Podcast
How to Best Guide Your Life Decisions & Path | Dr. Jordan Peterson
Huberman Lab
- Need for a Rule Book
- Humans may need external guidance like a rule book due to the limitations of their neural circuitry.
- This rule book helps navigate life’s complexities and become better versions of ourselves. Transcript: Andrew Huberman And it occurred to me to step back from all of that and ask, is part of the reason that we have a concept of God, that there are multiple religions, is that the consequence of some humans At some point realizing, or perhaps God himself realizing, what we are equipped with as humans, which we just described, is insufficient to allow us to evolve as a species and be the Best version of ourselves. I think this for me really is like the central question of at least my life, which is to what extent do I need to intervene with my default settings, rewire them, engage that prefrontal Cortex and, you know, push down on some appetitive or aversive behaviors? And to what extent can we do that? And (Time 0:08:32)
- Integration vs. Inhibition
- Socialization is crucial for integrating lower-order motivational states or impulses.
- Sophisticated socialization involves integrating, not just inhibiting, these impulses for a more fulfilling life. Transcript: Jordan B Peterson Our best outcome. We kind of know that we need a rule book. Even you admitted that in some ways implicitly when you discussed the fact that we have a 25-year socialization window. And what that means is that we have to interact with other people and our traditions in order to set us right. And that’s so complex it takes 25 years. And so we’re learning something from that. And that’s indication that our, let’s say, default biological settings are insufficient to guide us into the future. And so then the question is, well, what is it that you’re learning as a consequence of that socialization process and you can think about it and people have thought about it as a series Of complex inhibitions of lower order motivational states impulses but i’m not very happy with the inhibition model because inhibition is unsophisticated socialization. Integration is sophisticated socialization. So here’s a way of, I really learned this, I think, from contrasting Freud with Piaget, because Freud’s model, superego, is really an inhibition model, and Freud was a neurologist. Piaget’s model was very different. He thought of the properly socialized person as someone who had integrated their lower order, we’ll call them impulses for now, into a sustainable voluntary structure that regulated Them and gave them all their proper place. (Time 0:09:38)
- Motivational States as Personalities
- Motivational states are better understood as personalities rather than mere impulses or drives.
- These “sub-personalities” have perceptions, emotions, and rationalizations influencing behavior. Transcript: Jordan B Peterson And there’s something to be said for that hypothesis. Don’t make your theory any more complex than it needs to be. How far can you get with a theory of chained reflexes, a deterministic theory? The behaviorists got a long way. They couldn’t get to the highest strata of human endeavor with a chained reflex theory, but there was a lot of things they did that were very good. But one of the things they made a big mistake about was to conceptualize motivational states let’s say as impulses or drives that’s not sufficient because it fails to take into account The effect of those states on perception so it’s much better to think of a motivated state this is what helped me integrate behavioral theory with psychoanalytic theory, especially The psychoanalytic theory of religious endeavor. It’s much better to think of those lower order motivational states as personalities. They’re sub-personalities. They have their perceptions. They have their objects of perception. They have their cognitive rationalizations. You certainly see that in addiction, let’s say. They have their emotions. Like they are small personalities, unidimensional, very narrow-minded personalities. But they’re personalities. They’re not impulses. (Time 0:12:50)
- Vikings and the God of War
- Vikings used amanita muscaria to invoke the “god of war” before battles, enhancing rage.
- This exemplifies how they channeled aggression by making the personality of rage superordinate. Transcript: Andrew Huberman You give me an example? Jordan B Peterson Well, the god of war, Mars, that’s rage. That was a god that the vikings invoked before they went into battle they would use amanita muscaria and they imitated predators right from an early age this is a acetylcholine by the Andrew Huberman Way folks as to general receptor systems the nicotinic system which is a stimulant but also relaxes you that’s why people like nicotine um and then the muscarinic system which um creates Uh changes in our self-perception and perception of the things around us. It’s not so much a stimulant as it’s a… I would veer towards almost like a psychedelic or it has an effect of making us less fearful and intrigued. Jordan B Peterson It’s a radically atypical psychedelic. Yeah, it’s hard to describe. Yeah, yeah. Hard to describe. It’s outside the LSD, psilocybin, mescaline domain. So people would take this as an agent? The Vikings would take this as an agent before going into that. Sure, because what they were trying to do is make the personality of rage superordinate with no pain. Right, and they practiced that from a very early age. So the Vikings worked themselves up. They went berserk. That means to wear the bear shirt. Right. They transformed themselves, so to speak, into predators. Andrew Huberman They would narrow the context within which they’re, I’m calling them impulses, but you’re giving a more sophisticated explanation for them, within which the aggressive impulse, The strategically aggressive impulse could be channeled. Right. Jordan B Peterson And give them full reign. Right. They were experts at that. Andrew Huberman To be able to decapitate people, eviscerate people, do whatever it was that they needed to do in order to win and to suppress their own feelings of pain. Yeah. Well, (Time 0:22:07)
- Religious Transformation and Addiction
- Andrew Huberman’s friend overcame addiction through religious transformation at a specialized center.
