definition? The spirit is a pattern, the spirit that you must emulate to thrive so it's kind of uh in a sense when we say the human spirit is that it's an animating principle yeah it's a meta it's a pattern and you could say , well, what is the pattern, well, I can tell you some. degree imagine that like you're trapped by beauty you're trapped by admiration so and you can notice this this is not propositional you have to notice it it's like oh it turns out I admire that person so what does that mean?

Well, it means I would like to be like him or her, that's what admiration means, it means that there is something in his or her way of being that compels you to imitate another instinct or inspires respect or awe, even okay, what is it that catches you good? I don't know well, let's say, okay. okay, but it gets you and you want to be like that, kids love heroes for example, so do adults, unless they become completely cynical. I worship quite a few heroes, yes, well, there you have it with pride, yes, well, there you have it and there is nothing. that worship that celebration and the propensity to imitate is worship that is what worship means most fundamentally now imagine that you took the set of all admirable people and you extracted the learning, you extracted the core characteristics of what constitutes admirable and then you did it repeatedly until he purified it to what was most admirable, that's the best you're going to get in terms of a representation of god and you could say, well, I don't believe in that, it's like, well, what do you mean?, yeah, it's not a set of propositional facts it's not a scientific theory about the structure of the objective world and then I might say something about that too because I've been thinking about this a lot, especially since I talked to Richard Dawkins, okay, postmodernist types go back to the past. before daradan foucault maybe let's go back to nietzsche who i admire a lot for the way he says god is dead okay but nietzsche said god is dead and we have killed him and we won't find enough water to wash away all the blood so That was Nietzsche.

He's not stupid, he gets away with words, he certainly does and then you think: Well, we killed the transcendent. Well, what does that mean for science? Well, it sets him free because all that nonsense about a deity is just idiotic superstition holding back scientific development. what process from moving forward that is basically the new atheist claim something like that is how wait a second you believe in the transcendent if you are a scientist and the answer is well not only do you believe in it you believe in it more than anything otherwise, because if you are As a scientist, you believe in what opposes your theory more thanthat you believe in your theory.

Now we have to think that through very carefully so that your theory describes the world and, as far as you are concerned, your description. of the world is the world but since you are a scientist you think well even though that is my description of the world and that is what I believe, there is something beyond what I believe and that is the object, so I am going to throw my theory against the object and see where it will break and then I am going to use the evidence of the break as a source of new information to revitalize my theory, so as a scientist you have to postulate the existence of the ontological transcendent before you can move forward, except further.

You have to pause that contact with the ontological transcendent, even if it is annoying because it upsets your apple cart, it is exactly what will in fact free you, then you accept the proposition that there is a transcendent reality and that contact with that transcendent reality is redemptive. in the most fundamental sense because if it wasn't, why would you bother making contact? You're going to make everything worse or better. Why does contact with the transcendent free you as a scientist? Because you assume you assume. I mean freedom in the most fundamental sense, it's like well, freedom from want, freedom from disease, freedom from ignorance, right, the logos of science informs you in it, it's definitely that, yes, it's the direction, let's say, the directionality of science. a narrative direction, not a scientific direction and then the question is what is the narrative.

Well, it posits a transcendent reality. It postulates that transcendent reality is corrective. It posits that our knowledge structure must be considered with humility. It postulates that one must bow down in front of transcendent evidence and you have to make a vow, you know that as a scientist, you have to make a vow to follow that path if you are going to be a true scientist, it is like the truth, no matter what. and that means that you posit truth as a redemptive force. Well, what does redemptive mean? Well, why bother with science? so that people don't starve so that people can move more efficiently so that life can be more abundant, right, so everything is installed within an underlying ethic, so the reason I was saying that while we were talking about belief in God , it's like this is a very complicated topic, right?

Do you believe in a transcendent reality? Look, okay, now let's say you buy the argument I just made on the natural front, you say, yeah, yeah, that's just nature that's not god and then I would say well, which makes you think you know what it's like. nature. Look, the problem with that argument is that it already assumes a materialistic, reductionist, objective view of what constitutes nature, but if you are a scientist you are going to think well in the final analysis I don't know what nature is I certainly don't know its origin or destiny I do not know its teleology I am really ignorant about nature and that is why when I say it is nothing more than nature, I should not say that it is nothing more than what I understand nature to be, so I could say: will we have a totally reductionist explanation of cognitive processes?

And the answer is yes, but by the time we do, our understanding of the matter. It will have been transformed so much that what we now consider reductionists will not be anything like what we now think of reductionism. Matter is not dead dust. I don't know what it is. I have no idea what matter is. What matters? There is a definition that is. a very strange definition, but the notion that we have, you know that if you are a reductionist, a materialist reductionist, you can reduce the complexity of what is your assumption about the nature of matter that is not scientific. limited human assumptions of this century this week that in some sense without god in this big complicated definition that we are talking about there is no humility or it is not enough it is less likely that there will be or rather science can err by taking a trajectory far away of humility, well, without something much more

power

ful than an individual human being, yeah, well, so we know you know the story of Frankenstein comes out of that instantly and that's a good story for current times, it's like you're playing with making a new life.

You better make sure you have the arrows pointing up and it's interesting because you said science has ethics. I think it's embedded in an ethic. Well, you know science is an important word, yes, and it includes many disciplines. that have different traditions, so biology, chemistry, genetics, physics, those are very different communities and I think that biology, especially when you get closer and closer to medicine in the human body, has a very serious history, first of all, with Nazi Germany of abuse and all that kind of stuff, but it has a history of taking these things seriously, what it doesn't have a history of taking these things seriously is robotics and artificial intelligence, which is really interesting because You don't know, you called me a scientist, but and I would like to wear that label with pride, but often people don't think of computer science as a science, but nevertheless, it will be.

I think it's the science of one of the major scientific fields of the 21st century and you should often take it very seriously. When people build robots or artificial intelligence systems, they think of them as toys to play with oh, isn't that cool? Well, I feel like this is also not so cool, it's cool, but you know, at a certain point, it may not be that nuclear. uh explosion cool, yes it is, or birth control pill, cool, it's like o o transistor, cool, yeah, well, the other thing too and and this is a strange problem in a sense, the robotics engineer writes that they are things, people You are right, I am referring to the large classes of interest. it's interesting things versus interest in people, some of my best friends are people, yeah right, and people are very, very clear logical thinkers and they're very results-oriented and practical now and that's good, that makes the machinery and keep it running, but there's a human side to the equation and you get the extreme, the people and you think, yeah, well, what's going on with the human here?

When we talked about that, we've been talking about the need to have a technology company built into an ethic and you can ignore that, like most of the time, you can ignore the general ethics in a sense when you're playing with your toys, but when you're building an artificial intelligence, it's like that's not a toy, it could be a toy that turns into a monster. very quickly, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and this is a whole new kind of monster and maybe it's already here, yeah, and you realize how many of those things you can't turn off anymore and what's up with you engineers, and their inability to turn off the switches.

On things now it's like I have to hold this down for five seconds for it to turn off or I can't figure out if I just want to turn it off, click Power Off, well what's up with you humans not turning on all the switches in others? humans because there is a magic in what you notice and it hurts both for you and maybe one day the object itself will turn it off, so you have to be very careful as an engineer when adding switches to things, um, I think it's a feature it's not a mistake the off switch the off switch gives us humans a deadline for systems of existence makes you uh you know death is what really brings clarity to life and I think so, hence the flaming swords the flaming sword me I like your vision of the flame with the bush and maybe the sword as a transformation thing.

It is also a transformation that somehow consumes the thing in the process. Well, it depends on how much of the thing is straw. You know, that's why you can't touch the Ark of the Covenant, for example, and that's why people can have very bad psychedelic trips, it's like if you have 95 dead wood and you get too close to the flame, five percent. remaining percent may not be able to arrive. So you think it's all talk, but I think there's some aspect of destruction, I mean, you know Bukowski's line of uh, do what you love and let it kill you, don't you think destruction is part of that humility ? that's humility, you can bet, bet, bet, it's like inviting judgment invite judgment because maybe you can die a little instead of dying completely yeah, you know, I think it's Alfred North Whitehead, we can let our ideas die in place of us, right? we can have these partial personalities that we can burn and we can let them go before they become tyrannical pharaohs and everything and we lose everything and yes, there is this optimal bite of death and who knows what it would mean to optimize it, what if?

It was possible that if you died enough all the time you could continue living and the thing is that we already know this biologically because if you don't die properly all the time, it's cancerous consequences and it's a very fine balance between productivity on the biological front and selection. of that right life is a real balance between growth and death, so what would happen if you achieved that balance? Well, we know this well, because if you live your life properly, so to speak, you are humble enough to let your stupidity die before it finishes you, you will live longer, that's just a fact, well, but then what is the final extension of that? and the answer is we don't know, we have no idea, well let me ask you a tough question. question because, unlike the easy questions you've been asking until now, well, Dostoevsky is always just the warm-up, so if death, yes, yes, death every day is the way to progress in life, you you have become quite famous in death. hell, death in hell, yes, yes, because you don't want to forget the hell part, are you worried that your

fame

will trap you into the person you were before?, yes, yes, elvis became an Elvis impersonator when he died , if you're afraid?

That you have become a Jordan Peterson impersonator, what are you afraid of somewhere becoming the famous suit worn by the brilliant Jordan Peter? This is certainty in the search for truth, right, I think it worries me more than anything else, I hope, I hope to do it. Better is famous to a certain extent when you look in the mirror in the peace of your mind. Has he undoubtedly corrupted you in some way? I mean, it's a very difficult thing to avoid. You know this, because things change around you. People are much more likely to do it. do what you ask, for example, well, and that is a danger because one of the things that keeps you dying correctly is that people reject you optimally.

This is why so many celebrities get out of control, especially the tyrannical guys who claim to rule the countries around them. they stop saying yes, you're, you're, you're digressing a little there, they laugh at all their jokes, they open all the doors, they always want something from them, the red carpet always rolls out, it's like, well, do you think it would be like this? lovely, well not if they roll out the red carpet for you, well you're on your way to perdition, that's not good business, you just get there more efficiently, so one of the things I've tried to learn how to deal with I have people around me all the time who are critics who say yeah, I could have done better and you're a little harsh there and you're alienating people unnecessarily there and you should have done a little more background work there and and I think that the responsibility that comes with it increases as your influence increases and that's as your influence increases so that becomes a lot of responsibility so you know and then maybe you have a bad day and well here's an example.

I've been writing some columns. lately about things that bother me like the upcoming famine, for example, and it's hard to face those problems, it's hard to deal with those problems seriously and it's scary, and it would be easier to just go to the cabin with my wife. and going out to the lake and watching the sunset, so I'm tempted to turn to anger as a motivating energy to help me overcome resistance to doing this, but that makes me harsher and more critical in my tone when I read. Things like that, for example on youtube, might be optimal now that I've had debates with people about it because I have friends who say no, if you're criticizing the environmentalist globalists who are harassing Dutch farmers, then a bit of anger it's just the ticket, but then others say, well, you know you don't want to be too harsh because you alienate people who would otherwise listen to you, it's like it's a difficult balance to strike, but also maybe anger hardens your mind. to where you don't.

