Welcome to season two episode. Thirty five of the Jordan Be Petersen. Podcast I mean Petersen, Dad's, daughter and collaborator today episode is a twelve rules for life lecture recorded in Oslo United, twenty eighteen does. The lecture victimization that I really enjoyed just a heads up. We need it. Cancel the London event on November thirty days, still needs time to recover and I couldn't put him through the stress of travelling in performing quite yet. I really hope this doesn't disrupt people's plans to badly and were definitely rescheduling. It really sorry for the destruction, but healing comes first Then we'll be back at it on a completely unrelated note, I've been doing any de ivy transfusions, I read As for Elysium, which has a product this increase, Is anybody so you may have heard about energy on this podcast Joe Rogan also had an episode with a Harvard professor named David Sinclair about an eighty anyway. I've had

or of the ivy infusions. And, oh, my god, I've tried a lot of weird thing the last four years for healing my order mean disorder and nothing other than this, all meet diet has been as effective as these infusions. It's as if my entire bodies filled with energy. My mood is more varied, more highs and more lows, but it's better. Usually I'm just stable like a python or a lion. Hence the name, the lion Diet, but this is better, I think, I'll, be updating people on it on my Youtube Channel Killer Petersen on Youtube and on Instagram I really think there's something to this dad's gonna, give it a shot next week. Hope you enjoy this episode. Being a vector a joint rules for life lecture. Thank you. Everyone it's only been a week since I've been here something I never said before about Oslo, so

I've had a bit of a conundrum today because I've been in Europe, for I think this is the thirteenth lecture and there's only twelve rules and so when I am gone through the rules, many ways in the lectures about delivered, sometimes one at a time, sometimes mix and match three or for them to play them off each other. And when I came to Europe this time I thought I'd go through them backwards and I landed on number one last night in tonight. Go in Birmingham, and so I didn't know what to talk about tonight. So I thought I would do something more universal and more. Universal and that is not tied to a specific rule and deeper. In that I would

to go into the substructure of what I've been thinking about, and so I wrote this book a long time ago called map, meaning was published and ninety ninety nine, but I've been writing it since nineteen, eighty five and I spend a lot of time on that book for what it's worth and. It sort of laid the groundwork. I would say for all the lectures I put on Youtube and then for this twelve rules book, and it took me thirty years of life ring and working on those ideas until they became until I be fluent enough in discussing them so that they became Accessible say in written form to a larger audience, but. Twelve rules still grounded in the same metaphysical substructure that

laid out in maps of meaning, and I would say covered rather than invented. I hope the tension between those discovering invention is, is real and but I think I discovered something and certainly not by myself I'm gonna lay out a few propositions. I want talk to you tonight about idea? Victimization, that's the central theme. You may not know that for a while, because I'm going to wander around the fairly large territory before we get back to that concept, but I want to go been to that idea, and so you know ideas, ideas have depth. Like literature has depth or art has depth in Tunis metaphor, because it isn't obvious what it means that something can be deeper shallow, but we know that means. You know you can have a shallow conversation with someone, then

Why wasn't really about anything? Then? If you have it conversation will somehow it's about everything and so, and so depth has to do with With Significance- and profundities another way of thinking about, but that's just another way of thinking about depth that for a conversation is the more it's about every damn it's about a topic that everything relies on. Our thinking, is hierarchical and each thought depends on each layer. Thought depends on a layer of thought underneath that that's more fundamental and then that pending the layer of thought under that that's more fundamental and so on. All the way down to the to the bottom whatever the bottom is, and it's not. Easy to find the bottom that, because we have to get bottom of ourselves, and that's very that's a very long way down the bottom of ourselves, and it's not something we can easily articulate because we're complicated,

we're unfathomable in some sense, and so so I want to talk to you about, as down to the bottom is I've been able to get so. The first thing they talk about. This I'm gonna take a stand states, essentially biological? can evolutionary terms. Fundamentally, the time span over, which I consider human element is well it's it's. It extends over. I would say millions of years, because that is how I think about people, because I think in a novel in every sense- and I take this very seriously- we're very all creatures. You know, have dna within us. It has been for three and a half billion years, that's a very long time, and so that's part of what gives us that death,

Now, as individuals were rather evanescent. You know we don't last that long, but but there are parts of us that are truly for all intents and purposes, immortal and they're, all levels of our being that have been shot. All of the levels of our being have been shaped over unimaginable spans of time and that's made us what we are and and to understand people properly. You need that deep biological or station. You don't have enough respect, What you're looking at otherwise most have some sense of them, immense spans of time that you didn't. You know you, every single one of you people are the descent. Of life that has managed to replicate itself without failure for three and a half billion years. You know how unlikely that is its just its impact simple that each of you are here, that's so incredibly unlikely over that extend

span of time that there could be that success, that you could actually exist. Its justice agreeing miracle of impossible and that's only one of many sites, figuring miracles of impossibility! Now you know that human beings have only been looking at the world as if it was a place of objective, reality for a short period of time now you can quibble about how long that's been the case. No, if My senses, it's about five hundred years, it's about since the time of Francis Bacon, Descartes and and but you could push it back. You could say, while we started to conceptualize something approximating an objective reality, perhaps back at the time when this article discussion was first put forward as a mode of being so perhaps you could stretch it all the way back to the Greeks

It's more rationality. I would say that knowledge then objective thinking, I would say it's it's clear, a half any is more accurate, and so you gotta think but what that means is we ve only been thinking scientifically assigned sciences, a real method right, it's a very formal method and its new, its unbelievably powerful, but its unbelievably knew we ve only me. Thinking that way for five hundred years at most still don't think. That way is actually very difficult to think signed it. In fact, scientists can't even do it, which is why you have pier for you, if you're a scientist, because if you were great just you would need peer review because you just write your paper and it would be properly objective and properly laid out you need peer review, because your peers to find out, if you use the method right and if you use the rationale right in and then, if you didn't your biases interfere.

Your results too, too great a degree. So even if you're, a scientist and train scientist, other scientists still have to like pity continually with a stick to a fairly thick one to me. Sure that you stay thinking scientifically and, and a long time to be trained to think that way. So so the reason I'm saying that is because that isn't the way that we think that is the way that human beings think we some other way. And obviously that way works because we made it all two five hundred years ago, without other motive, thinking whatever that is no psychologists have been very interested in part of this mode of thinking, a certain group of psychologists. They study a form of thinking called Social Cognition Social condition is thinking about other people and I believe that our fundamental cognitive architects

is social, cognitive, ok, so why well first of all, you got to think about what the environment you know when you about the environment, you think about nature, and maybe God like especially if you're sort of romantic ever like a picture of a french impression is landscape in your imagination, there's nature site and that's the environment is like That's not the environment, the environment's a very strange abstraction environment is what confronts you most of the time and the environment is even more technically what what selects for reproduction overlong spans of time. That's really what the environment is Really, what nature is and forget beings. Nature is culture. Because we're social creatures, we lit we're not the visual creatures we are but but but were but we, but we will win

isolated individual creatures, we're not like male grizzly bears that just wander around alone, except for short periods of time I mean look, look at You hear you all are big group in one year, your friends and you have your family and UNESCO, in groups of all sorts of your deeply social and you ve been deeply social fur. God only knows how long. Millions of years you can go back seven million years, let's say that that's a fair estimate, although it's it's it's an underestimate, that's approximately when we separated from the the end so that we shared with chimpanzees nuke owing to tell how long ago that was if you're geneticists, because you can make The dna of two species together and they'll half's half strands

the strands were born and the degree to which the this is an old technology, but it's an easy way to explain: The closer the relationship between the species the tighter the cross he's DNA were born and the more energy. It takes in the form of heat to separate the strand and so get a pretty good estimate of genetic relatedness. Now there techniques than that doesn't matter. That was used for a long time, and then you can count late the similarity in the difference and if you know something about how stable mutation rates are- and we know something about how stable they are, then you can count laid over what span of time mutation rate would have had to occur to produce them difference, not only mutation but genetic alteration in general and then you can estimate how long ago the divergence was so with chimps. It seems to be about seven million years. Even

chimps are hardly social right. The existence, structured hierarchies, they have troops, you know they have their there, their mother child parents and they This UN troops inside hierarchies and so and it's the same for most primates, most primates, her very soon she'll creatures, not all of them, but most of them and the ones that work closely related. To are highly social and so there is an idea that that fundamental architecture of our cognitive ability, including our perception, is, actually it actually evolved to Caen actualize social relationships because you think what's your environment were mostly its other people in all its other, each other, each other people, not nature and serving on nature as own objective store some of riches that could be in

stagnated scientifically, because that's a new idea You know- and you know that too, because you seen the rate of technology just expand exponentially since the dawn of the scientific revolution, so people were able to exploit nature. So to speak prior to that, of the scientific revolution, but we ve got way matter out it since we develop this new methodology, but that shouldn't for you into thinking that that's how we think Cosette isn't how we think and certainly not how animals think so and there's plenty of Unity between our basic perceptual structures and the basic perceptual structures of animals, It's very important if you're a social animal, to keep track of what all the other social animals are doing so. Now. Imagine this so many here's another proposition. So what is this we know about evolution, is that it's a pretty conservative process, so there

manages to cobble something together. Let's say that works, then it attempts to stick with it. So I saw an interesting sample of this. I went to the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, a collection of mammalian skeletons there. It's like us zoo and it's really cool place to see, because What you see is just endless variations on a theme. Go back any human being, don't look very much the same when you see like a bad any human being, but when you see a bat skeleton and you see a human being skeleton you think all their exams. Play the same, bad has longer fingers, but the skeletal structure is exact. The same? You can even see it in Wales, although in Wales, modified a lot, but it still basically the same skeletal planets, like all diversity of mammals, same skeletal plan, just extensions, you can you can take a human skull and unjust transform it in terms of its more

ology into a chip skull without very much problem at all, without without with only with only call detective adjustments, and so in fact, chimpanzee skull. An infant Chimpanzees skull looks almost exam. Do the same as an adult human skull, very cool. That's a con whence of an evolutionary phenomena called Neoteny, which is tendency of over time to evolve towards their juvenile too word there juvenile form and so human beings are, in some sense chimps that maintain their juvenile nature. So that's quite in and even the morphology, so so in any this evolution is a conservative process, and so once you have, I have watched something that that works well enough, so that you can reproduce you keep it you tinker with it, that's it, but you keep it, and so once we developed the perceptual architecture,