- This change involved adopting a new incentive structure focused on a belief in God. Transcript: Andrew Huberman One of the most remarkable real-life examples I’ve ever witnessed of the power of belief in God, I’m just going to say it as it occurred, I have a good friend for many years struggled with Alcohol and drug addiction of multiple kinds. Incredibly kind person, incredibly successful in his career, married, two beautiful children, multiple relapses, crashed his truck at seven in the morning after getting intoxicated At 630 in the morning, got out of that one, happened again and again, multiple rehab centers of the sort of standard treatment, et cetera. And then ultimately enough happened within that whole set of circumstances that his wife said, you know, this is it. You’ve got to solve this or we just can’t be with you. A very scary situation for everybody involved, including him, who absolutely adored his family. He told us, his friends, that he was going to go to a center here in Los Angeles that treats addiction with essentially religion, a belief in God. He was already fairly religious. Most he attended church and things of that sort. And you can imagine we all fought, including myself, like, okay, dude, like, good luck. I hope this works. But like, I would say zero minus one confidence in his ability to get and stay sober. He just had not succeeded prior to this. He’s been sober more than four years now. He got out of there and never looked back. And I wonder now whether something must have changed in his brain by adopting what was essentially a… Different incentive structure. Right, different incentive structure but fear wasn’t doing it before fear of extreme consequences which were on the table at that time um when he went in weren’t enough something about Going there and the work that he did there allowed him to then it’s almost like he he got another prefrontal cortex a more powerful prefrontal cortex so maybe we could talk about that Well (Time 0:44:01)
- Abraham’s Call to Adventure
- The story of Abraham represents the call to adventure, leaving comfort for personal growth.
- God, as the voice of adventure, promises blessings, renown, lasting value, and abundance. Transcript: Jordan B Peterson At a distance. That’s a failure of adventure, I would say, in the terminology that I’ve been developing. So, for example, in this book, We Who Wrestle With God, one of the stories I analyze is the story of Abraham. And it’s a very interesting story psychologically. I mean, I think it’s stunning, actually. And I’ll lay some of that out for you. You can tell me what you think about it. So the divine is characterized in the classic stories of our culture as the ultimate up. So you can think about the divine as the target as such rather than any particular target. So here’s a way of thinking about it. You know, so an ambition will seize you and then you’ll aim at fulfilling that ambition. But once the ambition is fulfilled, a new ambition makes itself manifest, which might be a greater ambition, let’s say, if your personality is expansive. And then if you fulfill that, the same thing will happen. So then you could imagine that there’s a meta-ambition behind all proximal ambitions. Okay, now the divine characterization of the divine is a characterization of that meta-ambition. That’s a good way of thinking about it. So it’s something that recedes as you approach it, but it’s also the thing that all ambitions have in common. And we know there is such a thing because otherwise we wouldn’t have a concept of ambition, right, which speaks to a commonality among ambitions. Okay, in the story of Abraham, the divine is characterized in relationship to something like ambition. So Abraham has the, he’s already immersed in a situation that’s akin in a way to the scenario of a wealthy and a person in the modern world who’s in a situation of abundance. Abraham’s parents are wealthy and they provide for him. There’s nothing he needs to do. And in consequence, so he’s attained the socialist utopia or the consumerist utopia. You can look at it either way. And there’s no reason for him to move forward. So he doesn’t. He doesn’t do anything until he’s 75. And then the voice comes to him, which is the voice of adventure. And it’s God in this story. That’s how God is defined, God says to Abraham, you have to leave all this comfort, which is a very interesting proposition to begin with. It’s like, why the hell would you leave that when you have everything you need? Well, the implication is that you don’t have everything you need when you’re being delivered everything you need that isn’t how life works okay so god says you have to leave your your Father’s tent you have to leave your tribe you have to leave those who speak your language you have to venture out into the