Q & A 2019 01 January (mXPmLZRAPSo)

https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=mXPmLZRAPSo

It’s January 13th, 2019. Happy New Year to you all and thank you for joining the Q&A. So I’ll start with a couple of announcements. The first, I suppose, is that I’m leaving Patreon January 15th. Some of you may know that. That’s, I suppose, the date. Some of you may know that. That’s, I suppose, in protest over their treatment of Carl Benjamin, perhaps better known as Sargon of a Cad. Patreon, like many companies, seems to believe that their role now is to act as censor for speech patterns or speech content that they regard as unacceptable. And I think that they made a big mistake with Sargon. So both Dave Rubin and I and also Sam Harris have decided to leave Patreon. And that’s going to be official as of January 15th. So those of you who are my Patreon subscribers, if you’re interested in continuing with that subscription, you can go to my website at jordanbpederson.com. And there’s a support button there in the menu. And you can use that system. I’m also trying to design a system that, at least in principle, might work as a reasonable replacement for Patreon. That’s a couple of months away, but we’re working hard on it. We’re getting legal advice. We’re going to set up multiple payment channels so that it won’t be easy for people to be kicked off by credit card companies or, let’s call them, virtue signaling ethical types who think that their role is to police free speech. So I think this is a very bad precedent that Patreon has set and the credit card companies too. I can’t imagine. It’s difficult to imagine a more dystopian scenario than to have the large tech companies in combination with the credit card companies monitor your spending to decide when what you’re doing is sufficiently ethical by the standards of the people who are running their, let’s call them, safety and security speech monitoring programs. It’s just such a terrible idea. So there’s that. I’m also working on my new book quite a lot. Actually, it’s tentatively titled Beyond Order, 12 More Rules for Life or perhaps Beyond Mirror Order. I haven’t decided on that yet. I can tell you what the rules are. Maybe you’d be interested in that. So I’ll give you a list of them. The first one is do not carelessly denigrate social institutions or creative achievement. Rule two, imagine who you could be and then aim single-mindedly at that. Rule three, work as hard as you can. Work as hard as you possibly can on at least one thing and see what happens. Rule four, do not hide unwanted things in the fog. Rule five, abandon ideology. Abandon ideology. Rule six, notice that opportunity lurks where responsibility has been abdicated. Rule seven, do not do things that you hate. Rule eight, try to make one room in your house as beautiful as possible. Rule nine, if old memories still make you cry, write them down carefully and completely. Rule 10, plan and work diligently to maintain the romance in your relationship. Rule 11, be grateful in spite of your suffering. And then rule 12, do not allow yourself to become resentful, deceitful, or arrogant. In principle, that book will be published in January 2020. And I’m supposed to have the manuscript in sometime within the next six months. And I have a first draft done and I’m working hard on the repeated edits. It’s going to be published simultaneously in the UK and the U.S. and Canada. I’m working with three different editors. And so that’s that part of the announcement. So I’m hoping, I’m really hoping that I can make the next book better. Like it’ll be a pair, it’ll be a paired copy with the first one. I’m probably going to publish it with a black cover to go with the white cover of 12 rules. And I’m hoping that I can make it into a better book and that the two together will make a very complete set. So that’s the plan. We’ll see how it goes. The last one, I’m hoping that I can make a better book. I’m hoping that I can make it into a better book and that the two together will make a great set. So that’s the plan. We’ll see how it goes. The last announcement, I guess no, two more announcements. I’m going to Switzerland tomorrow. My daughter is having surgery there to get her ankle fixed again. We’re hoping that that will go well. I’m also doing a talk in Zurich. Then I have three talks in California. Information for them is at Jordan B Peterson. And then in February, my wife and I are going, my wife Tammy and I are going to Australia and New Zealand. And I believe we have 15 talks scheduled there over the course of about a month. And then I think in March and April I’m going to concentrate mostly on writing. And then perhaps we’re going to go to Europe. And so that’s for a month or two. That will depend to some degree on the writing schedule. But that’s the plan at the moment. I have some good podcasts coming up. I talked to General Stanley McChrystal last week about his new book on leadership and the myths that surround it and some of the initiatives that he’s been working on in the United States. And so McChrystal was the commander of the American forces in Afghanistan. And so it was very interesting to talk to him. And well, there’s a variety of other things going on too. But I won’t tell you any more about those for the time being. I think what I’ll do instead is turn to some questions. So I guess maybe I could also give a bit of a recap for 2018. So Tammy and I have gone to about 115 cities now, something like that. Her Google trip tracker showed that she had gone six times around the world. Mine said 20. And so that’s obviously wrong because I traveled mostly with her. But there was a lot of traveling last year. And I spoke to about 250,000 people. And that was a very, all of that was a very positive experience. The lectures have been really heartwarming to use an old term. I mean, it’s really something to see that many people gather together and listen and participate in a discussion about psychological and philosophical and spiritual issues that’s as deep as I can manage anyways. And it seems to be quite gripping for the audience and good for everyone. And so they’re very, very positive experiences, which is partly why we’ve been able to sustain this speaking pace. So that’s been good. Oh, we also have a discount, by the way. My partners and I decided to encourage everybody to make their New Year’s resolutions in a sophisticated and comprehensive way. And so we have this program. Some of you have heard about this at self-authoring.com called Future Authoring. And the Future Authoring program helps you write out a vision for the future to think through what you’d like your life to be like if you were taking care of yourself properly, to consider your friends and your family and your career and your education and your use of time outside of work and your ability to resist temptation, the kind of temptation that might drag you down and how you might take care of yourself mentally and physically and to write about that and then to write a counter story, which is where you might be three to five years down the road if you let all your bad habits get out of control, and then to write a strategic plan. It’s a very useful program. We’ve used it with lots of university students in particular, although it’s for adults of all ages. And if you’re a university student and you complete the program, it seems to increase the probability that you’ll stay in university by about 25%, something like that. It seems particularly useful, by the way, for men for reasons that we don’t exactly understand, maybe because they’re underperforming women academically. And it also improves people’s grades. But there’s a large literature in the industrial organizational area also indicating that if you’re working and you make a personal plan of this sort, then your overall productivity increases by about 10%, which is a lot. And you’re more likely to be physically and mentally healthy. And so I would really recommend trying this. Even you can try the program. You don’t have to do a perfect job at it. It doesn’t really matter because you’re trying to set out a bit of a vision and a plan for your life. And you need that because you need direction and you need purpose and you need the constraints of a vision to help you be less anxious and uncertain. And that anxiety and uncertainty reduction does occur if you have a decent map of where it is that you’re headed. The coupon code is NY2019, New Year’s 2019, NY2019. And if you go to the self-authoring site and click on the products menu item and go to future authoring, you can just enter in that coupon code and it’s 50% off. So I think the total price is $7.45, which is actually pretty damn cheap if what it does is help structure your future. And I really do think this is a helpful program. We’ve worked on it a lot and tested a lot. And it’s based on solid behavioral psychological principles allied with, I would say, a certain degree of optimistic philosophy. And it’s well, it’s a good thing to do. And this is a good time to do it. So if you’re interested, all that information will be in the description of the video as well. So that’s basically that. As far as I can tell, I don’t think I have anything else to tell you. Oh, 12 Rules for Life has sold about three million copies now. So I guess I’m telling you that. It’s become very popular in Korea where it sold about 200,000 copies, which is quite interesting and something I wouldn’t have necessarily expected. So all right, so let’s answer some questions and see how that goes. Can you talk about your own specific experiences slash methods used with integrating the shadow? Yeah, well, I can actually. I think a tremendous amount of what you might regard as shadow integration, which in the parlance of behavioral psychologists would be something like assertiveness training. All right, it’s training in how to stand up for yourself and for your let’s say for your better self, which would be the self that you could use productively over a medium to long period of time that would be of use to you, but also of use to people around you. So it’s a self that’s bounded by the necessity of taking care of yourself, but also simultaneously taking care of the people around you. I think that the simplest way to start that work is to consult your resentment. You know, it’s easy to become bitter about life and to become angry because, of course, life is difficult and it’s full of disappointments and people are also subject to betrayal on the part of themselves and on the part of people that hypothetically care for them. And so it’s easy to get bitter and to be resentful. And resentment is a very useful emotion, even though I think it’s one of the most damaging emotions if it’s not dealt with properly. So if you’re resentful, basically means only one of two things. It either means you should grow up and quit whining and get on with your life, or it means that you’re being subject to tyrannical forces of one form or another, maybe emanating from you, maybe a consequence of the natural environment, maybe a consequence of society. You’re being subject to tyrannical forces and you’re not putting your own best interests forward, like in that broader sense that I described. I don’t mean your selfish, narrow interests that only serve the purposes of instantaneous gratification. I mean your own best interests in terms of developing your character over the span of your life. If you’re resentful, it either means that you’re immature and that you should grow the hell up. And so you need to figure out how much of your resentment is that and maybe allied with the desire to find other things or people to blame. But the other possible option is that you have something to say or do, right? Because you’re in a situation where you’re violating your own internal ethical standards and you’re being required, pressured, let’s say, to say things you don’t believe or to do things that you believe to be wrong. And you need to determine, you need to start to strategize and plan how you can rectify that so that you can say what you mean. Like if you’re negotiating with a marital partner, for example, and there are issues in your marriage that aren’t making you happy. Well, the first thing is you have to take note of that, right, to see that you’re actually unhappy. The second is that you have to be willing to engage in a certain amount of conflict because in order to sort out what’s disturbing you, you’re going to have to lay your concerns out on the table and say, well, look, this is bothering me. You don’t have to say, well, I’m right and you’re wrong and you have to fix this. You have to say, well, I’ve noticed that this pattern of interaction or lack of interaction, say in our relationship, is making me resentful and angry. And the danger of that, of course, is you’re going to take it out on yourself and your partner. The danger is passive aggressiveness. You know, you’re not going to respond to your partner positively when they do something good if you’re resentful about them. And you’re not going to respond to yourself properly. So you have to lay it out on the table, but sort of in a spirit of ignorant humility. It’s like, look, I’m