Comments by "Peter deWolf" (@StoneShards) on "Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning | Lex Fridman Podcast #313" video.

  1. What I admire about excellence, for instance, is based on my personal experience of excelling: I KNOW how hard it is to achieve a tenth of what the admirable person has achieved. This person has maximized in himself the capacity to persist in the most stringent self-discipline. My experience with this process just makes me say, "WOW!"
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  2. I've heard that Jordan experiences great pain constantly, so I'd expect he has explored all manner of relaxation and hypnotic techniques to no avail. I hope he tries, again. Deep relaxation can take up to an hour to induce, if mental chatter is not an issue...hehehe...the monkey mind gets more unruly as discipline is applied...There's something about repetition, persistence...
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  3. "The logos ( the divine reason implicit in the cosmos?) is the fundamental principle of reality", followed by, "pain is the most fundamental principle of reality"...Why try to rank the fundamental principles of reality? Are any of these principles demonstrably fundamental to the others? Why cast "pain" as a "principle of reality"? That's not how we understand "pain"! The "divine reason implicit in the cosmos" is the pattern of the Chaotic Void at the moment the cosmic error, the repetition of the state of the Void, by chance, occurred. Pain experience complexifies readily, as it is a varied a regular occurrence for everyone, so it may seem to operate as a "principle".
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  4. About "God"...God is the center of spiritual gravity, intent on redeeming matter, making it responsive to spiritual gravity. We need a metaphysic to support further speculation; something personally real. We need a rationale for existence; a context for "being"--a creation mythology. And it doesn't particularly matter what it is exactly, as long as it is cogent, coherent, and comprehensive. Developing that rationale is the work of a lifetime. "What makes you think you know...what Nature is?", Jordan asks. "What makes you think you know...anything!" is the superior form of the question. Even more basically, though, "What makes you think?" is the real thrust of the inquiry. If you are a materialist, you "think" merely because chemicals and electricity bounce around in your brain. Otherwise, being to some degree enlightened, "I move myself to think about what is true (survival trait), 'truth' having a peculiar 'ring' to it, so I know it when I come upon it." Since imagination is the seat of spirit, I can trust it to show me the truth, but, only as long as I DON'T CARE WHAT IT IS! Because there's a deep urge to "see what you want to see". It's my duty to make myself able to "handle the truth", else illusion is sure to complicate my life. I do that by practicing dispassion, because the passions have the strongest biasing effect on awareness. I'm working with the following notion. Originally, there was only the Primordial Void, Chaos, in a word. All was seething potential, absent any manner of organization. It so happened that the statistically improbably occurred: a repetition in the state of the Void. The resultant harkening to structure/order implied by repetition caused Chaos to "eject" the repeated state. In that instant Chaos preserved its perfection, while birthing Order as the hierarchical pinnacle of that state AND as the substance that accomplishes the actualization of its being, that single state of potential "ejected" from the Chaotic Void. I like this conceptualization especially because it suggests a rationale for so many of the common features of human existence. For example, memory, based as it is in "reflection", harkens to the impetus for the Original "ejection", which, itself, requires an interface of some sort between Chaos and Order. Since Chaos cannot accept Order, a barrier between them is necessary to preserve each. That barrier, or interface, is the One Universal Mind, the progenitor of All That Is, the entirety of phenomenal existence. This ideation, for me, clarifies the notion of "mind" in the personal context: I don't have an independent mind; I have the ability, to the degree I perfect it, to OPERATE THE OUM. A base layer of the OUM, a substratum of It, is the storage for all memories. Each memory is like a buoy anchored into the substratum by EXPERIENCE, available forever afterward, to be "pinged", by any and all, as ability and intent permit. My experience validates this notion. God as a trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit map to Order, OUM, and Life (as a curious representative of Chaos, mollified by OUM at OUM's nearest proximity to Chaos). Always remembering that density transitions generate boundary phenomena/barrier regions...hehehe, I have to stop talking like this...
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  5. Curiously, anger mitigates pain, even physical pain. I see God, biblically, as having issued one command, "Be ye perfect even as I am perfect", and one promise, that He will not send you a trial greater than your ability to endure it. In my terms, "Always do your best and never give up!"
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  6. Depression is VOLUNTARY suffering! Depression is caused by avoidance, suppression of internal matters that demand attention. The person pretends these internal matters are NOT pressing--it's a sort of game of self-importance. Relax, be quiet, and observe yourself dispassionately--the ball will start rolling...things become more comprehensible...a path opens up..
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  7. The "meaning of life"...is in the living of it: your EXPERIENCE, impressing your state awareness of self into the universal substratum..."laying up treasure in heaven", so to speak.
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  8. I've found that ginko biloba and phosphatidylserine mess up my natural ability to choose words in the flow of the idea. Usually, as I venture to articulate a perceived pattern, appropriate words present themselves for my choosing. But when taking that stuff, I got major dropouts, where no words present themselves...nothin'! When I stopped them, my noodle came back.
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  9. "Scaling back the dragon" is good advice: your greatest power is in the smallest things. Most personal troubles can be summed up as inertial. I don't get "negotiating with yourself"! hehehe...I recognize what needs to be done and what is required to do it; inertially, "I do other things, not this"--so I add enough energy to overcome the inertia. That's all there is to it. But the monkey-mind will try to tell you you don't have any energy to add. At that point, you are fact-to-face with your nemesis. Now you're getting somewhere! Keep after him 'till he submits...it'll be worth it!
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