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Hello boys and girls. Ladies and germs, this is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss show where it is. Normally my job to deconstruct world-class performers of all different types from all different disciplines and I am thrilled to have as my guest today a polymath. I would certainly consider him a polymath Jordan be Peterson. He has taught mythology to lawyers doctors and business people consulted for the UN secretary-general helped his clinical clients manage depression obsessive compulsive disorder anxiety and schizophrenia.
Served as an advisor to senior partners of major Canadian law firms and lectured extensively in North America and Europe with his students and colleagues at Harvard and the University of Toronto. Dr. Peterson has published more than 100 scientific papers transforming the modern understanding of Personality as his book maps of meaning subtitle, the architecture belief revolutionized the psychology of religion. His book twelve rules for life an antidote to chaos was published in 2018 and has sold more than four million copies internationally his newest book is
Is beyond order 12 more rules for life, you can find him online at Jordan be Peterson.com on Twitter at Jordan be Peterson Instagram at Jordan dot b dot Peterson Facebook. You guessed it. Dr. Jordan be Peterson YouTube during Peterson videos and you can find his personality assessment at understanding myself.com and the self authoring program at self. Authoring.com Jordan. Welcome to the
show. Thank you God. It's hard to hear my name so many times without becoming
Somewhat nauseated it's
yeah, that's how I feel when I listen to my my own playback in this podcast and I'm thrilled to finally have you on the podcast. We are going to run out of time before we run out of
material the all that would be nice. That would be a good
thing. That would be a good thing and I want to start in maybe an odd place and that is asking
if you could describe to my audience who Sandy not lie
was cool. Well, I grew up in a small town in Northern Alberta. I heard you and my producer talking about cold in Minnesota. I was sort of smirking in the background. I thought you you guys don't know what cold is when I went to college there about 60 miles away. We had 30 days in a row one winter where it didn't get above minus 40. So anyhow, I grew up in this small town and in the province of Alberta.
So that's the Canadian equivalent of a state and we had a provincial government the equivalent of the state government and it was all conservatives Progressive conservative party every seat and in the house was Progressive conservative, except one new Democratic party member socialist Grant not lie. Who is the leader of the NDP and he wasn't elected so much because he was a socialist. I don't think because most of the people in my small town were conservative, but because he was a really good man. Anyways, he was the only opposition in the
Our Province for like decade a decade or more his wife Sandy not lie was a New Englander and somewhat of an anomaly in our small town and she she was quite outspoken New England intellectual and she was our librarian and our junior high school and all the delinquents and me as well. And maybe I was in that category hang out in the library weirdly enough because she treated us like
adults and
Are you started to work for the NDP when I was 14 I ran for vice president of the party when I was 14. That was my first sort of public exposure. But she was a good guide for me. She introduced me to a lot of books. I was an omnivorous reader, but mostly I read science fiction. I didn't know what the hell to read. I spend all you know, I'd hide my the books. I was reading behind a textbook in class and read way during school, but I was reading mostly science fiction and she started to
you hand me books that she thought would be good for me. She introduced me to an r and interestingly enough despite the fact that she was a socialist not an r and obviously but Sandy not lie. She said she thought I would be smart enough to see through R and Huxley Orwell solzhenitsyn a lot of serious material and I felt a real friendship with her and her husband and I worked with NDP for four years. So she was a
Influence on me. And that's Andy Knightley. Oh and her daughter Rachel. Notley who was a friend of mine a girlfriend of one of my close friends at one point became premier of Alberta many years later. She was defeated in the last election, which was only about three years ago, but she followed in her Father's Footsteps and and became premier of The Province. So that's that story.
On your website, you have an extensive list of recommended
books. Yeah. I've looked at
it looked at it multiple times. It's close to a hundred I would say and they're they're put into different categories different genres. Are there any books on that list or can you think of books that were introduced relatively early in your life some of the early exposures that have stood the test of
time for you Huxley and or will
I would say solzhenitsyn as well. I read one day in the life of Ivan denisovich when I was 13 or 14. That was one of the books not lie recommended and so they they certainly had an impact on
me. What was that impact if if you
don't know you don't know I started to think in broader terms as a consequence of being introduced to books like that and started to think more seriously from a political perspective and psychological perspective. I suppose it was my first introduction into serious thought
and so it was extremely exciting. I mean, I read a lot of English literature till I was about 25 and then I started reading nonfiction more once I started my Graduate Studies, but it opens up a world of ideas and that was really exciting to me incredibly exciting to me.
And the reason I'm asking so much about books is is I'm I am really fascinated by you and I'm fascinated by everyone I have on the show, but the
formation well that's sort of your decreases. My pleasure.
Being the object of the current Fascination.
Well right now you're the most fascinating person in the world to me and I find that books are a sort of a Wellspring of value for listeners because it's something they can model very well something that they can reach out for
this is what the people can get a whole education if they read those hundred books that I have in my website mean you're not going to get an education and every every discipline but there's a whole education they're
I recommended books that's been fun because lots of people have that that's been an unbelievably popular list. It sells hundreds of books a month that list.
I believe it and people email me constantly and say well, you know, you introduced me to Dostoyevsky. Thanks a lot. I've been there so enthralled if you're psychologically minded and you like dark the darkness to some degree, you know, if you like Gothic imagery and and film Noir and that sort of thing Dusty ask he's an unbelievable treat and he's so incredibly deep psychologically enthralling crime and punishment is an absolutely engrossing novel. That's
Well as being a stunning work of
philosophy another name that shows up not once but several times in that list is Nietzsche if I'm pronouncing that remotely correctly
I never do is Wonder dissect like an albertan Nietzsche. I know that's wrong. It's Nietzsche, I believe but I never get it right.
So I've read you highlight in a sense or at least mentioned that Nicha pointed out that most morality is cowardice if we're making the leap from some of this.
Stood books to specific ideas. Could you please elaborate on that?
