The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast

I was writing a very difficult book at that time which turned into my book *Maps of Meaning* which turned into the books that you guys are probably familiar with.

When I wrote Maps of Meaning, so I did that. I used the Jungian works in that regard, but I also used what I knew about neuropsychology and neuropsychopharmacology with the presumption being that if all of these pointers pointed to the same thing, it was probably there.

It's multi-method, multi-trait construct validation fundamentally.

When I wrote my first book, when I wrote *Maps of Meaning*, I wrote a chapter in that book called "The Divinity of Interest."

When I wrote Maps of Meaning, I had started to conceptualize the call of the sacred as something like spontaneous interest, right? Is that, well, so things will grip your attention and compel you in a certain direction. I realized later, after I wrote that book many years later, that that was equivalent to the more traditional notion of calling.

and then we went back and read about some meaning and all that and just started listened to your podcast and and have loved you and followed you and and prayed for your family

And that's how we actually bring meaning into the world.

when I wrote my book Maps of Meaning I analyzed the structure of redemptive stories and and your life is a redemptive story if you're fortunate because you have a lot of trouble in your life and yet you plow through and take care of that trouble and that's a story of redemption

...he laid out something I'd also investigated in my Maps of Meaning book that is underlying religious narrative...

I talked about this in maps it's on the border between chaos and order

Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief: https://jordanbpeterson.com/maps-of-meaning

when I wrote my first book which was called Maps of Meaning I spent a lot of time writing it but then I spent a lot of time with hammer and tongs trying to break every sentence

Nietzsche described himself as someone who philosophized with a hammer

I tried to do that with Maps of Meaning I figure I rewrote every sentence about 50 times trying to see is there any way is there any argument I can come up with that will get underneath this proposition and make it feel weak and unsteady to me

I only kept the propositions I couldn't break

When I wrote my book in 1999 called Maps of Meaning, it struck me that the basic cognitive and perceptual categories were something like chaos, order and the process that mediates between them.

You know, because one of the things I've understood more deeply recently, more explicitly, you know, I've been putting this together, is that the definition of sanity that's generally implicitly held among the psychological community is probably too individualistic.

And what I mean by that is that I don't think that sanity is something that you have in your head, it's not part of your psyche, it's not part of you exactly. It's more like harmonious interaction with the hierarchy of social, uh, of social arrangements that you have with other people.

So you imagine, well, you're a pretty sane person and you're married and your marriage is terrible. It's like, well, then you're not that sane, are you?

I found an analogy between you your use of diagrams in this book and my use of diagrams in my first book Maps of Meaning it while I was working out the ideas in that book which are analogous in many ways to the ideas that you're presenting were we're definitely what what sniffing down the same trail let's say I found that in order to understand what I was doing I had to make the diagrams and then I decided to include them there's some 70 diagrams yours are there's you have many more diagrams they're more differentiated than my diagrams by quite a a margin

well that and that's the that incest insistence motif you know so one of the things you talked about he has a whole symbolic chapter on this about the place where only like mates with light both Jonathan you should jump out

In my work in Maps of Meaning I called just a narrative a story, but the story that unites all narratives is a meta story.

and the part of the point I make in that chapter and I would say in both books and in Maps of Meaning as well is that the primary obligation of a parent is to serve as a proxy for the social and the natural world but let's say the social world why well because you want to train your child to be not only acceptable socially but highly desirable socially.

is that the primary obligation of a parent is to serve as a proxy for the social and the natural world.

And i wrote my book Maps of Meaning and i published a bunch of articles and i really concentrated on what i was doing at McGill and that went by the wayside and i really regret it because you know i had that opportunity

I know in the book I talk about giving kind of a very, very short history of free speech from the ancient Greeks to today and it and the point of that is to accentuate this point that actually the fact that we have it is astonishing and unlikely.

So I appreciated Dr. Peterson's discussion on the corpus of the scripture of the Bible in the book, and one of the things that he and I had talked about was to discuss a book, not the book, fair enough?

And one of the things that I've been praying about over the last many weeks and months is how the pandemic has placed in forefront of our culture suffering and death and pain.

So when I was reading through your book and I saw in the last chapter, you speak about suffering and being able to do that with a sense of gratitude.

The very beginning of the chapter you say, 'a much of your life you have been searching for certainty.'

You should experience for me yeah I enjoyed it a lot yeah sorry you're gonna say your Maps of Meaning was a very important book for me I read it actually to help me with my war book believe it or not for your notion of conflict and integrating internal conflict and external conflict so I just want to thank you and let you know nobody knows about that because I haven't really spoken about it but that book was very important for me

like when I wrote my first book Maps of Meaning I believe I wrote every sentence in that book 50 times

Well, this is why an I outline this to some degree in beyond order and also in my first book, Maps of Meaning.

You read Maps of Meaning during COVID so how long did that take you?

I think it took me about a month and then I actually reread my underlined notes before this conversation just to try to prepare myself.

Yeah well it's a long read Maps of Meaning I put an audio version of it out and I think that's probably easier for people because the sentences are so long that reading it out loud enabled me to sort of emphasize some parts and de-emphasize others and I think that was a good hint as to the underlying meaning but okay so well so let's talk about what you're doing first.

People who read 12 rules who watch your lectures and especially those who have read Maps of Meaning and the books you recommend experience rapid personal growth, their emotional states, their health and their relationships change.

People ask when will you post the next Bible lecture? When will we hear the Maps of Meaning?

maybe we could pause it as a general biological rule is if the rate of sexual reproduction of ideas exceeds the rate of sexual reproduction of human beings then there's no Malthusian catastrophe

that's a very nice way to put it I think that is exactly the point I like to make

so maybe the answer to Malthus is sort of hidden in some sense inside the presumptions you made in your book

I ran across John's podcast partly because their book club also focused on my first book, Maps of Meaning and so I looked up Gigi Durr who's speaking with me today.

And it's a very peculiar phenomenon of course and so that's why I found it so interesting and of course I think there's the book Maps of Meaning and part of the reason why we explored it in the book club is because I think that provides a framework for understanding that phenomenon better.

...and you know Maps of Meaning I think is essentially a book about morality as well in that it's a book about how to act so I found some very interesting parallels there.

...we take those truths that are seemingly entirely unrelated to markets and money you know it's all about is all about mediating the forces of nature the structure of reality and conjunction with the social relationships that constitute life and trying to figure out what behavior is most the most optimal balance between the two and I think we could carry that over to money in markets and it's funny because you know Maps of Meaning could have been called maps of value and obviously money is a map of value but I hadn't drawn the analogy between a map of value and money although in retrospect that seems like an obvious thing to do which is why I got interested in your idea about uninciraptable money.

I know some of this because I know that the knowing what and knowing how circuitry is separate now I've known that since I wrote Maps of Meaning and I know the inside circuitry is separate and you know that's what I've been getting out also with regards to this idea of revelation and then critical thinking which we started all this with it never got back to even though it's just a trivialization the logos were found the god god I hope so yeah I hope so John because it's certainly the only justification for my existence red skull and all.

