Latest / Motivation Mindset Podcast / Two Hours That Can Redesign the Next 20 Years of Your Future | Jordan Peterson

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Two Hours That Can Redesign the Next 20 Years of Your Future | Jordan Peterson · Motivation Mindset Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Sit on your bed one day and ask yourself, Ah,
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: what's what remarkably stupid things am I doing on a
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: regular basis to absolutely screw up my life? And if
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: you actually ask that question, but you have to want
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: to know the answer, right, because that's actually what asking
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: the question means. It doesn't mean just mouthing the words.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: It means you have to decide that you want to know.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: You'll figure that's out so fast it'll make your hair curl.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: There's no better pathway to self realization and the ennoblement
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: of being than to pause it the highest good that
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: you can conceive of and commit yourself to it. And
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: then you might also ask yourself, and this is definitely
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: worth asking, is do you really have anything better to do?
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: And if you don't, well, why would you do anything else?
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: If you orient yourself properly and then pay attention to
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: what you do every day, that works. And I actually
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: think that that's in accordance with what we have come
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: to understand about human perception, because what happens is that
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: the world shifts itself around your aim. Because you're a
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: creature that has an aim. You have to have an
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: aim in order to do something you're an aiming creature.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: You look at a point and you move towards it.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: It's built right into you. And so you have an aim. Well,
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: let's say your aim is the highest possible aim. Well,
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: then so that sets up the world around you. It
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: organizes all of your perceptions, It organizes what you see
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: and you don't see. It organizes your emotions and your motivations.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: So you organize yourself around that aim. And then what
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: happens is the day manifests itself as a set of
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: challenges and problems, and if you solve them properly, then
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: you stay on the pathway towards that aim, and you
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: can concentrate on the on the day. And so that
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: way you get to have your cake and eat it too,
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: because you can you can point into the distance, the
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: far distance, and you can live in the day. And
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: it seems to me that that's that makes every moment
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: of the day supercharged with meaning. That that's because if
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: everything that you're doing every day is related to the
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: highest possible aim that you can conceptualize, well, that's the
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: very definition of the meaning that would sustain you in
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: your life. Well, and then the issue is well, back
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: to Noah, while all hell's about to break loose and
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: chaos is coming. It's like, when that's happening in your life,
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: you might want to be doing something that you regard
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: as truly worthwhile, because that's what will keep you afloat
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: when everything is flooded, and you don't want to wait
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: until the flood comes to start doing that, because if
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: your ARC's half built and you don't know how to
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: captain it, the probability is very high that you'll drown.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: Ask and it shall be given. You seek and he
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: For everyone that asketh receiveth, and he that seeketh findeth,
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: and to him that knocketh it.
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: Shall be opened. That's sounds pretty optimist stick again, but.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: Again, I think it's a description of the structure of
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: existential reality.
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: And by which I mean.
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: When I'm in my clinical practice and I observe, and
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: this is also the case with my students, is let's
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: say people's lives aren't what they would like them to be,
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: and so then you ask why, Well, forget about tragedy
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: and catastrophe because that's self evident and we're not going
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: to discuss that although the degree to which you bring
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: about your own tragedy is always indeterminate. But I would
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: never say that every terrible thing that is visited on
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: a person is something they deserved. I think that that's
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: a very dangerous presupposition, especially because everyone gets sick and
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: everyone dies. But one of the main reasons that people
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: don't get what they want is because they don't actually
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: figure out what it is and the probability that you're
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: going to get what would be good for you, let's say,
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: which would even be better than what you want, right,
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: because you know you might be wrong about what you
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: want easily.
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: But maybe you could get what would really be good
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: for you.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: Well, why don't you Well because you don't try. You
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: don't think, Okay, here's.
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: What I would like if I could have it.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: And I don't mean I don't mean in a way
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: that you manipulate the world to force it to deliver
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: you goods for status or something like that.
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: That isn't what I mean.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: I mean something like, imagine that you were taking care
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: of yourself like you were someone you actually cared for,
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: and then you thought, okay, I'm caring for this person.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: I would like things to go as well for them
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: as possible, what would their life have to be like
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: in order for that to be the case. Oh, people
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: don't do that. They don't sit down and think, all right,
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: you know, let's figure it out. You've got a life.
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: It's hard.
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: Obviously, it's like three years from now. You can have
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: what you need. You've got to be careful about you
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: can't have everything. You can have what would be good
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: for you, but you have to figure out what it
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: is and then you have to.
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: Aim at it.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: Well, my experience with people as being is if they
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: figure out what it is that would be good for
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: them and then they aim at it, then they get it.
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: And it's strange because they don't. It's a strange thing.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: It's not quite that simple because you know, you may
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: formulate an idea about what would be good for you,
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: and then you take ten steps towards that and you
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: find out that your formulation was a bit off, and
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: so you have to reformulate your goal.
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: So you're kind of going like this as you move
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: towards the goal.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: But a huge part of the reason that people fail
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: is because they don't ever set up the criteria for success.
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: And so since success is a very narrow line and
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: very unlikely. The probability that you're going to stumble on
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: it randomly is zero. And so there's a proposition here,
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: and the proposition is, if you actually want something, you
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: can have it now. The question then would be, well,
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: what do you mean by actually want? And the answer
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: is that you reorient your life in every possible way
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: to make the probability that that will occur as certain
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: as possible. And that's a sacrificial idea, right. It's like,
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: you don't get everything obviously, you obviously, but maybe you
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: can have what you need and maybe all you have
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: to do to get it is ask.
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: But asking isn't a whim or today's wish. It's like
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: you have to be deadly serious about it.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: You have to think, okay, like I'm taking stock of
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: myself and if I was going to live properly in
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: the world, and I was going to set myself up
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: such that being would justify itself in my estimation, and
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: I don't mean, as a harsh judge, exactly what is
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: it that I would aim at? And so the issue
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: is not so much the blindness of others, even though
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: there's as much blindness among others as there is, as
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: there is for you.
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: But the issue here, the advice here, the description here
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: is you should be concerned about what's interfering with your own.
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: Vision first, and you should leave other people the hell
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: alone in relationship to that. And so if your mode
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: of being in the world is if you would just
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: act better, things would improve for me. Or if you
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: identify the evil and the catastrophe as something that's outside
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: that someone else needs to fix, or that someone's response
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: someone else is responsible for, then you're not going to
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: fix that, and you're going to remain blind to the
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: things that you're doing and not doing that make things
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: not go well. And so it's just better to think,
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: all right, I'm probably blind in many, many ways, and
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: maybe there are some ways that I could rectify that,
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: because it's highly probable that you're blind in all sorts
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: of ways. I mean, it's in fact, it's virtually certain,
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: and so it's just more useful to think, how is
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: it that I'm wrong in this situation. There's this old
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: idea that you go into the abyss. It's an idea
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: that you can gaze into the abyss. You gaze long,
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: and what you find in the abyss is a monster.
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: That's the dragon at the bottom of the abyss. Let's
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: say that's Satan himself for that matter. But if you
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: go into that, into that as deeply as you can,
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: what you find is you find your fragmented father in
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: a comatose condition, in a desiccated and separated condition, and
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: then you revivify that. Well, what does that mean? It
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: means something. It means that if you look in the darkness,
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: you find the light. That's one thing it means, and
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: that the light really stands out against the darkness, but
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: that the light is to be found in the darkness.
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: So that's a very interesting thing. That's a quest narrative,
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: but it means more than that. It means something fundamental.
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: So we know, for example, that if you take yourself
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: out of your current state of predict ability and safety
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: and you put yourself in a new situation, you'll learn right,
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: so incorporate new information. So that's a cognitive issue, but
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: that isn't all that happens. What happens is that new
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: genes turn on within you and code for the production
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: of new proteins. And that happens neurologically. New parts of
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: you turn on and so the idea is that if
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: you can move yourself out into the world and push
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: yourself out against a maximum array of challenges, more and
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: more of you turn on turns on, and then the
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: question would be, well, what would you be if all
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: of you that could be turned on was turned on?
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: And the answer would be you would be the resurrection
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: of the ancestral Father.
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: That's what you would be.
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: And so that's why Christ says I am the Way
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: and the Truth and the Life, and no one comes
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: to the Father except through me. What that means is
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: that if you take on the unbearable burden of being voluntarily,
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: then that transforms you into the ancestral Father. And that's
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: it's true. And so that's unbelievably optimistic. It's so interesting
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: because it's dark beyond belief. Well, the world is characterized
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: by suffering and by malevolence of a depth that's virtually
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: beyond comprehension. But if you choose to comprehend that, what
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: you discover in that is the light that destroys the darkness.
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: And that's well, and that's really something to discover. It's
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: there isn't a discovery that's more profound than that. That's
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: the search for the Holy Grail or the Philosopher's Stone,
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: all of that. If you actually want something, you can
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: have it.
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: Now.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: The question then we would be, well, what do you
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: mean by actually want? And the answer is that you
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: reorient your life in every possible way to make the
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: probability that that will occur as certain as possible. And
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: that's a sacrificial idea, right. It's like you don't get everything,
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: obviously you are, but maybe you can have what you need,
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: and maybe all you have to do to get it
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: is ask. But asking isn't a whim or today's wish.
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: It's like you have to be deadly serious about it.
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: You have to think, okay, like I'm taking stock of
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: myself and if I was going to live properly in
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: the world, and I was going to set myself up
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: such that being would justify itself in my estimation, and
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: I don't mean as a harsh judge, exactly what is.
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: It that I would aim at?
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: You could try this, This is a form of prayer knocking.
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: Sit on your bed one day and ask yourself.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: What remarkably stupid things am I doing on a regular
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: basis to absolutely screw up my life?
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: And if you actually ask that question.
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: But you have to want to know the answer right,
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: because that's actually what asking the question means. It doesn't
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: mean just mouthing the words. It means you have to
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: decide that you want to know.
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: You'll figure that's out so fast it make your hair curl.
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: You're perfectly capable of thinking, God only knows how. You're
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: perfectly capable of immense feats of imagination and dream and fantasy.
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: It's God only knows how you do all of that.
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: What would happen if you consulted yourself about the best
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: possible outcome for you?
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: You might get an answer.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: In order for us to set things right, we have
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: to understand that we have to take on that burden
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: of ultimate responsibility, not only as if it's ours, which
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: it is, but as if there isn't anything better that
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: we could do. And you have an ethical obligation to
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: lift the heaviest load you can possibly conceive of. And
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: that's the primary call to adventure in life. You need
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: a meaning in your life to forestall the suffering and
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: to make you strong enough to resist malevolence.
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: Where's the meaning to be found?
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: Right's impulsive pleasure and happiness, No responsibility. Who would have
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: guessed that it's not part of the narrative. What makes
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: life worth living is to pick up take its catastrophe
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: and embrace it and carry it, and to realize through
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: that process who you are. When I talk to audiences
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: about the relationship between responsibility and meaning, they inevitably go dead, silent.
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: There's not a rustle, there's not a cough. It's like,
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: is that the secret is that? The secret is that
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: it's the voluntary adoption of responsibility. It's like, well, that's
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: the central message of the West.
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: It's like to.
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: Pick up your cross and bear it.
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: You know, and everyone's been told that, but they don't
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: know what it means because it's not being articulated enough
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: so that it becomes something that's practical. It's like, yes,
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: look at the terrible responsibilities you have right in front
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: of you. Your family is hurting, you're in trouble, there's
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: problems in the world. It's like, all of that's right there,
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: and all you have to do is all you have
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: to do is take responsibility for it, and then you've
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: got what you need. It's something so magnificent that happiness
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: pales in comparison, and so it's it's thin gruel happiness.
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: And young people know that they're pursuing hedonistic pleasure and
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: you know, no wonder, but there's nothing in it that's sustaining.
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: And all it does is make you cynical.
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: It's like, is.
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: That's all There is?
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: Another one night stand, another another binge party, you know,
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: And it's not like I have anything against in principle,
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: against some of that exuberant, youthful hedonism.
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: Look, the universities have turned into places of parties.
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: Why well, because that's what the students find best to
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: do there. Well, that's not good. What you want to
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: offer them is a reason to not party. It's like, no,
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: you got to understand. You come to this class hungover.
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: You're not going to be able to get it. You're
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: not going to be able to write properly. You're going
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: to pay a price for that hedonism, It's like, and
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: the price will be too high for you to bear.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: It's like, oh, well enough hedonism for me, then, like
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: I've got something important to do. That's the way out
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: of that. Before you can be a painter who can
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: paint what's beyond mere memory, you have to inculcate that discipline. Skill,
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: and a lot of that is painful repetition and hard
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: grinding work. It's the sacrifice of the present for the future.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: But once you manage that, then things open up. That's
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: why we have disciplines, right, I mean, the words aren't
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: there by accident.
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: You have to narrow yourself first.
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: And then you can broaden outward and so and that's
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: part of the process of maturation. That's part of the
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: sacrifice of childhood. Say, in childhood, you're nothing but potential,
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: but it's not realized and you don't know how to
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: realize it. And so then the question is, well, how
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: do you get to a point where you realize the potential?
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: And the answer is you sacrifice almost all.
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: Of it to a single direction.
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: And so that's the thing about growing up, is that
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: when you're a teenager and a young adult, you have
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: to sacrifice everything you could have been as a child
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: to be the one thing that you're aiming at.
• 16:14
  Speaker 3: But then that opens up.
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: Aimless is not nothing. Aimless is bad.
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: Who nietzscha said, if you had a why, you could
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: bear anyhow. Most people find the meaning in their life
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: through responsibility. I believe the fundamental religious truth of the
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: idea that life is suffering. It's suffering because we're mortal
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: and fragile, and because we're also subject to malevolence at
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: our own hands into the hands of others. It's a
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: constant existential problem, and that can make you bitter, and
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: can make you hopeless and nihilistic and depressed and anxious
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: and likely to abuse substances of various sorts as a
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: medication or as escape. It can augur you in in
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: a very large number of ways. And I'm suggesting to
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: people that there is a way out of that, and
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: the way out is to confront that forthrightly and to
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: adopt responsibility in your own life and to try to
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: make the world a better place, and that it's necessary
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: to do that, and that if you don't do that,
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: then things go badly. I think the deck is stacked
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: against everyone to some degree because life is very difficult,
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: and we all die so but people some people do
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: have it harder than others, and all of us have
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: it very hard at some times in our lives. It's like, well,
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: what's the alternative? You take responsibility for that and try
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: to struggle uphill, because the alternative makes everything worse. Find
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: something in your life. That's so worthwhile doing that. The
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: fact that you're going to suffer is justifiable. Yeah, life's rough,
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: no doubt about it. And if good luck comes your way,
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: then you should be grateful for it. And if happiness
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: manages to manifest itself, you should be grateful for that too.
