Shadowing Practice: Jordan Peterson: "Why Being Yourself Is Terrible Advice" - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Look, let's say you're socially anxious Okay, so what happens when you're socially anxious?
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You go to a party, your heart's beating, why?
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The party is a monster, why?
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Because it's judging you And it's judging you, it's putting you low down the dominance hierarchy Because that's what a negative judgement is,
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and that interferes with your sexual success And that means that you're being harshly evaluated by nature itself Right,
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so you are confronting the dragon of chaos when you go into the social situation And so what do you do?
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You're like this, right, you hunch over, and that's low dominance I'm no threat, it's like, well that's not gonna get you very far You know,
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but that's a logical thing to do in the face of a tyrant, so I'm no threat You know, you look at the king and you're dead,
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I'm no threat, I'm hunched over And then what's happening internally, what are people thinking about me, what are people thinking about me?
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Am I looking stupid?
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Am I looking foolish?
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Geez, I'm awkward.
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I hate being here.
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Man, I'm sweating too much.
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It's all internalized, right?
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It's all self -focused.
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The I isn't working.
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What do you tell people?
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Stop.
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Don't stop thinking about yourself, because you can't.
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It's like, don't think of a white elephant.
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White elephant, white elephant, white elephant.
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You can't tell someone to stop thinking about something because they get caught in the loop.
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But what you do with socially anxious people is you say, look at other people.
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Look at them.
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Right?
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Why?
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Because if you look at them, you can tell what they're thinking.
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And then, unless you're terribly socialized, and some people are, some people have no social skills.
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And so, the reason they can't go to a party is because they don't even know how to introduce themselves.
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Like, they're just, no one ever taught them how to behave.
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And so they're really good candidates for behavior therapy
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Because you walk them through the process of how you actually manifest the procedures
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that are associated with social acceptability But most people aren't like that, they have the ability So if they're really introverted and high in neuroticism,
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they can usually talk quite well to someone one -on -one Why?
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Because they look at them Well, if I look at you, it's another thing to do
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if you're ever speaking to a group of people Never speak
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to the group of people It doesn't exist You talk to individuals
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And then they reflect for you the entire group
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Because they're all entrained If you look at one person They broadcast to you what everyone's thinking
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And you know how to talk to one person So it's easy
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So as soon as you focus on the person Not you
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You push your attention outward Use your eye You push your attention outward And you start watching Well, then all your automatic mechanisms kick in, and you stop being awkward Because if we're talking,
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and I'm looking here, I don't know what you're going to do next And I'm going to put disjunctions into the...
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They're like bad chords in the melody of our conversation And the reason is,
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I'm not paying attention So that's why the I is the thing at the top of the pyramid It's like,
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the thing that enables you to win the set of all possible dominance hierarchies is the I Pay attention,
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pay attention That's the critical issue That's why the Egyptians worshipped Horus That's why Horus was the thing
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that rescued Osiris from the depths It's the capacity to pay attention What do you pay attention to most?
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What your right hemisphere signals as anomalous It attracts your attention It's like, this isn't going quite right I'm not looking at that Wrong!
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That's what you look at That's what you look at What's not going right because that's.. see, that's the terrible monster that might eat you,
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but it's also the place you get all the information so, that's why it's useful to have discussions with your enemies
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because they will tell you things you do not know and that's such a great thing, because if you don't know them, well, you're not very smart, are you?
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you know, there may be a time when you go somewhere that's the thing you need to know
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and maybe your enemy will tell you why you're such a fool, you know, and a bunch of other things that aren't true, too But even one thing that's accurate, it's like, yeah, thanks very much,
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man, maybe I'll do some work on that And I won't have to carry that forward So, and that's part of the reason,
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again, why the terrible predator It's always the terrible predator that has the gold It's like, it's the person who delivers the message you do not want to hear So it's rough,
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it's rough But it doesn't matter, life is rough So I guess the case that I was making last time, at least in part, was that
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One way of conceptualizing the fundamental problem
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that human beings face is to conceptualize it as an ongoing struggle with complexity
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and complexity emerges as a...
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Consequence of the sort of finite boundedness of individual consciousness
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and the incredible excess of the unbounded everywhere else Even including underneath that consciousness,
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because of course your individual consciousness depends on the function
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Or is related to the function of things that are so complex you can't even understand it So there you are, surrounded by some things that you understand,
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in an ocean of things that you don't understand at all And including things about yourself
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And it's not obvious at all how people solve that problem, because in some sense it's not solvable The fact that you don't have the cognitive resources,
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or the conceptual resources To understand everything that you need to understand in order to properly orient yourself in the world now,
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obviously, partly the way we deal with that is that we cooperate with other people and so that radically multiplies our resources, incredibly multiplies our resources so,
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and it's something to consider always when, you know, so much of the political dialogue
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that surrounds us now consists of a critique of cooperative societies and an analysis of their oppressive nature And,
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of course, that's true, because any cooperative system that specifies a certain endpoint
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and produces a value hierarchy of some sort also simultaneously forces things into
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that value system and then rank orders people according to the value structure.
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And so there's an oppressive element to it.
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But compared to being naked in chaos, generally it's better.
