The killer, Petersen, Dad's, daughter and collaborator? Today's episode is a twelve rules for life lecture recorded in Cambridge on November. First, twenty eighteen. As almost exactly a year ago, I have named it set your house in order, obviously that from his book. But he talks a lot about the rule. Your house in order before you criticise the world in this lecture, no updates really from us. Yet again, things are still improving. Nelson S, fantastic hope. Your howling was great and even the very much candy. Said your house in order and Jordan be Petersen, twelve rules for life. Thank you very much for a knows to be here in this strange theatre

it's quite an interesting building in a very interesting town. I wish I had a few more days to stay here, but I have lots of exciting things planned for the next couple of days, so should be very interesting visit, starting with what will hopefully a somewhat interesting talk. Since I've come to the UK and in Northern Europe, which is, I guess, about twelve days now I've when speaking about twelve rules for life. Obviously. And about my first book, some meaning. I tend to speak about both of them together, because. Twelve rules of life is subset the first book maps of meaning and death. I'm kind of mix and match the rules of play them off against one another because each of them is a story but their connected to an underlying story, and so you can

but the same problem from different per se There's that way and make something new each time, and so that's that's kind of children, and helpful, you, I use the lectures as opportunity to to think on my feet and and to simultaneously and to think through complex problems that I think need to be solved. I need to of them for me, but hopefully this we have some general utility and then to make problem, formulation, clear, That's really important. That's the diagnosis, let's say and then to make me problem solution. Clearer. That's useful and more concise and more poetic and more elegant and. And since I've come to do on this, I've been working through the wheels backwards, when I was in North America was starting with rule one took me a long time are kept getting stuck on rule one because it was that standards.

It was your shoulders back and had led me into a fairly. The discussion about the the ability of hierarchies and and and the the the fact that the political discussion that we all agent centres, at least in part, on the active hierarchies that an end their necessity. That would be the right wing position, conservative position, let's say envy tendency for hierarchies to become corrupt and dispossessed people at the bottom, and that would be the left wing position and we need to generally have a discussion between those two positions because because high these are inevitable unnecessary. If you want to solve tax problems in a social environment, but they tilt towards tyranny and blindness and they do two dispossess people at the item of the hierarchy. So sometimes can needs to be strengthened because its decompose, so we're not solving complex problem

very effectively, and sometimes the hierarchy needs to be to loosen, because Scott too tight too hard to climb serving its proper purposes anymore anyway. That's a very complicated argument, although that was a relatively straightforward summary of it, since come here. I've been working through the rules backwards and I've got to rule six and that's the one that I'm going to discuss with you. And I think it's that the shortest chapter in the book rule six, which is put your house and purple daughter before you criticise the world it's actually set your house imperfect order before you critic as the world and it's a meditation on the, motivation for evil and and so you can understand why. Not necessarily where that would be the shortest chapter, but by what by an by, but what it might. Why am? I

The most challenging because it such a dark topic- and so backstage juggling ideas, thinking, ok, we're going to approach, this idea of malevolence and and what might be done about it most appropriately. I will have a bunch of things together relatively quickly. There are things that I've been working on for a long time, so the way thing is quick, but the ideas behind it art sit down in this chair and I'm going to talk to you a bit. Extemporaneous late, but I'm going to also rely on some notes that I made because Things I want to read you that are precisely formulated and so and I don't have a great memory for quotations. So so that's what we're gonna do we're going to do it. Analysis of this idea that you should put your house in perfect or before. You criticise the world and I will explain: that means psychologically so like to

a case that it's actually it's so the things I've come to realize in this lecture to her with regards to rule laws and regulations and responsibility. That say which is a central theme in twelve rules that you rules. Obviously, because, whilst write a book called twelve rules and people in. Culture, especially over the last four for decades,. Five decades, I would say, have started to view. Rules as nothing but limitation to their freedom, and their untrammelled freedom is an unquestioned good and that any limitations to that freedom are essentially have the nature of tyranny and that's simply not true I mean you have a responsibility and part of your responsibilities in sums? to abide by rules but not only because that's a duty- and it certainly not because its

thing, but a negative limitation on freedom, a lot of flexibility and lets say rule following for for lack of a better word rule abiding Better phrase is actually aspirational. The thing about structure, especially if its associated with value is that it gives you to do. This is the path with the idea that hierarchies are bad in essence or that they should be deconstructed. It's like what a hierarchy is a hierarchy of value that posits that one thing is preferable to another. While an hierarchy means is a judgement as a consequence right because if there's a higher value and one thing is than another, then some things are worse than others, and those things that are worse are judged by those things that are better and that dispossessed as people and might be hard on their feelings is well. You know, if you feel Let something then, while that's painful

One thing you can do is rectify your failure, and now the thing you can do is criticized the structure that gave rise to the idea that behaviour such as yours constitutes a failure and that's a pretty easy way out in some sense, except you also lose the perceptual structure that the hierarchy grants you and that's a major loss. That's the loss of a value, structured, no joke. It leaves you with nothing It leaves you in an enemy. And it leaves you in chaos at leaves you without forward direction. Thing about life human life, as you, you can't exist, you can't exe. I don't think you can exist. That's that's the right way to think about it, you cannot exist without a forward direction. You can't sacrifice hierarchy value for convenience, because it leaves you with nothing and the I guess that's not exactly true either, because we're never left with nothing if we're alive, because

Life in the absence of something worth doing, isn't nothing it's just pain and anxiety, and so what it leaves you with his pain and anxiety, is the ineradicable meanings of life, confusion and direction listless, and that's it Sequence of tomorrow, casually demolishing hierarchies value or even questioning the idea of value in one. Other things, nature said when, when he talked about the death of God, said the collapse, I believe system leaves you lost Paraphrase obviously leads, you lie because the value system gave you a direction and orientation and structure. And then if our collapses. The belief in God say the collapse of reality, which was what nature was commenting on then there's there. Nothing that replaces it but then farther. He said it's it's not just that you're left with nothing! It's it's. Than that, because. If you lose faith in one system of value,

might not only be not. It might not only be the case that you lose faith in that system of values, but you lose faith in the idea of systems of values as such, that's like, I met a catastrophe because not only do not believe any more and you need to believe in order to have the face to move forward. So not only do you not believe any more, but you don't even believe that belief is possible and then would say in some sense. That's the postmodern condition. That's this This is a map of. Of mega narratives, which I have plenty of trouble with. Well, one being how do you distinguish between a mega narrative and a narrative and that's real problem, given that this, after. The very structure of your thinking is, in fact, narrative and so to be sceptical about narratives is to be sceptical about thought. Itself and that's the same as being sceptical about action, because thought is the precursor to action. So it's it's. It's it's a it's hypothesis that

say it runs into some rather thorny practical problems, but it case, I'm very interested in why people's belief systems collapse and and an absurdly understand why they might and also just in the process by which they might be reconstructed on. So ground, because I do believe that There is solid ground on which polices can be constructed and that's what want to cover tonight and its difficult. So I'm going to have to do some reading in some some directly. King, and so we see how that goes so it's the plan anyways right, so is directly from twelve rules for life. From the first part of chapter six set your house imperfect order, its subtitled. A religious problem. It does not seem reasonable to describe the young man who shot

Anti children and six staff members at sent Hook elementary school in new town, Connecticut into them and twelve as they just person. This is equal True for the Colorado Theatre, Gunman, Columbine high school killers. But these murderous individuals had a problem with reality that existed at a religious depth As one of the members of the Columbine Dual wrote. The human race isn't worth fighting for only worth killing give the earth back to the animals. They deserve it infinitely more than we do. Nothing means anything anymore. People who think such things view be

in itself- is an equitable and harsh to the point of corruption. And human being in particular as contemptible. There appoint themselves supreme adjudicators of reality and find it wanting. There are the ultimate critics. Deeply cynical writer continues If you recall your history these came up with a final solution to the jewish problem. Kill them all well in case you haven't, figured it out. I say mankind, no, should survive. For such individuals, the world of experiences insufficient and evil so too, with everything.

