Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning

00:00:00.000 | - Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster.

00:00:03.880 | And if you gaze into the abyss,

00:00:05.560 | the abyss gazes also into you.

00:00:08.960 | - But I would say, bring it on.

00:00:12.200 | If you gaze into the abyss long enough,

00:00:15.280 | you see the light, not the darkness.

00:00:17.240 | - Are you sure about that?

00:00:20.240 | - I'm betting my life on it.

00:00:21.680 | - The following is a conversation with Jordan Peterson,

00:00:27.240 | an influential psychologist, lecturer, podcast host,

00:00:30.840 | and author of "Maps of Meaning,"

00:00:33.240 | "12 Rules for Life," and "Beyond Order."

00:00:37.760 | This is the Lex Friedman Podcast.

00:00:39.680 | To support it, please check out our sponsors

00:00:41.680 | in the description.

00:00:43.000 | And now, dear friends, here's Jordan Peterson.

00:00:46.980 | Dostoevsky wrote in "The Idiot,"

00:00:50.440 | spoken through the character of Prince Mishkin,

00:00:52.840 | "That beauty will save the world."

00:00:55.120 | Solzhenitsyn actually mentioned this

00:00:56.680 | in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech.

00:01:00.240 | What do you think Dostoevsky meant by that?

00:01:02.480 | Was he right?

00:01:04.120 | - Well, I guess it's the divine that saves the world,

00:01:09.120 | let's say.

00:01:10.920 | You could say that by definition.

00:01:13.160 | And then you might say, well, are there pointers

00:01:16.400 | to that which will save the world,

00:01:18.300 | or that which eternally saves the world?

00:01:20.140 | And the answer to that, in all likelihood, is yes.

00:01:23.360 | And that's maybe truth and love and justice

00:01:27.600 | and the classical virtues, beauty,

00:01:31.320 | perhaps in some sense foremost among them.

00:01:34.640 | That's a difficult case to make, but definitely a pointer.

00:01:37.640 | - Which direction is the arrow pointing?

00:01:39.480 | - Well, the arrow's pointing up.

00:01:40.640 | No, I think that that which it points to

00:01:43.240 | is what beauty points to.

00:01:45.000 | It transcends beauty.

00:01:46.360 | It's more than beauty.

00:01:47.480 | - And that speaks to the divine.

00:01:49.400 | - It points to the divine.

00:01:51.240 | Yeah, and I would say, again, by definition,

00:01:53.240 | 'cause we could define the divine in some real sense.

00:01:56.460 | So one way of defining the divine is,

00:01:59.360 | what is divine to you is your most fundamental axiom.

00:02:03.440 | And you might say, well, I don't have a fundamental axiom.

00:02:06.020 | Then I would say, that's fine,

00:02:07.280 | but then you're just confused

00:02:08.760 | 'cause you have a bunch of contradictory axioms.

00:02:11.960 | And you might say, well, I have no axioms at all.

00:02:14.040 | And then I'd say, well, you're just epistemologically

00:02:16.200 | ignorant beyond comprehension, if you think that,

00:02:19.000 | 'cause that's just not true at all.

00:02:20.640 | - So do you don't think a human being can exist

00:02:22.400 | within contradictions?

00:02:24.160 | - Well, yeah, we have to exist within contradiction,

00:02:26.280 | but when the contradictions make themselves manifest,

00:02:29.800 | it's in confusion with regard to direction,

00:02:33.020 | then the consequence of that technically is anxiety

00:02:37.760 | and frustration and disappointment

00:02:39.360 | and all sorts of other negative emotions.

00:02:41.040 | But the cardinal negative emotion

00:02:43.920 | signifying multiple pathways forward is anxiety.

00:02:48.840 | It's an entropy signal.

00:02:51.080 | - But you don't think that kind of entropy signal

00:02:53.920 | can be channeled into beauty, into love?

00:02:58.520 | Why does beauty and love have to be clear,

00:03:01.680 | ordered, simple?

00:03:04.480 | - Well, I would say it probably doesn't have to be,

00:03:08.700 | it can't be reduced to clarity and simplicity

00:03:12.440 | because when it's optimally structured,

00:03:15.880 | it's a balance between order and chaos, not order itself.

00:03:20.880 | If it's too ordered, if music is too ordered,

00:03:23.280 | it's not acceptable.

00:03:25.180 | It sounds like a drum machine.

00:03:26.560 | It's too repetitive.

00:03:27.720 | It's too predictable.

00:03:29.560 | It has to have, well, it has to have some fire in it

00:03:34.360 | along with the structure.

00:03:36.020 | I was in Miami doing a seminar on Exodus

00:03:40.760 | with a number of scholars,

00:03:42.180 | and this is a beauty discussion.

00:03:45.880 | When Moses first encounters the burning bush,

00:03:49.400 | it's not a conflagration that demands attention.

00:03:52.400 | It's something that catches his attention.

00:03:54.500 | It's a phenomena, and that means to shine forth,

00:03:57.960 | and Moses has to stop and attend to it, and he does,

00:04:01.260 | and he sees this fire that doesn't consume the tree,

00:04:05.540 | and the tree, the tree is a structure, right?

00:04:07.720 | It's a tree-like structure.

00:04:09.000 | It's a branching structure.

00:04:10.100 | It's a hierarchical structure.

00:04:12.040 | It's a self-similar structure.

00:04:14.000 | It's a fractal structure, and it's the tree of life,

00:04:17.160 | and it's the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,

00:04:19.000 | and the fire in it is the transformation

00:04:23.040 | that's always occurring within every structure,

00:04:25.360 | and the fact that the fire doesn't consume the bush

00:04:28.560 | in that representation is an indication

00:04:32.400 | of the balance of transformation with structure,

00:04:34.840 | and that balance is presented as God,

00:04:37.920 | and what attracts Moses to it, in some sense, is the beauty.

00:04:42.320 | Now, it's the novelty and all that,

00:04:43.820 | but like a painting is like a burning bush.

00:04:46.480 | That's a good way of thinking about it, a great painting.

00:04:48.760 | It's too much for people often.

00:04:50.720 | You know, my house was, and will soon be again,

00:04:55.080 | completely covered with paintings inside,

00:04:58.200 | and it was hard on people to come in there,

00:05:01.800 | because, well, my mother, for example, would say,

00:05:04.500 | "Well, why would you want to live in a museum?"

00:05:07.040 | And I'd think, "Well, I would rather live in a museum

00:05:09.120 | "than anywhere else, in some real sense,"

00:05:10.840 | but beauty is daunting.

00:05:13.240 | It scares people.

00:05:15.080 | They're terrified of buying art, for example,

00:05:17.200 | because their taste is on display,

00:05:18.720 | and they should be terrified,

00:05:19.760 | because generally, people have terrible taste.

00:05:22.320 | Now, that doesn't mean they shouldn't foster it

00:05:24.520 | and develop it, but, and you know,

00:05:26.400 | when you put your taste on display,

00:05:28.440 | it really exposes you.

00:05:30.720 | - Even to yourself, as you walk past it every day.

00:05:34.600 | - Absolutely. - This is who I am.

00:05:36.040 | - Yeah, well, and look how mundane that is,

00:05:38.360 | and look how trite it is, and look at how cliched it is,

00:05:41.400 | and look at how sterile or too ordered it is,

00:05:43.800 | or too chaotic.

00:05:45.140 | - Or how quickly you start to take it for granted,

00:05:47.160 | because you've seen it so many times.

00:05:48.600 | - Well, if it's a real piece of art, that doesn't happen.

00:05:51.560 | - You notice the little details.

00:05:53.400 | - The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

00:05:55.720 | I mean, there are images, religious images in particular,

00:05:59.640 | so we could call them deep images,

00:06:02.120 | that people have been unpacking for 4,000 years,

00:06:07.080 | and still haven't, I'll give you an example.

00:06:09.240 | This is a terrible example.

00:06:10.760 | So, I did a lecture series on Genesis,

00:06:15.880 | and I got a lot of it unpacked,

00:06:18.040 | but by no means all of it.

00:06:19.640 | When God kicks Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden,

00:06:25.200 | he puts cherubim with flaming swords at the gate

00:06:28.400 | to stop human beings from reentering paradise.

00:06:31.920 | I thought, what the hell does that mean, cherubim,

00:06:34.160 | and why do they have flaming swords?

00:06:35.760 | I don't get that, what is that exactly?

00:06:38.760 | And then I found out from Matthew Paggio,

00:06:41.280 | who wrote a great book on symbolism in Genesis,

00:06:44.220 | that cherubim are the supporting monsters of God.

00:06:48.140 | It's a very complicated idea,

00:06:50.100 | and that they're partly a representation of that

00:06:53.700 | which is difficult to fit into conceptual systems.

00:06:57.120 | They've also got an angelic or demonic aspect,

00:07:00.980 | take your pick.

00:07:02.300 | Why do they have flaming swords?

00:07:04.300 | Well, a sword is a symbol of judgment

00:07:07.580 | and the separation of the wheat from the chaff.

00:07:13.340 | You use a sword to cut away, to cut away and to carve.

00:07:18.340 | And a flaming sword is not only that which carves,

00:07:21.140 | it's that which burns.

00:07:23.260 | And what does it carve away and burn?

00:07:25.700 | Well, you wanna get into paradise?

00:07:27.400 | It carves away everything about you that isn't perfect.

00:07:32.460 | And so what does that mean?

00:07:34.020 | Okay, well, here's part of what it means.

00:07:35.700 | This is a terrible thing.

00:07:37.700 | So you could say that the entire Christian narrative

00:07:41.060 | is embedded in that image.

00:07:43.780 | Why?

00:07:44.940 | Well, let's say that flaming swords are a symbol of death.

00:07:48.540 | That seems pretty obvious.

00:07:50.740 | Let's say further that they're a symbol

00:07:53.380 | of apocalypse and hell.

00:07:55.680 | That doesn't seem completely unreasonable.

00:07:59.520 | So here's an idea.

00:08:00.860 | Not only do you have to face death,

00:08:04.740 | you have to face death and hell

00:08:06.940 | before you can get to paradise.

00:08:09.120 | Hellish judgment.

00:08:10.780 | And all that's embedded in that image.

00:08:13.500 | And a piece of art with an image like that

00:08:16.580 | has all that information in it.

00:08:18.740 | And it shines forth in some fundamental sense.

00:08:22.600 | It reaches into the back tendrils of your mind

00:08:25.620 | at levels you can't even comprehend and grips you.

00:08:29.500 | I mean, that's why people go to museums

00:08:31.420 | and gaze at paintings they don't understand.

00:08:33.860 | And that's why they'll pay,

00:08:35.320 | what's the most expensive objects in the world?

00:08:37.700 | If it's not carbon fiber racing yachts,

00:08:39.720 | it's definitely classic paintings.

00:08:42.940 | It's high level technological implements.

00:08:45.740 | Or it's classic art.

00:08:47.100 | Well, why are those things so expensive?

00:08:48.940 | Why do we build temples to house the images?

00:08:51.860 | Even secular people go to museums.

00:08:54.600 | I'm secular.

00:08:55.780 | Well, are you in a museum?

00:08:56.960 | Yes.

00:08:57.800 | Are you looking at art?

00:08:58.620 | Yes.

00:08:59.460 | Well, what makes you think you're secular then?

00:09:03.820 | - It's arguable that the thing many, many centuries

00:09:07.060 | from now that will remain of all of human civilization

00:09:09.620 | will be our art.

00:09:11.300 | Not even the words.

00:09:12.980 | - Well, a book has remained a very long time, right?

00:09:16.620 | The biblical writings.

00:09:17.460 | - Not that long.

00:09:18.280 | A few millennia.

00:09:19.740 | - That's right.

00:09:21.140 | - But that's in the full arc of living organisms.

00:09:24.380 | Perhaps we'll not--

00:09:25.220 | - Well, we have artistic images

00:09:28.540 | that are at least 50,000 years old, right?

00:09:30.940 | That have survived.

00:09:32.380 | And some of those are,

00:09:34.380 | they're already profound in their symbolism.

00:09:36.740 | - By we do you mean humans?

00:09:38.260 | - Yeah, we found them.

00:09:39.460 | And they've lasted that long.

00:09:43.460 | And so, and then think about Europe.

00:09:47.260 | Secular people all over the world

00:09:49.740 | make pilgrimages to Europe.

00:09:51.900 | Well, why?

00:09:53.360 | Because of the beauty.

00:09:55.140 | Obviously.

00:09:55.980 | I mean, that's self-evident.

00:09:58.700 | And it's partly because there are things in Europe

00:10:01.200 | that are so beautiful.

00:10:02.040 | They take your breath away, right?

00:10:03.300 | They make your hair stand on end.

00:10:04.580 | They fill you with a sense of awe.

00:10:06.620 | And we need to see those things.

00:10:10.380 | It's not optional.

00:10:11.460 | We need to see those things.

00:10:13.080 | The cathedrals.

00:10:13.920 | I was in a cathedral in Vienna

00:10:15.540 | and it was terribly beautiful.

00:10:17.780 | - Terribly beautiful.

00:10:18.620 | - Well, it was terribly beautiful.

00:10:20.060 | - Is beauty painful for you?

00:10:21.620 | Is that the highest form of beauty

00:10:24.300 | that really challenges you?

00:10:25.660 | - Oh, definitely.

00:10:27.060 | Yeah, yeah.

00:10:27.900 | I got a good analysis of the statue of David.

00:10:29.940 | Michelangelo's statue says,

00:10:31.420 | you could be far more than you are.

00:10:34.020 | That's what that statue says.

00:10:35.980 | And this cathedral, we went down into the under structure

00:10:40.860 | of it and there were three floors of bones from the plague.

00:10:45.860 | And there they all are.

00:10:47.620 | And then that cathedral's on top of it.

00:10:50.140 | It's no joke to go visit a place like that.

00:10:52.540 | No, it rattles you to the core.

00:10:56.420 | And our religious systems have become

00:11:01.020 | propositionally dubious.

00:11:03.420 | But there's no arguing with the architecture,

00:11:05.340 | although modern architects like to,

00:11:07.460 | with their sterility and their giant middle fingers

00:11:10.220 | erected everywhere.

00:11:11.440 | But beauty is a terrible pointer to God.

00:11:16.700 | And you know, a secular person will say,

00:11:18.380 | well, I don't believe in God.

00:11:19.480 | It's like, have it your way.

00:11:22.120 | You cannot move forward into the unforeseen horizon

00:11:26.780 | of the future, except on faith.

00:11:29.900 | And you might say, well, I have no faith.

00:11:31.380 | It's like, well, good luck with the future then,

00:11:33.300 | because what are you then?

00:11:34.900 | Nihilistic and hopeless and anxiety ridden?

00:11:38.380 | And if not, well, something's guiding you forward.

00:11:41.100 | It's faith in something or multiple things,

00:11:43.620 | which just makes you a polytheist,

00:11:45.980 | which I wouldn't recommend.

00:11:48.180 | - Well, let me ask you one short-lived

00:11:51.540 | biological meat bag to another.

00:11:54.820 | Who is God then?

00:11:56.740 | Let's try to sneak up to this question

00:12:00.300 | if it's at all possible.

00:12:01.620 | Is it possible to even talk about this?

00:12:05.020 | - Well, it better be,

00:12:05.860 | because otherwise there's no communicating about it.

00:12:08.980 | It has to be something that can be brought down to earth.

00:12:12.340 | - Well, we might be too dumb to bring it down.

00:12:14.740 | - It's not just ignorant, it's also sinful.

00:12:17.340 | Because there's not knowing,

00:12:20.540 | and then there's wanting to know or refusing to know.

00:12:24.540 | And so you might say, well, could you extract God

00:12:27.820 | from a description of the objective world?

00:12:30.900 | Is God just the ultimate unity of the natural reality?

00:12:35.900 | And I would say, well, in a sense,

00:12:39.340 | there's some truth in that, but not exactly,

00:12:41.740 | because God in the highest sense is the spirit

00:12:45.100 | that you must emulate in order to thrive.

00:12:49.060 | How's that for a biological definition?

00:12:51.460 | Spirit is a pattern.

00:12:53.460 | The spirit that you must emulate in order to thrive.

00:12:56.140 | - So it's a kind of, in one sense,

00:12:59.260 | when we say the human spirit, it's that.

00:13:02.580 | - It's an animating principle, yeah.

00:13:04.780 | It's a meta, it's a pattern.

00:13:07.020 | And you might say, well, what's the pattern?

00:13:08.620 | Okay, well, I can tell you that to some degree.

00:13:11.300 | Imagine that like you're gripped by beauty,

00:13:14.820 | you're gripped by admiration.

00:13:17.140 | So, and you can just notice this.

00:13:18.940 | This isn't propositional, you have to notice it.

00:13:21.620 | It's like, oh, it turns out I admire that person.

00:13:25.200 | So what does that mean?

00:13:28.100 | Well, it means I would like to be like him or her.

00:13:31.860 | That's what admiration means.

00:13:32.940 | It means there's something about the way they are

00:13:35.940 | that compels imitation, another instinct,

00:13:40.060 | or inspires respect or awe, even.

00:13:44.540 | Okay, what is that that grips you?

00:13:46.780 | Well, I don't know.

00:13:49.300 | Well, let's say, okay, fine, but it grips you,

00:13:51.980 | and you want to be like that.

00:13:53.380 | Kids hero worship, for example,

00:13:55.180 | and so do adults, for that matter,

00:13:56.580 | unless they become entirely cynical.

00:13:58.140 | - I worship quite a few heroes.

00:14:00.380 | - Well, there you go. - Proudly.

00:14:01.780 | - Yes, well, there you go.

00:14:03.340 | And there's no, that worship, that celebration

00:14:06.380 | and proclivity to imitate is worship.

00:14:08.460 | That's what worship means most fundamentally.

00:14:11.180 | Now imagine you took the set of all admirable people,

00:14:16.020 | and you extracted out AI learning.

00:14:18.980 | You extracted out the central features

00:14:20.980 | of what constitutes admirable.

00:14:23.260 | And then you did that repeatedly

00:14:24.700 | until you purified it to what was most admirable.

00:14:27.700 | That's as good as you're going to get

00:14:31.580 | in terms of a representation of God.

00:14:36.180 | And you might say, well, I don't believe in that.

00:14:37.620 | It's like, well, what do you mean?

00:14:40.860 | It's not a set of propositional facts.

00:14:43.860 | It's not a scientific theory

00:14:45.580 | about the structure of the objective world.

00:14:47.460 | And then I could say something about that too,

00:14:49.140 | because I've been thinking about this a lot,

00:14:50.660 | especially since talking to Richard Dawkins.

00:14:53.380 | It's like, okay, the postmodernist types,

00:14:57.380 | going back way before Derrida and Foucault,

00:14:59.700 | maybe back to Nietzsche,

00:15:01.740 | who I admire greatly, by the way,

00:15:04.380 | says God is dead.

00:15:05.660 | It's like, okay, but Nietzsche said God is dead,

00:15:09.380 | and we have killed him,

00:15:10.220 | and we'll not find enough water to wash away all the blood.

00:15:12.980 | So that was Nietzsche.

00:15:14.140 | He's no fool.

00:15:15.140 | - He's got a way with words.

00:15:16.140 | - He certainly does.

00:15:17.740 | And so then you think, okay, well, we killed the transcendent.

00:15:22.300 | Well, what does that mean for science?

00:15:24.700 | Well, it frees it up,

00:15:25.740 | because all that nonsense about a deity

00:15:28.300 | is just the idiot superstition

00:15:30.420 | that stops the scientific process from moving forward.

00:15:35.420 | That's basically the new atheist claim, something like that.

00:15:38.580 | It's like, wait a second.

00:15:40.020 | Do you believe in the transcendent if you're a scientist?

00:15:44.500 | And the answer is, well, not only do you believe in it,

00:15:47.860 | you believe in it more than anything else,

00:15:49.500 | because if you're a scientist,

00:15:51.700 | you believe in what objects to your theory

00:15:56.180 | more than you believe in your theory.

00:15:58.460 | Now, we gotta think that through very carefully.

00:16:00.420 | So your theory describes the world,

00:16:01.960 | and as far as you're concerned,

00:16:04.200 | your description of the world is the world.

00:16:06.340 | But because you're a scientist, you think,

00:16:09.020 | well, even though that's my description of the world,

00:16:11.940 | and that's what I believe,

00:16:13.800 | there's something beyond what I believe,

00:16:16.080 | and that's the object.

00:16:18.100 | And so I'm gonna throw my theory against the object

00:16:20.340 | and see where it'll break,

00:16:21.740 | and then I'm going to use the evidence of the break

00:16:25.340 | as a source of new information to revitalize my theory.

00:16:28.780 | So as a scientist, you have to posit the existence

00:16:31.420 | of the ontological transcendent

00:16:33.900 | before you can move forward at all, but more.

00:16:37.260 | You have to posit that contact

00:16:40.580 | with the ontological transcendent,

00:16:43.080 | annoying though it is because it upsets your apple cart,

00:16:46.420 | is exactly what will in fact set you free.

00:16:49.740 | So then you accept the proposition

00:16:51.420 | that there is a transcendent reality,

00:16:53.560 | and that contact with that transcendent reality

00:16:58.500 | is redemptive in the most fundamental sense,

00:17:01.020 | because if it wasn't,

00:17:01.860 | well, why would you bother making contact with it?

00:17:03.860 | You're gonna make everything worse or better.

00:17:06.300 | - Why does the contact with the transcendent

00:17:10.060 | set you free as a scientist?

00:17:11.820 | - 'Cause you assume that, you assume,

00:17:13.860 | I mean freedom in the most fundamental sense.

00:17:15.940 | It's like, well, freedom from want, freedom from disease,

00:17:19.180 | freedom from ignorance, right?

00:17:21.060 | That it informs you.

00:17:22.420 | - So it's the five of science. - The logos in it.

00:17:24.860 | It is definitely that.

00:17:26.420 | Yeah, it's the direction,

00:17:29.760 | let's say the directionality of science,

00:17:31.460 | that's a narrative direction, not a scientific direction.

00:17:34.180 | And then the question is, what is the narrative?

00:17:36.500 | Well, it posits a transcendent reality.

00:17:38.860 | It posits that the transcendent reality is corrective.

00:17:41.700 | It posits that our knowledge structure

00:17:43.540 | should be regarded with humility.

00:17:46.020 | It posits that you should bow down

00:17:48.280 | in the face of the transcendent evidence.

00:17:51.820 | And you have to take a vow, you know this as a scientist,

00:17:54.540 | you have to take a vow to follow that path

00:17:56.500 | if you're gonna be a real scientist.

00:17:57.820 | It's like the truth, no matter what,

00:18:01.480 | and that means you posit the truth as a redemptive force.

00:18:05.220 | Well, what does redemptive mean?

00:18:06.460 | Well, why bother with science?

00:18:07.780 | Well, so people don't starve,

00:18:09.260 | so people can move about more effectively,

00:18:11.300 | so life can be more abundant, right?

00:18:13.080 | So it's all ensconced within an underlying ethic.

00:18:16.780 | So the reason I was saying that

00:18:19.120 | while we were talking about belief in God,

00:18:20.800 | it's like, this is a very complicated topic, right?

00:18:23.260 | Do you believe in a transcendent reality?

00:18:25.080 | See, okay, now let's say you buy the argument

00:18:28.580 | I just made on the natural front,

00:18:30.080 | you say, yeah, yeah, that's just nature, that's not God.

00:18:34.720 | And then I'd say, well, what makes you think

00:18:37.400 | you know what nature is?

00:18:38.680 | Like, see, the problem with that argument

00:18:42.000 | is that it already presumes a reductionist

00:18:46.320 | materialist objective view of what constitutes nature.

00:18:50.240 | But if you're a scientist, you're gonna think,

00:18:52.640 | well, in the final analysis, I don't know what nature is.

00:18:55.280 | I certainly don't know its origin or destination point.

00:18:58.420 | I don't know its teleology.

00:19:00.360 | I'm really ignorant about nature.

00:19:02.840 | And so when I say it's nothing but nature,

00:19:05.700 | I shouldn't mean it's nothing

00:19:07.400 | but what I understand nature to be.

00:19:10.720 | So I could say, will we have a fully reductionist account

00:19:13.580 | of cognitive processes?

00:19:16.320 | And the answer to that is yes, but by the time we do that,

00:19:19.380 | our understanding of matter will have transformed so much

00:19:22.580 | that what we think of as reductionist now

00:19:24.580 | won't look anything like what we think of reductionism now.

00:19:28.220 | Matter isn't dead dust.

00:19:31.060 | I don't know what it is.

00:19:32.780 | I have no idea what it is.

00:19:34.300 | Matter is what matters.

00:19:36.100 | There's a definition.

00:19:37.460 | That's a very weird definition.

00:19:39.580 | But the notion that we have,

00:19:42.540 | you know, that if you're a reductionist,

00:19:44.100 | a materialist reductionist,

00:19:45.260 | that you can reduce the complexity of what is

00:19:48.820 | to your assumptions about the nature of matter.

00:19:52.060 | That's not a scientific--

00:19:52.980 | - Your specific limited human assumptions

00:19:55.460 | of this century, of this week, that,

00:19:58.740 | so in some sense, without God,

00:20:03.740 | in this complicated, big definition we're talking about,

00:20:07.380 | there's no humility, or it's less--

00:20:11.980 | - It's not enough.

00:20:12.820 | - There's less likely to be,

00:20:15.260 | or rather science can err in taking a trajectory

00:20:19.420 | away from humility.

00:20:20.820 | - Well--

00:20:21.660 | - Without something much more powerful

00:20:24.020 | than an individual human.

00:20:26.220 | - Yeah, well then, and we know, you know,

00:20:27.820 | the Frankenstein story comes out of that instantly.

00:20:30.540 | And that's a good story for the current times.

00:20:33.740 | It's like, you're playing around with making new life?

00:20:37.900 | You bloody well better make sure

00:20:40.740 | you have your arrows pointed up.

00:20:43.420 | - And it's interesting because you said

00:20:44.820 | science has an ethic to it.

00:20:49.140 | I think--

00:20:49.980 | - It's embedded in an ethic.

00:20:51.340 | - Well, there's a, you know, science is a big word.

00:20:55.460 | - Yeah.

00:20:56.300 | - And it includes a lot of disciplines

00:20:57.220 | that have different traditions.

00:20:58.500 | So biology, chemistry, genetics, physics,

00:21:02.620 | those are very different communities.

00:21:06.700 | And I think biology, especially when you get closer

00:21:09.540 | and closer to medicine and to the human body,

00:21:12.180 | does have a very serious, first of all,

00:21:14.420 | has a history with Nazi Germany of being abused

00:21:16.780 | and all those kinds of things.

00:21:18.260 | But it has a history of taking this stuff seriously.

00:21:21.100 | What doesn't have a history of taking this stuff seriously

00:21:23.580 | is robotics and artificial intelligence,

00:21:25.660 | which is really interesting.

00:21:27.300 | Because you don't, you know, you called me a scientist,

00:21:31.260 | but, and I would like to wear that label proudly,

00:21:34.860 | but often people don't think of computer science

00:21:37.780 | as a science, but nevertheless, it will be, I think,

00:21:41.500 | the science of one of the major scientific fields

00:21:44.820 | of the 21st century.

00:21:46.300 | And you should take that very seriously.

00:21:48.660 | Oftentimes when people build robots or AI systems,

00:21:52.580 | they think of them as toys to tinker with.

00:21:57.180 | Oh, isn't this cool?

00:21:58.980 | And I feel this too, isn't this cool?

00:22:01.300 | - It is cool.

00:22:02.420 | - But, you know, at a certain moment, you might,

00:22:05.820 | isn't this nuclear explosion cool?

00:22:09.380 | - Yeah. - Because it is.

00:22:10.420 | - Or birth control pill cool, it's like,

00:22:12.800 | or transistor cool, yeah.

00:22:15.620 | Well, the other thing too, and this is a weird problem

00:22:19.220 | in some sense, the robotics engineer types,

00:22:22.380 | they're thing people, right?

00:22:23.980 | I mean, the big classes of interest are interest in things

00:22:27.500 | versus interest in people.

00:22:28.700 | - Some of my best friends are thing people.

00:22:30.700 | - Yeah, right, and thing people are very, very clear,

00:22:35.100 | logical thinkers, and they're very outcome oriented

00:22:39.380 | and practical.

00:22:41.100 | Now, and that's all good.

00:22:43.220 | That makes the machinery and keeps it functioning.

00:22:46.020 | But there's a human side of the equation.

00:22:49.340 | And you get the extreme thing people, and you think,

00:22:52.980 | yeah, well, what about the human here?

