#377: 12 Rules for Life With Jordan Peterson

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Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of The Art of Manliness podcast. Have you been stuck in a rut for a while that you did them for so long? You feel like there's no use in trying to get out of that slump? Maybe even start telling yourself that.

Can never get better. This is just the way things are. Is there even a point to all of this and as you ruminate over, these questions over and over, you feel more and more depressed and maybe even start to feel a bit resentful. Beautiful burglars reasonable toward life itself. Well, I guess it is that perhaps the way you start to get out of that. Rut is to clean your room. Bucko his name is Jordi Peterson. I've had him on the show before check out episode of er, 335 you haven't heard it yet. Peterson is a psychoanalyst and a lecture. He's got a new book out called 12 rules of life, and ended up to chaos today on the show, dr. Peterson. And I discussed, why men

Have been disengaging from work and family and why is YouTube lectures resonate with so many Modern Men? We then unpack. Why? It's so easy to get resentful about life before spending the rest of the conversation, discussing rules and guidelines that can help you navigate away from resentment and towards a life of meaning dr. Peterson explains. Why he thinks a meaningful life isn't possible, without religion or myths, what lobsters can teach us about assertiveness and why it's simple act like cleaning. Your room can be the stepping stone towards a better life after the show's over check out the show notes at aomg is / rules of life and dr. P.

Joy's me now via

Jordan Pederson, welcome to the show.

Thanks very much for the

invitation. So we had you on the show about five months ago, kind of talk about your work in general and your ideas on what you're trying to do. And I'd encourage people to listen to that episode to get a big picture view of what what Jordans doing. You've got a new book out 12 rules of Life antidote to chaos. So I'd like to get into some specifics. This time kind of build off what we talked about last time into more specifics and talk about what you do in the book. This podcast, The Art of Manliness. So I wanted to

With this, your primary audience tends to be men. I think you've mentioned in interviews that about 80% of your YouTube viewers are male. What do you think is going on there? Why do you think men are so drawn to your

message? Well, I'm not sure. It could be just a side effect of the fact that the most of the YouTube users are actually men. So there's that's playing a role although and so it's hard to separate out that basic Baseline fact, from whatever

more specifically might be going on, but I think that assuming that there is something specific that is attracting me and I think that what it is is a call to responsibility essentially.

I think the people are especially young men are sick and tired of being fed, a constant diet of, you're good enough, you should feel happy with who you are an endless diet of Rights and Freedoms will give you a meaningful life. And that's on that. That's on the sort of Pat you on the back, even though you don't deserve it side of reality. And then there's the lack of Call to Adventure. I would say. And the

Ation that men face increasingly that they're active presence in the world does nothing but contribute to tyranny and oppression, which I think is absolute. It's not only nonsense. It's, it's pernicious and destructive nonsense of the worst kind. And so, you know, I've been telling men instead or suggesting to them explaining it more than telling that it's necessary for them to grow up and get their act together. And to adopt some responsibility and to

Are a burden and to speak truthfully and to take responsibility because there's important things to do in the world and that the world will be a lesser place if they don't allow what's within them to come forward and I think that that's true and so I think that that's a message that reasonable young men who are somewhat lost are desperate for

so men aren't getting this message. Why we've had people on the podcast discuss how you know, different economists.

Geologists sociologists discussing how men are dropping out of public life, dropping out of school, the workforce etcetera, not getting married and, you know, doing all that stuff. Why do you think that message that you think is getting passed on to Med through the culture is causing men to basically withdraw from

society? Well, if you're not going to be rewarded for your virtues and instead you're going to be punished for them. Then what's your motivation to continue especially when it takes a fair bit of effort?

To say truthful things and to shoulder responsibility. And if the consequence of that, so, there's reason to avoid it to begin with just as a consequence of the difficulty, but if the net effect of doing that, is that you're accused. Before you even do anything wrong of being a, an upholder of rape culture and the patriarchal tyranny and the oppressive West, then why in the world would you want to contribute to that? Especially if you start to believe it? You know, some of it's just a matter of accepting excuses.

