Q & A 2018 10 October - VoiceTube: Learn English through videos!

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Hi, everyone.
Welcome to the October version of the Q and A.
Um, hopefully all my technology will work.
It's amazing that it ever does.
He wouldn't, um, okay.
Oh, my.
Apparently it is good.
So let me catch you up to date on some news first.
That would be fun as far as I'm concerned.
So the first thing I want to do is share something with you, and that's this.
So I got this in the mail yesterday from Penguin UK from an editor, Nick Skidmore, who have been working with for several months.
And so this is the 50th anniversary version of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago in its abridged form one volume abridged form, which he approved.
Um, it's also published on the scent in the Centenary of his birth, and I was invited to write a Forward to It, which I completed and which seemed to meet with the satisfaction of the editors and also Soldier Knit.
Since family.
It's about 500 pages long, which is much shorter than the original book, which was about 1800 pages, and ah, soldier, it's an approved the abridgment.
I think I might have said that.
So it's a remarkable piece of literature and history and arguably the most influential historical document of the 20th century.
You could make that case, and so it was really unbelievably.
It was an unbelievable privileged to be asked to write the forward, and I hope that I did a credible job.
We'll see about that.
It's on sale as of November 1st.
Now, I've also prepared a YouTube video for it, where I've read the forward and some of the content of the book to provide people with an introduction.
And I'm hoping that this will be something approximating literary event.
So I invite you to pick up the book if you'd like to And, uh, and prepare to be shock to your core.
I suppose, is the proper way of thinking about it.
So there you go.
So that's that.
Next thing I was in New York the other day, um, yesterday literally finalizing what I hope is a deal for my second book and perhaps books after that.
But certainly for the second book, which is tentatively entitled 12 More Rules for Life.
There you go.
Um, originally, there were 42 rules, and I haven't used them all up, so there's plenty of reason for continuing as far as I'm concerned, and I've written a fair bit of it, and it seems to be going well.
And I'm hoping that I could do a better job of the second book.
That's the goal.
And that's what I discussed with the editorial team is that I want the next book to be substantially better than the last one was.
Hopefully, I can manage that.
So that's well and good as well.
I'm hoping that I'd have that book done by, um, next September, something approximating that maybe for publication the following January.
Now I've got a year after that if I need it, depending on what happens this year.
But that's the plan.
And then I'm going to tell you a little bit about what's happening with me over the next.
I suppose year.
Really, I I might as well tell you that maybe your be interested in knowing So the first thing is is that tonight I'm going with Tammy, my wife, who's been traveling me with me this whole time.
We've finished 85 cities in the tour so far, and they've gone really well.
I would say so we spoken to about 250,000 people.
I've been traveling with Dave Rubin of the Reuben Report, and that's been entertaining.
He's very comical and has beena good adjunct to add a bit of levity and also a certain degree of seriousness.
So that's good.
So on Sunday, I'm speaking in Dublin and on the 23rd that's Tuesday on Oslo.
I'll just go through the cities.
You could look up the dates at Jordan.
Be Peterson dot com forward slash events If you want Manchester, Oxford, Glass, go Edinburgh, Amsterdam, Cambridge, Helsinki, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Birmingham, Oslo, Stockholm and Helsinki.
So that ends November 11th.
Then I'm off with Tammy to Spain and Portugal to talk to book publishers there.
And then I'm going to speak to the Trilateral Commission in Slovenia in Lubyanka, and then we're going to Hawaii.
I have a talk in Hawaii, and that's that the end of November, then to New York.
Maybe I'm going to talk to Dr Oz again.
That's not finalized, but it seems probable that I'm going to Washington to talk to some people there and then to Florida for a bit of a break from Canadian winter, even though I won't have experienced any of that so far this year, and I have a speaking engagement there as well.
And then in January, possibly I'll be in California.
We've applied for a tech incubator in California to further the development of our educational software, which is already at the prototype stage.
I don't know for sure that will be accepted into the incubator, and I don't know for sure if we are accepted.
If that that's the route we're going to take because there are other options.
Were also working with a private school consortium to test the software, Um, as we develop it, because when you're developing a product, this is a good thing to know.
If you ever do build something, you want to build a product, test it with your potential customers, build it again because you've made all sorts of mistakes, test it with your customers and so on.
So and then after that, I'm going to Australia and New Zealand, probably to talking about a dozen places there and then back to Europe in March and April, and then I'm going to write nonstop, I hope, from May to September And then, with any luck, I'm going to start the biblical Siri's again with Exodus.
And so that's that.
That's the plan.
So, um, it's exciting and daunting and all of those things.
