Speaker 1: I couldn't be more excited to share something truly special
Speaker 1: with all you tea lovers out there. And even if
Speaker 1: you don't love tea, if you love refreshing, rejuvenating, refueling
Speaker 1: sodas that are good for you, listen to this Radi
Speaker 1: and I poured our hearts into creating Juny sparkling tea
Speaker 1: with adaptogens for you because we believe in nurturing your
Speaker 1: body and with every sip you'll experience calmness of mind,
Speaker 1: a refreshing vitality, and a burst of brightness to your day.
Speaker 1: Juni is infused with adaptogens that are amazing natural substances
Speaker 1: that act like superheroes for your body to help you
Speaker 1: adapt to stress and find balance in your busy life.
Speaker 1: Our super five blend of these powerful ingredients include green tea, Ushwa, ganda,
Speaker 1: acirolla cherry, and Lion's made mushroom and these may help
Speaker 1: boost your metabolism, give you a natural kick of caffeine,
Speaker 1: combat stress, pack your body with antioxidants, and stimulate brain function.
Speaker 1: Even better, has zero sugar and only five calories per can.
Speaker 1: We believe in nurturing and energizing your body while enjoying
Speaker 1: a truly delicious and refreshing drink. So visit Drinkjuni dot
Speaker 1: com today to elevate your wellness journey and use code
Speaker 1: on purpose to receive fifteen percent off your first order.
Speaker 1: That's drink ja Uni dot com and make sure you
Speaker 1: use the code on purpose.
Speaker 2: To be open to learning does mean, at least to
Speaker 2: some degree, always asking what am I doing wrong? What
Speaker 2: do I have to give up? What do I have
Speaker 2: to let go of? What do I have to transform?
Speaker 2: That could be very painful. There isn't anything better that
Speaker 2: you can do with failure, no matter how unjust, than
Speaker 2: to learn from one of the most articulate men of
Speaker 2: our time, clinical psychologists turned culture warrior, doctor Jordan Peterson.
Speaker 2: The man who prefer short term mating opportunities are psychopathic, narcissistic,
Speaker 2: acuabellion and sadistic. So one of the unintended consequences of
Speaker 2: the sexual revolution is that the freed up women have
Speaker 2: been delivered to the psychopathic men. Most people who have
Speaker 2: post traumatic stress disorder don't have it because they were hurt.
Speaker 2: They have it because they encountered someone who wanted to
Speaker 2: hurt them. People can go through all sorts of horrible
Speaker 2: things and not be traumatized. You wait till you tangle
Speaker 2: with someone who's malevolent, boy, you will not be the
Speaker 2: same person afterwards. The dark te trad males are differentially
Speaker 2: attractive to women, mostly younger and naive women.
Speaker 1: How does the woman even begin to detect or notice
Speaker 1: the difference?
Speaker 2: The Number one health and Wellness podcast, Jay said.
Speaker 1: Us, Hey, everyone, welcome back to On Purpose, the place
Speaker 1: that you come to become the happier, healthier, and more healed.
Speaker 1: Today's guest is someone that I've wanted to talk to
Speaker 1: for over six years, and I can't believe it's taken
Speaker 1: us this long to be in the same room for
Speaker 1: that much time. But we are finally here. And he
Speaker 1: said it to me a few moments ago that maybe
Speaker 1: this is the right time. And I always trust time
Speaker 1: in that sense and timing, So I'm very grateful to
Speaker 1: finally have on on Purpose. Dr Jordan B. Peterson, author, psychologist,
Speaker 1: online educator and professor at the University of Toronto. The
Speaker 1: Peterson podcast frequently tops the charts in the education category,
Speaker 1: and if you're not a subscriber, I promise you you'll
Speaker 1: want to be after this episode. Doctor Peterson has just
Speaker 1: launched Peterson Academy with hands selected professors from top universities
Speaker 1: around the world. It's received an incredible amount of acclaim already.
Speaker 1: If you haven't checked it out, makes you check it
Speaker 1: out after this episode. Jordan has written three books, Maps
Speaker 1: of Meaning and academic work presenting a new, scientifically grounded
Speaker 1: theory of religious and political belief, and the best selling
Speaker 1: Twelve Rules for Life one of my favorite books, and
Speaker 1: Beyond Order, which have sold more than seven million copies.
Speaker 1: And Jordan's fourth book, We Who Wrestle with God, will
Speaker 1: be released this November. Please welcome to On Purpose, Dr
Speaker 1: Jordan B. Peterson. Jordan, it's great to honestly finally be
Speaker 1: with you. As I was saying to you, I was
Speaker 1: kindly introduced by my dear friend Lewis House to Michayla
Speaker 1: around six years ago, and that's when this conversation started.
Speaker 1: So I really appreciate you making the time and.
Speaker 2: I'm being forward to it. Yeah, and I appreciate the invitation.
Speaker 1: I feel so many people today, I'm sure you hear
Speaker 1: this a lot as well. They feel that they're surrounded
Speaker 1: by toxicity, whether it's at home, whether it's at work,
Speaker 1: whether it's online, they feel like they're in a space
Speaker 1: where they can't become more they at least from their perspective.
Speaker 2: Well, I think some of that's actually a technical problem,
Speaker 2: and I think it's an extremely serious problem in our society.
Speaker 2: So we've invented these new communication technologies which we're utilizing now.
Speaker 2: The long form discussion seem to be pretty radically on
Speaker 2: the positive side of that, I would say, but the
Speaker 2: discourse on places like Twitter, Facebook, in comments sections and
Speaker 2: so forth is pretty degenerate, and I think the reason
Speaker 2: for that is that the evolved mechanisms that we use
Speaker 2: in face to face real world discourse have been stripped
Speaker 2: away in the electronic domain. And the problem with that
Speaker 2: is twofold. The first problem is the exploitative, sadistic psychopaths
Speaker 2: have free reign because they're not held responsible for their utterances.
Speaker 2: They're anonymous. They get rewarded for the propagation of their
Speaker 2: emotionally arousing material. The algorithms will capitalize on it, and
Speaker 2: that's a very toxic combination. And then the anonymity as well,
Speaker 2: like we know perfectly well from a vast array of
Speaker 2: psychological experiences that normal people anonymized are much more likely
Speaker 2: to let the negative part of their character have free reign.
Speaker 2: And so I really see this as a technical problem
Speaker 2: is that societies and psyches are always threatened by what
Speaker 2: they call the dark tetrad personality proclivities, narcissism, machiavelianism, psychopathy,
Speaker 2: that's parasitical predatory. A parasitical predatory is a psychopath and sadism.
Speaker 2: And you have those impulses within you, and there are
Speaker 2: people who are primarily characterized by those motivations. We have
Speaker 2: evolved mechanisms for keeping that under control, but they're all
Speaker 2: dispensed within social media. And so what seems to be
Speaker 2: happening is the dark tetrad types are hijacking the political
Speaker 2: discourse on the right and the left, polarizing and dividing
Speaker 2: and capitalizing on that. And it's catastrophic socially and psychologically.
Speaker 2: But they benefit from the ensuing chaos by attracting attention
Speaker 2: to themselves in a manner that's undeserved and counterproductive. I
Speaker 2: think the danger in that is sufficient that it's civilization threatening.
Speaker 2: I mean, we can't underestimate the power of these electronically
Speaker 2: mediated communication networks. They're insanely powerful. And they amplify people
Speaker 2: to a degree that's almost unimaginable. And so the manipulators
Speaker 2: and the bad actors have disproportionate influence on our Peterson
Speaker 2: Academy website. We have a social media network, and we're
Speaker 2: trying to incorporate all the features of social media networks
Speaker 2: that have made them attractive. But our system differs from
Speaker 2: let's say Twitter. Why, Well, there's a payment barrier, and
Speaker 2: you might say, rather it was free. It's like HM
Speaker 2: free A. If it's free, you're the product. And if
Speaker 2: it's free, there's zero barrier to your exploitation. Right, So
Speaker 2: the bad actors, you could I think this is probably
Speaker 2: a rule. In a social communication system that's free, the
Speaker 2: psychopaths come to dominate because they can take it. It's
Speaker 2: not free because you're devoting your attention A and attention
Speaker 2: is valuable and the bad actors can take advantage of
Speaker 2: your attention and pay zero price. Well, if you set
Speaker 2: up a system where actors can take advantage of your
Speaker 2: attention for zero price, the psychopaths are going to dominate.
Speaker 2: So one of the things we might hypothesize, I don't
Speaker 2: know if it's true, is that there should be a
Speaker 2: price barrier to all social media interactions. If it's free,
Speaker 2: the bad actors will dominate. And then the other thing
Speaker 2: we're trying to do is to well encourage and reward
Speaker 2: positive interactions. But we're also going to take the responsibility
Speaker 2: of identifying the small number of people who will repetitively
Speaker 2: misbehave and just ask them to leave. Now, you know
Speaker 2: that raises the specter of something approximating censorship, let's say,
Speaker 2: But I don't think it's reasonable to draw a direct
Speaker 2: line between censorship and not putting up with immature psychopaths. Like,
Speaker 2: that's not the same thing. It's not opinion based. I've
Speaker 2: been attacked by the psychopathic types on the left and
Speaker 2: on the right. It's politically agnostic. And so because the
Speaker 2: psychopathic manipulator types, they'll use whatever system of ideas is
Speaker 2: at hand to further their own machinations. And I think
Speaker 2: you can distinguish the psychopaths. I mean, I use some
Speaker 2: rules online when I'm dealing with comments. If you're anonymous,
Speaker 2: you're questionable. If you're anonymous with a demonic name, you're
Speaker 2: definitely questionable. And a lot of anonymous accounts have names
Speaker 2: that are Luciferian. You know, I guess that's part of
Speaker 2: the edginess. If you use lol, lmfao, if you use
Speaker 2: derisive names, those are all indications of bad actors. Like
Speaker 2: I think you could characterize the bad actor space quite clearly.
Speaker 2: You do that with diagnostic criteria. But we have this
Speaker 2: situation now where the social media spaces are overwhelmingly tilted
Speaker 2: in a negative direction by the predatory psychopaths.
Speaker 1: Do you believe that things are as divided as they see?
Speaker 2: No, I know they're not. They're speaking with one of
Speaker 2: my friends today, Greg Hurwitz, who has been doing polling
Speaker 2: trying to identify statements of conception that Americans radically agree on,
Speaker 2: and he has a list of about fifty that eighty
Speaker 2: five percent of Americans agree on. They're very foundational things. No,
Speaker 2: I don't believe it at all. I think that they're
Speaker 2: is a fringe of the dark tet tread types who
Speaker 2: are radically stirring the pot and that the algorithms and
Speaker 2: the anonymity and the costless nature of the communication is
Speaker 2: facility enabling them. Yeah, and it's extremely dangerous.
Speaker 1: How do we not let the average mind, how do
Speaker 1: we not let ourselves become consumed by believing that is
Speaker 1: reality when that's all we're explaining that.
Speaker 2: I don't know, I don't know how you do that.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think part of that might be realizing
Speaker 2: that that is happening. You know, it'd be useful for
Speaker 2: people to familiarize themselves with the symptoms of what's called
Speaker 2: cluster B psychopathology, borderline personality disorder, narcissism, psychopathy, antisocial personality,
Speaker 2: histrionic personality, to know who those people are so and
Speaker 2: to start to become aware of that. I think that's
Speaker 2: actually harder for people on the left. And the reason
Speaker 2: for that, I believe is that agreeableness tilts people towards
Speaker 2: the radical left because agreeable people are highly empathic, and
Speaker 2: they tend to think of anyone who's suffering as a victim.
