The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 254. The Adventures of Pinocchio and Free Speech Part 4⧸4

00:00:00.940 Hey everyone, real quick before you skip, I want to talk to you about something serious and important.

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00:00:51.040 Okay, so now there's a shock here, because essentially in some sense, the entity that's going to provide the solution to this very complex problem has arrived on the scene.

00:01:04.440 But it's quite damaged.

00:01:06.380 First of all, it's been speaking improperly.

00:01:08.040 Right, so that's an adolescent representation. 0.87

00:01:12.220 So it brays a lot of nonsense.

00:01:14.540 And it's been corrupted in a variety of ways.

00:01:17.440 And so, you know, to some degree what that means is that as you mature, and you're moving away from your mere marionette status,

00:01:25.060 your interaction with society, like Rousseau said, corrupts you in all sorts of ways.

00:01:29.080 I mean, you're participating in that corruption, but it still happens.

00:01:31.680 But in the representation in the movie, the truth of the matter is, it doesn't matter if you've been corrupted to some degree,

00:01:39.440 as long as you haven't absolutely sacrificed your capacity for true speech and vision.

00:01:44.700 So, you know, that's a pretty hopeful message, because Pinocchio is by no means a perfect entity.

00:01:50.740 But he might be good enough.

00:01:52.060 One of the things that disturbs me constantly about ideological representations of the world, broadly speaking,

00:02:02.860 is that their fundamental danger is that they always contain a too-convenient theory of evil and malevolence.

00:02:10.800 And for me, any theory that locates the fundamental problem of evil somewhere other than inside you is dangerous.

00:02:20.340 Now, that isn't to say that social structures can't be corrupted and aren't corrupt.

00:02:27.740 That's an existential problem in and of itself.

00:02:30.120 It's always the case that our social institutions aren't what they should be,

00:02:34.200 and they're outdated, and they're predicated to some degree on deceit.

00:02:37.460 And people who use power can manipulate them, sometimes successfully.

00:02:41.940 That problem never goes away, and it never will.

00:02:45.040 But when the evil can be easily located somewhere else,

00:02:51.260 then you have every moral right to allow your unexamined motivations to manifest themselves fully,

00:03:00.000 because you can punish the evildoers and always remain on the moral side of the fence.

00:03:05.360 There's a huge attractiveness in that.

00:03:07.180 And I think, I mean, this is something you've explored a lot with the idea of Solzhenitsyn's idea

00:03:11.900 about the good and evil cutting through the heart of every human being,

00:03:15.820 because that, to me, it really gets to the heart of a lot of what I would call a kind of infantile culture.

00:03:23.420 I think this is a symptom of childishness.

00:03:27.260 You know, whenever I was learning about literature and what constituted more sophisticated literature

00:03:33.040 and what didn't, Disney films, childish films, let's take Tolkien, for instance.

00:03:37.480 Good people look, sorry, bad people look bad.

00:03:40.280 They look like orcs, they're ugly, and there are villains, and then there are heroes, and they are good.

00:03:44.540 There isn't complexity.

00:03:45.640 And if you have a more complex novel, like a Mervyn Peake novel,

00:03:48.780 where people aren't necessarily good or bad, they're both,

00:03:51.500 they struggle within themselves and with other people,

00:03:53.440 that is a mark of a kind of adult novel as opposed to a childish novel, right?

00:03:57.880 And that's quite an important distinction.

00:03:59.380 And I think most of the political and ideological battles that I find myself in the middle of,

00:04:03.540 and I'm sure you do as well,

00:04:05.220 are because people are just reducing everything to this binary of good versus evil

00:04:09.600 and putting themselves on the side of good.

00:04:12.220 It is a very infantile, almost like a caricature of religion. 0.68

00:04:18.240 You know, it's, and I see it again and again.

00:04:21.320 We had it in this country with the Brexit vote.

00:04:23.400 Effectively, what happened in the vote here,

00:04:25.340 and the reason why it became so toxic and families fell apart,

00:04:28.320 you know, you wouldn't believe, I know it wasn't reported very much elsewhere,

00:04:31.480 but it was like a kind of ideological civil war here,

00:04:34.060 but not a very sophisticated one,

00:04:35.740 because it came down to this narrative that if you voted to leave the EU, 1.00

00:04:39.020 you were evil, racist, stupid. 1.00

00:04:41.140 And if you voted to remain, you were good and progressive and all the rest, 1.00

00:04:45.260 and noble and virtuous, right?

00:04:47.400 And of course, there are all sorts of good reasons to have voted either way.

00:04:50.800 And this kind of caricature, and it happens again with-

00:04:54.320 You described it as a caricature of religion,

00:04:58.640 and I think that's what an ideology is.

00:05:01.280 And this is one of the reasons that I've been inclined, let's say,

00:05:05.580 to go to have my shot at the rational atheists,

00:05:10.660 much as I'm a fan of Enlightenment thinking.

00:05:13.720 I mean, I was convinced, as a consequence of reading Jung primarily,

00:05:18.080 but also Dostoevsky, and also Nietzsche primarily,

00:05:21.720 and Solzhenitsyn, I would say, as well.

00:05:25.200 That, and then biology as well, as I studied that more deeply.

00:05:32.620 There's no escaping a religious framework.

00:05:35.780 There's no way out of it.

00:05:37.020 And if you eliminate it, say, as a consequence of rational criticism,

00:05:44.320 what you inevitably produce is its replacement by forms of religion

00:05:49.500 that are much less sophisticated.

00:05:51.380 I mean, let's see what you think about.

00:05:53.180 Well, it's not religion.

00:05:54.400 It's a fundamentalist religion.

00:05:56.260 You know, if I look back to my Catholic upbringing,

00:05:58.900 actually acknowledging your own capacity for sin is at the heart of Catholicism.

00:06:03.880 That's why we have the confessional.

00:06:05.140 That's why you sit there and tell this stranger all these things you've done wrong.

00:06:09.280 Because it's reckoning with it.

00:06:11.020 Well, that's far from trivial.

00:06:15.100 It's unbelievably not trivial.

00:06:17.460 And because it was so common, like a common part of Catholicism,

00:06:21.340 it can be passed over without notice.

00:06:24.120 And so the religious structures that we inherited,

00:06:28.900 I'm going to talk about Christianity most specifically

00:06:31.240 because it's the dominant form of religious belief

00:06:35.820 that primarily undergirds our social structures.

00:06:39.480 It's our operating system.

00:06:41.300 My producer came up with that term the other day,

00:06:43.880 and I thought it was apt.

00:06:46.020 And it does localize the drama between good and evil inside

00:06:50.740 and makes you responsible for that

00:06:53.700 and encourages you, let's say,

00:06:58.780 to attend to the ways that you fall short of the ideal.

00:07:01.760 And when you criticize a structure like that out of existence,

00:07:05.500 you don't criticize the questions that gave rise to it out of existence.

00:07:09.800 And the questions might be, well, what's the nature of the good?

00:07:14.960 What's the nature of evil?

00:07:16.380 Those are religious questions.

00:07:17.660 What's the purpose of our life?

00:07:20.040 How do you orient yourself if you're trying to move up,

00:07:24.140 let's say, rather than down?

00:07:26.240 How should you conduct yourself, etc., etc.?

00:07:29.160 Those questions don't go away, and they can't not be answered.

00:07:33.460 And so the way that a traditional religious structure answers them

00:07:38.920 is in a mysterious way.

00:07:41.180 It uses ritual.

00:07:42.340 It uses music.

00:07:43.260 It uses art.

00:07:44.140 It uses literature.

00:07:45.120 It uses stories.

00:07:46.240 All these things that are outside the realm of easy criticism.

00:07:49.740 And then some of that's translated into, you know,

00:07:53.480 comprehensible, explicit dogma,

00:07:55.400 and that's the part that's most susceptible to rational criticism.

00:07:58.520 What kind of student organizations were they part of?

00:08:01.160 I think I can speak to that part because it's in the media.

00:08:05.640 So Divest was one of them, Divest Mount A. 0.91

00:08:09.080 The other one was Black Student Association.

00:08:12.900 And the other one, ironically, was the Rose Campaign.

