Jordan Peterson: Video games, guilt-ridden depressed men in the workforce & treatment

I'm not a foe of video games because games are complicated and it isn't clear what people are doing when they're playing them you know they may be expanding their cognitive skills they may be learning to cooperate they may be learning to engage in complex problem-solving and so but part of it's also a matter of balance you know 50 hours a week probably not unless you're gonna go pro right because there's other things you need to be attending to it's not a stable solution for you your family your society it's too one-sided yeah and you can get pulled down rabbit holes of all sorts that that are one-sided pursuits of meaning so and it's time something we're actually going to talk about as the later class is unfold the question is how do you stop yourself from falling prey to a pathologist sense of meaning and I think one of the answers to that is don't lie because what you're hoping is that your nervous system is sufficiently healthy and well programmed so that what it reads out to you is reliable and if you pathologize your psyche by either through sins of omission let's say or outright deception you're gonna warp that internal structure and it's not going to read out properly to you and then your sense of meaning will lead you astray so like one of the reasons for speaking the truth I shouldn't say that because you don't know how to speak the truth but you do know how not to lie and it's a game you're playing with yourself you can define the damn lies no one else has to do that for you you you try not to utter falsehoods because you warp your neurological structure by doing so and then it will read out pathologically and then if you rely on it to guide you it will run you right off a cliff so that's where there's a moral element to this is if you're going to rely on your sense of meaning make sure that you don't pollute the mechanism see this is this is partly why people go to confession right which is mud which is like I said a psycho therapeutic technique it's like okay what stupid miserable wretched things did I do this week that's a good thing to to make conscious right because maybe you cannot do the the next week and you think well why did would you bother it's like well you're in the ship it's sailing across the the stormy seas if you're if you're hacking holes in it with a pickaxe you should probably pay attention to that before you sink so it's a good idea to keep to keep what you're doing that's stupid in mind so that you can stop doing it and so then you can more and more rely on yourself and your and your own you know your own conscience let's say as a guide to proper action you know in the pinocchio story is that the conscience was not an unerring guide for Pinocchio it had to learn and so and so it's also partly pushing yourself into new situations and differentiating yourself so that you get wiser and and so it's courage as well as truth those those might be the - there's more beauty courage truth you know the fundamental virtues why be virtuous that's the question and so that you can bear the suffering of life without becoming corrupt right it's practical its practical and there's nothing more practical than that so unless you want misery and people do you know it's exciting misery you could say that the ultimate sense of meaning is composed of the union of fragmentary senses of meaning and the fragmentary sensitive meaning can be overwhelmingly powerful anger sexual lust and and and the sorts of things that you experience wouldn't say when you're playing a video game which are very carefully calibrated to keep you on the on the edge of exploration let's say the kids who could delay gratification at an early stage we're doing quite a bit better later in life now I don't know to what degree that was controlled for IQ because such things matter but the point is is that well the point is the point that you're making is that you can delay you can only delay gratification intelligently though if the social structure is stable right because basically what if you delay gratification you're making a bargain with the potential future and the bargain is everybody's going to keep acting the same way so that the future is the same as the present because otherwise you'll delay gratification and then everything fall apart and you won't get your cake and you won't get to eat it and so society has to be quite stable it has to be stabilized by the contractual relationship between people before delaying gratification is a useful strategy this is also why you see in chaotic circumstances where the future becomes uncertain people for gold delay of gratification very very rapidly and and and perhaps appropriately so what happens as you stabilize societies being conscientious conscientious becomes more useful and so then you're going to be selected for as a consequence of being conscientious and that's going to stabilise the society even more these are these are roughly known as Baldwin effects so that's where let's call it a genetic transformation produces a behavioral transformation that transforms the environment so the genetic transformation is more likely to propagate you can get unbelievably rapid evolutionary movements when when you get a loop like that developing and and they they happen frequently and that's that's also how in some sense a meme can be turned into a genetic can manifest itself genetically so if you have an idea that spreads through the culture and it tilts the culture in a certain way such that those who hold that idea are likely to be more successful than the meme and the biology will align themselves across time and and well I think you see that happening that's that to some degree that's what's happened as religious stories have propagated themselves as well because as as the idea of the hero becomes clearer so to speak and then it manifests itself more clearly in the society then there's more rewards for doing it then the selection pressures get more positively related to that kind of behavior and the whole thing loops upwards so it's something like that where do you think we should draw the line or health should be turbulent in pharmaceutical interventions and very severe secretaries I mean to what at what point is depression and anxiety should be treated with medicine and at what point should be okay that's a good question medical interventions anything if you're sick you do what it's necessary to get better and you leave your pride behind if you if you have to and that that says nothing about the utility of the behavioral interventions you want to hit the problem with everything you have at your disposal but some antidepressants especially especially for people whose lives are together and who are depressed antidepressants can be absolutely miraculous so you know when you hear about the clinical evidence in their favor being iffy and that's partly because the diagnosis of depression isn't very well formulated there's it's very different to have a terrible life than to be depressed and antidepressants can only help you so much if you have a terrible life how do you differentiate the utility of behavioral / psycho therapeutic treatments for conditions like depression versus medical treatments ok so the first thing I would say is don't underestimate the utility of medical interventions depression is a catastrophe it carries with it a very high suicide rate and it also levels people out and it's really hard on their families and so and it and it's physiologically extraordinarily damaging and so if you're in a depressive state and it's severe you can try an antidepressant you'll know in a month if it works if it works well maybe it'll help you get your life together like we could say well maybe you're depressed because your life isn't very well together could be sometimes people are depressed their life is just it isn't fine because no one's life is fine everyone's life is a tragedy but sometimes people have their lives in order as much as you could expect anyone to have they have friends they have an intimate relationship they have a career that they like you know they're they're qualified industrious people working hard on what they're doing and and and really playing a minimum number of games with themselves and they're terribly depressed antidepressant man that's sometimes that will just fix it and so hooray like your biological entity if there's something out there that can help you strengthen yourself so that you can prevail great and you know people you hear everyone takes antidepressants you know everyone's taking them just like no one takes those bloody things without serious consideration half the time I spend with my clients who are depressed is often the two years long attempt to get them to tentatively try an antidepressant because they're so guilty that they're relying on an external crutch to sort out their lives that they can't even tolerate it but you know I say well look man what if you had diabetes you're not gonna take your insulin it's like you got stressed you blew out it your weakest point that's what happens when you get stressed if there's something out there that might help you it's like try it for God's sake you'll know in a month and you just stop if it doesn't work now having said that you want to do a multi-dimensional analysis it's like well do you have any friends do you have an intimate relationship or are you pursuing one do you have a reasonable career are you as educated as you are intelligent do you have something useful to do with your time outside of work do you have a drug or alcohol problem are there other behavioral issues like sleep dysregulation and lack of eating that are contributing to the pathology you want to differentiate all of that and wherever you can make a behavioral intervention so much the better but sometimes too you're dealing with people whose lives are so wrecked that they don't even know where to start

Channel: Essential Truth

Views: 1,971,439

Keywords: Jordan B Peterson, Jordan Peterson, Essential Truth, video games, gamers, depression, treatment options, anxiety, transliminal, Gravitahn, bite-sized philosophy, psyche matters, dose of truth, manofallcreation, TheArchangel911, philosophyinsights, ideacity, sorting myself out, video game addiction, overwatch, overcoming guilt, high-functioning depression, The Rubin Report, Evan Carmichael, Rebel Wisdom, Independent man, Bearing, StevenCrowde, Gad Saad

Id: i8FudntXfR8

Length: 10min 7sec (607 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 17 2018