To be truly good, you have to know how truly evil you are capable of being.

Those of you who know me, understand my fascination with Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson.  He makes you think. He doesn't tell you what to think, he helps you figure it out how to think. That way, you can become better at figuring out all kinds of things. Figuring out the world around you, and more importantly, the world between your ears, is a necessary and critical skill.

I've been listening to Peterson's podcast the last few days on my commute to work. In the latest one, he interviews Joe Rogan. Rogan is the host of a one of the most popular podcast on the planet, and has been a pioneer in long-form podcasting.

The Joe Rogan Experience podcast is downloaded millions of times a month. I listen to Rogan's podcast all the time. He interviews fascinating people, from MMA athletes, stand up comedians, psychologists, doctors, physicists, evolutionary biologists, mathematicians and sometimes, just  people he finds interesting. 

His long-form podcasts are great because people don't really get past their canned answers until the first hour is over. By then, they know Rogan isn't trying to "get them" or to make them say something dumb that gets a headline. Rogan is genuinely trying to understand them as a person. People let the guard down and start really communicating in this format.

Peterson's podcast was great because it turned the tables on Rogan. Peterson spent a few hours asking Rogan about his childhood, his martial arts career, his transition to being a stand up comedian, and how he started his podcast.

As they spoke about comedy, they brought up Bill Cosby. They both thought the worst part of Cosby's destructive fall, other than the damage to his victims, were the two completely contradictory sides of his behavior. His public persona was that of a wholesome, funny, father figure, spokes person, actor. However, deep within the heart of the man, he had a very dark side.

Peterson spoke about a book by Erich Neumann, Depth Psychology. The part he touched on was the idea: Don't be better that you are.

Meaning, beware of adopting a persona of someone far better that you actually are. The danger is, that dark part of you, that part you are not willing to admit to, or deal with, is going to go off and have some fun of its own.

When I see a public fall from grace, I used to think those people just snapped and went off the deep end. As I've grown older, I have started to see how these things don't "just happen", there's usually a long lead up of behaviors, and patterns of thinking, that start long before the fall.

I remember reading a story about a group of small town promoters, who in the late 60s, had booked Paul Harvey to speak at a local venue. Harvey was a popular national radio personality back then. As the date drew nearer, tickets sales were not going well and the promoters needed something else to sell tickets or they faced disaster. They needed another act, but had no money to pay for one. A local reporter thought of a young couple who had a puppet show, of all things, on a Christian broadcasting channel in their town. He asked the couple if they could do a live performance to open the night, and they agreed. They would do it for free.

Jim and Tammy Bakker put on a great show, and the event at least didn't lose money. Jim and Tammy were so strapped for cash, they asked for bridge toll and gas money to get home.

The point is, Jim and Tammy Bakker were once very, very nice people. However, they had a dark side they never dealt with. Looking back, as their popularity grew, and the money and fame came rolling in, they probably started to believe their own press. Those dark, secret, thoughts and urges were probably welling up and gaining strength, all the while their pristine image kept growing.

I'm not sure what that first, solid step, down the road to destruction was. Maybe something as simple as a kiss, or a late night dinner that ended up in a hotel room, but when that ball started rolling, Jim Bakker could not stop it. As those two sides battled inside for control, it must have been torture. The persona of a wholesome man of God, pitted against a sexual libertine looking for more and greater pleasure.

I would imagine Bakker was actually relived, in some small way, when it all came crashing down. At least he didn't have to pretend any longer. He finally had to confront his dark side. It was laid wide open for the world to see.

So what is the antidote to catastrophe? How do you keep that dark side from grabbing the keys and taking your life for a joy ride of destruction? I wish I knew for certain.

One thing I am sure of: The ability to stave off destruction, of your own making, is in direct proportion to the effort you put into understanding, and dealing with, your dark side. It isn't very pleasant, seeing yourself at your worst. That's why you haven't dealt with it.  Like Carl Jung said, "That which you most need, will be found where you least want to look".

