Q & A 2019 01 January

it's January 13 2009 teen Happy New Year to you all and thank you for joining the Q&A so I'll start with a couple of announcements first I suppose is that I'm leaving patreon January 15th some of you may know that that's I suppose in protest over their treatment of Carl Benjamin perhaps better known as sargon of akkad patreon like many companies seems to believe that their role now is to act as censor for speech patterns or speech content that they regard as unacceptable and I think that they made a big mistake with Sargon and so both Dave Rubin and I and also sam Harris have decided to leave patreon and that's going to be official as of January 15th so those of you who are my patron on subscribers if you're interested in continuing with that subscription you can go to my website at Jordan V Peterson comm and there's a support button there in the menu and you can use that system I'm also trying to design a system that at least in principle might work as a reasonable replacement for patreon that's a couple of months away but we're working hard on a ton we're getting legal advice we're going to set up multiple payment channels so that it won't be easy for people to be kicked off by credit card companies or let's call them virtue signaling ethical types who think that their role is to police free speech so I think this is a very bad precedent that patroness and the credit card companies - I can't imagine it's difficult to imagine a more dystopian scenario than to have the large tech companies in combination with the credit card companies monitor your spending to decide when what you're doing is sufficiently ethical by their by the standards of the people who are running their let's call them safety and security speech monitoring programs it's just such a terrible idea so mm-hmm there's that that I'm also working on my new book quite a lot but actually it's tentatively titled beyond order twelve more rules for life or perhaps beyond mere order I haven't decided on that yet I can tell you what the rules are maybe you'd be interested in that so I'll give you a list of them the first one is do not carelessly denigrate social institutions or creative achievement rule to imagine who you could be and then aim single-mindedly at that rule 3 work as hard as you can work as hard as you possibly can on at least one thing and see what happens rule 4 do not hide unwanted things in the fog rule 5 abandoned ideology abandoned ideology rule 6 notice that opportunity lurks where responsibility has been abdicated rule 7 do not do things that you hate rule 8 try to make one room in your house as beautiful as possible rule 9 if old memories still make you cry write them down carefully and completely rule 10 plan and work diligently to maintain the romance in your relationship rule 11 be grateful in spite of your suffering and then rule 12 do not allow yourself to become resentful deceitful or arrogant in principle that book will be published in January 2020 so and I'm supposed to have the manuscript in sometime within the next six months and I have a first draft done and I'm working hard on the repeat edits it's going to be published simultaneously in the UK and the US and Canada I'm working with three different editors and so that's that part of the announcement so I'm hoping I'm really hoping that I can make the next book better they're gonna be a pair it'll be a paired coffee with the first one I'm probably going to publish it with a black cover to go with the white cover of 12 rules and I'm hoping that I can make it into a better book and that the two together will make a very complete set so that's the plan we'll see how it goes the last announcement I guess no two more announcements I'm going to Switzerland tomorrow my daughter is having surgery there to get her ankle fixed again we're hoping that that will go well I'm also doing a talk in Zurich then I have three talks in California information for them is at Jordan B Peterson comm forward-slash events and then in February my wife and I are going my wife Tammy and I are going to Australia New Zealand and I believe we have 15 talks scheduled there over the course of about a month and then I think in March and April I'm going to concentrate mostly on writing and then perhaps we're going to go to Europe and so that's for a month or two that will depend to some degree on the writing schedule but that's the plan at the moment I have some good podcasts coming up I talked to General Stanley McChrystal last week about his new book on leadership and the myths that surround it and some of the initiatives that he's been working on in the United States and so McChrystal was the commander of the American forces in Afghanistan and so it was very interesting to talk to him and well there's a variety of other things going on too but I won't tell you any more about those for the time being I think what I'll do instead is turn to some questions so I guess maybe I could also give a bit of a recap for 2018 so Tammy and I have gone to about fifteen cities now something like that her google trip trackers showed that she had gone six times around the world mine said twenty and so that's obviously wrong because I traveled mostly with her but there was a lot of traveling last year and I spoke to about two hundred and fifty thousand people and that was a very all of that was very positive experience that lectures have been really well heartwarming to use an old term I mean it's really something to see that many people gather together and and listen and happen and participate in a discussion about about psychological and and philosophical and spiritual issues that's as deep as I can manage anyways and it seems to be quite gripping for the audience and good for everyone and so they're very very positive experiences which is partly why we've been able to sustain this speaking pace so that's been good oh we also have a discount by the way we my partners and I decided to encourage everybody to make their New Year's resolutions in a sophisticated and comprehensive way and so we have this program some of you have heard about this at self authoring calm called future authoring and the future authoring program helps you write out a vision for the future to think through what you'd like your life to be like if you were taking care of yourself properly to consider your friends and your family and your career and your education and your use of time outside of work and your ability to resist temptation the kind of temptation that might drag you down and and how you might take care of yourself mentally and physically and to write about that and then to write a counter story which was where you might be three to five years down the road if you let all your bad habits get out of control and then to write a strategic plan it's a very useful program we've used it with lots of university students in particular although it's for adults of all ages and if you're a university student and you complete the program it seems to increase the probability that you'll stay in university by about twenty-five percent something like that it seems particularly useful by the way for men for reasons that we don't exactly understand maybe because they're underperforming women academically and it also improves people's grades but there's a large literature in the industrial organizational area also indicating that if you're like if you're working and you make a personal plan of this sort then your overall productivity increases by about ten percent which is a lot and you're you're more likely to be physically and mentally healthy and so I would really recommend trying this even you can try the program you don't have to do a perfect job at it it doesn't really matter because you're trying to set out a bit of a vision and a plan for your life and you need that because you need direction and you need purpose and you need the constraints of a vision to help you be less anxious and uncertain and and you you have that anxiety and uncertainty reduction does occur if you have a decent map of where it is that you're headed the coupon code is my 2019 New Year's 2019 NY 2019 and if you go to the self authoring site and click on the products menu item and go to future authoring you can just enter in that coupon code and it's 50% off so I think the total price is seven dollars and forty-five cents which is actually pretty damn cheap if what it does is help structure your future and I really do think this is a helpful program we've worked on it a lot and tested a lot and it's based on solid behavioral psychological principles allied with I would say a certain degree of optimistic philosophy and it's well it's a good thing to do and this is a good time to do it so if you're interested all that information will be in the description of the video as well so that's basically that as far as I can tell I don't think I have anything else to tell you Oh 12 rules for life has sold about 3 million copies now so I guess I'm telling you that it's become very popular in Korea where it's sold about 200,000 copies which is quite interesting and something I wouldn't have necessarily expected so all right so let's answer some questions and see how that goes can you talk about your own specific experiences / methods used with integrating the shadow yeah well I can actually I think a tremendous amount of what you might regard as shadow integration which in the parlance of behavioral psychologists would be something like assertiveness training all right it's training and how to stand up for yourself and and for your let's say for your better self which would be the self that you could use productively over a medium to long period of time that would be of use to you but also of use to people around you so it's a self that's founded by the necessity of taking care of yourself but also simultaneously taking care of the people around you I think that the simplest way to start that work is to consult your resentment you know it's easy to become bitter about life and to become angry because of course life is difficult and it's full of disappointments and people are also subject to be trail on the part of themselves and on the part of people that hypothetically care for them and so it's easy to get bitter and to be resentful and resentment is a very useful emotion even though I think it's one of the most damaging emotions if it's not dealt with properly so if you're resentful basically means only one of two things it either means you should grow up and quit whining and get on with your life or it means that you're being subject to tyrannical forces of one form or another maybe emanating you may be a consequence of the natural environment may be a consequence of society your being subject to tyrannical forces and you're not putting your own best interests forward like in that broader sense that I described I don't mean your selfish narrow interests that only serve the purposes of instantaneous gratification I mean your own best interests in terms of developing your character over the span of your life if you're resentful it either means that you're immature and that you should grow the hell up and so you need to figure out how much of your resentment is is is that and maybe allied with the desire to find other things or people to blame but the other possible option is that you have something to say or do right because you're in a situation where you're violating your own internal ethical standards and you're being required pressured let's say to say things you don't believe or to do things that you believe to be wrong and you need to determine you need to start to strategize and plan how you can rectify that so that you can say what you mean like if you're negotiating with a marital partner for example and there are issues in your marriage that aren't making you happy well the first thing is you have to take note of that right to see that you're actually unhappy the second is that you have to be willing to engage in a certain amount of conflict because in order to sort out what's disturbing you you're going to have to lay your concerns out on the table and say well look this is bothering me you don't have to say well I'm right and you're wrong and you have to fix this you have to say well I've noticed that this pattern of interaction or lack of interaction say in our relationship is making me resentful and angry and the danger of that of course is you're going to take it out on yourself and your partner the danger is passion passive aggressiveness you know you're not going to respond to your partner positively when they do something good if you're resentful about them and you're not going to respond to yourself properly and so you have to lay it out on the table but sort of in a spirit of ignorant humility it's like look I'm frustrated I'm feeling this way about our relationship here's