00:22:55.260 | And when we're talking about, we've been talking

00:22:58.740 | about the necessity of having a technological enterprise

00:23:01.740 | embedded in an ethic, and you can ignore that.

00:23:04.540 | Like most of the time, right?

00:23:06.300 | You can ignore the overall ethic in some sense

00:23:09.460 | when you're toying around with your toys.

00:23:11.900 | But when you're building an artificial intelligence,

00:23:14.020 | it's like, well, that's not a toy.

00:23:18.120 | That might be--

00:23:20.500 | - Toy becomes the monster very quickly.

00:23:22.220 | - Yeah, yeah, yes, yes.

00:23:23.860 | And this is a whole new kind of monster.

00:23:26.940 | And maybe it's already here.

00:23:33.300 | Yes, and you notice how many of those things

00:23:35.060 | you can no longer turn off.

00:23:36.660 | And what is it with you engineers and your inability

00:23:41.180 | to put off switches on things now?

00:23:43.440 | It's like, I have to hold this for five seconds

00:23:46.880 | for it to shut off, or I can't figure it.

00:23:48.960 | I just wanna shut it off, click off.

00:23:51.780 | - Well, what is it with you humans that don't put off

00:23:55.300 | switches on other humans?

00:23:57.020 | Because there's a magic to the thing that you notice,

00:23:59.580 | and it hurts for both you and perhaps one day

00:24:03.380 | the thing itself to turn it off.

00:24:05.980 | And so you have to be very careful as an engineer

00:24:08.180 | adding off switches to things.

00:24:09.980 | I think it's a feature, not a bug, the off switch.

00:24:14.380 | The off switch gives a deadline to us humans,

00:24:17.020 | to systems of existence.

00:24:19.660 | It makes you, you know, death is the thing

00:24:23.260 | that really brings clarity to life.

00:24:25.780 | And I do think--

00:24:26.620 | - Yes, hence the flaming swords.

00:24:28.780 | - The flaming sword.

00:24:29.620 | I do like your view of the flame, the bush,

00:24:33.300 | and perhaps the sword as a thing of transformation.

00:24:36.660 | It's also, it's a transformation that kind of

00:24:39.740 | consumes the thing in the process.

00:24:41.380 | - Well, it depends on how much of the thing is chaff.

00:24:44.300 | You know, this is why you can't touch

00:24:46.220 | the Ark of the Covenant, for example.

00:24:48.660 | And this is why people can have very bad psychedelic trips.

00:24:52.060 | It's like if you're 95% deadwood,

00:24:54.940 | and you get too close to the flame,

00:24:57.140 | the 5% that's left might not be able to make it.

00:25:00.620 | - So you think it's all chaff,

00:25:04.700 | but I think there is some aspect of destruction that is,

00:25:08.340 | that's, you know, the old Bukowski line of

00:25:11.860 | do what you love and let it kill you.

00:25:13.460 | - Right.

00:25:14.300 | - Don't you think that destruction's part of--

00:25:16.540 | - That's humility.

00:25:18.180 | - That's humility, that's--

00:25:19.060 | - You bet, you bet, you bet.

00:25:20.580 | It's like, invite in the judgment.

00:25:23.180 | Invite in the judgment, because maybe you can die

00:25:25.100 | a little bit instead of dying completely.

00:25:27.020 | - Yeah.

00:25:27.860 | - You know, and that's, I think it's Alfred North Whitehead.

00:25:30.220 | We can let our ideas die instead of us, right?

00:25:33.380 | We can have these partial personalities

00:25:35.700 | that we can burn off, and we can let them go

00:25:38.580 | before they become tyrannical pharaohs

00:25:40.980 | and we lose everything.

00:25:43.220 | And so, yeah, there's this optimal bite of death.

00:25:46.380 | And who knows what it would mean to optimize that?

00:25:49.620 | Like, what if it was possible that if you died enough

00:25:52.460 | all the time, that you could continue to live?

00:25:56.180 | And the thing is, we already know that biologically,

00:25:58.260 | because if you don't die properly all the time,

00:26:02.460 | well, it's cancerous outgrowths,

00:26:04.020 | and it's a very fine balance between productivity

00:26:09.020 | on the biological front and the culling of that, right?

00:26:14.020 | Life is a real balance between growth and death.

00:26:17.620 | And so what would happen if you got that balance right?

00:26:20.300 | Well, we kinda know, right?

00:26:21.540 | Because if you live your life properly, so to speak,

00:26:25.900 | and you're humble enough to let your stupidity die

00:26:28.740 | before it takes you out, you will live longer.

00:26:32.020 | That's just a fact.

00:26:33.260 | Well, but then what's the ultimate extension of that?

00:26:37.060 | And the answer is, we don't know.

00:26:38.660 | We have no idea.

00:26:40.140 | - Well, let me ask you a difficult question, because--

00:26:42.940 | - As opposed to the easy ones that you've been asking so far.

00:26:45.620 | - Well, Dostoevsky's always just a warmup.

00:26:48.820 | So if death, if death every single day

00:26:54.140 | is the way to progress through life,

00:26:56.020 | you have become quite famous.

00:26:58.620 | - Death and hell.

00:27:00.100 | - Death and hell.

00:27:00.940 | - Yeah, yeah, 'cause you don't wanna forget the hell part.

00:27:03.700 | - Do you worry that your fame traps you

00:27:08.660 | into the person that you were before?

00:27:12.300 | - Yeah, well, Elvis became an Elvis impersonator

00:27:15.220 | by the time he died.

00:27:16.460 | - Yeah, do you fear that you have become

00:27:18.220 | a Jordan Peterson impersonator?

00:27:20.620 | Do you fear of, in some part, becoming

00:27:24.260 | the famous suit-wearing, brilliant Jordan Peterson,

00:27:29.260 | the certainty in the pursuit of truth, always right?

00:27:34.260 | - I think I worry about it more than anything else.

00:27:36.940 | I hope, I hope I do.

00:27:39.180 | I better.

00:27:40.020 | - Has fame, to some degree, when you look at yourself

00:27:43.100 | in the mirror, in the quiet of your mind,

00:27:45.580 | has it corrupted you?

00:27:47.700 | - No doubt, in some regard.

00:27:50.180 | I mean, it's a very difficult thing to avoid,

00:27:53.300 | because things change around you.

00:27:57.140 | People are much more likely to do what you ask,

00:28:00.300 | for example, right?

00:28:01.860 | And so that's a danger, because one of the things

00:28:04.380 | that keeps you dying properly is that people push back

00:28:07.380 | against you, optimally.

00:28:08.820 | This is why so many celebrities spiral out of control,

00:28:11.460 | especially the tyrannical types that, say, run countries.

00:28:15.180 | Everyone around them stops saying,

00:28:17.380 | yeah, you're deviating a little bit there.

00:28:20.140 | They laugh at all their jokes.

00:28:21.540 | They open all their doors.

00:28:22.780 | They always want something from them.

00:28:25.300 | The red carpet's always rolled out.

00:28:27.300 | It's like, well, you think, wouldn't that be lovely?

00:28:29.780 | It's, well, not if the red carpet is rolled out to you

00:28:34.020 | while you're on your way to perdition.

00:28:36.260 | That's not a good deal.

00:28:37.820 | You just get there more efficiently.

00:28:40.020 | And so one of the things that I've tried to learn to manage

00:28:43.180 | is just to have people around me all the time who are critics,

00:28:48.180 | who are saying, yeah, I could have done that better.

00:28:50.700 | And you're a little too harsh there.

00:28:52.900 | And you're alienating people unnecessarily there.

00:28:55.660 | And you should have done some more background work there.

00:28:58.980 | And I think the responsibility attendant upon that

00:29:02.180 | increases as your influence increases.

00:29:04.740 | And as your influence increases, then that

00:29:08.940 | becomes a lot of responsibility.

00:29:12.460 | So and then maybe have an off day.

00:29:14.820 | And well, here's an example.

00:29:17.260 | I've been writing some columns lately

00:29:19.380 | about things that perturb me, like the forthcoming famine,

00:29:24.260 | for example.

00:29:25.580 | And it's hard to take those problems on.

00:29:31.100 | It's difficult to take those problems on

00:29:33.340 | in a serious manner.

00:29:34.380 | And it's frightening.

00:29:35.540 | And it would be easier just to go up to the cottage

00:29:37.540 | with my wife and go out on the lake and watch the sunset.

00:29:40.900 | And so I'm tempted to draw on anger as a motivating energy

00:29:48.100 | to help me overcome the resistance to doing this.

00:29:52.020 | But then that makes me more harsh and judgmental in my tone

00:29:55.980 | when I'm reading such things, for example, on YouTube,

00:29:59.060 | than might be optimal.

00:30:00.260 | Now, I've had debates with people about that.

00:30:03.260 | Because I have friends who say, no,

00:30:05.540 | if you're calling out the environmentalist globalists who

00:30:10.660 | are harassing the Dutch farmers, then a little anger

00:30:14.460 | is just the ticket.

00:30:15.860 | But then others say, well, you don't

00:30:17.940 | want to be too harsh because you alienate people who would

00:30:20.420 | otherwise listen to you.

00:30:22.020 | It's like, that's a hard balance to get right.

00:30:24.900 | But also maybe anger hardens your mind

00:30:28.380 | to where you don't notice the subtle, quiet beauty

00:30:31.180 | of the world, the quiet love that's always there,

00:30:34.540 | that permeates everything.

00:30:36.180 | Sometimes you can become deeply cynical about the world

00:30:38.860 | if it's the Nietzsche thing.

00:30:41.860 | Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster.

00:30:45.780 | And if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.

00:30:50.780 | But I would say, bring it on.

00:30:53.860 | [LAUGHTER]

00:30:56.260 | Right?

00:30:56.780 | Well--

00:30:57.340 | That's why I also say, knowing that he's absolutely right,

00:30:59.980 | but if you gaze into the abyss long enough,

00:31:03.420 | you see the light, not the darkness.

00:31:06.580 | Are you sure about that?

00:31:08.380 | I'm betting my life on it.

00:31:10.580 | Yeah, that's a heck of a bet.

00:31:12.180 | Well, that's--

00:31:12.820 | Because it might distort your mind to where all you see--

00:31:17.460 | Is abyss.

00:31:18.380 | Is abyss.

00:31:19.620 | Yeah.

00:31:20.120 | Is the evil in this world.

00:31:21.260 | Well, then I would say you haven't looked long enough.

00:31:24.180 | You know, that's back to the--

00:31:25.900 | You're just a limited--

00:31:26.900 | --the swords, the flaming swords.

00:31:29.340 | So I said the whole story of Christ

00:31:31.060 | was prefigured in that image.

00:31:33.260 | It's like, the story of Christ, psychologically,

00:31:36.900 | is radical acceptance of the worst possible tragedy.

00:31:40.780 | That's what it means.

00:31:41.660 | That's what the crucifix means.

00:31:42.980 | Psychologically, it's like, gaze upon that

00:31:45.100 | which you are most afraid of.

00:31:46.700 | But that story doesn't end there.

00:31:48.500 | Because in the story, Christ goes through death into hell.

00:31:53.460 | So death isn't enough.

00:31:55.300 | The abyss of innocent death is not

00:31:58.260 | sufficient to produce redemption.

00:32:00.720 | It has to be a voluntary journey to hell.

00:32:03.180 | And maybe that's true for everyone.

00:32:06.260 | And that's like-- there is no more terrifying idea than that,

00:32:09.380 | by definition.

00:32:10.380 | And so then, well, do you gaze upon that?

00:32:13.940 | Well, who knows?

00:32:17.700 | Who knows?

00:32:18.340 | How often do you gaze upon death, your own?

00:32:22.460 | How often do you remember, remind yourself,

00:32:26.060 | that this ride ends?

00:32:27.420 | Personally?

00:32:28.300 | Personally.

00:32:29.540 | All the time.

00:32:30.740 | Because you, as a deep thinker and a philosopher,

00:32:33.700 | it's easy to start philosophizing and forgetting

00:32:37.780 | that you might die today.

00:32:40.020 | The angel of death sits on every word.

00:32:43.620 | How's that?

00:32:45.700 | How often do you actually consciously--

00:32:48.100 | All the time.

00:32:49.540 | --notice the angel?

00:32:50.660 | All the time.

00:32:51.300 | I think it's one of the things that made me peculiar.

00:32:57.700 | When I was in graduate school, I thought about--

00:33:02.020 | I had the thought of death in my mind all the time.

00:33:05.140 | And I noticed that many of the people that I was with,

00:33:07.380 | these were people I admired fine.

00:33:09.980 | That wasn't part of their character.

00:33:12.100 | But it was definitely part of mine.

00:33:13.860 | I'd wake up every morning.

00:33:16.060 | This happened for years.

00:33:17.020 | Think, time's short.

00:33:18.980 | Get at it.

00:33:19.740 | Time's short.

00:33:20.460 | Get at it.

00:33:21.620 | There's things to do.

00:33:23.620 | And so that was always-- it's still there.

00:33:25.620 | And it's still there with--

00:33:26.900 | I would say, and it's unbearable in some sense.

00:33:30.060 | Are you afraid of it?

00:33:31.220 | Like, what's your relationship?

00:33:32.580 | Afraid of death?

00:33:33.260 | Yeah.

00:33:33.780 | You know, I was ready to die a year ago.

00:33:39.020 | And not casually.

00:33:40.420 | I had people I loved.

00:33:41.500 | So no, I'm not very worried about me.

00:33:49.420 | But I am very worried about making a mistake.

00:33:52.100 | Yeah.

00:33:53.220 | I heard Elon Musk talk about that a couple of months ago.

00:33:55.580 | It was really a striking moment.

00:33:57.860 | Someone asked him about death.

00:33:59.100 | And he said, just offhand, and then went on

00:34:01.180 | with the conversation.

00:34:02.140 | He said, that'd be a relief.

00:34:03.420 | And then he went on with the conversation.

00:34:06.780 | And I thought, well, you know, he's got a lot of weight

00:34:10.220 | on his shoulders.

00:34:11.740 | I'm sure that part of him thinks,

00:34:14.300 | I'd be easier just if this wasn't here at all.

00:34:18.100 | Now, he said it offhand.

00:34:19.460 | But it was a telling moment, in my estimation.

00:34:21.900 | So for him, that's a why live question.

00:34:26.060 | The exhaustion of life.

00:34:27.740 | Yeah.

00:34:28.240 | If you call it life is suffering.

00:34:30.180 | But the hardship.

00:34:32.220 | I'm more afraid of hell than death.

00:34:33.740 | You're afraid of the thing that follows.

00:34:40.100 | I don't know if it follows or if it's always here.

00:34:44.420 | And I think we're going to find out.

00:34:47.300 | What's the connection between death and hell?

00:34:50.180 | I don't know.

00:34:53.380 | I don't know.

00:34:54.540 | I don't know.

00:34:55.240 | Is there something that needs to be done before you arrive?

00:34:58.520 | You're more likely to die terribly

00:35:00.280 | if you live in a manner that brings you to hell.

00:35:03.800 | That's one connection.

00:35:04.920 | And terribly is a very deep kind of concept.

00:35:09.280 | Yeah, yeah.

00:35:10.040 | And that's the definition, by the way.

00:35:16.240 | What do you make of Elon Musk?

00:35:17.880 | You've spoken about him a bit.

00:35:19.520 | You met him.

00:35:20.020 | I'm struck with admiration.

00:35:22.480 | That's what I make of him.

00:35:23.560 | And I always think of that as a primary--

00:35:26.820 | well, it's like, do you find this comedian funny?

00:35:29.980 | It's like, well, I laugh at him.

00:35:31.980 | You know what I mean?

00:35:32.860 | It's not propositional again.

00:35:34.860 | And so there are things I would like

00:35:37.620 | to ask Mr. Musk about.

00:35:41.060 | The Mars venture.

00:35:42.700 | I don't know what he's up to there.

00:35:44.300 | It strikes me as absurd in the most fundamental sense.

00:35:47.580 | Because I think, well, it'd be easier just

00:35:49.300 | to build an outpost in the Antarctica or in the desert.

00:35:52.340 | Well, how much of the human endeavor is absurd?

00:35:54.360 | Well, that's what Nietzsche say.

00:35:56.960 | Great men are seldom credited with their stupidity.

00:35:59.680 | Who the hell knows what Musk is up to?

00:36:01.640 | I mean, obviously, he's building rockets.

00:36:03.880 | Now, he's motivated because he wants

00:36:05.720 | to build a platform for life on Mars.

00:36:09.040 | Is that a good idea?

00:36:11.640 | Who am I to say?

00:36:13.360 | He's building the rockets, man.

00:36:14.880 | But I'd like to ask him about it.

00:36:16.760 | I would like to see that conversation.

00:36:19.440 | I do think that having talked to him quite a bit offline,

00:36:24.440 | I think these, several of his ideas, like Mars,

00:36:29.260 | like humans becoming a multi-planetary species,

00:36:31.900 | could be one of the things that human civilization

00:36:35.580 | looks back at as, duh, I can't believe he's one

00:36:40.180 | of the few people that was really pushing this idea.

00:36:42.740 | 'Cause it's the obvious thing for society,

00:36:46.620 | for life to survive.

00:36:48.140 | Yeah, well, it isn't obvious to me

00:36:49.580 | that I'm in any position to evaluate Elon Musk.

00:36:52.620 | Like, I would like to talk to him

00:36:53.860 | and find out what he's up to and why,

00:36:55.480 | but, I mean, he's an impossible person.

00:36:58.660 | What he's done is impossible, all of it.

00:37:01.460 | It's like, he built an electric car that works.

00:37:03.600 | Now, does it work completely,

00:37:05.000 | and will it replace gas cars, or should it?

00:37:07.280 | I don't know, but if we're gonna build electric cars,

00:37:10.720 | he seems to be the best at that, by a lot.

00:37:14.260 | And he more or less did that, people carp about him,

00:37:16.780 | but he more or less did that by himself.

00:37:19.020 | I know he's very good at distributing responsibility

00:37:21.500 | and all of that, but he's the spearhead.

00:37:23.300 | And then, that was pretty hard.

00:37:25.180 | And then he built a rocket,

00:37:26.660 | at like 1/10th the price of NASA rockets.

00:37:30.660 | And then he shot his car out into space.

00:37:33.440 | That's pretty hard.

00:37:34.940 | And then he's building this boring company,

00:37:38.060 | more or less as a, what would you call it?

00:37:41.220 | It's sort of, it's this whimsical joke in some sense,

00:37:44.540 | but it's not a joke.

00:37:46.300 | He's amazing.

00:37:47.340 | - And Neuralink, delving into the depths of the mind.

00:37:51.420 | - And Starlink, it's like, go Elon, as far as I'm concerned.

00:37:55.260 | And then, he puts his finger on things so oddly.

00:37:58.100 | The problem is underpopulation.

00:38:01.260 | It's like, I think so too.

00:38:02.580 | I think it's a terrible problem that we're,

00:38:05.260 | the West, for example, is no longer at replacement

00:38:09.900 | with regard to birth rate.

00:38:11.020 | It means we've abandoned the virgin and the child

00:38:13.420 | in a most fundamental sense.

00:38:15.020 | It's a bloody catastrophe.

00:38:16.900 | And Musk, he sees it clear as can be.

00:38:20.020 | It's like, wow.

00:38:21.060 | And where everyone else is running around going,

00:38:22.780 | oh, there's too many people.

00:38:24.140 | It's like, nope, got that.

00:38:26.900 | Not only, see, I've learned that there are falsehoods

00:38:30.260 | and lies and there are anti-truths.

00:38:33.300 | And an anti-truth is something that's so preposterous

00:38:36.100 | that you couldn't make a claim

00:38:39.660 | that's more opposite to the truth.

00:38:42.700 | And the claim that there are too many people

00:38:44.980 | on the planet is an anti-truth.

00:38:46.820 | So, you know, and people say,

00:38:49.660 | well, you have to accept limits to growth and et cetera.

00:38:52.100 | It's like, I have to accept the limits

00:38:56.340 | that you're going to impose on me

00:38:58.300 | 'cause you're frightened of the future.

00:39:00.740 | That's your theory, is it?

00:39:02.540 | Okay.

00:39:03.380 | - Well, it's an idea.

00:39:05.780 | It could be a right idea.

00:39:07.100 | It could be a wrong idea.

00:39:08.380 | I think anti-truth.

00:39:11.140 | Here, I'll tell you why it's the wrong idea, I think.

00:39:13.740 | So imagine that there's an emergency, dragon.

00:39:18.660 | There's a dragon.

00:39:20.260 | Someone comes and says, there's a dragon.

00:39:22.220 | I'm the guy to deal with it.

00:39:23.620 | That's what the environmentalists say,

00:39:26.180 | the radical types who push limits to growth.

00:39:29.620 | Then I look at them and I think, okay,

00:39:31.540 | is that dragon real or not?

00:39:35.380 | That's one question.

00:39:36.700 | Well, is the-- - I ask that question

00:39:38.220 | of myself every time when I spend time alone.

00:39:40.340 | - Is the apocalypse looming on the environmental front?

00:39:43.260 | Yes or no?

00:39:44.100 | I'll just leave that aside for the time being.

00:39:46.740 | I think you can make a case both ways

00:39:48.660 | for a bunch of different reasons.

00:39:50.460 | And it's not a trivial concern.

00:39:52.660 | And we've overfished the oceans terribly.

00:39:55.100 | And there are environmental issues that are looming large.

00:39:59.380 | Whether climate change is the cardinal one or not

00:40:01.940 | is a whole different question, but we won't get into that.

00:40:04.660 | That's not the issue.

00:40:05.900 | You're clamoring about a dragon.

00:40:08.180 | Okay, why should I listen to you?

00:40:11.460 | Well, let's see how you're reacting to the dragon.

00:40:14.340 | First of all, you're scared stiff and in a state of panic.

00:40:17.340 | That might indicate you're not the man for the job.

00:40:21.780 | Second, you're willing to use compulsion

00:40:25.260 | to harness other people to fight the dragon for you.

00:40:28.380 | So now not only are you terrified,

00:40:30.980 | you're a terrified tyrant.

00:40:33.260 | So then I would say, well, then you're not the Moses

00:40:35.580 | that we need to lead us out of this particular exodus.

00:40:39.300 | And maybe that's a neurological explanation.

00:40:41.420 | It's like, if you're so afraid of what you're facing,

00:40:45.020 | that you're terrified into paralysis and nihilism,

00:40:47.900 | and that you're willing to use tyrannical compulsion

00:40:50.300 | to get your way, you are not the right leader for the time.

00:40:54.260 | So then I like someone like Bjorn Lomborg or Matt Ridley

00:40:57.580 | or Marion Toupie, and they say,

00:40:59.700 | well, look, we've got our environmental problems.

00:41:03.100 | And maybe there's a, you could make a case

00:41:06.820 | that there's a Malthusian element in some situations,

00:41:11.100 | but fundamentally the track record of the human race

00:41:14.540 | is that we learn very fast and faster all the time

00:41:18.500 | to do more with less, and we've got this.

00:41:23.020 | And I think, yes to that idea.

00:41:27.820 | And I think about it in a fundamental way.

00:41:32.380 | It's like, I trust Lomborg, I trust Toupie,

00:41:36.500 | I trust Matt Ridley.

00:41:38.300 | They've thought about these things deeply.

00:41:40.100 | They're not just saying, oh, the environment doesn't matter,

00:41:42.220 | whatever the environment is.

00:41:44.060 | You know, the environment, I don't even know what that is.

00:41:47.500 | That's everything, the environment.

00:41:49.620 | I'm concerned about the environment.

00:41:51.420 | Which is, how is that different than saying

00:41:55.740 | I'm worried about everything?

00:41:57.580 | How are those statements different semantically?

00:42:00.740 | - Well, yeah, the environment, it could be

00:42:02.780 | I'm worried about human society.

00:42:04.940 | A lot of these complex systems are difficult to talk about

00:42:07.540 | because there's so much involved, for sure.

00:42:09.580 | - Yeah, everything.

00:42:10.900 | And then these models, 'cause people have gone after me

00:42:14.100 | 'cause I don't buy the climate models.

00:42:15.900 | Well, I think about the climate models

00:42:18.180 | as extended into the economic models

00:42:21.380 | because the climate model is,

00:42:22.940 | well, there's gonna be a certain degree of heating,

00:42:25.860 | let's say by 2100.

00:42:27.500 | It's like, okay, some of that might be human generated,

00:42:30.860 | some of it's a consequence of warming after the Ice Age.

00:42:33.660 | This has happened before, but fair enough.

00:42:36.180 | Let's take your presumption,

00:42:38.540 | although there are multiple presumptions

00:42:40.700 | and any error in your model multiplies as time extends,

00:42:44.780 | but have it your way.

00:42:46.660 | Okay, now we're gonna extend the climate model,

00:42:48.620 | so to speak, into the economic model.

00:42:50.780 | So I just did an analysis of a paper by Deloitte,

00:42:54.980 | third biggest company in the US,

00:42:57.740 | 300,000 employees, major league consultants.

00:43:01.860 | They just produced a report in May.

00:43:03.700 | I wrote an article for it in "The Telegraph,"

00:43:05.380 | which I'm gonna release this week on my YouTube channel.

00:43:08.700 | Said, well, if we get the climate problem under control,

00:43:13.500 | economically, 'cause that's where the models

00:43:15.820 | are now being generated on the economic front,

00:43:17.940 | so now we have to model the environment, that's climate,

00:43:21.300 | and we have to model the economy,

00:43:23.580 | and then we have to model their joint interaction,

00:43:26.500 | and then we have to predict 100 years into the future,

00:43:29.780 | and then we have to put a dollar value on that,

00:43:32.660 | and then we have to claim that we can do that,

00:43:35.340 | which we can't, and then this is our conclusion.

00:43:38.720 | We're going to go through a difficult period of privation,

00:43:43.820 | because if we don't accept limits to growth,

00:43:45.700 | there's gonna be a catastrophe 50 years in the future,

00:43:48.500 | or thereabouts, and so to avert that catastrophe,

00:43:52.060 | we are going to make people poorer now.

00:43:55.820 | How much poorer?

00:43:56.940 | Well, not a lot compared to how much richer

00:43:58.820 | they're going to be, but definitely,

00:44:01.460 | and they say this in their own models,

00:44:03.140 | definitely poorer, definitely poorer,

00:44:06.340 | than they would be if we just left them the hell alone.

00:44:09.940 | And so then I think, okay, poorer, eh?

00:44:14.220 | Who?

00:44:15.220 | Well, let's look at it biologically.

00:44:17.140 | Got a hierarchy, right, of stability and security.

00:44:22.140 | That's a hierarchy, or one type.

00:44:25.020 | You stress a hierarchy like that, a social hierarchy,

00:44:28.900 | so there's birds in a environment,

00:44:31.900 | and an avian flu comes in, and then you look at the birds

00:44:34.660 | in the social hierarchy, and the low-ranking birds

00:44:38.300 | have the worst nests, so they're most exposed

00:44:40.540 | to wind and rain and sun, and farthest from food supplies,

00:44:43.940 | and most exposed to predators,

00:44:45.300 | and so those birds are stressed,

00:44:46.820 | which is what happens to you at the bottom of a hierarchy.

00:44:49.060 | You're more stressed, 'cause your life is more uncertain.

00:44:52.220 | You're more stressed, your immunological function

00:44:54.180 | is compromised because of that.

00:44:56.220 | You're sacrificing the future for the present.

00:44:58.500 | An avian flu comes in, and the birds die from the bottom up.

00:45:02.940 | That happens in every epidemic.

00:45:04.620 | You die from the bottom up.

00:45:07.380 | Okay, so they say, when the aristocracy catches a cold,

00:45:11.820 | the working class dies of pneumonia.

00:45:13.980 | All right, so now we're gonna make people poorer.

00:45:16.380 | Okay, who?

00:45:19.460 | Well, we know who we make poorer when we make people poorer.

00:45:23.020 | We make those who are barely hanging on poorer,

00:45:27.180 | and what does that mean?

00:45:28.900 | It means they die, and so what the Deloitte consultants

00:45:33.380 | are basically saying is, well, you know,

00:45:36.820 | it's kind of unfortunate, but according to our models,

00:45:41.700 | a lot of poor people are gonna have to die,

00:45:44.620 | so that a lot more poor people don't die in the future.

00:45:47.340 | It's like, okay, hold on a sec.

00:45:49.460 | Which of those two things am I supposed

00:45:51.060 | to regard with certainty?

00:45:52.820 | The hypothetical poor people that you're gonna

00:45:54.900 | hypothetically save 100 years from now,

00:45:57.860 | or the actual poor people that you are actually

00:46:01.220 | going to kill in the next 10 years?

