We welcome decision to episode. Twenty four of the Jordan. We Petersen cast I'm Mikhail Petersen- that's daughter, collaborator manager currently on a week long fast, just to see what happens and I feel good eighty three hours in at the moment of Sylvan exercising just live in my life ways you unexpected doing fasting for the last three months, between eighteen and twenty four hours? Forty eight hours and I swear the more I do at the easier it gets I did a decks a scam last week which met body, fat, accurately and muscle tissue and bone density. And we'll see what a week of salt water destiny. I don't think you'll do a lot to be honest, but that will be fine to put up on Youtube, not going, you get into a weekly update about family because honestly, things are still crazily up in the air.

Well no more next week and out update you. Then something I learn recently that might be helpful random peace. Information did you now called showers or cold water. Immersion lowers quarters all levels you having trouble sleeping. It should help with that too. That's my timid so that's about it. For now, please enjoy this podcast, a twelve rules for life lecture from twenty eighteen recording. What a bag? Real Americans who don't recognize, went ahead. Of Canada. Nobody really visits there. Will you pay? True, if you drive for Toronto to Vancouver, though the places We'll do that. I'm scared went up. You rock. I was able to title this week's absurd, so I've titled it. The world. Is Europe Oyster enjoy when we return the world? Is your oyster, a twelve rules for life lecture? I turn be peers.

Thank you very much to all of you for coming here tonight? It's wonderful to see you all it's great to be in when a big, so I hope we have a fine time tonight I've been using these lectures this opportunity because they are an opportunity to to have these conversations with people it is strange to think about a lecture as a discussion or a conversation, but it isn't conversation, you know if, if just reading at her work in off pre prepared notes. We're fury just addressing the audience and you're watching everybody and listening to people listening to them. Watching individuals, but listening to the whole crowd as well, and can tell how people responding and you can see if people are following the arguments, and so you know when you play

Speed in the conversation is lotta nonverbal participation as well. We hold your eyes and well the way you move. I know what I've got the audience engaged, let it silent nobody around nobody moves. Their attention is focused on the front, so I can tell when I'm in the right place, so to speak, exceptionally well well, ruins on board. I get a chance to keep working on the ideas that I've been working on for thirty years in real time, which I really like doing and so To think on my feet and I'm gonna, talk a fair bit about the book tonight, but twelve rules and little bit about my other book maps of meaning which put out- an audio version dune twelve in the few twelve rules for life useful. Then you might take a shot at listening to maps of meaning its hard book, but

the audio version, I think, makes it more accessible. So. We arrange for those seems in them I was reading some poetry to data, so I thought I made sure that with you, I'm sure you thrilled about that idea. But this is poetry written by Karl Marx. I didn't know he wrote, poetry and so I found stumbled across some of the problems that he wrote, This young man, you know- I know This was my my book, my first maps of meaning actually started as a poem was about twenty pages long and it it was trying to express some ideas. I had a moat was kind of absurd the cold war, and about what I knew about Nazi Germany, both of those things, and they were plaguing me long with. Questions about the meaning of life in the face of suffering. I wrote a poem about it and then I noticed a tab, after my undergraduates who are really trying to wrestle seriously with the USA and with an idea. If you know, if they were,

Right some about something really grip them. Personally, but sometimes they would start by writing. Poetry was often very bad. The poetry, But that wasn't really the point like what and then at the same time,. Along the same years. I suppose I also spent of time trying to understand the role of art in art and literature in cognition in inhuman thinking has obviously obviously engaged in artistic production, including writing of such things. As poetry sexually form of thinking right, I mean you gonna get the idea, which is a misbegotten idea, that what It is due as produce beautiful things and that's the purpose of and it's not. The purpose of art is to think The productions are the secondary consequence of thought process and the kind of encapsulate the thought process like what artists visual artists, say painters is the

they teach you how to see, and they really do that that that's what they do, their their perceptual geniuses and when you look at them Are you learn how to look at the world? You learn what's beautiful in what isn't you learn what What's remarkable about individuals and what's remarkable about landscapes, what's been for all of those things Poetry is like that too, and so it's when people wrestle with ideas they first counter. What they told him, stand, that's what you have to think about. You don't have to think about what you already understand. You manage that think about what you don't understand and in thoughts have have a birthplace because they don't magically appear in your head with no preparation like that. Isn't how thinking works. Thinking is very, very complicated and the first way that you encounter when you don't understand. It's true imagination. The domain of origin would artists? Real artists do. Is they go out to the frontier

and they re conceptualize perception and using imagination and they lay the ground for fully articulated knowledge, that's what art you and poetry. Is it very interesting meat, and because it stands half way between the image and the fully articulated word because of course, of course, votaries richly, Image Laden and and also saturated and emotion, and so it's in the case of that you you're trying to spress an idea is not always the case, but it often case that if someone is trying to express an idea, they'll do it in song or the do? poetry before they can expressing it as full fledged philosophy and so It's your grappling with an idea that manifests itself in in in being grip. Motivation and emotion, and then they have produced a burst of imagination and that can be represented visually or can be represented in poetry. And then maybe it can. Represented story, and only after that, can it be fully articulated, and so that's how thought works

It goes from the absolute unknown itself, to the relatively unknown that the domain of imagination and dream and then from that fully tick. Elated verbal representations are extra That's actually how your brain works, and you right here here is involved mostly mostly it even over simplification, but its close enough you're right him here is involved in that initial imaginative grappling process that emotion, laden and image laden and then, as you, work on it, and especially as you are taking a late it, then you left hemisphere dominates more and more in terms of the representations. So that's process, by which thought is generally, that. That's also why you see that artists are in the forefront of conceptual revolution. You know like the the renaissance, for example, which laid the groundwork for the emergence of the modern West. Was an artistic movement to begin with, great artist, especially in northern ITALY, was this absence. Flowering of staggering art one other thing

You saw, for example, in northern ITALY in the renaissance was this was when, when medieval times shifted to modern times. As you know, the religious images that mediaeval people use were very iconic right. He look at medieval art. Its very iconic looks very fashion to us, twelve and thirteenth century stuff, before that, even it's almost cartoon like in very, very iconic images of Christ, for example, total generic images in a sense, but in as soon as the renaissance hit and all of a sudden, you saw these religious figures become humanised, so they actually took on individual, recognisable, individual characteristics. There is a revolution in idea that the company that, because what what what it meant that the divine image is in some sense were being brought to earth and transformed into something that was much closer to two too to the individual due to the everyday individual and That idea that laid the groundwork for the for the generation of of of the spread of dim

product ideas, at least in part, the idea that each individual was important enough to to be regarded as the locusts of political responsibility now was all laid out by the artists first, I think they were grappling with that and that's why people these these things from the northern from northern ITALY, the renaissance paintings or so unbelief, we value by people. You know it's, I was, this museum and in New York and remember which, when it was while back and it was quite a room where they were paintings and in that room by a great masters like dimension, Michelangelo and- But the chilean and these great great reticence, artists there was probably Maybe there was a dozen paintings in the room and each of those paintings would have been worth. Who knows a billion dollars, so is standing in this room with like three billion dollars worth of paintings in opening. You think this credibly, expensive, artifacts incredibly expensive, building on prime real estate in the middle of the most expensive city in the world

unbelievably highly valued and people from over the world making pilgrimages to see them like some. Going on their right. That's not trivial! There's just no way you spend too much time and effort and money right, serious money on dead, serious money, there isn't morgues so far the facts that we know of than highquality art in old paintings, four two hundred million dollars a second what's going on with that, you know me their status symbols to some degree, but that's, but the question is why or status, symbol, snow, and so so anyway, that's a bit about what would you meditation on the utility of poetry you know and so and so I'm gonna start with a bit of a poem from from Shakespeare and in this specific area For its own, just just read it just a fragment, and in most of you, ve probably heard this. So it's from as you like it, all the a stage.

And all the men and women merely player They have their exits and entrances. In one man in his time plays many parts. Well, that's that's worth taking apart no one in Shakespeare, of course is. Writing is well it is as close to immortal as anything that human beings produce might be. The reason for that is that it's it's its endlessly dance that that's one way of thinking about it, you can dive into ITALY. You can into anything profound, never come up again. It's just connected to everything, no one, and so and he makes a set of propositions here and you can just as by you know without really noticing what they are, but its helpful to notice what they are? All the stage. Ok! Well that's a metaphysic presupposition that and it's not a trivial when it might even be an ontological presuppositions. Ontology is the study of the structure a b.