what I think might be going wrong maybe on my part and maybe on your part and here's what I envision as a possible solution that's also really necessary if you're going to say what you have to say which is to manifest yourself properly in the world is you can't just complain about what's wrong you have to think well what would my minimal preconditions for satisfaction be you have to offer that to the person that you're negotiating with and so then you learn to abide by the truth to the degree that you can do that and no one does it perfectly you know but it's very useful because you're not storing up a whole sequence of memories about how you were unfairly treated and abused and betray instead you're trying to stay on top of it and to note your unhappiness and dissatisfaction when it manifests itself and to accept that that's the case and then to analyze that to see if it's your problem like I said with regards to maturity or if it indicates that there's an injustice in the manner in which you and the world are interacting and then to work to set that right even in small ways and so it's it's a matter of character logical development and that makes you that makes you stronger over time and partly what you need you know in order to do that is you have to really understand and we do this this is why we built in the future authoring program we built this section where you have to outline your most dismal future right what your future would be like if you let all your bad habits and characterological weaknesses have the upper hand and the reason we did this is because you can't be you can't straighten yourself out merely as a consequence of hope let's say you lay on a vision for the future and you think about what your life would be what you'd like your life to be like and then that makes you hopeful and it motivates you because it gives you something worthwhile and higher order to work for right and that's useful that's positive emotion working for you because positive emotion is experienced in relationship to goals but it's not as if not as useful as also being chased by something you're terrified by and if you have a good sense of how you can fall apart if you stay week and just exactly what kind of hell that would be then when you determine to do something like to tell the truth and to say what you think and to not do things that you hate then you're going to be pulled along by the purpose that your vision has provided for you but also pushed along by your desire to avoid the worst forms of Hell that you've already outlined for yourself personally and that can also help you be brave enough to stand up in the situation that we would require a conflict because if you have something to say and you have something to negotiate about with someone then there's going to be a certain amount of conflictual dialogue that accompanies that right to lay out a set of problems and to describe the fact forthrightly that those problems characterize a relationship and then to seek for solutions is quite stressful in the short term and it's really easy to avoid and so people avoid it all the time and then they store up grievances across the span of the relationships and eventually the grievances mount to the point where they return in monstrous form and just eat everything up that's where you get divorces or that's where you explode it your boss and end up fired or that's where you you know you develop high blood pressure over 15 years because you can't stand all the accumulated months all the accumulated monsters in your closet and and you drink yourself into oblivion because he can't stand your life that's all you know very counterproductive but it's easy to avoid that necessary conflict on a moment-to-moment basis because it's very stressful to speak forthrightly about genuine conflicts especially when you're dealing with important parts of your life but otherwise you don't straighten them out and then you have to carry all that forward so you need to be terrified of the consequences of not speaking your piece and that can counterbalance the terror of actually trying to have a conversation so well you know and you also have to look with regards to the the shadow ideas like you have to get in touch with the depths of your anger you know lots of people are resentful about all sorts of things they're resentful about Oh women and they're resentful about men and they're resentful about the patriarchy and they're resentful about the left wing and they're resentful about the right wing and they're resentful about politicians and they're resentful about the cataclysmic force of nature and its ability to make people sickened and suffer and they're resentful about their own inadequacies in the boat they're bad parenting and God like the list is just bloody endless and that can make you very very angry and that's part of that resentment and cynical and bitter and dark and full of fantasies about destruction and the desire to bring things down and the wish that everyone else suffered and the desire to shake your fist at God and all of that's really dark you know Young said well the shadow of the human shadow extends all the way down to hell and he really meant that you know because all the terrible things that people are motivated to do are associated with that shadow domain and like none of you are any none of you are Saints in any likelihood you have a terrible capacity for destructiveness and when you start to consult your resentment and to see how angry you are it can terrify you to see the depths of that anger sometimes that will manifest itself in very destructive fantasies you know which you might not want to become conscious of because they're so brutal let's say and so aggressive that you can't even believe that you generate them the nice person that's you it's like so it's quite frightening to open that door and see all that and that also associates you with the entire dark shadow of mankind right the the Satanic element of the human character and but it opens the door to understanding as well - to understanding how people can do terrible things because you could see yourself as one of the people who could do terrible things that's really useful you know because then you well then maybe you start to be motivated to be the sort of person who wouldn't do terrible things you know if you can really come to terms with the fact that that's part and parcel of you it also is some in perverse sense it's also a discovery of your own strength though because you know if you have that desire for aggression that does for destruction than that that that ability to fantasize in that aggressive manner it also means that you can incorporate some of that into your speech and into your actions so that you're a lot more movable right and and a lot more of a force to contend with it can give you some respect for yourself when you realize that you're a force of destruction as well as creation and then you're also more likely to treat yourself with a bit more intelligent caution you know to know that you're but part of you is a ticking bomb in some sense that can go off and so you you you tried a bit more lightly around yourself and and maybe you encourage people to tread a bit more lightly around you as well which isn't such a bad thing and all the people that I really admired that I know have a clearly dangerous side and you don't want to get you don't want to have that activated any more than necessary but it's also what makes them respectable and strong especially if they have that under control so well that's a bit of a dialogue about shadow integration it's a very challenging undertaking you know to pull in that dark side of your character and and that would be all the things that you've repressed or failed to develop as a consequence of trying to be a harmless and well let's say a harmless and harmless citizen who looks virtuous on the surface that's the union persona and you need that because everybody needs a mask that they wear in public like a suit you know so that we can tolerate seeing each other on the street we don't have to look right into our depths every time we interact we need that persona but that has to be transcendent and the way to transcend that is to integrate the darker parts of the character they're very useful that aggression that's sexual demand for example all of that's very difficult to socialize that competitiveness but unbelievably useful in terms of force of character if you could manage it richard asks how can i help my parents to sort themselves out that's question one how can i talk about the resentments of my childhood a way that benefits them instead of giving them guilt yeah well those are two very difficult questions how can you help your parents to sort themselves out well I guess the first question would be or do they want to sort themselves so because it's not that easy to help people if they don't want to be helped if they do want to be helped like listening is really a good strategy you know people you've got the question right because you said how can I help my parents to sort themselves out which is very different than how can I sort my parents out you help people to sort themselves out once they have decided to do so by giving them the opportunity to talk about their concerns and also to outline what potential solutions might be and you don't want to offer too many pieces of advice while you're doing that because it turns out that people are much more likely to implement a strategy of improvement if they generate it themselves and then also you don't steal the accomplishment from them like let's say you came to me with a bunch of problems and I said well here's what you can do about that and then you went out and did it and it worked and and then in some sense that's not your accomplishment I mean it is insofar as you implement it but it's not insofar as it was something that I planned and your intimation of that your intubation of the fact that the delight in success and the responsibility for six success might have been stolen from you by well-meaning advice is going to interfere with the probability that you'll implement the solution and so it's best to let people talk through their own problems like well what's the problem that's what you ask what's the problem what do you think it's not right about your life and then people will throw up with a bunch of things that they're complaining about or resentful about and and it might be quite an extensive list and they'll feel guilty about it because they don't want to burden you with it and but they need to get it all off their chest right they need to get the cards on the table so also some things know when you're talking to your wife or your husband or your intimate partner or a child for that matter so when you have a close relationship with this if they've got some things to complain about which they undoubtedly do they're going to complain about a lot more things than they're actually upset about because they'll have gathered up irritations that have been unspoken and aggravations and fears and they'll all be upsetting them emotionally and they don't know exactly what they are until they articulate them you know we say well what are you upset about well I don't know well how can you not know well the answer is there's all sorts of things that you respond to emotionally before you can articulate them then you get upset and you explode and you yell and you lay out all the things you might be angry about and you're impulsive and you overstate your case and you accuse people of things that you don't even believe all of that's part of the process of laying your cards out on the table you have complex situations that are disturbing you and you don't know what they are exactly you have to kind of guess so you say well it might be this it might be that it might be this it might be you and this is why it's your fault and you get accusatory and then if you're listening to all that you have to just be patient and let the person get all their cards out on the table even if some of that involves accusations about you which you don't have to immediately you don't have to immediately jump to the conclusion that those accusations are accurate or that you have to defend yourself you know and I'm not believe me I'm not saying this is easy because it's not but you listen to the person lay out there their deck of complaints and the first thing you'll find is that they will take 50 percent or maybe more 75 percent of the cards off the table right away because once they've articulated out those concerns they'll find that they're not really central they're not really the issue and so that leaves a smaller number of genuine problems and then you can ask people again well here's the problem can you think of any way if you could conceptualize how would be better in relationship to that problem well what