The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 185. The End of Universities？

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00:00:53.840 Welcome to the Jordan B. Peterson podcast. I'm Mikayla Peterson.

00:00:57.500 This is season four, episode 39. This episode is a bit different and with a special request

00:01:03.360 from JBP. It's a compilation of guests talking about the state of universities.

00:01:09.380 Yanmi Park's account of her experience at Columbia University is harrowing. As someone who had just

00:01:14.760 arrived to the West after her escape from North Korea, the thought that she had to censor herself

00:01:19.800 at a prestigious university like Columbia, or any university for that matter, which have historically

00:01:24.720 been bastions of free thought is horrifying. Her experience serves as one example of just how far

00:01:29.960 the universities have deteriorated. Dad wanted to put this compilation together because he still

00:01:35.160 feels like it's possible to save the universities. But before that can happen, more people need to be

00:01:39.600 aware of just how twisted they've become. Feel free to share and reference this video as some

00:01:44.340 evidence and people's perspectives on the problem with universities. In my opinion, people should

00:01:49.860 just go apprentice somewhere and start working right away and just skip university. You can learn

00:01:54.300 everything online for free. However, my dad is the intellectual and he still thinks these institutions

00:02:00.120 can be saved. And I hope he's right. Enjoy the episode.

00:02:05.000 And you came out of North Korea, then you went to university in South Korea. So you got you got to see that

00:02:11.120 culture as an outsider. And then you came to the United States and you got to see Columbia University. So

00:02:17.640 what did you conclude about your time in Columbia University? What are your what were your impressions?

00:02:23.840 What do you have to say to people about what you saw?

00:02:26.040 I knew you. Oh, my God. So that four years from 2016 to 2020. It was a complete madness. I, I became very

00:02:39.480 pessimistic about the Western world after university because like, so literally in this humanity classes,

00:02:50.440 even the economics, I was studying economics for two years and later human rights. They, the

00:02:55.800 professor would send me the like emails. Oh, this, this class, we're going to cover this days. If it

00:03:01.800 triggers you, you don't have to come to the class or don't even do the reading. I'm a rape survivor.

00:03:07.160 I'm asleep. I've gone through so many things. And they say, oh, this can trigger the rape. This can

00:03:12.440 trigger this. And then like they, every before the class, they say, let's go through what do you

00:03:19.960 want to be called your pronouns? And my English is not that good. I sometimes mistakenly

00:03:25.640 call him or she like, and then they started asking me to say they, and then I don't know how to

00:03:31.560 incorporate in my English that pronoun properly. And it made me so nervous to talk in the classroom. And

00:03:40.200 one day I got into five with my professor, she was saying, you know, the fact that you're letting men

00:03:46.840 holding the door for you is you are giving into their overpowering you. And I was like, you know,

00:03:53.880 isn't it kindness? Is it decency? I hold the door for people too. It's not like I'm trying to signal

00:03:59.400 that I'm powerful than you. And she was like, you're so brainwashed from North Korea. Like,

00:04:05.560 and I was scenario, of course, my GPA is gonna be affected. And it's like, okay, I gotta really

00:04:12.280 shut up. I gotta try to do my best to get a good GPA. So that four years, I learned to censor myself

00:04:22.040 all over again. And it became ridiculous. Like I literally, exactly. I literally risked my life to say

00:04:29.240 what I think is right. And now I'm like, in a country where I have four years of time trying

00:04:35.640 how to create a safe space and be sensitive enough. So, and like, where am I? And it gave me a lot of

00:04:44.840 chaos. Like, did I become free? Like, was it? Where am I? Is there any truly free place in this world

00:04:51.320 right now? Well, okay. So you, you were in this university in Korea and Korean universities are intense.

00:04:57.800 And so how would you contrast the quality of the education that you received? And they're very

00:05:03.560 Western influence, the South Korean university. So they're a product of the Western university system.

00:05:09.320 So how would you contrast your experience at the South Korean university with Columbia,

00:05:14.600 which is in principle, one of the great Western American institutions, educational institutions?

00:05:21.880 So I do think South Korea is way more technical. They are way more into trying

00:05:27.400 teach you the skill set. Like if, you know, more giving you actual knowledge. But I think Americans

00:05:35.640 are very obsessed. That was my impression at Columbia. We're really trying to help you how to think.

00:05:41.400 But almost like you would shape how you think. They are very into shaping your mind, how you think

00:05:48.200 about something. In South Korean study program was more like, oh, this is a fact. This is what happened in

00:05:56.120 history. This is what we're going to do. This is a model you're going to apply to solve this criminal case.

