October 1, 2019 • 55 mins
In this second episode of an ongoing series between Dr. Oz and Jordan Peterson, they deep dive into the topic of becoming better versions of ourselves. From the steps we can take to lead a virtuous life, to managing disappointment and envy, this interview helps us all understand how the small changes we make to ourselves have a ripple effect onto the world.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
You change, often because of pain, and sometimes because of
involuntary challenge. Something comes along and knocks the slats out
from underneath you. It breaks you into pieces. And maybe
you put yourself back together, and maybe you're even stronger
after you've been put back together, but you break into
pieces first. Hi, I'm Dr Oz and this is the
(00:48):
Doctor Oz Podcast. He's been called an accidental icon of
the modern day philosophical movement. Dr Jordan Peterson's work as
a clinical psychology professor at the University of Toronto is
international recognition as profound and often controversial insights. It often
explores and ignites fiery discussions on faith, personality, self empowerment,
(01:09):
and identity politics. The Dr Peterson's back with me and
help all of us gain a better understanding of our
full potential. Each civilization has determined its balance of rights
with responsibilities. So what do we owe our government and
what does it owe us? Probably the fundamental question that
created this entity the United States? How do you define that? Well?
(01:31):
I think we owe our government our attention more than
anything else, because without our the government is a dead entity.
It's the past. The past is blind and it can't
change itself. And so it's always in danger of losing
contact with the realities of the present and degenerating it
(01:54):
to something that's anachronistic as the environment changes. And what
we owe it is why open eyes and the ability
to speak, because it's wide open eyes and the ability
to speak that updates the structure that maintains peace and
harmony and productivity. That's our responsibility. Things manifest themselves to
(02:16):
people as problems. That's why people are obsessed with political problems.
This bugs me, It's okay, Well, the first question is, well,
why does it bug you? Why that thing and why
does it bug you? Well, it speaks to your soul
in some manner, that's why it bugs you. And what
should you do about it? Well, something, because it wouldn't
be bothering you otherwise. That that's that's a it's a
(02:38):
it's a message from very very primordial levels of your
consciousness that something is out of kilter that has something
to do with you. And so then you owe your
government the responsibility of taking on that problem and trying
to address it. If it's a complicated problem, then you
better have your act together. If you're going to try
to address it. You have the response ability to be
(03:00):
the eyes and the voice of your government. That's what
keeps it alive. People have known that since the time
of the ancient Egyptians. Right there, God Horace was a
speaker of truth and a visionary. He could see and
he could speak the truth, and it was his power
that revitalized the state. That's us, that's our consciousness, that's
(03:21):
what that's what we owe the government. So if we
owe that the government, and theorectly the government owes us
protection and making us interact with other countries in some
organized way, organizing our tribe. What happens to the covenant
between people and their government. The nation is citizen. Will
we become borderless? Why is that issue so painful right
(03:43):
now in America? Well, the first question is what constitutes
a border? You know, like if you're playing a monopoly game,
then the border is the the edge of the board,
but it's also the edge of the rule structure that's
organizing your behavior year. And the reason you can play
a monopoly game peacefully is because there are borders. There's
(04:06):
a structure that defines what constitutes appropriate behavior in that
defined space. And you need that because otherwise you fight.
And you see this children will fight when they're playing
monopoly because they can't stay within the borders. So you
can't have a borderless condition because there's no up and
there's no doubt. Everything is twist, twisting and turning all
(04:27):
the time. It's nothing but chaos, and people can't tolerate that.
So then the question is, well, we have to organize
ourselves into groups with borders. That's why we have walls
around our houses. That's why we have borders around our cities.
That's why we have borders around our states and our countries.
And because we can organize and agree upon the appropriate
(04:49):
mode of social behavior within those borders, you dissolve that
and no one knows what to do. You think, well,
that's going to bring about paces that they won't bring
about pace. It will bring about chaos. Now you might say, well,
let's expand the borders as much as possible so that
we can include as many people as possible in the game.
And I would say that's a pretty good ambition. It's
(05:12):
worked well in the United States. But you have to
remember that in the United States, you don't just have
a country here, you have municipal governments that are fragmented
into smaller forms of government than that. You have state governments,
you have a national government. You have a whole hierarchy
of institutions that enable you as an individual to maintain
contact with with the borders. Let's say you blow apart
(05:37):
the borders casually, you don't have any of that structure,
and and that's not good. First of all, you have
the chaos problem. And then you have the problem that
I think the E. E E C Is facing, which is
that the ordinary citizen starts to see so many layers
of complexity between them and their rulers that they lose
their allegiance. So in the country that has agreed they
(06:01):
have to have a border, they fight about what that
border should look like, how poorsh should be. And especially
when everyone's rights become the dominant theme, what happens when
those rights are mutually exclusive. Might write the free speech
versus your right to a safe space, for example, Well,
that's politics, or sometimes more deeply philosophy, or sometimes we're
deeply theologial. Political solutions don't seem to be offering us
(06:24):
a remedy. Instead, people become more and more extreme for
a brunch of reasons that I think most folks know
about that we live in bubbles. We you know, it's
confirmation bias. We haven't desired that that's the case, and
we only look at that data. But it's become difficult
through politics to make some of those difficult decisions. You know,
if you and I are living in a little camp
and that we can see the border and we can
(06:44):
both say, well, I don't want that, that's a dangerous
thing to come into our camp. That's a good thing.
That's that makes it sort of straightforward. Yeah, Well, that's
why I think, and I suppose I been trying to
participate in the discussion that I hope is deeper than
the political, because when the political fails, it means that
something that is holding it up is no longer working.
And I believe that our belief in the structure that
(07:08):
justifies free speech is shaking and that has to be reinstituted.
And part of the mode of reinstituting that is to
go back to, in my opinion, to go back to
the foundational stories of our community and to point out,
you know, that we're each made in the image of God,
let's say, and that we are sovereign individuals, and that
(07:29):
we have the ability to communicate and that that's something
that we lose at our peril. But the idea that
borders can be dispensed with is it's they do cause suffering.
It's not a pleasant thing to have nothing and to
be turned away from a place where you could move ahead,
and borders do that. But by the same token, you
(07:52):
have to define a space where everyone is playing an
agreed upon game, because otherwise no one knows what to do.
And and that degenerates into well, it degenerates into sectarianism,
and it degenerates into all sorts of things nihilism and violence.
And so as as as we resolved this concept of
our rights for responsibilities, we're going to have to look
(08:14):
at at guide posts bigger than ourselves. And it takes
me to again how historically humans resolved this problem, because
it's been there since day one, and faith has always
played a role of offering some advice on this. The
weakness of that structure, that morality, that narrative is is
(08:35):
is one of the one of the problems, and is
treatment its strength, and he might be one of the solutions. Well,
it undermines. See, sometimes it's about rights, but mostly it's
about responsibility. Citizenship is about responsibility, and your responsibility is
to constrain unnecessary suffering and to push back against malevolence.
(08:57):
That's your own malevolence, it's the malevolence of the social world,
it's the malevolence of the natural world. That's your moral obligation.
And to be responsible is to act in accordance with
that moral obligation. And I don't believe that we have
done a good job of communicating that where we haven't
articulated it properly. Partly it's because when the conservatives articulated
you owe your country, there's this duty. It's like it's
(09:21):
like it's it's it's a patriarchal voice demanding that you
sacrifice yourself for your country. There's like, there's duty. It's
all duty, and duties are perfectly reasonable virtue. But it
does engender rebellion, and for good reason, because it can
be tyrannical. It misses the point, and the point is
that you you need to accept responsibility. It's it's your
(09:47):
essence and you need it, not least because by accepting
responsibility you find meaning. And people know this, Like if
you look at the people you admire, let's assume those
of the people who are living properly, that you have
a natural tendency to admire people who are living properly
because you want to imitate them. And it's an instinct.
You know, you admire people who take responsibility for themselves
(10:10):
and for their family and for their communities. You know,
it is natural, and you see in that a valid
mode of being. You think, well, why do you need
a valoid motive being? Why do you need to take
on that responsibility? And the answer to that is simple.
It's because you're going to be subject to suffering and
you're going to be subject to malevolence, and that's going
(10:30):
to embitter you unless you have a purpose, and you
need a purpose that high enough so that it's an
antidote to the suffering and the malevolence. And and the
faith that you describe, which is the faith in the
sovereignty of the individual. It's the faith in the divinity
within the individual. It's the faith that the consciousness that
(10:52):
we that we share, that's the remarkably miraculous element of
us can can contend with the structure of what my
be and to make it into something good, and we
can't lose that. It's not optional. People literally die without
that knowledge, because they become purposeless and nihilistic, and then
the suffering and the malevolence overtakes them and they that
(11:15):
either crushes them into depression and they can't live, or
it embitters them and they become cruel and vengeful and
and and worse. And so these aren't optional concepts. And
the notion that responsibility is what gives you the meaning
to withstand suffering, that's that's a killer idea. Every time
I talk to my the audiences that I've been speaking
(11:36):
to across the world, it's about three people now. Every
time I make that case, that argument, the audience is
dead silent, because everyone knows it's like, yeah, it's that.
The truly meaningful things I do occur when I take responsibility,
and the more responsibility, the more meaning, like the more
weight and the more burden. It's it's it's not nothing.
(11:59):
It's the tragic acceptance of destiny, I suppose, but everyone
knows it to be true, and everyone be rates themselves
endlessly when they're failing to live up to their potential
and not accepting the responsibility they know is part of
their it's part of what's ethically required of them to
live properly in the world. There's lots more will be
(12:21):
come back. M Help us explain how human hierarchies forced
us in the tribes. Well, I think it's probably that
it's probably our better angels in some sense that do it.
(12:42):
Everyone agrees that perhaps that your primary loyalty should be
to your family, and that logically extends to your extended
kin group like evolutionarily speaking, and you know, then maybe
that elaborates up into your tribe. Your tribe is set
up to cooperate, compete towards necessary ends, and to provide
(13:02):
you with a context of friendship and a structure of
meaning in your life. And it can't be of infinite
scope because you lose the personal relationship that's necessary to
keep it functional. I think one of the things that's happening,
for example, with the European Economic Community and its fragmentation,
(13:24):
is that the size of it is too much, So
the distance between the people at the bottom and the
people at the top is so great that the people
at the bottom don't feel any personal power, they don't
feel any connection with their leaders. So there's like an
optimal tribal size, and it's a testament to people's ability
to cooperate that we produce tribal groups, and we do
(13:45):
it at the drop of a hat. We do it
when we organize sports teams. And you see how powerful
that tribal motivation is. While in the case of people's allegiance,
say to a sports team, it's very natural part of
human existence, and a lot of it is admire double.
The problem is is that there are many tribal groups,
and that puts us in conflict because, on the one hand,
(14:07):
the other tribal groups pose a threat to our way
of being in a variety of ways, like a genuine
threat threat of disease, for example, which has been terrible,
terrible threat throughout our evolutionary history, but also the threat
of radically new ideas or the threat of physical conflict.
