Jordan Peterson - Personal Responsibility

welcome to episode 53 of the jordan b peterson podcast i'm michaela peterson jordan's daughter i hope you enjoy this episode it's called personal responsibility recorded on february 23 2019 from auckland new zealand this is the very last of dad's 12 rules for life lectures that were producing his podcasts onto something new next week dad's still busy writing and editing his book and recovering scarlett my daughter starting to speak in sentences and i'm starting a podcast soon that's all for updates today season 2 episode 53 personal responsibility the last of the jordan b peterson 12 rolls for life lectures [Music] thank you very much so um i was debating what to talk about today backstage as i always do um trying to specify a particular problem that i could attack in a relatively new manner and i thought i'd concentrate on three rules tonight um weave them weave them into a story because they're related all the rules in the in the book are related because otherwise it doesn't really make much of a book so you know i picked i picked the 12 rules that that did make it into the final draft on the basis of their integration their potential integration into a coherent narrative and but it gives me also gives me a chance to play with different combinations of the rules to highlight different elements of what are is crucial what's important and i've been kind of avoiding this one i did some lectures on rule two is the one i'm avoiding i did some lectures on it early in the tour but uh it's quite a difficult chapter because it goes from what's quite mundane in some sense to what's as deep as deep can be or at least as deep as i can go and it's hard to bridge that gap and it's easy to make a mistake but i'm going to try that i'm going to try it anyways and see if i can manage it manage to bridge that gap so rule 2 is treat yourself like you're someone responsible for helping and rule three is the social analog of that i would say in some sense and also a logical conclusion of it which is to make friends with people who want the best for you and then rule four is a set of instructions in some sense about how you might go about rule two which would be taking care of yourself as if you were someone you were responsible for helping rule four is compare yourself to who you were yesterday and not to who someone else is today and it's a reminder to a certain kind of humility and realism and also a what would you call it a maxim that allows you to maintain a necessary ideal because ideals are necessary for reasons that we'll we'll discover or that we'll we'll discuss but they also can make you envious and jealous especially on angry especially if you see if you haven't accomplished your ideal and then if you also see at least in principle at least from your perspective that other people have and so it's often difficult to have an ideal even if you need one without becoming bitter as a consequence and it's not helpful to be bitter it just makes everything that's already not good worse and unless that's what you want it's not a very practical or useful solution not a well-advised solution so with regards to rule two now there's a social psychology literature which i don't trust by the way which um indicates that people tend to have a pretty high opinion of themselves at least if you ask them certain kinds of questions if you ask people whether they're better drivers than average they tell you yes with a fair big bit of regularity for example and they're likely to exaggerate their abilities in other directions gives you the impression of a kind of global narcissism it's a complicated problem you know because extroverted people for example tend to be more optimistic about the future than non-extroverted people and um it's not obvious exactly how it is when you're prognosticating about your future whether it can be determined determined whether or not you're accurate although it does seem somewhat unlikely that statistically speaking 70 percent of the people in a given room can be better drivers than average so something's fishy there but um i think a lot of it is actually the experimental methodology and that might be wrong but um i'm not so sure it is there's another literature that indicates that depressed people are actually more accurate in their self-assessment than non-depressed people although i actually don't believe that either because i think that mildly depressed people which are all often the people that social psychologists for example study might be more realistic than naive people that doesn't mean that depressed people are more realistic than healthy people because depressed people are really depressed and most of the people that are studied in social psychology experiments let's say are sort of well they're depressed in minor ways i'm not trying to trivialize it but like you can be so depressed that you're essentially immobilized you can be so depressed that you think all of the problems that everyone suffers from in the world are in some direct measure your fault you know you could be so depressed that all you can remember about the past is what's terrible all you can see about the future of the present is what's gray and black and everything that you can see about the future is a catastrophe and it's not obvious to me that that actually constitutes a realistic appraisal of the of the reality of being you know it's not so bad to have a bit of a balance between dark and light in your view of reality but when all the light disappears and there's nothing but darkness it's not obvious that that constitutes an accurate or useful way of looking at the world so it isn't obvious to me that people are prone except in their more narcissistic moments maybe they're more self-defensive moments and maybe if they actually are narcissists to truly believe that they're better than other people i my experiences being that in many cases especially if you start to have relatively deep conversations with people the truth is actually the opposite that people are harder on themselves than they are on other people and you know that might be biased by a sample on my part because of course i've been a clinical psychologist for a long time and people who come to see me have trouble but most people have trouble and even when i'm not being a clinical psychologist and i'm not just i'm just talking to my family and my friends generally turns out that they're they also have trouble and that they're not prone except for the more dislikable ones to presume that they are in somehow in some real sense superior to other people i actually believe that people generally believe the opposite that that they're that other people are better in in some significant senses than they are and the reason i believe that is because our reason i think people believe that is because well when you know someone else first you generally tend to know a fair bit of positive things about them because that's mostly what they show you they show you neutral and positive things this is actually one of the reasons why it's not really very good for your mental health to spend a lot of time on facebook apart from the fact that perhaps there are other things that you could be doing that would be more worthwhile there's also the fact that people tend to put mostly positive descriptions of their life on facebook and it's not that that's such a bad thing because it isn't necessarily like you would want to read an unending what would you call it description of misery and wretchedness on facebook and so i don't think it's mere narcissism that propels people to do that you know they're inclined let's say to share happier moments and maybe to take delight in them and and to and to and to want other people to take delight in them and also to want to remember them and maybe to duplicate them because that's one of the advantages to remembering them but one of the downsides of that can be that you have your relatively wretched life that's not all mexican holidays and and margaritas in the sun and you go onto facebook and see what your neighbors or friends neighbors and friends are doing and it looks like a like a coca-cola ad one continual coca-cola ad you know minus the obesity that would actually come along with with an actual chronic diet of coca-cola and so i think actually that people are are quite hard on themselves and you know this is one of the reasons that i believe that the presumption of innocence that characterizes our legal system is such an absolute bloody miracle i cannot figure out how in the world that idea ever came about and developed universal acceptance it's so unlikely you know if you deal with people in a clinical setting and they're somewhat depressed which is not uncommon and they've done something that they are guilty about independent of whether they've done something that they feel guilty about independent of whether they're actually guilty they tend to take themselves apart now that's especially true if you happen to be high in trait neuroticism which is one of the big five traits extroversion which is a positive emotion dimension neuroticism a negative emotion dimension agreeableness which is compassion and politeness conscientiousness which is orderliness and industrious and openness which is intellect and openness proper something like creativity if you're higher than normal in neuroticism it's very easy to take yourself apart if you're feeling guilty about something that you've done and people many people will feel guilty about what they've done at the drop of a hat i mean first of all they accused themselves of their own shortcomings and then if they are accused by someone else it's often very very difficult for them to mount their own defense you know to believe in their own innocence you know because you'd think well you know the police come to your door or a mob comes for you let's say on twitter and you know you're a stalwart sort of person and you pronounce your um innocence and you know you're a you're a brick wall nothing gets through that and that's just not how it goes man if the mob comes from you for you on twitter the probability that if you're a reasonably well socialized person that you're going to be wondering what you did wrong and how you should apologize and what you should do to put yourself back in the good graces of the community is extraordinarily high you know because well you probably have done some things wrong in your life and you probably are guilty about this and that and perhaps you didn't conduct yourself perfectly and so it's very difficult for you to mount your own the defense to presume your own innocence and mount your own defense which by the way is uh why it's a very good reason to have a lawyer and one of the things i would say i'm dead serious about this i've worked with legal cases a lot and learned a lot about the limitations and lack thereof of police ability to question you for example and if you're ever accused of something serious then do not talk to the police until you have a lawyer because you will definitely get yourself in all sorts of trouble and so you might think well if you're innocent and the police will tell you this too then you have nothing to be afraid of of course that's complete bloody rubbish because you always have something to be afraid of and innocence and guilt are relative things and they're not that easy to determine so don't be so sure that you can defend yourself especially for for reasons we'll go into but also don't be so sure that you don't need someone who's professional to stand sort of outside of you and to look at you like an individual among other individuals and to adjudicate your relative guilt or innocence in that manner you know in our legal system you're actually not required to be perfect and thank god for that what you're required to be is reasonable and like like a reasonable and let's say somewhat normative human being you're not required to go above and beyond the duty with regards to heroism for example i was involved in a court case it was quite a terrible case where a woman was up on trial for murder and she happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time shall we say she was in a motor home in a junkyard waiting for her boyfriend and she happened to walk out of the motorhome just as a gang was killing an enemy i guess an enemy gang member with a with with rocks very very brutal and they stripped her naked and told her that they would rape her and that they would kill her child she had one child unless she participated in the murder and so she didn't she ended up dropping a rock on the unfortunate gentleman's head although by all appearances he was well on the way to being dead at that point and at that point in canada the law was there was no excuse for participating in homicide regardless of the what would you call uh ameliorating preconditions but they did decrease her culpability substantially because they believed there was genuine reason for her to believe that her life was threatened and that she was going to be subjected to sexual assault and that her child i don't