Dr. Jordan Peterson: How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path

00:00:00.000 | - Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast,

00:00:02.240 | where we discuss science

00:00:03.720 | and science-based tools for everyday life.

00:00:05.920 | I'm Andrew Huberman,

00:00:10.320 | and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology

00:00:13.520 | at Stanford School of Medicine.

00:00:15.240 | My guest today is Dr. Jordan Peterson.

00:00:17.900 | Dr. Jordan Peterson is a psychologist, an author,

00:00:21.080 | and one of the most influential

00:00:22.800 | public intellectuals of our time.

00:00:25.080 | Today, we discuss the human animal,

00:00:27.560 | what it means to be a human being

00:00:29.000 | at the level of psychology, at the level of neuroscience,

00:00:32.100 | and indeed, at the level of expression

00:00:34.320 | of different personality types within us.

00:00:36.900 | Most of us don't think about having different personalities.

00:00:39.720 | However, as we discuss today,

00:00:42.060 | due to the activity of specific brain circuitries,

00:00:44.660 | including the hypothalamus,

00:00:46.280 | the prefrontal cortex, and others,

00:00:48.600 | we each and all can adopt different states of mind

00:00:51.680 | that powerfully influence our emotions,

00:00:54.080 | our thoughts, and our actions.

00:00:55.920 | And in so doing, we are different people

00:00:58.240 | depending on those states of mind.

00:01:00.200 | Today's discussion is both an intellectual one

00:01:02.440 | and a practical one.

00:01:03.840 | You will learn where and how to place your thoughts.

00:01:07.060 | You will learn the relationship

00:01:08.520 | between the call to adventure and responsibility.

00:01:11.600 | And as Dr. Peterson emphasizes in his new book,

00:01:14.480 | "We Who Wrestle With God,"

00:01:16.360 | he emphasizes the use of story,

00:01:18.460 | in this case, biblical stories,

00:01:20.360 | to understand oneself and to best guide one's actions

00:01:23.880 | towards the most positive and generative outcomes.

00:01:26.660 | We discuss the self, romantic relationships and commitments,

00:01:30.540 | the family, community, and culture.

00:01:33.400 | We also discuss the media, politics, cancel culture,

00:01:37.120 | things like social media and pornography,

00:01:39.360 | shifting masculine and feminine roles,

00:01:41.680 | and the innate human drive to create action at a distance,

00:01:44.880 | both in space and in time.

00:01:46.840 | Today's discussion is both intellectual and practical.

00:01:50.080 | Dr. Peterson emphasizes how to use different sources

00:01:53.320 | of story, philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience

00:01:57.320 | to understand and best guide one's decision-making process.

00:02:00.600 | Indeed, he discusses the tight relationship

00:02:03.220 | between the call to adventure and responsibility

00:02:06.600 | as a trustable framework for moving forward in life

00:02:09.760 | towards one's best possible outcomes.

00:02:12.360 | And I'm certain that by the end of today's discussion,

00:02:14.840 | you will be thinking about your own neural circuits,

00:02:17.680 | that is the connections in your brain

00:02:19.320 | that drive emotions, thoughts, and behavior,

00:02:21.240 | as well as your psychology, your different states of mind,

00:02:24.440 | and you're going to have a number of different tools

00:02:26.680 | and frameworks with which to apply all that knowledge

00:02:29.840 | toward the best possible outcomes.

00:02:32.040 | Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize

00:02:33.920 | that this podcast is separate from my teaching

00:02:36.240 | and research roles at Stanford.

00:02:38.040 | It is, however, part of my desire and effort

00:02:40.200 | to bring zero cost to consumer information

00:02:42.120 | about science and science-related tools

00:02:44.200 | to the general public.

00:02:45.660 | In keeping with that theme,

00:02:46.760 | I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast.

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00:05:16.320 | And now for my discussion with Dr. Jordan Peterson.

00:05:19.460 | Dr. Jordan Peterson, welcome.

00:05:21.940 | - Thank you, sir.

00:05:23.180 | - Delighted to have you here,

00:05:24.680 | and want to talk about elements within your new book,

00:05:28.740 | also some elements within your previous books,

00:05:30.860 | and within that mind of yours generally.

00:05:33.440 | As a framework for that,

00:05:35.780 | I'm wondering if you would tolerate or permit

00:05:39.220 | a little bit of a discussion about brain and psychology,

00:05:44.560 | just kind of lay the groundwork for where we might prod

00:05:48.260 | some of the themes that you bring up related to the book.

00:05:51.100 | So I view the brain as, obviously,

00:05:54.340 | a bunch of cells and parts, et cetera,

00:05:55.920 | but I distill it down to some sort of basic features.

00:05:59.940 | First of all, we have an autonomic physiology,

00:06:01.780 | I think we'd both agree on that,

00:06:03.020 | that regulates our sleepiness and wakefulness,

00:06:05.700 | our breathing, our heart rate,

00:06:06.780 | stuff that runs in the background.

00:06:08.460 | And then we have a lot of circuitry devoted to

00:06:11.740 | what I would call impulses,

00:06:13.220 | things that we desire we want to move toward,

00:06:16.200 | appetitive behaviors,

00:06:17.720 | and we also have some impulses to avoid things

00:06:20.720 | that are putrid, painful, et cetera.

00:06:22.520 | That's all in there like it is in other angles.

00:06:24.000 | - We should talk about the idea of impulse

00:06:25.740 | in relationship to that characterization.

00:06:27.800 | - Okay.

00:06:28.700 | - 'Cause there's an important point to be made on the,

00:06:32.780 | you pay a price for characterizing that as impulse,

00:06:37.560 | and I'd like to explore that with you 'cause it's crucial.

00:06:40.440 | - Great, we'll circle back to impulse, I'd like to do that.

00:06:43.700 | And then we have a lot of circuitry,

00:06:45.580 | people will hear about it as executive function,

00:06:47.980 | prefrontal circuitry, which does many things,

00:06:51.460 | but I like to think of as a circuit that can say,

00:06:56.460 | and here I'm borrowing from a previous guest

00:06:59.060 | who's a neurosurgeon,

00:07:00.020 | it can say, shh, or exert what's called top-down suppression

00:07:03.820 | on these, what I'm calling impulses.

00:07:05.900 | It can-

00:07:06.740 | - We should talk about that too,

00:07:08.100 | the suppression idea and the inhibition idea in general.

00:07:11.060 | - Great.

00:07:11.900 | - Because there's, I think there's a parallel problem there

00:07:14.820 | to the notion of impulse that's very much worth delving into.

00:07:18.340 | - Great. - Yeah.

00:07:19.300 | - So circuitry that's devoted to our ability

00:07:22.260 | to self-inhibit the desire to reach for something

00:07:25.040 | or to avoid something.

00:07:25.880 | We can push ourselves into things

00:07:27.220 | that would otherwise be aversive,

00:07:29.140 | we can avoid doing things that would otherwise drive us

00:07:31.980 | to quote unquote, just do it anyway.

00:07:36.080 | And then we have what I think of as our default settings,

00:07:41.080 | kind of how we're operating in the world

00:07:43.840 | with respect to food, other people, ourselves, our thoughts,

00:07:47.140 | if we don't intervene with ourselves.

00:07:52.560 | And these default settings are of course established

00:07:54.760 | by both nature, a genetic program that wires up circuitry,

00:07:58.880 | but also nurture because of the immense neuroplasticity

00:08:01.840 | that occurs in the first 25 years plus of life,

00:08:04.480 | but especially those first years of life.

00:08:06.600 | And then of course we have neuroplasticity,

00:08:08.680 | this incredible gift that humans have more of

00:08:11.820 | than any other species as far as we know,

00:08:13.560 | which is we can decide to make changes.

00:08:16.200 | Now, the reason I lay out this framework

00:08:17.800 | as opposed to starting with a question

00:08:19.260 | is because there are so many amazing questions

00:08:23.860 | that you ask in this book, we who wrestle with God,

00:08:27.500 | I've been trying to wrap our arms and minds

00:08:29.860 | around this huge set of questions.

00:08:32.320 | And it occurred to me to just step back from all of that

00:08:35.180 | and ask, is part of the reason that we have a concept of God

00:08:40.080 | that there are multiple religions,

00:08:42.840 | is that the consequence of some humans at some point

00:08:48.000 | realizing, or perhaps God himself realizing,

00:08:52.760 | that what we are equipped with as humans,

00:08:55.920 | which we just described, is insufficient to allow us

00:08:59.320 | to evolve as a species and be the best version of ourselves.

00:09:03.200 | I think this for me really is like the central question

00:09:05.660 | of at least my life, which is, to what extent do I need

00:09:08.760 | to intervene with my default settings, rewire them,

00:09:12.520 | engage that prefrontal cortex and push down

00:09:15.280 | on some appetitive or aversive behaviors?

00:09:17.400 | And to what extent can we do that?

00:09:21.840 | Maybe- - And to what end?

00:09:22.780 | - And to what end?

00:09:23.620 | And maybe we need a rule book.

00:09:25.100 | You know, I am starting to believe,

00:09:28.180 | and I'm now 49 years old, that we need a rule book,

00:09:30.980 | that the neural circuitry that's encased within our skulls

00:09:34.540 | is not sufficient to allow us to navigate through life

00:09:38.100 | to our best outcome.

00:09:39.220 | - We kind of know that we need a rule book,

00:09:41.140 | even you admitted that in some ways implicitly

00:09:44.300 | when you discussed the fact that we have

00:09:46.500 | a 25-year socialization window.

00:09:49.100 | And what that means is that we have to interact

00:09:51.880 | with other people and our traditions

00:09:54.180 | in order to set us right.

00:09:56.380 | And that's so complex it takes 25 years.

00:09:59.220 | And so we're learning something from that.

00:10:01.980 | And that's indication that our, let's say,

00:10:04.060 | default biological settings are insufficient

00:10:07.460 | to guide us into the future, right?

00:10:10.220 | And so then the question is, well, what is it

00:10:12.100 | that you're learning as a consequence

00:10:14.200 | of that socialization process?

00:10:16.340 | And you can think about it, and people have thought about it

00:10:19.580 | as a series of complex inhibitions

00:10:22.760 | of lower order motivational states, impulses.

00:10:26.120 | But I'm not very happy with the inhibition model

00:10:28.920 | because inhibition is unsophisticated socialization.

00:10:33.040 | Integration is sophisticated socialization.

00:10:36.560 | So here's a way of, I really learned this, I think,

00:10:38.960 | from contrasting Freud with Piaget.

00:10:42.400 | 'Cause Freud's model, superego,

00:10:44.040 | is really an inhibition model.

00:10:45.640 | And Freud was a neurologist.

00:10:47.840 | Piaget's model was very different.

00:10:50.180 | He thought of the properly socialized person

00:10:53.680 | as someone who had integrated their lower order,

00:10:57.220 | we'll call them impulses for now,

00:10:59.060 | into a sustainable voluntary structure

00:11:01.900 | that regulated them and gave them all their proper place.

00:11:04.980 | That's very different than an inhibitory model.

00:11:07.540 | So for example, I'll give you an example from my own life.

00:11:10.740 | My son was quite a willful young child when he was two.

00:11:16.780 | - I'm wondering where he got it from.

00:11:18.000 | - Yeah, well, fair enough.

00:11:19.400 | And my father was a formidable character.

00:11:22.200 | And so my son liked to do what he liked to do.

00:11:27.200 | And it took him quite a bit of tussling with him

00:11:31.600 | to help him, I wouldn't say inhibit that,

00:11:34.000 | or regulate it, to integrate it.

00:11:35.760 | And one of the consequences of that

00:11:37.360 | was he became a very good athlete.

00:11:39.680 | And so why is that relevant?

00:11:41.080 | Well, because it wasn't like he stopped being assertive

00:11:44.360 | or even aggressive.

00:11:45.660 | It's that he learned how to put that aggression

00:11:48.880 | in its proper place in relationship

00:11:51.200 | to a goal that was much more sophisticated

00:11:53.600 | than merely getting his own way moment to moment.

00:11:56.880 | Okay, so integration's a better,

00:11:59.480 | like a very sophisticated athlete,

00:12:02.400 | a team athlete in particular, isn't not aggressive.

00:12:05.800 | And they're not inhibiting their aggression

00:12:08.120 | on the playing field.

00:12:09.160 | They may now and then when they're provoked, let's say,

00:12:11.520 | but all things considered,

00:12:13.280 | what they've done is subordinate their aggression

00:12:16.520 | to a higher order goal

00:12:18.080 | that enables them to be more successful,

00:12:20.320 | but also to be successful

00:12:21.880 | in a maximally social and sustainable way.

00:12:24.760 | And Piaget's point, and he's absolutely right about this,

00:12:27.480 | is that that's much better conceptualized as integration.

00:12:31.440 | And then with regard to impulse,

00:12:32.940 | 'cause I said I would return to that,

00:12:34.600 | I spent a lot of time walking

00:12:37.560 | through the behavioral literature, right?

00:12:39.720 | And a lot of that was derived from animal experiments

00:12:42.320 | and it was predicated on the idea

00:12:44.480 | that if you could explain something

00:12:47.880 | on the basis of a deterministic reflex, you should.

00:12:51.000 | And there's something to be said for that hypothesis.

00:12:54.160 | Don't make your theory any more complex

00:12:57.320 | than it needs to be.

00:12:58.160 | How far can you get with a theory of chained reflexes,

00:13:00.840 | a deterministic theory?

00:13:01.960 | The behavior's gone a long way.

00:13:03.760 | They couldn't get to the highest strata of human endeavor

00:13:07.280 | with a chained reflex theory,

00:13:08.760 | but there was a lot of things they did that were very good.

00:13:11.540 | But one of the things they made a big mistake about

00:13:13.780 | was to conceptualize motivational states,

00:13:16.440 | let's say, as impulses or drives.

00:13:20.320 | That's not sufficient because it fails to take into account

00:13:24.920 | the effect of those states on perception.

00:13:27.560 | So it's much better to think of a motivated state.

00:13:31.680 | This is what helped me integrate behavioral theory

00:13:33.960 | with psychoanalytic theory,

00:13:35.720 | especially the psychoanalytic theory of religious endeavor.

00:13:40.760 | It's much better to think of those lower-order

00:13:42.980 | motivational states as personalities.

00:13:45.500 | They're sub-personalities.

00:13:47.560 | They have their perceptions.

00:13:49.620 | They have their objects of perception.

00:13:51.700 | They have their cognitive rationalizations.

00:13:56.000 | You certainly see that in addiction, let's say.

00:13:58.380 | They have their emotions.

00:14:00.020 | Like, they are small personalities, unidimensional,

00:14:04.220 | very narrow-minded personalities.

00:14:06.440 | But they're personalities, they're not impulses.

00:14:08.380 | - So are they personalities within our,

00:14:10.260 | what most people would think of as our larger personality?

00:14:13.920 | I mean, what I'm hearing is that,

00:14:15.680 | let's say somebody's an addict.

00:14:17.300 | - It depends on how integrated you are

00:14:19.020 | because you could be nothing but a succession

00:14:22.300 | of dominion of sub-personalities.

00:14:24.620 | That's what a two-year-old is, right?

00:14:27.460 | And so you have to build an integrating personality

00:14:31.100 | on top of those sub-personalities,

00:14:33.100 | but not in a manner that inhibits them.

00:14:34.740 | That means your socialization is unsophisticated.

00:14:39.460 | Even Freud knew this because,

00:14:41.500 | even though he had basically an inhibitory model

00:14:43.960 | of, say, superego regulation,

00:14:45.960 | he believed that a healthy personality

00:14:50.400 | would have the impulse of aggression

00:14:53.020 | and the impulse of sexuality to take two major,

00:14:56.160 | lower-order motivational states into account,

00:14:59.240 | would have them integrated into the functioning ego.

00:15:03.180 | The issue is integration.

00:15:05.060 | And so what you're doing when you're social,

00:15:06.740 | like, okay, when my son, for example,

00:15:09.400 | would become willful in a manner

00:15:12.140 | that I regarded as counterproductive

00:15:14.900 | for him and the household,

00:15:16.980 | and the rule would be you can't act that way

00:15:19.500 | because if you act that way,

00:15:21.040 | people aren't going to approve of you,

00:15:24.100 | and that's a bad plan.

00:15:26.100 | So you have to control that

00:15:28.380 | because it's not gonna work out well for you if you don't.

00:15:30.900 | Okay, so I use time-out.

00:15:33.380 | Now, time-out is an effective disciplinary strategy

00:15:36.140 | for social creatures because we don't like isolation.

00:15:39.140 | And so time-out basically takes a child,

00:15:41.980 | puts the child in isolation.

00:15:43.700 | That produces a pain-like response

00:15:45.820 | because social isolation produces pain.

00:15:47.180 | - It's pure inhibition, right?

00:15:48.860 | - Well, that's the question.

00:15:50.340 | You see, that's the question.

00:15:52.260 | He had to inhibit his immediate desire,

00:15:54.860 | say, to run around because he was gonna sit on the steps.

00:15:57.340 | But see, I put a rule in place there,

00:16:00.380 | and the rule was as soon as you get yourself under control,

00:16:05.060 | you can leave the stairs.

00:16:06.620 | Okay, so now the question is what does under control mean?

00:16:10.140 | One interpretation is inhibition.

00:16:12.820 | Another interpretation is no, no.

00:16:15.500 | He's developing a superordinate personality,

00:16:18.340 | probably cortically, that has enough dominion

00:16:21.380 | so that those underlying motivational states

00:16:23.740 | can now be integrated and placed properly into a hierarchy.

00:16:27.140 | And when I'm insisting that he regulate his behavior

00:16:31.180 | and I allow him to move off the step

00:16:33.540 | when he is now able to be a social creature again,

00:16:37.740 | instead of falling prey to his whim,

00:16:39.620 | I'm reinforcing the cortical integration

00:16:42.380 | of those underlying motivational states.

00:16:44.940 | Now, you might think the human organism

00:16:47.980 | comes into the world with a warring battleground

00:16:51.580 | of primordial motivational states.

00:16:53.300 | That's a perfectly reasonable view.

00:16:55.200 | We know a lot of that is mediated by the hypothalamus,

00:16:57.500 | for example, and the amygdala and these lower order,

00:17:00.940 | biologically, what, pre-programmed,

00:17:04.300 | to some degree, pre-programmed systems.

00:17:06.580 | Now, the specific manner in which those systems

00:17:10.380 | should find their expression and the specific way

00:17:12.780 | that they're going to be hierarchically integrated

00:17:15.580 | is going to depend to a tremendous degree

00:17:17.820 | on the particulars of the society at that moment,

00:17:20.700 | which is why you need that 18-year framework

00:17:23.340 | to hone the manner in which those systems

00:17:27.540 | make themselves manifest.

00:17:28.760 | But I think the best way to conceptualize that

00:17:32.140 | is that it's the hierarchical integration

00:17:34.940 | of the motivational states

00:17:36.420 | within an overarching superordinate personality.

00:17:39.460 | And that personality is not bound to the moment.

00:17:43.780 | It takes the medium and long-term into account.

00:17:46.100 | And it's not self-serving, like a two-year-old would be,

00:17:49.780 | because you have to take other people into account

00:17:52.480 | if you're going to be successful.

00:17:54.140 | So, and this is where the cortex comes in,

00:17:56.740 | as far as I'm concerned, this is what it's doing.

00:17:58.620 | It's stretching the, it's integrating the lower order,

00:18:02.900 | temporally bound motivational states

00:18:05.000 | that are specifically self-serving

00:18:07.940 | to a much broader vision of the world

00:18:11.100 | that takes the future into account and other people.

00:18:14.500 | And that's hard, it's very hard.

00:18:17.660 | - I love this, and I'll tell you why,

00:18:20.360 | because the way that I think of the prefrontal cortex

00:18:23.980 | is that its main job is context-dependent strategy setting.

00:18:28.180 | - Right, context-dependent. - Context-dependent.

00:18:30.140 | - Right, that's a crucial issue.

00:18:32.000 | - And you mentioned hypothalamus, this, you know,

00:18:34.180 | it's basically the size of, you know,

00:18:35.340 | two marbles or so sitting above the roof of our mouth,

00:18:38.500 | tiny, tiny little brain area.

00:18:40.740 | It's mostly switches in there.

00:18:42.200 | What do I mean by that?

00:18:43.060 | Anytime a neurosurgeon has stimulated neurons

00:18:45.520 | in a little sub-area of the hypothalamus,

00:18:47.020 | you get either rage or sexual appetite

00:18:50.260 | or mating with inanimate objects.

00:18:52.620 | I mean, this was done in both non-human primates

00:18:54.740 | and in humans. - Uncontrollable thirst.

00:18:56.420 | - Uncontrollable thirst, hunger,

00:18:58.300 | total suppression of hunger.

00:18:59.860 | I mean, all the basic drives are operating

00:19:01.620 | in there like switches. - Exploration.

00:19:02.700 | - And prefrontal cortex has direct access to it,

00:19:06.800 | to the hypothalamus,

00:19:08.960 | and prefrontal cortex is context-dependent learning,

00:19:13.300 | context-dependent decision-making.

00:19:14.940 | And I love that you brought in this notion

00:19:16.900 | of changing an impulse,

00:19:20.620 | in the example that you gave in your son's impulse

00:19:22.740 | to be aggressive or wild in some way

00:19:24.620 | that was inappropriate for the home environment

00:19:26.580 | at that moment.

00:19:27.860 | And two things that you said really resonate.

00:19:31.480 | The prefrontal cortex, his prefrontal cortex had to learn

00:19:34.580 | that whatever he was feeling for himself, his own desires,

00:19:38.580 | needed to be placed in a context of other people's wishes,

00:19:41.260 | desires, and needs as well.

00:19:42.460 | So there's an-- - Even for him to thrive, right?

00:19:45.140 | - It's not merely a sacrifice of his own desire

00:19:48.420 | for the sake of others.

00:19:49.500 | It's like, no, no, look, kid, if you're, we know this.

00:19:53.420 | If you have the same orientation towards other people

00:19:56.860 | at four that you did when you were two,

00:20:00.380 | especially if you're tilted a little

00:20:01.680 | in the aggressive direction,

00:20:03.460 | you will not make friends and you will be isolated

00:20:05.980 | and alienated for the rest of your life.

00:20:08.640 | So that two-year-old impulsiveness, that has its place.

00:20:13.660 | Two, it starts to modify radically at three

00:20:16.360 | and it better be fixed by four.

00:20:18.220 | And the reason for that is that you have to integrate

00:20:21.100 | yourself into the social world,

00:20:23.020 | which means in the case of children,

00:20:24.520 | it means you wanna have friends.

00:20:27.020 | And so the reason you're disciplining your child

00:20:30.140 | isn't to teach them that what they're doing is bad,

00:20:34.540 | you know, in that simple sense

00:20:38.460 | that you might interpret punishment.

00:20:39.780 | It's like, no, you need to be more sophisticated.

00:20:43.100 | Well, why?

00:20:44.100 | Well, you have to be able to take turns.

00:20:46.160 | Well, why?

00:20:47.060 | Well, 'cause no one like you otherwise.

00:20:49.540 | Well, what's the problem with that?

00:20:51.100 | Well, first of all, we're hyper-social.

00:20:53.780 | Like, you can punish psychopaths

00:20:55.980 | by putting them in isolation.

00:20:57.740 | That's how social human beings are.

00:20:59.700 | You take the most anti-social human beings there are

00:21:02.420 | and you can punish them by making them be alone.

00:21:05.300 | Right, so that's how social we are.

00:21:07.320 | So you wanna, you're modeling for your child

00:21:11.940 | a strategy of even satisfaction

00:21:16.660 | for his own basic drives that takes context

00:21:20.740 | in the most sophisticated possible way into account.

00:21:23.640 | Right, and that is, see, as soon as you understand

00:21:26.340 | that that's the fostering of like a meta-personality

00:21:29.380 | in the child, which would really be the personality

00:21:31.740 | of that child, the integrated personality,

00:21:34.180 | you start to understand how that might be related

00:21:36.180 | to religious thinking, because religious thinking

00:21:39.300 | is the attempt to formulate something approximating

00:21:43.520 | an ideal personality, right?

00:21:45.580 | Now, that's often attributed elements of the divine,

00:21:50.300 | but there's reasons for that that we could go into.

00:21:52.340 | But as soon as you know that the basic structure,

00:21:55.220 | even at the lower motivational level, is personality,

00:21:59.020 | well, then that changes the way you view the brain.

00:22:02.200 | Look, a lot of archaic deities are motivational systems.

00:22:07.200 | - Could you give me an example?

00:22:08.380 | - Well, the god of war, Mars, that's rage.

00:22:12.060 | That was a god that the Vikings invoked

00:22:14.660 | before they went into battle.

00:22:16.100 | They would use aminita muscaria,

00:22:18.260 | and they imitated predators from an early age.

00:22:21.300 | - This is acetylcholine, by the way, folks,

00:22:23.420 | has two general receptor systems,

00:22:25.700 | the nicotinic system, which is a stimulant,

00:22:27.560 | but also relaxes you, that's why people like nicotine,

00:22:30.300 | and then the muscarinic system, which creates changes

00:22:34.780 | in our self-perception and perception

00:22:36.940 | of the things around us.

00:22:38.820 | It's not so much a stimulant as it's a,

00:22:42.300 | I would veer towards almost like a psychedelic,

00:22:45.260 | or it has an effect of making us less fearful

00:22:50.260 | and intrigued.

00:22:53.820 | - It's a radically atypical psychedelic.

00:22:55.460 | - Yeah, it's hard to describe.

00:22:56.500 | - Yeah, yeah. - Hard to describe.

00:22:57.620 | - It's outside the LSD, psilocybin, mescaline domain.

00:23:02.620 | - So people would take this as an agent.

00:23:04.340 | - The Vikings.

00:23:05.180 | - The Vikings would take this as an agent

00:23:06.260 | before going into that. - Sure, because what they

00:23:08.140 | were trying to do is make the personality

00:23:10.900 | of rage superordinate, with no pain, right?

00:23:14.820 | And they practiced that from a very early age.

00:23:16.740 | So the Vikings worked themselves up, they went berserk.

00:23:20.340 | That means to wear the bear shirt, right?

00:23:22.980 | They transformed themselves, so to speak, into predators.

00:23:26.300 | - They would narrow the context within which their,

00:23:29.420 | I'm calling them impulses, but you're giving

00:23:31.100 | a more sophisticated explanation for them,

00:23:33.260 | within which their, the aggressive impulse,

00:23:35.920 | the strategically aggressive impulse could be channeled.

00:23:38.260 | - Right, and give full rein, give full rein, right?

00:23:40.780 | They were experts at that.

00:23:41.620 | - To be able to decapitate people, eviscerate people,

00:23:44.180 | do whatever it was that they needed to do in order to win,

00:23:46.420 | and to suppress their own feelings of pain.

00:23:48.180 | - Yeah, well, then you could imagine in a way

00:23:49.940 | that what they were doing was bringing the full resources

00:23:52.460 | of the cortex to, and placing them at the service

00:23:56.460 | of the rage circuits in the hypothalamus.

00:23:58.420 | Like, we have no idea what that would be like.

00:24:00.020 | No, there aren't, we don't do that.

00:24:02.320 | We have no idea what a human being who does that is like

00:24:05.460 | if they're expert at it.

00:24:06.820 | You would give you nightmares to think about it deeply.

00:24:11.220 | - Yeah, there's an experiment, if I may,

00:24:13.820 | that might shed some light on what it would look like.

00:24:17.160 | A former guest on this podcast, actually,

00:24:19.340 | David Anderson at Caltech,

00:24:20.780 | has been studying hypothalamic circuits.

00:24:22.460 | And he and his former postdoc, Dayu Lin,

00:24:24.140 | discovered a small, tiny, tiny collection of neurons

00:24:27.500 | in the ventromedial hypothalamus that, when stimulated,

00:24:30.780 | would send these animals, these mice,

00:24:33.280 | you can find videos of this online, into a rage.

00:24:36.200 | Now, the interesting thing is,

00:24:37.760 | is it required the presence of another mouse.

00:24:39.800 | - Right, right, right.

00:24:41.420 | So it's still somewhat context-dependent.

00:24:42.920 | - Somewhat context-dependent.

00:24:44.100 | If they were alone in their cage,

00:24:45.320 | they wouldn't attack themselves or the walls of the cage.

00:24:47.600 | But if you put a air or water-filled glove within the cage,

00:24:52.600 | they would absolutely attack it to try and destroy it.

00:24:56.020 | Then you turn off these neurons, the mouse is calm.

00:24:58.080 | We can put a link to this in the "Show Note" caption.

00:24:59.700 | Now, here's what's remarkable.

00:25:00.900 | The ventromedial hypothalamus has these neurons

00:25:03.840 | basically interspersed with other neurons

00:25:05.640 | that, when stimulated, suppress rage and activate copulation.

00:25:10.640 | Incredible, right?

00:25:12.780 | Within the same structure,

00:25:14.240 | you have these mutually exclusive sets

00:25:16.020 | of neurons and behaviors.

00:25:18.160 | And it speaks to, I think, some of the things

00:25:20.160 | that Freud and others have talked about

00:25:22.760 | in terms of the juxtaposition of these neurons,

00:25:25.960 | but that they mutually inhibit one another,

00:25:29.160 | which lends itself to some really interesting questions

00:25:31.340 | about when aggression and sexuality

00:25:34.840 | become combined in states of pathology, okay?

00:25:38.680 | But in any event, so context-dependent control

00:25:43.680 | over impulses, over the hypothalamus

00:25:46.440 | seems to be the theme here.

00:25:47.460 | And the other thing that you mentioned

00:25:49.240 | is the ability for your son, in this case,

00:25:51.900 | but presumably also the Vikings,

00:25:54.100 | to be able to broaden their temporal scope,

00:25:57.100 | to be able to think about the time domain differently.

00:25:59.720 | This is something I'm absolutely obsessed by.

00:26:02.060 | The more we experience,

00:26:03.640 | what I brought up at the beginning

00:26:04.880 | was that we have this autonomic arousal system.

00:26:06.960 | The more alert we are,

00:26:09.200 | the less we are able to take ourselves

00:26:11.360 | into notions of this too shall pass,

00:26:15.200 | the past, the present, the future.

00:26:17.420 | Autonomic activation, stress, panic, fear, anger,

00:26:20.540 | tend to make us lose sight. - Shrink.

00:26:22.880 | - We get blinders on,

00:26:24.380 | lose sight of the fact that there was a past,

00:26:26.160 | there's a present, and there's a future.

00:26:27.520 | - Yes, well, that's because they're collapsing

00:26:30.480 | your domain of apprehension to the moment,

00:26:34.240 | so you will act.

00:26:35.760 | You have to collapse to the moment to act, right?

00:26:38.800 | And so we should also point out for everyone

00:26:40.880 | that you don't want to underestimate

00:26:44.160 | the sophistication of the hypothalamus.

00:26:45.840 | And this is partly why conceptualizing its various states

00:26:48.520 | as subpersonalities is so useful.

00:26:50.800 | I mean, it's not unsophisticated.

00:26:53.240 | You can take a female cat and take out its whole brain,

00:26:55.760 | except for the hypothalamus.

00:26:57.600 | So it's like 95% of its brain is gone,

00:26:59.760 | and in a relatively controlled environment,

00:27:02.000 | it's indistinguishable from a normal cat.

00:27:04.560 | It can do cat things and live.

00:27:07.320 | Now, and it's hyper-exploratory.

00:27:11.240 | Now, that's a very strange thing,

00:27:13.480 | where it's a cat with no brain, it's hyper-exploratory.

00:27:16.160 | It's not what you'd think at all,

00:27:17.320 | but it shows you how sophisticated the hypothalamus is.

00:27:20.720 | It can run these programs,

00:27:23.000 | but they're programs of personality

00:27:25.200 | because they have perceptions.

00:27:26.880 | It can run them, and it can do that quite successfully.

00:27:31.600 | Now, all the higher-order subcortical

00:27:34.600 | and cortical systems are,

00:27:36.840 | well, I think they are, to your point,

00:27:38.920 | they're ways of expanding the apprehension

00:27:41.840 | of those fundamental motivational systems

00:27:44.200 | across broader and broader spans of time,

00:27:46.920 | incorporating more and more people,

00:27:48.480 | but also solving the problem of the conflict

00:27:51.640 | that emerges between those fundamental motivational states,

00:27:55.680 | right, it's like, well, what do you do

00:27:56.720 | when you're hungry and tired, right?

00:27:59.160 | Well, you have to mediate between the states to some degree.

00:28:02.760 | What do you do if you want to solve the problem

00:28:04.840 | of being hungry and tired over a long period of time

00:28:08.840 | with other people, right?

00:28:10.600 | Well, you need more and more brain to calculate that, right?

00:28:13.720 | And so a huge part of what maturation is

00:28:17.040 | is when we think about it

00:28:18.160 | as the capacity to forego gratification.

00:28:20.720 | Actually, what's happening is that as you mature,

00:28:23.640 | and your cortex comes online, let's say,

00:28:25.740 | you're able to regulate your behavior

00:28:27.800 | with more and more other things taken into account.

00:28:31.240 | Right, right, and there has to be some war there,

00:28:35.360 | which is why you're wrestling with God, let's say,

00:28:37.440 | there has to be some war there,

00:28:38.700 | because it's also the case that you do have to

00:28:41.800 | satiate yourself in relationship

00:28:44.620 | to your basic biological needs, or you die.

00:28:47.240 | And so there's gonna be tension,

00:28:48.880 | and that is something like the tension

00:28:50.300 | between the individual and the group, you might say.

00:28:52.420 | That's how the Russoians or the Freudians

00:28:54.480 | would think about it.

00:28:55.700 | So the weird thing about that is that

00:28:57.960 | it's not useful to identify your individuality

00:29:04.680 | with the dominion of a whim.

00:29:07.400 | And that's what hedonists do,

00:29:09.000 | and that's what immature people do.

00:29:10.440 | They think, well, why shouldn't I get what I want?

00:29:13.960 | It's like, I see, so your claim is that the you

00:29:17.460 | that's superordinate is what you want.

00:29:19.980 | That isn't, that means you're subjugated

00:29:23.060 | to these low-order personalities.

00:29:25.220 | And you might say, well, why is that wrong?

00:29:27.400 | It's like, well, you're a two-year-old.

00:29:30.040 | It doesn't work.

00:29:31.760 | You know, if it's all about you

00:29:33.480 | and your immediate gratification,

00:29:35.340 | well, first of all, you're rather psychopathic,

00:29:38.240 | because you could think of psychopathy

00:29:39.920 | as the extension of immaturity into adulthood.

00:29:42.800 | That's a pretty good default way of conceptualizing it.

00:29:45.680 | And it's like, it's an unsophisticated strategy.

00:29:49.360 | - They want what they want now.

00:29:51.280 | - Regardless, yeah.

00:29:52.120 | - And they don't care about the we.

00:29:55.040 | - Or the future.

00:29:55.880 | - Or the future.

00:29:56.700 | - See, see, this is one of the ways

00:29:57.840 | I caught on to this relationship was,

00:30:01.680 | 'cause I studied antisocial behavior for a very long time.

00:30:04.720 | Psychopaths, in particular, are notorious

00:30:08.200 | for their inability to learn from experience.

00:30:11.540 | Okay, so what does that mean?

00:30:13.080 | It means that if they do something impulsive

00:30:17.080 | that causes them trouble in the future,

00:30:19.660 | the fact of that future trouble

00:30:21.400 | has no bearing on their continued behavior.

00:30:24.120 | Well, what that means is that they are so non-communitarian

00:30:29.120 | that they're willing to even betray their own future selves.

00:30:34.020 | There's no difference between that and betraying someone else.

00:30:36.560 | It's exactly the same mechanism.

00:30:38.160 | - Very much a toddler, toddler.

00:30:40.600 | - Well, so here's something I learned in Montreal.