To understand the social world, we build our understanding of the world beyond the social world on top of that. So so so what that now you kind of no this already, you know think about this strange. This is a strange fact. When you, when you read stories to your kids, your little kids, you know it's calm and that all the things in the picture books. This is for really little. Kids are animated right Cars have faces, trains have faces, the moon has a face. The sun has a face like the tree, has a face. Everything is everything their fists itself in in in and aided form that's a good way of thinking about it. It is not exactly like the world is personified for a child, because that implies that the world, the child sees the world and then poses this person. A vacation on top of it, but that

What happened? What happens? Is the child sees the world as if its personified and only Great difficulty separates out the idea Well, there's an objective reality that doesn't have a personality, so the purse, section of the world, as personality is primary. Now that's really worth knowing, because one of the things that's kind of mysterious about take tomorrow. People as well, we're all the ancients thinking about when they were thinking about gods, it's like because we, even if some of us have the remnants of religious belief its A monotheism isn't like there's a god of the bed room in a god of the the altar and like there was in Rome, there was a god for everything. Everything had this personified form think the Romans personified. Everything is no, no, they didn't they saw the world as if it was collection of personalities. That was their mode of cognition and they had no other way of doing it. And it took us

River to even start to hypothesize that there was a kind of dead man. Material world that they did have an animated spirit. You know one we're still not sure, that's true, but trading. That way has turned out to be an extraordinarily powerful technology, might kill us all still. Well, it might that's that's also something to think about. I mean the scientific mode, Thinking is unbelievably powerful, but you know you want careful with what's unbelievably powerful, so we ve got created a fair number of things that could do us quite handily so here It would be better if we would just stuck with the personification and left the technology behind, but but I am not saying that the I'm not I believe that, but you can make a case for it: You know deviating from that age. Mode of apprehension, is something that certainly has dangers, ok, so so

we perceive the world in a prison if I'd manner and only with difficulty detached from that, so that we can be trained as scientists, and even then we have to do that collectively, because it so Then the question is: will two questions? The first would be. What is the nature of the personified world that we proceed in this? Second is: why does work but give the world personified, then I deserve our ability to see it that way: work alike, the reason it works is because most of what we want with really as other people. So if use if you tend to see things as personified that works, because ninety percent of what you do is with yourself with your partner with other people and so And you know, even if you conceptualize the state, no people go look at the queen of England. What do you think

Why, while she embodies the state is so it's really easy for people to personified the state and they see the queen, and I mean Queen is just a person, but she's queen at the same time and so she's just a person. Then she something else at the same time and when you go to look at that, and you don't really go. Look at that person you can. You can just go across the street. Look at a person! You go look at the queen. And you actually see the queen, which is a strange thing, because the queen is just a person and what you see as the person. Vocation of the state in no one and an and this is very deep perception. So you know Queen Elizabeth, for example, in England, is getting quite old and at some point she'll past. Way and the entire nation will grieve for that, and- and that's that's that's that's it Indication of how powerful that proclivity, to perceive per cent Suffocation actually is, and if you know, if we talk about a state or a country, we often

talk about it as if it's an individual and no one, fine, strange. You know you say that you treat the you treat the collective as if it an individual with all of the attributes of an individual and that's so, partly why stay can get angry at each other so quickly, because the same Relationship that might obtain between individuals can easily be used to represent the relationship between two states and so and you know that makes a certain amount of sense because it state is a collective of people but then, by the same token, it doesn't make any sense at all, because the state is something that's quite different from individual does matter that what matters is that's how we see the world. I think part of the reason why we developed the idea of a monotheistic god.

This isn't. A metaphysical statement by the wind is not a religious statement. Ok, I'm just speaking as a biologist here and evolutionary biologist. We leave the metaphysics out of this for the time being, what's a good way of representing the collective other. Well, Judge Mental Father pretty damn good. Why well You know that you extend across time and so and then you face a collective. That's all the p! but you know- and they track here- reputation across time that collective and they do a damn good job of it. People are unbelievably good at remembering ethical, transgressions. You can destroy your reputation very rapidly factor, evolutionary psychologists who think we have a specific cognitive Maud. You just to remember getting screwed over and we don't forget and so you might imagine that you need to

yourself as if there's great being, which would be the personification of the collective watching you all the time in writing down everything you do and a great book in the sky That is essentially the relationship that you have with other people. Last time you know so. I figure this out. I wrote about this a bit and twelve rules when I would think about hunting, is if you're, a hunter stone age Hunter. I'd say: well, what's the purpose of hunting an answer is about to obtain food right The greatest hunter is someone who is the most active at obtaining food ok, so maybe that's the strongest spear thrower or the bravest person who can stand up against a mammoth with a spear. That's we ve person right, you're, just an arctic monkey and hereafter

with a stick. Man, that's there's some courage in that and That's mammoth fur today, a mammoth for next week, but you still stuck with the problem of next month and so then you might say well, what's the greatest, to be a great hunter. Announcer might be well not only to be able to hunt but to be able to share so you bring something down and it's more than you need, and then you distributed among the people that you around, and then you distribute that it's? U trade, the The food itself for a moral obligation in this form promises from others, and so, if your effective at what you and you share. Then you can store they access in the form of promises from others, and so based what you're doing is trading you're too eating for your reputation and so there might say that it's actually even better? It's better to have the right,

mutation of being a great and generous hunter than it is just to be good at taking down an animal that's really worth thinking about, because what it means is that even to be a hunter in there, the truest sense across a long span of time means that your bargaining in some sense, with the future. You have to treat the other people round you in your tribe properly in order the store, any excess value across any reasonable amount of time well, then, if you think about that in some senses a contract with a patriarchal God, if that's the way that that that that You imagine that relationship. Then it's gonna work. It's you're you! don't Solly your reputation if you want to, if you want to eat forever, and can easily be abstracted up into an ethical principles goes beyond mere the mere provision of food because, as as it is In said, man does not live by bread alone, and so it could easily

that, the great Hunter is someone who pursues the most. Fickle aim right, who aims at the most ethical target and so well. That's that's a bit of a casual, quick outline of the notion of monotheism, could emerge from a biological perspective. It's a projection of the car active personality of future society into one entity, the establishment of a relationship with that you know, and maybe the fall there's a good metaphor for that, because fathers can be the judge Mental, and so, if you news the image of the father to represent the judge. Mental crowd then a bridge between what you ve already experienced as a child and and this abstract, nickel relationship that you have to establish with the collective so anyway, my point is well there's more.

Who are too because it also justifies the idea of sacrifice in some sense, because noted sacrifice is also to ensure the future is to let go of something in the present. That's a value that so that can obtain something of value in the future, and who do you see suffice to well. You know if I will now and you you pay me I put my money in the bank than what I've done is sacrificed, my immediate, if occasion too promise of the future! Well that that we say that out religiously to begin with with the idea of sacrifice, and so in those- idea there, which is that you can in fact forego what's. Pleasure boy in the present to ensure stability of the future, and you do that. Establishing a certain kind of relationship with her with a without with personification of the collective straight biologic. Rational and

saying that that accounts for monotheism in its totality, because I dont believe it does, but but as a straight illogical rationale, it's not a bad start, but it also shows you how that kind of thinking can actually be practically useful Could be evolutionary significant lots biologists. Many of them are enlightenment, hypes evolutionary biologists, you actually b and enlightenment type and evolutionary biologist, because if you earn enlightenment type, you think over spans of like two hundred or three hundred years, and if you are now missionary biologist. You think overspends like a million years or longer so conclusions you draw the same. It certainly plausible see the enlightenment types like Think of the religious impulse, thing. That's, rather shallow secondary com, quince of higher order, human cognition- and I think that's just That'S- just a non ardor is just seriously wrong: it's exactly backwards is,

higher order, human cognition to a degree that we have that capacity for abstract rationality, its impact They did something far far far more ancient and deeper. That has this. Personified structure, and that has thing approximating a religious grammar, and so they ve got the cart before the horse and then people like nature knew that Dostoevsky is well pretty much puzzled out by the bye, though by the latter part of the eighteen hundreds nature in particular so so anyways. That's the way. I look at things, and so I think that you know we live in a wheelchair a conceptual structure, that's personified in what comes out of that are the stories of the interactions between these personified entities and then what light sit on top of that is our struck moral rate. Our abstract ethical and moral reasoning and even nasty? that is our scientific enterprise. So that's

it's the hierarchy of cognitive structure. As far as I can tell, and think. The evidence for that is very strong. Certainly some of the evidence for that is our overwhelming love of stories and the the the self, evident proposition that. We're so deeply. We're so deep in our relationship with stories that we can we can we can. Sort of information that way through. Peel enjoyment. Right, I mean, if you go to listen to a very difficult lecture, for example, on a very abstract topic, you may really to concentrate redesigned terrific paper the same thing. It doesn't just pull you in, but if you go see him well crafted movie or you re too well crafted piece of fiction. It's like Not only is it in some sense effort less, it's also unbelievably enjoyable, and what that shows you is that there's an affinity between your

the biology of your intentional structures and the form itself It shows you how old that form of knowledge provision really is so also grounded in imitation one of the things that's very interesting about human beings. That's under estimated in terms of what differentiates us from animals is we're unbelievably imitative. You know you hear monkey see monkey do rights like no wrong. Even higher order primates, even chimpanzees trends, virtually nothing through imitation. They cannot copy one another. Whereas man we're so good at that is just absolutely unbelievable. Like we can mean each other's posture. Comic can mimic voice intonation character. Can run other people as a representation on the mutational platform of our body in a miraculous manner and so were,

unbelievably good at moving information from one person to another merely through imitation, that's obviously in large part how children learn and then we can even do that abstractly, because when we tell story or but our lay out a movie or or play, or something like that. What we're doing is where Copying multiple people to make the care in the drama, wanted to see you wanna go see a play where it's exactly what you did with your family at breakfast, it's like no one to see that what you want to see is like a net character so would be a character composed of many characters or a set of characters composed of many characters acting out something deep. And so you know, if you watch her was breaking bad popular in Norway. Ok, so I'm pretty good bad guys in breaking bad. It's like there you're ordinary, bad guys. This sort of super bad guys there there

essence of evil right, not just the common sort of boring, second rate, evil that you run across in day to day life. It's sort of purified makes it much more interesting and much more salutary much more powerful. You see that great literature to and dusty skis books, for example, the cat, Those are bigger than life right and they have to be because they wouldn't up to your attention, and so there abstractions of personality away from normality. Their condensation, that's another way of, about it? So it's rates more so think of fiction notice, as as the opposite effect but as hyper reality. Its more he'll than real its super reality and, and that's part Why fiction is so useful for us? It's a form of acts Action and abstraction. The very real numbers are abstract in their very, very real. You know something about numbers. It makes you very powerful and allows you to get a grip on the world and an the abstract

that we produce in fiction have the same power and the ultimate abstractions of fiction are religious representations, that's another way of thinking about So, anyway, you might ask yourself what are these fundamental personifications in this this I figured out Firstly from reading. Psychoanalysts, especially Karl you Freud, a fair bit and also in their person named Eric Norman, who should be way better known many years it would it be it's better for western civilization if the literary departments, especially at Yale, had turned do Norman to slash. Their literary criticism instead of a damn fool, cope. Because Newman got it right, and that was back in the nineteen fifties and and and we'll pelleas, just written short. An essay about that about twenty years ago. Saying the same thing about Eric Norman, you wrote a great book called origins and history of consciousness. So very hard Look it's on my reading list on my website. I'd highly recommended to great book, it's the