think they did threaten her child but they did certainly threaten her child with no longer having a mother so in any case we can get involved in very terrible things and it's it's very difficult for us to defend ourselves you need a lawyer to do that and so that's a good piece of practical advice and i would strongly recommend that you follow it if you ever happen to find yourself in trouble it's also the case if you find yourself in trouble at work or on social media you know it's hard to sit and remind yourself that you deserve the benefit of the doubt and then to try to make a coherent case for that one of the things i often did for my clients who were in trouble at work for one reason or another often because well for a variety of reasons sometimes because they hadn't done everything they should of that work you know and so they carried some burden of responsibility for that but sometimes because there were people who were genuinely malevolently predisposed towards them bullying them in terrible ways and they just weren't good at mounting their own defense which was also one of the things by the way that made them prone to being bullied and so we would work for hours on at least hypothetically outlining a story that involved the possibility that the person who was being accused so that would be my client was actually innocent of the charges you know and that's something that's useful to do for yourself if you ever run into trouble it's you don't have to believe that you're innocent to begin with but you could make the strongest case possible that you are right because everyone's entitled to a strong defense and then just see how that flies you know see if it's coherent i mean you could make the opposite case too just so you know what you might be in for but you know we have an adversarial system for a reason and part of the reason is is that one of the easiest ways to get at the truth insofar as that's possible and that's not an easy thing is to attack you know with a certain degree of intensity and viciousness and defend with a certain degree of intractability and and and and coherence and you need both of those and so and another thing i might mention is that if you ever do happen to unfortunately find yourself in the middle of a mob situation let's say on social media that one of the things that you consider deeply is not apologizing unless you are certain that you've done something wrong and even then you should wait a number of weeks until the noise and pressure on you which you will definitely feel and and deeply until that dies down because there is always the possibility that you know you've just been selected for relatively random reasons and that if you can just withstand the pressure that the mob will run off and torture someone else not not that it's good that they're torturing someone else but at least it's good that they're going to anyways at least it's good that it's not you the other problem with apologizing is that there isn't just one mob let's say on twitter there's a whole plethora of different mobs and if you're mobbed by one mob and then you apologize all that happens is that that's instantly replaced by another mob that mobs you because you apologized and the fact that it's a different mob is completely irrelevant to you because like if you have one set of neighbors show up to your door with pitchforks and and flames and they go away and another set comes up 100 with pitchforms and flames pitchforks and flames you don't really care that it happens to be two different sets of 100 people what you really care about is the pitchforks and the flames and so that's a useful thing to know about twitter hold your hold your damn ground and don't apologize too soon because there's always the possibility that you are correct and you deserve a solid defense now the question is at least in part why people aren't very good at mounting a solid defense for themselves or indeed at sticking up for themselves in general and which is also why again i think that the presumption of innocence built into our legal system is such a damn miracle because look even from a from a personal perspective if you're accused by a lot of people it's very difficult to assume yourself that you're innocent so if you're social because you tend to be prone to the opinions of other people with regards to your social propriety and that's actually what makes you not a psychopath and so the fact that you're susceptible to social pressure indicating your guilt is actually a testament to your sociability as a human being even though it can go wrong and then from a social perspective especially from the perspective of an autocrat it's like well you have a citizen who's conducted a crime perhaps committed a crime and it's a hell of a lot easier well maybe you committed a crime it's like well christ there's a hundred people more where you came from we might as well just be done with you and if you happen to be innocent well whatever no one's truly innocent anyways as we all know especially in autocratic and totalitarian societies it's much easier just to assume that you're guilty to punish you as a consequence and not to go through all the trouble of having to dig through all the evidence to suggest that on some bloody off chance you might be innocent and so i just don't get at all how we figured that out and how we've been able to maintain it and we should be very very very careful that we don't lose it because it is a kind of miracle it seems to me to be a reflection of the fundamental idea that sits at the bottom of our culture that each person is in some sense of divine worth you know i suppose that's rooted in the old because i believe that our cultural beliefs and in fact our cognitive structure per se the way that we look at the world is nested inside of stories inside of narratives and one of the oldest narratives we have is the one in gen in genesis and it's a fundamental story and it makes the completely unlikely claim that men and women are both made in the image of god which is a hell of a thing for a primarily patriarchal document to posit in its equal treatment of the sexes apart from the fact that it's just a completely outrageous thing to pause it period but you know there's something unbelievably powerful about it because what it does is make the suggestion that there's an element that characterizes human individuality human being human consciousness i would say in particular that that that has transcendent value that's that's that's above e it has a value even above the value you place on yourself and certainly above the value that the state is likely to place on you and that as a consequence yourself you yourself and the state are under a moral obligation to treat yourself as if you're something of transcendent value and that's value above all other value let's say not in a selfish way and not in a self-serving manner it has nothing to do with that it's more like an observation of a certain kind of worth i would say it's not it's the observation of the kind of worth that's made our entire culture decide for reasons that are also equally mysterious that despite all of our flaws we have the responsibility to vote because we have the ability to keep an eye on the pathology of our culture and to speak the words of truth and to pay attention properly so that if we and and and and and if we do that properly then we can keep our society functioning in a proper manner you know we we we believe we act out deeply in our culture the notion that each of us regardless of our peculiarities and our ig and our undeniable ignorance and bias and malevolence for that matter still have that ability to see clearly enough so that genuine sovereignty and authority resides in each of us regardless even of our socioeconomic status or our position in life any of that and and that seems to me to be associated with that idea of something of transcendent value that characterizes every single human being and i would also say that we treat each other that way even if we don't believe those words you know because we're atheistic or for whatever other reason we're cynical we certainly treat each other as if that's the case in a variety of ways number one operating ourselves continually with guilt and shame if we don't act up to the potential that we know we have and make use of what's in front of us in the best possible way and also by annoying those around us our family and friends by not treating them as if they are autonomous moral agents who are capable of important choices between good and evil and also able to make a genuine difference in their own personal lives and in the lives of others you know you when you're dealing with your own children you're always upset if you believe that they have failed to undertake what you know that they're capable of doing and it it's it's an ache in the soul when when you see someone that you love fail to manifest what you know they could manifest and even worse if they turn to the left let's say not not not politically speaking but speaking in a more archaic manner and and they degenerate downhill instead of moving in the uphill direction that you hope they might move in and that you know they could move in and so these are reasons i've argued with people like sam harris about whether or not each of us is intrinsic really intrinsically religious regardless of how we articulate our beliefs and i would say the fact that we act out these principles and that we believe them at least insofar as we act them out and also insofar as they actually work to keep our relationships with ourselves and with our family members and with society highly functional indicates that there's something to them that's true at least in in the in the in the manner of exceptional utility which is a kind of truth and i think all of that is very much worth thinking about i think the way we code that realization is in these deep stories and that doesn't really help explain anything because we don't really understand what it might mean to be let's say each of us made in the image of god but it's a good starting point and we can't really get underneath it we can't go any deeper than that we run out of we run out of wisdom at at that point and so well rule two is predicated on the idea that you should treat yourself like you're someone responsible for helping and i started that rule with a bit of a meditation on something i learned a decade ago or maybe 15 years ago when i was working with a colleague of mine we were trying to figure out ways of hiring better employees and one of the groups that we were working with where we thought there might be a market for such an endeavor was pharmacists because pharmacists make errors like everyone makes errors i don't know if you know this but you should um medical error is the third or fourth leading cause of death right so it's heart disease cancer traffic accidents medical error and so and and of medical error pharm pharmaceutical error is a reasonable subset and it's it's a it's a genuine catastrophe i always advise my clients if they go see a physician especially for anything important they never go alone because you're always rattled up and muddle-headed when you go see a doctor if there's actually something hypothetically wrong with you and like you need someone there with a clear head to remember what was said to ask the proper questions and to make sure that nothing that isn't important has been left uncovered and i would say the same thing in a hospital it's you leave your the person you care for in a hospital alone at their peril and it's not because medical people are incompetent although that is par although some medical people are incompetent it's a reflection of the fact that human beings are unbelievably complicated and there's endless numbers of things that can go wrong with us and medical staff are over stressed and overworked and they're also a bit inured to suffering seeing it all the time and they probably don't care about the person you love as much as you do i mean how the hell could they and so it's not such a bad idea to have someone there to keep an eye on what's going on it's important so well so there are many many things that can go that can go wrong with us and it's difficult for us to treat ourselves properly so back to pharmaceutical error one of the things we learned while studying this field was the types of errors that were made by pharmacists and it was generally administering the wrong prescription and for a variety of reasons physicians don't necessarily write in the most legible manner although you'd think that they could like type like everyone else types and and use electronic means of communication but that really hasn't happened and uh for for reasons that are not clear and um so it's easy to misread a prescription to give the wrong dose um to not notice what other prescriptions people are taking and so to uh prescribe a fatal combination something the pharmacist is supposed to at least catch and then there's the problem of similarity between names of different prescription drugs it actually turns out that there's