So now you're up to date and hopefully that was interesting.
I really am thrilled about this.
This is really something, man.
It's really something.
So and I'm the soldier knits and family was happy with the forward, so that was really positive.
And hopefully it'll bring a whole new audience to the book.
That would be a good thing.
This is not something that we should ever forget.
Ever.
Okay, so let's say Let's go to some questions here.
Any advice for a young counselor soon to finish his degree?
What do you wish you knew as a young therapist?
Well, let's start with advice.
Um, well, one thing I would say is you could go to my book list and read the books that are there.
There's at on my website.
There is a list of recommended books fiction, nonfiction, and the non fiction is categorized in different ways.
There's a psychotherapy section, I would say Read those books, that's that would be helpful.
Those people.
Young Freud, Rogers.
I think there's something by Adler Laundry Ellen Berget Some of the existentialists from the 19 fifties Um, lot of neuroscientists types very, very smart people very, very useful to know what they had to say.
So, um, then the next thing I would suggest you've heard this from me before, perhaps, is that it's almost impossible to overestimate the degree to which merely listening is helpful.
If you're a counselor, lots of people have no one to listen to.
I have no one that will listen to them, And that's a real problem because people actually think by talking.
And so for many people who are isolated, they have no one to talk to you.
So that means they don't think.
And that means that their their thoughts aren't straight and organized.
And you might think, Well, why does that matter?
But the reason it matters is because the best analogy, I would say to two thoughts is the best way of conceptualizing.
The structure of your thoughts is to consider it in the same manner that you might consider a map and your maps should be organized and things should be in the right place because otherwise, when you use the map to navigate in the world, you don't end up where you want to be, and you run into things that you don't want to encounter.
And so it's actually extraordinarily necessary to get your thoughts in order, since they help you simulate the world before you act in it.
And so don't underestimate how important it is just to listen and then you think, Let's think about listening to So someone comes to you and they and they come to you because they have a problem now you don't know what their problem is.
Neither do they.
All you know is that they have enough of a problem to come and talk to you.
So then they might have a problem because really terrible things have happened to them, and anyone with any sense would have a problem.
And so then they have problems in lives in life, say, or they have existential problems don't really psychological problems, even though it might be psychologically demanding to adapt to the real problems.
You wanna listen and you want to find out Well, what exactly is the problem space and how much of that is practical and how much of it is psychological.
So the first issue is you don't know what the problem is, and you want to ask a lot of questions to find out what it is and and also what it isn't because often people will come in and they're upset and they don't exactly know why they're upset and they might be upset about a whole bunch of things.
And it isn't until after they talk through all the things they might be upset about, that they find out what they're upset about and what they're not.
So another reason to listen, especially at the stage of problem formulation, is to help people decide what their problems aren't.
Well, then, the next thing you have to do the listing is like, OK, well, now we know what the problem is.
Well, what would your client view as a potential solution?
So, assuming that this could be made better in some manner, what would better look like?
So you need to develop co develop ah, philosophy of what's better, and so that's a goal or name, and it's almost like a personalized definition of mental health.
But it might be better to think about it as a personalized definition of, um, have a good life.
And so that's the next thing you have to listen about.
And then the last thing you have to listen about and negotiate as well is Okay, well, now we know what your problem is, and we know hypothetically what the destination is with regards to solving that problem is what are the strategies that are necessary to implement in order to make that positive outcome occur?
And then that's something that you negotiate by listening every week.
It's like, Okay, well, here's the goal.
What steps could we take that you would implement that would move you towards that goal?
Can you take those steps in the world?
Will you do that this week and then watch whether or not you do it and come back and report and also tell me and yourself whether or not implementing that actually work.
And then we can come back and we can have a discussion about whether you did it or not.
And if you didn't then how we could modify that and if you did, how we could continue and expanded, and if you did do it, whether it worked and if it if it and what unexpected things occurred and what, if any, implications there are for understanding your problem and for your goal.
And so you know you you need It's a map.
You have a starting point.
You have to figure out what that is.
You have a destination point, the desired future.
You have to figure out what that is.
You have to implement and design strategies that will move the person forward.
And then you have to test all those strategies.
Very strategic thinking, very practical thinking.
And so, um, that's That's an outline of how to do effective psychotherapy.
I would say effective careful psychotherapy.
Another bit of advice is people often who are young counselors are afraid and don't know how they can not take their client's problems home.
And I've got a couple of things to say about that.
The first is there not your problems, and it's very important to remember that it's partly you don't want to steal your clients problems.