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Now it doesn't always have to be, because it can get murderous, but generally speaking, well look, we're social animals, it doesn't matter Our evolutionary pathway has already taken us here,
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and so we're individuals, but we're unbelievably social And so, that's that, as far as I can tell,
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we'd have to be completely different creatures not to fall
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Not to take advantage of and fall prey to the problems with social being
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So one of the things that a neural net does
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when you're training it Is learn to figure out
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which things it can ignore And that's mostly what you're doing Is what can be ignored
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And that's a tremendous realization too Because it highlights again How important the structure within which you exist
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How importantly the structure within
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which you exist Determines what manifests itself to you As you move through the world
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Because you ignore almost everything So you ignore almost everything
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But then you concentrate on things that move you along your way
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or obstacles that get in your way And those things have emotional significance They're valenced,
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and the reason they're valenced is because they're conceptualized in relationship to the journey You know, if you run across a tool or something positive An opportunity,
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we could say, which is like an abstract tool Then
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that moves you forward And the fact that it's moving you forward is signaled by the incentive reward system
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Dopaminergically mediated incentive reward system that's grounded in the hypothalamus, the same system that you use
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when you explore the same system that's activated by psychomotor stimulants like cocaine
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and heroin and most of the drugs that people abuse
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that system indicates to you that this entity is non -ignorable
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because it's positively functionally related to the transformation of the world that you're attempting to accomplish so that makes you happy
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That provides you with hope
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and incentive to move forward A fundamental motivating force of life for human beings With the possible exception,
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say, of aggression and sexuality Which I would say operate much more sporadically This is pretty much continual And then,
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of course, the negative emotions are generated When you encounter something that gets in the way Which can require a small detour,
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let's say or can blow apart the frame that you're inhabiting completely
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and part of what we're trying to do is understand how you compute
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how emotional to get about certain classes of events and the reason
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that it's so complicated is because often when you run into a tool
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or an opportunity generally speaking it's not too hard to compute
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how useful it is although sometimes something can happen to you like, let's say you win a lottery,
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where the possibility space is so great that it's of indefinite positive significance, you know, and you're going to be overwhelmed by that sort of thing.
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It's pretty rare that something like that happens.
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It does happen to me.
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Maybe it happens when someone that you're desperately chasing for amorous purposes agrees to go out with you.
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That's another place where that sort of excitement occurs.
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It seems to occur to football players, you know, when they make a touchdown on TV, too, because they do their little touchdown and dance around like mad dogs And,
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you know, scientists never do that when they get a paper published
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So there's something about scoring a goal that's really got that incentive -reward blast, you know?
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So, anyhow, the positive emotion systems are operating,
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roughly speaking, because you have encountered something that moves you forward on your path And we could say that given,
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as we've discussed, that your value structure is a nested entity, right?
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With small goals nested inside larger goals, or small personalities nested inside of larger personalities
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A positive thing that's really positive has implications for what you're doing right now
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that are positive But also has positive implications higher up the abstraction chain You know, so for example,
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let's say you study really hard for an exam and you get a really good grade on it and you're surprised.
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You think, well, that's extraordinarily useful.
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I passed the grade, I passed the exam, I did well in the course, but that means that maybe I'm a better student than I thought, and given what I'm aiming for in the future,
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maybe I'm a more competent person than I had believed.
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And so you can see that the positive emotion would echo through those levels of analysis
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because it has implications on each level.
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Now, you're also trying, when you encounter something negative, to constrain its propagation across those levels, Because let's say you study really hard,
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and you fail, dismally, and so then you think, well, I messed up this course, I messed up this exam, I messed up this course, I'm not as good a student as I think I am,
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maybe I'm a failure as a person, and that can take you out completely, right?
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And, of course, there are certainly more traumatic events
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that can befall you than that A typical one
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that really will wipe someone out Imagine someone who's naive and dependent and over -sheltered And so they're off into the world,
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although they're not prepared for it
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And their axiomatic presuppositions aren't sophisticated enough To allow for the existence of radical uncertainty
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or malevolence and then one day they're attacked, when maybe they're out, they get mugged, or maybe they get raped, or something worse and they develop post -traumatic stress disorder from that,
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and the reason for that is that the event is so anomalous, especially combined with its malevolence,
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that it demolishes the interpretation frames from the local level all the way out to the superordinate level,
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and then the person is cast into this chaotic state And they're terrified, and angry, and vengeful, and paralyzed,
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and depressed, and all of those things simultaneously And maybe they never put the pieces back together, right?
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They descend into chaos, and that's that And if you're in a situation like that long enough,
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you know, the cortisol that's produced can produce permanent neurophysiological changes Shrinkage of the hippocampus,
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which is the part of the brain that moves information from short -term attention to long -term storage
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and growth of the amygdala, which is something that seems to tag stimuli,
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roughly speaking, with emotional significance more or less permanently because if you really encounter something traumatic,
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the hippocampus restricts information with regards to its application in a certain time and place so it's sort of situation specific,
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but if you encounter something truly dangerous, your brain is set up so that you will be afraid of it
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regardless of context so the amygdala can produce context -independent fears and those are basically,
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well, they can be part of post -traumatic stress disorder they can be part of a very, very serious phobia and
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so you can't contextualize them what you really do with someone who has a problem like
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that is you try to walk them through a recontextualization process so, you know, maybe if they're afraid of snakes so afraid of them they can't even really think of snakes You have them,
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well, first maybe you have them sit for one second
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and think of a cartoon snake And what happens is their brain notices
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that they can hold that image and nothing negative happens And
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so then in some sense it's built an inhibitory structure
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that partially inhibits Which is what inhibitory structures do
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That partially inhibits the otherwise context -independent fear that would constitute the phobia
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and so you basically build up contexts of safety around the phobia until the context signifies lack of danger
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and the person can progress forward if they're really damaged, it's really hard to do that,
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especially if the trauma was really severe the best way to teach people critical thinking is to teach them to write
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and I made this little thing that I put online, I don't know, is it in the Psych434 website? did I post that rubric for essay writing?
