How To Choose Your Life Partner Wisely? - Jordan Peterson

So now, you put yourself in this position. So, you're on a dating site, and you find someone. And this might even be more powerful initially for women than for men. Because, I don't know if you know this, but women rank 85% of men as below average in attractiveness. Now, men get their revenge. Don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to make a case that, you know, women are more demented when it comes to men than men are when it comes to women. It's just they're demented in different ways. So then, you think, it's interesting, because I've watched my daughter go through Tinder. You know, it's sort of painful. It's like, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. And, you know, she kind of thinks it's funny. And I suppose it is, but it's cruel as hell, right? All these poor weasley guys, they're just getting sorted into the, you should not be in the damn mating pool pile. Right, right. And that's a fundamental judgment. You should not be in the mating pool. Like, if you're off on a genocidal spree, that's exactly what you're trying to do. You're trying to prevent that. So, you know, I'm not saying my daughter's got genocidal tendencies. Although she probably does, because she is human, by the way. So, all right. So now, let's say that you've categorized some person in there as, you know, you're not going to respond to their damn email. And, you know, you put them down as a one out of ten, you know. So, no, no. And then someone says, you have to go out with that person. You have to ask that person out. And then you think, well, how are you going to react to that, that idea? Well, the first thing is, I think you're going to be angry at the person who's going to force you to do that. It's going to be anger. And then the second thing is, how are you going to feel when you bring that person into public with you, around your friends? Okay? How are you going to feel? And the answer to that is, you're going to feel disgusted and ashamed. And the reason for that is because it's contaminating, it's catching. And so then that puts the damn theories together. And this is why. If I force you to go out with someone that's low status, we'll say low attractiveness, we'll put the whole package together. Low attractiveness, low socioeconomic status, no real hope for the future, and really unlikable. We can put all those sorts of things together. You're going to think, no way. And then you bring that person out on a date with all your friends. And they think, what the hell is up with you? And so maybe you're an eight, roughly speaking, and then you get to go visit Five Land for a while. Okay. Now, what happens to you? Now, this is where it gets tricky. So we know that you, like the lobster, have a counter way down in the bottom of your brain that's really, really old. It's pre-cognitive, it's even pre-emotional. It's way down there at like reticular activating level. And what it does is scan the world to figure out where you are in the hierarchy. And it actually matters because if you're low, then you die, or you're stressed, or your children die, you know. And everything's worrisome to you because you're barely clinging on to the edge of existence. And you only take impulsive pleasures because that's the longest span that you can count on having pleasures over. And it's rough at the bottom. And you get low status mates if you get any at all. And it's not good. So you actually do not want to be there. And there's a reason for that. Whereas at the top, it's like, yes, you know, you get preferential access to everything, everything. So it's better to be there. And you can say what you want about egalitarianism, and there's lots of arguments to be held on both sides. But given a choice, you will go up rather than down. So let's say you associate with someone who's contaminated and it knocks your status down. Now, how does it do that? Well, it might do it a variety of ways. You feel bad about yourself. So that would be low self-esteem. So that means the part of your brain that's evaluating you as a high-status, competent being is now doubtful about whether you actually, you know, fit that description. And then there's all your peers because they're judging you like mad. And what they're basically doing is status evaluation. Are you like a lowly crumb brother who's absolutely outside the mating hierarchy completely? Or are you like Mr. Vampire Billionaire who's the, you know, the dominant vampire billionaire who's at the pinnacle of generic female literary pornography? So that's basically the hierarchy. So the problem is that if you take a dominance hit, your serotonin levels fall. And what that does is increase your negative emotion and decrease your positive emotion and increase the probability that when anything anomalous occurs, that you're going to have a generalized stress response. So that's the connection between the damn theories. If you're associated with the disgusting, your status falls. And that's what destabilizes the belief hierarchy. It's not a direct effect on belief. And that puts the problem in a completely different light in many ways. It's like, what the hell are you supposed to do about that exactly? There's no denying the fact that the top of the dominance hierarchy is a better place. Oh, I got to put one more twist in that. Terror management theories and their like basically say that it's your belief system that stabilizes your emotions. And then, you know, I varied that a bit and said, well, wait a minute. It's your expectation-desire hierarchy and the match between that and the world that stabilizes your emotions. And that's partly because it does, because you're not freezing to death or overheated or starving, but also because you can sit in a room like this with all the other conformists and feel like no one's going to, you know, stand up screaming and become murderous, which is a really good thing. So, but here's a twist. The twist would be the degree to which the expectancy-desire map regulates your emotions and your general response, your general stress response, is proportionate to your position in the dominance hierarchy. Right? So it's modulated by the degree of success that you have. And that's an important codicil, because it means the integrity of your theory about the world works better as well as that theory of the world is, in fact, working well for you, which means you're near the top of the dominance hierarchy. And then it really regulates your emotions as it should, because the environment is less dangerous for you. It's not psychological, man. If you're high in the dominance hierarchy, even in Canada, and you have someone who's sick in your family, they get to see the doctor a long time before someone who has a low IQ and no social connections. And it's not just corruption. You know, there's an element of that, who you know. It's just successful, conscientious people who are open. They have access to all sorts of strategies and plans and ways of figuring things out that people who are at the bottom of the dominance hierarchy, they just can't even muster. Plus, they're way more likely to be taken seriously when they go see a doctor, because they're articulate, you know, so it's a big deal. Okay, so then we're saying the degree to which your theory protects you from the world, your theory and its incarnation in the actual world, is proportional to where you are in the dominance hierarchy. And so what that means is that if you ever associate with anything or anyone that lowers your status, you forfeit the protection of your sociocultural confines. And the best way to do that is to associate yourself with someone who is disgusting or contemptible. Now, the next problem, so I think I was thrilled about that this morning, I tell you, because I've been trying to figure this out for like six years. I was thinking, how the hell do these things tie together? And I don't think that's absolutely right, but I think it's pushing towards something that's right. But then the problem that comes out of that is, what do you do about it? You know, it's a real bind, isn't it? Because you're just not going to get rid of the damn hierarchies. It's not even clear that you should, partly because, you know, you can be cynical like a postmodernist, and you can say, well, hierarchies are just based on power. It's like, which is, that's such a stupid theory that, you know, it's just painful. Some hierarchies are based on power, but a lot of them are based on competence, right? In a functioning society, it's like, who do you want to do your brain surgery? You know, do you want to have the person who really knows how to do brain surgery? Or do you want some person who's just, you know, sort of, they're doing it as an amateur in the back alley? You know, so you're going to assume that there's a bloody hierarchy, and that it's based on competence, and that you're going to peel from the top. And so, they're going to be more powerful, obviously, because they're at the top of the hierarchy, but you're going to be pretty damn thrilled about that when you're looking for competence, which you often are. And to think about all that as power, it's like, you know, really, like, live in the world. Some of it's power, but lots of it isn't.