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: So then you might ask yourself, well, what's the best
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: antidote to the discomfort of life? And you might say, well,
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: it's comfort, and I suppose that's what you act out
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: when you swaddle a baby. But a better antidote is
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: something like adventure to excellence, and that's far better antidote
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: to suffering than the mere absence of suffering. So not
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: to say that the mere absence of suffering that's not nothing.
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: I've been a psychotherapist for twenty years. I've seen things
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: you can't imagine, horror shows that you can't fathom, and
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: people who have been hurt in so many ways, so
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: many dimensions. It's like, should they be bitter, should they
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: be resentful? Should they become violent? These things don't help.
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: They have to struggle uphill despite their excess burden. And
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: it's responsibility, not guilt. It's the female crucifixion. And that's
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: exemplified best in well, the best portrayal of that I've
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: seen is Michelangelo's Pieta.
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: No, it's a statue of Mary.
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: And she has Christ's body on her as an adult,
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: on her lap, and that's broken and destroyed, and you
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: know she's displaying that's that's the bravery of a mother
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: to allow that to happen, but not only that, to
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: facilitate it.
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: Facilitated Bay you go, kid, Where you go? Where you go? Well,
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: why it's dangerous out there? It's yeah, no kidding, it's.
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: More dangerous here if you stay with me by a lot.
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: So you might lose your body out there in the world,
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: but if you stay here, you lose your soul, you know.
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's a pretty competitive world. There's lots of
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: competition for young men in particular. There's competition for status
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: and limited resources and for the attention of women. And
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: just because you're nice doesn't necessarily mean that you come
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: out particularly well in those competitions. I would like to
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: say that you should all be smarter, but I don't
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: know how you could be smarter. We don't know anything
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: about how to improve intelligence, and I suppose we don't
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: really know anything about how to improve industriousness either. But
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: I can tell you that people who are industrious come
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: up with a strategy for solving the problem that's ahead
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: of them, and then they do whatever they can to
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: stick to the strategy. And so, for example, if you
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: sat down today or tomorrow for a couple of hours,
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: three hours, and you filled in a Google calendar whatever
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: you happen to use, with a strategy for studying and
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: a list of when all your assignments are doing all
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: of that, and when you're going to sit down and study,
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: then you won't be in a position where you have
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: to cram for ten hours a day hopelessly. Right before
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: you know, an important exam.
• 20:43
  Speaker 4: Is beautifully put that love is the highest ideal to
• 20:48
  Speaker 4: reach for, and truth is it's handmade.
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: I try.
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: I thought about that for a long time, right, this
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: hierarchy of ideal.
• 20:55
  Speaker 3: The thing about truth, that bitter truth.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: Let's say that cynical truth is it can break the
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: shackles of naivety. And actually a burnt cynicism is a
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: moral improvement over a blind naivete, even though one is
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: in some ways positive but only because it's protected, and
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: the other is bitter and dark, but still better. But
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: you're not done at that point, you're just barely started.
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: I think optimally we exist to have something like a
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: playful adventure, right. We're built for an optimal challenge.
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: It's partly why we like to play, because in.
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: Play you find an optimal challenge. It's almost like the
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: definition of play.
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: And so.
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: If you can organize yourself and the world optimally, then
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: you have adventure. And maybe you have the adventure of
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: your life. And if you can do that brilliantly, then
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: you can do it in a.
• 21:56
  Speaker 3: Spirit of play.
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: That's what you need and want.
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: I saw an endless repetition in my clinical practice and
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: in my own private life when my eyes were open
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: the consequences of not saying what was true. It's like
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: whatever hell you might fall into by opening your mouth
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: when you have something to say that isn't popular, It's
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: nothing like the hell that you're going to envelop yourself
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: in if you lose control of your own tongue and mind.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: And like I said, in my clinical practice, I never
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: saw anyone get away with anything even once, And so
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: all you have in a situation like that is what
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: is the truth. Now you know, of course, you only
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: have your approximations to the truth, but that's better than nothing.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: And so you need to be afraid of the right thing.
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: And you should be afraid of contaminating your soul with deceit.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: That's what you should be afraid of. What happens is,
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: you know, garbage in, garbage out, the old.
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: Programmer saying goes.
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: And so you'll fill your head with nonsense and no
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: one will call you on it except you. But you
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: can still that voice if you try hard enough. You
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: just wait until you get in real trouble. You know,
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: one day they'll come a point where you have to
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: make a decision. And the decision is the difference between
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: life and death, or worse, between someone else's life and death,
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: or worse, between health and the suffering that's worse than death.
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: And because you've compromised.
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: Yourself to such a degree, you will not be able
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: to rely on your judgment and you will make the
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: mistake you shouldn't make, and then you're done.
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: And that will absolutely happen.
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, I mean you set what's great against what's tragic. Yeah,
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: I mean, what else could you possibly do? And so
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: then you say, well, how do you find what's great
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: in your own life.
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: And part of that is you watch.
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: It's like, when is it that I'm doing something that
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: alleviates my suffering? Right, it's a real you have to
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: ask that question to yourself. Honestly, one of the things
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: you have them do is say, well, why don't you
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: just watch for a week, like watch yourself, like you
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: don't know who you are, and you just see when
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: you're not quite as miserable, and then let's see if
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: we can figure out what it is about what you're
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: doing in that situation that's lifting the gloom. It's like, okay, okay,
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: there's something in that that's curative, right, And that's something
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: in that that's curative is related to well, you might
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: say your purpose. It's like, maybe part of the reason
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: you're depressed is because you're too isolated, and.
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: Now we can work on that.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: So let's see if we can increase the amount of
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: time you're spending with your friends by like twenty percent,
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: or maybe you need a couple of new friends, or
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: maybe you need to work on your comic material. You know,
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: because you can set that against the tragedy of life.
• 24:40
  Speaker 5: You said that a harmless man is not a good man.
• 24:43
  Speaker 5: A good man is a very dangerous man who has
• 24:45
  Speaker 5: that under voluntary control. How should people become more dangerous.
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: Becoming more articulate is definitely. I would say that's the
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: primary array of weapons. So I mean physical prowess is something,
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: and it's not nothing that physical confidence that comes along
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: with that as well, but the same thing replicated at
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: the level of the ability to communicate.
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: And to think.
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: That's way broader field of battle and opportunity. You want
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: to take your rightful place in the kingdom. It's like,
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: get your tongue straight, man, get it under control in
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: the highest possible sense. There's nothing that makes you more
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: formidable than verbal competence and being able to articulate, be
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: able to think, to marshal your arguments.
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: Right, it's a.
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: Battlefield metaphor, get everything in order, all your information straight,
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: to marshal your forces.
• 25:41
  Speaker 5: Is it possible to have too much responsibility, to take
• 25:44
  Speaker 5: too much responsibility for yourself.
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: You can for sure, Yeah, definitely No.
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: Dostoevsky said that every man was responsible for everything he
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: did and for everything that everyone else does, which is
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: kind of an insane statement but also somewhat it's true
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: in a certain sense, you do have an indefinite responsibility,
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: and you do have an indefinite capacity to bear that responsibility,
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: but that doesn't mean it can't be crushing. And then
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: I would say the antidote to that is that you're
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: not in this alone. As your responsibilities mount and your
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: opportunities increase.
• 26:21
  Speaker 3: You have to delegate more and more.
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: It's important that you do everything you can, but there's
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: enough for everyone to do. And so you might say, well,
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: the heroic path is one that leads to universal redemption,
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: and that's true. And you might say, well, that's all
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: on you. It's like it is in a sense. But
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: then the problem that you just describe it can be unsustainable.
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: You can torture yourself for not doing it well enough.
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: And it is up to you, but it's not up
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: to you alone. It's not up to you alone. So
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: you delegate and you help build people around you so
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: that they're all working in the same direction. It's an effort,
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: it's an effort multiplier in any case, and you make
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: sure that they get credit. Credit is exactly credit's good enough,
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: it's not exactly right. The rewards are in accordance with
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: their efforts, and you can distribute that if you can
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: routinize someone something and parse it off to someone else.
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: So here's a little kingdom for you, and it doesn't
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: have to be little, and it's something that can grow.
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: But here's a kingdom for you. Well, then you can
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: go off and do the next thing you need to do,
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: which is extremely important, you know. And you might think
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: there's a kingdom, and then it's broken into little kingdoms
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: and so the farther you are down the hierarchy, the
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: smaller the kingdom you get. But that's only true if
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: you think the world's a zero sum game, because you
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: could also think of it as a place of indefinite
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: number of the largest kingdoms possible. And I think, why
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: do we think this is exhaustible? In some sense, what
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: we're doing doesn't look exhaustible, you know. That's the limits
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: to growth mentality. It's like economists don't believe in that
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: because they think, well, no, we can just get more efficient,
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: which we certainly are. We're way more efficient than we
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: once were, and those and efficiency when they're not being
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: interfered with, are increasing at more than an arithmetic rate.
• 28:07
  Speaker 5: Why do you think people have a tendency toward that?
• 28:11
  Speaker 5: Zero some mentality.
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I mean there are elements of life that
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: have a zero sum element. I mean, if you're competing
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: with another man, for example, to marry a particular woman,
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: that's a zero sum game if you only think of
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: the game as including you two in that woman. So
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: you can set up circumstances that are zero sum. But
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: to take that metaphor of zero sum game where there
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: has to be winners and losers.
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: Because there's a finite number of resources.
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: Is to assume that the rules of that game are
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: the rules that govern all games, the set of all games,
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: and that's just not true. Their games are infinitely multipliable.
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: I mean, you can invent a new game. People do
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: that all the time. The man who invented ktan, which
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: is a game I really like to play. It's a
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: very popular board game that didn't exist until he invented it.
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: Now you know, thousands and thousands of people play it,
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: and he made a fortune from it. It's like that
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: game never existed. So there doesn't seem to be any
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: limit to the number of games we can invent. And
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: it's a complicated problem because we are on a single
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: planet and some resources are more zero sum than others,
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: But we haven't really run into any actual zero sum
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: limits in terms of our you know, the probability of
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: us living an abundant life on the planet. We've stewarded
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: some resources very stupidly. We've done a very bad job
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: of managing oceanic production, for example, and we have to
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: be smart about our resources. But that doesn't mean they're
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: zero sum, and certainly doesn't mean the world is a
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: zero sum game. And that's an enthusiam idea. You know
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: that population will grow till it consumes all available resources
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: and precipitously collapse. And then why do we think apocalyptically.
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: It's well, because things do come to sudden ends. People die,
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: people get fatal illnesses, Like the world you so or
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: carefully constructed can be blown apart at any moment by
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: a random occurrence genetic mutation that causes the cancer that
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: kills you. Like life has a fundamentally apocalyptic aspect, and
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: we do understand that because we're self conscious. And then
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: it's very difficult not to apply that kind of apocalyptic
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: reasoning to things as such, the world's going to burn up,
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: the climate's too hot, what about runaway positive feedback loops?
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: Because that's what the climate types are afraid of. Hey,
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: they happen. How do we bind our apocalyptic thinking? Perhaps
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: A good question, man, that's a good question.
• 30:37
  Speaker 3: We do that with the truth. That's how we do it.
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: Through dialogue, through.
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: Investigation, through exploration, through discipline, all of that. The logos
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: is the antidote to the apocalypse. And so what does
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: that mean? Love and truth is the antidote to the apocalypse?
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: Not the planet has too many people on.
• 30:55
  Speaker 5: A truth in the service of love.
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: What do you mean by that hierarchy of virtue?
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: I would say, you know, there's an old idea that
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: God is the sum of all that's good. I don't
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: think some is exactly the right metaphor. It's more like,
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: imagine there are eternal verities truth, beauty, justice, love, courage, fortitude, passion.
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: Think of all those things as virtues. So virtue is
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: what all virtues have in common. That's the relationship of
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: God to the good. Or you may think, how would
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: that manifest itself in your life? Well, that might be
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: pursuit of the good. And that's the pursuit of the
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: good that unites all proximal goods. What is that exactly? Well,
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: it's something like belief that it would be for the
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: best that all things flourish to the degree that that's possible.
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: When I was a clinician, I thought of that as
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: the good in me, serving the best in my clients.
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: And I think the desire for that to happen, that's love.
• 31:55
  Speaker 3: So that's the desire for you.
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: Say, well, you take a human and bent, broken, miserable, malevolent, hurt, corrupt, weak, frustrating, disappointing,
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: all of those things that we can lay on ourselves
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: because of our inadequacieses like, what's easy to dismiss that,
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: And part of that dismissal is what drives the notion
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: that the planet has too many people on it and
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: that we're cancer on the face of the earth. It's like,
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: it's not easy to love that, But what do you want?
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: You want the broken people to rise up out of
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: their brokenness rather than despise them for it. And then
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: you orient yourself towards that and try to pull that
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: out of people and yourself, keep facing challenges, voluntarily pay
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: attention at a rate that works for you, develop your
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: competence that actually stabilizes the environment around you, so it
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: actually is less predictable and less threatening. Plus you accrue
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: that evidence and you get the social support.
• 32:52
  Speaker 3: For doing so. That's your best pathway forward.
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: If you do what it is that you're called upon
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: to do, which is to lift your eyes up above
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: the mundane, daily, selfish, impulsive issues that might beset you,
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: an attempt to enter into a contractual relationship with that
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: which you might hold in the highest regard, whatever that
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: might be, to aim high and to make that important
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: above all else in your life. That that fortifies you
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: against the vicissitudes of existence like nothing else can. And
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: I truly believe that that's the most practical advice that
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: you could possibly receive. The way that you fortify your
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: faith in life is to assume the best something like that,
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: and then to act courageously in relationship to that. And
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: that's tantamount to expressing your faith in the highest possible good.
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: It's tantamount to expressing your faith in God. And it's
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: not a matter of stating, well, I believe in the
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: existence of a transcendent that deity, because in some sense,
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: who cares? Who cares what you believe? I mean, you
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: might in all that, that's not the issue.
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: It's not the issue. The issue, it seems to me,
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: is how you act.
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: The issue is not what you believe, as if it's
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: a set of facts, but how you conduct yourself in
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: the world.
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: The purpose of.
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: Thinking is to let your thoughts die instead of you.
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: It's a brilliant notion. And so the idea is something like,
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: you can conjure up a representation of yourself. You can
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: conjure up a variety of potential representations of yourself in
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: the future. You can lay out how those future representations
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: of yourself are likely to prevail or fail. You can
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: call the potential use in the future that will fail,
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: and then you can embody the ones that will succeed.
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: You do that well simultaneously conjuring up a representation of
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: your current state and determining for yourself because of your
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: undue suffering, which elements of your pathetic.
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: Being need to be given up so that you can.
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: Move forward forward into that future and the goal. What
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: is it that you're aiming at with that work and
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: that sacrifice.
• 35:06
  Speaker 3: That's the ultimate question.
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: What is it that you're trying to do when you're trying.
