The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 248. The Adventures of Pinnochio and Free Speech Part 2⧸4

00:00:00.000 At Wealthsimple, we're built for whatever you're building.

00:00:03.900 Built for Jane, who wants to break into the housing market.

00:00:07.760 We're built for Ted, who's obsessed with what's happening in the global markets.

00:00:12.120 And built for Celine, who just wants to retire and explore the world's flea markets. 0.96

00:00:17.340 So take a moment and think about what you're building for.

00:00:20.880 We've got the financial tools to help make it happen.

00:00:24.180 Wealthsimple, built for possibilities.

00:00:27.080 Visit wealthsimple.com slash possibilities.

00:00:31.000 Hey everyone, real quick before you skip, I want to talk to you about something serious and important.

00:00:36.600 Dr. Jordan Peterson has created a new series that could be a lifeline for those battling depression and anxiety.

00:00:42.860 We know how isolating and overwhelming these conditions can be,

00:00:46.240 and we wanted to take a moment to reach out to those listening who may be struggling.

00:00:50.220 With decades of experience helping patients,

00:00:52.740 Dr. Peterson offers a unique understanding of why you might be feeling this way in his new series.

00:00:57.540 He provides a roadmap towards healing.

00:01:00.000 Showing that while the journey isn't easy, it's absolutely possible to find your way forward.

00:01:05.540 If you're suffering, please know you are not alone.

00:01:08.640 There's hope, and there's a path to feeling better.

00:01:11.920 Go to Daily Wire Plus now, and start watching Dr. Jordan B. Peterson on depression and anxiety.

00:01:17.600 Let this be the first step towards the brighter future you deserve.

00:01:21.160 Okay, so now you can imagine what's happened is he was on Pleasure Island and everything went to hell, fundamentally.

00:01:30.280 And so he jumped into the water to escape from that, and that's equivalent to plunging into chaos.

00:01:35.580 And so chaos was an escape from pathological tyranny.

00:01:40.260 And now he's tried to go home.

00:01:41.640 So this is the psyche, in its search for maturation, runs into an obstacle, which is the tyrannical element of the Great Father that it cannot cope with, and it trots home, runs home.

00:01:53.660 It's a defeat.

00:01:54.200 A typical part of a hero's story is the initial defeat of the hero when he encounters, usually, either the terrible Great Father or the terrible Great Mother.

00:02:05.400 And so this is a retrogressive, Jung would call this retrogressive restoration of the persona.

00:02:11.820 So it's sort of like, maybe you're a well-adapted adolescent, and you live at home, and you're a happy adolescent, and everything's good at home.

00:02:18.860 And then you go out to try to be an adult, and you fail.

00:02:21.180 And then when you come back home, you try to act like a happy adolescent again.

00:02:24.560 But you're not.

00:02:25.620 What you are, in fact, is an unhappy adult.

00:02:28.000 And if you move back to the happy adolescent mode of being, then it's false and pathological.

00:02:35.300 You can't go home again, another typical motif in literature.

00:02:38.960 Now, the cricket, I can't tell you everything about this story.

00:02:44.460 I can tell you a couple of strange things about it.

00:02:46.540 One is that the cricket is Jiminy Cricket, right?

00:02:48.760 And the initials of Jiminy Cricket are JC.

00:02:51.340 And Jiminy Cricket was a common Southern American mild form of cursing.

00:03:00.260 It's the equivalent of Jesus Christ.

00:03:02.620 And so you might think, and of course, the cricket is Pinocchio's conscience.

00:03:06.620 And, well, so then you might ask yourself, why in the world would a pejorative, mildly pejorative term for Jesus Christ be applied to a cricket who's guiding a puppet into the water to rescue his father from a whale?

00:03:23.360 Why would any of that happen?

00:03:25.420 And the answer to that is, you know why, but you can't say why.

00:03:28.940 You can't say why you know, or what it is that you know.

00:03:33.600 But the mere fact that it makes sense, and it does, is an indication from a Jungian perspective that you're operating at an archetypal level.

00:03:41.220 You understand this.

00:03:43.000 And so I could say, here's an example of why the cricket is a bug.

00:03:46.860 Well, things bug you, right?

00:03:48.760 We say that.

00:03:49.620 Things bug me.

00:03:50.500 Well, you should do something about the things that bug you, because that's your conscience calling to you.

00:03:59.020 It's destiny, in some sense, manifesting itself as an unconscious impulse.

00:04:03.800 That really bugs me.

00:04:05.220 Means, if you can, you should do something about it.

00:04:08.580 Because you think about it, man.

00:04:09.840 There's a lot of things out there that might bug you, but lots of them don't.

00:04:13.740 But some of them do.

00:04:15.400 Well, why do those bug you?

00:04:17.200 And not the other things?

00:04:18.260 Well, that's a complicated question.

00:04:22.000 But one potential answer to it is that there's part of your psyche that's oriented towards further development.

00:04:28.180 Jung would call that the self.

00:04:29.940 And that's like the totality of everything that you could be.

00:04:33.340 And it's a strange sort of entity, in some sense, because it's partly potential, and it's potential that expands across time.

00:04:41.480 But the way that your potential totality calls to you in the present is by placing things in front of you that are your problem.

00:04:50.680 So then if you pick up the task of fixing the things that bothers you, then you find the pathway to further expansion of your personality.

00:05:07.960 So, and that's what's happening with Pinocchio.

00:05:11.460 Now, one of the things that's really interesting about the Pinocchio movie, and that makes it incredibly sophisticated, is that despite the fact that the cricket is an avatar of Christ, so to speak, the cricket has things to learn just like Pinocchio.

00:05:23.980 And so that's very cool, because it's so cool, it's so sophisticated, because it means that you do have a conscience that guides you, but until you establish a dialogue with it, both you and the conscience are immature.

00:05:37.320 You have to establish a conscious dialogue with it, and then interact together in a manner that propels your development across time.

00:05:44.160 And that'll stop you from being a marionette of forces that would make you a braying donkey who does nothing but slave away in salt mines. 0.98

00:05:51.440 So, okay, so Pinocchio goes home, that doesn't work, and that's where we're going to start here.

00:06:00.420 I mean, obviously this is starting to bother you, as you buy into it to begin with, and you're enthusiastic about it to begin with, and you attribute that to, well, the mechanics of the initial education, let's say.

00:06:14.460 It's a group phenomenon, it capitalizes on empathy, and it sounds benevolent, certainly.

00:06:22.580 In fact, it's the very essence of benevolence in some sense.

00:06:28.020 So it's going to be seductive, regardless of whether or not it's correct, but you become uncomfortable with it.

00:06:37.100 Well, the first thing you're uncomfortable with is that you were implicitly asked to produce a falsehood in relationship to your own identity, which was when you were asked the question about what you liked about being white.

00:06:54.320 And you said that what you said wasn't right, exactly, or wasn't correct, wasn't true.

00:07:00.500 It was something that you whipped up on the spot because of the nature of the demand of the situation, and you remember that, so obviously that's significant.

00:07:08.860 I think I was just meeting what I thought was an absurdity with an absurdity.

00:07:14.260 You know, like, I felt the question was a little bit absurd.

00:07:16.980 It's sort of like the premise.

00:07:19.440 Right.

00:07:19.800 The premise is, what do you call it, like, how long have you been beating your wife kind of question?

00:07:24.320 You know, so the premise of whiteness is, you have to accept the premise in order to answer the question. 0.52

00:07:31.940 I really have never been comfortable with the premise, period, because I don't think that it, you know, I understand.

00:07:36.520 Right, and it takes a lot of presence.

00:07:38.080 It takes a lot of presence of mind when you're asked a question, to question the question, especially when you're the student and it's the teacher that's, so to speak, it's the authority figure that's posing the question,

00:07:51.620 because you immediately have to rebel and you have to do it in an extremely sophisticated way.