would a solution look like even in principle and then they might say well I don't know and then they have to guess and lay their cards out on the table about what a solution might look like if they say they don't know that often means they don't want to think about it and a little bit of encouragement isn't in order and maybe a little bit of pressure but you want people to formulate a vision of what the situation would look like if the problem was solved and then they might find it very daunting because the solution looks so difficult that they don't see any pathway to it and so then the next part of the discussion is well are there some things that you could do that would be small steps that you would be interested in doing that you think you would do that would move you to the solution and maybe those things could be implemented tentatively and behavioral psychologists call that collaborative empiricism so you'll come and see a behavioral psychologist and lay out your problems and then the two of you will negotiate towards the beginnings of a solution what could you do this week that might make that problem slightly better and so you talk through what's practical and what's implementable you have to be honest about that because you don't want to set yourself up with a plan that's so complicated you won't implement it then you say to the person if you're the psychologist you say well look we've got a couple of ideas about what you can do this week that might make this situation slightly better why do you go and implement them and then come back next week and we'll talk about whether or not that worked and work would be you did implement it and that it did have the desired solution and if it didn't work meaning you didn't implement it or the solution didn't emerge then there's there's the opportunity for renegotiation so you can think about it strategically the first issue is well if something needs to be sorted out the first question is what the hell is the problem and the answer that is you probably don't know the problem is I'm upset and disturbed and angry and resentful and bitter and unhappy and anxious and in pain and lonesome I'm suffering from an excess of negative emotion and perhaps from a certain amount of hopelessness so the problem is the emotional circumstance and that might be associated with some real problems right some real practical problems so you lay all that out and say okay well what is the problem landscape look like right so that's the strategic move and then as I said that will generally simplify the problem landscape then you do think the same thing with a set of potential solutions well what would the solutions look like cuz you're not gonna be able to solve a problem unless you at least know what a solution might look like that would actually what would you say that would that you would find acceptable and then the next Pro issue is to lay out the strategies for the attainment of that solution and you know sometimes it might be some of these solutions might be dismal like you know if you've got someone who's ill in your family the solution might be well well we need a cure you know that's the only solution that will suffice but you don't know how to pursue the cure or maybe one doesn't exist so then you have to think of well a lower order and less satisfying solution which would be well maybe we can cope we're gonna learn to cope with this so that it's the least amount of Hell possible and and maybe that maybe that even that's too much you might have to say well we're gonna try to make this next week when we're coping with this better than the last week you know and and maybe you can't even do that it has to just be the next day you look for whatever small steps forward you can take that will make things less wretched and horrible than they currently are you know to put it rather bluntly and that requires the willingness to face the problem the humility to know that you don't have the solution at hand the willingness to listen to how the other people that you're talking to formulate the problems and formulate the solutions it's crucially important right to have them do that work themselves it's it's also you could think about it this way too is that if you listen to someone come up with a solution you don't undergo the neurological transformations necessary to change your character but if you come up with the solutions yourself you know if you articulate the problem you articulate the solutions then you've changed your own character in a way that increases the probability that you're going to act out what you do and that requires real patience to to let people stumble through to their own problem solutions because someone might lay out a set of problems and you think oh my god I know what you could do about that but it doesn't really matter if you know you know and I'm also not saying that sometimes advice is helpful you know sometimes you can give someone a hint but man you have to be careful with that because there's a real element of theft that's associated okay with it now Richard also asked how can I talk about the resentments of my childhood in a way that benefits them instead of giving them guilt I don't know if I can answer that question Richard because it's it's not a question that's see what I would ask if you came to talk to me and you had that question I would say first of all well what resentments list them out man write him down okay so that you know what they are because all those each of those resentments is going to be a different thing and the strategy that's associated with each might vary as a consequence of the particularity of the resentment so I would say you should start by writing them down like what's your problem exactly here's all the things that I can think of that I'm angry about with regard to my childhood write that down and then see which ones are still living and then you have to figure out well what do you want from your parents exactly do you do you want them to apologize do you want them to understand what they did wrong do you want to punish them do you want to get let them get you let them learn to know you better do you want to change the way they're interacting with you now do you want to learn your own lessons from your bad experience so that when you're a parent you don't make the same mistake you merely want to have a chance to express yourself like it's very difficult to to answer your question because I don't know what your goal is right so but and and I don't need to know you need to know what are the resentments so we can walk through the process where to describe lay them out and comprehensively you might want to make a list of everything that you think you might conceivably be annoyed about with regards to your parents no matter how trivial right because that way you you scour your memory four four four four four things that you're holding onto in a bitter way and maybe you have your justification I'm not suggesting that you don't but you need to discover what baggage you're carrying then you have to figure out well what can I let go of and what score and I would say what's really core is if there are ways that your parents treated you that are still affecting you or that are affecting your relationships with them now those really need to be dealt with because they're not done they're not in the past right they're not even resentments of your childhood they're still part of your ongoing life and so okay so now you have all your resentments laid out I guess I would say you know something like look mom and dad there's something I need to talk to you about that's been bothering me for a long time and I'd pick one of the more trivial things to begin with like here's a memory I have and don't get all high and mighty about it because you know you might have misconstrued the situation as a child it's highly probable and they may have had their reasons and you may not even remember the situation let's say correctly or the way they remember to say well here's here's something that happened when I was a kid in it it still bothers man do you remember what happened that's an open-ended question do you remember what happened why did this why did this go this way and then I would do an awful lot of listening you know because you are trying to gather information and the more your parents can tell you about what happened in those situations I would say the better off you're likely to be so that's about all I can say about that that's fairly delineated approach to general discussions about difficult things right but I would say don't be afraid of don't be more afraid of engaging in this process than you are afraid of not engaging in it like every relationship you have gonna have problems in it and you know you don't want to jump to a intense psychological discussion with every little bump but if if there's something of medium to long term permanence that's disturbing you or a pattern that repeats itself at least three times let's say well then that might be something that's worthy of discussion or your discovery that you're you know very dissatisfied with the way the relationship is going and you have to have the conflict necessary to sort that out and it's going to be conflict with you and the car and the person that you're talking to but the aim should be the establishment of something like fully informed fully negotiated medium to long term peace that's what you're aiming at if you have any sense Oh Cody said it took me seven months but I completed all the self authoring suit in July I'm still not motivated to do anything and waste all of my time what do I do well well the first question is is it true that you're not motivated to do anything and is it true that you waste all of your time it seems highly unlikely to me that both of those things are a hundred percent true so one of the things you might notice is are there anything is there anything that you're motivated to do presume you're motivated to eat although perhaps not and I'm not being smart about this um partly what I would say is two things you might need some smaller goals like you have to shrink your goals to the point where you've established a plan forward that consists of steps that not only you would be willing to take but that you would take and so some of that humility it's like man I'm stuck I can barely do anything it's okay like well I'm I'm laying in bed for seven hours a day well could I lay in bed for six hours and six and a half hours tomorrow you know or while I'm in bed could I do something somewhat useful could I read a book and I read one page of a book can I read a paragraph of a book you have to find that those steps forward that you would take I really think it's useful to make friends with something like a Google Calendar you know or whatever calendar program you might want to use and start designing days that you would like to have because that's the right way to use a calendar and everyone out there that's listening you should you should use a calendar to structure your days because if you know what you're doing tomorrow it decreases your anxieties substantially because you need that kind of structure you need a pathway you need to know you need to have a map and you need to know where you're located on the map and you need to know how you're moving forward and that gives you hope because you're moving towards goals that you regard as worthwhile and it stops you from being anxious because you're not entirely directionless and lost and so learning how to manage your time is useful you can start with a calendar you can start with simple things like you can put in well when you're likely to go to bed and when you're likely to get up and regulating that's useful that should be relatively ritualistically consistent it's very difficult to get your life in order if your sleep-wake schedule is completely random or if it's not aligned with like day and night and if it's not aligned with the normative practices of other people and so you may have to learn to get your sleep wake cycle regulated properly and then the same with your eating schedule those are very basic things and you can do that badly but that's what you want to approximate three meals a day let's say because that's what people do normatively and and then you have to add small goals now if that doesn't work like if you can't make the goals small enough to achieve you know it might be that you're not being humble enough with regards to your conceptions of your own ability but you can tell if the goal that you put forward is a reasonable one if you're actually implementing it because if you're not then by definition it's not a reasonable goal you know like let's say you're you're sleeping all the time in your room is just a bloody complete disaster you know and you think well I should clean up my room it's like well maybe you can't but