"In this compelling Dailymotion video, we explore the recent intellectual contributions and personal journey of Dr. Jordan B. Peterson. We dive deep into his highly anticipated new book, 'We Who Wrestle with God: Perceptions of the Divine,' examining its core themes of mythology, psychology, and the ancient stories that shape Western thought. Discover how Peterson analyzes concepts like rebellion, sacrifice, suffering, and redemption, offering a unique perspective on human consciousness and the pursuit of meaning. We also provide an update on his recent health, discussing his recovery progress and the enduring impact of his work. This video is essential viewing for anyone interested in personal development, philosophy, and the profound ideas of one of the most influential thinkers of our time."
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#JordanPeterson #WeWhoWrestleWithGod #Psychology #Philosophy #MeaningOfLife #PersonalDevelopment #BiblicalSeries #Consciousness #HealthUpdate #Dailymotion #NewBook #SelfHelp #Culture #Truth #Meaning
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CreativityTranscript
00:07the question is how do you differentiate the utility of behavioral slash psychotherapeutic
00:13treatments for conditions like depression versus medical treatments okay so the first thing I would
00:18say is don't underestimate the utility of medical interventions depression is a catastrophe it
00:25carries with it a very high suicide rate and it also levels people out and it's really hard on
00:31their families and so and it and it's physiologically extraordinarily damaging and so if you're in a
00:38depressive state and it's severe you can try an antidepressant you'll know in a month if it works
00:44if it works well maybe it'll help you get your life together like we could say well maybe you're
00:48depressed because your life isn't very well together could be sometimes people are depressed
00:53their life is just it isn't fine because no one's life is fine everyone's life is a tragedy
00:58but sometimes people have their lives in order as much as you could expect anyone to have they have
01:05friends they have an intimate relationship they have a career that they like you know they're
01:08they're qualified industrious people working hard on what they're doing and and and really playing a
01:15minimum number of games with themselves and they're terribly depressed antidepressant man that's sometimes
01:21that will just fix it and so hooray like you're a biological entity if there's something out there
01:26that can help you strengthen yourself so that you can prevail great and you know people you hear
01:34everyone takes antidepressants you know everyone's taking them it's like no one takes those bloody
01:38things without serious consideration half the time i spend with my clients who are depressed is often
01:44the two years long attempt to get them to tentatively try an antidepressant because they're so guilty
01:50that they're relying on an external crutch to sort out their lives that they can't even tolerate it
01:55but you know i say well look man what if you had diabetes you're not going to take your insulin
02:01it's like you got stressed you blew out at your weakest point that's what happens when you get
02:05stressed if there's something out there that might help you it's like try it for god's sake you'll know
02:10in a month and and you just stop if it doesn't work now having said that you want to do
02:17a
02:17multi-dimensional analysis it's like well do you have any friends do you have an intimate
02:22relationship or are you pursuing one do you have a reasonable career are you as educated as you are
02:26intelligent do you have something useful to do with your time outside of work do you have a drug
02:30or alcohol problem are there other behavioral issues like sleep dysregulation and lack of eating
02:35that are contributing to the pathology you want to differentiate all of that and wherever you can make
02:40a behavioral intervention so much the better but sometimes too you're dealing with people whose lives
02:45are so wrecked that they don't even know where to start they're different than the ones who have
02:49everything in order say and you say well try this man maybe you won't cut your throat in the next
02:54month
02:54because if you're dead it's going to be hard to work with you and so so medical interventions
03:02anything if you're sick you do what it's necessary to get better and you leave your pride behind if you
03:08if you have to and that that says nothing about the utility of the behavioral interventions you want
03:14to hit the problem with everything you have at your disposal but some antidepressants especially
03:21especially for people whose lives are together and who are depressed antidepressants can be absolutely
03:26miraculous so you know when you hear about the clinical evidence in their favor being iffy and
03:33that's partly because the diagnosis of depression isn't very well formulated it's very different to
03:38have a terrible life than to be depressed and antidepressants can only help you so much if you
03:43have a terrible life so yeah you want to stay inside this little map because it's working you want to
03:53get from point A to point B and this is good this indicates that you are moving forward that's the
03:59first thing it indicates and the second thing it indicates which is even more important and you'll
04:04never hear this from behavioral psychologists is that your map is correct so every time you move a
04:09little bit forward and something that you want happens it says oh the game I'm playing is the right
04:14game and so not only does the reward indicate progress it indicates that the frame within which
04:21progress is being calculated is the right frame and that's good because it's the frame that makes
04:26things irrelevant and you want them to stay irrelevant so if you don't move forward and you
04:32start to question the frame that's way worse than merely not moving forward you get a bad exam grade
04:37what do you think what the hell am I doing in university anyways it's like probably that's not the first
04:42place you should go with that piece of information and you think well why why is that worse well as
04:48far
04:48as I can tell your map of you as university student is a comprehensive representation it tells you what you
04:55should do every day it kind of tells you where you're going in the future and if something emerges
05:00as an anomaly you get worse grade than you expected and you blow that whole map it's like okay what
05:06have
05:06you been doing for the last four years what kind of high school student were you how clueless are you
05:10about how you're arranging your future what's your identity going to be if you're not going to be a
