back to indexJordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning | Lex Fridman Podcast #313
link |
Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster.
link |
And if you gaze into the abyss,
link |
the abyss gazes also into you.
link |
But I would say, bring it on.
link |
If you gaze into the abyss long enough,
link |
you see the light, not the darkness.
link |
Are you sure about that?
link |
I'm betting my life on it.
link |
The following is a conversation with Jordan Peterson,
link |
an influential psychologist, lecturer, podcast host,
link |
and author of Maps of Meaning, 12 Rules for Life,
link |
This is the Lex Readman podcast.
link |
To support it, please check out our sponsors
link |
in the description.
link |
And now, dear friends, here's Jordan Peterson.
link |
Dostoevsky wrote in The Idiot,
link |
spoken through the character of Prince Mishkin,
link |
that beauty will save the world.
link |
Solzhenitsyn actually mentioned this in his Nobel Prize
link |
acceptance speech.
link |
What do you think Dostoevsky meant by that?
link |
Well, I guess it's the divine that saves the world,
link |
let's say, you could say that by definition.
link |
And then you might say, well, are there pointers
link |
to that which will save the world,
link |
or that which eternally saves the world?
link |
And the answer to that, in all likelihood, is yes.
link |
And that's maybe truth, and love, and justice,
link |
and the classical virtues, beauty, perhaps,
link |
in some sense, foremost among them.
link |
That's a difficult case to make, but definitely a pointer.
link |
Which direction is the arrow pointing?
link |
Well, the arrow's pointing up.
link |
No, I think that that which it points to
link |
is what beauty points to.
link |
It transcends beauty.
link |
It's more than beauty.
link |
And that speaks to the divine.
link |
It points to the divine.
link |
Yeah, and I would say, again, by definition,
link |
because we could define the divine in some real sense.
link |
So one way of defining the divine is,
link |
what is divine to you is your most fundamental axiom.
link |
And you might say, well, I don't have a fundamental axiom.
link |
And I would say, that's fine,
link |
but then you're just confused,
link |
because you have a bunch of contradictory axioms.
link |
And you might say, well, I have no axioms at all.
link |
And then I'd say, well, you're just epistemologically
link |
ignorant beyond comprehension, if you think that,
link |
because that's just not true at all.
link |
So you don't think a human being can exist
link |
within contradictions?
link |
Well, yeah, we have to exist within contradiction.
link |
But when the contradictions make themselves manifest,
link |
say in confusion with regard to direction,
link |
then the consequence of that technically is anxiety,
link |
and frustration, and disappointment,
link |
and all sorts of other negative emotions.
link |
But the cardinal negative emotion,
link |
signifying multiple pathways forward, is anxiety.
link |
It's an entropy signal.
link |
But you don't think that kind of entropy signal
link |
can be channeled into beauty, into love?
link |
Why does beauty and love have to be clear, ordered, simple?
link |
Well, I would say it probably doesn't have to be,
link |
it can't be reduced to clarity and simplicity.
link |
Because when it's optimally structured,
link |
it's a balance between order and chaos, not order itself.
link |
If it's too ordered, if music is too ordered,
link |
it's not acceptable.
link |
It sounds like a drum machine, it's too repetitive,
link |
it's too predictable.
link |
It has to have, well, it has to have some fire in it,
link |
along with the structure.
link |
I was in Miami doing a seminar on Exodus
link |
with a number of scholars, and this is a beauty discussion.
link |
When Moses first encounters the burning bush,
link |
it's not a conflagration that demands attention,
link |
it's something that catches his attention.
link |
It's a phenomena, and that means to shine forth.
link |
And Moses has to stop and attend to it, and he does.
link |
And he sees this fire that doesn't consume the tree.
link |
And the tree, the tree is a structure, right?
link |
It's a tree like structure, it's a branching structure,
link |
it's a hierarchical structure.
link |
It's a self similar structure, it's a fractal structure.
link |
And it's the tree of life,
link |
and it's the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
link |
And the fire in it is the transformation
link |
that's always occurring within every structure.
link |
And the fact that the fire doesn't consume the bush
link |
in that representation is an indication
link |
of the balance of transformation with structure.
link |
And that balance is presented as God,
link |
and what attracts Moses to it in some sense is the beauty.
link |
Now it's the novelty and all that,
link |
but like a painting is like a burning bush,
link |
that's a good way of thinking about it, a great painting.
link |
It's too much for people often.
link |
My house was, and will soon be again,
link |
completely covered with paintings inside.
link |
And it was hard on people to come in there
link |
because, well, my mother, for example, say,
link |
well, why would you wanna live in a museum?
link |
And I'd think, well, I would rather live in a museum
link |
than anywhere else in some real sense,
link |
but beauty is daunting, it scares people.
link |
They're terrified of buying art, for example,
link |
because their taste is on display,
link |
and they should be terrified
link |
because generally people have terrible taste.
link |
Now, that doesn't mean they shouldn't foster it
link |
and develop it, but, and you know,
link |
when you put your taste on display,
link |
it really exposes you.
link |
Even to yourself as you walk past it every day.
link |
Absolutely. This is who I am.
link |
Yeah, well, and look how mundane that is,
link |
and look how trite it is, and look at how cliched it is,
link |
and look at how sterile or too ordered it is, or too chaotic.
link |
Or how quickly you start to take it for granted
link |
because you've seen it so many times.
link |
Well, if it's a real piece of art, that doesn't happen.
link |
You notice the little details.
link |
The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
link |
I mean, there are images, religious images in particular,
link |
so we could call them deep images,
link |
that people have been unpacking for 4,000 years
link |
and still haven't, I'll give you an example.
link |
This is a terrible example.
link |
So, I did a lecture series on Genesis,
link |
and I got a lot of it unpacked, but by no means all of it.
link |
When God kicks Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden,
link |
he puts cherubim with flaming swords at the gate
link |
to stop human beings from reentering paradise.
link |
I thought, what the hell does that mean, cherubim,
link |
and why do they have flaming swords?
link |
I don't get that. What is that exactly?
link |
And then I found out from Matthew Pagel,
link |
who wrote a great book on symbolism in Genesis,
link |
that cherubim are the supporting monsters of God.
link |
It's a very complicated idea,
link |
and that they are partly a representation of that
link |
which is difficult to fit into conceptual systems.
link |
They've also got an angelic or demonic aspect.
link |
Why do they have flaming swords?
link |
Well, a sword is a symbol of judgment and the separation
link |
of the wheat from the chaff.
link |
You use a sword to cut away, to cut away, and to carve.
link |
And a flaming sword is not only that which carves,
link |
it's that which burns.
link |
And what does it carve away and burn?
link |
Well, you want to get into paradise?
link |
It carves away everything about you that isn't perfect.
link |
And so what does that mean?
link |
Okay, well, here's part of what it means.
link |
This is a terrible thing.
link |
So you could say that the entire Christian narrative
link |
is embedded in that image.
link |
Well, let's say that flaming swords are a symbol of death.
link |
That seems pretty obvious.
link |
Let's say further that they're a symbol of apocalypse and hell.
link |
That doesn't seem completely unreasonable.
link |
So here's an idea.
link |
Not only do you have to face death,
link |
you have to face death and hell before you can get to paradise.
link |
Hellish judgment and all that's embedded in that image.
link |
And a piece of art with an image like that
link |
has all that information in it.
link |
And it shines forth in some fundamental sense.
link |
It reaches into the back tendrils of your mind
link |
at levels you can't even comprehend and grips you.
link |
I mean, that's why people go to museums and gaze at paintings
link |
they don't understand.
link |
And that's why they'll pay what's the most expensive objects
link |
If it's not carbon fiber racing yachts,
link |
it's definitely classic paintings.
link |
It's high level technological implements or it's classic art.
link |
Well, why are those things so expensive?
link |
Why do we build temples to house the images?
link |
Even secular people go to museums.
link |
Well, are you in a museum?
link |
Are you looking at art?
link |
Well, what makes you think you're secular then?
link |
It's arguable that the thing many, many centuries from now
link |
that will remain of all of human civilization will be our art.
link |
Not even the words.
link |
Well, a book has remained a very long time, right?
link |
The biblical writings have.
link |
But that's in the full arc of living organisms,
link |
perhaps will not be.
link |
Well, we have images that are, we
link |
have artistic images that are at least 50,000 years old,
link |
right, that have survived.
link |
And some of those are, they're already
link |
profound in their symbolism.
link |
By we, do you mean humans?
link |
Yeah, we found them.
link |
And they've lasted, they've lasted that long.
link |
And so, and then think about Europe.
link |
Secular people all over the world
link |
make pilgrimages to Europe.
link |
Because of the beauty.
link |
Obviously, I mean, that's self evident.
link |
And it's partly because there are things
link |
in Europe that are so beautiful.
link |
They take your breath away, right?
link |
They make your hair stand on end.
link |
They fill you with a sense of awe.
link |
And we need to see those things.
link |
It's not optional.
link |
We need to see those things.
link |
I was in a cathedral in Vienna, and it was terribly beautiful.
link |
Terribly beautiful.
link |
Well, it was terribly beautiful.
link |
Is beauty painful for you?
link |
Is that the highest form of beauty?
link |
It really challenges you?
link |
I got a good analysis of the statue of David.
link |
Michelangelo says, you could be far more than you are.
link |
That's what that statue says.
link |
And this cathedral, we went down into the under structure of it.
link |
And there were three floors of bones from the plague.
link |
And there they all are.
link |
And then that cathedral is on top of it.
link |
It's no joke to go visit a place like that.
link |
No, it rattles you to the core.
link |
And our religious systems have become propositionally dubious.
link |
But there's no arguing with the architecture,
link |
although modern architects like to,
link |
with their sterility and their giant middle fingers erected
link |
But beauty is a terrible pointer to God.
link |
And a secular person will say, well, I don't believe in God.
link |
It's like, have it your way.
link |
You cannot move forward into the unforeseen horizon
link |
of the future except on faith.
link |
And you might say, well, I have no faith.
link |
It's like, well, good luck with the future then.
link |
Because what are you then, nihilistic and hopeless
link |
and anxiety ridden?
link |
And if not, well, something's guiding you forward.
link |
It's faith in something or multiple things,
link |
which just makes you a polytheist,
link |
which I wouldn't recommend.
link |
Well, let me ask you one short lived biological meat
link |
Let's try to sneak up to this question
link |
if it's at all possible.
link |
Is it possible to even talk about this?
link |
Well, it better be.
link |
Because otherwise, there's no communicating about it.
link |
It has to be something that can be brought down to Earth.
link |
Well, we might be too dumb to bring it down.
link |
It's not just ignorant.
link |
It's also sinful because there's not knowing.
link |
And then there's wanting to know or refusing to know.
link |
And so you might say, well, could you
link |
extract God from a description of the objective world?
link |
Is God just the ultimate unity of the natural reality?
link |
And I would say, well, in a sense,
link |
there's some truth in that, but not exactly.
link |
Because God in the highest sense is the spirit
link |
that you must emulate in order to thrive.
link |
How's that for a biological definition?
link |
Spirit is a pattern, the spirit that you must
link |
emulate in order to thrive.
link |
So it's a kind of, in one sense, when we say the human spirit,
link |
It's an animating principle.
link |
Yeah, it's a meta.
link |
And you might say, well, what's the pattern?
link |
Well, I can tell you that to some degree.
link |
Imagine that like your grip by beauty,
link |
you're gripped by admiration.
link |
And you can just notice this.
link |
This isn't propositional.
link |
You have to notice it.
link |
It's like, oh, turns out I admire that person.
link |
So what does that mean?
link |
Well, it means I would like to be like him or her.
link |
That's what admiration means.
link |
It means there's something about the way
link |
they are that compels imitation, another instinct,
link |
or inspires respect or awe even.
link |
What is that that grips you?
link |
Well, I don't know.
link |
Well, let's say, OK, fine.
link |
And you want to be like that.
link |
Kids hero worship, for example.
link |
So do adults, for that matter, unless they
link |
become entirely cynical.
link |
I worship quite a few heroes.
link |
Well, there you go.
link |
Yes, well, there you go.
link |
And there's no, that worship, that celebration and proclivity
link |
to imitate is worship.
link |
That's what worship means most fundamentally.
link |
Now, imagine you took the set of all admirable people
link |
and you extracted out AI learning.
link |
You extracted out the central features
link |
of what constitutes admirable.
link |
And then you did that repeatedly until you purified it
link |
to what was most admirable.
link |
That's as good as you're going to get in terms
link |
of a representation of God.
link |
And you might say, well, I don't believe in that.
link |
It's like, well, what do you mean?
link |
It's not a set of propositional facts.
link |
It's not a scientific theory about the structure
link |
of the objective world.
link |
And then I could say something about that, too,
link |
because I've been thinking about this a lot,
link |
especially since talking to Richard Dawkins.
link |
It's like, OK, the postmodernist types,
link |
going back way before Derrida and Foucault,
link |
maybe back to Nietzsche, who I admire greatly, by the way.
link |
He says, God is dead.
link |
But Nietzsche said, God is dead, and we have killed him,
link |
and we'll not find enough water to wash away all the blood.
link |
So that was Nietzsche.
link |
He's got away with words.
link |
He certainly does.
link |
And so then you think, OK, well, we killed the transcendent.
link |
Well, what does that mean for science?
link |
Well, it frees it up, because all that nonsense about a deity
link |
is just the idiot superstition that
link |
stops the scientific process from moving forward.
link |
That's basically the new atheist claim, something like that.
link |
It's like, wait a second.
link |
Do you believe in the transcendent
link |
if you're a scientist?
link |
And the answer is, well, not only do you believe in it,
link |
you believe in it more than anything else.
link |
Because if you're a scientist, you
link |
believe in what objects to your theory
link |
more than you believe in your theory.
link |
Now, we've got to think that through very carefully.
link |
So your theory describes the world.
link |
And as far as you're concerned, your description of the world
link |
But because you're a scientist, you think, well,
link |
even though that's my description of the world
link |
and that's what I believe, there's
link |
something beyond what I believe.
link |
And that's the object.
link |
And so I'm going to throw my theory against the object
link |
and see where it'll break.
link |
And then I'm going to use the evidence of the break
link |
as a source of new information to revitalize my theory.
link |
So as a scientist, you have to posit
link |
the existence of the ontological transcendent
link |
before you can move forward at all.
link |
But more, you have to posit that contact
link |
with the ontological transcendent,
link |
annoying though it is because it upsets your apple cart,
link |
is exactly what will, in fact, set you free.
link |
So then you accept the proposition
link |
that there is a transcendent reality
link |
and that contact with that transcendent reality
link |
is redemptive in the most fundamental sense.
link |
Because if it wasn't, well, why would you
link |
bother making contact with it?
link |
Is it going to make everything worse or better?
link |
Why does the contact with the transcendent
link |
set you free as a scientist?
link |
Because you assume that, you assume,
link |
I mean, freedom in the most fundamental sense.
link |
It's like, well, freedom from want,
link |
freedom from disease, freedom from ignorance, right?
link |
That it informs you.
link |
So it's the lie of science.
link |
It is definitely that.
link |
Yeah, it's the direction, let's say,
link |
the directionality of science.
link |
That's a narrative direction, not a scientific direction.
link |
And then the question is, what is the narrative?
link |
Well, it posits a transcendent reality.
link |
It posits that the transcendent reality is corrective.
link |
It posits that our knowledge structures
link |
should be regarded with humility.
link |
It posits that you should bow down
link |
in the face of the transcendent evidence.
link |
And you have to take a vow.
link |
You know this as a scientist.
link |
You have to take a vow to follow that path if you're
link |
going to be a real scientist.
link |
Like, the truth, no matter what, and that
link |
means you posit the truth as a redemptive force.
link |
Well, what does redemptive mean?
link |
Well, why bother with science?
link |
Well, so people don't starve.
link |
So people can move about more effectively.
link |
So life can be more abundant, right?
link |
So it's all ensconced within an underlying ethic.
link |
So the reason I was saying that while we were talking
link |
about belief in God, it's like, this
link |
is a very complicated topic, right?
link |
Do you believe in a transcendent reality?
link |
See, OK, now let's say you buy the argument I just
link |
made on the natural front.
link |
You say, yeah, yeah, that's just nature.
link |
And then I'd say, well, what makes you think
link |
you know what nature is?
link |
Like, see, the problem with that argument
link |
is that it already presumes a materialist,
link |
a reductionist, materialist, objective view
link |
of what constitutes nature.
link |
But if you're a scientist, you're going to think,
link |
well, in the final analysis, I don't know what nature is.
link |
I certainly don't know its origin or destination point.
link |
I don't know its teleology.
link |
I'm really ignorant about nature.
link |
And so when I say it's nothing but nature,
link |
I shouldn't mean it's nothing but what
link |
I understand nature to be.
link |
So I could say, will we have a fully reductionist account
link |
of cognitive processes?
link |
And the answer to that is yes.
link |
But by the time we do that, our understanding of matter
link |
will have transformed so much that what
link |
we think of as reductionists now won't look anything like what
link |
we think of reductionism now.
link |
Matter isn't dead dust.
link |
I don't know what it is.
link |
I have no idea what it is.
link |
Matter is what matters.
link |
There is a definition.
link |
That's a very weird definition.
link |
But the notion that we have, you know,
link |
that if you're a reductionist, a materialist reductionist,
link |
that you can reduce the complexity of what
link |
is to your assumptions about the nature of matter,
link |
that's not a scientific proposition.
link |
Your specific limited human assumptions of this century,
link |
of this week, that so in some sense,
link |
without God in this complicated big definition
link |
we're talking about, there's no humility.
link |
Or it's less likely to be, or rather science
link |
can err in taking a trajectory away from humility.
link |
Without something much more powerful
link |
than an individual human.
link |
Yeah, well then and we know, you know,
link |
the Frankenstein story comes out of that instantly.
link |
And that's a good story for the current times.
link |
It's like you're playing around with making new life.
link |
You bloody well better make sure you have your arrows pointed up.
link |
And it's interesting because you said science has an ethic to it.
link |
I think it's embedded in an ethic.
link |
Well, there's a, you know, science is a big word.
link |
And it includes a lot of disciplines
link |
that have different traditions.
link |
So biology, chemistry, genetics, physics,
link |
those are very different communities.
link |
And I think biology, especially when
link |
you get closer and closer to medicine and to the human body,
link |
does have a very serious, first of all,
link |
has a history with Nazi Germany of being abused
link |
and all those kinds of things.
link |
But it has a history of taking this stuff seriously.
link |
What doesn't have a history of taking this stuff seriously
link |
is robotics and artificial intelligence,
link |
which is really interesting.
link |
Because you don't, you know, you called me a scientist.
link |
And I would like to wear that label proudly,
link |
but often people don't think of computer science as a science.
link |
But nevertheless, it will be, I think,
link |
the science of one of the major scientific fields
link |
of the 21st century.
link |
And you should take that very seriously.
link |
Oftentimes when people build robots or AI systems,
link |
they think of them as toys to tinker with.
link |
Oh, isn't this cool?
link |
And I feel this too.
link |
But, you know, at a certain moment you might,
link |
isn't this nuclear explosion cool?
link |
Or birth control pill cool.
link |
It's like, or transistor cool.
link |
Well, the other thing too, and this is a weird problem
link |
in some sense, the robotics engineer types,
link |
they're thing people, right?
link |
I mean, the big classes of interest
link |
are interest in things versus interest in people.
link |
Some of my best friends are thing people.
link |
And thing people are very, very clear, logical thinkers.
link |
And they're very outcome oriented and practical.
link |
Now, and that's all good.
link |
That makes the machinery and keeps it functioning.
link |
But there's a human side of the equation.
link |
And you get the extreme thing people,
link |
and you think, yeah, well, what about the human here?