00:30:43.760 | I worked with a man named Richard Tremblay there,

00:30:46.080 | and Richard, I think Richard's lab

00:30:48.720 | used up 1/3 of all social science funding

00:30:51.080 | for Quebec at one time.

00:30:52.320 | He was a radically successful researcher,

00:30:55.120 | and he was really interested in antisocial behavior

00:30:58.400 | and was trying to get to the roots,

00:31:00.040 | and one of the conclusions that our lab enterprise

00:31:05.040 | moved towards was that, one observation was that

00:31:10.320 | if you take two-year-olds,

00:31:11.980 | if you take kids at different ages,

00:31:13.920 | you could imagine you made a group

00:31:15.040 | of two-year-olds, three-year-olds,

00:31:16.280 | group of four-year-olds, all the way up to 15.

00:31:18.440 | You just let them interact.

00:31:19.800 | The two-year-olds are the most aggressive,

00:31:21.840 | but if you analyze the two-year-olds themselves,

00:31:26.720 | you find that all the aggressive kids are boys,

00:31:31.040 | and it's only a fraction of them, about 5%.

00:31:33.880 | So if you group two-year-olds together,

00:31:35.440 | 5% of the boys will kick, steal, hit, and bite,

00:31:39.720 | which was our definition

00:31:41.200 | of early-onset antisocial behavior.

00:31:44.560 | Almost all of those kids are socialized

00:31:46.640 | by the age of four, right?

00:31:49.240 | The remnant that aren't get alienated

00:31:51.800 | because they have no friends,

00:31:53.000 | and they're the ones who become juvenile delinquents

00:31:55.280 | and then early-onset criminals,

00:31:56.920 | and then repeat offenders, right?

00:31:59.320 | And so what it is, is imagine there's some kids

00:32:02.240 | whose default, their rage circuits

00:32:06.040 | are a little bit more dominant than the typical kid.

00:32:08.880 | They're often bigger physically.

00:32:10.440 | - Yeah, especially the biting.

00:32:12.760 | Forgive me for interrupting,

00:32:13.600 | but there's a very interesting paper published

00:32:15.920 | about two years ago showing that there's a specific circuit

00:32:19.480 | from the hypothalamus to the neurons

00:32:22.200 | that control jaw closure,

00:32:23.940 | that are independent of the neurons

00:32:25.480 | that control jaw closure for eating and for drinking,

00:32:29.560 | that are specifically for aggressive biting.

00:32:32.240 | I mean, I hope people understand the significance of this,

00:32:34.200 | because what this means is there are dedicated circuits

00:32:36.520 | for aggressive biting in your hypothalamus.

00:32:39.360 | We all learn to suppress these,

00:32:40.880 | except probably under conditions

00:32:42.200 | where our life is endangered,

00:32:43.600 | in which case you'd probably bite like hell

00:32:45.240 | in order to try and get out of that circumstance,

00:32:47.560 | but we are all born with this circuit.

00:32:50.160 | We die with this circuit.

00:32:52.000 | Most of us, apparently not these kids,

00:32:54.320 | learn to suppress this circuit.

00:32:55.760 | - Right, right, or integrate it.

00:32:57.000 | - An eight-year-old biter is a scary thing.

00:32:59.280 | - Right, right, right.

00:33:00.120 | - A one-year-old biter is like a little bit

00:33:02.280 | of a worrisome thing.

00:33:03.120 | A two-year-old, like, okay, we need to work on this.

00:33:05.120 | An eight-year-old biter, people are starting to be concerned,

00:33:08.360 | I think, even without knowledge

00:33:09.880 | of the psychopathology literature,

00:33:11.520 | one would be very concerned

00:33:12.640 | if their eight-year-old is biting other kids,

00:33:15.240 | not just because of the damage induced,

00:33:16.720 | but it's so very different and so much more primitive

00:33:20.080 | than even hitting or spitting or something.

00:33:23.000 | - Exactly, exactly.

00:33:23.840 | It's the indication of a virtual absence

00:33:27.000 | of sophisticated socialization.

00:33:28.760 | - They are truly in their hypothalamus.

00:33:30.360 | - Yeah, yeah, right, exactly, and that's,

00:33:32.040 | well, especially if you have a hypothalamus

00:33:34.600 | that's tilted towards rage, let's say,

00:33:36.680 | and defensive or predatory aggression, that's bad news.

00:33:40.680 | Now, so what's the upshot of that?

00:33:45.680 | Well, the upshot is that there is a, that's right,

00:33:52.120 | there's a subset of kids

00:33:53.840 | whose default reactions aren't socialized,

00:33:56.840 | and we associate that with psychopathy

00:33:58.800 | and long-term criminality.

00:34:00.160 | It's a really useful thing to understand

00:34:01.880 | that much of what we see as pathology,

00:34:04.940 | and I would say the same thing about narcissism

00:34:07.000 | and certain forms of hedonism,

00:34:10.000 | essentially what it is is failure of socialization, right?

00:34:13.840 | And this has very interesting political implications

00:34:16.080 | because it also implies that,

00:34:17.840 | imagine that impulsive self-gratification is a personality,

00:34:22.840 | the desire for impulsive self-gratification

00:34:26.880 | is a personality with its own political opinions.

00:34:30.760 | Nietzsche said in the late 1800s

00:34:32.620 | that every drive attempts to philosophize in its spirit.

00:34:37.880 | Brilliant, a brilliant observation.

00:34:40.060 | Far different than conceiving of the,

00:34:43.280 | say, hypothalamic drives

00:34:44.680 | as deterministic chains of only impulses.

00:34:48.880 | And another thing to consider, too,

00:34:50.600 | with regards to the effect

00:34:51.880 | of hypothalamic motivation on perception,

00:34:55.360 | that mouse that you talked about

00:34:56.880 | whose attack system is activated electronically.

00:35:00.960 | See, when that glove is dropped,

00:35:02.560 | you can see that there's a relationship with perception

00:35:05.440 | because if there's no target for attack

00:35:07.540 | that's biologically relevant in the environment,

00:35:09.860 | there's no impulse.

00:35:11.280 | So you could imagine that what happens

00:35:12.880 | is when you activate those neurons

00:35:14.320 | is that there's a set of perceptual stimuli

00:35:18.560 | that are much more likely to be classified

00:35:20.760 | as a defeatable enemy.

00:35:22.640 | Now, even a glove will do it.

00:35:24.560 | Right, right, so you drop in a glove

00:35:26.080 | and that's now perceived as defeatable enemy

00:35:29.200 | or perhaps threat 'cause we don't know exactly

00:35:31.280 | what the perception would be.

00:35:32.560 | But then you see,

00:35:33.720 | then it's the perception driving the behavior.

00:35:36.440 | That's not an impulse, right?

00:35:39.140 | That's more like a strategy.

00:35:40.780 | I really started to understand some of the literature

00:35:46.020 | on the evolution of religious thinking

00:35:47.840 | when I started to understand

00:35:49.140 | motivational states as personalities.

00:35:51.300 | Because one of the things that you see,

00:35:52.860 | this is so cool,

00:35:54.300 | something I tried to talk to Dawkins about,

00:35:56.860 | the greatest historian of religions who ever lived

00:35:59.660 | was Mircea Eliade,

00:36:00.740 | and he wrote a sequence of brilliant books.

00:36:03.540 | "The Sacred and the Profane" is the best one to start with.

00:36:05.980 | Very short book, very elegant book.

00:36:08.440 | And what Eliade documented across the world

00:36:12.800 | was the pattern by which polytheistic belief systems

00:36:16.800 | turned into monotheistic belief systems.

00:36:19.020 | That parallels maturation.

00:36:21.320 | It's the same thing.

00:36:23.120 | And so the polytheistic gods tend to be

00:36:26.360 | representations of motivational states.

00:36:31.560 | - I'm gonna pause you there

00:36:32.400 | 'cause I think this is extremely important.

00:36:35.920 | - So the god of war.

00:36:37.160 | - Or the god of love.

00:36:39.080 | - The gods of love.

00:36:40.240 | - Exactly, exactly that.

00:36:41.960 | - So the idea that the different gods

00:36:45.160 | are the reflective of different,

00:36:47.560 | we'll just say it as neuroscientists,

00:36:51.000 | as different hypothalamic and related circuits.

00:36:53.640 | - Well, why wouldn't they be gods?

00:36:56.040 | Beware of falling under their dominion.

00:36:58.600 | Beware of becoming their playthings.

00:37:00.640 | And the other thing that's very interesting, you see,

00:37:02.880 | is that you have to also understand

00:37:04.720 | that these don't exist independently of historical context.

00:37:08.000 | So let's say rage.

00:37:09.880 | It's like, there's a literature of rage.

00:37:13.760 | There's a culture of rage.

00:37:15.800 | There are patterns of rage

00:37:17.200 | that are played out in drama and literature.

00:37:19.360 | Like, it's not only that the motivational impulse

00:37:22.520 | is a personality.

00:37:23.560 | It's a personality with a history and a philosophy.

00:37:26.080 | And if you don't think it can possess you,

00:37:28.760 | you don't know very much about possession.

00:37:31.480 | So like, for example, if you're fighting with someone

00:37:34.280 | and you become enraged, as you said,

00:37:36.600 | your temporal purview shrinks,

00:37:39.640 | and your notion of what constitutes victory

00:37:42.320 | is radically transfigured.

00:37:44.160 | So if you're fighting with someone you love,

00:37:45.840 | you might wanna defeat them or even hurt them,

00:37:48.240 | independently of the fact that you actually love them.

00:37:51.080 | Well, then you think, well, you're gripped

00:37:53.040 | by these impulses.

00:37:54.600 | No, no, you're inhabited by the spirit of rage.

00:37:58.080 | And if you're a sophisticated person,

00:37:59.960 | there's gonna be an endless stream

00:38:03.000 | of sophisticated intellectual rationalizations

00:38:05.720 | that come along with that possession, right?

00:38:07.640 | It's full-fledged personality, and it's...

00:38:10.280 | One of the things you see with people who are psychotic,

00:38:16.440 | you know, who drift off into the landscape

00:38:19.040 | of their imagination is that they dwell

00:38:21.600 | on such states of possession.

00:38:24.160 | So for example, these kids that shoot up high schools,

00:38:28.600 | like they're fantasizing under the influence of rage

00:38:33.160 | and resentment for thousands of hours.

00:38:36.680 | That just takes control of them.

00:38:39.000 | And it's not a simple impulse.

00:38:41.880 | It's like, no, they've inverted the...

00:38:45.560 | You could think they've inverted the neurological order,

00:38:47.800 | and the god of rage is now the, what would you say,

00:38:50.600 | the leading personality of integration,

00:38:52.560 | or the god of resentful rage, even worse.

00:38:55.280 | - And the circuit may run in reverse.

00:38:57.400 | My colleague, David Spiegel,

00:38:59.220 | who's our vice chair of psychiatry at Stanford,

00:39:01.560 | has done some beautiful experiments

00:39:02.800 | examining the relationship

00:39:03.900 | between prefrontal cortical areas and the insula,

00:39:07.200 | a brain area that has a map of our internal body state,

00:39:10.080 | interoception, you know, our ability to sense

00:39:11.840 | our internal workings, et cetera.

00:39:13.360 | In any event, there are certain conditions,

00:39:15.700 | including depression, where the direction of flow

00:39:18.760 | between the prefrontal cortex and the insula

00:39:20.840 | literally reverses.

00:39:21.920 | It's like running against the typical traffic.

00:39:24.120 | This is a very different example,

00:39:25.320 | because here you're presenting it

00:39:26.680 | in the context of rage, or sociopathy,

00:39:29.320 | and these kids who shoot up schools.

00:39:33.160 | But I do absolutely subscribe to what you just said,

00:39:36.680 | that if one drops into one of these more primitive states

00:39:39.200 | and emotions, and all the things that go with it

00:39:40.880 | for a very long time, it's almost as if the governor,

00:39:44.360 | which is the prefrontal cortex,

00:39:45.680 | starts to become the governed,

00:39:47.440 | that the whole circuit starts to run from bottom up

00:39:49.720 | as opposed to top down.

00:39:51.400 | And I think there's good neurological evidence.

00:39:52.920 | - That's what happens in addiction.

00:39:54.840 | - Right, and so you hit that circuit

00:39:57.520 | that's seeking the drug with repeated doses of dopamine.

00:40:01.120 | You know, people say they have a monkey on their back.

00:40:03.040 | It's like, no, they have a monster in their brain,

00:40:05.860 | and they grew it, and it grows because it's reinforced

00:40:09.620 | with dopaminergic hits, and as it grows,

00:40:12.280 | its capacity to dominate increases.

00:40:15.440 | And so when there's a cue for the addiction,

00:40:17.740 | this is why people relapse when they get out

00:40:19.580 | of a treatment center.

00:40:20.680 | They'll go back to their normal environment

00:40:22.640 | after having dealt with the physiological withdrawal,

00:40:26.560 | let's say, and a cued craving will make itself manifest

00:40:29.920 | like a friend they freebase with,

00:40:31.720 | and it's all of a sudden, whoom, that monster is alive,

00:40:35.860 | and it just shuts everything else down.

00:40:37.720 | And it's got a personality.

00:40:39.200 | It can lie.

00:40:40.300 | You know, one of the hallmarks of addictive behavior

00:40:43.000 | is lying, and the lies are the rationalizations

00:40:46.200 | of that sub-circuit, sub-personality,

00:40:49.120 | for its own pathological behavior.

00:40:51.600 | And so, and that's all reinforced, too,

00:40:53.200 | by the dopaminergic hits.

00:40:54.960 | - It's like there's multiple people in there.

00:40:57.040 | - Yeah, definitely.

00:40:57.880 | - In everyone.

00:40:58.720 | One of the most incredible-

00:40:59.760 | - Polytheistic paganism.

00:41:01.360 | - Polytheistic paganism.

00:41:02.280 | - Yeah, that's the default condition.

00:41:04.720 | Right, right, that's the condition of the two-year-old.

00:41:08.080 | - I'd like to take a quick break

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00:44:01.680 | One of the most remarkable real life examples

00:44:05.440 | I've ever witnessed of the power of belief in God,

00:44:09.400 | I'm just gonna say it as it occurred.

00:44:12.080 | I have a good friend who for many years

00:44:14.800 | struggled with alcohol and drug addiction of multiple kinds.

00:44:19.160 | Incredibly kind person, incredibly successful in his career

00:44:23.960 | married, two beautiful children, multiple relapses,

00:44:28.960 | crashed his truck at seven in the morning

00:44:32.240 | after getting intoxicated at 6.30 in the morning,

00:44:34.800 | got out of that one, happened again

00:44:37.680 | and again at multiple rehab centers

00:44:39.440 | of the sort of standard treatment, et cetera.

00:44:42.080 | And then ultimately enough happened

00:44:43.620 | within that whole set of circumstances

00:44:46.280 | that his wife said, "This is it.

00:44:47.880 | You've got to solve this or we just can't be with you."

00:44:51.600 | A very scary situation for everybody involved,

00:44:54.800 | including him who absolutely adored his family.

00:44:57.600 | He told us, his friends, that he was going to go

00:45:02.680 | to a center here in Los Angeles that treats addiction

00:45:07.540 | with essentially religion, a belief in God.

00:45:10.960 | He was already fairly religious.

00:45:12.560 | Most Sundays he attended church and things of that sort.

00:45:16.520 | And you can imagine we all thought, including myself,

00:45:19.600 | like, okay, dude, like, good luck.

00:45:24.200 | I hope this works.

00:45:25.080 | But like, I would say zero minus one confidence

00:45:29.200 | in his ability to get and stay sober.

00:45:30.920 | He just had not succeeded prior to this.

00:45:33.700 | He's been sober more than four years now.

00:45:37.560 | He got out of there and never looked back.

00:45:40.260 | And I wonder now whether something,

00:45:45.160 | something must've changed in his brain

00:45:47.720 | by adopting what was essentially a-

00:45:50.360 | - Different incentive structure.

00:45:51.800 | - Right, different incentive structure,

00:45:53.300 | but fear wasn't doing it before,

00:45:54.960 | fear of extreme consequences,

00:45:57.160 | which were on the table at that time

00:45:58.960 | when he went in weren't enough.

00:46:02.120 | Something about going there

00:46:04.040 | and the work that he did there allowed him to then,

00:46:07.120 | it's almost like he got another prefrontal cortex,

00:46:10.260 | a more powerful prefrontal cortex.

00:46:12.420 | So maybe we could talk about that.

00:46:13.780 | - Well, that's not a bad way of thinking

00:46:16.100 | about what it is that people are trying to do

00:46:18.340 | when they say pray.

00:46:20.580 | So you can invite in spirits to possess you.

00:46:27.220 | That's a good way of thinking about it.

00:46:30.660 | I know that's odd terminology,

00:46:32.320 | but that's what you do when you dwell on your rage.

00:46:35.560 | Right, right.

00:46:36.980 | Now imagine that you're doing that

00:46:38.340 | in the most positive possible direction.

00:46:40.660 | So what you're doing is you're generating a hypothesis

00:46:44.580 | about the mode of conduct and perception

00:46:47.140 | that would best typify you if you were ideal,

00:46:50.980 | and then establishing a relationship with that

00:46:53.560 | and inviting it in.

00:46:54.640 | That's what the evangelical Protestants are doing

00:46:57.780 | when they formulate a personal relationship

00:47:00.720 | with Jesus Christ.

00:47:01.980 | That's exactly what they're doing.

00:47:03.380 | Now on the addiction side,

00:47:04.620 | so I studied alcoholism for years.

00:47:07.540 | That was the target of my dissertation

00:47:10.500 | in the first 20 papers that I published.

00:47:12.980 | I knew the alcoholism literature very well,

00:47:15.100 | and the neurological end of it as well.

00:47:17.220 | And it was known among alcohol researchers,

00:47:19.620 | it's been known for 60 years, more even,

00:47:22.180 | that the most reliable treatment for alcoholism

00:47:24.300 | was religious transformation.

00:47:26.260 | And this is well accepted among researchers in the field

00:47:29.220 | who have no religious affiliation whatsoever.

00:47:31.820 | And I do believe that a huge part of that

00:47:34.980 | is a consequence of incentive restructuring.

00:47:37.420 | So you said, for example, with your friend,

00:47:39.020 | that fear wouldn't work.

00:47:40.740 | Well, alcohol's a pretty good anxiolytic drug,

00:47:44.420 | but it's also, for people who are prone to alcoholism,

00:47:47.100 | it's a good incentive reward source, like cocaine.

00:47:50.980 | If you're going to, you can't get rats addicted to cocaine

00:47:54.700 | if they live in a natural environment.

00:47:57.220 | They have to be isolated in a cage

00:47:58.860 | before they'll bar press to their own death for cocaine.

00:48:02.620 | So one of the things you want to do when you treat addiction

00:48:05.220 | is you want to substitute a new incentive structure, right?

00:48:08.260 | Because the part of the addictive process

00:48:10.860 | is you fall into a false incentive pattern, right?

00:48:15.500 | 'Cause cocaine makes you feel

00:48:17.740 | like you're doing something useful

00:48:19.660 | in respect to an important goal, even though you're not.

00:48:23.180 | It mimics that.

00:48:24.500 | - Even if you know you're not.

00:48:25.660 | - Even if you know it's irrelevant.

00:48:26.500 | - And I'll just say, I've never done cocaine.

00:48:27.820 | I would be open about it if I had.

00:48:30.020 | I think I like dopaminergic states enough

00:48:32.480 | that I've been very scared of doing it, frankly.

00:48:35.620 | Also, it wasn't around much

00:48:36.660 | just because of when I went to college.

00:48:38.020 | It just wasn't a drug that was around much.

00:48:39.520 | But it's a remarkable drug in the sense

00:48:41.780 | that people who take cocaine

00:48:43.420 | seem to be excited about everything.

00:48:45.580 | They're in this high dopaminergic state.

00:48:47.480 | And their brain becomes exceptionally good

00:48:49.460 | at finding cocaine, even in the absence of resources,

00:48:52.580 | which is pretty remarkable if you think about it.

00:48:55.700 | Most people can't find the thing

00:48:57.060 | or get the thing they want

00:48:58.060 | in the absence of the resources to get it.

00:49:00.200 | But people who take hard drugs

00:49:02.460 | that really spike dopamine somehow manage.

00:49:04.760 | Yeah, sure, sometimes they lie.

00:49:06.620 | Sometimes they lie, cheat, and steal.

00:49:08.960 | Lie, cheat, and steal,

00:49:09.800 | but they'll do other things too, right?

00:49:11.100 | They'll socialize with people that have it

00:49:12.700 | so they don't have to lie, cheat, and steal.

00:49:14.220 | It's incredible to see that drug

00:49:17.340 | and things like methamphetamine take over people's minds.

00:49:20.500 | And now I'm thinking-

00:49:21.820 | - The pathway appears when the aim is firmly in mind.

00:49:25.560 | - Right, see, this is another insistence

00:49:28.700 | that's derived from the religious literature.

00:49:30.980 | So, because the idea there is that if your aim is upward,

00:49:35.420 | the pathway forward to that will make itself manifest.

00:49:38.540 | And that's true.

00:49:39.660 | You just pointed out that it was true

00:49:41.740 | in relationship to addiction.

00:49:43.300 | Right, is that if once that,

00:49:46.140 | once you're in that realm of possessed personality,

00:49:49.920 | the pathway forward will show itself to you,

00:49:52.060 | even under straitened circumstances.

00:49:54.180 | Right, and it's partly because

00:49:55.700 | you can think of our perceptual systems

00:49:57.620 | and our emotional systems, for that matter,

00:49:59.320 | as navigating tools.

00:50:01.560 | Right, so now the addiction, the addicted brain,

00:50:05.000 | like they say, the aim is possessed

00:50:06.920 | by the substance of addiction, right?

00:50:08.880 | So now the highest god is cocaine, let's say.

00:50:12.520 | And so now all pathways in the world

00:50:14.440 | are pathways to cocaine.

00:50:15.920 | All objects in the world are markers

00:50:18.400 | on the pathway to cocaine.

00:50:20.160 | 'Cause it just dominates, but it's not just an impulse.

00:50:23.620 | It dominates the perceptual landscape as well.

00:50:26.480 | That's makes it, and the emotional landscape.

00:50:28.400 | And it comes with all these rationalizations.

00:50:30.920 | That's all those lies, right?

00:50:33.080 | The whole thing, it's a whole personality.

00:50:35.400 | Yeah, brutal, brutal.

00:50:37.600 | Nowadays, I get a lot of questions about pornography.

00:50:42.600 | And the discussion around pornography

00:50:45.320 | is always related to the discussion around masturbation.

00:50:48.400 | But let's just talk about pornography for a moment

00:50:52.280 | in this context of these primitive drives

00:50:54.980 | and these circuits within the hypothalamus,

00:50:56.580 | which we were all born with,

00:50:58.500 | that clearly some of them are devoted

00:51:01.500 | to our progression as a species through reproduction.

00:51:04.100 | Zero question about that.

00:51:05.420 | Sexual behavior being linked to reproduction.

00:51:07.340 | Not always, but certainly we can all agree on that.

00:51:09.940 | It's a necessary precondition.

00:51:11.620 | I hope we can still all agree on that.

00:51:13.060 | But last time I checked, that's still true.

00:51:15.000 | A sperm and an egg met someplace in some context

00:51:17.780 | to create all of us, okay?

00:51:20.100 | We're still grounded in that.

00:51:22.520 | Pornography is something that I hear quite a lot

00:51:27.520 | from typically young males, but sometimes young females,

00:51:32.520 | or even older females who say that they can see themselves

00:51:37.080 | trying to resist the desire to go look at it.

00:51:40.400 | And it almost doesn't feel like a desire anymore.

00:51:42.620 | They're sort of just in a kind of a compulsion

00:51:46.760 | that is almost unconscious,

00:51:48.840 | but they're just aware of the fact that they're-

00:51:50.160 | - Like an eating disorder.

00:51:51.000 | - Like an eating disorder.

00:51:51.840 | They're doing it.

00:51:52.660 | They know they shouldn't be doing it,

00:51:54.120 | and they can't help themselves.

00:51:55.840 | And we could think about two ways to attack this

00:51:58.640 | if one believes it's a real concern,

00:52:00.200 | and they certainly do, so I do.

00:52:02.280 | I don't, I would be open if I had or do.

00:52:04.880 | Pornography has not been my thing,

00:52:06.160 | and I don't struggle with it.

00:52:07.400 | But when I hear from these people,

00:52:10.000 | it's so clear that they're asking,

00:52:12.760 | is it the prevalence of pornography out there?

00:52:15.240 | Or is it something really broken in them?

00:52:18.560 | Like, are they broken?

00:52:19.880 | But I don't know that I would say

00:52:22.040 | after having the discussion we've had thus far

00:52:24.000 | that they're broken.

00:52:25.200 | It seems to me that it's like the, as you said,

00:52:27.320 | it's the manifestation of one part of their,

00:52:29.740 | it's one personality within them.

00:52:33.040 | - Well, and it's been compulsively rewarded.

00:52:36.240 | So, you know, when you see yourself

00:52:40.280 | moving towards the culmination of a desired goal,

00:52:44.040 | a dopamine, that's accompanied by dopamine release, okay?

00:52:47.280 | And so two things, you know this,

00:52:48.600 | but everybody who's listening might not.

00:52:50.640 | There's two elements to that dopamine release.

00:52:52.760 | One is pleasure, but the other is that the dopamine,

00:52:57.160 | imagine that there are circuits activated as you're acting.

00:53:01.480 | What the dopamine does is increase the probability

00:53:04.080 | that the circuits that were activated

00:53:06.200 | just before the positive experience happened grow.

00:53:09.860 | Okay, so now if you're engaged with pornography,

00:53:12.700 | and that culminates in successful sexual satiation,

00:53:18.000 | which it can, that's what masturbation does,

00:53:20.480 | then the whole personality that's oriented

00:53:23.080 | toward that set of stimuli is going to come to dominate.

00:53:25.760 | It's very much like an addiction.

00:53:27.400 | Except it's, you know, there has been,

00:53:31.880 | there's been work done with generally simpler animals

00:53:35.440 | on these phenomena called super stimuli.

00:53:38.040 | I think it's stickleback fish where this was first observed.

00:53:41.160 | So males, I hope I get this right,

00:53:44.300 | but I've got it approximately right.

00:53:46.240 | I believe it's male sticklebacks will,

00:53:49.800 | they're very aggressive towards other male sticklebacks.

00:53:52.200 | And the reason they're aggressive

00:53:53.560 | is because the other male sticklebacks

00:53:55.060 | have a red dot on their bellies.

00:53:57.380 | So they don't like red dots at all.

00:53:59.440 | And so you could really enrage a stickleback

00:54:01.840 | with a red dot.

00:54:03.040 | And if you use a red dot that's a little bigger

00:54:05.360 | and a little brighter than the typical red dot,

00:54:08.060 | you get a super stimulus.

00:54:09.560 | It's virtually irresistible to the stickleback.

00:54:12.320 | And it's weird because the maximal activation

00:54:15.400 | is produced by a stimulus that they wouldn't see in nature.

00:54:17.880 | It slightly exceeds, that's exactly what pornography does.

00:54:21.360 | It's a super stimulus, right?

00:54:23.120 | And it's not surprising that young males in particular

00:54:26.000 | are susceptible to that because male sexuality

00:54:28.440 | in human beings is very visually oriented.

00:54:30.640 | Very, and a lot of our brain is visual,

00:54:32.840 | way more than virtually every other animal.

00:54:35.360 | Certainly every other primate and every other mammal.

00:54:38.760 | And so we have a situation where any 13 year old boy

00:54:43.320 | can see more hyper attractive super stimulus women

00:54:47.480 | in one day than the most successful man

00:54:50.080 | who ever lived a hundred years ago

00:54:51.920 | would have ever seen in his whole life.

00:54:53.920 | Yeah, well, that's like an evolutionary,

00:54:56.320 | ecological, radical ecological transformation.

00:54:59.880 | And it's worse because it's easily accessible,

00:55:03.520 | so it takes no work, right?

00:55:05.440 | So not only is it a super stimulus,

00:55:07.580 | it's one that's at hand, so to speak.

00:55:09.680 | - And the analog in the food world

00:55:14.680 | would be highly palatable, highly processed food.

00:55:18.720 | - Yeah, sugar, fat combination.

00:55:20.560 | - The other day I went into a gas station

00:55:22.180 | to use the restroom 'cause I was traveling home

00:55:23.760 | for Thanksgiving and I looked around

00:55:25.720 | and I thought this isn't a convenience store,

00:55:28.520 | this is a pharmacy.

00:55:30.580 | Everything that had chocolate

00:55:31.840 | also seemed to have caffeine and color.

00:55:34.560 | Everything, every drink seemed to combine not just sugar,

00:55:37.440 | but also caffeine and some other things

00:55:39.740 | that would provide stimulants.

00:55:41.360 | Then you've got nicotine. - Energy drinks.

00:55:43.160 | - And these things on their own aren't necessarily bad,

00:55:45.440 | any one of these one elements,

00:55:46.600 | in low enough doses, in frequent use, et cetera,

00:55:49.020 | but maybe sugar being the one that clearly,

00:55:51.400 | I think, deserves deeper investigation, right?

00:55:54.800 | But it just occurred to me that--

00:55:57.760 | - There isn't much difference between manufacturing sugar

00:56:00.960 | and manufacturing cocaine.

00:56:02.280 | I mean, you take something that's available

00:56:04.780 | in its natural form in relatively low concentrations

00:56:08.220 | and purify it.

00:56:09.540 | I mean, coca leaves, the natives used coca leaves forever

00:56:12.420 | as mild stimulant, didn't seem to cause them any trouble,

00:56:14.700 | but that's way different than cocaine, right?

00:56:17.980 | And sugar has the same, arguably,

00:56:21.140 | the same pathological properties.

00:56:23.220 | - Well, I didn't think we were gonna go here,

00:56:24.420 | but I think it's extremely appropriate

00:56:25.980 | and important that we do.

00:56:27.580 | So I know that you followed

00:56:28.980 | what is essentially an elimination diet

00:56:30.780 | for a number of years, you eat meat, right?

00:56:33.340 | I eat meat, vegetables, fruit, and some starches,

00:56:36.740 | unrefined starches, in any event.

00:56:38.820 | One thing that I think is absolutely clear

00:56:41.540 | from following a clean diet, so to speak, of any kind,

00:56:45.860 | but let's say of the sort that you follow or I follow,

00:56:49.100 | is that you very soon learn the relationship

00:56:52.140 | between taste of the food, volume of the food,

00:56:56.700 | macronutrient, so protein, fat, or carbohydrate content,

00:57:00.380 | micronutrients, and satiation,

00:57:03.860 | which is, if you think about it,

00:57:04.980 | it's sort of like a big plate of broccoli

00:57:06.700 | or a big steak or something,

00:57:07.820 | the brain learns and the hypothalamus learns

00:57:10.640 | the association between the taste, the caloric content,

00:57:13.780 | what else is in there, and satiation.

00:57:16.060 | If you think about highly processed food

00:57:17.620 | or even combinations of multiple ingredients,

00:57:20.700 | that's absolutely impossible to do.

00:57:22.600 | The brain can't parse what are the various things in here

00:57:26.060 | and how do they relate to my feelings of satisfaction.

00:57:28.260 | It's the difference between a super drug

00:57:30.260 | and what I believe are the elements that we have-

00:57:34.980 | - Explain why you think that link about satiation

00:57:39.420 | can't be learned in the case of these processed foods.

00:57:41.820 | - Yeah, because in the context of these processed foods,

00:57:43.900 | they're activating multiple neuron systems

00:57:46.740 | in the hypothalamus and gut.

00:57:48.180 | We know that the gut has neurons that can respond to sugar,

00:57:51.620 | fatty acids, and amino acid content.

00:57:54.060 | And there's this prominent theory

00:57:55.640 | that one of the main reasons we eat

00:57:57.140 | is to forage for amino acids,

00:57:59.180 | that we'll eat until we get enough

00:58:00.300 | of the essential amino acids.

00:58:02.180 | And we correlate that with taste,

00:58:04.460 | but that the gut has neurons,

00:58:05.820 | where we know the gut has neurons

00:58:07.460 | that signal through the vagus up through a little relay

00:58:09.400 | called the no-dose ganglion, if you wanna look at it,

00:58:11.500 | fun name, and then up to the dopaminergic centers

00:58:14.580 | of the brain, which make us,

00:58:16.220 | oh, when we eat something that has a high

00:58:18.820 | essential amino acid content, like a steak,

00:58:20.900 | like a really tasty steak,

00:58:22.700 | the neurons in the gut in a way that is independent of taste

00:58:25.740 | are signaling to the brain,

00:58:26.820 | ah, I'm getting essential amino acids,

00:58:29.220 | you should eat more of this thing.

00:58:30.980 | If those, let's just say a small fraction

00:58:33.120 | of those amino acids that are present in a candy bar

00:58:35.460 | or in a package of Skittles,

00:58:38.300 | which I'm guessing there's very few of them, if any,

00:58:40.820 | you're gonna continue to forage for food

00:58:43.220 | because those neurons will also respond to sugar.

00:58:45.420 | Basically, it will keep you eating

00:58:46.940 | until you get enough of those amino acids.

00:58:48.620 | In other words, there are two parallel tracks,

00:58:50.580 | one within our taste system-

00:58:51.420 | - Multiple pathways to satiation.

00:58:53.540 | - Right, multiple pathways to satiation,

00:58:55.380 | one dependent on taste, - Of course.

00:58:56.500 | - one dependent on actual nutrient content.

00:58:59.060 | The mouth can only learn taste association.

00:59:02.100 | The mouth can't actually learn nutrient content.

00:59:04.680 | The gut knows nutrient content.

00:59:06.720 | The problem is you take a food that is low

00:59:08.900 | in a micronutrient or macronutrient

00:59:10.620 | or essential amino acids or essential fatty acids.

00:59:12.580 | After all, there are no essential carbohydrates.

00:59:14.740 | There are only essential amino acids

00:59:16.220 | and essential fatty acids.

00:59:17.300 | - Right, right, right.

00:59:18.180 | - And it will keep you eating

00:59:20.020 | and it will keep the appetite system revving

00:59:22.500 | until you get enough of those.

00:59:24.260 | Now, here's the issue, if you've ever done this,

00:59:26.180 | it's probably been- - So that's empty calories.

00:59:27.540 | - Empty calories. - Yeah, oh yeah.

00:59:29.540 | - So in some ways, this, again, is an analog

00:59:33.140 | to the whole discussion around pornography,

00:59:35.460 | masturbation, and reproduction, right?

00:59:37.700 | I'm not saying that reproduction

00:59:38.700 | is the be-all, end-all of sexual activity,

00:59:40.620 | but in the evolutionary sense, it absolutely is, right?

00:59:43.820 | There's no question about that.

00:59:45.020 | There's no moral judgment there.

00:59:46.040 | That's just the reality.

00:59:47.000 | So the situation with food is the following.

00:59:51.540 | If we are eating without any gut-level understanding

00:59:56.540 | of what's coming in, we will keep eating.

00:59:59.180 | If you, let me give an example.

01:00:01.200 | You probably haven't done this experiment in a while,

01:00:02.940 | but if you've ever just had rib eye steak or two,

01:00:05.460 | it's pretty satiating.

01:00:06.340 | Maybe you also have a salad, if you're me,

01:00:07.920 | or some broccoli or something like that.

01:00:10.720 | If one takes, then even after you've eaten all that,

01:00:13.180 | one bite of pasta, one bite of pasta,

01:00:15.980 | the next impulse is more, right?

01:00:18.540 | Even though you already have enough essential amino acids

01:00:21.780 | from those steaks, you're loosing threshold,

01:00:24.420 | you've reached that, et cetera, all of that good stuff.

01:00:26.900 | Why?

01:00:27.740 | Because blood glucose goes up, and then you desire more,

01:00:29.500 | because blood glucose elevations are linked directly

01:00:32.160 | to the dopaminergic system.