An example of this is the lens we view our lives through. Peterson says that most people read history from the perspective of the victim. You imagine you are the Jew being rounded up in the Warsaw ghetto. You are the Gypsy being stuffed into a train car, on your way to the death camps. No one wants to read that story from the perspective of the oppressor. However, throughout history, that is the most likely scenario.

If you were a man born in Germany at the turn of the twentieth century, you were almost certainly going to be fighting for Adolph Hitler. No way, you say. I would never do that! Sorry to break it to you, but you probably would. There was an extremely small, active resistance to the Nazis within the German population, especially during the late 1930 and early 1940s. The odds of you being in it are one in a thousand.

In the beginning of the war, they needed factory workers and farmers, so maybe half of the men would be able to stay out of the army. By 1944 and 45, if you were a 16-50 year old German man, and were able to hold a rifle, you were going to be fighting in the Wehrmacht. You would have been the one poking the Jews with bayonets to get them in the rail cars. And the crappy part is, so would I.

We want to think we would be have the moral courage to stand up to this kind of evil, but that's not how most people are wired. More than likely, we would do what everyone else is doing. We would follow orders. How many of us are ready to see our family taken out and hung in the town square for our treason? Not many.

When we start to imagine ourselves as capable of doing something horrific like this, we can start to understand that anyone, and everyone are capable of doing these things. You, me, your spouse, your parents, your children, the Pastor at your church, the famous actor who has given millions to charity, your musical heroes, every single human being has this capability within them.

Some people understand this all too well. They have seen it in flashes or short bursts. The worst parts of them come out, sometimes by surprise. Be it cruelty, fury, sexual depravity, lying, deviousness, name your dark side, they see it, and they recognize it for what it is. Even if they never act on these dark feelings, they know they are in there, somewhere inside, just under the facade we show the world. 

We as a society, we don't want to talk about this dark side inside us. Especially, to our children. When our kids have these thoughts, as they all will, they think they are somehow broken. They think they are the only ones. This is a very bad thing. Talk to your kids about this, please.

As adults, we love to point to "those people" as the folks with dark sides. Criminals, and deviants of all sorts, it's those kinds of people, not us.  Yeah, not so much. We do a great disservice when we pretend we ourselves don't have these thoughts and urges. .

Look, some of you are better at tamping down these thoughts that others. So much so, that they only pop up once in a great while. When they do, you grab the RoundUp and spray those bad weeds as soon as you see them. Others, myself included, we will let them grow in the back yard of our mind until they take over. After some time, you have to hack your way through them just walk around. This is not good. Once they take over that back yard, it's not too long before they make their way around house to the front yard. 

One of my buddies, who worked with me on campus, had a great analogy. We were working in the summer, and some of the young ladies on campus wear very revealing outfits. We would be on some job site, and some woman would walk by with just enough clothes on not to be arrested. Look, I'm a married man, but it's hard not to notice. We would catch each other looking.

He would always say. "I'm a man, I'm going to notice those kinds of things. But those thoughts are like a bird. If it flies over your head, and keeps going, you're good. If it stops, and stays there, and builds a nest, brother, you're in trouble."

That's good advice. 

So, maybe you are a pillar of the community. Let's suppose you are in a leadership position in your company, your government, your church, or just within a group of friends. Maybe you always do the right thing. Maybe you have a spotless reputation. Okay, that's great, or is it? Is it a lie?

Are you hiding an affair? Embezzling funds? Abusing your spouse at home?  Or maybe you're  struggling with a terrible thought life, or an addiction to porn, or booze, or pills?

You can do something about it. You should do something about it.

The farther the divide between those two sides, between your public and private life, the worse the disaster is going to be.

If you need to resign from some position, or organization, so you can get some help, do it. If you need to come clean to your spouse, or your boss, or your coworker, do it.

If you just keep ignoring that dark side, one day you will be sitting in a court room discussing bail, or signing divorce papers, or in the ER on a ventilator. Maybe one day you will wake up with your picture on the front page of your local newspaper, and wonder how it ever got this far? Hopefully, your fall won't make nation news.

This first step is an honest, 360 degree assessment of the distance between your public persona, and your inner self. Look in the darkest corner, and root it out. It won't be easy. Even if no one ever knows how hard it was for you to change, it will be well worth it.