532. A Conversation So Layered It Bridges the Heavens and the Earth | John Vervaeke and Jordan Hall

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast – Episode 532

Title: A Conversation So Layered It Bridges the Heavens and the Earth | John Vervaeke and Jordan Hall
Release Date: March 24, 2025
Hosts: Dr. Jordan B. Peterson, John Vervaeke, Jordan Hall

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Introduction

In Episode 532 of "The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast," Dr. Jordan Peterson engages in a profound dialogue with cognitive scientist John Vervaeke and serial entrepreneur Jordan Hall. The conversation delves into the intricate interplay between conscience, values, societal structures, and the human psyche, exploring how these elements shape both individual lives and broader cultural narratives.

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Conscience and the Vertical Dimension

Timestamp [00:00 – 07:07]

Peterson opens the discussion by positing that "voluntary self-sacrifice is the uniting metanarrative," suggesting it unites people both psychologically and socially ([00:00] Jordan Peterson). Vervaeke challenges this by redefining the metanarrative as "sacrifice in service of getting to what is most real" ([00:09] John Vervaeke), emphasizing the pursuit of deeper truths over mere self-sacrifice.

The conversation shifts to understanding how conscience operates psychologically. Peterson introduces the concept of a "vertical hierarchy of value," where decisions are influenced by a cascading set of reasons extending towards the transcendent ([00:16] Peterson). Hall adds that recognizing the value in conversations often occurs retrospectively, highlighting the complexity of aligning personal goals with higher-order values ([06:28] Jordan Hall).

Notable Quote:

"Voluntary self-sacrifice is the uniting metanarrative. And that works to unite people psychologically and it works to unite them socially."
— Jordan Peterson [00:00]

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Self-Deception and Evil

Timestamp [07:07 – 26:30]

The dialogue deepens as the trio explores the nature of evil, linking it to self-deception and self-destruction. Vervaeke asserts, "at the heart of evil is self-destruction," questioning why any system would engage in self-destructive behavior ([24:23] John Vervaeke).

Hall contributes by analogizing conscience to the immediate feeling of "wrongness," akin to a sour note in music, which signals deviation from a valued path ([26:30] Jordan Hall). They discuss the Freudian concept of the superego, with Vervaeke distinguishing between healthy, transcendental conscience and pathological, authority-driven conscience that leads to guilt without purpose ([24:49] John Vervaeke).

Notable Quote:

"At the heart of evil is self-destruction. Why would any system destroy itself?"
— John Vervaeke [00:25]

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Normativity vs. Power

Timestamp [26:30 – 45:39]

The conversation transitions to the distinction between normativity and power as forces that drive societal narratives. Peterson argues against postmodern claims that "there is no uniting metanarrative but power," proposing instead that "voluntary self-sacrifice" is the true unifying force ([24:23] Peterson).

Vervaeke expands on normativity, defining it as ideals and constraints that guide behavior towards truth, goodness, and beauty, thereby fostering meaningful connections beyond mere power dynamics ([26:12] John Vervaeke). They critique the idea that power alone can sustain societal cohesion, emphasizing that without higher-order ideals, hierarchies degenerate into corrupt power structures ([43:01] Peterson).

Notable Quote:

"Voluntary necessity—love, beauty, reason, play—are compelling, but not compulsive. We say, 'I would do no other, but I feel totally free in doing it.'"
— John Vervaeke [43:29]

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Hospitality and Social Integration

Timestamp [45:39 – 86:45]

Peterson and Hall explore the role of hospitality as a foundational social protocol that transcends differences and fosters unity. Hall connects hospitality to ritual and play, suggesting that rituals mediate between diverse communities and facilitate trust and cooperation ([95:06] Jordan Hall).

They discuss how ancient societies, such as indigenous cultures, maintained stability through rituals that promoted communal bonds and resisted self-deception. Peterson underscores the importance of hospitality in overcoming cultural fragmentation, arguing that without it, societies risk collapsing into power-driven, disjointed aggregates ([98:26] Peterson).

Notable Quote:

"Hospitality has that imaginal element. It's like a state of communion, treating a stranger as if they're kin, creating trust despite apparent differences."
— Jordan Peterson [108:14]

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Rituals, Play, and Societal Stability

Timestamp [86:45 – 107:51]

The trio delves into how rituals and play underpin societal stability and innovation. Vervaeke introduces the idea that shamans act as mediators between different groups, facilitating communication and maintaining social cohesion through rituals that embody shared values ([101:44] John Vervaeke).

Hall elaborates on the imaginal aspect of rituals, describing them as "serious play" that allows individuals to engage with higher-order ideals and transcend ordinary reality. This imaginative engagement fosters a sense of shared humanity and trust, essential for large, diverse societies to function harmoniously ([105:59] Peterson).

Notable Quote:

"Ritual is a profound kind of play. It's a way of engaging the imaginal, acting out shared values, and fostering trust in the community."
— Jordan Hall [107:27]

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Personal Experiences and Applications

Timestamp [107:51 – 93:35]

Jordan Hall shares personal anecdotes illustrating his early recognition of societal deception, such as realizing discrepancies between advertised happiness (e.g., McDonald's Happy Meals) and reality ([88:26] Jordan Hall). These experiences fueled his quest to align personal values with higher-order ideals, influencing his entrepreneurial and philosophical pursuits.

Peterson relates this to therapeutic practices, emphasizing the importance of moving beyond self-centered perspectives to achieve productive insights and maintain psychological stability ([84:09] Jordan Peterson).

Notable Quote:

"When you argue with someone and it devolves into power struggles, stepping back to understand the higher goal—productive peace—can reorient the dialogue towards unity rather than domination."
— Jordan Peterson [86:45]

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Self-Deception and Overcoming It

Timestamp [93:35 – 107:51]

The discussion returns to self-deception, with Vervaeke explaining that "self-deception drives self-destruction." They explore methods to distinguish healthy conscience from pathological ones by challenging the source of normative judgments and fostering humility ([65:43] Javaanlyk).

Peterson emphasizes the dual necessity of recognizing both finite limitations and transcendent ideals to prevent falling into despair or hubris. This balance, he argues, is exemplified in Christian theology through the stories of Moses and Christ, embodying the tension between the finite and the infinite ([69:18] John Vervaeke).

Notable Quote:

"Humility is the virtue of identifying with finite transcendence—a confidence in recognizing a reality that transcends you, while believing in your capacity to engage with it."
— John Vervaeke [82:55]

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Conclusion

In this intellectually rich episode, Dr. Jordan B. Peterson, alongside John Vervaeke and Jordan Hall, navigates complex themes surrounding conscience, self-deception, societal integration, and the role of rituals and hospitality in fostering meaningful connections. By distinguishing between power-driven narratives and higher-order normative values, they propose a framework for building stable, cohesive societies grounded in shared ideals and transcendent truths.

Final Notable Quote:

"Hospitality is acting out the concept of shared humanity before it's even propositionalized, serving as a bridge between diverse individuals to create trust and unity."
— Jordan Peterson [108:14]

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Additional Information:

• Book Mentioned: Awakening from the Meaning Crisis by John Vervaeke and Christopher Mastro, published in October 2024.
• Relevant Works: Peterson references his book We Who Wrestle with God, discussing the metaphysical and ethical underpinnings of Christian narratives.

Disclaimer: This summary excludes advertisements and non-content sections to focus solely on the substantive dialogue between the hosts and guests.

Transcript

[Jordan Peterson]

Voluntary self sacrifice is the uniting metanarrative. And that works to unite people psychologically and it works to unite them socially.

[John Vervaeke]

I'll challenge you. I think the metanarrative isn't self sacrifice. I think it's sacrifice in service of getting to what is most real.

[Jordan Peterson]

I've been trying to figure out how conscience operates psychologically. One of the things that might distinguish AI systems from human beings is this vertical dimension.

[John Vervaeke]

I think that what drives self destruction is self deception, self destruction. So at the heart of evil is self destruction. Why would any system destroy itself that.

[Jordan Hall]

Does in fact have an inevitable collapse and a downward spiral into chaos?

[Jordan Peterson]

This goes back to the idea of conscience, you know, so maybe once you get your goals set, the perceptual systems, are they going to lay out the landscape for navigation?

[Jordan Hall]

Well, that's a very hard question.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah. Yeah. Well, they get harder as they get as you go up the ladder. Today's conversation is a an extension and continuation of a series of conversations I've had, most particularly, I would say, with John Vervaeke, who joins me today, and also with Jonathan Pagiou. And those conversations really center on specifying the foundational principles of iterable society and stable psyche. That's a decent way of thinking about it, or specifying more clearly and understandably the apex towards which systems of value strive. And that's a very complicated set of problems. And so it takes a lot of conversations to make progress. But I found I've been able to make a lot of progress with John and Jonathan. They're also both lecturing, by the way, as well as me for Peterson Academy. And so one of the things Peterson Academy is doing is aggregating a group of thinkers who are pursuing this problem, some directly like John and Jonathan, some more peripherally. And so many of you who are listening will have listened to some of the conversations I've had with Pageo, Jonathan Pageau, or with John Vervaeke. Anyways, we introduced another person into this conversational realm today, Jordan Hall. And Jordan is a serial entrepreneur who's been successful multiple times as a tech founder and has developed the capacities that are necessary to serve as a serial entrepreneur. And that means an openness to high level creativity conjoined with like deep technical prowess and then also the ability to separate the wheat from the chaff under low information conditions. And so Jordan hall has been talking to John Vervake for quite a long time. A series of conversations. And I met John again recently and we talked about meeting and John suggested that I include Jordan and he flew in and today to make that possible. And so we're in our conversation, we continued to flesh out, really, I think the best way to conceptualize it is we're attempting to articulate the structure of something like Jacob's Ladder, which is this nested sequence of value structures that. That tends towards a pinnacle. The pinnacle is the transcendent, let's say, or the ineffable divine. Those are matters of definition. And we're trying to understand the hierarchical relationship between our local plans and our ultimate ends, let's say, which is the same thing as trying to understand the relationship between the finite and the infinite. And we're trying to do that in a way that's quite differentiated and propositional, but also is true to the phenomena and the. And the what. And the what. The uniting reality of the transcendent. And so I know that's complicated, but it's a complicated issue. And while many of you are familiar with this already, and you can regard this conversation as a continuation on the same quest, so I think we'll jump right into it. Jordan, I was watching your podcast with Jonathan Pageau, and you started to talk to him about the vertical dimension, and one of the things you both discussed was the notion that one of the things that might distinguish AI systems from human beings is this vertical dimension. Now, cognitive capacity is soon not going to distinguish us by all appearances, so I thought we might well delve into that. This is obviously something John can immediately contribute to as well. I've been trying to figure out the technicalities of the vertical dimension, so let me run a hypothesis by you. To begin with, John, you should perhaps find this interesting. I think it's a development of some of the ideas that we discussed when we were on tour together. So in this new book I wrote that we who wrestle with God, one of the things I pointed out was that the God of the Old Testament, and this continues in the New Testament as well, is characterized very fundamentally in multiple ways. But one of those ways, one of the cardinal ways that he's characterized, is as the voice of conscience. And I've been trying to figure out how conscience operates psychologically. And I think the fact of conscience indicates something like a vertical hierarchy of value. So. So imagine that whenever you do something, whether you know it or not, you have a proximal reason for it, and then a slightly wider reason, and then a slightly wider reason than that, and then a wider reason than that, and so forth. And that sort of shades off into the unknowable. Now, for example, if I Asked you why you're here having this conversation. Let's play it out a little bit. Why are you here having this conversation?