Observe the subtle, silent beauty of the world, the silent love that is always there and permeates everything. Sometimes you can become deeply cynical about the world if it's Nietzsche's thing, yes, don't fight monsters so you don't become a monster and if you look into the abyss, The abyss also looks at you well, but I would say do it well because well, I also say knowing that he is completely right, but if you look into the abyss long enough you will see the light, not the darkness, are you sure of that? I'm betting my life on it, yeah it's a big bet, well that's because it might warp your mind to where all you see is this, it's alike a small thing, especially when i talked to bjorn? lomberg and michael leon last week i accepted the UN estimates on famine next year 150 million people will be food insecure food insecurity yes, food insecurity that's the damn buzzword famine well michael yawn thought 1.2 billion and then that little one spiral because he said what happens in a famine is that governments go crazy, governments become destabilized and then they appropriate the farmers' food, then the farmers don't have money, then they can't grow crops and I think so, that's exactly what they do that's exactly what would happen and then john told me 1.2 billion and then bjorn lombard said the same thing i didn't even ask him he just said it as a casual comment so let me ask you about the famine of the 30's yeah , do you think Ukraine in the Ukraine oh yeah fun fun funSimilarly, many of the things you mentioned in the last few sentences echo that part of human history, the holy door you use, no one knows.

Well, I just spent four weeks in Ukraine, oh yes, there are different parts of the world that still, even if they don't know it, they know it, yes, of course, they feel that the story runs in the Dutch knew in a sense that They had a famine at the end of World War II and part of the reason Dutch farmers are so incredibly efficient and productive is that the Dutch swore at the end of World War II that that was not going to happen again and then they had to take land out of the ocean because Holland is a big country, the fact that it is the biggest country in the world shouldn't even exist. number two exporter, you know, it's the number two exporter of agricultural products in the world, Holland, it's like I don't think it's as big as Massachusetts, it's a tiny little place that shouldn't even exist and they want to put here's this, here is the plan, say 30 percent of farmers are out of business, well, the broader ecosystem of agricultural production in Holland is six percent of their GDP now, these centralizing politicians think: tell me if I'm stupid with this, Take an industry, demolish it by decree by thirty percent now.

It works with a three percent profit margin, now you are going to eliminate 30 percent, how are you not going to demolish the entire agricultural ecosystem, how are you not going to impoverish the transportation systems, how not? you're going to demolish the grocery stores, you can't take something like that and match it again for fiat at 30 and not kill it. I don't see how you can do that, I mean look what we did with the covid lockdowns, we broke the supply. Chains tried to buy something lately, you can't and wait, and the Chinese aren't threatening Taiwan right now, what are we going to do without chips?

So I don't know what these people are thinking and then I think, okay, what are they thinking? The people at Deloitte are thinking: Aren't we smart? Shouldn't we be hired by our corporate employers? Okay, what a pity for the poor people. What do environmentalists think? We love the planet. It's like, do we love the poor? Okay, let's pit the planet against the poor, who wins the planet? Okay, you don't love the poor that much, do you love the planet or hate capitalism? Let's pit those two things against each other. Oh well, it turns out we actually hate capitalism.

Can we know because you're willing to break it and you know what's going to happen? So what is going to happen in Sri Lanka with these 20 million people who now have nothing to eat? Are they going to eat all the animals? Are they going to burn? All the firewood they are hoarding in Germany is like their globalist environmental utopia is going to kill the poor and destroy the planet and that's okay because we will end capitalism. Okay, yes, the dragon and the fear of the dragon. it drives ideologies, some of which can build a better world, some of which can destroy that world, yeah, what do you think of that theory about reliability?

If the dragon you face turns you into a terrified tyrant, you are not the right man. The work is that it's a good theory, it's an interesting theory, let me use that theory to challenge because what is horror like? Let me lay out the twists, turn it around, you are terrified, worried about the dragon of something we can call communism, Marxism. I was terrified of well, great, okay, okay, a tyrant, your theories had two components, yes, I'm not paralyzed, I had a dragon, yes, I'm not paralyzed and I don't want to be a tyrant. I think the tyrant part is missing with you. uh so you're very worried the intensity of your feelings uh doesn't really give you much room at least in your public persona to sit quietly with the dragon and drink a couple of beers and think about this the intensity of your anger worry about certain things What you are seeing in society is going to divert you from the path that ultimately leads us to a better world.

That's a good question, I mean, no, I'm trying to make this right, so we've come to a cultural conclusion about Nazis, can you be mad at Nazis? It seems like the answer is yes, well actually let me back up here. I also don't trust people who are angry at Nazis because I'm talking about real Nazis. There are a lot of people, as you know, there are a lot of people in the world who use real Nazis to mean a lot. I know one of them is very important to me, for example, yes, he is a Nazi.

I think he's a super magical Nazi. Turns out, I think they actually rob men of all their perspectives. I think a lot of people who call you a Nazi mean it, so yes, but there is something important there, because I went to the front in Ukraine, yes, and many. people who lost their homes or there had to interact a lot with Russian soldiers. Ukrainians interact with Russian soldiers. They reported that the Russian soldiers really believe that they are saving the people of Ukraine in these local villages. the Nazis, so for them it's not just that the Ukrainian government has or that Ukraine has some Nazis, it's like the idea is that the Nazis have taken over Ukraine and we need to free them.

This is the belief, yes, so again this Nazi is still a living dragon, yes, and it is used by people because it is safe to sit next to that dragon and spread any kind of ideology you want, so I just want to say that We have agreed on this particular dragon, but I still don't trust anyone who uses that, yes, but we have problems with boundaries, right, no, no, it's a very complicated problem, so Renee Gerard believed that it was a human tendency to demonize to the scapegoat and then expel him from the world. village and yes I have thought about that a lot we need a place to put satan seriously this is a serious problem if he is inside or outside the village well maybe he should be inside you that's the gist fundamental of Christian doctrine.

It's like Satan fights best on the battlefield of your soul and that's right, that's right, can you really put into words the kind of dragon you're fighting? Is it communism? Is it the spirit of Cain? Yes, can you explain it well? What is the spirit of Cain that Adam and Eve are expelled from paradise for becoming self-aware or when they become self-aware they are destined to work and the reason for that, as far as I can tell, is that they become self-aware? To be conscious is to become aware of the future, that is, to become aware of the death that certainly happens in the story of Adam and Eve, that the scales fall from your eyes and then the consequence of that is that now you have to work to avoid the catastrophes of the world. future, that is work, work is sacrifice, sacrifice of the present for the future, it is delay of gratification, it is maturity, it is also sacrificed to something and in the spirit of something, okay, so now Adam and Eve have two children , Cain and Abel, so those are the first two people. in history because the Garden of Eden doesn't count and they are the first two people who are born instead of created, so they are the first two people and that is an incredible story because it is a story of fratricidal murder that degenerates into genocide, flood and tyranny, so it's fun for the opening salvo of the story, let's say, and abel and cain make sacrifices and for some reason abel's sacrifices please God, it's not exactly clear why and the staffs don't now there's an implication in the text that it is because Cain's sacrifices are true or second rate, God says that Abel brings the best to the sacrificial altar, it does not say that about Cain, so you can imagine that Cain is sacrificing, but he has something in reserve, It's not there at all, it doesn't come with it. he gives his best to the table he is not offering his best to god and that is why abel prospers like crazy and everyone loves him and he gets exactly what he needs and wants exactly when he needs and wants it he is favored by god and cain is carrying this terrible burden forward and working and his sacrifices are rejected so he gets resentful really resentful enough to call God and say something like this is all the creation you have here I'm breaking in half and nothing good is coming towards my what?

What the hell is up with that and then there's Abel, the sun shines on him every day, how dare you? Okay, but Cain is talking to God, so God says what Cain least wants to hear, which is what God usually says to people he knows. He says look by your own means you are not making the sacrifices you should and you know it and then he says something even worse, he says that sin is crouching at your door like a sexually aroused predatory animal and you have invited it in so you have your way out. with yours and so it basically says that you have allowed your resentment to worry you and now you are brooding about it and generating something new and horrible creative possessed by the spirit of resentment and that is why you are in the miserable state that you are in. you find, then cain leaves, his countenance falls as expected and cain leaves and he is very indignant about this because god has said look, your problems are of your own creation and not just because you invited them in and not only that.

You got involved in this creatively and not only are you blaming me and not only does that make you jealous of Abel, who is your true idol and goal, and Cain, instead of changing, kills Abel, and then the descendants of Cain are the first people to make weapons of war and okay, you want to know what I think is the eternal story of humanity and it's unfolding right now, except at a thousand times the rate. Can I present to you a difficult truth, but maybe it's not a truth, but eh? I thought it's not always easy to know which of us is the stick, that's for sure, and resentment is um, it's possible to imagine yourself as the person who has resentment toward a particular worldview that you really care about, yeah, well.

I talked to a good friend of mine last week about that publicly, we're going to publish it, so I said, well, do I have a particular animus against the left? Let's say it is, it's probably fine, why first of all? a university professor is not that the universities are threatened by the right, they are 100 percent threatened by the left and they are not only threatened a little, they are threatened a lot and that threat made it impossible for me to continue in my profession as it was and it cost me my clinical practice too and that's not over yet because I have 10 lawsuits against me right now from the college of psychologists because they have allowed anyone to complain about me anywhere in the world for any reason. and I have the option to continue with an investigation which is a punishment in itself and I am doing it and then I have been tortured almost to death several times by bad actors on the left now that I have had my fair share of Radical right-wingers are not happy with what I have said, but personally that has been the left all along, not only me but my family, they said it, it could put my family at great risk and constantly, not once or twice, because a lot of people get canceled . once or twice but I have been canceled like 40 times and now I know like 200 people who have been canceled and I can tell you without a doubt that it is one of the worst experiences of your lives and that's if it only happens once and so on and then too I know that the communists killed 100 million people in the 20th century that intellectuals excused them endlessly and they still haven't given up that almost no one knows about it and that the specter of resentful Marxism has reappeared in full force and I also have a little animosity against that yes, it goes too far I don't know, I'm trying to understand that the story you just told seems almost impossible for you, an intellectual

power

, not to do it I have a tremendous amount of resentment, well, and this is the case so let me challenge you, yeah let me challenge you, go ahead and challenge, can you steal man?

The case is that the Prime Minister of this country, Trudeau, wants the best for this country and could actually do good things for this country as an intellectual challenge, sure, he seems to get along with his wife, he has some kids, no. there are sex scandals and he's in a position where he could easily be like that, he seems to have done some good things. On the ocean management front, he has placed a good portion of Canada's oceansof energy for Europe in the wake of idiotic globalist environmental utopianism, Russia's expansionist tendencies that are analogous in some sense to the empire-building of the Soviet Union, and then the last one, which is why I got in trouble, because of the belief or Putin's will. manipulating his people into believing that Russia is a saving force against the idiotic Western Wokism and that's where I got into trouble because it's like you're justifying Putin, it's like it's not just the Russians who think about the West. has lost his mind, Eastern Europeans think the same too and I know it's good, I went to 15 Eastern European countries this spring and talked to 300 political and cultural leaders and you could say, well, they were all conservative, actually No.