05:14student where are you going to end up in five years it's like so it's like a that little grade
05:19that bad
05:20grade is like a portal through which snakes can crawl and that's exactly how you respond to it
05:24especially if you open the door too much well maybe this means that I shouldn't be in university
05:29well one of the rules is don't you want to you want to constrain the anomalous event to the minimal
05:36necessary domain it's really really important you want to do that when you're arguing with your partner
05:42which you'll do all the time we have an argument well I should never have married you it's like no
05:47no that's not the first response that's a bad response or here's a really good one
05:53you've always done that sort of thing and you always will it's like oh good great it's like
05:59the only answer to that is to hit someone because like you're done right you're you're like that
06:03you've always been like that there isn't a chance that you can be repaired and none of it is acceptable
06:07it's like the person's going to fight with you right away because what else are they going to do
06:11so what you want to do is you want to minimize it isn't rationalization you want to say okay this
06:16person did something that disrupted our joint map okay what's the smallest possible thing they could
06:22do to put it back together and you have to know well we need to make a plan so you
06:27don't do it again
06:28or we need to have a discussion so that you know that it wasn't a good thing to do but
06:32I'm not going
06:33to go after your whole character I'm going to say when I come home and you're watching tv just come
06:42to
06:42the door and say hello not don't you love me or something like that it's like no no you just
06:47have
06:47to walk to the door and like give me a hug or something and then that's good enough and so
06:51then
06:51the other person might be able to tolerate that much corrective information maybe if you're kind
06:57of nice about it and you also understand that they're probably going to have something equally
07:01horrible to say about you in the next 15 minutes because you're going to do something stupid
07:04so so you don't want to you don't want to open the door so that every possible snake comes crawling
07:11through because that's a pathway to depression and you actually see that happening in depressed
07:16people is that every small event produces a cascade through their entire value system and they end up
07:23saying well that's just another reason that I should jump off a bridge and they really see it that
07:27way it's really awful because they've got no defenses it's like well I didn't do so well in this
07:33course it's like I'm going to get a bad mark in the or in the exam I'm going to get
07:38bad mark in
07:38the course that's going to screw up my ability to finish my degree I'm never going to get into the
07:43field of my choice it's just another piece of indication that I'm useless and that life isn't
07:47worthwhile bang I'm going to jump off a bridge and if you're really depressed it's like each of those
07:52things hits you with the certainty of truth it's really not good and so you want to be careful you
07:58want to be careful about walking down that pathway when you make a mistake you think okay
08:02what's the narrowest framework of interpretation within which I can I can understand this that
08:09will require minimal behavioral change to decrease the probability that it will happen again it's
08:15mental hygiene fundamentally yes yeah we'll get to that we'll get to that that is the next question
08:24it's because they don't exist in isolation so and that's another thing frequently when you when you hear
08:30behavioral accounts of cognitive processes they generally only focus on as if it's an isolated
08:38thing it's not it's scalable it's scalable a bunch of ways it's scalable temporally because what you do
08:45now is associated with what you'll do tomorrow and that with what you'll do next week and so forth so
08:49it has to be scalable temporally and it's also scalable socially right so it has an effect on you that
08:56has an
08:56effect on your family that has an effect on the community and so forth and so you don't want to
09:02take
09:04it's very difficult to think through the effect of your action and all those scaling levels simultaneously
09:10but but you have mechanisms that allow you to do that and we'll see I think that the sense of
09:16let's
09:16assume that you're not lying to yourself constantly so your head isn't full of chaos and garbage and you
09:22have reasonable relationships with people in the world I think that this is leaping way ahead I think
09:28that your sense of meaningful engagement with what you're doing is the psychophysiological marker that
09:34you're acting in a way that takes all of the stacked representations into account simultaneously because
09:40you're you're you're you're like you're trying to figure out where you are and you might think well
09:45that means where I am in this room but look this room is not a simple thing right it's nested
09:53it's
09:53it's a subset of the university that's a subset of society it's a subset of your life the room is
09:58a
09:58complicated thing and you need to figure out where you should be in the room and you can't do that
10:03surely with perception because all you see is me and some of the wall right it's you got this little
10:10narrow this little narrow portal and so you can't really rely on your perceptions to orient you but
10:17you do orient yourself and I think what you do is you it's engagement it's like does this seem meaningful
10:24and deep and engaging yes then it's an indication that it's serving multiple masters simultaneously so
10:32both maybe both socially and also temporally and so I think the sense of meaning is actually an
10:38instinct that orients people in time and space it's not an epiphenomena it's the most fundamental
10:45form of perception and that's the only optimistic thought that I've ever been able to derive from
10:49psychology is that that actually could be true it could be that the sense of meaning is an orienting
10:57reflex and that would be wonderful if it was true because it would make it real you know and it's
11:01one of the you know the one of the devastating elements of nihilism is something like well who the
11:08hell cares what you're doing what difference is it going to make in a million years it's like your sense
11:11of
11:11meaning is just an illusion you know you're you're a limited creature in a limited place and nothing you do
11:17really matters it's like that's a powerful argument especially if you're an objective materialist and a
11:22reductionist it's a killer argument but it looks to me like it's wrong it's actually wrong
11:28because meaning looks to me like it's an actual phenomenon it does say that you're
