Doctor Jordan Peterson: "The NUMBER ONE Reason For Divorce!" & "The One Small Step You Have To Take To Turn Your Whole Life Around!"

27:44They, you know, because the fundamental threat is more key to their self -esteem that they to their conception of themself and then allowed them to be comfortable before they get to the actual point, which is where they're going to be most vulnerable. They're going to throw out a bunch of screen concerns just to see if you can be trusted with something that will reveal their vulnerability and they're even doing that to themselves. It's like, dare I tell the truth about this situation because I betrayed myself before. So maybe not. You're so right. They test you on the way to the truth to see if how you'll respond.

28:21Yes, so I'm there testing themselves too. And, you know, and you can facilitate that. See, if you facilitate that by calm listening, then you're modeling the fact that whatever the hell they have as a problem isn't so terrifying that you have to avoid it and run away. Right. Right. It's so interesting what was actually revealed because this person that works in the way, Mark some teams in a different company where there's a CEO said to me, it's the works they were doing that was causing them the, the ideas and that's the reason they wanted to leave, et cetera. And I asked them the question after about 30 minutes, one was the time you were most happy in the business.

28:57They revealed to me that the time they were most happy was when they were with me overseas at the very beginning. And what that really revealed at its essence was they'd been a change in the proximity to me and the real meaning of the work. And they now felt like they were doing trivial things. The happiest time was when they were right next to me doing the most important stuff. Right. So the most difficult problems. Yeah, they were solving the most difficult problems when they were most challenged. And they were, so really the fix wasn't what they thought it was, the fix. And they're now, they actually texted me.

29:30I sent the message to one of my team members last night saying, I don't know, I want to keep that identity. So let's say they were with me in Canada. They text me when they were most happy. They text me last night saying, I feel like Canada Jenny again. Right. And the adjustment that had to be made was getting them back close to bigger challenges. So they wanted to be closer to the front line as it turned out. When Freud first developed psychotherapy, he developed this technique of free association. Okay, so all free association is, and this is what Freud, this is why people put, Freud put people on the couch and sat behind them.

30:07See, if I'm face to face with you, and I'm laying out the problem space, just what you're signaling to me by your face might stop me from fully revealing the truth, because maybe you'll raise an eyebrow or you'll be a micro expression of disgust or contempt or you'll look away or because I'm going to be evaluating you to see how you're reacting morally to my revelations. So Freud just hit himself. He said, and I don't think that's strictly necessary, but it's a very wise intuition. And you can imagine how it would be helpful. So now I think the counter to that is you can signal to someone who you're talking to like open reception of the message they're receiving, right?

30:58It's just that and kids love this, right? One of the things kids are doing all the time is testing you to see if you're paying attention and they will modify their behavior in any way imaginable to get attention. There's no, because there's no difference between attention and love, by the way, like there's no difference. And so I don't think you have to hide yourself from your client, but that's why Freud did it. Now what Freud noticed and the psychoanalysts is that if you let people free associate the topics that they pick would be linked to one another. That reminds me of this. That reminds me of this.

31:34That reminds me of this. Now obviously, because people aren't just emitting random noises, there's a reason the things they're revealing are linked. There's some implicit similarity that they're striving toward. Now often what'll happen if you listen to your wife, for example, she's laying out a bunch of problems and it'll spiral. It'll reminder of something this off this happened with Freud. If you got to the gist of it, it would remind people of something that happened to them much earlier in their life and often something that was traumatic. So a trauma is a problem you encounter in your life that's quite deep so that it unsettles you that you do not resolve.

32:13So it's like it imagine that in your bedroom, there were holes that you could fall through into trouble. So you want to make a map of where all the holes are so that you can walk through the landscape without falling into the pit. Now it'd be better if you just fixed the holes, but at least you have the landscape mapped out. Well, a trauma is a trauma is a hole that hasn't been filled in. So maybe if you had a trauma when you were four, you hit a wall and you couldn't resolve the trauma, that's no different than not maturing in relationship to that problem. So what you have at hand there are the only the tools that you developed by the time you were four.

32:57Now then you might encounter a situation where that's reminiscent of that. So for example, someone might say, I had a problem with my boss. I have a recurring problem with my boss. And so you listen to me, says that reminds me exactly of what my father did when in this situation when I was a kid. And so the reason the person is reacting to their boss in a negative way is because they're using the same conceptual structure that they used to construe their father when they were four. You'll see this in marriages all the time. Like if you have a recurring problem with your partner that's that that you really can't understand.

33:33Now it might be your fixation at some developmental stage that's the problem. Like she's interacting with you in a way that elicits your 13 year old self consistently. But she also might be reacting to you in a way that elicits her 13 year old self. And so then but if you listen to her, she'll get to that. And then she'll tell you the story. And then sometimes she'll be able to figure out what to do about that herself or sometimes you'll have to discuss it. But it almost always results in tears almost always. And I think the reason for that is think that what happens is when people break down in tears.

34:16So children cry quite often. And they cry when they encounter an impediment that they can't surmount. And I think what tears do is dissolve you to the state of neurological plasticity that characterizes early childhood so that you can learn. Now people don't like that right that reversion. It's humiliating. But you know, you have to break that's the crying. The crying is an indication that the current conceptual sub structure is insufficient. It has to die. And then the tears come right and then now you're prepared neurologically to learn something new. And that'll be whatever comes out of the discussion.

34:55And that'll replace that old conceptual structure that's outdated and immature with a new somewhat fragile conceptual structure. Right. And then the personal try that out a couple of times like maybe you this is something where you have to slight something that's just come out of a cocoon. You have to be very careful when you negotiate with your partner because you know, maybe they'll decide that they'll try a new tactic that you have both agreed on. But the first 30 times they implement that new tactic. First of all, they won't do it very well because it's new and second. If you punish it, it'll kill it right away.

