"This Is How Evil People Takeover The World" - Everything Wrong With The West | Jordan Peterson

look how much I love my son he doesn't even have a penis anymore those women online displaying themselves they're not human you're a fool if you think that's human and Jews you know they have IQs that are probably 15 points higher than the typical so they're radically over over represented the there's no reason to assume at all that the religious Enterprise can't degenerate into totalitarian psychopathy for that matter does all the time is that controversial yes all right there is a Doomsday Clock that we use to track how close we are to nuclear Annihilation the closer to midnight theoretically the higher the risk if we had a Doomsday Clock for how close we are to a totalitarian takeover of the West how close to midnight would it be it depends on what we decide to do it the opportuni is there at for a a pervasive totalitarian state the likes of which we can hardly imagine instituted with a rapidity we can hardly conceive of that's there it's right there in front of us so that's the eye of soron by the way why well if you dispense with God you create a Tower of Babel and that was what was represented in the Lord of the Rings as the Tower of soron technological Tower and what was on the top of it a big eye that could see everything exactly so if you don't have this is one way of thinking about it if you forgo your relationship with the omniscient that's a good way of thinking about it you'll create a technology that replicates that for you except there'll be nothing about it that will be your friend and it will watch everything you do no matter how hard you try to make yourself invisible let's say with the ring of power okay so I want to understand what what is the proclivity in the human soul that leads us back to this and let me you a little bit of context and then uh go into it so you introduced me to Alexander nson I actually read the G archipelago that sent me on a terrifying journey of reading about every totalitarian state that I could get my hands on oh yeah uh ended up really scaring me about how humans can break bad in a way that I felt I was looking around and seeing people trying to gobble up power uh top down Authority a sense of I know what's right and therefore you should do what I say and that even when it comes in the package of oh I'm going to save you like M China it's usually when the package it comes in yeah and and yet kills 100 plus million people so is it only darkness in the human soul is it only Pride or is there Spirit of Pride it's the eternal spirit of Pride allied with deceit and resentment and arrogant arrogance that's the spirit that Milton characterized in Paradise Lost is it is it only human no clearly not it exists only human what do you mean well it'll be there long after you are it's Immortal in a way that's a way of thinking about it but it feels like it would propagate only through the human mind what do you mean only that there is no other option I mean we could get into AI but I want to segment this out the the reason I want to tease this apart is I believe that people are possessed by ideas that if they they allow themselves to become possessed by ideas they invite them in yeah even better people invite in ideas those ideas are going to govern the quality of their life and then as enough of us agregate around good or bad ideas the quality of Our Lives get better or worse that's the war of principalities so that's what that's right that's right what I want people to understand is uh Soldier nen's idea of the line between good and evil runs to the heart of every man uh we all have this temptation towards totalitarianism born of Pride uh especially smart people so how do we avoid it fear fear of God is the beginning of wisdom well what is God then the antithesis of the of the spirit of totalitarian Pride can I simplify that so well imagine this okay sure sure imagine this imagine that here's a form of hell um owitz guard enjoying his job okay now I think it's it's fair to say that your experience exposing yourself to such things has convinced you that there's such a thing as evil okay whatever is farthest in the opposite direction that's God what is that well that's not a simple thing to say I mean God is ineffable God is the ineffable spirit that unites all that's a good way of thinking about it so what does that mean well it means an endless number of things right many of which can't be formulated in words much of which is directly experienced embodied um imagined felt motivated all of that not just words it's certainly not something that can be cap encapsulated in a in a set of declarative statements which is partly what the West is confused about we think that belief in God is adherence to a statable description of God or a Creed that's not what it is that's that's a very small fragment of what it is just as our verbal knowledge is a small fragment of our totality can I give you what I think you're saying in my language and tell me if I'm getting correct okay uh everyone's going to be familiar with the idea of The Madness of crowds and there is something terrifying if you've ever been around a group that goes from a normal group and they snap over into fighting or whatever you feel mob yeah you feel a spirit overcome them where they are linked and it changes something in the way that they are processing the inputs from their environment definitely it changes their perceptual frame yes changes their emotions it changes what they see it changes what they're aiming at even unconsciously it's no different than the in some ways it's no different than the spirit that unites a crowd when it leaps to the to its feet spontaneously after a particularly brilliant goal right that's also a form of possession although much more positive form of possession because that's a celebration of the ability to hit the mark which is the opposite of sin right sin means to miss the mark there's three separate derivations of the word sin that come from archery yeah yeah so that's what people are doing in the stadium is they're allowing themselves to be possessed by the spirit that hits the target brilliantly right all together collectively it's a form of worship what's interesting in that uh so let's put two pins in things so one the hell is the exact opposite it's when the crowd goes mad it breaks bad it kills it smashes it breaks and then God is the exact opposite of that it's expansive joyful uplifting and unifying right it has that it has that yes it's the proper Unity that's another way these are definitions right they're not statements they're not statements they're not descriptive statements about God they're definitions they're definitions that's a very very different thing so imagine that there is a spirit that properly unifies that's that's the monotheistic God that's the god of Abraham what is that well you know who can say no one can say we can tell stories about it and of course the biblical stories are stories about that that's exactly what they are but the fastest way and for modern people I would say is the root you took if you don't don't believe in good well try investigating evil and see what you make of that and then start to understand what that means for you and see what that does to you is one of the things I realized because I started studying malevolence a very long time ago now it's it's 50 years for me it's a long time and I certainly became convinced that in some ways there was nothing more real than malevolence now there are arguable contenders pain for example is a Contender but if malevolence is an undeniable reality and there's a price to be paid for denying that by the way because you turn the Nazi catastrophe into just a matter of opinion right if you don't believe in something like the Ultimate Reality of evil it's just well you know the Nazis went about things a slightly different way who's to say what's right or wrong and while the opposite of that there's an opposite of that right it's what it's wherever you go if you travel as far away from enjoying owitz as you can possibly go and people might say well no one enjoyed owitz it's like really what was the sign over owitz the joke work will make you free people joke you tell me they didn't didn't enjoy it slay if you think that people didn't enjoy orwitz you know nothing about human beings and nothing about yourself if you think you couldn't have enjoyed it you know nothing about yourself and that's terrifying and should be and that it can lead you you see that leads you because it gives you something solid to stand on something terrible terrible and solid but nonetheless something motivating because maybe you decide that you don't want to go to hell so to speak and maybe you don't want to bring everyone you love along with you maybe you don't even want to bring everyone you hate along with you that's a good realization better to redeem than to Dam you changed my life with a simple idea and that simple idea was that um I could find myself as the guard in aitz and not as the person hiding um and Frank in my addict yeah oh five of them yeah exactly and that scared me saw Yes I mean God the thing it just terrified me in Toronto it was something remarkable to behold all these butter won't melt in your mouth hyper moral Canadians you know secure in the fact that they're nothing for example like the warmongering Americans to the south delighting in the fact that they could turn their neighbors over to the state with a phone call willing to wear those goddamned masks for the rest of their life just to have the privilege of being a state informant brutal brutal awful so I look at that and I see myself and I say okay the line between which way I go on that runs through my heart this is where I get obsessed with the idea of okay I'm going to be possessed by ideas which ideas do I want to invite in that's why Christ says that the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed it takes root and grows inside you like all ideas ideas are alive Richard Dawkins figured this out although he didn't take it to its logical conclusion a living idea is a meme all ideas are alive and what do I mean by that well they're instantiated in your nervous system like how are they not alive how do they not have a perspective how do they not have an aim a set of motivations um the desire to communicate even n n said every Drive attempts to philosophize in its own Spirit n knew these things and then you do you you you incorporate you take in you eat sometimes things you shouldn't that's the Eternal sin of mankind to incorporate even the forbidden fruit fruit what's the forbidden fruit knowledge of Good and Evil what does that mean you don't get to make the moral rules and that's where Nicha went wrong we don't we can't create our own values we have to abide by the intrinsic order of the cosmos and Richard Dawkins knew this too he wrote a paper stating that biological organisms had to be a microcosm of the environment in which they evolved it's like okay Dr Dawkins how far are you willing to take them that a human being is a personality does that mean that the cosmos is a personality is it something you have a relationship with that's how we're adapted so he can take that wherever however he wants the the Avatar of the spirit of Enlightenment rationality right that that that's a snake that's now devoured its own tail so that's why the enlightenment is coming to an end yes we are for sure going to talk about that before we get to that though I I really how did you notice that I said that uh you gave a speech I I I listen to a lot of your stuff because you help me think through complicated ideas uh I am a big believer in that um by speaking you're speaking so that you can understand not necessarily so you can be understood so I seek people that I see have The Bravery to actually think out loud and process through also for anybody watching they will probably have heard me talk about this before and I was telling you this before we started rolling I was very confused when you went from the internet's dad you got very sick and you came back as like the internet's Theologian and I could not figure out what that change was uh but as somebody who I had seen be a very careful thinker I thought okay what if there were something here that I'm just not understanding yet let me try to map it and I don't know that you and I see this the same way I don't know is the honest answer and I hope we figure that out today but I know that you have Clarity of thought and there's internal consistency and so that means that there's probably something very useful because you know what you're aiming towards and this is the anchor we have to address before we can move on away from yes yes which to your point about uh sin is missing the mark but that implies that there is because I would say sin is hitting the wrong Mark if I had well that's that's a deeper form of sin because that's what I think is happening right now I really think you're the Maring the coal mine what's happening to you with them trying to strip your license even though I do hate the way you tweet I'm not going to lie but I listen to that whole episode where your friends were like Jordan please stop I was literally in my house like Jordan please anyway you get you should have the right to beow come out somewhere correct you should be a fully fledged human being you should not have to answer to us even though as people who um have gotten so much value out of the way that you think through problems that's what we're responding to anyway so the thing we have to get to is I think sin is hitting the wrong mark I think people are hitting that Mark in Spades I think you've become the lightning Pride that's why we worship Pride well pride has always pride has always been regarded as the ultimate sin before we before we go down that path let me let me string this whole idea together uh you're the canary and the coal mine because why would that be I wonder uh because you won't shut up about things that people who believe because I take the stance the totalitarians actually are trying to do good some of them aren't but I think that that makes it too easy to push them away assume that they are just possessed by the wrong idea and so they believe I know what's best I I legitimately know what's best for Humanity yeah but that's the problem I get it bear with me and you are who's the eye that knows just out of curiosity uh in that statement that's the question say I'm saying I know how wrong that can go those people are saying they they think they have identified the social structure that will lead to a Utopia they identify their eye with the spirit of totalitarianism that has possessed them they haven't gotten that far they may not even be smart enough to get that far which