Jordan B Peterson: You Need To Listen To Your Wife! We’ve Built A Lonely & Sexless Society! If You & Your Partner Do This, You’ll Divorce!

0:00:05 We know the couples that lived together before the marriage actually increases the probability that the relationship will fail
0:00:06 and the reason for that is very straightforward.
0:00:11 And talking of things that risk harming relationships, the subject we’ve never spoke about before, is…
0:00:15 Oh yeah, and that’s a huge reason sex has disappeared. People need to stop doing that.
0:00:19 Jordan Peterson, psychology professor. People love or love to hate.
0:00:23 He’s undeniably one of the greatest intellectual phenomenons on the planet.
0:00:25 And many view him as the ultimate father figure.
0:00:26 Welcome back, Mr. Peterson.
0:00:31 We’re built for maximal challenge, and that isn’t the way we view ourselves in the modern world.
0:00:34 We view ourselves as built for consumption and pleasure.
0:00:35 For example, watching pornography.
0:00:37 But what are the downstream consequences of that?
0:00:39 Well, first of all, it’s easy to get what?
0:00:40 Sexual gratification.
0:00:41 But does it matter?
0:00:43 Oh, it’s a catastrophe. You’re not desperate anymore.
0:00:45 And if you’re going to have the true adventure of your life,
0:00:48 you’re going to need love, shame, guilt, desperation, and pain.
0:00:49 Like, it’s hard.
0:00:53 But now, people take the easy road, like avoiding conflict, for example.
0:00:58 And I spent a lot of time studying evil. It arises when good men hold their tongue.
0:01:00 Now, you may suffer some consequences of speaking,
0:01:05 but retreating one step at a time defensively, but it makes you sick of yourself.
0:01:07 There’s nothing worse that can happen to you.
0:01:09 You want your life to be unbearably entertaining.
0:01:13 And maybe all the sorrow and catastrophe has to be part of it because otherwise there’s…
0:01:17 There’s nothing about it that’s glorious.
0:01:21 Over the last two years, you’ve been through a particularly difficult time.
0:01:24 And because you’ve been through that, have you been able to develop a strategy
0:01:26 that helps you go through suffering?
0:01:28 Yeah, oh, definitely. So, the first thing.
0:01:35 I find it incredibly fascinating that when we look at the back end of Spotify and
0:01:39 Apple and our audio channels, the majority of people that watch this podcast
0:01:43 haven’t yet hit the follow button or the subscribe button wherever you’re listening to this.
0:01:45 I would like to make a deal with you.
0:01:47 If you could do me a huge favor and hit that subscribe button,
0:01:53 I will work tirelessly from now until forever to make the show better and better and better and better.
0:01:55 I can’t tell you how much it helps when you hit that subscribe button.
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0:02:04 If you could do me that small favor and hit the follow button,
0:02:06 wherever you’re listening to this, that would mean the world to me.
0:02:08 That is the only favor I will ever ask you.
0:02:10 Thank you so much for your time. Back to this episode.
0:02:17 Your book comes at a really interesting time in my life personally.
0:02:20 Your book is called We Who Wrestle With God.
0:02:25 And it’s my belief and suspicion that there’s a lot of people wrestling with God at the moment.
0:02:29 And when I say the word God, I don’t necessarily mean some man in the sky with a beard.
0:02:34 What I really mean is a greater meaning, a greater sense of meaning.
0:02:38 The world feels like, and you speak to this in the book,
0:02:41 that it’s gotten more and more individualistic and there’s consequence to that.
0:02:44 Fractionated is another way of thinking about it, right?
0:02:46 Because you can think about it as individualistic.
0:02:50 And that’s a positive spin, so to speak.
0:02:56 But alienated, isolated, and fractionated is the, what would you say,
0:02:58 is the accompaniment to that.
0:03:07 See, I think the case is that the liberal experiment in individualism only works when
0:03:10 the conservative foundation is in place.
0:03:17 If you aggregate people together and they share enough fundamental values,
0:03:25 especially of a particular sort, then you can concentrate on the individual and individual
0:03:25 freedom.
0:03:28 But there’s a lot of preconditions for that.
0:03:32 And, you know, the Scottish liberals, so the ones who really established
0:03:38 Western liberalism as a philosophical and political movement, they knew that.
0:03:46 You know, it was individual liberty, Judeo-Christian substructure.
0:03:47 And that was an assumption.
0:03:53 Now, the problem with modern liberalism is that that underlying foundation has become
0:03:57 extremely shaky.
0:03:59 And everyone feels it.
0:04:02 That’s what the culture was about, fundamentally.
0:04:09 And that fact is invalidating the fractionated liberal experiment.
0:04:14 Partly, see, it’s partly because we have the wrong conception of identity, fundamentally.
0:04:18 Identity is a hierarchical structure.
0:04:25 So we kind of think that you end at your boundaries as an individual, but you don’t.
0:04:30 Because, well, you’re probably not going to want to be alone.
0:04:33 So then let’s say you’re married, okay?
0:04:39 So now your identity as a husband, that’s a social identity.
0:04:42 And then you have an identity as a father.
0:04:44 That’s a social identity.
0:04:48 Then you have an identity as a member of your community, and a member of your city,
0:04:51 and a member of your state, and a member of your nation.
0:05:00 And then you’re involved in a metaphysical endeavor that constitutes the foundation for the
0:05:01 nation, let’s say.
0:05:03 That would be one nation under God.
0:05:04 That’s one way of thinking about it.
0:05:09 Or you could think about it as the self-evident truce that underlie the state.
0:05:11 Your identity exists at all those levels.
0:05:15 And then your mental health isn’t something you carry around in your head.
0:05:21 It’s the harmony that exists, or doesn’t exist, between all those levels.
0:05:26 And that isn’t how liberal individualists think about identity at all.
0:05:30 And that’s because they were, for a long time, fortunate enough.
0:05:33 So all those other strata were in place.
0:05:38 So why do we find ourselves now if we don’t have that hierarchy and we aren’t held in
0:05:42 place by all those layers and sort of social and, I guess, family identities?
0:05:46 A drift in a storm alone.
0:05:50 So look, here’s an interesting fact.
0:05:57 So psychologists who are statistically minded, they’re called psychometricians.
0:06:01 They’re psychologists who are obsessed, research psychologists who are obsessed with
0:06:09 measurement and concept definition, spent a lot of time aggregating concepts.
0:06:14 These were, in some ways, what they were doing was equivalent to the development of
0:06:16 early large language models.
0:06:21 So psychologists were at the forefront of that on the statistical side.
0:06:27 Words that we use to describe people clump together.
0:06:33 So, for example, if you’re extroverted, you’re social and you’re happy.
0:06:35 You’re enthusiastic.
0:06:37 Okay, so those clump together.
0:06:44 If you’re anxious, you also tend to be frustrated, disappointed, grief-stricken,
0:06:47 and in pain, all the negative emotions clump.
0:06:52 Words associated with your empathy aggregate.
0:06:58 Words associated with your dutifulness aggregate, and so do words associated with creativity.
0:07:01 Those are the five fundamental dimensions of temperament.
0:07:08 One of the words that clumps with negative emotion is self-consciousness,
0:07:14 which means that self-consciousness is so tightly associated with suffering that they’re not
0:07:21 conceptually distinguishable, which means, literally, the more you think about yourself,
0:07:24 the more miserable you are.
0:07:30 And it makes sense when you understand how social people are.
0:07:37 We’re so social that you can take the most anti-social human beings imaginable,
0:07:44 so psychopathic criminals, and you can punish them by putting them in solitary confinement.
0:07:46 That’s how social human beings are.
0:07:53 And so your mental health is way more dependent on your nesting within a social structure
0:07:58 than on, say, the internal coherence of your belief systems.
0:08:03 In fact, I think it’s hardly at all dependent on the internal consistency of your coherence
0:08:05 of your belief systems.
0:08:07 It’s more like, does anyone like you?
0:08:09 Do you have any friends?
0:08:10 Do you have anyone that loves you?
0:08:18 Or more, or maybe even more profoundly, are there people for whom you make sacrifices?
0:08:25 Right? It’s relevant to the topic of this book, obviously, because the relationship
0:08:31 with the divine in the stories that I’m detailing in this book, most of them are Old Testament stories,
0:08:34 the relationship with the divine is a sacrificial relationship.
0:08:40 The divine is that to which sacrifice is directed.
0:08:47 Well, if you get married, it’s a sacrificial offering because you sacrifice your potential
0:08:51 relationship with all other women to that woman.
0:08:56 What does one do on an individual level if they find themselves in such a society where
0:09:01 individualism has taken hold and they can’t necessarily easily change the society?
0:09:07 Are there day to day, week to week choices that are making that are pushing me away from
0:09:13 that meaning and purpose and sort of collective, I guess, sense of responsibility?
0:09:16 Like the individual listening to this now that completely agrees with you finds
0:09:19 themselves as being a lonely person, because what do I do about this, Jordan?
0:09:23 Well, one of the things you do with disagreeable people who are
0:09:29 more inclined by temperament to be competitive and attain victory for themselves is one of
0:09:32 the exercises you can do with disagreeable people.
0:09:35 If you’re a disagreeable extrovert, you tend to be narcissistic.
0:09:40 And the problem with that, technically, is that you alienate people.
0:09:42 And the problem with that is while you’re hyper-social.
0:09:45 So if you alienate people, well, then you don’t have anyone.
0:09:49 And not only is that lonesome, but it’s also extremely impractical.
0:09:56 I mean, you know, you certainly, and no doubt, learn this more as you become successful.
0:09:58 It’s like you need a team.
0:10:04 And right, and the more tightly knit it is, and the more you’re all working in the same
0:10:06 direction, the better everything works.
0:10:12 It’s not useful to be a narcissist, because maybe you get what you want right now this time.
0:10:18 But as a propagating strategy across time, it’s a degenerating game.
0:10:19 Okay, so what do you do?
0:10:25 Well, instead of thinking about what you want, or even thinking about how to strategize in
0:10:30 relationship to your goals, you might think about what you could do for other people,
0:10:37 or you could think about what you would do if you only did what was true and right.
0:10:40 Those are very different orientations, right?
0:10:46 And the religious orientation fundamentally is the orientation towards what is true and right.
0:10:48 And you might say, well, I don’t know what’s true and right.
0:10:55 It’s like, yeah, kind of, because our knowledge is bounded and we’re ignorant.
0:11:01 So do we understand the nature of the highest good?
0:11:07 Well, no, but it’s a very rare person who doesn’t know some of the time when they’re
0:11:14 doing something wrong. And it’s also a non-existent person who doesn’t have some concept of the
0:11:22 good, because you can’t act without a concept of the good, because you act towards a goal
0:11:29 you deem desirable. So that’s up. I mean, unless you’re trying to make your life worse,
0:11:33 and people do do that from time to time, but believe that is an exception.
0:11:41 You have to have descended into hell in a way before you’re in a situation where
0:11:45 you’re actively working to make your own life worse. That can happen.
0:11:52 But assuming that you’re relatively well embedded in the realm of the normal,
0:11:58 then you’re moving towards something better always, because otherwise there’s no motivation.
0:12:05 We know this technically. This isn’t even disputable. So the positive emotion systems
0:12:10 that make you enthusiastic, so that fill you with the desire to move towards a goal,
0:12:16 independent of fear, say, you know, because you could move towards a safety goal because you’re
0:12:22 afraid, but imagine you’re trying to accomplish something. You have a goal. The positive emotion
0:12:29 systems operate to track progress to the goal. Positive emotion is a consequence of evidence
0:12:36 of movement towards a desired goal. Okay, so now you have a proximal goal. You know, like
0:12:42 our proximal goal right now might be just to, like in the most micro level possible, might be to
0:12:49 display facial signs of interest in the conversation, right? It’s very micro goal,
0:12:54 but then that’s nested in our desire to have an interesting conversation
0:13:01 on the topic we’re having right now. And then inside the podcast as a whole, and then as part of
0:13:06 the podcast enterprise that you’re involved in as part of the book enterprise, let’s say that I’m
0:13:14 involved in, that’s nested inside our view of the world, right? So you see there, there are nestings
0:13:22 of the good that have no upper limit. That’s Jacob’s ladder, by the way. And at the top of that
0:13:29 is the good itself, which is the divine for all intents and purposes, divine, what do you mean
0:13:37 by that? That’s a definition. That’s what I mean is that in the hierarchy of what’s good,
0:13:47 the divine is the peak, right? Now, I don’t know what that is. That’s also an insistence in the
0:13:54 biblical texts, by the way. In the final analysis, the divine is ineffable. It’s not definable.
0:13:59 And it’s beyond you. And that’s partly because it’s, there’s a practical reason for that even.
0:14:05 You know this as well, as you move towards a goal, let’s say you attain a goal. Okay, now you’ve
0:14:12 accomplished. Well, are you done? It’s like, no, a new potential goal emerges, a new pinnacle.
0:14:18 And then maybe you’ll accomplish that, but then a new one exists. And so you could say that the,
0:14:24 the domain of the, the domain of opportunity is limitless, right? Because the thing that’s
0:14:31 at the pinnacle recedes as you approach it. And that’s, you could say that’s a technical definition
0:14:37 of God, which is accurate. That is a technical definition of God. God is the good towards
0:14:43 which all goods point. These are definitions again, remember, they’re not proclamations of faith,
0:14:51 they’re definitions. So we obviously all believe that all good things share something in common,
0:14:57 because otherwise we wouldn’t have the category good. And then we all believe that there are
0:15:03 rank orders of good, because otherwise everything good would be equally worth pursuing, no one believes
0:15:08 that. So there’s a rank order. Well, if there’s a rank orders towards some end or some pinnacle,
0:15:14 you can also think about it as a foundation, depends on which metaphorical landscape you want to
0:15:22 inhabit. Then the question becomes, well, how do you characterize that which is the ultimate aim,
0:15:28 that which is and should be the ultimate aim? Well, the, the stories on which our culture
0:15:34 is predicated characterize that in story. Do you think many people have an ultimate aim in their
0:15:40 mind? They, they do whether they know it or not. How would you remember that? So like the average
0:15:44 person listening to this now, do they, are they conscious at all of what they’re? No, but it’s
0:15:52 implicit. Okay. One of the things the psychoanalytic thinkers insisted on Carl Jung in particular was
0:15:59 that everybody acts out a story. Sometimes it’s a tragic story. Sometimes it’s the story of hell.
0:16:06 Like you’re trapped in a story one way or another. Now, do you know the contours of your story?
0:16:13 Not necessarily. I mean, people are often very bad at describing themselves. They don’t know
0:16:17 what they’re up to. That doesn’t mean they’re not up to something. And you could also think about
0:16:22 them as the battleground between warring stories. That also happens. That just means they’re
0:16:29 fractionated in their psyche. Yeah, they’re being pulled in many directions at the same time.
0:16:32 Someone said to me actually yesterday, they said, an interesting way to understand your
0:16:37 self narrative or your self story is to answer the question. If you were a character, a fictional
0:16:42 character, who would you be? And in that, you’d figure out whether you have this sort of heroized
0:16:46 story or if you’re a victim. So I’ll ask you that question. Yeah, right. Absolutely. Which
0:16:58 fictional character would you be? Bugs Bunny. Bugs Bunny is a trickster character.
0:17:03 Right. So yeah, more serious answer.
0:17:13 Do you ever read The Idiot? No. Yeah, well, I’m probably half idiot and half Raskolnikov.
0:17:18 That’s another way of looking at it. Why’d you say that?
0:17:31 The character of The Idiot in Dostoevsky’s novel is a holy fool. It’s a strange combination.
0:17:40 A person who’s doing things right in a manner that’s, I suppose, not obvious, that looks
0:17:45 that can easily be confused with
0:17:54 naivety or foolishness, playfulness even, I suppose.