an entire industry devoted to naming prescription drugs because the prescription drug name can't have the same name as the chemical because the prescription only has a copyright so to speak for a certain amount of time and so you can't just steal the chemical name and then the prescription name can't sound like any other prescription name and there's lots of them and it can't look like any other prescription name when you write it down and that has to be true for multiple languages and so that's just completely bloody impossible and so it costs tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars to have a new prescription drug named just so you don't fall afoul of the you know 10 000 regulations that govern such things and that's just a small fraction of the reason that you know prescription errors might be might be made and we were trying to discover what personal characteristics of pharmacists might lead them to make more errors than usual and assessing their competence cognitively and from a personality perspective in an attempt to assess their propensity for error anyways it was kind of an interesting side foray into an area of psychology and medicine that i really had no familiarity with and i learned a lot of things and i learned one of the things i learned was that it was actually really hard to get people to take their prescription medication and so the general rule is i mean i kind of knew this eh because i'd worked with my clinical clients and although i'm a psychologist and so can't prescribe i would encourage people who were depressed and anxious sometimes or who had obsessive-compulsive disorder schizophrenia to have a serious conversation with their physician or their psychiatrist if they could find one about the possibility of trying a ver various forms of psychoactive medication on the off chance that that would make their problem much less serious than it might otherwise be and i would very much recommend if any of you are suffering from manic depressive disorder or serious depression or serious anxiety it doesn't have to be that serious it just has to be compromising your life certainly schizophrenia that you that you seriously consider attempting experimenting with some of the psychoactive substances drugs that have been used to treat these disorders because sometimes you can be unbelievably fortunate and you'll take something like an antidepressant for a month and then you won't be depressed anymore and that's a great benefit to you and your family and and likely a benefit as well that will extend your life and certainly your quality of life substantially so but i did know that you know you hear while everybody's taking antidepressants and everybody overuses prescription medication and it's as if you have this idea that there are people lined up at the physician's office begging on their knees to be given antidepressants or anti-anxiety agents and like that's just i don't know if i've ever had a single person ever come to me and ask me if i thought that ask me immediately if they if i would write a letter to a physician suggesting that a trial of an antidepressant would be a good idea most of the time people fight that idea just bloody tooth and nail because i mean who who wants to think that they're no longer in control of their mood right something so integral to their own personality it's humiliating to to have to admit to yourself that you've lost control let's say had control rested away from you for something that's so integral to your own sense of being and so people are often extraordinarily resistant to the idea of trying an antidepressant even for a short period of time and then even when they do try it and it works they're unbelievably likely to stop trying it in like two months when they start feeling better and i understand that they think well now i'm feeling better maybe i don't need this drug and this happens with schizophrenic people all the time they stop taking their medication usually that's a really really really bad idea like not always because nothing is always a bad idea well there are probably some things that are but um but that's not one of them and it's still not and and no one wants to be dependent on the damn drug and so people experiment and often to their detriment but anyways people you know are loath to take prescription medication and it's quite it's quite a struggle to get them to do it properly they have you have to explain to them what the drug does you have to explain its side effects because drugs don't just have one effect they have multitude of effects and we just call the effects we don't like side effects and we call the effects we like the effect the drug is supposed to have but they're all effects and if you take an antidepressant for example it might really make you tired for five days and that's often enough to have people just stop taking it completely but it actually turns out that there's a positive relationship between initial side effects like fatigue and the long-term positive benefits of an antidepressant because if you happen to be susceptible to that side effect it actually shows that you're susceptible to the drug and generally the fatigue recedes after five days to a week it's actually more like deep relaxation which if you were depressed you probably hadn't experienced for 10 years and now have confused with some form of pathology because you can actually just lay there and relax for a while and that means there's got to be something wrong with you and so um but in any case generally speaking it's apart from the psychiatric situation the psychological situation the situation with prescription drugs is even more interesting because if you go to a physician and he or she um prescribes to you a medication um there's a one-third chance that you won't even fill the prescription and then if you do fill the prescription there's a 50 chance that you won't take the drug or if you do you'll take it improperly you know you won't take it at the right time or you won't take it at the right dose or or you'll just take it a little bit and then stop anyways in any case you'll do it wrong and this is true even for serious disorders and for example there's evidence that like let's say you need a kidney transplant and jesus you know i wouldn't recommend that because if you need a kidney transplant it means you don't have any kidneys right because if you have one you can still function and if you have none then you have to be hooked to a dialysis machine for like eight hours a day and and that's you know that's that's uh that interferes with your life and it's it's complicated and intrusive and and uh and and mortally dangerous and so you get on a kidney transplant list and a kidney tr shows up you think man that's a good day you go have your kidney and then a substantial number of people reject their kidney after a year and the reason is they don't take their anti-rejection medication and you think god you know you don't have any kidneys then you're on bloody dialysis which is just a nightmare although it beats dying and then and then you have a kidney transplant which is highly improbable after being on a waiting list for a very long period of time and all you have to do is take your damn anti-rejection medication which has side effects as well by the way and then you won't reject your new kidney and you know you won't die or go back on dialysis and you know you're less likely to get a second kidney if you've rejected the first one because you didn't comply with your medication regime and you think what what's up with these people like what the hell that's all of us what what is what what's going on well why don't you take your damn medication and you think well you know well i don't like pills which is a pretty bloody simple-minded argument because just because it's round and in a jar does not mean that it's the same thing right i mean there's no such thing as pills there's a variety of different chemicals and they're very very different and the fact that they all happen to look the same is not much of a an excuse for lumping them together into the simple category of things you don't want to put in your mouth but but you know people can take too many pills that's pill load and so they're not very happy about that because that can become onerous and complex and maybe they don't trust their physician because they haven't been listened to or they haven't been fully informed and they don't trust pharmaceutical companies and and you know they're irritated at the world and at god for putting them in this position where they have some insufficiency that now has to be dealt with at a medical level and uh and maybe they're testing other people too it's like well do i really need to take this like do people really care that much if i'm around and you think well people won't play a game like that but they certainly will because we wonder you know how important we are to each other and we're always testing each other to find out and we test in pretty damn harsh ways to find out if we're important and you know i've i've dealt with people who had to have absolute bloody wars with their family before they would take their let's say antidepressant medication or stop drinking you know like literal like well not literal wars they weren't using tanks you know but but but like like drag down knock them out six month horrible familial arguments about whether or not person a was going to take their damn pills or stop their addictive processes or stop their drinking whatsoever and it was partly at least partly because the person who was affected really needed to know at a fundamental level that other people actually cared enough about their continued existence and health difficult to maintain as it is to actually go to war about it a little bit and it's very frequently the case that if you want to convince someone that doing something in their best interest is important that merely mentioning to them that it's in their best interest isn't sufficient any more than if you have a bad habit mentioning to yourself that it would be you know in your best interest if you stop doing it will actually have you stop doing it which it won't under most circumstances so we're very stubborn creatures and so but there's a twist in this and the twist is this is kind of an incomprehensible twist is let's say you have a dog and you like your dog which is fairly common most people like their dogs and it's it's not that surprising because you know when you come home your dog is almost always happy to see you unlike your wife and your children perhaps um and then perhaps not but it's certainly your dog that comes bounding to the door like kind of insanely and pathetically happy in that way that only dogs can manage and and a slightly contemptuous contemptible manner because part of you thinks you know really you're that happy to see me it's like i don't know what it is about your taste but anyhow you know you're willing to forgive the dog for that and you you pet them and you have a little wrestle and you know you're happy to have them home and so you like your dog and your dog likes you and that's a good deal and then your dog gets sick and you take your dog to the vet which you do generally speaking and the vet gives you a prescription for your dog and you go to the vet pharmacist and you get the damn prescription almost a hundred percent of the time and then you give the prescription to the dog correctly like a hundred percent of the time and so then you think well what in the world is going on there it's like do you actually like your dog better than you like yourself and the answer is yes and then you might ask why and why why would people like their dog loved their dog let's say more than they love themselves why would they treat their dog like someone they had responsibility for helping when they wouldn't offer themselves the same luxury you know and i'm not speaking necessarily about even liking yourself as a person i'm just thinking that well there's a dog and it's a living thing and there's you and you're a living thing and there's both something wrong with both of you and maybe just as a vaguely moral agent it would be incumbent on you to treat each of them with a certain degree of care but you don't you treat your dog preferentially and so so why is that is what is it that makes people prefer their dog to themselves and so well i would say one of the things that makes you different in your response to yourself than other people and their response to you is that like you know some other people and you know some of their flaws you know and you're kind of happy about them some of the time because well you know they have flaws and you do and that makes life a little bit easier and maybe it's easier to lord it over them to some degree and to feel superior but whatever you still like them despite their flaws maybe sometimes even because of their flaws and you know you know some of the things they've done that they shouldn't have done which aren't so much flaws as like active active let's call them sins of commission and you know you by and large