is a whole another thesis I have about the complexity of ideas which I think is a big part of what causes this problem is people cannot think through these incredibly complicated ideas so they need bumper stickers you give them a bumper sticker Parables o you're trying to make it positive again will take a bumper sticker long before they will take a par more compc yes yes that's you know what you know what slogan means yes no I don't know what it means it's from it's from the Welsh SLU gam it means battlecry of the Dead why of the dead because slogans are dead words and they're like in brandished by they're brandished by the army of the Dead that would rather drag the living into the pit than Prevail than allow the living to prevail battlecry of the dead it's the army of the Dead speaking through the mouths of people that use slogans okay can I I'm going to translate that yeah uh you said earlier that you know how soier niton talked about people who were possessed by an ideology right and they their words their words had no personal relationship to them they were they were merely mimicking an ideology all the Communists said exactly the same thing there's nothing alive about that if everyone is saying exactly the same thing well because and this is I suppose where the left has something has has something accurate perverted there's a diversity and a Vitality an originality in In Living speech that's not there in in the land of cliche and slogan that's why you can't listen to people like when I listen to ideologues talk it's just buzzing I can't even hear it my mind goes elsewhere instantly there's nothing about it that's compelling there's nothing that's gripping they're not testing the idea against feedback there's multiple reasons for because they're because the speech is an indication that while they're speaking they're not treading the golden path what's the golden path it's the path that grips attention and is inspiring okay I have to say you can give me space I need to say this that's that's fine all right so uh I'm not trying to speak elusively there's no no I know I know you and I just use such different language and I think it will be very useful for people to hear the same thing said in like a Rosetta Stone Way yes definitely okay so I've heard you talk about this a lot when you go out and do your talks part of what makes them so captivating is you are actually taking a living idea that you were trying to explore golden path it's not rigid Dogma it is an idea you want to find the truth of and so you go out in front of a crowd to assess whether they're taking it in what kind of like silence perfect and so that idea is living in as much as it is not rigid it is not fossilized you want predetermined it's not dogmatic right that's right it's that's why it's not dead it's not already formulated it's not a corpse it's something alive that's happening right then and there right right and that's something that only spontaneous speech can manage even even books suffer from the lack of that now books have their utility they in a book when you write a book when you read a book you can deeply investigate an idea but it does risk a kind of death death of the words on the page because they're not as finely attuned to the demands of the situation the specific situation as a spontaneous speech can be when it's at its highest because it's of the moment that notion that you know um there's that's the third person of the Trinity right that spirit that possesses you when you speak in an inspired manner that's a and that's a symbolic representation of the Living spirit of of exploration in relationship to the highest goal that's really what it is and so you know you might say well what what do you have to be aiming at if if your goal is to speak in that manner and the answer is well you have to be doing your best for the best in you and other people that has to be your aim and then you have to speak truth in so far as you're capable and will do the trick and there's no difference between that and the paraclete that Christ left in the gospels behind behind after his departure it's a reflection of the idea of the holy spirit it's the baptismal spirit it's the spirit of God that moves upon the waters at the beginning of time it's a it's the creative manifestation of the structure that extracts habitable order from chaos it's all of those things in its living form that's why it's inspiring why else would it be inspiring why else would it attract and gleam right or have motive Force right I mean the and and you can think of it instinctually if you want it speaks biologically those are words that speak to the deepest core of your being materially for that matter because everything Stacks up if everything's unified in the highest Place everything Stacks up and and that is the case that to me is the final test of an idea's validity if it will stack and if it will point you to things that are true that's technically True by the way because one of so the reason that you have five senses is so that your orientation occurs as a consequence of things that are stacked when all five senses report the same thing you have a reasonable assurance that what you're seeing corresponds sufficiently to reality so you won't perish right now we that isn't enough because then I'll take the evidence of my senses and contrast it with the evidence of of yours from your slightly different perspective and then we'll do that collectively we're doing a lot of stacking in order to filter the infinite sufficiently so that we can model it well enough to move forward a lot of stacking and that is there's a technical branch of psychometrics uh construct theory that that psychologists have developed to help distinguish between Concepts that are real from Concepts that aren't like the phenological concepts for example that people used to use to map the hypothetical functions of the brain there was something in that idea but they weren't real Concepts how do you know if a concept is real well you can measure it using multiple different instruments at different times and in different places and get the same report something like that now more than ever the ability to see through the chaos of the traditional news media is an absolute necessity bias narratives selective reporting all of it obstruct the kind of informed critical thinking that all of us should be striving for that's why I have to tell you about ground news ground news compiles stories from across the global political Spectrum giving you every angle so you get the full picture you can see a story like the one here which has been covered by more than 260 sources what I find really interesting is that 36% of the sources lean left 33% are in the center and 31% lean right now these are based on ratings from three Independent News monitoring organizations and if you keep scrolling you'll see every article about that topic another cool feature is the blind spot feed which shows you stories that are disproportionately covered by only one side of the political Spectrum go to ground. Newsom and sign up subscriptions start at just $1 a month or you can get 40% off unlimited access via the Vantage subscription check out ground news and stay informed form guys I am very impressed by this service and I hope you guys will give it a shot right right right this is why the case against you scares me this is people with dead ideas uh enslaving others with bumper stickers slogans that they can hold on to that makes them feel morally virtuous but they not they simple they're simple and morally virtuous yes it's a viciously tempting combination right correct one idea explains everything plus once you brandish that idea all your moral work is done mhm right very very tempting that is definitely the tempting that is definitely the temptation of a deadly slogan like from each according to his ability to each according to his need you can destroy the world with that dead weapon yeah and we you know we did a pretty good job of trying that and we're not done apparently yeah so uh this is why I think you have to be from their lens you have to be silenced because you force that idea to compete for validity in the realm of ideas and if it really is ideas and that's all we have if it doesn't compete in the realm of ideas it will compete in the realm of Flesh yes right everyone needs to know that and its unwillingness to compete in the realm of ideas is a signal that it's not valid which is why they can't put this is exactly why Biden saying I'm not going to debate scares the life out of me because that's what you do when you can't win like if you know your ideas are more compelling you step to the mic all day long or if you know that you should subject them to debate so if you're wrong you could learn even because maybe that's even what you want in a leader you don't necessarily need a leader who's right because God help you you're not going to find that but you could at least find one who is willing to put his ideas to the test to discover where he's wrong that's a leader that's someone with courage right that's someone willing to kill the to kill the father in a sense to kill the tyrannical father because the tyrannical father is the presumption of your own dead ideas that not psychologically speaking that's the case that's the giant that the hero slays in order to make the new world right the dogma of the past the dead dogma of the past it might have even been valid at some point but you want a leader who embodies that spirit and not necessarily the correct knowledge you know P Jean P the developmental psychologist he knew this is that the deepest truth is a proper formulation of the process by which truth itself is generated right and that's what P was trying to discover when he evaluated children he knew that again the deepest I don't know if I can say that again the deepest truth is the representation of the process by which truth itself is generated that's the hero story wow it's a process truth is a process truth is a spirit rather than a set of dead facts why do people run from it because it forces you to pick up your cross I mean I mean really obviously obviously like why do people run is the question well what do they run from Pain and malevolence well why well it's obvious why that what's not obvious is how you could not do that well you know the the entire biblical Corpus is an analysis of why you shouldn't run what would mean not to run what it would mean if you fully ceased running that's the story of Christ the story of Christ is the story of a man the man let's say who ceased running that's what it that's what the story is can I give you an alternate take that scares me so badly and I think I'm right about this okay I think well if it scares you that's a good indication that you might be right yeah uh the big problem here is that to pick up a cross and be willing to suffer what Jesus suffered you have to you have to have a conviction that you're right that hell awaits on the other side of not doing that most people cannot think through ideas that complicated and be certain enough that they'd be willing to be torn down well that's reflected to some degree that's reflected to some degree in the structure of especially the Catholic church and and and doeski pointed to that in the brothers kurasov there's a scene in the brothers karamazov where Christ comes back to Earth in the midst of the Spanish Inquisition and and he performs his miracles and goes about goes about his spiritual business goes about being the process of the word and The Inquisitor comes and arrests him and throws him in prison and then comes down in the middle of the night and says look you know we've we don't need you around you're a lot of trouble we've taken your impossible message your impossible demands and we recast them so that flawed people can manage and the last thing we need is you to show back up and destroy everything we've done to make what you had to say palatable because people just can't manage it it's too much and Christ listens and at the end he kisses The Inquisitor who turns white and leaves and but he leaves the door open when he leaves and and that's that's a complicated answer to your question but you are right in a sense that it's too much to ask but you're wrong and that people turn to lesser Solutions mediated Solutions like a belief in an external Christ let's say that's that's one way of thinking about it rather than a joint belief in an internal and external Christ which would be more comprehensive and they turn to that instead of of seeking out the whole Adventure the problem with that is and this is the problem is that you don't have have a choice about your cross exactly you only have a choice about how you will bear it because death and and hell are coming for you and that's that there's no escape from that and so all you can choose is the manner in which you confront it and you can do it voluntarily wholeheartedly in good faith with courage or you can do it any of the insane multiplicity of other ways that clamor for your attention that's right my name is Legion right there's a word there's a reason for that right so so the the Christian message fundamentally is that your best bet All Things Considered truly all things considered is to take the whole burden on like wide eyes wide open right that's what Abraham does for example when he goes on his great adventure it's the it's a and that's what job does there are precursors to this idea in the Old Testament stories it's in some ways fully revealed that's a good way of thinking about it in the New Testament stories so Christ's claim is that he embodies the spirit in the Old Testament you think that's right I think that's the simplest explanation and it has to do you said already that people can allow ideas to possess them so what idea should you allow to possess you well the insistence in the judeo-christian tradition is that you should invite in this the spirit of your ancestors the unified monotheistic creative loving kind truthful Spirit of your ancestors something's coming in or a multitude of things how about a diversity of things how about a rainbow of things or a plurality of things what under some United flag the union of diversity I don't think so it's no wonder that we believe in the union of diversity when we believe that a man can be a woman if we believe those things there's nothing we won't swallow no camel too big to go down our throats no totalitarian lie we won't rush to embody so you asked earlier where are we headed like every single person is making up their mind about that well they always have but it's really evident at the moment and it's going to become a lot more than it is because people are moving in the wrong direction no they've always done that but not this fast interesting right because we're