In this episode of the JBP Podcast, we take a deep dive into the impact of limiting freedom of speech, and look at what great thinkers like Nietzsche, Carl Jung, and Jiminy Cricket have to say on the topic. Then, towards the end of the episode, we explore a concept that'll be the focus of the next and final episode in this compilation series, what Dad calls the "Redemptive Power of Free Speech." Dr. Jordan B. Peterson has created a new series that could be a lifeline for those battling depression and anxiety. With decades of experience helping patients, Dr. Peterson offers a unique understanding of why you might be feeling this way, and offers a roadmap towards healing. In his new series, "Dr. Peterson's New Series on Depression and Anxiety: A Guide to Finding a Brighter Future You Deserve," Dr. B.P. offers practical advice on how to deal with anxiety, depression, and stress. If you're struggling, please know you are not alone. There's hope and there's a path to feeling better. Go to Daily Wire Plus now and start watching Dr. P.B.P.'s new series. Let this be the first step towards the brighter future you deserve. (Daily Wire Plus is a new service that helps connect people with resources to help them find a brighter future they deserve. Please visit Dailywireplus.org/JBP to get started on their journey to a brighter and more positive future. To find a list of all things they can do to improve their lives, go to Dailywire.org. Subscribe to DailyWire Plus to receive notifications and receive notifications about new episodes of the show, and more information about what's happening in their day-to-day life, and how they can help you get the most out of their day to live the best possible life. JBP's newest episode, "The Brightest possible day in the most upliftment possible. . , we'll be giving you access to everything you can do for you, no matter where they can access the most impactful, the most amazing things possible, the best of your day to help you achieve the most rewarding life possible. JBP is your most meaningful day, everywhere, everywhere you can access it, everywhere they get it, on the most important thing you can get it. - Thank you, JBP! - Michaela Peterson, PhD, PhD and more!
00:00:01.000Hey everyone, real quick before you skip, I want to talk to you about something serious and important.
00:00:06.000Dr. Jordan Peterson has created a new series that could be a lifeline for those battling depression and anxiety.
00:00:12.000We know how isolating and overwhelming these conditions can be, and we wanted to take a moment to reach out to those listening who may be struggling.
00:00:19.000With decades of experience helping patients, Dr. Peterson offers a unique understanding of why you might be feeling this way in his new series.
00:00:27.000He provides a roadmap towards healing, showing that while the journey isn't easy, it's absolutely possible to find your way forward.
00:00:35.000If you're suffering, please know you are not alone. There's hope, and there's a path to feeling better.
00:00:41.000Go to Daily Wire Plus now and start watching Dr. Jordan B. Peterson on depression and anxiety.
00:00:47.000Let this be the first step towards the brighter future you deserve.
00:00:52.000Welcome to episode 250 of the JBP podcast. I'm Michaela Peterson.
00:00:59.000This is part three of our series on free speech, a deep dive into the impact of restricting freedom of speech.
00:01:06.000We'll be looking at what great thinkers like Nietzsche, Carl Jung, and Jiminy Cricket have had to say on the topic.
00:01:12.000Then, towards the end of the episode, we take a closer look at a concept that'll be the focus of the next and final episode in this compilation series,
00:01:20.000what Dad calls the redemptive power of free speech.
00:01:43.000Well, many, many things at multiple levels of reality simultaneously.
00:01:49.000And that's the characteristic of an archetypal story.
00:01:53.000So on one level, Pinocchio's too old to go home.
00:01:57.000He can't go home to his father, because in some sense, he's already transcended his father.
00:02:02.000So there are things, for example, that your father can't help you with.
00:02:05.000And the reason for that is that you don't, he doesn't know any more about the situation than you do, and he can't.
00:02:10.000And so that's where his knowledge limits out.
00:02:12.000So that would be sort of on the personal level.
00:02:14.000And then on the transpersonal level, which would be the deeper archetypal level, what's happening to Pinocchio is exactly what Nietzsche described at the end of the 19th century.
00:02:23.000Because remember that Geppetto is his creator.
00:03:31.000Or it would be the automatic attraction of your interest to a new thing by forces that you do not understand.
00:03:37.000So one of the real ways of coming to grips with the idea of the active unconscious is to understand that you cannot control what you're interested in.
00:03:47.000And so then you might ask, well, if it's not you, what is it?