Has and, and taking the easy way out. And some of it's a matter of becoming guilty enough to actually believe it withdrawing from active engagement in the world, the people who are going after masculinity, let's say as toxic can't distinguish between tyrannical power and competence. In fact for them, there is no distinction between those two things, which shows you just how addled they really are, because it's extraordinarily important to discriminate between competence and power. You know, in the postmodern types, especially the neo-marxists think

Well competence. That's just how you justify your claim to your position. It's really just power. You're just defining competence in a way that benefits you, but that's idiotic. So it doesn't really require much of an argument. It's certainly no one ever acts like that. If you have a car and it doesn't work, you take it to a competent mechanic. If you if your father's heart is failing, you take him to a competent surgeon and you don't think, oh, well, that person is just there because of the, you know, the

Turn patriarchy and the privilege of of the oppressor so it's nonsense, it's resentful cowardly, ideologically possessed pathological nonsense and it's extremely dangerous. And so I've been saying that about as bluntly as I just said it and I think that more and more people are realizing that it's gone far enough. I'm sure hoping they are

one of the other dangers to of this sort of resentful added to that you're talking about. Is that the men who

Withdrawal or even just people who would draw, could be a woman. Do, they tend to attends to lead to nihilism and resentment themselves, right? They withdraw, and he starts to Fester. I mean, what's going on?

Yeah. Well, the thing is, the thing about life is very difficult life. There's an old ain't one of the most ancient of religious ideas that and emerges everywhere. I would say is that life is essentially suffering. And what that means is that while people are fragile and

And vulnerable and mortal and prone to physical Decay and mental illness and to a fair share of malevolence as well were fragile creatures. And that means that life is hard and painful and anxiety provoking and you need something to set against that that's worthwhile and that's that's your destiny in the world. Say you're positive Destiny in the world and if you don't have something positive to set against that and your life is nothing but struggle and pain.

And with, with the occasional foray into malevolence or victimization by malevolence, then all you do is suffer stupidly, and that makes you bitter and resentful. And then, you know, that's just the beginning of your trouble because bitter and resentful, that's just where you start the descent into hell, you know, you go from bitter and resentful to vengeful and to, and too cruel. And and, and way past that, if you really want to pursue it, and in people,

Pursue that all the time. It's not like it doesn't happen. It's not like this is some abstract dream. All those high school shootings, all these mass shootings, they're all carried out by people who walk down that road a very long distance. I wrote about that in chapter 6. It's rule, 6 is called set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world. And it's about the motivations of people like the Columbine, High School shooters and the mass rapist, the serial rapist Carl.

Ram who features very heavily in that chapter and it's a meditation on people's motivation, for for evil which is which exists in all of us and no wonder like it's understandable that doesn't make it, right? So the book 12 rules for life is a very serious book. There's there's elements of humor in it, but, you know, I'm trying to struggle with things at the deepest possible level and to explain to people why it's necessary to live, upstanding and Noble. And

And moral and truthful, and responsible life, and and why there's hell to pay if you don't do that. So that seems to be bizarrely enough and attractive

message, tell people life is hard and here's how to handle

it. You all that's it. Well, everyone knows life is hard and it's not just hard. It can be unbearably hard and and it's worse than hard, because sometimes the hardship is inflicted upon you by yourself, or by someone close to you or, or sometimes by an enemy.

Errors. But sometimes by a friend, do you get betrayed? And it's not just that it's hard. You're you're also subject to evil your subject to malevolence and that makes it even worse and and everyone knows this. And so you need something to set against that you need a noble way of being to set against that. And the thing is, you know, all of everything I've said so far in this program, I would say in some sense is very dark and pessimistic, you know. But what's optimistic is that having

Being established the truth of the matter, the suffering of life and the malevolence, that's part of it. You can also discover that living a meaningful life in the face of that a responsible meaningful truthful, life is actually possible and it actually works. That's the thing. That's the optimistic thing. You know, it's not so bad to say to people. Look, we've got a real problem here. It's no joke. It's a dead serious problem. It's the fragility of your life and he'll all balled up into one.

