39: Dr. Jordan Peterson - Archetypes, Psychedelics & Enlightenment

welcome to the future thinkers podcast episode number 39 this is the second half of our interview with psychology professor Jordan Peterson in this episode we talk about Jung's archetypes psychedelics and Jordans definition of enlightenment it's quite an interesting episode the topic range is a bit different than the previous half I hope you guys enjoy it before we get into it there's a few things I want to address from the last episode we got a bunch of hate on our YouTube and our podcast channel so I actually just want to talk about it a little bit because it brings up an interesting point that is really relevant to Jordan Peterson central point which is people who want to run away from criticism or run away from opposing ideas so I'm just going to read out one of our main comments that I thought was pretty ridiculous I've listened to your podcast for years and I very much enjoyed it until now this man is an idiot with a decent vocabulary I will never visit your website again trans people are not a subcategory of gay people are you kidding me right now I'm so furious furious because I really thought you folks who are future thinkers gendered pronouns serve no purpose okay so main point here is what Jordan Peterson talks about one of his favorite authors which is dusty F ski what Duff's TF ski does when he builds up a character is he tries to make the protagonist the antagonist and the antagonist the protagonist meaning he tries to build up all of the virtues of the guy you're supposed to hate so that you like him and you sympathize with him the benefits of doing this is that you see the pros and cons of both sides of a very difficult argument and you know in the situation with what Jordan Peterson is talking about especially when it comes to censoring language he says that's absolutely not something we should be doing we should be open to all opinions and then make judgment calls based off of information full information full conversations that we have and what people have been suggesting on our podcast and in emails and comments and that sort of stuff is that we do not have people on the podcast who are of different opinions and we or our audience and that's something that I'm a hundred percent opposed to we have to have people on that we dis agree with we have to build up opposing sides and understand the perspectives of people who are against us that said I'm actually really not against Jordan Peterson because I've dived in so deeply to his content he has a lot of really good ideas and he describes them quite well and if the people who had commented on our post or sent us emails had done this kind of research that we had they might actually be more on their side the thing is you might learn something when you don't surround yourself with people who are already in your echo chamber so that's something I just really felt like I needed to get off my chest and talk about at the beginning of this episode because it's just strange that people would want to hear only opinions that support their own opinions that's the slowest way to learn any thoughts about that ewv yeah I think there's other things to be said about Jordan Peterson that he talks about the weak parts of social justice warrior movement this is a little bit of a sidestep but it just explains my thinking recently I've been learning a lot about can wolbers integral model and it talks about different stages of development in your thinking and fifth stage of development is the postmodern thinking which is where a lot of social justice worries rest however in every stage of development you can have pathology and problems and if people become over developed in a certain area and underdeveloped in other areas they can become kind of totalitarian about their mode of thinking and that's what happens with social justice warriors so in one hand where they're coming from is they want justice and equality and they want everybody to be heard but on the other hand they become like overprotective mothers about it where they're just going to slay everybody who is offending them with words oh my god I do understand that wanting justice and equality and everybody to be heard is a noble pursuit but it just goes too far with this movement and that's what Jordan Peterson is trying to point out he's not saying that justice and equality are bad he's just trying to point out this is your problem sort your stuff out and then go on with your goal of justice in equality that's let's continue you having productive conversations thank you this whole idea of like shutting down the conversation because you're too fragile to even hear opposing opinions is ridiculous yeah I grew up in Soviet Union so I'm very familiar with people's free speech being censored people who grew up in North America don't understand how bad it can get when you try to control what people can say and can't say it can get really bad in Soviet Union you could be in your kitchen having a conversation with your friend and then your neighbor hears you through the wall while you are in your private apartment and then goes and reports on you to the government that you said something against the political leader and then you can disappear forever and this happened to thousands of people in Soviet Union this is not a joke so this is where things can go if you start censoring people's language if I disappear you're not saying like a vacation at a nice resort where you don't come back from you're talking about being murdered and then dumped in a ditch in a ditch or being sent off to Siberia before the internet before they could track people and you're working as a slave in the gulag these things were real look them up you have to be really careful with censoring language just don't do it this whole Western liberal bubble thing keeps popping up and I think it's interesting that people are so surprised that we would be sided with Jordan Peterson because his actual background of study and some of his favorite authors are from the Russian sort of like pre-collapse era mm-hmm and that kind of stuff is something that you and I have had so many conversations about but also from travel we've experienced other ways of thinking and cultures that are completely opposite to the way things are done in the West and this whole perpetuation of babying people and censoring ideas and you've got to be protected from words is something that can actually lead to a very censor totalitarian government State that's why he's so vocal about speaking out about this stuff so if you find yourself disagreeing with someone like Jordan Peterson maybe dive into the opposing argument a little more and really understand why you disagree and why his opinions are so upsetting to you the worst thing that can happen is either you get confer because you have more information or you have a better basis through which to argue with your opponent through so that's the whole idea with Dostoevsky is build up