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I don't think it actually went through, but it is still on 430, that's how I...
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Is it not on 434?
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Is that not working?
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It's almost not on 430.
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Oh!
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Yeah.
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But I still found it.
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It's still in 434.
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Oh, okay.
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Well, there's an essay...
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Oh, that's too bad.
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It's not on the 434 website, even?
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Because I updated it.
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Anyways, I have this guide to writing that, if it isn't on the 434 website, it is definitely on the 430 website.
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And it steps people through the process of writing.
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Because what's happened now, it's very hard to teach people to write, because it's unbelievably time -intensive.
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And like writing, marking a good essay, that's really easy Check A, you did everything right Marking a bad essay,
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oh my god The words are wrong, the phrases are wrong, the sentences are wrong They're not ordered right in the paragraphs The paragraphs aren't coherent
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and the whole thing makes no sense So trying to tell the person what they did wrong It's like, well, you did everything wrong Everything about this essay is wrong Well,
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that's not helpful either You have to find the few little things they did half right
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And you have to teach them what they did wrong It's really expensive
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And so what I did with this rubric was try to address
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that from the production side instead of the grading side
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But the best thing you can do is teach people to write
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Because there's no difference between that and thinking And one of the things
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that just blows me away about universities Is that no one ever tells students why they should write something It's like,
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well, you have to do this assignment Well, why are you writing?
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Well, you need the grade It's like, no You need to learn to think
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Because thinking makes you act Effectively in the world Thinking makes you win the battles you undertake
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And those could be battles for good things If you can think and speak and write You are absolutely deadly
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Nothing can get in your way So that's why you learn to write It's like
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I can't believe that people aren't just told that It's like
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it's the most powerful weapon you can possibly provide someone with
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and i mean i know lots of people who've been staggeringly successful
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and watched them throughout my life i mean those people you
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don't want to have an argument with them they'll just slash you into pieces
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and not in a malevolent way it's like
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if you're going to make your point
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and they're going to make their point you better have your points organized
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because otherwise you are going to look like
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and be an absolute idiot you are not going to get anywhere
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and if you can formulate your arguments coherently and make a presentation
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if you can speak to people
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if you can lay out a proposal god people give you
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money they give you opportunities you have influence that's what you're at university for
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and so that's what you do is you that's you're in you're in english right and yeah, in languages anyways, it's like,
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yeah, teach people to be articulate because that's the most dangerous thing you can possibly be so,
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and that's motivating if people know that it's like, well, why are you learning to write? because here's your sword, here's your M16, right? here's your bulletproof vest like,
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learn how to use them but Ah,
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it's just It's an endless mystery to me Why that isn't made self -evident
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So that's the sort of thing
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that can drive you mad Trying to sort out It's like
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people are There's a conspiracy to bring people into the education system To make them weaker So
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I guess that keeps the competition down maybe that's one way of thinking about it if your students are stupid,
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they're not going to challenge you okay, good, now, the next cool thing what happens when you see a tool?
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you're happy, what happens when you see an obstacle?
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you're unhappy, and now you understand emotions that doesn't take much, once you've got this initial framework, it's like, okay, what's an emotion for?
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Positive.
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Move forward.
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Negative.
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Get away.
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Indeterminate.
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Stop.
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That's anxiety.
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Stop.
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You're not where you think you are.
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Your map isn't producing the desired outcome.
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It's wrong.
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What should you do?
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You don't know.
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Stop.
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Because if you don't know where to go, There's no point going anywhere And then what?
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Prepare That's anxiety Stop, prepare Well, people hate that because Well, for obvious reasons Prepare, for what?
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Everything Yeah, very, very Demanding Psychophysiologically And that's also something that's really worth knowing It's like,
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anxiety isn't just a psychological state That's unpleasant It's like, you're revved up And you're burning resources like mad
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And you're in a biochemical state Such that That's optimized for quick action
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But that's toxic if you inhabit it For any length of time So not knowing what to do, that is not good, and it isn't just that it makes you feel bad,
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it hurts you, it damages you, it can kill you It'll make you age, it'll make you fat, it'll give you diabetes,
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it'll suppress your immune system so you're more likely to develop cancer It'll damage your brain,
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your hippocampus, it'll increase the probability that you have Alzheimer's It's like it's no joke that, it's you're running your machinery faster than you can replenish it
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So it's not a state
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that you can be in It's not a state you can tolerate
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Because it's anxiety It's anxious But it's also not a state you can live in
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And so I don't know where I am Means everything's relevant
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And I have to ramp up my capacity for action To deal with
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that Bad People do not like that We do not like not to be where we think we are We really,
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really, really don't like that And we structure almost all of our environments constantly, so that never happens, you know, we're all dressed the same with tiny,
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tiny variations, you know, we all follow the same traffic laws, everybody's behaving according to the proper code in this room, and everyone in this building is doing the same thing,
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it's like we're doing everything we can to make sure
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that everyone knows exactly where they are and what they're doing all the time, and that's because when we're in that state,
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we can advance cautiously using positive things and maintain a modicum of positive emotion.
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That's what we're basically trying to do.
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Okay, so you want to set up your world so that you're surrounded by things that move you along your way, that obstacles are minimized, and that almost everything can be ignored.