I mean, you might think Well, if I could take my client's problems on myself and lift the burden from the mold, wouldn't that be better.
And the answer is, Well, no, because someone's problems are not that distinguishable from their life.
And what you're there to do is facilitate their ability to learn to grapple successfully with the existentially vagaries of their own existence.
And you don't wantto leap in there and steal it like, let's say you give a spectacular piece of advice and you're going to give advice now and then, but it's it's not that advisable.
Then let's say you advise someone to solve a problem in a certain way, and they go do it, and the problem solved.
It's like while the problems disappeared, but they didn't learn how to generate the solution to the problem.
And so they're in worse shape with future problems, and it's your victory in some sense instead of theirs.
And so you don't wantto you don't want to steal from your client's destiny.
And so and that also frees you up to some degree because it also means that you're not morally obligated to take on those problems and carry them home.
And the other thing is, is that it doesn't do your client any good for their problems to sink you.
You have a moral obligation and ethical obligation of professional obligation to remain sufficiently detached from the situation so that your head is clear and you remain healthy and and your practice remains viable for the long run.
And so don't forget to protect yourself.
It's very, very important.
Let let your clients sort out their lives.
You're there to help you there.
As a sounding board, you're there is a strategic.
And, uh, you're there to offer strategic advice.
You're there to shed light on the symptom mythology and to lay out potential strategies for treatment.
All of that.
And so.
And that's good enough.
You don't take on any more than that.
So Okay, procrastination and instant gratification rule me.
Nothing seems to motivate me.
Nothing seems to motivate me.
What do I do?
Well, I'm gonna give you some practical advice.
Um, I would say you need a plan like you need a plan and not just a plan.
You need a reason to implement the plant.
You need both of those.
So something motivates you.
You already said instant gratification motivates you, so you'll do things for instant gratification.
Now, look, Instant gratification is a particular form of reward.
It's called incentive reward, and it's mediated by dopamine ergic circuitry, the same circuitry that mediates reward as a consequence of using drugs like cocaine or any of the drugs that people abuse.
And so there are certain short term activities that air pleasurable enough so they produce, Ah, untrimmed sick.
They intrinsically produce a dopamine kick.
And a lot of that's instantaneous gratification like, say, eating when you're hungry, at least the taste and flavor of the food, because there's also a satiation element that comes along with food.
And so there's those those pleasures that speak for themselves.
When you're looking at the long run, things that air rewards that air delayed don't produce as much of, ah, um, dopamine kicks.
So they're not as immediately gratifying, and they're not is gripping in the present.
And the way that you have to overcome that is to generate a vision of.
It's really it's not a it's not a plan or a strategy.
It's a philosophical vision that that that justifies your life in some way.
That you deeply believe has to be that, and it can't be trivial because otherwise procrastination and instant gratification are going to rule you.
So we developed this program called the Future Authoring Program, and it's part of the self authoring suite, and I'll run through it very rapidly because even if you don't use that program, although you could, because that's what it's designed for.
And I think it makes it easier.
It outlines what's necessary in order to overcome the problem that you're describing.
So the first question you might ask yourself is, Well, what would you need to gain?
And you have to have a real dialogue with yourself?
To understand this, you have to take yourself warts and all your useless, procrastinating, instant gratification seeking self.
And you have to sit down and say, All right, you know you're talking to your inner badly behaved six year old.
It's like, OK, what is it that you would have to have in order to commit to something in the long run?
What What kind of vision of the future would justify sacrifices for you?
And you might say, Well, you don't know.
It's like, Okay, fine.
That's why you have to break it down.
So let me ask you some questions so you might think, Well, here's some things that people need in their life because your your life is not going to be solid, grounded, gratifying, acceptable, meaningful, relevant and, ah, devoid of earth shaking anxiety without managing some of these things.
Most people need an intimate relationship, a long term, intimate relationship, because otherwise they get lonesome and bored and crazy, crazy in a different way than you get If you have a long term relationship.
Worst crazy, um, they need friends.
They need family.
So that could be your birth family, your parents, your extended family, your siblings, but also Children.
So you needed to know while where does that fit into your life?
What's your vision for that?
You want to get along with your parents who want to get along with your siblings?
You have a strategy for that.
Do you want to have kids?
At some point, you want to build yourself a family.
Okay, you need a job or a career.
Now a career is intrinsically meaningful and and and and usually very demanding in terms of commitment and hours, whereas a job at least could be engaging in worthwhile, it's usually more time limited.
Maybe you have more freedom outside of it.
But you need a job because you need something to do and you need some some routine and you need some financial support.
And if you could have a career and that's what you want, so much the better.
