Louder with Crowder - ‘MOST MEN ARE WIMPS!’ (Jordan Peterson Uncut) | Louder With Crowder

00:00:00.000 ♪ You're a strange animal, that's what I know

00:00:21.000 You're a strange animal, I got to follow I'm in your spirit

00:00:31.000 ♪ There we go, glad to have our guest.

00:00:41.000 This is a long-form interview.

00:00:42.000 It is. We do this every now and then. It's kind of cheating.

00:00:44.000 First of 2018. First of 2018.

00:00:46.000 The reason is because we are going to be at Virginia Tech February 6th.

00:00:49.000 It's true. So we need to buy some time on the road.

00:00:50.000 There are only a select few people who are worthy of long-form interviews.

00:00:53.000 Very, very, it's true.

00:00:54.000 Spoiler alert. It's not you. That's never me.

00:00:56.000 So our next guest, he's been making the rounds, and he's probably as viral right now.

00:01:01.000 He's as hot a ticket as he's ever been.

00:01:03.000 His book is out, of course, The 12 Rules for Life.

00:01:05.000 You've been reading it quite a bit. I've been reading it.

00:01:07.000 I've had to look at the Cliff Notes because I have it in my queue.

00:01:09.000 Right now I have Eric Metaxas, his book on Martin Luther that I'm finishing, and he'll be on the show too.

00:01:14.000 But this is, of course, by Dr.

00:01:16.000 Jordan Peterson. You can also do the self-authoring program.

00:01:19.000 If you go there, use the promo code CROWDER. You get 25% off because I'm a basket case.

00:01:24.000 Yeah. So it's helped me.

00:01:25.000 So if you're as messed up as me, he can be as useful for you.

00:01:28.000 Of course, he's on the Twitter at Jordan B. Peterson.

00:01:30.000 Dr. Peterson, thank you for being here, sir.

00:01:33.000 Thanks for the invitation. Well, no, listen, you knew you were going to get an invitation.

00:01:36.000 I think you invited yourself, as a matter of fact.

00:01:40.000 Yeah, well, it's my life's dream to have this interview.

00:01:44.000 Yes, exactly. Well, come on, we have some firepower, even if they happen to be some people who you might not necessarily want in your fan base.

00:01:51.000 So, first off, this book, it's been selling like hotcakes, correct?

00:01:55.000 What's the reaction been, by and large?

00:01:57.000 And I know there's been viral videos, but the book itself, what kind of feedback have you gotten?

00:02:03.000 Well, it's hovering between number one and number two on Amazon in Canada, the US, the UK and Australia.

00:02:12.000 And it's the same on the bestseller lists, the big bestseller lists, like the Wall Street Journal and the London Times and all that.

00:02:18.000 It's crazy. It's selling like mad.

00:02:21.000 So for those who haven't really read it, kind of give them, obviously, a bit of a summary.

00:02:26.000 This stems from what?

00:02:27.000 What kind of data? Is it, by and large, a big component of, or is, I should say, maybe the self-authoring program a big component of this book?

00:02:36.000 Well, part of what the book does...

00:02:41.000 Promote is the idea that you need a vision in life and a strategy, and so that's a good overlap with the self-authoring program.

00:02:50.000 It doesn't make specific reference to the program, but it, I would say, provides the psychological and philosophical and ethical underpinnings for what we're doing with the self-authoring program.

00:03:02.000 So the idea basically is that, well, that There's no doubt that life is difficult and that people get betrayed and that hard things are coming down the pipeline for everyone all the time.

00:03:14.000 But that if you organize your life reasonably and face it courageously and make a plan so that you're not just a leaf in the wind and try to do things that are meaningful, then you can extract out a path of being from all of that that's worthwhile and noble and Helpful and productive and all of those things.

00:03:37.000 And so the book is a description of how you might do that.

00:03:40.000 But more importantly, why?

00:03:42.000 Right. A couple of things out there.

00:03:44.000 This is one of those issues that I notice a lot with your interviews.

00:03:47.000 What you just said right now, if I were looking to mince it, I could say that's sexist against men.

00:03:52.000 Why? Because he talked about organizing your life.

00:03:55.000 This book effectively is using a trait or teaching people how to best enact a trait that is actually sexist.

00:04:02.000 Women have, naturally, more than men. 0.64

00:04:04.000 Organizational skills. This is something you talk about.

00:04:06.000 Now, if I were looking to mince that as a radical leftist when they say, well, that's sexist, that's a byproduct of patriarchy, you extolling the virtues of organizational capabilities could easily be turned as, so you're saying women are better than men because they're more organized?

00:04:18.000 Here's where you get wrong, because in the book, he also talks about how order is a stem of masculinity and chaos from femininity.

00:04:25.000 So, he balances it out.

00:04:27.000 Okay. Explain yourself.

00:04:32.000 Are you teasing poor Kathy Newman from Channel 4 again?

00:04:35.000 Well, okay, see, that's what we call a segue.

00:04:38.000 Okay, before we get to Kathy Newman...

00:04:42.000 Yeah. I'm refraining here.

00:04:43.000 Before we get to Kathy Newman, your rise has obviously been meteoric here this last year, which will also be a test of your narcissism.

00:04:50.000 We'll have to test those levels afterward, because often that gets...

00:04:52.000 Right, right. Well, I'm trying to keep that...

00:04:54.000 My existential terror is keeping the old narcissism under control.

00:04:58.000 Well, we'll test that later on in the program.

00:05:00.000 But in the States...

00:05:02.000 By and large, positive feedback.

00:05:04.000 Same thing it seems in the UK for people not named Kathy Newman.

00:05:07.000 But Canada still, a lot of people there hate you.

00:05:10.000 What's interesting to me is this is effectively a self-help book.

00:05:14.000 I can't remember in my lifetime, I'm sure someone will fact check me here, I'm sure it's happened, but certainly not to this degree, that a self-help book.

00:05:23.000 HALP book has been met with so much backlash.

00:05:28.000 Why do you think that is?

00:05:30.000 Because ultimately, what you are doing, as someone who's gone through the self-authoring program, you are looking to help people.

00:05:36.000 That's your goal. Well, you know, I took a stand against the radical leftists that started about, it's almost 18 months ago now.

00:05:45.000 And if you take a stand against the radical leftists, then they immediately try to paint you as a supervillain of the right.

00:05:52.000 And so that's just continuing in Canada.

00:05:55.000 Not with everyone. I mean, I have many journalists who are supporting what I'm doing in Canada, but it's definitely polarised.

00:06:02.000 And like there was an article in Canada's so-called national newspaper, The Globe and Mail, this week, which by the way is failing dismally as it moves forward through time, that really was a hit piece. 0.96

00:06:14.000 And it's an attempt by the people, I would say, on the radical left or people who are just misinformed To tar everyone who dares to stand up to their hypocritical and racist idiocy by making the case that they're associated with far-right thinking, which is just preposterous. 0.94

00:06:34.000 First of all, you don't have to be far-right to dislike the radical left. 0.96

00:06:39.000 You just have to be sensible and reasonable and not fold to the brim with resentment and false, what do you call that, false compassion.

00:06:48.000 So... The problem is if the radical left admits that someone like me actually happens to be reasonable, then they have to admit that reasonable people can object to what they're doing.

00:06:57.000 And then if reasonable people can object to it, then there's always the possibility that there's something wrong with it.

00:07:03.000 Imagine that, something wrong with identity politics and identifying people by race and ethnicity and construing the world as victim and victimizer.

00:07:13.000 I would reduce that and just say, imagine something being wrong.

00:07:17.000 Period. Right and wrong.