world so god is conceptualized in this story as the impulse the Voice that compels you out into the world and that encourages you to do so. So that’s a hypothesis about what the ultimate up is. Okay. And Abraham agrees and he does so in two ways. He builds an altar signifying his aim that he’s going to abide by the command of this voice or the invitation of this voice and that he’ll make the appropriate sacrifices. It’s a crucial point to understand because the process of transformation requires sacrifice. To be more than you are means you have to let go of that which you were. You have to make sacrifices. Now, Abraham’s life is punctuated by a sequence of reaffirmations of his upward aim and declamations of his willingness to sacrifice. Every time he finishes an adventure, he reconstitutes the covenant. Right. So this is this agreement to follow the voice of adventure. Okay. God makes him a deal. That’s the covenant. It’s very interesting deal. So now imagine, biologically speaking, that there is an instinct to integrate that operates within us. Okay. So now it’s not, it’s just as fundamental as the hypothalamic motivational states, let’s say, but it’s more sophisticated. And what it’s trying to do is to integrate all the motivational states across time and socially, right? And then imagine it manifests itself as an instinct, to be something like the instinct to mature, right? To move forward, right? To leave your zone of comfort, right, and maybe there have been people like Csikszentmihalyi who’ve characterized that as the attractiveness of flow, and maybe it’s associated with The exploratory circuit in the hypothalamus that’s mediated by dopamine, okay, but it’s got its character. Now, the character of that instinct in this story is, the way it’s characterized is as the voice of adventure. So it’s the thing that asks you to move beyond your zone of comfort and go into the foreign world. (Time 1:10:52)
- Adventure and Responsibility
- Embracing adventure through responsibility leads to personal blessings, social success, and lasting impact.
- This aligns individual self-interest with community well-being. Transcript: Jordan B Peterson That can happen. That’s what an addiction is. Or that’s what pornography is. It’s a false adventure, right? It’s failure to hit the proper target, you might say. But that central drive to integration across time and communally, why wouldn’t that be an instinct? And then we could cap that with an observation that I also think is self-evidently true once you understand it. So imagine that you’re a father. Now this spirit of adventure is often characterized paternally, right, insofar as God’s the father in these ancient stories. So think about this. So when you see your son, now it’s also true of your daughter, but I’ll focus on sons for the moment. When you see your son, and you love your son, when you see your son pushing himself beyond his own limits in an adventurous manner, if you’re a good father, you definitely encourage that, Right? And I would say, insofar as you encourage that, you are a good father. And that would mean that you’re the embodiment of that spirit that calls to adventure. That’s why Abraham is characterized, for example, in this story as forging an alliance with the spirit of his ancestors, with the deity of his ancestors. He’s embodying the call to adventure, and that’s what makes him the father whose reproductive enterprise is successful across the broadest possible span of time, I think. (Time 1:20:01)
- Responsibility as Adventure
- Recognize that responsibility is not just duty but the path to true adventure.
- Encourage young people to seek adventure by embracing responsibility. Transcript: Jordan B Peterson I learned a long while ago that adventure, let’s say, is the highest form of reward. That’s a good way of thinking about it. But there’s a corollary to that, that conservatives need to learn, because they don’t know this. Conservatives talk about responsibility, but they’re conscientious. And so for them, responsibility is dutiful, orderly productivity. It’s conscientiousness. Responsibility is a conscientious duty. What they fail to understand is that there’s no difference between responsibility and adventure. They’re the same thing. And you can tell young men in particular that. Say, look, you want to have an adventure because you definitely want an adventure. You’re like, you’re built for that. It will increase your status. It will improve your life. Like it’ll improve the probability that you’ll accomplish something. You want an adventure. Every fiber of your being is screaming for it. Where do you find it? You find it in the voluntary adoption of responsibility. And that’s like, everyone needs to know that. No young person has been taught that for like five generations. (Time 2:04:29)