link |
And when we're talking about, we've
link |
been talking about the necessity of having
link |
a technological enterprise embedded in an ethic.
link |
And you can ignore that, like most of the time, right?
link |
You can ignore the overall ethic in some sense
link |
when you're toying around with your toys.
link |
But when you're building an artificial intelligence,
link |
it's like, well, that's not a toy.
link |
Toy becomes the monster very quickly.
link |
And this is a whole new kind of monster.
link |
And maybe it's already here.
link |
Yes, and you notice how many of those things
link |
you can no longer turn off.
link |
And what is it with you engineers and your inability
link |
to put off switches on things now?
link |
It's like, I have to hold this for five seconds for it
link |
Or I can't figure it.
link |
I just want to shut it off.
link |
Well, what is it with you humans that
link |
don't put off switches on other humans?
link |
Because there's a magic to the thing that you notice.
link |
And it hurts for both you and perhaps one day the thing
link |
itself to turn it off.
link |
And so you have to be very careful as an engineer
link |
adding off switches to things.
link |
I think it's a feature, not a bug, the off switch.
link |
The off switch gives a deadline to us humans,
link |
to systems of existence.
link |
It makes you, you know, death is the thing that really
link |
brings clarity to life.
link |
Hence the flaming swords.
link |
The flaming sword.
link |
I do like your view of the flame, the bush,
link |
and perhaps the sword as a thing of transformation.
link |
It's also a transformation that kind of consumes
link |
the thing in the process.
link |
Well, it depends on how much of the thing is chaff.
link |
You know, this is why you can't touch the Ark of the Covenant,
link |
And this is why people can have very bad psychedelic trips.
link |
It's like if you're 95% dead wood
link |
and you get too close to the flame,
link |
the 5% that's left might not be able to make it.
link |
So you think it's all chaff.
link |
But I think there is some aspect of destruction
link |
that is the old Bukowski line of do what you love
link |
and let it kill you.
link |
Don't you think that destruction is part of?
link |
It's like invite in the judgment.
link |
Invite in the judgment because maybe you
link |
can die a little bit instead of dying completely.
link |
I think it's Alfred North Whitehead.
link |
We can let our ideas die instead of us.
link |
We can have these partial personalities
link |
that we can burn off.
link |
And we can let them go before they become tyrannical pharaohs
link |
and we lose everything.
link |
And so, yeah, there's this optimal bite of death.
link |
And who knows what it would mean to optimize that?
link |
Like what if it was possible that if you died enough
link |
all the time that you could continue to live?
link |
And the thing is we already know that biologically
link |
because if you don't die properly all the time,
link |
well, it's cancerous outgrowths and it's
link |
a very fine balance between productivity
link |
on the biological front and the culling of that, right?
link |
Life is a real balance between growth and death.
link |
And so what would happen if you got that balance right?
link |
Well, we kind of know, right?
link |
Because if you live your life properly, so to speak,
link |
and you're humble enough to let your stupidity die
link |
before it takes you out, you will live longer.
link |
That's just a fact.
link |
Well, but then what's the ultimate extension of that?
link |
And the answer is we don't know.
link |
Well, let me ask you a difficult question because.
link |
As opposed to the easy ones that you've been asking so far.
link |
Well, Dostoevsky is always just a warm up.
link |
So if death every single day is the way
link |
to progress through life, you have become quite famous.
link |
Because you don't want to forget the hell part.
link |
Do you worry that your fame traps you into the person
link |
that you were before?
link |
Yeah, well, Elvis became an Elvis impersonator
link |
by the time he died.
link |
Yeah, do you fear that you have become a Jordan Peterson
link |
Do you fear of, in some part, becoming the famous suit
link |
wearing brilliant Jordan Peterson, the certainty in the pursuit
link |
of truth, always right?
link |
I think I worry about it more than anything else.
link |
Has fame, to some degree, when you look at yourself
link |
in the mirror, in the quiet of your mind, has it corrupted you?
link |
No doubt, in some regard.
link |
I mean, it's a very difficult thing
link |
to avoid because things change around you.
link |
People are much more likely to do what you ask, for example.
link |
And so that's a danger because one
link |
of the things that keeps you dying properly
link |
is that people push back against you optimally.
link |
This is why so many celebrities spiral out of control,
link |
especially the tyrannical types that, say, run countries.
link |
Everyone around them stops saying,
link |
yeah, you're deviating a little bit there.
link |
They laugh at all their jokes.
link |
They open all their doors.
link |
They always want something from them.
link |
The red carpet's always rolled out.
link |
It's like, well, you think, wouldn't that be lovely?
link |
It's, well, not if the red carpet is rolled out to you
link |
while you're on your way to perdition.
link |
That's not a good deal.
link |
You just get there more efficiently.
link |
And so one of the things that I've tried to learn to manage
link |
is to have people around me all the time who are critics, who
link |
are saying, yeah, I could have done that better.
link |
And you're a little too harsh there.
link |
And you're alienating people unnecessarily there.
link |
And you should have done some more background work there.
link |
And I think the responsibility attendant upon that
link |
increases as your influence increases.
link |
And as your influence increases, then that
link |
becomes a lot of responsibility.
link |
So and then maybe have an off day.
link |
And well, here's an example.
link |
I've been writing some columns lately
link |
about things that perturb me, like the forthcoming famine,
link |
And it's hard to take those problems on.
link |
It's difficult to take those problems on in a serious
link |
manner, and it's frightening.
link |
And it would be easier just to go up to the cottage
link |
with my wife and go out on the lake and watch the sunset.
link |
And so I'm tempted to draw on anger as a motivating energy
link |
to help me overcome the resistance to doing this.
link |
But then that makes me more harsh and judgmental
link |
in my tone when I'm reading such things, for example,
link |
on YouTube than might be optimal.
link |
Now, I've had debates with people about that
link |
because I have friends who say, no,
link |
if you're calling out the environmentalists, globalists
link |
who are harassing the Dutch farmers,
link |
then a little anger is just the ticket.
link |
But then others say, well, you don't want to be too harsh
link |
because you alienate people who would otherwise listen to you.
link |
It's like, that's a hard balance to get right.
link |
But also maybe anger hardens your mind
link |
to where you don't notice the subtle quiet beauty
link |
of the world, the quiet love that's always there
link |
that permeates everything.
link |
Sometimes you can become deeply cynical about the world
link |
if it's the Nietzsche thing.
link |
Battle not with monsters lest ye become a monster.
link |
And if you gaze into the abyss,
link |
the abyss gazes also into you.
link |
But I would say, bring it on.
link |
Right, because I also say knowing
link |
that he's absolutely right.
link |
But if you gaze into the abyss long enough,
link |
you see the light, not the darkness.
link |
Are you sure about that?
link |
I'm betting my life on it.
link |
Yeah, that's a heck of a bet.
link |
Because it might distort your mind to where all you see.
link |
Is abyss, is the evil in this world.
link |
Well, then I would say you haven't looked long enough.
link |
You know, that's back to the.
link |
You just eliminated.
link |
The swords, the flaming swords.
link |
It's like, so I said the whole story of Christ
link |
was prefigured in that image.
link |
It's like the story of Christ psychologically
link |
is radical acceptance of the worst possible tragedy.
link |
That's what it means, that's what the crucifix means.
link |
Psychologically, it's like gaze upon that
link |
which you are most afraid of.
link |
But that story doesn't end there.
link |
Because in the story, Christ goes through death into hell.
link |
So death isn't enough.
link |
The abyss, the abyss of innocent death
link |
is not sufficient to produce redemption.
link |
It has to be a voluntary journey to hell.
link |
And maybe that's true for everyone.
link |
And that's like, there is no more terrifying idea than that,
link |
And so then, well, do you gaze upon that?
link |
How often do you gaze upon death, your own?
link |
How often do you remember, remind yourself
link |
that this ride ends?
link |
Because you, as a deep thinker and a philosopher,
link |
it's easy to start philosophizing
link |
and forgetting that you're,
link |
you might die today.
link |
The angel of death sits on every word.
link |
How often do you actually consciously?
link |
I think it's one of the things that made me peculiar.
link |
When I was in graduate school, you know,
link |
I thought about, I was, I had the thought of death
link |
in my mind all the time.
link |
And I noticed that many of the people that I was with,
link |
these were people I admired, fine.
link |
That wasn't part of their character,
link |
but it was definitely part of mine.
link |
I'd wake up every morning, this happened for years,
link |
think, time's short, get at it.
link |
Time's short, get at it.
link |
There's things to do.
link |
And so that was always, it's still there.
link |
And it's still there with, I would say,
link |
and it's unbearable in some sense.
link |
Are you afraid of it?
link |
Like what's your relationship?
link |
You know, I was ready to die a year ago and not casually.
link |
I had people I loved, you know.
link |
So no, I'm not very worried about me,
link |
but I'm very worried about making a mistake.
link |
I heard Elon Musk talk about that a couple of months ago.
link |
It was really a striking moment.
link |
Someone asked him about death and he said just offhand
link |
and then went on with the conversation.
link |
He said, I'd be a relief.
link |
And then he went on with the conversation.
link |
And I thought, well, you know,
link |
he's got a lot of weight on his shoulders.
link |
I'm sure that part of him thinks
link |
I'd be easier just if this wasn't here at all.
link |
Now he said it offhand,
link |
but it was a telling moment in my estimation.
link |
So for him, that's a why live question.
link |
The exhaustion of life, if you call it life is suffering,
link |
I'm more afraid of hell than death.
link |
You're afraid of the thing that follows?
link |
I don't know if it follows or if it's always here.
link |
And I think we're gonna find out.
link |
What's the connection between death and hell?
link |
Is there something that needs to be done before you arrive?
link |
You're more likely to die terribly
link |
if you live in a manner that brings you to hell.
link |
That's one connection.
link |
And terribly is a very deep kind of concept.
link |
And that's the definition, by the way.
link |
What do you make of Elon Musk?
link |
You've spoken about him a bit.
link |
I'm struck with admiration.
link |
That's what I make of him.
link |
And I always think of that as a primary.
link |
Well, it's like, do you find this comedian funny?
link |
It's like, well, I laugh at him.
link |
You know what I mean?
link |
It's not propositional again.
link |
there are things I would like to ask Mr. Musk about.
link |
I don't know what he's up to there.
link |
It strikes me as absurd in the most fundamental sense
link |
because I think, well, it'd be easier
link |
just to build an outpost in the Antarctica or in the desert.
link |
Well, how much of the human endeavor is absurd?
link |
Well, that's what it needs to say.
link |
Great men are seldom credited with their stupidity.
link |
Who the hell knows what Musk is up to?
link |
I mean, obviously he's building rockets.
link |
Now he's motivated because he wants to build
link |
a platform for life on Mars.
link |
Is that a good idea?
link |
He's building the rockets, man.
link |
But I'd like to ask him about it.
link |
I would like to see that conversation.
link |
I do think that having talked to him quite a bit offline,
link |
I think these, several of his ideas like Mars,
link |
like humans becoming a multi planetary species
link |
could be one of the things that human civilization
link |
looks back at as, duh, I can't believe
link |
he is one of the few people that was really pushing
link |
this idea because it's the obvious thing
link |
for society, for life to survive.
link |
Yeah, well, it isn't obvious to me
link |
that I'm in any position to evaluate Elon Musk.
link |
Like I would like to talk to him
link |
and find out what he's up to and why,
link |
but I mean, he's an impossible person.
link |
What he's done is impossible, all of it.
link |
It's like he built an electric car that works.
link |
Now, does it work completely and will it replace gas cars
link |
I don't know, but if we're gonna build electric cars,
link |
he seems to be the best at that by a lot.
link |
And he more or less did that, people carp about him,
link |
but he more or less did that by himself.
link |
I know he's very good at distributing responsibility
link |
and all of that, but he's the spearhead.
link |
And then that was pretty hard.
link |
And then he built a rocket at like one 10th
link |
the price of NASA rockets.
link |
And then he shot his car out into space.
link |
That's pretty hard.
link |
And then he's building this boring company,
link |
more or less as a, what would you call it?
link |
It's sort of, it's this whimsical joke in some sense,
link |
but it's not a joke.
link |
And Neuralink delving into the depths of the mind.
link |
It's like, go Elon, as far as I'm concerned.
link |
And then he puts his finger on things so oddly.
link |
The problem is underpopulation.
link |
It's like, I think so too.
link |
I think it's a terrible problem that we're,
link |
the West for example, is no longer at replacement
link |
with regard to birth rate.
link |
It means we've abandoned the Virgin and the child
link |
in a most fundamental sense.
link |
It's a bloody catastrophe.
link |
And Musk, he sees it clear as can be.
link |
It's like, wow, and where everyone else is running around
link |
going, oh, there's too many people.
link |
It's like, nope, got that.
link |
Not only, see, I've learned that there are falsehoods
link |
and lies and there are antitruths.
link |
And an antitruth is something that's so preposterous
link |
that you couldn't make a claim
link |
that's more opposite to the truth.
link |
And the claim that there are too many people
link |
on the planet is an antitruth.
link |
So, you know, people say, well, you have to accept
link |
limits to growth and et cetera.
link |
It's like, I have to accept the limits
link |
that you're going to impose on me
link |
because you're frightened of the future.
link |
That's your theory, isn't it?
link |
Well, it's an idea.
link |
It could be a right idea.
link |
It could be a wrong idea.
link |
I don't think antitruth.
link |
Here, I'll tell you why it's the wrong idea, I think.
link |
So imagine that there's an emergency, dragon.
link |
Someone comes and says, there's a dragon.
link |
I'm the guy to deal with it.
link |
That's what the environmentalists say,
link |
the radical types who push limits to growth.
link |
Then I look at them and I think, okay,
link |
is that dragon real or not?
link |
That's one question.
link |
I ask that question of myself every time
link |
when I spend time alone.
link |
Is the apocalypse looming on the environmental front?
link |
Yes or no? I'll just leave that aside for the time being.
link |
I think you can make a case both ways
link |
for a bunch of different reasons.
link |
And it's not a trivial concern.
link |
And we've overfished the oceans terribly.
link |
And there are environmental issues that are looming large.
link |
Whether climate change is the cardinal one or not
link |
is a whole different question, but we won't get into that.
link |
That's not the issue.
link |
You're clamoring about a dragon.
link |
Why should I listen to you?
link |
Well, let's see how you're reacting to the dragon.
link |
First of all, you're scared stiff and in a state of panic.
link |
That might indicate you're not the man for the job.
link |
Second, you're willing to use compulsion
link |
to harness other people to fight the dragon for you.
link |
So now not only are you terrified,
link |
you're a terrified tyrant.
link |
So then I would say, well, then you're not the Moses
link |
that we need to lead us out of this particular exodus.
link |
And maybe that's a neurological explanation.
link |
It's like, if you're so afraid of what you're facing
link |
that you're terrified into paralysis and nihilism
link |
and that you're willing to use tyrannical compulsion
link |
to get your way, you are not the right leader for the time.
link |
So then I like someone like Bjorn Lomborg
link |
or Matt Ridley or Marion Toopy.
link |
And they say, well, look,
link |
we've got our environmental problems.
link |
And maybe you could make a case
link |
that there's a Malthusian element in some situations,
link |
but fundamentally the track record of the human race
link |
is that we learn very fast and faster all the time
link |
to do more with less, and we've got this.
link |
And I think, yes, to that idea.
link |
And I think about it in a fundamental way.
link |
It's like, I trust Lomborg, I trust Toopy,
link |
trust Matt Ridley.
link |
They've thought about these things deeply.
link |
They're not just saying,
link |
oh, the environment doesn't matter,
link |
whatever the environment is.
link |
You know, the environment, I don't even know what that is.
link |
That's everything, the environment.
link |
I'm concerned about the environment.
link |
It's like, which is, how is that different
link |
than saying I'm worried about everything?
link |
How are those statements different semantically?
link |
Well, yeah, the environment, it could be,
link |
I'm worried about human society.
link |
A lot of these complex systems are difficult to talk about
link |
because there's so much involved for sure.
link |
And then these models,
link |
because people have gone after me
link |
because I don't buy the climate models.
link |
Well, I think about the climate models
link |
as extended into the economic models
link |
because the climate model is,
link |
well, there's gonna be a certain degree of heating,
link |
let's say by 2100.
link |
It's like, okay, some of that might be human generated.
link |
Some of it's a consequence of warming after the ice age.
link |
This has happened before, but fair enough.
link |
Let's take your presumption.
link |
Although there are multiple presumptions
link |
and any error in your model multiplies as time extends,
link |
but have it your way.
link |
Okay, now we're gonna extend the climate model,
link |
so to speak, into the economic model.
link |
So I just did an analysis of a paper by Deloitte,
link |
third biggest company in the US,
link |
300,000 employees, major league consultants.
link |
They just produced a report in May.
link |
I wrote an article for it in the Telegraph,
link |
which I'm gonna release this week on my YouTube channel.
link |
Said, well, if we get the climate problem
link |
under control economically,
link |
because that's where the models are now being generated
link |
on the economic front.
link |
So now we have to model the environment, that's climate,
link |
and we have to model the economy,
link |
and then we have to model their joint interaction,
link |
and then we have to predict 100 years into the future,
link |
and then we have to put a dollar value on that,
link |
and then we have to claim that we can do that,
link |
which we can't, and then this is our conclusion.
link |
We're going to go through a difficult period of privation,
link |
because if we don't accept limits to growth,
link |
there's gonna be a catastrophe,
link |
50 years in the future or thereabouts.
link |
And so to avert that catastrophe,
link |
we are going to make people poorer now.
link |
Well, not a lot compared to how much richer
link |
they're going to be, but definitely,
link |
and they say this in their own models,
link |
definitely poorer, definitely poorer
link |
than they would be if we just left them the hell alone.
link |
And so then I think, okay, poorer, eh?
link |
Well, let's look at it biologically.
link |
Got a hierarchy, right, of stability and security.
link |
That's a hierarchy or one type.
link |
You stress a hierarchy like that, a social hierarchy.
link |
So there's birds in an environment,
link |
and an avian flu comes in,
link |
and then you look at the birds in the social hierarchy,
link |
and the low ranking birds have the worst nests.
link |
So they're most exposed to wind and rain and sun
link |
and farthest from food supplies
link |
and most exposed to predators.
link |
And so those birds are stressed,
link |
which is what happens to you at the bottom of a hierarchy.
link |
You're more stressed because your life is more uncertain.
link |
You're more stressed.
link |
Your immunological function is compromised
link |
You're sacrificing the future for the present.
link |
An avian flu comes in,
link |
and the birds die from the bottom up.
link |
That happens in every epidemic.
link |
You die from the bottom up.
link |
Okay, so they say when the aristocracy catches a cold,
link |
the working class dies of pneumonia.
link |
All right, so now we're gonna make people poorer.
link |
Well, we know who we make poor when we make people poorer.
link |
We make those who are barely hanging on poorer.
link |
And what does that mean?
link |
It means they die.
link |
And so what the Deloitte consultants are basically saying
link |
is, well, you know, it's kind of unfortunate,
link |
but according to our models,
link |
a lot of poor people are gonna have to die
link |
so that a lot more poor people don't die in the future.
link |
It's like, okay, hold on a sec.
link |
Which of those two things am I supposed to regard
link |
The hypothetical poor people
link |
that you're gonna hypothetically save 100 years from now,
link |
or the actual poor people
link |
that you are actually going to kill in the next 10 years?
link |
Well, I'm gonna cast my lot with the actual poor people
link |
that you're actually going to kill.
link |
And so, and then I think further,
link |
it's like, well, okay, the Deloitte consultants,
link |
have you actually modeled the world?
link |
Or is this a big advertising shtick
link |
designed to attract your corporate clients
link |
with demonstration that you're so intelligent
link |
that you can actually model the entire ecosystem
link |
of the world, including the economic system,
link |
and predict it 100 years forward?