[Jordan Hall]

You invited me.

[Jordan Peterson]

Okay, so that would be an indication of what, reciprocity with regards to hospitality. Okay, so why was it important to you to accept the invitation?

[Jordan Hall]

So there was two other people who were connected to that invitation that oriented me towards thinking that it was a very good idea. Okay, we can keep going, but.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah. Okay, so then part of that was that there was a social network that you regarded as valid. You were willing to take direction from that, and they indicated to you that the conversation might be worthwhile. Is that a good summary?

[Jordan Hall]

Yeah.

[Jordan Peterson]

Okay, so now we've got two superordinate. Okay. What would it mean for the conversation to be worthwhile?

[Jordan Hall]

Well, that's a very hard question.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, yeah. Well, they get harder as they get. As you go up the ladder.

[Jordan Hall]

One of the things that I've noticed as I've accepted invitations over the past, gosh, 10 years, is that oftentimes I don't discover that the conversation was worthwhile until well after the conversation occurred. And so there's something like there's a split between, let's say, the epistemological sensibility of what would it mean for me to know that the conversation was worthwhile? And let's say, for the moment, the ontological sense of what would it mean for the conversation to have been worthwhile, regardless of whether I knew that? And there's something like a commitment to a perception or a feeling that a particular choice is worthy.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah.

[Jordan Hall]

And then what it means to commit on the basis of that feeling is to simply engage in the moment that's occurring, regardless of having to constantly try to decide whether or not what's happening is worth being part of, as you might imagine.

[Jordan Peterson]

Oh, okay, okay, okay. So I think what you just described is how you might gather indication that a path that you can't quite specify might be worthwhile. First of all, you said that there are paths that you can't specify that are worthwhile, that would be part of exploration, and that there are conditions under which circumstances under which you might be willing to. To proceed down that investigative path. Okay, so then we could divide that into two parts. We can say that you're making the presumption that there's something worthwhile in conversational investigation, which is a reflection of the logos, let's say. But there's also conditions under which you've already been set up to presume that the probability that that exploration will take place is Relatively high. Yes. And you used your social connections partly to triangulate in on that. So. Okay, okay. So, all right. So that's not a bad indication of some nesting. We could. We could continue because we could say things like, well, this is also a public conversation, and so if we manage it successfully, then we can explore together. And hopefully that's worthwhile, which we haven't defined yet. Worthwhile. But we'd also have the opportunity to bring it to other people.

[Jordan Hall]

Yep.

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, let's see if we could define worthwhile. So what would make the conversation worthwhile while it's happening, but then also in retrospect.

[Jordan Hall]

So you would have something like, it's funny, part of me wants to go and make it analytic, like to articulate it in an analytic fashion. You go there for a while. I think this is actually wrong, I guess, the wrong fundamental approach. But let me just take that approach for a little bit, just to give some room, because you can imagine if you have a hierarchy of values, then you have a. And we have a finite amount of time and energy. So we always have to be able to coordinate our allocation of finite time and energy for the moment, let's say our purposes, the things that we can actually consider to be strategic or have plans. We make plans. I'm just find that as a purpose. And then we have our values, and we want to be able to do this. We want to be able to coordinate our purposes and our values so that the most valuable things are the ones to which we attend with the most quality and amount of time. And so to the degree to which we realize the most valuable things on the basis of the amount of time that we're choosing to make, then we are effectively aligning our purposes with our values.

[Jordan Peterson]

So I actually think this is a bit of a side journey, but it looks to me like that's the basis for the instruction in the Sermon on the Mount. So the Sermon on the Mount, which I think of as an instruction manual in some ways, basically says the first thing you do is orient yourself to the highest possible good. And I think you could do that awkwardly and badly, and it would still be better than not doing it right, because you're developing a relationship with the highest good. And then once you've done that, you attend with all due care to the present. You set the frame, which is what I'm trying to do here is to serve the highest good, even though I might not be able to conceptualize that or articulate it, but that's my aim. Having established that aim, John you might have some things to say here, too. Like, we've talked about the relationship between value and perception and emotion in quite a bit of detail. So it seems to me that if you set your aim high, then even if you can't exactly specify the goal, you know, concretely, that your perceptions and your emotions will fall into alignment with that goal and they'll show you the way, so to speak. Maybe that's. And this, this goes back to the idea of conscience, you know, so maybe once you get your goal set and the perceptual, the perceptual systems, are they going to lay out the landscape for navigation? You can feel your way along. And I don't know if that's something like, are you. Do you think when you're doing that, assuming that the goal isn't concretely specified, that it's transcendent, you're still going to be able to see or feel which steps you're taking forward are what, reducing the entropy between where you are in that goal. So you could see that both as a combination of conscience and calling in relationship to the goal. The conscience would be the voice of negative emotion informing you when you're deviating from the path, and calling would be the invitation of positive emotion informing you, at least in part, at the level of emotion, that you're making the path manifest. And I wonder too, if while you're doing that, if at the same time this probably happens, particularly with dialogue, that you're clarifying the nature of the goal further. Right. Is there any of that?

[John Vervaeke]

Yeah, I mean, so I've actually been doing a lot of work around that right now with respect to what I call perspectival knowing, knowing what it's like and being able to take a perspective and some sort of a confluence of things. I mean, first of all, we are talking about basic relevance realization. Like, what do we ignore? What do we pay attention to? And then within that, I think what you're talking about is there's three interlinked things. There's origin, orientation, and ostension. Origin is where am I? And this is very much the vertical dimension, right? It's where am I? Who am I? What kind of thing am I? Where am I in the environment? And so this is like, think about it very concretely. You're lost. You first have to, where's your origin? Where am I? And once you have your origin, you do orientation. And orientation is kind of like this. Here's the proposal. So we've talked before about Marlo Ponty's idea that Relevance realization cashes out an optimal grip. Getting the right trade off, relations between being too close, too far away, too loose, too tight. You're constantly doing that. Now, I'll use an analogy. When I'm sparring, I take a stance. I don't actually fight with that stance. That stance doesn't. You don't do anything with it. The point of the stance is to get me sort of at this nexus place so that I got the best access to all the specific optimal grips.

[Jordan Peterson]

Readiness.

[John Vervaeke]

Right.

[Jordan Peterson]

Generalized readiness.

[John Vervaeke]

So orientation is this stance taking. So this is my stance.

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, that's what the orienting reflex does. Psychophysiologically, yes. Right. When you detect an anomaly, the orienting reflex triggers multiple neurophysiological systems. But fundamentally what it's doing is preparing you for action. You get a heart rate increase, often with an orienting response that isn't exactly indicative of emotion. It's indicative of the fact that you're probably going to do something with your musculature once you decide what that is. So are you distinguishing between the. You made reference to figure out where you are. That's like an orientation point. And then the stance is preparation for. Yeah, for where you're going to go.

[John Vervaeke]

The orientation the origin has. There's a technical term called indexicality, which is like me here. Now that's what you're trying to. Who am I? What state am I in? Where am I? Right. Like where am I actually standing?

[Jordan Peterson]

What happens when you wake up?

[John Vervaeke]

Right, so you have your standing and then you have your stance and then you have a stare, which is you astand, you point. Right. And then all of those are. What they're doing is they're configuring a perspective. What is being foregrounded, what is being backgrounded.

[Jordan Hall]

Yeah.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right.

[John Vervaeke]

And then now you can begin to do.

[Jordan Peterson]

And that's a world creation.

[John Vervaeke]

But it's what you said, it's like, it's what Hartwick Barrosa calls. You're looking for moments of resonance. You're looking for moments where you are directing yourself to the world. But the world also, as you said, is calling to you. Oh, there is a way I can. It calls out to you. Right. And so if you're optimally oriented, you're both controlling, you're finding that sweet spot between control and responsiveness, and you dance.

[Jordan Peterson]

That out, which I think is a.

[John Vervaeke]

Good representation totally, because you're negotiating, which is this combination of navigation and narration. You're tracking, which is navigation, and then you, you're keeping track of your Tracking, which is what? Nar. This is the theory of narration problems.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jordan Hall]

But you have to include the fact, as you mentioned, that you're also undergoing a process of transformation of self in medias rest.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yes.

[Jordan Hall]

So as you said, you're, you're.

[Jordan Peterson]

That's what happens in an exciting conversation.

[Jordan Hall]

So what's happening here? Yeah, performatively, we are engaging in the process that currently we're talking about.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right, right. So it, so that means in a deep conversation, partly what you're doing is progressing forward to your, to your various superordinate goals, but at the same time you're transforming the nature of the superordinate goal and the relationship between the goal hierarchy as you proceed. Right. And that's not a bad definition of a quest. And just one thing to make sure that all of our questions are caught up. So conscience would be the voice that comes from a higher order goal to you while you're operating at a more proximal. Where you're operating more proximally telling you that your proximal operations are violating a higher order goal.

[Jordan Hall]

Yeah, right.

[Jordan Peterson]

Then, then you could, then you could imagine. Okay, so. Yes, that seems reasonable.

[Jordan Hall]

Yep.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, that's a good way of thinking about it technically. Right. Because it is still in, in a sense it's your voice still because it's associated with your goals, but then it's also a voice from above, so to speak, especially if your goal hierarchy. Now you could imagine too that if you, you talked a bit about Christianity with pagio as well. So if you could imagine that you made the imitation of Christ your superordinate goal, even if you didn't exactly know what that means, because you can't, that would open up the possibility that whatever that represents could speak to you in the voice of. Insofar as you understand what that means, that could now speak to you with the voice of conscience. And hypothetically, if it was orienting you more accurately as you practiced it, your understanding of that would increase and you'd get sharper at it. You'd get more skilled at it because you get more. I've been talking to my wife. She's been investigating the relationship between self will, so to speak, and divine will. In her prayer practice, she's trying to orient herself towards the divine. And so what she does in the morning is. That's what she does, is she sits down for an hour and she thinks, okay, if I was really going to do things right, whatever that means, what attitude would I have to adopt? And how would I do that? And then you distinguish that from self will. So I would say, because self will begs the question, what do you mean by self? Right.

[Jonathan Pageau]

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[Jordan Peterson]

My suspicions are that the more selfish the will, the more a goal that should be lower order is elevated to the highest place. So, like a hedonistic self. Because the hedonists will say something like, I would like to do exactly what I want to do right now, regardless. But there's a question that isn't answered there. And the question is, well, why do you associate I with. With what you want? Because an alternative way of conceptualizing that is that something that's lower order has taken possession of you so completely that you now identify with it. And I mean, that has to happen to some degree when we're running out of biological program, so to speak. Like if you're hungry, I mean, hunger should grip you and grip all your perceptions until it's satiated. But it should. You talk to Pagio about the necessity of keeping everything in its proper place. Right. Which is something that Pagio is very concerned with trying to think through. So, okay, one more question then, at least on this line with regards to this. So imagine this superordinate figure being Christ, just for the sake of argument for the moment. So I've been trying to think through what would be the antithesis. I guess it's the antithesis of evil. That's one way of thinking about it. And at the same time thinking about the postmodern insistence that there's no uniting story but power. And so I think the idea that there's no uniting story but power is self defeating fundamentally. I've seen no evidence that in complex biological systems, even in chimpanzee troops, that power iterates. Well, power is a degenerating game. So one of the things you might ask is, well, you might say, like the postmodernists do sometimes, that there is no superordinate game. That's the central claim of postmodernism, as far as I've been able to determine, that there's no uniting metanarrative. Everything we do is united by a narrative at some level. And to just decapitate that arbitrarily and say, well, at some point there's no union, it's like, well, what point? That's a really big problem. But when they don't refuse to admit that there's a uniting meta narrative, they turn to power. And I've been trying to conceptualize what the antithesis or what the alternative might be. And it seems to me, I'm curious about this, John. It seems to me that the central message of the Christian drama is that voluntary self sacrifice is the uniting metanarrative. And that works to unite people psychologically and it works to unite them socially. And it seems to me almost a matter of definition that social interaction is based on self sacrifice, because that's kind of like the definition of social. And then psychological self sacrifice would seem to me to be the offering up of the lower order value structures to something that's transcendent. And then you get to have your cake and eat it too. You get. If you adopt the ethos of voluntary self sacrifice, then you unite yourself psychologically, but at the same time it's the best possible strategy socially. And that is definitely. That's not only an alternative to power, it's antithetical, it's the opposite. So.

