The 7 Habits That Will Fix Your Life - Jordan Peterson

[Music] I've often thought there's these seven things that people have to get approximately right you know we went through some of them you need an intimate relationship family job or career you have to take care of yourself mentally and physically your health you have to regulate your drug and alcohol use you have to use your work time productively outside of work um there's One other I often mention I can't remember it now it's an arbitrary list in some sense but if you don't have a list it's a good one and maybe you can pick one

of those things and work on them and if you have all of those things your life is likely to be better you know maybe you're a true radical and you have to live in a way that isn't traditional and and you don't need any of that highly improbable that that's true and God only knows how You're going to find your own way but until you know that for certain it's not such a bad idea to adopt an apprenticeship in at least one of these areas and you know the purpose of being an apprentice isn't so

that you're a slave it's so that you become capable of your Masterpiece you of transcending the the discipline so the idea is look there's lots of disciplinary strategies there's lots of games you should you could play and so you can fall into a Moral relativism say well all games are equal it's like well no but even if that's true you the fact that you need a game that isn't relative that's true you need a game pick a game which game anyone is better than none play it hard see what happens you'll change as a consequence

of the pursuit and I [Music] think you have to be in very Dire Straits before that won't work you can be in Straits that are so dire that you Can't move forward but generally you're somewhere that you could improve in some manner is is just getting people to believe that is that harder than actually doing it in some ways that that we seem to be there's so many young people that just feel so lost that just getting them just convincing them to do it is is in some ways more important than doing it well you

I don't think you can convince them exactly but you can ask them it's like okay well Think about your life um and I do think I address this directly in that chapter M remember some sometimes you accomplish something difficult well was that a good was that good or not and generally The Human Experience as far as I can tell is that when you've accomplished something difficult you regard that as worthwhile so okay so look that so then you say this is a therapeutic technique In some sense because you don't try to convince people you you

you get them to look at their own experiences like well it turns out that in your life when you've done something that stretched you beyond where you were so that was difficult that you regarded that as worthwhile okay so let's let's assume that that's a that's that's true and that that can be duplicated most people have problems in Living they don't have psychological problems and so I've experienced despite my love for the psychoanalysts very frequently what I'm doing as a therapist is helping people have a life that would work you know and you can parameterize

that it's like what do you need how about some friends that people kind of like that how about an intimate relationship with someone that you can trust that maybe has a future that'd be good how about a career that Puts you in a dominance hierarchy somewhere so at least you've got some possibility of rising some possibility of stabilizing yourself and a schedule in a routine because no one can live without a routine you just forget that if you guys don't have a routine I would recommend like you get one going because you cannot be mentally

healthy without a routine you need to pick a time to get up whatever time you want but pick one and stick to it because otherwise you Disregulated your circadian rhythms and they regulate your mood and eat something in the morning I've had lots of clients who've had anxiety disorders I had one client who was literally starving very smart girl she there's very little that she liked she kind of tried to subsist on like half a cup of rice a day she came to me and said I have no energy I come home all I want

to do is watch the same movie over and over what like is that weird and I thought Well it depends on how hard you work you know it's little weird but whatever it's familiar you're looking for comfort so I did an analysis of her diet it's like 3/4 of a cup of rice it's like you're St starving eat something you know you'll feel better so she modified her diet and all her anxiety went away and she had some energy it's like yeah you got to eat so a schedule that's a good thing man Your brain

will thank you for it it will stabilize your nervous system with a bit of a plan that's a good thing you need a career you need something productive to do with your time you need to regulate your use of drugs and alcohol most particularly alcohol cuz that does in a lot of people um you need a family like the family you have your parents and all that be nice if you all got along you could work on that that's a good thing to work on and Then you know you probably need children at some point

that's life that's what life is and if you're missing you know you may have a good reason to not be op operating on one of those Dimensions it's not mandatory but I can tell you that if you're not operating reasonably well on four I think I mentioned six if you're not operating reasonably well on at least three of them there's no way you're going to be Psychologically thriving and that's more pragmatic in some sense than psychological right human beings have a nature there's things we need and if we have them well that's good and if

we don't have them well then we feel the lack and so behaviorists behavioral psychologists concentrate a lot more on that sort of thing you know it's practical it's like strategizing make a career plan figure out how to negotiate cuz that's bloody important figure out How to say what you need figure out how to tell the truth to people figure out how to listen to your partner in particular because if you listen to them they will actually tell you what they want and sometimes you can give it to them and maybe they'll return the favor and

if you practice that for like 15 years well then maybe you're constantly giving each other what you want well hooray that would be good and then there's two of You under most circumstances and it's better to have two brains than one because people think differently because of their temperament mostly and so the negotiation is where the wisdom arises and it's part of the transformation the psychological transformation that's attendant on an intimate relationship and one of the fundamental purposes of a long-term intimate relationship try to make one room in your home as beautiful as possible see

