Welcome to season two episode. Nineteen of the Jordan Be Petersen Broadcast, I'm Mikhail it you're, saying daughter, collaborator and most attract Lastly, updates: first, Mom is still stable reaction. Nor helpful this week and things seem to be ok. She's down there. Spit all she's, incredibly board. The thing seem to be stable. I actually think everything's going to be ok and over the last ten weeks there were periods of time, if not the majority of the time where things really didn't seem like they were going to be okay, so things are good right now, maybe it's because thousands of people were brain for us. So thank you for that. Anyway, I'm in a much better moon. Now everyone seems a lot more stable. Maybe there will be more humane and into this little control, who knows or maybe my mood is good because I met seventy two hours into a ninety six, our fast I'm amp guys pumped my key challenges

four point. Seven, my nor adrenaline is through the roof, and if you like, a super human right now could hardly a bare thou unkind of Hungary I found the queue and aid for Youtube. Last night my extra energies evident they're, pretty cool. I would on this fasting train. If I were you, it's not too shabby. If you keep your electric lights up, this week's episode is one of my dad's, twelve rules for life, lectures recorded in Ottawa, Canada at Centre Point Theatre on July, twenty third, twenty eighteen when we return Jordan Peter twelve rules for life lecture from July, twenty third, twenty eight please welcome my father, Doktor Dungeon Petersen. Thank you. Thank you for a nice to be here see all of you here.

I've been thinking a lot about what I'm going to talk about tonight. Thinking more today than usual, I would say I was. Thinking about. The fact that I was in Ottawa Centre of the political structure in Canada thought what would be the most appropriate time to address here, and I thought that I would talk I thought about for good while and I thought I would talk about the relationship between risk instability, a meaning, because I think that that's the core, idea in twelve rules for life, I think, is something like the relationship between. Once ability and meaning And usually, what I do in these lectures is pick a rule or two or three or ten To go into them a little more deeply than I have with each talker with my book, I think I'm gonna do something different tonight. I think I'm going to go right underneath

the book itself and talk about its main themes, and these are probably the themes that I've been working on for the last thirty. Years are that I developed first of all in my book, maps of meaning which, by the way, is out an audio form, if some of you might be interested, not if you found twelve rules for life, helpful and you'd like to new to explore the ideas that are in there. You could try maps of meaning, which is a much more difficult book, but I pathetically might be worth the effort. That's obviously something you have to do so but I think the audio version which are recorded and release June twelfth makes it more accessible both of those books deal with. Maps of meaning. Obviously, given that that's the title, but twelve rules for life is because meaning is the antidote to chaos right fundamentally, and so the question then, at least to some degree, is is there. Any such thing is meaning perhaps is that

is it a reliable phenomena and phenomenon and and what exactly, is it if it if it has some existence? So so those are the things were going to talk about tonight and I'm gonna think about all of this So the first thing I thought I would tell you about is a dream I had a long time ago and I dont exact remember the circumstances of the dream, but I'll tell you what the dream but the image in the dream was now you might ask me, why would anybody tell you about a dream and there's lots of reasons for that dreams are the birthplace of thought That's that's a nice statement. You know it's a nice poetic statement, but it s also true your thoughts don't just spring into your head. Fully formed a thought is a complicated thing and in a way that these

they seem sort of magical you're sitting there and all of a sudden those words in your head and where they come Well, you don't know what you're going to think you thought them up, but that might even be true. But it's not much of an explanation and no one in its it's a ten. Of psychoanalytic thinking, especially of the union version, but also with regard to Freud, that articulated thoughts emerge out of us straight, that's basically dreamlike, so you can think there's a there's. The word there, that you don't understand the world its deep beyond our comprehension and then there's the tick world that you live in. That consists of the thoughts You have at hand many of them verbal lies, but not all of them, but many and then there's an between

what you know in what you don't know that intermediaries is composed of the dream in the dream is surely the dream? But it's also the day dream and its also literature and an art and mythology and music and ritual and dance and all those things that we participate, and there are sort of dream like, and so You have the unknown itself and then you have the zone. The dream, and then you have articulated thought and partly Why cycle analytically minded psycho are interested in the dream is because- and this is again particularly true the followers of Karl Young, I would say at his his investigations into dream. Is that Dream is mysterious, not because it's trying to be mysterious, but a dream is mysterious, because it's true,

you saw the really complicated problem and its problem that you can't solve. You don't understand this solution, and so what did he is doing is putting forth the best solution it can manage and its mysterious, because it's not fully articulate, and yet it's not a fully fledged thought, its half teacher and one you something like that, but one of the advantages of interpreting dreams is that It may be speed the process by which the dream image becomes fully stipulated reality by engaging in. Conscious analysis of the contents, its content Cyprus is not. Everyone believes the dreams are meaningful, but why? Why would you have them if they're not good for something? You spend lots of time it dreaming. You spend most of the time during the day dreaming Your imagination can obviously construct up the world in, and the imagination is the

of new inspiration and that the idea that dreams have some fun general utility in some significance is not, I think it's the appropriate default hypothesis. Animals dream dreams are. All if you are allowed to dream. You go insane. Those experiments have been done and so Dreams are doing something you can be sure of that and then nearly if, if it's true that there's continuity between the dream, say and mythology and literature which, which I think is very solid hypothesis, then we obviously also believed that its useful to do such things as study. Literature, criticized literature and interpret it. You read a book and there's something to reading it. That sort of like a awaking unconscious dream.

That's constructed by more than one person right, because the author has dreamed up the bark and then well you're reading the book, your dreaming up the book yourself. So it's it's a social dream, but then I talk about the book than you might think about it and you might you? Might about the moral of the story, for example the significance of it with great book. You might do that for centuries, trying to extract out what the way amidst that's coded in the book and so there's no reason to assume you couldn't do the same thing with dreams, and it certainly been the case that in my clinical and in my personal life and in my clinical practice, the Allison of dreams has been unbelievably useful. So now young was trusted in the analysis of dreams, particularly when people were facing a problem. They couldn't solve, because his hyper, This was the dream? Was a problem all mechanism- and it was sort of in some sense independent of the dreamer. You know what you can't just

We must anything you want to dream. Just happens to you, it's sort of like you're, an observer of it. It's it's a process of nature that manifests itself within you and you, Sir the observer, and it was your contention that a dream never lied and that's helpful. Really helpful. That was true if there was something going on inside you. That was actually dead, honest that you could lie on even if it was mysterious, because sometimes when you're cast to drift- and you don't know what to do, then you need something that you can rely on to guide you in dreams to perform that function in one of use positions was the dreams shed light precisely on that which either dont know, or that you are unwilling to know and We say that the neurological its neural psychological evidence. That's been a created syn the time Karl, you was writing about dreams actually suggests that something like that, something quite like that is. Is it the case? So, for example, it does look like you're right hemisphere

seems to be more involved in the dreaming process is in fact designed in some sense to deal with things that you're left hemisphere with its more are related notion of reality either canter won't face, and so I think, there's I think- things that I'm telling you are on solid? in so far as such things can be on solid ground. So I had this dream when I was working on a complicated problem. And here here was the vision you ve scene? I suspect that division drawing the truly man. No, so it's man! Everyone knows this. For some reason, it's not really obvious. Why? So? Man stretched out like this Nude and he's inscribed in the square in the squares inside a circle, and it's actually an architect. Troll drawing, I was looking up just before tonight. Just before this talk- and I found out that divinity might have created, two didn't collaboration with an architect who, who is interested in the release?

chip between the human body and architectural forms, and, the truth is the person whom the virtue of man is named after was an architect and he was very interested. He was also very interested in the relationship between the human form and proportion in architecture, and I saw one of the drawings that was associated with the trivial man- was the with a cathedral a cathedral from the top of view from the top mapped onto a body. So cathedral has the same structure as a body and an apparently there's a whole set of architectural theories about that kinship. So so anyways, the petroleum man seems to be attractive or compelling because it speaks of the relationship between the human body. And the structure of reality itself created reality, but maybe reality even beyond that. So to do. I had was sort of like the petroleum man, except the man wasn't inner square. He was in a cube,

and so he was nude and it was about to feed off the ground. Suspended in the air in this cube and when he walked. Moreover, the cube came along with him and if you stop the cube stopped and they walk backwards to queue came along with a backwards, and so he was in this cube and wherever he went. The cube was with him and then in the on the front of the queue there's a bunch of little Square spoke for by for the kind of like, like wallpaper patterns or wallpaper patterns. Look like this phenomenon, which is much more to be the case so in each cube in on this on the front face of the cube. There were squares and was made up of squares and each square was a circle and in the middle, the circle was a little serpents tail like a snake tail. You just see the tail, and so there

