Latest / Motivation Mindset Podcast / The Brutal Truth About Life That No One Wants to Hear: Jordan Peterson’s Hard-Hitting Advice

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The Brutal Truth About Life That No One Wants to Hear: Jordan Peterson’s Hard-Hitting Advice · Motivation Mindset Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: You say you are morally obligated to do remarkable things.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Why Well, I think partly because life is so difficult
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: and challenging that unless you give it everything you have,
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: the chances are very high that it will embitter you,
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: and then you'll be a force for darkness and not good.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: And so you know the fact that life is short
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: and can be brutal can terrify you into hiding and avoiding.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: You can flip that on its head and understand that
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: since you're all in anyways, you might as well take
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: the risks that are adventurous. There isn't anything more adventurous
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: than the truth. So why is that a moral obligation. Well,
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: if you hide and you don't let what's inside of
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: you out, and you don't bring into the world what
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: you could bring, and you become cynical and bitter, you
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: will start doing very dark things. Not only will you
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: not add to the world what you could add, but
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: you'll start being jealous of people who are competent and
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: doing well and work to destroy them. So that's the
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: pathway to hell. Really, we need to separate out the
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: distinction between fantasy and delusion. You do have a fantasy
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: about the future. So you have to provisionally map the future.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: That's what a plan is. That doesn't make it a delusion,
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: like it becomes a delusion when the map bears no
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: relationship to the underlying territory. So if you have a
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: strategy for the future, you know, maybe let's say that
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: your strategy for the future is that you have five
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: million YouTube subscribers in three years. Well, you have no
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: evidence of the strict sort that that's how it's going
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: to be, because anything could happen between now and three
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: years from now, let's say. But there's no reason to
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: call that a delusion. It's one hypothetically possible path of potential,
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: and then you can make the sacrifices necessary to bring
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: that about. So even though it's a fantasy because it
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: maps something it isn't there, it's not a delusion. It's
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: a delusion when you're ignoring elements of your own experience
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: that would inform your fantasy more effectively. You're ignoring them
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: so that you can live in a positive representation of
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: the future without having to pay the appropriate price for it.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: The ultimate ideal is also the ultimate judge, because the
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: ultimate ideal is something against which you fall far short,
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: and that might be so painful that you can barely
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: stand it. But then what you do is you two things.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: I suppose is you lower the ideal and you raise
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: your estimation of your potential. And what do I mean
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: by lower the ideal? Well, if you're comparing yourself to
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: someone or even to a futureself, and the gap is
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: so painful that it paralyzes you, then you've created a
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: dragon that you don't have the tools to master. And
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: so what you have to do is you have to
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: scale the dragon down to size. And you want to
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: scale the dragon down to size until it's a size
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: that you are willing to move to, however small that is.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: Now you know, if you're here and your ideal is
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: here and that gap is unbearable, then you reduce the gap,
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: and you reduce the gap. And you're going to have
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: to do that anyways, because you're not going to move
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: from where you are to perfect in one fell swoop, right.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: There's going to be incremental steps. So you have to
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: fill in that hierarchy of progression with a high enough
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: resolution representation so that you can start to move forward.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: There's another gospel comment that's very interesting. It's called the
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: Matthew principle, and the Matthew principle is to those who
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: have everything, more will be given, and from those who
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: have nothing, everything will be taken. Now, it's brutal because
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: it implies that reality works like this. When you're moving up,
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: you go like this, right, and that's pretty nice. That's
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: a lot better than this. But when you're going down,
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: you go like that, right. It's like downhill, downhill cliff. Okay,
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: so you want to avoid the downhill path. Well, if
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: the uphill path is like this, which is like exponential,
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: let's say, are geometric, then what that means is that
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: it doesn't matter how big the first steps you take
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: uphill are, even if they're trivial, even if they're shameful
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: in their size, because you're so useless. If you're disciplined
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: in that, you'll speed up extraordinarily rapidly. And so that's
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: the good news, you might say, is that you can
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: take very small steps, even ones that might be shameful
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: in their size, and you have to admit that to yourself.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: But once you get the ball rolling, it doesn't roll
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: in a linear fashion. It rolls in a geometric fashion.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: And this is a really good thing to know, because
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: it can take the sting out of the realization of
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: your own stupidity. It's like, yeah, you know, everybody has
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: their weak sides. Let's say things they're embarrassed about. When
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: I first started going to the gym, I was like
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: twenty three and I think I weighed one hundred and
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: thirty five pounds and I was six foot one, very