Something around might be my favorite chapter yeah well you've got some interesting artistic taste yeah yeah I suppose um that's that's a chapter about about the value of of beauty as a mark for the Transcendent and it's great you want to establish a relationship with things that sustain you truth the great varities truth beauty beauty is difficult to Define but it it's an invitation to the Transcendent essentially because Beauty speaks of the ideal and and it it it impacts you beyond thought it's visceral Beauty and that's an indication of the power of the ideal and

if you try to establish a relationship with beauty and so to do that you can make one corner of your room beautiful if you can you start to play with the idea of beauty you start to learn to discriminate between what's Beautiful and what isn't and then you invite that into your life and that's a scare that's a that's a terrifying thing to some degree because beauty is very powerful partly because it reminds you of who you aren't but it's amazingly worthwhile and it's sort of the The Next Step Beyond cleaning up your room you

know make it orderly but then the next step is make it [Music] Beautiful so you've you've you're done being someone that you were a school kid you're done with that and so that's an achievement but it's also the end of something it's the end of an identity and it's a new beginning so now you have a new beginning you have a new beginning you don't get that many of those in your life if you move if you switch jobs if you make a radical life transformation you may have that sometimes that's accidental it's thrust upon

you that's That's different that's harder sometimes it's because of opportunity but maybe you get four or five opportunities like that in your life so they're rare you get to be someone new who who have a vision so when I started to puzzle this out it was often because of talking to clients or students who didn't know what to do what should I do with my life I don't know what to do with my life fair enough and that's not a very good question what do I do with my life it's like what's the answer to

everything it's not a good question right it's too vague so I suppose I answered this to some degree at least initially like a conservative person they say well what other people do well they have an intimate relationship they have a family so that could be your birth family so you could fix that up or it could be you know your new family your kids your wife they have Friends they have a social community that might involve civic responsibility which is something we diely lacking at the moment you need a job you need to take care

of yourself mentally and physically you need to educate yourself you need to regulate your reaction to Temptation there's eight things okay so now you get to be whoever you want but you have to want it and you have to aim at it and so to do that you have to have a vision part of The utility of literature is the provision of such Visions negative you know in the case of anti-heroes positive in the case of protagonists who could you be part of the advantage of being educated in the humanities is that you can draw

your models from the best history has to offer and that's really what an education and Humanity should present you with it's like here are the great people of history and that's you in potential and so that means you can Establish a new peer group you know in some sense my peer group has always been the people whose books I most admired you know and that's a reach right because who wants who dares to compare himself herself to the truly great people of the past nche for me dovi Yung oh well and then the classic philosophers

like Plato and Aristotle and Kant and Hume all these stunning people that were brilliant Beyond conception you know I mean that's a high Reach and presumptuous in some sense but the point of the Humanity's education is in large part to surround yourself with peers of the highest quality and then you also want to do that with your peers so one of the things you want to ask yourself if you're graduating from high school is well now I'm off to do something else might be a job might be College might be trade school it's like I'm

going to make new friends What's a friend what do I want I want I want someone to tell good news to who will celebrate with me I want someone to tell bad news to who'll be upset that something bad happened to me and not secretly happy I want someone who's aiming up for me and for them or not or do you not want that it's like what do you want if you taking care of yourself what would you want in a relationship you need a vision for This and we do an staggeringly appalling job of

helping young people even understand understand that that's necessary and I I know partly why I was very curious about this because I spent a lot of time with this future authoring program self-authoring part of The self-authoring Suite because we built a program to help people make a plan and once we built the program one of the things we found for example was that if You gave it to young men who were entering College the few months before they went to college they were 50% less likely to drop out in the first year and it's crazy

for 90-minute exercise it's like that's just if the world had any sense every single college would have immediately used that upon publication of our paper but none of them did and that says something is that mainly just goal setting like what do you want Envision that and then I think goal setting is the wrong way to think about it I think it's too narrow a conceptualization I think that you need literally to imagine it it's like you get to be who you want well you need to run the story like in detail and if you're

trying to predict whether someone's going to commit suicide you ask them well you know have you ever thought about harming yourself well you know sometimes have you ever thought About killing yourself well you know the thoughts crossed my mind do you have a plan yeah I have a plan well can you tell me about the plan well you know my dad has a 45 in the top shelf of his desk I've seen it in there several times the bullets are in the drawer next door I thought you know I could probably put that in my

mouth in the bathroom so I didn't make too much of a mess and prob probably do that in the morning that's like that's not good Yeah right that person's in danger yeah cuz they've the dream has entered their mind they've visualized it and so I don't it's not goal setting it's it's more like it's much more like casting yourself in a fully fleshed out literary representation it's like what is your future who are you and what you want to do is negotiate with yourself it's like just imagine this is a gospel idea right that if

