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Jordan Peterson on why you need to clean your room
Sometimes the basics really matter.

- Jordan Peterson believes that only by taking care of your immediate environment can you then move onto bigger challenges.
- The idea stems from millennials who want to change capitalist economic structures though can be applied broadly.
- In a distracted age, our inability to pay attention to our environment is leading to increased rates of anxiety and depression.
Recently, an Equinox member tried to walk out of the club carrying a stack of towels. When management stopped him, he thought they were offering to help carry the towels to his car. He was baffled upon learning that you're not actually allowed to steal club property. He had assumed, as a paying client, they were rightfully his.
In some ways this is an upgrade from how many members treat towels. I'm always amazed by how many men leave them strewn across the floor and benches even though they have to, by design, walk by a bin on the way out of the locker room. Not just towels: shaving cream and hair in sinks; treating benches like drying racks for sweaty clothing; hangars and plastic and energy drink containers and…
I feel like I'm in nursery school again, only back then my peers generally had better manners. While I can't speak for the women's changing room, I've been told it's not much better.
I was introduced to Jordan Peterson's work thanks to his "Clean Up Your Room" tangent on the Joe Rogan podcast. Rather than offense—the most common response when pointing out men can't clean up after themselves—this rant was a breath of fresh air.
The context is different, though the general idea remains intact. The idea stems from a lecture on millennials trying to change economic systems—a talk, he admits, that's a "bit pretentious." The Canadian professor believes that 18-year-olds cannot possibly know anything about economic structures. Beyond the specifics of his argument, generality is summated in one sentence:
"If you can't even clean up your own room, who the hell are you to give advice to the world?"
Fleshing out the idea, he continues:
"My sense is that if you want to change the world, you start with yourself and work outward because you build your competence that way. I don't know how you can go out and protest the structure of the entire economic system if you can't keep your room organized."
Jordan Peterson on Cleaning Your Room - The Joe Rogan Experience
Peterson suggests displaying your own competence locally, managing what you can actually control, before championing larger causes predominantly out of reach. It's humbling, he continues, because you're not "exceeding your domain of competence."
Self-competence is a foundational theory in his last book, 12 Rules For Life. For example, Rule #2: Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping, another way of expressing the biblical maxim about doing unto others and so on. Not taking care of yourself "with attention and skill," he writes, paves the road to "self-disgust, self-contempt, shame, and self-consciousness."
A whole lot of selves, which is part of the problem. The intensive focus on the individual is a motivating factor behind the rise in populism: pockets of communities, and pockets within pockets, disenfranchised and disempowered, refusing reason to scream "what about me." Community building and participation are powerful methods for alleviating the anxiety and depression that become emotionally taxing when you feel isolated. Problem is, our mediums for expression, namely social media, merely echo. Cleaning up your Twitter feed might be another necessary step in this process.
Just as carelessness online is common, a similar scenario unfolds walking through a gym locker room. Consumed as we are by the device in our hands, we lose spatial awareness. Someone else will clean up that towel or wipe away the shaving cream (or pick up those fingernail clippings—yeah, that too). How many times has someone almost (or fully) walked into you because their attention was consumed? How many times have you walked into someone?
When you can't orient yourself spatially your ignorance of others is guaranteed. One basic example I can't even believe I have to write, but having lived through it dozens of times, is worth a mention.
There are no shoes in yoga studios. A number of members wear flip-flops around the gym (or around life, being Los Angeles). Instead of depositing their sandals in the shoe rack, they simply step out and leave them in the doorway, forcing other members to step (or trip) over them while entering the room. The rack is less than four feet away. Whether it's privilege or lack of self-awareness (or both, as the two go hand-in-hand) is open for discussion. The result is always a messy room.
Otti Logan, 16, gets a folding lesson from Zen tidiness guru Marie Kondo.
(Photo by Joanne Rathe/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
Peterson's argument stems from teenagers and economic systems, but here's another glaring example: climate change. Humans are the most wasteful species in the history of the planet. Our ability to manipulate natural resources into plastics, chemistry, and tons of useless products now floating around oceans is a major underlying cause of carbon emissions. Instead of waking up to clean our room, we bury our heads in our phones.
