The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 276. The Best of Conservative Education

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00:00:44.080 Hello, everyone. I have the great good fortune today, well, first of all, to be sitting outside,

00:00:50.040 which is quite nice, and also to be speaking to Dr. Larry Arnn, who is president of Hillsdale

00:00:56.480 College. Hillsdale College is a liberal arts institution in Hillsdale, Michigan, and it's

00:01:02.960 quite a remarkable place. I was asked to deliver a commencement address there earlier this year

00:01:08.580 and went up for the day. I knew about Hillsdale a little bit, but hadn't visited there. It's a

00:01:14.040 remarkable island of educational sanity in the midst of a sea of educational chaos. And I'm going to be

00:01:21.700 talking today to Dr. Arnn, who's been president of this august institution for a number of decades

00:01:27.740 about, well, about Hillsdale College in general, about its history, about his tenure there and his

00:01:34.480 activities and occupation and enterprise, and about the state, the dismal state, let's say,

00:01:41.920 of the higher education enterprise in general in the United States and in the West more broadly.

00:01:47.280 So I hope you enjoy the conversation. Welcome, Dr. Arnn. Thank you very much for coming to see me

00:01:55.100 and also for the commencement invitation and for agreeing to do this podcast. I'm really looking

00:02:02.200 forward to it. Well, you're a tremendous host and a tremendous man. It's a great pleasure for me to be

00:02:08.260 with you today. Yeah, it's been fun. It's been fun. We were out in the boat for the sunsets and we had

00:02:14.860 some fireworks at night and it's quiet and peaceful here and away from the fray, let's say. So that's

00:02:20.200 been lovely. And Dr. Arnn and I have been talking a lot about plans for educational revival in some

00:02:26.480 sense in the future. And so there'll be lots of things coming down the pipelines on that front.

00:02:30.520 But to begin with, I think we'll start by talking about Hillsdale and about its singular vision and

00:02:35.400 its founding. And so why don't we start? Tell me about how Hillsdale, tell everybody about how

00:02:40.220 Hillsdale got its beginning. And let's walk through the history of the institution.

00:02:44.680 History starts in 1844. It was on the frontier in Michigan. That was far as the country went back

00:02:54.840 then. A bunch of New England preachers who were classically educated. They read Latin and Greek,

00:03:03.100 which means that they knew the books that were written before Jesus. And they were very loyal to Jesus.

00:03:08.620 And they brought the tradition of a liberal education with them out to the frontier. And they founded a

00:03:16.320 college. And they met in the town hall. They just, one particular one of them, and they ran some done,

00:03:25.080 rode a horse into town. And there were two hotels, two hotels, thriving metropolis. And he said,

00:03:32.140 I would like to talk to the leading citizens who care about education. And a bunch of them gathered,

00:03:39.300 and they used city hall. It wasn't a government thing. The college had never had any money from

00:03:44.920 the government. But city hall back then was conceived a place where the city could use it,

00:03:50.180 the citizens could use it. And they made a deal, and they started the college. The city pledged

00:03:57.060 $10,000 if the college would raise $10,000. And that came from this Ransom Dunn and some other

00:04:07.820 people. They were preachers. And they went riding around the countryside all over Wisconsin and

00:04:13.140 Illinois and Indiana and Michigan. And they'd give sermons, and they'd ask for money. And the money

00:04:21.560 became $2 and $5 at a time. We still have the list. And what did they want to do? Well, they were very

00:04:31.280 clear about that. The college has a very beautiful founding document. It's the discovery of that that

00:04:38.680 made me think I could find a calling in managing the college. And it commits the college to four

00:04:46.520 things. They are learning, freedom, faith, and character. And those are all drawn out of the

00:04:55.760 great tradition of the liberal arts that goes back to medieval times, indeed back to Plato's Academy

00:05:00.880 before that. And so they, you know, you need to be free in order to, what does the liberal arts mean?