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: very thin, twenty seven inch waist something like that, and
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: I smoked like mad, and I drank too much, like
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: I wasn't in good shape. The first attempts forward I
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: took in the gym, I went to this swim sercize class. Jesus,
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: it was me and this like really fat guy, young
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: guy probably not any worse shape than me, and like
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: seven old women over seventy and they could outswim me like.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: It was pretty damn humiliating. And so I did a
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: semester of that got myself in somewhat better shape. And
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: then I started to go to the gym to work
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: out to lift weights, and that was also rough, because
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: you know, I'd be underneath the bloody bench press trying
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: to lift seventy five pounds off the rests, and you know,
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: some muscleheaded bastard would come over and tell me how
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: to do it, and it's like, yeah, thank you, But
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: you know, it's embarrassing, and lots of times people won't
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: do things like go to the gym because they're so
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: embarrassed about how they look or what sort of shape
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: they're in. And it's a pain to start at the bottom.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: But you start at the bottom where you're weak, and
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: if you want to rectify what's weak, you have to
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: accept the fact that you're at the bottom and that
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: the first steps are going to be painful. You know,
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: it took me about three years, but I stopped smoking
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: and then I stopped drinking, and I gained forty pounds
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: muscle in like three and a half years something like that.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: I basically had to stop doing that because I had
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: to eat like six times a day. It was crazy,
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: But I got a lot more physically confident and a
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: lot more coordinated. But the point of all this is,
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: if you're going to rectify your weaknesses, you have to
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: admit your insufficiency to your own shame. Now, if the
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: gap between you and your ideal is so great that
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: it paralyzes you, you shrink, that things will beckon to
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: you and call to you, and you'll have intuitions about
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: which pathway to take, and you will in all likelihood
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: follow those because what else do you have. You have
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: these orienting instincts. This is another reason why you don't lie,
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: because if you lie and you practice lying, you pathologize
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: your instincts, and then your intuitions lead you wrong. And
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: so there's a sin that's laid out in the Gospels.
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: It's the sin against the Holy Ghost, and it's unforgivable,
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: and people have been debating for like two thousand years
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: about what this particular sin is, but it's something like
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: the pathologization of the instincts that orient you. If you
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: sacrifice your relationship to the truth, you warp your vision
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: and then you can't see. And then one day it'll
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: be dark and there'll be sharp things in the fog
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: in front of you, and you'll wander right into them
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: because you've pathologized your own vision. You don't want to lie,
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: because you program yourself falsely, and then you automatically see
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: what isn't there, and then of course the world will
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: slap you in the face continually and you'll think, oh
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: my god, the world's such a pathological place when the
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: truth of the matter is is that no, you just
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: keep running into things that you refuse to see, and
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: then you think, well, the world's made of nothing but obstacles.
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: It's like, well, you put the obstacles in your own path,
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: and you did that by developing these complex, self serving delusions,
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: a story that you tell other people about who you
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: are that isn't true. You're trying to lay out a
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: map that bears no relationship to reality, and you keep
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: wondering why you wander off the path and into a pit.
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: It's like, well, how could it be otherwise? People have
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: commented to me many times about my bravery, and I
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: don't like that. It's not right. I'm afraid of different
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: things than the typical person. Maybe that's a good way
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: of thinking about it. I'm way more afraid of the
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: consequences of saying something that's false or wandering off the
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: appropriate path than I am of whatever consequences might come
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: for saying what I believe and doing what I believe
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: to be the case. I'm way more afraid of that.
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: You know, I've been reading the Gospel of Saint Matthew.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: I'm writing a book at the moment called we who
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: wrestle with God. And one of the things Christ says
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: to people continually is to not damage their vision, is
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: to not put that's the best way of putting it.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: Don't occlude your eye. You can see what's in front
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: of you if you're willing to see it. And if
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: you're willing to see it, many of the terrible obstacles
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: in life you can just walk around. But if you
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: blind yourself purposefully to follow your own narrow, self serving delusion,
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: you're going to run into terrible things and terrible people
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: and the terrible part of your own soul all the time.
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: That's what you should be afraid of. You can't be
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: isolated alone without responsibility and pursuing your hedonistic nonsense and
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: not be insane and miserable. Those are all the same thing, right,
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: And so you know, it's got to the point I've
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: said things that have made me somewhat unpopular, Like it's
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: very difficult for people to mature until they have a child.