01:00:33.700 | So what I'm basically trying to say here is that

01:00:35.380 | I do think that there are elements to our food,

01:00:38.540 | modern food, if you will.

01:00:39.700 | It seems like it's anything but modern

01:00:41.540 | in the sense that it's worse for us

01:00:42.700 | than the more primitive foods,

01:00:43.820 | but highly processed foods, pornography,

01:00:47.120 | any drug that spikes dopamine dramatically,

01:00:49.820 | like methamphetamine, for instance,

01:00:52.800 | any behavior that spikes dopamine dramatically

01:00:55.420 | that very quickly hijacks these circuits.

01:00:58.260 | And to me, the way to teach those circuits

01:01:01.680 | a calmer, more prudent version of themselves, right?

01:01:06.120 | To enter a different hypothalamic activation pattern

01:01:09.660 | is to start breaking the things down

01:01:11.680 | into their essential elements, right?

01:01:13.780 | About the motivation, the pleasure, et cetera,

01:01:15.780 | to tamp all that down.

01:01:17.380 | I mean, we know that for pornography,

01:01:19.380 | if the pornography is very extreme,

01:01:21.060 | then less extreme pornography doesn't seem to work.

01:01:24.180 | - Well, that's 'cause there's also a novelty kick

01:01:26.300 | in dopaminergic striving, right?

01:01:28.140 | I mean, so with any basic appetitive pleasure,

01:01:33.140 | there's a dopaminergic kick.

01:01:36.940 | But with any novelty, there's also a dopaminergic kick.

01:01:39.980 | So there's an optimized threshold for novelty

01:01:42.440 | and appetitive striving that plays out in pornography.

01:01:45.700 | So there's the direct effect of the stimulus as such,

01:01:50.700 | but there's variation in the stimulus that's also novel.

01:01:56.620 | And so it's a common pattern for pornographic usage

01:02:00.500 | to become more, what would you say, fetishistic.

01:02:05.500 | That's one way of thinking about it as it progresses,

01:02:08.120 | because that keeps the novelty alive.

01:02:10.440 | Right, that's very dangerous.

01:02:11.780 | That's a very dangerous development.

01:02:13.280 | - Right, and I would venture in a very different domain

01:02:15.060 | that if you were to eat your steak slathered

01:02:16.900 | in barbecue sauce for a couple of weeks,

01:02:18.540 | going back to the way that you eat them now,

01:02:20.420 | which by the way, this is a great opportunity

01:02:22.260 | to educate people about something that you taught me

01:02:24.740 | when we had dinner last,

01:02:26.140 | which is that if you're gonna order a steak,

01:02:27.700 | order a Pittsburgh char.

01:02:29.500 | The char on the outside is incredibly tasty.

01:02:31.940 | - Right, right. - We love that,

01:02:33.460 | the umami taste, we should have a devoted taste receptor.

01:02:36.460 | - It's complex. - Yeah.

01:02:37.540 | So, and if they don't know what a Pittsburgh char is,

01:02:39.500 | then maybe you're in the wrong restaurant

01:02:40.880 | or you need to educate them,

01:02:41.800 | but incredibly satiating, delicious, right?

01:02:44.980 | But if you were to slather those steaks

01:02:46.940 | in a bunch of things, I would suspect that after a while,

01:02:50.580 | your plain steaks wouldn't taste as good.

01:02:52.140 | - Oh, certainly.

01:02:52.980 | - But the way to make them taste good again

01:02:54.560 | would be to eat them plain for a period of time

01:02:57.020 | in which the stuff, all the condiments, et cetera,

01:03:00.260 | would start to become aversive.

01:03:01.460 | I do believe that when we return

01:03:03.580 | to the sort of most naturally satisfying mode

01:03:08.580 | of engaging with these circuits,

01:03:11.780 | here we're talking about food and sex in parallel,

01:03:13.840 | that they become especially satiating.

01:03:16.700 | And I think that, you know,

01:03:18.900 | in hearing from all these people

01:03:19.900 | that are addicted to pornography,

01:03:21.820 | and they're not addicted like it's telling me they love it

01:03:24.100 | and they can't stop.

01:03:24.940 | They're telling me it's no longer working for them,

01:03:26.700 | that there's this, you know,

01:03:27.900 | diminishment in the amount of dopamine

01:03:29.340 | that they're getting over time

01:03:30.300 | and they feel trapped within it.

01:03:31.660 | And they have no sense whatsoever

01:03:33.520 | because they haven't been socialized to,

01:03:34.740 | to go out and find a real relationship,

01:03:36.620 | a real sexual relationship or a relationship of any kind.

01:03:38.780 | - Well, it's also, there is some evidence suggesting too

01:03:42.660 | that if you've been socialized into pornography sexuality,

01:03:46.900 | it's actually quite difficult

01:03:48.120 | to establish a sexual relationship with an actual partner.

01:03:51.380 | Now, I would say to some degree,

01:03:52.740 | that's always been difficult

01:03:54.320 | because it's a complex form of behavior.

01:03:56.820 | But the introduction of pornography,

01:04:00.240 | well, it sets up a whole landscape of expectation,

01:04:02.980 | for example, that's not necessarily gonna play out

01:04:05.140 | that well in the real world, let's say.

01:04:07.620 | - And there's also a learning

01:04:09.700 | of those biological systems in the brain

01:04:12.300 | to evoke arousal by observing sex

01:04:15.140 | as opposed to participating, right?

01:04:16.940 | Completely different.

01:04:19.060 | So some of these-

01:04:19.900 | - Right, that's voyeur, right?

01:04:21.340 | You're basically learning to be a voyeur.

01:04:23.540 | Right, right.

01:04:24.380 | - And so you think about young brains

01:04:25.580 | that are highly plastic, learning that.

01:04:28.880 | So the returning-

01:04:29.720 | - Yeah, we have no idea what to make of that

01:04:31.380 | because especially for young men,

01:04:33.020 | because when they hit puberty,

01:04:34.660 | sexuality becomes a very insistent force.

01:04:39.060 | And we have no idea what effect pornography

01:04:42.580 | has on the development of male sexuality, none.

01:04:46.220 | - I've wondered for a while

01:04:49.540 | whether there's something inherently rewarding

01:04:54.180 | about creating impact or action at a distance.

01:04:59.180 | Here's why.

01:05:00.580 | I've been watching these videos of Elon's rockets

01:05:03.340 | and thinking like, that is awesome.

01:05:08.580 | That is awesome.

01:05:09.500 | - We're built on a throwing platform.

01:05:11.220 | - Yeah, just there's one image of the rocket thrusters

01:05:14.700 | that just captivated me.

01:05:16.060 | I'm not a spacecraft guy.

01:05:17.860 | I mean, I think it's really cool,

01:05:19.140 | but I wouldn't consider myself somebody

01:05:20.740 | that looks at the stars and thinks I wanna go up there.

01:05:24.120 | I might if I'm given the opportunity,

01:05:25.600 | but that's not been my thing.

01:05:26.660 | But I looked at this and I thought,

01:05:27.900 | what an awesome display of power.

01:05:30.420 | But then I was saying like, what is power?

01:05:31.900 | It's really about having impact or action at a distance.

01:05:34.660 | When we were kids, we liked-

01:05:35.500 | - Targeted.

01:05:36.320 | - Dirt clod wars, right.

01:05:37.160 | - Targeted impact at a distance.

01:05:37.980 | - Targeted, right.

01:05:38.820 | What an incredible display of funneling the laws

01:05:41.340 | of physics and engineering into something

01:05:43.460 | that can have enormous action at a distance

01:05:45.880 | and perhaps even take us into new galaxies.

01:05:48.360 | Amazing, right?

01:05:50.140 | - The word sin in many languages means to miss the target.

01:05:53.900 | Right, and it speaks to exactly what you're describing.

01:05:58.140 | Like that, the cache of action at a distance,

01:06:03.140 | that's unbelievably deeply embedded in us.

01:06:06.060 | That's why I made that throwing gesture.

01:06:07.520 | Like human beings throw, that's our physiology, right?

01:06:12.260 | We can throw something at a distant target.

01:06:14.740 | Well, that's structured our cognition.

01:06:17.900 | We're using our thoughts to hit distant targets.

01:06:21.140 | That's what we do.

01:06:22.380 | All the games that young men play,

01:06:24.220 | so many of those games are target games.

01:06:26.380 | All of the sports spectacles

01:06:28.940 | that people wanna participate in vicariously,

01:06:31.100 | even vicariously, they're target hitting games.

01:06:34.580 | Like our gaze specifies as the center of a target.

01:06:38.000 | There's targets everywhere.

01:06:39.640 | And we're unbelievably focused on bridging the gap

01:06:43.680 | between where we are and where we're going.

01:06:45.800 | Yeah, that's the whole perceptual landscape.

01:06:48.000 | - I'd like to take a quick break

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01:08:36.360 | So this thing about action at a distance, to me,

01:08:39.340 | feels like so inherent to our progression as a species.

01:08:41.720 | Most technologies are about that.

01:08:43.160 | In fact, if you think about social media,

01:08:45.040 | somebody tweets something and when people react to it,

01:08:47.700 | maybe positively or negatively,

01:08:49.860 | the school shooter in a very dark example,

01:08:52.460 | a sad or tragic example, right?

01:08:54.440 | Action at a distance.

01:08:56.120 | Then you think about pornography and masturbation,

01:08:58.120 | and I'm not passing any moral judgment here.

01:09:00.740 | It's like the ultimate form of creating action

01:09:04.500 | at a distance would be to create a new human being

01:09:07.520 | with somebody, right?

01:09:09.120 | I mean, you're propagating it in physical distance,

01:09:12.740 | creating a new being, and in time, right?

01:09:15.240 | I mean, incredible.

01:09:16.480 | And then you think about masturbation

01:09:18.320 | and you think about pornography,

01:09:20.240 | and there is no action at a distance.

01:09:23.200 | And I'm not just punning here.

01:09:24.760 | I mean, literally, there's not much action at a distance.

01:09:26.800 | It's all up close to oneself,

01:09:28.000 | but there's no impact on anybody.

01:09:30.520 | It's almost as if the energy that we're born with

01:09:33.680 | to be able to create positive things,

01:09:36.760 | to evolve our species through action at a distance,

01:09:39.040 | through creation of knowledge, technology,

01:09:42.240 | children, communities, culture.

01:09:45.960 | - It's the ultimate expression of sterility.

01:09:48.000 | - It's just looped back into oneself.

01:09:49.960 | It's as if, and I don't know what language there is

01:09:53.180 | for this in biology, but it's as if

01:09:54.760 | all that dopaminergic drive is just kind of looped back

01:09:56.880 | into oneself and it goes nowhere.

01:09:59.240 | And I think when I hear about the incredibly,

01:10:02.040 | what the language for it is only like the diminished souls

01:10:05.960 | of these people who are coming to me saying like,

01:10:09.760 | help, and I'm thinking, okay, listen,

01:10:11.680 | I'm a podcaster, I'm a scientist.

01:10:12.840 | I know some things about the dopaminergic system,

01:10:14.480 | but there are ways that they can get help.

01:10:16.280 | I think there are 12-step programs for this and so forth

01:10:18.360 | and other things, but I think what they're saying

01:10:21.480 | is that they're just kind of dissolving

01:10:23.880 | in their own reflex,

01:10:28.840 | but there's no action at a distance for them.

01:10:31.120 | This is the same thing I see with the failure to launch kids

01:10:34.000 | who are still living at home,

01:10:35.200 | who are not having any action at a distance.

01:10:36.800 | I think we were designed to disperse from our families

01:10:39.280 | and to create action at a distance up until a certain age.

01:10:43.040 | But I see so many of the problems that we face

01:10:48.440 | as failure to find a productive way

01:10:51.880 | to have action at a distance.

01:10:52.720 | - Well, that's a failure venture, I would say,

01:10:54.560 | in the terminology that I've been developing.

01:10:56.960 | So, for example, in this book,

01:11:00.100 | in We Who Wrestle With God,

01:11:01.780 | one of the stories I analyze is the story of Abraham,

01:11:07.040 | and it's a very interesting story psychologically.

01:11:09.520 | I mean, I think it's stunning, actually,

01:11:12.280 | and I'll lay some of that out for you

01:11:14.120 | and tell me what you think about it.

01:11:15.320 | So, the divine is characterized

01:11:19.920 | in the classic stories of our culture as the ultimate up.

01:11:24.920 | So you can think about the divine as the target as such,

01:11:31.840 | rather than any particular target.

01:11:33.840 | So here's a way of thinking about it.

01:11:35.640 | So an ambition will seize you,

01:11:39.020 | and then you'll aim at fulfilling that ambition,

01:11:41.240 | but once the ambition is fulfilled,

01:11:43.560 | a new ambition makes itself manifest,

01:11:45.720 | which might be a greater ambition, let's say,

01:11:47.880 | if your personality's expansive,

01:11:49.820 | and then if you fulfill that, the same thing will happen.

01:11:52.640 | So then you could imagine that there's a meta-ambition

01:11:56.120 | behind all proximal ambitions.

01:11:58.600 | Okay, now the divine,

01:12:00.320 | characterization of the divine

01:12:01.880 | is a characterization of that meta-ambition.

01:12:04.360 | That's a good way of thinking about it.

01:12:06.160 | So it's something that recedes as you approach it,

01:12:08.820 | but it's also the thing that all ambitions have in common.

01:12:12.320 | And we know there is such a thing,

01:12:13.560 | because otherwise we wouldn't have a concept of ambition,

01:12:16.400 | which speaks to a commonality among ambitions.

01:12:20.120 | Okay, in the story of Abraham,

01:12:24.000 | the divine is characterized in relationship

01:12:26.800 | to something like ambition.

01:12:28.660 | So Abraham has the,

01:12:32.400 | he's already imbursed in a situation

01:12:34.360 | that's akin in a way to the scenario of a wealthy

01:12:39.360 | and a person in the modern world

01:12:41.200 | who's in a situation of abundance.

01:12:43.460 | Abraham's parents are wealthy, and they provide for him.

01:12:48.000 | There's nothing he needs to do.

01:12:49.860 | And in consequence, so he's attained the socialist utopia

01:12:54.080 | or the consumerist utopia.

01:12:56.520 | You can look at it either way.

01:12:58.380 | And there's no reason for him to move forward.

01:13:02.520 | So he doesn't.

01:13:03.420 | He doesn't do anything till he's 75.

01:13:05.960 | And then the voice comes to him,

01:13:07.600 | which is the voice of adventure,

01:13:09.000 | and it's God in this story.

01:13:10.960 | That's how God is defined, right?

01:13:13.920 | And God says to Abraham,

01:13:16.380 | "You have to leave all this comfort,"

01:13:21.600 | which is a very interesting proposition to begin with.

01:13:24.520 | It's like, why the hell would you leave that

01:13:26.160 | when you have everything you need?

01:13:28.080 | Well, the implication is that

01:13:30.960 | you don't have everything you need

01:13:32.480 | when you're being delivered everything you need.

01:13:34.380 | That isn't how life works.

01:13:36.440 | So God says, "You have to leave your father's tent.

01:13:41.040 | "You have to leave your tribe.

01:13:42.480 | "You have to leave those who speak your language.

01:13:44.700 | "You have to venture out into the world."

01:13:47.120 | So God is conceptualized in this story as the impulse,

01:13:52.120 | the voice that compels you out into the world

01:13:56.220 | and that encourages you to do so.

01:13:58.380 | So that's a hypothesis about what the ultimate up is.

01:14:03.260 | And Abraham agrees, and he does so in two ways.

01:14:07.120 | He builds an altar signifying his aim,

01:14:12.120 | that he's going to abide by the command of this voice

01:14:15.900 | or the invitation of this voice,

01:14:18.260 | and that he'll make the appropriate sacrifices.

01:14:22.140 | It's a crucial, it's a crucial,

01:14:25.200 | it's a crucial point to understand

01:14:26.820 | because the process of transformation requires sacrifice.

01:14:31.440 | To be more than you are means you have to let go

01:14:33.860 | of that which you were.

01:14:35.600 | You have to make sacrifices.

01:14:36.780 | Now, Abraham's life is punctuated by a sequence

01:14:39.720 | of reaffirmations of his upward aim

01:14:42.820 | and declamations of his willingness to sacrifice.

01:14:46.540 | Every time he finishes an adventure,

01:14:48.380 | he reconstitutes the covenant, right?

01:14:51.620 | So this is this agreement to follow the voice of adventure.

01:14:55.120 | Okay.

01:14:55.960 | God makes him a deal, that's the covenant.

01:14:59.140 | It's a very interesting deal.

01:15:00.460 | So now imagine, biologically speaking,

01:15:03.380 | that there is an instinct to integrate

01:15:06.740 | that operates within us.

01:15:08.460 | Okay, so now it's not, it's just as fundamental

01:15:12.340 | as the hypothalamic motivational states, let's say,

01:15:16.020 | but it's more sophisticated.

01:15:17.540 | And what it's trying to do is to integrate

01:15:19.420 | all the motivational states across time and socially, right?

01:15:24.420 | And then imagine it manifests itself as an instinct,

01:15:28.060 | to be something like the instinct to mature, right?

01:15:31.540 | To move forward, right?

01:15:32.860 | To leave your zone of comfort, right?

01:15:35.140 | And maybe there have been people like Csikszentmihalyi

01:15:38.220 | who've characterized that as the attractiveness of flow,

01:15:41.700 | and maybe it's associated with the exploratory circuit

01:15:46.100 | in the hypothalamus that's mediated by dopamine.

01:15:48.900 | Okay, but it's got its character.

01:15:51.580 | Now, the character of that instinct in this story

01:15:56.120 | is the way it's characterized is as the voice of adventure.

01:16:00.100 | So it's the thing that asks you to move

01:16:02.160 | beyond your zone of comfort and go into the foreign world.

01:16:05.540 | Now, the advantage to that is that you fortify yourself

01:16:10.540 | and you develop, right?

01:16:12.080 | So no matter how good you are now,

01:16:14.220 | if you push yourself to the edge,

01:16:16.260 | you're gonna be better than you are.

01:16:17.820 | And that's a better win than merely being good

01:16:22.480 | like you are now.

01:16:23.860 | So that would be participation

01:16:25.320 | in that transformative process

01:16:27.080 | is a higher form of attainment

01:16:28.860 | than mere attainment of any specific goal.

01:16:32.060 | Okay, so that's the call to adventure.

01:16:34.760 | That's the call to a quest.

01:16:36.280 | That's what Gandalf offers Bilbo, for example.

01:16:39.800 | Okay, God characterizes the consequences of that.

01:16:44.180 | And this is so cool.

01:16:45.680 | When I figured this out, it just flattened me.

01:16:47.380 | It's so interesting.

01:16:48.760 | God says, okay, if you,

01:16:50.560 | God is defined as that which says this, by the way.

01:16:53.980 | If you push yourself beyond your zone of comfort,

01:16:58.360 | even if it's functioning for you,

01:17:00.280 | that's Abraham's situation, here's what'll happen.

01:17:02.780 | You'll become, you'll live your life

01:17:05.380 | in a manner that's a blessing to you.

01:17:07.860 | So that's a good deal, eh?

01:17:09.120 | Because lots, the miserable people you're talking about,

01:17:11.840 | the depressed people, the trapped people,

01:17:14.420 | their life isn't a blessing to themselves.

01:17:16.520 | So what's a pathway to blessing?

01:17:18.440 | Well, it's not satiation, not in this formulation.

01:17:21.520 | It's voluntary, it's the voluntary quest.

01:17:25.320 | And it's characterized by adventure.

01:17:27.060 | So that's deal number one.

01:17:28.660 | You'll live in a life that'll be a blessing to you.

01:17:30.960 | Okay, and then God says, that's not all that'll happen.

01:17:35.000 | You'll be a blessing to yourself in a manner

01:17:37.980 | that will make you renowned among other people, justly.

01:17:42.900 | So that's a good deal, because we know that people,

01:17:45.440 | men in particular, are very status-oriented,

01:17:48.800 | partly because their reproductive success

01:17:50.920 | is highly correlated with their social status,

01:17:54.200 | and the psychopaths game that,

01:17:56.060 | but still, it's like, renown is crucially important.

01:17:59.480 | You wanna be the quarterback

01:18:00.920 | on the shoulders of your teammates, you know?

01:18:03.520 | So that'll be the second thing that happens,

01:18:05.960 | and then the same voice says, and that's not all.

01:18:09.520 | You'll be a blessing to yourself and be renowned

01:18:12.000 | in a manner that will maximize the probability

01:18:14.280 | that you will establish something of lasting value.

01:18:17.400 | That's a good deal, so that's stretching across time,

01:18:20.400 | multi-generationally, because God tells Abraham

01:18:23.720 | that if he follows the pathway of adventure,

01:18:25.520 | he'll be the father of nations.

01:18:27.800 | So what that means is that he'll establish

01:18:29.800 | the pattern of paternal conduct

01:18:31.560 | that will maximize the success of his offspring

01:18:36.560 | in the longest possible run, 'cause that's so cool.

01:18:41.040 | This is success at a distance and over time.

01:18:44.520 | Exactly, and then the final offer is,

01:18:46.840 | you'll do that in a way that'll bring abundance

01:18:48.680 | to everyone else, too.

01:18:50.440 | Now, so think about what that means biologically.

01:18:52.560 | This is so cool, and I can't see how it can be wrong.

01:18:56.420 | It means that if you hearken to the voice

01:18:59.720 | that calls you out of your zone of comfort,

01:19:01.600 | and you do that voluntarily,

01:19:02.940 | so you put yourself on the edge of adventure,

01:19:05.200 | you will be following the instinct

01:19:08.280 | that has already evolved to make your life

01:19:10.880 | a blessing to yourself, to make you successful

01:19:13.480 | among other people, to maximize your probability

01:19:16.360 | of long-term success, and to do that in a way

01:19:18.460 | that brings abundance to your community.

01:19:20.600 | And then you think, look,

01:19:21.960 | let's take the contrary hypothesis.

01:19:24.640 | The contrary hypothesis would be twofold.

01:19:26.840 | There is no compulsion to adventure.

01:19:29.040 | It's like, that seems highly improbable.

01:19:31.000 | Or that the compulsion to adventure

01:19:33.440 | isn't aligned with psychological and social well-being.

01:19:37.080 | Well, what's the chance that the fundamental drive

01:19:40.880 | that would facilitate your transformation across time

01:19:44.720 | would not be aligned with your psychological integrity

01:19:47.440 | and the success of the community?

01:19:49.160 | Like, we wouldn't be social animals if that was the case.

01:19:51.960 | So as far as I can tell, that has to be true.

01:19:56.320 | Now, that doesn't mean you can get lost in false adventures.

01:20:01.060 | That can happen.

01:20:01.900 | That's what an addiction is, or that's what pornography is.

01:20:06.040 | It's a false adventure, right?

01:20:07.400 | It's failure to hit the proper target, you might say.

01:20:10.680 | But that central drive to integration

01:20:15.160 | across time and communally,

01:20:16.960 | why wouldn't that be an instinct?

01:20:18.480 | And then we could cap that with an observation

01:20:21.040 | that I also think is self-evidently true

01:20:23.500 | once you understand it.

01:20:25.320 | So imagine that you're a father.

01:20:27.400 | Now, this spirit of adventure

01:20:29.080 | is often characterized paternally, right,

01:20:31.880 | insofar as God's the father in these ancient stories.

01:20:35.800 | So think about this.

01:20:36.980 | So when you see your son,

01:20:39.400 | now, it's also true of your daughter,

01:20:40.640 | but I'll focus on sons for the moment.

01:20:42.680 | When you see your son, and you love your son,

01:20:45.640 | when you see your son pushing himself beyond his own limits

01:20:50.640 | in an adventurous manner, if you're a good father,

01:20:54.120 | you definitely encourage that, right?

01:20:56.400 | And I would say, insofar as you encourage that,

01:21:00.000 | you are a good father.

01:21:01.440 | And that would mean that you're the embodiment

01:21:03.720 | of that spirit that calls to adventure.

01:21:06.160 | That's why Abraham is characterized, for example,

01:21:08.400 | in this story as forging an alliance

01:21:11.120 | with the spirit of his ancestors,

01:21:13.760 | with the deity of his ancestors.

01:21:15.740 | He's embodying the call to adventure,

01:21:18.880 | and that's what makes him the father

01:21:20.920 | whose reproductive enterprise is successful

01:21:23.420 | across the broadest possible span of time.

01:21:26.160 | I think that's, I just can't see how that can be wrong.

01:21:30.320 | And that's a characterization of the divine.

01:21:33.000 | There's other, it complexifies it,

01:21:35.560 | because what the stories are trying to do

01:21:37.480 | is to give you an image

01:21:40.360 | of what that integrating personality might be like,

01:21:42.720 | and it's sophisticated,

01:21:43.900 | so a single characterization is insufficient.

01:21:47.200 | So in the story of Noah,

01:21:48.860 | God is, this personality is characterized quite differently.

01:21:54.760 | So Noah is presented as a man who's wise in his generations,

01:21:58.700 | which means that for his time and place,

01:22:00.960 | he's moral and reputable.

01:22:03.960 | So he's the sort of guy that people would go to for advice

01:22:06.600 | because he's lived a life

01:22:08.920 | that's emblematic of his wisdom, let's say.

01:22:11.520 | Okay, now, a voice comes to him and says,

01:22:14.600 | batten down the hatches there, mate.

01:22:17.040 | Trouble's coming.

01:22:18.520 | Okay, so here's the hypothesis.

01:22:21.100 | The hypothesis is the voice that calls to the wise

01:22:24.000 | to prepare in times of trouble

01:22:25.760 | is a manifestation of the divine,

01:22:28.120 | and it's the same as the voice

01:22:29.960 | that calls the unwilling to adventure.

01:22:32.800 | That's the monotheistic hypothesis,

01:22:34.560 | and so you can see what the imagination is doing

01:22:36.760 | is agglomerating these different characterizations

01:22:40.480 | of high aim,

01:22:41.800 | insisting that there's an integrated unity behind them,

01:22:45.080 | and then trying to conceptualize

01:22:46.840 | that integrated unity across time.

01:22:49.720 | And so, and I think that's done,

01:22:51.840 | I think that's done with radical success

01:22:53.840 | in the biblical library,

01:22:55.340 | that the culmination of the library of stories

01:22:59.720 | is the impressionistic representation

01:23:04.280 | of this integrating pattern,

01:23:06.040 | and I think that's what people call on

01:23:07.760 | when they're engaging in a religious enterprise

01:23:11.040 | that is radically successful,

01:23:12.880 | like that happened in the case of your friend, right?

01:23:16.120 | So he got a new personality,

01:23:17.920 | and that new personality had different incentive structure,

01:23:21.360 | and so that just superseded the addiction.

01:23:23.600 | It's almost as if, I mean,

01:23:25.800 | I realize that for people listening,

01:23:27.200 | it might not seem like this,

01:23:28.520 | but to us, his friends who had seen him try so hard

01:23:32.360 | in the context of people he truly, deeply cares about,

01:23:35.160 | more than anybody in the world, his children, his wife,

01:23:38.280 | it was almost like he got a brain transplant.

01:23:41.160 | It was astonishing.

01:23:43.400 | How does he account for it?

01:23:44.640 | Like, if you asked him, like,

01:23:46.440 | okay, you had every reason to change, and yet you didn't,

01:23:51.440 | and then all of a sudden you did,

01:23:53.280 | like, how does he understand that?

01:23:55.280 | - He uses very Christian religious language.

01:24:00.280 | He said that he felt Jesus's love for him,

01:24:06.560 | and he saw an image of who he could become.

01:24:09.540 | This was important, perhaps, no doubt,

01:24:12.400 | and not just perhaps, but no doubt,

01:24:14.080 | of who he could become.

01:24:16.000 | - And that was worth it.

01:24:17.360 | - And he had the adequate social support within this place,

01:24:22.360 | and so there was reinforcement,

01:24:25.040 | but what's remarkable is that he was able to take that

01:24:28.680 | outside of this place.

01:24:31.080 | It was a residential facility, out of this place.

01:24:34.200 | - And carry it with him.

01:24:35.040 | - And to this day, he is rock solid in that domain,

01:24:40.000 | and I will say in all the other domains of his life, too,

01:24:42.600 | extremely successful as an artist.

01:24:44.400 | I don't want to out him.

01:24:45.640 | You know, extremely successful as a commercial artist,

01:24:49.160 | and happy, and in service,

01:24:52.760 | and just seems like he got a brain transplant.

01:24:57.160 | - Right, so there's a mystery there

01:24:58.640 | that's kind of threefold.

01:24:59.920 | One is, what the hell did he mean

01:25:03.080 | that he realized that Jesus Christ loved him?

01:25:05.640 | Right, that's okay, what do you mean by that?

01:25:07.560 | And then somehow that's associated with the vision

01:25:10.640 | he developed of who he could be,

01:25:12.560 | if he was everything he could be.

01:25:14.140 | There's a relationship between those two things.

01:25:16.640 | And then there's this third mystery,

01:25:18.280 | is the culmination of those two phenomena,

01:25:23.120 | freedom of his addiction,

01:25:24.500 | even out of the context of the center.

01:25:27.240 | - That's right.

01:25:28.080 | - Very difficult to understand that.

01:25:29.320 | But you know, we know, think about it this way.

01:25:34.320 | If you're possessed by rage,

01:25:36.240 | different phenomena have dopaminergic cachet to you

01:25:40.720 | than if you're possessed by, like, sexual desire.

01:25:45.160 | Like, obviously, right? - Absolutely.

01:25:46.800 | - Right, so the idea that a given stimuli

01:25:50.680 | produces a given motivational response is incorrect

01:25:54.480 | because that's framework dependent, right?

01:25:57.520 | And then most, so I think one of the best ways

01:26:00.240 | to understand a motivational drive

01:26:02.160 | is that a motivational drive grips the target.

01:26:05.320 | It establishes the target, right?

01:26:07.600 | And it may increase the probability

01:26:11.880 | that certain action patterns will make themselves manifest.

01:26:14.720 | That would be kind of a compulsive element.

01:26:16.440 | But fundamentally, what it's doing is changing the target.

01:26:19.600 | That rearranges the perceptual landscape

01:26:21.880 | and it transforms the emotions.

01:26:23.440 | Because now, if your target is there,

01:26:26.520 | things that lead you there are dopaminergically relevant.

01:26:30.120 | If your target is there,

01:26:31.560 | things that lead you there are relevant.

01:26:33.640 | Same underlying emotion, but the stimuli, so to speak,

01:26:38.640 | that give rise to the emotion are radically different.

01:26:41.080 | So now, he has a different orientation and aim.

01:26:44.520 | And so, the incentive structure of his psyche

01:26:49.000 | is radically transformed.

01:26:50.680 | Now, we know that can happen because that happens to you

01:26:52.880 | when you move from one motivated state to another.

01:26:55.160 | - I think in 12-step programs,

01:26:56.600 | they allow the steps to be milestones.

01:27:00.120 | I mean, there's clearly a dopaminergic component.

01:27:01.880 | I hope people understand that dopamine is dumb.

01:27:04.360 | In fact, dopamine isn't dumb.

01:27:05.840 | Dopamine has no intelligence at all.

01:27:08.000 | It's just a currency of motivation and reward.

01:27:11.800 | - Which is why it can be gamed by cocaine.

01:27:13.960 | - Which is why it can be gamed by cocaine

01:27:15.400 | or most anything that can ferret its way

01:27:19.600 | into the hypothalamic system.

01:27:21.320 | And I hope people picked up on what you said before

01:27:23.880 | because it's so important that as one moves toward a target,

01:27:28.880 | dopamine increases en route to that target.

01:27:32.040 | I'm rephrasing what you said before.

01:27:34.320 | You said it wonderfully.

01:27:36.040 | I just wanna make sure people understand

01:27:37.640 | that as that dopamine increases,

01:27:40.200 | the probability that your perception

01:27:42.160 | will go to something other than the target

01:27:44.960 | decreases exponentially.

01:27:46.840 | As you get closer and closer,

01:27:48.480 | you get more and more dopamine.

01:27:49.640 | The greater the elevation in dopamine,

01:27:51.120 | the lower the probability that you'll engage

01:27:52.920 | in any other pattern of self.

01:27:55.400 | It's like it's almost, or personality type,

01:27:58.120 | other than the one that you're engaged in

01:27:59.480 | in pursuit of this behavior will emerge.

01:28:01.480 | - Not least because as you approach successfully,

01:28:04.800 | the probability of ultimate success is obviously increasing.

01:28:08.400 | So it makes perfect sense that you would narrow in focus.

01:28:11.400 | You run faster as you see the finish line.

01:28:13.800 | - Right. - Faster and faster.

01:28:15.920 | This concept of sin as missing the target

01:28:18.800 | or this definition of sin, I think is incredibly important.

01:28:21.040 | - Hamartia is the Greek word

01:28:22.360 | and it's literally an archery term,

01:28:24.000 | but it's also the word for sin in ancient Hebrew

01:28:27.200 | is also an archery term.

01:28:28.880 | And there's other languages where that's the case,

01:28:31.520 | but it's really important to understand

01:28:33.400 | that that notion is predicated

01:28:37.000 | on this target seeking psychophysiology.

01:28:41.360 | And that that's unbelievably deeply built into us

01:28:44.040 | as you pointed out, our eyes are target established.

01:28:47.320 | Well, it's so important to us

01:28:49.080 | that we infer aim from gaze, right?

01:28:52.960 | And it's more than that.

01:28:54.640 | Not only do we infer aim from gaze,

01:28:58.240 | we mimic the psychophysiological state

01:29:00.960 | of the target that we're watching

01:29:03.320 | as a consequence of our inference of aim from gaze.

01:29:06.920 | So if I can see what you're looking at,

01:29:09.760 | then I can occupy the same psychophysiological state

01:29:13.080 | that you do and that's the basis of my understanding.

01:29:15.880 | - Oh, this is so important.

01:29:17.040 | And there's something that I've never talked about

01:29:20.240 | on this or any other podcast,

01:29:21.480 | which is that in humans,

01:29:23.240 | we have a massive expansion

01:29:25.400 | of an area of the frontal cortex

01:29:26.760 | called the frontal eye fields.

01:29:28.440 | So there is circuitry deep in the brain.

01:29:30.520 | If you wanna look it up, it's superior colliculus.

01:29:32.520 | It's also called the tectum.

01:29:33.560 | In other species, it means roof.

01:29:34.760 | It's the roof of the midbrain, et cetera,

01:29:36.720 | that generate reflexive eye movements.

01:29:38.880 | You stimulate in there, it's like a machine.

01:29:41.140 | In fact, a colleague of mine

01:29:42.920 | who's now retired at Stanford, Eric Knudson,

01:29:44.720 | who did some beautiful work on neuroplasticity,

01:29:47.440 | was describing an experiment

01:29:48.360 | where they take out the frontal cortex of these owls.

01:29:50.520 | Owls are because they don't have much eye movements.

01:29:54.480 | They move their head almost all the way around, right?

01:29:56.880 | We've all seen that.

01:29:58.240 | And they use this for homing in on their targets.

01:30:02.240 | The owl or a monkey or a human

01:30:06.160 | in the absence of a prefrontal cortex

01:30:08.000 | or suppression of prefrontal cortex becomes like a machine.

01:30:10.280 | You click here, they look there.

01:30:11.320 | - Right, right. - Click here,

01:30:12.160 | they look there.

01:30:13.140 | Puppies are like this.

01:30:14.320 | Kittens are like this.

01:30:15.720 | Everything's a stimulus.

01:30:16.860 | Why?

01:30:17.700 | Because there isn't that top-down inhibition

01:30:19.440 | of those reflexes.

01:30:20.480 | In humans, we have an area-

01:30:21.960 | - That's why a cat with no brain is hyper-exploratory.

01:30:25.800 | - Right, everything's a target.

01:30:28.180 | - Everything's a target. - Everything's a target.

01:30:29.160 | - Everything is a target.

01:30:30.160 | - And there's no context-dependent learning, right?