11:32you're positioned properly between chaos and order or something like that it's real so
11:39well so we'll see we're going to develop that argument because if if it's real you want to know
11:47that because it gives you something to stand on you know maybe it's as real as pain but it's not
11:52pain
11:53it's something positive and you need something positive that you can rely on
11:56all right so and the psychoanalysts i think air too much on the side of the subject they tend to
12:05think that too much of you is inside of you and too little of you is outside of you and
12:10part of the reason i believe that is because of my clinical experience i love the psychoanalysts man
12:17they're brilliant they're brilliant they're deep
12:21they grapple with real problems like with the problems when people have real problems and i mean
12:27profound problems they're really profound moral problems they're problems of good and evil really
12:32you know there are things going on in their family that are so terrible that
12:36well that they're they're sometimes fatal you know lie upon lie upon lie upon lie for
12:43decades and decades and decades it's awful
12:53and that's not exactly inside them
12:58it's out there in the world and lots of the people that i see very famous critic of psychology
13:06i can't remember his name but i probably will
13:11criticize the practice of psychology quite effectively in the i believe in the early 60s
13:16the myth of mental illness by thomas sas z it's classic you should read it if you're interested in
13:25psychology read it like it's it's a classic and he basically said most people have problems in living
13:32they don't have psychological problems
13:34and so i've experienced despite my love for the psychoanalysts very frequently what i'm doing as a therapist is
13:42helping people have a life that would work
13:46you know and you can parameterize that it's like what do you need how about some friends that
13:54people kind of like that how about an intimate relationship with someone that you can trust
13:57that maybe has a future that'd be good how about a career that puts you in a dominance hierarchy
14:02somewhere so at least you've got some possibility of rising some possibility of stabilizing yourself
14:09and a schedule and a routine because no one can live without a routine you just forget that if you
14:15guys don't have a routine i would recommend like you get one going because you cannot be mentally
14:22healthy without a routine you need to pick a time to get up whatever time you want but pick one
14:27and stick to it because otherwise you dysregulate your circadian rhythms and they regulate your mood
14:35and eat something in the morning i had lots of clients who've had anxiety disorders i had one client
14:41who was literally starving very smart girl she there's very little that she liked she kind of tried to
14:47subsist on like half a cup of rice a day she came to me and said i have no energy
14:52i come home all i want
14:53to do is watch the same movie over and over what like is that weird and i thought well it
14:59depends
14:59on how hard you work you know it's a little weird but whatever it's familiar you're looking for comfort
15:05so i did an analysis of her diet it's like three quarters of a cup of rice it's like you're
15:12starving
15:13eat something you know
15:17you'll feel better so she modified her diet and all her anxiety went away and she had some energy
15:24it's like yeah you gotta eat so a schedule that's a good thing man your brain will thank you for
15:34it
15:34it will stabilize your nervous system with a bit of a plan that's a good thing you need a career
15:40you need
15:40something productive to do with your time you need to regulate your use of drugs and alcohol
15:46most particularly alcohol because that does in a lot of people um
15:53you need a family like the family you have your parents and all that be nice if you all got
15:58along
15:58you could work on that that's a good thing to work on and then you know you probably need children
16:02at some point that's life that's what life is and if you're missing you know you may have a good
16:10reason to not be operating on one of those dimensions it's not mandatory but i can tell
16:17you that if you're not operating reasonably well on four i think i mentioned six if you're not
16:22operating reasonably well on at least three of them there's no way you're going to be psychologically
16:31thriving and that's more pragmatic in some sense than psychological right human beings have a nature
16:37there's things we need and if we have them well that's good and if we don't have them well then
16:42we feel the lack and so behaviorists behavioral psychologists concentrate a lot more on that sort
16:49of thing you know it's practical it's like strategizing make a career plan figure out how to
16:55negotiate because that's bloody important figure out how to say what you need figure out how to tell the
17:00truth to people figure out how to listen to your partner in particular because if you listen to
17:08them they will actually tell you what they want and sometimes you can give it to them and maybe they'll
17:13return the favor and if you practice that for like 15 years well then maybe you're constantly giving each
17:20other what you want well hooray that would be good and then there's two of you under both circumstances
17:26and it's better to have two brains than one because people think differently because of their
17:32temperament mostly and so the negotiation is where the wisdom arises and it's part of the transformation
17:40the psychological transformation that's attendant on an intimate relationship and one of the
17:46fundamental purposes of a long-term intimate relationship so we're starting to be able to put
17:51the traits to sort of nail the traits down to their underlying biology with regards to neuroticism
17:57well if you're high in neuroticism you're more sensitive to anxiety and that's regulated at least in
18:03part by the hippocampus and and generated in part by the amygdala there's another part of the brain
18:08called the peri-aqueductal gray that seems to be associated with the experience of pain and pain is
18:15quite a complex phenomena depression is pain-like grief is pain-like social isolation is pain-like
18:22disappointment is pain-like there's anxiety components to that too and so neuroticism seems
18:28to be something like threshold for activation in those negative emotion systems so if you're higher
18:34in neuroticism one unit of uncertainty might produce let's say three units of psychophysiological response
18:41whereas if you're lower in neuroticism one unit of uncertainty might produce one unit of psychophysiological
18:46response it's hard you know obviously that's a simplified schemata but there's variability