forgive them for them and and still maintain your relationship and that's a good thing but you only kind of partially know those other people you know and so and as i said they tend to put on a fairly positive front but then there's you with you and that's a big problem because you actually know yourself i'm not completely because you're complicated and opaque and you hide from yourself and and all of that but compared to how you know other people if you're not completely blind you know yourself pretty damn well and as a consequence you're generally quite painfully aware of your own inadequacies one of the biggest fears that people have is speaking on front of a stage and a common nightmare is to be naked on a stage and the reason for that well you think why would that be a nightmare it's like we're all naked i mean under our clothes but we do all have clothes on and that's something to think about there's a reason for that it's not just because we're cold or hot there's a real reason for that and clothing is a human universal by the way even in climates where it doesn't seem to be particularly necessary and so people seem obliged in some sense to cover themselves up right to protect themselves from from what from the world from the prying eyes and continually valuation of others definitely that and so then to be naked on a stage is to have your full physiology and all of its inadequacies fully manifested for the delight of the group let's say and judgment and people aren't very happy about that and then of course to be on stage is also to have to reveal yourself in ways that aren't only physical unless you were there just to do a new dance which is unlikely you have to unfold yourself in an articulated manner and that allows people to make a judgment about you in some profound way and if it's a large crowd of people then that's often quite terrifying because really what it does is put you face to face with one of your fundamental fears you know people have like three well they have four fundamental fears one is fear of their own inadequacy and malevolence that's that's a big fear man that can really that can really do you in if you confront it accidentally and fully happens to soldiers sometimes in battle when they find themselves doing things they can't believe they do and then we're afraid of society that would be the oppressive patriarchy because society judges us harshly and and mercilessly in many ways and we don't like to plummet in the what would you call it we don't like to see our reputation savaged in front of the groups that we identify with it's extraordinarily hard on us emotionally for that to happen which i wrote about for example in rule one which is a a chapter at least in part the details of the fact that the neurochemical systems that track your comparative status incompetence hierarchies also regulate the balance between your positive and negative emotion such that if you suffer a social defeat your proclivity to experience negative emotion radically increases and your proclivity to experience positive emotion radically decreases and people seriously do not like that and it's no wonder because who wants to be completely overwhelmed with sadness and bitterness and anxiety and resentment disappointment and frustration and grief and then also devoid of happiness you know it's the very definition of hell and if a status defeat will increase that probability then we will fight very hard to maintain our status positions which we certainly do that's another fear and then of course we have the fear of nature and we should because of course nature despite being the environment and this thing that we should be striving to protect and maintain is also trying with all of its might constantly to make us ill and old and kill us and is generally very successful at all three and so there's every reason to be afraid of nature and um you know one night alone in the bush will pretty much convince you of that and then people are also afraid of the unknown and so those are the big categories of terror that human beings face and to be naked on stage is to face at least two or three of those simultaneously the nakedness element is a particularly interesting one and that made me think about exactly what that means um and the most famous story about nakedness i suppose is the story of adam and eve in in the garden of eden and so i'm going to tell that story and this is the hard part of the lecture i suppose i'm trying to explain why people don't take care of themselves very well it's a pretty practical question in some sense and a very personal one to make the leap i want to make the leap to this ancient story which i think does everything it possibly can in a metaphorical sense to account for what it is that makes it so difficult for us to care for ourselves properly and it's a very sophisticated and complicated story and many thousands of years old we don't know how it originated we actually have no idea how old it is we don't know why we remembered it we don't know how it got aggregated with other stories of its type and we have a very difficult time with its symbolic structure but nonetheless we still have the story interestingly enough and the story goes essentially that after god created the world he created a place for for for for a man that he created adam adama made out of earth and there's kind of an old idea it's not exactly canonically christian that the original adam was half woman and half man and that's why he could be separated into man and woman and that the purpose of marriage is to reunite that original unity it's kind of a lovely poetic idea and there's something about it i think that's true because of course as human as human beings we are male and female and and and it's that union of the two that really defines humanity and so and and it is also reasonable to assume that in some sense when you decide to find a partner um that you're completing something that's only half without the partner both physically and also psychologically because you can learn from your partner and from the long-term relationship that you have with them so that you're re-establishing an initial unity it's a very sophisticated stream of judeo-christian speculation along that line but in any case god makes adam and he puts them in a garden and it's it's paradise and that's an interesting idea i think especially if you know what the word paradise means paradise comes from the persian word paradisa which means walled garden and eden is a synonym let's say for paradise and it means well-watered place and so there's this idea that the proper environment for a human being is a walled garden that's well watered and you know that's that's not bad really as a description of the ideal human environment it's kind of what we dream of you know that's what a suburb is it's a whole bunch of fenced off gardens that are well watered places right and and the the garden is nature not nature in its wild and untamed form you know you don't want it full of viper i mean in new zealand it's not so bad but it can be really bad in australia you don't want to fall you don't want it full of poisonous snakes and spiders and cactuses for christ's sake you want it you know to be sort of a friendly place where you can go sit down and throw something on the barbecue and you know and not not die if you sit on the wrong bug and so and so you want nature but kind of under some preconditions right you wanted tamed and and and and and brought under human regulation and that's what constitutes a garden rather than a patch of wilderness not that there's anything wrong with wilderness but like it should be out in the wilderness not not in your backyard and and so that's nature and and in its benevolent form and then the wall well that's culture you know that's that's a man-made structure that delineates your territory from the territory of other people but also walls in the small bit of nature that you managed to have under your control and it's good to have some water so you don't dehydrate and die and so that your plants live and and all of that and so eden paradise is a kind of a good description of the where where people would live if they could choose to live somewhere and that is where we choose to live so that seems appropriate and quite a remarkable observation all things considered and now in this garden there are two trees apparently tree of life and if you eat of the tree of life then you live forever and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil which is a very strange tree although not much stranger than the tree of life all things considered and god tells adam you can eat the fruit of the trees of all the trees in the garden but stay away from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and and that's that and so adam is there in paradise with the animals and doing whatever it is that he's doing hanging around with god playing around with the animals bored out of his skull and um he gets a little [ __ ] and says to god um look you made all these other animals like a mate and wears mine and god says yeah well you know maybe that wouldn't be such a bad idea since it seemed to work for everyone else and so he hypothetically takes adam apart slightly and takes out a rib and makes eve and now there's adam and eve and that seems to be better and so they're cavorting around in the garden happiest clams and um but but but there's a there's a problem in the garden there's a snake and the the story says the snake was the most subtle sub-till s-u-b-t-i-l of all of the creatures that god had made it's a weird word subtle it sort of means fog-like and vague and and and and camouflaged all of which is true of snakes by the way and and and and and and what would you say sophisticated in a somewhat malevolent manner capable of causing trouble not altogether a good beast and you might ask yourself and the people have for a very long time why in the world would god go to all the trouble of making a paradise a whole world whole cosmos some world a paradise putting men and women in it and then tossing in a snake and you know that's not an easy question to answer by any stretch of the imagination but i think it has something to do with this i think that it's very difficult to take something as complex as reality which is very very complicated and then to wall off a tiny piece of it and then to keep everything outside that's troublesome actually outside and you know if you're a parent and you have children you might do what you can to protect them from the snakes in the outside world but then if you over protect them you make them weak and that's not very helpful and besides that what are you going to do you you will not let them watch movies you're not going to let them have friends you're not going to let them use the internet you know you're going to you're going to cut themselves off so completely from everything that's outside the walls that they have no idea what's out there in the broader world it's like you're not you're going to let some snakes in the garden because there's no keeping them out and then maybe if you have any sense you're going to teach your children to handle snakes so that they know what to do when they go out there in the broader world in any case eve knows full well that she's not supposed to listen to the snake or eat the tree of the knowledge of the fruit the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil but the snake is a very seductive and subtle creature and he catches her off guard and board and suggest to her that maybe god's little on the jealous side and that if she just had this fruit that has been forbidden to her which she is intensely curious about being human because you know perfectly well that you know if you were somewhere that was extremely pleasant and the person who owned it told you that there was like a room that you couldn't go into no matter what but everything else was okay that all you'd do the entire time you were there would be wondering what the hell was in that room because that's what human beings are like we're in we're curious in a manner that cannot be controlled and so eve was curious and the snake gave her the fruit and so she ate it he said it was good to eat and that it would open her eyes and make her like gods like the gods like god and so she did and she opened and she ate the fruit and the scales fell from her eyes very interesting phrase because it kind of indicates that before she interacted with whatever this was this thing that was outside of the paradisal world right that indicated maybe the broader reality and even the malevolent reality that surrounded paradise that she was in some sense naively unconscious and blind and i think that's a perfectly reasonable way of looking at the text and the first thing she does is share the fruit with her husband and that's an interesting idea because well women do share food and that's a human characteristic so that's really something because it's a rare characteristic among animals and and humans do share food even among those who are not their children which is quite the remarkable