It's a whole array of squares with circles inside them with little serpents tail there and the man could reach forward and grab a tail and pull it out of the little square and the whole snake would come out, and that was the world and I thought wow. That's a pretty weird image is very striking image. That was this very strange image and I thought about that image. Probably ever since I had the dream, which is like twenty five years ago, there is part of me this been thinking about that image ever since Because it was a revelation of the structure of being, and so so what does that mean? Well We cannot have this idea materialists because we're basically materials that we're

driven along like clockwork. You know that we're deterministic creatures and and were driven by physical chemical processes unfolding in a deterministic manner and That is a good theory. It's got us a long ways. We are kind of like plots. We are kind of computational machines, but it's an incomplete theory. I would say for for two reasons why is we're not obviously deterministic, because you can't predict our behavior. You certainly can't even predict the behaviour of animals even simple animals, so if we're determinist it's really really complicated. And so it's not self evident that we're deterministic. I actually dont, think we are, in the final analysis, let's not self evident, that we are even if you're, a determinist and the second piece of evidence that certain runs contrary to did. There's three the to the deterministic theory. Is that

at the bottom of reality. If you go all the way down to the subatomic level, things are not deterministic, so the deterministic model doesn't hold. That every single level of analysis. Now what that exactly mean- Four determinism- I don't know- and I don't want to make some you know loose Association between quantum in determinism and and and free will and consciousness sets explaining one mysterious thing by making reference to its potential relationship with a bunch of other mysterious things is not about helpful, I'm just pointing out that the deterministic Ma doesn't hold at every level, and so it's not a final model and in the final issue with regards to determinism, I think is a more pragmatic one. Maybe it's a weaker argument, but I don't think so. We don't treat each other like we're deterministic and in fact, if you treat yourself like you did monistic that doesn't work very well. You don't have a good relationship with yourself. If you don't treat yourself like you're, a creature possess,

a certain amount of free will with certain of choice and the attendant instability, and I think you naturally treat yourself in so far as you have guilt, for example, when you don't live up to your obligations in and when you feel that you can take me Once building that you have responsibility, you have a moral obligation of some sort and we feel sense of having choice and we hold each other responsible for our choices like you'd want to be around someone who treats you like a clock like deterministic clock, you don't treat you in that way. So don't treat yourself that way. Don't treat your family members that way and we don't structure society on that presupposition. Our societies actually structured the basis of our societies. The presupposition that people do in fact have that are not deterministic that every well that we are responsible for our actions now, that's obviously by did to some degree, because you are not responsible for everything I mean you have a certain struggle.

Responsible for your intelligence, although you might be responsible for what you do and whether or not you damage it, you don't really responsible. For your height like there are things about, you there are structured that are beyond your control, within that structure that you seem to have this capacity for free will and that's what this dream was referring to. Is that there's all these possibilities that lay themselves out in front of us and we can choose interact with the new might say. Well. Why? there be a snake tail there. Why? Why that space the image- and I thought about that for a long time to- and I think I hope I can explain this relatively briefly. I think that the the circuit that we use so ok us do something else and then go back to that. So here is how it looks to me here is how I think that things look to us. I think that we have when you wake up in the morning is you're not driven like a clock too.

Forward in the world you wake up and what you her hand is a set of possibilities no one, and maybe that makes you anxious, probably does in fact, because while there's lots of possibilities out there maybe there's more than you can handle it. Certainly the case if you're overstretched. But what you see is a range of possible These, then, are re themselves in front of you. You know one and that might appear to you in the sense of, or what do I do need to do to do today, or what should I do today or what do I have to do today or what would I like to do today or how would it be best, spend my time all those questions are there very of the same mystery, which is well there's a lot of possibilities that arrayed themself in front of me, and I need to figure How do you interact with them and I think you're doing that the time picking the morning, because at least for me I guess that's when it it's sort of most evident you wake up and you think well

How am I going to spend my day now? You know you ve, probably route nice. Today, in richer lies did so a fair bit of, runs automatically, but it still the case and when you are thinking in contemplating what seemed to see as a set of possibilities, point of view with the army of interacting with them in various ways, one that's what the dream image represented now, so so you have. You have potential that manifested it it itself in front of and I think that's actually how we think of the world were dont driven by the material structure of the present So much as we are engaged in the potential structure of the future, and that's a different thing is that in the future, what what manifests itself in front of us, looks like an array of potential futures and then we can interact without array of potential futures and actual eyes, We turn them into reality and I really think that's

we do, and so what we want we confront is something like chaotic potential enter or decisions. What whenever they are, are more choices, because to make a moral choices to choose one thing over another that that's the definition of a moral twice. What happens is that we transform potential into intellectuality as a consequence of our moral choices. That's that's how it looks to me now. Why would that potential be represented symbolically in serpent form, I think the reason for that is that Neuro by logically- is that the circuit that we use to deal with potential chaos. What might be where's the same circuit that we ve always used throughout the entire of evolution to interact with that way. Lies beyond us, so mansion the circle of the camp fire

forests forest around that the forest is populated by terrible things, things of potential, but also terrible things and the circuit we used to protect ourselves against the terror. Things of the unknown is grounded in the same circuit that we used to detect and protect ourselves against predatory, reptiles for sixty million year period. Something like that. So that's partly why. As far as I can tell that our great myths, the great hero myths, ample, which are very, very old narrative structures, virtually always involve some variation of the hero confronting some serpentine creature, a dragon most frequently Dragon read a great book on dragons awhile back man was track and I cant remember the name of it'll come to me, but he was trying to account for the

of the distribution of dragon symbolism everywhere in the world. He thought that a dragon was a tree cat, snake bird, and so so when we are primates, the things that tree, dwelling primates, the fundamental things that preyed on us we're snakes, predatory cats and predatory bert, and so he thought it and then you could probably add fire to the mix you know, because things we lived in burnt down a lot and many of us died as a consequence and so a tree cats, snake bird, specially one that spokes fire is predator right. It's the image of predator itself, and so one of the things you have to contend with predator and the predator lurks in the unknown, and the circuit that you to deal with the unknown even in sub struck form has its biological routes in the predator detection circuit, and that seems that solid science. As far as I can tell me this symbolic element to it this

bill? Symbolic element of it is something that most mainstream neuroscientist wouldn't accept, but that's because they don't know anything at all about symbolism, so it's not part of their purview and so the fact that they don't see the relationship, and I talk to some pretty good neuroscientist sewer, who were on board with the with the symbolic ideas. Well, so ok, so so so that's really what well that's what we're like but the world like the world, isn't a material structure driving us forward like clocks, it's a field of potential that we all confront, all time and that we transform into reality as a consequence of our moral decisions, and it seems too, that that's how we experience reality. That's how manifests itself to us. It seems like we upbraid ourselves when we don't do that properly to and you could think about it, a slightly different way to is that there is a potential

that manifests itself in front of you that you can interact with in various ways and then there is a potential within you that can react to that potential to master it and we all no doubt because will say to ourselves and to people we love you're, not living up to your potential. Turn your head and think you. How will I know, I'm really not living up to my potential in you know you wake up in the middle of the night, because your life isn't constituted the way that you know it should be and you're guilty about it in yours, and you God, I'm really not living up to my potential. I'm wasting might potentially like what the hell are you talking about exactly its serious. This potential that year not using what is it what it is anything that is yet right, which is this. This thing to be concerned about its only something that could be you're, not manifesting properly, something that could be well

but tat. I do believe that is how we experienced the world, and I think it's worth taking seriously, that and then here's a reason why I think it's worth taking seriously this bunch reasons. But here's a reason. It's it's kind of a strange reason, but I've I've been spending a lot of time. You may know this, I did a bunch of series series of lectures last year on Genesis about fifteen lectures and I really spend a lot of time thinking about the cycle, the meaning of the stories in Genesis. Because they're very, very old stories? we remember them for a reason, at least because their adapted to our memory, right through to remember them for thousands of years, otherwise they stick somehow and so my suspicions? Are they stick for reason, then? I think they're kind of dream, like we don't really you stand them, but we can't forget them and that might be taken

information that we dont yet understand, and that certainly seems to be the case and so there's a stir proposition and in the end, the opening in the first chapter of Genesis where God creates the world and the the account is an articulated account and then it's a narrative account in a written account, but it's the installation of accounts that we're orally transmitted, for God only knows how long before they were written down, and we really dont know how long, maybe as law these people have been using language which would be about at least two hundred and fifty thousand years. So all those stories and they have echoes of themes in them that are far older than that, and what do you see? What's the landscape of the first chapter in Genesis while it remarkably similar to this image that I just described in in in the way that I laid it out. So what you have it's a prop

about the structure reality and the proposition is something like, but there's something that that that that that its given the name God, that that exists and there's some chaotic potential that that thing is contending with an and that's the void that Toe Bowe who, which means the waste and and void, but it means more than that. It means something like chaotic potential so and its. So interesting to because the it's a cycle. It's a sign harmonization, let's say an abstraction of a deeper idea. Theirs older stories, even where these force or factor that serves, as God, We curves up a serpent tile being to create the world by the time. The genesis account is written, that's kind of turned into an abstraction instead of the serpentine being

its chaotic potential and that's the same relationship that I just described to you between the unknown and and and the predator Menus echoes of this in Genesis because God is actually described at times as having overcome a great, a great beast of sums, to create the world, the leviathan, for example, or the or the Bay moth. Both of those are our strange, deep creatures that get mention from time to time and genesis they sort of echoes of previous, more prime, radio conceptualisation of the structure of the world, and so there's this element of contending with the terrible dangerous, are known that sir as the sub story of the creation story in the first chapter, Genesis Nap that seems appropriate to me. The though the the story has been interpreted in christian terms,