18:52because if something unexpected or threatening happens to you it isn't obvious how upset you
18:58should get one answer what might be brush it off it's nothing another answer might be it's a bloody
19:03catastrophe and often when something uncertain or threatening occurs you don't have enough
19:08information at your disposal to make a full determination of the potential import of this
19:14of the circumstance especially if it's uncertain and so then you have to guess at how upset you
19:19should be and where you are on the normal distribution with regards to trait neuroticism say
19:25that sort of determines what your guess on average is going to be so you know the other with
19:32conscientiousness say you might say well how hard should you work well that's a really difficult
19:38question if you're going to die tomorrow and then you probably shouldn't work very hard today at all
19:43so one thing you might say is that the degree to which you should work hard is dependent on your
19:50assumptions about the stability of the future we actually know this to be true because if you put
19:55people in wildly uncertain circumstances they discount the future which is exactly what you should do right
20:02it's only makes sense to store up goods for future consumption if the future is likely to be very
20:08similar to the past and the present you need a stable society for that and conscientiousness only works in
20:15a stable society because all you do otherwise if you're piling up goods which is kind of what conscientious
20:20people do is leaving them there for the criminals to take or waiting for the next chaotic upheaval to wipe
20:26out
20:26everything that you've stored and so even conscientiousness is a kind of guess hard-working people say well you know
20:34sacrifice the present for the future that's great as long as the future is going to be there and you
20:38can predict it but if it's not going to be there and it's unpredictable then the right response is
20:42take what you can take right now well the getting's good now you know obviously there are troubles with
20:48that too and i'm speaking you know i'm i'm offering rough rules of thumb but i'm trying to provide you
20:55some indication of how and why these difference in value structures exist because they're applicable
21:01in different environments you know sometimes in a dangerous social environment it's not obvious that
21:07being an extroverted person is a good idea because extroverted people they stand out especially if
21:12they're extroverted and creative right because not only are they noisy and and dominant and assertive
21:18they're also colorful and and flamboyant and provocative what happens to people is that
21:24as they move towards zero positive feedback loops get set up so they're more likely to hit zero
21:29and as they move away from zero positive feedback loops get set up so that they're increasingly more
21:34likely to move away from zero so here's an example let's say uh you're not doing too bad so maybe
21:39you're in the middle of the normal distribution then you lose your job okay and so and let's say
21:45you're a conscientious person and we could say just for the sake of argument that you lose your job
21:50because of mass layoffs in your company so it has nothing to do with you it's
21:53fundamentally it's just like luck of the draw basically but then what happens to you well
21:59if you're conscientious you're gonna you're gonna go after yourself pretty hard so you're gonna in
22:04and especially if you're also high in neuroticism it's gonna depress you to lose your job and maybe
22:08you're in a situation where you just for one reason or another you don't have that many other
22:12opportunities now maybe you should have looked for them but maybe you're in a depressed strata of the
22:16economy or you're geographically located somewhere that makes moving difficult or so on and so forth
22:21you know so but you you lose your job and then you start to get depressed because of that
22:26well then as you start to get depressed you know it decreases the probability that you're gonna look
22:31for a job but also maybe starts to put stress on your family and it also starts to decrease the
22:36probability that you're in gonna engage in positive social interaction so now not only are you
22:41unemployed and suffering from economic stress but your marriage is starting to suffer and you're
22:46starting to isolate yourself from your friends and then of course as your marriage suffers and the stress builds up
22:50then that's going to make you more depressed and that's going to keep you even farther away from
22:54your friends and that's going to decrease the likelihood that you're going to have enough
22:57positive emotion and enthusiasm to look for another job and then you know maybe you want to add a bit
23:02of a drinking problem to that just for fun and you can see that you can get a spiral going
23:06that's just
23:07taking you down right and it's all sorts of things because lots of times people conceptualize
23:13let's say you know you're unemployed guy and you go to counseling and you get uh a diagnosis of
23:20depression and the thing about a diagnosis of depression it's sort of like the assumption is
23:24there's something gone wrong with your psychological structure it's like if you're unemployed and you're
23:29you're depressed it isn't obvious at all that the problem is in your head you know you know what i
23:33mean
23:34it's it doesn't it isn't even obvious that it's a psychological problem it's just a problem
23:38and problems can take you out and so the you know if you're unemployed and and you're under economic
23:44stress and your marriage is starting to shake and you're isolating yourself from your friends
23:48and you're less likely to be motivated to go look for a job you can sort of think about that
23:53as a
23:53depressive spiral but you can also think of it as a conspiracy in some sense of external forces
23:59that are auguring you into the ground and we don't tend to conceptualize psychological disorders that
24:05way but we should because lots of times when people are suffering from something that you could
24:10describe in psychological terminology and depression is a very good example of that it isn't obvious that
24:15there's something wrong with them psychologically often they just are in trouble and there isn't a
24:20category in in psychological diagnosis for client in serious trouble but my experience has been almost
24:28without exception that the people that come to see me come to see me because something's gone wrong
24:34with their life not because they have a psychological problem now you could say well their psychological
24:38inadequacies such as they might be are interfering with their ability to recover or maybe even served
24:44as precursors to you know increase the probability of the catastrophe and so a well-functioning personality