Karl, you wrote a forward to and said that he wished he would have written, which is a hell of a thing to say Norman was one of the students, and he also road another book called the great mother, which is also great book and it's an analysis of of the fundamental cognitive category, cognitive perceptual category of the feminine brilliance, brilliant book and it lines the pause, the feminine and the negative, feminine and and in a very thorough and compelling in somewhat terrifying manner, and so it's a great book and its great because it describes the perceptual architect. Of the human psyche, but it also gives you a template that you can use to investigate structure of literature, and the ideology, and so what I would say about in your people. What are one of the thing I've tried to do for years is too inoculate my students against the ology and

at times I received the criticism is well. How do you know that you're inoculation isn't just another ideology, which is perfectly reasonable: potential criticism, although it happens in this case to be seriously wrong. I'll. Try to outline my case for that, so part of the reason that I believe that the system I derived in part from the psychoanalytic thinkers that I will then I just described who were responding by the way. Did Nietzsche's challenge about the death of God that that's the that's the end. Actual pathway, in the late eighteen hundreds announced the death of God right, the collapse of of our of of the westerners straightforward belief in in in judeo christian substructure of our culture right and perhaps as a consequence of the Developing tension between site rationality and and traditional belief

When nature was not celebrating that when he announced the death of God, he knew it would be an absolute bloody catastrophe that what it would produce was, on the one hand, and absolutely soul, devouring nihilism and another incredible, Proclivity for possession by totality. In ideology that all out by about eighteen, fifty in an amazing feat of of pre and natures, Solution to that was that we would have to become like gods ourselves, that we would have to create our own values. And young, for example, Karl, you was a very astute student of nature, at least as much as a student Freud. He certainly took from price the idea of the active unconscious, which was a very crucial, crucial discovery but nature. Young, for example, did a seminar on thus big zarathustra, which is one of nature's most famous also most impenetrable books and certainly not the one? I would recommend that beginners to needs

start with its like the last book of his. You should read you did a seminar on nature that, if I remember correctly, was twenty seven hundred pages long and it only covered the first third of the book, so yeah that's quite something now so see what what Freud determined the interesting thing about Freud and and model psychologists, especially the cognitive types have not taken this seriously enough. Freud figured out that some components of yours psyche, our personalities they're alive so you're a unity but Europe diverse and you're, a diverse You're, a unity, that's composed of a diverse plurality and the plural, things that you are made of our best. Actualized as active personalities, not drives unnoticed, deterministic mechanisms, but things that have their own imagination and their own thoughts and their own rationale, and in

just terminology, even their own philosophy, Nietzsche and quote every driver. Two philosophize. In its spirit, You only all know that you all know that perfectly well, because counts in some sense. For that sense of profound disunity that you often experience in your own life, you know maybe you're over Wellman Leah attracted it radically to someone and you make a complete bloody fool out of yourself and you can't stop. You tell yourself you're, making a complete fool of yourself and counter productively is well, it's not like it's even working, but oh no! You can't stop yourself, man that thing Has you write that that that errors, that's a personality as an old one, transcendent and divine personality and it inhabits you and now and then you come under its way and good luck ray stating that, and so The same thing happens when you're, who fall under the sway of rage, you get angry

and some of you are more prone to that than others less integrated than others, and God God only knows what you might do, when you're angry dependent disintegrated. You are you kill someone and then and then reap regret that for the rest of your life, at least might say terrible things to people that you love because in the heat of rage or can see about them is every way that the wrong and all the ways that they should be defeated and all the ways that you're right and then you come out of that afterwards and you think what the hell was. I thinking it's like nor something was being in you and it's well integrated into you and now and then it gets control and so and so that's it's our Freudians observations, brilliant, and I know that that rationalist cognitive, psychologist types who like to think of the brain, something like an information processing machine. Think of us, like computers they they may give just now

come to terms with the psychoanalytic reality that Ura you're habit of Europe habitation place of multiple spirits, and perhaps you can you can when you say male, those together into a functioning unity with a fair bit of moral effort in difficulty, but it's no trivial thing and you better have helped to do it. We can see this in little kids, especially into your own. You know who are they behaviorally this regulation, their angry, then their crying then they're laughing, then their hungry, then their hot, then they're, then their tired, then running around enthusiastic beyond belief and, like all of that, can happen in ten minutes and and so just one motivational state after the other in and then there are curious and exploring and then they're playing in and it. So it's all these underlying spirits that are deeply. Deeply rooted in our biology all coming to manifest themselves. Sequentially

What you're doing when you socialize your children, is you're trying to help meld all those some components into a functioning. A functioning psychological and social unity, the emergence of a higher order, That's why you have the whole top part of brain is to manage that you can't get by on two year old, impulsivity, even even though each of those circuits each of those sub personalities have their limited utility. They have to be, did together into something that can offer iterative Lee over a long period of time in a social collective and that's that the necessity for socialization, but also the reason for the existence of the more complex parts of your brain, so Ok, so yours you're, a collection of sub personalities and you look at the world is if its composed of personality, so I'm going to tell you what personalities of the world must be asked.

As I can tell in order for to see things sufficiently clearly to have seen stout. The mythical chicle landscape, so that you, orient yourself properly in the world, so I'll tell you, story. First of all, to give you a sense of this. So most of you have seen the Disney movie sleeping beauty. Yes, how We have seen that ok, so so great rate. So I'm gonna tell you a bit of the first part of the story, so there's a king and queen and it's a good king and a good queen so those are two characters: good king and good queen the masculine paused a feminine. Now there desperate to have a child, which is what you would expect, the positive and masculine feminine and masculine to get at producing They eventually manage it, and so they have a daughter, little laid her name's, Aurora and and they're all thrilled to death about the fact that she is popped into existence, and so they decided the christening and they ve

the whole kingdom, except for one for one guest? they don't invite the evil queen maleficent interest, name because it partly means malicious and a proper, partly means. Malevolent, but there's a bit of Ben. Recent in there, too, and so on? well chosen, name and and militia sent, is a is negative feminist, he's the terrible wrapper a nation of nature itself, in all its brutality and No wonder they don't want to invite her to the christening it's like. What are you Do you invite the evil queen to them to the birthday party the christening, of course not. You protect your daughter from the terrible aspect of the natural world. That say it is something that you do is apparent right, put a wall around your children and you dont Suppose we don't you, don't you likely don't a four year old too, to a catastrophic

funeral and maybe not to a funeral now, maybe you do and I'm not saying that you shouldn't and if you did I'm not saying that's wrong, but that something that parents often choose to show their children from its just to bloody, brutal right. You think, therefore, your just can't handle death, and so that at Bay and fair enough man, but you keep too much at bay. You weak your child and so that's sleeping beauty? They don't invite evil. Queen did the party and so the princess whose overvalued in some sense and whose purity and innocence is overvalued, doesn't get to encounter. The negative aspect of reality with sufficient intensity and then it's her weak and dooms her to unconsciousness, and that's part of what that stories about you have take the evil queen into account and even more

do you have to invite her to the party and maybe even more importantly, you have to invite her to your children's party, and why well because you show by doing that, you can handle her and so can the child and that's one of the ways awakening some courage and so do you forget about the evil queen at your extreme peril? And if you remember, when that story, unfolds completely Evil queen has the hero of the story, the prince in a dungeon and she's gonna. Keep him there tell he's old and she's. Setting out a madly in when he finally does escape. She turns into the great ragged of chaos itself and and and and its Seen basically from Hell has very very intelligently crafted fairytale in a very intelligently: crafted film and dead, bloody, accurate, that's for sure, and so and so well. So what have? We got four characters? Well, we got good king

we ve got good queen, we ve got evil queen, that's three or hear some more here. Oh that's a good one. Be the Prince adversary that's another one, that's at the individual level of analysis. What's the best way to conceptualize you gonna conceptualize individuals and you need a scheme to do that. You have. Guy and bad guy, and you have the hero in the anti here you have the hostile brothers right. You have Loki and Thor a bad man and a joker, you have Superman and Lex lose. You have Christ and Satan. You have this this. What what? What? What what speaks? most positively out of the human soul, allied with terrible malevolent destructive force- that's the individual, and if you think that in jewels are good and you don't know about the adversary. Well, good luck to you because one day you'll meet someone who's. Fundamentally,

asked by the adversarial spirit, and they will take you out in precise proportion to your naivety, and that happens to people all the time and it's it's a reality like I've dealt with people who have post traumatic, stress, disorder and it's almost always the case that they develop it because they encountered something truly malevolent, and sometimes it was, other person, but sometimes it was part of himself at often how The soldiers in wartime, for example, so you to know that you no good you could conceivably be and reasonable and heroic, as part of you no doubt, is that sell with something that is dark as the light, So you are light and you better Keep an eye on it so because otherwise, you can get the upper hand and if you're, trying to explain phenomena like Nazi Germany or the gulag camps, or what happened in the Soviet Union? What happened in Maoist, China, or what's happening now in Venezuela or any?

