Speaker 1: You consider yourself an individual, but are you in fact
Speaker 1: built of rivaling neural networks? Can we see ourselves as
Speaker 1: a collection of personalities? How do we manage the conflict
Speaker 1: between different drives in our brains? And what does this
Speaker 1: have to do with deities or literature or maturation? And
Speaker 1: what did Friedrich Nietzsche mean when he said that every
Speaker 1: drive we have wants to quote represent just itself as
Speaker 1: the ultimate purpose of existence and the legitimate master of
Speaker 1: all the other drives, Or as he also put it,
Speaker 1: quote every drive wants to be master and it attempts
Speaker 1: to philosophize in that spirit. What exactly does that mean?
Speaker 1: Welcome to inner Cosmos with me David Eagle. I'm a
Speaker 1: neuroscientist and author at Stanford and in these episodes we
Speaker 1: sail deeply into our three pound universe to uncover some
Speaker 1: of the most surprising aspects of our lives. Today's episode
Speaker 1: is about how we are built of complex circuitry. Each
Speaker 1: of us is not like a simple computer program, but
Speaker 1: instead a machine built on conflict. This is a topic
Speaker 1: I have loved and written about for many years, and
Speaker 1: in today's podcast, I talk with a colleague who equally
Speaker 1: loves this topic from the point of view of clinical psychology.
Speaker 1: Today we talk with Jordan Peterson. He's one of our
Speaker 1: most well known psychologists. He was formerly at Harvard University
Speaker 1: and the University of Toronto and has now started his
Speaker 1: own educational platform called the Peterson Academy. You likely know
Speaker 1: Jordan from his books which have found wide audiences, like
Speaker 1: Twelve Rules for Life and his newest book, We Who
Speaker 1: Wrestle with God. Jordan and I are going to visit
Speaker 1: some key points in our conversation. The first is that
Speaker 1: as we age, we find ways to make these networks
Speaker 1: in our brain work together better, and this is in
Speaker 1: a sense, the definition of maturation. We'll also talk about
Speaker 1: the spectrum from a basic drive like reproduction to something
Speaker 1: richer that we might call a personality.
Speaker 2: Will come to the.
Speaker 1: Role of setting contracts with yourself to wrangle the behavior
Speaker 1: of the networks. And finally, we're going to discuss the
Speaker 1: role of literature and religion in setting up a way
Speaker 1: to direct the conflicting networks by giving them an external
Speaker 1: exemplar to look to with no out further ado. Here
Speaker 1: is my conversation with Jordan Peterson. So, Jordan, I'm very
Speaker 1: interested in how we are a collection of different things
Speaker 1: going on on the inside.
Speaker 2: We use the term individual when we talk about.
Speaker 1: Ourselves, but in fact we're made up of many different
Speaker 1: drives or personalities or neural networks.
Speaker 2: This is what we'll get into. So in my.
Speaker 1: Book in Cognito, I talked about as a team of rivals.
Speaker 1: I know you think about things as a collection of personalities.
Speaker 1: I'd like us to get into that. So how do
Speaker 1: you think about what we're made of?
Speaker 2: Who we are? I like the metaphor of personality might
Speaker 2: be deeper than a metaphor. It might just be a
Speaker 2: description because it works on a variety of different levels.
Speaker 2: It adds sophistication to the idea of drive because a
Speaker 2: drive has an algorithmic and mechanical connotation to it. But
Speaker 2: a personality has perceptions, emotions, and it has ideas, and
Speaker 2: it has opinions, and our internal motivational states are like that. So,
Speaker 2: like sexual the desire for sexual gratification brings with it
Speaker 2: a perceptual framework. Obviously, the same with anger, the same
Speaker 2: with hunger.
Speaker 1: And perceptual framework means what we notice exactly, how we
Speaker 1: prioritize our attention, and how we sequence our actions.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, But then there's a there's a deeper level too,
Speaker 2: which which I think you'll you'll find interesting. So I
Speaker 2: stimpend a lot of time studying the work of a
Speaker 2: historian of religions named Merche Eliada, and Eliada described a
Speaker 2: pattern he saw across cultures which was probably the psychological
Speaker 2: record of integration of tribes across time. So imagine every
Speaker 2: tribe has a value structure. It's usually represented by a
Speaker 2: superordinate deity or a set of deities. Okay, now, and
Speaker 2: one tribe meets another and they start to interact. Well,
Speaker 2: that often involves war and certainly involves discussion. It involves
Speaker 2: cooperation and competition. But there's a cognitive element to that too.
Speaker 2: So as the cultures integrate, the ideas integrate. Well, that's
Speaker 2: represented in the mythological literature as a battle between gods
Speaker 2: in heaven, right, And one of Aliata's points was that
Speaker 2: the battle between these gods, so these are personalities, tends
Speaker 2: towards a monotheism. Across time, as multiple cultures integrate, they
Speaker 2: integrate towards a monotheism. You might say, well, what's the
Speaker 2: evidence for that. It's like, well, mono implies unity, integration,
Speaker 2: applies unity. If culture is into penetrate and there's no unity,
Speaker 2: they're not integrated. They might be occupied the same territory,
Speaker 2: but they're not integrated. Interesting, and I think there's a
Speaker 2: parallel between that war of personalities that's represented, let's say,
Speaker 2: in the mythological literature, and the integration of fundamental motivational
Speaker 2: states in the process of maturation within a culture. I
Speaker 2: think those are the same thing. And if that's the case,
Speaker 2: then while you see a unification of phenomena across a
Speaker 2: very wide range of inquiries.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about what we mean by integration, because in fact,
Speaker 1: what we have is a battling of these networks all
Speaker 1: the time. Is certainly when you're a child, but even
Speaker 1: as you grow older and you set the path for
Speaker 1: your life and so on, you're always battling with yourself,
Speaker 1: as in, oh, I should need the case, I should
Speaker 1: need the cake, I should go do this thing.