Beyond Order can be read and understood on its own but also builds on the concepts that I developed in my previous books 12 rules for life and before that Maps of Meaning.

Beyond Order can be read and understood on its own, but also builds on the concepts that I developed in my previous books, 12 rules for life and before that Maps of Meaning.

Beyond Order can be read and understood on its own, but also builds on the concepts that I developed in my previous books, 12 rules for life and before that Maps of Meaning.

Beyond Order can be read and understood on its own but also builds on the concepts that I developed in my previous books 12 rules for life and before that Maps of Meaning.

Beyond Order can be read and understood on its own, but also builds on the concepts that I developed in my previous books, 12 rules for life, and before that, Maps of Meaning.

I just finished your book

The your first 12 rules

And I actually say this in our book, but um when I was a freshman I was hiding books under my bed including your book 12 rolls for life and Thomas Souls books so I had my like secret library underneath my bed which I'm ashamed to admit looking back but when you're in a new place

Don't look read your book years ago and gave it to me and we're big readers we love to read he was like mom read this so good 12 rolls that one and then we went back and read about some meaning and all that and just started listened to your podcast and and have loved you and followed you and and prayed for your family

He was like mom read this so good

I don't know if it made it in 12 rules, but it's an old rule in my life that to whom much is given much will be required.

I've been a fan since 12 Rules for Life so thanks so much for having me on.

12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos: https://jordanbpeterson.com/12-rules-for-life

In my first book, 12 Rules for Life, I have a chapter entitled, Don't Let Your Children Do Anything That Makes You Dislike Them and so what I thought I'd ask you given that you wrote this book detailing out different means of communicating with children, developing a philosophy of communication with children, kind of wondering what you think of that rule.

One of the things I've understood more deeply recently, more explicitly, you know, I've been putting this together, is that the definition of sanity that's generally implicitly held among the psychological community is probably too individualistic.

And what I mean by that is that I don't think that sanity is something that you have in your head, it's not part of your psyche, it's not part of you exactly. It's more like harmonious interaction with the hierarchy of social, uh, of social arrangements that you have with other people.

So you imagine, well, you're a pretty sane person and you're married and your marriage is terrible. It's like, well, then you're not that sane, are you?

Well, I was talking to a woman named Jean Twangie yesterday, and she's a research psychologist, we were talking about self-esteem, and one of the, the self-esteem movement in this school system in California, was absolutely dreadfully devastating and appalling.

It basically posited that you could teach kids how to be narcissistic to overcome their negative emotion and neuroticism, and that's so preposterously appalling that you couldn't invent something stupider. So we were talking about self-esteem, whatever the hell that means, because it's a very badly defined term, but here's one way of determining whether you have the appropriate amount of self-esteem. You might say, well, everyone should feel good about themselves. It's like, well, if you're a miserable, ratty, lying, deceptive, narcissistic prick, then probably you shouldn't feel that good about yourself.

it's a good book

I would specifically recommend the 12 Rules for Life because 12 more rules I have some criticisms of it

Your first book, 12 Rules for Life, sits prominently on our bookshelf in our living room and we've all read it and learned a tremendous amount from you over the years and certainly feel a kinship because of the shared relationship between university professorship and public education as well.

Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life: https://jordanbpeterson.com/Beyond-Order 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos: https://jordanbpeterson.com/12-rules-for-life Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief: https://jordanbpeterson.com/maps-of-meaning

Although I agree with most of the underlying substance of your argument, I'm not sure your approach is as persuasive as it could be.

It feels more like a mock fuselage at CEOs addressed to your fan base rather than a message addressed to CEOs which might persuade them to change their ways.

In that sense, I am not sure it will move the dial of the debate.

I fear the CEO video loses the humble vulnerability from the superpower equation.

I found myself hoping the non-judgmental Jordan Peterson would appear. Instead, I got caught in a net of angry sarcastic judgments.

In my first book um 12 Rules for Life I said do not lie or no I said the rule was tell the truth or at least do not lie because you know you might I mean can you tell the truth you'd have to know the truth you know you might be able to tell some partial truths but you can't tell the truth but you can not say things that you know to be false.

People who read 12 rules who watch your lectures and especially those who have read maps of meaning and the books you recommend experience rapid personal growth, their emotional states, their health and their relationships change.

Jordan B. Peterson is a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, a clinical psychologist, and the author of the multi-million copy bestseller 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, #1 for nonfiction in 2018 in the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, the Netherlands, Brazil, and Norway, and slated for translation into 50 languages.

Jordan B. Peterson is a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, a clinical psychologist, and the author of the multi-million copy bestseller 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, #1 for nonfiction in 2018 in the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, the Netherlands, Brazil and Norway, and slated for translation into 50 languages.

Beyond Order can be read and understood on its own but also builds on the concepts that I developed in my previous books 12 Rules for Life and before that maps of meaning.

Beyond Order can be read and understood on its own, but also builds on the concepts that I developed in my previous books, 12 Rules for Life and before that maps of meaning.

Beyond Order can be read and understood on its own, but also builds on the concepts that I developed in my previous books, 12 Rules for Life and before that maps of meaning.

Beyond Order can be read and understood on its own but also builds on the concepts that I developed in my previous books 12 Rules for Life and before that maps of meaning.

Beyond Order can be read and understood on its own, but also builds on the concepts that I developed in my previous books, 12 Rules for Life, and before that, maps of meaning.

Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life: https://jordanbpeterson.com/Beyond-Order

Hello everyone watching or listening on YouTube, or associated podcast or on the daily wear plus platform.

And this is why the internet is amazing but also dangerous, it's just like university in this way. Okay, before the internet, there was college and that's how I described it in high school.

You talked to some people that had rough experiences in high school, especially people are younger than me, and I said, 'Hey, just wait to go to college, you're going to be dealing with way more people and you'll be able to be yourself because there's some other people that actually feel just like you.'

Yeah, right, and you're gonna really like this college experience because you're going to find a friend group that just didn't exist in your small, 100 kid per grade high school, right? The internet is that on steroids right now.

That little four-person group that really likes gaming and wearing masks and doing all this other shit is four million globally, you get to feel part of a big group and you have all these people that like what you have to say. But what I think that the internet can often do, and it's something that like I try my hardest to not let it do, is it dulls our sword, you know what I mean? We don't have to communicate outside of the echo chamber, chamber, right?

We know if we want, we can say the things we believe to the people who also believe them, and now there's no more nuance.

Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life: https://jordanbpeterson.com/Beyond-Order 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos: https://jordanbpeterson.com/12-rules-for-life Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief: https://jordanbpeterson.com/maps-of-meaning

don't worry she said in our next book it was another 12 rules for lifebook we're writing and devoting a chapter to you

with everything that you are and with the capacity that you have to speak in a transcendent way to more people you have a moral responsibility to take more care with your words so that you're not thoughtlessly denigrating whole swaths of people who need to at least hear from you or hear a perspective that you have to offer that's immensely helpful

Do not hide unwanted things in the fog, which seems to me we live in a constant state of distraction now.