you knock the door will open if you ask you will receive if you seek you Will find and No One Believes that but I believe it's true but it depends on what you mean by knock ask and seek cuz means if you mean it yeah if your life depends on it yeah that's right that's right you're all in on it it's like you want this what do you mean want kind of want no that's you don't want for like two minutes of the day and then you get bored right right and your right hand wants

it your left hand doesn't and no no it doesn't mean that at all it means You're going to make the sacrifices necessary and you're all in on it okay so then the question becomes well what's worth going all in on and the answer to that is ask yourself one of the things I tell young people all the time I'm not a very typical psychologist in this regard because psychologists like to Pat people on the head and say you're all right the way you are I talked to Bishop Baron a while Ago I'm going to broadcast

this and he said that the Catholic priests were trained in the 1960s to kind of be accepting you know humanistically you're okay the way you are you know and that's such rubbish it's like not only are you not okay the way you are you don't think that anybody else is okay the way they are either you're not you don't think your children are okay the way they are like you love them and All that but you don't want them to stay 3 years old their entire life you want them to expand and improve and become

who they are and so instead of telling young people that they're okay the way they are I tell them that and it's a terrible message for them if they're desperate you know so let's say 10% of the people in my audience are young maybe they're young Men just for the sake of argument and they're like not in good shape they don't have any goals they're they're drinking too much they're watching pornography all the time they've got no aim they've got no structure in their life and they're just bloody miserable and the misery is twisting them

into malevolence because enough misery will absolutely do that to you and then what are you going to do and come along and say well well you're you're okay the way You are it's like that's the last thing they want to hear it's like get your damn act together you know you got things to do and they're going to be difficult and that there there's a there's a there's a an echoing Christian message in there I would say which is you pick up the weight of your suffering voluntarily and you walk uphill with it and that

not only gives you the meaning that you need in in your life to stop you from degenerating in a dangerous Manner but it actually makes things better and so that that that all has to be part of it like I believe in human Ingenuity I think we can solve all the problems that beset us but it can't just be it has to be more than we can enhance material well-being which is what it tends to be now it's not enough you might saywell what might you replace an ideology with and I would say well a

differentiated view of and strategy for life and so when I work with my clients I never start with high order problems to begin with like how do I Orient myself spiritually so let's just leave that aside for a second okay we'll return to it so what do you need to get straight in your life well you need a job or a career career preferably perhaps the advantage to a job is that you do it for 8 hours let's say and you're done right with a career you're In it all the time now you'll make more

money you'll Advance up the economic hierarchy but you're never done with work if you have a career and maybe that's what you want but in any case you have to have a job or a career why well you you you you don't want to starve you want to take care of yourself and the people that are dependent on you there are practical obvious practical reasons but there are psychological reasons too I mean a job gives you something to do Every day just as your career does and it's it also um addresses the Deep human need

to be a value and service to other people and so that needs to be attended to so if you're a young person it's like okay get have a plan you need a job and a career it it would be good if it was something that you're could be competent at so the smarter you are pure IQ the more complex job you can manage and then if you add the development of discipline to that so That's the development of conscientiousness that can further you so you need conscientiousness and intelligence to be competent and the more hardworking

you are and the more intelligent the more complex the job you can manage so if you're of average intelligence which you've probably figured out by the time you're 18 or so um it's going to be very very difficult for you to be a high-end corporate lawyer unless you work insanely hard so Your better bet is to pick a profession that isn't so cognitively demanding that's still useful and trades are great as far as I'm concerned there it's not like trades people aren't skilled and it's not like int it's not like trades don't require intelligence I

am not saying that M but um the it doesn't require as much abstraction generally speaking like if you want to be a lawyer you have to be hyper literate and like 90th percentile literate fundamentally And you have to be able to formulate verbal AR arguments or you're going to get crushed by someone who can do it okay so job and career you need a plan okay education you should be as educated as you are intelligent you should have a plan for that yeah okay and it should continue because things change quick and you better keep

up okay so you you should have a vision of that um people don't seem to do well without an intimate Relationship uh it'd be good if you could have a family and bring peace to the family that you have because family is important uh extraordinarily important those connection so intimate relationship and family whether that's your parents your siblings or the family that you start you need a plan for that a vision of that um you have to take care of your physical and mental health you have to regulate your drug and alcohol intake um you

have to figure out How to make productive and meaningful use of the time that's allotted to you outside of your obligations that's extraordinarily useful and you have to address your philosophical or spiritual SL athetic yearnings such as they might be well so that's better than an ideology a plan sure right now you know and as you climb up your career as you expand your competence and power well then you can get involved in larger scale Transformations if that's where Your interest takes you and so with job and career you should be competent and interested in