35:30Yeah. So you're describing my relationship very accurately because I am someone who in the mid. So what's my my sort of attachment style? I grew up in a household where my parents were very were at each other a lot. It was all fighting arguing. So I learned very early on that relationships are like prison. Right. So I wanted to commit. When I ran from committing my whole life, I met someone who had an opposite attachment style where whenever things get a little bit rocky, she wants to like latch on in a sense. Like she really wants to make sure that she's got my attention. Yeah. For example, I could come home and say one word that shows that I'm focused on my work.

36:09And then suddenly she's like trying for my attention. That makes me want to run and that makes her want to chase. Right. Right. And so then she'll you know, she'll get triggered and then she'll kind of retreat and be quote unquote like the word sulking is often used. Yeah. So we came up with a system where I said to her when you feel triggered by me not giving you the attention you want and we end up spiraling, can you just try and tell me as soon as possible? Yeah. Instead of like the seven hour silence. Yeah. So that was the mechanism we came up with. And then the first time she did that, I was as you said, very conscious of making sure I didn't react badly to it or get triggered by it.

36:48Right. So you're describing the process I've been through entirely. Yeah. Well, this happens. This happens to everyone and those those sulks, let's say, that's that's a nonverbal threat response. Right. Right. And you want to replace that with a more differentiated practical and more immediate strategy. You know, and so, you know, one of the things that I've seen, for example, with my wife is that the periods of time where she gets upset shrink and shrink and shrink and shrink because she can get from the problem to the verbalizable statement of the problem and the solution way, way faster. But that takes just from continual practice, continual attention.

37:29It's like, oh, I'm upset. Okay. Well, what am I upset about? Here's a bunch of things that I might be upset about. Okay. Which of those are focal? Like this is something you can learn. You know, but you have to, you have to admit you're upset. And you also have to understand that you don't know why. Because one of the things that'll happen in a marriage with any close relationship with any relationship is like, well, if you and I talk and we hit a pit, it's I would rather that it's your fault. Right. Because then you have to take the conceptual structure and you have to allow it to die and you have to cry and you have something to learn.

38:05And it's you and it's an indication that you're insufficient. It's way more convenient for me if it's you. Plus, I get to feel moral superior and like I have myself under control and that I've, you know, mastered the universe and also women also in some ways want that from men because they want the men to be competent. And so men will pretend to be more competent than they are. It's like, you want to find out what the problem is because then you can solve it. And one of the things you have to consider is that you're you're the problem. Maybe you're not. But maybe you are. Now you might say, well, why should you undergo the cataclysmic revelation that you're the problem and the answer is because you could stop being the problem.

38:47Like that's the pay off because you might say, well, why why attend to your wife? Why fight? And the answer is so you don't have to fight again. See, and I know this. So I'm a very agreeable person. I don't like conflict. Like I'll do almost anything to not to paper it over though. That's the thing to fix it. But the reason that I'll engage in conflict is because I know it isn't a theory. I know that conflict delayed is conflict multiplied. And so if I do have a problem with someone, I want to note it. Get it on the table, fight it through to the bloody bottom, fix it and move on. And there's a, you know, that's that's a lot of emotional stress and complex reconceptualization and retooling.

39:39And people would rather avoid that, you know, because you know, you come home from work and your mind is on something, whatever the hell it is. And then this like snake pops up and you think, do we really have to deal with this now? It's like, well, maybe and if not now, when and that's something you can also negotiate, you know, like I can give an example of that. So there was a time, a very long time where my daughter was insanely ill and suffering brutally and deteriorating at the same time. And that's overwhelming by definition, because a problem you can't solve is overwhelming. And then so the question arises, well, how do you deal with the problem that's overwhelming that you can't solve without making it worse?

40:23So one of the things that Tammy and I did was we made rules. It's like we didn't talk about Michaela after eight o 'clock at night. It was just off the table because we knew, well, are you going to, are you going to go to sleep? Are you going to need some sleep tonight? Like if we're going to battle this for like decades, we better not wear ourselves out. Okay, how not to? Well, let's make some rules that are like negotiating rules. And you can do this. This is good advice to the degree you can give people advice about a relationship. Here's you are going to have to listen to your wife 90 minutes a week.

41:01Okay. And you might as well just get that through your thick skull. Now why if you listen to her enough, you can make peace and you can play. So there's a huge benefit. If you don't listen to her, that will accumulate. And you'll listen to her in divorce court. Like you will eventually listen. And at some point, you'll pay for the privilege of doing so, right? Because there'll be other people involved. And then the backlog will be so high that you might never escape from it. Why don't men like to listen? Well, often because the insufficiency's are pointed at them. And sometimes, especially if the woman, let's say, and this can go both ways, let's be sure about this, but we'll be minus well, revoke, revert to the stereotypes.

41:47And I think it's fair because women are more threat sensitive. So they're more likely to bring up problems. Now that's the disadvantages. They bring up problems that don't exist because that's a false positive. But the advantage is they bring up problems before you're sensitive enough to see them. And so this is very important. If you think about the role of women is the woman is closer to the infant than you. Okay. So you're doing whatever the hell you're doing, you're concentrating on your career, you know, you're not especially when the infants under a year old, you're a step removed. Now, and good, you can be dealing with the external world, but she's concentrating on the little kids.

42:25And one of the things you want to hear from her is what the hell's wrong with the kids before you're wise enough to see it. Now, the price you pay for that is she might be shorting out about things that don't exist. So, you know, and this is especially true if your wife is high in neuroticism and it could be true if the husband is too. But as I said, that's the more stereotypical situation. So why listen to get to the signal? Now, will she get to the signal? Yes, although she might not be very good at that and it might take a lot of listening. But if you listen long enough, she'll get better and better at it until she'll get like really good at it.