00:46:04.220 | Well, I'm gonna cast my lot with the actual poor people

00:46:08.020 | that you're actually going to kill.

00:46:11.140 | And so, and then I think further.

00:46:13.060 | It's like, well, okay, the Deloitte consultants,

00:46:16.260 | have you actually modeled the world,

00:46:18.180 | or is this a big advertising shtick

00:46:20.620 | designed to attract your corporate clients

00:46:22.660 | with the demonstration that you're so intelligent

00:46:24.900 | that you can actually model the entire ecosystem

00:46:27.300 | of the world, including the economic system,

00:46:30.100 | and predict it 100 years forward?

00:46:32.500 | And isn't there a bit of a moral hazard

00:46:34.260 | in making a claim like that?

00:46:36.340 | Just like, just a trifle, especially when,

00:46:39.220 | so I talked to Bjorn Lomborg and Michael Yon last week.

00:46:42.100 | I accepted the UN estimates of starvation this coming year.

00:46:47.100 | 150 million people will suffer food insecurity.

00:46:52.220 | Food insecurity.

00:46:54.260 | Yeah, food insecurity.

00:46:55.980 | That's the bloody buzzword.

00:46:57.900 | Famine.

00:46:59.060 | Well, Michael Yon thought 1.2 billion,

00:47:03.140 | and then that'll spiral, because he said,

00:47:05.780 | "What happens in a famine is that the governments

00:47:08.580 | "go nuts, crazy, the governments destabilize,

00:47:12.940 | "and then they appropriate the food from the farmers.

00:47:17.380 | "Then the farmers don't have any money.

00:47:19.700 | "Then they can't grow crops."

00:47:21.780 | And I think, yeah, that's exactly what they do.

00:47:24.380 | That's exactly what would happen.

00:47:26.460 | And so Yon told me 1.2 billion,

00:47:29.540 | and then Bjorn Lomborg said the same thing.

00:47:32.020 | I didn't even ask him.

00:47:33.060 | He just made it as an offhand comment.

00:47:35.180 | So.

00:47:37.700 | - Let me ask you about the famine of the '30s.

00:47:41.660 | - Yeah.

00:47:43.060 | - Do you think-- - In Ukraine?

00:47:44.460 | - In the Ukraine. - Oh, yeah.

00:47:46.180 | Fun, fun, fun.

00:47:47.180 | - Similar, a lot of the things you mentioned

00:47:49.940 | in the last few sentences kind of echo

00:47:52.700 | to that part of human history.

00:47:55.140 | - The hole in the door.

00:47:56.620 | - Do you-- - No one knows about.

00:47:58.300 | - Well, now I've just spent four weeks in Ukraine.

00:48:02.740 | There's different parts of the world that still,

00:48:05.300 | even if they don't know, they know.

00:48:08.820 | - Yeah, right.

00:48:09.860 | - They feel history runs in the blood.

00:48:12.700 | - The Dutch knew, in some sense.

00:48:14.940 | They had a famine at the end of World War II,

00:48:16.780 | and part of the reason the Dutch farmers

00:48:18.420 | are so unbelievably efficient and productive

00:48:21.300 | is that the Dutch swore at the end of World War II

00:48:23.700 | that that was not going to happen again.

00:48:26.340 | And then they had to scrape land out of the ocean,

00:48:29.620 | 'cause Holland, that's quite a country.

00:48:31.220 | It shouldn't even exist.

00:48:32.740 | The fact that it's the world's number two exporter.

00:48:35.140 | You know that it's the world's number two exporter

00:48:37.140 | of agricultural products, Holland.

00:48:39.940 | It's like, I don't think it's as big as Massachusetts.

00:48:43.340 | It's this little tiny place.

00:48:44.660 | It shouldn't even exist.

00:48:46.460 | And they want to put, here's the plan.

00:48:49.380 | Let's put 30% of the farmers out of business,

00:48:52.700 | while the broader ecosystem of agricultural production

00:48:55.780 | in Holland is 6% of their GDP.

00:48:58.460 | Now, these centralizing politicians think,

00:49:01.620 | tell me if I'm stupid about this.

00:49:04.660 | Take an industry.

00:49:05.780 | You knock it back by fiat, by 30%.

00:49:12.340 | Now it runs on like a 3% profit margin.

00:49:15.260 | Now you're gonna kill 30% of it.

00:49:17.460 | How are you not gonna bring the whole thing down,

00:49:20.580 | the whole farming ecosystem down?

00:49:22.900 | How are you not gonna impoverish the transport systems?

00:49:27.180 | How are you not gonna demolish the grocery stores?

00:49:30.780 | You can't take something like that

00:49:32.420 | and pare it back by fiat, by 30% and not kill it.

00:49:37.140 | I can't see how you can do that.

00:49:39.420 | I mean, look what we did with the COVID lockdowns.

00:49:41.980 | We broke the supply chains.

00:49:43.940 | Tried buying something lately.

00:49:45.580 | And wait, and aren't the Chinese

00:49:49.540 | threatening Taiwan at the moment?

00:49:50.980 | What are we gonna do without chips?

00:49:52.740 | So I don't know what these people are thinking.

00:49:56.740 | And then I think, okay, what are they thinking?

00:49:58.300 | Well, the Deloitte people are thinking, aren't we smart?

00:50:00.540 | And shouldn't we be hired by our corporate employers?

00:50:02.940 | It's like, okay, too bad about the poor.

00:50:05.860 | What are the environmentalists thinking?

00:50:09.740 | We love the planet.

00:50:11.100 | It's like, do you?

00:50:12.660 | We love the poor, do you?

00:50:14.620 | Okay, let's pit the planet against the poor.

00:50:17.140 | Who wins?

00:50:17.980 | The planet.

00:50:18.820 | Okay, you don't love the poor that much.

00:50:21.140 | Do you love the planet or do you hate capitalism?

00:50:24.820 | Let's pit those two things against each other.

00:50:27.260 | Oh, well, it turns out we actually hate capitalism.

00:50:29.940 | How can we tell?

00:50:31.500 | Because you're willing to break it.

00:50:33.460 | And you know what's gonna happen.

00:50:34.620 | So what's gonna happen in Sri Lanka

00:50:36.020 | with these 20 million people who now have nothing to eat?

00:50:39.020 | Are they gonna eat all the animals?

00:50:40.940 | Are they gonna burn all the firewood?

00:50:42.540 | They're stockpiling firewood in Germany.

00:50:44.580 | It's like, so is your environmental globalist utopia

00:50:48.380 | gonna kill the poor and destroy the planet?

00:50:51.780 | And that's okay, 'cause we'll wipe out capitalism.

00:50:54.260 | It's like, okay.

00:50:55.420 | - Yeah, the dragon and the fear of the dragon

00:50:57.900 | drives ideologies, some of which can build a better world,

00:51:01.100 | some of which can destroy that world.

00:51:03.180 | - Now, what do you think of that theory

00:51:04.500 | about trustworthiness?

00:51:07.420 | If the dragon that you're facing

00:51:09.540 | turns you into a terrified tyrant,

00:51:12.060 | you're not the man for the job.

00:51:14.260 | Is that a good theory?

00:51:15.580 | - It's an interesting theory.

00:51:16.700 | Let me use that theory to challenge,

00:51:18.460 | because what does terror look like?

00:51:20.980 | Let me table the turns, turn the tables on you.

00:51:27.180 | You are terrified, afraid, concerned about the dragon

00:51:32.180 | of something we can call communism, Marxism.

00:51:41.820 | - Am I terrified of it?

00:51:45.180 | Am I terrified enough to be a tyrant?

00:51:47.060 | - Your theories had two components.

00:51:48.860 | - Yeah, I'm not paralyzed.

00:51:51.220 | - You had a dragon.

00:51:52.100 | - Yeah, I'm not paralyzed, and I don't wanna be a tyrant.

00:51:55.300 | - The tyrant part, I think, is missing with you.

00:51:58.320 | But you are very concerned.

00:52:00.740 | The intensity of your feeling does not give much space,

00:52:05.740 | actually, at least in your public persona,

00:52:11.000 | for sitting quietly with the dragon

00:52:13.640 | and sipping a couple of beers and thinking about this thing.

00:52:16.640 | The intensity of your anger,

00:52:20.460 | concern about certain things you're seeing in society,

00:52:24.980 | is that going to drive you off the path

00:52:27.100 | that ultimately takes us to a better world?

00:52:29.460 | - That's a good question.

00:52:30.780 | I mean, I'm trying to get that right.

00:52:33.780 | So we've kind of come to a cultural conclusion

00:52:36.460 | about the Nazis.

00:52:37.540 | Do you get to be angry about the Nazis?

00:52:40.860 | Seems the answer to that is yes.

00:52:42.760 | - Well, actually, let me push back here.

00:52:46.460 | I also don't trust people who are angry about the Nazis.

00:52:50.800 | - I mean the actual Nazis.

00:52:53.140 | - Well, as you know, there's a lot of people in the world

00:52:58.140 | that use actual Nazis to mean a lot of things.

00:53:04.900 | - I know, I know.

00:53:05.740 | - One of them is very important to me.

00:53:07.300 | - Me, for example.

00:53:08.460 | - Well, yes.

00:53:09.300 | - They use the, he's a Nazi.

00:53:11.500 | Or magical super Nazi, as it turns out.

00:53:13.820 | - I think they actually sort of

00:53:15.140 | steel man all their perspectives.

00:53:16.820 | I think a lot of people that call you a Nazi mean it.

00:53:19.940 | - Yeah.

00:53:23.060 | But like--

00:53:23.900 | - I'm aware of that.

00:53:24.740 | - There's an important thing there though.

00:53:26.460 | Because I went to the front in Ukraine.

00:53:28.980 | - Yeah.

00:53:29.820 | - And a lot of the people that lost their home,

00:53:34.820 | or their kind of, that got to interact a lot

00:53:38.460 | with the Russian soldiers, Ukrainian people

00:53:40.260 | that interacted with the Russian soldiers,

00:53:42.780 | they reported that the Russian soldiers

00:53:46.380 | really believe they're saving the people of Ukraine

00:53:52.980 | in these local villages from the Nazis.

00:53:55.780 | - I understand, yeah.

00:53:56.740 | - So to them, it's not just that the Ukrainian government

00:54:00.500 | has, or Ukraine has some Nazis.

00:54:02.860 | It's like, it has been, the idea is that

00:54:06.220 | the Nazis have taken over Ukraine,

00:54:08.140 | and we need to free them.

00:54:09.920 | This is the belief.

00:54:11.220 | So this, again, Nazi's still a dragon that lives.

00:54:15.820 | - Yeah.

00:54:16.660 | - And it's used by people, because it's safe

00:54:18.940 | to sit next to that dragon and spread

00:54:21.060 | any kind of ideology you want.

00:54:22.680 | So I just wanted to kind of say that we have agreed

00:54:27.220 | on this particular dragon, but I still don't trust

00:54:32.220 | anybody who uses that one.

00:54:34.140 | - Yeah, but we have issues with boundaries, right?

00:54:36.820 | No, no, it's, so this is a very complicated problem, right?

00:54:40.660 | So René Girard believed that it was a human proclivity

00:54:45.380 | to demonize a scapegoat and then drive it

00:54:47.620 | out of the village.

00:54:48.460 | And I've thought about that a lot.

00:54:50.780 | We need a place to put Satan.

00:54:52.480 | Seriously, this is a serious issue.

00:54:55.880 | - Should he be inside the village or outside?

00:54:58.280 | - Well, maybe he should be inside you, right?

00:55:02.080 | That's the fundamental essence of the Christian doctrine.

00:55:05.680 | It's like, Satan is best fought on the battleground

00:55:09.920 | of your soul.

00:55:11.000 | And that's, that's right.

00:55:15.180 | It's right.

00:55:17.640 | - Can you actually put words to the kind of dragon

00:55:19.680 | that you're fighting?

00:55:20.520 | Is it communism?

00:55:22.440 | - It's the spirit of Cain, yeah.

00:55:24.680 | - Can you elaborate what the spirit of Cain is?

00:55:30.700 | - So after Adam and Eve are thrown out of paradise

00:55:36.200 | for becoming self-conscious, or when they become

00:55:38.680 | self-conscious, they're destined to work.

00:55:41.740 | And the reason for that, as far as I can tell,

00:55:44.600 | is that to become self-conscious is to become aware

00:55:48.280 | of the future, is to become aware of death.

00:55:51.160 | That certainly happens in the Adam and Eve story,

00:55:53.440 | to have the scales fall from your eyes.

00:55:56.080 | And then the consequence of that is that you now

00:55:58.960 | have to labor to prevent the catastrophes of the future.

00:56:03.520 | That's work.

00:56:04.640 | Work is sacrifice.

00:56:06.480 | Sacrifice of the present to the future.

00:56:09.000 | It's delay of gratification, it's maturity.

00:56:12.240 | It's sacrifice to something as well,

00:56:15.220 | and in the spirit of something.

00:56:17.540 | Okay, so now Adam and Eve have two children,

00:56:21.840 | Cain and Abel.

00:56:22.760 | So those are the first two people in history,

00:56:25.720 | because the Garden of Eden doesn't count.

00:56:28.120 | And they're the first two people who are born

00:56:30.080 | rather than created.

00:56:31.000 | So they're the first two people.

00:56:32.680 | And that's a hell of a story, because it's a story

00:56:35.260 | of fratricidal murder that degenerates

00:56:37.680 | into genocide, flood, and tyranny.

00:56:40.640 | So that's fun for the opening salvo of the story, let's say.

00:56:45.640 | And Abel and Cain both make sacrifices.

00:56:48.760 | And for some reason, Abel's sacrifices please God.

00:56:52.280 | It's not exactly clear why.

00:56:54.280 | And Cain's don't.

00:56:56.160 | Now, there's an implication in the text

00:57:00.460 | that it's because Cain's sacrifices are second rate.

00:57:05.020 | God says that Abel brings the finest

00:57:07.920 | to the sacrificial altar.

00:57:09.640 | He doesn't say that about Cain.

00:57:11.320 | So you could imagine that Cain is sacrificing away,

00:57:13.720 | but he's holding something in reserve.

00:57:16.440 | He's not all in.

00:57:17.360 | He's not bringing his best to the table.

00:57:19.800 | He's not offering his best to God.

00:57:22.200 | And so Abel thrives like mad.

00:57:25.680 | And everyone loves him.

00:57:26.720 | And he gets exactly what he needs and wants,

00:57:28.720 | exactly when he needs and wants it.

00:57:31.000 | He's favored of God.

00:57:32.880 | And Cain is bearing this terrible burden forward

00:57:36.160 | and working.

00:57:37.440 | And his sacrifices are rejected.

00:57:40.320 | So he gets resentful, really resentful,

00:57:45.520 | enough resentful enough to call God out and say something

00:57:50.280 | like, this is quite the creation you've got going here.

00:57:55.680 | I'm breaking myself in half, and nothing good's coming my way.

00:58:00.200 | What the hell's up with that?

00:58:01.520 | And then there's Abel, the sun shining on him every day.

00:58:04.880 | How dare you?

00:58:06.960 | OK, but this is God that Cain's talking to.

00:58:10.360 | And so God says what Cain least wants to hear,

00:58:14.640 | which is what God usually says to people.

00:58:17.120 | He says, look to your own devices.

00:58:21.040 | You're not making the sacrifices you should.

00:58:24.200 | And you know it.

00:58:25.440 | And then he says something even worse.

00:58:27.840 | He says, sin crouches at your door

00:58:31.880 | like a sexually aroused predatory animal.

00:58:35.640 | And you've invited it in to have its way with you.

00:58:41.600 | And so he basically says, you have allowed your resentment

00:58:45.520 | to preoccupy yourself.

00:58:47.600 | And now you're brooding upon it and generating

00:58:50.320 | something creative, new, and awful,

00:58:52.840 | possessed by the spirit of resentment.

00:58:56.280 | And that's why you're in the miserable state you're in.

00:58:59.440 | So then Cain leaves.

00:59:01.040 | His countenance falls, as you might expect.

00:59:04.160 | And Cain leaves, and he's so incensed by this.

00:59:06.600 | Because God has said, look, your problems are of your own making.

00:59:11.680 | And not only that, you invited them in.

00:59:13.760 | And not only that, you engaged in this creatively.

00:59:16.480 | And not only that, you're blaming it on me.

00:59:18.760 | And not only that, that's making you jealous of Abel,

00:59:21.160 | who's your actual idol and goal.

00:59:23.480 | And Cain, instead of changing, kills Abel.

00:59:28.600 | Right?

00:59:29.520 | And then Cain's descendants are the first people

00:59:31.920 | who make weapons of war.

00:59:35.440 | And so that's-- OK, you want to know what I think?

00:59:39.320 | That's the eternal story of mankind.

00:59:42.520 | And it's playing out right now, except at 1,000 times the rate.

00:59:47.000 | Can I present to you a difficult truth?

00:59:52.320 | Perhaps not a truth, but a thought I have.

00:59:56.200 | That it is not always easy to know which among us are the Cain.

01:00:01.880 | That's for sure.

01:00:03.120 | And resentment.

01:00:06.680 | It is possible to imagine you as the person who

01:00:11.720 | has a resentment towards a particular world view

01:00:17.040 | that you really worry about.

01:00:19.080 | Yeah, well, I talked to a good friend of mine

01:00:21.720 | last week about that publicly.

01:00:23.440 | We'll release it.

01:00:25.120 | So I said, well, do I have a particular animus

01:00:27.720 | against the left, let's say?

01:00:30.400 | He's like, well, probably.

01:00:32.400 | OK, why?

01:00:33.440 | Well, first of all, I'm a university professor.

01:00:38.520 | It's not like the universities are threatened by the right.

01:00:41.880 | They're threatened by the left, 100%.

01:00:45.160 | And they're not just threatened a little bit.

01:00:47.000 | They're threatened a lot.

01:00:48.680 | And that threat made it impossible for me

01:00:50.680 | to continue in my profession the way I was.

01:00:53.120 | And it cost me my clinical practice, too.

01:00:55.600 | And that's not over yet, because I have 10 lawsuits against me

01:00:59.240 | out right now from the College of Psychologists,

01:01:02.240 | because they've allowed anyone to complain about me,

01:01:05.200 | anywhere in the world, for any reason,

01:01:07.800 | and have the choice to follow that up

01:01:09.520 | with an investigation, which is a punishment in and of itself,

01:01:13.120 | and are doing so.

01:01:15.320 | And then I've been tortured nearly to death multiple times

01:01:19.400 | by bad actors on the left.

01:01:21.520 | Now, I've had my fair share of radical right-wingers being

01:01:25.600 | unhappy with what I've said.

01:01:27.400 | But personally, that's been the left the whole time,

01:01:32.040 | not only me, but my family.

01:01:33.800 | Put my family at risk in a big way, and constantly.

01:01:37.480 | Like, not once or twice, because many people

01:01:40.960 | get canceled once or twice.

01:01:43.120 | But I've been canceled like 40 times.

01:01:46.680 | And I know like 200 people now who've been canceled.

01:01:49.680 | And I can tell you without doubt that it

01:01:53.400 | is one of the worst experiences of their life.

01:01:56.160 | And that's if it only happens once.

01:01:58.960 | And so-- and then I also know that the communists killed

01:02:04.600 | 100 million people in the 20th century,

01:02:07.080 | that the intellectuals excused them for it nonstop,

01:02:10.800 | and still haven't quit, that almost no one knows about it,

01:02:14.560 | and that the specter of resentful Marxism

01:02:17.200 | is back in full force.

01:02:19.040 | And so do I have a bit of an animus against that?

01:02:22.120 | Yes.

01:02:22.960 | Does it go too far?

01:02:24.360 | I don't know.

01:02:25.360 | I'm trying to figure that out.

01:02:26.760 | The story you just told, it seems nearly impossible

01:02:31.320 | for you, an intellectual powerhouse,

01:02:33.680 | not to have a tremendous amount of resentment.

01:02:36.360 | Well--

01:02:37.040 | And this is the--

01:02:38.080 | so let me challenge you.

01:02:39.080 | Yeah, go right ahead, man.

01:02:40.160 | Let me challenge you.

01:02:41.080 | Can you steal, man, the case that the prime minister

01:02:47.960 | of this country, Trudeau, wants the power

01:02:52.440 | wants the best for this country, and actually

01:02:56.240 | might do good things for this country,

01:02:58.840 | as an intellectual challenge?

01:03:00.440 | Sure.

01:03:02.240 | He seems to get along well with his wife.

01:03:05.480 | He has some kids.

01:03:07.040 | There's no sexual scandals.

01:03:08.680 | And he's in a position where that could easily be the case.

01:03:11.800 | He seems to have done some good things on the oceanic

01:03:14.120 | management front.

01:03:15.760 | He's put a fair bit of Canada's oceans

01:03:18.040 | into marine protected areas.

01:03:19.440 | And that might be his most fundamental legacy,

01:03:21.920 | if it's real.

01:03:23.120 | I've been trying to get information

01:03:24.580 | about the actual reality of the protection.

01:03:27.380 | And I haven't been able to do that.

01:03:29.040 | But that's a good thing.

01:03:30.160 | So sorry, the family thing is--

01:03:32.120 | It speaks to his character.

01:03:33.800 | It's his character.

01:03:34.600 | There is some aspect to him that makes him a good man,

01:03:38.200 | in that sense.

01:03:38.760 | I mean, there's the evidence there.

01:03:40.720 | I mean, he's not a Jeffrey Epstein profligate

01:03:43.400 | on the sexual front.

01:03:44.520 | So that's something.

01:03:45.400 | And his wife, they seem to have a real marriage.

01:03:48.900 | And he has kids, so good for him.

01:03:51.900 | That's a good start, by the way, for a leader.

01:03:54.160 | Yeah, right.

01:03:54.960 | To be a good man.

01:03:55.720 | Well, then I also thought, OK, well,

01:03:58.240 | after the Liberals had brought in a Harvard intellectual who

01:04:02.040 | was a Canadian to be their last leader, he didn't work out.

01:04:06.120 | And then they're flailing about for a leader.

01:04:08.320 | And the Liberals in Canada are pretty good at maintaining

01:04:13.500 | power and leadership, and have been the dominant governing

01:04:16.360 | party in Canada for a long time.

01:04:18.600 | And so they went to Justin and said, well, you know,

01:04:22.960 | it's you or a Conservative.

01:04:24.720 | And you can imagine that's not a positive specter for someone

01:04:29.200 | who's on the left, or even a Liberal.

01:04:32.480 | And Trudeau is quite a bit on the left.

01:04:35.040 | And they said, we need you to run.

01:04:37.400 | And then I thought, OK, well, the answer to that

01:04:40.600 | should have been no, because Trudeau, Justin,

01:04:44.000 | has no training for this, no experience.

01:04:46.520 | He's not-- he's a part-time drama teacher, fundamentally.

01:04:50.200 | He hadn't run a business.

01:04:51.320 | He just didn't know enough to be prime minister.

01:04:54.160 | But then I'm trying to put myself in his position.

01:04:56.520 | So it's like, OK, I don't know enough, but I'm young.

01:04:59.880 | And we don't want the Conservatives.

01:05:01.800 | And they had had a run, a 10-year run,

01:05:03.480 | so maybe it was time for a new government.

01:05:05.880 | Maybe I could grow into this man.

01:05:08.560 | Maybe I could surround myself with good people,

01:05:10.880 | and I could learn humbly.

01:05:12.960 | And I could become the person I'm now pretending to be,

01:05:17.920 | which we all have to do as we move forward, right?

01:05:20.680 | And so then I thought, OK, I think

01:05:23.920 | you made a mistake there, because you ran only

01:05:26.080 | on your father's name.

01:05:28.080 | And you didn't have the background.

01:05:29.600 | But let's give the devil his due and say, that's no problem.

01:05:33.240 | OK, so now what do you do?

01:05:35.000 | Well, you get elected.

01:05:36.440 | And your first act is to make the cabinet 50% women,

01:05:42.480 | despite the fact that only 25% of the elected members

01:05:46.080 | are female.

01:05:47.040 | It's like, OK, you just halved your talent pool.

01:05:50.520 | That was a really bad move for your first move.

01:05:52.920 | - Can I ask you about that?

01:05:55.000 | Do you think-- where does that move come from?

01:05:58.880 | Deep somewhere in the heart?

01:06:00.480 | Or is it trying to listen to the social forces of the moment

01:06:06.760 | and try to ride those ways towards maybe greater

01:06:10.680 | and greater popularity?

01:06:12.160 | - By after thinking it through.

01:06:13.960 | It's like, no, you just halved your talent pool

01:06:16.800 | for cabinet positions.

01:06:18.080 | That's what you did.

01:06:19.080 | There's enough cabinet positions.

01:06:22.080 | You could argue that each of them met threshold.

01:06:24.240 | It's like, there is a big difference

01:06:26.040 | between threshold and excellent.

01:06:27.920 | - So you don't think that came from a place of compassion?

01:06:31.040 | - I don't care if it did.

01:06:32.120 | I don't regard compassion as a virtue.

01:06:34.120 | Compassion is a reflex, not a virtue.

01:06:37.000 | Judicious compassion is a virtue.

01:06:39.240 | - Wait, wait a minute, wait a minute.

01:06:40.800 | Compassion can come deep from the human heart

01:06:44.600 | and the human mind, I think.

01:06:46.160 | Are we talking about the same kind of compassion?

01:06:48.400 | - Yes.

01:06:48.600 | - Trying to understand the suffering--

01:06:49.800 | - Treating adults like infants is not virtuous.

01:06:53.360 | - I see.

01:06:55.040 | Well, compassion isn't treating adults like--

01:06:58.080 | I mean, those are just terms.

01:06:59.560 | - Are you sure?

01:07:01.280 | - Whatever the term is, maybe love is maybe the better word.

01:07:04.000 | - Edible compassion is?

01:07:05.520 | - I mean, I suppose I'm speaking to love.

01:07:08.520 | You don't think those ideas came from concern?

01:07:11.320 | - Love is compassion.

01:07:12.600 | - You don't think those--

01:07:15.680 | - Love is a blend of compassion and encouragement and truth.

01:07:18.920 | Love is complicated, man.

01:07:20.520 | - Yeah, it has a lot of good things in it, yes.

01:07:22.160 | - If I love you, is it compassion or encouragement

01:07:24.680 | you want from me?

01:07:25.600 | - Yeah, the dance.

01:07:27.440 | Love is definitely a dance of two humans,

01:07:30.080 | ultimately, that leads to the growth of both.

01:07:32.120 | - Well, that's the thing.

01:07:32.960 | The growth element is crucial.

01:07:35.720 | Because the growth element, to foster the growth element,

01:07:38.560 | that requires judgment.

01:07:40.080 | Compassion and judgment, well, even,

01:07:43.840 | and have been conceptualized this way forever,

01:07:45.880 | two hands of God, mercy and justice.

01:07:48.720 | They have to operate in tandem, right?

01:07:50.880 | And mercy is, flawed as you are, you're acceptable.

01:07:55.880 | It's like, well, do you want that?

01:07:59.480 | Do you want your flaws to be acceptable?

01:08:02.080 | And the answer to that is no.

01:08:03.320 | It's like, well, that's where the judgment comes in.

01:08:05.240 | It's like, but you could be better.

01:08:07.440 | You could be more than you are.

01:08:09.280 | And that's the maternal and the paternal

01:08:11.000 | in some fundamental sense.

01:08:12.880 | And there has to be a active exchange of information

01:08:17.880 | between those two poles.

01:08:20.280 | So even if Trudeau was motivated by compassion,

01:08:23.280 | and it's like, yeah, just how loving are you, first of all?

01:08:27.600 | No, it was a really bad decision.

01:08:29.080 | And then he's expressed contempt for monetary policy.

01:08:32.920 | I'm not interested in monetary policy.

01:08:34.560 | It's like, okay, but you're a prime minister.

01:08:39.560 | And he's expressed admiration for the Chinese Communist

01:08:42.880 | Party, because they can be very efficient

01:08:46.200 | in their pursuit of environmental goals.

01:08:48.160 | It's like, oh yeah, efficiency, eh?

01:08:51.600 | The efficiency of the tyranny in the service of your terror.

01:08:56.120 | And so, and I've watched him repeatedly,

01:08:59.240 | and I've listened to him a lot,

01:09:00.720 | and I've tried to do that clinically

01:09:03.040 | and with some degree of dispassion.

01:09:05.760 | And that's hard too, because his father, Pierre,

01:09:09.800 | devastated the West in 1982 with the national energy policy.

01:09:14.800 | And Trudeau is doing exactly the same thing again.