00:03:53.000And if you think about that problem long enough, you'll start to understand what Jung was talking about.
00:03:59.000Because that is the way that you can understand in your own life that the things that direct you as a being are not things that you consciously choose.
00:04:09.000In fact, they're not even things that you can consciously choose.
00:04:35.000She said, and I thought this is very telling, to describe the state of the academy.
00:04:39.000She said, when I came to Cambridge, I was expecting, she said, the motto of the Royal Society is don't take anyone's word for it.
00:04:45.000And she said that's what she was expecting when I come to Cambridge.
00:04:48.000I was expecting to engage in rigorous discussion where all of my cherished beliefs would be challenged.
00:04:53.000You know, I would come away shaken and uncomfortable.
00:04:55.000And I would think for myself and I would be forced to rethink everything with the most important things in my life.
00:05:00.000I think she was actually studying psychology. And then she said, when I got here, it wasn't like that.
00:05:04.000When I got here, I felt that I was being coddled and there were certain things that you couldn't question.
00:05:09.000So the things that you were just made to feel an outsider, we questioned.
00:05:12.000It was a really it was a brilliant article and really telling because it was her own experience of what it's like for a student now compared to what it was like when I was when I was an undergraduate many years ago.
00:05:23.000So that's an illustration of how things can go wrong and the sorts of things we were seeing around us in the sort of summer and then the autumn of 2020.
00:05:35.000James, did you want to say anything more about that point? We can talk more about that.
00:05:39.000No, I mean, I think it was then, wasn't it June, July 2020.
00:05:43.000I remember you came came around for lunch around here.
00:05:46.000We started talking about, you know, who might be willing to sign in public a support which was required by the mechanisms of the all the kind of procedural mechanisms.
00:05:57.000I think we needed twenty five names, wasn't it?
00:06:00.000And I think we could come up between us.
00:06:02.000We managed to come up with seven or eight.
00:06:05.000And then and then it took us another eight, ten weeks to get past the twenty five.
00:06:12.000I think it was September that we were starting to starting to look promising.
00:06:16.000And in fact, I think in the end we got quite a few more than twenty five for the three amendments that that that was proposing to introduce to kind of to take out the respect language and replace it with.
00:06:47.000It's telling that actually, I mean, there might have been two reasons why.
00:06:51.000One reason why it might have been because it was a trivial issue.
00:06:53.000Nobody cared about it. Who cares? Quibbling about a few a few words.
00:06:57.000Another reason which I suspect was, you know, which turned out was with the more likely explanation was that actually a lot of people were afraid to sign something in public.
00:07:07.000And why do you think that argument's invalid?
00:07:09.000And the reason I thought the argument was it was invalid because the additional evidence that I got after the vote, because the vote actually had a very high.
00:07:16.000A lot of people bothered to vote on this and they bothered to vote for that change.
00:07:20.000If it had been a trivial thing, nobody would have cared to vote.
00:07:23.000So that was one bit of evidence. The other bit of evidence was the testimony of the people who wrote to me or who I called up at the time.
00:07:29.000And James may have got this as well. You know, people who are saying that we support this.
00:07:32.000We can see what you're doing and we can see why it's a concern.
00:07:34.000But I just don't want to get involved in this kind of fight right now.
00:07:37.000Getting involved in this is going to be too difficult for me right now.
00:08:17.000But I've learned through painful experience, I would say, and not least as a clinician, that when you see the elephant's trunk under the rug, you can infer the rest of the elephant.
00:08:30.000And it's going to get bigger as you feed it with your stupidity and your withdrawal.
00:08:35.000And you let whatever it's feeding on continue.
00:08:40.000You see this reflected in ancient mythology actually quite nicely in many situations.
00:08:47.000You see that in the Mesopotamian creation myth where a dragon grows in the background, essentially, that threatens to swamp everything.
00:08:55.000And that's eventually defeated by a great, you know, a Marduk, as it turns out.
00:09:01.000This is a very old idea that little things left grow in the dark and get big.
00:09:06.000And so it's not really a very good reason.
00:09:08.000And especially if your conscience is bugging you, because it's something that looks into the future and says, well, this is kind of small at the moment.
00:10:15.000And then the spiral starts, you know, the monster starts to grow when some people notice that their opinions are spreading fast.