00:08:18.600 It's about the massacre at Polytechnique.

00:08:21.400 And it means the world to me.

00:08:23.480 Polytechnique is University of Montreal, right?

00:08:25.560 So every year I commemorate, you know, I participate.

00:08:29.760 Okay, so that one group was that group saying that I encourage gender violence,

00:08:35.680 sexual violence, through my writing on the blog.

00:08:41.500 So that's...

00:08:42.020 And that was because you were pointing out that such activity is not part and parcel

00:08:48.900 of the central culture in Canada, but an aberration?

00:08:51.780 I was perhaps talking about, I don't know, honor killing in some places, you know.

00:08:57.880 So I read a media about a certain young woman who was killed, and I put a candle, you know,

00:09:04.160 for her memory, and I wrote something, you know, comment about that.

00:09:09.700 So that's because I didn't...

00:09:12.440 It's like...

00:09:13.420 And how is it that you're glorifying sexual violence by doing that, exactly?

00:09:18.180 I have no idea.

00:09:19.760 I wish I could answer, but I...

00:09:23.380 Okay, so that particular accusation, not only...

00:09:30.020 I've been thinking lately that there are about deception, the use of deception, and, you

00:09:35.480 know, there are lies that are just about true, but they're just sort of...

00:09:39.500 They're not quite true.

00:09:40.520 And so you sneak them by because they're close enough to the truth maybe to pass.

00:09:45.520 But then there are lies that are the antithesis of the truth, right?

00:09:50.200 They're anti-truths.

00:09:51.660 And it seems to me that the accusations that you're glorifying sexual violence fall in the

00:09:58.020 antithesis category of untruth.

00:10:01.480 Not only is it a lie, it's the opposite of the truth.

00:10:04.940 Yes, but when it's about the blog, I can understand.

00:10:08.160 I can understand because they don't like it, they're emotional about it, they're right.

00:10:13.740 That I can understand.

00:10:15.100 But when we come to talk about a behavior, a situation, an incident that has never happened,

00:10:20.800 that is a different story.

00:10:23.460 How do you separate out those two?

00:10:26.280 I think it all came in the context of the complaints and the situation of the blog.

00:10:33.660 But I don't know for sure because I remember, I didn't know how it started at the beginning.

00:10:38.840 But logically, it came when through that, you know, the process of the, I call it speed mobbing

00:10:48.700 because it was like speed dating.

00:10:50.940 It was so fast.

00:10:52.860 So it felt like, how can I say it with all respect, like having barking dogs coming at you all at once.

00:11:03.980 Yeah.

00:11:04.220 So how about we call this assault?

00:11:06.040 Yes.

00:11:08.200 Yes, absolutely.

00:11:09.160 Absolutely.

00:11:09.920 Look, I've watched lots of people respond to Twitter mobs over the last four years.

00:11:14.680 And my experience has been that being mobbed by 20 people on Twitter, especially when an

00:11:18.920 administrative organization then climbs in, that's enough to seriously damage someone.

00:11:25.400 Absolutely.

00:11:25.960 And most people climb back and apologize as fast as they possibly can.

00:11:29.880 And it's no wonder because it's very unnerving and destabilizing.

00:11:34.560 And so you're someone who is obviously deeply opposed to such things as sexual exploitation,

00:11:43.720 clearly, and assault and the use of arbitrary violence.

00:11:49.640 And nonetheless, you're targeted by precisely that kind of behavior.

00:11:54.340 And then it's encouraged in every possible way, as far as I can tell, by the administration

00:12:00.420 who immediately fold in the most cowardly of possible ways.

00:12:04.560 And so I just, this is just, it's outrageous.

00:12:07.160 And I can't understand why there isn't more noise about it.

00:12:11.120 I can't speak.

00:12:11.680 I mean, you're the wrong target, clearly.

00:12:14.400 Thank you.

00:12:14.940 I can't speak for the motivation, but I can speak of not standing up for me.

00:12:20.120 What I see, I saw the whole Canada stood up for me.

00:12:22.680 Like the people writing amazing comments on the GoFundMe campaign, people donating, people

00:12:30.840 like, I'm overwhelmed by that.

00:12:34.940 I see people standing up.

00:12:35.900 Right, right.

00:12:36.660 And I'm still into the thanking, thanking.

00:12:38.400 And I want to thank them if they are listening because I didn't have the time to complete

00:12:41.720 all my personalized thank you note to each one.

00:12:45.000 So 10,000 people support you and 20 people complain, and yet the university suspends you.

00:12:51.200 So like, what the hell's up with that exactly?

00:12:54.280 I mean, how come there's no proportionality of response?

00:12:57.760 If the overwhelming body of the population is supportive of who you are, let's say, and

00:13:04.560 what you've done, which is nothing that deserves the kind of treatment that you've been through,

00:13:10.520 why isn't the university as sensitive to the public opinion supporting you as they are

00:13:14.880 sensitive to the hypothetical public opinion damning you?

00:13:19.280 This issue of canceling is so abhorrent to me in a democracy.

00:13:23.860 All of this legislation that focuses on, you know, hate speech and limiting what can be

00:13:29.100 said on the internet.

00:13:30.360 And what's so ironic about it is that, as you might know, John Stuart Mill, who was, you

00:13:34.960 know, one of the fathers of utilitarianism and very often invoked in this current sort

00:13:40.240 of collectivist setting with the mandates, right?

00:13:43.980 He himself was an advocate for free speech because he said that the problem with squashing

00:13:49.780 free speech, it's not just that you might learn something new that you didn't know, but

00:13:55.340 you have the opportunity to put your own beliefs under the microscope and to think about new

00:14:00.280 reasons why you might believe or don't believe them.

00:14:03.020 So even on the metric that a collectivist, arguably, a consequentialist, a utilitarian like

00:14:10.120 John Stuart Mill is using, cancelling censorship is not good for humans, let alone democracies

00:14:19.700 that have free speech as one of their fundamental pillars, you know?

00:14:23.560 Well, the only real rationale for opposing free speech, apart from ignorance, which is that

00:14:30.780 you don't know that free speech isn't just another right and you don't know it's indistinguishable

00:14:35.040 from thought, is the conclusion that you've already figured it all out.

00:14:40.740 So you don't have to think.

00:14:42.100 Or you're trying to hide something.

00:14:43.980 Well, that's the other possibility.

00:14:45.600 But those two things go hand in hand very frequently, is that it's very often that people

00:14:52.340 who are trying to hide something justify that to themselves with a kind of totalitarian

00:14:58.260 certainty about their beliefs.

00:15:00.420 They double down on them to hide their own moral iniquities.

00:15:03.180 And so you have to believe that people like Rogan shouldn't be allowed to just have a

00:15:09.820 discussion with whoever they want and wing it.

00:15:12.460 And you think that because you think you already know.

00:15:15.080 And, you know, if your life is perfect and you're already living in the kingdom of God,

00:15:19.120 and then more power to you, you know, maybe you're right and you can shut down free discourse

00:15:23.280 because that heavenly heights have already been scaled.

00:15:26.540 But I haven't met anyone like that yet.

00:15:29.140 Most people I know think with not too much thought that there's some things they still

00:15:35.920 have to learn and some ways their lives could be improved.

00:15:38.340 And how are we going to approach that?

00:15:40.560 Especially you want to find out how you're wrong.

00:15:44.620 You should talk to people who don't agree with you.

00:15:47.120 Now, maybe 90% of what they say is not worth attending to.

00:15:51.920 Could easily be.

00:15:52.900 Probably the same goes for you.

00:15:55.720 But 10% might be just what saves you in the next crisis.

00:16:00.500 See, that's also an indication there of why people are often unwilling to form a representation

00:16:08.140 with, so to speak, form a relationship with the archetype of the Great Father.

00:16:12.820 Because to some degree, the archetype is a figure of perfection.

00:16:15.920 And the individual in relationship to that archetype is always pathologically flawed.

00:16:21.220 And so the embarrassment of that realization, which is exactly what's happening to Pinocchio

00:16:25.060 right now, is often enough to stop people from doing it.