By the same token, all these other tribes they create
(14:28):
interesting things, they have new ideas, they have ways of
being in the world that might be really helpful if
we could incorporate them. And so we have this terrible
tension between our in group loyalty and our out group curiosity,
and it's it's it's one of those opponent process issues
where there's there's positive and negative things pushing in both
directions and getting the balance right is extraordinarily difficult. So
(14:53):
much of human history has been one long narrative enslavement,
fighting between tribes. I remember you said wants that if
you met someone that was not like you historically, one
of you would die, right, that's why. So how do
we begin to strive, how do we reprogram ourselves to
accept a different outcome? We actually get bigger and bigger
tribes that we actually feel like we're seeking the same
(15:16):
not well, I think I think the United States is
a really good example of that. Is that you need
an overarching narrative. And so a narrative is a story
about how you should conduct yourself in your life. Right,
It's a story about who you are and where you
are and where you're going and why and how you're
going to get there with other people. So you need
(15:36):
that universal narrative that's acceptable to people. And then within
that you can place tribal groups, but they have to
subsume their tribal loyalty to that fundamental, larger narrative. And
so there's a melting pot element. You can keep that
those elements of your tribal affiliation that aren't in contradiction
with the underlying meta narrative. Why is that dissolved now?
(16:00):
We we seem not to have that multipots mind, Well,
well you still have it to a fair degree. You know,
we don't want to get too pessimistic about it. The
US is pretty peaceful ethnically speaking, despite what people think
and say. It's much more peaceful ethnically than it was,
say in the nineteen sixties. And I think that's the
same with most Western countries, although not all of them.
(16:21):
So there's no reason for despair. But you know, the
problem is is that part of the narrative that united
the United the United States and all its people was
predicated on the idea of self evident truths. Right, we
hold these truths to be self evident, and those truths
themselves are embedded in an underlying narrative structure that we
don't really understand. That would be the Judeo Christian narrative structure,
(16:44):
which is thousands of years old and and has its
roots tens of thousands of years before that, and it
consists of a series of stories about what constitutes a
human being. So, for example, one of the most fundamental
elements of the Judeo Christian narrative is that human beings,
men and women alike, just staggering statement for something that
(17:07):
was written so long, are made in the image of God.
And so there's a notion that each individual has sovereign value,
and that's something you can't prove that right. It's an
axiomatic statement. It's something you have to accept on faith
and then allied with that because the question is, well,
if you're made in the image of God, what does
that exactly mean? In the narrative that lays that out,
(17:29):
what God does when you are first introduced to him
is he's the creator of order from chaos, and he
does that with truth. He creates the order that is good,
because that's repeated consistently, what I've created is good. He
creates the order that is good from chaos, from possibility.
And that's what human beings do. And so that's why
(17:51):
each human being is of intrinsic value, because we have
that rule to play in the world. And that's part
of this massive underlying narrative that composes the self evident
part of the political structure that unites all of us.
When we start to lose the beliefs that enable those
fundamental propositions to be self evident, then the whole thing
(18:13):
starts to shake and and move, and that's not good.
That was Nietzsche's warning from back in the philosopher Nitze's
warning with the idea that God was dead, or Dostoevsky's
warning that if there's no God, then anything is permitted,
and that you know that the collapse of that underlying
structure can make us hopeless and nihilistic, and that leads
to that can lead to very dark places. And she
(18:35):
wasn't bragging that God was dead. He was lamenting. Oh yes,
he was terrified. Like Nietzsche believed that the consequence of
that was that we would have to create our own values,
that we sort of have to become like God's ourselves.
But the problem with that is that we can't create
our own values. We don't have the capacity for that.
I mean, try wake up at three in the morning
when your conscience is bothering you about something you've done,
(18:57):
and tell yourself that no, it's okay, You're gonna make
your own value and that reprehensible action that you undertook
is now fine. You see how far you get with
that rationalization, It's like you'll find that you're working against
an intrinsic moral intuition that has you in its grip,
and then that moral intuition is a guideline to the
underlying moral structure of the world. Now, I don't know
(19:19):
what that means metaphysically, you know, I don't know if
that means that the world really is a like a
narrative of the fight between good and evil. But as
far as human beings are concerned and their psychological makeup,
it certainly is. So. Why is it that so many
people seem to hate others who have different political perspectives
and what's going on? Oh well, it's not surprising. I mean,
(19:41):
there's all sorts of reasons to be ethnocentric. You know.
Other people are genuinely dangerous. Other ideas are genuinely dangerous,
you know. I mean, look at look at what happened
to the Native Americans when the Europeans came to the
New World. I mean, they brought with them all these diseases,
like dozens of diseases, measles, smallpox, umps um, chicken parts.
(20:02):
They lost their population in like a hundred years. I
understand the risks of different tribes. I always thought the
deep fundamental frustrations with each other would arise because of
those higher stories we're telling it what we're aiming for
our lives. Well, there's that purpose, there's that I never
thought politics would do that. Politics is how it's more tactical.
(20:22):
How are we gonna tax each other to take care
of some of the issues so we can all live
with harmony and seek that higher goal. So fighting within
religious disciplines, I sort of get that. Not good, but
I understand it. But it seems like religion has taken
a back seat and politics anger. Okay, So imagine that
(20:43):
the hierarchy of of of human conflict is something like this.
At the bottom you have tribalism, Right above that you
have religion, and then right above that you have politics
and economics flowing out of that. And what's happened is
that many of our political discussions have become religious or tribal,
(21:03):
and so they're becoming more serious. So we're not talking,
we're not in the domain of politics. We're down beneath that.
We're into the domain of what's self evident. So, for example,
there's a free speech controversy on campus. Who should talk
and who shouldn't. That's what people think the free speech
controversy is about. But that's not what it's about. Because
(21:23):
the radicals on campus who are opposed to free speech
do not believe that free speech exists. They're underneath the
political domain. Because in the United States, if you're acting politically,
you can argue about who should speak and who shouldn't,
but you can't argue about whether or not people should
be allowed to speak. And that would be useful. But
the argument on the campuses says, well, look, you're not
(21:45):
a sovereign individual. That's all nonsense. You're a member of
a group. You're just a mouthpiece for your group. You
don't have anything individual to add. It's not possible for
groups to communicate to one another in any reasonable manner
or to negotiate. And the entire political landscape is nothing
but a nightmare of competing power uh competing power claims
(22:07):
between groups of different identity. The whole idea of free
speech is something just invented by the dominant power group
to oppress the minority power groups. So it isn't about
who should speak, it's about whether free speech exists. That's
not political, that's theological, it's certainly philosophical. But I also
think it's theological because it violates the claim that each
(22:30):
person is individually sovereign and is a source of valid information.
So like, if you and I are going to have
a discussion, I have to presume that you have the
capacity to face the world and to change it for
better or for worse. And I have to listen to
how you lay out your propositions. I have to believe
that there's something there to you that isn't just your
(22:54):
social construction, It isn't just your political identity or your
your group identity. Well, if I've dispensed with all that belief,
there's no possibility for us to communicate, especially across racial
or ethnic or sexual barriers. One idea that I've been
playing with is the thought that to help address this
is to remind people that a lot of our differences
(23:14):
are genetic. So if these genetic differences also influenced whether
we're Republicans or Democrats, or pro life or pro choice,
then it would make people practice more forgiving. I mean,
how realistic is that? Are we really genetically that difference
and take disgust as a good dope? Yeah, well, I
(23:34):
mean far more of what you think politically is determined
by your temperament than you think genetic yes, yes, but
by biological factors. And so it's useful to know that
because that helps you understand that the person that you're
talking to isn't just arbitrarily different, they're actually different. When
you think, well, that's a bad sort of difference, it's like, well, no,
(23:57):
it's a sort of difference that might be useful in
a certain particular set of circumstances. So I can give
you an example. Liberal types are highering creativity, which is
a temperamental trait that's heavily influenced by genetics, and they're
lower in conscientiousness, which is also heavily influenced by biological
um factors. That disadvantage to that is that they tend
(24:19):
to be disorderly and chaotic. But the advantages they tend
to be creative and entrepreneurial. So all the entrepreneurial types
are Liberals, are almost all of them, And you can
see that by what's happening, say in places like Silicon Valley.
Well that's fine, man. You need the entrepreneurial and creative
types to generate new ideas, and you need to generate
new ideas because the old ideas decay and age like
(24:42):
would be lovely if we could just fix things and
then that was a permanent solution. But it doesn't work
that way. But what the liberals don't understand is that, well,
they're all fine, they're fine in terms of creating their
new their new entrepreneurial ventures, but they need conservatives to
run them. They need the conscientious types who are ought
as prone to think latterly, to take the algorithmic processes
(25:06):
that they've now invented right because they have a structure,
and to implement them carefully. And so there's this dynamic
between the liberal and the conservative in uh in a
free market society that drives the entire economy. And so
you might be annoyed at your crazy liberal colleague who's
you know, taking risks all the time and is coming
up with a you know, ten crazy ideas an hour.
(25:27):
But without him, you'll stagnate, and he might be just
as irritated as hell at you because you're so damn
nearrow minded. You can't get out of your your little
you know, your one dimensional trap, and things have to
be done exactly the same way or you're you're going
to be upset but you two need each other, and
then what you need free speech for in particular, is
to negotiate between those different temperamental types to come up
(25:51):
with a solution that's optimally functional. That would be the
first thing, but also that you can both live with
and the great hope of society's they're predicated on the
idea that the capacity to speak freely is an expression
of our divine essence. Let's say, speaking in this deeper
sense is that we can, in fact negotiate our way
(26:13):
to peace. I think that successful human societies do exactly that,
and that is the cure for the mediation between different
tribal groups. It's like, well, what's your perspective? God, I
have to listen to you. Oh my god, that's so
terrible because it's gonna undermine what I believe. I'm going
to have to question things that I think of as
sacred e and I have to listen to you as
if you know something, and you have to do the
(26:35):
same for me. A terrible process. You know that if
you're married to someone, you know it's it's it's very
brutal to have a genuine conversation. But there is a
possibility that what will come out of the chaos that
that produces is a new kind of order, and that
that new kind of order will be superior to the
previous order. And I would say that is the history
of humankind, because over the centuries, our tribes have united
(26:59):
into larger and larger and more and more peaceful aggregations.
And the net consequence of that seems to be a
much much less male homicide. That's the first thing. I mean.
We do have outbreaks of terrible wars from time to time,
but all things considered, it looks like an upward climb
as a consequence of I would say, as a consequence
(27:19):
of careful negotiation, that it's worth the best of the
time to listen to people you don't even like, because
I'll add to your life. Well there. They'll also tell
you things that no one else will tell you about yourself.