frustrated. I’m feeling this way about our relationship. Here’s what I think might be going wrong, maybe on my part and maybe on your part. And here’s what I envision as a possible solution. That’s also really necessary if you’re going to say what you have to say, which is to manifest yourself properly in the world. You can’t just complain about what’s wrong. You have to think, well, what would my minimal preconditions for satisfaction be? You have to offer that to the person that you’re negotiating with. And so then you learn to abide by the truth to the degree that you can do that. And no one does it perfectly, you know. But it’s very useful because you’re not storing up a whole sequence of memories about how you were unfairly treated and abused and betrayed. Instead, you’re trying to stay on top of it and to note your unhappiness and dissatisfaction when it manifests itself and to accept that that’s the case. And then to analyze that to see if it’s your problem, like I said, with regards to maturity or if it indicates that there’s an injustice in the manner in which you and the world are interacting. And then to work to set that right, even in small ways. And so it’s a matter of characterological development. And that makes you that makes you stronger over time. And partly what you need, you know, in order to do that is you have to really understand. And we do this. This is why we built in the future authoring program. We built this section where you have to outline your most dismal future, right? What your future would be like if you let all your bad habits and characterological weaknesses have the upper hand. And the reason we did this is because you can’t be you can’t straighten yourself out merely as a consequence of hope. Let’s say you lay out a vision for the future and you think about what your life would be what you’d like your life to be like. And then that makes you hopeful and it motivates you because it gives you something worthwhile and higher order to work for. Right. And that’s useful. That’s positive emotion working for you because positive emotion is experienced in relationship to goals. But it’s not not as useful as also being chased by something you’re terrified by. And if you have a good sense of how you’d fall apart if you stayed weak and just exactly what kind of hell that would be, then when you determine to do something like to tell the truth and to say what you think and to not do things that you hate, then you’re going to be pulled along by the purpose that your vision has provided for you, and you’re also pushed along by your desire to avoid the worst forms of hell that you’ve already outlined for yourself personally. And that can also help you be brave enough to stand up in a situation that would require conflict. Because if you have something to say and you have something to negotiate about with someone, then there’s going to be a certain amount of conflictual dialogue that accompanies that. To lay out a set of problems and to describe the fact forthrightly that those problems characterize a relationship and then to seek for solutions is quite stressful in the short term. And it’s really easy to avoid. And so people avoid it all the time. And then they store up grievances across the span of the relationships. And eventually the grievances mount to the point where they return in monstrous form and just eat everything up. That’s where you get divorces or that’s where you explode at your boss and end up fired. That’s where you develop high blood pressure over 15 years because you can’t stand all the accumulated monsters in your closet. And then you drink yourself into oblivion because you can’t stand your life. That’s all very counterproductive. But it’s easy to avoid that necessary conflict on a moment to moment basis because it’s very stressful to speak forthrightly about genuine conflicts, especially when you’re dealing with important parts of your life. But otherwise you don’t straighten them out and then you have to carry all that forward. So you need to be terrified of the consequences of not speaking your piece. And that can counterbalance the terror of actually trying to have a conversation. So, well, you know, and you also have to look with regards to the shadow ideas like you have to get in touch with the depths of your anger. You know, lots of people are resentful about all sorts of things. They’re resentful about all women and they’re resentful about men and they’re resentful about the patriarchy and they’re resentful about the left wing and resentful about the right wing. And they’re resentful about politicians and they’re resentful about the cataclysmic force of nature and its ability to make people sick and suffer. And they’re resentful about their own inadequacies and about their bad parenting. And God, like the list is just bloody endless. And that can make you very, very angry. And that’s part of that resentment and cynical and bitter and dark and full of fantasies about destruction and the desire to bring things down and the wish that everyone else suffered and the desire to shake your fist at God. And all of that’s really dark. You know, Jung said, well, the shadow, the human shadow extends all the way down to hell. And he really meant that, you know, because all the terrible things that people are motivated to do are associated with that shadow domain. And like none of you are any none of you are saints in any likelihood. You have a terrible capacity for destructiveness. And when you start to consult your resentment and to see how angry you are, it can terrify you to see the depths of that anger. Sometimes that’ll manifest itself in very destructive fantasies, you know, which you might not want to become conscious of because they’re so brutal, let’s say, and so aggressive that you can’t even believe that you generate them. The nice person that’s you. It’s like so it’s quite frightening to open that door and see all that. And that also associates you with the entire dark shadow of mankind. Right. The satanic element of the human character. And but it opens the door to understanding as well to understanding how people can do terrible things, because you can see yourself as one of the people who can do terrible things. That’s really useful, you know, because then you well then maybe you start to be motivated to be the sort of person who wouldn’t do terrible things. You know, if you can really come to terms with the fact that that’s part and parcel of you. It also is some in perverse sense, it’s also a discovery of your own strength, though, because, you know, if you have that desire for aggression, that desire for destruction and that that that ability to fantasize in that aggressive manner, it also means that you can incorporate some of that into your speech and into your actions so that you’re a lot more immovable. Right. And, and a lot more of a force to contend with. It can give you some respect for yourself when you realize that you’re a force of destruction, as well as creation. And then you’re also more likely to treat yourself with a bit more intelligent caution, you know, to know that you’re a part of you is a ticking bomb in some sense that could go off. And so you you you tread a bit more lightly around yourself. And maybe you encourage people to tread a bit more lightly around you as well, which isn’t such a bad thing. And all the people that I really admire that I know have a clearly dangerous side and you don’t want to get you don’t want to have that activated any more than necessary. But it’s also what makes them respectable and strong, especially if they have that under control. So, oh, that’s a bit of a dialogue about shadow integration. It’s a very challenging undertaking, you know, to pull in that dark side of your character. And that would be all the things that you’ve repressed or failed to develop as a consequence of trying to be a harmless and. Well, let’s say a harmless and. Harmless citizen who looks virtuous on the surface. That’s the union persona. And you need that because everybody needs a mask that they wear in public like a suit, you know, so that we can tolerate seeing each other on the street. We don’t have to look right into our depths every time we interact. We need that persona, but that has to be transcendent. And the way to transcend that is to integrate the darker parts of the character. They’re very useful. That aggression, that sexual demand, for example, all of that’s very difficult to socialize that competitiveness. But unbelievably useful in terms of force of character, if you can manage it. Richard asked, how can I help my parents to sort themselves out? That’s question one. How can I talk about the resentments of my child in a way that benefits them instead of giving them guilt? Yeah, well, those are two very difficult questions. How can you help your parents to sort themselves out? Well, I guess the first question would be, do they want to sort themselves out? Because it’s not that easy to help people if they don’t want to be helped. If they do want to be helped, like listening is really a good strategy. You know, people, you got the question right, because you said, how can I help my parents to sort themselves out, which is very different than how can I sort my parents out? You help people to sort themselves out. Once they have decided to do so by giving them the opportunity to talk about their concerns and also to outline what potential solutions might be. And you don’t want to offer too many pieces of advice while you’re doing that, because it turns out that people are much more likely to implement a strategy of improvement if they generate it themselves. And then also, you don’t steal the opportunity to talk about their concerns. And then also, you don’t steal the accomplishment from them. Like, let’s say you came to me with a bunch of problems and I said, well, here’s what you could do about that. And then you went out and did it and it worked. And then in some sense, that’s not your accomplishment. I mean, it is in so far as you implemented, but it’s not in so far as it was something that I planned. And your intimation of that, your intimation of the fact that the delight in success, in the responsibility for success might have been stolen from you by well-meaning advice is going to interfere with the probability that you’ll implement the solution. And so it’s best to let people talk through their own problems. Like, what’s the problem? That’s what you ask. What’s the problem? What do you think is not right about your life? And then people will throw out a bunch of things that they’re complaining about or resentful about. And it might be quite an extensive list and they’ll feel guilty about it because they don’t want to burden you with it. But they need to get it all off their chest, right? They need to get the cards on the table. It’s also something to know when you’re talking to your wife or your husband or your intimate partner or child, for that matter. Someone you have a close relationship with is if they’ve got some things to complain about, which they undoubtedly do, they’re going to complain about a lot more things than they’re actually upset about because they’ll have gathered up irritations that have been unspoken and aggravations and fears. And they’ll all be upsetting them emotionally and they don’t know exactly what they are until they articulate them. You know, you say, well, what are you upset about? Well, I don’t know. Well, how can you not know? Well, the answer is there’s all sorts of things that you respond to emotionally before you can articulate them. Then you get upset and you explode and you yell and you lay out all the things you might be angry about and you’re impulsive and you overstate your case and you accuse people of things that you don’t even believe. All of that’s part of the process of laying your cards out on the table. You have complex situations that are disturbing you and you don’t know what they are exactly. You have to kind of guess. So you say, well, it might be this and it might be that and it might be this and it might be you. And this is why it’s your fault. You get accusatory. And then if you’re listening to all that, you have to just be patient and let the person get all their cards out on the table, even if some of that involves accusations about you, which you don’t have to immediately jump to the conclusion that those accusations are accurate, that you have to defend yourself. You know, and I’m not believe me, I’m not saying this is easy because it’s not. But you listen to the person lay out their their deck of complaints. And the first thing you’ll find is that they will take 50 percent or maybe more, 75 percent of the cards off the table right away, because once they’ve articulated out those concerns, they’ll find that they’re not really central. They’re not really the issue. And so that leaves a smaller number of genuine problems. And then you can ask people again, well, here’s the problem. Can you think of any way if you could conceptualize how things would be better in relationship to that problem? Well, what would a solution look like even in principle? And then they might say, well, I don’t know. And then they have to guess