00:07:58.040 Yeah, and, you know, this could get back to the school and I might not have passed the class and, you know, I'm white, so that would have been problematic.

00:08:04.420 And why are you, why are you, and that would might have had job repercussions or, you know, promotions or whatever.

00:08:10.360 You know, you just, you realize that to question the question.

00:08:13.240 Because this is also mandatory.

00:08:14.700 Yeah.

00:08:14.980 And to question the question in these circumstances is, you know, the risk of that is so much greater than the triumph of dismantling the question that you're just not, you're never going to, and you may even fail at dismantling the question.

00:08:29.520 Like, your little rebellion may lead nowhere and you may be wrong, you know, which is the hesitation that anyone would have with an objection, just that you might be wrong.

00:08:37.860 And so, of course, you're just going to fall on that side of the equation.

00:08:41.140 I mean, that's what I did.

00:08:42.200 Some people don't, but that would, you know, I did that.

00:08:44.600 No, most people do.

00:08:46.040 Yeah.

00:08:46.460 And no wonder.

00:08:47.700 Right, right.

00:08:48.260 It's hard not, like you outlined a bunch of reasons why it's difficult to, you know, come up with exactly the right response at that second.

00:08:55.280 It's not like it's a question you're prepared for.

00:08:58.760 Right, right.

00:08:59.440 And, you know, I think the students do it all the time, you know, because there's tremendous social cost to challenging any of the assumptions of our anti-racist programming or the manner in which it's delivered.

00:09:13.920 And what are the costs for the students?

00:09:18.880 Social, you know, social opprobrium.

00:09:21.240 You could have, you know, teachers write recommendations for them if they get a reputation that there's a fear that it could affect their applications.

00:09:34.840 Students have come to me with, you know, concerns and examples of papers that they wrote, you know, on taking a position that went against the orthodoxy and they've, you know, suffered a grade hit from it.

00:09:50.320 And I've asked them, like, are you sure?

00:09:52.820 It just wasn't a good paper, you know, are you sure?

00:09:55.180 And they're like, no, I actually cited this, this, and this.

00:09:58.420 And I still, you know, and so I think, I think they're real.

00:10:04.320 I think that they're real and there's actually been, you know, stories that I've, that they've brought to me that are, you know, someone defends capitalism or something.

00:10:14.820 And then they have a big talking to after class or something like that, which is just.

00:10:18.180 Well, yes, I mean, how could you possibly defend capitalism while you're going to a $55,000 a year private school?

00:10:26.040 Right, right.

00:10:27.120 I mean, what's the probability that your parents are capitalists?

00:10:31.820 A hundred percent.

00:10:32.560 Very high, very high.

00:10:34.160 So basically you're, you're being, you're being set to task because you have the goal to defend the very attribute of your parents that enabled you to go to the school in the first place.

00:10:45.800 And that, of course, enabled the school.

00:10:47.680 Right. And it's so, it's such an ironic thing that both the administration and most faculty have such contempt for the very thing that makes them have a job.

00:11:00.560 You should be talking about ideas based on what make ideas sound or unsound, not, not the person who's saying them.

00:11:07.020 So I was seeing situations where, you know, white students would make a claim and then that claim was discounted by someone else because of their privilege.

00:11:20.000 Right. But you're making, of course, the white supremacist assumption that there are such things as ideas and that they can be rank or in terms of quality and that the purpose of discursive speech is precisely to do such things and et cetera, et cetera.

00:11:33.500 Yeah. And so the whole solipsistic nature of it, I was like, this is, you can't even have a conversation. This is not, this is not a way to have a functioning, you're not, you're not preparing people to function in a, in a truly vericiated world of ideas. It's not.

00:11:49.880 Well, it's, it's worse in some senses that the claim, fundamental claim is that there's no such thing as a conversation. There's just different discourses of power.

00:11:58.140 There's no conversation. Conversation assumes ideas and the free flow of ideas and the, and a rational individual actor and the capacity for logos and, and the individual as the central unit and, and so on and so forth.

00:12:12.120 People who hold the critical race position, let's say don't, uh, it's not that they avoid confrontational conversations. They don't believe that there's such a thing as a conversation. It's not part of the system. So it's a fundamental dispute.

00:12:30.280 Yeah, no, that's true. I mean, and I, I, and then the little things, like I remember talking to a colleague about a new, about a new hire. And then, and, and she said, um, I said, well, well, what's he like this new guy? And she said, well, he's like you, he's like me. Well, what do you mean by that? And she was like, oh, he's white. 0.75

00:12:51.760 I was like, okay. All right. You know, this is not a person that's a total stranger to me either. And I kind of walked away and like, really? So, okay. And, you know, I also, I also hear the objection to my, to my objection, which is, you know, see how it feels white man. See how it feels to be treated as your race. 0.59

00:13:13.760 That is, that is, it's, it's a, you know, she might've been trying to teach me a lesson in some sense. Like now, you know, how it feels, but that's not, you know, okay. That's, that's a point that you're making, but that's not, that's not a healthy thing. And that's not, that's not good because it doesn't actually.

00:13:37.860 Reduce the sum of misery in the world.

00:13:40.340 Yeah. I mean, yeah.

00:13:43.760 All right. So you're starting to get, feel disquiet and you actually make this known.

00:13:50.700 Yes. And I, I make it known in 2019. I make it known in, in 2020. I talked to the assistant head. I talked to the head of school.

00:14:01.480 You're married.

00:14:02.980 I, I'm recently married. I was, I've been married over a year, just over a year.

00:14:06.760 Do you, do you have any children?

00:14:08.760 No children.

00:14:09.660 No children, but you are married.

00:14:11.340 No, but I'm married.

00:14:11.820 Okay. So I'm just wondering what you have resting on your job.

00:14:14.680 Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And I, I didn't, you know, I'm, I'm, I have to say that, you know,

00:14:20.060 not having kids is, is a, is a huge part of why I feel like this is happening, that I've been able to,

00:14:27.740 to stick my neck out.

00:14:29.560 And, you know, I'm not, not, I don't judge anyone for, for, for balancing their duty to the truth and their duty to their family in whatever way that works for them, because both of them are important.

00:14:46.300 Um, or to put things at risk, you know, that's, that's a personal choice and that's, I can, I can't speak to any of that, but I think it definitely not having mouths to feed and, and, you know, having, having some savings from my previous job and, and things, um, being smart with my money and not spending it, um, unwisely as I have, as I had done.

00:15:13.540 A decade and a half ago, but, um, I think that, that helped me to do what I'm doing.

00:15:22.820 All right. So how are you being treated by the administrative officials to whom you're registering your objection? Are you doing that in writing or are you doing that?

00:15:31.660 In person, you know, mostly in person and, you know, I'm not writing anything official. I'm, I'm in the grumbling in my beard phase, I guess I'm in the griping phase, um, where I would go and I would say,

00:15:43.520 you know, this is wrong. Like why, why can't we teach, you know, a broad range of viewpoints? Why do we always have to teach this ritualistic thing? That's just a litany of.

00:15:51.940 You know, um, basically far left ideas. And, you know, some of, some, some of the administration were very sympathetic, like even overly. So like, I remember talking to, um, the assistant head, he pulled down a copy of Jonathan Haidt off the, off the bookshelf.

00:16:09.280 And was like, I'd love to teach this in my class. You know, I, I really want to make this happen. I want to teach, you know, so, you know, more, more than I was sort of, or maybe just modeling it or humoring me or something.

00:16:20.120 But he had the book.

00:16:21.440 He had the book. That's right.

00:16:22.500 And he knew the book and he knew where it was on his shelf.

00:16:25.220 I know. I know. So like, but, you know, then in public, you know, or in, in public, in the, in front of the community, you know, not saying nothing about it. Right. So I think there was a tremendous amount of preference falsification still going on there.

00:16:38.740 You know, well, you, you outlined why. I mean, you lost your job.