01:30:32.400 | I love that you gave the example of the decerebrate cats.

01:30:35.360 | They even can do fictive motion.

01:30:36.920 | They can walk on a treadmill

01:30:38.040 | and it's like with no cortex.

01:30:39.560 | It's amazing. - Yeah, right?

01:30:40.400 | It is amazing. - Makes you rethink the cortex.

01:30:41.720 | - Yeah, that's for sure.

01:30:43.120 | - And humans have these frontal eye fields

01:30:45.320 | which are an evolved area.

01:30:46.640 | They're present in other species too,

01:30:47.840 | but they're massively expanded in humans.

01:30:50.160 | So this is a cortical area, a frontal cortical area

01:30:53.680 | devoted to controlling gaze

01:30:55.520 | and the context and control of gaze.

01:30:57.840 | So it no longer becomes just a reflex that you can suppress

01:31:01.000 | as in the case with an adult cat versus a kitten

01:31:03.280 | or a dog versus a puppy.

01:31:05.760 | The frontal eye fields actually regulate

01:31:07.720 | all sorts of context-dependent like,

01:31:09.720 | oh, like he's looking at me directly.

01:31:11.480 | Is it aggressive? - Yeah.

01:31:13.360 | - Well, then maybe I'll activate my aggression

01:31:14.920 | or maybe I'll brace my defenses or,

01:31:17.000 | wow, we came to this party together,

01:31:19.380 | but she seems super interested in like directing her gaze.

01:31:22.800 | How are we inferring this?

01:31:23.920 | Sometimes it's body language.

01:31:25.120 | Sometimes it's this.

01:31:25.960 | Sometimes he looked at her.

01:31:26.880 | There are all these memes about this, right?

01:31:28.440 | - Right, right, right. - Right?

01:31:29.640 | The famous look over the shoulder meme

01:31:31.920 | that seems to have taken over the internet

01:31:33.320 | from time to time. - With the appropriate

01:31:34.480 | facial response. - Right, exactly.

01:31:36.400 | So humans have a massively expanded notion

01:31:41.400 | of what gaze is and our ability to control gaze

01:31:44.800 | and understanding of gaze.

01:31:46.180 | So when you raise this idea,

01:31:48.860 | that when you raise this fact, rather,

01:31:50.240 | about gaze defining the target

01:31:53.280 | and that looking at others' gaze

01:31:55.800 | allows us to understand what they are defining

01:31:58.560 | as the target, we started to get into notions

01:32:00.600 | of theory of mind and things of that sort.

01:32:02.800 | So what that implies,

01:32:04.280 | in keeping with our previous conversation,

01:32:06.480 | is that as you mature and your cortex integrates

01:32:10.720 | and you become cortically dominant,

01:32:13.620 | the targets of your gaze become voluntary, right?

01:32:17.920 | This is a big deal because it means

01:32:19.760 | that you can concentrate on the distal,

01:32:22.600 | let's say, the temporally distal,

01:32:25.260 | at the expense of the proximal.

01:32:27.600 | So if you're walking down the street

01:32:32.080 | and you hear a loud and sudden noise behind you,

01:32:34.520 | you'll do an anti-predator crouch and then turn

01:32:37.360 | and you'll do that, essentially, automatically.

01:32:39.680 | - So curl up. - Yeah, and then turn.

01:32:41.600 | - Like turtle up and then look.

01:32:42.440 | - And you turn to the place

01:32:44.640 | where your stereoscopic audition has indicated

01:32:47.300 | that the noise emanated from, right?

01:32:49.680 | And that's automatic.

01:32:51.640 | That's the control of the eye, gaze,

01:32:54.160 | and bodily posture by those underlying.

01:32:57.040 | - Yeah, this is a superior colliculus.

01:32:58.480 | It has a map of auditory world.

01:33:00.720 | So when you hear something to your right,

01:33:01.920 | you turn to your right.

01:33:02.760 | - Right, right, and you do that before you think, right?

01:33:04.960 | Okay, so that's an activation of the eye fields,

01:33:08.640 | let's say, by these underlying motivational systems

01:33:12.780 | that have this personality-like autonomy.

01:33:15.160 | But you can orient your,

01:33:19.560 | part of the religious enterprise

01:33:20.880 | is to orient your eyes heavenward.

01:33:23.760 | Well, what does that mean?

01:33:24.820 | Well, you can think about it.

01:33:25.840 | It means to search out the North Star

01:33:27.800 | that navigates for you unerringly,

01:33:30.540 | regardless of the situation at hand.

01:33:33.360 | Imagine you could progress towards a target

01:33:35.280 | in a manner that made all the potential targets

01:33:37.840 | that you could progress toward more likely.

01:33:40.640 | It's a meta-target.

01:33:41.880 | You said that's what happened to your friend, right?

01:33:44.240 | Is not only did he dispense with his addiction,

01:33:47.020 | but all of the other enterprises that he was associating,

01:33:50.760 | that he was pursuing in his life became more effective.

01:33:53.840 | - It's almost like,

01:33:56.740 | it is as if every goal was like elevated.

01:34:01.340 | - Right.

01:34:02.180 | - And it's funny because for the first couple of months

01:34:04.600 | that I was interacting with him, I thought,

01:34:06.540 | - Okay.

01:34:07.380 | - Like he's different.

01:34:08.500 | - Yeah.

01:34:09.340 | - And I thought, you know, like most people would,

01:34:11.220 | you know, perhaps would think like, all right, let's see.

01:34:14.740 | Let's see, but this has been four years now.

01:34:16.540 | He's very consistent with his program.

01:34:20.360 | He, you know, he's involved in a program

01:34:21.780 | that keeps him on track.

01:34:22.620 | - Right, right, right.

01:34:23.940 | - But he's elevated.

01:34:25.900 | And he's not talking above people.

01:34:27.500 | It's like, he's elevated, but he's grounded.

01:34:29.020 | When you talk to him, he's not kind of off some other place.

01:34:31.340 | He's actually very, very present.

01:34:33.060 | - Yeah.

01:34:33.900 | - And even his text messages are very much of like,

01:34:36.340 | what's going on today?

01:34:37.560 | You know, asking questions that are very much of the now.

01:34:39.980 | - Yeah.

01:34:40.820 | - And it's been a remarkable thing to observe.

01:34:43.800 | - Well, so-

01:34:44.640 | - Because he was about as down in his addiction

01:34:48.180 | and had so much to lose and had essentially risked it

01:34:52.860 | over and over and over to the point where, you know,

01:34:56.940 | I didn't think it was ever gonna turn around.

01:34:59.020 | And all of his friends thought the same.

01:35:01.440 | And his wife, of course, is delighted

01:35:03.180 | and his kids are delighted.

01:35:04.140 | - Of course.

01:35:04.980 | - And I can say this without revealing,

01:35:07.060 | 'cause no one knows, I'm godfather to his son.

01:35:09.460 | And his son is thriving, which is wonderful to see.

01:35:11.740 | And I just think of sometimes about how badly

01:35:13.700 | it could have gone the other way.

01:35:15.520 | - Yeah.

01:35:16.360 | - And it's fantastic.

01:35:17.180 | It's like, he's nothing short of spectacular.

01:35:19.180 | - Okay, so let me put that into a context of,

01:35:23.740 | let's say, an archetypal story.

01:35:25.460 | Okay, so I did a course for Peterson Academy

01:35:28.100 | on the Sermon on the Mount.

01:35:30.300 | And the Sermon on the Mount, it's a meta-goal strategy.

01:35:35.300 | It's very practical.

01:35:37.260 | It's very, very practical.

01:35:38.380 | And it emerges out of the biblical tradition

01:35:40.500 | in a very grounded manner.

01:35:42.460 | It's a logical extension

01:35:43.980 | of the biblical ethical precursors.

01:35:47.660 | So what Christ says to his followers

01:35:50.680 | in the course of the Sermon on the Mount is,

01:35:52.940 | first, orient your eyes upward.

01:35:57.240 | Okay, so that's in alignment with the notion

01:36:00.780 | that the firstborn is to be consecrated to God.

01:36:03.500 | There's a meaning to that.

01:36:04.420 | And the meaning is something like this.

01:36:06.660 | Imagine that your life consists of a sequence of episodes.

01:36:10.220 | Okay, an episode has a beginning and a middle and an end.

01:36:12.780 | The beginning sets the frame for the episode.

01:36:16.060 | So at the beginning of an enterprise,

01:36:17.700 | you want to lift your eyes heavenward

01:36:20.140 | so you establish the highest possible goal

01:36:23.360 | so that that constitutes the frame of perception

01:36:25.940 | for that episode.

01:36:26.780 | That's the idea.

01:36:27.860 | That's why the firstborn should be consecrated to God.

01:36:30.500 | So for example, to think about it prosaically,

01:36:34.020 | before we sat down for our podcast,

01:36:37.420 | because we've done many podcasts,

01:36:40.420 | we strive to inhabit the framework

01:36:43.620 | that will make the podcast most radically successful.

01:36:46.260 | Now, you could imagine that that could be subordinated

01:36:48.500 | to either of our proximal desire for an increase

01:36:51.900 | in short-term personal fame, right?

01:36:54.820 | Or we could try to dominate each other in the conversation.

01:36:57.740 | Or we could orient ourselves properly

01:37:00.620 | and we could do what we could to pursue

01:37:03.180 | the track towards revelation, so to speak,

01:37:06.100 | and we could elevate our conversation in that manner.

01:37:09.020 | Okay, and that would set the frame for the conversation.

01:37:11.180 | And the good podcasters always do that, right?

01:37:14.140 | They're not playing games.

01:37:15.980 | Or if they're playing games,

01:37:17.180 | it's of the highest possible order.

01:37:19.040 | It's a quest.

01:37:20.300 | Yeah, okay, quest for what?

01:37:22.020 | Enlightenment, for truth, right?

01:37:23.660 | For mutual understanding.

01:37:25.060 | And then maybe for the education

01:37:26.760 | of those who are participating.

01:37:28.460 | All right, so Christ says first orient your eyes upward,

01:37:32.660 | right, and that's to love God above all.

01:37:34.580 | So whatever that upward divinity is,

01:37:36.860 | you establish an allegiance with that

01:37:38.900 | and you allow that to determine your perceptions

01:37:41.940 | and your motivations.

01:37:43.060 | Next, operate under the assumption

01:37:45.580 | that other people like you participate

01:37:49.600 | in that nature of that utmost aim and treat them that way.

01:37:54.600 | Next, concentrate on the moment.

01:37:59.580 | Right, right, and that's exactly right

01:38:02.500 | because it's exactly right because

01:38:06.620 | when you specify your aim,

01:38:09.000 | the pathway makes itself manifest.

01:38:11.620 | Otherwise, you could never use your senses to orient.

01:38:14.340 | You'd never get anywhere, right?

01:38:16.660 | So if you aim upward to the best of your ability,

01:38:19.500 | then the pathway upward is what will make itself manifest

01:38:22.900 | in front of you.

01:38:23.740 | Then you have to attend to it.

01:38:25.220 | And so then you get this weird perverse optimality,

01:38:28.740 | which is you're focused on the

01:38:30.860 | longest temporal scale

01:38:35.700 | and the highest possible elevation

01:38:37.540 | and you can make most use of what's right in front of you.

01:38:40.620 | And that, the implication in the Sermon on the Mount

01:38:45.220 | is that there's no difference between that

01:38:47.920 | and participating in life eternal

01:38:50.280 | as it unfolds in the moment.

01:38:52.380 | And I think that seems to me to be exactly right.

01:38:55.340 | It's exactly right.

01:38:56.620 | And so, you know, I was thinking of that

01:38:59.460 | because you said your friends,

01:39:01.220 | all of your friends' endeavors had become elevated.

01:39:04.140 | So imagine that one problem you might wanna solve

01:39:07.340 | is what your goals should be.

01:39:10.000 | But a much deeper problem would be

01:39:12.300 | how do you conceptualize your goals

01:39:14.260 | in relationship to one another

01:39:16.260 | across the broadest span of time and person

01:39:19.660 | so that every goal has the highest probability of succeeding?

01:39:23.340 | So that would be like the pursuit of a metagoal.

01:39:25.260 | I would say that's what defines the religious enterprise.

01:39:28.460 | There's another variant of that, for example.

01:39:30.540 | So a variant of that would be

01:39:33.300 | not how do you solve the problem

01:39:35.980 | of any given thing that terrifies you,

01:39:39.100 | but how do you solve the problem

01:39:40.700 | of the class of things that terrify you?

01:39:43.540 | And the dragon fight mythology

01:39:46.340 | is the solution to that problem.

01:39:48.900 | So the attitude there is you adopt the stance of voluntary,

01:39:53.860 | what, a voluntary approach in the face of terror

01:39:57.180 | because that's the best metastrategy, right?

01:39:59.940 | And that's the strategy that works to protect you

01:40:03.060 | across the largest possible array of dangerous situations.

01:40:07.380 | This is what we learned as clinical psychologists

01:40:10.380 | with exposure therapy, right?

01:40:13.260 | You find the particulars of what someone is afraid of.

01:40:16.300 | That turns out to be somewhat irrelevant.

01:40:18.620 | You teach people to voluntarily confront

01:40:21.220 | what they're avoiding,

01:40:22.420 | and that doesn't make them less afraid.

01:40:24.000 | It makes them more competent and braver,

01:40:26.300 | and that generalizes, right?

01:40:28.740 | And so, yeah, the religious pursuit is the pursuit

01:40:32.220 | of meta goals in relationship

01:40:34.940 | to positive and negative emotion.

01:40:36.260 | That's a good way of thinking about it.

01:40:38.220 | - I'd like to take a quick break

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01:41:54.820 | - I love this idea of looking upward and defining,

01:41:59.820 | or at least having a sense that there's a internalization

01:42:04.920 | of the greatest possible outcome.

01:42:07.020 | And when I say greatest, both for oneself,

01:42:09.500 | but also for the community, right?

01:42:11.340 | - Yeah, that's life more abundant,

01:42:12.820 | or that's the symbolic terminology,

01:42:15.420 | or life in eternity, both of those are the same thing.

01:42:18.840 | So imagine you're fighting with your wife.

01:42:21.180 | Okay, now you're dominated by rage.

01:42:23.420 | Now, the advantage to that is you're ready.

01:42:26.380 | But the disadvantage is you're going to strive

01:42:30.380 | for proximal victory.

01:42:32.340 | Okay, now, you don't wanna be a pushover.

01:42:34.940 | That's a mistake.

01:42:36.420 | So then what could you do instead?

01:42:37.900 | You could pause, and you could remember,

01:42:40.540 | okay, if this could rectify itself

01:42:43.940 | in the best possible manner, what would that look like?

01:42:48.240 | Well, it's complicated, right?

01:42:49.920 | You don't want your wife to be defeated,

01:42:52.300 | and you don't want to be defeated,

01:42:54.060 | and you wanna solve the problem,

01:42:56.580 | but you don't wanna sweep it under the rug.

01:42:58.100 | You wanna solve it in a way that's solved,

01:43:01.160 | that works across time,

01:43:02.940 | that benefits your relationship in an upward manner.

01:43:05.980 | - And you have to make sure that you're not hijacked

01:43:07.780 | by that hypothalamic circuit or personality,

01:43:10.340 | as you've described.

01:43:11.820 | - If you don't alter your aim, you will be,

01:43:15.180 | because you need to substitute.

01:43:16.580 | You gotta think, I'd really like to win this.

01:43:18.740 | Like, I'd seriously like to win this battle.

01:43:20.800 | It's like, no, you need something better than that victory,

01:43:23.900 | and that would be a victory that would deepen

01:43:28.900 | and enrich your relationship and help it grow across time,

01:43:31.980 | and then you can remember that.

01:43:32.980 | It's like, I'm gonna listen.

01:43:34.260 | Even though I think my wife is wrong, I'm gonna listen,

01:43:38.220 | and I'm gonna see if I can find a pathway in the argument

01:43:41.320 | that makes our relationship better,

01:43:43.380 | and then you think, now, you have to really want that,

01:43:45.700 | because if you really want that,

01:43:47.020 | if you got that vision fleshed out properly,

01:43:49.780 | you'll want that more than you'll wanna win,

01:43:52.200 | and then you might say, well, why?

01:43:53.720 | It's like, 'cause it's a better deal.

01:43:55.600 | So there's one of Christ's parables

01:43:57.760 | where he talks about a pearl of great price,

01:44:00.560 | which is the pearl that a rich man

01:44:03.000 | would sell everything he owns to possess,

01:44:05.640 | and it's something like a reference to that.

01:44:08.640 | It's like, why would you ever attain a proximal victory

01:44:12.560 | if you could attain an ultimate victory?

01:44:14.720 | That's the battle, let's say,

01:44:15.980 | between the salvation of the soul and the victory in sin.

01:44:20.980 | That's how the religious language would portray it.

01:44:23.740 | Well, you can win a local victory,

01:44:26.180 | and it looks like you win,

01:44:28.860 | but if you forego the ultimate game,

01:44:32.000 | that's not a victory, that's a defeat, obviously.

01:44:34.380 | It might even be a worse defeat than if you lost.

01:44:36.740 | - Absolutely.

01:44:37.580 | I've been spouting off on social media

01:44:40.420 | and podcasts for a while now

01:44:41.620 | that any big inflection in dopamine

01:44:44.020 | that isn't preceded by a lot of effort

01:44:46.480 | to generate that dopamine inflection is very dangerous.

01:44:50.160 | Think drugs, think pornography,

01:44:52.160 | think highly processed foods.

01:44:53.840 | Think anything that creates this big sense

01:44:56.640 | of indulgence and pleasure without any effort

01:44:59.080 | is running counter-current to our evolutionary wiring.

01:45:02.480 | Now, you could say, well, okay,

01:45:03.400 | so what are we supposed to do?

01:45:04.240 | Move into caves?

01:45:05.420 | - No reward without commensurate sacrifice.

01:45:07.960 | - That's right, of some sort.

01:45:09.720 | And the other issue,

01:45:12.080 | and it's coming up again and again today,

01:45:13.680 | and I love that it is,

01:45:14.600 | is this notion of the temporal domain

01:45:16.940 | of rewards that exist over multiple timescales

01:45:20.160 | or broader timescales.

01:45:21.200 | One of the things that I feel truly lucky for

01:45:24.560 | is the fact that I went the path of science

01:45:26.560 | where, we were chuckling about this earlier,

01:45:29.200 | a project could take a year,

01:45:31.960 | then you have to restart

01:45:32.880 | 'cause that project went nowhere,

01:45:34.680 | and then you finish the project,

01:45:36.260 | you submit a paper, the review.

01:45:38.200 | The reward schedule in science could take four years.

01:45:42.260 | It's not just about getting a degree,

01:45:43.560 | like getting papers through sometimes took a year,

01:45:45.580 | sometimes took two years.

01:45:47.800 | Sometimes things didn't go well

01:45:49.120 | and you had to publish it in a journal

01:45:50.340 | that you wouldn't have wanted to,

01:45:52.080 | or sometimes you had to abandon projects altogether.

01:45:55.540 | So my reward system was trained up on lots of timescales,

01:46:00.300 | short, medium, long timescales.

01:46:02.440 | As I've moved into podcasting,

01:46:04.040 | the temporal loops are shorter, they're faster.

01:46:07.220 | But nonetheless, we do long-form content.

01:46:12.860 | But I think platforms like X, I think are wonderful

01:46:16.060 | if used appropriately.

01:46:16.940 | I think it's especially great nowadays, frankly,

01:46:18.960 | and Instagram, et cetera, they're very useful.

01:46:21.780 | But they train us,

01:46:23.220 | and I imagine they've trained the young brains

01:46:25.260 | that were weaned on them, 'cause I wasn't,

01:46:27.380 | but that were weaned on them for fast temporal timescales.

01:46:32.000 | This isn't like playing a long poker game.

01:46:34.740 | This is like playing the slot machine

01:46:35.900 | over and over and over, right?

01:46:37.720 | It's not like a four-day tournament.

01:46:39.740 | - Complete with intermittent random reinforcement,

01:46:42.140 | which is what happens when something goes viral

01:46:44.260 | unpredictably.

01:46:45.100 | - Right. - Right, right.

01:46:45.940 | It's really, yep, yep.

01:46:47.660 | - And then, of course, we have this notion in this country

01:46:49.940 | that in any moment, it could be a rags to riches

01:46:52.340 | or some overnight fame-type thing

01:46:55.380 | that exists as a possibility in our culture

01:46:57.820 | in a way that it hadn't prior.

01:46:59.460 | So I think that one of the things that could be useful,

01:47:03.020 | just venturing a hypothesis here,

01:47:04.580 | is that young and older people

01:47:07.900 | could take a look at their life and ask,

01:47:10.900 | over what variation of timescales do I derive reward?

01:47:15.900 | - Yeah, definitely. - You know,

01:47:17.060 | training for a marathon is a longer timescale

01:47:19.920 | of rewarding death. - Well, that's also

01:47:20.760 | a hallmark of maturity. - Yeah, yeah.

01:47:22.240 | Yeah, school, a degree, et cetera.

01:47:24.100 | In business, the timescales are sometimes fast,

01:47:27.020 | sometimes short.

01:47:28.620 | - I think you can ask even a better question than that.

01:47:31.700 | The better question would be,

01:47:32.800 | and this is kind of what's referred to

01:47:34.180 | in the Sermon on the Mount,

01:47:35.180 | is how could I optimize my long-term view

01:47:38.060 | while maximizing my focus on the moment?

01:47:40.860 | 'Cause then you get both.

01:47:41.940 | That's a really good deal, right?

01:47:44.620 | Because now you're conducting yourself in a manner

01:47:47.100 | that works in an iterated way that's socially productive,

01:47:52.100 | right, and maybe intergenerationally socially productive.

01:47:55.660 | That would be the best thing to establish.

01:47:57.420 | That's kind of what you're doing as a good father.

01:47:59.740 | But you're doing that in a manner

01:48:00.980 | that enables you to also derive maximal impact

01:48:04.980 | from each step you take forward in the present.

01:48:07.620 | So, Carl Friston told me,

01:48:11.380 | we were talking about entropy and emotion.

01:48:15.020 | And I'd figured out a few years ago

01:48:16.940 | with a couple of my students

01:48:18.060 | that anxiety signifies the emergence of entropy,

01:48:21.980 | like technically, which I was really thrilled about

01:48:24.140 | because it gives emotion a physical grounding,

01:48:27.020 | like a real physical grounding.

01:48:28.660 | And Friston surprised me because he said

01:48:30.740 | he has a theory of positive emotion that's analogous.

01:48:34.700 | He also knew the negative emotion.

01:48:36.300 | He'd also been working in that domain.

01:48:38.780 | He said that you get a dopamine kick

01:48:40.540 | when you reduce the entropy in relationship to a goal.

01:48:44.220 | And I thought, oh my God, that's so cool

01:48:45.860 | because it means that uncertainty is entropy.

01:48:48.660 | When it emerges, you get anxious.

01:48:50.380 | But when you see yourself stepping towards a goal,

01:48:53.620 | you get a dopamine kick.

01:48:54.780 | And the reason that's related to entropy

01:48:57.500 | is 'cause with each successful step you take towards a goal,

01:49:03.180 | you reduce the uncertainty of the pursuit,

01:49:06.340 | which is manifested in that phenomena you described,

01:49:08.900 | which is when you see the finish line,

01:49:10.780 | you start running faster.

01:49:12.340 | Right, so they're both related to entropy.

01:49:15.100 | - Well, to have goals at multiple timescales,

01:49:17.500 | you need to be able to, I love this entropy argument.

01:49:20.660 | It makes total sense that you want to be able

01:49:24.740 | to withstand the periods of time when you don't know

01:49:29.740 | whether or not things are becoming more or less uncertain.

01:49:32.900 | - Yeah, yes.

01:49:33.740 | - This is part of becoming an adult, if you will.

01:49:36.140 | - Okay, okay, so yeah, that was exactly the thread.

01:49:38.300 | So there's two corollaries of that.

01:49:40.060 | One is that the more valuable the goal

01:49:42.980 | towards which you're progressing,

01:49:45.300 | the higher the dopamine kick per unit of advancement.

01:49:48.480 | So what that means is you want an ultimate goal

01:49:52.220 | operating in the domain of each proximal sub-goal.

01:49:56.260 | And that's what happens with this upward orientation.

01:49:58.620 | It's like what you're trying to do is to make things

01:50:01.680 | as good as they could be, whatever that means,

01:50:04.300 | over the longest possible span of time

01:50:06.540 | for the largest number of people, you included.

01:50:08.940 | Now, you're not gonna know exactly how to do that,

01:50:11.140 | but that can be your goal.

01:50:12.740 | Okay, now that's gonna inform your perceptions

01:50:15.380 | and your perceptions of pathway,

01:50:17.260 | but it's also gonna modify your reward system

01:50:19.400 | because now every proximal step forward

01:50:22.500 | is an indicator of entropy reduction

01:50:24.860 | in regard to that meta-goal.

01:50:26.620 | Well, there isn't any, by definition,

01:50:28.520 | there isn't anything you can do

01:50:30.100 | that's more exciting than that.

01:50:31.460 | See, that kind of explains why your friend

01:50:34.460 | was able to pop out of his addictive frame

01:50:36.280 | because now he's doing something that's so worthwhile

01:50:40.220 | that the temptation of alcohol, let's say,

01:50:42.460 | pales in comparison.

01:50:44.140 | Right, right.

01:50:44.980 | - Right, it's a rewriting of the reward contingencies.

01:50:47.380 | - Yeah, yeah, right, exactly.

01:50:48.820 | And now you could imagine that,

01:50:51.220 | you could imagine a situation where a culture

01:50:53.820 | explores across time to find out

01:50:57.340 | how to characterize that goal

01:50:59.940 | such that if that goal is pursued,

01:51:02.700 | people integrate psychologically

01:51:04.380 | in a manner that integrates them socially

01:51:06.660 | across large spans of time.

01:51:08.380 | I think that's what happens

01:51:09.660 | when the monotheistic revelation emerges.

01:51:12.660 | That's what's happening from a biological perspective

01:51:17.460 | is that we're starting to characterize

01:51:19.100 | the longest-term goal.

01:51:20.900 | Yeah, something like that.

01:51:22.900 | - This is why I believe that pornography

01:51:25.340 | is potentially so poisonous

01:51:27.460 | because the level of uncertainty is basically zero.

01:51:31.940 | - Yeah.

01:51:32.780 | - People can access what they want to see.

01:51:35.100 | They can keep foraging until they find it.

01:51:37.260 | - Yeah.

01:51:38.080 | - And that's not the way that relationships work.

01:51:42.180 | The way relationships work is I ask somebody out,

01:51:45.460 | they might say yes, they might say no.

01:51:47.060 | You go out on a date, they might not want a second date.

01:51:49.300 | - Well, and that's all very-

01:51:50.140 | - Things could progress.

01:51:50.960 | You might think that you're on the path to one thing

01:51:52.500 | and it turns out it doesn't work

01:51:54.060 | or you're not compatible.

01:51:56.700 | That's also extremely salutary

01:51:59.380 | because if you're being rejected,

01:52:01.820 | like say you're a foraging male

01:52:03.420 | and you're being rejected all the time

01:52:06.940 | and you forego that for pornography,

01:52:08.900 | what you're foregoing is the corrective

01:52:10.940 | that all those women are offering you.

01:52:12.820 | Like they're rejecting you because there is something wrong.

01:52:15.940 | Like seriously, there's something wrong.

01:52:18.060 | And now you escape from that.

01:52:19.560 | You think, well, that's a relief

01:52:20.620 | because no more rejection.

01:52:21.800 | It's like, yeah, no more rejection,

01:52:24.500 | no more learning, no more improvement

01:52:26.800 | and no possibility of an actual life.

01:52:30.860 | - No action at a distance.

01:52:32.500 | - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:52:33.700 | No distal accomplishment, right?

01:52:37.020 | - Yeah, the only implication

01:52:38.400 | of the pornography masturbation scenario

01:52:40.660 | is that is more pornography masturbation.

01:52:43.300 | That's the only implication of it.

01:52:44.700 | That's all that possibly could arise.

01:52:46.460 | - It's worse than that

01:52:48.260 | because it's more pornography in a degenerating game

01:52:51.940 | 'cause as you said, you have to chase that novelty edge.

01:52:55.740 | - Otherwise dopamine is driven down further.

01:52:57.380 | - Well, and that means what?

01:52:58.460 | It's gonna get more and more extreme?

01:53:01.060 | Well, that's not a good scenario.

01:53:03.100 | That's not a good,

01:53:03.980 | like what do you mean more and more extreme exactly?

01:53:06.180 | Like where does that end?

01:53:07.180 | Well, you know, a casual glance at online pornography

01:53:10.940 | can give you some real insight into where that ends.

01:53:13.740 | Like that's a bottomless pit

01:53:16.900 | and in the most pernicious possible manner

01:53:21.140 | because sexuality can definitely twist itself

01:53:25.500 | into pathological forms

01:53:27.700 | that undermine psychological integrity

01:53:29.780 | and demolish society.

01:53:31.500 | - No, we see this with people who are highly successful

01:53:33.980 | who seem to have lots of areas of their life regulated

01:53:37.540 | and then, you know, they collapse their lives.

01:53:40.580 | And we sometimes see it with drugs of abuse as well.

01:53:44.260 | Although unless those drugs of abuse are dopaminergic

01:53:47.560 | and people have them in check, so to speak,

01:53:51.200 | which is exceedingly rare.

01:53:53.400 | - Yes.

01:53:54.240 | - It's usually just a matter of time

01:53:55.800 | and they don't reach the mountaintop.

01:53:57.160 | - Yes, well, time is the problem as we've been pointing out.

01:54:00.160 | Let me tell you another story.

01:54:01.520 | This is from Revelation.

01:54:03.200 | So Revelation is a vision of the end of time.

01:54:06.800 | Okay, now time ends all the time.

01:54:09.240 | Like our adventures end, our lives end,

01:54:11.080 | our relationships end.

01:54:12.360 | So the end has a pattern.

01:54:14.720 | Okay, Revelation is a vision

01:54:17.120 | of the eternal pattern of the end.

01:54:20.280 | So here's an element of the vision.

01:54:23.040 | It's so remarkable.

01:54:24.740 | I figured this out with my friend Jonathan Paggio.

01:54:27.520 | So there's a vision, a sub-vision

01:54:30.360 | in the sequential dream of Revelation

01:54:33.640 | of the Scarlet Beast and the Whore of Babylon.

01:54:37.780 | And it's very relevant to our discussion on pornography.

01:54:40.160 | You'll understand it right away.

01:54:42.060 | So it's a vision of how society disintegrates.

01:54:46.200 | Okay, now imagine when society disintegrates,

01:54:48.560 | men disintegrate according to their pattern

01:54:51.560 | and women disintegrate according to their pattern.

01:54:54.240 | That makes perfect sense, right?

01:54:55.600 | Because if society disintegrates,

01:54:57.980 | it's gonna be men and women who disintegrate.

01:54:59.960 | There's no reason to assume that their pattern

01:55:01.820 | of disintegration would be identical.

01:55:04.000 | Okay, Scarlet Beast, that's the Scarlet Beast of the state.

01:55:09.000 | That's Babylon, let's say.

01:55:11.280 | That's the degenerate, tyrannical state.

01:55:13.480 | It has multiple heads.

01:55:15.000 | Why?

01:55:15.840 | 'Cause whatever united it has vanished.

01:55:18.240 | That's like the death of God.

01:55:19.400 | It's vanished.

01:55:20.240 | And so now it's got heads in every direction.

01:55:22.340 | So it's confused.

01:55:23.440 | And it's red, scarlet, because that confusion,

01:55:28.040 | that disintegration is the precursor

01:55:31.360 | to the river of blood, right?

01:55:33.240 | The Red Sea, the swamp of chaos.

01:55:35.920 | So when the patriarchal state disintegrates,

01:55:39.680 | it loses its unity, and then it's multiple heads, right?

01:55:42.960 | And that's the emblem of descent into diverse chaos.

01:55:47.960 | - And gazes everywhere with these multiple heads.

01:55:50.600 | - Precisely, precisely.

01:55:51.800 | It's not integrated.

01:55:53.400 | Okay, now that's the disintegration of the patriarchy,

01:55:57.000 | you might say.

01:55:57.960 | Atop that is the Whore of Babylon.

01:56:02.200 | That's a beautiful woman who's subordinated her psyche

01:56:07.200 | to the demands of sexuality.

01:56:09.440 | She's the mother of all prostitutes, right?

01:56:12.680 | So she's extremely attractive, and she's clad in gold,

01:56:15.620 | and she holds a cup, it's very graphic imagery,

01:56:18.260 | that has nothing but the consequences

01:56:20.480 | of her fornication in it.

01:56:22.020 | - Is this like, I mean, I guess I will just say it.

01:56:26.120 | Recently there's been a number of posts

01:56:27.600 | on X of this woman who had sex with 100 men in a day.

01:56:30.440 | And now she's saying she's gonna have sex

01:56:33.200 | with 1,000 men in a day.

01:56:34.240 | - Yeah, well, she seems to be rethinking her plan,

01:56:36.960 | given the emotional consequences she had

01:56:39.200 | to her last success.

01:56:40.480 | - Yeah, I must say--

01:56:41.480 | - Her mother is her finance officer.

01:56:43.860 | - I'm speechless.

01:56:47.400 | - That's for sure.

01:56:48.520 | - I'm speechless.

01:56:49.360 | My response to her kind of post-100 men thing

01:56:54.360 | was it was hard for me to know to what extent

01:57:00.280 | that was part of the whatever--

01:57:03.520 | - The performance?

01:57:04.360 | Probably hard for everyone to do.

01:57:05.200 | - Whatever it was, you know?

01:57:06.020 | So it was hard for me to discern

01:57:08.200 | what was really going on there.

01:57:09.480 | I'm not a psychologist.

01:57:11.280 | But anyone who saw that would say,

01:57:14.800 | this is a pretty dark situation.

01:57:17.800 | - It's way darker than anybody who wanted

01:57:20.880 | to hold onto their sanity would possibly imagine.

01:57:23.640 | - What's also dark, and I'm not saying this

01:57:26.400 | from a place of moral judgment,

01:57:27.480 | I'm just saying this from a place of just kind of like,

01:57:30.440 | wow, like this woman obviously navigating life in this way,

01:57:34.920 | her choice, clearly.

01:57:36.640 | But the fact that so many people know about this,

01:57:40.780 | the fact that so many people,

01:57:42.700 | and here we're talking about it,

01:57:43.820 | but I think in service to a greater good,

01:57:46.700 | I certainly believe, that this is now out there, right?

01:57:51.700 | It's out there.

01:57:53.980 | Just like seeing somebody--

01:57:54.900 | - Pushing the envelope.

01:57:55.740 | - Just like seeing somebody murder somebody in cold blood.

01:57:57.940 | We could talk about that recently,

01:58:00.020 | a video of an assassination.

01:58:02.780 | Those had been available before,

01:58:04.320 | but those two things kind of leveled up or leveled down,

01:58:09.320 | one's idea of what humans are capable of

01:58:13.960 | by allowing so many people--

01:58:15.640 | - And what's acceptable.

01:58:16.720 | - What's acceptable.

01:58:17.560 | - Or desirable.

01:58:18.380 | - That's right, the threshold shifted.

01:58:19.760 | - That's for sure.

01:58:20.600 | - Maybe that's what I'm looking for,

01:58:21.720 | the threshold shifted.

01:58:22.680 | - Yeah.

01:58:23.520 | - Yeah.

01:58:24.340 | - Okay, so that's a great example,

01:58:25.660 | that young woman who's betrayed herself

01:58:29.860 | in the deepest possible manner,

01:58:31.240 | and all of the people that are following her,

01:58:33.580 | and all the young women who are influenced by her.

01:58:36.020 | So you have this figure on the back of the degenerate state,

01:58:41.020 | that's the degenerate feminine.