0:18:00 Is that how you characterize yourself? So when that’s doing things right, but in a way that
0:18:05 others perceive as foolishness or naivety? Or even malevolence at times.
0:18:10 You know, I mean, that’s partly why people have gone after my reputation.
0:18:18 Does it ever bother you? People going after your reputation or them? Sure. I mean,
0:18:21 sometimes it’s like it’s been very distressing, very distressing.
0:18:26 The battles I’ve had with the College of Psychologists in Ontario, those are no joke.
0:18:36 It’s very, very stressful and unconscionable. So expensive, hundreds of thousands of dollars.
0:18:42 Years, it’s been 10 years of legal battles. Calumny in the press.
0:18:51 They’re attempting to undermine my professional credibility with some degree of success.
0:18:54 You know, because when your professional college goes after you,
0:18:59 people have to make a choice. It’s either the professional college is corrupt and wrong or the
0:19:04 individual being targeted is corrupt and wrong. It’s way easier to draw the second conclusion
0:19:09 and under most circumstances, in a valid state, that’s the correct conclusion.
0:19:17 And it was very stressful to find myself embattled at the University of Toronto.
0:19:22 I liked working there. That place had its problems, but it was pretty functional and
0:19:29 I really liked being there. I enjoyed my career as a professor. I had great relationships with
0:19:34 the undergraduates and my graduate students. I love doing my research, which has also disappeared.
0:19:46 So now, those are the serious disputes that I’ve had reputationally, let’s say.
0:19:54 There’s a lot of casual reputation savaging that I don’t really care about from journalists and so
0:19:59 forth, although sometimes that’s been pretty brutal because whenever that happened, especially
0:20:05 when things just started to be developing around me, let’s say on the public stage,
0:20:12 when I encountered a particularly psychopathic journalist, which happened quite often,
0:20:18 particularly in the UK, it was completely a toss-up, which way it was going to go.
0:20:24 Like, it could have just finished me and my family. That was definitely the case three or four,
0:20:32 five times, maybe more than that. So yes, it’s very bothersome. Now, now and really for a long time,
0:20:38 all of that takes place within a much broader context. All the interactions I have with people
0:20:46 in my actual life are ridiculously positive. And what would you say, positive and gratifying?
0:20:53 That’s a form of suffering, in a way, and everybody goes through suffering.
0:20:59 Because you’ve been through that, have you been able to develop a strategy or
0:21:03 some kind of anchoring that helps you when the wind blows like that?
0:21:11 Well, yeah, definitely. I mean, I had very strong relationships
0:21:19 when all of this started to develop around me. And that’s just become more the case. I’ve got a very
0:21:27 tightly knit family and a very tightly knit group of friends. Now, I lost some more peripheral friends,
0:21:35 but you know, that’s unfortunate, but say la vie. So there’s that. Now, is that a strategy?
0:21:42 Well, it’s not exactly a strategy because I didn’t design it towards an end. It was more
0:21:48 like an end in itself, right? I mean, I had kids not as a strategic move, but because I like kids.
0:21:56 So and I particularly like my kids. So that’s not a strategy. And I really have a great
0:22:01 relationship with my wife. And like I’ve known her for 52 years, it’s a very long time. And
0:22:10 she’s definitely my best friend and probably has been for 52 years. And so that’s really helpful.
0:22:18 And that refers back to this issue of identity that we were discussing. My identity is well
0:22:28 structured in the social sense. And then in terms of strategy, yeah, I mean, I have a meta strategy,
0:22:37 I suppose. I just say what I think. Right now, is that a strategy? It depends on how you define
0:22:45 strategy. It’s not a strategy that’s designed to serve my ends, not in an individualistic way.
0:22:52 So I’m just trying to see what happens if I say what I think. That’s a way of navigating in the
0:22:57 world, right? It’s an adventurous way of navigating in the world, because you don’t know what’s going
0:23:04 to happen. You have to let go of that. And then there’s an element of faith in that, right? There’s
0:23:10 faith in everything you do. You know, the empiricist types, the scientific reductionists, they say,
0:23:14 well, you can move forward in the world without faith, that’s complete bloody rubbish. There
0:23:19 isn’t anything you ever do that’s important that you don’t do in light of faith. It’s like,
0:23:26 if you get married, you do that on the basis of the evidence, do you? What bloody evidence do you
0:23:32 have? You’re 23 years old, you don’t know a damn thing. You know, maybe you’re in love with the
0:23:36 person that you want to marry, but you have no evidence whatsoever about how your life is going
0:23:43 to go. None. You have to leap into the unknown like you do with everything that’s important.
0:23:50 That’s all faith predicated. Now, the question is faith in what? Well, if you decide that you’re
0:23:58 just going to say what you think, then you have faith in the truth, at least insofar as you have
0:24:02 access to the truth. Is it true to say that if you hadn’t have said what you think publicly,
0:24:08 then you would have experienced less suffering than you have? No, I don’t think so.
0:24:13 So if you’d stayed in your practice, you know, as a clinical psychologist? No, because I would
0:24:19 have had to bite my tongue. And you think that’s more- I know it. It’s not a matter of thinking.
0:24:29 I know it. I know it. Absolutely, 100%. I spent a lot of time studying evil a lot of time,
0:24:37 and I know how it arises. It arises when good men hold their tongue. You don’t want that.
0:24:42 There’s nothing worse that can happen to you. Now, you may suffer some consequences of speak,
0:24:50 for sure. But all things considered, which is the right attitude if you’re wise,
0:24:55 there’s nothing worse that can happen to you than to falsify your speech.
0:25:00 Is saying nothing a form of falsifying your speech? It is when you have something to say.
0:25:06 Yeah, definitely. Because there’s a lot of people probably listening now that have a lot
0:25:10 they want to say. But if they say it, they’re going to lose their job, or there’s going to be
0:25:14 immediate consequences, which might mean they can’t feed their family. Yeah, it might mean that.
0:25:20 But it also might mean that if they bite their tongue and pretend to be something other than
0:25:27 they are, they’ll be a weak model for their children. And is that better than having some
0:25:35 financial instability? Maybe here’s a counter proposition. If your job requires you to lie,
0:25:42 maybe you should find another job. Now, look, I also understand that there are strategic
0:25:48 considerations in such a decision. There’s no sense margarine yourself stupidly. And if you’re
0:25:54 going to say what you believe to be the case, then you need to put yourself in a position where
0:26:01 doing so won’t be instantly catastrophic in a way you can’t fix. Because that’s not a good,
0:26:10 that’s not wise. Now, when things blew up around me, I had three sources of income.
0:26:17 That wasn’t accidental. Now, you know, people say, well, you are fortunate. It’s like, yeah,
0:26:25 and careful. So I didn’t want to have all my eggs in one basket. And that turned out, well,
0:26:31 I knew that it’s like, you have no autonomy. If you have all your eggs in one basket. So if you’re
0:26:37 going to think strategically, if you’re going to think like someone who’s at war, let’s say,
0:26:47 then you don’t leave your, you don’t leave a mortal flank exposed. And so if you know, here’s a rule,
0:26:52 if you find yourself in a position where you’re unable to speak, you haven’t fortified your
0:26:58 territory properly. Right. So then you have to think about that. It’s like you think, okay,
0:27:04 why can’t I say what I believe to be the case? Where am I vulnerable? And you can say, well,
0:27:09 that’s inevitable. It’s like, no, it’s not, it’s not inevitable. That doesn’t mean it isn’t difficult
0:27:18 to fortify and to put yourself in a position where you’re on the offense successfully. That’s
0:27:26 hard, but retreating one step at a time defensively for your whole life and shrinking while you do it.
0:27:33 That’s also not very, that’s also difficult. It’s just the kind of difficult that wears you down
0:27:41 and makes you sick of yourself. That’s not a good, that’s not a good plan. That’s a bad plan.
0:27:47 And did you see this when you were in your clinical practice? Did you see it in people?
0:27:52 Oh, constantly. How does it show up on the surface? What are the words that they say to
0:27:57 articulate that this sort of slow diminishing? Oh, you see that people’s marriages all the time
0:28:03 when marriages deteriorate. A marriage ends in divorce when there’s 10,000 fights that haven’t
0:28:11 been had. And I really, I’m not just guessing at that number. It’s like, let’s say your marriage
0:28:20 isn’t going very well. And so you have five uncomfortable quasi disputes a day, just to pick
0:28:26 a number. Maybe it’s 50, maybe it’s three, whatever five will do. Well, that’s 1500 a year.
0:28:34 Okay, now you just aggregate that over, let’s say the 10 years it takes your marriage to collapse.
0:28:42 Well, you’ve got something approximating 10,000 fights you didn’t have. That’s 10,000 times you
0:28:47 remain silent when you had something to say. And they all aggregate. And then every time,
0:28:55 once you’ve collected the first 5000, then every time you have a dispute, all 5000 are lurking
0:29:01 behind that dispute. And the fact of their existence makes it much less likely that you’ll
0:29:08 say what you have to say. That’s the reemergence of the dragon of chaos as a consequence of fleeing
0:29:13 from your fate. That’s exactly right. Last time we spoke, you said something which stayed with me.
0:29:16 And I’ve actually forwarded it to a few of my friends on this particular subject. You said to
0:29:22 me, you’re going to have to sit and spend 90 minutes a week speaking to your partner.
0:29:29 So annoying. So annoying. It’s so annoying, but it’s so important. And so many of my friends that
0:29:32 are in have relationship difficulties. I send them this little four minute clip. I have it on my
0:29:38 phone. Have you seen that? Because the 90 minute, no, it might be 95 minutes. It might be 85 minutes.
0:29:46 But the concept of you need to sit down and create a space where she or he or whatever can tell you
0:29:51 what they’ve noticed. Why they don’t like you. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it’s especially, I think
0:30:00 I don’t think that you can really establish the kind of relationship with a woman that you want
0:30:07 with anything in the road. Like it’s hard for women to give themselves to men. And no wonder.
0:30:10 It’s amazing. They ever do it. They have a lot on the line.
0:30:15 What are the preconditions for that offering?
0:30:28 Peace and security. You can tell if it’s, if the territory is being cleared because play emerges.
0:30:37 Right. Right. Play emerges and play is a very fragile motivational state. It can be disrupted
0:30:44 by almost anything. So if there are impediments to understanding, play will not arise. And then
0:30:51 you don’t have the romantic adventure that you want. It’s grudging. Right. You don’t have a
0:30:57 voluntary partner. And that’s a very hard thing to attain, right? That full voluntary partnership.
0:31:02 That means that you’re in sync with each other. You can’t expect that to be easy. You can’t
0:31:09 even be in sync with yourself. Like it’s hard. And you need to keep each other up to date. You
0:31:17 need to know what’s going on. You need to iron out the sources of discomfort or distrust. And
0:31:25 that there’s a lot of Dante’s Inferno. What’s that? That, well, Dante’s Inferno is a characterization
0:31:34 of hell by, by Dante. It’s one of the most famous poems ever written. And it’s, it’s, you can think
0:31:41 about it as what you have to do to get to the bottom of things. So let’s say that you have a
0:31:47 dispute with your wife and it’s a recurring dispute. Right. It’s an issue. You have an issue.
0:31:54 Well, do you want to address the issue? It’s like, do you want to do surgery without anesthetic?
0:32:03 It’s the same question. Addressing an issue is a journey into the abyss. Dante placed Satan
0:32:10 at the bottom of hell. Right. So that’s the figure of malevolence itself encased in ice and frozen.
0:32:17 So immobile, surrounded by those who betray. That’s the lowest level of hell. Why? Well,
0:32:23 it’s often the case that if you journey into an issue, spiral down to the bottom, you’ll find
0:32:30 betrayal. Right. Cause maybe your partner doesn’t trust you because she was betrayed. Highly probable,
0:32:37 highly probable, or her grandmother was betrayed. Like, you know, there’s bad blood between men and
0:32:40 women. Can you ever solve for that? So if I’m in a situation where my partner doesn’t trust me
0:32:45 because she was betrayed, whether it’s something I did or whatever, how do you ever get rid of the
0:32:50 devil at the bottom of the spiral? Well, you have to, you have to find out that it’s there. Okay.
0:32:58 That’s a hard question. You both have to want to. That’s the first thing, because that’s the
0:33:05 setting of the aim. What do we want? We want to play forever in God’s heavenly garden. How about
0:33:12 that? That’s a metaphorical representation, right? But that’s a walled garden. That’s the human
0:33:21 environment. The walls are the walls of your house. The garden is nature, displaying itself in its
0:33:27 beauty within boundaries. That’s a place that play can take place. That’s what you want. You
0:33:34 got to think about it. What do you want? Okay. So now we might ask, what do you mean want? Okay.
0:33:39 If you were taking care of yourself and you could have what was good for you, what would that be?
0:33:44 Now that’s a hard question, right? You’re going to have to think about that for a long time.
0:33:51 What would satisfy someone as miserable and resentful and useless as me,
0:34:00 right? If I could have it. Now people will, they don’t even want to address that issue because
0:34:07 part of the problem with making your aim clear is you know when you’re failing. And people would
0:34:13 rather keep the evidence of their failure obscured from themselves, even if it meant continued failure.
0:34:16 But now let’s say you decide not to do that. You’re going to think, okay,
0:34:23 I’m going to aim high. I’m going to take care of myself. Okay. Now your wife’s on board with that.
0:34:28 Now that’s a hell of, that’s a, that’s really what the marital bow is in the final analysis.
0:34:31 Most deeply is that willingness to participate in that game.
0:34:38 Now you have to tell each other the truth. What the hell do you want? Well, she doesn’t know,
0:34:45 neither do you, not really. So you got to start digging, finding out. And you, and noticing it’s
0:34:49 like now and then you’ll see that you’re happy with each other. And maybe it’ll happen kind of
0:34:54 randomly. You’ll be out in some, I don’t know, maybe you’re a restaurant or you’re gone for a walk or
0:34:59 who knows. And you’ll notice, oh, this is going well. It’s like, oh yeah, this is going well.
0:35:06 What are we doing right? Could we take that little episode and could we start to expand it?
0:35:10 You know, because one of the things you can do in a marriage is you can notice when things are
0:35:14 going well. And then you can have a chat with each other and say, look, I don’t know what we did
0:35:20 during this period of time, but let’s see if we can figure it out and see if we could do like 10%
0:35:27 more of that next week or 1% more. And then just make that expand. You can do that too by,
0:35:33 you know, hypothetically at some point, if you’re married at some point, you were in love with your
0:35:39 wife, you can remember that. You have to remember that. You have to practice
0:35:46 remembering that. You have to practice bringing it to mind and occupying that. Because when you
0:35:53 first fall in love, it kind of happens to you, right? That’s a gift. But you have to, in order
0:36:02 for that to last, you have to become an expert at it. You have to become an expert at it. You have
0:36:07 to take it on as a responsibility. It’s offered as a gift, but then you have to take it on as a
0:36:12 responsibility. Then you have to practice. It’s like, oh, yes, I love this person. And if you
0:36:18 don’t at the moment, you have to think, well, I did and I could. So why don’t I? Is it me?
0:36:26 That’s probably it’s you. Might be them too, but you might as well start with you. I mean,
0:36:28 you got lots of flaws. You could start with those.
0:36:34 What if you just made a bad decision? As in like the person you picked, you think they’re not
0:36:41 compatible? Well, that’s a tough one, because you’re not really compatible with anyone.
0:36:45 You know, people think, well, I’ll find the right person. It’s like, first of all,
0:36:50 no, you won’t. Second, if you found the right person and they ever saw you, they just run away
0:36:58 screaming. So it’s just the whole conceptual scheme is wrong. When I was on tour, there was one
0:37:04 three-day period where the same question emerged from the audience because I do a Q&A
0:37:12 three nights in a row. How do I find the person that’s right for me? And I tried answering it.