00:16:44.480 Yeah. So, you know, these are high stakes games and you make a mistake and, and a mistake. You, you veer outside the, the realm of acceptable behavior, let's say. And what happens? Well, you get disproportionately punished for it.

00:17:02.720 And there's a moral element to it too, which is, well, there's no bloody way someone like you should be teaching. So not only did we fire you, but we're right to do so.

00:17:12.880 Yeah. So, and, you know, that's very hard thing to withstand, which is something I also want to talk to you about. I mean, you know, confident though you may be, or anyone may be, when your institution sheds you and surrounds that with accusations about the nature of your character,

00:17:31.680 if you're not a complete psychopath, it tends to strike you to your heart because there's always the possibility that you're wrong.

00:17:41.080 Right. Right. But I, I really, I really knew I wasn't because, you know, coming out, there was this meeting and I referred to it in the article or my essay, the self-care through an anti-bias lens meeting,

00:17:54.220 which is what kicked off the whole past two months for me. It was a, it was a meeting where students were ostensibly going to learn how to take care of themselves during the pandemic,

00:18:08.200 how to manage their emotions, how to take deep breaths and cope with things.

00:18:17.300 And in that meeting, you know, after some, some mind relaxing exercises like meditation and, and stuff, they put up the white supremacy, you know, aspects of white supremacy culture slide.

00:18:30.340 Right. And that's different than the pyramid or this is different than the pyramid and this is, you know, this is elements of white supremacy.

00:18:37.440 Right. Right. It's actually, um, you know, they, there's different forms of it, but essentially, you know, it's, it's fairly common in this, in this thing, as you know, and, um, uh,

00:18:51.340 Yes. So here's some professional and transactional relationships versus relationships based on trust, care, and shared commitments, protecting power versus sharing power, culture of overworking versus culture of self-care and community care,

00:19:10.440 competition and struggle for limited resources versus collaboration and working to share resources. That's all white dominant culture. 0.96

00:19:18.400 So. Yes. Yes. Yes. And so some of the things that were on this particular slide were objectivity, individualism, um, either, or thinking.

00:19:30.940 Right. Right. And, uh, I know that one.

00:19:34.480 There was, um, you know, the, the thing that rankled me the most was right to comfort.

00:19:39.940 Because, you know, how, how are you giving a self-care workshop where the 200 kids that are in there in this racially segregated workshop are challenged that they might not, you know, that having, imagining that you have a right to comfort is associated with a, you know, genocidal evil.

00:20:02.040 So, Kenneth Jones and Tima Okun, dismantling racism workbook, 2001. God only knows what that is, but it's everywhere.

00:20:09.960 The characteristics of white supremacy culture, perfectionism, which is an element of conscientiousness, which is a fundamental trait, sense of urgency, defensiveness, quantity over quality, worship of the written word, paternalism, either or thinking.

00:20:25.160 Notice this is all written in words, by the way, power hoarding, fear of open conflict, um, individualism, which seems to be run somewhat counter to the fear of open conflict.

00:20:37.080 Progress is bigger and more objectivity, right to comfort.

00:20:41.660 Yeah. It's, uh, it's quite the grab bag of conceptually unrelated items.

00:20:46.720 It's, it's incoherent at every possible level of analysis, as well as being, it's, it's impossible to parody.

00:20:56.180 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I, I saw it and I, you know, I had been thinking for a couple months prior to this because there had been some meetings that really upset me.

00:21:06.040 And I was thinking, well, and my head of school had actually said that if I was in an appropriate forum, I should feel free to ask questions.

00:21:15.180 By this point in the meeting, I think maybe 30 minutes in before this popped up, other faculty had been saying things in the chat area of the zoom meeting.

00:21:25.160 So, you know,

00:21:25.520 Is that anonymous? Is that anonymous in the zoom?

00:21:28.180 No, it's, it's, it's,

00:21:29.440 Oh, so they were under their own names.

00:21:31.760 Yeah. Under their own names. Yeah. Um, and so I thought, well, why,

00:21:36.040 you know, when the, when the facilitator had mentioned that, well, if you looked at this slide, I think she said, I think she said, you know, you might have some white feelings.

00:21:48.040 Um, and I said, I just kind of blurted out. I didn't, I didn't blurt it out angrily. I didn't blurt it out. I don't think I was too upset. Of course, you know, I, I don't know how it was perceived of course, but

00:22:01.060 I said, well, what do you mean? But what is a white feeling? What is a white feeling?

00:22:06.040 And I, you know, what came back was, I think she said something that defensiveness was a white feeling. I said, well, these feelings can belong to people of any race. And, you know, I think that it's, 0.51

00:22:16.360 I don't know whether it's, I don't understand why it's being attributed to a particular, the white people.

00:22:25.660 Um, and, you know, I had that kind of opened the gates a little bit and kind of broke the ice, I think, because in the chat, other kids started to ask questions. There was a debate about whether I should be allowed to ask the question.

00:22:40.860 Um, there were some other, the white feeling question. Um, there were also some, there was a lot of capitalism bashing in the chat.

00:22:51.140 And I said, you know, I believe capitalism is anti-racist since it's done more to, to lift people of all races out of poverty, um, than any, any alternative.

00:23:01.720 Um, and, you know, I, I wasn't monopolizing the chat. I was dropping in little things and there was a lot of activity in the chat.

00:23:11.300 And then, um, the, the, the facilitator actually went with me and she, she explained stuff, you know, her perspective on it.

00:23:20.260 And I thanked her and, you know, we've, she moved on some more and, um, I think I, I asked another question, but I really, as, as she said later in a meeting about the meeting in front of the whole faculty, she felt that I, you know, I was asking out of curiosity.

00:23:35.720 It didn't, I wasn't, you know, on a rant or saying it to, to be antagonistic.

00:23:41.720 I think some of the, some of my faculty members felt that I was, but the facilitator herself didn't feel that way.

00:23:48.280 So, and she was the one I was talking to. So I think that definitely counts.

00:23:51.540 No, that's quite remarkable. I would say, because it's very difficult in a group like that, when you know, the implicit ethos to be able to say something that's questioning without having anger build up as a motivation, right?

00:24:06.480 Because you need something to break through your resistance. Yeah. So to be able to say it without upsetting the, the, uh, the facilitator.

00:24:14.680 Yeah. I mean, I was passionate, but I wasn't, I don't think I was like enraged or anything like that. Um, it's, you know, I was trying to modulate what I was really upset.

00:24:22.600 I was, was the either or thing because I was like, well, if either or thinking is a, is a characteristic of white supremacy, well, then Ibram Kendi has got to be the whitest person in public life.

00:24:32.700 Cause his entire philosophy is so Manichaean. I mean, anyway, but I didn't say that of course, cause that would have been inflammatory, but, um.

00:24:44.480 Going online without express VPN is like not paying attention to the safety demonstration on a flight. Most of the time you'll probably be fine.

00:24:52.060 But what if one day that weird yellow mask drops down from overhead and you have no idea what to do in our hyper-connected world, your digital privacy.

00:25:00.180 Isn't just a luxury. It's a fundamental, right?

00:25:02.720 Every time you connect to an unsecured network in a cafe hotel or airport, you're essentially broadcasting your personal information to anyone with a technical know-how to intercept it.

00:25:12.200 And let's be clear. It doesn't take a genius hacker to do this with some off the shelf hardware.

00:25:16.960 Even a tech savvy teenager could potentially access your passwords, bank logins, and credit card details.

00:25:22.860 Now you might think, what's the big deal? Who want my data anyway?

00:25:26.160 Well, on the dark web, your personal information could fetch up to $1,000.

00:25:31.060 That's right, there's a whole underground economy built on stolen identities.

00:25:35.120 Enter ExpressVPN. It's like a digital fortress, creating an encrypted tunnel between your device and the internet.

00:25:41.560 Their encryption is so robust that it would take a hacker with a supercomputer over a billion years to crack it.