If you don't have the courage to commit a crime, it doesn't mean your moral for not doing it. It just means you're afraid but you can see this I suppose to some degree in in mob violence people Riot because they don't think they'll get caught and so they're not law-abiding under normal circumstances because their moral they're law-abiding because they're afraid of punishment and so nature was very,
careful to distinguish mirror obedience from morality and he thought of obedience not always as a form of cowardice because it can also be a source of discipline but not committing a crime because you're too afraid to I mean, it's probably better than committing a crime but it doesn't speak to the essence of morality, you know, and I've talked a fair bit about this is that there's a certain utility in being able to do virtually anything and then to control
yourself
And that's something I learned in part from Nietzsche I suppose.
You know the best people I've ever met or dangerous people but they keep themselves in check. I have a close friend who's been real Rock to me over the last couple of years. He was also born in Northern Alberta. He came from a pretty poverty-stricken background tough guy worked in lead smelters and oil rigs and he went to University which is where I met him and then he was a social worker for a long time and he's tough as Nails, you know, he's worked with delinquents all over Canada and he's a good
Marion but he's he's also a very compassionate person and he's a moral person as far as I'm concerned because there's a real danger to him but he keeps it under control and it's he's not a coward. He's not afraid he's not weak. How
do you cultivate or suggest people cultivate? You can you can tackle either both the ability to keep yourself in check or under control and to be courageous and just to provide
a little context for the question when I see you in the many interviews that you've done there are instances where people are very adversarial and aggressive and one thing that has struck me is your ability to maintain composure while still standing up for not rolling over with respect to your
Your arguments or your positions? How do you cultivate that or how heavy cultivated
that well I have an advantage I suppose in that I'm a clinical psychologist and I've spent $20,000. Although I'm not practicing anymore. I've spent $20,000 listening to people and maintaining my composure sometimes under very stressful circumstances. And so I've had a lot of practice doing that and then I did do some TV work at a local station here.
for a couple of years and
I had a good producer and he helped me.
Realize that anger plays very badly.
In a public forum like video and particularly now, I didn't have a tendency then I supposed to fly off the handle either but it's not useful to lose your temper. It's not useful mean. I'm boiling inside. I'm a very emotional person way too much.
So it's not like it's not stressful. It's unbelievably stressful but
I can detach myself from that to some degree and I'm really curious I suppose that's another part of it. I like to watch and when people really go after me. This is where the clinical practice is handy. I can snap into a different mode, which is okay. I don't know what you're up to. So I'm just going to watch you and then I'm going to figure out what you're up to because I can usually figure out what people are up to if I want to I don't do that all the time because I actually don't want to know sometimes what they're up to. I mean look people.
People have treated me extraordinarily. Well, don't get me wrong. And normally you know when you talk to someone you accept their persona.
You don't look behind but if people mistreat me in some way or or become adversarial then I'm able to look behind the scene and think and see what they're up to if I can remember to do that.
Do you look behind the The Mask or see what is behind by deducing where they're trying to leave where they're trying to lead you with the breadcrumbs and
See I've seen that very effectively but what other what other forms does that take or might that
take it's really hard to describe. I guess I I think it's useful to draw a distinction between thinking and paying attention. If you're thinking you're kind of walking down a programmatic trail. If you're paying attention, you just open your eyes and let your mind go where it will and ideas will occur to you know pop.
pop up in your field of Consciousness and
For me that's often informative. I'll get insight that way. I suppose I'm paying more attention to nonverbal communication and to facial expression and posture and and tone of voice and I can pick up patterns. I suppose
you mentioned earlier that at times you're boiling inside. I certainly have experienced that personally now anger. How would you distinguish?
And I sort of intuitively know these are different but I would struggle to maybe on the spot separate the two anger and resentment because one of your quotes that I have here in front of me with my notes is consult your resentment. It is revelatory and again to unpack that but if you could walk us through
yeah, well in my new book, I have a chapter which is Rule 11. Do not allow yourself to become resentful.
Fuller arrogant is kind of the evil Triad as far as I've been able to determine resentment in particular. It's about emotion. It's useful you can learn a lot by noticing that it occurs resentment tells you one of two things one is that that someone's treading on your territory and something needs to be done about it or that you need to grow the hell up and stop complaining and it's hard. It isn't necessarily obvious when you feel resentful which of those it is.
But you need to figure it out, you know because you can you can Harbor resentment for for unlived life for very very long period of time and all it does is corrupt you it hurts you hurts you physically because it's a stressful emotion angers a stressful emotion because your body hyper prepares for Action if you're angry because you might get into conflict. So that's a dangerous situation. And so we burn off a lot of psychophysiological
In Anger if you're resentful.
There's probably something you need to say. There's certainly something you need to figure out.
And so you can you can use it as a guide to further development. It's very much useful to aim at a resentment free existence. And that means I suppose that you're taking up enough space. There's always a struggle between your domain and the domain of other people Everyone competes for everyone else's attention everyone competes for everyone else's time you compete for your own time. And if you're resentful it's highly probable that well, as I said, either you're not standing up.
Yourself sufficiently or someone is legitimately on your case. In which case you. Well you need to do something about that or you know live with the consequences, which is very unpleasant. It's not optimal sometimes I suppose it's unavoidable. But you know, generally there's something that can be done about it. Maybe you need a new job. Maybe you need a new partner. It's easy for people to think that they're better than they are. It's not surprising.
That everybody wants to think that I probably want to think that about me.
So then you'll get angry about something, you know, maybe your partner puts you down in public doesn't show you the respect. Maybe you're married saying husband-wife owe each other a certain amount of categorical respect sort of independent of the individual personalities. You know, what if you have decided that you're going to devote your life to someone and vice versa. They're now in a category that requires a certain amount of respect to maintain the
Ship over time it's good for your partner. And it's also good for you. Maybe you've taken a shot in public and you're really angry about it and but you don't notice it because you want to think that you're better than you are that sort of thing doesn't upset you. And so you don't say anything about it. You don't do anything about it and then you don't fix it. And that's a mistake. It's much better. You could say to your partner. Look, you know, we were out for dinner tonight. And you said something snarky, which I didn't think was appropriate now, I might
Hypersensitive and touchy and immature and maybe you hit me in a weak spot, or maybe you're playing some power game. Why don't we figure that out now? That's messy people don't like conversations like that. And I think that's one of the things that's peculiar about me.
For one I don't know why exactly but I don't like that. Alright, I won't let those things go.