0:37:17 And by the third night, I thought, oh, I know why I can’t answer this question. It’s because it’s a
0:37:25 stupid question. It’s badly formulated, like profoundly badly formulated, fatally badly formulated.
0:37:31 It’s not the right question. The right question is, how can I learn to offer
0:37:37 something to someone else that would make me eminently desirable? That’s a way different
0:37:44 question. They’re not even in the same conceptual universe. And it’s the right question because
0:37:51 you can build yourself into a person that people would line up to be with. How?
0:37:54 Well, have you done it?
0:38:02 Well, you told me not to do it. You’re very successful, right? You’re increasingly successful.
0:38:06 Your book warns against narcissism, Jordan. There’s a difference between narcissism and
0:38:14 giving the devil is due. Okay, let’s pull back a little bit. What have you done right?
0:38:20 I have focused on myself for a long time. And what does that mean?
0:38:27 It means I fortified myself financially, so that I can support others. I can support family.
0:38:30 So that’s not exactly focusing on yourself, right? Okay.
0:38:35 That’s focusing on getting your act together. And I’m being very picky about the words because
0:38:42 focus on yourself that has a narcissistic connotation. But that isn’t what you’re talking
0:38:49 about. You said you fortified yourself financially. Okay, so now you have foundation under your feet
0:38:56 financially. Okay, good. What else? I go to the gym. So I’m physically strong, which is useful.
0:39:02 I’ve learned a lot. I’ve done a lot of learning about myself, about how I show up in the world.
0:39:05 So you’re trying to learn? Yes, I’ve learned some skills.
0:39:10 Well, so there’s three things that are pretty good. You’ve got a firm financial foundation.
0:39:17 You’re maintaining yourself physically or even improving yourself and you’re doing the same thing,
0:39:23 say spiritually and intellectually. Okay, well, that’ll attract a fair number of people, just
0:39:28 those three, right? And maybe you’re increasing the probability that it will attract the sort of
0:39:32 person that you would like to attract. That is very much the story of my life. Like, I think,
0:39:36 don’t think people realize this, but I’ve actually been on, I think, four dates in my entire life.
0:39:43 I’m 32. And I took this really counter, sort of seems counterintuitive approach to myself,
0:39:46 which was, as an 18 year old, I basically couldn’t attract anybody. I was also not on
0:39:51 dating apps. I wasn’t doing, so my, for 10 years, I basically focused on myself. And,
0:39:59 you know, 27 years old, someone messaged me and I went on it. And this is how I am. Like,
0:40:04 if I’m going to go on a date, it’s going to be, I’m going to go all in. It was a three day date
0:40:08 that I planned in an Excel document. I’ve been with that person for six years. So I feel like,
0:40:16 I didn’t go to bars and try and like, you know, that’s worth taking apart. I like to do arithmetic
0:40:22 with my clients. Like people hate arithmetic and it’s no wonder because it’s so savage. So I’ll
0:40:29 give you an example. So 15 years ago, I counted the number of times I would see my parents.
0:40:39 It was like 20 times. So then I knew that. Right. 20 isn’t very many. Right. How many people do you
0:40:48 get to try on in your life? Five. If you’re lucky. If you’re attractive and fortunate,
0:40:55 you get five cracks at the pinata. Five isn’t very many. And people think, well, it’s a,
0:41:00 there’s plenty of fish in the sea. It’s like, that doesn’t mean they’re going to swarm around you,
0:41:06 buddy. Right. It’s, and maybe it’s even worse for women because their timeframe is, is very short.
0:41:15 You know, like if a woman isn’t in a relationship, family relationship by 30, then it’s starting
0:41:21 to get pretty damn rough. And that’s almost independent of how attractive she is. It’s like,
0:41:26 you don’t have much time. Better get yourself prepared. When you say pretty damn rough, what
0:41:33 do you mean? Well, to find a mate or to have a child? Both, both. Well, we know now that at the
0:41:40 present time in the West, half of women, 30 and younger, don’t have a child. Okay. Now we also
0:41:48 know that couples 30, one in three couples at 30 already have trouble conceiving. That definition
0:41:55 of trouble is one year of attempt with no success. Okay. So fertility goes off a cliff at 35.
0:42:01 So 30, you’re pushing your luck at 30 at 35. You are seriously pushing your luck.
0:42:10 I worked for 10 years with a strata of the highest achieving women, likely in Canada. I had, as part
0:42:18 of my clinical practice, a offering that we made to consulting firms and law firms. And the offer
0:42:26 was send us your best people and we’ll work for them. But the consequence of that is that they’ll
0:42:32 be even more productive. So in the typical law firm, for example, there’s people who don’t do
0:42:36 well. Then there’s people who are good lawyers. Then there are people who are good lawyers that
0:42:42 bring in business. There’s like none of them. They’re super valuable. And if a law firm has
0:42:48 someone like that, they want to keep them. And they’re often women, half the time, let’s say.
0:42:53 And those were the women, I worked with a bunch of men too, but all concentrated on the women
0:43:01 here. Those were the women I was working with. And they were generally extremely attractive,
0:43:08 extremely intelligent, very hardworking, and very focused on career development. And they were,
0:43:13 they’d done very well in junior high school and high school. Then they, you know,
0:43:20 ace college and their LSATs. And then when they were articulating, the firms snapped them up quickly.
0:43:24 And then they rocketed up towards partnership. And then then they were 30. And they all thought,
0:43:29 what the hell am I doing working 70 hours a week with a bunch of insanely competitive men?
0:43:38 Right. And that is the question. It’s like, what are you doing? Exactly. And then even if you’re
0:43:43 radically successful, let’s say in your law school career, if you get run over by a bus
0:43:50 on the way to work, the waters just close over you at the firm and the firm continues on.
0:43:59 It’s not like anyone cares. Not really. So now I’m, I’m not saying that people shouldn’t pursue a
0:44:04 career. I’m not saying that. But I would say even in my case, and I’m male, so that makes a big
0:44:12 difference because men are also oriented towards status, competition, victory in a way that women
0:44:16 just aren’t not at least not in the career domain. And the reason for that is very straightforward.
0:44:26 And the, the thing that makes men by default most attractive to women is the comparative success
0:44:33 in the hierarchy of men. It’s a walloping predictor and it’s irrelevant to men. Like
0:44:36 men don’t care at all whether women are successful in their career.
0:44:44 It’s not a determinant of their attractiveness. In fact, it’s often the contrary. Well, these
0:44:51 women that I’m talking about, they were often alone. Why? Well, they’re beautiful. So that like
0:44:58 intimidated 90% of men right there, they’re smart. So that’s another 90% of the remaining 10%.
0:45:04 They’re accomplished and wealthy. Well, like, first of all, who’s going to approach them? And
0:45:08 second, who are they going to accept? Because women are a hypergamous, right?
0:45:15 Is that, does that mean that men are insecure and sort of emasculated by a strong, successful woman?
0:45:19 Sure. Yeah, well, but there’s reason for that. Like,
0:45:28 it’s not weakness on the part of men, exactly. It’s the desire of the woman to find someone who
0:45:35 brings a benefit to the relationship. And why? Well, she, because a woman will make herself
0:45:41 vulnerable when she has a child. And so she’s looking for a man who’ll be helpful compared to her.
0:45:48 Okay, so if the woman is like full of ability, well, then her standards for a guy who’s going
0:45:55 to be helpful get very high. And that’s hard on her because it decreases the pool of available
0:46:00 candidates radically. So like, there’s a negative relationship between IQ and women and the
0:46:08 probability of being married. So it’s harsh. Now, is it, are men intimidated? Well, yes,
0:46:15 obviously. Are men intimidated by beautiful women? Well, you can answer that, especially
0:46:21 if you’re young. Why? The probability that any given beautiful woman is going to reject you
0:46:28 when you’re a young man is like, it’s basically 100%. Now, it’s not exactly 100%. And there are
0:46:38 exceptions, but the default response is rejection. And beautiful women get hit on, you know, a fair bit.
0:46:42 Some of the, it’s interesting, because there’s a bunch of stats which I find quite interesting.
0:46:45 One of them is that sexlessness is increased, is increasing. Yeah, yeah.
0:46:50 People having less sex. Oh yeah, that’s fascinating. That’s fascinating. Does it matter?
0:46:58 Oh, it’s a catastrophe. And why are we having less sex? What is the complex web of factors that
0:47:02 have brought us to this place? I know something like… Well, one of them I would say is that
0:47:13 in a free and easy mating environment, women don’t trust men. And no wonder. Well, here’s a terrible
0:47:22 thing to know. So imagine that there are men who are oriented towards short-term relationships,
0:47:26 and there are men who are oriented towards long-term relationships, committed relationships,
0:47:31 right? Okay, so that would be the men who want love along with sex, let’s say, love and commitment.
0:47:36 Then there’s the party today because we’re all dead tomorrow’s sort of guys. And there’s some
0:47:42 women like that too, although fewer women because they pay a much higher price for sexual impropriety.
0:47:48 So the pool of short-term maters has more men in it. Okay, what do they like? Well, the personality
0:47:54 studies have already been done. They’re Machiavellian, which means they use their language to manipulate.
0:47:59 They’re narcissistic, which means they want unearned social status. They’re psychopathic,
0:48:05 which makes them predatory parasites. And they’re sadistic. Okay, so now you open up the mating
0:48:11 market so that short-term dalliances are acceptable. You throw all the women into the hands of the
0:48:18 psychopaths. Well, that’s a bad strategy. And it’s no wonder that it decimates the mating market
0:48:24 because women are thinking, well, are those men trustworthy? And the answer is no. And sex is
0:48:32 costly. We have this immature delusion that we can free sex from the grip of the oppressive
0:48:41 patriarchy, let’s say. It’s like, no, you can’t. Obviously, you can’t. Emotional entanglements
0:48:47 are an inevitable consequence of intimate physical relationships. There’s that. Then there’s the
0:48:53 issue of abortion and pregnancy that actually constitutes a problem. And then there’s sexually
0:49:00 transmitted disease. And that’s just like the first of a very long list of potential problems with sex.
0:49:08 So there’s no simple sexual landscape, and there are deluded people who think there is a simple
0:49:13 landscape and that there should be. But most, they tilt hard in the psychopathic direction
0:49:17 because they’re manipulative. Do you believe in no sex before marriage as a concept?
0:49:28 As an ideal. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That’s right. And why would that result in better relationships
0:49:32 and a better society more broadly? Well, here’s one way of looking at it.
0:49:39 So let’s say you take the alternative approach, okay? You’re going to try your partner on for size.
0:49:44 So you live together. Well, first of all, we know that couples live together more likely to get divorced
0:49:53 rather than less. We know that the probability of cheating is proportionate to the number of partners
0:49:59 before the marriage or the committed relationship. Well, well, partly that’s just self-evidence,
0:50:05 like the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. Right. So if you had a lot of partners,
0:50:10 you’re the sort of person who’s likely to have a lot of partners. And then there’s also a conceptual
0:50:16 problem. It’s like, are you shopping for a car? It’s like you’re going to take it out for a test
0:50:25 drive and see how it goes. Okay. That’s not the right metaphor. And then here’s another problem.
0:50:29 I’m going to see what it’s like to be married by living with this person. It’s like, no,
0:50:34 you’re not because you don’t know what it’s like to be married until you’re married.
0:50:41 Whatever you’re doing when you live together, that’s not a model for what you’re going to do
0:50:47 when you’re married because being married is different. It’s permanent. So you’re saying don’t
0:50:51 live together before you. Well, I know the stats on living together. It’s like you live with someone
0:50:57 and then you marry them, you’re more likely to get divorced. So it doesn’t work. The theory was
0:51:02 you try it out and if it works, you go ahead with it. Yeah. Well, the theory was wrong because that
0:51:08 isn’t what happens. It actually increases the probability that the relationship will fail.
0:51:12 It’s also partly, you got to ask yourself what the message is. I know what the message is when
0:51:19 you live with someone. It’s pretty straightforward. You’ll do unless someone better comes along
0:51:24 and all grant you the same opportunity. But Jesus, that’s a hell of a foundation for a
0:51:31 like long term relationship. So you say go from single to married and living together straight
0:51:36 away without the like trial period? Well, I don’t know exactly what the trial period should be.
0:51:42 I mean, people have dated and I’m also not saying that this is simple. It’s not simple. Why would it
0:51:47 be simple? It’s not, there isn’t anything more difficult that you do in your entire life than
0:51:52 find a partner and establish a family. It’s like it’s going to be hard how to do it optimally.
0:52:00 Well, I can tell you in my own experience, you know, like I’ve known my wife since she was eight
0:52:08 and we were friends, good friends, and we kind of departed from each other during adolescence.
0:52:15 I was a year younger than everyone in my class and she matured faster, women do anyways, and so
0:52:20 that kind of split us apart. And we didn’t get married till I think we were about 27,
0:52:25 something like that, 28, but it would have been better to do it earlier.
0:52:28 So get married earlier. Yeah, it’s just time I didn’t have with her.
0:52:34 What case would you make to me for marriage versus, because I’ll be honest,
0:52:38 I’m wrestling with marriage, not just God. I’m trying to understand what the point of
0:52:43 marriage is versus the relationship we have now. But I can have children in the relationship I have
0:52:51 now. Yeah. The general rule of thumb for life is that you should do what other people have done
0:52:57 forever, unless you have a really good reason not to. Don’t deviate from the straight, narrow path.
0:53:02 Like you are already deviating in all sorts of ways. You’re very entrepreneurial, right? So your
0:53:09 life has a variety of adventurous pathways. You’re going to want to put firm foundation
0:53:13 wherever you can, that’ll actually free you up to do more adventurous things.
0:53:21 Children are a multi-generational commitment. Because it’s children and grandchildren. And so
0:53:28 the marriage is a signifier of that. And in order to stay with someone optimally over the longest
0:53:34 period of time possible, it has to be serious. And for something to be serious, you have to throw
0:53:37 everything at it. You know, and you might say, well, love is enough. It’s like,
0:53:45 that’s a very naive view of the world, because there’ll be times, because that’s kind of like
0:53:49 saying, well, as long as we love each other and we’re happy, we’ll be together. It’s like, well,
0:53:54 if you’re talking 40 years, there’s going to be plenty of years in there where you’re not happy
0:53:59 and you probably don’t love each other. So what then? You’re going to just, is it just going to
0:54:05 dissolve? Or you’re going to say, we’re in this, you know, come hell or high water, which is the vow,
0:54:11 come hell or high, and hell and high water, they’re coming. And then you got to ask yourself,
0:54:16 you know, is this the person you want in the boat with you when hell and high water come?
0:54:20 And that’s not going to be fun. That’s for sure. You want to do it alone?
0:54:25 Or you think that when everything falls apart around you, you’re going to be in a better
0:54:32 position to find someone better? I don’t think so. It’s a long, and then, you know, you, you take the
0:54:37 marital vow in a religious sense and you do it in front of a community, right? So it’s, it signifies
0:54:42 commitment. And you need that because like, you think you can maintain all that commitment on your
0:54:50 own? Maybe you can’t. I doubt it. Generally, people can’t like no one. We need to fortify
0:54:53 ourselves in all sorts of ways to get through the things in life that are most difficult.
0:54:58 But the traditional marriage agreement, one that’s a legal agreement,
0:55:02 yeah, does it need to be, can I not take my partner, have a wedding in front of
0:55:08 our friends and family, sign a contract, maybe even do it in a sort of religious context,
0:55:13 without having it to be a religious, like a legal document that the government are involved in?
0:55:18 Well, you could, but is it not the same bond to you?
0:55:24 There, you’re talking about a multitude of different bonds, right? Fundamentally, right?