maybe tomorrow you could hang up two shirts you know or you could we could move two shirts from your bedroom to the laundry room or you could bag up a bag of dirty clothes but you could conceivably take to a laundromat and you just do that one thing you know if you do if your room's a catastrophe and you do that one thing and then you did one thing like that for 15 days or 20 days maybe your place would be in order and so the trick is to get the trajectory right and Kody if you if that doesn't work then you're gonna need to talk to somebody you know maybe you need a partner that that that you can discuss these things with where you both have a commitment like a mutual commitment to attaining a certain set of goals you know that could be a friend it could be somebody that you find online it could be and it could be a professional but if you find that you self cannot you just can't get this going then you're gonna have to reach out to someone else to give you a hand maybe you need to sit down with a parent or a friend or somebody that you love and go over the self authoring suite with them to go over the future authoring plans and to discuss how that might be implemented you know because if you can't do it on your own then and maybe you shouldn't have to then you have to reach out to other people and so make your goals smaller see if you can make friends with a schedule or a calendar this is really important all of you out there who aren't doing this like I would say all of the people that I know who have become successful in any way use a structured means to organize their time they have lists of things to do like they have everyday there's a list of things to do that day every week there's a list of things to do that week every month there's a list of things to do that month you know at every level of temporal resolution there's a sequence of plans and those plans are implemented on a day to day basis you cannot be and successful isn't the right way of thinking about it because I'm not thinking about you know I'm not really thinking about rising up the corporate ladder you know you know what I mean and that's sort of what success has come to mean in our culture that isn't what I mean you can't have a life that you're going to find acceptable without that because you need the vision and the plans to give you purpose and direction that's where all your positive emotion comes from all your motivation is laying out plans that are worth attaining and then observing yourself moving towards them that's the source of most positive meaning and then also without that structure you're so lost that you're going to be anxious and overwhelmed it's really like being in a foreign country like isolated and alone with no map I don't know where the hell I am I don't know what the hell I'm doing you know the rains are going to come and the storms are going to come and maybe it's winter and I don't know where I am or where I'm going and then the last thing Cody is like rely on some other people man you know maybe you'll be able to return the favor in the future I know you'll feel bad maybe that you have to go to someone else you feel weak and you know that you're taking advantage of them but people like to be helpful they really do and and so it's a mark of trust in someone and confidence in them that you would ask to have a serious conversation with them and so and if you don't have someone like that then you need to find somebody like that and maybe that means you have to interact more in online communities or maybe you have to get the hell out there in the world there's lots of meetup groups and that sort of thing online that have organized themselves and you can go there and hide in the back for a while and not talk to anybody but you're gonna get it I get the hell out there and and you know make some social connections because you cannot live alone we're social creatures and you need help and maybe you'll be able to offer some help at some point in the future too so well okay Rose says I'm consumed by envy I can hardly stand to read or watch or listen to anyone more successful than myself in what directions have my aiming wrong okay well look Rose it's pretty damn useful to figure out that you're consumed by envy that's a good start you know that that's a real self-realization and an important one okay so the first thing we might ask is well it's it's likely reasonable for you to observe that that's not optimal for you right because envy that's that resentment that I was talking about earlier or even worse than jealousy it's like it it's not a pleasant phenomenological state it's not a pleasant state of experience okay so look let's look at it this way well what are you envious of you know you say I can hardly stand to read or watch or listen to anyone more successful than myself well that's pretty vague Rose and you want to tighten up your envy a bit it's like you'll find that there are certain people that you're predicting the envious of another issues accomplishments really don't disturb you let's say so the first thing you want to do is figure out which people it is that you're particularly envious of and then you want to figure out well what is it that you think they have now you know they probably have a lot more problems than you think and so part of the pathology of envy is that you look at someone who's successful and you assume that that success defines them across all the important dimensions of their life and that's rarely the case and so you know there's a naive optimism and envy and that's reflected in the fact that you think that the person you're jealous of has everything that a person would need and that's rarely the case but that's somewhat besides the point look in your Envy lurks the beginnings of a structure of ambition you wouldn't be envious of something if you didn't believe that that was a value that you should possess okay so the first thing is make a list of all the people you're envious of and then figure out what it is about them that you envy okay now those are your goals all of a sudden right now you might be doubtful that you can attain those goals and I don't know what the goals would be you know like maybe it's beauty for God's sake maybe you're envious maybe just for the sake of argument you assume that you're not a very good-looking person we can assume you're not blessed by the same set of physical attributes that a Hollywood starlet might manifest you know and maybe you're envious of that it's like why you might start to think well in first of all you might think about whether or not there are dimensions of evaluation along which someone might be judged that are as important or more important than physical attractiveness right because there's multi there's multiple dimensions along which a person's positive attributes might be rank ordered and considered so you might want to broaden out your conceptualization of what constitutes the good in human action but then like if it is a matter of attractiveness then you may have to and I'm picking this one because it's a particularly difficult one attractiveness it's like well what could you do how often do you get your haircut that is it flattering you have someone professional doing it do you know how to use makeup properly and carefully you know are you in reasonable physical condition or are there other steps that you could take to put yourself in reasonable physical condition do you have some nice clothes like it's a matter of decomposition so let's assume we'll be optimistic about this you're envious okay well that means there's some things you value you don't have them but it's the beginnings of a philosophical stance so you lay out what it is you're envious about and you think well these persons these people have this and this and this and this and I don't and that's unfair and it might be unfair it's probably not an unfairness that specifically aimed at you it's probably more a general reflection of the unfairness and the inequality that's part of life and that's worth knowing but in any case you lay out your envy and you and you delve deep into it and you find out well here's what I want because you're in these envious because you see other people that have what you want okay good now all of a sudden you know what you want well that's useful terrifying because you might see that it's so distant from you but you can at least lay out and then maybe even admit to yourself what you want because the other thing is is that you'd be unlikely to be so envious if you weren't hiding from yourself what it is that you that you truly want you might be terrified to admit it because well once you admit it then you know what you want and you know when you're failing you know and and by hiding what you want from yourself well then you can hide to some degree the fact that you're not getting it and that you're failing and and it's no wonder that people do that so make a list of what you're envious of extract from that the virtues that you would like to pursue understand clearly that unless you pursue those virtues you're not going to get what you want and the envy will consume you more and that's like a good pathway to hell that's not a good thing and so make a plan here's some things that other people have that I want how can I start to move words having some of that myself and that's a that's the right way to deal with it so because the other what's the alternative you're gonna tear these people down or or or or manifest hatred for for them and maybe take your revenge when you can on the people around you because you're so angry and you're gonna tear yourself into pieces like you said consumed by envy right and that's like that's a predator metaphor Envy is something that's eating you up god that's not good you know but it's really good that you've at least admitted it that start part of that confrontation with the shadow so you can see your dark side there you know and you can look at your fantasies because if you're consumed by envy no doubt you have some pretty damn brutal fantasies I wish this is what would happen to that person know God they think they're so smart it's like I hope they fall and I get a chance to kick them while I'm down well they're down maybe you could join a Twitter mob and take them out if they make a mistake you know but that can also get you in touch with the dark side of you that maybe has the ability to to put forward some commitment to moving forward in the future that can make you tough and strong and so you might also start with the consideration that you could move in the direction that you desire right if you are willing to make the proper sacrifices I'm willing to do the work and maybe if you can find out what would truly motivate you which might be the desire to cease being consumed by Envy that would be a good start and then to pursue these goals that are implicit in your jealousy well then you have a direction for your life so in what directions are you aiming wrong well you're assuming that you're being unfairly treated and that it's and that there's something personal about that now you probably are being unfairly treated in some sense because that's just the human condition I would say like there's a real arbitrary element of life you're subject to the depredations of nature and the tyranny of culture and your own appalling shortcomings you know and that's life it's not personal exactly and that's worth knowing it's part of the standard human condition you should aim at rectifying your envy and some of that's going to be dropping that bitter resentment and the other is going to be pursuing what you need to pursue to allow you to view your life as at least acceptable right so so there's hope in the enve once you admit it because it gives you a moral direction hello dr. Peterson what would you advise to a person who has the courage to defy the crowd but doesn't have the verbal skills to debate real-time well look there's lots of ways of defining the crowd let's say I mean you could live your life the way that you want live it that's a matter of action you know and they say actions speak louder than words and one of the best things you could possibly be is a inspirational example so that's not nothing that's that something live properly in your defiance of the crowd right make your own course allow yourself to be guided by your own genuine principles you don't necessarily have to advertise that which is in some sense what you're doing when you when you're debating because you're taking the manner in which you act like if you're an integrated person and you're articulating that but maybe you can't do that because you don't have the verbal skills well then the question would be maybe you should develop some more verbal skills like I don't know this for sure Dave you know but but generally it's useful how do you do that doesn't hurt to read really