Speaker 2: I shouldn't do the thing.
Speaker 1: And so you can cuss it yourself, you can conjole yourself,
Speaker 1: you can contract with yourself. You can get angry at yourself.
Speaker 1: And the question is who is getting angry at whom?
Speaker 1: That's for sure, right, So in a sense, we're still
Speaker 1: like the polytheism on the infinite.
Speaker 2: We never quite made it to a monotheism. Okay, okay,
Speaker 2: So I'd like to address that well simultaneously addressing something
Speaker 2: that you said at the beginning of this discussion. So
Speaker 2: you talked about us as individuals who are at war
Speaker 2: with our internal states. Let's say, or we're a battleground
Speaker 2: of warring internal states, and so we're made out of
Speaker 2: parts and we coalesce at the individual level. But I
Speaker 2: would say that's not exactly, that's not sufficient. That's a
Speaker 2: necessary description, but it's not sufficient because the idea of
Speaker 2: integration levels doesn't stop at the level of the individual.
Speaker 2: Because I could say, for example, well you're married, so
Speaker 2: now you're a part of that. That's another superordinate structure.
Speaker 2: It's a real structure. It's not a structure that's embodied
Speaker 2: in a single body, but it's a structure that's embodied
Speaker 2: in two very closely interacting bodies. So that makes another
Speaker 2: it's a metabody. But then that's integrated in a family,
Speaker 2: and that's integrated in a community, and then a town,
Speaker 2: and then a state, and then a nation, and that
Speaker 2: and even the level of the nation isn't necessarily the
Speaker 2: highest level of integration. And to identify the individual as
Speaker 2: arbitrarily as the pinnacle of the integration process is an error,
Speaker 2: I think. And this actually that addresses the problem of
Speaker 2: self regulation. So you're not integrated properly when your wife
Speaker 2: hates you, right, So a huge, a huge source of
Speaker 2: information that we use to determine whether we've integrated our
Speaker 2: internal states properly isn't whether they're functioning for us as individuals.
Speaker 2: It's whether they allow us to integrate ourselves harmoniously into
Speaker 2: a marriage, into a family, into a community, into a town.
Speaker 2: And then the measure of integration becomes not the existence
Speaker 2: of the individual, but the existence of harmony across every
Speaker 2: single one of those levels simultaneously. And so that harmony
Speaker 2: is what we're striving for. I think that harmony is
Speaker 2: exemplified by music, by the way, I think so well.
Speaker 2: Music does the same thing. It takes diverse elements and
Speaker 2: it organizes them into hire and higher order integrated hierarchies.
Speaker 2: And you can see people acting this out when they dance,
Speaker 2: like to an orchestra, of all the diverse players who
Speaker 2: are doing the same thing, they're integrated. And then you
Speaker 2: see people moving themselves in couples and then in a
Speaker 2: community in relationship to the music. It's a it's a
Speaker 2: model for this, it's a heavenly hierarchy. That that's the
Speaker 2: way you express it in terms of ideas that are derived,
Speaker 2: let's say, from the history of religion. And so I
Speaker 2: think we've made a big mistake as psychologists. Assuming it's
Speaker 2: because we're basically liberal Protestants in our orientation. We assume
Speaker 2: that the individual is the pinnacle of the integration process.
Speaker 2: But that's not it's not accurate.
Speaker 1: I would say, there's there's other reasons why we why
Speaker 1: concert on the individual there, because that that's you know,
Speaker 1: bound off, it's got borders around it.
Speaker 2: It lives and dies. So this three pound.
Speaker 1: Brain will at some point go away, but the other
Speaker 1: brains in the community will stick around.
Speaker 2: That sort of so it's a natural place. But of course,
Speaker 2: every reason to assume that it exists, right, whether it
Speaker 2: exists as the pinnacle, that's the other question.
Speaker 1: Okay, fair enough, But what it's trying to do within
Speaker 1: its three pound universe is figure out all these tasks. Okay,
Speaker 1: how do I work within a community? How do I
Speaker 1: work within my larger nation state.
Speaker 2: And so on.
Speaker 1: But I think we can corner it to that three
Speaker 1: pound organ and then talk about what are the neural
Speaker 1: networks in here?
Speaker 2: Okay, but what Okay, that's possible, but I'm not thoroughly
Speaker 2: convinced of it, because I think it's reasonable, Like, why
Speaker 2: not assume that the neural network that's made out of
Speaker 2: a communication a communicating group is like it's it is
Speaker 2: part of the work, and it's certainly moving information back
Speaker 2: and forth, and it like it has an existence, like
Speaker 2: it's not as obvious to our perceptions as the embodied
Speaker 2: form of an individual, right, and so it's more abstracted
Speaker 2: in that sense. But I don't see that it's of
Speaker 2: a lower order of reality.
Speaker 1: I totally agree. Okay, it is a network inside large network.
Speaker 1: That's absolutely right. But as a neuroscientist, that's the that's
Speaker 1: the level that I choose.