Weren't they mostly conservatives because it turns out they're more willing to talk to me, but a good portion of them were liberals by any stretch of the imagination and a good number of them were canceled progressives? We are very concerned about the culture wars perhaps being a sign of a possible bad future for this country in this part of the world, that reason stands out and do you look back at four reasons why you think it deserves to have a place in a ? of the four because absolutely because it's what you know, uh well, the forum forked because I said look, Putin might believe this and in fact I think he does because I read a lot of Putin's speeches and I've been reading them for 15 years and my feeling about people in general and this was true for hitlers like what hitler believed well did you read what he wrote? he just did what he said he was going to do and you might think well some people are so deceitful that they have a whole set of elaborate speeches that are completely separate from their personality and their personality is pursuing a different agenda and all this speech is nothing more than a facade.

It's like good luck finding someone who is sophisticated. First of all, if you say things enough to believe them, it's a really interesting, fascinating and important point. Even if you start out as a lie like propaganda, I think Hitler is an example of someone who I think very quickly you start to believe propaganda, well, you've thought a lot about artificial intelligence systems, it's like you don't become the that you practice and the answer is, absolutely, we even know neurology. It's like when you first formulate a concept, large swaths of your cortex light up, so to speak, but as you practice that, first of all, the right hemisphere stops participating and then laughter participates less and less until you build specialized machinery for exactly that conceptual framework and then you start seeing it, not just thinking about it, so if you're telling the same lies over and over again, who do you think you're fooling?

Think about it. I can stand my own lies, not if they are effective lies and if they are effective enough to deceive millions of people and then they reflect them back to you, making you think that you are going to be able to stand that. And so I think Putin believes to the extent that he believes anything. I think he sees himself as a bulwark of Christianity against the degeneration of the West and that's the third way Dugan and Putin have been talking about the philosopher Alexander. dugan and putin for 15 years which is very amorphous solzhenitsyn thought that russians would have to return to the incremental development of orthodox christianity to escape the communist trap and to some extent that happened in russia because there has been a return to orthodoxy christianity is now You could say yes, but the Orthodox Church has just been co-opted by the state and I would say there is some evidence of that.

I have heard, for example, that the metropolitan now owns, I don't know if this is true, he owns five billion dollars in personal property and I would say that there is a bit of moral hazard in that and it is possible that the Orthodox church has been co-opted but there has been something of an orthodox revival in Russia and I don't think that's all Bad now even if Putin doesn't believe any of this if he's just a psychopathic manipulator and unfortunately I don't think that's true. I have read his speeches, it doesn't seem that way to me and he is by no means the worst.

Russian leader of the last hundred years, well there is a great selection there, there certainly is, but I say this knowing that even if you don't believe it, you have convinced your people that it is true, so we are stuck with the we are stuck . with the claim in any case and that is the point he was trying to make in the article. I sometimes worry about people explaining things, and a lot of people came to me, experts, telling me how I should feel and what I should do. think about ukraine oh naive lex you are so naive you know that's how it really is but then i can see people who lost their home i can see people on the russian side who believe they are really i think there is something degree to which they have love in their heart .

They see themselves as heroes saving a land from the Nazis. How else would you motivate young people to go fight? It's just that these humans destroy not only their homes but create generational hatred and destroy possibility. of mutual love, they are basically creating hate. What I have heard a lot is February 24 of this year. The hatred was born on a scale in which the region has not seen hatred towards Vladimir Putin. Hatred towards soldiers. Russia, but the hatred towards all Russians, a hatred that will last for generations and then you will be able to see, um, just the pain there and then, when all these experts talk about, uh, agriculture, energy and geopolitics, and yes, maybe you will like what you say. with the fight against the ideologies of the woke and so on, I feel that something profound is missing, that the war is not fought for any of those things, the war started and wars were avoided based on human beings, well, here is humanity, here's another ugly thought since we've done it.

We haven't had enough until now, we closed everything because of Covid. How much face-to-face communication was there between the West and Vladimir Putin? What if none? What if that was the wrong amount, especially given that Europe was completely dependent on Putin for its energy? it's supplied well, not quite, but you know what I mean materially and significantly, so maybe she had to go talk to him once every six months, maybe she's in some kind of bubble, probably and not just in one information bubble, as all these experts tell me, yes, no. a bubble human human human look, one of the things that I've really learned is there's a real emphasis on hospitality in the old testament.

I just brought all these scholars together to talk about the exodus. I have this security team with me and they are military tough. but they are on board for this mission, let's say, and so they did their best to be hospitable to my academic guests, they prepared good meat dishes and cheese crackers and they spent the whole day preparing this house that I had rented so that we could spend a hospitable time with these academics, most of whom I didn't know well but who said they would come and spend eight days talking to me about this book.

We rented some jet skis. We had a nice house. We had fun and got to know each other. in each other and we came to trust each other because we could see that we could have a little bit of fun and that we could let go a little bit, we didn't have to be on guard and that made the conversations go a lot deeper and then we figured it out. We couldn't finish the exodus in eight days, so I proposed from the beginning that we were going to double the duration, so I took eight people out of their lives for eight days, that's not an easy thing to do.

It's also quite expensive and the people at Daily Wire heard about all that and immediately said yes, so we'd love to do this again. Well, partly because it was intellectually, it was incredibly engaging. I learned a lot. It's going to take me about a year to digest it, if I ever can digest it, but they had a great time, so when they were offered that combination of intellectual challenge, let's say in hospitality, it was a no-brainer, they just said every single one of them said yes. I could do it somehow I would definitely be there and all this I went to Washington several times and the culture of hospitality has collapsed in Washington. 40 percent of congressmen sleep in their offices.

They don't have apartments, their family isn't there with them, they don't have social occasions with their fellow Democrats or Republicans let alone across the table, so I tried to have some meetings in Washington that were bilateral a couple of times. Get a young republican. Congressmen and Democrats get together to talk and as soon as they talk they think it was very interesting because at one of the lunches there were about 15 people, half Democrats and half Republicans, and all I asked them to do was spend three minutes talking about why that. you decided to become a congressman, which is not a job I would take, by the way, you spend 25 hours a week fundraising on the phone, your family is not with you, you have to run for elections every two years, you are in debt to the party apparatus right, they constantly vilify you this is not like that, you know, people think well, this is a job for the privileged it's like yeah, you go and run for congress and you discover how much fun it is and you risk your family and then you have to beg for your job every two years, well, your enemies, the worst of your enemies are them and the worst of your friends peck you brutally, so anyway we made them all sit around the table and said okay, just say why you ran for congress.

It was great, especially for a Canadian, because you Americans are so fucking theatrical, it's something to see, it was like Mr. Smith went to Washington for each of them, it's like this country has given us so much, where families have been so, so. uh we have benefited so much from our time here we think this is a wonderful country we really feel like we should give it back then the next one would talk and it was the exact same story and then it didn't matter if they were Republican or Democrat you couldn't tell the difference , no one could and it was genuine it's like well you're genuine you think these people are worse than you first of all they're not second they're probably better at all things.

I considered that it's not that easy to become a congressman and I'm sure there are some bad apples in the group, but generally you come out of your meetings with these people and think, quite impressively, that they are really giving a part of themselves in the name of the service maybe over time they become cynical and tired and worn out by the whole system, but I think a lot of that, can you imagine it heals? I think and I don't think it's right. I am partly naive. but not entirely, a lot of this is cured through the power of conversation, just basic social interaction.

I think Batman knows the effects of this pandemic by listening, look, listening, just sitting there and he doesn't have to be talking about the real problem. It's actually humor and all that kind of stuff about personal struggles, all that kind of stuff that reminds you that you're all human, yeah, well, the great leaders that I've met because and I've met some, now they're going to listen. their constituents is not a discussion about policy, it is not a discussion about ideology, they go and say, okay, what is your life like? What are your problems? They tell me about them and then they listen and then they are surprised and then they are shocked. gather. all that misery and they take it to the congressional office or the parliament and think this is what people are crying out for and good leaders, that's a leader, listen, it's like I talked to Jimmy Carr about comedy and would have sold out venues all over the world. on tour being funny that's hard said that comedy is the most stand-up comedy which is what I do in a real sense it's something I do and it's more like what I'm doing on my book tours, I would say that It's the closest analogue said it's the most dialogic company and I thought, well, why what do you mean?

Look, it's just a monologue and it's a prepared monologue. I mean, you have to dynamically interact with the audience while telling your jokes and you have to get the timing right, but you have a lot of jokes. I said, well, this is how you set up jokes and other comedians have told me this. You go to 50 clubs before you go on tour and you have new material. You think it's funny and you go to a club and you present your new material and people laugh at some of it and you pay attention to what they laugh and what they don't laugh at, so you submit to people's judgment. crowd and you get rid of everything that's not funny and if you do that enough, even if you're not that funny, the crowd will tell you what's funny, so you can imagine, imagine you do 50 shows and each one lasts an hour and collect two minutes of humor from each show so you waste 90, waste two more hours of 98, collect two minutes per show so you're not very funny at all, you're funny two percent of the time it adds up man, you're a scream, so that's what a leader does, that's what the leader does, they go out and add the misery that you know and the hopes, and then I think that's revitalizing someone who would otherwise be cynical and jaded. because then the personcan say to herself despite the shortcomings of the system and my shortcomings I am gathering misery and hope and I am carrying it forward where it can be repaired by giving it a voice giving it the right thing by giving it a voice can you really guide me through a day because this is fascinating?

Through your comedy tour. What is a day in the life of Jordan Peterson like? What is this interesting day? Let's look at the day when you have to speak by preparing your mind thinking about what you are going to talk about preparing yourself physically and mentally to interact with the crowd through actual speech, how do you adjust what you are thinking and how do you come down from that so you can start all over again like a limited system well, I usually get up at seven and I'm ready to start at 7, 30 or 8. coffee no, no, steak and water how many times a day steak, oh that's all I like how many times, three or four, depending on the day, steak and water drinking soda water, yeah, monastic asceticism, man, well, I did the right thing.

Usually only once a day did I do the right thing. Jordan Peterson last night and I only had two steaks and how wonderful it was, yeah, well, if you only have to eat one thing. You know it could be worse, so I'm ready to leave at eight anyway because we're usually moving. What does it mean to move? You are constantly flying somewhere. Well, we generally use private flights now because commercial airlines are not reliable enough. You can't not do a venue right so that's rule number one on tour, you make the show so everything and then rule number two is that anyone who causes any trouble on tour leaves because there's no margin of mistake.

Not now, there is no place. for unnecessaryunresolved error, because there will be mistakes, the guys that I have around me now, if they make a mistake, they fix it immediately, yeah, and that's great, there are a lot of people who trust you to be there, so you have like 4000 people. normally yes so I'm on the plane and I usually write or often because there's no internet on the plane and that's a good use of time so I'm writing a new book so I write on the plane writing or writing by hand, write, yes, write and, then we land and go, it's usually early afternoon and then we go to a hotel.