link |
And isn't there a bit of a moral hazard
link |
in making a claim like that?
link |
Just like just a trifle, especially when...
link |
So I talked to Bjorn Lomborg and Michael Yon last week.
link |
I accepted the UN estimates of starvation this coming year.
link |
150 million people will suffer food insecurity.
link |
Yeah, food insecurity, that's the bloody buzzword.
link |
Well, Michael Yon thought 1.2 billion,
link |
and then that it'll spiral because he said,
link |
what happens in a famine is that the governments go nuts,
link |
crazy, the governments destabilize,
link |
and then they appropriate the food from the farmers.
link |
Then the farmers don't have any money.
link |
Then they can't grow crops.
link |
And I think, yeah, that's exactly what they do.
link |
That's exactly what would happen.
link |
And so Yon told me 1.2 billion,
link |
and then Bjorn Lomborg said the same thing.
link |
I didn't even ask him.
link |
He just made it as an offhand comment.
link |
Let me ask you about the famine of the 30s.
link |
Similar, a lot of the things you mentioned
link |
in the last few sentences kind of echo
link |
to that part of human history.
link |
The hole in the door.
link |
No one knows about.
link |
Well, now I've just spent four weeks in Ukraine.
link |
There's different parts of the world that still,
link |
even if they don't know, they know.
link |
They feel history runs in the blood.
link |
The Dutch knew, in some sense.
link |
They had a famine at the end of World War II.
link |
And part of the reason the Dutch farmers
link |
are so unbelievably efficient and productive
link |
is that the Dutch swore at the end of World War II
link |
that that was not going to happen again.
link |
And then they had to scrape land out of the ocean
link |
because Holland, that's quite a country.
link |
It shouldn't even exist.
link |
The fact that it's the world's number two exporter.
link |
It's the world's number two exporter
link |
of agricultural products, Holland.
link |
It's like, I don't think it's as big as Massachusetts.
link |
It's this little tiny place.
link |
It shouldn't even exist.
link |
And they want to put, here's the plan.
link |
Let's put 30% of the farmers out of business.
link |
While the broader ecosystem of agricultural production
link |
in Holland is 6% of their GDP.
link |
Now these centralizing politicians think,
link |
tell me if I'm stupid about this.
link |
Take an industry, you knock it back by fiat by 30%.
link |
Now it runs on like a 3% profit margin.
link |
Now you're going to kill 30% of it.
link |
How are you not going to bring the whole thing down?
link |
The whole farming ecosystem down?
link |
How are you not going to impoverish the transport systems?
link |
How are you not going to demolish the grocery stores?
link |
You can't take something like that and pare it back
link |
by fiat by 30% and not kill it.
link |
I can't see how you can do that.
link |
I mean, look what we did with the COVID lockdowns.
link |
We broke the supply chains.
link |
We tried buying something lately.
link |
You can't, and wait, and aren't the Chinese threatening
link |
Taiwan at the moment?
link |
What are we going to do without chips?
link |
So I don't know what these people are thinking.
link |
And then I think, okay, what are they thinking?
link |
Well, the Deloitte people are thinking,
link |
aren't we smart and shouldn't we be hired
link |
by our corporate employers?
link |
It's like, okay, too bad about the poor.
link |
What are the environmentalists thinking?
link |
We love the planet.
link |
It's like, do you?
link |
Okay, let's pit the planet against the poor.
link |
Okay, you don't love the poor that much.
link |
Do you love the planet or do you hate capitalism?
link |
Let's pit those two things against each other.
link |
Oh, well, it turns out we actually hate capitalism.
link |
Because you're willing to break it.
link |
And you know what's going to happen.
link |
So what's going to happen in Sri Lanka
link |
with these 20 million people who now have nothing to eat?
link |
Are they going to eat all the animals?
link |
Are they going to burn all the firewood?
link |
They're stockpiling firewood in Germany.
link |
It's like, so is your environmental globalist utopia
link |
going to kill the poor and destroy the planet?
link |
And that's okay, because we'll wipe out capitalism.
link |
Yeah, the dragon and the fear of the dragon
link |
drives ideologies, some of which can build a better world,
link |
some of which can destroy that world.
link |
Now, what do you think of that theory about trustworthiness?
link |
If the dragon that you're facing
link |
turns you into a terrified tyrant,
link |
you're not the man for the job.
link |
Is that a good theory?
link |
It's an interesting theory.
link |
Let me use that theory to challenge,
link |
because what does terror look like?
link |
Let me table the turns, turn the tables on you.
link |
You are terrified, afraid, concerned about the dragon
link |
of something we can call communism, Marxism.
link |
Am I terrified of it?
link |
I'm not terrified enough to be a tyrant.
link |
Your theories had two components.
link |
I'm not paralyzed.
link |
Yeah, I'm not paralyzed, and I don't wanna be a tyrant.
link |
The tyrant part, I think, is missing with you.
link |
But you are very concerned.
link |
The intensity of your feeling
link |
does not give much space,
link |
actually, at least in your public persona,
link |
for sitting quietly with the dragon
link |
and sipping on a couple of beers
link |
and thinking about this thing.
link |
The intensity of your anger,
link |
concern about certain things you're seeing in society,
link |
is that going to drive you off the path
link |
that ultimately takes us to a better world?
link |
That's a good question.
link |
I mean, I'm trying to get that right.
link |
So we've kind of come to a cultural conclusion
link |
Do you get to be angry about the Nazis?
link |
Seems the answer to that is yes.
link |
Well, actually, let me push back here.
link |
I also don't trust people who are angry about the Nazis.
link |
I mean the actual Nazis.
link |
Well, as you know, there's a lot of people in the world
link |
that use actual Nazis to mean a lot of things.
link |
One of them is very important to me.
link |
He's a Nazi, or magical super Nazi, as it turns out.
link |
I think they actually sort of steel man
link |
all their perspectives.
link |
I think a lot of people that call you a Nazi mean it.
link |
I'm aware of that.
link |
There's an important thing there though,
link |
because I went to the front in Ukraine,
link |
and a lot of the people that lost their home
link |
or they're kind of, that got to interact a lot
link |
with the Russian soldiers, the Ukrainian people
link |
that interact with the Russian soldiers,
link |
they reported that the Russian soldiers
link |
really believe they're saving the people of Ukraine
link |
in these local villages from the Nazis.
link |
I understand, yeah.
link |
So to them, it's not just that the Ukrainian government has
link |
or Ukraine has some Nazis, it's like it has been,
link |
the idea is that the Nazis have taken over Ukraine
link |
and we need to free them.
link |
This is the belief.
link |
So this, again, Nazi is still a dragon that lives.
link |
And it's used by people because it's safe
link |
to sit next to that dragon
link |
and spread any kind of ideology you want.
link |
So I just wanted to kind of say that we have agreed
link |
on this particular dragon,
link |
but I still don't trust anybody who uses that one.
link |
Yeah, but we have issues with boundaries, right?
link |
No, no, it's, so this is a very complicated problem, right?
link |
So Rene Girard believed that it was a human proclivity
link |
to demonize a scapegoat and then drive it out
link |
And I've thought about that a lot.
link |
We need a place to put Satan.
link |
Seriously, this is a serious issue.
link |
Should he be inside the village or outside?
link |
Well, maybe he should be inside you, right?
link |
That's the fundamental essence of the Christian doctrine.
link |
It's like, Satan is best fought
link |
on the battleground of your soul.
link |
And that's, that's right.
link |
Can you actually put words to the kind of dragon
link |
that you're fighting?
link |
It's the spirit of Cain.
link |
Can you elaborate what the spirit of Cain is?
link |
So after Adam and Eve are thrown out of paradise
link |
for becoming self conscious,
link |
or when they become self conscious,
link |
they're destined to work.
link |
And the reason for that, as far as I can tell,
link |
is that to become self conscious
link |
is to become aware of the future.
link |
It's to become aware of death.
link |
That certainly happens in the Adam and Eve story,
link |
to have the scales fall from your eyes.
link |
And then the consequence of that
link |
is that you now have to labor to prevent
link |
the catastrophes of the future.
link |
Work is sacrifice.
link |
Sacrifice of the present to the future.
link |
It's delay of gratification, it's maturity.
link |
It's sacrifice to something as well,
link |
and in the spirit of something.
link |
Okay, so now Adam and Eve have two children, Cain and Abel.
link |
So those are the first two people in history.
link |
Because the Garden of Eden doesn't count.
link |
And they're the first two people
link |
who are born rather than created.
link |
So they're the first two people.
link |
And that's a hell of a story,
link |
because it's a story of fratricidal murder
link |
that degenerates into genocide, flood, and tyranny.
link |
So that's fun for the opening salvo of the story, let's say.
link |
And Abel and Cain both make sacrifices.
link |
And for some reason, Abel's sacrifice is please God.
link |
It's not exactly clear why.
link |
Now, there's an implication in the text
link |
that it's because Cain's sacrifices are true,
link |
God says that Abel brings the finest
link |
to the sacrificial altar.
link |
He doesn't say that about Cain.
link |
So you could imagine that Cain is sacrificing away,
link |
but he's holding something in reserve.
link |
He's not all in, he's not bringing his best to the table.
link |
He's not offering his best to God.
link |
And so Abel thrives like mad.
link |
And everyone loves him.
link |
And he gets exactly what he needs and wants,
link |
exactly when he needs and wants it.
link |
He's favored of God.
link |
And Cain is bearing this terrible burden forward
link |
and working, and his sacrifices are rejected.
link |
So he gets resentful, really resentful.
link |
Enough resentful enough to call God out
link |
and say something like,
link |
this is quite the creation you've got going here.
link |
I'm breaking myself in half
link |
and nothing good's coming my way.
link |
What the hell's up with that?
link |
And then there's Abel, the sun shining on him every day.
link |
But this is God that Cain's talking to.
link |
And so God says what Cain least wants to hear,
link |
which is what God usually says to people.
link |
He says, look to your own devices.
link |
You're not making the sacrifices you should.
link |
And then he says something even worse.
link |
He says, sin crouches at your door
link |
like a sexually aroused predatory animal.
link |
And you've invited it in to have your way,
link |
to have its way with you.
link |
And so he basically says,
link |
you have allowed your resentment to preoccupy yourself.
link |
And now you're brooding upon it
link |
and generating something creative, new and awful,
link |
possessed by the spirit of resentment.
link |
And that's why you're in the miserable state you're in.
link |
So then Cain leaves, his countenance falls,
link |
as you might expect, and Cain leaves.
link |
And he's so incensed by this because God has said,
link |
look, your problems are of your own making.
link |
And not only that, you invited them in.
link |
And not only that, you engaged in this creatively.
link |
And not only that, you're blaming it on me.
link |
And not only that, that's making you jealous of Abel,
link |
who's your actual idol and goal.
link |
And Cain, instead of changing, kills Abel, right?
link |
And then Cain's descendants are the first people
link |
who make weapons of war.
link |
And so that's, okay, you wanna know what I think?
link |
That's the eternal story of mankind.
link |
And it's playing out right now,
link |
except at a thousand times the rate.
link |
Can I present to you a difficult truth?
link |
Perhaps not a truth, but a thought I have,
link |
that it is not always easy to know
link |
which among us are the Cain.
link |
And resentment, it is possible to imagine you
link |
as the person who has a resentment
link |
towards a particular worldview that you really worry about.
link |
Yeah, well, I talked to a good friend of mine last week
link |
about that publicly, we'll release it.
link |
So I said, well, do I have a particular animus
link |
against the left, let's say?
link |
It's like, well, probably.
link |
Well, first of all, I'm a university professor.
link |
It's not like the universities are threatened by the right.
link |
They're threatened by the left, 100%.
link |
And they're not just threatened a little bit,
link |
they're threatened a lot.
link |
And that threat made it impossible
link |
for me to continue in my profession the way I was.
link |
And it cost me my clinical practice too.
link |
And that's not over yet because I have 10 lawsuits
link |
against me out right now from the College of Psychologists
link |
because they've allowed anyone to complain about me
link |
anywhere in the world for any reason,
link |
and have the choice to follow that up with an investigation,
link |
which is a punishment in and of itself, and are doing so.
link |
And then I've been tortured nearly to death multiple times
link |
by bad actors on the left.
link |
Now I've had my fair share of radical right wingers
link |
being unhappy with what I've said,
link |
but personally, that's been the left the whole time.
link |
Not only me, but my family, put my family at risk
link |
in a big way and constantly, like not once or twice,
link |
because many people get canceled once or twice.
link |
But I've been canceled like 40 times.
link |
And I know like 200 people now who've been canceled.
link |
And I can tell you without doubt,
link |
that it is one of the worst experiences of their life.
link |
And that's if it only happens once.
link |
And so, and then I also know that the communists killed
link |
100 million people in the 20th century,
link |
that the intellectuals excused them for it nonstop
link |
and still haven't quit, that almost no one knows about it,
link |
and that the specter of resentful Marxism
link |
is back in full force.
link |
And so do I have a bit of an animus against that?
link |
Does it go too far?
link |
I'm trying to figure that out.
link |
The story you just told, it seems nearly impossible
link |
for you, an intellectual powerhouse,
link |
not to have a tremendous amount of resentment.
link |
And this is the, so let me challenge you.
link |
Yeah, go right ahead, man.
link |
Let me challenge you.
link |
Can you steal, man, the case that the prime minister
link |
of this country, Trudeau, wants the best for this country
link |
and actually might do good things for this country
link |
as an intellectual challenge?
link |
He seems to get along well with his wife.
link |
There's no sexual scandals.
link |
And he's in a position where that could easily be the case.
link |
He seems to have done some good things
link |
on the oceanic management front.
link |
He's put a fair bit of Canada's oceans
link |
into marine protected areas,
link |
and that might be his most fundamental legacy, if it's real.
link |
I've been trying to get information
link |
about the actual reality of the protection,
link |
and I haven't been able to do that.
link |
But that's a good thing.
link |
So sorry, the family thing is, there's some aspect of.
link |
It speaks to his character.
link |
This is a character.
link |
There is some aspect to him that makes him a good man
link |
There's the evidence there.
link |
He's not a Jeffrey Epstein profligate on the sexual front,
link |
so that's something.
link |
And his wife, they seem to have a real marriage,
link |
and he has kids, so good for him.
link |
That's a good start, by the way, for a leader.
link |
Well, then I also thought, okay,
link |
well, after the Liberals had brought in
link |
a Harvard intellectual who was a Canadian
link |
to be their last leader, he didn't work out,
link |
and then they're flailing about for a leader,
link |
and the Liberals in Canada are pretty good
link |
at maintaining power and leadership,
link |
and have been the dominant governing party in Canada
link |
And so they went to Justin and said,
link |
well, you know, it's you or a Conservative,
link |
and you can imagine that's not a positive specter
link |
for someone who's on the left, or even a Liberal,
link |
especially, and Trudeau's quite a bit on the left.
link |
And they said, we need you to run.
link |
And then I thought, okay, well,
link |
the answer to that should have been no,
link |
because Trudeau, Justin, has no training for this,
link |
He's not, he's a part time drama teacher, fundamentally.
link |
He hadn't run a business.
link |
He just didn't know enough to be Prime Minister.
link |
But then I'm trying to put myself in his position, eh?
link |
So it's like, okay, I don't know enough, but I'm young,
link |
and we don't want the Conservatives,
link |
and they had had a run, a 10 year run,
link |
so maybe it was time for a new government.
link |
I could, maybe I could grow into this man.
link |
Maybe I could surround myself with good people,
link |
and I could learn humbly, and I could become
link |
the person I'm now pretending to be,
link |
which we all have to do as we move forward, right?
link |
And so then I thought, okay,
link |
I think you made a mistake there,
link |
because you ran only on your father's name,
link |
and you didn't have the background,
link |
but let's give the devil his due,
link |
and say that's no problem.
link |
Okay, so now what do you do?
link |
Well, you get elected, and your first act is
link |
to make the cabinet 50% women,
link |
despite the fact that only 25% of the elected members
link |
It's like, okay, you just have your talent pool.
link |
That was a really bad move for your first move.
link |
Can I ask you about that?
link |
Do you think, where does that move come from?
link |
Deep somewhere in the heart?
link |
Or is it trying to listen to the social forces
link |
of the moment, and try to ride those ways towards
link |
maybe greater and greater popularity?
link |
By after thinking it through.
link |
It's like, no, you just have your talent pool
link |
for cabinet positions.
link |
That's what you did.
link |
There's enough cabinet positions.
link |
You know, you could argue that each of them met threshold.
link |
It's like, there's a big difference
link |
between threshold and excellent.
link |
So you don't think that came from a place of compassion?
link |
I don't care if it did.
link |
I don't regard compassion as a virtue.
link |
Compassion is a reflex, not a virtue.
link |
Judicious compassion is a virtue.
link |
Wait, wait a minute, wait a minute.
link |
Compassion can come deep from the human heart
link |
and the human mind, I think.
link |
Are we talking about the same kind of compassion?
link |
Trying to understand the suffering in the world.
link |
Treating adults like infants is not virtuous.
link |
Well, compassion isn't treating adults like infants.
link |
I mean, those are just terms.
link |
Whatever the term is, maybe love is maybe the better word.
link |
Edible compassion is.
link |
I mean, I suppose I'm speaking to love.
link |
You don't think those ideas came from concern?
link |
Love is a blend of compassion and encouragement and truth.
link |
Love is complicated, man.
link |
Yeah, it has a lot of good things in it, yes.
link |
If I love you, is it compassion
link |
or encouragement you want from me?
link |
Love is definitely a dance of two humans, ultimately,
link |
that leads to the growth of both, yes.
link |
Well, that's the thing.
link |
The growth element is crucial.
link |
Because the growth element, to foster the growth element,
link |
that requires judgment.
link |
Compassion and judgment, well, even,
link |
and have been conceptualized this way forever,
link |
two hands of God, mercy and justice.
link |
They have to operate in tandem, right?
link |
And mercy is flawed as you are, you're acceptable.
link |
It's like, well, do you want that?
link |
Do you want your flaws to be acceptable?
link |
And the answer to that is no.
link |
It's like, well, that's where the judgment comes in.
link |
It's like, but you could be better.
link |
You could be more than you are.
link |
And that's the maternal and the paternal
link |
in some fundamental sense.
link |
And there has to be a active exchange of information
link |
between those two poles.
link |
So even if Trudeau was motivated by compassion,
link |
and it's like, yeah, just how loving are you, first of all?
link |
No, it was a really bad decision.
link |
And then he's expressed contempt for monetary policy.
link |
I'm not interested in monetary policy.
link |
It's like, okay, but you're a prime minister.
link |
And he's expressed admiration
link |
for the Chinese Communist Party,
link |
because they can be very efficient
link |
in their pursuit of environmental goals.
link |
It's like, oh yeah, efficiency, eh?
link |
The efficiency of the tyranny in the service of your terror.
link |
And so, and I've watched him repeatedly
link |
and I've listened to him a lot.
link |
And I've tried to do that clinically
link |
and with some degree of dispassion.
link |
And that's hard too, because his father, Pierre,
link |
devastated the West in 1982 with the national energy policy.
link |
And Trudeau is doing exactly the same thing again.
link |
And so as a westerner as well,
link |
I have an inbuilt animus and one that's well deserved,
link |
because central Canada,
link |
especially the glittery literati elite types
link |
in the Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto triangle
link |
have exploited the West and expressed contempt for the West
link |
far too much for far too long.
link |
And that's accelerating at the moment, for example,
link |
with Trudeau's recent attack on the Canadian farmers.
link |
He's an enemy of the oil and gas industry.
link |
It's an utter and absolute bloody catastrophe.