But that's okay because there's an antidote to it. There's something you can do about it and you could start today and well that's what I try to detail out 12 rules for life and in my lectures online as well and I believe it to be the case as pessimistic as I am about the nature of human beings and our capacity for atrocity, and malevolence, and betrayal, and and laziness and inertia. And all those things, I think we can transcend all that and set things straight. And I think that people can literally start

Art today. So, and you know, I've had thousands of people write me now and and thousands of people talk to me as well because it's up in those numbers now. And they're saying, well, look, I've been watching your YouTube videos and listening to to the information that you're providing and I decided to start putting my life together. So I tried. I've been trying really hard for the last three or four months and it's really working, you know, I'm getting along better with my girlfriend and maybe we're getting married and I have a job now, and

Pursuing it and I'm out of my nihilistic pit of despair and you know, thank God for that. What a lovely thing to hear from people, so, hooray. Hooray. Yeah. Well, I mean,

in your war, in your work, in your lectures and in this book, you you look to myths and stories from all around the world, but also primarily from the Bible, you did a whole lecture on the Old Testament to provide and use these to provide a framework for a meaningful life. I'm curious, you know, we're live in

A sort of post in a secular age as it's been called. Do you think it's possible to chart a meaningful life without resorting to religious or mythical stories? And if not,

you know, I not know, I don't believe so because the story of a meaningful life is a religious story by definition. So no, it's not possible. People have oriented themselves with stories forever and the greatest stories are about the proper way to orient yourself in life, and the deeper they are.

The more accurate they are, let's say and the deeper they are, the more they move into the territory. That is religious in nature. What religious means. Essentially in the final analysis is something like profound or deep or Eternal. And there are Eternal truths that are necessary to to it's necessary to live by Eternal truth. It's an eternal truth that life is suffering.

It will never go away that truth and it's an eternal truth that living in truth and living responsibly is the proper antidote to that. And when you talk about things at that level of generality, let's say, and and applicability and depth, and you're in the religious domain, like it or not. Now, you might say, well, does that have anything to do with God? That's a separate question. I would say and and well, I think you can. You can, you can have a reasonable

Difference of opinion about that, but the religious is part of Human Experience. It's part of everyone's experience. It's, it's what you experience. When you listen to a particularly moving piece of music or when you're deeply affected in a, in a play or at a movie or even buy something that someone tells you or when you're deeply engrossed in your life, something engaging that you're that, you're actively something meaningful that you're actively engaged in. These are all.

This experiences and and they're part of the instinctual landscape of human beings. It isn't even a question we know this, you can evoke mystical experiences in the lab, it's part and parcel of the, of The Human Condition. Now, we don't know the meta physical significance of that, but I would say it's a bit too early to say that. It's that there's none, you know. I do believe that the appropriate way to conceive of human beings is that were part material and more.

All and finite and part immaterial and and metaphysical and divine. I believe that's the most accurate way to think about human beings. And I also know that the cultures that are predicated on that view of the human being are the ones that work, you know, when you interact with yourself, if you treat yourself in part, as if you were a Transcendent being capable of much more than you are currently managing, if you treat the people,

Around, you like that. And you act like that in the world. You'll be radically successful in your endeavors. Everyone loves to be treated lab like that and perhaps it's because that's the way that they really

are. So make sure to see if I'm getting you. You think that or you're suggesting that we need to tap into a meaning that's outside or external to us because like you know, you talk about Nicha each, you know, said with the death of God, we have to create our new values, write our own meaning, right? Then come the Ubermensch is that

No, no, I don't think so. See, you asked me at the beginning of this conversational string, whether it was possible for us to, to live in a completely secular manner without, let's say returning to the religious depths and that was Nietzsche's, suggestion, that we do. So that we discover our own values or create them, but he had just started to work out that idea in the few short years before he

Died. I think the psychoanalysts criticized that idea to death by discovering that there were forces that operated within us that are not under our control. I don't think that you can create your own values. I think you can co-create them, but a huge part of it is Discovery. You know if you you can't make something in your life meaningful, if it isn't meaningful, you can't force that on yourself, you have to discover it, you know.

Because I could say to you, what, why don't you watch your life for the next month and notice? When what you're involved in is deeply, meaningful? Just notice it as if you don't control it or understand it and then strive to start doing more of that. And what you'll find is that you have to discover it, you can't make it happen. It sort of comes upon you, rather than being something that you can command.

