https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=VXiLvPjeK1M
Hi everybody Welcome to the second of the new q a’s We started them up again in 2021 and i’m pulling questions off Online sources at the moment thinkspot in part other sources as well like instagram Um, i’ve got about 15 lined up for today I’ll start with something that’s somewhat of a softball to warm myself up a bit Thank you for tuning in and I hope that these are useful to you Can I read? Beyond order if I did not read 12 rules for life The answer to that is yes, I wrote the books to stand on their own I think they complement each other if I had to recommend a preferred order of reading I would say read the first one first 12 rules for life first and the second one beyond order second But it’s not necessary Um, if you read beyond order first and 12 rules for second second or if you just read one of them That’ll work out fine, too I wanted the books to stand alone so they’re not dependent on one another um for those of you who don’t know 12 rules for life concentrates more on problems that are associated with an excess of uncertainty and anxiety chaos and Beyond order concentrates on problems that are more associated with an excess of order Stultification and boredom and and entrapment and And tyranny that sort of thing and so they make a matched set given that I view life I suppose from a narrative perspective as the battle between good and evil It’s a moral battle morality because we have to make choices about how to act and how to perceive value predicated choices So that puts us into the domain of morality So we play out the battle between good and evil on a background of order and chaos certainty and uncertainty or Explored territory versus unexplored territory or culture versus nature Those are some of the antithesis described in particular in chapter 11 of the second book beyond order, so That’s the answer to that question. Can I explain what I mean by post-modern? Neomarxism. Well, I hope I can explain it since i’ve been talking about it It’s not that easy to explain because a lot of these terms terms like existentialism phenomenology modernism post-modernism They’re they they they applied to very large domains of thought and it’s not always easy to settle on a definition But we’ll give it a shot. So hypothetically Post-modernism is a reaction to modernism a critical reaction to modernism modernism if you think about it in the enlightenment sense is predicated on the idea that the individual is Paramount is the proper unit of analysis is a fundamental reality is a rational being although also emotional nature is capable of independent speech and thought can Act rationally and think rationally and so that would mean way arguments according to their applicability logic coherence evidence Change perception and action as a consequence be reasoned with Be Validly attributed an independent sovereignty free will that’s all part of the modernist Set of presuppositions post-modernists are Hypothetically skeptical of all grand narratives that might include all religious narratives might include The claim that there’s such thing as a universal hero mythology for example and Might aim at criticizing the grand enlightenment narrative So post-modernism has often been described as skepticism about grand narratives now the problem with that as far as I’m concerned is that I don’t really see the skepticism. I see skepticism about some grand narratives so perhaps there’s skepticism about the enlightenment and the modernist view humanist modernist and religious view of the individual but What I saw happening and see happening still is that Although the formal claim is made that skepticism about grand narratives is paramount what happens in practice and also in theory is that a new kind of narrative is Ushered in and it’s one that appears to me to be a not very well disguised derivative of Marxism and The Marxist claim essentially is that or one of the Marxist claims essentially is that history is best viewed as the economic battleground between oppressor and oppressed between exploiter and exploited between bourgeoisie and proletariat between owners and workers and that that’s There’s no more important phenomena at the individual and group level than that conflict although There is a tremendous difference between people in terms of status I don’t believe that that’s a particularly useful way of interpreting the world And I think that the evidence that interpreting the world in that manner can lead to devastating consequences is overwhelming There are no successful Marxist governments. There are no successful governments that rely essentially on Central planning and that are informed by Marxist theory there are catastrophic failures that are often genocidal now what’s happened with the post modernists is that Many of them were technically speaking Marxists to begin with especially the French intellectuals people like Foucault and Derrida were card-carrying Marxists often or certainly sympathetic to Marxist claims back in the 1960s and when it became Evident to everyone that the application of Marxism almost inevitably resulted in tyranny and genocide it became no longer intellectually credible to promote those ideas as an intellectual Not that that necessarily stopped everybody from doing so well what seemed to happen what happened as far as I can tell is that The idea of economic conflict was replaced by the idea of power that that the most important element of an individual isn’t Their individual identity, but the group that they belong to the racial group the ethnic group that the gender The sex the sexual preference doesn’t matter some element of group identity and that the world is best construed as a battle for power between these different groups and I don’t see that there’s really much difference between the proposition that history was driven by economic conflict between the oppressor and the oppressed and the claim that history is driven by Power relationships between the oppressor and the oppressed and I also failed to see how that’s not a grand narrative The idea that and I also I should also point out that I believe that the idea is absolutely preposterous Not only is it wrong the idea that social institutions are essentially Predicated on power so that if you are striving for power, you’re more likely to succeed in a given functional social institution I don’t believe that there’s any evidence that that’s the case and plenty of evidence evidence to the contrary because the arbitrary expression of power is Actually not a very effective means of attaining Status and authority. It’s certainly a terrible means of attaining competence so the degree to which our social institutions are predicated on actual competence the ability to solve problems that we all regard as necessary problems to solve Striving for power is no means to attain competence and to the degree that our institutions are based on competence They don’t select for power and people who use power arbitrarily to force other people to do their will are Not likely to run stable institutions They’re likely to be overthrown by their underlings often in a not very pleasant manner And that’s true not only for human beings but also for for animals such as our nearest cousins say chimpanzees Where the evidence has become quite clear from the work of primatologists such as Franz de Waal that? Tyrannical chimps can attain the pinnacle of power in a chimp given chimp hierarchy for a short period of time, but tend Differentially to be torn to shreds by a couple of junior interlopers who band together and tired sick and tired of the tyranny it’s not a stable means of of Generating social interaction and the chimps that de Waal has studied who managed to maintain power or Authority or position let’s say over some reasonable period of time Tend to be more reciprocal and more interactive than their subordinate peers they have to spend a lot of time maintaining relationships rather than lording it over others and it’s also the case that none of the successful people I’ve ever met regardless of the Enterprise that they happen to be involved in entrepreneurial managerial administrative or academic scientific or in creative domains that are more entrepreneurial the people I’ve met that were most successful and And perhaps also most satisfied by their success were people who? Constantly went out of their way to be of aid to their superiors their peers and their subordinates and the idea that it’s the desire for power that Drives all of us forward is Well as I said, it’s not a credible idea scientifically partly because the expression of aggression Which has to be related to the expression of power if power is to mean anything so it has to be I’ll use My capacity for aggression to force you to do something that you wouldn’t do voluntarily That’s a reasonable definition of the expression of power its failures by and large who turn to aggression to Mediate their social interactions and people become less aggressive as they’re socialized not more aggressive and Chronically aggressive children adolescents and adults tend to be alienated isolated friendless familyless and Criminal slash incarcerated. It’s not a good strategy and so post modernism shouldn’t be allied with Marxism because postmodernism is hypothetically skepticism about The applicability of grand narratives and then the assumption that grand narratives But then the assumption comes in that the grand narratives were only stories told by people attempting to justify their arbitrary grip on the levers of power Let’s say and that leads us into the entire proposition that our social institutions and our ambitions are essentially predicated on the desire for power and as I said that appears to me to be not only wrong but Anti-true and I’ve been thinking about the idea of anti-truth lately I mean, you know if you lie the best way to lie is to almost tell the truth and so, you know, it’s false, but it’s close to the truth so maybe you can get away with it, but there are