42:57And then the time between the emergence of the problem and the solution will just it'll collapse to the point where it's virtually immediate. Now, that can take that's a very high level of mastery. That can take a very long time. But then, you know, you also want to put forward to your wife and yourself the proposition that you're better than you are, which is, well, I can, okay, I get the problem, I can solve it. It's like, no, you probably don't get the problem. And even if you did, it isn't necessarily the case that you could solve it. And so you have to put up with the fact that you're going to have to be dragged through the mud because she's going to point to, you know, maybe her kid's upset because you're a tyrant.

43:34And you probably are a tyrant to some degree, you know, clomping around overconfident and all that. And so she's going to poke you. Well, maybe you're, this is how you're stupid. And maybe this is how you're stupid. And maybe this is how you're long list of potential ways and actual ways you could be stupid. So you have to listen to that. Now, your wife has to act in good faith. You know, one of the things that Tammy and I did when we first got married, because I thought a lot of this through before we got married. I said, look, you know, if we're going to do this, you have to tell me the truth.

44:08I don't care what it is. You, I'll tell you the truth, but you have to tell me the truth. I don't care what the truth is. But it has to be true, right? And so that's without that, you get nowhere. And you can't trust your partner either. And so your partner has to be all in. That's why you have a marriage file. Because the marriage file is basically this. This is the vow. No matter what you tell me, I won't run away. And that's a bitch of a vow, man, because when someone unveils their whole heart, they unveil themselves all the way down to hell. It's not pleasant. It's awful. And so they need to know that you will not run away.

44:50And that's a vow because what do you know? Look, the person's always going to be thinking, always, if you really knew who I was, you wouldn't love me, you wouldn't be with me. And you know, hey, fair enough, because people are full of snakes. And if all those snakes were revealed, perhaps the logical thing to do would run, would be to run. And so then you might not, you might say, well, why not run? It's like, well, you want to run from everyone for the rest of your life. You want to forego the advantages of a permanent relationship. And you're full of snakes too. So you're both making a bad bet.

45:26And so you make the bad bet based based on the idea that if you are faithful and you are truthful, that you can resolve the issues and you can. It's a good deal. Resolving issues. Much of what you've talked about stems back to childhood trauma and things that happen in our are formative years. I often wonder those holes in the bedroom floor you describe that the early traumas can we get there often in the bedroom floor, by the way? Yeah. You bet. Can we ever fill those or can we just put planks of whatever? Oh no, no, no, you can't put planks of whatever them. You have to fill them and what you do.

46:01And you can do this. You know, let's say you were bullied repeatedly when you were a kid. Okay, you're probably still being bullied because if you didn't being a bully victim is a stable trait. So the great analysis of bullies that have been done, Dan always and Sweden did this who is a great psychologist. He analyzed bullying behavior and bully victim behavior. So we define bullying very carefully. You're a bully if you use power disproportionately. So like if I'm 12 and I'm picking on someone my own size, I'm not a bully, right? Because there's a the risk to me is commensurate to the risk to them.

46:42That's just aggression. That's just competition. And even if it's violent, it's not bullying. A bully is when I'm 12 and you're eight or when there's two of us in one of you or when I get you in a position where you're completely vulnerable and can't defend yourself, disproportionate use of force, right? bully victim is someone the bullies will check out. Imagine a bully comes into a room full of kids. He'll poke at all the kids and one of the kids will manifest a disproportionate emotional response. Well, then it's like he just zeros in on that. And those are often kids who are higher in neuroticism or who are fragile for other reasons.

47:18And then that can become permanent. And both the bullies and the bully victims have a negative long term developmental trajectory. The bullies tend to become criminal and alienated on that front, especially as they move into high school. And the bully victims tend to become depressed, anxious, independent. If you have a partner who's been a bully victim, for example, that's going to be brought into your marriage. And then one of the things that's going to happen is every time you try to have a dispute, which is to actually think and solve a problem, they're going to see you through the bully template.

47:49They're going to treat you like you're a bully. They're going to accuse you of being a bully. They're going to bring up all the times before when you acted like a bully. And then you're going to have to defend yourself. And part of the reason that people can't listen is because they also don't know how to defend themselves, especially if you're here's 15 pieces of evidence that you're a bully. It's like, can you counter those? Maybe. What if you're not very articulate? It might take you two weeks to think up how to argue yourself out of that. Plus you're going to be doubtful about it. So those are very complicated things to work through.

48:22But you can listen. If you listen, the person will dispense with some of their accusations by themselves. The accusations that can't be dispensed with them. Now, those are questions. You know, maybe your kid's upset when he or she's interacting with you. And your wife says, well, you're too hard on them. It's like, well, are you? Well, it's time for you to go away for like a week and meditate on that. Right? And that's that soul searching. Right? You're going to go down to the bottom of your hearts like, why are you a bully? Are you a bully like your father was a bully? You know, are you a bully like a friend who was a reprobate that you admired and tried to copy was a bully?

49:06You know, you have to see because maybe you are. Maybe you should stop. But then you also have to figure out how you would be if you weren't being a bully. Then your wife can help you. You know what? This is another good rule for couple conflict. Like, let's say I'm what do you want? If I could give you what you wanted, what would it be? Well, I don't know. It's like, no, sorry. I cannot hit a target. You won't specify. Let's discuss it at least. We got to have a target here. And so this is also if you're an employee, you got to know this. If you're an employee, you're going to your boss with a problem.