In the following manner, so you have got the thing that does the confronting. Let's say, then you have the action of confrontation. That's the second and that's described as the logos in christian terms and that's a very, very, very, very, very complicated idea. But partly what it means is the capacity for truthful, communicative spy each and that's the word of God. So it's gods uses the word. The logos, which has the capacity for communicative, truthful speech to interact with the chaotic potential give it form, that's how the world comes into being. And that seems right. It seems right in that. Won't you need something you need something to to apprehend and you need something to act and you need something to act on and

so that that's the fundamental constituent elements of reality, as laid out in that chapter there's some interesting details that go along without so the proposition is, there's a chaotic potential and what God is uses the logos to Jim rate habitable order. Out of that, and then one of the things that happened in the first chapter continually is that after God does that he says, and it was good and its repeated, and the fact that is repeated is important because you don't repeat something that you don't forget: without there being a reason for the repetition, and so I think the idea of something like this. This is an absolutely amazing ideas. Far as I'm concerned, or it might be like the moon. Amazing idea. There is the proposition is that

habitable order, that is created as a consequence of truthful speech is good. So there's an ethical element that its entered right into that, and that's really something is because there's lots of things about the world that don't seem so good, the world's a harsh place plenty of malevolence in it. And so we all doubt its utility solidity, at least at some points in our life and we might even wonder how things got so terribly how things so terribly astray and our own lives or in our person lives, earner collective lives, but there's a hypothesis, in the first chapter that if it's been brought into being as a consequence of truthful speech, then its good and I think that's an incredibly useful moral guidelines

It's a proposition, nay, the proposition is because how do you know if what you do is good you're not like you can sort of gas, but you don't know the full consequences of your actions right. So if you do a rather than be well, you can produce a lot of consequences because you did ay, but you produce a lot of other consequences. If you did b and you can't calculate all those com, Well, it's just impossible factors. It is clear how you ever decide to act, because you can't calculate all the consequences. Your action, so we don't know when the calculation stop, we actually No, how you decide to act and in european by the way you have neurological conditions that make it impossible for them to stop putting before they act. They often have like prefrontal cortical damage, and they can do things like decide which restaurant to go to because actually impossible, because there's a hundred thousand reasons why you might pick one risk? over another- and there isn't just to restaurants. There's like fifty restaurants and and then due to the restroom, how the hell do you decide what you're going to eat? What you do, but we don't know how we

We don't know how you manage it, but but but you do manage it so so so so, if you're not managing the complex job, Of computing, your your movement through the world by sheer brute force, computation cause it's not possible, and you make judgment about what you should do in some manner and the rule for making that judgment as is laid out Genesis is that you can just make the assumption that if it emerges as a consequence of truth, then it's good No man, that's an visitor. It's a very interesting way to conduct your life. It's actually the hallmark of faith. As far as I can tell, the existential faith in some sense is like you, dont calculator. Consequences just tell the truth and then just assume that whatever happens is the best thing that could happen regard

so. What happens in so You know it's a daring way of interacting with the world. It's an adventurous way of interacting with the world, because you're not really in some sense you not in control of outcome. You have to take your chances with the truth, but then you think too is like well, you believe it or not. Well, let's take the perspective. The best possible world is going to be brought into being by you lying all the time, so I know believes that you know you might you lie to get out of something which is really usually why people lie in order to avoid it. Once ability or to or to what to avoid responsibility, org or maybe try to live in a wish, which I would command by the way, so! You lie, but no one really ever thinks deeply and says or death. ITALY lying about things all the time. That's how you make the world a better place like no one thinks that a psychopath

I think what if I lie all the time, I can make the world better right now for me, but that's not the same thing at all. That's just that's expediency and that's not a great guide to what's on a great guide to life, even if you're a psychopath, even if you're successful have to move from place to place because people figuring out right away, and there are very few people who are cycle. Who are genuinely successful in our day. They get some media pleasure, honour, honor, now and then but he's not a great strategy. So if you don't believe, truth is the best guide. You certainly at least know that falsehood, isn't a good guide. I would say you probably have a moral intuition that the world that's brought into being through truth is the proper world. Well,. And you think what happens after the opening chapters in Genesis. While next thing that happens fundamentally, is that God creates human.

These men and women and in the strange line, which is that. And their made in the image of God. You think what what what is it Does that possibly mean? I suppose, that's part of the reason that we derive the off D I did sense that God is old man with a beard in the sky? It not that we're all old men with beards, but you but at least human right, what were made God's image like well so that that the straightforward concretization without is something like God, inhuman form, which is obviously insufficient in some ways, because if God exists in ever form. He exists. It certainly not in a form that, the same as these simple way as you and I but there's a dead

your idea there. As far as I can tell him it's this idea of the manner in which it is it's a deep, the deeper ideas in something like the basic structure, if you're the thing that confronts potential and acts to make reality potential and that's what God was doing at the beginning of time, then that's the equivalence of image to the same thing you're going do in another. Smaller scale, you're not generating whole planets, but your journal in part of the planet. You know, maybe it particularly hellish part of the planet, because you're not doing a good job of it, and that could certainly be the case, and that happens all the time. But you know now and then you make a good decision and react in a manner that would regard is appropriate if you bring something into bed. That's worth its worthy being brought into being and then and then maybe you're sort of satisfied with yourself, and you could say that it was good, You can sleep with a clear conscience having participate

properly in the ongoing creation of the world, and it seems me that that is in fact not only what were called upon to do, but actually what we do. And so that's a daunting thought, and I think that's partly why people too, I too think it. You know, because one of the things I've thought about for a long time is what people are often often complain. Life has no meaning, which is actually not the case, because life certainly hurt Even if you're, not realistic and and hopeless life a meaning that suffering so you're not getting away with United away from that with your nihilism band you're stuck with the suffering, so the idea that life is meaningless. That's just wrong! You can get rid of the positive meaning, By being cynical and by a in your responsibility but you're not going to get rid of the suffering and the suffering is definitely meaningful, there's not a person out here anyway

who can talk themselves out of their pain. So so They talk about life, lacking meaning it isn't what they mean, that they mean that their life lacks positive answer. Staining meaning and it's important to be precise about these things and then you're upset about that. My life has no positive and standing, meaning in, and then they feel oppressed about that, and I am happy- and it's not surprising, because because life is suffering and twisted up a bit with malevolence, just suffering worse. If you don't have any sustaining meaning, then you get tortured by the suffering and obviously that's extraordinarily unpleasant, and so it's not surprising that people complain and you might think, while they would escaped from that state of meaninglessness if they could and but they can't perhaps, and argued themselves into a third or there. They ve argued them's.

Into a state of meaninglessness it's a consequence of Russia, the rational critique of the structure of being or something like that. But, but I think, there's darker things at work there, because one of the things I asked myself repeatedly over the Yours is maybe everybody has a choice. The choice is something like this because I'm all because I'm echo analytically minded when people say something for one reason I was thing there's a shadow reason that we need to explore too. There's you. What you're doing this because you're good you're, a good person, the communists, posit The utopian future state that was good so for all the millions of corpses. That was the dark side, and so you could flip that think well know there was no utopian vision to be not really. There was just justification for the millions of corpses and it was the production of those corpses. That was reason and the utopian vision, just a secondary justification, and if you,

well, no, definitely not, and well that's and then you can account for the corpses with some other theory and see how far you get with that. So there's a dark side decisions, and so let's say that you're in wrap your right Dublin and nihilistic viewpoint in your suffering. Because of that you think god I really wish my life was meaningful. I wish Such a thing is meaning, and then you Ok, well, here's your choice: sparely stark. On this side, there's meaninglessness right you're, just as you suspect, with your rational critique of being you're, nothing but a dust speck. Among seven billion other, does specks honor. No account planet dating and no account star among trillion of stars among hundreds of billions of Galilee. He's in a meaningless universe. We think cod, that's dismal like well, no, it's not

dismal, because if it's all meaningless, you don't have any responsibility, Whatever the hell you want and theirs, charge into being able to do whatever you want without responsibility or easy? First of all I mean, except for the suffering part, but it's easy. It doesn't require any com doesn't require any sacrifice it doesn't require. Any vision doesn't require any diligence, it's easy, it you can do whatever you want. Whenever you want and so cynic might say. Well, you just dreamed up the whole nihilism to justify the fact that you utterly useless, and then you can reverse if you could say ok what forget about that's right. Here's another choice, every thing do is meaningful. It Actually matters think well, that's great, because there's all that meaning, it's like yeah sure, There's a lot of responsibility that goes along with that, because maybe it isn't

I do believe this. I do believe that this is the case. I do believe that the most accurate we have represented. You is the way that you are represented in the first chapter Genesis and that whatever it is, that you are is something like an embodied logos constrained. You know, but confronting the chaos of potential, and determining the course of creation by your moral choices and that you can choose to make things better. And you can choose to make things worse, and if you choose to make them better, then they get better. And if you choose to make them worse, then they worse, and so I would say you you have. The possibility heaven beckoning on the one hand, and the possibility of Hell beckoning on the other and your choosing between those two. Every single choice you make and that's actually meaningful.