00:06:00.840 Like, you know, this is how things work. But lately though, when it comes to sociology,

00:06:06.760 it's been very influenced by the Western, like the mainstream education. So a lot of anti-Western

00:06:15.960 sentiments was definitely there. I have been somewhat oppositional. I'm not exactly like a Mr. Go

00:06:21.960 long and get a long guy with this stuff that I don't always have the best reality check on my own

00:06:27.320 behavior. And so I'm, you know, I, I was just saying, well, okay, if I, if I did cause offense,

00:06:35.720 then, you know, I, I feel like it's okay to apologize. And there probably was a better way for

00:06:39.560 me to do this. Some of my comments, you know, were leaked or made or transmitted to other people that

00:06:45.960 weren't in the meetings, people that were in the, the BIPOC meeting, you know, particularly my,

00:06:52.440 my BIPOC is a black and indigenous people of color. So they were having their separate meeting

00:06:58.680 of faculty and students where they received different content. And why was it separate?

00:07:04.760 Just out of curiosity? The rationale as I could, as I can understand it is so that

00:07:10.760 the groups that have been marginalized won't be exposed to, you know, they'll have their own

00:07:16.440 things so that they're not exposed to the, I think the insensitive, possible insensitivity of the

00:07:26.040 oppressors. It's the best I can understand the rationale. But it wound up happening anyway,

00:07:33.320 because it would be rude of me to point out that that's somewhat paternalistic,

00:07:37.640 just, you know, just as, you know, observation.

00:07:42.120 That's a good one. Um, yeah, I mean, yeah, totally. Well, I guess that is a characteristic

00:07:47.720 of white supremacy culture though. Paternalism.

00:07:50.680 Yeah. So I, I guess it's quite accurate.

00:07:53.880 Well, as long as it's in a good cause, then I guess it's forgivable.

00:07:57.480 Yeah. Well, I found it so interesting because the day after the meeting,

00:08:01.400 there was an email that was released that said healing resources, you know, healing resources

00:08:08.040 that will help you come to terms with what happened. And the first healing resource

00:08:13.880 on the list was a CNN interview with a poet named Damon Young.

00:08:22.200 Um, and, um, Damon Young, uh, you know, in this interview said things like,

00:08:31.800 you know, we, we need to get rid of all of capitalism. We will have to do a carpet bombing,

00:08:38.120 not a carpet cleansing of society. And it was incredibly radical statements that were,

00:08:45.400 I would imagine would be frightening to, to many people. And that was listed as a healing resource,

00:08:50.440 as well as well, as long as the carpet bombing only targets the malevolent people.

00:08:55.320 Well, yeah, I guess. And then things, there was a Robin DiAngelo article that said, you know,

00:09:00.360 what white people need to be made or kept uncomfortable. Um, how can we become more

00:09:05.960 uncomfortable? Um, also, you know, really kind of, I would just say racist characterizations of white

00:09:13.640 people in these links. Um, things like, you know, all white people have never had to be guests in this

00:09:20.840 country. And, uh, like the Irish, for example, they weren't really white to begin with though. So,

00:09:29.160 yeah. Yeah. Um, and so I found this very ironic. The idea that, especially by the way,

00:09:36.920 postmodernism and the deconstruction and all those attendant pseudo philosophies, uh, you read Milton

00:09:43.800 to find out, uh, if he mistreated his daughters, not this, this miracle that we call paradise lost or

00:09:49.560 Samson Agonistes. You, you read Homer to find out, you know, if he's a blood worshiper, this whole,

00:09:56.200 this whole game of taking the great documents of Western civilization as a hunting ground for moral,

00:10:02.920 uh, woke offense. Well, first of all, it's catastrophically stupid. If you have the 40th

00:10:09.800 symphony of Mozart or the Beethoven's fifth, and the only reason you're playing it is to find out

00:10:14.200 if either Mozart or Beethoven had a sexist attitude, you're out of your mind.

00:10:18.680 Self, stop this. And, and the idea that one of the great propulsions of a certain segment of Western

00:10:25.640 society is simple envy and resentment of its success, even as those who are envious and resentful

00:10:33.800 are basically being fed and kept by it. They go into these institutions with some sort of childish,

00:10:41.240 immature, uh, animosity towards what, you know, if you think of it, the rise of thought is, is,

00:10:49.160 is the greatest thing we have. And at the, in the richest part of the world, the most prosperous,

00:10:55.640 the highest institution, have you been reading some of these whiteness things, the new rules?