00:10:23.000And that gives them a kind of confidence to double down and express themselves more confidently.
00:10:30.000And then on the other hand, people who disagree with those opinions see that their views gaining less traction and they stay silent because of the fear of social isolation.
00:10:48.000Well, I was just going to say that, you know, social media and those sorts of things that obviously all the network effects from that accelerates that.
00:10:56.000And so it and what happens is that people just get very bad at judging what the real spread of opinion is in a social environment.
00:11:04.000And then it's a kind of it's a dynamic process is it's a spiral.
00:11:08.000And so you get a spiral to the point where what is a confident minority, but minority position becomes this completely unassailable orthodoxy.
00:11:18.000And and I think that's one reason why in the case of what was started to happen in Cambridge in the summer of 2020 and leading up to the vote in in December is is is that what we saw was that although there was reluctance, deep reluctance among colleagues who struggled to get more than 25 votes to sign in public that are amendments.
00:11:40.000When it came to the vote, which crucially operated via secret ballot.
00:11:47.000So you were allowed to measure opinion, but with people voting by people voting from within the closet, as it were.
00:11:54.000And as soon as that that mechanism was allowed to operate, you suddenly that the spiral of silence just as it were the the monster explodes.
00:12:04.000Right. So that's really interesting procedurally as well, because these sorts of positive feedback loop phenomenon, you see those in in clinical therapy, too.
00:12:12.000So, for example, when people start to get depressed, then they withdraw and they stop socializing, say, and they stop engaging in their in the activities that bring them meaning and joy.
00:12:24.000And so that makes their depression worse. And then they're more likely to to withdraw again.
00:12:28.000And, you know, it's probably an example of something like the Pareto principle operating again.
00:12:32.000Right. That things can spiral up very, very rapidly and dominate and they can spiral down.
00:12:40.000And and there is some truth to that, that kind of process that underlies all sorts of phenomena.
00:12:46.000So that secret ballot issue, that's really relevant for bringing something like this to a halt.
00:12:51.000Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think. Yeah. Go ahead.
00:12:55.000OK, no, I was going to say one. I mean, one one part of the isolation process also, I think, I mean, is is certain kinds of social interactions or professional interactions.
00:13:04.000And what I mean is the experience of being in meetings, for instance, departmental meetings or college meetings where probably a lot of people, there'll be some mad or insane proposal.
00:13:14.000I mean, to say we're going to remove all pronouns from our policy or we're going to have this this this change of the syllabus or whatever.
00:13:20.000And everybody or maybe most people in the room were thinking this is nonsense, but I'm not going to say it's nonsense.
00:13:25.000And they left the meeting thinking they were the only person who thought it was nonsense because nobody spoke out.
00:13:29.000And the thing was not decided by a secret ballot. If it had been decided by a secret ballot, as was the case, as James says, in December, suddenly you have thousands of people realizing that they weren't alone.
00:13:39.000It's also possible that the objections. So imagine those objections manifest themselves in people's imagination, but they're not hooked so tightly to the whole to a whole ideological network as the proposal is.
00:13:51.000And so in some sense, people don't have the right words at hand immediately.
00:13:56.000You know, the pronoun thing is a good indication because, well, justify your use of he and she.
00:14:02.000It's like, well, I don't know how to do that. Exactly. You know, that's what everyone does. We've done that forever.
00:14:08.000And that's my justification. It's like, well, it's pretty weak compared to that whole ideology that's coming at you.
00:14:14.000And and those people who are so committed there, they're often pretty verbal.
00:14:18.000They're pretty well able to articulate that ideology and quite forcefully and they're emotionally committed to it.
00:14:24.000And so that's also a structural problem.
00:14:28.000Yeah. And they have devices. So, for instance, if you think about the way I found the way these people use terms like not only welfare, but also harm.
00:14:35.000You know, the idea that words do harm to people, which has a lot of currency now in Britain and is chilling, is based on an absurdly inflated conception of harm.
00:14:44.000But when you're in the middle of a discussion, you know, it's also related to another cognitive problem, which is one of the things I often did as a therapist,
00:14:52.000as a therapist, when someone told me they were afraid of something doing something is I said, well, that's because you're not afraid enough of not doing it, because that the doing produces this harm, let's say.
00:15:03.000And you can be afraid of that. But the not doing is sort of invisible.