01:58:43.700 | Female sexuality commoditizes

01:58:48.020 | when the masculine state degenerates.

01:58:51.700 | That's a sign of the end of things,

01:58:54.060 | and that makes perfect sense,

01:58:55.200 | because why wouldn't female sexuality commoditize

01:58:58.780 | when the masculine is no longer reliable?

01:59:01.320 | It's exactly what you'd expect.

01:59:03.080 | You know how the story ends?

01:59:04.520 | There's another element to it.

01:59:07.960 | The degenerate state offers the whore of Babylon

01:59:11.480 | as enticement for its degeneration.

01:59:13.840 | You can have everything you want on the sexual side.

01:59:16.720 | At the end of that substory,

01:59:19.000 | the state, the beast, kills the prostitute.

01:59:22.400 | And so what that means is that

01:59:24.520 | the long-term consequences of

01:59:28.820 | sacrifice-less sexual satiety

01:59:31.940 | is that sexuality itself is destroyed.

01:59:35.900 | And I think we're seeing that in our society now.

01:59:38.720 | 30% of Japanese under the age of 30 are virgins.

01:59:43.480 | Right, it's about the same in South Korea.

01:59:46.360 | Right, the birth rates in those countries have plummeted.

01:59:48.900 | Like, they're way, way below replacement.

01:59:51.960 | And increasingly, 50% of women in the West

01:59:56.960 | are childless at 30, 50%.

01:59:59.240 | - Yeah, birth rates are way, way down.

02:00:00.980 | - And going down as well.

02:00:02.820 | 50% are childless.

02:00:04.540 | Half of them will never have a child,

02:00:07.580 | because 30 is already pushing it.

02:00:09.180 | And 95% of them will regret it.

02:00:11.420 | We're already in a situation in the West

02:00:13.140 | where one in four women will be involuntarily childless.

02:00:17.020 | Right, and so it's so, well, that's a good example,

02:00:20.420 | as I said earlier, of how these things are characterized

02:00:23.580 | in this symbolic language that outlines the starkest,

02:00:27.700 | you might say, the starkest of biological realities.

02:00:31.180 | You said that there was a problem,

02:00:33.060 | you know, your sense was that there was a problem

02:00:35.360 | with effortless gratification.

02:00:37.860 | It's like, well, the problem,

02:00:39.100 | part of the problem with effortless gratification

02:00:41.100 | is it destroys itself.

02:00:43.420 | And it's so interesting, because the promise

02:00:46.160 | of the sexual revolution and the pill

02:00:48.020 | was an unlimited horizon of sexual opportunity.

02:00:52.660 | Okay, we know, but the actual consequence of that

02:00:57.140 | was, appears to be, that that's the pathway

02:01:00.680 | to the demise of sexuality itself.

02:01:02.700 | - This was if you can't be with the one you love,

02:01:04.420 | love the one you're with.

02:01:05.660 | Someone I know who was in their 20s in the 1970s

02:01:10.820 | explained to me, I always thought that song was about,

02:01:12.860 | you know, if you can't be with the person that you love,

02:01:15.940 | you know, you find someone else you can love.

02:01:17.500 | He explained to me that's not what that was about.

02:01:19.380 | That was about the wildness of the '70s.

02:01:21.180 | - Right, right, that promise.

02:01:22.780 | - Yeah, that was about the sort of the,

02:01:24.960 | just promiscuity had emerged as a theme of the 1970s.

02:01:31.300 | - Yeah, well, I mean, in the aftermath

02:01:33.420 | of the birth control pill, it was not surprising

02:01:35.540 | that people thought maybe that was possible.

02:01:38.140 | But that was wrong, it was seriously wrong.

02:01:40.460 | And we're going to be dealing with the consequences

02:01:42.820 | of that for a very long time.

02:01:44.180 | - You said that the patriarchy,

02:01:46.540 | the masculine fails before the--

02:01:48.780 | - Well, no, I would say that happens in concert, sure, sure.

02:01:52.900 | It's a feedback. - So it's not causal.

02:01:54.580 | - No, no, you can't, men and women degenerate

02:01:58.580 | at the same rate, right?

02:01:59.860 | I mean, we're involved in feedback processes

02:02:02.360 | that are so tight that there's no,

02:02:05.060 | like there's no oppressing women without oppressing men.

02:02:07.620 | There's no oppressing men without oppressing women.

02:02:09.700 | It's like we're joined at the hip, so to speak.

02:02:12.660 | And so, you know, these cultures

02:02:16.060 | that cloak women and silence them,

02:02:19.940 | you might think, well, that leads to the domination of men.

02:02:22.380 | It just turns men into pathological tyrants.

02:02:25.380 | Like there's no victory over one sex

02:02:30.020 | that's a victory of any sense at all.

02:02:32.700 | - It's anti-humanity.

02:02:34.380 | - Of course, of course, of course.

02:02:36.300 | - There was a recent post on X

02:02:38.980 | that just held my gaze, my attention,

02:02:43.300 | where it was a back and forth debate,

02:02:45.460 | a pseudo-political social debate.

02:02:47.900 | And then there were three words that,

02:02:49.740 | I'll just say that Mark Andreessen said,

02:02:54.500 | you know, it was about restoring vigor,

02:02:58.980 | pride, and achievement.

02:03:01.260 | And I thought, wow, like he's not a political candidate,

02:03:04.420 | but that's a beautiful trifecta,

02:03:07.020 | vigor, pride, and achievement to celebrate those.

02:03:10.420 | And I put that next to, you know,

02:03:12.780 | the deep pleasure in generative action at a distance,

02:03:16.620 | a technological development, the rockets.

02:03:18.740 | And there are other generative achievements.

02:03:21.700 | - I think that's exactly the theme

02:03:22.540 | of the story of Abraham.

02:03:24.180 | It's like the highest form of potential satiation

02:03:29.180 | is risky romantic adventure.

02:03:35.580 | It's not satiation, right?

02:03:37.100 | That's the wrong frame, right?

02:03:38.940 | And so one of the things I've noticed,

02:03:40.860 | this is such fun, I've talked in front of,

02:03:43.740 | I don't know how many public audiences

02:03:45.500 | in the last eight years,

02:03:48.300 | independent of my professorial career,

02:03:51.780 | and those are large audiences.

02:03:54.420 | You know, they must average about 3,000 or 4,000 people.

02:03:57.260 | And there's one place I go

02:04:01.140 | that always reduces the audience to like dead silence.

02:04:05.460 | The audiences are usually quiet in the events.

02:04:10.460 | That's one of the ways, I'm sure you know this,

02:04:13.060 | is you wanna listen to the audience,

02:04:14.980 | you wanna stay in that zone where no one's moving, right?

02:04:18.180 | 'Cause then you know their attention is focused,

02:04:20.860 | and you can hear that, and you can, I wouldn't say,

02:04:24.100 | you can play with it, not manipulatively,

02:04:26.700 | but in the proper sense of play.

02:04:28.300 | I learned a long while ago that adventure,

02:04:33.340 | let's say, is the highest form of reward.

02:04:36.780 | That's a good way of thinking about it.

02:04:38.980 | But there's a corollary to that

02:04:41.020 | that conservatives need to learn,

02:04:43.540 | 'cause they don't know this.

02:04:45.220 | Conservatives talk about responsibility,

02:04:47.260 | but they're conscientious, and so for them,

02:04:49.060 | responsibility is dutiful, orderly productivity.

02:04:53.580 | It's conscientiousness.

02:04:55.420 | Responsibility is a conscientious duty.

02:04:57.980 | What they fail to understand is that there's no difference

02:05:00.420 | between responsibility and adventure.

02:05:03.480 | They're the same thing.

02:05:05.080 | And you can tell young men in particular that.

02:05:08.240 | Say, look, you wanna have an adventure,

02:05:09.920 | 'cause you definitely want an adventure.

02:05:11.400 | You're like, you're built for that.

02:05:13.200 | It will increase your status, it will improve your life,

02:05:16.120 | like it'll improve the probability

02:05:18.520 | that you'll accomplish something.

02:05:19.600 | You want an adventure.

02:05:20.800 | Every fiber of your being is screaming for it.

02:05:23.800 | Where do you find it?

02:05:24.840 | You find it in the voluntary adoption of responsibility.

02:05:28.640 | And that's like, everyone needs to know that.

02:05:32.160 | No young person has been taught that

02:05:34.000 | for like five generations.

02:05:37.080 | - This is important.

02:05:37.920 | Can we operationalize this?

02:05:39.440 | So in your first book, you talked about

02:05:41.240 | get your room in order.

02:05:42.960 | One of the first things I do when I wake up in the morning,

02:05:45.580 | I look around the kitchen, I look around my room,

02:05:47.920 | and I try and get things in order.

02:05:49.680 | Now I need that in order to be able to think clearly,

02:05:53.680 | but it's just a first order of business.

02:05:55.320 | - Well, it's also a great morning ritual,

02:05:57.840 | because it's often the case,

02:05:58.920 | especially if you have a bit of a depressive tilt,

02:06:01.280 | that it's kind of hard to get oriented properly

02:06:03.840 | in the morning, you know?

02:06:05.600 | And if you take, like, I moved into a new house

02:06:09.680 | a while back in Northern Ontario,

02:06:12.600 | and the garage wasn't set up properly.

02:06:14.720 | And the first thing I did in the morning was

02:06:16.640 | I went out in the garage for 10 minutes.

02:06:18.800 | And 10 minutes isn't very long,

02:06:20.260 | but I would like order one thing, you know,

02:06:22.560 | part of the toolbox or whatever.

02:06:24.840 | And like, if you do that every day,

02:06:26.640 | things fall into order pretty quickly.

02:06:28.140 | But it was a real relief to me in some way,

02:06:30.200 | because I didn't have to think about

02:06:31.720 | what I was gonna do when I woke up.

02:06:33.480 | I made my bed, and then I went and fixed the garage

02:06:36.360 | for like 10 minutes.

02:06:37.440 | - And you get the brain into this,

02:06:38.880 | into what I call linear operations.

02:06:41.220 | Like the ability to carry out something linearly

02:06:43.560 | when there's a near infinite number of options

02:06:45.880 | in your phone, in your physical space,

02:06:48.640 | I think is so powerful, because you're picking a target.

02:06:52.480 | - Absolutely.

02:06:53.320 | - And it certainly isn't a sinful target.

02:06:55.200 | And you know it's not sin to clean your room

02:06:57.200 | or to organize your space or the garage.

02:06:59.680 | So you start with it.

02:07:01.080 | So within the day, one can do that.

02:07:03.200 | In terms of, I really love the stickiness,

02:07:08.200 | the positive stickiness of this idea

02:07:12.000 | that adventure and responsibility are the same thing.

02:07:14.480 | - Well, let's take that apart,

02:07:15.960 | because it's not immediately obvious.

02:07:18.560 | But look, when you go,

02:07:21.280 | let's say you go see an adventure movie, James Bond movie,

02:07:24.840 | you know, classic archetypal action adventure movie

02:07:28.920 | with some romance thrown in there.

02:07:30.640 | What is he doing?

02:07:33.760 | Well, difficult things.

02:07:35.400 | - He's trying to solve crimes.

02:07:36.440 | He's trying to catch bad guys.

02:07:37.520 | - Yeah, he's trying to battle with the forces of chaos

02:07:40.480 | that undermine the international order, right?

02:07:42.920 | I mean, it's high order adventure.

02:07:45.200 | And he's putting himself at substantive risk to do that.

02:07:47.840 | That's the sacrificial element to it.

02:07:50.160 | But everybody's gripped by it.

02:07:52.080 | Well, why?

02:07:53.400 | Because the stakes are high.

02:07:55.840 | What does it mean for the stakes to be high?

02:07:57.800 | It means the outcome matters.

02:08:00.040 | What does that mean?

02:08:01.000 | It means it's a life and death situation.

02:08:03.520 | Like, none of that makes itself present

02:08:06.280 | without the hoisting of a burden.

02:08:08.680 | And here's something else I figured out, so remarkable.

02:08:11.840 | So I went to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem,

02:08:17.880 | which is the first Christian church that was established.

02:08:22.000 | And hypothetically, it was established

02:08:23.880 | on the location of the crucifixion, right?

02:08:27.840 | And so at the center of the church is an altar,

02:08:30.920 | and at the center of the altar

02:08:32.560 | is the image of this crucifixion, right?

02:08:34.880 | Which is a sacrificial image, okay.

02:08:38.280 | Crucifixion, sacrificial image, altar, church.

02:08:41.760 | Then around the church is the community.

02:08:44.560 | And then that becomes the pattern for European towns, right?

02:08:48.200 | And all the towns that everyone wants to go visit in Europe

02:08:50.720 | have that pattern.

02:08:52.080 | Okay, so why?

02:08:53.640 | Well, responsible sacrifice is at the core of the community.

02:08:57.320 | That's what's dramatized in all that, in that architecture,

02:09:01.480 | in that sacred architecture,

02:09:04.040 | in the actual, in the structure of the community

02:09:09.040 | with its center.

02:09:10.600 | Well, of course, sacrifice is the center of the community.

02:09:13.760 | Obviously, because community is a sacrificial gesture.

02:09:17.080 | Like, insofar as you're not all about

02:09:20.040 | what you want right now,

02:09:22.680 | you're offering up a sacrifice of what it is

02:09:25.160 | that you want right now to the future and the community.

02:09:29.480 | Clearly, and now that's gonna integrate you psychologically,

02:09:32.040 | it's gonna integrate the society and make it productive.

02:09:34.680 | And it's so interesting that we acted that out for,

02:09:38.000 | that proposition out for, well, the whole,

02:09:40.800 | at least insofar as you're talking about

02:09:43.360 | Christian-oriented civilization for the last 2,000 years,

02:09:46.640 | without ever really noticing that

02:09:48.440 | we were dramatizing the proposition

02:09:50.840 | that sacrifice is at the center of the community.

02:09:53.640 | It's like, well, obviously.

02:09:55.120 | - Well, what are we to make of cities like San Francisco,

02:09:58.160 | which I grew up just south of,

02:09:59.560 | and by any standard, it's a beautiful city.

02:10:02.720 | I know people are gonna roll their,

02:10:04.080 | some people will roll their eyes.

02:10:04.920 | I mean, you have the Bay on one side,

02:10:06.720 | you have the ocean on the other.

02:10:08.080 | It has magnificent bridges.

02:10:09.920 | I mean, it's a testament to what's possible in a city

02:10:13.720 | in terms of diverse landscapes, et cetera.

02:10:16.040 | But the downtown, the center of the city,

02:10:18.380 | is just beyond anybody's sense of indecency

02:10:23.380 | to walk down in the afternoon hours, let alone at night.

02:10:29.940 | So that, at this point, you wonder,

02:10:32.980 | is the center really the center?

02:10:35.260 | I mean, you literally have to avoid the center of the city

02:10:37.780 | in order to get away from any of that.

02:10:40.220 | And it's very, it's sad. - Yeah, well, the question is.

02:10:42.580 | - It's tragic, it's tragic.

02:10:43.900 | - You're asking a symbolic question in some ways.

02:10:46.360 | Like, you're asking, what is the nature of the relationship

02:10:51.300 | between the state of society in general

02:10:55.500 | and the fact that the centers of cities have deteriorated?

02:10:59.780 | Well, those aren't unrelated, not in the least.

02:11:02.500 | They're very tightly related

02:11:04.260 | because the center does not hold, right?

02:11:07.060 | What's the famous poem from the 1920s?

02:11:09.940 | The center is loosened, right?

02:11:11.400 | And mere chaos is around, mere chaos is set upon the world.

02:11:15.220 | I haven't got the quote precisely right.

02:11:17.400 | That was T.S. Eliot.

02:11:18.800 | He knew that when the center pillar disintegrates,

02:11:22.720 | then everything falls into chaos.

02:11:24.280 | That's one of the oldest realizations of humankind.

02:11:28.260 | The question might be,

02:11:29.600 | what has caused the degeneration of the center?

02:11:32.860 | Well, man, you can think about that.

02:11:35.720 | The whole culture war is meditation

02:11:39.760 | on exactly that question.

02:11:42.320 | There's an insistence on the postmodern side.

02:11:44.800 | So the postmodernists, they figured out

02:11:47.860 | that we see the world through a story, and they were right.

02:11:51.180 | And that's a devastating blow

02:11:52.900 | to the empiricists and the rationalists

02:11:54.900 | 'cause they were wrong.

02:11:56.740 | We do not build our knowledge

02:11:58.460 | in consequence of an aggregation of facts.

02:12:00.980 | That's not how it works.

02:12:02.620 | And a story is something like the prioritization

02:12:05.900 | of the world of facts.

02:12:07.500 | - I heard recently that religion teaches through story,

02:12:11.180 | philosophy teaches through language

02:12:14.480 | that is divorced of story,

02:12:16.520 | and that science is designed to try and remove itself

02:12:20.580 | from language almost entirely.

02:12:22.640 | I mean, you'd love to just present graphs and figures,

02:12:24.520 | but you have to explain what's in those, right?

02:12:26.160 | There's a discussion, there's some conclusions,

02:12:28.160 | but the idea is that, as scientists,

02:12:30.120 | we're supposed to be objective

02:12:31.600 | and just interpret the data as they stand.

02:12:34.080 | - Yes, to only be informed by the facts.

02:12:36.720 | - To not infuse a story.

02:12:38.260 | - But story is the way that the brain works, right?

02:12:42.740 | I mean, beginning, middle, end.

02:12:44.620 | - It's also, the thing is,

02:12:46.060 | the story creeps into science in,

02:12:50.220 | what would you say, unavoidably.

02:12:52.340 | So here, let me give you an example.

02:12:55.180 | So I read a book once that was written by an ex-KGB agent

02:13:00.100 | who talked about a lab in the Soviet Union

02:13:03.860 | where there was a dreadful accident at one point

02:13:06.660 | that resulted in the death of about 500 people.

02:13:09.460 | They were trying to produce an amalgam of Ebola

02:13:14.080 | and smallpox.

02:13:17.420 | - Yikes.

02:13:18.260 | - And then to aerosolize it.

02:13:19.660 | - Oh, goodness.

02:13:20.500 | - Okay, now look, from a strictly scientific perspective,

02:13:24.440 | value-free, there's no difference

02:13:28.400 | between pursuing that branch of knowledge

02:13:30.360 | and pursuing any other.

02:13:32.500 | Now, you say, "Well, that's preposterous."

02:13:34.080 | It's like, yes, but it's preposterous

02:13:36.980 | because we know that you can have an evil scientist.

02:13:41.660 | I mean, Jesus, that's the trope of,

02:13:43.100 | how many movies uses evil scientist as a trope?

02:13:48.100 | Like, the bad guy is almost always an evil scientist, right?

02:13:54.100 | So it's not like we don't know this,

02:13:56.460 | so that science itself,

02:13:58.020 | which is the value-free pursuit of facts,

02:14:00.500 | can be an evil enterprise.

02:14:02.300 | If you're a good scientist,

02:14:04.000 | the story's always lurking in the background.

02:14:06.160 | Like, why are you conducting your investigation?

02:14:08.720 | Well, I wanna understand more about the human psyche.

02:14:11.400 | Well, why?

02:14:12.240 | Well, I wanna be of aid to the human enterprise.

02:14:14.480 | I wanna make things better.

02:14:15.560 | That's the story.

02:14:17.000 | I wanna pursue truth in a manner that makes things better.

02:14:21.280 | That's the story part.

02:14:23.080 | And you might say, "Well, that's self-evidence."

02:14:26.000 | Like, it's only self-evident when it's working properly.

02:14:28.600 | When it's not working properly, things get bad quick.

02:14:31.680 | So there were scientists in Unit 731

02:14:34.460 | when the Japanese invaded China,

02:14:36.420 | and you cannot read about what they did

02:14:39.100 | without traumatizing yourself permanently

02:14:41.980 | for the rest of your life, right?

02:14:44.460 | What happened with Unit 731,

02:14:46.640 | it's the worst human atrocity I've ever seen by a lot,

02:14:51.520 | and that was the scientific enterprise gone astray,

02:14:54.980 | let's say.

02:14:56.200 | It has to be encapsulated within a value structure,

02:14:59.440 | and the question is,

02:15:00.280 | well, what's the appropriate value structure?

02:15:02.760 | We're starting to figure that out,

02:15:03.920 | 'cause you know,

02:15:04.760 | I talked to Richard Dawkins about this a little bit.

02:15:07.080 | One of the things that disheartens Dawkins

02:15:09.000 | is that as the humanistic enterprise has progressed,

02:15:12.980 | and as the atheistic impulse has made itself more manifest,

02:15:17.980 | the assault on science and logic

02:15:20.760 | at the universities has intensified.

02:15:23.040 | 'Cause his notion was,

02:15:24.240 | if we could just free ourself

02:15:25.440 | from the superstitions of the past,

02:15:27.520 | everyone would become like a hybrid

02:15:29.840 | between, let's say, Newton and Bacon and Descartes.

02:15:33.880 | It's like, no, it turns out

02:15:35.320 | that when you destabilize the underlying story,

02:15:38.080 | everybody becomes a narcissistic, immature psychopath,

02:15:41.880 | and they don't make good scientists.

02:15:44.080 | And the evidence for that is kind of stark,

02:15:46.720 | because I'm sure you've observed, like I've observed,

02:15:49.240 | that over the last 20 years,

02:15:52.320 | the scientific enterprise has become

02:15:53.920 | a lot less reliable than it was.

02:15:55.920 | - Well, for a number of reasons.

02:15:57.120 | I mean, one of the primary ones, in my opinion,

02:15:59.520 | and I'm familiar with the scientific community,

02:16:01.200 | is that a lot of science is built on lineages

02:16:04.840 | and who your advisors were and so forth.

02:16:07.040 | It relates to funding, et cetera.

02:16:08.400 | And it used to be that the primary value

02:16:11.760 | within and across lineages was to seek out new territory.

02:16:16.040 | I could tell a lot of stories that would take up hours

02:16:17.880 | about great advisors telling their students

02:16:20.160 | to move into new territories,

02:16:21.480 | which sounded like, get out of my field.

02:16:23.760 | I'm gonna demolish you.

02:16:24.800 | But instead, what they were encouraging them to do

02:16:26.680 | was to go on, let's use your language,

02:16:28.440 | new adventures of responsibility.

02:16:29.600 | - On a new frontier.

02:16:30.680 | - But instead, what's happened is that 95% of the scientists

02:16:34.360 | in a given subfield all work on similar problems,

02:16:37.880 | pin metals on each other, validate each other,

02:16:39.920 | fund each other, and as a consequence,

02:16:41.640 | there are a lot of untouched problems

02:16:43.880 | that will hopefully someday be investigated.

02:16:47.320 | The other consequence is that this debacle

02:16:49.720 | within the field of Alzheimer's and dementia,

02:16:51.800 | where one laboratory fudges data,

02:16:53.800 | and you kind of wonder if, I mean, that's not my subfield,

02:16:57.160 | but you step back from it and you go,

02:16:58.520 | how the hell did this progress for 15 years

02:17:00.400 | where everyone was, like the emperor has no clothes,

02:17:04.080 | like everyone agreeing that this is the stuff to work on

02:17:06.120 | when in fact the data were falsified and people knew.

02:17:09.640 | People knew.

02:17:10.760 | So what that means is that it's like bad family values

02:17:13.760 | passed on through generations.

02:17:15.040 | And I do think these are well-meaning people along the line,

02:17:18.480 | but-- - Yeah, yes and no.

02:17:20.200 | They're a little bit intense

02:17:23.080 | on the career formulation side of things.

02:17:25.520 | - Well, so-- - Right, the careerist aspect

02:17:27.320 | as opposed to the scientist aspect.

02:17:28.680 | - Well, we-- - Yeah, that exists too.

02:17:30.360 | - Well, let's think about that critically.

02:17:32.960 | It's like science is a very weird endeavor

02:17:35.560 | because in order to actually be a scientist,

02:17:39.480 | you have to put discovering that you're wrong

02:17:42.800 | before demonstrating that you're right.

02:17:45.640 | And that is hard on your career in the short term.

02:17:48.320 | Like if you play that game and you're good at it,

02:17:51.600 | you can discover something real.

02:17:53.400 | But that's gonna take a while and it's not certain.

02:17:56.480 | - Right.

02:17:57.480 | - It's not at all surprising that people would subvert

02:18:00.000 | an enterprise that difficult

02:18:01.600 | to the narrow demands of career enhancement.

02:18:04.840 | It's exactly what you'd expect

02:18:06.560 | unless there was a stunningly powerful countervailing force.

02:18:11.160 | And that force was powerful enough, let's say,

02:18:13.320 | from 1550 to 1980 so that science worked.

02:18:22.080 | But that's a short period of time

02:18:23.480 | and it's only happened once.

02:18:25.320 | And we don't know what conditions had to be in place

02:18:28.040 | for people to actually like seriously prioritize the truth.

02:18:32.360 | Seriously, 'cause that's what a serious scientist does.

02:18:35.720 | And so it's not surprising that it would degenerate

02:18:37.920 | into something like dynasty and nepotism.

02:18:40.320 | That's exactly what you'd expect.

02:18:41.800 | That's the historical norm.

02:18:43.440 | So then you might think, well,

02:18:44.880 | what are the preconditions that have to be in place

02:18:48.000 | as narrative foundation for there to be at least

02:18:50.600 | some people that are prioritizing the truth?

02:18:53.360 | - I think one needs to reward true adventure and novelty,

02:18:56.440 | taking on novel problems.

02:18:58.360 | And these days, it's so hard for a scientist

02:19:01.520 | to birth an entire new field,

02:19:02.920 | and yet there are huge, huge sets of untapped problems.

02:19:07.520 | The challenge for them is it's difficult to get funding

02:19:10.120 | to take on things that are truly new.

02:19:11.840 | There's a lot of discussion these days

02:19:13.240 | about challenges with the NIH, et cetera.

02:19:14.880 | I think that the biggest challenge,

02:19:16.560 | regardless of the size of the budget,

02:19:17.960 | which is also an issue that needs to be dealt with,

02:19:20.440 | and where it's spent,

02:19:21.680 | is that we tend to reward science that's already completed,

02:19:24.920 | that fits with the current narrative,

02:19:26.760 | and it's very incremental.

02:19:28.120 | They reward incremental science.

02:19:29.800 | Whereas great science comes through taking great risk,

02:19:32.440 | and people, like you said, holding the truth above all else,

02:19:35.360 | and being willing to stake their careers on it.

02:19:37.600 | And we need to actually reward failure

02:19:40.680 | if it involved effort to solve things correctly.

02:19:43.320 | In other words, give young scientists funding

02:19:46.120 | and encourage them to go after novel problems,

02:19:48.120 | and understand that most of them will fail.

02:19:50.560 | And that doesn't necessarily mean

02:19:52.320 | that they have to be exited out of the university,

02:19:54.680 | give them a new novel problem to tackle.

02:19:57.160 | Problem is there's so much pressure,

02:19:59.040 | and you know, because you're a university professor,

02:20:01.000 | I know in order to reach tenure,

02:20:02.800 | you need to reduce the entropy as much as possible.

02:20:06.240 | In any event, without going down that path too far,

02:20:09.560 | I now understand why you're saying

02:20:11.320 | that science has to invoke story.

02:20:14.480 | That makes sense. - It has to be embedded.

02:20:15.520 | - That makes sense, that makes sense.

02:20:16.600 | - Otherwise, well, science is the handmaiden of some story.

02:20:20.920 | There's no way around that,

02:20:22.200 | because motivation is the handmaiden of some story.

02:20:25.120 | And so the motivational framework

02:20:27.520 | has to be put in place accurately,

02:20:30.000 | and the motivational framework

02:20:31.320 | for scientific inquiry is very stringent.

02:20:34.000 | Truth above all, right?

02:20:36.360 | So if you stake your whole goddamn career

02:20:38.640 | on a particular hypothesis, and you run a critical study,

02:20:41.640 | and it turns out that the reason you're famous is invalid,

02:20:46.080 | you have to publish that.

02:20:47.880 | Why the hell would you do that, right?

02:20:50.680 | And the answer has to be because you hold the truth

02:20:53.320 | in relationship to human flourishing

02:20:55.960 | higher than the integrity of your own,

02:20:59.120 | even your own self-valuation.

02:21:01.800 | Well, man, that's a very difficult thing to establish.

02:21:06.640 | Now, you can do that with young scientists to some degree,

02:21:09.840 | because you can help them understand

02:21:11.800 | that as a medium to long-term game,

02:21:16.200 | there's nothing better than pursuit of the truth.

02:21:20.360 | And so that's worth a risk.

02:21:22.640 | It's worth a risk because you can be spectacularly successful

02:21:26.160 | if you pursue the truth.

02:21:27.320 | It's unlikely, like it's unlikely

02:21:29.400 | to be a successful entrepreneur.

02:21:31.000 | But if you get it right, man,

02:21:33.160 | you've hit the mother load, right?

02:21:35.840 | And you don't want to falsify your data

02:21:38.840 | because you want to spend your whole life

02:21:41.040 | pursuing something that doesn't exist,

02:21:42.880 | 'cause you will talk yourself into belief

02:21:44.880 | that your falsifications are true.

02:21:46.840 | And then you'll warp the whole field.

02:21:48.680 | As you said, you illustrated that

02:21:50.960 | in relationship to Alzheimer's disease.

02:21:53.400 | Like you can instill love of the truth in your students,

02:21:58.280 | but you have to believe, that's a story too,

02:22:02.200 | you have to believe that the truth will set you free, right?

02:22:05.560 | And that's a religious presumption in the final analysis.

02:22:09.160 | Serve truth, it's the best long-term strategy.

02:22:13.360 | It's the best adventure.

02:22:14.920 | That's a good thing to know too.

02:22:16.640 | It's the best adventure.

02:22:18.560 | So I made a triumvirate of truth,

02:22:21.720 | responsibility, and adventure,

02:22:23.360 | saying they're the same thing.

02:22:24.960 | And I figured it out with regard to truth too.

02:22:27.840 | Truth is an adventure because if you,

02:22:32.680 | what would you say?

02:22:35.240 | Vow to follow the path of the truth,

02:22:37.480 | you have to let go of the predictability of the outcome.

02:22:40.720 | Right, now if I wanted to manipulate you in some way,

02:22:43.240 | I would craft my strategy for this podcast a priori.

02:22:48.160 | And then I would tilt the podcast toward that end, right?

02:22:53.080 | And I could be more or less sophisticated than that.

02:22:55.760 | Or I could just say,

02:22:57.400 | we're gonna follow the thread wherever it goes,

02:23:00.280 | and I'm gonna accept the outcome.

02:23:02.440 | And I'm gonna presume that the outcome

02:23:04.160 | is the best outcome that could possibly have been,

02:23:07.080 | even if I don't see why.

02:23:10.160 | Okay, why is that an adventure?

02:23:12.560 | 'Cause if I let go of my predetermined goal,

02:23:15.040 | I don't know what's going to happen.

02:23:16.800 | And that's exciting.

02:23:19.060 | That's right, 'cause you don't know.

02:23:21.280 | Well, that's the essence of adventure.

02:23:23.720 | It's like you're bounding over the uncharted sea, let's say,

02:23:27.200 | and you don't know what's gonna happen next.

02:23:29.520 | Well, why would you exchange that

02:23:31.920 | for like a kind of banal predictability?

02:23:34.500 | Well, to build your career, just,

02:23:36.880 | I mean, I understand why,

02:23:38.080 | but you're foregoing what's truly valuable

02:23:40.080 | for something that's second rate,

02:23:41.320 | for something that's secure.

02:23:42.580 | That's what Abraham did.

02:23:44.240 | It's like, yeah, it's better to have the adventure.

02:23:47.320 | Why the hell wouldn't you want that?

02:23:48.960 | - So he left what was indulgent, he had everything,

02:23:53.200 | for what was truly generative,

02:23:55.480 | in service to something larger.

02:23:57.320 | - And dangerous, and dangerous.

02:23:59.600 | Like he ends up as a warrior.

02:24:01.360 | At one point, he has to raise an army

02:24:03.240 | to rescue his nephew from the hands of tyrants.

02:24:06.920 | It's like, all the adventures of life get thrown at him.

02:24:10.680 | But it turns out that that's what he wants.

02:24:13.280 | He wants all the adventures of life to be thrown at him.

02:24:16.720 | And that is what everyone wants.

02:24:18.040 | And I think that is, you know, the idea that

02:24:21.160 | when you go watch "The Lord of the Rings," for example,

02:24:24.280 | or "The Hobbit," you're seeing the characterization

02:24:28.000 | of human personality dramatized.

02:24:30.200 | Obviously, right?

02:24:31.040 | That's like a truism.

02:24:32.540 | But you have to think about what that means.

02:24:34.640 | It's like, "The Hobbit" is Abraham.

02:24:36.720 | It's exactly the same story.

02:24:38.320 | And that story's the story of the,

02:24:41.760 | that's the genuine identity of the individual.

02:24:44.480 | And the promise is, is that if you aim up

02:24:46.680 | and you live in the spirit of the truth,

02:24:49.280 | you'll have the redemptive adventure of your life.

02:24:51.680 | And that'll be of such significance

02:24:54.240 | that it'll justify the suffering that's intrinsic to life.

02:24:57.680 | And I think that's right.

02:24:59.440 | I mean, when you look at your own life,

02:25:02.040 | I mean, you're on an adventure.

02:25:05.180 | You have this podcast.

02:25:06.300 | It's ridiculously successful, right?

02:25:08.420 | In a way that I'm sure you couldn't have imagined.

02:25:10.820 | How long, five years ago?

02:25:12.180 | - Yeah, we are about to hit the end of four years

02:25:14.460 | in a couple of weeks.

02:25:15.500 | We launched in January, 2021.

02:25:17.300 | No premonition could have seen this.

02:25:21.020 | I had no concept that it would become what it's become.

02:25:23.500 | - Right, okay.

02:25:24.340 | And so what's the existential consequence of that?

02:25:27.500 | Like, you know, I mean, everyone's life is rife

02:25:30.940 | with the possibility of suffering,

02:25:32.440 | and now you have something exciting and generative to do.

02:25:36.360 | Why is that working?

02:25:37.700 | I mean, existentially, why does that work?

02:25:40.300 | - You know, people will ask me,

02:25:41.140 | "What's next?

02:25:41.960 | Where are you headed?"

02:25:42.800 | And I always just say, you know, like on,

02:25:44.520 | well, on Friday, I'm talking to Jordan Peterson,

02:25:46.440 | and I'm focused on that all week long.

02:25:48.020 | And next week I'm recording a solo podcast

02:25:50.620 | about whatever it happens to be.

02:25:52.320 | I just believe, that's setting my sights on the proximal.

02:25:56.220 | And I just believe in, I know my deep, deep, deep love

02:26:01.220 | of finding, organizing, and disseminating information

02:26:07.660 | that I hope will be useful to people.

02:26:10.100 | - Okay, so why- - And that's it.

02:26:10.940 | - Okay, okay, so- - That's the driving force

02:26:13.160 | behind all of it, really.

02:26:14.000 | - Okay, so great.

02:26:14.860 | So I would say, I don't think that that proclamation,

02:26:17.880 | I don't think is any different from the notion

02:26:21.300 | of identity with the redeeming word.

02:26:23.440 | That's the same idea.

02:26:25.260 | 'Cause you said generated, generating ideas, right?

02:26:28.420 | Information, and disseminating it, right?

02:26:31.060 | So that's like, it's valid inquiry

02:26:33.420 | and dissemination of the consequences.

02:26:36.700 | Okay, your claim is that

02:26:37.900 | that's highly intrinsically motivating.

02:26:41.020 | - Oh, yeah. - Right, okay.

02:26:41.860 | So then- - I delight in it.

02:26:43.820 | It's hard sometimes.

02:26:44.980 | I mean, I was trying to read

02:26:46.140 | a really difficult paper yesterday.

02:26:47.580 | It's hard, but it feels so good.

02:26:50.260 | - Okay, so then we might say,

02:26:51.620 | well, what's the basis for that intrinsic pleasure?