link |
And look what's happened in Europe,
link |
at least in partial consequence.
link |
And he's no friend to the farmers.
link |
So I've tried to steel man him.
link |
I try to put myself in the position of the people
link |
that I'm criticizing.
link |
I think he's a narcissist.
link |
Do you think there's a degree to which power changed him?
link |
If you're not suited for the position,
link |
if you're not the man for the position,
link |
you can be absolutely 100% sure
link |
that the power will corrupt you.
link |
I mean, at the least, if you don't have the chops
link |
for the job, you have to devalue the job
link |
to the point where you can feel comfortable inhabiting it.
link |
So yes, I think that it's corrupted him.
link |
And I mean, look at him doubling down.
link |
We wear masks in flights into Canada.
link |
We have to fill out an arrive can bureaucratic form
link |
on our phones because a passport isn't good enough.
link |
We can't get a passport.
link |
What if you're 85 and you don't know
link |
how to use a smartphone?
link |
Oh, well, too bad for you.
link |
It's like, yes, it's corrupted him.
link |
Would you talk to him?
link |
If you were to sit down and talk with him
link |
and he wanted to talk,
link |
would you and what kind of things would you talk about,
link |
perhaps on your podcast?
link |
I don't think I've ever said no to talking to anyone.
link |
So, which is, you know.
link |
Would you, would that be a first
link |
or would you make that conversation?
link |
Do you believe in the power of those kinds of contexts?
link |
No, if he was willing to talk to me,
link |
I'd talk because I'd like to ask him.
link |
I have lots of things I'd like to ask him about.
link |
I mean, I've had political types in Canada
link |
on my podcast and tried to ask them questions.
link |
So, I'd like to know.
link |
You know, maybe I've got a big part of him wrong.
link |
And I probably do, but my observation has been
link |
that every chance he had to retreat
link |
from his pharaonic position, let's say, he doubled down.
link |
And these, our parliament is not running for the next year.
link |
It's still zoom in.
link |
It's still COVID lockdown parliament.
link |
For the next year, it's already been fatally compromised,
link |
perhaps, by the lockdowns for the last couple of years.
link |
And this is parliament we're talking about.
link |
Yeah, there's a kind of paralysis, fear driven paralysis
link |
that also, in part, some of the most brilliant people
link |
I know are lost in this paralysis.
link |
I don't think people have signed a word to it,
link |
but it's almost like a fear of this unknown thing
link |
that lurks in the shadows.
link |
And that, unfortunately, that fear is leveraged by people
link |
that, you know, who are in academic circles,
link |
who are in faculty or students,
link |
and so on, or more in administration.
link |
And they start to use that fear,
link |
which makes me quite uncomfortable.
link |
It does lend people in the positions of power
link |
who are not good at handling that power
link |
to become slowly, day by day, a little bit more corrupt.
link |
I was really trying to figure out, you know,
link |
the last two weeks, thinking this through.
link |
It's like, how do you know?
link |
Let's say someone asked me a question
link |
in the YouTube comments, said,
link |
why can I trust your advice on the environmental front?
link |
And I thought, that's a really good question.
link |
Okay, let's see if we can figure out the principles
link |
by which the advice would be trustworthy.
link |
Okay, how do you know it's not trustworthy?
link |
Well, one potential response to that would be
link |
the claims are not in accordance with the facts,
link |
but, you know, facts are tricky things
link |
and it depends on where you look for them.
link |
So that's a tough one to get right because,
link |
for example, Lomberg's fundamental critics
link |
argue about his facts, not just his interpretation of them.
link |
So that can't be an unerring guide.
link |
And so I thought, well, the facts exactly doesn't work
link |
because when it's about everything, there's too many facts.
link |
So then how do you determine if someone's a trustworthy guide
link |
in the face of the apocalyptic unknown?
link |
Because that's really the question.
link |
And the answer is they're not terrified tyrants.
link |
I think that's the answer.
link |
Now, maybe that's wrong.
link |
If someone has a better answer.
link |
How do you know if they're a terrified tyrant?
link |
Because they are willing to use compulsion on other people.
link |
When they could use goodwill.
link |
Like the farmers in Canada objected.
link |
They said, look, we have every economic reason
link |
to use as little fertilizer as we can.
link |
Cause it's expensive.
link |
We have satellite maps of where we put the fertilizer.
link |
We have cut our fertilizer use so substantially
link |
in the last 40 years, you can't believe it.
link |
And we grow way more food.
link |
We're already breaking ourselves in half.
link |
And if you know farmers,
link |
especially the ones who still survive,
link |
you think those people don't know what they're doing.
link |
It's like, yeah, they're pretty damn sophisticated man.
link |
Like way more sophisticated than our prime minister.
link |
And now you tell them, no, it's a 30% reduction.
link |
And we don't care how much food you're growing.
link |
So it's not a reduction that's dependent
link |
on amount of food produced per unit of fertilizer used,
link |
which would be at least you could imagine it.
link |
So, okay, so you're producing this much food
link |
and you use this much fertilizer.
link |
So you're hyper efficient.
link |
Maybe we take the 10% of farmers
link |
who are the least efficient in that metric.
link |
And we say to them,
link |
you have to get as efficient as the average farmer.
link |
And then they say, well, look, you know,
link |
our situation's different.
link |
We're in a more Northern climb, the soil's weaker.
link |
You know, you obviously have to bargain with that,
link |
but at least you reward them for their productivity.
link |
Well, it's like, well, Holland isn't gonna have beef.
link |
Well, where are they gonna get it?
link |
Well, you don't need it.
link |
It's like, oh, I see.
link |
You get to tell me what I can eat now, do you?
link |
And Holland is gonna import food from where
link |
that's more efficient on the fertilizer front.
link |
There's no one more efficient than Holland.
link |
And same with Canada.
link |
And like, isn't this gonna make food prices more expensive?
link |
And doesn't that mean that hungry people die?
link |
Cause that is what it means.
link |
Ultimately, poor people pay the price
link |
of these kinds of policies.
link |
Not known, not ultimately.
link |
That's a crucial distinction because they say,
link |
well, ultimately the poor will benefit.
link |
Yeah, except the dead ones.
link |
It seems like the story of war to,
link |
is a time when the poor people suffer
link |
from the decision made by the powerful, the rich,
link |
the political elite.
link |
Let me ask you about the war in Ukraine.
link |
I got into plenty of trouble about that too.
link |
You're, you're just a man in a suit
link |
talking on microphones and writing brilliant articles.
link |
There's also people dying, fighting.
link |
It's their land, it's their country, it's their history.
link |
This is true for both Russia and Ukraine.
link |
It's people trying to ask, they have many dragons
link |
and they're asking themselves a question,
link |
What is the future of this nation?
link |
We thought we are a great nation.
link |
And I think both countries say this.
link |
And they say, well, how do we become the great nation
link |
we thought we are?
link |
And so what, first of all, you got in trouble.
link |
What's the dynamics of the trouble?
link |
And is there something you regret saying?
link |
No, no, I thought about it a lot.
link |
I laid out four reasons for the war.
link |
And then I was criticized in the Atlantic
link |
for the argument was reduced to one reason,
link |
which was a caricature of the reason.
link |
I gave a variety of reasons why the war happened.
link |
Mismanagement on the part of the West in relationship
link |
to Russia and foreign policy over the last,
link |
since the wall fell.
link |
It's understandable because it's extremely complex.
link |
Hyper reliance on Russia as a cardinal source of energy
link |
provision for Europe in the wake of idiot environmental
link |
globalist utopianism.
link |
The expansionist tendencies of Russia
link |
that are analogous in some sense to the Soviet Union empire
link |
And then the last one, which is the one I got in trouble for,
link |
which is Putin's belief or willingness
link |
to manipulate his people into believing
link |
that Russia is a salvific force in the face
link |
of idiot Western wokeism.
link |
And that's the one I got in trouble for.
link |
It's like, while you're justifying Putin,
link |
it's like, it's not only the Russians
link |
that think the West has lost its mind.
link |
The Eastern Europeans think so too.
link |
And do I know that?
link |
It's like, well, I went to 15 Eastern European countries
link |
And I talked to 300 political and cultural leaders.
link |
And you might say, well, they were all conservatives.
link |
It's like, actually, no, they weren't.
link |
Most of them were conservatives.
link |
Because it turns out that they're
link |
more willing to talk to me.
link |
But a good chunk of them were liberals
link |
by any stretch of the imagination.
link |
And a fair number of them were canceled progressives.
link |
Well, because you're very concerned
link |
about the culture wars that perhaps
link |
are a signal of a possible bad future for this country
link |
and for this part of the world, that reason stands out.
link |
And do you, sort of looking back at four reasons,
link |
think it deserves to have a place in one of the four?
link |
Because it is, you know.
link |
Well, the four was bifurcated.
link |
Because I said, look, Putin might believe this.
link |
And I actually think he does.
link |
Because I read a bunch of Putin speeches.
link |
And I have been reading them for 15 years.
link |
And my sense of people generally,
link |
and this was true of Hitler, it's like,
link |
what did Hitler believe?
link |
Well, did you read what he wrote?
link |
He just did what he said he was going to do.
link |
And you might think, well, some people are so tricky,
link |
they have a whole body of elaborated speech
link |
that's completely separate from their personality.
link |
And their personality is pursuing a different agenda.
link |
And this whole body of speech is nothing but affront.
link |
It's like, good luck finding someone that sophisticated.
link |
First of all, if you say things long enough,
link |
you're going to believe them.
link |
That's a really interesting and fascinating and important
link |
Even if you start out as a lie, as a propaganda,
link |
I think Hitler is an example of somebody
link |
that I think really quickly you start
link |
to believe the propaganda.
link |
Well, you've thought a lot about AI systems.
link |
It's like, don't you become what you practice?
link |
And the answer to that is, well, absolutely.
link |
We even know the neurology.
link |
It's like when you first formulate a concept,
link |
huge swaths of your cortex are lit up, so to speak.
link |
But as you practice that, first of all,
link |
the right hemisphere stops participating.
link |
And then the left participates less and less
link |
until you build specialized machinery for exactly
link |
that conceptual frame.
link |
And then you start to see it, not just think it.
link |
And so if you're telling the same lies over and over,
link |
who do you think you're fooling?
link |
Think, well, I can withstand my own lies,
link |
not if they're effective lies.
link |
And if they're effective enough to fool millions of people,
link |
and then they reflect them back to you,
link |
what makes you think you're going
link |
to be able to withstand that?
link |
And so I do think Putin believes, to the degree
link |
that he believes anything, I do believe
link |
that he thinks of himself as a bulwark for Christendom
link |
against the degeneration of the West.
link |
And that's that third way that Dugin and Putin
link |
have been talking about, the philosopher Alexander Dugin
link |
and Putin for 15 years.
link |
Now, what that is is very amorphous.
link |
Solzhenitsyn thought the Russians
link |
would have to return to the incremental development
link |
of Orthodox Christianity to escape from the communist trap.
link |
And to some degree, that's happened in Russia
link |
because there's been a return to Orthodox Christianity.
link |
Now, you could say, yeah, but the Orthodox church
link |
has just been coopted by the state.
link |
And I would say there's some evidence for that.
link |
I've heard, for example, that the Metropolitan owns,
link |
now I don't know if this is true,
link |
owns $5 billion worth of personal property.
link |
And I would say there's a bit of a moral hazard in that.
link |
And it's possible that the Orthodox church
link |
But there has been somewhat of an Orthodox revival in Russia.
link |
And I don't think that's all bad.
link |
Now, even if Putin doesn't believe any of this,
link |
if he's just a psychopathic manipulator,
link |
and unfortunately, I don't think that's true.
link |
I've read his speeches.
link |
It doesn't look like it to me.
link |
And he is by no means the worst Russian leader
link |
of the last 100 years.
link |
Well, there's quite a selection there.
link |
There certainly is.
link |
And I say that knowing that.
link |
Even if he doesn't believe it, he's convinced his people
link |
And so we're stuck with the claim in either case.
link |
And that's the point I was trying to make in the article.
link |
Sometimes I'm troubled by people that explain things.
link |
And a lot of people have reached out to me, experts,
link |
telling me how I should feel, what
link |
I should think about Ukraine.
link |
Oh, you naive Lex, you're so naive.
link |
Here's how it really is.
link |
But then I get to see people that lost their home.
link |
I get to see people on the Russian side who believe
link |
they're, I genuinely think that there's some degree to which
link |
they have love in their heart.
link |
They see themselves as heroes saving a land from Nazis.
link |
How else would you motivate young men to go fight?
link |
It's just, it's these humans destroying not only their homes,
link |
but creating generational hate, destroying
link |
the possibility of love towards each other.
link |
They're basically creating hate.
link |
What I've heard a lot of is on February 24 of this year,
link |
hate was born at a scale that region has not seen.
link |
Hate towards not Vladimir Putin, hate towards not
link |
the soldiers in Russia, but hate towards all Russians.
link |
Hate that will last generations.
link |
And then you can see just the pain there.
link |
And then when all these experts talk about agriculture,
link |
and energy, and geopolitics, and yeah,
link |
maybe like what you say with fighting
link |
the ideologies of the woke and so on,
link |
I just feel like it's missing something deep,
link |
that war is not fought about any of those things.
link |
War is started, and war is averted based on human beings,
link |
based on humanity.
link |
Here's another ugly thought, since we
link |
haven't had enough so far.
link |
We locked everything down for COVID.
link |
How much face to face communication
link |
was there between the West and Vladimir Putin?
link |
How about that was the wrong amount,
link |
especially given that Europe was completely dependent on Putin
link |
for its energy supplies?
link |
Well, not completely, but you know what I mean.
link |
Materially and significantly.
link |
Maybe he had to go talk to him once every six months.
link |
Maybe he's in a bit of a bubble.
link |
And not just an information bubble,
link |
how all these experts tell me about.
link |
Yeah, no, a human bubble.
link |
Look, one of the things I've really learned,
link |
there's a real emphasis on hospitality
link |
in the Old Testament.
link |
I just brought all these scholars together
link |
to talk about Exodus.
link |
Hey, I have this security team with me,
link |
and they're tough military guys.
link |
But they're on board for this mission, let's say.
link |
And so they went out of their way
link |
to be hospitable to my academic guests.
link |
They laid out nice platters of meat and cheese and crackers.
link |
They spent all day preparing this house
link |
I had rented so that we could have a hospitable time
link |
with these scholars.
link |
Most of whom I didn't know well,
link |
but who said they would come and spend eight days
link |
talking about this book with me.
link |
We rented some jet skis.
link |
We had a nice house.
link |
And we got to know each other.
link |
And we got to trust each other
link |
because we could see that we could have some fun
link |
and that we could let our hair down a bit.
link |
We didn't have to be on guard.
link |
And that made the talks way deeper.
link |
And then we found out we couldn't get through Exodus
link |
And so I had proposed very early on
link |
that we're gonna double the length.
link |
And so I pulled eight people out of their lives
link |
That's not an easy thing to do.
link |
It's also quite expensive.
link |
And the Daily Wire Plus people picked all that up.
link |
And they said, right.
link |
They said, yes, right away.
link |
So we'd love to do this again.
link |
Well, partly because it was intellectually,
link |
it was unbelievably engaging.
link |
I learned so much.
link |
It'll take me like a year to digest it
link |
if I can ever digest it.
link |
But they had a really good time.
link |
And so when they were offered that combination
link |
of intellectual challenge, let's say in hospitality,
link |
it was a no brainer.
link |
They just said, every one of them said,
link |
if I can do it in any way, I will definitely be there.
link |
And this, I went to Washington a bunch of times
link |
and the culture of hospitality has broken down
link |
40% of congressmen sleep in their offices.
link |
They don't have apartments.
link |
Their family isn't there with them.
link |
They don't have social occasions with their fellow Democrats
link |
or Republicans, much less across the table.
link |
And so, and I tried to have some meetings in Washington
link |
that were bilateral a couple of times,
link |
get young Republican congressmen
link |
and Democrats together to talk.
link |
And as soon as they talk, they think,
link |
oh, it was so interesting.
link |
Cause one of the lunches was about 15 people,
link |
half Democrats and half Republicans.
link |
And all I'd asked them to do was just spend three minutes
link |
talking about why you decided to become a congressman,
link |
which is not a job I would take, by the way.
link |
You spend 25 hours a week fundraising on the telephone.
link |
Your family isn't there with you.
link |
You have to run for reelection every two years.
link |
You're beholden to the party apparatus, right?
link |
You're vilified constantly.
link |
This is not, you know, people think,
link |
well, this is a job for the privileged.
link |
It's like, yeah, you go and run for Congress
link |
and find out how much fun it is
link |
and put your family on the line
link |
and then have to beg for your job every two years
link |
while your enemies, the worst of your enemies
link |
and the worst of your friends
link |
are viciously hen pecking you.
link |
And so anyways, we had them all sit around the table
link |
and said, okay, just say why you ran for Congress.
link |
It was so cool, especially for a Canadian,
link |
cause you Americans, you're so bloody theatrical.
link |
It's such something to watch.
link |
It was like, Mr. Smith goes to Washington
link |
for every one of them.
link |
It's like, well, this country has given us so much,
link |
where our families have been so,
link |
we've benefited so much from our time here.
link |
We think this is a wonderful country.
link |
We really felt that we should give back.
link |
And the next one would talk.
link |
And it was like exactly the same story.
link |
And then it didn't matter
link |
if they were Republican or Democrat,
link |
you couldn't tell the difference.
link |
And was it genuine?
link |
It's like, well, are you genuine?
link |
You think these people are worse than you?
link |
First of all, they're not.
link |
Second of all, they're probably better.
link |
All things considered,
link |
it's not that easy to become a Congressman.
link |
And I'm sure there's some bad apples in the bunch,
link |
you walk away from your meetings with these people
link |
and you think, pretty impressive.
link |
They really are giving a part of themselves
link |
in the name of service.
link |
Maybe over time, they become cynical
link |
and become jaded and worn down by the whole system.
link |
But I think a lot of it.
link |
Could you imagine that?
link |
Is healed, I think.
link |
And I don't think I'm, well, I'm in part naive,
link |
that a lot of it is healed
link |
through the power of conversation,
link |
just basic social interaction.
link |
I do think that the effects of this pandemic.
link |
Especially by listening.
link |
Listen, just sitting there.
link |
And it doesn't have to be talking about the actual issue.
link |
It's actually humor and all those kinds of things
link |
about personal struggles,
link |
all those kinds of things that remind you
link |
that you're all just humans.
link |
Well, the great leaders that I've met,
link |
and I've met some now,
link |
they go listen to their constituents.
link |
It's not a policy discussion.
link |
It's not an ideology discussion.
link |
They go say, okay, what's your life like?
link |
And what are your problems?
link |
And tell me about them.
link |
And then they listen and then they're struck by them.
link |
And then they gather up all that misery
link |
and they bring it to the congressional office
link |
or to the parliament.
link |
And they think, here's what the people are crying out for.
link |
And the good leaders, that's a leader.
link |
So I talked to Jimmy Carr about comedy.
link |
And he's sold out stages worldwide on a tour, being funny.
link |
He said, comedy is the most standup comedy,
link |
which is what I do in some real sense.
link |
It's a thing I do that it's most akin
link |
to what I'm doing on my book tours, I would say.
link |
It's the closest analog.
link |
He said, it's the most dialogical enterprise.
link |
And I thought, well, why, what do you mean?
link |
Cause see, it's just the monologue.
link |
And it's a prepared monologue.
link |
I mean, you have to interact dynamically with the audience
link |
while you're telling your jokes
link |
and you gotta get the timing right,
link |
but you have a body of jokes.
link |
He said, well, here's how you prepare the jokes.
link |
And I've been told this by other comedians.
link |
You go to 50 clubs before you go on your tour
link |
and you got some new material and you think it's funny.