00:25:47.200 But don't let its power fool you. ExpressVPN is incredibly user-friendly.

00:25:51.000 With just one click, you're protected across all your devices. Phones, laptops, tablets, you name it.

00:25:56.580 That's why I use ExpressVPN whenever I'm traveling or working from a coffee shop.

00:26:00.700 It gives me peace of mind knowing that my research, communications, and personal data are shielded from prying eyes.

00:26:06.700 Secure your online data today by visiting expressvpn.com slash jordan.

00:26:11.460 That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N dot com slash jordan, and you can get an extra three months free.

00:26:17.880 ExpressVPN.com slash jordan.

00:26:21.000 Starting a business can be tough, but thanks to Shopify, running your online storefront is easier than ever.

00:26:29.520 Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business.

00:26:33.640 From the launch your online shop stage all the way to the did we just hit a million orders stage, Shopify is here to help you grow.

00:26:40.940 Our marketing team uses Shopify every day to sell our merchandise, and we love how easy it is to add more items, ship products, and track conversions.

00:26:48.140 With Shopify, customize your online store to your style with flexible templates and powerful tools, alongside an endless list of integrations and third-party apps like on-demand printing, accounting, and chatbots.

00:27:00.380 Shopify helps you turn browsers into buyers with the internet's best converting checkout, up to 36% better compared to other leading e-commerce platforms.

00:27:08.220 No matter how big you want to grow, Shopify gives you everything you need to take control and take your business to the next level.

00:27:15.160 Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash jbp, all lowercase.

00:27:21.120 Go to shopify.com slash jbp now to grow your business no matter what stage you're in.

00:27:26.120 That's shopify.com slash jbp.

00:27:31.860 What I really wanted to do, I've been thinking about an opportunity because I wanted to model for the students that you could ask questions that someone who was a teacher or someone who was an authority figure could ask a question and it was okay.

00:27:44.460 And how did the students react to your questions?

00:27:48.700 It was phenomenal.

00:27:49.980 I mean, I was really gratified in that they confirmed that I was doing the right thing because things came out in the chat.

00:27:58.260 They started to ask a broader range of questions.

00:28:01.120 I received the transcript later.

00:28:03.360 And, you know, it was like night and day.

00:28:05.940 Kids were asking questions like, well, I don't feel like I'm ignorant just because I'm white.

00:28:09.640 Or, you know, I don't like to be reduced to my race.

00:28:12.180 And then faculty joined in.

00:28:13.340 So several faculty members also started to ask questions.

00:28:18.120 You know, and I don't think the point was that people even necessarily wanted their questions answered in the forum.

00:28:24.680 They just wanted to ask them.

00:28:26.980 I got, you know.

00:28:27.460 Sometimes you don't know what your question is until you ask.

00:28:30.240 Exactly.

00:28:30.640 Like this, that's why I think intent is so, it's kind of a silly thing because you never really, it's only an ex post facto.

00:28:40.080 Explanation.

00:28:40.960 If you're called on it, I think like a true question, there may be no intent.

00:28:45.020 Like it just bubbles out of you.

00:28:46.700 If you're, if you're truly in a, in a conversation, I'm not thinking about.

00:28:51.320 Okay.

00:28:51.680 I'm not, it's not like I'm plucking this little thing out of the inside of my head and like, well, I intend this to be, you know, that's not communication.

00:28:58.620 That's.

00:28:58.840 Not if it's a genuine conversation.

00:29:00.960 No.

00:29:01.340 You don't have time for that in a genuine conversation.

00:29:03.660 No.

00:29:03.960 Yeah, of course not.

00:29:04.820 And so, you know, but.

00:29:06.900 I was really gratified.

00:29:08.240 I was on a natural high from the experience.

00:29:12.300 Why?

00:29:13.340 Well, because I felt that I had, you know, I had done something good.

00:29:18.200 Like it was just self-evidently good to me.

00:29:20.500 Like it just, when I reflected on it, this is a positive thing.

00:29:24.520 Now there were one of the, my colleagues got very upset with me, with my influence on this.

00:29:29.840 And, um, because at one point I did say, you know, why, you know, I don't identify as white.

00:29:37.980 Must I internalize society's delusions about me?

00:29:42.820 Um, which is, you know, like, it's kind of like the neutron bomb to this entire belief system.

00:29:50.560 But I, I was on a, I was on a, you know, I felt like it was something that I wanted to put out there so that kids could see it and, you know, understand, you know, that maybe this is a point of view, you know?

00:30:01.060 I'm not saying I'm right.

00:30:02.720 I'm at, I'm asking a question.

00:30:04.960 Um, and, you know, the, the feeling was that this was, you know, anti-racism 101.

00:30:10.180 But also offers them some defense.

00:30:12.600 Yeah.

00:30:13.220 Like I could, I was just.

00:30:14.240 That they're not morally obligated to accept these characterizations.

00:30:17.620 Right.

00:30:18.080 Which is kind of the whole point of anti-racism is that you're not obligated to accept arbitrary racial categories that are unrelated to the task at hand.

00:30:28.100 Yeah.

00:30:29.000 Well, it should be.

00:30:29.740 Um, but, uh, you know, then a colleague got, got upset with me and said, kind of got on his high horse and said, uh, you know, I can't believe that I may be mis, you know, paraphrasing here.

00:30:44.120 And if I am sorry, but he said, I believe, you know, I can't believe that a member of our, you know, one of my colleagues doesn't understand that we are white, that we are white since birth.

00:30:53.980 I am white since birth, that this has carries with it implicit biases that are unavoidable.

00:30:59.180 And we must affirm that, you know, and, and that's who, that's who we are.

00:31:03.340 And that's who I am. 0.99

00:31:03.840 And I just, it kind of interrupted him because I felt like he was kind of making me look, I don't know, he's being kind of, kind of a jerk. 0.96

00:31:11.720 So I interrupted him and said, um, you know, I'm sorry, you're stereotyping yourself. 0.97

00:31:16.320 I think it's sad.

00:31:17.060 Um, uh, and, you know, that kind of was a very awkward moment because it was in front of students and he said, you know, he expressed his dismay, um, and I remained silent.

00:31:32.000 And then after the meeting, I said, you know, I apologized to him.

00:31:34.900 I said, you know, that was unprofessional.

00:31:37.840 Was it?

00:31:38.440 Well, you know, I, I understood, I felt it.

00:31:41.560 I felt that there might've been a better way that I could do it, maybe wait till he finished and then ask, you know, to respond.

00:31:48.700 I, I, I'm, I'm also suspicious of my own, you know, because I am, I, I have been somewhat oppositional.

00:31:56.480 I'm not exactly like a Mr. Go long and get along guy with this stuff that I don't always have the best reality check on my own behavior.

00:32:04.320 And so I, you know, I, I, I was just saying, well, okay, if I, if I did cause offense, then, you know, I, I feel like it's okay to apologize.

00:32:14.740 And there probably was a better way for me to do this.

00:32:17.040 And so I did apologize and, you know, thought about it, you know, nothing against that, nothing wrong with that.

00:32:23.040 And then he accepted.

00:32:25.540 And, um, you know, I figured that was, that was it.

00:32:27.820 And there was a lot of processing after the meeting, I think that went on for hours afterwards.

00:32:32.720 My phone died.

00:32:33.940 It was on my phone.

00:32:34.700 And so when I went home, um, you know, I logged back into the meeting and people were still there talking.

00:32:40.100 So I talked to them, but I, I underestimated the effect of this because apparently, um, some of my, some of my comments, you know, were leaked or made or transmitted to other people that weren't in the meetings, people that were in the, the BIPOC meeting, you know, particularly my, my BIPOC is a black and indigenous people of color.

00:33:02.240 So they were having their separate meeting of faculty and students where they received different content.

00:33:08.480 And why was it separate?

00:33:10.320 Just out of curiosity?