Speaker 2: The problem with that attitude is that it doesn't arm
Speaker 2: you very well with an understanding of evil, because truly
Speaker 2: malevolent people camouflage themselves as victims and they take advantage
Speaker 2: of the empathic. So and that's a big problem because
Speaker 2: the last thing you want to do if you're truly
Speaker 2: empathic is enable the sadists, right, and there's no shortage
Speaker 2: of that. We know, for example, there's a developing psychological
Speaker 2: literature that shows that the active anonymous troll types are
Speaker 2: much more likely to be characterized by dark tetre traits.
Speaker 1: Is there a way that we can affect that at
Speaker 1: more of a root level so that there's a oh.
Speaker 2: I think that one of the things that social media
Speaker 2: operators should do is they should separate the anonymous accounts
Speaker 2: from the verified accounts. So, for example, I would like
Speaker 2: to see it on Twitter, where the verified accounts you
Speaker 2: see their comments, and then there's a hidden space underneath
Speaker 2: which is anonymous accounts, and if you want to click
Speaker 2: on that and look through what the troll demons have
Speaker 2: to say, you can. It's a little trip to hell.
Speaker 2: You're not required to do it, and they're separated from
Speaker 2: the people who will stake their reputation on their words,
Speaker 2: which is what you do when you genuinely identify yourself.
Speaker 2: You know. Now, the anonymous types like to say, well,
Speaker 2: you know, anonymity is necessary because in a tyrannical state,
Speaker 2: only the anonymous can tell the truth. And my experience
Speaker 2: with that is that for every one in ten thousand
Speaker 2: brave anonymous whistleblowers, there's nine nine hundred and ninety nine
Speaker 2: sadistic macuabellions, and so you might think that you're a
Speaker 2: brave truth teller in the confines of your anonymous, demonically
Speaker 2: named account, but probably you're just a sadistic trouble maker.
Speaker 2: So I think that would be And then the other issue,
Speaker 2: it probably is cost. Like free. First of all, freeze
Speaker 2: an illusion because there is nothing that's free. At least
Speaker 2: you're paying with your attention and your time. It's not
Speaker 2: free your data and well that's the next thing. You're
Speaker 2: also paying with your identity and all your behavioral data, right,
Speaker 2: and so none of that's free, and so that's an illusion.
Speaker 2: And I think one of the things we have observed
Speaker 2: with Peterson Academy, because the social interactions there are very
Speaker 2: positive and pretty much universally so hopefully will establish that
Speaker 2: as a what would you say, a cultural convention, right,
Speaker 2: But I'm certain that a fair part of that is
Speaker 2: just that you can't produce one hundred troll accounts for
Speaker 2: nothing and do nothing but cause trouble because at minimum
Speaker 2: it's going to cost you some money. So I think
Speaker 2: we can probably dispense with maybe eighty percent of the
Speaker 2: bad actors just by not making it free. So no
Speaker 2: one knows, right. This is why I have sympathy, let's say,
Speaker 2: for people like Mark Zuckerberg and for Elon Musk sort
Speaker 2: of equally, even though they're not necessarily on the same
Speaker 2: side of the political spectrum. It's like Zuckerberg gets hauled
Speaker 2: to Congress and raked over the coals. But it isn't
Speaker 2: like as if we can assume that he knows how
Speaker 2: to solve this problem, because the psychopathic parasite problem is really,
Speaker 2: really old, and those sorts of people are very good
Speaker 2: at manipulating communication networks, and there's no reason to assume
Speaker 2: that some of them aren't equally good in the new technologies,
Speaker 2: you know, and Musk is Musk's approach is something like
Speaker 2: a radical free speech approach. But I just sat with
Speaker 2: one of my friends here actually this morning. This is
Speaker 2: Greg Hurwitz I was telling you about. And he's done
Speaker 2: some forensic investigations, first of all, indicating how much of
Speaker 2: the troll activity on social media networks is fine by
Speaker 2: international actors iran topping the list, let's say, which is,
Speaker 2: you know, unbelievably horrible, And then how much of the
Speaker 2: pathological content is generated by a very small number of
Speaker 2: bad actors. With disproportionate influence. You know twenty twenty bad
Speaker 2: actors on Twitter like seriously malevolent people who are working
Speaker 2: to cause trouble full time. They can punch way above
Speaker 2: their weight, way above their weight.
Speaker 1: Not good and good, There's no saving them. I couldn't
Speaker 1: be more excited to share something truly special with all
Speaker 1: you tea lovers out there. And even if you don't
Speaker 1: love tea, if you love refreshing, rejuvenating, refueling sodas that
Speaker 1: are good for you, listen to this RADI and I
Speaker 1: poured our hearts into creating June Sparkling Tea with adaptogens
Speaker 1: for you because we believe in nurturing your body and
Speaker 1: with every sip you'll experience calmness of mind, a refreshing vitality,
Speaker 1: and a burst of brightness to your day. Juni is
Speaker 1: infused with adaptogens that are amazing natural substances that act
Speaker 1: like superheroes for your body to help you adapt to
Speaker 1: stress and find balance in your busy life. Our super
Speaker 1: five blend of these powerful ingredients include green tea, ushwaganda, acirolla, cherry,
Speaker 1: and Lion's made mushroom and these may help boost your metabolism,
Speaker 1: give you a natural kick of caffeine, combat stress, pack
Speaker 1: your body with antioxidants, and stimulate brain function even better.
Speaker 1: Juni has zero sugar and only five calories per can.
Speaker 1: We believe in nurturing and energizing your body while enjoying
Speaker 1: a truly delicious and refreshing drink. So visit Drinkjuni dot
Speaker 1: com today to elevate your wellness journey and use code
Speaker 1: on Purpose to receive fifteen percent off your first order.
Speaker 1: That's drink Jauni dot com and make sure you use
Speaker 1: the code on Purpose. Hey everyone, it's Jay Schetty and
Speaker 1: I'm thrilled to announce my podcast tour. For the first
Speaker 1: time ever. You can see my on Purpose podcast live
Speaker 1: and in person. Join me in a city near you
Speaker 1: for meaningful, insightful conversations with surprise guests. It could be
Speaker 1: a celebrity, top wellness expert, or a CEO or business leader.
Speaker 1: We'll dive into experiences designed to inspire growth, spark learning,
Speaker 1: and build real connections. I can't wait to see you there.
Speaker 1: Tickets are on sell now. Head to Jayshetty dot me
Speaker 1: and get yours today.
Speaker 2: Well The CLUSTERB psychopathologies are notoriously resistant to psychotherapeutic intervention.
Speaker 2: I mean, first of all, this kind of goes back
Speaker 2: to the discussion of pride. They're very unlikely to come
Speaker 2: for counseling because and if they do, they're the sort
Speaker 2: of people, and I'm dead serious about this, they're likely
Speaker 2: to announce themselves as the sort of person that the
Speaker 2: therapist is very lucky to be interacting with, right that
Speaker 2: there's no doubt that this will be at least as
Speaker 2: advantageous for the therapist as for the client, and that
Speaker 2: they're the sort of special person who has graced this
Speaker 2: office with their presence. And that's not a word of exaggeration.
Speaker 2: I had some pretty pretty unpleasant child molesting psychopaths, for example,
Speaker 2: in my clinical practice, and the one that I remember
Speaker 2: most particularly was unbelievably good at putting himself forward as
Speaker 2: a pillar of the devoted, misunderstood pillar of the community.
Speaker 2: It was just his constant refrain. Absolutely unteachable and antisocial
Speaker 2: personality is notoriously resistant to psychotherapeutic intervention. It's the same
Speaker 2: with histrionic, borderline, narcissistic, unbelievably stable personality trait.
Speaker 1: What's your aim and potential target with an individual like that,
Speaker 1: like where could your practice even take.
Speaker 2: Well, what I did try when I had those people well,
Speaker 2: and that was often court mandated, and I would never
Speaker 2: I think court mandated psychotherapy is a contradiction in terms
Speaker 2: because you have to come there voluntarily for it to work.
Speaker 2: My approach with people like that was to appeal to
Speaker 2: something like their more extended self interest, which would be well,
Speaker 2: I don't know if you noticed their buddy, but you know,
Speaker 2: your constant interference with children has decimated your marriage and
Speaker 2: your family, and you've been in prison for it, and
Speaker 2: you know people are on to you, and so a
Speaker 2: wise narcissistic psychopath might tone it down a bit, but
Speaker 2: I wouldn't claim for a moment that that had any
Speaker 2: effect whatsoever. You know, the degree of cynicism that characterizes
Speaker 2: someone like that is almost, it's almost it's very difficult
Speaker 2: to develop an appreciation for evil. It's not a fun
Speaker 2: place to go, and to do it properly, you also
Speaker 2: have to start to recognize it in yourself, and that
Speaker 2: is not pleasant. And as I said, for example, the
Speaker 2: naive empathic types, they really do believe that most of
Speaker 2: the criminals are misunderstood victims. And you know what's terrible,
Speaker 2: about that is that some of the criminals are misunderstood victims.
Speaker 2: You know, there are people in prison who, under duress
Speaker 2: of various sorts, made one extremely stupid mistake and ended
Speaker 2: up seriously punished for it. Okay, so let's just put
Speaker 2: those people off the table. We can ignore them. One
Speaker 2: percent of the criminals commit sixty five percent of the crimes. Okay,
Speaker 2: So those are the people that we're looking at, recalcitrant,
Speaker 2: repeat offenders with a proclivity for violence. Okay, can you
Speaker 2: repair them? Know, the standard penelogical theory is that part
Speaker 2: of their problem is actually delayed maturation. For whatever reason,
Speaker 2: you just put them in prison till they're in their
Speaker 2: late twenties, and then they're much less likely to reoffend.
Speaker 2: Why did they learn. That's one way of thinking about it.
Speaker 2: They're less impulsive and sensation seeking as a consequence of maturity,
Speaker 2: and likely some of it is just delayed maturity, but
Speaker 2: it has very little to do with rehabilitation and a
Speaker 2: lot to do with age. You know, the male crime
Speaker 2: curve spikes at fifteen, and even among normal males, let's say,
Speaker 2: they're much more likely to misbehave as testosterone and maturation
Speaker 2: kick in and then you see a return to something
Speaker 2: approximating normal behavior, usually by the time of twenty four
Speaker 2: or twenty five, when men take on more of the
Speaker 2: mature responsibilities of life, and the criminal pattern is approximately
Speaker 2: equivalent to that, although the lag to maturity is longer.
Speaker 2: But no, it's there's no evidence that I find credible
Speaker 2: that the cluster B psychopathologies are amenable to psychotherapeutic intervention.
Speaker 2: I don't think so. And they're also generally a very, very,
Speaker 2: very very You need a lot of very to make
Speaker 2: that right, very difficult population to work with, and you
Speaker 2: do that at your peril.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think listening to you, the idea of false
Speaker 1: compassion can be used so against us, and an immature
Speaker 1: level of the development of empathy and compassion is easily
Speaker 1: taken advantage of.
Speaker 2: Well, we know this because one of the things we know,
Speaker 2: for example, is so the dark tet trad males are
Speaker 2: differentially attractive to women, but mostly younger and naive women. Okay,
Speaker 2: So why Well, the typical dark tet trad type is
Speaker 2: very confident and not anxious. Okay, So why would that
Speaker 2: be attractive to women? Because men who are competent in
Speaker 2: their domain are confident and not anxious. What the predatory
Speaker 2: psychopaths do is mimic that, and naive women can't tell
Speaker 2: the difference, and so they can be more attracted to
Speaker 2: the dark TETDRAD types, especially when they're young. And then
Speaker 2: there's the addition complication that the even more pathological dark
Speaker 2: tetrat types are very good at appealing to empathy by
Speaker 2: making claims of victimization. It's a nasty game, and the
Speaker 2: people who are good at it, they're better at it
Speaker 2: than you are at detecting it. I knew Robert hare Hey.