Speaker 2: As a fair sociologist, yeah, fair enough.
Speaker 1: So within that you've got these different networks. One of
Speaker 1: the things that you and I have talked about this previously,
Speaker 1: but this question about Okay, So, as Frederick Nictzschi said,
Speaker 1: each drive philosophizes in its own spirit, meaning when I'm hungry,
Speaker 1: when I'm angry, when I'm happy, when I'm addicted, when
Speaker 1: I'm addicted, these things don't just drive me, but they
Speaker 1: actually have their whole story.
Speaker 2: They tell me, oh, this is true, this is the right.
Speaker 1: And Nietzsche had a what do you call this perspectivism,
Speaker 1: I think, which is this idea that this is why
Speaker 1: it's hard to say what a single truth is because
Speaker 1: you've got all these different drives, which we might call
Speaker 1: personalities and whatever, but you've got these different things that
Speaker 1: tell you different.
Speaker 2: Truths also have different criteria for truth exactly right. And
Speaker 2: this is something that pragmatists under William James were wrestling
Speaker 2: with at the end of the eighteen hundreds. So the pragmatists,
Speaker 2: who saw analogies very directly between their philosophical work and
Speaker 2: Darwinian theories, really derived a new theory of truth. And
Speaker 2: the new theory of truth was something like truth good enough,
Speaker 2: like something is truth, it's good enough as a tool
Speaker 2: to obtain a certain end right. And it's an interesting
Speaker 2: definition because it takes into account the fact that none
Speaker 2: of our truths are ultimate right, all our truths are proximate.
Speaker 2: And then you might say, because we're ignorant. We're bounded
Speaker 2: by our ignorance. Nothing we know is absolute. So then
Speaker 2: you say, well, how do you know that something's true?
Speaker 2: And the answer is something like it functions in relationship
Speaker 2: to its intended purpose, in relationship to a goal. Now
Speaker 2: that lays open to the question of what our true goals.
Speaker 2: But that's okay for now. And when a drive philosophizes,
Speaker 2: it's looking for the truth that enable it to obtain
Speaker 2: its end. Yes, right, right, that's its criteria for truth. Yes, right,
Speaker 2: this is a good enough argument to win the battle
Speaker 2: with my wife. Right, it's true enough for what so
Speaker 2: I can dominate her? Let's say, right, right, right, yes, exactly.
Speaker 1: And so the thing that you and I have discussed
Speaker 1: before is the possibility that instead of each of these
Speaker 1: drives actually owning its own personality, it might be sort
Speaker 1: of reaching out to other places and saying, you know,
Speaker 1: when I think about what I want to get out
Speaker 1: of the pre filled cortex, or you know, what I
Speaker 1: want to get in terms of words to use in
Speaker 1: this argument or something, it's drawing on these other mechanisms,
Speaker 1: these subsystems that are there.
Speaker 2: But here's the thing. The question is.
Speaker 1: About the conflict in these things and the way that
Speaker 1: these things battle with each other. So how do you
Speaker 1: think about the way these battle and the way as
Speaker 1: we mature we are working these battles out, We're working
Speaker 1: out how to get these things.
Speaker 2: Well, I think that is the job of the cortex.
Speaker 2: But the cortex is highly socialized, right, so you can
Speaker 2: think about it neurologically, it's the job of the cortex.
Speaker 2: But then the cortex is programmed by these larger networks, right, definitely. Okay,
Speaker 2: So what happens to you if you're well socialized is
Speaker 2: that these underlying motivational systems arrange themselves in the game
Speaker 2: so that each of them gets what they want at
Speaker 2: often enough, in a manner that doesn't interfere with the
Speaker 2: future or makes the future better even and in a
Speaker 2: manner that allows for the benefits of social community. Right.
Speaker 2: So there's a very tight set of constraints, and I
Speaker 2: think that I think the developmental psychologist PHA probably modeled
Speaker 2: this better than anyone else I know of, and he
Speaker 2: put it in terms of it's not game theory exactly,
Speaker 2: because game theory is a technical endeavor of its own.
Speaker 2: But PSA spent an awful lot of time analyzing the
Speaker 2: structure of games as the prototype of both maturity and
Speaker 2: of socialization. And a game for PSA, a game is
Speaker 2: a voluntarily shared aime with agreed upon procedures, the voluntary
Speaker 2: part being very very important. And I would say, you know,
Speaker 2: if you're trying to integrate rage and lust, let's say
Speaker 2: you can use pain as a suppressive or fear as
Speaker 2: a suppressive mechanism, even neurologically, like as a parent, you
Speaker 2: could punish your child viciously every time they were aggressive,
Speaker 2: and that aggression would come under the inhibitory control of fear,
Speaker 2: and you could call that socialization. But a much more
Speaker 2: effective way to do that is to entice and invite
Speaker 2: the child to integrate. That integration into something like higher
Speaker 2: order competition towards a distal goal. And that's what you do.
Speaker 2: For example, if you trained a competitive child, sot aggressive
Speaker 2: child to be an athletic victor, so the aggression is
Speaker 2: now directed towards a social aim, right, because that would
Speaker 2: be the game, and the aggression actually becomes something that's
Speaker 2: good rather than bad. Because if you have a sports team,
Speaker 2: you want your players to want to win, you want
Speaker 2: them to be competitive. But then if they're well socialized.