Maybe you don't want to know those things, but your
friends won't tell you that your enemies might. And then
you'll learn something that you might need to know. You know,
and it might save your life to learn that. So
(27:39):
it's bitter and terrible, but but maybe not as bitter
and terrible as the outcome. More questions after the break
We're all living at world that continual comparison to others
(28:02):
at least a fluctuating emotions of smug superiority or desperate
and security and big questions. How do we stop measuring
our self worth by someone else's standards, especially when social
media is the main way, especially a lot of young people,
to find themselves. Well. I think there's two things that
The first thing is you should figure out who to
compare yourself to. The best person to compare yourself to
(28:24):
is you yesterday and not someone else today. And the
reason for that is you don't know anything about these
people that you're comparing yourself to. Usually, one of the
things I've noticed is that it doesn't take much discussion
with someone, no matter how successful they are. You scratch
below the surface and you find that their life is
consists of trouble and suffering in proportions that you could
(28:48):
hardly imagine. Almost everyone is dealing with some serious problem,
personal problem, or problem in their family and relative status.
I suppose it's better to be rich and miserable and
poor and miserable, but you know, the misery is universal,
and so what you're comparing yourself too. If you're envious
it's an illusion, and it's not a helpful illusion. It's
(29:11):
not a fair race to to be racing against someone else,
but it's a fair race to be racing against yourself.
You could be slightly better than you are, and that will.
Actually the thing about that that's so cool, And I
think the psychological literature really indicates this is that slow
incremental improvement from your initial baseline can take you places
that you couldn't possibly imagine, and envy is only a
(29:33):
it's an impediment to that. You've talked frequently about how stories,
the Old tradition, the Bible can remind us of deep
fundamental insights of who we are. I'm gonna put an
image up of Caine Enable, the story you've talked about
quite frequently. What does this story teach us about envy
and what happens? You see, can Enable are actually the
(29:57):
first two human beings. They're the first two uman beings,
real human beings, because Adam and Eve are created by
God and so in some sense, while they or not
like us, but can Enable are born and their two
sons and and they they enter a state of mortal enmity,
you know, and the reason for that is that able
make sacrifices to God, and can make sacrifices to God,
(30:19):
and able sacrifices produced success and Cain's produced failure. Now,
you know, the sacrifices are very concrete. They're making burnt offerings,
and that seems very anachronistic, old fashioned and incomprehensible to
modern people. But the idea was that you could offer
something of value, and you could offer that up the
smoke would rise to God, so he could detect the
(30:40):
quality of your offering, and if the quality of what
you were sacrificing in the present was high enough, then
the future would work out for you. And that this
is an unbelievably brilliant insight because human beings are the
only creatures that have really figured out consciously that you
can let go of something that you need and want
now and forego gratification and you will actually improve your future.
(31:01):
So it's a huge deal. You know, it's the discovery
of the future, and so it's a it's a massively
important story. It's the discovery of time, yes, and it's
the discovery that you can actually act in the presence
so that you can bargain with the future and it
actually works. So it's it's a real miracle. And then
what happens is that Caine's offerings aren't accepted and ables are.
(31:25):
And this makes Cane very very angry and no wonder
because you know, if you're working hard and it isn't working,
you know, people aren't happy with you and you're not
making progress through your life, then you get bitter. And
that's what happens to Kane. And so then he doesn't
has a conversation with God and he says, like, what's
up with this world you created? I'm working myself to
(31:46):
death here and nothing's working for me and my brother
Able while everything is coming easy to damn, everyone loves him.
What's happening? And God says something like this. He says,
sin has made its entry into your dwelling place, into
your home, and sin means to miss the target. But
it's it's it's in this metaphor. It's presented that a
(32:08):
living thing arrow and you miss your bulls eye. That's
a that's a sin. It's a sin to miss the target.
So you can do that by not aiming or not
having the skill or anyways. God tells it Kane, it's
a terrible thing to tell me. He says, Sin is
waiting at your doorstep, and you've invited it in to
your life, evil, and you've entered into a creative union
(32:30):
with it. And it's that creative union with this evil
that you've invited in that's compromising your sacrifices and that's
the cause of all your suffering. And Kane is devastated
by this because he's already not happy that, you know,
Abel is doing extraordinarily well, and all his work is
going for naught. And now he goes and complains to
God about the structure of the world. And God says,
(32:51):
you look to yourself. Your sacrifices are not what they
should be, and you've made terrible mistakes that you're not
taking responsibility for. And Kine he can't tolerate that. The
story says, his countenance falls. He becomes absolutely enraged at
the structure of existence. It's not only that he's suffering,
but that he now realizes that the suffering is self induced,
(33:12):
and he can't tolerate that. And he's so angry at
at being and at God that he decides he'll kill Abel.
And it's a terrible thing because Abel is also his ideal,
so he kills his own ideal, right, and then he
tells God that his suffering is more than he can bear,
and God marks him and sends him on his way. Well,
that's the question. I mean, Kane's descendants degenerate generation after generation.
(33:39):
He's running away from his terrible crime to hell. There's
there's no other way of putting it. And I'm not
speaking metaphysically. One of Kane's descendants is Tuboucane, and Tubalcane
is the first person who makes in tradition, he's the
first person who makes weapons of war. So it's Kine's
sons are even more dangerous than Kane. And so there's
this idea in this old story that it's this envious
(34:01):
rage coupled with this inability to make appropriate sacrifices that
produces misery. And then that misery can can desire to
manifest itself in the world in the exaggeration of suffering
and malevolence, and that leads to social collapse. So if
we've made a bargain in our lives and acknowledge that
there's time and we can negotiate the future based on
(34:24):
sacrifices we make today, then we have tremendous control over
the world around us. Kane could have stopped sitting, stop
missing the targets, stop constructing a world with evil. He
could have learned from Abel. He could have made the
right sacrifice that he killed him. Instead, he killed him,
And there's all there's this ambivalence in the In the story,
(34:45):
it appears as though Kine's sacrifices are second rate. You
can never tell because there's some you know. Look, sometimes
people work really hard and things don't work out for them.
There's an arbitrary nous about life, you know, And and
that is left ambivalent in the story, although there is
this strong undercurrent suggesting that Kane is playing fast and
loose with the divine. Well, let's say, is playing fast
(35:09):
and loose with the future. Well, that's not gonna work.
Everyone knows. It's like, if you want the future to
work out properly, the sacrifices that you make now have
to be real and people understand that. I asked my students,
most of whom are children of first generation immigrants at
the University of Toronto and so pretty dedicated to their
to their task, say, well, what sacrifices did your parents
(35:29):
make so that you could go to university, you know,
and I mean they moved countries, they left everyone behind.
I mean this idea of sacrifice, which is conratized in
the story of kine Enable, is something that every modern
person understands, but it's useful to understand it in an
articulated way. It's so strange that you can bargain with
the future and that it works. Says we'll all forgo
(35:52):
this gratification now. I'll I'll take the harder route now
and the future will open itself up positively. And that
acts works. And if you don't do that bargain, you
made the point that it always comes back to get you.
And everyone knows that every undergraduate who procrastinates is guilty
about it. They're torturing themselves. Atheistic or not, there's no
(36:13):
escape from this. You know. They wake up the night
before or maybe it's the night before their final, and
they put everything off, their sweating, they feel weak and
how do you how do you cultivate acting better today
for a more successful tomorrow. That is a challenge for
a good slept sliver of the popular well, I would
say humility is the key to that. Look, if you
(36:35):
have a child and you love that child and you
want the child to develop. You set them a task
that exceeds their current domain of competence, but you set
them a task that they have a reasonable probability of
succeeding at. Right, not not complete, because then it's too
it's too easy. It has to be a challenge. You
look at the child and you say, well, here's your
(36:55):
ability level, here's one more step you could take right well,
and you have to do the same to yourself. You
have to take stock of yourself. That's a meditational exercises
like who am I? Where are my flaws? And and
they're not going to be something you want to face.
And then you think, well, what small thing could someone
as flawed as me do that I would do that
(37:19):
would improve me? And then it's humiliating because you think,
oh my god, and really I have to do something
that's small, that's all ain't capable of. It's like, yeah,
that's your lot, man, and you better be humble enough
to accept it. And then you you make that small improvement.
But then what you find is that small improvements accumulate,
those things compound and you can start moving ahead very
(37:42):
very rapidly. With the succession of small improvements. And there's
a metaphysical element to this, but you know, it's also
the basis of behavior therapy, which is the widest used, white,
widest employed brand of clinical psychology now in the world.
Behavior therapy it's like, well, let's figure out what your
problem him is, let's figure out what your goal is.
(38:02):
Let's break down your problem until we have a small
enough piece that you can address it successfully. Let's see
if you can address it successfully in the next week,
you can go and try it. If you can't, we'll
cut it down a little bit more. And let's assume
that incremental improvement is going to move you up. And
it does, but it does require that humility and it's
not a matter of comparing yourself to other people. It's
(38:23):
not helpful. It's like, what are you doing wrong? And
you can ask yourself that, right, And the problem with
asking yourself that is you get an answer and it's
not an answer you want. It's like, oh my god, really,
that's what I'm doing wrong. How could I be so
foolish and blind that that would be my mistake? And
how can I be so little and useless that this
(38:44):
is all I can do to improve it? You've got
to get that's that's to get down on your knees
in some sense before the ideal that you're attempting to manifest,
you know, and to show where you are in relationship
to that. The upside of that is that it's it's
an unbelievably powerful process. You can put yourself together to
a staggering degree merely by ceasing doing those things you
(39:08):
know you shouldn't do. I've asked octmputers in his review
two slides that uses his lectures to describe depicted how
we can be better versions of ourselves. So I'll start
to hear you in the middle of the walled garden.
It's beautiful, it's elegant. As you pull back from the
walled garden, you now all of a sudden see that
(39:29):
you have the opportunity to move into chaos if you
descended to disintegrate into that. And there's an analmous information
that falls back from chast that can misleads you. So
I'll turn it to you. I've I've witnessed you do
this brilliantly. Well. This explains how you can improve yourself,
but also why you won't. So the walled garden is
a metaphor among other things. I'm not trying to reduce
(39:52):
it to only a metaphor, but it suggests that the
natural environment for people is something like the balance between
culture and nature. Because the wall garden is exactly that,
it has walls, orders, but inside it has the natural world.
And so our natural habitat is the balance between culture
and nature. And that's the balance between order and chaos,
at least in part. And so that's our natural environment, um,
(40:15):
And that's part of the message in Genesis is that
that's that's where we should live. A wall, a well
watered place, a walled garden. That's or paradise. Now, the
problem is is that you circumscribe your small space, your
walled garden. Maybe that's the tightness of your family when
you have little children, for example, because you want to
(40:36):
set up a protective space around them. But there's always
there's always the outside that's still there, right and and
outside the walled garden there's everything that can disrupt and
expand it both at the same time. And what happens
is that as those things that appear, sometimes because you
search them out, which is probably the best way for
(40:58):
them to appear, but sometimes because they just make themselves manifest.
Trouble comes to visit you, and the trouble is something
you don't understand. That's what anomalis means. It means you
don't understand it, and so it doesn't fit in with
your conception of the way the world should be, and
it shatters you. And that's the descent and disintegration. This
is an imitation representation of an ancient representation of of
(41:19):
chaos itself. Right. It's it's the winged predatory serpent. It's
it's the predator itself. That's one way of looking at it.