49:46Why do you go with a solution, too? You know, and if you're the sort of employee who goes to your boss with a solution, you'll rack it yourself up the hierarchy. If you're in a halfway's decent business, you'll ratchet yourself up the hierarchy so fast you can't believe it because you'll get a reputation as the person who can solve the problem. So you can actually play with this in in your marriage because one of the things that you can do, for example, is, well, let's say you say something that irritated your wife. Okay. And then you can say, okay, she'll say, well, that really bothered me. It's like, okay, it's an open question.

50:22Why? Maybe she's too goddamn sensitive. And maybe you're too much of a son of a bitch. It's like, who knows? Right? But you can ask her, okay, if I had said what you wanted me to say in that situation, what would have I said? Now, that's a hard question. She asked, think about that. It's like, well, what would have worked. And then she'll say, you know, well, maybe you could have said this and then you can say, okay, let me say it. Now, then she asked, but it's sort of like, let me say it. It'll be sort of fake. It'll be a first pass approximation. You're putting words in my mouth, but let's assume that I'm trying to do something better stupidly and badly to begin with, you know, with an eye to mastering it over 50 repetitions.

51:06So, but I'll start by just saying it. So she'll tell you what to say and you can say it. Now, if you're absolutely 100 % unwilling to say it because you think it violates your conscience, that's a whole different issue. That means there's a deeper discussion to be had. But maybe you could try it, you know, you could try it out for size. And maybe she could see if that sort of satisfied her. And now you've got a rubric for for how that interaction might go in the future. Let's make it concrete. You come home at the end of a work day, okay? There should be there's a right way of doing that that you have to negotiate with your wife.

51:44You know, maybe she rushes to the door and meets you with all the problems of the day. Okay, that's probably not a great strategy. You know, because you're already up to here. You're tired. So is she likely from whatever she was doing? Maybe she was at work too. You can't meet each other when you're both tired every single day for the rest of your life with nothing but a ball of problems. Partly because if you do that 50 times, you're going to view the person as just a bunch of snakes that are coming at you. That's not good. Even if the problems that are being pointed to are real, you know, you might think, okay, so you come home after work.

52:22What would be the best way for that to unfold? And you have to negotiate that. And I would say, we, you know, let's parameterize that a bit. You're probably hungry. Well, you don't want to talk to someone. This is another great rule. Don't talk to your partner about something complicated when they're hungry. It's not going to work. So maybe you come home, you have something to eat. You kick off your shoes. Maybe you take 10 minutes for yourself and then you can talk, but you want to get that right. Or maybe you come home, you meet each other at the door. She gives you a hug. You have something to eat.

52:53You relax for a minute. Maybe you have a shower. But then you've already negotiated about when you're going to have a conversation and you're going to be prepared for it. Now people do this in their business. You don't just randomly discuss a bunch of problems at your business if it's running reasonably well. You have a meeting. It's parameterized. You kind of have an agenda. You have to do that at home. Your home is also a small business. And it has to be run like that. And you have to spend 90 minutes, at least 90 minutes a week with your wife, just running the damn business. And I can tell you, if you don't do that, you'll never get to the play ever because maybe you'll, you know, you'll be romantically interested in each other.

53:33And you want to spend some time together. But there's a bunch of problems brewing and your wife will definitely do this. Well, absolutely happen is that when you're trying to be interested in each other, these things will come into her mind and distract her and she'll bring them up. And then you'll get pissed off because it's like, well, we're supposed to be having fun at the moment. We're supposed to be attending to each other. Why are you bringing that up? And the answer is, well, we're together. And these are problems. We haven't set aside time to deal with them. The reason you should listen to your wife is because if you listen to her now, she'll tell you what's wrong and what she wants.

54:06And then you can fix what's wrong and you can give her what she wants. In your practice, have you ever encountered those holes in the bedroom, those childhood traumas that you realized at some point when you stared into the patient's eyes, they could never solve? Yes. Yes. Yeah. A bottomless abyss. Yeah. It's awful. Yeah. I was in situations where you know, I'd get to the bottom of it. I thought. And then it was like Dante's. So Dante's in Ferno for everyone who is reading, listening, you should read that book. Dante's in Ferno is a topography of hell. So underneath every problem is layers of problems, right?

54:51Right to the bottom. For Dante, the worst problem was betrayal. Right? And the reason betrayal is the worst problem is like, if you and I want to have a relationship, we have trust each other. And betrayal is the violation of the trust upon which relationships are predicated. So it blows apart everything. So the lowest level of hell for Dante, the bottom of hell was filled with betrayers. And that's right. That's childhood sexual abuse, like it's the ultimate betrayal. Right? It's the child sexual predator is someone who takes the role of guardian to be the wolf. Right? It's the worst form of betrayal.

55:30And so it just devastates children. And because they're actually faced with the problem of malevolence at a very early age. And they, what the hell? It's like, you're four. And now you see the bottom of hell. Well, that's trauma. And the only, the way you treat that by the way is you walk people through a topography of hell. That's what you do. And you can do that. Well, let's say you were abused when you were kid. Okay, so what's your problem? Well, your problem is you've seen into the heart of darkness. That's your problem. And just blew you into pieces. Could people really be like that? Is that my father?

56:06Right? Is that my uncle? How could he do that? Well, that's you're gazing into the face of malevolence itself. You have to develop a philosophy of good and evil. It's a religious philosophy, essentially, because a philosophy of good and evil is a religious philosophy. Those are the same thing. You have to, you have to develop a philosophy of evil. And then you have to understand how you combat that. And that's very complicated. How do you combat evil with truth, with love, with beauty? You have to start to embody that. You know, or maybe it's even worse, you're traumatized because you did something like brutal, seriously brutal.

