The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 250. The Adventures of Pinocchio and Free Speech Part 3⧸4

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00:00:52.000 Welcome to episode 250 of the JBP podcast. I'm Michaela Peterson.

00:00:59.000 This is part three of our series on free speech, a deep dive into the impact of restricting freedom of speech.

00:01:06.000 We'll be looking at what great thinkers like Nietzsche, Carl Jung, and Jiminy Cricket have had to say on the topic.

00:01:12.000 Then, 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,

00:01:20.000 what Dad calls the redemptive power of free speech.

00:01:23.000 I hope you enjoy today's episode.

00:01:25.000 Okay, so what's happened there?

00:01:43.000 Well, many, many things at multiple levels of reality simultaneously.

00:01:49.000 And that's the characteristic of an archetypal story.

00:01:53.000 So on one level, Pinocchio's too old to go home.

00:01:57.000 He can't go home to his father, because in some sense, he's already transcended his father.

00:02:02.000 So there are things, for example, that your father can't help you with.

00:02:05.000 And 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.

00:02:10.000 And so that's where his knowledge limits out.

00:02:12.000 So that would be sort of on the personal level.

00:02:14.000 And 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.

00:02:23.000 Because remember that Geppetto is his creator.

00:02:25.000 And now he's dead.

00:02:27.000 He's gone.

00:02:28.000 And so Pinocchio is bereft of placement, so to speak.

00:02:33.000 His soul has been corrupted, and he doesn't know what to do about it.

00:02:40.000 And when he returns to his family home, or when he returns to his tradition, what he finds is nothing.

00:02:47.000 Okay, so then what happens?

00:02:49.000 Well, this is another thing that you'll swallow with just no problem whatsoever.

00:02:54.000 Well, this dove comes along that's sort of golden and glowing, and drops a note right in front of him.

00:02:59.000 Now, you may remember, and perhaps you don't, but the star from which the dove comes is a representation of the blue fairy.

00:03:08.000 And the blue fairy is the positive element of the unknown in the Pinocchio movie.

00:03:13.000 And so what it basically is saying that when you're despairing because your father has died, and your tradition has nothing to offer,

00:03:21.000 that the positive element of the unknown may provide you with a message about where to go if you pay enough attention.

00:03:29.000 That would be an intuition.

00:03:31.000 Or it would be the automatic attraction of your interest to a new thing by forces that you do not understand.

00:03:37.000 So 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.

00:03:47.000 And so then you might ask, well, if it's not you, what is it?

00:03:53.000 And if you think about that problem long enough, you'll start to understand what Jung was talking about.

00:03:59.000 Because 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.

00:04:09.000 In fact, they're not even things that you can consciously choose.

00:04:13.000 They're directed by other forces.

00:04:17.000 So anyways, the dove drops a message in front of Pinocchio and the cricket.

00:04:27.000 Now it's the cricket that reads it.

00:04:29.000 So it's the same idea as what bugs you, so to speak.

00:04:33.000 The cricket is the interpreter. 0.96

00:04:35.000 She said, and I thought this is very telling, to describe the state of the academy.

00:04:39.000 She 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.

00:04:45.000 And she said that's what she was expecting when I come to Cambridge.

00:04:48.000 I was expecting to engage in rigorous discussion where all of my cherished beliefs would be challenged.

00:04:53.000 You know, I would come away shaken and uncomfortable.

00:04:55.000 And I would think for myself and I would be forced to rethink everything with the most important things in my life.

00:05:00.000 I think she was actually studying psychology. And then she said, when I got here, it wasn't like that.

00:05:04.000 When I got here, I felt that I was being coddled and there were certain things that you couldn't question.

00:05:09.000 So the things that you were just made to feel an outsider, we questioned.

00:05:12.000 It 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.

00:05:23.000 So 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.

00:05:35.000 James, did you want to say anything more about that point? We can talk more about that.

00:05:39.000 No, I mean, I think it was then, wasn't it June, July 2020.

00:05:43.000 I remember you came came around for lunch around here.

00:05:46.000 We 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.

00:05:57.000 I think we needed twenty five names, wasn't it?

00:06:00.000 And I think we could come up between us.

00:06:02.000 We managed to come up with seven or eight.

00:06:05.000 And then and then it took us another eight, ten weeks to get past the twenty five.

00:06:12.000 I think it was September that we were starting to starting to look promising.

00:06:16.000 And 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.

00:06:29.000 OK, so you needed tolerance.

00:06:31.000 You needed those twenty five to put the amendments forward.

00:06:35.000 That's right. Yeah.

00:06:37.000 Yeah. OK, so that would indicate that some people were concerned that that requirement for twenty five rather than just one person.

00:06:43.000 But it was hard to get twenty five.

00:06:46.000 Yeah, it was. It's telling.

00:06:47.000 It's telling that actually, I mean, there might have been two reasons why.

00:06:51.000 One reason why it might have been because it was a trivial issue.

00:06:53.000 Nobody cared about it. Who cares? Quibbling about a few a few words.

00:06:57.000 Another 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.

00:07:05.000 So why do you think it's not trivial?

00:07:07.000 And why do you think that argument's invalid?

00:07:09.000 And 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.

00:07:16.000 A lot of people bothered to vote on this and they bothered to vote for that change.

00:07:20.000 If it had been a trivial thing, nobody would have cared to vote.

00:07:23.000 So 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.

00:07:29.000 And James may have got this as well. You know, people who are saying that we support this.

00:07:32.000 We can see what you're doing and we can see why it's a concern.

00:07:34.000 But I just don't want to get involved in this kind of fight right now.

00:07:37.000 Getting involved in this is going to be too difficult for me right now.

00:07:39.000 I'm up for promotion right now.

00:07:41.000 Yeah.

00:07:42.000 I don't want to face all of these things.

00:07:44.000 So, yeah, well, you practice what you become.

00:07:47.000 We'd be sorry. You become what you practice.

00:07:49.000 And, you know, that's well.

00:07:51.000 And this is something I learned as a psychologist.

00:07:53.000 And I think maybe it was part of my temperament to begin with is like if you put off fights, they don't get better.

00:07:59.000 Not usually.

00:08:00.000 They usually get worse.

00:08:01.000 And maybe you think, well, I'll be in better position later.

00:08:04.000 And you might be, but probably you won't.

00:08:07.000 And so that notion that it's not a good time.

00:08:11.000 Fair enough.

00:08:12.000 You know, I hate conflict.

00:08:14.000 I really hate it.

00:08:15.000 I'm not built for it temperamentally.

00:08:17.000 But 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. 1.00

00:08:30.000 And it's going to get bigger as you feed it with your stupidity and your withdrawal. 1.00

00:08:35.000 And you let whatever it's feeding on continue. 1.00

00:08:38.000 And it's extremely dangerous.

00:08:40.000 You see this reflected in ancient mythology actually quite nicely in many situations.

00:08:47.000 You see that in the Mesopotamian creation myth where a dragon grows in the background, essentially, that threatens to swamp everything.

00:08:55.000 And that's eventually defeated by a great, you know, a Marduk, as it turns out. 1.00

00:09:01.000 This is a very old idea that little things left grow in the dark and get big.

00:09:06.000 And so it's not really a very good reason.

00:09:08.000 And 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.

00:09:15.000 But.

00:09:16.000 But.

00:09:17.000 Yeah.

00:09:18.000 But.

00:09:19.000 Yeah.

00:09:20.000 No, that's right.

00:09:21.000 Actually.

00:09:22.000 Go on, James.

00:09:23.000 I remember reading that as a kind of Babylonian creation myth, I think, isn't it?

00:09:28.000 But that sense of things just growing with a kind of gathering a momentum of their own is something that we've experienced a lot of.

00:09:35.000 Right.

00:09:36.000 I think it's there's there's been some work on this in sociology.

00:09:39.000 I think they call it the spiral of silence is I can't remember.

00:09:44.000 Elizabeth Neumann or Noel Neumann.

00:09:47.000 And the basic idea is that is the fear of isolation, social isolation, ostracism is like a huge motivating factor in a person's behavior.

00:09:59.000 Yeah, well, there's two great fears, right?

00:10:01.000 That's one is is being is being isolated and thrown out of the group because then you die.

00:10:07.000 And the other is biological catastrophe.

00:10:09.000 Those are the two big classes of fears that you see as a clinician.

00:10:13.000 Right.

00:10:14.000 So that's the animating idea.

00:10:15.000 And then the spiral starts, you know, the monster starts to grow when some people notice that their opinions are spreading fast.

00:10:23.000 And that gives them a kind of confidence to double down and express themselves more confidently.

00:10:30.000 And 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.

00:10:40.000 And then they get weaker.

00:10:42.000 They get weaker.

00:10:43.000 And of course.

00:10:44.000 Yeah.

00:10:45.000 A lot of these people.

00:10:47.000 They're gorgeous.

00:10:48.000 Well, 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.

00:10:56.000 And 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.

00:11:04.000 And then it's a kind of it's a dynamic process is it's a spiral.

00:11:07.000 It's a spiral.

00:11:08.000 And so you get a spiral to the point where what is a confident minority, but minority position becomes this completely unassailable orthodoxy.

00:11:18.000 And 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.

00:11:40.000 When it came to the vote, which crucially operated via secret ballot.

00:11:47.000 So you were allowed to measure opinion, but with people voting by people voting from within the closet, as it were.

00:11:54.000 And 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.

00:12:04.000 Right. So that's really interesting procedurally as well, because these sorts of positive feedback loop phenomenon, you see those in in clinical therapy, too.

00:12:12.000 So, 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.

00:12:24.000 And so that makes their depression worse. And then they're more likely to to withdraw again.

00:12:28.000 And, you know, it's probably an example of something like the Pareto principle operating again.

00:12:32.000 Right. That things can spiral up very, very rapidly and dominate and they can spiral down.

00:12:38.000 Very it's nonlinear on both ends.

00:12:40.000 And and there is some truth to that, that kind of process that underlies all sorts of phenomena.

00:12:46.000 So that secret ballot issue, that's really relevant for bringing something like this to a halt.

00:12:51.000 Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think. Yeah. Go ahead.

00:12:55.000 OK, 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.

00:13:04.000 And 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.

00:13:14.000 I 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.

00:13:20.000 And everybody or maybe most people in the room were thinking this is nonsense, but I'm not going to say it's nonsense.

00:13:25.000 And they left the meeting thinking they were the only person who thought it was nonsense because nobody spoke out.

00:13:29.000 And 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.

00:13:39.000 It'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.

00:13:51.000 And so in some sense, people don't have the right words at hand immediately.

00:13:56.000 You know, the pronoun thing is a good indication because, well, justify your use of he and she.

00:14:02.000 It's like, well, I don't know how to do that. Exactly. You know, that's what everyone does. We've done that forever.

00:14:08.000 And that's my justification. It's like, well, it's pretty weak compared to that whole ideology that's coming at you.

00:14:14.000 And and those people who are so committed there, they're often pretty verbal.

00:14:18.000 They're pretty well able to articulate that ideology and quite forcefully and they're emotionally committed to it.

00:14:24.000 And so that's also a structural problem.