01:09:18.160 | And so as a Westerner as well, I have an inbuilt animus

01:09:22.840 | and one that's well-deserved, because Central Canada,

01:09:26.600 | especially the glittery, literati elite types

01:09:30.320 | in the Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto triangle

01:09:34.480 | have exploited the West and expressed contempt

01:09:39.480 | for the West far too much for far too long.

01:09:42.960 | And that's accelerating at the moment, for example,

01:09:45.360 | with Trudeau's recent attack on the Canadian farmers.

01:09:48.880 | He's an enemy of the oil and gas industry,

01:09:52.480 | which is an utter and absolute bloody catastrophe.

01:09:54.840 | And look what's happened in Europe,

01:09:56.720 | at least in partial consequence.

01:09:58.680 | And he's no friend to the farmers.

01:10:01.000 | So I've tried to steel man him.

01:10:04.160 | I try to put myself in the position of the people

01:10:06.600 | that I'm criticizing.

01:10:08.320 | I think he's a narcissist.

01:10:09.920 | - Do you think there's a degree to which power changed him?

01:10:15.280 | - If you're not suited for the position,

01:10:17.360 | if you're not the man for the position,

01:10:18.760 | you can be absolutely 100% sure

01:10:21.720 | that the power will corrupt you.

01:10:23.040 | How could it not?

01:10:24.920 | I mean, at the least, if you don't have the chops

01:10:27.720 | for the job, you have to devalue the job

01:10:30.760 | to the point where you can feel comfortable inhabiting it.

01:10:34.000 | So yes, I think that it's corrupted him.

01:10:37.880 | And I mean, look at him doubling down.

01:10:39.960 | We wear masks in flights into Canada.

01:10:43.360 | We have to fill out an arrive can bureaucratic form

01:10:46.280 | on our phones because a passport isn't good enough.

01:10:49.160 | We can't get a passport.

01:10:50.640 | What if you're 85 and you don't know

01:10:53.320 | how to use a smartphone?

01:10:54.960 | Oh well, too bad for you.

01:10:57.280 | It's like, yes, it's corrupted him.

01:11:01.120 | - Would you talk to him?

01:11:04.240 | If you were to sit down and talk with him

01:11:06.000 | and he wanted to talk,

01:11:07.640 | would you and what kind of things would you talk about?

01:11:13.440 | Perhaps on your podcast.

01:11:14.840 | - I don't think I've ever said no to talking to anyone.

01:11:17.840 | So which is, you know.

01:11:20.160 | - Would that be a first?

01:11:22.040 | Or would you make that conversation?

01:11:24.360 | Do you believe in the power of those kinds of contacts?

01:11:27.280 | - No, if he was willing to talk to me,

01:11:30.040 | I'd talk 'cause I'd like to ask him.

01:11:31.720 | I have lots of things I'd like to ask him about.

01:11:33.480 | I mean, I've had political types in Canada on my podcast

01:11:36.280 | and tried to ask them questions.

01:11:37.880 | So I'd like to know.

01:11:40.400 | You know, maybe I've got a big part of him wrong.

01:11:44.400 | - Yes.

01:11:45.240 | - And I probably do.

01:11:46.640 | But my observation has been that every chance

01:11:50.160 | he had to retreat from his pharaonic position,

01:11:53.080 | let's say he doubled down.

01:11:55.400 | And these, our parliament is not running for the next year.

01:12:00.160 | It's still Zoom in.

01:12:03.640 | It's still COVID lockdown parliament.

01:12:06.160 | For the next year, it's already been fatally compromised,

01:12:11.160 | perhaps, by the lockdowns for the last couple of years.

01:12:16.840 | This is parliament we're talking about.

01:12:19.080 | - Yeah, there's a kind of paralysis,

01:12:23.280 | fear-driven paralysis that also, in part,

01:12:26.720 | some of the most brilliant people I know

01:12:28.240 | are lost in this paralysis.

01:12:29.960 | I don't think people assign a word to it,

01:12:32.360 | but it's almost like a fear of this unknown thing

01:12:35.440 | that lurks in the shadows.

01:12:36.920 | And that, unfortunately, that fear is leveraged by people

01:12:41.640 | that, you know, who aren't in academic circles,

01:12:47.120 | who aren't faculty or students and so on,

01:12:48.880 | are more in administration.

01:12:50.360 | And they start to use that fear,

01:12:52.520 | which makes me quite uncomfortable.

01:12:55.280 | It does lend people in the positions of power

01:13:00.000 | who are not good at handling that power

01:13:02.080 | to become slowly, day by day, a little bit more corrupt.

01:13:07.080 | - I was really trying to figure out, you know,

01:13:09.080 | the last two weeks, thinking this through.

01:13:10.680 | It's like, how do you know?

01:13:12.080 | Let's say someone asked me a question

01:13:15.680 | in the YouTube comment.

01:13:16.520 | He said, "Why can I trust your advice

01:13:19.720 | "on the environmental front?"

01:13:21.200 | And I thought, "That's a really good question."

01:13:25.560 | Okay, let's see if we can figure out

01:13:28.560 | the principles by which the advice would be trustworthy.

01:13:31.240 | Okay, how do you know it's not trustworthy?

01:13:34.520 | Well, one potential response to that would be

01:13:39.520 | the claims are not in accordance with the facts.

01:13:43.120 | But, you know, facts are tricky things,

01:13:44.840 | and it depends on where you look for them.

01:13:46.400 | So that's a tough one to get right,

01:13:48.520 | because, for example, Lomberg's fundamental critics

01:13:51.920 | argue about his facts, not just his interpretation of them.

01:13:56.120 | So that can't be an unerring guide.

01:13:58.000 | And so I thought, well, the facts exactly doesn't work,

01:14:01.760 | 'cause when it's about everything, there's too many facts.

01:14:05.280 | So then how do you determine if someone's a trustworthy guide

01:14:08.840 | in the face of the apocalyptic unknown?

01:14:11.440 | 'Cause that's really the question.

01:14:13.360 | And the answer is, they're not terrified tyrants.

01:14:17.400 | I think that's the answer.

01:14:20.520 | Now, maybe that's wrong.

01:14:21.520 | If someone has a better answer, hey-

01:14:22.960 | - How do you know if they're a terrified tyrant?

01:14:24.880 | That's the problem. - 'Cause they're willing

01:14:25.720 | to use compulsion on other people

01:14:27.880 | when they could use goodwill.

01:14:29.880 | Like the farmers in Canada objected.

01:14:32.800 | They said, "Look, we have every economic reason

01:14:36.640 | "to use as little fertilizer as we can,

01:14:39.140 | "'cause it's expensive.

01:14:40.800 | "We have satellite maps of where we put the fertilizer.

01:14:44.880 | "We have cut our fertilizer use so substantially

01:14:48.000 | "in the last 40 years, you can't believe it,

01:14:50.080 | "and we grow way more food.

01:14:52.240 | "We're already breaking ourselves in half."

01:14:54.840 | And if you know farmers,

01:14:56.240 | especially the ones who still survive,

01:14:57.960 | you think those people don't know what they're doing.

01:15:00.600 | It's like, they're pretty damn sophisticated, man.

01:15:04.600 | Like way more sophisticated than our prime minister.

01:15:08.840 | And now you tell them, "No, it's a 30% reduction,

01:15:11.800 | "and we don't care how much food you're growing."

01:15:13.760 | So it's not a reduction that's dependent

01:15:18.240 | on amount of food produced per unit of fertilizer used,

01:15:21.760 | which would be, at least you could imagine it.

01:15:24.560 | So, okay, so you're producing this much food,

01:15:27.240 | and you use this much fertilizer, so you're hyper-efficient.

01:15:30.700 | Maybe we take the 10% of farmers

01:15:32.400 | who are the least efficient in that metric,

01:15:35.160 | and we say to them, "You have to get as efficient

01:15:37.420 | "as the average farmer."

01:15:39.680 | And then they say, "Well, look,

01:15:41.640 | "our situation's different.

01:15:42.760 | "We're in a more northern clime.

01:15:44.600 | "The soil's weaker."

01:15:46.160 | You know, you obviously have to bargain with that,

01:15:48.160 | but at least you reward them for their productivity.

01:15:52.200 | Well, it's like, "Well, Holland isn't gonna have beef."

01:15:56.480 | Well, where are they gonna get it?

01:15:58.200 | "Well, you don't need it."

01:15:59.320 | It's like, "Oh, I see.

01:16:00.160 | "You get to tell me what I can eat now, do you?

01:16:02.520 | "Really?

01:16:03.460 | "Okay.

01:16:04.460 | "And Holland is gonna import food from where

01:16:08.900 | "that's more efficient on the fertilizer front?

01:16:12.540 | "There's no one more efficient than Holland.

01:16:14.900 | "Same with Canada?

01:16:16.460 | "And isn't this gonna make food prices more expensive?

01:16:20.460 | "And doesn't that mean that hungry people die?

01:16:24.080 | "'Cause that is what it means."

01:16:25.980 | - So, ultimately, poor people pay the price

01:16:28.740 | of these kinds of policies.

01:16:30.740 | - Not known, not ultimately.

01:16:33.920 | - Today. - Now.

01:16:35.420 | - Today.

01:16:36.260 | - Today, that's a crucial distinction,

01:16:37.900 | because they say, "Well, ultimately, the poor will benefit."

01:16:40.900 | Yeah, except the dead ones.

01:16:43.220 | - Yes, today.

01:16:44.980 | - Today, right.

01:16:46.300 | - It seems like the story of war, too,

01:16:49.420 | is a time when the poor people suffer

01:16:52.620 | from the decision made by the powerful, the rich,

01:16:56.540 | the political elite. - Yeah, 'cause they can just leave.

01:16:59.740 | - Yeah.

01:17:00.980 | Let me ask you about the war in Ukraine.

01:17:03.360 | - Oh, yeah, I got into plenty of trouble about that, too.

01:17:06.160 | - You're just a man in a suit,

01:17:12.220 | talking on microphones and writing brilliant articles.

01:17:16.700 | There's also people dying, fighting.

01:17:20.740 | It's their land, it's their country, it's their history.

01:17:23.700 | This is true for both Russia and Ukraine.

01:17:26.420 | It's people trying to ask, they have many dragons,

01:17:30.180 | and they're asking themselves the question,

01:17:32.460 | who are we, what is this, what is the future of this nation?

01:17:37.340 | We thought we are a great nation,

01:17:41.180 | and I think both countries say this,

01:17:44.180 | and they say, "Well, how do we become

01:17:48.020 | "the great nation we thought we are?"

01:17:50.100 | - Yeah.

01:17:50.940 | - First of all, you got in trouble.

01:17:55.140 | What's the dynamics of the trouble?

01:17:59.500 | Something you regret saying. - Well, it wasn't that much.

01:18:01.740 | No, no, I thought about it a lot.

01:18:03.660 | I laid out four reasons for the war,

01:18:06.140 | and then I was criticized in "The Atlantic"

01:18:08.820 | for the argument was reduced to one reason,

01:18:12.020 | which was a caricature of the reason.

01:18:15.300 | I gave a variety of reasons why the war happened.

01:18:18.260 | Mismanagement on the part of the West

01:18:20.920 | in relationship to Russia and foreign policy

01:18:23.540 | over the last, since the wall fell.

01:18:26.580 | It's understandable 'cause it's extremely complex.

01:18:29.100 | Hyper-reliance on Russia as a cardinal source

01:18:34.060 | of energy provision for Europe

01:18:35.980 | in the wake of idiot environmental globalist utopianism.

01:18:39.660 | The expansionist tendencies of Russia

01:18:45.660 | that are analogous in some sense

01:18:48.800 | to the Soviet Union empire building.

01:18:51.260 | And then the last one, which is the one

01:18:53.180 | I got in trouble for, which is Putin's belief

01:18:57.460 | or willingness to manipulate his people into believing

01:19:01.260 | that Russia is a salvific force

01:19:03.900 | in the face of idiot Western woke-ism.

01:19:06.860 | And that's the one I got in trouble for.

01:19:08.460 | It's like, while you're justifying Putin, it's like,

01:19:11.060 | it's not only the Russians

01:19:14.780 | that think the West has lost its mind.

01:19:17.140 | The Eastern Europeans think so too.

01:19:19.220 | And do I know that?

01:19:20.140 | It's like, well, I went to 15 Eastern European countries

01:19:24.620 | this spring and I talked to 300 political

01:19:28.900 | and cultural leaders and you might say,

01:19:30.780 | well, they were all conservatives.

01:19:31.980 | It's like, actually, no, they weren't.

01:19:35.300 | Most of them were conservatives 'cause it turns out

01:19:37.860 | that they're more willing to talk to me.

01:19:39.100 | But a good chunk of them were liberals

01:19:42.260 | by any stretch of the imagination.

01:19:46.060 | And a fair number of them were canceled progressives.

01:19:49.780 | - Well, because you're very concerned

01:19:51.860 | about the culture wars that perhaps are a signal

01:19:56.860 | of a possible bad future for this country

01:20:02.340 | for this part of the world, that reason stands out.

01:20:06.300 | And do you sort of looking back at four reasons,

01:20:11.300 | think it deserves to have a place in one of the four?

01:20:16.300 | - Oh, absolutely.

01:20:17.740 | Because it is, you know, it's a-

01:20:20.460 | - Well, the four was bifurcated, eh?

01:20:22.180 | Because I said, look, Putin might believe this.

01:20:24.300 | And I actually think he does.

01:20:25.820 | 'Cause I read a bunch of Putin's speeches

01:20:27.500 | and I have been reading them for 15 years.

01:20:29.660 | And my sense of people generally,

01:20:31.460 | and this was true of Hitler, it's like,

01:20:33.620 | what did Hitler believe?

01:20:35.580 | Well, did you read what he wrote?

01:20:37.900 | He just did what he said he was going to do.

01:20:40.020 | And you might think, well, some people are so tricky.

01:20:42.380 | They have a whole body of elaborated speech

01:20:47.140 | that's completely separate from their personality

01:20:49.820 | and their personality is pursuing a different agenda.

01:20:52.740 | And this whole body of speech is nothing but a front.

01:20:55.980 | It's like, good luck finding someone that sophisticated.

01:21:00.180 | First of all, if you say things long enough,

01:21:01.940 | you're going to believe them.

01:21:02.900 | - That's a really interesting and fascinating

01:21:04.820 | and important point.

01:21:05.980 | Even if you start out as a lie, as a propaganda,

01:21:09.660 | I think Hitler is an example of somebody

01:21:12.620 | that I think really quickly,

01:21:14.020 | you start to believe the propaganda.

01:21:16.100 | - Well, you've thought a lot about AI systems.

01:21:19.300 | It's like, don't you become what you practice?

01:21:22.860 | And the answer to that is, well, absolutely.

01:21:24.900 | We even know the neurology.

01:21:26.420 | It's like when you first formulate a concept,

01:21:28.460 | huge swaths of your cortex are lit up, so to speak.

01:21:32.060 | But as you practice that, first of all,

01:21:34.740 | the right hemisphere stops participating.

01:21:36.740 | And then the left participates less and less

01:21:40.660 | until you build specialized machinery

01:21:42.940 | for exactly that conceptual frame.

01:21:45.860 | And then you start to see it, not just think it.

01:21:49.100 | And so if you're telling the same lies over and over,

01:21:52.380 | who do you think you're fooling?

01:21:53.660 | Think, well, I can withstand my own lies.

01:21:56.460 | Not if they're effective lies.

01:21:58.420 | And if they're effective enough to fool millions of people,

01:22:02.380 | and then they reflect them back to you,

01:22:04.460 | what makes you think you're going to be able

01:22:06.620 | to withstand that?

01:22:08.220 | You aren't.

01:22:09.060 | And so I do think Putin believes,

01:22:12.140 | to the degree that he believes anything,

01:22:14.660 | I do believe that he thinks of himself

01:22:17.260 | as a bulwark for Christendom

01:22:20.740 | against the degeneration of the West.

01:22:23.580 | And that's that third way that Dugin and Putin

01:22:26.660 | have been talking about, the philosopher Alexander Dugin

01:22:29.380 | and Putin for 15 years.

01:22:31.060 | Now, what that is is very amorphous.

01:22:34.580 | Solzhenitsyn thought the Russians would have to return

01:22:38.260 | to the incremental development of Orthodox Christianity

01:22:42.660 | to escape from the communist trap.

01:22:45.020 | And to some degree that's happened in Russia

01:22:46.900 | 'cause there's been a return to Orthodox Christianity.

01:22:49.500 | Now you could say, yeah, but the Orthodox Church

01:22:51.820 | has just been co-opted by the state.

01:22:53.980 | And I would say there's some evidence for that.

01:22:56.020 | I've heard, for example, that the Metropolitan owns,

01:23:01.020 | now I don't know if this is true,

01:23:03.220 | owns $5 billion worth of personal property.

01:23:06.340 | And I would say there's a bit of a moral hazard in that.

01:23:09.060 | And it's possible that the Orthodox Church

01:23:11.700 | has been co-opted, but there has been somewhat

01:23:14.220 | have an Orthodox revival in Russia.

01:23:16.460 | And I don't think that's all bad.

01:23:18.580 | Now, even if Putin doesn't believe any of this,

01:23:21.540 | if he's just a psychopathic manipulator,

01:23:24.180 | and unfortunately, I don't think that's true.

01:23:29.180 | I've read his speeches.

01:23:30.660 | It doesn't look like it to me.

01:23:32.460 | And he is by no means the worst Russian leader

01:23:34.820 | of the last hundred years.

01:23:37.260 | - Well, there's quite a selection there.

01:23:39.380 | - There certainly is.

01:23:40.780 | But, and I say that knowing that,

01:23:43.660 | even if he doesn't believe it,

01:23:46.920 | he's convinced his people that it's true.

01:23:51.500 | And so we're stuck with the claim in either case.

01:23:56.500 | And that's the point I was trying to make in the article.

01:23:59.860 | - Sometimes I'm troubled by people that explain things.

01:24:05.740 | And a lot of people have reached out to me,

01:24:08.100 | experts telling me how I should feel,

01:24:11.860 | what I should think about Ukraine.

01:24:14.020 | Oh, you naive, Lex, you're so naive.

01:24:18.340 | Here's how it really is.

01:24:20.340 | But then I get to see people that lost their home.

01:24:24.100 | I get to see people on the Russian side who believe they're,

01:24:28.260 | I genuinely think that there's some degree

01:24:31.060 | to which they have love in their heart.

01:24:33.500 | They see themselves as heroes saving a land from Nazis.

01:24:37.660 | - How else would you motivate young men to go fight?

01:24:41.380 | - It's just, it's these humans destroying

01:24:45.740 | not only their homes, but creating generational hate,

01:24:49.580 | destroying the possibility of love towards each other.

01:24:52.780 | They're basically creating hate.

01:24:54.700 | What I've heard a lot of is on February 24th of this year,

01:24:59.500 | hate was born at a scale that region has not seen.

01:25:04.260 | Hate towards not Vladimir Putin,

01:25:06.740 | hate towards not the soldiers in Russia,

01:25:09.380 | but hate towards all Russians.

01:25:12.020 | Hate that will last generations.

01:25:15.380 | And then you can see just the pain there.

01:25:20.380 | And then when all these experts talk about

01:25:27.900 | agriculture and energy and geopolitics,

01:25:32.900 | and yeah, maybe like what you say

01:25:36.820 | with fighting the ideologies of the woke and so on,

01:25:41.360 | I just feel like it's missing something deep

01:25:45.660 | that war is not fought about any of those things.

01:25:52.500 | - War started and war is averted based on human beings,

01:25:56.940 | based on humanity.

01:25:58.860 | - Here's another ugly thought

01:26:00.820 | since we haven't had enough so far.

01:26:02.820 | We locked everything down for COVID.

01:26:07.700 | How much face-to-face communication was there

01:26:10.700 | between the West and Vladimir Putin?

01:26:13.060 | How about none?

01:26:14.500 | How about that was the wrong amount?

01:26:17.020 | Especially given that Europe was completely dependent

01:26:19.420 | on Putin for its energy supplies.

01:26:21.180 | Well, not completely, but you know what I mean.

01:26:23.540 | Materially and significantly.

01:26:25.940 | So maybe he had to go talk to him once every six months.

01:26:28.660 | Maybe he's in a bit of a bubble, probably.

01:26:31.780 | - And not just an information bubble,

01:26:34.300 | how all these experts tell me about.

01:26:36.380 | - Yeah, no, a human bubble.

01:26:38.100 | - Human bubble.

01:26:39.220 | - Look, one of the things I've really learned,

01:26:41.260 | there's a real emphasis on hospitality in the Old Testament.

01:26:44.300 | I just brought all these scholars together

01:26:46.980 | to talk about Exodus.

01:26:48.100 | Hey, I have this security team with me,

01:26:50.860 | and they're tough military guys,

01:26:53.740 | but they're on board for this mission, let's say.

01:26:57.220 | And so they went out of their way

01:26:58.620 | to be hospitable to my academic guests.

01:27:01.420 | They laid out nice platters of meat and cheese and crackers.

01:27:04.340 | They spent all day preparing this house I had rented

01:27:07.260 | so that we could have a hospitable time with these scholars,

01:27:09.820 | most of whom I didn't know well,

01:27:11.140 | but who said they would come and spend eight days

01:27:13.460 | talking about this book with me.

01:27:15.420 | We rented some jet skis.

01:27:16.700 | We had a nice house.

01:27:18.020 | We had fun.

01:27:19.660 | We got to know each other, and we got to trust each other

01:27:22.820 | because we could see that we could have some fun

01:27:24.620 | and that we could let our hair down a bit.

01:27:26.380 | We didn't have to be on guard,

01:27:27.860 | and that made the talks way deeper.

01:27:30.780 | And then we found out we couldn't get through Exodus

01:27:33.660 | in eight days, and so I had proposed very early on

01:27:37.380 | that we're gonna double the length.

01:27:38.780 | And so I pulled eight people out of their lives

01:27:41.020 | for eight days.

01:27:42.860 | That's not an easy thing to do.

01:27:44.940 | It's also quite expensive,

01:27:46.300 | and the Daily Wire Plus people picked all that up.

01:27:49.060 | And they said, "Yes, right away."

01:27:51.940 | Said, "We'd love to do this again."

01:27:53.900 | Well, why?

01:27:54.900 | Well, partly because intellectually,

01:27:57.460 | it was unbelievably engaging.

01:27:58.700 | I learned so much.

01:27:59.540 | It'll take me like a year to digest it

01:28:01.540 | if I can ever digest it.

01:28:03.380 | But they had a really good time.

01:28:08.420 | And so when they were offered that combination

01:28:11.020 | of intellectual challenge, let's say, in hospitality,

01:28:14.420 | it was a no-brainer.

01:28:15.540 | They just said, every one of them said,

01:28:17.580 | "If I can do it in any way, I will definitely be there."

01:28:20.220 | And this, I went to Washington a bunch of times,

01:28:24.060 | and the culture of hospitality

01:28:26.100 | has broken down in Washington.

01:28:28.260 | 40% of congressmen sleep in their offices.

01:28:31.580 | They don't have apartments.

01:28:33.100 | Their family isn't there with them.

01:28:35.100 | They don't have social occasions

01:28:37.580 | with their fellow Democrats or Republicans,

01:28:40.420 | much less across the table.

01:28:43.020 | And so, and I tried to have some meetings in Washington

01:28:45.980 | that were bilateral a couple of times,

01:28:48.420 | get young Republican congressmen

01:28:50.460 | and Democrats together to talk.

01:28:52.700 | And as soon as they talk, they think,

01:28:53.940 | "Oh, it was so interesting, 'cause one of the lunches

01:28:57.100 | was about 15 people, half Democrats and half Republicans,

01:29:01.260 | and all I'd asked them to do was just spend three minutes

01:29:03.780 | talking about why you decided to become a congressman,

01:29:06.260 | which is not a job I would take, by the way.

01:29:08.460 | You spend 25 hours a week fundraising on the telephone.

01:29:12.860 | Your family isn't there with you.

01:29:14.820 | You have to run for re-election every two years.

01:29:17.660 | You're beholden to the party apparatus, right?

01:29:20.580 | You're vilified constantly.

01:29:22.540 | This is not, you know, people think,

01:29:24.980 | "Well, this is a job for the privileged."

01:29:26.780 | It's like, yeah, you go and run for Congress

01:29:29.660 | and find out how much fun it is

01:29:30.900 | and put your family on the line

01:29:32.060 | and then have to beg for your job every two years

01:29:34.180 | while your enemies, the worst of your enemies

01:29:37.060 | and the worst of your friends are viciously hen-pecking you.

01:29:41.300 | And so anyways, we had them all sit around a table,

01:29:43.500 | said, "Okay, just say why you ran for Congress."

01:29:47.700 | It was so cool, especially for a Canadian,

01:29:49.460 | 'cause you Americans, you're so bloody theatrical.

01:29:51.660 | It's something to watch.

01:29:53.060 | It was like Mr. Smith goes to Washington

01:29:56.100 | for every one of them.

01:29:56.940 | It's like, "Well, this country has given us so much.

01:29:59.260 | Our families have been so,

01:30:00.660 | we've benefited so much from our time here.

01:30:05.300 | We think this is a wonderful country.

01:30:06.780 | We really felt that we should give back."

01:30:09.180 | Then the next one would talk

01:30:10.460 | and it was like exactly the same story.

01:30:12.180 | And then it didn't matter

01:30:13.460 | if they were Republican or Democrat,

01:30:14.740 | you couldn't tell the difference.

01:30:15.740 | No one could.

01:30:16.900 | And was it genuine?

01:30:17.900 | It's like, "Well, are you genuine?

01:30:20.220 | You think these people are worse than you?"

01:30:23.140 | First of all, they're not.

01:30:25.220 | Second of all, they're probably better,

01:30:27.660 | all things considered.

01:30:29.180 | It's not that easy to become a congressman.

01:30:31.740 | And I'm sure there's some bad apples in the bunch,

01:30:34.180 | but by and large, you walk away from your meetings

01:30:37.020 | with these people and you think,

01:30:38.620 | pretty impressive.

01:30:42.020 | - They really are giving a part of themselves

01:30:44.180 | in the name of service.

01:30:45.540 | Maybe over time, they become cynical

01:30:48.180 | and become jaded and worn down by the whole system.

01:30:52.780 | But I think a lot of it-

01:30:54.180 | - Could you imagine that?

01:30:55.620 | - Is healed, I think.

01:30:58.260 | And I don't think I'm,

01:30:59.900 | well, I'm in part naive, but not fully,

01:31:02.340 | that a lot of it is healed through the power of conversation,

01:31:05.500 | just basic social interaction.

01:31:08.180 | I do think that the-

01:31:09.660 | - You bet, man.

01:31:10.500 | - The effects of this pandemic-

01:31:11.940 | - By listening.

01:31:12.820 | - Listen, just sitting there.

01:31:15.460 | And it doesn't have to be talking about the actual issue.

01:31:17.980 | It's actually humor and all those kinds of things

01:31:21.620 | about personal struggles,

01:31:23.940 | all those kinds of things that remind you

01:31:26.260 | that you're all just humans.

01:31:28.620 | - Yeah, well, the great leaders that I've met,

01:31:31.180 | 'cause, and I've met some now,

01:31:32.700 | they go listen to their constituents.

01:31:36.100 | It's not a policy discussion.

01:31:37.380 | It's not an ideology discussion.

01:31:38.660 | They go say, "Okay, what's your life like?

01:31:42.220 | "And what are your problems?

01:31:43.540 | "And tell me about them."

01:31:45.780 | And then they listen, and then they're struck by them.

01:31:47.980 | And then they gather up all that misery

01:31:49.780 | and they bring it to the congressional office

01:31:52.300 | or to the parliament.

01:31:53.220 | And they think, "Here's what the people are crying out for."

01:31:57.700 | And the good leaders, that's a leader.

01:32:00.620 | Leader listens.

01:32:01.700 | So I talked to Jimmy Carr about comedy,

01:32:06.860 | and he's sold out stages worldwide on a tour,

01:32:11.860 | being funny, that's hard.

01:32:14.380 | He said, "Comedy is the most, stand-up comedy,

01:32:17.460 | "which is what I do in some real sense.

01:32:20.780 | "It's a thing I do that it's most akin

01:32:23.380 | "to what I'm doing on my book tours, I would say.

01:32:25.720 | "It's the closest analog."

01:32:27.460 | He said, "It's the most dialogical enterprise."

01:32:29.820 | And I thought, "Why, what do you mean?"

01:32:32.380 | 'Cause see, it's just the monologue.

01:32:34.220 | And it's a prepared monologue.