your opponent research your opponents perspective so well that you could actually make the argument on their behalf mm-hmm and then destroy their argument from that total being that you've created for your opposition either way you win last thing before we get into this episode I want to say thank you to our recent patrons and donors Matthew the ladybug Japan music katieandchris thanks for helping us make this show possible oh yeah and we got some exciting news so the first round of the Eternity crowd sale went live if you've been listening to our last couple of episodes you're probably already familiar with Eternity their technology is about enabling mainstream level scalability privacy and lightning-fast transaction speed of the blockchain so they just finished their first round of their contribution campaign they raised 120 thousand ether which is equivalent to about 6 million dollars at the current exchange rate fortunately if you did miss the last round of funding and you still want to participate the second round is going to start on May 21st 2017 so you've still got a chance to check it out contribute I highly recommend you learn as much as you can about it and you should never contribute or donate or whatever any amount of money that you are afraid to lose so this has got to be your you're investing pocket change kind of stuff so for more details go to future thinkers org slash eternity AE te r n ity or go to future fingers at org slash AE for short and to get any show notes books mentions and other things we talked about in SEPA soed go to future thinkers org slash 39 okay let's get into it hope you enjoy welcome to future thinkers org a podcast about the evolution of technology society and consciousness I'm Mai Gilliland and I'm UV Ivanova to get notified of new podcasts and videos go to future thinkers org and subscribe to our mailing list you can also find us on iTunes stitcher and you tube if you like what we do and you want to help us make more podcasts and videos give us a like or review with your friends and consider becoming a patron go to patreon.com/crashcourse inner ii go to cutting machinery org slash app last but not least if you want to get access to more content hidden episodes or if you just want to chat with us in previous guests then check out our community at community future thinkers org I wanted to bring you back to young and the idea of archetypes and sort of digging up and discovering all the absolutely darkest most horrible parts of yourself and recognizing that they're there yeah and feeling those feelings fully and realizing that you're capable of doing some horrible things before you can reconcile that you're also capable of good well that's the thing this is also why the safe space idea is so bad so one of the things I do in my maps of meaning course and to some degree in my personality courses I try to get the students to understand how it was that they could have been Nazis to actually understand that to think okay I'm a nosh wits guard what am I like because I could do that well it's horrifying to understand that but if you understand that you can be could have been a nosh wits guard which it's a hard thing to understand but then you're going to be a lot more careful when you discipline your children I'll tell you that because you'll think oh yeah I'm a monster I better be careful I could do something not only could I do something bad I probably will you know um you see parents treat their children terribly often terribly although it's much it's usually much slower than a sudden torturous death that some horrible battle drawn-out over decades the underlying impetus is the same everyone loves their children yeah sure no and that's another Freudian observation it's like Freud was very smart parents love their children but they hate them too and the feeling is amply repaid by the children you have to take that whole dynamic into account you have to understand that you could easily hate your child easily and so you then you be careful and awake and maybe you can avoid that you have to be awake and you can't be awake unless you know you're a monster you're asleep until you know that you know one of the things that I learned from you was that I would learn why people aren't enlightened because hypothetically you could be I mean that's the theory right there have been enlightened people and certainly we assume that being enlightened is a good thing well if you can be enlightened then why isn't everyone enlightened well you might say that the degree that you become enlightened is proportionate to the to the depth of the darkest place you've ever visited and so that's a pretty good barrier what's your definition of enlightenment well I would say there's two elements to it one is that you're truly working to make things better and you can start with your own presumption about what better would be but I mean better and and part of that would be that you're trying to decrease unnecessary suffering that's not all there is to it but if you need a an anchor point that's a good one you should try to decrease unnecessary suffering you should tell the truth those are the two the two fundamental elements I think is that you're oriented towards the good and that you continue to improve that orientation because you understand that your definition of good is insufficient so it has to transform but at the same time you you try to speak the truth and so the truth issue is an interesting one and and this is I think the proper way to understand faith because faith doesn't mean believing a bunch of things you know not to be true that's stupidity that's not faith so here's here's a way of thinking about it so imagine that when you're talking to someone you want something from them you want their recognition you want to dominate the conversation you want to stand out but there's a name there's a goal you're treating the person and the conversation like a means to an end and maybe you do that with your speech all the time you're always using it as a tool to obtain some end you see this probably the extreme of this is the pickup artist community right so their whole scheme is how to craft their words in a manipulative manner it's all acting right how to present yourself as a dominant male so that you can attract sexual partners it isn't how to be a good man so you can attract women it's how to present yourself falsely I'm satirizing it to some degree because the community is useful insofar as it gets men to stop being afraid of women but forget about that for a minute so that's the use of speech instrumentally that's one way of thinking about it but here's another way of using speech you try to say what you think as clearly as you can period and then you let whatever happen happen and the faith bear hears the faith idea there is that whatever happens if you tell the truth is the best thing that could have possibly happened it's a presumption and you have to make presumptions to move forward in life and so you think