A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership - James Comey (Notes)

 

In the author’s note, Comey states that loyalty is indispensable in his line of work in law enforcement, but this loyalty is to truth itself, not to any party or person, no matter his own personal political leanings. Only the evidence after thorough investigation matters.

Comey tells the story of his life and career path. He was the U.S. deputy attorney general during the administration of George W. Bush, then appointed as the director of the FBI by Barack Obama in 2013, and fired by Donald Trump in 2017.

He paints different pictures of each of these presidents’ personalities, leadership styles, ways of going about business, and the climate surrounding them in the White House. Bush, for instance, could be blunt, impatient, start meetings early, and had a devilish sense of humor. Though his humor had a mean streak, it was essential to relieve tension in meetings. One minute they are talking about terrorism, the next minute the room is erupting in laughter.

Comey addressed the illegal overreach of the NSA and the use of torture in the Bush administration. The Bush administration operated in a culture where uncertainty was intolerable and doubt was derided as weakness. There was pressure to be certain. In politics, admitting doubt and mistakes is career suicide. It was difficult for Comey persuade them, no matter how much evidence was presented, that some of what they were doing was illegal.

When Obama nominated Comey to be director of the FBI in 2013, he met with him in the Oval Office for an informal conversation, telling him this was the last time they could speak this way because the FBI and president needed to be at arm’s length, working independently, and needed to go through professional, established protocols to interact with one another. In other words, they couldn’t be personal friends. This protects both the president and the FBI. Obama stated his confidence in him to do his job well.

Comey describes Obama as intelligent, composed, open-minded, someone who asked questions, looked at things from multiple angles, and took his time deliberating. He was both confident and humble, which is difficult to balance. He also described how Obama and Biden worked together, though having completely different personalities and divergent ideas about which direction to take things.

As Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump competed for the presidency in 2016, Comey had two important issues on his plate to investigate—evidence that Putin had directed Russian operatives to interfere with the election in favor of a Trump victory, mainly through use of misinformation on social media, and whether Hillary Clinton broke any laws sharing classified information over emails sent on an unsecured, unofficial server.

The evidence that Putin interfered with the election was certain, but it was concluded that Clinton had broken no laws, she was just sloppy and careless. Comey was disappointed that Obama, in an interview with 60 Minutes, declared Hillary’s innocence before the investigation was over. This would make the investigation look partisan.

Comey announced to America that the case was closed and Hillary was innocent of criminal behavior. Right wing media, upset that there was no conviction, tried to spin the investigation as partisan and unjust, undermining confidence in the FBI. Comey assured readers that the personal politics of FBI members never get in the way of investigation. They follow strict protocol, work as a team, compare the evidence to the law, then make their conclusions.

Congressman Anthony Weiner was under investigation for sending nude photos to underage girls, and while examining his laptop, the FBI found a file of Hillary’s emails—tens of thousands more than were submitted for the investigation. They got a warrant to open the file and look through them, but with more than 100,000 of them and only two weeks before election day, there is no way they could read them all in time, as it took people specially trained in what to look for as they read them.

The dilemma put before Comey was whether or not to reveal that the investigation into Hillary Clinton was reopened or to conceal it until after the election. If he reveals this, it could have an impact on the election. If he doesn’t, the media will report it anyway and it will look like he’s hiding something, undermining America’s confidence in the FBI.

After talking it over with many people and knowing that no matter which option he picked it was going to look bad, he decided to reveal to the American people that the investigation of Hillary’s emails had been reopened. His job was to care about the integrity of the FBI, not whether or not this influenced an election, and looking at the polls, no one seriously thought Trump would win anyway.

For this, Comey was excoriated, treated coldly, and even hated by Hillary and many surrounding him in meetings at the White House. People refused to make eye contact, talk to him, or acknowledge his presence. He felt like a ghost. Still, many were sympathetic to how tough that decision was and reached out to him with sympathy and support.

After Trump won the election, Obama, though he tirelessly campaigned for Hillary and wanted badly for her to win, told Comey he nominated him because he believed he was a man of integrity who would do the right thing, and that nothing that happened in the past year changed his perspective on this.

Comey notes that he didn’t vote for Obama, he didn’t vote in 2016, and that his wife and kids voted for Hillary Clinton. Any insinuation that he saved Hillary Clinton from criminal activity or sabotaged her presidential bid and helped Trump in any way was deeply upsetting to him. He was just doing his job.

Trump now elected, the FBI had to brief him on Putin’s interference in the election, and Comey was asked to brief him one-on-one about the Steele Dossier, in which Russia claimed to have footage of Trump with prostitutes in a Russian hotel room in 2013 in which the prostitutes peed on each other on the bed, and that they planned to use the footage as blackmail.

When the FBI told Trump about Putin’s election interference, there were no follow up questions like how did they do it, how do we prevent it from happening again, and what steps should be taken against them. They only wanted to minimize the damage by insuring Americans that Putin had no influence on Trump’s victory. Comey was shocked that they were deliberating their spin right in front of them. “Intelligence does facts, the White House does politics and spin.”

Comey told Trump about the dossier and he immediately became defensive, denying the allegations, asking if he looked like the kind of guy who needed prostitutes. When Comey explained that he just wanted to protect the president from blackmail, that the FBI didn’t believe the allegations, and that he wasn’t under investigation, Trump calmed down.

Four days later, Buzzfeed released details from the dossier. Trump tweeted: FAKE NEWS—A TOTAL POLITICAL WITCH HUNT! He called Comey the next day to tell him he didn’t stay overnight at the hotel, was only there to change his clothes, that he knew he was being recorded, and that he flew in and out the same night. Being a germaphobe, he assured Comey that he would never let anyone pee on a bed near him. Comey thought Trump needn’t stay overnight to be with prostitutes, and the suite was big enough that he needn’t be in the bed with the prostitutes when they peed on it, allegedly because the Obamas had once slept in that bed, but didn’t say any of this out loud.

Trump was convinced he had the biggest inauguration crowd ever—definitely bigger than Obama’s—when no amount of spinning the facts, pictures, and data could justify this. Nothing would change his mind. Comey would come to find that Trump lived in a world of his own making.

Trump arranged a private dinner for Comey in the Green Room at the White House, which was strange, because there was protocol for setting up these meetings through proper channels, and he never attended these meetings alone. These meetings needed to be recorded as official meetings and the contents of the meetings disclosed to his team. He told Trump there needed to be a separation between the FBI and the president for both of their good, and previous presidents understood this.

After praising Comey for doing a great job, noting that everyone spoke of him in high regard, and hoping he would stay on as FBI director, he let him know that others wanted his job. Comey assured him that he had no desire to quit the job he loved and could be relied on to always tell the truth. “I need loyalty. I expect loyalty,” Trump said. Comey didn’t respond. They stared each other in the eyes for a few seconds and moved on.

In a long stream of consciousness monologue, Trump went on about his sexual assault allegations, Hillary’ emails, his inauguration crowd size, that he didn’t mock a disabled reporter, the luxury of living in the White House, and the viciousness of the campaign. He never left room for response or feedback, so believed everyone simply agreed with him. This wasn’t the proper way for a leader to rapport with a subordinate. He simply didn’t know the protocol of past presidents, why they couldn’t be on chummy terms, and how scandalous it was to meet alone with an FBI director and ask for loyalty, starting with putting his job security on the table.

Trump said Chief of Staff Reince Priebus didn’t know they were meeting, which seemed incredible to Comey, then later in the conversation said he did know. Why lie about it? Trump then asked Comey to investigate the golden showers claim to prove it didn’t happen. Comey explained that it is very difficult to prove that something didn’t happen, and the American public would interpret that as an investigation on him, which wouldn’t look good.

Trump again asked for loyalty. Comey said he would get honesty. “That’s what I want, honest loyalty,” Trump said, as if a bargain had been struck. “You will get that from me,” Comey said, uncomfortable and desperate to end the conversation.

Comey notes that someone so experienced in business and leadership should know that ethical leaders never ask for personal loyalty. They care about how they lead, have a confidence that breeds humility, and are open to feedback and being wrong. They understand that they need to trust others to tell them the truth so they can make effective decisions.

Comey made it a practice to keep notes on his personal meetings with Trump because he didn’t trust Trump to recollect their meetings accurately and worried that he might use them against him one day. After every personal meeting with Trump, Comey met with his team and debriefed, wrote a memo of the contents of their conversation, and left one copy with the FBI and another in a safe at home.