It's real and you think what you believe. That's like. Well, let's, let's ride that say what are you sure? You don't believe that, because you don't, the hell. You believe, because you can't really count for yourselves fully right. People are really ray. We're complicated each is the most complicated thing there is so we're not, transparent to ourselves is not obvious to each of us. What it is that we believe or how we construe the world and. So often when I'm trying to figure out what someone please ice, sort of look at how they act. That's an existential attitude is something also learn some degree from Karl Young, can't understand the motivation. Look at the outcome of the action and in further motivation. I like that lot. You think we're water people believe well powder, they acted mice. So people after spending twenty five thousand hours, counselling people through all sorts of things and about these things? For many more

and that is that you have a guilty conscience if you're not participating in the pool. The creation of being it weighs on you and not just a bit either like it'll. Take you out. It'll it'll make you suicidally ruin your life, your you'll contemplate the catastrophe of your foolish choices and waste. You ve laid to your own potential and the absence that you ve been. For your family and your community and You will not escape from that. Not a bit. And so it seems to me that regardless of peoples, conscious, accounting for themselves at a more impetus level and more unconscious level. Your holy yourself double as if you're responsible all the time and that you will torture yourself to death! If you do it wrong so

We weren't. If it wasn't the case, then why would you ever? It's not like you guys? Don't feel guilty, that's that's a common state of mind for European. I know that guilt can go too far and sometimes that people feel guilty more than would be productive, but it's not you don't feel guilty or ashamed or that you haven't lived up to your potential. All of those things. Man, that's that's! That's the sort of thing that torments you at three o clock in the morning. The the the idea of law stop opportunity. You know and in the sense of falling. I suppose in some sense that you have, if you haven't done what you could with what you ve been granted so you hold yourself ethically accountable. You hold the people, you love ethically accountable to the last thing you want for your children. I would say the last thing: if you love them too, degree at least, is that they live up to their potential right now. If you try to provide for them and environment

it increases the probability that they will live up to their potential and if you're a sense of all, you discipline your children when they're not living up to their potential and you reward them when they are in your thrilled when they are rights. Literally, if you love your children, you're thrilled when they do something, that's a real evolution of their potential. You know if you, if you Your husband or your wife is the same thing. It always again to the degree that you're not locked in a malevolent struggle and people are complicated and we don't have read untrammelled relationships with the people that were intimate with, but by and large what you're hoping. Is that that person. You love especially if you love someone the act, Loving them is actually the embodiment of the hope, that the potential you see them would fully manifest itself. I think that's

So what happens like you know? How look? Everybody has a soft spot for kids. I would say, but you have a particular saw spot for your own kid, and that's probably a good thing, because you'd there's just there, you are in there like a billion heads and you're not going to take care of all of them, so it might be ok, He took care of one or two, and you did a real good job of that and if everyone else did that the NATO be cared for. So the fact that your focusing Your own child is a reasonable, given your constraints, and so people are pretty in love with you, and you might think. Well, that's a kind of blindness, because why should it from a rational perspective that your child is any more important than any other child that your child suffering takes precedence. Over any other child suffering, and while I think the answer is, while you have limited resources seek and have to focus somewhere, but an but it The answer is the

is that your child takes precedence over other children is because if you love your child, then that's the only child you actually see because I have a sneaking suspicion that if you love someone, then you see them and the rest of the people that you don't You don't really see you just see your imagination, the more an image of the more you know you walk into, does actually evidence for this. There's this funny experiment I'll tell you about so. It's an experiment about change blindness, so here's the experiment so near the victim of the experiment. You walk into a store and you're interacting with the person behind the counter, and then the person behind the counter duck- down, and then another person pops up and continues to interact with you and the question is: do you notice, and the answer is in fifty percent of the cases? No

and so there's another famous experimental seems a variant of the same thing, so it was done at Harvard Tourist walks into the Harvard Campus Undergraduate comes up with a map starts asking the tourist for directions, couple a guy's, overhear holding a door and they walk between the tourist and the student blocking the student from the tourist momentarily, the student grabs, the door keeps walking and one of the people holding the door, takes the map and starts talking to the tourist and the tourist six percent of the time doesn't notice that the person has been switched, not even works if they have quite markedly different clothing and so you're blind to most people and you have to be because you just be overwhelmed, if you weren't blind, you be overwhelmed. If you weren't, mostly blind to everything. You're blind to most people, but I don't think you're blind to the people that you

and I think that's where you love them. I think that what happens is that when you, when you fall in love with someone or when you love someone there's a biochemical transformation. We know some. We know how some of this works chemically and you might think, that deludes, you and so you're in love with this person, because you're deluded- and you know you might actually wonder that sometimes after you fall in love with someone but but a more or less cynical interpretation, that would be no all of a sudden the scales for from your eyes. Can see not only who that person is but who they could be, and it's that thing that you see that what is and what could be, that make you, fall in love and then to that that you're in love, you try to foster the emergence of that. If you can stand like it's hard, because you know if, if, if you and I have a tight relationship and you're doing strangely well- and you know you start to manifest your potential- it's scary to me, because, to a degree that you have done that, then

you're both an ideal and a judge, and I might feel ashamed as a consequence and then work to bring you down. And you see that in relationships all the time, even between parents and children less so there, but certainly it's not by no. It wasn't by the competition of that sort, is by no means non existent and so well so you're trying to call your children forward to adopt responsible So what are the next thing that happens in in the stories- and this is I haven't, got this worked out, so it's completely coherent yet, but what happens? Is that see? If that's the right place to go with this argument,.

There's an awakening, so God make scarred, puts Adam and Eve into this garden, and the garden has a snake in it. That snake is the same thing that I've been talking about its partly this potential that exists in the world. It's more than that. However, the snake wakes everyone up wakes, Adam and Eve up and the first thing: the scales fall from their eyes and they Is that their naked? That's a very that's! That's the next thing of tremendous significance that occurs in that narrative tempted by the snake, with something like tempted by the possibilities of the world. It's a hard thing to completely comprehend Eve wakes up and realizes that she's naked and then she wakes Adam and that realisation of nakedness that's the dawning of suffering in the world. Something like that, because to realise that your naked is too.

Is to realize you're vulnerability and that something that's very specific to human beings that we face realize our vulnerability and our capacity to suffer big its partly because we can see we can we can. We can propagate that The future makes us, unlike animals like an animal suffers, but now you suffer even now, even if you're not suffering, because you know that you're going to suffer in the future and so you have. This sense of you're finished issued that no, creature house, and that disrupts the structure of being that's how the story goes, and I think that's right. I think that that discovery did disrupt the structure of being the discovery of our vulnerability and they equivalent discovery of the future and made us different creatures and because we're so complex,

because our consciousness in some sense plays a role in being itself. That truly is a disruption of the fabric of reality, and then God, chases, Adam and Eve out of Paradise and tells them that they're going to have to work, and, of course, that makes perfect sense to because we are since the only creatures that half the work and the reason we work is because, while you're doing fine right now, but what about five years from now? It's like you're going to sacrifice the present to the future. That's where the idea sacrifice comes in, took me about twenty years to figure out exactly what that sacrificial motif mentioned in Genesis, but what it meant was. It was in distinguished her out like that, rules for life was indistinguishable from the discovery of the future, because as soon as you discover the future, then you have to sacrifice the present to it.

Where's your just doing whatever it is that you want to do in the present it's kind of how an animal lips- and you know animals have pretty rough life's, although it doesn't appear that they dwell on much whereas well. In than that that there's something be said for that. But you know, whereas we worry about everything you can possibly worry about, and generally we don't get eaten by predator things and we live a long time. So the advantage to our chronic we and our ability to sacrifice to present to the future is that we actually do pretty good stretched across time, even though, There is a tremendous amount of concern, that's associated with that, the weight of work, let's say and driven I would say by the knowledge of death and that's really story lays itself out, which is quite interesting, so responsibility. This is where the transition gets tricky.