well if being is good then a truthful relationship with it is the proper relationship and you might say well how do you know that the outcome is going to be good it's like you never know if the outcome is going to be good that's the problem you never know so you have to assume and so there is a deep idea I think it's a core religious idea it's certainly extraordinarily well developed in Christianity that your fundamental moral obligation is to tell the truth period now that doesn't mean you know people say well you know what about truths that hurt people's feelings it's like you're not supposed to be stupid when you tell the truth you're supposed to be wise and so for example this is a funny little anecdote I suppose to illustrate the point so you're all clothing shopping with your girlfriend or your wife and she says does this dress make me look fat well what's the answer say well no well maybe that's a white lie then maybe it isn't but maybe it is that isn't what you say you say I don't answer questions like that that's the truth in that situation right because white lie a white lie is obviously there are levels of seriousness to being deceitful and sometimes you tell a white lie because you can't come up with the truth that isn't more harmful but it's still not right it's not optimal there's a truth there that you could tell if you could get it right and you don't just like bang out your stupid observations casually just because they happen to be accurate in that microcosmic moment you know you have to be sophisticated when you tell the truth which is partly why you need to be oriented towards the good in a fundamental way and you have to shake off your resentment of being in order to be oriented towards the good and that's very hard because being makes people suffer and so everyone's angry about that and if you're angry you can't be oriented towards the good because you were out for destruction how do you shake off your resentment of being gratitude helps start noticing the invisible things you have around you that that shield you from catastrophe but you also have to kind of understand what catastrophe is you know and history can really help you with that you know if you if you do some reading about people who really had problems you know they're starving they're freezing their tyrannize they're terrified which is kind of the common law of mankind you know if you understand that and you also understand how you could be complicit in such things you start to become grateful when you're not in the middle of a revolution with no power and freezing to death because that's a more likely condition right entropy is the more likely condition and one of the things that we're not taught in our school systems is that we should be grateful it's like Jesus our culture our civilization is an absolute bloody miracle I can never believe it works it requires so many impossible things to be functioning properly at the same time that you know I went through I went through the Tesla factory about a month and a half ago that place is just unbelievable it's a mile square approximately maybe 3/4 a mile so it's a huge building and inside there there's it's just densely packed with high-tech robotic material and it's it's defined now they're going to build a better one that's like a quarter the size and five times the efficiency there's all this complex machinery there and it's all powered and all of it works it's just unbelievable you know it's so improbable that all of that would work and that's just a tiny fraction of what's keeping our society working Jesus it's it's amazing and what's even more amazing is that it's really damaged people who are doing this because people are damaged and so you know they go out to work even though their father has Alzheimer's and you know they have an alcohol problem in their their stupid kid is experimenting with meth and maybe their job is in trouble and they have financial difficulty and they go and fix the power lines you know fix your plumbing and and everything works it's amazing I really enough and if you if you know how horrible you are and if you know how unlikely that is then that will make you more grateful than resentful it makes life look a lot easier than maybe it appears to be you mean the fact that we're protected by all this mm-hmm oh god it's on yes well that's partly why archaic people initiate their young men it's like okay take you out somewhere and we're gonna make you face the devils and demons of your imagination we'll put you in a cave for a week pretty horrible thing you can imagine is going to come and visit you in that cave some real things and some imaginary things but all horrible and when you get out you'll know the difference between a real problem and a pseudo problem and we don't have that in our culture at all no an exit problem you see because everything that works you immediately take for granted it's how your brain is organized because if it worked you don't have to pay attention to it and so it's like this is what I think about these bloody radical professors it's like here's a leftist professor at a university they're in a fort that's their office that's in a fort that's the building that's in a fort that's the university that's in a fort that's the town that's inside another fort the state and another fort the country and they stand on top without saying the system is corrupt it's like oh that was really great man you're in by ten forts and you're protected enough to complain about the corruption of the system and while you're in that fort people give you food system is corrupt and then they think I'm brave for standing up against it's like you're not brave you're so bloody protected that there's never been human being on the planet in the entire history of mankind that is as protected as you so I'm interested if you've talked about psychedelics and their role in culture and initiation now why are you curious about that because I've read a lot of Terence Mckenna and I've I have been interested in initiation is the thing that's missing from on culture and I think historically psychedelics have played a big role in that initiation process we met Dennis McKenna last year how is that Carl yeah he is always fun he was up here for a conference on psyche a little also it was a conference that I spoke at as well and well I mean what can I say about psychedelics we don't understand them at all they're in conceivably strange yes and yes they've been used forever as a means of transforming the perception of reality which they do in a manner that is beyond comprehension I don't think we understand them at all it really is too bad that we don't have the social functioning or the mechanisms or structure to actually facilitate these experiences and you know with like a shaman or someone to guide you through the process you don't damage yourself because it's been an immensely valuable for me there are people experimenting now under controlled conditions I mean they're doing it at Johns