it that's a good Pathway to [Music] success I had already concluded intellectually that there was nothing good about nihilism and and bitterness and resentment that it was unbelievably dangerous and that it isn't Justified under any circumstances and then I entered these Extreme circumstances and I thought well this justifies it it's like I I can't see how anybody could be in this situation and not shake their fist at God and and yeah in Outrage but I really really thought it through and talked to my wife wife about it and and all I could conclude was that

that was wrong is that it it didn't justify it it's there was nothing good in it there was nothing helpful in it all it was doing was hurting me it was interfering with Whatever good I still might be able to do in the world um you know the last chapter of my new book is be grateful in spite of your suffering and and that was a chapter I you know worked on and and was doubt about and returned to and was like thoroughly uh what irate about and felt hypocritical about and and so on and

so forth the full gamut of emotional responses But it's the right thing to do to be grateful it's it's and I'm not claiming this for myself it's it's tightly allied with the kind of existential courage it's a decision and you know I undoubtedly there are people who've been pushed farther in the domain of pain than me burn victims people you know suffer unimaginable Agony and I would never dare to compare my pain to someone else's extraordinar extraordinary pain It was certainly far worse than every day that I spent in the last two years was worse

than any day I had before that by a huge margin so for me it was well like I said if it had gone any more extreme I can't imagine that I would have lived through it um but the okay so the first conclusion was you you still under those conditions you Orient yourself upward and you try to do good in the world and you and you don't if you fall prey to resentment and and Anger and hostility however Justified not even however rationalized but however Justified even if an objective Observer would say well no wonder

you feel that way it's not helpful so there is no good in it that's what you said I see no good in it but then I wonder like like I I would agree with you I'm inclined to agree with that that there's no good in that but but you know through you know there's the old cliche adage about going through hard Times revealing certain Silver Linings and certain benefits that you may not see in the moment so are you open to that possibility of in the future some realization there has been I guess that this

thing we already discussed I would say is of benefit whether that benefit justifies what I went through I would say so would I repeat what I went through and still going through for that matter I mean I've only been feeling somewhat better for five six days right I wouldn't repeat it to learn that and maybe you're still learning something maybe there's still something that's to come some realization I mean I'm not I'm not saying that's the case I know you I know you're not well God only knows right I mean right God it wasn't until

this last week that I really thought that through and realized that however extreme my pain which was defuse um yeah um it didn't justify resentment it didn't justify Ingratitude it it didn't make certainly didn't make those things work but then the other thing that I did realize was and people have commented on that being difference between this book and the first book the second book is more communitarian there's less humor in it because I just wasn't up to humor you know but there's more emphasis on uh cooperation and and and the social role in ethical

behavior and I think that's partly a consequence of me Observing how far above the Call of Duty my friends and my family went while they were caring for me and not only my friends and my family but medical personnel and the general public who've been my well the general public my viewers readers and listeners let's say have been unbelievably loyal and supportive and so I've seen this outpouring of love from you know at the micro level within my family and and from my friends and from people I don't Know but who I communicate with um

that's well that saved my life for sure there's no doubt about that multiple times many many times the reason I emphasize individual responsibility there's two reasons one is well you can start right now right where you are no matter what you're doing so you have that at hand second if you become more responsible you probably won't hurt anyone by doing it right it removes the Convenience of the enemy and that's given how terrible it is for us to generate say class-based explanations of enmity or racial based explanations of enmity that's something we really have to

step carefully around I mean the worst crimes the human race has ever committed have been generated by class-based hypotheses of malevolence class or or ethnicity based hypothesis of malevolence it's terrible and and we Need to avoid that and I don't see that adopting more individual responsibility even though it's not a cure all it doesn't that's one danger it doesn't pose in my estimation if you ask a disagreeable person what what he wants say or she wants they'll tell you right away they they know it's like this is what I want and this is how I'm

going to get it but agreeable people especially if they're really agreeable are so agreeable that They often don't even know what they want cuz they're so accustomed to living for other people and to finding out what other people want and to trying to make them comfortable and so forth that it's harder for them to find a sense of their own desires as they move through life and that's not look there's situations where that's advantageous but it's certainly not advantageous if you're going to try to uh Forge yourself a career that just doesn't work at all

and So even though on average men and women don't just don't aren't that much different in terms of their levels of agreeableness by the group if you go out and you look at the extremes they're very different so all of the most agreeable people are women and all of the most disagreeable people are men and the thing is the extremes are often what matter rather than what's in the middle and so one of the ways that's reflected in in society by the way is there's way More men in prison and the best personality predictor of

being imprisoned is to be low and agreeable it makes you kous now you may think well what's the opposite of compassion and politeness and the answer to that is I think it's best sort of conceptualized as a as a trading game so let's say that we're going to play repeated trading games and if you're very agreeable then you're going to bargain harder on my behalf than you're Going to bargain on your own behalf whereas if you're very disagreeable you're going to do the reverse you're going to think I'm in this trading game for me and