I'll just come about it. It from a different perspective. So here is something that I've noticed. That's really be fascinating to me as I've been talking to audiences around the world. Now I've spoken at gatherings like this now about a hundred times. Probably to about I don't know how many people Three hundred thousand people a lot of people, and so I've been watching the audiences has. I always watch everyone who comes when I can see in the audience, watch the audience. I watch individual people and I'm kinda individual people, despite the fact that its an audience and but I'm listening to, what's going on as well and one of the things I've learned as a lecture whose paid a lot of attention to his audiences that if you're saying something particularly meaningful, then everything is silent. Right,

So it's quite remarkable. You can get three thousand people in a room or more and it'll be dead silent and you know that if it's dead silent. Then you are on the right path. And everyone's with you, because otherwise they be shuffling around noticing that their hotter noticing that their uncomfortable about thinking about something are playing with their phone they get instantly destructive and so of people aren't being distracted by some. Also means their attention is focused on what's going on and if three thousand people are for seeing their attention on what's going on, then you can be reasonably certain that something is going on and, if you a lecturer and you pay attention to your audience than you always try to make sure that something is going on, and that keeps the odd still inquired quiet and that's it the occasion that something's going on in its it's. It's something that you you can use to orient yourself in sense to a place of maximum meaning and that's what what to do, and especially the spontaneous lecture. You want the Lex

be meaningful because otherwise, like what the hell are you doing there and if its meaningful, then everyone's gripped by it, and if it their grip, then their silent, and so you you, you can tell that and so you when you lose your audience, they start to make noise and that's very disconcerting. So it's very unpleasant, and so I dont like it when that happens, and I try to make sure that it doesn't okay. So the question is what topics silence, an audience now and there's two one is any talk about responsibility and that's really interesting in order. I noticed this last year when I did the biblical there. I mentioned most of the people who came to those strangely enough we're, men who are notorious. For their refusal to come to any sort of luck that involves anything like that, but that was the audience and when I talk to them about responsibility, they were dead, quiet and

were particularly quiet. If there was an association between the idea of responsibility and meaning and and So I've been thinking about that exactly why that's happening in this is this is what I have come up with events related to the all the stories that I told you already and hoping I can make the connection perfectly clear. That's what I'm trying to do in this lecture. So it's definitely the case. This is what's leader, in the story about a beneath that. If you wake up, you notice your naked, and you know that life is suffering and that's very disturbing Maybe in some sense you never recover from about human rights, I've never recovered from discovering the future. Unsurprisingly, and it

This is an existential problem and one is what the hell do you do about the fact that the future is likely to be rife with suffering. That's just a practical issue, but then there's and philosophical issue to which is what do you do about the fact that the future is going to be rife with? suffering so there's the practical issue bill yourself, a house so that you don't die in the winter, but there's there, essential issue, which is what the hell should you do about? The fact that life is suffering and then you can, you can make that even more complicated or its made more complicated, because it's not just that life is suffering its life. Suffering of the type that you're stupid irresponsibility will definitely make worse right. So its suffering contained aided by ignorance and malevolence and malaria since the worst of of the dual of ignorance and malevolence. Not only will you make things worse because

ignorant. You will make things worse because you try to make them worse, and so that's that's a hell of a thing to contend with two and the question is Well that can undo you it can and glue you. It's can make you nihilistic, make make you hopeless. It can make you depressed. You can do far worse things than that, because, if the full weight of the world's suffering malevolence level of a sort of laden onto you without your acquiescence, then Well. That makes you unhappy, and then that makes you bitter and then that makes you resentful, and then that makes you cruel and then makes you vengeful and then. Makes you murderous and there's places pass that then, makes you genocidal right and so the that their suffering malevolence is not only enough to produce a kind of nihilism, but it's enough to pray neo that degenerates into something

far worse than mere nihilism, and in fact I dont think nihilism sustainable. I think it inevitably J D rates into something approximating the design four hell. It's something like that. While the question is, what do you do about that? I think the first thing you notices that actually bothers you that their suffering and malevolent you know it would drive you crazy if it didn't, bother you, but we will just make that. Independent issue. Fermented does bother. You. Bothers you enough, so they might even quest the utility of your existence because of it all, You may go the whole way in question. The utility of existence itself And everyone does that at different times in their life. You know if you're, especially if you're faced with the entrenched intractable suffering of someone close you child, particularly, but not necessarily just a child, you can throw up your hands in despair and think none

should it should ever be. This is so terrible that it would be better than nothing existed at all and then that's what do you do when you ask in some sort of cosmic sense what the point is fair enough, but I think you have an answer to that, because you're not pleased that some deep level about the fact of on recorded suffer and unopposed malevolence it weighs on you. So then, what should you do about that? Could you do something about that and I would say: not only could you, but if you did, then that would in some strange manner be the cure for the problem so

There's this idea that clinicians have come up with a sort of on mouse over the last hundred years An idea is, if you wanna good over a fear, and you want to forward effectively in the world. Then what you, is voluntarily confront that fear no man What it is and that works turns out. Virtually every school of psychotherapy is discovered this more or less independently. So Randall has figured out that if you confronted things that you haven't dealt with in your past, that that would straightened out and then the behaviors figured out. If you are afraid of something- and you exposed yourself to that thing, you Fraid of in small doses, then you get more and more. Rageous and you'll be able to get over your fear doesn't really matter how terrible the thing is so Edna for whose great clinical experimentalists tried it out with with women who have

post, traumatic, stress, disorder, post, traumatic, stress disorder is rough men and they had it because they were violently rape by strangers right and so what was the curative process this occurred? You can't do this without delay by the way, so she made sure that her clients, the experience, was in the past more than eighteen month, in the past seems to be about rule of thumb. She had them relive the experience in as much detail as possible in in it is full imagination, ass, possible voluntarily and help them up to cycle physiological recording device. To check their emotional reactivity and then show the women who the worst time really. Well, they were reliving. The experiences got better faster and stayed better longer, and so, What's so interesting? Is that it in some sense the magnitude of what you face doesn't matter? If you face it, you can overcome it.

And so then you think. Well, how true is that you think? Well, look. You know people work Emergency words, that's pretty damn rough, meaning Emergency Ward right, not there's nothing there, but emergencies, and so that by definition, that's about his rough as it gets. And yet people can do that and they have lives minute stressful Did they go to work every day and they do that and people. Could morgues you don't corridors and their first responders. You know the paramedic I said all of that and and and their people who work. Oh have care wards. That's pretty damn rough because you, you know caring for someone new form relationship with him. Are you not a very good palliative care nurse and definitely they die and usually within a couple of weeks, but yet by my sister in law, is a palliative care nurse and she just keeps on cruising she's good to her kids, she's good to her husband, she's, a good person in all weirdly, its produced more appreciation for life in her, and I wouldn't

that's necessarily inevitable because those jobs can be very stressful, but there's those two work every day, so that's quite something that she's, so damn tough, that chick face it dead on voluntarily and and so then there's that possibility- which I think is an actuality- that, despite the fact that There's this suffering and malevolence at the bottom of the world, which is enough to corrupt you because of its existence. If you turn around. Paradoxically, paradoxically, and you decide you're going to accept the challenge of, confronting that then, all of a sudden you find it but you're the sort of creature that can do that Think that's any different than confronting that chaotic potential. I think it's the fullest manifestation of that, and then in an here's, something else. That's really interesting, and I think I close with this I'll tell I tell you it to two interesting stories. One is about a cathedral, the shark cathedral,

in the cathedral, there's a maze labyrinth and it's it's a circle and divided into four northwest, east and south it. So it's made out of quadrants quite big. I think it's fifty two feet across and its Symbolic pilgrimage to the holy City or to the centre of the world- and you do that go into real pilgrimage and single pilgrimage and you go places. You haven't been right. That's the whole point of going in a pilgrim and specially fear from a medieval village and you ve never been anywhere. You go out of your village. You go out into the world you Jerusalem by the time you come back like that, like like Bilbil beckons you're, not the same creature. You ve had your big adventure and you're, not the same creature anymore. So the fact You ve gone out in that adventure and pushed yourself up against World means your informed in ways you wouldn't have been and you're transformed, and so that's the purpose of the pilgrimage. That transformation is what takes you to the heavenly city. You might be doing a geographically but

doing it, metaphysically psychologically at the same time. But maybe you can't do that because you can't afford a pilgrimage, and so you have to walk the labyrinth, and so this labyrinth is constructed as the central feature of this great cathedral winter it on one side and then you walk through it, but you don't just walk right to the centre right, because you don't get to the centre by walking straight to the Centre Party, because you don't work, centre is maybe the centre moves and it's something you have to discover in the confines of your own life and so haughty get to the centre answers by going everywhere. You possibly can, and so you, the labyrinth and you walk every quadrant. You walk every square inch of every quarter And by the time you're done you're in the centre and that's the centre of the world and you fully informed because you ve been everywhere because you ve taken on all the responsibility there is to take on, and that's me did you weigh more than you? Were you think what some of us?

matter of learning right and you know that the more skills you acquire I've never acquired skills that didn't turn out to be worthwhile, even if it didn't produce the consequence that I had attended right to pay, myself up against some limitation and to try transcend that has produced a transformation that I regard as that, I've come to regard inevitably as useful, and sometimes it's because I have to leave parts of myself useful anymore behind, which is also a form of sacrifice right to let go of what you shouldn't be and leave it behind. Well, so you get informed by interacting with the world and the more determine that you're going to take on the burden of the world voluntarily, the more informed you become and the better you become at being able to take on the burden of the world better. You are acting in a manner that reduces suffering and constricts the malevolence, thus having the original problem, but there's even or to it. And this is something that's only been discovered in in very reason,

time. So it turns out that if you put yourself The new situation, first of all, if I stay you involuntarily they tend to react with defensiveness in fear, and you produce a lot of stress hormones and its harder. You, but if you take the same challenge on voluntarily, your second physiological response is completely different right. So it's it! Don't you don't produce stress hormones in levels that will damage. So, even though the objective burden is the same, the subjective consequence, even vested. Materially. Isn't the same. So it's different to hoist mode voluntarily than it is to have it thrust upon you and so the western and might be well what size load should you bear, and I think the answer to that is the biggest one you can possibly care. Because that will ensure that you know that you have something meaningful to do in any case, if you, yourself in a new situation. This is what stu neurologically. This is so cool new.