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Okay, so emotion.
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Positive emotion, that's dopaminergic.
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That's incentive reward.
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You experience it in relationship to a goal.
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Because, you know, most of the time when you talk to behavioral psychologists, They'll tell you reward is a satiation consequence You're hungry, you get a piece of food,
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that's rewarding It's like, that's consumatory reward And that shuts down the motivational system It's satiating,
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it makes you satisfied That's not the same as incentive reward Incentive reward says, come this way, come this way Good things are over here,
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good things are over here And that's dopaminergic And that's the kind of reward people really like We live for that
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so when you talk about positive meaning in your life this is an oversimplification, but a tremendous amount of that is incentive reward you're in a goal -directed structure,
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it's a value structure let's say it's fairly well -developed because you're sophisticated
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everything you do is linked to something else you move ahead, it works, yes you move ahead, it works, yes and it's that constant moving ahead
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and the validation of the frame that makes your life meaningful And so that also means no value system,
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no positive emotion Which is another thing that's so much worth knowing You know, the postmodernists complain about value systems constantly And they say,
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well, the problem with the value system is that it includes some people, winners And excludes other people,
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losers It's like, yes, that's true What's the answer?
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Flatten the value system So there's no losers Fine, no winners either and if the value system is flat there's no point B
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what the hell are you going to do? where's your positive emotion?
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you're going to wander around being happy that the value system is flat it's like, no you're not
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because when you flatten out value systems you don't get rid of suffering
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because you can't all you get rid of is the possibility of positive emotion
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and that is not a good solution so then you leave people with nothing but negative emotion it's so naive Ok,
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so good, so now we know, you're going from point A to point B, you're doing that with an action If things are working out, if you see facilitators along the way that you can utilize,
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you get a kick of positive emotion You know, and you can even see that calibrated, like let's say you do better than expected on a test Yes!
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It's like, that's better than doing as well as you expected
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because what the message is is
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that not only am I moving towards my desired goal
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but I'm moving along faster and with less effort than I thought it's like bang, positive reinforcement right, you think yes well that's it,
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that's meaning, that's a big chunk of meaning and so a really meaningful event is one that gets you to the next step
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and simultaneously increases the probability that you're going to get to all the steps after
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that that's like a maximally meaningful event so, you know, you get you're opening an envelope about whether or not you got into medical school it's like,
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you're going like this, right? why? why are you shaking? it's an envelope No, it's not.
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It's a portal, right?
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It's a portal And what's in that envelope either puts you that way, into one world, or that way, into another And you think, you're looking at it, you think, well, that's an envelope, it's like,
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your body isn't thinking that, not for a bloody second It knows perfectly well
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that that's a portal And you open it up, it's like.. collapse The whole.. what would you call it?
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That whole avatar -related future just goes.. ashes Or,
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bang, it springs into reality And you perceive that,
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and you perceive all of that almost instantaneously And that produces that radical transformation in emotion You're not reacting to the envelope,
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or maybe the envelope isn't what you think it is Or maybe the envelope isn't what you see And that's more accurate,
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that's way more accurate the envelope is way more than what you see this is one of the great stories of mankind,
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and this isn't the only variant of this story there's many variants of it,
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but this variant is useful for our purposes that's a story I stumbled across a long time ago
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I'm going to tell you the second story first, because I don't have the energy to tell you the first story
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So this is a story that the ancient Egyptians predicated their society on And to understand this story,
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the first thing you have to know is what the characters were And these characters were gods There's four of them
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Although the Egyptians had far more than four gods You might think of these as the central gods And you might think, what is a central god?
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And then you might think, well, imagine that the gods compete for dominance across time In people's imaginations
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And some gods win And they occupy the primary position of dominance in the hierarchy, in the dominance hierarchy of gods And those are ideals,
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and ideals compete across time for dominance, and they're embodied And so when diverse tribal people come together,
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they throw all their gods into the ring And they fight across time, and something emerges as a victor And that's the emergence of monotheism out of polytheism
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And it parallels the development of a unified morality within each of us as we develop across time.
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And the god that emerges as dominant across time bears a substantial resemblance.
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Imagine you have a set of gods in this locale that are competing across time, and something emerges as dominant.
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And then over here you have another set of gods
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that compete across time for dominance
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and something emerges You'll see major commonalities across the two things
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that emerge And the reason for that is because the process of emergence
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that gives rise to both of them is similar in both situations
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And that's part of what accounts for the cross -cultural similarity of high -order religious ideas Alright,
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anyways, you need to know the characters Osiris
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Osiris is the old king he's Dumbledore for all intents and purposes he's the old king
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he's the spirit that established the Egyptian state
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when he was young he was a great hero
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but now he's old and he's archaic and he's willfully blind that's Osiris he has a brother Seth
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Seth is Seth and Seth is Satan because the word Satan comes from the word Seth
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so he's a precursor to the Western idea of Satan you have Isis, Isis is the queen of the underworld
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and Isis was the goddess of a religious structure that prevailed across thousands and thousands of years Isis,
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and you have Horus, Horus is a falcon and the Egyptian eye, everyone knows that eye, right? the eye is a falcon,
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and the Egyptian eye That's Horus.
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And Horus is a falcon, because falcons can see way better.
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They can see better than us, they can see better than anything else, except for, perhaps, eagles.
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And they fly above everything.
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Zazu in Lion King is Horus, right?
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And Mufasa is Osiris.
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And Scar is Seth.