00:05:08.280 It means the study of the ultimate things, the things that are good to know just because they're good to

00:05:14.120 know. And then you need to be able to, you need to have your freedom to do that. The college has

00:05:21.560 always been interested in the Constitution. And you need to have a strong character. You need to not be

00:05:27.120 overcome by vice, but pursue virtue. And what else? And you need to, and God is a big figure. So those are

00:05:36.720 the points. And then, you know, this is in 1844 and 16 years later, the world fell apart. Uh, the civil war

00:05:45.160 began in 1861. And it's curious about that because we didn't have any military training at the college,

00:05:54.260 but effectively all of the young men joined the Union Army. And they, uh, uh, there were more than 40 of

00:06:06.360 them at the Battle of Gettysburg in the Peach Orchard on the second day, helped to turn the tide. Uh, all in

00:06:14.320 all about 500 of our students went more than any place except Yale, which is older and larger than we

00:06:20.340 were then. And, uh, the faculty had been very involved. So why do you think these preachers that

00:06:27.340 started Hillsdale, Christians, were also interested in the benefits of a liberal arts education? Why

00:06:34.540 didn't they just agitate to start a seminary? That's, you know, um, great political philosopher writes,

00:06:41.380 uh, religion is not, can't, can't be simply open to philosophy, but the most open is the Christian

00:06:51.600 religion. Uh, he, he talks about the Spanish names, Harry, Harry Jaffa, a teacher of mine. You know,

00:06:57.800 he's his, his teacher, Leo Strauss. He talks about the fact that Moses, my, my embodied, he's a Jew

00:07:04.660 and, uh, all for Robbie, a Muslim and Thomas Aquinas are rough contemporaries. And, uh, Thomas

00:07:14.680 Aquinas could write most openly about God, about, about the truth is known by reason in the, in the

00:07:22.600 great Summa Theologica. The first query is whether anything apart from reason is necessary to know

00:07:31.300 God. And he says, you know, that, that, that book, a wonderful book is written in the form of the

00:07:38.940 disputed question. So here's the question, then two or three opinions about it and two or three answers

00:07:45.400 and then his own opinion. And his own opinion is, yes, there are some things apart from reason you

00:07:50.760 need, but you can know a heck of a lot by reason. Right. So there's this alignment and reason in that

00:07:56.860 sense, that's the alignment in some sense between the Greek tradition, the Platonic tradition and the

00:08:02.200 philosophical tradition and the emergent Christian tradition. There was an overlap there. That's

00:08:06.580 really quite remarkable that comes together with the joint conceptualization of the logos.

00:08:10.840 So because that conception of region reason that you're describing, that's the Greek notion of the

00:08:18.620 logos. And that was adjoined oddly to the Christian notion of the logos, which I think is a kind of

00:08:24.100 historical mystery. But the fact that those things actually overlaid and overlapped is a remarkable

00:08:29.140 synchronicity, we could say. And so the Greeks believed that you could move towards the good

00:08:35.320 and the sum of all goods as a consequence of logos, as a consequence of reason. And then the Christians

00:08:41.120 insisted that that logos had been embodied in a particular figure and that there were divine

00:08:45.960 attributes associated with that. And so, and so maybe that's part of what's underlying, what's

00:08:51.780 underneath the allowance on the Christian side for the Greek philosophical tradition underneath the

00:08:57.640 rubric in some sense of a modified Judaism, right? It's not something you'd necessarily expect, but it's

00:09:03.300 definitely something that happened. And I think there's an important thing to lay out in that regard

00:09:07.600 too, because a lot of modern people are taught that there's a real antithesis between the religious,

00:09:12.940 say the Catholic in particular, and education in general and science in particular. But as I've looked

00:09:19.680 into that more deeply, I've become convinced that exactly the opposite is the case, and that the

00:09:24.420 university tradition, certainly which grew out of the monastic tradition just as clearly as can be,

00:09:29.520 but also the scientific tradition, are deeply embedded inside the religious substrate rather than

00:09:34.980 operating in a manner that's antithetical. And I think the fact that the preachers, preachers knew

00:09:39.160 that even in 18, well, even, they knew that in the mid-1800s, and that drove them to decide that a liberal

00:09:47.300 arts education studying people like Plato and Aristotle, for example, was actually commensurate with a

00:09:51.860 broader, let's say, ethical and Christian goal. It's not obvious why that would be the case, to pull in

00:09:57.380 these pagans. So, first of all, a prerequisite for entry to Hillsdale College in 1844 was you had to

00:10:06.540 read both Greek and Latin. And so they started prep school for people who couldn't do that, and you

00:10:11.260 just, you learn those, and then you could come. But the way they looked at the world, and I, you know,

00:10:16.480 I think it's a wonderful way to look at the world myself, is that this account of logos, which you bring

00:10:22.280 up, that's the Greek word both for reason and for speech. And that means that whatever you can