It's like, well, you should lay out an ideal, you should pursue an ideal. Why wouldn't you?

Don't hide things in the fog. You have to let yourself know what you want.

We really do our best not to lie to each other about anything and we also have fights when they're necessary we don't let things we don't hide things in the fog that's the title of chapter three of my new book don't hide things in the fog and we work through our issues.

Rule three is mechalus favorite do not hide unwanted things in the fog right and this is the opposite of hiding unwanted things in the fog this is confronting them and that's a variant of St. George and the dragon.

penguin random house informed me that they couldn't put out a double edition of my book in any reasonable amount of time my two books because they can't get carboard or paper.

Rule 2 is, imagine who you could be and then aim single-mindedly at that.

So chapter two is imagine who you could be and then aim single-mindedly at that.

And for me after being on tour with you, I think that's something that got into me through osmosis, that I would be on stage.

And then just that, it helped my aim. It helped my aim. And I wonder how many people just don't know how to aim because they have no experience like that, something like that.

So, so that's a disciplinary routine I would say. Yeah, and I take you out of your current order.

when you're working on say Beyond Order this new book how do you think of composing your stories or your messages so that they are not lost so that they have some durability or transmissibility

I want to ask you about the title Beyond Order but before I get to that I'm just planting the seed I'd love to ask you this is a question that a friend of mine several friends of mine wanted me to ask some version of and I would like to hear your answer and that is how would you recommend someone think about meaning

The complexity of the language of Beyond Order:12 More Rules for Life. What is Jordan's process for increasing the precision of his speech and writing?

it has a very distinctive language and many levels of complexity to explore and comprehend the peculiarity of this language is that it somehow helps the reader set his perception set his mind on the book's narrative it flows very easily and deeply into the reader's mind

I do make this point to some degree in in Beyond Order when I talk about making space for romance a fair bit of marriages administrative detail and getting that down getting that right mean that all that does allow you to see some good will on the part of your partner as well.

I'd like to announce my new book Beyond Order, 12 more rules for life.

Unlike my previous book, Beyond Order explores as its overarching theme how the dangers of too much security and control might be profitably avoided.

Because what we understand is insufficient, we need to keep one foot within order while stretching the other tentatively into the Beyond.

I hope that people find this book as helpful personally as they seem to have found the first set of 12 rules.

Hello if you have found the ideas I discuss interesting and useful perhaps you might consider purchasing my recently released book Beyond Order 12 more rules for life available from Penguin Random House in print or audio format.

This new book Beyond Order provides what I hope is a productive and interesting walk through ideas that are both philosophically and sometimes spiritually meaningful as well as being immediately implementable and practical.

If you have found the ideas I discuss interesting and useful, perhaps you might consider purchasing my recently released book Beyond Order. 12 more rules for life available from Penguin Random House in print or audio format.

This new book Beyond Order provides what I hope is a productive and interesting walk through ideas that are both philosophically and sometimes spiritually meaningful as well as being immediately implementable and practical.

Beyond Order can be read and understood on its own, but also builds on the concepts that I developed in my previous books, 12 rules for life and before that maps of meaning.

If you have found the ideas I discuss interesting and useful, perhaps you might consider purchasing my recently released book Beyond Order. 12 more rules for life available from Penguin Random House in print or audio format. You could use the links we provide below or buy through Amazon or at your local bookstore. This new book Beyond Order provides what I hope is a productive and interesting walk through ideas that are both philosophically and sometimes spiritually meaningful as well as being immediately implementable and practical.

Beyond Order can be read and understood on its own, but also builds on the concepts that I developed in my previous books, 12 rules for life and before that maps of meaning.

You could use the links we provide below or buy through Amazon or at your local bookstore. This new book Beyond Order provides what I hope is a productive and interesting walk through ideas that are both philosophically and sometimes spiritually meaningful as well as being immediately implementable and practical.

Beyond Order can be read and understood on its own, but also builds on the concepts that I developed in my previous books 12 rules for life and before that maps of meaning.

Hello. If you have found the ideas I discuss interesting and useful perhaps you might consider purchasing my recently released book Beyond Order 12 more rules for life available from Penguin Random House in print or audio format.

Perhaps you might consider purchasing my recently released book Beyond Order. 12 more rules for life available from Penguin Random House, In Print, or Audio Format. You could use the links we provide below or buy through Amazon or at your local bookstore.

This new book Beyond Order provides what I hope is a productive and interesting walk through ideas that are both philosophically and sometimes spiritually meaningful, as well as being immediately implementable and practical.

there's a section in here about sanity you know and it's a critique to some degree of psychoanalytic thought because the cycle not that I admire the psychoanalysts tremendously but they tended to think of sanity as something that was organized inside your psyche or let's say inside your brain for that matter maybe even a reflection of healthy brain function but sanity is to large part outsourced and what I mean by that is that if you're fortunate and you're well socialized um other people find you acceptable enough to include you in their networks and then all you have to do is pay attention to the functioning of that network and regulate your behavior as a consequence of the feedback you receive and you more or less stay sane

it's coming out March 2nd and I sort of clung to this like a life raft over the last couple of years while I was writing it

I finished writing this book but I'm not writing right now

the core argument is we are living in a period of evolutionary hyper novelty where human beings are actually the species for which we have the best tools to deal with novel circumstances that our ancestors did not know anything about but that the rate of change has become so high that there is no conceivable way for us to keep up with it and what we are effectively watching decide even in principle yeah that you know the very fact that you can say the environment that we live in is not the one that we were born into that's way too fast

Dad has an illustration per rule in this new book that Juliet did and they are stunning.

My previous book 12 rules for life was illustrated by Ethan van Siver and I liked his illustrations a lot I thought they were very successful but he had other opportunities that he was pursuing and so.

I was obliged to find another illustrator for Beyond Order and I decided with my team my daughter and my family members actually mostly in discussion to.

I was going to run a contest online and solicit drawings I thought that would be.

I was going to have an opportunity to entertain and interesting and perhaps allow someone an opportunity that they might not otherwise have obtained and so we received hundreds and perhaps even thousands of.

Big news, Dad's book is coming out Tuesday, March 2nd, Beyond Order available at his website at Jordan B. Peterson dot com Amazon wherever you buy books and he has posters for sale with absolutely incredible illustrations on it from the book.

Sorry, I don't want to derail you from your tangent but that's one of the passages that I've concentrated a lot in this new book that I've just finished, We Who Wrestle with God because that equation that Christ manages with his identification with the serpent in the desert, that is so stunningly brilliant that I cannot possibly imagine how anyone could have thought it up.

It's a hypothesis that I've developed fairly extensively but I'm working on in detail in the new book that I'm working on right now called We Who Wrestle with God.

We don't expect in the world, we desire, we desire, right. Our expectations are specified by our desires and that's a useful twist because it brings in, it integrates motivation.