Hopkins with psilocybin they showed that people who had a mystical experience with psilocybin showed pronounced personality changes one year later mostly in elevation and trade openness so that was very interesting and they also used them to help people quit smoking with about an 80% success rate which was way higher than any pharmacological intervention you know when people started to experiment with LSD back in the 60s the ones who were experimenting properly did understand the necessity of set and setting and a guy but you know the technology especially with LSD was so powerful that the culture just couldn't handle it we didn't know what to do with it it was sort of like the Native Americans when they got introduced to to hard alcohol because they hadn't had alcohol and you know Europeans started with beer and wine and it's like they you know the Brazilians South America when coca leaves it's like yeah yeah you can chew coca leaves but then you take and make cocaine out of it it's a whole different beast alcohols the same way beer is one thing but vodka is a whole different thing and the natives got exposed to alcohol they had no defense against it at all well LSD was like that for modern people we had no idea what to do with that stuff we lost any connection we had with the psychedelic world who knows how long ago who knows long time ago and psychedelics give you an access to those deep dark parts of your mind - as well as the kind of beautiful and transcendent ones yeah well that's what happens to people if they have a bad trip not just access they shove you into it yeah yeah well you know I mean with communities that use that properly let's say so to speak you're supposed to purify yourself before you experiment and what that means is that you know you should make up with your brother and clean up your house and get your things in order and try to stop lying and straighten out your mind so that if you do play games with it it won't take you somewhere you seriously do not want to be yep we we did an episode last year about DMT dimethyltryptamine and one of the things I mentioned is UV and I are married who documented about six times doing DMT and one of the times we had fought earlier in the day and I was a [ __ ] idiot to do this after fighting like that and I just had gremlins and needles and you know bugs crawling up my skin all of the stuff just the worst thing and it was just all following my train of thought from the day right it was terrible but it also made me realize the value of sorting that subconscious stuff out before you you enter into this kind of experience yeah or how about the value of sorting that stuff out before you enter into any kind of experience yes into life that's right that's right that's right that's the right way to think about it it happens more slowly but it's happening at all those levels and you know you don't know exactly this is part of the mythological world it's like every decision you make is a decision between good and evil you don't notice that while you do actually you actually do notice but it's a micro it's a micro choice it doesn't knock you on your ass you know but it should it should were you an atheist before huh that's a good question you mean before I started to study all this stuff I think I saw in Joe Rogan's interview with you you said you're religious and then he said how do you reconcile that with with what you study and yeah well I talked to you about some of that like I mean certainly I believe that the fundamental myths are they're evolved they're deeply rooted in us ly and and the right way of thinking about that is over really it's like the myth of dropping a stick on a snake that st. George right and the world creating hero very frequently creates the world out of the parts of a reptilian monster well that's a story that's slate I don't know how many millions of years old it's old old old you know snakes were eating us when we lived in trees they were one of our primary predators and the first tree dwelling primate precursor who dropped a stick on a snake was pretty popular with the ladies wow I've never thought of that I suppose young talks about that evolved stories but I've never thought about that being something that's rooted in biology oh yeah man it's down there Wow and if you think about it as being rooted in our brain structure too because you have this reptilian brain and by first of all recognizing that is there and it controls certain parts of your behavior and then mastering it you're also kind of killing the snake or at least you're the master that's right that's right that's oh that's another metaphor it's a useful one well you're wired to respond to the unknown so that would be everything outside the tree that would be everything on the forest floor that would be everything outside the light cast by the campfire okay that's the unknown what's the unknown it's a gold-bearing predatory dragon why well the dragon is a predator right it's a snake it's a bird it's an animal it's a monster what's in the dark a predatory monster yes that's what's in the dark but the predatory monster has treasure gold or it's a female often why because if you conquer the unknown you get the treasure right that's the human story huh and everyone knows that that's why they go watch The Hobbit it's why they go watch Harry Potter you know look the second and Harry Potter volume with the basilisk okay it's magical kingdom that's the school the kids are in it Harry's a rule breaker who's touched by evil that's what makes him a hero the basilisk is a predator it's a snake it lives underneath the school it can shake everything to pieces if you look at it it freezes you why because that's how a prey animal responds to a predator frozen it's a snake it lives underneath everything that's right because the snake can shake everything to pieces at any moment and the magical school is built on chaos Harry has to go underneath down way down to find the source of the basilisk he actually gets into it through a toilet or through a bathroom right he goes to the dark place right the place of refuse and and and rejection down into the bowels of the sub structure to face the basilisk what happens he frees Ginny Ginevra virgin and he's half killed doing it what happens a Phoenix comes along and cries in his wounds and Phoenix is a symbol of rebirth it's amazing how deep this goes yes it goes to the deepest that there is that's what makes an archetypal story there isn't anything deeper than an archetypal story that's it that's what makes it archetypal so here's an example so why is the story of Christ an archetypal story it's because you can't tell a more tragic story okay so why what's the basis of tragedy the most terrible set of possible things happens to the least deserving person right and so that's what happened so what happens to Christ all his friends rejected betrayed tortured killed that'll do it that's pretty good you get social rejection you get betrayal you get torture you get