00:11:00.280 And it's like the ones the federal government are using to train your civil servants. You mean

00:11:04.760 those? Yeah. And they're, the epidemic of, of anti-racism, which is a kind of racism, diversity,

00:11:11.800 which is monosyllabic. If you don't have our ideas, you don't have any, or you're a racist,

00:11:17.400 or you're this, or you're that. I don't know how a free people have succumbed so easily and so lethargically

00:11:24.680 to a kind of, it's, it's not physical, but it's a metaphysical restraint. And the cowardice about

00:11:32.760 some of these, these universities that apologize for some professor, the New York Times guy, 49 years

00:11:39.960 columnist, and in an explicatory conversation using that N-word, the editor said, no, nothing wrong with

00:11:48.200 him, but then he fired him. The universities, damn them, were the place that this, this other pandemic

00:11:56.600 began. And while we're living through COVID, we should also understand that the intellectual pandemic,

00:12:03.720 this goes to our heart and core. We are displacing ourselves by allowing charlatans to wreck the

00:12:10.840 intellectual standards of the Western world. What I've read is that you made some claim that

00:12:16.280 Canada wasn't systemically racist, that that wasn't the right way of looking at the country.

00:12:21.480 And is there, so, and to me that means now, is that the case now that at a university,

00:12:26.600 if I stand up and say that I don't believe that the lens of systemic racism is the proper way to

00:12:32.040 analyze Canada, especially compared to other countries, that now I'm so reprehensible that I

00:12:36.840 deserve to be suspended? If a couple of people object, is that the situation that we're looking at?

00:12:42.760 Or am I being too hard on the university? I have to admit, I may be wrong, but there

00:12:49.480 may have been a flavor for that during that month. So like, it was, like, my story was sort of a

00:12:56.760 scapegoat for something that is much bigger than a deer, a simple deer, a silly deer. Sometimes we're

00:13:04.760 not allowed to write serious things, or silly things, or be wrong, or change our mind.

00:13:09.880 And your situation is also particularly peculiar, I might say, because you don't seem to be the right

00:13:16.520 sort of target for this sort of targeting, you know, because you're using the terminology that

00:13:22.600 I don't appreciate in the least. I mean, you're female, you're an immigrant, you're, you're at least

00:13:29.720 in principle, part of the communities that the people who push this sort of nonsense are

00:13:34.280 hypothetically trying to protect. So why? Is it because you are in one of these victimized categories?

00:13:43.400 Absolutely. And you dared to say something that wasn't

00:13:47.240 in accordance with the necessary moral ideology that you've been targeted?

00:13:52.840 Maybe they wanted, if you read about of the Bambi's blog, you see that that deer does not want to fit in

00:14:00.120 any group and put in a box. So I'm supposed to be racialized, you know, be a poor me. I don't have

00:14:10.360 poor, I don't, I don't like to be victimized personally in my life. Even now with what is happening to me,

00:14:16.120 I think I'm a dignified person. So in that sense, I like the term invisible minority, visible minority,

00:14:28.040 you know, the terms that used to be used in Quebec, my time when I immigrated, I see myself more in them

00:14:35.720 and then like, like, put us divided into you're this group, that group, and, and, you know,

00:14:43.720 sectoralism, or not like Canada. Right. So you're supposed to be first of all,

00:14:49.720 you're female. So hypothetically, you're oppressed, because you're female, even though

00:14:53.720 the evidence for suppression of females in academia is very, very, it's actually females dominate over

00:15:01.640 males in terms of numerical proportion in most disciplines. It's not the case in the STEM fields,

00:15:08.360 but everywhere else, it's the case not only, especially in terms of graduates produced,

00:15:13.000 it might not be the case at the highest levels of distinction in the academic hierarchy, although

00:15:18.440 that's changing pretty rapidly. So you should actually fit into at least two oppressed categories,

00:15:22.760 female and an immigrant, right. And, and so, and so the rule here is that if you're in both of

00:15:29.160 those categories, victimized by the intersection between those two categories, that there's a

00:15:33.560 particular political view, you better have or else. And or else in your case is there else you get

00:15:39.640 suspended. Because a few people complain. That's what the hell's going on with the administration.

00:15:46.440 I don't understand what they're doing. I really don't understand. I can't understand why they didn't

00:15:51.240 have the courtesy. Actually, I can understand why they didn't have the courtesy to call you. Because

00:15:55.720 the sad truth is, is that as soon as a few people complain, everyone who isn't directly involved

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00:23:22.100 No, but let me tell you something. What happened at Mount Allison University and is happening elsewhere,

00:23:27.140 but particularly here, is a symptom of what is happening in our country or

00:23:31.060 or maybe beyond, actually. So, I take it like that. It's a symptom that we do have a serious

00:23:37.880 problem, as you said, like tenured professors not being able to express ideas, debate ideas,

00:23:44.640 challenge students with ideas. We do have a big problem.

00:23:48.200 You're a citizen of a free country. You have a right to express yourself any way that you see fit.

00:23:53.280 Second of all, you're a tenured professor and your thoughts are actually protected to a fair degree.