Generally a nice hotel that is not corporate. I don't really like corporate hotels. My secretary and one of my logistics guys. has gotten pretty good at choosing the adventurous type of hotels, the boutique hotels are usually in the older parts of the city, especially in Europe, somewhere interesting, so we go there and then have lunch usually and sometimes it's a deep fryer and a steak in the hotel room and me. I leave a trail of air fryers behind me all over the world and then Tammy and I usually go out and take a walk or something and check out the city and then I rest for like an hour and a half or an hour and a half like a nap. , yes, now I have to sleep for 20 minutes and that's all I can say, but I need to do it at the last minute, it never refreshes your mind, yes, that wakes me up again at night and then tam. he has to sleep more, he's still recovering from his illness, so he has to sleep more in the afternoon and that's absolutely necessary for both of us or things start to wear out and then we go to the venue and I usually sit for an hour.

If I'm going to give a lecture, I've been doing a lot of Q&A and that's a little bit easier, but if I'm going to give a lecture, I have to sit for an hour and then think, what question am I trying to investigate? having that that's the point what mystery am I trying to unravel? It's usually associated with one of the rules in my book because technically it's a book tour, but each of those rules is an investigation of an ethic and each of them points to a deeper type. mystery in a sense and there's no end to the amount that can be explored, so I have the question, the question could be something like uh, get your house in perfect order before you criticize the world, okay, what exactly does that mean? ? means house what does it mean to put what does it mean to put that active verb what does perfect mean and order why before criticizing the world what does it mean to criticize what does it mean to criticize the world how can you do that correctly or incorrectly so I start thinking about how to break down the question and you start to thinking about which of these decompositions it's important to really delve into, yeah, well, then I'll realize, it's like okay, there's something there that maybe I've been mulling over that I would do.

I would like to investigate further, so I think okay, how can I approach this problem? I think I have this story, I know I have this story and I have this story, but I haven't juxtaposed them before and there will be an interesting interaction in the juxtaposition, so I have the question and I have a framework of interpretation and then I have some potential narrative places to go. the ones that I can go and then I think okay, I can juggle that and see what happens and then what I want to do is focus on that process while I attend to the audience to make sure the words are coming through and then see if I can go deeper into This is enough for a narrative to emerge spontaneously with an ending.

I'm sure you've experienced this on podcasts, right? maybe I'm wrong, but my experience has been that if I get into the conversation and we know about the time period, there will be a natural narrative arc and then you'll know when the halfway point is and see when you're coming to a conclusion and then if you really If you pay attention, you will see that it is a good place to stop. You get to a point and you have to be alert and patient to see that and you have to be willing to do it. Be satisfied with what you have to do, but if you do that and then it's like a comedian making the joke work, it's like he's got all these balls in the air and they're going somewhere and that's how they come together. and people love that, right, they say oh, this and this and this punch together and that's an idea and it's a lot like a punchline, well that's interesting because your mind is actually something.

I'm also a fan of your podcast and you're always driving. In that sense, I would say that in a podcast conversation there's often a sort of Alice in Wonderland exploration down the rabbit hole, man, and then something new comes along and the more absurd, the wilder, the better, yeah , the conversations with Elon are like that, yeah, it's like, actually, the more you drive into an ark, the more uncomfortable you start to feel in a funny, absurd conversation because, oh, now I'm one of the normal ones, no, I don't want to That, I want to be, I want.

I want the rabbit, I want the crazy one because it makes it more fun, but somehow throughout it there's wisdom that you try to get right, so there's a thread, well, that's what you're following, man, you're following the thread, eh, yes, the thread is correct. thread well that's what we're trying to do that thread that thread is the right balance between structure and spontaneity and it manifests itself as the instinctive meaning and that's the logos in the dialogues and it really is the logos and only god knows what that means You know, I'm referring to the biblical statement that logos is the fundamental principle of reality and I believe that to be true.

In fact, I think it's true because I think that meaning guides you well. Here's a way of thinking I've been writing about. this recently what is real matters is how it is okay that is an answer what is real what matters is real because that is how you act well that is different from matter it is how it is okay what is the most real thing that matters how about pain why it's the most real thing try to discuss it good luck so pain is the fundamental reality okay that's harsh doesn't that lead to nihilism and hopelessness?

Yes, doesn't it lead to a philosophy that is the antithesis of being the most fundamental reality? It's the pain. Yes, is there anything more fundamental than pain? really if you are suffering love and truth that is what you have and you know if they are more powerful than pain maybe they are the most real things when you think about reality what is real that is the most real well it is a difficult one, right, because you have to, because if you're a scientist, a materialist, think about it, the thing is the real thing, it's like, well, you don't know what the problem is, yeah, and so on, and then, when things get difficult , you will do it.

I'll find out what's more real, yes I feel like this is missing the physical reality, I mean some of the things are missing, so of course pain has a biological component and all that kind of stuff, but it's missing something deep. about the human condition that at least modern science is not able to describe it, but it is getting there. Yes, that's why one way to describe it the way you're describing it is because underneath the science is the assumption that there is a deep logos. In all this that we are trying to do, you know there are two traditions.

In a sense, there are two logos traditions. There is the Greek rational Enlightenment tradition, which is a logos tradition, and insists that there is a logos in nature and that science is the way to approach it, and then there is the Judeo-Christian logos which is more embodied and more spiritual and I would say that the West is actually an attempt to unite those two and it is the right attempt to unite those two because they need to be united and I see the union coming on close terms, you know, I talk to friends to talk, for For example, on the animating principle of chimpanzee sovereignty and that is quite close from a biological point of view, it is power because that is the claim, even by biologists, often the most dominant chimpanzee has the greatest reproductive success. it's like oh yeah, dominant, eh, you mean using compulsion, okay, let's see, they are the chimpanzees that use compulsion most successfully and the response is sporadically and rarely and long story short, well that's sporadically for short periods of time. of time, because because they meet an unpleasant end, the subordinates end.

They wait for those who exercise arbitrary control for a moment of weakness and then tear them to pieces. It is the terror of every dictator, and for good reason, and Dewall has shown that alpha chimpanzees, the males who have preferential access to mating, are often the best and most reciprocal peacemakers and, so even among chimpanzees the principle of sovereignty is something like iterative iterative reciprocity and that's a much better principle than power and it's kind of like I've been thinking what the antithesis of the spirit of power is, I think it's the spirit of play and you know, I don't know what you think about that, but when you have a good podcast conversation, you already described it in a sense as playback, it's like there's a right structure because it's an orderly conversation, but you want it to play. in the system and if you do it well then it's really engaging and then it seems to have its own narrative arc.

I'm not trying to impose that, although that's another thing I don't do. I didn't come into this conversation thinking at all. This is what I want from a conversation with Lex Friedman, instrumentally I thought I'd go talk to Lex because I like his podcasts. He is doing something right. I don't know what he is. He asks interesting questions. I'll have a conversation. with him, where he will go, wherever he goes, embracing the spirit of the game, so what do you have this when you are giving a lecture, you go in front of the crowd, you thought of a question, yeah, you just go on stage first of all. not at all nervous I'm very nervous when I'm sitting there thinking about the structure initially that's why my wife and I have been doing Q&As and that's easier for me yeah it's the way comedians are nervous like uh Joe Rogan he just did his special this weekend and now he has to sit nervously like a comedian does, which is like he has no material right now.

I have to start from scratch when he was constantly giving lectures instead of Q&As basically. What I was doing was writing an entire chapter of a book every night and you know, that's a bit of a stretch because I would go back to themes that I had developed, but it's not really a stretch because I never went over material from memory. That's how it was, it's very demanding and that part is stressful because I sit down, there's an hour until the show and I think: can I do it? I can do this? and you know the answer is well, you did it a thousand times, but it's not this time.

Yeah, it's like: Can I think of a question? Can I think of the structure? Can I achieve spontaneous narrative? that's hard, it takes effort and it's stressful, okay, I get it, but then there comes the moment when you go out on stage and you think, well, I know I had it, but can I do it? No notes and then the question is, well, are you going to do it. to find out, you do it and then I go out on stage and I don't talk to the audience, I talk to one person at a time and you can talk to a person you know because you know how to do it, so I talk to one person and not for too long because I don't want to make her too nervous and then with another and with another person and then I'm in touch with the audience and then I can tell if the words are landing and I listen.

Are they whispering? Are they silent because they want silence? So I see, because that's what it sounds likewere in this together. So you bet right and also here there is a good rule if learning public speaking I never say a word until everyone is 100% silent and that is a great way to start a talk because you are placed in the frame and if the frame is, We'll all talk while you talk, the message is good, you can talk, this is a place where everyone can talk, it's like no it's not, this is a place where people pay to hear me talk, so I'm not going to talk until everyone is listening and then you get that stillness and then you just wait because that stillness becomes an expectation and then it becomes kind of nervous expectations like what the hell is he doing it's not manipulative it's a sense of synchronization it's like when that's right you think well, now is the time to start well. nerve the interesting thing about that nervous expectation is that from the audience's perspective we are in this together, yes, I mean, in that silence there is a union, of course, it is the union of everyone's attention, yes, yes, and that It's something great.

I mean, you love that at a concert when everyone's not silent, but when everyone's attention is unified and everyone's moving in unison, it's like we're all worshiping the same thing, right, that would be the point of the conversation, the point of the conference. and worship is the direction of attention towards it and it is uni, it is communion because everyone does it at the same time, so I mean there is not much difference between a conference room and a church in that sense, it is the same design and fundamental structure and they are integrally associated with each other and they really emerged from the other, the conference hall emerged from the church, so it is perfectly reasonable to think about it in those terms and then okay, after the conference we play a piece of music that It's a piece of music I've been producing. with some musicians for a couple of books that I am going to publish in the fall terrible books abc of children's tragedy they are called dark books dark books dark and comic books terrible books heartbreaking illustrations we have set them to music and that's why we play a part of it and then generally I I meet about 150 people to take pictures, so each one of them is a little, there's a little flash of human connection, a lot, it's very intense, 10 seconds with each person, you think, how can 10 seconds? being intense is like paying enough attention gets intense really fast does it break your heart saying goodbye so many times its like being in a wedding line at a wedding you want to be at and everyone is in costumes and that's so weird because I bought these suits expensive when I went on tour and it broke my heart because I spent so much money on them I thought God, that's completely unconscionable I thought no way, man, yeah, I'm on this 100 and that's why I'm going to dress respectfully. and since sixty percent of the audience comes in two or three piece suits, they're all dressed up and then there's a line to greet me and they're all happy to see me, that's not that hard to understand, you know, even though it's in a You're right because normal interactions are pretty superficial and you think I don't want superficial interactions like yeah, you do it most of the time, yeah, it's intense, it's very intense and I don't know if you, but have you tried this, no.