a terrible episodes of absence thirdly, appalling barbarism that characterized much of human history, and certainly the last hunt, the last entry. If you don't know, the adversary, then You have a very weak grass born precisely what happened so the individual. You ve got these two characters here, adversary, that's Kane enable see all human story. We have Kane enable right hero virtuous God. Worrying beneficial to everyone taken by his jealous brother right, for no other reason, then, for his brothers failure to live up to the ideal. That's why story. Sits at the very core of the biblical corps. It's a warning and it's a smart one and so you have the individual in its by four created in its by four created. What would you say it with its by?

located essence and then surrounding the individuality of society, where he talked about the fact that we are deeply embedded in society, and you know what society. Well, it's definitely the evil king mean we hear that all the time right. That's the painter, cool tyranny and what we ve got at the moment in our public discourse. Is the domination of that discourse by a single, mythological personification the evil? King, like Fair, enough societies can turn tyrannical hierarchies can become become corrupt. Organizations of human beings can become dominated by power. They can oppressed people at the bottom of the distribution. And they can misuse resources and lie and cheat deceive and destroy clearly and Some degree that characterizes even our highly functional modern western societies, because nothing is perfect. We need to be awake to make sure that the EU,

king is not the predominant force that's a lie in a comprehensive, mythological view. The wise king and I very little appreciation personally and modern academic discourse. Further, even the idea that the wise king might hypothetically exist and to me that smell, acts of onion gratitude and ignorance that so deep some miracle of sorts when you think about country like you pay had this amazing country that fundamentally peaceful Want is fundamentally a thing of the past year. All free you can pay Sue, your destinies, you're still or press. By the catastrophic limitations of your own being. But you know, no one knows how to transcend that, and you can while no one does and to consider what you have best characterized as evil came. The totalitarian patriarchy is so blind that it can only be

derived as an idiot energy, which is precisely what it is and motivated one at best and its even worse, because the the evil king you think brothers did evil. King is social characterisation, but its paired with care. The realisation of the of the individual, if there's only an evil king there's, no hero, there's just an adversary, because it's that adversarial action of the individual that produces the evil, king, part of the reason that I believe that their that there's a hunger for encouragement, let's say and for entice into responsibility among young man and even men who aren't so young is because the implicit notion that their best characterized as the adversary who serves the evil king has become, if not dominant. Cultural narrative, I would say the most

centrally powerful intellectual, cultural narrative and its pathological to its core. So hero, adversary, wise king evil, king great you to know all those things what's left good queen Well, we don't debate the existence of the good queen. I wouldn't say because I would say, author considered positive aspect of femininity is on the ascendant and people recognize that would be associated with the the emancipation of women over the last century we say very little about the evil queen and that's a big mistake, because that to be taken into account as well, and so We don't know what female totalitarianism might look like, but my suspicions are we're going to get a pretty decent taste of it over the next thirty years. Unless were careful, and if you think, if your foolish enough to think that,

if you take a patriarchal structure, I use those words like with red, with resistance, and you fill it with women and that somehow going to make it better than you have another thing. Coming it's going to make a different unless you think that women are somehow pure in their essence, in a man, the men aren't, then the mere reconstruction of society with women filling the rules is not going to bring in the desired utopia. It's going to produce positive consequences, and it's gonna produce. Negative consequences and that some of the negative consequences that it's already producing is the end since by a very striking minority of raw call leftist types many of whom are feminists, that our culture is best care raised as a tyrannical patriarchy and that the active The of men is essentially adversarial, and there is no excuse for that. It's not it's not true

its malicious. It's not helpful and it's outright destructive or care mistakes of the evil queen, who wants to keep the hero locked in a dungeon until he's too damn old, to do anything of any utility. It's very important to get these myths, Google categories right and so the categories and my senses. You can think about this, something you can think about a very long time it contains all those characters is not an ideology. This is part why it's been so difficult to get rid of Freud. Now, why ego? That's the individual, positive aspect of the eagle negative aspect of the eagle very, very explicit and Freud Superego That's this is societal structure will Freud. I knew that in a strong superego to keep your impulses and check. That was the civilising forest, but that these super nor could easily become hyper, dominant and totalitarian. So we had the ballot

right there and then with regards to the end. Well, that's nature, and they did well. That's the forested vitalizing, you that's your primordial instincts, but it's also. It's also it's also the home of the horrors of nature itself, and so Freud, stout and almost completely and almost complete met, physical world, actually a reconstruction of the landscape of ancient mythology, in doing so, did a good job of mapping the human psyche, and that's partly why, for it is so difficult to get rid of that in the fact that he did understand very deeply. There you're composed of some personalities and that those things are alive, and so and the union's while they did a better job of mapping out the landscape as far as I'm concerned, because they made it more explicit and I tried to continue that in maps of meaning okay. So so that's it so you can think about all that when everyone that, whenever anyone is ever telling you a story about the way the world works, you think its missing here. People are

people are evil and destroying the planet and culture is nothing but the rape of nature. It's like fair enough man People are currently evil Culture does have a destructive element, but there's something missing there. An and poor nature poor nature all victim. It's like no nature he's trying to kill us just as hard as we're trying to her out there for sure, and we have our reasons right and those reasons mostly are rooted in the necessity for survival. Now, even a smart bird, follow its own nests. You know say and that we should be careless, but we have a struggle for existence on our hands and nature, might be beautiful and been it beneficial and its fundamental essence. But it's also vote. Primary murderous force and, of course, you nor that gives you have winter. Just like we in Canada, and it's trying. Even harder. In Canada, most of the time to kill you all the time and so and so to the degree that are

fundamental depredations, are merely a consequence of our attempts to protect ourselves against the evil queen their justified. At least some part and should be viewed with a certain amount of sympathy instead of this anti. Human dogma, that seems to permeate, for example, so much environmental discussion where beings are off often characterized as a cancer on the planet or or some pc that that the planet be better off without its like. If you can't here the evil, king or the evil, Queen law, king behind our like that you ears aren't open because it certainly there. So so that's the that's you that's the antidote to eighty in Seoul, and I want to continue little bit with it caution about victimization, because it is a bit of a sideways move and all of this, in some sense, was approached Roma. For what one of us is that I am most apart, by with rigour,

Stu, modern intellectual discourse, and I fundamentally blame the sociologists. Although there's a variety of other people, you could blame, but we can start with them. Is that he that human beings are best characterized by their group identities. Okay, so First of all, I don't find that unacceptable scheme, because I one of the things we learned in the west a long time ago was that human, your best categorized as individuals and their for that is that, where the nexus of multiple group identities and it all those identities into account simultaneously is in fact to treat people as if their individuals and our entire societies are predicated on the idea that the sovereign the visual is the cornerstone of the state family and the state, and I believe that to be practically true, in so far as societies that adopt that principle. Work done it fully will compare. Do societies that don't and metaphysically

because I think that the cosmos is constructed so that each of us, in some sense, is a central point of reality cards this itself is a central point of reality and that we have divinity that goes along with that conscious status and attack although responsibility that accompanies them. So I think it's practically true and true and literary sense, but also metaphysically, true, and then I think that, any attempt to insist that each of us is no more than an avatar of whatever, identity is to be regarded as paramount at the moment is a river into an extraordinarily dangerous form of tribalism, so now without idea. The group idea is dear that? Not only should we be characterized as group member sex, ethnicity, race, gender, sexual proclivity. You can list a very long list of potential

group identities, which is one of the problems with the group identity theory, the idea that that Those are paramount. First of all, runs contrary to the notion of the sovereign, the visual and also while we're due reduces us too, are each of us to our group. So but that's not that's, not The that's not the bottom of what's wrong with that it's not only that it exists. In contradistinction to our fundamental axiomatic assumption, which is that the individual is the fundamental locus of value its It produces a kind of narrative about the structure of the world, which is an ideology and a dangerous one in theory, gee as well. We're members of groups I'm going to show press either. Group some groups are victims in some groups are victimize yours now we know.

We want to go into that idea bit. That's why I want to talk about being a victim. The first thing, we'd like to say is the real in that the victim narrative is so attractive. Is that it's true. It's not true in the ideological sense that it's been put forth, but it's true mean think about situation. You know, you're full of inadequacies that could characterized by Europe. The authorities whenever they happen to be your multiple group entities you're, not. Thing. You should be you're going to be judged harshly and put outside the social ideal as it child it as an adult and happens to everyone right. You know those kids, your bullied when they grow up in some kids. I know perfectly well far more bullied than others but child. It is often no picnic for children. We need if you are really together six year old, you're, some malevolent eight year old it'll be perfectly willing to push you around and then and

there's that your subject to that arbitrary element of social isolation and then there is also the fact that you know kind of a delightful idiosyncratic child full of potential and an end and uniqueness, and you showed a question moulded into why you are now and someone that's great, because here? You can sit peacefully in civilly among all these other people, but there tremendous amount of destruction in the wake of that, as well as some benefit victim of the The king, beneficiary of the wise king that characterises all and so there's a victim element. To that mean society is a horse judge. And you're wrong in its eyes. Now it's not only a harsh job, but that's there, and so you know that the essential tragedy of life so characterizing people as victims at the Socio logical level rings true to some degree, because what it's trying to some degree and then with regards nature. Let's say: well God, you know, you're, not

good, looking as you might be, and is lots of people that are smarter than you and you know, there's who can live longer than you and you're, going to have a lot of pain and suffering in your life and a very unfair way and you're gonna have a fair bit a bad luck, and you know there's this maturity, subjugation to the random. Catastrophes of nature that characterize everyone mean everyone gets sick era one dies. Every one loses everything, and so think of us as victims is like well for sure, and then, of course, also the case that at any given time some people's to be much more victims than others. And then for arbitrary reasons as well, the problem is that it's not that helpful, as a character. And it's dangerous, especially dangerous when you start to play it out at the level of group, so trying to puzzle this out. I wrote them forward to

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the fiftieth anniversary version of it Zander Solzhenitsyn, Gulag archipelago and for its historical. Inaccuracies and its faults, which are obvious, let's say fifty years later, but certainly work. Then it was the first book to completely terror the mask of Soviet, the absolute catastrophic depths of DEC, of absolute Sylvia barbarism, and it it dealt the death blow to the obvious. What appeared to be death blow to the reprehensible ideology that had given rise to all that and when I I've read that in its entirety. The three volume sat a couple of times and then the abridged version again more Secondly, while I was writing the forward- and I was trying to figure out exactly what had happened because you know- just for the Stalinists for the Soviets,

quickly said. Look the whole soviet marxist enterprise, fundamentally good in its initial, oppositions proletariat, spiritual z, victimised against victim that was. The underlying narrative. Tat was. The true with an accurate way of viewing history, the the EU. Hope here that was promised, was a universe list, utopia and worth making a certain amount of sacrifices for and it wrong, because no one implemented properly so like well. No, it went wrong fast, like. It wasn't that it started out or all what no flakes and roses and then God murderous over a couple of decades. Is that isn't what happened? It got murderous right away, and so I ve been in a why. That was because you know if you're gonna give, the devil is, do you might say well back in nineteen fourteen

with a tremendous amount of inequality that existed might be perfectly reasonable if you're a compassionate person to feel that a bit of inversion of authority, in power might be in order to bring the peasantry. Open to bring the aristocracy down, and to give everyone a fighting chance and to deal with it inequality once and for all you, you might have been forgive for being naive enough to assume that you could manage that with rational social planning and radical revolutionary change. Although people have warned against that, like Dostoevsky unlike nature. Instead, it would be a complete, bloody catastrophe which it was, but still, but now I know, sorry, we ran the experiment. We ran in the Soviet Union, we ran in China, we we ran it everywhere and it didn't work and because well it's for a variety of ways but its bloody, solid evidence that it didn't work because it was replicated in many different circumstances with me.