forms of Discourse let’s say or or there are theoretical propositions that are so opposite to reality that they’re not just lies They they are the opposite of the case and I truly believe that our functional social institutions are held together by productive reciprocity they degenerate when they degenerate They degenerate they can degenerate into a tyranny that’s predicated on power But the fact that degenerate institutions are predicated on power Is only an indication that they’re degenerate it’s no indication at all that that’s the central tendency of our most fundamental social Institutions imagine you believe that well imagine that you believe that it’s power Well, then you’re going to be inclined to exercise power insofar as you wish to be successful And so maybe that’s a way of justifying your own power drive but if you’re guilty about that because you think that the arbitrary expression of power is immoral and You perhaps you should think that then you’re going to view your own ambitions and certainly the ambitions of others with a tremendous skepticism and How are you going to move forward with any confidence in your life if you believe that your own ambitions to succeed are? Predicated on nothing, but the arbitrary expression of power and so I think it’s also psychologically devastating so Now post there’s another element of postmodernism that we should discuss too And that’s the idea that and again these are vague ideas that There’s how would how would we put it? There’s also criticisms of the idea of objective truth and so Classically speaking we would draw a distinction between what’s real in the world as such independent of our interpretation And our interpretation there are lines of postmodernist thinking and these are particularly associated with Derrida That appear to imply although it’s difficult to pin down that everything is interpretation and That’s part of the skepticism everything’s interpretation, but then what that leads the practitioners of those interpretive theories To conclude is well back to power Because that they sneak this grand narrative back in that way and as far as I’m concerned That’s just a new justification for old Marxist presuppositions so I Hope that’s clear. It probably isn’t but It’s as good as I can do at the moment Hi JP given your oft repeated messages about the dangers of ideology What advice do you have for your fans who may view your own teachings with such dogma? I guess who may view your own teachings with such Well, I’ll just read the question given your oft repeated message about the dangers of ideology What advice do you have for your fans who may view your own teachings with such regard that those ideas become an ideology? Themselves lots of love from a 98th percentile orderly UK based engineer. Well the first thing I would say is that Whenever a developing mind encounters a Comprehensive set of novel ideas There is the initial danger of sliding into uncritical acceptance of those ideas and that can happen Whenever you read anyone who’s thought through things with some degree of Thoroughness so I fell into Nietzsche. I fell into Dostoevsky. I fell into Jung. I fell into Freud I fell into Rogers The latter are all clinicians when I teach my personality course when I taught my personality course at Harvard and U of T I would present each thinker in the strongest possible terms and But even though they didn’t always agree that there was a central element of agreement but certainly plenty of disagreement and That was somewhat disconcerting to the students because they would identify with one thinker and then we’d go on to another and they’d identify With them and then we’d go on to another and and so on but I think that’s okay as long as you come out the other end and you tend to and so when you encounter a new set of ideas you do tend to Adopt them somewhat dogmatically to begin with as you’re puzzling through them and then later with more development and more reading You kind of come back to yourself. And so I think that’s part of the developmental course of expanding your philosophical or psychological knowledge, um, I Do warn against oversimplified thinking particularly in chapter 6 of Beyond Order, which is called abandoned ideology and that’s a Method it’s actually a discourse on Methodology of thought, you know What I warn against primarily there are low resolution answers to low resolution questions What should we do about the planet’s ecology, let’s just not a very good question it’s way too vague How should we restructure our economic system? Well, it’s too global and vague those those questions Don’t lead to productive answers because they’re ill formed How do we make people less aggressive? That’s another category another question of that type You have to differentiate the questions. So to a to a very high degree before you can Before you can be reasonably sure that your conceptualization is productive and not dangerous and so that you have some shot at Perhaps answering the question in part. So with regards to aggression, for example Maybe you’re concerned about interpersonal aggression aggression between people you might be able to say how could we reduce the incidence of physical aggression kicking biting and hitting for example among Six year old boys in a given geographical locale a much more specific sort of question. So I Would encourage people to think in detail and not to accept blanket Ideological answers you do that in proportion to your ignorance of the field Like we all of us want to have a complete map of the world But we lack differentiated knowledge of many many things and so when an ideology comes along that purports to provide all The answers to even questions that we haven’t yet asked were likely to be to welcome it because it fills in the gaps in our map But you have to be careful of Confusing that with genuine knowledge and Then and and you have to strive towards genuine knowledge So I would say for people who believe perhaps that they’ve fallen too deeply under the sway of my ideas The best antidote to that would be to read other people. I have a reading list online at Jordan B Peterson comm under books There’s a list of recommended books there which were books that I found particularly influential, you know So maybe that would just cement the dogma but I don’t think it would and so broader reading is is advised and and Writing as well for that matter if you really want to learn to think in in a revelatory manner creative manner and also in a critical manner Writing and editing is an extremely useful thing to do So but I’ll reiterate, you know when you first encounter a set of philosophical ideas Especially if you’re not in haven’t been inclined to think philosophically that much in the past You’re very much likely to come under the powerful sway of the first trained mind that you encounter but Well, don’t stop there, you know, there’s lots of other people to read so I I Guess the other thing I would recommend is an outline this in chapter 12 Although it’s a very strong theme in my first book maps of meaning. I viewed the teaching that I did and the writing especially with maps of meaning as an antidote to ideology and Because I came you know, it’s not easy to differentiate ideology from belief or ideology from religion for that matter So what’s the difference between ideology and religious belief or belief per se? My sense was that an ideology not only provides a very low resolution representation of the world But it also tends to only tell part of the story now so then you might ask well, what’s the whole story and That’s a very complicated question but my answer to that and this is a consequence of reading deeply into the clinical literature my Hypothesis about that was something that was essentially it turned out being essentially akin to Freud now Freud produced a very balanced picture of the Psyche which is part of the reason Freud’s thinking was so influential and part of the reason why his thinking still saturates our thinking even though We think we’ve dispensed with Freud actually what we’ve done is incorporated The most brilliant insights of Freud so deeply that we think of them as presuppositions now obvious like that We have an ego everyone knows what the idea is or virtually everyone or certainly believes that we’re driven by fundamentally, you know unconscious and biological drives That’s a very Freudian idea and that that there is some super ego You know the effect of society upon us or at least some concept that’s akin to that We’ve taken a lot of Freud’s ideas But Freud was very balanced because he talked about the id so you could think about that as nature within It’s the natural world within it was a positive element and a negative element It was the source of all energy, but also it was blind in its motivational demands Let’s say blind and wild in its motivational demands unruly and dangerous as a force Although completely necessary and then the ego well the ego was had a positive element and a negative element as well So and then the super ego is that society all things considered? That’s the patriarchy and in from the Freudian perspective it can be overweening and tyrannical So it can go too far and be negative, but it’s also a positive force because it counterbalances the blind selfish impulsive Narrow drives of the id and make social Organization possible so Freud has a three-tier view of Psychological reality and each element has a positive and negative Pole and to me that indicates a balanced theory I Believe that an intact religion tends to produce a balanced Representation of that sort and that what ideology ideologies do is parasitize that fundamental narrative and so I Can outline two ideologies? so I Would say that the the narrative that drove the settling of the United States in particular the frontier myth That’s a ideology, so it’s positive individual That’s the you know Forthright pioneer boldly going where no one has gone before because a positive view of Civilization and society because along with the pioneering