00:16:28.500 So what that would say, what that means in some sense is that in order for you to mature

00:16:33.580 in the fullest possible manner, you have to understand the manner in which you're deeply

00:16:41.080 flawed in relationship to your potential as it might be historically determined.

00:16:47.480 And that's a very bitter thing to do.

00:16:49.200 You know, it's much easier, and people do this all the time, to engage in half-witted,

00:16:53.820 formulaic, ideological criticisms of the system as a whole.

00:16:58.160 It's like, you know, the probability that the system is more flawed than you is pretty

00:17:03.180 damn low. 0.98

00:17:04.360 So you might want to start with, you know, getting rid of your donkey ears and your tail and 1.00

00:17:08.480 stop bringing nonsense before you judge the entire, you know, historical process by which 0.98

00:17:15.880 human beings have come into being.

00:17:18.300 So anyways, that's kind of what that means.

00:17:21.060 If this can happen to you, like the lesson here, there's only two lessons here.

00:17:25.000 Either you're a bad person and you got exactly what you deserved, or this can happen to anyone.

00:17:31.100 And so look the hell out.

00:17:32.560 I totally agree.

00:17:34.380 And I tend to stand up for people, no, I stand up for people in real life, but also on the

00:17:40.580 blog.

00:17:41.400 I write when something isn't right.

00:17:43.440 Like, for example, I'm thinking quickly of a situation.

00:17:47.540 Maybe Dr. Matthew Bokote in Montreal, whenever he has stories like being canceled or trying

00:17:54.120 to attempt to cancel, or maybe Dr. Gatzad, again, from Montreal.

00:17:57.600 I said, bravo to the Jewish public library.

00:18:03.120 Library.

00:18:03.580 Yeah, because they, and even the prime minister of Quebec, I may have had a post saying bravo.

00:18:11.460 The University of Laval as well, you know, saying that academic freedom must be protected.

00:18:19.340 Like, but the academic, I mean, it's protected.

00:18:24.080 So that's, I mean, a recommitment to it, if you see what I mean.

00:18:28.680 Well, look at the academic.

00:18:32.960 The bulk of the abstract intellectual work in our society goes on at university.

00:18:37.840 So that's where the cutting edge is.

00:18:39.340 It's not the only place.

00:18:40.680 There's, it happens in many places, but it's one of the main places.

00:18:43.680 It's certainly the main place where training for that is still instituted.

00:18:49.160 Apprenticeship for that is still instituted.

00:18:51.180 And so if that comes under assault, if that's in danger, then what's to protect the same thing

00:18:57.680 in the rest of the culture?

00:18:59.000 If, if it, if it goes where it's paramount, if it, if it's threatened where it's paramount,

00:19:03.460 it's going to be threatened everywhere.

00:19:05.420 And that's why people should pay attention to what's happening to you.

00:19:08.300 And, and, and should put as much pressure as they possibly can on the administration

00:19:14.760 at Mount Ellison to reverse their insane decision and to have some courage instead of kowtowing

00:19:20.800 to a tiny minority of students who don't even represent the communities they purport to represent.

00:19:26.740 You know, my guess is, is if we took those, and it'd be easy enough to find out, but no

00:19:31.660 one will do it.

00:19:32.320 If we surveyed these student organizations, presented them with your story and surveyed

00:19:38.540 them, I suspect that the vast majority of students within those organizations, organizations

00:19:43.440 themselves would be appalled at what's being done to you.

00:19:47.660 So there's a handful of students who say they represent a tiny proportion of students, but

00:19:53.320 who actually don't, who complain bitterly in the background and use deception to bring

00:19:58.760 administrative force to bear on someone like you.

00:20:01.220 And somehow that's okay.

00:20:02.700 And despite the fact that thousands of people express their support for you, the university

00:20:08.040 won't change its mind.

00:20:09.240 And for what to, to indicate their commitment to what, to this insane, um, ideology that purports

00:20:17.080 to be anti-racist.

00:20:18.420 You can see how fair it is in your case.

00:20:20.880 You know, we're, we're, we're matching an actual injustice against a bunch of hypothetical

00:20:26.720 injustices.

00:20:27.680 Yes.

00:20:28.120 Yes.

00:20:28.560 And my take on it was at the beginning that, okay, they chose whatever path I've never,

00:20:33.580 I, I, uh, but now, um, I am like, um, the target because of all, of all this, if you

00:20:43.000 see what I mean, like.

00:20:44.020 You're a target, not just a target.

00:20:45.620 You've also been hit.

00:20:46.900 You're not just a target.

00:20:48.560 Exactly.

00:20:49.120 You've been successfully hit.

00:20:50.620 Exactly.

00:20:51.460 Like my career, like when you are a researcher, uh, when you are a faculty member, doing your

00:20:57.840 research or services across the province and the country, your reputation, even if you

00:21:03.000 want to go find another job somewhere else, your reputation is all what you have, right?

00:21:08.440 Your, your reputation is done.

00:21:10.320 Look, I, the other thing is I'm on, you're on hiring committees.

00:21:13.200 I sat on hiring committees.

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00:24:05.340 And so, given that there's a preponderance of candidates, and that there's a preponderance

00:24:11.920 of qualified candidates, any and all candidates who show any sign whatsoever of scandal are

00:24:17.120 immediately removed from the pack.

00:24:21.300 Because the hiring committees won't tolerate the risk.

00:24:25.400 So, as soon as you've been brushed with scandal, and then here's another question for you,

00:24:29.680 because I've had to think this through, and I'm still not exactly sure what to make of it.

00:24:33.060 I could go back to the University of Toronto.

00:24:34.940 What about my graduate students?

00:24:37.640 What bloody chance do they have on the job market?

00:24:40.440 It doesn't matter about their publication rates.

00:24:42.980 So, let's say they come out with a stellar publication, but they're associated with me.

00:24:47.340 It's like, are they going to find a job?

00:24:49.040 Well, the answer to that is, perhaps not.

00:24:51.820 And so, what am I supposed to do with that as a moral person?

00:24:54.500 Am I supposed to not go back to the University?

00:24:56.400 Because merely being associated with me is enough to increase the probability

00:25:01.320 that my qualified students won't be acceptable to any hiring committee?

00:25:05.200 These shots are unbelievably effective, even if you can manage them.

00:25:09.040 And it's not obvious that you can manage them.

00:25:11.540 I mean, you're still going through this.

00:25:12.840 You have months to go without gainful employment.

00:25:16.840 You know, and the doubts creep in when you're accused of this sort of thing.

00:25:22.780 Because anybody with any sense pays attention to accusations, right?

00:25:27.560 If you're a psychopathic to the core, you don't care what other people think.

00:25:30.920 But if you're a reasonable person, you're modifying your behavior.

00:25:34.640 You're all the time as a consequence of the effect you have on others.

00:25:38.560 So, well, I'm reprehensible enough.

00:25:40.720 So, an institution that I admired deeply has...

00:25:43.680 And me too.

00:25:45.740 Yeah.

00:25:46.300 And the whole Canada, right?

00:25:47.620 But I want to say something.

00:25:49.300 You know, some people believe what they read.

00:25:51.840 And they do not, you know, question or apply.

00:25:54.040 Say, let's listen to the other side.

00:25:55.380 Let's see what happened.

00:25:55.980 And some even, you know, friends would call my spouse and say, well, even if it has been said, it's too much.

00:26:03.400 But my spouse will say, she has not said it.

00:26:07.080 Like, so they thought, because it's written in such a way that is...

00:26:11.860 Yeah, well, you know what they say.

00:26:14.400 Where there's smoke, there's fire.

00:26:15.980 Exactly.

00:26:17.320 But let's assume, like, some people are saying, even if, like, the...

00:26:21.900 How can I say?

00:26:23.620 The punishment or the discipline is beyond...

00:26:29.100 It's surrealistic.

00:26:32.700 Disproportionate.

00:26:33.780 Disproportionate.

00:26:34.380 Yes, and severe, which it certainly is.

00:26:37.260 Yes.

00:26:37.620 So, what do you do now?

00:26:43.840 What are you doing?

00:26:44.800 I mean, how have you been structuring your life in the aftermath of this?

00:26:51.040 I've never imagined that we can be working as hard as that without having, you know, being suspended without pay.