01:32:36.260 | I mean, you have to interact dynamically with the audience

01:32:39.900 | while you're telling your jokes

01:32:40.980 | and you gotta get the timing right,

01:32:42.060 | but you have a body of jokes.

01:32:44.700 | He said, "Well, here's how you prepare the jokes."

01:32:47.220 | And I've been told this by other comedians.

01:32:49.500 | You go to 50 clubs before you go on your tour

01:32:52.620 | and you got some new material and you think it's funny.

01:32:55.300 | And you go into a club and you lay out your new material

01:32:58.580 | and people laugh at some of it.

01:33:00.540 | And you pay attention to what they laugh at

01:33:04.580 | and what they don't laugh at.

01:33:06.380 | So you subject yourself to the judgment of the crowd

01:33:09.060 | and you get rid of everything that isn't funny.

01:33:11.380 | And if you do that enough, even if you're not that funny,

01:33:14.560 | the crowd will tell you what's funny.

01:33:17.200 | So you can imagine, imagine you do 50 shows

01:33:20.060 | and each is an hour long and you collect two minutes

01:33:22.360 | of humor from each show.

01:33:24.500 | So you throw away 90, you throw away two hours,

01:33:28.000 | more than 98% of it, collect two minutes per show.

01:33:31.860 | So you're not very funny at all.

01:33:34.260 | You're like funny 2% of the time.

01:33:35.860 | You aggregate that, man, you're a scream.

01:33:38.820 | So that's what a leader does.

01:33:41.420 | That is what a leader does, is goes out

01:33:43.140 | and he aggregates the misery, you know, and the hopes.

01:33:46.900 | And then I do think that's revivifying

01:33:48.900 | to someone who would otherwise be cynical and jaded

01:33:52.080 | because then the person can say to themselves,

01:33:54.500 | "Despite the inadequacies of the system

01:33:56.860 | and my inadequacies, I'm gathering up the misery

01:34:01.540 | and the hope and I'm bringing it forward

01:34:04.660 | where it can be redressed."

01:34:06.500 | - Giving it a voice.

01:34:07.500 | - Yep, giving it, that's right, giving it a voice.

01:34:09.380 | - Can you actually take me through a day,

01:34:10.820 | 'cause this is fascinating, through your comedy tour.

01:34:14.620 | What does a day in the life of Jordan Peterson look like?

01:34:19.580 | Which is this very interesting day.

01:34:22.500 | Let's look at the day when you have to speak.

01:34:24.740 | Preparing your mind, thinking of what you're going

01:34:28.460 | to talk about, preparing yourself physically, mentally

01:34:33.460 | to interact with the crowd through the actual speaking.

01:34:37.260 | How do you adjust what you're thinking through

01:34:39.780 | and how do you come down from that

01:34:41.740 | so you can start all again as a limited biological system?

01:34:46.540 | - Well, I'm usually up by seven

01:34:51.300 | and ready to go by 7.30 or eight.

01:34:55.660 | - Coffee?

01:34:57.820 | - No, steak and water.

01:35:00.460 | - How many times a day, steak?

01:35:02.460 | - All, that's all I eat.

01:35:03.780 | - How many times?

01:35:05.060 | - Three or four, depending on the day.

01:35:07.220 | - Steak and water.

01:35:08.060 | - Steak and sparkling water.

01:35:09.500 | Yeah, so monastic asceticism, man.

01:35:13.820 | - Well, I did the proper, I usually eat just once a day.

01:35:16.940 | I did the proper Jordan Peterson last night

01:35:19.420 | and just ate two steaks.

01:35:20.580 | - And how was that?

01:35:21.940 | - It was wonderful.

01:35:23.140 | - Yeah, well, if you have to only eat one thing,

01:35:26.780 | could be worse.

01:35:27.780 | So anyways, I'm ready to go at eight

01:35:29.660 | because we're generally moving.

01:35:31.180 | - What does moving mean?

01:35:33.380 | - Flying. - You're constantly--

01:35:34.620 | - Flying somewhere.

01:35:35.940 | - Okay.

01:35:36.780 | - And we usually use private flights now

01:35:38.860 | because the commercial airlines aren't reliable enough

01:35:41.620 | and you cannot not make a venue, right?

01:35:44.780 | So that's rule number one on a tour.

01:35:46.580 | You make the show.

01:35:48.900 | So everything, and then rule number two is

01:35:53.060 | anybody who causes any trouble on the tour is gone.

01:35:56.740 | Because there is zero room for error.

01:35:59.380 | Now, no, there's zero room for unnecessary,

01:36:04.300 | unaddressed error.

01:36:05.300 | So there's gonna be errors.

01:36:06.580 | The guys I have around me now,

01:36:08.100 | if they make a mistake, they fix it right away.

01:36:12.060 | So, and that's great.

01:36:13.700 | - There's a lot of people relying on you to be there,

01:36:15.820 | so you have to be there.

01:36:16.660 | - Yeah, like 4,000 people typically.

01:36:19.900 | So then I'm on the plane and I usually write,

01:36:26.100 | or often, because there's no internet on the plane

01:36:31.100 | and that's a good use of time.

01:36:32.500 | So I'm writing a new book, so I write on the plane.

01:36:34.860 | - Typing or handwriting?

01:36:36.260 | - Typing, yeah, typing.

01:36:38.940 | And then we land and we go to,

01:36:43.580 | it's usually early afternoon by then,

01:36:46.020 | we go to a hotel.

01:36:47.340 | It's usually a nice hotel.

01:36:48.780 | It's not corporate, I don't really like corporate hotels.

01:36:51.460 | My secretary and one of my logistics guys

01:36:54.700 | has got quite good at picking kind of adventurous hotels,

01:36:59.220 | boutique hotels.

01:37:00.260 | They're usually in the old parts of the city,

01:37:01.740 | especially in Europe, somewhere interesting.

01:37:03.980 | And so we go there and then lunch usually.

01:37:08.940 | And sometimes that's an air fryer and a steak

01:37:11.660 | in the hotel room.

01:37:12.500 | And I leave a trail of air fryers behind me

01:37:14.500 | all across the world.

01:37:16.020 | And then Tammy and I usually go out

01:37:19.980 | and have a walk or something and take a look at the city.

01:37:22.580 | And then I have a rest for like an hour and a half

01:37:25.140 | or an hour, half an hour.

01:37:26.340 | - Like a nap or just--

01:37:27.180 | - Yeah, nap, I have to sleep for 20 minutes.

01:37:29.420 | And that's about all I can sleep,

01:37:30.460 | but I need to do that in the late afternoon.

01:37:31.780 | - And that refreshes your mind.

01:37:32.940 | - Yeah, that gives me, that wakes me up again

01:37:35.060 | for the evening.

01:37:36.380 | And then Tam has to sleep longer.

01:37:38.260 | She's still recovering from her illness.

01:37:40.180 | And so she has to sleep longer in the afternoon.

01:37:42.500 | And that's absolutely necessary for both of us

01:37:44.380 | or things start to get frayed.

01:37:46.580 | And so then we go to the venue.

01:37:50.100 | And then I usually sit for an hour.

01:37:54.660 | If I'm gonna lecture, I've been doing a lot of Q and A's

01:37:56.940 | and that's a little easier.

01:37:57.860 | But if I'm gonna lecture, I have to sit for an hour.

01:38:01.060 | And then I think, okay,

01:38:02.300 | what question am I trying to investigate?

01:38:07.580 | I have to have that, that's the point.

01:38:09.700 | What mystery am I trying to unravel?

01:38:13.140 | It's usually associated with one of the rules in my book

01:38:15.620 | because technically it's a book tour,

01:38:17.700 | but each of those rules is an investigation into an ethic.

01:38:21.700 | And each of them points to a deeper sort of mystery

01:38:24.580 | in some sense.

01:38:25.420 | And there's no end to the amount it can be explored.

01:38:28.820 | And so I have the question.

01:38:30.820 | My question might be something like,

01:38:32.620 | put your house in perfect order

01:38:36.740 | before you criticize the world.

01:38:38.460 | Okay, what does that mean exactly?

01:38:40.780 | What does house mean?

01:38:42.300 | What does put mean, that active verb?

01:38:46.780 | What does perfect in order mean?

01:38:48.980 | Why before you criticize the world?

01:38:51.300 | What does it mean to criticize?

01:38:52.940 | What does it mean to criticize the world?

01:38:54.700 | How can you do that properly or improperly?

01:38:56.860 | So I start to think about how to decompose the question.

01:38:59.340 | - And you start to think which of these decompositions

01:39:02.180 | are important to really dig into.

01:39:03.780 | - Yeah, well, then they'll strike me.

01:39:05.060 | It's like, okay, there's something there

01:39:06.380 | that I've been maybe noodling around on

01:39:09.100 | that I would like to investigate further.

01:39:11.140 | Then I think, okay, how can I approach this problem?

01:39:13.700 | I think, well, I have this story that I know,

01:39:16.220 | I have this story and I have this story,

01:39:17.900 | but I haven't juxtaposed them before.

01:39:19.940 | And there's gonna be some interesting interaction

01:39:21.940 | in the juxtaposition.

01:39:23.420 | So I have the question

01:39:24.820 | and I kind of have a framework of interpretation.

01:39:27.540 | And then I have some potential narrative places I can go.

01:39:31.100 | And then I think, okay, I can go juggle that

01:39:33.300 | and see what happens.

01:39:35.140 | And so then what I wanna do is concentrate on that process

01:39:38.820 | while attending to the audience

01:39:40.340 | to make sure that the words are landing

01:39:42.540 | and then see if I can delve into it deeply enough

01:39:45.060 | so that a narrative emerges spontaneously with an ending.

01:39:50.060 | Now, I'm sure you've experienced this in podcasts, right?

01:39:53.420 | Maybe I'm wrong, but my experience has been

01:39:56.100 | if I fall into the conversation

01:39:58.420 | and we know about the timeframe,

01:40:00.820 | there'll be a natural narrative arc.

01:40:03.660 | And then, so you'll kind of know when the midpoint is

01:40:06.180 | and you'll kind of see when you're reaching a conclusion.

01:40:08.100 | And then if you really pay attention,

01:40:09.380 | you can see that's a good place to stop.

01:40:12.940 | And it's kind of, you come to a point

01:40:15.340 | and you have to be alert and patient to see that.

01:40:20.220 | And you have to be willing to be satisfied

01:40:22.340 | with where you've got to.

01:40:24.180 | But if you do that, and then it's like a comedian

01:40:26.700 | making the punchline work.

01:40:28.740 | It's like, I've got all these balls in the air

01:40:32.260 | and they're going somewhere

01:40:33.820 | and this is how they come together.

01:40:36.380 | And people love that, right?

01:40:37.700 | To say, oh, this and this and this and this and this,

01:40:40.140 | whack, together.

01:40:42.700 | And that's an insight.

01:40:43.660 | And it is very much like a punchline.

01:40:45.980 | - Well, that's interesting because your mind,

01:40:47.820 | actually, I'm a fan of your podcast too.

01:40:49.860 | And you are always driving towards that.

01:40:53.380 | I would say for me in a podcast conversation,

01:40:57.060 | there's often a kind of Alice in Wonderland

01:41:00.700 | type of exploration.

01:41:02.260 | - Down the rabbit hole, man.

01:41:03.540 | - And then you just, a new thing pops up.

01:41:06.180 | The more absurd, the wilder, the better.

01:41:08.820 | Conversations with Elon are like this.

01:41:10.500 | - Yeah, I bet.

01:41:11.740 | - Actually, the more you drive towards an arc,

01:41:14.180 | the more uncomfortable you start to get

01:41:16.340 | in a fun, absurd conversation because,

01:41:19.740 | oh, I'm now one of the normies.

01:41:22.420 | No, I don't want that.

01:41:23.460 | I want to be, I want the rabbit.

01:41:25.700 | I want the crazy.

01:41:27.340 | Because it makes it more fun.

01:41:29.740 | But somehow throughout it,

01:41:32.060 | there is wisdom that you try to grasp at,

01:41:35.940 | such that there is a thread to the thing.

01:41:37.540 | - Well, that's the thing, man.

01:41:38.580 | You're following the thread, eh?

01:41:40.300 | - Yeah.

01:41:41.140 | - The drive.

01:41:41.980 | - Well, that's right.

01:41:42.940 | That's what we're trying to do, that thread.

01:41:45.460 | That thread is the proper balance

01:41:47.180 | between structure and spontaneity.

01:41:49.060 | And it manifests itself as the instinct of meaning.

01:41:52.140 | And that's the logos in the dialogos.

01:41:54.740 | And it really is the logos.

01:41:55.940 | And God only knows what that means.

01:41:57.700 | You know, I mean, the biblical claim is that logos

01:42:01.100 | is the fundamental principle of reality.

01:42:03.700 | And I think that's true.

01:42:05.660 | I actually think that's true.

01:42:07.860 | 'Cause I think that that meaning that guides you,

01:42:10.540 | well, here's a way of thinking about it.

01:42:11.740 | I've been writing about this recently.

01:42:14.180 | What's real?

01:42:15.100 | Matter.

01:42:17.060 | It's like, okay, that's one answer.

01:42:19.140 | What's real?

01:42:20.060 | What matters is real.

01:42:23.060 | 'Cause that's how you act.

01:42:24.860 | Okay, so that's different than matter.

01:42:26.780 | It's like, okay, what's the most real of what matters?

01:42:31.580 | How about pain?

01:42:33.700 | Why is it the most real?

01:42:36.340 | Try arguing it away.

01:42:37.940 | Good luck.

01:42:41.060 | So pain is the fundamental reality.

01:42:43.940 | All right.

01:42:44.780 | Well, that's rough.

01:42:47.700 | Doesn't that lead to nihilism and hopelessness?

01:42:50.100 | Yeah, doesn't it lead to a philosophy

01:42:53.820 | that's antithetical towards being?

01:42:55.780 | The most fundamental reality is pain.

01:42:57.860 | Yes.

01:42:59.780 | Is there anything more fundamental than pain?

01:43:02.020 | Love.

01:43:04.500 | Really?

01:43:08.340 | If you're in pain,

01:43:09.420 | love and truth,

01:43:14.900 | that's what you got.

01:43:18.140 | And you know,

01:43:19.020 | if they're more powerful than pain,

01:43:26.740 | maybe they're the most real things.

01:43:28.580 | When you think about reality, what is real

01:43:33.660 | that is the most real thing?

01:43:36.140 | Well, it's a tough one, right?

01:43:37.500 | 'Cause you have to, 'cause if you're a scientist,

01:43:40.340 | a materialist, think, well,

01:43:41.900 | the matter is the most real.

01:43:44.980 | It's like, well, you don't know what the matter is.

01:43:47.500 | Yeah.

01:43:48.340 | And so, and then when push comes to shove,

01:43:49.740 | and it will, you'll find out what's most real.

01:43:53.100 | Yeah.

01:43:53.940 | I feel like this is missing,

01:43:59.220 | the physical reality is missing some of the things.

01:44:03.540 | So of course, pain has a biological component

01:44:05.980 | and all those kinds of things,

01:44:06.860 | but it's missing something deep about the human condition

01:44:10.660 | that at least the modern science is not able to describe.

01:44:15.260 | But it is reaching towards that.

01:44:17.260 | Yeah, it is.

01:44:18.100 | And it's the reason, one way to describe it

01:44:21.100 | as you're describing is the reason it's reaching it

01:44:23.700 | is because underneath of science is this assumption

01:44:27.380 | that there's a deep--

01:44:30.500 | Logos.

01:44:31.980 | Thing to this whole thing we're trying to do.

01:44:34.780 | Well, you know, there's two traditions, right?

01:44:36.580 | In some sense, there's two logos traditions.

01:44:39.540 | There's the Greek rational enlightenment tradition.

01:44:44.340 | That's a logos tradition.

01:44:45.780 | And it insists that there's a logos in nature

01:44:48.460 | and that science is the way to approach it.

01:44:50.660 | And then there's a Judeo-Christian logos,

01:44:52.540 | which is more embodied and more spiritual.

01:44:55.100 | And I would say the West is actually an attempt

01:44:57.180 | to unite those two.

01:44:59.020 | And it's the proper attempt to unite those two

01:45:01.620 | because they need to be united.

01:45:04.860 | And I see the union coming in your terms.

01:45:07.460 | You know, I talked to friends to all, for example,

01:45:09.660 | about the animating principle of chimpanzee sovereignty.

01:45:13.380 | And that's pretty close biologically.

01:45:15.220 | Is it power?

01:45:16.780 | Because that's the claim even from the biologists often.

01:45:19.340 | The most dominant chimp has the best reproductive success.

01:45:23.620 | It's like, oh yeah, dominant, eh?

01:45:26.780 | You mean using compulsion?

01:45:28.300 | Okay, let's look.

01:45:29.900 | Are the chimps who use compulsion the most successful?

01:45:34.580 | And the answer is sporadically and rarely.

01:45:39.060 | And for short, well, that's sporadically,

01:45:41.420 | for short periods of time.

01:45:42.980 | Why?

01:45:44.020 | Because they meet an unpleasant end.

01:45:46.660 | The subordinates over whom they exercise arbitrary control

01:45:52.380 | wait for a weak moment and then tear them into shreds.

01:45:56.020 | Right?

01:45:56.900 | Every dictator's terror.

01:45:59.300 | And for good reason.

01:46:00.500 | And de Waal has showed that the alpha chimps, the males,

01:46:04.420 | who do have preferential mating access often,

01:46:07.300 | are often and reliably the best peacemakers

01:46:12.020 | and the most reciprocal.

01:46:14.100 | And so even among chimps, the principle of sovereignty

01:46:16.580 | is something like iterated reciprocity.

01:46:21.580 | And that's a way better principle than power.

01:46:26.820 | And it's something like, I've been thinking,

01:46:28.700 | what's the antithesis of the spirit of power?

01:46:31.580 | I think it's the spirit of play.

01:46:34.460 | And you know, I don't know what you think about that,

01:46:37.460 | but when you have a good podcast conversation,

01:46:39.580 | you already described it in some sense as play.

01:46:41.900 | It's like there's a structure, right?

01:46:43.380 | 'Cause it's an ordered conversation.

01:46:45.900 | But you want there to be play in the system.

01:46:48.140 | And if you get that right, then it's really engaging.

01:46:51.340 | And then it seems to have its own narrative arc.

01:46:54.860 | I'm not trying to impose that,

01:46:56.060 | even though that's another thing I don't do.

01:46:58.140 | I didn't come to this conversation at all thinking,

01:47:01.300 | here's what I want out of a conversation with Lex Friedman.

01:47:04.580 | Like instrumentally, I thought, I'll go talk to Lex.

01:47:08.860 | Why?

01:47:09.700 | I like his podcasts.

01:47:13.140 | He's doing something right.

01:47:14.500 | I don't know what it is.

01:47:15.820 | He asks interesting questions.

01:47:17.940 | I'll go have a conversation with him.

01:47:19.780 | Where's it gonna go?

01:47:20.900 | Wherever it goes.

01:47:23.460 | - Embracing the spirit of play.

01:47:26.340 | So what you have this, when you're lecturing,

01:47:30.020 | you're going in front of the crowd,

01:47:32.060 | you thought of a question, you get on the stage.

01:47:36.380 | First of all, are you nervous at all?

01:47:38.260 | - I'm very nervous when I'm sitting down,

01:47:43.020 | thinking through the structure initially,

01:47:46.020 | which is why my wife and I have been doing Q&As,

01:47:49.020 | and that's easier on me.

01:47:50.820 | - It's the way comedians are nervous.

01:47:54.460 | Like Joe Rogan just did his special this weekend.

01:47:59.180 | And so he now has to sit nervously,

01:48:02.580 | like a comedian does, which is like,

01:48:05.060 | I have no material now.

01:48:07.020 | - Right.

01:48:07.860 | - I have to start from scratch.

01:48:08.700 | - When I was doing the lectures constantly

01:48:10.780 | instead of the Q&As, basically what I was doing

01:48:14.820 | was writing a whole book chapter every night.

01:48:17.780 | And you know, now that's a bit of an exaggeration

01:48:20.300 | 'cause I would return to themes that I had developed,

01:48:22.660 | but it's not really an exaggeration

01:48:24.500 | because I didn't ever just go over wrote material, ever.

01:48:29.380 | So it's very demanding and that part's nerve wracking

01:48:34.540 | 'cause I sit down, it's an hour before the show,

01:48:36.420 | and I think, can I do this?

01:48:41.020 | And you know, the answer is, well, you did it 1000 times,

01:48:45.020 | but that's not this time.

01:48:46.580 | - Yeah.

01:48:47.420 | - It's like, can I come up with a question?

01:48:49.140 | Can I think through the structure?

01:48:51.260 | Can I pull off the spontaneous narrative?

01:48:56.140 | Can I pull it together?

01:48:57.420 | And the answer is, I don't know.

01:49:00.060 | And so then I get it together in my mind, I think,

01:49:02.660 | and that's hard, it takes effort and it's nerve wracking.

01:49:05.780 | Okay, I got it, but then there's the moment

01:49:08.660 | you go out on stage and you think,

01:49:10.300 | well, I know I had it, but can I do it?

01:49:13.420 | No notes.

01:49:15.180 | And then the question is, well, you're gonna find out,

01:49:17.620 | well, you do it.

01:49:18.860 | And so then I go out on stage

01:49:21.020 | and I don't talk to the audience.

01:49:24.380 | I talk to one person at a time.

01:49:26.580 | And you can talk to one person, you know,

01:49:29.540 | 'cause you know how to do that.

01:49:30.500 | So I talk to a person and not too long

01:49:32.380 | 'cause I don't wanna make them too nervous.

01:49:33.820 | And then someone else and someone else,

01:49:35.900 | and then I'm in contact with the audience.

01:49:37.940 | And then I can tell if the words are landing

01:49:41.060 | and I listen, it's like, are they rustling around?

01:49:43.620 | Are they dead quiet?

01:49:46.060 | 'Cause you want dead quiet.

01:49:47.580 | - Oh, I see, that's what focus sounds like.

01:49:51.420 | You're in it together then.

01:49:53.420 | - You bet.

01:49:54.260 | Well, and I also, here's a good rule

01:49:55.620 | if you're learning to speak publicly.

01:49:57.660 | I never say a word

01:49:59.100 | till everyone is 100% quiet.

01:50:04.540 | And that's, it's a great way to start a talk

01:50:06.620 | because you're set in the frame, eh?

01:50:08.900 | And if the frame is, well, I'll talk while you're talking,

01:50:11.540 | the message is, well, you can talk.

01:50:14.380 | This is a place where everybody can talk.

01:50:16.180 | It's like, no, it's not.

01:50:17.860 | This is a place where people paid to hear me talk.

01:50:21.180 | So I'm not gonna talk till everyone's listening.

01:50:24.020 | And so then you get that stillness,

01:50:26.980 | and then you just wait

01:50:28.180 | 'cause that stillness turns into an expectation.

01:50:30.820 | And then it comes, turns into a kind of nervous expectations

01:50:34.420 | like what the hell is he doing?

01:50:35.940 | It's not manipulative.

01:50:37.140 | It's a sense of timing.

01:50:38.700 | It's like, just when that's right, you think,

01:50:41.060 | okay, now it's time to start.

01:50:42.940 | - Well, that nervous, the interesting thing

01:50:44.340 | about that nervous expectation

01:50:46.180 | is from an audience perspective, we're in it together.

01:50:49.380 | - Yeah.

01:50:50.220 | - I mean, there is, into that silence,

01:50:51.540 | there's a togetherness to it.

01:50:53.100 | - Of course, it's the union of everyone's attention.

01:50:55.420 | - Yeah.

01:50:56.260 | - Yeah, and that's a great thing.

01:50:58.420 | I mean, you love that at a concert

01:50:59.900 | when everyone, it's not silence then,

01:51:01.700 | but when everyone's attention is unified

01:51:03.900 | and everyone's moving in unison,

01:51:05.260 | it's like we're all worshiping the same thing, right?

01:51:09.260 | And that would be the point of the conversation,

01:51:11.460 | the point of the lecture.

01:51:13.660 | And the worship is the direction of attention towards it.

01:51:16.620 | And it's communion because everyone's doing it

01:51:19.220 | at the same time.

01:51:20.620 | And so, I mean, there's not much difference

01:51:23.260 | between a lecture theater and a church in that regard, right?

01:51:25.620 | It's the same fundamental layout and structure.

01:51:28.460 | And they're very integrally associated with one another.

01:51:30.940 | One really grew out of the other.

01:51:32.220 | The lecture theater grew out of the church.

01:51:34.300 | So it's perfectly reasonable

01:51:36.300 | to be thinking about it in those terms.

01:51:38.540 | And so, and then, okay, so after the lecture,

01:51:42.180 | we play a piece of music that is a piece of music

01:51:45.580 | that I've been producing with some musicians

01:51:47.980 | for a couple of books I'm gonna release in the fall.

01:51:51.020 | Terrible books, "ABC of Childhood Tragedy,"

01:51:53.780 | they're called, dark, dark books,

01:51:57.180 | dark and comical books, terrible books,

01:52:02.340 | heartbreaking illustrations.

01:52:05.260 | We set them to music.

01:52:07.620 | And so we play a piece from that.

01:52:09.420 | And then afterwards, I usually meet about 150 people

01:52:13.580 | to have photographs.

01:52:14.540 | And so each of those is a little-

01:52:17.220 | - Is there a little sparkle of a human connection?

01:52:19.980 | - A lot, a lot.

01:52:22.460 | It's very intense, 10 seconds with every person.

01:52:26.460 | You think, well, how can 10 seconds be intense?

01:52:28.620 | It's like, pay enough attention.

01:52:31.860 | It gets intense real quick.

01:52:33.260 | - Does it break your heart to say goodbye so many times?

01:52:36.900 | - It's like being in a wedding lineup,

01:52:39.220 | at a wedding that you wanna be at,

01:52:41.220 | and everybody's dressed up.

01:52:42.820 | And that's so weird, 'cause I bought these expensive suits

01:52:45.300 | when I went on tour, and it broke my heart

01:52:47.660 | 'cause I spent so much money on them.

01:52:48.940 | I thought, God, that's completely unconscionable.

01:52:51.380 | I thought, no way, man, I'm in this 100%.

01:52:55.460 | And so I'm gonna dress with respect.

01:52:58.820 | And like 60% of the audience comes in

01:53:03.820 | two or three piece suits.

01:53:05.900 | They're all dressed up.

01:53:07.460 | Then there's this line to greet me,

01:53:09.260 | and they're all happy to see me.

01:53:11.220 | That's not so hard to take,

01:53:13.420 | although it is in a sense, right?

01:53:15.060 | Because normal interactions are pretty shallow.

01:53:19.020 | And you think, I don't want shallow interactions.

01:53:21.020 | It's like, yes, you do most of the time.

01:53:23.580 | - It's intense.

01:53:24.500 | - It's very intense.

01:53:25.700 | - And I don't know if you--

01:53:26.540 | - But you've had a taste of this, no doubt,

01:53:28.300 | 'cause people recognize you.

01:53:29.140 | - Yeah, but I also have, when a person recognizes me,

01:53:33.300 | and they come with love, and they're often brilliant people,

01:53:37.380 | one of the thoughts I have to deal with,

01:53:39.860 | one of the dragons in my own mind is,

01:53:42.460 | you know, thinking that I don't deserve

01:53:44.340 | that kind of attention.

01:53:45.900 | And so--

01:53:46.740 | - Well, you probably don't.

01:53:48.220 | - Right, I don't. - But maybe you could.

01:53:50.940 | - It's a burden in that I have to step up

01:53:53.060 | to be the kind of person that deserves that,

01:53:56.260 | not deserves that, but in part deserves

01:53:58.220 | that kind of attention.

01:53:59.100 | And that's like, holy shit.

01:54:01.300 | - It's crucially important too,

01:54:02.580 | because if someone comes up to you in an airport,

01:54:05.220 | and they know who you are,

01:54:06.100 | and they're brave enough to admire you,

01:54:08.980 | or who you are attempting to be,

01:54:11.260 | and you make a mistake, they will never forget it.

01:54:16.260 | - Yeah.

01:54:17.220 | - So it's a high stakes enterprise.

01:54:19.380 | - And the flip side of that, especially with young people,

01:54:23.220 | a few words you can say can change the direction

01:54:25.500 | of their life. - Yeah.

01:54:26.460 | One way or another.

01:54:28.180 | And so I really have to watch this too in airports,

01:54:30.340 | 'cause I do not like airports.

01:54:31.700 | I do not like the creeping totalitarianism in airports.

01:54:34.620 | They've always bothered me.

01:54:35.860 | - Yes.

01:54:36.700 | - They really bother me.