56:42And maybe you enjoyed it. That's a very common pathway to post -traumatic stress disorder for people. And post -traumatic stress disorder occurs when you have a very large hole that, you know, gapes large enough to swallow virtually everything that hasn't been fixed or papered over. You do that by finding your way out of hell. And that's what happens in the inferno, too. Dante is guided through hell by Virgil, who's the spirit that guides you through hell. That's a good way of thinking about it. So, and every problem, if the problems your wife brings to you, especially if they repeat, there are levels underneath that.

57:16And at the bottom, there's a betrayal, something like that. There's some bit of hell in there somewhere. And so, and sometimes, you know, if you go all the way to the bottom and you solve that bottom problem, you solve a whole bunch of peripheral problems. So, in, there's a movie apocalypse now that's about a journey to the heart of darkness. And that's what the book is about. Connolly Joseph Conrad's book. And there's a documentary heart of darkness that describes the making of apocalypse now. And the people who made apocalypse now, which was a movie about a journey to the heart of darkness, it had an effect on them while they were making the movie.

57:51And all of the people that were acting in the movie and directing and producing and financing all went on a journey to the heart of darkness inside. And it virtually killed them. One of them had a heart attack. One of them went completely broke. Like, they just had a catastrophe when they were making this movie. They fell into its archetypal clutches. Heart of darkness is the name of the documentary. It's fascinating. Have you been on that journey yourself? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sort of, I would say in some ways, permanently. When I went back, when I was 20, something like that, 20, I started studying atrocity.

58:28Right. And so, I was, I've always been interested in the Holocaust, Auschwitz in particular, but it's a very particular interest. Like, evil, Nazi Germany, Auschwitz, prison guard, prison guard who enjoyed his work. Right. Because my question was, how could you be an Auschwitz prison guard who enjoyed his work? Now, one answer is, well, you're just like a demon from another planet who's so unlike me that I don't even have to worry about it. And that's a very convenient answer, but it's not true. Many, many, many of the people, not all, many of the people who were involved in the Nazi atrocities were perfectly ordinary people.

59:14They were just like you. And you think, no, I wouldn't do that. It's like, that's not what the evidence suggests. The evidence suggests that the vast majority of people in Nazi Germany went along with it. Now, not all of them were dragged into the abyss itself, but plenty were. And if you think you wouldn't have been one of them, that just means it's highly likely that you would have, because you have no idea what you're capable of. There's a great book about that's terrifying book called Ordinary Man. And it's about the initiation of a police battalion from Germany who went to Poland after the Germans marched into Poland.

59:54Now, these were ordinary men. They were policemen middle -aged who had grown up before the Nazi propaganda mill got going. Okay. So they weren't indoctrinated Nazis from like the time they were four. They're just ordinary middle -class guys. Plus their commander told them in Poland when they were starting to do military work, even though they were civilian policemen, that they could go home, that they didn't have to do this job, and that there would be no repercussions. And in fact, out of the battalion, a number of men right at the beginning said, I'm not doing this and they went home. The vast majority went along.

1:00:30Now, why? Okay. So now these policemen are in Poland and they've been told a story, which is that, you know, Germany's at war. And the reason for that is that evil Jews have conspired up a conspiracy and they've united the Western world against us. And there are fifth column within the country. And your patriotic duty is to root them out. Now that we're in Poland and you're saving the fatherland. And there's going to be dirty work associated with it. And do you really want to leave all that to your compatriots? You know, your companions, your guys? Because like if you and I are together and someone that we're working for, presents us with a dirty job, and I say, well, I'm not doing that.

1:01:09Well, then I leave it to you. So there's a kind of betrayal that's built into that. Now, the guys that left thought, I don't care, I'm not doing this, but most people didn't. And part of the reason they didn't do it is because they were loyal to their, to their peers by the end of this, which took months, these guys were taking naked, naked pregnant women out into the middle of fields and shooting them in the back of head like and becoming violently ill because of doing so and tearing themselves into shreds internally. Like sick, sick at heart, but doing it. And that's it's a terrible thing to look at.

1:01:42And I started looking at that like 40 years ago now, you know, it was shocking. And so what did I discover? Well, I discovered a lot of things. I discovered that the root road to totalitarian hell and atrocity is paved with lies. Like lies are the pathway to hell really, like practically and metaphysically. And so one of the things I decided this was in 1985 was that I was not, I was going to stop lying. What does that mean practically? Lies ruin your life. So you will not accept a white lie? Well, look, a white lie is worse than better than a black lie, but look, if you're really telling the truth, you're serving truth at every level of analysis simultaneously.

1:02:32That's right. So if my words are landing properly, they're going to be the words that work right now and tomorrow and a week from now and a month from now and they're going to work for me and they're going to work for you. So a true statement has levels of application and a white lie is a statement that's true at one level and false at another. Now you might not be able to maybe you don't have the wherewithal at that moment to come up with the statement that satisfies all the truth conditions at every level. And so you default to the best you can manage. You know, your wife says, do I look fat in this dress?

1:03:07You know, or maybe she says, how do I look in this dress? And you think you don't like that dress? And you know, the easy thing to do is to say, I love it here, whatever you want. Or, you know, of course not. But that's and that's a white lie. But that's not the optimal answer. Like a better answer that is, don't ask me questions like that. And then you can have a discussion about it. See, the thing is, I've done, I bought a lot of clothes for my wife. I like clothes shopping for my wife. And I tell her how I think she looks. And the advantage to that is that if I tell her that she looks good, she knows I mean it.

1:03:46Right. I'm not muddying up the water. And if I have to say something, I mean, it's not like I, the number of times that I've told her that I'm not happy with the way she's presenting it. Like it's it's virtually that virtually never happens. She actually has extremely good taste. And so it's just an example. But if you're forced into a situation where you have to tell a white lie, there's snakes somewhere that you haven't dealt with. And maybe the best you can do. And that's Lenin Cohen, the poet said, there's no decent place to stand in a massacre. You may have already compromised yourself to the point where in that situation the best you can do is a lie.