What is happening when someone comes to think in this manner. A great german play Faust, a tragedy, Written by Johann Wolfgang VON Gerda, Is that issue the plane. The plays me character is a scholar named Faust who, it's his immortal, soul to the devil. Mephistophelean return he receives, whatever he desires will still alive on earth in girth does play. Method is the eternal Adversary of being. You could say in some sense that he's the literary representation of the Spirit that inhabited the Columbine killers. You could say that you could say the same thing: the person who shot up Sandy Hook elementary, no, if you if you dwell long on terrible things, then something

herbal comes to inhabit you and human beings are kept of being possessed by ideas, and I can be thousands of years old. And ideas that are thousands of years old, tend to have this structure of personalities. That's a good way of thinking about them and so, if you dwell long and terrible places than a thousands, a personality of evil? That's thousands of years old can come to inhabit. You are capable of being the dwelling place for that. For that complex system of conceptualisation people have been about the nature of evil for a very long time, and have thought about it s, something embodied in that makes sense, of course, because it something that's acted out and it comes complete with a conceptual scheme. It comes complete with it, opinions and its own emotions and its own motivations and its own rationales. All of that Space. To think of that is a personality. One of the things I really like about the psychoanalysis analysts and this

something that I think this the cognitive scientists having yet figured out, although the ones who work more on the level of emotion and motivation or coming close, is the psycho analysts figured out the beginning of twentieth century that ideas were alive that they have human beings like some personalities and that, if you were trebled in some particular way. It was If you were possessed by some complex and that that was the psychoanalytic term in a complex would be something like an autonomous closet Autonomous sub personality, that would that would that would that you had granted access granted that some personality access to yourself ordered some out taken you over now. This isn't an uncommon experience. Everybody knows this, it's just articulated that. Well, you know you you, you know perfectly well that when you're angry you're, a different and then you are when you're com and the more did integrated. You are, as a person psychologically. The more did.

You are when you're angry than when you're, not angry and when you're angry. You knew you think about being angry, as you have a point so so there's a as to your anger, which is usually something approximating destruction or defeat, and then there is a set of emotions that go along with that, mostly rage, but but But also a certain amount of pleasure by the way, because anger is an emotion that activates both positive and negative emotion systems, which is part of what for the self righteous sense that might accompany anger, there's been good, neural psychologically. Studies done emotional response during anger, but then there's also a philosophy that goes along with it and and memories that go along with it like. If you're fighting with someone that you love you having very acrimonious argument, it can easily be the case that the only thing that you can, the only memories that you can bring to mind about their behaviour in the past are those memories that are precisely is irritating as whatever. That's driving you towards the fight at the moment, and so there is it because the anger

turns you into something. That's somewhat unit dimensional. Only what you know that feeds that unit dimensionality comes to mind so it's very useful to think of it as a personality. This also is useful, if you're, trying to understand what archaic people meant I deities or gods, because these goals, for anger, is a God. It's areas or Mars. That's a good way of thinking about the God of rage and can possess you and and and the reason that it conceptualize, as God was because it's a trans, personal force it like you, the creator of anger and humane the Master of anger either. It could easily be the other way around that anger the master of you and then the question well, what is this anger? That's the master of you, and it is at least in part of personality and it's a personality that transcends you as an individual, because every one experiences anger, even animals, experience anger, and so it

Think ancient and archaic and as we come to understand the anger and express it merits in many different ways and watch other people become angry and see how its action, lies and portray art and literature, we come to have an expanded sense of what the personality of anger might constitute. And then, when we become angry, then we can manifest all of those different elements of what it means to be angry. You know they say in the United States that as the movie industry has concentrated more and more over the decades on organised criminals, mafia types that the mob types have come to represent. Movie, mafia types more and more in their actual behaviour and that's a good example Of precisely that art feeding and life feeding, art and anger is one personality, that's trans, personal and love is another: that's Trans personnel and jealousy, but but the they, the figure The figure of evil itself is one of the old Trans personal

personal entities and so that, partly what we're going to talk about tonight now that was found. That was that was girt. This idea, in fact, When he was trying to understand the nature of evil, and he embodied it as a as as as a personality adversary of being. And the question is what the fundamental motivation of great adversary of being and in this is this is a psychological question and a personal question, as well as a literary and theological question, because there, times in your life, where you are opposed to the idea of existence itself, and I think common, parents for everyone, when, when people spare and that despair turns into resentment and bitterness you question a very utility of not only your life and then that these into something approximating suicidal ideation, but that can also dr homicidal tendencies, are even genocidal tendencies and there's something underneath that too, which is deeper

mere suicide or mere homicide or mere genocide, which is the hatred for the idea of existence itself, especially emitted suffering existence and that's Gerda was attempting to express, and so his his words Mephistophelean, the great adversary of being where this I am Spirit who negates rightly so, for all that to be deserves to perish wretchedly. It were better. Nothing would begin he has years later. Girth wrote the second part of fast, and he had Mephistophelean repeat that Credo indifferent words with exactly the same fee thesis and the thesis is so very straightforward, thesis the very powerful thesis it in definitely one that each of us contents with perhaps

Existence is structured such that the suffering that entails makes the whole game suspect and that it would in fact be better if nothing existed, in preference to something and if you become, desperate enough in your life and there will be When that a high probability, then some variant of that idea will enter your thinking and that certainly the case in the situation of the people who are just described, that did that particular particularly terrible things. They did. You can understand the motivation if someone like the Columbine Highschool shooters without understanding. The level at which they were seeking revenge wasn't personal it wasn't social, what's the matter, Bali that school had gone way beyond that absolutely way beyond that, to L a themselves to the position the judge of all being and to make. Determination that it would be better if everything could be punished for it.

Crime of its good of its existence- and you might not think that students could be sophisticated enough to come up with such populations, but you perfectly welcome to go online. And read the writings of the killers themselves and you'll find things there that will make the hair stand up on the back of your neck. If here, if you understand, what's being written. That's for sure now in dostoevsky book, the brothers grammars up, there's a character Ivan the older brother of the main character, the main character, is a stick, novitiate and he's a good person. He's kind of a simple person, which is often the case in dusty, Esky stories like the idiot in the main character in the idiot, is a Christ like figure, but by no means an intellectual giants. His his. Virtue is in is in his action in this places and straightforward and honesty of his action, whereas Karamazov is definitely a figure of of town intellect and and crew,

and and and worldliness and and so he's is the dominant character in some sense, and one of the thing, it's a remarkable about dostoevsky book, especially the brothers cram resolve, is that wins all the arguments, but loses the war and the reason He loses the wars because he winds or the arguments, but his brother Alyosha, better life like em a more and more and more moral life and despite the that he can't articulate the rationale for the morality of his life, and so it gives Dostoevsky an advantage in some sense over nature, because Dostoevsky could dramatized what virtue looked like In the face of overwhelming intellectual criticism and have the virtue wind, despite the fact that, at the intellectual level, the

The criticism wind so Ivan is always criticising Alyosha for his simplicity and his belief in God, and Alyosha isn't really up to the task of defending himself and no wonder because its indefensible. In some sense I mean it's becoming. People in the modern world too. To read what make a right In case, for God, so good luck, good luck with that is very, very difficult in the face of the scientific revolution, but far. Than that in the face of a kind of an overweening cynicism about the structure reality and also about, in the of tremendous confusion about what it might even mean for there to be something divine so anyways is after Alyosha one day and about its belief in God, and he lays out stories that Dostoevsky took from actual newspaper of the time and they were where they were still of suffering essentially and Ivan pick a particular form of offering, which is, I suppose, predicted the unbearable for anybody who has any sense

compassion and fair play in and he talked about a girl, young girl who and said this is a real story who had been she was four years old, I believe and her parents were very cruel and apparently weren't very pause, predisposed to her, to say the least, and they locked her in the outhouse overnight for some infraction and she Beat on the walls and and was screaming about an crying about being out there in the cold and the neighbours. But no one didn't think about it and she was praying to is to save and she froze to death and. Crimes or Ivan faces Alyosha with this story and says, Do you think that the entire structure

being- is worth having one little girl like that tortured to death in that manner. So would you do that of course, Alyosha has no answer to that, and I haven't response is, Well, it's not even so much. That being is therefore unjustified. It's it's more than that because Ivan isn't it. In their standard sense. He sort of men, atheist. He doesn't not it isn't that he isn't daddy it isn't that he has no believe in God it's that he doesn't approve of God and enough different thing and He uses his stories which are very powerful stories stories of the unjust suffering of children to indicate but if there is a god, then he certainly a morally reprehensible creature and and Alyosha is basically what driven to What's in the face of that and unsurprisingly, because it's not so. To formulate something coherent that