and lay their cards out on the table about what a solution might look like. If they say they don’t know, that often means they don’t want to think about it. And a little bit of encouragement is in order. Maybe a little bit of pressure. But you want people to formulate a vision of what the situation would look like if the problem was solved. And then they might find it very daunting because the solution looks so difficult that they don’t see any pathway to it. And so then the next part of the discussion is, well, are there some things that you could do that would be small steps that you would be interested in doing that you think you would do that would move you to the solution? And maybe those things could be implemented tentatively. And behavioral psychologists call that collaborative empiricism. So you’ll come and see a behavioral psychologist and lay out your problems. And then the two of you will negotiate towards the beginnings of a solution. What could you do this week that might make that problem slightly better? And so you talk through what’s practical and what’s implementable. And you have to be honest about that because you don’t want to set yourself up with a plan that’s so complicated you won’t implement it. Then you say to the person, if you’re the psychologist, you say, well, look, we’ve got a couple of ideas about what you could do this week that might make this situation slightly better. Why don’t you go and implement them and then come back next week and we’ll talk about whether or not that worked. And work would be you did implement it and that it did have the desired solution. And if it didn’t work, meaning you didn’t implement it or the solution didn’t emerge, then there’s there’s the opportunity for renegotiation. So you can think about it strategically. The first issue is, well, if something needs to be sorted out, the first question is, what the hell is the problem? And the answer to that is you probably don’t know. The problem is I’m upset and disturbed and angry and resentful and bitter and unhappy and anxious and in pain and lonesome. I’m suffering from an excess of negative emotion and perhaps from a certain amount of hopelessness. So the problem is the emotional circumstance. And that might be associated with some real problems, right, some real practical problems. So you lay all that out and say, OK, well, what is the problem landscape look like? Right. So that’s the strategic move. And then, as I said, that will generally simplify the problem landscape. Then you do think the same thing with a set of potential solutions. Well, what would the solutions look like? Because you’re not going to be able to solve a problem unless you at least know what a solution might look like. That would actually what would you say that would that you would find acceptable? And then the next issue is to lay out the strategies for the attainment of that solution. And, you know, sometimes it might be some of these solutions might be dismal. Like, you know, if you’ve got someone who’s ill in your family, the solution might be, well, well, we need a cure. You know, that’s the only solution that will suffice. But you don’t know how to pursue the cure. Maybe one doesn’t exist. So then you have to think of, well, a lower order and less satisfying solution, which would be, well, maybe we can cope. We’re going to learn to cope with this so that it’s the least amount of hell possible. And and maybe that maybe that even that’s too much. And you might have to say, well, we’re going to try to make this next week when we’re coping with this better than the last week. You know, and and maybe you can’t even do that. It has to just be the next day. You look for whatever small steps forward you can take that will make things less wretched and horrible than they currently are. You know, to put it rather bluntly, and that requires the willingness to face the problem. The humility to know that you don’t have the solution at hand. The willingness to listen to how the other people that you’re talking to formulate the problems and formulate the solutions. It’s crucially important, right, to have them do that work themselves. It’s it’s also you could think about it this way, too, is that if you listen to someone come up with a solution, you don’t undergo the neurological transformations necessary to change your character. But if you come up with the solutions yourself, you know, if you articulate the problem and you articulate the solutions, then you’ve changed your own character in a way that increases the probability that you’re going to act out what you do. And that requires real patience to to let people stumble through to their own problem solutions, because someone might lay out a set of problems and you think, oh, my God, I know what you could do about that. But it doesn’t really matter if you know, you know. You know, and I’m also not saying that sometimes advice is helpful. You know, sometimes you can give someone a hint. But man, you have to be careful with that because there’s a real element of theft that’s associated. OK, with it. Now, Richard also asked, how can I talk about the resentments of my childhood in a way that benefits them instead of giving them guilt? I don’t know if I can answer that question, Richard, because it’s it’s not a question that’s see what I would ask if you came to talk to me and you had that question, I would say, first of all, well, what resentments list them out, man, write them down. OK, so that you know what they are, because all those each of those resentments is going to be a different thing. And the strategy that’s associated with each might vary as a consequence of the particularity of the resentment. So I would say you should start by writing them down. Like, what’s your problem exactly? Here’s all the things that I can think of that I’m angry about with regard to my childhood. Write that down and then see which ones are are still living. And then you have to figure out, well, what do you want from your parents? Exactly. Do you do you want them to apologize? Do you want them to understand what they did wrong? Do you want to punish them? Do you want to get let them get you? Let them learn to know you better. Do you want to change the way they’re interacting with you now? Do you want to learn your own lessons from your bad experience so that when you’re a parent, you don’t make the same mistake? Do you merely want to have a chance to express yourself? It’s very difficult to to answer your question because I don’t know what your goal is. Right. So but and and I don’t need to know you need to know what are the resentments so we can walk through the process where to describe, lay them out and comprehensively. You might want to make a list of everything that you think you might conceivably be annoyed about with regards to your parents, no matter how trivial. Right. Because that way you you scour your memory. For for for for for things that you’re holding onto in a bitter way. And maybe you have your justification. I’m not suggesting that you don’t, but you need to discover what baggage you’re carrying. Then you have to figure out, well, what can I let go of and what’s core? And I would say what’s really core is if there are ways that your parents treated you that are still affecting you or that are affecting your relationships with them now, those really need to be dealt with because they’re not done. They’re not in the past. Right. They’re not even resentments of your child that they’re still part of your ongoing life. And so. Okay, so now you have all your resentments laid out. I guess I would say, you know, something like, look, mom and dad, there’s something I need to talk to you about that’s been bothering me for a long time. And I pick one of the more trivial things to begin with. Like, here’s a memory I have. And don’t get all high and mighty about it, because, you know, you might have misconstrued the situation as a child. It’s highly probable. And they may have had their reasons. And you may not even remember the situation, let’s say, correctly, or the way they remember it. Say, well, here’s something that happened when I was a kid. And it still bothers me. And do you remember what happened? That’s an open ended question. Do you remember what happened? Why did this go this way? And then I would do an awful lot of listening, you know, because you are trying to gather information. And the more your parents can tell you about what happened in those situations, I would say the better off you’re likely to be. So that’s about all I can say about that. That’s a fairly delineated approach to general discussions about difficult things, right? But I would say don’t be afraid of don’t be more afraid of engaging in this process than you are afraid of not engaging in it. Like every relationship you have is going to have problems in it. And, you know, you don’t want to jump to a intense psychological discussion with every little bump. But if there’s something of medium to long term permanence that’s disturbing you or a pattern that repeats itself at least three times, let’s say, well, then that might be something that’s worthy of discussion or your discovery that you’re, you know, very dissatisfied with the way the relationship is going. You have to have the conflict necessary to sort that out. And it’s going to be conflict with you and the and the person that you’re talking to. But the aim should be the establishment of something like fully informed, fully negotiated, medium to long term peace. That’s what you’re aiming at, if you have any sense. Oh, Cody said it took me seven months, but I completed all the self authoring suit in July. I’m still not motivated to do anything and waste all of my time. What do I do? Well, well, the first question is, is it true that you’re not motivated to do anything? And is it true that you waste all of your time? It seems highly unlikely to me that both of those things are 100 percent true. So one of the things you might notice is, are there anything? Is there anything that you’re motivated to do? Presume you’re motivated to eat, although perhaps not. And I’m not being smart about this. Partly what I would say is two things. You might need some smaller goals. Like you have to shrink your goals to the point where you’ve established a plan forward that consists of steps that not only you would be willing to take, but that you would take. And so some of that’s humility. It’s like, man, I’m stuck. I can barely do anything. That’s OK. Like, well, I’m I’m laying in bed for seven hours a day. Well, could I lay in bed for six hours and six and a half hours tomorrow? You know, or while I’m in bed, could I do something somewhat useful? Could I read a book? Could I read one page of a book? Could I read a paragraph of a book? You have to find that those steps forward that you would take. I really think it’s useful to make friends with something like a Google calendar, you know, or whatever calendar program you might want to use and start designing days that you would like to have, because that’s the right way to use a calendar. And everyone out there that’s listening, you should you should use a calendar to structure your days, because if you know what you’re doing tomorrow, it decreases your anxiety substantially because you need that kind of structure. You need a pathway. You need to know you need to have a map and you need to know where you’re located on the map and you need to know how you’re moving forward. And that gives you hope because you’re moving towards goals that you regard as worthwhile and it stops you from being anxious because you’re not entirely directionless and lost. And so learning how to manage your time is useful. And you can start with a calendar. You can start with simple things like you can put in. Well, when you’re likely to go to bed and when you’re likely to get up and regulating, that’s useful. That should be relatively ritualistically consistent. It’s very difficult to get your life in order if your sleep wake schedule is completely random or if it’s not aligned with like day and night. And if it’s not aligned with the normative practices of other people. And so you may have to learn to get your sleep wakes cycle regulated properly. And then the same with your eating schedule. Those are very basic things. And you can do that badly, but that’s what you want to approximate. Three meals a day, let’s say, because that’s what people do normatively. And then you have to add small goals. Now, if that doesn’t work, like if you can’t make the goals small enough to achieve, you know, it might be that you’re not being humble enough with regards to your conceptions of your own ability. But you can tell if the goal that you put forward is a reasonable one if you’re actually implementing it. Because if you’re not, then by definition, it’s not a reasonable goal. You know, like let’s say you’re you’re sleeping all the time in your room is just a bloody complete disaster. You know, and you think, well, I should clean up my room. It’s like, well, maybe you can’t. But maybe tomorrow you could hang up two shirts, you know, or you could you could move two shirts from your bedroom to the laundry room. Or you could bag up