00:07:19.000 You know, that's just amazing to me.

00:07:20.000 And you see that in some interviews with you.

00:07:22.000 Let me say one thing. Okay, this is where we'll test a little bit of the narcissist in you.

00:07:26.000 This is obviously the most viral interview I think you've done with Kathy Newman.

00:07:30.000 Would you say? Yes.

00:07:31.000 Okay. Yes, definitely.

00:07:33.000 And it's one where I've seen even leftists, if you look at the feedback, saying, okay, this is an example of someone who I disagree with, but this person is reasonable.

00:07:41.000 The feedback on the Kathy Newman interview is almost entirely positive.

00:07:45.000 Would you say that's a, compared with other interviews that were seen as more polarizing, would you say that's a relatively accurate assessment?

00:07:50.000 Yeah. The only exception would be that there was a flurry of newspaper articles after the interview came out.

00:08:00.000 evil army of trolls because I seem to apparently have an evil army of five million trolls

00:08:06.000 Yes, which is a lot of trolls, you know at some point you start wondering if the trolls are just normal people

00:08:11.000 Yeah, but yes, I would say that the apart from the press and there was a lot

00:08:17.000 They want people to think you have direct access to Jim Henson's creature shop and you're sending them out.

00:08:21.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:08:24.000 Well, and the Guardian claimed, and Channel 4 as well, that they had to bring in the police to do a security analysis.

00:08:30.000 And you can bring in the police under any circumstances.

00:08:32.000 It doesn't mean that the threats are credible.

00:08:34.000 And I don't think they produced any evidence whatsoever that the threats so-called were credible.

00:08:39.000 But yes, I would say...

00:08:41.000 Overwhelmingly, the consensus is that Kathy Newman conducted that interview in a highly biased, ideologically rigid, confrontational, and inappropriate manner.

00:08:53.000 Okay, good. So I just want to make sure that we recap this.

00:08:56.000 So your most viral interview and certainly the feedback amongst viewers and listeners as positive as we've seen this year.

00:09:04.000 Let's kind of separate the media from it a little bit because, you know, Kathy Newman is one on her own.

00:09:08.000 Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah.

00:09:09.000 So I think a big question here is, you know, why is that?

00:09:12.000 Why were you so successful with this?

00:09:14.000 And obviously you're wildly successful.

00:09:15.000 So, by the way, take this or leave it.

00:09:17.000 And I am not at all assuming that for people, hold your comments, that I know anything more than Jordan Peterson on any given topic.

00:09:23.000 He's a doctor. I'm not. Got it.

00:09:24.000 What I will say is this.

00:09:26.000 As an intellectual, as kind of an existentialist, and you've talked about this, sometimes you can be almost too smart for your own good.

00:09:31.000 What I think you did with this interview so well, certainly I would say...

00:09:38.000 More perfectly than I've seen in any other interview is this form of, I've talked about it, pattern disruption, and sometimes you'll wax on sometimes, which is in a way that's very intelligent, but the viewer may not necessarily directly correlate it to a point.

00:09:53.000 I think what you did with Kathy Newman that was so effective is you asked a follow-up question, you made her clarify her questions, which showcased them as absurd, and you lasered in on an answer better than I think I've ever seen you do.

00:10:06.000 Not that you haven't done it well, but you did it with Every question here.

00:10:11.000 It was almost like a boxer just coming back, making her overreach, and straight down the pipe.

00:10:16.000 That's what I saw. Would you say maybe that's why?

00:10:22.000 Did I lose? Oh, there he is.

00:10:24.000 I think I was fortunate to have handled that interview properly.

00:10:27.000 Yeah, I was fortunate to have handled that interview properly.

00:10:30.000 I think what clued me in, I think, very rapidly was when I first sat down with her in front of the cameras before they were running, She was very friendly and engaging and chirpy, and I thought that we were actually going to have a conversation because that's what we were having before the cameras rolled.

00:10:49.000 But as soon as the cameras went on, it was like she was a completely different person.

00:10:52.000 And what happened in some sense was that the clinical psychologist in me turned on.

00:10:59.000 Because that was such a dramatic shift in character, I thought, uh-oh, there's something strange going on here.

00:11:04.000 And so I got really detached from the interview.

00:11:06.000 Not completely detached, because it was still a high-pressure situation, I would say.

00:11:11.000 But I started just to watch what she was doing instead of taking it personally.

00:11:15.000 And what I realized almost immediately was that the person she was talking to bore virtually no resemblance to me.

00:11:22.000 And so it was hard to take it personally.

00:11:24.000 If people come after you with attacks, let's say, or insults, or Or they're after your character.

00:11:30.000 And they cut close to the bone.

00:11:33.000 Well, that's one thing.

00:11:34.000 But if they come at you with all sorts of accusations that really bear no relationship whatsoever to either what you think or what you said, then it's easier to be detached.

00:11:46.000 And I've also been trying hard to maintain a sense of humor through everything that's happened over the last 18 months.

00:11:53.000 And that's been difficult.

00:11:55.000 Partly because I've had very serious health problems and of course that makes having a sense of humor difficult but also because in many situations I had a lot on the line and wasn't sure how it was going to go but my sense of humor has returned and although I don't know if you can tell that in this interview yet but it has see there's a smile it's ironic because usually in this this is one of the few places people going oh Jordan Peterson laughing but I'm just fascinated I wanted to get to this that's right um you seem more relaxed with you yeah there's something wrong yeah you We seem more relaxed in the interview.

00:12:26.000 I hate to use the word, but we use this a lot in combat sports, more fluid.

00:12:30.000 You were able to take what she gave you and every time return it back tenfold.

00:12:36.000 And it's almost like that analogy you're a tiger who kind of has to bleed a little bit before you're in the fight.

00:12:42.000 I've noticed that when you're with friendly people, there's no time constraint.

00:12:45.000 You have so much room to you know expand upon an idea sometimes being framed in by someone else who's confrontational

00:12:53.000 Might bring out the best in you and I think we saw that it was formidable

00:12:57.000 Yeah, well, so so well And the thing is is that it's a lot easier to have a sense

00:13:02.000 of humor when you're not feeling three-quarters dead, right?

00:13:05.000 Yeah, so, you know, my health is back. I'm in pretty good shape again

00:13:09.000 and so it's a lot easier to be sharp as well and to pay attention to what's going on, but also to to

00:13:15.000 To have a bit of a lighter touch and I've always struggled with that with the material I deal with because it's so

00:13:20.000 serious You know, I mean totalitarianism and atrocity is what I've

00:13:23.000 been studying for 30 years and it doesn't really get any darker than that

00:13:27.000 but I do know that even despite the fact that that What I study is very dark and and I suppose some of the 0.95

00:13:34.000 things I talk about is very dark too that the humor is just Unbelievably necessary and I think I was able to keep a

00:13:40.000 lighter touch in that interview and to laugh a little bit especially at the absurdity of it because it just became...

00:13:46.000 Well, I think the reason that it went viral is because the interview became its own parody.

00:13:53.000 What should have happened, likely, was that she should have gone after me.

00:13:58.000 Afterwards, I thought, that was like being mauled by 20 miniature pit bulls.

00:14:03.000 And I was sure that Channel 4 was going to edit that and cut it up so that I would look like an absolute monster.

00:14:09.000 And I guess they did that to some degree with regards to what they broadcast and also what they put on their Facebook page.

00:14:16.000 But they put the whole interview up on YouTube, which I actually think...

00:14:20.000 You know, you could say, well, more power to them, and fair enough, but I actually think they did that out of straight naivety.

00:14:26.000 I don't think they had any idea whatsoever what that interview actually looked like to the outside world.

