Dreams, Stories, Psychedelics & Consciousness | Tor Nørretranders | EP 441

Dr. Jordan B. Peterson sits down with author and speaker Tor Nørretranders. They discuss the entropy of emotion, the nature of pointlessness, the over-civilization of societal structures, how relationships shape perception, and why play might be the antithesis to tyranny.

Tor Nørretranders is an independent author, thinker and speaker based in Denmark, serving an international audience. He has published over 30 books on topics ranging from society to human consciousness.

This episode was recorded on March 29th, 2024

- Chapters -

(0:00) Coming up
(0:37) Intro
(2:11) The User Illusion, selective awareness
(11:00) How stories act as pointers for value, predictive processing
(21:05) Karl Friston, entropy and emotion
(23:39) Motivation, loaded perceptions
(28:58) Supernature, sperm and asymmetry
(31:58) Kayak angst, the removal of sensory data
(34:03) Pointlessness, how aim creates hope
(36:08) Exodus, compressing what’s there
(37:17) How psychedelic experiences multiple the emotional landscape
(41:16) The Tower of Babel, the first builders of cities
(47:54) Cain, how agriculture changed worldview
(49:49) Food has become “over-civilized” and that’s the problem
(55:05) Machines for living, excess orientation
(56:28) The Japanese economic miracle, establishing new points
(58:04) The sense of meaning, the raindrop analogy
(1:02:42) Fantasy and substituting presumption
(1:06:02) Gracing demise, and how relationships shape perception
(1:08:13) Every person is a universe
(1:12:49) Play as the antithesis of tyranny
(1:20:23) Peripheral code, the experimental fringe
(1:27:17) Pride and the moral order
(1:29:05) The pathology of force
(1:31:24) Seeing your interactions with the world as a relationship
(1:34:54) Reality is a consequence of your aim