Or from very different cultures and always the same terrible consequence emerged and if you don't think that's evident Then you don't think what evidence is is the same thing than what I think: evidences soul, and I would say you also suffer from the unforgivable delusion, you in your purity imperfection actually understand Marxism, the proper way and if the two of power. Would just given to you. You would have brought about the utopia that now and stolen failed to produce, and if you don't see that arrogance lurking in that kind of interpretation. Then you really haven't come to terms with the adversarial part of the individual personality, so wasn't real Marxism like yeah. Your version would be any better and I'll tell you not words worse than that, because if it does happen that you're Saint Francis of Assisi and you're utopian

implementation of the communist idea. What is in fact brought the utopia forward. You would have been the first to be annihilated by the executioners who took over the russian revolution. Pretty much the Candide manifested itself, so I wouldn't made a bloody bit of difference. To begin with, some what happened? What happened? Here's? What happened as far as I can tell- and this is the problem part of the problem with the group identity idea in part of the problem with the Damn victimized narrative, we ve already decided yeah yeah you're a victim, and we should decide at the same time, and this is a critical thing that you are also a victim That's your honour and privilege right! That's that's! That's the fact you happen to be born in Norway. You know instead of some bloody hell hole somewhere else in the world like like Venezuela, for example so so you have that privilege and its arbitrary you know and so on. To contend with your arbitrary privileges, just like your arbitrary disadvantages and you have to atone for them. I would say, with some respect, stability there is that,

arbitrariness so so so here is the problem. So already decided that. Well, you could be a member of our group and we could characterize you that way. Well, then, the question is are you a victim or victimized? And then we might say well too, on the group, and it would also depend on how that group was being construed at this moment right. So, but that's solely part of the problem, because you're, not just the member of one group, you're the man, an adventure groups as the intersection theorists have insisted right. Within their their own domain of knowledge. We can't we characterize you with one group. Maybe we have to come to, with your unique status as victimized or victim. We have to do multi dimensional analysis of your group identities we're here the problem with that. Now, let's say it's more unforgivable to be a victim miser there It is if you

victor, miser. Let's get this right fewer victims worthy of compassion, but if you're victimize or your worthy of punishment and you're, more worthy of punishment as a victim iser, then you are worthy of compassion as a victim. Let's start with that, How goes along nicely if you have a particularly malevolent attitude to your fellow human beings? Let's say nature said to beware of those in whom the The desire to punish is strong, so, and we should also point out that you don't want to underestimate the power of hate and resentment and revenge like maybe you can put it up against love and love a win, but that means that what you were manifesting would have to be loved and that's so easy to manage fairly easy to manage resentment and hatred and the design for a certain amount of May him. You can do that You can do that with virtually no effort whatsoever on your part,

and so, whereas loving kindness and compassion in their true sense. Those are effort for achievement now, not something that come to people with discipline and care vision and all of those things self sacrifice, and it's rare and maybe developed some of that new and good for you, but but don't be thinking, something that you're just gifted with easily. So what happened russian Revolution well turned out that you can take everyone and you could fraction ate them into five different group memberships. Now, turned out that long as you were evicted miser along one of those access. It was perfectly reasonable to do away with you, and that seems to me. Exactly white went wrong, slackened and the reason, that's problem is because watch true, you know. Every single one of us is the hell is the deserving beneficiary. Of a certain amount of privilege in respect to history,

this tension lists in the nineteen fifty is the existentialist psychoanalysts called that thrown us. It was after Heidegger right and throw This was this arbitrary element to the world's like you, you you born with a certain amount of intelligence right. Well, that you didn't that that's a big deal to be born with a certain amount of intelligence we better by the term. A forty, it's better to be born at the ninety five percent offer intelligence than the ninety five percent out for wealth and it's a genetic lottery. You know like your parents, can the press, your intelligence, but its very the call to augment it, something that used to be more or less gifted to you you know, and it makes a huge difference in terms of the probability of your life I'll, come and tell us. Our view is the best predictor of long term socio economic success, the best there's a huge genetic component to that, so some are born smart and some, Some are born so smart and you know it's so

Arbitrary, here's, a terrible statistics, the United States government, the military decided not decades go, maybe a little longer than that that it was illegal to indirect anybody with it. I q of less than eighty three into the armed forces. Ok. Why? Because, despite the american military being absolutely desperate for warm bodies in war, time and in peacetime wartime. While you need soldiers, time. Well, you can use them with as a means of moving people from under underclass up into the more edge. It'd strata of society. You can use it as a tool of social policy and their equally short of manpower while they decided that, if you haven't, I you less than eighty three? There wasn't a thing. They could possibly train you to do, no matter how much effort it took to do anything at all that wasn't posit thirdly counter productive right, it's terrible it's terrible

is the military, worry earlier doctors of IQ test and did a lot of the research that was designed update them because they wanted to screen people quickly for aptitude to develop an officer quartering more time, so they had their reasons and indeed velvet. Powerful iq test and the terrible thing about that. That's ten percent of the population right He just think about that. So pure joy, lottery? Fundamentally, there's some environmental effects, but are not very strong genetic We dooms ten percent of the population to counter counterproductive. Productive exist in any society, that's approximately as complex as the! U S military, which is sir, the society that you have produced, and so the fact that happened to be sitting there and you are fairly intelligent. It's like well, there privilege for you hard to tell but you should be punished for that. You can be sure you know here's another thing. You hear people being a case all the time about the one percent something became very popular in the United States.

To be, and so the question is worthy draw the boundaries exactly. You part one percent well known as men, people that are richer than me. It's like yeah, but probably bout sick billion nine hundred and ninety nine million, etc, etc. That are poorer than you. So you need an income of thirty two thousand dollars a year to be in the top one percent worldwide, So I don't know what the the average GDP is in in Norway, It's a hell of a lot higher than that is probably triple that, so you don't in the one percent you're in the upper third of the one percent say: well, that's not fair, because we want draw the boundaries. Are you around Norway, but that's convey. And for you that's all. There is no reason you should do that can honestly and so well. So what's the point of all this while the whole victim victimize thing, the whole group identity. Narrative is predicated on a very

narrow and, I would say, malicious view of the world. You're victimized by your own, malevolence, your victims by the tyranny of your culture and your victimized, the catastrophe of nature and that's bill. Into the structure of the world- and you can do distinctions between different levels of victimization. I suppose can do that on the basis of group identity, but it doesnt solve the from the fundamental problem. And it creates other problems that are far worse. What's the alternative. While this is an alternative that I think we did very good job of articulating in the west, and it's see the first element of that is too. Since the porn, the fundamental sovereignty of the individual, and not with regret to write that something got wrong over the last fifty years right. Sovereign individual. The most important

elements of that sovereignty is not what you have coming to you from others in the form of your right they most, port and part of the sovereign individuality is what you can deliver in terms of your responsibility, because it's that on which your own stability relies the stability, your family and the integrity, the state, and so and what you do instead of playing your status as victim, which is self evident, yes, dictum. Obviously, life is fundamentally suffering and is contaminated by malevolence and that's a permanent reality. Instead of the rising yourself as a hapless victim, differentially affected by that and then looking for whose fault it is. You do something radical and you think, maybe it's not my fault Maybe it's my responsibility to do something about that. There's plenty suffering in the world that you could do

something about. You could start with your own. For that matter, you could treat yourself half decently, that's rule to write, treat yourself. You're someone responsible for helping. You could try that actually works quite nicely, and if you can example. Maybe you could do the same thing for your family, That would be a nice extension of grace, let's say, and maybe you go to tat. While you can try doing it for the whole community, you could gone the load of that suffering, their load of that victimization lets you could there are not only not only as I said, on existential reality, but is challenge to the deepest part of yourself and I'll. Tell you One of the things that we have also learned from deep narrative in clinical wars, but what's the fund Anthony narrative. You ve got your characters evil, queen and you're good queen and you're, evil, king and you're good king and. The hero in the adversary? What's the fundamental narrative stand up

and tyranny confront the catastrophe of Nature act out, mythology of the hero gain the treasure, the dragon stores, the fundamental narrative of unkind and now the willingness to take on the responsible. That goes along with the entire catastrophe of being it's much preferable, alternative, deciding who is to blame and going after them. Thank you very norwegian sea, known further extroverted enthusiasm so here's what we're going to do. I want to go through some of the big questions that I've come up with during the last five or six months on the road with you, which have just been an incredible, truly life changing time. Me and then we're gonna end with all those best question.