00:14:28.000 Yeah. 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.

00:14:35.000 You 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.

00:14:44.000 But 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,

00:14:52.000 as 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.

00:15:03.000 And you can be afraid of that. But the not doing is sort of invisible.

00:15:07.000 And that that has something to do with decision making in uncertainty, by the way.

00:15:11.000 And so I used to get people to flesh out what would happen if they didn't do the thing they were afraid of.

00:15:16.000 And then they thought, oh, I see there's real risk both ways.

00:15:19.000 And 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.

00:15:26.000 There'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.

00:15:34.000 But the question that isn't being asked then is, well, what harm does your attempt to shut down what words you regard as harmful?

00:15:44.000 What's that likely to produce for harm? Well, none. It's like, oh, really?

00:15:48.000 So 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.

00:15:53.000 And there's no danger in that either, is there? So that's a good way to deal with that sort of thing.

00:16:00.000 I 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.

00:16:06.000 We 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.

00:16:12.000 So if you mandate speech on one thing one day, it's going to be mandated on other things the next day.

00:16:16.000 And 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.

00:16:25.000 That's how we should think about about these things, not only in university, but in politics more generally.

00:16:30.000 Typical right wing claptrap. Well, that's kind of an interesting thing, right?

00:16:36.000 Because 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.

00:16:46.000 And that's actually a virtue, although it is by no means the only virtue.

00:16:50.000 And 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?

00:16:56.000 And that you're wise enough to make that change right in something that's sort of working already.

00:17:01.000 So part of part of the problem might be that I think it's a sort of a glitch within liberalism.

00:17:08.000 And 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.

00:17:20.000 But you can understand the temptation of trying to fold under the notion of harm or violence.

00:17:26.000 I think it's the Australian psychologist, Nick Haslam, who calls this concept creep.

00:17:31.000 You 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.

00:17:42.000 That there's sort of threat to the harm, you know, there's harm or threats of harm or violence to the person which are.

00:17:49.000 In 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.

00:17:59.000 But that is something that society and the legislature in that society needs to deliberate upon and decide.

00:18:08.000 And, you know, we all accept that freedom of speech is not it's not an unqualified right.

00:18:14.000 And indeed, academic freedom has has proper parameters imposed as well.

00:18:20.000 So we can also be grown up and say that it's it's dangerous, but necessary.

00:18:25.000 It's dangerous, but necessary.

00:18:27.000 I think that the danger comes in when what counts as harm is being subjectively determined.

00:18:33.000 And 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.

00:18:51.000 That 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.

00:19:01.000 That is to say, the only evidence that count of the harm that could possibly count is the subject saying you've hurt me.

00:19:08.000 And 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.

00:19:27.000 And 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.

00:19:43.000 Yeah, 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.

00:20:13.000 And 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.

00:20:24.460 So 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.

00:20:46.000 That 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.

00:21:03.160 And I know that I think this is something you've touched on.

00:21:05.280 Well, 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.

00:21:13.160 So we could talk about people who are hypersensitive to anxiety and depression, let's say they're higher in neuroticism.

00:21:19.300 Well, one of the things you want to do when you get educated is arm yourself with defenses.

00:21:25.560 And I mean, practical defenses, both ideational.

00:21:28.600 So the way you think and the way you act against that kind of onslaught and education can really do that, right?

00:21:34.800 Because you're quicker on your feet and you, you know more.

00:21:37.820 And, 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.

00:21:49.460 You 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.

00:21:57.900 So 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.

00:22:11.280 If you're trying to help people become more resilient, this is a serious issue.

00:22:15.660 And, and it, well, obviously this is all serious.

00:22:19.680 But the fact, the fact is the universities in the UK are to some extent going in the opposite direction.

00:22:24.880 So they do have, as James points out, this category of what's called microaggressions.

00:22:29.760 And these are things which can even be a matter for disciplinary action.

00:22:33.240 If you're reporting for it, where you say something.

00:22:35.260 At 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.

00:22:45.520 Well, Cambridge tried to introduce a system where you could report, you could report these things anonymously.

00:22:51.020 So not confidentially, anonymously.

00:22:53.000 Nobody knows who made the report.

00:22:54.960 So it's like East Germany.

00:22:56.020 The report comes in and then somebody could in principle be disciplined for it.

00:22:59.580 Yeah, no one would ever misuse that.

00:23:01.620 No, you couldn't imagine that.

00:23:03.940 So 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.

00:23:10.580 And as you say, part of the point of words is to some extent that they do some harm.

00:23:14.640 They're meant to be upsetting.

00:23:15.660 They're meant to shake your views about things.

00:23:17.500 You 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.

00:23:27.680 OK, so now what have we found out?

00:23:29.580 Well, 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.

00:23:44.700 And so what does Pinocchio decide to do?

00:23:47.680 He decides to go find him.

00:23:49.420 That'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.

00:24:00.620 What you're trying to do is to resurrect your dead father from the bottom of the ocean.

00:24:06.220 And if you do that, you won't be a marionette.

00:24:09.620 And if you don't, you will be.

00:24:11.660 A 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.

00:24:24.080 And therefore, we can't be responsible for our own words, not just our actions.

00:24:29.120 We can't be responsible for our own words and the ramifications.

00:24:31.840 So we have to be controlled and we have to be stifled by the state.

00:24:35.280 And it's very, it makes me very nervous.

00:24:37.460 Going online without ExpressVPN is like not paying attention to the safety demonstration on a flight.

00:24:44.560 Most of the time, you'll probably be fine.

00:24:46.540 But what if one day that weird yellow mask drops down from overhead and you have no idea what to do?

00:24:52.240 In our hyper-connected world, your digital privacy isn't just a luxury.

00:24:56.020 It's a fundamental right.

00:24:57.200 Every time you connect to an unsecured network in a cafe, hotel, or airport,

00:25:01.680 you're essentially broadcasting your personal information to anyone with a technical know-how to intercept it.

00:25:06.560 And let's be clear, it doesn't take a genius hacker to do this.

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00:27:23.300 So, I've been thinking through the importance of free speech, I suppose, from a psychological perspective,

00:27:33.980 and it seems to me that, well, we can walk through some axioms and you can tell me what you think about them if you would.

00:27:41.620 So, I mean, the first thing we might posit is that it's useful to think.

00:27:47.720 It's better to think than not to think, and that might seem self-evident, but thought can be troublesome and stir up trouble,

00:27:55.500 and your thoughts can be inaccurate.

00:27:57.620 So, it's perhaps not that unreasonable to start the questioning there,

00:28:04.480 but I think it was Alfred North Whitehead who said that thinking allows our thoughts to die instead of us.

00:28:14.640 And so, he was thinking about the evolution of thought in some sense from a biological perspective.

00:28:22.520 So, imagine a creature that's incapable of thought has to act something out,

00:28:28.540 a representation of the world or an intent.

00:28:30.620 It has to be embodied.

00:28:32.220 And then if that fails, well, it fails in action,

00:28:35.840 and so the consequence of that might be death.

00:28:38.840 It might be very severe.

00:28:40.140 Whereas, once you can think, you can represent the world abstractly,

00:28:46.280 you can divorce the abstraction from the world,

00:28:49.160 and then you can produce avatars of yourself,

00:28:53.540 sometimes in image, like in dreams, let's say,

00:28:56.100 or in literature and fiction and movies and so on,

00:28:58.860 produce avatars of ourselves that are fictional,

00:29:01.780 and then run them as simulations in the abstract world,

00:29:06.640 and observe the consequences.

00:29:09.640 And we do that in our stories.

00:29:12.340 We do that when we dream.

00:29:14.240 We do that when we imagine in images

00:29:16.480 and depict a dramatic scenario playing itself out.

00:29:20.920 But then we also do that in words

00:29:22.780 because we encode those images.

00:29:25.200 It's one more level of abstraction.

00:29:26.740 We encode those images into words,

00:29:29.040 and those words become partial dramatic avatars,

00:29:32.780 and then the words can battle with one another.

00:29:35.280 So thought seems to work, let's say, verbal thought.

00:29:39.080 You ask yourself a question.

00:29:41.760 You receive an answer in some mysterious manner.

00:29:44.780 There's an internal revelation of sorts.

00:29:47.420 That's the spontaneous thought.

00:29:49.660 You know, when you sit down to write a book,

00:29:51.340 thoughts come to you,

00:29:52.480 perhaps because you pose yourself a question.

00:29:54.560 And no one knows how that works,

00:29:56.180 but we experience it,

00:29:57.780 that thoughts manifest themselves

00:29:59.180 in the theater of our imagination.

00:30:01.080 So that's the revelatory aspect.

00:30:02.720 And then there's the critical aspect,

00:30:04.280 which is, well, now you've thought this,

00:30:07.640 and perhaps you've written it down.

00:30:09.480 Can you generate counterpositions?

00:30:12.340 Are there universes that you can imagine

00:30:14.520 where this doesn't apply?

00:30:16.380 Are there situations where it doesn't apply?

00:30:18.500 Are there better ways of formulating that thought?

00:30:21.180 And, but I would say with regard to critical thought,

00:30:25.740 and to some degree with regard to productive thought,

00:30:28.140 an indeterminate proportion of that

00:30:32.760 is dependent on speech.

00:30:35.500 I don't think it's unreasonable to point out

00:30:38.020 that thought is internalized speech,

00:30:40.300 and that the dialectical process

00:30:42.820 that constitutes critical thinking

00:30:44.980 is internalized speech.

00:30:46.880 So you and I are engaging in a dialectic enterprise.

00:30:49.800 You'll posit something and I'll respond to it,

00:30:52.040 and you'll respond to that.

00:30:53.240 And we're in a kind of combat.

00:30:57.140 There's some cooperation about it as well.

00:31:00.480 And we're attempting to formulate a truth more clearly,

00:31:03.260 at least in principle, if we're being honest.

00:31:06.240 We do that when we're speaking.

00:31:08.140 So our thought, the quality of our thought

00:31:10.000 is actually dependent on our ability to speak our minds.

00:31:13.820 Absolutely.

00:31:14.360 And then, so go ahead.

00:31:15.900 Well, I couldn't agree more

00:31:17.580 because I think speech is the way

00:31:20.120 in which we collaborate on our thoughts.

00:31:22.000 You know, that's how it works.

00:31:23.460 You refine those thought processes

00:31:25.240 that you've described.

00:31:26.200 I mean, I'm no psychologist,

00:31:27.740 but I understand this basic premise

00:31:29.180 that we have these various thoughts

00:31:31.700 that are continually in conflict within ourselves.

00:31:34.620 Unless we're able to articulate them

00:31:36.440 and to engage in others through that process,

00:31:38.720 through that transactional process of speech,

00:31:40.820 then those thoughts are never refined

00:31:42.500 and they remain in this kind of infancy.

00:31:44.480 Yes, well, they're as refined as we can make them

00:31:48.140 as individuals.

00:31:49.500 But that's also assuming that you even have the words,

00:31:51.980 which you also learned in the dialectical process.

00:31:55.080 Right, exactly.