I hesitate because people recognize me, yes, but I also have when a person recognizes me and comes with love and often they are brilliant people. One of the thoughts I have when dealing with one of the dragons in my own mind is, you know, thinking that I don't deserve that kind of attention and well, you're probably not right, so it's a burden because I have to give a step forward to be the kind of person who deserves that, but partly deserves that kind of intention and that's it. As a saint, it's also vitally important because if someone comes up to you in an airport and knows who you are and is brave enough to admire you or who you're trying to be and you make a mistake, they'll never forget it, yeah.

It's a very risky business and the other side of the coin, especially with young people, a few words you can say can change the direction of their lives one way or another, so I really have to keep an eye on this at airports too. . I don't like airports. I don't like the creeping totalitarianism in airports, they have always bothered me, yes they really bother me and I sometimes make an unpleasant traveling companion to my wife because of it, although I think we have solved it thank God because we are doing it. I travel a lot, but most of the security guards and border staff, all those people know me and, as a rule, have a positive predisposition towards me, so if I'm moody or irritable, yes, then well, that's not it. well, it's not.

Well, so it's a tightrope to walk because I don't like that progressive totalitarianism, but in the same way, you know, if you're just one of the crowd, you know sometimes it's good to be one of the crowd and then . You're a little prickly and people may just ignore it, but if you're someone they've dared to open their heart to because that's what admiration is and then you are and you betray them, then that's real and they'll never do it. forget it and then they'll tell everyone too, so it requires a lot of attention and Tammy in our life has been complicated because in Toronto, for example, we can't just go for a walk, it's always a high drama production because there are always people.

They show up and have a heartbreaking story to tell and I'm not being cynical about it, yeah, it's kind of hard to take because people don't do that, they don't open up to you that way and share the tragedy of their life, but that's something. which happens every day, so when we go to our cabin that's outside of town, it's a relief, you know, because as wonderful as it is, it's strange. I have a strange life because everywhere I go it's very It's strange, it's like I'm surrounded by old friends because now I virtually walk down the street in any city and people say hello to me, Dr.

Peterson, it's a pleasure to see you or they say better things than those, very rarely bad things that one experience in 5000 can be. very strange, although you don't forget them either, but it's very, it's very strange, there is an intimacy where they know you well and because they jump, they avoid small talk they often jump to familiarity, it really is like it's an old man friend. and it feels like that for me personally, the experience is that goodbye hurts because, you know, there's a feeling that you'll never see that friend again, right, yeah, that's kind of strange, uh, so for me, a lot of uh, a lot of it just feels like a goodbye mm-hmm well, you're right about that and I mean, I guess in some sense it's part of the pain of opening up to people because they too tammy has been particularly impressed, she said she really I never knew. what the men were like I said what do you mean she said I can't believe how polite the men are when they come and talk to you because it's always the same the pattern is very similar the person shows up they are mostly men not always but mostly and They are hesitant and they are very polite, very, very polite, and they say: I hope I don't bother you.

Do you mind? Know? Do you mind if I tell them that they don't bother me and that I'm doing everything I can? not being the guy that's bothered by that is like who you think you are yeah yeah you're the guy that's famous and now he's above that yeah you don't want to be that guy yeah so you wanna be grateful all the time when people open up like that and you have to be alert and on time to do it right right away because for these it's 5 seconds or 10 seconds or 20 seconds whatever, but for them they have opened up and you can really nail them if you're dumb after the 150 people, how do you get off that?

How can you find yourself again? Well, that's when I was taught that I was caught in the traps of Twitter, you know? By then I'm so exhausted from the talking and the interactions with the audience and the whole day because it's a new city, it's a new hotel, it's 5,000 new people, it's a new book chapter, it's a completely new horizon of ideas and I I'm going to another city the next day. By then I'm already so exhausted that I'm not as good at controlling my impulses as I could be and Twitter was a real catastrophe because of that because I would get hooked and then I couldn't. like I used to do when I was working a lot on my book, I used to call tammy and say look you have to come get me, I can't stop, I can't stop, I got tired and then I thought because it's part of some kind of over the top hypomanic approach that I couldn't quitting is like oh no I'm still writing I need to get away from this but I couldn't stop so I might as well read something, a fiction book, non-fiction, fiction, stephen king i.

I was reading a lot of Stephen King when I was on tour last time, so that was good. I really like Stephen King. Great narratives, great characterizations, you know, and there's also some familiarity with the writings of Stephen King, who writes about people that you know and So I really found that it was a relief and it was helpful and that to tolerate this, let's say, or be able to hold it well, it took a lot of negotiation on the part of Tammy and I because she got dragged into this and you know. her life is a part of this whatever it is and she's had to find her way and for example she now has a different hotel room than me when we traveled and she found out she didn't want to be on the tour this spring and I was sick with new on the one hand it didn't make it complicated but she went home and came back and said and she was nervous but she said I think I need my own room and part of me wasn't happy with that, it's like what do you mean you need your taste?

Are we not married anymore? It's like you need your own room and she was like, well, you know I can't. She has to do exercises because she was very sick and she has to stay in shape. she has to have some time to do that, she does a lot of prayer and meditation and she needs the time and she has her own podcast that's going pretty well and she needs the time and I trust her and she said well I need this in order to continue and I thought well , okay, if you need this to continue, yeah, because she left and didn't say well, I don't want to be on the tour, I don't want to do this anymore, she's gone. and I prayed, let's say how can I continue to do this and that was the answer, so she has her own hotel room and that was a very good decision on her part and she is very good and she gets better all the time to figure out what she needs to do. .

This is going to happen to her to make this sustainable and everything that has been is a plus because I don't want to travel without her and I don't want her life to be miserable and I want her to be completely on board and that's why she has to do it. Be properly selfish, as everyone does in a relationship, and you should not just say yes, this is something strange that you are doing and you should, both you and her, discover how to enjoy, how to handle this intense intellectual intensity well. There's also another element that I didn't tell you about, so it was a typical day, but it's missing an important component because we usually also have a dinner with about 30 cultural representatives, I guess between 10 and 30 from each country, because I have a network of people who have networks that are putting me in contact with key decision makers in each country and so we have about an hour and a half of that now, sometimes that's on a day when I don't have a talk yes but sometimes the conversations are consecutive and she also has to handle that and be friendly and then people show us interesting things and tours in cities and everything is like it's a wonderful surf fight, yes exactly, but still it is.

Yes, you have to be there because you have to be present mentally, yes, like a curious mind, like an intellectual mind, how can you sleep? Luckily, that's almost never a problem, even when I was incredibly sick for about three. years, I thought a lot about that too, you know, I didn't do a good job of explaining that while I was sick because it seemed in some sense that the reason I was sick was because I was on benzodiazepines, but that's not the case. why I was sick and then I took them at a very low dose and I took them for a long time and it helped me with any problems I had and it seems like it was an allergy or maybe multiple allergies and then it stopped working and then I took a little more for about a month and that made it a lot worse, so I cut back a lot and then things really got out of hand and there was this deeper, oh yeah, oh yeah, what can you put into words?

I had a lot of immunity. My daughter, as everyone knows, has a very reactive immune system and Tammy has three immune conditions, each of them quite serious. I had psoriasis and peripheral uveitis, which is an autoimmune condition, and alopecia areata and chronic gum disease. which seemed to be related to older people and then Michaela seems to have had all of that and that I think was the cause because I also had this propensity for depression that was part of my family history, but I think it was all immunological. From what I can tell, one of the things that happened to me was I always noticed that I couldn't really breathe because I could breathe about a fifth of what I could sometimes and that's why I was always short of breath and it seems like Lo Maybe that was because I was always on the verge of an anaphylactic reaction, which is not pleasant and that'shypersympathetic activation, no parasympathetic activation, I couldn't relax at all, it's an immune response, allergic response, yeah, that's what it looked like now anyway.

I don't like to talk about this a lot because it's very radical and you know I don't like to spread it, but this diet seems to have stopped all that. I don't have psoriasis, all the patches are gone, yes, my gum. disease that is incurable, I had multiple surgeries to treat it, it completely disappeared, it took three years, my right eye, which was quite cloudy, cleared up completely. What else has changed? Well, I lost 50 pounds and instantly kept it off. I should mention that I do too. I am not a deep researcher of nutritional science. I have my skepticism about the degree to which it is currently science because, like many complex systems, there are several, full of mystery and full of profiteers, people who benefit from different types of diets, but I must say that, personally, it seems that I feel better when I only eat meat, that's very interesting and I discovered it a long time ago, first of all, how do you discover it?

So with the discovery it was like this, I started I listened to ultramarathon runners about 15 years ago and they started talking about fat adapted running, so I discovered for the first time that I don't have to run super fast to enjoy running and in fact, I really enjoy running at a slower pace, so it was like a step. one is like, oh, okay if I maintain something called uh, the mathematical rule, which is a fairly low heart rate, if I maintain that you can go pretty fast while maintaining a fairly slow average speed in general, anyway, they are fed diets low carb, so I got into that, on top of that, I also fast often.

Then I discovered how amazing my mind feels when I fast. You know people call it intermittent fasting, but hey, that's a death optimization, huh, because when you fast, your body is logical and obviously, if you think about it biologically, it's what your body cleanses. first well damaged tissue, so I know the literature on fasting to some extent and it is a very compelling literature if you starve dogs I think it is 20 less than rats, also below their optimal body weight, live a 30 percent more, yes, that's a lot. thirty percent is like thirty percent yeah yeah thirty percent well, there are aspects to a lot of these things that make me nervous because I always feel like there's no free lunch that I'm going to pay for it in some way, but there's an approach that I can achieve when I fast, especially when I eat once a day, my mind is almost nervous, it's almost like an anxiety, but a positive one or one that I can channel as an emotion, you know, I wonder how much of that is associated with well, imagine that means lack of food, which is not that hard to imagine, well, maybe you should be much more alert in that situation biologically speaking because you are in hunting mode, let's say you are not desperate, but in hunting mode and God only knows that maybe humans should be in hunting mode all the time, but we don't know that, so I wonder if there is a stress on the system that in the long run causes the system to not seem that way.

It seems that in case of fasting not and on top of that I discovered that what I enjoy I just don't enjoy eating fat as much, so I love eating meat and when you talk about low carb diets, I discovered it through that. process if someone makes me fat, but I just feel a lot of the things that make me feel weird about food, like a little groggy or full or just any aspect of food that I don't enjoy, aren't there with meat. and I can still enjoy the company and when I eat once a day and I eat meat at least in Texas you can still have all the joy oh yeah, dinners with friends now I don't do what you know you have something very serious that, um, there are benefits For the health that you take very seriously for me, I can still drink whiskey.

I'll still do the things that add a little spice to the thing, yes, now, when you completely take the spice out of it. It gets harder, yes, it's harder socially and Tami seems like she can only eat lamb, although she may be able to eat underripe beef and that makes traveling too complicated, because well, for obvious reasons, it's like That's really all you can do. come, yes, well, c'est la vie and maybe it's a form of madness, but if it can really go back to what you were talking about when you were thinking about a question before the lecture, yes, let me ask you about the thought in general, um this.