So would you guys what you think we could do?

Into the rules with the 12 rules. Do of course, is list, isn't exhaustive? I guess it sets up the, the parameters for you, for you to discover that meaning, right? Doesn't force it, but it sets, the, the groundwork for you to actually have those meaningful experiences. I know, I

do also. It also helps explain that. That's what's happening, you know, so we could look at it this way. So, I believe that the experience of meaning is an instinct and you could think about it as the ordering instinct,

It's more like the balancing Instinct but we'll start with ordering. There's a lot inside of you that needs to be ordered and set straight. Like you are a collection of motivations and emotions and thoughts and, and Proto actions and desire desires while I suppose. Those are the same as motivations. You're a loose collection of all those things, and something has to bring all of that into a functioning order, and the experience of deep engagement.

But the experience of meaning, I think, is the manifestation of the Instinct that orders, you and it orders, you ended orders your family and it orders the world, the broader world as well. And that instinct isn't some secondary consequence of some more important biological function. Let's say it's it is that very function and I think we know enough about Neuroscience now. I think we know enough about how the brain operates to just make that statement categorically. So,

My hypothesis is being in. This is this is not a fully original hypothesis. It's based on the work of neuro, scientists, whose research? I know well and respect greatly. Very hard-headed people. They believe, for example, that the left hemisphere is specialized for operation in explored territory. And that the right hemisphere is specialized for operation in unexplored territory or or that the left hemisphere handles things that have been routinized and

Practiced and the right hemisphere handles things that are novel. Well, you need to practice things, you need to know what you're doing, and you have to have a place where that works. So that would be explored territory or order or routine and so part of your brain works well there. But then that's surrounded. Always buy things that you don't understand. And so there's another part of your brain that has to work with the things you don't understand and the sense of meaning occurs, when you get those two.

Systems working properly together so that you're partly stable and secure and operating where, you know, what's going to happen next. And it's going to be something that you want but also expanding your competence at the same time and pushing yourself and stretching yourself, so that if things shift on you, then you're going to be ready and prepared, and that's a deep Instinct. That's the Instinct of meaning. As far as I can tell.

It's it's an unerring guide to proper action in the world. See we've lost faith in the idea of meaning intrinsic meaning, but I think that's a big mistake. I think it's a big mistake. I don't think it's warranted by the facts,

so let's get into some of your specific rules. The first rule you asked readers to consider the lobster. What can a giant sea bug? Teach us about living a meaningful

life? Well, it can teach us something very profound about life itself, you know.

One of the criticisms that's thrown forward very commonly today by the postmodern neo-marxist social constructionist types, who believe that human beings don't have any real nature and that everything is only construction of the social world. Is that the observation that animals live in hierarchical structures and have, for a third of a billion years. So, the idea that the

Tree hierarchy, let's say, is somehow a cultural construction is preposterous nonsense. It's an idea that has no bearing. No grounding whatsoever in the facts of the matter. Now, the particulars of a human hierarchy can be shaped by cultural forces clearly, but the fact of hierarchical organization is something unspeakably ancient. And so ancient that even these giant sea

Insects that you describe the lobsters the Crustaceans from whom we separated about a third of a billion years ago in The evolutionary. Climb forward, they live in hierarchies as well in the same neural chemical systems mediate. Their behavior in the hierarchies that mediate our behavior in our hierarchies. So one of the amazing things is amazing demonstration of biological continuity. Is that if a lobster is fighting with another lobster for a position in a

And he loses, then he'll make himself small and and, and Crouch down and collapse physically and run off and hide and won't fight again. But if you give him antidepressants to oversimplify slightly, if you give him a antidepressants, then he'll stand up straight and go out and fight again. And the reason I wrote about that is because it's it's definitive proof and not the only Source by the way that

Existence itself, social existence itself is deeply hierarchical and that your hierarchical position governs. Your posture. There's a reciprocal relationship between the two and your emotional well-being and so knowing how to conduct yourself in a hierarchical relationship and hierarchical relationships is extremely important and one thing you can do is improve your posture. If things aren't going well for you, if you if you feel put down and victimized and if people are picking on you, it might be