00:31:55.720 It's not as though the truth is ever fully graspable,

00:31:58.500 but we can get nearer to it

00:32:00.220 through that collaborative process of speaking

00:32:01.820 and articulating the thoughts.

00:32:03.320 And in fact, even in the act of, like you say,

00:32:05.100 writing or articulating yourself

00:32:06.760 with your self-authoring programme, for instance,

00:32:09.740 the act of writing things out

00:32:11.460 is what clarifies the points of view for you.

00:32:14.880 I've actually found that the way

00:32:17.480 that I think about these issues now

00:32:19.140 is largely a product of the fact

00:32:21.220 that I've written so much about it

00:32:22.720 and changed my mind through the act of learning

00:32:25.080 how to express myself on these points.

00:32:26.900 And the consequence of not having that opportunity,

00:32:31.680 I think, is something I would barely want to contemplate.

00:32:36.340 And I think that to give an example of the moment,

00:32:40.400 which is that because any kind of attempt

00:32:43.080 to have a discussion or debate

00:32:44.740 about the perceived conflict

00:32:45.980 between trans rights and gender-critical feminism,

00:32:48.780 because to even attempt that discussion at the moment

00:32:50.880 will have such grave social consequences,

00:32:55.040 and certainly in terms of career prospects,

00:32:57.360 major consequences,

00:32:58.660 people will not have that discussion.

00:33:00.460 I have people I know in politics, in the media,

00:33:03.120 and they say to me, quite honestly,

00:33:04.740 I will not talk about this.

00:33:06.460 I have concerns, I have qualms,

00:33:08.180 I want answers to questions,

00:33:09.860 but I absolutely will not open my mouth about this.

00:33:12.480 And if you don't do that,

00:33:14.520 this is why no one understands the issue.

00:33:16.700 This is why no one has reached

00:33:18.120 any kind of consensus on this issue.

00:33:19.760 All we have is a sense in which

00:33:22.020 to have the quote-unquote wrong opinion

00:33:24.120 makes you a pariah,

00:33:26.060 and therefore I'd better not have that opinion.

00:33:28.180 Well, then that's not a sincerely held conviction.

00:33:30.720 That's just...

00:33:31.280 Well, if the definition of wrong

00:33:33.900 is continually transforming

00:33:35.420 and in an unpredictable manner,

00:33:37.120 then it's best just to sidestep the issue entirely.

00:33:40.120 And then that leaves it murky and ill-defined

00:33:42.240 and assuming that you believe

00:33:44.140 that thought has any utility.

00:33:45.500 And so when you're sitting down to write,

00:33:47.220 when I'm sitting down to write,

00:33:48.400 and I produce a sentence,

00:33:50.960 you know, it might have come

00:33:52.040 from some theoretical perspective.

00:33:53.840 Maybe I'm approaching something

00:33:54.980 from a Freudian perspective

00:33:56.840 or a Marxist perspective

00:33:58.260 or an Enlightenment perspective, etc.

00:34:02.420 I mean, it's a psychological trope,

00:34:06.260 I suppose,

00:34:06.860 that we all think the thoughts

00:34:09.400 of dead philosophers, right?

00:34:11.060 We think we have our own opinions,

00:34:12.700 but that's really rarely,

00:34:14.000 very, very, very rarely the case.

00:34:16.220 It's not that easy to come up

00:34:17.700 with something truly original

00:34:19.000 and generally make incremental progress at best.

00:34:22.480 And so your ability

00:34:23.880 to abstractly represent the world

00:34:25.760 and then to generate avatars

00:34:28.220 that can be defeated without you dying

00:34:30.180 is dependent on your incorporation

00:34:32.000 of a multitude of opinions.

00:34:34.160 And that in itself is a consequence of...

00:34:37.780 I mean, that works to the degree

00:34:39.120 that communication is actually free

00:34:41.020 and that you can get access

00:34:42.160 to as much thought

00:34:43.240 as you can possibly manage.

00:34:44.620 So I can't see how you can deny

00:34:47.060 the centrality of free speech

00:34:50.000 as a fundamental right

00:34:51.720 or the fundamental right, perhaps,

00:34:54.180 unless you simultaneously deny

00:34:55.980 the utility of thought.

00:34:57.680 But maybe if you are also inclined

00:35:00.580 to remove the individual

00:35:04.060 from the central position

00:35:06.380 of the political discourse,

00:35:07.940 then maybe you can also

00:35:09.520 make the case,

00:35:12.560 at least implicitly,

00:35:13.720 that individual thought doesn't matter

00:35:15.920 and that mostly it's just causing trouble.

00:35:17.940 But I think individual thought is key.

00:35:19.820 And actually, even in the outline

00:35:22.240 you've described there,

00:35:23.520 there is individual agency

00:35:25.160 in reaching a conclusion

00:35:26.980 that has been articulated before

00:35:28.540 insofar as if you are engaged

00:35:30.400 with a multitude of writers

00:35:31.500 and philosophers and artists and ideas

00:35:33.120 and you've come out with a perspective.

00:35:35.300 Well, that perspective

00:35:36.140 may not be original to you,

00:35:37.640 but the process that you've gone through

00:35:39.040 to reach that viewpoint

00:35:40.060 is individual to you.

00:35:41.720 You know, there is a power in that.

00:35:43.540 There's something important about that.

00:35:45.040 No, there's something crucial.

00:35:47.000 If you're a practicing psychotherapist,

00:35:49.800 one of the things you have to learn

00:35:51.800 is to not provide people

00:35:54.400 with your words too much.

00:35:56.960 What you want is for them

00:35:58.820 to formulate the conclusion.

00:36:02.020 And you can guide them

00:36:02.840 through the process of investigation.

00:36:04.760 You talked about

00:36:05.340 the self-authoring process,

00:36:06.820 which is online at selfauthoring.com,

00:36:10.660 that it steps people,

00:36:12.780 say, through the process

00:36:13.900 of writing an autobiography,

00:36:15.540 of analyzing their current virtues

00:36:17.480 and faults

00:36:18.020 and of making a future plan.

00:36:21.180 The utility of all of that

00:36:22.740 is dependent on

00:36:23.700 the person who's

00:36:26.480 undertaking the exercise,

00:36:29.740 generating their own

00:36:31.120 verbal representations, right?

00:36:34.520 And that seems to cement it somehow

00:36:36.840 as yours,

00:36:38.060 if you've come up with the words.

00:36:39.600 And so it's the uppermost expression

00:36:43.320 of personhood,

00:36:45.000 the ability to

00:36:46.160 have the words that you should speak

00:36:49.740 reveal themselves to you

00:36:51.040 and to have the right

00:36:51.820 to express them as you see fit.

00:36:54.560 Yes, in which case,

00:36:55.380 if you are merely repeating

00:36:57.200 an accepted script,

00:36:59.040 then to what extent

00:37:00.140 can you even say

00:37:01.640 to be an individual at all?

00:37:03.240 You know, this to me...

00:37:04.840 Well, I think that's part

00:37:05.820 of the philosophical conundrum

00:37:07.400 is that

00:37:07.880 if you believe

00:37:09.640 that all people do

00:37:10.640 is repeat

00:37:11.400 pre-digested scripts,

00:37:13.560 especially if

00:37:14.440 your view is that

00:37:16.080 the fundamental human motivation

00:37:17.840 is power

00:37:18.560 and the entire

00:37:19.740 social landscape

00:37:20.700 is nothing but a competition

00:37:22.140 between

00:37:22.680 equally,

00:37:24.340 what would you say,

00:37:25.980 selfish and single-minded 0.97

00:37:27.300 power strivers,

00:37:29.340 then there is no

00:37:30.560 individual...

00:37:31.840 there's no individual

00:37:33.400 in that conceptual world.

00:37:35.620 And it seems to me

00:37:36.660 that that's the world

00:37:37.680 that

00:37:38.040 we're being pushed

00:37:41.400 to

00:37:41.800 inhabit

00:37:43.620 and are criticized

00:37:45.160 for...

00:37:46.040 on moral grounds

00:37:46.740 for criticizing.

00:37:47.900 You seem to have

00:37:49.000 an ability

00:37:50.380 to see

00:37:51.260 slippery slopes,

00:37:52.560 we might call them,

00:37:53.360 better than most.

00:37:54.440 You know,

00:37:55.140 how do you think

00:37:56.400 you know

00:37:56.840 when you're at the top

00:37:57.860 of one of these

00:37:58.740 precipices

00:38:00.060 pointed downward,

00:38:01.420 you know,

00:38:01.600 about to

00:38:02.300 degenerate,

00:38:03.180 we might say,

00:38:03.820 into some

00:38:04.220 pretty worse things?

00:38:05.820 And what are

00:38:06.440 the signs of that?

00:38:08.740 Well,

00:38:09.160 I think

00:38:09.580 one of the...

00:38:10.320 for me,

00:38:11.220 one of the signs

00:38:12.000 was

00:38:12.500 violation

00:38:15.160 of fundamental principles.

00:38:17.800 These principles,

00:38:19.100 like the principle

00:38:19.720 of freedom of speech,

00:38:20.700 which is not just

00:38:21.660 one freedom

00:38:22.520 among many.

00:38:23.580 The conservatives

00:38:24.060 make a huge mistake

00:38:25.160 on this front

00:38:25.680 all the time

00:38:26.180 because they talk about,

00:38:27.300 well, how about

00:38:27.720 viewpoint diversity

00:38:29.620 without noticing

00:38:31.260 that now

00:38:31.860 they've made

00:38:32.340 diversity

00:38:32.900 the superordinate

00:38:33.840 moral imperative

00:38:35.380 and have subordinated

00:38:36.500 freedom of speech

00:38:37.600 to that,

00:38:38.340 which means

00:38:38.720 they've lost,

00:38:39.660 they instantly lose

00:38:40.780 when they do that.

00:38:42.240 Freedom of speech

00:38:42.940 isn't one freedom

00:38:44.060 among many,

00:38:44.760 and it's not a right,

00:38:46.320 not in any,

00:38:46.960 not in the truest sense.

00:38:48.760 It's a necessity,

00:38:50.240 and it's a moral

00:38:51.700 responsibility.

00:38:53.000 You're free to speak.

00:38:53.620 All the others

00:38:54.060 possible.

00:38:55.200 That's right,

00:38:55.780 that's right.

00:38:56.160 It's the precondition

00:38:56.940 for all other freedoms,

00:38:58.100 and you have the right

00:39:00.560 to speak freely

00:39:01.740 so that the truth

00:39:03.980 can be investigated,

00:39:05.420 and the truth

00:39:06.720 needs to be investigated

00:39:07.700 because the truth

00:39:08.560 is very complicated,

00:39:10.480 and it's dynamic

00:39:11.860 in some sense

00:39:12.600 because the future

00:39:13.500 is different

00:39:14.200 from the past,

00:39:15.420 and so there's

00:39:16.240 a cutting edge

00:39:16.980 we have to stay on

00:39:18.040 to stay adapted

00:39:19.000 because the future

00:39:20.060 is literally

00:39:21.260 not predictable

00:39:22.780 from the past,

00:39:24.300 literally and technically.

00:39:25.360 The truth is not partisan,

00:39:26.700 right?