It's something that maybe you and Jim Keller think a lot about is thinking how to think um, how do you think about an idea? Well, first of all, I think okay, that's a very good question. We tried to solve that with this essay application that my son and I have developed because if you are going to write the first question is, what should I write about what is the name of the application sa.app and well, the first question is, what do you upset, what's bothering you, is this something cool? It's like where is my destiny well what bothers you well that's where your destiny is your destiny is found in what bothers you why those things bother you there are many things that could bother you like a million things man but some things bother you They grab you, they bother you and they can make you feel resentful and bitter because they bother you so much as if they were your thing, man, they have you, so I look for a question that I would like the answer to not. and I would really like to have the answer, so I don't assume that I already have the answer because actually I would really like to have the answer, so if I could get a better answer, great, that's the first thing and it's like a prayer. okay, there's a mystery here, I'd like to go deeper into it, so that's humility, it's like there's a mystery here, which means I don't know, I'd like to go deeper into it, which means I don't anymore.

I know enough and then then. the revelation comes it's like well, what is a revelation? Well, if you ask yourself a question, it's a real question, you get an answer or you don't, the answer is well, yes, thoughts start appearing in your head, so from somewhere right, from somewhere they come from. Do you have an idea? It depends on what you're aiming for, it depends on the question, but no, no, it doesn't, to some extent, it depends, it depends on your intention, so imagine that your intention is to make things better, then maybe they. they come from the place that is designed to make things better maybe your intention is to make things worse then they come from hell and you think no it's really like you're so sure of that if your intention is conscious if you can um conscious and habitual, right, because when you practice something consciously it becomes habitual, but it's conscious, it's like when I sit down before giving a lecture, I think okay, what's the goal here, to do the best job I can, to what end?

Well, people come here, not for political issues, they come here because they are trying to improve their lives, okay? So what are we doing? We are conducting joint research into the nature of what makes life better. What is my role in doing good work? What mood should I be in? Am I upset by the theater or am I? Am I aware and excited that 4,000 people have shown up at substantial expense and trouble to come hear me speak and if I'm not in that frame of mind I think well maybe I need something to eat or maybe I need to talk to someone because that ingratitude it's not a place to start it's like I should be excited to be there obviously and that orientation has to be there and then I said conscious all of this is conscious what I'm serving the greater good I can conceptualize what that is it makes some sense but I don't know in the final analysis that's why the research is being carried out who is doing it is me who I am communicating with and the audience, so I want, I try to get it and I scare everyone away that's why it's like I have to do it alone are you writing things?

Yes, at that time I do no, I just take occasional notes and it's usually about 30 notes, but then on stage I never refer to them and often I don't even use the structure that I laid out. It's something interesting. Where do powerful phrases come from? You have a? Have something? Trying to summarize an idea in a sentence or two? Well, when I speak, I have consciously practiced this since 1985. I try to feel and see if the words are stepping stones or foundation stones. Is it that solid? this word solid is this phrase solid is this sentence solid like it's a real sense of fundamental foundation underneath every word and I guess people ask me if I pray and I would say I pray before every word well when you're when you're asking . questions like you are very lucid and present in your ability to ask questions and inquire, so how do you do it?

First of all, I worry that my mind will easily get trapped when I step on a word and know it is unstable. I realize that you don't really know the definitions of the words you use and that can be debilitating, so I try to be more lighthearted with the words I use because otherwise you get caught up and you don't want to be obsessive. literally my mind in the middle of the sentence will think well, what does the word sentence mean? well, well, well, you know, everything else just explodes, your general idea explodes and you got lost in the details, well, neurologically, there's a production center and an editing center and those.

The strokes can be affected separately and usually when people write or speak they try to activate both at the same time and that's why people try to write an essay and get every sentence right in the first draft, that's a big mistake and then I could say well how can you be careful with your words but carefree and the answer is to orient yourself correctly while you are in the conversation that we have you have an orientation structure you want to be prepared you want to be attentive so you want to have an interesting conversation and you want having the kind of interesting conversation that other people want to hear and that will be good for them in some way, okay, that's a pretty good framework and then you search your heart and think that's really What you want is

fame

or notoriety.

What are you looking for is money? I'm not saying that any of those things are necessarily bad, but they are not optimal, especially if you are not willing to admit them correctly, and therefore they can contaminate you. you want to be decontaminated so that you have the right journey, let's say, and then you have to put yourself, that is a meditative practice, you have to put yourself in the right receptive position with the right goal in mind, then you can and I believe you can achieve it. getting better and better at this, so you can trust what's going to happen, you know, for example, before I came here, I mean, I guess you have a reason for doing the podcast with me, what's the reason?

I mean, we wanted to talk for a long time. So the reason has evolved, one of the reasons is that I've been listening to you for quite a while so you become a one-way friend and I have a lot of one-way friends, some of my best friends don't even know me. exist, so I'm a big fan of podcasts and audiobooks, in fact, most of my friends are dead, yeah right, writers, the definition of a reader, uh, a lot of dead, great dead friends, so I wanted , I wanted to meet this one-way friend. I guess we didn't have a conversation and then there's this kind of puzzle that I've been wanting to solve for the same reason I went to Ukraine to ask myself this question: who am I and what was this part of the world?

What is this thing? That happened in the 20th century, I lost a lot of my family there and I feel like a lot of my family is defined by that place. Now that place includes the Soviet Union, it includes Russia and Ukraine, it includes Nazi Germany, it includes these great, powerful, enormous leaders. millions of people who were lost in the beauty, the power of the dream, but they were also the torture that was imposed on them through different government institutions and you are someone who, from some angle, also seemed drawn to try to understand what it was like. . that and not in some kind of historical sense but in a deeply psychological human sense what is that will be repeated again in what way is it repeated again and how can we stop it and how can we stop it and that is the crucial question that I felt I wanted to come from origins very different uh, taking advantage of the threat of that curiosity, you know, I'm an engineer, you're a psychologist, both lost in that curiosity and both were suits and a talk with various levels of eloquence, um, about a kind of um, the shadows that that history throws on us and that was one and also psychology.

I wanted to be a psychiatrist for a long time. I was fascinated by the human mind and until I discovered artificial intelligence, the fact that I could program and make a robot move and until I discovered that magic I thought I wanted to understand the human mind by being a psychiatrist, talking to people, through from psychotherapy, now you have the best of both worlds because you can talk to people and you build robots, yeah, I mean, but the dream ultimately is the robot that I felt when I built the thought, you start trying to understand it, yeah, That's one way, I wantThat is, we are all, we all have different abilities and inclinations.

So, my particular thing is uh it has to do with uh, I learn by building, yes, I think about a thing by building it and programming is a wonderful thing because it allows you to build a little toy example, in the same way that you can do it. a little thought experiment, uh, programming allows you to create a thought experiment in action, it can move, it can live and it can do well and then you can ask questions about it, so all that because of my interest in Freud and Young, you too you're in different ways have delved deeply into humanity, the human psyche through the perspective of those psychologists, so for all those reasons I thought about our password, yeah, so well, that's a good framework for a discussion, Right?

You had all kinds of reasons. and then you think, well, are you just letting the conversation go where it wants? it's like well, not exactly you spent all this time it's not that this came up by accident this conversation you spent all this time framing it and then all of that provides the implicit substructure for the game in the conversation and if you have that implicit, here's another way that works worth knowing: if you get the implicit structure of perception right, everything becomes a game and not just a game you want to play and maybe in the final analysis, a game you would want to play forever, so you know it's obviously a distant ideal, but we know that games need rules or there is no game, is there a device you can give?

Now that we know the framework to give me to Lex. how to make this podcast better how to think about this world how to be a good engineer how to be a good human being taking seriously your concern about suffering is serious business, right, and that's part of it to go back to the beginning. Let's say that's that willingness to look into the abyss, which is obviously what you were doing when you went to Ukraine, it's like you were looking inward. The abyss that makes you better is the thing and this is where maybe Nietzsche's idea It is not as differentiated as it was, sometimes your gaze can be directed forcefully into the abyss and then you are traumatized if it is involuntary and accidental it can kill you, but it is voluntary the more transformative it is and that is part of that idea about facing death and the hell, it's like you can tolerate death in hell and the answer is this terrible answer is yes to the extent that you're willing to do it voluntarily and then I might wonder why I should have to submit to death in hell.

I am innocent and so the answer is that even the innocent must be willingly sacrificed to the highest good. That's such an interesting distinction. Voluntary suffering. Yes Yes. Well, that's why the central Christian doctrine is take up your cross and follow me and I'm not speaking in religious terms, I'm just speaking as a psychologist, it's like one of the things we've learned in the last hundred years is voluntary exposure to that. what freezes and terrifies you in measured proportions is healing, so one form of at least partly involuntary suffering is depression. Do you have any advice for people on how to find a way out?

You are a man who has suffered in this way perhaps you will continue to suffer. In this way, how can you find a way out? The first thing I do as a doctor if someone comes to me and tells me that he is depressed is to ask myself a question, what does this person mean by that? So I have to figure it out because maybe they're not depressed, maybe they're very anxious or maybe they're obsessive, like there are several forms of powerful negative emotions, so you need to differentiate between them, but the next question you have to ask is: are you depressed or have you? a terrible life or it's a combination of the two, so if you're depressed, as far as I can tell, you don't have a terrible life, you have friends, you have family, you have an intimate relationship, you have a job or a career. you are as educated as you should be, given your intelligence, you use your time outside of work wisely, you are not beholden to alcohol or other temptations, you are involved in the community in some fundamental sense and all of that is working now if you have all of that. and you feel really bad, or you're sick, or you're depressed, then sometimes there's a biochemical route to that treatment.

My experience as a doctor is that if you are depressed but you have a life and taking an antidepressant will probably help you a lot now you may not be depressed exactly you just have a terrible life what do you think? you don't have any relationships your family is a mess you don't have any friends you don't have any plans you don't have a job you use your time outside of work not just badly but destructively you have a drug or alcohol habit or some other tainted pornography addiction um you're not completely involved in the community around you you don't have any scaffolding to support you in your current way of being or you move forward and then as a therapist you do two things well, if it's depression per se, like I said, sometimes there's a biochemical pathway, a nutritional path, there are ways to approach it, it is probably physiological if you are at least partly, if you are depressed but have a good life, sometimes it is conceptual, sometimes you can turn to dreams to help people because dreams contain the seeds of future potential and if your person is a really good dreamer and you can analyze dreams that can be very helpful, but that seems to be true only for the most creative people and for people who just have a terrible life.

Okay, you have a terrible life. Well, let's choose a facade. What if you need? What if you need a friend like that? kind of friend, do you know how to shake hands and introduce yourself? I'll have the person show it to me, so let's do it for a second, so it's like this. Hi, I'm Jordan, right? People don't know how to do that and then. they can't even get the ball rolling for the listener Jordan just gave me a firm handshake, yeah, unlike a dead fish, you know, and there are these elementary social skills that, hypothetically, if you were well taken care of, you would learn them when You were like three years old.