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: You find a huge part of what you are in
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: that relationship. It makes you responsible, makes you grow up,
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: It gives you the opportunity to mentor someone you have
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: someone around who's more important than you. Well, that's part
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: of being mentally healthy. It's a huge part of it.
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: This enterprise that I helped put together, Alliance for Responsible Citizenship,
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: we're trying to put forward a model of governance. It's
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: called a subsidiary model, and the idea is that people
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: have multiple social roles that scale. Now there's you take
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: care of yourself, integrate yourself, which means you can conduct
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: yourself properly across the medium to long run your self sustaining.
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: Then you can maybe extend that to your partner, and
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: then to your family, and then to your local community
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: and then to broader communities as you become more and
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: more competent and able to take on that responsibility. That's
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: the alternative to isolated hedonic slavery is slave to your
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: own whims, and it's the alternative to tyranny because if
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: you take on all that responsibility, you don't have any
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: need for someone to govern you. It's truly the case
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: that your sanity is the concordance between you as an
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: individual and the world. That's the sanity you're distributed out
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: into the world and you should be, and that's you
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: want to be. That's where the adventure is. You want
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: to be solepsistic, the solebpsistic porn masturbator Jesus isn't want
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: to be aimless and miserable. Well, God, it's so pathetic.
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: Why am I so unhappy? It's because you think about yourself. No,
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: you think about the lowest impulses in yourself all the time.
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: That's why you're miserable. People exist in a sacrificial relationship
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: to the world. What does that mean? It seems to
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: mean something like human beings are aware of their extended self.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: You know you're going to be around tomorrow and next week,
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: and next month, the next year, and five years from
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: now and ten years from now. Now it's less certain
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: as you go out, but you do have the sense
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: of yourself as something that stretches across the decades. Okay,
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: And so what that means is that you have to
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: conduct yourself in a manner that is and merely immediate.
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: You have to conduct yourself in a manner that will
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: work across time. Now, how do people do that? They work?
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: Work is a sacrificial gesture. So you work, by definition, virtually,
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: work is the sacrifice of the present for the future.
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: I mean, maybe someone can come up with a better
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: definition of work than that, But I don't think so.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: It's like, you put in time and effort right now,
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: even if it's something not what you'd like to be
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: doing at the moment, you put in time and effort
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: because you believe. What the hell does that mean? You
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: believe it'll pay off? Well, is that a contract with
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: the future? Is it a covenant? Because the relationship that
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: the Biblical Corpus characterizes human striving is covenant. It's a bargain.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: The bargain is you make the right sacrifices and they
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: pay off. That's the bargain. Now you might say, well,
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: that's just part of the social contract, but the Biblical
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: Corpus insists that it's deeper than that. It's built into
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: the structure of reality itself, and that if you got
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: the sacrifices right, the future would be paradisal. That's a
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: kind of sacrifice right there, is that you're willing to
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: sacrifice your short term physiological and psychological comfort for a
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: medium to long term benefit. It's the essence of sacrifice.
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: This is something the atheists don't understand about the Biblical narrative,
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: is that the narrative insists that we live in a
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: sacrificial relationship. It's the essence of humanity to live in
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: a sacrificial relationship. It's like, well, is that true or not? Well,
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: as you mature, your relationships are more sacrificial. It's less
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: about what you, in your narrow sense want right now,
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: and it's more about what's good over the medium to
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: long run, including other people. Well, that's a sacrificial relationship. Now,
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: the Covenant, you know, and this is a matter of faith,
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: it's the matter of the deepest faith. Are you willing
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: to act out the proposition that the way to make
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: the world reveal itself to you in its most positive
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: god is for you to adopt the most appropriate sacrificial relationship.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: What's a big risk, isn't it? Because you have to
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: give up everything. That's the deal. You give up everything
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: that's low everything everything. Well, that's what the Christian passion is,
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: because the Christian passion is an archetypal story, because Christ
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: is the person who sacrifices everything thoroughly one hundred percent.
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: There's no indecision because you age like you pay for
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: your indecision. It's a decision. It's a decision to avoid fundamentally,
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: and part of the moral that's embedded in the story
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: of Job and in the Christian passion is that you
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: can master what you'll face. And maybe that's true. I mean,
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: the clinical literature seems to indicate that it's true, because
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: one of the things you do if you're a competent
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: clinician is you look at what people are attempting to accomplish.