a bag of dirty clothes that you could conceivably take to a laundromat and just do that one thing. You know, if you do if your room’s a catastrophe and you do that one thing and then you did one thing like that for 15 days or 20 days, maybe your place would be in order. And so the trick is to get the trajectory right. And, Cody, if you if that doesn’t work, then you’re going to need to talk to somebody. You know, maybe you need a partner that that that you can discuss these things with where you both have a commitment, like a mutual commitment to attaining a certain set of goals. You know, that could be a friend. It could be somebody that you find online. It could be and it could be a professional. But if you find that you yourself cannot you just can’t get this going, then you’re going to have to reach out to someone else to give you a hand. Maybe you need to sit down with a parent or a friend or somebody that you love and go over the self-authoring suite with them to go over the future authoring plans and to discuss how that might be implemented. You know, because if you can’t do it on your own, then and maybe you shouldn’t have to, then you have to reach out to other people. And so make your goals smaller. See if you can make friends with a schedule or a calendar. This is really important. All of you out there who aren’t doing this, like I would say all of the people that I know who have become successful in any way, use a structured means to organize their time. They have lists of things to do like they have every day. There’s a list of things to do that day. Every week, there’s a list of things to do that week. Every month, there’s a list of things to do that month. At every level of temporal resolution, there’s a sequence of plans and those plans are implemented on a day to day basis. You cannot be, and successful isn’t the right way of thinking about it because I’m not thinking about, you know, I’m not really thinking about rising up the corporate ladder. You know what I mean? And that’s sort of what success has come to mean in our culture. That isn’t what I mean. You can’t have a life that you’re going to find acceptable without that because you need the vision and the plans to give you purpose and direction. That’s where all your positive emotion comes from. All your motivation is laying out plans that are worth attaining and then observing yourself moving towards them. That’s the source of most positive meaning. And then also without that structure, you’re so lost that you’re going to be anxious and overwhelmed. It’s really like being in a foreign country, like isolated and alone with no map. I don’t know where the hell I am. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. You know, the rains are going to come. The storms are going to come. And maybe it’s winter and I don’t know where I am or where I’m going. And then the last thing, Cody, is like, rely on some other people, man. You know, maybe you’ll be able to return the favor in the future. I know you’ll feel bad maybe that you have to go to someone else. You’ll feel weak and you know that you’re taking advantage of them. But people like to be helpful. They really do. And so it’s a mark of trust in someone and confidence in them that you would ask to have a serious conversation with them. And so if you don’t have someone like that, then you need to find somebody like that. And maybe that means you have to interact more in online communities or maybe you have to get the hell out there in the world. There’s lots of meetup groups and that sort of thing online that have organized themselves. And you can go there and hide in the back for a while, not talk to anybody. But you got to get it. I get the hell out there and, you know, make some social connections because you cannot live alone. We’re social creatures and you need help. And maybe you’ll be able to offer some help at some point in the future, too. So, well, OK, Rose says I’m consumed by envy. I can hardly stand to read or watch or listen to anyone more successful than myself. In what directions am I aiming wrong? OK, well, look, Rose, it’s pretty damn useful to figure out that you’re consumed by envy. That’s a good start. You know, that that’s a real self-realization and an important one. OK, so the first thing we might ask is, well, it’s it’s likely reasonable for you to observe that that’s not optimal for you. Right. Because envy, that’s that resentment that I was talking about earlier or even worse, that jealousy. It’s like it’s not a pleasant phenomenological state. It’s not a pleasant state of experience. OK, so look, let’s look at it this way. Well, what are you envious of? You know, you say I can hardly stand to read or watch or listen to anyone more successful than myself. Well, that’s pretty vague, Rose. And you want to tighten up your envy a bit. It’s like you’ll find that there are certain people that you’re particularly envious of and others whose accomplishments really don’t disturb you, let’s say. So the first thing you want to do is figure out which people it is that you’re particularly envious of. And then you want to figure out, well, what is it that you think they have? Now, you know, they probably have a lot more problems than you think. And so part of the pathology of envy is that you look at someone who’s successful and you assume that that success defines them across all the important dimensions of their life. And that’s rarely the case. And so, you know, there’s a naive optimism in envy. And that’s reflected in the fact that you think that the person you’re jealous of has everything that a person would need. And that’s rarely the case. But that’s somewhat besides the point. Look, in your envy lurks the beginnings of a structure of ambition. You wouldn’t be envious of something if you didn’t believe that that was a value that you should possess. OK, so the first thing is make a list of all the people you’re envious of and then figure out what it is about them that you envy. OK, now those are your goals all of a sudden. Right. Now, you might be doubtful that you can attain those goals. And I don’t know what the goals would be. You know, like maybe it’s beauty for God’s sake. Maybe you’re envious. Maybe just for the sake of argument, you assume that you’re not a very good looking person. We could assume you’re not blessed by the same set of physical attributes that a Hollywood starlet might manifest, you know, and maybe you’re envious of that. It’s like, well, you might start to think, well, in first of all, you might think about whether or not there are dimensions of evaluation along which someone might be judged that are as important or more important than physical attractiveness. Right. Because there’s multi there’s multiple dimensions along which a person’s positive attributes might be rank ordered and considered. So you might want to broaden out your conceptualization of what constitutes the good in human action. But then, like if it is a matter of attractiveness, then you may have to. And I’m picking this one because it’s a particularly difficult one. Attractiveness is like, well, what could you do? Like, how often do you get your haircut? And is it flattering? You have someone professional doing it. Do you know how to use makeup properly and carefully? You know, are you in reasonable physical condition or are there are there steps that you could take to put yourself in reasonable physical condition? Do you have some nice clothes like it’s a matter of decomposition. So let’s assume we’ll be optimistic about this. You’re envious. OK, well, that means there’s some things you value. You don’t have them, but it’s the beginnings of a philosophical stance. So you lay out what it is you’re envious about and you think, well, these persons, these people have this and this and this and this and I don’t. And that’s unfair. And it might be unfair. It’s probably not an unfairness that’s specifically aimed at you. It’s probably more a general reflection of the unfairness and inequality that’s part of life. And that’s worth knowing. But in any case, you lay out your envy and you and you delve deep into it and you find out, well, here’s what I want, because you’re envious, envious because you see other people that have what you want. OK, good. Now all of a sudden, you know what you want. Well, that’s useful. Terrifying, because you might see that it’s so distant from you. But you can at least lay out and then maybe even admit to yourself what you want, because the other thing is, is that you’d be unlikely to be so envious if you weren’t hiding from yourself what it is that you that you truly want. You might be terrified to admit it because, well, once you admit it, then you know what you want and you know when you’re failing, you know, and by hiding what you want from yourself, well, then you can hide to some degree. The fact that you’re not getting it and that you’re failing. And and it’s no wonder that people do that. So make a list of what you’re envious of. Extract from that the virtues that you would like to pursue. Understand clearly that unless you pursue those virtues, you’re not going to get what you want and the envy will consume you more. And that’s like a good pathway to hell. That’s not a good thing. And so make a plan. Here’s some things that other people have that I want. How can I start to move towards having some of that myself? And that’s that’s the right way to deal with it. So because the other what’s the alternative? You’re going to tear these people down or or or manifest hatred for for them and maybe take your revenge when you can on the people around you because you’re so angry and you’re going to tear yourself into pieces like you said, consumed by envy. Right. And that’s like that’s a predator metaphor. Envy is something that’s eating you up. God, that’s not good, you know, but it’s really good that you’ve at least admitted it. That start part of that confrontation with the shadow so you can see your dark side there, you know, and you could look at your fantasies because if you’re consumed by envy, no doubt you have some pretty damn brutal fantasies. I wish this is what would happen to that person. No, God, they think they’re so smart. It’s like I hope they fall and I get a chance to kick them. Well, I’m down while they’re down. Maybe you could join a Twitter mob and take them out if they make a mistake, you know, but that can also get you in touch with the dark side of you that maybe has the ability to to put forward some commitment to moving forward in the future that can make you tough and strong. And so you might also start with the consideration that you could move in the direction that you desire. Right. So if you were willing to make the proper sacrifices, willing to do the work, and maybe if you could find out what would truly motivate you, which might be the desire to cease being consumed by envy, that would be a good start. And then to pursue these goals that are implicit in your jealousy. Well, then you have a direction for your life. So, in what directions are you aiming wrong? Well, you’re assuming that you’re being unfairly treated and that there’s something personal about that. Now, you probably are being unfairly treated in some sense because that’s just the human condition, I would say. Like there’s a real arbitrary element of life. You’re subject to the depredations of nature and the tyranny of culture and your own appalling shortcomings. You know, and that’s life. It’s not personal exactly. And that’s worth knowing. It’s part of the standard human condition. And you should aim at rectifying your envy. And some of that’s going to be dropping that bitter resentment. And the other is going to be pursuing what you need to pursue to allow you to view your life as at least acceptable. Right. So, so there’s hope in the envy once you admit it, because it gives you a moral direction. Hello, Dr. Peterson. What would you advise to a person who has the courage to defy the crowd but doesn’t have the verbal skills to debate real time? Well, look, there’s lots of ways of defying the crowd, let’s say. I mean, you could live your life the way that you want to live it. That’s a matter of action. You know, and they say actions speak louder than words. And one of the best things you could possibly be is an inspirational example. So that’s not nothing. That’s that’s something. Live properly in your defiance of the crowd. Right. Make your own course. Allow yourself to be guided by your own genuine principles. You don’t necessarily have to advertise that, which is in some sense what you’re doing when you when you’re debating because you’re taking the manner in which you act like if you’re an integrated person and you’re articulating that. But maybe you can’t do that because you don’t have the verbal skills. Well, then the question would be maybe you should develop some more verbal skills. Like, I don’t know this for sure, Dave, you know, but but generally it’s useful. How do you do that? Doesn’t hurt to read. Really doesn’t hurt to write, you know, a little bit of writing every day clarifies your thinking. It’s a hard thing to do. And it’s an unlikely thing. Most people won’t do it. But man, you know, you wouldn’t be