Well, I'm writing, as I mentioned, a book on... on... on explication of biblical narrative. It's called We Who Wrestle with God, and I've been working... Oh, nice pun on Israel. Yes, yes, right, exactly, exactly. And I discovered that relationship when I did the lectures... lectures on Genesis in 2017. So I've been kind of trying to come up with a technique... technical definition of the sacred, right?

And I've been working... on... on... on explication of biblical narrative. It's called We Who Wrestle with God, and I've been working...

So I spent a lot of time recently writing this book, "We Who Wrestle with God" and one of the chapters in that book deals with the story of Abraham.

I'm writing this book called We Who Ressel with God and I was writing about Noah the story of Noah today you know and there's a scene after the arc comes to rest after the flood Noah plants a vineyard and I guess you know he's had kind of a rough time so he plants a vineyard and he brews up some wine and he gets pretty rip-roaring drunk and one of his sons come in comes into his tent and Noah is there passed out and he's naked and instead of covering him up and shutting the hell up about it this son called ham goes and tells his brothers that you know dads made a fool of himself and sort of gets them to come in hypothetically to poke fun at him and instead the other brothers come in with their backs turned and cover him up and then so the story goes the descendants of ham become the slaves the servants and the slaves of the sons who covered up their father and the idea there no this is kind of far afield from what you pointed out but the idea there is that if you don't have a certain degree of respect or even reverence for your father despite his shortcomings which we all have then you're doomed to a useless life and people who are respectful will dominate over you because they'll be you know their lives will go right because they're in accordance with tradition

Yeah well you see that that's very interesting observation because I've just written a new book called We Who Wrestle with God and it comes out November 12th and what it it's a it's a journey through the characterizations of god in 10 old testament stories about 10 there's uh there's some forays into new testament material but I'm saving most of that for another book

Yeah, yeah, so I'm writing this book called We Who Ressel with God and I'm obviously animated by the same spirit, so to speak, that you are because the books parallel each other quite remarkably.

...I've been working on this idea in my new book it's called We Who Ressa With God...

...that's why my the name of my next book by the way is We Who Wrestle with God...

I have a new book coming out in November and I actually drew somewhat heavily on Richard Dawkins for parts of the book.

Dawkins makes a strong case and repeats it again in his newest book which is just out that the an organism, any biological organism has to be a microcosm of its environment, has to be a model.

So I've written a new book called We Who Wrestle with God, which will be out in mid-November.

there's a very old idea and I elucidated it in some detail in this new book I wrote this We Who Wrestle with God that the way you become immune to the poison of the worst serpents is by looking at the things you least want to look at

in this new book i wrote this We Who Wrestle with God that the way you become immune to the poison of the worst serpents is by looking at the things you least want to look at

I have a book coming out November called We Who Wrestle with God.

I was reminded of actually one of my favorite stories about Christ actually which came from not the Bible but from Fyodor Dostoevsky's book The Brothers Karamazov...

You see something similar happening in The Brothers Karamazov yeah because you have Ivan is a very is very able to put forward extremely compelling propositionly atheistic arguments right in kind of a Nietzschean spirit in real sense right and alliosa who's the monastic novitiate is no match for Ivan on the propositional front but he's a way better person

He says life is so right with catastrophe and suffering betrayal malevolence it's so intrinsically unworthy that it would be better if consciousness itself was just brought to an end.

Okay, so let's take that, let's take that argument apart because you you put your finger on the postmodern quandary right because the postmodernists in some sense the reason that they ran into trouble with assuming they criticized the notion that there was a canonical interpretation of the text because there's so many subjective interpretations of any text in fact there's a near infinite number of potential subjective interpretations of any text just like there's almost an infinite number of places you could be looking right now and so it's a huge deep problem so and when you say that you can project something onto the text that in some sense isn't there that's also an extremely deep problem and these problems are deep enough you know the fact of multiple interpretations of a single reality is so pervasive that it stopped AI researchers it's the thing that stopped AI researchers from being able to build functional robots like it's a killer problem yeah yeah okay so if that's the frame problem okay so let's let's agree that that exists but we should also agree and partly I think by the merits of your own argument that we do have a reliable subjective intuition that texts differ in depth yeah and that that means something so I'm going to propose what it means and you tell me what you think about this okay sure so one of the ways that we specify where to look at is by looking at what we deem to be important and so here's a way of conceptualizing that and it sort of maps on to the idea of the phoVA extending outward to less high-resolution consciousness so I write a sentence because I want to write a paragraph I write a paragraph because I want to sequence paragraphs into a book a chapter I write chapters to sequence them into a book I write a book because I want to be a practicing scientist I want to be a practicing scientist because I'm a good citizen I want to be a good citizen hypothetically because I want to be a good person you know and maybe I want to be a good person to avoid the hell that you described okay so those are nested value structures and we see the world through that structure simultaneously the whole thing is there and if one part of it collapses we make reference to the part that contains it that's how we don't crash like a computer now that now the navigation that you described these nested structures their navigation maps as far as I can tell now okay so here's the depth issue some maps have more other maps dependent on them than other maps do okay so if I go into your map structure some of that's even propositionalized and I mess about with the deeper axiomatic propositions upon which many other propositions rest then that's going to disturb you fundamentally and that's part of that experience of depth and you know look look you get much more if you're married and you love your wife you're much more upset if she divorces you than if you have an argument about who should do the dishes well why well because the stability of your marriage is a precondition for all sorts of other ways that you perceive the world and if that's violated well that's traumatic yeah so when we so and the reason I'm trying to get this clear with you is because you think clearly about these things but also because it allows to it allows for clarification of language in some sense so we could say that as you go deeper into that nested structure what you approach becomes more and more sacred by definition I'm trying to define it experientially because the so let's say you're transformed at a fundamental level that means something shifts way down deep and that's how you feel it even in an embodied sense and and what we've defined as as human beings as religious as far as I can tell or as sacred is our attempt to define the landscape that is characterized by those deepest structures of maps now what you're talking about I think is outside the map system altogether in some sense you know it's the container for all of it yeah yeah it is in some sense because or it's or thoghnall to it I mean it penetrates it at every point but it's not reducible to it and I mean that's why it's so consequential so for instance I think you can so taking accepting your your picture of nested maps and and depth and all that I agree with all of that and maps can be more or less useful in more or less in register with with the reality they're purporting to describe right so you can have faulty maps and in science we really try to get an accurate map and and we have a high resolution yeah and we have a language game which is when it's working is optimized to you know as Richard Feynman famously said not fooling ourselves right I mean that's like the master value of not fooling yourself whereas I would argue in in religious discourse not fooling yourself is not a master value and in fact you know so much of what goes by the name of religious faith okay but let me put that in terminology then because you talk about the sacred right and and and you accept that and and you also and you also see it as revivifying and and and and crucial to the prevention of suffering yeah but you juxtapose that against religion and so what what's the difference as far as your concern between what sacred and what's religious uh yeah good question well so maybe the best way to get at it is by reference to a principle which is I think what I think anything that's true right and this is this is true scientifically descriptively but it's true spiritually and it's true with respect to anything we would call sacred anything that's true anything that's real is discoverable now right it's like a little like like if we if we lost everything if we lost all the books if we lost all the tools if we lost everything and we just found ourselves having to reboot not only civilization but human cognition you know everything that is real is discoverable from that starting point even if you're even if you're starting zero again now we would we would talk about it differently we would have you know we would we would have memories of what what you know some of us would have memories of all that we've lost and that would anchor us to certain expectations but the point is what is true what is real what is what is what is the real opportunity for a direct self-transcendent engagement with reality right what what is the real opportunity for let me take exception let me take exception to that in one manner I see what you mean I understand what you mean I believe but here's here's a potential problem with that so I'm not saying let me just close it or do it possible misunderstanding I'm not saying that we shouldn't stand on the shoulders of giants and I'm not saying tradition is useless in fact either you know I would I would probably agree with you that that we should be fairly conservative in how we in how we overthrow our traditions I mean so I'm not I'm not arguing that we should just be radical iconic lasts the tears that we should tear everything down to the studs and start again that's not that's not what I'm I have okay well what's the difference but what's the difference in your vision then between the tradition that you would be conservative about and religion I'm not trying to corner you I'm just trying to see how you're making the distinction exceptionally it comes down to very specific claims that that I think are clearly false and which many of our religions advertise as not only important but indispensable for their projects so to take Islam as a specific example is I mean Islam mainstream Islam not just al-Qaeda style Islam just any Islam that really is worthy of the name in the year 2021 is founded on the claim that the Quran is the literal word of God and it is yeah but in the minds of most Muslims most of the time it means that these stanzas were dictated to Muhammad in his cave by the archangel Gabriel and he was he was commanded to recite and he recited them and what we have here is in truth the claim the the Orthodox claim is is even more stringent than what the seemingly analogous you know fundamentalist religion Christian claim about the Bible it's not just that the text itself is verbatim what God said uh it's that the document itself is in fact like every instantiation of the physical document is itself the word of God it's like it's it's there's sort of a double layer of sacredness to it well is it cannot be edited okay is it this is a problem that claim or is it the problem that the people who purport to understand it claim to be 100% right no no but the problem is that given that claim and given the actual contents of the book yeah which you have is an endless source of divisiveness and conflict like if you dignify that claim okay this is the most important series of utterances ever expressed on earth this is it let's find out what the creator of the universe wants us to know what he wants us to know above all else is that one we should hate and fear and despise and resist and never befriend unbelievers right that's that's that message comes through on virtually every page and a hell has been prepared for these unbelievers where their skins will be endlessly burned off of them and and replenished so that they can be tortured and new right do you think there's any relationship between that claim and your observation that failure to take refuge in the sacred as you laid it out dooms you to possession by the default network and puts you into a hell okay so it is possible to give a very enlightened reading of this text or really any text that that allows you to step out of its divisive and toxic implications so I would support that kind of reading you know if we were joined in this conversation by by Muslim scholars who said no no don't you understand Jordan's spiritual interpretation of this admonishment is precisely what God intended he intended it to be to be an engine not of hate and division and sectarian tribalism he intended it to be a device that would allow you to recognize the emotional and cognitive implications of of being caught by dualism say right like really you know etc etc he goes far as you want in that direction that'd be great the problem is the book itself gives no indication that your interpretation is the right one in fact it gives every indication that it's not and then it's heterodontous.