• 35:11
  Speaker 3: To improve the future.
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: We believe that the future can be improved.
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: We believe that it can be improved as a consequence
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: of our sacrificial work. And so once again, what are
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: the limitations? What are the limits to that? What are
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: the necessary limits to that? I would say, we don't know.
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: We conjured up this remarkable idea. The future exists, we
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: can see it, even though it's only potential. We can
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: adjust our behavior in the present in order to maximize
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: our probability of success in the future. How best to
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: do that? Well, the idea is something like, don't hesitate
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: to offer the ultimate sacrifice if you want the future
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: to turn out ultimately, Well, what is it that you
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: could contract for, Let's say, if you were willing to
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: give up everything about you that's weak and unworthy. The
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: proper sacrificial attitude produces a psychological state and then a
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: social state that's a manifestation of that attitude that decreases
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: the probability that the world will careen into hell and
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: increases the probability that people will live high quality, meaningful,
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: private lives in a society that's balanced and capable of
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: supporting that.
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: And none of that seems to me to be questionable.
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: Really.
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: I also don't think it's anything that people don't actually know.
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: You know, people have told me many times that when
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: they listen to me talk, they're hearing things that they
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: already knew but know how to say. It's something like that.
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: And this is one of those things that I think
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: is exactly like that. I mean, I think it's at
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: the very core of our moral knowledge, which is our
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: behavioral knowledge and our perceptual knowledge. I mean, let's get
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: this straight. Moral knowledge is no trivial matter. It's knowledge
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: about how it is that you orient yourself in the world.
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: There's no more profoundly necessary form of knowledge. Well, it's
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: predicated on something that's exactly like this. We know that
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: we have to make sacrifices. We know that we have
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: to aim at what's good. So then why isn't that
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: we don't aim at what's best and make the sacrifices
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: that are necessary in order to bring that into play.
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: I think it seems to me that in some sense
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: that's self evident. The question is why we don't do it.
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: But there's answers to that too. Life is hard and
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: it hurts people. It's rife with limitation, and some of
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: it's arbitrary and some of it's unjust. And some of
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: it's worse. Some of it's malevolent, which is even worse.
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: It's not surprising that that combination of vicissitude can turn
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: people against being. But I think even when that happens,
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: and even when people have the kind of history.
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: That if they revealed to you, you would.
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: Say, well, it's no wonder you turned out that way,
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: the people who turn out that way still know that
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: it's wrong. They still know that, however deep their own suffering,
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: however arbitrary, their own suffering, however much that's caused by
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: the malevolence of others, as well as the tragedy of existence,
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: that that does not in any way justify they're turning
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: away from the good. And I believe everyone knows that.
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: I believe that they know it implicitly, even if they
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: don't allow themselves to know it explicitly. And I believe
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: that if they violate that idea, then they violate themselves,
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: and that they end up in Kine's position, which is
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: the position of the man who's been given a punishment
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: that is too great to bear. Now we're capable of
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: making sacrifices in abstraction right to conceptualize a future that
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: we want to let go of the things that are
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: stopping us from moving forward, and to free ourselves from
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: the chains of our original preconceptions.
• 39:10
  Speaker 3: Pursue pleasure, to follow.
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: Your impulses, live for the moment, do what's expedient. A
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: mountain is something you have to climb, and you have
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: to climb to the pinnacle of a mountain, and the
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: mountain is up right, and the mountain stretches up to heaven,
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: and it's a long journey to specify the right place
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: on the highest pinnacle.
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: And that's symbolic because.
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: Of course it's a pinnacle that you're always trying to reach,
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: just like you're always trying to aim. You're always trying
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: to climb upward. At least that's the theory. Depends to
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: some degree, of course, on your definition of upward. You're
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: supposed to again to act out the highest good of
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: which you're capable. Now that'll transform your life to some
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: degree into an archetypal adventure. There's no way around that.
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: Because as you attempt to climb a higher mountain, let's say,
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: or to aim at a higher target something like that,
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: then the things around you will become increasingly dramatic and
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: of import that happens by necessity, obviously, because if you're
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: aiming at something difficult and profound, and you're really working
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: at it, then your life is going to become perhaps
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: increasingly difficult and profound. But that might be okay, That
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: might be exactly what you need as an antidote to
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: the implicit limitations that face you as a human being.
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: The good father is precisely someone who is willing to
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: sacrifice this child to the ultimate good. You have a
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: moral obligation as a parent to encourage your child to
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: go out into the world right and to be whoever
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: they can be, to be the best they can possibly be.
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: And in doing that, you're encouraging them to pursue the good.
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: You're sacrificing them to the good. You're not keeping them
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: for yourself selfish. You're telling them that they can go
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: out and live their life and live it properly. You
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: don't want for your son what it is that you
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: want for him. You want for your son what would
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: be best for him and for the world, and you
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: let go in precise proportion to your desire to.
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: Have that happen.
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: When you have an infant, do you do everything for
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: the infant because the infant can do nothing for him
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: or herself. But as the infant matures and is increasingly
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: capable of doing things for him or herself, then you
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: pull back, right, you pull back, and every time the
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: child develops the ability to do something, you allow them
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: or encourage them to do it, and you don't interfere.
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: You know, so, if your child is struggling getting dressed, well,
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: obviously there's sometimes that you help them, but mostly you
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: let them learn so that they can know how to
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: do it in the future. That's better for you and
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: it's certainly better for them. There's a rule if you're
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: working with the elderly in an old age home. In
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: the rule is something like, don't do anything for any
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: of the guests, let's say that they can do for themselves,
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: because you compromise their independence.
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: And so, as a mother, you pull back, and you
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: pull back, and you.
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: Let your child hit him or herself against the world,
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: and you fail to protect them.
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: But by failing to protect.
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: Them, you encourage and ennoble them to the point where
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: you're no longer necessary. Now, they may still want to
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: see you, and it would be wonderful if that was
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: the case, but the point is is that you're supposed
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: to remove yourself from the equation by encouraging your child
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: to be the best possible person that person can be,
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: and you sacrifice your desires, all of your desires to that,
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: your personal desires, even your desires for your child in
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: relationship to you, because you want them to move forward
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: into the world as a light right, as a light
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: on a hill. That's what you want if you have
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: any sense, And so you don't get to keep your
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: children at home because you need them. If you don't
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: know what you're doing, you don't know where you are,
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: and you don't know where you're going. And if you're
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: in a place where you don't know where you are
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: or where you're going, you're.
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: In danger.
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: Because that's unmapped territory and God only knows what lurks
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: in unmapped territory. If you're so confused and disoriented that
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: you don't know where you are or where you're going,
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: there are predators of the spirit who are much worse
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: than snakes that are waiting for you.
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: And the probability that you'll move from.
• 43:38
  Speaker 4: Aimless, hopeless, joyless anxiety to nihilism, corrosive bitterness and genicidal
• 43:47
  Speaker 4: fantasy in the fundamental extreme is very high.
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: It's like, well, I just want to be happy. It's
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: a slogan.
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: It's the most common slogan of our time, I would say,
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: And it's such a preposterous slogan.
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: It's like, what do you mean, Just you just want
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: to be happy? That's all. That's all you want, that
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: absolute impossibility.
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: You want bliss, unending no matter what you do, and
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: that's all you want. It's not exactly a small ask,
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: let's say, because it's the same thing as asking to.
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: Dwell permanently in paradise.
• 44:28
  Speaker 3: It's something like that.
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: And then it also isn't true, that isn't what you want.
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: If you do.
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: Careful analysis of what people mean when they say they
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: just want to be happy, what they mean is they
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: don't want to suffer. Stupidly, they're much more concerned. We're
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: much more concerned with not experiencing an excess of negative
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: emotion than we are with experiencing a surfight of positive pleasure.
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: So first of all, we don't mean we just want
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: to be happy. We mean, please.
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: Don't make us too miserable and fair enough, that's reasonable.
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: But then on the happiness front, even on the absence
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: of misery front, that's not true. It's like, it isn't
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: obvious at all that we want happiness. It isn't even
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: obvious that we want absence of misery. What's really obvious
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: is that we want an adventure, right, we want an
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: adventure that's so compelling that it makes the misery of
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: life not just justifiable but worthwhile. You want to look
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: back at your life and you know this to be true.
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: You want to be able to say to yourself, even
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: considering a month or a week or a series of days,
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: you want to be able to say, that was really difficult,
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: but you know what, it was worth it. And I
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: think that's what you want from your life. It's something like,
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: you know what, that was difficult, but it was worth it.
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: And that meant that the adventure was so great that
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: it justified the difficulties. And so then the question is,
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: and here's the question, where do you find the great
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: adventure of your life? Well?
• 46:00
  Speaker 3: How about in truth?
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: Well why, because you don't know what's going to happen.
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: If you tell the truth, it's a mystery, it's going
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: to lay itself out for you. And so that's an
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: adventure because you don't you literally do not know what's
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: going to happen. You have to let go of knowing
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: what's going to happen, and so then you have that adventure.
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: And then what is also the case is that it's
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: you that's having the adventure, right because if if what
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: you're doing is living in truth, that's your that's you,
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: that truth is you, and so that means that whatever
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: happens when you tell the truth is your adventure. And
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: then you think, well, I'm using deception, It's like, well,
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: maybe you are, but maybe deception is using you. And
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: then maybe it's the spirit of deception that's having the
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: adventure of your life. And then you might ask yourself, well,
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: why are you so miserable and unhappy, And the answer
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: would be, well, the spirit of deception is having the
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: adventure of your life. You're not even there because if
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: you're not living in truth, you're not there. Obviously, what's
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: there is the spirit of deception. And you might think
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: that's your deception, but I would be very careful about
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: thinking that, because there has been there have been centuries
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: of meditation on the nature of the spirit of deception,
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: and the answer isn't that the spirit of deception is you.
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: The answer is that the spirit of deception is something
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: that possesses you, convinces you that it's you, and that's.
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: Not something you want to fall into.
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: The clutches of the world is founded on a sacrifice.
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: Right, and that's what the crucifix represents.
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: And European towns were built around a church, and the
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: church was built around an altar, and the altar was
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: built around the idea of self sacrifice. So the sacrifice,
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: the proper sacrifice, is at the center of the community.
• 47:53
  Speaker 3: That's what that idea means.
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: Now you might ask, well, what's the proper sacrifice, and
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: the answer is something like a voluntary willingness to bury
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: your cross. And then you might say, well, what is
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: your cross? And the answer to that is, well, that's
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: the catastrophe of your life, right, That's the fact you'll
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: be betrayed, the fact that you're going to die, the
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: fact that you're going to be in pain, the fact
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: that your loved ones will see you suffer, the fact
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: that the mob will come after you, the fact that
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: criminals might be preferred to you, et cetera. It's all
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: the potential catastrophes of your life. And then the sacrifice
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: is the idea that you you have to you have
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: to let your what would you say, you have to
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: let your narrow ego go enough so that you pick
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: all that up voluntarily, all of that, and then that
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: transforms it.
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: And I think, I think that's literally true. I think
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: that's what all this.
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: That's what all the psychological evidence points to, is that
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: if you adopt a stance, a voluntary challenge, even in
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: relationship to tragedy and malevolence, that's the pathway to transcendence.
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: Do you have some to say that you're not saying.
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: If you do, then it's your fault. This is your fault,
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: it's your problem. And you might say, well, I'm too
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: afraid to talk. It's like, fair enough, how afraid are
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: you not to talk?
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: You know?
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: People say to me frequently they compliment me on my bravery,
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: and I think you don't understand.
• 49:21
  Speaker 3: I'm not brave. I don't like conflict.
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: I'm way more afraid of losing control of my tongue
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: than I am of the consequences of saying what I
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: have to say, because I know what happens when we
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: allow other people to control our tongues. It's not good.
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: It's not good. It's hell itself, and so of course
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: it's troublesome to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
• 49:49
  Speaker 2: When you say what you have to.
• 49:50
  Speaker 3: Say, it's like, that's fine, Try.
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: Not say what you have to say.
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: Well, that'll be okay in the moments, like, yeah, in
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: the moment, but I'm fortunately your whole life isn't in
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: the moment.
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: Practice in developing the capacity.
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: For skilled movement forward in a manner that simultaneously encourages
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: the others that you're cooperating.
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: With to do precisely the same thing.
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: And that's not some arbitrary ethos. It's not arbitrary because
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: if that doesn't happen, then nothing flourishes, and if it
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: does happen, then everything flourishes. It's also not relativistic in
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: some sense, because you have to do that no matter
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: what you're doing, no matter what it is that you're doing.
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: If you do that well, you're doing whatever it is
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: you're doing well. In fact, that's really in some sense
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: how you would define well. If you give up enough psychologically,
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: you'll cut your losses in actuality, And of course that's
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: sort of what thoughts for is right, so that you
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: can get yourself straight. You can give it up in abstraction,
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: so you don't act out the pathology, and then nothing
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: dies in actuality, But that still means you have something
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: to give up.
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: You want to.
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: Initiate a process of active engagement with the dragon that
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: burned you. Fundamentally, the psychophysiological pattern of active engagement is
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: the opposite to the psychophysiological pattern of involuntary stress. And
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: so if you can practice embodying that voluntary confrontation.
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: Then that stance can come to dominate.
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: And that's the stance you want to dominate, because that
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: moves you forward voluntarily into the world. And so and
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: that in all probability that will work. I want to
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: be free to do what I want. Okay, Well, hang
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: on a second, which I are you talking about there?
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: Are you talking about the mature eye that sees next
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: week and next month, the next year and ten years
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: out and that takes the community into account. Or are
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: you talking about the impulsive, headenistic, self serving, narrow eye
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: that just wants exactly what it wants right now? And
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: what makes you think that when you make a case
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: for that hedonism that you're not just falling under this
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: way of an impulsive, short sighted.
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: Demon, so to speak.
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: If you look at music, for example, music operates by
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: very sophisticated rules, and so it's ordered and constrained. But
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: out of that rules system of rules comes an almost
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: infinite array of possibility.
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: And so you know, we have this sense.
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: I think it derives from Rousseau that any constraint of
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: order is a limit on freedom, when what we should
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: be hypothesizing is that with the optimal set of principles,
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: you get the maximally desirable freedom. And it's not freedom
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: from everything, and it's not freedom to do anything. It's
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: certainly not a narrow hedonistic freedom, because that backfires on
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: you like the next day. This is I think, why
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: people are so obsessed in some sense with the search
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: for fundamental meaning. This is a good story. So you
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: can imagine two people laying bricks. They're building a gigantic wall,
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: and the one person thinks, oh my god, you know
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: this wall is going to take one hundred thousand bricks.