thing and eve recognizes she's naked and then adam recognizes she's naked and that means they both become self-conscious because to become naked is to become self-conscious and it's also the case i believe that women have been making men self-conscious since the beginning of time and and still do so i mean there's almost nothing that makes a man more self-conscious for example than being rejected by a woman it's part of the eternal sort of enmity that characterizes the sexes as well as all of the wonderful things that brings us together in any case adam and eve realize that they're naked and the question is well what does it really mean to realize that you're naked and that's the rub you see well human beings stand upright which is kind of a strange characteristic for for for animals we're about the only creatures that manage it we wander around on two feet which is a hell of a spectacular accomplishment but we've been doing it for a long time so we kind of take it for granted but one of the characteristics of that is that the softest parts of our body the most vulnerable parts are fully exposed you know whereas animals that wander around on all fours they have their armored back and that protects them from attack and so forth but also from the analytic view let's say of their compatriots who are nowhere near as analytic as human beings are and so we're kind of fully exposed to view and not only are we exposed to view but we're exposed to all of the judgment that that view indicates you certainly see this i i would say more painfully with women because women are more sensitive to negative emotion and body shame for example than men are the clinical researchers on that is quite clear and that's because there is a tremendous amount of pressure social pressure with regards to evaluation of the manner in which one presents themselves physiologically and so there's a there's a source of shame there and a discontinuity saved from that initial unself-conscious paradise little children little girls little boys can run around naked they don't care at some point they start to care usually around three my son really started to become self-conscious when he was around three didn't seem to have anything to do with what we were doing my daughter became self-conscious in that manner quite a bit later i can't see that we treated them particularly differently in any case you know by by by 10 most children are wandering around with clothing on and we tend to continue doing that for the rest of our lives covering ourselves up that that that nakedness is what does it mean well it means to it it means a variety of things it means to see your vulnerability in its complete manifestation to understand that you're a vulnerable creature in the world and the story you know later as the story develops god curses people with death and there's an association between the realization of nakedness and the realization of death and to see yourself as a vulnerable physical creature to develop that full self-consciousness that comes along with having the scales fall from your eyes and having your eyes open means to be aware of your limitations as a mortal creature across for now in front of everyone's social judgment and also across the entire span of time it's really at that point that death itself enters the world knowledge of death which is sufficiently equivalent to death for metaphorical purposes and adam and eve immediately make themselves clothing rough clothing out of plants and cover themselves up because now they're ashamed and the question is well why are they ashamed and that's a stupid question because the reverse question is really the proper one which is once you realize that you're insufficient in your own eyes and subject to negative judgment on the part of your peers and also fragile and mortal and destined for death how could you not be ashamed and so that's that's a rough break for adam and eve and now they're a bit more like gods in that they um they know something about the nature of the world but they've also lost something that they'll never regain next day adam and eve are in the garden wandering about again and god is used to walking around with adam which is kind of an interesting idea because it means i think like it sort of means the same thing that that characterizes children you know and maybe animals children are sort of beyond good and evil and and children and animals exist in the natural world in a in a manner where they're not distinct from it like they're immersed in it you know and i think that that's what it means in some sense to walk unconsciously with god as you just act out your life and you're not self-conscious you're just doing the things that you do and you're not too concerned about the present and you're not too concerned about the future you're just acting out your instinctual pathway and and and that's perhaps a fine although rather blind way of being anyways god's walking around in the garden which apparently he does when it's cool in the evening and he's looking for adam and adam isn't nowhere to be found which says very little for adam's intelligence as far as i'm concerned since it's god that's looking for him and adam happens to be hiding behind a bush which is not a very sophisticated tactic given that it's likely that the almighty creator of the universe can see through bushes if he chooses to but anyways none of this part of the story reflects that well on adam and god which is another reason why i think the idea that genesis in particular is a patriarchal document is an absolutely ridiculous proposition because it isn't obvious at all that adam comes off particularly well in the story adam god calls out to adam says look he doesn't just say this it's a paraphrase i don't know what the hell god said but he said something like this um where are you you were supposed to be out here for a walk like what's going on and adam is behind the bush and he says i'm over here and and god says i'm hiding and god says why are you hiding and adam says well i found out that i'm naked and god says how do you find out that you were naked now he knows because he's god and adam immediately takes the cowardly way out and he and he points to eve this is so perfect and he says you know you know that woman you made me that it was her fault she she ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and she wasn't supposed to do that then she gave it to me and now i'm in this terrible condition and if it's not her fault which it probably is then it's your fault because you made her and so men have been blaming women and god for making themselves conscious for a very long time yeah yeah that's worth thinking about for about 50 years so it's not all that happens though when they eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil because it's not called the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of nakedness it's called the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and i thought about that for a tremendous amount of time it's like what in the world because i assume these old stories make sense you know it's a game i play it's like they're old they've been around a long time i'm not sure why they're there but there they are they're at the basis of our culture like many many of the stories that we depend on depend on them our whole culture grew out of their roots let's say and so i assume that our ancestors who managed to survive conditions that would have done a lot of us in very rapidly i can tell you were a lot smarter than we think and that the mysterious processes that that produced these stories and compelled us to remember them are a lot more psychologically significant than we generally tend to presume so i give them the benefit of the doubt and try to understand why it is that they might make sense instead of assuming that they don't and that that's not easy because they're complicated stories and so i thought about this nakedness knowledge of good and evil idea for a very very long time like about 20 years puzzling it out what the hell's the relationship between discovering that you're naked and discovering good and evil and then one day mostly because of studying totalitarianism totalitarianism and the atrocity the proclivity for people to commit atrocity in the service of their group belief or maybe just because that's what they were like clued me in and i thought i see this is one of the things that really makes people different than animals it's like you know it's one thing to realize that you're naked to realize that you're naked means that you know that you're limited in time and space that you're mortal and that you're you're subject to degeneration and to social humiliation and to your own harsh judgment all of that nakedness to know that you're vulnerable against the world and definitely a source of shame because of that and and a felt lack of self-sufficiency and no wonder and no wonder um it's understandable but the other thing is is that this is and this is the rub it's like if you're out in the veld and you're not being very careful and a hungry lion jumps on you and eats you you don't really think of the lion as evil i mean you might write at that moment but you know philosophically it's not evil it's just hungry and as soon as it's not hungry then it goes and has a sleep and it's not up to some malevolent trick it's it's done for the day but human being that's a whole different sort of creature and because human being is capable of doing terrible things to someone else and consciously so think well what's the connection between that and nakedness itself and it seems to be this is like here's the thing is that once i realize that i can be hurt you know i have a self-conscious model of my own vulnerability then i can generalize that to other people i can think oh this is interesting here's how i can be heard by myself here's how i can be hurt by society here's how i can be hurt by nature and by the unknown and what that implies is that well you can be hurt with exactly the same mechanisms and that and immediately becomes part of my what would you say my repertoire of ability and then all of a sudden you the world is no longer a walled a walled garden and a well-watered place but it's a moral story because with that ability to inflict suffering comes the knowledge of good and evil as far as i'm concerned those are identical propositions because now we have the choice a deep choice about how we're going to treat ourselves and each other we can inflict tremendous pain and suffering on each other in a very voluntary and and conscious manner in in in a way that no other animal can manage and that's the dawning of the moral sense that capacity we now have to choose to mitigate or exaggerate suffering and and that's not all but it's a huge part of it and anyways god tells adam well you know you weren't supposed to do this and now you're in trouble and he kicks him out of the garden and he says to adam well now you're going to have to work in this in the sweat of your brow and the world's going to bring up thistles and thorns and it's going to be a hard lot and you know you're going to strive and toil in difficulty until you die and from dust you arose and to dust you will return and to the woman he says well you're in trouble as well because now you're going to be under the thumb of your husband he doesn't say that you should be or that that's a good idea but that's what's going to inevitably happen and that you're going to have terrible pain in childbirth and that life is also going to be very difficult for you and that's where that story essentially ends um the next story one of cain and abel and a plays on that because in a very interesting way because it indicates what happens and i would say it it what supports my general hypothesis about what the first story means because what happens with cain and abel is that well they're brothers right and uh so hypothetically the first two real human beings and they don't really like each other abel is a good guy by all appearances god smiles on him faith smiles on him how about if we put it that way everything that he does seems to work out well he makes sacrifices which the text insists upon and the sacrifices are rewarded by god that's a very very very very important crucial document because we already noted that men and women had discovered time in genesis they discovered the duration of their life and the existence of death and the necessity for toil and by the time we get to cain and abel human beings have discovered in this dramatic manner that if they make sacrifices in the present that hypothetically the future can be better and that's that's like i don't know if that's not the major discovery of mankind it's certainly among the top one or two because it's very it's really something for a creature for an animal like us to notice that if we give up something that we want right now we can sort of bargain with fate as it were to get something better in the future and that's really what you do when you work right because when you work by definition you're doing things that you'd rather