Yeah, and sometimes people, I've had a lot of clients that no one paid attention to and they needed like 10,000 hours of attention and part of that was just listening because they had 10,000 hours of conversations that they never had with anyone and they were all tangled up in their own. heads and had only one client in particular. I worked with this person for 15 years and what she wanted from me was for me to shut up for 50 minutes was very difficult for me and to just tell her I told what had happened to her and then what happened at the end of the conversation, then I was able to argue a little with her and then, as we progressed through the years, the amount of time we spent in discussion increased proportionally in these sessions until by the time we stopped seeing each other when my clinical practice collapsed, we were talking about 80 times, but she had literally never been cared for properly, so she was an unhewn block in the Taoist sense, right?

She had not been subjected to those fiery swords that separated the wheat from the chaff and that you can do it in therapy if you're listening and you're depressed, I would say if you can't find a therapist and that's getting harder and harder because it's actually become illegal. be a therapist now because you have to agree with your clients, which is a terrible thing to do with them, just like it's a terrible thing to just arbitrarily oppose them, you could do the online desktop publishing program because it helps you write an autobiography, and if you have memories that are more than 18 months old and that bother you when you think about them, a part of you is locked inside you and an undeveloped part of you is still trapped in that's a metaphorical way of thinking, that's why it still has an emotional meaning.

You can write about your past experiences, but I would say wait at least 18 months if something bad has happened to you because otherwise you will hurt yourself again when you encounter it. You can update yourself with an autobiography. There is a failure analysis. virtues that is the current authorship and then there is a guided writing exercise that helps you make a future plan that is the young people who do that could go to university the young people who do that 90 minutes only the future authorship 90 minutes have 50 less chances of quitting That's all it takes so sometimes depression is a heavy cloud that makes it hard to even take a single step towards it or did you say isolate yourself make a friend oh man sometimes the first step is extremely difficult, oh my god, sometimes it's much worse than that.

I had clients who were so depressed they literally couldn't get out of bed, so what's your first step? Can you sit down once today? No, can you lean on your elbows once today like you just shrink the dragon until you find one that is conquerable that will move you forward, there is a rubric for life, shrink the dragons until you find one that is conquerable and it will give you a little gold commensurate with the struggle, but the positive side of that is that that's what you think. God, that's depressing, you mean I have to start by sitting down while you do, if you can't sit, but the positive side of that is that the problem with the Pareto distribution is that the aggregates increase exponentially and the failures do too, so true, but the aggregates exponentially. increases, so once you start rolling, you can make good progress.

This person I talked about was incapable of sitting with me in a cafe when we met, just talking, even though I was her therapist, but in the end she was standing still. live comedy, so you know, it took years, but still most people don't do live comedy, that's a pretty bloody achievement. She would read her poetry in the second scenario, so for someone who was petrified to paralysis by social anxiety and who had to start from a very young age, there is a great achievement, yes, it all begins with one step. Do you have any advice for high school kids? find each other take some responsibility do something for other people you are doing something for yourself while doing it even if you don't know for sure because you are a community over time you find something that helps someone to help someone to help a job for find a job do your best with clients don't be above your job you're going to get an entry level job when you're a kid or what else would you like to be the boss what Do you know you don't know anything?

You could be the boss at your job. You know that if you're working at a grocery store or a convenience store, assuming you're not working for terrified tyrants, you can be nice. with clients you can develop your social skills you can learn how to manage the boss-employee relationship you can arrive 15 minutes early and leave 15 minutes late like you can learn in an entry-level job and I'll tell you if you take an entry-level job and you learn and it's a reasonably decent place, you won't be in an entry level job for long because everyone who is competent is desperate for competent people and if you go and show yourself competent there will be a test period, but if you show yourself competent, all kinds of doors that you didn't even know they were there will start to open up like crazy, so you strive to be competent for the craft, yes, yes, for the discipline, you know, I mean, I said it in one of the chapters in My books focus in putting your house in order.

It's like, how do you start making your bed? Know? It actually took me quite a while in my life before I made my bed regularly in the morning. in pretty good order but that was something I didn't have in order my clothes in my closet also everything is in order not everything I'm cleaning out some drawers right now but look around and see what's bothering you in your room just look, it's okay, I'm in my room, do I like this room? No, it bothers me. Good because? Well, the paint is peeling off there and there's dust there and the carpet is dirty and that corner is kind of ugly and there's no light there. alright and my clothes closet is a mess so I don't even like to open it um okay that's a lot of problems that sucks that's a lot of opportunities pick something and fix it something that bothers you yeah but not too much so the rule is choose something that you know would make you choose a problem choose a solution that you know would help you that you could do that you would do it so you have to negotiate with yourself it's like well I'm not cleaning this room how do you know?

I've been here for 10 years and I've never cleaned it. Well, obviously, that's too big a dragon for you. Could you clean out a drawer? You figure it out and now imagine you want to be happy when you open that drawer and think well, that's stupid, it's like maybe it was your sock drawer that I cleaned out in my room the other day, by the way, you're going to open it every morning, That's like 30 seconds of your life every day, okay? three minutes a week is 12 minutes a month is two hours a year so maybe your life is made up of you have 16 hours a day, let's figure this out 5 12 in an hour 12 in an hour 144 in 12 hours yes, let's say 200. 205 minute sentences, that's your life, ladies and gentlemen.

Jordan Peterson did some math on how many five-minute clips there are in a day and I'm prettysure it's pretty accurate, it's roughly correct, so you got 200 5 minute chunks and they repeat. many of them repeat, so if you understand each of them correctly, they are trivial, who cares what my sock drawer looks like? Fair enough, man, but that's your life, the things you repeat every day, the mundane things I think I can achieve all of them. those mundane things, right, those are the rules of the game, it's like now everything mundane is in its place, now you can play because everything mundane is in its place and this is really true, so with children imagine that you want that your children play well, the game is very fragile neurologically any competition.

Motivation or excitement will suppress play, so everything has to be in order, everything has to be a walled garden before the children play, that's a good way to think about it, so you put everything in order and you think: " "My God, I'm tyrannized now." with this order it's like no, you're not, if it's voluntary and then the order is the precondition for freedom and then suddenly you get all these things in order, it's like, oh, look at this, I have, I have I have some room to play here and then maybe you won't be depressed now.

It's often not that simple. You know it's not that simple. Try to put your room in order. A perfect order. That is hard. I mean, it's a really powerful way to think about those five. one minute snippets, just do one of them correctly in a day, yeah if you do that for 200 days your life is in order, yeah you know I thought I did that with my clients a lot so a lot of them kept coming back Home from work, guys. say, and your wife would meet you at the door and there would be a fight right away, you know, and there's a confrontation there because he comes home and he's tired and hungry and he's worked all day and he expects you to know that he'll be greeted when he. he comes home but then the wife is home and she's been with the kids all day and she's tired and hungry and she hopes that when he comes home he'll show her some appreciation for what happened today and then they crash and then they both have problems that argue because you've had problems during the day and then every time you get together it's not like it's a fight for 20 minutes and then the whole night is fucked up and so then you think okay, here's the deal, you knock and the door opens.

It will open, okay, you can choose how it will happen when you return home, but you have to figure out what it is, so now here's the deal, you treat yourself appropriately, you imagine coming home and it goes the way you want it to and you need it to go well. , How does it look like? You can have it, but you have to know what it is, what it looks like, and you think, okay, I want to come home, I want to be happy that I came. home I come home I open the door I say hello honey I'm home my wife says hello it's so nice to hear your voice she comes over she says hello honey she gives you a hug she says how was your day and you say well we We'll sit down and talk About that, how was your day?

Well, we'll sit down and talk about it, do you need something to eat? We're probably going to sit down and talk about our day, that sounds pretty good, okay, that sounds pretty good, it might not be perfect. It sounds a hell of a lot better than what we're doing now, so how about we go talk to your wife and say, "Okay, this is what's going to happen when I get home." I wish it were better, what would you do? ? I would like it to happen if you could have what you wanted and then she sits back and thinks: it's okay if he comes home, what do I want to happen?

And so now you have two visions and you say, well, what would you like? listen and she says what would you like, can you tell her and then you think? Okay, now we can put these visions together so that not only do we both get what we want, but because we've put them together, we even get more of what we want. Who wouldn't agree with that unless they were even depressed and that is so exciting that it is not a compromise, it is a union of ideals that even creates a better ideal and then you can go home and then there is another rule that goes along with that?

It's please, dear, have the grace to allow me to do this stupidly and wrongly. Well, I learned at least 20 times, yeah, and we all give you the same leeway and then we'll practice stupidly 20 times and talk about it and then maybe. We'll do it right the next 10,000 times, yeah, right, and you can do it with your whole life, you can do it with your kids, and you can do it with your family, like it's not easy. but you can do it, it's much easier than the alternative. Let me ask Jordan Peterson for some dating advice. How do you find the love of your life in that topic?

That is a good question. They did it to me several times during my tour, three times in a row. in fact, because we asked people to use this solid device, which is a popular question. The second question always rose to the top and I was asked that three times in a row and I didn't have a good answer and then I thought why not I don't have a good answer I thought oh I know why because it's a stupid question so why yes? Because? Because it is putting the cart before the horse. Here is the correct question.

How can I become the perfect date? Answer that question and you will have no problem answering the previous question. It's like what I want in a partner. If you offered everything you could to one partner, who would it be? Would you work on that? Ask that question. Just ask yourself. Okay, I have to be the person. that women would want okay, what do they want? clean, not a bad start, reasonably fit, so healthy, productive, generous, honest, willing to delay gratification, so you dance with a woman, it's like, what is she doing?, what are they doing right?

You two?, has a pattern. patterns happening around you, those are the patterns of music, patterns of being, that's the music now, can you align yourself with the patterns of being gracefully, that's what she's checking out and then you can do that with her and Then you can do it in a playful and attentive way? and keep your bloody hands still for at least a minute so you can dance playfully. It's like you can go through this in your imagination and you know you know you know and then you think well, how far am I from? those things and the answer is usually man, it's a pretty horrible chasm that separates you from that ideal, but the harder you work to give other people what they need and want, the more people will line up to play with you, so it's the wrong question. , it's like how can I?

I am the best possible partner and then you think well, if I do that, people will just take advantage of me and that is the non-naive objection, because the naive person thinks well, I will be good and everyone will treat me well, it's like The cynic says that No, I'll be good and someone will take me out and then you think well, what do you do with that objection? And the answer is well, you take that into account, that's why you're supposed to be as gentle as a dove and as wise as a snake it's like I know you're full of snakes I know maybe I know more than you but we'll play anyway and that's the risk that's right voluntarily it's like that and that's what's great about it is to say, even though the person you're dealing with is full of snakes, if you offer your hand confidently and it's real, you will evoke the best of them, yes, and that is true, even I have dealt with people who are quite criminal and quite psychopathic and sometimes dangerously so and you are very careful when you deal with someone like that, especially if they are drunk, and even then your best option is that alert confidence, that's the only fact, the only thing I know is that if I had a client that was paranoid, he was a paranoid psychopath, that's a bad combination, he was a bad guy, he had like four restraining orders and the restraining orders didn't They work on the kind of people you put restraining orders on and he used them. being harassed from time to time by, you know, a bureaucrat in a bank with delusions of power and he would tell them that he used to act like that with me when I talked to him, he would say I'm going to be your worst nightmare and he meant it, yeah , and I would.