But at least at least you could have a trade, something worthwhile.
Not that a trade can't be a career.
And believe me, I've got nothing against traits.
Um, you need to take care of yourself mentally and physically.
Like, how do you want to present yourself in the world?
No.
You want to be healthy mentally and physically, so that you're like a light among men.
Let's put it that way.
That would be a good goal.
Um, how are you gonna handle the temptations of drugs and alcohol and whatever procrastination and instant gratification are tilting you in the wrong direction.
So those air, you know, seven things that you might consider.
Sit down.
Here's the question.
You're taking care of yourself like you're someone you care about.
You can design a future that would be good for you.
If you were taking care of yourself, right for 20 minutes, you can have what you want.
It's three years, it down the road could have whatever you want.
We have to aim for it and work for it.
And you have to specify it.
What is it?
What do you want?
What would make your life worthwhile?
What would be good enough So that instant gratification would be an obstacle instead of a means for proceeding.
Like I can give you an example to some degree.
You know, when I was a kid in my early twenties, I did.
I I did quite a bit of drinking and partying.
I came from a hard drinking background up in northern Alberta.
And, um, you know, I was out three times a week, even when I was in graduate school and I was beginning to write seriously scientific papers and also the work that became maps of meeting and eventually 12 rules for life.
And it came to the point where I couldn't do both.
I couldn't go out and be that social and have that much instinct, instant gratifying fun and being good enough shape so that if I was editing something complex, I was making it better instead of worse.
And I was really interested in what I was doing.
I was learning a lot about the brain.
I was learning a lot about alcohol and drug abuse.
I was laying out the platform for the relationship between narrative and neuroscience, and it was really engrossing and engaging.
But it was hard and it was long term.
It was a long term plan.
I had to make a choice.
It was either continue the fund, which was fun.
I really enjoyed it or do this thing that I really believed was more worthwhile.
And it was more worthwhile to do the more worthwhile thing.
Which is why I stopped with the instant gratification, like a lot of stopping.
And this is true for most people, especially young men, who tend to drink a fair bit carouse around lot.
Most young men stop that sort of thing, at least to some degree around 25 or 26 the reason they do that is because they pick up other responsibilities.
They get a real job that has some future, and to get a relationship that's permanent, they have a family and they decide well, that's more important than the procrastination and the instant gratification.
Okay, so make yourself a damn plant.
Make it into a strategy.
Could use the future authoring program if you like, I would highly recommend that.
Do it badly.
You might be intimidated by it.
You know, I don't know how to planets like, Yeah, we know you don't know how to plan.
Make a bad plan better than the one you've got.
So so do it badly and then try and modify it as needs be and see if that works.
You need a philosophy, Cody.
That's the thing.
You know, you're living a shallow life and so short term avoidance.
That's procrastination.
You'll do that because you don't think it's important enough.
You don't think that the negative consequences of not doing what you should do are severe enough.
You're not afraid enough of it.
The other thing you do in the future authoring program, by the way, is right about just exactly what kind of hell you'd be likely to descend into 3 to 5 years in the future.
If you let your bad habits, procrastination and instant gratification, let's say rule you and take you out of the game completely because you also need to be terrified as well as hopeful about what you might do.
If you got your act together, you need to be terrified about what you wear.
You might end up if you kept being like lazy and useless, you know, and shallow, and that none of that's good.
So you need to be deeper and you need to look deeper.
You need Nietzsche, said he who has a Why conveyor anyhow, and you need a why and why is something like, Well, imagine you could have the life imagine you could have a life that would be worth giving up some of the instant gratification for even in principle.
What would that look like?
So all right, all right.
What do you think the Feminine hero Journey is?
Do you believe females have their own archetypal story to follow?
Yes, they certainly do.
I think the first of all, they have the hero's story like men do.
But I think I think the the classic hero's story.
Imagine it this way.
The classic hero's story is the archetypal male story, with with the feminine lurking in the background because, like men are adventurous heroes, all things considered fundamentally.
But they're also very maternal men take care of Children families for very long periods of time.
So, as far as um, if you think about this from purely biological perspective, human males are very maternal, so both males and females have on aspect to them.
That's our cue, typically masculine and architecturally feminine.
And I would say in the typical male, the architect, really masculine dominates with the architect plea feminine in the background.
In the typical female, it's the reverse.
And so, although there might be some variation in that, you know, you give the relatively rare female who's Maur archetypal e mail in their orientation to the world and you get the relatively rare male who is more artistically female, feminine.
So the dragon, the conflict with the dragon is the archetypal male story.
Go out, confront the dragon, get the gold, bring it back to the community.
Rescue the virgin, uh, noble the community.
Why make yourself wise as a consequence of the adventure and develop your character?
That's a great story.
Um, the archetypal feminine narrative, at least to some degree, is beauty and the beast, which is to encounter the monstrous masculine and to tame and civilize it so that they're so that a joint relationship can be established.
That's part and parcel of the development of long term intimacy.
And that would be partly for the purposes of intimacy, which is particularly important to people say who are high and agreeableness.
And women are hiring agreeableness, but also as the platform for, um, for raising Children successfully.
Now you get a male variant of that, which is one of the male variants of the same story that Eric Norman in particular talked about.
He was a union commentator.
He wrote a book called Origins and History of Consciousness, which I would highly recommend.
That's on my list of recommended readings and another one called The Great Mother.
Another brilliant book Norman talked about something called The Crystallization of the anima from the great Mother archetype.
And so you might say that the men who have been dominated by women a young boy who's been dominated by his mother, for example, or a man for for who for some reason is dominated and intimidated by the idea of the rejecting feminine.
And if you're interested in that idea, you could watch a documentary called Crump.
You'll see exactly what I mean by dominated by the archetypal rejecting feminine.
I've never seen a better example of it that then what's laid out in that documentary Crumb to brilliant documentary.
So the female's ah, hostile judge and very critical of meant the feminine speaking are critically.
And so the man has to steal himself to face that rejection to develop his character just like Bill Murray Dozen Ground Hog Day, exactly the same story, and then free the individual woman with whom he has a relationship from the archetypal judgmental feminine.
So that's like the male version of Beauty and the Beast.
And so then and the female version.
Obviously the hero archetype is the fact that women do have heroic role to play in the world as well, because they confront the unknown just like men do.
And garner, um, wisdom, knowledge riches as a consequence.
But the way I look at it is that, well, for females, the feminine archetype is at the forefront and the masculine at the background, and it's reversed for men.
So that's that's how it looks to me.
So you caught some Twitter flak for your comment on Brett Kavanaugh.
Care to address your comment and the blowback while I address the comment because I wrote a blogger post, and so that was probably the right way not only to address it, but that would have been the right way to handle it to begin with.
So I'll address it.
Sure, I'll address it, and I will address the blowback as well.
Look, just because you have an idea doesn't mean that it's the only idea.
And just because you have an idea doesn't mean it's right.
And so, like, it's weird for me in some sense, to engage in public discourse especially politically, because you see, I've bean in.
I've been a researcher for a very long period of time, and so most of the people that I've talked to about serious ideas, most of them many of them have bean researchers, graduate students, for example.
And when you're talking about a problem, whatever it might be if your research oriented, what you do is kind of what you do.
If you're a therapist.
The way I laid out advice for a young therapist earlier, it's like, OK, well, what does everybody think the problem is?
And so you assume that you don't know it's like Okay, well, we have big discussion about what everybody thinks.
The problem is.
Well, what do you think the real problem is like?
What's the real problem with the Cavanaugh situation?
Well, one might be.
While Cavanaugh was accused of sexual impropriety when he was a high school student and because of that, he's not his suitability for the Supreme Court is in question.
Maybe that's the problem.
Yeah, maybe.
And maybe that's not the problem.
Who the hell knows what the problem is?
So here's a bunch of possibilities.
Um, we haven't had a reasonable discussion about what constitutes an acceptable statute of limitations with regards to accusations of misbehavior between individuals like, Well, can you accuse someone reasonably five years later, 10 years later, 15 years later, 40 years later like, Is there a limit do?
Is there a more?
Do you have a moral obligation If you're going to accuse someone or even seek justice to do that within a reasonable period of time, who does?
We don't.
So that's a problem.
Um, what exactly are the rules that govern the conduct of men and women when they're young?
When they're drinking, are we gonna have that conversation?
No, we're not going to have that conversation either, because no one wants to think that through.
And they especially don't want to think it through with regards to the complicating additional feature of alcohol.
Thing about alcohol is the reason that people drink is so that they can act stupidly and have fun.
Now the problem with acting stupidly and having fun when you're sober is that it makes you anxious and so you don't do it.
But alcohol, especially for people for whom alcohol is a good drug, ramps up the excitement of impulsivity and quells the anxiety.
And so people always drink often drink because they want to go out and be stupid and have fun.
And look, I understand that there's something to be said for stupid fun, but it's but one of the things that also needs to be said about it is it's bloody, well, dangerous, and so we don't want to have that conversation.
We don't have that conversation on campuses.
We talk about the rape crisis.