00:39:27.040 Everyone should be invested

00:39:28.320 in discovering the truth.

00:39:29.700 Everyone should,

00:39:31.140 it should matter

00:39:32.040 equally to everyone.

00:39:33.560 It does,

00:39:33.860 it does matter.

00:39:35.000 I mean,

00:39:35.380 the truth is not partisan

00:39:36.760 in that

00:39:38.180 different partisan stakeholders

00:39:41.160 will have

00:39:41.800 different a priori presumptions

00:39:44.120 about which pathway

00:39:45.220 forward is correct,

00:39:46.460 but that's all based

00:39:47.400 on previous experience,

00:39:49.780 and previous experience

00:39:51.620 is a partial

00:39:52.500 but not total diet,

00:39:53.980 and so the proper way forward

00:39:56.400 literally emerges

00:39:57.720 as a consequence

00:39:58.500 of the free discourse

00:40:01.300 between diverse agents,

00:40:05.320 and so as soon as

00:40:06.840 that's interfered with,

00:40:08.540 the process of thought

00:40:09.920 itself is interfered with,

00:40:11.560 and thought is the process

00:40:12.960 that isn't it?

00:40:14.600 I mean,

00:40:14.820 what's thought for?

00:40:15.960 Is it not the process

00:40:17.760 that adapts us

00:40:18.620 to the horizon of change?

00:40:20.220 I mean,

00:40:20.440 that's what thought does,

00:40:21.820 and there's no distinction

00:40:22.900 between free speech

00:40:24.260 and thought.

00:40:25.220 In fact,

00:40:25.660 most of our,

00:40:26.360 even our internal thought

00:40:27.480 is mostly conducted

00:40:28.460 as a variant

00:40:30.980 of an argument.

00:40:32.340 Or as opposed

00:40:32.780 to thinking that truth

00:40:33.740 has to be,

00:40:34.420 you know,

00:40:34.660 instrumental in order

00:40:35.680 to achieve some goal.

00:40:37.160 We might think

00:40:37.660 even more fundamentally,

00:40:38.960 truth just is an expression

00:40:40.480 of our essences

00:40:41.360 of being humans,

00:40:42.400 and if we're not doing it,

00:40:43.860 or thought,

00:40:44.360 if we're not doing it,

00:40:45.540 right?

00:40:45.860 We're not human anymore.

00:40:46.920 Well,

00:40:47.480 the instrumentality issue

00:40:48.760 is dead relevant.

00:40:50.340 I mean,

00:40:51.660 one of the reasons,

00:40:53.260 when I did this interview,

00:40:54.940 for example,

00:40:55.800 and all the discussions

00:40:57.180 I have on my podcast,

00:40:58.680 they're not instrumental.

00:41:00.480 Like,

00:41:00.760 I didn't come on this podcast

00:41:02.440 because I thought,

00:41:03.440 well,

00:41:03.780 I'm going to talk

00:41:04.660 to several thousand truckers,

00:41:07.040 let's say,

00:41:07.900 and here's what I want them

00:41:09.540 to think,

00:41:10.160 and so I better make sure

00:41:11.580 that I talk in this manner,

00:41:12.940 and I have to make sure

00:41:14.140 I hit these talking points,

00:41:15.660 and there's none of that.

00:41:17.700 Zero.

00:41:18.740 And because I want to find out

00:41:21.200 what happens in the moment,

00:41:22.440 right?

00:41:22.660 We're just going to have

00:41:23.300 a discussion,

00:41:24.160 just.

00:41:24.860 I mean,

00:41:25.360 this week,

00:41:25.940 this was so comical.

00:41:28.040 So,

00:41:28.460 CNN people came after

00:41:29.880 Joe Rogan.

00:41:31.280 Yes.

00:41:31.900 Did they?

00:41:32.400 I didn't hear.

00:41:33.280 Yeah.

00:41:33.420 And one of them said,

00:41:38.140 essentially,

00:41:39.060 man,

00:41:39.420 what's going on here?

00:41:40.200 We've got this whole bureaus

00:41:41.820 devoted to fact-checking

00:41:43.440 and the truth,

00:41:44.180 and all these experts hired,

00:41:46.840 and why the hell

00:41:48.560 aren't people listening to us

00:41:49.820 when they listen to Joe Rogan,

00:41:51.360 and he's just winging it?

00:41:53.360 And I thought,

00:41:54.460 just winging it, eh?

00:41:56.980 You try just winging it

00:41:59.320 in front of 11 million people

00:42:00.960 for five years

00:42:02.000 and see if you're still

00:42:03.040 standing, buddy.

00:42:04.420 You think just winging it

00:42:06.020 is so easy.

00:42:07.440 Well,

00:42:07.660 first of all,

00:42:08.200 why aren't you doing it

00:42:09.600 if it's so damn easy?

00:42:11.220 And second,

00:42:12.380 isn't it something that

00:42:13.360 with all your resources,

00:42:15.060 you can only garner

00:42:16.260 like one-tenth of the audience

00:42:17.860 of one man

00:42:18.940 who has like

00:42:19.820 zero production

00:42:21.180 expertise in his studio?

00:42:24.060 He just puts it all out online,

00:42:25.900 and all he does

00:42:27.020 is have honest conversations.

00:42:28.760 I mean,

00:42:28.980 insofar as he's capable of that,

00:42:30.960 you know,

00:42:31.240 Joe stumbles,

00:42:32.340 and he knows that

00:42:33.440 and admits it,

00:42:34.720 and sometimes it gets too,

00:42:36.340 you know,

00:42:37.160 buttoned down on a given point,

00:42:38.620 but fundamentally,

00:42:39.620 he's just trying to do

00:42:40.860 what we're doing here.

00:42:41.920 Don't you want to just say,

00:42:43.280 leave him alone?

00:42:44.620 Whoever wants to listen to Joe,

00:42:46.260 go listen to Joe,

00:42:47.380 for goodness sakes.

00:42:48.660 Yeah, well,

00:42:49.100 part of me,

00:42:49.880 part of me now thinks,

00:42:51.960 hey,

00:42:53.080 keep at it,

00:42:53.760 guys.

00:42:54.540 Every time you attack him,

00:42:55.720 a million more subscribers

00:42:56.900 for Joe.

00:42:57.500 They kick him off Spotify.

00:42:58.980 He would have a new platform

00:43:00.640 like in two days

00:43:02.960 with twice as many listeners,

00:43:04.940 and so Joe's got to the point

00:43:06.280 where as long as he continues

00:43:08.180 to be careful,

00:43:08.980 and he is being,

00:43:10.540 I don't think he can be cancelled.

00:43:12.960 In fact,

00:43:13.400 I think all the attempts

00:43:14.480 to cancel him

00:43:15.280 only redound to his credit

00:43:17.640 and increase the rapidity

00:43:19.540 with which he's destroying

00:43:20.640 the entire legacy media.

00:43:22.000 Now this is very interesting

00:43:24.260 because the conscience here

00:43:25.580 plays a very dichotomous role.

00:43:29.020 So on the one hand,

00:43:30.180 Pinocchio is often ahead

00:43:31.600 of his conscience,

00:43:32.700 so to speak.

00:43:33.280 So he's taking the leading role

00:43:34.640 and the dialogue

00:43:36.020 is kind of choppy

00:43:36.980 and neither of them

00:43:37.600 know exactly what they're doing.

00:43:39.380 But in this situation,

00:43:40.820 it's very paradoxical

00:43:42.000 because you can see

00:43:43.960 Pinocchio's been half-turned 0.99

00:43:45.240 into brain jackass 0.98

00:43:46.280 at this point, 0.97

00:43:47.020 something you might well consider

00:43:48.320 when you remember

00:43:49.000 your adolescence.

00:43:49.820 So in this point,

00:43:54.120 the cricket,

00:43:55.360 his conscience,

00:43:56.000 does two things.

00:43:57.140 It warns him

00:43:57.980 how horrible this is going to be

00:43:59.340 and how utterly dangerous it is.

00:44:01.160 And then at the same time,

00:44:02.480 it helps him prepare

00:44:03.400 and goes along with him.

00:44:04.700 And so it's quite comical.

00:44:05.800 So watch what happens here.

00:44:07.240 And what were you...

00:44:10.420 Okay, so tell me about

00:44:11.900 your thoughts about

00:44:12.980 people's inability to speak.

00:44:15.400 What have you been thinking

00:44:16.680 or experiencing

00:44:17.560 prior to this explosion

00:44:20.040 of interest

00:44:20.720 in your particular case?

00:44:22.820 What had you been sensing?

00:44:24.460 And was that the culture at large?

00:44:26.280 Was that at Mount Ellison?

00:44:27.380 What had you been experiencing

00:44:28.520 that was worrisome to you?

00:44:30.780 That is at large.

00:44:31.860 You know, when we hear stories

00:44:32.940 about people being,

00:44:35.780 being silenced

00:44:38.300 in one way or another

00:44:39.380 or when we see

00:44:41.540 that people are being,

00:44:42.780 I don't know

00:44:43.120 if that's the term in English,

00:44:44.200 but disreputable,

00:44:47.220 I mean,

00:44:47.700 being made into

00:44:48.880 diabolizing them, 0.88

00:44:51.020 you know,

00:44:51.400 saying words,

00:44:52.620 you know,

00:44:53.420 this or that,

00:44:54.500 racist or that,

00:44:55.340 just because someone...

00:44:56.060 Having their reputation attacked.

00:44:57.840 Yes, exactly.

00:44:58.960 And so that...

00:45:00.320 And that is actually,

00:45:02.380 it's ironically,

00:45:03.720 a contradiction

00:45:04.400 with where I come from

00:45:05.740 where we know

00:45:06.680 we have a powerful group

00:45:08.320 or more powerful

00:45:10.000 than other groups,

00:45:10.900 but Lebanon has issues.

00:45:12.480 But people still express

00:45:14.380 their opinions there

00:45:15.640 despite stories,

00:45:17.740 you know,

00:45:18.060 extreme stories

00:45:18.920 of, you know,

00:45:20.100 killing here and there,

00:45:21.260 you know.

00:45:21.560 But I mean,

00:45:22.560 they can teach freely.

00:45:25.240 They can criticize freely.

00:45:27.440 and I do criticize

00:45:29.780 things there

00:45:31.420 and I have never imagined

00:45:34.300 in my whole life

00:45:35.260 that my problems

00:45:36.600 would be from Canada

00:45:38.120 and not like

00:45:39.340 coming from

00:45:40.820 where I come from,

00:45:42.300 if you see what I mean.

00:45:43.880 So what did you write about

00:45:45.740 that got,

00:45:46.520 that caused trouble

00:45:47.400 and for how long?

00:45:49.840 Tell us all about that.

00:45:51.500 It's very hard

00:45:52.460 to know precisely,

00:45:53.820 but I,

00:45:54.420 but,

00:45:54.920 you know,

00:45:56.060 some of the things,

00:45:56.980 it's public information.