It's what lurks outside the safe confines of the walled garden,
and you can't keep it out. It comes in, and
the consequence of that is you lose faith. You lose faith,
the walls are breached and you descend, and then you
(41:41):
descend into chaos. And that's a terrible situation and that
that can make people desperate. It can make them lose hope.
And so it's also why people don't like to change it.
You know, you change often because of pain and and
sometimes because of involuntary challenge. Something comes along and knocks
the slats out from underneath you. It breaks you into pieces,
(42:02):
and maybe you put yourself back together, and maybe you're
even stronger after you've been put back together, but you
break into pieces first, and this is partly why the
road to enlightenment is so difficult for people. It's not uphill,
it's downhill, and then the uphill, and then it's downhill,
and then it's uphill. And maybe with each successive peak
you rise higher and higher if you're fortunate, but that
(42:24):
doesn't mean that the descents are any less catastrophic. So
people will hide. They'll hide in the walled garden like
Adam hid from God. They'll hide in the wall garden
because well they don't want to let what's new in.
And it's no wonder. But it doesn't work. It doesn't work.
You also created a representation of an archetypal circumstances of
(42:44):
life we always exist, instead of a damaged structure that
is partially biological, partially not. Take a look at the
department socio cultural. So here we're pulling back and again
you've got this fantastic palace, palatial place you're living from.
You know, maybe it's the idea city. Yeah, well that's
it on there, say, well that's it. You're always this
(43:05):
is this is the constant complaint of the revolutionary It's like, well,
look at this terrible damage structure with its holes that
we've inherited from the past. It's like, well, that's an
archetypical experience, is that the state is damaged, that chaos
threatens it. It's it's it's always that way. That's that's
the monster at the gates of the walled gardens. That's right,
(43:28):
exactly that, And so from that the hero emerges, right,
say well, there's something wrong with the structure of the world.
The hero emerges to confront chaos voluntarily. That's your best
bet is, well, there's the whole Well, what are you
gonna do? You can ignore it? Are you gonna go
and explores contours and try to repair it? Well, that
could be could be dangerous. It's it's it's not it's
(43:49):
not a trivial undertaking to do that, and it might
very much annoy the people who are still, you know,
ensconced as they think safely within that original structure. But
the hero emerges them the damage structure awake right and
and comes into contact with the chaotic forces that threatened
the stability of everything. Does that voluntarily, and the consequence
(44:11):
of that is the generation, the discovery of a treasure.
It's the archetypical hero myth, the discovery of the gold
that is then brought back to revitalize the community, or
the freed. Often a virgin is freed. That happens in St. George.
And part of the reason for that is, well, because
that can represent wisdom, but also because I believe historically
and biologically that well, women are attracted to two men
(44:35):
who do that, who go beyond the damage structure of
the current state, and who voluntarily encounter the unknown, and
that means that they've developed themselves into the sort of
individual that can now have a relationship with a woman,
and she wants someone who has that capacity. And so
that's part of well, why St. George frees a virgin
from the grips of a dragon. It's not an easy
(44:57):
thing to understand otherwise, you know, but if the if
that happens, that you have reintegration and you ascend back
in the world, well that's the hope is that you know,
you're incorporation of the new information, whatever you've learned by
venturing outside of the safety of your damaged community. Is
now something that you integrate and you rebuild the community
as a consequence, and then that puts the walls back,
(45:20):
you know, and now it's temporary because the walls are
always under assault. Here's the way of thinking about it, Well,
what are you? Are you the damaged city? You certainly
might feel that way. That's that's depression, you know, or
or or cynicism. Or then are you chaos itself? Because
you can certainly feel that way too, that everything's fallen
apart around you and that there's nothing to you or
(45:41):
your life but chaos, and so or you can think, well,
maybe I'm the re established order, you know, and that
seems like the best of the three deals, right, It's like,
well but but but there's but there's something better than that.
There's something better than being the damaged city and being
chaos itself and even being the city that's really idolized,
and that is to be the process that continually does this.
(46:04):
Because this is the destiny of this is that it
will happen again, break again, it'll break it again. So
what you want to recognize is that this is what
you are. You're the thing that confronts chaos when it
makes itself manifest and I think that's the oldest story
of mankind. It's it's the story that emerged when, as
who knows how long ago, millions of years ago, perhaps
(46:28):
we decided that we were no longer going to hide
like frightened rabbits and wait for the predators to take
us out. We're gonna organize ourselves and go out into
the unknown and make the space safe. That's whose descendants
we are. That that story is so deep, the idea
of the confrontation with chaos, it's the it's the story
(46:49):
that opens Genesis, for example, and it's it's echoed in
the idea that the fact that people are made in
the image of God is partially a consequence of our
ability to confront ass and to regenerate order. So I
watch you tell these stories and respectral menacing the psychology
of it. But I simultane you see the profound emotion
(47:13):
in you as you share with us keep wisdom, millennia,
old wisdom. What's that coming from? Well, it's partly coming
from a chronic inability to regulate my negative emotion pretty clearly. Well,
so there's that, But look, here's partly what it's coming from. Recently,
you know, because I've become more emotional, I would say,
(47:35):
over the last few years, and it's partly a consequence
of the encounters that I have with individual people all
the time. And I don't really know what to make
of it. You know, Like I was sitting in the
airport yesterday in Toronto and about six people came and
talked to me, and they're very polite. And this is
(47:58):
always the case when people come and talk to They
apologize for interrupting me, and I tell them that it's fine,
they're not interrupting me. Then they tell me about being
in chaos, or they tell me about being the damaged city.
You know, they tell me about something that wasn't right
in their life. You know, they weren't making progress with
towards a marriage with their girlfriend, they were stuck in statis,
(48:20):
or they're alcoholic, or they're addictedive, they're in a career
that they didn't like, or they weren't getting along with
their parents, or you know, all the terrible places that
people could get stuck. And they say, well, look, I
was watching your lectures or reading listening to your podcasts,
or reading your book, and then well I decided that
I'd start to pursue what was meaningful. I developed a
vision for my life. I started to take on more responsibility.
(48:43):
I started to tell the truth, and everything is way better.
And there emotional when they discussed this. And I think
this is partly what's made me more emotional is that
I have all these story that people have told me
now sort of lodge it inside me that are representatives
(49:06):
of this. And and the thing that that's a motion
producing is that there isn't this is fundamental. People cannot
live without knowing this. They don't live property and and
so they discover some of these things and everything gets better,
and it's affecting to have people tell those stories. It's
(49:30):
also saddening to me that people are so desperate for
this knowledge, you know, it's it's ancient knowledge we clearly needed.
It doesn't take that much to distribute it so that
people understand it, and the effect is overwhelming and so well,
and then there's the fact that I just haven't adjusted
(49:51):
to the fact that people keep telling me these stories,
you know, And so when when I'm talking about this,
it's not abstract me like I do believe that this
is the fundamental structure of the world. There's no more
accurate way of portraying the world than than that order
descent into chaos restructuring of order as that Sciziphus journey.
(50:14):
And it's the way uphill, and it's punctuated by catastrophe,
which is why the way uphill is so difficult. Is
the pain you feel because so many haven't heard this
message yet and you realize they're in pain and they
don't have to be. Or is it the unbelievable experiences
of witnessing people change. It's joy hardly, you know. I'm
(50:37):
so thrilled that, you know, when someone comes and tells
you a story like that, you know, and then just
little stories. I went to this restaurant in Toronto and
one of the waiters there have been listening to my
lectures and he said, you know, I just have this
waiter job, so you know, it's not very high status job.
And he said, but six months ago I started watching
your lectures and I thought, man, I'm really gonna do
(50:58):
this job, you know, like I'm gonna put myself into it.
He said, I've got three promotions in six months, you know,
and so I'm doing way better. And because he took
this domain around him, that he had control of trivial
as it might appear, contemptible, as it might appear if
you're in an arrogant state of mind. You know, I'm
just a waiter at a restaurant. What can I do?
It's like, you could be good at it, you know,
(51:20):
and God only knows how good you could be at it.
And that means you can hone your interpersonal skills, and
you can become hospitable, and you can take some pride
in the fact that you can offer people the opportunity
to have a little happiness, maybe even if you're only
contributing that to some degree, and you can strengthen yourself characterologically.
And so he tells that story and he's smiling away.
You know, it's like, so, that's great, and it's great
(51:44):
to hear those stories constantly. But then there's a sadness
that goes along with it. And the sadness is that, well,
that encouragement is lacking. People lack it terribly. That's one
of the things I've realized on this world tour that
I've been honest that you have no idea how many
people have never heard an encouraging word. You know, it's
so that's deeply affecting. And also how little encouragement people need.
(52:09):
If it's true encouragement, you know, be courageous, you know
that's true encouragement. It's amazing how little they need to
start changing. And so that's also sad because it's like
there's a terrible illness and you don't need much medicine
and it's available, but it's not being used or for you.
(52:31):
Also personally, as you pointed out for others, the more
you do, the more you know you can do, so
your burden doesn't get later it gets heavier the more
you do. Well, that's what you see, and you know,
you hope that will you while you while you do that,
you get more organized, you know, so that you can
you can manage it better. And the other thing too,
is that it's very important to understand, you know, let's say,
(52:54):
as your burden grows. I learned this about two years ago.
I had this very profound experience. It's which I can't
really talk about. Um. It was it was like a
vision of paradise that was part of it. And along
with that vision came the knowledge in some sense of
what paradise required. And then as the vision disappeared. I
(53:16):
realized that I lost the secret to whatever that was
like on the way back, so to speak, I lost
that secret. It was like Gilgamish when he returns from
the depths. He has the tree of immortality, but a
snake steals it from him. I think that that was
based on an experience that was similar to the one
that I had. Many ways it doesn't matter, but then
(53:37):
and it was. It was really hurting me that I
had this knowledge and then I lost it. And then
I realized that, well, this isn't something that you have
to do by yourself, that this the journey forward to
the proper destination isn't And then this is part of
what makes the burden lighter, is that it's not just
on you, like it is on you man it on you,
(54:00):
but everyone has a role to play, and so there's
no reason not to reach out for help. And so
as you take on more responsibility, you build a structure
around you that enables that responsibility to be hoisted in
a manner that doesn't crush you. And because crushing you
isn't helpful, it's not it's not moving you forward. And
(54:23):
so there's a humility in that, right. It's it's even
though it is on you to to put things together,
it's also on everyone else, and everyone else has a
role to play and they need to be invited into
the process. It's like it's everyone's fault individually, but we
all collectively have to take responsibility for it, and that's possible.