Speaker 2: It's like aggression within rules towards an aim name would
Speaker 2: be the victory of the game, but not just that,
Speaker 2: the well being of the team, the growth of the
Speaker 2: team across time, the ability of the team to get
Speaker 2: along with other teams, and the generalization of that to
Speaker 2: a broader range of games. That's what it would be
Speaker 2: to be a good sport, for example. So's that's a
Speaker 2: game like model of motivational integration towards a higher order ethos, right,
Speaker 2: future oriented, community oriented, right exactly.
Speaker 1: So we're putting we learn as we grow from a
Speaker 1: child who has these different drives, we're learning how to
Speaker 1: make these cooperate for communal reasons.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and for the future, yeah exactly.
Speaker 1: The thing that's interesting the most is how these things
Speaker 1: stay rivaling our whole lives and how we work.
Speaker 2: Out strategies for this.
Speaker 1: So one thing you and I've talked about before is
Speaker 1: the Ulysses contract, where you say, you know, I know
Speaker 1: I want to do this kind of thing in the future,
Speaker 1: and so I'm gonna contract.
Speaker 2: I'm going to make some.
Speaker 1: Unbreakable pact where I can't break it, and I have
Speaker 1: to do this thing in the future.
Speaker 2: But I'm Also, I want to.
Speaker 1: Talk to you about story and religion and how those
Speaker 1: can be ways that steer us when we are thinking
Speaker 1: about these internal conflicts.
Speaker 2: Well, I was interested in your Eleas's contract model, but
Speaker 2: the model that sprung to mind for me when you
Speaker 2: walk through that was the Old Testament model of covenant,
Speaker 2: because covenant is actually contract. So unpack that. Well, the
Speaker 2: relationship with the divine in the Old Testament is characterized
Speaker 2: as a covenant. That's a contract. Okay, it's a sacrificial contract,
Speaker 2: which is very specific kind of contract. And I think
Speaker 2: the sacrificial contract is the basis of maturity and community.
Speaker 2: I think it is by definition. Well, and what does
Speaker 2: that official mean? Like means I'll give up something now
Speaker 2: to get something later, got it? Oh? Okay, that's the sacrifice.
Speaker 2: There's no difference between that and work, right, because when
Speaker 2: I work, I sacrifice the present to the future. Yeah, right,
Speaker 2: that work is sacrificial. Okay. Now, once this is a
Speaker 2: matter of definition. Once you know that, a very interesting
Speaker 2: question enters the stage. You might say, which is what's
Speaker 2: the most effective form of sacrifice? Right? And the biblical
Speaker 2: stories examine that from every conceivable angle. So, for example,
Speaker 2: one of the very early stories in the biblical Corpus
Speaker 2: is the story of canaan Abel, and it's the story
Speaker 2: of two patterns of sacrifice, one of which succeeds at
Speaker 2: least in the divine sense, and the other which fails cataclysmically.
Speaker 2: And that's the sacrifice, the false sacrifice of kan. It
Speaker 2: sets up a pattern of sacrifice. One is immature, prideful, usurping,
Speaker 2: and self serving, and it degenerates into murder and genocide, right,
Speaker 2: and then the flood comes. That's how those stories are arranged.
Speaker 2: The other is the sacrifice of able and able sacrifices
Speaker 2: of the are those that are pleasing to God. Well,
Speaker 2: that opens the next question, which is well, exactly as
Speaker 2: we pointed out earlier. Once you know that the foundation
Speaker 2: of community and the future is sacrifice, the only question
Speaker 2: that remains is what's the appropriate sacrifice? And that as
Speaker 2: a very complex question. There's other ordering possibilities, like the
Speaker 2: postmodernist notion essentially is that power is the uniting meta narrative.
Speaker 2: What's an example of that. Well, the Marxist presupposition that
Speaker 2: society is as a zero sum competition between the oppressor
Speaker 2: and the oppressed. On the economic plan, that's been generalized
Speaker 2: by the neo Marxist let's say to be what a
Speaker 2: multi dimensional battle of power? And you know, you can
Speaker 2: see some truth in that when you think about, for example,
Speaker 2: if you're thinking about the solution to the problem of
Speaker 2: rivalry only as competition, as unbridled competition, but as soon
Speaker 2: as you understand that there's bridled forms of competition, maybe
Speaker 2: that's why you're interested in the Ulysses contract because that
Speaker 2: puts structure around rivalry. Right, how do you structure rivalry?
Speaker 2: So maybe that's why it captured your attention so intensely,
Speaker 2: because that's a crucial question, right, how do you delimit
Speaker 2: the demands of power? M'd say, that's another way of
Speaker 2: looking at it. Yeah, that's right, And I'm interested. I mean,
Speaker 2: what's your take on the role of story in sayings?
Speaker 1: So I've always got all these possible paths that i
Speaker 1: could take, and I'm always facing temptation.
Speaker 2: Everyone is.
Speaker 1: And the question is, you know, do story in general,
Speaker 1: biblical stories or otherwise give us a sense of Oh,
Speaker 1: here's a model that I hadn't thought of before, and
Speaker 1: I can look up to this character and I can
Speaker 1: or that's right, and navigate myself accordingly.
Speaker 2: Well, okay, so a story is a description of a
Speaker 2: hierarchy of value. That's an embodied hierarchy of value. Okay.
Speaker 2: So when God assigns a role to add him, he says,
Speaker 2: your role is to name, identify, and subdu, and subdu
Speaker 2: means to put everything in its proper place. Okay. So
Speaker 2: someone's character is the manner in which they put things
Speaker 2: into place, right, their priority. When you go watch a movie,
Speaker 2: what you see is the embodiment of a structure of prioritization.