0:55:30 You’re the one that you’re prioritizing is the bond that’s voluntary and predicated on
0:55:36 what? The love of the moment. I mean, we want to be precise here, right? That, so I think that’s
0:55:41 a reasonably reasonable way of conceptualizing it. And it is a romantic view that that should
0:55:45 prevail. And it’s a romantic view that that should be sufficient. I don’t think it,
0:55:51 there’s, it’s often the case that it doesn’t prevail, and it’s generally the case that it’s
0:55:55 not sufficient. And so then you might say, well, maybe you want to add a legal element to that,
0:55:59 and you want to add a metaphysical element to it, because those are all fortifications.
0:56:06 And there are indications even to yourself that you’re serious. It’s not like we understand
0:56:11 ourselves. You know, like people are just as mysterious to themselves as someone else is
0:56:19 mysterious to them. You ask yourself, it’s like, okay, well, what process is, what do I have to
0:56:27 put in place to ensure that I’m doing the right thing? Well, when you’re embarking on something
0:56:33 difficult, like marriage, and you better have everything necessary in place.
0:56:39 If you and Tammy hadn’t got married, and you were just in a relationship like I am with my partner,
0:56:44 how would you think your life would be different? And do you think you don’t think it would have
0:56:50 lasted? You don’t think your life would have lasted? Oh, well, that’s, that’s undoubtedly true.
0:56:55 I mean, both of us just about died in the last five years. And I don’t mean by a little bit. I mean,
0:57:05 like it was touch and go for a long time. So it was a good thing. Everything was in place through
0:57:16 that. I mean, the waters were pretty high for the last three years, four years, socially, professionally,
0:57:23 physically. What are you wrestling with exactly, like in this issue? I mean, it seems like you’re
0:57:28 trying to sort out the relationship between the emotional attachment and the personal attachment
0:57:33 and the social structures that say surround marriage. It’s complicated because even any
0:57:39 answer I might give you is if you go down that spiral, you might find something at the bottom
0:57:43 of it. That’s not what I’m saying. So what I mean by that is, just as you asked that question,
0:57:48 I just got a glimpse of, I just had a bit of a flash to like my issues with commitment,
0:57:52 and how I watched. Okay, so when you add a little fantasy? No, I just, I just remember
0:57:56 recalling feeling like my dad was in prison when he was in his relationship. So I think that’s
0:58:01 still okay. So now I can tell you what to do with that. So you bring those images to mind.
0:58:07 Right? So you’ve got this question in mind. You just found out something. You said that
0:58:11 there’s something at the bottom of this. Okay, now if you watch your fantasies,
0:58:17 they all shed light on this descent into the abyss, so to speak. Now you had a flash of memory.
0:58:23 Okay, that memory is associated with all sorts of things. You can bring that to mind and let
0:58:29 it play itself out. Right? And it’ll explore the contours of the problem that you’re, now you put
0:58:33 your finger on a very important problem. You said that you saw in your father someone who’s trapped
0:58:39 in his marriage. Yeah. Was no bloody wonder you’re leery of that. Right? So now you, okay, so now
0:58:44 the question would be, what was the nature of that entrapment? What evidence did you have that
0:58:50 that was in fact the case? How much of that was him? How much of that was her? And what is it that
0:58:55 they did wrong and right? You need to know all of that and you need to know how it affected you.
0:59:00 That’s a great, see, that’s so cool because that very frequently happens to people when they ask
0:59:07 a question. That’s like a revelation. So you ask a question. That’s like a prayer. The question is,
0:59:14 is there something at the bottom of my, the trouble I’m having conceptualizing marriage?
0:59:20 Okay. Now you want to know that’s the first precondition. Okay. Then you’ll get memories,
0:59:24 images like that, and then people shy away. It’s like, I don’t want to go there. It’s like, yeah,
0:59:29 that’s for sure. You bloody well don’t want to go there, but you do because if it’s there,
0:59:36 you will go there. Right? It’ll plague you and it’ll plague your life. It’ll, it’ll show its head,
0:59:42 continually in your relationship, or you can get to the bottom of it, which is people will fight
0:59:47 their whole life with their partner to avoid getting to the bottom of something. That’s how
0:59:52 terrifying it is to get to the bottom of something. Right? But if you do get to the bottom of it,
0:59:58 then you don’t have to fight for 30 years. So that’s very much worthwhile and it’ll,
1:00:04 it’ll lighten you as well. You know, because you’re, you have a real issue. It’s like,
1:00:09 how can marriage not be a trap? Yeah. Well, yeah. Right. Definitely. That’s a very good question.
1:00:16 And an important one. How can marriage be a trap? How can not being married be a trap? How can being
1:00:23 alone being a trap be a trap? How can being deluded about what holds people together be a trap?
1:00:30 There’s traps everywhere, man. There’s traps everywhere. And so there’s no risk-free pathway
1:00:36 forward. There’s just risk everywhere. Okay, so that’s a really useful thing to know. Then the
1:00:40 question would shift to something like, well, if I wanted to construct a relationship that had,
1:00:48 that was optimized, that’s what you have to ask yourself. It’s like, and your, and your, and your
1:00:53 partner. It’s like, what are we doing here? What do we want? Tammy and I decided, for example,
1:00:59 when we first got married, I, well, I mentioned this to her right away when we decided that we
1:01:04 were going to take things seriously. It was like, we’re going to tell each other the truth.
1:01:12 So that was part of the vision. Like, no matter what, no matter what, yeah, no matter what,
1:01:17 she’s been very good at that, I would say better than me. I’ve been good at it, but she’s been
1:01:22 really quite remarkably good at it. She really threw herself into it. And I mean, that’s,
1:01:29 that causes complete transformation, but there’s plenty of skeletons in the closet to be
1:01:36 revealed, God, that’s for sure. Talking of things that risk harming relationships,
1:01:39 one of the things I wanted to ask you about, a subject we’ve never spoke about before,
1:01:46 but it ties into the themes of relationships, marriage and, and sex is pornography. And generally,
1:01:51 Oh, another reason that sex has disappeared. Yeah, right, right. You talk about hedonism in
1:01:59 your book, we who wrestle with God, pornography. Is this a bad thing? It’s a terrible thing.
1:02:04 Yeah, it’s a terrible thing. Everything about it is terrible. Really?
1:02:11 Well, first of all, it’s addictive and no wonder. I mean, any 13 year old boy
1:02:22 can now look at more beautiful naked women in one day than the greatest king who ever lived,
1:02:24 managed in his whole life.
1:02:33 Right. So it’s like, wow, that’s not and talk me through the downstream consequences of
1:02:37 such a possibility. It’s easy. It’s easy. It’s easy to get what
1:02:42 sexual gratification. That’s not good. It’s not supposed to be easy.
1:02:48 And it’s easy. So how desperate do you have to be to get married?
1:02:54 Not desperate at all. It’s like, yeah, right. What do you know? You don’t know anything.
1:02:57 I’m married just because I’m in love. You’re an idiot.
1:03:06 God to put you in a position where you’re going to have the romantic adventure of your life,
1:03:12 the true romantic adventure of your life. You’re going to need love and desperation, buddy.
1:03:17 You’re going to need everything working on your side, love, desperation, terror, shame, guilt,
1:03:22 everything working for you. And so you take the easy road.
1:03:26 Pornography. Sure. You’re not desperate anymore.
1:03:32 So people that consume pornography, do you think they’re less motivated to attack life?
1:03:36 And so well, definitely less motivated to pursue sexual relationships with women.
1:03:41 A way of that, are they then less likely to then want to go to the gym or
1:03:42 have a career? Oh, definitely.
1:03:47 It’s an interesting idea. How much of what men do do they do to impress women?
1:03:49 A lot. It’s like, yeah, like all of it.
1:03:56 All of it. I mean, the status battles that men back to the law firms, for example. So the men I
1:04:03 worked with, they’re very concerned with their bonuses and their end of the year performance
1:04:08 reports. Why? Well, part of it was the money. Most of them had lots of money. It’s like,
1:04:12 I’d ask them, they say, well, that’s the money is how we keep score. Well, what does that mean?
1:04:17 Well, it’s money is the way that men in those competitive enterprises say they,
1:04:20 they compare themselves to one another. And why do they want to be at the top?
1:04:27 Because women peel from the top. So men are trying to impress women all the time and they’ll do it
1:04:32 in positive ways and in pathological ways. The window for sexual representation started to open
1:04:38 in the 1920s, let’s say, but it really got going with Playboy. Then Penthouse came out right after
1:04:45 that. And Penthouse was like full frontal nudity display. And then Hustler came out and Hustler
1:04:51 was sort of, well, whatever Penthouse didn’t show you, Hustler will show you. And it got
1:04:58 pretty low brow. Like it was a rough, low class magazine. It didn’t, it just shed all the pretensions
1:05:08 that Playboy and Penthouse had. And then the net came along. It’s like all those engineers who couldn’t
1:05:15 establish a relationship with an actual woman, exchanging pornography, what 25% of internet
1:05:21 traffic, something like that, that desire to exchange pornography. Was that what created the net?
1:05:33 Yeah. It was a huge part of it. What’s that done? Well, as you pointed out, I think 30% now of Japanese
1:05:40 men and women under 30 are virgins. It’s about the same in Korea. Relationships between men and
1:05:44 women are falling apart in the rest of the West in the same sort of way.
1:05:52 Now, can you attribute that to pornography? Certainly part. Like if I was a young woman
1:05:58 and I was looking at the pornography world online, I’d think, yeah, maybe not.
1:06:02 One of the interesting things we noticed when we’re doing some research on this was what the
1:06:08 top Google search around this subject matter is, how do I quit? And I feel like the third one is,
1:06:14 how do I quit? And that it’s in such high quantity of people searching Google for how to quit
1:06:20 pornography that it feels desperate. Like it feels desperate. Well, why wouldn’t it be addictive?
1:06:24 And why doesn’t pornography feel good to people? That’s a good question.
1:06:31 That’s a good question. Well, there’s nothing heroic about it. That’s for sure. It’s obviously
1:06:37 nothing to be proud of. That’s a different issue than whether or not it’s wrong. It’s certainly
1:06:42 not an accomplishment. I mean, I don’t think anyone would disagree about that. It’s not an
1:06:48 accomplishment. Well, maybe sex is supposed to be an accomplishment. Maybe you violate the
1:06:52 spirit of sexuality itself when it’s not an accomplishment. You certainly do that if you
1:07:03 rape, right? So is it an accomplishment? Probably. So what if your accomplishment is false? Well,
1:07:10 then what are you betraying? Well, if it’s associated with sex, maybe you’re betraying
1:07:17 the most fundamental possible thing. It’s certainly possible. There is life and sex.
1:07:23 That’s pretty much that, right? You’re alive and you reproduce from a biological perspective.
1:07:30 And so you’re violating the spirit of what? Maybe you’re violating the spirit of relationship.
1:07:36 Maybe you’re violating the spirit of adventure, the spirit of romance, the spirit of reproduction,
1:07:45 the spirit of life. Likely. It’s so interesting that a lot of people seem to be angry at it.
1:07:50 They seem to be angry with what it’s done to them. They should be angry. They should be angry.
1:07:53 Even on an individual level, people seem, in the comment section of these episodes that we’ve
1:07:58 done about the subject matter, people seem to be angry about its existence and what it’s done to
1:08:03 them. They should be angry. They should be outraged. It’s outrageous. It’s outrageous.
1:08:05 Would you ban it if you were in charge of the world?
1:08:18 I don’t know how to answer that. I think any policies that require force rather than
1:08:26 voluntary compliance are generally bad policies. There are restrictions that should be placed on
1:08:32 its distribution, but I would have to spend a lot of time thinking through what those were from a
1:08:40 policy perspective. I think it’s wrong. No, I don’t think. I know it’s wrong. That doesn’t mean I know
1:08:47 how that should be dealt with at the level of policy. It’s complicated. I do understand why
1:08:52 young men and young women are angry about it. It’s like, where are the adults? Where are the adults?
1:08:58 Where have they gone? They’re not protecting like 11-year-old kids from what you can see on the net?
1:09:05 You know, I remember when I was a kid, I got ahold of some of these underground comics from the 1960s,
1:09:12 and a lot of the underground comic artists were they’re pretty pathological creatures,
1:09:17 like Robert Crumb’s a good example. Crumb led a pretty good life for someone as demented as he is,
1:09:24 and there’s a very famous documentary made about the Crumb Brothers, and Robert Crumb was the
1:09:30 Establisher. He was one of the people who established the genre of graphic novel really back in the
1:09:37 60s in Hyde Ashbury in San Francisco. And his imagination goes places that you don’t want to
1:09:47 be along for the ride seriously, like seriously. And I read some of that material when I was like
1:09:53 11, you know, I never forgot it. It was shocking as hell. And like typical 11-year-old now, it’s like
1:10:00 there are things that he is going to see that he’ll never forget. It’s not good.
1:10:06 And the brain is still forming at that age, isn’t it? So it’s an interesting way to shock the brain.
1:10:12 Well, we also don’t know why that’s right. We have no idea whatsoever what a diet of pornography
1:10:17 exposure does to somebody who’s, you know, making their way through puberty.
1:10:21 What would you say to those individuals then that have been googling that, like how to quit?
1:10:27 Because I imagine if we thought about percentages, I’d say, what, 90% of people that are listening
1:10:32 right now watch pornography. At least, I don’t know what the numbers are, but it’s a lot of people,
1:10:34 it’s a vast majority. Write down, write down what it’s doing to you.
1:10:39 Write down what it’s doing to you. Write down, exhaustively. Everything you think it might be
1:10:44 doing to you. Write it down, everything. Don’t worry about whether you’re right or not. Like,
1:10:49 maybe it’s not doing some of the things you think it might be doing, but make an exhaustive list,
1:10:54 then start thinking through is like, is that what you want? Is that what you want?
1:10:59 And then write down what you want instead. That’ll help. Because if you’re going to, look,
1:11:09 any hedonistic endeavor is rewarding in the moment, obviously. The problem is,
1:11:12 is the price you pay for it in the medium to long run, right? That’s the problem.
1:11:16 And it’s the contradiction between those two things. That’s the problem.
1:11:20 Okay. Now, if you want to quit doing something that’s gratifying in the short term,
1:11:26 you need to know why, right? Because otherwise you won’t have the willpower. You won’t have the,
1:11:33 the part of you that thinks, well, what the hell will win? What the hell? Which is what people think
1:11:38 when they do something they shouldn’t do. And they should notice what they say to themselves when,
1:11:42 when they’re making that rationalization, because what the hell refers to hell.
1:11:48 And you, the reason to stop doing things that are self-destructive is because
1:11:52 they’re self-destructive. I mean, is that the sort of person you want to be?
1:11:57 Is that the model you’d like to have for your son, for example? Is that
1:12:02 the way you would imagine that someone you admire would act?
1:12:07 These are good questions to ask yourself. No, are you this sort of person that
1:12:12 is acting out a pattern that you think is admirable? I don’t think pornography,
1:12:20 masturbation fits into the ideal of heroic masculinity. I don’t think anybody thinks that.
1:12:27 It’s, there’s something furtive about it and second rate, obviously, like, it’s ridiculous in a sense
1:12:33 that we even have to have this discussion because obviously. Well, these things creep in, don’t they,
1:12:38 to society and they become normal. First they creep, then they rampage. We almost can’t remember a
1:12:42 time if you’re a young person when there wasn’t pornography. You definitely can’t remember.
1:12:47 You open up an app and you get absolutely 100%. Oh, and it’s going to get way worse.