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And there's no specific representation of Isis, but the closest there is in that story is probably the queen of the hyenas that's played by...
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Who's the actress?
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Hmm?
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Yes, Whoopi Goldborg, that's right, that's right, because they inhabit...
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She's like the queen of the underworld, right?
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She's the queen of the hyenas that live out among the death, but...
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Okay, anyways, Seth...
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Osiris, Seth, Isis, and Horus.
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Here's how the story goes.
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Osiris is a great king.
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He established the Egyptian state.
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You could think about him as the embodiment of Egyptian custom and tradition.
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You could think about him as the thing that the pyramid represents, all right?
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But he was great when he was young, but he's not young anymore.
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He's old, and he's willfully blind, and what that means is that he doesn't see what he could see.
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He refuses to see what he could see Why is Osiris old and willfully blind?
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Because that's what culture is
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It's a paternal spirit that's old and willfully blind And it's always
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that way Always that way And the reason for that is
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because it's a construction of the dead The dead aren't alive
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So they're out of date They can't update themselves anymore
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And you inhabit their corpse And that's actually what happens in an earlier story that I'll tell you next week
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the early Mesopotamian gods inhabited the corpse of their father, roughly speaking anyway, so Osiris was great when he was young,
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but he isn't young anymore he's old, and he's willfully blind, he won't look where he knows he should look he doesn't have the energy,
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or maybe he doesn't have the spirit his brother Seth is not a good guy and Osiris knows it,
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but he underestimates his malevolence and power and so Seth wants to rule the kingdom so what does that mean?
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It's easy.
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Every stable society is threatened by willful blindness and malevolence,
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always Every bureaucracy has that proclivity to stagnate
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and to become blind That's why corporations die all the time
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That's why a Fortune 500 company only lasts 30 years It's
361
why we have to have elections It's to stop the dead from staying in control for too long
362
Osiris turns a blind eye to Seth Seth is happy about it.
363
The same thing happens in the Lion King, roughly speaking Seth one day waits for Osiris to make a mistake and to be weak, and he attacks him, and he chops him up into pieces
364
And he distributes the pieces across the entire Egyptian state In fact,
365
the Egyptians regarded their provinces as pieces of Osiris' body Okay, so, now you can't kill Osiris, because he's a god And why is he a god?
366
Because he represents the spirit of structure And there's always structure.
367
It can't be destroyed.
368
It always reconstitutes itself.
369
It can be hurt and broken into pieces, which is exactly what happens to Osiris.
370
Things fall apart.
371
Why?
372
Because they get old, and because malevolence undermines them.
373
That's what the Egyptians were trying to sort out.
374
Okay, so, Seth distributes his Osiris all over Egypt, so he can't get himself back together.
375
Right?
376
Things fall apart, and they can't be brought back together.
377
But the spirit of Osiris still lives in the pieces So what happens?
378
Order is demolished What would you expect?
379
Chaos emerges That's Isis
380
Isis is queen of the underworld She's Osiris' wife Order and chaos Just like the yin and the yang
381
Order collapses Up comes the queen of the underworld She's looking
382
for order Chaos cries out for order She's looking for order
383
She goes all around Egypt Trying to put Osiris back together
384
It's a state of chaos She finds this phallus She makes herself pregnant with it And what does that mean?
385
Well, it means it's like
386
Geppetto in the belly of the whale
387
That thing has the potential to reemerge The thing
388
that collapses into its pieces Is still alive It can unite with the chaos
389
And produce something new That's the story of the dissolution of structure Into chaos and then its revivification Isis makes herself pregnant,
390
she goes back down to the underworld, she gives birth to Horus Horus is the Egyptian eye,
391
he's the son of the great father and the great mother He's a messianic figure,
392
and in fact, much of the mythology that described Horus Was extracted without much modification, and then attributed to Christ Very much,
393
and you can read about the parallels, you can read about it online if you want There's any number of parallels, and of course there is the mythology that the Jews came out of Egypt
394
And of course the Christians emerged from the Jews And
395
so there was a tremendous influence of Egyptian thinking on the development of these later ideas
396
And you see pictures of Isis with Horus on her lap
397
That are virtually identical in content
398
and form to the later pictures of Mary with the infant Christ
399
And that's the holy mother of God in the hero It's
400
not a Christian motif It's far deeper than a Christian motif It's a human motif So Isis,
401
queen of the underworld, gives birth to Horus And Horus grows up outside the kingdom Why?
402
In the underworld Because that's what human beings do You're alienated from your culture Always.
403
Why?
404
It's old and dead and corrupt.
405
And so that leaves you growing up in chaos, what would you call, alienated from your fundamental culture.
406
That's the story of adolescence.
407
Horus grows up.
408
He can see.
409
That's what differentiates him from Osiris.
410
That's why he's a falcon.
411
He goes and has a fight with Seth, and now the difference between Osiris and Horus is that Horus does not underestimate Seth.
412
He knows exactly what he's up against, and he goes and has a terrible battle with him,
413
trying to get his kingdom back Something else that's echoed in the Lion King story And while Horus and Seth are fighting,
414
Seth tears out one of his eyes Now, why?
415
Because Seth is the embodiment of destruction and malevolence And no matter how conscious you are, if you encounter that, even voluntarily,
416
the probability that it's going to damage your consciousness is extraordinarily high That's why people don't do it
417
So the eye is torn out But Seth is defeated
418
And Horus banishes him to the nether regions of the kingdom You can't kill him Why?