doesn't hurt to write you know a little bit of writing every day clarifies your thinking it's a hard thing to do and it's an unlikely thing most people won't do it but man you know you wouldn't be asking me this question if you didn't think at some level that some improvement in your verbal ability would be useful to you well so how do you do that you read you think you're right the reason you write is because writing forces you to articulate your thoughts it organizes your brain around whatever it is that you're writing about it one of the easiest ways to write there isn't any real easy way but the easiest ways to write is to write down a problem it's like what's what what problem is bothering me we can write about that first of all to get the problem clear because that's a hard thing then you start to write about what my possible solutions be and if you fight with those solutions because you know you want to kill off the stupid ones and then you know maybe you need to learn to speak more fluently maybe you need to what what might we say you could try a class in improvisation and maybe that's too daunting you could join a speaker's club like Toastmasters you could try talking more at dinner parties a little bit more once you formulate your thoughts you have to be willing to be somewhat of a bumbling fool to begin with right because you're gonna not if and maybe you're better your verbal skills are better than you think they are you know and you're just self-conscious but you have to practice putting yourself forward a little bit and tentatively you can do a lot of that you know a lot of that initial learning how to interact with people though by asking them questions about what they think and then responding instead of being too concerned about putting your old point forward so all right so what's the answer what would I advise to the person who has the courage to defy the crowd good live according to your principles right and that's not a verbal thing and you can be a good example and that's a major accomplishment but then if you need to improve your verbal ability which is generally a good thing then those are the ways to do it read write speak and and and understand that developing those abilities might be of tremendous use to you you know because it's one thing to live properly and that's not a trivial thing but it another thing to be able to articulate yourself and to be able to negotiate and generally speaking there's nothing about that that isn't advantageous and even introverted and anxious people can learn to do that you know it's those are learnable skills it's not easy but but but you can manage it you can also you can also speak carefully you know and listen to what you're saying and only try to say things that you think are true that's also unbelievably useful you have to feel that out like is this really what I believe or am i putting it forward well because I want to look good or I want to dominate or or I want to express obliquely an emotion that I'm too cowardly to come out and confront directly or am I being manipulative there's lots of reasons that people use language but what you really should use it for is to state what you believe to be true and then to let the consequences of that unfold and so that can also help you simple truths bluntly stated can be very powerful you don't need a lot of verbal fluency under those circumstances if there's evidence of strength of character behind it so the daodejing speaks of acting naturally well I don't know if that's true if it's acting naturally it depends on what you mean by naturally the daodejing speaks of acting in a manner that balances yin and yang that balances chaos in order and that means that you're speaking in the right place at the right time about the right things and that's allied with part of what I just discussed with regards to speaking the truth how is one to put their foot down and change / better their condition without in unnaturally manipulating their world well the fundamental answer to that is to speak the truth and to let the car secuence --is of that unfold but then the trick is well how is it that you come to speak the truth well in order to do that as far as I can tell you have to be terrified of the consequences of not speaking the truth and and part of that is well look do you want the truth on your side or not do you want to do you want to be facing the truth as an enemy or do you want to have the truth behind you as an ally and the truth is reality and I I don't see that you want reality as an enemy and so if what you do is use your language to represent reality as accurately as you possibly can now given all your inadequacies and biases you're bound to make errors but that's the goal then you have the force of reality behind you it's it's as if you've you know where you are you might not like it and you maybe you know maybe it's a terrible craggy chasm full of lava and water but at least you can see where the obstacles are and you can pick your way through it so and then the naturalness is well from the Taoist perspective in some sense yours you're you're aiming at being at peace with the world and that means accepting it in some sense for what it is and you can't speak the truth unless you're willing to do that and that means that to a large degree it means what means exploring the depths of yin and yang of order and chaos the order to know that like there are tyrannical forces of foot and some of them are operating you and some of them operate in the social world and and some of them operate for that matter in the natural world too much crushing order and on the chaotic side there's the possibility of nihilism and hopelessness and depression and that a complete Cataclysm and so you're you're there's cliffs on both sides of you you have to be aware of that because you don't want to fall into those cliffs and there's a thin pathway between them that you can that you can walk down if you're careful and you feel your way down that pathway by noting how what you say noting whether what you say puts a foundation underneath you that's there's a New Testament injunction to that goal to build your house on a rock and not on sand and and what's the rock well the rock is the truth and integrity of your character and of your voice that's what it is and you you see you want to aim at something Noble that's the alliance with God that's one way of thinking about it you want to serve the highest good and you have to think very hard about what that is I mean we know what it is to some degree or we have some we have some collective conception of that you know it would be peace that would be something it would be the willingness and desire to treat other people like you would like to be treated if you were treating yourself properly it's that as well it's it's characterological nobility it's the desire to serve the good it's truth and beauty and all of those classic virtues all integrated into a single thing you want to serve that and then you and then having aimed at that you won't do and that that that that governs how you're going to see the world right that's senseless and since the that sets the lens or sets the frame through which the world manifests itself to you right so it's as if you're getting your spectacles adjusted properly and then the world reveals itself to you and then you use your language to articulate that and that's that's the that's naturally there is no it's not natural it's very difficult now you know if you don't do that what you do is end up you you you end up using your language to manipulate people into giving you what you want and that's not helpful because you know what do you know about what you want give me give me one second give me one second sorry about that my son I'm in my son's basement my house is being renovated in Toronto for well til this afternoon and he's got a new puppy and he was rolling a bone upstairs on the floor for this puppy it's very cute by the way this puppy yeah that's making quite a lot of racket so I just had to take care of that so just give him a good cuffing no I just asked him just told him that the ball was rolling around so look part of this is faith in truth you know like really it's it's hard to it's hard to emphasize this importantly enough you have to make a decision in your life at some point look about how you're going to use your words like you can use them instrumentally and you can use them to manipulate people you say well this is what I want from this situation and here's how I'm going to have to craft my words to get it or you can think well I'm oriented properly in the world and I'm going to say what I think and let things happen and those are two different they're really two different modes of being I wrote about this in 12 rules for life they're really two different modes of being and the lad the latter one which is faith in truth that's the same as faith in the logos by the way from a symbolic perspective it's the faith that truth is that which turns uninhabitable chaos into habitable order it's the truth that as that and so you you tell the truth and you throw caution to the wind and it doesn't mean you tell the truth stupidly because telling the truth stupidly isn't truthful you have to do it very carefully and very strategically strategically well the strategic part the goal is to get better all the time at carefully articulating what constitutes the truth you know it seems obvious to me in some sense it's like you got to really think this through it's like what do you want on your side you want falsehood on your side it's like who thinks that you really think that you're gonna be able to lie and manipulate your your way through the world and that you're gonna get away with that like there's an arrogance that goes along with that arrogance in belief that arrogance of belief in your capability to deceive and that you're gonna pull the wool over everyone's eyes right you're gonna deceive yourself because you're gonna believe in your own maliciousness and mendacious nassif other people cuz they're stupid and they won't catch on and you're gonna see you're gonna deceive God and reality itself because it's not going to snap back and take you out if you bend and distort it like that's so foolish you don't have a hope none of that you might get away with your your lies for a certain amount of time but they're gonna aggregate and take you out man at every level not least your own guilt and your own self contempt and so so where was that well that's good answer to that question I agree we don't live in a tyrannical patriarchy can you provide a better explanation for the iniquities women face especially lateness of the right to vote etc well you know a hundred and thirty years ago let's say let's take 1895 just as our starting point in the world wasn't the same place as it is now you know rights and privileges spread as the social and economic conditions make their manifestation possible to some degree to some degree and I'm not suggesting that men haven't oppressed women and that women haven't oppressed men Christ we've been at each other's throats in many ways throughout the entire course of human history men at the throats of men men at the throats of women women at the throats of men women at the throats of women parents at the throats of children like there's no shortage of contentiousness and tyranny that characterizes human history so but in 1895 the average person in the Western world lived on less than a dollar a day they bited in today's money way below the current UN standards from her poverty life was very very hard there is no reliable birth control like you can't underestimate the radical consequences of reliable birth control know that that that opened up the world to women and it's not just birth control it's a whole variety of technological transformations and and also an increase in the safety of the street a hundred contributing factors that have opened up the world to the freedom of women but a huge part of that was the collective striving of men and women to free themselves from the absolute tyranny of hand to both exist you know what woman was well let's say sexually mature back at that time around 15 or 16 very likely to be married soon after that partly because sex outside of marriage was so unbelievably dangerous very high probability of pregnancy and then of death in childbirth and then it and then death of children and then continual pregnancy women weren't the same even biologically speaking that the birth control pill is a biological revolution and it took a long time to extend the full coterie of rights to people even men it was like Jesus most men in Eastern Europe for example were serfs until the late 1800s fundamentally slaves it's it's it's not as if the common person has had the right to vote for any substantial amount of time in some countries for a couple