And so she actually making an antelope ontological argument. He said all the world's stage ok. So what does that mean exactly? Does that The same is saying the world is the world is what what would you say that The world is fundamentally a material place. That's a completely different claim. The world is a stage that a particular way of looking at the world, and so what do you do the stage as well. You you play your part. And each person plays their part, and so do something very technical, very technically, very interesting about that plane. Because what Shakespeare is suggesting is that the world is best conceived of as a forum for action because, of course, that's what the stages for stages a place that you act things and there's a secondary consideration that emerges out of that is that well, if the stage and- and you play your part in what should your part b? What's the proper part to play,

Might we might say well that maybe that's the fundamental question of life you're you're on this age, it's a dream of life and death. That's clearly the case. You play your part to quest, what are you? What is the park? Your plane? That's the first question. One of the things I learned from Karl you, which really shocked me. You know Young said everybody. So the story myth actually that was more fundamental plane. So, MRS, like a mental story, you act out a myth, whether you know it or not, but that's an interesting point, a new and secondary claim was you should know which miss your acting out, because it not be one, you would choose consciously, or do you mind acting something old, unconsciously, that it's a tragedy, a catastrophe or worse than that and you should understand what it is that Europe too, you might well, I know what I'm to like? No, you don't you're a complicated creature, you're, an unbelievable complicated creature and you not transparent to yourself, and it isn't necessarily the case at all that you know what you're up to you know and if your life is,

miserable beyond your ability to tolerate it, then be that you're playing the wrong sort of part. Now you know I'm people get unlucky and mournful unfamiliar that I know the people who are through who people can suck. Dreadfully through no fault of their own. There's. No doubt about that. Arbitrary element to life, but it's also certainly the case that you can Brady on yourself and others. A lot of misery, that's unnecessary and that There's a lot and that's a part as well location, world stage. Then the question might be You play a part and you play a part with you know what the parties are? Not here's. Another idea let's say you haven't written your part, when someone else has- or something else. Has missing, I learned from you in which we really scared me as well. What's I started to understand the psychoanalysts young said people don't have ideas, ideas have people and that that was a

What once I understood the psychoanalysts that that became very terrifying because, like calling, psychologists when they think about the brain that they kind of use, a computer model, you're an information process right and and and new modules. Cognitive module, say, emotion, models for that matter, but the second what's. That is really the way they looked at the world. The way they thought of your psyche was that your computer a lot of different some personalities in some beings and their sort of your aggregated together in in into something with some unity gnats you but those some company. Of you, those things are alive. And they haven't, will never desire to live well. Nature said every DR tends to philosophize in its spirit, no and and and so so Maybe you can be possessed in some sense by elements of your boy. That you don't have fully under control now you know that everyone knows that, because you do stupid things when you get angry rate or vengeful. You know you think, oh my god,

How can I do that? How can I think that her or maybe you having trouble controlling your diet, we get upset, you go to the refrigerator, need like a quart of ice cream and in a loaf of bread. That's what happens to people, that's what happened! people with eating disorders, and you know they go into a kind of it. France and they just eat everything and then a kind of I'm too, and they think what the was that that was the last thing I wanted to do, and you know you do that. Your foolish and love, and if you do that, if your possessed by a passion and it's very easy to become possessed by element of your own being that that you don't have fully under control in some of those elements are systems of ideas. You know that they are in. You did that cons, idea, d a essentially, but you didn't take it as far as the psychoanalysts took it because a meme, a system of ideas that shared culturally, can enhance you like a being and direct your actions and that's what happens in the case of ITALY Oji, you know people who have any the orgy say. This is what I believe it's like: oh no! No! No!

that thing has you in its grip and Europe puppet. You think I think, like no you, don't it thinks you that's what happened? You know that if you know, if you look at what happened in places like now, Germany every one wonders what the hell happened mandate. What happened, there's like while everybody got possess, a set of ideas powerful idea straight at the end of murderous ideas, genocidal ideas and you can't say so much that it Europeans have those ideas, as you can say that those ideas have the Germans and the same. With the Soviet Union the same thing with Maoist China, anytime, you this way of an ideology thing has you and it's making you play your part and you might school boys that, apart you wanna play hard to say say what you want: some I'll read this loophole from marks now so so it was interesting to me for the reasons that I did. I told you about that that are

poetry is the birthplace of ideas. And ideas can possess. You sound like well what was marks up to exactly well, maybe we find out a little bit by really his poems, is early poem when he was a young man. It's called Vocation of one in despair God has snatched from me, my all in the in rock of destiny. All his worlds are gone beyond recall nothing. But revenge is left on myself, revenge or proudly rig on that being that and Lord make my strength, a path work of what's weak leave, better self without reward. I

Shall build my throne, high overhead cold? tremendous show, summit be for its bulwark. Superstitious dread, for its Marshall Black? agony. Who looks on it with a healthy? I shall turn back struck death He pale and dumb clutched by blind and chill mortality may his happiness prepare its tomb and the almighty lightning shall rebound from that massive iron giant. If he brings my walls and tower down eternity show raise them up defiant to hell of a poem literally. You know it reminds me I haven't done enough background research to find out if there's a connection. It reminds me a lot of the poetry imperative,

lost in Paradise lost a very famous for and it's about the rebellion of Satan against God minutes in attempt by Milton around. The canonical judeo christian writings that make up the narrative substructure of our culture there cloud of images and and stories that are not written down but they're just part of our cultural heritage? The idea of health, for example, as one in and really the idea of the devil, which has almost discussed, not at all, in N N, N n N, the biblical corpus Very, very, very, very few references, almost none, but there's cloud of ideas about, evil and and so forth. It then have agri it'd themselves in a poetic sense and in the majestic sense around this core set of narrative writings and what millions, to do was to articulate all those that's what he wrote. Paradise lost in it's about that

angel in God's heavenly kingdom, something approximately a quiver the rationality I would say, attempting to this waste, what's transcendent with its own kingdom, and in doing that it, at least in part, is revenge against God. It's something like that and this parliament really reminds me of that- and I dont know if marks was reading, Paradise lost at that point or not. In some sense, it doesn't matter because Paradise lost had such a wall upping impact on european culture. That We have been familiar with its themes, implicitly from everything He read anyways so, but it's it's it's going to tell, palm because person who write it right right road, it is a very, very angry, desperately angry and and hopeless and and and and then worse out for revenge

and then worse out, to build a structure that would extract that revenge slick. Well, you know it's a. What happened with marks is, quite today a mystery. What the way his ideas unfolded in the twentieth century. You know it's not so obvious way why why that happened? In other words, the cover story, that was the the compassion are you compassion for the downtrodden just part and parcel of the marks, a story, and then there's then there's what happened when the hypothetical compassion man did itself in the world, and that was absolutely brutal Look beyond comprehension least two million people died and we should be. Clear about what it meant to die. I was I was what it meant to die and under communism. I was looking online. The other day for critiques of

but listen, because it's it's common now, when everybody anybody Fourth and argument about the murder of communism and the steps that are associated with that two hundred million deaths, for example, that's from the black book of communism, which is a very good scholarly reference about what happened in, Soviet Union Maoist China, its common, now that people who are attempt to revive the Spirit of Marxism, and there seem to be more all the time to. The counter claims that capitalism killed just as many people and then they Really, this doubts or something like x, number of people die Starvation and x number of people died because they had lack of you know access to clean water, they didn't have access to to proper medication and so mean, if you stack up those des besides the deaths that were produced by the communists than you can you know you can you can even the scales?

it's quite the piece of logic as far as I'm concerned, because there's a bit Difference between the fact that people die even the fact that perhaps they wouldn't have to die if other people intervened and save them and act killing people like that? seriously, man, that's a big difference and, like and one of the logical floors, there's like everybody dies. You can't blame that own capitalism. Now you might be able to say. Well, you know capitalists could have been better. Distributing their resources more effectively, so that more people were protected against a mortality that emerge too soon and in others I suppose there is some truth in that critique, because none of us are perfect and of our systems are perfect, and perhaps it's possible that those who, over the last hundred years, have generated some excess wealth. Would have been more intelligent and and what would you say,

elegant and wise and thoughtful and foresee and done better with their money. Then they did fair enough but that is not the same as lining people up and shooting them and torturing them and thirdly, killing them and that's what, happened with the communists. And so we need a and so this moral equivalence of the car, Minister system and the capitalist system is its preposterous. Now, one of the things that also quite interesting in in that light is what's been happening economically around the world, especially in the last fifteen years, because things have really transform themselves in very interesting ways. So

the bird. The wall didn't fall, till nineteen, eighty, nine rights, when the Second World WAR ended as far as I'm concerned is in nineteen. Eighty nine, you know the drill attic part of it into didn't nineteen, forty five but the cold War raged until one thousand nine hundred and ninety eight one thousand nine hundred and eighty nine that was an extension of world WAR two and in order there was constantly bubbling up all over the world, bubbled up in Korea and bubbled up in Vietnam. Can the Cambodian, throughout Africa and all through South America, no one's the capitalists and the Communists fought for control over people's, keys and also their territories, and and then that didn't really star until nineteen, eighty nine, and so from then on word. There wasn't the same. Tremendous pressure from the right left to warp and twist

governments all over the world into the collectivist into into it into the collectivist vision, let's say and so What's been, the consequence of that the removal of that idiot, logical pressure, at least the partial cessation of that ideological pressure. Well, there were there. It wasn't a lot of listen. Things didn't change a lot for a while after that, but that's not surprising. You know when something falls apart. Well, there's going to be bit of a catastrophe and its aftermath? No matter what it is, It takes a while for the new situation to sort of manifest itself, and you know what what's been happening over the last safe since the year two thousand, so decade after the wall fell down happening since the year two thousand is actually quite I'll, kill us and in so let me that little bit so I first figure this out I worked on you in committee, but four years ago it was a committee, said