00:10:31.320 think, you can say, and whatever you can say, you can think. And that means that this conversation

00:10:38.700 is a kind of sharing that no other creature is capable of. And it's a transformative process as

00:10:46.560 a redemptive and transformative process. And that's right, and connected. Aristotle writes that

00:10:53.620 we're more gregarious, that comes from the Greek word for flock, than horses or bees, right? And that

00:11:01.780 means, and so it's this nature of man, but then logos is not, when we talk, we can see, you know,

00:11:12.040 how to get from A to B, we can also think about whether to go from A to B. And that brings

00:11:18.200 in the divine, because that would be in both Greek philosophy, and in the Christian faith,

00:11:23.260 and the Jewish faith, and I think the Islamic faith, that would be the ultimate destination,

00:11:30.260 God. Right, that's like a definition, right? If you think about this as a mapping problem,

00:11:35.100 that part of what we're doing, well, dialoguing, exchanging logos, is to map out the terrain,

00:11:42.140 that includes the destination and the details of the journey, all of that. And then the ultimate

00:11:48.220 destination is a destination that would be guided by the highest good, by definition, right? Because

00:11:53.660 your destination is a good, you wouldn't be going there if you didn't think it was better,

00:11:57.020 unless you're aiming down. And so the ultimate destination, in some sense, is the transcendent

00:12:01.820 destination. And so that's like a definition of the divine path. And in some sense, a definition

00:12:07.340 of the spirit that animates you while you're walking down that path. And then you say, and I think

00:12:12.220 there's an instinctual element to this that's associated with that gregariousness. So, you know,

00:12:17.260 people are unbelievable mimics, right? We imitate each other on a scale that's unparalleled among other

00:12:23.500 creatures. And we do that with language, but we can literally inhabit, we can almost literally inhabit

00:12:30.060 each other's bodies, each other's frames of reference. And we do that by exchanging viewpoints,

00:12:34.300 essentially. And so we're negotiating together this pathway to the highest possible point.

00:12:40.380 And I think that's marked. So, you know, what I was hoping when we started this discussion,

00:12:44.860 like I always hope with my podcast is that we would fall into a discussion and be engaged by it,

00:12:50.540 right? And then it would be animated by a spirit that was its own, not instrumental, not planned,

00:12:55.100 but something that would emerge automatically as a consequence of goodwill and honest

00:12:59.740 communication. And what's so fascinating about that, literally, is that if that happens,

00:13:06.380 it's intrinsically and instinctually engaging, right? You feel the conversation as meaningful.

00:13:11.660 And that's a marker, as far as I can tell, for the manifestation of that logos,

00:13:16.220 that instinct for meaning. It's not something rational. It's the thing upon which rational discourse

00:13:22.460 fundamentally depends, and maybe the goal of rational discourse. And then you could also think,

00:13:27.580 this is a wonderful way of thinking about it too, you know, is that if you're listening to a symphony,

00:13:33.740 in some sense, you're apprehending its completion, right? So there's a voyage to the end.

00:13:40.300 But getting to the end of the symphony is not the purpose of listening to the music,

00:13:46.540 even though you know that end is there. So you have the end in mind. But if the end is appropriate,

00:13:52.540 then the journey becomes intrinsically meaningful in and of itself. And so you get the destination

00:13:58.860 tied to the journey in that intrinsic sense. And I do believe that people experience that

00:14:03.660 as deep engagement in meaning. And that's the purpose of dialogue. And there's that Christian

00:14:09.980 idea that goes along with that too. And it's an idea certainly that therapists have picked up on,

00:14:15.260 is that that redempt, that dialogue, honest dialogue is genuinely spiritually redemptive.

00:14:22.220 We'll get back to more with Larry Arnn in just a moment. First, we'd like to thank our sponsor,

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00:15:28.140 So I think all that you just said is breathtakingly good. And it shows you understand what teaching is. Today,

00:15:38.940 we think of teaching as doing something to somebody, right? It's not. It's doing something with

00:15:44.620 somebody. Plato writes a letter. He wrote 13 letters, but one of them apparently is his, the seventh.

00:15:51.900 And he says, how would you capture the teaching of Socrates? It's just in these conversations.

00:15:57.900 Right, right.

