Jordan Peterson: "When You Listen To The Unconscious, Life Makes Sense"

Added: 2026-05-30

[00:00:01]There are parameters within which conscience has to operate and that it's it's sort of like this. It's like it's [clears throat] the same parameters that govern fair play. We'll say that. And so you can say there's fair play within a game and there's fair play across sets of games. And the set of games is pretty much indistinguishable from the actual environment. Right? If you think about all the things you do as nested games at at some point, the spread of that is large enough so it encompasses everything you do, which includes the environment. And so I I believe that you're adapted to the set of all possible games, roughly speaking, all possible playable games, something like that. And that you know the rules for that, which is why we we talked about this a little bit, why you're so good at identifying cheaters. You have a module for that according to the evolutionary psychologists. And you not only do you identify them, but you really remember them. It really sticks in your mind. And there's other evidence too. So one piece of evidence that I love I think it's so well there's a couple. One I would derive from France Dewal who's a famous primatologist and he studied he studied the prototype morality that emerges in chimpanzees and it's very much rest nested in their dominance structures.

[00:01:15]You know, because you could think of morality in some sense as the understanding of the rules by which the dominance hierarchy operates, right? And so you could say, well, the biggest, ugliest, meanest chimp and the male dominance hierarchies in chimps seem to be the predominant ones, although the females also have a dominance hierarchy in it. It's not quite so clear in Bonabos, uh, which seem to be more female dominated, but in any case, um, the chimp, primary chimp dominant structure is male. And you could think, well, it's like the caveman chimp who's biggest and toughest, who necessarily rules and who rules longest. But that isn't what Dewal found. See, the problem with being mean, let's say, and not not negotiating your social landscape and not trading reciprocal favors is that no matter how powerful you are as an individual, two pe two individuals, threearters your power can do you in. And that happens with the chimps fairly regularly. If the guy on top is too tyrannical and doesn't make social connections, then weaker chimps, males, make good social connections. And when he's not in such good shape, they take him down and viciously too. Dewal has has documented some unbelievably horrendous acts of let's call it regicide in among the chimpanzeee troops that he studied mostly in the Arnum Zoo. They have a big troop there and that's been there a long time. But he's very interested in prototypical morality. And here's some other examples of prototypical morality emerging among animals. There's many of them, but one is u you know if two wolves have a dominance dispute that again that would be more likely among the male wolves, but doesn't really matter. They basically display their size and they growl ferociously and puff up their hair so they look bigger. And you know, you can see cats do that when they're they go into fight or flight, right? Not only do they puff up, including their tail, but they stand sideways. And and the reason they do that is because they look bigger, right?

[00:03:09]because they're trying to put out the most intimidating possible front. So anyways, if two wolves are going at it, they're what they're really trying to do is to size each other up and they're trying to scare each other into backing off fundamentally because see the worst case scenario is like you're wolf number one and I'm wolf number two and we tear each other to shreds but I win but I'm so damaged after that that wolf number three comes in and takes me out. So like there's a big cost to be paid even for victory in a dominance dispute if it degenerates into violence. And animals and human beings, but animals in particular have evolved very very specific mechanisms to escalate dominance disputes towards violence step by step so that they don't so that the victor doesn't risk incapacitating himself by winning. So, what happens with the wolves is that, you know, they growl at each other in posture and display and maybe they even snap at each other, but the probability that they're going to get into a full-fledged fight is pretty low. And what happens is one of the wolves backs off and flips over and shows his neck. And that basically means, "All right, tear it out, you know, and the other wolf says, of course, he doesn't, "Well, you're kind of an idiot and you're not that strong, but we might need you to take down a moose in the future. And so, you know, despite your patheticness, I won't tear out your throat. And then they've established their dominance position.

[00:04:31]And then from then on, at least for some substantial period of time, the subordinate wolf gives way to the dominant wolf. But at least the subordinate wolf is alive. And you know, he might be dominant over other wolves.