419
Because the malevolent, destructive force
420
that threatens states never dies It's always there You can only remove it temporarily Now Horus is king Pharaoh,
421
king, god He's got his eye And so you think, well, he's going to just pop that back in his head, and then he's going to be able to lead...
422
He's going to be able to take his place at the uppermost pantheon of gods properly
423
But that isn't what he does He takes his eye, and he goes back to the underworld Just like Pinocchio,
424
going into the depths to rescue Geppetto And down there is the spirit of Osiris,
425
who's extant as a kind of half -dead ghost And he gives Osiris his eye Now Osiris can see
426
So what does that mean?
427
You go down into the chaotic,
428
when threatened by malevolence Even to the point of damage to your consciousness You go down into the chaos,
429
and you find the dead spirit of your tradition And you give it vision And so,
430
provided with vision, Osiris regenerates And then Osiris and Horus go back up to the world
431
Linked together and rule jointly And the Egyptians believed that the pharaoh,
432
who had an immortal spirit Was the embodiment of the conjunction of Horus
433
and Osiris And that's what gave him sovereignty And
434
so you think about how brilliant that is The Egyptians are trying to puzzle out who should lead Who should be Pharaoh, and what do you have to be If you're going to be Pharaoh, in order for things to work
435
You have to be awake to malevolence and chaos
436
And you have to embody your tradition And that puts you at the highest pinnacle of the dominant structure
437
And that's the same as, it's the same thing It's the same thing as the battle between the gods across centuries,
438
or eons, and the emergence of the highest possible moral virtue as a consequence of that competition
439
It's the eye on the top of the pyramid, right?
440
It's, you know, in the Washington Monument, there's a cap on the Washington Monument The top of the Washington Monument is a pyramid, at the top of the pyramid is a cap,
441
it's made out of aluminum And the reason it's made out of aluminum is because when they made the Washington Monument, it was the most valuable metal known.
442
And so what does it mean?
443
It means there's a pyramid, and there's something at the top of it.
444
But the thing that's at the top of the pyramid isn't the same as the rest of the pyramid.
445
That's the thing.
446
The pyramid exists.
447
There's a dominance hierarchy.
448
Something climbs up to the top.
449
But it's not just at the top of one pyramid.
450
It's at the top of all of them.
451
The thing that rises to the top of any given pyramid is the same thing that can dominate all pyramids
452
It isn't good enough to be the best at a dominance hierarchy
453
What you want to be is the best at the set of all possible dominance hierarchies Right, and that's the thing that's gold at the top of the pyramid
454
And that's the eye That's what the Egyptians figured out And what does that mean?
455
It means the thing that puts you at the top is attention Pay attention.
456
Keep your eyes open.
457
It's not the same as thinking.
458
It's not the same thing.
459
It's like watching.
460
And the thing about human beings is we can see.
461
We can see better than any other creature except birds of prey.
462
And so our capacity to see is, in fact, what we use in the world.
463
Our brains are actually organized around vision, unlike most animals.
464
Their brains are organized around smell, not us.
465
we can see, we stand upright so we can see a long distance, and in our ability to see is what saves us,
466
and what saves our communities and that's what these stories are trying to portray and you might say,
467
well, why didn't people just say so? and the answer to that is because they didn't know
468
it took a long time to figure it out, forever, it's taken forever to figure it out
469
it's part of what I hoped when I wrote this book
470
and part of the reason that I'm teaching it is
471
because it seems to me
472
that it would be useful for everyone to actually understand this instead of just having it told as a story it's like,
473
that's great, man yes, you need the story but why not also just understand it? so
474
well, so that's what we're trying to do we're trying to understand this
475
so I had this client and she had a dream
476
she was having a really rough time
477
and she was a pretty good dreamer she had this dream
478
that she was walking down a road by there was an ocean on one side
479
and there was sort of sand dunes on the other side and she looked up and there was this guy
480
with a huge python
481
that had been out there showing it to everyone
482
and she took a look
483
and he invited her to come take a look at the snake but she refused and walked on.
484
And so she told me that dream.
485
She was also quite imaginative, so I said, look, let's try something.
486
First of all, tell me about the snake handler.
487
And she said, well, he's kind of a charlatan, he's a show -off, he's a fake, and I'm afraid that if I went up to the crowd where the snake was,
488
that they would force me to touch it.
489
And so I thought, okay, so that's why you walked by.
490
I said, okay, so let's play a game.
491
So you sit there and bring bring that dream image to mind, close your eyes, bring the dream image to mind, but let's play with it a little bit.
492
It's like Jung's technique of active imagination.
493
Let's play with it a little bit.
494
So go up there, imagine that you go up there, and you kind of have to do this like you're daydreaming.
495
You can't force it.
496
You have to play with it like you would when you're daydreaming, which is you're kind of half doing it voluntarily, and it's half manifesting itself.
497
It's kind of a gateway between you and the collective unconscious that's another way of thinking about it and anyways, I said, okay, so go up there
498
and the first thing we're going to do is figure out what are you going to do
499
if the crowd tells you that you have to touch the snake or get close to it
500
because she needed a defense
501
because it isn't up to other people to force her to do that so we practiced what she might say it's like, no, I'm comfortable here I'm just going to stand in the background just going to look at it
502
and get accustomed to it I don't need you to push me forward
503
so she felt pretty good about that So
504
that kind of armed her with a defense
505
so then she could pretend to go up
506
and take a look at the snake
507
And I said well the first thing you should do is take a look at the snake handler
508
and see if he's who you think he is And so she did that in her imagination.