devised the suffering of innocent children, its permanent existential problem, how is that the world can become instituted in that manner. So so that's that's that's something and I would say that. Mephistophelean Credo is best justified by precise That said of observations, and now today, here, of course, is that if you the conclusion that being as such is something so corrupt that it deserves to be eradicated. Then You may come to act in that matter, which is, of course, what people like the column standing on a much larger scale, people like I'd, say Hitler. Stalin. Who were motive? I believe, at the deepest level, by the same by possession by exactly the same credo, we see that was stolen with his immense contempt for people and also with Hitler as World WAR two advanced and the German started to lose the war, because by the end he believed that too

a nation itself deserve nothing but to perish, which, as I presume was his hope from the beginning, because we don't have to take him at his word. And he was very attractive fire and destruction and the idea ratification through death, and so it certainly possible that it was possession of that type that drove both Hitler and Stalin. To do what they did there are large scale revenge? On God, for the crime of existence and so a question emerges out of that which is whether Evil is to be attributed to God. I think this is a question you see. I dont think I don't that you need to be. I dont think that need to believe in God in order to be troubled by Question because it that really matter at this level of analysis, whether you believe in God, because you will find that there will be times in your life where you act, if God exists, whether or not you believe in him- and that's often the case, I would say

commonly the case when you are absent the desperate and maybe when that desperate desperation has boiled over so over into resentment and hatred, because you will find yourself acting out. Great drama of doubt about the creators, Goodness Something like that, even if you dont, if you even if you wouldn't tickled in that manner. Your play out the drama and so you still have to ask you have to answer that question and my inclusion after thinking about this for many years, is that tragedy can be attributed to God, but not evil, and so now when you talk about why, I think that's the case, so the first thing is going to talk a little bit about the story of Adam and Eve and so in what I think it means psychologically it's a very interesting story, which is why haven't forgotten it for many thousands of years right, because it sort of the deafening

of interesting that you dont forget it, and so you might think about story like that. As a maximally interesting story, you might even think about that. You might even think that that's why it came to be because It's maximally interesting story so interesting. We can't forget it now why that is that's a whole different question and I'm not going to go into that tonight, although I think there are answers to it, but we will report on the assumption that it's interesting enough to be not to be forgotten and for all, everyone to know it. Will use. That is evidence that it's not forgettable, and so it's memorable and that the reason for that I think it's memorable because it describes something that we cannot do. Right any better that needs to described. So what, happens in the story of Adam and Eve theres many things, but will concentrate only on the rise on the part of the story. That I believe indicates isn't dick of the rise to self consciousness. Now, what happens is that man

leave are naked in the garden of Eden garden of Eden is the human environment. It's it's the ultimate balanced combination of culture and nature, that's the world garden right, the walls and the garden culture, the walls and through the garden and that's the human environment, because we don't just live in nature, obviously, because we just die in nature, We can't just live in culture because we need nature, and so we have to balance the two and a great metaphor for the balance between nature and culture is a garden, and so that's a perfectly reasonable representation of the dwelling place. If you beings. And initially we dwell in that garden in unconscious. In unconsciousness, or at least, on self consciousness. Now that the divided and between those two things is not so easy to draw, but it neither case, partly because you know him. Beings are clearly conscious and appear to be conscious as well, although

consciousness on consciousness is on some sort of grit gradation with from from from lower to hire tarred detail. Animals can do. Some very intelligent things don't seem like there is any evidence. That's credible. That animals are really self conscious. He had trivial, evidence like the fact that, if you put Dick on a chimpanzee- and you showed a mirror than it sometimes can note that it has lipstick and that sort of of consciousness, but it's really reflexive self consciousness, whereas the self consciousness that human beings, This is a much richer detailed kind, because not only can you recognize yourself as an individual entity separate from other individual entities, but you have a theory about your own being a very, very thoroughly developed

fantastic all images, dick theory of your own being that's laid out, say in dreams and then an articulated theory of your own being and then also on top of that knowledge of your borders and your boundaries, which is the critical aspect not so much whether you can read nice yourself in a mere, but the fact that you know that you're a finite in time. Space, which is the critical element of self consciousness, because it defines you're limits as being right you. You once weren't and then were and once and at some point point won't be- it's, the consciousness of that bound that surrounds you. That's. The boundary of your body, except the temporal extension of that that really makes you self conscious and so Adam and Eve are clearly not that to begin with, and the serpent Temps Eve into eating this apple, this fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil a very strange tree,

very strange fruit in a very strange tempter, to say the least and and the great mysteries is why the fruit is that the fruit of the tree, the knowledge of good and evil It's not obvious how the question of this particular legacy, let's say result is, is she added with knowledge of good and evil, and so this is something that I did. About in twelve rules for life that took me decades to figure out and it's it's, it was discovery that I would say shook me to the core. Because I think it's so crucial and I think it's actually quite quite easy to understand. You already know it But you don't know you know it, and so, when you hear it than you know that you know it and that's even worse, merely knowing it so Adam and Eve. Takes the fruit and each it them, and the scales fall from her eyes and then, of course, you sure

with her husband who who is who is equally in enticed, let's say to devour it and the scales fall from the rise in their eyes, open, which implies that their eyes were closed to begin with, and that's the unconsciousness that I was discussing and The first thing that happens or one of the first things that happens is They both realized their naked. That's often given a sexual connotation and there's utility in that, but that's not the fundamental issue as far as I'm concerned, like you know, if you have I that you're naked on stage, which is a fairly common nightmare, then that that's not so well. I mean there might be a sexual element in it. Maybe you're afraid that people will make fun of your endowment. Let's say that in all, but but but its deeper than that. It's that to be naked on stages, to have you Limited self subject on mediated evaluation by the group, and so that

other terrifying. Its partly. Why people don't like public speaking as well, especially if there actually saying what they mean, because then they have who they are laid air for the evaluation of the group, and that's that's that's knowledge of that naked. This that's knowledge of nakedness and the nakedness is what the nakedness is. The vulnerability to know that you're naked is to know that your vulnerable is to understand and here is You stand your limitations and with human beings. I think part of the reason for that and may be part of the reason that that actually developed is because of our stance. You know like most, Mozart course on four legs and there The most vulnerable parts of them are actually armoured and in the mail in community anyways their armoured because they have their back covering the vulnerable, parts of them right, but human beings we stand upright and one of the core sequences of that is that

think about us so to speak, and certainly the most centrally vulnerable parts of us physiologically speaking even metaphysically. Speaking for that matter are subject to public evaluation and not only public evaluation but too, but to harm, because you can certainly be with but like this member, we're not rhinoceros. As you know, we weren't when we're not armoured we're very valid. We'll creatures and when you become of conscious than you become aware of that vulnerability and like a meadow vulnerability. Not only are you vulnerable, but you know it, and so not only can you then experience pain, but you can experience anxiety and not just anxiety in the trivial sense but anxiety in the long term, permanent sense, knowing that, no matter how comfortable you are right now and how well constituted your life is at the moment that all of that can break apart at any moment, leave you with nothing and leave you dead and and everything around you can disappear and that's all a consequence of the knowledge of your limitation and that's in some hence why death

the world and the conflict of that is that Adam and Eve oh themselves right. They put an intervening structure between them and the terrible world, both social and trial and it's only clothing in the in the It's only a leaf in the story, but its symbolic of the world. Closed its symbolic of that there's a reason for that. I mean it's warm in here. You don't have to be closed, but you certainly are, and you have been for a very long time- it's tens of thousands of years that people have worn close to protect themselves, and the elements for, Sir for sure, but also to protect themselves against their own heart cells, judgment and the judgment of others. And that's part. The intermediation of culture against nature and its symbolic of that as well as because, once you I understand that your vulnerable in some permanent sense across time, then your life, to work and, of course, that The next thing that happens in this Adam and Eve is that God finds out what happens. One of the next things that have

God finds out that Adam and Eve or now self consciousness is now you're in trouble you're going to have to work as why do you have to work? If you self, conscious and answer is well, you might have everything you need now, but that doesn't you're going to have it in the future, and so there is no escape from that. You have to work. You have to sacrifice the present for the future now you are aware of the future and the different of work in some sense, is the sacrifice of the present for the future to forego Efficacious if its merely spontaneous pleasure, we dont defined it as work, Is when you're doing something for later, that you'd rather not do now and why You do that! Well, it's because you know that you extend across time and even if it's not you, maybe it's your family that extends across time, your vulnerable on all fronts and so you're going to work and that's that and so well and then the other thing that happens is that people become aware of the day.