00:45:58.020 I'm not saying anything

00:45:59.380 that went in emails

00:46:02.600 or in social media

00:46:04.940 from the university

00:46:05.900 or went in the media,

00:46:08.780 actually,

00:46:09.080 if you read the stories

00:46:09.800 of being accused

00:46:10.760 of being racist,

00:46:12.800 of being,

00:46:13.980 you know,

00:46:14.240 all these terms

00:46:15.380 like encouraging

00:46:17.080 sexual violence,

00:46:18.820 etc.

00:46:20.620 So what,

00:46:21.040 those were the accusations

00:46:22.020 against you?

00:46:22.880 They were accusations

00:46:23.560 of racist,

00:46:24.500 racism,

00:46:25.120 they were accusations

00:46:25.860 that you were

00:46:26.540 promoting sexual violence?

00:46:28.860 Yes. 0.79

00:46:30.080 What else,

00:46:30.720 what else were you accused of?

00:46:32.260 It seems odd

00:46:32.980 to be promoting

00:46:33.580 sexual violence,

00:46:34.580 but I can explain

00:46:36.120 why perhaps,

00:46:37.360 perhaps people,

00:46:39.160 maybe younger people

00:46:40.220 think in black and white

00:46:41.720 and don't see the nuances

00:46:43.460 and I can understand

00:46:44.840 that when we are young,

00:46:46.260 sometimes it's like that,

00:46:47.580 but I try

00:46:48.800 I think I try

00:46:49.860 to bring some perspective

00:46:51.100 by comparing,

00:46:52.240 you know,

00:46:52.480 places worse than Canada.

00:46:55.660 You know,

00:46:55.820 Canada has issues,

00:46:56.760 of course,

00:46:56.980 like all the countries,

00:46:57.880 but Canada is not

00:46:58.920 as bad as we think.

00:47:00.800 Had it been that bad,

00:47:02.240 I would have not immigrated here. 0.85

00:47:03.980 My family would have not,

00:47:05.260 I would have not chosen

00:47:06.240 to stay.

00:47:07.540 So,

00:47:07.740 so maybe I may have said

00:47:09.720 in wars,

00:47:12.680 war times

00:47:13.480 or under certain

00:47:14.760 radical groups,

00:47:16.000 you may have

00:47:16.820 rape culture 0.90

00:47:18.400 and by no means

00:47:20.200 I meant to be saying

00:47:21.480 minimizing the experience

00:47:23.520 of people

00:47:24.260 going through

00:47:25.400 through horrible things

00:47:27.160 like rape 1.00

00:47:27.760 and then that's sexual.

00:47:28.880 So that's absolutely

00:47:30.060 not the case,

00:47:31.760 but

00:47:32.360 I think it's all

00:47:34.040 about the blog

00:47:34.980 in all honesty,

00:47:36.100 all what we hear

00:47:37.380 in the media

00:47:37.860 is not the main thing

00:47:39.760 is the blog,

00:47:41.120 is it's disturbing.

00:47:42.640 Okay,

00:47:44.280 so I've cut this

00:47:45.000 a little bit,

00:47:45.540 but what happens

00:47:46.160 in the movie

00:47:46.640 is that he goes

00:47:47.700 to the bottom

00:47:48.160 of the ocean

00:47:48.700 and he starts

00:47:49.220 to ask about Monstro

00:47:50.440 and as soon as

00:47:51.760 he asks any

00:47:52.440 of the fish

00:47:52.920 down there,

00:47:53.820 the denizens

00:47:54.440 of the sub-oceanic world,

00:47:57.720 where Monstro is,

00:47:58.660 they just run away

00:47:59.440 and so Monstro

00:48:00.500 is he who cannot

00:48:01.480 be named,

00:48:02.940 right?

00:48:03.460 And I'm sure

00:48:04.040 you've encountered

00:48:04.640 that in your reading

00:48:05.520 before,

00:48:06.540 right?

00:48:06.820 That's the hallmark

00:48:09.340 of

00:48:09.680 in the Harry Potter series.

00:48:14.940 Right,

00:48:15.600 see now,

00:48:16.060 you've done it.

00:48:17.920 Yeah.

00:48:19.100 So this represents

00:48:20.160 something so terrible

00:48:21.100 that it can't even

00:48:21.920 be talked about.

00:48:23.300 Okay,

00:48:23.580 so what happens

00:48:24.280 is Pinocchio

00:48:24.960 ends up not only

00:48:25.860 at the bottom

00:48:26.300 of the ocean,

00:48:27.140 but he has to go

00:48:28.040 to the deepest part

00:48:29.240 of the bottom

00:48:29.800 of the ocean

00:48:30.420 where the most

00:48:31.400 terrible thing

00:48:32.340 rests.

00:48:34.160 And so

00:48:34.440 we're cutting

00:48:36.120 to the point

00:48:36.620 where he does that.

00:48:38.740 You had it yourself

00:48:39.380 recently with that 0.84

00:48:40.060 ludicrous Marvel comics

00:48:41.140 thing where you

00:48:41.600 became the Red Skull.

00:48:43.560 And that to me

00:48:44.580 was a perfect example

00:48:45.880 of the banality

00:48:46.780 of an artistic

00:48:48.920 endeavor

00:48:49.460 that becomes

00:48:50.560 an exercise

00:48:51.420 in political pedagogy

00:48:53.280 because that

00:48:53.880 was quite clearly,

00:48:55.640 I mean,

00:48:55.880 you couldn't even

00:48:56.740 say it was satirical

00:48:57.640 because it

00:48:59.280 cannot be satirically

00:49:00.220 effective

00:49:00.620 if the thing

00:49:01.700 that they are

00:49:02.120 comparing you to

00:49:02.960 is the precise

00:49:03.640 opposite of the

00:49:04.280 thing you believe.

00:49:05.020 I mean,

00:49:05.160 of all the sort

00:49:06.500 of public figures

00:49:07.040 I can think of,

00:49:08.020 you have

00:49:08.680 the most clear

00:49:10.100 track record

00:49:10.840 of opposing

00:49:11.440 tyranny

00:49:11.880 in all its forms,

00:49:13.180 which anyone

00:49:13.760 who knows anything

00:49:14.300 about your work

00:49:14.860 will know.

00:49:15.700 You've spent years

00:49:16.420 lecturing about

00:49:17.100 the evils of

00:49:17.540 authoritarianism,

00:49:18.540 including Nazism.

00:49:19.820 So the idea

00:49:20.400 that you would

00:49:20.800 then become

00:49:21.220 this super magic

00:49:22.340 Nazi 0.93

00:49:23.340 is propagandistic. 0.94

00:49:26.800 It's totally

00:49:27.920 banal artistically.

00:49:29.720 Firstly,

00:49:30.140 it's not satirically,

00:49:31.620 right?

00:49:31.800 But also,

00:49:33.020 it's just,

00:49:33.800 it's just,

00:49:34.480 it's just,

00:49:36.140 do you know

00:49:36.380 what it reminds me

00:49:36.960 of?

00:49:37.120 Actually,

00:49:37.200 I don't know

00:49:37.440 if you remember

00:49:38.280 after the fatwa

00:49:38.940 against Salman Rushdie,

00:49:40.520 there was a film

00:49:41.780 made in Pakistan

00:49:42.540 called

00:49:43.580 International Gorillas

00:49:44.520 where they turned

00:49:45.980 Salman Rushdie

00:49:46.780 into this evil 0.55

00:49:47.940 villain playboy

00:49:50.480 who was colluding

00:49:51.100 with the Israeli

00:49:52.340 military services.

00:49:53.820 And at the end

00:49:54.160 of the film,

00:49:54.540 these flying copies

00:49:55.780 of the Quran

00:49:56.440 float down

00:49:57.540 and shoot laser beams 1.00

00:49:58.420 into his head 1.00

00:49:58.900 and kill him off. 1.00

00:49:59.480 And that is such 1.00

00:50:00.740 a ridiculous, 0.99

00:50:01.560 laughable film. 0.99

00:50:02.920 You know,

00:50:03.060 you put your enemy

00:50:03.740 as the main villain

00:50:04.480 and you just

00:50:05.040 misrepresent him

00:50:06.300 in that way.

00:50:06.600 Well,

00:50:06.700 that's just what

00:50:07.080 they did to you.

00:50:07.600 It's as banal as that.

00:50:09.200 And that's,

00:50:09.560 I think people

00:50:09.920 are sick of that.

00:50:11.980 Well,

00:50:12.060 the response

00:50:12.760 thankfully seems

00:50:14.360 to indicate

00:50:14.960 that no,

00:50:16.040 it didn't,

00:50:16.820 that people,

00:50:17.920 it didn't do me

00:50:18.780 any harm

00:50:19.360 as far as I can tell.

00:50:20.960 I mean,

00:50:21.220 it was very

00:50:21.900 shocking to me

00:50:24.420 that it happened.

00:50:25.600 It took me

00:50:26.180 about 12 hours

00:50:26.980 to sort of

00:50:27.520 regain my composure

00:50:28.420 because I actually

00:50:29.120 couldn't believe it

00:50:29.900 to begin with.

00:50:30.620 I was sure

00:50:31.360 that it was

00:50:31.860 a fabrication,

00:50:34.440 especially,

00:50:35.700 but then

00:50:36.180 it was even more

00:50:37.380 shocking when I found

00:50:38.160 out who,

00:50:38.560 who had authored it.

00:50:40.300 You know,

00:50:40.840 it wasn't,

00:50:41.540 it was someone

00:50:41.940 who had an

00:50:42.640 intellectual reputation.

00:50:44.500 And so.

00:50:45.820 But he's an activist,

00:50:46.920 isn't he?

00:50:47.280 He's a,

00:50:48.120 he's an intersectional activist.

00:50:49.420 He definitely,

00:50:50.280 his opinions

00:50:50.780 definitely place him

00:50:51.800 on the radical,

00:50:53.060 on the side

00:50:53.560 of the radical left.

00:50:55.440 So,

00:50:56.220 it's very difficult

00:50:57.580 to,

00:50:58.160 so there's an attack

00:51:00.020 on the essence

00:51:02.760 of free speech.

00:51:03.660 I mean,

00:51:03.840 I remember

00:51:04.480 reading Derrida.

00:51:06.620 Derrida

00:51:07.080 criticized

00:51:08.000 our culture,

00:51:09.320 Western culture,

00:51:10.080 as phallogocentric.

00:51:12.640 Yeah.

00:51:12.880 And it's really

00:51:13.480 actually quite a

00:51:14.340 precise word.

00:51:15.640 So the phallic 0.97

00:51:16.740 part of it

00:51:17.420 is masculine,

00:51:18.620 obviously,

00:51:19.620 related to the phallus,

00:51:20.960 to the,

00:51:21.200 and logos

00:51:23.060 is,

00:51:24.160 well,

00:51:24.400 that's the central

00:51:25.240 concept of

00:51:26.920 Greek rationalism,

00:51:28.240 but it's also

00:51:28.840 the central concept

00:51:29.760 of Christianity.

00:51:30.760 And the logos

00:51:32.140 is

00:51:32.940 something like

00:51:34.940 the magical power

00:51:36.100 of genuine

00:51:37.640 and true speech.

00:51:39.260 It's something

00:51:40.100 like that.