Reince Priebus invited Comey to the White House for a 20-minute meeting to learn more about the protocol between intelligence and the White House, and after explaining to him that a distance must be kept between the president and him for both of their good and that they should only meet formally and through the correct protocols, Priebus asked if he would like to see the president. “I’m sure he’d love to see you!” Comey refused twice, wondering if Priebus had heard anything he’d just said in their meeting, but he insisted, taking him to the Oval Office.

In that meeting, Trump went into another stream of consciousness rant in which he spoke but never left space for others in the room to respond. Bill O’Reilly had just asked Trump in a pre-Super Bowl interview why he respected Putin, a man who kills his own citizens and others, and why he wouldn’t outright condemn him. Trump said he respected Putin, even if he might not get along with him. O’Reilly stated again that he was a killer. Trump responded, “There are a lot of killers. We’ve got a lot of killers. What do you think? Our country is so innocent?”

This became a lighting rod of criticism across the aisles. Trump thought he gave a good answer to a tough question, but Comey, for the first time, spoke up and told Trump his first answer was good, but not the second one. “We aren’t the kind of killers that Putin is.” Trump abruptly ended the meeting, not used to being challenged, and Comey knew from then on that they wouldn’t have a friendly rapport, which he thought a good thing.

“Still, the encounter left me shaken. I’d never seen anything like it in the Oval Office. As I found myself thrust into Trump’s orbit, I was once again having flashbacks to my earlier career as a prosecutor against the Mob. The silent circle of assent. The boss in complete control. The loyalty oaths. The us-versus-them worldview. The lying about all things, large and small, in service to some code of loyalty that put the organization above morality and above the truth.” (251)

After the next intelligence briefing at the White House, Trump asked everyone to leave the room but Comey when the meeting ended. He wanted to crack down on those leaking classified information to reporters and explained that he had to fire Michael Flynn for misleading the Vice President Mike Pence. Flynn was under FBI investigation for colluding with a Russian ambassador, which he lied about when interviewed by FBI agents. Trump said Flynn was a good guy and asked him to “let this go.” In other words, to do him a favor and stop the investigation. Comey again wrote a memo of the meeting and shared it with his team in case Trump would later try to deny the conversation ever happened. He asked AG Jeff Sessions to make sure he was never alone with Trump again, but he couldn’t insure that.

Trump called Comey, wondering if perhaps FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe had something against him because he was hard on his wife Jill, who ran for Virginia state legislature in 2015 and lost. Trump believed, falsely, that Hillary Clinton had given money to Jill, so the FBI was soft on Hillary in return. Comey assured Trump that most FBI agents lean right, Andrew was a Republican, and he was a professional who could put all personal matters aside to do his job well.

Trump said the Russia investigation was a cloud over him, keeping him from doing his job well, and it was hurting Melania. What could he do to lift the cloud? Comey said the FBI was working as quickly and thoroughly as possible. Trump wanted the message to the American public to be clear that he wasn’t personally under investigation.

Two weeks later Trump called, irritated that the cloud of the investigation was still over him. Comey told him he reported his request to the acting deputy attorney general and had not heard back, so the White House councel should contact the leadership of the DOJ to make the request. Trump said he would do that, “Because I have been very loyal to you, very loyal. We had that thing, you know.” Comey assumed that by “that thing” he was referring to the private dinner in the green room at the White House.

On May 9, 2017, while in the middle of a speaking to an audience at a Diversity Agent Recruiting event in L.A., Comey stopped mid-speech when he saw on the TVs behind the audience various news stations with the words COMEY RESIGNS and COMEY FIRED. No one had notified him. He completed his speech, met with everyone and shook hands, then tried to find out what was happening.

He was blindsided when the memo on his firing said his conduct was awful and unacceptable. This made no sense, given his impeccable reputation and having received nothing but praise from the Trump team. He was unjustly defamed, as it was claimed that the FBI was in disarray and being poorly led, which wasn’t true. What Trump told those close to him was he fired Comey to relieve pressure on the Russia investigation. Many reached out to him to report their shock and dismay at how disrespectful and unjust this firing was after such a long and impeccable record.

Trump was furious, seeing footage on the news of Comey flying back from L.A. to Washington on an FBI plane. He called McCabe and asked that it be investigated. He wanted to know who authorized the use of the place for Comey. McCabe said he himself authorized it because the plane and staff needed to return to DC and that it was the FBI’s job to see to it that Comey return home safely. Trump exploded, saying Comey was never allowed back on FBI property ever again. He was not allowed to say goodbye to his team and coworkers. His stuff was shipped to him. Angry, Trump asked McCabe, “Your wife lost the election in Virginia, didn’t she?” “Yes, she did,” he replied. “Ask her how it feels to be a loser,” he said, and hung up.

On May 12, Trump tweeted that Comey had better hope there were no tapes of their conversations before he decided to start leaking to the press. Comey had no intention of going to the press, but realized if Trump did record their conversations, then also recorded was Trump in the Oval Office asking Comey in private to drop the Flynn investigation. This would be scandalous.

Comey decided to share unclassified information from his personal memos about his conversations with Trump in which he was asked to drop the FBI investigation of Flynn. This is freedom of speech and press, not “leaking” unclassified information as some pundits wrongly claimed. Comey just wanted to tell the truth.

Comey noted that lacking kindness, humility, empathy, and respect for truth, Trump can’t keep around him the kinds of people a president needs to speak truth to him. He is unethical and untethered to truth and institutional values. His leadership is transactional, ego-driven, and about personal loyalty.

He further notes that it is hypocritical and morally wrong for right wing pundits and evangelical faith leaders to look the other way and ignore this dangerous behavior because they find some of Trump’s policies and court appointments favorable. They would never let Obama or Clinton get away with this behavior. “What is happening now is not normal. It’s not fake news. It’s not okay.”

Every organization has its flaws, Comey notes, but it’s not okay to sit idly by and watch the president destroy norms and traditions and brazenly undermine confidence in law enforcement institutions meant to keep him in check. Thinking about what’s right for the country must come before political or personal loyalty.

Comey is optimistic that whatever damage Trump does will be temporary and pass, and hopefully this afford good conversation about our need to value truth, integrity, respect, tolerance, and ethical leadership.

A Review of Jordan Peterson's Maps of Meaning Lecture Series

In the Maps of Meaning lecture series, Jordan Peterson draws from many disciplines like religion, mythology, philosophy, biology, psychology, anthropology, sociology, political theory, art, and history to make the case that human brains have evolved to create meaning and tell stories; to structure everything we experience by myths and archetypes—or universal and important stories told over and over again.

What he challenges is the idea that humans are blank slates onto which facts present themselves and that we create value, meaning, and narratives from them after the fact. Peterson makes the case that value, meaning, and framing life in archetypes arise from the way our brain is evolved and how its neuroprocessing works. For instance, the ability to speak a language is preloaded in the brain. When the baby is born, it babbles phonics heard in every language. The potential for language is already there. The baby then zeroes in on the language of its environment and mimics that. Just as the brain is preloaded with the potential for development of language, it is preloaded to create meaning and narrative. As data arrives, your brain is already sorting and categorizing and discriminating what is meaningful to it and its goals, and doing this subconsciously without your conscious permission because that’s what it is evolved to do. You can only notice that you experience reality the way your brain has arranged it for you.

Peterson spends time in these lectures going over a few Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Babylonian, Jewish, Christian, Hindu, and Buddhist myths and stories to make the case that they all have similar or universal archetypes in them, or important takeaways for wisdom. The same archetypes can be found in Peter Pan, Sleeping Beauty, Pinocchio, The Lion King, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and Star Wars.

While Peterson believes he is deriving such complex wisdom from these stories and comparing them for their common archetypes, it seems to me that he’s reading all of that complexity into these stories and creating patterns of similarity rather by ignoring their stand-alone context. His long and infamous lecture series on reading the Bible through an archetypal lens depends on the same procedure. Just how many archetypes are there? No one knows. They can be multiplied endlessly.

Joseph Campbell, one of the most influential and popular mythologists in the past century was famous for scouring the world’s myths and religions for universal themes and seeing them as one, despite differences in details. His concept of the hero with a thousand faces says there is a single hero archetype played out in a thousand different specific heroes in a thousand different stories: usually that the hero is confronted with tragedy and evil and is then pulled into a quest where he can never go back, but must go into the unknown, face great danger, and return with something valuable and share it with humanity.