because the God who created this universe if it was created by God is quite clearly a maniac

other maniac Ivan in The Brothers Karamazov

it's very interesting I would urge everyone to read The Brothers Karamazov because I do think it's a work of genius

and and it's so interesting how it works in in The Brothers Karamazov Dostoevsky pits Ivan against Iliocia and Ivan is handsome and debonair and he's he's the warrior type that you just described he's very atheistic and he can put up a pretty good argument you know he he tortures his brother who's a monastic novigiant with stories of children locked in outhouses overnight and freezing to death they were punished by their parents which Dostoevsky took from a newspaper and said I don't I cannot possibly imagine how there could be a god who is omniscient and and had all the other classic attributes of God who could create a universe where that was allowed to happen even once and Ivan it can out debate Iliocia consistently but Iliocia's character is such that he wins the argument he loses all the battles in some sense but wins the war and that's something you can really portray when you clothe your ideas in characters or or when the characters are even more I think to the point is when the characters are so profound that they're acting out ideas that you couldn't yet make explicit no and that is one of the things that that narrative does is that it enables us to play out ideas that were not yet intelligent enough to understand and sometimes the gap between the narrative representation and the explicit understanding can be thousands and thousands of years because we're still unwrapping while we're certainly still unwrapping the Bible we're unwrapping we're still unwrapping Shakespeare there's more depth there than we can then we can understand explicitly and so anything that uses character has that tremendous advantage and then also there's also this strange ability that some people have in spades to create fictional worlds that are of unbelievable profundity and power and I mean the greatest example of that in the last 30 years in terms of sheer imaginative powers gotta be JK rolling and the Harry Potter series which you know grip the imagination of the entire planet for for a decade and produced untold wealth and spread literacy everywhere as well she had an unremarkably creative imagination and something quite mysterious

And Dostoevsky's Ivan makes that case in The Brothers Karamazov brilliantly brilliantly he tortures his brother Aliyosha who's the novitiate and it's a very interesting book because Aliyosha is nowhere near the retoration that Ivan is but he is the most admirable character in the book because of the totality of his personality not because of the brilliance of his rational mind it's amazing book in that regard but the problem I had with Benatar's hypothesis wasn't it's it's axiom because I think you can make a strong case that there's so much suffering in the world that the question of its validity is a valid question the problem for me there is that if you do that and you start to act that out things take a things appear to take a vicious turn very rapidly you start working against everything that's alive and striving yes and no quite right

maybe we could do that by referring to the Grand Inquisitor in 'The Brothers Karamazov'.

Material Reasons to Vote for Democrats: A Comprehensive Guide by Michael Knowles is the most exhaustively researched and coherently argued case for the Democratic party to date.