00:51:40.720 And there are

00:51:42.020 representations of

00:51:43.180 the magical

00:51:44.320 power of speech

00:51:45.460 that predate

00:51:46.620 Greece and

00:51:47.620 Christianity.

00:51:48.400 You see it

00:51:49.140 in Mesopotamia

00:51:50.040 the equivalent

00:51:53.460 to the Savior

00:51:54.300 in ancient

00:51:55.160 Mesopotamian

00:51:55.980 religious thinking

00:51:57.860 was Marduk,

00:51:58.580 and he could

00:51:59.100 speak magic words.

00:52:00.820 He had eyes

00:52:01.360 all the way

00:52:02.400 around his head,

00:52:03.160 which meant

00:52:03.860 that he paid

00:52:04.460 attention to

00:52:05.100 everything,

00:52:05.580 but he could

00:52:06.320 speak magic words.

00:52:07.360 And so that idea

00:52:11.000 of the centrality

00:52:13.420 of speech

00:52:14.100 and its

00:52:15.660 association

00:52:16.360 with the

00:52:17.900 very fabric

00:52:18.580 of reality,

00:52:19.280 that's been

00:52:20.360 an idea

00:52:20.820 that has

00:52:22.240 strived

00:52:23.280 to make

00:52:23.660 itself manifest

00:52:24.400 for thousands

00:52:24.980 and thousands

00:52:25.500 of years.

00:52:26.620 I mean,

00:52:27.200 in the Judeo-Christian

00:52:29.100 tradition,

00:52:29.740 in the biblical

00:52:30.200 tradition,

00:52:31.440 the word

00:52:32.160 is given

00:52:33.080 cosmological

00:52:34.260 status as

00:52:35.360 the thing

00:52:36.040 that brings

00:52:37.040 habitable order

00:52:38.180 out of chaos,

00:52:39.560 and it's

00:52:40.140 identified with

00:52:41.020 divinity itself.

00:52:42.220 And so the

00:52:44.320 assault on

00:52:45.160 free speech

00:52:46.180 is an

00:52:46.520 assault on

00:52:47.060 a principle

00:52:47.540 that's

00:52:48.700 fundamental

00:52:49.380 beyond,

00:52:50.240 say,

00:52:51.180 its central

00:52:51.700 importance to

00:52:53.280 the enlightenment.

00:52:54.920 And it's

00:52:56.600 an assault

00:52:57.400 on the idea

00:52:58.640 of the logos

00:52:59.140 itself.

00:53:00.340 I agree.

00:53:01.040 This is why I

00:53:01.520 always mistrusted

00:53:02.380 the post-structuralists.

00:53:04.560 When I was

00:53:05.080 studying for

00:53:05.600 English,

00:53:05.960 it was the

00:53:06.620 Derrida and

00:53:07.180 Foucault and

00:53:07.700 Lyotard,

00:53:08.080 these were

00:53:08.840 taken as a

00:53:09.400 given,

00:53:09.700 and this

00:53:09.880 idea that

00:53:10.260 there is no

00:53:11.500 truth beyond

00:53:12.120 language.

00:53:12.580 Language is

00:53:13.260 all.

00:53:13.620 Language is

00:53:14.020 the way in

00:53:14.320 which we

00:53:14.560 construct our

00:53:15.160 perception of

00:53:15.640 reality and

00:53:16.180 our perception

00:53:16.600 of truth.

00:53:17.480 And actually,

00:53:18.020 there is no

00:53:18.400 truth at the

00:53:18.860 heart of it.

00:53:19.300 I just found

00:53:19.740 it so

00:53:20.020 depressingly

00:53:21.800 pessimistic,

00:53:22.560 because it

00:53:22.800 also means

00:53:23.180 that you

00:53:23.400 can construct

00:53:24.740 any kind

00:53:25.300 of reality

00:53:25.800 you like.

00:53:27.500 Maybe that's

00:53:28.640 part of the

00:53:29.160 motivation for

00:53:30.120 it,

00:53:30.580 is the

00:53:32.400 hypothetical

00:53:33.900 lack of

00:53:34.740 constraint by

00:53:36.240 anything,

00:53:36.820 that that

00:53:37.160 seems to

00:53:37.820 imply,

00:53:39.220 right?

00:53:39.480 I mean,

00:53:39.940 if there's

00:53:40.740 no canonical

00:53:41.460 reality,

00:53:42.760 well,

00:53:43.020 there's no

00:53:43.340 responsibility,

00:53:44.300 that's for

00:53:44.740 sure.

00:53:45.720 You could

00:53:46.380 argue that

00:53:47.340 there's no

00:53:47.700 meaning and

00:53:48.220 it's deeply

00:53:48.660 pessimistic,

00:53:49.400 but maybe the

00:53:49.900 payoff for that

00:53:50.480 is no

00:53:50.760 responsibility,

00:53:51.340 but there's

00:53:51.860 also no

00:53:52.280 constraint of

00:53:53.000 any sort.

00:53:53.460 There's

00:53:53.560 certainly no

00:53:53.940 ethical

00:53:54.300 constraint.

00:53:56.100 And,

00:53:56.380 I mean,

00:53:57.360 I keep

00:53:57.660 trying to

00:53:58.100 dig to see

00:53:58.720 what's at

00:53:59.080 the bottom

00:53:59.480 of this

00:54:00.040 anti-Logo

00:54:01.820 sentiment,

00:54:03.060 and it's

00:54:04.880 a very

00:54:05.220 difficult

00:54:06.060 thing to

00:54:06.740 make,

00:54:07.220 to get

00:54:07.980 right.

00:54:08.780 Maybe it's

00:54:09.120 not even as

00:54:09.680 deliberate as

00:54:10.320 the way that

00:54:11.020 it sounds.

00:54:12.220 Maybe it is

00:54:12.960 just the

00:54:13.320 fact that

00:54:13.700 these theories,

00:54:15.420 for whatever

00:54:15.780 reason,

00:54:16.220 became fashionable

00:54:17.080 in universities

00:54:18.120 about 20

00:54:18.760 years ago,

00:54:19.220 and now,

00:54:19.660 for whatever

00:54:20.000 reason,

00:54:20.440 they have

00:54:20.840 escaped into

00:54:22.640 the mainstream.

00:54:24.000 I mean,

00:54:24.460 most of the

00:54:24.800 people that

00:54:25.160 push this

00:54:25.540 stuff don't

00:54:26.800 read Foucault,

00:54:27.820 and they

00:54:28.200 don't know

00:54:28.860 about the

00:54:29.540 people whose

00:54:30.200 ideas they've

00:54:31.260 imbibed and

00:54:31.940 actually very

00:54:32.400 much misunderstood.

00:54:33.220 The whole

00:54:34.440 point of the

00:54:34.880 post-modernists

00:54:35.400 was to

00:54:35.960 trash the

00:54:37.840 notion of

00:54:38.500 grand narratives.

00:54:39.460 What we have

00:54:39.940 now in the

00:54:40.700 social justice

00:54:41.220 movement is an

00:54:41.740 incredible grand

00:54:42.460 narrative.

00:54:43.000 We are on the

00:54:44.120 right side of

00:54:44.660 history, we are

00:54:45.360 the righteous

00:54:45.760 ones, and

00:54:46.180 everyone else

00:54:46.580 needs to be 0.98

00:54:47.440 decimated.

00:54:48.860 It seems to

00:54:50.860 me that this

00:54:52.580 stuff, I don't

00:54:53.320 think it's as

00:54:53.820 conspiratorial as

00:54:54.980 that.

00:54:55.180 I think it's

00:54:55.600 just circumstances

00:54:57.480 of history, one

00:54:58.480 thing after

00:54:58.880 another, and this

00:54:59.420 is where we're

00:55:00.200 at now, but

00:55:01.220 the end

00:55:01.560 result that we

00:55:02.120 have to deal

00:55:02.660 with, which I

00:55:03.520 think you've

00:55:03.840 alluded to, is

00:55:04.480 this idea that

00:55:05.640 if there is no

00:55:06.240 such thing as 0.74

00:55:06.760 reality beyond

00:55:07.400 language, then

00:55:07.960 you are at

00:55:08.700 liberty to

00:55:09.260 construct whatever

00:55:10.820 pseudo-reality

00:55:13.060 that you

00:55:13.540 desire or is

00:55:14.780 easiest for

00:55:15.460 you.

00:55:16.300 We see

00:55:16.860 elements of

00:55:18.080 this reverberating

00:55:18.880 in a lot of

00:55:19.680 the discourse at

00:55:20.300 the moment of

00:55:20.720 things like

00:55:21.120 lived experience.

00:55:22.620 You can present

00:55:23.780 as much data as

00:55:24.920 you want, but

00:55:25.880 it will be

00:55:26.220 disregarded if

00:55:26.980 it doesn't

00:55:27.380 tally with

00:55:28.380 what lived

00:55:29.080 experience really

00:55:29.560 means, which is

00:55:30.060 what I want

00:55:30.600 to be true.

00:55:31.640 Well, there's

00:55:32.060 also this

00:55:32.600 insistence that

00:55:33.500 seems part of

00:55:34.200 it that, I

00:55:35.200 mean, I

00:55:36.440 objected to

00:55:37.140 some legislation

00:55:37.860 that was

00:55:38.240 passed in

00:55:38.780 Canada, and

00:55:39.400 that's sort

00:55:40.000 of what

00:55:40.520 propelled me

00:55:41.340 into public

00:55:42.180 visibility, let's

00:55:44.100 say.

00:55:45.120 And to begin

00:55:45.900 with, I was

00:55:46.480 mostly concentrating

00:55:48.320 on the

00:55:49.420 violation of

00:55:50.260 the principle

00:55:51.360 of free speech

00:55:52.120 that the

00:55:53.140 legislation seemed

00:55:53.940 to me to

00:55:54.320 represent, because

00:55:55.700 it compelled

00:55:56.720 certain utterances.

00:55:58.000 And I was

00:55:58.900 never a fan of

00:56:00.040 hate speech

00:56:00.580 laws to begin

00:56:01.420 with, and

00:56:02.100 this was

00:56:03.500 something beyond

00:56:04.480 hate speech

00:56:05.080 laws, because

00:56:05.640 hate speech

00:56:06.120 laws stop you

00:56:07.140 from saying

00:56:07.840 things, whereas

00:56:09.100 compelled speech

00:56:10.040 laws force you

00:56:11.260 to say something

00:56:12.200 which is much

00:56:13.060 worse, even

00:56:14.200 though the first

00:56:14.800 one is also

00:56:15.580 inadvised, ill

00:56:17.080 advised, as far

00:56:17.900 as I'm concerned.

00:56:18.480 So now you

00:56:19.920 might ask, how

00:56:21.140 did Geppetto

00:56:22.040 get in the

00:56:22.480 whale?

00:56:22.940 And the answer

00:56:23.420 to that is

00:56:23.880 it's never

00:56:24.240 really made

00:56:24.780 that clear

00:56:25.240 in the movie.