spirit comes the civilization that’s imposed on well, then there’s nature Negative it needs civilizing. It’s a wild force and the positive individual bringing benevolent culture to this savage world That’s the frontier myth and it’s very motivating and it’s true because that’s a story that can be acted out But it’s incomplete and I believe that that was compensated for that incompleteness was compensated for That this started to happen in the early in the late 1800s with the rise of the conservation ethic, but also really manifested itself in the 1960s with the environmentalist Ideology and I’m not saying that there is no valid environmentalist claims that that’s different Issue but there’s a narrative the individual is a power-hungry Dispoiler society is fundamentally rapacious greedy and devouring and mother nature is being In there all her innocence raped continually So and you see that’s exactly the opposite of the frontier myth wherever it lacked So the frontier myth had a negative view of nature, although it could be fertile but only you know if social if so if brought under the sway of the proper social processes Civilization agricultural of that it had to be tamed nature. It was wild well the environmental nature is everything beautiful in and of itself the benevolence of mother nature and Society on the frontier myth side is a civilizing force and on the environmentalist side is a Despoiling force and the individual is a hero in the Frontier myth but a villain essentially a villain Selfish greedy grasping devouring villain on the environmentalist front now if you put both of those together You get a whole you get the whole story now, of course, it’s rife with paradoxes and that’s problematic People don’t like that, but it’s much more comprehensive. And so I’ve suggested to people that You know if you only have a negative view of the patriarchy for example Of the patriarchy for example, well, where’s the positive element and if you only have a positive view of nature Well, you know, what about cancer and guinea worms? I think they’re called guinea worms They’re a kind of parasitic worm that whose nature I don’t want to go into but aren’t pleasant and have thankfully been eradicated And then with the regard to the individual too is like well, there should be polarity there And I think in a well-functioning religious system Provides you with a polarized view of all these different levels of reality individual social and natural and ideologies fragment that and so they gain their power by Riding like parasites on an underlying religious reality essentially Religious narrative that’s necessary to orient you properly in the world functionally in the world and and functionally both with regard to yourself Functionally with regard to yourself nature and society so Now that’s the answer to that question. Hi, dr Peterson I have a 12 year old sister who’s recently been really interested in starting dressing as a boy even changing Her hair and cutting it very short. I’m sure she is in an exploratory phase But i’m a little worried should I or my parents intervene or let her just explore now that she’s young Lovely to have you back. Dr. Peterson Well, thank you for that. Um Look, let me tell you a story about my son When he was little three two, maybe even two probably really little his sister who was a year and a half older had a bunch of female friends, obviously and They used to play dress up in the basement and they’d spend a fair bit of time dressing julian up in like as a fairy or as a princess and um, you know, I Kind of cast my eyes upward on that and my eyebrows and but then I thought about it for a couple of minutes and I thought well look What’s going on here? Well julian is engaged in this game And he’s having a good time. And so, you know, he was I trusted his instincts as a small child you know to the degree that you can trust a small child’s instincts because they go straight to but You know, he seemed to be a well-adjusted kid and he was playing and what do you do when you play well you Experiment with different roles with different identities. That’s what especially fantasy play. That’s what fantasy play is So let’s say that you’re a little boy and you want to understand little girls Well, you’re not gonna think them through. I mean Jesus even adult males can’t think adult females through. I mean they’re caught we’re very complicated and Um Thinking about it Isn’t necessarily going to get you very far. It’s like thinking about dancing isn’t going to make you into a good dancer And so what julian was doing when some sense was more akin to dancing than to thinking He was playing at what it meant to be female. So he was using his his own body his own Being To act out what was feminine and the girls were playing with that too You know, they they were trying to assess the difference between male and female and and how those might inter Relate and that’s why they were fascinated with that kind of dress-up play So I just let it go let it happen and that was the right decision because I realized that had I interfered with it I would have been saying to him The feminine the nature of the feminine is such That it presents such a danger to what is masculine or what is young that it can’t even be played with in fantasy And that’s definitely the wrong message and so you know he dressed up like a print let them dress him up as a princess and enjoyed it or as a fairy and played it out and that was all fine and You know he he did Know how much this had to do with that play. I have no idea but he grew up to be You know a very diplomatic and understanding sort of person and although he’s tough as a boot and so It worked out fine now with regards to your 12 year old sister Look, there’s a huge range of gender experimentation and gender Expression among young people and I would say that your instincts that this is an exploratory phase are Accurate and that you should leave it be however I would also say that you should be there and watch and talk because things are so unsettled now in relationship to gender identity that what could easily just be Laudable exploratory pre play or the exploration of the boundaries of gender identity could easily be transformed into assertions by ideologically addled Interlocutors that this is indication that your sister is in fact male and And that’s a that would be a consequence of falling prey to the very stereotypes that are hypothetically under attack the fact that this girl woman to be is feeling urges to toy with a masculine self-presentation Is no indication that is no necessary indication that at some level she desires to be a man It’s a form of play and it should Or a form of fashion, which is also a form of play for that matter. And so I think your best bet is to say to her implicitly and explicitly you’d say it implicitly by leaving it alone to some degree but even explicitly to say look if you want to play around the boundaries of identification as male or female go right ahead, but don’t Mistake don’t prematurely mistake your interest in the manner in which the other sex presents itself as Some indication that there is something flawed about your own or questionable about your own identity as a female it’s no it’s not evidence for that and so play but don’t assume that the play is Manifesting itself because there’s some Necessarily hidden reality that has to be brought to the surface and I think that is a real danger in in the political landscape That we have set up right now so It’s play and fair enough. So You know you see this There’s all sorts of play in in terms of gender representation in the 1970s in in the rock and roll world There’s a whole subset of glam rock which was men and theatrical men adopting makeup and and and high heels platform shoes tight clothes long hair all elements of Femininity essentially kind of a dramatic femininity. They were still men. It was part of play and entertainment and and drama and That’s fine You don’t the drama doesn’t have to take on a physiological reality You know at that point you have to wonder if it’s gone a bit too far That that should be the first presumption is that it’s gone a bit too far at that point. So So I’d say Leave-er be Encourage her for that matter, but keep an eye on her, you know and and don’t let her fall prey to any foolish advice and Don’t let her get too confused as a consequence of her exploration in all probability I mean, this is the general life course even children who have gender dysphoria, you know, so who are unhappy with their current sex The data indicate that the vast majority of them settle into identity with their physiological form and their Psychobiological form for that matter By the time they’re 18 so and there’s a tremendous wide Tremendously wide range of femininity to masculinity within women and a tremendously wide range of femininity to masculinity within men too, so what constitutes normal is a pretty broad category and So probably Don’t worry about it. It’s it’s and there might even be some rebellion in it And that’s not necessarily a bad thing in teenagers as well. They have to push back in some ways so Yeah, I Hope you’re doing well, dr. Jordan Peterson. Well, thank you for that. Thanks for all your work question I’ve noticed in myself that I’m insensitive and I have a hard time empathizing with others losses Everyone was in shock and grief crying except me. For example when my uncle mid-50 died in an accident a few weeks ago Sorry to hear that and I noticed down many times in the past that I’m callous and indifferent to human suffering or feelings Is it something important to think about and reconcile or perhaps some people are just born that way if they are how can I develop myself? well, I Don’t know because I don’t know you I don’t know because I don’t know you but so I have to give a generic answer I would first of all caution you against taking this answer to personally because I don’t know who you are and I’d need to know the details, but I can answer it generically to some degree So the first