01:54:38.420 | And I'm an unpleasant travel companion for my wife

01:54:40.980 | sometimes because of that.

01:54:42.060 | Although I think we've worked that out, thank God,

01:54:44.140 | 'cause we're doing a lot of traveling.

01:54:46.460 | But most of the security guards and the border personnel,

01:54:50.940 | all those people, they know me.

01:54:52.380 | And as a general rule, they're positively predisposed to me.

01:54:55.700 | And so if I'm peevish or irritable,

01:54:57.780 | then, well, that's not good.

01:55:02.380 | It's not good.

01:55:03.540 | And so that's a tight rope to walk too,

01:55:05.260 | because I do not like that creeping totalitarianism.

01:55:08.580 | But by the same token,

01:55:09.940 | if you're just one of the crowd,

01:55:13.820 | sometimes it's good just to be one of the crowd,

01:55:18.340 | and then you're a little irritable,

01:55:19.540 | and people can just brush that off.

01:55:21.060 | But if you're someone they have dared to open their heart to,

01:55:26.060 | 'cause that's what admiration is,

01:55:28.020 | and then you betray that,

01:55:32.220 | then that's a real, they'll never forget it.

01:55:35.660 | And then they'll tell everyone too.

01:55:38.140 | So it takes a lot of alertness.

01:55:41.140 | And so Tammy and I, our life has got complicated,

01:55:43.380 | 'cause in Toronto, for example,

01:55:45.380 | we can't really just go for a walk.

01:55:48.300 | It's always a high drama production,

01:55:50.780 | 'cause always people come up

01:55:52.500 | and they have some heart-rending story to tell.

01:55:56.020 | And I'm not being cynical about that.

01:55:58.060 | It's a hard thing to bear,

01:56:01.980 | because people don't do that.

01:56:03.740 | They don't just open themselves up to you like that

01:56:05.900 | and share the tragedy of their life.

01:56:07.700 | But that's an everyday occurrence.

01:56:12.620 | And so when we go up to our cottage,

01:56:14.540 | which is out of the city, it's a relief,

01:56:18.140 | because as wonderful as that is,

01:56:22.300 | like it's a weird, I have a weird life,

01:56:23.900 | because everywhere I go, it's very weird.

01:56:26.620 | It's like I'm surrounded by old friends,

01:56:29.140 | 'cause I walk down the street in any city now, virtually,

01:56:32.300 | and people say, "Hello, Dr. Peterson, so nice to see you."

01:56:35.300 | Or they say better things than that.

01:56:36.940 | Very rarely bad things.

01:56:38.740 | One experience in 5,000 maybe, very rare,

01:56:42.740 | although you don't forget those either.

01:56:44.860 | But it's very strange.

01:56:47.500 | - And there's an intimacy, they know you well,

01:56:51.460 | and because they leap into,

01:56:54.540 | they avoid the small talk often.

01:56:57.500 | - They leap into familiarity.

01:56:58.700 | It really is like it's an old friend,

01:57:00.900 | and it feels like that.

01:57:01.860 | For me personally, the experience is the goodbye hurts,

01:57:06.500 | because there's a sense

01:57:09.860 | where you're never gonna see that friend again.

01:57:11.580 | - Right, yeah, that's a strange thing, eh?

01:57:14.380 | - So to me, a lot of it just feels like goodbyes.

01:57:19.380 | - Well, and it is.

01:57:22.540 | You're right about that.

01:57:23.380 | And I mean, that's, I suppose, in some sense,

01:57:26.700 | part of the pain of opening yourself up to people,

01:57:29.500 | because they also, Tammy has been struck particularly.

01:57:33.060 | She said, "I really never knew what men were like."

01:57:35.420 | I said, "Well, what do you mean?"

01:57:36.900 | She said, "I cannot believe how polite the men are

01:57:41.020 | "when they come and talk to you,

01:57:42.580 | "'cause it's always the same.

01:57:43.860 | "The pattern's very similar.

01:57:45.540 | "The person comes up, they're mostly men,

01:57:47.100 | "not always, but mostly.

01:57:49.100 | "And they're tentative, and they're very polite,

01:57:51.620 | "very, very polite."

01:57:53.540 | And they say, "I hope I'm not bothering you.

01:57:55.500 | "Do you mind that I say that they're not bothering me,

01:57:59.100 | "and I'm doing everything I can

01:58:02.140 | "to not be the guy who's bothered by that."

01:58:04.460 | It's like, who do you think you are?

01:58:05.860 | - Yeah, yes.

01:58:07.500 | - You're the guy that, what, is famous,

01:58:10.460 | and now is above that?

01:58:12.140 | - Yeah.

01:58:13.260 | - You don't wanna be that guy.

01:58:15.300 | So you wanna be grateful all the time

01:58:17.780 | when people open up like that.

01:58:20.540 | And so you gotta be alert and on point

01:58:23.260 | to do that properly, like right away,

01:58:25.180 | 'cause for you, it's five seconds,

01:58:27.940 | or 10 seconds, or 20 seconds, whatever it is.

01:58:30.140 | But for them, they've opened up,

01:58:33.980 | and so you can really nail them if you're foolish.

01:58:37.540 | - After the 150 people, how do you come down from that?

01:58:40.660 | How do you find yourself again?

01:58:44.620 | - Well, that was often when I got caught in Twitter traps,

01:58:48.420 | 'cause I'm so burnt out by then

01:58:50.500 | from the talk and the audience interactions,

01:58:55.020 | and the whole day, 'cause it's a new city,

01:58:57.180 | it's a new hotel, it's a new 5,000 people,

01:59:00.820 | it's a new book chapter, it's a whole new horizon of ideas,

01:59:04.220 | and it's off to another city the next day.

01:59:06.740 | I'm so burnt out by then that I'm not as good

01:59:10.740 | at controlling my impulses as I might be,

01:59:13.500 | and Twitter was a real catastrophe for that,

01:59:15.340 | 'cause it would hook me, and then I couldn't,

01:59:17.500 | like I used to, when I was working on my book a lot,

01:59:20.820 | I used to call Tammy, I'd say,

01:59:22.260 | "Look, you have to come and get me, I can't stop.

01:59:25.340 | "I can't stop."

01:59:26.220 | I got tired of it, 'cause it's part

01:59:28.900 | of a kind of hypomanic focus.

01:59:31.660 | I couldn't quit.

01:59:32.740 | It's like, "Oh no, I'm still writing.

01:59:34.580 | "I need to get away from this," but I couldn't stop.

01:59:37.260 | And so it's better to read something, a book.

01:59:42.260 | - Fiction, nonfiction?

01:59:46.100 | - Fiction.

01:59:47.460 | Stephen King, I was reading a lot of Stephen King

01:59:50.300 | when I was on tour last time, that was good.

01:59:52.420 | I like Stephen King a lot.

01:59:53.260 | - So great narratives.

01:59:54.580 | - Great, and great characterization.

01:59:56.460 | And there's a familiarity about Stephen King's writing too,

02:00:02.900 | that he writes about people you know.

02:00:05.340 | And so I really found that a relief.

02:00:08.100 | And so that was useful.

02:00:10.300 | And that in order to tolerate this, let's say,

02:00:12.940 | or to be able to sustain it,

02:00:14.340 | well, that's taken a lot of negotiation

02:00:16.740 | on the part of Tammy and I,

02:00:17.860 | because she's dragged into this,

02:00:20.260 | and her life is part of this, whatever this is.

02:00:25.100 | And she's had to find her way, and has.

02:00:28.420 | For example, now she has a different hotel room

02:00:30.460 | than me when we travel.

02:00:32.380 | And she found that she didn't wanna be on the tour

02:00:35.380 | this spring, and I was ill again for part of it,

02:00:37.940 | and that made it complicated.

02:00:39.060 | But she went away back home, and she came back,

02:00:42.180 | and she said, and she was nervous about it.

02:00:43.420 | She said, "I think I need my own room."

02:00:45.420 | And part of me was not happy with that.

02:00:47.140 | It's like, what do you mean you need your,

02:00:48.540 | like, are we not married anymore?

02:00:50.380 | It's like, you need your own room?

02:00:52.420 | And she said, "Well, you know, I can't."

02:00:54.900 | She has to do exercises because she was really sick,

02:00:57.300 | and she has to keep herself in shape.

02:00:59.900 | And she has to have some time to do that.

02:01:02.220 | She does a lot of prayer and meditation,

02:01:03.820 | and she needs the time, and she has her own podcast,

02:01:05.940 | which is going quite well, and she needs the time.

02:01:08.860 | And I trust her, and she said, "Well, I need this

02:01:11.500 | "in order to continue."

02:01:12.460 | And I thought, well, okay.

02:01:15.180 | If you need this in order to continue, yes.

02:01:19.020 | 'Cause she went away and didn't say,

02:01:20.300 | "Well, I don't want to be on the tour.

02:01:22.460 | "I don't want to do this anymore."

02:01:23.500 | She went away and prayed, let's say.

02:01:25.900 | How can I continue to do this?

02:01:28.740 | And that was the answer.

02:01:30.420 | And so she has her own hotel room.

02:01:32.740 | And that was a really good decision on her part.

02:01:36.100 | And she's very good and getting better all the time

02:01:39.660 | at figuring out what has to happen for her

02:01:43.780 | to make this sustainable.

02:01:45.140 | And all that's been is a plus.

02:01:48.340 | 'Cause I don't want to travel without her,

02:01:50.980 | and I don't want her life to be miserable.

02:01:53.580 | And I want her to be fully on board.

02:01:55.540 | And so she has to be properly selfish,

02:01:58.300 | like everyone does in a relationship.

02:02:00.740 | - Yeah, and you have to, not just that,

02:02:02.940 | this is a weird thing that you're doing,

02:02:05.260 | and you have to, both you and her have to figure out

02:02:08.220 | how to manage this very intense intellectual,

02:02:13.060 | social journey. - Well, there's another element

02:02:14.820 | to it too that I didn't tell you about.

02:02:16.380 | So that was a typical day, but it's missing a big component

02:02:19.500 | because usually we also have a dinner

02:02:22.140 | with like 30 cultural representatives, I suppose,

02:02:26.820 | 10 to 30 from each country.

02:02:28.700 | 'Cause I have a network of people who have networks

02:02:32.100 | who are setting me up with key decision makers

02:02:35.780 | in each country.

02:02:37.140 | And so then we have like an hour and a half of that.

02:02:39.540 | Now, sometimes that's on a day when I don't have a talk,

02:02:42.420 | but sometimes the talks are back to back.

02:02:44.860 | And so she also has to manage that and to be gracious.

02:02:49.700 | And then people are showing us exciting things

02:02:51.700 | and tours in the cities, which is all,

02:02:53.940 | like it's a surf fight of wonderful.

02:02:56.380 | - Yes, exactly.

02:02:57.340 | But it's still, yeah, you have to be there for it.

02:03:00.220 | You have to be present for it mentally

02:03:02.660 | as a curious mind, as an intellectual mind.

02:03:04.980 | How do you get to sleep?

02:03:07.820 | - Fortunately, that is almost never a problem.

02:03:11.820 | Even when I was unbelievably ill for about three years,

02:03:16.820 | I thought about that a lot too.

02:03:19.220 | I didn't do a really good job of explaining that

02:03:21.380 | while I was ill because it appeared in some sense

02:03:24.740 | that the reason I was ill

02:03:25.900 | was because I was taking benzodiazepines.

02:03:28.260 | But that isn't why.

02:03:29.820 | I was ill and then I took them and very low dose.

02:03:33.580 | And I took that for a long time

02:03:35.060 | and it helped whatever was wrong with me.

02:03:37.300 | And it looks like it was an allergy

02:03:39.380 | or maybe multiple allergies.

02:03:42.020 | And then that stopped working.

02:03:44.980 | And so I took a little bit more for about a month

02:03:47.820 | and that made it way worse.

02:03:48.940 | And so then I cut back a lot

02:03:50.860 | and then things really got out of hand.

02:03:54.740 | - So there was a deeper thing in the benzo.

02:03:57.740 | - Oh yeah, definitely.

02:03:58.580 | - Can you put words to-

02:04:00.180 | - Well, I had a lot of immune,

02:04:01.540 | well, my daughter, as everyone knows,

02:04:03.500 | has a very reactive immune system

02:04:06.060 | and Tammy has three immunological conditions.

02:04:09.820 | Each of them quite serious.

02:04:11.460 | And I had psoriasis and peripheral uveitis,

02:04:14.380 | which is an autoimmune condition,

02:04:15.820 | and alopecia areata and chronic gum disease,

02:04:20.420 | all of which appeared to be allergy related.

02:04:23.020 | And so Michaela seems to have got all of that.

02:04:25.700 | And so that, and that I think was at the bottom of,

02:04:28.460 | 'cause I also had this proclivity to depression

02:04:30.580 | that was part of my family history.

02:04:32.860 | But I think that was all immunological

02:04:34.740 | as far as I can tell.

02:04:35.580 | So one of the things that's happened to me,

02:04:37.820 | I always noticed I really couldn't breathe.

02:04:40.500 | Like I could breathe about one fifth

02:04:42.260 | as much as I sometimes could.

02:04:45.160 | And so I was always short of breath

02:04:48.460 | and it looks like what that was perhaps was

02:04:53.100 | I was always on the border of an anaphylactic reaction,

02:04:56.420 | which is not pleasant.

02:04:57.660 | And that's hyper sympathetic activation,

02:05:01.180 | no parasympathetic activation.

02:05:03.180 | I couldn't relax at all.

02:05:05.420 | - That's an immunological response.

02:05:07.420 | - Allergic response, yeah.

02:05:08.900 | So anyways, that was what seemed,

02:05:11.660 | now I don't like to talk about this much

02:05:14.500 | 'cause it's so bloody radical

02:05:15.780 | and I don't like to propagate it,

02:05:17.300 | but this diet seems to have stopped all of that.

02:05:19.660 | I don't have psoriasis, all of the patches have gone.

02:05:22.660 | My gum disease, which is incurable,

02:05:25.500 | I had multiple surgeries to deal with it,

02:05:27.260 | is completely gone, took three years.

02:05:30.380 | My right eye, which was quite cloudy,

02:05:32.260 | it's cleared up completely.

02:05:33.620 | What else has changed?

02:05:36.940 | Well, I lost 50 pounds and like instantly,

02:05:40.220 | and kept it off.

02:05:41.260 | - I should mention that I too am not a deep investigator

02:05:45.940 | of nutritional science.

02:05:47.740 | I have my skepticism towards the degree

02:05:49.660 | to which it is currently a science

02:05:51.620 | 'cause like a lot of complex systems,

02:05:53.340 | it's full of mystery and full of profiteers,

02:05:57.980 | the people that profit of different kinds of diets.

02:06:00.100 | But I should say for me personally,

02:06:02.340 | it does seem that I feel by far the best

02:06:05.140 | when I eat only meat.

02:06:06.380 | It's very interesting.

02:06:07.260 | And I discovered that a long time ago.

02:06:10.020 | First of all--

02:06:10.860 | - How do you discover it?

02:06:12.220 | - So by, the discovery went like this.

02:06:15.540 | I started listening to ultra marathon runners

02:06:17.940 | about 15 years ago,

02:06:20.380 | and they started talking about fat adapted running.

02:06:25.380 | So I first discovered that I don't have to run super fast

02:06:31.100 | to enjoy running.

02:06:32.420 | And in fact, I really enjoy running at a slower pace.

02:06:36.380 | So that was like step one.

02:06:37.500 | It's like, oh, okay, if I maintain,

02:06:39.620 | this is something called the math rule,

02:06:42.780 | which is pretty low heart rate.

02:06:45.020 | If I maintain that, you can actually get pretty fast

02:06:47.780 | while maintaining a pretty slow average speed in general.

02:06:50.700 | Anyway, they fuel themselves on low carb diets.

02:06:55.700 | So I got into that.

02:06:57.300 | On top of that, they also fast often.

02:07:00.620 | So I discovered how incredible my mind feels

02:07:04.740 | when fasted.

02:07:05.860 | People call it intimated fasting, but--

02:07:08.180 | - Well, that's an optimization of death, eh?

02:07:10.380 | Because when you fast, your body logically,

02:07:15.300 | and obviously, if you think about it biologically,

02:07:17.860 | is, well, what does your body scavenge first?

02:07:20.860 | Well, damaged tissue.

02:07:22.980 | So I know the literature on fasting to some degree,

02:07:28.540 | and it's very compelling literature.

02:07:30.620 | If you starve dogs down,

02:07:32.660 | I think it's 20% below rats too,

02:07:35.020 | below their optimal body weight, they live 30% longer.

02:07:38.100 | - Yeah.

02:07:38.980 | - That's a lot, 30%.

02:07:40.700 | It's like 30%, yeah, 30%.

02:07:43.820 | - Well, there is aspect to a lot of these things

02:07:46.340 | that make me nervous, 'cause I always feel like

02:07:48.700 | there's no free lunch that I'm gonna pay for it somehow.

02:07:51.500 | But there is a focus that I am able to attain when I fast,

02:07:55.940 | especially when I eat once a day.

02:07:57.860 | My mind is almost nervously focused.

02:08:01.340 | It's almost like an anxiety, but a positive one,

02:08:04.100 | or one that I can channel into just like an excitement.

02:08:07.180 | - You know, I wonder how much of that's associated with,

02:08:10.460 | well, imagine that that signifies lack of food,

02:08:13.940 | which is not that hard to imagine.

02:08:15.940 | Well, maybe you should be a lot more alert

02:08:17.860 | in that situation, right?

02:08:19.260 | Biologically speaking, because you're in hunting mode,

02:08:22.740 | let's say, you know, not desperate, but in hunting mode.

02:08:26.540 | And God only knows, maybe human beings

02:08:29.420 | should be in hunting mode all the time.

02:08:31.140 | - Often, but we don't know that.

02:08:32.820 | So I wonder if it has a stress on the system

02:08:37.500 | that long-term causes the system to get--

02:08:39.940 | - It doesn't look like it.

02:08:41.260 | - It seems, in case of fasting, not.

02:08:43.660 | And then on top of that, I discovered that

02:08:46.380 | the thing I enjoy, I just don't enjoy eating fat as much.

02:08:51.380 | So I love eating meat, when you talk about low-carb diet.

02:08:55.620 | So I just discovered through that process,

02:08:57.980 | if somewhat fatty meat, but just meat,

02:09:00.860 | I just feel a lot of the things

02:09:03.900 | that make me feel weird about food,

02:09:05.500 | like a little groggy or like full or just whatever,

02:09:10.500 | the aspects of food that I don't enjoy,

02:09:14.060 | they're not there with meat.

02:09:15.740 | And I'm still able to enjoy company.

02:09:18.300 | And when I eat once a day and eat meat,

02:09:22.300 | I say, at least in Texas,

02:09:24.420 | you could still have all the merriment of,

02:09:27.180 | you have dinner with friends.

02:09:28.780 | Now, I don't do the, you have a very serious thing

02:09:33.460 | that there's health benefits

02:09:37.140 | that you are very serious about.

02:09:39.420 | For me, I could still drink whiskey.

02:09:41.500 | I'll still do the things that add a little bit of--

02:09:45.340 | - Spice.

02:09:46.180 | - Spice into the thing.

02:09:47.580 | Now, when you completely remove the spice,

02:09:49.660 | it does become more difficult.

02:09:52.260 | - Yeah, it's more difficult socially.

02:09:53.740 | And Tammy seems to only be able to eat lamb,

02:09:56.500 | although she might be able to eat non-aged beef.

02:09:58.860 | And that makes traveling complicated too, right?

02:10:02.220 | Because, well, for obvious reasons,

02:10:04.620 | it's like, really, that's all you can eat?

02:10:06.720 | Yeah, well, c'est la vie.

02:10:09.740 | And maybe that's a form of craziness, but--

02:10:12.300 | - If we could return to actually the thing

02:10:13.940 | you were talking about,

02:10:15.540 | when you were thinking about a question before the lecture.

02:10:17.940 | - Yeah.

02:10:18.780 | - Let me ask you about thinking in general.

02:10:20.660 | This is something maybe that you and Jim Keller

02:10:25.500 | think a lot about, is thinking how to think.

02:10:27.800 | How do you think through an idea?

02:10:32.940 | - Well, first of all, I think, okay,

02:10:35.540 | that's a really good question.

02:10:38.100 | We tried to work that out with this essay app

02:10:40.140 | that my son and I have developed,

02:10:41.500 | because if you're gonna write,

02:10:42.740 | the first question is, well, what should I write about?

02:10:45.100 | - What's the name of the app?

02:10:46.100 | - Essay.app.

02:10:47.380 | And, well, the first question is,

02:10:51.300 | well, what bugs you?

02:10:53.580 | What's bugging you?

02:10:54.860 | This is such a cool thing.

02:10:56.040 | It's like, where's my destiny?

02:10:57.820 | Well, what bothers you?

02:11:00.820 | Well, that's where your destiny is.

02:11:02.220 | Your destiny is to be found in what bothers you.

02:11:04.900 | Why did those things bother you?

02:11:07.380 | There's a lot of things you could be bothered by,

02:11:09.700 | like a million things, man.

02:11:11.480 | But some things grip you.

02:11:13.580 | They bug you, and they might make you resentful and bitter,

02:11:16.740 | 'cause they bug you so much.

02:11:17.940 | Like, they're your things, man.

02:11:20.060 | They've got you.

02:11:21.540 | So then I look for a question

02:11:23.740 | that I would like the answer to,

02:11:25.980 | that I don't, and I would really like the answer to it,

02:11:29.740 | so I don't assume I already have the answer,

02:11:32.380 | 'cause I would actually really like to have the answer.

02:11:35.340 | So if I could get a better answer, great.

02:11:39.220 | And so that's the first thing.

02:11:40.220 | And that's like a prayer.

02:11:41.660 | It's like, okay, here's a mystery.

02:11:45.300 | I would like to delve into it further.

02:11:49.740 | Well, so that's humility.

02:11:51.060 | It's like, here's a mystery,

02:11:52.620 | which means I don't know.

02:11:54.140 | I would like to delve into it further,

02:11:55.940 | which means I don't know enough already.

02:11:58.140 | And then comes the revelation.

02:12:01.900 | It's like, well, what's a revelation?

02:12:04.380 | Well, if you ask yourself a question,

02:12:07.140 | it's a real question, do you get an answer or not?

02:12:10.420 | And the answer is, well, yeah,

02:12:11.700 | thoughts start to appear in your head.

02:12:14.060 | So-- - From somewhere.

02:12:15.260 | - That's right, from somewhere.

02:12:16.580 | - Where do they come from?

02:12:17.820 | Do you have a sense?

02:12:19.340 | - Depends on what you're aiming at.

02:12:21.660 | - Depends on the question.

02:12:23.260 | - No, it does to some degree.

02:12:26.300 | It depends on your intent.

02:12:29.060 | So imagine that your intent is to make things better.

02:12:32.540 | Then maybe they come from the place

02:12:35.380 | that's designed to make things better.

02:12:37.340 | Maybe your intent is to make things worse.

02:12:39.860 | Then they come from hell.

02:12:41.380 | And you think, not really.

02:12:43.460 | It's like, you're so sure about that, are you?

02:12:45.940 | - Is your intent conscious?

02:12:47.420 | Like, are you able to introspect with intent?

02:12:49.500 | - It's conscious and habitual, right?

02:12:51.740 | 'Cause as you practice something consciously,

02:12:54.060 | it becomes habitual, but it's conscious.

02:12:56.180 | It's like, when I sit down before I do a lecture,

02:12:59.580 | I think, okay, what's the goal here?

02:13:01.660 | To do the best job I can.

02:13:04.140 | To what end?

02:13:05.060 | Well, people are coming here not for political issues.

02:13:08.540 | They're coming here because they're trying

02:13:09.740 | to make their lives better.

02:13:11.780 | Okay, so what are we doing?

02:13:13.020 | We're conducting a joint investigation

02:13:14.940 | into the nature of that which makes life better.

02:13:17.500 | Okay, what's my role?

02:13:18.740 | To do as good a job about that as possible.

02:13:21.780 | What state of mind do I have to be in?

02:13:23.620 | Am I annoyed about the theater?

02:13:25.980 | Or am I clued in and thrilled that 4,000 people

02:13:30.260 | have showed up at substantial expense and trouble

02:13:33.620 | to come and listen to me talk?

02:13:35.420 | And if I'm not in that state of mind, I think,

02:13:37.260 | well, maybe I need something to eat,

02:13:38.380 | or maybe I need to talk to someone.

02:13:39.900 | Because ingratitude is no place to start.

02:13:44.460 | It's like, I should be thrilled to be there, obviously.

02:13:48.180 | And so that orientation has to be there.

02:13:50.300 | And then I, is it conscious?

02:13:51.500 | All this is conscious.

02:13:52.740 | What am I serving?

02:13:53.860 | The highest good I can conceptualize.

02:13:55.820 | What is that?

02:13:56.920 | I have some sense, but I don't know it

02:13:58.740 | in the final analysis, which is why the investigation

02:14:01.580 | is being conducted.

02:14:02.620 | Who's doing it?

02:14:03.700 | Me, whoever I'm communing with, and the audience.

02:14:07.860 | And so I try to get myself,

02:14:10.060 | and I chase everybody away for that.

02:14:11.540 | It's like, I have to do that by myself.

02:14:13.540 | - Are you writing stuff down?

02:14:15.820 | - Yes, at that point.

02:14:17.100 | I just make point notes.

02:14:19.300 | And it's usually about maybe 30 notes.

02:14:21.980 | But then on stage, I never refer to them.

02:14:24.200 | And I often don't even use the structure that I laid out.

02:14:27.740 | - Kind of an interesting thing.

02:14:29.300 | From where do powerful phrases come from?

02:14:31.580 | Do you try to encapsulate an idea into a sentence or two?

02:14:38.420 | - Well, when I talk, and I've practiced this

02:14:42.060 | since, consciously, since 1985,

02:14:46.600 | I try to feel and see if the words are stepping stones

02:14:51.600 | or foundation stones, right?

02:14:53.860 | It's like, is this solid?

02:14:55.220 | Is this word solid?

02:14:56.480 | Is this phrase solid?

02:14:57.840 | Is this sentence solid?

02:14:59.620 | It's a real sense of fundamental foundation

02:15:04.160 | under each word.

02:15:05.080 | And I suppose people ask me if I pray,

02:15:08.220 | and I would say, I pray before every word.

02:15:11.100 | Well, when you're asking questions,

02:15:16.280 | like you're very clear-headed and present

02:15:21.220 | in your ability to ask questions and inquire.

02:15:25.520 | So how do you do that?

02:15:27.320 | - So first of all,

02:15:29.180 | I'm worried that my mind easily gets trapped

02:15:36.780 | when I step on a word and I know it's unstable.

02:15:41.840 | You kind of realize that you don't really know

02:15:45.340 | the definitions of any words you use,

02:15:47.860 | and that can be debilitating.

02:15:51.460 | So I kind of try to be more carefree about the words I use.

02:15:56.580 | Because otherwise you get trapped.

02:15:59.140 | - You don't want to be obsessional.

02:16:00.880 | - Like literally, my mind halfway through the sentence

02:16:04.860 | will think, well, what does the word sentence mean?

02:16:08.620 | - Right, right, right.

02:16:09.620 | Well, you know, neurologically--

02:16:10.460 | - And then everything else just explodes.

02:16:12.580 | Your big picture idea explodes

02:16:14.660 | and you lost yourself in the minutia.

02:16:17.380 | - Well, neurologically, there's a production center

02:16:21.860 | and an editing center,

02:16:23.820 | and those can be separately affected by strokes.

02:16:27.180 | And so often when people are writing or talking,

02:16:30.380 | they try to activate both at the same time.

02:16:33.100 | And that's so people will try to write an essay

02:16:35.700 | and get every sentence right in the first draft.

02:16:37.500 | That's a big mistake.

02:16:38.940 | And so then you might say,

02:16:39.860 | well, how can you be careful with your words, but carefree?

02:16:42.780 | And the answer is orient yourself properly, right?

02:16:46.180 | While in the conversation we're having,

02:16:48.240 | you have an orientation structure.

02:16:50.020 | You want to be prepared, you want to be attentive.

02:16:53.860 | Then you want to have an interesting conversation,

02:16:56.300 | and you want to have the kind of interesting conversation

02:16:58.380 | that other people want to listen to

02:17:01.520 | that will be good for them in some manner.

02:17:04.460 | Okay, so that's pretty good frame.

02:17:06.300 | And then you kind of scour your heart and you think,

02:17:09.660 | is that really what you want?

02:17:10.820 | Are you after fame or after notoriety?

02:17:12.860 | Are you after money?