(54:43):
And so that was well, that was the way out
of that conundrum, because I did really feel terrible about
it that I had, you know, felt in this strange
state that I had discovered something profound. And then it
was a great relief to understand that, well, you don't
have to even though it's your sponsibility, that this is
not something you have to do alone. You have your community,
(55:04):
and it's fine to reach out as much as possible
and to and to not to grant to people, but
to help people realize what role they have to play
in in in moving this whole process forward. And so
that was a great relief to understand that I don't
know what you didn't bring back, but I know you
give all of us a glimpse of heaven and the
(55:24):
courage to seek its affectually being
You change, often because of pain, and sometimes because of
involuntary challenge. Something comes along and knocks the slats out
from underneath you. It breaks you into pieces. And maybe
you put yourself back together, and maybe you're even stronger
after you've been put back together, but you break into
pieces first. Hi, I'm Dr Oz and this is the
(00:48):
Doctor Oz Podcast. He's been called an accidental icon of
the modern day philosophical movement. Dr Jordan Peterson's work as
a clinical psychology professor at the University of Toronto is
international recognition as profound and often controversial insights. It often
explores and ignites fiery discussions on faith, personality, self empowerment,
(01:09):
and identity politics. The Dr Peterson's back with me and
help all of us gain a better understanding of our
full potential. Each civilization has determined its balance of rights
with responsibilities. So what do we owe our government and
what does it owe us? Probably the fundamental question that
created this entity the United States? How do you define that? Well?
(01:31):
I think we owe our government our attention more than
anything else, because without our the government is a dead entity.
It's the past. The past is blind and it can't
change itself. And so it's always in danger of losing
contact with the realities of the present and degenerating it
(01:54):
to something that's anachronistic as the environment changes. And what
we owe it is why open eyes and the ability
to speak, because it's wide open eyes and the ability
to speak that updates the structure that maintains peace and
harmony and productivity. That's our responsibility. Things manifest themselves to
(02:16):
people as problems. That's why people are obsessed with political problems.
This bugs me, It's okay, Well, the first question is, well,
why does it bug you? Why that thing and why
does it bug you? Well, it speaks to your soul
in some manner, that's why it bugs you. And what
should you do about it? Well, something, because it wouldn't
be bothering you otherwise. That that's that's a it's a
(02:38):
it's a message from very very primordial levels of your
consciousness that something is out of kilter that has something
to do with you. And so then you owe your
government the responsibility of taking on that problem and trying
to address it. If it's a complicated problem, then you
better have your act together. If you're going to try
to address it. You have the response ability to be
(03:00):
the eyes and the voice of your government. That's what
keeps it alive. People have known that since the time
of the ancient Egyptians. Right there, God Horace was a
speaker of truth and a visionary. He could see and
he could speak the truth, and it was his power
that revitalized the state. That's us, that's our consciousness, that's
(03:21):
what that's what we owe the government. So if we
owe that the government, and theorectly the government owes us
protection and making us interact with other countries in some
organized way, organizing our tribe. What happens to the covenant
between people and their government. The nation is citizen. Will
we become borderless? Why is that issue so painful right
(03:43):
now in America? Well, the first question is what constitutes
a border? You know, like if you're playing a monopoly game,
then the border is the the edge of the board,
but it's also the edge of the rule structure that's
organizing your behavior year. And the reason you can play
a monopoly game peacefully is because there are borders. There's
(04:06):
a structure that defines what constitutes appropriate behavior in that
defined space. And you need that because otherwise you fight.
And you see this children will fight when they're playing
monopoly because they can't stay within the borders. So you
can't have a borderless condition because there's no up and
there's no doubt. Everything is twist, twisting and turning all
(04:27):
the time. It's nothing but chaos, and people can't tolerate that.
So then the question is, well, we have to organize
ourselves into groups with borders. That's why we have walls
around our houses. That's why we have borders around our cities.
That's why we have borders around our states and our countries.
And because we can organize and agree upon the appropriate
(04:49):
mode of social behavior within those borders, you dissolve that
and no one knows what to do. You think, well,
that's going to bring about paces that they won't bring
about pace. It will bring about chaos. Now you might say, well,
let's expand the borders as much as possible so that
we can include as many people as possible in the game.
And I would say that's a pretty good ambition. It's
(05:12):
worked well in the United States. But you have to
remember that in the United States, you don't just have
a country here, you have municipal governments that are fragmented
into smaller forms of government than that. You have state governments,
you have a national government. You have a whole hierarchy
of institutions that enable you as an individual to maintain
contact with with the borders. Let's say you blow apart
(05:37):
the borders casually, you don't have any of that structure,
and and that's not good. First of all, you have
the chaos problem. And then you have the problem that
I think the E. E E C Is facing, which is
that the ordinary citizen starts to see so many layers
of complexity between them and their rulers that they lose
their allegiance. So in the country that has agreed they
(06:01):
have to have a border, they fight about what that
border should look like, how poorsh should be. And especially
when everyone's rights become the dominant theme, what happens when
those rights are mutually exclusive. Might write the free speech
versus your right to a safe space, for example, Well,
that's politics, or sometimes more deeply philosophy, or sometimes we're
deeply theologial. Political solutions don't seem to be offering us
(06:24):
a remedy. Instead, people become more and more extreme for
a brunch of reasons that I think most folks know
about that we live in bubbles. We you know, it's
confirmation bias. We haven't desired that that's the case, and
we only look at that data. But it's become difficult
through politics to make some of those difficult decisions. You know,
if you and I are living in a little camp
and that we can see the border and we can
(06:44):
both say, well, I don't want that, that's a dangerous
thing to come into our camp. That's a good thing.
That's that makes it sort of straightforward. Yeah, Well, that's
why I think, and I suppose I been trying to
participate in the discussion that I hope is deeper than
the political, because when the political fails, it means that
something that is holding it up is no longer working.
And I believe that our belief in the structure that
(07:08):
justifies free speech is shaking and that has to be reinstituted.
And part of the mode of reinstituting that is to
go back to, in my opinion, to go back to
the foundational stories of our community and to point out,
you know, that we're each made in the image of God,
let's say, and that we are sovereign individuals, and that
(07:29):
we have the ability to communicate and that that's something
that we lose at our peril. But the idea that
borders can be dispensed with is it's they do cause suffering.
It's not a pleasant thing to have nothing and to
be turned away from a place where you could move ahead,
and borders do that. But by the same token, you
(07:52):
have to define a space where everyone is playing an
agreed upon game, because otherwise no one knows what to do.
And and that degenerates into well, it degenerates into sectarianism,
and it degenerates into all sorts of things nihilism and violence.
And so as as as we resolved this concept of
our rights for responsibilities, we're going to have to look
(08:14):
at at guide posts bigger than ourselves. And it takes
me to again how historically humans resolved this problem, because
it's been there since day one, and faith has always
played a role of offering some advice on this. The
weakness of that structure, that morality, that narrative is is
(08:35):
is one of the one of the problems, and is
treatment its strength, and he might be one of the solutions. Well,
it undermines. See, sometimes it's about rights, but mostly it's
about responsibility. Citizenship is about responsibility, and your responsibility is
to constrain unnecessary suffering and to push back against malevolence.
(08:57):
That's your own malevolence, it's the malevolence of the social world,
it's the malevolence of the natural world. That's your moral obligation.
And to be responsible is to act in accordance with
that moral obligation. And I don't believe that we have
done a good job of communicating that where we haven't
articulated it properly. Partly it's because when the conservatives articulated
you owe your country, there's this duty. It's like it's
(09:21):
like it's it's it's a patriarchal voice demanding that you
sacrifice yourself for your country. There's like, there's duty. It's
all duty, and duties are perfectly reasonable virtue. But it
does engender rebellion, and for good reason, because it can
be tyrannical. It misses the point, and the point is
that you you need to accept responsibility. It's it's your
(09:47):
essence and you need it, not least because by accepting
responsibility you find meaning. And people know this, Like if
you look at the people you admire, let's assume those
of the people who are living properly, that you have
a natural tendency to admire people who are living properly
because you want to imitate them. And it's an instinct.
You know, you admire people who take responsibility for themselves
(10:10):
and for their family and for their communities. You know,
it is natural, and you see in that a valid
mode of being. You think, well, why do you need
a valoid motive being? Why do you need to take
on that responsibility? And the answer to that is simple.
It's because you're going to be subject to suffering and
you're going to be subject to malevolence, and that's going
(10:30):
to embitter you unless you have a purpose, and you
need a purpose that high enough so that it's an
antidote to the suffering and the malevolence. And and the
faith that you describe, which is the faith in the
sovereignty of the individual. It's the faith in the divinity
within the individual. It's the faith that the consciousness that
(10:52):
we that we share, that's the remarkably miraculous element of
us can can contend with the structure of what my
be and to make it into something good, and we
can't lose that. It's not optional. People literally die without
that knowledge, because they become purposeless and nihilistic, and then
the suffering and the malevolence overtakes them and they that
(11:15):
either crushes them into depression and they can't live, or
it embitters them and they become cruel and vengeful and
and and worse. And so these aren't optional concepts. And
the notion that responsibility is what gives you the meaning
to withstand suffering, that's that's a killer idea. Every time
I talk to my the audiences that I've been speaking
(11:36):
to across the world, it's about three people now. Every
time I make that case, that argument, the audience is
dead silent, because everyone knows it's like, yeah, it's that.
The truly meaningful things I do occur when I take responsibility,
and the more responsibility, the more meaning, like the more
weight and the more burden. It's it's it's not nothing.
(11:59):
It's the tragic acceptance of destiny, I suppose, but everyone
knows it to be true, and everyone be rates themselves
endlessly when they're failing to live up to their potential
and not accepting the responsibility they know is part of
their it's part of what's ethically required of them to
live properly in the world. There's lots more will be
(12:21):
come back. M Help us explain how human hierarchies forced
us in the tribes. Well, I think it's probably that
it's probably our better angels in some sense that do it.
(12:42):
Everyone agrees that perhaps that your primary loyalty should be
to your family, and that logically extends to your extended
kin group like evolutionarily speaking, and you know, then maybe
that elaborates up into your tribe. Your tribe is set
up to cooperate, compete towards necessary ends, and to provide
(13:02):
you with a context of friendship and a structure of
meaning in your life. And it can't be of infinite
scope because you lose the personal relationship that's necessary to
keep it functional. I think one of the things that's happening,
for example, with the European Economic Community and its fragmentation,
(13:24):
is that the size of it is too much, So
the distance between the people at the bottom and the
people at the top is so great that the people
at the bottom don't feel any personal power, they don't
feel any connection with their leaders. So there's like an
optimal tribal size, and it's a testament to people's ability
to cooperate that we produce tribal groups, and we do
(13:45):
it at the drop of a hat. We do it
when we organize sports teams. And you see how powerful
that tribal motivation is. While in the case of people's allegiance,
say to a sports team, it's very natural part of
human existence, and a lot of it is admire double.
The problem is is that there are many tribal groups,
and that puts us in conflict because, on the one hand,
(14:07):
the other tribal groups pose a threat to our way
of being in a variety of ways, like a genuine
threat threat of disease, for example, which has been terrible,
terrible threat throughout our evolutionary history, but also the threat
of radically new ideas or the threat of physical conflict.