asking me this question if you didn’t think at some level that some improvement in your verbal ability would be useful to you. Well, so how do you do that? You read. You think. You write. The reason you write is because writing forces you to articulate your thoughts and organizes your brain around whatever it is that you’re writing about. And one of the easiest ways to write, there isn’t any real easy way, but one of the easiest ways to write is to write down a problem. It’s like, what’s what what problem is bothering me? You can write about that, first of all, to get the problem clear, because that’s a hard thing. Then you start to write about what might possible solutions be. And if you fight with those solutions because you want to kill off the stupid ones and then, you know, maybe you need to learn to speak more fluently. Maybe you need to. What what what what might we say? You could try a class in improvisation. And maybe that’s too daunting. You could join a speakers club like Toastmasters. You could try talking more at dinner parties a little bit more. Once you formulate your thoughts, you have to be willing to be somewhat of a bumbling fool to begin with. Right. Because you’re going to not if and maybe you’re better, your verbal skills are better than you think they are, you know, and you’re just self-conscious. But you have to practice putting yourself forward a little bit. And tentatively, you can do a lot of that, you know, a lot of that initial learning how to interact with people, though, by asking them questions about what they think and then responding instead of being too concerned about putting your own point forward. So all right. So what’s the answer? What would I advise to the person who has the courage to defy the crowd? Good. Live according to your principles. Right. And that’s not a verbal thing. And you can be a good example. And that’s a major accomplishment. But then if you need to improve your verbal ability, which is generally a good thing, then those are the ways to do it. Read. Right. Speak. And and and understand that developing those abilities might be of tremendous use to you, you know, because it’s one thing to live properly. And that’s not a trivial thing. And that’s not a trivial thing, but it’s another thing to be able to articulate yourself and to be able to negotiate. And generally speaking, there’s nothing about that that isn’t advantageous. And even introverted and anxious people can learn to do that. You know, it’s those are learnable skills. It’s not easy. But but but you can manage it. You can also you can also speak carefully, you know, and listen to what you’re saying and only try to say things that you think are true. That’s also unbelievably useful. You have to feel that out. Like, is this really what I believe or am I putting it forward? Well, because I want to look good or I want to dominate or or I want to express obliquely an emotion that I’m too cowardly to come out and confront directly. Or am I being manipulative? There’s lots of reasons that people use language. But what you really should use it for is to state what you believe to be true and then to let the consequences of that unfold. And so that can also help you simple truths bluntly stated can be very powerful. You don’t need a lot of verbal fluency under those circumstances if there’s evidence of strength of character behind it. So. The Dow Tehching speaks of acting naturally. Well, I don’t know if that’s true. If it’s acting naturally, it depends on what you mean by naturally. The Dow Tehching speaks of acting in a manner that balances yin and yang, that balances chaos and order. And that means that you’re speaking in the right place at the right time about the right things. And that’s allied with part of what I just discussed with regards to speaking the truth. How is one to put their foot down and change slash better their condition without unnaturally manipulating their world? Well. The fundamental answer to that is to speak the truth. And to let. The consequences of that unfold. But then the trick is, well, how is it that you come to speak the truth? Well, in order to do that, as far as I can tell, you have to be terrified of the consequences of not speaking the truth. And part of that is. Well, look, do you want the truth on your side or not? Do you want to be facing the truth as an enemy or do you want to have the truth behind you as an ally? And the truth is reality. And I don’t see that you want reality as an enemy. And so if what you do is use your language to represent reality as accurately as you possibly can. Given all your inadequacies and biases, you’re bound to make errors, but that’s the goal. Then you have the force of reality behind you. It’s it’s as if you’ve you know where you are. You might not like it and you may be, you know, maybe it’s a terrible craggy chasm full of lava and water. But at least you can see where the obstacles are and you can pick your way through it. So and then the naturalness is, well. From the Taoist perspective, in some sense, you’re you’re you’re aiming at being at peace with the world. And that means accepting it in some sense for what it is. And you can’t be a hero. And that means accepting it in some sense for what it is. And you can’t speak the truth unless you’re willing to do that. And that means to a large degree, it means what means exploring the depths of yin and yang of order and chaos, the order to know that like there are tyrannical forces afoot. And some of them are operating you and some of them operate in the social world. And and some of them operate, for that matter, in the natural world, too much crushing order. And on the chaotic side, there’s the possibility of nihilism and hopelessness and depression and that complete cataclysm. And so you’re you’re you’re there’s cliffs on both sides of you. And you have to be aware of that because you don’t want to fall into those cliffs. And there’s a thin pathway between them that you can that you can walk down if you’re careful. And you feel your way down that pathway by noting how what you say, noting whether what you say puts a foundation underneath you. That’s that’s there’s a New Testament injunction to that goal to build your house on a rock and not on sand. And what’s the rock? Well, the rock is the truth and integrity of your character and of your voice. That’s what it is. And you see. You want to aim at something noble. That’s the alliance with God. That’s one way of thinking about it. You want to serve the highest good. And you have to think very hard about what that is. I mean, we know what it is to some degree, or we have some we have some collective conception of that. You know, it would be peace. That would be something. It would be the willingness and desire to treat other people like you would like to be treated if you were treating yourself properly. It’s that as well. It’s it’s character, a logical nobility. It’s the desire to serve the good. It’s truth and beauty and all of those classic virtues all integrated into a single thing. You want to serve that. And then you and then having aimed at that, you want to. And that that that governs how you’re going to see the world. Right. That sets this that sets the. That sets the lens or it sets the frame through which the world manifests itself to you. Right. So it’s as if you’re getting your spectacles adjusted properly and then the world reveals itself to you. And then you use your language to articulate that. And that’s that’s the. That’s naturally it’s not it’s not natural. It’s very difficult. Now, you know, if you don’t do that, what you do is end up you you end up using your language to manipulate people into giving you what you want. And that’s not helpful because, you know, what do you know about what you want? Give me give me one second. Give me one second. Sorry about that, my son. I’m in my son’s basement. My house is being renovated in Toronto for well till this afternoon. And he’s got a new puppy and he was rolling a bone upstairs on the floor for this puppy. It’s very cute, by the way, this puppy that’s making quite a lot of racket. So I just had to take care of that. So just give him a good coffin. No, I just asked him, just told him that the bone was rolling around. So. Look, part of this is faith in truth, you know, like really, it’s hard to it’s hard to emphasize this. Importantly enough, you have to make a decision in your life at some point. Look about how you’re going to use your words. You can use them instrumentally and you can use them to manipulate people. You say, well, this is what I want from this situation. And here’s how I’m going to have to craft my words to get it. Or you can think. Well, I’m oriented properly in the world and I’m going to say what I think and let things happen. And those are two different. They’re really two different modes of being. I wrote about this in 12 Rules for Life. They’re really two different modes of being. And the latter one, which is faith in truth, that’s the same as faith in the logos, by the way, from a symbolic perspective. It’s the faith that truth is that which turns uninhabitable chaos into habitable order. It’s the truth that does that. And so you you tell the truth and you throw caution to the wind. It doesn’t mean you tell the truth stupidly because telling the truth stupidly isn’t truthful. You have to do it very carefully and very strategically. Strategically. Well, and the strategic part, the goal is to get better all the time at carefully articulating what constitutes the truth. You know, it seems obvious to me in some sense. It’s like you got to really think this through. It’s like, what do you want on your side? You want falsehood on your side? It’s like who thinks that you really think that you’re going to be able to lie and manipulate your way through the world and that you’re going to get away with that? Like there’s an arrogance that goes along with that arrogance in belief, that arrogance of belief in your capability to deceive and that you’re going to pull the wool over everyone’s eyes, right? You’re going to deceive yourself because you’re going to believe in your own maliciousness and mendaciousness. You’re going to deceive other people because they’re stupid and they won’t catch on. And you’re going to see you’re going to deceive God and reality itself because it’s not going to snap back and take you out if you bend and distort it. Like that’s so foolish. You don’t have a hope. None of that’s you might get away with your your lies for a certain amount of time, but they’re going to aggregate and take you out. And at every level, not least your own guilt and your own self-contempt. And so. So where was that? Well, that’s a good answer to that question. I agree we don’t live in a tyrannical patriarch. Can you provide a better explanation for the iniquities women face, especially lateness of the right to vote, et cetera? Well, you know, one hundred and thirty years ago, let’s say, let’s take 1895 just as our starting point. The world wasn’t the same place as it is now. You know. Rights and privileges spread as the social and economic conditions make their manifestation possible to some degree, to some degree. And I’m not suggesting that men haven’t oppressed women and that women haven’t oppressed men. Christ, we’ve been at each other’s throats in many ways throughout the entire course of human history. Men at the throats of men, men at the throats of women, women at the throats of men, women at the throats of women, parents at the throats of children. Like there’s no shortage of contentiousness and tyranny that characterizes human history. So, but. In 1895, the average person in the Western world lived on less than a dollar a day in today’s money, way below the current UN standards for poverty. Life was very, very hard. There was no reliable birth control. Like you can’t underestimate the radical consequences of reliable birth control. Now that opened up the world to women and it’s not just birth control. It’s a whole variety of technological transformations and also an increase in the safety of the street and a hundred contributing factors that have opened up the world to the freedom of women. But a huge part of that was the collective. Striving of men and women to free themselves from. The absolute tyranny of hand to mouth existence. You know, when woman was, well, let’s say sexually mature back at that time around 15 or 16, very likely to be married soon after that. Partly because sex outside of marriage was so unbelievably dangerous, very high probability of pregnancy and then of death in childbirth and then and then death of children and then continual pregnancy. Women weren’t the same, even biologically speaking, that the birth control pill is a biological revolution. And it took a long time to extend the full coterie of rights to people, even men. It was like Jesus, most men in Eastern Europe, for example, were serfs until the late 1800s, fundamentally slaves. It’s not as if the common person has had the right to vote for any substantial amount of time in some countries for a couple of hundred years. And that’s all like we’re clambering out of the great darkness of biological history. And creating a culture