by the: U S Secretary general, to produce a document that was maybe the overview of something approximating economic sustain Economic development, whatever that means to heart What is sustainable is really really hard to figure out, but that was at the end, and you can kind of sea the rationale for that's like you, dont want to use today that completely screws you over in a week right, you don't want to something in a year. That makes things worse five years from now so next week and next are in ten years from now on do today also works tomorrow and next week and next year in ten years from now, and maybe we're for you and your family and your community as well all at the same time and so that its it's trying to. Rate within that system, a multiple constraints that you might be regarded as something approximating sustainable. So we were trying to wrestle with that. What what like what would it be like? What would it be to have a sustainable fishery, for example, or maybe it's sustainable

tenable energy policy, etc, etc. To start thinking over Some reasonably long period of time, which even in itself is even a complicated problem is not obvious what period of time you should think over say what we should think over a thousand years, because we have the law term vision- is like. You don't know what it's gonna be like in ten years. You know, at the rate, Second, the rate of technological transformation right now, so unbelievably extreme that I dont We can even see very clearly ten years down the road. So it's hard to plan for like a thousand years, and also anyway, that's all very complicated, but we were we were producing this document, and I got the opportunity to first of all watch how a document like that was produced. It looks like we're who works on higher level planned like that, all the p that. We're on the committee were former heads of states that the people who were technically appointed to the committee

and then they all produce hierarchies of people underneath them who actually worked on the document because their weight, those be? like, if you're the Ex president of France, busy Europe, like you're moving around man, you're you're occupied all the time. You don't have time to spend two years thinking about a new plan for sustainable global development so, even though you might be the figure had on the committee, you don't do any of the work and so on. Passed down to the people that you are associated with until gets to someone who will actually do it who were those people well they're, usually times their academic. Sometimes there are political bureaucrats, their people, that for one is another- have a little bit of extra time and interest, but none of trained to do this because no one's train to produce a global plan for economic, sustainable development. Nobody here, that treaty, so none of the people doing it know what they held their doing so

and then it is not surprising because it's a complicated problem, so that was interesting to watch it, and then we got the first draft of the document and it was awful and it was awful- it was like it was written in nineteen. Eighty four with a cold war document was north against south. You know the privilege north against the underprivileged south and it was capitalist against socialist, no sense that you know there could be cooperation between those two ends of the political distribution. No sense the south was not what it was in nineteen eighty four mean that open world has developed a lot since nineteen, eighty four and and and this helping extraordinarily quickly- and you know- I mean It is China more of an economic powerhouse than the United States. Well, no, but chow, plus India might be. No, I mean that the tide is turned in many ways, so unbelievably outdated. So we thought where we right, the narrative so much look for oppressors victims and all of that horrible nonsense, but to see if we can put together a document.

Is predicated on the idea that everybody could work together, in some loose, but would you call it some some loose association of good will and that we can make things better instead pointing to whose fault everything once and so we we really. We the underlying narrative- and that was interesting to because one of the things I learned. This is a rule that I didn't write in twelve rules, but it was one of the possible those response. Opportunity look lurks where responsibility has been abdicated so one of the things you learn, if you do tat sort of thing, that sort of thing I was talking about is that, the actually do the writing. Then you win because for someone to do something about that. They would have to do the right thing. And its fifties you just to take what you written. Then it is to write a whole deaf faint, and so you might think

why the hell do I have to do the writing, and the answer is because then you get to do. The writing it's an interesting thing. You know if you're out I mean I don't think you should allow people to take advantage of you. I think that's a big mistake, but You know if you're angry, because excess responsibility has been dumped on you. You know India, and of whether not you're being taken advantage of that's a different issue. You might reverse that and think well. Where the responsibilities that's worthy, already is inevitable, to follow. You. That makes you indispensable man that gives you a stake in the game. So that was quite interesting, so a chance to read about two hundred bucks, the months that I was working on this document and Most of those were books on economic development, but also on on ecological matters right, so I was just didn't climate change and overfishing and before

station and the demolition of of diesel like what decline in specification extinction in all. Things you hear about that are looming catastrophes that that began, The human race and the planet, some of which were responsible for and I read, a bunch everything I could get my hands on, including books by people like Bjorn long who put himself forward is the sceptical environmentalist. I highly recommend Bjorn Lumber by the way he wrote a book called how does Seventy five billion dollars to make the world a better place, It's a really really smart book, So it s not very much money by the way cuz there's like seven billion over. So that's like what seventy five ten bucks each. It's just nothing, you know, Mostly, what he found was that we shouldn't be concerned about things like climate change and we shouldn't even concern about over fishing, which is a real problem or de forest really that what we should really be concerned with is getting. Enough nutrition and health care too

small children that The return on out from an economic perspective is two hundred and fifty two one economic sense right because you know out in the developing world there's a lot of potent, geniuses, let's say I'm not trying to elevate geniuses to appoint of what we a value among ordinary people. That's not the point. I am making the point. I made use that you know now and a genius comes along who offer something to the world. It's so absolutely remarkable that ever One is better off for it and you don't. Who that's going to be? It could be any one of those little tiny, kids right. They all have brains, RO, unbelievably complicated creatures and the fact that they are not all being. What would you say? courage: they dont all have the minimal resources necessary to manifest at least there physiological peak is it has to be for everyone and

and that is also why the return on investment for four four four childhood carry so absolutely high. Lumber did was say. While he took a bunch of economists, some Nobel Winning Prize winning economists, the? U N goals is, but a hundred and fifty you in development goals is way too many hundred, if the goals is no goals right, if you have a hundred and fifty goals, it's like I'm not talk, do I certainly not working with you? It's like you have a hundred and fifty girls like if you have, if you have my two goals or you at least, have a hierarchy of goals. This is the most important thing. This is the second most important thing. The third most important thing We could work together, but a hundred and fifty goals, you're just a chaotic mass and the? U N actually had a hundred and fifty goals and they would not prioritize them because, as soon as that, Rioters, one goal of another: they annoyed the people who had the secondary goal so wise that go more important than my go well

some goal has to be more important, because we can do all these things at once. Well, you're, not so If my goal will, then we do anything like that Kay as long as you don't sacrifice my goal, right. So that's that's the stasis, and so what Lombard did, because he's smart is that he took teams of economists, some of them were Nobel Prize Winning economists and he said: ok, here's the deal What I I pot of money. Seventy five billion was fixed to begin with, but he updated it because you know time tonnes went on an inflation, not valued the currency, download it. And he said: ok, here's the deal take these four hundred the, U N goals and and analyze them economically and figure out where you get most bang for the back. It's like we're not gonna blow to do or a hundred and fifty we don't have infinite resources. We have my time we are finite resources prior tax and so in the best way to prioritize use money too. Our ties, not because it's such a great way of priorities.

But because we don't have a better way of doing it, so you can only use the best thing you have at your disposal. No matter how bad it isn't, money isn't perfect, but. It has its utility it's a unit. Firstly, accepted standard of value that something so? He said well rank order, rang quarter of the priorities in terms of return on investment, just why? How you do the calculations, then he at all teams. Do that and then he average across teams and came up with a final ranking pretty smart aids like while we might as well take our resources and do the most we can with them in the short period of time and so and when, when he found out, I think for of the top ten goals, had to do with the improvement of of early health round the world some was quite cool cycle Should you be concerned about climate change? Doesn't look like it. First of all, you know what the hell do about according to do about it, not only that the measurement error in climate change is so large

fifty years out, but even you did whatever it is that you think that you should do now at whatever cost you wouldn't be able to tell fifty years from now if what you did had any effect, because them measurement error is so high that, wash out in the measurement, no I'm not saying we shouldn't be concerned about climate. That's not my point. My point is we don't know what to do about it and there's a bunch of other problems that we have that are really pressing that we do know what to do about and we could solve them, so we can solve them effectively and we know how to do it and so, more importantly, more importantly,. Reading Lombard variety of other people tunas but been about an timber. Published in the last ten years. All documenting the same thing Steve Tankers enlightenment now is one of them and hands rustling, whose a great data visualize are Scandinavian guy just wrote another book facts. I can remember the name of the book

we at the mobile hands, Rosalind and map readily has written a book as well like this and and theirs it there's a number of them and there's an organization online. The tweets constantly human progress, dot, org and not really does this world in data and and these people are, empirical analysis of the rate of economic growth around the world and since it two thousand we have been getting richer, worldwide warrant. Rape is absent. Leave unprecedented in the history of mankind. Theirs. Nothing to compare to, and no one knows that the world in data people or was it was I think it was human progress, did a pool in there the state. So here's a fact. Okay, so one of the millennium goals, millennium goals was too the number of people in absent poverty between the two thousand and two thousand and fifty

that's a major legal right, because people have been poor forever, and not just a little poor like seriously starving, poor, there were still famines in major famines in developed countries in Europe, the twentieth century in places like sweet in places like ITALY, just after world war, two like family was the norm in no it. Eighteen, eighty five, the average, Person in the western world lived on less than a dollar a day in today's money, which is, than half of the current you in Craig. We have for absolute poverty. So that was everyone man, everyone up to eighteen. Ninety five was so goddamn poor. You cannot even imagine it right and an and and suffered everything that went along with that right, terrible mortality in childbirth, right terrible, mortality for four, for babies, also for mothers right very low probability of reaching an old age. You are unbelievably likely if you are kid born around you know tenure.