Genes turn on and code for proteins that haven't been coded before so it's like you have tremendous biological potential locked in genetic code, but it won't man, first itself unless you push it you're, not going to unlock those boxes of protest, Let's say, and God knows what you'd be like, if you unlocked all of that those you will not unlock without the demand and the demand One occur unless you put yourself beyond where you already are so well suffering in the world in this malevolence, and that's your problem and you know what's your problem, because if you're not doing a good job of ameliorating the suffering and training the malevolence than you're, not torture yourself to death with guilt and chain has definitely your problem, and so you want do something about that, because the alternative is not Good. So you decide to do that voluntarily and you think well that's impossible. Given that the burden of suffering

and the degree of malevolence in the world, and it is impossible. But God only knows what you are in your fundamental essence, and God only knows what you could be if you were completely turned on. Let's say, and the way you find out is by deciding you're going to do that, which is impossible and you don't have a choice anyways because you're confronted with mortality with offering and mortality and malevolent, in your life, any ways and you're all in man like you state yourself on this right. This is this, life or death situation for you just like it is for everybody else, and so the question is well. What would you be like if you play that to the full, and so I think, what's been, making the audience is quiet and in this I think something that's extraordinarily useful to know is that. Would you need a meaning in life to sustain you through the catastrophe of life because

Life is just stupid suffering and in that produces degeneration it it's not a good thing. It's not a static, think it goes, bad to worse? You need a meaning in life to sustain you through that. The meaning, is to be found in not in impulsive and not in your rights and not even in your freedom, but in Europe, for instability, and so. Because you to think about this. You know it too, because if you know, if you think about those times when you're, actually ok with yourself and maybe even pleased with yourself, let's say You know it minimum there's some things that you ve done. And minimum. You ve taken care of yourself right not to be. To some one else. That's at least something so you you ve taken on enough. Sports ability. So you account for yourself and then maybe you ve gone that above and beyond the call of duty- and you are also taken- carry your family and maybe

you're really pushing the boundaries you're taking carry yourself in your family in a way that's actually beneficial to the community, and so when you wake up three in the morning, you can think well caught. At least I did that cycle that something and then you think about People that you admire, you know you'd, People who take on responsibility at that happens, continuously right. It's not some new necessarily choose. If you look in the world in use. If you're reasonably mature. You know you look at people and you think we're that person is Baron under the structures of their existence, quite admirably an end, and you feel in him ocean. You feel impelled to call be that to imitate that, that's that's! The compulsion towards the matter station of a higher moral being. So that seems to be part of. That idea seems to be part of what. Well, what is it?

people to my online lectures because that idea runs through them. It's something like well, you have to the meaning in life The meaning is a real thing to real thing and it manifests itself You take responsibility for the inadequacies of big and it's that willing to take sports ability for the inadequacies of being that should in form the manner in which you interact with that potential. That's that's them. Choices that you're making. As you see these this chaotic potential, it manifests itself in front of you. You want to do that. You want to make things better. That's the meaning and that is, I think, our participation in creation- and I think it is the manifestation of the image of god- I think

right, and I think we need to understand that and that we could set things right we could set. Them is right as we could set them if we undressed. That, and I think it would be in everyone's interests to understand that and most importantly, I think it's just true that that's the case, and I think that everyone knows it. Thank you well, this is all of us, or months will start with this. What are your thoughts on?

certain Trudeau, ok. So so when, when Mr Trudeau first appeared on the scene and was contemplating high level public office. I had my misgivings and there is a reason for that. I felt that it was inappropriate. It

inappropriate to capitalize on your unearned fame when you're competing for a position of responsibility, and I felt that because Pierre was perhaps the most famous canadian politician of last seventy five years that Justin had to establish its own independent credibility before he had licence to the name and he didn't and he ran anyways, and I thought that was sign of maturity and narcissism, and I still believe that so those were the first thoughts he's.

Farming and he's good looking and he knows how to behave in public and those are trivial advantages. But I don't see any evidence that he has the depth of care necessary to occupy the position that he's chosen to occupy an eye. I think, one of the manifestations of that there's a couple further pieces of evidence. One is his problem: ready to make policy as a consequence of conformity with well meaning and trendy ideology, and saw that manifest itself most appallingly. In the manner in which he chose to constitute his cabinet, because his first one of his first decisions was to choose his cabinet on the basis of their genitalia, and I do not think that

Forgivable, his responsibility was to go through the people that were elected along with him and subject them to the appropriate acid test. And to pick the most qualified people, regardless any of their non relevant characteristics, ridden that's actually the critic issue when you're selecting for in Gordon rule in unknown, prejudiced manner that the definite of selecting in unknown. Prejudiced manner is that you ignore all attributes that aren't germane to the task at hand and sex is not one of them and so I believe that he

gerrymandered, his cabinet selection, so that he could manifest his allegiance with a with the eye with the ideology, the drugs identity politics, instead of making the increase, really hard civil decisions that would have been necessary to pick the most qualified people and so I also know that he mentioned gender. Three hundred and eighty five times in the budget document, and that is the biggest problem that we have. So I think that he that's what I think so far

twenty. Five year old, ambitious women with no parents and no siblings, I feel lost lonely and scared, even though I am professionally successful. Well, that's not surprising, I mean you're. U you explained why instantly in this question. You know You have no parents and no siblings so you're alone. No wonder you feel lonely- I mean you are alone and that's a very profound, its position. You know I've had clients in my clinical practice who were very isolated, who have no no family, or maybe the one person that comes to mind had a daughter, but they have no one else, and you know that her and her daughter, what kind of clung to each other Perhaps in a somewhat counterproductive manner, but unsurprisingly, you know that it's a pretty rough place, and even even if you're doing quite You can be taken out by a prolonged bout with misfortune, and partly what you need to do is buffer

self, with a social community, and hopefully your fortunate enough, so that that consists of some parents and some siblings and maybe a bit of an extended family for better or worse than a good friendship network and an intimate relationship like you need. You need me of structures of support to surround you in a job. One, but it's only one and its one of, Heaven things that you need to know what things do need well, you need to figure out how to educate yourself in. We need to figure out how to take care of yourself your mental and physical health, and you need a career and you need to figure out how to cope with temptations like drug and alcohol abuse, and you need to figure out how to make production use of your time outside work and you needed it relationship and you need a family and if you don't have, if you're lacking, if thing isn't working on one of those dimensions. There's other dimensions, but that's a pretty good initial summary. Then, of course, you're going to feel lost

only in scared, and the reason for that is that you are in fact exposed on multiple fronts. Your life isn't buttressed nearly as well as it needs to be, and so what you need to do is you need to. You need to spend some real time developing a network of friends, and you need to find a relationship and you need to have a family and because that's what it is human being and the idea that you know you say, even though our professionally successful, it's really interesting question: I'm a twenty five year old, ambitious woman. Okay. So there is an implicit presumption there. That ambition is safety in some sense, because otherwise it wouldn't be highlighted as the as the as the what would you say as the only descriptor, and it means in some sense I'm reading a lot into this, but I'm going to do that. For the purposes of illustration, it means that in some sense you

into the idea that ambition in the career domain is sufficient to set you up in the world and its not that's just complete nonsense. Most people don't have careers, they have jobs, and a job is generally something that you're paid to do, because you wouldn't do it otherwise, and even if you for career the probability that you have a career that so great that the logical thing for you to do is to sacrifice the probability of having a family to it is virtually zero. Ike I've known many people who had outstanding careers, many of them women and it isn't, and some of those women decided to sacrifice the possibility of children to their career. I would say, that's a minority taste I'll, tell you and it isn't obvious to me that for most of them that was a good decision now about something you tend to discover only when it's too late

so, you don't feel lost, lonely and scared. You are lost, lonely and scared and that's a big difference. You know, because you sometimes people come to me in my clinical practice and you know they said. Their depressed and then they tell me about their lives and their lives are absolutely terrible, and I think you're not depressed you have a terrible life right look. This is different here is what it's like to be depressed. You come to me geez. I don't know what's wrong, you know I I have some kids and I love them, and I've got a husband or wife and that's workin out as well as you could expected. I have a job in it. It's pretty good job. I can't imagine doing something that would be better and I'm pretty healthy, and yet God just feel terrible. All the time I'm gloomy, and I worry about everything and wake up in the middle of the night, I can't sleep properly and your depressed. But if you come and say, Jesus