Nobody talks about the alcohol sexual assault crisis if men and women didn't drink together to be virtually no sexual assault and in fact, if people didn't drink it all, there be almost no violent crime because alcohol contributes to violent crime in a manner that you can hardly imagine 50% of people who are murdered or drunk and about 50% of the people who do the murdering or drunk.
And that's probably an underestimate, because the stats aren't kept that well, and it also defend depends on how you define drunk.
So that could also be a problem.
Come while the Liberals left types.
Let's call them the left leaning progressive types.
Don't want a conservative on the Supreme Court how the left leaning types aren't happy that Trump won the election.
The conservatives want to rush our candidate onto the Supreme Court come hell or high water because of the November election.
Um, then there's another problem.
Well, is this about Cavanaugh at all?
Or is this about Roe and weighed in about abortion?
Who knows, right?
It's about all those things.
So it's an unbelievably complicated, God awful situation.
And so Eric Weinstein and Bret Weinstein were tweeting about this, and it was late at night, and Eric said, as far as I can tell, either way, this is not gonna end well.
And I thought, Oh, and he said, Is there an alternative?
Is there a way out of that?
And I thought, Oh, that's an interesting question What might be a way out of that?
And I thought, Well, Kavanagh's in a rough position because he can't withdraw, obviously.
And perhaps shouldn't, um without his reputation being shattered.
And if he doesn't get nominated, same thing.
His life is basically over.
So, but on the other hand, he's tangled up in a scandal that's of sufficient murk and mud so that it isn't self evident that he can serve as a Supreme Court justice without having every single one of his decisions, especially in contentious cases, produce a tremendous amount of social upheaval over the next two or three decades.
And it isn't obvious that that's a great move forward now.
It might be fine.
I mean, there's being, um, controversy around other Supreme Court justice nominations, and that seems to have basically sorted itself out.
And I already said just because you're thinking something through doesn't mean you're right.
It's a it's a it's a simulation.
So I thought, Well, if I was in Kavanaugh's position, and I felt that my, um candidacy have Bean compromised.
Perhaps through no fault of my own.
I am not saying anything about his innocence or guilt, but that my candidacy had been compromised by this interminable and ugly scandal.
And that meant that my tenure on the Supreme Court might be marked by culturally divisive controversy in the long run.
Maybe it would be better for me to be nominated to say, Look, it's to murky, It's too muddy, and I don't think the country is best served by my accepting the nomination.
Then the Conservatives can nominate another, um, candidate get their person on the Supreme Court, so there's no necessary loss there.
And perhaps we could move forward with a minimum relative minimum of divisiveness.
Now, look in my blawg.
I laid out all the reasons why that isn't a good idea.
Like here.
Maybe if you just give me five seconds, I can read some of them because I tried to make a steel man case for why my idea wasn't a good one.
My idea about him withdrawing, So just give me one second and I'll read all the potential objections just so that you know that I've thought them through.
Um, so perhaps the Democrat opposition would mount a similar campaign against my putative successor.
Well, that's certainly possible, I said.
Well, that would provide virtually unassailable evidence for the purely manipulative and political motivation of the accuser's, forcing them to duplicate their strategy a second time that would help reveal the machinations for what they were in a manner that would be virtually indict.
Undeniable.
Perhaps time is of the essence, and there'd be no way to place another candidate of conservative leaning on the bench before the November elections.
As they say, however, act in haste, repent in leisure, okay, and then other other, um, arguments against my position.
Here they are.
Oh, yes.
If Kavanaugh withdrew after being nominated, here's what might happen.
It would be read as an admission of guilt on his part.
It would embolden those who would use reputation destruction as a political maneuver.
It would weaken the generally and vitally important idea of the presumption of innocence.
It would indicate weakness on the part of the Republicans at a key moment prior to the November elections.
It would mean that an innocent man has been successfully pilloried by a mob.
It would validate the use of allegations of past behavior well past any reasonable expiry date as a weapon.
It would destroy the Republican opportunity to choose the Supreme Court justice, hand the Democrats and unearned victory in better a large percentage of the conservative base who would regard the withdrawal as a betrayal and last and perhaps least violate my own personal adage for what that's worth of.
Don't apologize if you haven't done anything wrong.
Okay, so I understand the weaknesses of that position.
I was putting it forward as a potential third alternative.
Now, look, it's perfectly reasonable to put things thio out to put things forward as alternatives.
That's thinking now, having said that, I made some mistakes.
Okay, so the first mistake Waas don't tweet complicated ideas in 140 characters about contentious issues in the midst of a controversy at two in the morning, right?