where people have enough freedom to be to exercise what would optimally be their full set of rights and to say that that didn’t happen in the past primarily because of the patriarchal dominion of men is, I think, an escape from full confrontation with the absolute dreadful horror of biological history. It’s a wish that all of the things about life that are deeply troublesome and terrible are a consequence of the errors made by those who control the social structure. And God, it would be really something if they had that much power, you know, it’s like, well, we can make things bad or good. It’s like, no, you’re facing the terrible dragon of nature and she’s something awful to behold. And your tyrannical patriarchy is a relatively ineffective force in the face of the absolute deprecation of the human race. I mean, even now, we’re powerful technologically compared to how we have been in the past. And, you know, we’ve extended our life a lot, but we still only managed about 80 years. And a lot of that is still characterized by my mental and physical illness. You know, we’re still suffering from a lot of the same kind of mental and physical illness that we’ve been through. And so we shy away from that and say, well, it’s all the suffering is a consequence of something that’s oppressive and under the control of human beings. It’s like, I know I wish that was the case, but it isn’t. And that’s not to say that social structures are the only thing that can be controlled by human beings. It’s not as if 150 years ago, all men were free and all women were enslaved. The truth of the matter is 150 years ago, virtually everyone was enslaved. So it’s a long bloody haul out of that. You know, and a tremendous amount of people were enslaved. And the construction of the formulation of labor saving devices, you know, that freed women from the government, you know, the the And the provision of universally accessible hygienic facilities, toilets everywhere is a big deal. It allows people to move around and to operate out in the world and tampons and sanitary pads and all that. And so it’s a long, long haul. And all of that. Jesus. Women were oppressed because people were oppressed and perhaps women were more oppressed than men. Although even that’s not obvious because, you know, men suffered brutally in warfare, absolutely brutally. And so it’s a long haul. And we’re required to sacrifice themselves for the protection of women and children. It’s like human history is a nightmare. And it’s a long haul. And it’s a long haul. And it’s a long haul. And it’s a long haul. And it’s a long haul. And we emerged out of that men and women together and have been attempting to free each other to the degree that that’s possible in the course of that struggle. And so that’s how it looks to me. You have talked about earning your knowledge. How do you do? Man, you guys, you put up some viciously good questions today, man. I got to say, these are tough questions. They’re very good questions. Those are tough questions. And I think that’s the way to do it. And I think that’s the way to do it. And I think that’s the way to do it. And I think that’s the way to do it. And I think that’s the way to do it. I would say these are tough questions. They’re very good questions. This is Devon M. You’ve talked about earning your knowledge. How do you define this and earn it? When is it OK to debate ideas like yours if they are not your own? Well, I would say it’s OK to debate them. Right away, if what you’re trying to do is to test them and learn more about them, right? If you’re trying to put them forward as if they’re your own and to obtain something approximating unearned moral superiority by doing so. So that means to have the ideas and to discuss them, but not to identify with them as if they are defining characters, defining features of your own personality. How do you earn knowledge? Well, in all your elementary school teachers, when you’re writing an essay said you got to put it in your own words. Think, well, what does that mean? You can’t just copy a sentence. It has to be in your own words. And, you know, that was never very well explained to me, but there was something to it. It’s like for knowledge to be yours, you have to integrate it with your own experience. You have to see how that applies to your own case and then have a story to tell about how that’s the case. That’s personal. Right. So it’s the intermingling of the abstract with the personal that makes it real. It’s the intermingling of the epic with the particular or the archetypal with the concrete that makes something real. And so if an idea is still an abstraction, if you’re just parroting it, it also means that you haven’t learned to use it as a tool. You haven’t started to apply it in your own life because you could say, well, here’s an idea that I came across and here’s how I implemented it. And here’s what I learned when I implemented it. And then that’s definitely yours. Right. Because you’re you can kind of tell because you’re recounting your knowledge in a manner that no one else could do. And that’s what gives it that ring of genuineness. Right. That’s what it means in some sense to speak from the heart. It’s like, well, here’s my experience with this idea. And you can say, too, well, here’s how I understand this idea. And you reformulate that in your own terms. And that means that you associate it with your own with the only with the unique particularities of your own experience. And then I would also say it means that you’ve acted out the ideas and tested them in the world and that you have your own stories to tell about that. And and that’s how you make it your own. It’s like you go to the tool store, the hardware store and you buy a hammer, you know, and then you start to use the hammer to hammer in nails. And you learn how to use the hammer. You learn how to use the saw. And then, you know, at some point, that saw sort of becomes yours. You know how to use it. And it’s the same with these ideas. It’s like, you don’t just you don’t just say the words. You’re not just a puppet mouthing the words. They become part and parcel of your own philosophy, the way that you perceive the world, the way that you construe things and the way that you act in the world. You’ve tested them and you have your own. You have something to add to them that’s yours personally. You know, and if you if you’re having a discussion with someone and they’re talking about things that don’t have those characteristics, right, that they haven’t made the difference. Right. That they haven’t made personal, then the conversation is almost never interesting. It’s because the person is it’s just they’re just they really are an empty shell through which. Ideology, ideology, cliches and slogans are pouring. There’s nothing about that that’s compelling because you don’t see the grappling. You don’t see that the other person has grappled with the ideas and come to their own unique conclusions. And it really is in that mingling of the abstract and the particular that compelling wisdom is to be found. And so that’s that’s. And then concretely speaking, well, there’s ways of earning your knowledge. And part of that is reformulating it in your own words. That’s thinking it through right and discussing it until you have it at hand. You can talk about it and you can generalize from it because you truly understand it. But a huge part of that is also putting it into practice and deriving your own conclusions as a consequence. And some of that can be done with debate. It’s like here’s an idea I came across and here’s the idea. And here’s what I think it means. And this is how I think it would change things if I put it into practice. This is how I understand this idea. And what do you think of that? Like that’s a good debate or discussion, you know, because then the other person can say, well, I don’t really agree with the way you formulated that or I don’t agree with your conclusions. Hopefully it’s a real discussion and not just one upmanship, you know, because that’s a pretty dull game. And then how then you get clearer about what it is that the idea is and how it is that you would use it as a tool in your own life. And that’s the right way to think about ideas, too, you know, as well. Partly they’re tools for looking at the world with because you have to look at the world with tools because you can’t look at the whole world. So you’re looking at the world through a tool like structure and then the ideas themselves are tool like and they need to be used and worn a bit in your hands before they’re yours. So have you ever thought about engaging in a public debate with Slavoj Žižek? He has many interesting observations on the topic of ideology, and that would be a good conversation. Yes, we have a tentative. We have been speaking tentatively about the possibility of having a public discussion in Toronto in April. And so we’re negotiating and we’ll see how that goes. We’ll see if he’s available and if I’m available, if we can agree on a set of topics, if we can if we can undertake all the complex, detailed negotiations necessary to make something like that successful in the public sphere. I’m confident enough that this will occur that I’ve already downloaded about six of his books because I really want to start understanding what he has to say and think before undertaking that. So, so, yes, I have thought about it more than thought about it. The offer is out. The negotiations are underway. How do you maintain a stable identity when you are plagued by bouts of depression and anxiety? Well, the first thing we might say is that you can’t. You know what I mean? If you’re plagued by bouts of depression and anxiety, that does destabilize your identity. So it’s almost by definition. But having said that, look, this is when habit and plan and strategy are so useful. So in the periods of depression that I’ve had, what’s sustained some of them were long and and and certainly the most unpleasant experiences of my life. You this is when you need a philosophy, let’s say that’s allied with your vision and your strategy to sustain you. Because what would what would happen to me is that. I know I have these a vision and I suppose the vision is of a world that’s better in in that’s less likely to descend into ideological catastrophe and where people are more responsible and more awake and more educated. And and and healthier. All of that, a vision of a better world, you know, a world that’s less hellish, at least, but also a better world and some sense of what role I might play in that. And so that’s very motivating. Like it’s a profound goal to to try to make things better. And you can do that locally. You can do that for yourself. You can do that for your family. You can do that for the broader community. And all of that’s worth it, man. It’s worth making some sacrifices for. It’s worth suffering for to some degree. And then you decompose that into the day to day and week to week strategies and actions that you’re undertaking, the plans and the activities that you’re putting forward to make that dream a reality, to realize it. And then when the depression and anxiety come along, you think part of it with depression, it’s like it’s just bloody endurance. It’s like you get up and you work through the next hour. You try to stay on track. You try to implement your strategic plans to the best of your ability. And you hope and you pray that you’ll get through it. You know, you’ll get through it and that the darkness will recede and you you you stay on track. You eat even though you’re not hungry. You get up even though you want to stay in bed. You interact with people even though you’d rather be alone. And it’s it’s it’s it’s the benefit of disciplined habits can can sustain you. It’s like the boat you’re rowing in through a terrible storm leaks and all. And maybe you’ll be overwhelmed, but you have the boat and you can row forward. And that’s what you’ve got. And so endurance is a huge part of it. And then I would say with its anxiety, it’s the same thing. It’s like are very much the same as you’re terrified and uncertain. But you move ahead to the best of your ability. And again, you operate at least to some degree on hope. And if you haven’t got hope, then you’ve got blind, bloody endurance. And that’s all motivated by some sense that you’re working towards something that’s worthwhile working toward, you know, and that is, well, that’s your own long term well-being to treat yourself properly. It’s the stability and productivity and harmony and health of your family. That’s a huge deal. And then it’s whatever benefit you can be to the community. And if you have to limp along and drag yourself forward in order to maintain that pathway, then so be it. Because it’s better than the alternative. So and I’m not and I know that you can become depressed enough so that you’re virtually immobilized, but you do what you can to fight it and you and then you do what you can to treat it. You know, it’s like, have you tried antidepressants? Have you gone to speak to a professional? Have you done what you need to do to investigate the causes of your depression and anxiety? Because often there’s physical reasons that that