link |
And you go into a club and you lay out your new material
link |
and people laugh at some of it.
link |
And you pay attention to what they laugh at
link |
and what they don't laugh at.
link |
So you subject yourself to the judgment of the crowd
link |
and you get rid of everything that isn't funny.
link |
And if you do that enough, even if you're not that funny,
link |
the crowd will tell you what's funny.
link |
So you can imagine, imagine you do 50 shows
link |
and each is an hour long
link |
and you collect two minutes of humor from each show.
link |
So you throw away 90, you throw away two hours,
link |
more than 98% of it, collect two minutes per show.
link |
So you're not very funny at all.
link |
You're like funny 2% of the time.
link |
You aggregate that, man, you're a scream.
link |
So that's what a leader does is,
link |
that is what a leader does is goes out
link |
and he aggregates the misery, you know, and the hopes.
link |
And then I do think that's revivify
link |
to someone who would otherwise be cynical and jaded
link |
because then the person can say to themselves,
link |
despite the inadequacies of the system and my inadequacies,
link |
I'm gathering up the misery and the hope
link |
and I'm bringing it forward where it can be redressed.
link |
Giving it a voice.
link |
Yeah, that's right, giving it a voice.
link |
Can you actually take me through a day
link |
because this is fascinating, through your comedy tour.
link |
What does a day in the life of Jordan Peterson look like?
link |
Which is this very interesting day.
link |
Let's look at the day when you have to speak.
link |
Preparing your mind,
link |
thinking of what you're going to talk about,
link |
preparing yourself physically and mentally
link |
to interact with the crowd through the actual speaking,
link |
how do you adjust what you're thinking through
link |
and how do you come down from that?
link |
So you can start all again as a limited biological system.
link |
Well, I'm usually up by seven
link |
and ready to go by 7.30 or eight.
link |
No, steak and water.
link |
How many times a day steak?
link |
All, that's all I eat.
link |
Three or four, depending on the day.
link |
Steak and sparkling water.
link |
Yeah, so monastic asceticism, man.
link |
Well, I did the proper, I usually just once a day,
link |
I did the proper Jordan Peterson last night
link |
and just ate two steaks.
link |
Yeah, well, if you have to only eat one thing,
link |
you know, could be worse.
link |
So anyways, I'm ready to go at eight
link |
because we're generally moving.
link |
What does moving mean?
link |
Flying. You're constantly.
link |
And we usually use private flights now
link |
because the commercial airlines aren't reliable enough
link |
and you cannot not make a venue, right?
link |
So that's rule number one on a tour.
link |
You make the show.
link |
So everything, and then number rule number two
link |
is anybody who causes any trouble on the tour is gone
link |
because there is zero room for error.
link |
Now, no, there's zero room for unnecessary,
link |
unaddressed error.
link |
So there's gonna be errors.
link |
The guys I have around me now, if they make a mistake,
link |
they fix it right away.
link |
So, and that's great.
link |
There's a lot of people relying on you to be there.
link |
So you have to be there.
link |
Yeah, like 4,000 people typically.
link |
So then I'm on the plane and I usually write or often
link |
because there's no internet on the plane
link |
and that's a good use of time.
link |
So I'm writing a new book.
link |
So I write on the plane.
link |
Typing or handwriting?
link |
Typing, yeah, typing.
link |
And then we land and we go to,
link |
it's usually early afternoon by then we go to a hotel.
link |
It's usually a nice hotel.
link |
It's not corporate.
link |
I don't really like corporate hotels.
link |
My secretary and one of my logistics guys
link |
has got quite good at picking kind of adventurous hotels,
link |
boutique hotels are usually in the old parts of the city,
link |
especially in Europe, somewhere interesting.
link |
And so we go there and then lunch usually.
link |
And sometimes that's an air fryer and a steak
link |
in the hotel room.
link |
And I leave a trail of air fryers behind me
link |
all across the world.
link |
And then Tammy and I usually go out and have a walk
link |
or something and take a look at the city.
link |
And then I have a rest for like an hour and a half
link |
or an hour, half an hour.
link |
I have to sleep for 20 minutes.
link |
And that's about all I can sleep,
link |
but I need to do that in the late afternoon.
link |
That refreshes your mind.
link |
Yeah, that gives me, that wakes me up again for the evening.
link |
And then Tam has to sleep longer.
link |
She's still recovering from her illness.
link |
And so she has to sleep longer in the afternoon
link |
and that's absolutely necessary for both of us
link |
or things start to get frayed.
link |
And so then we go to the venue
link |
and then I usually sit for an hour.
link |
If I'm gonna lecture, I've been doing a lot of Q and A's
link |
and that's a little easier.
link |
But if I'm gonna lecture, I have to sit for an hour.
link |
And then I think, okay, what question am I trying
link |
I have to have that, that's the point.
link |
What mystery am I trying to unravel?
link |
It's usually associated with one of the rules in my book
link |
because technically it's a book tour,
link |
but each of those rules is an investigation into an ethic.
link |
And each of them points to a deeper sort of mystery
link |
And there's no end to the amount that can be explored.
link |
And so I have the question,
link |
my question might be something like put your house
link |
in perfect order before you criticize the world.
link |
Okay, what does that mean exactly?
link |
What does house mean?
link |
What does put mean, that active verb?
link |
What is perfect in order mean?
link |
Why before you criticize the world?
link |
What does it mean to criticize?
link |
What does it mean to criticize the world?
link |
How can you do that properly or improperly?
link |
So I start to think about how to decompose the question.
link |
And you start to think which of these decompositions
link |
are important to really dig into?
link |
Yeah, well, then they'll strike me.
link |
It's like, okay, there's something there
link |
that I've been maybe noodling around on
link |
that I would like to investigate further.
link |
Then I think, okay, how can I approach this problem?
link |
I think, well, I have this story that I know,
link |
I have this story and I have this story,
link |
but I haven't juxtaposed them before.
link |
And there's gonna be some interesting interaction
link |
in the juxtaposition.
link |
So I have the question
link |
and I kind of have a framework of interpretation.
link |
And then I have some potential narrative places I can go.
link |
And then I think, okay, I can go juggle that
link |
and see what happens.
link |
And so then what I wanna do is concentrate on that process
link |
while attending to the audience
link |
to make sure that the words are landing
link |
and then see if I can delve into it deeply enough
link |
so that a narrative emerges spontaneously with an ending.
link |
Now, I'm sure you've experienced this in podcasts, right?
link |
Maybe I'm wrong, but my experience has been
link |
if I fall into the conversation
link |
and we know about the timeframe,
link |
there'll be a natural narrative arc.
link |
And then, so you'll kind of know when the midpoint is
link |
and you'll kind of see when you're reaching a conclusion.
link |
And then if you really pay attention,
link |
you can see that's a good place to stop.
link |
And it's kind of, you come to a point
link |
and you have to be alert and patient to see that.
link |
And you have to be willing to be satisfied
link |
with where you've got to.
link |
But if you do that, and then it's like a comedian
link |
making the punchline work.
link |
It's like, I've got all these balls in the air
link |
and they're going somewhere
link |
and this is how they come together.
link |
And people love that, right?
link |
They say, oh, this and this and this and this and this.
link |
And that's an insight.
link |
And it is very much like a punchline.
link |
Well, that's interesting because your mind actually,
link |
so I'm a fan of your podcast too.
link |
And you are always driving towards that.
link |
I would say for me in a podcast conversation,
link |
there's often a kind of Alice in Wonderland
link |
type of exploration.
link |
Down the rabbit hole, man.
link |
And then you just, a new thing pops up,
link |
the more absurd, the wilder, the better.
link |
Conversations with Elon are like this.
link |
It's like, actually the more you drive towards an arc,
link |
the more uncomfortable you start to get
link |
in a fun, absurd conversation because,
link |
oh, I'm now one of the normies.
link |
No, I don't want that.
link |
I wanna be, I want the rabbit.
link |
I want the crazy because it makes it more fun.
link |
But somehow throughout it, there is wisdom
link |
that you try to grasp at such that there is a thread.
link |
Well, that's the thing, man.
link |
You're following the thread, eh?
link |
Yeah, the thread's the, well, that's right.
link |
That's what we're trying to do, that thread.
link |
That thread is the proper balance
link |
between structure and spontaneity.
link |
And it manifests itself as the instinct of meaning.
link |
And that's the logos in the dialogos.
link |
And it really is the logos.
link |
And God only knows what that means.
link |
You know, I mean, the biblical claim
link |
is that logos is the fundamental principle of reality.
link |
And I think that's true.
link |
I actually think that's true
link |
because I think that that meaning that guides you,
link |
well, here's a way of thinking about it.
link |
I've been writing about this recently.
link |
What's real matter?
link |
It's like, okay, that's one answer.
link |
What matters is real.
link |
Because that's how you act.
link |
Okay, so that's different than matter.
link |
It's like, okay, what's the most real of what matters?
link |
Why is it the most real?
link |
Try arguing it away.
link |
So pain is the fundamental reality.
link |
Well, that's rough.
link |
Doesn't that lead to nihilism and hopelessness?
link |
Yeah, doesn't it lead to a philosophy
link |
that's antithetical towards being
link |
the most fundamental reality is pain?
link |
Is there anything more fundamental than pain?
link |
If you're in pain,
link |
that's what you got.
link |
if they're more powerful than pain,
link |
maybe they're the most real things.
link |
When you think about reality, what is real?
link |
That is the most real thing.
link |
Well, it's a tough one, right?
link |
Because you have to,
link |
because if you're a scientist, a materialist,
link |
think, well, the matter is the most real.
link |
It's like, well, you don't know what the matter is.
link |
And so, and then when push comes to shove,
link |
and it will, you'll find out what's most real.
link |
I feel like this is missing,
link |
the physical reality is missing some of the things.
link |
So of course pain has a biological component
link |
and all those kinds of things,
link |
but it's missing something deep about the human condition
link |
that at least the modern science is not able to describe,
link |
but it is reaching towards that.
link |
And it's the reason, one way to describe it
link |
as you're describing is the reason it's reaching it
link |
is because underneath of science is this assumption
link |
that there's a deep.
link |
Thing to this whole thing we're trying to do.
link |
Well, you know, there's two traditions, right?
link |
In some sense, there's two logos traditions.
link |
There's the Greek rational enlightenment tradition.
link |
That's a logos tradition.
link |
And it insists that there's a logos in nature
link |
and that science is the way to approach it.
link |
And then there's a Judeo Christian logos,
link |
which is more embodied and more spiritual.
link |
And I would say the West is actually an attempt
link |
to unite those two.
link |
And it's the proper attempt to unite those two
link |
because they need to be united.
link |
And I see the union coming in your terms.
link |
You know, I talked to friends to wall, for example
link |
about the animating principle of chimpanzee sovereignty.
link |
And that's pretty close biologically.
link |
Cause that's the claim even from the biologists often
link |
the most dominant chimp has the best reproductive success.
link |
It's like, oh yeah, dominant.
link |
Hey, you mean using compulsion?
link |
Are the chimps who use compulsion the most successful?
link |
And the answer is sporadically and rarely.
link |
And for short, well, that's sporadically
link |
for short periods of time.
link |
Because they meet an unpleasant end.
link |
The subordinates over whom they exercise arbitrary control
link |
wait for a weak moment and then tear them into shreds, right?
link |
Every dictators terror and for good reason.
link |
And the wall has showed that the alpha chimps,
link |
the males who do have preferential mating access often
link |
are often and reliably the best peacemakers
link |
and the most reciprocal.
link |
And so even among chimps, the principle of sovereignty
link |
is something like iterative, iterated reciprocity.
link |
And that's a way better principle than power.
link |
And it's something like I've been thinking
link |
what's the antithesis of the spirit of power.
link |
I think it's the spirit of play.
link |
And I don't know what you think about that,
link |
but when you have a good podcast conversation,
link |
you already described it in some sense as play.
link |
It's like, there's a structure, right?
link |
Cause it's an ordered conversation,
link |
but you want there to be play in the system.
link |
And if you get that right, then it's really engaging.
link |
And then it seems to have its own narrative arc.
link |
I'm not trying to impose that even though
link |
that's another thing I don't do.
link |
I didn't come to this conversation at all thinking,
link |
here's what I want out of a conversation
link |
with Lex Friedman, like instrumentally.
link |
I thought, I'll go talk to Lex.
link |
I like his podcasts.
link |
He's doing something right.
link |
I don't know what it is.
link |
He asks interesting questions.
link |
I'll go have a conversation with him.
link |
Where's it gonna go?
link |
Embracing the spirit of play.
link |
So what you have this, when you're lecturing,
link |
you're going in front of the crowd,
link |
you thought of a question, you get on the stage.
link |
First of all, are you nervous at all?
link |
I'm very nervous when I'm sitting down,
link |
thinking through the structure initially,
link |
which is why my wife and I have been doing Q and As
link |
and that's easier on me.
link |
It's the way comedians are nervous.
link |
Like Joe Rogan just did his special this weekend.
link |
And so he now has to sit nervously like a comedian does,
link |
which is like, I have no material now.
link |
I have to start from scratch.
link |
When I was doing the lectures constantly
link |
instead of the Q and As,
link |
basically what I was doing was writing
link |
a whole book chapter every night.
link |
And now that's a bit of an exaggeration
link |
because I would return to themes that I had developed,
link |
but it's not really an exaggeration
link |
because I didn't ever just go over wrote material ever.
link |
So it's very demanding and that part's nerve wracking
link |
because I sit down, it's an hour before the show
link |
and I think, can I do this?
link |
And the answer is, well, you did it a thousand times,
link |
but that's not this time.
link |
It's like, can I come up with a question?
link |
Can I think through the structure?
link |
Can I pull off the spontaneous narrative?
link |
Can I pull it together?
link |
And the answer is, I don't know.
link |
And so then I get it together in my mind, I think,
link |
It takes effort and it's nerve wracking.
link |
But then there's the moment you go out on stage
link |
and you think, well, I know I had it, but can I do it?
link |
And then the question is,
link |
well, you're gonna find out while you do it.
link |
And so then I go out on stage and I don't talk
link |
to the audience, I talk to one person at a time.
link |
And you can talk to one person,
link |
cause you know how to do that.
link |
So I talk to a person and not too long
link |
cause I don't wanna make them too nervous
link |
and then someone else and someone else.
link |
And then I'm in contact with the audience
link |
and then I can tell if the words are landing
link |
and I listen, it's like, are they rustling around?
link |
Are they dead quiet?
link |
Cause you want dead quiet.
link |
You're, oh, I see.
link |
That's what focus sounds like.
link |
You're in it together then.
link |
Well, and I also, here's a good rule
link |
if you're learning to speak publicly,
link |
I never say a word till everyone is 100% quiet.
link |
And that's, it's a great way to start a talk
link |
because you're setting the frame,
link |
and if the frame is we'll all talk while you're talking,
link |
the message is, well, you can talk.
link |
This is a place where everybody can talk.
link |
It's like, no, it's not.
link |
This is a place where people paid to hear me talk.
link |
So I'm not gonna talk till everyone's listening.
link |
And so then you get that stillness
link |
and then you just wait
link |
cause that stillness turns into an expectation.
link |
And then it comes, turns into a kind of nervous expectations
link |
like what the hell is he doing?
link |
It's not manipulative.
link |
It's a sense of timing.
link |
It's like just when that's right,
link |
you think, okay, now it's time to start.
link |
Well, the interesting thing about that nervous expectation
link |
is from an audience perspective, we're in it together.
link |
I mean, there is into that silence,
link |
there's a togetherness to it.
link |
Of course, it's the union of everyone's attention.
link |
Yeah, and that's a great thing.
link |
I mean, you love that at a concert when everyone,
link |
it's not silence then,
link |
but when everyone's attention is unified
link |
and everyone's moving in unison,
link |
it's like we're all worshiping the same thing, right?
link |
And that would be the point of the conversation,
link |
the point of the lecture.
link |
And the worship is the direction of attention towards it.
link |
And it's union, it's communion
link |
because everyone's doing it at the same time.
link |
And so, I mean, there's not much difference
link |
between a lecture theater and a church in that regard, right?
link |
It's the same fundamental layout and structure.
link |
And they're very integrally associated with one another.
link |
One really grew out of the other,
link |
the lecture theater grew out of the church.
link |
So it's perfectly reasonable
link |
to be thinking about it in those terms.
link |
And so, and then, okay, so after the lecture,
link |
we play a piece of music that is a piece of music
link |
that I've been producing with some musicians
link |
for a couple of books I'm gonna release in the fall.
link |
Terrible books, ABC of childhood tragedy,
link |
they're called dark, dark books,
link |
dark and comical books, terrible books,
link |
heartbreaking illustrations.
link |
We've set them to music.
link |
And so we play a piece from that.
link |
And then afterwards, I usually meet about 150 people
link |
to have photographs.
link |
And so each of those is a little.
link |
Is there a little sparkle of human connection?
link |
A lot, a lot, it's very intense.
link |
10 seconds with every person you think,
link |
how can 10 seconds be intense?
link |
It's like, pay enough attention.
link |
It gets intense real quick.
link |
Does it break your heart to say goodbye so many times?
link |
It's like being in a wedding lineup,
link |
at a wedding that you wanna be at.
link |
And everybody's dressed up.
link |
And that's so weird,
link |
because I bought these expensive suits
link |
when I went on tour and it broke my heart
link |
because I spent so much money on them.
link |
I thought, God, that's completely unconscionable.
link |
I thought, no way, man, I'm in this 100%.
link |
And so I'm gonna dress with respect.
link |
And like 60% of the audience comes in
link |
two or three piece suits.
link |
They're all dressed up.
link |
Then there's this line to greet me
link |
and they're all happy to see me.
link |
That's not so hard to take.
link |
You know, although it is in a sense, right?
link |
Because normal interactions are pretty shallow.
link |
And you think, I don't want shallow interactions.
link |
It's like, yes, you do most of the time.
link |
Yeah, it's intense.
link |
It's very intense.
link |
And I don't know if you have.
link |
But you've had a taste of this, no doubt,
link |
because people recognize you.
link |
Yeah, but I also have,
link |
when a person recognizes me and they come with the love
link |
and they're often brilliant people,
link |
one of the thoughts I have to deal with,
link |
one of the dragons in my own mind is, you know,
link |
thinking that I don't deserve that kind of attention.
link |
Well, you probably don't.
link |
But maybe you could.
link |
So it's a burden in that I have to step up
link |
to be the kind of person that deserves that,
link |
not deserves that, but in part deserves
link |
that kind of attention.
link |
And that's like, holy shit.
link |
It's crucially important too,
link |
because if someone comes up to you in an airport
link |
and they know who you are and they're brave enough
link |
to admire you or who you are attempting to be
link |
and you make a mistake, they will never forget it.
link |
So it's a high stakes enterprise.
link |
And the flip side of that, especially with young people,
link |
a few words you can say can change the direction
link |
One way or another.
link |
And so I really have to watch this too in airports
link |
because I do not like airports.
link |
I do not like the creeping totalitarianism in airports.
link |
They've always bothered me.
link |
They really bother me.
link |
And I'm an unpleasant travel companion
link |
for my wife sometimes because of that.
link |
Although I think we've worked that out.
link |
Thank God, cause we're doing a lot of traveling.
link |
But most of the security guards and the border personnel,
link |
all those people, they know me.
link |
And as a general rule, they're positively predisposed to me.
link |
And so if I'm peevish or irritable,
link |
then well, that's not good.
link |
And so that's a tight rope to walk to
link |
because I do not like that creeping totalitarianism.
link |
But by the same token, if you're just one of the crowd,
link |
just, sometimes it's good just to be one of the crowd
link |
and then you're a little irritable
link |
and people can just brush that off.