1:04:26But that means that you shouldn't have bloody well been there to begin with. And the antidote in many respects is honesty further upstream. Honesty with yourself and others further upstream. You can get yourself in positions where all of your options are bad. And what that means is exactly as you pointed out, you did something upstream, man. Now one of the things you do in therapy is you find out what people did upstream. You know, and you'll find this in your discussions with your wife. There'll be a problem. And as you circle towards it, you'll see, oh, this is where I made a mistake. Right.

1:05:01This is what's wrong with me. And then you can even you can even find out if you look, you can you can go back into your past and you can think, oh, yeah, that's when I made that decision. I knew when I made it, it was bad decision. And your life is full of the consequences of decisions you took in the past that put you on the wrong path. And you said we were talking about repairing things. What you do is you go back to where you made the mistake. You figure out what the mistake was. You know, there's this cartoon trope that there's an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other. Well, you come to a cross road.

1:05:36That's also where you meet the devil. Go this way or that way. If you go the wrong direction, your life will be then the consequences of that bad choice. And then that will tangle you up. And then you'll suffer for it. Then you have to figure out, okay, what's the suffering? What's the problem? When did I make the bad choice? Which road should have I taken? That's how you fix a trauma. You you replaced the road you did take with the road you should have taken. And now you have a road forward. And once you have a road forward, the trauma is no longer traumatic because you have a road, your brain brings up the past because you have not specified the proper road forward.

1:06:17You go back into the road you took that was the wrong road. You find out what the right road was. Now you've you've atoned you've confessed. You've repented and you have specified the proper pathway forward. And that's what you do when you negotiate a solution to a problem with your wife too. Here's what we're doing. Here's the problem. Here's what we did wrong. Here's what we'll try to do in the future. And if that new future map works, that past trauma will be rendered irrelevant. I was looking at our past conversation and I thought it would be interesting to see who the audience were, their demographic and the the age group were 20 to 40 year olds, really 18 to 40 year olds.

1:07:04My question to you is in their lives in that demographic's lives, what do you think the biggest challenges because you're both your kids Julian and Michaela both fit into that that category as well. What is the greatest challenge that that demographic face? Well, the biggest challenges we had with our kids was see, I think the biggest challenge I had in my generation was negotiating the years between 13 and 50 something like that. But my sense is now the biggest challenge to young people is negotiating the transition into adulthood into adulthood identity. And I think that's partly why we have this terrible war in our culture of what constitutes identity.

1:07:44And I think the reason that identity has become such a problem is that our concepts of identity are unbelievably unsophisticated, narrow, hedonistic and self -serving. So the identity groups that have popped up are all you could say, whim -based identity groups, their sexual identity say or something arbitrary like sex, sex or race or ethnicity, something arbitrary. But the sexual identity groups are particularly interesting because the idea that that's your identity is predicated on the notion that there isn't anything more vital to you than your than the immediacy of your sexual behavior. Well, you're not a sex machine.

1:08:31You're not a short -term sex machine. That's not what a human being is. So if you revert to that, all you're going to do is produce like anxiety, hopelessness and misery. It's not a good solution. So then you might say, well, what's the solution? And the solution is something called a subsidiary solution. It's like, so what's your identity? Well, you should get your act together and take care of yourself. So you have to integrate yourself. You have to integrate across anxiety and hatred and pain and jealousy and fear and hunger and lust and all the that that plethora of spirits that wage war within you.

1:09:11It's a lot. You have to bring that into a unity. Okay. And one of the things Nietzsche said, the famous German philosopher was that every drive attempts to philosophize in its spirit. So all those sub -city sub - subordinate spirits that war inside you will try to dominate. I'm only my anger or rage. That's the protestor type. You know, I'm only my sexuality. I'm only my appetite. That's the consumer model. But all that has to be integrated. And then you might say, well, integrated into what? Well, integrated into a structure that serves all of those spirits simultaneously and harmoniously across a long time.

1:09:52That's maturity. Okay. But that doesn't happen in isolation. So then the next there's stages above that. Okay. So the next thing is maybe you've got your act together enough so that someone can tolerate being around you. So that so there's enough left over from you so you can play with someone else. So you establish a relationship, marriage, let's say. You invite someone else to join forces with you. You produce a united vision. Okay. So now there's you and there's you as husband. And it's the joint interplay of those that's now your identity. Okay. And so now you have a role and you have obligations and responsibilities and opportunities.

1:10:34You know, you say, well, I'm constrained by my marriage. You know, there's all sorts of things I can't do, which really means I can no longer in the most primitive way. It means I can no longer immediately gratify my short term whims. Although it could also be more complex in that I don't get to pursue the things that I need to pursue, which means you haven't negotiated with your wife very well. Like if your marriage is a prison, you have, you're either very immature in what you want or you haven't negotiated properly. If you've done it well, you've got your individual unity established. And then there's a unity within the marriage that's better.

1:11:09And why would it be better? Well, you could learn to love someone. And that would be better because getting outside yourself decreases your anxiety. So we know as psychologists, one of the things that was learned 20 years ago is that there's no difference between thinking about yourself and what you want and being miserable. Those are self -consciousness and negative emotion are so tightly tied together that they're statistically indistinguishable. Does that not raise the question about the decline of religion? Absolutely. Well, that's the next level. It's like, okay, so there's you now, you're a husband, right?