[John Vervaeke]

So I want to say two things about two of your main points. The first is I want to explore conscience, because there is conscience that I think is the call to something higher. But I think there's also conscience that can be pathological because it's the internalized voice of authority figures who have Punished us or who have traumatized us.

[Jordan Peterson]

That's like the harsh Freudian superego.

[John Vervaeke]

Yeah, I tend to have a sadistic superego.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right.

[John Vervaeke]

So there's that. And then the other thing you said about self sacrifice, but you said something that maybe qualified it. Cause this is a qualification I would make. I think the metanarrative. I'll challenge you. I think the metanarrative isn't self sacrifice. I think it's sacrifice in service of getting to what is most real. I think people make all kinds of.

[Jordan Peterson]

Okay, okay. No arguments with that. I was using self, I would say, in that fractionated, hedonistic manner. Right. Because if you're trying to organize yourself in relationship to a higher unity, you're sacrificing what's lower to that upward.

[John Vervaeke]

I agree. But what I'm scanning at is, I think what perhaps, I guess because we're talking about conscience, and conscience is a normative self knowing, knowing yourself normatively rather than descriptively. Right. That's what conscience is.

[Jordan Peterson]

Okay. Why normatively?

[John Vervaeke]

Because as you said, what you're doing is you're knowing yourself through a normative lens what is true, what is going on? Oh, yeah. Okay.

[Jordan Peterson]

Okay.

[John Vervaeke]

So it's conscience, knowing of yourself. But what you're doing is you're reflecting on yourself through a normative lens.

[Jordan Peterson]

Okay. So that ties together the psychological and the social, that normative lens.

[Jordan Hall]

Let me check if I disagree. I may. I don't think I do, but I want to check, which is I'm grounding the notion of conscience at a level that is quite below semantics. Sure. It's like the moment when you are playing music and you feel the sour note come. That feeling that you have of a direction towards wrongness is conscience.

[John Vervaeke]

Well, this is what I wanted to. I agree. And what I would say there is that. But that's the normative. But that's showing up in perspective taking as opposed to rule following. What you're doing is you're doing that like Jordan P. Said, I'll have to do Jordan P. And Jordan AES. Right. The dance. Right. The dance of the perspective taking. Yep. So when I mean normative, I don't mean like a Kantian code. I mean the very sort of sets of constraints that you put on yourself so that you shape your behavior according to. You're trying to get at what is true, what is good and what is beautiful. That's what I meant by that.

[Jordan Peterson]

So why normative then rather than ideal?

[John Vervaeke]

Because I. Okay, so I use ideal in a technical sense, which might be valuable to Us. So John Keeks makes a distinction between goals, which are states you can realize, and ideals, which are constraints that you bind yourself to. So, for example, like a clear goal state when I'm thirsty is to drink water. But honesty isn't a state I get to. Right. It's a constraint I'm putting on all of my behavior for the rest of my life. So he calls those, he says, and one of the mistakes we can make is we can confuse goals and ideals. Ideals are ways of being and goals are states.

[Jordan Peterson]

An ideal is like a meta goal. Is that a reasonable way? But then where does normative fall into that?

[John Vervaeke]

So what normativity is. Is normativity are. Use that language. Normativity are ideals, ways in which we constrain our behavior so that we can shape it so that we can get in contact within and without with. I would argue with what is most real, that is Plato's proposal. That's what is ultimately we're driving for. We're trying to. It's a grand act of optimal realization.

[Jordan Peterson]

Okay, how does that relate? Because the other connotation of normative might be social norms, for example. And I mean, there are. I'm trying to put together the definitions that you laid out. So.

[John Vervaeke]

Yeah, so social norms are supposed to be justified by their appeal to what you might call ethical norms, but approximations of the ideal. Yeah, but I don't like the doing that because normativity, for me, ethics is too limited a sense of normativity. It's about the right thing to do. It doesn't cover everything. That's covered by trying to make your thoughts as true as possible, trying to make your experiences as. As tracking as what is beautiful as possible.

[Jordan Peterson]

So there's a discussion in Exodus that's relevant to that, I think maybe so just before Moses goes up Mount Sinai to get the Ten Commandments. So he's gathered up a lot of implicit knowledge by that point by serving as judge for, like, years. Anyways, he leaves and he leaves Aaron in charge. And Aaron is the political voice of the prophet. And as soon as the. The transcendent voice, the prophet disappears. The political voice.

[John Vervaeke]

Yeah.

[Jordan Peterson]

Bows to the whim of the crowd. Right. And so this is very interesting because if you have a consensus model of truth, the. The biblical insistence is that a consensus model of truth will devolve almost instantly into worship of the golden calf, which is kind of like an orgiastic materialism, which strikes me as highly probable because I don't think there's much difference between an orgastic Materialism and a profound fractionated immaturity. Because. Yeah, you agree with that?

[John Vervaeke]

Totally.

[Jordan Peterson]

Okay. And so then the prophetic voice speaks for the ideal that unifies what would otherwise degenerate into orgasmic materialism. It's something like that. And so I think your contention was that normative is insufficient because it doesn't include the vertical. Ethical isn't insufficient. Sorry, Ethical.

[Jordan Hall]

I think we can ground it concretely and make it really simple. Just think about an infant that's learning how to pick up a pee. There's a whole complex of feedback loops that are going on orienting towards particular, in this case, goal, with the ability to be able to discern what random articulation of neuromuscular activity, coordinating hand, brain, eye, towards an increasing capacity to actually engage in depth perception. Everything else produces the desired effect. That extremely complex, subtle and continuous field of feedback loops and constraints that produces the capacity to move through reality to achieve a goal that's normative, governed by the law of continuity or the infinitesimal, like all the way continuous, like a continuous wave. Ethics is what happens when you endeavor to actually re articulate that, governed by the law of, let's say the digital. I can re articulate semantically ethics. I can take your norms. Your norms have a field effect of continuity. There's something about them which has a. How do you say it Right. They're irreducible. You cannot actually break them apart. They're always available to respond to the reality that you're in. Because they are developed in complex relationship with reality. Ethics takes a snapshot. Just like when I'm digitizing a wave in sound, it takes a snapshot of it. It reproduces that in a semantic form that allows us to actually do things like look at it, what we're doing.

[Jordan Peterson]

Okay, so what would you say given that definition? So I think I've developed a parallel notion of that conceptual framework. So when ethologists go look at wolf packs, they abstract out regularities of behavior in the wolf pack. So like the hierarchical relationship between wolves and a wolf pack would be a behavioral regularity. It's acted out. And you could say it's as if the wolves are following social rules. But they're not rules, they're patterns. But when you describe them, they're rules.

[Jordan Hall]

Yes, that's right.

[Jordan Peterson]

Okay, so is that parallel? Yes.

[Jordan Hall]

And that's also to your notion of the profit and the political. At the political, we are now an aggregate of things that are not actually part of an integrated whole and therefore are governed by consensus, which is what happens when you try to simulate a whole in an aggregate, in the category of actually being in communion, governed by the prophet, we are in fact a well integrated whole and therefore no longer governed by an aggregate or by politics.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yes, okay. Yes, okay. That's exactly what I think that story indicates. Yeah. And so then that vertical orientation that's symbolized in the Exodus story by Mount Sinai. And then what happens when the commandments are delivered? They're delivered in the context of a much wider range of rules. Right. So there's like these macro rules that are really foundational and then a bunch of micro rules that are more situational. And it's. What seems to happen is that the revelation is something in your language that would be the translation of the normative to the ethical.

[Jordan Hall]

Yes, that's correct.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah. So, okay, so you think that. Did you know of the relationship between that and what happened at Mount Sinai?

[Jordan Hall]

Yes.

[Jordan Peterson]

Okay, okay, okay, okay.

[Jordan Hall]

And we'll just, we can add something.

[Jordan Peterson]

That people generally know. So it was worth asking.

[Jordan Hall]

Something might be interesting to add is just to think about the next step vis a vis Moses. Because remember, Moses was brought up in and trained in the most executive situation humanity has ever produced. Pharaonic Egypt is an executive. And I'm naming this in terms of Commander in Chief executive.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Jordan Hall]

And so one might imagine that when he finally exited, he was a slave.

[Jordan Peterson]

At the same time because he was a Hebrew.

[Jordan Hall]

So he has a full understanding.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's got the whole hierarchy.

[John Vervaeke]

Yeah.

[Jordan Hall]

That he would naturally default back to an executive form of leadership when he moves responsible for governing according to these rules. Right. He would move the rules into a legislative function. He'd adopt the executive function, but he doesn't do that. He adopts the judge function. And the judge operates by means of norms first, laws second, even the common law. Like think about how the common law.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely.

[Jordan Hall]

What would a reasonable man do? This is a question that is actually hitting you.

[Jordan Peterson]

What would a reason the whole system. Well, yeah. And so there's something also that's fascinating about that, because if you two have a dispute that you can't settle, you're lacking a superordinate structure that unites two different narratives, let's say. And if I impose a narrative structure on you, if it's an imposition, it's going to be fragile. I'm going to have to feel my way between your dispute and find a superordinate principle that you can't better. And unless you accept that as valid and that would be unless it's in accordance with your conscience and your calling. Maybe it's going to fragment the first time it's stress tested.

[John Vervaeke]

Well, that's what I.

[Jordan Hall]

But.

[John Vervaeke]

I think this is very close to the point I wanted to make, was that for me, the normative, it doesn't just encompass the moral. Because, for example, for you to get the common thing between Jordan and I, you have to get, first of all, a shared meaning structure.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yes.

[John Vervaeke]

And I don't mean just semantic meaning, I mean. No.

[Jordan Peterson]

Embodied.

[John Vervaeke]

Embodied meaning.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah. Because otherwise you're going to fight still.

[John Vervaeke]

Right. And so you could think of a life that is very ethical and yet is quite meaningless. Somebody who is leading very. These are tropes in literature. The person who is very honest and very kind but is lonely.

[Jordan Peterson]

That's the rich man in the Gospels parable.

[John Vervaeke]

Right.

[Jordan Peterson]

Because he's followed all the rules and things aren't good yet.

[John Vervaeke]

Right. So the reason why I think of normativity as a broader notion is it includes this idea of connectedness to what's real meaning that I think is actually more foundational than our moral decisions. Our moral decisions, I think, are ultimately regulated by what we find meaningly most real. I think that's what ultimately orients us, because you need some touchstone that tells you, well, how do I know when this is true? How do I know when this is good? How do I know this is beautiful?

[Jordan Peterson]

Why touchstone?

[John Vervaeke]

Because I think what we're talking about is the metaphor is contact with reality.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah. Yeah. Well, there's a foundational element to that.