link |
But if you're someone they have dared to open their heart to,
link |
cause that's what admiration is, and then you betray that,
link |
then that's a real, they'll never forget it.
link |
And then they'll tell everyone too.
link |
So it takes a lot of alertness.
link |
And so Tammy and our life has got complicated
link |
because in Toronto, for example,
link |
we can't really just go for a walk.
link |
It's always a high drama production
link |
cause always people come up and they have some
link |
heart rending story to tell.
link |
And I'm not being cynical about that.
link |
It's a hard thing to bear because people don't do that.
link |
They don't just open themselves up to you like that
link |
and share the tragedy of their life.
link |
But that's an everyday occurrence.
link |
And so when we go up to our cottage,
link |
which is out of the city, it's a relief,
link |
because as wonderful as that is,
link |
like it's a weird, I have a weird life
link |
because everywhere I go, it's very weird.
link |
It's like I'm surrounded by old friends
link |
because I walk down the street in any city now virtually
link |
and people say, hello, Dr. Peterson, so nice to see you.
link |
Or they say better things than that.
link |
Very rarely bad things.
link |
One experience in 5,000, maybe very rare,
link |
although you don't forget those either,
link |
but it's very strange.
link |
And there's an intimacy, they know you well.
link |
And because they leap into,
link |
they avoid the small talk often.
link |
They leap into familiarity.
link |
It really is like it's an old friend
link |
and it feels like that.
link |
For me personally, the experiences, the goodbye hurts
link |
because there's a sense
link |
where you're never gonna see that friend again.
link |
Yeah, that's a strange thing, eh?
link |
So to me, a lot of it just feels like goodbyes.
link |
You're right about that.
link |
And I mean, that's, I suppose, in some sense,
link |
part of the pain of opening yourself up to people
link |
because they also, Tammy has been struck particularly.
link |
She said, I really never knew what men were like.
link |
I said, well, what do you mean?
link |
She said, I cannot believe how polite the men are
link |
when they come and talk to you
link |
because it's always the same.
link |
The pattern's very similar.
link |
The person comes up, they're mostly men,
link |
not always, but mostly.
link |
And they're tentative and they're very polite,
link |
very, very polite.
link |
And they say, I hope I'm not bothering you.
link |
Do you mind, you know, do you mind that I say
link |
that they're not bothering me?
link |
And I'm doing everything I can to not be the guy
link |
who's bothered by that.
link |
It's like, who do you think you are?
link |
You're the guy that what is famous and now is above that?
link |
You don't wanna be that guy.
link |
So you wanna be grateful all the time
link |
when people open up like that.
link |
And so you gotta be alert and on point
link |
to do that properly, like right away.
link |
Because for you, it's five seconds or 10 seconds
link |
or 20 seconds, whatever it is.
link |
But for them, they've opened up.
link |
And so you can really nail them if you're foolish.
link |
After the 150 people, how do you come down from that?
link |
How do you find yourself again?
link |
Well, that was when I got caught in Twitter traps,
link |
cause I'm so burnt out by then from the talk
link |
and the audience interactions and the whole day.
link |
Cause it's a new city, it's a new hotel,
link |
it's a new 5,000 people, it's a new book chapter,
link |
it's a whole new horizon of ideas.
link |
And it's off to another city the next day.
link |
I'm so burnt out by then that I'm not as good
link |
at controlling my impulses as I might be.
link |
And Twitter was a real catastrophe for that
link |
cause it would hook me and then I couldn't,
link |
like I used to, when I was working on my book a lot,
link |
I used to call Tammy and say, look,
link |
you have to come and get me, I can't stop.
link |
I can't stop, I got tired and then I kind of,
link |
cause it's part of a kind of hypomanic focus.
link |
I couldn't quit, it's like, oh no, I'm still writing.
link |
I need to get away from this, but I couldn't stop.
link |
And so it's better to read something, a book.
link |
Fiction, nonfiction.
link |
Fiction, Stephen King.
link |
I was reading a lot of Stephen King
link |
when I was on tour last time, that was good.
link |
I like Stephen King a lot.
link |
It's a great narrative.
link |
Great, and great characterization, you know?
link |
So, and there's a familiarity about Stephen King's
link |
writing too that it's, he writes about people you know.
link |
And so I really found that a relief.
link |
And so that was useful.
link |
And that in order to tolerate this, let's say,
link |
or to be able to sustain it,
link |
well, let's take a lot of negotiation
link |
on the part of Tammy and I,
link |
because she's dragged into this and, you know,
link |
her life is part of this, whatever this is.
link |
And she's had to find her way and has, for example,
link |
now she has a different hotel room than me when we travel.
link |
And she found that she didn't want to be on the tour
link |
this spring, and I was ill again for part of it.
link |
And that made it complicated,
link |
but she went away back home and she came back
link |
and she said, and she was nervous about,
link |
she said, I think I need my own room.
link |
And part of me was not happy with that.
link |
It's like, what do you mean you need your,
link |
like, are we not married anymore?
link |
It's like, you need your own room?
link |
And she said, well, you know, I can't,
link |
she has to do exercises because she was really sick
link |
and she has to keep herself in shape.
link |
And she has to have some time to do that.
link |
She does a lot of prayer and meditation
link |
and she needs the time.
link |
And she has her own podcast, which is going quite well.
link |
And she needs the time and I trust her.
link |
And she said, well, I need this in order to continue.
link |
And I thought, well, okay,
link |
if you need this in order to continue, yes.
link |
Because she went away and didn't say, well,
link |
I don't want to be on the tour.
link |
I don't want to do this anymore.
link |
She went away and prayed, let's say,
link |
how can I continue to do this?
link |
And that was the answer.
link |
And so she has her own hotel room.
link |
And that was a really good decision on her part.
link |
And she's very good and getting better all the time
link |
at figuring out what has to happen for her
link |
to make this sustainable.
link |
And all that's been is a plus
link |
because I don't want to travel without her.
link |
And I don't want her life to be miserable.
link |
And I want her to be fully on board.
link |
And so she has to be properly selfish.
link |
Like everyone does in a relationship.
link |
And you have to, not just that,
link |
this is a weird thing that you're doing.
link |
And you have to, both you and her have to figure out
link |
how to manage this very intense intellectual,
link |
Well, there's another element to it too
link |
that I didn't tell you about.
link |
So that was a typical day, but it's missing a big component
link |
because usually we also have a dinner
link |
with like 30 cultural representatives, I suppose,
link |
10 to 30 from each country.
link |
Cause I have a network of people who have networks
link |
who are setting me up with key decision makers
link |
And so then we have like an hour and a half of that.
link |
Now, sometimes that's on a day when I don't have a talk,
link |
but sometimes the talks are back to back.
link |
And so she also has to manage that and to be gracious.
link |
And then people are showing us exciting things
link |
and tours in the cities and which is all,
link |
like it's a surf fight of wonderful.
link |
But it's still, yeah, you have to be there for it.
link |
You have to be present for it mentally.
link |
As a curious mind, as an intellectual mind.
link |
How do you get to sleep?
link |
Fortunately, that is almost never a problem.
link |
Even when I was unbelievably ill for about three years.
link |
I thought about that a lot too, you know,
link |
that I didn't do a really good job of explaining that
link |
while I was ill because it appeared in some sense
link |
that the reason I was ill was because I was taking
link |
benzodiazepines, but that isn't why I was ill.
link |
And then I took them and very low dose.
link |
And I took that for a long time and it helped
link |
whatever was wrong with me.
link |
And it looks like it was an allergy
link |
or maybe multiple allergies.
link |
And then that stopped working.
link |
And so I took a little bit more for about a month
link |
and that made it way worse.
link |
And so then I cut back a lot and then,
link |
then things really got out of hand.
link |
So there was a deeper thing in the Benzo.
link |
What can you put words to?
link |
Well, I had a lot of immune, well, my daughter,
link |
as everyone knows, has a very reactive immune system.
link |
And Tammy has three immunological conditions,
link |
each of them quite serious.
link |
And I had psoriasis and peripheral uveitis,
link |
which is an autoimmune condition and alopecia areata
link |
and chronic gum disease, all of which appeared
link |
to be allergy related.
link |
And so Michaela seems to have got all of that.
link |
And so that, and that I think was at the bottom of,
link |
cause I also had this proclivity to depression
link |
that was part of my family history.
link |
But I think that was all immunological
link |
as far as I can tell.
link |
So one of the things that's happened to me,
link |
I always noticed I really couldn't breathe.
link |
Like I could breathe about one fifth
link |
as much as I sometimes could.
link |
And so I was always short of breath.
link |
And it looks like what that was perhaps was
link |
I was always on the border of an anaphylactic reaction,
link |
which is not pleasant.
link |
And that's hypersympathetic activation,
link |
no parasympathetic activation.
link |
I couldn't relax at all.
link |
That's an immunological response.
link |
Allergic response, yeah.
link |
So anyways, that was what seemed,
link |
now this, I don't like to talk about this much
link |
cause it's so bloody radical
link |
and I don't like to propagate it,
link |
but this diet seems to have stopped all of that.
link |
I don't have psoriasis, all of the patches have gone.
link |
My gum disease, which is incurable,
link |
I had multiple surgeries to deal with it,
link |
is completely gone, took three years.
link |
My right eye, which was quite cloudy,
link |
it's cleared up completely.
link |
What else has changed?
link |
Well, I lost 50 pounds and like instantly kept it off.
link |
I should mention that I too am not a deep investigator
link |
of nutritional science.
link |
I have my skepticism towards the degree
link |
to which it is currently as a science.
link |
Cause like a lot of complex systems is full of mystery
link |
and full of profiteers,
link |
the people that profit of different kinds of diets.
link |
But I should say for me personally,
link |
it does seem that I feel by far the best
link |
when I eat only meat.
link |
It's very interesting.
link |
And I discovered that a long time ago.
link |
How did you discover it?
link |
So by, the discovery went like this.
link |
I started listening to ultra marathon runners
link |
about 15 years ago.
link |
And they started talking about fat adapted running.
link |
So I first discovered that I don't have to run super fast
link |
And in fact, I really enjoy running at a slower pace.
link |
So that was like step one.
link |
It's like, oh, okay.
link |
If I maintain something called the math rule,
link |
which is the pretty low heart rate.
link |
If I maintain that you can actually get pretty fast
link |
while maintaining a pretty slow average speed in general.
link |
Anyway, they fuel themselves on low carb diets.
link |
So I got into that.
link |
On top of that, I also, they also fast often.
link |
So I discovered how incredible my mind feels when fasted.
link |
You know, people call it intermittent fasting, but.
link |
Well, that's an optimization of death because you're,
link |
when you fast, your body, logically and obviously,
link |
if you think about it biologically is,
link |
well, what is your body scavenge first?
link |
Well, damaged tissue.
link |
So the, and I know the literature on fasting
link |
to some degree, and it's very compelling literature.
link |
If you starve dogs down, I think it's 20% below rats too,
link |
below their optimal body weight, they live 30% longer.
link |
That's a lot, 30%, like it's like 30%, yeah, 30%.
link |
Well, there is aspect to a lot of these things
link |
that make me nervous because I always feel like
link |
there's no free lunch that I'm gonna pay for it somehow.
link |
But there's a focus that I am able to attain when I fast,
link |
especially when I eat once a day.
link |
My mind is almost like nervously focused.
link |
It's almost like an anxiety, but a positive one
link |
or one that I can channel into just like an excitement.
link |
You know, I wonder how much of that's associated with,
link |
well, imagine that that signifies lack of food,
link |
which not that hard to imagine.
link |
Well, maybe you should be a lot more alert
link |
in that situation, right?
link |
Biologically speaking, because you're in hunting mode,
link |
let's say, you know, not desperate, but in hunting mode.
link |
And God only knows maybe human beings
link |
should be in hunting mode all the time.
link |
Often, but we don't know that.
link |
So I wonder if it has a stress on the system
link |
that long term causes the system to get sick.
link |
It doesn't look like it.
link |
It seems in the case of fasting, not.
link |
And then on top of that, I discovered that
link |
the thing I enjoy, I just don't enjoy eating fat as much.
link |
So I love eating meat when you talk about low carb diet.
link |
So I just discovered through that process,
link |
if somewhat fatty meat, but just meat,
link |
I just feel a lot of the things
link |
that make me feel weird about food,
link |
like a little groggy or like full or just whatever,
link |
the aspects of food that I don't enjoy,
link |
they're not there with meat.
link |
And I'm still able to enjoy company.
link |
And when I eat once a day and eat meat,
link |
I said, at least in Texas,
link |
you could still have all the merriment of,
link |
you have dinner with friends.
link |
Now, I don't do the, you have a very serious thing
link |
that there's health benefits
link |
that you are very serious about.
link |
For me, I can still drink whiskey.
link |
I'll still do the things that add a little bit of spice
link |
Now, when you completely remove the spice,
link |
it does become more difficult.
link |
Yeah, it's more difficult socially.
link |
And Tammy seems to only be able to eat lamb,
link |
although she might be able to eat non aged beef.
link |
And that makes traveling complicated too, right?
link |
Because, well, for obvious reasons,
link |
it's like, really, that's all you can eat?
link |
Yeah, well, celeries.
link |
And maybe that's a form of craziness, but.
link |
If we can return to actually the thing
link |
you were talking about,
link |
when you were thinking about a question before the lecture.
link |
Let me ask you about thinking in general.
link |
This is something maybe that you and Jim Keller
link |
think a lot about is thinking how to think.
link |
How do you think through an idea?
link |
Well, first of all, I think, okay,
link |
that's a really good question.
link |
We tried to work that out with this essay app
link |
that my son and I have developed,
link |
because if you're gonna write,
link |
the first question is, well, what should I write about?
link |
What's the name of the app?
link |
And, well, the first question is, well, what bugs you?
link |
What's bugging you?
link |
This is such a cool thing.
link |
It's like, where is my destiny?
link |
Well, what bothers you?
link |
Well, that's where your destiny is.
link |
Your destiny is to be found in what bothers you.
link |
Why did those things bother you?
link |
There's a lot of things you could be bothered by.
link |
Like a million things, man.
link |
But some things grip you.
link |
And they might make you resentful and bitter,
link |
because they bug you so much.
link |
Like, they're your things, man.
link |
So then I look for a question
link |
that I would like the answer to,
link |
that I don't, and I would really like the answer to it,
link |
so I don't assume I already have the answer,
link |
because I would actually really like to have the answer.
link |
So if I could get a better answer, great.
link |
And so that's the first thing.
link |
And that's like a prayer.
link |
It's like, okay, here's a mystery.
link |
I would like to delve into it further.
link |
Well, so that's humility.
link |
It's like, here's a mystery,
link |
which means I don't know.
link |
I would like to delve into it further,
link |
which means I don't know enough already.
link |
And then comes the revelation.
link |
It's like, well, what's a revelation?
link |
Well, if you ask yourself a question, it's a real question.
link |
Do you get an answer or not?
link |
And the answer is, well, yeah,
link |
thoughts start to appear in your head.
link |
That's right, from somewhere.
link |
Where do they come from?
link |
Do you have a sense?
link |
Depends on what you're aiming at.
link |
Depends on the question.
link |
No, no, it does to some degree.
link |
It depends on your intent.
link |
So imagine that your intent is to make things better.
link |
Then maybe they come from the place
link |
that's designed to make things better.
link |
Maybe your intent is to make things worse.
link |
Then they come from hell.
link |
And you think, not really.
link |
It's like, you're so sure about that, are you?
link |
Is your intent conscious?
link |
Like, are you able to introspect with the intent?
link |
Conscious and habitual, right?
link |
Because as you practise something consciously,
link |
it becomes habitual.
link |
But it's conscious.
link |
It's like when I sit down before I do a lecture,
link |
I think, okay, what's the goal here?
link |
To do the best job I can.
link |
Well, people are coming here not for political issues.
link |
They're coming here because they're trying
link |
to make their lives better.
link |
Okay, so what are we doing?
link |
We're conducting a joint investigation
link |
into the nature of that which makes life better.
link |
Okay, what's my role?
link |
To do as good a job about that as possible.
link |
What state of mind do I have to be in?
link |
Am I annoyed about the theatre?
link |
Or am I clued in and thrilled that 4,000 people
link |
have showed up at substantial expense and trouble
link |
to come and listen to me talk?
link |
And if I'm not in that state of mind,
link |
I think, well, maybe I need something to eat
link |
or maybe I need to talk to someone
link |
because ingratitude is no place to start.
link |
It's like, I should be thrilled to be there, obviously.
link |
And so that orientation has to be there.
link |
And then I, is it conscious?
link |
All this is conscious.
link |
What am I serving?
link |
The highest good I can conceptualize.
link |
I have some sense, but I don't know it
link |
in the final analysis, which is why the investigation
link |
is being conducted.
link |
Me, whoever I'm communing with, and the audience.
link |
And so I try to get myself and I chase everybody away
link |
for that, it's like I have to do that by myself.
link |
Are you writing stuff down?
link |
Yes, at that point, I just make point notes.
link |
And it's usually about maybe 30 notes.
link |
But then I, on stage, I never refer to them.
link |
And I often don't even use the structure that I laid out.
link |
Kind of an interesting thing.
link |
From where do powerful phrases come from?
link |
Do you have a, do you try to encapsulate an idea
link |
into a sentence or two?
link |
Well, when I talk, and I've practiced this since,
link |
consciously, since 1985, I try to feel
link |
and see if the words are stepping stones
link |
or foundation stones, right?
link |
It's like, is this solid?
link |
Is this word solid?
link |
Is this phrase solid?
link |
Is this sentence solid?
link |
It's a real sense of fundamental foundation
link |
And I suppose people ask me if I pray.
link |
And I would say, I pray before every word.
link |
Well, when you're asking questions,
link |
like you're very clear headed and present
link |
in your ability to ask questions and inquire.
link |
So how do you do that?
link |
So first of all, I'm worried that my mind
link |
easily gets trapped when I step on a word
link |
and I know it's unstable.
link |
You kind of realize that you don't really know
link |
the definitions of many words you use.
link |
And that can be debilitating.
link |
So I kind of try to be more carefree about the words I use.
link |
Because otherwise you get trapped.
link |
You don't want to be obsessional.
link |
Like literally, my mind halfway through the sentence
link |
will think, well, what does the word sentence mean?
link |
Right, right, right.
link |
Well, you know, neurologically.
link |
And then everything else just explodes.
link |
Your big picture idea explodes
link |
and you lost yourself in the minutiae.
link |
Well, neurologically, there's a production center
link |
and an editing center.
link |
And those can be separately affected by strokes.
link |
And so often when people are writing or talking,
link |
they try to activate both at the same time.
link |
And that's, so people will try to write an essay
link |
and get every sentence right in the first draft.
link |
That's a big mistake.
link |
And so then you might say, well,
link |
how can you be careful with your words, but carefree?
link |
And the answer is orient yourself properly, right?
link |
While in the conversation we're having,
link |
you have an orientation structure.
link |
You want to be prepared.
link |
You want to be attentive.
link |
Then you want to have an interesting conversation.
link |
And you want to have the kind of interesting conversation
link |
that other people want to listen to.
link |
That will be good for them in some manner.
link |
Okay, so that's pretty good frame.
link |
And then you kind of scour your heart
link |
and you think, is that really what you want?
link |
Are you after fame or after notoriety?
link |
Are you after money?
link |
I'm not saying any of those things are necessarily bad,
link |
but they're not optimal,
link |
especially if you're not willing to admit them, right?
link |
And so they can contaminate you.
link |
So you want to be decontaminated.
link |
So you have the right trip, let's say.
link |
And so you have to put yourself,
link |
that's a meditative practice.
link |
You have to put yourself in the right receptive position
link |
with the right goal in mind.
link |
and I think you can get better and better at this,
link |
then you can trust what's going to happen.