of hundred years and that's all like we're we're clambering out of the great darkness of biological history and creating a culture where people have enough freedom to be to exercise what would optimally be their full set of rights and to say that that didn't happen at the patent in the past primarily because of the patriarchal dominion of men is I think an escape from full confrontation with the absolute dreadful horror of biological history it's an it's a wish that all of the things about life that are deeply troublesome and terrible are a consequence of the errors made by those who control the social structure and God it would be really something if they had that much power you know it's like well we can make things bad or good by women by Fiat it's like no you're you're facing the terrible dragon of nature and she's something awful to behold and your your your your tyrannical patriarchy is a relatively ineffective force in the face of the absolute depredations of mother nature I mean even now we're powerful technologically compared to how we have been in the past and you know we've extended our life a lot but we still only manage about 80 years and a lot of that is still characterized by my mental and physical illness you know we're still subject to the limitations the awful limitations of biology ways that are almost too terrifying to behold and so we we shy away from that and say well it's all all the suffering as a consequence of something that's oppressive and under the control of human beings it's like I know I wish that was the case but it isn't and that's not to say that social structures lack corruption but it's not as if a hundred and fifty years ago all men were free and all women were enslaved the truth of the matter is a hundred and fifty years ago virtually everyone was enslaved so and it's it's a long bloody hole out of that you know what a tremendous amount of that has taken place over the last 130 years with the absolutely revolution and living standard and an availability of food and proliferation of consumer items and the construction of the formulation of labor-saving devices you know that freed women from the the grinding misery of constant domestic work for tens of hours a week at extraordinarily low pay and the and the the provision of universally accessible hygienic facilities toilets everywhere is a big deal allows people to move around and to operate out in the world and and tampons and sanitary products and birth control and all of that Jesus women were oppressed because people were oppressed and perhaps women were more oppressed than men although even that's not obvious because you know men suffered brutally in warfare absolutely brutally and and and died at a rate if you eliminate childbirth deaths from the equation in a rate that exceeded the rate that women died at and were required to sacrifice themselves for the protection of women and children it's like human history's a nightmare and that nightmare involves incredible difficulty in struggling forward to survive and we emerged out of that men and women together and have been attempting to free each other to the degree that that's possible in the course of that struggle and so that's how it looks to me you have talked about earning your knowledge how do you define you guys you put up some viciously good questions today man I gotta say these are tough questions they're very good questions so this is Devon M you've talked about earning your knowledge how do you define this and earn it when is it ok to debate ideas like yours if they are not your own well I would say it's okay to debate them right away if what you're trying to do is to test them and learn more about them right but it's not okay if you're trying to put them forward as if they're your own and to obtain something approximating unearned moral superiority by doing so so that means to have the ideas and to discuss them but not to identify with them as if they are defining characters that defining features of your own personality how do you earn knowledge well and all your elementary school teachers when you're writing an essay said you got to put it in your own words think well what does that mean you can't just copy a sentence it has to be in your own words and you know to me that was never very well explained to me but there was something to it it's like for knowledge to be yours you have to integrate it with your own experience you have to see how that applies to your own case and then have story to tell about how that's the case that's personal right so it's the intermingling of the abstract with the personal that makes it real it's the intermingling of the epic with the particular or the archetypal with the with the concrete that makes something real and so of an idea is still an abstraction if you're just parroting it it also means that you haven't learned to use it as a tool you haven't started to apply it in your own life because you could say well here's an idea that I came across and here's how I implemented it and here's what I learned when I implemented it and then that's definitely yours right because you're you can kind of tell because you're recounting your knowledge in a manner that no one else could do and and that's what gives it that ring of genuineness right that's what it means in some sense to speak from the heart it's like well here's my experience with this idea and you can say - well here's how I understand this idea and you reformulate that in your own terms and that means that you associate it with your own but the only with the unique particularity --zz of your own experience and then I would also say it means that you've acted out the ideas and tested them like in in the world and that you have your own stories to tell about that and that's how you make it your own it's like you go to the tool store the hardware store and you buy a hammer you know and then you start to use the hammer to hammer in nails and you learn how to use the hammer you learn how to use the saw and then you know at some point that saw sort of becomes yours you know how to use it and it's the same with these ideas is like you don't just you you don't just say the words you're not just a puppet mouthing the words they've become part and parcel of your own philosophy the way that you perceive the world the way that you construe things in the way that you act and the world you've tested them and you have your own you have something to add to them that's yours personally you know and if you if you're having a discussion with someone and they're talking about things that don't have those characteristics right that they haven't made personal then the conversation is almost never interesting it's because the person is it's just an they're just they really are an empty shell through which ideologue ideology because shayzon's slogans are pouring there's nothing about that that's compelling because you don't see the grappling you don't see that the other person has grappled with the ideas and come to their own unique conclusions and it really is in that mingling of the abstract and the particular that compelling wisdom is to be found and so that's that's and then concretely speaking well there's ways of earning your knowledge and part of that is reformulating it in your own words that's thinking it through right and discussing it until you have it at hand you can talk about it and you can generalize from it because you truly understand it but a huge part of that is also putting it into practice than deriving your own conclusions as a consequence and some of that can be done with debate it's like here's an idea I came across and here's the idea and here's what I think it means and this is how I think it would change things if I put it into practice this is how I understand this idea and what do you think of that like that's a good debate or discussion you know because then the other person can say well I don't really agree with the way you've formulated that or I don't agree with your conclusions and hopefully it's a real discussion and not just one upmanship you know because that's a pretty dull game and then well then you get clearer about what it is that the idea is and how it is that you would use it as a tool in your own life and that's the right way to think about ideas to you know is well partly they're they're tools for looking at the world with because you have to look at the world with tools because you can't look at the whole world so you're looking at the world through a tool like structure and then the ideas themselves are too alike and they need to be used and and worn a bit in your hands before they're before they're yours so how you ever thought about engaging in a public debate with slavish jiseok he has many interesting observations on the topic of ideology and that would be a good conversation conversation yes we have a tentative we have been speaking tentatively about the possibility of having a public discussion in Toronto in April and so we're negotiating and we'll see how that goes we'll see if he's available and if I'm available if we can agree on a set of topics if we can if we can undertake all the complex detailed negotiations necessary to make something like that successful in the public sphere I'm confident enough that this will occur that I've already downloaded about six of his books because I really want to start understanding what he has to say and think before undertaking that so so yes I have thought about it more than thought about it the offer is out the negotiations are underway how do you maintain a stable identity when you are plagued by bouts of depression and anxiety well the first thing we might say is that you can't you know what I mean if you're plagued by boats of depression and anxiety that does destabilize your identity so it's almost by definition but having said that look this is when habit and plan and strategy are so useful so in the periods of depression that I've had what sustained some of them were long and and and certainly the most unpleasant experiences of my life you this is when you need a philosophy let's say that's aligned with your vision and your strategy to sustain you because what would what would happen to me is that I know I have these a vision and I suppose the vision is of a world that's better in in that's less likely to descend into ideological catastrophe and where people are more responsible and more awake and more educated and and healthier all of that a vision of a better world you know a world is less hellish at least but also a better world and some sense of what role I might play in that and then so that's very motivating like it's a profound gold to try to make things better and you can do that locally you can do that for yourself you can do that for your family you can do that for the broader community and all of that's worth it man it's worth making some sacrifices for it's worth suffering for to some degree and then you decompose that into the day-to-day and week-to-week strategies and actions that you're undertaking the plans and the activities that you're putting forward to make that dream a reality to realize it and then when the depression and anxiety come along you think part of it with depression it's like it's just bloody endurance it's like you get up and you work through the next hour you try to stay on track you try to implement your strategic plans to the best of your ability and you hope and you pray that you'll get through it you know you'll get through it and that the darkness will recede and you you you you stay on track you eat even though you're not hungry you get up even though you want to stay in bed you interact with people even though you'd rather be alone and it's it's it's it's the benefit of disciplined habits can can sustain you it's like the boat you're rowing in through a terrible storm leaks and all and maybe you'll be overwhelmed but you have the boat and you can roll forward and that's what you've got and so endurance is a huge part of it and then I would say with its anxiety it's the same thing it's like or very much the same as you're terrified and and uncertain but you move ahead to the best of your ability and again you operate at least to some degree on hope and if you haven't got hope then you've got blind bloody endurance and that's all motivated by some sense that you're working towards something that's worthwhile working to work you know and that is well that's your own long-term well-being to treat yourself properly it's the stability and productivity and harmony and health of your family that's a huge deal and then it's whatever benefit you can be to the community and if you have to limp along and drag yourself forward in order to maintain that pathway then so be it because it's better than the alternative so and I'm not and I know that you can become depressed enough so that you know