Speaker 2: Robert hare was the first clinical psychologist who really delved
Speaker 2: into psychopathy and non clinical psychopathy, and he recorded two
Speaker 2: hundred conversations with brutal criminal psychopaths, and he was quite
Speaker 2: an agreeable person, Robert Hare And he said invariably that
Speaker 2: while he was talking to them, they had him convinced,
Speaker 2: and it wasn't until afterwards when he was watching the
Speaker 2: videos that he could see the tricks. And that's because
Speaker 2: these people are watching you more than you're watching them,
Speaker 2: and they're seeing which tricks work on you. And that's
Speaker 2: the game of the that's the goal of the game.
Speaker 2: Like if I was doing that I'd be thinking, Okay, well,
Speaker 2: I'm going to get this guy to smile more right,
Speaker 2: I'm going to see if I can I'm going to
Speaker 2: see which lies I can get him to swallow, because
Speaker 2: then i'd be testing you, let's say, for your gullibility.
Speaker 2: And so I'd start out with a little lie and
Speaker 2: watch you, and then if you swallowed it, I'd get
Speaker 2: a good boost of superiority, which is partly what I'm after.
Speaker 2: And then i'd try, you know, another lie, and if
Speaker 2: you detected that, well, i'd move in another direction, sort
Speaker 2: of map you for your gullibility, and then i'd find
Speaker 2: out how you could be exploited, and that'd be the
Speaker 2: whole purpose of the conversation. Yeah, and then well, and
Speaker 2: then add to that the fact that I've practiced that
Speaker 2: for thirty years and that maybe I'm as smart as
Speaker 2: you are, or possibly smarter, right, I mean, it depends
Speaker 2: on the situation.
Speaker 1: But how does a woman even begin to detect or
Speaker 1: notice the difference.
Speaker 2: Well, part of the way that women have done that
Speaker 2: historically is by not going out with people they don't know, right,
Speaker 2: that aren't part of their social network, you know. And
Speaker 2: one of the things about the psychopathic predators is that
Speaker 2: they're not very good at maintaining social connections and so wow,
Speaker 2: that's huge. Yeah, oh yeah, Well like the dating apps
Speaker 2: and that sort of thing, there are there are complete
Speaker 2: open play playing ground for the psychopathic types. There's something
Speaker 2: even worse about this, actually, So the sexual revolution was
Speaker 2: predicated on the idea that we could alter female reproduction
Speaker 2: patterns so that they could act like men, basically because
Speaker 2: men are more likely to take a short term mating opportunity,
Speaker 2: and the promise of reliable birth control was that that
Speaker 2: avenue of possibility would be open to women. Okay, And
Speaker 2: you might say, well why not, because you know, sexuality
Speaker 2: is pleasurable and if you could reduce the cost, why
Speaker 2: not do it? All right, So that's what we've been
Speaker 2: experimenting with for sixty years. Okay. Well, one reason is
Speaker 2: that hormonal birth control alters female's perceptions. So women on
Speaker 2: the pill don't like masculine men as much. And what
Speaker 2: that's done to us politically and sociologically, no one knows.
Speaker 2: It's a big deal, and we don't know. But the
Speaker 2: other thing that's happened is so imagine that there are
Speaker 2: you could imagine male reproductive strategies as being on a continuum.
Speaker 2: There are men who are more inclined towards long term, committed,
Speaker 2: monogamous relationships, and there are men who are more committed
Speaker 2: to short term, hedonistic, pleasure seeking relationships. All right, So
Speaker 2: now imagine you took these men and you analyze their personalities.
Speaker 2: And you took these men and analyze their personalities. Well,
Speaker 2: that's been done. The men who prefer short term mating
Speaker 2: opportunities are psychopathic, narcissistic, machiavelian, and sadistic. Right, So, one
Speaker 2: of the unintended consequences of the sexual revolution is that
Speaker 2: the freed up women have been delivered to the psychopathic men, right,
Speaker 2: And it's the consequence of that we don't know. We
Speaker 2: don't know. We know that young people are less likely
Speaker 2: to have relationships. We know that the birth rate is plummeted.
Speaker 2: We know that people are much less likely to get married.
Speaker 2: How much of that is a consequence of the destabilization
Speaker 2: of the reproductive pattern by hormone birth controls. No one knows.
Speaker 2: It's not like it was a minor revolution, right, it
Speaker 2: was a major technological revolution. But the terrifying thing is,
Speaker 2: and women should know this is like the guys that
Speaker 2: are just out for a good time. They're not much fun,
Speaker 2: and they're a lot worse than you think. And the
Speaker 2: worst of them are so much worse than you think
Speaker 2: that if you ever got to look inside their mind,
Speaker 2: you would never recover. And I'm not saying that lightly.
Speaker 2: It's not pleasant, Like the worst of terrible people are
Speaker 2: so bad. I'm not making this up. Most people who
Speaker 2: have most traumatic stress disorder don't have it because they
Speaker 2: were hurt. They have it because they encountered someone who
Speaker 2: wanted to hurt them, right, and so it was that
Speaker 2: glimpse of that malevolence that fractured them. It wasn't People
Speaker 2: can go through all sorts of horrible things and not
Speaker 2: be traumatized. You know, a terrible illness, terrible pain, an accident.
Speaker 2: You wait till you tangle with someone who's malevolent. Boy,
Speaker 2: you will not be the same person afterwards, assuming you
Speaker 2: managed to put yourself back together at all. So this
Speaker 2: is not and it's many of those people too that
Speaker 2: have free reign online. It's not a good thing.
Speaker 1: You brought up identity, and I feel that so much
Speaker 1: of our subscription to ideas of identity are somewhat subconscious,
Speaker 1: and I'm not sure anyone's have a at least not
Speaker 1: that I know the scale of people who are thinking
Speaker 1: about their life in a logical way to say, let
Speaker 1: me think about what my identity is. I think we
Speaker 1: join community, we join groups, we leave communities, we leave groups,
Speaker 1: We sign up to this, we unsubscribe from that. We
Speaker 1: don't even recognize that we're subconsciously crafting an identity by
Speaker 1: the people we spend time with and the people we
Speaker 1: listen to. It often isn't acidly. Yeah, it isn't as
Speaker 1: a which stories. By the way, that's a good observation.
Speaker 2: I mean. One of the things I've realized in one
Speaker 2: of the themes that is developed in this new book
Speaker 2: is the notion that so when you're introduced to someone,
Speaker 2: you'll tell them a story about who you are, so
Speaker 2: you describe your identity. A story is a description of
Speaker 2: that implicit identity that you described, So you see the
Speaker 2: world through a structure of identity. That doesn't mean you
Speaker 2: know what that is. As you pointed out, when you
Speaker 2: tell a story about yourself, what you're trying to do
Speaker 2: is to approximate. You're trying to encapsulate that implicit identity
Speaker 2: into something that's communicable, and then that something that also
Speaker 2: becomes explicitly understandable to you. This is partly what dreams do.
Speaker 2: So in the dream, your implicit identity reveals itself, but
Speaker 2: not entirely coherently and not entirely verbally. If you take
Speaker 2: a dream and you interpret it, if you have the
Speaker 2: good fortune to be able to manage that and maybe
Speaker 2: some help, you're moving the information that's part of your
Speaker 2: implicit identity upward into something that's more explicitly recognized. Like
Speaker 2: what you'd hope is that what you're actually pursuing pre
Speaker 2: consciously or unconsciously is mapped very well by your self description, right,
Speaker 2: because then you're a person that has a certain degree
Speaker 2: of integrity who you think you are and who you
Speaker 2: are the same thing. That's an optimal situation, that's the
Speaker 2: pursuit of something like integrity, say in moral development, maybe
Speaker 2: in psychotherapy, in a relationship that's positive and productive. It's
Speaker 2: all moving towards that end. And it's very useful to
Speaker 2: understand that what stories do is stories are the manner
Speaker 2: in which implicit identity makes itself explicit. And so the
Speaker 2: Biblical stories, for example, are part of the process, the
Speaker 2: historical process by which the developing morality of individuals as
Speaker 2: they become more complexly civilized, reveals itself to those cultures
Speaker 2: and to the participants. It's a dynamic process, and it's
Speaker 2: much better to understand the stories that way. You know,
Speaker 2: the atheist types tend to belief in God says, belief
Speaker 2: in something like the great Genie in the sky, the
Speaker 2: sky Daddy, I think, the benevolent sky Daddy, which is
Speaker 2: the terminology that people like Richard Dawkins used. But that's
Speaker 2: a very it's a dismissive parody of the phenomena. It's
Speaker 2: not a reasonable approach because the realm of religious conceptualization
Speaker 2: is far more sophisticated than that parody would indicate. Like
Speaker 2: I mean, let's take the idea that the divine reveals
Speaker 2: itself as the call of adventure. Well, this is a
Speaker 2: serious idea to contend with. So what it implies is
Speaker 2: that there's a spirit, so to speak, a process, a
Speaker 2: dynamic that reveals itself within us, that captures what interests
Speaker 2: us and compels us forward in consequence. And that following that,
Speaker 2: so when God comes to Abraham, he makes Abraham an
Speaker 2: offer like a very explicit offer. This is the Covenant
Speaker 2: of Yahwa, and it's a very interesting offer. And I
Speaker 2: read it from a psychological perspective, even from an evolutionary
Speaker 2: biological perspective. God. This is how God is defined by
Speaker 2: the way. So God makes Abraham an offer. So Abraham
Speaker 2: comes from rich parents, and there's no reason for him
Speaker 2: to do anything. From the purely material perspective, everything that
Speaker 2: he could want is already at hand. And it actually
Speaker 2: takes Abraham seventy years to get moving right because he's
Speaker 2: an old man by modern standards. When the voice of
Speaker 2: adventure comes to him and it says something very very
Speaker 2: specific to him, it's not vague at all. It says,
Speaker 2: you need to leave the comforts of your land and
Speaker 2: home and you need to voyage out into the great unknown.
Speaker 2: So it's like a quest story. Like the Hobbits say,
Speaker 2: away you go from comfort. Well, then the first question
Speaker 2: you might ask if you had that impulse is well,
Speaker 2: why I have everything that I would need, assuming life
Speaker 2: is based on that kind of need right at hand.
Speaker 2: So what's the benefit to me of moving beyond the
Speaker 2: zone of infantile dependence and comfort. That's a question everybody
Speaker 2: faces always especially if they're provided for adequately or even
Speaker 2: excellently by their parents. What should impel you out into
Speaker 2: the world and why bother? Well, God tells Abraham something
Speaker 2: very specific. He says, if you abide by the voice
Speaker 2: of Adventure, you'll be a blessing to yourself. Okay, that's
Speaker 2: a good deal, because it's very frequently the case that
Speaker 2: people's people don't have an existence that's a blessing to them.
Speaker 2: They suffer a lot. They're anxious, they're grief stricken, they're resentful,
Speaker 2: they're angry, they're self contemptuous, they're vicious. There's all sorts
Speaker 2: of ways that their existence is not a blessing to them.
Speaker 2: So the offer that the Voice of God as Adventure
Speaker 2: makes to Abraham is that if you follow this pathway
Speaker 2: of adventure, your life will actually you'll start to experience
Speaker 2: your life as a blessing. So that's a good deal.
Speaker 2: Just that alone, if that was true, that might be
Speaker 2: good enough to motivate you right to think that's okay,
Speaker 2: that's the pathway forward to self acceptance, let's say, or
Speaker 2: something like a sophisticated self esteem. But that's not the
Speaker 2: whole offer. The second offer is you'll become known among
Speaker 2: your peers and validly. And that's very interesting because you know,
Speaker 2: you can think about people as corrupt power seekers who
Speaker 2: are clambering for status, or you can be less cynical
Speaker 2: and you could say, well, we're wired such that we appreciate,
Speaker 2: do consideration for our genuine efforts. Okay, so if my
Speaker 2: reputation is established on valid basis, that means that I'm
Speaker 2: appreciated by the people around me, but that there's a
Speaker 2: valid basis for that. That's the offer. That's part two.