A forty five minutes. India will see so first off servers off every single night. You are different and I think tonight, perhaps different more different than any night, so far how the hell do you do it? I honestly don't know I didn't. I usually go back in the green room. Therefore, a little bit before an attendant ten minutes before show I walk out there and you say you need to think for a little bit and then you somehow do an hour and a half summing up everything you think in a different way on any given. I well there's some I'll answer that technically you know. The first thing is that something I tell my

students. You know if, if you want to write an essay, you need a problem, because the essay is an attempt to solve a problem. So, first of all, you need a problem, and then second, if you're going to devote time to the problem, then it should be like it should be, a problem. That is your problem. At least a piece of it should be have students all the time and they come up to me and they say tell me what I should read my essay about in their often very annoyed that I haven't. No, you didn't give us a topic. It's like! Yes, that's because the topic is the difficult part of the assignment right to specify the problem that the difficult part of the assignment, in fact, when you turn this, you're trying to address a complex, that's a domain of suffering. The diagnosis, which is the problem, formulation is the crucial cognitive step. So if you want to write, you need a problem in and if you want to

truthfully, then you need a problem that yours and if you want to write in a focused and aimed manner Then you, U night, you're thinking around the problem, and so one thing I always do before. When I sit back stages. I think ok, what's the problem for the night, you know when the problem for the night was victim so which one statements like ok, let's explore the concept victim and go down as far as we possibly can. Ok, so then! Well then, I would say my I have my knowledge organised in a idiosyncratic manner and that's a consequence of having spent when I wrote, wrote my first book, which was maps of meaning. I wrote everyday for three hours for fifteen years and I vowed when I started that I

going to make that what would you say that the highest duty that I had nothing was going to come before that and there is a certain amount of cruelty and that, because it meant that you know, if my wife came into my office, then I would bark at her and if my kids came into my office like a junk yard dog surrounded by barbed wire, it's like because you can always not right. It's not that important. That day there might, be more pressing concerns and their probably including people who would just like to have something to do with you for a while or do something geyser have a problem fixed. It's like no go away. I've got three hours, and so I I I I I was a thief and I took that from life, and so I spent a very long time writing in thinking about the hardest problem that I could conceptualize in. That was

the relationship between the individual and the atrocity committed in the service of totalitarian possession. It was the worst problem. I can think of how so I looked to see what the worse thing but could do under the worst circumstances was and tried to figure out. Why That happened was step. One step too was have come to some determination about how it might happen, then and having learned something that I it's spected along, which was that that capacity was the individual right me as well. Everyone else to deter If there was a mode of acting in the world, that would restrict that possibility, that it would no longer manifest itself, and so I spent

However many hours, forty five thousand hours, thinking about that- and that's not right because that's how much time has been writing about it most of our time, because I have a very sets mind in some senses lock on a problem. I can't let it go or can't. Let me go, I don't know which way to think about. It it wasn't only that I was writing for three hours a day. I was thinking about it. All the time, right from the time I woke up till the time I went to sleep and I was reading about it obsessively I read, a tremendous amount I was in graduate school and saw the reason I'm telling you all of that is to answer this question is like then I spent. Use lecturing about it and started out with my lecture sphere restructured because I was still wrestling with the ideas, but I tried over the years to reduce the amount of scaffolding safety, wire

net. That was underneath me. While I was lecturing until I got to the point where I didn't need to do anything other than set for ten. In its and think, ok, what's the problem? Where am I going I'm exploring the solution and not necessarily putting forward a pre constructed solution like it'll, be in the universe of solutions are considered, but I'd like to get a sharper and clearer. So I got to the point where I could go from the problem. Through the story using all these things that I have already talked about in new and so then I can see once there- and I think the closest analogy I can think of- is jazz improvisation. It. Something like that. You know an expert museum It has a tremendous number of have habits, deeply ingrained like an athlete same thing that the greater part part build into two to him or her. And so I, that and so, then I can come out and think. Ok well a little

yes a little of that and that new it's like each of these, are is this a personality of sorts, and you can let them have a dialogue in real time and see where it goes. Nazi story right, that's what a great author does when he writes a book is he puts out some characters and then he lets them. Characters do whatever they would do and that reveals story and so do that. I let the ideas do what they're going to do and see how they fight and compete with one another and and and then that's see what people want lectures, assuming that this is a lecture and it probably isn't it's probably more like a strange sort of dialogue with the audience. What what people, and in a forum like this, is they want to see thought inaction

right. They don't want to see something, that's already crystallized and and and dead, which is why I did read the last time I was here, although I do that, rarely they want to see something they want to see. What they want to see, technically speaking, is something if you thought about metaphysically, as they want to see the logos, inaction, that's really what people always want to see, and I mean that philosophically and so the The real time part of it, the fact that it's not a contrived performance, is actually crucial to its success and also what keeps me engage like it's. I don't know how these damn lectures. You're gonna go when I came out here. I think ok victim man It's a big problem, ok! Well, we could. We could address it with the Essen and we can use this in hand. I can those together and we can see how that goes and then, Perhaps all bearded draw aroused

in conclusion, because it's hard to bring them to the point that then you know successfully something. I've got better out over the tour just great fun, but I never don't know if it's going work, and so I'm on it When I come out on stage. I think. Oh, my god, I've got a big problem here and I've gotta sorted out the seventy minutes and there's all these people here so and and- and that makes it a tense for me an exciting way. It's and exhilarating. You know and exhilarating challenge, but that also makes it alive because I could easily fail so well. So that's how its lots of practice and and in the final thing is, I don't talk about problems that don't matter to me. They matter. Does

them thing that matters it's important fundamental and so every night I come out. I think, ok! Well, what's the fundamental problem for the night and it's a problem that affects me as far as deep down is as I can go, you know and so yeah do you know the point in life when you became a serious person and I mean that I mean that in the best sense of it, because when people ask me what it's like to be on tour with you, I always say what he takes life seriously and it's making me take life more seriously and I think it's making these people take life more seriously. Do you remember the moment that happened? Yes, can you tell me that moment? Yes, I can yeah, so it was in. I think, nineteen. Eighty three and this is a strange story. I came home from a party universe

party, and I wasn't in the best mood. I've always had a certain proclivity towards depression, which I've recently discovered is probably an auto immune problem in any I going to this party and I'd have a to drink, because I like to drink and added, I wasn't happy with with thing that happened at the party wasn't happy with the way I behaved. I mean that's, not uncommon right if you feel like to drink than you not happy with the way you behave. Those things just go together, and so, but there is a difference deeper than that? It wasn't just that. I was unhappy with the way the party had gone, but I was deeply dissatisfied with how I was oriented in life like I felt that I felt that there was a

It wasn't nihilism, I suppose that was that was gnawing at me. This was not long after I'd stopped I'd. Workforce Socialist Party in Canada for a while, when I was a kid wasn't long after I stop doing that, and so I can lost my moorings and in order that the Christianity that my mother practised in particular I'd abandoned that when I was like thirteen, and so I didn't have any structured Orient me at all and so I was experimenting a little bit with artistic production at this point, not a lot but a bit, and so I took out this canvas from my my closet, and I sat down- and I sketched out this picture- I just love my nation, Rome and what came out was. It was a cruise fiction and there reserve a a picture of Christ on on the crucifixion it with a very judgmental face, very angry

and with a snake wrapped around his waist, and it was really harsh picture expression is picture, not that I have the talent of an expression is but but but that's what it was, and I thought I mean it. I wasn't thinking I. You think that I was thinking in religious terms at that point at all, and you know it was an absolutely sporadic churchgoers and I was absolutely shocked by this picture. I thought what where the hell did this come from? What did that past? believe me, you know I took me years to figure out what it meant in really want one thing. So I'll tell you part of what it meant, so called Young said something very interesting about the structure of the new testament. He said that the gospel cries is: fundamentally, although not entirely, fundamentally a figure of compassion but. The ideal, is not only compassion

Ideal is also a judge because an ideal is a judge. You know that you have an ideal world judge, because you don't live up to it, and so your ideals always looking at you like you're, not what you should be in the higher the ideal. The more judgmental the judge, but that's where he thought the book of revenue. First of all emerged in the as a nun, conscious revelation which, because Christ comes back at the end of time. So so the story goes as the ultimate judge and virtually no one is judged acceptable. Why? Why? Why, because by the highest possible, see speaking psychologically biologically for that matter,. The idea of Christ is the instantiated of the ideal. As such. That's what it is It might be more than that. But that's what it is it's it's whatever. A human being, would be if a human being was perfect and it's an effort of Arkell

the imagination to represent symbolically, which we do with cathedrals. For example, when we paint the image of Christ against the dome that represents eternity itself. That's the ideal. Now you might say why don't believe in the ideal? It's like you missing the point you missing the point so so that ideal is a judge and the farther you are away from that ideal. The harsher the judge, and so the snake was part of that, because the thing is: is that if you're low enough in the ideal is high enough. The ideal itself is so judge mental and so detached for you. That starts to look to you like your enemy, and so that was the painting was like and I was asking a question. That was the thing that I was asking. The questioner is asking what what I I have to do to set this. What would I have the due to set the situate, I mean right, and so then I drew this picture and the picture. How had had the answer?

artistic production always has the answer. That's where the answers come from me, no one, so that was a manifestation of imagination. It was. It was part of me attempting in its symbolic motive, personified thinking to deliver a message and so I swore that night that I was going to do whatever it took to set myself right period whatever, and I was dead serious about that, and so that was that was the moment and then I don't know what I did without picture iced. I hid it my closet, because I was so freaked out by what the hell is this it's like some schizophrenia, nightmarish like underneath. That covers with that thing, but that was the.

That. Was it wasn't long after that I wrote the first dare say that eventually turned into this maps of meaning book. It was a poem to begin with, actually that that was how it came about first. So that's when I decided to be two straight myself out, regardless of two straight myself out: that's what I'm gonna do so. So I think this is our thirteenth show in Europe regret a couple more over the next couple days and now it sounds like we're extending for another thirty or forty, probably in the spring of this thing, has just grown and grown and grown. Are you shocked at the amount of people that live in western societies here in Norway, especially when we were in Sweden a couple days ago? But all the countries that we ve been in that live in free societies yet are completely afraid to say what they think.

Is is it absently shocking to you? I think the most. I think what I've been most shocked about in all of that is what happened in the UK, with the police starting to prosecute people for crimes of offensive knows that Just now, I think, that's probably partly because- and I mean I see- that is broadly reflective of of something that's happening in the west in general, but its prey particularly shocking in appalling to me as a western canadian. No, because obviously Canada was part of the british Empire and when I grew up, there was. A pretty tight affinity still in western Canada with the British Empire mean earth are Would the dominion of Canada was still pink, we're still part of the british empire? We god- save the queen constantly at public gatherings, that's going by the wayside, and so- and you know I've always

guarded british common law and the british parliamentary tradition as well, one of it perhaps the highest achievement of western civilization. I mean you can argue about that, but it's it's in the top ten, let's say to see the Brits who also have this, for nominal sense of humor. This ability to say having no matter how outrageous about anyone and to include themselves in a joke right, which is such an elegant way of expressing coming Dick Freedom to see them going down. This road is just a just: it's it's it's. What is it exactly? What its deeply saddening? That's for sure and and let's horrifying nets, nothing Actually, the right wording. I dont know what the word forty is. There certainly sorrow that's associated with disbelief. It's also that watching that happen in what I still think is like the central

core of the idea of the visual sovereignty and freedom as expressed across the western world, and so and then there's similar manifestations of that everywhere else. But the police per prosecuting people for asking people to turn in their neighbors. If they say something else and that's happening in the: U K Letter, what we saw that that you know, but he sent me posters pictures of posters in in the scottish subway, In the end, the metro in the tube in saying inviting people do inform on your neighbors for being offensive. It's like what the hell. What what's so I knew this was coming because because I knew we brought our first hate speech laws in Canada back in the nineteen eightys, we were, after this character named earns zangwill. Who is a particularly despair

piece of work, hard hat, wearing right, wing, Anti, semite, holocaust denial. You know he had it all that guy and in it was his shenanigans. Careless malevolent shenanigans that enticed aliens into producing hate speech legislation. I thought no, that's! That's not good. It's not good you're, making a big mistake. We're gonna pay for this. It's gonna unfold, overlong time who defines hate. The crucial issue. It's not like it's a scientific category, two judgement,

and the answer is those whom you least want to have the power to define it. Cuz they're, the ones that will take that power to themselves, and if you think that isn't going to affect what you get to say. Well, you've got another think coming, so I think it's I think it's going to pay for it and hopefully, hopefully will wake up and push back before we have to pay too high a price we're going to pay for it. So yeah and we're going to deserve

If we do he's talking to you why, last night last night I was on this british show called question time, which is very famous but issue, and there is a woman parliamentarian. There from Ireland was pretty bright eye like listening to her, but the host asked me about this character named count Dracula at an off. You know about him. His girlfriend he's a comedian while he thinks The media as well, but you know too large a comedian to think they're comedians that aren't funny. Not saying he's not funny, because other people think that he's a comedian too, but he presents himself as a comedian count Dang killer, that's actually a joke, that name

girlfriend had upon, and I liked count Damkina because he hated that bug and I'm not very fond of pugs. I think they're hideous little creatures and and and and but you know I dont really hate them if a pug comes along and all pet it and everything. But it's just sort of like me the this, read like dog with these bugbear. You know if you hit a pat on the back of it, the eyes will pop out and so because they ve been so genetically mishandled and so on and it's just you realize were put this on Youtube and you're just hear unleashing a whole day- people I know I know I know but whatever whatever so you can have your pardon. You can love my dad had this dog that was so damn hideous and useless that it was just a miracle and he loved it too and so- and you know, that's fine, that's fine, but

and there's going to be an ironic attitude in in the dismissal of pugs and thank you I didn't like is girlfriends punk, and so He thought he play, I mean trick and or a mean slash funny trick and teach it to do a pale Hitler salute, which I We thought was quite funny. It's like I don't love. I don't see that is glorifying Hitler. It's a pub for God's sake. It wasn't it wasn't. What do you call those Doberman? You know it was a it's like teacher ran to do here. So late, I love it come down to the breed of dogs with you all these things matter in terms of their revenue of the way they represented, you know, and then you know he taught it to so horrible. He and I'm gonna, be so for this eighty, to do its little salute when he said gas, the juice which is not funny no exit

its horribly funny. You know that's the thing. Well, look and so yeah. You laugh that's right because you're all horrible- and you know- and you know perfectly well that its horribly funny- you know we need- we need to be able to be horribly funny because if it's horrible and win and we need to be able to find We need to be able to allow people the freedom to find the ability to transcend bout. Horror with comedy and in a mark of a free society, is that Coke Committee these can be just exact what the hours which their people who pushed the edge of what's acceptable. If Europe, comedian. You get right to the edge right, new dance there and the audience is thinking on serious elements. A good example of that you know, because you can just see her she's gonna play we correct recently, but when she was in her hated, you could just see Sarah she's so smart

see you're sitting there and she think of something just speck Kimberly evil. And horrible, and she think and then she say it. You know- and everyone would just crack up because, like the darkest part of their sole had once thought something like that and she dared to outdo written and by honouring its, she also simultaneously transcended it. You know and that's the beauty of comedy and and and Well so any ways they they went after dank, learn and nailed him legally- and I thought that's that's in great Britain as well and last night, so they brought this up one on question time and you know the the irish woman who said she went off when I talk about how terrible Kristallnacht wasn't, what an awful thing Auschwitz and end the Holocaust was it's like well. It's it's. Do you not that Morley virtuous to notice that

you know, you know what I mean it's like and it didn't have anything to do with the topic at hand. It's like yeah, you wouldn't say that you noticed that unless you're implying that will keep their people around you, including this count, dank and who didn't notice. That K. It had nothing to do with whether he should have been prosecuted for his stupid joke. You can say what you could say. It was a stupid joke, which certainly was you could say that it was a hateful joke, which I don't agree with by the way but you could say that- and I think you could. You can make a credible case for that, but to say that, because you think that the Holocaust was bad, he should be

criminally prosecuted like no sorry man, you ve crossed the line and- and there is no excuse for it- and so that's part of what's worrisome about the state of discourse in in the free west. That same thing, comedians won't go to university campuses. The same thing you don't get to be funny. So if you can't be funny, then you not free, you know the gesture in the kings courts. The only person gets to tell the truth. And if the king is such a tyrant, did he kills this gesture than you know that the evil king is in charge, and so when we cannot tolerate our comedians, it's like. Well, there you go there, the canaries in the coal mine. As far as I'm concerned no, I promised my wife did. I would

did any hornets with any Hornets nest with sticks for like a day. And now I just had a big hornets nest with a stick. So Tammy she's here somewhere- Jordan's wife by the way she's been on this entire zealots ravens fault. This ship years alone, what what has been the best part of this adventure of the store for you personally, oh well, the best part happens all the time. The best part

I think I think I told the story tonight, though, not shirk, as I talked to a bunch of journalists. Today's who can't remember- and I told the story, but this guy came up to me last night. He was a kind of appears guy rough, looking guy and about he's protein is late, twenties, maybe early thirties. He said I've, I've been smoking drug free for nine months and I said: hey good work man because he looked pretty pleased about that said. Well, you know, hopefully that belong better, and you said it's a lot better, I said we're good for you for sticking it out, and I hope you can continue it, and I meant that cuz I didn't mean good for you and hope you can stick it out and he knew I meant that because he wouldn't have bloody well told me that to begin with, we didn't think that was going to be the response and then he said- I got nine of my mates to do the same thing yeah. I thought. Right on man. That's great, and then you know this.

In Birmingham two nights ago and I walked out of the hotel in this kid working class. Kid came up to me. You know just out of the blue any said. Thank you very much for your with eighty, my vision. I thought hey look, it's really good thing to be able to go around the world and have people stop you on the street and say things like that to you. It's like that's as good as it gets. You know, and people are telling me stories like that, all the time they come up and they say what you ve watched this. It happens all the time people come up and they tell me some way that their house was out of order. You know there are hopeless and and nihilistic and and drinking too much and watching much pornography and procrastinating too much and being not serious with their relationship and not getting along with their parents, and you know not formulating a vision and not growing up and while you know, there's just endless ways that you can descend into a kind of

what would you call it- a kind of grungy, filthy carpet, infested, hell and and so and then they say, look I've been watching your lectures and I developed a plan for my life and I've been trying to be more responsible and I've been really trying to tell the truth, and I ended my relationship with my father and I got married to my girl Now I have a flat and I quit doing drugs and I've just tripled my salary in the last year and- and I commit suicide like I was going to six months ago. I have think I have. I don't know out of the hundred and fifty people that I talked to each night. I would say probably over the course of the lecture series. There's probably ten people like that at night and tell me that

and so see, and because I believe what I said tonight. I believe that the individual is sovereign and that individual sovereignty is the cornerstone of reality itself am it's the cornerstone of the state and its the cornerstone of reality itself I truly believe that to be the case that every time I hear someone say look, I've got my act together. I think that's one more word it on you know if the scales are always tilting towards good towards evil than every time someone decides to straighten themselves up, they put me, they take a maid, the weight of the evil side and they put it on the good side and it's not trivial, and I believe that that's what the redemption of the world depends on its, not political. It happens at the level of the individual. Just like the descent into totalitarian catastrophe occurs when people abandon their sovereign responsibility, which I think is the most accurate

we have diagnosing what happened in the twentieth century. So whenever someone comes up to me and says I was not so well in here, is you know three ways wherever really put my life together, we have a little fifteen seconds ready and we both know why, and so that's that's as good as it gets, and so that's happening constantly and I'd feel generally speaking there events are like. There's celebrations of that, and so interesting too. The media miss this completely. It's like theirs. They don't have the conceptual. What would you say they don't have the can actually tools to understand that some might be happening. Worthy of note outside the purely conventional confines of of you know that

stultifying dull political discourse, but it doesn't matter it might be nice if it didn't happen. It doesnt fundamentally matter because I'm a psychologist, I decided long time ago that the individual was the right level of analysis, and so it's an absolute it's. It's not a pleasure. It's not the right way of thinking about it. What's wrong, Seven do what is meaningful, not what is expedient. This is the most deeply meaningful thing that I can envision. Do it so that's great it's great! It's hard great is hard when something great happens, that's hard right. It's not it's not something trivial, but it's doesn't matter. Because, because its great and so every time someone says to me, I'm better, I'm get along with my father. I married

girlfriend we're going to have a child. We were going to have children now we're gonna have children. I think that's one more. So that's great Until the autumn little bit about Jordan Petersen Havin fun. We did Syria, Jordan Petersen. What's Petersen do for fun, I stopped them actually. Well, it's not like. I don't

it's like most of what I ve always done for fun in my life has been to play in all, and so, when I had little kids, I played with them all the time and my kids are grown up and I play with them all the time and my daughter is so playful, despite her rather catastrophic life. Up to this point, she's much better, but is that every single thing she says you know when she's not delivering like when she's not focused on top do people about a serious topic, everything she says: it's a joke. You know my son is ridiculously tv and playful, and so so that's fun and when they were them, kids, we just played all the time. And so I really like that in most of the people who ve been, my close friends have been people like that, their there they play with their speech all the time, which is why I think, along with comedians, in our

