The blue fairy in Pinocchio is Mother Nature.
Genetic studies show that even in a shared environment, temperament is genetically determined. Freud thought of the super ego as the tyrannical father in your head, but your father is just a voice for society that shaped him. The voice of society is in your head, but it’s not perfect and should be questioned.
Morality is the understanding of the rules by which the dominance hierarchy operates. The biggest, meanest chimps who don’t negotiate power or share with others, once weak, are brutally destroyed by the chimps below him. In proto-morality, even chimps hate tyranny. If two wolves are fighting, they are sizing each other up and try to scare each other by growling and puffing up. The subordinate wolf rolls over and shows his neck in defeat and is allowed to live, but lower on the hierarchy, which is better than being dead. Rats love to wrestle and pin each other down. When the big rat wins, the subordinate rat initiates play next time. Unless the big rat lets the little rat win 30% of the time, the little rat will not want to play anymore. If you deprive them of rough and tumble play their prefrontal cortex doesn’t develop and they become restless and impulsive. If you deprive human children of rough and tumble play, they also become restless and impulsive. Then you put them on Ritalin, which is no good.
Kids need rough and tumble play. They learn the limits of their bodies and that of others and their ability for reciprocal give-and-take. Dancing is a test to see if you can connect, mirror, reciprocate, express yourself in your body and are socially literate.
Rats run toward pleasure and away from pain, which are two different motivation systems in the brain. Similarly, humans are motivated by running toward rewarding goals and away from the pain they want to avoid.
Morality emerges from repetitive social interaction. We trust each other, you betray me, I whack you, and we start again. Don’t hold a grudge, try again. You’re open, but not a pushover.
Morality emerges before the representation of morality. It’s not a top down thing, but bottom up. Kids can play games even of they don’t fully know the rules. A rule describes a pattern of behavior, but a pattern of behavior is a pattern of behavior. The behavior comes first, then the description.
If you want to do something that is difficult and requires energy, your brain gives you something else hard to do that is less difficult—it gives you a reward for not putting yourself through the more difficult struggle. Don’t practice what you don’t want to become—you train your thoughts by rewarding or defeating them.
The cricket is Pinocchio’s conscience, but he is on a matchbox pontificating and lecturing, dull and tyrannical. There is nothing genuine in what he says. He just repeats moral platitudes.
Our brains are built to form representations of reality in the form of image and story. We are always acting things out, but don’t always know why we’re acting things out. Through dreams and talking we put the pieces together, discover what we’re doing, epiphanies arise, then we make strategies to improve.
You can unknowingly have a crush on someone and start to fantasize about them. Maybe you don’t want to know you have a crush on them. Freud’s idea of free association says to watch your fantasies and responses to them. Fantasies provide problems and possible solutions. Freud sees dreams as wish fulfillments. They are that, but not merely that. In fantasy, we can become a character, put ourselves in a situation, and run the simulation to test our response.
The birds in Pinocchio represent the Holy Spirit. Pinocchio heads out naïve and confident. The fox is the trickster. He’s a fraud and a con artist. If you are preyed upon by a narcissistic psychopath—and you will be—he views you as stupid and naïve. In his mind, if he can fool you, you deserve it. They are great at manipulating the best of us. [Peterson recommends watching serial killer Paul Bernardo being interviewed by the police on YouTube. He’s good looking, charismatic, and good at manipulating.]
Nietzsche asked, do you follow the rules because you’re good or because you’re afraid of getting caught? If you could get away with it, would you do the wrong thing? This is why he said Christian morality was cowardly. Those who don’t have the courage to be violent make a virtue of their meekness.
When men go bad they become tyrannical and antisocial, much more so than women.
We always wonder what’s going on behind the scenes in people. This is why we watch people’s eyes, to see what they are looking at. We can predict how to cooperate or take advantage of them.
The Fox grabs Pinocchio to take
him to
Don’t teach kids to be afraid of strangers, make them courageous. This will protect them. Don’t terrify your kids. They will become targets.
The fox and wolf schmooze Pinocchio, singing to him about the benefits of unearned celebrity. He can go right to the top without hard work and sacrifice. Like the Kardashians, many want to be instantly famous or pretend to be famous for doing nothing. “Don’t bother with hard work, you have natural talents!”
Freud and Jung talked about the oedipal situation of the boy being overprotected by the mother. This occurs in families with bad boundaries, where the dad wasn’t around and his mom tries to get from him what she is missing from her husband. She’s scared of letting her son grow up and leave and having nothing left. These mothers love and smother their babies. Some boys become hyper-feminized as a result and others hyper-masculinized because they are trying to separate from her.
Don’t invite vampires into your life. You have to invite them in, and once they’re in, they’re hard to get rid of. They take your blood and drain your life from you.