02:17:14.220 | I'm not saying any of those things are necessarily bad,

02:17:17.780 | but they're not optimal,

02:17:20.060 | especially if you're not willing to admit them, right?

02:17:22.820 | And so they can contaminate you.

02:17:24.660 | So you want to be decontaminated.

02:17:26.800 | So you have the right trip, let's say.

02:17:29.500 | And so you have to put yourself,

02:17:31.920 | that's a meditative practice.

02:17:33.100 | You have to put yourself in the right receptive position

02:17:36.620 | with the right goal in mind.

02:17:38.140 | Then you can, and I think you can get better and better

02:17:43.060 | at this, then you can trust what's going to happen.

02:17:47.340 | You know, so for example, before I came here,

02:17:49.660 | I mean, I presume you have a reason

02:17:52.800 | for doing the podcast with me.

02:17:55.820 | What's the reason?

02:17:56.860 | - I mean, we wanted to talk for a long time.

02:18:03.060 | So the reason has evolved.

02:18:05.900 | The, one of the reasons is I've listened to you

02:18:10.900 | for quite a long time.

02:18:13.220 | So you've become a one-way friend

02:18:15.540 | and I have many one-way friends.

02:18:17.660 | Some of my best friends don't even know I exist.

02:18:20.220 | So I'm a big fan of podcasts and audio books.

02:18:24.020 | Actually, most of my friends are dead.

02:18:26.080 | - Yeah, right.

02:18:26.920 | - The writers--

02:18:28.880 | - The definition of a reader.

02:18:30.180 | - Yeah.

02:18:31.020 | - I've worked with a lot of dead, great dead friends.

02:18:34.380 | So I wanted to meet this one-way friend, I suppose,

02:18:37.460 | and have a conversation.

02:18:39.660 | And then there's this kind of puzzle

02:18:42.420 | that I've been longing to solve,

02:18:44.020 | the same reason I went to Ukraine,

02:18:46.460 | of asking this question of myself, who am I?

02:18:50.500 | And what was this part of the world?

02:18:52.980 | What is this thing that happened in the 20th century?

02:18:56.280 | That I lost so much of my family there

02:18:59.420 | and I feel so much of my family's defined by that place.

02:19:03.540 | Now that place includes the Soviet Union,

02:19:06.860 | it includes Russia and Ukraine,

02:19:09.620 | it includes Nazi Germany,

02:19:11.100 | includes these big, powerful leaders

02:19:14.580 | and huge millions of people that were lost in the beauty,

02:19:19.580 | the power of the dream,

02:19:22.060 | but were also the torture that was forced onto them

02:19:27.060 | through different governmental institutions.

02:19:33.500 | And you are somebody that seemed from some angle

02:19:37.300 | to also be drawn to try to understand what was that.

02:19:41.980 | And not in some sort of historical sense,

02:19:44.660 | but in a deeply psychological human sense.

02:19:47.320 | What is that?

02:19:48.160 | Will it repeat again?

02:19:49.700 | In what way is it repeating again?

02:19:51.700 | - And how can we stop it?

02:19:53.100 | - And how can we stop it?

02:19:54.100 | And so--

02:19:54.920 | - That's the crucial issue.

02:19:55.760 | - I felt I wanted to, from a very different backgrounds,

02:20:01.940 | pull at the thread of that curiosity.

02:20:04.180 | You know, I'm an engineer, you're a psychologist,

02:20:08.560 | both lost in that curiosity and both wear suits.

02:20:12.720 | (laughs)

02:20:14.000 | And talk with various levels of eloquence

02:20:17.000 | about sort of the shadows that that history casts on us.

02:20:23.680 | And so that was one.

02:20:30.340 | And also the psychology.

02:20:31.580 | I wanted to be a psychiatrist for a long time.

02:20:33.820 | I was fascinated by the human mind.

02:20:37.700 | Until I discovered artificial intelligence,

02:20:41.060 | the fact that I could program and make a robot move,

02:20:44.180 | and until I discovered that magic,

02:20:47.660 | I thought I wanted to understand the human mind

02:20:50.020 | by being a psychiatrist, by talking to people,

02:20:52.180 | through talk therapy, psychotherapy.

02:20:55.020 | - So now you've got the best of both worlds

02:20:56.700 | because you get to talk to people

02:20:58.080 | and you get to build robots.

02:20:59.740 | - Yeah, I mean, but the dream ultimately is the robot.

02:21:03.540 | That I felt like by building the thing,

02:21:05.820 | can you start to try to understand it.

02:21:08.340 | That's one way.

02:21:09.420 | I mean, we all have different skills and proclivities.

02:21:12.540 | So like my particular one has to do with,

02:21:17.540 | I learn by building.

02:21:21.820 | I think through a thing by building it.

02:21:25.540 | And programming is a wonderful thing

02:21:27.620 | because it allows you to build a little toy example.

02:21:30.660 | So in the same way you can do a little thought experiment,

02:21:33.820 | programming allows you to create a thought experiment

02:21:35.780 | in action, it can move, it can live,

02:21:37.660 | and then you can ask questions of it.

02:21:40.260 | So all of those, because of my interest in Freud and Jung,

02:21:45.020 | you're also in different ways have delved deeply

02:21:51.860 | into humanity, the human psyche,

02:21:56.700 | through the perspective of those psychologists.

02:22:00.300 | So for all those reasons, I thought our paths would cross.

02:22:04.380 | - Yeah, so that's quite a frame for a discussion, right?

02:22:07.500 | You had all sorts of reasons and then you think,

02:22:09.860 | well, are you just letting the conversation go where it will?

02:22:13.180 | It's like, well, not exactly.

02:22:15.460 | You spent all this time.

02:22:17.820 | It's not like this came about by accident,

02:22:19.820 | this conversation, you spent all this time framing it.

02:22:23.020 | And so all of that provides the implicit substructure

02:22:26.780 | for the play in the conversation.

02:22:28.580 | And if you have that implicit, here's another way,

02:22:31.460 | this is very much worth knowing is,

02:22:34.260 | if you get the implicit structure of perception right,

02:22:36.900 | everything becomes a game.

02:22:39.100 | And not only that, a game you wanna play.

02:22:42.260 | And maybe in the final analysis,

02:22:44.060 | a game you'd wanna play forever.

02:22:45.820 | So, you know, that's obviously a distant beckoning ideal,

02:22:52.180 | but we know games need rules or there's no play.

02:22:57.180 | - Is there advice you can give now that we know the frame

02:23:03.140 | to give to me, Lex, about how to do this podcast better,

02:23:08.140 | how to think about this world, how to be a good engineer,

02:23:20.960 | how to be a good human being from what you know about me?

02:23:25.520 | - Take your preoccupation with suffering seriously.

02:23:28.200 | It's a serious business, right?

02:23:33.760 | And that's part of that, to circle back to the beginning,

02:23:36.600 | let's say, that's that willingness to gaze into the abyss,

02:23:40.080 | which is obviously what you were doing

02:23:41.540 | when you went to Ukraine.

02:23:43.440 | It's like, it's gazing into the abyss that makes you better.

02:23:48.440 | The thing is, and this is maybe where Nietzsche's idea

02:23:51.720 | is not as differentiated as it became.

02:23:55.100 | Sometimes your gaze can be forcefully directed

02:24:00.840 | towards the abyss, and then you're traumatized.

02:24:04.920 | If it's involuntary and accidental, it can kill you.

02:24:08.140 | The more it's voluntary, the more transformative it is.

02:24:14.100 | And that's part of that idea about facing death and hell.

02:24:18.200 | It's like, can you tolerate death and hell?

02:24:21.280 | And the answer is, this terrible answer is yes,

02:24:26.280 | to the degree that you're willing to do it voluntarily.

02:24:31.580 | And then you might ask, well, why should I have

02:24:34.200 | to subject myself to death and hell?

02:24:37.360 | I'm innocent.

02:24:38.960 | And then the answer to that is,

02:24:40.800 | even the innocent must be voluntarily sacrificed

02:24:47.920 | to the highest good.

02:24:48.920 | - That's such an interesting distinction.

02:24:56.400 | Voluntary suffering.

02:24:59.800 | - Voluntary, yeah.

02:25:00.960 | Well, that's why the central Christian doctrine is,

02:25:04.880 | pick up your cross and follow me.

02:25:06.960 | And I'm speaking, not in religious terms, saying that.

02:25:11.740 | I'm just speaking as a psychologist.

02:25:13.560 | It's like, one of the things we've learned

02:25:15.360 | in the last hundred years is, voluntary exposure

02:25:18.800 | to that which freezes and terrifies you

02:25:22.120 | in measured proportions is curative.

02:25:25.260 | - So a form of, at least in part,

02:25:30.240 | involuntary suffering is depression.

02:25:32.460 | Do you have advice for people on how to find a way out?

02:25:38.900 | You're a man who has suffered in this way,

02:25:43.480 | perhaps continue to suffer in this way.

02:25:46.160 | How do you find a way out?

02:25:47.680 | - The first thing I do as a clinician,

02:25:53.640 | if someone comes to me and says they're depressed,

02:25:55.720 | is ask myself a question.

02:25:57.360 | Well, what does this person mean by that?

02:26:00.480 | So I have to find out, like,

02:26:02.360 | because maybe they're not depressed,

02:26:03.640 | maybe they're hyper-anxious, or maybe they're obsessional.

02:26:06.840 | Like, there's various forms of powerful negative emotion.

02:26:10.400 | So they need to be differentiated.

02:26:12.360 | But then the next question you have to ask is,

02:26:14.120 | well, are you depressed, or do you have a terrible life,

02:26:19.120 | or is it some combination of the two?

02:26:21.820 | So if you're depressed, as far as I can tell,

02:26:26.160 | you don't have a terrible life.

02:26:27.720 | You have friends, you have family,

02:26:30.840 | you have an intimate relationship,

02:26:32.160 | you have a job or a career,

02:26:33.640 | you're about as educated as you should be,

02:26:35.380 | given your intelligence,

02:26:36.820 | you use your time outside of work wisely,

02:26:39.220 | you're not beholden to alcohol or other temptations,

02:26:42.620 | you're engaged in the community in some fundamental sense,

02:26:47.600 | and all that's working.

02:26:49.440 | Now, if you have all that, and you're feeling really awful,

02:26:52.560 | you're either ill or you're depressed.

02:26:54.920 | And so then sometimes there's a biochemical route to that,

02:26:58.320 | treatment of that.

02:26:59.240 | My experience has been as a clinician,

02:27:01.120 | is if you're depressed, but you have a life,

02:27:03.760 | and you take an antidepressant,

02:27:05.640 | it will probably help you a lot.

02:27:08.100 | Now, maybe you're not depressed, exactly.

02:27:11.560 | You just have a terrible life.

02:27:13.560 | What does that look like?

02:27:14.840 | You have no relationship, your family's a mess,

02:27:20.080 | you've got no friends, you've got no plan, you've got no job,

02:27:24.440 | you use your time outside of work,

02:27:26.100 | not only badly, but destructively,

02:27:28.240 | you have a drug or alcohol habit,

02:27:30.520 | or some other vice, pornography addiction,

02:27:33.520 | you are completely unengaged in the surrounding community,

02:27:37.320 | you have no scaffolding whatsoever to support you

02:27:41.300 | in your current mode of being, or your move forward.

02:27:44.460 | And then, as a therapist, well, you do two things.

02:27:48.700 | Well, if it's depression, per se, well, like I said,

02:27:51.820 | there's sometimes a biochemical route, a nutritional route,

02:27:55.180 | there's ways that can be addressed,

02:27:56.760 | it's probably physiological, if you're, at least in part,

02:27:59.660 | if you're depressed, but you have an okay life,

02:28:01.900 | sometimes it's conceptual.

02:28:03.900 | You can turn to dreams, sometimes to help people,

02:28:06.580 | 'cause dreams contain the seeds of the potential future,

02:28:09.780 | and if your person is a real good dreamer,

02:28:12.140 | and you can analyze dreams, that can be really helpful,

02:28:14.540 | but that seems to be only true for more creative people.

02:28:17.460 | And for the people who just have a terrible life,

02:28:19.460 | it's like, okay, you have a terrible life,

02:28:22.780 | well, let's pick a front.

02:28:26.820 | How about you need a friend, like one sort of friend?

02:28:31.820 | Do you know how to shake hands and introduce yourself?

02:28:36.340 | I'll have the person show me, so let's do it for a sec.

02:28:40.420 | So, it's like this, hi, I'm Jordan, right?

02:28:45.060 | And people don't know how to do that,

02:28:46.800 | and then they can't even get the ball rolling.

02:28:49.100 | - For the listener, Jordan just gave me a firm handshake.

02:28:51.340 | - Yeah, as opposed to a dead fish, you know?

02:28:54.380 | And there's these elementary social skills

02:28:56.940 | that hypothetically, if you were well cared for,

02:28:59.780 | you learned when you were like three,

02:29:02.060 | and sometimes people have, I had lots of clients,

02:29:05.940 | to whom no one ever paid any attention.

02:29:09.900 | And they needed like 10,000 hours of attention.

02:29:12.700 | And some of that was just listening,

02:29:13.980 | 'cause they had 10,000 hours of conversations

02:29:17.580 | they never had with anyone,

02:29:19.220 | and they were all tangled up in their head.

02:29:21.620 | And they had to just, one client in particular,

02:29:24.900 | I worked with this person for 15 years,

02:29:28.500 | and what she wanted from me was for me

02:29:33.740 | just to shut the hell up for 50 minutes,

02:29:36.420 | which was very hard for me,

02:29:38.020 | and to just tell me what had happened to her.

02:29:42.020 | And then what happened at the end of the conversation,

02:29:44.980 | then I could discuss a bit with her.

02:29:48.100 | And then as we progressed through the years,

02:29:50.300 | the amount of time that we spent in discussion

02:29:52.580 | increased in proportion in the sessions,

02:29:55.220 | until by the time we stopped seeing each other,

02:29:58.780 | when my clinical practice collapsed,

02:30:02.580 | we were talking about 80% of the time.

02:30:06.380 | But she literally,

02:30:07.500 | she'd never been attended to properly, ever.

02:30:09.980 | And so she was an uncarved block in the Taoist sense, right?

02:30:13.620 | She hadn't been subjected to those flaming swords

02:30:16.380 | that separated the wheat from the chaff.

02:30:19.420 | And so you can do that in therapy.

02:30:22.740 | If you're listening and you're depressed,

02:30:25.460 | I would say, if you can't find a therapist,

02:30:28.380 | and that's getting harder and harder,

02:30:29.860 | 'cause it's actually become illegal to be a therapist now,

02:30:32.260 | 'cause you have to agree with your clients,

02:30:34.540 | which is a terrible thing to do with them.

02:30:37.420 | Just like it's terrible just to arbitrarily oppose them.

02:30:40.700 | You could do the self-authoring program online,

02:30:44.060 | 'cause it helps you write an autobiography.

02:30:46.580 | And so if you have memories that are more than 18 months old

02:30:49.460 | that bother you when you think them up,

02:30:51.580 | part of you is locked inside that.

02:30:54.340 | An undeveloped part of you is still trapped in that.

02:30:59.340 | That's a metaphorical way of thinking about it.

02:31:01.620 | And that's why it still has emotional significance.

02:31:04.140 | So you can write about your past experiences,

02:31:06.780 | but I would say wait for at least 18 months

02:31:08.780 | if something bad has happened to you,

02:31:10.460 | 'cause otherwise you just hurt yourself again

02:31:12.100 | by encountering it.

02:31:13.180 | You can bring yourself up to date with an autobiography.

02:31:16.740 | There's an analysis of faults and virtues,

02:31:18.940 | that's the present authoring.

02:31:20.060 | And then there's a guided writing exercise

02:31:23.700 | that helps you make a future plan.

02:31:25.980 | That's, young men who do that could go to college.

02:31:30.460 | Young men who do that, 90 minutes,

02:31:32.460 | just the future authoring, 90 minutes.

02:31:34.460 | They're 50% less likely to drop out.

02:31:37.260 | That's all it takes.

02:31:38.900 | - So sometimes depression is this heavy cloud

02:31:43.580 | that makes it hard to even make a single step towards it.

02:31:46.340 | Or you said isolate, make a friend.

02:31:48.860 | - Oh man, sometimes-

02:31:49.700 | - The first step is extremely difficult.

02:31:52.060 | - Oh my God, sometimes it's way worse than that.

02:31:54.940 | Like I had clients who were so depressed,

02:31:57.100 | they literally couldn't get out of bed.

02:31:59.940 | So what's their first step?

02:32:01.180 | It's like, can you sit up once today?

02:32:05.940 | No, can you prop yourself up on your elbows once today?

02:32:10.620 | Like you just, you scale back the dragon

02:32:13.260 | till you find one that's conquerable,

02:32:16.980 | that moves you forward.

02:32:18.140 | There's a rubric for life.

02:32:19.900 | Scale back the dragons till you find one conquerable.

02:32:23.180 | And it'll give you a little bit of gold.

02:32:25.900 | Commensurate with the struggle.

02:32:27.300 | But the plus side of that,

02:32:29.140 | 'cause that's, you think that, God, that's depressing.

02:32:31.060 | You mean I have to start by sitting up?

02:32:35.420 | Well, you do if you can't sit up.

02:32:37.740 | But the plus side of that is,

02:32:39.340 | it's the Pareto distribution issue,

02:32:40.980 | is that aggregates exponentially increase.

02:32:45.860 | And failures do too, by the way.

02:32:47.980 | But aggregates exponentially increase.

02:32:50.140 | So once you start the ball rolling,

02:32:51.580 | it can get zipping along pretty good.

02:32:53.380 | This person that I talked about

02:32:56.660 | was incapable of sitting with me in a cafe

02:33:00.460 | when we first met, just talking,

02:33:02.100 | even though I was her therapist.

02:33:04.180 | But by the end, she was doing stand-up comedy.

02:33:07.420 | So, you know, it took years.

02:33:10.900 | But still, most people won't do stand-up comedy.

02:33:14.020 | That's quite the bloody achievement.

02:33:15.940 | She would read her poetry on stage too.

02:33:19.260 | So for someone who was petrified into paralysis

02:33:23.860 | by social anxiety, and who had to start very small,

02:33:28.860 | it was a hell of an accomplishment.

02:33:31.620 | - Yeah, it all starts with one step.

02:33:33.940 | Do you have advice for young people in high school?

02:33:38.220 | You're given, a lot of people look up to you for advice,

02:33:41.340 | for strength, for strength to search for themselves,

02:33:46.340 | to find themselves.

02:33:47.980 | - Take on some responsibility.

02:33:49.660 | Do something for other people.

02:33:53.260 | You're doing something for yourself

02:33:54.700 | while you're doing that, even if you don't know it,

02:33:57.260 | for sure, 'cause you're a community across time.

02:34:00.220 | Find something to serve.

02:34:02.580 | - Somebody to help, a problem to solve.

02:34:04.900 | - A job, find a job, do your best with the customers.

02:34:08.940 | Don't be above your job.

02:34:10.220 | You're gonna get an entry-level job when you're a kid.

02:34:12.780 | Well, what else would you want?

02:34:14.700 | You wanna be the boss?

02:34:15.540 | What do you know?

02:34:16.380 | You don't know anything.

02:34:17.780 | You could be the boss of your job.

02:34:20.260 | You know, if you're working in a grocery store,

02:34:22.180 | you're working in a convenience store,

02:34:23.340 | assuming you're not working for terrified tyrants,

02:34:26.620 | you can be nice to the customers.

02:34:28.700 | You can develop your social skills.

02:34:30.940 | You can learn how to handle boss-employee relationship.

02:34:34.140 | You can be there 15 minutes early and leave 15 minutes late.

02:34:37.780 | Like you can learn in an entry-level job, man.

02:34:40.380 | And I'll tell you, if you take an entry-level job

02:34:42.900 | and you learn, and it's a reasonably decent place,

02:34:45.860 | you will not be in an entry-level job for long.

02:34:48.460 | Because everyone who's competent

02:34:50.100 | is desperate for competent people.

02:34:52.140 | And if you go and show yourself as competent,

02:34:54.140 | there'll be a trial period.

02:34:55.140 | But if you go show yourself as competent,

02:34:57.140 | all sorts of doors you didn't even know were there

02:34:59.260 | will start opening like mad.

02:35:01.060 | - So you strive for competence, for craftsmanship.

02:35:04.420 | - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

02:35:05.900 | For discipline, you know, I mean,

02:35:08.940 | I said in one of the chapters of my books

02:35:11.420 | is focused on putting your house in order.

02:35:14.140 | It's like, well, how do you start?

02:35:15.740 | Make your bed.

02:35:16.660 | You know, it actually took me quite a long time in my life

02:35:21.500 | before I made my bed regularly in the morning.

02:35:23.540 | Most of my life was in pretty good order,

02:35:25.340 | but that was one thing I didn't have in order.

02:35:27.660 | My clothes in my closet as well, all that's in order.

02:35:31.020 | Not all of it.

02:35:31.860 | I'm cleaning out some drawers right now,

02:35:33.260 | but look around and see what bugs you in your room.

02:35:37.940 | Just look.

02:35:39.180 | It's like, okay, I'm in my room.

02:35:40.900 | Do I like this room?

02:35:41.860 | No, it bugs me.

02:35:43.060 | Okay, why?

02:35:44.780 | Well, the paint's peeling there and it's dusty there

02:35:47.340 | and the carpet's dirty and that corner's kind of ugly

02:35:50.860 | and the light there isn't very good

02:35:52.340 | and my clothes closet's a mess,

02:35:54.380 | so I don't even like to open it.

02:35:56.500 | Okay, that's a lot of problems.

02:35:59.140 | That sucks.

02:36:00.340 | That's a lot of opportunity.

02:36:02.340 | Pick something and fix it.

02:36:04.300 | - Something that bugs you.

02:36:05.980 | - Yeah, but not too much.

02:36:07.460 | So the rule is pick something you know would make,

02:36:11.980 | pick a problem, pick a solution to it

02:36:14.900 | that you know would help, that you could do,

02:36:18.980 | that you would do.

02:36:20.740 | So you have to negotiate with yourself.

02:36:22.180 | It's like, well, I won't clean up this room.

02:36:23.860 | How do you know?

02:36:24.700 | I've been in here for 10 years and I've never cleaned it up.

02:36:27.060 | It's like, well, obviously that's too big a dragon for you.

02:36:29.700 | Would you clean one drawer?

02:36:32.340 | Find out.

02:36:33.180 | And so imagine now you want to be happy

02:36:35.740 | when you open that drawer and you think,

02:36:37.140 | well, that's stupid.

02:36:37.980 | It's like, is it?

02:36:38.820 | Maybe it's your sock drawer,

02:36:41.580 | which I cleaned up in my room the other day, by the way.

02:36:44.380 | You're gonna open that every morning.

02:36:47.580 | That's like 30 seconds of your life every day.

02:36:50.820 | Okay, so that's three minutes a week.

02:36:54.940 | That's 12 minutes a month.

02:36:57.340 | That's two hours a year.

02:36:59.580 | So maybe your life is made out of,

02:37:01.100 | you've got 16 hours a day.

02:37:02.740 | Let's figure this out.

02:37:03.660 | Five, 12 in an hour, 12 in an hour,

02:37:06.900 | 144 in 12 hours.

02:37:09.180 | Yeah, let's say 200.

02:37:10.620 | 200 five-minute chunks.

02:37:12.060 | That's your life.

02:37:12.900 | - Ladies and gentlemen, Jordan Peterson did just some math

02:37:15.300 | how many five-minute chunks there are in a day.

02:37:17.460 | And I'm pretty sure that's pretty accurate.

02:37:19.300 | - It's approximately right.

02:37:20.620 | So you got 200 five-minute chunks and they repeat.

02:37:24.580 | A lot of them repeat.

02:37:26.380 | So if you get every one of those right,

02:37:28.260 | they're trivial, right?

02:37:29.100 | Who cares what my sock drawer looks like?

02:37:30.740 | It's fair enough, man, but that's your life.

02:37:33.100 | The things you repeat every day, the mundane things.

02:37:36.820 | Think I could get all those mundane things right.

02:37:39.340 | That's the game rules.

02:37:40.620 | It's like now all the mundane is in place.

02:37:43.380 | Now you can play 'cause all the mundane's in place.

02:37:45.900 | And this is actually true.

02:37:47.020 | So with children, imagine you want your children to play.

02:37:51.060 | Well, play is very fragile neurologically.

02:37:53.700 | Any competing motivation or emotion will suppress play.

02:37:57.380 | So everything has to be in order.

02:37:59.340 | Everything has to be a walled garden

02:38:02.100 | before the children will play.

02:38:04.140 | That's a good way of thinking about it.

02:38:05.980 | So you put everything in order and you think,

02:38:07.500 | oh my God, now I'm tyrannized by this order.

02:38:09.580 | It's like, no, you aren't, not if it's voluntary.

02:38:12.580 | And then the order is the precondition for the freedom.

02:38:15.740 | And so then all of a sudden you get all these things

02:38:17.540 | in order, it's like, oh, look at this.

02:38:19.380 | I've got some room to play here.

02:38:21.660 | And then maybe you're not depressed.

02:38:24.860 | Now it's often not that simple.

02:38:26.940 | It's not that simple.

02:38:28.660 | Try putting your room in order, perfect order.

02:38:31.100 | That's hard, man.

02:38:31.940 | - I mean, it's a really powerful way to think

02:38:33.340 | about those five minute chunks.

02:38:34.500 | Just get one of them right in a day.

02:38:36.820 | - Yeah, well, if you do that for 200 days,

02:38:39.420 | your life is in order.

02:38:40.740 | You know, I thought I did that with my clients a lot.

02:38:44.020 | So a lot of them would come home from work.

02:38:45.540 | The guys, hey, and their wives would meet them at the door

02:38:47.980 | and it'd be a fight right away.

02:38:49.980 | You know, and it's a clash there

02:38:51.180 | 'cause he comes home and he's tired and hungry.

02:38:53.340 | He's worked all day and he's hoping that, you know,

02:38:55.740 | he gets welcomed when he comes back to the home,

02:38:58.040 | but then the wife is at home

02:38:59.900 | and she's been with the kids all day

02:39:01.100 | and she's tired and hungry.

02:39:02.100 | And she's hoping that when he comes home,

02:39:03.460 | he'll show her some appreciation for what's happened today.

02:39:05.860 | And then they clash and then they both have problems

02:39:08.260 | to discuss 'cause they've had their troubles during the day.

02:39:10.540 | And so then every time they get together,

02:39:13.220 | they're not like it's a bit of a fight for 20 minutes

02:39:16.340 | and then the whole evening is screwed.

02:39:18.940 | And so then you think, okay, here's the deal.

02:39:21.860 | It's knock and the door will open.

02:39:24.980 | Okay, you get to pick what happens when you come home,

02:39:28.920 | but you have to figure out what it is.

02:39:30.220 | So now this is the deal.

02:39:31.980 | You treat yourself properly.

02:39:33.900 | You imagine coming home and it goes the way you want

02:39:37.020 | and need it to go.

02:39:38.620 | Okay, what does that look like?

02:39:41.400 | You get to have it,

02:39:42.240 | but you have to know what it is.

02:39:44.140 | What does it look like?

02:39:46.020 | And you think, okay, I wanna come home.

02:39:48.060 | I wanna be happy about coming home.

02:39:50.020 | I come home, I open the door.

02:39:53.580 | I say, hello, honey, I'm home.

02:39:56.060 | My wife says, hi, it's so nice to hear your voice.

02:39:58.760 | She comes up, she says, hi, dear.

02:40:02.420 | She gives you a hug and she says, how was your day?

02:40:05.100 | And you say, well, we'll sit and talk about that.

02:40:07.420 | How was your day?

02:40:08.700 | Well, we'll sit and talk about that.

02:40:10.540 | Do you need something to eat?

02:40:12.760 | Probably.

02:40:14.320 | Let's go sit and talk about our day.

02:40:16.240 | It's like, that sounds pretty good.

02:40:18.160 | Okay, that sounds pretty good.

02:40:20.040 | Might not be perfect,

02:40:20.880 | but sounds a hell of a lot better

02:40:22.000 | than what we're doing now.

02:40:23.240 | So how about we go talk to,

02:40:26.240 | we'll go talk to your wife and say, okay,

02:40:29.300 | this is what's happening when I come home.

02:40:31.040 | I would like it to be better.

02:40:32.740 | What would you like to have happen

02:40:34.360 | if you could have what you wanted?

02:40:37.240 | And so she sits down and she thinks,

02:40:39.260 | okay, if he comes home, what do I want to have happen?