Reasons to Vote Democrat: A Comprehensive Guide is the most exhaustively researched and coherently argued case for the Democratic party to date

the book is one that Donald Trump himself even called a great book

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Reasons to vote for democrat a comprehensive guide by Michael Knowles is the most exhaustively researched and coherently argued case for the democratic party to date the book is one that Donald Trump himself even called a great book for your reading enjoyment

Reasons to Vote for Democrats: a comprehensive guide by Michael Knowles is the most exhaustively researched and coherently argued case for the Democratic Party to date.

the book is one that Donald Trump himself even called a great book

Reasons to Vote for Democrats a comprehensive guide by michael noels is the most exhaustively researched and coherently argued case for the democratic party to date the book is one that donald trump himself even called a great book for your reading enjoyment plus it's a must-have addition to any political observer's coffee table head over to dailywire.com slash shop to get your copy today warning this book is intentionally left blank side effects for voting democrat may include feelings of hopelessness depression anxiety reduced testosterone increased crime higher taxes rampant abortions and a strained relationship with your father

Reasons to vote for democrat a comprehensive guide by michael noels is the most exhaustively researched and coherently argued case for the democratic party to date the book is one that donald trump himself even called a great book

Reasons to Vote for Democrats is the most exhaustively researched and coherently argued case for the Democratic Party to date.

the book is one that Donald Trump himself even called a great book

Reasons to Vote for Democrats a comprehensive guide by michael noels is the most exhaustively researched and coherently argued case for the democratic party to date the book is one that donald trump himself even called a great book for your reading enjoyment plus it's a must-have addition to any political observer's coffee table head over to dailywire.com slash shop to get your copy today warning this book is intentionally left blank side effects for voting democrat may include feelings of hopelessness depression anxiety reduced testosterone increased crime higher taxes rampant abortions and a strained relationship with your father

I read Dan Dennett's book and I also read Jeffrey Gray's book and Gray is a real genius. He wrote a book called The Neuropsychology of Anxiety, which I think is one of the best neuroscience books ever written, maybe the best.

if you're interested in the idea of modeling that that's I think that's the most profound neuroscience text that's ever been written

Jeffrey Gray wrote an incredibly brilliant book called The Neurocycology of Anxiety where he integrated the work the Russians had done which very few people knew about apart from Gray who read absolutely everything and The Neuropsychology of Anxiety I think cited 1300 scientific deep scientific papers, neurophysiological papers, animal behavioral papers like hard core psychology because there is such a thing and he actually read all those papers and he actually understood them and then he integrated that with Norbert Wyners who was one of the fathers of cybernetic and computer science, he integrated that with Norbert Wyners cybernetic theory and with while a raft of animal experimental material and laid out the neurological basis for the establishment of the orienting reflex and also for the establishment of memory itself.

I read this one book called The Neuropsychology of Anxiety which is a great scientific work.

I think it's the greatest neuropsychological work of the last 50 years it's very hard book I think it has 1800 references something like that and this guy Jeffrey Gray he actually read all those references and he understood them

and so it took me six months to read the book but I got an entire education out of it I got to experience in six months what it took him 30 years to learn like what a gift that is it's unbelievable.

I've done a lot of thinking about narrative when I read this book back in the 1980s the Dural Psychology of Anxiety by Jeffrey Gray.

And that book had a tremendous impact in the field of psychology although it took about 20 years before people I suppose incorporated at least some of what Gray had proposed and he got a lot of his ideas although I didn't know it at the time from Norbert White Winer weener I don't know how to say his name it brilliant cyberntition who worked on establishing what might be the basis of of intent.

took me like six months to read that book and understand it is really dense so imagine that.

I studied Jeffrey Gray's book the Neural Psychology of Anxiety which is the best book ever written about the biology of anxiety hands down and it's a hard book it took psychologists I read that book in 1985 which wasn't very long after it was published and I really read it it took me six months to read that book it was hard and it took the general run of psychologists 30 years to really notice Jeffrey Gray's book there wasn't a lot of serious discussion about it among personality psychologists and social psychologists people who are far removed from biology and animal experimentation it took 30 years for them to start to digest that book and that process certainly hasn't finished yet

So that's another line of evidence that's all documented quite nicely in Jeffrey Grace book The Neuropsychology of Anxiety because he talks a fair bit about the difference between pain and art so that would be physical punishment what it elicits as a state which would be pain like an anxiety say which is elicited by threat of punishment and not punishment itself and opiates are good at moderating punishment like responses pain essentially.

In Jeffrey Gray Gray's work which is brilliant neuropsychology of anxiety is a great book but he assumes that the map predicts expectation and that we're sort of cold cognitive expectors right prediction machines but we're not we we don't predict what's going to happen we work to make what we want to happen happen yeah but that's not the same thing but that's that's the change that's happening Jordan that there's shifting off of prediction as the primary metaphor into anticipation.

the most outstanding behaviorist was Jeffrey Gray and he wrote a book called The Neural Psychology of Anxiety which is an absolute work of genius and it's very heavily influenced by the Schenarian tradition

So Solzhenitsyn talks in The Gulag Archipelago, and I have to bring that up once per podcast about these intellectuals who are in a camp being worked to death.

If you read the Goulai Garcopeligo, for example, Solzhenitsen does a masterful job of indicating how the consequences, the brutal tyrannical actions of Lenin and Stellan were necessary concomitants to the or necessary outcomes of the axioms that were embedded in the communist worldview.

until solianits and published the gulagarca palagol in which case they were still Marxists they just went underground

they even have dad narrating The Gulag Archipelago what a time to be alive every month members get access to one out of thousands of audiobooks plus full access to a selection of audible titles just download and stream wherever whenever there's a 30 day trial for newcomers as well if you enjoy this podcast is hard to imagine you wouldn't enjoy listening to great books as well make a change in 2022 visit audible dot com slash Peterson or text Peterson to 500 500 that's audible dot com slash Peterson or text Peterson to 500 500

Paul Ehrlich, who wrote The Population Bomb and is still kicking around, made a very famous bet with an economist Julian Simon.

He asked Simon to propose a basket of commodities and they bet on whether those would be less or more expensive by the year 2000 because that was the doomsday date as far as Dr. Ehrlich was concerned.

And he famously, Simon, who was an absolute genius as opposed to Ehrlich who certainly presumed he was one, famously collected on that bet shortly after the millennium switch because the basket of commodities became far less expensive rather than more expensive.

There was more of everything.

And of course, the entire economic history of the world since that point has indicated exactly that.

Paul Airelec for example at Stanford who wrote The Population Bomb in the club of Rome who were the original apocalyptic doom sayers on the environmentalist front claiming that by the year 2000 there'd be mass starvation we'd be running out of basic commodities and that life was going to get a hell of a lot worse quickly

Ehrlich set up an organization, author of The Population Bomb of course, called ZPG which evolved into an organization.

Ehrlich and his population bomb and the club of Rome, etc. these anti-population zealots started beating the drum back in 1965, saying that we were all going to starve to death by the year 2000 when we'll have four billion people, God help us and now have eight.

...most famously who wrote The Population Bomb that by the year 2000 we'd be out of all our primary resources and everyone would be starving...

how did early become famous he became famous through the 1968 book The Population Bomb where he's telling human beings not hey the planet is going to become more impacted and that's intrinsically bad he's saying you're all going to starve and his close colleague Sean Holdren who was Obama's chief science advisor no he probably would have been a great person.

It's like you have to have a touch of... It's like Harry Potter. You have to have a touch of the devil inside you in order to understand what the devil's like.