you are going to take care of your own interest where an agreeable person is going to say no no at best this is at at worst this has to be 50/50 but I'd like to help you every way I can one of the things you have to be careful of if you're agreeable is not to be exploited because you'll line up to be Exploited and I think the reason for that is because you're wired to be exploited by infants and so that just doesn't work so well in that actual world and one of the things

one of the things that happens very often in Psychotherapy you know people come to psychotherapy for multiple reasons but one of the is they often come because they're too agreeable and so what they get is so-called assertiveness training although it's not Exactly assertiveness that's being trained what it is is the ability to learn how to negotiate on your own behalf and one of the things I tell agreeable people especially if they're conscientious is say what you think tell the truth about what you think there's going to be things you think that you think are nasty

and harsh and they probably are nasty and harsh but they're also probably true and you need to bring Those up to the Forefront and deliver the message and it's not straightforward at all because agreeable people do not like conflict not at all they smooth the water you know and you can see you can see why that is in accordance with the hypothesis that I've been putting forward you don't want conflict around infants it's too damn dangerous you don't want fights to break out you don't want anything to disturb the the relative peace you know and

if you're Also more prone to being hurt physically and perhaps emotionally you're also maybe loathed to engage in the kind of high intensity conflict that will solve problems in the short term because a lot of conflict it takes a lot of conflict to solve problems in the short term and you know if that can spiral up to where it's dangerous which it can if it gets uncontrolled it might be safer in the short term to keep the water smooth and to not delve into those situations where Conflict emerges the problem with that is it's not

a very good medium to long-term strategy right cuz lot lots of times there are things you have to talk about because they're not going to go away and the advantage to having a well socialized disagreeable person is that they really don't let much get in their way so if you can get a kid who's disagreeable socialized that person can be quite quite the creature you know Because they're very they're very forward moving in their nature and very difficult to stop but if you don't get them successfully domesticated tamed roughly speaking by the time they're four

their peers reject them and that's a big problem because your job as a parent is to make your child socially desirable by the age of four like you got to you want to burn that into your brain because people don't know that that's your job and here's Here's why you think it's it's easy if you think about it carefully so you imagine you've got a you've got a three-year-old child so sort of halfway through that initial period of socialization and you take that child out in public okay what do you want for the child who

cares about you what what do you want from the CH for the child you want the child to be able to interact with other children and adults so that the children are welcoming and Smile and want to play with him or her and so the adults are happy to see the child and treat him or her properly and if your child's a horrible little monster because you're afraid of disciplining them or you don't know how to do that properly then what they're going to do is they're going to experience nothing but rejection from other children

and false smiles from other parents and adults and that's so then you're throwing the child out there Into a world where every single face that they see is either hostile or lying and that's not something that's going to be particularly conducive to the mental health or the well-being of your child if your child can learn a couple simple rules of behavior like don't interrupt adults when they're talking too much and pay attention and try not to hit the other kids over the head with the truck any more than is absolutely necessary then and you know

and share and play Properly then when they meet other kids the kids are going to try out a few little play routines on them and that's going to go well and then they're going to go off and socialize each other for the rest of their lives because that's what happens is that from 4 years old onwards the Primary socialization with children takes place among other children and so if the kids don't get in on that early they don't move into that developmental spiral upwards and they're Left behind and you can imagine how terrible that is

because a four-year-old will not play with another 4-year-old who's two but a 5-year-old certainly will not play with a 5-year-old who's two right cuz the Gap is just starting to get unbelievably large and so the kids start out behind and then the peers leave them behind and then those kids are alienated and outside the peer group for the rest of their life those are the ones that Grow up to be long-term antisocial right they're already aggressive it doesn't dip down now what happens to normal boys roughly speaking imagine the aggressive 2-year-old types they get socialized

so their level of aggression goes down and then they hit p and testosterone kicks in and bang levels of aggression go back up and so that's why males are criminals between the ages roughly of 16 and about 25 so and it matches the creativity curve by the way it's so cool if you Look at the spike of creativity among men 16 to 25 and it starts to go down criminality matches that absolutely perfectly that's quite cool so and part of so the testosterone levels ra raise the average level of aggression among men it's more dominance

than aggression actually and testosterone is by no means all bad and then starts to decrease at about age 25 or 26 which is usually when men stop staying up late at night stop drinking as much develop a full-time Career and take on the burdens and responsibilities and opportunities that are associated with a long-term partner and [Music] family it's really useful to investigate the viewpoints of people who have opposing views to yours because they'll tell you things not only will they tell you things things you don't know they'll also tell you how to see the world

in ways that You don't see it and they'll also have skills that you don't have that you could develop so for example if you're an introverted person it's very useful to watch an extroverted person because the extroverted person has ways of being in the social world that aren't natural to you that you can use as to improve your toolkit and if you're disagreeable one of the best things to do with disagreeable people especially if that's alienating them from other people for Example because it can you know people treat you like your a selfish arrogant son