00:26:58.260 Like, I'm very busy working, doing what I need to do, replying to emails, thanking people, strategizing, doing things.

00:27:07.620 I'm working, basically, on that.

00:27:10.980 So, like, all that time, I'm not putting it on my research.

00:27:14.640 I'm not putting it on future courses if I'm still here or on...

00:27:20.540 So, it's...

00:27:22.040 I'm living day by day.

00:27:24.620 But I am fine in the sense that I know.

00:27:30.400 I know who I am.

00:27:32.600 I know my values.

00:27:34.100 I know the value of freedom, a free expression for me, academic freedom, slash, they are related, right?

00:27:44.000 That I know for sure.

00:27:45.820 One of my friends once said, the truth doesn't matter anymore because it has been a narrative.

00:27:51.360 But luckily, there has been amazing journalists who have helped more.

00:27:55.760 I'm not going to be naming what everyone knows, helped more than I can ever imagine.

00:28:01.440 Like, I felt that, like, you know, those articles fell on me from heaven.

00:28:05.140 So, the narrative has shifted, if you see what I mean.

00:28:10.320 So, yeah, yeah, well, I was fortunate enough to have some of Canada's preeminent journalists, you know, take a second look what I was doing and actually think it through and, you know, come out in support of me.

00:28:21.420 Thank God for that.

00:28:22.740 Yes.

00:28:23.080 And that was definitely a lifesaver, repeatedly over time.

00:28:30.040 So, thank, you know, absolutely.

00:28:32.920 Thank God there are people who still want to know what the actual story is.

00:28:36.780 All it takes is a few accusations of your far right or alt-right or whatever, and it's there.

00:28:41.960 You know, any prospective employer can Google that and it comes up and who's going to take the risk? 0.99

00:28:46.420 You know, the accusation is sufficient to damn you. 0.95

00:28:48.940 And that's what the reputation is. 0.97

00:28:52.940 Well, there, you put the finger on the absolute catastrophe of the non-crime hate index.

00:28:58.280 It's like, well, it's a permanent stain, especially in a technological universe where nothing is ever forgotten, no matter how long the lag.

00:29:09.620 And it's worse because the government here feels no compunction to address this or to…

00:29:14.440 It's staggering to me.

00:29:15.580 Well, I suppose they are, well, because the strategy is that if you oppose hate speech laws, you're obviously a hateful person.

00:29:23.380 Why else would you oppose hate speech law?

00:29:24.740 You know, it's the old thing.

00:29:25.660 And a politician doesn't want to stand up in parliament and be the one who is seen to be siding with the evil guys, the bad guys.

00:29:31.640 Well, you have to make a very, very subtle argument to stand up against hate speech laws because you're faced with the problem that there is such a thing as hate speech.

00:29:39.320 Yeah, I mean, it's pernicious and terrible.

00:29:43.120 It's like, okay, so you're arguing uphill.

00:29:46.660 This is, again, why it's such a bloody miracle that we ever had free speech to begin with.

00:29:51.960 It's almost inconceivable to me that we managed to generate the baseline presumption of innocence.

00:29:58.540 That's a miracle.

00:30:00.520 The fact that you can go bankrupt and start again, that's a miracle.

00:30:05.280 The idea that you ever had free speech and that that was genuinely the case, that's a miracle.

00:30:11.040 And none of this is given the appropriate respect and awe that it deserves because it's so unlikely.

00:30:18.740 It's hugely unlikely.

00:30:19.800 I mean, I know in the book, I give a kind of very, very short history of free speech from the ancient Greeks to today.

00:30:26.040 And the point of that is to accentuate this point that actually the fact that we have it is astonishing and unlikely, so unlikely.

00:30:34.180 And all the more reason why we need to defend it.

00:30:36.600 We need to be really, really vigilant about any cracks that appear in this because it will go away very, very easily if we don't defend it.

00:30:45.820 And it's hard, particularly when it comes to the idea of, that's why I wrote a chapter on hate speech because, and took the other side's view seriously, because just trashing the opposing argument isn't going to help.

00:30:58.380 We have to talk about it and explain, you know, why it's important nevertheless.

00:31:02.640 Well, for one thing, like you say, hateful speech exists.

00:31:06.020 Let's start from that point.

00:31:07.340 Let's acknowledge that that hateful speech exists and it can be hurtful and it can do damage.

00:31:12.100 But then the alternative is a state that might in the future be completely unscrupulous, that is going to decide for you what you can say.

00:31:20.440 And those are the things that we have to tackle.

00:31:21.980 And the other key thing is that no one knows how to define hate speech.

00:31:26.120 You know, UNESCO, the European Court of Human Rights, they've all agreed there's no way to define hate speech.

00:31:32.420 Every European country that has hate speech laws has different hate speech laws, different definitions, subjective, abstract concepts such as hate, such as offence, such as perception.

00:31:43.900 You know, and these are on the statute books and you don't want this stuff on the statute books because it's all very well.

00:31:48.020 I mean, I know we talked about the SNP and their hate crime bill.

00:31:51.200 The defence I'm always running into is people are saying, yes, OK, technically, someone could be arrested and imprisoned for saying an offensive joke.

00:31:59.280 Technically, yes. But no one in their right mind, no jury, no judge is going to.

00:32:06.040 We've got common sense. It's OK.

00:32:08.360 Well, that's so myopic. I mean, because you don't know who's going to be in charge in 10 years time.

00:32:13.000 You don't know who that judge is going to be.

00:32:15.100 How can you possibly just.

00:32:16.180 You can be certain that someone will be in charge that doesn't approve of you and that you don't approve of.

00:32:21.720 That will certainly happen.

00:32:25.460 You don't want vague, vague wording on the statute books.

00:32:31.160 It's going to be exploited at some point, even though even if it's not today, there's absolutely no way that you can guarantee against future against the future abuses of that.

00:32:40.560 And I don't it is, as you say, it's a certainty.

00:32:43.020 So I'm I'm yeah, I think it's I think it's actually one of the most important arguments that we should make and that and that we need to do, you know, free speech needs to be defended in every successive generation.

00:32:54.860 It's not something that, you know, you know this, you get it and then it's there forever.

00:32:59.060 No, that's not true.

00:33:00.300 There's something about human nature and something about people in power.

00:33:03.720 There's something about the way that we are that it will collapse.

00:33:09.580 It's it's an edifice that is not secure at any given time.

00:33:12.640 And but it's hard.

00:33:14.540 It's that thing of of being smeared.

00:33:17.040 The risk is you're going to be smeared.

00:33:18.440 You're going to be associated with the worst possible kinds of people, because, of course, it's only really controversial speech that ever requires protection.

00:33:24.540 And people are going to say, well, then you must support what what these awful people are saying.

00:33:29.820 And it's it's hard to make the case, but it's a case that nonetheless has to be made.

00:33:33.720 And particularly by politicians.

00:33:35.580 I've been incredibly disappointed by the way in which politicians in this country have not made any kind of effort to to if anything, as from what I can see, there are moves even in the in the English parliament to push through further hate speech laws.

00:33:49.260 We should be repealing them, not pushing for them.

00:33:50.840 But but no one wants to have the argument.

00:33:52.620 No one wants to be tainted.

00:33:53.520 Yeah, well, they get identified one by one and taken out.

00:33:57.160 That's what happens when you get put on a list.

00:34:00.040 This is it.

00:34:00.640 The identitarian left, if that's what we're going to call them.

00:34:03.920 I don't know what to call them.

00:34:04.900 That's the problem is they're very clever about evading even a label.

00:34:08.420 But they like making their lists.

00:34:10.260 They like observing and saying, you know, you are you are problematic.

00:34:14.400 You have sinned.

00:34:16.300 And and and now they have a an electronic trail.

00:34:19.980 They these are the people that absolutely love going through all of your old tweets.

00:34:23.420 And messages and anything they can find.

00:34:26.940 And of course, the point about that is you can do that to anyone.

00:34:29.140 There is no one alive who if you had complete unfettered access to everything they've ever written online or in their emails or text messages that you couldn't construct a case to damn someone.

00:34:37.760 No, it's actually one of the things that's more or less saved me.