So the peculiarity is that you'll you'll open those conversations. You don't have an aversion to it.
Well, I have a horrible adverse into it and I don't like conflict but I've learned and I this is partly I suppose clinical training, but it's not just that some things. If you don't address them they just get worse.
And I've been able to see where things are going to go. It's kind of like what I mentioned to you earlier that if I watch someone I can generally figure out what they're up to. I also can see where things are going if I walk into someone's house and there are things out of order in a particular way.
If I pay attention to that that's often indicative of something not right in the relationship, you know, maybe the kitchen's a mess. It's like there's there's food that isn't fresh in the fridge for example, or or there's packages up in shelves that haven't been opened for like 2 years or since the wedding. Let's say that's too much chaos in the kitchen. Something's wrong. Well, what's wrong? Well, there's something wrong in the domestic relationship there the bargaining about who does What in
Kitchen hasn't been thought through.
and so
you have to have those fights to put things in order and if you don't then you end up with the worst fight in the future. And so the reason that I call things out.
as far as I can tell
the positive reason who knows what the negative reasons are is because I don't want more conflict. I'd rather have genuine peace, which is very very very hard to obtain people generally obtain Peace by sweeping things under the carpet. I have another chapter in this new book called don't hide things in the fog and that's what it concentrates on is.
Pay attention to your negative emotions resentment particularly. It's like it's so informative you find out where your immature well, do you want to probably not who wants to find out that or you'll find out who's oppressing you?
And maybe then you can learn to stand up for
yourself. Let's dig into the new book. I want to do it in a particular way, which is starting with a quote of yours that a close friend of mine has committed to memory now. Please fact check me on this perhaps, it's Abraham Lincoln or Oscar Wilde or one of the other ubiquitous attributions on the internet. But but here we go, and I'm fond of this as well quote. It seems to me that the purpose of life is to find a mode of being that is so meaningful.
The fact that life is suffering is no longer relevant. Now, I have a I have a follow-up just a segue from that but is that an accurate
quote? Well, I don't know if it's an accurate quote but it sounds like something I probably said accurate sentiment Oculus
distributed accurately attributed. All right,
it seems to me that it's true. I mean I did this isn't necessarily the case that you can do it. All right, it's hard to do. I mean and that of course, it's hard I suppose.
Is in proportion to the suffering that you're undergoing it isn't necessarily the case that you can always manage it but sometimes you can manage it and it's a good if you can
this so I want to use your book as a prop isn't the right word a vehicle for exploring this one of the books that you often reference is Man's Search for meaning by Viktor
Frankl story. I'm going to I'm going to stop just for a sec because I thought about some other things so
This is partly why I have a certain conservative bent. I suppose see people need to search for meaning because they get corrupted by suffering if their life isn't meaningful. That's how it looks to me because you can't torture an animal Forever Without It lashing out. And so if your life is nothing if there's nothing in it that speaks to you. There's still going to be suffering. You can't talk yourself out of
of that
So then I see people tearing down.
Traditional structures. Let's say or their casual about them another rule in this new book is do not casually denigrate social institutions are creative achievement. Well, why social institutions? Well, I've counseled lots of people who were lost and so if you came to see me and I was your therapist, I'm very practical I'd say to you. Okay. Well, let's look at your life for a minute. Do you have a intimate?
Nation ship
what about your family now? It could be, you know married with kids or it could be the family of your birth your siblings and your parents and so on. How is that functioning? Do you have anyone there? Do you have a job or maybe a career? Even if you're fortunate but least a job that keeps Body and Soul together and maybe where there's some chance of advancement and hope do you know how to use your time outside of work productively you take care of your mental and physical health. Do you manage The Temptations drug and
All use and that sort of thing. Do you manage those Temptations effectively. Are you as educated as you are intelligent? Those are standard patterns of activity in the world. Do you have kids? Do you have a wife do or husband you have a job? I mean, it's mundane in some sense. But and you can look beyond all those standard answers for meaning but if you're overwhelmed by life anxious and and suffering that's a good place to start put that
Together why well the answer that is because that's what people do.
That's what people do that's the best we've been able to manage. So and if you don't have that because you're a human being like other human beings you're going to suffer for it.
And so a tax on that assaults on that aren't that helpful?
Unless you have a better like I have this friend. He's an atheist or and he's wavering about this. He was born a communist. He was raised in Poland and he had objected at one point to the Christmas traditions of his family who are also atheistic and you know, he objected on the grounds of logical coherence. Why are we doing this? Well,
Don't do it. Well, then what happens? Well, then you have another week day. You lose Christmas well.
Great. It's like now you're logically coherent wonderful, but you've lost Christmas. You don't want to throw these things away. You know, when I see this sometimes with young people when they're talking about getting married. We don't need to get married. We don't need a piece of paper. It's like really that's your that's the depth of thought you put into this. It's like you're not going to mark this permanence with conscious awareness and social celebration and this sanction of your community.
A beautiful ceremony. That's just nothing.
You let that go. Well, what are you going to replace it with? Nothing, huh? You know you can say it's I don't want to be married in a church. I don't believe in God fair enough, but good luck filling in the hole. So what is the
template for constructive criticism of a social institution in other words if there is a wrong way to do it where you're creating a void and not offering a better solution. What is the better?
Approach or what might be
you know, I got well-known I suppose in part because of my injunction to people that they clean up their room My Closet by the way is a mess. I haven't been able to clean it up for like three years. So there's this English common law principle with regards to the distribution of power. I think it's English common law.
That there are certain responsibilities of the family and the community and the town and the state and the and the federal government and the international organizations and but you want to have the most proximal level.
Possible take responsibility for a given Enterprise and I think that's a good.
philosophy personally
You want to make changes start with what's under your control start with changing those things that will hurt you. If the change is go wrong. There's a good one, you know, and it's better. I think to put your life together then to go worry about parading around and being a social activist. I think most of that's fraudulent and I think it's appalling that people learn to do that. Mostly at universities fix up your own life, and that doesn't mean you shouldn't be involved.
The community but I believe that you you have to earn that right not because there's something more wrong with you than wrong with anyone else. It's just that if you if you operate it at a level that's beyond your competence. All you're going to do is make catastrophic mistakes practice locally till you're competent and then if you dare or move out a little bit, you know as you mature and you gained some when I when I used to work for the NDP, they're socialists back when I was 14 or
Dean
One of the things I came to realize I think I realized this when I was 16 and went to University. It's like why woke up one day and I thought I had this ideology in my mind, you know about how the world should be structured and I woke up underneath thought what the hell do you know? You don't have a family you don't have any experience? You don't have a job like you're a pop mean I was smart enough. I verbally I'll could hold my own and my head was full of ideas. I could defend them, but you know at the same.
time that I was a socialist
Kid, I was I sat on the Board of Governors for the local college and almost all the people on that board were local businessman most of them immigrants because Northern Alberta was an immigrant like it was only 50 years old. Everybody had moved there. It was a new place. It was the end of the frontier. Literally we were at the end of the Railway the northernmost tip of the North American Prairie and there was all these conservatives sitting on this board and me and what I found
Actually respected these people my ideologies. My explicit ideology was antithetical to there's but when I interacted with them one-on-one, I thought hmm these people have made something of themselves. And when I talked to the activists, I never got that impression. I thought you guys are resentful as hell. You don't know anything you've never done anything but your noisy and self-righteous and so that put a lot of
cognitive dissonance that filled me with cognitive dissonance
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I was going to go to Viktor
Frankl. Hmm
But I'd like to pull a hard left just always a
dangerous thing
is dangerous thing especially depending on the country. You're in a special and we'll come back to Victor Franco because I would like to ask her out about him. But first I'd like to go to all this Huxley and possibly Hunter as Thompson. So I was oh, yeah. I was interested to see Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by undressed opsin on your list of suggested books and
Island or the island. I don't know if there's a the in the title by Aldous Huxley and going into down the rabbit hole with your videos and interviews. I noticed that you seem to have quite a familiarity with the research done by Rick Strassman with intravenous and and EMT and also the psilocybin research at Johns Hopkins with Roland Griffiths, Matt Johnson and their entire team, but
In the clips that I've seen there isn't really a lot of context there Snippets that I've found what has been the context for introducing those to your classes or in your
lectures. Well, I did my PhD and
Alcoholism so psychopharmacology. I mean, I've got a PhD in Clinical Psychology, but my research was four years eight years nine years was all drug and alcohol abuse I concentrated on alcohol, but that was okay because alcohol is like water it crosses the blood-brain barrier like water it bathed every cell it has
Paulie systemic effects and so if you study alcohol from the psychological and and pharmacological perspective, you have to learn the function of the systems that all drugs affect, you know, all drugs of abuse affect fundamental motivation or emotional systems. That's why we take them, although with the hallucinogens. It's more complex, you know, like the benzodiazepines and barbiturates and alcohol their anxiety lytx. They reduce anxiety alcohol also has a
Open the nergic effect for some people kind of like cocaine or amphetamines. There's the analgesics like heroin or cocaine is also analgesics whether the psychomotor stimulants are analgesic as well. But the big categories are pain relieving anxiety relieving and and psychomotor stimulant and most drugs of abuse fall into those categories. And then there's the hallucinogens which are their whole other universe. And so I'm well-versed in psychology of and the physiology of drug and alcohol use
and so that's the context that's part of it. Anyways, I'm also interested in religious experiences and for one reason or another and it's a bottomless mystery. There are agents that reliably produce religious experiences and no one knows what in the world to do about that. That's for sure.
There's a study on going at Hopkins also that that's looking at the
Of Serotonin 2A agonists, like psilocybin is effects on world view of religious leaders of different faiths, which
is that right? How are they doing
that? Well, they do they're doing it with as I understand it Administration. Probably 30 milligrams of synthetic psilocybin.
Wow, I'd have to check it
legal should be illegal or
legal. It's no wonder it was all made illegal. I
Mean, it's Pandora's
Box in what respect what would your what would your concerns be with that particular? Pandora's
Box? Well, look what happened when psychedelics were introduced into the culture in the 1960s, you know, it was it was revolutionary. No one knew what new window no one knew how to regulate or control it and I don't mean control by clampdown. I just meant no one knew what to do with it. I mean it knocked him as he Leary off to the side sideways, you know, and I had Timothy Leary's old position at
I heard he had the same position as me. Yeah, so that was kind of
interesting. I think the I mean the social dynamics are very different. And in the sense that yes, there are a lot of risks psychological in rare cases physical with psychedelic use, but I'm very involved with the phase 3 trials both for psilocybin and MDMA assisted Psychotherapy group is running out Griffiths is involved so they would be one site.
For the
table, he's a scientist.
He's great. He's a he's a close. He's a close friend and
he's I met him as our conference on aw.
He's an excellent excellent scientist with a lot of a lot of exposure to psychoactives expert and caffeine metabolism and all things caffeine among other compounds the I mean you've spoken in in the videos. I've seen at least of the change.
Is in
openness. Yes personality traits.
Would that not be a positive thing? If that is a consequence of opening Pandora's
Box spans and how neurotic you are. No, I mean technically this is a technical discussion open. This isn't much fun. If you're high in neuroticism because you because you continually undermine yourself like openness is creativity, but let's let's not be all pollyannish about this there wouldn't be variation in creativity if it wasn't dangerous.
There's lots of people who are very low in openness. And there's a reason for that now it has advantages, you know, the open people occupy a particular Niche there on the
edge Jordan. Would you mind defining openness in the sure because
kind of people who are open there's creativity essentially creativity and verbal fluency together make up openness. Now, it's also associated with verbal IQ. So it's the one there's five personality traits extraversion. It's positive emotion neuroticism.
That's negative emotion agreeableness. That's compassion versus predatory aggression something like that conscientiousness that's dutifulness orderliness and then openness, which is intellect interesting ideas and creativity. You know, you might think the more of that the better but no that isn't how nature works. You can undo Yourself by being open people who are open to have a hard time catalyzing their identity because they're
So protein they shift shapes constantly. They're interested in everything. It makes it very hard for them to pursue. One thing. My observation is that if people are high in negative emotion, so they're prone to anxiety. For example, then being open can be a curse because when you expose yourself to something that's unknown, you know that extraversion and openness can drive you forward as a function of curiosity and engagement but the uncertainty
He is also the uncertainty you pay a price for physiologically.
Because when you face something uncertain your body like when you're angry your body has to prepare for anything and that's expensive and physiologically demanding and so an open people they flip things upside down all the time. And that's dangerous. Like it isn't like it's not necessary. Don't get me wrong. It's necessary this chapter. I'm a delusion to I said don't casually criticized social institutions or creative.
And I picked those phrases very carefully. We need social institutions, but they become corrupt and so we need creative revolution, but it can get out of hand. And so there's this constant war between the strictures of tradition and the transformation of creativity and you can't say who's right. You can just talk it out.
Yeah, but you know what the psilocybin you take one dose and have a mystical experience and your you move from 50th percentile openness to 85th percentile with one dose. It's a major neurological rewiring. It's stunning. It's stunning and you know, you could say well that I'm sure there are things about that that are good, but you said Beware of unearned wisdom. It's a good quote me. It is a good
Quotidian, I know you really puzzles me because it's never clear to me how he knew the things he knew and that's one really good example of that
on the openness just to explore this a bit further, you know, it also seems again. I'm not a clinician but that speaking just as a as a someone at least involved on some level with the
science and there's an open person. I tried no doubt about it given what you do your
Ariel and you're interested in ideas like your Cardinal personality trait undoubtedly is openness. And you know, if you can manage it. It's a great trade
on the one hand you have disqualifying criteria for becoming a subject in these psilocybin studies schizophrenia being one of them or a family history of schizophrenia, which seems to overlap with some of what you were saying earlier, right? There are risk factors if you are sort of swimming closer to the
The bank of the river that
is if you're schizophrenic, if you're schizophrenic, you should stay away from em feta means it's pretty obvious that the whatever the hallucinogens do isn't the same as schizophrenia that's people set that but you can induce paranoid schizophrenia and normal people by overdosing the moment on amphetamines. So by still it might not be a good idea if you have a family history to you know to mess around
Yet seems it seems
to possibly accelerate the onset. Not that they're the same thing. Although these drugs used to be referred to as psycho memetics, but that's since been somewhat disproven in terms of neurological Coral. It's just looking right MRI if fmri scans and so on now on the other hand you have acute anxiety and some cases chronic but acute anxiety and say terminal cancer patients. We Hopkins has also is a population Hopkins has worked with you and in those cases.
The shift openness can be life-changing
li+. Well, I don't know this by shift openness exactly or if it's the religious aspect of the experience true.
Yeah, obviously, I mean if you have ego dissolution that can do something for fear of death. Oh,
yes. I think I also think that's that's phenomenal research. It's unbelievably interesting, you know, and it's certainly the case that like, I firmly believe that the world is not the way we perceive it. It's deeply its
deeply strange and I do believe that the hallucinogens reveal that and I you know, I don't think that attempts to drive them underground have been particularly fruitful. One of the consequences of the War on Drugs is now we have like 500 psychoactive chemicals instead of 20 or 30, you know, because chemists keep chasing the laws and so making it illegal isn't doesn't look like a good solution. I wouldn't I wouldn't that doesn't mean we
A good solution. Yeah hundred percent agreed. I mean if you just look also at Black Market synthesis of something like MDMA of deforestation in Cambodia, or you have chemicals being dumped in Holland, which is real Nexus for production if you legalize and regulate and tax that as you would any other industry, then many of those problems cease to be problems not to make it sound easy, but I agree with you as I suppose what I'm saying. I have to ask before we go to Viktor Frankl.
If you're able to put words to it and what ways do you think reality is deeply strange. Can you elaborate on that? And anyway,
there's a narrative aspect to it. There's a religious aspect to it. There's an a meaningful aspect to it that we don't understand. We can't understand it scientifically or we haven't been able to the scientific Viewpoint excludes that to some degree and I think the best evidence for that probably does come from hallucinogenic experience now people have
Clearly people have a biologically instantiated religious instinct.
Now it's possible that that only speaks of our peculiar biological nature.
That it doesn't reflect broader reality as such but if you go deep enough into the psyche.
What you it becomes increasingly difficult to separate what you discover from reality. Now people can clearly have individual subjective religious experiences. Most scientific phenomena are objective many people have to experience the phenomenon at the same time. You have these religious experiences that can be induced by hallucinogens. Let's say each person has their own particular experience, but everyone has an
Similar and we don't know what to do about that category of experience and then you know, we think in stories and we see the world through a structure of value. I think that that has been proven Beyond a doubt by neuroscientists and psychologists and the fact that we see the world through a prism of value seems to indicate that there's something about value that's real. And so that's partly why things are deeply mysterious. I mean Rick Strassman
terrified himself right out of the DMT research as far as I could tell because all his subjects came back and said, well, you know, I went somewhere else and saw aliens. It's like well, it was a dream. No, sorry wasn't a dream was way more real than any dream. In fact, it was actually more real than life. Well, what do you do with that?
What do you do when it's all within every subject are almost every
subject exact one and one out of 30. Yeah, exactly. No one knows what to do with that. We don't know what to
With that at all. And yeah, I mean it's beyond
comprehension. It is deeply deeply strange. You know, what are the images that I paused on and one of your lectures online is an older lecture. I believe was a side-by-side comparison of two drawings one of our show ya a piece of artwork of the Scandinavian tree of life and the Peruvian Amazonia tree fly. Yeah.
And if you want if you don't mind taking a moment just to describe that or I could try to recall it. It was it was really striking and then you and then you shortly thereafter at it at a drawing your son head put together and the overlap was really hard to wrap your head around and
saw this drag my son made. Yeah, I have it in my office. He was about six when he made it. It's stunning on one side. There is a forest full of pine trees and then there's a river running down the middle.
Then on the other side there's a town but the town is all mushrooms like like Amanita muscaria mushroom. So all the houses have mushroom caps. And so there's an order there's order on one side and chaos and another and the river runs between them and then out of the river grows a beanstalk and the Beanstalk stretches up to heaven the clouds are there and st. Peter's there by the gates and it's not like my son had any particular Christian religious education like he didn't we didn't go to church and
And I saw him draw that and I thought that's unbelievable. I can't believe you drew that because it's it's a shamanic drawing its Chaos and Order. Those are the two subsets of existence right at the point. They meet out of the river grows the tree of life it reaches up to heaven that and the shaman they crawl they climb the tree of life and they go to heaven and you know, when mircea eliade people who studied the shaman many of them thought that if the experience was drug-induced that somehow it had been
Apologize that wasn't part of the actual tradition, but I think that's completely wrong is that people have been using psychoactive drugs to transcend their Consciousness for God only knows how long one of the most interesting hypothesis I ever encountered. I think that was Terrence McKenna.
He thought that psilocybin mushrooms and human beings co-evolved. So who knows, you know,
the stoned ape hypothesis? Yeah, it's what's further more interesting is that we are not the only species who seeks Altered
States Of Consciousness is book about animals who seek out psychoactive experiences flies even that's why I am indeed a musk area is called. When is it the fly fly agaric? Because fly again, I didn't go I didn't know that.
Don't yeah. Yeah. Yeah even flies reindeer
even flies.
Yeah, very strange. It's very very
strange. It is very safe to say that we do not know what to do with
that. We also don't know what to do with things. We don't know what to do with you know, that's the problem with opening Pandora's Box is that if you have your life reasonably well conceptualized and then you have an experience that indicates to you that you just don't know what the hell's going on.
At all, it's like well, what do you do then?
Yeah, and In fairness, this is maybe a subset of what you're describing but a term I was introduced to by Roland was ontological
shock. Yeah and fewer of those a better. Yeah for that
reason. These are not compounds to be taking
casually well ontological shock produces post-traumatic stress disorder. There's a whole literature on on Tolo. They don't call it ontological shock. It's generally termed something like disruption of fundamental.
axioms, but it's exactly the same idea, you know and one half of that Terror and the other half is aw and that's why trips can go bad because you can you can get the terror side of the ontological shock
which is also why the therapeutic rapper that is used by say Hopkins or by Maps who is working with the mdma-assisted Psychotherapy is so important because these compounds can re-traumatize or traumatized if you or if used in an irresponsible,
Small context or even if used responsibly quite frankly right risk
exists. Well because even the safety precautions that are put in place they can certainly decrease the probability that the trip will be negative. But that doesn't mean they alleviate the ontological shock they do it at the moment. So it doesn't go astray during the trip, but there's still the long-term sequelae I do to consider
I need to use that word more sequelae. That is a great word. Aha, you mentioned your son was not
not these are not the exact words you use but brought up religious. You've also describe knowledge of the stories in the Bible as quote vital to proper psychological health and you have a lecture series called the psychological significance of the biblical stories. So people can dive in there. But for those who have not studied the Bible is this a study you recommend to everyone and if so,
why
Well, I don't know if I would recommend anything to everyone our culture grew out of the Bible. It's grounded in the Bible for better or worse.
And so if you want to know who you are and why you think the way you think like you think you know the way you think you think you think you don't?
Or very rarely thoughts are greater than you are some sense mean it's very rare that you don't think that you think something that someone else hasn't thought. You know, why I can't remember who said it might have been Alfred North Whitehead that everyone is the unconscious proponent of some philosopher. So now thought exist in a hierarchy value, especially in relationship to value and the more profound the thought the more it deals with fundamental.
Using the fundamental value is 1 upon which many other values depend that's a guy like the technical definition of a hierarchy I can give you an example. So for example, imagine you're in a committed relationship and you're you know, you and your wife have an arrangement to do the dishes and it's her turn and she doesn't do them. Well, that's a minor-league ontological shock because well, it has implications possibly for her honesty, you know and perhaps not maybe she was tired that night God only knows but it's a deviation from what's expected.
It and you know, generally those things are knitted up pretty quickly and whether or not your wife does the dishes when she's supposed to Once really doesn't destabilize you that much because not much else depends on it. Now if she did it 10 times or something like that. Well, then you might start to question her commitment to your agreements and then you might question her honesty and then you might question your relationship and you know that you can go down a rabbit hole pretty quickly. But if your partner has an affair
that tends to be quite a shock because you've
Modeled your plans for behavior and even for perception of the world on the Assumption of fidelity and if that assumption is demolished, then all those plans dissolve and then the uncertainty comes rushing in and that's very hard on you cycle physiologically. And so anyways, there's a hierarchy of values and the deeper you go the more the values look religious almost by definition its in fact, you could say that that's a
Venetian is that the deepest values are religious. This is something I tried to impress upon Sam Harris. Now, you know, he didn't like the terminology religious but doesn't to me, it doesn't really matter because you could replace it with okay deep then, you know, like have it your way. We have a word for the deepest values and that's religious. And so what happens when you encounter those values, well you tremble and you might think well, not me. It's like well that all that means is that you're
Acted to a degree you cannot possibly imagine and one day maybe not maybe you'll be lucky and you'll go through life without being knocked ass over teakettle so to speak but but perhaps not you might run into someone malevolent for example, and then the scales will fall from your eyes. So anyways, the deepest values are religious and our religious document is the Bible and the Bible is an absolute mystery.
So easy, I don't care if you're atheistic or not. I mean and this lecture series was for everyone and lots of lots of people have watched it weirdly enough impact the theaters that I was lecturing in all the bizarre things and you know as most a young man coming to listen to some half-baked psychologists talk about religious matters for an hour and a half. The deepest questions are religious questions and the Bible is the best answer we have and if you don't like that, well fine do better good.
Fuck. I mean there's wisdom in that book. That's it's unbelievable. The story of Cain and Abel. I have a whole lecture on Cain and Abel that stories one paragraph long and you can think about that for the rest of your life. You know, it's the first two human beings fratricidal murder with a genocide and twist all packed up into a story one paragraph long and it's all resentment. It's like Cain sacrifices are rejected by God. Okay. What does that mean? That's easy.
You make sacrifices to improve your future and you do that on the basis of Faith you believe that if you conduct yourself in a certain way fate is likely to smile upon you because why else would you make the sacrifices and sometimes that doesn't happen you make the sacrifices and the reward isn't forthcoming. And will that make you bitter well in all probability. How bitter how about better?