509
She said no, he doesn't seem to be a little charlatan at all He's got this snake
510
that is his you know something he takes care of and he just has come out here to show
511
The people let people look at this snake and
512
so she said I asked so I said was he is he someone that you could trust or someone you shouldn't trust.
513
You have to ask both those questions, because otherwise you're leading the witness, right?
514
You don't want to tell people what to think.
515
You have to let them figure it out for themselves.
516
So, and she said, no, I think he's somebody that could be trusted.
517
And I said, okay, well, so what do you think that you could go up there and, you know, maybe lay your hands on the snake and touch the snake?
518
And she said she wasn't sure about it, but we went through it, and she was able to do it.
519
And so, it's the same.
520
So she had to make contact, she had to voluntarily make contact with this terrible snake that's at the bottom of being,
521
that's at the bottom of the tree of existence Right, that's where the snake is, it's wrapped around the tree Well, why?
522
Well, partly because we lived in trees, and that's where the damn snakes were, down there on the ground, where we didn't know Right, and that's the divine tree of being,
523
that And so, well, you have to get the hell out of the tree and go confront the snakes, and then that's the way out,
524
at least in principle So, you know, it was Carl Jung who popularized and differentiated the idea of archetypes They weren't his idea.
525
Platonic forms are archetypes, essentially Ideals are an archetype,
526
and so, but Jung, the thing that I think he did that hadn't been done before was to suggest that,
527
as well as suggesting, as Freud did,
528
that human beings are composed of sub -personalities Jung pointed out, as Freud did to some degree,
529
that some of those personalities have a universal character and so that they can be thought about as transcendent entities
530
And you could think about those...
531
while they have been thought about and even put forward as gods of one form or another now, when Jung talked about archetypes,
532
it was never clear what he meant and I think the reason for
533
that was because the archetype is a very complicated idea and a very complicated phenomena and you can think about it biologically, and you can think about it socially
534
and you can think about it as something
535
that the individual participates in creating so it's not that easy to localize it And as well,
536
it's not that easy to localize it, and as well,
537
Jung was never clear about what the universe of archetypes looked like At some times he spoke as
538
if they were a relatively small number, and then at other times he spoke as if they were innumerable And I think the reason for that is, in part, it depends on the level of analysis, right?
539
The more transcendent the archetype, the fewer they are, but they differentiate Because you might say, well, how many hero archetypes are there?
540
And one answer could be one
541
But they differentiate all the way out into the diverse range of works of fiction
542
that we have So you could say there's as many variants of the hero archetype, roughly speaking, as there are works of fiction
543
So you think about it as a hierarchy with the ultimate archetype at the top So then another question might be, what does the landscape of ultimate archetypes look like?
544
And I think that's what I tried to lay out, and that's what I'm trying to lay out in this diagram So, now, why do you want to know that?
545
There's a number of practical reasons, as well as intellectual reasons One of the most relevant practical reasons, as far as I'm concerned,
546
is that But integrating narratives, and so those would include political narratives,
547
integrating narratives have their force because they draw on universal archetypes Otherwise they wouldn't have any power, right, because they're basically stories,
548
an integrating archetype, like the story that Hitler sold the Germans Or that the Germans and Hitler co -created, which is a much more accurate way of thinking about it,
549
that had motive force because it had an archetypal essence And so,
550
political stories derive their power from the underlying archetypal representations Obviously, because they have to be concerned with the things that people find important, right?
551
How can you sell a political message to someone if it isn't about something they find important?
552
And if it's important to them, it's going to be grounded, at least to some degree, in their biological substructure I mean, if you're talking to hungry people about food,
553
it's a story that you can tell, right?
554
Because it hooks them deeply, it hooks deep into their motivational systems To use a narrative of Utopia, which is the land of milk and honey,
555
roughly speaking, a very, very old idea You're also tapping deeply into intrinsic human longings
556
And so the idea that political narratives incorporate archetypal themes is not really,
557
it's not an idea that I would consider particularly controversial putting it that way might be okay, so the problem
558
with political narratives in my estimation is that they can
559
rapidly transform themselves into ideologies and ideologies are dangerous for a variety of reasons
560
but the primary reason for their danger I think
561
this is a hypothesis is because of their one -sided nature what happens is that they capitalize,
562
parasitize I think is even a better way of thinking about it a profound underlying narrative, but they don't tell the entire story and so then
563
if you're looking for orientation in the world because you're fragmented and chaotic and somebody provides you with a partial story, that's going to serve an integrating function
564
and one of the things you see in psychotherapy is that
565
if you're chaotic and confused and you go see a therapist who has a particular kind of practice, Freudian, behavioral, cognitive, Rogerian, whatever
566
There's a high probability that undergoing
567
that course of therapy is going to be good for you
568
And that you might even come to view your life in the terms of that therapeutic practice You might say,
569
well, why is that therapeutic practice right for you?
570
Maybe it could have been Rogerian instead of Freudian, say And the answer to that is, yeah, well, it probably could have been because,
571
roughly speaking, any coherent ordering principle is better than none
572
and so that's also a good way to think about human development from an intellectual perspective is
573
that partly what has to be provided to individuals as they mature into adults is some kind of ordering structure
574
and this is one of the facts
575
that people who criticize the dogmatic element of religious belief don't really understand they don't understand
576
that you have to provide people with a determinate structure of some type even if it's constricting and restricting and crushing,
577
for that matter you have to pass through a disciplinary structure before, even in principle, you could be free before you're disciplined,
578
you're not free, you're just chaotic And so you have to practice some set of routines and rituals.