Speaker 2: This person has an aim, they have a strategy, They
Speaker 2: have some things for them come first. That's the things
Speaker 2: they attend to. That's what you're watching. When you watch
Speaker 2: the character, you reflect the perceptions and the emotions, and
Speaker 2: you observe the success of the strategy. Right. So what
Speaker 2: a story presents to you is a hierarchy of intentional
Speaker 2: and action priority, and it's extremely valuable. And then you
Speaker 2: can test them out. And I say, that's the technical
Speaker 2: definition of a story. And so we're always looking for
Speaker 2: a better story, and the story would be the structure
Speaker 2: that integrates the conflicts. That's another way to say that.
Speaker 1: That's really lovely, right, because I always think about the
Speaker 1: story as what always has grabbed me is the way
Speaker 1: that we slip so easily into characters, into.
Speaker 2: Story in other ways. Yeah, right.
Speaker 1: Neuroscientists we study the brain. We say, look, here's how
Speaker 1: the visual system works. You have photons that the retina.
Speaker 1: You know, you figure out what you're looking at, what
Speaker 1: you're hearing from. But in fact, what brains do most
Speaker 1: of the time is they don't care at all about
Speaker 1: what's in front of them.
Speaker 2: They're thinking about other things. They're simulating possible future.
Speaker 1: Is that reminiscing about the past, or they're slipping into
Speaker 1: literature and absolutely the character. So I love what you
Speaker 1: said about the reason you become the characters. You get
Speaker 1: to experience the world from a.
Speaker 2: Different attentional exactly exactly, it's a different structure. Well look, look,
Speaker 2: so a typical story element, let's say, in an action
Speaker 2: romantic action adventure movie, is do you save the woman
Speaker 2: you love or do you serve your country? Right, that's
Speaker 2: very so you can see there's both of those are
Speaker 2: very well developed hierarchies of value. There's real reasons to
Speaker 2: prioritize the person you love, and there's real reasons to
Speaker 2: prioritize your nation. Okay, so now what do you do
Speaker 2: when those are head to hit? Well, the character of
Speaker 2: the protagonist determines the answer to that question, right right, right, right.
Speaker 1: So see gets to live in those shoes and see
Speaker 1: what he does, and see what that resonates with you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you can see whether that's an uphill that's
Speaker 2: an uphill journey or a downhill journey, yes, right, and
Speaker 2: so or or a variant of that. And this is
Speaker 2: the most standard variant is the comedic variant, which is
Speaker 2: obstacle crisis resolution, but resolution at a higher order, right, right,
Speaker 2: that's the divine comedy. Tragedy is just the dissent, right,
Speaker 2: that's the emergence of entropy. That's a way of thinking
Speaker 2: about it. Give entropy would be while your your belief
Speaker 2: system collapses because it encounters an obstacle that's insurmountable. Now
Speaker 2: you're bereft, and that's the end of you. Right, that's
Speaker 2: tragic dissolution of the would be hero, that's right.
Speaker 1: And just symone's following the entropy is this idea of
Speaker 1: you know, instead of having a clear path, you've got
Speaker 1: multiple possibilities. That's this idea of an increase of entropy.
Speaker 1: Your brain is anxious and it has does things.
Speaker 2: Fall apart, or which you don't know which way is up,
Speaker 2: or when you don't know where you're going, or when
Speaker 2: you're lost in the desert right right, or you're just
Speaker 2: in despair. Right. All of those those are high entropy.
Speaker 1: States exactly, And what the brain is always trying to
Speaker 1: do is save energy. That's essentially its mainful life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right, right, Oh, that's.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that was Schrodinger's definition of life. Essentially, it's
Speaker 2: an anti entropic function, right, So the association of anxiety
Speaker 2: with entropies is very, very fundamental, very fund Stories are
Speaker 2: ways of constraining entropy. That that isn't all they do,
Speaker 2: because they provide an aim and they provide hope. But
Speaker 2: even that's an entropy constraining function to some degree.
Speaker 3: Oh, fascinating, Yeah, it's it's it's it's really a key realization.
Speaker 3: As soon as you understand that a story describes a
Speaker 3: hierarchy of attentional prioritization, you think, oh, well, of course,
Speaker 3: because that means that the story, the story is literally
Speaker 3: how we make sense of the world. It's a description
Speaker 3: of a structure of making sense in the world.
Speaker 2: Navigation. It's a navigational.
Speaker 1: Structure, right, And all these lessons are as we plow
Speaker 1: through novels with these lessons give us is ways to
Speaker 1: manage the own conflict within our heads with all these
Speaker 1: different drives going on.
Speaker 2: And to do that in relationship to other people in.
Speaker 1: The future that's exactly right, and ourselves in the future, right, and.
Speaker 2: Ourselves of course, of course, of course, because we're actually
Speaker 2: a community across time, right. So that's partly why there's
Speaker 2: an analogy between the self and the community. It's like, well,
Speaker 2: why should you take care of the old, Well, you're
Speaker 2: going to be old. So if your society doesn't take
Speaker 2: care of the old, that's you, buddy. Why should you
Speaker 2: take care of the sick? Well, you may be naive
Speaker 2: and think you're going to be healthy your whole life,
Speaker 2: but you're not, you know, so over the course of
Speaker 2: your life you're going to it. While you could say
Speaker 2: you're going to inhabit the entire sociological cosmos. So you
Speaker 2: see reflections of this. For example, this is a very
Speaker 2: canonical example of this in the insistence that the savior
Speaker 2: is born in the lowly place. You see that with Moses,
Speaker 2: and you see it with Christ is born with the animals,
Speaker 2: among the animals in a stable. Why well, because at
Speaker 2: some point, at some point in his life, even the
Speaker 2: greatest hero occupies the lowest position. And so then if
Speaker 2: that's the case, then you want to set things up
Speaker 2: psychologically and socially so even those who occupy the most
Speaker 2: lowly of positions are protected as if they're of infinite value.