Speaker 2: So you're blessing to yourself in a manner that enhances
Speaker 2: your reputation and you deserve it. That's a good deal
Speaker 2: if you could have that. Then there's another offer, which
Speaker 2: is you'll get those two things, plus you'll establish something
Speaker 2: of lasting significance. Because Abraham is the father of nations,
Speaker 2: like he's the founder of a dynasty. So not only
Speaker 2: will you have those first two things, but it'll propagate
Speaker 2: across time. You know, and it's often the case when
Speaker 2: people are looking for something meaningful that they think, well,
Speaker 2: I'd like to do something of lasting value. Right. There
Speaker 2: seems to be something intrinsically motivating about that, and so
Speaker 2: you think well, that's a good deal. And then the
Speaker 2: fourth thing is you'll do it in a way that'll
Speaker 2: be a benefit to everyone else. So there's nothing selfish
Speaker 2: or narcissistic about it. So you think about what that means.
Speaker 2: It implies that the instinct of adventure that compels you
Speaker 2: beyond your zone of comfort is allied psychologically and socially,
Speaker 2: so that if you follow it, you'll be a blessing
Speaker 2: to yourself. You'll have a reputation that's esteemed and deserved.
Speaker 2: You'll conduct yourself so that you produce things of lasting value,
Speaker 2: and it will be good for everyone else. Well, that's
Speaker 2: an excellent deal. And it speaks of a harmony between
Speaker 2: the advanced psychological motivation that pulls you forward and your
Speaker 2: emotional states plus productivity and integration into the broader social community. Well,
Speaker 2: I think that's right. I can't see how it can
Speaker 2: be otherwise, because the counter hypothesis would be the force
Speaker 2: that motivates you forward acts at cross purposes, to say,
Speaker 2: sociological stability. And I can't see how we could be
Speaker 2: genuinely social animals productively socially animals, which we are, and
Speaker 2: there be some intrinsic conflict between the force that moves
Speaker 2: us forward, and the force that brings people together, why
Speaker 2: not assume that they exist together in a kind of harmony.
Speaker 2: I mean, we're adapted to the social world anyways. That's
Speaker 2: one of the avenues that I had explored in We
Speaker 2: Who Wrestle with God. And there's more in the Abrahamic
Speaker 2: story that's quite remarkable too, because the other thing that
Speaker 2: Abraham decides to do this is so cool when you
Speaker 2: understand it, is that So imagine you know this in
Speaker 2: your own life. Ame you move towards a new destination,
Speaker 2: and that requires a kind of growth. So you might ask, well,
Speaker 2: what does that growth consist of? And in the Abrahamic story,
Speaker 2: it consists of sacrifice. So every time Abraham makes a
Speaker 2: transformation in identity, he makes a sacrifice. Well, that is
Speaker 2: what happens when you make a transformation of identity, because
Speaker 2: as you grow and mature, you have to shed those
Speaker 2: traits people, even situations, material possessions, geographic locale, whatever. You
Speaker 2: have to shed all of that if it's interfering with
Speaker 2: your progress forward. And so what you see in Abraham's
Speaker 2: life is a series of adventures, each of which are
Speaker 2: marked by a sacrifice that move him upward towards a
Speaker 2: higher and higher and more integrated form of being. Right,
Speaker 2: he's the redeemer of cities at one point, and there's
Speaker 2: nothing in that that doesn't seem accurate to me psychologically. So,
Speaker 2: and it's an exciting thing to understand because it's the
Speaker 2: Abrahamic story is the template for individual development. That's a
Speaker 2: good way of things. Abraham is the first real individual
Speaker 2: in the Western canon, and the stories very it's very
Speaker 2: psychologically astute once you understand the basic reference, once you understand,
Speaker 2: for example, that sacrifice at least in part, means dispensing
Speaker 2: with something you once valued but has now, say, become
Speaker 2: an impediment, and so well. So that's a little bit
Speaker 2: more a description of the domains of thought that I've
Speaker 2: been wandering in. No.
Speaker 1: I deeply appreciate the way you're analyzing and observing a
Speaker 1: religious text that can often be seen as a story,
Speaker 1: a lesson, a message, and actually looking at it as
Speaker 1: closely linked to human development and part of my training.
Speaker 1: I did something similar with the bugger Ghita, which is
Speaker 1: the text of the East, and it's similar. There's a
Speaker 1: conversation between the divine Krishna or God with Argin, who's
Speaker 1: an archer who has lost all self belief and self
Speaker 1: esteem because he's had to fight his family.
Speaker 2: He's an archer. Yes, you know, sin means to miss
Speaker 2: the target. Oh yeah, it's a it's an archery term.
Speaker 2: And and and that notion of sin has that archery
Speaker 2: connection in multiple different languages. And so it's the same
Speaker 2: theme that you're describing. And the reason for that is
Speaker 2: an archer hits the target right, So to hit the
Speaker 2: target accurately is to pursue the divine most appropriately. So
Speaker 2: there's a metaphysics of archery. So that's definitely not a
Speaker 2: that's not that's a good example of how there's that's right.
Speaker 2: There's no mistake in that, right, there's no mistake in
Speaker 2: that you want to hit the target dead center. Absolutely. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And in the beginning of the text, his bo is
Speaker 1: slipping from his hands because he's he's feeling sweaty, he's
Speaker 1: feeling nervous, he's feeling anxiety. Right, and therefore he turns
Speaker 1: to God for instruction and guidance.
Speaker 2: Okay, So so okay, So there's a there's a meaning
Speaker 2: there too. So psychologists have demonstrated convincingly, mostly statistically that
Speaker 2: there's no difference between being self conscious and being miserable, right,
Speaker 2: They're so tightly associated. So, for example, in the Big Five,
Speaker 2: in one of the classic Big five personality descriptive processes tests,
Speaker 2: self consciousness is a facet of neuroticism. So it's actually
Speaker 2: a sub element of suffering. Okay, so what does that mean.
Speaker 2: It means that if you're focused on your narrow self
Speaker 2: what you want now, you're going to become both aimless
Speaker 2: and anxious. And that's technically the case. And so you
Speaker 2: might say, well, then what's the medication for that? And
Speaker 2: the medication isn't exactly to stop thinking about yourself, because well,
Speaker 2: then what do you think about and exactly how do
Speaker 2: you continue to maintain your care for yourself. The medication
Speaker 2: to that is to aim higher, for example, in our conversation,
Speaker 2: and you're obviously good at this, because your podcast wouldn't work.
Speaker 2: You can't sit in a conversation like this and do
Speaker 2: nothing but aim at the enhancement of your own status,
Speaker 2: let's say, in the eyes of your audience, or at
Speaker 2: the expense of your guest. First of all, if you
Speaker 2: do that, you won't have guests for long, and their
Speaker 2: quality will disintegrate, but also people will see through you
Speaker 2: eventually and see you as self serving. If, by contrast,
Speaker 2: you aim the conversation at the expansion, let's say, of
Speaker 2: your own understanding and wisdom, then it's not about you.
Speaker 2: It's about the dynamic of the conversation, and you can
Speaker 2: bring everybody along for the ride. But one of the
Speaker 2: benefits of that is you won't be self conscious, so
Speaker 2: your hands won't sweat, you won't miss your grip on
Speaker 2: the bow, you won't aim wrong.
Speaker 1: I guess it comes back down to in the same
Speaker 1: way that you talked about the call to adventure almost
Speaker 1: feeling like the first step, at least from what I
Speaker 1: observed from what you were sharing. Maybe there are a
Speaker 1: lot of people listening today who may feel Jordan Jay,
Speaker 1: I've never had a call to adventure like I've missed it.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen it. Even if it's there, I don't
Speaker 1: know where it is in my life. And that's why
Speaker 1: my life feels meaningless. I feel lost. I've v stopped.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because I just don't see it. That's well, that's
Speaker 2: and see is the right metaphor there. So the ancient Egyptians,
Speaker 2: one of their God's Horus was the god of the
Speaker 2: open eye, and the Mesopotamian god Marduk, who is a
Speaker 2: savior figure whom the emperor should model himself after, was
Speaker 2: also he had eyes all the way around his head,
Speaker 2: so he could see. That's not the same as thinking.
Speaker 2: So to have an open eye is to attend, and
Speaker 2: so you might say, well, if you've missed your adventure,
Speaker 2: Carl Jung said, modern man doesn't see God because he
Speaker 2: doesn't look low enough, which is a very interesting way
Speaker 2: of conceptualizing. It's like one of the things I try
Speaker 2: to do in this new technology we're developing with essay,
Speaker 2: but also as a theme in We Who Wrestle with
Speaker 2: God is to point out that you can learn to
Speaker 2: wor So, for example, when I was dealing with depressed
Speaker 2: people in my clinical practice, and this is a pretty
Speaker 2: standard behavioral approach, is one of the things you do
Speaker 2: with depressed people is you have them track their mood,
Speaker 2: say maybe every hour during the day, because a depressed
Speaker 2: person will assume that they're very unhappy and that that's
Speaker 2: always there. But if you get them to track it,
Speaker 2: what you find is they may be comparatively unhappy, but
Speaker 2: there is variation. So there'll be times when they're much
Speaker 2: more miserable than usual, but also times when they're less miserable,
Speaker 2: and they may not even really know when those times
Speaker 2: are without tracking it. So one of the things typically
Speaker 2: is depressed people will isolate themselves because they think they
Speaker 2: don't want to see anyone. But if you have them
Speaker 2: track their emotions, you find that when they're with other people,
Speaker 2: they're almost invariably less depressed. Okay, so imagine now I
Speaker 2: had you make a map of your emotions across a week,
Speaker 2: and we associated the emotions with what you were doing.
Speaker 2: What we'd find is some of the things you were
Speaker 2: doing were making you much more depressed and some of
Speaker 2: the things less. And so then your goal. So the
Speaker 2: first goal is see that, attend to that as if
Speaker 2: you're ignorant even with regards to your own nature. And
Speaker 2: then the next thing would be, well, how about you
Speaker 2: do a little bit more of the things that are
Speaker 2: positive and a little bit less of the things that
Speaker 2: are negative. Right, and then we will remap that and
Speaker 2: see if you've moved your average mood, you know, up
Speaker 2: the distribution. And so this is what they call the
Speaker 2: beginner's mind, at least in part in Buddhism, you want
Speaker 2: to look at the situation, which might be your own
Speaker 2: situation as if you don't know yourself, it's like, okay,
Speaker 2: well what am I interested in? People are often loath
Speaker 2: to even ask that question because they may find, for example,
Speaker 2: that the thing that compels them forward isn't the thing
Speaker 2: their father, mother wanted them to do. That's a very
Speaker 2: common familial story. You know, you might be shocked at
Speaker 2: who you are. It's highly probable, just like you're shocked
Speaker 2: when you start to get to know someone else. It's
Speaker 2: the same as going to apply to you. And the
Speaker 2: rule there is something like watch, don't assume, right, don't
Speaker 2: put your presuppositions before the realities of your experience, all right,
Speaker 2: So he had to watch and so and if you watch,
Speaker 2: you see you can you can rectify your aim right, right.
Speaker 2: And so that's the difference between attention and thought. You know,
Speaker 2: Luciferian intelligences worship their own presuppositions. Someone who's act of
Speaker 2: and attentive watches they're alert. Meditation can foster that, right
Speaker 2: because it teaches you to be present and awake. And
Speaker 2: so I would say to people who haven't found their calling,
Speaker 2: is that they're not noticing it in its micro manifestations.
Speaker 2: You know, it's not going to necessarily announce itself like
Speaker 2: Gandalf announced himself to the Hobbit. It's going to be
Speaker 2: subtle things bother you. That's part of your adventure. Like
Speaker 2: there's going to be certain things that grip you and
Speaker 2: disturb you, and those are the problems that you're destined
Speaker 2: to have to contend with. And you might be annoyed
Speaker 2: about that because you think, I don't want to have
Speaker 2: any problems. It's like, no, you actually probably want to
Speaker 2: have some serious problems that you can contend with that
Speaker 2: are going to occupy you some responsibilities. And then there'll
Speaker 2: be the things that clearly motivate your movement forward. And
Speaker 2: it's very good to start to understand what those are,
Speaker 2: to understand that that's how it works first, but then
Speaker 2: also to understand them in more detail you can understand.
