Dr. Jordan Peterson is a clinical psychologist who sold over 5 million copies of his book 12 Rules for Life. The most watched This Past Weekend guest ever returns to the program 2 years later to catch up with Theo about the rapid technological revolution that is happening before our eyes, if it's ok to have pride in your country, and capturing the magic of first times. Get Jordan's new Book: Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life http://bit.ly/BeyondOrder_12_More_Rules
This episode is brought to you by Magic Mind Use code THEOMAGIC to get 20% off at https://MagicMind.co
Music: “Shine” - Bishop Gunnhttp://bit.ly/Shine_BishopGunn
Hit the Hotline 985-664-9503 Video Hotline for Theo Upload here: http://bit.ly/TPW_VideoHotlineFind Theo: Website: https://theovon.com Instagram: https://instagram.com/theovon Facebook: https://facebook.com/theovon Facebook Group: https://facebook.com/groups/thispastw... Twitter: https://twitter.com/theovon YouTube: https://youtube.com/theovon Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiEK... Producer: Nick Davis https://instagram.com/realnickdavis Producer: Sean Dugan https://www.instagram.com/SeanDugan/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Today's episode is brought to you by Magic Mind, the anti-procrastination sipper.
If you want that small upper, you can get it.
Go to magicmind.co and use code Theo Magic for 20% off.
Today's guest is his second time returning to the podcast.
He has a new book out, Beyond Order, 12 More Rules for Life.
I'm almost to rule number four right now.
And man, he's just, you know, I'm gracious for his time.
You know, I'm honored to be able to talk to a thinking man.
This man is a real thinker and an orator.
And sometimes I can think and sometimes I can talk, but rarely can I do both.
He's a professor.
He's high-level in so many fields.
He's a best-selling author.
Sold over 5 million copies of his first book, 12 Rules for Life.
Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Jordan Peterson.
I'll send it.
And tell you my stories Shine on me And I will find a song I'll be singing just for you And I will find a song Dr. Peterson, great to see you again.
I feel.
It's really good to see you too.
It's been a while.
A long while.
Yeah, it has been a while.
Thank you for the new rules.
I got to ask you, how many more rules are there overall?
Because it's starting to add up.
Well, originally there was a list of 42. I published that on Quora.
I've heard that.
Yes, and so in principle, there's 18 more, but of course, you know, there's an infinite number of necessary rules.
I don't think I'll publish any more rule books, however.
Yeah, I'm just letting you know, as someone who's trying to abide by the rules, we're doing our best out here, and we're glad that there's more, but it's also, it's a lot, it's a lot to do, you know, it's a lot.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, and you can only beat the same horse so many times.
Yeah, well, I don't think that's actually a saying, but now I've invented it.
Well, I've seen some.
I grew up in some areas.
They had a little bit of mild animal cruelty about us growing up.
Nothing real heavy, but probably I'm glad some of it wasn't documented at the time, actually.
So I tried to get as far as I could into Beyond Order, into the new book.
And it's just, you know, it's hard.
There's a lot of like, you have to take your time and you have to really absorb as you go.
And there was one part, there's a lot of parts that stuck out for me.
But so far, there's a part in chapter three where you talk about fear and you talk about the fog.
And I wrote down a sentence.
It says that sometimes you're so afraid that you will not allow yourself to even know what you want.
I think that's very common.
It really hit me hard because sometimes I admit I'm afraid to like, I'm afraid to even map out, even to really write down and map out what I want.
But I don't know exactly.
I tried to really drop down and figure out what the fear was.
Like, why am I afraid?
And I've had some trouble really figuring that out.
Like, am I afraid that I'll have to then do it?
Am I afraid that I'll then feel inadequate based upon what I really want and where I currently am?
So I just wanted you to maybe expound on that a little bit and just kind of share, like, what did you think?
Why do I get afraid to really admit, even admit to myself what I really want?
Well, I think you put your finger on two of the fundamental reasons.
If you don't allow yourself to know what you want, then you haven't established your conditions for failure.
Right?
I mean, if you're aiming at a goal and the goal is really clear, then you can.
Sorry, I lost you.
Oh, you did?
Yes.
Just visually, or can you still hear me?
I can hear you.
Just.
Okay, there we go.
Sorry about that.
No worries.
Okay, you're better than just being still too.
Somehow I might get a little foggy.
No, it was minimized.
Okay, let's forget about that.
We can go back to this.
If you know what you want, then you know when you're failing.
If you don't allow yourself to know what you want, you can keep that foggy.
If you don't set out the conditions for your success, then you can avoid your responsibility because, again, that's not clear.
And the problem with wanting something is that in all probability, you're going to have to work for it.
You're going to have to make sacrifices.
And it's certainly possible that you want to avoid that.
You might be afraid to make it clear because other people could deny it to you too, which is something I write about a fair bit in that chapter.
The problem is, and failing to make any of that clear protects you right now, but it's really hard on you over the medium to long term.
Because if you don't make it clear to yourself what you want or to other people, the probability that you're just going to stumble into it is pretty low.
And you can put that off indefinitely day after day.
But the problem with that is that you age while you're doing that.
And there's obviously a price to be paid for that.
So that chapter, that's chapter three, do not hide things in the fog.
I mean, it's a warning about failing to pay attention.
You know, Knowledge emerges in a very strange way.
It emerges, obviously, when we learn something, we started out by not knowing it.
And so, what that means is that knowledge goes through a transformation process from being absolutely not there to being explicit and fully detailed.
And one step of that process is emotion.
And so, for example, you might find yourself frustrated and disappointed about the events of the day, but be unable to exactly specify why.
That's extremely common.
You know, you go home to your partner and you'll be in a bad mood and, you know, you'll snap at them for something and they'll say, well, what's up with you?
And you'll say, well, nothing.
You're just being annoying when it's perfectly clear to both of you that there is actually something up with you.
And then that disappointment and frustration, anger and sadness, let's say, or anxiety is a sign that something isn't right.
But it isn't like, it isn't necessarily that you're repressing knowledge of what's not right.
It's that you just, you actually don't know.
And the emotion is the first step in the process by which that knowledge emerges.
And you might have to sit and think and talk to your partner or to a friend for God only knows how long before you're actually going to put your finger on what it is that you're upset about.
And it could be very far removed from whatever happened to trigger you in the moment.
And so that's the fog.
And you can keep things in the fog just by not doing that.
It's really easy.
It's no more difficult than just sitting there doing nothing because creating knowledge is active and difficult.
Yeah.
Well, it's, you know, and we've created such a perfect fog these days.
Like, really, the fog has been, it's become such a, the fog is such a business.
Every little thing that can be created to take away your attention from, or that can take away our attention from figuring out who we are or like kind of spelunking inside of ourselves and trying to get some answers has really been created.
It's almost, it's pretty masterful how much has been created out here on the outside to keep our attention away from delving inside of ourselves.
Well, you know, attention is the basic currency, right?
Everyone fights for it.
And it's incredibly valuable.
And it certainly is the case that it's also very tempting to turn your attention to things that grasp your short-term interest rather than, say, pursuing the causes of negative emotion.
That's a good example.
And of course, we have massive corporations working night and day to continually attract our attention.
And there's something sinister about that, obviously, but you can't exactly lay responsibility at their feet because there's a tremendous overlap between educating people, informing them, and making them attend to you.
And the lines between all of those things are very foggy, let's say, and difficult to lay out.
It's certainly the case that one of the ways that you can keep yourself in a fog about yourself is by distracting, is through distraction with external, with anything in the external world.
And obviously, computer technology, cell phones, games, well, not negative in and of themselves, perhaps, are there at any moment to distract you.
At any moment, yeah.
Yeah, the little things that are time consumers like it.
Yeah, there's companies, there are businesses where that is their that's their, that's their business is to get your attention.
Everything's trying to get our attention.
Sometimes I worry that the forces that are out there that have like started to, you know, really create algorithms even on how to get our attention and how to keep it, that those forces are stronger than our human abilities to keep them away from us.
Do you feel like that that's true or do you feel like that that's just a feature?
I really do believe that that's true.
Look, as far as I can tell, we are teaching computers to read our minds as fast as we possibly can.
And they're way better at it than they were 10 years ago.
And they're going to be so much better at it in five years that we won't even be able to imagine it.
And when I say read our minds, I'm not talking about something magical, but for example.
We're not talking about like guess what's happening.
It's not like they're going to guess what we're thinking or guess what we want for dinner or anything like that, probably.
Well, they might, but they won't do it by directly reading our brainwaves or anything like that.
They're already algorithms that target advertisements to send it you are pretty good at deciding what it is that you're motivated to pursue.
And now, I've heard.
I actually just got an ad on my phone for your new book, actually.
Oh, well, good.
So I'm involved in the same process, the same nefarious process.
Oh, just joking.
I've read that I think it's Facebook, but I might be wrong about this, that owns Oculus and the headset, the VR headset company.
Now, you can track eye movements with a VR headset, and psychologists use the tracking of eye movements to map attention in high detail.
Now, look, if you look at our eyes, you see that there's a colored circle and a dark circle in the middle, and then that's surrounded by white.
And that makes your eye very visible to other people, animals too, but to other people particularly.
Human eyes are quite unique in that regard, and it looks like we've evolved to have highly visible eyes.
And the reason for that is that we communicate with other people and they can read our motivations by watching our eyes.
So if you stand on the corner and you look up at nothing in the sky and you stand there long enough, someone else will join you.
And then if there's two people, then there'll be 10 right away.
And the reason for that is that we, and this is again something uniquely human, we attend to where other people point their eyes, Assuming that if they're interested in it, we might be interested in it too.
And so that's, and human beings are visual animals.
About half our brain is taken up with visual processing.
We're much more visual than virtually any other animal.
And so computers are soon going to be able to track where we place our eyes, which, of course, advertisers are incredibly interested in.
And that's going to speed up the ability of high-powered computational devices to understand human beings as a group, but also each of us individually to an immense degree, an immense degree.
And so, and I think we're probably 10 years away from computers that understand us better than we understand ourselves.
AI machines are going to get extremely good at this because it's so lucrative to be able to gauge attention.
There's nothing that's more valuable than that.
And so.
Do you feel like there should be there should be legislation because I hate to put anything on the, you know, that it's the government's responsibility.
But should there be like rules or legislation between allowing computers and AI to get that advanced?
Or is it still just fall on the feet of us as humans just to battle kind of the dark arts of these machines that can sort of like take us into a trance and then monetize the trance at the same time?
I think that legislation in some sense is it's going to be playing catch up and it's going to be farther and farther behind all the time because this is moving so fast and with such power and it's so distributed that no one is going to be able to even keep track of it, much less regulate it.
I mean, the interconnected environment is changing so rapidly that even if you're reasonably tech savvy, you can't keep up with all the major changes.
And there's no evidence whatsoever that that's going to do anything but accelerate.
And so I can't see how legislators have the ghost of a chance at keeping up with this, even if they knew what to target or what to legislate.
And, you know, more and more engineers are, I think China now graduates more engineers every year than the United States has engineers.
Oh, yeah.
China, you could be eight years old and China and be a damn engineer.
I've been over there and I've seen a, bro, I've seen a six-year-old build a damn bridge in front of me.
You know what I'm saying?
They're highly capable.
Yes, well, and lots of other cultures are coming online very rapidly.
And so we're, well, and there's no shortage of unbelievably proficient amateurs online as well and programming.
And so we ain't seen nothing yet.
And I really do believe computers are going to, your computer is going to understand you so well.
I think it won't be long till it knows what you're going to do more accurately than you do.
I think that's already true to some degree.