24:51has all the micro routines in place that's actually something that you help people with if you're a
24:56behavioral therapist because one of the things you assume if you're a behavioral therapist is that
25:00sometimes the reason people aren't doing things is because they don't know how
25:05you know sometimes maybe the person's depressed but potentially high functioning
25:08they got all the damn micro routines they're well socialized they're just dormant you got to get them awake again
25:14and implementing them but
25:15sometimes you get someone in your practice say who's just been neglected like you cannot believe right
25:21the parents never paid any attention to them or maybe just punished them every time they did something good that's
25:26really fun and then you know they didn't make friends and so
25:29they're really really vague and and and poorly articulated and so then what you do is you work at the
25:36bottom of the micro routines and get them to practice building up all these little attributes that they didn't build
25:42up and you know one of the things you can think about in terms of character development is so now
25:46maybe understand something about your own personality you might say well what could you do to improve your personality and
25:52the answer is develop some of the micro routines on the other side of the personality distribution
25:57so if you're disagreeable as hell maybe you could start learning how to do nice things for people and that
26:03actually works by the way so if you take disagreeable people who are depressed and you get them doing nice
26:07things for other people their depression tends to lift but then by the same token if you're agreeable then you
26:12should practice doing some things for yourself and being more tough minded in your negotiations and so you can sort
26:18of place yourself on the on the personality trait distribution
26:21you know you're extrovert it's like okay man learn to spend some time with yourself right you're low in openness
26:28well try reading a book that's outside of your you know your your sphere of interest now and then
26:33if you're conscientious well you should probably learn how to relax occasionally and and so forth so you can I
26:40think partly what you're doing as you're developing your personality is not moving the mean much the average where you
26:45know where you're located but you're extending the standard deviation so that you're a bigger bag of tricks than you
26:51were before you know where you're located but you're extending the standard deviation so that you're a bigger bag of
26:51tricks than you were before you're
26:51and I think you can practice that consciously it's like you're hyper orderly it's well get a dog you know
26:58dogs are messy horrible things you know it's just what you need if you're hyper orderly because they're gonna leave
27:03hair everywhere and force you to live with it and so okay so and so this is sort of you
27:08right this is your personality it's this connect collection of routine subroutines that you've turned into a hierarchy and then
27:15there's something at the top of it and that's that's a big question like what the hell should be at
27:19the top of the hierarchy because that's the ultimate question
27:21of unity and then the clinicians would say well it's the self actualized person or it's the self or something
27:26like that you know that's that's the I that's the implicit and perhaps explicit ideal that you're aiming for and
27:33you might say well is does such thing exist that I would say well do you admire people because that's
27:39your answer right do you despise people well you like some people and you don't like others you respect some
27:45people you don't respect others while you're acting out the notion that there's at least an implicit ideal
27:51you do the same thing when you go to movies you know you you know who the hero is you
27:54know who the bad guy is you're acting out the proposition that there's some sort of value hierarchy and there's
27:59some sort of manifestation of it that's coherent across time so you appear to believe that and you know you
28:05are driven at least to some degree by your own inner ideals and so you tend to answer the question
28:11is that real with an affirmative and if you don't there's catastrophic consequences Nietzsche and existentialists were very good at
28:19detailing that's like you let your value hierarchy
28:21disintegrate well then what well part of it is nihilistic chaos who that's not so much fun and then there's
28:28the alignment of nihilistic chaos with the intrinsic desire that someone will come along and tell you what to do
28:34right so what happens is if you let this devolve you end up with nihilistic exist not with nihilistic chaos
28:40or the demand for for the tyrant to come forward and we've had that happen lots of times and doesn't
28:45seem to have gone that well so
28:50all right well so what happens when you lay out these little routines in the world at different levels of
28:56analysis well this is how your emotions function broadly speaking you know you're aiming at something and this is an
29:05oversimplification which is why I want to show you this right when I show you this assume that it's made
29:12out of that right it's just a schematic oversimplification because even if
29:18let's say that I'm trying to do something as simple as walking towards the door I mean that the action
29:24of walking towards the door is predicated on the existence of all the subroutines that enable me to propel my
29:31body across time and space and like there's that took a lot of internal organization to get that right it's
29:38automatized now and so you can treat it like it's invisible but implicit in any one of these structures is
29:45this entire structure
29:46and you actually see this in therapy very frequently too
29:50and one of the things that I figured out over the last years is this is a good proposition so
29:54you know it's pretty self-evident that life is has got its rat's nest of miseries and that's for sure
30:00and maybe you could even make a categorical statement that life is mostly a rat's nest of misery
30:04you know you can make a pretty powerful argument for that but then there's a counter question which is well
30:10what if you tried not to make it any more miserable than it had to be
30:14right then what then what would it be like and my suspicions are is that a lot of that misery
30:20I would suspect that most of that misery would go away
30:22because it's the unnecessary misery that really brings you down you know it's like well if someone has cancer it's
30:28like that sucks but
30:30it's not like it's not like you can say if only we had done this differently then that wouldn't have
30:37happened