00:14:32.000 I think they were shell-shocked by the response.

00:14:34.000 I really believe that. I have some inside information from Channel 4, and I've been following people's reaction to it.

00:14:40.000 Like, I invited Kathy Newman to do another interview, you know, because I threw a backdoor channel, and I said, look, like, why don't we basically make this right instead of It ending this way because you've taken a lot of flack for this.

00:14:53.000 Why don't we actually sit down and have a talk and then that'll work out fine.

00:14:57.000 And she said something like, well, I need to let this die down and rethink it.

00:15:01.000 But I don't understand what all the fuss is about.

00:15:03.000 I thought the interview went very well.

00:15:05.000 It's like, well...

00:15:06.000 I think whoever's in charge of their YouTube account, probably not a big Kathy Newman fan.

00:15:10.000 And upload. She doesn't have access to YouTube.

00:15:15.000 That's fascinating. So she didn't take you up on it.

00:15:17.000 I mean... You know, yeah, I think there is some naivete there, but it's interesting that they uploaded that entirety.

00:15:24.000 Well, we had that with Sky News.

00:15:25.000 Remember that? You were there one time, and there were some producers there who didn't like one of their hosts, but they brought me on, and you could tell that's how I got my gig at Fox News, and that's how I got my spots at CNN. You know, as a young kid, I was just a comedian.

00:15:38.000 I didn't even have this show back then.

00:15:39.000 It was just kind of a lamb for the slaughter.

00:15:41.000 Yeah. I did alright.

00:15:43.000 You know, it's like they sent me in front of Alan Combs and I did okay and then they kept bringing me back.

00:15:47.000 I don't think they always necessarily expect it.

00:15:49.000 And like you said, they're out of touch.

00:15:51.000 She may have thought that she did really well in that interview.

00:15:54.000 One thing... I often do, and I think we've talked about this, to prepare for debates, to prepare for conversations, or even just to see kind of where I stack up against great thinkers, and you would be certainly today's sort of great thinker, Mount Rushmore, I would say, is the first time I watch an interview, I'll watch the Kathy Newman portion and pause it before I hear your response, and I respond as though it's in real time.

00:16:17.000 I'll do this with Bill Maher, I'll do it with, I don't know, Don Lemon, I'll do it with Kathy Newman, just to see how I would respond so it's as close to a live simulation as possible.

00:16:25.000 One thing that you handled superbly was very different.

00:16:29.000 I noticed from where I took this, when she said, well, hold on a second, I'm talking about the transgender law in Canada.

00:16:36.000 She said, why does your freedom of speech trump their right to not be offended?

00:16:41.000 And I just paused it and my answer was, there is no right to not be offended.

00:16:45.000 But then he hit play, and yours was actually, I thought, ooh, this might play against him.

00:16:49.000 I thought it was a little too intellectual, but it actually drew her into a firefight to where you ultimately said, gotcha.

00:16:55.000 You said, well, think about it. You need to have the right to be offensive because you need to have the right to dig and to offend me.

00:17:01.000 And that's absolutely something you should be doing.

00:17:03.000 And you turned it in a personal analogy and telling her, giving her more free reign.

00:17:09.000 And I think she was caught off guard by that.

00:17:10.000 That was handled really well. Well, she was because it was so, the thing is, It was so patently obvious by that point that she was doing everything she possibly could to make me uncomfortable.

00:17:22.000 She knew it. I knew it.

00:17:23.000 The viewers knew it.

00:17:24.000 There was no doubt about it.

00:17:26.000 And it was easy just to point to that and then to say, well, perhaps that's what you should be doing.

00:17:32.000 At least you certainly have the right to do that.

00:17:34.000 That offence argument, like we can break that down a little bit because that's worthwhile.

00:17:39.000 It's like, okay, you don't have the right to say anything that offends someone else.

00:17:43.000 It hurts their feelings. Okay.

00:17:44.000 What if you're talking to a thousand people?

00:17:47.000 You don't have the right to say anything that's going to offend any one of those thousand people, which basically means you do not have the right to say anything at all.

00:17:55.000 Because in a group of a thousand people, virtually anything you say will be regarded as offensive by at least one person, even if it's merely a consequence of the fact that they're misinterpreting you.

00:18:06.000 And so really, The right, the absence of the right to offend is absence of the right to speak at all.

00:18:15.000 And that just seems so self-evident.

00:18:17.000 All you have to do is think about it.

00:18:18.000 And if it's not a thousand people, well, what if you're Kathy Newman and you're talking to a million people?

00:18:23.000 Like, she's offending people nonstop.

00:18:25.000 And she has to, if she's going to be...

00:18:27.000 Well, no, seriously. No, I know.

00:18:29.000 And she doesn't understand it, though.

00:18:30.000 She thinks, because I think this is important, she sees intent as the ultimate kind of value there.

00:18:36.000 What trumps the action is the intent.

00:18:38.000 Her intent isn't to offend, and she ascribes intent to you.

00:18:42.000 Your intention was to offend. 0.97

00:18:44.000 She even went as far as saying that, you know, to harm transgender people.

00:18:46.000 I think in her eyes, it's okay for her to speak as long as she's not intending to hurt anyone's feelings.

00:18:51.000 And people like, you know, your feelings don't matter so much to her.

00:18:57.000 Well, there's also a misinterpretation of my stance because my stance had very little initially to do with transgender people.

00:19:05.000 The whole issue of transgender phobia, let's say, is that the backlash from the radical leftists.

00:19:13.000 What I said was that I would not use words that the government was compelling me to say.

00:19:18.000 The fact that they happened hypothetically to be about transgender people was just a sideshow in some sense.

00:19:24.000 Not that their concerns are irrelevant, but that wasn't the point.

00:19:27.000 If all this was was about transgender pronouns, it would have disappeared, well, a year ago.

00:19:33.000 It would have disappeared immediately.

00:19:35.000 That's not the issue at all, and everyone knows it.

00:19:37.000 The issue really is that there's a culture war going on, and the radical leftists are trying to push an agenda on everyone, and they're doing it quite effectively.

00:19:47.000 I said that I wasn't going to play.

00:19:49.000 I said, specifically, that I would not allow the radical leftists to define the linguistic territory.

00:19:57.000 And that was correct, and it's the right thing to do.

00:20:00.000 Well, look, if the radical leftists define the linguistic territory, and the game we start playing is identity politics, right?

00:20:09.000 So it's every group against every other group, In a war against all, and that there's no real communication between the groups possible, and it's victim and victimizer narrative, and that's the way of the world, then one of the things that does instantly is open the door to the identitarian right, who will say, okay, no problem. 0.72

00:20:26.000 You can define the game.

00:20:28.000 It's identity politics.

00:20:30.000 I'm white. I'm white and male, let's say, and I'm not going to play to lose.

00:20:35.000 I'm going to bloody well play to win, because that's what the right-wing identitarians will do.

00:20:39.000 Right. And that's, well, both of the whole, for me, the response to that is, let's just not play that game.

00:20:47.000 Right. Where the headline was something about me being an angry white male.

00:20:55.000 And I thought, I don't really care what you guys say about me.

00:20:58.000 Like, it bothers me, or it doesn't bother me, or bring it on, or the, what would you say, the controversy is useful?

00:21:05.000 Like, there's lots of ways of interpreting it.

00:21:07.000 I'd rather people didn't attack me for things that were untrue, although it's actually kind of a relief.