1:12:54 Wait till there are AI equipped adjustable pornographic. Suck you by. Then we’re really
1:13:00 going to have fun because we’re already at a point now where with a decent chatbot,
1:13:06 a really alienated young man can have a better conversation with a decent chatbot
1:13:12 than with anybody he’s ever talked to in his entire life. Right. Now they’re going to get a lot
1:13:17 smarter and soon they’re going to have like, well, you can, there’s already services of this sort
1:13:25 available. They’ll be fully fleshed out two dimensional women. They’re not women. Simulacra
1:13:32 of women. Right. So yeah. It’s interesting because with my head in this design your own girlfriend.
1:13:37 She won’t argue with you. She won’t do the 90 minutes a week.
1:13:41 Yeah, right. Right. She’ll give you everything you want, but that’s not true.
1:13:46 She’ll give the worst part of you everything it wants. Jesus. That’s not good.
1:13:53 The worst, weakest part of you will get exactly what it wants. That’s not good. That’s seriously
1:13:59 not good. I mean, that’s what pornography is kind of doing, right? Definitely. Well, and there’s an
1:14:06 edge to it too, right? Because one of the pleasure is enhanced by novelty.
1:14:12 Right. So that, that brings up an issue with regards to marriage.
1:14:21 You know, I talked to Bill Maher, Bill’s alone and he’s my age, you know, and that’s painful.
1:14:27 But he said to me, you know, in his Hollywood hedonistic manner that he really couldn’t imagine
1:14:31 being with the same woman, you know, for any length of time. It’s a novelty issue. It’s like, well,
1:14:38 are you restricted by the woman or are you restricted by the limits of your own imagination?
1:14:42 This is an important question. Like I would say
1:14:52 if you establish the optimized relationship with someone, you, they’re inexhaustible.
1:14:57 That doesn’t mean novelty isn’t important. It’s important. That’s part of play.
1:15:03 So yeah, a lot of people struggle with that. Got a lot of friends that struggle with this
1:15:09 idea of being with the same person forever. Same person. Well, but that’s really, no,
1:15:16 look, I understand. Like, I know that novelty enhances pleasure. So the question is, how do you
1:15:23 keep your relationship alive? That means novel. You play. It’s interesting because actually what
1:15:28 I actually think is happening there is it’s not that they are miserable with the same person
1:15:33 forever. It’s actually the thought. That’s kind of what I said, the thought of being with the
1:15:37 same person. Well, that’s part of that trap, eh? Yeah. Well, okay, so that’s very good observation.
1:15:43 Because that thought is going to have a story attached to it. The story is going to be something
1:15:50 like, well, I’m with this person. We both become unattractive quite rapidly. We get alienated from
1:15:56 one another. There’s no sexual dynamism or romance or excitement. And then we just sit, you know,
1:16:02 and eat like cold eggs while looking at each other harshly over the table at breakfast for 40 years.
1:16:08 Yeah. Well, yeah, that’s dismal. So, you know, maybe don’t do that.
1:16:13 Yeah. There’s an element of control to it. On this point of hedonism as well, I was thinking,
1:16:16 because we’re talking about pornography, but there’s many types of hedonism in my life,
1:16:21 whether it’s, you know, eating the cookie. This is a, I don’t actually do this,
1:16:26 but it’s a metaphor of eating the cookie from the mini bar in my hotel room here in New York
1:16:31 at 1am in the morning. When I know tomorrow I’m going to regret it. There’s all these forms of
1:16:37 hedonism, like scrolling on TikTok or whatever it might be. And hedonism shows up in my life in
1:16:43 these little uncontrolled, like, oh, gosh, I made a mistake. And it sometimes shows up when I’m
1:16:51 disabled in some way, emotionally disabled. And so it’s almost, it feels like it’s a form of medicine.
1:16:55 Now, I could write down on this page who I want to be. I could say, I don’t want to be the person
1:16:57 who eats the cookie. I don’t want to be on TikTok. I don’t want to watch pornography,
1:17:02 all those kinds of things. But then staving off that moment where, you know, you’re,
1:17:08 you’re weakened in some way, and I use that word. Maybe you’re weakened in some way by something,
1:17:15 tired or whatever, sticking to those principles when in that moment, when it’s hard. Is that just,
1:17:19 again, a case of just being clear on what I want in the long term? Well, that helps. It helps.
1:17:25 Practice helps. Surrounding yourself with people who have the same aim and that keep you
1:17:33 responsible. Accountable. That helps. Oh, yeah, you need all of that. Because that battle,
1:17:38 the battle between immediate gratification and medium to long term investment, that’s a real
1:17:42 battle. You know, like the, the right amount of pleasure in the moment isn’t zero.
1:17:47 Yeah. Okay. I don’t want to live a life of misery. Well, right, right. And you can’t,
1:17:52 you don’t want to be at the joyless grind for whom everything is tomorrow.
1:17:57 Yeah. Right. It’s very hard to, because what you’re trying to do is you’re trying to optimize
1:18:04 emotion and strategy over all timeframes. And you don’t know how long that timeframe is.
1:18:08 Well, that, that’s also a problem. Exactly. Exactly. If I might have one day left, go.
1:18:12 Right. So I don’t need to do this. Well, and we also know, you know, when people are, say,
1:18:21 off to a battle in wartime, they party like there’s no tomorrow. Well, because maybe there isn’t.
1:18:27 So definitely the religious insistence is that you should live in the light of eternity.
1:18:34 Right. Is that you should attempt to conduct yourself in a manner that is best all things
1:18:41 considered over the longest possible conceivable span of time. Now, does that mean don’t have the
1:18:51 desire? No, no, because no, it doesn’t mean that because look in the biblical text, for example,
1:18:58 there is an insistence that the spirit of the divine wants the provision of life more abundant.
1:19:04 That’s the language, the, the idea of a fruitful garden, an earthly garden of delights even,
1:19:12 that’s part and parcel of a vision of paradise. It’s not joyless. It’s, it’s harmoniously balanced.
1:19:17 I think best way to think about it is likely musically, you know, in a musical piece, that’s
1:19:23 great. Every note has its place. Every note has its proper place in relationship to the whole.
1:19:28 Right. But every note is also worthwhile. Well, that’s what you want is you want to balance
1:19:36 your concentration on the present with your apprehension of the medium to long run. So I’ll
1:19:41 give you an example that. So I did, I did a course for Peterson Academy call. It’s on the
1:19:48 Sermon on the Mount and the Sermon on the Mount is the longest record we have of Christ’s direct
1:19:56 utterances, let’s say, and it constitutes the core of Christian ethics. It’s a set of instructions
1:20:05 and the instructions are very specific. So essentially the instruction is to aim at every
1:20:12 moment at what’s highest. Okay. So this is something you have to practice. Okay. So the idea is that
1:20:18 at each moment you’re bringing to bear a certain attitude and the attitude is I’m going to do what’s
1:20:28 best. Okay. All things considered for me now, for me now in a way that works tomorrow, for me now
1:20:33 in a way that works tomorrow and next week and next month and next year and five years from now
1:20:38 and 10 years from now in relationship to my wife, in relationship to my kids, to my parents,
1:20:45 to my community, right? It’s that whole identity. You’re optimizing that. Now, you might not know
1:20:52 how, but that’s your aim. Okay. So that’s, that’s the injunction to put the love of God above all
1:20:57 else to aim at what’s highest. Now, you don’t exactly know how to do that, but that doesn’t
1:21:04 matter. You can specify your aim right now. No doubt you do something like that with your podcast.
1:21:10 Right. That’s why it’s successful. Yeah. Okay. You agree with that? Yeah. Why? Because it’s,
1:21:16 it’s difficult, isn’t it? There’s just immense pressure when you’re a podcast to aim at something
1:21:20 else. And you have to, me and Jack talk about this a lot. You have to have like a certain set of
1:21:24 principles that are unnegotiable, but whatever principles you choose and believe in, they come
1:21:29 at a great cost. Okay. What are the principles? So, so this is worth delving into because you’d be
1:21:34 very successful as a podcast. Yeah. One of my principles is I will, I try not to judge the
1:21:41 people I’m speaking to, and I try not to come in with preconceptions. I take them as I meet them.
1:21:49 I, I try not to, I’m in search of genuine curiosity in them or some kind of answer or truth.
1:21:54 Right. So there’s a search in it. Yeah. Well, that’s a quest. Yeah. So, you know what? An adventure
1:21:58 story is a quest. Did I answer that question? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There’s only one
1:22:03 thing I would take issue with. You said that you don’t judge. Yeah. I would say probably you don’t
1:22:08 condemn. You have to judge because you have to listen and you have to separate wheat from chaff.
1:22:15 You have to evaluate, but you can do that without careless condemnation or a priori,
1:22:22 what would you say? Like a tyrannical insistence that what you know now is sufficient. Okay.
1:22:27 Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You want to not, people say I’m not judgmental. It’s like, that’s not
1:22:34 a virtue. You want to be, you want to use judgment all the time, but that’s not that can, like,
1:22:39 I could judge you so I don’t ever have to listen to you about anything. Yeah. Judgment might happen
1:22:44 in my head, but it’s then about how I treat the person based on that judgment. I don’t want to
1:22:51 treat them based. I don’t want to have some like higher egotistical values that I’m correct. That’s
1:22:56 right. That’s exactly it. That’s a hypocritical moralizing. Yeah. It’s the moralizing. It’s like,
1:22:59 I think I’m better than you because that’s exactly, exactly. That’s right. You don’t want it. You
1:23:04 definitely don’t want to do that in a podcast. The pathological journalists, that’s all they do.
1:23:10 All they’re doing is establishing moral superiority on the flimsiest possible grounds at the least
1:23:15 possible cost in the most spectacular way. Yeah. It’s really not hard. It’s hard being a podcaster,
1:23:20 especially in this particular moment where there’s been such a focus on podcasting because of what’s
1:23:25 happened in the selection cycle. Yeah. You really have to be clear on what you believe in because
1:23:29 the winds are going to blow. Like the world is going to try and sway you. They’re going to say,
1:23:32 you can’t speak to this person. You have to speak to this person. Don’t do that. Don’t do this. This
1:23:36 is wrong. And you go, okay, so how do I weather such a storm when I know the storm is coming?
1:23:43 I don’t have to look to Rogan to go, look at the arc of Rogan. And if I’m also a podcaster.
1:23:53 Just keep asking stupid questions. Yeah, well, that is that quest. And what people want in a
1:23:59 discussion is a quest. They want to see bloodhounds on the trail towards some truth. That’s what
1:24:04 they’re after. They want to participate in that. Same with the public lectures I do. I’m always
1:24:08 trying to answer a question. I don’t know what the answer is when I go on stage. It’s a real question.
1:24:12 Do you think Joe has Joe Rogan? I’ve never actually met him, but do you think he’s just
1:24:18 has great faith in humans? And there, because there’s obviously been a lot of pressure on him.
1:24:25 So how he survived that is he just has faith in who he is. His faith in his own ignorance.
1:24:31 Okay. And that those watching, which is a lot of people watching Rogan, will understand. Yeah.
1:24:38 Yeah. Yeah. Joe’s on a quest. He’s trying to be smarter than he is. That’s what Joe does.
1:24:42 It’s curiosity that’s driving him. This is what Musk said too about himself.
1:24:47 And he said that to me when I interviewed him, he said that was how he reconciled.
1:24:53 He had a terrible existential crisis when he was like 13, you know, and he reconciled that
1:24:58 essentially with the quest. He decided that he could just pursue truth, pursue knowledge, pursue
1:25:04 understanding, and that that would, that’s meaningful intrinsically and valuable intrinsically.
1:25:09 And that’s the beginnings of a religious orientation or more than the beginnings even,
1:25:14 because the quest is a religious pursuit. It’s pursuit of the truth. It’s pursuit of the treasure
1:25:21 that the dragon guards, right? And so treasures and dragons, they’re always in the same place.
1:25:25 It’s very annoying. It’s a good thing to know though, because if a dragon shows up,
1:25:31 you can always ask yourself where the treasure is. It might be close. It’s there.
1:25:38 So, okay, so back to the Sermon on the Mount, because we were talking about orientation. So
1:25:46 aim up, assume that other people have the same value as you do, and that that value is associated
1:25:53 with whatever is divine, and then concentrate on the moment. Right. So it’s the most
1:25:59 distant possible upward aim with the most intense possible concentration on the moment.
1:26:08 Right. You’re good at that. That’s what, that’s, I can’t say that’s what’s made you successful,
1:26:14 but it’s certainly part of it because you pay attention. See, that’s, that’s what paying attention
1:26:22 means, because you want your, your, your intent to be focused, because otherwise your attention is
1:26:27 fragmented. So you want your attention to be focused. Now your attention is focused on something.
1:26:33 Now we, we pulled it apart a little bit. You said that you’re, you know, you have these principles
1:26:37 and that you’re trying to learn. And so your attention is pretty focused. And then you bring
1:26:41 all that to bear in the moment. Right. And then people find that compelling because they’re on,
1:26:46 they’re, they’re along for the ride. They’re along for the adventure. And that is meaningful.
1:26:52 It’s the essence of meaningful. And so, so what we were trying to address was the relationship
1:26:59 between hedonism and, and say, intelligent long-term pro-social strategy. You can, you want them both.
1:27:08 You want, you want, there’s an optimized solution that delivers both far better than any other
1:27:15 solution. This is the pearl of great price that Christ speaks about, that anyone wise and wealthy
1:27:20 would sell everything they own to purchase. There isn’t anything better than that.
1:27:25 For the, for the person listening right now that is struggling with this concept of like,
1:27:29 we talked about hedonism discipline, like they’re just so far from it, because there’s a scale of
1:27:35 people that are, you know, able to stay focused on the long-term. For the people at the very other
1:27:41 end of the scale who just look at their lives and go, I just, I hear what he’s saying. For some
1:27:45 reason, it’s not working. Like, I can’t get out of this situation. You meet these people at the time.
1:27:50 Well, maybe, maybe you can’t start on the porn side then, you know, like my, this is
1:27:58 how a good behavior analyst approaches problems of that sort. It’s like, okay,
1:28:09 is there something in your life that you know is not right, that you could improve, that you would
1:28:18 improve? Any step whatsoever? Well, generally, you can just ask yourself that question. It’s like,
1:28:24 it’s a contemplative exercise. Sit on the edge of your bed and think, okay, where is my life off
1:28:33 kilter? Is, so then, then you have a variety of ideas about how you’re, yeah, okay. I’m on my mom’s
1:28:38 bed. I mean, I’ve got no relationship. My job’s crap. I hate it. Okay. Then I’d say zero in on one
1:28:45 of those and find some small thing that you could fix that you would fix. Why a small thing? Well,
1:28:49 because look at you, you’re completely goddamn useless. You better find something small that you
1:28:54 could do. Now, if you can find a big thing, good, but obviously you haven’t been able to because
1:29:03 all these problems exist. So, see, one of the emphasis in the religious realm, let’s say, is
1:29:07 humility. One of the things that’s emphasized, well, what’s humility? What’s the opposite of pride?
1:29:14 Well, humility is starting where you are. That’s what humility is. And it’s annoying because,
1:29:20 you know, like, if your life is a mess, then you have to see that you’re the person in that mess.
1:29:27 And then you have to understand that your first attempt to redress the mess might not be something
1:29:32 you’re particularly proud of, you know? I mean, I saw this lots in my clinical practice where
1:29:36 people would, the first steps they had to take to put things in order were pretty embarrassing.
1:29:44 It’s like, really? That’s all I can do? Hey, man, uphill is better than downhill. And there’s a
1:29:50 doctrine in the Gospels that Christ puts forward, which is very interesting. He says,
1:29:54 it’s the Matthew principle it’s called, “To those who have everything more will be given.
1:30:00 From those who have nothing, everything will be taken.” Okay, so it lays out a view of the world.