For Jung, you start as a persona, or the mask you wear for society, a “good person.” You then investigate your shadow—the parts of you hidden away because they are taboo, which you find shocking because they are hidden even from you. Your goal is to explore your shadow, then integrate it into your conscious mind.
If you’re extraordinarily compassionate, you will sacrifice yourself for others and this will be endearing. But people will take advantage of you, so it’s not good and won’t get you through life. You have to develop teeth and be angry, vicious, and confrontational to be moral. You have to go to the shadow where that is repressed.
American Idol is a great look at narcissism—utterly talentless people becoming accusatory and homicidally angry when criticized and not unduly praised. In the opposite, you find introverted and humble people who don’t believe they are talented, but are extremely talented. No wonder the show is so popular.
[Peterson recommends Jean Piaget, who in his estimation is one of the best psychologists there is.]
You have to learn to be assertive and negotiate. You have to learn to say no. You have to know what you want and ask for it. If you ask for a raise, you have to have your reasons and your resume in order and have options. You make less money if you are agreeable and don’t ask for more. If you don’t have yourself in order, you’re just a façade which can be easily torn down.
The cricket falls asleep, which means conscience can be flawed. He’s not as conscientious a conscience as he should be. Conscientious people are industrious and orderly. They like willpower and order. They are very judgmental and hard on themselves and others. They rank high on disgust. These are the highest predictors of being drawn to conservatism.
To be a celebrity, you have to be a crowd pleaser. You become the puppet of the crowd and they reward you with money. You sell yourself out to please others. Don’t make a fool of yourself for public display.
When you blush, you feel shame or embarrassment. An interesting theory says you can trust people who blush because you know their conscience will betray them.
Celebrities become narcissistic with grandiosity and arrogance and surround themselves with sycophants who tell them what they want to hear. You have entitled, adult brats. But you want real friends who challenge you and tell you when you are doing things that upset other people. The job of a parent is to teach kids not to do things that cause people to dislike, exclude, and reject them. Your job is to socialize them to get along with others.
Hitler wasn’t a bad person who led people down a bad path, it was a conspiracy between him and is followers together. Maybe you were in WW1 and your friends got blown up, and your economy got destroyed, and you have moderate artistic talent that takes you nowhere, and there was a threat of communism from the East looming, so you’re angry. You’re charismatic, good with crowds, and can air grievances, though you don’t have your ideology together, and if enough people shout at you long enough that you are their savior, you start to believe it. Hitler was a conscious manipulator who could appeal to the darkest fantasies of the crowd, which he made a mob, so now they can scream their darkest thoughts and fantasies in public without fear of judgment from others.
[Peterson recommends The Gulag Archipelago: An Experiment in Literary Investigation by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.]
If you were arrested by the KGB and hauled off to a tribunal, they wanted you to admit you were guilty and would torture you until you confessed. Why a mock trial? Why not just arrest you and throw you into the camp? Because they don’t want to you exist outside of the rules.
In all tyrannical societies, society is tyrannized all the way down. You terrorize your own conscience, and never admit or talk about anything going wrong, especially when just about everyone is a government informant, policing each other. Everyone participates in tyranny by lying together. The idea that good people were just following orders and only the tyrant is to blame isn’t true.
The jester is the only one who is allowed to tell the king the truth, because he is already beneath contempt. This is what makes comedians powerful voices of social commentary.
If you break a rule but were unaware, you get off easy. But if you willingly break it, the punishment is heavier. Kids are cute, which elicits compassion and sympathy, so we let them get away with more. Nature doesn’t.
Cuteness is cross-species, indicated by big eyes, round head, small nose, small mouth, and flailing limbs. Cuteness brings out compassion and the desire to nurture, unless you are a sociopath.
Mark Twain said one of the advantages to telling the truth is you don’t have to remember what you said. Lying is a hydra, it grows complexity and you have to keep lying. Pinocchio has learned don’t be an actor, and don’t lie.
Rousseau saw kids as innocent, but corrupted by society, which is partially true. Good kids turn twelve and become demon teens in an instant. Girls treated like princesses become teens, then look for someone to tear them out of that role, like a biker guy.
Dante’s hell in Inferno has Satan encased in ice at the
bottom level surrounded by traitors and betrayers, which makes sense because
when you betray someone you can damage them beyond recovery. Read Inferno with
Compassionate people don’t think they can be brutal, but you can kill people with compassion by doing for them what they can do themselves. Let them struggle through it. Don’t make them dependent.
Women are choosy maters, so they let men compete, then pick the winners at the end—those highest in the hierarchy; men with status, power, and success.
Religious conversion is an amazing treatment for alcoholism, as are mystical experiences, some induced by LSD.
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