00:23:58.520 And it's protected broadly so that you can think broadly. And the fact that this has happened

00:24:04.200 despite your tenure, well, I guess part of the question that people who are watching might be

00:24:08.440 asking is why the hell should they care about this? And the reason I believe that people should

00:24:12.580 care about this, first of all, is that what happens in the universities ends up happening

00:24:16.220 everywhere else very, very rapidly. Absolutely.

00:24:18.720 And if it can happen to someone like you, it seems to me that it can happen to anyone at any time and

00:24:23.380 any place. And this unbelievable cowardice that our institutions show in the face of

00:24:30.320 unwarranted allegations, as long as they're the right flavor, is something that should be

00:24:34.840 tremendously worrisome to everyone.

00:24:36.420 We haven't got to the bad stuff yet, but it started to become apparent to me. I sort of had

00:24:44.020 the realization that this was really going the wrong direction when we had a professional

00:24:49.460 development meeting and they passed out the, I'm sure you've seen it, the pyramid of racism,

00:24:56.340 also known as the pyramid of white supremacy. And it had this schema, it was a schema arranged in the

00:25:03.000 form of a pyramid with genocide at the top of the pyramid. And then various layers that had

00:25:08.680 categorical names like overt racism, covert racism, minimization, indifference. And then various,

00:25:18.240 there must've been about 50 or 60 things sprinkled on the pyramid at various levels. And some of the

00:25:24.340 things on the pyramid I actually thought were, you know, in many cases, virtues.

00:25:33.000 So things like, um, being apolitical or things like, you know, um, you know, there are two sides to

00:25:41.380 every story, um, things that were contradictory, like, um, you know, not believing POC, but also

00:25:52.460 thinking, well, my black friend said dot, dot, dot. So the idea that these two things were next to each

00:26:00.560 other seemed interesting to me. Um, also things that were just, um, you know, political party plat,

00:26:08.940 you know, platforms. Minimization. We all belong to the human race. Right. Right. That was,

00:26:15.780 that was a big one. Post-racial society. Why can't we all just get along? Prioritizing intentions over

00:26:24.320 impact. That's a nice one. Yeah. Yes. We could, we could talk about that for about three weeks.

00:26:30.500 Yeah. Not believing experiences of people of color. Two sides to every story. Right. Yeah. Well,

00:26:41.500 it's very interesting when you look very carefully at the words that are lumped in with the other words,

00:26:48.100 let's say. Right. Guilt by association. Okay. So you had this pyramid of white supremacy.

00:26:55.080 Yeah. And I was asked to, you know, what do you, how do you respond to this? What do you think about

00:26:58.160 this? And I just, I said, I think this is extremely destructive and horrible schema to put in front

00:27:04.520 of a child and I will never do it. And then there were. And so what's the problem with that exactly?

00:27:08.500 So the kids stick with the list. Why, why is that bothering you? Well, it's, it's because it means that,

00:27:16.080 you know, events, the, the multiplicity of possible reasons for things that, that change,

00:27:21.680 that are different depending on the actual incident get reduced to this script of, of explanations.

00:27:28.020 And only those explanations, you know, fit the paradigm and only those explanations will be

00:27:33.420 considered. And, and that means that you're not making sense of the world for yourself.

00:27:39.280 You're following a script. You may know the name. She is a, she escaped from North Korea.

00:27:46.080 Yes. And she wrote a book called in order to live, which is an amazing book.

00:27:50.120 And the book ends in 2015, but after 2015, she enrolled in Columbia university, which was a

00:27:59.500 dream of hers and a dream of her father, that she'd be an educated person. And she studied humanities at

00:28:04.220 Columbia. And I asked her what that was like. And she said that it was a complete waste of time and

00:28:10.120 money. And that she felt that she was completely unable to utter an opinion that was genuine the

00:28:16.400 whole time she was there. And it shocked me, you know? And so I asked her very specifically,

00:28:21.920 I said, come on, come on, you're, you're not going to tell me that the entire time you spent in

00:28:27.380 Columbia, you didn't have at least one professor or two professors who stood out, who really taught

00:28:33.200 you. Now, she had told me during the interview that she had encountered George Orwell's work

00:28:37.720 when she was in South Korea, particularly animal farm. And that was what partly what influenced her

00:28:43.740 to start speaking and writing. And so, and she had read a lot when she was educating herself in South

00:28:49.080 Korea prior to going to South Korean university and then to Columbia. So it's not like she was

00:28:53.160 unfamiliar with the potential impact of, let's say the classics on, on, on, on, on her life,

00:28:59.660 on her philosophy. But when I pressed her, the best she could do was to identify a single biology

00:29:07.280 class, which dealt with evolution, which was a complete mystery to her, given her background,

00:29:12.260 because history sort of started when her dynastic totalitarians were born. But she said, even that

00:29:18.600 took a wicked turn to the politically correct direction by the time she was done.