00:21:12.000 It's better than to be attacked for things that are true, you know, in some sense. 0.98

00:21:16.000 But I couldn't believe that our national newspaper was so goddamn Dumb, that they would title an article with a racial epithet. 0.99

00:21:27.000 You know, it's like angry white man. 1.00

00:21:28.000 I see. So this is what we're going to do in Canada.

00:21:30.000 We're going to start having these discussions and we're going to label them with race.

00:21:37.000 And that's how we're going to make Canada, which is already a very peaceful country, much more peaceful. 1.00

00:21:42.000 That's your solution, you morons. 1.00

00:21:45.000 Well, you know, it's funny because that's what she accuses you of doing. 1.00

00:21:47.000 She goes, you know, you're trying to stir it up a bit.

00:21:49.000 You're trying to divide people, men and women and trans.

00:21:52.000 That's what she said about you. 0.95

00:21:54.000 And then they go along with headlines like angry white male.

00:21:57.000 Again, it's about intent.

00:21:58.000 They go angry white male or patriarchal male.

00:22:02.000 Well, it doesn't matter if this offends anybody because I didn't intend to.

00:22:05.000 So it's okay. Publish.

00:22:07.000 Print. They don't see that.

00:22:09.000 They see you as trying to divide and conquer through truth.

00:22:12.000 And that's what's most concerning to me.

00:22:14.000 Well, yeah. The thing is that I'm not playing identity politics games.

00:22:19.000 I'm not going to view the world through the lens of your group identity.

00:22:24.000 And that means just stepping outside of that game completely.

00:22:27.000 And that is what I did with 12 Rules for Life.

00:22:29.000 There's a little bit of political content in it in chapter 11, rule 11, which is don't bother children when they're skateboarding.

00:22:37.000 It's somewhat of a diatribe against the idea that boys should be socialized like girls, which I think is an appalling, an absolutely appalling idea.

00:22:47.000 And I also think it's an idea for which there is absolutely no justification in the psychological literature.

00:22:52.000 So I kind of touch on politics there, but more because politics has invaded a sphere it should stay the hell out of.

00:22:58.000 But the rest of the book is a book about individual responsibility.

00:23:03.000 As an antidote, in some sense, to the tragedy and malevolence of life.

00:23:08.000 Hold on a second. I'm going to interrupt there really quickly.

00:23:10.000 Do you see what you just said?

00:23:12.000 Your book is, in and of itself, seen as political, based on what you just said.

00:23:17.000 You must see this. It's about the power of the individual, which is, of course, you're placing the power of the individual, the influence of the, I guess, sort of the power of the individual over their own destiny, over the importance of the collective.

00:23:30.000 And that is why leftists will always see it as political.

00:23:34.000 There's no way out of it. You just have to embrace it because it's about the collective.

00:23:37.000 Well, I guess the reason that I think it is political, but it's more than political, and that's the case that I make in the book, it's that The idea that the individual should be sovereign is not a political idea.

00:23:50.000 It's a philosophical idea.

00:23:52.000 It's actually a theological idea.

00:23:54.000 It's actually the fundamental theological idea.

00:23:57.000 And that's actually the level at which this battle has to be fought, because it is in some sense a battle between the idea that the collective is Sovereign versus the idea that the individual is sovereign.

00:24:09.000 And the great idea of the West, more than any other cultural group, I would say, especially the articulated idea, is that even for the sake of the group, the individual has to be sovereign, because the individual is the force that revitalizes the group when it becomes hidebound and static.

00:24:27.000 And I think the evidence for that is overwhelming.

00:24:29.000 I think the West got that right.

00:24:31.000 Like, we got some things right.

00:24:33.000 The sovereignty of the individual is the most important one.

00:24:35.000 The absolute necessity for freedom of expression.

00:24:39.000 That's another thing we got right.

00:24:40.000 We got the idea of private property right, conjoined with the notion that you also have responsibility to your property so that you shepherd it and use it properly.

00:24:49.000 These are not political ideas.

00:24:52.000 They are, because they find expression in the political realm, but they're rooted in something far deeper than mere opinionated politics, and 12 Rules for Life explains why that is.

00:25:03.000 And I think the evidence is clear.

00:25:05.000 From neurobiology, from neuroscience, from evolutionary psychology, from mythology, from comparative literature, and I talk about all that in the book.

00:25:14.000 It's like from game theory, from economic theory, like the evidence is compiling from multiple disciplines simultaneously, that there is a central ethic that drives productive Well, let's say that helps you be healthy as an individual that drives positive relationships between you and your intimate partner, that sets your family straight, that works good for the community, all of that.

00:25:38.000 There's an ethic that does all of that, and it's not merely an arbitrary political opinion.

00:25:43.000 I believe that that's wrong.

00:25:44.000 That's why the postmodernists are wrong.

00:25:47.000 Enough of them. They're wrong.

00:25:48.000 Right. Well, and that's interesting.

00:25:50.000 One thing I also noticed with your Kathy Newman interview, and the reason I think the left sees you as such a political threat, is it seems as though less and less we have, when people talk about common ground, foundational truths upon which we agree.

00:26:03.000 For example, you saying men and women are fundamentally different.

00:26:05.000 They want different things.

00:26:06.000 There used to be a point where even feminists could say, well, yeah, of course, but we believe that the constraints have set. 1.00

00:26:13.000 And then you go down the path. Now we don't even agree on that.

00:26:15.000 And you were on Joe Rogan's show the same day actually I was, so he got a lot of flack for that. 0.98

00:26:20.000 They thought it was now becoming a bastard. 0.91

00:26:22.000 They thought it was the coming of the Fourth Reich for them. 0.98

00:26:26.000 Certain foundational truths that, okay, we were talking about, you don't put children on puberty blockers.

00:26:31.000 Regardless of how you feel about the trans issue.

00:26:33.000 Insane. Here's something absolutely comical that happened.

00:27:03.000 In the last two weeks.

00:27:04.000 So you remember James Damore, the engineer that got fired at Google?

00:27:08.000 Yes. He wrote a memo saying, poor James, he's an engineer.

00:27:13.000 And so he went to a diversity seminar.

00:27:16.000 And the diversity seminar people asked for feedback.

00:27:20.000 And James Damore is an engineer.

00:27:22.000 And so he thought, oh, they want feedback.

00:27:24.000 And because he's a good engineer, he thought, oh, they want intelligent, carefully thought through, thoughtful feedback.

00:27:31.000 Yeah. So that's what he provided them with.

00:27:33.000 And then they ignored it completely.

00:27:35.000 And he thought, well, they wanted feedback.

00:27:37.000 Why'd they ignore it? So then he posted it on an internal memo board, which people at Google do all the time, to see if he could get some discussion going there.

00:27:44.000 And then that was leaked.

00:27:45.000 It wasn't like James Damore planned this.

00:27:47.000 He was just doing what a non-political engineer would do when someone asked them for feedback.

00:27:53.000 Someone who might be a little on the spectrum, as many engineers are, yes.

00:27:56.000 Yeah, well, right. Well, okay.

00:27:58.000 Maybe engineers are Hope I think we I think we all overlords are

00:28:06.000 Very there, you know Are we there yes, we're there

00:28:14.000 Sorry, go ahead. We left with engineers in the spectrum, and I think you had something funny.

00:28:18.000 I apologize. Okay, well, so the CEO of Google came out and said he wasn't sorry that he fired James Damore.

00:28:26.000 And then he had a little discussion with the CEO of YouTube.

00:28:29.000 And She ended up saying that, well, women don't really like the geeky sort of jobs that characterize Silicon Valley. 1.00

00:28:37.000 And I thought, God, how can you do that?

00:28:40.000 That's exactly what Demore was talking about.

00:28:48.000 Exactly that.