you're virtually immobilized but you do what you can to fight it and you and then you do what you can to treat it you know it's like have you tried the antidepressants have you gone to speak to a professional have you done what you need to do to investigate the causes of your depression and anxiety because often there's physical reasons that that might be the case you know like I've learned notoriously that a fair bit of the negative emotion that I experienced a seem to be associated with an autoimmune problem that was associated with food sensitivity Jesus like I hadn't I I would have never believed that was possible ten years ago even though I didn't I had learned by that point that my susceptibility the negative emotion was definitely exacerbated for example if I was hungry so I knew there was some relationship with food but I had no idea that it was this profound as it turned out to be and so but don't and then well the other thing you can do too is that as the negative emotion ramps up in intensity the amount of time that you construe as managable shrinks you know and if you're extremely depressed and anxious then you know you may be struggling to get through the day and then you need a map of what is going to constitute a minimally acceptable day and that might be one where you've done what you need so that when you wake up tomorrow things aren't worse right you have to keep up with your obligations and your duties at least enough so that you're not degenerating downhill and you the other thing too is that you you also learned that you act out the things that you would do when you're normal even when you're depressed you know you don't want to see people well it doesn't matter you go see them cuz it's better than not seeing them you know and you find when you do see them that it's better it'll go better than you think but you can't isolate yourself and you're anxious and so you want to avoid you don't want to go out you'd rather stay home and sit in the chair and just sit there and like in a frozen positions like you can't do that you have to go out and go grocery shopping and go out and have coffee and all of those things it doesn't matter whether you enjoy them it matters that you do them because that's what you do that's what you do in order to maintain your health and and so a huge part of it is like head down endurance and that'll get you through bad times that endurance it's it's it's such an under represented virtue that ability to trudge forward under a trudge forward unhappily under unfairly burdensome load is a testament to character if you can and then it's something that should be encouraged and valued so you know and I'm not making the claim that people who are depressed you can't get out of bed lack endurance some do and some don't because depression comes in very varied degrees of intensity and and you can be laid out completely by depression so I'm not trying to make some arbitrary judgment about who's got endurance and who hasn't you can't do that from the outside but I can say that endurance is one of the tools you have to deal with chronic discomfort and pain you know and even if you have chronic pain it's interesting because it's very much allied with depression by the way all of the research on chronic back pain for example indicates and chronic pain of all sorts is that the more you allow your pain to render you inactive the worse the outcome including exacerbation of the pain a depression is a pain disorder and so that's very much worth thinking about - it's like move forward move forward move forward you know and if you need to talk to somebody about what your plan is for the day or the hour or the week then do that as well and perhaps you also have to help get the people around you to help a bit I need a little bit of help getting up in the morning I need to have breakfast made for me so that all I knew when I get up in my sin my terrible state of fog and confusion and terrible anxiety and depression is I have a shower because that's what happens first and then the next thing is I eat and then that's better you're at least you're out of bed and moving and that's that's a start you know so and then you endear and hope and that's how it is and you do the same thing when someone in your family is sick or when you're facing a death all of that it's like one bloody foot in front of the other up the hill how are you always so consistently composed and confident oh yeah well I wouldn't say that I am I know what you mean well look you know I'm I'm not that young I'm just about 60 years old and so I have a lot of experience behind me and I've seen a lot of things and I've learned to be detached to some degree you know that's one thing you learn as a clinician as people are always talking to you about terrible things and that difficulties in their life and you can take that home and and have it destroy you because you're constantly exposed to the troubles of existence and then there are real troubles you know and I mean it's not unique to clinicians you see that with physicians and palliative care workers and people who work in morgues and emergency responders and like there's lots of people who face the the very difficult aspects of life very frequently you detach yourself from it to some degree you know and I don't mean in a disinterested way I mean in a in a way that is sort of allied with a longer term view you know like if I'm doing an interview now with with someone who's attacking me and I can get irritable I think I was too irritable in the GQ interview for example which some of you might have watched I think well I'm not gonna jump to conclusions about how this is going to go even even with regards to how it feels right in the moment we'll see how it unfolds across time and I'll try to manage myself in the moment with the least amount of upset that I can manage and then it's part of the doctrine of minimal minimal necessary force like one of the things I've learned if you're if you have a dispute with someone and it needs to be settled and maybe they need to change more than you and that's not always the case because sometimes the settling requires change on your part but let's say that they have to be defeated in some sense in comparison to you you don't want to defeat them any more than necessary you know it's like you don't knock your opponent to the ground and then jump up and down on them three or four times in triumph you know you you you you pin them in linen and then let them up minimal necessary force because any more than that just produces a counter reaction and so and I guess the other thing is too is my motivation when I'm engaged let's say in these discussions is that I'm not trying to win the argument I'm not trying to win I'm trying to say what I think as clearly as I can and there is there might be an element there might be one of the consequences of that might be what appears to be a victory but the victory is the victory for your ability to articulate what you believe and that's what I'm trying to do and so that's another reason to stay composed is like well okay this person has just thrown a curveball at me it's like all right so well I could be thinking well I don't want to be undermined by that and I don't want to make a fool of myself and I don't want to be put on the spot and of course all of those things are true but mostly what I'm thinking about is okay well now I've got that question I want to answer as truthfully as I possibly can what do I think about what was just said and I'm not calculating the outcome I'm assuming this is a mark of faith right this is the faith that the people have talked about being something that has to be manifested necessarily we'd be talking about this since the dawn of time what's the faith the faith is that if you say what you believe to be true then whatever happens is the best thing that could have happened and I believe that so that's what I really believe it partly because I believe that if you're deceitful which is the opposite of that or manipulative or malicious or malevolent but maybe primarily manipulative then what you're acting out is your belief that deceit will bring victory and I just don't believe that at all I just I think it's a preposterous claim and so if Steve won't bring victory then truth is what brings victory if there is such a thing as truth and there's certainly such a thing as deceit so there must be such a thing as truth and so and some of its just curiosity too it's like well I'm going to say what I think and see what happens that's an adventure you know that's the adventure of your life really and you don't want to miss that because that's what you've got in your life is for it to be an adventure it's not an easy road you know it's a stormy sea and what you have is the adventure of contending with God and the waves that's what you have and the way you do that is with truth and then that sort of takes you out of that immediacy of the conflict whoever it is that the conflict with whoever it is that you're talking to you're trying to align yourself with something that's deeper and more profound and more lasting but I'd like I don't think that I am particularly consistently composed and confident you know I think I have faith in the truth it's not the same thing and you know I'm an emotional person obviously how do you manage to read so much well a lot of that's good fortune you know like I seem to have a knack for reading it's not it was a gift you know like when I was a kid if I look at a word once I can always spell it like I have it instantly and I've been like that ever since I was little and so I seem to have a facility for very rapid verbal comprehension and then my father taught me to read when I was very young and I think it was the combination of those two things that enabled that for me you know I had the natural proclivity a verbal ability you know I my grudges supervisor very smart guy Robert Peel guy I really like he had trouble with spelling you know it I don't know why sake that is people have different talents and I had to tell it for immediate recognition and memory of words and and and I'm also very verbally fluid here so I think mostly it's an innate talent you know now I also do know that the more you read generally speaking the faster you get my wife is really like she always read but she's really started to read more since you go to Kendall she turns out to he likes her Kindle she reads a lot more in her reading speed has increased a lot a lot of its practice you can try to speed up your reading by reading a little faster than you're comfortable with it I don't know the research literature indicating the utility of that but practice is always useful the other thing is is that you want to make it part of habit you both conceptually and practically a lot of people don't read because they're afraid of books the books aren't their friend so you might want to get a few books and kind of make them your friend you can start with simpler books you know like fiction there's lots of good fiction written written for adolescents and children it's pretty straightforward you can start there if you're interested in philosophy there's lots of simple guides like the idiots guide to different topics or a beginner's guide I read those things all the time when I'm first investigating a new topic you know I start with the introductory material and I make time for reading like and it was that was encouraged in my family like always read before I went to sleep I read and I still do that somewhat less so because I've become so distracted by social media but you set aside a bit of time every day to read it for me it was always just before I went to bed I go to bed turn the light read for oh when I was a kid for hours but and if you do something every day you do a lot of it and so I would say well if you want to read if you want to make yourself educated is put aside 20 minutes a day to read or ten you know some small amount of time that you could actually steal not two hours because good luck it's very unlikely you'll manage that but 20 minutes a day you know that's 2 hours a week that's 700 hours a year you know that's even if you're a slow reader that's a good number of books and so you make it a habitual part of your life and you decide that it's going to be something that you value you investigate carefully what resistances you might have to that idea because you might think well that's pseudo intellectual or there's something more productive I can be doing or I'm intimidated by books or I hate books because I wasn't good at reading when I was a kid and I was humiliated because of it or you know you've got something against intellectuals or God there might all sorts of resistances to picking up a book then you can listen to audiobooks that's a good way around that by hook or by crook man so you value it you make it a regular