00:29:22.700 Universities now at the humanities level, from everything I read, are a disgrace. The treason of

00:29:29.980 the clerks, it is, it is, they are so suffocated by these arch and empty philosophies that have no logic

00:29:38.460 and are punitive. I would now, I'm a person that was so taken by the university that I almost

00:29:46.020 worship it. And now I tell people that have younger people, younger children, 20, 21, 22,

00:29:53.740 don't go to the damn university taking science, go to a trades college, or just go out on your own.

00:30:00.400 It's the saddest thing that has happened in the Western world, that we've allowed second-rate

00:30:06.760 minds, political agents, propagandization as instruction. We have decimated the soul of the

00:30:14.760 university. I mean, look at what, Joe, look at what Animal Farm did for you. That's what reading

00:30:20.180 great books does for people. You know, it illuminates their soul. It's not optional. And I'm so

00:30:27.020 appalled that that was your experience at Columbia. It's so awful that you went through all that and

00:30:33.280 managed to get to this great university. And, you know, and that, and that you had to shut yourself

00:30:39.400 down, and that your basic conclusion was that it was a waste of time. Now, did you have courses

00:30:45.420 where that wasn't the case? Did you have courses that were worth it?

00:30:49.820 I, I, I mean, so one class I remember in my senior year, it was called the Western civilization,

00:30:58.720 the music art, one of the core that Columbia had is a Western art, and the music-

00:31:03.440 Has still, not for long.

00:31:06.380 But then the, I was excited to learn about, but I thought, at the end of the day, this is still the

00:31:11.120 West. America is in the West, right? It would be funny if you wanted to study Eastern music at the end

00:31:16.400 of the, in the core. And professors like, who has a problem with calling the Western civilization

00:31:22.480 like art? And then every single one of them all lifting their hands, because they were saying,

00:31:27.000 there are so many artists who are greater than Beethoven and Mozart. We silenced them, erased them

00:31:33.220 all. And that's why we have to now end up studying these like bigots, you know, who are racist.

00:31:38.140 And I'm like, and then they were like, looking at me, why are you not putting your hands up,

00:31:45.340 somebody who doesn't have the problem with talking about best-sensualization.

00:31:49.800 So that's just like, I was like, do I even have to do this to graduate? And that was, of course,

00:31:55.480 necessary to do that course to graduate. So every, every class had an element of being politically

00:32:02.740 correct and shaping you how you think. And I learned how to censor myself so well at the

00:32:09.600 Columbia. And then I was freaked out one day. It's like, what am I doing? This is not what I

00:32:14.160 escape, you know, it's just, and I'm so, I'm so ashamed of that. That's so awful.

00:32:20.800 I can't believe it. You know, it's no, it's no picnic to watch these great institutions hang

00:32:34.160 themselves. Yeah. I literally felt like it's a suicide of civilization. Like we are killing

00:32:44.560 ourselves here. And, and that's why, like, what, I mean, that's what scares me is that

00:32:54.240 when I was so grateful to going to South Korea was outside of North Korea, there was at least

00:33:00.180 a place that was left to be free. And all these people obsessed fighting for, you know, climate

00:33:08.040 change, animals rights, gender equality, transgender, whatever, all these things people fighting,

00:33:14.540 for wonderful. But then imagine when nobody's free in this world, who's going to fight for

00:33:22.280 us. And that's like, what terror for me is like, imagine all of us became enslaved, like

00:33:28.680 North Koreans, all of us did in that system. There's no one can stand up for any of us.

00:33:35.080 And I guess, because I'm always, I always knew that it wasn't guaranteed. Like when I go to

00:33:40.900 camping with my friends, my friends somehow always a confidence that they're going to find

00:33:46.280 food, even though when they're going to the remote area, not me, I always packing this

00:33:52.080 like energy bars, blah, blah, always with me, because I know that you can end up not having

00:33:57.680 ever all food. So maybe this is a mentality that in the West, freedom was always there.

00:34:03.980 Somehow people think it's going to be miraculously going to be always there.

00:34:07.300 And for me, it's like, no, it can be not there.