Speaker 4: That's the ethos, oh I see, that makes them very
Speaker 4: appealing to the whole demographic to watch the story, because
Speaker 4: if the hero is someone who already is born in
Speaker 4: privilege and rich and so on, maybe you lose a
Speaker 4: lot of the audience that way.
Speaker 2: As this course, the audience doesn't have the opportunity to move.
Speaker 2: It means that it also means that the story that's
Speaker 2: being told doesn't span the entire range of possibilities. It's like, well,
Speaker 2: here's a hero story if you're rich, well fair enough,
Speaker 2: and it's not like that isn't the guide, But a
Speaker 2: better guide is here's the story that guides you when
Speaker 2: you're coming up from the abyss, or from the depths,
Speaker 2: or from the lowest possible place. Because the the total
Speaker 2: story would take you from the lowest possible place to
Speaker 2: the highest possible place.
Speaker 1: Right, I've always thought about that just as the size
Speaker 1: of the delta.
Speaker 2: Being the important thing.
Speaker 1: But your point is that opens it up to you know,
Speaker 1: everybody getting to see that where that spans.
Speaker 2: It's univers so well, and you can imagine that as
Speaker 2: a solution increases in quality, it becomes more generalizable. Right
Speaker 2: it is that's almost by definition. That's that's that's that's
Speaker 2: a good indication of its utility. This applies to everyone.
Speaker 2: So then the question is partly of course this is
Speaker 2: the case. If you think it through, it's like, what
Speaker 2: story are human beings attempting to work out across the generations? Well,
Speaker 2: the story that applies to everyone, well obviously, while like
Speaker 2: what else, what other story could they possibly be trying
Speaker 2: to work out? Right, the story that applies to the
Speaker 2: privileged few, well, that would work if the privileged few
Speaker 2: were stable, But they're not, right. I mean, look, one
Speaker 2: percent of the population almost always controls fifty percent of
Speaker 2: the wealth. But the people who occupy that one percent
Speaker 2: aren't the same people even within the span of their life.
Speaker 2: So like the water that's running from a faucet makes
Speaker 2: a stable column, but the molecules are different from second
Speaker 2: to second. Well, it's the same with these distributions in
Speaker 2: social status. And so you know, a rich person who
Speaker 2: goes to school is still the youngest kid in the school,
Speaker 2: is still going to be subject to bullying, is still
Speaker 2: going to be low on the social totem pole. And
Speaker 2: so you need an ethos that applies to everyone across
Speaker 2: all possible social positions, right, and a universal That's why
Speaker 2: Harry Potter's an orphan, right, because he's lost, he's parentless,
Speaker 2: he occupies a low he lives under the stairs with
Speaker 2: like tyrannical parents, right, But it doesn't matter because he's
Speaker 2: the hero that redeems everything right. Right, So that's a
Speaker 2: universalizing story, and that's why it's sold, like, you know,
Speaker 2: hundreds of millions of copies.
Speaker 1: Okay, So coming back to the issue of rivalry between
Speaker 1: I think about them and networks.
Speaker 2: You think about them as personalities. Other people think about
Speaker 2: them as drives. It'sarily some of the things are drives.
Speaker 1: Some of the hypothalamic issues are you know, thirst, fear, hunger.
Speaker 2: The more the more automated they are, the more they're
Speaker 2: drive Like yeah, that's because right, So, and the more
Speaker 2: the more phylogenetically asient they are because they can just
Speaker 2: run as programs. That's a really good point.
Speaker 1: Actually, so we should we shouldn't call them all drives
Speaker 1: or all personalities. I totally agree with what you're saying.
Speaker 1: These really automated hypothalamic things. Those are really like I
Speaker 1: think about the most personalities with.
Speaker 2: Very few degrees of freedom. Yeah that's right. Right, So
Speaker 2: like sexual behavior, once it's instigated, collapses into a relatively
Speaker 2: there's a few degrees of freedom, that's right, but it's
Speaker 2: a more dry but it.
Speaker 1: Still has a personality in terms of the things that notices,
Speaker 1: the things it says to try to seduce and so on.
Speaker 2: Yeah that's right. Okay, Then we can think the more
Speaker 2: phylogenetically ancient the motivational state, the more drive like it becomes.
Speaker 2: Yeah that's right. Okay, it's mostly automated. Good personality is
Speaker 2: on a spectrum. Okay, so complexity of personality at least, right.
Speaker 1: So how do you think about maturation and all these
Speaker 1: personalities that you have.
Speaker 2: What's your take on what it means? Okay, Okay, here's
Speaker 2: a way of thinking. I think this is very cool.