[John Vervaeke]

There's two points. It's contact and comparison. So think about this. Our judgments of realness are. Right. This is from Spinoza, basically, like, think about when you're waking up, you're in this small world and you're in the dream, right? And then you go. You wake up to a bigger world, and from that bigger world you can see the limitations and the biases of the smaller world. And you judge the bigger world to be more real than this is what people mean when they want to be connected to something larger than their self that's more real. Right.

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, that's interesting that that's upward, eh?

[John Vervaeke]

Of course it is. Of course it is. And then. But how do they know that that's the case? Well, they know it's the case because they make a contrast to comparison. So notice that I used the length of the stick to explain the length of the shadow, not the length of the shadow to explain the length of the stick. One Thing explains the other. One is a source of intelligibility for the other, and it's not reversed. So we judge things in terms of a comparative contrast of increased realness. And that is a matter of like, you have to do this, you have to transform. That's what you were saying earlier, Jordan. You have to transform. You have to wake up. Ultimately, the truths are not truths that you can get to without having undergone transformation. So the touchstone is.

[Jordan Peterson]

It's a transformation of the axiomatic assumptions on which that viewpoint are based. As far as I can tell.

[John Vervaeke]

I think it's the axiomatic assumptions, but I think it's woven with. I don't know if you'll allow me to extend it, axiomatic skills, axiomatic states of mind. Yes, paradigmatic.

[Jordan Peterson]

Paradigmatic assumptions wouldn't have to be propositional.

[John Vervaeke]

That's right.

[Jordan Peterson]

There's paradigmatic, even perceptual, even perceptions can change, Right?

[John Vervaeke]

That's right, absolutely. The touchstone is I want to be in contact. I want to do this comparative reflective thing that makes me aware of the inexhaustible intelligibility, that which is most real. So compare a real object to a dream object, the dream object. Like you could do some Jungian analysis, but the number of properties are limited. You get the real object and think about the number, the amount of information I can extract just from this thing here. That's what makes it real. It's this inexhaustible realness, constrained inexhaustibility. Right. And I think that. That. Well, I think you have a fount of inexhaustible intelligibility. And I think that is ultimately the touchstone. It's the sense of contact, and it gives us the comparative reflective judgment of what is most real.

[Jordan Peterson]

So, you know, that reminds me of the representations of Moses staff. I was thinking about Moses staff when you were talking about that first stage, I think you described it not as orientation.

[John Vervaeke]

Origin.

[Jordan Peterson]

Origin, yeah. So Moses staff is a symbol of center point.

[John Vervaeke]

Right?

[Jordan Peterson]

Right, right. And it's got a stable element, which is the tree. Let's say it's the tree of life. It's the staff of life, but it also transforms into a serpent. Right. So it's order with the lifeblood of chaos still within it.

[John Vervaeke]

And wisdom. Because the serpent's also wise, right?

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah. Well, a serpent's wise partly because it sheds its skin and can transform entirely.

[John Vervaeke]

Exactly.

[Jordan Peterson]

So Moses staff, this is relevant to your concern about pathological superegos?

[John Vervaeke]

That's right.

[Jordan Peterson]

You know, because you could Say. And maybe this is partly why the left.

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[Jordan Peterson]

Like, the left suffers from that, I think, to a large degree, because when the left examines hierarchies, they see corrupt power. And the thing about that is that hierarchies can degenerate into corrupt power. In fact, it's probably. Apart from hedonic dissolution, it's probably the most common form of. Of pathologization. But the fact that some hierarchies dissolve in the direction of. Or what. What. Yeah, Deteriorate in the direction of power doesn't mean that all hierarchies are deteriorated power. Right. That's taking it. But then the question arises, if some hierarchies aren't degenerated into power, then what's the principle of the hierarchy? Right? And you can see echoes of that in the culture war that we're having right now about the definition of merit. Well, what's the principle that rules if it's not power right now? This is why I've been playing with this, too. So some of it's voluntary self sacrifice. But that's also where I think ideas of play start to Become important.

[John Vervaeke]

Yeah. I think it's not power. I think it's this, like, love, beauty, reason, play are all what Frankfurt calls voluntary necessities. They're compelling, but they're not compulsive. We say, I would do no other, but I feel totally free in doing it. So when you read a good argument and you come to the conclusion, you go, yeah, I get that. But you don't feel like you've been bludgeoned into it. Right.

[Jordan Peterson]

Do you think it would be reasonable to make play central to that notion? Because my suspicions are this is informed partly from studying Panksep's psychology. Right. And play is a fragile motivational state. It can be disrupted by the dominion of virtually any other motivational state. But you added beauty and love and, like, higher order values to that. But I guess my question would be, is what you're doing with those higher order values in that state of voluntary. What did you call voluntary?

[John Vervaeke]

Voluntary necessity.

[Jordan Peterson]

Voluntary necessity. Is that state of voluntary necessity. Is that the definition of play?

[John Vervaeke]

I think it's the definition of the genus that play belongs to.

[Jordan Hall]

Nice.

[Jordan Peterson]

Okay.

[John Vervaeke]

Yeah. Okay. And I think they're all ways of tracking. I'm proposing the alternative to power, which is to come into contact with reality. Is there is. There is an element of. We have to exert some control. And this is the notion of resonance. Look, think about the moments when you feel called. You come around the corner as you're tracking through the wilderness, and unexpectedly, uncontrollably, there's the sunset. That's beautiful. And you enter into a moment of resonance, and you feel that you're in contact with something more real. See, reality has to have an element that exceeds us, that is beyond us. And we have to have a responsivity to it, a faithful openness to it.

[Jordan Peterson]

That's also. That's something that's intensely desirable. I mean, I think, like, one of the insistences in both the Old and New Testament is that in the fundamental. In the final analysis, what's at the pinnacle is ineffable. Right. So if you. There's no end to the traveling up Jacob's ladder. And that means that the ineffable transcendent is by definition outside our reach. And there's a cost for that. The cost to that is that you can't conceptualize it completely, you can't articulate it. But the advantage is it's like an inexhaustible good.

[John Vervaeke]

Yes.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right. And so no matter. You could imagine that you're looking at a beautiful sunset while you're walking along a pathway in the forest, and then you for the first time come across the edge of the Grand Canyon and you see the sunlight playing out in the Grand Canyon and you stop looking at the sunset, right? And you could also imagine that there isn't a limit to that, that the mysteries that might grab your attention, even if you're operating at a relatively high level of apprehension, there's no limit upward to that. That's kind of what Tolstoy experienced when he had a dream that resolved his suicidality. And he had a vision of a, first of all, being hung over. He was at a great height, right? He was hung over like an abyss, an infinite abyss, which is like an existential catastrophe. And when he finally looked up, he could see a rope that was holding him above the abyss, but it disappeared into the unknowable, right? And that it appeared, at least the way he wrote the story, was that that was enough to snap him enough. That vision was part of the process that snapped him out of his existential dread. And the point you're making is that there are moments, See, those are magical moments. I think we talked a little bit. I was at a party with you recently. We talked a little bit about an extension of ecological. What's the ecological approach to visual perception? Who's the.

[John Vervaeke]

Gibson.

[Jordan Peterson]

Gibson, right. So Gibson talked about tools and obstacles, right? So you set a goal, you see a pathway. The objects that you perceive are tools and obstacles. Everything else is irrelevant. That's associated with your idea of relevance realization. But there's. You can add layers to that. So you have tools and obstacles, you have friends and foes. That'd be the equivalent on the social level. And then there's another level too, which is like agents of magical transformation. And agents of magical transformation are beings or phenomena that emerge into your field of apprehension from a higher order level of being. And the more distant up the Jacob's Ladder, that emissary, the more the quality of magic would obtain. And the magic would be that the interloper is bringing with it a new set of axioms, a new set of rules. So that's the magic. It's Right. Like something magic plays by different rules. And so then there'd be a hierarchy of rules up Jacob's Ladder, essentially, something like that.

[John Vervaeke]

Yeah, I think. I agree. I think if reality, if the experience of reality realness is the experience of inexhaustible intelligibility, the inexhaustibility points to the fact that we cannot make it determinatively intelligible. We can't fully grasp it. I think that's the ineffable. And I think what that does is. And this is my proposal, what I think existential conscience is, as opposed to pathological psychological conscience, existential conscience is to realize our correct attitude, our correct comportment towards the fact that reality shines in intelligibly, but it also withdraws in mystery. And I think that. And this is Plato's central argument, which I just. Sorry, I had a really sort of powerful realization that this is. I finally understood what Augustine meant when he said that Christianity was the continuity, the continuum, or even the completion of Greek philosophy. The correct comportment Plato talked about was finite transcendence. You have to hold like this tonos, like the tension of the bow. You have to hold that we are simultaneously finite and transcendent. We are finite in that we are capable of failure and sin and decadence. But if you just identify with that, you fall prey to despair and you become servile and manipulatable. You have to remember your transcendence very capable of orienting towards the true and the good and the beautiful. But if we identify just with our capacity for transcendence, we fall prey to hubris and then we become tyrants over others. We have to hold the two together. And I think existential conscience is the call to constantly reinhabit and reidentify with holding both remembering that reciprocal remembering of your finite and your transcendence. And I think the Incarnation and the Crucifixion are the enactment of finite transcendence.

[Jordan Peterson]

That's just what I was thinking because I thought if Pagio was here, that'd be the first thing he'd point out. Yeah. So that's extremely.

[John Vervaeke]

Yeah, he'd love to point that out to me.

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, yeah, because you have this insistence in Christian theology that Christ as God puts on mortality comprehensively. Right. It's not just death, it's kenosis.

[John Vervaeke]

It's the deep self emptying. Right. And this all the way down, all.

[Jordan Peterson]

The way down, all the way down, not past death, into hell. Right. And so what that would mean, practically speaking, I think, is that obviously one of the elements of existence that's limiting and terrifying is death. And like the terror management theorists, who aren't very pessimistic in my estimation, think that much of human motivation springs or even all springs from the denial of death. Right. That's a Freudian trope. But that's a problematic presumption in a.

[John Vervaeke]

Variety of ways, one of them empirically undermined too well we'll have to talk.

[Jordan Peterson]

About that because I don't know about the. I know of alternative models that fit the data better, but I don't know of any direct challenges to it. But in any case, the pro. One of the problems with that presupposition is that it isn't obvious at all that death is the worst thing life has to offer. Now, one of the. Because I. The people I've seen in my life that were most damaged, were damaged by an encounter with true evil, with malevolence, not with death. People can actually tolerate a brush with death without collapsing into psychological. Like an actual brush with death, without collapsing into psychological chaos. But if they're naive and they encounter someone malevolent, then, like, all bets are off. And so part of the reason that, you know, Christ descends through death into hell is because the whole acceptance of that finitude is not merely acceptance of mortality, it's also grappling with the reality of evil.

[John Vervaeke]

I agree. I agree. I think, and first of all, I'll say something, and I want to be quiet because I want you to talk more because I value what you have to say. I think Whitehead, he said the defining, the central thing of evil is self destructiveness. And so I see evil, there's malevolent evil, of course, but I think evil gets its home in the fact that we are all prey to self deceptive, self destructive behavior. And I think that's how transcendence offers us a response to our finitude. Right.

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, would that be a consequence of failing to establish the proper relationship with the rope that. That extends upward? Right. Because it's very. How do you avoid falling into despair and resentment if you don't remember your relationship with the infinite?

[John Vervaeke]

I think you need both.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yes.