Between good and evil and and and and that's that's, that's attributed to theirs. I'd like element that attributed to that what God actually says out after Adam and Eve, eat the fruit become aware of good and evil. He says what we have to remove of them from Paradise and unless Elsie that fruit, the tree of life and live forever and be like God, themselves their halfway there with their knowledge of good and evil going on. How is it that the Ingestion of whatever this was in food After the metaphor for knowledge to ingest to describe to you and you might have received a bit of indigestible news. That's a good way of thinking about it the idea of incorporation of food in the idea of incorporation of knowledge are very tightly linked and the reason for- at least in part at the metaphorical level, as part of the reason that you want to incorporate knowledge is so that you can incorporate food right

is knowledge is actually this knowledge is actually the abstract representation of the food that war that was Stan you across very large periods of time more than that, but it certainly that so there's a very tight relationship between us foraging for knowledge, which we do something. Specific about human beings that we forge for knowledge and that forging for now just partly what enables us to maintain our selves biologically across long spans of time, so squirrels forged for nuts, and then they have to remember where the nuts are and then the remembrance of where the knots our is equivalent to the food and the knowledge and the are the same thing and so and then there's the that you can eat today and then there's the food that will sustain you for the rest of your life and the knowledge is the food that sustains you for the rest of your life and that's why man does not live by bread alone. That's why that works out. So. Adam and Eve realise that they are vulnerable and, and they realise that their debt

and their death enters the world at that point, the knowledge of death, so the vulnerabilities is final. In some sense, its cataclysmic, it destroys the structure reality, that's what story means and there's something about that. You know because we're very kind, Lex creatures ass human beings, there's nothing more complex anywhere than what's inside your skull. The brain is, immensely immeasurably the most complicated thing that there is and at some point it gets the power to reflect upon itself. And the story in Genesis is party predicated on the idea that that put a Catholic. MC rift in the structure of reality, depends on how you define reality, not most complex thing that exists might have something crucial to do with the structure of reality. At least you can do. That case and whether does not in some objective sense whatever that might mean it certainly does as far as you are concerned, and so that self sufficient importance and so on,

happens when you realise that you're vulnerable. Was something very interesting and this where the idea of good and evil interest the world, because you know maybe your hungry, and maybe your hungry, like a lion and when you're hungry like a lion, you rose yourself out of your torpor because, most of the time, it's just sleep except when they hungry and then when they get hungry, they organise themselves and they go hunting. They take down a zebra, then the zebra and that's the end of that in its little heart on the zebra, but there's no more violence in it. You know no casual slaughter, there, certainly not dragging out the torment of the zebra, you know they're just eating so its tragic, certainly for the zebra. Not malevolent an animal that, something carnivorous. Does it by necessity, but here, Can do something carnivorous far more than necessity, and the reason They can do. That is because they actually understand their own vulnerability and

Side of that is that, as soon as I understand my own vulnerability, I have some sense of how and be hurt, and what makes me terrified and anxious as soon as I know that for me, I also know it for you and as soon as I know it for you, then I can use it. And that's how the knowledge of good and evil enters the world with the revelation of vulnerability. Because now you have within Europe or to take that knowledge of the misery of the world and to utilise it in any way that you see fit. And so that's why human beings are capable of malevolence because they can take that they hate which is something far darker than mere predatory behaviour and subjected to endless creative torment and that might be something that you apply to yourself and it might be something that you apply to your family and might be something that you, why or community and now and then it might be something that you directly apply right: that you're directly engaged in precisely that more level.

Which is the exploitation of vulnerability and truly malevolent its exe attention of vulnerability merely for the aesthetic joy of doing so. You know you see this dark humour that sit miracle humour that goes along with great malevolence like this gate sign over Auschwitz concentration Camp work will set you free right, some, some, great cosmic joke that place only if written by the Spirit of evil itself to parity. Deep for that place where, if there was work, all was done was parity work for the purpose of the violence and destruction that it could produce prior to death, and so that the depths of malevolence- and there is no doubt that exists, that's for sure and so send the question. I suppose people be Self conscious and they became capable of malevolence, and is that something that you can lead

at the feet of God and so that something that milk is very interested in, Paradise lost his great poem and so its opponents very much worth reading. If you, if you understand what it's about and it's about free, will and it's about evil and it's about its this great narrative that we're imbedded in that we don't understand that part. Parcel of the biblical corpus, let's say, but also part and parcel of all the And plays architecture and and in literary productions and musical productions, endeavour and like architecture and and and dream all of that artistic structures. That's part of the dream in which understand articulated this doctors are embedded in. That's that's Milton is trying to understand its the structure of that underlying dream, because you're embedded in a dream, you have to dream every night or you can maintain your sanity you're you're articulated.

Carved mission has to dissolve into the dream that surrounds you in order to maintain its sanity and the underlying metaphysics of our culture, expressed at least in our stories like the biblical corpus, constitute the dream: upon which our sanity pans, even though we don't know that a noose people like Milton, who are great poets? Who or who are? geniuses of the imagination who are playing in the realm of dreams, trying to sort things out at a level that far below articulated cognition, to wrestle with questions that are so deep that they trouble all of us, but that none of us are intelligent enough to articulate our way through and that's why, Study, literature and poetry- if you have any sense because it pushes you down into that dream, where you can, where you can straighten out the metaphysics upon which you're more formal is it being in death? definitely rely something

but for us, Something has to serve as a buffer between our limited knowledge and the unknown itself and its its dream that surrounds us. That constitutes that buffer and it has to be maintained in order and that's what poets and artists and and and and and philosophers if their deep. And sometimes psychologists, that's what they do being about people like Young and Freud, I'm thinking about that so this is God's, Discussion of of the Emergence of evil in the world and his his attempt to reconcile isn't tempted justify, I would say, in some sense, the structure of being even given that malevolence made its emerging on the stage and talking about

the relationship between Adam and Eve, But mankind in general and Spirit of evil as such, which might be that proclivity, to seek revenge on existence for the tragedy of being. For man will hearken to his closing lies and Silly transgress, the so command, sir, A pledge of disobedience so Will fall he and is faithless progeny whose fault. Who is, but his own in great he heard of me, He could have. I made him just and right. Sufficient to have stood the, free to fall

I created all the theory of powers and spirits, but them who stood and them who fell. Freely, they stood, who stood and fair who fell. So that's a fairly straightforward. Hypothesis that evil beckons. But the people have within them what would be necessary if they drew opponent to resist it, and Existence of evil them deforestation of evil in the world. Can there are four not be laid at the feet of God? Now perhaps it's an argument that you don't buy, but it's an argument and its strong one. And then there's another justification

you know Milton row: Paradise lost. He said he wrote. Milton's paradise lost to justify the ways of God to man it's quite an ambition. It's a hell. Thing for someone to say, especially given that he meant it so here's another section from book too, I would you allow people the choice to Geneva? Why why why grant the power free will because perhaps spree will is the power to choose between good and evil. It seems to be most fundamental definition of free will. I also must change their nature. And revoke the high decree Unchangeable eternal, which Dane their freedom

they themselves ordained their fall self tempted self, depraved. And one more. And perhaps this is more relevant to free choose, the good rather than evil. What pleasure I from such obedience paid when will and reason. Reason also is choice, useless and vein of freedom, both despoiled made passive both had served necessity. Not me. They, therefore, as to write, belonged. So we're created nor justly accuse their maker or they're making or their fate as if produced, nation overruled. So the next story in.

Genesis is, is this can an it's over interesting story? It's very short story a few lines long. I dont I've. Never encountered a story that has it that much, Step packed into that tiny amount of space, it's absolutely unfair. Mobile in some sense and so over the story briefly. The first thing is that Adam and Eve of the mother and father of us all, and so you could say well, if you are thinking but its symbolically, maybe from the union perspective that. Eve is the personification of nature itself. An atom is the personification of culture itself, and each of us is the chief of nature and culture The question is what is the fundamental nature. The child of nature and culture, an answer is, can enable lost our brothers To real human beings because their board

the standard manner and not made by God they're real. And it's a terrible story, because it's a story of of murder and worse and so that's the first story of mankind and is the story so There's Cain and there's able and cane is the first born. Abel is the second born and there's a reason. For that. But we won't go into and they're, both. Working in the world. They have to work because workers the world and cane a farmer and able is a shepherd. And then the shepherd is no trivial thing bo peep A few thousand years ago If you were guarding sheep, there were wolves and lions, and you have very rudimentary weapons, and so, if you're going to defend your sheep against lions, then you are the sort of person who could defend sheep against lions and that's no joke and so