00:33:11.660 The rationale as I could, as I can understand it is so that the groups that have been marginalized won't be exposed to, you know, they'll have their own thing so that they're not exposed to the, I think the insensitive, possible insensitivity of the, uh, oppressors.

00:33:32.740 It's, it's, it's the best I can understand the rationale.

00:33:36.740 Um, but it wound up happening anyway, because it, I suppose it would be rude of me to point out that that's somewhat paternalistic, you know, just as, you know, observation.

00:33:47.880 That's a good one.

00:33:48.920 Um, yeah, I mean, yeah, totally.

00:33:51.840 Well, I guess that is a characteristic of white supremacy culture though.

00:33:55.420 Paternalism.

00:33:55.860 Um, yeah, so I, and there, I guess it's quite accurate.

00:33:59.740 Well, as long as it's in a good cause, then I guess it's forgivable.

00:34:03.120 Yeah.

00:34:03.760 Okay.

00:34:04.120 So that was how long ago, that meeting?

00:34:06.420 That was February 24th.

00:34:09.080 Oh, yes.

00:34:09.580 Okay.

00:34:09.860 So things are starting to snowball.

00:34:11.540 Yeah, this year.

00:34:12.920 And that was referred to after the fact as the events of Wednesday, like they couldn't even really, it was sort of like 9-11.

00:34:20.700 They couldn't actually, they had to come up with a euphemism for it, I guess.

00:34:24.180 Um, so the events of Wednesday, and so they had meetings about the events.

00:34:29.340 And who's they?

00:34:30.540 Well, the office of community engagement, coupled with the Dean of Student Life.

00:34:34.080 And there, there, there are Dean level positions that exerted a lot of effort and energy because I did not make their lives easy, um, to, to address the things that were said and raised in the meeting, not just by me, but by, you know, lots of different people and students, students, you know, spoke up as well and faculty.

00:34:59.340 And so, um, what I found it so interesting because the day after the meeting, there was an email that was released that said healing resources, you know, healing resources that will help you come to terms with what happened.

00:35:17.040 And the first healing resource on the list was a CNN interview with a poet named Damon Young, um, and, um, Damon Young, uh, you know, in this interview said things like, you know, we, we need to get rid of all of capitalism.

00:35:39.840 Um, we will have to do a carpet bombing, not a carpet cleansing of society.

00:35:45.380 And it was incredibly radical statements that were, I would imagine would be frightening to, to many people.

00:35:53.160 And that was listed as a healing resource as well as long as the carpet bombing only targets the malevolent people.

00:35:59.660 Well, yeah, I guess, and then things, there was a Robin DiAngelo article that said, you know, what white people need to be made or kept uncomfortable.

00:36:09.280 Um, how can we become more uncomfortable?

00:36:12.520 Um, also, you know, really kind of, I would just say racist characterizations of white people in these links, um, things like, you know, all white people have never had to be guests in this country.

00:36:26.060 And, uh, like the Irish, for example, they weren't really white to begin with though.

00:36:33.180 So, yeah, yeah.

00:36:35.260 Um, and so I found this very ironic and then I had a series, I had two meetings.

00:36:40.780 I had a meeting with my head of high school and the assistant head, and I had a meeting with the head of the whole school.

00:36:47.980 And then, you know, I, the head of the meeting with the head of high school.

00:36:54.880 They called you in at that point?

00:36:56.740 Yeah.

00:36:57.080 I mean, they.

00:36:57.460 So what's happening around you?

00:36:58.740 Is this growing?

00:36:59.800 This is this.

00:37:00.300 Well, yeah, there's a lot of, there's a lot of agitation.

00:37:02.900 There's meetings about meetings.

00:37:04.220 There's student diversity council meetings.

00:37:07.260 Um, there are, um, there's just a lot of agitation in the community, I would say.

00:37:13.840 Uh, and, and meetings about meetings.

00:37:17.280 So some of the things that would happen would be in the week, in the end, as the week continued, there was a faculty meeting about it.

00:37:25.160 Um, I had some advisory circles, circle practice was taken away because they felt that it would be, the students would be upset if I was a part of it.

00:37:36.420 So the dean has to run my advisory circle is what, um, well, it was, it's a, it's a practice that we've started this year where, um, activities, um, where you, you put up a slide and you talk about an issue and then everyone has to go around and speak one by one about a question.

00:37:56.760 And then you kind of do it around twice.

00:37:58.520 Um, and then, you know, this is to sort of manage discussion.

00:38:03.200 Um, and I've done a couple of these.

00:38:05.560 So you're not, you're persona non grata at this now because of your toxic influence on the students?

00:38:10.960 Right, right.

00:38:11.880 And so, you know, I got a, I got an email saying, you know, under current circumstances following yesterday's meeting and your role and what transpired, you, you know, I've asked you to recuse yourself.

00:38:21.100 Um, then, you know, there were subsequent meetings, there was a faculty meeting, uh, I think at that faculty meeting, uh, a colleague said, well, this is, this could be terrible.

00:38:34.500 This could undo everything we've ever taught them, which I thought to myself, please, please, I hope so.

00:38:42.600 Um, but, uh, the, uh, and there was, how are you, how are you reacting to all this?

00:38:50.480 Well, I'm on a natural high.

00:38:52.180 I mean, I, I know that I feel like this is something that I've finally done to, to open up something like some daylight.

00:39:03.000 And I, all of this churn is going on around me, but I'm going about my day and I'm teaching my classes.

00:39:09.860 Uh, I am, you know, I, I did feel the need to address my classes.

00:39:16.700 So I said at the beginning, you know, I am an anti-racist, um, you know, I want you to feel safe.

00:39:23.160 And then I would just sort of teach the class.

00:39:25.060 And then I was told not to address it with the class, with anyone in the classes.

00:39:29.260 With regard to teachers and students in private and public institutions, high schools, junior highs, elementary schools in your state and across your country.

00:39:41.480 What, what do you see this, if anything, what does this indicate?

00:39:46.400 Well, I have hopes, you know, I, I feel that if, if students can, if I, if, if the type of, you know, willingness to ask a question it in response to some of these, you know, what I consider to be indoctrination, frankly.

00:40:07.140 At other schools.

00:40:08.700 And you think that's happening at other schools?

00:40:11.160 Yeah.

00:40:11.460 I mean, I, it's no question because of the calls that I've received and the conversations I've had with people all over Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey.

00:40:21.560 You know, their, their parents are very concerned with their children.

00:40:24.260 They've seen it because of the pandemic through their, through the zoom, zoom classes.

00:40:29.260 They've witnessed what's being taught to their kids and they're very, very concerned and they have specific receipts to back it up.

00:40:38.480 And, you know, they're sending me curriculum.

00:40:43.080 So, you know, I, I have, this is not simply a, a, a rarefied independent school problem.

00:40:51.560 This is happening at, you know, school boards and districts all over the country.

00:40:55.560 Um, a lot of it spurred by the, you know, the George Floyd, it's killing and the reaction to it.

00:41:04.440 Um, I believe it was taken as an opportunity to, you know, redress, um, that with a misguided.

00:41:14.180 Yeah.

00:41:14.680 An opportunity for what it's like, I'm trying to figure out, I keep trying to figure out, cause I've been concerned about this for long time.

00:41:21.580 Um, and, uh, I still can't get to the bottom of it.

00:41:26.160 It's like, I don't understand exactly.

00:41:28.720 I know there's a resentment element to it, but I can't understand exactly what's driving this and, and why it's, despite the fact that it's clearly the view of a very small minority of people, perhaps 5%.

00:41:41.240 That's what the survey seemed to indicate.

00:41:43.160 I cannot understand why it's making the headway that it's making at the rate that it's making and what it's really aiming at.

00:41:52.740 What do you think about that?

00:41:54.980 Like, what's your sense?

00:41:56.420 Cause obviously it's bothering you.

00:41:59.080 Yeah.

00:41:59.760 I think I have a sense why, and maybe it's a theory.