not do right now because otherwise it wouldn't be work and the reason that you're doing that is because you think well if i give up what i really want to do impulsively right now then over the medium to long term things will be better and so you learn you believe that making the appropriate sacrifices has the propitiates god let's say metaphorically and abel sacrifices work man everything he touches turns to sheep and camels and women and he has everything he wants and everyone likes him and everybody thinks he's a good guy and you know that's pretty good for abel but cain isn't doing so well and nothing he sacrifices appears to have the proper effect and there is some idea in the story that maybe the sacrifices he makes are a little bit on the half-hearted side and that god isn't all that thrilled at those sacrifices as a consequence and that's really worth thinking about again for about 50 years because it is possible that if you're making sacrifices and they're not working out that well that it's not so much that god hates you it's that your sacrifices could be of a somewhat higher quality right that you're playing a game with yourself and with the structure of reality and you think you can get away with it and you can't and the fact that you're not getting away with it and that you can't makes you bitter and resentful and cruel and vengeful and homicidal eventually and worse than that because there are far worse places than you can go that you can go than merely homicidal anyways cain has enough of this one day and he says to he decides to have a chat with god and it goes something like this it's quite a an arrogant chat really it's almost as arrogant as adams was stupid and cain basically challenges god he says look i don't know what sort of world you think you put together here but uh we've got abel and we've got me and like everything's just working out for him and you know he's perfectly goddamn delightful and everyone likes him and and whatever he touches like king midas turns to gold and it's all easy for him and uh then there's me and i'm like breaking myself in half here and i'm offering up my sacrifices and like you turn your nose up at them and nothing works out for me and implying by the way that it's god's fault and i would say more than implying stating quite forthrightly that it's god's fault which you know takes a certain degree of arrogance you might think and that's also worth thinking about for a very long period of time because it is possible that if things are going well for someone that you know and not going so well for you that it is a consequence of the quality of your sacrifices and i don't want to push that too far because i know that people have bad luck you know because we are fragile creatures intrinsically and terrible things can happen to us on a somewhat random basis but it's still very much worth considering that's the rule in chapter six uh put your house in order before you criticize the world that the reason that things aren't turning out for you as well as they might is because your sacrifices just don't have enough blood in them they're just not what they should be you're not putting your full heart into it and as a consequence you're not reaping the fee you're not reaping the crop that you might otherwise sow and that's a harsh thing to think but that's actually what god tells cain which is quite interesting i read a lot of different translations trying to understand this and what god basically says is look buddy before you dare to criticize the creator of the world or reality itself for that matter you might give some thought to your own actions and here's how i look at it being god and all um you're in a house and there's a doorway and in the doorway there's a a predatory cat and it's it's sexually aroused and it's after you and you invited in voluntarily and you let it have its way with you and something's produced as a consequence of that that's well you might say unholy and and what's the idea and the idea is well it's sin that crouch is at the door the and that means to miss the mark it means to make an error and it's something you have to invite into your life but it isn't just that you invite it in and it stands with you it's that you invited in this this this malevolent way of being and you enter into a creative union with it that's that's symbolized in this particular story using a sexual metaphor and it's the combination of your perverse will and this capacity for cruelty and malevolence that you meld together into something that's uniquely pathological and yours and that's basically what god tells cain that's what you've done and that's why your life isn't turning out as well as it might or as well as your brothers and so why don't you uh get the hell out of my sight and think about that for a while and cain leaves and he's not happy about it at all which is fully understandable because you know if you're having a wretched time of it then you're having a wretched time of it and then if your brother's doing well you know that's just salt in your wounds man and then then maybe you could rationalize that because the world's unfair and your brother is lucky and you're unlucky and all of that and you can you know reserve a little bit of self-respect as a consequence of that rationalization even though it's pretty thin but then you decide to go and have it out with god and he just basically says no that's all lies and it's actually a hundred percent not only a hundred percent your fault but something that you've done voluntarily and that you know you did and that you made far worse by doing it voluntarily and now you're lying about it and complaining about the structure of reality and so of all the bad news you could possibly get about why it is that things aren't going well for you that's the worst especially if it's actually delivered by god because then it's hard to argue with so what happens well you'd think that maybe if cain had any sense which he doesn't he's too far gone he'd go sit in a cave for about a decade and and eat locusts and honey if he could find some and think about all the terrible things he did and then come out and like apologize to abel and to the people he didn't do well for and and like with a little humility start again and and maybe have a life but that isn't what happens what happens is that he decides he's going to take revenge and he takes revenge in a terrible way he kills abel and then you think well what does that mean and this is a terrible story right because it's really the first story about human beings that we have in at the base of our culture because adam and eve were made by god so they don't count cain and abel they were born they count and so the first story is this terrible murder of a brother and a murder that was motivated by jealousy and spite for for for for living positively in the world right it's about the worst story you can imagine and so cain goes and kills abel and god you know asks him about it and cain says well am i my brother's keeper and that doesn't work out so well because god has actually figured it out and cain says my punishment is more than i can bear and it might be because god has banished him he's put a mark on him and banished him and told people to leave cain the hell alone and i think that was to stop like a cycle of revenge killings let's say although it's complicated to say but maybe his punishment is more than he can bear because there's a problem when you take your ideal let's say abel happens to be your brother but your ideal the person you really wish you could be because that's what cain wants and then you kill it you've killed your ideal you've destroyed your ideal and then what do you have you've got nothing because you need an ideal to live for and if you destroy your ideal then you've got nothing and cain says well my punishment is more than i can bear and maybe that's because life without that ideal is more than can be born and well it gets worse from there really because you know it isn't only that abel that cain killed abel to get rid of abel that's bad enough it's plenty bad even at the cost of his own soul in some sense which was something cain was apparently willing to sacrifice but the real reason that he did it was to shake his fist in anger at the structure of reality itself the unfairness of being and that's metaphorically represented as the proclivity to take revenge on god by destroying god's ideal and so the story is even darker than mere murder because it goes farther down than just homicide and if you're wondering why it is that people do the terrible things they do that are truly terrible the things that are almost incomprehensibly terrible you have to go beyond mere motivation for homicide and even torture and homicide and you have to look at the motivations that will turn human beings against being itself and and if you want to understand the sorts of people who shot up the columbine high school or who killed the elementary school kids on the east coast of the united states who participated in the terrible things that happened in nazi germany or in the gulag archipelagos individual acts of atrocity and brutality then you have to go to levels of hell homicide that the level of hell that you occupy when you're contemplating homicide is a deep level but it's it's there are many levels that are far below that and to understand atrocity in its full depths is to take a journey into levels of hell that far exceed mere homicide in depth and so to conclude well what is it about human beings that make us unwilling to take care of ourselves and i would say well it's those two things that are laid out so clearly in those stories and one is well we know that we're naked you know we know we're vulnerable in the world and that we're prone to physical illness and we're prone to mental illness and we're prone to self-betrayal and the betrayal of others and we're prone to aging and we're destined for death and it's kind of difficult to consider ourselves truly worth care under those circumstances because it's hard for us to have to maintain maintain intrinsic respect for ourselves of a loving kind let's say when we know that all of those inadequacies fundamentally characterize us and that's bad enough you know why should someone as worthless as me be worth care it's a fine question but it's only half the question because the next question is yeah well what about the malevolence it's not only that we're fragile in the way that we are and that makes us doubt our own value intensely but that we're also capable of doing capable of doing terrible things and do them and know it and each of us know that more about ourselves than we know about it about anyone else and i've met lots of people who were suicidal because of that but also unwilling to take care of themselves you know because they were so guilty about who they were and them and their motive being in the world that they just felt that they weren't worth the damn trouble you know and and well and they all had their own particular reasons for for believing that their own failures their own improper sacrifices let's say their own acts of individual malevolence but they're summed up in a lovely metaphorical manner a horrifying metaphorical manner in those ancient stories and those stories explain to us too why as well that our consciences don't sit well with us and why we always feel that there's something undone that we should be doing in the world which is a much better pathway to take by the way than to degenerate into nihilism and and catastrophe and so and that's really ruled too it's like well you should treat yourself like you're someone responsible for helping and the first question is well why don't you and the answer is well there's a lot wrong with you you know and it's hard to exercise enough love and care in a deep and non-naive way to care properly for something like that but you know you do it for people that you love despite their inadequacies and there is this idea that there is a spark of divinity within us and it is possible that the fact that you have that spark of divinity with you within you also means that you have the capability to withstand that terrible vulnerability that's what i was trying to get at in chapter one which was to stand up straight with your shoulders back that you could actually voluntarily accept the onslaught of the tragedy of being and that you can constrain the proclivity for malevolence that's part of you and that's part of the world and in that you can discover your own value your own intrinsic value and your own nobility and and all of that might be more powerful than the forces of vulnerability and malevolence themselves which i also happen to believe and i think that that is in some sense the fundamental hallmark of faith and so chapter two and to some degree chapter three which is to surround yourself with people who want the best for you is a it's an encouragement to assume to act out the proposition that even if life is as difficult as it seems to be and if you're as vulnerable and weak in a fundamental sense as you definitely are and