[John Vervaeke]

And I find both. I find the temptations of despair and the temptations of hubris are constant.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yep. That's a nice way of elaborate. So I'm going to. I want to revisit this with regards to the tyrannical superego idea.

[John Vervaeke]

Yes.

[Jordan Peterson]

Okay. So, Jordan, I wanted to ask you. You've. You've had a pretty practical life in many ways. I mean, you've been involved in many business ventures, and I believe that that's what you were most known for to begin with. Yes. So. But you've taken. And I don't know how much of this was the case with you all the way along, but you've become more known for your philosophical investigations as of late. And so I'm curious about how is it that you made your entry into the more Philosophical domain from the entrepreneurial, let's say.

[Jordan Hall]

I'm going to answer that in a moment, but first I want to just say something here. I think it's useful to notice again, and I guess I'm playing the role of self referentiality, that while it may appear that I'm not talking, we don't actually really understand reality very well. And I feel like I'm quite present to what's happening. So it may very well be the case that I'm participating meaningfully even though you can't hear the sounds come out of my mouth.

[John Vervaeke]

And you're gifted at that. I just, I'm also aware of the fact that. I'm also aware of the fact, though, there's an opportunity here for you.

[Jordan Hall]

Sometimes I say things. So I would say this is going to be a little bit odd, but in point of fact it actually is the inverse.

[Jordan Peterson]

Okay.

[Jordan Hall]

So I was always very curious about both the nature of reality and what is right. So both the sort of metaphysics and ethics. Always. As far as I can recall, somewhere around the probably late elementary school I began to notice that the world that we live in, or at least the world that I have been thrown into, was suffering significantly from making any sense whatsoever. It was sort of haphazardly thrown together in a fashion that tended to produce more negative than positive. Think about just what happens when you go to school.

[Jordan Peterson]

How old were you when that started to become a focus of attention? Do you think about fourth grade? Oh, yeah. Okay.

[Jordan Hall]

And then similarly the same noticing, for example, like, oh wait, I'm sitting in front of a television in the context of my home, which is lying to me continuously with a highly effective capacity to manipulate. And yet that seems to be something that the people who are around me seem to be perfectly okay with. Hmm, that's interesting. So a sense of there's something way off, it's way off. And curiosity about, okay, well, what would write look like and how might we accomplish that? So you can see how those two things link together.

[Jordan Peterson]

So you said TV and school.

[Jordan Hall]

Yeah.

[Jordan Peterson]

Were there other experiences that you remember at a young age that like I'm kind of curious about what triggered this? Yeah, I mean, that's pretty early.

[Jordan Hall]

Another one was, you know, we, we live in a neighborhood. Behind the neighborhood is a large forest, sort of a virgin forest. I don't know how virgin it was. And so we play, the kids play back there and we build structures and tree houses and everything like that. And then one day it's just been clear cut to build out More of the neighborhood. And the building out of the neighborhood is supremely ugly, like suburban ugliness. And so again, an aesthetic sense of. Again, there's something deeply wrong about that. It went from being a beautiful place of play that had an aliveness to it and had a feeling of connectedness to what I would now call, say, the sacred. And it was perfectly profaned. It wasn't just clear cut. It was clear cut. And then they built ugly buildings in that place. Again, these are all happening roughly the same time. And so the journey that I went on then was a journey that was always entangling. How can I have agency in the world to make the world less off, less wrong? Think normative. And what does right even look like? Because I don't have a context that gives me any good answers to that question. Every time I go out in the world and try to query it, the signals I get back from the world tend to be nonsense or wrong. You look at tv, the President's lying.

[Jordan Peterson]

Do you have any sense of how old you were when you were able to articulate that as a, like, as a propelling principle? I mean, Musk told me that he was about 12 or 13 when he had a very serious existential crisis and started really religious material. And his existential solution to that was really a quest. Like, he found that if he concentrated on learning and investigating that that produced a sufficient influx of meaning so that his propositional concerns were. They were no longer foregrounded.

[Jordan Hall]

Interesting.

[Jordan Peterson]

I had clients who were like that too. Creative people, if they ever stopped creating, they'd fall into the grip of their rational mind and just tear them into pieces. Yeah, but as long as they focused on that continual exploration, play, creativity, they, then, then they were fine. They'd fall into it like a child playing. And so. Yeah, yeah, and that's it. Kind of interesting because it, you know, you might think of the real as what you think, because then certainly lots of people who are intellectual fall into that problem. But if one of the things you do as a therapist with people who are depressed, especially if they're intelligent, is help them identify, it's probably something like a higher calling. You say, look, let's, let's, let's attend to your experience and see when you're depressed and when you're not. And then see if we can characterize the moments when you're not and then concentrate on expanding them. Right. And for this gentleman, who's a very creative architect, as long as he was creating, he was fine. Now, now and then his Rational mind would crop up and say, well, what's that? What the hell's the point of all this creativity, you know, which is a. Well, it's kind of a bottomless pit, isn't it? If the ultimate goal is ineffable, there's no final answer to that question that you could propositionalize.

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[Jordan Peterson]

Nice. One answer would be, well, you're not suicidal when you're doing it. You know, that's kind of an exist. Well, seriously, like, it quells your pain. It quells your existential dread. If you believe your pain is real and that's enough to make you despair, why wouldn't you have faith in what rescues you from that? Right? That seems like a reasonable proposition. Okay, so back to, I would call.

[Jordan Hall]

It pseudo metanoia right there. Like if you imagine you're going the wrong direction and metanoia is to turn you into the right direction, pseudo metanoia at least turns you perpendicular to going in the wrong direction.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[John Vervaeke]

Kind of like dead reckoning.

[Jordan Hall]

Yeah. And the trouble of course is if you get stuck in pseudometanoia, you don't get pointed in the right direction. You're now in a therapeutic loop where you're constantly drifting back here unless you happen to be in a very healthy context, which will begin to drift you in this direction.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right. So for him, like, where that would have gone over time, had it deepened, would be to identify the source of that respite that he was experiencing when he was engaged in creative action. Right. Because that's a manifestation.

[Jordan Hall]

He would actually have to find a way to embed himself in a world that was in continuous contact with that source of perspective, to expand that territory to include the whole of his life and the whole of all that he loves.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yes, yes. That's probably what the Protestants are like.

[Jordan Hall]

And that was my pivot in sixth grade.

[Jordan Peterson]

Okay, okay.

[Jordan Hall]

So in sixth grade is when I had that thought of, you can't solve the problem by controlling a particular sphere in which you can find something like solace or joy, because you have to create an entire world that has that continuity for everything that you love. And so that was the dual vector for me. And so then part of the process was, okay, agency. And this leads to starting businesses. And by the way, specifically the businesses that gave rise to this kind of thing, like digital media, digital video, on the Internet, making the Internet available to be able to do this, create, like your podcast and yours as well, for reasons. There's obvious reasons why that's a good thing to do. And then in the meantime, like, here's a scene where in 2005, my third company has gotten to the point where it's quite successful and worth a lot of money. I'm in the office at Google headquarters where I'm going to be meeting with Sergey Brin. They're talking to me about buying the company.

[Jordan Peterson]

Which company was this?

[Jordan Hall]

It's called DivX.

[Jordan Peterson]

DivX.

[Jordan Hall]

And in the lobby, I'm reading Gilloy's A Thousand Plateaus. So in the moment where I'm about to actually have a serious business meeting about my company being acquired by what at the time was by steps, the ascendant giant of the space, my curiosity is still pointing to, okay, what's going on here in the world of post structuralism? So these teams, they're very tightly wound for me continuously. So is the answer to that question right?

[Jordan Peterson]

Right. Yeah. So you laid out the order. So it was the. That reminds me of a variety of things that the developmental psychologist Piaget spent his whole life studying children's play. There were other things he studied too, because he was a polymath. But the reason he did that was because he was trying to reconcile the gap between religion and science. None of the psychologists that I ever encountered ever told their students that, which is really quite sad because it was like. That's actually an important detail. You do? Yes. That doesn't surprise me. John. Let's go back to the superego issue because this is a very interesting thing to delve into because there's a personal element to it which will make it more germane. But there's a generalizable element that's very, very important because I do really think, like, one of the things I've seen about the atheist crowd, for example, is that to be an atheist from what I've been able to understand, requires two things. One is a kind of alliance with a reductive materialist rationalism, and there's a kind of a Luciferian pretension that goes along with that. But that's insufficient. It also really helps if you were viciously hurt by someone religious. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so if we. Let's delve into the nature of power a bit, and not as ability, but as when the postmodernists make the proclamation that everything's a power game, let's say they're basically saying that power is the uniting meta narrative or procedure or world. Now we're trying to distinguish between. Or partly what we're trying to do is distinguish between the world that's governed by power in the world that's governed by this other orientation that we're trying to flesh out. So let's see if we can characterize the world that's governed by power. Now, you said that you're subject on a fairly regular basis to, like, a tyrannical Freudian superego, and that'll make itself manifest as a pathological conscience. Right. As guilt, when guilt is not warranted.

[John Vervaeke]

That's right.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right. Okay. So now we know that for guilt to be an appropriate manifestation of conscience, conscience has to be properly oriented. But now we're left with the problem of how the hell. This is the problem of how you distinguish the spirits to see if they're of God. Right. How do you distinguish. And I mean this personally, to begin with, how do you distinguish between an impulse of your conscience that's a manifestation of the tyrannical superego and one that's orienting you towards a higher good. How can you tell the difference?

[Jordan Hall]

So good.

[John Vervaeke]

So my response to the situation that you were describing with the architect. What I do, what I've learned to do, is I ask the source of the normativity of the judgment that's being rendered against me. The voice is saying, whoa, that's not real. Okay, tell me what real is then. Tell me what your standard of realness is. I get it. To commit to a normativity. And then once it commits to a normativity, then I combined it to what I was talking about earlier.

[Jordan Peterson]

Okay, so let me ask you a clarifying question. Does that mean that conscience without call is unreliable? Like if I'm stopping you and calling you out on your misbehavior, let's say, but I'm not providing an alternative pathway forward. Is that one of the markers of tyrannical conscience?

[John Vervaeke]

I think so. I don't know if that's the point I was making. No, no, let's not lose that point. That's a good point. Let's put a pin in that point. The point I was trying to make is I can. The pathological conscience isn't consistent about normativity. What it does is constantly invokes normativity that it doesn't refuse, that it refuses to submit itself to.

[Jordan Peterson]

Okay, so it's not playing by its own rules.

[John Vervaeke]

It's not playing by its own rules.

[Jordan Peterson]

So I'll say, is it incoherent?

[John Vervaeke]

Because a path it is. And this goes towards Whitehead's idea, I find that which in it, which is ultimately self destructive.

[Jordan Hall]

I think, by the way, the implications, that notion that being incoherent, it does not cohere with you.

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, it might not even cohere internally.

[Jordan Hall]

Right.

[Jordan Peterson]

Because one of the things like if your superego is the voice of a sadist, then it's going to say whatever it can say for the purposes of making you guilty or hurting in some way. Right. It's not like that's orienting you towards something higher. It's a power maneuver. And sadism is a power maneuver. Fundamentally it is.

[John Vervaeke]

And so what I've learned to do is to challenge that and say, yeah, like in addition to whatever pain it might be inflicting. And pain can be born, if you understand it. Right.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah. It can be salutary as well, if it's appropriate.