1:11:47And so your identity is those two things in lockstep, but that's not enough. Now, maybe you're a father. Now you have kids. Now you have a whole another level of responsibility and opportunity to flesh yourself out and support and love, right? So now, and then well, you so you've got your family together, that's not enough. You've got the community to serve. So you want to serve the community and then community scale, you know, maybe you're good in your local business and you have a local business organization and you're good in that. And then well, then there's the town level and the city level and the state level and the country level.

1:12:25And then, you know, America is one nation under God. That's the ultimate level of this hierarchy of identity. And that's what should be served most fundamentally. That's a definition. Okay. God is that which should be served most fundamentally. It's a definition. So when you're thinking that B is better than A, what you're saying, even if you don't know it, is that B is a step from A on the road to God. That's what you're saying. The medieval definition, am it evil definition of God was something like the sum of all that is good or the essence of what is good. And so if you believe that there is a good, then lurking behind that is the spirit of all that which all which all of that which is good.

1:13:14That's God by definition. Now you can debate forever about what that is. But it is something you live in relationship to like that's in escape. That's absolutely inescapable. And you might say, well, I don't believe in God. And then I would say, well, do you believe in good? And you'll say, no, I say, well, then you can't act because you act towards a good or you're not motivated. I call to Simon Gunning, who's the CEO of campaign of living miserably. It's a big mental charity here. And I said, give me the updated stats. He said to me 19 to 35 year olds, which is that demographic that are listening to this predominantly are twice as likely to report being in crisis than any other group.

1:13:53Right. And there's a reason. It's a very straightforward reason. It's it's literally this. The more you are focused on yourself, the more miserable you are. It's as simple as that. But that's society now these days. We've got no one. Well, I'm troubled. Force is pushing us in that direction. You know, like I could attribute this to the idiocy of a degenerate Protestant liberalism driven by postmodernism. But you could also just as easily point to consumerist capitalism. It's like, it's all about you. It's all about what you want. Worse. It's all about what you want right now. Worse. It's all about what your bassist appetites want regardless of cost right now.

1:14:36Well, that that's the same as being two years old. It's there's nothing about that. And why do you think that's you anyways? It's like since wind and what you are become what the most idiotic part of you who cares nothing about anything else and any other people wants right now. Why is that you? How about this though? So this is where I'm trying to make a distinction is responsibility is a good thing. But with responsibility sometimes times comes this idea that it's about me. My outcomes are about me. It's all about me. My success and failure are a consequence of me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Yeah. Well, that's right.

1:15:14Right. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, that's why the classical Christian philosophy has always been that you cannot infer someone's more or worth by the level of accomplishment. So the aristocrats would have said the Roman aristocrats would have said, well, look at me. Like it's pretty obvious speaking to a slave say it's pretty obvious that I'm better than you. First of all, I can slap you and there's not a god damn thing you can do about it. And you have to do what I tell you to do. And I've got all the money and all the stuff. And I can make all the decisions. And I have all the power clearly that's evidence that I'm morally superior to you.

1:15:52But didn't they believe that a god had granted them that superiority? It's a some degree. So didn't they often believe in fortune as the we sure we're in a good responsibility. Sure. Of course they did. That just made it even better. It's like it's a the fact that I've got the power as a reflection of the fact that the cosmic order is clearly on my side. And we believe that less now because of the decline of religion. So we now think that our outcomes are more determined by our own actions. Yes, but lurking underneath that is is there's a hidden god lurking underneath all that too. It's just that the goddess becomes subjectivity.

1:16:24It's something like that. When God talks to Moses out of the depths of the burning bush, he says, I am what I am. And that's what every degenerate Protestant liberal says now. I am what I am. And they also say, and if you don't go along with it, the consequences for you are going to be pretty damn dismal. Use my pronouns, adopt my identity, play the game that the worst part of me insists on or else. And it is a consequence. I said Protestant liberalism for a reason like as we've moved away from God, we've moved into a radical subjectivity. Now the problem with that is that a radical subjectivity, especially one of impulse is unbelievably immature and counterproductive.

1:17:08It just doesn't work any more than a room full of two year olds works. What's subsidiary structure? It's the adoption of voluntary responsibility made way more complex identity. It's like, you know, take on the load, take someone in your life, make a permanent relationship, work it out, have some kids, serve your society at all these different levels, strive upward, what's up? Okay, here's the definition of up, a better solution. Unites more situations and people across broader spans of time. Is this why this brings me to you're doing Peterson's Academy, which is an online sort of interactive learning platform you've designed, which seems like it's taking on this typical university structure.

1:18:02I was on there, I see people consign it right now, but why are you doing Peterson's Academy? Well, curiosity.

1:18:14I'm curious about virtually everything. I started putting my lectures on YouTube because I was curious what'll happen if I use this, you know, so curiosity. But then the more deliberative answer is I'm in a very fortunate position because I can meet pretty much anyone I want to meet. And the people I want to meet are almost always interesting thinkers, let's say, or people who've done interesting things repeatedly in their lives. And so I can find those people and some of them are very charismatic and they have lots to say. And they, I am providing them with a platform to say those things. And we can do it at extremely high quality and very, very low cost.

1:18:52And we can distribute that to everyone. And I am an educator. I'm a professor, or at least I was, I'm still a professor at Emma, Emma, Emma, right? And it's timed for the, for what we've been doing in universities for all these centuries to be made available on a mass scale because it can be done very well. And it can be done. And it's entertaining to do. And there's no reason not to do it. Okay, so that's all on the positive side. And then there's a sense of humor aspect to it too because it became impossible for me to work in the university. And so I thought, fine, I'll go build my own university because I thought, maybe there's something arrogant about this when the university came after me.