useful to know in any case can enable make sacrifices to God it's kind of a mystery. It's mystery for modern people, because we don't know what this means build an altar into burn, something into offer, offer the burnt Roy and to God must offer something to God. It's the acting out of an idea right there and its deep idea. It's the idea of work itself, because work itself is sacrificed or to deeper idea than that. The idea is that, in order to if something that you need and want in the future, you have to let go of something you value in the present and that's that discovery of the future. So. This idea of sacrifice that's put forth, and so early in this document is at its it. Representation of what might be the second fundamental discovery that human beings ever made is that we alter our behaviour in the present so that the future would change that's a hell of a thing to discover. It is literally the discovery of possibility itself

and the thing about it is it's actually true, or at least we will act as if it's true you do give things up in the present, so that the future can be better. You do actually act out. I idea that reality is structured, such that, if you bargain with it properly, you will avoid punishment and receive and receive what's good negotiation and it's an active trade, and the strange thing is that it actually works now. Part of the reason that it works is because you're actually negotiating with future p and your future self, and so there is personified element to reality in that manner, but it's more than that, but we can leave it at that and so people had acted out before they could understand it. We can already understand it now. You know I asked my students. Well, did your parents make sacrifices so that you could go to university? There often children a first generation immigrants and think it is real off the sacrifices. Everyone knows what this means, but when we see

transposed. You know, sir a thousand years into the past and and if we see at manifested itself in its more archaic form like like, like that pretend play that children engaged in some sense, we there's a disjunction, and we don't understand. But I d is fairly straightforward- is well there's some basis ultimate structure of reality. Where might you encounter that? Well how about the sky? But why would you think that well go out and look at the sky at night and see how you feel and see that that produces a sense of all at at at at the realisation of infinity itself and believe or non believer, that emotion is there and so one but the divine in the unknown like that, it's perfectly reasonable and then God inhabits the celestial spheres, fine are you communicate? rises. Well, so you burn something in it at all.

Up in essence to whatever resides up there, it's a little bit on the concretize side, it's not so bad for a first pass approximation of first pass abstraction of the idea of sacrifice itself as a fundamental moral necessity. We we had to discover that somehow ok makes sacrifices, enable makes his sacrifices and able very careful and sacrifices, and he takes the best of what he has any sacrifices that much he puts his best foot forward. That's what it means. Where's Kane, what we're? Never too sure the story is a bit ambivalent and it should be because we know it might be that because there is some, something about life that somewhat arbitrary and it isn't obvious always that those who put their best put forward are justly rewarded in those who fail to do so are justly punished, right, there's an arbitrary element, and so there's some about Kane. But you get the sense from the story that he isn't pudding is best put forward. Far from it.

And what happens when what happens table is everything good happens to him and every time something good happens in something even more good happens, because what did they say from those who have nothing. Everything will be taken and to those who have everything more be given, and that's already laid out in the story of able you do things right and then things start to happen in a good way, and then that starts to multiply and up you go and then, but if take the other pathway, let's say, and you don't make the proper sacrifices and you hold back what's best because you think you can get away with it or because you don't think it's necessary because you're not willing to make the effort or whatever it might be. Then it goes from bad to worse, very, very rapidly. That's exactly what happens to Cain and he's not very happy about it, and so he decides to have it out with God and it's no bloody wonder and we confront Scotty Sidney, says something like this. What's up with universe that you created I'm breaking myself and half down here, trying to struggle forward again

the impossible odds that you You laden me with. An end, nothing's going well for me, and then There's able here darling Everything works out for him. Everyone. Accept everything he touches works out. So what? What hell going on here. And God says, to him something took me a long time to understand. I had to look at a lot of different translations and think this through for a long time to understand what it meant God says something like sin personified Sin that means to miss the target by the way, Sin crouches out your door like her amorous and arouse predatory animal. And you ve chosen to invite it in that it can have its way with you in a minute in the creative sense that that amorous arousal would with India,

metaphorically that you invited something in that you can join with creatively and produce something as a consequence and what you produced is not a good thing and so why things aren't going well for you. And that's the end of the discussion. It says in the story that Keynes countenance fell, so I guess you can imagine that it might, because of all the things that you don't want to find out when you put a complaint like that, for word to God. Is that it's you. Doing or you're, Doing that's bring about, and so what. Keynes reaction well it should be watching be, it should be shut himself up in a cave for a month and think very carefully about everything that is done in his entire life. That's wrong and put it right, but that isn't what happens What happens, is he finds able and kills them Does he do that? Well,.

Every ideal is a judge. How about that? able is actually what Kane would like to be and worse knows that he could be if he had chosen to be. The pain of that is so great. Let's say the pain of that gap between The ideal and the reality is so great Cain chooses instead to destroy his own ideal, spite against God for the conditions of existence and that the story of human malevolence. Ok, calls tells God the pain of he's done is too great for him to bear clear exactly what that means. But perhaps It does mean that he realises that is destroyed its own ideal and therefore has nothing left and God Marksman tells people to leave and be in, the reason for that, at least in part, is an indication of the law.

Of utility for a cycle of revenge. But it doesnt matter because then Kane has offspring and if you bother, if you disturb if you transgress, against one of cane sons than seven. You die and if you transfer against one of Keynes grandsons than forty nine of you die and then his his descendants ultimately, next in line is to bore Cain and he's the person who makes weapons of war. So there's that idea there you're right lurking in that story that not only is there. This can enable drama that exists. That's a fundamental part of human nature. That's the style brothers, that's that forms of reaction to the test of consciousness itself, but that the key like response, more applies and is fundamentally responsible for the catastrophes of war It seems to me to be.

Precisely accurate. Also. Then the question is Is there something that can be done about it? Maybe all go one more place before I do that I recently wrote the forward to, abridged version of Solzhenitsyn School like archipelago that was just published today can be, nearly enough and I was thinking about why the Russian Revolution went so terribly when it was predicted at least in principle on compassion for the dispossessed it's not so easy to have compassion for the dispossessed is easy to play. Compassion for the dispossessed but to say, grew gate that from hatred for the successful, let's say or maybe more to segregate there. From hatred for the good and joy

we rewarded is no great forward thing. So, I'm going to read you something from the forward. The russian revolution became bloody very rapidly. You wasn't that there are pristine period where the poor retreat properly and for time, after the revolution became corrupt. It was exceedingly murderous right from the beginning which lie lead you to conclude that it was exceeding is exceedingly murderous motivations that dominated right from the beginning, despite the claim so Soldier sites For example, one Martin lapses. Writing for the newspaper. The terror. November. First, nineteen eighteen. We are not fighting against single individuals. We are Stir emanating the bourgeoisie as a class, it is not necessary during the interrogation,

to look for evidence proving that the accused proposed the soviets by word or action. First question you should ask him is: were classed as you belong to what is his origin? His location and his profession, these are the questions that will determine the fate of the accused such is the sense and essence of red terror. It is necessary to think when you read such a thing to meditate long and hard on the message It is necessary to recognise, for example, that the writer believed would be better to execute ten thousand potentially innocent individuals than to allow one poisonous member of the oppressor class to remain free. It is equally necessary to pose the question who precisely belonged to that. Vertical entity. The bourgeoisie.

It is not as if the boundaries of such a category are self evident there for the mere perceiving they be drawn, but where exactly more importantly, by whom, or by what. If it's hate inscribing the lines instead of love, they will inevitably be drawn so that lowest meanest more. Cruel and useless of the conceptual geographers will be justified in manifesting the greatest possible evil and producing the great possible misery. Members of the bourgeoisie. Beyond all redemption. They have The girl was a matter of course. What, if there lives. Children. Even their grandchildren off with their heads too

all were incredibly corrupted by their class identity and their destruction, therefore, ethically necessitated how convened that the darkest and dire of all possible motivations could be granted. The high of moral standards, that True marriage of Helen of Heaven, values. What Phyllis ethical presumptions, truly dominated under such circumstances. Was it the desire for brotherhood, dignity and freedom from want. Not in the least given the outcome Was instead and obviously the murderous rage of hundreds of thousands of biblical Keynes each looking to torture destroy and sacrifice their own private evils.

There is simply no other manner of accounting for the corpses. And it is exactly the necessity for interminable sacrifice that constitute the terrible counterpart of the utopian vision, Heaven worth any price but who pays. Christianity solve the problem by insisting on the sacrifice of the self. Instead, that. The suffering and malevolence of the world is the responsibility of each individual Sitting that each of us sacrifice what is unworthy and unnecessary and resentful and deadly in our own characters display the pain of such sacrifice so that we stumble properly uphill under our respective involuntarily shouldered existential burdens.