Meeting ninety five very unlikely to lose one parent before the age of ten and pretty damn likely to be without both of them by the time you were fifty and are hardly any people that were well off and even though that were well off. It's like You weren't that well off man, they didn't toilets, right I mean, and everybody laughed about that. It's like no, no, you don't get it they didn't have toilets, that's all problem and they didn't have central heated and they didn't have air conditioning. It's like central hearings, a bit why you Canadians, Euro Canadian sooner it's like central heating and yeah? That's a good step, Senor from dying for like six months of the year. It's a big deal, you know, and they didn't have refrigeration you should try and even without a refrigerator for a week. You think your poor. It's like you know Were you ever refrigerator, you're, rich man? That's him and that's not some little ratty refrigerator that you like a year salary and has one cubic space in it, which was what the first refrigerators we'd like to great big black,

refrigerated, but a whole moose in it, and so and he's think. Well, everybody's got a refrigerator. It's not a big deal is like Joe because everyone has, it doesn't mean it's not a big deal. It's a really big deal, you know, and I think it is the people at home, Progress wrote a little essay while back pointing out that your probably better off, as a member of the same you're. Barely in the middle class, you're, probably better off than John Rockefeller wasn't eighteen. Ninety five! so you're better off. As a member of you know just kind of entry member entry level, member of the middle class now than the richest person in the world in eighteen, ninety five. So so that's that's something to think about, and so ok how poor everyone was in eighteen. Ninety five men, we ve been getting richer like like now but he's business instance been this exponential curve. You know something so the world got richer first, but some people got richer first, but you gotta think that, through its like one of course

countries got richer. First, we expect ever, but he's going to become go from not rich it all. Absolutely poor. You're, just gonna make one leap: everyone all seven billion people are all suddenly to be rich. That, isn't going to be how it works some countries we're going to get rich first and within this country some people were going to get rich first, but now you think about you, think about the rate of technological advancement. That's upon us is probably what fifteen years ago, ten you go that big screening he came out and when, first came out- they were like you know, you got a fifty and tv, it was a status symbol, protocols, Fifteen thousand dollars something like that, and you know got to have one, and you got to have one if you were rich buzz like Four years later, five years later there Physically free right I mean how many, how many screens have you guys thrown out in the last five years

like all mono my screen is this thick were first. What was this thick order? My monitors too thick better throw that away, this thick- oh, no, that's too pointy! Now there this thick, it's like they're, so cheap you can just throw them away. And now everybody has a sixty five in screen and you wouldn't have had those if the rich people wouldn't have had them. First, that's the other thing, that's kind of interesting about rich people, but no one ever thinks about is like rich, People are necessary to buy expense things first, because of the way can produce and market. You know like the people who built the law screen, TVS had to sell the first ones for like twenty five thousand dollars each be so that they can get so cheap that everybody could have them for free and so this Something I've been thinking about with regards to inequality. Is that you know. One of the advantages to making some people to giving some people large pools of of calf or to allow them to accrue that or to encourage them to accrue. That is,

when a new consumer product enters the market at a high cost is actually a market for it, so that the people who pay it can generate enough of them to saturate the wealthy market, so they can drive down the price so that Nobody else can have them. So what if is the case that the price all of us paid have cool things is that there has to be rich people. I mean it seems, are not sure about this. It's an idea that I've been just toying with over the last few months, but it's not obvious to me that its falls Who cares if you have to wait for years, for your damn fifty and flat screen tv not like you sit there without a refrigerator. You ve gotta refrigerator. You know so. Ok, so everybody was bloody dirt, horribly dirt, pour in eighteen, ninety five, even in the developed world, where in all things better than they were in the rest, the world, because it was her people in the west, but it was absolutely brutally catastrophic everywhere else. And so on. Then you know this technological miracle occurred and lot that's a concept

the free market principles a lot of it. A huge amount of it and so well when we start to get rich and get richer and richer and richer and richer than the gap between the west and the rest of the world grew? And you know that that that allowed us to criticise ourselves to some degree. Thought well made What the west is doing is exploiting everyone and that's why rich and in others out of truth to that, because no system is perfect and then, when you produce, a corporation or a government or theirs an amount of exploitation, that's bound to go along with it, because no human structures are without their imperfections, but But in the final analysis the the west is rich because its extracted resources and made the rest of the world. Poor argument is not correct because everybody started brutally. Here, and not only that every He started brutally poor and almost everybody, suffered under tyrannical governmental structures,

The baseline for human existence is starvation and catastrophe under the yoke of tyranny, and whenever that isn't happening, it's a bloody miracle, and so you can't just put at the foot of some system. You can't say what about consequence of capitalism or the west is like no its. Not that's the deal Condition of existence its way easier to starve under tyranny. Then to be wealthy and freedom, its way more likely, and that anybody got to the point where they were free and then also wealthy. It's like we should just be. We should just be cons, Glee, amaze beyond comprehension that anything like ever happened even once, and the cool thing is happening everywhere so the millennium goal, for the? U N was to halve the number of people in absolute poverty from the year two thousand to two thousand two thousand and fifteen, and we did it three There's earlier think about that half as many

people were in absolute privation over a twelve year period. Here's the projection by the EU twenty thirty. There won't anybody on the planet whose apps thirdly in poverty, That's twelve years from now. We have been done with that, and so that's just be it's just. I can figure out. Why that isn't a headline every day three hundred thousand more people no longer in poverty that got a good headline too, to wake up to hear something school mortality rate in Africa. Is now the same as the child mortality rate in Europe in nineteen fifty that's how narrow the gap is become. That's a sixty a sixty year gap. That's all that's left between the least developed parts of the world and the most developed parts of the world. So in and in the rates of of of death of women in childbirth have absolutely plummeted around the world and more and more access to fresh water and more more people

access to to vaccines and more. There are people have access to food, we have enough food for everyone. And here's something else. You know we're going over populate the planet, we're all gonna die. No we're, not that's wrong! We're gonna, piquant, nine billion. Demographic projections indicate because what seems to have happened to no one guess this All you have to do to bring population under control as educate women, educate women instead of having Eight children, you. Whom die Two children, both of whom survive, or they have one point. Five children snotty replacement. So not only are we going to peek at nine billion sometime in the next forty years, but then that then the population is into decline precipitously in fifty years. The big problem will be that there aren't enough people so annoying enough food to feed all those people like we're gonna have to be careful and continue doing what we're doing, but we have enough for everybody,

and so an end and that we are becoming more productive in our ability to generate food all the time. So Do we have enough already, but food is getting cheaper and cheaper and cheaper and all is considered of higher quality? You know that that doesn't mean that the couldn't be improved but compared to potato pealings. You know and grew, and dirty water, which was like this. Diet, for people for a very long period of time, not doing too bad. So. Ok so back about to Shakespeare, All the world's stage

so what I was doing in some said sense with with that part of the lecture was setting the stage. You know you think, what if you're gonna play your part, you, you should know what the stages like. Where are you exactly. What's going on around you, it's hard to say. You know it's very easy to be It's a mistake. I think we all human progress, people also pooled America, to find out how many people knew that the rate of poverty had fallen by half by two the year two thousand and two thousand and twelve a ninety five percent of Americans have no idea that that happened was so. So- and I suspect most of you didn't know that- and I suspect that there was a substantial percentage of you who doubt whether it was actually true. You know in question well where they gerrymandering the definition of of absolute poverty and an arbitrary definition. But you gotta define it in some manner

no matter how you define it fell by half so so so that's a great thing. So, but people don't know why don't they know? I know the answer to that. Like part of me things. Maybe there's a couple of things going on. One might be, I think one the things that happened since the Nineteenth Seventys was that the prosperity the developing world was purchased at the relative expense of the north african and european working class, because one of this, is that you ve seen happened since nineteen. Seventy there's some arguments about this, because your money buys higher quality items now, so, even if have the same amount of money. As you didn't did, nineteen seventy two things you can buy or better so even you have the same income. It might be that your richer now, but it's hardly it's hard to calculate those things, but independent of working class wages have remained pretty flat since the nineteen seventies

the bargain, with the working class in North America and in Europe with something like work, hard children will have a better life than than you do and maybe even your future self will be better off than you are now, but that's kind of. That and there's a lot of reasons for, and so I think what that's done, its produce a certain amount of disenchantment in the west that the radical left us too, have been capitalizing on and so on. All around the world. Things are getting better at a rate that so fast that you probably couldn't improve it. If you tried the West seems to be at odds itself about its moral. What would you say? It's me. It's it's morality and its vision and its and propriety of its mode of operating in the world, and you know why. I think that's, I think, that's a catastrophe actually because As far as I can tell the reason that this economic miracle is taking place and has,