Critics of Campbell believe he is doing a disservice to specific, individual myths developed in different times, places, and cultures to speak to different needs and situations by trying to make them seem more universal than they really. Peterson is aware that he is doing the same as Campbell and sees the Bible both as a collection of stories written by specific people in specific times and places, therefore full of contradictions when collected as a whole, and as a collection of stories edited over time to reference and draw from one another and over again to create unified themes as a whole. It’s just a matter of which of these you intend to focus on in your analysis.

So does Peterson succeed in proving his thesis that certain archetypes arise over and over again in myths and stories because they are universal and birthed from the structure of our brain? I don’t know. It’s an interesting hypothesis that people far better informed than I am in these areas have criticized.

So is all lost if this project fails? No. There is much to learn from archetypes and universal truths, even if the specific myths and stories Peterson used to make his case don’t always map onto these archetypes comfortably. There is plenty of wisdom in these lectures, much of which is derived from psychology and his years of clinical practice as a therapist.

Yes, these lectures contain the expected jabs at Marxism, socialism, postmodernism, and the state of universities being social justice indoctrination centers that curtail free speech for ideology. But there are also jabs at Hitler, Nazis, totalitarianism, and online men’s communities that think poorly of women. Hardly what you would expect from an alt-right Nazi who fuels men to be misogynists as his critics are fond of saying.

What I got from these lectures has little to do with his thesis, but more with practical advice on dealing with how to rebuild your life once tragedy and chaos has disillusioned, disoriented, and destroyed you, and how to avoid becoming bitter, resentful, and wanting to die, encouraging listeners to get in touch with what’s meaningful to them, pay attention to their values, rise from the ashes, take responsibility, stand up straight, face the world, and create order from chaos. He encourages listeners to risk believing that life is good and that what they do is worth it despite the evil and chaos in them and all around them, and that what they do matters. No matter how bleak it looks, the potential to live a deep, rich, meaningful life is always in front of you. I’m thankful for that kind of encouragement.

Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief - Jordan Peterson - 12 - Final: The Divinity of the Individual (Lecture Notes)

[I did not watch this lecture. These notes are slightly modified from another person's blog.]

Peterson starts the final lecture by reminding us of the essential problem that he has laid out in the beginning of his lectures—that of belief systems. What constitutes belief systems and why are people willing to engage in conflict to maintain and expand them?

Belief systems orient us in the world and matter psychologically. Some are superior and others inferior.

Science describes objective reality but has no bearing on our subjective reality. We cannot derive an ought from an is. There are too many pathways you can derive from scientific truths. You have no way of knowing which scientific truth should be most relevant without invoking your subjective interpretation. That is the postmodernist problem: there are too many facts to be able to coherently determine values. If there was an inquiry into values, assuming they are divorced from science, what would it look like?

Jung suggested that we inhabit archetypal myths. Neuroscientific ideas echo a similar idea to that. Kant suggested that we use an a priori structure when interacting with the world. Piaget described the constraints we have in the social world, and that’s what limits the infinite number of possible interpretations of how we ought to behave. Our constraints are both biological and sociological. These ideas lay the foundations to the answer to the postmodern conundrum.

To know if one solution matches the problem of how to orient yourself in the world, you should test it. In other words, it must be functional. Maslow outlined our basic needs for survival. These needs differ in degree but are universal.

Piaget concluded that the set of games that are played voluntarily outcompete the set of games that are played by force. In other words, regardless of what the game is, the fact of whether it was voluntary or not is the most important factor to consider. This is a good argument against tyranny. And the same idea is used in chimp hierarchies where tyrants often lose to other chimps who collude against them. The idea that our identity is a blank slate then, is unwarranted. We have numerous in-built constraints.

The stories of mythology have to be both memorable and useful. The main objection to deriving meaning from stories is that there are too many interpretations (same as the criticism against deriving moral values from science). But the answer to that is that the meaning from stories are derived from multiple levels of analysis outside of stories – they are derived neurologically, psychologically, and socially.

When you fail at achieving a goal, such as getting another person to be attracted to you, you may feel like your entire belief structure is jeopardized. And while it’s not the best course of action to think so extremely, it’s not irrational. If your system of values and actions fail to produce your intended outcomes, it’s not irrational to assume that there is something wrong with the system, or that you need a new one.

The existential landscape consists of order and chaos. Explored territory and unexplored territory. That’s what the structure of stories is like. It also defines your relationships with your friends. They slowly reveal new parts of themselves to you. You don’t want to be friends or in a relationship with someone who is too predictable (order) or too chaotic.

When you encounter an anomaly, you use the same neurological circuit that detects predators. That’s the dragon of chaos or the snake in the garden. But the dragon symbol is deeper, it hoards treasure. Despite its capacity to kill you, it offers you the possibility of something valuable in return.

“The thing you don’t know about is the greatest gift. Error is an infinite source of information.”

When someone you are talking to says something you don’t agree with, or that surprises you, that’s when you learn new things. If you’re constantly in a state of order, you don’t learn anything. But it’s not always easy to recover from too much chaos.

If a problem is small, but noticeable, don’t ignore it. If you’re in a relationship, you need to first notice that there is a problem that is manifesting itself across multiple situations. Then you need to confront the person and you need to then ignore their tears. Then you’ll be able to discuss the problem. Most people don’t do that. You need to be tough to be willing to go through multiple layers of challenges before reaching a solution. But if you don’t, the problems accrue until they becomes too large.

“If you continue to be a slave, you will continue to give rise to tyrants.” Solzhenitsyn said that a society falls apart because of the accumulation of small mistakes. If you allow yourself to be taken advantage of, you will be taken advantage of. And you will simultaneously encourage that person to take advantage of other people. The counter to that is to be articulate enough to formulate arguments and brave enough to stand up for them. Naivety will never protect you from tyranny.

A wealthy man complains to Christ about his troubles, and Christ’s answer was for him to leave his wealth behind and follow him. Some people interpret this as a critique of wealth, but it’s actually a critique of attachment.

A main impediment to enlightenment is attachment. This doesn’t mean you should have no wants, but that it is necessary to be willing to give up what you value most to evolve. And that’s a very difficult to do. This point is made in The Brothers Karamazov.

Christ makes a return to the world, but the inquisitor tells Christ (while imprisoned) that the burden he put his people through was too much, that they had built a society where his teachings were watered down so that more people are able to live by them. Christ then kisses the inquisitor on the lips, and the inquisitor runs away terrified, leaving the cell door open for Christ. The story is remarkable and could be interpreted as an attack on the Catholic Church for refusing to acknowledge Christ’s arrival and letting go of control. But what makes the story even more remarkable is that the inquisitor left the door open. Dostoevsky managed to give a balanced critique of the Catholic Church at one of its darkest periods.

To transform into a better individual, you burn off your previous identity. Not being willing to do that will hinder how well you adjust to life’s demands.

The first thing you should do is orient yourself in the world. In the game of Quidditch in Harry Potter, there are games within games. The most important game involves the snitch—a winged ball. The round chaos contains the initial material the world is made of. It’s made of mercury, which is interpreted as the subconscious manifesting itself in your waking life. If Harry catches the snitch, he wins the entire game.

Too much conflict and too little conflict are both bad for relationships. If you tell someone they are a bad person and list all the reasons for why you think that’s the case, you will probably not go very far. But avoiding conflict completely will place you in stasis. The question becomes how to operate somewhere in between those two extremes.

“Meaning is what manifests itself when you’ve oriented yourself properly and when you’ve optimized the flow of information between you and chaos.” In other words, you want to be moving in the right direction and in a state of flow where things are neither too challenging nor too easy.

Meaning is the perception of being in the right place. However, it can be pathologized. That’s why there’s a call to virtue in most religions. If you warp and twist the inputs and blind yourself to reality, you will not be able to orient yourself properly. You must maintain a pristine, honest relationship with the world. There is no certainty in life. But this is the best path forward. It is to try to get your act together, to avoid cynicism, and to pursue something that is meaningful to you.

The goals you set must strike a balance between order and chaos. You should do things that are slightly out of reach but still realistic to pursue. You should aim to be an entity that is self-correcting, that is constantly solving problems and developing ways to solve problems more effectively.