You're broadcasting the wrong signals, and to stand up straight well that starts to regulate your nervous system, right, then and there and to stand up straight and face. The world forthrightly means that people will treat you with more respect and you can get a virtuous spiral developing. And so it's an injunction to paying attention to how you hold yourself in the world and an explanation of why that's deeply deeply important and not merely a consequence of some sociological

Yes, so that's rule one,

yes. But what do you do? Because it's suffering these status defeats right over and over. Again, it creates a vicious cycle, it just causes you to do things that actually hurt you more, in the long run, how do you find it in you? When you say, you're someone's listening to us and they've just, I mean, they're they feel like a loser, right? How do they find it in to stand taller and kind of face the world and fight the world when they suffered those status defeats over and over again?

Well, I think I would say that much of the rest of the book is

About that about what you can do to put yourself together. I mean, the first thing I would say is that it's a very dangerous thing to construe yourself as a particularized victim, mean, people people definitely encounter defeats over and over again. I would say that's even part of life. Hopefully, you can learn from them and you can stop making the same mistake over and over. I would say, well like rule, I think it's rule. 8 is tell the truth or at least don't lie. That's a really good place to start. If you're

Suffering, continual defeats. There's a high probability that you're not saying the things that you need to say and you're not living your life in an integrated and and and what would you say an integrated and forthright manner? There's things that you're leaving on done. Now I know sometimes people find themselves in terrible situations and everything that's happening around them is arbitrary and unfair but that's very rare. It's very rare that people are in a situation that's so terrible that there isn't

Something they're doing, that's making it worse and so you know, rule two is treat yourself. Like you're someone who's worth helping. Well, that's a good attitude to adopt to yourself, and to adopt with regards to yourself, and you might start to think about what it would mean to help yourself. So we have this program online called the self authoring sweet. And there's one component of it. Helps you write an autobiography so that you can figure out where you are and how you got there. That's helpful. Another component helps you, analyze your personality faults and virtues.

You so you can figure out who you are and it third component helps. You write a plan for the future. You might say, well, if your life isn't going the way you want it to, then start to think about what you want. What do you want from your friends? What do you want from your family? What do you want from your Intimate Relationships? How are you going to educate yourself? What are your career goals? How are you going to handle the Temptations of drugs and alcohol and other forms of Temptations mean, if you were take care of yourself properly, how would you put your life together across those Dimensions? What would

Vision for yourself. Look like three to five years down the road. If you were taking care of yourself and Rule, three is make friends with people who want the best for you. Well, that's another thing that you can put straight, you know, if you are surrounding yourself with people who are happy when you're defeated and unhappy when you're successful, even if they call themselves, your friends, perhaps, even if they call themselves, your family is you should step away from people like that because they're not looking out for what's Best in you. You have every

Right? And even an ethical responsibility to surround yourself with people who are going to be happy when good things happen to you for good reasons. And there's lots of things you can do. I mean, one of the things that I've suggested to people is that they clean up their rooms instead of protesting in the street and that's become a bit of an internet meme and you know if if things aren't going well for you then I would say start fixing the little things that are in front of you that

Could fix and don't stop and see what happens. Try it for a year, try it for two years, really? Dedicate yourself to it. Quit lying and saying things that make you weak and sort out what you have right in front of you that you can fix and that can remove the bitterness to. You can least run it as an experiment. Say well I'm not going to be bitter and nihilistic for a year. I'm really going to hit this hard. I'm going to make a goal. Going to develop a vision and I'm going to play the game as hard as I can for a year.

And then I'll reevaluate. It's like, well, that's a good plan, man. Yeah, that'll help.

So yeah, fixing those small things is a way to increase competency power. You know, if that we're making comedy sequel power. So there's a Nietzsche quote, like Joy is the feeling of power increasing, right? Enjoys the feeling of Competency increasing. So as you clean your room and do others little small things, you start to feel better about life.

Well, they're also not so small, you know, like if you live in a house that's really chaotic, you know.