might be the case. You know, like I’ve learned notoriously that a fair bit of the negative emotion that I experienced seemed to be associated with an autoimmune problem that was associated with food sensitivity. Jesus, like I had I would have never believed that was possible 10 years ago, even though I did. I had learned by that point that my susceptibility to negative emotion was definitely exacerbated. For example, if I was hungry. So I knew there was some relationship with food, but I had no idea that it was as profound as it turned out to be. And so but don’t and then well, the other thing you can do, too, is that as the negative emotion ramps up in intensity, the amount of time that you construe as manageable shrinks, you know, and if you’re extremely depressed and anxious, then you know, you may be struggling to get through the day. And then you need a map of what is going to constitute a minimally acceptable day. And that might be one where you’ve done what you need so that when you wake up tomorrow, things aren’t worse. Right. You have to keep up with your obligations and your duties at least enough so that you’re not degenerating downhill. You know, the other thing, too, is that you you also learn that you act out the things that you would do when you’re normal, even when you’re depressed, you know, you don’t want to see people. Well, it doesn’t matter. You go see them because it’s better than not seeing them. You know, and you find when you do see them that it’s better. It’ll go better than you think. But you can’t isolate yourself and you’re anxious. And so you want to be able to see people. You don’t want to go out. You’d rather stay home and sit in the chair and just sit there like in a frozen position. It’s like you can’t do that. You have to go out and go grocery shopping and go out and have coffee and all of those things. It doesn’t matter whether you enjoy them. It matters that you do them because that’s what you do. That’s what you do in order to maintain your health. And and so a huge part of it is like head down endurance. And that’ll get you through bad times. That endurance. It’s it’s it’s such an underrepresented virtue. That ability to trudge forward under a trudge forward unhappily under unfairly burdensome load is a testament to character if you can. And then it’s something that should be encouraged. And valued. So, you know, I’m not making the claim that people who are depressed who can’t get out of bed lack endurance. Some do and some don’t because depression comes in very, very degrees of intensity. And you can be laid out completely by depression. So that’s the kind of thing that I’m trying to do. So I’m not trying to make some arbitrary judgment about who’s got endurance and who hasn’t. You can’t do that from the outside. But I can say that endurance is one of the tools you have to deal with chronic discomfort and pain. You know, and even if you have chronic pain, it’s interesting because it’s very much allied with depression, by the way. All of the research on chronic pain, back pain, for example, indicates and chronic pain of all sorts is that the more you allow your pain to render you inactive, the worse the outcome, including exacerbation of the pain. And depression is a pain disorder. And so that’s very much worth thinking about, too. It’s like move forward, move forward, move forward. You know, and I think that’s the most important thing. Move forward, move forward. You know, and if you need to talk to somebody about what your plan is for the day or the hour or the week, then do that as well. And perhaps you also have to help get the people around you to help a bit. I need a little bit of help getting up in the morning. I need to have breakfast made for me so that all I do when I get up in my in my terrible state of fog and confusion and terrible anxiety and depression is I have a shower because that’s what happens first. And then the next thing is I eat and then that’s better. You’re at least you’re out of bed moving. And that’s that’s a start. You know, so. And then you endure and hope. And that’s how it is. And you do the same thing when someone in your family is sick or when you’re facing a death. All of that. It’s like one bloody foot in front of the other up the hill. How are you always so consistently composed and confident? Yeah, well, I wouldn’t say that I am. I know what you mean. Well, look, you know, I’m I’m not that young. I’m just about 60 years old. And so I have a lot of experience behind me and I’ve seen a lot of things and I’ve learned to be detached to some degree. You know, that’s one thing you learn as a clinician, as people are always talking to you about terrible things and the difficulties in their life. And you can take that home and have it destroy you because you’re constantly exposed to the troubles of existence. And then they’re real troubles, you know. And I mean, it’s not unique to clinicians. You see that with physicians and palliative care workers and people who work in morgues and emergency responders. And like there’s lots of people who face the very difficult aspects of life very frequently. You detach yourself from it to some degree, you know, and I don’t mean in a disinterested way. I mean, in a in a way that is sort of allied with a longer term view, you know, like if I’m doing an interview now with with someone who’s attacking me and I can get irritable. I think I was too irritable in the GQ interview, for example, which some of you might have watched. I think, well, I’m not going to jump to conclusions about how this is going to go. Even even with regards to how it feels right in the moment, we’ll see how it unfolds across time. And I’ll try to manage myself in the moment with the least amount of upset that I can manage. And it’s part of the doctrine of minimal, minimal necessary force. One of the things I’ve learned if you’re if you have a dispute with someone and it needs to be settled and maybe they need to change more than you. And that’s not always the case, because sometimes the settling requires change on your part. But let’s say that they have to be defeated in some sense in comparison to you. You don’t want to defeat them any more than necessary. You know, it’s like you don’t knock your opponent to the ground and then jump up and down on them three or four times in triumph. You know, you you you. You pin them and let and then let them up. Minimal necessary force, because any more than that just produces a counter reaction. And so. And I guess the other thing is to is my motivation when I’m engaged, let’s say in these discussions is that I’m not trying to win the argument. I’m not trying to win. I’m trying to say what I think as clearly as I can. And there is there might be an element there might be one of the consequences of that might be what appears to be a victory, but it’s not. The right victory is the victory for your ability to articulate what you believe. And that’s what I’m trying to do. And so that’s another reason to stay composed is like, well, OK, this person has just thrown a curveball at me. It’s like, all right, so well. I could be thinking, well, I don’t want to be undermined by that, and I don’t want to be undermined by that. I could be thinking, well, I don’t want to be undermined by that, and I don’t want to make a fool of myself, and I don’t want to be put on the spot. And of course, all those things are true. But mostly what I’m thinking about is, OK, well, now I’ve got that question. I want to answer as truthfully as I possibly can. What do I think about what was just said? And I’m not calculating the outcome. I’m assuming this is a mark of faith, right? This is the faith that people have talked about being something that has to be manifested necessarily. We’ve been talking about this since the dawn of time. What’s the faith? The faith is that if you say what you believe to be true, then whatever happens is the best thing that could have happened. And I believe that. And I really believe it, partly because I believe that if you’re deceitful, which is the opposite of that, or manipulative or malicious or malevolent, but maybe primarily manipulative, then what you’re acting out is your belief that deceit will bring victory. And I just don’t believe that at all. I think it’s a preposterous claim. And so if deceit won’t bring victory, then truth is what brings victory if there is such a thing as truth. And there’s certainly such a thing as deceit. So there must be such a thing as truth. And so and some of it’s just curiosity, too. It’s like, well, I’m going to say what I think and see what happens. That’s an adventure. You know, that’s the adventure of your life, really. And you don’t want to miss that because that’s what you’ve got in your life is for it to be an adventure. It’s not an easy road. You know, it’s a stormy sea. And what you have is the adventure of contending with God and the waves. That’s what you have. And the way you do that is with truth. And then that sort of takes you out of that immediacy of the conflict, whoever it is that the conflict with whoever it is that you’re talking to. You’re trying to ally yourself with something that’s deeper and more profound and more lasting. But I like I don’t think that I am particularly consistently composed and confident. You know, I think I have faith in the truth. It’s not the same thing. And, you know, I’m an emotional person. Obviously. How do you manage to read so much? Well, a lot of that’s good fortune. You know, like I seem to have a knack for reading. It’s not it was a gift. You know, like when I was a kid, if I look at a word once, I can always spell it like I have it instantly. And I’ve been like that ever since I was little. And so I seem to have a facility for very, very little. And then my father taught me to read when I was very young. And I think it was the combination of those two things that enabled that for me. You know, I had the natural proclivity of verbal ability. You know, I my graduate supervisor, very smart guy, Robert Piel guy, really like he had trouble with spelling. You know, I don’t know why exactly that is. People have different ways of reading. I had a talent for immediate recognition and memory of words. And and and I’m also very verbally fluid. Let me set here. So I think mostly it’s an innate talent. You know, now I also do know that the more you read, generally speaking, the faster you get. My wife is really like she always read, but she’s really started to read a lot since she got a Kindle. She turns out she really likes her Kindle. She reads a lot more and her reading speed has increased a lot. A lot of its practice. You can try to speak a lot of it. You can try to speed up your reading by reading a little faster than you’re comfortable with. I don’t know the research literature indicating the utility of that, but practice is always useful. The other thing is, is that you want to make it part of habit, both conceptually and practically. A lot of people don’t read because they’re afraid of books. Books aren’t their friend. So you might want to get a few books and kind of make them your friend. You can start with simpler books, you know, like fiction. There’s lots of good fiction written for adolescents and children. It’s pretty straightforward. You can start there. If you’re interested in philosophy, there’s lots of simple guides, like the book of the year. Simple guides like the idiot’s guide to different topics or a beginner’s guide. I read those things all the time when I’m first investigating a new topic. You know, I start with the introductory material and I make time for reading. That was encouraged in my family. I always read before I went to sleep. I read and I still do that. Somewhat less so because I’ve become so distracted by social media. But you set aside a bit of time every day to read. And for me, it was always just before I went to bed. I’d go to bed, turn on the light and read for, oh, when I was a kid, for hours. And if you do something every day, you do a lot of it. And so I would say, well, if you want to read, if you want to make yourself educated, just put aside 20 minutes a day to read or 10, you know, some small amount of time that you could actually steal, not two hours because good luck, man. It’s very unlikely you’ll manage that. But 20 minutes a day, you know, that’s two hours a week. That’s 700 hours a year. You know, that’s even if you’re a slow reader, that’s a good number of books. And so you make it a habitual part of your life and you decide that it’s going to be something that you value. You investigate carefully what resistances you might have to that idea because you might think, well, that’s pseudo intellectual or there’s something more productive I could be doing or I’m intimidated by books or I hate books because I wasn’t good at reading when I was a kid and was humiliated because of it. Or, you know, you’ve got something against intellectuals or God, there might all sorts of resistances to picking up a book. Then you could listen to audio books. That’s a good way around that by hooker, by crook, man. So you value it. You make it a regular part of your life. You practice doing it. And you need a higher goal, too, is like, well, why should