- In the aftermath of a losing battle, regardless of how aggressively a lobster has behaved, it becomes unwilling to fight further, even against another, previously defeated opponent. A vanquished competitor loses confidence, sometimes for days. Sometimes the defeat can have even more severe consequences. If a dominant lobster is badly defeated, its brain quickly dissolves. Then it grows a new, subordinate's brain -- one more appropriate to its new, lowly position.
- The wings of bats, the hands of human beings, and the fins of whales look astonishingly alike in their skeletal form. They even have the same number of bones. Evolution laid down the cornerstones for basic physiology long ago.
- Mark Twain once said, "It's not what we don't know that gets us in trouble. It's what we know for sure that just ain't so."
- It is difficult to use money properly, particularly if you are unfamiliar with it. Money will make you liable to the dangerous temptations of drugs and alcohol, which are much more rewarding if you have been deprived of pleasure for a long period. Money will also make you a target for predators and psychopaths, who thrive on exploiting those who exist on the lower rungs of society. The bottom of the dominance hierarchy is a terrible, dangerous place to be.
- I always ask my clinical clients first about sleep. Do they wake up in the morning at approximately the time the typical person wakes up, and at the same time every day? If the answer is no, fixing that is the first thing I recommend. It doesn't matter so much if they go to bed at the same time each evening, but waking up at a consistent hour is a necessity. Anxiety and depression cannot be easily treated if the sufferer has unpredictable daily routines. The systems that mediate negative emotion are tightly tied to the properly cyclical circadian rhythms.
- People are better at filling and properly administering prescription medication to their pets than to themselves.
- The division of life into its twin sexes occurred before the evolution of multi-cellular animals. It was in a still-respectable one-fifth of that time that mammals, who take extensive care of their young, emerged. Thus, the category of "parent" and/or "child" has been around for 200 million years. That's longer than birds have existed. That's longer than flowers have grown.
- Women's proclivity to say no, more than any other force, has shaped our evolution into the creative, industrious, upright, large-brained (competitive, aggressive, domineering) creatures that we are. It is Nature as Woman who says, "Well, bucko, you're good enough for a friend, but my experience of you so far has not indicated the suitability of your genetic material for continued propagation."
- The Taoist juxtaposition of yin and yang doesn't simply portray chaos and order as the fundamental elements of Being -- it also tells you how to act. The Way, the Taoist path of life, is represented by (or exists on) the border between the twin serpents. The Way is the path of proper Being.
- Chaos and order make up the eternal, transcendent environment of the living.
- When life suddenly reveals itself as intense, gripping and meaningful; when time passes and you're so engrossed in what you're doing you don't notice -- it is there and then that you are located precisely on the border between order and chaos.
- Order is not enough. You can't just be stable, and secure, and unchanging, because there are still vital and important new things to be learned. Nonetheless, chaos can be too much. You can't long tolerate being swamped and overwhelmed beyond your capacity to cope while you are learning what you still need to know. Thus, you need to place one foot in what you have mastered and understood and the other in what you are currently exploring and mastering. Then you have positioned yourself where the terror of existence is under control and you are secure, but where you are also alert and engaged. That is where there is something new to master and some way that you can be improved. That is where meaning is to be found.
- Women have been making men self-conscious since the beginning of time. They do this primarily by rejecting them -- but they also do it by shaming them, if men do not take responsibility. Since women bear the primary burden of reproduction, it's no wonder. It is very hard to see how it could be otherwise. But the capacity of women to shame men and render them self-conscious is still a primal force of nature.
- Beauty shames the ugly. Strength shames the weak. Death shames the living -- and the ideal shames us all. Thus we fear it, resent it -- even hate it.
- Perhaps Heaven is something you must build, and immortality something you must earn.
- Dogs are predators. So are cats. They kill things and eat them. It's not pretty. But we'll take them as pets and care for them, and give them their medication when they're sick, regardless. Why? They're predators, but it's just their nature. They do not bear responsibility for it. They're hungry, not evil. They don't have the presence of mind, the creativity -- and, above all, the self-consciousness -- necessary for the inspired cruelty of man. Why not? It's simple. Unlike us, predators have no comprehension of their fundamental weakness, their fundamental vulnerability, their own subjugation to pain and death. But we know exactly how and where we can be hurt, and why. That is as good a definition as any of self-consciousness.
- Only man can conceive of the rack, the iron maiden and the thumbscrew. Only man will inflict suffering for the sake of suffering. That is the best definition of evil I have ever been able to formulate. Animals can't manage that, but humans, with their excruciating, semi-divine capacities, most certainly can.
- Perhaps Man is something that should never have been. Perhaps the world should even be cleansed of all human presence, so that Being and consciousness could return to the innocent brutality of the animal. I believe that the person who claims never to have wished for such a thing has neither consulted his memory nor confronted his darkest fantasies.