00:42:03.700 It's not just my theory, but it's, I've seen it in other places or hinted at in other places.

00:42:08.340 I think when you sort of, you know, over the past few decades, you have a gradual sort of leeching from the soil of society of sort of a moral sense, a moral tradition, moral grounding in, you know, long, long religious traditions, essentially.

00:42:29.680 When they depart from the public sphere, it leaves a kind of vacuum.

00:42:32.760 And, you know, wokeness is, is a way to sort of, sort of paint by numbers, moral righteousness, and it gives people the sense that they're good people.

00:42:43.900 I think people have an almost, you know, I don't know whether it's evolutionarily based, but they have a need to have a moral character and sense of themselves.

00:42:52.400 And if, and if something comes along, which is going to offer that and give you that thing, well, then there's a, there's a tremendous hunger for it.

00:43:02.300 So people will adopt it quickly.

00:43:03.800 And so you can have, you know, a very small percentage of the population that's pushing it can have a real powerful outsized influence.

00:43:12.200 Do you, do you have a traditional religious belief of any sort?

00:43:15.260 And are you a practicing religious person?

00:43:17.300 I am, I am, it's a really good question.

00:43:22.900 I am, I was raised Catholic and I, you know, was, I've lapsed, you know, I have a joke that I, I use sometimes, you know, I'm so lapsed, I'm prolapsed.

00:43:33.900 But, but, uh, basically, uh, I, I, I, you know, was a functioning agnostic, then atheist, uh, and, um, but I, I don't feel like I really need a lot of God, but I do need to have something, which is like a conscience.

00:43:54.240 Like, I guess I believe in a conscience, I believe in some little mirror of the divine, which sort of is, is in me.

00:44:02.300 It's not like above me or around me, but it is within me.

00:44:05.420 And so it's sort of like a reflective thing that I can, and it's sort of reactivated, I guess, and as part of this whole experience.

00:44:13.600 So I can, I can take in the world and the world of reality, but I can reflect it against something, which is not of this world.

00:44:22.340 I don't know how else to describe it.

00:44:23.900 And then.

00:44:24.600 That's pretty good.

00:44:25.680 What comes back.

00:44:26.720 I'm, I'm satisfied with that answer.

00:44:29.300 You know, like what comes back is something that I should attend to.

00:44:32.620 It's something that is, it is, it is something important.

00:44:35.540 And that is the, you know, and, and now that I feel like I have that or own awareness of that, you know, it's just like, you know, ah, you know, okay.

00:44:47.400 Like I've got, it's been there.

00:44:49.740 Exactly.

00:44:50.240 Thank God.

00:44:50.820 I want to say thank God, but I don't, I don't, I don't know.

00:44:53.820 I don't know that there's a God with a capital G.

00:44:57.420 I just know that there's something which is, which is not of this world, but is in this world.

00:45:03.280 Well, my point, my principal argument in the book is that absolute freedom of speech is always going to be better.

00:45:11.780 And in fact, by promoting free speech, you're doing something to help those very people that you are concerned about.

00:45:18.820 So recently the Scottish parliament passed a hate crime law that has its supporters and also its detractors.

00:45:29.520 And I'd be interested in your feeling about that.

00:45:33.480 Now, you said, I believe in this book, if I remember the statistics correctly, that there have been 120,000 incidents of police investigated speech hate crime in Britain in how long?

00:45:48.540 Since that's been over the last five years or so?

00:45:51.120 It's worse than that.

00:45:53.140 The statistic I quote is between 2014 and 2019, there are 120,000 recorded incidents of non-crime.

00:46:01.960 They call them non-crime hate incidents.

00:46:03.960 And this is something which is now routine in the UK.

00:46:06.740 I mean, obviously, I'm going to be talking about the UK and the US and Canada is a very different kettle of fish, I'm sure.

00:46:12.460 And I'm sure a lot of the people who are watching won't be familiar with the problems we have in the UK.

00:46:16.600 Of course, we don't have constitutional protection for free speech.

00:46:19.800 We don't have a First Amendment.

00:46:21.280 We don't have anything like that.

00:46:22.840 So we are particularly vulnerable.

00:46:24.840 And at the moment, unfortunately, in the UK, the police who are trained by the College of Policing, who do issue very specific guidelines about this.

00:46:33.700 And anyone can check this because if you go to the government's website on hate crime and hate speech, they make very clear what they're talking about.

00:46:39.920 What they say is that there are five protected characteristics and these fall into race, gender, sexuality, gender identity and disability.

00:46:48.420 I think I might misquote that, but there's one missing.

00:46:50.860 But anyway, there are five protected characteristics.

00:46:52.940 And if a victim and they do use the word victim rather than complainant, if a victim perceives that any speech or crime was motivated by hatred towards any of those five protected characteristics, then it qualifies as a hate crime.

00:47:09.520 If it's criminal, if it's not criminal, if it's just speech or something like that, it qualifies as a non-crime hate incident.

00:47:16.080 Police will investigate that.

00:47:17.440 They will record that.

00:47:19.020 And although non-crime incidents don't lead to prosecution, they do go on a criminal reference check that many people take.

00:47:25.500 We call it a disclosure and barring service here.

00:47:28.220 So it can affect your employment prospects.

00:47:31.040 And is that without a trial?

00:47:32.900 That's recorded without a trial.

00:47:34.900 Of course.

00:47:35.540 There's no trial.

00:47:36.040 So you get a quasi-criminal record.

00:47:38.560 You get something flagged up when you, particularly if you're applying for a teaching job, say something like that, where you're working with children, it's very important.

00:47:44.020 And you get this thing flagged up.

00:47:44.980 So it does have serious ramifications.

00:47:47.420 But even beyond that, we have hate speech laws, which are encoded into the Public Order Act, which is one example.

00:47:54.480 But the other, the main example is the Electronic Communications Act 2003.

00:47:59.100 In this country, and I do quote the statistic in the book as well, we have roughly 3,000 people arrested a year for offensive things that they have said online.

00:48:11.020 So in other words, nine people a day, roughly, the police in the UK are arresting.

00:48:16.140 And people in the UK will be familiar with this, because if you see the Twitter accounts of various police forces, various police departments across the country, they often put things out like, you know, make sure you don't say anything offensive or thoughtless online, or we will be knocking on your door.

00:48:28.200 They say these very kind of frightening things.

00:48:31.680 There was a recent police display outside a supermarket in the UK.

00:48:37.380 It went viral, this image.

00:48:38.740 It was them next to a big digital billboard.

00:48:40.900 And the slogan on the billboard was, being offensive is an offence.

00:48:45.000 And this was flanked by police officers who were socially distanced, but they were there in their masks, which made it seem slightly more sinister.

00:48:53.340 They got in a lot of trouble for that, because people were saying, well, being offensive surely isn't a crime.

00:48:58.620 But actually, the problem with that is that the police clearly thought it was a crime.

00:49:02.420 And they, you know, they were acting on that basis.

00:49:04.440 They'd obviously hadn't just concocted this billboard out of nothing.

00:49:07.260 They'd really considered what it should say.

00:49:09.040 And more to the point, actually, they were right.

00:49:11.800 In this country, you can go to prison for jokes, for offensive remarks.

00:49:18.020 And people have gone to prison, have been arrested routinely for causing offence.

00:49:23.500 And of course, the notion of offence is incredibly subjective.

00:49:27.300 In fact, the legal stipulation in the Communications Act is that you will have broken the law if the judge and jury deem that you have communicated material that is, quote unquote, grossly offensive.

00:49:39.780 Well, I don't know how you define that.

00:49:42.140 I wouldn't know how to define that.

00:49:42.760 And also, who defines it is the real question as far as I'm concerned.

00:49:45.860 I mean, I've looked into this legislation to some degree.

00:49:48.760 And one of the things that struck me about it was that it seems to be purposefully left up to the hypothetical victim to define offence, which has become a subjective reality.