1:30:10 Progress, regression. That’s one model. Here’s another one. Progress, regression. This is the
1:30:20 right model. So even if you have to start small, you accrue success exponentially. You accrue defeat
1:30:28 exponentially too. That’s the abyss that is hell. You start going downhill, you go downhill faster
1:30:34 and faster. You start going uphill, you go uphill faster and faster. So even if you have to start
1:30:38 small or even painfully small, which is highly probable, especially if you’re trying to tackle
1:30:42 something that’s really plagued you, it doesn’t really matter. How small?
1:30:49 Take, I would say, take the step that you can take, that you will take, that actually feels
1:30:54 like some accomplishment. Imagine you’re dealing with a three-year-old kid and you want to encourage
1:31:00 him. You want to set him a task that, you don’t want him to say, “Dad, I could do that when I was
1:31:08 two.” But you don’t want to set him a task that there’s not a chance he’ll manage. You want to
1:31:14 set him a task that will stretch him beyond where he is, that has a reasonable probability of success.
1:31:20 Right? Why? Why stretch him from where he is? Well, because you want to grow. I mean, look,
1:31:27 if you love a child, you love the child for who he is and who he could be, and you want to
1:31:36 indicate your love for both of those, I think if you’re a father, you tilt even more towards
1:31:42 love for who the child could be. What is self-belief in this context? Because people,
1:31:46 everyone’s looking, so many people are in search of two words, I think that’s three words, but
1:31:53 self-belief and confidence. And in this context of that small task, how is that building my
1:31:59 self-belief or confidence? Because you watch yourself do it. And that does what to you? Well,
1:32:07 look, if you see someone, a friend, who is continually, incrementally improving, you’re
1:32:11 going to, well, maybe you’ll be jealous and resentful and bitter and miserable and try to
1:32:16 undermine them, but assuming you’re not like completely encapsulated by dark forces, you’ll
1:32:24 think, oh, that’s admirable. Well, you see the same thing in yourself. You have to act.
1:32:31 You have to develop an opinion of yourself the same way you would develop an opinion of someone
1:32:39 else. So now, and I’m not hypothesizing about this, by the way, we know this clinically. If I want to
1:32:47 truly help you build your confidence rather than merely readjusting the words you say about yourself,
1:32:52 which would be something like self-esteem, which is something that doesn’t even exist, by the way,
1:32:59 it’s just a pathological concept altogether. You want confidence, okay, more to the point. You
1:33:04 want the confidence that’s based in competence. Otherwise, it’s narcissistic. Okay, so how do
1:33:12 you develop that? Well, you watch yourself exceed your limits, and then you think, oh, look at that.
1:33:17 There’s something in me that can exceed my limits. That’s your true self. That’s a good way of thinking
1:33:22 about it. And in doing so, you actually realize that limits exist and you’ve imposed one on yourself
1:33:27 in the first place. Well, that’s one of the things you can realize, certainly, that also you don’t
1:33:32 exactly know where the limits are. It’s like, oh, I exceeded that. It’s like, okay, well, now what?
1:33:38 What’s the upward limit to exceed? What’s the upward arc of exceeding limits? That’s Jacob’s
1:33:44 ladder. I would say this is the promise of the kingdom of God. That’s one way of thinking about
1:33:51 it. There’s no upward limit. There’s no limit to how bad things can get. No one would deny that who
1:34:01 has any sense. So that means in a way that hell exists, you can find your way there with no problem.
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1:35:00 please tag me, send me a message online. It’s interesting what’s going on with young men in
1:35:04 particular at the moment, because it does appear, and I don’t have the stats on this in front of
1:35:10 me, but it does appear that young men are more and more in search of some type of religion.
1:35:15 Yeah, definitely. I think Islam, I think I read, Islam’s on the rise amongst young men,
1:35:20 or it’s the dominant religion that young men are being drawn to. But in the context of what
1:35:25 we’ve described, that person who sat on the edge of their bed, do they need religion? And I’m being
1:35:31 intentional not to say God, I’m saying religion. Well, these are hard things to do on your own,
1:35:38 right? I mean, you only have the span of your life and the probability that you can figure out
1:35:44 how to live merely as a consequence of consulting your own limited experience is zero.
1:35:48 It’s too complicated. So the religion might be your society, it might be your friends,
1:35:53 your family in this context. That’s part of it. That would be the more structured part,
1:35:56 the more traditional part. You need the traditional stories.
1:36:04 That’s why I wrote this book, is to indicate, well, at least in part, well, what the stories are,
1:36:11 and also what they mean. It’s not only that, it’s not only what they mean, it’s how knowing what
1:36:18 they mean changes your life. So for example, in the story of Abraham, God comes to Abraham.
1:36:26 Okay, now questions emerge from that statement. What do you mean God and how does he come to
1:36:31 Abraham? What the hell does that mean? Well, the story lays that out. The God that comes to
1:36:38 Abraham is the voice of adventure. It’s a definition. So this is a good thing to know.
1:36:44 God is the voice of adventure. Okay, so now let’s think about this a little bit. So
1:36:50 the God that’s the voice of adventure is the God of the forefathers of Abraham,
1:36:56 the father. He’s a patriarchal spirit. Okay, if you’re a good father, you speak with the voice
1:37:02 of adventure to your sons. Obviously, you know, you’re encouraging them. It’s like, get the hell
1:37:08 out there, you know, make something of yourself. Why do you do that? Because you have this little
1:37:14 kid and you think, get at it, man, let’s see what you can be. And so that’s that voice of the
1:37:19 benevolent father. And that’s the spirit of the ancestors. And behind that, there’s the God who’s
1:37:26 the voice of adventure. If you pursue the spirit of adventure, there will be things you have to give
1:37:33 up. Right, you know that. I mean, you know, you’re taking steps. We’d even say that steps forward
1:37:39 in your life. What do you mean forward? What do you mean steps? Well, they’re little adventures you
1:37:46 have that transform you and transform your circumstances. Okay. You have that adventure,
1:37:52 and you have to change as a consequence of it. You have to give up your immaturity so that you
1:37:58 can take advantage of this new opportunity. Okay, and that changes you. Now you’re a slightly
1:38:04 different person. Now a new horizon of opportunity opens up. You have to make a sacrifice. It’s like,
1:38:12 okay, looks like if I’m going to do this, I can no longer afford this. Well, Abraham changes so
1:38:19 dramatically that he gets a new name. He starts as Abraham, and he ends as Abraham. Abraham is the
1:38:26 father of nations. So what’s the moral? If you pursue the spirit of adventure and make the proper
1:38:34 sacrifices, you become the father of nations, right? That’s true. There’s a really interesting
1:38:40 thing. I grew up as religious until I was 18. I say religious because the terms are difficult to
1:38:45 define to me. But my mother’s was believed in a God. She was Christian. My father’s Christian. And
1:38:50 at about 18, I started reading a lot of Richard Dawkins books and other people’s books. And I
1:38:54 got to this place where I think I was atheist by the definition of I didn’t think there was
1:38:58 necessarily a God. And I found myself in this place of being agnostic. Now, when I think about the
1:39:06 Bible as a compass or as a guide, the part of my brain that’s like rooted in this, like, I need
1:39:11 evidence for everything goes, is this just a book that a bunch of men wrote thousands of years ago
1:39:15 when they were sat around a campfire or whatever? And if it is, then it’s just one person’s opinion
1:39:20 as much as any as much as any self help book on a shelf is one person’s opinion.
1:39:26 Well, okay, let’s take that claim apart. I mean, yes, it is stories that people came up with thousands
1:39:32 of years ago, but no, definitely not one person’s opinion, definitely 100% because these stories
1:39:40 have been transmitted over millennia and organized and edited and transformed by a very large number
1:39:46 of people. So it’s at minimum, it’s a massive collective effort. And it’s a collective under
1:39:52 effort undertaken by arguably the most literate and intelligent people there are. And that’d be the
1:39:57 Jews. Why would I listen to the Bible more than I’d listen to something Socrates wrote or any
1:40:03 philosopher? Oh, there’s a huge overlap between the Greco, the Greek philosophical tradition and
1:40:11 the Christian tradition. I mean, Western culture is the amalgamation of Greece, Jerusalem and Rome.
1:40:18 So and the early Christians saw tremendous parallels between Christian theology and
1:40:23 Greek philosophy. Where do you think we come from? You know, you’ve got the like Darwinism
1:40:27 evolutionary theory of we’ve evolved, etc. Then there’s the more religious view that,
1:40:33 you know, if you really think about the first testament and the early testament and the stories
1:40:39 of the, you know, creation, people think, you know, maybe we were just popped out of nowhere.
1:40:42 But where do where do we youth believe that we come from? Do you believe a God put us here?
1:40:45 Or do you believe that? Do you believe evolution is true? Do you believe both are true?
1:40:54 You have to read the book. But I’m not trying to be a smart alec in that response.
1:41:01 It’s a complicated answer. Yeah, it’s a complicated answer. I think that we’re guided by the spirit
1:41:10 of meaning. Okay, I think that’s also our deepest instinct. That’s somewhat Darwinism. Well, I had
1:41:15 a rule for this book is I didn’t make any claims about the biblical stories that I couldn’t justify
1:41:24 scientifically. I don’t think there’s a conflict. I think that viewing the biblical stories as an
1:41:28 amalgam of superstitious, proto-scientific theories is absurd. I don’t think there’s any evidence
1:41:34 for that at all. These are stories. Stories and scientific hypotheses aren’t the same thing.
1:41:40 The Lord of the Rings is not a scientific hypothesis. But that doesn’t mean it’s not true.
1:41:43 Do you believe my great, great, great, great granddad was an amoeba?
1:41:51 You were a sperm at one point. I mean, it’s not that implausible. We all come from single-celled
1:41:57 organisms. I’m asking these questions because it’s like I’m genuinely wrestling with
1:42:00 a bunch of big, existential questions that I’ve actually only been wrestling with maybe
1:42:05 flight, I’d say a year. So it’s very fresh for me. And it’s funny. My arc here is
1:42:11 religious Christian, up until maybe 18, just staunch atheists for two years to the point
1:42:16 that it was my identity. And then let go of that. I’ve drifted for a couple of years
1:42:20 and find myself at this really interesting point where I’m back at the door of, okay,
1:42:24 let’s re-look at some of these answers again. Well, that’s exactly why I wrote this book,
1:42:30 because I know that that’s the time. And it’s not just the time for you. That’s the time that we’re
1:42:35 in. Yeah, it’s the time we’re in. Yeah. Oh, definitely. Definitely. Well, it’s partly because
1:42:42 the Enlightenment has exhausted itself, partly because it was wrong. It’s failed us the individual.
1:42:47 Well, I think exhausted is a better word because it wasn’t like the Enlightenment was without its
1:42:51 benefits. When you say the Enlightenment. It means technological progress. The
1:43:01 hypothet, the materialist reductionism of the atheist scientist. Okay. Yeah. It’s not right.
1:43:08 Factually, they were wrong. Their theory of perception was wrong. They’re wrong.
1:43:16 We see the world through a story. We do not see the world as a collection of facts. They’re wrong.
1:43:22 You see, the postmodernists figured this out. And that’s why the postmodernists had a walloping
1:43:26 influence on culture. Now, I’m no fan of the postmodernists for a variety of reasons, but
1:43:31 their insistence that we see the world through a story, that they’re right. That’s right.
1:43:39 I agree. I mean, if you obviously read the book, Sapiens by Noval Harare, and his central point
1:43:43 is that what bound us as humans and stopped us being these scattered chimps was stories. They
1:43:46 bind us together. So I completely understand that we need a story. It’s how everything, money,
1:43:52 governments, et cetera, function. But what that story is, now I can, I can agree that story of
1:43:58 voluntary sacrifice. 100% agree that humans need that. There’s no chance that we’d be here otherwise.
1:44:03 And it’s a set of values and principles. Now, those values and principles are often found in
1:44:08 religion. But do they, and a belief in a God, but do they have to be? Could they be found in,
1:44:16 could I theoretically make a new religion where me and my friends all unite against a set of values,
1:44:20 sacrifice, giving, parenthood? That’s a great question. Well, this is what Nietzsche basically
1:44:27 presupposed in some ways. So when Nietzsche observed that God had died, say in 1850 or
1:44:34 thereabouts, his medication for that, his warning was will descend into nihilism and
1:44:43 communist totalitarianism. And that was exactly right. Maybe a mindless hedonism in there too.
1:44:49 Dostoevsky concentrated more on that. Nietzsche said, we’ll have to create our own values. We’ll
1:44:52 have to become, that’s what the Superman is, the Nietzschean Superman, the man who creates his own
1:45:01 values. Try. See what happens. You can’t do it. You can’t create your own values because values are
1:45:10 real. They’re not arbitrary. They’re not relativistic. So imagine this, imagine there’s a very large
1:45:15 number of games that could be played, like an infinitely large number. But there’s a very
1:45:21 small number of games that people want to play. And then there’s even a smaller number of games
1:45:27 that sustain themselves and improve as you play them. Okay, so that’s like a landscape. You could
1:45:32 think about it as a landscape of potential patterns of interaction. You could even think about it as
1:45:38 a landscape of potential tribal affiliations, right? The rules of those games would be the
1:45:44 principles of the society. Okay, now the question, your question is, could we come up with our own
1:45:54 set of rules? And the answer to that is no. Why? Because the sustainable, abundant playability
1:46:00 of a game is not arbitrary. So for example, if you want to get along with your wife,
1:46:08 she has to want to play the game you’re playing. Okay, no, there’s lots of games you could play
1:46:13 that aren’t going to fit that criteria. Now then imagine it’s even worse though, because
1:46:18 to get along with your wife, she has to want to play the game you want to play. But both of you
1:46:24 have to play a game that works today and tomorrow and next week, next month, next year, right? And
1:46:28 then you have to play it with your kids and your parents and a bunch of other people.
1:46:33 So can I ask then, so is it the case that humans are designed in such a way
1:46:37 where there’s a certain set of values and stories that are most conducive with their
1:46:44 reproductive survival? And so if that’s true, and I completely understand why that would be true,
1:46:49 because it’s true for all species, like there’s a set of stories and narratives probably in my
1:46:54 dog, if you go back to 100 years from when his ancestors were in the wild, that he needed to
1:46:59 subscribe to, to reproduce, to be a dog and to survive as a dog. But so the question then becomes
1:47:05 where do those values come from? Are they innate within us because of our environmental factors?
1:47:10 So I need to be this way because of the environment I live in so that I can have sex with somebody
1:47:17 and reproduce because of I have two arms, two legs, etc. I’m this advanced chimp. Or do they come
1:47:24 from above somewhere and they’re granted down to me? Because if I look at every animal? Not or, and.
1:47:30 Oh, and, okay. Yeah, yeah, it’s the same thing. You’re looking at the same problem from two different
1:47:36 perspectives. It’s and. Yes, they’re handed down from on high. Yes, they’re instincts. So who are they
1:47:46 handed down from? Well, the religious… Do you struggle with this question? Well, it’s a complicated
1:47:53 question. But you struggle with the answer? I struggle with making the answer simple enough
1:48:01 to offer rapidly. Are you clear about yourself on it? Not as clear as I could be. What is it you
1:48:10 wrestle with? Well, clarity is part of it. We want to make things as clear as possible.
1:48:17 Breath of coverage. Right? I mean, people ask me what I believe and I say, well, I’m not hiding
1:48:22 what I believe. I’m like, I lecture about it. I podcast about it. I write about it. It’s like,
1:48:29 that’s what I believe. There it is. Is there obfuscation in that? Well, some partly things
1:48:35 are complicated. So it’s very difficult to give short answers to complex questions.
1:48:41 You tend to give, if you give short answers to complex questions, the answers tend to be symbolic.
1:48:45 Yeah. You have to say something like, where do they come from? It’s like, well, they come from God.