579
Now, you could say, well, they don't necessarily have to be religious.
580
And they could be secular, you could become a lawyer, you could become a plumber, you could become a carpenter.
581
And I would say, yes, that's far better than not becoming anything.
582
But the problem with an identity that isn't rooted into the archetypes is it leaves you incomplete.
583
Because the archetypal rooting of the identity is what helps you grapple with the fundamental existential problems of life
584
And whether you're a carpenter, or a plumber, or a lawyer, your soul is still going to hunger for some deeper form of identity
585
And you're not going to get
586
that without having your practical identity encapsulated in something that's greater from a philosophical perspective
587
And perhaps even deeper than philosophy
588
Which I think the archetypal stories are They're the structure within
589
which philosophy itself is embedded And outside of that is a behavioral structure We've talked about how those evolve
590
There's a behavioral evolution of something approximating a consensual morality And then stories about that consensual morality emerge And then inside that,
591
the structures of philosophy nest
592
And all of those things have to be addressed by your identity to some degree Or you're weak That's the problem, you're beset by doubts, you're beset by anxiety,
593
you're easy to stop, and you don't have much motivation And none of that's good, it's not good at all,
594
because life presents you with enough real obstacles in the face of genuine suffering
595
So that unless you're strongly grounded and have a real reason for moving forward, you're going to get stopped And as soon as you're stopped, you are one miserable thing
596
Because it's almost like the definition of human misery is to be paralyzed by anxiety
597
and emotional pain And also have no motive force forward It's a terrible state
598
And so you don't want to be in that state
599
And you have to have an identity that's powerful enough
600
and deeply rooted enough So the most profound doubts
601
that might emerge about your life are met by something of equivalent force
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This video has 601 sentences and 8749 words to shadow. The speech runs for 52:09. The speaker talks at a natural 168 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 84% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 less common words from the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
- snake /sneɪk/ (noun) — Any of the suborder Serpentes of legless reptiles with long, thin bodies and fork-shaped tongues.
- emotion /ɪˈməʊ.ʃən/ (noun) — A person's internal state of being and involuntary physiological response to an object or a situation, based on or tied to physical state and sensory data.
- chaos /ˈkeɪˌɑs/ (noun) — The unordered state of matter in classical accounts of cosmogony.
- pyramid /ˈpɪɹ.ə.mɪd/ (noun) — An ancient massive construction with a square or rectangular base and four triangular sides meeting in an apex, such as those built as tombs in Egypt or as…
- dominance /ˈdɑmɪnəns/ (noun) — The state of being dominant; of prime importance; supremacy.
- reward /ɹɪˈwɔɹd/ (noun) — Something of value given in return for an act.
- emerge /ɪˈmɝd͡ʒ/ (verb) — To come into view.
- incentive /ɪnˈsɛntɪv/ (noun) — Something that motivates, rouses, or encourages.
- envelope /ˈɛnvə(ˌ)loʊp/ (noun) — A paper or cardboard wrapper used to enclose small, flat items, especially letters, for mailing.
- narrative /ˈnæɹ.ə.tɪv/ (noun) — The systematic recitation of an event or series of events.
- roughly /ˈɹʌf.li/ (adverb) — In a rough manner; without kindness, softness, or gentleness.
- hierarchy /ˈhaɪ.ə.ɹɑː(ɹ).ki/ (noun) — A body of authoritative officials organized in nested ranks.
- anxiety /æŋˈzaɪ.əti/ (noun) — An unpleasant state of mental uneasiness, nervousness, apprehension and obsession or concern about some uncertain event.
- ignore /ɪɡˈnɔː/ (verb) — To deliberately not listen or pay attention to.
- encounter /ɪnˈkaʊntɚ/ (verb) — To meet (someone) or find (something), especially unexpectedly.
Phrasal verbs you will hear
- think about /ˈθɪŋk əˌbaʊt/ (verb) — To ponder.
- look at (verb) — To observe or watch.
- go up (verb) — To move upwards.
- mess up (verb) — To make a mess of; to untidy, disorder, soil, or muss.
- play with (verb) — To fiddle with; make small adjustments to, for example to something mechanical in order to improve its performance.
- deal with (verb) — To handle verbally or in some form of artistic expression; to address or discuss as a subject.
- do with (verb) — Only used in to do with
- fall apart (verb) — To disintegrate, to break into pieces.
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 227 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, don't, they're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: threaten /ˈθɹɛt.n̩/, therapeutic /ˌθɛɹ.əˈpjuː.tɪk/, mythology /mɪˈθɑ.lə.d͡ʒi/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: emotion /ɪˈməʊ.ʃən/, consciousness /ˈkɑnʃəsnəs/, anxious /ˈæŋkʃəs/, socially /ˈsoʊʃəli/, examination /ɪɡˌzæm.ɪˈneɪ.ʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: hierarchy /ˈhaɪ.ə.ɹɑː(ɹ).ki/, anxiety /æŋˈzaɪ.əti/, fundamental /ˌfʌn.dəˈmɛn.təl/, probability /ˌpɹɑ.bəˈbɪl.ə.ti/, behavioral /bɪˈheɪvjəɹəl/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like snake, emotion, chaos.
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | being harshly evaluated · are associated · can be ignored |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | person who delivers · say, which is · way Which can |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | has already taken · have encountered · we've discussed |
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.