00:34:10.640 That's, you know, that's why we were supposed to be educating young people. We were supposed to be

00:34:14.640 teaching them that, no, it's not always there. It's, it's fragile, and you better take care of it,

00:34:20.200 because the default condition is authoritarian starvation. And if that isn't happening, it's a

00:34:26.960 bloody miracle. Yeah. Well, I've seen this over and over in the universities, too. You know, it was

00:34:32.120 often the case that it was my psychology classes where the students learned about what happened in

00:34:37.380 Stalinist Soviet Union and Maoist China. They hadn't been taught at all. They hadn't been taught that

00:34:42.300 tens of millions of people died in China. They hadn't been taught about what happened in North

00:34:46.920 Korea. They hadn't been taught about what happened in Russia. It was like that never existed, even

00:34:52.000 though the Cold War was all about that. And it was, it's appalling. It's, and, and I, I think you,

00:34:58.400 you see exactly the same thing while you're pointing out exactly the same thing. I've been

00:35:03.820 thinking about the question of the meaning of life. And the first objection, I suppose, arose, that arose

00:35:11.560 in my mind was an objection to the question itself, because there might not be a meaning in life. There

00:35:16.500 are places where people derive meaning. And, and you can list them. And it's useful, practically, if people

00:35:26.280 are thinking about how to organize their life, if they're unhappy, and they want to know how things

00:35:30.380 might be better. I mean, my observation, and obviously not only mine, is that people generally

00:35:36.100 need to have a career or a job to keep the wolf from the door, but also to engage them productively

00:35:41.360 with others, which is a primary source of meaning for conscientious people and for creative people

00:35:46.760 alike. You need to be a, you need to pursue your education to, to flesh out your intellectual

00:35:54.020 capacity. You have to take care of your health, physical and mental. You, you need an intimate

00:35:58.680 relationship. You need a family. You need friends. You need intelligent use of your leisure time. You

00:36:04.540 have to regulate your, your susceptibility to the temptations that might lead you astray, drugs and

00:36:11.260 alcohol, and perhaps pornography, and those sorts of things. And, but then there is a, a core to all

00:36:17.620 that around which these more practical endeavors arrange themselves. And that's something like

00:36:23.480 attention to the spiritual or the philosophical domain or the religious domain. I think you can,

00:36:29.740 in some sense, put all those together. And, and that might be, well, it might be that the attempt

00:36:35.180 to answer explicitly, or at least to address the question of, well, what is all of that practical

00:36:41.440 life in service of? And you said, for example, that when you were working with the inner city kids

00:36:47.460 in Halifax, you were trying to help them realize that the, they were meant for the higher things and

00:36:55.960 vice versa. And someone might ask, well, what's the, why bother with that when you can just bother with

00:37:03.820 the skills? And it seems to me that the answer is something like, well, we all have to make decisions

00:37:08.880 about how we're going to behave in life and how we're going to act ethically. And if you help

00:37:14.540 people understand their relationship to what's ultimately noble, then you can help them fortify

00:37:21.520 their, their resolution to do good in the world instead of to do harm. It's, it's, it's, it seems to

00:37:30.340 me to be, I mean, I think we're always deciding with every decision that we make, whether we're going

00:37:35.760 to do good or do harm by action or by inaction and whether we should do good or harm or nothing at

00:37:41.880 all, I think depends to some degree on who we think we are and, and what we're capable of. And it seems

00:37:48.040 to me that the humanities, when, when they're properly taught are the study of who we could be,

00:37:54.200 each of us as individuals. And we need to know that because otherwise we'll be much less than we

00:37:58.300 are. And that's not a, that's not a trivial problem. It's a cataclysmic problem. I did a talk

00:38:04.480 at Harvard four years ago, and I pointed out two things to the students in the audience. One was that

00:38:13.720 a tremendous amount of civilization and effort had gone into producing the institution that they were

00:38:21.840 now part of, and that everyone who was part of that institution was hoping that they would come

00:38:27.720 there and learn everything they possibly could that was relevant and important, and that they would be

00:38:32.840 the best possible people they could be. And they would go out in the world and do as much good as

00:38:37.780 they possibly could. That was the essential mission of the enterprise. And that was really the case.

00:38:44.900 And also that learning to write in particular was going to make them more powerful than they could

00:38:53.100 imagine. And number of students came up to me afterwards and said, I really wish someone would

00:38:59.340 have said that to us when we first came here. If you were going to recommend to a young person what

00:39:06.680 they should study to prepare to be a researcher, a psychological researcher, a clinical psychological

00:39:13.060 researcher of your type, what should they do at the bachelor's level, let's say? What's the right

00:39:20.320 preparation? And then let's walk through the process, bachelor, master's, PhD, postdoc, because

00:39:25.540 people don't know that. And so what do you look for in a student if you're looking for a master's

00:39:33.120 level student? What should have they done in their bachelor's degree?

00:39:35.560 I guess they have to be passionate and at the same time ready to work very hard

00:39:41.260 to clarify how you go about understanding what you want to understand. So you need both of those.

00:40:00.100 You need the interest and the discipline. I guess it's like that in every discipline, even a hockey

00:40:06.360 player or football player. It is if you want to be successful. Yeah. Yeah. You need to be interested

00:40:11.960 because you have to want to. Yeah. And at the same time, you have to take the time and and like

00:40:19.520 investing yourself. So is it fair to say that you taught yourself to read and you got your GED

00:40:28.120 equivalent? You did that in one year. And so you were ready to go to university at the age of how in the

00:40:32.820 world did you do that? How much time were you spending every day studying?