I did say since the year two thousand is because the damn radical leftist collectivist lost in nineteen, eighty nine, they stop mucking up the planet Increasingly, governments around the world are experimenting with free market solutions and a certain amount of freedom and, as a consequence, people are getting rich way faster, that's what in China, you know what happened in China? You don't you know how that the open market started to develop was a bunch of farmers. In secret collectivized farmers who producing nothing and starving as a consequence, met in secret and decide but they were gonna parcel out their collective plot privately and upon it for doing that was death when they start to do it, but they met clandestinely in secret and they parcelled out or plots, and they all decided that you couldn't keep way you group, and all of a sudden men, they are producing food like mad and of course, The authorities got curious about that and found out

they were doing- and you know you you and and began to do what you expect that the communist totalitarian to do, but but they needed the damn food. And so they decided weirdly enough to leave these people alone and to encourage that kind of experimentation and down the genesis of the origin of the free market experiments in China is just a cup farmers, who, you know, took porn themselves to risk their own lives to two to try to Something that was that it was actually productive and so the We introduced free market principles into the chinese system and while the rest is history, you know tap into China over the last forty years. It's just its go beyond comprehension. Same was with South Korea right, which was so. Korea was an unbelievably poor place, an underdeveloped and now it's an economic powerhouse in India. Which is completely ungovernable, I mean you know we have. In Canada, with two languages like, I think, there's three hundred languages in India reddened

absolute plethora of religious beliefs and an immense power Minutes are complicated place man and nonetheless, India. It's like its cruising through their own peoples, Having or if there are there's a lot fewer than there were, you know, in China. Well, people don't start, there's plenty of food for everyone in China since, like What a miracle that is, who would have ever guessed that was going to happen and so We have every reason to be optimistic, and so aren't so. Let's say that that's the stage. What's the stage we're in a world that could contain new to radically improve. If we don't do anything, stupid and market up right, and so the thing about This poem, I read a marxist like there's, dark innovations in national marks Pretty much lays out his desire to demolish and destroy he's vengeful the terror things down. And I see that as a threat in the west. You know we don't have we don't

institutions, many of our institutions, don't seem to either understand what we have appreciated or be humbly grateful Ford or to regard. The miracle that it is That's very very dangerous because, because it is a miracle and in particular, kind of miracle, its it's the sort of miracle that I was trying to. Trying to lay out in dramatic terms, at least in part, in twelve rules for life so like well, why does Why does what we do in the west work? Well, I think the first reason is is what I think we got really right and I think in we are, this more comprehensively than had ever been Artie they did in the history of the world. What the primary level of analysis, when you're trying to understand the structure of reality without Shakespeare's all the world's stage and every individual comes out and place his or her part. That's that

level of analysis the individual! set up your society. Keen on the idea that the individuals of ultimate value and that to some degree. That's a matter of rights and here's here. Something I think we ve done wrong. Technically speaking in our inner political system, probably in our international develop does well when we're talking about the price Missy of the individual. We can't trade on rights, but I think, that's wrong. I think what we you do is concentrate on responsibility instead and so ok, so it's interesting! So it's interesting! You know you might Ask yourself: why would everyone clap about that. No, it's really a serious question because right I mean hey man, that's what you get to do like the world's your oyster psych. So what I want to about that, will receive stability, that's a whole different stories like that's a burden for you, man, it's like

out there and do your part is thanks for you to do that, there's a heavy weight on you and you need to bear up underneath it, so why would you plop about that it's a good thing, because we win- and I am asking the seriously because one of the things I ve noticed this really blown me away. I can't really come to terms with it is that I've been to figure out why? What I've been talking about has resonated with people. I think, there's a technical reason. The Tec, one reason: is these new, media forms like Youtube, podcast have enabled long form a global, long form. Philosophical discussion, that's never happened before right tv, you get six minutes or thirty seconds right. And so, if you have a complicated message, you have to sound bite two thirty seconds, or or maybe six minutes with Youtube in part. Ass. You can talk about complicating things for a very long time and it turns out tat people or want that strangely enough, there's a huge market for that, we're smarter than we thought our technologies made us,

stupider than than we are so so, and I think part of the reason that the what in doing a successful is because I've been fortunate enough to be an early, a doctor and a new technological space that was relatively uninhabited and so that's a useful thing to know, but the other that I've noticed? Because at the beginning of this talk I said I'm always watching individuals when I'm speaking with them- but also listening to the crowd in one of the things I ve noticed is that whenever I talk about me, once ability, especially and its relationship with meaning the crowd, goes completely silent, and it's happening every single venue that I've talked to in it's a reflection of the fact the same. It's reflecting the same thing that drove you to applaud when I talked about responsibility, so I think talked about rights for so long in the west that were exhausted by the discourse and we need the correct because there are no rights without responsibilities. Does the same thing. You're right for my responsibilities are the same thing and but there's something that

that's deeper. I think than that- and this is this- is, I think, the other issue that struck a chord with people. The stage I said so you know You can't believe the suffering of the world at the west at the feet of the West, because the suffering of the world is built into the structure of the world. Starvation death brutality. All of that That's that's the easy default the state of the world tremendous work to two to produce counter position to that. To make sure Everyone has enough, and it makes that our institutions are are free and And flourishing that's hard, and so so it's hearted it practically, but it also has to do with psychologically, because if the state of the world, the fundamental bottom level of reality, something like suffering. I think it's suffering tainted malevolence. Something like that. Then we also need something

psychological to set against or you end up in a situation like marks. You know where he's outraged at the store sure of the world and desires to wreak havoc and take revenge as a consequence which he seems to have done extraordinarily effectively. If you don't have that meaning Then it's very difficult to to reconcile yourself to the conditions of existence right, because, even if your fortune, as we all are, even if your fortunate, your life is still very heart, you know you're you're, fragile. Its away, so your family you're gonna, face the death of the people that you love and then yourself for that matter, and and there's gonna be some bloody rough times along the way and they'll be recognized. Make. You feel, like shaking your hand at the sky and just asking what the hell's going on you know. So you need something to set against that. You need a meaning to set against that. To justify your life. The face of that suffering, and I think that that's why people are happy about the discussion of responsibility,

because it's actually not writes that give your life meaning its responsibility, and they want to know the connection between responsibility and meaning. Pretty once you know the connection between meaning and the anti to suffering like what's the antidote to suffering well. It isn't lack of suffering man, because that happening so I mean- you can stay that often the less innovation, the better might say, but fundamentally theirs in their radical amount of suffering. That's going to be associated with your life. What you need thing to set against that something that It's a vision that sufficiently noble to make. Suffering worthwhile. Something like that even to yourself to stop you from becoming better than you think, where do you find that meaning was not in your rights rights? Allow you to do whatever you want and doing whatever you want, is actually that sort of what an impulsive teenager does you know just do whatever you

once like. No, that is how it works. You can tell that by look. People that you admire, or even looking at yourself when you admire yourself in those rare moments that you might dare to do that, you know it's like well, who did? Who do you look up to where you certainly don't look up to people that don't take care of themselves for starters, like it one has to take care of you as a grown man. It's like I mean unless you ve been cut off at the knees. You know unless some terrible tragedies before you you're just not up to your responsibility and your cause, you're not you could be and you're taking from someone else no one admires that unless you a psychopath, no one admires that. Well that's what cycles Stu. When so you know they find out admirable. But no one else does: relatively rare, and are generally not very successful? So it's about strategy. So well. You have to keep running away if you're a psychopath, because people figure out who you are and then they would have anything to do with you. So if you're, a psychopath, you're, no mad and and

You can go around the parasite and it's sort of works. Not really had. So it's not the attitude to the whole state on let's say, or a family or relationship with yourself, and so you made my people spontaneously to take responsibility for themselves. But then that's not of it. You know people you really admire. You think, while he's a good man or she's that woman, and not only in old, is she is she sensible and and secure and herself, but she got some left over for a family. So she is conducting your life responsibly and taking care of her family like good for an under difficult circumstances, and then maybe you meet someone who's even gone little farther than that and the kind of got there, life under control, and they use Their families live put in pretty decent order.

And then they haven't been left over for the community right, so they're out there trying to do these things, and you know most of the people that I've met, not everyone, but most of the people that I've met, who have access wealth, and I get a lot of people like now, especially in places like Silicon Valley mode. So. For those people spend a substantial amount of time trying to figure out what good things they could do with their excess money. You didn't because their good people, exactly, although some time That's the reason is because it's actually you have money what you gonna do, how many yards do you need one is more than enough you don't even want to have one actually does they're more troubled in their worth. But if you have one, you certainly don't need to its like what're. You gonna do well Maybe you could do some useful with your money. You know maybe there's people whose careers you could help foster. Maybe there's a business that you could build some some major, problem in the world that you could try to solve this.