Speaker 2: You can start to come to understand that by understanding
Speaker 2: your own temperament. So for example, if you're high in neuroticism,
Speaker 2: you're going to be more concerned with safety and security.
Speaker 2: If you're agreeable, you're going to be relationship focused. If
Speaker 2: you're disagreeable, you're going to be competitive. If you're conscientious,
Speaker 2: you're going to be interested in order and productivity. If
Speaker 2: you're open, you're going to be interested in aesthetics and
Speaker 2: ideas well. Right there, you've got a bit of a
Speaker 2: map of the territory of calling and call conscience that
Speaker 2: you're going to occupy. And so you have a nature,
Speaker 2: you know, and it's given to you, and it manifests
Speaker 2: itself in what interests you and what bothers you and
Speaker 2: the biblical insistence at least in part. And this is
Speaker 2: common I think too sophisticated religious systems of thought worldwide,
Speaker 2: is that there's an autonomy in what calls you and
Speaker 2: what calls to your conscience. Right you have a relationship
Speaker 2: with your conscience. You have a relationship with what interests you.
Speaker 2: It's not exactly under your control. It's something that can
Speaker 2: guide you and that you can follow. And that's portrayed
Speaker 2: in these well in the story of Abraham, for example,
Speaker 2: as God is the call to adventure. It's an extremely
Speaker 2: interesting conceptualization, you know, and you see that implicitly in
Speaker 2: quest stories like The Lord of the Rings of the Hobbit.
Speaker 2: You know, you have this ordinary guy who's protected. That
Speaker 2: would be the Hobbit in the first book Book of
Speaker 2: Tolkien series, or even Harry Potter, who unbeknownst to him
Speaker 2: is magical and has ordinary parents. Right, So there's this
Speaker 2: call out of ordinariness, and the voice of that call
Speaker 2: is associated with as definition, with the divine. That's not
Speaker 2: a superstitious conceptualization, and it's not something like an abdication
Speaker 2: of responsibility in favor of superstition. You know, it's a
Speaker 2: terrifying idea. It's also predicated to some degree on the
Speaker 2: idea that the purpose of life isn't something like secure comfort.
Speaker 2: That's partly why people make so much trouble. So we're
Speaker 2: not wired for infantile secure comfort. And if we don't
Speaker 2: have a real adventure, we'll find a false one and
Speaker 2: we'll cause a lot of trouble in that false adventure.
Speaker 2: A lot. Alcoholism that's a false adventure. Drug abuse that's
Speaker 2: a false adventure. You know, Sequential parasitical love affairs, that's
Speaker 2: a false adventure, political activist of a destructive sort.
Speaker 1: The false adventure seems to be so alluring and intoxicating
Speaker 1: in so many ways, and naturally, in the case that
Speaker 1: you're sharing distracting as well. How does one avoid the
Speaker 1: allurements of a false adventure while they're still pursuing that's a.
Speaker 2: Very good that's a very good question. Well, I think
Speaker 2: conscience is a big part of that, you know, because
Speaker 2: it's very frequent that people will be visited by their
Speaker 2: conscience when they do something that's hedonistically valuable in the
Speaker 2: short term, but then they think, oh, you know, I
Speaker 2: shouldn't have done that. It's like, well, why shouldn't have
Speaker 2: you done that? Well, I cheated on my girlfriend? All right,
Speaker 2: well you got to cheat. There's the benefit. What's the downfall? Well,
Speaker 2: I can't trust myself. I'm a liar. She can't trust me. Okay,
Speaker 2: So what's the problem with that? You want to be alone,
Speaker 2: you want to be a parasitical psychopath, Like, what's your
Speaker 2: goal here? And so the problem, part of the problem
Speaker 2: with just call, let's say, is it can become short
Speaker 2: term and it can to entice you into false microadventures
Speaker 2: that don't propagate well across time and that disturb other people.
Speaker 2: You know, you said something when we were talking just
Speaker 2: before the interview started about because I was asking you
Speaker 2: what you thought you might be doing right with regard
Speaker 2: to your podcast, say that woul account for its popularity
Speaker 2: and you said, well, you're in it for the long run. Well,
Speaker 2: a fundamental part of cortical maturation from a biological perspective
Speaker 2: is that you start to see things in the long run,
Speaker 2: and then you don't do things in the short term
Speaker 2: that are exciting and even adventurous that violate what the
Speaker 2: propagation of the adventure across time, you know, And you
Speaker 2: can envision it this way socially. If you and I
Speaker 2: have an honest conversation, okay, imagine that you have a
Speaker 2: guest who uses your podcast in a manipulative way. Okay,
Speaker 2: they could gain some short term advantage putting you down,
Speaker 2: let's say, playing a power game, using the podcast as
Speaker 2: a means to enhance their economic standing or their social standing. Well,
Speaker 2: what's the problem with that, Well, they're not going to
Speaker 2: get invited back. While you do that twenty times, you're
Speaker 2: done right, Okay. So one of the ways of thinking
Speaker 2: about this, if you're trying to understand what constitutes morality technically,
Speaker 2: is that the moral pathway if I'm interacting with you morally,
Speaker 2: assuming you're treating yourself properly, our interactions are going to
Speaker 2: have to be of the kind that you want to
Speaker 2: voluntarily repeat. That's what you have with a friend, and
Speaker 2: there's a pattern to that obviously, a pattern of reciprocity,
Speaker 2: a pattern of mutual aid, unless it's a pathological friendship,
Speaker 2: in which case it's likely to collapse anyways. But that's
Speaker 2: a constraint. Repeatability. Voluntary repeatability across time is a real constraint,
Speaker 2: and it's something like the future because it's across time,
Speaker 2: but it's also something like the constraint on your actions
Speaker 2: by the necessity for you to be embedded in a
Speaker 2: voluntary social framework, right, And that's a huge advantage, you know,
Speaker 2: Like one of the things you can think about. For example,
Speaker 2: there's this game that economists play behavior economists. So this
Speaker 2: is how the game works. You pick two people and
Speaker 2: you say to one of them, I'm going to give
Speaker 2: you one hundred dollars and you have to split it
Speaker 2: with this person. If they accept the offer, then you
Speaker 2: get the hundred and you pay them. But if they
Speaker 2: refuse the offer, neither of you get anything. So that's
Speaker 2: the game. Now, if you play that across cultures, what
Speaker 2: you find is that regardless of socioeconomic status, people offer
Speaker 2: fifty percent. Okay, now this violates the tenets of classical economics,
Speaker 2: which views people as self maximizers, because if I'm only
Speaker 2: going to play a game with you once, I should
Speaker 2: take ninety nine dollars and give you one, and you
Speaker 2: should take one, because what do you want zero or
Speaker 2: do you want one? But that isn't what people do.
Speaker 2: They split it fifty to fifty. Now then you might
Speaker 2: ask why, well, you don't play one off games with people.
Speaker 2: So imagine you're doing this publicly. Okay, Now everyone watches
Speaker 2: you and they see that you you're a fair player, Well,
Speaker 2: then they're going to play with you if they get
Speaker 2: an opportunity. You could even say, I don't know if
Speaker 2: this has ever been tested, but you could even say,
Speaker 2: well maybe you do a sixty forty split and you
Speaker 2: offer the person that's playing slightly more than you get. Well,
Speaker 2: you lose in that game. But if you get a reputation,
Speaker 2: that's part of that abrahamic adventure. If you get a
Speaker 2: reputation for bending over backwards to be reciprocal, people are
Speaker 2: going to line up to play with you. And so
Speaker 2: that's why you try to teach your children to be
Speaker 2: good sports because you know, you say to them, it
Speaker 2: doesn't matter whether you win or lose. It matters how
Speaker 2: you play the game, and the kids thinks, what the
Speaker 2: hell do you mean? Of course it matters if I win.
Speaker 2: You know, parents are usually not sophisticated enough to pursue
Speaker 2: that philosophically. But the right answer is what good is
Speaker 2: they're winning one game when you never get invited to
Speaker 2: play again. It's much better to be invited to play
Speaker 2: one hundred games. And that means you're going to have
Speaker 2: to be the sort of person that other people are
Speaker 2: lining up to play with. And that's the basis. That's
Speaker 2: part of the basis of a genuine ethic. And I
Speaker 2: think raise to a raised to the philosophical level, you
Speaker 2: get something like a transcendent ethic out of that. It's
Speaker 2: biologically predicated, but it's a higher order. It's a higher
Speaker 2: order and more mature ethic, and it's real, it's super real.
Speaker 1: Yeah. That reminds me of the kind of insidious traits
Speaker 1: that we also see presence. If you look at the
Speaker 1: examples of the ones that you just gave of the Hobbit,
Speaker 1: like photo bag ins or you look at Harry Potter,
Speaker 1: both of them also experience the envy of their call
Speaker 1: to adventure. So there are others who envied their call
Speaker 1: to adventure. And often you find that again, while we
Speaker 1: don't have all call to adventure, we may envy someone else's.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, that's also a very central observation, I would say.
Speaker 2: So the first story in the Genesis, in the Old Testament,
Speaker 2: the first story about actual human beings that are in
Speaker 2: history is the story of canaan Abel. Because Adam and
Speaker 2: Eve or well, they're made directly by God. So the
Speaker 2: first two humans in history are canaan Abel. It's a
Speaker 2: story of resentment and envy, right, And it's exactly It's
Speaker 2: exactly what you just laid out. Is that Able aims
Speaker 2: up and makes the proper sacrifices, right say, in the
Speaker 2: Abrahamic sense, and because of that, everything he does works
Speaker 2: and makes second rate sacrifices and deceives himself and other
Speaker 2: people and God and fails, and instead of learning from
Speaker 2: his failure, he becomes bitter. He shakes his fist at
Speaker 2: God and complains about the structure of reality itself, and
Speaker 2: then he becomes murderous and kills his own ideal and
Speaker 2: then his descendants become genocidal, and then you have the flood.
Speaker 2: It's like, so that that's another of the consequences. Let's
Speaker 2: say a false of non existent adventure or false adventures.
Speaker 2: Those who took the adventurous path become the targets of envy.
Speaker 2: There's destruction that's then aimed at them, and that can
Speaker 2: propagate so widely through a society that it does itself
Speaker 2: in and that's happened over and over in human history. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's really it's brutal, and it's so terrifying that that's
Speaker 2: the you know, you could argue that that Cain versus
Speaker 2: Able narrative is in many ways the fundamental narrative of
Speaker 2: what would you say? It's the fundamental battle of the
Speaker 2: most likely attitudes of each individual. Right, you can maintain
Speaker 2: faith and courage, you can make the proper sacrifices, you
Speaker 2: can aim up. You can be a benefit to yourself
Speaker 2: and others, or you can hold back what's best. You
Speaker 2: can try to manipulate the system. You can degenerate into
Speaker 2: bitterness and envy, and then look the hell out right, right,
Speaker 2: and this is one paragraph that story, right, It's like
Speaker 2: twelve lines long. It's a stunning miracle of compression.
Speaker 1: Yeah, how does one transform that? If one is experiencing
Speaker 1: envy of another's call to adventure or envy of another
Speaker 1: one's path or success or reward from God, the universe,
Speaker 1: wherever it's coming from, how does one transform, purify and
Speaker 1: rid themselves of that envy?
Speaker 2: What does one doing well? Are part of what has
Speaker 2: historically constituted religious practice is an answer to that question.