00:50:03.660 And you can understand why that might be to some degree, because how would you define hate and how would you define offence without, especially the latter, without making recourse to someone's subjective experience?

00:50:16.420 But then, of course, well, we'll delve into that in a moment.

00:50:21.180 I should start with the hard question, I suppose, which is, well, clearly people can say hateful things, and those things can be damaging psychologically and physiologically, I suppose, if people are stressed enough and the borderline is very difficult to identify.

00:50:36.760 Why is it that people shouldn't just assume that you're a mean, loudmouth and that they shouldn't pay any attention to you at all because you're concerned about this?

00:50:47.640 I mean, that's the general criticism of critics of hate speech, let's say.

00:50:54.520 And so why in the world aren't the people who are putting this forward just trying to make the world a nicer place?

00:51:01.480 What's the big problem here?

00:51:02.800 Well, I think a lot of people do assume that I'm a mean, loudmouth.

00:51:06.760 I think they assume that about most people who defend freedom of speech.

00:51:11.280 And I'm sure the latter part of your question is absolutely right, insofar as I imagine a lot of the people who are sceptical about free speech are, in fact, trying to make the world a better place.

00:51:20.940 I don't think that's mutually exclusive.

00:51:22.340 I mean, the problem here is that the legislation as it currently stands here means that, for instance, if you say something critical about me and I perceive that it was motivated by hatred towards me on the basis of my sexuality, for instance, I could phone the police.

00:51:37.800 And that would be recorded and would appear on hate crime statistics in this country because it's all about perception.

00:51:44.200 That word is used about five or six times within the one passage in the hate crime legislation, the word perception of the victim.

00:51:50.740 And again, I say victim, not complainant, which suggests a complete disregard for due process.

00:51:55.320 But I suppose we can leave that aside. But the most common, the most common and the most frightening misconception I have found when it comes to people defending free speech is that they are doing so because they want to have the right to say appalling things about people with no comeback whatsoever.

00:52:11.660 And they want to go back to some imaginary good old days, you know, where you could just be casually homophobic and racist and sexist and all the rest of it.

00:52:19.760 And no one would call you out for that.

00:52:21.680 Now, I don't know anyone who falls into that category. And most people who are, you know, advocating for free speech are doing so precisely because they are aware that in countries where free speech protections are meagre, minorities tend to suffer the most.

00:52:35.720 And in fact, there is a it seems to be a corollary to me that those who are genuinely for free speech are also for equal rights and protecting the vulnerable in society.

00:52:45.980 And this perception, which I really find unpleasant, this perception that if you are standing up for this most foundational of principles of freedom of speech, if you're standing up for that, you can only be doing so if you have a nefarious motive.

00:52:58.400 I mean, what a horribly pessimistic view of humanity.

00:53:00.980 Well, it seems to be a direct derivation of the hypothesis, for example, that all Western social organizations, particularly Western, are based on power and are best conceived of as tyrannical.

00:53:21.220 And so if that's your view, why would you not assume that most use of speech is essentially an exercise of power in the service of tyranny?

00:53:32.340 But then why would you assume that the government in control of any particular country isn't part of that tyranny that you're describing?

00:53:39.860 It seems odd to me to be mindful of the potential for tyranny, but then to outsource all your individual liberties to the state.

00:53:48.300 It seems contradictory to me.

00:53:49.520 Well, I guess the way that that is elided over is by allowing the hypothetical individual victim to define the offense.

00:54:01.060 This is the problem, though.

00:54:02.080 I mean, the problem I've run into, and this is partly why I appreciated your book, is that increasingly people are called upon to defend fundamental assumptions that were so taken for granted

00:54:16.040 that virtually no one has an argument that's fully articulated at hand.

00:54:22.220 When no one questions free speech, no one has to defend it thoroughly.

00:54:26.240 As soon as it's questioned, well, it becomes an extraordinarily complicated problem.

00:54:31.100 The same with gender identity.

00:54:33.480 When no one's paying attention to it, it's obvious.

00:54:36.360 But as soon as you have to think it through, it becomes a rat's nest, to say the least.

00:54:41.080 When I was in the UK a few years ago, I saw a number of things that I felt were disturbing.

00:54:49.140 People seem to have accepted the omnipresence of CCTV cameras to a degree that I found horrifying, frankly.

00:54:57.400 I don't like CCTV cameras.

00:54:59.460 I don't like the message they portray, which is that everyone is criminal enough, so they should be surveyed all the time, and someone needs to be watching.

00:55:11.040 I noticed, too, in London in particular, that many buildings had instituted airport-level security,

00:55:19.580 so that you had to pass through a metal detector and have your bags checked, etc., while you were moving in and out of buildings.

00:55:26.560 And it struck me as quite horrifying, given that, as far as I'm concerned, Great Britain and its legal and parliamentary traditions are at the epicenter of Western freedoms.

00:55:39.820 I mean, you could make a case for France, I suppose, but not a strong one, as far as I'm concerned.

00:55:45.540 Yet, your citizens seem to have accepted this with virtually no problem.

00:55:52.360 And now, on the heels of that, we have this multiplication of hate crime.

00:55:59.100 That's as much a surprise to me as it is to you.

00:56:01.980 I mean, you won't have seen all of the CCTV cameras.

00:56:05.280 Apparently, they're absolutely everywhere.

00:56:06.760 You can't walk anywhere in the UK without being potentially monitored.

00:56:12.520 I'm not saying someone's watching you all the time, but things are being recorded and digitized.

00:56:16.120 Yeah, and it's interesting to me, because I remember back in the early 2000s, when the government was trying to push through its ID card scheme.

00:56:24.400 And broadly speaking, the left were unanimously against it.

00:56:27.720 And they didn't like this idea of living in a society where there's someone on the corner saying,

00:56:31.620 papers, please.

00:56:32.420 No one really wanted that.

00:56:33.680 But we've become very docile and very accepting of the idea that we need to be coddled and monitored by the state.

00:56:41.080 I mean, I know there's a recent debate about vaccine passports.

00:56:43.200 And people seem very blasé about this idea that we might have to have our ID embedded and encoded onto a card to get anywhere or to do anything.

00:56:52.420 So I think there's something going on there.

00:56:54.280 And it is connected with what you've brought up in terms of hate crime legislation.

00:56:58.380 We've just become accustomed.

00:56:59.660 I mean, you mentioned specifically the problem in Scotland.

00:57:03.060 And seriously, it relates very closely to what you're saying, because the SNP, who are the only really party with any clout in Scotland, that's the Scottish National Party.

00:57:12.320 And it's never a good idea, is it, when you have one political party which doesn't really have an opposition.

00:57:16.880 They have a reputation for quite nanny state-ish policies.

00:57:20.460 You know, they introduced a, what was it called, the named person scheme.

00:57:24.340 It didn't go through in the end, but they wanted to assign every child born in Scotland with a state guardian.

00:57:30.320 You know, they effectively didn't trust the parents to raise their own kids.

00:57:33.680 They have other examples, you know, minimum pricing on alcohol or a ban on two-for-one pizzas because they don't trust poor people not to gain weight.

00:57:41.040 So all sorts of, these sorts of policies.

00:57:42.860 But in this current hate crime bill, which has just sailed through because there's no opposition, Hamza Youssef, the Justice Secretary, has pushed through, he specifically included an element to this bill which says that they can criminalize you for things you say in the privacy of your own home.

00:57:58.220 I mean, that to me is, I mean, that's just a given.

00:58:00.500 I would have never thought that anyone in this country would not consider that to be an incredible invasion on individual liberty.

00:58:07.440 You can make a strong case for Scotland as the ground zero for many of the, developing many of the concepts that undergird the entire Western notion of freedom.

00:58:19.020 And to see that emerging in Scotland is absolutely stunningly terrifying as far as I'm concerned.

00:58:25.220 You think of Mel Gibson with a face covered in woad shouting freedom as he's executed, you know, in Braveheart. 0.97

00:58:31.200 You do think of Scotland as being associated with it.