part of your life you practice doing it and and you you need a higher goal to it's like well why should you read well and so that you're more informed and you can think better why should you be more informed and think better because you won't walk blindly into so many pits you know you'll be able to negotiate better in your life because you'll be more informed and more verbally fluent and you'll have a better sense of how the world works and they'll hold your own in conversations and that'll make you more confident those are all unbelievably good reasons to be highly literate is is an incredibly massive massive advantage practical advantage you know and it shouldn't be underestimated so there are drug-addicted mentally ill homeless people in my city and it seems to keep getting worse how do we help people who don't want to be helped well I think you do that by example fundamentally there isn't any other way I know of to help people who don't want to be helped and then I guess I think what you do is you open up you it's the same thing I've said many times is that you do what you can to make the things around you better you better your family better and then whatever you can manage in your community you know if you're interested in the drug-addicted in the mentally ill know there are volunteer you could volunteer you could talk to those people and listen because then you'd find out what the hell their problems are and then you'd have some sense about how they might be helped you know but that's a hard thing there's no helping from above drug addiction and it's combination of mental illness unbelievably complicated problems there's no simple solutions so and it isn't even necessarily obvious that the people that you see who are homeless and drug-addicted and mentally ill don't want to be helped is that sometimes they have problems that are so absolutely overwhelming that they can't be helped in any real sense you know like if they're unmedicated schizophrenic for example with a drug problem Scott it's just that's just a nightmarish it's a nightmare of insane complexity because schizophrenia is very very difficult to deal with even even with medication because the medication that helps people who are schizophrenic also tends to depress their positive emotion and decrease their motivation you know so the medications are generally helpful and the proper treatment guidelines if you're schizophrenic generally are stay with your medication because despite the negative consequences of the medication which aren't trivial the consequences of not taking in our and that's a real Hobson's choice right it's a bit of Hell in both directions but if you really want to know I would say go have some contact with those people and listen to them and learn what the problems are maybe you could start seeing what might be helpful it's a really complicated problem and it's different than the problem of helping people who don't want to be helped because you have to figure out who it is that doesn't want to be helped first and you don't want to assume that just because someone's homeless that they don't want to be helped I mean that doesn't mean that it's easy to figure out how to help them it's not easy it's helping people is a very difficult business and it's a very dangerous business to because you get tangled up in ways that you wouldn't expect and that can be an occupational hazard let's put it that way how do I stop ruminating these thoughts are recurring and relate to every and any embarrassing moment I have ever had during my lifetime I'm a 76 year old woman well although here's something you could try write down everything that you're ruminating about I know that seems counterproductive but Laci ruminations come up accidentally involuntarily unconsciously whereas if you write down everything that you're ruminating about you're facing them voluntarily so I would say well open up a journal or word document whatever and write down every time you ruminate about something write it down and write down every rumination you can remember exhaustively write them all down that would be the first thing and the second thing is standard behavioral therapy practice the second thing the next thing would be write down why you think they happened so that you get a good causal account and then write down well what you might have done about them then but more importantly what you could do about them in the future to avoid them because it doesn't matter that something embarrassing happened to you what matters is whether or not you're likely to repeat it in the future but my suspicions are that even if you just you could just start simply write down every ruminating ruminating thought that you have voluntarily and think about them in detail and write them down in detail get every little word down and then you have that document and then when you have a thought and start to ruminate on it then sit down later after the ruminating thought goes away and bring it to mind voluntarily so every time you ever thought you don't want to have later practice having that thought on purpose and try that for about a month and see what happens because it's often the case that if you start thinking about the thoughts you're ruminating on consciously and confront them voluntarily that they will start to go away so you could try that you could try that that that should help what's the best method to retain what you read and to be able to use it in conversation oh well it's very difficult ready to retain anything without recalling it so look if you encounter something and then you encounter it again you can usually recognize that you've encountered it before that's recognition memory so it's it's an important form of memory it's it's it's the memory that's associated with familiarity but it's not the same as being able to use something exactly it's a rather shallow form of memory even though it's necessary in order to be able to use something you have to recall it this is also very useful hint for studying like if you're studying and you have to remember what you want to do is study and then you want to write down what you just learned so you read a paragraph you close the book and you write down what you remember or you read a chapter and you close the book and you write down what you remember or at least you sit there and you try to remember because the way you remember is by practicing remembering okay so if you're reading and you want to use it in conversation then you have to think about what you read you have to put it in your own words it's also often helpful to close the book and write it down or to associate it with some problem that you're currently trying to solve you have to take the knowledge and make it your own and then and then that alters the structure through which you look at the world and that changes the way that you think so that when you have a conversation the next time that you're going to have the conversation in a different way so merely reading isn't enough you have you have to read and think and recall and it's the act of recalling that produces the remembering and it's that act of remembering that puts that material at hand for you so okay well look I'm just about done here it's 11:35 so I've gone for 19 minutes and I hear people rattling around upstairs and I have to fly to Zurich today and so I'm going to stop out I'm going to stop here so I'll find one more question and answer it and then I just found out I'm having a girl congratulations what can I do to raise her to think for herself and not fall into the modes of thinking proposed by popular culture well you can let her think for herself when she's a kid you know what you do is so that she practices doing that you know and so that means to consciously encourage as much autonomy as possible so how do you do that well let's say she's a little kid she's three and she started to get interested in clothing so you late clothing out of the bed and you say what you can wear this or you can wear this you let her make autonomous decisions you know with kids you don't want to let them choose from an infinite menu you want to give them a constraint menu but what you want to do with your daughter is allow her to make as many decisions as she can possibly make as early as possible you know and that doesn't mean the children always know what's best for themselves or any nonsense like that it just means that you're going to encourage her autonomy to every in every measure that you can manage and that means you're gonna have to be brave and allow her to subject herself to a certain number of risks so you you you raise her to think for herself by letting her think for herself and and that can start that can start quite early um I would say when she's a teenager she's going to fall into the modes of thinking proposed by popular culture because that's part of being enculturated and socialized it's virtually inevitable and it's even somewhat desirable but what you hope is that you've you've encouraged the capacity for autonomous thinking to a sufficient degree that it's likely to integrate with that more intense teenage socialization and then reemerge so you get someone who the other side as an autonomous individual and that works with boys and girls so so you know let's I guess you do what Geppetto did and Pinocchio is the first thing you decide is well you don't want to raise a puppet you know you want to raise an autonomous person and and then you think through what what does it mean to be an autonomous person what sort of person do you want your job to be what what sort of person do you want to encourage your child to be and then having having having established that vision in mind that's going to guide your choices but at least you're making the right choices you don't want someone who's dependent and whiny and cringy and and and more frightened than they need to be and martyred martyr like and vengeful and malicious and manipulative and mendacious all of those things you want someone who can make their own judgments you can ask kids what they think pretty damn early like you have to be careful and not push them beyond their capacity but if you know your child you'll be able to see what level of decision-making they're capable of engaging it and then you would encourage them to mature as rapidly as they can you know and that also means that you have to not allow yourself to fall too in love with the dependent and needy creature that your infant will be to fulfill your own emotional needs you want to detach and and encourage to mature as rapidly and as comprehensively as possible and that will work you know and some of that some of that is negotiation with your child you find out what they think what do you think about this what do you think about who should do the work in the house how should we split it up like they can be engaged in the decision-making process is a very early age and and part of that that encouragement is going to be reflected in your implicit attitude that the child is a real person who's capable of imposing their will yes in a realistic sense in the world on the world and doing that in a competent and excuse me competent and confident manner so but at least the beginning is the desire to do that you want to raise them confident autonomous courageous truthful person and then you reward them when they're like that and you notice it and you tell them good work you did that right keep it up that's the right thing and you tell them why what they did was right you know in a detailed way and that that's very powerful you wait and you lurk and you wait for something that you want to have happen and you say yes well we'd like to see a lot more of that good work you do that with yourself and with your partner too it's very powerful technique alright everyone I'm going to say goodbye hopefully I'll do another one of these in February although I'm not certain maybe at the end of January I have a couple of days there but I'm going to Australia in February and that's going to be very busy so but maybe I can do I like doing this maybe I can do another one in January near the end so just one last thing I just want to let everybody know remind everybody that I am leaving patreon on the 15th of January and so thanks for your support over the last couple of years and hopefully hopefully my next book will be better than the last one was that's the plan that's why I'm doing my best to manage that and and hopefully we'll all have a good year you know and aim high and all of that so good see you and we'll talk in something approximating a month bye

Channel: Jordan B Peterson

Views: 587,489

Keywords: Jordan Peterson, Jordan B Peterson, psychology, psychoanalysis, Jung, existentialism, q&a, #hangoutsonair, Hangouts On Air, #hoa

Id: mXPmLZRAPSo

Length: 119min 22sec (7162 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 13 2019