thing I’d like to point out is that despite your claims to be callous and indifferent you were polite enough to open this question with a Query or comment on my well-being. I hope you were doing well, dr Jordan Peterson. So even if you didn’t feel that Hope deeply you were polite enough to to utter it and Politeness is an aspect technically speaking politeness is an aspect of trait agreeableness Which is the empathy dimension? So there’s five cardinal personality dimensions extroversion sociability positive emotion Gregariousness extroverts love to be in groups. They like to entertain they like to be the center of attention They’re they’re energetic active and Manifest a lot of positive emotion. They’re verbal as well Introverts they’re quiet. They tend to keep to themselves. They’d rather have one-on-one interactions with people I think introverts prefer nature and extroverts prefer the human social world But the evidence for the introverted preference for nature is weaker, but it’s it’s something that I’ve noticed for what it’s worth Neuroticism that’s the negative emotion Dimension some people experience much higher levels of negative emotion per unit of negative experience than others That might be relevant to you and we’ll get back to that Agreeableness, which is the empathy dimension women are higher in agreeableness. They’re higher in neuroticism as well quite substantially in both cases, although populations of men and women overlap more than they differ Agreeableness is the empathy dimension. It’s composed of Compassion and politeness and you’re describing yourself as relatively low perhaps relatively low in compassion that’s a more masculine mode of being and In its extreme it can produce callousness and insensitivity to the point where the best personality predictor of criminal predatory behavior antisocial behavior is Low agreeableness, but it has to be pretty damn low and it has to be combined with other negative attributes before that’s a problem Because Disagreeable people are also very tough-minded Skeptical hard to push around ambitious forthright And and Well, they’re good people to have on your side. They’ll tell you bad news when they need to So it’s in and of itself. It’s not necessarily a detrimental trait. So we’d have to look at your entire personality Okay, that the fourth dimension is conscientiousness that’s orderliness and industriousness and the fifth dimension is openness to experience which is essentially Creativity and intelligence some amalgam of that. So the first thing we’d have to figure out is why you are less emotional Than other people now there’s two likely possible reasons So the first thing I would recommend for you is that you go to this website that my colleagues and I built called Understand myself calm Understand myself calm you can do a good personality test there That’ll give you the five factors and break each of them down into their two aspects Now what I would predict in your case is that you’re relatively low in agreeableness particularly compassion and You may also be relatively low in neuroticism Which means that you’re just not that prone to negative emotion And so the combination of those two which is very masculine by the way low neuroticism and low agreeableness That’s masculine personality configuration means that you don’t feel negative emotion as much as other people might so you’d be much less likely to cry for example even under conditions that might evoke grief and other people and you’re not as Empathetic you don’t feel other piece people’s feelings as intensely as someone who’s highly empathetic and That’s possible you could be low in agreeableness and low in neuroticism I wouldn’t despair if I was you because that doesn’t doom you to a life of callousness Let’s think about other personality configurations that might be relevant to you if you’re extraverted and low in agreeableness You tend to be narcissistic because an extraverted person likes to dominate the social Circumstance and if they’re disagreeable as well, then they don’t really care about their impact on other people and so extraversion High extraversion plus low agreeableness can lead to narcissism and you have to watch that because if you’re narcissistic Then you really are the star all for yourself And that’s actually just not a very good way of negotiating the world People will turn off to you after some time because they’ll discover that you’re not Reciprocal enough in your interactions, you’re not generous enough It might be helpful if you were high in conscientiousness, let’s say because If agreeableness helps make someone social one of the things that helps make them socially acceptable Reciprocal altruistic willing to do favors for other people generous and so forth Conscientiousness also aids in that conscientious people are likely to keep their word. They have integrity They’re honest they’ll make and keep Verbal contracts and so if you’re low in agreeableness, but high in conscientiousness people can still trust you even though you’re a hard ass You know fundamentally you’re honest and so you’ll do what you say you’ll do if you’re high in conscientiousness Now if you’re low in conscientiousness and low in agreeableness, well, that can start to be trouble because then You you’re not likely to work that hard and you’re likely to take advantage of others and so that starts to get into more serious personality configuration problem Now If you’re high in neuroticism and low in agreeableness that can also be problematic That’s hallmark of personality disorder not all personality disorders But some of them because you’re you experience a tremendous amount of distress and you’ll use that as a weapon Because you don’t really care about your impact on other people and so that can be a problem but I Wouldn’t Presume on the basis of what you’ve told me that you’re in trouble now if you are genuinely extremely low in in Compassion for example, so take this personality test and find out an extremely low would be let’s say under fifth percentile And even then it’s your one in twenty. So that’s not that bad, you know, it’s or not that extreme I don’t mean bad if you’re at the first percentile. Well, you know that’s starting to get into Genuine extreme if you’re really low in compassion You might and this would work especially well if you were high in conscientiousness, but it might work Anyways, you might try as an exercise to Regularly and routinely think of something that you could do for other people and do it like you might have to do that Coldly and cognitively in some sense instead of emotionally and nicely But I suspect that that would help expand your personality So you could still have the advantages of being disagreeable being hard to take advantage of for example But you could learn the advantages of generosity and reciprocity and so That’s about the best I can do with that So probably you’re low in agreeableness and low in negative emotion and probably not too low in each So, you know do the personality test and find out and if you are really low in agreeableness then think perhaps of making a conscious plan to Be more reciprocal to do things for other people to learn how to do that as a skill That would likely serve you well if you’re really low in negative emotion or autism I wouldn’t worry about that too much unless you’re really high in extroversion because that might mean that you’re likely to take more risks than you should because you get enthusiastic and carried away and you’re not afraid even when you should be so That’s that pretty much How to understand God is love You talk about God as the ultimate judge and focus on accountability slash living as if God exists But how to love God is it a feeling like loving a person can love balance out the crushing responsibility? This is a hard question. I’m gonna take it apart in a couple of ways This is my understanding so it isn’t how to understand God is love because I can’t answer that question But I can I can I can provide some information about how I might understand what that means well, the first thing is is that I think that you you have to make a decision in your life and this is This is a decision and I would say that it’s a voluntary element of faith because it isn’t exactly evidence-based It’s more like something you decide before you even look at the evidence It’s more like you decide to stake your life on this like, you know If you decide to get married to someone you don’t really do it on the basis of the evidence that you’re going to have a happy Life because you don’t have that evidence you do it you decide that you’re going to make a happy life with this person And that it’s worth the risk. So you you get married as an expression of faith Okay, and and so faith doesn’t mean believing things that no one with any sense would believe faith Sometimes means putting a stake in this to sand and saying Here is where I stand In some sense regardless and you do that when you get married you do that Maybe when you you know pledge allegiance to a friend you have a best friend and you want to maintain that friendship As long as you possibly can it’s it’s it’s a decision of faith Maybe you do that when you decide a career when you go to university because you could have done something else, right? But you chose that so that’s where you put your faith And like I said, that doesn’t mean believing what no reasonable person would believe Okay, so back to God is love. Well, I’m gonna talk about being first instead of God and Being is the totality of experience that we’re gonna define that it that way for the purposes of this discussion Being is what there is instead of nothing and you experience that as a conscious creature Being is what you experience as a conscious creature. It includes all your emotions all your motivations all your subjective experience as well as everything That’s objective Okay, so It seems to me that all things considered It’s a useful Move of faith to act as if you love being and if you love something then you want the best in