I've been unemployed for two years, and I have a really is health problem and my and might my childish deathly ill and my wife is an alcoholic Father has Alzheimer's Disease and we're gonna get kicked out of our house next week, and I dont know what they held to do so like you're, not depressed emit. You might be depressed to, but but it's no wonder it's like no wonder you feel terrible, that's terrible, and so on we do different things if you're clinician under those circumstances like for me. If I see one whose depressed, but their life is an order. One of the first things I suggest to miss. You should try antidepressant something's gone wrong and you could try an antidepressant a month and there's a bit of risk, but not as much risk as the reason being depressed and you might find that it actually just fix it up and that that happens to people quite frequently. Now it's very difficult generally to entice people are convinced them to take an antidepressant because

if their conscientious, because they think- oh you know that's a cop out- and I should do this myself and you know it's just a chemical treatment and so on and so forth and fair enough. But you know people get sick and one of the ways they get sick is that their mood gets this regulated and If you take an antidepressant and it works, then you won't jump off the bridge and that's really said quite a good thing, because once you jump off a bridge, there's no coming back and it's a real risk with depression. And then, if you to have a terrible life? It's like what you do something completely different therapeutically Mr Might recommended antidepressant because maybe it'll take a bit of the edge off. But then you start helping the person put their life together to the degree that that's possible, and- and so I would say to this twenty five year old,

Bishop woman, you two alone in the world. Far too alone, you need some friends, you need a network at work. We need to develop your social network, you need an intimate relationship and in all likelihood you need a family because, like what the hell I'll see you going to do once your fifty and onward, that's another thing that young people don't think about it. It's like you know. I just had a grandchild. Last year my kids are getting married and and we're looking forward to more grandchildren and other things you notice. As you get older, I mean I've had a great career. You know I'm one of those people who have been very fortunate. I've actually had a career and it's been incredibly meaningful and even so as I get older. What becomes increasingly important to me are my wife, my kids, my parents, like my family, that just the importance of that growth rather than decree

is across time- and you know, I'm hoping when I'm seventy- that I'll have grandkids and now be surrounded by people that I love and that that's that's one of the places that you find the deep sustaining meaning in life. So career ambition is not sufficient, not by any stretch of the imagination, and we should stop lying to young women about the structure of the world, because we certainly do that and it's really too bad. So all right What do you think about people putting you on a pedestal and agree with everything you say? Well, I wouldn't That people agree with everything. I say that the first thing I too good mean because I certainly been what would you say, exposed to plenty of resistance to what I said or more accurately what people think said when they dont pay any attention to what I actually said. But there's a

there is a serious. Even though the question is, what would you call it? It's in cautious in its formulation, there's something about the question. There is a real danger in in that sort of thing you know being regarded as an authority. Let's say What do I think about that's more like what do I do about it and what I do about it is pay attention. I watch the Youtube comments, so I watch the twitter comments, so I can keep an eye on social media. I look at the memes that people are and rating of me and there's lots of them and that the means are actually really useful because they're pretty there there there, the activity of the court jester right, because the mean makers are in committee clearly, and so there sat arising me in various ways and the meat, in general are good hearted.

And so my sense is if the court gesture isn't vicious, then you're, probably not too stupid, and so I'm watching that to see that the the satire stays light hearted, because that means that I haven't made any particular egregious mistakes and then I've also, in very careful with what I say and continue to be very careful with what I say, because there is great danger in a misstep. Has been for a long time and I suppose the more people that are listening to what I'm saying the more danger of the misstep for better or worse. And then I have surrounded myself with people who are who are attentive and clear, headed and item to them all the time about. What's going on around me, so that,

can stay oriented and listen to what they say. So my wife is one of those people she travels around with me and she's. A tough minded, sensible person who's been through her own. I by fire and she watches, what's happening and gives me a slow. Whenever that's necessary, which is probably mine, slap two or three times a day at a major slap about once a week. So and kids keep an eye on me and they do the same thing, and I have a couple of friends who been watching everything that's been happening since the beginning and there they have no compunction whatsoever, sharing their opinion, and so am I attention to all that, because I'm hoping that this will be good, it is good and that it will continue to be good and so and then I'm also not twenty in like this. Is this isn't owing to my head? The way it might? If I wasn't fifty five fifty six

I've already done lots of things in my life and shepherded through peep people through incredibly difficult circumstances, and so I think I am fundamentally a sensible person and, although prone to my certain kinds of errors, and since I'm fine, mentally, sensible and I've surrounded myself with people who are awake and critical, then I'm hoping that this will continue to unfold properly so and so far. That seems to be the case. One example of that is these lectures these discussions, because their insanely positive so and that's a good thing and Michael myers- Sense is that most of the people who are coming to hear me talk are doing it. The political reasons are radically secondary and that most people who are coming to here be talk are coming because they are trying to put their lives together as individuals, and I dont see in that anything but good, and that's

people tell me when I meet them afterwards, I'm gonna meet about a hundred and fifty of you afterwards and everybody tells me something too to me- and it's usually something like I've been trying to put my life together and its working, and that's really good. So I am pleased about that and thank you, and so that's a great thing for people to say, and as long as that keeps happening, then I'm going to assume that this is good, so anonymous, do any advice for a young woman who smart, beautiful and successful, but who can't find a man thing I want the most is a husband in for kids, sure go online Do I have this future authoring programme? The join made reference to write

exactly what you want in a partner and an right, for you, so so that you're telling the truth to yourself right of exactly what you're looking for then set up at a dating profile and say, say exactly that in all EU candidate for privacy to say exactly what you want and and see what happens so because you're probably get what you want. It'll take some work and they'll be some frogs to kiss along the way I'd say. But I think of you. If you just laid out your argument truthfully c and here's the thing to think about two is the more truthfully you lay out what you want, the more the higher the probability that the right person will read it and respond. So I think you can get what you want, but you have to specify it and you have to communicate it, and I actually think that's true in life in general is that I think you can get what you need and want.

But you have to specify it and then you have to sacrifice everything necessary to attain it, and so I think that's how the world works and I know that there is an element of luck. I know that people can get cut off at the knees, but it still your best bet so, which books have you read on young? Exactly have read everything he published, except for what's been released in the last ten years. That's about thirty volume! something like that is diversity really a strength. How can it be well depends on what you mean by diversity randomly selected people on the basis of their race, gender and, if necessary, for tests for participation and intellectual endeavours. That's not diversity that stupidity,

but there is lots of forms of diversity that are a strength. You know, because people breathe different talents and abilities to the table, and you can you can match. Talents and abilities to the two, situation. I mean I can give you an example of of diversity of strength. That's good political example, so when we ve learned over the last thirty years that what the fundamental elements of human temperament are looks like we're kind of five dimensional people, different extra version, which is assertiveness and enthusiasm. They differ in neurotic system, which is withdrawn, withdrawal, sort of fear and volatility, defensive

ocean they different agreeableness, that's compassion and politeness. They differ in conscientiousness, that's industriousness, orderliness, and they differ in openness to experience, which is basically creativity. Interesting ideas, and if you want to find out what you're like by the way sort of objectively, you can go online. I have this personality test at a site called understand my Dot com and it'll. Give you for your your position on the five sick factors and then the ten aspects that I also laid out and see useful in interest. You might want to even do that. If you have older kids its useful to do that with them, because you'll find out things about your kids that you didn't know, I had my kids do this test several times when I was developing it, I kept learn things about them. I thought I knew them really well. I suppose I did, but I was still surprised by elements of their they'll be that I have seen so. One of the things we ve learned as a consequence of laying out the structure of temperament. Is that

there's, a relationship between temperament and political belief, and so it turns out that you kind of vote your temper but it's even deeper than that, because the way you think you think about the world is that you look at the facts that are out there and the new dispassionately assess them. A new generate your political opinions. But you do that a little bit, but not very much, not unless you really educated politically and almost no one is including me what do instead is your temperament filters, the set of facts for you and you derive your conclusions from that set of filtered facts, and so Liberal left leading types tend to be high and openness. So that's creativity and interesting ideas and low in conscientiousness, and that's industriousness and orderliness predict early low and orderliness, not so much an industriousness, and so there are the creative types and then the right wing, the conservative types are low in openness to experience and high

conscientiousness? And so what does that mean while the conscientious types do pretty well, because conscientiousness is a really good predictor of long term life success in more conservative occupations so managerial and administrative occupations, for example, and academia for that matter. You're is very, Your successes well predicted by how conscientious you are, and so conscientious people around us some dutiful. They do what they say they are going to do. If you have a task to do, and everyone knows do it. You want to find a conscientious person and they'll do it and so, contrary these people are really good at running things better import inventing them now we're all types by by comparison tend to be. You find, creative artists, types among the liberal, left, leaning types and that in the entrepreneurs, because entrepreneurs are more like artist, Then they are like managers and administrators, and so this

really cool as far as I'm concerned, because what it means is that we need liberal left leaning types to generate businesses, but they need the conservatives to run them and that's a good exam. Of diversity and new. Do you see that in your own organizations is that you're gonna need people who are diligent, industrious, reliable rule, the algorithm executed managers and administrators, there are the people to rely on? If you know what the hell you doing and you needed done efficiently, but you're going to have sprinkle in their creative disruptive types. Because now and then your company is gonna, go off the rails. If you only do what you're doing when the environment shifts around, and you need people to think laterally it's the case in the economy in general. We need the the radical thinkers to produce

information when their necessary, but we need the conservative types to implement sensible solutions and then the purpose of the political dialogue and the reason for the necessity of free speech is so that these two temperamental types can communicate. To keep everything in in the proper centre, like the centre moves around day, where you're supposed to be. Sometimes you need more, serve active approaches, and sometimes you need more radical approach, and you dont know win which of those solutions is correct, and so the way you figure that out just by talking that's why free speech is the funded one of the reasons why free speech is fundamentally axiomatic. You can't have a successful quality without free speech, because you need the different temperamental types to communicate to solve the current problems of the day, and so that's a really good example, diversity is necessary. You know it's horrible because, as you know, the liberal left leaning types. They view the conservatives with suspicion, because