you know we're we're we're in a we're in a runaway cycle of of transformation and yeah I think we're in a positive feedback loop where social media allows simplistic ideas to we in a lot of positive feedback loops yeah it uh I I the Only Solution I see is that's the dragon that needs it own tail the positive feedback Loop H we interpret the orob boros differently well it's many things you know because it is a symbol of chaos but one of the things it is is a runaway positive feedback loop interesting I see that as um the what ends up happening when you don't have the right foundational model that you can't make progress because your core Foundation is such that you eat your own progress yeah through incompetence is the easiest way to think of it you have the wrong model that's to me what the or boros is about which is the whole idea that you're saying that's why emerges when the father dies you know better yeah if the if the father is a corpse the Urus makes itself manifest the Mesopotamians knew this when when the okay so the Mesopotamian Gods killed their father absu and tried to live on his corpse well that's what we're doing when we mouth slogans we're trying to live on the corpse of the past and in instead of embodying its Living spirit they try they slay the past they're they have no regard for the past which is also what we're doing by the way they slay the past and attempt to inhabit its corpse like jepetto in the whale it's the same idea and Tiamat shows back up she's the dragon of chaos and she and her goal is to destroy everything and that's one of the precursors that idea is one of the precursors to the flood myth and the word TI is they say etymologically cognate with the word toou vaboh and that's the chaos out of which God makes order at the beginning of time all these ideas are linked so if you inhabit dead ideas you will bring back chaos of course the dead yes the dead ideas can no longer they can no longer sustain you in your active contending with the present this happens in The Lion King what happens when SC scar Takes Over The Pride what what happens when Scar takes over Pride Rock Pride Rock it's so comical scar takes over Pride Rock well why well he's scarred that's the first thing he's intellectually arrogant obviously and the whole Kingdom turns into a wasteland a dry sterile desert Wasteland that's always the case it's always been the case and and we're seeing the archetypal outlines more clearly now because things are changing at a ever accelerating rate and so God only knows what does Jonathan Paso say Giants will walk the earth once again they already are what is The Enlightenment why do we have to get to the other side of it or why do you think maybe we already are the enlightenment is the belief that the material world speaks for itself and it's not true you have to see facts through a lens of value the postmodernists got that right that's why we are in the culture world to some degree is the postmodern critique was correct we see the world through a story and the facts now indicate that I've I've talked with Carl friston for example one of the world's great neuroscientists many people know this now um I asked friston is a is an object a micron narrative he said yes so we have to understand what to do with it function you bet you bet you bet you bet you don't just see the world you see the value of the world and you don't you don't see the world and infer the value you see the value you see the value and and the the implicit structure of your incons unconscious is the is the Matrix of value through which the world reveals itself and properly formulated that Matrix has a multi-dimensional narrative structure that's coherent that's reflected in the structure of the biblical stories and we know that what we say well what's the foundational document of Western Civilization well obviously it's the Bible like forget the theology historically well what does that mean well it means that it means it's the seed from which your perceptual Matrix grew you're a more or less coherent echo of the biblical Corpus that's what you are and the more you know of the stories the hyperlink Stories the more fully fleshed that Incarnation internal Incarnation becomes the Bible was written in consort you might say with the obviously with the function of the human nervous system both individually and collectively was woven together over thousands of years and also evolved to match the structure of our memories all of that and the structure of our attention so the postmodernists when they realized that we saw the world through a story which was a brilliant Discovery and was made in many disciplines at the same time by the way um they jumped to the they jumped to the next question which was well if we see the world through a story what is the story and they said well it's power and it's twin sister it's evil twin sister Hedonism but Power they were marxists it's all about power power have it your way play with fire see what happens power you think power is interesting too because you might say well why would you want Power like if I could just ask you to walk along with me why wouldn't I do that why would I have to exercise power over you well how about I want you to do something that you don't want to do well what how about something for my immediate gratification that's why pajo Jonathan Paso has said that the Marquee dad is the evil brother of the Enlightenment rational mind it's like absolutely same thing same idea explored by dovi in in crime and punishment with risol nikov yeah brutal all right so let me say uh if I'm understanding you correctly that to get on the counter Enlightenment trrain we could sum it up in a tongue-and-cheek way and say facts are dead facts are always dead facts are always dead that's why you can't follow them there's as many there's more facts than there are things you can't Orient yourself imagine I drop you in the middle of a desert it's like all the facts are at hand man you're still going to die why cu the cuz the territory isn't the map because the land doesn't speak how about that how about all of that right now can I give me my favorite example of this sure okay this is true uh what we think of as the entire world everything that we can see is 0.35% of the available electromagnetic spectrum right right good example so looking at you I should see a number of photons in a given wavelength that are reflecting off of that fabric but I don't I see black I see red I see gold whatever you see tools and obstacles uh yes for sure and once I understood oh my God I'm seeing a ridiculous ly gross simplification of what is really in the world then I realize my brain is made up of algorithms and once I realize my brain is made of algorithms and algorithms are designed to push you to see certain things to conceive of them in a certain way I suddenly really wanted to understand what are my algorithms driving me to do and every idea for sure that's why Yung said every person has to figure out the myth that they're living whoa wow it's the same thing what story here's two ways of thinking about it what story are you acting out or what character resides in you that's another way of thinking about it or what Spirit have you allowed to possess you or what Spirit have you invited in and consorted with so such that it can possess you so when Cain is bitter Cain from Cain and Abel Cain is bitter because his sacrifices go unrewarded so he's bitter because his work is not successful and everyone should be able to identify with that there's no difference between work and Sacrifice by the way they're the same thing we when we work we sacrifice the present to the Future saw that clip from your book yeah okay okay so now Cain's work is unsuccessful so he gets bitter and so and he's jealous as well of Abel who sacrifices are accepted and who's thriving and so Cain Cain's countenance Falls he becomes depressed and anxious and nihilistic and resentful and starts to shake his F fist at God he did he does what job's wife tells job to do when job is being tortured job's wife says shake your fist at God and die well Cain shakes his fist at God and kills and so that's that's even worse um so Cain calls out God just like bitter atheists do constantly and for they have their reasons and says you know I'm what the hell's going on here what kind of world did you make where I'm breaking myself in half with my labors and nothing is succeeding and everything is bitter and pointless and God says if you did well you you'd be accepted and then he says something much much worse which you figured out already he said sin crouches at your door like a sexually aroused predatory animal and you've invited it in to have its way with you that's dark right well it's terrible it's terrible and there's Echoes of this in other mythological stories uh so what it means is that Cain is suffering and there's there's nothing sinful in that as such right because the innocent can suffer Cain suffers and then he turns in the direction of Temptation he starts to nurse his resentment that's another biological metaphor to nurse your resentment he starts to brood over his resentment right and so what that means is that Spirit of arrogant resentment takes he invites it in it takes up residence within him but then he engages in Creative he engages in a creative dialogue with that spirit it's it's not merely possession it's it's joint cons it's conspiracy it's conspiracy between the eternal spirit of Darkness that's a good way of thinking about it and a living human soul that's what happens when you get resentful man when I hear you talk this is uh this is is exactly what it feels like to me um JK Rawling the first Harry Potter book is really simple and by the last one it's heavy and she was clearly maturing the writing and the story with the people reading it m when I look at we who yes when I look at we who wrestle with God as the more mature next step in the 12 rules of Life uh you sort of return to maps of meaning interesting so you don't feel that it's the successor to 12 rules of life it is in the way that you just described because I think I suppose it's a hybrid see maps of meaning was so difficult it's it it took me 30 years to unpack it to the point where I could make it straightforwardly comprehensible especially in writing but even in in lecturing right I I unpacked it really over 30 years then I got good enough at that so I could write a book that was accessible and then this book is I hope it retains its accessibility but it's it's a hydrogen bomb this book really I mean look I haven't read it yet but I'm going to I'm going to plant a flag here and say this is how I think your books go uh maps of meaning which is how I found you um helped me understand why why were you motivated to plow through that because I'm a filmmaker at my so the story part yes and so I took away from that this is why these structures these character these relationships this is why they resonate with the human animal yes right 12 rules for life were hey I see you suffering I see nobody's talking to you let me give you some simple rules that will really help you out then you go on your own cross carrying Journey coma illness crazy town and you come back with the Deathly Hallows version of now I'm going to give you these the mythology and I'm going to tell you exact ly what you wrestle with to learn what Spirit not only lives inside you currently What Spirit should live inside of you all of the human experiences already been thought through I can't give it to you in a bunch of simple packages of the rules for life because those will become dead wood fast I've got to get you into the thing there's a reason you titled this book we who wrestle with God and not what you can learn from God that that would have been a title more people would have understood but there's obviously something to this idea of wrestling with living ideas making it personal figuring out what your relationship is with this stuff when when when when when Jacob is wrestling with God that's worship that's that's true worship that's why he he's awarded the name Israel he's the leader of the chosen people because he wrestles with God so that uh Mana for the suffering because it means that if you're genuinely suffering then you're God's there in your grasp right there with you that's a good way of thinking about it in the wrestling um Socrates was a wrestler literally right and he was he was a very powerfully built person he wrestled before he was a philosopher it's the same thing and everyone thing is about the Chosen People Israel everyone wrestles with God now the question is you know in what Spirit should you wrestle with God and I would say um remember who you're wrestling with that's what job that's what God tells job when he reminds him that you know God was there at the beginning of the time beginning of time um defeating Leviathan fashioning the world remember who you're wrestling with with have a little humility or a lot plenty enough to strip you of your Deadwood right and if you're all Deadwood then the fire of God looks like hell can I get you to read something that you said these are your words verbatim this is from your Arc speech this was when I felt like okay I actually really understand what he's doing now uh it starts there with the muscle emojis uh and just goes to the read it out loud yeah I think it's better in your voice because this this for everybody listening this is part of the speech he gave at the ark conference we're so foolish we regard those propositions religious propositions is something approximating primitive superstitions when in fact they're the most brilliant intuitions into the fundamental structure of reality that have ever been offered we predicated our civilization on those price positions and look at it it's not so bad we've brought wealth and plenty to billions of people around the world we've been struggling uphill properly and if we were wise and faithful and courageous and responsible we could continue to spread that to everyone we could eradicate absolute poverty we could bring about a time of abundance and opportunity for everyone and we'll do that we can do that if we Hoist the world on our individual shoulders and operate collectively in this harmonious Manner and continue the struggle uphill toward the city of God and that's the truth it's the truth it's not some Superstition it's not some primitive defense against death anxiety it's not the opiate of the people it's the call to Divine responsibility and to the degree that each of us acted it out in the confines of our own life we do what I suggested at the beginning of this conference which is tilt the world toward heaven and away from hell yeah that's that's all right amazing it hit me very hard when I first heard it I don't believe in God how do