00:28:50.000 And, you know, it is the case that the biggest difference, the biggest psychometric difference between men and women is actually in what they're interested in.

00:28:58.000 And so women tilt towards interest in people... 1.00

00:29:00.000 And men tilt towards interest in things.

00:29:03.000 And that's most pronounced in the Scandinavian countries where most has been done to level the gender playing field.

00:29:09.000 And you know, the people I talked to about this, I talked to a New York, I think it was New York Magazine reporter, and he said, well, isn't that pseudoscience?

00:29:17.000 And I thought, no!

00:29:22.000 Well, is that among serious scientists, especially the ones that are biologically oriented, this

00:29:28.000 isn't even debatable.

00:29:30.000 We settled this back in like 1982.

00:29:33.000 You know, Steve Pinker wrote a book a while back called The Blank Slate, where he made

00:29:37.000 a case that people had a biological nature and we weren't just sociocultural creations.

00:29:43.000 And I read that book and I thought, geez, Steve, I don't know why you wrote this book.

00:29:47.000 It's like everyone knows this.

00:29:48.000 It's like that was done in the 1980s.

00:29:51.000 But I didn't understand at that point that there was this tremendous radical leftist

00:29:55.000 backlash against the idea that human beings have a biological nature.

00:29:59.000 There is backlash against biology, period.

00:30:02.000 The most sexist people alive would have to be biologists. 0.99

00:30:04.000 And it doesn't work in the medical field, ironically dominated by women. 1.00

00:30:08.000 But for example, you know, when you're talking about the gold standard for trials, when you're talking about double-blind placebo-controlled clinical trials, right, the placebo means, okay, we have a controlled group, and often, if you're trying to study a new substance, right, if you're trying to clear medicine with the FDA, you have to compare it to a substance that has predictable biological results, meaning, okay, we're going to use a substance where we know exactly how this affects, let's say, the liver or the kidneys or what the half-life is, and we're going to compare this new substance and its biological results.

00:30:36.000 So in other words, at some point, you have to determine truthfully what an establishing substance does to the body to know how to use it as a comparison.

00:30:46.000 We're now saying, well, hold on a second, maybe I don't think that acetaminophen does that in the body.

00:30:50.000 But it does, though!

00:30:53.000 You know? That's where we are.

00:30:55.000 Yeah, well, it's certainly possible, and the postmodernists are doing this, to take science apart right to the core, and to think about it just as another ideology.

00:31:03.000 And the problem with that is that the postmodernists don't act that way, because they use their cell phones and their...

00:31:11.000 They're desktop supercomputers, which rely on the objective reality of quantum mechanics, and they swallow that without a second thought.

00:31:22.000 So they act out their belief that science is something that transcends mere ideology, but they won't allow that entry into their ideological claims.

00:31:30.000 One of the things I do in 12 Rules for Life, and Newman went after me a little bit about this because she thought she might have Right.

00:31:49.000 Because anything about psychiatry knows a lobster's thing.

00:31:52.000 I heard about that years ago and I remember asking my dad, saying, what the hell does

00:31:54.000 a lobster on an antidepressant look like?

00:31:57.000 Because it's hilarious the first time you hear about it, but it's well-known in the

00:31:59.000 psychiatric community. 1.00

00:32:00.000 So, Kathy Newman's just an idiot. 1.00

00:32:02.000 Continue. 1.00

00:32:03.000 Yeah.

00:32:04.000 Yeah, well, so, you know, there's this idea that the radical leftists put forth.

00:32:08.000 There's a couple of ideas they put forth, apart from the fact that group identity should be the paramount virtue, that are also just wrong.

00:32:17.000 So here's one.

00:32:18.000 Inequality is caused by capitalism.

00:32:21.000 That's wrong. So here's some evidence.

00:32:24.000 The same law, the same formulas that govern the distribution of wealth in a society govern the mass of stars The size of cities and the heights of trees in jungles.

00:32:37.000 Now, you can't blame the latter three on capitalism.

00:32:40.000 Right. There's something deeper at work.

00:32:42.000 This proclivity towards unequal distribution of resources is something like a powerful natural law.

00:32:48.000 And it does threaten the integrity of societies.

00:32:51.000 And we don't know what to do about it.

00:32:53.000 But it isn't the fault of capitalism.

00:32:55.000 No. Okay. Next issue.

00:32:57.000 The patriarchy.

00:32:58.000 The hierarchy. So the patriarchal hierarchy is a consequence of capitalism.

00:33:03.000 Eurocentric, phalagocentric, capitalist domination.

00:33:08.000 And that's not the real, say, state of nature.

00:33:10.000 Okay, that's wrong.

00:33:12.000 There's been hierarchies for 350 million years.

00:33:16.000 That's why I use the lobsters as an example.

00:33:18.000 And the mechanisms that we use neurobiologically to govern our emotions and govern our posture and determine our self-esteem and all of that are akin to the mechanisms that lobsters use.

00:33:33.000 And lobsters have been around since before there were trees.

00:33:36.000 And so the hierarchy is older than trees.

00:33:39.000 It's not a sociocultural construct.

00:33:42.000 It's wrong to say that.

00:33:45.000 It's wrong to describe inequality as a consequence of capitalism.

00:33:49.000 It's wrong to assume that people's group identities should be superordinate to their individual identities.

00:33:57.000 It's wrong That there's an infinite number of valid interpretations of the world.

00:34:02.000 Those are all postmodern claims.

00:34:04.000 They're all wrong.

00:34:06.000 It's done. We're done with this.

00:34:08.000 One thing, by the way, I should have prefaced this.

00:34:10.000 You talk about that sort of posture and self-esteem.

00:34:12.000 The neurochemistry of lobsters is so similar to humans that they've actually administered antidepressant psychiatric medication to lobsters with very similar effects.

00:34:20.000 It is hysterical the first time you hear about it.

00:34:22.000 Two things here. Before we get to the lobster thing, because that's going to be the majority of this interview, I'm not going to lie about it.

00:34:28.000 I just find it hysterical. But you just mentioned that we cannot blame inequality on capitalism.

00:34:32.000 So I think a big part of it, if you look at whether it's socialism, whether it's communism, whether it's free enterprise, capitalism, right?

00:34:39.000 These, at a point, were mechanisms designed to help us cope with or help us to best frame in sort of the essence of a human being, right?

00:34:48.000 We see it as, for example, if you see socialism, the reason socialism exists is because people inherently recognize that inequality exists, not as the byproduct of socialism, but socialism is a designed solution for that.

00:35:01.000 So I would follow that up with, I hate to be political with it, but this is entirely accurate, okay, we know that regardless of the society, Anywhere throughout history there's been inequality.

00:35:11.000 Has there been a single system in the history of man that has pulled more people out of poverty than modern westernized free enterprise?

00:35:20.000 The answer is no. The answer to that is clearly, well, it's not only no, it's so clearly no that it's just, it's almost miraculous.

00:35:27.000 Like... There have been more people lifted out of poverty in the last 15 years than were lifted out of poverty in the entire history of mankind before that.

00:35:36.000 Like, not only are people being lifted out of poverty, they're being lifted out at a rate that is actually inconceivable.

00:35:42.000 We could actually be done with extreme poverty except for that that's caused by cataclysmic events.

00:35:47.000 We could be done with that in 10 years.

00:35:51.000 Well, that's why they've shifted to inequality, right?

00:35:53.000 Because, well, here's a standard, poverty.

00:35:55.000 But hold on, there's a bigger gap.

00:35:56.000 Yeah, but let's say the pie was $1 million, and you had 50% of it.

00:36:01.000 But now the pie is $5 billion, and you have 20% of it.