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: I'm laying one at a time, and I'm wasting my
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: life away trivially adding to this gigantic brick wall. And
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: what am I doing this is absolutely miserable brick by brick,
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: and the other person thinks, in three hundred years, this
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: is going to be a cathedral. And so the person
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: in the second state is doing exactly the same thing
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: at a local level, laying bricks, but each brick is
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: related to a very high goal, and that means the
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: reward that's attendant upon the laying of the brick is
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: proportional to the goal of the entire behavior process. So
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: if you're aimless and goalless, then you can't elicit any
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: positive emotion. And if your goals are fragmented, which is
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: also what happens if you're aimless or your goals lack unity.
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: If your goals are fragmented, then no given behavioral manifestation
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: can listit any dopaminergic reward because it's not a step
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: forward to anything desirable. One of the things while I
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: did write about this in my first book, particularly about
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: putting your life putting your house in perfect order, it's like, well,
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: if you're lost, one of the things you can do
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: is look around and see what direction you could take locally,
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: fix something, find something that you could do that would
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: make things better, that you would do and there's a
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: humility in that too, because, especially if you're in a
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: low energy state, it's like, oh my god, you know,
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: I don't have enough energy to make dinner. It's like
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: do you have enough energy to put a fork on
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: the table? And sometimes people are so depressed that that's
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: really all they can do. Can you take a small
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: step forward, no matter how small that is, implement a
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: micro routine, even something like washing a cup and putting
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: it the shelf. And you know that's a good thing
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: because you have a shelf and there's cups on it.
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: You've already decided that's an appropriate way to live is
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: to have your coffee cups on a shelf. If you
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: go ahead with cleaning out the cup and putting it
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: on the shelf, then you've taken steps towards a valuable
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: micro goal. You get a dopamine kick from that that
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: transforms itself into adrenaline that energizes you in part what
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: the dopamine system is doing. So imagine that the purpose
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: of the dopamine system is to elicit a satiating reward fundamentally,
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: But then the satiating reward is something that has to
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: be approached in steps, and so in order to maintain
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: the motivation necessary to approach the satiating reward, you have
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: to mark each of the steps with a marker of pleasure.
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: Small things are not small.
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: You might have the cognitive appraisal that doing something local
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: like cleaning up your room is small, but it's not
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: obvious at all that that's the case.
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: It's not that trivial to put.
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: Your immediate surroundings in order, and it can easily be
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: the stepping stone to putting things in order on a
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: broader scale. In fact, it's probably the necessary stepping stone
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: to do that. You can pat yourself on the back,
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: especially if you're depressed a little harder than you might otherwise,
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: by saying, you know, you say, well, this is trivial,
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: but I did it. It's like no, if you're moving ahead,
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: that's not small. You just keep doing that. You're going
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: to get out of this paralyzed or retreat mode. If
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: you're in the zone of proximal development, you're pushing your
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: skill development one increment forward, and it's one that you
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: can actually manage. Imagine that you have someone who's habitually avoidant,
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: and maybe they're avoidant because when they become possessed by
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: negative emotion, they become hyper aware of their internal state
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: and they feel the panic, and so then they freeze
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: or retreat, and they do that constantly, and then they're
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: in this terrible negative emotional state all the time because
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: every time they see a stimulus that's associated with retreat,
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: they get gripped these interceptive sensations.
• 57:03
  Speaker 2: And so you say to them, well, we're going to
• 57:05
  Speaker 2: reverse that.
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: Instead of you being gripped by that, you're going to
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: expose yourself to that voluntarily. So if you do that
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: well repeatedly with people, not only do they stop being
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: afraid of the things that.
• 57:19
  Speaker 2: You're showing them, that they're exposing them to, but they.
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: Become more likely to approach other things they're afraid of,
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: far more likely. In fact, it doesn't exactly look like
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: people get more less afraid at all.
• 57:30
  Speaker 2: It looks like what happens is they learn to get braver.
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: One of the phenomenon cognitive phenomena that loads very heavily
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: on neuroticism is self consciousness. And so when you fall
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: into anxiety, then there is this internal obsessiveness which has
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: to do with the panoply of sins in some sense,
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: which parts of me are functioning and need to be eradicated.
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: And one of the things I used to do with
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: my socially anxious clients. So they would go into a
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: social situation, often with eyes down cast, by the way,
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: and they would be so intensely concentrating on their own
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: internal sensations that they would fail to make eye contact
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: with anybody they were talking to, and then they would
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: be awkward because they weren't reading the cues they could
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: have read if they would have only looked, and then
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: the conversation would become disjointed, and then they would get
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: anxious and fall into themselves.
• 58:31
  Speaker 2: And so one of the things that I taught them.
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: To do wasn't to try to calm themselves down, but
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: to try to calm the other person down. So when
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: you go into a social situation, pay more attention to
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: the other person, like just focus your attention outward. And
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: if the person had any social skill. Sometimes I had
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: clients who had skills, and so they were anxious socially
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: because they actually didn't know how to behave socially. So
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: then you had to teach them the social skills. But
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: some of them had the skills but wouldn't activate them
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: because they were so neurotically obsessed with their own inadequacy
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: that they failed to attend to the cues that would
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: elicit the proper responses, And all they had to learn
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: to do was wash and then they would automatically respond
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: because they knew how to have a conversation.
• 59:24
  Speaker 2: See.
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: The reason that socially anxious people are so interroceptive is
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: it's involuntary, right, they get gripped by the negative emotion,
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: and then that produces this intense, obsessive interoception that might
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: not happen if they did it voluntarily. This is why
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: exposure therapy works so well in psychotherapy. Is like, well,
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: I'm afraid of something, and if I go near it,
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: then I'm possessed by negative emotion. Well that's if you
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: go near it accidentally. I'm going to have you go
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: near it purposefully. And what you're going to find is
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: that to the degree that you do it purposefully, that
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: response will be and that happens. It's extraordinarily reliable. Imagine
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: you anticipate something and then you make a mistake. Now
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: the question then becomes how significant is the mistake the
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: depressive takes that.
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 2: Punishment response.
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: Let's say that's a consequence of failed anticipation and can't
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: bind it. It just takes out all of their potential
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: future selves, and so then they're in a depressive pit.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: That's too much learning from failure. That binding problem is
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: really tricky. One of the rules of thumb for that
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: that's extremely useful, that's socially instantiated, is innocent until proven guilty.
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: So you might say when those thoughts come up, because
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: they're adversarial and accusatory thoughts, you might say, well, that
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: is part of the realm of possibility. But when your
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: child does something wrong that's minor, you don't say you're
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: a rotten kid. You bind it. You say, look, kid,
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: here's a bunch of things you're doing right. But in
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: this particular example, specific situation, here's the minimal thing you
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: did in correctly and how to alter it. And it's
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: a really good habit of mind to address towards yourself
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: as well as to other people, which is to say, well,
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: what's the minimum crime that I'm responsible for in this moment.
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: And that's part of this miracle of the presumption of innocence,
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: and especially without proof. A lot of what I did
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: in my clinical practice to people who had a depressive
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: temperament was help them make a case for themselves. It's like, well,
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: maybe you're as bad as you think you might be,
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: but maybe not. Let's take the contrary argument and only
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: narrow the repair to the absolute minimum that needs to
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: be manifested. Sometimes when you make one little mistake, it
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: is actually an indicator of a flaw in your character,
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: but most of.
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 2: The time it isn't.
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: And it certainly can't be responded to that all the time,
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: because then you'd never be able to make a mistake
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: without wiping yourself completely out. You want to make it
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: as local and precise as you possibly can, and that's
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: also one of the advantages to removing yourself from a
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: rage or an anxiety state, because a rage or an
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: anxiety state is low resolution and global, and so it'll
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: be globally accusatory.
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 2: So you want to specify it. And you think, okay, well.
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: What's the minimum necessary behavioral transformation to ensure that similar
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: mistakes are not replicated in the future. It's like if
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: your roof leaks, you don't have to dig a new foundation.
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: You can just fix a few shingles. And you might think, well,
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: the rain's coming through, so you have to tear down
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: the whole house. It's like, well no, And you might
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: panic and run around because the water's coming in, but
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: it's still a bad idea to dig up the foundations
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: every time something trivial maintenance problem needs to emerge. And
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: so one of the things that's very useful to learn
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: is like, well, is this only a trivial maintenance problem.
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 2: And one of the advantages to.
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: That too is that if it's not the collapse of
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: your entire self, let's say, and it's a trivial maintenance problem,
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: you're much more able to activate that courageous response to anomaly.
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: That's part and parcel of exploratory behavior and eventual success.
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: So what part of the trick of many sorts of
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: why I'd say religious training enterprises, certainly the meditative enterprises,
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: is something like, how do you tell yourself a story,
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: like a real story, though, a story that actually works,
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: where you can confidently approach the thing that's blocking your path.
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: How do we come to know ourselves in terms of
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: our personalities and more importantly potential. One of the first
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: ways to come to know yourself is to understand that
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: you don't you know, you can learn to kind of
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: watch yourself like you're watching a stranger. So you have
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: to understand that you don't know who you are are,
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: and that's not easy to understand because you think you know,
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: but then you know. You remember you can't control yourself
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: very well. You're not very disciplined, you're full of flaws.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: Maybe you don't know yourself as well as you think,
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: but it's hard to get low enough to understand how
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: deeply it is the case that you are ignorant about
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: who you are. Now there's an upside to that too,
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: which also is that you're also ignorant about who you
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: could be. And so the discovery of that, you know,
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: is some reward for the horror of determining who you
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: actually are. Then you watch yourself, You watch yourself like
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: you're watching a stranger. You watch what you say and
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: you listen. You think, well, what sort of person would
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: say that? And how am I reacting emotionally when I'm
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: communicating in that manner? You know? Is that making me
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: feel stronger?
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 3: Weaker?
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: Is filling me with shame? Is it helping my confidence?
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: Am I laying out a lie? Am I deceiving myself?
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 3: And other people.
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: Am I adopting this personality at parties that is designed
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: to impress and to amuse and it comes across as
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: nothing but self centered narcissism. What are my dark fantasies?
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: What are my aggressive fantasies? What is it that I'm
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: willing to do? What am I interested in so that
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: I'll spontaneously pursue it? What do I procrastinate about and why?
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: What am I unwilling to do? What do I think
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: is good? What do I congratulate myself for accomplishing? And
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: what do I berate myself for failing to confront and
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: to implement? Those are all incredibly complicated questions and you
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: don't know the answers to them. So that's the start.
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: And then in terms of potential, well, you'll discover a
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: little bit more about your potential as you discover who
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: you are, especially the darker parts of yourself, because then
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: you discover your potential for mayhem. There's some real utility that,
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: you know, the discovery that you're dangerous. It's such a
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: useful discovery. It's actually something that strengthens you because the
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: first thing that a realization like that can in fact
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: produce is the ambition to incorporate that danger into a
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: higher order personality, and that can make you implacable. That
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: can make you someone who can say no when you
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: need to say no. You know, that can make you
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: someone who won't avoid necessary conflict. And so that's unbelievably useful.
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: And so that's one of the potentials that you might discover.
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: The other thing you do to discover your potential is
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: to what you challenge yourself. You know, it's like, take
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: a bit of a look at yourself and think about
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: what's not so good that you could improve, that you
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: should improve by your own standards, and that you would improve,
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: you know, and set yourself a little goal. You know,
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: maybe you're not studying at all at you and your
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: at university, or maybe you're maybe you're at work and
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: you've got this stack of paper there, you know, and
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: you haven't looked at that damn stack for like a month,
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: and you know that you should be, and you're bothering
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: yourself at night because you're avoiding that. It's like, maybe, think,
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: I've avoided that stack of paper completely for one month.
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: I'm quite a coward when it comes to whatever snakes
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: might be hidden in that stack.
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 3: Of paper.
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 2: How about tomorrow?
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: I just like put that stack of paper in front
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: of me on my desk, and I like, I glanced
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: through it for fifteen seconds. See if I can do that.
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: It's like, well, you set yourself a goal of improvement.
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: You know, it's a humble goal. There's things you could
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: do to improve and you know what they are, and
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: there's small steps that you could take that you might
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: take that would put you in that direction. And then
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: the question is are you big enough to take those
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: small steps? You know, are you capable of grappling with
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: the fact that you're fundamentally flawed to the point where
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: you have to break things down into almost childlike steps
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: in order to manage them.
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 2: An answer to that is, yeah, you are.
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: Most people have things they avoid, you know, and they're
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: afraid of. So I would say, to some degree, it's
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: the law of everyone. People vary in the degree to
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: which they've conquered that. And you do meet people from
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: time to time who are extraordinarily disciplined, but most of
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: the time they've got disciplined in exactly this manner. It's
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: through slow, incremental improvement. And then you challenge yourself. It's like, well,
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: could I do this, that would be better. Then you
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: find out and then you think, well, is there something
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: slightly larger and more challenging that I could do that
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: would be better? And you try it and you find out.
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: And as you try it and you find out, generally
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: you get better at it and you can take on
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: larger and larger challenges. You know, you take responsibility for yourself.
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: That's part of standing up straight with your shoulders back.
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: It's like take on the world, man, but only at
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: the level that you can manage when you're ignorant and
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: biased and deeply flawed and immature. It's where everyone starts.
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: You don't want to take You don't want to bite
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: off more than you can chew. But it doesn't mean
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: that you can't wrestle with part of reality, you know,
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: some part that's small enough so that you have a
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: good shot at victory. And then you attain victory over
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: some small part of the chaos, and then you're the
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: person who's victorious over chaos. You're just a beginner, but
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: that's who you are. And then maybe you can get
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: unbelievably good at that. And you do that by challenging
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: yourself humbly at the level that you're able to function.
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: It's easier to understand if you think about a child
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: that you're trying to rear properly, and you want to
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: make that child, help that child reveal their highest potential,
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: whatever that is, whatever that means, And what you do
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: is you don't set them a series of impossible tasks
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: in the hope of undermining their self confidence. You form
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: a relationship with them that is predicated on your interest
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: in their highest mode of being, and then you offer
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: them challenges that are precisely optimized to their ability right,
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: so they can do them, but they have to stretch.
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: The two elements of their ability would be what they
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: can do and how much they're capable of a transforming
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: what they can do, and an optimal challenge stretches you
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: to the end of what you can do and then
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: into the domain of how you can transform. You have
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: to be humble and wise enough to understand that you
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: might have to aim pretty damn low, especially in those
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: places where you're not functioning well, and it might be
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: so embarrassing that you can't that you can't bring yourself
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: to fathom that that's actually who you are. You need
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: the loss of that ragadigo, because it's precisely what's interfering
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: with your movement forward. You know, it's part of the
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: adversarial process mythologically speaking, that stops moral progress. You're too
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: proud of who you think you are to notice what
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: you're like so that you could change properly. You don't
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: want to sacrifice that part of yourself. It's probably associated
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: with some delusion that helps you maintain a positive, although
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: very fragile self image. You know, in the absence of
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: genuine effort, it's not to be recommended. So you know
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: yourself by watching and paying attention. It's not thinking exactly,
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: it's not imagination. It's just it's watching like you're like
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: you're a snake, because a snake watches like cold bloodedly
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: with no emotional reaction, just to see what's there. Doesn't
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: allow what is wanted or desired to interfere with what
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: is observed. So you watch yourself like that, as if
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: you don't know who you are. Well, that's the beginning,
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: and then you challenge yourself continually to see how far
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: past yesterday you could push today and tomorrow, and to
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: continually experiment with expanding the domains not only of your competence,
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: but of your ability to increase that competence. The upper
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: limit to that is proportional to the moral effort that
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: you put into it.