I come to what does p say about that when people say that he says I don't believe in the same God you don't believe in do you think are you struggling to find your way yes is it an honest struggle yes that's the belief it's not a statement religious belief is not a statement about facts it's not a scientific theory this is why the enlightenment is is done that that was wrong that isn't what it is it's a struggle it's the moral struggle or you could say maybe more clearly see you say you don't believe but what you mean is you can't reconcile your conceptions with your intuitions really and that is the modern predicament because you do you believe that what happened in orwitz was wrong yes okay well then you know you've established one pole of the of the belief in Divinity you've just established the malevolent poll and that means the benevolent poll is ill conceptualized still implicit that's it still implicit that's what God is that's what God is in in the belly of the whale is implicit still implicit but that doesn't mean it's not there called or not called God is there that was Carl Yung The Carving over his the castle he built with his own two hands it's there you just don't know it but you know to some degree because you're struggling and you're struggling away from owitz let's say that's good great you know the person running away from hell is also running towards heaven now maybe your pathway would be a little straighter if you knew a little bit more about heaven but away way is something out of hell is something out of hell towards what there's the next question I suppose Out of Hell towards what towards what toward toward a neutral a neutral normality or or upward away from hell up Jacob's Ladder towards the highest possible Heights that's the dwelling place of the eternally uniting Spirit that's a good way of thinking about it that's Jacob's Ladder and where does it end I don't know if it does end it it disappears into the Heights and what's at the top something that recedes when you approach it I come at everything from a very materialist standpoint not everything I think everything not the evil not your realization of the reality of evil oh to me that there's no in congruence there that that's just a natur there was necessarily an incongruent um interesting so for me that's the same I come at that just humans are algorithms and you have algorithms that could lead you to evil I get why in certain circumstances in a truly aoral Universe where are the creators of algorithms as well yeah sort of there's look yeah sort of that's right biology is uh is at play but females select who they sleep with and that has huge implications we all get to invite ideas into our world so for sure um well there's an order it's like I think one of the ways of thinking good thinking about it is that it's the same as the dynamic between musical knowledge and musical production in composers like the composers are adhering to a set of guidelines you would say they're they're they're operating in accordance with a certain order but they can produce an endless literally endless proliferation of forms and human beings are both of those things they're they're the order that gives rise to gives rise to what is new and alive but they're also the thing that is alive they're both at the same time that's the hero in in in relationship to the the father of the king that's Osiris in relationship to Horus well that's Horus sorry Horus the Egyptian god in relationship to Osiris we're both that's partly why there's a trinitarian view in Christianity so because there's a there's a the father is like a structure that's a way of thinking about it and the Sun is the sun is the Incarnation of that structure and the spirit is the intermediary between the two it's something like that I'm I'm trying to get people to understand that they're having a biological experience because I want them to be able to predict the outcome of their actions by understanding the nature of their mind and the minds of the people they're interacting with I have a feeling you're doing exactly the same thing through a different form of encapsulated wisdom that wisdom being the biblical Corpus how right does that feel well the monotheistic hypothesis is that everything meets so I don't have any problem with the evolutionary biologist for example well that once we sort out our theological presuppositions and our biological presuppositions they'll be the same thing yes oh yes you can see that that that convergence is already happening that's already happening in many many ways there's there's a tremendous concordance I would say between the ethos that's laid out in the biblical writings and uh the uh what would you say the analysis of reciprocal altruism so and you know Brett Weinstein is moving rapidly down that road for example in his conceptualization of the spirit that organizes human individuals and and societies so do you think what they're discovering is that the narrative structure and the just time tested way that these stories have been passed on uh into our generation um prove that that's just the best encapsulation of that wisdom in a way that people can use in their own lives yeah well sure sure you could you could almost think about that as by definition I mean the stories in the biblical Corpus are the ones that burn themselves into our imagination and memories well why well because they have a concordance with that structure the stories this is where Dawkins would have gone with the idea of meme if he would have pushed it eventually the memes that best match themselves to the structure of our psyche are the ones we conserved yes obviously how could it possibly be any different how could it possibly be any different than that obviously that's the case that obviously assumes a base assumption that you will react the most strongly to the things that are most true if you don't have that base assumption you won't that won't be obvious to you you''ll be like it's not real therefore it's [ __ ] and you will completely discredit the emotional response yes yes I because if you take a Sam Harris or Rich that when you're confused conceptually though too and that can block your vision so and and that's what's that's part of what happened as a consequence of the Enlightenment we we didn't understand what we were doing and we didn't understand the relationship between what we were doing and the world of fact it was super useful man well the enlightenment absolutely absolutely why did it break down why does it fall apart because the world of facts doesn't speak because the empirical hypothesis is wrong will you give me that it's like Newtonian physics versus einsteinian physics where it's so close it gets you so far but then ultimately it falls down and you realize there's a whole universe to be unlocked there there's an there's a reasonable analogy there the the problem is it's like the follow of the science ideas that science isn't an animating spirit it's not a guide and so the world of facts see the empirical hypothesis is that we derive all our information from facts it's it's not it's just not the case that's not I'm going to change that word for you and I think it will help you get to what people are trying to say it's utility that's utility that's value who cares about facts it's utility what I'm trying to get people to the American pragmatists figured out in the late 1800s yes so but you were saying people look at the world and they see they don't see a water bottle they see I can quench my thirst they see the utility so someone I'm putting words in their mouth and I don't know them well enough but like if I were to sit down with Sam or Dawkins I have a feeling where where they Buck is I don't need the encapsulation of wisdom in this story that I've seen kill millions of people throughout history when peoplee even that's that's that's a very see both Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins identify the totalitarian spirit with the religious spirit and that's a failure of discrimination on their part they're not the same thing the religious spirit can be perverted by the totalitarian spirit but that doesn't make it identical to it that's exactly what the postmodernists claim when they talk about the it's exactly the same claim that the postmodernists are making about systemic racism is that the system itself is nothing but an embod embodiment of oppressive power it's exactly what Harrison Dawkin say about the religious domain it's precisely the same claim and it's not true it's not true when religious idation is perverted it perverts in the direction of power but the truly religious have known that forever I mean Christ himself is crucified by the people who use the religious Enterprise as a means to power that's the Pharisees this is this isn't new so now can can the religious Enterprise be perverted by those in power well obviously the most effective Psychopaths use what is highest to serve what is lowest but they will also smuggle things into The Works that were convenient and useful at the time to justify Conquest whatever oh sure and then that stays in the adance of that philosophy that religion then do some pretty horrible [ __ ] like it's easy to understand where Sam is coming from especially with Islam when somebody does a thing that we consider pretty heinous and they point to the book and say I did it because it says to do this in that then yes well it requires it requires particularly careful separation of the the wheat from the chaff to get those things straight yeah and is this why you say we wrestle with God we're not just taking every word of the Bible uh on its face we are pulling from it you can't you can't take every word on its face it's not even technically possible because the meaning of each word is dependent on well the word obviously but the history of the word and then the history of the word in so far as you've encountered it and then the word in that phrase and then the phrase in that sentence and then the sentence in its paragraph and then all of the relationships between all of those levels and all the other sentences and paragraphs in the whole book like it's not like you can point to the facts in the Bible I mean that just doesn't work because the Bible's actually the structure through which the reason it doesn't work is because the biblical Corpus is a representation of the structure through which facts are interpreted it's not the facts themselves it's a deeper form of truth it's a deeper form of Truth okay well the truth through which truth is seen okay um I I think what I hear you saying is uh you need the narrative because the narrative forces a hierarchical structure to the facts that are being discussed and without that even it gives you a a framework with which to order the facts you're trying to deal with so that you don't have to reinvent that uh sequencing of hierarchical facts Alone by yourself well it also gives you protection against The False Consensus of the group whoa say that again well look people might say they might say well our knowledge is only a social construct and then maybe they mean Truth by consensus you know so let's assume that there's a world of facts that you can Orient yourself in we'll just leave that as an assumption for now and then we'll say well people come to Truth by consensus it's okay well what what what if the consensus is the Nazi consensus well then either that's a transgression against a more fundamental truth or it's just a variant of an infinite number of equally valid consensual truths well you can go down that morally relativistic pit if you want but that's a form of hell because eventually The Logical culmination of that mode of thinking is that there's no value distinction between things in which case you can't even move forward because you only move forward towards something better and so it just leaves you bereft now the alternative is to say well there is a central core of hierarchical Truth and that to some great degree that's embedded in Tradition in which case we can use tradition as the staff the the the flag pole let's say like Moses staff which is exactly what Moses staff represents by the way that's the tradition around which even our consensus must revolve right and that's the conservative insistence that's one way of thinking about it is that there's a vertical axis of orientation upward towards God mediated by tradition and there's a horizontal axis that it's that's part of the ongoing conversation and consensus of the moment but you got to ask yourself and you already have asked this question it's the question soltion it's posed if everyone has gone insane if everyone's possessed by the LIE well first of all to make that claim is is also to make the assumption that there's some truth that's now being ignored but then on what grounds does the man who is honest stand because it's obviously not on the grounds of consensus because the consensus is the lie that's the nature of a totalitarian state right when the consensus becomes the lie you're in a totalitarian state and that obviously implies indicates more directly that there's a truth there's a truth outside of that now the truth is a process rather than a statement of facts or even a statement of faith you know and partly because partly because of the of the mode of Enlightenment thinking we think even Christians think and probably especially Protestants not that I'm singling out the Protestants because that wouldn't be fair that you know to believe in Jesus is to say a set of facts and then say you believe them like they're a scientific theory well you're missing the point which is what the Orthodox Christians have been trying to tell the Protestants for a very long time and the Protestants know this to some degree the point is the imitation of Christ that's the ultimate expression of Faith it's not proclam it can also be proclamation of a set of beliefs but that's not what it is fundamentally when you say faith what do you mean faith that it will work Faith Is What You Bet Your Life on uhhuh that's a definition I worry that a lot of people bet their life on that this is really true because then they can just spout the bumper stickers and they can shut the argum they're also they're not just betting their life they're betting their soul right that's worse that that disappears with death you know let me play with an idea here really fast is it possible that part of what makes religion so useful is that even if you are uh trying to treat it like a dead bumper sticker slogan uh that the wisdom that it encapsulates is so useful that even if you were just blindly doing it because God told you to do that your life will be better than if you were to um not not well yes yes and I would also say that even if you don't think so your belief structure is permeated by the