00:36:05.000 You're still better off, and that's why they shift the goalposts.

00:36:08.000 Well, so we could make this argument technical in some sense.

00:36:12.000 We could say, look, you need a certain number of units of inequality To produce a certain number of units of wealth.

00:36:22.000 Okay, so no inequality, no wealth.

00:36:25.000 Bad idea. Everyone starves.

00:36:27.000 But then there's a limit on the other side, which is if the inequality gets too extreme, even if no one's starving, the society is going to destabilize.

00:36:36.000 And I think the evidence for that is clear.

00:36:38.000 So then we have a problem, which is, okay, inequality tends to emerge of its own accord in all sorts of different domains.

00:36:45.000 So it emerges among sports...

00:36:47.000 Among athletes, right?

00:36:49.000 Because if you look at the distribution of athletic prowess, it follows the same Pareto distribution that wealth distribution does.

00:36:59.000 It happens for recording artists.

00:37:01.000 It happens for artists.

00:37:02.000 It happens for authors.

00:37:03.000 It just happens everywhere.

00:37:05.000 Okay, so we might say, well, we don't want to let the inequality get so extreme that society starts to destabilize.

00:37:12.000 So we have to figure out how to mitigate the gap.

00:37:17.000 But then we could have an intelligent conversation about how to develop multiple strategies to mitigate that gap and see which ones work.

00:37:25.000 And mere shoveling money to the bottom end of the distribution, like shoveling money to the, what do you call that?

00:37:34.000 It's the lower class, but it's the lower class people that Theodore Dalrymple write about, the people that are outside the system completely.

00:37:42.000 If you give a cocaine addict money, If you give an alcohol-addicted cocaine addict money, he'll just die.

00:37:50.000 It's a really bad solution, right?

00:37:52.000 Because he'll just go out on a binge and he'll spend all his money and he'll die.

00:37:56.000 And there's lots of people at the bottom of the heap Whose lives are so absolutely dysregulated that merely providing them with money will not help them.

00:38:06.000 So it's not the right solution.

00:38:08.000 Now, and we do have serious problems here too because we're also setting up a situation where most of the people who are on the low end of the inequality distribution also have low cognitive function.

00:38:20.000 And that's going to be a worse and worse problem as the machines take over our jobs They're going to start taking over the jobs for people who have lower IQs first.

00:38:29.000 Well, obviously, how could it be any other way?

00:38:32.000 But that's actually a really big problem, and we don't know how to deal with it.

00:38:36.000 But we could have an intelligent discussion about that without getting all identity politics about it, you know?

00:38:42.000 Right. And if the left clued in, which I hope they do, then they'd stop playing identity politics and start standing up for the dispossessed again, which is what they should be doing.

00:38:52.000 Not to mention the moral reprehensibility of simply stealing from someone to give it to someone else.

00:38:56.000 It's just wrong.

00:38:58.000 At a certain point, you have to say, this is theft.

00:38:59.000 That's not only a financial issue, that's a moral issue.

00:39:01.000 But it's interesting, like you talked about, we have no problem with it in sports, which, by the way, is also the byproduct of free enterprise if you look at professional sports leagues.

00:39:07.000 I guess we need to redistribute the Jamaicans' fast twitch muscle fibers. 1.00

00:39:11.000 It's a 100-meter dash.

00:39:13.000 Let's fine-tune our grafting techniques.

00:39:16.000 Here's one thing. As a psychologist, do you still practice?

00:39:19.000 Do you still see basket cases, or do you not have time for that?

00:39:23.000 It's on this program. Only on this program.

00:39:28.000 I don't.

00:39:31.000 I stopped my clinical practice last February.

00:39:35.000 Because I got swamped.

00:39:37.000 And one of the things that you can't do as a clinical psychologist is be distracted.

00:39:43.000 So when I do an hour of therapy with someone, I like to give them 100% of my attention.

00:39:49.000 Because we're talking about very...

00:39:52.000 Crucial things, past, present, and future.

00:39:55.000 And unless I'm concentrating 100% and also have enough additional mental capacity during the week to be thinking about my clients and what they're going through and to be available, then I risk making a mistake.

00:40:08.000 And so I pulled out of my clinical practice last February, partly because of health concerns, but also partly because my life got too complicated and I haven't picked it back up.

00:40:17.000 Well, I think that's very noble of you because you don't want to be distracted.

00:40:20.000 Did he reach out to anyone? 0.99

00:40:21.000 Oh, s***! 0.99

00:40:23.000 I had a suicide letter and I forgot to submit it. 0.99

00:40:26.000 Yeah, it's obviously... Well, exactly.

00:40:28.000 It's no joke, so you have to really be careful about that.

00:40:31.000 Yeah, but I just made a joke about it anyway. So let me ask you this.

00:40:34.000 It was sort of funny, even.

00:40:36.000 Okay, well, I appreciate it.

00:40:38.000 You talk about the lobster, shoulders back, you know, and you talk about sort of this, a lot of people would, they'd do well to take on a more combative nature.

00:40:45.000 In other words, to sort of, you talk about this fight for their territory, earn it.

00:40:48.000 Courageous. Courageous.

00:40:50.000 Okay. But it's courageous and vulnerable at the same time.

00:40:54.000 Yes. Well, that was going to be my follow-up question, because I wonder this in your practice, and as someone who regularly still does counseling, I think everyone should do it to some degree, certainly if you're married.

00:41:05.000 You have different people come into your practices.

00:41:08.000 How do you sort of apply this life principle to, let's say, someone who might come in like a beaten puppy, someone who's meek, someone who's slumped over, and recognize the difference?

00:41:18.000 And how would you coach them versus someone who comes in headstrong, cocky, and is already too combative?

00:41:23.000 Because it seems like you could be given somebody some arms that some people probably don't need.

00:41:31.000 Well, a lot of...

00:41:32.000 So in the first case, someone who's beaten down and been bullied, say, maybe their whole life, a lot of what I do with them is listen, you know, and walk through.

00:41:42.000 Like, I had a client a while back who had been bullied so badly in high school that she had a psychotic episode. 0.81

00:41:49.000 Yeah. And so she was so broken when she first saw me that it was just beyond belief.

00:41:54.000 Like, she could barely talk, and she was having visual hallucinations, and it was really, really, really bad.

00:42:00.000 And I just let her talk for, oh, about three months.

00:42:03.000 I just listened to what happened to her.

00:42:08.000 I was fractured in her speech. And we wrote down what happened to her and made it coherent.

00:42:13.000 And talked about malevolence a lot because the kids who went after her were really doing it with vicious intent.

00:42:18.000 Like, they were out to take her out.

00:42:19.000 And they did. And it was an ugly situation.

00:42:23.000 So a lot of that's listening.

00:42:24.000 It's like, okay... What happened to you?

00:42:27.000 Who did it? Why?

00:42:29.000 Were you making yourself more vulnerable than you needed to because you didn't have the skills to defend yourself or see what was happening or fight back?

00:42:37.000 All of that. Then to strategize about how you could come up with inappropriate defense against similar things in the future because the purpose of memory isn't to remember.

00:42:47.000 The purpose of memory is to extract out wisdom from the past so you don't repeat catastrophes in the future.

00:42:54.000 And so... If you help someone sort through their memories, especially of terrible, like, sustained psychological assault of that sort, then you arm them for the future, and that restores them to health.

00:43:06.000 And she got much, much better.

00:43:08.000 She was able to go back to school and all of that, and so thank God for that.

00:43:12.000 And then, with someone who's, most of the time, Stephen, you don't see the over-confident types in therapy because they're kind of narcissistic and they never come for therapy.