Soldier Edson, said. There is nothing that so assists the awakening of omniscience within us as insistent thoughts about one's own transgressions errors and mistakes the difficult cycles of such pondering over many years whenever I mentioned the heartlessness of our highest ranking bureaucrats, the cruelty of our executioners I remember myself in my captain shoulder boards and the forward March of my battery through EAST Prussia, enshrouded in fire, and I say where we any better. But it was, and is the opinion of the materialists utopians that someone else be sacrificed so that Heaven itself might be attained, some perpetrator or victimized.

Oral pressure or member of a privileged group cynic might be forgiven. In consequence, for asking. Is it the city of God? That is in fact the aim. Or is the true aim, the desire to make a burning, sacrificial pyre of everyone in everything and the hypothesis of the coming. Brotherhood of Man merely the cup story. The camouflage It is precisely the horror that is the point and not the utopia. It is far from obvious in such situations just what his horse and what is card is precise In the aftermath of the death. A hundred million people are more that such dark questions must be asked.

And we should also note that the utopian vision, dressed as it is inevitably in compassion, is a temptation particularly difficult to resist and may therefore offer opportunities subtle and insidious justification for mayhem. There's this story, and the cocktail party by Ts Elliot swore, news not having a good time of it, talks psychiatrist, and it's just at a party and she says to him seeking free. Medical advice, my It is not going well. I'm suffering and it's too much to bear. But I'm really hoping that it's my fault he surprised and sir. Why would you hope that? Why would you hope that it was your fault

and she says well, we do options. As far as I can tell. Either. I'm suffering as a concept Unbearably as a consequence of the structure of existence itself, in which case I'm lost, there's nothing I can possibly do or theirs Something that I'm doing wrong that I can rectify to improve the situation. That's the issue, that's the rule, put your os imperfect order before who criticized the world the idea. While, if things are not going so well for you. And if that's leading you too, places which it will. Then the proper response. And that would be the response that wouldn't make everything worse.

Ask yourself what you say. True you do true, are you aiming upward. Are you making all the sacrifices that are necessary? Have you the advantage of all the opportunities that are laid out in front of you. Have you done everything you possibly can to put your house in order. Or instead are you going to do it came down and dare to challenge God consequence of the former, at least in principle, is the. Destruction of that part of you that's unworthy and the possibility of rebirth in redemption and the content, The second is your descent and the descent of everyone that you have contact with into something? closely resembling hell as Can manage? Thank you very much

So I want to do one thing before I dive into the audience questions in. I think when I tell the audience that you change it up every night, I think people think I'm being sarcasm were hyperbolic but I'm not, but I thought tonight this been the most intense talk you get. The entire time. How do you? How do you feel right now? How do you feel after you do that? Give everything that you have for a good hour and a half that's a rough lecture that one. Yeah, I mean that's the darkest rule in the book by a large margin in and you know, surprised when I went, I read it, I read it before. Coming out here tonight- and I thought that it

I was surprised at how short it was, and I knew There is a lot underneath it and- and you know Why- quite nervous backstage which party Because most The time I dont use notes we now and then I'll read the lecture when it something really knew and I'm in not familiar with it. But I must never use notes and so Also, using notes is not common, and so I was It is about that and I wasn't sure that I was going to be able to weave all those elements together. Could I wrote when I talked about tonight, I guess in half an hour before them show such also. It was a tight day right because we we flew in from Amsterdam when I was in Amsterdam for last three days and weeks really really busy at Amsterdam, and so when we came here, went to our hotel. I just For both, Four hours and then

Much time you know, and so I prepared backs agent. I usually just sit and think about what I'm going to say, and I can get that but tat have written out and then not to know if it was going to come here. And whether or not I was going to get to the end and all of that and then the seriousness of it. It's terrible terrible topic, it's the First of all possible topics, which is why saved it for you pay Cambridge either way I figured I figured this was a good place and it makes sense to do that at a place like this. What sort of the centre of the intellectual universe I mean. I'm sure the Oxford people wouldn't be very happy to hear that the term them off light in comparison. That's for sure, but term. It's it's! It's rough man. It's rough that lecture so I'm glad it's over, mostly

I'm sure you all ours will not yet let's dive times? Given your popularity? Is it possible that people develop an ideology loyal to your stances? How would you suggest people continue to develop their? views. Well, that is what I suggest. So it's thing you know I don't always the ideology of developing your own views and ideology mean about a cult of individuality, how bout that is that a possibility mean I dont I mean, there's this funny Leyden, remember the life of Brian Bright up on the second floor of his his house his mother, I think in that crowd, is outside Some of them have shoes and some have gourds, which is really ridiculously comical, and he he's really not happy that all these people have gathered. He says

You shouldn't be following me around you're, all individuals, and they all chance. We are all individuals, it so funny it so ridiculously comical, but I mean hoping that I'm hoping that what I am Providing is actually encouragement to the development of genuine individuality outside of the persona. Shell, nor unplayable character. Shell right, the new mean has it. You know, and I dont think that The idea that the individual is the sovereign element is called its called idea. It's maybe it's. Maybe it's maybe the non called idea. That now you know my students have told me for years, some of them I lay Odin maps of meaning what I regard as a comprehensive rep

presentation of narrative structure, its balance, pause developments and negative elements in balance and make the call that. What an ideology does is only represent some of the characters so, for example, the idea that the west is a patriarchal tyranny. That's an ideology, why well, because the West is Partly a patriarchal tyranny right and there's a big difference between. Stating that something is only one thing, and that is partly one thing: that's the difference between well, it's the difference. Doing delusion and reality in mice my world. It's the difference between safety decayed nuance, thought and and one size fits all cure for every problem. In the absence of the necessity of thinking, you know that article page turkey is the evil king. It is always an evil king, everyone

that, but does it I came to you know, and you have to if have some gratitude for the wise king, at the same time that you have some apprehension about them working in some proclivity to criticise And so when you just see one especially when that satellite by the idea. Well, what's the antidote to the evil king, well, the wise queen, like while fair enough, what about the evil queen? Well, there's no evil queen there's! No! green, there's just evil patriarchy. It's like You know what happens in sleeping beauty, you know the Disney movie What happens if you don't invite the evil queen to your daughter's christening party She grows up unconscious and falls asleep at puberty right, never to awake, that's what friends can she's too painfully naive but dont for to invite the evil queen to your damn party, and so you know. What you're, providing with her with a balance

have in this- is what a profound religious system actually does like a truly poetic system. Provides all the characters and in an eighty, is a parasite on that it pulls the mode force from that underlying dream, like structure and it it it manipulated and uses it, but it's well. So what I M hoping and who knows is that it that I've laid out its implicit in twelve rules and more explicit in my book maps of meaning actually these things out in a balanced manner, and so. Good to know the whole story. It's good to know that there is a benevolent element to culture and MILAN intelligent and that there's a benevolent element to nature and a malevolent l element. There's a heroic element to the individual and an adversarial element, and that all of those things have to be part of your conceptualisation of reality. I mean they are in some sense, because when you go and watch a movie or you read a novel any of this, those

Characters are always there, wouldn't story. Without those characters there always there and you need all of them, and then you have to figure out how to put them in bed and so. So I'm hoping that's, not an idiotic gee, I'm hoping that it something much more fundamental than anybody. Ology just like, I believe that the idea that the individual is sovereign and that each sovereign individual as a centre of creation, I dont, believe that that's an and the arbitrary, ideological idea. I think it's. I think it's the truth, it's, the grounding truth. It certainly the grounding truth of our culture culture this great culture that you people have managed to build over over centuries, that's been in. My estimation of fundamental light in the darkness of the world, its the on the idea of the sovereignty and value of the individual. That's not And I idea man, that's the idea, and so So I dont think that if you are

our collective. That idea- and you understand that europe- that it's it's something. Something called like about it. It's like this following in that there's only you man, it's on you straighten yourself out. And I don't see that that's a cult it's like it doesn't have any of the elements of a cold there isn't any required a view except to do you can do and to do everything you can to do what you can do that's not how cold operate so think. It's rubbish, so So what you say it is it's a cold actually the second most important question here, was doing Cathy Newman stay in touch only in brief

twitter, wars, You'Re- probably not very productive, but but well that's life. I have asked her if she liked to have another discussion one point she did get back. Dutch with me through an intermediary. This was after the first, interview and she said that she wait until the scandal died down I guess it hasn't died down yet. What's the best piece of advice that someone has given you. I would say at something approximating avoid arrogance. If possible, that was probably my father's one of my father's fundamental pieces of advice to two, not brag. When I was a kid you know I mean I don't know. If I had it regular propensity. For that mean I was a smart kid and I had a rapid