02:26:54.820 | We think about that biologically.

02:26:56.700 | Well, you could imagine it as a manifestation

02:27:00.580 | of the instinct that integrates, right?

02:27:05.580 | It integrates you across time.

02:27:07.700 | It integrates you with other people across time, right?

02:27:10.100 | And there's a marker for that.

02:27:11.640 | Why wouldn't you find your, how could it be otherwise

02:27:15.100 | than you would find your deepest satisfaction

02:27:19.100 | in pursuing the course of action

02:27:21.480 | that integrates you psychologically

02:27:23.660 | and integrates other people socially?

02:27:26.140 | Like, that would assume that there's a concordance

02:27:28.540 | between your deepest self-interest

02:27:30.340 | and the interest of your society.

02:27:32.020 | And it better be that way,

02:27:33.100 | because otherwise you couldn't thrive

02:27:35.720 | as an individual in society.

02:27:37.900 | So it better be that way.

02:27:39.140 | And we've been doing this for a very long time

02:27:41.780 | as human beings, so why we wouldn't have an instinct

02:27:44.100 | to mark that pathway.

02:27:45.940 | And of course, we'd find our deepest satisfaction in that.

02:27:49.700 | I mean, once you see these issues

02:27:53.580 | through that light, they become, I think, painfully obvious.

02:27:57.700 | So, also because the contrary hypothesis is absurd.

02:28:01.780 | It's like you're gonna find deep satisfaction,

02:28:03.420 | what, rejecting knowledge.

02:28:04.940 | And if you do happen to stumble across a nugget,

02:28:07.700 | you're gonna hoard it for yourself.

02:28:10.660 | Right, well, right, right, exactly.

02:28:12.180 | It's laughable.

02:28:13.020 | It's clearly laughable.

02:28:14.020 | No one believes that.

02:28:15.860 | - Earlier, we were talking about operationalizing

02:28:20.300 | the effort, the calling to move from potential chaos

02:28:24.060 | to order starts with organizing one's physical space.

02:28:29.060 | If we were to extend the rings of the bullseye

02:28:32.980 | out a little bit further for people listening

02:28:35.700 | who are trying to figure out

02:28:36.940 | like where do they receive that calling?

02:28:39.620 | How do they find their calling?

02:28:42.740 | So responsibility and adventure being perhaps

02:28:46.620 | the compass through which we can navigate there.

02:28:50.940 | So they think like, well, where can they grab a hold

02:28:55.300 | of their responsibility and then as a consequence

02:28:58.460 | of doing that, engage in adventure and have an impact

02:29:02.100 | that is good for them and good for the world.

02:29:04.420 | How do they find that?

02:29:06.740 | - I think there's very practical answers to those questions.

02:29:10.740 | So two of the most, two of the highest order

02:29:15.420 | characterizations of the divine in the biblical library

02:29:18.460 | is calling and conscience.

02:29:22.060 | And you could think about those.

02:29:23.660 | You could think about those as integrated manifestations

02:29:26.300 | of positive and negative emotion.

02:29:28.780 | So imagine there's a pathway forward to your aim, okay?

02:29:33.780 | Your negative emotion tells you when you deviate

02:29:35.740 | from the pathway and your positive emotion tells you

02:29:38.100 | when you're progressing along the pathway.

02:29:39.940 | Okay, now imagine that there's a voice

02:29:41.860 | of your integrated positive emotion

02:29:44.460 | and there's a voice of your integrated negative emotion.

02:29:47.260 | Calling, that's what fills you with enthusiasm.

02:29:51.020 | And that root word of that is theos, right?

02:29:52.820 | Deos, that's God.

02:29:54.660 | Calling, conscience.

02:29:56.780 | Okay, so now that beckons you forward.

02:29:59.180 | So how do you find that?

02:30:00.460 | Some things bother you.

02:30:02.100 | Those are your problems.

02:30:05.700 | And you might think, I don't wanna have any problems.

02:30:07.300 | It's like, no, you've got some problems.

02:30:10.420 | You can tell that 'cause those things bug you.

02:30:13.180 | That's your conscience calling you to your destiny.

02:30:16.140 | Those problems, okay?

02:30:17.740 | Calling, there's some things that interest you, right?

02:30:22.060 | And you don't get to pick them exactly.

02:30:23.780 | They just sort of make themselves manifest

02:30:25.620 | like the burning bush did to Moses

02:30:27.260 | 'cause that's an example.

02:30:28.860 | That's the symbolic representation of calling.

02:30:32.220 | It's the dynamism between calling and conscience

02:30:34.700 | that orients people upwards, right?

02:30:37.780 | That's the pillar of flame and the pillar of darkness

02:30:40.340 | that guides the Israelites across the desert

02:30:42.400 | when they're lost.

02:30:43.700 | Calling beckons.

02:30:45.380 | Conscience provides disciplinary limitations.

02:30:48.020 | That's a good way of thinking about it.

02:30:49.340 | So you can see that some things are good.

02:30:52.340 | You ask yourself, what bothers me about me?

02:30:55.080 | Okay, now you have a domain.

02:30:57.860 | You think, well, man, some of those things,

02:30:59.440 | I just, I don't know how to fix them.

02:31:01.260 | Fine, don't fix them.

02:31:04.340 | Fix some of the things you could fix.

02:31:06.060 | That's, we talked about that.

02:31:07.620 | Or make your goddamn bed in the morning.

02:31:09.300 | Like, you could do that.

02:31:10.780 | And it's like you see people, their lives are so chaotic.

02:31:13.520 | Like, their living environment,

02:31:16.100 | every single bit of it is a catastrophic mess.

02:31:19.740 | Sometimes multiple generations deep.

02:31:22.800 | It's just chaos everywhere.

02:31:24.720 | It's like, where do you start dealing with chaos?

02:31:27.240 | Wherever you can.

02:31:28.760 | Put something in order.

02:31:30.440 | By your own standards of order.

02:31:32.600 | And then see what happens 'cause what'll happen is

02:31:34.800 | now you got a little corner of order

02:31:39.800 | and now you're a little more well-situated

02:31:41.800 | and then you'll be able to see what's the next step.

02:31:45.880 | And you might think, well, it looks hopeless

02:31:47.460 | 'cause there's just chaos everywhere.

02:31:48.800 | It's like, it's okay because the process is exponential.

02:31:53.360 | So even if you start nowhere, if you keep doubling,

02:31:58.360 | you're gonna get somewhere and faster than you think.

02:32:01.480 | And, well, the same thing applies

02:32:03.120 | when you're plummeting into the abyss, unfortunately.

02:32:05.080 | - The degenerative stuff.

02:32:06.680 | A colleague of mine who studies, he's a geneticist,

02:32:09.320 | said it takes many, many, many generations

02:32:12.400 | to evolve a species.

02:32:13.460 | It doesn't take very many to devolve a species.

02:32:16.200 | Negative mutations can build on another

02:32:18.080 | and crash a species very, very fast.

02:32:20.340 | I think our psyche is similar in that way.

02:32:23.520 | - Well, that's an entropic problem.

02:32:25.160 | There's way more ways to make something complex worse

02:32:28.840 | than there are to make it better.

02:32:30.520 | - Right.

02:32:31.360 | - That's why it's a straight and narrow path.

02:32:34.080 | - My father came to this country from Argentina

02:32:36.320 | and he grew up in a lot of,

02:32:37.880 | surrounded by a lot of political chaos,

02:32:39.600 | came to the country, became a physicist,

02:32:41.040 | probably 'cause he likes order.

02:32:42.160 | He's a very orderly guy.

02:32:43.600 | And it was probably in the early '90s that we went,

02:32:48.200 | I was born in '75, so probably, yeah, early '90s,

02:32:50.560 | that we went to a movie theater together to see a movie.

02:32:53.660 | And he said it as we were walking in.

02:32:56.160 | He said, "Look."

02:32:57.560 | And I said, "What?"

02:32:58.380 | And he said, "This is the beginning of the end."

02:33:00.520 | And I said, "What do you mean?"

02:33:01.480 | He said, "We're degenerating as a society."

02:33:04.480 | And I said, "Why?"

02:33:05.320 | And he said, "There are people here in their pajamas."

02:33:07.740 | - Right, right.

02:33:08.580 | - And obviously, they weren't in their pajamas,

02:33:10.220 | but they'd come in in kind of like bathroom slippers.

02:33:14.040 | And they weren't slovenly,

02:33:16.320 | but they weren't taking care of themselves.

02:33:18.280 | Clearly. - Worse, worse.

02:33:19.520 | - They didn't care what other people thought, right?

02:33:21.400 | They didn't care. - That's right.

02:33:22.240 | They were making a public display of their lack of care.

02:33:24.800 | - Right, exactly. - Right, right.

02:33:25.640 | - Exactly. - That's a narcissistic aspect

02:33:27.840 | to that, too.

02:33:28.680 | Yeah, he's right about that.

02:33:30.120 | - Yeah, and I thought at the time,

02:33:31.080 | like he's being judgmental.

02:33:32.000 | I was a teen, right?

02:33:32.840 | He's being judgmental, et cetera.

02:33:35.220 | But, you know, I would say from 1990 until fairly recently,

02:33:39.660 | hopefully things are shifting for the better now,

02:33:41.460 | but there has seemed to be,

02:33:44.260 | it's kind of chaos out there.

02:33:45.500 | Now, I think it's wonderful

02:33:46.420 | that people can express themselves

02:33:47.820 | by wearing clothes that they feel represent them, et cetera.

02:33:51.540 | But this wasn't that.

02:33:52.700 | This was a lack of care.

02:33:54.300 | - Look, voluntary, what would you say?

02:33:57.500 | The evocation of voluntary chaos, that's one thing.

02:34:00.940 | The degeneration into chaos through sloth, let's say,

02:34:04.300 | that's not an adventure.

02:34:06.120 | That's carelessness in all things

02:34:08.380 | masquerading as an adventure.

02:34:10.380 | I'm so cool, I don't care.

02:34:12.420 | It's like, you're not cool.

02:34:14.760 | You're just useless.

02:34:16.340 | And you're covering your uselessness

02:34:18.300 | with a veneer of revolutionary morality.

02:34:21.580 | It's like there's nothing in that that's up.

02:34:23.960 | Like if people want to deviate

02:34:25.500 | in the manner they present themselves in dress,

02:34:27.620 | and they're doing that

02:34:28.560 | because they have a inspiration or a purpose,

02:34:32.460 | then that's completely different

02:34:34.400 | than just being so cool you don't care.

02:34:37.540 | And that's not cool.

02:34:38.820 | There's nothing about that that's cool.

02:34:41.140 | And you might say, and you had this sense

02:34:43.340 | when you were a kid that your dad was overreacting.

02:34:45.460 | It's like, yeah, well, if you look,

02:34:49.580 | you can see things before other people see them.

02:34:52.080 | And he came from a place that had gone through

02:34:56.380 | a fair number of very rough times.

02:34:58.820 | And so he could have been perfectly accurate

02:35:01.860 | in what he saw, highly likely.

02:35:04.820 | That's another example of the center disintegrating, right?

02:35:09.280 | - Where do you think we are now in the United States?

02:35:12.780 | I think in terms of how we hold

02:35:16.900 | and represent order versus chaos.

02:35:19.500 | I mean, we were talking about some of the,

02:35:20.820 | you know, these social media posts recently.

02:35:23.220 | We just had a public display of an assassination.

02:35:27.500 | - Maybe, you know, I hadn't intended on going there,

02:35:29.780 | but I think it's worth talking about.

02:35:32.100 | It was weird.

02:35:32.940 | I got pulled into this through tangential reasons.

02:35:35.380 | This Luigi Mancione's last tweet was a podcast cover

02:35:39.780 | of my episode with Jonathan Haidt.

02:35:41.920 | And some media outlets tried to make something of that.

02:35:45.780 | But clearly he was very smart.

02:35:50.060 | Clearly he had forethought to his actions.

02:35:53.700 | He 3D printed this gun, it seems.

02:35:56.060 | It is all alleged now, but it seems to be pointing

02:35:57.740 | in that direction.

02:35:58.560 | He seems to not want the police

02:35:59.600 | to go investigate anybody else, you know,

02:36:01.320 | because he claims there's no one else acting with him,

02:36:03.320 | et cetera.

02:36:04.160 | He clearly was trying to make a statement,

02:36:07.380 | but the statement was a combination of statements

02:36:10.220 | about the insurance system, sort of anti-establishment

02:36:15.220 | because of his affinity for Kaczynski Unabomber bombings.

02:36:19.300 | But at the same time, he didn't really seem to fall

02:36:22.980 | into kind of left-leaning or right-leaning politics squarely.

02:36:25.700 | He was kind of all over the place.

02:36:26.660 | So you're a trained clinician.

02:36:29.940 | Do you think there's some schizotypal

02:36:31.380 | or schizophrenic type organization there in his head

02:36:34.620 | or lack of organization?

02:36:36.140 | I mean, what are we to make of this?

02:36:37.740 | And we had to see somebody assassinated, shot in the back,

02:36:42.740 | multiple times. - If I had to hazard a guess,

02:36:44.100 | I would say the first thing I would be looking for

02:36:46.580 | is pathological narcissism.

02:36:48.300 | Disordered thought, possibly,

02:36:54.140 | but he was quite successful academically.

02:36:57.540 | Like the typical pattern for something

02:36:59.180 | like schizophrenic dissolution

02:37:01.180 | is very, very much difficulty in maintaining.

02:37:04.640 | So disciplined, striving

02:37:06.220 | in a highly intellectual atmosphere, for example.

02:37:08.780 | - Yeah, he was a valedictorian.

02:37:09.620 | He went to Ivy League school and graduated.

02:37:10.460 | - Yeah, yeah, yeah, so I'd think

02:37:11.740 | more Luciferian grandiosity.

02:37:14.500 | And the intellect is particularly prone to that.

02:37:16.920 | The archetypal representation of the intellect

02:37:22.140 | that overreaches is Lucifer, right?

02:37:25.080 | God's highest angel gone most catastrophically wrong,

02:37:29.500 | which means that the best thing in its place

02:37:31.700 | is the worst thing on the top.

02:37:34.260 | That happens with sexuality.

02:37:35.540 | It can happen with aggression.

02:37:37.020 | It certainly happens with the intellect.

02:37:39.140 | And so I think he's a worshiper of his own intellect

02:37:41.780 | and believed that he was the guy who could make the decision

02:37:45.580 | even of life and death,

02:37:46.980 | which means he took onto himself the role of ultimate judge.

02:37:50.500 | And that's what the kid who shot up Columbine did too

02:37:53.300 | and said in his own writings.

02:37:55.100 | He's the judge.

02:37:56.660 | And that's like narcissistic beyond comprehension.

02:38:00.060 | And the fact that he's being celebrated,

02:38:01.820 | well, that's an echo of that moralizing narcissism

02:38:05.780 | that's deeply embedded in our culture, deeply embedded.

02:38:09.900 | And so, yeah, it's a very ugly, it's very ugly.

02:38:13.820 | I see, so we're going to what?

02:38:15.880 | We're now vigilantes in relationship to the corporate world,

02:38:20.060 | judge, jury, and executioner.

02:38:21.940 | And the reason we've taken on that role

02:38:23.860 | is because we, unlike, let's say,

02:38:27.100 | the people who run healthcare enterprises,

02:38:29.260 | we truly care for the sick and oppressed.

02:38:32.340 | It's like, do you now?

02:38:33.940 | Do you now?

02:38:35.460 | There's so much moralizing in our culture.

02:38:37.380 | It's beyond, it's really beyond belief.

02:38:39.260 | - I was going to say all these CEOs

02:38:40.340 | now are going to need personal security.

02:38:41.740 | That's hardly going to cause them to adjust their premiums

02:38:45.860 | or something downward.

02:38:46.860 | I mean, I think as people get more scared,

02:38:48.820 | they tend to show up. - Double down.

02:38:51.460 | - Yeah, they tend to double down.

02:38:53.460 | I mean, earlier we were talking about action at a distance.

02:38:56.340 | I mean, clearly this Mangione guy is aware of action.

02:39:01.340 | - Short-term route to high status.

02:39:03.940 | So ignored or notorious, there's a hard choice for young men.

02:39:08.940 | They'll pick notorious, many of them will.

02:39:11.940 | And no wonder, because status is everything.

02:39:16.700 | - And it's hard to do good things

02:39:18.700 | over long periods of time.

02:39:20.180 | - Right?

02:39:21.020 | - It's not hard to be good.

02:39:21.860 | It's just hard to do, it's hard to do good things.

02:39:24.100 | It's hard to do big things.

02:39:25.180 | I mean, I think that's one reason why I'm very happy

02:39:27.860 | that Elon is being celebrated.

02:39:29.820 | You don't have to agree with him politically,

02:39:32.340 | but the rockets going, the idea of going to Mars,

02:39:35.420 | trying to make sure that our species replaces itself.

02:39:38.980 | I mean, these are big, important endeavors.

02:39:41.900 | I mean, I, the reason-

02:39:42.740 | - Well, and he can clearly do them.

02:39:44.500 | I mean, he's- - Well, Neuralink, Neuralink.

02:39:45.740 | - He's been insanely successful

02:39:48.020 | doing five impossible things simultaneously.

02:39:51.620 | Right, that's not fluke.

02:39:53.340 | - No.

02:39:54.180 | - Right, once, probably not fluke even once,

02:39:57.820 | but the probability that it's fluke once is higher.

02:40:01.700 | Five times, no, that's a reputation.

02:40:06.260 | Right, and so, and he's a from first principle sort of guy.

02:40:10.560 | So yeah, I wouldn't bet against Elon Musk.

02:40:13.180 | So, and that is independent of his political stance.

02:40:16.180 | And is it difficult to do good things?

02:40:21.080 | - Well, it's hard, it's hard.

02:40:23.420 | It's hard to do long-term good things

02:40:25.860 | 'cause they're long-term.

02:40:26.860 | That's what I was trying to say.

02:40:27.700 | - Right, but it's also intensely,

02:40:29.660 | the thing is it's also, this is that back to that issue

02:40:32.680 | of the relationship between responsibility and adventure.

02:40:35.640 | It's like, if the aim is true, the voyage is worthwhile.

02:40:42.660 | And so, and that happens right away.

02:40:44.780 | Like, you know, you're very successful with your podcast,

02:40:47.980 | but my suspicions are you've deeply enjoyed it

02:40:50.900 | since its onset.

02:40:52.180 | Well, so, well, that means that some of your pleasure

02:40:56.140 | is satiation related.

02:40:59.420 | You've become successful, but if that was your aim,

02:41:03.260 | you would have failed as a podcaster.

02:41:05.420 | Because a podcaster--

02:41:06.260 | - Definitely, I definitely would have failed.

02:41:07.580 | - Oh, definitely.

02:41:08.420 | - Right, right.

02:41:09.240 | - Oh, absolutely, 100%.

02:41:10.080 | - 'Cause it wasn't the pursuit of pleasure per se.

02:41:12.020 | It's sort of like the difference between, you know,

02:41:13.740 | is it easier to be the class clown or the top of the class?

02:41:18.060 | It's just much easier to be the class clown.

02:41:20.780 | All you have to do is crack 10 jokes, one of them hits,

02:41:23.300 | you know, and you're safe,

02:41:25.080 | but you're actually dissolving as you go.

02:41:27.360 | - Right, right, right.

02:41:28.260 | Well, that's the prioritization of the short-term

02:41:30.380 | over the long run.

02:41:31.220 | I mean, Rogan's a perfectly appropriate example

02:41:35.520 | 'cause he's sort of like the archetype

02:41:36.980 | of the successful podcaster.

02:41:38.700 | It's like, what's Joe doing?

02:41:41.220 | Well, he's doing what he's always done.

02:41:42.500 | He sits down with his producer, one guy,

02:41:45.200 | and he talks to people he wants to talk to

02:41:47.780 | about things he wants to talk to them about.

02:41:49.560 | That's the whole thing.

02:41:51.100 | The whole, and it's, you know, the lefties

02:41:54.660 | who refuse to talk to people in the podcast world

02:41:58.180 | for 10 years are now proclaiming to everyone who will listen

02:42:01.500 | that they should have built their own, you know,

02:42:04.300 | alternative media apparatus,

02:42:06.460 | and they could have participated in the one that exists now

02:42:09.620 | at any time had they shown the least proclivity to do so.

02:42:13.860 | It's not such an easy thing to build

02:42:17.700 | because it wasn't something that Joe built.

02:42:21.000 | It was something that happened around him

02:42:23.620 | in consequence of the nature of his pursuit,

02:42:26.580 | and that's the case

02:42:27.420 | for virtually all the successful podcasters.

02:42:30.540 | - I think people forget how Joe's podcast started.

02:42:33.540 | You might know this story.

02:42:34.500 | I'll keep it brief,

02:42:35.380 | but he was a comedian at the Comedy Store.

02:42:39.300 | He had done some television and things of that sort,

02:42:41.180 | but, and people can find this online.

02:42:43.340 | The videos are on YouTube,

02:42:44.380 | where a comedian was stealing Ari Shaffir's jokes.

02:42:48.300 | So Joe got up on stage and said,

02:42:50.900 | there's some ethics in the comedy community.

02:42:55.900 | People can buy jokes,

02:42:57.380 | but you don't steal jokes, apparently,

02:42:59.860 | and there's an etiquette as well.

02:43:02.020 | So apparently he confronted this guy

02:43:03.780 | in front of the audience and said,

02:43:06.280 | "You're stealing his jokes,"

02:43:08.280 | and the guy challenged him and Joe said, "No,"

02:43:10.380 | like Joe was stood up in the name of justice

02:43:12.420 | for a friend of his.

02:43:13.780 | And my understanding, could be wrong about this,

02:43:15.980 | but my understanding is that Joe was then banished

02:43:18.260 | from that particular comedy club.

02:43:20.780 | So what did he do?

02:43:21.940 | He went home, he popped open his laptop,

02:43:24.060 | and he and Brian Redman and a few other folks

02:43:27.140 | started what eventually became the Joe Rogan Podcast.

02:43:30.100 | It came out of an impulse to stand up for the truth,

02:43:35.100 | which I think is an important thing

02:43:37.900 | for people to understand,

02:43:39.480 | because it helps you understand Joe.

02:43:41.520 | - And he's been unerring in that.

02:43:43.820 | - Yeah, yeah, and I think that that's deep.

02:43:46.060 | Yeah, and he doesn't claim to always be right,

02:43:48.260 | but his pursuit of the truth

02:43:52.540 | has been a driving force for the podcast.

02:43:55.140 | - He claims consistently to not be sufficiently right.

02:43:58.740 | That's why he listens and asks questions.

02:44:01.660 | You don't ask genuine questions

02:44:03.900 | if you believe that you already know everything.

02:44:07.260 | You only ask real questions

02:44:08.780 | if you don't think that you know enough.

02:44:11.060 | And Joe wouldn't be perennially attractive to his audiences

02:44:15.500 | if he wasn't asking the same questions

02:44:17.420 | that the audience would like to have answered.

02:44:19.820 | - Right, he's genuinely curious.

02:44:21.860 | - Absolutely.

02:44:22.700 | - I mean, you said it.

02:44:23.540 | - Well, Musk himself said, when I interviewed him,

02:44:26.400 | he talked about a terrible existential crisis

02:44:29.180 | that he had when he was 13, 14,

02:44:32.140 | which is not atypical of people with outstanding intellects,

02:44:36.980 | let's say.

02:44:37.820 | And he resolved that by recognizing

02:44:43.020 | that the quest is the source of meaning.

02:44:47.460 | And so he took it upon himself

02:44:49.260 | to confront difficult problems and try to solve them.

02:44:53.380 | And he found that to be sufficiently gratifying,

02:44:55.780 | so his existential crisis resolved itself.

02:44:58.940 | And that's very much the same pattern

02:45:02.040 | that Rogan is exemplifying in you, in your pursuits.

02:45:06.500 | And you can see what impact it has on the public, you know?

02:45:10.660 | And I was talking with one of your staff members

02:45:13.760 | before this podcast about your lectures, say, in Australia.

02:45:18.140 | And so you're in the weird position

02:45:19.580 | where 5,000 people come and listen

02:45:22.340 | to a biologist lecture spontaneously for, what, 90 minutes?

02:45:26.660 | Like, what the hell?

02:45:28.060 | Well, that's just an indication of how compelled people are

02:45:31.120 | by anything approximating a genuine quest.

02:45:34.460 | It doesn't even matter the direction, right?

02:45:37.180 | It matters the commitment

02:45:38.460 | and that capacity to explore and transmit.

02:45:42.740 | And that is a manifestation of the word that redeems.

02:45:45.700 | - I love this idea, or what you just said,

02:45:49.120 | that it doesn't even so much matter the direction

02:45:52.260 | as much as the commitment.

02:45:53.780 | A colleague of mine at Stanford

02:45:55.300 | who I respect tremendously, Anna Lembke,

02:45:58.020 | who wrote the book "Dopamine Nation,"

02:45:59.660 | she's the head of our Dual Diagnosis Addiction Center.

02:46:01.920 | She was the one who really truly deserves credit

02:46:04.600 | for bringing dopamine into the public discussion

02:46:06.940 | over the last few years.

02:46:07.780 | She initiated that, talking about how big inflections

02:46:10.960 | in dopamine that are very fast,

02:46:12.280 | that aren't preceded by effort,

02:46:14.040 | aka drugs of abuse, behavioral addictions, et cetera,

02:46:16.600 | leave us below baseline with our dopamine.

02:46:18.920 | And then people will engage in more of the behavior

02:46:20.920 | that drives us further and further and further.

02:46:22.320 | That's kind of the principle of it.

02:46:24.020 | I was talking to her about how people get sober

02:46:28.000 | and the conversation turned to

02:46:30.760 | how do young people find their purpose.

02:46:33.280 | It was very interesting.

02:46:34.680 | She said, "Let's talk about finding purpose.

02:46:36.520 | "Everyone nowadays wants to know what their purpose is."

02:46:39.800 | And she said, "The way you find your purpose

02:46:41.520 | "is by going out onto your front lawn

02:46:43.140 | "and seeing if the leaves need to be raked."

02:46:45.300 | Sounds familiar, right?

02:46:46.560 | You find purpose by figuring out how you can be of use

02:46:51.420 | at progressively larger and larger spheres

02:46:53.640 | away from yourself.

02:46:55.600 | And in doing that- - And the present.

02:46:57.060 | - And in doing that, you start to hear the calling

02:46:59.120 | and you find your purpose.

02:47:00.560 | And as you said, you don't- - Or it reveals itself to you.

02:47:03.540 | - It reveals, yeah. - And this is the same thing.

02:47:04.920 | - Right. - Yeah, yeah.

02:47:05.760 | - So I think you two would enjoy a conversation

02:47:07.840 | at some point. - Well, well, yeah.

02:47:08.680 | - I think you're very aligned. - This is an important thing

02:47:09.960 | to return to because people are often curious

02:47:13.000 | about what to do practically.

02:47:14.320 | It's like, okay, first, this is what Jacob does.

02:47:18.140 | Jacob, in the Old Testament stories,

02:47:20.040 | he eventually becomes Israel, right?

02:47:22.080 | And so that's his name.

02:47:23.680 | And Israel means we who wrestle with God.

02:47:26.680 | Now, Jacob is a bad guy when the story starts.

02:47:29.920 | And he leaves his home and the perverse influence

02:47:32.920 | of his mother and his criminal betraying past behind.

02:47:37.920 | And he decides that he's going to aim up.

02:47:41.540 | And that night, he makes an altar and he makes a sacrifice.

02:47:45.280 | And that night, he has a dream of a staircase

02:47:47.240 | that reaches up to heaven,

02:47:48.600 | which is now what he's walking up, right?

02:47:51.320 | And so he finds his purpose.

02:47:58.120 | He finds his adventure as a consequence

02:48:01.120 | of his decision to be better.

02:48:03.480 | Okay, so now you wanna find your purpose.

02:48:05.240 | Okay, first thing you have to do,

02:48:07.920 | you have to review how wretched and miserable

02:48:13.040 | you actually are.

02:48:14.880 | And you have to face that.

02:48:16.520 | And then you have to think, I'd rather not have that.

02:48:19.600 | And it has to be true.

02:48:21.320 | And then you have to aim up.

02:48:23.080 | Now, you don't know what that means

02:48:24.520 | because you're pretty scattered and dissolute,

02:48:27.440 | but at least you got the damn intent in mind.

02:48:30.640 | And then you have to be willing to make the sacrifices,

02:48:34.080 | right, along the way.

02:48:35.400 | Okay, then what happens?

02:48:37.120 | Well, then the pathway will reveal itself to you

02:48:40.320 | in increments, calling.

02:48:42.600 | Is there something around here that I could fix,

02:48:44.740 | that I would fix?

02:48:46.720 | That's a great question.

02:48:47.920 | Is there something at hand that I could fix,

02:48:51.160 | that I would fix?

02:48:52.480 | It might be something low,

02:48:53.600 | 'cause especially when you first get going,

02:48:55.640 | you're not good for anything.

02:48:57.160 | So you might have to start with something pretty trivial,

02:48:59.240 | but it doesn't matter 'cause you start getting better.

02:49:02.120 | Is there something that bothers me, that's conscience,

02:49:04.600 | that I could set right in some small way?

02:49:07.160 | Well, that's there for everyone, right?

02:49:09.640 | In the midst of the most catastrophic mess, that pathway,

02:49:13.320 | you might even say, look, the more mess around you,

02:49:15.920 | the more unstructured possibility you have at hand.

02:49:19.360 | And it's true, you know, it's like,

02:49:21.000 | I'm not trying to be a Pollyanna about this.

02:49:24.440 | I know how difficult that is,

02:49:26.720 | but it is the case that the more mess at hand

02:49:29.680 | that you can see, the more opportunity that's there,

02:49:32.780 | 'cause, well, if you can see that it's a mess,

02:49:35.800 | then you can see the pathway to cleaning it up.

02:49:40.960 | Well, so do it, do it, see what happens.

02:49:44.240 | That's the adventure.

02:49:45.680 | What's gonna happen?

02:49:47.240 | In my class, my Maps of Meaning class,

02:49:50.560 | I used to have students do this as a project.

02:49:53.280 | And one of the projects was find something around you

02:49:56.600 | in your neighborhood, wherever, in your family

02:49:58.760 | that isn't set right and see if you could set it right.

02:50:02.160 | Just write down what happens.

02:50:03.960 | Well, one student in particular,

02:50:06.480 | he decided his mother had died

02:50:07.960 | and the family kind of fragmented.

02:50:10.080 | And so he decided he would try to take on the role of mother,

02:50:13.560 | you know, be responsible for the household operating.

02:50:18.000 | Well, it grew him up like mad, as you can imagine.

02:50:20.840 | He ran into all sorts of weird resistances, right?

02:50:23.800 | 'Cause his family was upset

02:50:25.360 | that he was doing what mom used to do.

02:50:27.240 | And like, he just had a tremendously complex adventure

02:50:31.040 | as a consequence of his willingness to pursue this.

02:50:34.560 | It was obviously necessary 'cause the alternative

02:50:37.000 | was that his family was gonna fall apart.

02:50:39.200 | It's like, that's there for everyone.

02:50:40.920 | You say, well, my circumstances are so difficult.

02:50:43.280 | It's like, fair enough.

02:50:44.560 | So are everybody else's, by the way.

02:50:47.120 | But that means there's a lot of mess, fix it a bit.

02:50:51.400 | And that's ridiculously entertaining and unpredictable.

02:50:56.040 | And that in itself is a great deal.

02:50:58.080 | You have no idea what's gonna happen.

02:50:59.540 | Just like you didn't know what happened

02:51:00.800 | when you started the podcast.

02:51:02.080 | Why'd you start it?

02:51:03.940 | - I had a, for me, I felt a compulsion to share what I knew,

02:51:08.840 | but because during the pandemic,

02:51:11.840 | everyone was so focused on vaccines and lockdowns

02:51:16.180 | that no one was talking about the reality

02:51:18.040 | that everyone was facing, including,

02:51:20.480 | sorry, Josh Gordon, I know him through time,

02:51:23.220 | our director of the National Institutes of Mental Health.

02:51:27.240 | Not a single thing out there about,

02:51:29.680 | hey folks, if you're gonna be indoors this much,

02:51:31.920 | get some sunlight in your eyes in the morning,

02:51:33.400 | or else you're gonna have trouble sleeping.

02:51:34.680 | Trouble sleeping equates to mental health issues.

02:51:36.860 | Stress, uncertainty.

02:51:38.520 | My lab was working on ways to regulate stress

02:51:41.480 | through deliberate breathing, through other mechanisms.

02:51:44.440 | It was like, well, I want people to have tools,

02:51:46.500 | zero cost tools to deal with their stress,

02:51:49.040 | to help them regulate their circadian biology,

02:51:51.180 | because those wick out to countering the negative forces

02:51:56.020 | that were on us, which are social order was disrupted,

02:51:58.900 | people are at home.

02:51:59.740 | So it was the desire to give people tools

02:52:01.540 | that I knew existed, that I was knowledgeable about.

02:52:04.580 | And I had a longstanding kind of growing compulsion

02:52:08.820 | that I wanted to talk about neuroscience

02:52:10.660 | because it's so darn cool.

02:52:12.420 | - Right, okay, so it's a logical extension.

02:52:13.700 | - There was a lot of energy behind the mission,

02:52:16.600 | but then there was a calling.

02:52:17.760 | The calling was from hearing about people's suffering.

02:52:19.760 | It's like, well, of course you're not sleeping well.

02:52:21.560 | I mean, not only are there a million things

02:52:22.980 | to worry about right now, people aren't working, et cetera,

02:52:25.600 | but you're not getting sunlight in your eyes.

02:52:27.880 | You need to get outside.

02:52:28.920 | You need to, you know,

02:52:29.920 | and then there's the whole socialization thing,

02:52:31.660 | and whatever people's circumstances,

02:52:33.520 | there are things that they could do.

02:52:35.080 | And so I felt that calling,

02:52:36.480 | and my conscience told me that I have the knowledge,

02:52:39.680 | so why would I cloister with it at home?

02:52:43.000 | That's like, what good is that?

02:52:44.460 | And so I just started blabbing on the internet.

02:52:46.920 | - Right, right.

02:52:48.240 | - That's why.

02:52:49.080 | - Yeah, well, that's a perfectly, you know,

02:52:51.400 | you can think, well, that's a logical extension

02:52:53.760 | of your subsidiary calling to be a teacher and a professor.

02:52:57.880 | You're already a researcher, you're already a professor,

02:53:00.100 | so you're investigating and transmitting knowledge.

02:53:02.560 | It's like, well, looks like you could do that

02:53:04.880 | on a broader scale, and the technology's there.

02:53:07.800 | Why not explore that?

02:53:09.640 | That's a perfectly reasonable,

02:53:11.040 | and you can see the interplay

02:53:12.160 | of calling and conscience there.

02:53:13.940 | That's a lovely way of characterizing

02:53:15.960 | the voice of the divine,

02:53:17.280 | which is how it's characterized, repeated.

02:53:19.600 | Elijah, Elijah's the prophet who appears with Christ

02:53:24.240 | when he's transfigured on the mount in the New Testament.

02:53:27.120 | It's Elijah and Moses.

02:53:28.440 | Elijah is the first person in human history

02:53:30.720 | who identifies the divine with conscience.

02:53:33.100 | That's his contribution.

02:53:34.440 | That's a major psychological revolution, right?

02:53:37.920 | It's an unheralded transformation in understanding.

02:53:42.920 | It's like, it's not the storm, it's not the forest fire,

02:53:46.280 | it's not the earthquake, it's not the god of nature.

02:53:49.600 | He's the originator of the phrase, the still, small voice.

02:53:53.520 | Right, it's like that's a,

02:53:55.200 | that the notion that your conscience

02:53:57.080 | is the voice of the divine,

02:53:58.560 | my God, there's virtually no discovery.