Speaker 2: So imagine that you have a drive to admire, Okay,
Speaker 2: because you do. Okay, okay, what other people sure? Just
Speaker 2: the fact that that exists, it's like you'll admire someone,
Speaker 2: It's like, okay, I would say, the drive to admire
Speaker 2: is the manifestation of the instinct to mature. Okay, let
Speaker 2: me understand that the impact. Yeah, okay, Well, so look,
Speaker 2: a four year old is going to admire a six
Speaker 2: year old, all things considered, they'll usually pick someone that's
Speaker 2: in their zone of proximal development, so someone they could be. Right,
Speaker 2: And so now this instinct that compels them to admire, right,
Speaker 2: to copy and to attend to picks a potential future
Speaker 2: self that's obtainable and then grips them. Okay, that's the
Speaker 2: instinct to mature. Right. So then you could say we've
Speaker 2: got all these hypothalamic functions. There are sub personalities, but
Speaker 2: there's a metafunction as well that's also biologically instantiated, that
Speaker 2: drives us towards maturation and integration and integrates all those
Speaker 2: sub personalities, and that manifests itself in the experience of admiration.
Speaker 2: And then we admire heroes in books, and we admire
Speaker 2: religious figures, and those are all here's how you make
Speaker 2: a religious figure. It's simple. You take ten admirable people
Speaker 2: and they're the same because they're admirable, so they exist
Speaker 2: in a category. You extract out everything that's admirable, you
Speaker 2: sink it into a single personality and posit that as
Speaker 2: an ideal. And you do that a thousand times, you
Speaker 2: have a savior. A savior will emerge out of that.
Speaker 1: Oh terrific, right, okay, and then we okay, And so
Speaker 1: the to summarize this, what we then do is we
Speaker 1: use that savior as a way when we.
Speaker 2: Have an internal battle.
Speaker 1: We say, it gives us some you know, I don't
Speaker 1: know what would Jesus do exactly?
Speaker 2: What would what would dny X do?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right, because right, so, both literature and let's
Speaker 1: say religion, even at a higher level of this gives
Speaker 1: us a way to deal with this conflict because, as
Speaker 1: you what I've talked about before. You know, what we're
Speaker 1: always trying to do is reduce entropy and not have
Speaker 1: every possibility open.
Speaker 2: And often we know.
Speaker 1: That there's a conflict between instant gratification and long term
Speaker 1: thinking who we want to be, and so that gives
Speaker 1: us a way to grip onto it, to say what
Speaker 1: would this deity do well?
Speaker 2: And the fact that that, the fact that that example
Speaker 2: is exemplified in the story also makes it generalizable. And
Speaker 2: here here's why. So think if you watch children play house,
Speaker 2: Let's say a little boy is playing the father. You
Speaker 2: might say, well, he's imitating his father, but that's not right.
Speaker 2: What he does is he watches his father, and then
Speaker 2: he watches instantiations of the father in say movies, Disney movies,
Speaker 2: and the books he's reading, and he abstracts out the
Speaker 2: character of the father. Now, the character of the father
Speaker 2: is a far more generalizable understanding than pure imitation. It's
Speaker 2: less drive like, it's more personality like. So, if you
Speaker 2: have a savior instantiated in a story, you can generalize
Speaker 2: from the story to the novel situation, which you couldn't
Speaker 2: do if you were just imitating. Yes, right, so that's
Speaker 2: how you encapsulate the spirit of the story. The spirit's
Speaker 2: the pattern that can be generalized.
Speaker 1: What's interesting is this is not to my knowledge, it's
Speaker 1: not really studied in neuroscience, so we don't know where
Speaker 1: do you store the savior? I mean presuming this all prefrontal,
Speaker 1: long term thinking stuff, some of that shapes your circuits,
Speaker 1: the fact that I know of a savior, or we
Speaker 1: study it in some ways, but we don't know we're
Speaker 1: studying it.
Speaker 2: Okay, if you study vervet monkeys, for example, vervet monkeys
Speaker 2: will look longer at photographs of high status vervet monkeys
Speaker 2: that have low status in their tribe, right in their group. Right,
Speaker 2: So there's an association between social status and movement towards
Speaker 2: that admirable figure. And the alpha chimp is the highest
Speaker 2: status chip. Okay, so you might say, well, he's the
Speaker 2: most powerful chimp, he's the most brutal chip. It's like
Speaker 2: friends to all blue that theory to bits, that isn't
Speaker 2: the case. Stable alphas are reciprocal and they have very
Speaker 2: dense friendship networks. Right. So now you could say you
Speaker 2: take alpha you're a chimp. You take Alpha one in
Speaker 2: one generation and Alpha two in the second generation in
Speaker 2: three and four and five, and then you amalgamate them. Well,
Speaker 2: that's eliot a tract that development in religious stories. That's
Speaker 2: exactly what happens, is that that's how memory actually works.
Speaker 2: Is imagine there's a historical figure who's memorable and stories
Speaker 2: are told about them, but then it's three generations later
Speaker 2: and everyone who knew him died. Well, all the stories
Speaker 2: get amalgamated into a central hero figure, and that's what's remembered, right,
Speaker 2: that's what's remembered, right, Yeah, And that's what stories are
Speaker 2: told about. That's what's remembered, and that is what is taught.
Speaker 1: And when it's taught to somebody, then they can use
Speaker 1: that hero figure as a way to navigate or they.
Speaker 2: Even acted out, they dramatize its. Right, Yeah, yeah, that's
Speaker 2: that's right, that's exactly right. So the the historical memory
Speaker 2: aggregates into singular figures and then those are elevated, exactly right.