characterized by this terrible propensity for the infliction of voluntary suffering on yourself and others and that destructive tendency that there's still something within you that's so remarkable and so aligned with with order and being in the proper manner that you can climb above that let's say like abel and that you can make the proper sacrifices and that you can set yourself right and you can set your family right and you can set the world right and that the mere possibility that that might occur that that might be within the realm of potential means that you have a moral obligation to exercise the responsibility to take care of yourself as if you're something that matters and that if you did that properly it might turn out that what you did would matter that it would matter to you that it would be meaningful in the way that things that matter are meaningful and that it would matter to everyone around you in an important manner and what that might mean and i'll close with this is you know adam was unable to walk with god in the garden because he was ashamed and and deceitful and and shocked and all of that and no bloody wonder he had his reasons but then you might think well is that something that could be rectified in some cosmic sense and i would say that's really the the exercise of a fundamental religious orientation is an attempt to set whatever's gone wrong at the basis of being right again and the answer might be well if you can if you can take responsibility for yourself if you can manifest the faith that despite your inadequacies and your proclivity for malevolence that you are in fact something that matters part of part of a deep reality that's not fully comprehensible but that you partake in merely in observing but also in bringing to be that you have an important or even a vital role to play in the direction of the world that you can that you can recover to some degree what humanity has lost let's say from the beginning of time and that you also lost in childhood and that you can stand up straight with your shoulders back let's say and you can take responsibility for yourself as if you are something that matters and that if you did that properly and i believe this fully if you did that properly then you would be well on the way to doing what matters and setting yourself right and setting your family right and setting the community right and and setting reality itself right because that's as far as i can tell really what we're here to do strange as that might be and so well that's about the end of that lecture and that's why you should take your prescription medication when you go to see the physician thank you very much [Applause] so now now i'm going to sit here in this chair and you had provided me with some questions and i've gone a bit into the question period but i'm going to answer some of them and then that'll pretty much bring the evening to a close so if you give me a moment i'll get my computer up and running with any luck and we'll see what you have to say about all of this one of the things that i find quite interesting about this line of reasoning which i think is very much worth considering as well is that it's very dark in some sense you know i make a case that for the burden that human beings bear a hair terrible burden and it is outlined very nicely in the story of adam and eve and cain and abel you know the burden of vulnerability and mortality and knowledge of death and nakedness and then the proclivity for the what the weight of that to make people malevolent and homicidal and and genocidal you know kane's descendants become genocidal interestingly enough and that's all very very dark it's as dark as it can be i would say but you know what's interesting about that and one of the things that i love about doing these lectures is that if you go down deep enough into that darkness you find a corresponding light and the light is the fact that despite that darkness we are the sorts of creatures who can face that we can face our own mortality voluntarily we can confront our own malevolence and we can prevail and in that ability to confront and prevail i do believe and i think this is the fundamental story of the judeo-christian tradition is that it it's those stories are there to remind us that if we peer long enough into the darkness we can find the light that leads us to the place where the problems that beset us can be solved and that it's our adventure in life to actually participate in the solving of those problems and that we can in fact do that and so in all that darkness there's that light and i think that light is lighter than the darkness and then i would say that the moral obligation that you have in life then becomes to test to see if that's true to see if you lived your life with truth and with courage and that you made the proper sacrifices and that you bore your responsibility nobly and forthrightly if in fact your life would radically improve if you could tolerate that by letting go of your desire for revenge and and and and and punishment if if you could allow your life to go well and to set your family straight and to set the community straight just to see exactly how far we could push that because in this realm that we're in of infinite possibility which seems to be the realm that we do find ourselves in there's no reason to assume that we couldn't start making something that's already good much better than it is and then continue that indefinitely and that that could be the adventure of our lives that could justify the suffering and the and the malevolence and overcome it and give us the purpose that we need and all of that seems to me to be correct and so anyways on to the questions what would you say to a young man looking to get into politics well the first thing i would say is um it's a mistake to be fatally cynical about politics because for all the reasons there are to be fatally cynical about politics there's much more reason to be fatally cynical about the conflict that will inevitably arise or the tyranny that will inevitably manifest itself if we can't handle the dirty business of politics properly so i would say don't become prematurely cynical about it the next thing i would say is what do you know and that's a very important question it's like what does it mean to get into politics exactly does that mean to seek political power does that mean to seek power well first of all you shouldn't be seeking power you should be seeking competence and in order to seek competence you better know something and so i would say well if you want to get into politics you want to educate yourself you know in all the things you need to be educated in life i mean you can you can start to play the political game to familiarize yourself with it but you know it's not such a bad idea to well it's not such a bad idea to have a job for a while and maybe a career and maybe it's not such a bad idea to have a successful career upon in which people are dependent on you so that you start to understand what that sort of responsibility means and then maybe it's not such a bad idea to have a family because like human beings mature adult human beings tend to have families and and they transform when they have families because when you have children then someone becomes more important to you than you are and you're not mature until that happens and so that's necessary and so i would say well make sure that if you're looking to get into politics that you're even more looking to get into competence and that you learn everything you can possibly learn that would make you a reasonably wise person by the time you attain whatever level of power you might authority let's say you might be seeking i mean i've seen lots of people get into politics you know this happens with ideologues and the way they ratchet themselves up the power hierarchy is by being more effective avatars puppets of their particular ideological stance and there's nothing about that that's useful there's nothing in it that will solve any real world problems and there's plenty that will make it much worse and so if that's what getting into politics means i would say stay the hell away from it but if it's a matter of developing your character and then at some point adopting your social responsibility then go for it and more power to you because we need people who are competent and careful and truthful and courageous and forthright to enter the political sphere so that things don't degenerate and hopefully have some chance of at least maintaining themselves or improving so there's you need what do you need to know you you need to be really good at at least one thing you have to specialize you have to be a great networker you have to know a lot of people you have to be honest you have to be articulate you have to you have to have a vision you have to have a strategy you have to know something about history and economics and politics be good to know something about science you know you have to be a polymath of sorts before you should dare to enter that realm with any degree of confidence because otherwise all you are is a loose cannon and you'll come up with global proposals to improve improve the world you know by waving your wand that will do nothing but make everything worse and so so i would say don't do that why would you say the audience here is predominantly caucasian slash white as opposed to diverse well the first thing is is i wouldn't say that because because i don't think that's a good way of looking at the world but then to take the question with a certain degree of seriousness i would also point out well the culture is predominantly caucasian and white so why would that be a surprise and then the third thing i would say is well did you do a count like do you do you know how offset the audience is or is that just a guess and then the next thing i would say is well is the audience here reflective of the general um demographic let's say of youtube because most of the people who've come across my work have come across it on youtube and if my audience is let's say more diverse than the typical youtube audience which is almost certain because it's 80 mail then it's actually more diverse than you would expect so and then the last thing i would say is why would you ask that question so you know there's a there's an insinuation in it which is that there's something that i'm saying that somehow we didn't add mail to it but we could have that there's there's something that i'm saying that's predominantly for caucasians or predominantly for whites or predominantly for men and if that was true which it isn't by the way but if it was true then that would conceivably reflect badly on me and you know i have a couple of things to say about that one being if it is the case that i happen to be speaking primarily to men between the ages of say 27 and 35 which seems to be approximately the case first of all there's nothing wrong with that because like is there something wrong with talking to men between the ages of 27 and 35 are we not actually supposed to be allowed to talk to them and if they happen to be the ones that are coming to my lectures which is absolutely bloody peculiar just so you know it i mean look i did these biblical lectures a year ago a year and a half ago on genesis right and i it's always made me laugh because i thought i rented a theater for 15 weeks which was quite a substantial financial risk and i thought well maybe people come and listen to these lectures and i thought i've made business plans before and talked to business people and i thought this is a hell of a business plan man this is what i'm going to go to the bank with and say here's my plan man i'm going to invest 225 000 so that's about what it costs to rent a theater of any reasonable size for 15 events i'm gonna i'm gonna invest invest 225 000 and i'm going to talk about the old testament and the people i'm going to get in are men between 27 and 35. it's like all of that is well it's a sign of insanity no one with any sense at all would ever invest a penny in anything like that because well who's going to come to lectures on genus the first damn lecture was three hours on the first sentence of genesis like that that's a hell of a thing to advertise in posters around your city it's like three hours on the first sentence of genesis like people are lined up down the street waiting for that well turned out they were [Laughter] and and and they were mostly men and and then i guess what i would say about that is that like you know i'm perfectly willing to speak to people who will listen because it seems rather foolish to speak to people who won't listen and so if it turns out that the an audience comes and they're listening and then i'm going to talk to them and that's the deal and i'm not going to say well you're not sufficiently diverse across all of the categories of diversity that the ethnic diverse police seem to think are so necessary so unless you can go out there and like haul in you know another 30 percent women i'm just gonna sit here and despise you like you know it's sad it's sad because one of the things