02:54:03.400 | There's no proposition more revolutionary than that.

02:54:06.680 | And so that's why Elijah is a prophet of primary status.

02:54:10.760 | And I just see no reason at all

02:54:12.680 | not to take that claim seriously.

02:54:14.240 | It's like, you come up with an explanation

02:54:16.760 | for your conscience.

02:54:18.360 | It tells you things you don't want to hear.

02:54:21.100 | So how is that you?

02:54:23.280 | I mean, you have to gerrymander the definition of you

02:54:26.940 | for that to be you.

02:54:28.960 | - No, I absolutely believe

02:54:30.160 | that things come from outside of us, certainly for me.

02:54:32.580 | And I'm now very much a devotee of prayer.

02:54:36.520 | I pray before this podcast.

02:54:38.480 | - What do you pray?

02:54:39.400 | - Well, before this podcast,

02:54:40.760 | I prayed for clarity of mind,

02:54:43.300 | to be able to learn from you

02:54:46.180 | and to help transmit that knowledge out to people

02:54:48.860 | in a way that would be useful to them,

02:54:50.760 | for sustained focus,

02:54:53.680 | for the ability to also let go

02:54:58.200 | and not try and control or lead with questions.

02:55:01.360 | - That sacrifice, yeah, yeah.

02:55:02.600 | - And to allow a sense of randomness and serendipity

02:55:07.600 | to make it what it is,

02:55:12.440 | trusting that it's in service to the listeners.

02:55:15.520 | - Right, well, that's a very precise

02:55:18.480 | and properly formulated prayer.

02:55:20.520 | - Yeah, I pray before every podcast.

02:55:21.960 | I pray before going to sleep each night.

02:55:23.160 | I've been doing this for a little over a year.

02:55:26.660 | I always quietly, secretly.

02:55:28.360 | - Why did you decide to do that?

02:55:29.840 | - My coming to the whole notion of prayer and God,

02:55:32.480 | et cetera, was complicated in the backdrop

02:55:36.800 | in the sense that I always secretly prayed,

02:55:39.140 | always secretly prayed.

02:55:41.840 | And then about a year, about a year and a half ago,

02:55:45.920 | a guy that works on my security team

02:55:47.720 | started talking to me about the Bible.

02:55:50.640 | We started talking about God and it made sense.

02:55:54.760 | I started reading the Bible.

02:55:56.480 | I'm not through it yet and I started praying.

02:55:59.800 | And I had a number of experiences

02:56:02.080 | as a consequence of praying,

02:56:03.520 | clearly as a consequence of prayer

02:56:05.600 | that made me realize that prayer

02:56:09.900 | doesn't give me a capacity of any sort.

02:56:12.480 | It just allows certain things

02:56:14.120 | that I believe are inside of me to come out.

02:56:17.640 | And for-

02:56:18.480 | - Yeah, proper prayer establishes aim.

02:56:20.580 | - Yeah, that's right.

02:56:21.580 | - Oh yeah. - That's right.

02:56:22.420 | - Well, why wouldn't you establish your aim?

02:56:23.920 | Like, why wouldn't you take a moment

02:56:25.680 | before you start your podcast

02:56:27.920 | to remember what the hell you're trying to accomplish

02:56:30.640 | and to have it firmly in mind?

02:56:32.200 | - Yeah, and it felt different.

02:56:33.960 | So I should say that I have this little list

02:56:35.840 | that I sometimes do.

02:56:36.660 | I'll say, you know,

02:56:38.120 | deliberate breathing, aka breath work,

02:56:39.700 | can allow you to shift your state.

02:56:41.280 | Hypnosis is a tool that can allow you

02:56:43.800 | to solve a particular problem

02:56:45.440 | 'cause it has some aspect of neuroplasticity in there.

02:56:49.120 | Non-sleep-depressed, which is a thing

02:56:50.680 | that was built out of this practice called yoga nidra,

02:56:54.320 | where you go into an awake but deeply relaxed state,

02:56:56.880 | allows you to restore your vigor.

02:56:58.440 | Meditation, to me,

02:56:59.440 | is a way of enhancing one's ability to focus.

02:57:02.600 | You know, third eye meditation

02:57:04.080 | of concentrating your breath, et cetera.

02:57:05.320 | I mean, we know based on the data, it improves focus.

02:57:07.480 | Prayer, to me, is entirely different than all of those.

02:57:10.700 | There's some overlap.

02:57:12.080 | They look similar.

02:57:14.200 | Some of them look similar from the outside.

02:57:16.200 | But prayer, for me,

02:57:19.520 | is the allowing of something from truly outside me

02:57:23.260 | to come through me and bring out the best in me.

02:57:27.140 | And that's why I pray for four things.

02:57:29.820 | I pray for ability.

02:57:31.220 | I pray for other people.

02:57:32.860 | And I also have learned

02:57:34.440 | that a powerful aspect of prayer is just listening.

02:57:37.580 | Because just stopping and listening

02:57:40.040 | and trying to invite in or allow in messages

02:57:44.840 | that if I didn't still myself, that I wouldn't hear.

02:57:48.580 | And sometimes I'll go to sleep

02:57:50.020 | and then the next morning something will come to mind.

02:57:52.620 | It's not always immediate, yeah.

02:57:53.460 | - Well, I don't think there's any real difference

02:57:55.300 | between that and revelation.

02:57:56.980 | So imagine that

02:57:58.160 | what speaks to you in intuition is the voice of your aim.

02:58:04.740 | Now, this would be true if your thoughts

02:58:11.300 | and the images that appear to you are tools, so to speak,

02:58:16.420 | to orient you towards your destination.

02:58:18.940 | Well, obviously, they have to be that.

02:58:20.820 | Because if your thoughts and your visions, let's say,

02:58:24.260 | didn't orient you towards your destination,

02:58:26.660 | they would be useless and you'd never get anywhere.

02:58:29.420 | Okay, so now you specify your aim.

02:58:32.020 | And it is the voice of that aim

02:58:34.500 | that will make itself manifest to you.

02:58:36.060 | That is what a revelation is.

02:58:38.020 | And one of these days when we have a podcast,

02:58:40.300 | I'd like to sit down and talk to you about the relationship,

02:58:42.820 | the formal relationship between thought and prayer.

02:58:46.980 | Because I think thought is secularized prayer.

02:58:51.100 | I mean, look at it's historic,

02:58:52.740 | 'cause when did we start to think?

02:58:56.380 | That's not so obvious, you know?

02:58:57.940 | I mean, we started to think in words

02:59:00.980 | after we developed the ability to use language.

02:59:03.340 | What's that, 150,000 years?

02:59:05.100 | Maybe it's longer than that.

02:59:06.180 | No one really knows.

02:59:07.140 | But thought has its historical origins.

02:59:10.660 | The probability that it emerged from something like prayer,

02:59:13.420 | as far as I can tell, is 100%.

02:59:15.300 | But I'd like to, at some point,

02:59:16.860 | it's complicated,

02:59:17.700 | but I'd like to have a discussion with you about that.

02:59:21.020 | So imagine that to have an informative intuition

02:59:26.020 | means that you posit a question.

02:59:29.660 | And that's a form of humility.

02:59:31.740 | It's like, there's something I need to know

02:59:34.140 | that I don't know that I could know that I'd like to know.

02:59:37.820 | It's like, so you set the stage.

02:59:39.420 | Well, once you set the stage,

02:59:40.700 | the probability that a creative idea

02:59:42.940 | will enter the theater of your imagination

02:59:45.540 | is much enhanced.

02:59:47.060 | That's the first stage of revelation.

02:59:49.300 | Then you have to assess that.

02:59:50.740 | That's discriminating the spirits, you might say.

02:59:53.780 | You're separating the wheat from the chaff.

02:59:55.380 | That's critical thinking.

02:59:56.540 | But all of that, as far as I can tell,

02:59:58.620 | is something approximating secularized prayer.

03:00:02.460 | Set your aim.

03:00:03.580 | Then observe the manifestation of that aim.

03:00:09.500 | That, it's not even magical.

03:00:12.140 | It's how your perception works.

03:00:14.260 | Now, there's a magic to it,

03:00:15.460 | because I suppose the magic is that you can think up

03:00:19.100 | something you never thought up before.

03:00:21.180 | How the hell do you do that?

03:00:23.100 | It's more like you experience it, right?

03:00:24.900 | You set your aim, you have a question.

03:00:26.460 | So you're on your knees, hoping for an answer.

03:00:28.860 | The light bulb goes on.

03:00:31.820 | Well, if that's not revelation, then what the hell is it?

03:00:35.300 | It's the same thing.

03:00:36.580 | Having spent a good portion of my career

03:00:39.300 | digging around in brains,

03:00:40.540 | recording from neurons, slicing up brains, staining brains,

03:00:44.220 | and from my understanding of neuroscience,

03:00:48.420 | and I think by now in 2020, almost 2025,

03:00:51.580 | we have a fairly good understanding

03:00:52.780 | of what different brain areas do,

03:00:54.140 | how different circuits interact.

03:00:55.820 | I don't see how anyone who's really interested

03:01:01.220 | in how humans work can not believe in God.

03:01:08.300 | And I'm not being disparaging of people that don't.

03:01:10.660 | I know people that are atheists, I have some in my family,

03:01:14.140 | and I just don't think that the human brain and mind

03:01:18.420 | is capable of understanding and managing itself

03:01:22.540 | as well as it possibly could

03:01:24.500 | in the absence of a concept of God in prayer.

03:01:29.260 | And I think there's a lot of historical evidence

03:01:32.540 | to support that statement,

03:01:33.580 | meaning that this notion of God

03:01:36.220 | has been around a very long time.

03:01:38.540 | This is not a coincidence.

03:01:39.580 | I mean, humans have discarded many of the things

03:01:42.140 | that other people perhaps came up with.

03:01:45.820 | This has been a stable feature

03:01:48.300 | of being human for a very long time,

03:01:50.700 | of societies for a very long time.

03:01:52.140 | And I've been wanting to ask you

03:01:54.340 | throughout today's conversation,

03:01:55.460 | to what extent do you think the different religions

03:01:58.660 | and the way that they represent God differently,

03:02:02.020 | or in the case of Christianity, God and Jesus Christ,

03:02:05.180 | to what extent do you think that the stories

03:02:09.140 | and the lessons and the teachings overlap

03:02:14.140 | at the level that we're talking about today,

03:02:16.980 | which is really about a psychological

03:02:19.340 | and neuroscientific level?

03:02:20.860 | Seems to me that they all converge on the same themes,

03:02:23.940 | but I'm not, you know, I'm somewhat of a newbie

03:02:26.260 | to formal prayer and to reading the Bible and so on.

03:02:30.020 | So I like to say, you know, I haven't gotten my jersey yet

03:02:32.700 | 'cause I don't deserve it,

03:02:33.540 | but I'm putting in, I'm showing up to practice,

03:02:36.020 | you know, this kind of thing.

03:02:37.020 | So I'm just curious to what extent you see

03:02:40.100 | consistent themes across religions,

03:02:42.140 | and maybe even to atheism too.

03:02:44.260 | Like atheism, it's been argued

03:02:45.580 | as its own form of religion perhaps, right?

03:02:48.140 | And for anyone listening, I mean, I wanna make clear,

03:02:50.820 | like the, there's, I don't have any pushback on atheism.

03:02:55.820 | It's just that for me, adopting,

03:02:59.020 | really coming to terms with a real belief in God,

03:03:02.300 | and adopting a prayer practice every single night,

03:03:05.580 | and also during the day, many times,

03:03:08.300 | and always before a podcast,

03:03:09.980 | has been just tremendously beneficial to my life.

03:03:12.340 | So that's why I'm gonna continue to do it.

03:03:14.460 | Why wouldn't I?

03:03:16.580 | But that's the question.

03:03:17.500 | To what extent do different,

03:03:18.420 | the way that different religions represent God,

03:03:20.980 | you think across religions converge on common themes?

03:03:25.980 | - Well, I think they converge substantively.

03:03:28.220 | I mean, I think the best,

03:03:30.460 | I talked to Camille Paglia about this a few years ago.

03:03:35.220 | Maybe she's one of the world's foremost literary theorists,

03:03:38.940 | and she said something very interesting to me

03:03:40.700 | that was quite surprising.

03:03:42.020 | She said that had the academy turned to Eric Neumann,

03:03:46.260 | who is Jung's greatest student, by the way,

03:03:49.060 | instead of Foucault, the whole history of the university

03:03:53.900 | and the intellectual enterprise over the last five decades

03:03:56.580 | would have been entirely different.

03:03:57.700 | - What happened with Foucault?

03:03:58.980 | - What happened with Foucault?

03:04:00.500 | - Well, Foucault is the most cited scholar who ever lived.

03:04:04.580 | And Foucault believes that the story that we act out

03:04:09.100 | is one of power, and that's wrong.

03:04:12.660 | And it's not just wrong,

03:04:13.740 | it's like perversely and dangerously wrong.

03:04:16.300 | I think it's technically wrong,

03:04:18.420 | as well as being ethically wrong,

03:04:20.060 | partly because power does not provide a stable basis

03:04:23.740 | for psychological integration or social unity.

03:04:27.340 | It's just, it's not.

03:04:29.500 | Power might be more effective adaptively

03:04:32.740 | than capitulation and dependence,

03:04:35.740 | but it's not an optimized solution,

03:04:39.660 | not by any stretch of the imagination.

03:04:41.500 | And I think the data demonstrating that,

03:04:45.460 | I think it's incontrovertible.

03:04:47.940 | And I outline that in this book, "Will You Wrestle With God?"

03:04:51.460 | Eric Neumann, Carl Jung, Mircea Eliade,

03:04:56.660 | a host of others,

03:04:58.460 | outlined the patterns of religious thinking,

03:05:02.020 | and it took them most of the 20th century to do that,

03:05:04.660 | and they found recurring themes that are profound.

03:05:07.540 | So one example,

03:05:09.540 | the ancient Egyptians worshiped a god, Horus.

03:05:13.420 | Everyone knows the god Horus,

03:05:14.980 | because his emblem is the eye, the open eye.

03:05:18.900 | Well, what does that mean?

03:05:20.980 | But it means in part

03:05:21.820 | that the ancient Egyptians worshiped attention,

03:05:26.300 | and they felt that the god of attention

03:05:29.980 | was the antidote to the pathological state.

03:05:32.740 | And they were right about that.

03:05:36.180 | They had a god of the pathological state.

03:05:38.380 | That was Seth.

03:05:40.660 | The god Seth, the name Seth,

03:05:42.500 | became Satan through the Coptic,

03:05:46.540 | through the Coptic Christians.

03:05:48.300 | So they believed that the degenerate state had a spirit,

03:05:51.980 | and the antidote to the spirit of the degenerate state

03:05:55.120 | was the all-seeing,

03:05:56.700 | the all-seeing, upward-striving eye.

03:06:02.180 | And that's right.

03:06:03.060 | It's like they'd nailed that.

03:06:04.460 | - That sounds like what you were saying before.

03:06:06.660 | Where you set your sights.

03:06:07.740 | Where you set your sights. - Yes, exactly.

03:06:08.740 | - High and to the heavens,

03:06:11.720 | and then to the most proximal thing

03:06:13.580 | that's gonna deliver you to the next rung.

03:06:15.980 | - Well, and there's a difference

03:06:17.060 | between attention and thinking.

03:06:19.860 | Like, attention is a quest.

03:06:22.420 | If you're paying attention,

03:06:23.420 | you're looking, you're seeking,

03:06:25.200 | you're knocking, you're asking, right?

03:06:27.860 | And the eternal promise is that if you ask,

03:06:32.660 | you'll be answered.

03:06:33.880 | And if you seek, you'll find.

03:06:35.240 | And the eye is the gateway to that.

03:06:38.240 | And it's the antidote to the degenerate state

03:06:40.800 | because the degenerate state,

03:06:43.520 | the totalitarian state,

03:06:44.760 | insists and tyrannizes,

03:06:47.240 | and the open eye seeks.

03:06:49.280 | Well, the Egyptians figured this out,

03:06:50.840 | and the Egyptian theology had a walloping impact

03:06:53.560 | on Jewish theology.

03:06:55.640 | I mean, the Jews came out of Egypt.

03:06:57.520 | Like, that's a conception.

03:07:01.720 | There are consequences of that conceptually

03:07:04.020 | as well as historically.

03:07:05.880 | The pattern of the hero's journey,

03:07:08.360 | that's replicated.

03:07:10.360 | I would say that's the central pattern

03:07:12.160 | of story per se.

03:07:14.520 | And that makes itself manifest

03:07:16.280 | in perhaps all cultures that have managed

03:07:18.860 | any unity in any progress whatsoever.

03:07:21.880 | Is there a hierarchy of religious truth?

03:07:25.220 | Yes, just as there's a hierarchy in literary depth.

03:07:31.040 | We understand that a dime store romance

03:07:34.960 | is not as profound as a Dostoevsky novel.

03:07:37.640 | We know there's a hierarchy of depth.

03:07:39.400 | And you can arrange religious apprehension

03:07:43.460 | in terms of a hierarchy of quality.

03:07:46.040 | And I think the Jungian school did that brilliantly,

03:07:49.680 | brilliantly, and biologists should know it

03:07:51.520 | in far more depth.

03:07:52.360 | The best neuroscientists of emotion and motivation

03:07:56.120 | that I knew, and that includes Joachim Panksepp,

03:07:58.820 | they knew the work of Iliad, for example.

03:08:03.540 | Which of those readings would you recommend

03:08:05.420 | for somebody who's interested in psychology

03:08:07.180 | and neuroscience explained at that level?

03:08:09.060 | I would start with "The Sacred and the Profane" by Iliad.

03:08:12.500 | And also Eric Neumann's book,

03:08:16.980 | "The Origins and History of Consciousness."

03:08:19.620 | That's a harder one because it's,

03:08:21.420 | unless you know the lingo of that school,

03:08:25.100 | it's hard to understand what he's aiming at.

03:08:29.000 | If you understand that he's aiming at,

03:08:30.940 | he's elaborating on the symbolism

03:08:35.460 | of the adventurous spirit.

03:08:36.980 | That's a good way of thinking about it.

03:08:38.780 | It's a technical analysis of the structure

03:08:41.140 | of heroic expansion of personality.

03:08:43.820 | But an easier way in is through Iliad,

03:08:48.300 | "Sacred and the Profane."

03:08:49.460 | Short book, you would read it now knowing

03:08:53.240 | that the gods that Iliad described as warring

03:08:56.500 | in the pagan world are in part manifestations

03:09:00.980 | of the personality of motivational drive.

03:09:04.300 | And the mapping of that war across times,

03:09:07.060 | that's the war of the gods in heaven,

03:09:08.620 | which is a very common mythological trope.

03:09:10.980 | There's a war that integrates towards a monotheism.

03:09:14.060 | And Iliad had tracked that in multiple cultures.

03:09:16.580 | And that's very, it's very much worth knowing.

03:09:19.100 | Because it explains, it explains the symbolism

03:09:23.820 | of the emergence of the integrated literate human psyche

03:09:28.680 | across tens of thousands of years.

03:09:32.020 | That's captured in story.

03:09:34.100 | So imagine this, here's a way of thinking about it.

03:09:36.100 | So tribe A, tribe B, tribe C.

03:09:39.600 | Now they all have their highest deity

03:09:41.540 | or their panoply of deities.

03:09:43.460 | Now they unite.

03:09:45.060 | Okay, so as they unite, they fight,

03:09:47.460 | they compete, and they cooperate.

03:09:49.100 | They kill each other, they cooperate and trade.

03:09:51.840 | At the same time that's happening,

03:09:53.220 | there's a war in the space of ideas

03:09:55.980 | between their respective deities.

03:09:58.620 | And you could think about the human beings

03:10:00.300 | acting out that war just as you could think about the war,

03:10:03.940 | the abstraction reflecting the conflict on earth.

03:10:07.000 | Well, there's a pattern to that conflict.

03:10:09.640 | That pattern is quite stable across cultures.

03:10:11.960 | It tilts towards a monotheistic unity

03:10:14.800 | in so far as the multiplicity of cultures unifies.

03:10:18.360 | Well, obviously.

03:10:19.920 | Like, what are they gonna unify

03:10:21.560 | in the absence of conceptual unity?

03:10:23.680 | I don't think so.

03:10:25.240 | And why wouldn't it be that the movement

03:10:27.620 | towards that conceptual unity,

03:10:29.300 | which is the establishment of a larger scale civilization,

03:10:32.480 | would involve the battle between ideas of the divine

03:10:36.280 | and their integration into something resembling a unity?

03:10:39.280 | Like, clearly.

03:10:40.600 | Well, that's part of the proclamation,

03:10:42.600 | let's say, of the analytic psychologists

03:10:45.820 | that were all part of Carl Jung's school.

03:10:48.160 | And the academy just ignored that entirely,

03:10:51.800 | except for Camille Paglia,

03:10:53.480 | who understands this quite profoundly,

03:10:55.840 | and went in the direction of Foucault.

03:10:58.180 | - These are these lineages

03:10:59.480 | that we were talking about before.

03:11:01.000 | It's hard for people to appreciate

03:11:02.660 | just how powerful these academic lineages are

03:11:05.140 | and scientific lineages are,

03:11:06.280 | because they set trajectories.

03:11:08.200 | - And they define what's forbidden.

03:11:10.760 | Like, all the people that advised me as a graduate student,

03:11:15.640 | even those who had my best interests firmly in mind,

03:11:18.600 | told me to never talk about

03:11:20.360 | my interest in Jungian psychology.

03:11:22.040 | - Really? - Yeah, yeah.

03:11:22.880 | - Sorry, I'm laughing 'cause it's so preposterous.

03:11:24.720 | - Yeah, well, it's not surprising.

03:11:27.960 | I mean, I always did when I went for job interviews,

03:11:31.680 | and that definitely was part of what scuttled at me

03:11:35.020 | at some of the places I interviewed.

03:11:37.400 | Now, fortunately, they hired me at Harvard.

03:11:41.120 | And so, what I was discussing was verboten in many places,

03:11:46.120 | but not there.

03:11:49.320 | So, you know, that worked out quite nicely for me.

03:11:51.200 | - Yeah, I was gonna say, clearly it worked out.

03:11:52.720 | - Yes, yes. - I've been meaning

03:11:53.920 | to ask you, I've been reading a really interesting book

03:11:57.040 | recently that's basically grounded in Adlerian psychology.

03:12:01.080 | - Yeah.

03:12:01.920 | - I wasn't familiar with Adlerian psychology.

03:12:03.720 | - Yeah, Adler's very practical.

03:12:05.500 | - The book talks about Adler as a counterpoint

03:12:08.660 | to Freud and Jung.

03:12:09.900 | - What's the book?

03:12:10.860 | - The book is called "The Courage to be Disliked,"

03:12:13.660 | and I highly recommend it to everybody.

03:12:16.240 | It was actually written by a Japanese author.

03:12:17.900 | I think there are two Japanese authors.

03:12:19.140 | It didn't get quite so popular in this country,

03:12:21.520 | but it had a big following in Japan,

03:12:24.820 | and I think in other places in Asia.

03:12:27.420 | And the book is set up as a conversation

03:12:30.820 | between essentially a philosopher of Adlerian psychology

03:12:34.720 | and a student who's challenging him.

03:12:37.300 | So it's a conversation that raises all the challenges

03:12:40.140 | that would come to one's mind if you were to be presented

03:12:42.980 | with this idea of life tasks,

03:12:44.820 | and that we're supposed to discard with our thoughts

03:12:46.580 | about prior trauma and just figure out

03:12:48.540 | what are our tasks now.

03:12:50.700 | - Right, right, right.

03:12:51.540 | - And I like the practicality of it.

03:12:53.340 | - Adler's very practical.

03:12:54.460 | - Yeah, I like that.

03:12:55.300 | I was just curious what your thoughts were about that.

03:12:57.300 | It seems to fit quite well with your notions

03:12:59.860 | and what you've talked about in multiple books,

03:13:01.500 | including the most recent one, the one that's out now,

03:13:04.820 | about getting really serious about what your tasks are

03:13:08.660 | at this moment in time and embracing those tasks

03:13:11.180 | as a way to progress forward,

03:13:13.380 | as opposed to floundering in notions about the past.

03:13:17.700 | And I think it might hit some people square upside the head

03:13:20.380 | when there's, I think, one of the chapters opens

03:13:23.300 | with the words, "There's no such thing as trauma,"

03:13:25.200 | which is clearly not true.

03:13:26.960 | But the whole idea is to prompt a different way of thinking.

03:13:29.840 | And to let people start to drill into like,

03:13:33.420 | okay, what do I need to do now,

03:13:35.300 | regardless of what my parents did or didn't do?

03:13:37.260 | - Regardless of my damaged self.

03:13:38.820 | - Right, regardless of my damaged self.

03:13:40.100 | And I must say, I really like the book.

03:13:42.820 | - Well, I would say-

03:13:43.660 | - I should say, I really like the concept

03:13:47.060 | of embracing task while agonizing over the meaning of life

03:13:51.900 | and what one is to do.

03:13:52.860 | - Yes, well, Adler was the most practical

03:13:55.180 | of the small crowd that aggregated around Freud.

03:14:00.120 | And so Jung's take was that Freud focused on sex

03:14:04.280 | and Adler focused on power

03:14:06.520 | and Jung focused on what transcended both.

03:14:09.000 | And I think that's right.

03:14:10.320 | Now, Adler is a good riposte to Freud

03:14:13.040 | in exactly the way you described.

03:14:15.160 | If you like that book

03:14:16.440 | and you're interested in all three of them, let's say,

03:14:19.060 | there's a great book called "Discovery of the Unconscious,"

03:14:22.440 | which was written by a man named Henri Ellenberger

03:14:25.220 | who was the foremost exponent

03:14:27.420 | of existential psychology in the 1950s.

03:14:30.220 | Brilliant, brilliant scholar.

03:14:31.740 | And it is the best analysis of Freud, Jung, and Adler

03:14:34.860 | that's ever been written by a lot.

03:14:36.540 | And it's a truly great book.

03:14:38.380 | He also traces the idea of the unconscious

03:14:41.460 | back 350 years before Freud.

03:14:44.480 | So it's a masterful study.

03:14:46.300 | But I liked Adler

03:14:48.700 | and he was much less charismatic than Freud and Jung.

03:14:51.500 | And so his star didn't shine as brightly.

03:14:53.680 | But he's very practically oriented

03:14:55.800 | and much of his thinking, what would you say,

03:14:59.320 | fits quite nicely with the same kind of bottom-up approach

03:15:03.240 | that a more behaviorally oriented psychotherapist

03:15:05.880 | would employ.

03:15:07.200 | So, look, there are some people,

03:15:11.980 | if you're engaging in a therapeutic process with someone,

03:15:18.400 | there are people who are best engaged with

03:15:21.280 | at the level of concept.

03:15:23.540 | Those are people who are high in trait openness.

03:15:26.600 | Not everyone's like that.

03:15:27.860 | In fact, most people aren't like that.

03:15:29.920 | Jungian psychology works really well

03:15:31.880 | on highly creative people.

03:15:33.220 | And almost all Jung's clients were creative

03:15:36.200 | 'cause they wouldn't have come to him otherwise.

03:15:38.960 | And there's also people for whom sexual dysfunction

03:15:43.160 | and trauma are the primary, what would you say,

03:15:47.680 | the primary preoccupation of their life and the past.

03:15:51.120 | And Freud serves them well.

03:15:54.620 | Adler's very practical.

03:15:56.600 | And if you're looking for a psychologist

03:15:59.540 | to help you figure out how you could advance

03:16:03.320 | from where you are now,

03:16:04.760 | he's got plenty of things to say that are good.

03:16:08.640 | He also wasn't as good a literary stylist

03:16:10.960 | as Jung or Freud.

03:16:12.880 | So that also put him off to the side to some degree.

03:16:15.080 | But anyways, a deeper investigation

03:16:18.040 | can certainly be found in "Discovery of the Unconscious."

03:16:20.560 | And for anybody listening and watching

03:16:22.440 | who's interested in psychological ideas broadly

03:16:26.560 | and would like familiarity

03:16:28.320 | with the psychoanalytic tradition,

03:16:30.600 | Freud, Jung, and Adler, let's say primary,

03:16:32.440 | there is not a better book

03:16:33.680 | than "Discovery of the Unconscious."

03:16:35.020 | It's really a work of genius.

03:16:36.880 | - You know what's missing from the literature?

03:16:38.400 | Thank you for those, by the way,

03:16:39.880 | is a really excellent up-to-date book

03:16:42.540 | on neuroscience and the mind and psychology.

03:16:46.120 | Perhaps we write one together.

03:16:47.800 | - Yeah, yeah, well, that's--

03:16:48.640 | - I mean, it's just not out there.

03:16:50.280 | I mean, there are textbooks on neuroscience.

03:16:51.640 | There's a lot of discussion, as you know,

03:16:53.280 | about free will, lack of free will,

03:16:54.720 | depending on which author you're paying attention to.

03:16:56.800 | But there isn't really a satisfactory book

03:17:01.120 | about the brain, the mind, and psychology.

03:17:04.640 | This just doesn't exist.

03:17:06.120 | - Yeah, the closest one I ever encountered

03:17:08.200 | probably is "Affective Neuroscience,"

03:17:10.440 | Panksepp's book.

03:17:11.440 | - He's, I'm so, I must say,

03:17:14.560 | you've mentioned Panksepp a few times

03:17:16.040 | and Jaak Panksepp, as some of you may know,

03:17:18.520 | but perhaps most of you don't,

03:17:19.760 | was such a gift to science.

03:17:22.200 | And the fact that,

03:17:23.560 | I think the first time I heard you lecture

03:17:25.160 | in one of your YouTube lectures,

03:17:26.200 | you mentioned Jaak Panksepp and I thought,

03:17:27.720 | "Okay, this guy knows the good stuff."

03:17:30.440 | Because he was the first one to talk about

03:17:31.960 | juvenile play as a way of exploring

03:17:33.600 | circuitry and social dynamics.

03:17:35.360 | Such a--

03:17:36.200 | - And that fit, by the way,

03:17:37.280 | that fit perfectly with Piaget's observations

03:17:41.120 | of childhood socialization.

03:17:42.520 | It's like I came across Panksepp and I thought,

03:17:44.760 | "Oh, that's so cool.

03:17:46.600 | "Now we have the psychophysiological basis

03:17:49.160 | "for Piagetian developmental theory."

03:17:51.280 | Was perfect.

03:17:52.480 | Yeah, so that was lovely concordance.

03:17:55.280 | - Youngsepp would have been far more recognized

03:17:59.200 | had he been, he was at Bowling Green University, I think.

03:18:01.600 | And so, smaller university,

03:18:03.960 | perhaps, I don't know,

03:18:04.840 | I didn't ever hear a lecture

03:18:05.960 | and maybe not as charismatic

03:18:07.080 | as some of the other luminaries

03:18:08.680 | of neuroscience at that time, but--

03:18:10.360 | - Yeah, I don't know how he was as a lecturer.

03:18:12.640 | He's a great writer.

03:18:14.000 | And man, he had an unerring eye for the right problems

03:18:16.880 | in terms of psychological investigation.

03:18:19.240 | And very brave in that regard.

03:18:21.000 | I mean, he studied laughter in rats.

03:18:24.200 | And you think, "Oh, of all the absurd things to focus on."

03:18:26.880 | It's like, "No, you just don't understand where the goal is

03:18:29.920 | "or play among rats.

03:18:31.120 | "Who cares that rats play?"

03:18:32.480 | Well, that would be the sort of research proposal

03:18:35.360 | that would be pilloried by sensible Republicans

03:18:38.360 | looking to trim government waste.

03:18:40.080 | It's like, "No."

03:18:41.040 | That was the heart of the matter, right?

03:18:43.320 | Rats organize their social hierarchy through play,

03:18:46.440 | not through force, right?

03:18:48.960 | That's a big discovery.

03:18:50.920 | Like that's, I think he should have won a Nobel Prize.

03:18:53.400 | - I do too.

03:18:54.240 | - Yeah, he should have won a Nobel

03:18:55.160 | for a variety of his discoveries,

03:18:56.640 | but that one in particular.

03:18:58.320 | Like rats have an implicit morality.

03:19:02.000 | That's a major league, and it's based on play.

03:19:05.640 | Wow, stunning.

03:19:07.560 | - And we see the same thing in kids, obviously.

03:19:09.640 | - And well, we see the same thing in chimpanzees.

03:19:11.880 | Like, it's pretty strange to understand

03:19:14.280 | that dominance hierarchies, if they're functional,

03:19:17.800 | are often organized in consequence of play, not force.

03:19:22.200 | Like, so much for Foucault.

03:19:25.360 | - When you look out on the landscape of social media,

03:19:29.640 | do you see elements of that as well?

03:19:32.800 | That there's sort of a playfulness

03:19:34.120 | among people that's establishing a hierarchy?

03:19:37.360 | It seems like Elon's having a good time

03:19:39.280 | with his rockets and his X and Tesla.

03:19:42.800 | - I think that there is,

03:19:44.600 | I think that the antithesis of tyranny is play.

03:19:48.840 | It took me a long time to realize that.

03:19:50.960 | Like, I've been studying evil intensely

03:19:53.360 | since I was about 13.

03:19:55.320 | And evil is easier to define than good.

03:19:58.800 | It's hard to find a category

03:20:01.840 | that integrates all that's good,

03:20:04.080 | that you can point to simply.

03:20:08.120 | But it has,

03:20:09.480 | the fact that play is the antithesis of tyranny

03:20:13.680 | seems to be a pretty good summation.

03:20:15.520 | Like, Panksepp showed, for example,

03:20:17.080 | that play wouldn't emerge among animals

03:20:18.800 | if they were possessed by any other motivational state.

03:20:21.600 | Things have to be set up very carefully

03:20:23.360 | before play will emerge.

03:20:25.040 | Your house is optimally structured

03:20:27.960 | if your children can play.

03:20:30.040 | Your marriage is optimally structured

03:20:31.880 | if you're playing house with your wife.

03:20:33.880 | And I think that that reality of the,

03:20:37.760 | what would you say,

03:20:38.720 | the optimally superordinate nature of play,

03:20:42.840 | that makes itself manifest

03:20:44.840 | when you're watching someone who's a master at their task.

03:20:47.760 | And Musk is playing.

03:20:49.680 | And hopefully that will,

03:20:50.920 | you know, and Trump plays too.

03:20:52.760 | It's one of the things

03:20:53.600 | that made me less uncertain about him.

03:20:56.400 | He's deadly funny.

03:21:00.000 | Now, it's rough.

03:21:01.800 | He plays rough, no doubt about it.

03:21:03.880 | But he's ridiculously,

03:21:05.920 | he's got a ridiculously comic touch.

03:21:08.560 | And that's not something

03:21:10.120 | that's generally characteristic of,

03:21:12.440 | you know, psychopathic dictators.

03:21:14.560 | Hitler wasn't known for his sense of humor.

03:21:17.520 | - Let's talk about sense of humor, if you don't mind,

03:21:19.840 | because I think it's something that's sorely lacking

03:21:24.600 | in a lot of the discourse among adults, so to speak.

03:21:29.200 | And I think these days,

03:21:31.400 | I think a lot about what young people are observing.

03:21:34.080 | A few years back, I was watching this show.

03:21:37.280 | I didn't like it.

03:21:38.280 | Forgive me, because I think the actor was quite good.

03:21:42.320 | But the show was "Californication" with David Duchovny.

03:21:45.280 | And I realized,

03:21:46.920 | this show is all about the adults acting like children

03:21:49.360 | and the children acting like adults.

03:21:50.720 | - Oh yeah, that's a typical Hollywood inversion.

03:21:53.040 | - And I thought, this is terrible.

03:21:56.840 | Not because I'm some sort of moral avenger or something,

03:21:59.040 | but it just, it was sort of like,

03:22:01.000 | the question I've been asking myself a lot

03:22:02.520 | over the last few years is,

03:22:03.680 | who are the adults in the room?