[John Vervaeke]

What conscience gets is the claim, often implicit, that there's an authority behind the pain, that the pain is based on, that the source of the pain has the right to inflict pain on you because it has an authority, because it's speaking according to some standard that you should be following. And what I try and do is get it to tell me what that standard is. And very often that I can then bind it to, wow, you know the thing you said, you know, well, what's the point of this? Well, give me a clear example of something that has a point voice. If this is pointless, give me a clear example of something that has a point. Because if your point is that nothing has a point, you are engaged in self destruction. Because there's no point in me paying attention to you either. So what is it you're saying? What is something that actually has a point voice? And then it will, if it's genuine conscience, if it's calling me to finite transcendence, it'll say blah and it'll call me to a virtue. If it's this pathological thing, it will start to thrash, it'll start to flounder because it will realize that it doesn't have an up, it doesn't have something that it can actually bind me to, it can inflict pain.

[Jordan Peterson]

It's definitely the voice of a demon, right? It's got no upward orientation. It's trapped in hell. It's got no upward orientation.

[John Vervaeke]

So that's my personal answer to your question. But that therapeutic intervention, if I can call it that, is coupled to the philosophical reflection that finite transcendence is what I am most called to, to identify with. That is what I am, that is what my humanity is. It's to hold together, reciprocally, remember and recognize my finitude and my transcendence.

[Jordan Peterson]

It seems to me, to some degree, and I think this is something that happens when you do get to something fundamental, is that it has a certain degree of immediate self evidence to it. Well, like how could it be otherwise for a human being? Like, how could it possibly be that we could bear the catastrophe of our affinitude without remembering our ineffable relationship? You'd think the infinite. Well, right. You can fall into despair and people might say, well, that's a rational response. It depends on what you think the point of the rational is. It doesn't seem to be a rational response. If it's. Well, we could go into that. If it's self defeating, yes. Right, so then why don't we investigate for a minute what that means? Like one of the symbolic representations of that. That's the blind leading the blind, right? They're going to fall into a pit. Okay, well why not? What's the difference? What the hell difference does it make anyways if you fall into a pit, right? And that's a discussion about the nature of reality. Well, there's endless suffering in the deepest of pits. And that, I don't know, that Seems.

[John Vervaeke]

Let me give you an example.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah.

[John Vervaeke]

The person like, oh, it's all meaningless. It's like. Well, you feel the call to speak that because you are actually committed to the truth, you find the truth intrinsically valuable. So your actions are based on you holding things to be intrinsically valuable, which you actually is in contradiction to what you're actually saying. Right, right, right. This is the.

[Jordan Peterson]

Accept the principle of non contradiction.

[John Vervaeke]

Well, but then the point is, if. If they're trying to convince. I mean, if they're just being violent, that's.

[Jordan Peterson]

Then I just realized if they're trying to be coherent, Right.

[John Vervaeke]

If they're trying to persuade me, then I can appeal to the normativity that is intrinsic to any act of persuasion.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right, right, right, right. Yes. Well, okay. It seems to me that the mere fact that someone who's desperate and nihilistic is, in fact desperate is because they regard their suffering as wrong. Because if you're just suffering and you don't think it's wrong, well, then that's a different kind of suffering. Right. That's kind of like the pain of an animal, I would say. And then it seems to me that in your realization that the suffering is wrong or unjust, there's a seed there.

[John Vervaeke]

Yes.

[Jordan Peterson]

Because you've got an indication. You've got an indication that something that's actually a good is being violated. And that's a. Right, Right. So maybe this is also why that union that we discussed of death and hell with the infinite, you probably can't find. Yeah, that's probably right. You can't find an accurate way of orienting yourself to what's highest unless you traverse the lower realms. That's what happens to Jonah, right? In the whales. He's all the way down in the bottom of the abyss. Then he orients himself upward and the voice of God makes itself manifest, but only under those conditions.

[John Vervaeke]

So cognitively, I would say, yeah, this is right. There is no self transcendence, which is a form of self correction, unless there is a deep. And I don't just mean propositional, I mean a deep ownership and responsibility to one's capacity for self deception.

[Jordan Peterson]

Okay, that. Okay, now you've gone sideways with that. Now I've been interested, as you know, in self deception for a bit.

[Jordan Hall]

The previous was the thing that you really focus on, and that's the thing he really focuses on. If we can find the place where those meet, we've got. Done something really interesting.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, okay, so why bring in the theme of self deception?

[John Vervaeke]

Because I think that what drives self destruction is self deception. So at the heart of evil is self destruction. Why would any system destroy itself? I mean, this is a Platonic argument. I think at the heart of it is self deception. I mean, this is in the, to use a Christian source, this is in the Epistle of John. Like we are prone to self deception and that's what keeps us from the love of God in a profound way.

[Jordan Peterson]

Wow. What's the motivation for the self deception?

[John Vervaeke]

Here's a specific. Sorry, I'll use my name as an adjective version, that the very processes that make us intelligently adaptive, relevance realization, which means we have to frame, we have to ignore, we have to prioritize, we have to orient, are also the processes that make us prone to self deception. Because we might. Because we can lie, we think of sin, we miss our aim.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, I agree.

[Jordan Hall]

The wage is sin or death. That's what you just said, the wages of sin or death.

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, as soon as you can absolutely abstract, you can lie, right? Because you can build a representation. Like you can build multiple representations. That's really the. Or multiple worlds for that matter. That's the essence of the capacity to abstract. Well, then there's no reason that you can't falsify those.

[John Vervaeke]

I think even animals, I agree, they don't lie. I think lying requires a reflective commitment to the truth of what you stated. But I think animals can deceive themselves because they can be deceived. So one organism can mislead. Like chimps do this to each other all the time. And my capacity to deceive you is dependent on your capacity for self deception.

[Jordan Hall]

Okay, fair enough.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So one more step along that line and then I'm going to ask you, Jordan, if the discontinuities that you saw when you were a kid, how you feel that they might be related to this issue of both deception and self deception, because you talked about lies, the lies that were being promulgated, you talked about the desecration of this play space that you had, which is not precisely a lie, although the erection of the ugly buildings might veer in that direction to some degree. So I spent a lot of time thinking about self deception. Like a lot.

[John Vervaeke]

Yeah, it's crossed multiple times.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, yeah. And so it seemed to me that it's akin to Freud's notion of repression. But there's an important difference, because as far as I could tell, repression is like a sin of commission. It's something you do, whereas most self deception looks to me like omission. Yeah, it's omission.

[John Vervaeke]

That's what I was just saying. Yeah, exactly. I omit so I fail to explore.

[Jordan Peterson]

Okay, so lay out your theory of omission in relationship to self sufficient.

[John Vervaeke]

So it's an omission of insight. So think about the insight. I thought he was angry, but it turns out he's afraid. That's an insight. And I realize that I have oriented the wrong way.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right? Now I have to reconfigure.

[John Vervaeke]

Right? Right. But think about certain egocentric bias or proclivities or whatever that makes me the opposite of prone to insight. That makes me resistant to insight. And what we do is, I think there's an omission. We make ourselves resistant to insights that we might have intimations of.

[Jordan Peterson]

So here's an account of that. I've got you wrong. You weren't angry, you were afraid. Well, now I have to figure out at what level of presumption I got you wrong. Like, maybe I really got you wrong. Yes, and. And maybe I didn't just get you wrong. Maybe that's an example of a pattern of me mistaking fear for anger that's permeated all my relationships. Okay, now I've got an entropy pit in front of me, Right? So. So I'm going to have to. That's a journey down Dante's Inferno. I think I'm going to have to go into that pit of uncertainty and do the hard work necessary to reconstitute the world that that insight demolished. And the easiest thing for me to do is just not do that. Right? I can just not do that.

[John Vervaeke]

And this, you just made Iris Murdoch's argument in the sovereignty of the good. She talks about the example of the mother in law who has this attitude towards her daughter in law. She's coarse.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah.

[John Vervaeke]

And then she realizes, oh, she's not coarse. She's authentic. She's not rude, she's spontaneous. And then she does the thing you just did. And then she thinks, oh, but maybe this isn't an isolated. Maybe there's a systematicity. Think Piaget. Maybe there's a systematicity to my error. And then she faces the choice. The choice is, do I change? In order to properly address that systematicity?

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[Jordan Hall]

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[Jordan Peterson]

Right. Well, okay, well so. So then. So Dante, I think that that journey down into Dante's Inferno is a descent into that entropy pit.

[John Vervaeke]

I agree.

[Jordan Peterson]

You know, and then at the bottom, and I saw this in my therapeutic practice a lot too, Dante put the betrayers right by Satan, right? And so, so imagine that you engage in one of those sins of omission in the situation that you just described. Well, that now that means that you've betrayed yourself, right? Because you've betrayed your capacity for transformation. I think that's that mysterious sin against the Holy Ghost is that you've now divorced if you divorce yourself. Yeah, well, because it's the sin that can't be forgiven, right? So you think, what the hell is that? It's like, well, if you violate the spirit of transformation itself, then how in the world could you possibly recover from that? Because you foreclosed off any. And then like in your scenario, there, there was a painful realization of inadequacy on part of the self because Murdoch's character would now have to think, okay, not only did I make this mistake that's really hurt my relationship with my daughter in law and caused her some suffering and elevated me morally as well in comparison to her, but maybe I did that with a bunch of other people.

[John Vervaeke]

Exactly right.

[Jordan Peterson]

And God only knows how many discontinuities that placed in my life. But maybe there's a reason that has to do with me. Like a certain kind of blindness, right, willful blindness that that might be associated with that. Because the payoff for her, that's the secondary game gain of the Freudians, the payoff for her was that she got to be falsely elevated morally over her daughter in law. And even worse, that she was punishing her for that authenticity. That would be her own pathway out of her misery, right? So who the hell wants to go through that? That's a metanoia, but it's always down. This is the problem with learning, I think, is that before you transfigure, there's a dissolution into an atropic state. That's that descent into chaos.

[John Vervaeke]

Well, you see that in insight, entropy goes up first before you get the reduction.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah. Now, you said that's been demonstrated.

[John Vervaeke]

Yes.

[Jordan Peterson]

Can you tell me about that?

[John Vervaeke]

So it's been demonstrated, the work of Stefan and Dixon. It's very complicated. But what you can do is you can use sort of state space math to translate, like, where somebody's looking or pointing a finger into, like a measure of the entropy of the cognitive processes that are producing the orientation. The math is well established.

[Jordan Peterson]

So excess neural activation, is that associated with that increase in entropy?

[John Vervaeke]

It depends, because that's hard to measure because it could be excitation or. And so you can't just track. Right. But what you get is you get a significant increase in entropy, and then you get with the insight that the decrease.

[Jordan Hall]

I'm going to bet it'll look a lot like what we saw on Twitter around the H1B thing for the past three days, if you were able to measure.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah.

[John Vervaeke]

That's interesting, because I've been toying with that idea, Jordan, of being able to see the insight mechanics in distributed cognition, not just in individual cognition.

[Jordan Hall]

Absolutely.

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, that'd be that state of confusion. Right. Where. Okay, so now you've thrown an anomaly into the. Into the mix, and then everybody's chattering about how that might be reconciled.

[Jordan Hall]

Notice how it's governed initially primarily by the sin of omission, like nobody actually listening to anybody else, like nobody actually stepping back, taking the stance of humility, which allows them to say, wait, maybe I'm making a mistake. Maybe I'm reading you wrong. So this is part of what builds up the entropy is the hardening of the dialogic space around something which isn't able to actually step into an appropriate level of humility to allow the insight to land.

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, that's like a definition of tyranny.

[John Vervaeke]

I want to pick up on the humility thing.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah.