00:15:07.000And that that has something to do with decision making in uncertainty, by the way.
00:15:11.000And so I used to get people to flesh out what would happen if they didn't do the thing they were afraid of.
00:15:16.000And then they thought, oh, I see there's real risk both ways.
00:15:19.000And now I get to pick my risk. And this harm issue is the same thing, because you could say, well, sometimes words do do harm.
00:15:26.000There's no doubt about that. And maybe that's it's unfair to conflate that with something like physical violence, although you could have a discussion about that.
00:15:34.000But the question that isn't being asked then is, well, what harm does your attempt to shut down what words you regard as harmful?
00:15:44.000What's that likely to produce for harm? Well, none. It's like, oh, really?
00:15:48.000So you haven't thought that part of it through at all. And you're going to be the arbiter of what's harmful and what's not.
00:15:53.000And there's no danger in that either, is there? So that's a good way to deal with that sort of thing.
00:16:00.000I agree. Of course, another thing that a lot of the time people don't see is they think, you know, we can impose on people's speech.
00:16:06.000We can tell them how to behave various ways, but they don't think that that's an instrument that could be abused in all sorts of ways.
00:16:12.000So if you mandate speech on one thing one day, it's going to be mandated on other things the next day.
00:16:16.000And in general, I think with any form of coercive coercive principle, you need to think what's going to happen in the hands of somebody wicked and, you know, tyrannical.
00:16:25.000That's how we should think about about these things, not only in university, but in politics more generally.
00:16:30.000Typical right wing claptrap. Well, that's kind of an interesting thing, right?
00:16:36.000Because one, one thing that conservative thinking does always is say, yeah, but it's like, well, you're putting this forward for the good and fair enough, you know, and it's based on compassion.
00:16:46.000And that's actually a virtue, although it is by no means the only virtue.
00:16:50.000And sometimes it's a vice, but why are you so sure that this will only do the thing you think it will do and nothing else?
00:16:56.000And that you're wise enough to make that change right in something that's sort of working already.
00:17:01.000So part of part of the problem might be that I think it's a sort of a glitch within liberalism.
00:17:08.000And you think back to to Mill's idea, the famous no harm principle, which for many, many years operated as a very, very good basic rule for governing social interaction.
00:17:20.000But you can understand the temptation of trying to fold under the notion of harm or violence.
00:17:26.000I think it's the Australian psychologist, Nick Haslam, who calls this concept creep.
00:17:31.000You can see that you see the sort of the power that comes from leveraging these concepts, particularly when an institution is caught in the headlights of a Twitter mob or whatever it might be.
00:17:42.000That there's sort of threat to the harm, you know, there's harm or threats of harm or violence to the person which are.
00:17:49.000In the end, I mean, I think I take your point, Jordan, there may well be certain situations in which use of speech can be thought of as inflicting harm.
00:17:59.000But that is something that society and the legislature in that society needs to deliberate upon and decide.
00:18:08.000And, you know, we all accept that freedom of speech is not it's not an unqualified right.
00:18:14.000And indeed, academic freedom has has proper parameters imposed as well.
00:18:20.000So we can also be grown up and say that it's it's dangerous, but necessary.
00:18:27.000I think that the danger comes in when what counts as harm is being subjectively determined.
00:18:33.000And so this notion that that's that started to gather steam in the last few years, this idea of a microaggression, which in effect is is is is an aggression or a claim that harm has been inflicted on a person that that is subjectively determined.
00:18:51.000That is to say, it's it's in principle, not an offense that could be explored in any kind of forensic context by by by by jury or a judge.
00:19:01.000That is to say, the only evidence that count of the harm that could possibly count is the subject saying you've hurt me.
00:19:08.000And that and so the danger of the language that that Arif was was was protesting against the risk of the identitarian respect language is that it effectively conferred a veto on the most psychologically fragile person on in the university.
00:19:27.000And who could simply say and we would not there would be no way of establishing whether or not they that they were sincere with that they'd have to be just simply taken at face value that this person that the invitation to this speaker troubles me upsets me does does me harm.
00:19:43.000Yeah, well, that's interesting to imagine you take that hypothetical sensitive person, it might not be in their best interests to actually grant them that sort of veto power, because one of the things you do with someone who's really depressed or anxious is actually especially if you're working as a cognitive behaviorist, let's say is you get them to look at the thoughts that are upsetting them, and maybe modify the ones that are making them sensitive beyond what is good for them.