00:15:58.860 And so he invented the dialogue for that purpose. And then his student, Aristotle, invented the

00:16:05.180 dialectical treatise where they introduce a thing and you talk about it a while and you have to go

00:16:11.260 back over and something else comes up. So it's like a conversation. Yep, yep.

00:16:16.060 And the point is, we learn together. Talking and thinking are the same thing.

00:16:21.980 The same thing. Yeah, that's why free speech is so you think, well, why think? Well, so that you

00:16:28.060 think before you act. Why think before you act? So you don't fall into a pit. How do you think?

00:16:34.700 You think dialogically, even if you're thinking only internally. What that means is you've trained

00:16:39.420 yourself to be more than one person at the same time. Very difficult thing to manage. Most of the time,

00:16:44.860 we think through dialogue. And it's so interesting to me too, that these long form podcasts

00:16:49.740 have become a cultural phenomenon, right? Because in some sense, people like Rogan in particular

00:16:55.500 pioneered this, these long form dialogues. In some real sense, that is a return to that

00:17:00.460 platonic tradition of dialectical learning. And part of the reason that people like these podcasts

00:17:06.140 as well isn't necessarily because of the content, although that's relevant, but this is also relevant

00:17:11.740 to the teaching enterprise. It's because they love to see the process of dialogue modeled.

00:17:18.300 And so a lot of the comments on the YouTube channels, like I had a conversation with my father

00:17:22.460 and I put it up on my channel. I interviewed him about his life and I wanted to do that personally.

00:17:27.100 I had my reasons, but it turned out to be a very popular podcast, much more than I had expected it to

00:17:32.220 be. And I don't think it was because the content per se was like universally fascinating. No, it was

00:17:40.620 the details of my father's life in a particular time and place in Northern Saskatchewan when he was

00:17:45.580 growing up really on the frontier. But people really like to see the genuine intergenerational

00:17:52.780 dialogue modeled. And we have no idea how important an element of education that is, right? Is that

00:17:58.060 because as a professor, partly what you're doing is inculcating knowledge, which is doing something

00:18:02.460 to someone, let's say. But a huge part of it is modeling the process by which knowledge itself is

00:18:07.740 generated and expanded. So one can understand Aristotle by reading the first lines.

00:18:17.580 The first line of the metaphysics is, the human being stretches himself out to know. We want to

00:18:24.620 know. And so your father, anybody talking with this father is a demonstration how one generation

00:18:33.180 affects the next. But your father, you're a remarkable man. And people wonder, where does that guy come from?

00:18:40.940 And so to find out that information, and then to find out that it's normal, you know, you weren't,

00:18:50.300 your father was not a professor at Cambridge, right? Your father was a normal man, and a heck of a man.

00:18:59.980 A normal man is a fine thing to be. Just think of the conclusion you can draw about the form of

00:19:05.820 government of aristocracy, right? It is one of the most worthy forms of government, but it's also

00:19:15.500 fatally flawed, because sons are not necessarily like their fathers, and daughters like their mothers

00:19:22.860 and fathers. So that, you see, in other words, there's an account of how nature works in hearing

00:19:31.340 you talk to your father. And hearing a lecture about it is different, right? Because they're

00:19:41.900 seeing the, if you're talking to your dad, they're seeing the raw material. And we've been talking a

00:19:49.340 lot the last couple of days, and your dad comes up a lot. There's a couple of things I realized about

00:19:54.460 him. I thought about this for a long time. So my father has a very large collection of single-shot rifles,

00:19:59.980 300 of them or something, like a lot. And he's been, I would say, compelled and obsessed by

00:20:06.300 collecting them, learning about them, and becoming an expert marksman, because he was,

00:20:11.180 and he is an expert marksman. He was competing at provincial levels. So very good marksman. And when

00:20:17.180 he hunted, he hunted with single-shot rifles, because the goal was to hit the target with one shot.

00:20:22.940 And it really, I wasn't interested in rifles the same way he was. And he had a craftsman interest in

00:20:28.700 them too, because he made gun stocks. And he was a good, good carpenter and handyman. Very artistically

00:20:35.020 gifted and very precise in his, in his, in his, in his workings. His grandfather who raised him was a

00:20:43.740 blacksmith who could make virtually anything out of nothing. And so, but his, his, his preoccupation with

00:20:50.940 guns really was a mystery to me because I didn't share the same thing temperamentally. You know,

00:20:56.860 I was probably too tender hearted to be a, to be a hunter. But I, it came to me at one point,

00:21:02.140 after having meditated on this for a long time, that the reason my dad was so interested in rifles was

00:21:06.860 because he wanted to hit the target with a single shot. And he realized that that was the purpose of

00:21:12.140 life. And I knew at that point that the word sin was a derivation. It's also derived through the

00:21:18.700 Jewish equivalent of the word sin. The hamartia, which is the Greek word means to miss the target.