30:38but when someone's out like torturing you in a malevolent way or maybe you're doing the same you can always
30:43ask yourself well is it really
30:44is this really necessary is this just like a useless add-on to the miseries of life that's what disheartens
30:50people
30:50and so even in your own life if if you if if you aren't suffering from self-imposed misery
30:57and you're only suffering from inescapable misery maybe you could handle that and you know you could
31:03you could survive you could bear it and and even maybe without becoming irredeemably corrupt and so
31:09the goal would be well yeah life is a rat's nest of miseries and maybe it has no ultimate meaning
31:14we could say
31:15that if we're feeling particularly pessimistic but it still leaves one question open which is if you
31:20didn't do everything you could to make it worse how good could you make it be and the the least
31:26answer is well it it could be tragedy but maybe not hell and i think that's right i really believe
31:32that that's that's the most pessimistic proper statement the worst case outcome in the worst of
31:38all possible worlds is that your life could be tragic but not hell and that's a lot better than hell
31:43right it's it's and you think i could give you an example of the difference you're at your mother's
31:48deathbed well that's tragedy here's another scenario you're at your mother's deathbed and
31:54all you you and all your idiot siblings are arguing well that's the difference between tragedy and hell
32:00and you might be able to tolerate the first circumstance and maybe it would even bring you
32:03closer together with your family members the second one no one can bear that you walk away from a
32:09situation like that sick of yourself and sick of everything else too and you know it's often the
32:14case that tragic circumstances bring out the dragons because the stress is high and all those things
32:20that people haven't dealt with they don't have the energy to repress and and all the bitterness comes
32:26pouring forward it's like seriously man so that's actually a good it's a rough lesson but it's a good
32:33hallmark for figuring out whether or not you're you've got yourself adjusted properly and in relationship
32:39to your siblings it's like if you all gathered around the bed of someone close who was dying
32:44could you manage it and if the answer is no it's like well put your life together because it's going
32:50to happen and you should be the person who's there that can do it and do it properly and then
32:55maybe
32:55you'd find that it isn't the sort of thing that will undermine your faith in life itself and i've seen
33:01i've seen both of those situations you know ugly ugly ugly situations you know murderously ugly
33:09situations and then they're opposite where people have had terrible things happen and to happen to
33:14them as a family and you know they pull together and they rebuild their damn ship and they sail away
33:20and so that seems to me to be a lot better that makes you know when the flood comes right
33:27well okay so the same thing the question emerges well who are you well you could say
33:32say you're this plan that's what people usually that's how people usually identify maybe they have
33:40no plan at all and they're just in chaos right that's like being in the belly of the beast they're
33:44nihilistic in chaos they have no plan they're just chaos itself and that's a very dreadful situation for
33:49people to be in or maybe they conjure together a plan that's their identity it's kind of fragile and
33:55they're holding on to that with with everything they've got it's their little stick of wood that
33:58they're floating in the ocean clinging to you know and so they're identifying really hard with that
34:03plan that's what happens when you're an ideologue is that you're identifying really hard with that
34:08plan the problem is something comes up to confront it well how do you act well you can't let go
34:13of
34:13the plan because you drown then you cling to it rigidly well that's no good because then you can't
34:19learn anything then if that's you you're a totalitarian you're not going to learn anything
34:23you're going to end up in something that's close enough to hell so that you won't know the
34:27difference and you might drag everyone along with you that's happened plenty of times right
34:31it's the whole story of the 20th century it happened over and over and over and it happens
34:35in people's states it happens in their business organizations it happens in their cities it happens
34:41in their provinces it happens in their states and it happens in their psyches all at the same time
34:47you can't blame the manifestation of that sort of thing on any of those one levels it happens
34:52when a society goes down that way it goes down everywhere at the same time it's not the totalitarians
34:58at the top and all the happy people striving to be free at the bottom it's not that at all
35:03it's
35:03totalitarianism at every single level of the hierarchy including the psychological and so you
35:08don't want to be the thing you don't want to be in chaos that's for sure but you don't want
35:11to be
35:11the thing that clings so desperately to the raft that you can't let go when someone comes to rescue
35:17you right you don't want to be that so then you think well exactly what are you you're not the
35:23chaos you're not the plan maybe you're the thing that confronts the obstacle and i would say that's
35:30the categorical lesson of of psychology insofar as it has to do with personal transformation
35:37because that's what you always teach people in psychotherapy i don't care what sort of psychotherapist
35:41you are you're always teaching them the same thing you're the thing that can you're not
35:45you're not the plan you're the thing that can confront the obstacle to the plan and then when
35:50you know even further that the obstacle is not only an obstacle but opportunity itself well then your
35:56whole view of the world can change because you might think well i've got this plan something came up to
36:00object to and it's like it's possible that the thing that's objecting has something to teach you
36:05that will take you to the place where you develop an even better plan that's a nice framework to use
36:10it's
36:10like are you so sure that this is a problem is that the only way that you can look at
36:15it or is it an
36:16opportunity i mean i'm not trying to be you know naively optimistic there are some things that's pretty
36:21hard to extract gold from some dragons and maybe the death of a family member is a good example of
36:26that but even in a situation like that i can tell you that it's an opportunity for it's an opportunity
36:32for maturation that's for sure and the thing is you might say well it's pretty miserable to go