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 2: The more that's.
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: Guided by the highest of all possible visions, right, the
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: alliance with the highest of all possible conceivable good, The
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: more it's accompanied by truth in speech and action, the
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: more you will develop your potential. And I believe that
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: potential to be as unlimited in the upward direction. Unlimited
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: in the upward direction, then it is unlimited in the
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: direction that brings people to the political and social hells
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: that so often characterize the world that we inhabit.
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 3: And so.
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: You also, I suppose, have to be willing to undertake
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: that as an adventure, because it's a hell of a
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: thing to bear that kind of responsibility. It takes a
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: person out of the ordinary, it takes them out of themselves.
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: But there's deep meaning to be had in it, and
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: it's and there isn't anything better that you can do.
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: Everyone in the right mind knows that there's a million
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: ways of doing things wrong and one way, if you're lucky,
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: to do things right. And so the notion that it's
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: a very very narrow pathway that you tread upon. If
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: you're doing things right, that's wisdom. That's the line between
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: chaos and order that you're supposed to be on constantly right.
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: It's a very very thin line, because if you're a
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: little bit too far in one direction, then it's too
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: much chaos, and if you're a little too far in
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: the other direction, then it's too much order, and both
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: of those aren't good. It has to the balance has
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: to be exactly right. And you can feel that. And
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: I truly believe you can feel that. And I think
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: it's your deepest instinct. It's your deepest instinct.
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 2: And I mean that.
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: I mean that biologically, I don't mean that metaphorically. I
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: think that your psyche is arranged to exist in a
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: cosmos that's composed of chaos and order. I think that's
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: why you have the hemispheric structure that you have. And
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: then when you feel as if you're meaningfully engaged in
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: the world, when the terror of your mortality strips away
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: and you're engaged and it's timeless, that's the deepest instinct
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: you have telling you that you're in the right place
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: at the right time. And then what you do is
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: practice being there practice being there, and that's that narrow
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: spot that's so difficult to find, you wander around it.
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 2: Maybe if you're lucky, you can watch. You can watch.
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 2: This is an experiment.
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: Watch yourself for two weeks, like you don't know who
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: you are because you don't, So watch yourself for two
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: weeks and notice.
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 2: There's gonna be times when things are proper they're raided
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 2: properly for you.
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: It's not easy to notice because when they're a raid
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: like that, you're so engaged you don't exactly notice, you know,
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: but you'll see, oh, I'm in the right place.
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 2: It's like, Okay, how'd I get here? What am I doing?
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 2: You know?
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: How is it that this could happen more often? I'd
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: like this to happen more often? How would I have
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: to conduct myself in order for that to happen more often?
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: And then you practice that, and then maybe instead of
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: ten minutes a month or ten minutes a week, it's
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: like fifteen minutes a day, and then it's half an
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: hour a day, and then it's an hour a day,
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: and then it's four hours a day, and maybe if
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: you're extraordinarily careful, then you get to a point where
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: you're like that a good proportion of the time, you
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: are not the master of your own house.
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 2: There are spirits that dwell within you, meaning.
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: You have a will and you can exercise a certain
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: amount of conscious control over your being.
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 2: But they're also of.
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: Things that occur within you that seem to be beyond
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: your capacity to control. Your dreams, for example, that's a
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: really good example. Or your impulses, for example. You might
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: think of those as so foreign from you that they're
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: not even you don't even want them to be part
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: of you. But more subtly, even how about what you're
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: interested in? What compels you?
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 2: Like, where does that come from?
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 1: Exactly? Because you can't conjure it up of your own accord,
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: you know. So if you're a student and you're taking
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: difficult course, you might say to yourself, well, I need
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: to sit down and study for three hours.
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 2: But then you sit down, and that is what happens.
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: Your attention goes everywhere, And you might say, well, whose
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: attention is it? Then if it goes everywhere because you
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: say it's your attention, it's like, well, if it's your attention,
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: maybe you'd be able.
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 2: To control it, but you can't.
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: And so then you might think, well, Jen, then just
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: exactly what the hell is controlling it? And you might say, well,
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: it's random. It's well, it's better not be random. I
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: can tell you that that's that happens to some degree
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: in schizophrenia. There's an element of randomness in that it's
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: not random. It's driven by the action of phenomena that
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 1: I think are best considered as something like sub personalities.
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: You can't make yourself interested in something. Interest manifests itself
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: and grips you. That's a whole different thing. And so
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: what is it that's gripping you? And how do you
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: conceptualize that? Is that a divine power? Well, it's divine
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: as far as you're concerned, because it grips you and
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 1: you can't do anything about it. And so there's a
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: calling in you towards what you're compelled by and what
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 1: you're interested in it. Sometimes that might be very dark
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: and sometimes not, but you're compelled forward by your interest.
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: And so the idea that what moves you away from
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: your country and your father's house and the comforts of
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: your childhood home is is something that's beyond you and
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: that you listen to and hearken to that's exactly right.
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 2: And you can say, well, I don't want to call
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 2: that God.
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: It's like, it doesn't matter what you call it exactly,
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: it doesn't matter to what it is, what it's called,
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: it still is. And if you don't listen to it,
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 1: that's the other thing. If you don't listen to it.
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: And I've been a clinician and talk to enough people
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: now as old as I am, to know this absolutely,
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: if you do not listen to that thing that beckons
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: you forward, you will pay for it like you cannot
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: possibly imagine. You'll have everything that's terrible about life in
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: your life and nothing about it that's good and worth.
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 2: You'll know that it was.
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: Your fault and that you squandered what you could have had.
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: So this is not only a calling forth but a warning.
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: One of the things that I've noticed in my life
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: is that nothing I've ever done was wasted. And by done,
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: I mean put my heart and soul into you know,
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 1: like attempted with all of my effort. That always worked.
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 2: Now it didn't.
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: Always work the way I expected it to work. That's
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: a whole different issue, but the payoff from it was
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: always positive, something of value, always accrued to me, and
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: I made the sacrifices necessary to do something worthwhile.
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 2: Go somewhere you don't understand.
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 1: You have to go into the unknown, and that's God's
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: first command, go into the unknown, because you already know
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: what you know and so and that's not enough unless
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: you think you're enough. And if you're not enough, and
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: you don't think you're enough, then you have to go
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: where you haven't been. Get away from your family enough
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: so that you can establish your independence. And that isn't
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: because there's something wrong with your family, but it means
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 1: get away.
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 1: I talk to people very frequently whose families have provided
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: them with too much protection and they know it themselves,
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: and that means they're deprived of necessity. Then you have
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: to get yourself away from your dependency in order to
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 1: allow necessity to.
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 2: Drive you forward.
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: And that's to become independent and to become mature. You know,
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: we've been fed this unending diet of rights and freedoms.
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 2: And there's something about that.
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: There's something about that that's so pathologically wrong, and people
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 1: are starving for the antidote. And the antidote is truth
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: and responsibility right, and it isn't it isn't because that's
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: what you should do, and some I know better or
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: someone knows better for you what you should do, since
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 1: it's that that's the secret to a meaningful life. And
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: without a meaningful life, then all you have is suffering
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 1: and nihilism and despair and all of that and self contempt.
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 2: And that's not good.
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: And it's necessary for men to stand up and take responsibility.
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: If you were able to reveal the best of yourself
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: to you in the world, that you would be an
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: overwhelming force for good, and that whatever errors might be
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 1: made along the way would wash out in the works
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 1: if you forthrightly pursue that which God directs you to pursue.
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: Let's say that all things are possible, and so we
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: don't know the limits of human endeavor.
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 2: We truly don't.
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: And it's premature to put a cap on what it
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 1: is that we are, what it is that we're capable of.
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 1: And so you know you're already something, and maybe you're
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 1: not so bad in your current configuration. But you might
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: wonder if you did nothing for the next thirty years
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 1: except put yourself together, just exactly what would you be
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 1: able to do?
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 2: And you might think, well, that's worth finding out.
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: But of course that's that's the adoption of responsibility. There's
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 1: lots in the world to fix. Everything that bothers you.
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 1: About the world and about yourself should be fixed, and
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 1: you can do that. I have a friend, he lives
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 1: in Montreal's name is James Simon. He's a great painter
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: and he's taught me a lot of things help. He's
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: helped me design my house and beautify it. And I
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 1: bought some paintings from him a couple of years ago,
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: and he did this series of paintings where he went
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: around North America and stood in different places and then
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 1: he painted the view from here down and so it's
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 1: his feet planted in different places, on roads, in the desert,
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: on the ocean. Well, you know, he was trying to
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: make a point, and the point was that wherever you are,
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 1: it's worth paying attention. And that's because you know, so
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 1: all these places that he visited, he looked exactly.
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 2: Where he was standing by the side of the road
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 2: in the desert.
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: It's sind of mundane in some sense, but then maybe
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 1: he put forty hours into that painting, you know, and
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 1: it's very very realistic painting with really good life. And
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: what he's telling you as a painter is everything is
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 1: worth paying attention to an infinite amount, but you don't
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 1: have enough time, and so the artist.
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 2: Does that for you, right.
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: The artist looks and looks and looks and looks and looks,
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: and then gives you that vision. And so then you
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 1: can look at the painting and it reminds you that
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 1: everything that there is is right where you are. And
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 1: that's a hard thing to realize, but it's actually true.
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: And so I've been telling people online in various ways
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 1: and the lectures that they should start fixing up the
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: world by cleaning up their room. How you would like
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: your life to be and what you would like your
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 1: character to be three to five years down the road
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 1: if you were taking care of yourself like you were
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: taking care of someone that you actually cared about. So
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: you kind of have to split yourself into two people
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 1: and treat yourself like like someone you have respect for
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 1: and that you want the best for. That's not easy
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 1: because people don't necessarily have respect for themselves and they
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: don't necessarily want what's the best for themselves because they
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: have a lot of self contempt and a lot of
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 1: self hatred, a lot of guilt. I think you have
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: an obligation, it's one of the highest moral obligations to
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: treat yourself as if you're a creature of value. How
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: you would like your friendships to be conducted, because it's
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: useful to surround yourself with people who are trying to
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 1: move forward, and more importantly, who are happy when you
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: move forward and not happy when you move backwards, not
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: when you fall.
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 2: That isn't what I mean.
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 1: But when you're doing self destructive things, your friends shouldn't
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 1: be there to cheer you on. You look at the
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: world through a story, you can't help it, and and
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: the story is what gives value to the world, or
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: the stories what you extract from the value of the world.
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 1: You can look at it either way. You're somewhere and
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: it's not good enough, right, that's the eternal human predicamment.
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: Wherever you are isn't good enow And to some degree
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 1: that's actually a good thing, because if it was good enough,
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 1: well there's nothing for you to do. So it's actually
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: maybe a good thing that it's insufficient. And that might
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 1: be why sometimes having less is better than having more.
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: And I don't want to be a Pollyanna about that.
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 1: I mean, I know that there's deprivation that can reach
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 1: to the point where it's completely counterproductive. But it isn't
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: always the case that starting with little is if you
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 1: start with little, you start with more possibility.
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 2: It's something like that.
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: So you move from always from what's unbearable about the
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 1: presence to some better future, right, And if you don't
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 1: have that, then you have nothing but threat and negative emotion.
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 1: You have no positive emotion because the positive emotion is
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 1: generated in the conception of the better future and then
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 1: the evidence that you generate yourself that you're moving towards it.
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 1: That's where the positive and fulfilling meaning of life comes.
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 1: So you want to set up this structure properly. It's
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 1: very very important. And so what it means is that
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 1: you want to be going somewhe where that's good enough
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 1: so that the going is worth the while. And you
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: can ask yourself that, and well, we know what's wrong
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 1: with life. It's rife with suffering and insufficiency and deception
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 1: and evil. It's all of that obviously, Okay, what would
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 1: make the journey worthwhile? Oh, you can ask yourself that.
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 1: It's like all right, in order to bear up under
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 1: this load? What is it that I would need to
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 1: be striving to attain? And if you ask yourself that,
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: that's to knock and the door will open.
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 2: That's what that means.
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: If you ask yourself that, then you will find an
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: answer and you'll think you'll shrink away from it. You'll think, well,
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 1: there's no way I could do that. It's like, well,
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 1: you don't know what you could do. You don't know
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 1: what's possible, and you're not as much as you could be,
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: and so God only knows what you could what you
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: could do and have and give if you sacrificed everything
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: to it. You have to sacrifice that which is most
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: valuable to you currently that's stopping you, and God only
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 1: knows what that is. It's certainly the worst of you.
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: It's certainly that, and God only knows to what degree
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: you're in love with the worst of you. The idea
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 1: that what you should do if you're feeling resentful about
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 1: the nature of being or suffering too much for your
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 1: own life, let's say, is straighten the damn thing out,
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 1: like seriously, try it for a year, even try it
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 1: for a week. Try not doing the things you know
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 1: you shouldn't do try not saying the things you know
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: to be false, and just watch what happens. You might
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 1: as well give it a shot, right because you say, well,
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 1: I'm all in for a year, you know, I'm gonna
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 1: do things right, and then I'll just stand back and
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 1: kind of watch how things unfold and maybe I'll reconsider
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: at the end of that year. It's like, try it,
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 1: try it. I mean, I would say I've had thousands
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 1: of letters now from people who are saying, hey, I
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 1: tried that, you know, and hey, you know worked. I
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: read this great line in the ts Eliot play called
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 1: The Cocktail Party, and in it, this woman comes up
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: to a psychiatrist and she says, you know, I'm having
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: a really rough time of it. I'm suffering badly. My
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: life is not going well. And then she says, I
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 1: hope that there's something wrong with me. And the psychiatrist says,
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 1: what the hell do you mean by that? And she says, well,
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: here's how I.
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 2: Look at it.
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 1: There's either something wrong with the world and I'm just
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 1: in it and that's how it is. And then like,
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 1: what am I going to do about that because it's
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 1: the whole world? Or maybe I could be fortunate and
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 1: there's something wrong with me that's causing all this unnecessary suffering,
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 1: and if I.
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 2: Could just set it right, I could learn and I
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 2: could set it right.
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 3: And so.