nation. For that in the little town that I was in for a variety of reasons, and so, Which wasn't necessarily stellar route Popularity, although complaining about that it had its advantages and I wasn't an unpopular kid. That was just the thing that if I was bothered, I was bothered about most people have something there bothered about, and you could have a lot worse things to be bothered about than that, but to stay I hate the word humble because I dont really, I wouldn't you cannot claim to be humble and be humble right. You know what I mean that doesn't work, and so it's hard to describe it, but I am I am partly as a consequence of that. I think I think that was embedded very deeply and me because my father was very adamant about that. I think I'm. I am very reflective about

what I might do to improve, and I tried to call trade on that and that's good advice, Good advice to the degraded advice can be good What tonight's lecture was about that? What you should do it concentrate on how you could improve you know you don't have right to be cynical in bitter, unless you start making mistakes. You know you might say well, you'll, never stop making mistakes like well the biggest list, it, is not to recognise and rectify your mistakes. I think that's the sin. Hence the holy ghost that's unforgivable, so that would that would a piece of stellar advice. We talk a little bit about this during the brake here. Do you see Things are going to get much worse before they get better. Think that's up to us man to decide. Like. I don't think they have to get worse. I mean there's

lots of reasons there's lots of, evidence in many ways. Things are getting better depends on your of analysis at all that's almost beyond comprehension, I mean were lifting people out of Poverty worldwide at an absolutely at its absolutely unparalleled in the entire history of the world. Right that have we have the number of people in absolute poverty between them two thousand and the EU two thousand and twelve, the most after me. Thank you and projection goal was fifteen years. We did it in twelve, its mind boggling and even the and projects now that by the year twenty thirty there won't be any one in the world that that lives under their current level of abject, dollar ninety day and you think what that's pretty damn low it's like yeah, that's for sure, and so you could say well that sort of an arbitrary line, an end it is, but the line to be drawn somewhere. The point here is that people have superseded that and its also said,

you Terry to understand that in eighteen, ninety five, which isn't that long ago, the other, person in the western world, live on less than a dollar a day. So you know by Thorkel standards dollar ninety day, well, it's not luxury. Let's put it that way, but it's well above the historical norm, and so in that the only good news, there's lots of good news: child mortality rates in Africa now what they are we're in Europe, a nineteen fifty two, that's really good news looks like our population will probably pick out at nine billion, which weaken as tight bit of a bottleneck, you know but looks like we can. We feed all those people in it'll decline, precipitously after that there's more forest in the northern hemisphere than there was a hundred years ago and more forest in China than there was thirty years ago and looks like if you can get people GDP up to about five thousand dollars a year, they start taking care of the environment.

There's no wars in the western hemisphere for the first time in while, for the first time, that's a big deal, well, that's a big deal. No wars and rate violence all over the world or are plummeting and and and to death in warfare, have declined precipitously over the entire course of the ever since the world war? Two you know. Everybody and their dog has more technological power in their hand, by huge margin than sent the astronaut to the moon in nineteen sixty nine and it costs absolutely nothing and draws no power that certainly more bring the economies of Africa forward in the sub Saharan kind, In Africa have the fastest growing economies in the world, so it looks like the economic miracle that took hold in China and South EAST Asian India has finally spreading. Africa that starting to produce real improvement and so so a lot of good things, man and maybe that could accelerate. But you know we're so becoming more and more technologically powerful? And I think, we're politically p

raised in the west in the manner that perhaps dangerous, but it it it intimates, the possibility of danger, and that would be a Qatar coffee, and so So what I am hoping is that people will be sensible and careful and live decent risk the more responsible lives in that. If enough people do that, then that stabilize things, and we won't have to do think catastrophically stupid but we'll see like. I think I think it could go either way. That's how it feels to me- and I don't know I mean what I don't out very difficult. Predict the future. But I think it feels like that to a lot of people so we're in a choice, like we were nineteen, eighty four, you know seem to me that in nineteen eighty four, the whole world decided it well, step away from the nuclear brink inasmuch as it were

INA Garten chance, one thousand nine hundred and eighty four sixty two was another one, but I think the cuban missile crisis was sixty two one thousand nine hundred and eighty four things really pee and I think we made a collective decision- it's like no, let's not put everything to the torch, you know, Maybe we can make another decision now, it's not story what we label to produce just as its bearing fruit everywhere, because I believe that it is so we ve got thing to do. We ve got good things to do. We could we can eliminate them, I've most common diseases in the world in the next twenty years, people working diligently to do that, its within grass It certainly eradicate hunger, we more or less done that already in a week, We get things in order. If, if we choose those that, but get rid of the bitterness and resentment, and we have to aim at that and we'll see it's a terrible thing, about bitterness and resentment

satisfying what is it psychologically about humans? That causes us to focus on all of the negative things where you could do it easily Electra or an hour and a half on all the positive things that you just make out, but we don't focus on You can tweak the boy out every day and it wouldn't do half as well is talking about all the terrible has other well we're way, we're tilted so that a loss of a given magnitude has more psychological impact in a game of the same magnitude and the real reason. So, if lose five dollars, you're more annoyed at yourself than if you find that you are here, if you find five dollars on the street and The ratio of respect to gain and in response to lost, differs from person to person. You're very Diverted you expect and gain more positively and if you're, very high in trade and which is the negative emotion dimension than you feel more profoundly, but on average people are tilted more towards

the pain of loss. The reason for that is that, well, you know, so what you're happy fine, what, if you're dead Right so like pain and anxiety, or signals that you ignore at your mortal peril, whereas think things that signify positive outcomes are generally only saw only signify. You know, temporary incremental improvement so makes sense that we're loss averse right because we can be heard so badly, but it does make it more difficult for us to two points early wait, positive news. You know so there were also wired to be looking for threat like you, don't have to, look around for things that are ok You know you don't even see things. That's another problem with our perception. In some sense everything that's. Ok is invisible right, because what? Why would you don't do anything about it, you, I you not paying attention to the floor, and that's because it's not going to fall out from underneath you. You know

and you're so blind in that way, it's just absolutely unbelievable. You! You can't believe how much you don't pay attention to, but you patent, do things that might go wrong, while that makes sense, because those are the things you should think about, but it does tell us towards apocalyptic thinking that's why the apocalypse is always nigh. There's always thing that can go wrong enough to blow everything into bit. So it's it's something that we have to struggle carefully to regulate, because it can be exploited I think, it's being exploited by the mainstream media as dives in stiff spiral in Owen Well, I m really serious about that in technical sense, because we had a means of communicating globally. That was more or less I stable for a few decades in centralized cast televue radio. Not accessible to everyone, at least in terms of production. So there was

the consensus that emerged as a consequence of that and every we focused on it. So there were lots of dollars flowing into it to sustain it. Well now, that's In part, because everybody is now a news producer and the two of that is that mainstream media is falling apart because it lacks viewer, ship and money and budgets in fact checking, and and highly paid journalists and all of that, and so increasingly, in order to retain a shrinking audience. They tell towards covering the extremes? You know like there's good estimate, published a week or two ago by in the Atlantic monthly. That depends define these things, of course, but did the extreme political views on the left and the right only characterized about eight percent of people on the left in in the? U S and a slight smaller fraction. If I remember correctly, but approximately the same on the radical right, but if you are engaged with the news, you'd think that that was everyone and it is not

it's hardly anyone and Then the question is what ways all the focus on those people and the answer is well. They say provocative things that attract attention and what the news media driven to do in the short term now, because their medium to long term survival is in doubt is to maximize short term return, and you do that with you. Do that with sensationalism You see an analog of that. This is a very cutting I down in don't know this, but the rate of violent crime in United States has fallen by fifty percent in the last thirty years. Fifty percent no they're shutting jails down in New York City cause, they just don't have enough people to put in them, and so real catastrophe, it's gonna get that criminal population motivated, but by the United States, but at the same time an end it's safer in the? U S on the street than it has been since the early sixties and safer than it ever was in the entire course of humans,

at the same time and in its safer in the? U S on the street than it has been since the early sixties. That's safer than it ever was in the entire course of human history. So it's like that. As good as it gets. But what's happened is that reporting of violent crime has gone way up over the same period of time. So, if you ask people are this more dangerous than they once were. Everyone says, oh my god. Yes, it's way more messaging. No, it's not it's way safer way safer, but but that's butter because we don't know what to do about this technological revolution in that's, that's that's democratized news production and one is just what to do about that, because we don't know what to do about this technological revolution in that's, that's that's Hocker ties news, production and on is destroying these old enterprises in the UK was reported to single or so much