00:40:39.440 I didn't. So that was a funny story. I ended up in the ER and then like they were saying,

00:40:45.980 you're malnourished because I didn't have time to eat. I forgot to eat. So even when I was sleeping,

00:40:52.780 I would turn on the like TED Talks or NPR so I can like listen. My brain still kept working.

00:40:58.780 And even when I was sleeping, I would put the books behind my pillow. So the like knowledge

00:41:04.040 would go into me. I was obsessed. I was crazy. You were obsessed with it? Yeah. I was completely

00:41:10.520 obsessed with learning. So you're completely obsessed with studying to the point where you're

00:41:14.880 not even eating. And we should also just stress here, it is definitely the case that the education

00:41:22.140 process is unbelievably competitive in South Korea, as you've already pointed out, far and above what

00:41:27.340 people in, in young people in North America can imagine, or in Europe for that matter. And so you

00:41:33.060 were facing very, very heavy competition. So, but you got obsessed to the point where you weren't even

00:41:39.960 eating. That's amazing because I would have thought that you would be more motivated to eat after what

00:41:45.280 you did than virtually, but you were hungrier for knowledge than for food despite, and you had been

00:41:50.540 starved of both. Exactly. I was, I was working at this, I don't know, you know, something called

00:41:57.900 Daiso. It's like a $1 store in South Korea, the Japanese branch. So I was working there as a part-time

00:42:05.020 job and I was a minor. So my mom had to give the, like, authorization that she would let me work.

00:42:11.260 And then I was working as a wedding horse, like serving food as a waitress. So I was working,

00:42:17.160 and then my mom was also doing the dishes and helping me. And I was living in these rooms in

00:42:23.760 Seoul because I was studying where underground, I didn't even have a window. And I still remember

00:42:30.720 those times. I was so happy because I had a goal. Like I was, you know, like this tiny room where you

00:42:36.960 can just stretch your feet, like barely. I'm like five times tiny in that room. I was like living there.

00:42:42.940 All I had was books with me and dream. Yeah. Well, a room full of books isn't small.

00:42:49.040 Exactly. It was, it was large. Yeah. Right. Absolutely. Absolutely. So you got your GED

00:42:55.960 and then you applied to university for, in a competitive program and they, there was still

00:43:04.000 trouble with you getting in, but you managed it. How did you manage it? And how did you decide what you

00:43:08.380 were going to do? I was going to study criminal justice. It was, I saw so much injustice and even

00:43:17.420 in South Korea, I saw so much of it. I really wanted to understand how that worked. You know, how,

00:43:23.460 how, what these things call justice. So I'm grateful. They gave me all the opportunity to study that

00:43:30.720 program. And, but now it's a, I, it's just such a, like, I don't know how I was going through all of

00:43:39.200 that, but somehow back then I had a drive that I didn't ever even knew I had. So, but your experience

00:43:46.240 at university, go into that a little bit more detail. Well, I'm glad you, you elaborated that as

00:43:51.520 you did. And I, I suppose, not I suppose, I know, I brought up that university experience in the hope

00:43:57.780 that, and we'll do it now, down the road in this conversation. I think outside of family,

00:44:04.500 that is always principle and will never be superseded. Outside of family, if there's anything

00:44:10.180 that, that contributed to the way that I look at things and have given me lasting benefit, okay?

00:44:17.620 You may be familiar with Samuel Johnson's remark about literature. It applies to all the arts.

00:44:22.100 That it exists better to help us endure life or to enjoy it. It fixes the mind. And when you have

00:44:30.040 a real university, you get these things. I, the professor I mentioned, for example, when he found

00:44:38.400 a book, it was one of Arthur Kessler's, I won't bother to name it. He actually walked to my house on a

00:44:42.960 Saturday afternoon. I was just a kid and in awe of them, but he came to the little studio, or sorry,

00:44:49.600 the student house and wanted me to have this book for a week so I could read. I mean, this kind of

00:44:55.000 almost genuflection to the emergent or emerging mind of a young person is something that stays

00:45:01.760 forever. So that long-winded again, the university experience was the strongest because the universities

00:45:09.440 then had values. They worshiped, and that's a good word, not to be backed off from. They worshiped the

00:45:16.120 best creations, the best fashions, the best styles of thought, the best scientific finesse. And they

00:45:25.180 made you, not made you, they induced you to be grateful, to be grateful for what other first-rate

00:45:34.020 minds have contributed to the temper of the entire human race.