[John Vervaeke]

So one of the things Kaplan and Simon found it was predictive of insight is a thing they called the notice invariance heuristic, which is what you have to do when you need an insight is. So the advice we give people isn't actually the best advice. Think of previous instances where you solved an analogous problem. That's actually not the best, because what you need is you need to think of previous instances where you failed to solve the problem. Now, why. Yeah, yeah, good. That's exact. Because what you do is you. You look for what you have failed to change, what you kept invariant across all your failures. And that's the thing you should probably change in your current situation.

[Jordan Peterson]

That's that too so that's why the tyrant doubles down in the Exodus story. Right? The humility as the anomalies mount, which is exactly what happens in life. Right.

[Jordan Hall]

And all over the place in our world right now.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[John Vervaeke]

So, okay, so I just want to make one point. I think humility is the virtue of identifying with finite transcendence. Humility is not despair, and it's not hubris. Humility is a confidence in a recognition of a reality that transcends you, but a confidence that you can nevertheless address it, you can be in contact with.

[Jordan Peterson]

Okay, so I was at church this morning with Tammy, and I'm kind of getting accustomed to going to Catholic services. And one of the ways this service opens, and many of them, and maybe this is a constant across services, is that the entire congregation professes a disjunction between itself and the transcendent in the form of, like, I have sinned, my most grievous sin. Right. This is something that really bothered me when I was a kid because I thought it was a reflection of a kind of tyranny. And I think it can be, but I think more when it's oriented properly. It's that prayer for something like humility, like, if things aren't going right for you, especially if they repeat. I mean, one of the things you could pray for, so to speak, reorient yourself towards, is to allow yourself to come to some conclusion about how it is that you're misaligned with the ideal in a manner that's causing this disjunction. And so I wonder, too, then, with regards to insight. So you said, reflect on your tyrannical past, essentially, so how you can shed that in the moment. But is it also. So I find, for example, if I'm arguing with my wife and it's not going anywhere, one of the things that the two of us have learned to do is to step back and think, okay, like, what the hell are we trying to accomplish here? And at the lower level, it's, well, there's a conflict of goal or micro world, say, and then that can easily devolve into the wish that one of them would dominate. Right. Especially if one of the views introduces some uncomfortable entropy into the other one. It's like, just shut the hell up. I'm right, and then the problem goes away. But the problem with that is that if you do that all the time, then you're always right and your partner's always wrong.

[John Vervaeke]

And that's your metagame argument.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yes, exactly, exactly. But so you can step back and you can think, okay, well, what the hell are we trying to accomplish here? Then you have to remember that while you're married and the person's going to be there tomorrow and that you love them, then you have to remember what that means. And then you have to remember what it's like when you're not arguing, which is often very difficult when you are arguing. And then you have to call to that spirit, I think, and that's what delivers the insight. It's like, okay, what are we trying to do here? We're trying to make productive peace. Okay, the argument was power, let's say a power manifestation, at least in part. But the proper goal is productive peace. And then you'll get. You'll get an answer from the spirit of productive peace.

[John Vervaeke]

So you do this. You do this by asking. You can even do this with, like, individually, the Solomon Paradox, Igor Grossman's work. Somebody get them to describe a problem they can't solve. They will inevitably describe it from the first person perspective. Ask them to redescribe it from the perspective of a friend or somebody who knows them well. And when they redescribe it from a perspective other than their own, they'll often get an insight into that because it breaks them out of the fact that they're like.

[Jordan Peterson]

It's interesting because, you know, you may know that there's no difference between being self conscious and being in a state of negative emotion. Right. They're statistically inseparable. And depressed people are much more likely to use first person pronouns.

[John Vervaeke]

That's right, yeah.

[Jordan Peterson]

And socially anxious people, too.

[John Vervaeke]

That's right.

[Jordan Peterson]

You know, one of the ways I used to treat my socially anxious clients was when they were having a party. I'd say, well, just concentrate on putting everyone else at ease. Right. And then they'd forget about themselves, which is exactly what they were hoping to do. But you can't just forget about yourself. Right. You have to put up a new frame. So, okay, so, all right, now, you talked about self deception, these experiences that you had when you were a kid. You saw this disjunction between what you were perceiving, what. What we were perceiving and what you knew. Like, it's interesting that.

[Jordan Hall]

Yeah.

[Jordan Peterson]

Okay, do you. And you said that the television essentially was full of lies. Right. Okay. Flesh that out a bit and let tell, tell, tell me and everyone who's listening and watching what deception you think you were detecting. What?

[Jordan Hall]

Just make it very concrete. As an example, there were two that I remember quite clearly. One was a McDonald's Happy Meal, which was, in fact, not at all happy when you actually got it. And then the other one was the president, Richard Nixon, explicitly saying something on the television and then having my grandfather over here letting everybody in the family know that that was a lie. So those are the two events that I remember going, huh? So I live in a culture where this kind of thing happens. I didn't think it in that way, but I remember the feeling landing very heavily on me. Huh. That means I can't. Actually. This is like the. The child who has an alcoholic parent who begins to have to take responsibility for parenting because they notice. So our culture is an alcoholic parent. It's actually a really good metaphor.

[John Vervaeke]

Oh, that's brilliant.

[Jordan Hall]

That's a really good metaphor. And so that feeling of, oh, I need to start taking responsibility for navigating.

[Jordan Peterson]

This world, why did you make that okay? But that's not the only, like, okay, keep going. In the story of Cain and Abel, Cain fails and he gets alienated from God. And in consequence of that, so he experiences a landscape of trouble, let's say. But his response isn't to take responsibility. His response is to curse fate.

[Jordan Hall]

I wasn't alienated from God. I was alienated from our culture. Those aren't the same. Important point.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah. But they can easily become the same. Like people, you know, who. If you're. If you're. If your faith in the patriarchy, so to speak, is demolished, then why not go all the way down to the bottom and assume that everything's pointless and deceptive? I mean, this happens to people when they despair.

[Jordan Hall]

Sure. So I've been there.

[Jordan Peterson]

Okay. But that didn't happen to you when you were a kid and you said you were. You decided to take responsibility. Okay. And you also made reference to your grandfather.

[Jordan Hall]

Yeah.

[Jordan Peterson]

Okay. So. So did he play a role in this?

[Jordan Hall]

Only in this particular episode.

[Jordan Peterson]

Only in that episode. Okay. So why. Why didn't you despair and why did you decide to take responsibility? And then what did that mean?

[Jordan Hall]

Well, I think the answer to why I didn't despair was that the. So much of my life was still very much connected with just base reality. As a kid, living in a physical environment, maneuvering around, and so something like 95% of my life was, it's possible to navigate reality in a fashion which works.

[Jordan Peterson]

And were you doing that successfully?

[Jordan Hall]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jordan Peterson]

Along what dimensions? You had friends?

[Jordan Hall]

I had friends, yes. Okay. I was not hungry. Often I could explore. I could adopt challenges like catching the frog and accomplished catching the frog and noticing that it was delightful. I Could go crawl in the creek, you know.

[Jordan Peterson]

So you had a track record of success. What about your relationships with your parents at that point?

[Jordan Hall]

Pretty healthy, I'd say. I think so.

[Jordan Peterson]

Okay, so you were fairly firmly grounded. So you had a platform that enabled you to determine what constituted the truth.

[Jordan Hall]

You could do it from the center out. The center out was pretty solid, right. My own sort of physical body, my ability to maneuver in space, my ability to connect things, my relationship with my parents and my close family, my relationship with friends, my relationships with nature were all pretty solid. So when I come against this error at the level of culture, that's the anomaly, I don't have to worry about the center. The center is pretty solid.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah. Why phrase it in terms of center and anomaly?

[Jordan Hall]

Well, anomaly in the sense that for the most part, again, everything is actually functioning reasonably well. This notion that we talked about the very beginning of being able to have values aligned with purposes and being able to make choices that land with a sense of, yep, this is landing. And I mean in a physical sense. So when the anomalies anomaly in this case would be an experience that throws an error in that category of, huh?

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah.

[Jordan Hall]

I. I have set now a new purpose. My new purpose is to cajole my parents into taking me to McDonald's to get a Happy Meal. I have noticed that in the act of doing that, I'm creating dissonance with my own relationship with my parents, who are not happy about this thing. I get the Happy Meal, the experience sucked, and I made my family mad. Anomaly, purpose of value, alignment against the center.

[Jordan Peterson]

Oh, yeah. So. So that's interesting because you pointed to the fact that you had multiple dimensions of success, and I mean qualitatively distinct dimensions. So that's important. Such that when you were introduced to the abstracted digital world, so to speak, and you saw that it was faulty, that didn't shake your face. So now we're in a situation. You know, one of the things I noticed when I was a parent, this was little kids. You know, this is almost 25 years ago. I'd often take my little kids over to see other people with little kids, and the first thing they do is put on a movie and put the kids in the basement and put on a movie. And this always annoyed me because my attitude was, throw the damn kids in the basement and let them amuse themselves. Right? They have to do that. They have to learn to play. They have to learn to get along with strangers. And. And that's an excellent. And you just short circuit that. But now imagine that we have all these kids that are dominated by the digital and they come to that realization that they're being deceived in multiple ways. The question then is what the hell's their center?

[Jordan Hall]

They haven't won.

[Jordan Peterson]

Do you think that's true?

[Jordan Hall]

Yeah.

[Jordan Peterson]

So there's data coming out. I'm interested in your response to this, John. So I read recently that six, many times, by the way, and I think Jonathan Haidt details this. 60% of young women with a liberal political orientation have a diagnosed mental illness now that's self reported, you know, and so there's problems with that. But. But I'm wondering to what degree, and I'm not necessarily pointing the finger at finger at the liberal ethos here, I'm wondering about this. In immense rise in neurotic mental illness that seems to be characteristic of our culture.

[Jordan Hall]

Let's bring in the image of the golden calf because I think the key insight is to recognize that anytime a group of people move themselves into this way of being in relationship with each other and with the world, that is the word I used was aggregate. I think we've used different words to describe it, meaning they're not in communion. Is a well integrated whole, but are in fact parts endeavoring to pull themselves together by means of something like consensus. There's a lot of other things to bring in together, but that's the way we've talked about it. That does in fact have an inevitable collapse and a downward spiral into chaos. That was the argument that you made earlier or that you brought forward earlier. And from my point of view as well as I understand it, that is the case. And so it's sort of by definition.

[Jordan Peterson]

If, if it's an aggregate that isn't unified by the appropriate higher order principle, it's going to disintegrate.

[Jordan Hall]

Yes, that's correct.

[Jordan Peterson]

That's why that principle isn't ideal. It disintegrates.

[Jordan Hall]

And so can we go here? I'm going to take it up like one level that may be more than we can handle right now in this like where we are. But the basic idea is that the ability to actually form well integrated wholes that include a diversity of people out outside of a small group of people who are genetically related has not actually been a solved problem. So we've actually had three cuts at this. One is the indigenous mode, which is small groups of people who are genetically related live within a culture that has been the same culture for everybody for a very large number of generations. And by the way, if you investigate the indigenous modes, they have incredibly powerful psycho technologies for inhibiting things like self deception or tyrannical norms. So it's a whole integrated complex that forms a relatively stable over long periods of time.

[Jordan Peterson]

Long periods of time. Aborigines 25,000 years.

[Jordan Hall]

Right. Long periods of time. But has the inability to grow beyond a certain number of people. Oh, 200, 1500, if you think about the way they create meta groups.

[Jordan Peterson]

Okay, okay.