Bad idea.
And so one of the consequences of this for me is that I withdrawn quite a lot over the last three weeks from Twitter.
It's Twitter is a very dangerous platform, and so I'm taking a break from it while I'm reevaluating its utility.
And so I because I talked to my son about this before and other members of my family, and we had agreed that I wasn't going to post anything on Twitter that should be made into a blawg.
But the problem with Twitter is that it or the problem with me who knows where the problem is, is that Twitter invites and facilitates impulsive responding.
And so I'm not convinced that it's necessarily a good platform for me.
I of all the places that I tend to get into trouble.
Twitter is sort of at the top of the list now.
I laid out in my blog's Why I Still Use It.
I feel some moral obligation to the almost a 1,000,000 people who follow me on Twitter, for example, and there's an addictive quality to it, too.
You know, I'm following a lot of these people in the intellectual dark Web in seeing what they're up to and trying to keep an eye on the cultural climate.
Let's say, and it's not easy to figure out for me, as it sure is the case for all of you, exactly how much you should be exposed to such things and how much you should protect yourself.
I mean, Case could certainly be made that I should stay the hell off Twitter and do nothing but right for the next year because it's not like I have any shortage of things to write about, so I'm trying to sort that out.
So, um, that's my explanation.
And, um and it could easily be that, as I said, it could easily be that the idea that I put forward wasn't the best idea.
You know, who knows what the best ideas may be.
The best idea was for Cavanaugh to do exactly what he did.
Who knows so and more, you know, good luck to him into the Supreme Court.
I hope it all stabilizes.
That would be lovely.
And it has happened before, and so maybe it will again.
So all right, I took the understand myself test and have a question.
Okay, so the understand myself test at understand myself dot com for all of those of you don't know is a personality test.
It's based on the Big Five extra version neuroticism, agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness.
It breaks each of them down into two fundamental aspects that have bean empirically validate, and so you can take that test.
I put a code in the description of this video.
I think the code is October.
You can use that code for Self Arthur Ring and for understand myself, and there's a 20% discount for that.
So if you want to do that, only takes about 15 minutes to do the understand myself test.
By the way, the self are throwing program that requires more effort.
You have to do that over a number of days, but you can do it badly.
As I said, and you need a plan, man, you need to know where you are.
That's the autobiographical part, and you need a plan for the future.
So it's worth it.
Even though it's hard, it's not as hard is stumbling through your life blindly.
Okay, I took the understand myself test and have a question.
Should I take the results as is and live trying to cope with them, or can I try to change them to some degree?
All right, so the first thing is, I would say we'll take the results as they are to some degree now.
It depends.
Look you got to be careful, because if you take a personality test like this and you're depressed so you know the future looks really bleak to you.
The president looks bleak when you look into the past.
Almost everything looks negative.
You know, you're not taking any pleasure in things.
You feel bad.
Perhaps even worse in the morning.
You, you're you're you can't see any light in your life.
You're very self critical.
Perhaps you're depressed.
Then if you're depressed, your personality scores are going to look, um, they're going to be skewed as a consequence of that.
And so they might be more negative because of the mindset that you have when you take the test, then they truly are.
So I'm assuming with this answer that you're not depressed.
So, um, should I take the results as is and live trying to cope with him?
While one thing is, you should at least give yourself some credit.
It's like you're a particular way.
So let's say you're low and openness just for the sake of argument.
Let's say you're low on openness and moderately high and conscientious.
You're a more conservative person.
You're probably going to be happier if you take a more conservative path in life.
You're going, you're not.
If you're low on openness, you're not that creative.
You're not gonna be interested in aesthetics.
You're not gonna be interested even in ideas.
To that grated degree, it's not your area Fascination.
You're more practical in concrete and perhaps, and also less flighty and less prone to two creative error.
There's advantages, too, you know, because most creative people, our fonts of ideas that won't work and that will occupy a tremendous amount of counter productive time in their implementation.
That's the downside to creativity, False positives.
If you're disagreeable, well, then you're gonna try to work somewhere where competent competitiveness is useful.
If you're high and neuroticism, then you're probably going to have to find a job where the stress levels aren't too high.
If you're introverted, you want to find a place where you could work and spend a fair bit of time by yourself.
You know you want to match your environment to your personality.
That's adaptation to some degree.
Now, if you're really high in neuroticism, for example, and you're too anxious and then there are things that you can do about that, You know that that's something you might want it if it's really out of hand.
Say, if you're 98% Tyler above something like that, and it's also making you suffer because you're too anxious and to risk averse and too volatile.