"Kondo" might be a buzzword (and annoying Instagram hashtag), but the underlying Shinto principles are worth exploring. Westerners would do well studying more Japanese culture, especially the focus on collectivism and philosophy of bowing—basically, the de-emphasizing of "me".
Kondo's platform is rooted in simplicity and elegance: Treat everything as if it's sacred. Place your attention in the environment and not only does your environment improve, so do you. In an overworked and overstressed culture like America, more emphasis on objects directly in front of our eyes would do our collective nervous system wonders. Which is a hard message to get across in the land of fragmented awareness.
Explaining why he wrote 12 Rule For Life in the book's introduction, Peterson offers an overview for our collective success:
We must each adopt as much responsibility as possible for individual life, society and the world. We must each tell the truth and repair what is in disrepair and break down and recreate what is old and outdated. It is in this manner that we can and must reduce the suffering that poisons the world. It's asking a lot. It's asking for everything.
Do we have the will for "everything"? The notion that "someone else will do it" cuts across economic classes, ethnicities, and genders. While I don't agree with Peterson that millennials know nothing about economics—they're inheriting the future we're creating and should be allowed a voice in the matter—he's right about the most basic principle imaginable: Clean up your room and you clean up yourself.
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Iron Age discoveries uncovered outside London, including a ‘murder’ victim
A man's skeleton, found facedown with his hands bound, was unearthed near an ancient ceremonial circle during a high speed rail excavation project.
- A skeleton representing a man who was tossed face down into a ditch nearly 2,500 years ago with his hands bound in front of his hips was dug up during an excavation outside of London.
- The discovery was made during a high speed rail project that has been a bonanza for archaeology, as the area is home to more than 60 ancient sites along the planned route.
- An ornate grave of a high status individual from the Roman period and an ancient ceremonial circle were also discovered during the excavations.
Foul play?
<p>A skeleton representing a man who was tossed face down into a ditch nearly 2,500 years ago with his hands bound in front of his hips was dug up during a high speed rail excavation.</p><p>The positioning of the remains have led archaeologists to suspect that the man may have been a victim of an ancient murder or execution. Though any bindings have since decomposed, his hands were positioned together and pinned under his pelvis. There was also no sign of a grave or coffin. </p><p>"He seems to have had his hands tied, and he was face-down in the bottom of the ditch," <a href="https://www.livescience.com/iron-age-murder-victim-england.html" target="_blank">said archaeologist Rachel Wood</a>, who led the excavation. "There are not many ways that you end up that way."</p><p>Currently, archaeologists are examining the skeleton to uncover more information about the circumstances of the man's death. Fragments of pottery found in the ditch may offer some clues as to exactly when the man died. </p><p>"If he was struck across the head with a heavy object, you could find a mark of that on the back of the skull," Wood said to <a href="https://www.livescience.com/iron-age-murder-victim-england.html" target="_blank">Live Science</a>. "If he was stabbed, you could find blade marks on the ribs. So we're hoping to find something like that, to tell us how he died."</p>Other discoveries at Wellwick Farm
<p>The grim discovery was made at Wellwick Farm near Wendover. That is about 15 miles north-west of the outskirts of London, where <a href="https://www.hs2.org.uk/building-hs2/hs2-green-corridor/" target="_blank">a tunnel</a> is going to be built as part of a HS2 high-speed rail project due to open between London and several northern cities sometime after 2028. The infrastructure project has been something of a bonanza for archaeology as the area is home to more than 60 ancient sites along the planned route that are now being excavated before construction begins. </p><p>The farm sits less than a mile away from the ancient highway <a href="http://web.stanford.edu/group/texttechnologies/cgi-bin/stanfordnottingham/places/?icknield" target="_blank">Icknield Way</a> that runs along the tops of the Chiltern Hills. The route (now mostly trails) has been used since prehistoric times. Evidence at Wellwick Farm indicates that from the Neolithic to the Medieval eras, humans have occupied the region for more than 4,000 years, making it a rich area for archaeological finds. </p><p>Wood and her colleagues found some evidence of an ancient village occupied from the late Bronze Age (more than 3,000 years ago) until the Roman Empire's invasion of southern England about 2,000 years ago. At the site were the remains of animal pens, pits for disposing food, and a roundhouse — a standard British dwelling during the Bronze Age constructed with a circular plan made of stone or wood topped with a conical thatched roof.</p>Ceremonial burial site
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzUzMTk0Ni9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0NDgwNTIyMX0.I49n1-j8WVhKjIZS_wVWZissnk3W1583yYXB7qaGtN8/img.jpg?width=1245&coordinates=0%2C82%2C0%2C83&height=700" id="44da7" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="46cfc8ca1c64fc404b32014542221275" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" alt="top down view of coffin" data-width="1245" data-height="700" />A high status burial in a lead-lined coffin dating back to Roman times.
