Jocko Willink w Jordan Peterson - Jocko Podcast 112

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Great interview and it opened with a very powerful recount by Jocko of a close friend he served with who lost his life and his struggles with the questions surrounding that event.

run time: 2:10:37
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHZjcfgk4CI

Jordan Peterson:
-Life is suffering and malevolent...
-Life really is bad...
-No matter how bad you think it is it is actually worse than that...
-You can't get to the bottom of how terrible things can get...

I may have been watching Marvin's commentary about: life, the universe and everything from "The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy", by mistake...
I'll check and get back to you...

He then goes on about some positive stuff, but who wants to hear about that?...

-Hierarchy is not a consequence of social or cultural constructions, not a secondary consequence of capitalism and the free market...that is nonsense...
-Hierarchies are based on competence, not power...
-Hierarchies are not a patriarchal construction...
-Remove what is useless about yourself...
-Tell the truth or at least don't lie...
-Do not cast pearls before swine...
-"Nice" isn't a virtue...
-A sense of humour is always a good thing...

No, this is not me talking...
It is actually Jordan Peterson who stole many of my ideas...

I think the first thing I listened to, when I first heard about him (late 2016?) was his 2015 Maps of Meaning course. I think he said early on, even in that course, that the most constant comment he got from his students is that he was telling them all things they already knew deep down but for whatever reason hadn't fully ordered or synthesized quite in the same manner.

I think what he's done is a great job of sorting out a lot of what should be obvious for people, perhaps for reasons of peer pressure these things get buried sometimes, and ultimately he's making a broad call to mental health for a culture that's collectively lost its isht.

The problem I have with Peterson's philosophy, abate it being a minor one, is his personal perspective on life...
He is a man who has-been/is dedicated to helping others through psychotherapy which is admirable...

However...
This pegs him down to, comparatively speaking, pedestrial consideration...
It doesn't transcend to the greater/higher levels of enlightenment...
It is as though his intellectual ballast, due to his connectivity with personal interconnectivity, is weighing him down and limiting his view over the horizon of intellectual emancipation...
In other words, his philosophy enslaves him to a degree...

My assessment is hardly fair since he has defined his philosophical parameters voluntarily, while I cheekily pick holes at his intellectual construct to suit my own personal agenda, admittedly...
I hope he doesn't mind...

What interests me personally is the ability for one to transcend one's intellectual subservience imposed on one through social conditioning/indoctrination and biological influences and free oneself from social expectations and self-imposed limitations...
While having an attitude of benevolence is universally approved of in our social context, it is still one more obstruction in gaining greater freedom of thought...
(Though, of course, there is nothing inhibiting us from oscillating between the two perspectives)...

We progressively build intellectual/conceptual building block to allow us to gain a greater perspective on life...
The more we build, the more we approach the ability to look over the next level/metaphorical-wall inhibiting greater understanding of personal and absolute existence...
Tethering ourselves psychologically to our biological mechanism created through the evolutionary processes simply creates obstacles to clarity of thought in regards to "the big picture..."
(This is a concept mentioned in the Bret Weinstein podcast...Thx Bret... )

This is the basis of my personal philosophical manifesto...
The desire to break through to yet another level of enlightenment...
To boldly go where others have gone before me, but with my own personal signature...

I thank you...<bow>
<exit stage right>

P.S.
JP & BW, I thank you for being catalysts in facilitating my search for: "...the meaning of life, the universe, and everything..."

Truthfully, while I think people can transcend social conditioning by getting away from other people and staking out their own space to think, I'm less sure that people can really overcome biological limitations to their own intellect or mental health. They might be able to better optimize what they have and make themselves more functional with better software but past that I think there are a lot of ideas that'll be lost on most people, unless the public level consequences and pain have made it unignorable, but until then certain things just remain abstractions or get deemed 'paranoid' (for the language sticklers here I mean that in the colloquial sense, not the DSM-V definition) as if a person's having a big to-do about nothing (AI alarmists like Sam Harris and Elon Musk come to mind in taking this sort of criticism).



I think a person should aim for benevolent outcomes, raw truth or facts may not always lead to positive outcomes if pursued too slavishly (this is part of what I think Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson's massive breakdown over defining 'truth' was about). At the same time one should be willing to look at the darkest facts, imbibe their meaning, and try to figure out - in light of this information - what can we do to prevent those facts from dragging us to a deeper circle of Dante's inferno than our world already is.


Pursue it but, do be careful and do be warned, that there are some truths so awful that when and if you encounter them square on - even in your own mind - it can be devastating. I had an experience like that this past Wednesday that just about left me feeling like I was suffocating and I'm still to a degree getting over and assimilating it.


Then again the question might be - what else can we find a frame of reference for being?

I think our only real hope is to have laws and structures that understand the natural perversion and meanness of dynamics left to their own devices, laws which aren't designed to completely prevent it (none can) but to keep things from going off the rails. Like Bret said - the founding fathers got us most of the way there but past that there's still a significant range of human behavior, biological and emotional conformity, and almost reflexive reactions to certain kinds of situations that just can't be remedied from the top down and such urges and impulses have to be methodically herded and/or sublimated.

Sup, dude...

Bret Weinstein talks about the flexibility of culture and how it surpasses our evolutionary genetic development... how it works symbiotically. Why can't this be applied to personal philosophising?
Same diff, ain't it dude?

Intellectual "software" can work with biological "hardware" as effectively as super charged changing cultural environments work in harmony with our slower evolving biological hardware...based on BW's intellectual construct...

Seriously dude, don't be a downer on me man...8:
Have you tried it?
I'm sure it's hip...
Like psycodelicsville sick...
We don't need no LSD s**t...


Man oh man...
Your talking just like *the* man...
Your crimpin my style...my freedom...
I wanna fly like an eagle, high above the ground...
And you want me to flop in the mud like a mudskipper?
Dude, that ain't kool...

This shite is getting down...
I'm going for a cone...
Might chill out witcha later...
When ya come to ya senses...
ciao...

<the young punk saunters through the rubbish ladened ally way to the streets bustling with pimps, shills and hos...
He may come back but hasn't decided yet...The conversation was a disappointment because he wanted a quick fix as all young punks do...Maturity has yet to catch up with this youthful lost soul...>

I appreciate your effort and I think we can have a beautiful relationship together but I think you need to be less intense...
I'm not a kid and I'm not going to do anything foolish...
I am simply intellectualising at my own pace...
Having a bit of fun...

Well, I suppose I'm still a kid in some ways and some of what you're reading is what I have to say to myself from time to time.