Accepting something means taking responsibility for it. You cannot feel responsible for something you do not accept.

“A little knowledge of death will destroy you. The only way to overcome death is the complete voluntary acceptance of it.”

Meaning can be a gage to help you know if you’re on the right track or not. If you live a life where you are constantly overwhelmed with challenges, your life will have a lot responsibility and meaning, but such a lifestyle is unsustainable in the long run. You will eventually burn out. And of course, if you have no responsibility, your life has no meaning.

The ideal is to experience just enough chaos (challenges) to be able to experience self-renewal and growth, while simultaneously having the opportunity to recover. Take on as much as you can handle while living a life you can sustain for 30 years into the future. Having that mindset is a lot better for you than the alternatives.

You don’t find meaning by asking someone to tell you how well it will work out for you. It’s your destiny to find that out. You need to act as if Being is good even though there are good reasons to think it’s not. Assuming that Being is good is a leap faith. But to play this game you must be all in. And the great thing about life is that you’re already all in.

“Why not pick the best thing possible that you can do? Why not do that? Maybe you can justify your wretched existence to yourself that way. I think you could. That’s what it looks like! People find such meaning in the responsibility they adopt, it stops making them ask questions about what life is for.”

Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief - Jordan Peterson - 11 - The Flood and the Tower (Lecture Notes)

[I did not watch this lecture. These notes are slightly modified from someone else's blog]

Peterson starts the lecture by summarizing his views against postmodernism, and why sacrifice is the right path forward. Instead of having a belief system and then trying to get the world to subscribe to it by demanding rights it is wiser and more useful to carry the burden of personal responsibility on your own. GPS is an intelligent system that is not dogmatic. It readjusts and recalibrates. Similarly, you will be forced to reassess your views about the world. The ideal is not having the best belief system, it is the ability to adapt your belief systems to new information. The idea of sacrifice is key. If you want to be adaptable, you have to be willing to sacrifice your previous judgments about the world. 

In the story of Adam and Eve, the snake represents an archetypal limit. The snake not only is a predator, but is symbolic of all things that are predators. It represents the essence of evil. But evil doesn’t just exist externally, it exists within you. And coming to terms with your shadow is the cure to naivety.

“He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.” Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

People are afraid of confronting the monster within, but they should try to do so voluntarily. The alternative is that the shadow takes you down an evil route involuntarily (School shooting). The solution to post traumatic stress is in gaining a more sophisticated philosophy of evil. The Egyptian myth: Confront Seth, lose an eye, and reunite with Osiris. Integrate your shadow. Predators choose naïve victims who are unaware of the shadow in themselves and in others. Without a sophisticated philosophy of evil, you will have no way to defend yourself against predation. You should learn about malevolence and become dangerous. Those are the two defenses against malevolence.

When you overprotect your children, you turn them into easy prey. They will eventually face chaos and tragedy and realize that protection from authority is no longer sufficient.

Exposure to what you are afraid of leads you to learn that you are tougher than you think. Men who are afraid of their father’s judgment in their 30s and 40s should come to terms with the limitations of the knowledge of their fathers. The all-knower doesn’t exist, you must cultivate a stronger self.

The only way to get tough is through exposure to malevolence, danger, and fear. Become self-reliant; no more dependence on authority for answers. One bad solution to chaos that people often resort to is grasping on to old forms of order and tyranny.

In psychotherapy, it’s a mistake to try to solve other people’s problems. Instead, you should let them become a better solver of problems. That’s the Oedipal problem—not allowing the child to become stronger by overprotecting them.

The permanent problem that exists is the inevitable death of your perceptual scheme. The only solution is to have an adaptive perceptual scheme. Be willing and capable of altering your world view whenever required.

The story of Cain and Abel happens after original paradise has collapsed. Adam and Eve are outside history, but Cain and Abel is considered inside history. The hostile brothers is an archetypical motif. Cain’s philosophy is “To hell with it.” Abel’s philosophy is “Make things better.”

Archetype is something you cannot push beyond. Christ’s death is an archetypal limit because the worst possible malevolence was inflicted on the best possible person.

Cain and Abel also represent an archetypical limit in the same way. Cain (the most evil) destroys Abel (the most good). Cain destroys his own ideal (who he aims to become).

Cain is a farmer while Abel is a shepherd. Shepherds had to be very tough to survive. The older brother (Cain) was destined to inherit more possessions and you might think he is lucky. But Cain is not favored by God.

Wealth can be a problem, even today. Children who are raised in wealthy conditions are deprived of privation. And the only way to become more mature is through necessity. Parents find it difficult to say no to their children when they have money, but they are not doing their children any favors psychologically. The children find that what they want is devalued while their desires grow. That’s not helpful. Children need to hit the right limitations. Having no limits imposed them endows them with a worldview that is different from how the world really works.

The idea of sacrifice was central to the story of Cain and Abel. The understanding was that the only way to benefit in the future would be to sacrifice something valuable in the present. The story doesn’t make it obvious that Cain didn’t sacrifice enough, but it subtly hints at that idea. In life, whenever you find something has been causing you suffering, the best thing to do would be to drop it. In other words, sacrificing what’s valuable to you.

When primitive societies ceremonially sacrifice each other and animals for the gods, don’t dismiss them as stupid. Sacrificing someone often kept other kinds of aggression at bay and stabilized society, and it’s important to remember that we evolved from primates. To be able to develop a sophisticated and counterintuitive notion of sacrifice was no easy feat. It took thousands of years of trial and error to understand its value, and eventually those who understood it had a survivalist advantage over those who didn’t.

“If people impede your development, you should sacrifice your relationship with them.”

The idea of inequality can be seen through Cain. He thinks he is making all the right sacrifices, and yet he achieves nothing while his brother Abel—seemingly making the same sacrifices—gets whatever he wants. And worse, he’s a good guy and everyone likes him. In today’s world, it is tempting to think that it’s inequality that fuels violence and suffering, but it’s more likely that anger at inequality is the culprit. The more violent areas are not those that have the lowest living standards but the ones that have the most inequality. Is the right course of action to rebel against the system, or to make the right sacrifices?

Cain’s choice was to brood in resentment and murder his ideal. He rebelled against the social contract and against the logos. And when he confronts God about it before murdering Abel, God tells him that it’s his fault. Not only that, but he tells him that he intentionally invited an evil cat into his house and allowed it to interlock with him and have evil offspring. His blindness to malevolence got him to this point and there is no one to blame but himself. After Cain kills Abel, God questions him about what he had done. There is a parallel here to Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment. Raskolnikov before and after killing the old woman are different people.

It’s simple to assume that Hitler wanted to win, but it’s clear that he did not have good intentions. He could have not demolished people (Jews and gypsies) and could have used them for labor. But his proclivity for revenge mirrors that of Cain and it is more likely that he wanted destruction than the victory he promised and preached.

The theory of nations going to war for natural resources is an oversimplified understanding. It is more likely that motivations for war are deeper and more psychologically vindictive and malevolent. People have managed to survive peacefully with very little.

The Bible contains many self-contradictions, but that’s only one level of analysis. You don’t have to take it literally to derive value from it. The sequence of events in it, however, is not random.

The descendants of Cain go on to build institutions. But the flood eventually comes. Recall the murder of Absu, which results in the destruction of the cultural structure. Similarly, Cain is rejecting the cultural structure. Tiamat is God of salt water is paralleled by the idea of the flood in the Bible.

Eliade stipulates that whatever you build will eventually decay if you leave it alone. A similar motif exists in the story of Osiris. You have a moral contract with the things that you own to preserve them. That’s what you do with a car or any project you start.

Another example is the New Orleans flood. They are a corrupt state that built a dam that could last 100 years, when the Dutch created one that could last 10,000 years. Entropy is inevitable, but willful blindness accelerates the process of destruction. You can blame nature (the mother) but insufficient order from within (the father) is more often the problem.

The story of Noah and the story of Cain are preludes to the story of the Messiah. The way to withstand chaos according to these stories is to identify with the state (culture), and to have the power to transform, to walk forthrightly and honestly alongside God.

Noah makes the proper sacrifices with the coming of the flood because he was prepared. After the passing of the flood, creation is reborn. God tells Noah that he won’t smite all of humanity again and then lays out some rules.