It's probably why we travel well together. John, my two around you who's, a great guy very, very useful, is also committee in Rome, it's a comedian in so many of the people that I go along with her comedians and asked interviews on how to begin with comedians, because there's that element of play. So I really like that, on this tour? There's not a lot of fun. I wouldn't say we had a good time when we went to the comedy colombian solid salt Lake City. That was, that was fun. That was forty five minutes and fun. I had some fun at Cambridge I'd I'd some funded, just to be clear. I brought Jordan up as the surprise guess I did about our stand up and then I brought you up and we did. We started together we just gotta rift for about forty. Five minutes and apple were yet respond. They were through and they love seeing you. Yes, I did. I was at the Cambridge Union just a couple of days ago and I was in a fairly high spirited mood and, and I had a fair bit of fun,

students there. There are still serious, but you know what I really like: what the times in my life that I've had. The best time is when I'm sitting around with a variety of people who are very amusing and all their trying to do is to outwit each other with something absurd and funny and was really a part of. I don't know if it's part of of and an avian culture or not, but in in in in the west, where I grew up, which is the working class culture mean most of what my friends- and I did with regards to conversation- was like half witted up up up

men upmanship. I guess that's what it is. Your goal was to say something funnier than the person just before you said, and so it was competitive humor, and I really really like that lot, and so when I am able that's great relief, but this tour like it's very tightly, scheduled crazily tightly, scheduling, Tammy, and I decided at the beginning that, because it was such an absurd, opportunity that it was a working to her you know and that we are going to subordinate everything, to making sure that these shows went as well as they possibly could, and that we would take whatever refuge and amusement. We could you know where we could steal it, and we ve had some of that mean. Last summer in Oslo, we walked up to the sculpture, gardens, that was really cool and we walked down the boulevard and we only had about an hour and a half to take a look around the city, but

but it was a nice hour and a half. You know the sun was out and we enjoy yourselves and so that's rule twelve right petticoat on the street, when, when you see one when you encounter one- and you take your joy where you can get it and you don't complain if it's not happening, perhaps as often as it should, especially when you're given like we have been this absolutely improbable adventure and we'll have time- hopefully God willing knock on wood with some luck for some more fun in the future. What that's actually quite a secular to my next question, which is because you talk about stories so much in the importance of stories.

Does the Jordan Petersen Story have a happy ending and as that, even matter or what do you think the the ending of the Jordan Petersen stories? I don't have any idea, you know when I was from the time I was about twenty, a kind of had a sense of what would happen to me. I had some sense of it, but only really only extended until I was about my age, fifty something like that and I didn't know what would I didn't have a vision for after that and see. I thought when I wrote road maps of meaning I remember telling one of my my peers. I said I think everyone will think the way that I think in this book in fifty years, and he said well

pretty grandiose claim. I guess that was it something like welfare enough. You know, but but but by the same token I wasn't taking. I wasn't taking credit for the ideas like I was taking some credit for clarifying them. Ideas were already there they're everywhere those Yes, but clarifying the miss something, and so I knew that when I was working on maps of meaning was at the centre of things in some sense and that manifested itself in my teaching clear because my time at Harvard for six years and the course there which is based on my book, was very very popular and students regarding life. Changing in the same thing happened at the University of Toronto, and so I knew that power was in those ideas, but I dont see

my future very clearly from here on in in all over the next year. I'm going to do more of what I am doing. I want to return to the exodus to exodus. I like doing those biblical lectures. I thought that was useful and important, so I want to do that, but my vision kinds, some kind of runs out in December of two thousand and nineteen and I dont know what, because all of this is so unlikely, I thought last to use every single day. I thought well, this is going to come to an end like this is ridiculous, and this is ridiculous is can continue, but it is continuing, and so I have no idea how. How do you predict something,

that, I mean for the longest time. I thought that, as this wave grew, the probability that I would end up like a surfer smashed on the beach was the highest probability outcome and I still probably think that that's the highest probability outcome, but but I'm not as apprehensive about that now as I was because in some sense assuming I don't do anything spectacularly stupid, like defend count, Dracula, Dave, Ruben, the people. The people who would like to that who would have liked to have taken me out have thrown the worst that they could throw out me. As far as I can tell I mean, might my my cardinal day in terms of vilification

it's quite a contest by the way, because there were many days like that was the day I was civil dangerously accused by an all right magazine of being a jewish shill and accused by a jewish magazine of being tantamount to Hitler himself. I thought well that pretty much does it is like the Nazis hate me, because I'm a jewish ill and the end well, this particular jewish publication. You know compared me to Hitler and I thought well, that's it. There What else do you go after that? We're gonna call me now you like it don't worry, you did that's just not there. Much past Hitler, and so you know- and so I'm not

concerned that, in the absence of some fatal stupidity on my part, which certainly could still happen because we have that proclivity for fatal stupidity within all of us, I'm not to concern that. I'm going to be taken out by my ideological logical opponents, but by the same token, this is a pretty unwieldy and unprecedented situation to be in, and so I am not under any illusions about its stability or safety. So, who knows man stick with it as long as your gave me so far, so good our rights, I promised you guys that I was gonna. Take what I thought was the best question from you guys and there were there were hundreds of them. I was reading through him during the lecture, but I thought this was the best we got out about.

Will you move to Oslo and run for Prime Minister of Norway will first he you probably want someone, you can speak Norwegian and second, more seriously, throw my life. I consider the political career, and certainly when I was young very seriously. That was my ambition till I was about eighteen.

But yeah started when I ran through an executive position in the Socialist Party and my home province when I was fourteen, and so that was the first large scale public. Each I gave to about seven hundred people. We can ever pause ruins. I can try to picture fourteen year old, Socialist Jordan Peters in that that's an incredible image to me. What was that kid like? Like me? you know I could speak to a crowd. Then speech was very successful. I lost the position by thirteen votes out of seven hundred, something like that, and you know I had the audience under. I had the audience. No

so you know there's certain things about you that remain constant hopefully I know more than I did, then you know that's to be developed. We hope for I've. I stopped actively pursuing political career when I was eighteen and the reason for that was because I became more interested in something else, which is what I was talking about tonight, because it turned out that the political problems that I was interested in were we're dead.

Enough, arguably not to be political because they were ready for some reason. I was very interested in totalitarianism. Right from the time I was like an adolescent. I dont know why exactly who the hell knows why you get interested in what you're interested in some problem in all? This is a thing that useful to know about life. You know all of you have problems that bother you and you think. Well, I don't want to have a problem and fair enough, but like theirs lot of problems you could have that could bother. You could there's lots of things wrong with the world and you could be obsessed by like a million problems right because there's just problems everywhere, but you're not some problem

grab you. Why it's a mystery? It's the mystery of the autonomy of being in some sense problem, grabs you it won't! Let you go like that's the suffering in that. That's your problem and you know in that problem might be your destiny. I think that's right is in the the problems that grip. You are the portal to your destiny and and so well, then you can, Let them sleep when you can have no problems. Couldn't good luck with that, so you ve got your problems. One of the things you learn as a therapist is you don't interfere with people's problems and what I mean by that is this. Let's say you come to me and we have a discussion about. What's wrong in your life, and I listen because I want you to explain what the problems are, because what do I know about your life? It's like I need to listen so that I can hear what

Our problem is not rush to a conclusion. And then I want to listen. While you generate a solution. Now I'm gonna help by asking questions and help you explore, but if I let's say You lay out your problem and, I think, hey, I know, would six now and then I just say to you: well, you know: here's a solution. First of all, you gonna be very annoying about that, because I just took your problem it was up to you to wrestle with that problem and come up with a solution and then to have a little so Congratulatory burst of pleasure at you all in

Hu. It is genius that you could solve your problem and then then you're motivated because you ve come up with a solution. Maybe go implemented right and so well, so my problem became something that wasn't political and so I pursued that and so I'm not going to pursue a political career. I have also decided to I didn't know this, but I dont have the temperament for it. I couldn't do it. I I find the adversarial interviews that I'm in example. They take me like. It takes me three days to recover from one of those. Why does because? I don't like that motive discourse, and if your political year in that motive discourse all the time and I'm not cut out for it, I'm not a particularly combat a person by nature, I'm a person,

terrified about leaving monsters under the rug ignored. But that is not the same. Thing- and it's not like, I enjoy the process of calling them out and hashing them through, but I think we'd better get out and well their small. So so so no I'm not coming to Norway The answer to that question. So On that note, I said is true privately before, but I may as well say publicly, since we put this up on the EU to this. What we're doing here. This started as a professional joy for me, but it has become a personal joy that I can explain. I am better than when we started like. I know what it's like to be, these people, that taking these ideas in changing and on better ends, and it's because of the work that you ve put into your life that you ve helped.

To all of us. So I want to thank you for that and on that note I ve never ending to show like this before, but I'm gonna get out of the way, and I need you guys. Go bananas for Doktor George Bailey. Thank you guys. If you found this conversation meaningful, you might think about picking up dad's books, maps of meaning the architecture of belief. Where's, newer, bestseller, twelve rules for life and antidote to chaos? Both of these works does much deeper into the top, covered in the Jordan. Be Petersen Podcast, see George, me Petersen dot com for audio e book and textiles or pick up the books at your favorite bookseller, really hope, enjoyed this podcast, if you did His liberating apple podcast, comment review or share this episode with a friend thanks for tuning in and talk to you next week follow me on my Youtube Channel Jordan be Petersen on Twitter at Jordan be Petersen on Facebook at doctor,

would be Petersen and Instagram Jordan Dog be DOT Petersen. Details on this show acts to my blog information about Marine tour dates and other events and my list of recommending books can be found on my website, Jordan, Peter sooner com. My online writing programmes designed to help people straight note, their past stand themselves in the present and what a sophisticated vision and strategy for the future can be found itself, authoring, dot, com, that self authoring dot com from the West would one podcast network.