Well, then we're at a real loss because then if I've been afraid to make a plan for myself and my life and I've been afraid and I've been living in the fog and I've been just, you know, kind of sidestepping, really putting my fucking pants on as a human and taking some action.
If I'm in that fog and then the computer is able to figure out what I'm going to do before I've even done it, but I haven't even made a plan, then surely the computer is going to make a plan for me, it feels like.
I think the computer is making a plan for you all the time already by default.
Look, that's exactly what advertising is, is advertising makes a plan for you.
There's no difference between those two things except maybe one of sophistication.
So, you know, I mean, when you're watching something and an ad pops up, that's a little world that you could visit.
And the advertiser obviously wants you to visit that.
And the problem there, because you might think, well, it would be really good.
The computer can help you make a plan.
But I think what's more likely to happen, because at least to begin with, the computer is going to be paid, so to speak, by the advertisers to capitalize on your short-term impulsivity, is that ever more attractive distractions are going to be dangled in front of you.
And that's likely to keep you in the fog.
And what can I do to battle the fog?
Like, what can I do, you know, as a human to retain my humanity as things get more tech and more and as tech becomes far smarter in some ways, you know, in technical ways than I'll ever be?
Well, you know, I wish I knew the answer to that.
I don't, partly because the landscape that's unfolding in front of us, because it changes so rapidly, it's unpredictable.
You know, other rules in my two books address that to some degree.
I think your best bet, the best bet you have virtually all the time is to try not to lie to yourself.
In my first book, 12 Rules for Life, I said, do not lie.
No, I said the rule was tell the truth or at least do not lie.
Because, you know, you might, I mean, can you tell the truth?
You'd have to know the truth.
You know, you might be able to tell some partial truths, but you can't tell the truth.
But you can not say things that you know to be false.
And in the second book, the new one, Rule 5 is do not do things that you hate, which is also a kind of lie.
And I don't mean don't do difficult things like get out of bed at six in the morning and exercise.
You know, you might say, well, I hate going to the gym.
And that isn't what I mean.
You don't really hate going to the gym.
You just find it difficult.
I'm thinking more that you might observe yourself engaging in activities that you find despicable even right then, but certainly later when your conscience dwells on them, and that you should stop doing that because that's a form of behavioral lie.
I think the only thing we have to orient ourselves is, As individuals, is our willingness to live a life that's relatively free of unnecessary deceit or of deceit at all.
The 11th rule is: do not allow yourself to become deceitful, resentful, or arrogant.
I might have those out of order, but it's concentrating on the same sort of idea.
You know, it's partly, here's another way of looking at it.
Your attention moves around for reasons that you don't quite understand.
Those reasons are unconscious.
You can tell that to some degree because you can't make yourself pay attention to something that you aren't interested in.
Well, you can, but you really have to work at it.
You know, it's really easy to pay attention to something you're interested in.
That's not difficult at all.
In fact, it's enjoyable, whereas paying attention to something that you're not interested in requires will and effort.
And so you can see that there's unconscious mechanisms at work there because you can't control them.
Now, the danger to deceit is that you'll pathologize those unconscious mechanisms.
Because as you practice something, imagine you practice a particular form of untruth.
You tell yourself a story that you know to be false, and that becomes your habitual way of looking at the world.
Well, what that means is that you're forming habits that are unconscious because habits become unconscious, and then they skew the way the world appears to you.
It'll pull your interest in places that aren't good for you to go, that aren't associated with the real world.
And so that's not to be wished for.
Because if you don't want to be out of sync with your automatic self, that's bad news.
And lying definitely does that, especially if it's habitual.
Because it creates what a false truth?
Well, it creates a false truth and a false you.
Right.
You know, because there's different kinds of memory.
There's the memory that's associated with the way the world is, and that's called episodic memory.
And then there's another, or declare or declarative memory.
There's another kind of memory that's memory for action.
And so that's what you use when you play tennis or ride a bike or play the piano.
You know how to move your hands and you move your body.
And that's a kind of memory as well.
And you don't want to pathologize either of those because then you become, you see, once the deceit has become habitual, then you're its victim.
You're its pawn because it's automatic.
And that's a terrible fate.
You don't want that.
You really don't want that.
I think your best defense against anything that's trying to hijack your attention is something like honesty.
It's also very useful, and I stress this quite a bit in this second book, to surround yourself with people who want the best for you and who care for you because they can also help keep you on the straight and narrow path.
And, you know, that's not a matter of some trivial moral injunction.
There's terrible places you can end up.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, definitely.
I've been to some of those places and it's, yeah.
And you don't get any sleep when you're there either.
I'll tell you that.
Right.
Right.
Another indication that your unconscious mind is not working properly at some point, right?
Because the sleep-wake cycle gets dysregulated.
That's very unpleasant, to say the least.
Dr. Peterson, so getting back to the fog and just the things that can take away our attention and how valuable our attention is, what can I do?
Are we going to start to see new parts of like new small societies form of people that don't want to be influenced by technology?
Or, you know, what do you, what do you feel like some of the future looks like as far as trying to retain some sense of holding on to my attention and using it for myself as opposed to letting it be used by outside influences?
Does that make any sense or not?
Yes, yes.
Well, look, there's another rule, I suppose, a dictum, perhaps, that if you don't have your own story, then you're going to be a bit player in someone else's story.
Okay, so let's talk about that fog again.
So let's say, because of the reasons you already laid out, you don't want to make your conditions for failure conscious because then you know when you're failing and that hurts.
You don't want to make your plans for the future too clear because then if you don't attain what you're looking for, it's very clear that you've lost it, which is somewhat different than failure, right?
And then there's also the problem that if you make your motives clear to other people, then they really have the ammunition to hurt you because like I can hurt you by depriving you of what you want, but I can hurt you even better if I really know what you want and can deprive you of that.
So you have reasons to keep these things unclear.
But the problem then is that you don't have a direction that's powerful, right?
Because you're not consulting yourself, watching yourself, learning about yourself, figuring out who you are, and figuring out what kind of route through life you would have to take to be engaged.
Okay, so then you get weak because you're not integrated.
You're all over the place.
You're scattered.
Well, then anybody who has power for one reason or another can compete with you for your own attention and win.
And so if you don't have your own plan, painful as it is to develop one, partly because you have to take your own inadequacies into account, oh yes, and you also mentioned, you know, you posit an ideal, this is what I want, or this is who I could be.
The farther away that is from you, the more inadequate you feel in relationship to it.
You know, so that's another reason to avoid it.
But yes, well, that's why every ideal is a judge.
There's no getting away from that.
Now, if it's too much for you, I might say, well, make A lesser ideal, like try to pursue something that doesn't intimidate you into paralysis.
Right, start with something closer that's more manageable, huh?
So you can even prove to yourself that you can do it.
Exactly.
Well, what you really want to do is you want to lay out a plan that has a pretty high-end aim, but that also consists of steps that aren't too intimidating.
So you have to ask yourself, I would like to do this.
I should do it, but would I do it?
And the answer is likely to be no, often, because you know what you're like.
You're supposed to go to the gym, but you don't.
It's like, okay, well, maybe you won't go to the gym, but maybe you'd walk half a block every second day, something like that.
And you have to ask yourself, I write about this in the first chapter about the advantage of being a fool.
You know, if you notice that you're not so good at something, then you can calibrate down the goal until a fool like you can manage it, and then you can attain it, and then you're not quite so much of a fool.
And so, okay, so you have to build a plan.
I have a tool for that that I often recommend for people called self-authoring.
Yeah, I'm very familiar with it.
Okay, well, and it is, it was developed in an attempt to help people write out, well, an account of themselves, past, present, and future, but relevant to this discussion is to make a plan.
It's like, what is it that you need to thrive in the world, or at least not to become bitter?
And if you don't have your own plan that you're committed to, right, and honestly committed to, what that means is that you will be the pawn of other people's decisions.
Especially now more than ever, it feels like.
Do you think that that's true?
Well, that certainly seems to be the conclusion we're reaching in the course of this conversation.
It's like as the powers around you become more and more invasive, but also of more utility to you to some degree.
I mean, we don't want to be completely negative about computational power.
We wouldn't be having this discussion without it.
But as the forces around you have more and more capacity to grip your attention, it stands to reason that you're going to have to be the captain of your own ship to a greater and greater degree.
Otherwise, you'll fall prey to those who wish to monetize your attention.
So it's time to make a plan.
If you haven't made a plan, it's time to have a plan.
It's a really good time to have a goal and to have a plan.
Yes, I think that's, it's always been the case that it's been good to have a plan.
But, you know, I think it's particularly the case when things are changing so rapidly around you, too.
You know, because then it's your own ship.
You have a place for you in this maelstrom of constantly transforming opportunities and possibilities.
I do think, it seems to me, that we're increasingly being called upon to act as independent moral agents.
Now, you know, informed by tradition, obviously, because it's very difficult to become wise all on your own.
But, and I suppose it's partly because we have more possibility and more power, so we have to take more responsibility.
I can't see a way out of that.
Right.
Yeah, I think that makes sense.
I mean, and it's hard if we think about our own story.
It's scary to make ourselves the hero of our own story in a lot of ways.
It feels, I mean, it feels like what we would want to do, but it feels scary because you see what a hero has to do.
You know, you see what he has to give up.
It seems presumptuous, doesn't it?
You know, like, who are you to be a hero?
Well, you know, it used to, maybe now it feels like it's a necessity almost, though, a little bit more.
It starts to feel like it's becoming more of a necessity that if I want to really get through this and not only get through it, but do it well and be a leader and be someone who can affect others and be positive and be a part of what's good, then I need to, at some point, admit that maybe I do want to be my own hero, you know?
Yes.
Well, and I also think you have to deeply consider the alternatives.
You know, it's so as a clinician, I frequently saw that my clients were afraid to make a move.
I talk about that a little bit.
Oh, yeah.
I think it's in, that's in chapter five again, do not do what you hate, which is full of sort of practical advice, I suppose, in relationship to career.
People are often afraid to make a change, to make a plan, to make a decision, to take responsibility.
And the right response to that is, yes, no wonder you're afraid.
This is frightening.
People, you know, they want to get a new job, so they have to format and update their CVs, their resumes.
Well, just that alone is enough to stop many, many people cold because, first of all, you have to gather up all that information.
And then second, you have to make a coherent narrative account of your life.
And third, you have to face all the things that you did in the past that didn't work out the way they were supposed to.
You have to take account of the gaps in your resume.
Like to make a resume is to take a cold, hard look at yourself.
It's like, ooh, God, who the hell wants to do that?
Like an inventory kind of.
Yes, exactly.
And so you're afraid of that and you put it off and you put it off.
Oh, yeah.
And you can't say, well, don't be afraid of that.
What you can say, I think that's more useful is, okay, you don't like your job.
You don't like your current position.
You don't like your status.
You don't like your income.
You don't like your trajectory.
That's why you want to change.
Okay, well, let's say you don't make your resume.
Then what does the world look like in five years?
Like frightening as it is to make a plan, unhappy stasis just disintegrates.
And so one of the things we do do in the self-authoring program, in the future authoring program, is say, well, if you deteriorated according to your own vices and that got out of hand, what would that look like five years down the road?
You know, everyone knows.
Some people flirt with alcoholism or drug abuse or sex addiction, yes, yes, yes, that's right, fractured relationships, snacks, even candy, whatever.
And then, you know, you have a sense in your mind of what you'd be like if you let yourself go.
Oh, well, I'd be sick, man.
I'd be under a bridge or something.
I'd probably be behind like a, I don't know, living behind a Tim Hortons or something, you know, some type of place.
I'm trying to make it local to you, but like some, yeah, I'd be living, you know, I'd just be doing drugs or just probably listening to Aerosmith.
I'd be outdoors, I bet, no real home.