[00:04:42]And so, everyone in the whole hierarchy has sorted that out through either through mock combat or through combat itself. And you know, the low ranking members aren't in the best possible position, but at least they're not getting their heads torn off every second of their existence. And so there's even some utility in the stability of the dominance harchy for the lowranking members because at least they're not getting pounded, they're getting threatened, which is way better.

[00:05:07]I mean, it's not good, but it's way better than actual combat. And then there's the example of rats, which I love. This is Yak Pankp's work and he wrote a book called Affective Neuroscience which I which I would highly highly recommend. I have a list of readings recommended readings on my website. It's a brilliant book and he's a brilliant psychologist. Really one of the top top psychologists as far as I'm concerned both theoretically and experimentally. A real genius, huh? He's the guy who discovered that rats laugh when you tickle them. They laugh ultrasonically so you can't actually hear them. But if you record it and slow it down, then you can hear them giggling away when you tickle them with an eraser, which is sort of like their mother's tongue. It's often what lab people use as a substitute for the licking of the little rat by the mother.

[00:05:52]So, so, and he discovered the play circuit in mammals, which is like a major deal, right? He should get a Nobel Prize for that. That's a big deal to discover an entire motivational circuit whose existence no one had really predicted you know apart from the fact that obviously mammals play and uh even lizards maybe some of the more social lizards seem to play you know so anyhow what panks have observed I think this is a brilliant piece of science is that first of all juvenile male rats in particular like to rough and tumble play. They like to wrestle and they actually pin each other just like little kids do or like adult wrestlers do. They pin their shoulders down and that basically means you win. And so, okay, so that's pretty cool. But what's even cooler, I think, well, there's three things. One is the rats will work for an opportunity to get into an arena where they know that play might occur. And so that's one of the scientific ways of testing an animal's motivation, right?

[00:06:48]So imagine you have a starving rat and it knows that it's got food down the end of a corridor. You can put a little spring on its tail and measure how hard it pulls and that gives you an indication of its motivational force.

[00:07:00]Now imagine the starving rat that's trying to get to some food and you have a little spring on his tail and you waft in some cat odor. So now that rat is starving and wants to get out of there.

[00:07:11]He's going to try to pull even farther towards the food. So getting away plus getting forward are separate motivational systems. And if you can add them together, it's real potent. And part of the reason why in the future authoring exercise that you guys are going to do as the class progresses, you're asked to outline the place you'd like to end up, which is your desired future. And also the place that you could end up if you let everything fall apart, is so that your anxiety chases you and your approach systems pull you forward. You're maximally motivated then. And it's important because otherwise you can be afraid of pursuing the things that you want to pursue, right? And that's very common. And so then the fear inhibits you as the promise pulls you forward, but it makes you weak because you're afraid. You want to get your fear behind you, pushing you. And so what you want to be is afraid, more afraid of not pursuing your goals than you are of pursuing them.

[00:08:03]It's very, very helpful. And lots of times in life, and this is something really worth knowing, you know, and this is one of the advantages to being an autonomous adult, is you don't get to pick the best thing. You get to pick your poison. You have two bad choices and you get to pick which one you're willing to suffer through. And every choice has a bit of that element in it.

[00:08:23]And so if you know that, it's really freeing because otherwise you torture yourself by thinking, well, maybe there's a good solution to this, you know, compared to the bad solution. It's like, no, no. Sometimes there's just risky solution one and risky solution two, and sometimes both of them are really bad, but you at least get to pick which one you're willing to suffer through. And that's that actually makes quite a bit of difference because you're also facing it voluntarily then instead of it chasing you. And that is an entire different entirely different psychophysiological response. Challenge versus threat, it's not the same even if the magnitude of the problem is the same. And so putting yourself in a challenging let's call it mind frame you can't just do that by magic. Putting yourself in a challenging mind frame is much be much easier on you psychophysiologically because you don't produce you don't go into the generalized stress response to the same degree and you're activating your exploratory and seeking systems which are dopamineergically mediated and that involve positive emotion. So if you can face something voluntarily rather than having it chase you it's way better for you psychophysiologically.