1:19:34There was part of me that thought, you think I need you. It's like, I don't think so. I think you need me. And if you don't want me around anymore, we'll see who needs who. Now, like I said, you know, I was irritated and pieved and maybe there's something arrogant about that. But let's reconfigure it. So here's one of the experiences I've had bringing these professors down to Miami. This is especially true with the professors from Cambridge and Oxford. Like some of these people, man, they're deadly. You're lucky to have a conversation with them. They've been thinking a long time. They're super smart.

1:20:10They're wise. They know their field. They're great communicators. These are stellar people. And their universities treat them terribly. No respect. They let their students walk all over them. They pay them abysmally. They treat them as if they're pawns of the administration. It's sickening. And so I invite them down to Miami and we make them a good financial offer. And we treat them like people. We're very pleased to have there and that we hope they'll come back. And they have a really good time and they deliver and we say, look, they say, well, what, what, function do you want this course to serve?

1:20:45You know, because maybe they're worried that there's a political agenda or something like that. And our rule is we picked you for a reason. You know what we're doing. You tell us how to get the hell out of your way so that we can enable you to teach the course. You've always dreamed of teaching. We will provide you with the audience. You've always wanted, which will be people because they have a live audience and live audience members. We select are selected because they want to come and listen, which is what you want for students. And so we want to have the dream experience for the professor come talk about what you love to people who want to listen plus will provide you with maybe enough financial security.

1:21:24So you don't have to be concerned about your damn university anymore, which is also something I'm quite pleased about. Now, I don't know if we can deliver on that, but even the initial we give them an advance like with a book deal and even the additional advance generally is a sizable sum. It depends to some degree on their following, right? We do some economic calibration, but I would love to be in a position where I could take like the best thousand lectures in the world, bring them on to Peterson Academy, give them financial independence, because that would be really amusing. And then to bring what they have to say to everyone for like for almost no cost.

1:22:05You first, you've taken a first principle approach to trying to build in a university, bringing the best professors together, giving them the freedom, making sure they're not they're not censored in any way, giving them the audience and the remuneration and appreciation they deserve. When does this university Peterson Academy launch? Early 2024. We already have 30 courses recorded something like that. I'll put the link to the university in the description below on this episode, but also you can just search Peterson's university online and it comes up the first thing. We usually have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest in the diary.

1:22:42But I wanted to ask you my own question because it was quite pivotal to our, it was really informative and the honesty you brought with it in our last conversation really changed my life in a number of ways. How? I'll tell you after asking your question. Okay, okay, okay. The question is how are you doing? Good. Good. You know, I still have a lot of pain. So that's annoying, but not anywhere near as much as I did have when I was really sick. So like I almost always feel like I have a relatively serious flu, achy, it's some neurological problem and I have no idea what it is and neither does anyone else.

1:23:23But, but I'm not anxious at all and my head is very clear and I have such a ridiculously interesting life that the the the leftover trouble is basically irrelevant. You know, I wish it would go away, but whatever it's not that big a problem. So and I, I mean, I just have an absolutely miraculous realm of opportunity in front of me. It's crazy. Every day I have is so interesting that it's almost unbearable and I would tell people who are listening, you know, you might want that for yourself, let's say, you might want to have that and I can tell you you can one way to increase the probability that things will unfold for you properly is to is to not lie.

1:24:11Just stop lying. Period. Stop saying things you believe to be untrue. Stop doing things you know to be wrong. Just start with that. You'll get closer and closer to the truth and the truth is the truth is the adventure of life. That's the advantage to the truth. You have the world on your side, but obviously because if you're lying about things, you're opposing reality. Who are you? Who are you to oppose reality? Good luck. Unbearable. It's almost unbearable. Your life is so exciting and so full of opportunities that it's almost unbearable. Yeah, yeah, it's like an action adventure movie all the time.

1:24:54It's crazy. It's crazy. You know, wherever I go, I can talk to whoever I want essentially. You know, I'm going from country to country. People stop me on the streets. They're happy to see me. It's like I have friends wherever I go. Really, it's crazy and people, you know, they feel they know me because they've been watching hours often and they do know me. You know, I don't know them, but they certainly approach me on good terms. You know, and so and I go, I just was in nine different countries and I have a team of people who set up meetings for me, like dinner meetings and so on in these countries and they're always people.

1:25:29They're well placed people in the political realm and the culture realm. They're hyper interesting people and you know, so I meet 30 people like that every second day in different countries all over the world. And so and then I have these podcasts and I can basically phone anyone I want who I would like to talk to and they'll talk to me. And so, you know, three times a week, I get to sit down with someone who's like a bloody genius and for 90 minutes, they'll tell me a whole bunch of things I don't know. So that's superbly interesting. And so and you know, my books are selling like mad and I am writing another one, which I'm really interested in.

1:26:06And yeah, it's great. It's ridiculously interesting. And you can I truly believe that people have that at hand. You have that at hand. That's there for you. Jordan, thank you. My pleasure. It's always good to talk with you. It's always good to talk with you too. And it's you've given me a gift as you did last time in so many ways. So thank you so much for making the decision because I know you could be anywhere. So if you'd come here, that that that that honor and that that decision is not lost on me. So it means a lot to me. Thank you so much for the work that you do. Yeah. Well, I'll tell you just so you know, too, it's like there's a reason I'm here.

1:26:42You know, I have a team that because I do have a lot of requests. And when you have more requests than you can possibly fulfill, there's a certain pain in that because the requests are almost always of some quality. You know, so we triage and we're looking for people whose podcasts have reached and who have been successful and who will conduct a straightforward and honest interview. And that will, you know, that are aiming up and that won't play games. And there's a reason I'm here. And the reason I'm here is because of the work that you've done. So right, it's no favor. I'm glad to be here, but I'm here because this is the right place to be right now.

1:27:22So congratulations on that. Thank you so much.