36:37to be digging for gold when someone's falling into the grave well if they really love you first of
36:42all that's what they'll want you to do and second you're going to make their death a lot more palatable
36:47experience for them if you're someone who can be in the room and be helpful instead of be you know
36:51quivering in the corner and feeling that the entire world is collapsing in on you i mean that's another
36:56you want to be the useful person at the funeral how's that for a goal that's a good goal man
37:02you know
37:03that you've got yourself together in a situation like that because you're going to be at them and maybe
37:07you want to be the person on whose shoulder people cry that'd be a good goal that's kind of you
37:13know
37:13i don't like being naively optimistic so when i tell you to get your life together i'm not going to
37:17say roses and sunshine it's like that's that's that's that's pablum for fools but it really is
37:25something to be the reliable person at a funeral there's this idea in union psychology called the
37:31circumambulation and jung had this idea that you had a potential future self which would be
37:38in potential everything that you could be and that it manifests itself moment to moment in your
37:44present life by making you interested in things and the things that you're interested in are the
37:50things that would guide you along the path that would lead you to maximal development now it sounds
37:56like a metaphysical idea or a or a mystical idea even but but it's not it's it's not it's a
38:03really
38:03profoundly biological idea the idea is something like well you're set up so that you're automatically
38:09interested in those things that would fully expand you as a well-adapted creature well like there's
38:16nothing radical about that idea how well what else could possibly be the case unless there's something
38:21fundamentally flawed about you that is what the situation would be it's kind of interesting to
38:27think about how that would be manifest moment to moment but the idea is something like well your
38:32interest is captured by those things that lead you down the path of development well that better be
38:38the case okay so that's fine and so there's some utility in pursuing those things that you're
38:43interested in that's the call to adventure let's say so and the call to adventure takes you all sorts
38:49of places now the problem with the call to adventure is like what the hell do you know
38:53you might be interested in things that are kind of warped and bent and often it's the case that when
38:59new parts of people manifest themselves and grip their interests say they do it very badly and shoddily
39:06and so you stumble around like an idiot when you try to do something new that's why the fool is
39:11the
39:11precursor to the savior from the from the symbolic perspectives because you have to be a fool before you can
39:17be a master and if you're not willing to be a fool then you can't be a master so so
39:22you're gonna it's
39:23it's an error error-ridden process and that's also laid out in the old testament stories because the
39:28first thing that happens to all these patriarchal figures when god kicks them out of their father's
39:33house when they're like 84 is that they they run into all sorts of trouble and some of it's social
39:40and some of it's natural and some of it's a consequence of their own moral inadequacy
39:43so they're fools and but but the thing that's so interesting is that despite the fact that they're
39:49fools they're still supposed to go on the adventure and that they're capable of learning enough as a
39:55consequence of moving forward on the adventure so that they straighten themselves out across time
40:00and so it's something like this this circumambulation that jung talked about was this
40:05continual will return to this this continual circling in some sense of who you could be you might notice
40:11for example that there are themes in your life you know when you go back across your experiences you
40:16see you kind of have your typical experience that sort of repeats itself and there might be variation on
40:22it like a musical theme but it's it's like you're you're circling yourself and getting closer to
40:27yourself as you move across time that's the circumambulation now you remember that for a sec
40:32because we'll go back to it okay so imagine that something glimmers before you it's an interest
40:38that's dawning and you decide well first of all you're paralyzed you think well how do i know if i
40:43should pursue that it's probably a stupid idea and the proper response to that is you're right it
40:48probably is a stupid idea because almost all ideas are stupid and so the the probability that as you move
40:55forward on your adventure that you're going to get it right the first time is zero it's just not
41:01going to happen and so then you might think well maybe i'll just wait around until i get the right
41:06idea and which people do right so they're like 40 year old 13 year olds which is not a good
41:11idea
41:12and so they wait around until it's waiting for godot until they finally got it right but the problem is
41:18you're too stupid to know when you've got it right so waiting around isn't going to help because even if
41:23it the perfect opportunity manifested itself to you in your incomplete form the probability that you
41:29would recognize it as the perfect opportunity is zero you might even think it's the worst possible
41:34idea that you've ever heard of anywhere highly likely highly likely so so you have there's a niche
41:41niche called that a will to stupidity which i really liked so because he thought of stupidity as being
41:48it you know it's it's you have to take it into account fundamentally and work with it and so
41:54and so you can take these tentative steps on your pathway to destiny and you can assume that you're
42:01going to do it badly and that's really useful because you don't have to beat yourself up it's
42:06pretty easy to do it badly but the thing is it's way better to do it badly than not to
42:10do it at all
42:11and that's the continual message that echoes through these historical stories in genesis it's like
42:17these are flawed people they they should have got the hell out of their house way before they did
42:23and they go out and they stumble around in tyranny and famine and self-betrayal and and violence and
42:31but it's a hell of a lot better than just rotting away at home and that's the that's great so
42:37that's
42:37good and so why is that well okay so you you start your path and you think that you're heading
42:42you know towards your star and so you go in that direction and then because you're here the world
42:50looks a particular way but then when you move here the world looks different and you're different as a