- To sacrifice ourselves to God (to the highest good, if you like) does not mean to suffer silently and willingly when some person or organization demands more from us, consistently, than is offered in return. That means we are supporting tyranny, and allowing ourselves to be treated like slaves. It is not virtuous to be victimized by a bully, even if that bully is oneself.
- You deserve some respect. You are important to other people, as much as to yourself. You have some vital role to play in the unfolding destiny of the world. You are, therefore, morally obliged to take care of yourself. You should take care of, help and be good to yourself the same way you would take care of, help and be good to someone you loved and valued.
- Treat yourself as if you were someone you are responsible for helping is to consider what would be truly good for you. This is not "what you want." It is also not "what would make you happy."
- It is not the existence of vice, or the indulgence in it, that requires explanation. Vice is easy. Failure is easy, too. It's easier not to shoulder a burden. It's easier not to think, and not to do, and not to care. It's easier to put off until tomorrow what needs to be done today, and drown the upcoming months and years in today's cheap pleasures.
- We are not equal in ability or outcome, and never will be. A very small number of people produce very much of everything. The winners don't take all, but they take most, and the bottom is not a good place to be.
- Talking yourself into irrelevance is not a profound critique of Being. It's a cheap trick of the rational mind.
- Winning at everything might only mean that you're not doing anything new or difficult. You might be winning but you're not growing, and growing might be the most important form of winning.
- Before you can articulate your own standards of value, you must see yourself as a stranger -- and then you must get to know yourself.
- What you aim at determines what you see.
- Making your life better means adopting a lot of responsibility, and that takes more effort and care than living stupidly in pain and remaining arrogant, deceitful and resentful.
- Our values, our morality -- they are indicators of our sophistication.
- A properly disciplined person is, at least, a well-forged tool.
- "What is it that is bothering me?" "Is that something I could fix?" and "Would I actually be willing to fix it?" If you find that the answer is "no," to any or all of the questions, then look elsewhere. Aim lower. Search until you find something that bothers you, that you could fix, that you would fix, and then fix it. That might be enough for the day.
- She was out to produce a little God-Emperor of the Universe. That's the unstated goal of many a mother, including many who consider themselves advocates for full gender equality. Such women will object vociferously to any command uttered by an adult male, but will trot off in seconds to make their progeny a peanut-butter sandwich if he demands it while immersed self-importantly in a video game.
- When someone does something you are trying to get them to do, reward them.
- The judgmental and uncaring broader social world will mete out conflict and punishment far greater than that which would have been delivered by an awake parent.
- Rules should not be multiplied beyond necessity. Alternatively stated, bad laws drive out respect for good laws.
- A hurricane is an act of God. But failure to prepare, when the necessity for preparation is well known -- that's sin.
- Have you cleaned up your life? If the answer is no, here's something to try: Start to stop doing what you know to be wrong. Start stopping today. Don't waste time questioning how you know that what you're doing is wrong, if you are certain that it is.
- If you cannot bring peace to your household, how dare you try to rule a city?
- Once we can see the future, we must prepare for it, or live denial and terror. We therefore sacrifice the pleasures of today for the sake of a better tomorrow.
- Soldiers who develop PTSD frequently develop it not because of something they say, but because of something they did.
- Nietzsche writes, "The Christians have never practiced the actions of Jesus prescribed them; and the imprudent garrulous talk about the 'justification by faith' and its supreme and sole significance is only the consequence of the Church's lack of courage and will to profess the works Jesus demanded."
- An idea is not the same thing as a fact. A fact is something that is dead, in and of itself. It has no consciousness, no will to power, no motivation, no action. There are billions of dead facts. The internet is a graveyard of dead facts. But an idea that grips a person is alive. It wants to express itself, to live in the world.
- The socialists were more intrinsically capitalist than the capitalists. They believed just as strongly in money. They just thought that if different people had the money, the problems plaguing humanity would vanish. This is simply untrue.
- Each human being understands, a priori, perhaps not what is good, but certainly what is not. And if there is something that is not good, then there is something that is good. If the worst sin is the torment of others, merely for the sake of the suffering produced -- then the good is whatever is diametrically opposed to that. The good is whatever stops such things from happening.
- Aim up. Pay attention. Fix what you can fix. Don't be arrogant in your knowledge. Strive for humility, because totalitarian pride manifests itself in intolerance, oppression, torture and death. Become aware of your own insufficiency -- your cowardice, malevolence, resentment and hatred. Consider the murderousness of your own spirit before you dare accuse others, and before you attempt to repair the fabric of the world. Maybe it's not the world that's at fault. Maybe it's you.