Photo Credit: HS2
<p>While these ancient people moved away from Wellwick Farm before the Romans invaded, a large portion of the area was still used for ritual burials for high-status members of society, Wood told Live Science. The ceremonial burial site included a circular ditch (about 60 feet across) at the center, and was a bit of a distance away from the ditch where the (suspected) murder victim was uncovered. Additionally, archaeologists found an ornately detailed grave near the sacred burial site that dates back to the Roman period, hundreds of years later when the original Bronze Age burial site would have been overgrown.</p><p>The newer grave from the Roman period encapsulated an adult skeleton contained in a lead-lined coffin. It's likely that the outer coffin had been made of wood that rotted away. Since it was clearly an ornate burial, the occupant of the grave was probably a person of high status who could afford such a lavish burial. However, according to Wood, no treasures or tokens had been discovered. </p>Sacred timber circle
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzUzMTk0Ny9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY2MDAwOTQ4Mn0.eVJAUcD0uBUkVMFuMOPSgH8EssGkfLf_MjwUv0zGCI8/img.jpg?width=1245&coordinates=0%2C149%2C0%2C149&height=700" id="9de6a" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="ee66520d470b26f5c055eaef0b95ec06" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" alt="An aerial view of the sacred circular monument." data-width="1245" data-height="700" />An aerial view of the sacred circular monument.
Photo Credit: HS2
<p>One of the most compelling archaeological discoveries at Wellwick Farm are the indications of a huge ceremonial circle once circumscribed by timber posts lying south of the Bronze Age burial site. Though the wooden posts have rotted away, signs of the post holes remain. It's thought to date from the Neolithic period to 5,000 years ago, according to Wood.</p><p>This circle would have had a diameter stretching 210 feet across and consisted of two rings of hundreds of posts. There would have been an entry gap to the south-west. Five posts in the very center of the circle aligned with that same gap, which, according to Wood, appeared to have been in the direction of the rising sun on the day of the midwinter solstice. </p><p>Similar Neolithic timber circles have been discovered around Great Britain, such as one near <a href="https://bigthink.com/culture-religion/stonehenge-sarsens" target="_blank">Stonehenge</a> that is considered to date back to around the same time. </p>Surprising new feature of human evolution discovered
Research reveals a new evolutionary feature that separates humans from other primates.
Human evolution.
- Researchers find a new feature of human evolution.
- Humans have evolved to use less water per day than other primates.
- The nose is one of the factors that allows humans to be water efficient.
A model of water turnover for humans and chimpanzees who have similar fat free mass and body water pools.
Credit: Current Biology
Skepticism: Why critical thinking makes you smarter
Being skeptical isn't just about being contrarian. It's about asking the right questions of ourselves and others to gain understanding.
- It's not always easy to tell the difference between objective truth and what we believe to be true. Separating facts from opinions, according to skeptic Michael Shermer, theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss, and others, requires research, self-reflection, and time.
- Recognizing your own biases and those of others, avoiding echo chambers, actively seeking out opposing voices, and asking smart, testable questions are a few of the ways that skepticism can be a useful tool for learning and growth.
- As Derren Brown points out, being "skeptical of skepticism" can also lead to interesting revelations and teach us new things about ourselves and our psychology.
New study suggests placebo might be as powerful as psychedelics
New study suggests the placebo effect can be as powerful as microdosing LSD.