00:58:33.380 But honestly, Scotland, for some reason, and I don't know what it is, and it might be to do that it's effectively this one party state, it seems to have this incredible sense.

00:58:42.040 And they've really bought into this idea that unless they can police the thought and speech of their citizens, then they will just run amok.

00:58:51.000 There's another element to that bill.

00:58:52.460 I don't know if you know about this.

00:58:53.360 There's a specific element on the bill which talks about the public performance of a play.

00:58:57.100 So they've effectively said that they will criminalise public performances.

00:59:02.240 So say if it can be deemed that those performances were designed to stir up hatred, that's the formulation, stir up hatred.

00:59:09.300 I'm not quite sure what that means necessarily.

00:59:11.000 But when Hamza Youssef was questioned about this in Parliament, he actually said, well, theoretically, a neo-Nazi or someone from the far right could get together with a group of actors and put on a play to recruit people to his cause.

00:59:23.400 And as I said at the time, you know, I don't know any neo-Nazis, but they're not into amateur dramatics.

00:59:28.100 That's not their thing.

00:59:29.000 They don't do that.

00:59:30.040 They wouldn't get involved.

00:59:30.920 And yet he's got this idea in his head that that is a feasible...

00:59:33.780 I mean, it seems ridiculous, but it's not really because the ramifications are quite serious.

00:59:38.460 And the way it's just gone through without any opposition really, really troubles me.

00:59:43.500 I mean, there have been modifications, I should say, in fairness.

00:59:46.380 In the initial bill, in the initial draft of the bill, they had said that you could be criminalised irrespective of intention.

00:59:52.360 In other words...

00:59:53.560 Yes, that was terrifying.

00:59:55.640 ...awful.

00:59:56.160 I mean, if you wrote a play that then stimulated someone to join the far right, then you were still responsible whether you intended it or not.

01:00:02.760 Now, the problem was, you know, with theatrical representation or any kind of artistic representation is sometimes you want to represent the worst aspects of humanity, because that's part of drama and literature and all the rest of it.

01:00:14.200 I mean, you would be...

01:00:15.380 There would be no artistic freedom if that went through.

01:00:17.260 So fortunately, that element of the bill was modified.

01:00:20.720 Well, and also the attempt to reverse the idea that intent is important, that's even more catastrophic.

01:00:29.780 It's always been a miracle to me that our legal system ever became psychologically sophisticated enough so that intent rather than outcome was what mattered.

01:00:40.480 Because you have to be a sophisticated thinker to see that someone has done damage to someone else, and so the damage is real and marked and troublesome and costly, all of that, painful.

01:00:53.800 But because the intent wasn't there, the severity of the action is dramatically mitigated.

01:01:01.340 That's a sign of maturity and sophistication to note that, and the fact that it's built into the legal system is nothing short of remarkable.

01:01:08.620 And then to remove that and to make the felt consequences the arbiter of the reality of the situation is a dreadful assault on the integrity of the law as such, as far as I can tell.

01:01:22.340 Well, moreover, it's something that everyone intuitively understands.

01:01:26.780 We all understand the difference between murder and manslaughter.

01:01:29.760 You know, we all understand that intent actually does, like you say, escalate the severity of a crime.

01:01:36.140 And it's bigger than that, isn't it?

01:01:38.340 It's because this idea that intention doesn't matter is actually built into so much of this, what we call social justice discourse.

01:01:45.560 If you think of critical race theory, it's just a given that there are racist structures and you can be racist without intending to be racist.

01:01:53.640 And I really do dispute that, because I think in order to be racist, intention has to be at the heart of that.

01:01:58.740 Otherwise, it's incoherent to me.

01:01:59.960 Why were you motivated, you guys, to do No Safe Spaces?

01:02:03.340 And what exactly is it examining?

01:02:07.580 It's examining free speech, which alone, I mean, first of all, everybody involved in it, the directors, the writers, the producers, were fantastic people.

01:02:19.000 People I really admire and adore.

01:02:24.940 And originally, it was with me.

01:02:28.380 And then very early on, they said, would you like to do it with Adam Carolla?

01:02:32.320 And I don't know if your viewers are able to perceive this, but we really do adore each other and respect each other.

01:02:45.700 And so the thought of doing this with Adam was, I was excited, and it turned out that I had every reason to be excited.

01:02:54.820 It's a great chemistry that we have.

01:02:56.920 Just to hear Adam describe how different our backgrounds is, is worth the price of admission, which he does most of the time when we go public.

01:03:06.440 Adam, why don't you give a brief review of how different our backgrounds are?

01:03:10.440 Well, first, our similarities.

01:03:14.600 We're both over six foot, and that's where it ends.

01:03:19.700 Dennis is, you know, a New York, he's an East Coast guy.

01:03:23.460 I grew up in North Hollywood, California.

01:03:25.820 Dennis is a scholar.

01:03:28.380 I was put on academic probation at a junior college.

01:03:32.620 Dennis likes symphonies.

01:03:35.480 I like prog rock.

01:03:36.640 He likes gefilte fish.

01:03:38.280 I like Philly cheesesteaks.

01:03:40.600 Where does it end, Dennis?

01:03:42.740 Well, what about the religious difference?

01:03:46.360 Oh, yes.

01:03:46.920 He's a very religious Jew.

01:03:50.120 I'm essentially atheist slash pagan.

01:03:53.160 Okay, so let me ask you another question.

01:03:55.620 So when I look at political surveys,

01:03:58.260 I see that there's a very limited number of people on the right that you could describe as extremists.

01:04:05.140 And there's a very limited number of people on the left who appear to support the more extremist leftist propositions.

01:04:12.360 And so I do believe that, in some sense, it's more difficult for people on the left to draw distinctions between acceptable leftist ideas than it is for people on the right.

01:04:23.420 I mean, on the right, you draw the line with claims of racial superiority.

01:04:26.720 On the left, there's obviously trouble brewing on the extreme, but defining exactly where it is and drawing a border around it seems to me a relatively complex task.

01:04:37.300 And, well, you asked me why I got in trouble.

01:04:38.920 I mean, I got in trouble because I said, well, I'm not sure where to draw the line, but that particular law compelling speech with its implicit theory of identity, that's gone too far as far as I'm concerned.

01:04:50.380 But, you know, the fact that that caused so much trouble, I think, is indication of the fact that it's difficult to draw the line.

01:04:57.660 And so, well, I'm interested in both your comments about that.

01:05:02.020 Well, I think you're on to something with the extreme part of the right wing party is pretty definable.

01:05:09.760 And I think most reasonable people agree that the farthest right, you know, Jews shooting laser beams into the sky and shooting down satellites or whatever crazy stuff comes out of QAnon or sort of far right stuff, racial things of that nature. 0.99

01:05:31.620 I think we can all agree that that's pretty definable and that most people on the right will not cross that border.

01:05:41.280 And William Buckley helped with that, wouldn't you say?

01:05:44.360 I would.

01:05:45.280 But on the left, I feel like there's a much greater sense of, well, we don't agree with AOC, but we're not going to say anything about it or we're not going to define it or the squad.

01:05:58.820 So there's a much more, you know, I live in California, most everyone, I work in Hollywood, everyone's on the left.

01:06:05.860 Their thing is sort of like, we don't like what Gavin Newsom is doing, but he's still our guy.

01:06:13.040 And, you know, we'll go along.

01:06:14.420 Well, that's part of this difficulty withdrawing borders.

01:06:17.280 Like I've had conversations with Democrats about the idea of equity, for example, which is a no-go zone as far as I'm concerned because of its connotations of equality of outcome.

01:06:26.360 But they insist, generally speaking, that most of the people who are using the term equity are really using it as a proxy for equality of opportunity.

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - April 28, 2022

248. The Adventures of Pinnochio and Free Speech Part 2⧸4

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript