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All right, boys is a lot of crazy shit going on in the world right now. The border is wide open. Gas, prices are popping through the roof. You can't even buy a fucking egg anymore costs like a fucking price of a house shit's going crazy. That's why I think this election is probably one of the most important elections ever and you guys all need to get out and vote. If you are not registered to vote, you guys need to go to send the vote.com. All right because guys, we can't just be tweeting about this shit. You can't be just complaining or talking to your boys or posting on fucking ex you got to actually get up off your ass and fucking
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Talking to people. And they're like, I'm not registered to vote yet. They have like a specific side. They're choosing like, I don't know what you guys are thinking, but everybody needs to vote like it's gonna be a close one. So, get up off your ass. Don't be lazy. Go to send the vote.com. If you do not know how to vote as everything you need to register. Let's get to the podcast footballs back with one week for now. If you guys haven't tried out cries picks, you guys got it. Download it. They have a crazy deal right now too. If you just put in five bucks you get 50 bucks free, it's that simple. No strings.
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Well, I'm still all your picks. Thank me later. We've been firing on prize picks. I can't watch football without firing on fries picks. It's just it's way too fun. All my friends, love it. Everyone's been blowing me up about it. I fucking love price fix. So, download the prize. Pigs have used code know. Take advantage of that boys. Let's go on a heater all season long. We're fucking hot and we're staying, hot was getting the Pod. Do you watch
sports? No, not generally, no hockey. Hockey. Sometimes who is your team? Grown-up Montreal, Canadiens
Montreal, why Montreal? But you from a
Right, I know well, when I grew up, there wasn't an Alberta team, really not when I was kid. No Oilers. No. No, I'm old. It was a pretty small League when I was a kid. So
is this original six? Yep. Okay. Yeah. And you stay do
you know it couldn't be Toronto? So
no I'm Leafs fan.
Uh-huh. Yeah. That's a sad State of
Affairs. I know. Yeah I know
it's not a Perpetual disappointment. It's tough. I told my son when he was a kid. He was a Leafs fan. I said you don't you don't want to do that here.
You're going to be disappointed your whole life through F.
Where do you spend most of your time like these days traveling traveling? Yeah. All over the US and Canada and Europe and your
Australia New Zealand. Yeah. No. We're all South America Mexico. Yeah, we were in 60 cities from February to May. So it's pretty much non-stop which I actually like it's a privilege. Like I get to travel all over the world and meet people and
Talk to people
and I know you got some big stuff coming up. Have a book coming out yet Peterson Academy. Yeah. What's what what are you doing with Peterson Academy?
We're hoping that we can bring Elite level general education and then more specialized education to everyone everywhere in multiple languages for virtually no money.
That's the plan. And and it's well, under way. We have 30,000 students, we launched with approximately 20 lectures. We have 30 more already filmed. We have two year production schedule already mapped out will do something approximating, a great books approach but that won't be all of it and we have great professors. And not only do we have great professors, the production quality is extremely high and the tenor of the community.
And we're going to work to maintain. This is extremely positive. And so and we have advanced Ambitions, I can't see any reason at all that. We can't provide a bachelor's level education to people for about two thousand dollars. And so that's a 95% cost reduction and I think our lectures are second to none in terms of quality. And, and certainly, in terms of production value,
So, and it also appears that we hit the price point, right? It's about $500 a year and from what we've been able to understand from our audience, people regard that as bargain, and I think it is be the you get access right away to 20 courses. I just can't see why that's not a great deal and it's extremely exciting, the opportunity because I'm connected and this is partly a consequence of having done the podcast. But
I'm in a privileged position because I can find interesting people everywhere and they'll usually come on my podcast now. And then someone refuses for contractual reasons. Sometimes for ideological reasons, but not very often, and it's only happened two or three times and usually, it's because they're afraid, you know, that their reputation will be Savaged. If they dare come on my podcast, which I think is not a necessary fear anymore, but I can find people who are very
Very interesting and and knowledgeable compelling and decent, and ask them to lecture and there, they almost invariably do. And then when they do, they have that, we treat our professors extremely well, because we're happy to have them, you know, we'd like them to come back and so they're likely to come back. So yeah, we we rent a pre-enrollment over the last three weeks, we launched formally on September 9th. And
So far, the platform can tolerate the load and that's cool. Yeah, it's so fun and we're negotiating with a couple of different jurisdictions with regard to formal accreditation. Now, I don't know if that will happen because our approach is different than a typical University. Not least because it's online but I think we'll be able to manage it and
Then the sky's the limit, you know, we hope we can translate all our courses into multiple languages and and really expand out in the developing world. We teach people free market economics, which would be extremely useful and not done because even Business Schools in the west tend to have a leftist perspective when it comes to capitalism so to speak. And that's so counterproductive. Now, I just went to his Becca stand. I lectured at a university. There are called Central Asian University, which is pretty new,
New. And it's it was founded by an entrepreneur there who has repurposed 400,000 square, metres of post-soviet, industrial space and their manufacturing, everything you can possibly imagine. And when the Soviets ran Uzbekistan, the only thing they were allowed to
The only occupation they were allowed to engage in. Was Raising of cotton, they drained Lake Baikal, which is one of the world's biggest lakes, right to nothing to irrigate the fields. Absolute ecological disaster. And now the Communists have their foot off the neck of these Pakistan people. And they're becoming wealthy at an unbelievably rapid rate. Yeah now and it's definitely the case around the world that if you can shake the shackles of vengeful communism that
people everywhere can raise their standard of living incredibly quickly and we'd like to help people learn how to do that. I have a question about
yeah online like Academy because yeah of course is like that programs are becoming more and more popular. Yeah. But so let's say a student goes through your program and he goes to an employer and on his resume he has your Academy. Yeah. How is that going to work as opposed to like
old-school? Well, if we become formally accredited accredited,
Then, the university courses will transfer and the degree will be equivalent to a degree from a typical University if that doesn't happen because there's various reasons why it might not including ideological capture by the accreditation agencies. And we're not going to compromise what we're doing for accreditation will just Reach Out directly to employers. We're going to offer our students.
Relatively soon, in the future, an appendix for their CV, so they can detail out the courses they've taken and we can provide a description of what that means and we hope that we'll be able to offer employers the certainty that they're hiring someone who of their own accord went out and got educated. And we want to teach people to write and think as well. I have a another company called sa dot app and it's based on work I did at the University.
Of Toronto primarily taking apart the process of writing, which is very, very similar to the process of thinking, breaking it up into its constituent elements and teaching people how to do that. It's a word processing program, but it has an an editor and an editing technology built into it and we'll use that as well to teach people to write and to think and to discover what they're interested in and and compelled by. And so we should be
be able to offer employers who will bring on board. And I think that's highly probable the certainty that if they hire our graduates, especially if they're of a certain caliber, they can at least be assured that they haven't been indoctrinated into a mess of woke nonsense, that would make them dangerous as employees. And that's that's something and they'll also be literate and and have a broad general education. Is that all virtual? Well it is at the moment but we've got plans to rectify that too because if our
Student population, grows, large enough and we have a reasonable number of people in any given urban center. We're going to host conventions and conferences. So you could imagine bringing people together for three days at an arena or a large theater where they could have 10 lectures come and they could be educated you know, non-stop for three days and meet all the people around them who are doing the same thing. We want to, we want to, what would you say facilitate social interaction.
Because part of the reason that you go to university, is to find a new group of
peers. Yes, social aspect is huge. Yes, of course of
course. And and you know, lots of many people who are interested in ideas which is kind of a prerequisite for pursuing higher education. Don't necessarily find their proper social group at in high school. Let's say, but and it's delayed until they go to college or university to find people that they can engage with.
Say, at the intellectual level, that interests them. And I think that's already happening on Peterson Academy because the social media part of it, which is quite carefully designed and regulated allows people to find their peers and we're hoping that we can facilitate meet up. So I can imagine scenarios where groups of 20 people might get together and watch the lectures together. We're going to have boys, this episode is sponsored by Shopify.
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Cat rooms for all of the different courses and that technology is already ready to be implemented. So, we want to crack
this on the flip side, it might be a good thing because then students are to be more focus on their future at an earlier age. Yeah. Well, we're set up for sick like financial success or jobs.
Well, the other thing too, is that we won't limit our students won't be limited. One of the strange things about modern universities is they still suffer from the delusion that University education is for people from
18 to 22 years of age, right. And there's just absolutely no reason why that should be the case. I mean, for example, there's plenty of people who retire at a relatively early age, there's absolutely no reason that they couldn't be using university-level lectures too. Well to increase their interest in the world to develop new ideas. There's lots of people out there while who just can't get access to it to a real education anywhere like broadly speaking around the world, but there's plenty of people who didn't
take the opportunity to go or couldn't and we can serve them. And then there's no reason at all that particularly bright high school and even Junior High School students can be participating in the lectures,
especially for the price of like post-secondary education. Yeah, especially in the States because I told you, I'm from Canada to, and I found out how much it costs for like schools in the states. Yeah, yeah. It's almost like unfathomable. Oh, yeah. It's just it's a complete scam as far as I'm concerned. I mean, it's not like, we can duplicate
Everything a university does. Because one of the things you do generally, when you go to college, not everyone, you move away from home, right? You establish your Independence and as I said you develop a new peer group and but we can certainly Foster that and it's not like we don't know. That's important. Yeah we're looking into all sorts of ways that we can foster social interaction and I think if we're very careful with it, that we can do it.
As effectively as the University's manage it because they're not particularly good at it and at a much much lower
cost. What in your opinion, what are the biggest holes in like traditional education? Like, what are the biggest holes that you're trying to fill?
That aren't currently being
filled quality. Look, most large universities
Are not particularly concerned with the quality of their lecturers in relationship to undergraduate teaching. So that might come as a shock to people, because you think well, University is primarily a teaching Enterprise, but that isn't how the larger universities view it. They view themselves at least at least as much a research Enterprise. Now, you know, the optimal professor.
This is a rare person. Has a certain entrepreneurial ability, so maybe they're capable of generating, some commercially viable products from their research, they can do research, they're good teachers, and they can play a role in the administration now. It's a rare person who can do all four of those but there's no shortage of professors, who can't teach at all, like the courses are abysmal and I would say that the typical large state school, 10% of the courses are excellent. If that
100% of our courses are excellent. That's a big difference. And we also deliver them in a very efficient manner and a compelling Manner and so and you can speed up the rate at which you listen, which is also not trivial. And you know, you might say, well it's better to be in person and there are some situations where that's true. I mean if if what you're participating is is a seminar say of 10 to 15 people and it's discussion focused and Socratic in nature then. Well, that's extremely
I'm Lee advantageous but that's hyper expensive and it's increasingly rare. Like at the University of Toronto are smaller courses just got bigger and bigger and once you're lecturing to a hundred people you might as well be lecturing to 10,000, right? The the personal contacts part of it is gone. Now we're also going to encourage our professors to interact with students as much as possible on the platform. You know, we're aware that they human interaction element of education is
Is necessary. But that doesn't mean it's already being offered by the Legacy institutions mean, I think at the University of Toronto, the, if I remember correctly and it's approximately write the ratio of Faculty to students was 1 to 300
Well it at that point way before that point it might it might as well be virtual especially if the quality is higher. And we're very careful in who we pick his professors and so far, the reaction from the students with regards to lecture quality has been very very positive and we'll call to like if we find out that over the years that some of the courses are of lower quality than others, which is inevitable, you know, we'll just keep replacing our course. Selection until all we have are superb.
Horses. And one of the things that's so cool about the technology that all you guys utilize in that you make your living with, is that you can use video permanently now. And so, why the hell not have the best lecturers deliver, the best information at the highest possible production quality. If the universities would have been interested, they could have done this 20 years ago, why not?
Well, they're going to lose so much money. Yeah, yeah.
I don't even know if it's
wife.
I mean for them it's a business. So what they're not going to switch. I think don't don't switch what? I
think it's a matter of priority. Like if you look at where the universities have
grown and also the cities with the universities are going to make a lot more money when you have students, well, 40,000, you can't have a college football team, right? Yeah. Unless we get Peterson Academy, it could play tennis for Peterson Academy.
Yeah, yeah, that'd be for ping-pong happy fun. Yeah, you'd be ping pong. Yeah, stomp
Peterson and Academy, frats, and
sororities to yeah. Yeah, I mean, what's really happened at the
Cities over the last 25 years is that mostly they've grown on the administration side. I give you if you look at the charts it's ridiculous the administration costs of just ratcheted themselves up to it point where it's it's ridiculous. It's become its become. I would say it's like an indentured servitude scam so you can imagine that for a long time when you went to University essentially what you were doing was increasing the value of your future earnings. Well the University's basically figured out how to capture the
Future earnings of their students by ramping up the tuition costs and then all the tuition costs didn't even go to profit. They went to administrative overhead and there's just no excuse for it. There's no reason that has to be the case. And so while it isn't the case with Peterson Academy and so we can bring extremely high quality education to people at a very low
cost. I'm interested what you said earlier. You said you're not going to compromise for like credit ation. Yes. Is
There, a lot of corruption with those accrediting agencies, there's got to be right. Well, there's ideological corruption. They're not, just going to give a credit out and kind of threatened, the whole system that's already
going. Well, they're, they're they're also, the universities are so captured in geologically that it's a scandal. There are no conservatives at all. In universities mean there's a couple of conservative universities Hillsdale College, for example, which is an outstanding educational
institution, what where's that is in Michigan?
And in a little town. And so, it's not for everyone, but but I went to Hillsdale a couple of times and I talked to a lot of the students, and they told me that 90% of the professor's were excellent. That's very rare. They have a 1% first-year dropout rate, 1% the typical first year, dropout rate is 40%, which is well, that's also an indication of the scandalous state of the universities but they're just too expensive and
There's no excuse for it, especially given the technology that we have at hand. And so, why do you think
it's gotten there? Like, you talked a little bit earlier you mentioned about the, the woke sort of mindset that's injected into like these institutions. Why do you think it's gotten to that point and
also? Well, I think I think what's happened fundamentally and this happens to institutions in general? Is that imagine that you build up, something that has reputational and brand value, because it's actually being delivering a credible
All service. I think you could make the case that for many years. The universities did a good job a of selecting students so that you could be reasonably certain. So for example, at Harvard, most of the value of a Harvard degree was actually the fact that you were accepted at the University, right because the criteria for acceptance were so high that a that a an employer could be reasonably certain this is true for MBA programs to that at minimum you were much.
Harder than average. And that's definitely something that you want when you're hiring someone, especially for a complicated position and so, and then the universities did incredible job of educating people. And so, they built up a tremendous brand value. Like, the Harvard brand value is through the roof. Although they've compromised it terribly in the last four or five years, but what happens when you build up an institution that has tremendous brand value, is that the parasites can swoop in and take advantage of it. And certainly, that's what's happened with the
Like woke, grievance, study mob of false disciplines that have invaded the university and they're almost all political actors. And and you can, you can start to turn the brand value to your own purposes. Which is what's happened with the multiplication of Administrators knows you can ramp up the value of the students, they have a certain pool of future earnings, you can turn those future earnings to your own purposes by ramping up the tuition costs,
so on that, right?
The ideological idea of like people going, okay, we have this sort of structure and now I'm taking what I can from it instead of like giving what I should be giving to it back
to its happening companies like Disney. How do you cuz
is it ideological thing? Or is it a human thing? Because so for this instance, right? I'm not saying you'd be the person that, you know, let's say, you get your Academy to the certain level and then you do the same thing. I'm not saying you do that. But what's your
question? So my question is like
is it a human thing or as an ideological thing?
Because that's
A very good question. Actually, I would say most fundamentally. It's a, it's a sociological phenomenon that's not immediately linked to etiology. And so well, one of the things we know, for example, is that the typical the typical family fortune lasts about three generations, and the typical Fortune 500 company about 30 years and it's because, well, it because it's hard for a company to stay on The Cutting Edge and current mean, you know, with your own Enterprise that
You're not, you have to be very aware of where the environment is Shifting, so that you stay on The Cutting Edge of the communication technology. After know, the algorithms, you have to know what's current and hot. You have to stay on that edge and it's hard to do that for a long period of time and then you also have. Here's another terrible problem. It's a very cool thing to understand although it's it's a dreadful fact. So there's a law of creative production called the pre do rule
and the Pareto rule. Sometimes you hear it. Characterized as the 80/20 rule, 20% of your customers will give you 80% of your business but it's or 20% of your employees do 80% of the work but it's way worse than that. Like that's just a shorthand version of the law. The actual law is the square. Root of the number of people involved in an Enterprise. Do you have to work? Okay, so here's what that means, if you have 10 people that work for you, three of them do have
Work. Now that seems pretty understandable. Right? If you have 110 of them, do half the work and if you have ten thousand a hundred of them do have to work. And so what that means is that as your Enterprise grows, the number of people who are engaging in counter productive, activity scales, much faster than the number of people who are being productive. And so what that seems to mean that as a company, as a company gets bigger and bigger its lifespan starts to shrink.
Because it just can't be dynamic and mobile. And, you know, could that happen to Peterson Academy? If that's what happens to most Enterprises, you know? And that's also why it's a very exciting often to be in an entrepreneurial activity in the growth phase, you know, because that's when everybody is dynamic and they're staying on The Cutting Edge, and it's very common for any institution to become petrified and sclerotic with time, and that's such an old problem that it's coded into our religious mythology.
Elegies. So one of the deepest one of the most common religious stories mythological motifs is the evil brother of the rightful King and what that reflects is, the fact that any social organization tends towards what would you say becoming outdated and corrupt with time and that has to be constantly battle against part of the way that the free market deals with that, is that if you aren't profitable, you die.
And so there's a death mechanism built in. And what that does is it's harsh because your company can fail, right? But what it does is it calls the dead Giants before they
before everything rots and the biological metaphors, a good one. And so sure. Certainly, it's something that could, it could happen to any company. Once it grows beyond a certain point, happens to be her Aqua sees happens to societies. It's very difficult thing to to contend against. Now, with regards to etiology is that there are ideologies that speed that process along. So if your Society gets possessed by something like victim mentality, where you make the presumption that
Anybody who's attained, any level of success is a predator, you know, is an exploiter that can speed the process of deterioration of your institutions. And that's what's happened for example. In communist countries where everybody who's successful is tard as a parasite, or a predator and what you mean, just think about it for a minute is if you run your Society on the principle that everyone successful is a power,
Dad Thief. How is that going to work? How can that possibly work? Because what happens, this certainly happened in the Soviet Union. After the Russian Revolution is, anybody who's productive gets killed? Well, you know, that's obviously not going to work very
well with. You don't want people to die. Hell yeah. This is just kind of going back. But one thing, I realized he wouldn't because I went to University and get a degree, but I think one of the biggest flaws has the universe
Seeing all these people, expect you to, oh, you should know your degree should know what you want to do later in life when your young years old. And I think that's one of the biggest flaws and I don't know how your Academy compares to that, but I just remember looking around in my friends. Well,
we are in the process of developing technology to help people specify what they're interested in, right? And so that's the problem that you're describing. Now part of the advantage to University historically in, this is partly why people were willing to pay a premium for it, is that it was sort of a Time.
Out in your life in that transition time between adolescence and full independent adulthood, where you could be awarded as social identity student, right? So that gave you a role and it allowed people to presume that you weren't just a waste of time and that you had time to explore, while you were catalyzing your final choice. And so an and the reason that we're offering to begin with something like a general humanities,
a degree with with Leavin of science. Let's say is precisely Lao that people that opportunity to explore but we're also developing technologies that will help people.
Identify what they're interested in and so this is something to know when I write about this. Also, in my new book, you might say, well how do you discover the purpose of your life? Okay, so there's a variety of ways to approach that. You could say, well, you can look at what interests you, okay? So some things call to you, you know, you find them compelling and engaging, you have to watch yourself and see what those things are and you can pursue them. And so that's that's positive. Emotion, pulling, you forward.
But then there's a regulatory mechanism that goes along with out, which is something like your conscience. And so your conscience is like the voice of negative emotion and it tells you when you're wandering off the beaten path towards your destination and it what would you say it? Informs you with guilt and shame about the inadequacies of your behavior. But you can also use that as a way of discovering your purpose or your destiny because virtually everyone
Imagine, there are things you're interested in, but there are also things that bother you, there are things that show up to you, like they're a problem and they bother you. And you might say, well I don't want to have any problems and that's not a very good way of looking at it. What you should understand is that those things bother you because they happen to be your problems and so you could find your purpose in their solution.
And so and that's that's the call of conscience. And in classic religious writings in the biblical narratives, for example, one of the conceptualizations of God that's very common is the interplay between calling and conscience. And so one of the things we're going to do with Peterson Academy, we're doing this with this essay program as well. Is help people discover their calling and help them establish a relationship with their conscience.
We differentiate, we're, we are and have differentiated that to some degree to because what you're interested in and what bothers you is going to be dependent to some degree on your personality structure and we also and we know how to map that we know how to turn that into questions that you could write about or investigate. And it's also going to be dependent to some degree on the structure of Interest per se. So psychologists have broken the world of what you're interested.
Rested in into it's appropriate statistical domains. So, for example, Engineers, have interests in the realistic domain. It's more practical. And there are people who are more interested in the aesthetic domain. There's a model called Raya, sack RI a sec provides a 6 dimensional overview of interest. And so, we're going to use those Technologies to help people understand what they're interested in, why that can help them. Pick topics to write about and to
The gate but it also helps them chart a course. Let's say for their life,
I just I get the ends. All time, I hear people just like there at that, 23:26 age. Now, dude, I don't know what the hell to do with my life. I feel so lost and I've kind of felt like that too. And I felt the best thing to do is you got to leave your hometown for a lot of people. Yeah. And make yourself uncomfortable and that's the best thing you can do. Don't know how you feel about the socially for sure. Like you said that definitely helps a lot.
Well, there's a story I read about this in this book. We who wrestled
with God. So the story of Abraham is a foundational story, right? Because Abraham founds the abrahamic religions, which is a big contribution, Abraham is really the first individual in the biblical stories. And his story is you could think about it as the archetypal story of the individual. So what happens to Abraham at the beginning of the story is he's wealthy. So he has everything. He could want in life. If you thought about life, as just a set of needs and wants. So his parents are
I'll see he spend 70 years in his dad's, encampment in his tent, being taken care of and the Divine comes to him as the voice of Adventure. And it says to him, you have to leave your zone of comfort and you have to go out into the world and have the difficult adventure of your life and that will be better than just having everything handed to you on a silver platter, which is
It's an interesting way of looking out at that. Life is for adventure, rather than comfort. And God, who's the voice of Adventure makes Abraham and offer. It's a very interesting offer, it's very much worth thinking about. So the voice of Adventure pulls Abraham into his quest. Let's say, tells him that if you follow the spirit of Adventure, here's what will happen to you. You'll become a blessing to yourself. So you live a life that you find
worth living. So that's that's a good reward.
You'll do that in a way that will enhance your reputation among other people validly. So that's a good thing, because one of the basic drives, let's say of anybody who's reasonably socialized is to do something that is useful and that other people regard as useful, you know? And so and then, the next offer is, you'll do that in a way that will increase the probability that you'll establish something permanent.
so that's that's a good deal because people would like generally when they think about having a meaningful life they think about maybe doing something of lasting significance and the fourth offer is and you'll do it in a way that will be a benefit to everyone else and such a beautiful story because it's such a cool story because it makes this case that the same force that compels you out into the world, even as a child, if it's made fully manifest and you leave your hometown, you leave your zone of comfort, and you allow yourself to
Develop, is that you'll have the life that you want, your name will grow among other people. You'll establish something permanent and you'll do that in a way that's a benefit to everyone else. Well, that's a, that's a great deal and it's very important to understand, at least to allow for the possibility. That that's actually true. You know? Like, you guys have all left years owns of comfort, and pursued, your individual adventures. And, you know, what's been the consequence of that
I mean you have a huge fan base. You're obviously doing something that's useful for people. You seem to have be having a good Adventure. That's what you want to find. Mosque found that Elon Musk. I found that out when I interviewed him because he had a real existential crisis when he was about 13 and he's very smart. So it was an intense crisis and I know teen 13. You Jordan,
do you think anything could be good forever? The Deep? Like and I mean it's in the idea of like, that's a deep one because we constantly talk about like, you know,
One, you know, you're starting this new Academy and you have great intentions and we told the story about Abraham having like you could have this you learn this, you want to do good for yourself and for others, right? Do you think that is just innately? What all humans are trying to accomplish? Or is it like, do people get to a point where they have so much that it's never enough? And then the change of hands, whoever comes next, doesn't understand the values. It took to get to that point, and then it's just like now it's becoming, oh, what can I take from this rather than? How could I give to this and give to people? Like, all these institutions that we talked about that are like, at a point where
They've gotten to the point so far that they start to become corrupt. Yeah, is that's what I'm trying to get at like is it just a human thing that is a cycle. That's never going to end or do you think someone could actually make something? The
first issue is, you might ask yourself is, do you want it to end? So, there's an idea again, in the biblical stories. There's a character Jacob, who's really not a very good guy when he's a kid, he conspires with his mother to defraud his brother out of
His rightful inheritance, he lies to his father. He's kind of a mama's boy. He's not a good guy, but he leaves. And when he leaves his home, partly because his brother wants to murder him. And for good reason, he makes a vow that he's going to change and then he has a dream and it's this famous dream of Jacob's Ladder and the dream is of a spiraling staircase. Essentially that ascends up into the infinite and has angels
Descending and ascending, that's Jacob's Ladder. And when he wakes he builds an altar and swears that he's going to transform. And so you asked, is there something that's eternally good? Well, in deep religious texts there's an idea that you can live in the light of Eternity, right? So you can live each moment as if it echoes in eternity and that's I suppose you get a sense of that whenever you're engaged in something that's
Particularly profound and meaningful. Maybe when you're deeply in love when you're taking care of your children. There's a notion that you can bring eternity into each moment. Now, you asked, you put a complicated spin on that because you said something like, could that be permanent? And the permanency is probably in the process of transformation rather than in any particular thing that you do along the way. So you could think that as you're moving up Jacob's Ladder
Towards something that's better and better. And you'll never hit the top. You could say, well, is there any given place along the way that's efficient and the answer is no, but the utility of that upward journey is sufficient. You know what I mean? So it's like it's like engagement in a process, its engagement in the proper process of upward striving. That's permanent even though it's permanent in that Dynamic way,
Way? No because you're alive thing. You're not static and if that gets too constrained and becomes too static than it, tends to get corrupt. Yeah, like so, so in the abrahamic story, so what you see, it's very cool because Abraham decides that he's going to leave his zone of comfort and aim up, and then he has a series of Adventures and each Adventure changes his character. He learns something like he's at War at one point and he has to go to a very corrupt city and try to redeem it.
He has a variety of very difficult adventures and every time he has an adventure, he marks it with the sacrifice and there's a reason for that. And the reason is that as your character changes, because you've had a new adventure, you have to let go of things that characterized you in the past that are no longer suitable and so Abraham. He changes so dramatically that he gets a new name in the text and that's a reflection of the fact that if
You spiral upward and you make the proper sacrifices. You can change. So dramatically that it's like you're a different person and then you might say, well you want to do that all the time, you know, you want to continue that process. Like I've watched this like I'm 62 now and so I've lived quite a long time and I've watched a lot of people and I've seen this
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What would you say? Unavoidably people tend to stultify at some age, you know, the really unfortunate people peak in high school. And so 16 was the top point of their life and everything after that's kind of an after thought. And some people Peak at 30 and some people Peak at 40 and 50 and most people are pretty static by the time there.
40 but it isn't inevitable right? I mean as you age it's harder and harder to be dynamic and continue to transform but it's still it's still what you want to aim at what to find static. Like, just bettering yourself, oh, just being just being stuck in content editing, content repetition, I would say and and increasingly meaningless repetition loss of the sense of play loss of exploration, loss of hope, you know that
Can go a long with loss of Health to you know I mean being in a state of endless upward transformation requires a fair bit of energy and so you also have to be fortunate enough not to be visited by some catastrophic illness. Although even then you can use that to transform but it's very useful to know, you know, to conceptualize your life that way and it is innate in a way. You know, mean people will pursue. Well thirst is innate and hunger is innate in lust is an 8 but the
The force that integrates all of those and integrates that integration with other people, that's also an eight and that can make itself manifest, as you spiral upward. And that's, I think the feeling of meaningful engagement like that actual experience that embodied experience is actually an indication that you're walking that path of upward transformation. That's how its signal to you.
Instinctively sound like you're saying, you got to continue to pursue new things and continue to change as
Human, as you get older.
Well, I think that that's where you derive your deepest source of meaning from like it's not the only place because you derive, meaning, for example, from relationships, but they transform to and a relationship. A good relationship is something Dynamic. Like a good relationship is a transformational game. You know, if you have a really good friend or a good marital partner, you're challenging each, you're challenging each other constantly to continue to unfold and
Develop and the meaning of the relationship then is allied with that proclivity to strive upward and it and it is a challenge as well. And it's interesting to think about this. It's kind of obvious once you grasp it. So for example, if you have two teenagers and they want to play one-on-one basketball, you might say well the reason they're playing the game is to win, but if that was the case, each player would pick a play partner that they could just defeat one.
It percent of the time but no one does that. Like if you want to have, if you want to play a game that's fun and you have any sense, you actually try to find someone who's a little bit better than you are. So maybe you lose a little more often than you win and you might say, well why would you do that? If winning is the point. And the answer is, well, winning is the proximal point of a single game, but the point of a sequence of games is to get better at playing. And so you're after The
Challenge on that, on that idea, why do you
You think he said something earlier about, I think you said I don't know if it was the word attachment but being stuck in places like if we're talking about growing and, you know, becoming better, why do you think it's so difficult for people to let go of the attachments that they have as far as like what they live should look like? A lot of times like leading into the sort of depression or anxiety like the idea of that, my life should be this way or my life was this way and I lost these things and they hold on to that. That moment are kind of sentimentality. Yeah. Within that, because
The say they're in this moment trying to come up, trying to come up, but then they're latching, they're holding on to things that are keeping them kind of unprecedent like sort of in the past. Yeah. And then they're stuck with the feelings of anxiety and relationship to where they want to be, not where they are and then depression holds on. How do you think a person could best remove themselves from attachments that hold them into places that make them feel? I have a
practical solution to that, I can talk about that theoretically and practically mean we part of I
Ripped a program ten years ago, partly because of working as a professor and partly because of working as a clinical psychologist mean and it was an attempt to address the issues that you just described. You can get locked into place. Let's say by failure of imagination, you don't have a vision for yourself. You can get locked into place because you don't think that there's any actions that you can take, that will change things. So you have no belief in your self as an active agent, you can get lost.
Into place. This is a similar thing because you believe that you're a victim of circumstances, you can get locked into place. Because at any moment, it's easier to do nothing than to do something right. So just inertia will keep you in place, you can get locked into place because you're surrounded by people who aren't supporting you when you move forward because they punish you, if you're good because it makes them look bad and that's envy and jealousy. And that can be a very powerful constraining force for people. You know, there are families that are constituted
So that anytime anyone in the family ever does anything positive everyone else, punishes them and so that's an awful situation. We developed this future authoring program to help people develop a vision for their life and it uses some of the principles that we discussed earlier. So you need a vision for the future to motivate you to change because it's easier to do nothing. So you need a reason to act, okay? So now
The question is, well, where might you discover a reason to act? So one of the things I could say, you're not going to be very good at that when you first try it. So, maybe you have to do some rather simple exercises to get yourself warmed up. So, I could say, all right, here's the, here's the game. It's like it's what kids do when they pretend when their kids, okay? So, here's the deal. Five years down the road, you can have what you need and want, okay? But here are the rules. You have to be treating yourself properly.
As if you're valuable and you have to specify what your goal is, okay? So those are the only rules, okay? So now we can translate that into initial action. So let yourself fantasize and for 15 minutes, write down what you would want, if you could have what you wanted, five years, down the road, who you would be, and let your you want to do this, really, like, kids, pretend, who could you be if you could be who you wanted to be? What would that look like? You can think of
about people, you admire and so forth and so right for 15 minutes and don't get picky about it and don't get self-critical just get it out. Okay next stage imagine that you let all your bad habits take up, take the upper hand and control you and that brought you to the worst place you could imagine in five years.
What would that look like? Now that's useful because to be motivated, two things have to happen, something has to be chasing you and you have to be chasing something and you can get somewhere just by ambition and you can get somewhere just by having fear push you but you can really get somewhere if you're chasing something and you have fear pushing you and so if you're trying to change the way you live and you think well I'm going somewhere better but I'm also avoiding hell then your maximally motivated
Okay, so now you have those two competing Visions where I could be if things went well and where it could be. If I let the weakest and most useless parts of me, take the upper hand,
you write that one down to the very start
when down to. Yeah. So you know, right and so most people know, you know, some people would well maybe you know, a woman would drift into prostitution or you'd end up on the street or you'd be a wonderful cocaine addict or you'd be a terrible alcoholic or you can be a narcissist mean, who the hell knows?
I would be depressed or anxious like people, follow or hypochondriacal people fall apart in their own ways but everybody kind of has a sense of you know where they drift if they let misery and nihilism, take the upper hand, it's really useful to know that because you need to know what you're trying to avoid and why and then we asked people to
Make a more definitive Vision. Know what should I do with my life? I don't know. Well, what do other people do with their lives? Do you have an intimate relationship? What's the quality of your friendships? Do you have a vision for your career? How are you going to educate yourself? How do you take care of yourself, mentally and physically? What services do you offer other people? How do you regulate your worst habits? That's like seven or eight? Domains could have a vision for all of those, your family. How would you put your family too?
Together, if you made that a goal, my wife did an early version of this exercise, 20 years ago. And one of her goals when she was meditating on them was to improve her relationships with her siblings, and her father. And so, she made that a Target and it worked radically well, like, she
rectified all the
What would you call the kind of leftover problems that she had with her family members and established really positive relationships with them? But she'd made that a conscious goal. My sense of people is that there were basically Visionaries that wrestle with possibility. That's the best way of conceptualizing us. That's what it means in some ways to be made in the image of God. Because God in the Old Testament accounts, for example is the force that wrestles with possibility and makes it into the
Order that's good. And that is what people do, that's what our Consciousness does. But you have to have a vision and our culture does it terrible job of helping people develop Visions? Like, I think it's 40 percent of young people feel they have no agency in their life,
you know, I needed a culture does a bad job of that. What's pushing down on that
take? Well, there's a well, well, so I used to have my students at University, do this exercise. And then they would share the results with other students. And
Once I implemented that I started thinking. Well, this is so strange. It's so obvious that you should have people. How can it be. That I have students that have gone through 15 years of education and no one ever sat them down. Even for an afternoon and said, okay, what are you write an essay about who you could be, if you got yourself together. And so I started to investigate that's like, okay, well, that seems so obvious. Why don't we do it? Well, then I found out the public education system was established in the late.
1800s, let's say in the US and it was based on the Prussian military model and it was instituted in the US by fascists. Now, this is before Mussolini, this is before World War Two. So being a fascist in the late, 1800s isn't quite the same thing as being a fascist, say it 1940. But the prussians instituted, a universal education system because they wanted to train obediently unthinking soldiers.
and that was their goal and then the industrialists imported that idea into the u.s. because the rural populations were flooding into the cities and they needed Factory workers and so the goal was well will educate the poor to be Factory workers and you know there was something to that because things were industrializing and people did have to learn to work in factories and that required, a certain temporal order, but the reason there are rows of desks and Factory bells and obedience, and one leader and
A lot of following in schools is because that was the Prussian model of universal education. And so it was actually a goal of that system to produce people who weren't entrepreneurial, who weren't creative, who didn't have their own ideas, who were obedient and compliant and you know for whatever utility there might have been in that in a society that was primarily factory-based. Like that's not a good model for right now. So we're living in a system that was
Conceptualized do 100 and almost 200 years ago by a Prussian dictator, who wanted nothing. But the opportunity to produce mindless automaton soldier's Soldier, you're saying so Preposterous.
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The
pilot you're saying culture basically continues to put into will say the youth brains that you can accomplish our get to where you think you can.
Well, there's just there's no emphasis in on that in the education system. You know the students that. So before I launched the future authoring program as a commercial product, I tested it, I used it continually in my classes and students found it extremely useful. You
No, many of them. Well, here we did some experiments with this program. So, three, we did three experiments. One at McGill University. The students who did this exercise, their grade point. Average went up 35%. That's a lot for one intervention. We, we implemented it in the Netherlands at Rotterdam in a business school and we got the same effect on grades and but a bigger effect among low, achieving young men.
Especially if they were ethnic minorities and I think that's because they were the most aimless and so if you already have a plan making another plan is going to have some utility. But if you never had a plan in your life and you even make a bad plan that puts you far ahead and then, the last experiment we did was at a, like, a vocational College in Canada and we dropped the dropout rate among young men by 50%, in the first year 50%, they did the exercise in 90 minutes.
When they came for their orientation. And so and exactly zero universities have picked up this program which is another indication like that exercise. It's a great exercise man and you can and I encourage people, it's that self, authoring.com is where the exercise is. I encourage people to do a bad job of it, you know, because if you make a plan for the next five years, that plan is going to change as you move ahead. And so then you might say, well why bother making a plan and
What part of the reason is because you motivate yourself with the goal and you can strain your anxiety like a plan, does both of those, if it's a good plan and then it also enables you to learn along the way. And so you don't want to be. So perfectionistic that you criticize your plan to death, you want to have kind of a loose guideline for how you're going to move forward and allow yourself, to course, correct along the way. But the other thing is, is that we weren't exactly sure. Why writing the plan worked a. So we looked into that.
Did what people write about matter and answered, that seemed to be know what did matter was. How many words they wrote and that was probably a proxy for how much effort they put into it. A and so and then you might say, well, do the particulars of your plan matter and I would say they probably matter to some degree but what matters more is that you start to conceptualize yourself as the author of your own future and I think for many of these people especially for the lower achieving young men.