it to flourish and so you maybe you decide deep in your soul that It would be better for you to act towards an end that Makes everything that’s good better that that’s the best way to live to make everything that’s good better and maybe to restrict the development of everything That’s malevolent and evil within yourself and in the broader world insofar as you’re able to do that and so I think that’s an expression of love is that because when you love something you care for it and the proper attitude towards being I think is care and so So that’s one element of God is love God being Analogous in some way to being Now we could look at God more classically as the creator of being if you assume being is good well it’s not much of a leap to assume the creator of being is good and maybe you adopt an attitude towards the creator of being and that’s also love and you open your heart to existence and Maybe that’s the most effective means of having existence open its heart to you So for example, you know if you love other people you want the best for them You want the best in you to serve the best in them if you love them and you trust them courageously So you open yourself up to them? I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume that that’s how you elicit the best from them the best that can be elicited You’re gonna get hurt sometimes and betrayed but that’s gonna happen no matter what approach you take I think that’s the most effective approach and that is perhaps the most effective approach to existence per se to approach it with love and courage and and so that’s How that looks to me is It’s a feeling like loving a person. Yes. I think it is. I think it is a feeling like loving a person it’s it’s the generalization of that care that you would have for a Child your child your your brother your sister a family member. It’s the generalization of that to the broader domain of of Existence to broader domain of domains of existence and I think that’s a skill in some sense, right? I mean if you’re good at loving and caring for your family, but you can Expand that outwards so that more people are brought under that umbrella then well assuming you can manage that’s very difficult It seems to me that that’s laudable It seems to me that we spontaneously admire and would like to imitate people who are capable of that And so you see that when you have a job or you and you encounter a boss who takes you under his or her wing and helps develop you or You find a teacher who’s particularly inspiring or you work for an entrepreneur who’s inspiring and who also opens doors for you They’re acting with love as far as I’m concerned They want the best in them to serve the best in you and that’s very very motivating for everyone and That’s the proper basis of our social relationships not power for God’s sake So can love balance out the crushing responsibility? That’s a sophisticated question. I don’t know the answer to that Love is warmer than responsibility love is the is part of empathy and agreeableness It’s a different dimension than responsibility, which is more part of conscientiousness and sort of a cold virtue I don’t know if it balances out the crushing responsibility, but I think it’s the emotional analog to the crushing responsibility Right. So maybe there’s love and duty and they run parallel in if you’re an ethical person That’s not all there is to ethics, but you know love and duty there They’re important and and maybe they’re better together than they would be as independent entities, so Okay Hi, Dr. Peterson, I’m a 25 year old female I think I’m afraid of intimacy and closeness The thought of a man taking care of me and having to cede some of my control to create room for that scares me I want to try and be in a romantic relationship, but I don’t know how to allow it. What advice do you have? Okay. Well, let’s take your questions apart. First of all, I Think I am afraid of intimacy and closeness I Think I am afraid of intimacy and closeness. Okay, fair enough and and the first thing I would tell you is that does not make you unique and I’m not saying that in a manner that’s designed to be condescending or insulting I’m just saying that well, that’s a very common fear. You’re not alone You may think you’re alone in that but you definitely aren’t and it’s also a justified fear I mean if you allow someone to be close to you Then you open yourself up to them and they can hurt and betray you so of course there’s reason to be afraid So so what do you do about that? Well There’s reason to be afraid of lack of intimacy and distance you want to be alone for the rest of your life That’s a frightening thought in all likelihood. It’s not that easy to get through life on your own You know, it’s lonesome and difficult and if you’re in trouble You don’t have someone to help you out and you don’t have someone to help when they’re in trouble and you don’t have anyone to Share your triumphs with and all of that so that’s not good So you might be afraid of intimacy, but you should be at least as afraid of its lack And so maybe those fears can balance, you know, you say well, I’m afraid of intimacy so I won’t go there Well, you’re not afraid enough of being alone. And so you got to bring that up. It’s like yeah Well, I don’t want to be alone for the rest of my life assuming you don’t it seems like you don’t because you said I Want to try to be in a romantic relationship So you want this and it does look like fear is inhibiting you to some degree because You’re 25 and it sounds from the tone of your question that you haven’t been in a relationship before so it could easily be fear That’s stopping you. So let’s talk about trust for a second You might say well, why should I trust when I could get hurt? And that’s a good question You you trust when you’re naive because you don’t know you can get hurt and that’s not Ethical that’s not moral. It’s not laudable. It’s just Naivety once you know you can be hurt you trust as a courageous decision Knowing that if you trust someone you can bring out the best in them and knowing that if you don’t you’ll never see it So it’s a calculated risk and it’s an intelligent calculated risk designed to move you and the other person to To the best so you you can tell yourself that I’m gonna take a risk I might get hurt but I’m gonna take a risk knowing it’s a risk. It’s a reasonable risk. Don’t be a fool, but it’s a reasonable risk And And remember that you have some reason to be afraid of intimacy and closeness, but you know, you should also see both of those as Positives on your side to be intimate with someone means that you can share your thoughts with them and think things through with them And you can share your triumphs and your disappointments and all of that you broaden out your life You broaden out your ability to solve problems You increase the probability all things considered that you’re going to remain sane because two people who are Communicating are generally saner than one person who is only thinking by themselves so So you don’t want to deprive yourself of that even though it’s somewhat dangerous to be hooked up with someone The thought of a man taking care of me and having to cede some of my control to create room for that scares me Well, you got to think about how you’ve posed those questions Seed some of your control. Well, are you sure that’s what a relationship is about? Are you sure it’s about seeding control? I mean Because there’s an idea there that the relationship is going to be based on power. It’s well more you you you end up with someone and you negotiate with them and So, you know, where do you want to live? What career do you want to have? Where do you want to be educated? How many children do you want to have? Well, you don’t know not really you have your opinions and maybe you think I’m gonna enforce those I want that control but maybe you think instead well Wouldn’t it be good to have the opportunity to discuss all those options with someone reasonable and come to a joint conclusion? But would be best for both of you moving forward. Maybe you could have your cake and eat it too. It’s not seeding control and I would say don’t seed control like you know If there are things in your life that you absolutely need then you want to negotiate for those but the the the the essence of the relationship should be truthful negotiation not control and power and so You may be afraid because you have a misapprehension about what an optimal relationship or reasonable relationship would be The thought of a man taking care of me. Well, what do you mean by that exactly? I mean Do you do you feel that it’s that you’re going to be infantilized because someone is taking care of you that they’re gonna want But they’re gonna want to decide what’s best for you. Well again, there’s a power Assumption lurking at the bottom of that that may not be helpful to be taken care of means that you know someone is gonna be looking out for you and if they think something is good and helpful for you are gonna help you Find it and maybe help provide that for you, but you’re going to do that with them reciprocally so you’ll be taking care of each other and That should be a positive thing on both fronts I know that’s idealistic and it’s never perfect and there is power struggles in a relationship But that doesn’t mean that the power dynamic is the basis for the relationship it sounds to me like you’re afraid of being dominated and so You you need to I would say one thing that you should really strive to do when you enter a romantic relationship is Not to avoid conflict not to pretend that you’re something other than you are because then you won’t seed control and you won’t fall prey to a pathological power dynamic that often happens when people hide themselves because they don’t trust and Then they don’t get what they want because how could they they’ve never expressed it, you know And and then the other person dominates them because they’ve never expressed any of their own desires. Well, don’t do that, you know Confer with yourself a very useful Marker for that is resentment You know if you’re in a relationship with someone and you feel resentment climbing up on you that’s an indication of one of two things you’re either immature and Unwilling to make the sacrifices necessary for the relationship or to negotiate fairly within the relationship and then you should mature out of that as fast as you possibly can and maybe you can do that through dialogue with your partner or The resentment might mean that you are in fact being taken advantage of and that you have something to say so don’t let if resentment pops up find out whether you’re immature or being oppressed and if it’s the latter then you have something to say to enter into a negotiation and The negotiation should be that you both get something better than either of you would have had if you were separate You know, sometimes it’s a zero-sum game and only one person can win the negotiation But that’s that’s suboptimal and it certainly isn’t the typical pattern for a good negotiation. So I Want to try and be in a romantic relationship, but I don’t know how to allow it Well, the next thing I would say is well one step at a time You don’t have to do this any faster than you want to so slow it down, you know, so How would a generic relationship start? Well, maybe you meet online. Well, what do you do first you email each other? Excuse me If I’m out of touch you email each other you know when you talk about Trivial things to begin with just to see if the other person can even talk and then you know you start sharing something and when You do that you see if the other person shares something of about equivalent emotional significance And then maybe you share something deeper and see if they do the same in return and you test each other out in writing Maybe you exchange photographs and you see if you’re curious and interested and if you are well then maybe you meet for coffee in the middle of the afternoon in a well-lit location where there’s lots of other people around and You check the person out and you have a conversation and you see if you like them and if there’s some attraction and if there’s some Curiosity and maybe you meet for coffee three times because you’re not in a hurry You know and then maybe you go to a movie and you see if you decide which movie or if he decides which movie and whether that can be negotiated about and whether you respond the same way and whether you have anything to talk about afterwards and Maybe that’s all you do. Maybe you go to a movie five times. Like you don’t have to do this any faster than Necessary and so if you’re afraid don’t bite off more than you can chew you can Adjust the rate at which the relationship progresses and I would say and I would say that to all the women who are listening It’s like slow the hell down There you think that if you don’t allow the relationship to proceed Sexually say at a very rapid rate You’re gonna lose the interest of the guy if that’s the case then lose it because it’s not worth it If he has any sense at all if you slow things down and there’s anything more there than just mere physical lust Let’s say narrow-minded impulsive physical lust which is nothing to sneer at by the way, but is hardly the basis for a good relationship If he can’t tolerate it’s slowing down. Well, then he’s not that interested in you or he’s immature or So don’t worry about that. Slow it down. It’s it’s to everyone’s advantage to slow it down So slow it down until you’re not afraid That’s part of learning to negotiate with yourself So get the hell out there and get in the romantic relationship try them out But don’t do them quickly and make sure that you keep your head about you and that you don’t You know That you don’t allow your cowardice essentially to interfere with your ability to express what you want and you want to question your Presupposition that the relationship is necessarily going to be predicated on something like power and control because that’s not a good relationship That isn’t how relationships should function They’re pathological when that’s what they’re about and you should be afraid of them if that’s what they’re about so Get out there and learn how to do it. But do it slow play a bit practice a bit But get at it because you’re 25, you know, it’s time to get moving You’ll be 30 a lot faster than you think so get at it Dr. Peterson, I’m a recent father My daughter is one month old and sometimes I find it hard to deal with my daughter I feel a lot of frustration when she spent hours crying and I don’t know what to do since you can’t reason with a baby Is it okay not to feel love to my baby during these episodes of frustration? Am I a bad father for feeling this way? Look everyone is upset frustrated and Stressed by a crying baby, I mean that’s what the crying is for like it’s There isn’t anything that’s more upsetting than a baby who won’t stop crying Well for obvious reasons right because if you didn’t care whether the baby cried Well, then you wouldn’t respond to its distress. So don’t worry about that it’s like, you know, one of the things I’ve often recommended to my clients who are Driven to distraction by a baby, maybe a colicky baby, you know We won’t quit crying is put some earplugs in now You can have a baby monitor watch the baby, you know, and I’m not saying go deaf and hide in another room So you if something terrible happens to your baby, you don’t know it But you don’t have to torture yourself to death and some earplugs if the baby’s crying all the time can bring the level of stress Down for you and your wife without interfering with anything. So think about that if the baby’s crying a lot Babies shouldn’t cry Constantly day after day hour after hour if you should if that’s happening if your baby is crying This is a guess. It’s not medical advice. I could be wrong, but it’s like a parameter You know if your baby is crying more than three hours a day especially continually and it’s probably much less than that but You know, you should you should probably think about Talking to a doctor about that and see if there’s some gastrointestinal problem one of the things you might check is and see is what your wife is eating if she’s Breastfeeding because infants can respond quite dramatically with intestinal upset to the components of breast milk and cruciferous vegetables, for example can be particularly Toxic in that regard. So that’s something to check out You could experiment with the baby with different, you know have your wife eat different foods When she’s breastfeeding but earplugs can really be helpful Sometimes you find it hard to deal with your crying daughter. Well, she’s only a month old Well, you don’t even know her, you know when I had kids my wife of course had had nine months in some sense to get accustomed to the idea of the baby because she had had the pregnancy and Had the pregnancy and in some sense she was already in a relationship But my sense was who the hell is this, you know, and I mean it was a baby and it was my baby And so it was a particular baby, but I didn’t have any particular Relationship with that person to begin with and something you have to learn. You’ve only had a month You don’t know this person You got to get to know a baby even when they’re little you have to spend time with them You have to rock them you have to play with them a little bit it’s hard when they’re that young It’s particularly hard for fathers in my estimation You know, it’s easier for fathers when babies become more interactive say after nine months So don’t worry about that too much You’ve got to get to know this person but do do that because it’s worth it and so do what you can to interact change the baby’s diapers and you know patter and and and and and look at her and and Babies like massage it’s really good for them and you can kind of get to know the baby that way and Hold her as much as you can and rock her and all of that, but don’t worry like unless you You wouldn’t be worried about this if you were the kind of monster that should worry about it You know, you’re concerned because you don’t have always this overwhelming sense of love It’s like you got to get to know this person you will in all likelihood don’t be scared away from the baby because because of this, you know, and It’s only the early months I it took me like six months to really start to get to know the baby And and you see the person’s there already like I have kids who were grown now and they’re who they were when they were babies Like they’re way distant when they’re babies and they’re not well defined. They’re kind of far away in some sense, you know, they’re They haven’t come out into the world But the their core character is there and you have to get to know them And as you get to know them you’ll get to love them that that’s what will happen in all likelihoods Don’t worry about that. No, you’re not a bad father. And of course, you’re gonna be driven to distraction and frustration by the baby’s Tears and maybe by the child’s misbehavior like you have to defend yourself against that and you can talk to your wife about this and You can spell each other too Like if your baby’s crying a lot and there’s nothing that you can do about it medically, let’s say maybe you know You need to go for an hour-long walk and then come back and your wife needs to go for an hour-long walk So that you can get away from the crying because it can drive you to bloody distraction And it’s not good to be pushed beyond your capacity for tolerance, but I don’t see any Reason for you to be concerned. You have a one-month-old daughter your Christ. You’re still so sleep-deprived in all likelihood You don’t know which way is up The first year is very intense and although extremely interesting and compelling because of all the transformations It’s quite challenging. And so just hang in there. You’ll you’ll do fine Massage, you know babies like touch they like skin-to-skin contact That’s another thing you can do is put the baby on your chest You know with without any the baby can have a diaper