[Jordan Hall]

And has the inability to actually integrate people who have any real diversity of intrinsics, either different languages or different genetics, or different actually just ways of being raised. They have a small amount, but not big. The problem with that is that if you flip over here and you discover there's a new toolkit that has the ability to have a cosmopolitan expansive polity that can in fact grow a large number of people and can absorb a wide diversity of people, this produces a certain generative capacity along the dimension of power.

[Jordan Peterson]

Because it has that it deteriorates in that direction.

[Jordan Hall]

Well, it has it both as a positive. It can produce, say for example, innovation. It can produce a way of orienting towards the productive environment to produce more food, for example. It can solve more problems strategically. That's a better way of putting it.

[Jordan Peterson]

That's the advantage of diversity, let's say.

[Jordan Hall]

Yeah, it can solve more problems strategically and it can deploy more focused power on a particular problem domain. So by the way, it goes very high at the level of purpose, but is not able to actually go as high as the level of values, because the values have a very hard time being integrated, coherent, well integrated, top to bottom, where conscience is non tyrannical, which is why it has to develop tyrannical conscience, that is the pharaoh. To be able to establish something like order in that context.

[Jordan Peterson]

Do you think that's a necessary first step?

[Jordan Hall]

Probably about a third step. I'm guessing you look at like you move from Moses to Saul and then ultimately across, you kind of see it happening over time. Like there's a period of time where it can be held together by something like a shared esprit or a felt sense of a deep moment of being together. Like think about the Romans on the hills with the Celts coming to destroy them. And they manage to come together and they produce something. And the republic is actually able to achieve a certain level of being a republic for a while, but it goes through a degenerative cycle, but it still has to. Ultimately the only toolkit it can go to is something like a. A golden calf, something like a way to hold an aggregate together because it has still become an aggregate because we have not yet figured out how to turn these kinds of large, cosmopolitan, at scale groups of people into a well integrated whole.

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, so one of the logical likely pathways of devolution you talked about, the golden calf, is like sequential appeal to sequential hedonistic demands. Sure, you can make peace with the toddler that way. You just give the toddler what he wants every time he asks.

[Jordan Hall]

Red circuses and empire.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, yeah, Empire is.

[Jordan Hall]

Think about how empire works. I go out, I conquer my neighbor, so I'm able to actually bring booty back to my people. So they have a sequential satisfaction of lower self demands which keeps them relatively stable for some amount of time, but not for a very long time because it is structurally fundamentally unstable, as you said. So it will undergo collapse, which is where we are.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah. Okay, so partly what we're trying to do here, and I would say in the broadest possible sense I think this is what you're trying to do, John, and correct me if I'm wrong, is we've been investigating the propositionalization of an ethos that would unite iteratively and relatively permanently. And we're investigating the possibility that that must by necessity be predicated on something other than that hedonic, immediate hedonic gratification. And it's also not predicated on power. Okay, so, you know, one of the things you see in the Old Testament.

[Jordan Hall]

Hold on one second.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yep.

[Jordan Hall]

I think it's. That was very powerful and very important. So in case, you know, other people besides us are participating in this conversation. Put a bookmark on that. Yeah, okay.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, yeah, that's that. Yeah, there's a lot of, there's a lot of exploration summarized very quickly in that statement. There's an immense emphasis in the Old Testament on the value of hospitality. Right. Like it's a cardinal moral virtue. Now I investigated that a little bit in we who Wrestle with God. Anthropologically. I mean, part of the reason for that was, well, imagine that there are relatively isolated cities and a stranger comes in with wares to trade. Now you can steal his wares, but you don't get any more like stuff. And so that's a drag. But worse than that, you don't know who he's associated with. Like the primates that we're related to are very good at remembering who each little primate they could pound flat is related to. Right. Because you pound the little primate flat and then his three more powerful relatives come along and you're dead. So they, they see the little guy in its social web okay, so the stranger's there and you could be very inhospitable, but then his army comes marching in and you're all dead. Right. Plus you don't get to trade, plus you're all dead. Yes, that's a bad idea. So now you have to be hospitable, and that gets the trade going. And so I'm wondering, then I was thinking about hospitality. Like it's a local thing, right? Because that's what you do at a banquet or at a party. You make people welcome. That's what you do. If you run a small business, if you have even the least amount of sense, you make people welcome, then you could think if that scaled well, then the whole world would be a hospitable place and the problem would be solved. Right. So it's obviously a scalable virtue. And maybe it's also the foundation of that societal trust that constitutes, I think, the only real natural resource. Could you speculate, do you think, on the relationship between hospitality and play? We talked about that.

[Jordan Hall]

We can throw an insight too.

[John Vervaeke]

Okay, okay, I will. I'll throw an insight too. So I think this goes back to. There seems to be evidence, the dating is questionable. Somewhere between 120,000, 70,000 BCE. We're facing, it looks like the possible end of the species. It's under tremendous pressure. It's bottle decking. And it looks like the innovation that we happened upon. Again, you have to be careful because the evidence is very undetermined when you're talking about prehistory, but was expanded trade networks where not only trade of good, but trade of information. So what seems to have happened is human beings figured out if they could create larger networks of information gathering and good distribution, they could deal with what looked like probably there might have been challenges to the food supply. We don't know. Now, the problem with that, though, the problem with that is how do you do that? How do you actually. You can't make it teleological. Well, we need to set up trade networks. And so one of the proposals which I find very powerful and interesting is that you need individuals who are capable of being liminal and willing to undergo significant self transformation and move between worlds. And so you get the proposal of the invention notice. I'm doing it this way of shamanism, that what the shaman is good at is the shaman is good at actually mediating between different perspectives and different groups. And what the shaman starts to do is you start to create.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right. Well, he is a border dweller.

[John Vervaeke]

That's right. He's a border dweller.

[Jordan Peterson]

A psychopomp.

[John Vervaeke]

Yeah, yeah. And he can move between communities and he can negotiate, and he can also deal with any of ways in which the foreigner has introduced social disharmony to the group, because that's one of his or her skills too. Right. But what the shaman has to do, right, is the shaman has to somehow translate their capacity for, like, this cognitive flexibility into something that can be learned by other people. And the proposal is that we get the invention of important sets of rituals, that you get the invention of, like, something perhaps like even like the handshake, which is a ritual which is designed to try and speed up the process by which you and I, who are strangers, might be able to recognize each other as at least potentially trustworthy. So you have outward facing rituals like that, and then you have inward facing rituals of initiation. Like, okay, we have to tighten our identity. So we, like, in order to be willing to interact with them, we have to know clearly better who we are. And so you get the initiation rituals, you have, like interaction rituals. And then in connection with that, you have rituals that have to do with enhancing the cognitive flexibility that makes that kind of ritual possible. Now, here's the connection. Ritual is play. It is a profound kind of play. Because what I'm doing in ritual is I'm engaging the imaginal. So the Corbin's distinction between the imaginary and the imaginal. So the imaginary is when I picture things in my mind and I'm taking myself away from reality. The imaginal is when I, like when a child is playing at being Superman. They're not picturing Superman, they're. What's it like to look at the world like Superman? What is it like to try out this identity? That's what a ritual is. A ritual is a way of what's it like Play, Serious play. What's it like to look at. What's it like to look at this person as, although they're a stranger, they're trustworthy. What's it like to be a person that can enter into recognition with you? And so I think there.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right, and then identity starts to become identity with the ability to do that.

[John Vervaeke]

Exactly right.

[Jordan Peterson]

That's identity with the hero, I think, rather than with the. With the tyrannical father, let's say.

[John Vervaeke]

So I think there's. I think hospitality, right, is a name for a set of rituals that were invented and discovered to deal with this problem of how do we expand our networks?

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, well, it's got to be something like, let's say you're being hospitable to someone who's truly a stranger. You're treating them kindly. So you're treating them as if they're kin.

[John Vervaeke]

That's right.

[Jordan Peterson]

And so what that means is that despite the evident differences which might be racial, linguistic and ethnic, let's say, so profound differences, you're making the propos, you're acting out the proposition when you're hospitable, that there's a core identity that's shared. Right. And so that's gotta be a transcendent identity because the obvious identity markers are radically different.

[Jordan Hall]

So while it is the case that there is something happening at the level of the horizontal, you have more goods, you have more ideas. And by the way, we could just take note of the strength of a protocol or a ritual over time and across contexts lets us know something about how important it is. So if we think about the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, how critical the hospitality protocol was.

[Jordan Peterson]

Oh, yeah.

[Jordan Hall]

Lot is when to go willing to go to great lengths not to violate the protocol of hospitality that tells us, pay our attention.

[Jordan Peterson]

Ultimate length. Ultimate length. That's right.

[Jordan Hall]

Ultimate length. And so the vertical dimension, the fact that we are now able to enter into a state of communion by means of properly exercising this ritual, this protocol of engagement to form a new identity that has completely new capacities and competencies that are an expansion in the vertical dimension as well as in the horizontal dimension. And that's like. That's the key on lock that enables everything together.

[Jordan Peterson]

It's so cool that that hospitality has that imaginal element. It's right. I'm going to. I'm going to treat this stranger as though they're welcome. Well, on. There's a question. On what basis? Yeah, well, it's something like shared humanity. So it. It is the acting out of the concept of shared humanity before that's propositionalized at all or.

[Jordan Hall]

Or even not. Because the fort for Abraham, they weren't humans. Right. They're angels.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right. Well, I think that's partly pointing to the fact that the thing that you're actually establishing the hospitable relationship with is only. It's only human on the surface. Right. That's a pointer. Because we've already made the case that when you're hospitable to someone who's truly a stranger, you're removing from consideration all the obvious differences. But you're doing that in the realization that there's something, well, you could say in the context of that story, something divine underneath that every stranger who comes your way is an angel in disguise, something like that. Right, yeah. Well, that's certainly, that's what Christ says.

[Jordan Hall]

In the gospel you do proper hospitality is an ascendant coming.

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, then you could also imagine that the more hospitable you are to someone, the more the angelic element of their nature is like, I think this is. I noticed this in my clinical practice. Even with the worst people, like, if you're engaged in a dialogue with someone who's hurt and bad, the best possible thing you can do is to listen and never say anything that's the least bit false. Because as soon as you do that, as soon as you do that, you're in their territory and you're not going to win that. Like, that's a very bad. That's a good thing for everybody watching and listening to know if you ever fall into the hands of someone truly dangerous, lying is a very bad idea. They're a lot better at it than you. So. All right, well, we should wrap up this part of the discussion, I think, on the daily wire side. I'm going to start by talking to John and Jordan about how they met and how their relationship developed. And then, you know, we'll continue along the same lines. I want to find out too, what they jointly think they're up to. And so if you want to join us on the daily wire side for half an hour for that, please, you're more than welcome to do that. And thank you, gentlemen. It was lovely meeting you. I very much appreciated that. John, it's always great to see you and thank you. I always feel that we get somewhere that hospitality discussion that was particularly useful. But there was lots in that that I felt moved, you know, moved things ahead.

[John Vervaeke]

I talked about that in, in the book Awakening for the Meaning Crisis.

[Jordan Peterson]

Oh, yes, yes. And when did this come out? This is Awakening from the Meaning Crisis. When was this published?

[John Vervaeke]

October came out.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right, right. So for everybody who's watching and listening, you know, you could read this. John Vervecki and Christopher Mastro, Pietro Awakening from the Meaning Crisis, Book one. So anyways, gentlemen, thank you very much and for all you watching and listening, thank you very much for your time and attention. Much appreciated.