death okay plus mental confusion terrible mental confusion about destiny that's the Garden of Gethsemane right okay so that's on the tragic yet and then on the innocent side he's the perfect man and why is he tortured because he's good archetypal story you can't push past it that's what makes it our temple now you might say is it true an answer to that is it depends on what you mean by true is Dostoyevsky true well it's fiction yeah but it's more true than real its meta true it's more real than real a great novel is more real than real and a collection of stories like the Bible that's more real than meta real it's more real than fiction is and if you read it that way you start to understand what it means and it's it'll just blow the some structures right out for underneath you I spend a lot of time in the last while looking at the story of Moses which I'll do some videos on it ventually it's just when you start to understand what these stories mean they're just absolutely they're there they're beyond they're so brilliant that you can't believe it Cain and Abel is a great example that that damn story is a paragraph long you could think about that story for like well we have been we've been thinking about that story for 3,000 years it's a paragraph long so I can give you a quick rundown of what it means so Cain and Abel are the first two real human beings because Adam and Eve are made by God so these are the first two human beings that live on earth well who are they well they're a pair of brothers who want to kill each other or Cain does anyways and so Abel's a good guy he's making sacrifices and that pleases God so what does that mean well it means if you make sacrifices your life might go okay everyone knows that now of course the sacrifices are concretize in the old story because people had to act things out before they understood them but it took people a long time to understand that you could make a bargain with the future human beings are the only animals that have ever figured that out hey I can let go of something I want now try doing that with your dog you can let go of something I want now and something better will happen in the future well god that's an amazing disguise the more valuable the thing I let go of now the more promise I can obtain in the future that's a bargain with God man that's so brilliant for people to have figured that out it's just unbelievable that we figured that out okay so Abel's making sacrifices and they happen to be pleasing to God it isn't obvious why you get the impression that he's a pretty good guy and he's doing it properly and there's a hint of that in intimation of that because he's sacrificing animals and not vegetables and animals are more valuable than vegetables they're better food and he's sacrificing the high quality animals so he's not stenting in his sacrifice and he burns this sacrifice because well then it turns into spirit that's smoke and the smoke goes up and God is up and why is that well have you ever looked at the night sky it's like it fills you with awe it's like well where's God well he's where I is okay well how do you communicate with them well smoke you know I mean you got to give these people some credit for Christ's sake they were trying to figure things out so you burned something you burn something valuable and God can tell and maybe that's symbolic of your attitude towards life so maybe it actually works anyways Abel's doing great everyone loves him he's got lots of women he's got lots of camels and or cows or whatever it was that he had he's he's flourishing plus he's a good guy everyone loves him and they know he deserves it so you just hate him if things aren't going your way it just hate him and so Cain gets more and more bitter and then he goes and has a chat with God and he says what kind of stupid planet did you make I'm breaking myself in half here trying to get things together nothing work or is working out for me and then there's this my bloody brother Abel and he's just shining you know I just feel horrible when I'm around him what's going on and you know he's talking to God he should have been a little more careful but Abel or Cain is so bitter and so arrogant that he thinks that he's got to answer and God tells him says to him it's horrible what he says he says sin crouches out your door like a predatory aroused cat basically a predator but it's sexually aroused you've invited it into your life to have its way with you and that creative union between you and sin which means to miss the mark by the way has produced something terrible and that's what inhabits you and that's why your life is going terribly well you know if you're if you're introspective you say your life is going terribly and start thinking about it you think oh well I made all these mistakes why oh well I'm bitter and I'm resentful and I'm lying it's like oh my god not only am I not making the right sacrifices but like I've been living my whole life terribly so then you're in real quandary because not only have is everything going badly for you it's also your fault that's what God tells Caine then he says you know go deal with it you could you could deal with it if you wanted to but you've decided not to well so Caine leaves that conversation and he is not happy he is seriously seriously ultimately not happen and so he thinks to hell with this I'll go kill Abel that'll teach him that'll teach Abel that'll teach God and that'll screw me over royally yeah well that's what happened since that's all in one paragraph it's like or deadly deadly deadly story and then one of Cain's ancestors sorry one of Cain's children a few generations down the road his descendants get more and more murderous Cain's descendants one of his descendants is tubal-cain and he makes the first weapons of war and the next story is the flood I'm trying to figure out the relevance of the arousal of the predator oh well that's easy it's that that thing that's tempting you invite in like a vampire bite a vampire in and we're gonna invite it in then it's you have a creative interaction with it it's not merely that it possesses you so to speak or attacks you it's not that you invited in you participate on it brew brewed that's what a hand does when it's trying to make an egg turn into a chick it broods on it those Columbine kids they brooded on what they were doing for months and months maybe years all those terrible mass shooters they go into their basement and they brew and they allow that terrible resentment and ingratitude to possess them and out of that possession comes something new right and that's what well that's basically what God tells Cain it's like oh and it says in the little story after Cain has a chat with God it says his countenance falls it's like yeah it's all right and then he's off to to stick it to God and if you want the true motivation behind killers like the Columbine kids that's it you don't believe that just read what they wrote they just tell you and they say it right out it's not hidden