00:56:26.600 But I can

00:56:27.440 tell you some

00:56:28.000 things about

00:56:28.540 that, is

00:56:29.000 that if you

00:56:32.300 conceptualize

00:56:33.200 your historical

00:56:34.020 tradition as a

00:56:36.100 personality, like a

00:56:37.440 body of laws and

00:56:38.540 customs, say, it's

00:56:41.760 not alive, it's

00:56:44.100 dead, right?

00:56:45.280 Because it's

00:56:45.820 composed of the

00:56:46.460 past, and

00:56:47.640 because it's

00:56:48.120 dead, it can't

00:56:49.260 come up with

00:56:49.740 anything new.

00:56:51.000 So if it

00:56:51.760 encounters something

00:56:52.800 new, it's

00:56:54.660 stopped, and

00:56:55.680 that's what's

00:56:56.100 happened to

00:56:56.960 Geppetto, that

00:56:58.100 he's engulfed by

00:56:59.920 this entity that

00:57:01.500 represents the

00:57:02.260 absolute unknown,

00:57:03.180 and he cannot

00:57:03.820 figure out how to

00:57:04.820 get out, and

00:57:05.400 the reason for

00:57:05.940 that is none of

00:57:06.660 the things he

00:57:07.320 knows, so none

00:57:08.600 of the things that

00:57:09.280 history has

00:57:09.860 produced as a

00:57:10.540 body of knowledge,

00:57:11.440 are sufficient to

00:57:12.460 deal with the

00:57:13.580 fundamental problem.

00:57:15.320 That doesn't mean

00:57:16.080 they're useless, it

00:57:18.080 just means that, just 1.00

00:57:20.020 like the puppet is

00:57:21.560 lost without the

00:57:22.520 father, the father

00:57:24.040 is also lost

00:57:25.080 without the

00:57:25.600 puppet, and

00:57:26.740 that's the

00:57:27.940 relationship between

00:57:28.900 you and history,

00:57:29.900 your history.

00:57:30.980 When you study

00:57:31.640 history, you think,

00:57:32.500 well, you're

00:57:32.780 studying a record of

00:57:33.800 events in the

00:57:34.380 past, and that's

00:57:35.120 not right.

00:57:36.180 What you're

00:57:36.660 studying is the

00:57:37.740 circumstances that

00:57:39.680 gave rise to

00:57:40.620 you as a being,

00:57:42.360 and unless you

00:57:43.520 understand your

00:57:44.740 history, in every

00:57:46.320 way you possibly

00:57:47.080 can, then you're

00:57:48.240 an incomplete

00:57:48.760 creature.

00:57:49.960 You don't know

00:57:51.200 enough to move

00:57:51.880 forward.

00:57:54.020 In the same way,

00:57:55.280 your culture, being 0.55

00:57:57.440 composed of dead

00:57:59.440 fathers, so to

00:58:00.740 speak, can't

00:58:02.000 progress without you

00:58:03.000 because you're

00:58:03.600 its eyes.

00:58:05.140 And there's an

00:58:05.620 Egyptian story that

00:58:07.400 features the god

00:58:08.200 Horus, who I've

00:58:08.960 talked to you about

00:58:09.740 before, who

00:58:10.840 actually resurrects

00:58:11.960 his father from

00:58:12.600 the dead by

00:58:13.260 giving him an

00:58:13.980 eye.

00:58:15.900 So Geppetto

00:58:16.740 can't figure out

00:58:17.380 how to get out

00:58:17.860 of this whale

00:58:18.340 without help.

00:58:20.160 Alright, now

00:58:20.580 something very

00:58:21.220 sophisticated happens

00:58:22.420 here, so, and

00:58:23.520 I have to explain

00:58:24.320 it to you at

00:58:25.240 multiple levels at

00:58:26.220 the same time.

00:58:27.020 So now, Geppetto

00:58:29.100 is hungry, and

00:58:32.580 when the whale

00:58:34.300 opens its mouth, a

00:58:35.180 lot of fish come

00:58:36.180 in.

00:58:37.060 Now one of the

00:58:37.540 things I want you

00:58:38.200 to think about, you

00:58:38.920 can just put this

00:58:39.520 in the back of

00:58:40.020 your mind, is that

00:58:40.800 one of the oldest

00:58:41.760 symbolic representations

00:58:45.580 of Christ is a

00:58:46.960 fish, and all of

00:58:48.420 his followers were

00:58:49.180 fishermen, and so

00:58:49.980 there's this weird

00:58:50.620 relationship between

00:58:52.240 the messianic figure

00:58:53.900 who's at the base of

00:58:54.820 at least at the

00:58:55.680 base of Christian

00:58:56.360 culture, and the

00:58:57.400 idea of things that

00:58:58.320 are pulled up from

00:58:59.080 the depths.

00:59:00.180 Now here's what

00:59:00.740 happens in this part

00:59:02.040 of the movie, it's

00:59:02.660 so amazing.

00:59:04.340 So, Geppetto is

00:59:05.340 looking for fish, and

00:59:06.920 the reason for that

00:59:07.540 is he doesn't think

00:59:08.160 he can get out of

00:59:08.660 the whale, and so

00:59:09.340 he might as well

00:59:09.800 have some fish while

00:59:10.660 he's in there.

00:59:12.320 So he's given up

00:59:13.120 on getting out.

00:59:14.360 Now what happens

00:59:15.060 is that the whale

00:59:15.800 swallows Pinocchio

00:59:16.780 as if he's a

00:59:17.560 fish.

00:59:19.700 So Pinocchio is

00:59:20.780 put into the same

00:59:21.560 category as fish, and

00:59:22.980 it happens to

00:59:24.580 Geppetto a couple

00:59:25.420 of times, he

00:59:25.960 mistakes Pinocchio

00:59:27.160 for a fish, you'll

00:59:28.280 see.

00:59:28.660 So what that

00:59:29.620 means in some

00:59:30.200 sense is that

00:59:30.860 Geppetto can't 1.00

00:59:31.600 distinguish between

00:59:32.560 the fish that

00:59:33.760 will feed you for

00:59:34.440 the day, and

00:59:35.380 whatever it is that

00:59:36.100 Pinocchio represents.

00:59:37.580 So you can think

00:59:38.180 about Pinocchio as

00:59:39.280 a fisherman, instead

00:59:40.420 of as a fish.

00:59:41.820 So you can think

00:59:42.740 about it this way, and

00:59:43.800 here's an old

00:59:45.980 saying, if you give

00:59:47.840 a man a fish, you 1.00

00:59:48.600 feed him for one

00:59:49.220 day, but if you

00:59:49.720 teach him to fish, you

00:59:51.200 feed him forever.

00:59:52.320 So the idea is it's

00:59:53.240 better to develop the

00:59:54.560 skill to acquire

00:59:55.620 something than it is

00:59:56.540 to have the thing.

00:59:58.220 Now what Pinocchio

00:59:59.020 represents is, he's

01:00:01.940 like a meta fish.

01:00:02.980 I know this is a

01:00:04.000 strange way of

01:00:04.640 thinking about it.

01:00:06.600 Geppetto's problem

01:00:07.340 isn't that he's

01:00:08.060 hungry.

01:00:09.820 His problem is that

01:00:10.720 he can't get out

01:00:11.300 of the whale, and

01:00:11.940 so what he's

01:00:12.360 fishing for isn't

01:00:14.220 something to eat, it's

01:00:15.820 something that will

01:00:16.940 help him get out

01:00:17.580 of the whale.

01:00:18.360 But he can't

01:00:19.220 recognize the

01:00:20.300 difference between

01:00:21.000 the proximate solution,

01:00:23.240 which is so that

01:00:24.300 he'll just no longer

01:00:25.080 be hungry, so he's

01:00:25.860 got a very short-term

01:00:26.600 outlook, and a

01:00:27.540 solution to the

01:00:28.160 much broader

01:00:28.640 problem.

01:00:29.140 So what happens

01:00:29.800 is, the whale

01:00:30.900 swallows a bunch of

01:00:31.660 fish, and Pinocchio's

01:00:32.540 in there, and

01:00:33.040 Geppetto's fishing

01:00:33.920 away, and he

01:00:34.680 catches Pinocchio, and

01:00:36.380 Pinocchio announces

01:00:37.200 himself, and

01:00:38.220 Geppetto says, tells

01:00:40.740 him to be quiet,

01:00:41.340 because he's

01:00:41.600 interfering with

01:00:42.180 him fishing, and

01:00:42.760 then when he

01:00:43.120 turns to hug

01:00:43.700 Pinocchio, because

01:00:44.600 he wakes up, he

01:00:45.620 actually hugs a

01:00:46.340 fish, and then he

01:00:47.240 discards the fish.

01:00:48.720 So then he

01:00:49.300 figures out that

01:00:49.880 Pinocchio's there.

01:00:51.180 Then Geppetto

01:00:51.880 decides that, well,

01:00:52.740 they're going to

01:00:53.020 have to live inside

01:00:53.720 the whale, and

01:00:54.480 it's another idea of

01:00:55.880 his blindness at

01:00:56.780 this point, because

01:00:57.480 he's composed of

01:00:58.800 the dead past, so

01:00:59.780 to speak.

01:01:00.140 So what Pinocchio

01:01:01.300 does is start to

01:01:02.560 destroy the ship

01:01:03.800 itself, which is

01:01:05.020 what they're floating

01:01:05.640 in, in the whale, to

01:01:06.680 start a fire.

01:01:08.220 And the fire makes

01:01:09.220 the whale mad enough

01:01:10.120 to spit them out, and

01:01:10.980 the whale then

01:01:11.560 transforms itself into

01:01:12.660 a dragon and tries 0.98

01:01:13.540 to kill them, because 0.74

01:01:14.160 it's a fire-breathing 1.00

01:01:15.060 entity at that point.

01:01:16.720 And so part of the

01:01:17.880 understory is, it's

01:01:19.840 better to figure out

01:01:20.580 how to fish than to

01:01:21.560 fish, or that, more

01:01:23.400 profoundly, it's

01:01:24.160 better to figure out

01:01:25.040 how to do something

01:01:25.860 than to merely benefit

01:01:27.100 from the thing

01:01:27.760 itself.

01:01:28.660 Pinocchio represents

01:01:29.680 that which can do

01:01:30.920 new things.

01:01:32.020 So he's a hero, and

01:01:33.660 he's willing to

01:01:34.220 destroy part of the

01:01:35.240 current order, that's

01:01:36.460 the ship, in order

01:01:37.740 to produce a new

01:01:39.380 strategy that will

01:01:41.420 actually free them

01:01:42.420 from the whale.

01:01:43.140 Now, he wants to get

01:01:43.760 his father out of

01:01:44.500 there, too.

01:01:45.100 So that's what

01:01:45.700 happens in the next

01:01:46.440 five minutes, I

01:01:47.640 would say.

01:01:47.980 So, all of this was

01:01:51.920 happening around me, but

01:01:52.600 I felt like a kind of

01:01:53.440 stoic indifference to

01:01:54.620 it, because I felt a

01:01:56.040 sort of awakening in

01:01:56.940 me that made all of

01:02:00.240 the hubbub sort of

01:02:03.300 irrelevant.