Enough to destroy the ideal. That's all packed into that story. I don't understand it. I don't understand how that's possible. I have a hypothesis. You know that a scientific hypothesis is as the story is transmitted across time everything that's Superfluous gets Stripped Away because it's not memorable and then all that happens after thousands of years of playing telephone. Is that what absolutely not forgettable is retained, but I don't think that's a comprehensive.
Isis it's partially true and I think the story of Cain and Abel it's like when it opened itself up to me, it just knocked. I've never recovered from that. I don't
think when you think of stories and you use stories and you tell stories very effectively when you talk about say Pinocchio you use biblical stories, you're very engaging sort of interpreter and transmitter of stories 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 mostly when I'm writing. I'm trying to figure something out as the period of time over which I've been writing has lengthened. I'm spending more time communicating the ideas and less time figuring them out. When I wrote my first book which was maps of meaning pretty much all I was doing was trying to figure something out. It was just an
Exercise in sustained thought and I worked on it for from 1985 to 1999 about three hours a day and I thought about it, especially when I was in my 20s all the time. I was thinking about it like 13 hours a day and that ideas were just running through my mind at a rate far higher than I'm capable of now. I was trying to figure something out. I was trying to figure out I was trying to understand malevolence. I suppose among other things but when I wrote the last two books I was
Communicate some of what I thought I had learned and so but it's still a lot of it's still trying to solve a to answer a question when I lecture for example, not usually do that without notes. I have a question in mind. It's like, okay. Well, he wouldn't in the biblical lectures. For example. The first one is I think it's about two hours long on the first sentence of Genesis. The question is well, what is this sentence mean? And so will the lectures and exploration of what it means and
I'm trying to think it through and at the same time I'm communicating that process of thinking it through and that's what I'm doing with my books and the books are written to me, you know, which is why I think I've gotten away with giving advice books aren't really advice or if they are. I'm included in the population of idiots who needs the advice. So, you know, these are things I haven't there's a last chapter is be grateful in spite of your suffering, you know, I've had real struggle with that.
So although I know perfectly well that resentment regardless of the cause is not productive. It's certainly
understandable.
It a grabbing what you just said and maybe going to a somewhat meta-level. I am going to shoehorn and Viktor Frankl because I don't want to leave that loose end for listeners Frankel talks about the desire to finish his book as one of the sources of meaning that got him through the concentration camps did your book and I don't know the timeline for having worked on it serve a similar purpose over the last 18 to 24
months. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. It was life raft. I was I was definitely
He stated when I finished it, which is common experience, you know be people in and it speaks to the nature of human motivation. We often think well once I get to point B, that's where you're headed. Everything will be okay. It's like no that's not the case at all. Is that now? You need a new point B, so and that was really, you know, because I don't work at the University anymore and I don't have my clinical practice anymore. And so that those are losses of structure for me and now I have the book too.
Anchor myself while I was so ill and it was invaluable and still is for that
matter. 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 and 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 or constructing or finding meaning if they have reached the Pinnacle?
All of competence or a high level of competence in a certain area. I have a friend. I won't name them because I don't know if you would want this public but I asked him some version of this and he said well at some point you have to either find God or have kids and having kids easier. So I had
kids. Well that's likes to what we discussed earlier. It's like there's many domains in which to obtain competence. You can find a new domain but kids for sure that's like look life is quite
straightforward in some ways find a partner and stick with them. You know, that's hard try to make yourself into better people if you can it's a challenge have kids have grandkids. Thank God. I have grandkids. Thank God. I have kids they're of unquestionable virtue.
And so then if you're lucky you have other projects and you're healthy enough to to undertake them with regards to how people should search for meaning while it's the first thing I do. I like I said with my clients is I do a scan of their life and we have you mentioned it at the beginning when you introduce me. Yeah. I have a program a self authoring at self authoring.com that helps people with this it helps you write an autobiography sort of figures out who you are.
It helps you assess your personality traits positive and negative and then it helps you make a plan for the future. And that's that people have found that useful why Beyond order? What
is the Genesis of that title? How did you arrive at
that title?
Well the first book as far as I can tell in the world of value. So let's think about value for a minute. If you move towards something you value it. Otherwise, you would move towards it. There's an old joke about the chicken is why did the chicken cross the road and the answer to that is well. He thought the other side was better. Well, that's that's the case, you know, and we need a gradient of value to organize our action.
And what you have to prioritize because you can't do everything at once and so you do the thing. That's most important right now now and that means you're in a world of importance and that's a value that that's a value world and the value world. As far as I can tell has two broad components the Taoist stalked about it as yin and yang and broadly speaking. It's Order and Chaos and Order tends to be represented with masculine symbols, and Chaos tends to be represented with feminine.
Symbols that doesn't mean order is male and Chaos has female and you know, I've been pilloried for this even though it's hardly my proposition but the idea of the patriarchy its use of masculine symbolism to represent order.
You're in order when what you want to happen happens when you act.
And so that's reassuring because not only do you get what you want, but the fact that you get what you want indicates that your theory about how to get what you want is true and every time you fail you don't get what you want. But you also undermine the validity of the theory that you're using to organize your perceptions and your actions. That's partly why people don't like to fail because you don't know how far back that can Echo how far down your hierarchy of presuppositions that can Echo if you're clinically depressed.
Reminder failure means you're worthless human being and you never know when a failure is going to demonstrate that you know, it can in any case there is Chaos and Order their the two great domains and you have to contend with chaos because too much of it overwhelms you you drown in it. It's the flood.
And that happens when your life gets Beyond you and you're somewhere where no matter what you do nothing. You want happened. It's a domain of Terror and pain now. It's also a domain of unlimited possibility because outside of what you know is everything you don't know and there's Untold riches to be gathered from the domain of everything. You don't know but that doesn't mean it's still needs to be managed. It's dangerous now the domain of
Is the same way it's like if order becomes too extreme than everything becomes cramped, it becomes totalitarian and then that starts to pathologized. That's the dying King The King who's dying for lack of the Water of Life is the old Tyrant who can no longer see beyond his own presuppositions. And so my first book concentrated more on pathologies of chaos, and and the second book more on pathology.
out of order
And they're they're a match set in that regard insofar as I was successful at doing that and you know, the liberal types. They're very sensitive to pathologies of order and the conservative types are very sensitive to pathologies of chaos, but they're both right. It's just there's no final solution to that problem.