By the same token, all these other tribes they create
(14:28):
interesting things, they have new ideas, they have ways of
being in the world that might be really helpful if
we could incorporate them. And so we have this terrible
tension between our in group loyalty and our out group curiosity,
and it's it's it's one of those opponent process issues
where there's there's positive and negative things pushing in both
directions and getting the balance right is extraordinarily difficult. So
(14:53):
much of human history has been one long narrative enslavement,
fighting between tribes. I remember you said wants that if
you met someone that was not like you historically, one
of you would die, right, that's why. So how do
we begin to strive, how do we reprogram ourselves to
accept a different outcome? We actually get bigger and bigger
tribes that we actually feel like we're seeking the same
(15:16):
not well, I think I think the United States is
a really good example of that. Is that you need
an overarching narrative. And so a narrative is a story
about how you should conduct yourself in your life. Right,
It's a story about who you are and where you
are and where you're going and why and how you're
going to get there with other people. So you need
(15:36):
that universal narrative that's acceptable to people. And then within
that you can place tribal groups, but they have to
subsume their tribal loyalty to that fundamental, larger narrative. And
so there's a melting pot element. You can keep that
those elements of your tribal affiliation that aren't in contradiction
with the underlying meta narrative. Why is that dissolved now?
(16:00):
We we seem not to have that multipots mind, Well,
well you still have it to a fair degree. You know,
we don't want to get too pessimistic about it. The
US is pretty peaceful ethnically speaking, despite what people think
and say. It's much more peaceful ethnically than it was,
say in the nineteen sixties. And I think that's the
same with most Western countries, although not all of them.
(16:21):
So there's no reason for despair. But you know, the
problem is is that part of the narrative that united
the United the United States and all its people was
predicated on the idea of self evident truths. Right, we
hold these truths to be self evident, and those truths
themselves are embedded in an underlying narrative structure that we
don't really understand. That would be the Judeo Christian narrative structure,
(16:44):
which is thousands of years old and and has its
roots tens of thousands of years before that, and it
consists of a series of stories about what constitutes a
human being. So, for example, one of the most fundamental
elements of the Judeo Christian narrative is that human beings,
men and women alike, just staggering statement for something that
(17:07):
was written so long, are made in the image of God.
And so there's a notion that each individual has sovereign value,
and that's something you can't prove that right. It's an
axiomatic statement. It's something you have to accept on faith
and then allied with that because the question is, well,
if you're made in the image of God, what does
that exactly mean? In the narrative that lays that out,
(17:29):
what God does when you are first introduced to him
is he's the creator of order from chaos, and he
does that with truth. He creates the order that is good,
because that's repeated consistently, what I've created is good. He
creates the order that is good from chaos, from possibility.
And that's what human beings do. And so that's why
(17:51):
each human being is of intrinsic value, because we have
that rule to play in the world. And that's part
of this massive underlying narrative that composes the self evident
part of the political structure that unites all of us.
When we start to lose the beliefs that enable those
fundamental propositions to be self evident, then the whole thing
(18:13):
starts to shake and and move, and that's not good.
That was Nietzsche's warning from back in the philosopher Nitze's
warning with the idea that God was dead, or Dostoevsky's
warning that if there's no God, then anything is permitted,
and that you know that the collapse of that underlying
structure can make us hopeless and nihilistic, and that leads
to that can lead to very dark places. And she
(18:35):
wasn't bragging that God was dead. He was lamenting. Oh yes,
he was terrified. Like Nietzsche believed that the consequence of
that was that we would have to create our own values,
that we sort of have to become like God's ourselves.
But the problem with that is that we can't create
our own values. We don't have the capacity for that.
I mean, try wake up at three in the morning
when your conscience is bothering you about something you've done,
(18:57):
and tell yourself that no, it's okay, You're gonna make
your own value and that reprehensible action that you undertook
is now fine. You see how far you get with
that rationalization, It's like you'll find that you're working against
an intrinsic moral intuition that has you in its grip,
and then that moral intuition is a guideline to the
underlying moral structure of the world. Now, I don't know
(19:19):
what that means metaphysically, you know, I don't know if
that means that the world really is a like a
narrative of the fight between good and evil. But as
far as human beings are concerned and their psychological makeup,
it certainly is. So. Why is it that so many
people seem to hate others who have different political perspectives
and what's going on? Oh well, it's not surprising. I mean,
(19:41):
there's all sorts of reasons to be ethnocentric. You know.
Other people are genuinely dangerous. Other ideas are genuinely dangerous,
you know. I mean, look at look at what happened
to the Native Americans when the Europeans came to the
New World. I mean, they brought with them all these diseases,
like dozens of diseases, measles, smallpox, umps um, chicken parts.
(20:02):
They lost their population in like a hundred years. I
understand the risks of different tribes. I always thought the
deep fundamental frustrations with each other would arise because of
those higher stories we're telling it what we're aiming for
our lives. Well, there's that purpose, there's that I never
thought politics would do that. Politics is how it's more tactical.
(20:22):
How are we gonna tax each other to take care
of some of the issues so we can all live
with harmony and seek that higher goal. So fighting within
religious disciplines, I sort of get that. Not good, but
I understand it. But it seems like religion has taken
a back seat and politics anger. Okay, So imagine that
(20:43):
the hierarchy of of of human conflict is something like this.
At the bottom you have tribalism, Right above that you
have religion, and then right above that you have politics
and economics flowing out of that. And what's happened is
that many of our political discussions have become religious or tribal,
(21:03):
and so they're becoming more serious. So we're not talking,
we're not in the domain of politics. We're down beneath that.
We're into the domain of what's self evident. So, for example,
there's a free speech controversy on campus. Who should talk
and who shouldn't. That's what people think the free speech
controversy is about. But that's not what it's about. Because
(21:23):
the radicals on campus who are opposed to free speech
do not believe that free speech exists. They're underneath the
political domain. Because in the United States, if you're acting politically,
you can argue about who should speak and who shouldn't,
but you can't argue about whether or not people should
be allowed to speak. And that would be useful. But
the argument on the campuses says, well, look, you're not
(21:45):
a sovereign individual. That's all nonsense. You're a member of
a group. You're just a mouthpiece for your group. You
don't have anything individual to add. It's not possible for
groups to communicate to one another in any reasonable manner
or to negotiate. And the entire political landscape is nothing
but a nightmare of competing power uh competing power claims
(22:07):
between groups of different identity. The whole idea of free
speech is something just invented by the dominant power group
to oppress the minority power groups. So it isn't about
who should speak, it's about whether free speech exists. That's
not political, that's theological, it's certainly philosophical. But I also
think it's theological because it violates the claim that each
(22:30):
person is individually sovereign and is a source of valid information.
So like, if you and I are going to have
a discussion, I have to presume that you have the
capacity to face the world and to change it for
better or for worse. And I have to listen to
how you lay out your propositions. I have to believe
that there's something there to you that isn't just your
(22:54):
social construction, It isn't just your political identity or your
your group identity. Well, if I've dispensed with all that belief,
there's no possibility for us to communicate, especially across racial
or ethnic or sexual barriers. One idea that I've been
playing with is the thought that to help address this
is to remind people that a lot of our differences
(23:14):
are genetic. So if these genetic differences also influenced whether
we're Republicans or Democrats, or pro life or pro choice,
then it would make people practice more forgiving. I mean,
how realistic is that? Are we really genetically that difference
and take disgust as a good dope? Yeah, well, I
(23:34):
mean far more of what you think politically is determined
by your temperament than you think genetic yes, yes, but
by biological factors. And so it's useful to know that
because that helps you understand that the person that you're
talking to isn't just arbitrarily different, they're actually different. When
you think, well, that's a bad sort of difference, it's like, well, no,
(23:57):
it's a sort of difference that might be useful in
a certain particular set of circumstances. So I can give
you an example. Liberal types are highering creativity, which is
a temperamental trait that's heavily influenced by genetics, and they're
lower in conscientiousness, which is also heavily influenced by biological
um factors. That disadvantage to that is that they tend
(24:19):
to be disorderly and chaotic. But the advantages they tend
to be creative and entrepreneurial. So all the entrepreneurial types
are Liberals, are almost all of them, And you can
see that by what's happening, say in places like Silicon Valley.
Well that's fine, man. You need the entrepreneurial and creative
types to generate new ideas, and you need to generate
new ideas because the old ideas decay and age like
(24:42):
would be lovely if we could just fix things and
then that was a permanent solution. But it doesn't work
that way. But what the liberals don't understand is that, well,
they're all fine, they're fine in terms of creating their
new their new entrepreneurial ventures, but they need conservatives to
run them. They need the conscientious types who are ought
as prone to think latterly, to take the algorithmic processes
(25:06):
that they've now invented right because they have a structure,
and to implement them carefully. And so there's this dynamic
between the liberal and the conservative in uh in a
free market society that drives the entire economy. And so
you might be annoyed at your crazy liberal colleague who's
you know, taking risks all the time and is coming
up with a you know, ten crazy ideas an hour.
(25:27):
But without him, you'll stagnate, and he might be just
as irritated as hell at you because you're so damn
nearrow minded. You can't get out of your your little
you know, your one dimensional trap, and things have to
be done exactly the same way or you're you're going
to be upset but you two need each other, and
then what you need free speech for in particular, is
to negotiate between those different temperamental types to come up
(25:51):
with a solution that's optimally functional. That would be the
first thing, but also that you can both live with
and the great hope of society's they're predicated on the
idea that the capacity to speak freely is an expression
of our divine essence. Let's say, speaking in this deeper
sense is that we can, in fact negotiate our way
(26:13):
to peace. I think that successful human societies do exactly that,
and that is the cure for the mediation between different
tribal groups. It's like, well, what's your perspective? God, I
have to listen to you. Oh my god, that's so
terrible because it's gonna undermine what I believe. I'm going
to have to question things that I think of as
sacred e and I have to listen to you as
if you know something, and you have to do the
(26:35):
same for me. A terrible process. You know that if
you're married to someone, you know it's it's it's very
brutal to have a genuine conversation. But there is a
possibility that what will come out of the chaos that
that produces is a new kind of order, and that
that new kind of order will be superior to the
previous order. And I would say that is the history
of humankind, because over the centuries, our tribes have united
(26:59):
into larger and larger and more and more peaceful aggregations.
And the net consequence of that seems to be a
much much less male homicide. That's the first thing. I mean.
We do have outbreaks of terrible wars from time to time,
but all things considered, it looks like an upward climb
as a consequence of I would say, as a consequence
(27:19):
of careful negotiation, that it's worth the best of the
time to listen to people you don't even like, because
I'll add to your life. Well there. They'll also tell
you things that no one else will tell you about yourself.