of a maybe that's because you are it's like okay so what do you do about that one of the one of the most uh promising treatments let's say for that is get the person to do something for someone else once a day just as a practice and learn how to do it maybe you can wake the circuit up you know if you think that it's lying dormant in you which is probably right you know I think We have a very wide range of propensities within us some are switched on genetic propensities some are switched on

but I think that if you put yourself in the right situation or walk yourself through the right exercises you can switch some of these other things on as well but it takes work and and and dedication and discipline I would say generally speaking if you want to adapt yourself properly to life you should find a niche in the environment that Corresponds with your temperament right you shouldn't work at Cross purposes to your temperament because it's just too damn difficult but having done that then you should work on developing the the skills and and viewpoints that

exist in the space opposite to your personality because that's where you're fundamentally underdeveloped that way I think you can extend out your temperamental capability across a wider range and to me that's roughly Equivalent as bringing a richer toolkit to each situation you know so if you're hyper extroverted you should probably learn to shut up at parties now and then and listen just to see what's going on to see if you can manage it you know and if you're introverted well then you should learn how to speak in public and to and to learn how to

go to parties without hiding in the corner and saying nothing to anyone you know and if you're agreeable then you need to learn how to Be disagreeable so people can't push you around and if you're disagreeable you learn you need to learn how to be agreeable so that you're not an evil son of a b so and the same thing applies even in the conscientious domain it's like if you're too conscientious you need to learn to relax and let go a little bit and if you're unconscientious it's time like get out the Google Calendar Man

and start scheduling your day right and beat yourself on the back Of the head with a stick until you're disciplined enough so that you can actually stick this something for some length of time you know people are aware of the future in ways that animals aren't or animals are only partially aware we're very aware of the future and aware of our mortal limitations in a manner that seems unique to human beings and we sacrif we constantly sacrifice the present to the Future future that's Actually the definition of work and that emerges very early on in

the biblical narrative Corpus the the idea that humans are destined to work but that also work is the sacrifice of the present and that's part of the fall in some sense it's the sacrifice of the present to the Future and we regard that as the Hallmark of maturity fundamentally right can you delay gratification well if the answer is no it's well then you're two can you delay Gratification well then I mean that technically um because two-year-olds can't delay gratification which makes it very difficult for other people to play with them for example um if you

can delay gratification then you can work if you're work if you can work then you're mature it's the definition of maturity and responsibility and and it does pervade it's so interesting to see that it pervades the act of attention itself and that there's no because you know I Used to ask my students because I was trying to figure this out I'd ask them a question like well why are you why are you writing this essay or what are you doing when you're writing this essay that's a better question so you think what is someone doing

when they writing an essay and one answer is say they're doing it on a computer well they're moving their fingers up and down and that's actually a really good answer because that's not An idea right moving your fingers up up and down that's not an idea that's where your spirit meets your body you're actually moving something physical and you you you don't really have consciousness of the muscular or you know you don't know how you move your fingers but you can do it and so at the most the highest level of resolution when you're writing

an essay you're moving your fingers and now you know how to type and you have automated Structures for doing that and then you're composing words and the words are in phrases and the phrases are in sentences and the sentences are in paragraphs and the paragraphs are in sections and the whole thing makes an essay but then that's a subset of a class and you want a grade for the class because you want to pass the class because you want to get your degree but why do you want to get your degree it's well maybe you're

interested in That field of study and you think being a scholar is a good thing and you want to have a job and so while you're writing an essay you're what are you doing preparing to have your career and then does that are you doing that because you want to be a good citizen and a good father perhaps good mother and do you want to do that because you want to be a good person and or are you mixed up in all of that and but so you're doing all of those things well or Badly

at the same time all the time with everything you do all the time and there's no way around that it can't be simplified the whole structure has to be there and that's another reason why we don't have general purpose robots yet is that they're just not embedded in that ethic that stretches all the way up from the most minute motor patterns of action and perception to the highest possible ethical [Music] Striving you realize that that in order to exist in the world you're constantly having to sacrifice that is you have to sacrifice the idiosyncrasies in

order to be able to grasp the the object because this can be all kinds of things right it could be a dog chw toy it could be could be a million things but in order to be able to grasp it I have to sacrifice idiosyncrasies and I also have to somehow let's say recognize it in its highest form or kind of move it towards Its highest form and that seems to be an aspect of religious thinking which is actually part of attention which is saf well the sacrificial aspect of attention in part is that whenever

you see something as that thing you sacrifice the possibility of all the other things that could be and that's delimiting to a large degree you know it hems you in but but that's also a relief because you know how many bloody million things do you want to attend to at one time but so Part of the reason you know the idea of sacrifice conscious idea of sacrifice emerges very easy early on for example in the biblical writings because the second story in in Genesis I think it's Genesis 3 is that the Canan is that the