that's happened continually and it's quite it's quite a mystery to me i'm going to write something about this or maybe make a youtube video because i want to make a youtube video for to women about 12 rules for life because every negative left-wing article i read about what i'm doing says exactly the same thing it's because they just read each other and never anything that i actually write they just read each other and that is that i'm primarily appealing to angry and disaffected young caucasian men and and that implies well first of all that's bad because there's something wrong with young caucasian men clearly because they're part of the oppressive patriarchy and as i already pointed out nobody should be talking to them especially not encouraging them to continue in their evil ways which i tend to do because i don't think their ways are any more evil than the general ways of humanity um and i'm perfectly happy to encourage people and if those are the people who would like some encouragement and they find it in what i'm saying then more power to them as far as i'm concerned but then with regards to women it's like these this story after story comes out and says well peterson is fundamentally talking to men and i think well what's the evidence for that apart from the wish fulfillment on the part of your ideology it's like first of all i'm a psychologist okay so 80 percent of my students have been women since like 1993. so you know it's got more and more women as time has progressed but right from the beginning especially at the undergraduate level it was overwhelmingly female less so at the graduate level and so the women that i was teaching weren't coming to me and telling me well why are why is it that you know there's all this women these women in the class but you're only talking to the men like that didn't happen because it's not true and then these rules that i've been laying out it's like well how are they just for men it's like what women aren't supposed to stand up straight with their shoulders back and confront the world courageously i kind of thought that was the core message of feminism so and then and then what you're you're not supposed to take care of yourself like you're someone responsible for helping i mean that would be good that's what you do if you have women in your clinical practice and they're often there for assertiveness training more commonly than men are for a variety of reasons what you do is you teach your clients to stand up for themselves you know and and and to take care of themselves as opposed to sacrificing themselves to to grade a degree for other people and then suffering the resentment and the bitterness that might go along with that and also the failure to develop their own lives and how that doesn't apply to women is completely beyond me because it certainly does and then to surround yourself with people who want the best for you well that's the same thing it's like have some friends that support you and and your vision in life and your desire for your career and your education that includes your intimate partner and that has nothing to do that's specific to men and how about don't how about compare yourself to who you were yesterday and not to who someone else is today well that gives you a nice way of incrementally improving your life across time in a manner that's manageable and it's a very effective technique for people who want to fortify their characters and advance in their careers and put their families together and i don't see how that doesn't apply to women it's like at all like where's the sexism in that and don't let your children just do anything that just makes you dislike them well what what you think what's the what's the plan here here's my plan let's raise a generation of children that really like their fathers and really dislike their mothers like that's not the plan and that's not how the chapter was written and well i'm not going to go through the rest of the rules and make the same case but you know it's it's it's it's so amazing for me to watch this happen over and over and over again it's it's as if and i don't really understand it it's that there's this it's like a it's a it's a emergent conspiracy of individuals primarily women but not only who are so irritated at what i'm doing for reasons that i don't exactly understand that they've basically told other women that it's wrong for them even to look at what i'm doing and um that seems i would say well let's call it counterproductive to begin with but then we might also call it what would we say pretentious that would be a good one and authoritarian and so people who want to come and listen they can come and listen if you want to come and listen then i'm perfectly happy to talk and if you want to listen and i talk and that works then we communicate and hopefully things get better and i hope that everybody does that and so if that isn't happening yet well hopefully it will be and look my book is going to be translated into 50 languages you know that's a lot of languages and i've been that that's all the languages that there are book markets for and that that that that sounds diverse to me don't you think so like what the hell's the problem in your current perspective of the societies of the future what advice would you give to those who are wanting to have children but worried about the world well first of all you're completely out of your mind to have children just like everybody always has been because why why wouldn't you be worried about the future of the world like you should be you know the world's a rough place and you're bringing children into a rough place now we've always brought children into a rough place and often into a place that's a lot rougher than this place i can tell you that and with a lot less positive possibility lurking on the horizon you know i would say you're worried because well partly because you don't understand how we're situated historically that would be part of it but you're also concerned that life has a brutal element and wondering at a deep level if it's fair to bring children into a realm such as this you know there's this this statue that i used in my book called the pieda it's a beautiful statue and i think it's sort of the female equivalent of the crucifixion and it's mary holding christ in her arms after he's being broken on the cross and it's a very very sad statue as well as beautiful one and um it means something it means something to women in particular you know the crucifixion to men means that you will be that it's your obligation in some sense to be broken on the suffering of the world that's what it means and and and the the pieta means that if you're a woman and you bring a child into the world that your child is going to be broken by the world that's what's going to happen and that it's still your divine duty let's say your sacred duty it's an integral part of life in order to have the courage to allow that to happen to give your child up to the world which is what a courageous mother has to do you know because she can't be there to protect her child from the snakes all the time and so what you do is you try to make your child as competent as possible and you launch them into the world hoping that they have the sort of noble and worthwhile adventure that justifies their existence and that's what you do when you have children it's it's a it's a mark of courage and a mark of faith in the essential goodness of humanity and being and and if you have any sense you're worried about it obviously but you don't let that stop you because that's life right everything about life should stop you in some sense it's like i can't understand why people aren't terrified out of their skulls all the time you know we all face mortality and illness and malevolence and death as i've said repeatedly throughout this lecture and yet we get up in the morning and we go do the difficult things that we need to do to keep the world in alignment and we love each other at least to some degree and much of the time we do our best and you know good for us and hopefully we could do it a little bit better and you have some children and and you have a chance to do it a little bit better and to give them the adventure of their life and to encourage them and to prepare them for the difficulties they're going to encounter and to be behind them and with them and that's that's one of the things that makes life worthwhile and so despite your fear have some courage and do what people do be fruitful and multiply right it's the fundamental commandment and it's correct it's life man and so don't shy away from it because you will regret it so one more i'm a young man getting married under two weeks time what advice to you now you're in real trouble jason ran's asking this question what advice to you do you have moving forward to manage your eatable mother and neurotic families in general well one one thing i would suggest is move the hell away and i mean that seriously at least far enough away so that you have your privacy you know you're supposed to leave both of you you leave your parents and you go with your partner you you've rearranged your hierarchy of moral obligations it's no longer your parents it's no longer your siblings it's your partner is number one number one along with you and then you protect them against that over sheltered neuroticism that eatable danger that might lurk in the background and maybe you do that even it's very difficult to say but maybe you do that by limit by agreeing to limit contact to a certain reasonable amount you know i've had clients whose mother phoned them three times a day you know and if your mother phones you three times a day by the way that that's too many times and all she ever did when she phoned was make my client miserable that was her goal it's like i'm going to phone my daughter up because i love her so much and i've spent a whole hour since i talked to her and she hasn't been miserable about what she's wretched about for an hour so it's time for a new call and so one of the experiments that we conducted was well how about once a week how would that be for a while i mean i think she was 27. it's like how about once a week that's not so bad and how about if she gets miserable on the phone you just hang up because how much are you going to take and where are you going to draw the line and i love you and i care for you is no excuse for making you like unhealthy and dependent and miserable and so if you're going to get married then you make your marriage paramount and you and you erect walls around it and you don't let anything disrupt it and you you you know you put out a hand of trust to your in-laws but a careful one because you protect your marriage and you discuss very carefully with your new bride the rules for familial engagement and you hope that over the medium to long term you make peace with your extended family because that's absolutely necessary especially if you're going to have grandchildren but you don't take any nonsense and you make sure that everyone knows who's who and so that would be my advice for that thank you all very much for coming it was a pleasure to talk to you [Applause] [Music] [Applause] oh it was a it was a pleasure it was a pleasure being in new zealand and i would say hold on to your civilization you've got something here that's very much worth preserving don't let it go not without a fight bye-bye if you found this conversation meaningful you might think about picking up dad's books maps of meaning the architecture of belief whereas newer bestseller 12 rules for life and antidote to chaos both of these works delve much deeper into the topics covered in the jordan b peterson podcast see jordanbpederson.com for audio ebook and text links or pick up the books at your favorite bookseller remember to check out jordanbpederson.com personality for information on his new course which is now 50 off i really hope you enjoyed this podcast i should also mention next week we're starting on dad's biblical series right in time for easter this should be interesting for everyone not just those of you who are religious i find the story is fascinating hopefully you will too talk to you next week follow me on my youtube channel jordan b peterson on twitter at jordanb peterson on facebook at dr jordan b peterson and at instagram jordan.b dot peterson details on this show access to my blog information about my tour dates and other events and my list of recommended books can be found on my website jordanb peterson.com my online writing programs designed to help people straighten out their pasts understand themselves in the present and develop a sophisticated vision and strategy for the future can be found at self-authoring.com that's selfauthoring.com from the westwood one podcast network [Music]

Channel: J.P. 's lectures

Views: 62,470

Keywords: Jordan Peterson, Jordan B. PetersonPsychology, at UofT, Lecturer, YouTube Personality, Author, PsychologyBig Five;, Personal Responsibility

Id: 1b0TlJauuA0

Length: 128min 33sec (7713 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 04 2020