I'd have no family.
Yeah, so for you, so for you, it's a vision of homelessness and substance abuse.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, you've got to ask yourself, like, okay, think about that.
Is that what you want?
And I don't, I mean, think about it.
Imagine that that's what awaits you.
Well, then you have a better thing to be afraid of.
It's like afraid as I am of gripping my own destiny, here's the alternative.
Right.
Now you've created a reality of what that looks like.
So now you have something to battle against, right?
Yes, exactly.
Part of being motivated is to be afraid of the proper things.
You know, afraid as you might be of success, and fair enough, it's possible that you should be more afraid of stagnation and failure.
But you have to make those things real for you before they have any power.
Yeah, as you're talking, I'm even realizing that if I don't make the lowest, if I don't make the reality of what could happen if I don't take care of myself and if I were to like devolve and disintegrate into my worst place, if I don't make that a reality, it almost lets me stay in the fog even more because now even the, there's not even the, the end hasn't even been created.
I've left it all just so vague that I can just kind of meander around.
It's like it reminds me a little bit, I didn't want to quit smoking for a while because if I quit smoking, then I would have to actually then do something else good for myself or I would have to then be a non-smoker.
And a non-smoker might then go for a run or he might like, you know, then achieve a different goal.
So one of the reasons I realized for a while that I didn't quit smoking was because if I was real honest with myself, I wanted to always have an excuse of why I couldn't do other stuff.
Right.
I think that's a really good, well, that's the kind of observation that's necessary.
So you've made three observations so far about, you know, sort of nefarious, dark motives that keep you down.
You said, well, there's the unwillingness to take responsibility, the fear of the distance between you and your ideal.
And then now you had another one, which is, well, it isn't just quitting smoking because that's part of the decision to be healthier.
Well, what does that mean?
Well, it doesn't just mean quit smoking.
It implies other things.
And those things are effortful in the moment, right?
They pay off in the medium to long term, but they're effortful in the moment.
And so, and that your ability to do that is exactly part and parcel of that process of pulling things out of the fog.
It's like, and these are really good questions to ask yourself.
It's like, well, what reasons do I have that I don't want to admit that are stopping me from doing those things that I want to or know that I should?
I'm afraid of judgment mostly usually.
Afraid of judgment?
Yeah.
Yes.
Yes.
I'm afraid I'll fail.
I'm afraid I'll realize that I'm not good enough or I was never capable enough in the first place.
Right, that's a really big one right there.
It's like, I watched this Simpsons episode recently where Bart had to get a C on one class or be held back.
And he actually studied for like two days and then he failed and he broke down and he said, well, my God, this is so terrible because I was failing before, but I wasn't trying.
And so I could always, it wasn't really failure because I never tried.
I never tried, but this time I really tried and yet I failed.
And well, it turns out that, you know, it works out for him in the end, but that's not the point.
I thought it was a very apropos episode because it is much different to fail when you've gone all in, you know, and that's that's very frightening.
Where does that fear come from inside of us?
Is that a fear that's just built into like it's part of the human journey as a human?
It's part of the journey of the spirit.
Is that something that's just built into us from birth, kind of?
Or do you think that some of that fear is learned over time?
What do you think about that?
Well, I think fear of failure is part and parcel of being human.
The particulars of that can be changed a lot by your upbringing.
I mean, if you were punished unduly for failure or perhaps protected too much from it, so you have no experience with it, then that can certainly elevate the danger.
Your own temperament can do that too, because some people are more prone to catastrophize as a consequence of relatively trivial failures, and that can bring them down.
But we are future-oriented creatures, and that's a deep part of our nature.
And so that fear of failure, fear of judgment, all the things that you've raised so far are deeply central to our nature.
So you also mentioned, you know, we talked a little bit earlier about how not clarifying your future goals can keep you in the fog.
You pointed out you can do that equally with the future that is the failure.
And I think that's equally true is by, you know, you're smoking and you can not think about that.
It's quite easy to not think about.
It'll plague you now and then, but to think about something, generally speaking, is effortful.
And often you also have to talk to other people.
And so you have to put some time and energy into it.
Whereas not thinking about something Is pretty easy.
And so you'll be, you know, you wake up in the morning and cough and feel terrible because you smoked way too much.
And if you thought about that for a little while, you could see quite quickly where that's probably leading.
But you can just not do that.
Distract yourself.
Think about something else.
Oh, yeah.
Think about depression.
Yep.
Play a game.
Think about a friend.
Think about a yeah, do there's so many things you could do.
So then you leave yourself undefined.
Well, the problem with all of that, too, is that I think then in some sense you're destined to fail in the most fundamental sense, because unless you believe that you can get what you want without being sophisticated about failure and being sophisticated about success, and I don't believe that because being successful at anything is actually rather unlikely.
Although being successful at something, you have a decent shot at, but any particular thing is quite unlikely.
And then if you put obstacles in your path, well, and you're facing competition because you're definitely always facing competition.
Yeah, there's people that want to define themselves.
There's people that want to make that effort, that want to, you know, like open their eyes in the fog and really try and see themselves, you know?
Yeah, that's going to be competition.
Yes, and in all likelihood, they're going to get there before you, unless you think that you can stumble fortunately into what you desire.
And I don't think virtually no one believes that if pushed.
You know, they might assume that in some ways and act like that in some ways.
But if you push someone and say, look, you know, if you tried harder, would you do better?
They think, well, yeah, probably.
And so it's hard to deceive yourself about such things.
Is it more of a Western kind of philosophy that we can like the fog is almost, is it more of a luxury almost of Western civilization to even be able to have a fog?
I feel like in some cultures and societies, a fog would be a luxury maybe because you have to face real elements of survival more often.
Well, we could say maybe that it's a danger of plants better way.
Right?
Right.
Well, I've wondered this.
You know, so let's say you're a parent and you're reasonably well off.
Well, how much do you do for your kids?
And the answer to that is surprisingly complicated.
Because on the one hand, you want to do everything you can.
On the other hand, if you deprive them of necessity, then you deprive them of the opportunity to know you deprive them of the motivation that that necessity often provides.
And so, you know, you said, well, in cultures where you're living more hand to mouth, you don't have the luxury of making things unduly complicated.
And there is some advantage in stark motivation.
You know, if you're really hungry, you don't have a lot of existential angst around eating.
You just eat.
And so that definitely is a problem.
It isn't obvious to me what to do about that either.
It's one of the diseases of wealth.
What should I do?
Well, I don't have to do anything.
Well, why should I do anything?
Or what calls to me?
That's also a problem that's going to become increasingly relevant.
Do you ever wish sometimes like if you could do it again that you got to be in like a more of a primitive kind of life where you just like where things just felt like if you saw an animal, it kind of felt like y'all maybe knew what each other was thinking or something like that?
Like sometimes I feel like I love being in America and I think it's really cool.
But sometimes I'll see like something a national geographic or something and I'll be like, man, that really looks, it looks a lot more real, you know, like a lot more visceral.
Like I've been to Africa before and I remember looking in the eyes of a man one time and it felt like he was like, no joke, doctor, it felt like he was like 3 million years old.
Like it just, like his eyes, it just felt like, man, you could just dive into his eyes and never hit the bottom, man.
You know, I just, do you ever think how neat it would be maybe to have more of a primitive type of, I don't know if primitive is right?
Well, people obviously have a nostalgia for that.
You know, I mean, that's why we camp.
That's why people have a cottage in the woods.
There is something about that more direct existence that is obviously attractive to us.
It doesn't mean that we're likely to produce it for ourselves, although it is strange that we'll do that when we're vacationing.
Yeah, it is strange that we'll kind of go back to almost like we'll kind of flirt with having nothing kind of.
Yeah, and it isn't exactly obvious.
Well, and it's also interesting that we regard that as a break.
And I think part of the reason for that, look, there isn't a lot of evidence that people in industrialized societies are happier than people who are in non-industrialized societies.
In fact, the evidence is actually quite the reverse.
I would believe that.
And I think the reason, perhaps, not the reason, a reason, because there's usually many reasons for anything, is that it requires a certain amount of constant deferral of gratification to maintain an industrialized lifestyle.
You're not living in the moment.
You're always putting off the moment so that, well, so that you'll live longer.
So, I mean, one of the advantages of being in an industrialized society is that your life expectancy is much longer.
But there is something that's more primordially satisfying about, or there seems to be, about a lifestyle where the actions and the rewards and the punishments aren't so separated.
You know, you're going to medical school, you're slaving away, let's say.
The reward for that is deferred far into the future.
And you're giving up all sorts of momentary pleasures.
And there's a cost associated with that as well.
Now, and it isn't an easy one to, well, it's the constant battle that we have between what's good in the moment and what's good over the long run.
It's a very difficult thing to get right.
Yeah, and our existence here is more about what's good over the long run.
Maybe it's a little more like that.
Well, that's yes.
Well, at least the culture is built that way.
Right, right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's built on deferral of gratification and so on.
And so that makes it kind of insipid in some ways.
It isn't as adventurous or exciting.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Or it doesn't seem that way.
It's interesting, though.
I mean, it seems that people who are in less industrialized countries and have a less industrialized existence will trade that quite rapidly for the opportunity to progress, so to speak, economically.
So.
Yeah.
All right, let me crack in a little liquid death here as I hit these ad reads.
COVID spring break is right around the corner.
People are going to be running out there coughing, coughing down your daughter's neck, coughing on your son's back and legs.
Who knows what's going on?
Spring break.
You better tighten up your pants, tighten up your crotch, and you know who can help Manscaped.
Here to ensure that the party in your pants never stops.
Even Veronica Corningstone wouldn't say no to this pants party.
That's a joke from that movie.
Look, Manscaped is dedicated to helping you level up your body grooming game.
I recently got my buttocks waxed and also tightened up around my crotch with a special trimmer that does not cut you.
Do yourself a favor and always use the right tools for the job.
Get 20% off in free shipping by going to manscaped.com slash Theo.
A lot of free gifts they send you.
Get 20% off in free shipping by going to manscaped.com slash T-H-E-O.
That's 20% off with free shipping.
By going to manscaped.com slash Theo, say aloha to your new beautiful, hairless body with Manscaped.
Fabletics menz.
That's what you want to be a fabletics menz.
Fabletics represents for every guy who wants to look and feel his best without breaking the bank.
And that's all, guys.
That's all men's these days.
To get the best active wear at the best prices, get at least 20 to 50% off retail prices every time you shop.
Go to www.fabletics, F-A-B-L-E-T-I-C-S dot com slash T-H-E-O for access to an insane deal, deals that are not sane.
Get your first two pairs of shorts for just $24 when you become a Fabletics Men VIP member at checkout do it.
I'm wearing their stuff.
It's great to work out in.
You feel good.
That's right.
All types, all colors, no exclusions.
It's an insane deal because they know that once you try their gear, you'll be hooked like a fish.
Go to fabletics.com slash theo for access to an insane deal that includes free shipping.
That's right, on all orders over $49 and free returns on exchanges within 45 days.
Support the podcast.
Get Athletic Where, Fabletics.
Yeah, it's interesting also, too, that you would think you would find happiness in not goal scoring, but like I noticed in my own life in the past year since I spoke to you last, you know, I've probably had some a decent amount of success and life kind of got a little bit more exciting with doing some touring and, you know, was more financially rewarding.
And I always, but I found that I was really not unhappy.
I was grateful, but I was, I guess I was a little unhappy.
I think I always felt like when I got to a certain level of success, that the questions that I had inside of my heart or inside of my brain or the discomfort, I felt like everything would go away.
Like life would hand me some like magic answer book that had a couple decent answers in it, you know?
You mean like beyond order?
Yeah, yes, yes, like beyond order.
Like there would be, okay, you did it, you know, like somebody comes out from behind the door and they're like, all right, Bucko, you know, like finally Oz comes out, you know, and it never says good job.
But that never happens.
No, no.
Well, you know, that's another indication of the perverseness of human beings to some degree.
So look, there are two kinds of reward, technically speaking.
There's satisfaction and there's incentive reward.
And satisfaction is the reward that you were sort of dreaming about.
So you're hungry and you have Thanksgiving dinner and you're no longer hungry.
That's a reward.
That's satiation.
It's satisfying.
It stops you from being hungry.
Well, you think, well, I'm hungry.
I don't want to be hungry anymore.
But hunger did give you something to do.
And there was the anticipation of the meal, you know, and sometimes on Thanksgiving Day, people will not eat all day just to heighten the anticipation, right?
Because that increases the incentive reward.
And incentive reward is what you experience when you're moving towards a desired goal rather than when you attain it.
And we do have this vision.
It's a vision of utopia and probably is what motivates utopian thinking, motivates ideas of the promised land, which is milk and honey.
That if we just turn the corner and get to here, everything will be all right.
And that isn't the case.
We're wired up so that the pursuit is often more engaging than the acquisition.
Yeah, I wish I'd have realized that, though, as I was trying to acquire, it's like it's such a tough thing.
I missed some of the moments of the pursuit because I was so focused on, I think, on this end goal that would make any of the uncomfortable, it would make all the pain of the sacrifice, it would make it all worth it, kind of.
Right, right, right.
Well, there is some utility in that sort of dream, too, because it having that image of the future also motivates you to pursue it.
But the problem with that kind of thinking, I suppose, too, is that this is Dostoevsky raised this in notes from underground.
It's a great short book.
And he criticized.
It's short, I'll give it a chance, man.
It's a great book.
It's a great book.
It's a real punch, that book.
And it contains a very powerful critique of the idea of utopia.
And Dostoevsky's, and he was talking about the sort of precursors to the Russian communists and their notion.
If you just gave everybody enough material resources, then all of a sudden the problems of the world would disappear.
Dostoevsky, first of all, points out that that's nonsense because for reasons that are similar to the ones that you laid out, but also that even if it was true, people are so perverse in a sense, we're such peculiar creatures that we would smash our happiness all to pieces out of sheer boredom just so something new and exciting could happen so that we would have something to do again.
And I read that and I thought, wow, that's exactly right.
It's that it's this searching that's part of our essential nature is not only insatiable, but it's actually desirable.
Because, well, what do you do?
You shake hands with Oz and then you die?
It's like, done.
I'm over.
Well, you don't because you want to get on to the next great adventure.
And so it is, you know, the Sermon on the Mount seems to address this to me, this fundamental problem.
My reading of it anyways, is something like, align yourself with the highest good that you're capable of imagining.
And so for all intents and purposes, that's God, the sum total of all that's good.
And you live in relationship to that.
And then concentrate on the moment.
And see, it seems to me that way you get to have your cake and eat it too, right?
Because you're aiming at something that's like the promised land, this proverbial utopia.
It by definition is the best possible thing.
And maybe your view of that's going to change as you mature, but it doesn't matter.
That's still going to orient you.
And having that in mind, so now you're pointing in the right direction, you can attend very carefully to the details of the pursuit.
And that's, I think that's.
That's the best we can do?
Well, I certainly haven't.
Well, I did come from the Sermon on the Mount, so hypothetically it's a reliable source, you know.
But I think it makes a tremendous amount of sense psychologically.
Yeah.
I mean, why would you not aim at the best that you could conceptualize if you were going to aim?
Right.
And having done that, well, then it is reasonable to concentrate on the present, and then you can immerse yourself in the present and enjoy it.
And then you don't perhaps have those regrets that you described of missing the voyage because you were so focused on the material luxury.
And material luxury is a strange thing too.
I mean, it isn't obvious often whether you own something or it owns you.
And I don't mean that in a flippant sense.
No, I wouldn't at all.
Recently, I was investing in, you know, people are doing cryptocurrency now.
It's like invisible.
I don't even know what it is, you know, but it's people are excited by it.
And I started to notice those markets on this crypto thing.
And I didn't mean to interrupt you, Dr. No, please go ahead.
Thanks.
But I noticed like I'd wake up in the middle of the night and I would check this thing.
And finally, I realized like whatever monies I'm going to possibly make in this portal, this gambling portal of cryptocurrency, which no judgment on it.
I don't know enough about it to really judge it, but I'm spending like important time checking it.
I was just, I realized I became a slave to it.
And so I just sold it all.
I don't want, I just, it did, in my heart and in my chest, it didn't feel good having that distraction to check all the time about what was going on with this money.
It just felt like it owned me.
And I immediately decided, you know what, I just don't want to be owned by this.
Maybe something else, but just not this, you know?
Right.
And was it specifically the worry about it that was bothering you?
Or what do you think triggered or alerted you to the fact that that pursuit wasn't for you?
That's a great question.
I think it was I couldn't control myself.
This is the truth.
I couldn't control myself from checking it.
And so the only alternative I had was to eliminate it because I was really having trouble.
And it doesn't fully answer your question, but I was just having trouble stop checking it.
So I just said, I have to get rid of it.
Well, it answers it to some degree.
You found to your surprise.
See, this is partly what we were talking earlier about not hiding things in the fog.
This is part of the process of coming to a clearer vision of yourself is noticing exactly that.
Because your theory was, well, I can buy this cryptocurrency and maybe I'll make some money.
But regardless, one way or another, this is going to make my life better.
You had a theory of yourself and you had a theory of the money.
Well, it turns out that that was wrong.
Now, why exactly, we don't know.
But the consequence of that was that you became a slave to a set of impulses that you didn't find enjoyable in the least.
And that is, and so then you stopped doing it.
And fair enough, that seems to be the right solution.
Yeah, and that's a kind of a simple scale.
I think, and that scale evolves as I get a little bit older of, does this make me feel good?
Like, does it really make me feel good?
Like, even sometimes making some money doesn't really make me feel good.
You know, does it make me feel good as like a human, as like something that has to be alive?
Does it feel like it brightens that part of me that makes me feel proud?
You know, I guess.
I don't know.
I'm trying to explain it.
No, it's a great thing to explain as far as I'm concerned.
Because, look, you said, does it make you feel good?
And then you started to investigate what good meant.
And well, both of those things are really worth doing.
They're not foolish in the least because what's good, you know, when you brought in the idea of being alive, which, you know, you might think, well, why did you bring in the idea of being alive?
Obviously, you're alive.
But there's a theory there that's emerging too, which is, well, I'm a living creature.
And I'm, well, this African that you saw who was so old, you're that old.
You're really old.
You know, life has been around for three and a half billion years.
We're really old and God only knows what we're up to or who we are.
And so you say, well, we're going to pursue what's good.
And what is that?
Well, it has something to do with the fact that we're alive.
We have to serve our own biological reality.
We have to address the good in a manner that's right for us as living creatures.
And so you say, well, we have to pursue the good, but we also have to figure out what it means, what the good means.
And that's partly what I'm trying to do in, well, in Beyond Order, my other books, I look a lot at traditional ideas of the good.
Most of those are grounded in religious conceptions.
What does it mean to pursue the good?
What does it mean to be a good person?
Well, these are very complicated problems.
But you don't get a free pass on them.
If you're murky about them, then, well, you're ill-defined and vague and inarticulate in your own life.
And that's not, there's comfort in that.
It's comfortable.
Yeah.
Oh, it's very comfortable.
It's like a nice shawl or something.
It's almost, it's merino wool.
I mean, it's nice.
You know, it's really nice to be comfortable and not have to ask myself, am I happy?
Am I being of service?
Do I feel like I'm contributing anything to the world?
Do I feel like I'm being honest?
Do I love myself?
You know, do I love others?
Am I being a good brother?
Am I being a good son?
If some of the answers aren't what I want them to be, am I trying in some way to maybe get to answers that I'm more happy with?
You know, am I proud of myself?
Am I ashamed of myself?
Where does my shame come from?
You know?
Yeah, well, that's a good question.
That's a really tricky question.
Well, that's when I feel a lot.
When you just feel a lot.
I feel, you know, shame really, it's such a powerful thing.
Sometimes I'm carrying a shame.
I don't even know if it's my own.
Yes, well, that's why there's the concept of original sin.
You know, that shame is such a universal human emotion.
It saturates our existence.
It's partly because we're so social, you know, and so the sense that we have a responsibility to ourselves and to others is really built into us at a very, very profound level, in multiple ways.
And we exist in relationship to that shame all the time.
And it's easy to say, well, you should dispense with it, you know, but it's not so easy to do.
And it's not even clear how you should go about dispensing with it.
You know, I've seen people in my clinical practice who had what seemed to be counterproductive levels of shame, right?
They would do things that someone else might do and then punish themselves far more than seemed appropriate.
And I started to think about what does it mean to punish yourself appropriately?
Philosophy of punishment, which I outlined to some degree in the first book, on the chapter on children, which is don't let your children do anything that makes you dislike them.
Well, you have to stop them.
Well, how do you stop people?
Well, you punish them one way or another, even if it's just withdrawal of attention.
So then, well, how should you punish, assuming there are standards, etc.?
Well, one rule, at least with regards to yourself, is you shouldn't hit yourself harder than is necessary to teach you.
Right?
So if you've learned your lesson, good enough.
And I think that's also often a precondition for forgiving other people.
It's like, well, you know, did they learn their lesson?
Yes.
Well, then maybe you can let it go because additional punishment, what, is it going to make them learn the lesson even more?
Well, why will I forgive other people before I'll forgive myself, I wonder?
Well, that's a good question because it isn't obvious that you should, right?
Because, you know, we tend to think that people are selfish and they put themselves first, but it's just as common, the reverse is just as common where they'll be better to other people than to themselves.
Yeah, I feel that a lot.
It isn't.
Yes, I think it's more common than the reverse, actually.
Although people can act selfishly from time to time, I do think that most people punish themselves more than they punish other people.
And that's also something to be aware of and to see if you can regulate that because it's not necessarily for the best, even if it might be associated with the willingness to take responsibility.
Yeah, I think it just comes from having to take a lot of responsibility growing up.
And so you would be hyper, you know, you would have to be very stern on yourself.
But I don't want to get away from shame because it's really important.
Well, shame is a good pointer to the good, too, hypothetically, because you could ask yourself, well, what am I ashamed about?
What is shame?
What should I do about it?
Those are all good questions.
Maybe you can dispense with the shame that's excessive.
But if you're ashamed, well, does that mean that you did something wrong?
Well, if it does, That means that there's such a thing as doing something wrong.
That seems to imply that there's such a thing as wrong.
That seems to imply that there's such a thing as right.
And so, shame, in principle, can also be a pathway to what is good.
Say, well, if I'm engaged in something that's good, at least I won't be ashamed.
And that, I mean, everybody has to answer these questions for themselves, but I think that's something that's very much worth considering.
What would be the case if you decided to stop engaging in all those actions that made you ashamed?
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, it's good.
And it's nice to think that shame can be a direction and anything can be a direction that could lead us then to the reverse, which is like, yeah, if something is wrong, then there must be something that's right.
And so it's the best evidence that I know of for something that's right.
Like, it's, you can find people who will debate the existence of the true or the good.
They're cynical and they're nihilistic, let's say.
They're not naive.
Maybe that's their advantage.
But it's very rare to find someone who doesn't believe that there's such a thing as what's wrong.
And so, and untrue.
And so that's a good starting point.
It's like if you want to discover what's right, you can first discover, more easily discover what's wrong.