[00:09:31]So that's partly why well it's worthwhile to go find the dragon in its lair instead of waiting for it to come and eat you. So and especially when you also add the idea that if you go find the dragon in its lair, you might find it when it's a baby instead of a full-fledged bloody monster that is definitely going to take you down. And so that's part of the reason why well there's a whole bunch of things that that that emerge out of that observation like don't avoid small problems that you know are there face them because they'll grow into big problems all by themselves. And you can think about imagine the tax department sends you a notification. You owe them like $300.

[00:10:11]Well, it's you know that's annoying.

[00:10:14]Maybe you don't even want to open the letter or maybe if you do you just put it on the shelf. But that damn thing doesn't just sit there like a piece of paper on the shelf, right? You ignore that for five or six years, it's going to become attached to all sorts of horrible things. And if you ignore it long enough, you get the idea. It's going to turn into something that is completely unlike the little piece of paper that it's written on. And and many many problems in life are like that.

[00:10:38]You'll see they'll you'll see that they pop their ugly little head up and you know, and you might want to turn away.

[00:10:44]you might not want not want to think about it, which is the easiest way of turning away, right? You just don't attend to it. It's not like you repress it or anything like that. You just fail to attend to it. And that's a really as a long-term strategy, it's dismal. It's also something I think that's more characteristic of people who are high in neuroticism and high in agreeableness because agreeable people don't like conflict. And people who are high in neuroticism, who are high in negative emotion, are hit harder per unit of uncertainty or threat. And so, you know, and that's partly why in psychotherapy a lot of times the people you see need assertiveness training. So, that would be the opposite of agreeableness or they need to help get their anxiety and emotional pain under control. It's those are not the only reasons. There's antisocial behavior, but you can't fix that in therapy in all likelihood.

[00:11:32]There's alcoholism. There's lots and lots of other reasons, but those are two major reasons. So anyways, there is a that was all to tell you that oh yes, back to the rats. Okay, the rats are pulling on the you can measure rat motivation by how hard they pull on the on the spring, let's say, and they're more motivated if they're running away and running towards, but let's go back to play. So you can take juvenile rats who haven't been able to play for a while. Maybe they've been isolated or maybe they just haven't been able to engage in physical activity like many school children that you might be thinking about. um neither allowed to play nor allowed to engage in physical activity. And there's a reason I'm telling you that. So anyways, you get one of these little rats and you can measure how hard he wants how hard it he'll pull to go out and play or how many buttons he'll push, you know, and that's gives you an indication of his motivation. So anyways, you can see that a playdeprived juvenile rat will fight harder to play than a non-play deprived juvenile rat. And so you can in infer that the rat wants to go play. And uh you know you do that you do the same measurement with everyone around you. If they want to do something you're going to poke and prod at them to see what sort of things they're willing to overcome in order to go and do that.

[00:12:45]You'll object even if you don't really object. It's like it's a measurement device. And if they're willing to overcome a bunch of your objections, then you think, "Oh, well maybe they really want to." And that's another thing to really know. If there's something you want, you need about five arguments about why you want it because the probability that the person who's opposing you will have five arguments about why you shouldn't have it is very low. They just won't have thought it through enough. So the other thing that happens in the future authoring exercise is that you're asked to articulate the reasons for all the goals that come out of your vision of the future. So you're asked like why would it be good for you?

[00:13:23]Why would it be good for your family?

[00:13:24]why would it be good for broader society? So, that gives you three levels of argumentation right there. And if you have it articulated down into detail and it's related to other important goals, then you're you're a hell of a thing to argue with because people just aren't that deep. By which I mean they just don't have that many levels of explanation or objection. And it's also really useful in relationship to your own mind because if you want to do something that's difficult and and that requires energy. A lot of different subsystems in your mind are going to throw up objections. It's like, well, maybe that isn't what you should be doing right now. Maybe you should be doing the dishes or vacuuming or watching TV or looking at YouTube or if you're really sneaky. When you're trying to do something hard, what your brain does is give you something else hard to do that's not quite as hard so that you can feel justified in not doing the thing you're supposed to because you're doing something else useful. And if you give into that temptation, which you often will, then it wins. And because it wins, it gets a little dopamine kick and it grows stronger. Every anything you let win, the internal argument grows.

[00:14:27]And anything you let be defeated shrinks because it's punished. It doesn't get to have its way. So that's another thing really to remember is don't practice what you do not want to become and because those are they're neurological circuits. You build those things in there, man. They're they're not going anywhere. You can build another little machine to inhibit them. That's the best you can do. Once they're in there, you can't get them out. So, and then the ones you build to inhibit can be taken out by stress and the old habits will come back up. So you got to be be careful what you say and what you do because you you build yourself that way.

[00:15:04]So anyways, back to the rats. Okay, so the little rat gets to go out there and play. Now imagine one little rat is paired with another rat, but the little other little rat is 10% bigger. 10% in juvenile rats is enough to attain permanent dominance. So the 10% bigger rat will win the first wrestling contest. Okay? And so that's what happens. And then so the little rat gets pinned and maybe they play a bit and then they're done with it and so you separate them then you let them play again. The next time what happens is that the subordinate rat does the invitation to play and that's like you know like a dog does when it wants to play. You can recognize that kind of spllays its feet apart and it looks up and looks interested and sort of dances around. And you can do it with any kid that has a clue, you know, that hasn't been destroyed by adults. If you're a little three-year-old kid or foury olds are better for this. If you go like this, like they know exactly what's going to happen. You know, they're ready to dart back and forth and they'll usually smile and and kids love rough and tumble play, which is now basically illegal in all daycarees. It seriously, it seriously is. Kids need it so desperately because it teaches them the limits of their body and your body, and it teaches them what's painful and what isn't, and it teaches them the dance of play. And without that, they're just little disembodied blobs. Like they have no finesse. what that's what you're checking out when you dance with someone, you know, you're seeing if they have that that fluency and facility for mutual reciprocal action embodied in them. And if they're kind of like this, you know, and and just have no sense of rhythm and don't pay any attention to you and all of that, you have reason to question whether they actually inhabit their body and whether they can engage in a mutual interaction, a physical interaction that's going to be reciprocal and mutually satisfying. It's really important to check out and a lot of that rough and tumble play even interactions between a child and its mother. If you have a happy mother and a happy infant and you videotape them and you speed up the videotape, you'll see that they're dancing. So, one responds, then the other responds, then the other responds. It might just be with eye gaze and and movement and all of that, but there's a dynamic interplay which you don't see with depressed mothers and their infants. So, okay. So, back to play. So the little rat who got is the subordinate one, he has to do the invitation and then the big rat can agree to play cuz he's in the dominant position.

[00:17:31]But if you pair them repeatedly and this is really worth thinking about because see morality emerges out of repeated interactions because you might say well if you're only going to act with someone once you might as well just take advantage of them and run off. That's what a psychopath does, by the way. And there is there is room in the environmental niche for psychopaths, but they have to keep moving around because otherwise people figure out who they are. So, they just move around and they can take advantage of one person, you know, maybe five times or 10 times or something and then the reputation spreads and they got to get the hell out of there. But, so it's not a good long-term strategy unless you can't think of a better one.

[00:18:09]So anyways, if you repeatedly pair these rats, unless the big rat lets the little rat win at least 30% of the time, the little rat will not ask the big rat to play. And that is it's a staggering discovery. It's a staggering discovery because you've got the emergence there of a of a implicit morality essentially that's even incarnated in rats that emerges across multiple play sessions.

[00:18:33]It's like yes, exactly. That's exactly what PJ said about the emergence of morality. It's exactly the same idea at the rat level. So it's it's a massively and the fact that there's a circuit a separate neurohysiological circuit that's actually specialized for that sort of thing is also a big deal. Now the other thing Panks have figured out is that if you deprive juvenile rats of the opportunity to engage in rough and tumble play, their prefrontal cortexes don't develop properly and they become impulsive and restless. And then you can fix them with methylenadate or rolin.

[00:19:08]And those are the drugs that are used to fix hyperactive kids, most of whom are male. And that's because, well, really, you're going to take your six-year-old, your 5-year-old, you're going to put them in a desk, you're going to get them to sit there for 6 hours. That's your plan, right? That's a stupid plan. And they're they're denied the opportunity to engage in play. And that means that their ability to become social is being impaired. It may cause neurological impairment. That's what the rat evidence suggests. And then you suppress that with empetamines because empetamines actually don't activate the play circuit. They activate a different circuit which will suppress the play circuit. So it's very very it's not very wise. And I'm not going to go off on that tangent because I could tell you why the school systems were set up that way, which I probably will at some point because it's quite an interesting story in and of itself. And it's the reason all you guys are sitting in desks right now. Somebody laughingly referred to this once as grade 15, which I thought was pretty funny given the a look at the bloody place, you know, hideous. And okay, so now this is an interesting thing. So you got the emergence of morality in say chimps. You got the emergence of morality in wolves. You got the emergence of morality in rats. And the morality governs sequential interactions or group interactions. They have to repeat because because it's an emergent property of social or repetitive interactions.

[00:20:39]That's why you can't just localize it in one instance. It's repeated. And uh there's been computer simulations of this to to help you figure out how you might attain victory across games across time. Maybe you need a strategy. And there there's a very simple strategy which I believe is called modified tit for tat. So if you're nice to me, I'm nice back. And if you do something bad to me, I do something bad back. But but imagine you run that out in sequences of of behavior and see who who does best with what strategy across time or an alternative strategy. Here's the best strategy. I trust you. You trust me. We start interacting. You screw up, I whack you. And then I forgive you and we start again. that's modified tit for tat and so and there hasn't been an it's a very simple algorithm no one has come up with a better algorithm in computer game in in the computerized simulation of game space than that particular strategy so it's like trust but don't be a pushover if someone violates the rules you got to nail them but then you don't hold a grudge you open the door to further interactions >> I almost committed suicide 3 years ago but I did not jump I'm better [snorts] Now, what would you tell someone who might currently be on the edge?

[00:21:53]>> Well, it's hard to come up with generic advice for someone who's desperate, you know, because there's many pathways to desperation.

[00:22:00]You can always do it tomorrow.

[00:22:04]Yeah. Well, you know, that's that's pretty good. It's pretty good. That's a pretty good piece of advice. It's like, you know, you don't get to do it twice if you're successful. So, um, is it not possible just to wait, you know, can you just wait? And that's pretty generic advice, but it's definitely worth thinking about, you know, because it's it's final act. Then I would say too, let people around you know you you don't want to keep that a secret. And if you don't have anyone to tell, really, it's time to go to the hospital and tell someone. And you tell when you go to the hospital, you say, "I'm suicidal.

[00:22:47]I'm and I have a plan and here's my plan." And that's by the way how you assess someone for suicidality. You know, cuz depressed people, lots of people get depressed, will have suicidal thoughts. And they're far from rare. And so then you might ask yourself, well, how do you know when someone's suicidal?

[00:23:03]And they're suicidal when they say to you, um, you say, well, are you do you ever think self-destructive thoughts?

[00:23:11]and they say, you know, yeah, you know, in well, in my father's house, there's a basement and there's a pistol down there and it's in the top right hand corner of the of the bureau and I know the bullets for that gun are in the bottom left hand drawer and you know, I've taken that gun out of that drawer and I've toyed with it and I thought, you know, my parents are leaving [snorts] next week for a weekend and uh they won't be back and I could go into the bathroom and and put the barrel in my mouth and and uh end it. It's like that's a suicidal person.

[00:23:48]And you know that because they're not just being plagued by vague thoughts.

[00:23:53]They have a fully detailed implementable vision of their death. And that's not good. And so if there's anybody in the audience who has that sort of fully fleshed out fantasy, I would say tell someone, you know, tell someone or more than one person. Tell the closest person you have to someone who cares, you know, and if you don't have anybody to tell, then go to the hospital and tell them because the pro the probability is pretty high if you're suicidal that there's actually something wrong with you, that you're ill in some manner, you know, and maybe you're depressed, but there's a lot of reasons to be depressed. Sometimes you might be depressed because you just have a terrible life and that's very complicated. But sometimes you're depressed because you have an immunological condition or inflammatory condition or you know you're ill in some way that hasn't been diagnosed or or you have seasonal effective disorder and your circadian rhythms are off. Like there's a lot of reasons that you can get desperate enough to be suicidally depressed. And there's always the possibility that that can be fixed. And so, and it's it's tricky because when you're depressed, you definitely think that the future is dismal and you know, the past is dismal and the present is unbearable and the future is definitely worse and it's all your fault besides and that's basically the depressive cloud. Uh, it affects everything. It's very low level profound deep brain brain and psych psychic state but it's generally rectifiable and you know since you can always do it tomorrow you might as well run the whole gamut of treatments before you make the final decision. So that's what I would tell people who are Oh, and the other thing too you got to understand too about suicide is that if there are people around you that love you, it's pretty likely that they'll never really recover.

[00:25:55]And so, you know, you might be thinking that if you took yourself out, you'd be doing the people around you a favor.

[00:26:01]But, and often people who are depressed, they really believe that. But, you know, I've had lots of clients who were pretty damn traumatized by a familial suicide and they just tortured themselves for the rest of their life thinking, you know what? If well, I had one client, for example, one her relative committed suicide an hour after she missed a phone call from him. It's like how the hell do you recover from that, you know, because you just think, well, you know, if I would have just been there and then you don't you can't talk to the person about it. There's no real way of rectifying that. You just live with that guilt. And it's it's pretty damn awful thing. That's why most societies regard suicide as a crime, you know, because you leave an aftermath of catastrophic destruction in your wake.

[00:26:51]And uh that's also not a good thing. So, you know, if you're depressed, you're going to think it's going to be better for everyone else if you're just gone. But generally, that's far from the truth.

[00:27:02]Almost inevitably, it's far from the truth. So, those are some things you need to know on the suicide analysis and prevention front. How to balance between making peace and speaking the truth in intimate relations. What if truth hurts the other or two sides conflict? Well, you can be absolutely certain that that's going to happen. I mean look the first thing that's a really good question that's from Vincent.

[00:27:30]It's a really good question. It's a really difficult question.

[00:27:37]The first thing you have to decide is this goes back to what I was discussing about 10 minutes ago about what your aims are. you know, your whole the whole way you perceive the world is dependent on what your on the aim of your ethical structure.

[00:27:54]And so that ethical structure is is a is a it's a hierarchy with something at the top that's of crucial importance. And Carl Jung would say that whatever is at the top of your ethical hierarchy functions psychologically as if it's God for you. It's because it's the highest of all possible values. And you could think of God in that sense as a personality that perhaps a personality that you're trying to mimic because a value structure actually constitutes a personality that you're trying to act out or mimic. And so the highest element in that personality structure would be the most valuable portion of that personality. You might say, well, what do you want? What do you want? If you could have what you wanted, if you could knock and the door would open, so to speak, and if you could ask and you would receive, what would you want? And and that means what would you give? What would you give?

[00:28:56]What would you be willing to give up important things for? How would you prioritize? Which is the same as giving up important things. And it's not easy to come to terms with what you want because you might be angry and resentful and bitter and you might have your reasons for that and and that might contaminate your ethical structure, let's say, and make it so that there's large parts of you that would be the shadow part from the union perspective who's who's actually that are actually after conflict and and harm and cruelty and suffering out of spite and revenge.