The Tower of Babel comes after the flood. As the group of human beings try to build a tower that reaches to the sky and challenge God’s dominion, which angers God, the people start to fractionate. This is a universal feature of groups.

The ideal is to have a group large enough so that you can be protected, but small enough so that you are relevant to it. In the story of the Tower, the group becomes too large—like what has been happening to the EU. The people in the story no longer spoke the same language and dispersed to different far away areas.

The Tower story is placed right after the Flood story. The Flood story contains nihilistic chaos while the Tower story contains the totalitarian temptation to build hyper structures to replace the transcendent. The result is decay. The prophets have warned of the temptation to refuse to be subservient to a higher ideal. It’s what also results in the deterioration of the larger groups in the story.

In the Q&A, Peterson was asked why most of his viewers and subscribers of the Self-Authoring program are mostly men. He replied that it’s not because of his political stances. His viewership was mostly male (85%) even before the political issues arose. It boils down to two things: agreeableness and responsibility. On the extremes, men and women are very different even though they’re similar on average. Men on average are disagreeable and women are agreeable. Men often refuse to take orders and prefer to do nothing with their time instead. When Peterson spoke to his audiences, he noticed that “men’s eyes lit up” when he talked about responsibility. Men are starving for that message today. To them, there is nothing but responsibility. Self-authoring helps them find a goal that they want to accomplish.

Non-western ethnic minorities, and generally groups that weren’t doing so well and had an ambivalent relationship with education, have seen the most marked improvement after going through the self-authoring process.

Lifting a load, as useless as you are, is your first step to redemption. The charm of Homer Simpson exists in his courageous and admirable quest to take care of his family despite his shortcomings and incompetence. The key is choice. “People will carry a heavy load if they get to pick up the goddamn load.”

Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief - Jordan Peterson - 10 - Genesis and the Buddha (Lecture Notes)

Peterson started this class partially hoping to explain why people defend their belief systems and why they are found valuable. Belief systems regulate people’s emotions by helping them orient themselves in the world so that what they do matches what they want in the social environment where they are successful. People defend their beliefs systems because they are used to make sense of the world and then to act out making sense of the world with everyone around them. 

What happens when two groups of people have different beliefs systems? You can give yours up for theirs, you can fight, or you can assimilate. Could you deconstruct your beliefs to find essential principles or guidelines to find similarities despite their differences? Can we find viable principles in them?

Communism and capitalism are ideologies pitted against each other. Are their differences meaningful to debate or as postmodernists say, they are both just power games and debate is meaningless?

Universities are now making it mandatory to take classes in equity, which is equality of outcome, teaching that wherever there isn’t equality the system is corrupt and must be destroyed. But we can endlessly multiply categories of people in society and their inequalities so the notion is futile. The only way to have total equality is if everyone has nothing. Why are these ideas returning with such force when history shows the bloody carnage that resulted in trying to implement these ideas?

Are there principles that Western civilization is based on that are more than mere opinion? Nietzsche said if you take the core principles out of society the whole system shakes and crumbles. When we kill God or transcendent values, what’s left? Dostoyevski was working on this at the same time in Crime and Punishment. A character in that book wants to solve multiple problems by killing someone, believing the only thing holding him back is arbitrary moral convention. He commits the crime and hell breaks loose. Dostoyevsky is investigating the idea that with no God or transcendent or higher values anything goes.

Peterson is frustrated with Sam Harris and radical atheists who believe that we can abandon the transcendent and be purely rational. Naked self-interest is completely rational. Harming others to get what I want is completely rational. Where is the pathway from the rational to an egalitarian virtue? Why the hell not every man for himself? It’s a fairly coherent philosophy that can be implemented in the world with a great level of success. The ethics Harris and Dawkins take for granted as rational come from a long history of mythology. You don’t get to wipe that out and assume that the ethics it delivers are just rationally axiomatic.

You don’t have to argue for the existence of God. You can say God is our ethics personified. The point is, western civilization bases its ethics on God. What’s at the bottom of the idea of a transcendent value? How can we address this without appealing to metaphysics? We can say God can be anything. What—if anything—is our culture predicated on?

Out of Nietzsche and Dostoyevsky came Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn who wrote The Gulag Archipelago and documented the horrors and atrocities that resulted from trying to implement state-based equality. Why don’t students learn about this in college when taught left wing politics? The system didn’t work because it was predicated on the wrong values. Whatever we’re doing in the West works despite its flaws.

Solzhenitsyn advised that Russia return to Orthodox Christianity, making him a reactionary in the eyes of his critics. If people don’t return to transcendent values they are vulnerable to pathological ideologies and the murderous impulses that come with them.

Nietzsche said we had to create out own values, becoming supermen, to replace God, which was a bad idea. If you are the giver of values, you inflate yourself into a demigod and announce the values you thrust forth. What’s to keep you humble? Hitler didn’t create himself or Nazi Germany, it was co-created with the Germans. He became the mouthpiece of their darkest desires and they fueled each other.

Jung studied Nietzsche in great detail and saw the flaws in the idea that we must create our own values. Jung and Freud paid attention to dreams and their language and that there is great significance to them. They were informative. Freud wrote The Interpretation of Dreams and saw them as wish fulfillments and that the primary motivation of human beings are sexual. Jung wrote Symbols of Transformation about the fantasies of an American schizophrenic woman and relating them to mythology.

Myths are birthed from dreams, which a mode of information presentation. They both share a narrative structure and are narrative-like. They are movies that play in your head, like daydreams, involuntarily. Dreams, like thoughts, think and dream in you. What are they, what are they thinking, and why?

Freud thought dreams were sneaky and cryptic because they want to tell you what your conscious mind doesn’t want to hear, tied up in the idea of repression. Jung disagreed, believing dreams are being is clear as possible, it’s just the best they can do. They are the birthplace of thought the same way artists are the birthplace of culture. Your mind is groping outward to try to comprehend what it has not yet comprehend by trying to mapping it to image. It’s incoherent because it’s not a full-fledged thought. It’s potential that could be clarified and brought into reality.

From where to thoughts come to pop into our head, the void? The gold Buddha sitting in the image of the lotus is an image of the lotus bursting up from the bottom into fruition. Maybe these ideas have roots. There seems to be a necessary pattern in morality that is intrinsic and manifested in culture and isn’t just arbitrary or learned. The dialogue between culture and nature that tries to make the proper articulation of that spring forward in each individual. Your nature strives so you can manifest yourself properly in the world and culture is meant to aid you in that.

Piaget had some interesting ideas, hoping to reconcile science and religion. He was interested in the spontaneous morality the developed in children as they played together. What is central to all of them? What’s the ideal?

The dominance hierarchy is in your biology. You become healthier and experience wellbeing at every level physically, emotionally, and psychologically when doing the right thing, and we put the right thing at the top. It’s anything but arbitrary opinion.

When you look at the night sky, you project gods into the cosmos and populate the unknown with deities from your imagination. When you remove them from the cosmos, do they go away? No, they back to your imagination. The corpses of your gods live in your imagination, so where do you go to revivify them? Your imagination. What’s down there? Just mess and catastrophe, or is it patterned? Order in the form of archetypes exist down there—structure looking for things to fill it with.

We are predisposed to language. We babble all possible phonics as babies and can potentially speak any language until we absorb a language from our culture and fill those babblings with words. Similarly, we are predisposed to thinking in archetypes and fill this with data.

A fundamental question of existence is why keep struggling? If you cut off one head on a hydra and more keep coming in endless struggle and suffering, why go on? Is life really worth living? Why not just kill yourself and end the game? People who have become truly malevolent answer that life is worth destroying. It’s not irrational to work for the destruction of being. It might be the most rational thing you can come up with depending on your presuppositions.

Jung sees the birthplace of archetypal ideas in the imagination. They are representations of patterns of adaptive behavior that have evolved collectively. We determine morals and ethics together by figuring them out over history.

There is nothing more noble than encountering the unknown and articulating what you find. This will make you practically successful. You’ll be admired by men, selected by women, and practically successful in life. Your ideals are trying to manifest themselves and make themselves known to you, which is what religious education is for. We’ve lost that.

The hero goes out into chaos and makes order, then when order becomes too rigid and oppressive you bring it to chaos and restructure it to improve it.

Joseph Campbell is a mediator between Jung and general culture, but all of his ideas come from Jung.