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: And maybe that needs some retooling. But let's assume that
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: they have a goal in mind that would work. Right,
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: You've talked it through with them strategically, they have a
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: well laid out vision. Okay, Now they're laying out the vision,
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: and they encounter impediments that stop them, and maybe they're
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: impediments that make them afraid and paralyze them. And so
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: then what you do is you decompose the impediment or
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: until you find a way they can advance that constitutes
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: a genuine advance that they'll actually do. So what you
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: do is you take the problem and you narrow it
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: until they'll face it. Okay, then they face it. Then
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: what happens They get more competent, That's what happens, and
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: then they get better at facing all problems. So they
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: don't just learn how to deal with that specific problem,
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: they learn a lesson that generalizes across problems. They get braver.
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: When you use exposure therapy, people don't get less afraid,
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: they get braver. That's way better because braver moves from
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: situation to situation. Okay, So the question is if you
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: faced everything that was put in front of you, who
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: would you be. Well, the answer to the biblical answers,
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: you'd be a true son of God. That's the biblical answer.
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: It's like, well, do you believe that, Well, it depends
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: on what you mean by believe. Do you have a
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: better bet than facing what's there? Well, you just have
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: to be sensible about it for a moment. It's like,
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: is your theory that you're going to adapt better using
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: falsehood and avoidance, because that's the contrary theory. You either
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: face it and you do that predicated on the faith
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: that something in you will respond if you do, or
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: you don't face it. That's it. Those are the options.
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: If you don't face it, that's faith too. That's faith
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: in the notion that avoidance and deception will suffice. There's
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: technically two different forms of reward. There's consumatory reward. That's
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: what an orgasm is, its consumatory reward. It brings the
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: behavioral and perceptual sequence to a halt. It ends it
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: right at the climax, it ends it, but then it's over.
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: That journey is over. Right. Then there's the dopaminergic reward,
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: and dopaminergic reward is evidence of advancement towards a goal. Right, Okay,
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: So there's a corollary to that, Well, how do you
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: become optimally engaged? Because dopamine facilitates engagement and focus, which
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: is why drugs like amphetamines can be used for kids
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: who are attention deficit disorted. You tap up the dopamine response,
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: they lock on, right, Okay, so they're locking onto a
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: goal directed pursuit. The problem with amphetamines is that they
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: can lock you on so hard you can't get out
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: of the frame. So like kids on amphetamines will obsess,
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: for example, cleaning up their closet, they can't switch to
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: the next activity. Okay. Dopaminergic reward is reward that's accrued
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: in relationship to a goal. Okay, So what's an implication
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: of that, Well, pursue the highest possible goal. Well, why
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: because the kick from advancement is higher. Now you have
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: to balance that. It can't be you have to advance, right,
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: because imagine the reward's got two components. Number one is
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: you're moving towards some thing valuable. Okay, So you want
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: it to be as valuable as possible, Okay, but you
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: have to be moving. You need something extremely valuable that
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: you can move towards. Okay. So part of the reason
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: that you establish a relationship with God, let's say, is
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: because that's what sets the upper bound to your vision.
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: It's like, I want things to be the best they
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: could be. That's a vision of paradise. Well, that has
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: to be fractionated into your proximal decisions. But lurking behind
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: that should be this continual movement towards what would you say,
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: a heaven that recedes as you approach it. That's the
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: proper vision of heaven. A heaven is a place that's
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: perfect and getting better both at the same time. That's
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: what music shows you, because a great piece of music
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: is perfect, but it's just getting better as it unfolds,
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: and you need that. This is part of the problem
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: with a static utopian vision. Something Dostyevski criticize if you
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: gave people nothing but consumatory reward, he famously says, so
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: that they can do nothing but sit in tubs of
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: hot water, eat cake, and busy themselves with the continuation
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: of the species. Human beings would break that all to
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: hell in a moment, just so they have something interesting
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: to do. If you run yourself through a disciplinary process,
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: so you accomplish something, maybe you don't attain the goal
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: you were aiming at, but you accrue a new way
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: of looking at the world in a set of skills. Well,
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: if you just keep doing that, you have multiple ways
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: of looking at the world in more and more skill. Well,
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: that's that's your storehouse of treasure. As you walk through
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: life in your normal mode, things will call to you,
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: and if you pursue them, they will take you deep.
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: It doesn't really matter what it is that calls. What
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: matters is that you pursue it, and you pursue it
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: to the depths. And as you pursue it to the depths,
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: you will become transformed. And if you do that without reservation,
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: that will turn you into the person who frees the
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: slaves and opposes the tyrants and That is how it works.
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: That's the call, and that can happen in any direction,
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: virtually any direction. You just have to pursue it with
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: sufficient faith.