they hate being I hate being that's what the Columbine kids wrote they'd like to destroy everything they'd like to burn everything in the most painful possible way it's interesting that they can come to that final conclusion if those types of things are possible then what do you believe is the meaning or purpose is there an ultimate meaning or purpose behind life well I think that's an empirical question really sure did you find this conversation meaningful mm-hmm then that's a hint when you experience meaning that's that's an orientation it's a real phenomenon so I can give you an example so hypothetically the reason that you found this conversation meaningful is because we are exchanging information right we're actually trying to get somewhere with the conversation I can say well that's useful for you right now but it's also useful for you the future you so it's useful today and tomorrow and next week and next month and then it might be useful for you and it might be useful for people you're going to interact with and it might be useful for the broader community so it's like all these timeframes today tomorrow next week next month stack up simultaneously and all these different contexts stack up and you're operating at all those timeframes and in all those contexts simultaneously and the way you detect that is with meaning so if what you're doing serves all of those purposes to the degree that what you're doing serves all those purposes simultaneously you'll be enmeshed in a sense of meaning and it's a deep deep deep instinct that tells you that you're in the right place at the right time that's the line between chaos and order that's the Daoist position one foot in order one foot in chaos you're maintaining the order and expanding it and transforming the chaos into habitable space and that's because chaos and order are the fundamental constituent elements of reality really really not metaphorically actually fire unknown safety danger culture nature that's the fundamental reality and you have to deal with that and when you're dealing with it properly then you're imbued with the sense of meaning and it's not an empathy nomina it's the most real thing it is the most real thing that reminds me of something you talked about in another podcast and you talked about use concept of synchronicity and the way that he described it is your kind of momentary alignment with the divine yeah how well it's synchronous moment is when everything lines up everything comes together there's a sexual metaphor lurking in that - it all came together Wow everything lines up you can experience that when you listen to music yeah he's a music does that for you it's like wow all these layers they're all operating simultaneously perfectly and you know it so it can be overwhelming well that's it that's an analog that's what music does it provides you with an analog of things coming together your amazement that all of these systems function together seems like an ultimate display of synchronicity it is a display of synchronicity I mean it's partly I mean part you might say say why do all these things work together while they work together to the degree that people manifest courageous trust and that's a huge part of it hmm what what's keeping this all together courageous trust us we're because you wouldn't think that you know but that is what it is it's like I mean I can give you an example of that too eBay is a great example of that because eBay for unfroze a lot of frozen assets right but it was predicated on this weird idea that you could sell junk to a stranger and they wouldn't send you a bouncing check so that meant you didn't sell them junk and they didn't send you a check that bounced and the rate of honest interaction and eBay is staggering and that was right like that right from the beginning that could have only worked in a culture where trust was the norm and all of a sudden it provided access to wealth for people tremendous wealth Trust is everything trust and on to honesty like obviously trust without honesty is just naive stupidity but courageous trust is that's the currency that that a complex civilization runs on and the trust might be well I'm trusting that you're orienting yourself towards the good and telling the truth and then I can ago she ate with you and then we can cooperate and compete mm-hmm this concept of chaos and order is interesting to me actually that was my first tattoo chaos on one side or on the other side and that you to find meaning in life and to find happiness you kind of have to walk this precarious balance line between the two that's right it's not happiness even it's better than that it's proper orientation in beading it's not just happiness it's much more robust than that because it's also what makes you able to tolerate tragedy without becoming corrupt you know so for example if you're living properly on the line between chaos and order you're a useful person out of funeral you're not happy but I know to shoulder that people can cry on it maybe you're the person that can make the arrangements right and you can stand being in a room when someone's dying and maybe you're there for them and not consumed completely by your own tragedy you V and I both practice this style of meditation we do a mantra meditation we do an open awareness meditation and we do a third one which is meant to feel your deep dark emotions for a full 10 minutes so you focus on the thing that causes you the most emotional pain and you sit in that emotion and it relates to what we talked about at the beginning of this conversation of immersing yourself in challenging emotions so that you can become more resilient so like a good practice I do how is it worked for you when people ask me why I do that I generally answer this isn't this is sort of a half-truth but I generally answer because it prepares me for future events you know it's inevitable that my parents are going to die and so I can be a shoulder to cry on for my siblings or I can be adding to the misery because I'm just as shocked as they are that's exactly and that's what I meant by reducing unnecessary suffering mm-hmm that's right you can take a bad situation like my wife's family my wife's mother died several years ago seven years ago and she had a degenerative neurological disease like Alzheimer's she developed it very early and two things occurred as a consequence of that first of all her husband took care of her and he did it unbelievably well and he was kind of a he's a very interesting person I really like him he's unbelievably extroverted and kind of a jester type everybody in our small town knew him he was a drinker and that was problematic but he wasn't he was a happy drinker he kind of played the fool to some degree but he's no fool not it not in the least and then when his wife got sick man he just took care of her like you wouldn't believe and it was so interesting because he was also open for help not asking for it and not whining about it none of that none of that at