Maybe you don't want to know those things, but your
friends won't tell you that your enemies might. And then
you'll learn something that you might need to know. You know,
and it might save your life to learn that. So
(27:39):
it's bitter and terrible, but but maybe not as bitter
and terrible as the outcome. More questions after the break
We're all living at world that continual comparison to others
(28:02):
at least a fluctuating emotions of smug superiority or desperate
and security and big questions. How do we stop measuring
our self worth by someone else's standards, especially when social
media is the main way, especially a lot of young people,
to find themselves. Well. I think there's two things that
The first thing is you should figure out who to
compare yourself to. The best person to compare yourself to
(28:24):
is you yesterday and not someone else today. And the
reason for that is you don't know anything about these
people that you're comparing yourself to. Usually, one of the
things I've noticed is that it doesn't take much discussion
with someone, no matter how successful they are. You scratch
below the surface and you find that their life is
consists of trouble and suffering in proportions that you could
(28:48):
hardly imagine. Almost everyone is dealing with some serious problem,
personal problem, or problem in their family and relative status.
I suppose it's better to be rich and miserable and
poor and miserable, but you know, the misery is universal,
and so what you're comparing yourself too. If you're envious
it's an illusion, and it's not a helpful illusion. It's
(29:11):
not a fair race to to be racing against someone else,
but it's a fair race to be racing against yourself.
You could be slightly better than you are, and that will.
Actually the thing about that that's so cool, And I
think the psychological literature really indicates this is that slow
incremental improvement from your initial baseline can take you places
that you couldn't possibly imagine, and envy is only a
(29:33):
it's an impediment to that. You've talked frequently about how stories,
the Old tradition, the Bible can remind us of deep
fundamental insights of who we are. I'm gonna put an
image up of Caine Enable, the story you've talked about
quite frequently. What does this story teach us about envy
and what happens? You see, can Enable are actually the
(29:57):
first two human beings. They're the first two uman beings,
real human beings, because Adam and Eve are created by
God and so in some sense, while they or not
like us, but can Enable are born and their two
sons and and they they enter a state of mortal enmity,
you know, and the reason for that is that able
make sacrifices to God, and can make sacrifices to God,
(30:19):
and able sacrifices produced success and Cain's produced failure. Now,
you know, the sacrifices are very concrete. They're making burnt offerings,
and that seems very anachronistic, old fashioned and incomprehensible to
modern people. But the idea was that you could offer
something of value, and you could offer that up the
smoke would rise to God, so he could detect the
(30:40):
quality of your offering, and if the quality of what
you were sacrificing in the present was high enough, then
the future would work out for you. And that this
is an unbelievably brilliant insight because human beings are the
only creatures that have really figured out consciously that you
can let go of something that you need and want
now and forego gratification and you will actually improve your future.
(31:01):
So it's a huge deal. You know, it's the discovery
of the future, and so it's a it's a massively
important story. It's the discovery of time, yes, and it's
the discovery that you can actually act in the presence
so that you can bargain with the future and it
actually works. So it's it's a real miracle. And then
what happens is that Caine's offerings aren't accepted and ables are.
(31:25):
And this makes Cane very very angry and no wonder
because you know, if you're working hard and it isn't working,
you know, people aren't happy with you and you're not
making progress through your life, then you get bitter. And
that's what happens to Kane. And so then he doesn't
has a conversation with God and he says, like, what's
up with this world you created? I'm working myself to
(31:46):
death here and nothing's working for me and my brother
Able while everything is coming easy to damn, everyone loves him.
What's happening? And God says something like this. He says,
sin has made its entry into your dwelling place, into
your home, and sin means to miss the target. But
it's it's it's in this metaphor. It's presented that a
(32:08):
living thing arrow and you miss your bulls eye. That's
a that's a sin. It's a sin to miss the target.
So you can do that by not aiming or not
having the skill or anyways. God tells it Kane, it's
a terrible thing to tell me. He says, Sin is
waiting at your doorstep, and you've invited it in to
your life, evil, and you've entered into a creative union
(32:30):
with it. And it's that creative union with this evil
that you've invited in that's compromising your sacrifices and that's
the cause of all your suffering. And Kane is devastated
by this because he's already not happy that, you know,
Abel is doing extraordinarily well, and all his work is
going for naught. And now he goes and complains to
God about the structure of the world. And God says,
(32:51):
you look to yourself. Your sacrifices are not what they
should be, and you've made terrible mistakes that you're not
taking responsibility for. And Kine he can't tolerate that. The
story says, his countenance falls. He becomes absolutely enraged at
the structure of existence. It's not only that he's suffering,
but that he now realizes that the suffering is self induced,
(33:12):
and he can't tolerate that. And he's so angry at
at being and at God that he decides he'll kill Abel.
And it's a terrible thing because Abel is also his ideal,
so he kills his own ideal, right, and then he
tells God that his suffering is more than he can bear,
and God marks him and sends him on his way. Well,
that's the question. I mean, Kane's descendants degenerate generation after generation.
(33:39):
He's running away from his terrible crime to hell. There's
there's no other way of putting it. And I'm not
speaking metaphysically. One of Kane's descendants is Tuboucane, and Tubalcane
is the first person who makes in tradition, he's the
first person who makes weapons of war. So it's Kine's
sons are even more dangerous than Kane. And so there's
this idea in this old story that it's this envious
(34:01):
rage coupled with this inability to make appropriate sacrifices that
produces misery. And then that misery can can desire to
manifest itself in the world in the exaggeration of suffering
and malevolence, and that leads to social collapse. So if
we've made a bargain in our lives and acknowledge that
there's time and we can negotiate the future based on
(34:24):
sacrifices we make today, then we have tremendous control over
the world around us. Kane could have stopped sitting, stop
missing the targets, stop constructing a world with evil. He
could have learned from Abel. He could have made the
right sacrifice that he killed him. Instead, he killed him,
And there's all there's this ambivalence in the In the story,
(34:45):
it appears as though Kine's sacrifices are second rate. You
can never tell because there's some you know. Look, sometimes
people work really hard and things don't work out for them.
There's an arbitrary nous about life, you know, And and
that is left ambivalent in the story, although there is
this strong undercurrent suggesting that Kane is playing fast and
loose with the divine. Well, let's say, is playing fast
(35:09):
and loose with the future. Well, that's not gonna work.
Everyone knows. It's like, if you want the future to
work out properly, the sacrifices that you make now have
to be real and people understand that. I asked my students,
most of whom are children of first generation immigrants at
the University of Toronto and so pretty dedicated to their
to their task, say, well, what sacrifices did your parents
(35:29):
make so that you could go to university, you know,
and I mean they moved countries, they left everyone behind.
I mean this idea of sacrifice, which is conratized in
the story of kine Enable, is something that every modern
person understands, but it's useful to understand it in an
articulated way. It's so strange that you can bargain with
the future and that it works. Says we'll all forgo
(35:52):
this gratification now. I'll I'll take the harder route now
and the future will open itself up positively. And that
acts works. And if you don't do that bargain, you
made the point that it always comes back to get you.
And everyone knows that every undergraduate who procrastinates is guilty
about it. They're torturing themselves. Atheistic or not, there's no
(36:13):
escape from this. You know. They wake up the night
before or maybe it's the night before their final, and
they put everything off, their sweating, they feel weak and
how do you how do you cultivate acting better today
for a more successful tomorrow. That is a challenge for
a good slept sliver of the popular well, I would
say humility is the key to that. Look, if you
(36:35):
have a child and you love that child and you
want the child to develop. You set them a task
that exceeds their current domain of competence, but you set
them a task that they have a reasonable probability of
succeeding at. Right, not not complete, because then it's too
it's too easy. It has to be a challenge. You
look at the child and you say, well, here's your
(36:55):
ability level, here's one more step you could take right well,
and you have to do the same to yourself. You
have to take stock of yourself. That's a meditational exercises
like who am I? Where are my flaws? And and
they're not going to be something you want to face.
And then you think, well, what small thing could someone
as flawed as me do that I would do that
(37:19):
would improve me? And then it's humiliating because you think,
oh my god, and really I have to do something
that's small, that's all ain't capable of. It's like, yeah,
that's your lot, man, and you better be humble enough
to accept it. And then you you make that small improvement.
But then what you find is that small improvements accumulate,
those things compound and you can start moving ahead very
(37:42):
very rapidly. With the succession of small improvements. And there's
a metaphysical element to this, but you know, it's also
the basis of behavior therapy, which is the widest used, white,
widest employed brand of clinical psychology now in the world.
Behavior therapy it's like, well, let's figure out what your
problem him is, let's figure out what your goal is.
(38:02):
Let's break down your problem until we have a small
enough piece that you can address it successfully. Let's see
if you can address it successfully in the next week,
you can go and try it. If you can't, we'll
cut it down a little bit more. And let's assume
that incremental improvement is going to move you up. And
it does, but it does require that humility and it's
not a matter of comparing yourself to other people. It's
(38:23):
not helpful. It's like, what are you doing wrong? And
you can ask yourself that, right, And the problem with
asking yourself that is you get an answer and it's
not an answer you want. It's like, oh my god, really,
that's what I'm doing wrong. How could I be so
foolish and blind that that would be my mistake? And
how can I be so little and useless that this
(38:44):
is all I can do to improve it? You've got
to get that's that's to get down on your knees
in some sense before the ideal that you're attempting to manifest,
you know, and to show where you are in relationship
to that. The upside of that is that it's it's
an unbelievably powerful process. You can put yourself together to
a staggering degree merely by ceasing doing those things you
(39:08):
know you shouldn't do. I've asked octmputers in his review
two slides that uses his lectures to describe depicted how
we can be better versions of ourselves. So I'll start
to hear you in the middle of the walled garden.
It's beautiful, it's elegant. As you pull back from the
walled garden, you now all of a sudden see that
(39:29):
you have the opportunity to move into chaos if you
descended to disintegrate into that. And there's an analmous information
that falls back from chast that can misleads you. So
I'll turn it to you. I've I've witnessed you do
this brilliantly. Well. This explains how you can improve yourself,
but also why you won't. So the walled garden is
a metaphor among other things. I'm not trying to reduce
(39:52):
it to only a metaphor, but it suggests that the
natural environment for people is something like the balance between
culture and nature. Because the wall garden is exactly that,
it has walls, orders, but inside it has the natural world.
And so our natural habitat is the balance between culture
and nature. And that's the balance between order and chaos,
at least in part. And so that's our natural environment, um,
(40:15):
And that's part of the message in Genesis is that
that's that's where we should live. A wall, a well
watered place, a walled garden. That's or paradise. Now, the
problem is is that you circumscribe your small space, your
walled garden. Maybe that's the tightness of your family when
you have little children, for example, because you want to
(40:36):
set up a protective space around them. But there's always
there's always the outside that's still there, right and and
outside the walled garden there's everything that can disrupt and
expand it both at the same time. And what happens
is that as those things that appear, sometimes because you
search them out, which is probably the best way for
(40:58):
them to appear, but sometimes because they just make themselves manifest.
Trouble comes to visit you, and the trouble is something
you don't understand. That's what anomalis means. It means you
don't understand it, and so it doesn't fit in with
your conception of the way the world should be, and
it shatters you. And that's the descent and disintegration. This
is an imitation representation of an ancient representation of of
(41:19):
chaos itself. Right. It's it's the winged predatory serpent. It's
it's the predator itself. That's one way of looking at it.