Gates, you don't he's trying to kick the slots out of the five biggest transmissible diseases. Other thing, maybe we should give him sixty billion dollars, it's like, which we already did so like You nobody gave us this personal computers in return, which was in such a bad trade and now he's off. They are trying to get rid of malaria. Well, if of getting rid of malaria is bill. Gates has to have sixty billion dollars is like that's a pretty good. That's a pretty good bargain. And these are actually making headway. You know approach to get rid of polio in the next couple of years of bloody. Is terrorists would stop harassing people who are doing vaccination would already have that done, but We might be how to get rid of the five big transmissible diseases. Next fifteen years had beheld an accomplishment and so you know you, you ve got the responsibility for you. You got responsibility for your family, if you wanted, you got responsibility for your community and you can have people's finger wagging. You saying you know you should take your. You should take their responsibilities seriously and that's a pretty. Is a kind of

were you to tell me what to do sort of response. You know- and I think where the conservatives have fallen down classic conserve because they get a bit finger, wagging and and and The mental is about the whole thing, and but if you can make them- Better case you can say, look life's rough. For you and everyone else, and you Do something about that like you, couldn't do everything about it, but you could. You could definitely do so about an you could certainly make it a hell of a lot worse. That's it. Power should you make worse for you and for everyone else that you got that if you wanted, you could at least not do that would be something, and then well. That would be something like you could just refrain from making things worse, that be a nice start, but then you can really push yourself a bit and think no, no, I'm not we're going to aim to make things better? I'm unity this plan and the way I'm gonna do? That is to take responsibility, so here's the music couple of great ideas that the West House, so the first idea is

the individual, sovereign divine about each person theirs focus of ability and each person that so valuable that the intention of the state itself should Be founded on recognition of that That is one of the great and I'll kill us human ideas to think that case for everyone is It's amazing that anybody ever came up with that idea, and and even more amazing that we basically all share that idea that we found it our state on it and that it works works. You found the state on that idea works. And then associated with. That idea is that that's every individual has sovereign ethical responsibility to four one to work diligently to ITALY in eight unnecessary suffering in the world? We certainly do that. If you take care of your family right, I mean we want to protect our children from undue suffering not from here anything not from challenge, certainly, but from from.

Base misery, you know and the same for you and perhaps the same for you and the other thing to do is to constrain malevolence right to work to eradicate evil in you. First in you first and foremost new. That's a big enough job man, you constraining yourself, you'll, start to constrain and everywhere else you wrestle with that in yourself, and so that's that's expressed in the new testament story of at least in part of Christ encountering Satan in the desert created what foregoing the temptations of power in order to constrain malevolence, but it's for it is a psychological drama and so that responsibilities like while the world is a bit, place in many ways and the bitterness is made worse by the malevolence of you and everyone else, and if so, what and ended that can drive you to despair, certainly driving to madness. Right and worse.

Can drive you to murder contributed genocide. It can drive you to torture. I can it does not surprising, but what do you do about that you do about face, and you think. The world is characterized by suffering in malevolent but the meaning there's meaning to be had in the meat to be had in the responsibility and the responsibilities to alleviate the suffering, and drain the malevolent, and that's that what's her name in your life and weird this is so strange. This is the strange part of it is that if you turn around and you adopt that responsibility, despite its wanting nature voluntarily, then that instantly produces the meaning that works as a medication against the suffering. Even if not dispense with the suffering. It's least you challenge that's worth living for right. Nature said He who has a. Why can bear? any how it's like. So we're not going with this,

I figured something out the other day and then took me like thirty years to figure this out, so some of you, some of you, have watched my lectures and you know Electra about Pinocchio, for example, there is a deep, mythological idea and Pinocchio and the ideas that you should be sure. Your father from the belly of the beast, is something like that and So I've been thinking about that's like well. Why would the spirit of Father be lying latent in the belly of a beast. What what possible sense with that big? And you all know this is true. You know this because watch things like Pinocchio when you watch a puppet marionette whose being pulled by strings that aren't his descend to the depths of chaos and rescue. His father and tat makes sense to you, knows why, but it does, then you watch the lion king and you see the same thing with similar, because when he undergoes his maturation transformation at the end of the movie, he falls the Sharm and down into the depths of the jungle path and looks in the reflective pool

to the depths and then sees his father echoed in the sky and his father tell them to member who he is and fine with you, you, you gotta, doubted, it makes sense. Architecturally christian Why? Ok, so here's here's a! here's an idea. So you need. Confront challenges. That's how you grow. That's how you become stronger the clinical evidence, for that is where then, you could think of the notion of challenge itself. So that's also part of the stage setting the notion of knowledge itself is that you stand on the abyss and you face the abyss. That's your own death for that matter. That's the suffering and the malevolence of the world, the darkness of the world, in the dark ass. You see a terrible monster and that's a thing that will take you down you go down there into it and what happens when you get inside? You find the spirit of your dead father, and what does that mean? Well, one of the things we know is that if you face things you get stronger now because you learn you never learn without difficulty right because you have

you learn by facing challenges that you haven't yet faced, and so it's differ. Do you get more informed, as you face challenges that you haven't face, There needs to be more to you. You get to be more like it fleet, human being frank, you get to be more like the embodiment of the answer, still spirits at something like that by fire. Challenging yourself. So the question is: where what would you become its face? The ultimate challenge proper, We become their ancestral father at something like that, but today something even more remarkable about this, so one of the things that biologists have figured out neurologist an geneticists have figured out last ten years. This is so cool If you go to somewhere that you haven't been so you challenge yourself. New genes genes that haven't been turned on in your brain turn on and they called for new protein and they make new structures, part of your potential, because you you have potential over the hill. That means party Potential is locked in your genetic code and

turn on until you put yourself in- situation of challenge, and so we actually transform physiologically as a consequence of facing things voluntarily. U turn you turn parts of you. That aren't on on, and so the question might be what do you face? A little challenge, party, eternal and you learn is a bigger challenge, even more happens. You know that if you go to the German heavier the weights, you lift the more you start to develop, assuming your careful and it's not that mysterious the question would be or who would you be if you face the ultimate challenge and the answer that would be well. You would be everything you could be in the quest then, would be well? Who would you be if you could be everything you could be an answer to that would be you'd, be the person that can tolerate the tragedy of big. That's who you'd be you'd, be the person who would take responsibility for that. Be the person that would constrain the malevolence in your own heart and work for the better

and a big. That's who you would be that's where your father is to be found in the bottom of it this thinking what a you big man Forty five done now. What do we got like another? Another? Forty come in six, and stops in Europe The revolution has begun her, for you have forty forty more cities, probably something like that- may be more over the next six months: lots of cities what're, you gonna, do in August, relax I'll bet

I think so I think so. I've got I've got to talk and rejoin on the fourteenth and one in six Saskatoon on the sixteenth. So it's this lake, that's finished, but I don't have any other public talks during that period of time. Until September fifth, and then we start going down these go straight to twenty cities lined up along the EAST coast, smaller cities, partly one I'm going to do- is I was just figure this out today. I have the great honour of being asked to write the introduction to the fifty. And every the version of the gulags capella goal, which is going to be published in two thousand and four, and for so I finish that I finish that today got it off, so that was that was good, I heard from the Socialists and family this weekend.

We are very happy with the introduction. So that was a big deal, because it was a daunting task to write something that vaguely deserve to be associated with a book like that and one of the things were going to do to publicize, I suppose the existence of the new version. It's also the hundredth anniversary of social rights and pursue this year, and so those two things dovetailed very nicely is I'm going to read the production as a Youtube, video and I'm gonna maker. I'm gonna put images with it, so I'm gonna spend, I think, that'll be funds like editing, video, it's really challenging and interesting, and so I put together little documentary and get ready for release in November, and I think that would be an relatively. I wouldn't call it entertaining thing to do for the next while, but it we very engaging and

we are working on getting the videos out from the same Harris talks, and so that should happen, next and while we're trying to trying to figure out how to distribute them properly and and and what to do with them, and I'm going to New York to moral and I'm going to speak to me. On PBS invited me, which is quite strange because the liberal left media has had nothing to do with me is except the odd, while more than odd hit peace and you know their basically continuous, but I'm gonna be on frontline tomorrow next day and then show after that's, that's New York and I'm working on negotiating the contract for my next books as well this month. So. You do realize the question. I ask you as you have you well, you know I've really