canable story is Genesis 3 or two after Genesis 3 Genesis 4 I guess four okay so it's very early on and there's this insistence that so human beings are already destined to work as a consequence of the fall out of the uh Garden of Eden but the can and abble story is specifically about sacrifice and about the degree to which a sacrifice has to be of the highest quality so you have this one protagonist Abel um who's a prototype for a motive being that stretches throughout history and Abel's sacrifices are to the highest to to

that which is the highest imaginable so he's aiming as high as he can and they're genuine and honest and the consequence of that is that God Smiles upon him let's say but that his life is extremely successful he gets everything that a sensible human being would want and need and he's contrasted with Cain who's bitter and arrogant and makes second rate sacrifices and you want to think about that personally it's like well did you give it your best shot when you when you failed and if the answer is no it's like well who are you

trying to fool exactly you trying to fool yourself well good luck with that You trying to F other people it's like well who made you so smart and those them so dumb and is that how you think about other people you could just pull the wool over their eyes and then is it more than that you think you can bend the structure of reality and so you're going to make these half-witted sacrifices and that's going to please God too and that's what you believe and you know Cain is very annoyed that his sacrifices aren't being

rewarded and he Goes and talks to God and basically calls him out and says something like you know kind of stupid Cosmos did you make here here I am breaking myself in half and all the good things are going going to Abel it's like what's up with you which is really quite the thing to do you know and if you don't think people do that you don't know much about them and God basically tells them you are people do that all the time which is why it's an archetypal story and God Basically tells Cain that

he doesn't make good sacrifices he knows that perfectly well that he was tempted by bitterness and arrogance and deceit to enter into a consensual sexual relationship with the spirit of vengeful sin itself which is a hell of an accusation think of a basketball player I like to always bring it to something that at first not religious at all for people to see what we're talking about the basketball player has to one Sacrifice million things that all his friends are doing that are fun or that that he could be doing he has to he has to

take away all the idiosyncrasies and focus on one thing and then he has to that's when the able sacrifice comes in he has to give his best if he doesn't give his best then he won't make it there's no way and so the the sacrificial pattern enters into pretty much any type of Excellence or excellent Behavior you you know one of the things Human beings did because we were prayed upon and became Predators one of the things we did was imitate the Predator you know and so we were in awe of a predatory animal like

we still might be if you meet a grizzly bear in the in the woods you know it's you might freeze and you're certainly going to attend to it but then there's part of you that is deeply called upon to imitate the the capacity for aggression of the Predator so that you Can defend your loved ones against predatory action and some of that would be to be the warrior that can fight off the grizzly bear but then abstracted up into the religious sense it would be to be the ethical actor who can protect your family from

um from unscrupulous Psychopaths you know forces of malevolence that border on the on the satanic and so and that's all part of the ethical Enterprise and Weirdly enough all of your acts of perception are necessarily nested inside a structure that's pointing to what's what is at the highest or you're incoherent those are the options well that's a strange thing right because you can say well maybe your hierarchy of value isn't unified and there's nothing at the top it's like okay it's not unified well then you're confused and if you're with someone and your hierarchies of

value aren't unified then you are in Conflict or you're aimless or you're hopeless or you're anxious or you're lost that's the phenomenological consequence of lacking this United pyramidal pyramidal ethic so you you can't get away from the necessity of this unless you want to live you know aimless nihilistic confused hopeless all of that why do you think there is such a crisis of masculinity in the first place and why are there so many people out There who are angry at you for even talking to men well I think it's I think you could think about

it as a consequence in some sense of the lack of a concept of original sin oddly enough I mean people bear an existential burden you know it's an intrinsic part of life to I suppose to feel guilty in relationship to Nature and to feel guilty in relationship to Culture know it's difficult for us to live in harmony with the natural world and for the natural world to live in harmony with us by the way and none of us are all we could be on the social front and one of the consequences and so we we

have that sense intrinsically you know that there's a lack in us that needs to be redressed and unfortunately that can be weaponized and has been and what I see Happening to young men in particular boys as well not just young men and maybe even you know maybe starting at the age of toddlers is that we have this sense in the world that human beings live in antagonism to Nature and that we're actually a malevolent force and that our social structures which are clearly capable of the commission of atrocity are fundamentally oppressive patriarchal in their nature

And so then if you're a male in a society with that ethos you're the motive force that drives you into the world to live is associated with rapaciousness and Des spoilation on the natural front and then oppression and atrocity on the social front it's like well then if you're the least bit conscientious because this sort of accusation hurts conscientious young men the most then the best you can do is well let's say Castrate yourself how would that be and that would be real comical except that it's also happening so I guess that's why that's why