00:34:42.220 Is that right?

00:34:42.900 Well, by the time I made my political statement, which was a philosophical statement or even a spiritual statement, not a political statement.

00:34:50.620 I already had 200 hours of lectures online.

00:34:53.940 And so essentially everything I'd ever said to students was recorded.

00:34:58.180 And there wasn't it wasn't possible to pull out a smoking pistol.

00:35:03.500 So this is very smart.

00:35:04.940 And also, I mean, but this is why it's also astonishing.

00:35:07.140 I find it unendingly astonishing the way you are mischaracterized because because it's all there.

00:35:13.100 Everything you think is out in the open.

00:35:14.500 You've been very, very, very clear and explicit about your point of view.

00:35:17.940 And so when they try and demonize you and turn you into this thing, people can check and they'll realize that you're – I think what they're doing is they're relying on the reputational damage being a kind of barrier to people even investigating who you really are.

00:35:30.520 Yeah, well, to some degree that works, but it doesn't really work because what genuinely happens is that, you know, for every person who wouldn't open a lecture because of my reputation, there's three or four who do because they're curious.

00:35:46.640 And then it has an even more perverse effect on, in some cases, on the true believers because they're primed to find anything I said offensive, but that doesn't happen.

00:35:59.840 Or maybe they even find it useful.

00:36:01.720 And then that's not good at all.

00:36:03.560 It's like, well, he's demonized.

00:36:05.600 Isn't that interesting when you meet the people, when you get into conversation with the people and you can see that you're not what they thought you were and they don't know quite what to do with that.

00:36:14.660 You know, and that to me is another reason why we need more speech, not less.

00:36:19.920 We need to have the conversation so that people can be disabused of the fantasies that they've been wallowing in.

00:36:25.980 You know, but I do very much enjoy that when people expect one thing and then they actually speak to me and they don't see that, that there's no evidence of it because it doesn't exist.

00:36:37.260 Yeah, well, it's interesting to watch that unfold in the public domain too.

00:36:40.700 I mentioned those two interviews, the Channel 4 interview that has been viral and the interview by Helen Lewis at GQ.

00:36:48.720 And those interviews basically consist of nothing but the attempt by the interlocutor to have a conversation with the person that exists in their imagination.

00:37:04.560 Right.

00:37:05.180 Which bears almost no relationship to me at all.

00:37:07.780 That was particularly the case with Kathy Newman.

00:37:12.120 And it was less so with Helen Lewis, but that was still essentially the issue.

00:37:16.760 It's quite reassuring though, isn't it, that once it's out there, people can see through it.

00:37:22.100 It's very reassuring.

00:37:23.600 And what saved me, and this has given me an endless supply of hope, I would say, is that all I've ever had to do is just show everything.

00:37:35.300 It's like, here's the situation.

00:37:36.900 No edits.

00:37:38.020 Like, this is what happened.

00:37:39.040 And every time so far, so far, you know, I haven't been fatally damaged.

00:37:49.300 Yeah.

00:37:49.800 I mean, one of the things I've learned most, I think, since Titania kicked off and it became a known thing is I've learned simply never to trust the perception of someone as constructed in the media or online.

00:38:05.980 Or, you know, it's never the same person.

00:38:09.740 I've ended up meeting, you see, coming from the background I did, most of my friends were always on the left.

00:38:14.420 I didn't really know conservative people.

00:38:17.220 And now I have a lot of friends who are conservatives, you know, and they're just not this villain that they were made out to be.

00:38:23.200 And even some famous conservatives who people have said they're absolute monsters, they're evil, they want to eat babies, basically, or the equivalent, you know, and you get to know them and you realize, oh, my goodness, the perception is so removed from the, so far removed from the reality that even I once had bought into it myself because everyone's telling you this.

00:38:41.540 Oh, yeah.

00:38:41.760 The same thing is, I've certainly had that experience repeatedly, repeatedly.

00:38:45.540 I never trust it now.

00:38:47.300 Like, whenever I hear the way people talk about people online, I just, I never trust it.

00:38:51.700 Unless I know someone personally, I'm never going to trust that again.

00:38:54.920 I think that's an important lesson for me.

00:38:57.880 I think there was a report done last December by Civitas, which is a sort of right-leaning think tank, very, very good report on the state of academic freedom in the UK.

00:39:05.380 And I think they found, if you have a look, 83 out of 140, you know, UK universities were found to have some kind of anonymous reporting system.

00:39:14.720 So it's very, very widespread.

00:39:18.520 And, yeah, and it just, it's a huge issue, very, very concerning.

00:39:22.880 And I think that, as Arif says, I mean, a lot of it is, it may well be well-intentioned, but I think the point is that it starts off processes and procedures, disciplinary procedures, where, you know, the end result may not be anything at all.

00:39:36.780 It may just be a few weeks of having to go and, you know, see the chair of your faculty, you'll go to see some committee, or you'll have to pay trips to HR.

00:39:45.660 But as a colleague of ours says, you know, the process is the punishment.

00:39:50.640 Yeah, exactly.

00:39:51.120 There's nothing trivial about any of that.

00:39:52.780 That's awful.

00:39:53.440 When that happens to someone, it's so awful.

00:39:55.680 It just does them in.

00:39:57.260 It takes its toll.

00:39:57.900 It takes its toll.

00:39:59.340 Yeah.

00:39:59.820 And it puts a shadow on them.

00:40:02.240 Right, right.

00:40:03.720 And it has a chilling effect as well.

00:40:05.200 When you see it happen to one person in your department or your university, you know, you just watch yourself.

00:40:09.800 You don't say things like that, you know, again, or yourself, you know, what you publish, what you say in meetings, what you say to students, you just become more and more careful.

00:40:17.820 And another thing I think is that, I mean, Tocqueville talks about this quite well, which is that one way to tyrannize people is not to control them in big things, but to control them in little things.

00:40:27.720 So that tyranny becomes a habit.

00:40:29.200 Conformity becomes a habit.

00:40:30.580 Every time you say something little, you know, some small interactions, you're constantly looking over your shoulder, worrying whether to say this or not.

00:40:37.680 That, Tocqueville said, is the most efficient way to turn people into sheep.

00:40:40.500 No, it's also sort of, in some sense, the ultimate reach of totalitarianism, because your life is made out of small things.

00:40:48.280 You know, big things are rare and seldom.

00:40:51.180 And so having to watch that, well, I have to say to watch your sense of humor, for example, you know, and fair enough, you can, you can cross the line and an astute person reads the crowd properly.

00:41:01.000 And, but you see great comedians, man, they're right on that edge, right?

00:41:04.680 They're right at the point where they shouldn't be saying what they're saying.

00:41:08.380 Well, and some of them far past that line on purpose, you know, but everyone knows.

00:41:12.820 But, but to chill that is to take almost all the fun, the dynamic fun out of social interactions, that spirit that's, that's a free spirit.

00:41:22.060 And that makes all that partly what makes life worth living.

00:41:26.080 It's terrible that these things are happening.

00:41:28.300 And it's more terrible that the universities are doing it.

00:41:31.820 How, how shameful.

00:41:33.800 I will tell you another institution that's sort of been ruined.

00:41:37.980 And I think Jordan was sort of getting to it.

00:41:41.800 And it sort of gets back to the oboe or the cello player for the New York Philharmonic.

00:41:47.620 How do you say that one film is definitively, definitively better than the other film?

00:41:55.740 You know, it, it is subjective and, or objective and, and, or subjective, sorry, but you are, you know, so a lot of the answers is sort of make a better film and you'll get in, you'll get onto Netflix or make a better film and you'll get into the Sundance Film Festival.

00:42:14.420 So I've had five films all turned down from the, from the Sundance Film Festival.

00:42:22.560 Now, Jordan, the way Jordan's mind is working is you're thinking, well, how, but how do you know?

00:42:28.200 I mean, they could. 0.98

00:42:28.780 No, I'm thinking, why don't you organize your own damn conservative film festival? 0.98

00:42:33.080 Well, that too. 0.97

00:42:33.760 But the, the, the, the, the academic in you is thinking, how do we define that?

00:42:40.960 And, and as we spoke about earlier, when the guy hits 40 home runs in a season, that's definable.