The greatest example of that in the last 30 years, in terms of sheer imaginative power has got to be JK Rowling and the Harry Potter series which gripped the imagination of the entire planet for a decade and produced untold wealth and spread literacy everywhere as well.

in my new book I talk a fair bit about Harry Potter and no Harry Potter is definitely an archetype taking Christ figure taken flesh well clearly he's in battle with Satan himself obviously I mean and she has an unbelievably profound mythological imagination and the thing that's so fascinating about all of that is that because her mythological imagination is spot on she captivated the entire globe and and produced you know there's a men's storehouse of wealth and dominated the entertainment landscape for a decade and you know people don't take that seriously but it's a it's a great mission to watch that absolutely they should it's it's a it's a phenomenal

I mean the greatest example of that in the last 30 years in terms of sheer imaginative powers gotta be JK rolling and the Harry Potter series which you know grip the imagination of the entire planet for for a decade and produced untold wealth and spread literacy everywhere as well she had an unremarkably creative imagination and something quite mysterious

In my new book I talk a fair bit about Harry Potter and he's probably an archetype taking flesh well clearly he's in battle with Satan himself obviously and she has an unbelievably profound mythological imagination and the thing that's so fascinating about all of that is that because her mythological imagination is spot on she captivated the entire globe and produced this immense storehouse of wealth and people don't take that seriously but it's a great missed to watch that absolutely they should you know anything that grips people's attention like that is obviously worth paying attention to

I started reading iron Rand

I've just been rereading out the shrug which I do oddly enough about every 15 years and I figured out one of the core problems with her doctrine it might be the core problem so she assumes that self-interest is the appropriate governing principle but she never really defines what constitutes self-interest and that's a big problem so because you can have narrowly hedonic self-interest and Rand actually wanders into that territory because her protagonists, Rourke and Dagnitaggart and so forth do have and express quite continually their right to do whatever the hell they want whenever the hell they want to and that they should be guided by no other principle in some sense than the gratification of their own desires but that's exactly what the hedonists on the left say and so this begs the question of what constitutes the individual whose self-interest is its stake and where Rand makes a mistake is she doesn't understand that there's a set of constraints that operate on what constitutes individual self-interest

I think that enlightened self-interest and social interest are exactly the same thing and I don't think that Rand understood that right is that she seems to believe that there's this internal self which is the part that's self-interested that's almost like the internal self, the radical leftists insist upon being able to establish such things as gender self identification right that's 100% autonomous and unmoored that can operate itself as an autonomous governing principle it's almost like a deity and it's the same it's the conservative version of the same mistake that the radicals on the progressive side are making

You talked about you yourself rereading Atlas Schrogg I do that with about the same frequency and the last time I did three or four or five years ago it's because I had a junior colleague at the policy organization I was leading prior to being adhered to as a capital O objectivist and I thought well let me reread Rand and see if I'm missing anything and be a good colleague a good mentor and I realized this actually the sort of come full circle rereading Atlas Schrogg four or five years ago ironically is what made me realize my own deficiencies in thought about the free market and a couple of other shibbleness of the right which is to say that so many very thoughtful men and women who are devotees of Rand make the mistake that she's making and they haven't thought through the consequences of that as it relates for example to regulatory capture

The way that Rand maneuvers around the complexity of those questions say with regards to Reagan's her capture is that she attributes to her protagonists a kind of a vague nobility of character right so that it's distasteful for Rorke and Taggart for example to engage in any plaintive negotiations with government agencies right it's beneath them to ask for favors from government but she never establishes why it's beneath them right it's vaguely associated in principle with their self-interest and their implicit heroism but it's very difficult to derive that heroism from that narrow self-interest and I think the reason it's difficult to do that is because it doesn't thrive from that narrow self-interest it derives from the necessity of a higher order self-interest that has the community as an intrinsic part of itself and she's very weak on that front right because her characters Taggart's a good example and so is Rorke works in a very unhappy marriage and Dagny Taggart is single those people aren't bound by like they're all noble individual heroes who stand alone they're not well situated in happy marriages they're not as couples well situated in functional families but she's almost Rousseau she's almost Rousseauian in that regard she seems to regard any form of higher order social involvement as an impediment to the noble nobles striving of the disaggregated individual and so it's very strange to see that dovetail with the more radical ideas of the progressive left and it's definitely a flaw in her thinking right both both from the perspective of characterization but also from the perspective of ethics that narrow self-interest that's not the that's not the highest self that's not the true self it's just the immature and impulsive self and she tries to make that noble and it's not noble it's just immature

So that's exactly why I think that's why her work never hits it's like Rand is not Dostoevsky right there's a shallowness about her work that's I like reading it it's exciting it's adventurous it's a romantic adventure you know and it's got a strong hero narrative element but it's definitely not literature and I think the reason for that is that her characterizations are too they're too simplified you won't be expecting this reference I'm sure but I grew up reading Louis Lemur books you know written in the 20th century but they were 20th century versions of the western dime novels of the late 1800s who read them as a boy and every time I guess I've read Atlas Shug three or four or five times I don't mean to be too offensive toward Rand followers but we've established that feelings are okay to hurt their her characters are just as flat as the great heroes and Louis Lemur novels who showed up in these western towns and they were rugged individuals right in there as a as a 10 or 11 year old boy those were good things to read in the same way that there's a certain value to reading Rand's work but it's not literature yeah certainly not Dostoevsky and in the in the great book schools that I've led Rand had no part of the curriculum and and I'll just make this final point if I may on on this thread the way this plays out in conservative politics and by that I mean not elected officials but to some extent the donor class but these are these are thoughtful men and women most of whom have made their their own wealth themselves is that they think that those characters from Atlas Shug are the model but in reality I mean almost without exception as I think about these men and women in their own lives they are living out that higher order thinking or set of values far better than Rand's own characters in other words they themselves these devotees of Rand personify the limitations of the book it can be hard to explain that to them because they're they're so committed to this mode of thought but the point is the more of those devotees of Rand who come to grips with those limitations the quicker the American political right will be able to resolve this conundrum we have about the community and about the free market

and I really enjoy there's a book by by Ein Rand called the new left the anti-industrial revolution and it was written at the time that this was happening and one of the analyses is basically there's a transition between the old left and the new left where the old left claimed to be for industry for productivity for prosperity and what happened is that was clearly not achieved by their policies communism led to the devastation of industry the malfunction of industry widespread poverty and Rand said well you know the left basically had a choice are you going to stay with your anti-capitalism or are you going to embrace capitalism because you really care about industry and productivity right right and actually what they did was they they kept their anti-capitalism and they looked for new reasons to support anti-capitalism and in the 60s they decided on this issue of environment and it was a convenient issue in a number of ways one is the pro-capitalism side didn't do a very good job with it particularly rhetorically they didn't make the point that well good environments are made possible by prosperity so the idea of a good environment in a humanistic way was co-opted by the anti-capitalist who had no right to it whatsoever I mean look at the Soviet Union and an environment but they they they owned that value issue but then they packaged it with this hostility toward human impact as such and what they really did brilliantly was they took over the schools so they put in the schools this idea that human impact is bad and especially the idea that it's inevitably self-destructive because the planet is this delicate nurture that our impact ruins and that has permeated the whole educational system where people think that we inherently are destroyers of the planet and it has permeated the scientific community

And he said that he couldn't believe it. It took him two years. It took him two years to admit to what might be going on.