all but if you had a something that would help like I recommended for example did he get an LED sign that was programmable so that when he went out he could have it on the fridge and it would just repeat where he went over and over so she knew where he was and he picked that up right away and it's hard to take help you know in a situation like that and anyways he took care of her until he couldn't lift her out of the chair anymore and so that was amazing to watch man it was just blew me away how good he was at that and then when she was dying we were all there and my wife Tammy she volunteered in the palliative care award and she's very good with that sort of thing and her sister is was a palliative care nurse and her other sister was a pharmacist and so these are people who've learned to cope with tragedy and you know it was a tragic experience but one of the things that was very interesting was that it actually the family came together and as a consequence of that event their bonds actually strengthened substantially all of them and so they lost obviously because they lost their mother but first of all they didn't make a bad situation worse because they could have turned tragedy into hell with no problem and second because they faced it properly it was the least amount terrible it had to be right that's exactly it it's useful for paramedics to I would imagine I mean you get used to it just from on-the-job experience but I mean if you're trained to be a paramedic then I imagine this kind of meditation would be extremely useful because you'd be able to maintain a level of focus and calm when a situation comes that you're needed the core doctrine of Union psychotherapy is basically I don't know I never know if I'm saying a lot properly but it's ear in stair Colinas infinite or which means roughly it means in fill that will be found but what it means is thank you what most is to be found where you least want to look that's a dragon idea - right it's it's in the terrible predatory unknown the we'll be found that's the human story that's what we're like we're information foragers and that's our myth is it true it's like well we will see we're living it out we're living it out we're seeing if it if it works yeah the sad and ironic and hilarious part of that is we might never know because we don't know you die that's the end result of everybody's story so you don't know if you're ever gonna make it just partner you know is whether it's worthwhile while you're alive uh-huh and you know you can tell when what you're doing is worthwhile now you can undermine that rationally and you say well in a million years who's going to know the difference it's like the right answer to that question is it's like the address question it's like that's a stupid frame of reference Wow you can frame of reference that makes everything it's like children were killed in Auschwitz well in a billion years who's going to care what kind of stupid answer is that it's like sorry wrong theory so if you're adopting a framework of reference that makes everything you do meaningless you might start questioning whether or not that's an appropriate framework of reference yeah you know it depends on what you decide to make primary because you have to make that decision that's also why faith is necessary you have to decide what you're going to make primary yeah any more questions UV well we have quite a lot of young listeners and they often ask us what can they do to sort of contribute to the world or to make their life meaningful what would you answer to them I would say choose your words carefully learn how to write learn how to think learn how to communicate learn how to articulate yourself that makes you more powerful than anything else you can possibly do and then try to make things better start with what you can make better start by making your relationships with your friends better start by making your relationships with your parents better start by adhering more carefully to your discipline when you're pursuing something that you think is worthwhile straighten yourself out and you start you start doing that by stopping doing the things you know you shouldn't do simple as that you know there's a set of things that you're doing you know you should do them some of them you could even stop stop doing them it'll make you a little more together and it says you're a little more together there's something else stupid you'll be able to stop doing stop doing that you do that for three or four years man you'll be a whole different person you do that for a lifetime you'll be a deadly force for good in the world and that's what you should be interesting choice of words yeah well being good and being nice are not the same thing at all they're not even close if you're nice you just get pushed over nice doesn't have a chance against malevolent it doesn't have a chance it's just a quivering rabbit that's all yeah nice gets you know wearing a real battle and you have this self authoring course yeah mine that's a good one the self Arthur and course has three modules the first one helps people write an autobiography so you identify the most emotionally significant elements of your life and analyze the negative ones in particular so that you can leave them behind you have to learn from your negative experiences what is necessary so you won't repeat them right that's the purpose of knowledge right and then the second module helps you identify your personality faults and virtues and overcome the former and capitalize on the latter and the third one helps you write a plan for your future three to five years down the road and so you write about what your life would be like if you were taking care of yourself properly like you or someone you cared about and how you would like your family to be arranged your intimate relationships your career your education your use of time outside of work and your use of drugs and alcohol and then you want to figure out what you are aiming at that you desire and want that would be valuable and we ask you to think about it in relationship to you and your family and the community and now next week and next month so trying to get all that lined up and we also have you write about what your life would be like in three to five years if you let everything go to hell if you let your bad habits and so forth overcome you and take you down and that gives you something to run away from and something to run towards and that is motivating yeah Tony Robbins talks about that a lot you always need an equivalent pain to go along with your reward yeah well you're a lot faster if you're running away from something that you don't want to be near towards I think that you want right see that way you get your anxiety working for you instead of against you because you might say well why should I do this work it's hard and it's anxiety provoking it's like then you think oh well if I don't do what I'm supposed to I'm going to end up in that little hell that I delineate it if you