I think there's a crisis and it there's something serious at the root of it right because we do have to take the fact of our the potential damage we can do to the natural world and the social world we have to take that seriously but the the proper consequence of taking that seriously is not To commit Harry cury let's say in a fit of moral anxiety and take yourself completely out of the the game but that's the insistence now and it's really and I see that psychoanalytically you know I see that as a manifestation at

a symbolic level of something like well symbolically that's associated with the devouring mother right it's it's an overweening and destructive false compassion that has this devouring quality and yeah and that's basically Where we're at the thing is I never really set out to talk to men specifically I but I did set out at least in part to make a case for the utility of both the feminine and the masculine spirit and it turned out that making the case for the masculine Spirit was something that was more demanded by the culture let's say the anger that's

a complicated issue we we touched on some of it in relationship to the despoiling of Nature and the idea of The oppressive and atrocity atrocity committing patriarchy but then there's another issue too which I think is M um because of family fragmentation there's a very large number of women who have just like there's a very large number of men who have never had a real word of encouragement in their whole life it's a really sad thing to see it's a really really sad thing to see to see that deeply and to have seen that reflected

In so many thousands of people but there are many women who've never had a positive relationship with anyone male in their life and so one of the the consequences of that we know for example that younger women are more likely to be attracted to men who show dark Triad traits narcissistic MCU valan and Psychopathic and people who have those traits are characterized by the mimicry of competence and so what women want in men more than anything else is competent Generosity and the data on that are very clear but you can mimic that if you're narcissistic

and if you're a young woman you woman you can be deluded by that it's partly because it points to the problem of dissociating competent Confidence from the expression of power per se so we could call power I'll Define that as the willingness and ability to use compulsion to attain your aims now if you are someone who has a proclivity to manifest power then that Looks like the manifestation of both ambition and will and if you haven't had the a positive relationship with anyone masculine in your life and maybe with not even with your own internal

masculinity say you can't discriminate between power and competent the ambition that serves competence and so because that's terrifying because the power if you have NE had only negative relationships with men their their capability to use power becomes such a Threat that it has to be opposed at all costs even if it manifests it itself within the say within the developmental pathway of your own son and so so some of that's familial breakdown and then you have a multigenerational pattern of that that makes it even worse and so that's that's definitely part of it you know

there's an ideological drum that's being beaten constantly both on the sociological constructivist front right that's the oppressive patriarchy and Then on the environmental front and then you add to that the fact that well on the left is especially the radical types their whole damn Doctrine it's the most pathological Doctrine you could invent if you set out to invent a pathological Doctrine and I I mean that I'm not making a joke I I I really mean that in the deepest possible sense the notion that the fundamental human motivation is the willingness and ability to use compulsion

power power it's all about Power and every time I hear that now from someone I think that is not a sociological observation that is a confession on your part and so and it's also just complete bloody nonsense I mean you you all you all know this you have friends because they're compelled to be your friends like that's definitely not how you have friends you might have bully henchmen that way but you don't have friends power is an extraordinarily Unstable basis to establish a marriage on plus it just doesn't work because it turns out that women

who are so annoying are very difficult to oppress you know so you can try but it's not that easy and I don't think that we've been all that historically successful in doing so but it's also a it's also a Preposterous proposition because because the expression of power within an intimate relationship does not produce intimacy or a relationship the Best it can produ produce is like a combination of tyranny and slavery and that does not characterize the institution of marriage per se and I've been trying to puzzle out uh especially my lecture to it recently what

the antithesis to power is or to the will to power let's say in terms of arbitrary compulsion and it's something like the spirit of free and voluntary play and that's a wonderful thing to know it's so optimistic you guys were Talking about optimism earlier you know if you're so imagine this is that if you structure your relations optimally and I mean optimally with yourself with your intimate partner with your family with your community the highest level of attainment of that structuring is the manifestation of the spirit of voluntary play and that's so lovely because there's

nothing better than playing fundamentally and you know human beings and other mammals as well also have a Biological circuit that mediates play that was discovered by a man yak PP and he showed that play is unbelievably important to the development of children for a variety of complicated reasons partly because they're practicing to be competent adults but also that it can be suppressed by almost any other emotion or motivation so your kids can't really play if they're hungry or tired or wet or or upset the same would apply within your relationship if there's stresses And tensions

the play disappears but if you optimize the relationship and the circumstance then the spirit of plag can manifest itself and I would also say that's also the fundamental purpose of fathers in some sense is to imagine that paradise that's a Walled Garden that's what Paradise means so it's walls structure and then the garden inside is nature and a nature that's tended the the masculine role in in child rearing is something like the erection of the Walls so that play can manifest itself within the walls and that's a real good combination of security cuz that's what

the walls are for but but then the kind of Freedom that allows for Untamed development to occur in the most positive possible sense and so I would say that those of us who are standing against the radicals who insist that the only human motivation is power can oppose that in part by putting forward the observation that the proper Antithesis to that is the spirit of voluntary play [Music]