Look, I think that's partly why we like anti-heroes in movies and in fiction.
You know, what's the purpose of a dark character?
Well, he shines a light on what the reverse is.
And sometimes that's very powerful.
In the Batman series, for example, the Joker generally was a better bad character than Batman was a good character.
He was more realistic and more thought-provoking.
Yeah.
Yeah, there was more.
I don't want to say more depth there, but there was more depth there.
There was more depth.
Well, I think it's partly because The Joker, especially Heath Ledger's version, was pretty realistically evil in a psychological sense.
Whereas Batman, well, he's a vigilante.
And whereas being a vigilante might be one pale reflection of what the good is, because it requires courage and is involved with justice, it's still a pretty pale reflection of what the good is.
Go ahead, sorry, Doctor.
No, no, you had a thought.
I'd like to hear it.
I sometimes think maybe that's why it's almost interesting to be the joker in the world sometimes, to be to delve in that turmoil of the darkness and stuff, because it's a more complex character in some ways.
There's almost some appeal to it.
Well, you know, there's a notion derived from the psychological theories put forth by Carl Jung, and he derived some of this from Nietzsche, a philosopher.
And Nietzsche famously claimed that most morality was not morality, but cowardice.
It was merely the fear of getting caught or the fear of public humiliation, something like that.
That's what keeps you in line.
So then if there's a riot and there's no police around, you're perfectly happy to throw a rock through the window because the probability of getting caught declines precipitously.
So, and then if your morality is all persona, so for Jung, a morality that was nothing but conformity and adherence to social norms and fear, sort of a narrow, constrained, I'll never dare to do anything wrong and therefore I'm good.
That wasn't good at all.
We have a lot of that these days.
Yes, definitely.
Definitely.
And so under those conditions, if you're nothing but a persona, and so you're an obedient coward, let's say, then your dark side is actually the pathway to salvation.
Because it's what breaks out.
Yes, precisely.
It's what breaks that tawdry, banal morality into pieces and leads you forward.
That's crazy.
So sometimes you need the dark side to even see what's going on on the...
It's very, very frequently the case.
And I mean, it's an axiom of Jungian psychotherapy that the pathway to development is through the shadow.
So, for example, you might have somebody in your clinical practice who's been raised by extremely conservative and religious parents, which I'm not criticizing, by the way, but they're 27 years old and still a virgin.
Now, look, there's utility in fidelity, and promiscuity isn't a plus, but it might be that if you're still a virgin at the age of 27, that it's necessary for you to investigate your lust in order to progress past your mere childlike obedience.
Right, right.
Yeah, because you may have some hang-up there that's even preventing you from engaging and getting settled down, you know.
Oh, in all likelihood, because for example, if you're terrified of that, then perhaps you're not very good at sophisticated sexual suggestion, like flirtation.
And so then you're nowhere near as attractive as you might be.
So no one is going to be, you know, interested in you as a potential mate.
Yeah.
You know, and you might also see someone who prides themselves, for example, on never getting angry.
Maybe they had an overbearing father who was angry all the time.
I never get angry.
Well, that person is constantly being pushed around by his or her boss at work and maybe his wife or husband, his or her wife or husband.
And that I'm too good to be angry persona is stopping them from manifesting the aggression necessary to even tell the truth about their situation.
Man.
There's So many boxes and places we can put ourselves, we have to be careful.
Everything is kind of a little bit of a trap sometimes.
Yeah, well, that's why we pay attention to being bored, I suppose, to some degree.
You know, that's a sign too that the box has got a little bit too tight.
Yeah.
And then you need to make arrangements with the part of you that can break things because things need to be broken just like they need to be fixed.
And something that's old and ready to fall down sometimes needs to be leveled before something new can come along.
Look, there's nothing more obvious in the world today than the fact that you might need help.
And I know I need help because I get help.
What I'm talking to you about today is getting help that is better than what you've been getting.
You could ask your boy Sidney for some information, and that little bet should tell you something.
Or you could ask little Daniel over there for some information, and you know he's over there.
He's hitting them Winston's and he's been locked up in his own backyard for doing family crime.
But BetterHelp will assess your needs and match you with your own licensed professional therapist.
Real Help.
We're talking Real Help.
The services available for clients worldwide.
BetterHelp wants you to start living a happier life today.
You know, I tell a story a while back.
I was going to see my friend Chris Dillia.
It's about a year and a half ago, and I was not doing well.
I was probably crying and driving.
And I wasn't even listening to country music.
So, you know, just natural.
And I wasn't doing well and I needed some help.
So I pulled over on the side of the road and I called BetterHelp.
And in no time, I was FaceTiming with a real human female psychotherapist.
Visit their website and read their testimonials that are posted daily.
Go to betterhelp.com slash Theo and join the over 1 million people who have taken charge of their mental health.
You can get 10% off your first month at betterhelp.com slash Theo.
This podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp and this past weekend.
Listeners get 10% off at betterhelp.com slash Theo.
If you need some help and you don't want to go to a person in your town or you're scared or whatever, give it a ring, bug up.
Your head is a unique spot.
And you could do little things.
You could do an earwax cotton handle thing.
See what's up.
You could do other stuff.
Put a hat on your head.
Comb your hair.
All those things are unique, but none of them are going to change your life.
Wouldn't it be great if there were a pocket-sized guide that helps you sleep, focus, act, and be better?
There is.
And if you have 10 minutes, Headspace can change your life.
Headspace is your daily dose of mindfulness in the form of guided meditations in an easy-to-use app.
Headspace is the only meditation app advancing the field of mindfulness.
If you're not being mindful, you can be mindful.
And that's called Headspace.
You know, there's so many different little meditations on there.
It teaches you how to meditate.
Some people say, well, I sit there and, you know, I don't know what's going on and I can't relax and I got ants.
Suddenly I got ants on me.
Damn.
Headspace is backed by 25 published studies on its benefits, 600,000 five-star reviews and over 60 million downloads.
You deserve to feel happier in Headspace is Meditation Made Simple.
Go to headspace.com slash T-H-E-O.
That's Headspace.com slash Theo for a free one-month trial.
One free month of Headspace with access to Headspace full library of meditations for every situation, every one.
That's right.
This is the best deal offered right now.
Head to Headspace.com slash Theo today.
You've probably tried meditation before and it didn't work, or maybe you felt like you were doing it wrong.
If mental health is part of your self-care plan this year, you owe it to yourself to try Headspace.
And now, back to Mr. Peterson.
So lucky to have him.
You know, one of the things I learned from reading Nietzsche was, again, in relationship to morality, is that a man, for example, someone who is incapable of violence is not moral because they keep it under control.
Right.
Right?
Because the temptation is...
They don't have the capacity.
It's like, well, I wouldn't engage in a fist fight.
Well, yeah, that's because you'd be.
Right, precisely.
And I can parade that as my moral virtue.
I'm non-violent.
I'm non-aggressive.
And this is completely independent of the morality of violence or aggression.
I mean, obviously, we think it's moral in cases of self-defense.
And so it has its necessary place.
But you have to ask yourself all the time, are you law-abiding or are you just conventional and cowardly?
Yeah.
Dang, man.
More questions you got to ask ourselves.
We got to ask ourselves questions.
I think that's just such a big thing.
We have to like, people, we have to learn to get into places and ask ourselves questions and really come up with some answers.
And one thing I noticed is the habit of it gets, it helps you fine-tune the practice of it.
Just even the practice of it helps you fine-tune the ability to do it.
Because at first it feels very impossible when you first start asking yourself questions to really think you're going to get somewhere and get answers.
Yeah, well, to begin with, you don't necessarily get, you don't get going very quickly.
Right.
Right?
And that's, again, you have to have some patience with yourself when you first take those stumbling steps.
You said that since we've talked last, that, you know, your life has progressed positively.
Is that the case?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yes, it is.
And so to what do you attribute that?
What have you been doing right or what have you been doing wrong less?
Well, one thing that's helped me, I think, is just I've had more exposure to people that are more capable in a lot of different fields than myself.
So I think that's made part of me want to rise to the occasion a little bit more.
Not to be equals to them or anything, but just to, it's made me a little more worldly, I think, in some ways.
In other ways, my brother made me promise I would go to therapy, even if I didn't want to.
So that's made me have to like commit to going and speaking to a therapist every week.
So that makes me have to just talk about stuff a little more.
And I think slowly in some of those moments, I've had to like, you know, I've had moments where if I'm really feeling something, I'll kind of ask myself, well, what am I feeling right now?
Like, am I feeling sad?
Am I feeling disappointed?
Am I feeling dejected?
Am I feeling tired?
You know, I just start to really kind of like, it's almost like using a metal detector over my feelings when I ask questions.
And then sometimes one of the words will kind of spark up and be like, okay, I'm feeling dejected.
And then why?
Who's making you feel dejected?
What's making you feel dejected?
It's almost like I'm like Sherlock Holmes, but I'm the crime scene.
That's perfect.
That's perfect.
Well, that is exactly that process by which knowledge emerges that I was referring to before.
It's like you have an emotion, but you don't even necessarily know what it is.
Yeah, it's just a clue.
It's like bubbles that come up in a river or bubbles that come up in a lake.
Right.
And sometimes there's a monster down there, dude.
And that gets scary when you start to really get some of the answers.
You're like, oh, my God.
And some of them will make me just sometimes break down crying because it'll be such a real unearthing of something that I didn't know was going on inside of me.
Yes.
Well, that's another reason why people don't look, is that there's a monster in the depths.
And that metaphor of the bubbles, that's a perfect symbolic representation.
The depth, because look, you can't see what's in the depth.
So the depth is what's unknown.
And something lurks in the unknown.
And when the emotions arise, as you mentioned, it's a manifestation of something that's underneath.
You can see this in, you see this very clearly in intimate relationships, you know, where one person will get annoyed at the other for some minor transgression.
And soon they'll be fighting about something that happened or didn't happen 10 years ago.
And then they'll get to the point where they're investigating the structure of the entire relationship.
And then that'll stop people from ever having a dispute at all because they're so terrified that any pathway into a dispute will lead down into, you know, is this relationship worthwhile?
That's actually part of the reason I think that it's useful to have divorce difficult, if not forbidden.
Because otherwise, that question, it's like, do you really want to be tortured by that question for the rest of your life?
At some point, it's nice to just say, well, I'm not going to go there.
That's off the table.
Yeah.
We talked a little bit about shame and I wanted to kind of take it into a different direction.
And, you know, I've kind of felt some shame.
Like, I don't feel ashamed of my country.
Like, I live in the United States.
And I don't feel ashamed of my country, but I feel like more recently there's been like I'm supposed to feel ashamed of my country.
Like I know like the Olymp, the Olympics is going to be coming up sometime.
I don't know when, but I know it keeps coming up.
And it's like if I cheer for America, it almost feels these days in America like you're wrong.
And it seems like there's a ton of animosity and resentment from Americans who are enjoying the comfort and the privileges and the opportunities of America towards America and towards its history and stuff.
But if we didn't have the battles and we didn't have the social revolutions that have happened in America over time, then half of the world would still be enslaved and there'd be a lot less opportunity for all types of people and all types of genders and everything.
So it just feels like such a weird time.
There's like a lot of shame being cast on people in America for, I think, supporting like a traditional idea of America, maybe.
Yeah, I think you're dead on with all those observations and especially with regards to the sort of questioning attitude you have towards it.
It's like, well, look, let's see if we can sort that through a little bit.
All right.
Well, there's some real complex existential problems there because you pointed out, well, with any complicated nation, there's the bloody history and the accomplishments.
And the question is, well, what do you make of the relationship between the bloody history and the accomplishments?
And it's complicated.