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 1: Well, I've been thinking about that for a very long time,
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 1: and I think, well, if your life isn't going the
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 1: way it is, you know you can find someone else
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 1: to blame, which is pretty convenient for you and also
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 1: relatively easy. Or you could think, Okay, I don't like life.
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 1: I don't like the way my life is unfolding. Maybe
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 1: I don't like life in general because it's tragic and
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 1: tainted with evil. How do I know if my judgment
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 1: is accurate? And the question is, well, have I really
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: done everything I possibly could to set my life straight?
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 1: Because maybe I shouldn't be judging it it's quality or
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 1: the quality of life itself, or being itself for that matter.
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: If I haven't done everything I possibly could to set
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 1: my life straight, well, so there's a task.
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 2: The humility element is.
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 1: It took me a long time to understand why there's
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 1: religious injunctions supporting humility, to even understand what the word
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 1: really meant in that sort of technical sense, and it
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 1: means something like this. It means what you don't know
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 1: is more important than what you know. Then what you
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 1: don't know can start to be your friend. You see,
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 1: people are very defensive about what they know. But the
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 1: thing is you don't know enough. And the read you
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: can tell you don't know enough because your life is
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 1: not what it could be, and neither is the life
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 1: of the people around you.
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 2: You just don't know enough.
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 1: And so what that means is that every time you
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 1: encounter some evidence that you're ignorant, someone points it out.
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 1: You should be happy about that because you think, oh,
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 1: you just told me how I'm wrong. It's like great,
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 1: Like maybe I had to sift through a lot of
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 1: nonsense to get through the real message that you're telling me.
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 1: But if you could actually tell me some way that
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 1: I'm wrong and then maybe give me a hint about
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: how to not be wrong like that, well then I
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 1: wouldn't have to be wrong like that anymore. That that
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 1: would be a good thing. And you can embark on
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 1: that adventure by listening to people. And if you listen
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: to people, they will tell you. They'll tell you amazing
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 1: things if you listen to them, and many of those
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 1: things are little tools that you can put in your
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 1: toolkit like Batman, and then you can go out into
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 1: the world and use those tools and you don't have
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 1: to fall blindly into a pit quite as often. And
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 1: so the humility element is, well, do you want to
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 1: be right or do you want to be learning?
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 2: And it's deeper than that, it's.
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 1: Do you want to be the tyrannical king who's already
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 1: got everything figured out? Or do you want to be
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 1: the continually transforming hero or fool for that matter, who's
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 1: getting better all the time. And that's actually a choice,
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 1: you know, it's a deep choice, and it's better to
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 1: be the self transforming fool who's humble enough to make
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 1: friends with what he or she doesn't know and to
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 1: listen when people talk, and listening is a transformative exercise,
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 1: like if if you listen to the people in your life,
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 1: for example, if you actually listen to them, they'll tell
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: you what's wrong with them and how to fix it
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 1: and what they want. They can't even help it if
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 1: you start listening, because people are so shocked if you
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 1: actually listen to them that they tell you all those
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 1: sorts of things that they might not have even intended to.
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 2: Things they don't even.
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 1: Know, and then you can you can work with that
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 1: and the other thing that's so interesting you know now,
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 1: and then you have a meaningful conversation, right, you have
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 1: a good conversation with somebody, you walk when you think, jeez,
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 1: you know, we really connected and I know more than
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 1: I did when I came away from that conversation. And
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 1: during the conversation you're really engrossed in it. And that
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 1: feeling of being engrossed is a feeling of meaning. And
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 1: the feeling of meaning is engendered because you're having a
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 1: transformative conversation. So your brain produces that feeling of meaning
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 1: for you says, oh, yeah, it's exactly where you should
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 1: be right here and now. It's the right place and
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 1: time for you, and that's a great place to occupy.
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 1: And so a good conversation where people are listening has
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 1: exactly that nature. And the reason it has that nature
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 1: is because it is in fact transformative. It's one of
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 1: the truisms of clinical psychology. Like if you're a clinical psychologist,
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 1: a huge part of what you do is just listen
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 1: to people. It's like, you know, they come in, they're
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 1: unhappy and they'd rather not be something like that.
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 2: You say well, why do you think you might be unhappy?
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 2: And they don't know.
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 1: They have some ideas, and they may have to ramble
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 1: around for like a year before they figure out why
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 1: they're unhappy. They get rid of a bunch of reasons
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 1: why they thought they were unhappy that are untrue, and
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 1: then you kind of get to the heart of the problem,
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 1: and then you might ask them, well, if you could
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 1: have what you wanted so that your life would be okay,
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 1: would that look like? Then they have to ramble around
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 1: a bunch about that because they don't really know, but
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 1: the listening will straighten them out. Because people think by talking,
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 1: and in order to think, you have to have someone
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 1: to listen, because it's very hard to think. Hardly anyone
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 1: can think, and even the people who can think can
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 1: only think about a limited number of things. But almost
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 1: everybody can talk, and you can listen to yourself talk,
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 1: and if someone listens to you, then well then you
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 1: also have a foil for your thoughts, right, because you
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 1: can watch the person when you're talking and see if
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 1: you're boring, or see if you're amusing, or if you're
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 1: engrossing all of those things, and so like, if you're
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: arguing with your wife, let's say, or your husband big
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 1: party is gonna want to win. That's stupid because because
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 1: you don't want that, you want to you want to
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 1: defeat your wife in an argument. Oh well, great, like
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 1: if she was gonna disappear tomorrow, no problem.
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 2: But like you're.
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 1: Gonna like live with defeated, miserable her for the next week.
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 2: That's no good.
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 1: So you listen and you think, Okay, well, here's here's
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 1: what you what I think I think you said, and
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 1: maybe you can make it a little stronger and more elaborated.
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 1: Then was the case with the original utterance, so that
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 1: you get the damn argument right, because you don't want
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 1: to win, you want to fix the problem.
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 2: That's the winning.
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 1: How do I decide if my inner voice is healthy
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 1: or not? And how do I maintain it healthily? How
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 1: can one tell if one's inner voice, judgment, or conscience
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 1: is a healthy one and not a voice that is
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 1: the result of an unhealthy mind due to past experiences,
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: Now that's a really interesting question, the question of conscience.
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 1: I continually asked my frequently, let's say, or yearly, ask
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 1: my personality class attendees if they heard the voice of
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 1: conscience if they had a feeling and emotion emotional state,
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 1: let's say, or a voice that informed them when they
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 1: had done something ethically wrong and that perhaps made them
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 1: guilty as a consequence, and it was essentially a universal experience.
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 1: That's the voice of society within. I suppose that's one
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 1: way of thinking about it. The Freudians would think about
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 1: that as the voice of the super ego. Carl Jung
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 1: would take that conceptualization somewhat farther. He would have considered
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 1: it the voice of the self, which is in part
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 1: the voice of the ethic that's derived from the broader community,
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 1: insofar as that ethic is valid, let's say.
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 2: But also in part the voice of.
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 1: The more thoroughly developed self that's still striving to be born.
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 1: One thing you could say is that you experience violations
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 1: of your conscience when you're not acting like the better
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 1: person that you could possibly become, and so to some degree,
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 1: that's your higher self upbraiding you for failure to develop
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 1: in the appropriate direction.
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 2: And that seems to me.
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 1: To be a reasonable way of conceptualizing it. Now, the
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 1: one question might be how error prone is your conscience
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 1: given that you're not omniscient, You have to attend to
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 1: your guilt and your self discussed, and your self contempt
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 1: and your self consciousness. You have to understand that the
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 1: manifestation of those emotions might well indicate a moral failing
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 1: on your part or a lack that needs to be addressed,
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 1: while at the same time considering that it is not
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: a straightforward matter to deal fairly with yourself, and you
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 1: can be too tormented by your conscience, too rigid, too responsible,
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 1: take on too much weight onto yourself, deny yourself in
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 1: a manner that isn't sustainable.
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 2: And so forth.
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 1: That a moral code, a moral way of being, can
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 1: become too rigid and inflexible, and, despite its putative.
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 3: Aim upward, be something counterproductive.
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 1: I think most of the way out of that, if
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 1: there is one, is well careful thinking. You have to
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 1: see what your conscience says. You have to see how
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 1: you respond. You have to capture that voice and your responses,
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 1: and you have to think it through. But most of
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 1: that is done in dialogue with other people rather than
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 1: as the consequence of internal thought. You know, if you
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 1: have a dispute with your wife or your husband, your
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 1: intimate partner, sibling, your parents, anybody close to you, and.
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 2: It's useful for each of you in.
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 1: The dispute to ask yourself and the other person very
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 1: seriously if you're at fault or if they're at fault,
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 1: and for both of you to be able to contemplate
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 1: that you might be at fault and so might the
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 1: other person, and then it's in your best interest to
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 1: sort out exactly who's made the error and where, and
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 1: maybe it's both of you and maybe at different levels
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 1: of analysis. I think the same might be said about
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 1: your reaction to your conscience.
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 2: It's not uncommon for.
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 1: Me to talk to my wife, my kids, my parents,
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 1: my friends, for that matter, about something I might be feeling.
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 1: Maybe I'm guilty about something, I'm self conscious about something,
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 1: I'm angry about something, I feel impelled by my conscience
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 1: to do something as a consequence to change something. It's
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 1: very helpful to discuss such things with other people, to say, look,
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 1: here's what I think I did wrong, and here's how
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 1: I'm punishing myself, but I'm not sure that I'm not
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 1: doing it in.
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 2: An exaggerated way.
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 1: And you gather other people's opinions and listen to them carefully.
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 1: And friends are extraordinarily useful in that regard, and that
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 1: can help you calibrate it. So I think most of
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 1: what we do to decide if our inner voice is
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 1: healthy is discuss it with other people. And I believe,
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 1: as I pointed out in my last book explicitly, that
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 1: tremendous amount of our sanity is maintained as a consequence
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 1: of social interaction.
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 3: So you can't find.
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 1: Your authentic self merely as a consequence of a journey within.
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 1: I would say, there's just not enough of you. You
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 1: have to be informed by the broader social world. What
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 1: is the best way to avoid falling back into nihilistic
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 1: behaviors and thinking?
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 3: Well, A large part.
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 1: Of that, I would say is is habit, the maintenance,
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 1: the development, maintenance of good practices.
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 2: Habits.
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 1: If you find yourself dissolute, neurotic, if your tenants, if
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 1: your thought tends in the nihilistic direction, and you tend
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: to fall apart, organizing your life across multiple dimensions is
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 1: a good antidote. It's not exactly thinking. Do you have
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 1: an intimate relationship? If not, well, probably you could use one.
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 1: Do you have contact with close family members siblings or
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 1: children or parents, or people who are even more distantly related.
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 2: If not, you probably need that.
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 1: Do you see your friends a couple of times a
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 1: week and do something social with them.
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 2: Do you have a way of.
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 1: Productively using your time outside of employment?
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 2: Are you employed?
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 3: Do you have a good.
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 2: Job, or at least a job that.
• 1:40:14
  Speaker 1: Is practically sufficient and that enables you to work with
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 1: people who you like working with, Even if the job
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 1: itself is mundane or repetitive or difficult. Sometimes the relationships.
• 1:40:27
  Speaker 3: That you establish in an.
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 1: Employment situation like that can make the job worthwhile.
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 2: Have you regulated your.
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 1: Response to temptations, pornography, alcohol abuse, drug abuse?
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 3: Is that under control?
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 1: I would say differentiate the problem. There's multiple dimensions of attainment, ambition, pleasure, responsibility,
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 1: all of that that make up a life, and to
• 1:41:03
  Speaker 1: the degree that it's possible, you want to optimize your
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 1: functioning on as many of those dimensions as possible. Those
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 1: are all the questions that I would decompose the problem
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 1: into the best way to avoid falling back into nihilistic
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 1: behaviors and thinking, how can responsibility be differentiated from imposed guilt? Well,
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 1: I think you adopt genuine responsibility, let's say healthy responsibility.
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 1: I think you adopt that more or less voluntarily. I
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 1: mean there's an element of necessity and compulsion in our
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 1: lives as well, because there are things we have to
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 1: do to survive. But if you've explicitly formulated a set
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 1: of goals and you're pursuing them, then you've adopted the
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 1: responsibility to act in a certain manner to make those
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 1: goals realize themselves. That's responsibility that you've adopted, rather than
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 1: responsibility that's being imposed on you. Assuming that you've thought
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 1: through the goals and you find your spirit in harmony
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 1: with those goals, you can consult your resentment. I think
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 1: that's a very useful step. If you find yourself angry
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 1: and bitter about the things that you are responsible for doing,
• 1:42:20
  Speaker 1: then that's an indication that you might be operating under
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 1: some unhealthy compulsion. That you're rebelling, and that's the reason
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 1: for the resentment against the insistence that you act in
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 1: a certain way, Although it's also possible that you're just
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 1: immature and that you're rebelling against the discipline that's necessary
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 1: to attain the goals that you genuinely do want to
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 1: attain and that are valid and that you are actively
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 1: engaged in constructing.
• 1:42:51
  Speaker 3: So you have to get that straight.
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 1: And some of that's a consequence of thought, and again
• 1:42:56
  Speaker 1: some of that's a consequence of discussion with other people
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 1: with whom you're intimate enough to have a conversation like that,
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 1: and perhaps they have conversations about similar things with you,
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 1: if you're fortunate. Human beings have built a mechanism, let's
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 1: say that's like a game engine. You know how there
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 1: are game engines now that people have devised their computational devices,
• 1:43:28
  Speaker 1: and you can take a game engine and you can
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 1: generate games with it, like computer games. So the game
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 1: engine is a mechanism for producing games. Well that's what
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 1: our brains are, like, our brains are game engines for
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 1: producing games. And so what happens is that when you
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 1: think you produce an avatar of yourself, you produce a
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 1: fictional world that that avatar inhabits, and maybe you produce
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 1: multiple fictional worlds and multiple avatars. That's the you that
• 1:43:53
  Speaker 1: could be tomorrow, which is what you're doing when you're planning,
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 1: and you walk the avatar through its potential roots, and
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 1: those that look good you keep, and those that don't
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 1: look good you kill, And so then you can embody
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 1: the ideas that you keep and act those out and
• 1:44:08
  Speaker 1: hopefully the idea is that when you embody them, you're
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 1: successful and you.
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 2: Don't get killed.
• 1:44:15
  Speaker 1: Don't have one plan, right, If you're going to stake
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 1: yourself on something, you should throw a couple of alternative
• 1:44:22
  Speaker 1: scaffolds up beside you so that you have somewhere to go.
• 1:44:25
  Speaker 2: You want to be a.
• 1:44:25
  Speaker 1: Doctor, Okay, well you could be a nurse. It's like,
• 1:44:29
  Speaker 1: it's not a doctor, but it means cutting your throat.
• 1:44:32
  Speaker 1: You're still doing eighty percent of what you wanted to do.
• 1:44:35
  Speaker 1: So and you want to think about this during your
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 1: whole life. Man, if you're going to take a high risk,
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 1: you want to scaffold yourself in other areas so that
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 1: if it fails, bottom doesn't drop out and you die.
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 1: And it's also very much worth thinking about with regards
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 1: to setting up your life in general. It's like, if
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 1: you concentrate solely on your career, you can get a
• 1:44:56
  Speaker 1: long way in your career. And I would say that
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 1: that's a strategy that a minority of men preferentially do.
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 1: That's all they do. They work like seventy eighty hours
• 1:45:05
  Speaker 1: a week. They go flat out on their career. They're
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 1: staking everything on the small probability of exceptional status in
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 1: a narrow domain.
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 2: But it's hard on them. They don't have a life.
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 1: It's very difficult for them to have a family, they
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 1: don't know how to take any leisure activity. Like, they
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 1: get very one dimension. Now, it may be that that
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 1: uni dimensionality is the price you have to pay to
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 1: be exceptional at one thing, right, because if you're going
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 1: to be something like a genius level mathematician or a scientist,
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 1: say it's like you're in your lab. You're in your
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 1: lab all the time, you're working seventy hours a week
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 1: or eighty hours a week. You're smart, you're dedicated, you're
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 1: uni dimensional, and that's how you get to beat all
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 1: the other people who are doing that.
• 1:45:45
  Speaker 2: It's the only way. But the problem is you don't
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 2: get a life. Now.
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 1: If you love being a scientist and you have that
• 1:45:52
  Speaker 1: kind of focus of mind, well, first of all, you're
• 1:45:55
  Speaker 1: a rare person, and second you're going to pay for it.
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 2: But fine, more power to you. But but.
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 1: It's a risky business to do that. You sacrifice a
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 1: lot for it, you know. And I would say most often,
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 1: if you're speaking about having a healthy life, that isn't
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 1: what you do. You spread yourself out more so, you know,
• 1:46:16
  Speaker 1: you have a family, You have some things that you
• 1:46:19
  Speaker 1: do outside of work that are meaningful to you and useful.
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 2: You have a network of friends.
• 1:46:25
  Speaker 1: That those three things aloner, four things aloner plenty to
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 1: keep you well oriented. And then if one of those
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 1: things collapses, you know, everything doesn't go.
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 2: Now.
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 1: The price you pay for that is the more you
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 1: strive to optimize that balance, the less likely you are
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 1: to be fantastically successful at any single one of them.
• 1:46:46
  Speaker 1: But you might have a very you know, if you
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 1: can consider your life as a whole, that might be
• 1:46:52
  Speaker 1: a winning strategy.
• 1:46:53
  Speaker 2: One of the things Carl Jung said, I really like this.
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 1: He thought that men went after perfection and winn went
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 1: after wholeness. So perfection would be stake it all on
• 1:47:05
  Speaker 1: one thing and look for radical success. Not that all
• 1:47:08
  Speaker 1: men do that, because they don't, but we're talking about
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 1: extremes at least with regards to the men that do that.
• 1:47:14
  Speaker 1: The wholeness idea is more like, well, I want It's
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 1: like I want one thing in my life to be
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty percent, or I want five things
• 1:47:23
  Speaker 1: in my life to be eighty percent. Well, there's a
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 1: lot more richness in a life where you have five
• 1:47:31
  Speaker 1: things operating at eighty percent, but you're not operating at
• 1:47:33
  Speaker 1: any of them at one.
• 1:47:34
  Speaker 2: Hundred and fifty percent.
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 1: And I really believe this because I've watched men and
• 1:47:38
  Speaker 1: women go through their careers now for a long period
• 1:47:41
  Speaker 1: of time. But one of the things that I've noticed
• 1:47:43
  Speaker 1: is that mostly women in their thirties bail out of
• 1:47:46
  Speaker 1: unidimensional careers.
• 1:47:48
  Speaker 2: They won't do them.
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 1: They won't put in the eighty hours a week that
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 1: they would have to put in in order to dominate
• 1:47:54
  Speaker 1: that particular area.
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 2: And it isn't.
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 1: The reason that they won't do it is because they
• 1:47:58
  Speaker 1: decide it's not worth it, and no wonder because why
• 1:48:02
  Speaker 1: would that be worth it? You have to ask yourself that.
• 1:48:05
  Speaker 1: It's like, well, you want to be an outstanding scientist.
• 1:48:08
  Speaker 1: It's like, okay, really, really that's what you want because
• 1:48:12
  Speaker 1: that means that's what you do.
• 1:48:15
  Speaker 2: Because you're competing with other people.
• 1:48:16
  Speaker 1: You know, they're smart, they're hardworking, and if you want
• 1:48:19
  Speaker 1: to be at the top, you have to be smarter
• 1:48:21
  Speaker 1: and work harder than any of them. And working hard
• 1:48:23
  Speaker 1: means working long hours. I mean it also means working diligently,
• 1:48:27
  Speaker 1: but in the final analysis, it's also an additive issue.
• 1:48:31
  Speaker 1: If I'm smart and hard working and I can crank
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 1: out for seventy hours a week and you do it
• 1:48:36
  Speaker 1: for thirty, it's like, in two years, I'm so far
• 1:48:39
  Speaker 1: ahead of you you will never ever catch up. And
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 1: I think partly maybe part of the reason too, that
• 1:48:43
  Speaker 1: women are oriented that way more than men. I think
• 1:48:45
  Speaker 1: there's two reasons is one is socioeconomic status does not
• 1:48:48
  Speaker 1: make women more attractive on the mating market, but it
• 1:48:51
  Speaker 1: does make men more attractive. And the second is women's
• 1:48:54
  Speaker 1: time frame is compressed, right because guys can always say, well,
• 1:48:57
  Speaker 1: all have kids later, and they can say that till
• 1:48:59
  Speaker 1: they're like eighty, whereas women, it's.
• 1:49:01
  Speaker 2: Like, no way, man, get it.
• 1:49:02
  Speaker 1: You've got to get it together by the time you're
• 1:49:04
  Speaker 1: let's say forty, but really probably by thirty five, but
• 1:49:07
  Speaker 1: definitely by forty because otherwise it ain't happening.
• 1:49:10
  Speaker 2: And that's bloody dreadful.
• 1:49:14
  Speaker 1: There's a sacrificial element in maturation, right, you have to
• 1:49:18
  Speaker 1: sacrifice the pluripotentiality of childhood for the actuality of a frame.
• 1:49:26
  Speaker 1: And the question is, well, why would you do that. Well,
• 1:49:28
  Speaker 1: one reason is it happens to you whether you do
• 1:49:30
  Speaker 1: it or not. You can either choose your damn limitation
• 1:49:35
  Speaker 1: or you can let it take you unaware when you're thirty,
• 1:49:38
  Speaker 1: or even worse, when you're forty, and then that is
• 1:49:42
  Speaker 1: not a happy day. I see people like this, and
• 1:49:45
  Speaker 1: I think it's more and more common in our culture
• 1:49:47
  Speaker 1: because people can put off maturity without suffering an immediate penalty.
• 1:49:52
  Speaker 1: But all that happens is the penalty accruise, and then
• 1:49:55
  Speaker 1: when it finally hits, it just wallops you. Because when
• 1:49:58
  Speaker 1: you're twenty five, you could be an idiot. It's no problem.
• 1:50:01
  Speaker 1: Even when you're out in a job sert, it's like, well,
• 1:50:04
  Speaker 1: you don't have any experience in you're kind of clueless.
• 1:50:05
  Speaker 2: It's yeah, yeah, you're young, you know, it's no problem.
• 1:50:08
  Speaker 1: That's what young people are like. But they're full of potential. Okay, well,
• 1:50:11
  Speaker 1: now you're the same person at thirty. It's like people
• 1:50:14
  Speaker 1: aren't so thrilled about you at that point. It's like,
• 1:50:16
  Speaker 1: what the hell have you been doing for the last
• 1:50:18
  Speaker 1: ten years. Well, I'm just as clueless as I was
• 1:50:20
  Speaker 1: when I was twenty two. It's yeah, but you're not
• 1:50:23
  Speaker 1: twenty two. You're an old infant, right, and that's an
• 1:50:27
  Speaker 1: ugly thing, an old infant. So the part of the
• 1:50:32
  Speaker 1: reason you choose your damn sacrifice because the sacrifice is inevitable, but.
• 1:50:38
  Speaker 2: At least you get to choose it.
• 1:50:39
  Speaker 1: And then there's something that's even more complex than that,
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 1: in some sense, is that the problem with being a
• 1:50:46
  Speaker 1: child is that all you are is potential and it's
• 1:50:48
  Speaker 1: really low resolution. You could be anything, but you're not anything.
• 1:50:52
  Speaker 1: So then you go and you adopt an apprenticeship, roughly speaking,
• 1:50:57
  Speaker 1: and then you become at least you become something. And
• 1:51:00
  Speaker 1: when you're something, that makes the world open up to
• 1:51:02
  Speaker 1: you again. You know, like if you're a really good plumber,
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 1: then you end up being far more than a plumber.
• 1:51:09
  Speaker 1: You know. If you're a really good plumber, well then
• 1:51:11
  Speaker 1: you have some employees, you run a business, You train
• 1:51:13
  Speaker 1: some other people, you enlarge their lives.
• 1:51:15
  Speaker 2: You're kind of a pillar of the community. You have
• 1:51:17
  Speaker 2: your family.
• 1:51:19
  Speaker 1: Once you pass through that narrow training period which narrows
• 1:51:23
  Speaker 1: you and constricts you and develops you at the same time,
• 1:51:26
  Speaker 1: then you can come out at the other end with
• 1:51:27
  Speaker 1: a bunch of new possibility at hand. Part of the
• 1:51:31
  Speaker 1: proper path of development in the last half of life
• 1:51:34
  Speaker 1: was to rediscover the child that you left behind as
• 1:51:38
  Speaker 1: you were apprenticing, and so then you get to be
• 1:51:42
  Speaker 1: something and regain that potential. At the same time, you're
• 1:51:47
  Speaker 1: in the situation that you're in right now, and that's
• 1:51:49
  Speaker 1: not good enough. And so that's another thing that's kind
• 1:51:52
  Speaker 1: of interesting about people as they're chronically dissatisfied with the
• 1:51:55
  Speaker 1: way things are. Well, that's okay, because you wouldn't be
• 1:52:00
  Speaker 1: motivated to move forward if you weren't chronically dissatisfied with
• 1:52:03
  Speaker 1: the way that things are. But it's kind of annoying,
• 1:52:05
  Speaker 1: you know, because you might think, well, why aren't you
• 1:52:07
  Speaker 1: just happy with what you have? And answer to that
• 1:52:10
  Speaker 1: is generally because I don't know if it's going to last,
• 1:52:13
  Speaker 1: and so that's part of it. And the other is, well,
• 1:52:16
  Speaker 1: if the situation shifted a bit, maybe i'd have more
• 1:52:18
  Speaker 1: options than some of that would be, it would last longer,
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 1: it'd be more stable, it'd be more promising, and so
• 1:52:25
  Speaker 1: you can say, well, you should be satisfied with what
• 1:52:27
  Speaker 1: you have. But it's kind of really a stupid thing
• 1:52:29
  Speaker 1: in some sense to tell human beings, because no matter
• 1:52:32
  Speaker 1: what you have, it isn't going to solve your fundamental problem.
• 1:52:35
  Speaker 2: So the problem isn't going away.
• 1:52:37
  Speaker 1: And you can't just fool yourself into saying, well, what
• 1:52:40
  Speaker 1: I have is great. You could say I could have
• 1:52:43
  Speaker 1: a hell of a lot less and that would be bad,
• 1:52:45
  Speaker 1: and most people have a lot less than me, and
• 1:52:48
  Speaker 1: I should be grateful for what I have. That's fine,
• 1:52:50
  Speaker 1: that's perfectly reasonable. But you're stuck with this chronic sense
• 1:52:54
  Speaker 1: of unfinished business. And the reason for that is, well,
• 1:52:56
  Speaker 1: you're permanently vulnerable, so how could it be otherwise. And
• 1:53:01
  Speaker 1: even if you've got your problem solved, then there's three
• 1:53:03
  Speaker 1: or four people in your family that, by no means
• 1:53:05
  Speaker 1: have got their problems solved. So the problem of problems
• 1:53:10
  Speaker 1: never goes away. That's a good thing to know existentially too,
• 1:53:13
  Speaker 1: because it helps you calibrate your life properly, because you
• 1:53:17
  Speaker 1: might be thinking, well, if I just got everything together,
• 1:53:20
  Speaker 1: you know, i'd hit some plateau of satiation and stability
• 1:53:23
  Speaker 1: and then I would just be there. It's like, no,
• 1:53:25
  Speaker 1: that's never going to happen. It's never going to happen,
• 1:53:27
  Speaker 1: so you might as well just forget about that. Well,
• 1:53:29
  Speaker 1: maybe you want to push your damn rock up a hill.
• 1:53:31
  Speaker 1: You know it's going to roll down again. It's like,
• 1:53:33
  Speaker 1: what are you gonna do? Just sit there by the rock.
• 1:53:36
  Speaker 1: It's okay to be active. Even if the problem you're
• 1:53:38
  Speaker 1: trying to solve is not fundamentally solvable. That doesn't mean
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 1: it isn't worth trying to solve. And you guys should
• 1:53:48
  Speaker 1: listen to this because I know what I'm talking about.
• 1:53:50
  Speaker 1: If you happen to be creative, if you're a songwriter
• 1:53:53
  Speaker 1: or another kind of musician, or an artist, or any
• 1:53:56
  Speaker 1: of the other number of things, that you might be
• 1:53:59
  Speaker 1: find to make money and then practice your craft on
• 1:54:03
  Speaker 1: the side because you will starve to death otherwise. Now,
• 1:54:07
  Speaker 1: for some of you that won't be true, but it's
• 1:54:08
  Speaker 1: a tiny minority. Your best bet is to find a
• 1:54:11
  Speaker 1: job that will keep body and soul together and parse
• 1:54:14
  Speaker 1: off some time that you can pursue your creative thing,
• 1:54:17
  Speaker 1: because then well, as a long term strategy, medium to
• 1:54:20
  Speaker 1: long term strategy, it's a better one. You know, you
• 1:54:24
  Speaker 1: hear very frequently people say things like everyone's creative. It's like,
• 1:54:27
  Speaker 1: that's wrong. Okay, it's wrong. It's just as wrong as
• 1:54:30
  Speaker 1: saying that everyone's extrovert. First of all, you have to
• 1:54:33
  Speaker 1: be pretty damn smart to be creative, because otherwise you're
• 1:54:35
  Speaker 1: just going to get to where other people have already
• 1:54:37
  Speaker 1: got and that's not creative by definition. So being fast
• 1:54:42
  Speaker 1: and being out there at the front of things really
• 1:54:44
  Speaker 1: makes a difference.
