Peterson recalls an encounter with a client who claimed to be raped five times. She was confused and traumatized, but something was deeply wrong with the way she operated in the world. Of course, there are many legitimate reasons (such as undesirable familial circumstances) that would have confirmed her role as victim. Had Peterson only … Read more
Do we need God to make sense of life? Jordan Peterson and Susan Blackmore debated whether God was necessary for meaning to exist. They first discuss the nature of memes and archetypes. Susan Blackmore subscribes to Dawkins’ idea of memes as being separate from genes in that they are not biological, but that they are … Read more
My Notes For Maps Of Meaning (2017) – Jordan Peterson Patterns of Symbolic Representation In this lecture, Peterson explores the nature of the unknown through mythological symbolism, and explains why the unknown is necessary. The Antidote to Nihilism It’s not enough to just be lawyer or plumber, you need to ground yourself in something greater … Read more
Principles by Ray Dalio (founder of Bridgewater) is a great book. One of the gems in the book was his reference to how the economic machine works, an excellent thirty-minute video that everyone should watch. Practical Thinking Throughout the book, Dalio shares his personal story, and then goes on to give us advice about work and … Read more
When Peterson was later asked which rule he found hardest to follow, he said it was this one. Don’t Lie A form of lying (to yourself) and to others is to espouse overly simplistic “truths” about the world. People who tell you that capitalism, the patriarchy, and the government are evil are engaged in self-delusion. … Read more
Hooked: How to Form Habit Building Products is a book that combines insights from psychology to inform us about how we become habituated to technologies – and how we can, in turn, design products that can get users habituated. Eyal makes an important distinction between habits and addictions – as they are often used interchangeably. … Read more
My Notes For Maps Of Meaning (2017) – Jordan Peterson Neuropsychology of Symbolic Representation Jordan Peterson’s eighth Maps of Meaning (2017) lectures discusses the neuropsychology of symbolic representation (how our brain’s right and left hemispheres process the known and unknown differently), and the story of Mesopotamian myth of Marduk. Categories What are most real categories? … Read more
The Icarus Deception is a call to make great art. Seth Godin makes the case that in our new information economy, your best hope is to find a niche audience and form a connection. The End of the Industrial Age There was a point in time – almost a century ago – where the smartest … Read more
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi defines Flow as a psychologically optimal mental state. Flow is when you are neither too bored by the triviality of the task or overwhelmed by its difficulty. You lose sense of time, you are wholly focused, undistracted. In this state, you achieve growth and you live up to your potential. Athletes and … Read more
Get While the Getting’s Good Life is suffering. Enjoy it while you can. We may be licensed to reason in this way since there is no denying the initial proposition, but it isn’t only that life is suffering. Human beings for thousands of years exhibited patterns of behavior that were somewhat predictable, but we never … Read more