00:45:38.040 My undergraduate degree, I encountered people who were reading these texts and

00:45:45.180 saying things about them that enabled me to understand the things that I had perhaps intuited

00:45:51.240 when I was younger in a more self-conscious, rationally universal frame, which is, of course,

00:45:57.920 what philosophy is. Ideas are the whole, are everything, you know, and there should be,

00:46:04.680 you should be talking about ideas based on what make ideas sound or unsound, not the person who's

00:46:12.040 saying them. What's your vision for Ralston College, architecturally speaking?

00:46:17.380 You know, I would perhaps say just by introduction that, you know, our analysis and the need for

00:46:21.860 founding new institutions is directly related to the things we've just been speaking about, the

00:46:25.560 cultural, spiritual crisis, the upstream influence of the university over everything else,

00:46:30.620 the fact that it is the epicenter of, at very best, unhelpful, at worst, downright toxic forms of

00:46:39.900 ideology that spread through anything and everything that is catastrophically beset with high costs,

00:46:48.680 low value, and so on and so forth. But our analysis is simply that there is huge demand in young

00:46:57.240 people for alternatives, people who are seeking alternatives to the indoctrination and activism

00:47:03.300 and fraudulent low value of the academy. I mean, I think your own work has shown this about as clearly

00:47:09.140 as anything else historically ever has, that it's a mistake to concede the, to be, you know, your new

00:47:17.160 book, you write about the need for creative dynamism in relation to our institutions. And it seems to me

00:47:22.400 we're in a moment, not only in which that is urgently necessary, but also eminently possible, if we have

00:47:28.780 only the courage to do it. So what I would say is a few things. The first is that Ralston College has

00:47:39.460 really four fundamental commitments. First, to seek the truth with courage. Second, to apprehend beauty

00:47:50.200 in all of its forms. Third, to the freedom of speech and thought that are the conditions of those

00:47:59.980 pursuits. And finally, to the friendship or even fellowship that is the context for all of these

00:48:09.020 pursuits. And, you know, what's become clear to us, Jordan, over the years is it's been a long

00:48:17.860 runway. It's not easy getting a college going. You know, anyone who thinks that you need to

00:48:23.560 go off and fight in a war in order to undertake something really hard of value can call me up and

00:48:32.020 we'll have a talk about other things, other projects that may be very, very difficult to

00:48:36.100 bring into the world, but necessary and beautiful. What's become clear to us in these, these years of

00:48:42.800 development, which we're sort of at the end of as we now are launching our first programs and

00:48:49.260 first degree, is that Ralston College has a double vocation, both on the one hand to be a reinvention

00:48:56.880 of the academy, a place for in-person degrees, a new model for the university that can, we hope, be

00:49:06.560 pretty radically disruptive, not just because we're going to change everything, but we hope that it will

00:49:11.500 lead to many other people doing new and different and more beautiful and more adequate and perhaps

00:49:16.300 cheaper and faster, but above all, just more important and higher value things in the space

00:49:21.380 of higher education. So on the one hand, to be a reinvention of the academy, a reinvention and a

00:49:27.320 revival of the academy. And on that side, we've received our degree granting powers from the state

00:49:33.640 of Georgia. We expect to launch our first degree this autumn. In what? In what? This first degree will

00:49:39.940 be a master's in the humanities. So it will be a pretty intensive boot camp in thinking about the

00:49:45.820 big ideas, tracing them and their development through history, which we think is important,

00:49:51.080 both as a revival of those forms of life and thought and culture, but also because we think they are the,

00:49:57.920 as it were, the key to opening up the depths of the self for the students themselves. You know,

00:50:05.980 it's not that every human, if I can't play the piano, it's not that every, you talked about

00:50:11.220 resentment earlier, you know, it's not that every human being should have to play the piano like

00:50:16.200 Martha Argerich or Glenn Gould from your current town of Toronto. 99.999% of human individuals

00:50:25.900 couldn't play the piano that way. But because Glenn Gould could and did, we can all hear the music.

00:50:32.120 And in some level, I think what the high end of the academy is about is about playing the music so we

00:50:42.420 can all hear it. And so on the one hand, it's the reinvention of the academy in a degree form. But on

00:50:52.520 the other hand, the second side of this double vocation is to be a kind of platform of humanistic

00:50:58.100 inquiry for anyone, anywhere, who wishes to engage with the riches of the humanistic tradition,

00:51:05.060 who wishes to seek the truth with courage, who wishes to ask the fundamental human questions

00:51:11.780 that every human being must face about truth and beauty and forgiveness and love and suffering.

00:51:19.920 To me, the universities are a key element in the conversation across the generations about

00:51:27.600 just exactly what a human being is. And that's something that, it's not some abstract philosophical,

00:51:33.920 it's not merely some abstract philosophical concern. It's the central issue that determines

00:51:41.040 how you make all the decisions in your life.

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - August 02, 2021

185. The End of Universities？｜ Jordan B. Peterson Podcast

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