on obviously but skin-to-skin contact babies like that They like to be touched. They like to be padded Get to know the baby. Don’t be afraid. And like I said earplugs can really help you can still hear the baby crying Just won’t drive you out of your skull. And what good is that if you’re all frazzled and stressed the baby will pick that up, too so Yeah, yeah Good luck, you know, you’ll you’ll do fine. I suspect How did I balance met marriage fatherhood and a demanding career well Hmm I Stopped wasting time That helped a lot. I stopped drinking. I stopped going to bars I really didn’t spend a lot of time with my friends when I had young kids in particular I had friends and I saw them, you know with some degree of regularity But where I cut corners was more with social life outside my family So I spent a lot of time with my wife and I spent a lot of time with my kids and I spent a lot Of time on my career and so you have to make choices and I think those were reasonable choices I’m not displeased with them. Don’t abandon your friendships, but But you can certainly look at where you’re wasting time and just stop doing things that you know to be a waste of time So and I did and so I had enough room for my marriage and I had enough room for my kids and I had enough room For my career and you know sort of a multi-dimensional career and I was always a challenge to me to to see how efficient I could get and you can also And I’ve really recommended this for relatively higher income dual income couples Who are trying to pursue dual careers kids and marriage you can outsource, you know hire hire a cleaning lady if you can afford it Buy restaurant food if you can afford it, etc No, you can outsource get you can have someone do your laundry Then you can concentrate on your marriage and your kids I know that that you know is only an avenue available to people who have relatively high incomes But people who have dual incomes have relatively high incomes and so Outsource what’s unnecessary so that you can concentrate on what’s necessary I mean I didn’t do that when I was beginning my career because When I lived in the United States when I was in my late 20s and starting my family we had one income You’d think a Harvard beginning professor makes a lot of money and I suppose that’s true in some absolute sense But relatively speaking, you know, we didn’t have enough money to buy magazines. We we all our money went for For housing cost and and the basic necessities of living I had a car that was 20 years old 25 years old I think it was old It was bloody thing the doors fell apart on the person I sold it to you know, like six months down the road They knew it was a wreck at that point, but we drove that thing right into the ground So I know that’s not necessarily possible for everyone at the beginning of their career But if you have two incomes you can manage it I Concentrated on my marriage and making time for it I concentrated on spending time with my kids consciously and I concentrated on developing my career those were the three elements of my life and I had some time left over for creative pursuits and and and for friends but most of it was a matter of getting rid of Time wastes of any sort, you know, and I just Pushed that out of my life, you know day after day until I wasn’t wasting any time Or virtually no time and you know, I’ve asked my undergraduates frequently how much time they waste per day and general estimates are like six to eight hours of Time they regard themselves as wasting like that’s a whole career right there, right? So if you just stop wasting time you can do a tremendous amount Especially if you also try to maximize efficiency and I always found that incredibly Motivating, you know a motivating Game how much can I do in the least amount of time possible? That was that’s fun to try to do that as far as I’m concerned. I know me, you know, that’s maybe it undoubtedly a temperamental thing but But if you’re built if you’re wired that way, that’s a great Meta strategy become efficient. I always asked my graduate students when they were designing experiments. They’d come with a proposal I’d say to them, you know, is there any way you could do this ten times faster? What would you have to cut? what would you have to change to do this ten times faster and You can learn to do that. I also learned to Force the task to fit the time, you know, there’s this dictum work expands to fill the time allowed for its completion Work expands to fill the time allowed for its completion. Well, there’s a corollary to that which is work Becomes more efficient in proportion to the restrictions of time placed upon it So if you say well, this could take me two weeks, but I’m going to do the best job I could in one day You’d be amazed you can get 90% of the way or 95% of the way or sometimes even farther in that day So that’s another way of becoming efficient, you know If you only have ten minutes to do something that should maybe take you two hours Maybe you can figure out how to do it in ten minutes you can get dreadfully efficient so That’s very much worthwhile in my estimation. If you want to do a lot of things what what else are you gonna do? You know rather than become efficient if you want to do many things you don’t have much choice But I found it extremely entertaining to try to do that and when I was healthy I could do a tremendous amount in a very short period of time I’m very frustrated that that’s not so much the case now, although perhaps it’s coming back to some degree. I Have recently found a passion in studying psychology. I can relate to that. What book should I read to expand my interest? anything written by the great clinicians assuming that you’re Interested in clinical psychology. I presume that because when people think about psychology, they generally don’t think about research psychology Which is a different endeavor they usually think about clinical psychology all the great clinicians Carl Rogers Abraham Maslow Sigmund Freud Carl Jung hum Who else? It’s silly I guess I’m running out of steam here, so let me just look them up for a minute Eric Erickson yes, Eric Erickson Jean Piaget great developmental psychologist That’s a good start more Practically go to my website under books Jordan B Peterson comm books Recommended books. There’s a whole list of books that were extremely influential to me Some of them were more research oriented like Jeffrey Gray’s treatise on the neuropsychology of anxiety and There’s a great work on higher cortical functions in man by Alexander Lurie and some other brain function books there as well you could go read all those books that’ll inform you and and You know when you read those people you’ll find out what they read and you can go read them, too So that’s a good start. So do that that’ll that’ll keep you going for a good length of time Do you have any interest in a new biblical lecture series? Yes, I have much interest in that I Have started reading Exodus. I would love to do a lecture on that lecture series on Exodus. I’m thinking hoping praying That I can do that in the fall of this year if Kovac vanishes if the theater is open up so I could rent a theater again, I’d like to do a dozen lectures on Exodus in October and November and It’s a great story Exodus, it’s it’s you know the story of tyranny The collapse of tyranny into an interregnum period of chaos and the promised land It’s the story of human adaptation go from a terrible place that that is full of restrictions You have to blow it apart because it’s too restrictive and tyrannical But you don’t immediately go to a better place you go to a worse place you cross the sea Where you could drown you are in the desert for 40 years and then you struggle back towards a new state of equilibrium It’s psychological It’s the the narrative of psychological transformation upward and it’s a political narrative. It’s an economic narrative It’s a battle between the forces of water and the forces of stone water representing chaos That’s Moses and stone representing tyranny. It’s brilliant and deep and Profound and I would love to do a lecture series on Exodus if I had the intellectual wherewithal and and So it’s one of my great hopes that I would be able to do that. So that’s my plan And you know, if I’m healthy enough, I’ll try it and see if I can manage it God willing and all that so What are your thoughts on superheroes? Well, they’re quasi religious figures there, you know, they’re they’re literary figures Symbolic figures they’re amalgams of what’s it my admirable. So you imagine that we have this instinct to admire It takes us over that doesn’t happen voluntarily exactly you admire someone sort of despite your will and you tend to admire the ideal So here’s an example. I was talking to a great biologist this week Randy Thornhill dr. Randy Thornhill who discovered the role of symmetry bilateral symmetry in sexual attractiveness while he showed for example or people who were influenced by his research showed that even babies will look longer at a symmetrical face and symmetrical face is more attractive or an averaged face is more attractive and an averaged symmetrical face is even more attractive and Newborn babies even are very young babies will look much longer at an attractive face than a non attractive face And that’s because they are primed to admire the ideal that they need to strive to become That’s the instinct for admiration and it’s part of the fundamental religious instinct Which is the instinct to admire the admirable as such in some sense to feel awe in the presence of what’s great and to wish to develop towards that spontaneously and so Well superheroes in some sense You really wouldn’t need superheroes in a culture that had a fully functioning religious structure because the religious structure would fill in the superhero gap But since the death of God so to speak well we need superheroes because that’s part of the way that we rebuild our gods and So you take a given superhero and he’s an amalgam of some admirable traits you know he might