Speaker 1: And my point is, I think this we don't understand
Speaker 1: entirely how that we know about mirror neurons and the
Speaker 1: fact that we in person and others. But but this
Speaker 1: is a big part of why we have hero stories
Speaker 1: in religion and so on, is so that we can say, oh,
Speaker 1: that's somebody worth mirroring, that's definitely.
Speaker 2: Definitely and admiration is the key to that. And that's
Speaker 2: so that's where you can say the instinctual basis of it,
Speaker 2: and you know that admiration is probably the drive as
Speaker 2: well that compels a child to listen to his father
Speaker 2: if he admires it, right, because and you need that
Speaker 2: because otherwise, why would the child make the father a
Speaker 2: figure of intentional prioritization. There has to be an instinct
Speaker 2: there which is an instinct to respond, let's say, to
Speaker 2: the paternal and then if the father matches the paternal
Speaker 2: template genetically, then he's going to catalyze that instinct for
Speaker 2: admiration and learning is going to take place. Excellence, Yeah, excellent,
Speaker 2: Thank you so much. Hey, my pleasure. I loved this conversation.
Speaker 2: There were so many things that came out. Yeah, yeah, correct,
Speaker 2: it was my pleasure.
Speaker 1: That was my conversation with Jordan Peterson, and I just
Speaker 1: want to summarize a few of the parts that I
Speaker 1: found particularly important. First, nobody, you know, is one thing
Speaker 1: like a computer system with a single operating system. But
Speaker 1: instead each person you look at can be somewhat different
Speaker 1: under different circumstances. And the part that sometimes it's harder
Speaker 1: to see is that this applies equally to ourselves. We
Speaker 1: are each build of different networks with different goals, and
Speaker 1: your behavior falls under the grip of different drives, like
Speaker 1: when you're trying to obtain something or you're hungry, or
Speaker 1: you're sexually driven, or you're angry, or you're calm and
Speaker 1: thinking about your long term goals. Whatever state you're in
Speaker 1: modifies not just how you act and what you decide,
Speaker 1: but what you even notice and how you perceive it.
Speaker 1: I'll give you an example. One study showed that when
Speaker 1: people are thirsty, they're more likely to perceive an ambiguous
Speaker 1: surface as transparent, like water. This is like a parts
Speaker 1: traveler seeing mirages of water in a desert. Versions of
Speaker 1: this sort of thing happen all the time. What we
Speaker 1: see and what we notice depends on our drives. A
Speaker 1: person with an addiction to drugs, sex, food, anything else
Speaker 1: will notice threats and opportunities differently than someone else. They
Speaker 1: know notice what they need to notice to obtain what
Speaker 1: they seek. But because we're always trapped inside ourselves, it
Speaker 1: can be difficult to see that we're different people at
Speaker 1: different times. This only becomes clear in those moments when
Speaker 1: we look back and we think, wow, I really can't
Speaker 1: believe I did that, or said that, or thought that
Speaker 1: was a good idea. A century ago, Albert Einstein commented
Speaker 1: on how when a scientist looks at raw data, they
Speaker 1: can only see what their frameworks allow them to see
Speaker 1: he said quote. It is the theory which decides what
Speaker 1: can be observed. In other words, there's raw data out there,
Speaker 1: but if you don't have a framework for something, you
Speaker 1: won't even see it. And the heart of today's episode
Speaker 1: is the same sort of idea, not about a theory,
Speaker 1: but a personality. The personality, the drive that grips you
Speaker 1: at the moment, the neural network that is winning for
Speaker 1: the moment, that decides what can be observed. If you're
Speaker 1: a regular listener to this podcast, you know that I'm
Speaker 1: obsessed with the differences between people in terms of what
Speaker 1: they perceive from the world. But today's episode is fundamentally
Speaker 1: about the differences between you and you and you at
Speaker 1: different moments in time. Sometimes the role of religion or
Speaker 1: literature is to set up ideals that we admire, and
Speaker 1: that way, instead of just looking to other people, we
Speaker 1: can look to an envisioned future self. We can say, Okay,
Speaker 1: I have a vision that I kind of like for
Speaker 1: the sort of person that I want to be, even
Speaker 1: if you don't feel like that person. Now you can
Speaker 1: build a model of that future you and ideal self
Speaker 1: that satisfies the greatest number of constraints, both individual and communal,
Speaker 1: and then you can navigate your decisions in deference to that. So,
Speaker 1: as we wrap up, here's the takeaway. You are not
Speaker 1: one singular, unchanging entity, but instead a shifting constellation of drives, states,
Speaker 1: neural networks, each vying for control in different moments, and
Speaker 1: recognizing this fluidity can be a powerful tool not only
Speaker 1: for understanding your past actions and moments of regret.
Speaker 2: But also for shaping your future.
Speaker 1: Self By consciously constructing ideal versions of yourself, whether through
Speaker 1: thinking about it or writing on religious or literary exemplars,
Speaker 1: we can use these to help guide our choices because if.
Speaker 2: We are in our core a team of rivals.
Speaker 1: Then the challenge and the opportunity is learning how to
Speaker 1: captain that argumentative team towards the optimal outcome. Go to
Speaker 1: Eagleman dot com slash podcast for more information and to
Speaker 1: find further reading. Send me an email at podcast at
Speaker 1: eagleman dot com with questions or discussion, and check out
Speaker 1: and subscribe to Inner Cosmos on YouTube for videos of
Speaker 1: each episode and to leave comments Until next time.
Speaker 2: I'm David Eagleman, and this is Inner Cosmos.