people now get. Their video on line than on tv that flipped about two months ago and like I have this experience. A while ago, I was on a major tv show, the United States, and it about a product that I have an online product. Its personality scale called understand myself, and I have my team prepared. We thought man better get our servers in order because we're gonna talk about this personality test and the the and for its gonna spike and hopefully will crash our system, so we stress, tested them for like two months. It was like so then the they came in. This story was released, audience hypothetically in the millions and tens of millions around the world at Z. Effect on sales, zero. It just me, I thought all I see. People are watching tv, they just have it on and saw people over fifty five, it's like they're, not watching at their just lonesome like one need some noise. Quick

the good? You know people like that. You know they have the tv on all the time about people and two there watching it it's different, and so I think I think the main me tv stations, when I walk now into a tv station, stream tv station. It feels like I'm in nineteen. Seventy five. So what's this like it's like back to the future, you know so I think that's just ed and and really hard on radio? And so it's desperation, it's driving attention the polarizing figures and makes you know, and another thing that's happened in the: U S like these have been conducted over the last two years. You ask someone: how is your life how think going for you and your family or better than they have been for a long time. Well, think everyone else is doing their duty. Terribly you know that's also not good, because actually people are doing terribly

we ve been and how many cities have we been in the? U S, and last, like forty in the last three months, Oh, that's just on the second half year, Bulgaria, hurriedly cities, looking pretty going pretty good and downtown lots of activities, some of them a rough Philly Philadelphia is kind of rough. But it's been rough for a long time, but man most of the city's. It's like the rebuilding their downtown choristers construction everywhere. It's like its there's there it's not Venezuela. I can tell you that although sad resists go, does have the poop app where well, they tell you where humans, poop and there's an app for they are well stupidity and economic failure. Not so We have time for one more. I think that this would be sort of. Fitting and or funny one to end on here in Cambridge any news about your online university going to offer a recognised degree no, I won't offer recognise, degree

Because that would cost like twenty million dollars and take thirty years and then I'd be dead and broke in that not interested, neither those outcomes- and I am certainly not interested in their intersection- know what our hope is that we will provide What we're trying to design is something like a portal Imagine that it was sort of like a companion that might be a way thinking about it, thinking reasonably far into the future. That act, the way that you use Youtube and the internet so that you could get, read it for what you learned and that you could set it helped. You set up learning objectives and it could assess your knowledge and teach you to read and teach you to write and teach you to think and that their be personalized to you and that that would accompany your use of online technology and then that your problem, can be tracked, and that would constitute the

Gravitation and then imagine that that accreditation was of sufficient validity so that it actually measured your skills accurately, so that it would become. Valid accreditation by its quality. That's what were aiming at and so it's impossible, it probably won't work, something like that's going to be built eventually, because, like the way that we interact online is made a portal is Google search, read it whatever or the Youtube it's like the user interface for interfacing with the content is its there it doesn't make any sense it's like they should be. Nothing more programmatic about it. It's something less random, so so. Why not? Why not? people to assess themselves with regard to what knowledge David Crude and to have continual record of that across time, and so so that's vision at the moment- and you know perhaps, this is thinking along ways down the road,

be ten years. You know. Perhaps that could be something allied with particularly insightful form of artificial intelligence that was personalized to you that no, what you knew and then so imagine this imagine that you knew you know twenty percent about some topic and that the system could figure out oh, how that knowledge compared to a bunch of people, a very large group of people who knew twenty five percent about the topic and that this system knew the pathway from twenty percent to twenty five percent. So that Tell you look you. Here's where you are in your knowledge about Ex topic: here's two things: You can watch couple a if you could answer man, you'd be up to twenty two percent and so forth I cannot see any reason more. That's that's what Raymond out we ve developed a prototype already for that, and I just can't see any reason why that would, I think, would find that attractive and margin is well that you know me,

you developed a certain amount of knowledge about a political issue are historically issue. Say what here's a hundred people who have about the same knowledge that you do You can only enter into a little contest, it's like which of you can maximize your knowledge fast vastest in the next month, then you can track that you never peer group. You know that you can compete with, because that sort of competition is kind of entertaining, and so we'd like and we'd like to introduce competitive element into it and restart and figure out how to teach people are right online. So one of our ideas is imagined it bunch paragraphs that were written by people who can write, and Wouldn't have to judge that that accurately, because what we do is just assume that high quality books were written by people who could write and high quality Books are ones that are cited, a lot that say we paragraphs from those books and then scramble the senses so scrambled senses into phrases and scrambled Paragraphs graphs, interest, scrambled paragraphs and then have you set them right like we're here. Is the scrambled sentence, drag and drop

the phrase see if you can match the original. A good way of scaffolding writing, and we don't know teach people to write on a massive scale. It's really expensive cars. Usually you something, and then someone asked a great it and that's it. Unbelievably time consuming and painful and unbelief the expensive, so it can't scale, but we ve got. Ten ideas about how we might be able to teach people too to write more effectively and that should help them think more effectively and so and I've got a good little team, a small team working on this, and we will not we're capitalized. I'm funding this, mostly as a consequence of patron donations. So I put a fair chance: the patron donations aside for this week. Raising money because one of the things I've learned when you develop a new project is that if you re too, money than what you have is the problem of what to do with all that money, which is now

the same problem as whatever the problem is that you're trying to work on, and so we just want to work on the problem and will scale incrementally if necessary, but but that's the plan, We made arrangements with a couple of consortia private, schools in the United States who are willing to allow us to the software and students as we develop it so another thing, Developing a product is really useful thing to know you dont build the whole product and then launch it into the marketplace because, like what the hell do, you know, even if its a product that doesn't mean people will buy it. What you do develop a little better than survey a bunch of people and carefully and see if they would actually buy it like they might say they like it. They might think that it's cool, they might think it too idea. All that's completely irrelevant the only It matters is that they would actually purchase it, and so you develop has to develop PTSD develope test, and so we huge range of people who are willing to test we're hoping that

can produce a universal online education system that that will cover. Nor the knowledge domains as such, we ve already mapped them out from Wikipedia my smart kids guys that are working on this one of them To return to solve is well how do you can so I knowledge domains. What are the knowledge domains psych, while the EU first have disciplines, while are those the right boundaries are those that right categories, who knows right there, just kind arbitrary one of them founder the map nor restructure, Wikipedia like and we fix That was one week's work is very smart. This kid is pretty well here: here's the knowledge structure, Wikipedia, that's good like english common law, because Wikipedia Urged organically right in it it evolved, and so, if you track the structure of Wikipedia you might think. Well, that's pretty good snapshot of human knowledge, and so now we ve got the basic structure of

knowledge laid out and we can map the interrelationships and we ve got people who are working on it. That are pretty good statistics and measurement- and so we hope in offering university degrees we're going to try to offer a valid form of accreditation instead. So that's the plan it'll probably fail. But it's well, it's so, if so, ridiculously difficult and unlikely that the probability that it will succeed is very low, but it's it's. Worthwhile. It's very challenging thing to do, and so that some. You know and People that I'm training will learn a tremendous amount doing it, and so, even if it fails, they'll go, do something else that successful and it's a very interesting problem to try to solve so well. So that's what doing with online education system so

While on that note, he clearly has a lot of work. To do so. I am going to get out of the way, makes him noise for doktor during Peters and everybody back you guys. If you found this conversation meaningful, you might think about taking up debts, bucks maps of meaning the architecture, belief or as new are best seller. Twelve rules for life, an antidote to chaos. Both of these works does much deeper into the topics covered in the journey Petersen. Podcast see, Jordan, be Petersen, not com for audio epoch and text links or pick up the bugs in your favorite books on a really hope you enjoy. Despite cast. If you dead, please leave a rating. An apple pie casts a comment. Review will share this episode with a friend thanks for training and touching next week. Follow me on my Youtube journal. Jordan, be Petersen on Twitter, Jordan, be Petersen on Facebook, at Doktor, Jordan be Petersen and against a grandma Jordan dogged, be dont Petersen. Details on this show access to my blog information about moving towards AIDS and other events and my list. The recommended books can be found on my website. Jordan be Petersen, doored com, my online writing programmes designed to help people street note. There pasts understand themselves in the present and develop a sophisticated vision and strategy for the future can be found itself authoring, dot, com, that self authoring dot com

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