So you're cursed and blessed by your history.
And what's the right attitude?
Well, okay, let's look at patriotism for a minute.
Now, in principle, pride is a sin.
And I think the reason for that's more like arrogance.
And arrogance is a sin because an arrogant person is convinced that they're absolutely right.
And that can make you a tyrant to other people, but also to yourself.
It makes it very difficult for you to learn, for example.
And so you might say, well, I'm a patriot.
And then if you criticize that, you could say, well, that's a sin of pride.
And look at the bloody history of your nation.
And how dare you be proud of that?
And it's not easy to figure out how to argue your way out of that.
But by the same token, to have no affinity for your community and your country also seems to lead you places that aren't particularly good.
So it seems to me that one attitude you could have towards your country is gratitude.
That's not pride exactly, right?
So you could be a patriot of gratitude.
And you could say, well, look, man, I go outside and, hey, look, there's a highway and there's a bridge and there's a school and a university.
And I didn't make these things.
And I can walk down the street without fear of like masked thugs most of the time.
And I can pursue what I want, at least compared to people throughout history.
Right.
A lot of opportunity.
Yeah.
And a lot of security.
A lot of security.
I mean, the probability that a person who isn't involved in criminal activity is going to be the victim of a violent crime is extremely low.
So, and far more than at any other point in history.
And so, I think you can be- Yes.
Well, way back when, this is millions of years ago, there was a cat in Africa that had two large teeth in the front and one large tooth on the bottom that exactly fit over a hominid skull.
Yes, bro.
Yeah, right.
Absolutely.
And it turns out that we're not eaten by many of those anymore.
Right.
And, you know, we've kind of dealt with the predator problem to the point where we actually feel sorry for the predators.
You know, maybe we want a few more wolves and a couple of lions and tigers, which is easy to say if they're not eating your children at the time.
Right.
So it seems to me that, you know, security, we're definitely secure.
We are definitely, well, comparatively speaking, and for sure.
you compare us to the rest of humanity in the past and the rest of humanity at present, it's like you can be grateful for all those things and still...
When you're a kid, as long as no one's abused you, you kind of trust everybody.
But that's not really trust, you know?
It's not trust in the sophisticated sense.
Trust in the sophisticated sense is more like, look, I know that you're as full of snakes as me, and that if I enter into a relationship with you, there's a possibility of deceit and betrayal.
But I'm going to put an honest foot forward anyways and take you at your word, partly because that's an encouragement for you to manifest your best.
And hopefully you'll do that with me.
And so that's an act of courage that makes the world better.
And you still might get stabbed in the back for doing it, but you're not a fool under those conditions.
You've taken a calculated risk.
And I would say the same thing about patriotism.
It's like when you're a kid, you know, you stand up when the American flag shows and you sing, and you're an unquestioning participant in that.
And then maybe when you're an adolescent, you start to learn about the sorrier elements of history, and that takes a hit.
But then maybe you get beyond that, and you think, yes, well, human history is a complete bloody nightmare.
It's a bloody tragedy.
It's a catastrophe.
But I'm still look at all the things that have been produced as a consequence and you're grateful for that.
And that's a more mature form of courage, I would say, rather than the unthinking patriotism or unthinking anti-patriotism for that matter.
It's discerning gratitude.
And I think you can be discerningly grateful for what the U.S. has to offer.
And if you're not moving away, that's sort of evidence that you feel the same way.
Yeah.
Well, sometimes I think a lot of people would like to move away, but there's just nowhere left to move.
You know, I think a lot of people sometimes would love to start a new country or something, but they just, there's nowhere left to go kind of.
Well, it's good in principle.
You know, I saw, I went to an Airbnb out on Vancouver, in the Vancouver Island vicinity a few years ago.
Oh, there you go.
One of these islands that are populated by mostly by hippies.
And we came across this couple who rented this little cabin that my wife and I stayed in, and they had decided to sort of go back to the land.
Well, they bought something that owned them because they were on this island.
It was pretty isolated, and it could be self-sufficient.
But do you know how much work it takes to make you self-sufficient?
Wow.
Like just keeping yourself in chickens is no simple task.
It's a daily grind.
And that's just chickens, you know, and maybe you're training eggs and so on.
Yeah, that's right.
And so they were really in trouble, this couple, because they wanted to go start a new country, but they had no idea just how difficult it is to, well, to have a chicken, let's say, which is something we take for granted because it's so unbelievably simple.
All these problems are solved for us.
We don't even notice how difficult it was to solve them.
Have you seen, there's that television show Alone that was actually filmed out on Vancouver Island.
Did you ever see any episodes of that show?
No, no.
What's its theme?
They take, I think, maybe 10 people and they put them onto like an uninhabited place and they have to survive for themselves by hunting and fishing and trapping.
And so it's kind of reality television, but the contestants have to film all the footage themselves.
So there's no crew there.
So, I mean, you have people really like killing aardvarks and ox.
I mean, hunting down bears.
It's pretty intense.
It's about as like real as I've ever seen a show get.
But the first two seasons were on Vancouver Island.
And it looks like a lot of people.
Yeah, well, it turns out that doing things like hunting and fishing are actually incredibly difficult technical skills because animals don't like to be eaten and they're actually pretty smart.
So you have to know a tremendous amount before you can manage that with any degree of success.
Yeah.
So patriotism, so if we're at a time.
So what do you think about that?
I mean, I think your comments about I think the idea of patriotism is under assault because, you know, it's an oppressive culture and all of that.
And there is an element of that that, of course, is true, but I think, well, I like hearing what you said, to have a gratitude, you know, to have a thankful gratitude of where we are and of the place that I'm in, to think of history in a little bit of a longer term instead of just in maybe some of the simpler terms that maybe I saw in commercials growing up and stuff like that.
And just in some of the simpler terms of like saying the Pledge of Allegiance and stuff.
But I really like having the feeling that everybody is on the same page, even though maybe that's just a creature comfort that I've had growing up, and maybe that's changing some in America.
It just used to feel like everyone was on the same page.
Yes.
Well, that brings us back to the technological revolution to some degree.
You know, there does seem to be a certain amount of fragmentation of the narrative, let's say.
And that is unsettling because it is when everyone's on the same page, they're not at each other's throats.
You know, and you might, you can put that down and you can say, well, that's just conformity.
It's like, well, first of all, let's not get too casually critical about the idea of conformity.
I cover that in chapter one.
Do not casually denigrate social institutions or creative achievement.
It's like, it's really hard to get everybody on the same page.
And it's really hard to get everybody to conform, especially when they're doing it voluntarily.
And there is not much difference between that and peace.
And if you don't think that that's a good thing, then you should think really hard about failed states where no one's on the same page.
And you get an instant proliferation of warring gangs of armed thugs.
And if you think the utopians are going to win the armed thug battle, you've got another thing coming because they'll be the first ones on the chopping block.
And so, you know, you're a comedian and an open person and not likely to have a great taste in some ways for pure conformity.
And I'm someone who enjoys artistic creation and revolutionary ideas.
But by the same token, I'm not someone who despises conformity.
Well, you said in the book, I mean, you said that we're always going to have, as humans, we're always going to be searching for revolutionary ideas.
It's something that is constantly the way that we've always been.
And it's the way of like just a liberal way of thinking is to keep moving forward and progress and try things that are new and want to do that.
But I just feel like you have to have a foundation of comfort to be able to do that from because some of that is a luxury of being comfortable or at least being comfortable.
It's a tremendous amount of enough.
And when things get really uncomfortable, that feels a lot scarier place to be creative from almost.
Well, the first thing we should point out is that being a conformist isn't the highest of moral virtues, but being unable to conform is worse.
Now, refusing to conform, that's in a different category.
You might have valid reasons for, especially if you're exceptional.
And, you know, you could say, well, virtually everyone is exceptional in some regard and should perhaps not be conformist there.
And we could say, fine, but the rest of the 95% of them should go along with the crowd because that's going along with peace.
And we also don't ever want to confuse the inability to conform with the ability to produce revolutionary ideas.
Because just because you can't conform or are rejected doesn't mean you're a genius.
What it most likely means is that you're just incapable.
And then you're going to be highly motivated to confuse your incapability with creativity.
And that's not helpful.
And then you pointed out something that's also very important.
Just how many dimensions do you want to be exceptional on anyways?
You know, you're a comedian and you have to take substantial risk to do that.
And it's quite threatening.
It wouldn't be such a bad idea if the rest of your life was, well, maybe secure enough to allow you to tolerate that.
Yeah.
Yeah, to have some more sense of, yeah, like I guess I worry on like a bigger like picture as a nation that like if we start to like if the fabric of some of the textile of the past, if some of the tapestry kind of I guess or tapestry of the past starts to come apart, like I'm all for making new tapestry, but I just feel like I just get scared.
I don't know if I feel, but it's more a fear.
I get scared that if we do that, that things could just tear.
And I just don't know what's going to happen.
I guess I'm just, I'm scared a little bit.
I don't know what the future of this country that I live in looks like.
And I used to feel like I had a little bit better idea, but I don't know if the idea of what I thought it looked like was just a comfort based upon like my skin tone and growing up with at least food in my house.
You know, some stuff like that.
I just don't know if I don't know if maybe my idea was just a luxury or something.
I don't know.
Do you know what I'm kind of saying a little bit?
I'm just kind of saying that.
Yes, well, I think that's a question.
That's a question that everybody's being driven to answer, partly because there's intense moral pressure to ask yourself that question.
To what degree was your privilege unearned?
Well, there's an easy answer to that, actually.
Lots of it.
But the same holds true with virtually everyone else.
and so who's got privilege depends a lot on what group you're willing to use as a comparison.
Yeah.
So even impoverished people in North America are rich by world standards.
Yeah.
They're in the top 1%, generally speaking.
And they're certainly in the top 1% by historical standards.
The problem with hammering home the idea of undeserved privilege is that there's no one who can't be crucified on that particular cross.
You know, unless you're born naked in the middle of a field with nothing.
Everyone is the undeserved recipient of the fruits of the past.
The fact that you have a mother is a privilege.
You didn't earn that.
And so when you say you deserve nothing because of your privilege, what makes you so sure you're not saying that to everyone for all time?
In which case, no one ever gets anything that they can have for their own?
So it's a very dangerous game.
Well, I don't see where it can end.
It's not obvious because imagine each person has multiple identities.
That's intersectionality.
We all have multiple identities.
You're privileged along some of those identities and relatively speaking and less along others.
So if you're young and black and female, well, you're young.
Right.
So that's not deserved.
It's not like you earned being young.
Yeah, I certainly didn't feel privileged growing up.
I mean, I feel like a lot of what I've had in my life has certainly been earned.
I felt disadvantaged in a lot of ways, you know, emotionally in some, there's always, yeah, I think everybody would have their own discussion, their own like, not their own parameters, but yeah, I could see how everybody would have pluses and minuses.
Well, that's why I think the right level of analysis is the individual.
You know, and when you move away from that, it gets dangerous.
It gets dangerous quickly, and it gets dangerous for everyone.
And the reason why is the reason that you just laid out.
You take any individual person, you can point to the advantages that they had.
Now, look, I understand that some people, I mean, I was a clinician for a long time, and I saw people who had lives that were so hard that you could barely even imagine it.
You know, I had one client who was impaired intellectually.
She lived with an aunt who was schizophrenic, who had an alcoholic boyfriend who was extremely violent and also schizophrenic, who used to bother her about being possessed by Satan.
She was so ashamed that she couldn't look anyone in the eye.
She would walk down the street with her hand like this, sort of bowed down, because she felt so unworthy.
She wasn't an attractive person.
She looked like a street person, so people treated her badly, all things considered.