01:02:04.260 Now, it sounds like

01:02:05.020 you had decided to do

01:02:06.200 this.

01:02:07.880 Yeah, I think I had

01:02:09.540 been sort of

01:02:11.540 unconsciously waiting

01:02:12.640 for an opportunity, and

01:02:13.680 when it happened, when

01:02:14.500 I blurted things out,

01:02:15.780 and it happened, then

01:02:18.280 I embraced it, and I

01:02:19.400 realized that I had, I

01:02:21.660 was not ashamed, and I

01:02:23.100 was not contrite, and I

01:02:25.040 was proud.

01:02:26.140 I was actually proud.

01:02:28.500 And when...

01:02:29.080 So now, and then, when

01:02:29.780 did you write the essay

01:02:30.800 that was published with

01:02:32.960 Barry Weiss?

01:02:33.980 I don't want to rush you

01:02:35.040 if there's more to

01:02:35.780 unpack, I'd like to hear

01:02:36.920 it.

01:02:37.300 I realize that, you

01:02:38.860 know, I don't want to

01:02:40.240 tax you either, but...

01:02:45.780 I had...

01:02:47.280 I knew I wanted to

01:02:49.860 write about the whole

01:02:50.920 thing, so I had taken a

01:02:53.000 lot of notes over the

01:02:53.840 years, and so my first

01:02:55.040 draft was about 5,000

01:02:56.980 words, and it contained

01:02:59.120 a lot of information

01:03:01.080 centered around the

01:03:02.140 actual Zoom meeting, and

01:03:03.600 then, you know, the

01:03:05.860 effects on the students,

01:03:07.640 and, you know, what had

01:03:09.500 happened to me, and then

01:03:11.560 I realized, like, what...

01:03:12.700 The reason why I did...

01:03:13.820 Why I said the thing in

01:03:14.680 the meeting in the first

01:03:15.420 place was because I was

01:03:16.700 trying to model for the

01:03:17.680 students, and that was

01:03:18.660 what was animating me, and

01:03:20.800 so I, you know, I handed

01:03:23.420 it off to a friend who

01:03:25.500 edited it and really

01:03:26.380 hacked it way down, you 0.93

01:03:28.420 know, cut out a lot of

01:03:29.280 the stuff, and then I did

01:03:31.060 another draft where I was

01:03:33.620 really trying to get to

01:03:34.860 the main ideas and boil

01:03:36.320 them down as crisply as I

01:03:37.820 could, and then Barry took

01:03:39.440 a look at it, and she made

01:03:41.240 a few changes.

01:03:41.820 And how did you get

01:03:43.400 through the fair, through

01:03:44.440 fair, because I had been

01:03:45.320 volunteering with them

01:03:46.300 for a couple of months

01:03:48.180 now?

01:03:49.140 And FAIR, just so everyone

01:03:50.420 knows?

01:03:51.060 Is a foundation against

01:03:52.580 intolerance and racism.

01:03:55.020 And, you know, we, you

01:03:56.300 know, I was in the process

01:03:57.640 of, I still am, you know,

01:04:00.060 helping to build the

01:04:01.660 organization and select

01:04:04.000 chapter leadership in various

01:04:05.700 states so that we can

01:04:07.340 really...

01:04:07.700 We're in this sort of

01:04:08.360 networking phase because I'm

01:04:10.020 calling...

01:04:10.600 People have given us their

01:04:11.900 names, and I'm calling

01:04:12.800 people, and what I'm

01:04:15.100 finding is that everyone

01:04:16.060 has a story, so I can't

01:04:18.120 just be on the phone with

01:04:19.380 them for, you know, 15

01:04:20.580 minutes, and all the

01:04:21.360 volunteers are finding

01:04:22.220 this, that there's a

01:04:22.940 tremendous outpouring.

01:04:24.500 It's very emotional.

01:04:26.220 They'll talk about what's

01:04:27.000 happening with their kids.

01:04:28.380 They'll talk about that

01:04:29.060 they didn't suspect that

01:04:30.520 anything was wrong in the

01:04:31.540 culture until maybe a year

01:04:32.700 ago, and now it's clear to

01:04:34.200 them, and they want to do

01:04:35.080 something.

01:04:35.420 And so you really have to

01:04:37.860 listen before you can, you

01:04:40.780 know, just operationally try

01:04:42.400 to plug people in, and, you

01:04:44.260 know, a lot of times it's...

01:04:45.980 It really feels like...

01:04:47.820 I'm not a therapist, but it

01:04:48.880 feels like...

01:04:49.880 At the peak, I was making

01:04:51.580 like five calls a day, and

01:04:53.280 each of those were about an

01:04:54.320 hour, and you wind up really

01:04:57.180 having an engagement with

01:04:59.920 another human being.

01:05:00.660 So this is starting to inform

01:05:02.000 your writing as well, and the

01:05:03.400 way you're thinking about what's

01:05:04.560 going on at the school.

01:05:06.280 Yeah, and so I'm starting to

01:05:09.400 feel like I have a lot of

01:05:11.240 people that I'm...

01:05:14.560 You know, that are...

01:05:17.320 That this is something that's

01:05:18.740 becoming kind of a duty, like

01:05:21.480 almost a moral duty.

01:05:24.160 So, yeah, so that's kind of

01:05:27.940 the background to that, and

01:05:31.340 then the article came out,

01:05:34.560 and I waited, and there's just

01:05:41.100 a tremendous...

01:05:42.040 I've had an email at the

01:05:43.140 bottom of the article, and I

01:05:45.840 was expecting like 50% positive,

01:05:48.540 50% negative.

01:05:49.620 I would be happy if it was 50%

01:05:51.400 positive.

01:05:51.780 Now, I realized later it's on

01:05:53.340 Barry Weiss's Substack, and it's

01:05:54.900 mostly her fans, but I put the

01:05:57.600 email out in some other places,

01:05:58.800 and I was just amazed that, you

01:06:02.100 know, maybe 500 emails in the first

01:06:05.680 two days, and long emails, like

01:06:09.260 people writing, you know, some of

01:06:11.960 them are just a word or a subject

01:06:13.680 line, but people had a lot to say, a

01:06:16.020 lot of stories.

01:06:17.580 And I've spent a couple hours each day

01:06:21.960 since then going through them and

01:06:23.380 responding to everyone because it's

01:06:25.960 really important to do that.

01:06:27.240 I think that, you know, I feel like

01:06:31.060 it's just...

01:06:32.060 I can't just, you know, ignore them

01:06:33.880 or just give like a one-sentence

01:06:35.660 thing because some of these...

01:06:38.960 I try to, you know, I try to respond

01:06:42.840 in at least one or two sentences in a

01:06:44.840 way that addresses their particular

01:06:46.780 situation, and then I try to direct

01:06:49.020 them to FAIR as, you know, as an

01:06:51.860 organization that can help.

01:06:55.220 And all people of all different

01:06:56.600 backgrounds, people wrote in from

01:06:59.880 other countries.

01:07:01.120 And what are they telling you in the

01:07:02.540 main?

01:07:04.120 They're just...

01:07:04.960 A lot of what I'm getting, I'm just

01:07:06.580 getting a lot of pats on the back,

01:07:08.140 just like, yes, you know, good for

01:07:11.120 you, bravo, like, you know, this is

01:07:13.900 amazing, keep doing it, keep doing what

01:07:15.760 you're doing, I support you, you know,

01:07:18.320 100%, this is a huge problem, you know,

01:07:20.580 and you're standing up for it, and

01:07:22.180 what you're doing is right, and, you

01:07:26.100 know, and...

01:07:27.780 Okay, so you publish this in Barry

01:07:32.700 Weiss's Substack, and the school

01:07:36.760 reacts.

01:07:38.880 Mm-hmm.

01:07:39.700 What happens?

01:07:40.960 Well, they make the claim that, you

01:07:45.460 know, some of what I've written is a

01:07:48.460 mischaracterization.

01:07:50.580 And, you know, they're not trying to,

01:07:56.860 you know, they, I think it's a little

01:07:59.500 blurry to me now, actually, because so

01:08:02.080 much has happened since, so I kind of

01:08:03.620 have to reconstruct what happened.

01:08:06.380 But in this time, so the article came

01:08:13.120 out on the, I believe, on the 13th,

01:08:16.640 and, you know, I had a contract to sign

01:08:22.020 for the following year, and part of that

01:08:24.660 contract, my contract is up, this current

01:08:27.400 contract is up at the end of August, but the

01:08:29.760 deadline for me to sign next year's contract

01:08:32.160 was April 15th, and as one of the stipulations

01:08:36.600 of my contract was that I had to attend

01:08:38.740 restorative justice practices designed by the

01:08:41.340 school to address the harm that I had caused

01:08:44.180 students of color and other students.

01:08:47.680 I see.

01:08:47.940 So you were obliged to be guilty enough to go

01:08:50.160 to be retrained.

01:08:51.440 Right.

01:08:52.020 And, you know, the details of the, of this

01:08:54.440 process would be revealed to me after I

01:08:56.660 signed.

01:08:57.960 So I was signing something that I didn't,

01:09:00.580 you know, I wouldn't know what I was

01:09:02.200 signing.

01:09:03.520 So I waited.

01:09:04.700 Apart from an admission of culpability and

01:09:07.020 guilt.

01:09:07.580 Right, right.

01:09:08.620 Of unspecified nature.

01:09:10.320 Right.

01:09:10.620 And now participation, I thought about it,

01:09:13.140 I was like, well, participation doesn't

01:09:14.840 mean that I have to, you know, say mea

01:09:18.920 culpa, I can participate in it.

01:09:21.720 Maybe it's an opportunity for me to engage,

01:09:24.240 you know, and I thought about it, but then

01:09:25.900 I said, well, it would mean that I was

01:09:27.200 signing on to it, mean that I was

01:09:28.580 legitimizing it by signing it.

01:09:31.540 And so I decided not to sign it because

01:09:33.960 if I, if I put my word on it, then it

01:09:36.080 would mean that I was saying that that

01:09:38.580 was an appropriate request to make of

01:09:40.560 someone.

01:09:42.020 So I didn't sign it.

01:09:43.300 How in the world did you manage to make

01:09:44.380 that decision?

01:09:47.240 Well, I just really just delayed it and

01:09:49.500 thought about it.

01:09:50.500 And then I talked to friends about it.

01:09:53.700 And then I, I realized that, no, I'm

01:09:56.760 just gonna, I'm just gonna let it lapse

01:09:58.960 because, you know, I'm, I'm, I've

01:10:02.760 reinvented myself before.

01:10:04.760 I've had several careers.

01:10:06.600 I, I have math skills, coding skills.

01:10:09.860 I figured, you know, if I didn't work for

01:10:11.940 Grace, I could find, I could land on my

01:10:13.820 feet somehow.

01:10:14.980 I didn't, I don't have kids.

01:10:16.980 So there, there were, I had, I felt like

01:10:19.360 I had options.

01:10:20.640 You know, I felt like no matter what

01:10:21.960 happened, I had faith that I would be

01:10:24.560 okay.

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - May 05, 2022

250. The Adventures of Pinocchio and Free Speech Part 3⧸4

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