Never they never once conceptualized themselves as the authors of their own destiny, you know, because that's a very particular way of viewing yourself. It's a lot easier to think of yourself as the passive recipient of external forces or as a victim and that also gives you an excuse. Well, not to do anything particularly effortful but it's terrible. It's
tied, that's very awesome advice for sure. Would be for people is to just start writing down your goals.
You have to do that your plan to? Yeah. Well, you can also
start by watching like you can watch yourself, week-to-week day-to-day. Let's say, watch what you're interested in like, watch notice. When you're engaged, you're engaged. When you're not thinking about yourself, you're concentrating on the task at hand and your sense of the sense of time disappears. Well, if you watch yourself, you can see when that's happening to you, you know, for extroverts, it's going to often be when they're around.
Is for someone who's agreeable. It's going to be when they're interacting in a relatively intimate relationship. If you're conscientious, then it's likely going to be when you're bringing order to things or being productive. If you're open, it's going to be when you're doing something creative, you know? So it's reflective of your temperament but you have to discover what that is then you can start to notice and then you can start to make a plan. I'm going to do more of the things that deeply engage me, right? And and people should be explicitly taught that because it's a very good.
It's pretty straightforward. Yeah, you know, and it's kind of what you would do if you have a child or someone that you love and you're watching them.
Wander through their life and Orient themselves and you see them doing things that they're enthusiastic about and that they're expanding their skills. You want to reward that. That's what you do with a young child. You say you know I noticed you're pretty excited and enthusiastic about that you're concentrating on it you know good job. Here's another book on this subject. Or do you have some questions? You know you want to Foster that and you do that with
yourself will you agree then it's probably more beneficial for people to find what there?
Because people always want to just chase money a lot of the time, right? So instead of doing that and focusing on maybe this job can make me the most money find out, you know, this is what I actually am focused on him like and there's a but if you want to make money I should making money that.
Well even if you want to make money, you should probably find out what you're interested in and compelled by and the other thing about money that people have to understand, is that look, I've met lots of people who are rich in various ways, right? The best way to be rich is in opportunity for my
He can expand your opportunities, but if the money you're pursuing is let's say, lock to your status, or to your head and Mystic self-gratification momentary, self-gratification. All it's going to do is bring you misery. It's not helpful. What you want is to expand their wealth of opportunity. That's in front of you and money can do that. I mean, we raised a reasonable amount of capital when we launched Peterson Academy and
What we're most excited about is the fact that we can take that money and make the Enterprise grow. There's all sorts of features that we want to integrate into. We want to see if we can solve those problems. And also then bring it to people's attention and be of service and that's very deeply meaningful. That's way different than say status for the stake of status. Or, you know, the hedonistic gratification that money can conceivably bring you and that there is some of that and some security obviously, but mostly money is used
Well as a tool but as a end goal while it's likely better than no end goal, I would say, you know, so if it's better to be, I think it's better to be greedy than useless. But that doesn't mean that being greedy is the best form of motivation. It's and it doesn't fulfill its own desire. You could say
you know he did do a study on a happiness with people that are worth hundreds of millions and other people that are just happy with their situation,
you probably don't want to
Just the quality of your life exactly based on your emotional state, you know, happiness or lack thereof that's a contributing factor, but it's probably better to think about your happiness as a side effect of your proper Pursuits. So it's a you're pursuing something that's meaningful and engaging in productive. The spin off of that is going to be as much happiness as you're capable of, but a lot of what's going to determine your happiness is your temperament.
And you know, so extroverted people have a lot of positive emotion and neurotic people have a lot of negative emotion. And so if you're very introverted and very high neuroticism, there's not going to be a lot of happiness and that's, that's a biological fact, in some ways for you, you don't want to be pursuing happiness, you want to be pursuing something like meaning, and that would be associated with that, like upward oriented striving that we discussed before, and then if happiness comes along,
Ang well you know you're a fool if you don't welcome it and if you're not grateful for it but it's not a good aim,
you're saying happiness isn't a good name, it's not a good aim, I thought it's the only aim. No, it's not a good aim, it's a good side effect. So what if he finds something that is Meaningful that but you're still not happy. Oh that's going to happen. You know that in your own life.
You've built an Enterprise. Well, some of that took work. You had to forego gratification, like, every second of the time you were working on building your Enterprise, wasn't fun. But, but it's weird a because, you know, perfectly well that if you're making sacrifices because what you think you're doing is valuable, then even the difficulty starts to become imbued with meaning. And that's a that's a really good deal because you're going to have difficulties in your life, what you want. If you're fortunate, you can.
Have meaningful difficulties. And that's actually, I'd say just that in itself is a better Pursuit than happiness because happiness is fleeting and it's, it's it's also treacherous to some degree because happy people tend to be more impulsive. For example, you can make a lot of mistakes. If you're well, I can give you a clinical example. So one of the most severe forms of mental disorders, Mania,
And Mania is excess of positive emotion. And if you're in a manic State it's like yeehaw that's pretty fun. In fact, often people romantic won't take their medication because it's quite a trip but it's a complete catastrophe. Like manic, people will spend every cent. They have their thinking, I'm all sorts of wild ideas and it's very exciting and maybe even some of the ideas are good, but positive emotion can really go off the rails and it does make people impulsive describing Bob. Yeah.
Yeah, I don't know if Bob's happy I guess is you probably nobody has the manic right impulsive stuff.
You know, what can, you know, having a bit of a manic Edge gives you a lot of energy. There's a lot of writers. For example, have a manic Edge, but what my point is, is that positive emotion per se can can lead you down pathological
roads. So, is it safe to say that? You think the most important thing in life for any person is purpose?
Yes, yes. Well, think about it this way, you know, they're going to be times in your life where you're
Are going to be suffering pretty intensely, and you're going to need something in those periods to keep your boat afloat. Let's say, and the the deeper purposes that you've established are going to provide you with that. When the going gets rough, you want to know that what you're doing. You want to know that it's worth the sacrifices. You want to know that it's worth the difficulty and then you can maintain yourself even when the road is rough and oh look. There's data showing for example, that childless couples are happy.
Then people with children. Now, one conclusion, you could derive from that, is that you'd be a fool to have children. But you'd only believe that if you thought that those sorts of measures of Happiness were good, indicators of the quality of your life. Well, if you have children part of the reason you're less happy, let's say, is because you have a hell of a lot more responsibility and you have these fragile creatures around you, that can be hurt, you have to take care of them, but
There's deep meaning in that and it's not something that you would forego for momentary happiness. That's a kind of immaturity, it's a bad measure. It's a bad measure and purpose and meaning is a higher. You could think of it as a higher form of Happiness, that's another way of conceptualizing
it. There's a this is completely off-topic. I was thing about this last night before we were doing this podcast but and I'm sorry this is completely off-topic but I think a study that needs to be done and it should be at some point is someone
Who's screen time is like 10 hours a day compared to someone who's an hour or two hours a day. Because I've noticed a lot of people who scroll on their phones all day. It's driving them fucking
not. Oh those are still Studies have been done Jonathan haidt. He's a social psychologist and his newest book details out exactly those studies.
And what usually found, well,
height is made a very strong case that screen use and misery are tightly Associated, especially among young people. And so, I mean, there's a bunch of reasons for that and some of it is the content of what they're consuming. So,
Troll demon, comments and pornography, let's say, but some of it also is the fact that the screens interfere with other things that people might be doing like, establishing actual relationships. I think that's particular devastating for young children because they need to be playing. And so if they're on their screens, they're not playing. And if you don't play with people, when you're young, you don't learn how to be with other people and you're not going to learn that. When you're
older, you think pornography should be banned.
Yes.
I do think that now the devil's in the details, right? Because at what, you know, you might ask yourself at what point do, aesthetically pleasing, images of Attractive, people shade into destructive pornography and that's a relatively complicated question, but it's not an insoluble question. No, I think pornography is an absolute catastrophe. We don't know what it's doing to young people, but the evidence that's accumulating is that it's not good.
good, and it's not surprising because
And it's going to get worse with a. I buy a lot because we'll have the technology for fully customizable virtual girlfriends. And now, it's like months away. There's already companies that offer has to some degree
like a bush. Trying to find that website. I think there already is.
Yeah, there are, there are there already are virtual doctor and running you can unlock the more pornographic features with increased payment role and those, those are going to be very powerful because the AI system
Teams are already out the point where for for a really lonely and isolated person. The AI chat Bots system will give them more attention and a better conversation than they've ever had with anyone in their whole life. Yeah I was we're already at that but you're
going to know it's aii, right? So it's like look well
you have friends and people around you you know what I would say 1 in 20 people that's probably about, right? Have no one, no one's ever paid attention to them, no one's ever listen to them.
And if they can find a substitute, that's better than nothing or even radically better than nothing, it's going to be in many ways irresistible so just like pornography is irresistible. I mean pornographic images aren't real, they're real enough and that's part of their danger. I mean, we put young men in a situation now, young men are more susceptible to pornographic imagery because men are much more visual in their sexual response than women, women have their pornographic, proclivities.
But they tend to use stories rather than images. But the given 12 year old 13 year old young man can see more beautiful women in one hour than the most powerful man in history ever saw in his entire life and were asking young men to be able to contend with that. It's like, why should they be able to contend
with that? What do you think is like the product of that? What is it doing to society?
Well, we don't exactly know, the causal, the causal consequences
There are things. We know the birth rate has plummeted in the west far. Fewer young people are having relationships, the rate of virginity, is skyrocketing, I think, in Japan, it's 30% of people 30 and under are virgins and, and the Curves in the US and the rest of the West are like, we're 15 years behind, the Japanese, the curves are the same. And so it's radically disturbing relationships between men and women. Now, how much of that is pornography while we don't know, because it's hard to parse
Us apart all the different influences, the pill like sleigh has something to do with the tube because women on the pill like masculine men less and
so we have no idea what happens gauge that how is that? How is that? Gauged, that comment you just made. How is it going women? Who take you talking about the birth control pill? He's getting he's no no I'm generally better. That's a great question. Here's here's one.
Eight degrees of masculinity and facial configuration and jaw width has is one of the markers. There's a variety of markers, okay? So you can take women and you can show them a picture of the same man with the jaw with varied and then you can see if the women who are on the pill, like the men with narrow Jaws, better than the women on the pill. And the answer is the women on the pill, like the men with narrow Jaws better, and they're less masculine. And so and you also see the same preference in women's representative cycle. Why didn't, you know,
they're nouns.
We gotta get our jaw lines go earlier. Pull out game strong bro, bro. I'm not worried about that.
That's not the only investigative technique but that's one of them.
So overall, do you think like where everything is headed based on what, you know, based on your whole life? Are we headed to dystopian or utopian
society? We're headed we're headed towards a competition between those two things at a rate that we that has never before made itself manifest, like there's more
Possibility in the positive and negative Direction in front of us. Now than there ever has been, you know, per unit of time and that's partly just a consequence of technological transformation, everything's happening so fast and so things could be radically better than they are. And there's many things, moving in that direction, we talked earlier about, the amelioration of absolute poverty, like the UN predicted 10 years ago that at least at the growth rates that were in place then that we could eradicate a
Absolute poverty by the year 2030 2035 and that's despite the fact that there's will probably Peak out at about 9 billion people. It's clearly the case that there are enough resources to provide every one of nine billion people with what they need and want and opportunity, we could do that. Why does that not happen? It is happening. That is happening. I mean, there's twice as many people in the world as there was when I was young the doomsaying.
Asians in the 1960s were that we'd have mass starvation by the year. 2000 at just simply hasn't happened. Everyone's much richer than they were and you know, there's local deviations in that and there is concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny number of people, that's in some ways inevitable. But that's radically positive were way more efficient at agricultural production than we once were, were way better at making more with less, and we're getting better and better at that all the time. So there,
There are lots of reasons to be extremely positive, you know, by the same token, you know, you see developments in places like China, 700 million closed-circuit TVs, there watched all the time can we could build a totalitarian state that made Orwell's worst nightmares. Look like a romp in the park that could easily happen and there's powerful forces pushing Us in that direction too. It's already the case in many ways in China. So mean we we copied the Chinese during the covet lockdown, right? So we can certainly
Do the same in many, many ways. So this is also why as far as I'm concerned it's partly why I wrote this next book, we wrestle with God is that we have this incredible technological power. That's accelerating extraordinary rapidly is we better get our ethical act together because otherwise we'll turn will make the machines that turn against us and everyone knows that, you know, so how do you see that playing out machines? You better be wiser when you're using them.
How do you see that playing out?
Out because we had, we had a RFK on the Pod last year too and he was talking about the dangers of AI. Yeah, that's just scares the biggest threat with a I right now,
I don't know, I don't know because it's changing so quickly that it's very difficult to tell mean, people are very afraid that jobs will be replaced. For example, creative jobs and so forth. Mean people have been afraid about that with technological transformation forever and although that's happened locally to people the overall trend hasn't
In that vast swaths of the population find themselves, you know, bereft of the opportunity to have to keep Body and Soul together. So I don't think that will happen. I suppose the biggest danger is to me, is probably something like, what we are seeing unfold in China. Is that the the different centers of power governmental? Communicative corporate will lock.
Step together in a fascist Manner and that AI will augment that process of centralized control. And so you know, the fact that your cell phone spy on you all the time is an example of that. Now, you know, so far mostly that's being confined to corporations, who want to use your information to sell you things and, you know, there's worse forms of totalitarianism than
Being plagued by people who want to offer you what you want, but the Bad actors like the Chinese. They've taken that same technology and turned it into a weapon of almost absolute control. And that could easily happen and a I could easily.
Could easily speed that process along the floor to see in airports already, that your photograph is being taken all the time, whenever you move and you have to pass through these automated gateways and that's going to become more and more common. We could make ourselves. The phone is
scary, like even like might be like everywhere you go one day, right?
Well it is already that in many ways because your phone pretty much knows where you are all the time. Now you know so far and your cars do,
Do to, you know, I mean, you could easily imagine a situation where while this is already happened, where your car is reporting, all your driving habits to your insurance company, that's already happening. And that's a form of, well, you can see where that could go.
God doesn't like the simple things. Like my for you page are for you Pages. Probably get us in trouble. Know what I mean? Never mind. It's like if you click, you know, if you like something Jimmy Rose and chicks that. Yeah. Yeah. We're more and more of that. Like, Yeah. Well, yeah. Yeah. Well.
And that's, that's fine in a way because it's not surprising. That capitalist Enterprises are trying to push things that you might want to buy on you and that's actually not entirely terrible because there are some things you want and advertisements. Arguably might be targeted to you rather than random, you know. Would you rather watch an ad? That's offering you something you might want or 10 ads that have no bearing on anything. You might want, you know, you can see how those things have their
Utility. But you can also see how they could be used while they were used during the covet. Lockdowns is Agents of control. So we're building these systems.
While the Chinese in particular have done that they call their systems, Skynet for God's sake. After the Terminator system, they do. This is literally true. They call it Sky College, Skynet and they said, lady Engineers who designed it said? When they were pushed, we're building the good Skynet. It's like, well, you know, the people who built this guy net in The Terminator series thought they were building the good Skynet
into. We got to answer for Skynet. Oh, Arnold is our answer, right? We got to get Arnold out
your old though.
You got to be a second coming.
Bro, dude, give me a shotgun. Give me a bike. I'm there, I'll pull up, I'll save John Connor.
So, you know, should you be optimistic or pessimistic?
Yeah. That's what I want to know is like, where do you
think, man? You should be awake and you should understand that as you become more technologically powerful, you better Orient yourself properly because he'll become Your Own Worst Enemy.
Otherwise, do you think they want to do that here? Like it's done in China,
being in an airport lately, airports are the entry point. Airports are the entry.
Point of total of the totalitarian proclivity into our society. So do I think they they want that it's difficult to identify the they mean there's a there's a tilt look if the technology exists for people to be surveyed surveilled it's going to be utilized in that manner. Can we keep up with that proclivity? We'll see.
you know, the Chinese haven't
and their society is,
you know, if your social credit score Falls below a certain level in China, you don't get to spend any of your money.
Because everything centralized and so. And what's your social credit score depend on? Well, is your yard clean?
Are you too noisy? As far as your neighbors are concerned? Do you give blood when you should? Do you volunteer for State services? Like a good citizen, are you obedient compliant? Do you never jaywalk you jaywalked in China, the gait recognition systems catch, you, they put your picture up on our screen showing everybody that you're a transgressor and they pull the find money out of your bank
account. That's like happening.
Yes, yes.
That's happening. That's crazy. Well it's not much different than being administered to find by an automated system that catches you speeding on the road in the United States, right? I mean these things happen. One little slip at a time.
You know, and those automated speed traps while they have those l u l z z systems in London to that the that the what do you call those characters. Can't remember what they call themselves, they keep cutting them down with electric saws but the UL easy cameras, you know, take a picture of your license plate and if you're not supposed to be driving in that area at a certain time then you get a fine. And so we could easily degenerate into a situation where absolutely everything we do. All the time is being monitored and we're
They're just
something that's I think that's inevitable with technology. Well, how could it like not go
that way? I could I would take every one ever have to decide that. That's a very bad
idea to take every human just Banning together and just completely rebelling.
Yeah. Well, you Americans would never have added scrapping for freedom and so and people people, you know, and in the UK, they've been trying to put up these monitoring systems with closed circuit, TV cameras, and there are groups of Vigilantes who were cutting them down as fast as their put up. And so,
you know, people are always struggling against the totalitarian proclivity, always, it's as old as man, you know. And but yeah, you have to be awake. What are they say? The price of freedom is eternal vigilance and now that things are happening, faster, that probably implies that you need to be a little more
awake. How about what's going on in Canada? What's your opinion on what's going on there? Well, is there any hope for Canada? Because sometimes I just feel like
People are so far gone and it's well, it's changed so much even when I
agree, clear that the bloom is going off, Trudeau's Rose. And if there was an election tomorrow, his party would be decimated and likely the Socialists the NDP as well. Paulie ever, the conservative leader would end up with a supermajority and he's he's a tough character and
he would staunch the flow, so,
You know, I've watched countries, reinvent themselves multiple times over the course of my life. I mean, the US, for example, since I've been alive as gone through a whole series of ups and downs, things were pretty rough in the UK and in the u.s. in the early 70s with the oil shock. And in the UK with while it was paralyzed by strikes and very economically unproductive and the the the Brits put themselves back together and the Americans have reinvented themselves multiple times.
Has over the course of my life. In America is particularly good at that, it's a diverse enough place. So that, even if a fair chunk of it has gone insane and whatever the newest form of insanity is there's some people somewhere doing something useful and productive and that tends to spread quite quickly. And I don't see that. I don't see that at the moment coming to an end in the u.s. I mean, I've traveled a lot in the u.s. I don't know how many cities I've traveled to the last four years, multiple times in the US.
I've seen virtually every reasonably sized major urban center and there's a lot of great things happening in the u.s., you know, all the time places like Nashville, Nashville's thriving, some of the smaller cities in the u.s. are are doing great, so it's very unwise, especially to count the Americans out because they're so good at Reinventing themselves,
said you travel that earlier, he said, you did a 60 cities was that worldwide
know that.
Was all in the
US. He said you go to your up a lot too? Yeah. Is there any any other countries or cities where your you feel more sane or like? Wow, this is really a good culture. They're progressing in a way that's positive.
The Eastern Europeans are doing pretty well, so partly because they were under the thumb of this Communists for a long time, and that wasn't fun, and they remember. And so they're pretty oriented towards
Free exchange and freedom, they're very pro-american, and their societies are pretty stable. So that's been really good to see. And well, there are lots of European this Scandinavian countries are doing very well. They're very sensible, very wealthy. They have their problems a fair bit of their problems. Stem from extraordinarily foolish immigration policies, especially in countries like Sweden, but I wouldn't put them out for the count. Like, I
Said, you know, we have a very open field of possibility in front of us at the moment and and things are happening, faster, and faster. It's, it's very important for people to attend more carefully to their ethical conduct and so, and things could go extremely well. And hopefully, that'll be the proclivity that wins out.
So, earlier you said something about, like, hard to defined out who they are, but isn't they just kind of like the big Pharma, big tech, Industrial military industrial complex? Like that's that's the control.
NG factors as far as an American. I think
I think you kind of put your finger on it appropriately with that analysis, it's big is the problem, right? It doesn't matter whether it's big government or big corporations or big communication networks. Is that once Things become a certain size, they pose a certain threat and part of that thread, is that they aggregate together with other big Enterprises, that's actually how you get fascism, fascist, fascist means to
Bind. And the fascist view is that there's collaboration at the highest levels among the biggest entities, and that's a catastrophe because it unites everything into sort of a totalitarian Overlord and, you know, assorted dispersed serfs, and that's not helpful.
Do you think that's happening now or not having definitely? Yeah, definitely, it's
happening. So, how do you averse some you and doing with the UN, it's happening with the world economic forum and these, you know, and some of that.
Is it positive mean to some degree? There has to be International systems of cooperation but one of the dangers with the EU for example, is that you move political power so far away from the local people that they really have no say whatsoever in their Destiny. I mean that's why the the Brits objected to that. And that's why they left the EU and I think they made the right choice for what it's worth. Now, you know, they went and elected Labour government and so they're going to have to contend with that for the next.
Number of years, but I don't like gigantic.
There's real danger in gigantism, real danger. You get what, what they call regulatory capture, you know, is once an Enterprise gets big enough, it can start gerrymandering the rules that are supposed to be regulating its operation and that's happening all over. But it is, it's an inevitable. It's an inevitable consequence of systems that have simply grown too large and it's a hard proclivity to fight. Its people have been fighting it forever ever since there's been civilization, that's been a problem.
Do you know, how do you stop things from turning into mindless Giants and stomping all over everyone?
You know you saw that with Google I mean when Google first emerged as a corporation everyone was pretty happy with Google. But 10 years ago they took a maybe they got too big. They took a totalitarian woke turn and they've been a force for fascism since then and so collaborating with governments like Facebook did with the American government. This is a real danger and
There are, you know, there are ways that to address it the fundamental way to address, it is for individuals to take more political responsibility into their own hands. No, I mean what are the things you need to think about as a citizen of a free state is that you should be doing something?
In the communal and social political realm, you know, sitting on a board working for the school board volunteering for election. Like you should be playing some political role actively and if you're not. So there's a rule, any political responsibility that you refused to shoulder will be taken up by tyrants and used against you. It's as simple as that people get lackadaisical when the systems are working well and they didn't count it for a very long time. Most of our institutions in Canada, were highly functional up.
Ten years ago and same in the states, so you can kind of sit back on your laurels and think, well, I, you know, I can live my own isolated life and that's an understandable desire. But you can't, you have to, you have to shoulder some political responsibility and that's how you pull it back from the, from the tyrants
changing subjects. A little bit. You personally struggled with a Xanax, some sort of addiction. You were in a coma. Yeah, for out for how many months two months
kind of depends.
And how you counted. But I, it was complicated because I had it some sort of unspecified Amina, logical illness that really, it's probably plagued me my whole life, but that really became acute in 2016. And I, I was, I got very ill and one of the side effects apart from very low blood, pressure was insomnia. And so, I was prescribed
These benzodiazepines and they stopped that from happening. I could sleep again very low dose and I just kept taking them. Yeah, I mean, I couldn't even feel them for. They had no effect on me as far as I could tell apart from the fact that I could sleep. But it was a very stressful period of my life. It's been my university job came under assault and there's a lot of things happening around me, and I had taken antidepressants before that.
And that was probably part of an immunological problem, as well, many years later.
I tried to stop taking them. Yeah, and that did not go. Well, so and then well, it's because it's because that's all that often happens to people, you shouldn't take ends does beans for more than a couple of weeks. So anyways, things spiraled out of control in consequence. Was that took about three years to
some being in a car. I'm just so curious about the coma thing. What was that experience?
Like, I don't remember much of it zero of it not zero, but it's pretty
fragmented. Like, you just just black
Doubt you just you just wake up one day and the times gone and you is it like sort
of? Yeah. Yeah. It's but there's no real difference between that being asleep.
You were dreaming,
not that I can remember no. So what now I was very ill when I when I went to Russia for judgment strangely enough and the the diagnosis of the Russians when I got there was that someone was trying to kill me so wide being prescribed a lot of different medications to deal with.
A variety of the problems. I was experiencing acute pain. Being one of them. Anyways, you don't deal with any of that. Now, I still have a lot of pain but not compared to how much I did have.
So that that was probably what you would agree. I think he had a multiple things happening but I was probably the lowest point in your life. Yes. And how did you get motivated again or battle to?
Well, I had a lot of support.
And a lot of opportunity, you know, and both of those were relevant.
Like I was in an observed amount of pain. I mean, at one point I was walking 10 to 12 miles a day because I couldn't sit, I couldn't rest, I could only move that made things. Somewhat, bearable people, my family, they still wanted me around and I did have a wealth of opportunities. And so I tried a variety of different treatments and one of them finally likely worked. And I started to become
Cover slowly I guess in 2021 21 think it was 21 Fall of 21 or fall of 22. I woke up one day and
The normal ceiling falling on me that happened in the morning, didn't happen. And then I started to be able to sit bit and
Things gradually improved and they're pretty good. Now I mean I generally have about as much pain as you would have if you were, you know what it's like when you get the flu. Yeah. Your body aches. Yeah. Yeah. So that that's there all the time but compared to what it was like, it's nothing. It was ridiculous. Who's Dick do, you know what, the actual? How to
describe you don't know. The actual diagnosis. No. Actual diagnosis, really? No.
No. It was an immunological response of some sort. So,
We're still trying to figure it out partly because I would like to get rid of the rest of the pain. Yeah, at least I'm functional and I've learned to manage it
so I was just curious because something I struggle with for a really long time was just the idea of death and not that you know being in a coma is like you're not dead but you're not here. What's your opinion of death? Like what what do you think happens besides the fact that your physical body is gone? Obviously, do you do you have some sort of idea of? No, not really. I mean I've done a lot of investigating
Education, into religious ideas. Let's say and no part of that complex of ideas, involves conceptions of the infinite conceptions of the afterlife. But I got to say,
my concern with death has really taken the form of concern with using the time that I have in the most productive and meaningful possible way. And that seems to me to be see I have, okay, I know how to answer that we have a series of documents about Socrates death, and so Socrates was brought up on charges by his Athenian peers of corrupting the city's Youth and really
and the penalty for that. It was a form of religious heresy, the penalty for that was death and the Athenian Aristocrats who didn't care for Socrates told him. Essentially we're going to put you on trial six months from now and we're going to find you guilty and we're going to kill you and you better get the hell out of town.
And Socrates went to think about this. His friends started making plans for him to leave, and he went and consulted his conscience, he called that his Damon and he said his conscience told him not to run and he should see it through. And so, he said the thing, Socrates believed that the things that distinguished him from all other men, was that he always did what his conscience told him, no matter what it was.
And so he decided he was not going to change that and when he went on trial and when he explained his decision to his friends, he made a case that this isn't the whole case. But it's part of it. His case was that he had lived a really full life and it had and done everything that
was in his power to do and that maybe the gods were offering him a graceful exit and maybe that that was okay. And so I kind of Wonder partly from contemplating that if, if you lived your life completely that might be enough. And here's some proof of that, maybe
You know, there's been difficult things that you've done in your life and you've done. Now, it's an open question, whether you would do them again, it's as if having done them once,
You've completed something, right? And like my wife, and I, for example, talked about whether or not, we would have children. Again, we really liked having children, we really like having grandchildren but it's not obvious that we would do it now again. Well, why
was it something like we
did that? Well, so maybe your constituted so that if you took advantage of every opportunity that came your way, you live your life completely, and you wouldn't be concerned about death because you'd had your life.
I think, I think, I think that might be true. And so I don't really ever think about
The world after death. I mean, I'm kind of content to leave that in a zone of ignorance. I don't understand the relationship between no finite human beings, and the infinite Cosmos or the spirit behind it. Is there more to reality than we can see, or understand? Well, obviously, yeah, but what particular form that takes in relationship to life after death?
It's not one of the questions that's really gripped. Me for me, it's been more. Like I said, Here we are now. What do we have right in front of us to that we can maximize and that's, that's a very entertaining way of contending with things. You know, mean, the fundamental religious orientation, I suppose would be something like, the, the attempt to do the most possible good in the most efficient manner at every moment possible.
And that's a very interesting Challenge and I think that in that challenge, there's a solution, let's say to the terror of death.
That's what it looks like to me the gospel stories, you know, the story of Christ's crucifixion. The moral of that story is something like, if you were willing to shoulder the full responsibility of your life with all of its catastrophe and malevolence that you would find a purpose that was sufficient to what would you say in Noble, you in the maximum possible Manner and also, in a way that would be beneficial to everyone else and I think that's true.
I think it's right. So
about continuing death is just about living your life to the fullest.
Yeah, well, I didn't, I think, in some ways, those are the same thing, because I think when you're living your life to the fullest, you're also contending with your vulnerability and like, your susceptibility to death. Let's say unto evil, you're contending with that as radically as you possibly can in every moment. And I think you can do that in a manner that makes you Victorious. I think that makes itself manifest in some
something like that. Deep sense of purpose that we were discussing before we know, as clinicians, we know that if people are anxious and timid and inhibited that if you have them practice, even in small increments, voluntarily confronting the things that they're afraid of that. That's radically Curative to get braver and stronger, their anxiety decreases. They develop more hope and purpose and there doesn't seem to be a limit to how much that can expand. So,
so,
It's not like you ignore your fears precisely let's say of death, definitely not, but I think it's more like you wrestle with that. That's why I titled my book. The way I did, we who wrestle with goddess, you're wrestling with your mortality and your vulnerability continually, and I think if you do that properly, use transcended at the same time. Well, you know, you know, that's the case, you know what to some degree. Because, you know, that the people that you admire are people who are brave in the face of adversity,
Adversity, they don't let things stop them, then you might ask. Well, what's the ultimate expression of that? That the passion story is a partial answer to that because the catastrophe that Christ walks through is the compilation of all potential catastrophes. And so it's in a way you could think about it. As the ultimate hero story is that if you're faced with the worst that life could throw at you even hypothetically.
Could you maintain your moral compass and your willingness to move forward? And you have to think that there is anything more admirable than that. We need the heroes, we watch on movie. Screens are always people who are indomitable in the face of obstacles. And I think there isn't a better description of the human Spirit than that. And I also think that acting out that pattern is what provides you with the deepest source of purpose and meaning
And and also that makes you admirable to other people. There's something very real about that. That's what you want to see in your kids. It's certainly what you admire in in Your Heroes and in yourself for that matter. If, you know, if you can muster the determination to two people that
you would consider your heroes or that you admire the most in your life
storage units. Alexander solzhenitsyn is one. He was the Russian dissident. Who wrote the gulag archipelago?
Ago and Took an Ax to the foundation of of the totalitarians in the 1970s extremely effectively. Remarkable person, he wrote a thirteen hundred page book that he basically memorized when he was in prison. So he was one of these characters who didn't let anything stop him and it wasn't just
He was on the Russian front. When WWII started, then he was in.
Terrible Gulag camps for very long period of time and he had cancer. It's like pretty brutal. Yeah, and yet he wouldn't allow herself to be silenced and he wrote this amazing book want to Nobel Prize for literature and brought down the Soviet Union. It's like
That's pretty impressive. Yeah. And historically documented, you know, so that's I have other intellectual Heroes. I suppose, Dostoyevsky, for example who's absolutely remarkable thinker and author and in the same vein as social Nets and also Russian interesting. Lee enough about Elon Musk. Hey man, it's hard not to admire Elon mosque. I mean good God. It's it's something to see someone do one impossible thing. Yeah I mean how many
Of all things is he doing at the same time and with with this hyper efficiency, it's
incredible. It's incredible. Incredible save person in the world,
right? It's hard to find a contender. Yeah, it's amazing. You know, and he's a great model for me. He's like a it's like a character in a work of fiction. Right. You know, so good for him. And from what I've been able to tell I've met him four times and we had a pretty thorough discussion when I
I talked to him publicly.
I think he's doing what he can to be a good person you do. I mean, no one's without their flaws and
Geniuses have their idiosyncratic, flaws obviously just like everyone does, but I think he's, I think it's quite clear that he's a net force for good and he's very inspiring person. You know. Can you do something difficult but what is must show you can do five impossible things at the same time and type in a hyper efficient manner. So
Good for him, man. It's real. I've been very fortunate, you know, I've met a lot of remarkable people, very brave people, Ayaan hirsi Ali God, she's deadly, Douglas Murray that guy's got a spine of Steel. Like bravery is rare in really is and people are generally timid and conventional and they'll go along with the Mad mob and some of that's positive because it's it's part of being social, but there are people who
You just can't move them. And I've been fortunate to meet a number of them. It's very it's it's really something to see it's been a privilege to meet them. So speaking of like heroic figures obviously you know you have a love for that. It's describing the people that you sort of like not necessarily look up to but you Meyer who is sure they look up, look up to admire. Why do you think there's such an attack on masculinity overall? Because it's not that, you know, not that women can't be heroic. But in general, there's been such an attack on mail.
Sort of masculinity were. So
some of it is actually, I think a consequence of the breakdown of the family because there are many women who have never had a positive relationship with man. Not a brother, not a father, not a lover, not a friend, all they see in masculinity is threat, and they're also unable to discriminate between competence and power. So they just attribute everything to power and dominance power and force.
And that's terribly indiscriminate because it's a crucial distinction between power-mad incompetent. But if you're a woman and all of your relationships with men have been fragmented, then it's not surprising that a, you're going to not be able to distinguish between power and competence and B. You're going to be skeptical and cynical about masculinity. You know? And then I would say it's not just the women driving it, although, the resentful
feminists have have certainly played the role, it's also tempting for men themselves to denigrate, the idea of say responsible heroism because if you believe in it then you're shamed by the fact that you're not that
And so, people are often willing to dispense with an ideal. If it frees them from judgment. Now, the problem with that is then you don't have an ideal and then you don't have a purpose. And that's, that's a pretty high price to pay, but the upside is well, you know, there are no Heroes means, I can do whatever the hell I want. Whenever I want for whatever reason I want and who's to say different. Now, you know, the answer to that is, well, you're going to be nihilistic hopeless.
Xiety ridden miserable and unpleasant to be around and that's quite a price to pay for your irresponsibility but the payoff is
not having to accept the responsibility. Yeah,
that's right. Yeah. You know, when you understand when you come to understand that there's no difference between taking responsibility and meaning when you start to understand that those are the same thing, then all of those attempts to flee responsibility look like ultimately counter
Octave. I mean one of the things I've noticed as I've gone around lecturing and its many places now, I mean, I don't know how many public lectures I've done.
It's hundreds, 600. Maybe many
one of the propositions that always brings audiences to silence is the
What would you say the suggestion that there's no difference between responsibility and meaning? This is something conservatives have been very bad at informing young people. It's like you want a meaningful life.
Pick up some responsibility, it's the same thing, the heavier, the load that you voluntarily shoulder, the more meaning there is in your life.
So, that's a great thing to know.
it changes the way you look at everything even even adversity because you start to understand mean my family and I have come under repeated public attacks and those attacks were often aimed at
Didn't devastating my career, my reputation there are serious attacks. What we've learned. Is that
There's an opportunity and every attack, and it's part of that old hero myth idea. You know, that every treasure has a dragon, right? That's it ancient story. But the corollary of that is that every dragon has a treasure really, really, and that can really change the way you look at your life, it's like something Dreadful comes along, you think, okay.
Unpleasant as this is, if I could see properly, I would be able to see what's in that, I could see where the Pearl is.
You know, and that's really worth knowing. I mean, we do that, I would say my family, we've learned to do that. Technically, even if if some Scandal erupts around me which happens with some degree of regularity, one of the first things we do now is look for the opportunity. Yeah, that's not cynical. It's like, okay, this is Roth but well, I can give you an example that journalists that have rake me over the coals most thoroughly, and with most malevolent intent have clearly
He done me the biggest favor.
They're the most popular interviews I ever did, they brought my work and my endeavours to the attention of many, many people, when's the book drop
no mid-november mid-november and have a Peterson Academy,
Peterson Academy launched, September 9th,
all right, we'll post those links in the description. Yeah, I appreciate you coming on, man. This is amazing.
Those are very useful programs for people. We got to
do that e-rep. Got to do the exercise.
Yeah. What are the things? My wife discovered, you know.
She's done this a couple of times everything she aimed out, she accomplished every single thing. And those some of those things were very, very complicated. Like, sorting out the relationship with her and her siblings in her and her father, and her father recently died. You know? And she had everything squared away. She'd said everything she wanted to say to him. Their relationship was put in place that's a huge. It's a huge accomplishment. Yeah so she had no regrets, you know? And
and I saw this as one of the things I loved about being a clinician, you know,
if you're treating yourself properly and you sort out your ambitions,
You can attain.
So then what you want to do is you have to think you have to, it's a discussion with yourself. What would it take to satisfy you with your life? Like, actually, if you could have what you needed, what would that be? You have to admit that to yourself, which is a complicated thing. But maybe you maybe, there are conditions under which you would think all the trouble that constitutes life is more than worthwhile
You have to figure out what that is, and then that's what you have to aim at. And I think there's every reason to assume that
If you're willing to make the proper sacrifices that you can, you can achieve your Visionary ends. There we go. Musk is doing. I mean, he's a remarkable person, but people are remarkable. So, who knows what you could do? Yeah, you guys have done, well, you know, and you're very young sky's the limit and that's a good thing to know, you know? It's you've got how old are you 30, right? So you've got 60 more years, right? Who knows what you could.
If you got yourselves fully together, you know, you were already a great position. You're very influential, you could do a world of good. That's a fun thing to figure out. Yeah. So the plan you know, one thing we could do. You think about this okay, do the future authoring program? All three and let's review it publicly. Let's do it. Let's walk through it and I can ask you because I learned learned what questions to ask people about their plans, you know, and to flesh them out because you want to have your plan tested, right to see if there's well, if there's something you
Could substitute that would be better or if there's weaknesses in it. You want to know that. Yeah. So think about that. And if you want to do that and I
love that.
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Let's do it. Let's do it. We could do that. Maybe we could do that around when the book
launches, all right. Jordan Peter, thank you so much.
Thank you sir. Thanks for the invitation. It's real. Good to get to know you guys a bit.