Now, look, I saw her at this hospital that I was working at where the inpatients were people who were in even worse shape than her.
They were people so hurt that they couldn't be deinstitutionalized.
And I saw her because she had decided that she wanted to take one of these institutionalized people for a walk when she was out walking her dog.
So despite all her catastrophes, which were plenty, you know, she could still see outside of herself to someone who had it even worse.
It was really something.
You know, yeah.
Well, and so this privilege game, it's like, well, look to your own privilege.
And that isn't, I'm not saying that there aren't historical injustices, but there are.
Many of them.
Right, there are for everyone in a lot of ways, yes.
But if we only look at the victim side of things anyway, even as a human, if I only see myself as a victim, I'm really going to have a tough time.
I can see myself, I can respect that I'm a victim of some things, but if I only see myself as a victim, it's going to make the rest of my life pretty tough, I feel like.
Well, it also matters what it matters what you want to do about the fact that you're a victim.
Do you want to take away from other people?
It isn't that...
That...
It isn't that...
It isn't that...
I don't know.
It kind of put us on a lot of different planes here at once.
Oh, that's okay.
Well, that was a very complicated problem, and it's one that I think is particularly relevant to your particular country at this particular time and place, because the tapestry is under assault.
And the thing is, it's a lot easier to burn something up or to cut it up than it is to knit a new tapestry.
It's really hard.
Has there been times that is it okay where we are right now from an outsider's perspective?
Is it scary like based on like historical civilizations and stuff?
Like do you think we're in a place that is like still kind of safe judging from an outside like or from a you know, I mean, you're still in Western civilization.
Canada is not extremely different than the U.S. Do you feel like we're in a scary place or do you feel like it's just a lot of pomp and circumstance and at the root of things we're we're we're still at a very realistic place?
I think there are always dangers that threaten the stability of societies.
I think that those dangers are real, but I think they're always there.
I think that I have faith in the robustness of, say, American institutions, all things considered.
It seems to me that your country has weathered crises of at least this magnitude and often far worse many times in the past, and that's worked out.
So I think there's reason to be alert, but not hopeless.
I mean, on the broader scale, the broad scale, world scale, let's say, it's hard to make a case that things were ever better than they are now.
And it's almost impossible to make the case that there was ever a time in the past where things were getting better faster than they are now.
So it's reasonable to assume that everyone on the planet will be out of abject poverty as defined by the UN by the year 2030.
Wow.
It's halved.
Well, it already halved from 2000 to 2012.
And so, and that was the fastest transformation in human history by a huge margin.
Yeah, I've been seeing less poor people, I feel like, honestly.
Well, there's variance because in the Western countries, the working class hasn't kept up as well as they were in the 60s, let's say, in some ways.
But globally speaking, there's lots of reasons for optimism.
It's a difficult problem to settle because there's always the possibility that any given problem will get completely out of hand.
And that's the case that people make with regards to climate change.
Well, there's a small percentage of complete catastrophe, a small percent probability of complete catastrophe.
Well, we don't know what to do with a problem like that because it's impossible to calculate how many resources you devote to something that's absolutely catastrophic, but that has a small probability of occurring.
You know, like what if the Greenland ice sheet melts?
Right.
Well, then the oceans rise, you know, multiple feet, and that's a catastrophe.
Well, how much is it worth to stave that off?
It's very, very difficult to calculate.
Yeah, and plus we're still, a lot of people are still surviving.
I think there's still that heavy survival instinct in a lot of people where it's more of a short-term survival that I don't even think it's our fault for thinking that way.
It's just built into like our limbic system or our brainstem or something.
Like it's hard.
It is.
Yeah.
I agree with you.
It's an archetypal story.
That's the apocalypse.
Yeah.
You know, the end of the world is always upon us.
You know, I see.
Go on.
Sorry, Doc.
Well, it's because things can fall apart for us completely.
And they do in our own life.
There's illness waiting.
There's death waiting.
Like we have a built-in sense that things can come to a cataclysmic end.
And that also makes us prudent and careful and able to look at the future and forestall catastrophes.
But the problem is that we can also generate false positives and be unduly worried about things that are very unlikely to occur.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And sometimes it's like some people will start to become unduly worried about things that they don't even know if they can occur.
That even becomes an addiction for some people.
Like they're just addicted to problems, you know?
Like I notice that a lot.
Like people are just addicted to problems, especially on social media in the U.S. And I had a question about social media.
Sometimes I feel like tech is like the new fossil fuel kind of.
Like bandwidth is like the new oil and like YouTube is like the pipelines and like, you know, like Wi-Fi is kind of like this, is this natural gas.
Like it's all kind of, I don't know, there's like these platforms that we need to be able to survive these days.
Oh, you mean they become part of the infrastructure?
Right.
They've become huge parts of the infrastructure, especially in communication.
Yes.
And communication has become one of the main, I mean, especially even since we talked last.
Like last time we spoke, you were talking about how video and podcasting has become such a new form of communication, how people are using it.
And the platforms that we're on are now like even probably twice as popular as they were two years ago when we spoke.
So sometimes I find for myself, like I get afraid to kind of speak up and even ask questions like on my podcast and to talk about certain topics because I'm afraid of being deplatformed.
Like the platform can be taken away.
And they never, I just wonder have they ever had that in history?
Like in the past, like, you know, people, you might not be afraid to write something because no one was going to take away the trees to make the paper, you know?
But now it feels like if you don't, and I may be wrong, but I feel sometimes like if I don't say the right, not say the right thing, but if I don't evade certain conversations and raise my hand and ask certain questions, that if I do do those things, sorry, that they could take away the forest.
They could take away the paper, the YouTube, the Instagram.
They can take away the platform where we basically has become our English language kind of in a lot of ways.
Well, you know, I mean, in societies that weren't free, and that would be most societies, the probability that your voice could be taken away was very high because you could just be killed or imprisoned.
Wow.
And I suppose, all things considered, it's better to have your YouTube channel shut down than to be imprisoned or killed.
Right.
It is new, I suppose, in that we're dependent on these technology companies, increasingly dependent for our interpersonal communication.
I don't feel like the fear that you're describing is unwarranted.
I certainly feel the same way about my podcast and YouTube channel.
I've had guests on recently where I've been extremely uncomfortable talking about the topics That we've been talking about.
And I think reasonably so.
You can face deplatforming, or worse, they can just shut you down completely, and it's arbitrary and very, very complicated, and costly, and hard on you.
And then there's the constant probability of being swarmed on social media, which is in some ways a new phenomenon, partly because of the sheer volume of it and the degree of exposure.
So there are reasons to tread carefully, that's for sure.
And it is quite terrifying, no doubt about it.
Have you run into trouble with your podcast?
No, I haven't run into trouble.
I think a lot of it for me has just been fear.
You know, I had on Robert F. Kennedy, who's a friend of mine, and he's not an anti-vaxxer, but he is a lot more about safe vaccines and making sure that vaccines have been tested properly.
And he's an environmentalist, you know, since he was a child.
And so it makes sense that he, you know, he cares about the environment around us and the one that's in our veins, you know, going into our bodies.
He's just an overall environmentalist man.
But I know he was, his Instagram was taken away for being, I don't know if he was anti-vax, but certainly for like bringing up a lot of topics and questions about vaccinations.
So I don't know.
I guess I just see it happening sometimes.
And so I just get worried.
I just get like, you know, I just wonder, has there ever been a time and place in history, but I guess you answered it that some people used to be killed for being, for saying what they wanted to say.
Like free expression is, that's not common.
But do you worry that we're like kind of cornering any of our freedom of speech or anything?
Or am I just scared?
Well, I worry enough about it so that it scares me to talk about certain things.
And it isn't obvious to me that that's for the best.
I don't think your fear is unwarranted.
I also think that freedom of speech is sufficiently threatening so that the probability that it will be curtailed is always high and that we have to, what is it, the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
I think I've got that right.
I don't remember who I said it, but who said it.
And then so you might think, well, what should you talk about and what shouldn't you?
And I think that depends to a large degree on your conscience.
You know, if you're interested in something, you're trying to figure it out.
If you thwart that, then you thwart the part of yourself that's interested in things and trying to figure them out.
And I can't see that's for the best for anyone.
And I do believe that all things considered, free speech is a lesser evil than constrained speech because someone has to decide what the content of the speech is going to be.
And I don't see that we should give that power over to someone lightly, no matter who they are.
Partly because things change too.
Just because something happened to be the case a year ago doesn't mean that it's the right solution now.
And so we have to engage in these sorts of discussions to keep everything up to date.
You know, there's conformity, and that's back to Rule 1. There's conformity in social institutions.
Hooray.
Abide by them.
But the underlying environment shifts around.
And so sometimes the traditions of the past are no longer functional and have to be updated.
And the only way we can figure out when that's going to happen is by communicating about it.
And so you don't want to constrain that because we all end up out of date and paralyzed.
Yeah, I think there's a feeling of maybe a fear of like paralyzation or something.
I guess it's not as much a reality now that I think more about it as much as it is just kind of a fear.
But also a fear to speak up.
So I think I just feel afraid to talk about things sometimes or to even raise my hand and ask questions because of things I've seen of people being, you know, deep piety.
Yes, it's certainly more like that than it was 10 years ago or 20 years ago.
I certainly feel that way much more.
So that's no problem.
And what happens in history when that happens?
Does things usually work out okay?
I guess so because we're here.
That's what we hope for.
I guess it depends on whether or not we let the fear stop us.
Yeah.
Right?
And if enough people let the fear stop us, then that won't be good.
Yeah.
So we'll try not to do that and hope that suffices.
Yeah, I'm going to try not to do that.
I had a question about, so I notice whenever I was young growing up, like I was thinking about like my first kiss when I was growing up, you know, when I was a kid.
And I notice as I get older and get involved with women and that sometimes I feel like I spend so much time trying to kind of recreate the initial moments that I had, like that initial kiss moment that I had, you know.
Like I remember my first kiss, like when I was moving towards her face, I just remember feeling like the ships were crossing the Troy.
And I remember feeling like, you know, like Sparta and just like, you know, like Denzel Washington was there, like everything was going on inside of my body.
You know, it was like the whole like, you know, the, like everything was there, you know, the Grand Canyon was there and everything was there in this moment, like watching me just being a part, like it was in my skin, waiting to see if I could land this kiss with this girl.
And I think I've romanticized sometimes like moments like that in my in my future that I'll never be able to get back to those moments, you know, like that was great.
Look, like I still chase that high.
I still chase that novelty.
You know what I'm saying?
Like even now, and no moment now will ever live up to those initial moments, but sometimes I'm obsessed with the feelings that were in the novelty of youth.
And it's like I'm constantly trying to recreate those and nothing ever suffices.
And so everything sometimes feels like a little bit of a exhale.
Yeah, well, I wrote about that in two chapters in Beyond Order.
It's Rule 8, I believe, which is make one room in your home as beautiful as possible.
And Rule 10, which is plan and work diligently to maintain the romance in your relationship.
And both of them focus to some degree on the nature of the experience that you just described.
You know, there's a certain pristine and transcendent reality to experiences of being in love and experiences that are associated with childhood before everything becomes stale with repetition.
And part of the question of life is to how to rekindle that so that you can, and it's even associated with what we were talking about earlier, which is that nostalgia for more primitive conditions.
In Rule 8, I suggested that people cultivate a relationship with beauty because that is one way of inviting that feeling of awe.
I mean, I think you did such a great job of describing how significant that first kiss was.
Oh, yeah.
Even Tarzan was there now that I think Lim.
What's that?
Even Tarzan was there now that I think about it.
Right, right.
Well, all romance, all the romantic tropes, all the movies focus on exactly that experience.
