we all do I play a game with my students it's called what's my idol this is what I very one of the very first sessions of the class what's my idol where I take them through a little bit of ainus they read a little bit of ainus um and I say look this is the first modern really great behavioral scientist is St Thomas aquinus and and it's don't read it for the religious parts let's read it for the behavioral parts of this and I say okay he says that the idols that you're going to chase
are ultimately there's going to be one that attracts you more than any other right and that when you do you'll always do the things that you later regret that that's that's the thing about it okay and that's Behavior that's what makes them Idols I know right they beckon falsely in the Pres and that's very empirically robust a very empirically robust assertion of course we know this from all the literature that you know that that when people chase these Idols that they're ultimately they don't get what they wanted a lot of regret so I say okay
let's play a game and the way to do this is not to say what's your Idol but to eliminate the ones that they're not your idol okay you want to play sure okay sure so money power pleasure honor and honor is not what we say with my Marine children which is assert With Honor that means to be honored yeah the narcissist that means fame or or or what we have in Academia which is prestige to walk in and people say oh this Jordan Peterson wrote that paper you know that paper that got the award last
year or whatever happens to be or the admiration of strangers or the admiration of the right group of people right which we want it's your lobsters right that raises serotonin levels okay okay so think of those four and then let's think of the one you would first eliminate which doesn't mean you don't have it at all but rather that you have the population mean level of it so if you got rid of money for example you wouldn't be poor you just have exactly the population mean amount of that so you wouldn't be in in there
would be no deprivation whatsoever money power pleasure Fame which one do you kick away power why I'm not interested in exerting control over others voluntary actions so if I were to you're the clinical psychologist and I'm just a you know a workingclass economist but I would say that the reason for that is because you hate when people have power over you well that's certainly an indication of the undesirability of power that's my lived experience of the I hate yes I hate that yeah I hate being being told what to do not everybody hates that people
who really like power actually are not bothered that much when people have power over them because it feels legitimate inherently it's it's kind of an interesting thing so you find that totalitarians are pretty comfortable when they're in totalitarian systems they were just like to be the totalitarian right right right dictators admire dictators funny I was just writing about exactly that this morning it's like yeah well this is part of our misunderstanding of totalitarian system everyone is striving to be free except the bully on the top it's like no it's bullies all the way down I
know so that's okay so now we've established that about you but you kicked away power you got three left money pleasure and honor what's next pleasure probably pleasure no money probably money why taste is an excellent substitute for money like you can you can you can you can you're talking about the population mean of money population mean of money if you're $75,000 wise and Discerning that you're rich with that amount of money yeah yeah and and I would also postulate correct me if I'm wrong that given the fact that your material success among other things
has taught you using your self-awareness as a behavioral scientist that there's not that much nice stuff that you can get with money it's really not that interesting well the the big advantage to me of having money is there are it opens up Avenues of possibility it makes some things easier right Medical Care it does but it opens up sources of unhappiness and it it opens up Avenues of Adventure right that would otherwise be impossible but they're not the things you care about the most well there's other ways of doing them yeah there's other ways of
doing them that are that are they equally valuable um sufficient so that that was my second choice anyways the things that I love the most are not things you buy I just if you know people say if I could keep everything in a napsack I would be detached and I say no I would still rent everything I want the whole point is that that you know buying stuff is not that interesting well money money is useful to me because it enables opportunity it's not particularly useful to me because I can buy stuff with it I
mean I buy things but look you know cult culture like ours you can buy virtually everything you need for nothing if you pay attention like virtually everything is free food maybe not you know but I have a whole lecture on how actually how to buy happiness with money and it's it you have to go exactly against your limic system why because your limic system tells you to accumulate resources beyond what you need to show your your your evolutionary Fitness such that you can get more mates and propagate you need more Buffalo jerky and animal and
and and flints in your cave and the guy anyway okay so you got two two left pleasure and and honor now it's hot in here because we're these are things that you like yeah and this is normal yeah but you got to get rid of one and go to the population mean which is a pleasure probably next yeah and and and and now we've established what your temptation is now we've establish that that doesn't mean that you can't tame it but you must know it you must say to yourself honor honor when I do the
wrong thing it's because I it's because I pursue Honor by the way I'm exactly like you EXA why it's too bad for you well it's too bad for my wife and yours yeah and your wife yeah right yeah I mean it's because you know I hate people having power over me I don't want to have power over others I was a chief executive for 11 years and the thing I hated was when people call me boss it made me intensely uncomfortable it made me feel embarrassed even humiliated when people said boss cuz I felt like
they were setting up a hierarchy it felt passive aggressive even what it wasion money okay great well you know if you're someone's boss it's not who's it's not obvious who the slave is right right because if I have to tell you what to do then I have to tell you what to do it's hard enough to get myself to do things much less bother with you maybe there's some temporary thrill in ordering people around although it's not a thrill I've ever appreciated but I'd rather that you did your own thing I'd hate you know I
hate dictatorships and I wouldn't want the dictator is the bottom line money okay yeah what it's F pleasure I'm I mean I'm I'm I'm a very self-disciplined person you know I wake up at 4:30 in the morning I work out for an hour and it hurts every day before Dawn how old are you 60 and and and I'm in Better Health than when I was 30 and part of it is because I'm not a sensualist because I can actually do that I mean I like feeling good but it's not high on my list of priorities
you know what tempts me this that's what tempts me and I know it's true and I know I have that particular tendency and that knowledge is power why because that knowledge is being stored in the episodic memory of my hippocampus and it's accessible by my prefrontal cortex and I can use it to manage my lyic system and that's that's being Fully Alive as far as I'm concerned that's being Fully Alive and when my students understand that they can not just avoid errors they can feel like they have control they can feel like they have a
sword and shield on their hero's journey that's what this that how do you get them to start envisioning their future pathway in a more multi-dimensional manner [Music]