Speaker 2: So the first would be you could practice gratitude, you know,
Speaker 2: and you could make the case that if you're not
Speaker 2: screaming in agony because you're on fire right now, you
Speaker 2: have lots of things to be fortunate about.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: And people who have passed through extremely harrowing experiences they
Speaker 2: often learn that it's like, oh, the sorts of things
Speaker 2: that I thought were terrible or are almost negligible, and
Speaker 2: there's so many good things happening to me all the
Speaker 2: time around me that are invisible to me, maybe because
Speaker 2: of my arrogance that I'm just blind to them. So
Speaker 2: the practice of gratitude, that's a standard religious exercise, I
Speaker 2: would say, across the domains of felid religious systems. What
Speaker 2: else humility? So the thing about that one of the
Speaker 2: things that distinguishes Cain from Abel is that when Cain fails,
Speaker 2: he thinks it's God's fault or society or other people,
Speaker 2: or it's externalized blame. When Able fails, he learns, And
Speaker 2: that's the proper sacrificial attitude, because you might so, for example,
Speaker 2: if you're a man and you're getting nowhere with women,
Speaker 2: it's very easy for you to become extremely hostile to women,
Speaker 2: which is not going to help you out much, generally speaking,
Speaker 2: in the relationship market. And you can certainly understand why
Speaker 2: that might be, because if you've had fifty encounters with
Speaker 2: women you're attracted to, and every single one of them
Speaker 2: resulted in maybe not only rejection, but contemptuous rejection, you
Speaker 2: can certainly understand why you might conclude from that that
Speaker 2: there's something seriously wrong with women. But you could flip
Speaker 2: that and you could presume that by definition, if you're
Speaker 2: failing in that regard, there's some changes that should be made,
Speaker 2: you know, and it really does depend on your initial
Speaker 2: stance with regard to the situation. One of the things
Speaker 2: that comes very that comes through very clearly with regards
Speaker 2: to the upward aiming Israelites. They're not all upward aiming.
Speaker 2: But the upward aiming ones in the Old Testament is
Speaker 2: whenever a cataclysm visits them, they assume it's their fault.
Speaker 2: And that's a hell of a thing to take on
Speaker 2: to yourself, right. It's if I'm failing, it's my fault.
Speaker 2: And you can certainly understand why that's difficult, because a
Speaker 2: certain amount of misery seems to visit people arbitrarily. But
Speaker 2: there's almost no failure, regardless of how arbitrary, that you
Speaker 2: can't learn from. And there isn't anything better that you
Speaker 2: can do with failure, no matter how unjust, than to
Speaker 2: learn from it. And so as a general attitude, how
Speaker 2: did I go wrong? Here? Is a hyper useful existential stance, right,
Speaker 2: And it's also a bulwark against hopelessness, because you know,
Speaker 2: even if it was ninety five percent situational and five
Speaker 2: percent you, if you adjusted that five percent, maybe that'd
Speaker 2: be enough so that the next time that situation arises,
Speaker 2: you'd come out on the positive side of it, you know.
Speaker 2: And you're also not a torment to other people then,
Speaker 2: because your general question is how am I insufficient? And
Speaker 2: that also gives you something to do, because man trying
Speaker 2: to rectify your own insufficiency. That's a that'll keep you
Speaker 2: busy for the rest of your life. And that's a
Speaker 2: good thing, right, That's a meaningful pursuit, and you will experience.
Speaker 1: It that way working on your own insufficiencies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, it's an inexhaustible source of possibility, right, because
Speaker 2: there's always you could be better at something than you are,
Speaker 2: no matter how good you are at something, and no
Speaker 2: matter how many dimensions you're doing that analysis in simultaneously. Right,
Speaker 2: it's like a horizon of opportunity in some In some ways,
Speaker 2: that's the flip side of it, your insufficiencies. The flip
Speaker 2: side of your insufficiencies are the opportunities that growth in
Speaker 2: those dimensions would represent. That's a good way of looking
Speaker 2: at the world.
Speaker 1: What's the insufficiency that lets us down the most? Is
Speaker 1: there one that stands above all all?
Speaker 2: Pride? That's that's the classical answer from the Judeo Christian perspective. Anyways,
Speaker 2: pride and arrogance. You know, that would be something like
Speaker 2: the presumption that that you're that you're right and that
Speaker 2: and that you're above it all, that you're on top
Speaker 2: and so. And you could see that as a well.
Speaker 2: First of all, it's something very annoying to other people.
Speaker 2: So that's a problem given that you have to put
Speaker 2: up with them. And it's also an impediment to learning,
Speaker 2: right because to be open to learning does mean, at
Speaker 2: least to some degree, always asking well, what am I
Speaker 2: doing wrong? What do I have to give up, what
Speaker 2: do I have to let go of, what do I
Speaker 2: have to transform? That could be very painful. But so pride,
Speaker 2: that's one that's that's a major one. He hedonism, that's
Speaker 2: a problem, and that's a kind of immaturity. So that's
Speaker 2: that desire for immediate gratification at the expense of other people,
Speaker 2: at the expense of you in the long run, right,
Speaker 2: so at the expense of the general future. And so
Speaker 2: that's a very difficult thing to overcome. I mean, a
Speaker 2: lot of what you do when you're socializing children is
Speaker 2: you're trying to encourage them to become capable of integrating
Speaker 2: their various hedonistic desires so they don't conflict with one another,
Speaker 2: so that they can be they can find their gratification
Speaker 2: in the long run in a manner that's commensurate with
Speaker 2: the needs and wants of other people. And it takes
Speaker 2: twenty years to socialize a child to become a full
Speaker 2: fledged adult. And it's not like the process ends there.
Speaker 2: It's very complicated process of integration and self regulation. And
Speaker 2: it is it is upward? And why why is it better? Well,
Speaker 2: even if the goal is gratification, if one strategy allows
Speaker 2: twenty repetitions of gratification and the other strategy offers one
Speaker 2: gratification followed by regret and catastrophic failure, it seems pretty obvious,
Speaker 2: even by the standards of gratification, that the first strategy
Speaker 2: is better than the second. Yeah, right, right, right, right,
Speaker 2: So the iteration element of it is crucial. Now, is
Speaker 2: this a long term playable game? Better? Is this the
Speaker 2: kind of long term, playable, sustainable game that I would
Speaker 2: like to engage in voluntarily and maybe bring others aboard
Speaker 2: equally voluntarily. That's a that's a good ethical question. It's
Speaker 2: also extremely practically valuable. You know, we were talking before
Speaker 2: this began about theness about the utility that you found
Speaker 2: in putting together around you a very functional team. Well,
Speaker 2: a functional team is composed of people playing this game
Speaker 2: and all doing it fuleheartedly and voluntarily. Yeah, Well, so
Speaker 2: that's an optimal solution. Even if even if the goal is, say,
Speaker 2: the maximization of your success, your success success that comes
Speaker 2: at the expense of other people, that's not that means
Speaker 2: that your definition of success is thoroughly flawed. That's all
Speaker 2: it means. That's especially true if the world isn't a
Speaker 2: zero sum game, and I don't see any evidence that
Speaker 2: it is. There's no reason that your victory unless you're
Speaker 2: envious and spiteful, sadistic, even there's absolutely no reason that
Speaker 2: your victory has to come at the expense of someone else.
Speaker 1: I feel often, going back to your point on pride,
Speaker 1: I feel often our views of how pride shows its
Speaker 1: face quite superficial, in that we think of things like
Speaker 1: ego and pride as bravado and arrogance and showing off,
Speaker 1: and those are quite immature, superficial. They're true, but there
Speaker 1: you get what I'm saying. They're incomplete aspects, and I
Speaker 1: think today in the world we see far more subdued, nuanced,
Speaker 1: hidden ways of how pride shows up in all of
Speaker 1: us and around us, one of which you pointed out earlier,
Speaker 1: which was like I'm right, you're wrong, and this can
Speaker 1: show up on a daily basis, whether it's a comment section,
Speaker 1: a chat rumor, and an online place, whatever it may be,
Speaker 1: that there's a feeling that ego rules us, not in
Speaker 1: the I'm the boss and you're lower down, but in
Speaker 1: I'm right and you're wrong, and my way is the
Speaker 1: best way, and my political party, my god, whatever it
Speaker 1: may be, is better than Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, some of that is the attempt to obtain status,
Speaker 2: and sometimes that's predicated on the erroneous assumption that if
Speaker 2: you defeat someone, let's say, in an argument, you're right. Now.
Speaker 2: There's a certain amount of truth in that, because you
Speaker 2: can evaluate ideas in the ideational space, but you can
Speaker 2: be intelligent and unwise and defeat someone wise and less
Speaker 2: articulate in an argument and still be profoundly wrong. What
Speaker 2: you should be trying to do, and this is especially
Speaker 2: true in the confines, let's say of a marital relationship,
Speaker 2: is you should be trying to listen. It's like, and
Speaker 2: maybe you're trying to help your partner formulate their argument
Speaker 2: more accurately so that you both can get to the
Speaker 2: root of the problem and the cheap way. Oh, it's
Speaker 2: very useful. It's like, well, you might have a point,
Speaker 2: you know, I mean this is actually one of the
Speaker 2: things that can help men in their understanding of women.
Speaker 2: So women on average are more sensitive to negative emotion,
Speaker 2: so you could think of them as having a lower
Speaker 2: threshold for alarm. Okay, Now, what that implies is that
Speaker 2: there'll be times when the alarm bell goes off when
Speaker 2: it doesn't have to, but there'll be other times when
Speaker 2: the alarm bell is going off to signify something that
Speaker 2: is barely detectable. But is there, okay. So often what
Speaker 2: women find frustrating and speaking to men is the men.
Speaker 2: They'll start, the women will start to lay out the problem,
Speaker 2: and the men will offer a solution, and the men think, well,
Speaker 2: don't you want a solution, And the women, who often
Speaker 2: can't articulate this, think, well, yeah, but will neither of
Speaker 2: us know what the problem is yet? And so the
Speaker 2: initial stages in much coupled communication are the woman bringing
Speaker 2: up a problem but not knowing what it is, and
Speaker 2: so making all sorts of wandering attempts to specify the
Speaker 2: problem and hoping even implicitly, that she'll have enough space,
Speaker 2: enough scaffolding so that that investigative process can come to
Speaker 2: focus on the actual problem. Well, once you've got the
Speaker 2: problem identified, it's a lot simpler to put forward a
Speaker 2: solution and implement it. But that's the case for well,
Speaker 2: that's the case often for yourself. If you're upset or
Speaker 2: any dialogue, it's like you want to listen long enough
Speaker 2: so you actually understand what the problem is. And that's
Speaker 2: a great benefit to you, because now the cost is,
Speaker 2: if you're wrong, you're going to have to give something up,
Speaker 2: and that's annoying and difficult and complicated and can be humiliating.
Speaker 2: And then you might say, well, why bother. An answer
Speaker 2: to that's straightforward. It's so you don't make the same
Speaker 2: stupid mistake again, and that comes at a cost. This
Speaker 2: is why there's this dawning insistence, arising insistence in our
Speaker 2: culture that you shouldn't be able to be offensive in
Speaker 2: your speech, which sort of means you shouldn't be allowed
Speaker 2: to upset anyone emotionally. Well, if you're speaking about something
Speaker 2: that's foundational, pointing out an error, that's going to be
Speaker 2: upsetting to the person you're talking to, because it means
Speaker 2: they're going to have to do a fair bit of
Speaker 2: cognitive retooling. They're going to have to undergo a partial
Speaker 2: death and rebirth. Well, that can be terribly painful, but
Speaker 2: it's better than actually failing cataclysmically repeatedly in the world,
Speaker 2: you know. So we substitute death in argumentation for death
Speaker 2: in actuality. That doesn't mean that death in argumentation is nothing.
Speaker 2: And because there is an emotional burden and an effort
Speaker 2: that has to be made, people are resistant to that.
Speaker 2: I'd rather show that I'm right so that you have
Speaker 2: to change fair enough. But you might be the one
Speaker 2: with the problem. I mean, that's a terrible thing to contemplate.