00:42:47.620 And when the guy drains 14 three pointers in a playoff game, that's pretty definable.

00:42:53.220 But how do we do it with documentaries?

00:42:55.580 And there's an, well, you could, you could make the case with your film that, I mean, it, it had a reasonable success.

00:43:01.620 I hope I've got this right.

00:43:03.120 It had reasonable success at the box office.

00:43:05.460 I mean, it had enough success at the box office.

00:43:07.460 So it should have been economically interesting for a place like Netflix or Walmart.

00:43:12.400 Agreed.

00:43:12.840 So another system that's sort of been corrupted is you used to be able to go on to the website, Rotten Tomatoes, and literally check the score of the film.

00:43:26.200 And it's not an exact science, but your film gets a score and my film gets a score and her film gets a score and it's pretty good.

00:43:34.520 Now, if you look at no safe spaces, the critics have it under 50%, somewhere 46%, and the audience has it at 99%.

00:43:46.980 And I would argue we now must remove the critics from the equation because the critics are so left and so woke that there's nothing, you know,

00:43:59.600 Dennis Prager could make Gone with the Wind tomorrow and it would get under 50% on Rotten Tomatoes.

00:44:06.340 So they've screwed up their own, they've corrupted their own system or sort of polluted their own system.

00:44:13.380 You must now go with the audience because there's two scores.

00:44:17.760 There's the critics score and then there's what the people thought.

00:44:21.100 And we now have to throw out the critics.

00:44:23.400 And by the way, it's a two-way street.

00:44:26.160 One of the, you know, films that would be an Oscar-nominated film that started a young gay black man who was struggling with his sexuality,

00:44:36.080 that'll be 96% with the critics and 65% with the people.

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00:45:58.000 People.

00:45:58.580 Well, you know, that's a testable hypothesis.

00:46:00.580 You could rank order films by discrepancy between critics and audience and then rate them according to their political affiliation and you'd have the answer right there.

00:46:09.180 You could probably, you know, a good statistician could do that in a day, be a very interesting thing to do because you might be right.

00:46:15.400 A good statistician could do it in a day.

00:46:17.400 Yeah, yeah.

00:46:18.200 That's right.

00:46:19.100 You're right.

00:46:19.580 That's a great point, Jordan.

00:46:20.900 Yeah, it's very simple.

00:46:21.980 It's very simple.

00:46:22.760 It's not only what the theme of the film is, it's does it have Dennis Prager's name on it?

00:46:30.540 Take a look at the arc of Clint Eastwood directed films and watch how they shrank in the eyes of the critics over the years since he spoke to the, famously spoke to the bar, the empty bar stool at the, at the convention.

00:46:47.400 I know his film about the, that featured the car and, and the Asian family next door, which I really liked.

00:46:54.140 I mean, that's got slammed for racism.

00:46:56.080 Yeah, Grant Torino, even by some of the actors that were in it, who I thought were extremely ungrateful, that's my personal opinion.

00:47:02.200 I thought that was a remarkably non-racist film.

00:47:06.740 I mean, Eastwood was, played a character who was, you know, a standard conservative of the Archie Bunker type, essentially, but as he got to know his neighbors, he placed his allegiance to them over that of his own family, who he saw as becoming morally corrupt.

00:47:22.920 How in the world that's a racist film is absolutely beyond me.

00:47:26.460 But Jordan, I think you're not factoring in, you're, there's two factors.

00:47:33.020 There is, what is the film and then who directed the film?

00:47:38.080 Yes, yes, yes.

00:47:39.220 So if that, if that film was directed by Mark Ruffalo, there would be no, no issues.

00:47:44.920 He's a progressive actor, Dennis.

00:47:46.460 I know you don't know any actors.

00:47:48.420 You pick the actor that's on, you know, George Clooney.

00:47:52.660 If George Clooney directed Gran Torino, it'd be 15 points higher, percentage points higher with the critics.

00:48:00.700 That's, that's my assertion.

00:48:02.480 And I've studied it.

00:48:03.520 Well, it'd be fun to do the statistical analysis.

00:48:05.180 Maybe somebody listening could whip that up because a good graduate student in psychology could do that very quickly.

00:48:10.220 Maybe I'll have my, one of my people do that.

00:48:12.340 That would be fun.

00:48:13.140 This is one of the things I loved about being a clinician is that I talked to lots of people who were really different than me, like seriously different from me.

00:48:20.500 And if I wasn't learning something from them, when I was in discourse with them, it was because I wasn't conducting the discourse properly.

00:48:32.640 And they taught me invaluable things.

00:48:35.380 Even if you don't learn truth, even if you don't learn more reasons for why your position was right, at the very least, you have benefited from a very rigorous mental exercise.

00:48:45.880 Yeah, well, that helps you, as you said already, you, you want to differentiate and assess your own beliefs.

00:48:52.240 Well, why?

00:48:53.740 Well, because your beliefs aren't a set of facts at your disposal.

00:48:58.840 Your beliefs are tools that you use to navigate the world.

00:49:03.400 And the more finely tuned those tools, the more different, like, I have a shed at home, a shop, with all sorts of power tools in it.

00:49:13.080 And one of the things I learned, because I've renovated houses a number of times, one of the things I've learned is that if the job is difficult, you don't have the right tool.

00:49:22.940 And then you can go down to Home Depot, which has, like, 50,000 square feet of tools, which is just phenomenal.

00:49:30.980 And you can find some little gadget that somebody spent half their lifetime devising that makes that job easy.

00:49:37.700 Well, that's, that's ideas.

00:49:39.300 Ideas are tools.

00:49:40.380 They're not, they're not facts.

00:49:42.460 And you have to sharpen them and take care of them.

00:49:44.920 And differentiate them.

00:49:46.540 You bet.

00:49:46.900 And put them away in the right way, right?

00:49:48.380 And maintain them.

00:49:49.140 You bet.

00:49:49.940 Metaphor is beautiful.

00:49:50.840 You know, it seems like, so talking about both the, both the truckers situation and then the Joe Rogan situation, it seems in many respects, like intellectuals or elites have gotten us into this mess.

00:50:02.200 And it's the, it's the truckers and the Joe Rogans of the world that are getting us out of it, arguably.

00:50:08.560 You know, what does this say about education and academia and civil discourse and democracy moving forward?

00:50:16.840 Well, it says that the highest and the lowest always have to be united.

00:50:20.840 And what that means in some sense is that, well, I learned that in part from watching Wagner's Die Meistersinger, the opera, because he, the libretto, elaborates on that theme in an absolutely stellar manner.

00:50:33.600 It, because in his opera, it's, the opera details out the actions of guilds of men.

00:50:43.420 And so, each guild is made out of domain experts.

00:50:46.300 So, one of the heroes is a cobbler who's an expert shoemaker.

00:50:49.800 You think, well, who cares?

00:50:50.920 He makes shoes.

00:50:51.700 It's like, well, you have good shoes.

00:50:54.320 So, that isn't a concern of yours.

00:50:56.220 But if you didn't, you'd think it was very important.

00:50:59.140 And if you're a good enough cobbler, you get to sing.

00:51:02.620 And if you're a good enough singer, you get to elect a master singer.

00:51:06.300 It's a lovely, structured sequence of metaphors.

00:51:09.760 And so, one of the things Wagner did so well in that opera was to point out that true expertise means the differentiation of abstract knowledge all the way down to the point of behavioral implementation.

00:51:22.060 And it's one thing I really like about being trained as a behavioral psychologist.

00:51:28.420 I'm very interested in psychoanalytic theory, but it's very abstract.

00:51:31.420 Existential psychology is very abstract.

00:51:33.360 Meaning of life stuff.

00:51:34.960 It's like, yeah, but where does the rubber hit the road?

00:51:38.380 Well, the truckers know that.

00:51:40.660 Right?

00:51:41.220 They really know that because they're down there moving goods to people.

00:51:44.280 They're doing the actual work in the most fine-grained manner.

00:51:47.360 Now, they might have a problem with high-order articulation.

00:51:50.740 And it's up to their leaders.

00:51:52.560 I'm not so sure about that.

00:51:54.060 I'm not so sure either.