I really enjoy this tour, but it's you know, there's no time for error, there's no space for for mistakes, and my wife and I have been touring and she's, been extraordinarily helpful and keeping everything on so just not having that responsibility for travel and and this at the end of the day, will be relaxing and Unless I am also less stressed about the media, noise around me because you know for a long time. It's got it's gone like this, and I've have never been sure if I was gonna get taken out by something like that New York Times peace, but so far I haven't been taken out and it doesn't look like. I will never say that it isn't obvious that this situation is getting worse. For me

someone, someone, I know says, choose your words carefully. I think we to tempt fate. That's for sure, You know I'm starting with this one, because it has come up at every canadian stop. When will you run for Prime Minister, actually came up in America to work. You did did they're gonna inflict. There can inflict me on an all on unsuspecting Canadians. It is clear and qualified and it isn't- I Haven'T- had a political career, I'm not a professional administrator, theirs trillion things I dont know about how to run something complicated like a modern economy, so that- and it would be a

learning curve b. I can't speak French very well see come. I have all these other things that I'm doing that seem to be important Maybe they're more, maybe I'm more suited for them. We want the things I'm working on right now. Some of you know this, perhaps, is that I wanted to build something approximating an online university. Heard some people to do that. Recently. There's three of us three people hired very, very smart kids very technologically savvy man: they can solve problems like just nobody's business. It's really something to see, and We want to build a universal education system, not a university, but something broader than that, because we thought there's no sense, restricting it to the age range that would begin university. There's just no reason to do that. So we want to build a universal education system that will provide a high quality university equipment education for

something between one tenth and one one hundred the cost, with no administrative overhead with and, more importantly, we're going to I'm so that it will be impossible to mess with the grating scheme. No logical interference with the grating scheme, none, and so that project is perversely enough, actually ahead of schedule which really staggers me because we ve only been working on it for about three months full time. But were a year ahead of where I thought we'd be at this point, and so that's

exciting and- and I'm very interested in devoting a substantial amount of time to that, and so there's all these projects that I would have to put on hold. If I decided to do something political- and it isn't obvious to me that that would be smart, so I think I'll just keep doing what I doing, at least for the foreseeable future. For the record, I think we can all agree of Trudeau can do what he can do it right. I want to drag you into this thing, kicking in one way or another. To I don't know that was a compliment

Any advice were apparent, navigating their children through the digital age. That's a tough. Men well, I've had some friends you with teenagers and they run into vicious trouble because of what happened with her kids online, like just absolutely horrible trouble, you know, because it kid can get in trouble online in ways that while so can adults. Obviously, but imagine if you were thirteen mansion their say and you wrote down what He thought and letting them everybody, no psych, that's bad enough. Man don't do that and then, wrote it down in a way that can never be erased and then everything you did was recorded. So you could never forget it for the rest of your life.

Is that so dismal man like the best thing about being thirteen- is that you get to forget it. So. I don't know I've been I've been talking to my friends and the people who have been affected by this, trying to figure out what to do, and it's really hard, because you know you can't your kids teenagers they're, pretty sad little specimens if they we have a smartphone. You know in the broader culture. So it doesn't look like something. That's that's easy to deny them. They also don't pick up, logical prowess than and that's a mistake because like better know how to use one of these things, because otherwise you just gone you're lost. But the technology is so dangerous. So you know when I talk to my kids about experimenting with illicit substances. I said: look you're, probably going

spearmint, but if you're stone, I don't wanna know it. So, if you're experiment and you better keep yourself under control well enough, so I can't but your screwed up, because otherwise you not handling it properly and so Well, that seems to me to be about right, like what the hell are you going to do you gonna say don't experimental like mean we're, gonna make part legal, it's already ninety five percent. They are so it's it's pretty hypocritical to give that advice, but you can help your kids

the rule is gonna, be something like don't do so don't do something so damn stupid that you ruin the rest of your life right. That's the fundamental rule with regards to playing with fire, and maybe you can help your kids. Maybe you can help make your kids sensible enough so that they won't make any fatal errors playing with complicated technology, but I'm just as happy that my kids are old enough now, so that they are not facing this thing. That world was pretty digitized when they were too. There are twenty four and twenty six ten years ago, social media was still around but not like. It is now so. I don't have any easy answers for that. Unfortunately, do you think you moved SAM Harris at all during your for talks? Oh yeah, I think so, but I think he moved me too.

You know I mean Paris is not an unreasonable guy. He's he's a very articulate spokesperson for particular perspective. A powerful perspective. The materialistic atheists perspective is an unbelievably powerful perspective so and he's very good at articulating. It and SAM's part is in the right place for it. Concern like the reason that he wants to ground. Ethics, in fact, is so that we have a solid ethical structure. You know I I just don't think that I dont think that the answer is that he provides hours are sufficiently. I think there There there low resolution and they dont- have sufficient poetic power and that's a big problem, because he overvalued rationality and I don't think we should undervalue it. I'm

certainly a fan of the enlightenment, I mean I'm a scientist. I use rational means all the time, and I try to be very clear in what I write and say, but. Rationality is embedded in the body. In the body is something that's far more complicated than mere rationality and it requires poetry and art and it requires narrative and it requires wisdom and dance and music and an art and all of those things that the rationalists tend to think of as mere epithets phenomena of something more fundamental and they're wrong. They ve got it backwards, and so it isn't that I fault SAM Why he's doing what he's doing? He would like to see the sum total of suffering in the world reduced and he's terrified of religious fundamentalism and no wonder, but I dont think that the answer provided by the materialists atheists has the motivation,

potency to serve as a bulwark against nihilism or totalitarianism? And so that's why we differ and. We had a real conversation. You know it lasted ten hours for four sessions. Ten hours- and you know we- we hid each other, I would say as hard as we could. Also noting, that we were trying to work towards the same end, which was clear discourse and and and some development of some vision about how to proceed with this terrible problem of meaning. But. It wasn't like it wasn't like you didn't, listen in Munich. Real conversation, and I think we're both more articulate and we were before the conversation like this thing that I talked about tonight why the Father is in the belly of the beast. I don't think I would to figure that out. If I wouldn't have talked to SAM for ten hours, I am really happy. I figured that out. That's that's the bloom.

Away when I finally realised why that image existed. Its really something you know and that's that's why it's useful to engage with people who are of good faith who have opinions that are different from yours? That's thinking! That's what thing is, and thinking gets you places places you need to go so it was definitely worthwhile and yes, I think we were both moved by and I think the audience was as well so. We know some of your heroes? Who were long gone? Do you have any living heroes. I unreservedly

Living euros is rough because it takes a long time to figure out if someone's a hero. You know I mean I have people that I respect and scientists, particularly on lots of great scientist, but it takes a long time to establish a reputation like a real reputation and so usually by the time you do you dead some kind of unfortunate, and so so, but I leave for sure I mean I thought her book infidel was staggering piece of work and she's insanely brave,

Now, and then you see these people that no Douglas Murray's, like that very he's got a spine of steel that guy it's really something to meet him because he's very affable eagle list Guy, you know not arrogant soft spoken, but if he has a mindset on something, there's no move in him and it's really something to meet people like that. You know their quite rare Lindsey Shepherd girl from from Wilfred Gloria. I surveyed Her I mean she's, young she's, just a kid really early twenties and the university brought everything it had to bear on her and she basically crossed her arms and said: I'm not moving.

And then didn't and that's good for her man, impressive man, there's a lot of good stuff here, boxers or briefs. He asked me this before reason. I wear pants so that I don't have to answer, though, don't no point to meet these the questions there's a man I that one comes up a lot is

one public policy that you could enact in Canada that you think might fix things. No, not one. No it's too complicated any besides. You don't fix things. That's how things work. You know what you do. You you, you look at a problem and then the deeper the more you look at it, the man. Or Michael problems. You see that it's made of, because you know there's this old story that if you the head of a hydra than six more heads girl. Well, that's the lot. That's the world Well, that's a Huron myths. It's like you face a problem. You find out that it's a whole set of problems and then you look at each problem and you see that's a whole set of problems. That's the problem. The ology, because the says we can solve all those problems at once, so I know you can't you don't even know what the damn problem is

like the problems, are really complicated. There really really really really complicated, and so you know I would have. I would have a method I liked Lambert's method like ok, while the first thing we should do is say well what are the problem what are the big problems facing Canada, the gender wage gap that one of them so, despite despite the fact that it was reference to gender was reference three hundred and eighty five times in the federal budget. So what? What are the problems with? Well, that's that's a hard problem and I'm not being dismissive about that or or or treacherous intellectually

hands Isaac who wrote a great book called genius, and he he's a great psychologist- was world's most cited psychologists for a long time. One of the things he pointed out was that that most difficult cognitive problem is to formulate the problem properly. Because if you formulate a problem properly, you're you're, fair ways to solving it. So the first question would be it's like. Well, what are the problems that confront us as a nation? Well, what you do is you, you do some information gathering to find out. You have people, experts. Common people everyone's like well, what are the problems? What what's wrong with us that we can fix? Well, did you give gather a nice car Conglomeration of problems- and you think, ok well,. How would we rank or to these problems? And could we generate.

At some solutions to them and then can we test different solutions to see if they would work. So I would say that the way to solve complex problems is to have a complex problem solved methodology and social scientists. Scientists general have a complex problem. Solving methodology specify the problem generate hypotheses about how might be solved test a variety of variants to see which ones work, specify your outcome, measures properly, that's how things should be handled, and so I would never think that there is one thing that could be done, because that's that isn't how the world works. Its it's problems are complicated, their high resolution generally. What you do is solve micro problems partially, but if you do a bunch of that things get better like it works incremental not. You know that's one of the lessons in twelve rules. Life is don't underestimate,

utility of incremental improvement. It's you because if it starts to compound, so it's ok to focus on a problem and decompose it into micro problems you, u biting off exactly as much as you can chew, fix that, then you build a fix, the next thing and then your benefits, the next thing. So it's a method and it would be application of that method. That would be the solution to the problem. This is interesting as a therapist have you ever been in therapy? Know you well look yet any too complicated, because I would say the answer to that? Is yes, and no one of the things I learned from reading Carl, you Young said.