link |
You know, so for example, before I came here,
link |
I mean, I presume you have a reason
link |
for doing the podcast with me.
link |
What's the reason?
link |
I mean, we wanted to talk for a long time.
link |
So the reason has evolved.
link |
One of the reasons is I've listened to you
link |
for quite a long time.
link |
So you've become a one way friend
link |
and I have many one way friends.
link |
Some of my best friends don't even know I exist.
link |
So I'm a big fan of podcasts and audio books.
link |
Actually, most of my friends are dead.
link |
The definition of a reader.
link |
It's a lot of dead, great dead friends.
link |
So I wanted to meet this one way friend, I suppose,
link |
and have a conversation.
link |
And then there's this kind of puzzle
link |
that I've been longing to solve.
link |
The same reason I went to Ukraine
link |
of asking this question of myself, who am I?
link |
And what was this part of the world?
link |
What is this thing that happened in the 20th century?
link |
That I lost so much of my family there
link |
and I feel so much of my family is defined by that place.
link |
Now that place includes the Soviet Union
link |
and it includes Russia and Ukraine.
link |
It includes Nazi Germany,
link |
includes these big powerful leaders
link |
and huge millions of people that were lost in the beauty,
link |
the power of the dream, but were also the torture
link |
that was forced onto them
link |
through different governmental institutions.
link |
And you are somebody that seemed from some angle
link |
to also be drawn to try to understand what was that.
link |
And not in some sort of historical sense,
link |
but in a deeply psychological human sense.
link |
What is that, will it repeat again?
link |
In what way is it repeating again?
link |
And how can we stop it?
link |
And how can we stop it?
link |
And so. That's the crucial issue.
link |
I felt I wanted to, from a very different backgrounds,
link |
pull at the thread of that curiosity.
link |
You know, I'm an engineer, you're a psychologist,
link |
both lost in that curiosity and both wear suits.
link |
And a talk with various levels of eloquence
link |
about sort of the shadows that these,
link |
that history casts on us.
link |
And so that was one.
link |
And also the psychology,
link |
I wanted to be a psychiatrist for a long time.
link |
I was fascinated by the human mind
link |
until I discovered artificial intelligence,
link |
the fact that I could program and make a robot move.
link |
And until I discovered that magic,
link |
I thought I wanted to understand the human mind
link |
by being psychiatrist, by talking to people,
link |
by to talk therapy, psychotherapy.
link |
So now you've got the best of both worlds
link |
because you get to talk to people and you get build robots.
link |
Yeah, I mean, but the dream ultimately is the robot.
link |
That I felt like by building the thing,
link |
can you start to try to understand it.
link |
I mean, we all have different skills and proclivities.
link |
So like my particular one is, has to do with,
link |
I learned by building.
link |
I think through a thing by building it.
link |
And programming is a wonderful thing
link |
because it allows you to like build a little toy example.
link |
So in the same way you can do a little thought experiment,
link |
programming allows you to create a thought experiment
link |
in action, it can move, it can live, it can,
link |
and then you can ask questions of it.
link |
So all of those, because of my interest in Freud and Young,
link |
you're also in different ways,
link |
have delved deeply into humanity, the human psyche
link |
through the perspective of those psychologists.
link |
So for all those reasons, I thought our paths were crossed.
link |
Yeah, so that's quite a frame for a discussion, right?
link |
You had all sorts of reasons, and then you think,
link |
well, are you just letting the conversation
link |
It's like, well, not exactly.
link |
You spent all this time,
link |
it's not like this came about by accident,
link |
this conversation, you spent all this time framing it.
link |
And so all of that provides the implicit substructure
link |
for the play in the conversation.
link |
And if you have that implicit, here's another way,
link |
this is very much worth knowing is,
link |
if you get the implicit structure of perception right,
link |
everything becomes a game.
link |
And not only that, a game you wanna play,
link |
and maybe in the final analysis,
link |
a game you'd wanna play forever.
link |
So that's obviously a distant beckoning ideal,
link |
but we know only games need rules, or there's no play.
link |
Is there advice you can give, now that we know the frame,
link |
to give to me, Lex, about how to do this podcast better,
link |
how to think about this world,
link |
how to be a good engineer,
link |
how to be a good human being, from what you know about me.
link |
Take your preoccupation with suffering seriously.
link |
It's a serious business, right?
link |
And that's part of that,
link |
to circle back to the beginning, let's say,
link |
that's that willingness to gaze into the abyss,
link |
which is obviously what you were doing
link |
when you went to Ukraine.
link |
It's like, it's gazing into the abyss that makes you better.
link |
The thing is, and this is maybe where Nietzsche's ideas,
link |
not as differentiated as it became,
link |
sometimes your gaze can be forcefully directed
link |
towards the abyss, and then you're traumatized.
link |
If it's involuntary and accidental, it can kill you.
link |
The more it's voluntary, the more transformative it is.
link |
And that's part of that idea about facing death and hell.
link |
It's like, can you tolerate death and hell?
link |
And the answer is, this terrible answer is,
link |
yes, to the degree that you're willing to do it voluntarily.
link |
And then you might ask, well,
link |
why should I have to subject myself to death and hell?
link |
And then the answer to that is,
link |
even the innocent must be voluntarily sacrificed
link |
to the highest good.
link |
Even the innocent must be voluntarily sacrificed to the highest good.
link |
That's such an interesting distinction.
link |
Voluntary suffering.
link |
Voluntary, yeah, yeah.
link |
Well, that's why the central Christian doctrine is,
link |
pick up your cross and follow me.
link |
And I'm speaking, not in religious terms saying that,
link |
I'm just speaking as a psychologist.
link |
It's like one of the things we've learned
link |
in the last 100 years is voluntary exposure to that
link |
which freezes and terrifies you
link |
in measured proportions is curative.
link |
So a form of, at least in part,
link |
involuntary suffering is depression.
link |
Do you have advice for people on how to find a way out?
link |
You're a man who has suffered in this way.
link |
Perhaps continue to suffer in this way.
link |
How do you find a way out?
link |
The first thing I do as a clinician,
link |
if someone comes to me and says they're depressed
link |
is ask myself a question.
link |
Well, what does this person mean by that?
link |
So I have to find out like,
link |
because maybe they're not depressed,
link |
maybe they're hyper anxious,
link |
or maybe they're obsessional.
link |
Like there's various forms of powerful negative emotion.
link |
So they need to be differentiated.
link |
But then the next question you have to ask is,
link |
well, are you depressed?
link |
Or do you have a terrible life?
link |
Or is it some combination of the two?
link |
So if you're depressed, as far as I can tell,
link |
you don't have a terrible life.
link |
You have friends, you have family,
link |
you have an intimate relationship,
link |
you have a job or a career,
link |
you're about as educated as you should be
link |
given your intelligence,
link |
use your time outside of work wisely,
link |
you're not beholden to alcohol or other temptations.
link |
You're engaged in the community in some fundamental sense,
link |
and all that's working.
link |
Now, if you have all that and you're feeling really awful,
link |
you're either ill or you're depressed.
link |
And so then sometimes there's a biochemical route
link |
to that treatment of that.
link |
My experience has been as a clinician is if you're depressed,
link |
but you have a life and you take an antidepressant,
link |
it will probably help you a lot.
link |
Now, maybe you're not depressed.
link |
Exactly, you just have a terrible life.
link |
What does that look like?
link |
You have no relationship, your family's a mess,
link |
you've got no friends, you've got no plan, you've got no job.
link |
You use your time outside of work
link |
not only badly but destructively.
link |
You have a drug or alcohol habit
link |
or some other vice, pornography addiction.
link |
You're completely unengaged in the surrounding community.
link |
You have no scaffolding whatsoever to support you
link |
in your current mode of being or you move forward.
link |
And then as a therapist, well, you do two things.
link |
Well, if it's depression per se,
link |
well, like I said, there's sometimes a biochemical route,
link |
a nutritional route, there's ways that can be addressed.
link |
It's probably physiological if you're, at least in part,
link |
if you're depressed, but you have an okay life.
link |
Sometimes it's conceptual.
link |
You can turn to dreams sometimes to help people.
link |
Cause dreams contain the seeds of the potential future.
link |
And if your person is a real good dreamer
link |
and you can analyze dreams, that can be really helpful.
link |
But that seems to be only true for more creative people.
link |
And for the people who just have a terrible life,
link |
it's like, okay, you have a terrible life.
link |
Well, let's pick a front.
link |
How about you need a friend?
link |
Like one sort of friend.
link |
Do you know how to shake hands and introduce yourself?
link |
I'll have the person show me.
link |
So let's do it for a sec.
link |
So it's like this, hi, I'm Jordan, right?
link |
And people don't know how to do that.
link |
And then they can't even get the ball rolling.
link |
For the listener, Jordan just gave me a firm handshake.
link |
Yeah, as opposed to a dead fish, you know?
link |
And there's these elementary social skills
link |
that hypothetically, if you were well cared for,
link |
you learned when you were like three
link |
and sometimes people have, I had lots of clients
link |
to whom no one ever paid any attention.
link |
And they needed like 10,000 hours of attention.
link |
And some of that was just listening
link |
because they had 10,000 hours of conversations
link |
they never had with anyone.
link |
And they were all tangled up in their head.
link |
And they had to just, one client in particular,
link |
I worked with this person for 15 years.
link |
And what she wanted from me
link |
was for me just to shut the hell up for 50 minutes.
link |
It was very hard for me.
link |
And to just tell me what had happened to her.
link |
And then what happened at the end of the conversation,
link |
then I could discuss a bit with her.
link |
And then as we progressed through the years,
link |
the amount of time that we spent in discussion
link |
increased in proportion in the sessions
link |
until by the time we stopped seeing each other,
link |
when my clinical practice collapsed,
link |
we were talking about 80% of the time.
link |
But she literally,
link |
she'd never been attended to properly ever.
link |
And so she was an uncarved block in the Taoist sense, right?
link |
She hadn't been subjected to those flaming swords
link |
that separated the wheat from the chaff.
link |
And so you can do that in therapy.
link |
If you're listening and you're depressed,
link |
I would say if you can't find a therapist,
link |
and that's getting harder and harder
link |
because it's actually become illegal to be a therapist now
link |
because you have to agree with your clients,
link |
which is a terrible thing to do with them.
link |
Just like it's terrible just to arbitrarily oppose them.
link |
You could do the self authoring program online
link |
because it helps you write an autobiography.
link |
And so if you have memories
link |
that are more than 18 months old
link |
that bother you when you think them up,
link |
part of you is locked inside that.
link |
An undeveloped part of you is still trapped in that.
link |
That's a metaphorical way of thinking about,
link |
that's why it still has emotional significance.
link |
So you can write about your past experiences,
link |
but I would say wait for at least 18 months
link |
if something bad has happened to you.
link |
Because otherwise you just hurt yourself again
link |
by encountering it.
link |
You can bring yourself up to date with an autobiography.
link |
There's an analysis of faults and virtues,
link |
that's the present authoring.
link |
And then there's a guided writing exercise
link |
that helps you make a future plan.
link |
That's young men who do that could go to college,
link |
young men who do that, 90 minutes,
link |
just the future authoring, 90 minutes,
link |
they're 50% less likely to drop out.
link |
That's all it takes.
link |
So sometimes depression is this heavy cloud
link |
that makes it hard to even make a single step towards it.
link |
Or you said isolate, make a friend.
link |
Oh man, sometimes the first step is extremely difficult.
link |
Oh my God, sometimes it's way worse than that.
link |
Like I had clients who were so depressed
link |
they literally couldn't get out of bed.
link |
So what's their first step?
link |
It's like, can you sit up once today?
link |
Can you prop yourself up on your elbows once today?
link |
Like you just, you scale back the dragon
link |
till you find one that's conquerable
link |
that moves you forward.
link |
There's a rubric for life.
link |
Scale back the dragons till you find one conquerable
link |
and it'll give you a little bit of goal.
link |
Commensurate with the struggle.
link |
But the plus side of that,
link |
cause that's, you think that God, that's depressing.
link |
You mean I have to start by sitting up?
link |
Well you do if you can't sit up.
link |
But the plus side of that is
link |
it's the Pareto distribution issue
link |
is that aggregates exponentially increase
link |
and failures do too by the way.
link |
But aggregates exponentially increase.
link |
So once you start the ball rolling
link |
it can get zipping along pretty good.
link |
This person that I talked about
link |
was incapable of sitting with me in a cafe
link |
when we first met just talking
link |
even though I was her therapist.
link |
But by the end she was doing standup comedy.
link |
So, you know, it took years,
link |
but still most people won't do standup comedy.
link |
That's quite the bloody achievement.
link |
She would read her poetry on stage too.
link |
So for someone who was petrified into paralysis
link |
by social anxiety and who had to start very small,
link |
it was a hell of an accomplishment.
link |
Yeah, it all starts with one step.
link |
Do you have advice for young people in high school?
link |
You've given, a lot of people look up to you
link |
for advice, for strength,
link |
for strength to search for themselves, to find themselves.
link |
Take on some responsibility.
link |
Do something for other people.
link |
You're doing something for yourself while you're doing that
link |
even if you don't know it, for sure.
link |
Cause you're a community across time.
link |
Find something to serve.
link |
Someone to help, a job to, find a job,
link |
do your best with the customers.
link |
Don't be above your job.
link |
You're gonna get an entry level job when you're a kid
link |
or what else would you want?
link |
You wanna be the boss?
link |
You don't know anything.
link |
You could be the boss of your job.
link |
You know, if you're working in a grocery store
link |
or you're working in a convenience store,
link |
assuming you're not working for terrified tyrants,
link |
you can be nice to the customers.
link |
You can develop your social skills.
link |
You can learn how to handle boss employee relationship.
link |
You can be there 15 minutes early and leave 15 minutes late.
link |
Like you can learn in an entry level job, man.
link |
And I'll tell you, if you take an entry level job
link |
and you learn and it's a reasonably decent place,
link |
you will not be in an entry level job for long
link |
because everyone who's competent
link |
is desperate for competent people.
link |
And if you go and show yourself as competent,
link |
there'll be a trial period.
link |
But if you go show yourself as competent,
link |
all sorts of doors you didn't even know were there
link |
will start opening like mad.
link |
So you strive for competence, for craftsmanship.
link |
Yeah, yeah, yeah, for discipline, you know, I mean,
link |
I said in one of the chapters,
link |
my books is focused on putting your house in order.
link |
It's like, well, how do you start?
link |
You know, it actually took me quite a long time in my life
link |
before I made my bed regularly in the morning.
link |
Most of my life was pretty good order,
link |
but that was one thing I didn't have in order.
link |
My clothes in my closet as well, all that's in order.
link |
Not all of it, I'm cleaning out some drawers right now,
link |
but look around and see what bugs you in your room.
link |
It's like, okay, I'm in my room.
link |
Do I like this room?
link |
Well, the paint's peeling there and it's dusty there
link |
and the carpet's dirty and that corner's kind of ugly
link |
and the light there isn't very good.
link |
And my clothes closet's a mess,
link |
so I don't even like to open it.
link |
Okay, that's a lot of problems.
link |
That's a lot of opportunity.
link |
Pick something and fix it.
link |
Something that bugs you.
link |
Yeah, but not too much.
link |
So the rule is pick something you know would make,
link |
pick a problem, pick a solution to it
link |
that you know would help, that you could do,
link |
that you would do.
link |
So you have to negotiate with yourself.
link |
It's like, well, I won't clean up this room.
link |
I've been in here for 10 years and I've never cleaned it up.
link |
It's like, well, obviously that's too big a dragon for you.
link |
Would you clean one drawer?
link |
And so imagine now you wanna be happy
link |
when you open that drawer and you think,
link |
well, that's stupid.
link |
Maybe it's your sock drawer,
link |
which I cleaned up in my room the other day.
link |
By the way, you're gonna open that every morning.
link |
That's like 30 seconds of your life every day.
link |
Okay, so that's three minutes a week.
link |
That's 12 minutes a month.
link |
That's two hours a year.
link |
So maybe your life is made out of,
link |
you've got 16 hours a day.
link |
Let's figure this out.
link |
Five, 12 in an hour, 12 in an hour, 144 in 12 hours.
link |
Yeah, let's say 200, 205 minute chunks.
link |
Ladies and gentlemen, Jordan Peterson did just some math
link |
how many five minute chunks there are in a day.
link |
And I'm pretty sure it's pretty accurate.
link |
It's approximately right.
link |
So you got 205 minute chunks and they repeat.
link |
A lot of them repeat.
link |
So if you get every one of those right,
link |
they're trivial, right, who cares
link |
what my sock drawer looks like.
link |
It's like, fair enough, man, but that's your life.
link |
The things you repeat every day, the mundane things.
link |
Think I could get all those mundane things right.
link |
That's the game rules.
link |
It's like now all the mundane is in place.
link |
Now you can play because all the mundane is in place.
link |
And this is actually true.
link |
So with children, imagine you want your children to play.
link |
Well, play is very fragile neurologically.
link |
Any competing motivation or emotion will suppress play.
link |
So everything has to be in order.
link |
Everything has to be a walled garden
link |
before the children will play.
link |
That's a good way of thinking about it.
link |
So you put everything in order and you think,
link |
oh my God, now I'm tyrannized by this order.
link |
It's like, no, you aren't, not if it's voluntary.
link |
And then the order is the precondition for the freedom.
link |
And so then all of a sudden
link |
you get all these things in order.
link |
It's like, oh, look at this.
link |
I've got some room to play here.
link |
And then maybe you're not depressed.
link |
Now it's often not that simple.
link |
You know, it's not that simple.
link |
Try putting your room in order, perfect order.
link |
I mean, it's a really powerful way
link |
to think about those five minute chunks.
link |
Just get one of them right in a day.
link |
Yeah, well, if you do that for 200 days,
link |
your life is in order.
link |
You know, I thought I did that with my clients a lot.
link |
So a lot of them would come home from work,
link |
the guys, and their wives would meet them at the door
link |
and it'd be a fight right away.
link |
You know, and it's a clash there
link |
because he comes home and he's tired and hungry.
link |
He's worked all day and he's hoping that, you know,
link |
he gets welcomed when he comes back to the home,
link |
but then the wife is at home
link |
and she's been with the kids all day
link |
and she's tired and hungry and she's hoping
link |
that when he comes home, he'll show her some appreciation
link |
for what's happened today.
link |
And then they clash and then they both have problems
link |
to discuss because they've had their troubles
link |
And so then every time they get together,
link |
they're not like it's a bit of a fight for 20 minutes
link |
and then the whole evening is screwed.
link |
And so then you think, okay, here's the deal.
link |
It's knock and the door will open.
link |
Okay, you get to pick what happens when you come home,
link |
but you have to figure out what it is.
link |
So now this is the deal.
link |
You treat yourself properly.
link |
You imagine coming home
link |
and it goes the way you want and need it to go.
link |
Okay, what does that look like?
link |
You get to have it, but you have to know what it is.
link |
What does it look like?
link |
And you think, okay, I want to come home.
link |
I want to be happy about coming home.
link |
I come home, I open the door.
link |
I say, hello, honey, I'm home.
link |
My wife says, hi, it's so nice to hear your voice.
link |
She comes up, she says, hi, dear.
link |
She gives you a hug.
link |
She says, how was your day?
link |
And you say, well, we'll sit and talk about that.
link |
Well, we'll sit and talk about that.
link |
Do you need something to eat?
link |
Probably, let's go sit and talk about our day.
link |
It's like, that sounds pretty good.
link |
Okay, that sounds pretty good.
link |
Might not be perfect,
link |
but sounds a hell of a lot better
link |
than what we're doing now.
link |
So how about we go talk to,
link |
we'll go talk to your wife and say,
link |
okay, this is what's happening when I come home.