It's what lurks outside the safe confines of the walled garden,
and you can't keep it out. It comes in, and
the consequence of that is you lose faith. You lose faith,
the walls are breached and you descend, and then you
(41:41):
descend into chaos. And that's a terrible situation and that
that can make people desperate. It can make them lose hope.
And so it's also why people don't like to change it.
You know, you change often because of pain and and
sometimes because of involuntary challenge. Something comes along and knocks
the slats out from underneath you. It breaks you into pieces,
(42:02):
and maybe you put yourself back together, and maybe you're
even stronger after you've been put back together, but you
break into pieces first, and this is partly why the
road to enlightenment is so difficult for people. It's not uphill,
it's downhill, and then the uphill, and then it's downhill,
and then it's uphill. And maybe with each successive peak
you rise higher and higher if you're fortunate, but that
(42:24):
doesn't mean that the descents are any less catastrophic. So
people will hide. They'll hide in the walled garden like
Adam hid from God. They'll hide in the wall garden
because well they don't want to let what's new in.
And it's no wonder. But it doesn't work. It doesn't work.
You also created a representation of an archetypal circumstances of
(42:44):
life we always exist, instead of a damaged structure that
is partially biological, partially not. Take a look at the
department socio cultural. So here we're pulling back and again
you've got this fantastic palace, palatial place you're living from.
You know, maybe it's the idea city. Yeah, well that's
it on there, say, well that's it. You're always this
(43:05):
is this is the constant complaint of the revolutionary It's like, well,
look at this terrible damage structure with its holes that
we've inherited from the past. It's like, well, that's an
archetypical experience, is that the state is damaged, that chaos
threatens it. It's it's it's always that way. That's that's
the monster at the gates of the walled gardens. That's right,
(43:28):
exactly that, And so from that the hero emerges, right,
say well, there's something wrong with the structure of the world.
The hero emerges to confront chaos voluntarily. That's your best
bet is, well, there's the whole Well, what are you
gonna do? You can ignore it? Are you gonna go
and explores contours and try to repair it? Well, that
could be could be dangerous. It's it's it's not it's
(43:49):
not a trivial undertaking to do that, and it might
very much annoy the people who are still, you know,
ensconced as they think safely within that original structure. But
the hero emerges them the damage structure awake right and
and comes into contact with the chaotic forces that threatened
the stability of everything. Does that voluntarily, and the consequence
(44:11):
of that is the generation, the discovery of a treasure.
It's the archetypical hero myth, the discovery of the gold
that is then brought back to revitalize the community, or
the freed. Often a virgin is freed. That happens in St. George.
And part of the reason for that is, well, because
that can represent wisdom, but also because I believe historically
and biologically that well, women are attracted to two men
(44:35):
who do that, who go beyond the damage structure of
the current state, and who voluntarily encounter the unknown, and
that means that they've developed themselves into the sort of
individual that can now have a relationship with a woman,
and she wants someone who has that capacity. And so
that's part of well, why St. George frees a virgin
from the grips of a dragon. It's not an easy
(44:57):
thing to understand otherwise, you know, but if the if
that happens, that you have reintegration and you ascend back
in the world, well that's the hope is that you know,
you're incorporation of the new information, whatever you've learned by
venturing outside of the safety of your damaged community. Is
now something that you integrate and you rebuild the community
as a consequence, and then that puts the walls back,
(45:20):
you know, and now it's temporary because the walls are
always under assault. Here's the way of thinking about it, Well,
what are you? Are you the damaged city? You certainly
might feel that way. That's that's depression, you know, or
or or cynicism. Or then are you chaos itself? Because
you can certainly feel that way too, that everything's fallen
apart around you and that there's nothing to you or
(45:41):
your life but chaos, and so or you can think, well,
maybe I'm the re established order, you know, and that
seems like the best of the three deals, right, It's like,
well but but but there's but there's something better than that.
There's something better than being the damaged city and being
chaos itself and even being the city that's really idolized,
and that is to be the process that continually does this.
(46:04):
Because this is the destiny of this is that it
will happen again, break again, it'll break it again. So
what you want to recognize is that this is what
you are. You're the thing that confronts chaos when it
makes itself manifest and I think that's the oldest story
of mankind. It's it's the story that emerged when, as
who knows how long ago, millions of years ago, perhaps
(46:28):
we decided that we were no longer going to hide
like frightened rabbits and wait for the predators to take
us out. We're gonna organize ourselves and go out into
the unknown and make the space safe. That's whose descendants
we are. That that story is so deep, the idea
of the confrontation with chaos, it's the it's the story
(46:49):
that opens Genesis, for example, and it's it's echoed in
the idea that the fact that people are made in
the image of God is partially a consequence of our
ability to confront ass and to regenerate order. So I
watch you tell these stories and respectral menacing the psychology
of it. But I simultane you see the profound emotion
(47:13):
in you as you share with us keep wisdom, millennia,
old wisdom. What's that coming from? Well, it's partly coming
from a chronic inability to regulate my negative emotion pretty clearly. Well,
so there's that, But look, here's partly what it's coming from. Recently,
you know, because I've become more emotional, I would say,
(47:35):
over the last few years, and it's partly a consequence
of the encounters that I have with individual people all
the time. And I don't really know what to make
of it. You know, Like I was sitting in the
airport yesterday in Toronto and about six people came and
talked to me, and they're very polite. And this is
(47:58):
always the case when people come and talk to They
apologize for interrupting me, and I tell them that it's fine,
they're not interrupting me. Then they tell me about being
in chaos, or they tell me about being the damaged city.
You know, they tell me about something that wasn't right
in their life. You know, they weren't making progress with
towards a marriage with their girlfriend, they were stuck in statis,
(48:20):
or they're alcoholic, or they're addictedive, they're in a career
that they didn't like, or they weren't getting along with
their parents, or you know, all the terrible places that
people could get stuck. And they say, well, look, I
was watching your lectures or reading listening to your podcasts,
or reading your book, and then well I decided that
I'd start to pursue what was meaningful. I developed a
vision for my life. I started to take on more responsibility.
(48:43):
I started to tell the truth, and everything is way better.
And there emotional when they discussed this. And I think
this is partly what's made me more emotional is that
I have all these story that people have told me
now sort of lodge it inside me that are representatives
(49:06):
of this. And and the thing that that's a motion
producing is that there isn't this is fundamental. People cannot
live without knowing this. They don't live property and and
so they discover some of these things and everything gets better,
and it's affecting to have people tell those stories. It's
(49:30):
also saddening to me that people are so desperate for
this knowledge, you know, it's it's ancient knowledge we clearly needed.
It doesn't take that much to distribute it so that
people understand it, and the effect is overwhelming and so well,
and then there's the fact that I just haven't adjusted
(49:51):
to the fact that people keep telling me these stories,
you know, And so when when I'm talking about this,
it's not abstract me like I do believe that this
is the fundamental structure of the world. There's no more
accurate way of portraying the world than than that order
descent into chaos restructuring of order as that Sciziphus journey.
(50:14):
And it's the way uphill, and it's punctuated by catastrophe,
which is why the way uphill is so difficult. Is
the pain you feel because so many haven't heard this
message yet and you realize they're in pain and they
don't have to be. Or is it the unbelievable experiences
of witnessing people change. It's joy hardly, you know. I'm
(50:37):
so thrilled that, you know, when someone comes and tells
you a story like that, you know, and then just
little stories. I went to this restaurant in Toronto and
one of the waiters there have been listening to my
lectures and he said, you know, I just have this
waiter job, so you know, it's not very high status job.
And he said, but six months ago I started watching
your lectures and I thought, man, I'm really gonna do
(50:58):
this job, you know, like I'm gonna put myself into it.
He said, I've got three promotions in six months, you know,
and so I'm doing way better. And because he took
this domain around him, that he had control of trivial
as it might appear, contemptible, as it might appear if
you're in an arrogant state of mind. You know, I'm
just a waiter at a restaurant. What can I do?
It's like, you could be good at it, you know,
(51:20):
and God only knows how good you could be at it.
And that means you can hone your interpersonal skills, and
you can become hospitable, and you can take some pride
in the fact that you can offer people the opportunity
to have a little happiness, maybe even if you're only
contributing that to some degree, and you can strengthen yourself characterologically.
And so he tells that story and he's smiling away.
You know, it's like, so, that's great, and it's great
(51:44):
to hear those stories constantly. But then there's a sadness
that goes along with it. And the sadness is that, well,
that encouragement is lacking. People lack it terribly. That's one
of the things I've realized on this world tour that
I've been honest that you have no idea how many
people have never heard an encouraging word. You know, it's
so that's deeply affecting. And also how little encouragement people need.
(52:09):
If it's true encouragement, you know, be courageous, you know
that's true encouragement. It's amazing how little they need to
start changing. And so that's also sad because it's like
there's a terrible illness and you don't need much medicine
and it's available, but it's not being used or for you.
(52:31):
Also personally, as you pointed out for others, the more
you do, the more you know you can do, so
your burden doesn't get later it gets heavier the more
you do. Well, that's what you see, and you know,
you hope that will you while you while you do that,
you get more organized, you know, so that you can
you can manage it better. And the other thing too,
is that it's very important to understand, you know, let's say,
(52:54):
as your burden grows. I learned this about two years ago.
I had this very profound experience. It's which I can't
really talk about. Um. It was it was like a
vision of paradise that was part of it. And along
with that vision came the knowledge in some sense of
what paradise required. And then as the vision disappeared. I
(53:16):
realized that I lost the secret to whatever that was
like on the way back, so to speak, I lost
that secret. It was like Gilgamish when he returns from
the depths. He has the tree of immortality, but a
snake steals it from him. I think that that was
based on an experience that was similar to the one
that I had. Many ways it doesn't matter, but then
(53:37):
and it was. It was really hurting me that I
had this knowledge and then I lost it. And then
I realized that, well, this isn't something that you have
to do by yourself, that this the journey forward to
the proper destination isn't And then this is part of
what makes the burden lighter, is that it's not just
on you, like it is on you man it on you,
(54:00):
but everyone has a role to play, and so there's
no reason not to reach out for help. And so
as you take on more responsibility, you build a structure
around you that enables that responsibility to be hoisted in
a manner that doesn't crush you. And because crushing you
isn't helpful, it's not it's not moving you forward. And
(54:23):
so there's a humility in that, right. It's it's even
though it is on you to to put things together,
it's also on everyone else, and everyone else has a
role to play and they need to be invited into
the process. It's like it's everyone's fault individually, but we
all collectively have to take responsibility for it, and that's possible.
(54:43):
And so that was well, that was the way out
of that conundrum, because I did really feel terrible about
it that I had, you know, felt in this strange
state that I had discovered something profound. And then it
was a great relief to understand that, well, you don't
have to even though it's your sponsibility, that this is
not something you have to do alone. You have your community,
(55:04):
and it's fine to reach out as much as possible
and to and to not to grant to people, but
to help people realize what role they have to play
in in in moving this whole process forward. And so
that was a great relief to understand that I don't
know what you didn't bring back, but I know you
give all of us a glimpse of heaven and the
(55:24):
courage to seek its affectually being
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