Moral effort as a substitute for therapy- something like this because Therapy is actually a moral process. Why? Why? Because you go to a therapist, because you life isn't what it could be by our own proclamation right and that might be a physical thing. You might be ill. That has to be sorted out because people get second, you know, there's lots of variants of depression and other disorders too- that are mostly a consequence of physical illness of one form or another, and so that has to be sorted out. But then people make strategic errors and they don't have a well developed vision for the life and all of that, so you help people through that, and you know I did a lot of analysis of my own dreams and a lot of right

and thinking about things, and so, and I have a lot of communication with my wife and my friends is well my weight in particular, I would say- and that's been deeply therapeutic and in the rough, since I mean in the horse sense, because we really have a close relationship, but it's a combat of relationship. You know like she doesn't stand for any nonsense, and neither do I and so that in her less than me, even I would say which is a good thing. It was funny the kids used to come over to our house. Teenagers, and we like that. We liked our teenagers oddly enough and we liked having their friends but there is a rule in our house and all their friends knew it was. You are welcome here really, but if you do so think stupid, and we never have to see you again as a consequence. That's perfectly ok with both of us and so,

and when the king, when the kids first come over, they were first came up, I didn't know the house very well. They were mostly afraid of me, but after that, been there for about a month, they were mostly afraid of Tammy. So that's therapy man, that's a relationship right yeah. I do because you you're you're, stupid and ignorant, and so is your partner, and if you bash yourself against each other long enough, you both get tempered a bit, and maybe here your little smarter than little wiser than you might otherwise be because he had to take that other person into account and they had to take you into account and you have solved difficult problems together in and so that's been good like. We fought a lot a hard fight and vicious fights, often but productive. You know because that the goal of the fight was too not Have to have the fight again and those are hard fights man, because sometimes there about deep things. Problems in life, problems that you're carrying forward as a flawed personality, problem,

that are part and parcel of your being because of your screwed up family, because you carry multi generational pathology forward with you, and so that relationship has been very therapeutic. I would say so, as I said and no Tommy's here by the way, give it up or damage, is here somewhere. I like this, where well one thing about that too, like because we we put each other's through the mill, I would say, and to some degree, because life also did that our daughter was very ill for a long time, and so that was challenging. We ve been able to do what we ve been doing for the last sixty days like we ve had a very intense schedule and under very stressful circumstances, and-

we don't. We were fortunate in that we're not carrying so much excess relationship baggage with us that that is compromising our ability to do this, and so that's that's been extraordinarily helpful to the combat. You know that straightens things out is it's. It's. It's tents and its conceptual people avoid that sort of thing all the time and there really it's. Ok, it doesn't matter we have to fight about that has had such a lie. So I guess you do you have to you have to you have to fight about, have to straighten out and people avoid that like mad and then the disagreements accumulate and they turn it. You were terrible monster and the EU. You're in divorce court for like fifteen years scrapping over your kids, will you give your lawyers three hundred thousand dollars and then then you have the fights you didn't have enough and its,

expensive in horrible yeah. I mean I've seen plenty of this. I'm a therapist I've seen plenty of this when you a kid: what did you to be, when you grew up quite varied, I mean I remember- I don't know if I should tell you this, but I'm going to anyways, because I told a report of this Toronto life and he Meda, You know he here didn't treated. Kindly. Let's say he was kind of a son of a bitch funny, because he was kind of a gifted rider. He could actually right, but he didn't have any kind. Events in his own ability or that of his audience. So he would tell a story about me, which was like an accurate story and then he would write like a paragraph about what you should think about what you just read, which isn't what you do if you're good?

read. What you do is you just tell the story and you let your audience make up their own mind, but he couldn't do that. He tell the story which he couldn't do he did his research. Say what here's, how you should think about this? If you were good person like so when he wrote this piece, which I was happy about, because I was very, I think, kind to him and welcoming and honest- and you know he wrote this nasty little piece and I wrote him. I said you know you're you you, you perverted your own talent, because you're actually pretty damn good writer, and yet you didn't have enough confidence in your ability or that of your audience to separate the wheat from the chaff. You had to tell them good thinking. People should think anyways when I was a kid one of the first pillar

a memories I have is is Robert Kennedys assassination, and I followed that I think was only about six when that happened right even been younger, but I think it was six because it was quite shocking and I remember his funeral and there were hordes of people at his funeral and I thought I'll have a funeral like that. Really know what to make of that, because it wants a hell of a thing for a six year old kid to think it. So I don't know where that thought came from but it is a newly memory and he assumed he assumed. That meant that I was narcissistic and I don't really think The issue is like Kennedy was shot. That's not exactly the sort of thing that you hope for so so

but I always had some sense. I suppose that I was going to be involved in large scale, enterprises of one form or another, and I work for the LAPD when I was a kid from the time. I was thirteen till the time of the sixteen I ran for vice president, the Aberdeen DP. When I was fourteen and- and I wrote my own speech, despite what people thought- and so I I I I thought about it,

little career for a long time. I thought about a scientific career, and then I decided TAT. I was going to work as a psychologist and all those things have come true to some degree I mean there's some political element to what I've been doing sort of second airily, but that's that, while that's that's what sort of the scope of my ambition when I was a kid, so I think it was partly my father's doing, because my father is unbelievably. My father is unbelievably good with little kids. He is really he's got a gift for it. You know, and I think that.

I've learned that from him, because I really like little kids and we get along great, I get along with little kids right away. I get along with teenagers too in my dad. Wasn't so good about that? He didn't really trust teenagers, but one of the things my father instilled in me or in loud to develop in meat, was he had an unshakeable confidence that I could do whatever I said mine too, and he completely believed that now he was a harsh guy. Man like he had high standards and was of weird weird living with him, because he thought that I could do. It reset, my mind too, but nothing I did was good enough. Well, it's a funny. It's really funny crucible! You know because, on the one hand, its extremely encouraging and, on the other hand, it's hard because you never you. Never you never good enough, but maybe that's not a bad combination. It might be that because you need judgment in your life,

who knows how you should set the standards. So what makes you think that what you doing is good enough. Maybe you could do better. So should I be on the side of you: that's Doing good enough, or should I be on the side of you that could be doing better and he was he was a distant my dad he's still alive he's a disagreeable guy he's not currying favour it's like and there's some that's an admirable trait, even though its got its harsh side so because it would have been relieved me as a kid to have been able to do,

something that was good enough and I am not complaining about this, its genuine mystery to me, but that was certainly offset entirely by his belief that I could do whatever I set my mind too. So he gave me a kind of unshakeable fundamental confidence I would say in, and it that's been a great gift to me and in one of the things I've seen too is one of the things that people tell me a lot in this to her. They thank me for the encouragement, because I am lecturing to people in suggesting that they could be more than they are and that that's really part of them. Many many people. Thank me for that. In one of the things I ve realized. Is that not being encouraged sufficiently is the norm and I can't say

was my Lord. I was encouraged sufficiently so that was that was a great gift that I had from my parents. Why does want to say to you guys if you think Jordan has affected? You tried traveling the world with them for two and a half months and having them look at you. While these answering a lot of these questions are not set you privately, but I am a better person now than when we started this thing, I think it's another large room for their sorry Dave. You said yourself operate out. I thought it a little committed timing tune. So given take really this,

he's been be. Yes, we end this leg of it now we're gonna take a month off. This has been just I mean professionally, the thrill of my life up, but personally it's been its movement, truly move me and I thank you. That- and on that note I'm gonna get out of the way and makes a noise Peters and everybody, if you found this comes in boy, you might think we're picking up debts, books, maps of meaning the architecture grief or is nor bestseller twelve rules for life, an antidote to chaos. Both of these work still much deeper. Two topics covered in the joint, be patient, podcast, see, Jordan, deviation, dot, com for audio evil context, links or pick up the books, your favorite bookseller. Also, subscribe to his email list. If you're on a website hope you enjoy, does not cast. If you did, please leave a rating, it apple, podcast comments, review, will surely said with a friend

speaks up. Sound is another twelve years for life lecture from Regina Scattering, recorded on August fourteen twenty. Eighty we're still making our way through the twelve roost, canadian tour, hopefully enjoying it, taught you week. More updates, then, hopefully good once follow me on my: u to Channel Jordan, be Petersen on Twitter. Jordan be Petersen on Facebook at Doktor, Jordan be Petersen and of Instagram Jordan Dog Begot Petersen. Details on this show access to my blog information about Latour dates and other events, and my list of recommended works can be found on my website. Jordan be Petersen dot com, my online writing programmes designed to help people strayed note. There pasts understand themselves in the present and develop a sophisticated vision and strategy for the future can be found itself authoring, dot com that self authoring dot com

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