implicit beliefs Dawkins believes in the truth he believes in the redeeming power of the truth mhm he believes in the redeeming power of the communicated truth well there's no difference between that and worshiping the word the Divine word it's the same thing and and if that wasn't the case the scientific Enterprise wouldn't have emerged out of the Christian ethos Dawkins though he doesn't know it is mostly a Christian and so is Harris now Harris has drifted off into meditative space because he had to find a God that was so ineffable that his rational intellect could not tear it down so that was Sam's solution but the question is why would he worry about his rational intellect tearing it down it's only because I think and this is this is one of the things I'm dealing with which is if you ask me to believe that it is scientifically true that everything in the Bible is literally correct I'm done Tapped Out finished no way uh a level of absurdity that I I just can't even entertain like I I couldn't look myself in the eye and be like yeah I actually believe it whereas if you say to me hey this is the ultimate encapsulation of wisdom so if tradition is experiments that worked I forget who said that but I think that's a lovely way to think of it that's a good one uh if that's true and this story is has encapsulated these in a way that the human mind can absorb through the narrative and that this is just withstood the test of time that if you blindly believe this and act in accordance your life will actually be made better you could say The Exodus description is a very accurate description of what actually happened but all the people who were there at the time were blinded by the facts blinded by the facts why do you say blinded by the facts well how much you already said for example that when you look you use some trifling percentage of the available electromagnetic spectrum well when you are anywhere doing anything what fraction of what's going on in reality do you perceive well I would say the biblical accounts of what happened are more accurate than the accounts of the people who would have than the accounts we would have generated had we been there there the there are there are Glimpse behind the scenes that's another way of thinking about it I I don't want to spiral off from this I want to know if you think this is really true because this may make your message acess accessible to people like me as one Avatar uh that it might not otherwise be that the mistakes Sam is making is approaching God which I will say is encapsulated wisdom in a narrative that you can pass it's the wisdom too even that's even better okay so if he's turning his rational mind to it that is to lose the forest for the trees because now he's attacking the container and he's saying ah but the you told me the container was made out of wood but it's actually made out of plastic whatever it's like does it matter like you got the thing in the container and the thing in the container is what works now I'm going to say something really inflammatory and then I will shut up and let you respond uh I have a feeling that a big part of why religion works is that it is the thing that it at all levels of intellect works it works for extremely smart people and it works for really dumb people yeah yeah definitely why encapsulated that's that's you know there's some real truth in that now Dawkins response to that is that's the most intellectually arrogant thing he's ever heard but but well because you know oh I see so it's good for stupid people but not like for smart people like me you know that's the position I'm saying it's good for everybody I know I know I know but his response I've heard him respond to that sort of thing his response is that's intellectually arrogant but Dawkins believes that Dawkins believes that people can easily become scientists and they can't like science Jesus I know lots of scientists I know lots of people who call themselves scientists not very many of them are scientists scientists are as rare as prophets they're rare now you know you got people tinkering around the edges and sometimes they you know move things a trifle but someone genuinely devoted to the truth in that sort of monastic manner that requires total commitment you know Dawkins is probably one of those people you know he's tangled up in his own I don't I don't want to get you know high on my horse here I like Richard Dawkins and I and I learned a lot from his writings and he got a lot right you know I mean he is the last standing Avatar of the rationalist spirit that's a good way of thinking about it the enlightenment spirit and in some ways more power to him but his his view of the religious Enterprise it's biologically absurd like it's it's not a functional view on from his own perspective and I know that partly because first of all he knows that a biological organism has to be a microcosm and second he came up with the idea of meme the idea of meme is that far from the idea of archetype yes it's the same thing correct yeah well he just he got to the meme part looked over the edge thought W we're not going there that's what people do that's what psychologists always do for example when they encounter you you have to explain what's happening now with llms and how they're finding the patterns and the language because that that really made me look at theal Corpus in a new way absolutely well I think that we'll be able to use the LGE large language models where I'm I've tongue and cheek established a new scientific discipline with a former student of mine uh Victor Swift who now works with me and works on on large language models which we've been playing with a lot computational epistemology so he's found a set of 10 words that functionally replace the notion of God in the English language Corpus what are the 10 words I don't know all 10 of them to tell you the truth but you know you can imagine so imagine God is the shared variance of words such as good true beautiful just merciful interesting right right so then imagine that God dies it's that Center word disappears but the spirit embedded in the cloud of Concepts well that the cloud of Concepts around a given concept is the archetype the center sorry the central tendency of a cloud of related Concepts is the archetype yeah that makes we can map it we can map it now with the large language WS yeah stunning that's really important for people to understand that that in cracking at least mimicking human intelligence in a way where we can't distinguish the difference what you're looking for are these interconnected patterns well that's exactly that's what the models do that's how they're trained right is that they're trained on conditional probability essentially towards a goal so you can tell a word let's say a non-word like uh nant n NT nant that's a uh it's nonword but it's not it's less of a nonword than ZX QR well why well because the statistical relationship between the letters and the word ant are more akin to English words than the statistical relationships letter to letter in the all consonant other non-con all consonant non-word okay well the large language models map the statistical relationship not only between letters but between words adjacent words but then words two words away words three words away two words two two words away from two other words like the whole map essentially right right and so but they do that statistically they do that mathematically so that really what that means now is that if these models are programmed honestly trained honestly a very difficult thing to manage then we can use statistics to evaluate the structure the implicit structure of meaning and that's what literary critics have been doing forever and you know Harris when he argued with me he said well you know you're just that's just your interpretation which meant of the biblical text for example which turned him instantly into a postmodernist right there's an infinite number of interpretations of any text and there's no canonical order between them that's the postmodernist claim the lack of meta narrative let's say which means there's no Union it means there's no comprehensibility it means everything fragments ultimately which is what they wanted so they could dance in the runes and pursue their own short-term gratification right with power as their as their as their hypothetical guardian and guide terrible terrible these interpretations aren't arbitrary they're not arbitrary they're coded into the language that's what makes the language comp without that coding their language would not be comprehensible now the postmodernists even knew this to some degree because they knew so sir he was he wasn't a postmodernist but he was a precursor he knew that the meaning of a word was coded in its relationship to other words now it's more complex because it's the same for phrases and sentences and paragraphs in the entire structure has that what would you say that Network that Network nature right but none of that's arbitrary and and here's why it's not arbitrary this is so cool it's it's not arbitrary partly because it has to be comprehensible to you and to me and to everyone else so that's a terrible constraint right it's like it has to be a game everyone can play so that's a really wicked constraint one of those multi-dimensional constraints we were talking about earlier but there's more to it I had a vision of this that this week about how this and it's been developing for years this idea so imagine there's like a central pillar I envisioned it as a pillar of fire we sort of God at the base of that and then there are stacked diss of manifestation material imaginal no material behavioral imaginal semantic right so the material world has an implicit structure that's captured in imagination and so the world of images is going to have the same networked structure as the world of words that the llms have modeled soon the llms will bu a to model the world of images and soon they'll be able to lay them on top of one another and that's what we do because our semantic representation system is isomorphic with the underlying imaginal system and that's isomorphic with the behavioral system and that's isomorphic with the material system and so there and then the concordance between those is the truth of the claim right so if it's true it's true semantically imaginatively behaviorally and it's reflective of the structure of the material world that's a tight set of constraints there's nothing arbitrary about that there's no the meaning is only in the text that's the ultimate claim of the disembodied rational prideful intellect it's all in the words it's like no no no yeah that that to me is the punchline about what you're calling the counter Enlightenment of uh all of these patterns are present in the biblical Corpus and that's how you know right it's a refle that's exactly right it's a it's well what the hell else do you think we've been doing for 4,000 years than trying to map this that's what we've been trying to do with every tool at our disposal now and you but you pointed to a further constraint the representation has to be made manifest in a form accessible to everyone right right well is that going to be in the form of complex scientific theories no that's the domain of Specialists obviously obviously obviously and besides that even that specialized knowledge you can't use that to orient you in the world there's no reason to assume that your you know typical evolutionary biologist is any wiser you know than your typical plumber often far less at least the plumber is constrained you know the world of constraints that a plumber operates in that's a pretty pretty tangible world you're wrestling with the essence of material reality that's for sure we who wrestle with pipes yes definitely definitely well and plumbers you know I would say there's it's hard to uh imagine a profession that has contributed more to the world than plumbers how often are you checking your credit score afraid of identity theft or account breaches we all use the internet every single day for important things like Personal Banking and remote work so why not protect yourself with our sponsor Aura Aura is an all-in-one cyber security service that keeps you safe online AA identifies data Brokers exposing your info and submits opt out requests on your behalf Ora also monitors your credit tracks your passwords for data breaches and secures your online activity with VPN and anti malware protection you can try Aura for free for 2 weeks by clicking the link in the description or scanning the QR code right so all right this this whole idea I find utterly profound um I worry though we're in a super weird moment you are you're a canaran a coal mine for me in terms of freedom of speech and the Overton window what people are allowed to say um the the authoritarian game only works if there's nobody there to challenge the ideas you refuse to go away but you're proving hard to kill but they have certainly tried most people are very easy to kill in the world of ideas they can shut down their career make it impossible for them to make money which then makes other people just way too afraid to speak I get it you know the hell that awaits on being silent but most people don't and honestly the Hell Comes so slowly that most people are like well this is just a little bit of Hell by being silent a little bit more a little bit more well it's deferred hell yes exactly and well deferred hell is deferred hell is eternal hell that's not good it is I'd rather just have the hell like now yes but you are very very rare and so there's two things I want to see if we can get to the other side of using what the um counter Enlightenment is going to teach us okay so one I I spend a lot of my time absolutely freaked out about the authoritarianism that I see creeping in as somebody who grew up in the 80s like this is just riplash raging yeah it it's Insanity oh yeah and it scares me because there people telling me I can't 700 million ctvs in China Jesus man yeah they have full gate recognition right lock down knives in people's houses what that's really scary that that freaks me out are Petty yeah right that's what makes them tyrants right there'll be nothing that you there'll be no autonomy that's the like zero zero autonomy because you know well and if if you if you haven't done anything wrong you you'll have nothing to worry about it's like well good great find me someone who hasn't done anything wrong who has nothing to worry about you yeah right so how do I heard at one point you were spending like $90,000 a month fighting everything that's coming at you um that's crazy so how do people who just absolutely cannot do that how do they push back substitute and substitute adventure for security okay security it's like you're going to pursue security are you