you read? Well, it’s so that you’re more informed and you can think better. Why should you be more informed and think better? Because you won’t walk blindly into so many pits. You know, you’ll be able to negotiate better in your life because you’ll be more informed and more verbally fluent. And you’ll have a better sense of how the world works and be able to hold your own in conversations. And that’ll make you more confident. Those are all unbelievably good reasons to be highly literate is is an incredibly massive, massive advantage, practical advantage. You know, and it shouldn’t be underestimated. So. There are many drug addicted mentally ill homeless people in my city, and it seems to keep getting worse. How do we help people who don’t want to be helped? Well, I think you do that by example. Fundamentally, there isn’t any other way I know of to help people who don’t want to be helped. And then I guess I think what you do is you open up. It’s the same thing I’ve said many times is that you do what you can to make the things around you better. You better, your family better, and then whatever you can manage in your community. You know, if you’re interested in drug addicted in the mentally ill, you know, there are volunteer. You could volunteer. You could talk to those people and listen, because then you’d find out what the hell their problems are. And then you’d have some sense about how they might be helped. You know, but that’s a hard thing. There’s no helping from above. Drug addiction and its combination with mental illness, unbelievably complicated problems. There’s no simple solutions. So and it isn’t even necessarily obvious that the people that you see who are homeless and drug addicted mentally ill don’t want to be helped. Is it sometimes they have problems that are so absolutely overwhelming that they can’t be helped in any real sense? You know, like if they’re unmedicated schizophrenic, for example, with a drug problem, it’s God. It’s God. It’s just that’s just a nightmarish. It’s a nightmare of insane complexity because schizophrenia is very, very difficult to deal with. Even even with medication, because the medication that helps people who are schizophrenic also tends to depress their positive emotion and decrease their motivation. You know, so the medications are generally helpful and the proper treatment guidelines. If your schizophrenic generally are stay with your medication because despite the negative consequences of the medication, which aren’t trivial, the consequences of not taking it are worse. And that’s a real Hobson’s choice. Right. It’s a bit of hell in both directions. But if you really want to know, I would say. Go have some contact with those people and listen to them and learn what the problems are. Maybe you could start seeing what might be helpful. It’s a really complicated problem, and it’s different than the problem of helping people who don’t want to be helped because you have to figure out who it is that doesn’t want to be helped first. And you don’t want to assume that just because someone’s homeless that they don’t want to be helped. I mean, that doesn’t mean that it’s easy to figure out how to help them. It’s not easy. It’s helping people is a very difficult business, and it’s a very dangerous business, too, because you get tangled up in ways that you wouldn’t expect. And that can be an occupational hazard. Let’s put it that way. How do I stop ruminating? These thoughts are recurring and relate to every and any embarrassing moment I have ever had during my lifetime. I’m a 76 year old woman. Well, oh, well, here’s something you could try. Write down everything that you’re ruminating about. I know that seems counterproductive, but like see ruminations come up accidentally, involuntarily, unconsciously. Whereas if you write down everything that you’re ruminating about, you’re facing them voluntarily. So I would say, well, open up a journal or word document, whatever, and write down every time you ruminate about something, write it down and write down every rumination you can remember exhaustively. Write them all down. That would be the first thing. And the second thing is standard behavioral therapy practice. The second thing, the next thing would be. Write down why you think they happened. So that you get a good causal account and then write down, well, what you might have done about them then. But more importantly, what you could do about them in the future to avoid that, because it doesn’t matter that something embarrassing happened to you once. What matters is whether or not you’re likely to repeat it in the future. But my suspicions are that even if you just. You could just start simply. Write down every ruminating thought that you have voluntarily and think about them in detail and write them down in detail. Get every little word down. And then you have that document. And then when you have a thought and start to ruminate on it, then sit down later after the ruminating thought goes away and bring it to mind voluntarily. So every time you have a thought you don’t want to have. Later, practice having that thought on purpose and try that for about a month. And see what happens, because it’s often the case that if you start thinking about. The thoughts you’re ruminating on consciously and confront them voluntarily that they will start to go away. So you could try that. You could try that. That that should help. What’s the best method to retain what you read and to be able to use it in conversation? Oh, well. It’s very difficult really to retain anything without recalling it. So look, if you encounter something. And then you encounter it again, you can usually recognize that you’ve encountered it before. That’s recognition memory. So it’s it’s an important form of memory. It’s the memory that’s associated with familiarity, but it’s not the same as being able to use something exactly. It’s a rather shallow form of memory, even though it’s necessary. In order to be able to use something. You have to recall it. And this is also very useful hint for studying. Like if you’re studying and you have to remember what you want to do is study. And then you want to write down what you just learned. So you read a paragraph, you close the book and you write down what you remember. Or you read a chapter and you close the book and you write down what you remember. Or at least you sit there and you try to remember because the way you remember is by practicing remembering. OK, so if you’re reading and you want to use it in conversation and you have to think about what you read. You have to put it in your own words. It’s often helpful to close the book and write it down or to associate it with some problem that you’re currently trying to solve. You have to take the knowledge and make it your own. And then and then that alters the structure through which you look at the world. And that changes the way that you think so that when you have a conversation the next time that you’re going to have the conversation in a different way. So merely reading isn’t enough. You have you have to read and think and recall. And it’s the act of recalling that produces the remembering. And it’s that act of remembering that puts that material at hand for you. So. OK, well, look, I’m just about done here. It’s eleven thirty five. So I’ve gone for 19 minutes and I hear people rattling around upstairs and I have to fly to Zurich today. And so I’m going to stop out. I’m going to stop here. So I’ll find one more question and answer it. I just found out I’m having a girl. Congratulations. What can I do to raise her to think for herself and not fall into the modes of thinking proposed by popular culture? Well, you can let her think for herself when she’s a kid. You know, what you do is so that she practices doing that, you know, and so that means that she’s going to be able to think for herself. And so that means to consciously encourage as much autonomy as possible. So how do you do that? Well, let’s say she’s a little kid. She’s three and she start to get interested in clothing. So you lay clothing out on the bed and you say, well, you can wear this or you can wear this. You let her make autonomous decisions. You know, with kids, you don’t want to let them choose from an infinite menu. You want to give them a constrained menu. You want to give them a limited menu. You want to give them a limited menu. You want to give them a limited menu. But what you want to do with your daughter is allow her to make as many decisions as she can possibly make as early as possible. You know, and that doesn’t mean that children always know what’s best for themselves or any nonsense like that. It just means that you’re going to encourage her autonomy to every. In every measure that you can manage, that means you’re going to have to be brave and allow her to subject yourself to a certain number of risks. So you raise her to think for herself by letting her think for herself. And that can start that can start quite early. I would say when she’s a teenager, she’s going to fall into the modes of thinking proposed by popular culture, because that’s part of the culture. Because that’s part of being inculturated and socialized. It’s virtually inevitable and it’s even somewhat desirable. But what you hope is that you’ve. You’ve encouraged the capacity for autonomous thinking to a sufficient degree that it’s likely to integrate with that more intense teenage socialization and then reemerge. So you get someone who comes out the other side as an autonomous individual. And that works with boys and girls. So, so, you know, let’s I guess you do what Geppetto did in Pinocchio is the first thing you decide is, well, you don’t want to raise a puppet. You know, you want to raise an autonomous person. And then you think through what does it mean to be an autonomous person? What sort of person do you want your child to be? What what sort of person do you want to encourage your child to be? And then having having having established that vision in mind, that’s going to guide your choices. But at least you’re making the right choices. You don’t want someone who’s dependent and whiny and cringy and and and more frightened than they need to be. And martyr martyr like and vengeful and malicious and manipulative and mendacious. All of those things you want someone who can make their own judgments. And you can ask kids what they think pretty damn early. Like you have to be careful and not push them beyond their capacity. But if you know your child, you’ll be able to see what level of decision making they’re capable of engaging in. And then you would encourage them to mature as rapidly as they can. You know, and that also means that you have to not allow yourself to fall too in love with the dependent and needy creature that your infant will be to fit. You know, and some of that some of that is negotiation with your child. Find out what they think. What do you think about this? What do you think about who should do the work in the house? How should we split it up like they can be engaged in the decision making processes at a very early age. And then you can ask them what they think about it. And then you can ask them what they think about it. And then you can ask them what they think about it. And part of that’s that encouragement is going to be reflected in your implicit attitude that the child is a real person who’s capable of imposing their will in a realistic sense in the world on the world and doing that in a competent manner. And part of that’s that encouragement is going to be reflected in your implicit attitude that the child is a real person who’s capable of imposing their will in a realistic sense in the world on the world and doing that in a competent and excuse me, competent and confident manner. So, but at least the beginning is the desire to do that. You want to raise a confident, autonomous, courageous, truthful person. And then you reward them when they’re like that. And you notice it and you tell them, good work. You did that right. Keep it up. That’s the right thing. And you tell them why. What they did was right. You know, in a detailed way. And that’s very powerful. You wait and you lurk and you wait for something that you want to have happen. And you say, yes, we’d like to see a lot more of that good work. You do that with yourself and with your partner too. It’s a very powerful technique. All right, everyone, I’m going to say goodbye. Hopefully I’ll do another one of these in February, although I’m not certain. Maybe at the end of January. I have a couple of days there, but I’m going to Australia in February and that’s going to be very busy. So, but maybe I can do I like doing these. Maybe I can do another one in January near the end. So just one last thing. I just want to let everybody know, remind everybody that I am leaving Patreon on the 15th of January. And so thanks for your support over the last couple of years. And hopefully, hopefully my next book will be better than the last one was. That’s the plan. I’m doing my best to manage that. And hopefully we’ll all have a good year, you know, and aim high and all of that. So good to see you. And we’ll talk in something approximating a month. Bye bye.