You might want to consider something like counseling to see if you can get your anxiety levels down or to learn to meditate or to learn to control your breathing.
Or you know, or or or to talk to someone to see if there's some physiological reason for that.
Now you can change, but like if you're introvert and you can develop social skills, but you kind of have to do them one of the time, you know, because it's not something that comes naturally to you.
And it might not be something that you developed as a child.
You have to consciously plan a social strategy.
So you might say, Well, I'm introverted.
I should go out with someone for lunch once a week.
I should see friends twice a week, right?
You should.
You need to make a plan for social interactions, and if you're extroverted and you can't stand being alone, well, Then you might practice being alone a little bit so that you can learn howto, spend some quality time on yourself and not be so dependent on the company of others.
If you're an agreeable person, too agreeable, then you'll need to figure out what it is that you want, what you're resentful about and what you need to negotiate about on your own behalf.
And if you're really disagreeable, then you might want to think hard about consciously deciding that once a week or so you're going to try to do something for someone else.
And there's a research literature on that.
Actually, it indicates quite clearly that if you consciously plan to do something altruistic on a regular basis, it does seem to improve overall well being.
And I think that's particularly important for disagreeable people because they don't do that.
Naturally, it doesn't come to them naturally.
So I think that you that the general advices find an environment where your temperament works, and then the more specific advice is while having said that it doesn't hurt to expand your temperament.
If you're introverted, you should be able to do what extroverted people do, and if you're extroverted.
You should be able to spend time alone.
You should develop those as skills.
If you're an agreeable person, you should learn how to negotiate for yourself in a tough minded manner.
And if you're disagreeable, you should learn to take other people into consideration more if you're unconscious.
Hensh ISS wouldn't hurt to have a schedule like a Google calendar to start working on that, because low conscientiousness is going to interfere with your long term success.
And if you're hyper conscientious, well, you might need to learn to relax a little bit and to make that a priority.
So and if you're high and openness, well, I don't have a quick answer for what you do if you're high in openness.
Oh, I do.
I guess I do to some degree, try to focus on one thing to some degree on one thing and get good at that because when you're open your flying out all over the place laterally and you can easily become a dilettante, So one of the things you have to do if you're high in openness is developed true expertise in that least one place, you can even pick it somewhat arbitrarily given that you're interested in everything, commit to something.
If you're low on openness and a little closed off compared to what?
You should be a little narrow minded, let's say and conventional.
Maybe you should read a book a week, join a book club.
That's a good thing to do.
Um, that's a that's a good start.
Join a book club, um, and and and and open yourself up a little bit.
Go see a movie now and then as well.
That would also be helpful, you know, and and that widen you out a bit.
And that's important.
You know, it's important for your career and all that sort of thing.
You wanna you know, your temperament puts you in a certain place in the distribution, and it isn't so much that you want to move.
The place is that you want to move the variability so that you can be what you need to be when the situation demands, and that doesn't mean to blow in the wind.
It means to be adaptable instead of constrained tightly by your biological predisposition, and you can learn that it's painstaking it.
It requires a lot of effort, but you can learn.
So my daughter's school is now teaching gender as a social construct.
Four Sexes avoids naming boys and girls.
What do we do?
Leaving is not an option.
Well, I guess the first question is, I'll just take you at your word that leaving is not an option.
It certainly might not be an option.
Um, I would say your best bet.
And this is a casual piece of advice because I don't know your particular situation is to find out how many parents there are around who are also not happy about this and then start to strategize.
I mean, look to some degree what people just define as gender is a social construct.
So let's look at it this way.
So there are things that make men men and that make women women that are universal across cultures.
So, let's say, except for tiny variations, um, external genitalia.
So but then there are things that do vary across culture with regards to whether they're regarded as masculine or feminine, male or female, and those air more learned.
So let's say that external genitalia is not a social construct.
It's not learned.
We can't agree on that then we're not going to be able to have a discussion at all So.
But there are some things about male behavior and some things about female behavior that our culture specific and learned.
And so to that degree, gender is a social construct, so so you know, you have to give the devil his due.
But the problem isn't teaching that gender is a social construct.
The problem is teaching the gender is on Lee a social construct, and that's just wrong.
It's absolutely wrong.
As soon as someone's doing that, then you know that you're dealing with an ideologue.
And the research evidence on that, for example, is crystal clear.
Apart from the fact that there are morphological differences between men and women, which are quite obvious, you could name a variety of the men have wider jaws.
They have larger teeth.
They can bite harder.
They have thicker skulls, as women certainly can attest to.
From a psychological perspective, they are more powerful in the upper body.
They c