you how's that going to work you're you're going to die you're going to encounter malevolence like you can you can defer the the encounter to some degree although not very successfully there's no security and and then the thing is that's the thing that's so interesting to understand is you don't want security you're not an infant that's not what you're after you're actually after Adventure so where do you find your adventure aim up tell the truth and Adventure will come your way and then that's so much better than security that there's no looking back it's so incredibly exciting it's it's Uncharted Territory the thing about the truth is that you don't know what's going to happen when you utter it you have to let go you know so if I could come in here you know calculating what I want from this interview figuring out how it's going to increase my social status or make me more money and I mean if it does those things okay but that's not the aim they a is to come in here and have wrestling match and why because I have faith in the outcome so what's the faith the faith is whatever happens to you when you tell the truth is the best thing that could happen no matter how it looks to you that's a statement of faith now there's an alternative statement which is oh no no no I'll say something and there'll be a consequence and I'll have faith that that consequence is the defining what would you say defining feature of that utterance I said something I got in trouble therefore I shouldn't have said it it's like well what if you get in trouble but like three weeks later everything's way better for you Christ like it's not like there's any shortage of things like that in life that's what work is work is I'm going to do this thing now that's difficult so that something better will happen in the future well truth is like truth is the ultimate investment in that matter definitely that's why truth is what stores up treasure in heaven that's what that means and so so how can people how can people learn this try telling the truth I I wrote a chapter about this in one of my books that was quite accessible it's like start by not saying things you know to be a lie just start with that play with it see what happens see what happens walk me through the morning when that person does that I'll talk to young men right now uh they say what they think is true they get fired from their job they go well then they then they probably bid off more than they could chew right the Eternal sin of Adam to bite off more than he could chew it's like you know if you don't know what you're doing and you're in a dangerous place maybe you know start on your knees humbly carefully you know don't go out there and brandish your new truth and make yourself into an idiot martyr so you can tell yourself that you're the Messiah you know with one utterance that's not wise you have to be as wise as serpents right that's the idea this isn't a game you have to you have to do it with your eyes open you know and if you pay attention you'll see your opportunity you'll see you'll see it'll make itself manifest to you you'll see where there's a choice point where you'll be conversing with someone and you could take the easy route out that you usually take or you could dare right then and there and there's an excitement about that and then you'll try it and you know other person you know maybe you're kind of a cringing milksop sort of person and and so you're you're being intimidated by one of your friends who's actually a bully that you hate and you decide at that moment that you're finally going to say at least a fraction of what you've been thinking and you know it takes them back and then actually likes you better and is 10% less likely to bully you now you might get punched too you know that's well hey it's real like it's that's right this this is this is real it's it's it's the ultimate game I suppose the ultimate game is what's real but but it's not like there's not consequences one of the the other thing you have to understand and this is a good thing for young men to understand is you're going to pay one way or another there's no way out of that so choose your method method of payment that's what you can do and and weirdly enough if you choose the proper God if you choose the proper method of payment the price you pay is is one you would pay happily that's what that's why see Abraham is called upon to sacrifice his son for example and in the service of God and he says yes and then he doesn't have to and that's right and it's the same we know this even on our families a mother who will sacrifice her child to the world let the child go Foster that child's Independence offer the child to be broken by the world full-heartedly we'll get that child back right the child won't leave it's so interesting because the child leaves but not really right because that's the child who wants to maintain a relationship with the mother for the rest of the child's life who wants that mother as a grandmother and who wants her around and who will return as much as is appropriate but no more and so everything you give away you'll get back if you give it away in the right spirit and we know that even on the reciprocal front you know I I worked with many many professors and and soci scientists but let's say as a graduate student I had a great graduate adviser Robert Peele who's still alive and who I still work with that case in point I loved working in Bob's lab partly because he was insanely generous with his ideas he just give them away like there were professors who'd like have an idea they' shelter the damn thing it's like this is my idea and someone's going to steal it it's like first of all probably it's not your idea second of all it's not that great anyway so don't be so concerned there's not a lot of people lining up to steal your ideas and third it's not that easy to steal ideas anyways so there's a fair bit arrogance and and lack of faith in that but imagine we could even imagine psychophysiologically what happens to you if you give away your ideas so let's say you know you're blessed with a creative spirit and and you're just giv your ideas away like mad like like you're a tree that's full of fruit and you're just Distributing it well everybody that you give an idea to is thrilled about it and they reflect that in their enthusiasm and that enthusiasm is rewarding and that reward creates a dopaminergic kick and that dopaminergic kick reinforces the dominance of the creative spirit and so then you have more ideas right and so that's a great example of how you get back what you give away in Spades it's by far the best strategy that's why Christ says that you know if someone asks you for I don't remember the this phrase exactly but you know you give the person who asks your coat you walk the mile with them you give more than you're called upon to give even to your enemies why because there is no better strategy than that by any stretch of the imagination this is why there's such an emphasis in the Old Testament on Hospitality be welcome and in productive generosity productive generosity what what does that ensure it ensures your own security weirdly enough because if you give to a thousand people and then you're in trouble you have a thousand people who are ready to help you know maybe you could give to a 100,00 people or a million people I mean how could you possibly put anything in a more solid Bank than in the Goodwill you generated in the embodied imaginations of other people that's the kingdom that's the that's the Tre that's Treasures in Heaven and they are an eternal form of treasure in some sense not least because that reputation can last in some cases throughout the ages and then it's it's part of the manifestation of that underlying Spirit of creative generosity that gives rise to the cosmos itself thing I don't want to get lost in all of that is that that is somebody who has a hierarchy of values whether they got it religiously or they just decided it but the hierarchy of values is what I would tell people to lean on in times of trouble yeah they can't have just decided it if they decided it it's because something moved within them right because we just aren't self-created you know you know what I mean I mean we we have that self-creative capacity to some degree but we're the inheritors of one tradition or another or mish mash of traditions or we're socialized creatures intensely socialized creatures so there's all sorts of things that give rise to impulses within us and so I would say if some someone technically atheistic is generous and productive in spirit then they're infused with the word regardless of what the semantic system sitting on top has to say about it's like I don't believe that it's like well it kind of looks like you do you know if we're going to judge the tree by its fruits and so Dawkins you know Dawkins doesn't know how much of a Christian he is God I want to sit you two down at the same time I want to hear him respond to that statement he's a he's a terrifying guy guy you know I I unfortunately the few times I have talked to him I'm still quite ill and um you don't want to talk to Richard Dawkins when you're not at your best and so but I do believe that we are scheduled to have a public discussion at some point in the relatively near future that would be amazing um going back to young men there's an idea that you put out there that I have talked about just ad nauseum I'm so grateful to you for this concept I hope you're right that in the Bible the idea that the meek shall inherit the earth makes no sense when you think of Meek as weak but when you think of Meek as somebody who is a total badass but they keep their sword sheathed Rogan's a good example why what's meek about Rogan well it's not that he's weak it's that he every guest he has he he tries to learn from you know it's it it's a kind of there isn't anything more compelling and powerful than a well-armed humility and I've seen this in great people I've met I have been privileged to meet many great people and I've met the shells of great people too but the great people I've met are they're striking in their humility striking it's a core part of their character and they're not they're wrestling all the time when they talk to someone doesn't matter who it is they're they're there with them communicating you know one of the things we learned as we moved Along on this tour was I have security people who also help me with Logistics and uh we've had to be very careful about who we gather around us because all the people on the tour have to treat everyone they come into contact well with well all everyone especially the people who come to my shows but in restaurants in hotels like I don't want to leave uh this is especially true if you're in the public eye because okay if if you're unknown and you offend someone they'll forget it but if you're wellknown and you offend someone they will never forget it it will burn itself into their imagination and they will tell absolutely everyone they they'll feel deeply betrayed and and they have been so so we ensure that everyone around us treats everyone not well in the manner that keeps reputation intact but well not so that reputation stays intact but because it's the right thing to do and that's a form of that meekness you know it's it that's that's what it's referring to do you think men are being taught to be weak right now yes definitely what oh no it's worse than being taught they're being enticed toward that in every way tell me more and punished for not doing it well they're enticed towards it by well well the insistence for example that there are modes of less worthy being than the masculine let's say because masculinity itself is toxic to its core a manifestation of patriarchal oppression that male ambition is nothing but a manifestation of the force of tyrannical power that not only oppresses the oppressed but rapes the world Jesus brutal so there's that so that and then any deviation from any deviation in that direction the desire of a four-year-old boy to play with guns for example well we have to rub rub that out it's like oh well do you you're going to rub out your son's ability to point and shoot are you that's that's what he'll do is his whole life going to go to war with that in your feminine virtue toxic masculinity it's like great great Harpy Warfare it's awful it's awful you know but it's it's part of this belief and that's derived from this Unholy Nexus of agreement between the postmodernists and the metam marxists that the only story is one of power and Men wield the power and therefore all masculine virtue is identical to the striving for power and that's immoral in its Essence it's basically the most pathological brandishes of that Doctrine presume that male virtue is indistinguishable from malevolence and so the best you can do if you're a man is to castrate yourself and oh god well what that's what's happening in the culture it's act literally happening it's not even it's not even symbolic that's that's the offering that's the ultimate offering to the to the great mother that's a great way Freud knew this Yung knew this this is well mapped out this is well mapped out in the psychological and and symbolic spheres you've asked a lot of people I don't know if you've ever gotten a satisfying answer I haven't heard it yet but what happens when the left goes too far or where yeah where does the left go too far yeah yeah well it's Equity clearly I POS that to it was either Brett Weinstein or his wife Heather H and cuz I said look what I see in the world right now is what it looks like when women become pathological that the things that are good nurturing wanting to care for people when that goes too far and I devouring mother would be your phrase but it's a perfect phrase um yeah it really does sin of Eve that's the Eternal sin of Eve to to even clasp the serpent to her breast my compassion is so overpowering there's nothing it can't incorporate even the fruit of the of evil itself that's the fall of Man yeah that's being playing out like in Spades rapidly miraculously yeah it's very very bad very very dark so I know that if we don't find a way to um make men I would even say strong I think strong is a part of it but invite them invite them to be strong invite them to be become what healthy masculinity looks like now the question becomes to from where I'm standing I will give you the image that I use a lot I use this in business all the time uh when things are getting really hard I imagine myself in a loin cloth covered in the blood of my enemies with a big [ __ ] sword in my hand yeah and that imagery helps me stay focused be strong be hard when I need to be hard not that I'm you know imagining killing indiscriminately but that I need to be able to step into aggression and aggression is the right