The story of the Buddha is almost a perfect parallel structurally to the story of Adam and Eve. Are we imposing structure on the story or are there archetypes that underlie them that we simply notice?

The Bible was authored by multiple people over long periods of time and organized later into a collective story out of which the sense arises. It evolved from bottom up. We acted first and made sense of it later. Information is encoded in action and we don’t know why that’s the case. The best you can do is dream yourself up and bring it into articulated existence. Most of the time you don’t even know what you’re up to and have little control, so good luck trying to control someone else.

The reason the Bible has so many contradictions is because dreams have so many contradictions. Too much coherence loses the unarticulated richness in the premature attempt at coherence. Waking thought sacrifices completeness for coherence and dream thought sacrifices coherence for completeness. Precise thought excludes too much (left hemisphere, linguistically mediated, sequential, logical) and imprecise thought is not sufficiently coherent (right hemisphere, imagistic, emotion based) so we do both. The right hemisphere wants a picture of everything so it’s not precise, so the left articulates for precision and clear action but loses richness. The Bible is half dream and half articulated thought which has the advantages and disadvantages of both. We have to face everything thougt we don’t understand anything completely. We need the interplay of dream and articulation.

A healthy family functions in which all the individuals thrive and the family is strong. The individual benefits along with the group and keeps bringing one another up. That’s the goal of a healthy society. You try to maintain what is stable because it falls apart easily. An orchestra is comprised of individuals doing their part to create a harmonious symphony and everything comes into coherence. All levels of being are stacked coherently. Everyone is having a good time. It’s a glimpse of paradise.

The first stories of Genesis are unidentifiably ancient. God only knows how old they are. Oral traditions can last centuries. They are repeated and acted out. There is a place in history past which we cannot look. Everything pops up about 5,000 years go and everything before that is lost.

Where is the meaning in a literary work? It’s the words in relation to the sentences in relation to the paragraphs in relation to the chapters in relation to the book in relation to culture in which the book is produced.

The Bible endlessly cross-references itself and tries to connect everything to everything to create coherence. You can pull out meanings at one level of analysis that you can’t at another. You can focus on a particular story or see how it’s used in coherence with the bigger story which changes the meaning.

To believe the Biblical stories and ask if they are true is to ask whether or not you agree with the moral of the story or the archetype as a valid representation of reality, not whether or not God actually exists or whether or not the Bible makes sense scientifically or whether or not the events and people in it are actually historical.

In Genesis, to be naked and not ashamed is to lack self awareness that you have made yourself vulnerable and unprotected. Things were pretty good when we weren’t self-conscious and didn’t know we were naked. Clothing is a barrier of protection between you and the world. Knowing good and evil is to be aware of threat and to learn to be malevolent.

In Genesis, Adam and Eve are unconscious beings in a safe space and a serpent comes in to open their eyes and reveal suffering and death. Paradise comes to an end, they are expelled, and there are gates that keep them out. In the story of Buddha, he is raised in a protected city that only contains what is healthy and good and all things that cause suffering are kept from him. He is curious and wants to explore, just like Eve wonders why she can’t eat the fruit. They look beyond the confines of their safe space and look for trouble. You don’t want timid, sheltered, and coddled kids nor do we want antisocial kids breaking all the rules, we want a balance. We aren’t content with paradise or utopia because we are built to keep exploring the unknown and asking what’s next. We destroy paradise for challenge and adventure. Buddha encounters evil and suffering, becomes anxious, and spends months in PTSD. The world collapsed, he knew good and evil, and couldn’t return to paradise. You can’t return to childhood, so you go backwards by committing suicide—destroying your painful self-consciousness and making it all go away. What’s the way forward? Are you destroyed and that’s it? Or do you generate order out of chaos?

If these stories are archaic superstitions written by ignorant people in the past, why do they make so much sense?

Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief - Jordan Peterson - 9 - Patterns of Symbolic Representation (Lecture Notes)

Jung popularized and differentiated the idea of archetypes. They didn’t originate with him, but come from Plato’s ideals. Jung and Freud believed in sub-personalities that can be thought of as transcendent entities, like gods. Jung never clearly defined archetypes. It’s a complicated idea that can be thought of as biological, sociological, and something the individual partakes in. Sometimes he says they are few, sometimes infinite. It depends on how wide your lens is. You have a hero archetype, but you can have an infinite number of particular heroes in stories that fit the archetype. 

Stories or narratives incorporate underlying archetypal themes because they matter to us, hook us, and motivate us.

What kind of therapy works best? Well any kind of ordered structure is better than chaos, so potentially all of them. You can’t just challenge religious dogma and leave people in chaos, you have to provide some kind order, which comes from ritual, routine, etc.

No matter what you do for a living, your soul longs for deeper meaning. Your identity is contextualized in something bigger. Philosophy is nested in archetypes which give order and meaning. To be left in chaos is to be left in anxiety, pain, and lacking motivation. We need deeper meaning to order and make sense of our lives.

Political narratives can become ideologies because of their one-sided nature. They capitalize on one side of the narrative, but don’t tell the whole story. All stories must contain the positive and negative. Life is complex. For instance, society is both tyrannical and liberating. Capitalism produces both good and bad results. Male aggressiveness can be both positive and negative. Various political and economic philosophies contain both good and bad.

Reality consists of you, your interpretive structure, and the world of phenomena. Every story has these elements.

How do you know that the stories and archetypes you tell aren’t just imposed post hoc stories? Because you can map archetypical structures to brain biology and neuroprocessing in the brain. They arise in us across culture. They are deeper than post hoc frames. They come before information and frame it, not after.

We tell stories with deeper meanings than we can know. How? Because we act out and live out meaning by imitating, even if we don’t know what we’re doing. We live bottom up. We don’t think and articulate first, we act first, then wonder and reflect on why we want what we want and do what we do. You have an epiphany after years of behaving a certain way and not knowing why you do so. Animals are the same. They do, but don’t philosophize and articulate. Acting is deeper than thinking.

When you watch a play, you partake in it through imitation or live vicariously through the characters, then you get coffee, talk about it, and try to articulate it. You find themes that matter. An archetype is what’s common across stories, so we can watch one hundred movies and find what they have in common.

Freud talked about the id, ego, and superego. The id is the natural force within you, the ego is you as an individual, and the superego controls, oppresses, and civilizes you, and can also be a complete tyrant.

What you confront in life is not the material word, but potential. We are not determined by a material substrate. Though it’s never a good idea to base an argument on quantum mechanics, the quantum realm suggests that being is a field of potential from which forms emerge. Consciousness plays a key determining role in that, though we don’t know exactly how.

Your name is a category, but you are a paradoxical category. A person can lack homogeny enough that you can’t plot a way forward with him. There are too many things pulling both you and him apart. Complex categories like people are both A and B at the same time.

A dictionary of symbols won’t do. They change according to context. When the context is sky and earth, sky is masculine and earth is feminine. When the context is earth and water, earth is masculine and water is feminine. The unknown/great mother is chaos, and nature. The known/great father is order and society.

How do you learn? You know nothing, you build a center, and you explore the unknown from there. When the caregiver is changed, what is familiar (family) is gone and the child becomes disoriented, anxious, and unsafe. He smiles at a stranger, then hides, then repeats and plays a game, then loosens up and explores if he feels safe enough, then retreats to mom for a hug of reassurance. When life is too much, he runs back for comfort. A child explores then comes back and attaches to a mother’s leg. At some point, he moves on providing his own security and no longer needs his parents for that. He becomes an adult.

Sacrifice is painful because you learn something new and have to give up previous frames and data you got all wrong and no longer need. You abandon all you know and have to remap and retool yourself, other people, and the world around you. When you explore something new, a part of you is demolished. This is why some people don’t enjoy talking to people who have ideas different to theirs. They become challenged, which is uncomfortable, and might even lead to disillusionment, where you have to retreat to the underworld. Continual small updates make you stronger because you practice the process of letting go and transforming. Be a master of that, not of guarding your territory. You want to keep tearing down your walls, expanding, and rebuilding. What we don’t know benefits us, so don’t be afraid of it. Welcome it, grow, and develop.