Speaker 1: But I find that. Don't you think there's a need
Speaker 1: for both the delivery and the receptor to upgrade themselves,
Speaker 1: because there's a sense that even the deliverer of a message,
Speaker 1: no matter how true it may be, if they're able
Speaker 1: to make it not more digestible than a I don't
Speaker 1: mean in a watered down way. I mean in a
Speaker 1: way that is not agitating but true, right impact.
Speaker 2: Well, definitely. I mean you don't want to wield the
Speaker 2: truth as a weapon more than necessary, you know. And
Speaker 2: people might say, well, I hurt your feelings, but I
Speaker 2: was only telling you the truth. It's like you might
Speaker 2: have been telling the truth at one level of analysis
Speaker 2: and lying like mad at another because maybe your motivation
Speaker 2: was to hurt and you figured out how to use
Speaker 2: something that was normally true as your weapon. And so
Speaker 2: at the very narrow level of analysis, semantically what you
Speaker 2: said was true. But in the broader context, now you're
Speaker 2: just this sadist. And so there are technical approaches that
Speaker 2: to some degree that are coded in the laws. So,
Speaker 2: for example, if you're defending yourself, you're entitled to use
Speaker 2: something approximating minimal necessary force, and that's a good maxim
Speaker 2: for communication. Know, you want to deliver a corrective message
Speaker 2: in the most constrained possible manner. There's ways of doing this.
Speaker 2: So for example, if you if you have an employee
Speaker 2: and they've made a mistake, you want to bring up
Speaker 2: the mistake primarily so it's not repeated. And so one
Speaker 2: of the ways of buffering that is to bring the
Speaker 2: person in and to say, look, here's a bunch of
Speaker 2: things you're doing right, and we don't have a global problem,
Speaker 2: but in this specific case, here's what you did, this
Speaker 2: was the consequence, and this is what you could have
Speaker 2: done to do it differently. And then you close it
Speaker 2: by reiterating the fact that you know having said that,
Speaker 2: I have confidence, for example, that you'll rectify this error.
Speaker 2: And people make mistakes, and the real issue here is
Speaker 2: whether you take responsibility for it and rectify it, and
Speaker 2: then the person can learn without being demolished, without being demoralized.
Speaker 2: And that's also a very good thing to do to yourself.
Speaker 2: Like if you see that you you've made a mistake
Speaker 2: and you're guilty as hell and tearing yourself apart, you
Speaker 2: want to approach it with the presumption of innocence. It's like,
Speaker 2: don't assume you're any more terrible than you have to assume. Okay,
Speaker 2: then do the analysis and figure out what's the minimal
Speaker 2: transformation you can make that will suffice. This is also
Speaker 2: a good principle when you're arguing with maybe you're upset
Speaker 2: with your partner, your wife, or your husband. It's incumbent
Speaker 2: on you to figure out what you want, Like what
Speaker 2: would satisfy you? Okay, so you have a problem with me.
Speaker 2: I didn't. I wasn't properly appreciative for the efforts you
Speaker 2: made when you were preparing dinner. I was dismissive of it.
Speaker 2: It's like, okay, what is it that you wish I
Speaker 2: would have said. The person might say, well, if you
Speaker 2: love me, you'd know that. It's like, yeah, but I'm stupid,
Speaker 2: so I need to know what words should have I
Speaker 2: used that would have encouraged your efforts in that regard,
Speaker 2: and then the person can tell you, and then you
Speaker 2: can say the words. And you have to understand that
Speaker 2: there's going to be a certain falseness about that the
Speaker 2: first time that it happens, but it's something you can
Speaker 2: get good at over time. You may have to teach
Speaker 2: your partner how to reward you properly, and there may
Speaker 2: be be pretty bad at it the first ten times,
Speaker 2: and that might be annoying to you and them and
Speaker 2: even false, but you can practice it and it's worth practicing.
Speaker 1: Yes, Yeah, I read something similar to what you're saying
Speaker 1: in terms of how to give proper feedback, and it
Speaker 1: was in a book called The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle,
Speaker 1: and he talks about a three step method that the
Speaker 1: first thing you do is you share that we have
Speaker 1: high standards here because you don't want to live in
Speaker 1: a world of low standards. You don't want to drop
Speaker 1: your company's standards. Right, you're a mind. The person you're
Speaker 1: speaking to, we have high standards. Here, we have high goals.
Speaker 1: And the second thing you do is you say to
Speaker 1: that person and I believe you can get there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I believe it.
Speaker 1: I see it for you, because of course still at
Speaker 1: the company.
Speaker 2: Throwing some evidence in their direction would be useful in
Speaker 2: that here's some things you know that I remember that
Speaker 2: you really did well.
Speaker 1: Correct that showed me you can get And then the
Speaker 1: third is here are that what you were saying, here's
Speaker 1: that area, Here are the steps that you can take.
Speaker 1: Here was the consequence, here's a rectification. And I love
Speaker 1: that because we allow people to rise to high standards
Speaker 1: as opposed to hold them to them. And I think
Speaker 1: there's a difference between that in how society is functioning
Speaker 1: right now, where we want to hold people to certain standards,
Speaker 1: but we're not willing to help them rise towards them.
Speaker 1: And it seems like God in this conversation with Abraham,
Speaker 1: is like encouraging Abraham to rise, not just pointing at
Speaker 1: a standard that'shu well.
Speaker 2: This is one of the things that you see repeated
Speaker 2: in the biblical stories is that this is why there's
Speaker 2: insistence in those stories that whatever the divine is, it's
Speaker 2: something that you actually enter into a relationship with because
Speaker 2: there is this element of let's say, tolerance for failure
Speaker 2: combined with encouragement. Right, It's not merely that what constitutes
Speaker 2: the divine is this unattainable, infinite standard against which you're
Speaker 2: always going to fall short. That's sort of that's what
Speaker 2: a tyrant does falsely. It's more like the spirit of
Speaker 2: encouragement that a good father would put into play with
Speaker 2: his kids. You know, you want to set a standard
Speaker 2: that pulls the child upward towards further development, but you
Speaker 2: want to put it within the range of their grasp
Speaker 2: and so and you know, is does that characterize your
Speaker 2: interaction with the world. Well, I think it's fair to
Speaker 2: say that it is, because you know, we can fail
Speaker 2: without dying, and we can improve, and so the notion
Speaker 2: that ideals can exist in concert with encouragement isn't an
Speaker 2: unreasonable proposition, and it is. I mean, I think part
Speaker 2: of the reason that God is represented, let's say, in
Speaker 2: the biblical text as a wise father, is because that
Speaker 2: element of the divine that's discriminating but encouraging is paramount.
Speaker 2: And that is what you want in a father, for sure.
Speaker 2: You want someone who says I think you're capable of
Speaker 2: being great. I really think that, and here's some evidence
Speaker 2: that you've provided that that might be the case. But
Speaker 2: given that I believe that you're capable of that, I'm
Speaker 2: not going to let you get away with any deviation
Speaker 2: from that. That would be finally counterproductive. That's not care, right,
Speaker 2: that's the devouring mother who says whatever you do is fine, dear.
Speaker 2: It's like, that's not love, right. That's actually the desire
Speaker 2: on the part of the person who's delivering that message
Speaker 2: to keep the person being communicated with in a continually
Speaker 2: infantile and dependent state. Right. So it's a weird thing
Speaker 2: because you need that discriminating judgment, which can be quite harsh.
Speaker 2: It's like, no, that up to standards there, buddy, But
Speaker 2: that failure isn't emblematic of your core self. Right. The
Speaker 2: part of you that I really want to communicate is
Speaker 2: with is the part that's saving up. That was sort
Speaker 2: of the agreement I had with my clients in my
Speaker 2: clinical practice, like I'm on the side of you that's
Speaker 2: aiming up, and that's an interesting basis for a relationship.
Speaker 2: It's like, I'm not going to accept everything you do
Speaker 2: now that doesn't mean I'm going to arbitrary arbitrarily judge
Speaker 2: it or dispense with you in the case of failure.
Speaker 2: But our deal has got to be something like, we're
Speaker 2: trying to make things better, and so I'm going to
Speaker 2: be on the side of you that's trying to make
Speaker 2: things better and help you discriminate that part within you
Speaker 2: from the part that might be envious and aiming down
Speaker 2: and being destructive.
Speaker 1: What still gives you hope? Jordan, and all of this
Speaker 1: that we're discussing today, is there anything that makes you
Speaker 1: feel up?
Speaker 2: Oh? Well, there's lots of things to be hopeful for.
Speaker 2: I mean, we're feeding twice as many people regularly as
Speaker 2: even the most wild optimists imagined in the late nineteen sixties.
Speaker 2: Absolute poverty is being restricted around the world at a
Speaker 2: rate that's miraculously inconceivable. I mean, before things destabilized to
Speaker 2: some degree over the last five years, the un projections
Speaker 2: was or that we could eradicate absolute poverty by twenty
Speaker 2: thirty five. That's I mean, that's a huge improvement. I mean,
Speaker 2: these communication technologies they enable well. With Peterson Academy, for example,
Speaker 2: we figure we can offer people a high quality university
Speaker 2: level education for under two thousand dollars and everywhere, So
Speaker 2: like that's a major improvement. I think that things are
Speaker 2: actually somewhat less polarized on the political side than they
Speaker 2: were two years ago. I mean, there's tendencies in both directions,
Speaker 2: but I see, I was just in Newzbekistan that was
Speaker 2: extremely interesting. I met a man there who's an industrialist.
Speaker 2: His enterprises comprised fifteen percent of Uzbekistan's GDP. He refurbished
Speaker 2: four hundred thousand square meters of post Soviet factory floor space,
Speaker 2: and they're manufacturing everything you can possibly imagine, marble tiles,
Speaker 2: building materials, fridges, microwaves, air conditioners, golf carts, hospitals, hotels,
Speaker 2: high rises. Uzbekistan under the Soviets was barely functional. Everyone
Speaker 2: was raising cotton. They drained Lake Bakal to irrigate the
Speaker 2: cotton fields. That was the only industrial development they got
Speaker 2: themselves out of the out from underneath the boot of
Speaker 2: the Soviet totalitarians. And the society is becoming wealthy and
Speaker 2: opportunity rich at an insane level, and that's happening all
Speaker 2: over the world. I mean, endless numbers of reasons to
Speaker 2: assume that everybody could thrive. That's what people like Musk
Speaker 2: are trying to aim at. You know, however, imperfectly, I
Speaker 2: see no reason at all that the future couldn't be
Speaker 2: one of unlimited abundance. There's going to have to be
Speaker 2: a transformation and ethical orientation to go along with that,
Speaker 2: because there's no difference between the ability to generate genuine
Speaker 2: wealth and ethical conduct. Those are the same thing. That's
Speaker 2: the life more abundant that's promised by the divine in
Speaker 2: the in the Old Testament stories, for example, you have
Speaker 2: to conduct yourself honorably so that you can trust each other,
Speaker 2: so that you can cooperate to be productive, right right,
Speaker 2: So yeah, I'm optimistic fundamentally.
Speaker 1: Do you believe that that is that going to be
Speaker 1: something you're teaching at the Pizzason Academy, that primary thing? That?
Speaker 2: Definitely? Yeah, definitely yeaheah Because to me, I agree with
Speaker 2: you that that.
Speaker 1: I always wondered how business school was across the world.
Speaker 1: College is how at universities there was no class on
Speaker 1: proper character. It just it amuses me that.
Speaker 2: Well, and there's no classes even on the relationship between
Speaker 2: character and economic progress. I read a great book once
Speaker 2: called the wealth and poverty of nations, and it was
Speaker 2: a study of really it's a study of the role
Speaker 2: that honesty and trust plays in the generation of wealth.