00:43:22.000 But you do see people now and then who are less sophisticated in their disagreeable attitude than they might be.

00:43:30.000 And usually what you do with people like that is help them strategize more carefully.

00:43:34.000 It's like, okay, you want to operate in the world in a combative and competitive manner.

00:43:41.000 Fine. Let's see if we can turn that into a sophisticated dance instead of a random flailing of fists. 1.00

00:43:49.000 Sure. And so it isn't a matter of inhibiting their aggression.

00:43:51.000 It's a matter of helping them develop much more sophisticated strategies for...

00:43:56.000 So maybe someone is fairly combative and explosive and they're mad at their boss because things aren't going the way they should at work and now and then they have a fit or they're resentful and bitter.

00:44:07.000 Well, both of those are very bad strategies.

00:44:10.000 It's like, okay, what are you upset about What do you want as a solution?

00:44:14.000 Can you possibly obtain this in the current workplace?

00:44:17.000 Or do you have to look for another job?

00:44:19.000 What's your strategy for moving forward?

00:44:21.000 And those would be like conversations that probably take about a year.

00:44:24.000 Yeah. Right? Because it's really complicated to come up with a full life strategy for career development, for example, although it's unbelievably useful.

00:44:32.000 I mean... It's incredibly useful.

00:44:34.000 Oh yeah. Most of the time in my consulting practice, because my practice...

00:44:38.000 We expand the gamut from people who are extraordinarily impaired in almost every way to people who are hyper-competent.

00:44:44.000 And some of the people who came in for consulting, and so that would be career development and life development planning, you know, we'd triple their income in three years by strategic.

00:44:55.000 But it was like a sequence of battles.

00:44:59.000 Put inside a large-scale strategy and now there's going to be an army of people saying open up your private practice

00:45:05.000 I want to triple my income. Dr. Peterson. You promised you'd make me more money

00:45:08.000 Well, you know, it's interesting though Do you start off could the premise sort of in your book you

00:45:13.000 start off with the idea of listen more people would would benefit

00:45:16.000 From being able to sort of stand in the pocket being able to be courageous

00:45:20.000 So obviously like we said there are two different kinds of people the second kind of person probably wouldn't seek

00:45:24.000 counseling Anyway, probably wouldn't be reading this book. But do you

00:45:27.000 write that this is chapter one?

00:45:28.000 Do you write it from that point of view because you see that as a more plaguing problem in today's society timidity

00:45:35.000 lack of?

00:45:36.000 confidence lack of self-esteem I don't know if it's worse.

00:45:40.000 No, I don't necessarily think it's worse than it has been.

00:45:43.000 Although the stats for depression and anxiety among young people are pretty troublesome.

00:45:47.000 Do you think it would be more prevalent than like the cocky, overconfident type of...

00:45:52.000 Oh, yeah. Oh, yes. It's definitely more prevalent than that.

00:45:54.000 Oh, for sure. Like 10 to 1, I would say.

00:45:58.000 Yeah, yeah. And, you know, the 12 rules for life is a call not so much to be not anxious, but to not let anxiety stop you.

00:46:07.000 Right. That's the thing.

00:46:09.000 And there's an explanation of why it might stop you and an explanation of why people become embittered and unhappy and deceitful and resentful and all of that as well.

00:46:19.000 But yeah, it's very practical.

00:46:22.000 You were saying maybe people would beat down the doors of my consulting practice to figure out how to triple their income.

00:46:27.000 And I would say, well, the first thing you want to do is, if that's your goal, first of all, you want to decide if that's actually your goal.

00:46:34.000 Because if you're going to do that, there's a bunch of other things you can't do.

00:46:38.000 Right? Because you just can't do everything.

00:46:40.000 But let's say you want to triple your income.

00:46:42.000 Okay, well, pick a time frame.

00:46:44.000 Maybe it's three to five years.

00:46:46.000 And then figure out what the hell is wrong with you that's stopping you from looking at other opportunities.

00:46:52.000 Well, you have to get your resume together.

00:46:53.000 And it can't have holes in it.

00:46:55.000 And you have to have some education.

00:46:57.000 You have to be... Able to produce something that's of value to other people.

00:47:02.000 You have to stop being resentful about competing in the workplace.

00:47:05.000 You have to be willing to undergo endless interviews.

00:47:08.000 You have to send out 50 resumes a week for two years and assume that 99% of them will fail.

00:47:15.000 You have to assume that you'll go to multiple interviews and most of the time you won't get the job.

00:47:21.000 Like, it's a grueling battle.

00:47:23.000 Or you have to do a podcast on local radio for years without being paid a dime under this false presumption that someday it might actually have a significant enough viewership and listenership that you could actually make a living to employ 15 people.

00:47:36.000 It might be a pride-swallowing siege, which I will never fully tell you about for several years. 0.97

00:47:43.000 And it's true. And you know what?

00:47:44.000 I will tell you this. I'm going through that right now with trying to improve my relationships and my marriage before we have children.

00:47:52.000 And we could have children. We'd probably be better than most parents.

00:47:54.000 But I don't want to be that dad who works 16 hours a day and isn't there for my kids.

00:47:57.000 And because I'm tired, I get frustrated.

00:47:59.000 And something that was really telling to me, and this is why a lot of...

00:48:02.000 Yes, barely. But I do.

00:48:04.000 I find the time. I make the time.

00:48:06.000 Priorities. That's also in his book.

00:48:08.000 Dr. Jordan Peterson's book is about making a plan.

00:48:10.000 I make a plan, and I have back passages to not gay Jared's house. 1.00

00:48:14.000 So one thing with my marriage is, like you said, setting a plan, assessing yourself.

00:48:19.000 And something that was very telling to me, and a lot of people see it as weakness marriage counseling, I highly recommend it.

00:48:26.000 Because almost every stereotype about men and women You realize it is true when you're in a marriage, the miscommunications that occur, the way you both read situations. 0.98

00:48:34.000 And our counselor said, listen...

00:48:37.000 Anger from a man, from a husband to a wife, is almost never productive in a marriage.

00:48:43.000 He said, usually anger is disguising some other emotion.

00:48:45.000 It's usually either disguising hurt or fear.

00:48:49.000 He said, and with your wife, it will be more productive to be vulnerable and remove the cloak of anger with her.

00:48:56.000 You don't have to do it with everyone, but in the privacy of your marriage, your wife will respond better to vulnerability.

00:49:01.000 So examine why you're angry.

00:49:02.000 Usually it's hurt or fear and express that to your wife.

00:49:05.000 Okay. And that was a breakthrough.

00:49:07.000 And I don't know if that's the kind of thing that you have to be honest with yourself before you can come to a solution.

00:49:12.000 Truth is at the center of it.

00:49:17.000 Well, I talk a fair bit about that in 12 Rules for Life, about resentment.

00:49:21.000 You have to consult your resentment, and you find you're resentful about something.

00:49:25.000 Okay, why? Well, there's only two reasons.

00:49:28.000 The first reason is that you're whiny and useless, and you should shut the hell up and grow up. 1.00

00:49:32.000 Because that's life, and quit being such a twerp. 0.99

00:49:38.000 But, having established that you're not being a twerp, And that something is actually wrong that you need to set right, then you have to figure out exactly what it is that's wrong, and you have to figure out exactly what you would like to make that go away.

00:49:53.000 Like, one of the best things you can do in your marriage if you're arguing with your spouse is actually tell them what would minimally satisfy you.

00:50:01.000 Right. It's like, I'm mad at you because you did this.

00:50:04.000 It's like, okay, fine.

00:50:06.000 But no, you need something else.