00:20:13.000And that's also to some degree judged subjectively by them. And so it isn't necessarily the case that protecting people in that manner and giving them that sort of power is actually in their best interest.
00:20:24.460So it reminds me of that insight of Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianov in their, I think it's their 2017 Atlantic article that became the coddling of the American mind, where one of the three principles I think Jonathan isolates is, is a sort of inversion of the Nietzschean idea that, you know, what doesn't kill you makes you weaker.
00:20:46.000That is to say, anything that, you know, the sort of harm or violence that sort of any kind of threat is it doesn't have, it's not something that can toughen you up, it's not an opportunity to try and strengthen your character or to develop resilience.
00:21:03.160And I know that I think this is something you've touched on.
00:21:05.280Well, that's also a huge part of what you, that's also a huge part of what universities are doing for their students, if you think about it psychologically.
00:21:13.160So we could talk about people who are hypersensitive to anxiety and depression, let's say they're higher in neuroticism.
00:21:19.300Well, one of the things you want to do when you get educated is arm yourself with defenses.
00:21:25.560And I mean, practical defenses, both ideational.
00:21:28.600So the way you think and the way you act against that kind of onslaught and education can really do that, right?
00:21:34.800Because you're quicker on your feet and you, you know more.
00:21:37.820And, and, and also if you're trying to reduce someone's anxiety and depression and they're temperamentally tilted that way, what you actually do is gradually expose them to the things that they're afraid of.
00:21:49.460You don't, you don't protect them more and more and more because that actually makes that positive spiral descent into depression and anxiety worse.
00:21:57.900So the fact, the idea that you should remove everything that might threaten someone's identity and you should make that a university wide policy is actually exactly the opposite of what you should do speaking clinically.
00:22:11.280If you're trying to help people become more resilient, this is a serious issue.
00:22:15.660And, and it, well, obviously this is all serious.
00:22:19.680But the fact, the fact is the universities in the UK are to some extent going in the opposite direction.
00:22:24.880So they do have, as James points out, this category of what's called microaggressions.
00:22:29.760And these are things which can even be a matter for disciplinary action.
00:22:33.240If you're reporting for it, where you say something.
00:22:35.260At NYU, there's posters all over the place, like in the bathrooms, for example, encouraging people to report such things to the appropriate, you know, well-paid bureaucratic authorities.
00:22:45.520Well, Cambridge tried to introduce a system where you could report, you could report these things anonymously.
00:23:03.940So as you say, you know, if, if making fun of someone's religion, for instance, is something I can't do, you know, that's a kind of challenge which might upset them.
00:23:10.580And as you say, part of the point of words is to some extent that they do some harm.
00:23:15.660They're meant to shake your views about things.
00:23:17.500You know, if the conversations you have at university, you know, never upset you, never make you feel a little bit less confident, never make you make you perhaps even make you cry sometimes, university isn't doing its job.
00:23:29.580Well, we found out that God, the Father, and God, the Father, the Creator, are not in fact dead, which is what Nietzsche pronounced, but alive in some weird way in this horrible creature at the bottom of the ocean.
00:23:44.700And so what does Pinocchio decide to do?
00:23:49.420That's actually what you're doing at university, by the way, for all the chaos that you experience when you come to university and all the uncertainty and all the doubt.
00:24:00.620What you're trying to do is to resurrect your dead father from the bottom of the ocean.
00:24:06.220And if you do that, you won't be a marionette.
00:24:11.660A degraded view of humanity, I feel, where we are effectively like marionettes and that we're just being played and that we don't have any agency anymore.
00:24:24.080And therefore, we can't be responsible for our own words, not just our actions.
00:24:29.120We can't be responsible for our own words and the ramifications.
00:24:31.840So we have to be controlled and we have to be stifled by the state.
00:24:35.280And it's very, it makes me very nervous.
00:24:37.460Going online without ExpressVPN is like not paying attention to the safety demonstration on a flight.
00:24:44.560Most of the time, you'll probably be fine.
00:24:46.540But what if one day that weird yellow mask drops down from overhead and you have no idea what to do?
00:24:52.240In our hyper-connected world, your digital privacy isn't just a luxury.
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