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 2: And then you also have to.
• 1:54:46
  Speaker 1: Have these divergent thinking capabilities, and that's part of your
• 1:54:49
  Speaker 1: trade structure. And creative people are really different than non
• 1:54:52
  Speaker 1: creative people, you know, partly because, for example, they're highly
• 1:54:56
  Speaker 1: motivated to do creative things and to experience novelty and
• 1:55:00
  Speaker 1: and to chase down esthetic experiences into attend movies and
• 1:55:03
  Speaker 1: to read fiction, and to go to museums, and to
• 1:55:05
  Speaker 1: enjoy poetry, and to enjoy music that's not conventional music,
• 1:55:09
  Speaker 1: for example. These aren't trivial differences, and so a real
• 1:55:14
  Speaker 1: misstatement to make the proposition that everyone's creative. It's just
• 1:55:18
  Speaker 1: simply not the case. It's a matter of wishful thinking.
• 1:55:21
  Speaker 1: It's like saying that everyone's intelligent. It's like, well, if
• 1:55:23
  Speaker 1: everyone's intelligent, then the term loses all of its meaning
• 1:55:27
  Speaker 1: because any term that you can apply to every member
• 1:55:29
  Speaker 1: of a category has absolutely no meaning. You know, the
• 1:55:32
  Speaker 1: other thing you want to be thinking about here is
• 1:55:33
  Speaker 1: that don't be thinking that creativity is such a good thing.
• 1:55:37
  Speaker 2: It's a high risk, high return strategy. There's creative people
• 1:55:40
  Speaker 2: in this room. Man.
• 1:55:41
  Speaker 1: You guys are going to have a hell of a
• 1:55:42
  Speaker 1: time monetizing your creativity. It's virtually impossible. It's really really
• 1:55:46
  Speaker 1: difficult because, first of all, let's say you make an
• 1:55:48
  Speaker 1: original product. You think the world will beat a pathway
• 1:55:51
  Speaker 1: to your door if you build a better mousetrap.
• 1:55:53
  Speaker 2: It's like, that's complete rubbish. It isn't true in the least.
• 1:55:57
  Speaker 1: If you make a good creative product, you've probably solved
• 1:56:00
  Speaker 1: about five percent of your problem, because then you have marketing,
• 1:56:04
  Speaker 1: which is insanely difficult, and then you have sales, and
• 1:56:07
  Speaker 1: then you have customer support, and then you have to
• 1:56:09
  Speaker 1: build an organization, and you have to if it's really novel,
• 1:56:13
  Speaker 1: you have.
• 1:56:13
  Speaker 2: To tell people what the hell the thing is.
• 1:56:15
  Speaker 1: You know, we built this future authoring program, right, it's
• 1:56:18
  Speaker 1: available for people online. How do you market that? No
• 1:56:21
  Speaker 1: one knows what that is? And that's a real problem.
• 1:56:23
  Speaker 1: If you write a book, well then you have the
• 1:56:25
  Speaker 1: problem that another million people have also written a book.
• 1:56:28
  Speaker 1: But if you produce something that's completely new and doesn't
• 1:56:30
  Speaker 1: have a category, people can't search for it online.
• 1:56:33
  Speaker 2: How are they going to find it?
• 1:56:34
  Speaker 1: And then you have pricing problems, and it's really unbelievably
• 1:56:38
  Speaker 1: difficult to produce something creative and then monetize it. And
• 1:56:41
  Speaker 1: even worse, if you're the creative person. Let's say you
• 1:56:44
  Speaker 1: have a spectacular invention. You've got no money, right, you've
• 1:56:47
  Speaker 1: got no customers. Those are big problems, and so maybe
• 1:56:50
  Speaker 1: you go and you find a venture capitalist. We start
• 1:56:52
  Speaker 1: with family and friends, because that's how it works. You
• 1:56:54
  Speaker 1: raise money for your product. You raise money from your
• 1:56:56
  Speaker 1: family and friends. That's assuming you have family and friends
• 1:56:59
  Speaker 1: that have some money and that they're going to give
• 1:57:02
  Speaker 1: it to you, and most people aren't in that situation.
• 1:57:04
  Speaker 2: So it's a.
• 1:57:05
  Speaker 1: Terrible barrier right off the bat. And then of course
• 1:57:07
  Speaker 1: you're putting your family and friends. It's substantial financial risk
• 1:57:10
  Speaker 1: because the probability that your stupid idea is going to
• 1:57:13
  Speaker 1: make money is virtually zero, even if it's a really
• 1:57:15
  Speaker 1: brilliant idea. And so then let's say, well, you get
• 1:57:18
  Speaker 1: past family and friends and you get venture capital capitalists involved,
• 1:57:21
  Speaker 1: because that's often the next step, or an angel investor.
• 1:57:24
  Speaker 1: That's there's steps in building a business, family and friends,
• 1:57:28
  Speaker 1: angel investor, that's some rich guy that you happen to.
• 1:57:31
  Speaker 2: Meet, some man or is some way who's who's.
• 1:57:33
  Speaker 1: Into this sort of thing, is willing to provide you
• 1:57:36
  Speaker 1: with some money to get your product off the ground. Well,
• 1:57:39
  Speaker 1: how much of your product is that person going to take?
• 1:57:42
  Speaker 2: Well? Most of it? Most of it? And no wonder
• 1:57:46
  Speaker 2: because you know.
• 1:57:47
  Speaker 1: You don't have any money, how are you going to
• 1:57:49
  Speaker 1: bargain for control over your product. He'll just say, well,
• 1:57:52
  Speaker 1: do you want the money or not? And if your
• 1:57:54
  Speaker 1: answer is no, then he'll go and do something else
• 1:57:56
  Speaker 1: with his money. It's not like there's no shortage of
• 1:58:00
  Speaker 1: things that you can do with your money. There's a
• 1:58:02
  Speaker 1: million things you can do with it. So you're not
• 1:58:03
  Speaker 1: in a great bargaining position. And then if you get
• 1:58:06
  Speaker 1: venture capitalists involved, they'll take another big chunk, and maybe
• 1:58:09
  Speaker 1: if they're not very straight with you, they'll just throw
• 1:58:11
  Speaker 1: you out because maybe by that point in the company's development,
• 1:58:14
  Speaker 1: you're nothing but a pain in the neck because what
• 1:58:16
  Speaker 1: do you know about marketing and sales and customer service
• 1:58:19
  Speaker 1: and building an organization and running a business like you
• 1:58:22
  Speaker 1: don't have a clue, So why do they need you.
• 1:58:25
  Speaker 1: So even if you're successful at generating a new idea
• 1:58:28
  Speaker 1: and you put it into a business, the probability that you,
• 1:58:31
  Speaker 1: as the originator of the idea, are going to make
• 1:58:34
  Speaker 1: some money from it is very, very low. So don't
• 1:58:37
  Speaker 1: be thinking that creativity is such a something you would
• 1:58:40
  Speaker 1: want to curse yourself with. Now you know, it's not
• 1:58:43
  Speaker 1: all bad because it opens up avenues of experience for
• 1:58:47
  Speaker 1: creative people that aren't available to people who aren't creative.
• 1:58:49
  Speaker 1: But it definitely is a high risk, high return strategy,
• 1:58:53
  Speaker 1: you know. So the overwhelming probability is that you will fail,
• 1:58:57
  Speaker 1: but a small proportion of creative people sick seed spectacularly,
• 1:59:02
  Speaker 1: and so it's like a lottery in some sense. You're
• 1:59:05
  Speaker 1: probably going to lose, but if you don't lose, you
• 1:59:07
  Speaker 1: could win big and that keeps a lot of creative
• 1:59:09
  Speaker 1: people going. But also they don't really have much choice
• 1:59:11
  Speaker 1: in it, because if you're a creative person, you're like
• 1:59:14
  Speaker 1: a fruit tree that's bearing fruit, so you don't really
• 1:59:18
  Speaker 1: have You can suppress it, but it's very bad for you.
• 1:59:21
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 1:59:21
  Speaker 1: The creative people I've worked with is if they're not creative,
• 1:59:23
  Speaker 1: they're miserable, so they have to do it, but and
• 1:59:28
  Speaker 1: you know there's real joy and pleasure in it and
• 1:59:30
  Speaker 1: psychological utility. But that doesn't necessarily mean that it's an
• 1:59:34
  Speaker 1: intelligent it's certainly not a conservative strategy for moving forward
• 1:59:37
  Speaker 1: through life. What does it mean to think creatively? It's
• 1:59:43
  Speaker 1: something like this. You imagine that I toss you out
• 1:59:46
  Speaker 1: an idea, and there's some probability that when I toss
• 1:59:49
  Speaker 1: you that idea, that that will trigger off other ideas
• 1:59:52
  Speaker 1: in your imagination.
• 1:59:53
  Speaker 2: So you could think about it as a threshold issue.
• 1:59:55
  Speaker 1: If you're not very creative, I'll throw you an idea
• 1:59:57
  Speaker 1: and hardly any other ideas will be triggered, and the
• 2:00:00
  Speaker 1: ones that will be triggered are going to be very
• 2:00:02
  Speaker 1: closely associated with that initial idea.
• 2:00:05
  Speaker 2: So let's say I tossed each.
• 2:00:07
  Speaker 1: Of you an idea and I asked you to think,
• 2:00:09
  Speaker 1: tell me the first thing that comes to mind.
• 2:00:11
  Speaker 2: Okay, So what.
• 2:00:11
  Speaker 1: We would see first is that the first thing that
• 2:00:14
  Speaker 1: comes to mind in light, in all likelihood, would be
• 2:00:16
  Speaker 1: shared by many of you. Okay, So then you can
• 2:00:19
  Speaker 1: think about that as a common response, right, And so
• 2:00:21
  Speaker 1: that's a less creative response, and then there'll be some
• 2:00:24
  Speaker 1: things that come to mind for you that are that
• 2:00:26
  Speaker 1: are so idiosyncratic that you're the only person that thinks
• 2:00:29
  Speaker 1: that and no one can understand it. Well, that's also
• 2:00:32
  Speaker 1: not exactly creative because the thing that you for something
• 2:00:36
  Speaker 1: to be creative, it has to be novel and useful
• 2:00:38
  Speaker 1: at the same time. That's sort of a rough definition creative.
• 2:00:42
  Speaker 1: Something creative is.
• 2:00:43
  Speaker 2: Novel and useful.
• 2:00:44
  Speaker 1: So anyways, so you can think of you get thrown
• 2:00:47
  Speaker 1: an idea and there's some probability that that will coactivate
• 2:00:50
  Speaker 1: other ideas, and if it co activates many other ideas,
• 2:00:52
  Speaker 1: that's like fluency. And if it coactivates ideas that are
• 2:00:55
  Speaker 1: quite distant from the original idea, something like that, and
• 2:00:58
  Speaker 1: you could you could distance by comparing it to probability
• 2:01:04
  Speaker 1: that other people have generated it, then that's also another
• 2:01:06
  Speaker 1: indication of creativity. So they have to be unlikely, many
• 2:01:10
  Speaker 1: unlikely responses that are useful. That's what creativity is, roughly speaking,
• 2:01:14
  Speaker 1: and then you contractionate it into different dimensions.
• 2:01:17
  Speaker 2: So that's creative thinking. But then creative.
• 2:01:19
  Speaker 1: Achievement would be the ability to take those original ideas
• 2:01:23
  Speaker 1: and then actually to implement them in the world, and
• 2:01:25
  Speaker 1: that's obviously much more different than merely being creative. Imagine
• 2:01:30
  Speaker 1: what happens when you play Monopoly. What happens everybody has
• 2:01:34
  Speaker 1: the same amount of money to begin with, right, So
• 2:01:37
  Speaker 1: then you start playing, it's basically a random game. Will
• 2:01:40
  Speaker 1: some people start to win a bit, some people start
• 2:01:42
  Speaker 1: to lose a bit, And then if you win, the
• 2:01:43
  Speaker 1: probability that you'll keep winning starts to increase. And if
• 2:01:47
  Speaker 1: you lose, your vulnerability increases as you lose. And then
• 2:01:50
  Speaker 1: maybe you've got to say six people playing Monopoly. Soon
• 2:01:53
  Speaker 1: one person has zero. What happens When they have zero,
• 2:01:57
  Speaker 1: they're out of the game. So zero's a weird number
• 2:02:00
  Speaker 1: because when you hit zero, you're out of the game.
• 2:02:02
  Speaker 1: So then if you keep playing, people start to stack
• 2:02:05
  Speaker 1: up at zero. Right, what happens at the end of
• 2:02:07
  Speaker 1: the game one person has all the property and all
• 2:02:10
  Speaker 1: the money and everyone else has none. Right, That's what
• 2:02:14
  Speaker 1: happens if you play an iterated trading game to its
• 2:02:17
  Speaker 1: final conclusion. It's not a consequence necessarily of structural inequality.
• 2:02:21
  Speaker 1: It's built into the system at a deeper level than that.
• 2:02:24
  Speaker 1: So you know, people talk about all the time about
• 2:02:26
  Speaker 1: how unfair it is that the one percent of the
• 2:02:28
  Speaker 1: population has the vast amount of the money, and one
• 2:02:31
  Speaker 1: percent of the one percent has most of that money,
• 2:02:33
  Speaker 1: and one percent of the one percent of the one
• 2:02:35
  Speaker 1: percent has most of that money.
• 2:02:38
  Speaker 2: It's a it's an.
• 2:02:39
  Speaker 1: Inevitable conclusion of iterated trading games, and we don't know
• 2:02:42
  Speaker 1: how to fight it. We don't know how to take
• 2:02:45
  Speaker 1: from the people who have and move it to the
• 2:02:48
  Speaker 1: bottom without it instantly moving back up to the talk.
• 2:02:50
  Speaker 1: Different people maybe, but still back up to the talk,
• 2:02:54
  Speaker 1: because even the one percent churns a lot, Like I
• 2:02:56
  Speaker 1: think you have a ten percent chance, if I remember correct,
• 2:03:00
  Speaker 1: you have a ten percent chance of being in the
• 2:03:02
  Speaker 1: top one percent for at least one year of your life,
• 2:03:05
  Speaker 1: and a forty percent chance of being in the top
• 2:03:07
  Speaker 1: ten percent for at least one year in your life.
• 2:03:10
  Speaker 1: That's in Canada and the US. It's less so in Europe.
• 2:03:12
  Speaker 1: So there's a fair bit of churning at the top end.
• 2:03:15
  Speaker 1: It's not the same people all the time who have
• 2:03:17
  Speaker 1: the money, but it is a tiny fraction of the
• 2:03:19
  Speaker 1: people all the time who have all the money