Your parents are alcoholics and your, you know, an overgrown child and the place is a filthy hellhole and everybody is aiming down and there's always carping and bitterness and resentment everywhere. You try to clean up your room in a place like that, you'll find that there's nothing small about it at all. It's really hard. It's really difficult. It'll take a lot out of you. You'll face unbelievable opposition from the people around you and you'll have to fight through that too. So these things that people think are small like

Like, sorting out their own household. It's like that's not small, man. That's really hard. It's really hard. And if you get good at that, if you get so that you can put your room and put yourself in order and then put your room in order and then put your household in order. Like you're well on the way to being Unstoppable,

the only go back to that idea that rule of speaking the truth, right? And you you did you said that in reference to you know figuring out where you are now in life and using the self authoring tools that you have helped you do that. How do you

What's the advice you give to people to ensure? They're actually depicting reality as it is because we're storing. We don't think we're storytelling or storytelling animals. So we could say the story while I'm here because of you know such and such thing and I'm a victim of blah, blah blah. But yeah, you ignore the things that you

contributed. Well, okay, so you've got two questions. There is one is, how do you, how do you know that what you're saying is the truth and the second is, how do you test the stories that you tell yourself, right? Right in those are both really good questions. So, let's start with the first one.

I don't think you can know if you're telling the truth but because who knows the truth, right? The truth is is, is in some senses, an unreachable goal. But one thing you can do and you can do this right away. Is you can stop saying things, you know, to be false. So the chapters actually called, tell the truth, or at least don't lie and I would say, well, it's very difficult to have your vision clear enough so that you can see the truth. But by the same token,

Okin virtually. Everyone knows when they're lying at least some of the time and could stop doing that and that's good enough. If you stop saying things that, you know, to be lies, then you'll start clarifying your vision and you'll get better and better at perceiving the truth. Even though you'll never get, you'll never get to the point where you, where you have it in your grasp, right? So never receding goal. And then with regards to the story that you tell yourself, well, this is what's made me into a pragmatist technically

Speaking of the William James CS purse type, what's the purpose of memory people ask? Well, it's to remember the past said, that's the wrong answer, the purpose of memories to help you, stop doing the stupid things you did in the past that hurt you. And so if you have an accurate representation of the past and its failures, then you won't repeat the failures into the future. You know, let's say you have a lot of resentment about women, just for the sake of argument, you've had a lot of bad relationships and you have a lot of

That meant about how women are and how they've treated you. And you have a theory about women and men and about their relationship in the world. And you keep telling yourself that theory and acting it out in the world and all that happens. Is you have one bad relationship after another. It's like well clue in there. Something wrong with your theory. If you keep applying it in the and the same pathological things keep happening, then, perhaps there's something wrong with you the way you formulated the story, you know, and you can't complain.

Lane about women, you know what I mean? Women is not a category that you get to complain about because women for men present a huge part of the challenge of life and it's up to you to reconfigure yourself so that you can have a successful relationship with a woman. And if you don't, then you're wrong, it's as simple as that,

right? It's like that saying, if everyone you meet Saint a hold and you're probably the a whole.

Well, hate going to ask yourself at some point. How much of it and you, maybe you

Hope that that's the case because of its everyone else. Well, good luck to you, but if it's just you well you might be able to change that, you know. You have you you come out and make a statement. You say every woman I've ever known as betrayed me. It's like well, you know you might ask yourself if there's a reason for that. Well, it's just the way women are. It's like, well, no, actually, it's just the way you are. It's either you are. It's all women. So pure, Occam's razor Simplicity and humility.

He would also suggest that you're the one with the problem. So if the world keeps slapping you in the face at some point, you have to wonder if if it's trying to tell you something, you ever see the movie Groundhog Day of

it's one of my favorites.

Classic Groundhog Day, is a great movie and and that's that Groundhog Day has the proper mythological structured. So religious movie about death and rebirth, it's brilliant. Well, if every, if every one of your days is Groundhog Day than it's time to wake,

He'll up again. So I guess you when you tell your story, you figure that out, maybe a heuristic to use would be questioned it like Gail. How could this not be true or why? Why would I have this story? What other explanation

would it be well? Well, it's if your life isn't what you would like it to be, then there's some possibility that the story you're telling yourself about it is wrong, you might as well just assumed that.