I read a PDF a while back that was prepared by a marketing agency that described the growth opportunities on the transgender treatment front, the so-called gender affirming side of medicine, which that gender affirming phrase, that's like one of the most manipulative lies I've ever heard in my life.

Her best-selling book, Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters (2020), was named a "Best Book" by the Economist and the Times (of London). It has been translated into ten languages.

I wrote the book because a woman wrote to me.

I've had this problem with her now in epidemic of these young girls who are in a lot of very real pain deciding that gender must be their problem and very quickly obtaining hormones and surgeries.

I don't advocate a particular method of treating transgender people. I don't even advocate a method of treating transgender teenagers all I'm pointing out in the book is that there are there seems to be a sudden rise in these teenage girls who are subject to peer influence and social media influence deciding their transgender and there are no medical safeguards for these girls.

They are very much you know they're acting under so you know social media influence and peer influence we have numbers on that certainly not my studies but others have done studies on this. And they're acting under the influence of peer influence and social media influence they are quickly obtaining hormones and surgeries and there is virtually no over medical oversight of this process.

That's the thesis of the book.

he really couldn't believe it you know and that's another example of the effectiveness of that tarring

he had listened to Abigail Schreyer and I talk about it I guess it was two years ago when Abigail first put out her book Irreversible Damage

There's a great book called *Discovery of the Unconscious* by a man named Henry Ellen Berger, which was a canonical text for psychoanalytic training for about 30 years and truly is a brilliant book.

The Discovery of the Unconscious by Henri Ellen Berger, which is an absolutely brilliant book and analysis of 350 years of clinical endeavor.

Brilliant book.

There's a book called "Discovery of the Unconscious" which is a great book, Henry Ellenberger.

It's about that thick and it covers young Freud Adler, it's a great book.

The first 300 pages is a history of pre-psychoanalytic thought and part of that is a historical survey of contagion.

I was talking to Brian Mererescu...within a year ago he wrote The Immortality Key...it sounds to me like the account that you're making of what happened in the Amazon jungle sounds to me very much like what seem to happen in ancient Greek culture with their formulation of various psychedelic wines

The Immortality Key the secret history of the religion with no name. Okay, so the Greeks.

The Greeks society was grounded in a spiritual experience and practice that centered on eluses I hope I have that pronounced properly the initiates were inducted into the Alicinian mysteries and this book is one of a long line of books a relatively long line of books really started in the 1960s suggesting that shamanic experiences which are tens of thousands of years old perhaps older and religious practices in more sophisticated societies that were profoundly influenced and affected by hallucinogenic substances it seems highly probable to me in fact I think the evidence is incontrovertible we have no idea what to do with that fact now.

I spoke with an author this week and a professor of classics at Boston University the author is Brian Marascu wrote a book called The Immortality Key

Have you read The Immortality Key? No I haven't read it. A mortality? Oh you need to read it. I just interviewed the author. He's been tracking the use of psychedelics in the where all the Greeks went to be enlightened you know the Delphi.

I've been reading this book recently The Immortality Key by Brian Marorescu and he's making a case that has been made by other people although he makes it in a very interesting way and a very original way.

Camille Pallia told me once I thought this was extremely interesting I'm a great admirer of Eric Neumann who wrote a book called The Great Mother and another called The Origins in History of Consciousness and he provides a very acute and deep summary of Carl Jung's thought he was a student of Jung's and Jung wrote an introduction to The Origins in History of Consciousness and said it was the book he wished he was able to write which is pretty damn high praise and Neumann's work is analogous to your work in its symbolic language

Pallia said that had the postmodernists turned to Eric Neumann instead of Michelle Foucault and Jacques Derrida and the French continental philosophical Neil Marxist crowd that the entire history of intellectual endeavor in the humanities in the last 60 years would have been written very differently and I think that's absolutely true.

I'd come to the same conclusion independently of her and work quite different as thinkers and so it was quite striking for me to have her to hear her say that especially about a work that's as relatively obscure as the origins in history of consciousness which is a great book it's a truly great book and I definitely see your work in the same tradition.

The Origins And History Of Consciousness is a remarkable book.

And so is the great mother. And in some sense he provides an overview and summary of Jung's thinking, which you couldn't get unless you read like 20 volumes of Jung.

Viewers of our channel began to buy books by Eric Neumann after hearing about him in your interview with Camille Palia.

The Origins And History Of Consciousness by Eric Neumann because he got the story of narrative right

it's the it's the it's the much deeper version of a hero with a thousand faces

and he also wrote one called the great mother which is an analysis of representations of the feminine narrative representations dramatic representations of the feminine across history which also a great book especially if you're interested in neuroscience and instincts because though the archetypes are tied to instincts in a profound manner and so it's some representations imaginative representations of the maternal across time that's the great mother it's a great book

And he wrote two very profound books, one called The Great Mother, which is a study of the symbolism of productive chaos and another book called The Origins And History Of Consciousness, which is an elaboration of the hero myth, although much deeper than the sort of treatment, say, meted out to that by Joseph Campbell.

And she actually dropped out of NYU in 2020, also during COVID, which I think is exactly the right move. Once you're unlocked down, drop out, the defeats of major point of college.

And originally what we were planning to do was write a book or what I was considering doing, was writing a book that was a follow-up to Coddling, even though Canceling is a follow-up in a sense,

And originally what we were planning to do was write a book or what I was considering doing, was writing a book that was a follow-up to Coddling, even though Canceling is a follow-up in a sense, something that was much more directly a follow-up because the book was written by me and Jonathan Hyte, like 48 and 60-year-old Jen-Exers. But a lot of it's concerned about the terrible injustice we do to young women, teaching them the mental habits of anxious and depressed people.

So she wrote me in Hyte to talk about if we thought maybe COVID could uncoddle young people by presenting challenges that they could then overcome. It's a little optimistic.

Well, first thing is that we took this head on in coddling of the American mind.

I thought I'd be cardling of the American mind as well and that hadn't come out until I think the next year or the year after okay

Right now the most popular, the most well selling or best selling books are White Fragility by DeAngelo and I can't remember her first name and then there's Robin DeAngelo

I really don't think that often about Robin DiAngelo I know she wrote a book called White Fragility which was published last year and was all the rave I found it in coherent but I learned why what what was in cool and maybe this isn't productive like I don't want to I don't want to push you into commenting on Robin DiAngelo maybe that's just not a reasonable place for this court

what was it Milton? wasn't didn't Milton write paradise laws to justify the way of God the ways of God to man it's a hell of an ambition in some sense that's what this entire religious endeavor does the literary endeavor as well what's the point of all this what's the meaning of this