have some flaws to just to make it more interesting or sometimes because an Admirable trait comes along with a flaw and that that that’s part of the complexity of the world, but the superhero is Not a normal person. He’s a super person obviously and super means superordinate It means above and so You know if you took three people and took the best from each of them and made them into one person They would be a sort of superhero and so, you know, there’s a fictional element because the powers are expanded but that’s also a way of exploring the fact that With admirable qualities comes an increment in power. So That’s perfectly fine and so superhero the reason our culture is so enthralled by superheroes is because we’re nowhere near religious enough Obviously, that’s the reason it’s the same why same reason we’re in trance, especially the engineering types who tend much less to be Classically religious because of their thing like orientation rather than their people orientation They get all their religion through science fiction They don’t even notice that it’s happening, but it doesn’t matter It’s happening if you’re interested in that sort of thing. You could read the hero with a thousand faces by Joseph Campbell That’s a great in illus a great Representation of the emergence of heroic themes in literature across cultures literature and religious religious thinking Or you could read the origins and history of consciousness by Eric Neumann Neumann Eric is er I ch Eric Neumann the origins and history of consciousness both of those books I think are on my list of Recommended books on my website. I’m not sure about the hero with a thousand faces It should be there if it isn’t because it’s a great book in any case superheroes are quasi divinities and mean obviously look at Thor and and Mean Marvel Comics has divinities in its superhero pantheon and they fit in perfectly because What’s the difference between Iron Man and Thor, you know? Immortality, I suppose although Thor’s immortality can’t be absolute or he wouldn’t be interesting because you couldn’t kill him and you’re not interesting Unless you can die. So so, you know superheroes evoke the the the evoke admiration and the desire to emulate and And and you know, the superheroes are always battling They’re always good against evil. And so the landscape that superheroes inhabit Which is good and evil against a background of chaos and order is the mythological or the religious landscape. So it’s it’s all religion Just repackaged so that people don’t notice because they have to be religious and if they notice they criticize the religion and then they can’t be religious and so And then they can’t orient themselves So it sneaks up on us and takes us over in forms that we don’t tend to notice consciously are religious but nonetheless that is what they are so and they’re so successful today because Well, like I said, our culture is is is had the slats kicked out from underneath it. So it doesn’t have a traditionally functioning religious Substructure and it has to it has to Partly what I’ve been writing about recently is the contamination of political belief with religious belief because religious belief isn’t put in its proper place and Then politics becomes religion and then that’s a bloody catastrophe literally, so yeah So that’s why Have you done any more reading about Islam not in the last two years? I haven’t done much reading at all. Although I’ve been reading a lot I suppose in preparation for these podcasts that I’ve been doing but other than that I haven’t really been able to read So I’ve bought lots of books about Islam and I have read a fair number of them previously Are you planning to have a debate with a Muslim on my podcast? No, but I am I do have two Muslim scholars scheduled for the next month and a half one more liberal who wrote a book called reopening Muslim minds and Another Hamza Youssef who’s more conservative who’s been recommended to me by well the liberal or liberal author of this book was one But oh by many many people on YouTube I mean, I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time But I didn’t believe that I had the intellectual wherewithal to manage it It’s not going to be a debate though because what the hell do I know about Islam? You know, I mean I can talk to whoever I’m talking to like an ignorant Westerner and that’s what I’ll do And and I’ll put out whatever objections said ignorant Westerner might have and questions But mostly what I want to do is Listen and ask questions. I don’t have anything to debate because I just I don’t know the culture well enough to debate it. I Mean I can I can put forward my objections to what I see as certain attributes that appear to be associated with the culture like the fact that women’s rights construed from a Western perspective tend to be What less than manifest let’s say in countries that are Islamic? So I’d like to talk about that for example, so and especially given that there is overwhelming empirical evidence that Rights granted to women is one of the best predictors of economic well-being, you know So I don’t know how Islamic fundamentalist cultures deal with that particular fact They don’t tend to score all that well in terms of economic freedom or productivity as well So, you know, those are incendiary claims, but those are the sorts of things I’m going to say Perfectly willing to be revealed as wrong, but you know the best I’m going to be able to do because I’m not that Informed it’s a very complex culture. It’s not easy to unpack and it’s also not a culture that has really unpacked itself Right. It’s still in many ways a functioning religious society It hasn’t subjected itself to analytical self-criticism. And so that makes it very difficult to understand philosophically from the outside So anyways, you can see how this discussion might go, but I’m very much looking forward to it and I hope it’s you know I’ve had this vision visions literally visions of Everyone coming to the table so to speak, you know, and we need to bring everybody to the great banquet table of the world and Hopefully these dialogues will be part of that some small part of that and so I’m really looking forward to it And I hope I conduct it. Well, I have lots of Muslim readers and viewers and and listeners and I don’t want to alienate them casually or Purposely for that matter. I want to say what I have to say and stick as close to the truth as I can possibly manage But I want to engage in a genuine dialogue because we need to engage in a genuine dialogue because the alternative to that is war so or if not war failure to cooperate and that would be stupid because We do a lot better if we all cooperated obviously so So anyways, I have two people coming on and hopefully that’ll You know lead to something else. That’s the that’s the hope and so I’ll talk to these two people within the next month and Release those talks within the next two months. So that’s the upshot for that What is the difference between Spirituality faith and religion. Well, that’s not a very well posed question. I don’t I don’t mean that To be critical. I’m gonna restructure the question. You can think about two elements of religious Religious phenomenology phenomena that are associated with the religious world. There’s a spiritual element that’s less constrained by belief and more a consequence of say emotion and motivation and aesthetic experience and all of that unbounded in some way by Explicit dogma. So there’s a dogmatic element and a spiritual element and that would Correspond roughly speaking to the to the to belief versus exploration in a more general cognitive sense roughly But both are necessary right because For all its flaws Collective adherence to a dogma that’s there’s no distinction between that and peace because peace reigns when people accept unquestioningly a sufficient number of presuppositions to guarantee Cooperation so you don’t get away without dogma You might say you’re anti dogmatics like yeah in some ways possibly now and then and some people more than others but most of the time when you ask a question you you hold a thousand things constant and allow one thing to vary and so the Constancy is the dogma and the variation is the the questioning. There’s a spiritual element that’s associated with Experience with awe with wonder with questions about the meaning of life With the feeling of love the feeling of devotion the feeling of duty the desire to admire The aesthetic sense that that a visit to a cathedral might produce or or gospel music or or Or music in general for that matter, which has a pronounced religious element spiritual element and lots of people describe themselves as spiritual but not religious which means that Well, they haven’t been able to apply Systematic philosophical reasoning to the wares and whys of their experience So now if a if a belief system becomes entirely dogmatic it tends to rigidify and ossify and become tyrannical So that’s not good. But if it’s only spiritual like the New Age movement Let’s say then it’s everything and nothing at the same time. Everything goes everything is permitted all is equal Everything falls under the same umbrella. It’s so inclusive and so Non-structured that it really degenerates into nothing at all So there always has to be a balance between Structure and openness to change and structure is dogma and openness to change is Exploration and both of them have a religious element. So and then you also included faith Well, I’m not going to talk about that because I’m out of brain power for the day So we’ll just stick with spirit versus dogma for the answer to that question for now And that’s pretty much all I can manage For the day, thank you very much for submitting your questions and for persevering This far into this video if you have in fact done that and I hope that you found the questions interesting and the answers useful and thank you for your attention and and I Hope that Well, you’re welcome to tune in to another lecture whenever you feel the inclination to do so Bye. Bye