02:40:41.520 | And then now you got two visions and you say,

02:40:44.200 | well, what would you like?

02:40:45.200 | And you listen and she says, what would you like?

02:40:48.920 | And you tell her, and then you think,

02:40:50.560 | okay, now how can we bring these visions together?

02:40:53.320 | So not only do we both get what we want,

02:40:55.600 | but because we've brought them together,

02:40:57.040 | we even get more than we want.

02:40:58.620 | Well, who wouldn't agree to that

02:40:59.960 | unless they were aiming down?

02:41:01.920 | And that's so exciting.

02:41:02.860 | It's not a compromise.

02:41:04.320 | It's a union of ideals that's even makes a better ideal.

02:41:08.320 | And then you get to come home.

02:41:09.440 | And then there's another rule that goes along with that,

02:41:12.080 | which is, please, dear, have the grace

02:41:15.700 | to allow me to do this stupidly and badly.

02:41:19.660 | Well, I learned at least 20 times

02:41:22.320 | and I'll give you the same leeway.

02:41:25.960 | And then we'll practice stupidly for 20 times

02:41:28.920 | and we'll talk about it.

02:41:30.480 | And then maybe we'll get it right

02:41:31.980 | for the next 10,000 times.

02:41:34.520 | Right?

02:41:35.480 | And you can do that with your whole life

02:41:37.840 | and you can do that with your kids

02:41:39.100 | and you can do that with your family.

02:41:40.840 | Like, it's not easy, but you can do it.

02:41:42.520 | It's a lot easier than the alternative.

02:41:44.560 | - Let me ask for some dating advice from Jordan Peterson.

02:41:47.560 | How do you find on that topic, the love of your life?

02:41:52.480 | - That's a good question.

02:41:54.520 | I was asked that multiple times on my tour,

02:41:58.020 | three times in a row, in fact,

02:41:59.560 | 'cause we ask people to use this Slido gadget.

02:42:02.900 | - That's a popular question?

02:42:05.040 | - To vary.

02:42:06.000 | It always came up to the top.

02:42:07.240 | And I got asked that three times in a row

02:42:10.240 | and I didn't have a good answer.

02:42:11.680 | And then I thought, why don't I have a good answer?

02:42:16.360 | I thought, oh, I know why.

02:42:17.880 | 'Cause that's a stupid question.

02:42:19.680 | So why?

02:42:24.080 | Why?

02:42:25.400 | Because it's putting the cart before the horse.

02:42:27.880 | Here's the right question.

02:42:29.220 | How do I make myself into the perfect date?

02:42:33.480 | You answer that question

02:42:36.200 | and you will not have any problem

02:42:37.800 | answering the previous question.

02:42:39.080 | It's like, what do I want in a partner?

02:42:42.000 | If I offered everything I could to a partner,

02:42:46.260 | who would I be?

02:42:47.920 | You work on that.

02:42:49.120 | Ask that question.

02:42:49.960 | Just ask, just ask yourself, okay.

02:42:52.560 | I have to be the person that women would want.

02:42:57.560 | Okay, what do they want?

02:43:00.560 | Clean, that's not a bad start.

02:43:05.680 | Reasonably good physical shape.

02:43:09.680 | So healthy, productive, generous, honest,

02:43:16.280 | willing to delay gratification.

02:43:21.600 | So you dance with a woman.

02:43:22.800 | It's like, what's she doing?

02:43:23.720 | What are you two doing?

02:43:24.720 | Well, it's a patterned,

02:43:26.520 | there's patterns happening around you.

02:43:28.020 | That's the music, patterns, patterns of being.

02:43:30.320 | That's the music.

02:43:31.720 | Now, can you align yourself

02:43:32.900 | with the patterns of being gracefully?

02:43:35.120 | That's what she's checking out.

02:43:37.320 | And then can you do that with her?

02:43:40.360 | And then can you do that

02:43:42.520 | in a playful and attentive manner

02:43:45.400 | and keep your bloody hands to yourself

02:43:47.240 | for at least a minute?

02:43:48.560 | And so can you dance in a playful manner?

02:43:52.840 | It's like, you can go through this in your imagination

02:43:55.240 | and you know, you'll know, you know.

02:43:58.000 | And then you think, well, how far am I from those things?

02:44:00.280 | And the answer is usually, man,

02:44:01.740 | it's pretty horrible abyss separating you from that ideal.

02:44:06.600 | But the harder you work on offering other people

02:44:11.600 | what they need and want,

02:44:14.140 | the more people will line up to play with you.

02:44:16.940 | And so it's the wrong question.

02:44:18.360 | It's like, how can I be the best partner possible?

02:44:21.380 | And then you think, well, if I do that,

02:44:22.780 | people will just take advantage of me.

02:44:25.340 | And that's the non-naive objection, right?

02:44:29.180 | 'Cause the naive person's saying,

02:44:30.340 | well, I'll be good and everyone will treat me right.

02:44:31.940 | It's like the cynic says, no, I'll be good.

02:44:34.940 | And someone will take me out.

02:44:37.740 | And then you think, well, what do you do

02:44:40.980 | about that objection?

02:44:42.060 | And the answer is, well, you factor that in.

02:44:45.740 | And that's why you're supposed to be, what is it?

02:44:48.820 | As soft as a dove and as wise as a serpent.

02:44:51.340 | It's like, I know you're full of snakes.

02:44:54.380 | I know it.

02:44:55.780 | Maybe I know it more than you do, but we'll play anyways.

02:45:00.660 | - Take the risk anyway.

02:45:02.340 | - That's right, voluntarily, right?

02:45:04.260 | It's like, and what's so cool about that is that

02:45:07.100 | even though the person you're dealing with

02:45:08.940 | is full of snakes, if you offer your hand in trust

02:45:13.140 | and it's real, you will evoke the best in them.

02:45:16.980 | And that's true even, I've dealt with people

02:45:18.900 | who were pretty damn criminal and pretty psychopathic

02:45:23.900 | and sometimes dangerously so.

02:45:28.180 | And you tread very lightly when you're dealing

02:45:30.780 | with someone like that, especially if they're intoxicated.

02:45:33.980 | And even then, your best bet is that alert trust.

02:45:38.980 | It's the only, it's the fact that the only thing I know that

02:45:45.860 | I had one client who was a paranoid,

02:45:49.140 | he was paranoid psychopath.

02:45:51.220 | That's a bad combination.

02:45:53.060 | He was a bad guy, man.

02:45:54.500 | He had like four restraining orders on him

02:45:58.020 | and restraining orders don't work on the sort of people

02:46:00.260 | that you put restraining orders on.

02:46:02.940 | And he used to be harassed now and then by,

02:46:05.500 | you know, a bureaucrat in a bank with delusions of power.

02:46:10.180 | And he would say to them, he used to kind of act this out

02:46:13.220 | to me when I was talking to him, he'd say,

02:46:15.660 | "I'm going to be your worst nightmare."

02:46:19.460 | And he meant it.

02:46:22.140 | And he would do it.

02:46:23.780 | He had this obsessional psychopathic vengeance

02:46:27.700 | that was just like right there, paranoid to the hilt

02:46:31.460 | and paranoid people are hyper acute.

02:46:34.100 | So they're watching you for any sign of deceit

02:46:38.580 | or manipulation, and they're really good at it.

02:46:41.540 | 'Cause like they're 100%, that's what paranoia is.

02:46:44.420 | It's 100% focus on that.

02:46:47.140 | And even under those circumstances,

02:46:49.820 | if you step carefully enough, you can, maybe,

02:46:54.820 | you can avoid the acts.

02:46:57.180 | That's a good thing to know

02:46:58.140 | if you ever meet someone truly dangerous.

02:47:00.220 | - Absolutely.

02:47:02.700 | I believe in that, that being fragile,

02:47:05.460 | nevertheless taking that leap of trust

02:47:07.940 | towards another person, even when they're dangerous,

02:47:10.180 | especially when they're dangerous.

02:47:12.060 | If you care, if there's something there

02:47:15.940 | in those hills you want to find,

02:47:18.380 | then that's probably the only way you're going to find it

02:47:21.340 | is taking that risk.

02:47:23.420 | I have to ask you about Gulag Archipelago

02:47:26.420 | by Solzhenitsyn that speak to this very point.

02:47:30.340 | There's so many layers to this book,

02:47:31.780 | we could talk about it forever.

02:47:33.980 | I'm sure in many ways we are talking about it forever.

02:47:38.020 | But there is sort of one of the themes captured

02:47:41.180 | in the few ways that was described through the book

02:47:43.260 | is that line between good and evil

02:47:45.300 | that runs through every human being.

02:47:48.580 | As he writes, "The line dividing good and evil

02:47:52.820 | "cuts through the heart of every human being.

02:47:55.340 | "During the life of any heart,

02:47:57.460 | "this line keeps changing place.

02:47:59.700 | "Sometimes it is squeezed one way to exuberant evil,

02:48:03.500 | "and sometimes it shifts to allow enough space

02:48:06.060 | "for good to flourish.

02:48:07.660 | "One and the same human being is,

02:48:09.780 | "at various ages, under various circumstances,

02:48:12.660 | "a totally different human being.

02:48:14.940 | "At times he's close to being a devil,

02:48:17.540 | "at times to sainthood.

02:48:19.980 | "But his name doesn't change,

02:48:22.020 | "and to that name we ascribe the whole lot,

02:48:24.660 | "good and evil."

02:48:26.500 | What do you think about this line?

02:48:27.740 | What do you think about this thing where we talked about

02:48:30.220 | if you give somebody a chance,

02:48:31.820 | you actually bring out the best in them.

02:48:33.700 | What do you think about this other aspect

02:48:36.420 | that throughout time that line shifts inside each person,

02:48:41.420 | and you get to define that shift?

02:48:43.660 | What do you think about this line?

02:48:45.940 | Are we all capable of evil?

02:48:47.600 | - Well, you know, the cosmic drama,

02:48:50.420 | that's Satan versus Christ.

02:48:53.580 | It's like, well, who's that about?

02:48:55.700 | If it's not about you.

02:48:56.860 | I'm speaking just as a psychologist,

02:49:01.500 | or as a literary critic.

02:49:03.140 | Those are characters.

02:49:04.340 | At least they're that.

02:49:05.800 | Well, are they human characters?

02:49:08.980 | Well, obviously.

02:49:10.660 | Well, are they archetypal human characters?

02:49:12.840 | Yes.

02:49:14.680 | What does that mean cosmically and ontologically?

02:49:18.460 | I don't know.

02:49:19.660 | Like, is the world a story?

02:49:21.060 | Maybe.

02:49:23.300 | - The way stories are often told

02:49:24.660 | is the characters embody a stable--

02:49:27.140 | - Those are unsophisticated.

02:49:28.220 | Not great literature, though.

02:49:30.420 | It's very rare in great literature.

02:49:32.180 | What you have in great literature generally

02:49:33.940 | is the internal drama.

02:49:35.220 | As the literature becomes more pop, I would say,

02:49:40.660 | the characters are more unitary.

02:49:42.940 | So there's a real bad guy, and he's all bad,

02:49:44.900 | and there's a real good guy, and he's all good.

02:49:47.940 | And that's not as interesting.

02:49:49.660 | It's not as sophisticated.

02:49:51.500 | When you reach Dostoevskyan heights

02:49:53.500 | in literary representation, or Shakespearean heights,

02:49:56.680 | you can identify with the villain.

02:50:00.720 | And that's when literature really reaches its pinnacle,

02:50:05.380 | in some sense.

02:50:06.460 | - And also the characters change throughout.

02:50:08.660 | They shift throughout.

02:50:09.500 | They're unpredictable throughout.

02:50:11.260 | Taking the speaking of Russia more seriously recently.

02:50:14.500 | And I've gotten to talk to translators

02:50:16.340 | of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy and Chekhov,

02:50:20.740 | and those kinds of folks, and you get the,

02:50:23.260 | one of the mistakes that translators made

02:50:25.980 | with Dostoevsky for the longest time

02:50:28.380 | is they would, quote unquote,

02:50:30.740 | fix the chaotic mess that is Dostoevsky.

02:50:34.940 | Because there was a sense like he was too rushed

02:50:38.900 | in his writing.

02:50:39.980 | It seemed like there was tangents

02:50:41.660 | that had nothing to do with anything.

02:50:43.580 | The characters were unpredictable and not inconsistent.

02:50:46.580 | There's parts of phrases that seemed to be incomplete.

02:50:49.460 | That kind of stuff.

02:50:50.460 | And what they realized, that is,

02:50:52.300 | that's not, that's actually crafted that way.

02:50:55.260 | It's not, it's like editing James Joyce,

02:50:58.580 | like Finnegan's Wake or something,

02:51:00.020 | because it doesn't make any sense.

02:51:01.740 | They realized that that is the magic of it.

02:51:03.700 | That captures the humanity of these characters,

02:51:05.940 | that they are unpredictable.

02:51:07.100 | They change throughout time.

02:51:08.780 | There's a bunch of contradictions.

02:51:11.220 | On which point, I gotta ask,

02:51:12.580 | is there a case to be made that Brothers Karamazov

02:51:15.260 | is the greatest book ever written?

02:51:17.020 | - Yeah, there's a case to be made for that.

02:51:20.180 | I don't know.

02:51:21.020 | Is it better than Crime and Punishment?

02:51:23.020 | - Yes, yeah.

02:51:23.980 | - You think so?

02:51:24.860 | Why do you, I'm not arguing with it.

02:51:26.740 | Why do you think that?

02:51:28.060 | - Well, every book is a person.

02:51:30.420 | Some of my best friends are inside that book.

02:51:32.740 | - Yeah, it's an amazing book.

02:51:34.060 | There's no doubt about it.

02:51:35.700 | - I think it's, some books are defined

02:51:39.900 | by your personal relationship with them.

02:51:41.340 | And that one was definitive.

02:51:42.580 | And I almost graduated to that one,

02:51:44.660 | because for the longest time,

02:51:46.580 | The Idiot was my favorite book of all.

02:51:51.300 | 'Cause I identified with the ideas

02:51:53.980 | represented by Prince Mishkin.

02:51:55.660 | I also identified--

02:51:56.660 | - Ah, that's interesting.

02:51:58.180 | - To Prince Mishkin as a human being.

02:52:00.540 | - The holy fool.

02:52:01.540 | - The fool, yeah.

02:52:02.380 | Because the world kind of, my whole life,

02:52:05.740 | still kind of sees me, saw me in my perception,

02:52:08.660 | my narrow perception as kind of the fool.

02:52:12.860 | And I, different from the interpretation

02:52:17.620 | that a lot of people take of this book,

02:52:19.860 | I see him as a kind of hero.

02:52:21.860 | To be-- - Oh, definitely.

02:52:22.820 | - To be a naive, quote unquote, fool,

02:52:26.780 | but really just a naive optimist.

02:52:29.940 | And naive in the best possible way.

02:52:31.780 | I do believe that--

02:52:33.220 | - That's childlike.

02:52:34.540 | - Yeah, childlike is a better,

02:52:36.260 | so naive is usually seen as--

02:52:38.460 | - That's childish naive.

02:52:39.700 | - Yeah, but childlike.

02:52:42.500 | That's why no one enters the kingdom of heaven

02:52:45.380 | unless they become like a child.

02:52:48.100 | That's Prince Mishkin.

02:52:49.300 | Dostoevsky knew that.

02:52:50.980 | So that's why you like the idiot.

02:52:52.380 | That's so interesting.

02:52:53.700 | See, I think I like "Crime and Punishment"

02:52:55.460 | because while you identified with Mishkin,

02:52:57.300 | I think I identified more with Raskolnikov.

02:52:59.820 | Because I was tempted by Luciferian intellect,

02:53:02.100 | you know, in a manner very similar

02:53:06.260 | to the manner he was tempted.

02:53:07.860 | But I mean, I think you can make a case

02:53:10.580 | that the Brothers Karamazov is Dostoevsky's

02:53:13.380 | crowning achievement.

02:53:15.180 | - Well-- - And that's something, man.

02:53:16.940 | He ruined literature for me.

02:53:18.540 | 'Cause everything else just felt insipid afterwards.

02:53:22.660 | Not everything, not everything.

02:53:25.420 | I found some books that, in my experience,

02:53:29.980 | hit that pinnacle.

02:53:31.940 | "The Master and Margarita."

02:53:34.260 | That's a deadly book.

02:53:35.420 | I've read that, I think, four times.

02:53:36.900 | And I still, there's still, it's unbelievably deep.

02:53:41.060 | There's a Nikos Kazantzikas, a Greek writer.

02:53:43.460 | Some of his books are, his writing is amazing as well.

02:53:48.860 | - Did you ever connect with the literary,

02:53:50.860 | like existentialist Camus,

02:53:52.900 | or people like Hermann Hesse, or even Kafka?

02:53:58.820 | Did you ever connect with those--

02:54:00.380 | - To the same degree?

02:54:01.340 | - Yeah, to the same--

02:54:02.180 | - Enough to be an influence.

02:54:03.620 | You know, you have to be deaf in some fundamental sense

02:54:08.380 | not to encounter a great dead friend and fail to learn.

02:54:13.300 | No, and I mean, I tried to separate the wheat

02:54:15.860 | from the chaff when I read.

02:54:17.580 | You know, and I read all the great clinicians,

02:54:19.500 | all of them, perhaps not.

02:54:21.220 | Those who are foremost in the pantheon.

02:54:25.340 | And I tried to pull out what I could, and that was a lot.

02:54:28.060 | I learned a lot from Freud.

02:54:29.340 | I learned a lot from Rogers.

02:54:31.180 | And I learned a lot from, well, from Dostoevsky and Nietzsche.

02:54:33.860 | I'm gonna do a course on Dostoevsky and Nietzsche

02:54:36.140 | for this Peterson Academy.

02:54:37.460 | This is coming up in January.

02:54:39.260 | - Oh, that'll be, them together.

02:54:40.700 | - I'm really looking forward to it.

02:54:41.900 | - You're weaving.

02:54:43.940 | - I hadn't thought about doing them together.

02:54:45.940 | That'd be fun.

02:54:46.780 | That's a good idea.

02:54:47.980 | That'd be a good idea.

02:54:49.140 | (laughing)

02:54:50.620 | - There's an interesting--

02:54:51.460 | - I wouldn't steal that idea.

02:54:53.140 | - You often weave them together really masterfully

02:54:55.420 | because there is religious, in the broad sense of that word,

02:55:00.420 | themes throughout the writing of both.

02:55:03.620 | - Yeah, well, there's uncanny parallelisms

02:55:05.660 | in their writing and their lives.

02:55:07.860 | So, and Dostoevsky's deeper than Nietzsche,

02:55:12.180 | but that's because he was a writer of fiction.

02:55:15.580 | - Nietzsche is almost a character in a Dostoevsky novel.

02:55:18.020 | - He is definitely that.

02:55:19.620 | He is definitely that, yes.

02:55:21.380 | Apparently, Nietzsche knew more about Dostoevsky

02:55:24.820 | than people had thought.

02:55:25.740 | There's been some recent scholarship on that grounds.

02:55:27.940 | Dostoevsky didn't know anything about Nietzsche,

02:55:29.780 | as far as I know.

02:55:30.900 | I could be wrong about that.

02:55:32.340 | But the thing that Dostoevsky had over Nietzsche

02:55:35.300 | is Nietzsche had to make things propositional

02:55:37.660 | in some real sense, 'cause he was a philosopher.

02:55:39.540 | And it's hard to propositionalize things

02:55:42.420 | that are outside your ken, but you can characterize them.

02:55:46.460 | And so, in "The Brothers Karamazov,"

02:55:49.340 | Ivan is a more developed character than Ilyosha,

02:55:54.180 | in the explicit sense.

02:55:56.340 | He can make better arguments.

02:55:58.100 | But Ilyosha wins, like Mishkin,

02:56:01.300 | because he's the better man.

02:56:02.860 | And Dostoevsky can show that in the actions.

02:56:05.820 | He can't render it entirely propositional,

02:56:08.820 | but that's probably because what's good

02:56:10.260 | can't be rendered entirely propositional.

02:56:12.740 | And so, Dostoevsky had that edge over Nietzsche.

02:56:14.820 | He said, well, Ivan is this brilliant rationalist,

02:56:17.460 | atheist, materialist, and puts forward an argument

02:56:21.500 | on that front that's still unparalleled,

02:56:23.460 | as far as I'm concerned, and overwhelms Ilyosha,

02:56:26.860 | who cannot respond, but Ilyosha's still the better man.

02:56:30.860 | So, which is very interesting, you know,

02:56:32.620 | that- - Well, you know,

02:56:34.260 | the funny thing about those two characters

02:56:35.860 | is you, Jordan Peterson, seem to be somebody

02:56:39.620 | that at least in part embodies both,

02:56:42.540 | because you are one of the intellectuals of our time,

02:56:45.660 | rigorous in thought, but also are able to have that kind of,

02:56:50.660 | what would you describe?

02:56:52.740 | If you remove the religiosity of Ilyosha,

02:56:56.000 | there's a, what's a good word?

02:56:59.700 | Love towards the world?

02:57:00.860 | - Spirit of encouragement.

02:57:03.020 | - Yes.

02:57:04.500 | - Which one- - Yeah, well, it's, you know,

02:57:06.060 | one of the things I did learn, perhaps,

02:57:08.860 | from looking into the abyss to the degree

02:57:10.820 | that I have had to, or was willing to,

02:57:14.860 | was that at some level, you have to make

02:57:18.040 | a fundamental statement of faith.

02:57:20.580 | When God creates the world, after each day,

02:57:23.100 | he says, he saw that it was good.

02:57:25.680 | You think, well, is it good?

02:57:28.180 | It's like, well, there's a tough question.

02:57:29.940 | You know, do you wanna bring a child

02:57:31.780 | into a world such as this, which is a fundamental question

02:57:35.060 | of whether or not it's good.

02:57:36.460 | It's an act of faith to declare that it's good,

02:57:40.420 | because the evidence is ambivalent.

02:57:43.160 | And so then you think, okay, well,

02:57:46.340 | am I gonna act as if it's good?

02:57:49.540 | And what would happen if I did?

02:57:53.340 | And maybe the answer to that is,

02:57:55.540 | I think this is the answer.

02:57:56.940 | (pages rustling)

02:57:59.700 | The more you act out the proposition that it's good,

02:58:08.380 | the better it gets.

02:58:09.420 | And so that's, Dostoevsky said, this is something else.

02:58:14.820 | Every man is not only responsible for everything he does,

02:58:17.700 | but for everything everyone else does.

02:58:20.140 | It's like, what, is that profound,

02:58:22.940 | or are you just insane?

02:58:24.980 | Then you think, is what you receive back proportionate

02:58:29.740 | to what you deliver?

02:58:30.780 | And the answer to that might be yes.

02:58:34.380 | That's a terrifying idea, man.

02:58:36.780 | And it's certainly, you can see that it's true

02:58:38.580 | in some sense, because people certainly respond to you

02:58:43.580 | in kind with how you treat them.

02:58:45.660 | That's certainly the case.

02:58:46.820 | - I mean, it's terrifying and it's exciting.

02:58:49.740 | - Yeah, right.

02:58:50.580 | But that's an adventure, isn't it?

02:58:53.380 | So, yeah, you create the world by the way you live it.

02:58:58.380 | The world you experience is defined

02:59:03.340 | by the way you live that world.

02:59:05.020 | And that's really interesting.

02:59:06.840 | And then taken as a collective,

02:59:08.420 | we create the world together in that way.

02:59:10.700 | What do you think is the meaning of it all?

02:59:12.860 | What's the meaning of life, Jordan Peterson?

02:59:15.100 | We've defined it many, many times

02:59:18.100 | throughout this conversation.

02:59:19.180 | - It's the adventure along the route, man.

02:59:22.340 | And I would say, where's that adventure to be found?

02:59:26.980 | In faith?

02:59:28.200 | What's the faith?

02:59:29.800 | The highest value is love and truth is its handmaiden.

02:59:32.840 | That's a statement of faith, right?

02:59:36.820 | 'Cause you can't tell.

02:59:38.260 | You have to act it out to see if it's true.

02:59:42.660 | And so you can't even find out without,

02:59:46.300 | and that's so peculiar,

02:59:47.860 | you have to make the commitment a priori.

02:59:50.780 | It's like a marriage, it's the same thing.

02:59:53.620 | It's like, well, is this the person for me?

02:59:56.820 | That's the wrong question.

02:59:58.120 | How do I find out if this is the person for me?

03:00:01.820 | By binding myself to them.

03:00:05.240 | Well, maybe the same thing's true of life, right?

03:00:09.280 | You bind yourself to it.

03:00:10.680 | And the tighter you bind yourself to it,

03:00:13.420 | the more you find out what it is.

03:00:15.620 | And that's like a radical embrace.

03:00:18.060 | And it's a really radical embrace.

03:00:20.000 | That's the crucifix symbol.

03:00:21.260 | And more than that, because like I said,

03:00:23.620 | the full passion story isn't death.

03:00:27.100 | It isn't even unjust death.

03:00:29.240 | It isn't even unjust death

03:00:31.400 | and the crucifixion of the innocent,

03:00:34.100 | which is really getting pretty bad.

03:00:36.380 | It's unjust, torturous, innocent death,

03:00:41.380 | attendant upon betrayal and tyranny, followed by hell.

03:00:48.280 | Well, that's a hell of a thing to radically embrace.

03:00:51.460 | It's like, bring it on.

03:00:52.620 | - I think a lot of people put truth as the highest ideal

03:00:58.740 | and think they can get to that ideal

03:01:03.740 | while living in a place of cynicism

03:01:05.900 | and ultimately escape from life

03:01:07.700 | and hiding from life, afraid of life.

03:01:10.020 | And it's beautifully put that love

03:01:13.940 | is the highest ideal to reach for, and truth is--

03:01:18.100 | - It's handmaiden.

03:01:19.080 | I thought about that for a long time, right?

03:01:21.080 | This hierarchy of ideal.

03:01:23.020 | And the thing about truth, that bitter truth, let's say,

03:01:25.560 | that cynical truth is it can break the shackles of naivety.

03:01:30.560 | And actually, a burnt cynicism is a moral improvement

03:01:36.180 | over a blind naivety,

03:01:38.920 | even though one is in some ways positive,

03:01:42.560 | but only because it's protected.

03:01:44.200 | And the other is bitter and dark, but still better.

03:01:48.060 | But you're not done at that point.

03:01:49.500 | You're just barely started.

03:01:51.320 | It's like, you're cynical?

03:01:53.100 | You're not cynical enough.

03:01:54.460 | It's like, how cynical are you?

03:01:57.060 | Are you, I'm an Auschwitz prison guard level of cynical?

03:02:00.920 | 'Cause you have to go down pretty deep into the weeds

03:02:05.560 | before you find that part of you,

03:02:07.220 | but you can find it if you want.

03:02:09.420 | And then you think, well, I want to stop this.

03:02:11.820 | Well, that was the question you posed.

03:02:14.420 | In some sense, you're obsessed with, say,

03:02:16.040 | what happened on these mass scale catastrophes

03:02:19.180 | in the communist countries.

03:02:21.380 | It's like, well, millions of people participated.

03:02:24.740 | So you could have, and maybe you would have enjoyed it.

03:02:28.960 | So what part of that is you?

03:02:30.940 | And you can find it if you want.

03:02:33.460 | - Yeah, it's all there.

03:02:36.180 | The prisoner, the interrogator, the--

03:02:39.220 | - Judas, Pontius Pilate.

03:02:42.700 | - All of it. - All of it.

03:02:43.540 | And all of it is inside us.

03:02:46.180 | - Yeah.

03:02:47.020 | - And you just have to look.

03:02:48.820 | And once you do, maybe eventually you can find the love.

03:02:52.660 | Jordan, you're an incredible human being.

03:02:54.580 | I'm deeply honored you would talk to me.

03:02:56.980 | Thank you for being a truth seeker in this world,

03:02:59.740 | and thank you for the love.

03:03:01.540 | - Hey, thanks for the invitation, man.

03:03:04.040 | - Thanks for listening to this conversation

03:03:06.580 | with Jordan Peterson.

03:03:07.860 | To support this podcast,

03:03:09.100 | please check out our sponsors in the description.

03:03:11.660 | And now, let me leave you with some words

03:03:13.740 | from Friedrich Nietzsche.

03:03:15.100 | You must have chaos within you

03:03:18.140 | to give birth to a dancing star.

03:03:20.420 | Thank you for listening, and hope to see you next time.

03:03:24.580 | (upbeat music)

03:03:27.160 | (upbeat music)

03:03:29.740 | (Session concluded at 4pm)

Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning | Lex Fridman Podcast #313

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