00:51:58.860 I challenge every Canadian to get themselves there and talk to some of these truckers.

00:52:03.940 I think they'd be very surprised.

00:52:05.560 They don't have trouble with enunciating blunt truths.

00:52:10.720 But, you know, you were pointing to problems among the intellectuals.

00:52:14.040 Well, the intellectual chattering class is criticizing the truckers.

00:52:17.200 There's a divorce between the intellectualized framework, ethical framework, and that practical

00:52:22.900 reality that the working class people represent.

00:52:25.940 And, I mean, your observation that the truckers and the Joe Rogans are serving as redemptive

00:52:32.200 agents is a reflection of the idea of the brilliance of individual sovereignty, the notion of individual

00:52:39.740 sovereignty as the basis for political stability.

00:52:42.340 It's like, well, who should you consult?

00:52:44.480 Well, not just the people with the ideas.

00:52:47.000 The people who drive the trucks.

00:52:48.960 Well, why?

00:52:49.420 Because they're navigating the roads.

00:52:51.500 They're delivering the goods in the real sense.

00:52:54.540 Talking to the people.

00:52:55.100 And so they know things.

00:52:56.080 Yeah, you bet.

00:52:56.920 Well, and they are the people.

00:52:58.400 They have their families.

00:53:00.080 Their life is real.

00:53:02.540 It's not abstracted to the point where the abstractions themselves become a problem.

00:53:06.940 It seems like they're almost like a litmus test for how we're doing and the things that

00:53:12.900 we're getting wrong.

00:53:13.660 And they're showing us in the face, look, it's almost like a, you know, like a boil that's

00:53:18.740 finally erupting.

00:53:19.840 Look, these are the problems, right?

00:53:21.680 We would have kept silent if you didn't screw things up so much.

00:53:24.820 But now we have real problems.

00:53:27.280 You're not fixing them.

00:53:28.720 Well, you saw the same thing with the yellow jackets in France.

00:53:31.920 It's like corrupt energy policies started to make energy too expensive for ordinary people.

00:53:37.860 It's like, well, we have to save the planet.

00:53:39.640 It's like, well, how about not on our backs there, guys?

00:53:43.600 And so, and we're going to see a lot more of that, I suspect, especially if the elite

00:53:49.280 types and their utopian schemes, if the elite types with their utopian schemes keep walling

00:53:55.620 themselves off from the people that they hypothetically represent.

00:53:58.580 This is why the UK jumped out of, this is why the UK voted for Brexit.

00:54:04.200 It's like the common people thought, no, too, too abstract, too much of a Tower of Babel.

00:54:09.800 The leaders have got too far away from the people they represent.

00:54:12.940 And I think they made the right decision.

00:54:15.640 So, more power to Rogan and the truckers.

00:54:19.360 Okay, so this is very interesting, too, because, so, Pinocchio ends up being a master of fire.

00:54:25.680 Well, you can think about that as, there is a book written a while back by a primatologist

00:54:32.300 who also wrote demonic males, Richard Wrangham.

00:54:36.320 And he talked about the origin of fire.

00:54:39.060 And as far as Wrangham is concerned, we invented fire about two million years ago.

00:54:42.840 And that enabled us to cook food.

00:54:45.140 And that enabled us to swap intestinal length for brain. 0.93

00:54:50.260 So, if you look at a chimpanzee, you know, chimpanzees are like the ultimate in couch potatoes.

00:54:55.640 Right?

00:54:56.000 They're, they're, they're about this high and they're shaped like this.

00:54:58.700 They have this huge barrel body.

00:55:00.460 And the reason they have that is because they eat leaves.

00:55:03.660 And so, they have to spend like eight hours a day eating leaves.

00:55:06.240 They will eat meat if they can get it.

00:55:07.840 They have to spend like eight hours a day eating leaves and just chewing them over and over.

00:55:11.220 Because like leaves, A, they don't want to be eaten.

00:55:13.740 So, they're pretty tough and inedible.

00:55:15.680 And B, they don't have any nutritive quality to speak of.

00:55:18.620 So, the chimpanzee has to spend all of its time chewing.

00:55:21.520 Which is rather mindless endeavor, all things considered.

00:55:24.800 Whereas human beings, two million years ago, or thereabouts, invented fire.

00:55:28.840 And as a consequence of that, we could cook meat.

00:55:31.800 And meat is incredibly energy rich.

00:55:35.440 And so, and it's easy to digest once it's cooked.

00:55:38.640 And so, the consequence of the invention of fire was that we're the way we are today.

00:55:44.080 We could have a brain instead of a gut.

00:55:47.240 And so, the idea that Pinocchio's mastery of fire, and it's as something more than merely

00:55:54.080 a means of cooking.

00:55:55.140 That's how it started out.

00:55:56.060 But you can think of our entire technological capacity as stemming from the mastery of fire.

00:56:02.360 Now, the other thing you can think of, and this is very much worth considering, is that

00:56:05.660 Pinocchio masters fire.

00:56:08.020 And that turns the whale into a dragon.

00:56:10.500 And so, the idea there too is that, and this is an old idea, is that

00:56:13.400 Our technological prowess is something that makes nature itself angry.

00:56:22.440 And, of course, you might say, well, do you believe this?

00:56:24.420 And the answer to that is, well, how many of you have environmentalist leanings?

00:56:28.080 And that's exactly the story that you're following.

00:56:31.620 Because you're still wondering about whether or not mastery of fire was in somehow against

00:56:36.400 the natural order, and then it will end up in all of our deaths.

00:56:39.660 And, you know, that's a reasonable thing to worry about.

00:56:41.700 But not mastering it was going to end up pretty badly too.

00:56:46.300 And you were going to talk about the potential proposed legislation in the UK that sort of,

00:56:51.860 I understand, emerged out of all this.

00:56:53.720 So, what's happening on the legislative front?

00:56:58.160 Well, should I just say something about that, Araf?

00:57:00.180 I mean, it's just worth giving you, Araf has mentioned it already, and it's worth giving

00:57:04.060 you a little bit of background to that, Jordan.

00:57:06.680 It was 2019 that there was roundabout then, I think it was May 2019, there was certainly

00:57:12.480 a lot of talk about what had happened to you at Cambridge in policy circles and government

00:57:17.960 circles.

00:57:18.460 And out of those sorts of discussions, I suspect that kind of crystallized a manifesto commitment

00:57:24.840 in the Conservative Party manifesto for the December 2019 UK general election, which had

00:57:30.780 a very strong statement about the importance of the university sector, importance of higher

00:57:35.840 education in a post-Brexit economy, and also signaled some concerns about what was going

00:57:41.680 on there, especially on academic freedom.

00:57:44.040 So, that was remarkable to see.

00:57:45.200 I still remember when I saw that manifesto claim, I thought, that's absolutely fantastic.

00:57:49.300 It looks like they're going to be serious about this.

00:57:51.620 And indeed, they delivered.

00:57:53.900 They started drafting a very important piece of legislation.

00:57:57.240 I think it's really probably one of the first of its kind that is that clear and emphatic

00:58:04.620 in the West.

00:58:06.900 I think the UK is leading the way on this.

00:58:08.640 The legislation itself, you know, some people, you know, my own view is that it's just a

00:58:14.560 shame that it's had to come to this.

00:58:16.100 You know, we do not want governments stepping into and regulating the intellectual cultures

00:58:23.680 of the university.

00:58:25.800 Now, that's not what the legislation does.

00:58:28.640 It just provides a right for academics or visiting speakers who've been disinvited, academics

00:58:36.240 who've been fired unfairly to a kind of direct line of appeal to an ombudsman, effectively,

00:58:42.840 a so-called academic freedom champion.

00:58:46.200 And that's so there's a kind of quasi-judicial process there, which is going to hold in principle,

00:58:51.420 open up universities to significant financial liability through fines if they were found to

00:58:56.220 have breached their duty to promote academic freedom and protect the rights of visiting

00:59:00.800 speakers and so on.

00:59:02.880 So I think, you know, you in principle may have had a line of appeal to that new post as

00:59:11.640 and when it comes into being.

00:59:13.900 Now, there's still some problems with the legislation.