1:48:52 Now, is that a useful answer? Well, it’s a short answer. So it’s useful in that it’s short. It begs
1:48:58 the question, what do you mean by God? We could return to that in the story of Abraham. These are
1:49:04 definitions. Because if you’re going to talk about what’s property put in the highest place,
1:49:08 you have to know what you’re talking about. Okay, in the story of Abraham,
1:49:13 the voice of adventure is to be put in the highest place. And if you follow that,
1:49:19 then you become the father of nations. That’s reproductive success. Right? So that means the
1:49:25 idea is that there’s an alignment between the instinct that calls you to adventure and the
1:49:31 probability that you’ll be attractive to women in the manner that ensures the survival of your
1:49:39 descendants. And is that an environmental? It’s both. It’s both. It’s both. It emerges as a
1:49:45 consequence of the constraints of social interaction, let’s say. Like there’s constraints, for example,
1:49:50 on what makes a man desirable to a woman. Yeah. Right. That has nothing to do with you,
1:49:54 those constraints. Those are there. Right. They’re there in the
1:50:03 society of women. They’re eternal. They’re not, no woman, she might vary in her opinion to some
1:50:11 degree, but she partakes of the pattern. So it’s there. Now, it’s also built into you because
1:50:20 you’re a social creature. And so your physiology indicates to you the nature of that pattern.
1:50:24 So does my dog have a different religion to me? Does he have a different God?
1:50:30 To some degree. There’s an overlap because you can communicate. Your dog understands
1:50:39 you and vice versa. So that’s a good question. Social mammals understand each other.
1:50:46 Right. So there’s an overlap in their deepest instincts or their highest impulses. You can
1:50:51 think about that both ways. I was going through my head and thinking about the Venus flytrap
1:50:57 and my French bulldog, Pablo, and they all need a different set of behaviors and principles and
1:51:01 values to survive and thrive and be happy. Yeah. Well, you can think about that as, sure, sure.
1:51:03 I was thinking then, does that mean that they all have a different God?
1:51:07 They have a nature. Yeah. They have a different intrinsic nature. That’s another way of thinking
1:51:12 about it. Yeah. Because of the environment and the factors that they face as that species. So
1:51:18 then Pablo’s God might be slightly different to my God if we’re talking about, because I’m trying
1:51:25 to understand if this idea of God is a set of evolutionary motivations. Yes, it is. It is that.
1:51:30 You can think about it as rising up from the material world or descending from
1:51:37 on heaven. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter fundamentally. It doesn’t matter. Those are
1:51:41 different ways of looking at the same problem. When I say evolutionary motivations, it doesn’t
1:51:46 feel so divine. It doesn’t feel like a place, a reason to gather in a church. It feels like
1:51:53 I’m just kind of a robot that’s being steered by these motivations of don’t do that, do this.
1:51:56 This feels good. If you’re with your friends and family, you feel good. So do that more.
1:51:59 And if you’re with your friends and family, you’re safer. So you’re more likely to have kids.
1:52:05 Or is it this sort of divine thing that we society have told us God is where we should
1:52:09 worship and we should thank you so much and go to a church and get on our knees and pray.
1:52:14 Because they have two very different things. One is like practical and pragmatic. And the
1:52:22 other one is this divine thing. Okay. Here’s one way of thinking about it. So I mentioned that
1:52:29 in the story of Abraham, God is the call to adventure. That’s the definition. Now,
1:52:38 the divine that’s put forward in these library of stories has multiple characteristics. He’s
1:52:43 characterized in many ways. But there’s an insistence that that reflects an underlying unity.
1:52:49 Now, the unity is incomprehensible in its essence. So you have to accept that as
1:52:56 the initial starting point. You’re not going to get the answer. You can see something complex
1:53:04 from a variety of different perspectives. In the story of Noah, God is the impulse that comes to
1:53:12 the wise to prepare when trouble’s brewing. Now, you can think of that as an instinct.
1:53:19 You can think about it as got instinct, intuition, negative emotion, anxiety, but it’s more than
1:53:26 that because you can be afraid of something that isn’t real. Now, you might have to ask yourself,
1:53:34 okay, what are the preconditions for your fear? What are the preconditions to the validity of your
1:53:39 fear? So you’re afraid and you should be. Well, let’s say that’s the characteristic of someone
1:53:45 who’s wise. Okay, so then the question is, well, what’s the essence of the wisdom that makes your
1:53:54 fear valid? Noah is described in the story of Noah as a man wise in his generations. So that means
1:54:00 that by the moral standards of his time, he’s an upstanding human being. Okay, so now you can
1:54:06 imagine that means he exists in harmonious relationship with his present self and his future
1:54:12 self. Okay, that makes him mature. But then he also does that in a way that serves his wife
1:54:20 and his family and his community. So his self is balanced and optimized across those parameters.
1:54:27 That makes him secure in his foundation and properly oriented. If you’re secure in your
1:54:34 foundation and properly oriented upward, then there’s no difference between the voice of the
1:54:40 divine and the instinct for the instinct that preserves you in times of trouble. But you see,
1:54:47 you can’t exactly get there by the mere bottom up materialistic notion because you could think about
1:54:52 the fear that guides Noah as an instinct. But the instinct is pathological unless it exists in
1:55:00 this wider moral framework, because then you could have the fear of a coward. Well, that’s not helpful.
1:55:05 The wider moral framework, could that wider moral framework just be
1:55:09 I’m in my DNA, I’m hardwired to want to reproduce?
1:55:15 Yeah, but even reproduction is, see, this is I think where Dawkins went dreadfully wrong.
1:55:18 Sex and reproduction aren’t the same thing for people.
1:55:20 Not anymore, certainly.
1:55:27 Well, not at all, because we’re high investment reproducers. Sex just gets the ball rolling.
1:55:34 So, so here’s a question, how would you have to act to maximally ensure the survival of your
1:55:40 offspring? Okay, so now, what do you mean survival? Do you mean
1:55:49 that your son lives? Do you mean that your grandson lives? Do you mean that 20 generations down the
1:55:55 road from you? The pattern that you represented is still propagating itself successfully?
1:56:00 Does it mean that the people that you produce are able to take on all challengers because of
1:56:05 the manner in which they conduct themselves? That’s a lot more complicated than just sex,
1:56:12 like way more complicated. So the pattern that Abraham, so Abraham is the father of nations,
1:56:20 right? There’s an insistence in the story that the manner in which he conducts himself
1:56:31 as a hero, establishes the pattern that makes his descendants successful, eternally.
1:56:39 I just can’t figure out whether this is, whether, like, what all the things happened in in terms of,
1:56:45 is the Bible just a consequence of people trying to figure out our evolutionary motivations and
1:56:51 turn them into these stories that guide us? Why just? Okay, we can remove the word just.
1:56:55 Well, but that’s an important removal. It’s an important removal because it’s, you know,
1:57:00 because it has bound people. Is the Bible in part the story of human beings coming to consciousness?
1:57:08 Yes. Yeah. Yes. Okay, yeah. Does it reflect a deeper underlying reality? Yes. Yeah. How deep is
1:57:14 that underlying? Well, let’s say, okay, it’s a story about the psyche. And then let’s say, well,
1:57:20 no, it’s a story about the psyche in society. Okay, so well, no, it’s a story about the psyche
1:57:29 in society, in the natural world. Okay. Well, what’s underneath that? The source of nature,
1:57:32 society, and the psyche. This is an interesting question. It’s a very direct one. But I would
1:57:37 love just an answer that I, because I haven’t got clarity on this. What is it you believe,
1:57:42 what God is it that you believe in? I’ve heard you talk about this sort of substrate idea and such,
1:57:48 but in a simple way that I can understand, do you believe in a man in the sky God? Do you believe
1:57:54 in it? Well, that’s not as that’s not as primitive conceptualization as the atheists would have you
1:57:59 believe. What is it you believe? Well, there isn’t anything more complex in the known universe than
1:58:09 a human brain. So if you want a model for reality as such, like proclaiming that it has something
1:58:15 akin to the structure of the human psyche is not an absurd claim, given that that is the most
1:58:22 complex thing by far that we know of by far. So what is it you believe? Well, I’ve been explaining
1:58:29 it. But I mean, I did say I mentioned something which we skipped over very quickly because I
1:58:37 introduced it too rapidly. Postmodernists figured out that we live in a story, but then they left
1:58:45 to a faulty conclusion of two forms. Well, three, there’s no uniting story that was one of their
1:58:51 conclusions. In fact, the definition of postmodernism is skepticism of meta narratives. There’s no
1:58:58 uniting story. It’s like, well, that’s a stupid theory, because it there’s no union. So what,
1:59:05 there’s just diversity. Well, we worship diversity now in this utterly foolish manner. There’s no
1:59:12 difference between diversity and war. Without a uniting narrative, there’s nothing but war.
1:59:20 So no, that’s not going to work wrong, hedonistic self-gratification. There’s Michelle Foucault
1:59:26 for you to a T. It’s like, why is that wrong? Why can’t people just do what they want with whoever
1:59:32 they want all the time? Because it defeats itself and quickly. It’s not a sustainable game. If it’s
1:59:38 all about you and your whims, I don’t want to be anywhere near you. And that won’t be so good for
1:59:44 you. That’s not going to work. Power, that’s really where the postmodernists landed with
1:59:53 their, what would you say, temptation to turn towards Marx. It’s all about power. It’s like,
1:59:58 first of all, that’s probably a confession, if that’s what you believe. And second, no, it’s not.
2:00:05 Try tyrannizing your wife and see how well that works for you. Try tyrannizing yourself
2:00:12 and see how successful you are. Power is not the game. Okay, what’s the game? What’s the story?
2:00:18 I mentioned earlier, it’s voluntary self-sacrifice.
2:00:27 Right, you offer yourself up in the service of something higher. That’s the basis of society.
2:00:32 That’s the basis of psychological stability. The Christian insistence is that that’s the
2:00:40 basis of the world. I’m going to ask you again, because I want to be clear. What is the God you
2:00:46 believe in? I think that the claim that Christ is the embodiment of the prophet and the laws,
2:00:53 I think that’s true. That’s complicated. It’s very, very complicated, but I think it’s true.
2:01:04 So you believe that Jesus was God? Yeah. I think if you understand what that means,
2:01:11 that it’s indisputable. I’ll give you a brief explanation of why.
2:01:25 Christ takes the sins of the world onto Himself. That means all the problems that there are
2:01:30 are His problems. Right. Okay, so
2:01:42 the idea there is that there’s no difference between making that assumption and then actually
2:01:48 beginning to address those problems. And there’s no difference between that which best addresses
2:01:58 the problems of mankind and the divine. Those are the same thing. And I can’t see how that can be
2:02:04 otherwise, because the contrary hypothesis would be that you would adapt best to your life by avoiding
2:02:10 things that are difficult and terrifying. And no one believes that. And so the pattern of the passion,
2:02:17 this is the voluntary self-sacrifice issue taken to its extreme. The pattern of the passion is the
2:02:24 decision to voluntarily confront and welcome anything that happens to you, no matter what it is.
2:02:38 And that’s a terrible thing to ask or endeavor to undertake. But while the alternative is to shrink
2:02:45 away, well, the spirit of shrinking away is the divine. It’s like, I don’t think so.
2:02:54 Like, that’s preposterous. The spirit of unlimited courage? Well, that’s not a bad start for a
2:03:04 definition of what constitutes the divine. The highest possible value. Has your belief in God,
2:03:15 religion been shaken at all? Oh, yes. Definitely. Constantly. Over the last year and a half,
2:03:19 two years, you’ve been through a particularly difficult time with losing people in your life that
2:03:28 are foundational to you. Tammy as well. Oh, yeah. Well, and I was in extreme pain for three years.
2:03:35 Right. I went through three years where every minute of my life was worse than any minute
2:03:42 I had ever had previous to that. It was terrible. And did I lose faith?
2:03:53 Was it questioned, challenged? Absolutely. Absolutely. It just became absurd.
2:04:03 It was absurd. So many things had gone off the rails in my wife was dying. My daughter was ill.
2:04:13 I was things that blown up around me in 50 different ways. And I was like seriously in pain.
2:04:19 It was terrible. I was walking like 12 miles a day because I couldn’t sit. I did that for months.
2:04:28 Winter, rain, whenever I had a friend who walked with me. It was terrible. And yeah, I mean,
2:04:35 I thought what was the desperation? It wasn’t even the pain. It was the fact that I was in such
2:04:43 terrible shape that I felt that I was a felt. I believed that I was a burden to everyone around
2:04:50 me and that that was only likely to get worse. And I thought, what’s the sense in this? What’s the
2:05:00 possible significance of this? So yes, everyone’s faith is challenged. I mean, Christ himself cries
2:05:06 in despair out to God on the cross. And the story wouldn’t be believable without that.
2:05:13 Like if you’re going to live, you’re going to be pushed past your limit, right? If you’re going to
2:05:20 live. So, but who knows what you discover when you’re pushed past your limit?
2:05:27 In that moment, you know, I’ve been in my relationship for some time now and I genuinely
2:05:36 think I’d rather die myself than my partner die. And you were there as Tammy was struggling with
2:05:42 her health, which is not something I’ve heard you actually talk about before in what I’ve observed.
2:05:44 She was dying.
2:05:51 Is that harder to take for you than your own pain and struggle?
2:05:56 I think generally, if you love someone, it’s worse to see them suffer than to suffer yourself.
2:05:58 You certainly figure that out when you have kids.
2:06:03 And this all happens at the same moment, the same couple of years of your life.
2:06:10 Is there anything to, you know, people always search for silver linings and things.
2:06:12 Is there anything?
2:06:19 We’re both alive. My family’s thriving. My adventure is expanding.
2:06:24 Life isn’t fair, is it? Doesn’t appear to be very fair.
2:06:28 Because, I mean, this is how your story ended in that regard.
2:06:33 I don’t know if an adventure is fair. I don’t even know if that’s what we want.
2:06:37 Like this is something I really came to understand more deeply when writing this book.
2:06:43 What are we built for? We’re built for a maximal challenge.
2:06:47 And that isn’t the way we view ourselves in the modern world.
2:06:52 We view ourselves as built for pleasure, you know, pornography.
2:07:03 We view ourselves as built for consumption or for safety or for maybe for egotistical
2:07:12 self-aggrandizement and fame. Those are, look, many, all of those things are better than their
2:07:18 absence, let’s say. You know, I think part of the reason that Andrew Tate is so popular among
2:07:24 young men because it’s better to be a successful reprobate than a useless scrounger.
2:07:31 Seriously. I mean, seriously. But that’s why the villain in stories is often admirable compared
2:07:39 to the coward, right? At least the villain is out there like doing villain things, you know, but
2:07:43 At least he has meaning. Well, and he’s not, he’s not.
2:07:46 The villain, at least the villain has meaning.
2:07:51 The villain’s on a quest of sorts, you know, a committed and a committed villain can learn.
2:07:52 That’s another thing too.
2:07:56 What are we built for?
2:08:04 I think we’re built for maximal challenge. And that’s way more interesting. I mean,
2:08:12 one of the things that, see, I figured out that lies, that totalitarian states were
2:08:18 a consequence of lies in about 1985. I really figured it out. I’d been reading Solzhenits
2:08:22 and then Carl Jung. I’ve been reading, I was reading a lot. I was really obsessed by it.
2:08:30 I thought, oh, I see. So hell is the dominion of the lie. Okay, so what do you do about that?
2:08:37 Well, you stop lying. That’s how you fight it. And that means you do that in your own life. You
2:08:44 just stop, just you practice stopping. You practice not doing the things you know you shouldn’t do.