really want to think about it because then you think oh yeah I'm not going there I'm going to do this what gives you optimism about the future sociologically there's lots of things you know I mean 300,000 more people will be connected to the world's power grid today and 250,000 people will be lifted out of abject poverty we're solving those problems faster than we ever have in the history of the planet I mean the amount of wealth that's being created in the last 15 years is absolutely unparalleled in human history so many things are getting better and we could continue that and lots of people are working hard trying to make things better enough people so that you know at least we have some functioning societies and there's some possibility that we'll be able to expand those so that makes me optimistic I mean I would also say that teaching people makes me optimistic I mean I put a lot of material out on YouTube as YouTube well no and you know the reception has been overwhelming and I'm always talking about the same things I'm talking to you guys about I'm talking about not being deceitful I'm talking about you know burying a heavy responsibility and getting yourself oriented in life and and people are just eating that up it's like good ya know people are hungry for that they're starving for that at spiritual brand right yeah yeah it seems like all this controversy lately is just sort of expanded your reach and ability to connect with people so I wish you more controversy good fun yeah well that's the thing you know and and I do try to live the way that I'd be describing I try to say what I think and see what happens and it's ridiculously interesting to do that because you don't know what's going to happen so it's a real adventure to do that it's like well I'm gonna say what I think well is that gonna work I don't know what do you mean by work that's the issue what do you mean by work I'm going to say what I think carefully which is carefully as I can and observe the results that's very it's meaningful it's ridiculously meaningful because you don't know exactly what's going to happen it's like who knows what will happen I couldn't have predicted this and I had no idea that making those little videos was going to do anything I was mostly trying to figure out what I was thinking I'm experimenting what happens if I make a video about this oh isn't that interesting it's ridiculously interesting it was too interesting for a while yeah too many people having a window into your life well and just the uncertainty that went along with it my job was definitely in doubt for three months was really hard on my family they're hostile I noticed your patreon account is going well it seems like you're pulling a bit of income from that so is that been in response to the well I had started it back last April you know when I started to develop that was again curiosity I just found this patrons I you know I was thinking about monetizing the videos because well I could use some production health and that kind of thing and also curiosity but I thought they just the material just doesn't suit advertisements you know yep and so I thought no I can't do that it just was annoying and then I found this patreon site and I thought oh that's cool I'll set one up just out of curiosity I mean it was new write it so I didn't know what was going to happen and then people started to subscribe support however you want to put it and that started to grow and I thought oh that's interesting and then of course all this political stuff happened and just went and then I'd be able to have all the production quality of the videos is expanded substantially and I've been able to hire some people to help me and I'm concentrating very much on video production I'm once I'm done teaching which basically happens at about halfway through April one of the things I want to do I'm going to do a whole series on I'm gonna see if I can lecture on the Bible right from the beginning to the end oh cool yeah that'd be fun I'm gonna rent a church I think because there's one down the street where I can get I can rent it for like 125 dollars an hour and it'll sit five or six hundred people so I'll do it there and videotape but I'd like to go right from the beginning to the end that will take all five years they are longer but that would be well I think that's what I'm going to do I'd love to see more stuff on Jung and Freud yeah well that's in the office as well and I'm trying to the thing is is that I'm trying to reorganize my life to take into account the potency of YouTube but I'm still I'm still not exactly certain about what that means I mean it means that I have the chance to offer information to thousands and thousands of people but exactly how that should fit into my life well that's a complicated question so I'm still sorting that out but you know it's happening incrementally the production values way up and and I'm starting to interview people and so on and formulating ideas for the future you could also put your courses on udemy and Coursera and places like that and charge for them that's true I could also do that so that's yeah that would make the courses more specific you know and potentially open the door to accredit people so yeah so there's lots of things to think about and I'm still tangled up with all sorts of obligations apart from that they're good tangles but they do stop me from concentrating as much on let's say video education as I might Jordan thanks for joining us this has been an awesome conversation my pleasure yeah we would love to speak to you again sometime I'm sure our audience would love it too all right good job bye bye alright that's all for this episode thanks for listening to get any show notes links mentions books that we talked about in this episode go to future thinkers org slash 39 and don't forget to check out Eternity at future thinkers org slash AE see you guys in the next episode bye e bye thanks for listening to the future thinkers podcast to get notified of new podcasts and videos go to future thinkers org and subscribe to our mailing list you can also find us on iTunes stitcher and you tube if you like what we do and you want to help us make more podcasts and videos give us a like or review share it with your friends and consider becoming a patron go to patreon.com/crashcourse inori org slash app last but not least if you want to get access to more Khan and hidden episodes or if you just want to chat with us in previous guests then check out our community at community huger thinker's org [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Future Thinkers

Views: 47,244

Keywords: future thinkers, podcast, interview, jordan peterson, psychologist, psychology, Jung, Carl Jung, Jungian psychology, archetypes, psychedelics, enlightenment, personal development, depth psychology, mike gilliland, euvie ivanova, future thinkers podcast, resentment, personality psychology

Id: OXZJRT4kBSA

Length: 55min 39sec (3339 seconds)

Published: Wed May 03 2017