[00:29:34]And and the probability that part of you is like that is unbelievably high because it's it's very hard to be pure of spirit, let's say, given how much suffering and malevolence there is in the world and how much we're exposed to that. So it's very easy to take the low road. If you if you are married let's say or you have a close relationship with someone and you you want that relationship to be good then the first thing that you have to figure out is well what do you mean by good you know so and I would say well good would be um loving let's say and what that would mean is that each of you would be trying to take care of the other and yourself as if you're of equal import and that that import is high. And so I think that once you're married to someone for example or once you have children and then maybe this the same thing applies to your immediate family, your parents and your siblings is that probably somewhat less so for them although still significantly that you have to treat your spouse and your children as if they are yourself.

[00:30:49]And I know that's an old idea and it's not often explained well, but you you well that also assumes that what you want for yourself is something approximating what would be best for you and you'd have to figure that out as well. And I don't know, it seems to me that well, you want to like the people that you're with and so you have to treat them well and you want them to love you and to love them. I would say at least to the same degree that you'd want that from a pet. You know, it's very nice to come home if you have a dog or another animal that loves you to have something there that's really on your side that's happy to see you. It's one of the wonderful things that can happen well in a marriage, but also when you have children. [snorts] So, you want to like the people you're around. You want to love them. You want to support them when they're having a hard time and vice versa. So you want to make your the vessel in which your family's ensconced watertight and and capable of withstanding storms. You [snorts] want to discipline yourself so that you're not doing things that you're ashamed of.

[00:32:02]You want to tell the truth. You want to work responsibly and be a good provider whether you're female or male in whatever capacity you can manage. And I would say that also goes for children to the degree that they're capable of contributing to the family environment.

[00:32:17]And [snorts] you have to think that all through. You want to embed your family in a healthy social life too and in a healthy community life. But that all has to be conscious and thought through before you can start telling the truth.

[00:32:35]Now, how to balance between making peace and speaking truth in intimate relationships? What if truth hurts the other or two sides conflict? Okay, so the first thing you have to do is with the person that you're communicating with, you both have to figure out well what it is that what are you aiming at?

[00:32:52]You know, I think it's in rule nine, which is assume that the person you're listening to knows something that you don't. That I outlined a number of different conversational types, you know, and there's the conversational type that's designed to mutually amuse, and that can be lots of fun. And there's the conversational type that's um designed to win. That's where I have a point of view and you have a point of view and and we engage in a power dispute, especially essentially a dominance dispute where the goal is for one of the positions to come out on top and win. And then there's another conversation where the goal is to explore a problem and to come to a joint to jointly further the understanding of that problem. And I would say that that's how you balance making peace and speaking the truth in intimate relationships is that you know the first thing you have to do is well you have to have a conversation about just exactly what the problem is. And that might take a long time and a lot of listening because when people are upset about something they don't always know what it is that they're upset about. And what they're upset about might be associated with a hundred other things that they're upset about that they've not dealt with.

[00:34:15]And some of those can be directly gerine to the issue at hand. But some of them can be a consequence of oh old family trouble or old trauma to use a very overused word but trouble in the past that hasn't been dealt with properly.

[00:34:30]And it it all amalgamates into a complex. That's the psychoanalytic idea that consists of all the problems that the person is dealing with that haven't been resolved. And then any new problem gets it it gets it's poorly separated from that entire complex of problems. And so when the person is upset, then all the things they're upset about can sort of manifest themselves in in a incoherent and chaotic manner. [snorts] And that's really hard. And so if someone's upset about something, you or the other person might take a tremendous amount of listening before you can even get to what the problem is. And often during that process of listening, there's a lot of mutual recrimination and accusations as each person tries to work it out. Because if you're annoyed at someone and maybe all the other things that are wrong with your life are in the background driving the annoyance, but you don't really know it, you're going to accuse them of all sorts of misbehavior. Some of it, you know, with some justification, no doubt, and all sorts of inadequacies. It's not a good way of communicating, but it happens a lot. And then that person has to defend themselves like mad just so that they can not be the target of all that vitriol that's stored up for such a tremendous length of time. So anyways, you have to listen to each other a lot.

[00:35:57]It's like, okay, what's the problem?

[00:36:01]And then a rule there might be, well, what's the minimum problem? It's like, well, our relationship is no good. It's like that's a non-starter for a discussion, man. Um cuz you can't fix your whole relationship. You have to be more precise. You have to think and maybe your partner has to help you figure out what it is that you're upset about right now that could be rectified.