Your relationship is going well, then something comes up. From where? Up from inside of you. It will manifest. Trouble is always brewing in relationships, which is what keeps them alive. Having nothing but positive interactions with your partner is a dead relationship. You don’t want bliss from your partner, but periods of peace punctuated by a good fight. A real relationship is a wrestling match that causes you to grow. A narcissistic person wants a partner who delivers only what they want from them, and they will mistreat them beyond belief. A person with no spine who is ever-compatible and agreeable is not real, so can’t be engaged, encountered, and respected. Tension in relationships is healthy.

Jonah doesn’t want to deliver a negative message to Nineveh, so he runs and a storm comes. Betray your destiny and see how long it takes before you are drowning in a storm. What’s calling you to be your best is exactly the thing that’s pushing you forward to manifest yourself most fully in the world. Run from that and everything starts to rock. Those on the boat think the storm resulted because someone did something wrong. Drawing a storm because you did something wrong is a worthwhile metaphor. Sometimes one person in your company is sinking you and you need to throw him overboard or ask him voluntarily to leave to save the company. Jonah is thrown overboard and finds himself in the belly of the whale, in the underworld, where his whole world has fallen apart. He decides to follow his destiny after all. Out of the belly of the fish comes the illuminated human being. If you fall apart and put yourself back together, something better results. Jonah is “born” from the whale anew, from the chaos of the eternal feminine.

There is an image of Venus in the sky, the goddess of love, emanating rays of light down upon the kneeling knights beholding her. Men use the image of female perfection to motivate themselves. In Tom Sawyer, he’s 12 years old and is struck by Becky, the new girl across the street, and hops on the fence and performs for her. He is kneeling before the image of the feminine, which motivates him. It’s the chivalry story—trying to make himself worthy. You should encourage this in your partner.

The feminine represents novelty—both promise and threat. Women don’t understand how paralyzing they are for men. Men are terrified of women because they don’t want to be rejected. They don’t see the individual woman, but the judgmental ideal, feeling rejected by all women. They have to sacrifice their relationship with the ideal woman for the real woman. Get over your fear of rejection by encountering it continually. Go out and ask women for phone numbers and realize that rejection from women isn’t as catastrophic as you imagined.

If you turn out the lights and sit in the dark, your imagination immediately conjures predatory creatures and monsters coming from all sides. In new environments, cats pause, slink in a crouch, sniff, then with trepidation explore. They run to safety when they smell danger. They might not know exactly what’s out there, but they know it will hurt them. This is the monster—the conglomerate of all predatory animals imagined together that can hurt you. It’s a useful category that has functional utility.

Kali is the Hindu goddess of destruction. She is immersed in fire and skulls—she is the fire that consumes. She has insect-like arms. She’s given birth to a person whose intestines she’s eating. This is Mother Nature. It gives birth to you and consumes you. If you make sacrifices to her, she benefits you. In the face of horror and death, you make sacrifices so you transform the terrible destructive element of nature into that thing that continually offers you what you need.

Dianna is multi-breasted. She nurtures and protects—the source of fertility and sustenance and all things good. She is the positive feminine in nature, Kali is the negative.

You can’t negotiate with God or Mother Nature to rid your life of evil and suffering, but you can get your life together as best you can and reduce unbearable suffering.

The MGTOW movement—Men Going Their Own Way—have had enough of women. They have been hurt by women so advise to never marry, fall in love, have deep connection, or share your space or resources with women. They have made their negative experience with some women representative of all women. If women keep rejecting you, the trouble is not with them, but with you. They are telling you what’s wrong with you. Listen to them. Similarly, among feminists, all men are thought to be evil and masculinity toxic. To say you want nothing to do with women makes you a pathetic weasel.

[Leaders of the Red Pill men’s community on YouTube often say they agree with Jordan Peterson on everything but his relationship advice. They advise that men should never be in a relationship with a woman they have to contend with; she should always submit and trust a man’s leadership. And men should never be chivalrous, perform, impress, or “simp.” Bowing down to a woman because she’s beautiful and pedestalizing her is making her of greater value than you, and this turns women off. Men should be confident and the prize. Women should be trying to win him because he is a high quality alpha male. The man who puts the woman above him is a beta simp. She will look down on him.]

There is an image of Mary holding her baby and crushing the reptile under her feet. She’s coming out of a portal that transcends time and space. It’s the place from which all forms emerge. Layers of harmonious patterns make up being, so there are musical instruments in the painting, a symphony of potential.

Images of Isis with Horus on her lap are precursors to the Christian iconography of Mary and Jesus, but both represent the same eternal archetype of valuing life and protecting it from danger.

In Peteron’s experience working with women—mainly conscientious, conservative, hard working, intelligent, dutiful, and agreeable women—they want to please, do what they’re told, and be obedient. This means they outperform men in grades at school. Men are rebellious and not as agreeable, which might hold them back. Women succeed in high school and college and are great at moving up their high stress, high pressure jobs, making over $250,000 a year and working 70 hours a week with no time for anything else. These women marry men who make as much as they do or more, so end up leaving their careers to work 9-5 jobs to manage their lives and families. Why aren’t there more women in positions of power? People in positions of power and responsibility never stop, never rest, and handle endless stress. They are obsessed with work and are disagreeable, so want to lead people and don’t care if they hurt feelings. They are incredibly competitive, and their personal relationships suffer because of this. Some women are built for this, but most realize they aren’t. They want families, so drop out of their careers for a more balanced life in their 30s. Women are never more miserable than when they realize they want kids but didn’t have them for the sake of their career.

Most people don’t have careers, they have jobs, and a job is getting paid to do something you wouldn’t do otherwise. A career isn’t an idealized enjoyable life, it’s high stress and hard work. Why are telling women to idealize a fulfilling career and to see motherhood as an unfulfilling jail? It’s appalling.

The positive mother gives birth to the hero. Hercules is wearing a lion skin and has a bow and arrow and a club covered with eyes. He is armed, accurate, and able to pay attention. He is protected, given encouragement, and can take on the world head on.

The great mother and father are born from chaos. Male and female are fundamentally differentiated into two sexes that interact creatively to bring new life into being.

There is an image of God the Father with the sun behind him. He is sitting behind a walled city. The sun fights its battle with darkness at night and rises victorious in the morning. It provides life and light and sends the darkness away. This is why we have solar gods, victorious in the sky. The city is a confined space, and inside is a dominance hierarchy. It represents order.

If you are socialized well, you become God the Father, embodying the central spirit of that culture. You are the embodiment of civilization and the force that transforms it and moves it forward. That’s what university is supposed to be for, but now it creates politically obsessed idiots.

What kind of relationship do you have with your real father? Without him, it’s demoralizing and hard to be confident in the world. If your father rejects you, it’s as if the spirit of civilization rejects you and leaves you outside the city walls. It’s very difficult to recover from this. The father can also be a tyrannical and crushing force instead of an encouraging one. If you’re my son, I should always be imposing the highest standards of behavior on you and judge you with the intent of improving you. But the father might have his own pathologies—being jealous of your achievements or competing with you for your mom’s attention.

The image of father as wise king has been lost to a massive degree in modern universities because he represents the patriarchy to be torn down. Rather than being grateful to all of the structure he builds despite his imperfections, he is completely torn down and made obsolete.

The overprotective mother holds the child and says she won’t let anything happen to him, when instead of coddling and smothering him, she should be sending him out into the world and saying she’s there for him if he needs her. The father also wants to get you into the world and light a fire under your ass to do better in the world and succeed.

We have more rights and privileges and protections than ever in history. How about we focus on responsibility? That’s where life has meaning. The more responsibility you agree to bear voluntarily there more meaning and fulfillment enters your life. It’s tough, but you’re doing something difficult and heroic. It’s a good and necessary message. We have to be more than we are or we aren’t going to survive.

Captain Hook is a pirate. He’s captain of the high seas, willing to break the rules, a romantic figure of adventure. The dragon of chaos is after him. It already took his hand. Peter Pan stays Pan—pan means everything—and refuses to grow up and become someone, because why be an adult when you become jaded, scared, tyrannical, and chased by the dragon like Captain Hook? That’s the negative father.

The father supports the son who voluntarily takes responsibility and embraces sacrifice, foraging into the chaotic world. This is noble and to be looked up to. This is the top of the dominance hierarchy. We admire courageous and strong people who act appropriately in a helpful, compassionate, wise, tough manner despite being beset with all the problems of mortality that beset everyone else.