Conservatives are always having the men and boxing the men in keeping the borders tight and making everything organised and drives the liberal types crazy and then, of course, the conservative types. Stand the liberals. Cars are always breaking down boundaries and and violating barriers and and arguing for the free, low of everything and marking everything up and coming up with all sorts of cockamamie ideas, but but well is the thing about creativity like first of all, if creative, you're, probably poor right is it is. It is viciously difficult to monetize creativity and look here give you an example so Say you're city got a city and part of its falling apart. What sort of iraqi neighbourhood, but it's gonna, not too bad architectural bones and there's things about it there a little bit cool? And so what happens where the artist move there right now, when galleries and they showed

strange work and they start to make it a little cool. And then the coffee shop people come in and there that, like that terror of creative and all this is called better open, a coffee shop. So we can hang out with old artists, and then you know and the trendy change move in and then there prices start to go up and a bunch of people get rich not artists, they don't make any money at all. There still starving to death in their garrets, so they have to wander off to some other uninhabited part of the city and start again you don't make any you. You can't make any money as a creative visual artists. You can't make any money is a musician. You can't make any money is a sculptor, dancer, Sir ART actor like you can poor and really poor and probably miserable, except for a tiny fraction of people who become fantastically successful. And so creativity is a high risk, high return game and the mobility, that you fails almost certain

now, and then you'll succeed spectacularly and what you do will change the whole world and so well on part of the reason that the consent it are sceptical of the creative types is because they think our most those ideas are stupid, dangerous and that's absolutely true, stupid, dangerous and counter productive, except for the any minority that are absolutely crucial and vital and that's the point, that we have in adapting to the world in general right is that we ve got some, things that are working, so the managers and the administrators. The conservative types are beetling away, making those things work, but the whole environment shifts on us, and then we think all we need to radically idea to adjust our society. So then we have to do Rate like a thousand radical ideas, most of which are just absolutely catastrophic, but one or two of which are are absolutely vital, and then we have to do the terribly the process of sifting through all that chaff to pull out the wheat and that's what we do in our political, honest, political dialogue at least

part and so and there's no solving that problem, it's a permanent problem, which is why we to be alert and awake, and we have to talk freely because that's how we solve that emerged problem, and so that's that's diversity. So. Can a capable, but extremely shy person overcome their social limitations to do well in the workplace on their own, or do they need professional help? What kind? Well you know. First of all, I would say that you're already eighty percent of the way to solving the problem, because this is a truism for four therapy. You can't If you already know you have a problem, and you want to overcome it, then you're like three quarters cured and then it's a good time to go, see a therapist Why would you see a therapist while you have You say you,

obviously know that you have some social limitations and and that's interfering with the full manifestation of your capability and so I would say, fine behavioral psychologist find one, Was trained at an American Psychological Association approved school who has a phd with a research background, because that person at minimum, be intelligent and the for that there's a reason for that. The reason is that they went to a political programme like a clinical psychology programme and their damn hard to get into that. You have to have a great point: average, that's applause and you have to have done very well on a standardized test, and so that means minimum that you're smart. So so that's a good place to start so find someone like that. Go talk to them see if you can talk to them. If you can and if the illicit that's good and then you can make it

for expanding you're, social ability and it's complicated. So if you're shy probably not very extroverted in you- might be a little. Than average in neurotics. Isn't that what makes it so you're you're, not outgoing and assertive and you're afraid of people. That would that's the real double beryl shyness and so. And you can go talk to someone and make a plan and if its interfering with your professional development, especially if you're really capable then yeah, you can overcome it like Number people can become very socially skilled, but they have to do it consciously and they have to do it. Programmatic, and you can do it on your own, like you could decide that you're gonna take someone out for lunch once a week or twice a week and you can make a really can the effort to expand your social network. But I would say it is easier to go talk to someone about it and not not to talk to them.

You have a psychological problem, which is why I see a behavioral psychologist, because they are very good at strategic planning that it's a practical problem is that you're, not social enough to make full use of your talents so fix it and it'll take like two or three years, probably to get really good at it. I had a client who is extremely short. She couldn't. Even though she was seeing me in the therapeutic in this, there appeared a relationship she when we when we first met, she wouldn't go and have coffee with me at the little coffee shop downstairs, because that was like exposure exercise. Let's just go sit and have coffees like no way she was going to do that and she ended up doing. She did stand a comedy yeah, so that's a hell of a transformation man and so

You can get a long way. You can get an awful long way with diligent effort and an incremental improvement. So I would say due to go, go talk to what have you got to lose man a couple hours bit of trouble? You could go talk to someone in formulating a plan. Developing social ability and you you'd, and it would work if you, if you practice it you'll get good at it. You'll never become extra. And people will probably always where you out to some degree, because that's one of the things you know of your introverted if you go to a group of people and you get worn out because if extroverted just get more and more excited about the fact that there are people around you but fear introverted sake, Hall God. I gotta go and recover hats that's introversion, one! More! Ok, This is gonna Skynet, similar here on. Oh, it just disappeared, Ok, can you please elaborate on your comment regarding enforced monogamy she's

there seems to be a lot of confusion and controversy with regards to yeah. Well, the confusion and controversy was built into the article that them woman that enter we knew exactly what I bloody well meant by enforced monogamy. She wasn't stupid. She had a graduate degree from Colombia and we two about enforcement. Monogamy for like two minutes out of that days I spent with her. So the fact that that even highlighted in the article was, I think, a cheap trick on her part and she knew it. What did it mean? It meant what anthropologists have known? hundred years, and that isn't even vaguely controversial, societies all over the world tend towards the enforcement, of monogamous social norms. And the reason for that is that the best structure for kids- that's the fundamental reason, because it's better that kids have to parents and that the research data that is perfectly clear and that doesn't mean that every site,

No parent is doing about job, but overall having to parents is associated with much better outcomes on virtually every measure. That's been assessed and that's because having kids is really hard. It takes eighteen years, it's like it's too much for one person So and then monogamous societies tend to be a lot more peaceful than polygamous societies, and so Another reason and then another reason is that it seems better for women, especially if they want to have to have a stable, monogamous partner, and so all I was pointing out was that there valid reasons for these social enforcement of monogamous norms. Like oh enforced monogamy. Oh, my god, you know he wants to take women at gunpoint and and and and distribute them to useless men like Well, it's so stupid. It's so stupid.

Here here is why here's why no one wants to do that No one there isn't a human being. Who wants to do that? So if you're gonna go after someone to pillory them, you should at least a cue them of holding a view that someone actually hold so any is most about died off. We saw it was so ridiculous. I just can't believe it so, but there's been lots of ridiculous things that have happened, and that's that was definitely one of them. So all right, that's probably

Good, thank you very much everyone. It was a pleasure to see you and thank you very much for coming out tonight. If you down this conversation meaningful, you might think about picking up. That's that's maps in me. The architecture of police or his new or best seller, twelve lose for life, an antidote to chaos. Both of these works does much deeper into the top is covered in the Jordan. Be Petersen hot cast, see George be Petersen, drive home for audio e book and text links or pick up the books. It your favorite bookseller. I really you enjoyed despite cast. If you do, please liberating an apple broadcasts comment. A review was shared. Upset with a friend If you didn't enjoy it, please do not leave

sweet spot gas is going to be a conversation between Dad and Steven Pinker. Doktor Steve pink is the Johnstone family, Professor, in the department of Psychology at Harvard University, and has also taught at Stanford and MIT he's an expert. Psychologist? Who can research in visual cognition cycle, linguistics and social relations stage? for that next week and more updates hope everyone's week is wonder: Follow me on my Youtube Channel Jordan, be Petersen on Twitter at Jordan, be Petersen on Facebook. Doctor Jones, be Petersen and against Instagram Grandma dog be DOT Petersen. Details on this show acts to my blog information about my tour dates and other events, and my list of recommended books can be found on my website. Jordan Petersen dot com? My online writing programmes designed to help people street note there passed on stand themselves in the present debate.

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