- Make that an axiom: to the best of my ability I will act in a manner that leads to the alleviation of unnecessary pain and suffering.
- If you decide that you are not justified in your resentment of Being, despite its inequity and pain, you may come to notice things you could fix to reduce even by a bit some unnecessary pain and suffering. You may come to ask yourself, "What should I do today?" in a manner that means "How could I use my time to make things better, instead of worse?" Such tasks may announce themselves as the pile of undone paperwork that you could attend to, the room that you could make a bit more welcoming, or the meal that could be a bit more delicious and more gratefully delivered to your family.
- You may find that if you attend to these moral obligations, once you have placed "make the world better" at the top of your value hierarchy, you experience ever-deepening meaning. It's not bliss. It's not happiness. It is something more like atonement for the criminal fact of your fractured and damaged Being. It's payment of the debt you owe for the insane and horrible miracle of your existence.
- Taking the easy way out or telling the truth -- those are not merely two different choices. They are different pathways through life. They are utterly different ways of existing.
- If you're lucky, and you fail, and you try something new, you move ahead. If that doesn't work, you try something different again. A minor modification will suffice in fortunate circumstances. It is therefore prudent to begin with small changes, and see if they help. Sometimes, however, the entire hierarchy of values is faulty, and the whole edifice has to be abandoned. The whole game must be changed. That's a revolution, with all the chaos and terror of a revolution.
- Error necessitates sacrifice to correct it, and serious error necessitates serious sacrifice.
- A good friend of mine discovered that his wife of decades was having an affair. He didn't see it coming. It plunged him into a deep depression. He descended into the underworld. He told me, at one point, "I always thought that people who were depressed should just shake it off. I didn't have any idea what I was talking about." Eventually, he returned from the depths. In many ways, he's a new man -- and, perhaps, a wiser and better man. He lost forty pounds. He ran a marathon. He travelled to Africa and climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. He chose rebirth over descent into Hell.
- If you pay attention, when you are seeking something, you will move towards your goal. More importantly, however, you will acquire the information that allows your goal itself to transform. A totalitarian never asks, "What if my current ambition is in error?" He treats it, instead, as the Absolute. It becomes his God, for all intents and purposes. It constitutes his highest value. It regulates his emotions and motivational states, and determines his thoughts. All people serve their ambition. In that matter, there are no atheists. There are only people who know, and don't know, what God they serve.
- Advice is what you get when the person who you are talking to wants to revel in the superiority of his or her own intelligence.
- If you're not the leading man in your own drama, you're a bit player in someone else's -- and you might as well be assigned to play a dismal, lonely and tragic part.
- There is the conversation where one participant is trying to attain victory for his point of view. This is yet another variant of the dominance-hierarchy conversation. During such a conversation, which often tends toward the ideological, the speaker endeavors to:
- denigrate or ridicule the viewpoint of anyone holding a contrary position.
- use selective evidence while doing so.
- impress the listeners (many of whom are already occupying the same ideological space) with the validity of his assertions.
- You already know what you know, and, unless your life is perfect, what you know is not enough.
- Why avoid, when avoidance necessarily and inevitably poisons the future?
- You have to consciously define the topic of a conversation, particularly when it is difficult -- or it becomes about everything, and everything is too much.
- People motivated to make things better usually aren't concerned with changing other people -- or, if they are, they take responsibility for making the same changes to themselves (and first).
- We know, from studies of adopted-out identical twins, that culture can produce a fifteen-point (or one standard deviation) increase in IQ (roughly the difference between the average high school student and the average college student) at the cost of three-standard-deviation increase in wealth. What this means, approximately, is that two identical twins, separated at birth, will differ in IQ by fifteen points if the first twin is raised in a family that is poorer than 85 percent of families and the second is raised in a family richer than 95 percent of families.
- Too-agreeable people bend over backwards for other people, they do not stand up properly for themselves. Assuming that others think as they do, they expect -- instead of ensuring -- reciprocity for their thoughtful actions. When this does not happen, they don't speak up. They do not or cannot straightforwardly demand recognition. The dark side of their characters emerges, because of their subjugation, and they become resentful.
- There are only two major reasons for resentment: being taken advantage of (or allowing yourself to be taken advantage of), or whiny refusal to adopt responsibility and grow up. If you're resentful, look for the reasons.
- Jordan Peterson's 12 Rules for Life:
- Stand up straight with your shoulders back.
- Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping.
- Make friends with people who want the best for you.
- Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.
- Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them.
- Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world.
- Pursue what is meaningful. (Not what is expedient.)
- Tell the truth -- or, at least, don't lie.
- Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don't.
- Be precise in your speech.
- Do not bother children when they are skateboarding.
- Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street.
Like the quotes? Read the book.