Why not assume that it's like well I don't have anything I want. Okay well maybe what you want is wrong or maybe the way that your, your theory about being in the world is incorrect. Your theory about yourself is incorrect. Your ideas about other people are incorrect and that's why things aren't working out for you. There's a little section in the book. I took a piece from a TS Eliot play called the cocktail hour. And in that play a woman, approaches a psychiatrist at it at a cocktail party.

And says, I need to talk to you for a minute. I'm having real serious problems. My life is not going. Well, I'm, I'm suffering far too much and I have this idea. I really hope there's something wrong with me and that you can help me figure out what it is, and the psychiatrist is sort of taken aback. And he says, well, why do you hope that there's something wrong with you? And she says, well, I'm having a terrible time of it and if it's, if there's something wrong with me, then maybe I can fix it but if there's something wrong with the world and that's just how it is. Well then I don't see that I have any

Hope at all. And so that's it's such an optimistic idea. It's echoed in the New Testament statement. You should take the log out of your own eye before, you worry about the dust mote, in your neighbors eye. And that's also, right? It's like, if your life isn't what it should be, then assume that it's your fault. Now, I know that's harsh, because I know that people that terrible things happen to people in and they're often arbitrary, but it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter. It's still the right way to face the world face the world as if the excess

Suffering that you're undergoing is your fault and you could do something about it and you'll find that there's more that you can do about it. Then you

think this kind of ties into my next question. This idea of sacrifice that you've lectured a lot about and you right, you know, a great deal about. I think you might even like she's you said that sacrifice is like the greatest human invention,

ever see at the discovery of the future. If you only live in the present like an animal, then you have to do the next thing that's necessary, whatever that happens to be.

But if you're a human being things are more complex because you have to do whatever needs to be done next in a way that doesn't interfere with the future or maybe even makes the future better. And what that often means is that you don't get you don't get to do exactly what you want. Right now you don't get to pursue your impulses because you're going to pay a price for that tomorrow or next week or next month or next year. Instead you often have to give up something of value now.

To obtain something of higher value later. And that's basically the sacrificial Motif these archaic people who were sacrificing something of value to God, were acting out the idea that you had to give up something of value in the present so that you could establish a better future and that's really the motif of work, right? Because work is the sacrifice of the moment for the benefit of the future. And the funny thing is the strange thing is that

Rifice actually works. It actually pays off you. Can you actually can bargain with the future? Which is well, I describe why that is in great detail in, in 12 rules for life. But one of, then you might ask yourself and also write about this. I believe it's in rule 7, which is do, what is Meaningful? Not, what is expedient? You have to sacrifice to get ahead? Well, what's what does getting ahead mean? What would be the best possible ahead?

Well, that's sort of conceptualized, religiously and ideas like paradise or heaven. And then, you might say, well, what is the ultimate sacrifice that you have to make in order to get ahead to reach Paradise or have a? Well, you have to sacrifice yourself to what's good, essentially, something like that. You sacrifice everything week. That's a everything about yourself. That's weak to the good. It's something like that and that's just accurate, that's painful because

You know, people are generally not very well constituted, they're not very mature, they're they're not, they're not very articulate, they're not aiming very high and so when they start sacrificing parts of themselves, they may find that there's a lot to burn off, maybe almost everything. But the end goal the end consequence of that hopefully the aim that's being pursued is of sufficient Grandeur to justify that.

Should that's the, that's the Phoenix Wright. The Phoenix bursts into flame Burns off, everything that's old, and is then reborn. That's a, that's a symbol of the Savior, the Phoenix. And if something you do to yourself, it's like everything old and dead about you. You want to let go of let it burn off it's painful, but because it's alive, but it's just dead wood. You don't need it. That's part of the sacrifice of yourself, right?

And it sounds like sacrifices a skill. It's like something you have to learn. And

Notice

that it is a skill. There's no doubt about it. Part of the skill is setting. Your goal think, well, what? So, what would I say, what's a good goal? Well, let's start from the initial premises that life is Dreadful suffering tainted with malevolence. All right, so everyone can agree on that. That's a little harsh, but it seems accurate. Okay, fine. That's the Baseline. All right now, now how do you solve that problem? Well, you have to Embark upon an adventure, that's so.