word and when I um that's why Andrew Tate is so so attractive to young men dude so much he's utterly fascinating to me 90% of what he says scares me to death because it actually is toxic masculinity but 10% is so good that I'm like you cannot people are complicated a but the thing is is that the the more okay so so the perversion of warrior in some ways is psychopath and you know that because you watch like mafia movies so we all know this okay but but there's a dreadful attraction in untrammeled aggression for men who are so crushed that they're castrated that's a good way of thinking about it so so the attraction that the that the Andrew Tate Persona let's say has on those young men there's actually a lot of that that's positive now that doesn't mean that that's the right target but it there are creative ways of being wrong that are helpful right right now I you know you see better examples of that precisely that in people like Joo willink and David Goggins and Joe Rogan like these are tough guys you know but they're not they don't have the sex appeal though that's one thing I'll give Andrew Tate like partly because they don't want it yeah you see yeah but it isn't that they couldn't have it like it's that they've they've decided that everything in its proper place Rogan has a family you know that's that's where he's put it and and hey man good work good work to him you know and that sex appeal that Andrew Tate has that's the sex appeal of the short-term Mater that's the psychopathic sex appeal that's the dark tetr sex appeal it's shallow it's shallow and it will get him in trouble I mean already got him in trouble yeah and so that's not going to unless he you know wises up precisely that it'll get him in trouble you know and I'm I'm not trying to take him apart I mean I think what he did with his with his capitalization on female sexuality is absolutely unforgivable but well I that's enough of that I mean that was that was beyond the pale in my estimation there was no there's no excuse for that whatsoever now you know if you're a basement dwelling in Cel the mere fact that you could imagine ever doing that sort of like you imagining yourself you know in a loin cloth covered with blood the mere idea that a man which is what you are could even imagine manage doing that having a Harum you know of women who are offering sexual favors at at your beck and call that's a much higher calling than castrated over obese resentful loser who can't leave the basement right cuz that's an even low I suppose you know when you're in the lowest rung of Hell the rung right above looks like heaven and and it it's up it's up that aggression and that aggression is very very necessary you know it's it's very necessary and sports are a great way of of of putting that in its proper place especially team sports because you you can take that competitive Instinct and that instinct to win that instinct to be competent more deeply and you can you can put it in its proper place and it is an immense source of implacability immense now in a certainly something I draw on when I lecture for example like it's a source of energy it's just sitting right there interesting why is that so effective anger aggression is a very primordial Instinct very and and it it activates both the positive emotion systems which are forward mov moving and the negative emotion systems that awaken you it's high stress like there's nothing more stressful than being angry it's very psychophysiologically demanding it's very psychophysiologically stressful but also in as a as a alerting as a form of alerting arousal in some ways it's unparalleled and and it's great to have it at hand you you don't want to rep see the Freudian model with regard to aggression was repression like we have this terrible ID that's trying to make itself clamber upward you know all red and tooth and Claw there's some truth in that but his model of how that was regulated by socialization it was insufficient it's not repression it's not inhibition now he kind of knew that because he talked about sublimation P Jean P had a much better model much more much wiser and P observed actual children a competitive child who socialized integrated the capacity for aggression into the game and then he becomes the player every kid wants on his team because he still wants to win so he's he's got that forward driving intensity and skill but but he does that in a manner that brings everyone along with them right and so then it's not aggression isn't inhibited it's integrated and and the more aggression you can integrate well the more compelling you are 100% like that's that's the that's what that's what women are after that's because the fundamental I think the fundamental female hero story is essentially Beauty and the Beast and a woman is after a a civilized Beast like literally that's that all female pornography has that structure civilized Beast you know and it can tilt a little hard in the Beast Direction when it gets a little masochistic and it you know can turn a little hard in the in the Civilized Direction when it's kind of a like when it's a romance that tilts more in the direction of friendship Woody Ellen would probably be a good example of that as a character in his own movies but you know there's a you can imagine that there's a range in there where the solution can be offered in a variety of different forms yeah I think you were the one that pointed me to a book that was utterly transformational a billion Wicked thoughts yeah yeah right what I find really interesting is it isn't just a civilized Beast it is a beast I civilize with my magic HOA which is what they say in the book right but that that I find very interesting and has somehow become probably did the same thing to men that humans did to wolves that's [ __ ] Interesting Man uh tell me more about that that is really interes all you know you want a wolf like that's trying to eat you or do you want a wolf on your side well that's the situation women are in I mean you've seen the cartoon representations do Tex Avery's cartoons from the 1940s I think they were the 40s with the wolf who's like completely sexually what obsessed with Tex flying out of his eyes yes and and he's always after the singer who sings Old Wolfie you know it's perfect it's perfect yeah women definitely tame men obviously yes clearly they probably tamed them by offering them sex and fruit you know so they were gatherers women are gatherers they're not Hunters really makes me sad that we can't that the uh public discussion around this people get so weird about so fast you actually did a really amazing interview I think her name was Dr Sarah Hill yeah yeah yeah Sarah was good I found that utterly fascinating talking about just what men do to get women's attention the demands that women make it yeah literally that all everything and anything is the answer to that 100% My Success is literally tied to my desire to impress my now wife then uh fiance when I really turned it on I was like well I've got to the correlation between male trappings of socioeconomic success and male reproductive success is like it's like 7 for women it's negative it's zero it's lower than zero like men don't care at all about the wom men aren't looking for in women for what women look for in men correct so and not a bit even not a bit even and and that plays out also in the structure of female motivation you know men are very competitive they'll and and in unidimensional in some ways oneeyed you might say right and there's an immense symbolic level of web of associations around that idea the oneeyed giant well the penis is a oneeyed giant like obviously right and it's it's a seeking it's a it's part of a seeking system seeking women and it'll do that unidimensionally right and so and men are like that Freud knew this the men are like this from this cellular level up and so they'll specialize they'll hyp specialize obsessively in a manner women are just not interested in they can but they're not interested in it and partly they're not interested in it because that isn't what doesn't attract men that that capability you know the the men I work with in big law firms for example hyperco competitive men you know and they were they're very concerned about their bonus but not because they needed the money said well the money is just a way of keeping score and they all said that they all knew that they laughed about it it's like they wanted a bigger bonus than the next guy the amount didn't matter the comparative amount mattered a lot and it was it's part of a status ranking you know and and that's everything for young men status ranking God yes I mean they'll they'll die for that they'll kill for that like it's not like we don't know this it's in the criminology literature this is Crystal Clear know the gang a tremendous amount of gang violence is status competition but even more than the even the economic element of that is subordinate to the status competition so yeah that's that's crystal clear crystal clear so all right there's another idea that I need to put this post or counter enlightenment idea up against uh what's going on in Hamas Israel that you've got two religions supposedly both packaging up a ton of wisdom but when they Collide it's ugly and it won't go away is there a danger in trying to communicate wisdom in a religious package of course there's danger in every in everything in every Endeavor um the danger is the confusion of the religious Enterprise with dogmatic certainty fundamentally I mean there there's no reason to assume at all that the religious Enterprise can't degenerate into totalitarian psychopathy for that matter does all the time not least because it's in the interest of the totalitarian Psychopaths to hijack the religious Enterprise now they do that all the time that's their modus operandi again that's the same people that Christ is contending with constantly in the gospels I mean at multiple levels he contends with the tyrants themselves from Rome but it's not like there's no tyrants in the Jewish community and all of those tyrants use religion to be tyrannical with and yeah it's the most egregious sin or one of the most egregious sins so the third commandment it depends on how you count them but the third commandment is generally held to indicate something like do not use God's name in vain and people think that means don't swear and it kind of means that some trivial way but mostly what it means is do not claim Divine motivation for self-serving Behavior that's what all the protesters are doing we're so compassionate in public it's like no I don't think so I think you're narcissistic Psychopaths fundamentally and if you're not well at that moment you're certainly possessed by that Spirit look at how good we are that's why Christ says in the gospels not to let your left hand know what your right hand is doing if you're going to be good do it in secret why so you don't so you don't fall prey to the temptation to make your good subordinate to your pride right that's what the bloody edle mothers do all the time look how much I love my son yeah he doesn't even have a penis anymore we solved that problem for him wow yeah wow it's so bloody it's so brutal it's so dark it's it's virtually unimaginable it's such a pit it's so awful and then the mother can parade around with what what has she got her son's genitals on a stick so she can parade down the street oh absolutely and show her neighbors look how compassionate I am no matter what he turns into I still love him brutal would you say that or would it be something more along the lines of he is so loving and so compassionate for having been at my breast that he has essentially voluntarily discarded these tox name that'd be her cover story and you know the other part of that secret desire is well immense hatred for men immense immense hatred for men for for or For What that particular breed of woman thinks men stand for and are so you know where where does that come from if for comes from all sorts of places lots of those lots of women like that were terribly damaged by Men by power Mad Men you know who hurt them in all sorts of terrible ways they lots of these people you know you hear their story and you think well it's no wonder you think that way but that's that's no that's no excuse because many people who are terribly abused don't grow up to be abusers they decide that they're going to take the opposite route you know you can learn a lot from being abused and one of the things you can learn is not to do it so what idea has possessed them that makes them break bad when that horrific thing happens to them I think you have to read my new book I can't I can't I can't simp it's too complicated to simplify see if I can come up with some reasonable I'm virtuous because I was hurt that'd be that's part of it for sure yeah and that's part of the if you're a victim you're an infant and if you're a infant victim then you're moral and to be protected at all cost and anything that threatens you as a predator and there's nothing too terrible for a predator right to meet out to a predator which is another part of the underground attraction for that because this is the horror show of the oppressor oppressed narrative once you identify the oppressed and you identify them with innocence you identify the oppressor with predation or even worse parasitical predation it's exactly what Hitler did to the Jews 100% predatory parasite what do you do with predatory parasite you burn them to the ground no holds bar no no punishment is too extreme and then well then you get owitz so brutal and then you get to have all the Delights of being the oswit owitz guard and then the darkest part of your soul has the chance to come out and play is that what you think is going on right now I was I was taken aback I did not see it coming that uh there were Pro Palestine marches on October 8th soe Israel's response yeah yeah yeah that's definitely what's happening I mean it's very straightforward it's algorithmic oppressor oppressed well how do you know the oppressors they're statistically over represented in positions of authority and obviously by definition then they're oppressors well who's most statistically overrepresented in positions of authority Jews that's like the doors open man so why are they the canary and the coal mine why in a way that is so bizarre throughout history part of the reason it's part of it is the reason I just said so then you might say well why are they more likely to be successful well they're smarter that's part of it by a lot you mean at a truly biological level they just as a group they have a higher IQ yeah and they have neurological problems that go along with that like is that controversial or are people course it is but do people debate the fact stupid people debate it well I'm serious like