2:08:50 You practice paying attention to your words to see if they’re landing solidly and they make
2:08:59 you confident instead of weak, right? You abandon your short-term desire for control and power,
2:09:05 understanding that there isn’t anything better that can happen to you than what happens if
2:09:12 you tell the truth, right? No matter what it looks like to you in the moment. It’s a strange thing,
2:09:16 but I can’t see how it could be otherwise, because you’d have to hypothesize that you’re
2:09:25 going to align yourself with life, with nature, with society, with God, with yourself by lying.
2:09:30 No one believes that. You might think you can get away with it. That’s way different, right? But no
2:09:41 one believes that. So, well, so then what happens in consequence of that? Well, I think what happens
2:09:46 in consequence of that is what happened to Abraham. Your life just goes like this.
2:09:52 Just opens and opens and opens and opens. And I don’t think there’s any limit to that.
2:10:02 And that’s ridiculously entertaining, like unbearably entertaining. There’s what you want
2:10:07 in your life. You want it to be unbearably entertaining. And it’s funny, you know, when you
2:10:14 watch people go to movies, I mean, James Bond, right? That’s an unbearably entertaining life.
2:10:19 And that’s what people want to see when they go to a theater, because that’s what they want.
2:10:27 That’s what they want. And maybe all the sorrow and catastrophe that’s part of that has to be
2:10:34 part of it, because otherwise there’s nothing about it that’s glorious.
2:10:42 Why does that move you so much?
2:10:56 Because life is very wide. You know, there’s the the peaks and valleys are
2:11:06 very distant from one another. And I don’t know, maybe as you ascend uphill, your understanding of
2:11:12 the chasm between the peaks and valleys also increases. You know, because you think maybe as
2:11:20 you’re successful, you’re happier. Well, first of all, I’m not sure that success and happiness are
2:11:25 the same thing. I’m not sure that we want them to be the same thing. I don’t even know what people
2:11:31 mean when they say they want to be happy. If you investigate it, technically you find out that
2:11:35 really what people mean when they say they want to be happy is that they don’t want to suffer.
2:11:42 That’s different than the enthusiastic joy that you might think about, you know,
2:11:45 that’s part and parcel of a child’s laughter. You want to be happy. What do you want to be
2:11:48 laughing all the time? Is that what you’re saying? Well, no, that’s not what I mean. Well,
2:11:53 what do you mean? Do you mean the gratification that comes along with the cookie at one in the
2:11:58 morning? No, that’s not what I mean. Well, okay, what do you mean? Well, I don’t know. It’s like,
2:12:04 yeah, you don’t know. Partly what you mean is you don’t want pointless suffering. Fair enough,
2:12:08 you know, fair, fair enough, but that doesn’t mean it’s happiness. That’s your goal.
2:12:13 That’s nice. I don’t think that’s your goal. I don’t think your podcast would be successful
2:12:18 if that was your goal. I think you would have washed up on the shoals of triviality long ago.
2:12:25 I do. Well, there’s something you’re doing that’s working. There’s something about the way you’re
2:12:31 approaching the situation that’s of broad appeal. There’s some archetypal pattern that’s
2:12:38 you’re acting out in your conduct in your podcast, because otherwise it wouldn’t have the effect it
2:12:46 has. It’s true. I agree. I don’t know what it is, but because… Well, you know some of it.
2:12:55 We talked about some of it. You said that you can apprehend the outline of some of the principles.
2:13:01 Some of that you probably discovered as you went along rather than putting them in place to begin
2:13:08 with. This seems to work. So that’s a discovery of a pathway. Well, as a podcast as well,
2:13:11 I don’t think you really truly understand your principles until they’re tested.
2:13:17 Especially when they’re tested from both sides. So this side’s telling you to be more like this,
2:13:22 and this side’s screaming you to be more like this, and you’re faced with a decision. When I
2:13:25 started out as a podcaster, there was no one screaming. There was no one there. Right. Right.
2:13:30 But at some point in the journey, you get immense pressure. Yeah. Well, then you’re also forces a
2:13:34 decision out of you. Yeah. Well, you’re also in a situation then when you have to start worrying
2:13:38 about your reputation, which is something you don’t have to worry about when no one knows who
2:13:43 you are. And it’s very dangerous to worry about your reputation. As soon as you start worrying
2:13:48 about your reputation as a podcaster, you’re going to fail. Because you’re not interesting then.
2:13:54 You’ll stop taking risks. Yeah. So then another question emerges, you got people yelling at you
2:13:58 from this side and this side. Well, how do you know what’s right? Well, it isn’t…
2:14:03 Partly it’s by listening because you want to pay attention to your audience. But
2:14:09 there’s something guiding you if you do what you’re doing properly that has nothing to do with
2:14:15 the clamor. Yeah. It’s funny because actually, links back to some of the principles we’ve talked
2:14:20 about today. It’s one of the things I’ve learned is having a good relationship, like good friendships
2:14:26 and a good relationship with my wife is actually the foundation for me to be able to navigate
2:14:32 the people screaming at me from both sides. Yeah. Why? Because it just anchors me in…
2:14:40 It’s like an anchor of knowing who I actually am, irrespective of the
2:14:46 crowd. The crowd telling you who you are. Yeah. Well, that’s a good illustration of distributed
2:14:54 identity. Yeah. Yeah. It’s like you are your wife and your friends and your family. Yeah. Right?
2:15:01 There’s no… Fundamentally, there cannot be any separation there. Yeah. Yeah. And when you
2:15:06 said you’ve experienced that, it’s like that’s what gives you… That’s part of what gives you a
2:15:12 foundation. It’s like, yeah, that’s not a losery. And it’s nice because as you said, when I go out
2:15:16 into the world, everyone is very nice to me. It’s just if you spend too long on the internet,
2:15:20 people scream at you from both sides. They say, “Do it more like this. Do it like this.
2:15:24 Wear the CEOs. This is called Diary of the CEO. We want more of these kind of guests. We should
2:15:28 talk about this politics. Trump, Kamala, Trump. And at the middle of that, you’re going, “Fuck
2:15:32 in hell.” And that’s where you have to take some time to really tune in yourself and go,
2:15:37 “Who am I? And why am I doing this? And what are my principles?” And irrespective of the principles
2:15:44 I choose, or I believe in, that there’s going to be suffering and there’s going to be sacrifice.
2:15:49 And there’s going to be great adventure as well. And the good… One thing I really like that helps
2:15:54 me for some bizarre reason is the knowledge that I will die someday. Why does that help?
2:16:03 It’s just… It’s a good question. Why does it help? It helps because I think it’s focusing
2:16:09 in me on what actually matters in a way that I wouldn’t be as easy to otherwise. What it’s
2:16:13 saying is it’s just a reminder of, “Okay, if I’m going to die someday, then actually this person
2:16:21 screaming at me to be more like this, it obviously doesn’t matter.” It obviously doesn’t matter in
2:16:25 the context of my other priorities. Well, it might be that death is what makes things matter.
2:16:30 Scarcity always makes the value of something. Well, right. And we’re talking about a kind of
2:16:34 ultimate scarcity then. You can ask yourself… One of the fundamental questions you can ask
2:16:42 yourself is, “What is the nature of the real?” And I think death makes things real. I agree.
2:16:46 Yeah. That’s why it’s an important… I don’t know. It seems like a weird thing to say, but it
2:16:53 reminds me that what’s trivial and what’s not, in the context of a finite amount of resources,
2:16:58 time, attention that I can commit, it’s foolish to commit some of them to
2:17:03 some of the things that I find myself committing them to sometimes when I remind myself of that
2:17:09 death. How do you pick your guests? Curiosity. Yeah. That’s… I pick people I want to talk to.
2:17:13 It’s like, “I’d like to hear what that person has to say.” Yeah. And it’s something that I’m
2:17:19 trying to learn. So it’s typically when I’ve seen you wrote a book called “We Who Wrestle with God.”
2:17:25 That’s the word “Israel,” eh? That’s what “Israel” means. Yeah, I am. And that’s the chosen people of God.
2:17:30 Israel. I didn’t know that. Yeah. But I thought this is a subject that I’m curious about.
2:17:36 So I would like to talk to Jordan to see if he can help me fill in this sort of jigsaw puzzle in
2:17:39 my brain of subject matters that relate to this. And I evolve. I’m probably going to have kids soon.
2:17:43 And whenever my kids, I’m going to be curious about parenthood and I’m going to speak to,
2:17:48 you know, guests that can help me with that. That’s been my framework. And it’s worked
2:17:54 in terms of, “I still like doing this.” Well, there’s no reason. So when I’m on stage lecturing,
2:18:02 I’m on a journey. It’s a real journey. Yeah. It’s not an act. Like, I pose a question to myself
2:18:09 before I go on stage. It’s a question I want the answer to and I don’t have. And I go on stage
2:18:16 and I try to move towards the answer. And people come along and I want to go there and they want
2:18:20 to come along. It’s a good deal. And the podcaster like that, if you’re doing them honestly, it’s
2:18:24 like, I want to talk to this person. That’s a really nice way of thinking about it. Moving
2:18:29 towards an answer. Yeah. Not even sure what the answer is, but. Well, and it’ll change as you
2:18:34 approach it. Move towards the answer. Right. The questions and the answers change as you move
2:18:38 towards it. That’s okay. That’s fine. We were touching this earlier, but it’s something that
2:18:43 I wanted to touch on because one of the themes of this podcast is often the subject of grief.
2:18:46 And I read that you’d lost both of your parents within sort of six months of each other.
2:18:52 What does that moment teach you about priorities, about life, about what matters, about
2:18:55 anything that you could pass down to me that’s important?
2:19:07 Things last way less long than you think. So you should be aware of that and not take things for
2:19:14 granted. No. And so, and I don’t think I took my parents for granted. Now, did I do that perfectly?
2:19:21 Well, we don’t do things perfectly, but it was pretty good. It was pretty good.
2:19:28 I learned when my, I watched my wife’s family go through the death of their mother.
2:19:39 And one of the consequences of that was that my wife and her siblings and her father pulled closer
2:19:48 together in during that time. And that really, it was like a wound healing, you know? And so I saw
2:19:55 that and I saw that that worked. So for example, Tammy has a stronger relationship with her older
2:20:03 brother than she did before her father also died. So we lost her father and my father and my mother
2:20:11 this year, basically. It isn’t that her brother substituted for her father, but it was that there
2:20:19 was more there than she had made use of. And so when her father departed, the possibility of expanding
2:20:24 that relationship with her brother was on the table. And I did the same thing with my sister and my
2:20:36 brother. And that’s helpful. It’s helpful. So there’s opportunity everywhere, even in grief,
2:20:41 there’s opportunity. Is there one lesson that your father taught you? Pay attention.
2:20:52 He was good at that. He taught that very well. And it wasn’t a good idea to not pay attention around
2:21:04 my father. I wouldn’t describe him as an easy person. He had high standards and he was rather
2:21:14 unforgiving. And I don’t know, do you forgive the people that you love for not being everything
2:21:22 they could be? That’s a hard question. It’s okay, dear. It’s like, is it now? I think we have a lot
2:21:30 of that in our culture. It’s okay. I like you just like you are. Do you forgive him?
2:21:36 Yes, I don’t think they’re…
2:21:44 My dad and I sorted out our differences a long time ago. You know, when I left home,
2:21:49 our relationship was somewhat fractious from the time I was 13 to the time I left home.
2:21:56 He developed quite a severe depression, which ran in my family. And that made him
2:22:05 harder to understand than had been the case previously. It also made the probability that if
2:22:15 there were events in the household that they would be, they’d have more reverberation than they would
2:22:26 have otherwise. And that was confusing to me. I understood why that happened later, not much later,
2:22:31 and it wasn’t very long after I left home that whatever differences I had with my father were
2:22:39 irrelevant. So we didn’t really have unresolved issues, I wouldn’t say. What about your mother?
2:22:43 What’s the one lesson? My mom was great. What’s the lesson if any she left with you?
2:22:52 My mother was a very hospitable person. And in the Old Testament accounts, hospitality is a
2:23:00 cardinal virtue. And she was very good at making people welcome. The day my mother died, I thought
2:23:06 about her most of the day, that day, memories came to mind. And one of the things I realized
2:23:10 about my mother was that I don’t have a single negative memory of my mother.
2:23:16 It was really quite something to know someone for 62 years.
2:23:25 And really, I really don’t have a negative memory of my mother. I don’t remember any
2:23:28 time where she acted.
2:23:40 She was a good person, my mother.
2:23:51 I could always make her laugh. She had a very good sense of humor. I appreciated that a lot.
2:23:58 And although she was a very agreeable person and a very feminine person,
2:24:07 she was tough too. And she wasn’t an edible type. She had strong protective instincts,
2:24:13 but her desire to help her children become independent trumped that for sure.
2:24:17 Jordan, we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question
2:24:22 for the next, not knowing who they’re leaving it for. And the question left for you is,
2:24:25 how do you feel most misunderstood?
2:24:42 I don’t know if I am misunderstood. I think the people who don’t like me,
2:24:47 some of them have me confused with some figment of their imagination.
2:24:51 Some of the people who don’t like me, they understand me.
2:24:57 They just don’t like what they understand. They don’t like what it implies.
2:25:06 And so that’s okay with me. I don’t feel misunderstood, I wouldn’t say.
2:25:08 I’ve got nothing to complain about.
2:25:18 People who’ve been listening to me, they understand me. And as far as I can tell,
2:25:22 that’s been very good for them. And that’s unbelievably gratifying for me.
2:25:26 You must experience that. I mean, your podcast has had a broad effect.
2:25:32 And I presume a positive effect on people. There isn’t anything better than that,
2:25:38 to see that what you’re doing has that broadly salutary effect. That’s great.
2:25:43 That’s another indication of our essentially, I would say, religious nature.
2:25:48 You know, Jaco Willing told me this, you know, Jaco said that he could,
2:25:55 he could have easily been like a gang leader, criminal type. He’s a tough warrior character,
2:26:01 you know. And he said when he went into the military, he discovered that being the leader of
2:26:04 a team and moving people in a positive direction, there wasn’t anything better than that.
2:26:09 And so that just straightened him out, you know, and I feel exactly the same way.
2:26:14 There isn’t anything better than that. And so I’m able to do that. And I see the evidence of
2:26:20 that all the time. And whatever misunderstandings there might be about me necessary or unnecessary
2:26:24 are so trivial compared to that, that they’re not, they don’t even really register.
2:26:27 What a privilege. That’s for sure.
2:26:31 Jordan, thank you so much. It’s a privilege we share, because doing this for me is a great
2:26:35 privilege. And the fact that it positively impacts anyone is everything you’ve just said.
2:26:38 And I see that in your work, but also I see it when we have these conversations in the
2:26:43 immense avalanche of people who profess that you’ve changed their life in some positive way
2:26:46 and move them in a better direction. And that’s irrefutable and no one can, you know,
2:26:51 I mean, as I say, there’s no greater privilege. So Jordan, thank you so much for your time.
2:26:52 I appreciate it. Thank you.
2:26:55 You bet. Thanks for the invitation again. It’s always a pleasure to talk to you.
2:26:55 Thank you.
2:27:01 Isn’t this cool? Every single conversation I have here on The Diary of a CEO, at the very end of
2:27:07 it, you’ll know, I asked the guest to leave a question in The Diary of a CEO. And what we’ve
2:27:13 done is we’ve turned every single question written in The Diary of a CEO into these conversation
2:27:20 cards that you can play at home. So you’ve got every guest we’ve ever had, their question,
2:27:27 and on the back of it, if you scan that QR code, you get to watch the person who answered that
2:27:33 question. We’re finally revealing all of the questions and the people that answered the question.
2:27:41 The brand new version two updated conversation cards are out right now at theconversationcards.com.
2:27:45 They’ve sold out twice instantaneously. So if you are interested in getting hold of some
2:27:49 limited edition conversation cards, I really, really recommend acting quickly.
2:28:13 [Music]