He had this obsessive psychopathic vendetta that was like paranoid to the hilt and paranoid people are hyper sharp, so they're watching you for any signs of deception or manipulation. and they are very good at it because they are 100 because that is paranoia, it is 100 to focus on that and even in those circumstances, if you step carefully enough, maybe you can avoid the acts that is good to know if you have ever met someone really dangerous uh I absolutely believe in being fragile, however, taking that leap of trust towards another person even when they're dangerous, especially when they're dangerous, if you care if there's something there in those hills that you want to find, then that's probably it.

The only way you'll find out is by taking that risk. I have to ask you about Soulja Nitzin's gulag archipelago which speaks to this same point. There are so many layers to this book that you could talk about it forever, I'm sure. In many ways, we are talking about it forever, but there is one of the themes captured in various ways that was described in the book: that line between good and evil that runs through every human being as he writes the line that divides good. . and evil cuts the heart of every human being during the life of any heart this line keeps changing places sometimes it compresses in a direction towards exuberant evil and sometimes it changes to allow enough room for the good in which it is found to flourish the same human being. various ages under different circumstances a totally different human being is sometimes close to being a demon sometimes close to holiness but his name does not change and we attribute a lot of good and evil to that name.

What do you think of this line? Do you think about this what we talked about? If you give someone a chance, you really bring out the best in them, what do you think about this other aspect that over time that line changes within each person and can you define that change? Think along these lines, are we all capable of evil? Well, you know the cosmic drama that is satan against christ, it's like well, who is it about? If it's not about you. I am speaking only as a psychologist or as a literary critic. Those are characters at least.

They are very good, they are human characters, obviously, they are archetypal human characters, yes, what does that mean cosmically and ontologically? I don't know, maybe the world is a story, but the way stories are often told is the characters and the body, I know. Those are insufficient, it is not great literature, although it is very rare in great literature, what there is in great literature generally is the internal drama, just when literature becomes more pop, I would say that the characters are more unitary, for what there is a really bad guy and him. all bad and there's a really good guy and he's really good and that's not that interesting, that's not that sophisticated when you reach Dostoevsky heights in literary representation or Shakespearean heights, you can identify with the villain and that's when the Literature truly reaches its pinnacle. some sense and also the characters change throughout the turn, they are unpredictable at all times, I am taking Russian speech more seriously recently and I have been able to talk to translators of dostoyevsky and tolstoy and um chechev and those kinds of people and you get to one One of the mistakes that translators made with Dostoevsky for the longest time is that they, in quotes, fixed the chaotic mess that is Destievsky because there was a feeling that he was too rushed in his writing, it seemed like there were tangents that had nothing to do with it. to do with anything. the characters were unpredictable, not inconsistent, there are parts of sentences that seem incomplete, that kind of thing and what they realize is that it's not that, it's actually designed that way, it's not, you know, it's like edit james joyce like finnegan's wake or something like that because it doesn't make any sense, you realize that's the magic that captures the humanity of these characters, that they are unpredictable, they change all the time, there are a lot of contradictions , at what point should I ask if there is any case that I can argue that the brothers?

Karmazov is the best book ever written, yes, there are reasons to defend it, I don't know, it is better than crime and punishment, yes, yes, do you believe it? Why don't I discuss it? Because you believe that? well this is every every book is a person, some of my best friends are inside that book, yes it is an amazing book and there is no doubt about it. I think some books are defined by your personal relationship with them and that one was definitive and I. I almost graduated from that one because for a long time The Idiot was my favorite book uh of all because I identified with the ideas represented by Prince Michigan I also identified oh that's interesting for Prince Michigan as a human being holy fool the fool because the The The world of my entire life still sees me, it saw me in my perception, my narrow perception is a little silly and I am different from the interpretation that many people take from this book.

I see him as some kind of hero to be, oh. I'm definitely a quote-unquote naïve fool, but really just a naïve, naïve optimist in the best way possible. I think childish, yes, childish is butter, so naive is generally seen as childish, yes, but childish is why no one enters.the kingdom of heaven unless they become like a child, that's prince mishkin dostoevsky knew it, that's why you like the idiot, that's so interesting. Look, I think I like crime and punishment because while you identified with Michigan, I think I identified more with Raskolnikov because I was tempted by a Luciferian intellect, you know him in a very similar way to the way he was. tempted, but I mean, I think you can argue that the Brothers Karamazov are Dostoevsky's greatest achievement, wow, and that's something, man. right, it ruined literature for me because everything else just felt bland afterwards not everything not everything I found some books that in my experience reached that pinnacle um the master in daisy that's a deadly book that I've read I think four times and still there is still it's incredibly deep uh there is a nikos kazansicus a greek writer some of his books are his writing is also amazing did you ever connect with literature like existentialist camus uh or people like carmen hesse or um or even kafka did you ever you connected with those to the same degree, yes, to the same degree, enough to be an influence, you know, you have to be deaf in some fundamental sense not to meet a great dead friend and not learn, no, and I want That is, I tried to separate the wheat from the chaff. when I read, you know, I read all the great doctors, all of them maybe not the most prominent in the pantheon and I tried to get what I could and that was a lot.

I learned a lot from Freud. I learned a lot from Rogers. and I learned a lot from Dostoevsky and Nietzsche. I'm going to take a course on dostoevsky and nietzsche for this

peterson

academy. This will be in January. Oh wow, I'm really looking forward to it. knitting, I mean, I hadn't thought about doing them together, oh that would be fun, that's a good idea, well, that's a good idea, there's a sense that the idea you often weave them together in a very masterful way because there's something religious about general. sense of that word themes throughout both of their writing, you know there are strange parallels in their writing in their lives, so um and Dostoevsky is deeper than Nietzsche, but that's because he was a fiction writer.

Nietzsche is almost a dusty yes, he definitely is, he's definitely that yes character and apparently Nietzsche knew more about Dostoevsky than people had thought. There have been some recent studies on that topic. Dostoevsky didn't know anything about Nietzsche, as far as I know, I may be wrong on that, but what Dostoevsky had about Nietzsche is that Nietzsche had to make things propositional in some real sense because he was a philosopher and it's hard to propositionalize things that are outside of your knowledge, but you can characterize them and therefore in The Brothers Karamazov, Ivan is a more developed character than Eliotia in the explicit sense, he can present better arguments, but Elosha wins like Michigan because he is the better man and Dostoevsky can demonstrate That in actions cannot make them completely propositional, but that is probably because what is good cannot become completely propositional and that is why Dostoevsky had that advantage over Nietzsche, he said well, Ivan is a brilliant rationalist atheist materialist and presents An argument on that front that is still unparalleled as far as I'm concerned and overwhelms Eliot, who can't respond, but Eliot is still the better man, which is very interesting.

The curious thing about those two characters is that you, Jordan Peterson, seem to be someone who at least embodies both because you are one of the intellectuals of our time rigorous in thought, but you are also capable of having that type of what you would describe if you eliminate yosha's religiosity, there is a what is a good word, love towards the world spirit of Ánimo, yes, well, you know, one of the things that I learned, perhaps by looking into the abyss to the extent that I had to or was willing to do it, was that on some level you have to make a fundamental statement of faith when God creates the world after each day, he says he saw that it was good, you think, well, is it good?, it's like well, there's a question. difficult, you know, do you want to bring a child into a world like this?, which is a fundamental question: whether or not it is good, it is an act of faith to declare that it is good because the evidence is ambivalent and then you think okay, I'll to act as if it were good and what would happen if it did and maybe the answer is, I think this is the answer the more you represent the proposition that it is good, the better it becomes and that's what dostoevsky said this is something else every man is not only responsible for everything he does but for everything others do, it's like what's so deep or are you just crazy, so you think that what you receive is proportional to what you give and the answer could be yes, that It's a scary idea, man, and you can certainly see that it's true in a sense because people certainly respond to you in kind with how you treat them, that's certainly the case, I mean, it's scary and exciting, yeah, right, That's an adventure, isn't it?

Uh, yeah, you create the world by the way you live it, the world you experience is defined by the way you live that world and that's really interesting and then, taken as Collectively, we create the world together that way, yeah, what do you think is the meaning of all this? What is the meaning of life? Jordan Peterson, you have, we have We define it many times throughout this conversation the adventure along the road man and I would say where is that adventure in faith what is faith the highest value is love and truth is that it's handmade that's a statement of faith right because you can't be told you have to act to see if it's true, yeah, and you can't even find out without that, and that's so peculiar that you have to make the commitment like priory, yes, it's like a marriage, it's the same, it's like that. this is the person for me, oh that's the wrong question, how do I know if this is the person for me by joining them?

Well, maybe the same thing is true in life, right? You bind yourself to it and the more you bind yourself to it, the more you discover what it is and that's like a radical embrace and it's a really radical embrace that's the symbol. of the crucifix and more than that because as I said, the entire story of the passion is not death, it is not even unjust death, it is. Not even the unjust death and crucifixion of the innocent, which is really getting pretty bad, is an innocent, torturous, unjust death, accompanied by betrayal and tyranny followed by hell, well, that's an incredible thing to radically accept.

It's like bringing it, I think many. people put truth as the highest ideal and think they can reach that ideal while living in a place of cynicism and ultimately they run away from life and hide from life for fear of life, and it's beautifully said that love is the highest ideal to achieve and the truth is that it is handmade, I thought about it for a long time, this hierarchy of ideals and what happens with the truth, that bitter truth, let's say the cynical truth is that it can break the shackles of naivety, and a burned-out cynicism is actually a moral improvement. out of blind naivety even though one is somehow positive but only because it's protected and the other is bitter and dark but even better, but you're not done at that point yet, you've barely started, it's like you're cynical. you're not cynical enough it's like how cynical are you are i'm an auschwitz prison guard level of cynical because you have to be you have to get pretty deep into the weeds before you find that part of yourself but you can find it if you want and then you think, well , I want to stop this, that was the question you asked, in a sense you are obsessed with saying what happened in these large scale catastrophes in CO, in the communist countries, it's like millions of people participated, so you could have enjoyed it and maybe you would have enjoyed it, so how much of that is you and can you find it if you want?

Yes, everything is there, the prisoner, the interrogator, the pilot of Judas Pontius, everything, everything, and it is, everything is inside. we, yes, and you just have to watch and once you do, maybe you can eventually find love, Jordan, you are an amazing human being. I am deeply honored that you spoke with me, thank you for being a seeker of truth in this world and thank you. for the love hey thanks for the invite man thanks for listening to this conversation with

jordan

peterson to support this podcast please look at our sponsors in the description and now let me leave you some words from Friedrich Nietzsche you must have chaos inside you to give birth to a dance star thanks for listening and hope to see you next time