42:56consequence of having made that voyage and so what that means is that now that thing that glimmers in
43:01front of you is going to have shifted its location because you weren't very good at specifying it to
43:07begin with and now that you're a little sharper and more focused than you were it's it's going to
43:13reveal itself with more accuracy to you and so then you have to take a you know it's almost like
43:21a
43:21180 degree reversal but it isn't because you know you've I mean you've gone this far and that's a long
43:29ways to get that far but that's a lot farther than you would be if you just stayed where you
43:37were
43:37waiting and so it doesn't matter that you overshoot continually because as you overshoot even if you
43:46don't learn what you should have done you're going to continually learn what you shouldn't keep doing
43:52and if you learn enough about what you shouldn't keep doing then that's tantamount at some point to
43:59learning at the same time what you should be doing so it's okay so it's like this now what's cool
44:07about
44:08it though I think is that as you progress the degree of overshooting starts to decline right and that we
44:15know that there's nothing hypothetical about that as you learn a new skill like even to play play a song
44:21on the piano for example you overshoot madly you're making all sorts of mistakes to begin with and
44:25then the mistakes they disappear there's a great TED talk I think it was about this guy set up a
44:36really
44:36advanced computational recording system in his home and recorded every single utterance his young child
44:43made while learning to speak and then he put together the child's attempts to say certain phonemes and put
44:52them in list and you can hear the child deviating madly to begin with and then after hundreds and
44:57hundreds of repetitions just zeroing right in on the exact phoneme so you know you might not know this
45:04but when kids babble because they start babbling when they're quite young they babble every human phoneme
45:10including all sorts of phonemes that adults can't say and then they they die into their language so
45:16that after they learn say English then there's all sorts of phonemes they can no longer hear or
45:22pronounce but to begin with it's all there which is really quite interesting but so they see as they
45:26learn a particular language they zero in on the proper way to pronounce that and their errors minimize and
45:33every time you learn something that's how it is and that's really useful to know too because it means that
45:38it's okay to wander around stupidly before you fix your destination now you see that echoed in exodus
45:45right because what happens is that the egyptians or the hebrews escape a tyranny which is kind of
45:51whatever you do personally and psychologically when you escape from your previous set of stupidly held
45:58and ignorant and stubborn axioms it's like away from that tyranny it's like great i freed myself from
46:04that well then what well you think well now i'm on the way it's no you're not now you're in
46:09the desert
46:09where you wander around stupidly you know and worship the wrong things until you finally organize
46:16yourself morally again and head in the proper direction so that's worth knowing too because
46:21you think well i got rid of a lot of things baggage excess baggage that i didn't need in my
46:27life and
46:27now everything's okay it's like no it's not you've got rid of a whole set of scaffolds that were
46:32keeping you in place even though they were pathological and now you have nothing and
46:37nothing actually turns out to be better than something pathological but you're still stuck
46:43with the problem of nothing and and that's well that's exactly why exodus is structured the way
46:48that it is it's that you escape from a tyranny it's hooray we're no longer slaves yeah well now
46:53you're nihilistic and lost it's not necessarily an improvement but it is but it is the pre see it's
47:00also useful to know that because you can also be deluded into the idea that imagine that you're
47:06trying to become enlightened which might mean to turn all those parts of you on that could be turned
47:10on you think well that's just a linear pathway uphill you know it's just from one success to another it's
47:16no it's not it's like here you are and you're not doing too badly and the first step is a
47:20complete
47:20bloody catastrophe it's worse and then maybe you can pull yourself together and you hit a new plateau
47:26and then that crumbles and shakes and bang it's worse again and so because part of the reason that
47:32people don't become enlightened is because it's punctuated by intermittent deserts essentially by
47:38intermittent catastrophes and if you don't know that well then you're basically screwed because
47:43you go ahead on your movement forward and you collapse and you think well that didn't work i collapsed
47:48it's like no that's par for the course it's not indication that you failed it's just indication
47:54that it's really hard and that when you learn something you also unlearn something and the thing
48:00you unlearned is probably useful and unlearning it actually is painful you know let's say if you have
48:04to get out of a bad relationship it's like not every not any real there isn't any relationship that's
48:09a hundred percent bad and so when you jump out of it well maybe you're in better shape but you're
48:15still lonesome and disoriented and you don't know what your past was and you don't know what your
48:19present is and you don't know what your future is it's that's not that's why people stay with the devil
48:24they know instead of you know looking for the devil they don't know so so anyways the fact that
48:33you're full of faults doesn't mean you have to stop and thank god for that that's a really useful
48:39thing and the fact that you're full of faults doesn't mean that you can't learn and so you can
48:45posit an ideal and you're going to be wrong about it but it doesn't matter because what you're right
48:50about is positing the ideal moving towards it if the actual ideal isn't conceptualized perfectly well
48:58first surprise surprise because like what are you going to do that's perfect so it doesn't matter that
49:03it's imperfect imperfect it just matters that you do it and that you move forward so that's really
49:08that's really positive news as far as i'm concerned because you can actually do that right you can do
49:13it badly anyone can do that so that's that's useful okay so like if you were an efficient person you
49:20would have just done that but you're not but who cares you know you still end up in the in
49:26the same
49:26place and maybe the trip is even more interesting who knows probably too interesting
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