00:50:08.000 It's like, I think that what's happening here is suboptimal.

00:50:12.000 And if we did it this way, which would require only a little change, that that would be better.

00:50:17.000 And let's try that for a week.

00:50:19.000 And then we can discuss it again.

00:50:21.000 You know, and so you have to make these things concrete.

00:50:25.000 You know, like maybe you're having battles about frequency of sexual interactions with your wife, because that's very common, especially once you have kids.

00:50:33.000 It's like, well, what's your minimal requirement?

00:50:37.000 Make it so you...

00:50:39.000 It's like, I want you to be around when I need you.

00:50:42.000 It's like, oh yeah, Jesus, go away. 0.96

00:50:44.000 You have a boner 24-7.

00:50:46.000 That's not going to happen. Yeah, same conversations, not K. Jared has with his hand.

00:50:50.000 The stranger. You sit on it for two minutes, it goes numb.

00:50:53.000 Makes you feel loved. Everyone needs affection.

00:50:55.000 See, I just don't want to know these things.

00:50:57.000 I just don't want to know these things.

00:50:59.000 Well, one thing I will say though, and often within a marriage, and that's what I think marriage counseling is so important, because now you've added two people.

00:51:05.000 First off, Don't date someone who hasn't sorted themselves out.

00:51:10.000 Don't marry someone who is in a constant state of crisis and they could use this book.

00:51:14.000 Fix yourself first. But then you realize, like we're talking about with anger in a marriage, it's usually not actually stemming from your spouse.

00:51:21.000 Because you married them, generally speaking, because you love them.

00:51:24.000 Often frustration is coming from these outside circumstances, which you tend to channel in to the person you spend the most amount of time with.

00:51:30.000 For example... Yeah, well, you often don't know, eh?

00:51:33.000 Right. Because you go to work, and you get upset, and then you're all irritable.

00:51:36.000 And you don't really even know why, because maybe 10 stupid things happened that day that you haven't fully thought through. 0.98

00:51:41.000 And then you come home, and your wife says something that rubs you the wrong way, and bang, you're irritable as hell. 0.99

00:51:48.000 And then you have a little discussion.

00:51:49.000 You think, well, I think I'm mad at you for saying this thing.

00:51:52.000 And then you think it through, and you think, oh, well, wait a minute.

00:51:55.000 These 10 things happened at work.

00:51:57.000 Oh yeah, that's a reflection of a deeper problem at work that I don't even really want to think about.

00:52:03.000 And a lot of discussions between husbands and wives...

00:52:10.000 Hold on a second. 1.00

00:52:13.000 Damn this Canadian internet. I think he's still there. 0.99

00:52:16.000 Husbands and wives. We're left off on husbands and wives. 0.99

00:52:18.000 We're leaving on husbands and wives. 0.95

00:52:19.000 I think he's there. I can see his good-looking mug, but I can't...

00:52:25.000 Now we're still here.

00:52:28.000 Husbands and wives, apologies.

00:52:30.000 They've come for you and your internet.

00:52:34.000 Yeah. Well, a lot of discussions between husbands and wives that are combative are actually discussions about what the problem is rather than what the solution is.

00:52:44.000 This is something that husbands really don't understand well about listening to their wives.

00:52:48.000 Husbands want to cut right to the chase and solve the problem, but the wives are trying to figure out, well, wait a minute. 1.00

00:52:54.000 What's the problem? Maybe it's this, maybe it's that.

00:52:57.000 There has to be a fair bit of wandering in the conversation to even specify what the problem is.

00:53:03.000 Once you know what the problem is, it's actually not that hard to solve it usually, but it's definitely hard to identify the problem.

00:53:10.000 Yeah, and as you talked about with some of your female patients before, often with wives, simply listening and not providing a solution is the solution, is validation to emotions, which isn't something that computes with a lot of men.

00:53:21.000 Usually you're saying this, this, this, and this, and you want to hear, well, maybe this is how...

00:53:25.000 Ah, that's the ticket!

00:53:26.000 And you go off and you carry a solution.

00:53:27.000 But often women are saying something because they want you to listen. 1.00

00:53:29.000 They go... Oh, that's good.

00:53:31.000 I feel better now. These are things that you can only know if you examine yourself.

00:53:35.000 Well, so one of the things that happens when, if you listen to someone who has problems, this is what they do, is they think, okay, I'm upset, and here's 20 things that might be a problem.

00:53:48.000 And then if you listen to them go through it, it's kind of painful, especially if you live with them, because you think you might be at the core of all 20 of those problems, and maybe you are.

00:53:58.000 But if you can be patient and let the person lay out all 20 problems, then the next thing they'll do is they'll think, oh, wait a minute, 18 of those aren't relevant.

00:54:09.000 Here's the one that's important, but they can't get to the important one before wandering through all the potential ones.

00:54:17.000 And so sitting back and waiting, it's like you only let the person lay all their cards on the table before they can pick up the one that's relevant.

00:54:25.000 Right. And that takes patience.

00:54:26.000 And it's really important.

00:54:28.000 Yeah. And if you want to piss off your wife in a hurry, have her list 20 problems bothering her and say 18 of those aren't relevant.

00:54:34.000 And watch her.

00:54:36.000 That'd be like James Damore.

00:54:37.000 Well, you wanted me to give you feedback.

00:54:40.000 She's supposed to be the one that decides that 18 of them aren't relevant.

00:54:43.000 Yes, exactly. Wise words.

00:54:45.000 The book is 12 Rules for Life.

00:54:47.000 It's selling like hotcakes on Amazon.

00:54:49.000 I know we almost just scratched the surface of chapter one, chapter two.

00:54:51.000 We'll have to have you back soon. And of course, the self-authoring program, the promo code is CROWDER. Where's the website for the self-authoring program, Dr.

00:54:58.000 Peterson? It's selfauthoring.com.

00:55:01.000 Yeah, and there's also the Understand Myself program, understandmyself.com, that takes about 15 minutes to fill out.

00:55:08.000 It'll give you a very detailed description of your personality.

00:55:11.000 You probably won't like it.

00:55:13.000 That's many people. 0.76

00:55:14.000 Yeah, listen, but the good thing is if you are actually examining yourself, and this is why I think you're seen as this crazy right-winger.

00:55:21.000 This is a self-help book.

00:55:23.000 And so is a self-authoring based on truth.

00:55:25.000 That's why we did the personality test here on air.

00:55:27.000 People can go to the archives and see us do that on air.

00:55:29.000 It's not the secret.

00:55:31.000 That would be sort of the antithesis to this.

00:55:32.000 The secret was just what you want and it'll come to you.

00:55:36.000 This is based on honest assessment of yourself.

00:55:39.000 Reality as it is, as you wish it to be. Reality as it is.

00:55:41.000 Your shortcomings, your attributes, and how to correct yourself.

00:55:45.000 I think everyone would do well to read it.

00:55:47.000 Dr. Peterson, thank you so much, sir.

00:55:49.000 And I hope that this meteoric rise continues. 0.99

00:55:51.000 Just don't become a narcissistic prick. 0.99

00:55:53.000 I'll do my best, man. 0.99

00:55:55.000 I've got people keeping my feet on the ground.

00:55:57.000 All right. It's certainly not Canada, though.

00:55:58.000 Just don't let the United States get to your head.

00:56:01.000 We will be back. We'll be at Virginia Tech tomorrow and Dr.

00:56:04.000 Peterson back soon. Thank you so much, sir.

Louder with Crowder - February 06, 2018

‘MOST MEN ARE WIMPS!’ (Jordan Peterson Uncut) | Louder With Crowder

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