Can you recreate that within the confines of an ongoing relationship?
Well, it takes a tremendous amount of effort.
That's the thing about youth is you get these gifts, right?
When you're older, you have to work at it, but it's worth working at.
And you can set up romance in a permanent relationship that can be extraordinarily intense if you want that and if you're willing to work for it.
And it's worth it because otherwise you abandon it and that's not good.
And the same goes for beauty.
One of the great things that artists do is remind us of what's right in front of us.
Because as you get older, what you see is more and more memory and less and less of the thing itself.
And an artist comes along, if he's a real artist, just whacks you on the side of the head and says, no, look at it this way.
And you look at it that way and you think, oh, yes, that's now I remember.
Yeah.
And I like chapter 8. Go ahead.
Sorry.
And I haven't gotten to 8 and 10. I'm stuck in three.
I didn't mean to be, but there's a lot of big word.
You got to be.
It takes a little time.
Hey, no problem.
I like chapter 8, I think, better than any of the other chapters because it does concentrate on this experience of youth and the ability to be immersed so completely that's characteristic of childhood.
And does, there's an idea, you know, that the kingdom of heaven is something that's already inhabited by children, right?
Unless you become as little children, you'll in no wise enter the kingdom of heaven.
And that is a poetic echo of the fact that those experiences are possible.
But with effort and discipline and aim, you can reduplicate them, at least to some degree, in your adult life.
And that's definitely worth that can be worth the effort, especially if you find yourself longing for it.
Yeah.
Yeah, a lot of, I mean, even, I remember after our last conversation, a lot of things come down to effort, really, and really living, you know, effortly living, you know, because living after a while, it becomes sometimes, especially in this, in our country, that you're kind of floating in a, you know, in a little bit of a cushy river kind of, you know.
So I think, yeah, if you really want to live, if you really want to challenge your soul and get into whatever's in you or experience anything, experience some things more than the gratis that is kind of like cloaked on us each day in America, then you have to really make an effort.
One of the things I noticed that's relevant to that, I think you need a meaning to sustain you in life because life is difficult, and so the meaning has to be proportional to the difficulty.
I think everyone knows that and wants that.
Whenever I talked to audiences about that and pointed out that it's through the adoption of responsibility that you're most likely to encounter those meanings, the audiences would generally go silent.
Because that isn't an equation that's often made, right?
Is that, well, you need meaning, that's better than happiness.
Happiness is a consequence, I would say, a fortunate consequence of the pursuit of something deeply meaningful.
But almost everything that's deeply meaningful requires the willingness to adopt responsibility.
And so that's a good thing to know because you might ask yourself, well, why should I adopt responsibility?
And the answer to that seems to be something like, well, it deepens your life.
Because I want meaning.
I want something more.
No, it's a great, because I think a lot of us are swimming around thinking that something meaningful will show up.
There's so many, there's so much advertising and so much.
This is important.
This means something.
This is valuable.
And a lot of it is pyrite, man.
It's pyrite.
Do you remember your first kiss, Dr. Peterson?
Was it in Canada?
Yes, it was certainly in Canada.
My man.
I remember the first time I held hands with the woman who became my wife.
Wow.
Were you guys outdoors or indoors?
It was high school graduation.
And she had been a friend of mine, but that was our first date.
And that was an unparalleled thrill, I would say.
but I was able to duplicate that many times in our marriage, thank God, with her cooperation and participation.
It was something we really concentrated on, making time for romance.
Once you get married, romance sort of becomes number 11 on a list of 10 necessities.
You know, it's still up there, but it gets pushed out by everyday concerns, work and domestic responsibilities and children and all of that.
You have to force it back up into the top three or four.
And, you know, that also stabilizes your relationship across time and is good for your kids and good for you.
So that's worth the work.
And it's really useful to know that it is work.
It is work.
It's not just going to happen.
And the fact that it isn't happening for you, it doesn't mean that there's something wrong with you.
It just means that it's work.
You have to aim at it.
You have to aim at it.
Do you remember if you kind of, did you reach for your wife's hand or did she make that first initial move?
Do you remember or no?
Yes, I do remember actually.
She took my hand.
Yeah.
That's cool, man.
She was much more confident in that regard at that time than me and probably still now, for that matter.
I know you speak a lot about your granddaughter in your book.
Not a ton, but there's a couple of moments so far that I've noticed where you kind of reference her or watching a child grow and some things that they learn.
Is that your first grandchild that you have now?
Yes.
I have another one now.
I have two, but she was the first.
Has it changed any of your views of being alive or the importance of family or just maybe just any of your do you notice anything different in your heart or your brain?
Obviously there's going to be some stuff in your heart that's obvious, but has any of your it's mostly cemented home the notion I had that there's there's really nothing in the final analysis.
There's there's your there's the career your career and your family, you know, and your family is half your life or more.
And I don't know what you do when you're old if you don't have grandchildren.
You know, I mean, it's not like they occupy all my time, but it would be, there'd be such a hole there.
Yeah.
Oh, I can imagine, yeah.
Sitting there in this part of the suit by yourself and just doing solitaire maybe or something, you know?
Well, and not being able to interact with children, because children are revitalizing, as well as being exhausting and frustrating and all of those things.
But they are revitalizing and they're like fire.
You know, if you put a two-year-old among a group of 75-year-olds, the 75-year-olds don't do anything but watch the two-year-old.
They're fascinated by the child and to see all that new potential coming to manifest itself.
I mean, those are the sorts of things that cultures tell you, you know, get married, stick together.
Well, why?
Well, it's for the children, but that's to your benefit as well.
And then it's for the grandchildren because that's to your benefit as well.
It's a good long-term solution, even though it's very difficult and requires all sorts of sacrifice.
But you lose that and you get all fractured up.
And it isn't obvious to me what you do then as you age.
So it's made me more aware even of the great privilege of having a family that loves you and how valuable that is above everything else.
Yeah, that's powerful, man.
And I can imagine.
I don't have that yet, but sometimes I feel myself like I constantly kind of feel myself coming to some of the same, like I'm in a cul-de-sac.
And I think sometimes it's what I'm looking for is probably a family of my own.
You know, I'm actually, I've had fear about kind of taking some of those next steps, but I think some of what I am looking for is just more a sense of like, this is my tribe or this is my group or this is, I don't know, something.
I can feel it kind of.
Yeah, well, if you didn't, people who felt that had children and that's how we're all here.
So yeah, it's a huge part.
It's a huge part of life.
And it gets a bad rap.
It's a responsibility rap again.
It's like, well, you know, can you really be with one person for the rest of your life?
And is that realistic now that people live so long?
And, well, I don't know if it's realistic or if you can be with one person for the rest of your life, but there are definite coming up with a better alternative is no simple matter.
And it's a blessing to have young people around that care whether you're alive, you know, as you get older.
And so I wouldn't, I don't think it's a good idea to deny yourself that.
Sounds like a real gift.
Yes, well, and you should, you know, this chapter about romance in relationships might be particularly useful to you if you're thinking about having a family, because I do believe that it's possible to keep that romantic vision alive.
You have to make it a name.
You have to really work at it.
You think, well, what do I want?
How would I like to have a date with my wife?
Well, what would you like to see her wear?
How would you like to arrange the music?
All of these things.
People are afraid to attend to them.
But if you attend to them, you can get good at it.
And then you can make something magical.
And then the magic that you can create with the same person over and over stops you from being frustrated that it's the same person.
Yes.
So, and I think you need to know that that's possible.
Yeah.
Yeah, man.
I think sometimes we just don't hear that kind of stuff enough, you know?
No, I know.
I know we don't.
I have one more question I wanted to ask you.
This was about, you know, I've been in recovery for like five years, I guess, and I've struggled recently in the past year during the pandemic.
But I'm still a strong believer in recovery and in the 12 steps of recovery.
Why do you feel like the 12 steps of recovery or the 12 steps work well for so many people?
And do you think that that's the best modality to obtain sobriety for addicts?
Well, it isn't obvious that there's a good alternative.
So that's the first thing.
If AA doesn't work, it isn't like there's a preferable treatment.
Most people cease alcohol use on their own without medical intervention.
We don't know why, although religious transformation seems to be one.
And of course, the 12 steps capitalizes on that.
I think that it's quite an intelligent program, psychologically speaking.
You know, first of all, you have to make a moral inventory.
You have to figure out what's wrong in your life, which would obviously include the alcohol misuse.
You have to rectify that, take responsibility for it, try to chart out a new course.
You're also provided with a social structure, which is really useful when you're trying to stop drinking because it's very probable that most of your friends are going to be drinkers.
And so that leaves not only do you stop drinking, but you stop associating with your friends or maybe even with your family members.
That's really hard.
So, you know, an AA doesn't seem to be an exploitative organization.
It's all volunteers.
But speaking strictly clinically, it isn't obvious that there's a better alternative.
If you were being strictly scientific, you'd say, well, there's never been controlled trials of AA where you randomly assign people to the AA group and to the non-AA group or another treatment to see head to head which works better.
And there's the problem that many people drop out, and so you can't tell exactly what the success rate is.
But that's, in some sense, a technical argument.
It also isn't clear to me that AA does people harm.
Right.
Which is also really important because many medical treatments can produce harm.
And so the worst you could say is, well, maybe it won't work.
So.
Yeah, and that's not that big of a risk.
Especially if you're already wet.
Comparatively speaking, yes.
Yeah, if you're already all sick or something, you know, you've been.
So what do you think it was that enabled you to stop drinking?
Like, why did you manage it?
What did you use as an alternative?
Well, I noticed when I went, well, my problem was cocaine, but I worried that if I drank, I would do cocaine.
I never had a problem drinking, but I was worried that one could lead to the other.
Yes, undoubtedly.
I think, well, one thing, it gave me a place where I realized that other people were sharing their thoughts and feelings, and I'd never been in that kind of environment before.
And so to me, so that was one of the big things was the emotional sobriety.
And then it helped me have a relationship with a higher power, which I'd never really had.
Right.
And what difference did that make, do you think?
Man, that made it was the first time in my life I felt like something cared about me unconditionally.
And you experienced that?
Oh, and I experienced it at a level that shook me, man, like I've got electrocuted.
Like it was, yeah, that a God just, that this in vit that some invisible thing cared about me at a level that I could never even imagine.
And that no matter if I was good or bad or if I did something naughty or nice or cinnamon or spice, man, that this thing loved me.
And that was, I just never felt that before.
So for there to be a way to get to that feeling, that's what made recovery feel like important to me, I think.
Yeah, well, to have an experience like that is a real gift.
Yeah.
It was just, it was powerful.
Dr. Peterson, I don't want to take up a ton of your time, man, but I just, I think, once again, it just reminded me that life is a program of effort, you know?
And if we want to see changes and if we want to experience something different than the circle or even the figure eight that we're in or even the trapezoid that we're in, that we have to, that we gotta, we gotta make an effort, you know?
We really gotta make an effort.
It's good talking to you like it was last time.
Appreciate it very much.
You too, Jordan.
Thank you so much for your time and congrats on the new book and I look forward to finishing it and you look great.
Congratulations on your continued success.
You too, brother.
I'll chat soon.
All right.
All right, cheers.
Good talking with you.
Thank you.
Now I'm just floating on the breeze And I feel I'm falling like these leaves I must be cornerstone Oh, but when I reach that ground I'll share this peace of mind I found I can feel it in my bones But it's gonna take a little time For me to set that parking brake And
let myself unwind Shine that light on me I'll sit and tell you my stories Shine on me And I will find a song I will sing it just for you
And now I've been moving way too far fast on the runaway train with a heavy load.
And my past.
And these wheels that I've been riding on, they're once so thin that they're damn near gone.