You're stuck with it. It's an existential. It's an eternal existential concern. That's why mythological language is standard across people is no matter who you are. No matter when you live you always have to deal with the fact that some things Escape your competence and no matter where you are. No matter who you are. You have to adapt to the fact of the existence of a value structure that's shared across the social group. It's the fundamental. So those are fundamental.
Elements of human experience and we have symbols for them.
Can we all understand the symbols? So for example in Pinocchio, this is I'm not going to go into this because it's too complicated but no one box at a puppet going to the bottom of the ocean and being swallowed by a whale why it makes no sense. There's nothing about that. That makes sense. Right? It's not it's obviously not an empirical description of the objective world, but it's so clearly
Real that a four-year-old can follow it. It's a mystery.
You know the whale breathes fire in Pinocchio.
It's a dragon. Why why is that? Well, we Face Dragons Forever. That's what a human being is.
It's a creature that faces the dragon the dragon can burn you to a crisp but it has it has what you need. That's the world. It'll burn you up. But it has what you need. And so then the question is how do you stop from getting burned up and get what you need? And the answer to that is that you mold yourself into the hero?
And that's a religious story and you would say well is it true and the answer to that is it depends on what you mean by true and you know, that's a weasel answer in some ways, but it's not it's because it's such a deep question that it can be put forth without discussing the definition of true. So it's is deep question as what is true.
I would say that part of the cultural war is a criticism of the motif of the hero. That's Dara does fellow go centrism Western culture is fellow go Centric. I would say human culture is fellow Goose cell logo Centric. I think Derrida was wrong about that. It's human culture its man so to speak against nature, although sometimes it's man against culture and sometimes it's man against man. It's man against nature and we Triumph as the hero and
That story isn't true or isn't correct. But that's us and if it isn't, correct. Well, then were evolutionary abortion because that's who we are and I would say well before you throw it aside, maybe you should try it.
You don't have a better option. Anyways, what does it mean to try it? Mostly I would say it means it means two things. It means to practice love and that means assume that things are valuable and act according to that assumption and it requires truth which is don't say what you know to be untrue.
And you know when I tried to unpack the first sentence of Genesis in the context of the broader biblical narrative.
What appears to be happening is that there's a proposition that God is Guided by love and uses truth to create if something like that and maybe love is something like the wish that all being would flourish. There isn't a better story than that. What effect do you hope you
are?
new book to have
I know that's might seem like a lazy question, but I'm going to keep it broad. I'd just be interested to hear your thoughts. What would what would be success a successful effect for this book looking back 12 months from now 24 months from
now, it would be lovely if it had the same effect on people as the last book appeared to have you know, I mean it's comforting to me to read through my YouTube comments.
Oddly enough because that isn't generally a place people would go for comfort, you know Untold numbers of people.
Have said to me in person, but publicly and in that way that they put their lives together at least in some ways and you talked about Viktor Frankl.
You know when I wrote maps of meaning I said, well I was interested in malevolence. I was deeply affected by the accounts I dread of what happened in the second world war and in Germany and what happened in Soviet Union and in China these horror shows.
That characterized the 20th century constrain malevolence.
And so if you study malevolence you start to understand what the opposite of that is. The opposite of malevolence is something like the hero's journey, you know, and it's easy to be cynical about that. But well it's not that easy because if you're cynical about then you undermine your own life and everyone knows this. This is the other thing that's so interesting. Everyone knows this. You never teach someone you love to lie.
You're always appalled if you have a son or daughter who is appalled if they don't tell the truth.
You know when the deepest part of your heart that if you don't tell the truth the World falls apart and that's actually true. You know, I talked about unearned wisdom. It's no trivial matter to understand that you know, Dostoyevsky said everyone is responsible for everything that happens to them and everything that happens to everyone else as well. And you know, that's an insane statement and he was a very extreme person.
also true and I think that's part of what people get a glimpse of when they have a
hallucinogenic induced religious experience. It's like there's a lot more rested on you than you think.
And you know that you don't wake up in the morning berating yourself for telling the truth. You wake up at 4:00 in the morning braiding yourself for violating your conscience, you know one classically and in at least in some strains of Christian thinking conscience is associated with Christ or with the holy spirit. It's the it's the voice of God within I'm aware of all the criticisms of ideas like that. But you know, it's pretty it's really something that you can't
Control your conscience.
So what is it? Exactly? It's not you.
You're responsible to it. It holds you accountable it transcends you.
So what is it? Well, if you think it's nothing Well violated for a while and see what happens. So, you know, I hope what I wrote in Beyond order.
is true
You know and if it's true, it should do some good.
Because what's true does good.
At least that's the
hope.
Jordan I think we're running up on time. I want to be respectful of your schedule I have
Sincerely enjoyed this conversation. I'm glad you exist. I'm glad you right. I'm very excited for you and your readers with respect to Beyond order 12 more rules for life. And I encourage people to check it out. Is there anything that you would like to add in terms of closing remarks or a question to my audience a request of my audience?
Anything that you would like to say,
my book is coming out in March 2nd, and I've been thinking about what to do about that. And I think the most appropriate thing to do is to thank people the people who've watched my lectures and listen to them and who have bought tickets to my lectures and who've bought and read my book. My family has received an unbelievable outpouring of support. It's saved my life.
So appreciate it.
Thank you so much Jordan,
and thank you to you too. I appreciate the conversation. Um onward and upward.
Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one. This is five. Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? And what do you enjoy getting a short email for me? Every Friday that provides a little more soul of fun for the weekend and five. Bullet. Friday's a very short email where I share.
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Check it out. Just go to four hour workweek.com. That's 4-Hour workweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoyed this podcast episode is brought to you by Helix. Sleep sleep is super important to me in the last few years. I've come to conclude it is the end all be all that all good things good mood good performance. Would everything seem to stem from good sleep. So I've tried a lot to optimize and I've tried it.
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