Speaker 2: Japan's a really good example of that. Japan has like
Speaker 2: no natural resources and it's an extremely wealthy country. Why well,
Speaker 2: it's a high trust society. No one steals, an envy
Speaker 2: is looked down upon, right, ambition is fostered, and so
Speaker 2: it's conscientious, hard work and maybe even to a fault
Speaker 2: in Japan, but it's a high trust society. In high
Speaker 2: trust societies, everybody can become rich. But it means that
Speaker 2: everybody has to conduct themselves ethically, and that is a
Speaker 2: precondition for anything approximating I hate to use the words
Speaker 2: sustainable but an iterable capitalism, right because people, the leftist
Speaker 2: critics in particular, like to think of capitalism as a
Speaker 2: rapacious enterprise. But that's well, first of all, compared to
Speaker 2: what you know, dynastic poverty, because that's generally the alternative,
Speaker 2: and it's not like that's not rapacious, and most enterprises
Speaker 2: that orient themselves too much to the short term fail.
Speaker 2: So it's important to teach people. We do this so badly,
Speaker 2: you know, I mean even the word capitalism isn't one
Speaker 2: that should be used because really what we're talking about
Speaker 2: is free exchange of goods and services. Who's opposed to that?
Speaker 2: You want to be able to have a different job,
Speaker 2: You want to have some choice? Do you want to
Speaker 2: actually be able to own the things you purchase? Do
Speaker 2: you want to be able to purchase things? Do you
Speaker 2: want to have a choice? Who says no to that?
Speaker 2: No one, but no one. Young people in particular aren't
Speaker 2: taught that. Well, that's the capitalism that you're criticizing. The
Speaker 2: fact you get to own something and move your labor
Speaker 2: voluntarily from one place to another. You're going to oppose that?
Speaker 2: Are you in favor of? What of top down authoritarian
Speaker 2: planning where everyone starves miserably? So, and you know, a
Speaker 2: lot of that's we've been removed from the world since
Speaker 2: the since the wall fell, and people are much richer
Speaker 2: than they've ever been, and not in an entirely pathological manner.
Speaker 2: So yeah, there's lots of reason to be optimistic. I
Speaker 2: actually think we're on the cusp of something like an
Speaker 2: ethical revolution, because I tried to outline in this in
Speaker 2: this new book, is that I think that we're at
Speaker 2: the point where are scientific discoveries and feels like cognitive
Speaker 2: neuroscience and evolutionary biology can be seen to dovetail with
Speaker 2: our traditional understanding of high order ethics. That's partly the
Speaker 2: case I tried to make in this book, and it's
Speaker 2: certainly the ethos that saturates the course offerings in Peterson Academy.
Speaker 2: You know, we're trying to encourage people to take maximal responsibility,
Speaker 2: to have an adventurous life, to pursue an ethical pathway,
Speaker 2: to tell the truth, and to educate themselves broadly and esthetically.
Speaker 2: And so far it seems to be working. You know,
Speaker 2: people are pleased with the I'm so excited about this.
Speaker 2: I mean, I got a hand to my daughter and
Speaker 2: her husband. They've done a bang up job of putting
Speaker 2: this together. The courses are really beautiful, they're very they're compelling,
Speaker 2: they're very well produced, and the technology works like a charm.
Speaker 2: And the social media network so far is behaving exactly
Speaker 2: how we hoped it would behave when we were feeling
Speaker 2: particularly optimistic and so and we now have the capital
Speaker 2: to put all the things that we wanted to build
Speaker 2: into the system into place. So translation into multiple languages
Speaker 2: that'll be on table very soon. A radical expansion of
Speaker 2: the curriculum. We're going to predicate it on I think
Speaker 2: something approximating the Chicago Great Books tradition. So we're imagining
Speaker 2: something like the selection of great books that would characterize
Speaker 2: a high quality education in the humanities one course, something
Speaker 2: like a minimum of one course per great book. I
Speaker 2: can't see any reason we can't do that. We have
Speaker 2: an excellent stable of professors, all of them want to
Speaker 2: continue working with us. I think that's true without exception
Speaker 2: so far. And I'm able to make contact with great
Speaker 2: lectures all the time and to keep discovering them, and
Speaker 2: so yeah, I've been tweeting out funny ads about being
Speaker 2: at the most progressive university in the world. Well, the
Speaker 2: progressives hope for universal education at something approximating zero cost.
Speaker 2: Well that's what we've got. It's open to anyone, and
Speaker 2: it's no one comes out with debt. So that's seems
Speaker 2: pretty progressive to me.
Speaker 1: Absolutely so.
Speaker 2: And I'm very excited about the translation possibilities because AI
Speaker 2: systems are getting pretty good at that. So we'll have
Speaker 2: our lectures be able to lecture in other languages using
Speaker 2: their own voice and modify the videos so that it
Speaker 2: appears that they're speaking that language. So God only knows
Speaker 2: how many languages we'll be able to translate our material into,
Speaker 2: you know, as the AI systems develop and it gets
Speaker 2: cheaper and cheaper. So yeah, exciting, it's exciting. And the
Speaker 2: essay app you know, that teaches people to write. It works,
Speaker 2: helps people figure out what they want to write about.
Speaker 2: It runs them through the process of generating their ideas,
Speaker 2: and then it teaches them how to edit and so,
Speaker 2: and there's no difference between doing that and teaching people
Speaker 2: to think. I'm so hopefully we can provide people with
Speaker 2: content and we can teach them the mechanics of thinking
Speaker 2: and writing. It's fantastic. Yeah, that's fun. Looks fun, and
Speaker 2: I think were able to do it.
Speaker 1: I mean, you're already doing it.
Speaker 2: So we've got thirty thousand students and the system seems
Speaker 2: to be working, so we've got proof of We've got
Speaker 2: good proof of concept.
Speaker 1: Now absolutely or congratulations Jordan. It's brilly honestly brilliant and
Speaker 1: can't wait to enroll myself? Are they doing that? Straight
Speaker 1: after this?
Speaker 2: Good?
Speaker 1: And Jordan. We end every on Purpose episode with a
Speaker 1: final five and these questions have to be answered in
Speaker 1: a one word to one sentence.
Speaker 2: Oh no, maximum, So how long.
Speaker 1: A sentence you you define it? You're teaching everyone how
Speaker 1: to write and think. I'll go with your definition. Question one,
Speaker 1: what is the best life advice you've ever heard or received?
Speaker 2: How the truth or at least don't lie?
Speaker 1: Number two? What is the worst advice you ever heard
Speaker 1: or received? It's all about you? Number three? How would
Speaker 1: you define your current purpose?
Speaker 2: I think I'm doing in my way the same thing,
Speaker 2: the same thing that Elon Musk said that he was
Speaker 2: doing when I interviewed him, which is to continue exploring
Speaker 2: the limits of possibility. That's an adventure, right, to explore
Speaker 2: the limits of possibility. A lot of times possibility comes
Speaker 2: to you as tragedy. That's a good thing to understand.
Speaker 2: You know. They say every treasure has a dragon, right,
Speaker 2: But you can reverse that, and that's worth knowing too.
Speaker 2: If something terrible comes your way, it's like there's an
Speaker 2: opportunity there, not the kind of opportunity you would have
Speaker 2: wished for, but that doesn't mean it isn't there. Yeah,
Speaker 2: So that's a good thing to know.
Speaker 1: Have you spent a significant time with Ilo Moscow. Has
Speaker 1: it been more time?
Speaker 2: I met him four times, so we've probably spent a
Speaker 2: total of about seven hours together. Yeah, and I would
Speaker 2: say I've walked away from each encounter more impressed with
Speaker 2: him as a character. In terms of his character, I
Speaker 2: mean you have to be mouth open and amazement with
Speaker 2: regards to his technological and managerial entrepreneur prowess. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's just it's ridiculous. But I believe that he's doing
Speaker 2: his best to aim up, thank God. And I think
Speaker 2: that's what the Mars voyage is symbolize, right, He's it's
Speaker 2: a mythological adventure to aim up in that manner, and
Speaker 2: he's it's part of his story, right, It's the mythological
Speaker 2: dimension of his story. And it's not practical, right, except
Speaker 2: in so far as a great story is practical. So
Speaker 2: I remember the Apollo voyages. They were very motivating to people,
Speaker 2: you know, as an indication of what humanity was capable
Speaker 2: of doing. And certainly Musk is playing that out on
Speaker 2: the technological side.
Speaker 1: So beautiful, Okay, Question of a four, how do we
Speaker 1: scale trust.
Speaker 2: By attempting to practice honesty in your own life? Yeah,
Speaker 2: and by rewarding it among the people that you interact with.
Speaker 2: It's very useful to understand that you have the opportunity
Speaker 2: to point out other people who you interact with regularly
Speaker 2: what they're doing that is positive and good, and that
Speaker 2: that there's nothing in that that isn't productive.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, said absolutely. Fifth and final question, we asked
Speaker 1: this to every guest who's ever been on the show.
Speaker 1: If you could create one law that everyone in the
Speaker 1: world had to follow, what would it be?
Speaker 2: Don't follow stupid rules? What constitutes a stupid rule? Now
Speaker 2: that's the hard part of the problem, isn't it. I think? Well,
Speaker 2: I had that conversation with my kids because it is
Speaker 2: something I told them when they went to school. I said, look,
Speaker 2: there's going to be reasonable rules at your school, and
Speaker 2: there are going to be unreasonable rules, and I don't
Speaker 2: require you to follow the unreasonable rules, but you have
Speaker 2: to be willing to bear the consequences. Right, So you're
Speaker 2: morally obliged to object to foolish restrictions, but you have
Speaker 2: to be willing to pay the price for that, and
Speaker 2: there will be a price, and it has to be
Speaker 2: you that pays it, right, And that's hot. Yes, Yes,
Speaker 2: it's also the difference between activism, let's say, in civil disobedience,
Speaker 2: because if it's civil disobedience, you pay the price. If
Speaker 2: it's activism, someone else does. Ohful WHOA.
Speaker 1: I hope everyone subscribe to the podcast if you don't already,
Speaker 1: check out Peterson Academy if you haven't already. New book
Speaker 1: out in November, we who Wrestle with God. We got
Speaker 1: glimpses into it today, doctor Jordan BPCE, And thank you
Speaker 1: so much for your time and energy. I hope we
Speaker 1: get to do this again. Extremely grateful for your time
Speaker 1: and energy. And I learned a lot today, And actually
Speaker 1: I feel I could have talked to you for another
Speaker 1: three hours about Eastern and Western religion and ideologies and
Speaker 1: the amount of stories that I had coming up in
Speaker 1: my mind to to share back and forth. But we
Speaker 1: can just save that for another Yeah, that would be good.
Speaker 2: I'd love to do. It'd be, it'd be, it'd be.
Speaker 2: We did a little bit of that, we got we
Speaker 2: got into the overlap between the narrative domains. That would
Speaker 2: be beautiful. I don't I don't know nearly as much
Speaker 2: about Hindu religious thought as I should. I know a
Speaker 2: little bit about Buddhism and and a moderate amount about
Speaker 2: Taoism and that's been extremely useful to me. But I'm
Speaker 2: less conversant with with the Hindu tradition of thought, and
Speaker 2: it would be very interesting too. I mean, I've never
Speaker 2: delved deeply, almost without exception, into a religious tradition without
Speaker 2: finding stories that were like of incalculable value.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. Yeah, well I'm happy to save wherever possible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, well so yeah, that would be a good
Speaker 2: thing to thank you, thank you so much. Good to
Speaker 2: talk past.
Speaker 1: Such a pleasure. Honestly, if you love this episode, you
Speaker 1: love my interview with doctor Gabo Matte on under standing
Speaker 1: your trauma and how to heal emotional wounds to start
Speaker 1: moving on from the past.
Speaker 2: Everything in nature grows only where it's vulnerable. So a
Speaker 2: tree doesn't grow where it's hard and thick, does it.
Speaker 2: It goes where it's soft and green and vulnerable.