link |
I would like it to be better.
link |
What would you like to have happened
link |
if you could have what you wanted?
link |
And so she sits down and she thinks,
link |
okay, if he comes home, what do I want to have happen?
link |
And then now you got two visions and you say,
link |
well, what would you like?
link |
And you listen and she says, what would you like?
link |
And you tell her, and then you think,
link |
okay, now how can we bring these visions together?
link |
So not only do we both get what we want,
link |
but because we've brought them together,
link |
we even get more than we want.
link |
Well, who wouldn't agree to that
link |
unless they were aiming down.
link |
And that's so exciting.
link |
It's not a compromise.
link |
It's a union of ideals that even makes a better ideal.
link |
And then you get to come home.
link |
And then there's another rule that goes along with that,
link |
which is, please, dear, have the grace
link |
to allow me to do this stupidly and badly
link |
while I learn at least 20 times.
link |
And I'll give you the same leeway,
link |
and then we'll practice stupidly for 20 times
link |
and we'll talk about it.
link |
And then maybe we'll get it right
link |
for the next 10,000 times, right?
link |
And you can do that with your whole life.
link |
And you can do that with your kids
link |
and you can do that with your family.
link |
Like it's not easy, but you can do it.
link |
It's a lot easier than the alternative.
link |
Let me ask for some dating advice from Jordan Peterson.
link |
How do you find on that topic the love of your life?
link |
That's a good question.
link |
I was asked that multiple times on my tour,
link |
three times in a row, in fact,
link |
because we ask people to use this Slido gadget.
link |
That's a popular question?
link |
It always came up to the top.
link |
And I got asked that three times in a row
link |
and I didn't have a good answer.
link |
And then I thought, why don't I have a good answer?
link |
I thought, oh, I know why.
link |
Cause that's a stupid question.
link |
Because it's putting the cart before the horse.
link |
Here's the right question.
link |
How do I make myself into the perfect date?
link |
You answer that question
link |
and you will not have any problem
link |
answering the previous question.
link |
It's like, what do I want in a partner?
link |
If I offered everything I could to a partner
link |
Ask that question.
link |
Just ask yourself, okay.
link |
I have to be the person that women would want.
link |
Okay, what do they want?
link |
That's not a bad start.
link |
Reasonably good physical shape.
link |
So healthy, productive,
link |
willing to delay gratification.
link |
So you dance with a woman.
link |
It's like, what's she doing?
link |
What are you two doing?
link |
Well, it's a pattern.
link |
There's patterns happening around you.
link |
That's the music, patterns, patterns of being.
link |
Now, can you align yourself
link |
with the patterns of being gracefully?
link |
That's what she's checking out.
link |
And then can you do that with her?
link |
And then can you do that in a playful
link |
and attentive manner and keep your bloody hands
link |
to yourself for at least a minute?
link |
And so can you dance in a playful manner?
link |
It's like, you can go through this in your imagination
link |
and you know, you'll know, you know.
link |
And then you think, well, how far am I from those things?
link |
And the answer is usually, man,
link |
it's pretty horrible abyss separating you from that ideal.
link |
But the harder you work on offering other people
link |
what they need and want,
link |
the more people will line up to play with you.
link |
And so it's the wrong question.
link |
It's like, how can I be the best partner possible?
link |
And then you think, well, if I do that,
link |
people will just take advantage of me.
link |
And that's the non naive objection, right?
link |
Because the naive person is saying, well, I'll be good
link |
and everyone will treat me right.
link |
It's like the cynic says, no, I'll be good
link |
and someone will take me out.
link |
And then you think, well,
link |
what do you do about that objection?
link |
And the answer is, well, you factor that in.
link |
And that's why you're supposed to be, what is it?
link |
As soft as a dove and as wise as a serpent.
link |
It's like, I know you're full of snakes.
link |
Maybe I know it more than you do, but we'll play anyways.
link |
And that's the risk anyway.
link |
That's right, voluntarily, right?
link |
It's like, and what's so cool about that
link |
is that even though the person you're dealing with
link |
is full of snakes, if you offer your hand in trust
link |
and it's real, you will evoke the best in them.
link |
And that's true even, I've dealt with people
link |
who are pretty damn criminal and pretty psychopathic
link |
and sometimes dangerously so.
link |
And you tread very lightly
link |
when you're dealing with someone like that,
link |
especially if they're intoxicated.
link |
And even then your best bet is that alert trust.
link |
It's the only, it's the fact that the only thing I know
link |
that I had one client who was a paranoid,
link |
he was paranoid psychopath.
link |
That's a bad combination.
link |
He was a bad guy, man.
link |
He had like four restraining orders on him
link |
and restraining orders don't work on the sort of people
link |
that you put restraining orders on.
link |
And he used to be harassed now and then by a bureaucrat
link |
in a bank with delusions of power.
link |
And he would say to them, he used to kind of act this out
link |
to me when I was talking to him.
link |
He'd say, I'm going to be your worst nightmare.
link |
And he meant it and he would do it.
link |
He had this obsessional psychopathic vengeance
link |
that was just like right there, paranoid to the hilt
link |
and paranoid people are hyper acute.
link |
So they're watching you for any sign of deceit
link |
or manipulation and they're really good at it.
link |
Cause like they're 100%, that's what paranoia is.
link |
It's 100% focus on that.
link |
And even under those circumstances,
link |
if you step carefully enough, you can,
link |
maybe you can avoid the ax.
link |
That's a good thing to know if you ever meet someone
link |
I believe in that, that being fragile, nevertheless,
link |
taking that leap of trust towards another person,
link |
even when they're dangerous,
link |
especially when they're dangerous.
link |
If you care, if there's something there in those hills
link |
you want to find, then that's probably the only way
link |
you're going to find is taking that risk.
link |
I have to ask you about Gulag Archipelago by Solzhenitsyn.
link |
Let's speak to this very point.
link |
There's so many layers to this book.
link |
We could talk about it forever.
link |
I'm sure in many ways we are talking about it forever.
link |
But there is sort of one of the themes captured
link |
in the few ways that was described to the book
link |
is that line between good and evil
link |
that runs through every human being.
link |
As he writes, the line dividing good and evil
link |
cuts through the heart of every human being.
link |
During the life of any heart,
link |
this line keeps changing place.
link |
Sometimes it is squeezed one way to exuberant evil,
link |
and sometimes it shifts to allow enough space
link |
for good to flourish.
link |
One and the same human being is, at various ages,
link |
under various circumstances,
link |
a totally different human being.
link |
At times he's close to being a devil,
link |
at times the sainthood.
link |
But his name doesn't change,
link |
and to that name we ascribe the whole lot, good and evil.
link |
What do you think about this line?
link |
What do you think about this thing
link |
where we talked about if you give somebody a chance,
link |
you actually bring out the best in them?
link |
What do you think about this other aspect
link |
that throughout time that line shifts inside each person
link |
and you get to define that shift?
link |
What do you think about this line?
link |
Are we all capable of evil?
link |
Well, you know, the cosmic drama,
link |
that's Satan versus Christ.
link |
It's like, well, who's that about?
link |
If it's not about you?
link |
I'm speaking just as a psychologist
link |
or as a literary critic.
link |
Those are characters, at least they're that.
link |
Well, are they human characters?
link |
Well, are they archetypal human characters?
link |
What does that mean cosmically and ontologically?
link |
Like, is the world a story?
link |
But the way stories are often told
link |
is the characters embody a stable.
link |
Those are unsophisticated, not great literature though.
link |
It's very rare in great literature.
link |
What you have in great literature generally
link |
is the internal drama, right?
link |
And as the literature becomes more pop, I would say,
link |
the characters are more unitary.
link |
So there's a real bad guy and he's all bad
link |
and there's a real good guy and he's all good.
link |
And that's not as interesting.
link |
It's not as sophisticated.
link |
When you reach Dostoevskian heights in literary representation
link |
or Shakespearean heights, you can identify with the villain.
link |
And that's when literature really reaches its pinnacle
link |
And also the characters change throughout.
link |
They shift throughout.
link |
They're unpredictable throughout.
link |
Taking the speaking of Russian more seriously recently.
link |
And I've gotten to talk to translators of Dostoevsk and Tolstoy
link |
and Cherkov and those kinds of folks.
link |
And you get the, one of the mistakes that translators made
link |
with Dostoevsky for the longest time
link |
is they would, quote unquote, fix the chaotic mess
link |
that is Dostoevsky because there was a sense
link |
like he was too rushed in his writing.
link |
It seemed like there was tangents
link |
that had nothing to do with anything.
link |
The characters were unpredictable and not inconsistent.
link |
There's parts of phrases that seem to be incomplete,
link |
that kind of stuff.
link |
And what they realize that is, that's not,
link |
that's actually crafted that way.
link |
It's not, it's like editing James Joyce,
link |
like Finnegan's Wake or something
link |
because it doesn't make any sense.
link |
They realize that that is the magic of it.
link |
That captures the humanity of these characters,
link |
that they are unpredictable.
link |
They change throughout time.
link |
There's a bunch of contradictions.
link |
On which point I gotta ask, is there a case to be made
link |
that Brothers Karamazov is the greatest book I've ever written?
link |
Yeah, there is a case to be made for that.
link |
I don't know, is it better than Crime and Punishment?
link |
Why do you, I'm not arguing with it.
link |
Why do you think that?
link |
Well, every book is a person.
link |
Some of my best friends are inside that book.
link |
Yeah, it's an amazing book.
link |
I mean, there's no doubt about it.
link |
I think it's, some books are defined
link |
by your personal relationship with them.
link |
That one was definitive, and I almost graduated to that one
link |
because for the longest time,
link |
The Idiot was my favorite book of all,
link |
because I identified with the ideas
link |
represented by Prince Mishkin.
link |
I also identified.
link |
Ah, that's interesting.
link |
To Prince Mishkin as a human being.
link |
The fool, yeah, because the world kind of,
link |
my whole life still kind of sees me,
link |
saw me in my perception.
link |
My narrow perception is kind of the fool.
link |
And I, different from the interpretation
link |
that a lot of people take of this book,
link |
I see him as a kind of hero to be.
link |
To be a naive, quote unquote, fool,
link |
but really just a naive optimist,
link |
and naive in the best possible way.
link |
I do believe that.
link |
Yeah, childlike is a better.
link |
So naive is usually seen as.
link |
That's childish, naive.
link |
Yeah, but childlike.
link |
That's why no one enters the kingdom of heaven
link |
unless they become like a child.
link |
That's Prince Mishkin.
link |
Dostoevsky knew that.
link |
So that's why he liked The Idiot.
link |
That's so interesting.
link |
See, I think I like Crime and Punishment
link |
because while you identified with Mishkin,
link |
I think I identified more with Raskolnikov
link |
because I was tempted by a Luciferian intellect,
link |
you know, in a manner very similar
link |
to the manner he was tempted.
link |
But I mean, I think you can make a case
link |
that the Brothers Karamazov is Dostoevsky's
link |
crowning achievement.
link |
And that's something, man.
link |
He ruined literature for me.
link |
Because everything else just felt insipid afterwards.
link |
I found some books that in my experience
link |
hit that pinnacle.
link |
The Master and Margarita.
link |
That's a deadly book.
link |
I've read that I think four times,
link |
and I still, there's still, it's unbelievably deep.
link |
There's a Nikos Kazantzakis, a Greek writer.
link |
Some of his books are,
link |
his writing is amazing as well.
link |
Did you ever connect with the literary,
link |
like existentialist Camus or people like Hermann Hesse
link |
Did you ever connect with those?
link |
To the same degree?
link |
Yeah, to the same.
link |
Enough to be an influence.
link |
You know, you have to be deaf in some fundamental sense
link |
not to encounters a great dead friend and fail to learn.
link |
No, and I mean, I tried to separate the wheat
link |
from the chaff when I read.
link |
You know, and I read all the great clinicians,
link |
all of them, perhaps not.
link |
Those who are foremost in the pantheon.
link |
And I tried to pull out what I could,
link |
and that was a lot.
link |
I learned a lot from Freud.
link |
I learned a lot from Rogers.
link |
And I learned a lot from, well,
link |
from Dostoevsky and Nietzsche.
link |
I'm gonna do a course on Dostoevsky and Nietzsche
link |
for this Peterson Academy.
link |
This is coming up in January.
link |
Oh, that'll be them together.
link |
I'm really looking forward to it.
link |
You're weaving, I mean.
link |
I hadn't thought about doing them together.
link |
That's a good idea.
link |
That'd be a good idea.
link |
Well, there's an interesting.
link |
I'm gonna steal that idea.
link |
You often weave them together really masterfully
link |
because there is religious in the broad sense
link |
of that word, themes throughout the writing.
link |
Throughout the writing of both.
link |
Yeah, well, there's uncanny parallelisms
link |
in their writing and their lives.
link |
So, and Dostoevsky's deeper than Nietzsche,
link |
but that's because he was a writer of fiction.
link |
Nietzsche is almost a character in a Dostoevsky book.
link |
He is definitely that.
link |
He is definitely that, yes.
link |
And apparently Nietzsche knew more about Dostoevsky
link |
than people had thought.
link |
There's been some recent scholarship on that grounds.
link |
Dostoevsky didn't know anything about Nietzsche
link |
I could be wrong about that.
link |
But the thing that Dostoevsky had over Nietzsche
link |
is Nietzsche had to make things propositional
link |
in some real sense, cause he was a philosopher.
link |
And it's hard to propositionalize things
link |
that are outside your ken, but you can characterize them.
link |
And so in the Brothers Karamazov,
link |
Ivan is a more developed character than Eleosha.
link |
In the explicit sense, he can make better arguments.
link |
But Eleosha wins, like Mishkin, because he's the better man.
link |
And Dostoevsky can show that in the actions.
link |
He can't render it entirely propositional,
link |
but that's probably because what's good
link |
can't be rendered entirely propositional.
link |
And so Dostoevsky had that edge over Nietzsche.
link |
He said, well, Ivan is this brilliant rationalist,
link |
atheist, materialist, and puts forward an argument
link |
on that front that's still unparalleled
link |
as far as I'm concerned.
link |
And overwhelms Eleosha, who cannot respond
link |
but Eleosha's still the better man.
link |
So, which is very interesting, you know, that.
link |
You know, the funny thing about those two characters
link |
is you, Jordan Peterson, seem to be somebody
link |
that at least in part embodies both.
link |
Because you are one of the intellectuals of our time,
link |
rigorous in thought, but also are able
link |
to have that kind of, what would you describe?
link |
If you remove the religiosity of Eleosha,
link |
there's a, what's a good word?
link |
Love towards the world.
link |
Spirit of encouragement.
link |
Yeah, well, it's, you know, one of the things
link |
I did learn, perhaps, from looking into the abyss
link |
to the degree that I have had to, or was willing to,
link |
was that at some level you have to make
link |
a fundamental statement of faith.
link |
When God creates the world, after each day,
link |
He says, He saw that it was good.
link |
You think, well, is it good?
link |
It's like, well, there's a tough question.
link |
I mean, you know, do you want to bring a child
link |
into a world such as this, which is a fundamental question
link |
of whether or not it's good.
link |
It's an act of faith to declare that it's good
link |
because the evidence is ambivalent.
link |
And so then you think, okay, well,
link |
am I gonna act as if it's good?
link |
And what would happen if I did?
link |
And maybe the answer to that is, I think this is the answer.
link |
The more you act out the proposition that it's good,
link |
the better it gets.
link |
Dostoevsky said, this is something else.
link |
Every man is not only responsible for everything he does,
link |
but for everything everyone else does.
link |
It's like, what is that profound, or are you just insane?
link |
Then you think, is what you receive back proportionate
link |
to what you deliver?
link |
And the answer to that might be yes.
link |
That's a terrifying idea, man.
link |
And it's certainly, you can see that it's true in some sense
link |
because people certainly respond to you in kind
link |
with how you treat them.
link |
That's certainly the case.
link |
I mean, it's terrifying and it's exciting.
link |
But that's an adventure, isn't it?
link |
You, yeah, you create the world by the way you live it.
link |
The world you experience is defined by the way
link |
you live that world.
link |
And that's really interesting.
link |
And then taken as a collective,
link |
we create the world together in that way.
link |
What do you think is the meaning of it all?
link |
What's the meaning of life, Jordan Peterson?
link |
You've, we've defined it many, many times
link |
throughout this conversation.
link |
It's the adventure along the route, man.
link |
And I would say, where's that adventure to be found?
link |
The highest value is love and truth is its handmaiden.
link |
That's a statement of faith, right?
link |
Because you can't tell.
link |
You have to act it out to see if it's true.
link |
If it's true. Yeah.
link |
And so you can't even find out without,
link |
and that's so peculiar.
link |
You have to make the commitment a priori.
link |
Yeah. It's like a marriage.
link |
It's the same thing.
link |
It's like, well, is this the person for me?
link |
Oh, that's the wrong question.
link |
How do I find out if this is the person for me?
link |
By binding myself to them.
link |
Well, maybe the same thing is true of life, right?
link |
You bind yourself to it.
link |
And the tighter you bind yourself to it,
link |
the more you find out what it is.
link |
And that's like a radical embrace.
link |
And it's a really radical embrace.
link |
That's the crucifix symbol.
link |
And more than that, because like I said,
link |
the full passion story isn't death.
link |
It isn't even unjust death.
link |
It isn't even unjust death
link |
and the crucifixion of the innocent,
link |
which is really getting pretty bad.
link |
It's unjust, torturous, innocent death,
link |
attendant upon betrayal and tyranny, followed by hell.
link |
Well, that's a hell of a thing to radically embrace.
link |
It's like, bring it on.
link |
I think a lot of people put truth as the highest ideal
link |
and think they can get to that ideal
link |
while living in a place of cynicism
link |
and ultimately escape from life
link |
and hiding from life, afraid of life.
link |
And it's beautifully put that love
link |
is the highest ideal to reach for and truth is.
link |
I thought about that for a long time, right?
link |
This hierarchy of ideal.
link |
And the thing about truth, that bitter truth,
link |
let's say, that cynical truth,
link |
is it can break the shackles of naivety.
link |
And actually a burnt cynicism
link |
is a moral improvement over a blind naivety.
link |
Even though one is in some ways positive,
link |
but only because it's protected.
link |
And the other is bitter and dark, but still better.
link |
But you're not done at that point.
link |
You're just barely started.
link |
It's like, you're cynical?
link |
You're not cynical enough.
link |
It's like, how cynical are you?
link |
Are you, I'm an Auschwitz prison guard level of cynical?
link |
Because you have to be,
link |
you have to go down pretty deep into the weeds
link |
before you find that part of you.
link |
But you can find it if you want.
link |
And then you think, well, I want to stop this.
link |
Well, that was the question you posed.
link |
In some sense, you're obsessed with,
link |
say, what happened on these mass scale catastrophes
link |
in the communist countries.
link |
It's like, well, millions of people participated.
link |
So you could have, and maybe you would have enjoyed it.
link |
So what part of that is you?
link |
And you can find it if you want.
link |
Yeah, it's all there.
link |
The prisoner, the interrogator, the Judas.
link |
And all of it is inside us.
link |
And you just have to look.
link |
And once you do, maybe eventually you can find the love.
link |
Jordan, you're an incredible human being.
link |
I'm deeply honored you would talk to me.
link |
Thank you for being a truth seeker in this world.
link |
And thank you for the love.
link |
Hey, thanks for the invitation, man.
link |
Thanks for listening to this conversation
link |
with Jordan Peterson.
link |
To support this podcast,
link |
please check out our sponsors in the description.
link |
And now let me leave you with some words
link |
from Friedrich Nietzsche.
link |
You must have chaos within you
link |
to give birth to a dancing star.
link |
Thank you for listening and hope to see you