03:22:05.080 | Who's actually regulating all this stuff that's happening?

03:22:08.320 | Everyone's in disagreement.

03:22:09.480 | People are misbehaving in the kind of worst of ways

03:22:13.360 | by not treating each other with respect.

03:22:18.240 | Occasionally, you'd see a discourse

03:22:20.080 | that felt meaningful and structured

03:22:22.560 | or explorative in the real sense,

03:22:25.760 | like people were there to learn.

03:22:26.840 | I think that's been one of the successes of your work

03:22:29.520 | and of Rogan's work.

03:22:30.760 | And I like to think, you know, my podcast as well,

03:22:32.920 | Lex Friedman, certainly, and others, right?

03:22:35.080 | Sometimes people use comedy,

03:22:37.620 | sometimes people use neuroscience as a pro,

03:22:40.280 | but in any case.

03:22:41.680 | But, you know, I've been concerned

03:22:44.640 | that there isn't this kind of like enjoyment of discourse

03:22:49.640 | between people that disagree

03:22:52.040 | in a way that includes forgiveness

03:22:54.120 | or like, "Oh, you got, like, good one, like, you got me."

03:22:56.440 | Or, you know, and it seems like it's degenerated

03:23:00.720 | into things that are so nasty.

03:23:03.040 | And it's sort of like people are entering the game,

03:23:05.160 | if you could even call it that,

03:23:06.600 | with a refusal to shift.

03:23:08.720 | Like, that's not a debate.

03:23:11.060 | - That's what happens.

03:23:11.900 | - There's nothing playful about it.

03:23:12.720 | Like, you have to be willing to have a winner and a loser,

03:23:14.480 | and you have to be willing to be either one

03:23:16.460 | if you're going to engage in real discourse, in real play.

03:23:21.080 | And to me, it's like, okay,

03:23:25.240 | I can manage seeing all that or participate

03:23:27.720 | or not participate to the extent that I want,

03:23:29.280 | but for young people, it's gotta be really discouraging.

03:23:31.940 | It's like you either dunk on somebody or get dunked on.

03:23:35.360 | - You know, I guess the optimistic riposte to that

03:23:38.600 | would be the fact that the people that you're pointing to,

03:23:41.840 | like Rogan, who is a comedian,

03:23:44.560 | like many of the people who've become

03:23:47.120 | extremely successful as podcasters,

03:23:49.360 | Constantine Kisson, Russell Brand, Dave Rubin,

03:23:53.960 | um, Crowder, Steven Crowder, Theo Vaughn,

03:23:58.960 | that's a lot of comedians.

03:24:01.160 | So there's a lot of play in the alternative media,

03:24:04.040 | and a lot of young people are being informed

03:24:06.800 | by the alternative media.

03:24:08.220 | So I think there's genuine room for optimism there.

03:24:11.940 | And there's plenty of play in those podcasts.

03:24:18.100 | Now, a group of us, eight years ago,

03:24:23.100 | seven years ago, put out an offer

03:24:24.900 | to the Democratic Powers That Be

03:24:29.900 | to invite the Democrats to come and talk to us.

03:24:33.920 | Rubin was part of that, Rogan was part of that,

03:24:36.380 | if I remember correctly, I'm quite certain of it.

03:24:39.180 | I was part of that, Shapiro was part of that.

03:24:42.300 | This was a genuine invitation,

03:24:44.040 | which was extended many times in serious ways

03:24:48.180 | by people who are very well-connected

03:24:50.420 | among the Democratic elite.

03:24:52.260 | And that came to nothing.

03:24:54.660 | - They wanted no part of it.

03:24:55.780 | - Nope, they'd speak to me, for example, privately,

03:24:58.140 | never publicly, virtually never, almost without exception.

03:25:02.740 | All the while, the alternative media

03:25:05.180 | was gaining more and more power.

03:25:06.460 | All the while, we were telling them, this isn't optional.

03:25:10.740 | Your legacy media foothold is dying, wake up.

03:25:14.940 | Well, Rogan, for example, you could imagine

03:25:16.820 | that he would be on board with such a thing,

03:25:18.380 | because he's not precisely your stereotypical Republican.

03:25:23.380 | - No, not at all.

03:25:25.180 | - Right.

03:25:26.460 | - People will call him that.

03:25:27.740 | They try and, you know, manosphere, bro, whatever.

03:25:30.500 | It doesn't, the reality falls so far from that.

03:25:33.700 | - Yeah, it's just not true at all.

03:25:36.180 | - That's not true.

03:25:37.020 | - Yeah, so there is plenty of play,

03:25:39.740 | and so I think we can be positive about that.

03:25:42.780 | And I think young people, too,

03:25:44.200 | have seen how successful that could be.

03:25:46.840 | I mean, Rogan and his coterie, let's say,

03:25:51.260 | wiped out the legacy media.

03:25:53.200 | Well, so you can see what the spirit of playful adventure

03:25:57.720 | can do in a very short period of time.

03:25:59.540 | Now, there's technological reasons for that, too,

03:26:01.460 | but technological reasons are not.

03:26:05.260 | It's still a stunning phenomenon

03:26:07.840 | and a stunning accomplishment,

03:26:09.420 | and a very positive one as far as I'm concerned,

03:26:11.660 | and hopefully it will continue.

03:26:13.480 | - Yeah, the power pendulum has definitely swung.

03:26:16.260 | - Yeah.

03:26:17.100 | - In a different direction.

03:26:17.920 | - Yeah, well, that became stark, starkly obvious

03:26:20.600 | when Rogan interviewed Trump.

03:26:24.160 | That was the death knell of the legacy media.

03:26:27.360 | - It certainly elevated podcasts

03:26:28.920 | and their impact and significance across the board.

03:26:31.440 | - Well, I think it demonstrated the fact

03:26:33.640 | that they had been elevated, right?

03:26:35.700 | It was evidence of that that was so conclusive

03:26:39.680 | that there was no longer any way of questioning it.

03:26:43.760 | Even the CNN pundits and so forth,

03:26:46.980 | who were very resistant to that as a hypothesis,

03:26:50.100 | changed their tune very rapidly.

03:26:53.020 | - Well, and it was interesting

03:26:54.140 | because Rogan's conversation with Trump was a serious one.

03:26:58.300 | Theo's conversation with Trump

03:26:59.920 | was a mixture of serious and less serious.

03:27:03.260 | And I mean, I couldn't help but smile big

03:27:07.460 | when at the inauguration,

03:27:10.400 | the thanks went out to a number of people,

03:27:12.760 | including Theo Vaughn.

03:27:13.940 | I mean, if you think about this.

03:27:14.780 | - I know, I know, it's so funny.

03:27:16.980 | Good for Theo, it's so funny.

03:27:18.580 | - Yeah, I'm yet to meet him.

03:27:19.420 | I hear he's a very nice guy.

03:27:20.260 | - Oh, I really like Theo.

03:27:21.080 | Theo's so great because Theo is,

03:27:22.880 | like he's backwoods hip to the core, right?

03:27:29.180 | Seriously.

03:27:30.620 | Underclass background, and it's real.

03:27:33.500 | And he's so bloody smart.

03:27:36.060 | And so it's such a fun combination

03:27:37.860 | because he's got this,

03:27:39.320 | it's pretty easy if you're elitist

03:27:41.540 | to be derisive about Theo and his backwoodsy stick.

03:27:46.540 | But man, there's a first rate mind lurking behind that.

03:27:53.920 | It's not a persona 'cause it's actually him too.

03:27:59.080 | I can relate to that to a large degree

03:28:00.900 | because I came from a very small town,

03:28:03.800 | way the hell out in the middle of nowhere.

03:28:05.780 | And so I have plenty in common with Theo.

03:28:08.760 | But it's very funny to watch.

03:28:10.940 | It's very funny to see him do this successfully.

03:28:12.940 | It's ridiculously and preposterously comical

03:28:16.640 | that he got to sit down with Trump.

03:28:18.140 | I mean, I just thought that was, that's so funny.

03:28:21.180 | And that it was successful and playful.

03:28:23.540 | You know, that's great.

03:28:24.860 | And there's plenty of play

03:28:26.220 | in the Republican renaissance at the moment,

03:28:29.380 | whatever that is.

03:28:30.320 | I mean, Republican, to call it that,

03:28:32.380 | is like that's whatever the hell's happening.

03:28:34.760 | It's not conceptualizable

03:28:36.780 | in terms of our normal political dichotomy, right?

03:28:40.300 | I mean, we're in uncharted water.

03:28:42.060 | Now, hopefully, this is why I hope

03:28:45.540 | the Democrats get their act together

03:28:47.380 | 'cause every administration needs an opposition.

03:28:52.380 | And if the Democrats continue with this woke idiocy,

03:28:55.800 | they're not going to be able to serve

03:28:57.300 | as the proper corrective to the excesses

03:28:59.940 | that will definitely emerge in the Trump administration,

03:29:02.820 | especially if they face no credible opposition.

03:29:05.500 | 'Cause that always happens.

03:29:07.140 | - Sorry, didn't mean to interrupt.

03:29:10.060 | Before we started, we were touching on this a little bit.

03:29:13.060 | And you said something,

03:29:14.940 | which was that you're hoping for a really formidable,

03:29:18.000 | strong Democratic Party to counter the Republican Party.

03:29:22.180 | And you are, and you're saying it again now,

03:29:23.780 | you're concerned that if there isn't one,

03:29:27.080 | that power- - Corrupts.

03:29:29.300 | - Might run amok.

03:29:30.540 | - Oh, yes.

03:29:31.380 | Well, of course it will.

03:29:32.200 | It always does.

03:29:33.140 | You know, and that the Republicans themselves,

03:29:35.660 | who might wish well,

03:29:37.380 | this remarkable group of people

03:29:39.020 | that's aggregated around Trump,

03:29:40.420 | it's like they should hope for themselves

03:29:42.300 | that they have an effective opposition

03:29:44.420 | because someone's gotta be telling you where you're stupid.

03:29:47.780 | And if the Democrats,

03:29:49.300 | so this is another public invitation to the Democrats,

03:29:52.340 | which is like, must be the 50th one that I've issued.

03:29:56.320 | If you have something to say, you know,

03:29:58.700 | I'd be happy to talk.

03:30:00.060 | And so would many people

03:30:01.780 | who've expressed similar sentiment to me

03:30:04.300 | in the alternative media world.

03:30:06.300 | And that offer has been on the table

03:30:08.140 | for years.

03:30:10.780 | So I hope that,

03:30:12.180 | I'm afraid that all the people with any real courage

03:30:16.460 | or virtually all of them

03:30:17.300 | will be chased out of the Democratic Party.

03:30:19.620 | They're all afraid of being canceled,

03:30:21.060 | which is why they wouldn't appear on my podcast

03:30:23.500 | to begin with.

03:30:24.500 | It's like, why does Peterson always interview conservatives?

03:30:27.300 | It's like, well, how about because they'll talk to me?

03:30:31.580 | You know, there's a simple explanation

03:30:33.420 | and definitely a true one.

03:30:35.820 | So maybe that can shift

03:30:37.520 | and there's gotta be somebody in the Democrats

03:30:39.820 | who's got enough courage to forge a new direction.

03:30:43.820 | And if they wanna continue

03:30:45.300 | with this same old pattern of woke idiocy,

03:30:48.460 | well, go right ahead.

03:30:49.860 | It's not gonna work.

03:30:51.060 | The tide's already turned in that regard.

03:30:53.160 | - I think that judging from some of the article titles

03:30:57.480 | that I've seen at New York Times and other venues,

03:31:01.120 | it seems like there might be some consideration about this.

03:31:05.300 | They're talking about a restructuring

03:31:06.540 | of the Democratic Party.

03:31:07.880 | Who's going to lead?

03:31:08.900 | Who's going to be their Joe Rogan?

03:31:10.980 | Which is, by the way, a silly question.

03:31:12.940 | That's just the silliest question.

03:31:14.420 | He is, as we say in science, he's N of one.

03:31:18.080 | Don't even try.

03:31:19.800 | The whole point is to create.

03:31:22.100 | Well, why would you?

03:31:22.940 | - You also can't.

03:31:24.460 | - Yeah, right.

03:31:25.300 | It's impossible.

03:31:26.120 | - Joe didn't emerge by accident.

03:31:27.620 | Joe is very, very, very smart.

03:31:30.140 | Very.

03:31:31.060 | And if you think, and it's what?

03:31:33.500 | It's like, Joe built this?

03:31:34.660 | It's like, not the way

03:31:36.380 | that a political party would build it.

03:31:39.540 | First of all, he didn't build it.

03:31:41.020 | Not that way.

03:31:42.580 | Not through a priori planning

03:31:45.100 | so that the Democrats could have a voice.

03:31:47.820 | - It's just him being him.

03:31:49.280 | - Yes, exactly.

03:31:50.120 | - Yeah, and someone who is a self-declared Democrat

03:31:53.660 | will do that as well, but not by trying to be him.

03:31:55.740 | That's just not going to happen.

03:31:56.740 | - No, they'll do that by trying to figure out

03:32:00.600 | what the opposition to this new,

03:32:02.620 | peculiar band of Republicans should be,

03:32:05.380 | and what sort of vision could be put forward

03:32:07.380 | that would be attractive.

03:32:08.900 | You know, I read today some Democrat claiming

03:32:11.060 | that the Democrats are the true voice of the working class.

03:32:14.380 | It's like, I don't think so.

03:32:16.260 | I think that ship has sailed,

03:32:18.740 | and maybe the Democrats should be the true voice

03:32:21.300 | of the working class, but they're certainly not.

03:32:24.820 | And in principle, that would mean

03:32:27.060 | that there's an opportunity there

03:32:29.060 | on the Democrat side to forge a new path.

03:32:31.860 | I mean, Clinton managed that in the '90s.

03:32:34.100 | This has happened many times.

03:32:35.420 | It could happen again.

03:32:36.820 | But there's a lot of learning

03:32:39.860 | that's going to have to take place before that happens.

03:32:42.540 | So certainly learning about

03:32:44.900 | this new alternative media environment.

03:32:47.260 | If you can't sit down for three hours

03:32:48.780 | and say what you actually think,

03:32:50.960 | actually what you think, right,

03:32:54.220 | regardless of what might do to your reputation,

03:32:56.940 | let's say, you're not going to be successful

03:32:58.980 | in the podcast world.

03:33:00.500 | - Yeah, that's absolutely true.

03:33:01.620 | Podcasting is real.

03:33:02.980 | Even for, I'll just say,

03:33:04.600 | because perhaps it's of interest

03:33:07.100 | or maybe even actionable for people.

03:33:08.540 | I mean, I get a little frightened every podcast.

03:33:12.660 | Certainly if I'm going to talk about

03:33:14.060 | like I'm forming this relationship to prayer

03:33:15.980 | or I'm exploring a, I mean,

03:33:17.700 | I'll talk about circuits in the brain all day long

03:33:19.820 | with no fear whatsoever.

03:33:22.060 | That's my wheelhouse.

03:33:23.020 | But anything that's new,

03:33:24.980 | which is a real exploration and evolution of where I'm at,

03:33:29.660 | of course is going to evoke fear.

03:33:30.980 | I also know that's where the growth is.

03:33:33.780 | I would hate for this podcast

03:33:34.960 | to look the way it did on episode one now.

03:33:38.060 | And clearly this conversation is a new direction

03:33:41.740 | that I've not taken before in this podcast,

03:33:44.220 | but I'm delighted that it's happening.

03:33:45.700 | I want to say that.

03:33:47.020 | And I think that some level of fear and anxiety

03:33:51.300 | about the unknown is absolutely required.

03:33:54.340 | And I think that that's something that hopefully any,

03:33:56.820 | especially young people listening need to know.

03:33:59.100 | You're not supposed to perform well at the outset.

03:34:01.620 | Like in anything.

03:34:03.180 | You're not. - Well, you can't.

03:34:04.020 | That's why Jung said the fool

03:34:05.660 | is the precursor to the redeemer.

03:34:07.380 | You have to accept the role of fool voluntarily

03:34:11.460 | before you can improve.

03:34:13.220 | Of course, when you start something new,

03:34:14.620 | you're going to be an idiot.

03:34:16.000 | Like, what do you know?

03:34:17.860 | So that's the price of entry is to be a fool.

03:34:21.580 | Well, you can be a voluntary fool.

03:34:23.100 | And then you can,

03:34:23.980 | then you have a bit of a sense of humor about yourself.

03:34:26.300 | And that takes the sting out of it.

03:34:27.940 | And maybe even makes you an attractive character

03:34:30.540 | despite your ignorance.

03:34:31.580 | People will make tremendous allowances

03:34:35.180 | for ignorance that's voluntarily admitted to.

03:34:38.780 | - I've certainly made mistakes publicly,

03:34:40.340 | apologized for the ones that I felt I should apologize for.

03:34:43.260 | There's a slip of the tongue and make it, said something,

03:34:46.420 | went back and correct.

03:34:47.340 | It was embarrassing,

03:34:48.160 | but the ability to laugh at oneself

03:34:51.300 | is tremendously powerful.

03:34:53.580 | Genuinely laugh.

03:34:54.500 | It's just thinking like, oh God, where was I thinking?

03:34:56.500 | I understand this, blah, blah, blah, blah.

03:34:58.820 | You know, sometimes we err, you know.

03:35:02.780 | I have a couple of questions about you.

03:35:04.620 | - Uh-oh.

03:35:05.740 | - I know you're the clinician,

03:35:07.960 | but I'm not trying to play that role.

03:35:10.100 | When you wake up in the morning,

03:35:13.660 | is your mind in a good place typically?

03:35:16.100 | Or are you tormented?

03:35:17.180 | Or are you, where does your mind land most mornings?

03:35:22.180 | First thing.

03:35:24.860 | - Well, I've suffered from a proclivity towards depression

03:35:29.860 | my whole life, I would say.

03:35:32.840 | And I would say the roughest part of the day for me

03:35:36.660 | is morning, although it's way better than it once was.

03:35:39.880 | So when I get up, I have a shower and make my bed

03:35:44.620 | and do something useful.

03:35:45.580 | And then I'm pretty much, I'm on my way.

03:35:49.200 | - You're into your tasks into the day.

03:35:51.980 | - And I still have quite a lot of pain

03:35:54.380 | from whatever happened to me a couple of years ago.

03:35:56.660 | And so that's annoying.

03:35:57.660 | - Physical pain.

03:35:58.500 | - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

03:36:00.260 | But psychologically, my life is ridiculously,

03:36:05.260 | it's absurdly interesting.

03:36:09.020 | It's crazily and absurdly interesting all the time.

03:36:13.800 | And so anyone with any sense would be like open-mouthed

03:36:18.580 | in amazement and gratitude for that.

03:36:21.220 | It's preposterous.

03:36:23.500 | And I have this tour that's going,

03:36:26.840 | well, it's been going for like six years, really.

03:36:29.780 | And it continues.

03:36:30.620 | - Your tour schedule is superhuman.

03:36:32.380 | I have to say, having done some live shows,

03:36:34.180 | I mean, what you do with tours,

03:36:35.460 | and I've been to one of your shows.

03:36:36.500 | I highly recommend people attend.

03:36:38.300 | It was spectacular.

03:36:39.540 | I don't wanna give too much away,

03:36:40.760 | but it's not planned in the sense

03:36:43.580 | that there's a script or something.

03:36:44.760 | It's very open and, but--

03:36:47.020 | - It's a quest.

03:36:47.920 | - It's a quest.

03:36:48.760 | - An intellectual quest, right?

03:36:50.100 | - It's a real experience.

03:36:50.940 | And men, wear your jacket and tie

03:36:52.500 | because everyone else there is gonna be wearing a jacket,

03:36:54.140 | at least a jacket.

03:36:54.980 | - Dress up, look respectable.

03:36:57.260 | Yeah, so my wife and I are touring

03:36:59.660 | from January through June.

03:37:02.440 | And much of that's in the United States.

03:37:05.540 | And then two months in Europe.

03:37:07.460 | And so that's great because Europe is in trouble.

03:37:10.700 | And going there to speak is a privilege and an honor.

03:37:14.100 | And so that's ridiculously exciting.

03:37:17.060 | And people can find more out about the tour

03:37:19.100 | at jordanbpeterson.com, the dates and so forth.

03:37:22.460 | They're all listed there.

03:37:23.760 | We launched Peterson Academy, where we want you to teach.

03:37:27.980 | And that's going spectacularly well.

03:37:31.260 | - This is a place where people can hear lectures

03:37:33.100 | in a given domain?

03:37:34.060 | - Yep, yep, yep.

03:37:35.420 | We have 35 lectures online already.

03:37:39.140 | Each of them is sequenced over six to eight hours,

03:37:43.260 | which compacts, I would say,

03:37:44.900 | the equivalent of a full university course

03:37:46.820 | into that span of time.

03:37:48.660 | We're pursuing accreditation,

03:37:50.140 | which I think is a high probability

03:37:52.300 | in the relatively not too distant future.

03:37:55.800 | So that's ridiculously exciting

03:37:57.420 | because we can take the best lectures in the world

03:37:59.700 | and we can make them available to everyone.

03:38:02.380 | And we built a social media element into it.

03:38:04.400 | We took the best of the social media networks.

03:38:07.180 | And people are using it like mad.

03:38:09.780 | And it's 100% positive.

03:38:12.880 | It's philosophically oriented.

03:38:15.180 | It's mutually encouraging.

03:38:16.940 | We threw four people off the platform out of 40,000.

03:38:19.980 | Well, three, 'cause we put one guy on probation

03:38:22.420 | 'cause he said he'd improve.

03:38:24.300 | And we established a positive culture.

03:38:26.820 | There's no bots, there's no trolls.

03:38:29.540 | No one's playing games and we watch.

03:38:32.500 | And now, you know, the community has settled into a,

03:38:35.380 | it's got an ethos already.

03:38:36.780 | And I think that'll be self-sustaining.

03:38:38.580 | - So people are there to learn.

03:38:40.740 | - And to support each other learning.

03:38:42.340 | - Got it.

03:38:43.180 | - It launched out of the gate

03:38:44.740 | better than we thought it would,

03:38:46.500 | even though we were optimistic.

03:38:47.860 | And I would say the quality of what we're offering exceeded,

03:38:51.420 | it certainly exceeded my expectations.

03:38:53.380 | It's, well, we showed Michael Malice.

03:38:56.980 | Michael Malice did a course for us on totalitarianism.

03:39:01.020 | And he takes that rather personally,

03:39:02.620 | given his family background.

03:39:04.460 | And he said that the trailer brought him to tears.

03:39:08.300 | And that's my, now I can be easily brought to tears.

03:39:11.700 | So I don't know if I'm the best.

03:39:12.740 | - Same, like around certain topics.

03:39:14.620 | - Yeah, yeah.

03:39:15.460 | - I've cried a few times on this podcast this year

03:39:16.700 | and a few others.

03:39:17.540 | So that was a vulnerability I'd never expected, but.

03:39:20.980 | - Yeah, well, it's good to know I'm not alone in that.

03:39:22.980 | - You're not alone.

03:39:23.820 | - I'm less susceptible now that I'm more healthy.

03:39:25.900 | But I feel the same way about what we're producing,

03:39:29.060 | because it's exactly, if you were a professor

03:39:32.020 | and you wanted the best possible courses

03:39:34.900 | to be available to people,

03:39:37.480 | and you saw these, you'd think, target, hit.

03:39:41.020 | And that's ridiculously fun.

03:39:43.540 | And so, and I have a great relationship

03:39:47.100 | with my wife and my kids.

03:39:48.980 | - You have some grandkids now too.

03:39:50.100 | - I do, and two more on the way.

03:39:52.220 | - Wow, congratulations.

03:39:53.060 | - And so, you know, and I have an endless field

03:39:57.500 | of stellar opportunity in front of me.

03:40:00.320 | So hopefully I have enough sense to appreciate that.

03:40:04.700 | And I hope, and I do, I do appreciate it.

03:40:07.180 | And I know it's unlikely, so.

03:40:09.980 | - A long way from posting lectures on YouTube,

03:40:13.560 | which is where most people originally found you,

03:40:17.400 | if they were listening about that.

03:40:18.240 | - Yeah.

03:40:19.060 | - That's certainly how I learned about you.

03:40:19.900 | I thought this guy's talking about really interesting things

03:40:22.020 | in the fields of psychology.

03:40:23.220 | He knows who Jock Panksepp is.

03:40:24.940 | And he's posted it on YouTube.

03:40:27.620 | Can I ask what inspired that move?

03:40:29.940 | Was that from conscious, was that calling or conscience?

03:40:34.100 | Or both?

03:40:36.260 | - It was probably mostly calling,

03:40:38.760 | because the fundamental motivation was,

03:40:41.860 | and I think it is my fundamental motivation, is curiosity.

03:40:45.420 | You know, I watched YouTube and I thought,

03:40:48.700 | hmm, what the hell is this?

03:40:51.700 | Video on demand worldwide, what does that mean?

03:40:58.860 | It means the spoken word is now as permanent

03:41:03.180 | as the written word and more easily disseminated.

03:41:05.820 | I thought, oh, that's a spectacular

03:41:09.680 | and world-altering revolution.

03:41:12.240 | That's what it looks like to me.

03:41:13.400 | This was like in 2010, you know,

03:41:16.000 | when it was mostly cat videos.

03:41:18.820 | I thought, might as well put my videos up there

03:41:23.080 | and see what happens.

03:41:24.380 | And so, see what happens, right?

03:41:27.960 | That's an adventure.

03:41:29.720 | And so, I did that for maybe six years.

03:41:34.780 | Maybe seven years, somewhere between five and seven years

03:41:38.460 | before things exploded around me.

03:41:40.260 | And that was also extremely helpful,

03:41:41.900 | because when I opposed the Trudeau government's attempt

03:41:46.900 | to compel my speech in the form of Bill C-16,

03:41:52.780 | I was immediately pilloried as a, you know,

03:41:55.820 | right-wing Nazi, even though I'd spent my whole career

03:41:59.780 | publicizing the horrors of the Nazi administration

03:42:02.820 | and teaching my students how not to fall prey

03:42:05.940 | to totalitarian temptation.

03:42:07.560 | Like, that was the core of my career.

03:42:10.220 | I had like 200 hours of lectures up on YouTube already.

03:42:15.880 | So, when all that negative attention was drawn to me,

03:42:18.840 | people started looking at the lectures.

03:42:20.520 | And the huge advantage there was that there wasn't a single,

03:42:24.640 | really, there wasn't a single important word

03:42:26.800 | I'd said to students in the last 20 years

03:42:28.840 | that wasn't recorded.

03:42:30.800 | And the people who decided that, you know,

03:42:33.000 | I was a reprehensible character had every opportunity

03:42:35.840 | to go through everything I'd said with a fine-tooth comb,

03:42:38.800 | which you can be absolutely certain they did.

03:42:41.080 | And they couldn't find one thing I ever said

03:42:44.240 | that led any credence whatsoever to their accusations.

03:42:48.040 | And so, that was a breaking point in some ways

03:42:50.360 | for council culture, because there were very forceful

03:42:59.960 | attempts to counsel me.

03:43:01.280 | And so, people went and checked me out,

03:43:03.080 | and they thought, huh, nothing he says falls into alignment

03:43:08.080 | with what he's being accused about.

03:43:10.360 | Well, you know, that, what would you say?

03:43:16.240 | That was part of the dam breaking with regards

03:43:21.040 | to the corruption of the legacy media.

03:43:23.100 | So, not only was what I was accused of a lie,

03:43:27.360 | it was exactly the opposite of the truth,

03:43:30.080 | which is the most profound kind of lie.

03:43:32.880 | So, YouTube helped me out a lot there.

03:43:35.460 | - Well, you've certainly prevailed.

03:43:39.640 | And we're all-- - So far.

03:43:41.680 | - Well, I guess that speaks to what I was going to say,

03:43:45.160 | which is that I want to thank you

03:43:47.960 | for posting those videos on YouTube

03:43:50.840 | and for entering that adventure,

03:43:53.640 | because it certainly was the beginning of a long adventure

03:43:58.280 | that's still happening now,

03:44:00.160 | where you continue to take risks that are healthy risks

03:44:04.920 | in service to trying to understand the truth and share that.

03:44:08.880 | And I must say, never with the stance

03:44:11.080 | that you know absolutely right for everybody,

03:44:13.920 | but certainly where you have felt

03:44:17.000 | you could share useful knowledge at the practical level,

03:44:19.880 | like really how to operationalize,

03:44:21.360 | like clean up your room, right, you know?

03:44:24.320 | Do these things to try and discover your path,

03:44:27.660 | get on your path, set your sights to the right level.

03:44:31.200 | And to make that a daily practice

03:44:32.800 | and a repeated lifelong practice is really spectacular.

03:44:37.160 | And it's obviously inspired millions of people,

03:44:38.960 | including myself.

03:44:40.040 | I'll also say that it's really wonderful

03:44:43.040 | that you are also continuing to do that yourself

03:44:46.200 | and making that visible to people.

03:44:47.800 | Your live events, of course,

03:44:49.160 | are an exploration in the moment where you raise a question

03:44:52.560 | and ask a question and address it.

03:44:53.900 | It's not pre-planned.

03:44:55.640 | And I must say that your progression of books and podcasts

03:44:58.140 | and where things are going now,

03:44:59.600 | in particular that today you said

03:45:01.680 | you are hopeful that the Democratic Party,

03:45:06.240 | I think most people assume that you're very right-leaning.

03:45:08.640 | I'm not gonna assume one way or the other,

03:45:10.800 | but the fact that you are intentionally inviting

03:45:13.520 | and hoping for opposition so that power is checked

03:45:16.560 | and things continue in the right direction,

03:45:18.000 | I think that's really beautiful

03:45:19.000 | because what you're asking for is more balance

03:45:22.040 | as opposed to more skewing of knowledge and power.

03:45:25.280 | And I think that's a terrific example.

03:45:27.520 | And it's clear that you live right near the edge

03:45:30.600 | in order to inspire us to basically explore knowledge,

03:45:35.920 | explore ancient teachings,

03:45:37.240 | and merge them with where we are now.

03:45:39.400 | - Yeah, well, it's been unbelievably rewarding.

03:45:41.360 | I mean, part of the reason that my wife and I keep touring

03:45:43.660 | is because we meet all these people

03:45:45.920 | and they put their lives together.

03:45:49.360 | It's thousands and thousands of people.

03:45:51.700 | It's so gratifying.

03:45:53.100 | Wherever we go, the probability

03:45:57.200 | that someone will come up and say, "Thank you."

03:46:01.980 | But then when I ask, like, "For what?

03:46:04.520 | "What do you mean exactly?

03:46:05.720 | "What changed?"

03:46:06.880 | They tell me.

03:46:08.120 | And there isn't anything better that can happen to you

03:46:11.080 | than to travel around the world

03:46:14.280 | and have perfect strangers come up to you as friends

03:46:19.280 | and tell you that their lives are far better

03:46:23.840 | than they would have been because of their efforts

03:46:26.040 | and because of their encounter with what you've been doing.

03:46:30.040 | Like, if you could pray for anything to happen to you,

03:46:34.660 | there's not a possibility that you could come up

03:46:37.680 | with a better wish than that.

03:46:39.800 | And so it's great.

03:46:43.500 | It's great.

03:46:44.840 | And it's fascinating to explore its continuation

03:46:49.840 | and to observe the consequences.

03:46:53.640 | And it's a privilege to be in that.

03:46:56.400 | It's an immense, what would you say?

03:46:59.000 | It's unspeakably immense privilege to be in that position.

03:47:02.220 | And it's so great to see people like you

03:47:05.200 | and Friedman and Chris Williamson

03:47:07.600 | and all these other podcasters

03:47:09.040 | who are pursuing the same vision

03:47:12.560 | and so successfully,

03:47:14.840 | and to see the massive effect that's having on people.

03:47:18.860 | That's such a good deal.

03:47:21.040 | So, and I do believe it's the sort of thing

03:47:23.540 | that's in a deeply personalized way,

03:47:27.460 | available to anyone who follows their calling and conscience.

03:47:31.920 | - Thank you for those words.

03:47:34.700 | I also agree it's freely available

03:47:37.820 | by people being themselves and as you said,

03:47:40.300 | following their curiosity and conscience.

03:47:43.300 | Thank you for coming here today

03:47:45.300 | and sharing with us where you're at now,

03:47:47.300 | your knowledge, and please come back again.

03:47:50.060 | I really enjoyed this.

03:47:50.980 | - Hey, anytime.

03:47:52.280 | I appreciate the invitation very much.

03:47:54.460 | And it's a pleasure watching your progress forward

03:47:58.780 | and seeing you propagate all the remarkable discoveries

03:48:03.780 | that have been made in the field of neuroscience

03:48:06.800 | because it's quite the credible enterprise

03:48:09.580 | and people need to know the biology of motivation,

03:48:13.260 | let's say, and the biology of emotion.

03:48:15.100 | And it's great to see you managing that

03:48:20.100 | in a sophisticated way with so many people.

03:48:22.420 | It's a good deal for everybody.

03:48:24.380 | - Thank you.

03:48:25.220 | It's a labor of love inspired in no small part by you

03:48:27.860 | and my other podcast colleagues,

03:48:30.020 | and in your case, my academic colleagues.

03:48:32.460 | So thank you, Jordan.

03:48:34.300 | Thank you for joining me for today's discussion

03:48:36.460 | with Dr. Jordan Peterson.

03:48:38.220 | To find links to Dr. Peterson's work, his social media,

03:48:41.500 | his new book, "We Who Wrestle With God,"

03:48:43.580 | as well as a link to the Peterson Academy,

03:48:46.060 | please see the show note captions.

03:48:48.080 | If you're learning from and/or enjoying this podcast,

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03:48:59.740 | you can leave us up to a five-star review.

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03:49:08.360 | If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast

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03:49:30.480 | I discuss science and science-related tools,

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03:49:42.480 | For those of you that haven't heard,

03:49:43.620 | I have a new book coming out.

03:49:44.820 | It's my very first book.

03:49:46.440 | It's entitled "Protocols,

03:49:47.840 | an Operating Manual for the Human Body."

03:49:50.000 | This is a book that I've been working on

03:49:51.160 | for more than five years,

03:49:52.320 | and that's based on more than 30 years

03:49:54.640 | of research and experience.

03:49:56.200 | And it covers protocols for everything from sleep,

03:49:59.260 | to exercise, to stress control,

03:50:01.740 | protocols related to focus and motivation.

03:50:04.240 | And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation

03:50:07.560 | for the protocols that are included.

03:50:09.640 | The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com.

03:50:13.520 | There you can find links to various vendors.

03:50:15.920 | You can pick the one that you like best.

03:50:17.680 | Again, the book is called "Protocols,

03:50:19.440 | an Operating Manual for the Human Body."

03:50:21.960 | And if you haven't already subscribed

03:50:23.420 | to our Neural Network Newsletter,

03:50:25.220 | the Neural Network Newsletter

03:50:26.440 | is a zero-cost monthly newsletter

03:50:28.400 | that includes everything from podcast summaries

03:50:30.600 | to what we call protocols

03:50:31.760 | in the form of brief one to three page PDFs

03:50:34.440 | that cover things like how to optimize your sleep,

03:50:37.160 | how to regulate your dopamine.

03:50:38.800 | We also have protocols related to deliberate cold exposure,

03:50:41.920 | get a lot of questions about that,

03:50:43.740 | deliberate heat exposure, and on and on.

03:50:45.720 | Again, all available at completely zero cost.

03:50:47.800 | You simply go to hubermanlab.com,

03:50:49.720 | go to the menu tab in the top right corner,

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03:50:54.840 | that we do not share your email with anybody.

03:50:57.660 | Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion

03:50:59.880 | with Dr. Jordan Peterson.

03:51:01.440 | And last, but certainly not least,

03:51:03.680 | thank you for your interest in science.

03:51:05.640 | (upbeat music)

03:51:08.220 | (upbeat music)

Dr. Jordan Peterson: How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path

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