the the the the int the IQ literature has something in it to appall everyone deeply I I mastered that literature in like 19934 with a student of mine who I still work with brilliant student he got bounced right out of the whole academic world because of the response to his work partly on IQ well we were were looking at their class but if you go out to like IQ 145 where the serious action starts Jews are way over represented and if you don't like that theory well how about they have a giant conspiracy to take over the world as a substitute Theory so I don't care which of those theories you like it's like you're GNA both of them are like fire both of those theories are fire and so but you're stuck with one or the other so that's life that's life you know and so what what should happen is that people should be bloody happy that there's smart Jews around and the Jews should be very careful not to take their intellectual superiority as a marker of what would you say excess intrinsic worth not I'm not saying that they are more prone to that than anyone else by the way but it is a it is a Temptation for intelligent people to identify with their intelligence and to become prideful right that's actually how in some ways how God keeps the Eternal scales of cosmic Justice balanced so imagine you're born with an IQ of of 145 well then you might think well that's not very fair because what about the poor guy who's born with an IQ of 85 and those are very different they're very very very very different and and you say well that's completely unfair it's like fair enough but the guy with the IQ of 145 is is prone to The Temptations of the pride of the intellect and that is Lucifer right like that's the worst Temptation and so Lucifer is the spirit of intellect gone most dreadfully wrong and so sure you can have an IQ of 145 but man you better uh you better be on your knees in gratitude that that gift was given to you and you better not misuse it because if that thing takes the upper hand you are in the hands of the worst possible agent of Destruction and of course like well no it's the intellect that goes most dreadfully wrong that's not the worst possible threat so obviously that's the worst possible threat and and so you know it says in the gospels that if you've been given a lot you there'll be a lot demanded of you and that goes for intelligent people they better develop some humility a a a virtue that's sadly lacking at the moment with our worship of Pride let's say pride and Hedonism Jesus brutal those two ideas in particular you think grip people today power pride and Hedonism yeah that's a that's a yeah absolutely well if you make your sexual identity Paramount it's like you've identified the eye with with the impulse essentially with the whim right because sex is a whim like obviously now does it rule well what what is it that you are if sex rules you're the wolf that's for sure that's for sure and a wolf to yourself too so you know when you see this ambivalence on the left because on the one hand anything goes in all forms of sexuality are to be like celebrated worshiped essentially because celebration and worship are the same thing yet sex is so dangerous especially between like members of a young heterosexual pair that absolutely every single bit of it has to be regulated right to the last word it's like well you Lous breeds tyranny that's why the [ __ ] of Babylon is on the great Scarlet beast of the state at the end of time tell me exactly what that means when you break it down well imagine that when masculinity degenerates the state pathologizes the patriarchy pathologizes well what happens to females they pathologize too well where do how do they pathologize in the direction of disinhibited sexuality so 35% of internet traffic is pornographic yeah but that's not driven by women that's driven by men it's driven by Bloody women too who parading themselves absolutely inter it might be like there's no shortage of electronic pimps and desperate Engineers let's say but that doesn't mean the women who engage in that are Innocent by any stretch of the imagination they're they're uh they're doing the same thing with their sexuality that that that the that people granted the talent of intelligence doe with their with their with their gift look at me it's like no no wrong wrong those women online displaying themselves they're succubi they're not human you're a fool if you think that's human you're a fool at minimum it's a machine human hybrid a woman doesn't appear in a Million places at the same time whatever that is that's not a woman yeah what do you make of the only fans dynamic between men and women the more I look at this the more I'm getting freaked out there was a a woman named you have to stop looking that looking at it truly through a research lens but uh Belle deline I believe is her name uh back in 2020 she sold 10 million pounds worth of her bath water oh that's perfect the hor of Babylon has a cup full of liquid by the way in Gold a gold cup full of liquid that she offers the world really absolutely absolutely absolutely look at how wonderful this is it's actually what does it say in the Book of Revelations it's filled with the filth of her Abominations God perfect so what is that it's people wanting to consume that thing they can't have that they have idolized of course of course it's it it's it's people wanting to consume the thing that is denied to them because they hid their light under a bushel because they hid uh they hid who they could become from themselves and never pursued it sure and so they're not attractive to themselves or anyone else AB holy [ __ ] okay so that's for sure oh yes brutal brutal brutal You' got women uh ascending to a position of power that weird dynamic of postmodernism uh they've been given a gift of being able to persuade men through their beauty to do what they will to get the attention that they want now as a mechanical hybrid they're able to appear in tens of thousands hundreds of thousand millions of places sit on the chests of men and take their Essence from them and then men are hiding their potential away from themselves because they're punished for but that then that gives them an excuse for not doing it cuz they think well I'm going to the young guys let's say who decide to be useless you know some of its genuine response to not being incouraged and to being punished some of it is but some of it it's pretty convenient it's like you don't have to put your cross on your shoulder it's like no one wants me to do that anyways it's like well yeah that that's always been the case and I mean in some ways you know there's there's new impediments to striding forward confidently but there's always being impediments you it's so interesting so I uh I train anybody that will listen uh that you need to have beliefs in your life and since facts are overwhelming it's not about recognizing what's true it's about recognizing what's useful is how I think of it uh so you have a set of beliefs you have a set of values so you have hierarchy what matters relationship to the right end that's correct a th% which is why I always lead with you have to have a goal and that goal needs to be honorable so you've got see the thing is that's where your God lies your God lies in the well your God lies in the ineffable of in the ineffable extent of what you regard as useful so imagine that useful tilts in a in a direction the sum total of all that would of all that would be most properly useful the essence of that that's the god that's the implicit God yeah I'm realizing I have built from the ground up a system that is designed to do all the things that religion does it's really interesting this to me is it's fascinating because whenever you discover the same thing from multiple different disciplines you can be pretty sure you're converging on the truth because everybody's just going what actually works uh but the last thing the last part of my cocktail is rules so you need rules in your life basically there need to be things that you don't do um I'm that's good that's good that's exactly right that's that's where're cons so you can imagine the spirit of God in the Old Testament makes himself manifest in two forms calling and conscience and conscience is that what you just described it's like the guard rails it's like you're going off the path you know so there's fences and warnings on the conscience side but it's the same thing and it's the dynamic between this is what happens in the movie Pinocchio so Pinocchio is called out into the world his father is benevolent a benevolent Creator that's jepetto he's called out into the world to make himself manifest to real I himself to become real and there's two things that attract him he wants to go out and learn and have his Adventure that's the calling and but that has to be alligned with the conscience and the reason for that is the calling alone gets him in trouble like first of all it entices him to becoming a narcissistic Psychopathic manipulative actor that's when he's on stage right then it entices him into lying to get away with things and to get what he wants so that's another extension that manipulation that it entices him to become neurotic enough so that he can take a permanent holiday then he goes to Pleasure Island where he can engage in Hedonism that's where the slavers are right and so he needs that's what that's what just the calling alone you know will take in places that are attractive but not appropriate you need a conscience along for the ride and that's Jiminy Cricket right and Jiminy Cricket is what bugs you exactly yes and so that's one of the places you can find your destiny is in what bothers you there's going to be an array of things that make themselves manifest to you as callings of your conscience those are problems those are your problems why is that your problem it's like well can you stop thinking about it does it bug you all the time well hey there you go that's your destiny right where does this all go you've got Canada has declined economically you guys are now making 60% of what Americans are making China we can do worse than that with oh Jesus let's hope not uh China is watching everything everybody does they're Way Beyond 1984 2024 in the US is uh it's terrifying the election does it actually build up the Civil War I don't know yep UK you've got conflict Russia Ukraine you've got conflict Israel uh you got Farmers Europe yeah like where does this go depends on how many of us shoulder our crosses and walk uphill I I really mean that like we're at that point wake up figure out which side you're on if you were a betting man what odds do you give um US Civil War what odds do you give World War I well we we're already in World War II so I'd give that 100% how far will it go depends on how stiff necked we are right so the Egyptian Tyrant is visited by is it 10 plagues the last plague is the destruction of the future itself that's the death of the firstborn so you know it depends on how hard we have to be hit before we wake up and there's no end to that you know I mean God destroys the whole world in a flood you know that never happened it's like how about about it's happening all the time how about it's happened forever it's happening now it will happen forever how high does the water have to rise till people learn and what does it mean to learn well this is why I'm a psychologist not a politician or a theologian to whatever degree I lay pretensions to that someone concerned with spiritual matters let's say psychological matters Redemption is a matter of individual determination so that's why I operate at the big level of the individual how far will we have to go depends on how many sins you decide to continue harboring how are you connected how is that decision connected to the destiny of the world we all bear the world on our shoulders how how can that be true here's one way of thinking about it how much better would the people around you be if you were better some obviously what's the ultimate extent of that what if you were everything you could be that's what you're called upon to be you're called upon to be everything you can be why not least because the try getting through the world without doing it then you'll end up in the position of Cain you didn't offer your best you'll be rejected by man woman and God and yourself and then what then you're bitter then you're fratricidal then you're murderous then you're genocidal then the flood comes or you erect the Tower of Babel it's always the same and now you can see it like it's just right there why because it's happening so fast this has been amazing Jordan where can people follow you where can they get your book well I just my book has just been announced it won't be available until November but you can pre-order it and so any standard book selling site has it available as of two days ago um people can come on and hear me talk about the things we talked about today on my tour I've got 48 cities left I'm going to tour with my wife who speaks as well and is getting very good at it I'm going to tour with Jonathan pel for some of it and with Constantine kissen so that'll be very interesting and uh then we're also launching Peterson Academy in very short order and that's our attempt to provide people people with the highest quality possible education genuine education in the general Arts and Sciences domain at approximately the undergraduate level to as many people as we can possibly manage at the in the most accessible possible way that'll be launching very soon um I've been working on an app with my son called essay that teaches people how to think and write and you need to know that because you need to master the verbal domain so that you're articulate and competent and young men are never told this there's why do you like rap musicians because they're articulate it's attractive there's nothing more attractive than being articulate so get your words in order there guys and this essay app helps teaches you how to to ask the right questions to search for the answers in the appropriate place to examine the revelations that you're granted to sort them out and to put yourself together and so we organize ourselves at the highest level with words so words matter every single word matters every single word those are the fruits of the tree that those are the fruits that the tree that you most truly are has to offer that's a good way of thinking about it yeah so I love it that's the situation there it is all right everybody if you haven't already be sure to subscribe and until next time my friends be legendary take care peace check out my intense conversation with Patrick B David about masculinity our men today week and if so what can we do about it if you look at data yes from 1960 till today our population has increased around 90% but in