00:59:15.920 For example, I think Araf and I agreed that it doesn't go far enough on protecting academics

00:59:22.580 from institutional interference or the politicization of curricular content, you know, that freedom

00:59:31.580 of, for academics, freedom of speech means freedom to teach, freedom to select content

00:59:37.360 and freedom to deliver it as they see fit.

00:59:39.600 Of course, to some extent, it's a shared institutional enterprise, designing curricula and so on, but

00:59:44.080 there should be a defeasible presumption that academics can teach what they want to teach

00:59:48.820 and how they want to teach it.

00:59:52.000 Nevertheless, I mean, I think it will, it will, I think, I hope shift the, shift the culture 1.00

00:59:58.420 in some of the ways that the equalities legislation shifted the culture 10 years ago.

01:00:02.980 And, and even if it may be imperfect when it gets royal assent, nevertheless, I mean, I think

01:00:09.000 that it will make vice chancellors and senior university staff throughout the, throughout the country

01:00:14.900 sort of sit up and realize that there are consequences to, to continuing to, to, to allow this, this

01:00:21.200 culture to flourish.

01:00:23.240 No, I think it's really, it's really appropriate that that initiative came from the Faculty of

01:00:30.080 Divinity at Cambridge, you know, that it can be traced at least to the events, perhaps the

01:00:35.220 events that took place there.

01:00:36.580 It's quite, that's quite something when you, you know, step back and think about it.

01:00:41.060 Well, I mean, you know, in its, in its defense, I, I, I had a conversation with Roger Scruton

01:00:47.720 round about that time who, who expressed his, uh, deep disappointment at, uh, um, the, the

01:00:53.860 treatment meted out to you.

01:00:55.300 And he said something quite interesting.

01:00:56.900 He said, uh, when he was in Eastern Europe in the 1980s, setting up, uh, underground universities

01:01:03.160 in, uh, Warsaw Pact countries, particularly Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, uh, by some

01:01:09.360 kind of strange quirk, um, although the university of university of Cambridge wouldn't, uh, confer,

01:01:15.380 uh, degrees or, or credentials, it was considered politically too difficult.

01:01:19.720 I think the divinity faculty did have some kind of degree conferring power.

01:01:24.760 It had, was able to accredit or recognize a diploma in theology.

01:01:29.080 And that's exactly how Roger got his, his students, um, uh, their, their diplomas as it

01:01:34.580 were from the faculty of divinity at the university.

01:01:36.740 So it was, I think from his point of view, it was especially, you know, heartbreaking

01:01:41.560 that, that things developed as, as, as they did in, in early 2019, but, you know, just to

01:01:47.240 reiterate, I I've had no, uh, criticisms or, um, uh, from, from colleagues within the faculty.

01:01:54.360 I think there's great excitement that you're coming over and, and, and great gratitude to

01:01:59.180 you that you've shown the kind of graciousness and forbearance to, to, um, as it were, let bygones

01:02:05.900 be bygones and, and, and go ahead with the visit that had been planned back then, which,

01:02:11.560 which I think you probably wouldn't have been able to, to, to, to, uh, do anyway, given

01:02:16.160 all the horrible things that started to, to happen to you, you know, and Tammy health-wise,

01:02:20.920 um, in, in 2019.

01:02:23.660 Yeah.

01:02:24.020 Well, like, like I said, I'm, I'm absolutely thrilled to be able to do this.

01:02:28.160 Well, because I, I seem to be able to do it and that's something, but also that I have 0.94

01:02:31.960 the opportunity again, I think you'd have to be a pretentious fool not to take an, an, 0.92

01:02:37.860 an opportunity like that and be grateful for it. 0.93

01:02:40.600 And like every people, there's mistake, mistakes made, you know, and that's that, but who knows,

01:02:46.020 you know, if, if the upshot of this all is that the protection for freedom of inquiry

01:02:51.380 and speech in the UK is, is strengthened and maybe that's a model for the West.

01:02:55.740 It's like, well, that's a pretty small price to pay, even though it was, you know, it was

01:03:01.540 unpleasant.

01:03:02.400 So now say la vie, you know.

01:03:04.700 So here, what happens is that in the midst of this complete chaos, Pinocchio has a choice

01:03:09.280 and the choice is he can either save himself, which is a very, very selfish choice and reduces

01:03:15.520 him to an a historical individual because he has no relationship left with his father,

01:03:20.120 or he can put himself at great risk and rescue his father, you know, finish the process, stop

01:03:27.080 his father from drowning and your life has changed dramatically.

01:03:31.560 Um, if you could have taken a route, I guess I'm asking, you know, would you do it again?

01:03:41.600 And I do, but I don't want to ask that in a cliched way.

01:03:44.840 And maybe it's a stupid question because you just don't know, but are you okay? 0.88

01:03:50.300 Yeah. 0.99

01:03:50.900 Yeah.

01:03:51.220 I mean, you know, on the one hand, if I think about it logically, would I do it again in a

01:03:57.200 heartbeat?

01:03:58.080 There are a few things I might do slightly differently, but I'm not even compelled.

01:04:03.040 You know, I think, uh, it went pretty well in light of what the, uh, the forces in play

01:04:10.700 were.

01:04:11.860 But, you know, the, the thing that we've lost is security, right?

01:04:17.980 The fact is the world, I mean, people might, you got a settlement from the university, but

01:04:24.400 that was a trivial proportion of your future or your mutual future earnings.

01:04:30.480 It was nothing.

01:04:31.220 It was enough.

01:04:31.760 So you didn't starve to death immediately, but that was all.

01:04:35.040 Right.

01:04:35.680 Um, you know, and if, if I'm honest about it, we were forced to move out of our home to a

01:04:42.840 different city.

01:04:43.880 We uprooted our children's lives, which was quite disruptive.

01:04:49.340 Um, but I really don't feel there was any choice.

01:04:56.300 I don't, you know, if I, if I think about it as a matter of choice, I cannot find the circuit

01:05:02.000 that would have done anything differently.

01:05:03.900 And, um, I'm not, all I can say is our lives are full of purpose and we're doing fine.

01:05:14.400 The absence of security is something I think about a lot, but, um, but yes, I would say

01:05:22.680 there wasn't any choice nor should there have been.

01:05:26.060 And I'm not, uh, I'm not sorry.

01:05:29.360 I made the choices I did in the slightest.

01:05:31.360 Well, you look good, man.

01:05:34.760 And you look, if you don't mind me saying, you look different than you did when I saw

01:05:38.880 you before.

01:05:40.160 Well, I'm older now.

01:05:41.180 Well, but there's a year.

01:05:43.120 I've noticed this in my clinical clients when they, when they integrate their aggression,

01:05:49.760 their faces harden and they, they, they look determined all of a sudden instead of questioning.

01:05:56.040 And you look like that more than you did.

01:06:00.120 Now, some of that's from getting older, but not all of it.

01:06:02.580 It's.

01:06:03.880 Well, I think, uh, you know, if, if I'm understanding you correctly, it's probably a lot about, um,

01:06:11.280 you know, getting catapulted into the big leagues and learning to, to play that role.

01:06:18.320 It's, um, you know, it's trial by fire, but, uh, certainly it's been fascinating and I'm

01:06:27.580 looking forward to seeing what comes next.

01:06:31.720 Famous last words.

01:06:33.280 Yeah, that's ominous coming from you, Jordan.

01:06:38.320 Pinocchio dies and then his father brings him home.

01:06:41.760 And so because he's rescued his father, the benevolent spirit of nature appears,

01:06:48.540 resurrects him and turns him into a real human being.

01:06:53.180 So it's pretty funny as far as I'm concerned that the answer to Nietzsche's Greek question

01:06:57.720 manifested itself in 19, mid-1930s in the forms of an, form of an animated child's movie.

01:07:05.980 So, you know, and that's an, that's an example.

01:07:08.220 That's an example of a number of things.

01:07:09.880 It's an example of how archetypes work.

01:07:12.140 It's also an example of how artists are on the edge of discovery all the time.

01:07:16.780 And they discover things they don't even understand.

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - May 19, 2022

254. The Adventures of Pinocchio and Free Speech Part 4⧸4

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