[00:36:27]I mean, maybe you made a nice dinner or even a dinner that wasn't so nice [snorts] and you got treated casually and with a certain amount of contempt while everyone was eating it. you know, they came in and grabbed the food and scattered to the four ends of the house and ate it and didn't bring their dishes back and didn't say thank you. And you know, you're very irritated about that and you have your reasons. And you know, the way you might respond to that is, well, this relationship isn't working, but it's not precise enough. You think, well, I have this specific problem. I'm trying to make it a specific problem. Then I'm trying to come up with a specific solution that might make this relationship, this part of the relationship work better. And so look, you have to aim at peace and you have to aim at love and responsibility and mutual support.

[00:37:23]You have to want that for the people that are important to you in your life.

[00:37:29]And then you can start to talk to them because you're going to listen in the proper way. You're going to listen in a way that's aiming at that higher good which is mutual peace amongst the members of the community.

[00:37:44]Something that I learned for example from Jean Pia, he called that an equilibrated state. And an equilibrated state is like a game that everyone wants to play. And so if you set your household up properly, then it's a game that everybody is participating in voluntarily. And that's going to be predicated on the desire for peace and the willingness to speak truth and the ability to take responsibility. So that has to be part of your higher order moral aim. And then when you're having a difficult discussion with someone, the discussion is going to be affected by that higher order moral aim. It's not going to be contaminated to the same degree by your desire to inflict pain and attain victory and, you know, crush your opponent and punish them for their previous sins and um indicate your disappointment in things they've done over the years and all of that. And so you can tell if you've got it balanced.

[00:38:44]By the way, Vincent, if the conversation continues, you know, when when we used to sit down for family meetings, which happened on a bimonthly basis, something like that, once every two months, when we were trying to de divide up economic and practical duties amongst my wife and and I and the kids, we had some rules. And the rules were well, you know, there's a certain number of things that have to be done in the house to keep it running in a manner that anyone with any sense would want it to run. And there are certain responsibilities that everyone has to undertake to facilitate that. And there's difficult discussions that have to be had about who's going to do what.

[00:39:31][snorts] And so here's the rules.

[00:39:34]We have to make a list of what needs to be done. We have to agree on that. And then we have to each accept the responsibilities that go along with that in some sort of order. Maybe you choose one and then I choose one and then someone else chooses one assuming that everybody's mature enough and capable of doing the jobs that they pick. and that you have to negotiate until you come to the best solution that can be negotiated, which isn't necessarily a perfect solution, but it might be the best one that can be done. And then you have to stick with it until the next negotiation. And if you get upset during the negotiations, which you likely will because these are difficult topics, how to divide up responsibilities in the House and people get mad because they feel they've been taken advantage of or aren't being listened to. One of the rules was well you can leave the discussion but only until you calm down and then you have to come back because these things have to be pushed through.

[00:40:37]They have to be negotiated through because the alternative is well important things don't get done or people do them resentfully because they're sort of forced by their own orderliness or their own conscientiousness or or you know by force psychological or otherwise on the part of other people.

[00:40:56]These things have to be negotiated through. You can tell if you've got the balance between making peace and speaking the truth right if the conversation continues and it can be emotional and will be and can be difficult because important things have to be dealt with. But as long as the people are still in the conversation and communicating then you then you've got the balance right you know and you might have to take a break maybe have to hold off till the next day. Um maybe sometimes when you're negotiating something that's difficult, you have to offer the other person the opportunity to sleep on their decision too, which I think is often a very good idea. If you have to make an important decision in your life, it's very useful to tell the person that you're negotiating with it.

[00:41:43]Look, I'm interested in this and it seems good, but I'm not going to agree until I sleep on it. Gives your Well, lots of things happen when you sleep.

[00:41:52]you organize your brain when you sleep, at least to the degree that you can organize it. And you can often be more solid or more doubtful about a decision if you sleep on it. So,