Images of Hitler’s propaganda are shown. He’s the knight of nationalism. He is God the Father, but represents the state, or hyper-nationalism, which is tyranny. He has an eagle above him, which eats flesh, not a dove. He has a boot stomping on snakes. He can now round up the enemies he deems to be snakes. Everything outside of Arian purity was disgusting and meant to be burned. These images have archetypal power. Presented is uniformity of the state, all in lockstep, rigid, homogenous, and without diversity or individualism, which you need in case you’re on the wrong path and on your way to marching off a cliff. Stalin used similar propaganda to present himself as a God archetype.

Communism was a fully articulated philosophy that could be attacked philosophically, but fascism wasn’t, so depended on ritual, symbolism, light, fire, highly charged emotional rallies, pageantry, organized and orderly displays, lights shining miles into the sky as Hitler spoke, long before rock music used them, and personal charisma that allowed him to play the mob like an orchestra, leading to millions of deaths.

What does it mean to be a good person? It’s bravely going into the world, creating order from chaos, sharing what you’ve found, being a good husband and father, and keeping order. This is winning at all of the dominance hierarchies.

Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief - Jordan Peterson - 8 - Neuropsychology of Symbolic Representation (Lecture Notes)

What are the constants of experience? Evolutionary biologists and evolutionary psychologists have an Afro-centric view of evolution. This is the idea that the primary forces that shaped evolution are based on a specific time and environment—the millions of years we and our ancestors spent in Africa—that we are no longer adapted to. Peterson disagrees with this, stating that there are universal fundamentals in humanity that are not limited to a certain time and place. 

Are abstractions more real or as real as what they represent? This is a debate among ontologists. Numbers are abstractions, but they work so well to represent reality that they have an essential reality of their own.

The dragon of chaos is the category of potential. Consciousness extracts out the reality that we inhabit. More than material reality, Heidegger wanted to understand being itself, which includes non-material realities.

The individual is explored territory nested in unexplored territory, society nested in nature, order nested in chaos. The universal is comprised of the individual, culture, and nature. Myth says we are more than nature and nurture. We are conscious. The development of you as an individual across time and space is experienced by you as a conscious observer. Every story is a representation of that.

Knowing that there is positive and negative in everything keeps you from binary utopian ideology. You must be aware of malevolence, evil, and danger so you aren’t shocked and won’t collapse when it finds you. Every entity we encounter is complex and internally paradoxical. No one and nothing is all good or completely safe.

The category of that which is beyond our understanding is represented by the predator or dragon hoarding the treasure. We need to know what we don’t know in order to contend with it. We need to go into the unknown and into darkness where something is there to destroy us, but there is also something there that we absolutely need.

You get people figured out and put them in a box and marry them and hope they stay in a box, but people are so complicated and are continually jumping outside the box. Your relationship needs constant negotiation and reconceptualization. You never exhaust the person or the world with your perceptions. You are ever-engaging something new.

Existentialists talk about alienation—being alienated from your created products. Ford builds a factory and thinks he’s making an assembly line and cars, but he started a revolution of mass manufacturing and the car changed the climate and atmosphere, built cities, changed rural life, promoted individualism, and had political and economic implications. More than a machine, the car is the embodiment of the ideology that you as an individual can purchase something you can freely move around in. You make something and have no control over what you made and the consequences are unleashed on the world. The snakes and hydras released multiply their heads constantly and you can’t keep track of them. The same is true of you and other people. There are always snakes in everything. There is always chaos to contend with.

Human women are highly selective of the men they mate with. Human males are subject to vicious selection pressures. Nature is that which selects, which is why it is represented as feminine.

How do we determine that something is real? We have to measure it from different methods and see if they converge. The universal archetypes in stories manifest themselves in the evolutionarily space, neurological space, and conceptual space, so are based on solid, stable ground.

Alexander Luria is perhaps the greatest neuropsychologist who ever lived. He was interested in trying to outline the overarching picture of brain function and structure. Peterson goes over brain structure and how it causes of us to perceive ourselves and reality around us and shapes what we experience and how we communicate it.

We are not blank slates that encounter stark facts, we actively engage with and process information. We are always interpreting data in relation to ourselves. Data comes in and we filter and bias it immediately. We are never passive observers.

The Hebrew slaves go from tyranny to catastrophe, and in the desert squabble and fight amongst themselves, wanting the good old days of tyranny again. Moses becomes a full time judge, mediating conflicts for months on end. When you invest an expert amount of time working on problems, you map patterns and find solutions. This is why your dreams can give you information you didn’t know you had. That Moses went up a mountain and got commands from God is a metaphor.

Movies focus on faces because facial expressions tell us what people are up to. People with plastic surgery appear lifeless and register as zombies. We are uncomfortable being unable to read their subtle facial cues.

Dreams aren’t random. They are hard to understand, but they aren’t random. Dreams, fantasies, and myths stretch you into the absolute unknown.

We confront the unknown, make something of it, then model and talk about how we did it. The mythological hero is at the top of all dominance hierarchies because he does this. When you win the treasure from the dragon, you are above all dominance hierarchies. This is not fiction, it’s meta-truth.

Negative emotional energy causes you to freeze. You stop. You hope the predator doesn’t see you. In danger, you hunch over and protect your neck or you get the hell out of there. Positive emotion makes you impulsive. Mania is an example of this. Full blown mania leads you all over the place. You don’t sleep for a week, you end up in debt and alienate all of your friends, and you die or crash into depression. When you are inappropriately happy and impulsive you will run right into the ground. Your goal is not to be happy. That’s impossible. You need a balance between positive and negative emotions to navigate the world.

Different tribal ideas are mined for unifying ideas and edited and unified into one motivating story, like Genesis using surrounding myths in its creation story. The Mesopotamian story of Marduk also emerges from many competing tribal stories.

In this story, there are two primary deities: Apsu and Tiamat. Tiamat is female and Apsu is male. They are locked in eternal embrace—yin and yang. The elder gods kill Apsu and make their home on his corpse. This is the same as Nietzsche’s death of God and trying to live on his corpse. The postmodernists do the same—they criticize, undermine, and destroy culture and live on the corpse of the values it developed over time. When you kill order, chaos comes back. Tiamat wakes up and decides to wipe the elder gods out. She creates 13 different chimeric monsters to lead an army and elects one as head monster, Kinu, an early representation of Satan. They try to confront chaos successfully, but keep failing. They produce Marduk who can speak magic words. He has eyes all the way around his head. He can speak and see. He asks to be voted king of the gods who can decide destiny before agreeing to fight. They agree and he goes out to combat Tiamat with a net and a sword. He overcomes Kinu, cuts him into pieces, and makes human beings out of his blood. This means we have evil in our blood, the same motif used in the Christian idea of original sin.

You think, you see, you confront chaos, you defeat it, and you bring order from it. This is what puts Marduk atop all dominance hierarchies. This is why he should be king.

Tiamat wasn’t happy that the gods were making a lot of noise and being obnoxious. The moral here is that if we muck about too much, nature will take her revenge, perhaps with global warming.

Adam and Eve wake up and know they are naked and can do good and evil. If you realize you are naked, vulnerable, upright, and exposed, you want to cover up and protect yourself because others know you are vulnerable and can plan malevolence against you.

At the Babylonian New Year ceremony, the old man dies, the new man is born, and New Year’s Eve is a time of chaos and partying. The emperor bows before the priest who slaps him, asks him how he failed in the past year, and how he intends to do better. This is much like our New Year’s resolutions.

Suffering, death, and mortality are the price to pay for being. To voluntarily accept suffering is the key to transcending it, not running from and avoiding it.

In Exodus, Moses leads the Israelites out of the desert and in chaos they worship other gods, so God sends them poisonous snakes to bite them. God tells them to make a bronze snake, put it on a poll, and everyone who looks at it won’t be bitten anymore. Christ on the cross is the same. Look at and transcend suffering. Face it.

There is a magical element to that, but it mirrors psychotherapeutic truth. Jung’s active imagination is used to confront dangers in your imagination and see what happens. In therapy, you don’t tell clients what to think and lead them, you let them figure it out themselves. But they need support. People are really disadvantaged when they don’t have the confidence of their father and have a disruptive relationship with their mother.

The bedrock of Western civilization is based on the Judeo-Christian idea, developed from Egypt, that everyone has a soul and is valuable—the sovereignty of the individual. Enlightenment thinking is not a set of rational ideas developed 400 years ago, but goes way deeper.