00:21:24.540 It's an archery term. And the Jewish equivalent of the word for sin has the same kind of derivation,

00:21:29.260 means to miss the target. And so I thought, oh, I see what my dad was doing. He didn't know this either,

00:21:34.700 is he was practicing to, to aim in the most deadly possible manner. One shot dead center of the right

00:21:43.420 target. And all of that perfectionism that goes along with mechanical machining, let's say, and the

00:21:49.420 precision that's necessary to make a rifle. It's all associated with that hunting tradition that

00:21:53.820 characterizes human beings so deeply. Like, I mean, our, our whole physical platform is a throwing

00:21:58.700 platform and we aim at everything. All our sports are aims at targets. It's really

00:22:04.620 deeply embedded inside of me, of us. And so I realized that about my father. I told him that,

00:22:09.660 I said, I think I figured out why you're so interested in rifles and shooting. So I outlined

00:22:13.980 that and he said, yeah, I think that's right. He didn't know that. And then, so that was very

00:22:18.940 interesting, that precision element of him. But also one of the things that my father gave me as a gift,

00:22:24.700 and I think my mother did this as well, is that he was really 100% behind me, the best in me.

00:22:32.220 I always knew, even when I was a little kid, that he had, he didn't have my back exactly. He was a

00:22:39.100 firm supporter of the best being made manifest in me. And many of my friends didn't have that with

00:22:46.060 their fathers. And of course, people who lack fathers entirely, unless they're very fortunate,

00:22:50.140 often don't have that at all. And so my dad spent a lot of time with me when I was a very little kid,

00:22:55.820 teaching me to read, and hours a day, when he came home from work for months on end. And I became an

00:23:02.140 expert reader because of that. And that was unbelievable, unbelievable gift. And the time

00:23:07.820 he spent, that wasn't just the fact that he taught me how to do it, because he was a school teacher,

00:23:12.140 but that he spent all that time and valued it so intently, it gave me this deep rooted admiration and

00:23:18.700 love for literacy that was, maybe that's the most fundamental element of my existence, I suppose,

00:23:25.260 is that, that love. But I know that having that male encouragement firmly on the side of the promotion

00:23:34.940 of your development, that is something that's just of inestimable importance. And something,

00:23:39.420 of course, that should be offered by teachers to their students, male and female alike.

00:23:43.420 If, you know, there's, you hear stories, I guess it happens, that parents want to dominate their

00:23:51.660 kid. Fathers might want the kid to be like them, right? And that's not the natural thing. The natural

00:23:59.180 thing is you think, one of the contributions I, a parent, can make in my life is for my children to

00:24:08.540 have benefits I didn't have. And to have character better than mine. And that's, you know, that is

00:24:16.220 fundamental to the teaching business. I think today in the teaching business, if you, in all of it,

00:24:24.860 right? You know, so I, I'm a teacher at Hillsdale College. I'm the president, but I'm a teacher too.

00:24:29.020 And we think today, if you read about it, we want them to think something. We want them to,

00:24:40.700 we want to do something to them to make them the way we want. But that violates the spirit of the

00:24:47.420 dialogue that you just, that you brought up earlier, right? In other words, that's conversion

00:24:52.300 therapy. That's what that is. That is, that is what it is. And we're gonna, so I'm, we're gonna

00:24:58.780 set up a system to work on you. And then what you know, and what you are will be a product of our

00:25:06.060 work. And that is the most uncharitable approach to education. And it's dominating these days.

00:25:14.060 Yeah. Well, it's not education. It's ideological inculcation. It's propaganda. It kind of reminds

00:25:19.740 me of the Prussian education model. And you know, a lot of that was, was the foundation,

00:25:24.620 the philosophical foundation of the American public education system. One of the things that

00:25:29.500 was a mystery to me, I built this program a long while back called self-authoring. And there's an

00:25:35.020 element of that, future authoring, that helps people walk through the process of developing a

00:25:40.620 personal vision. And so, first of all, people are asked to envision what their life could be like

00:25:46.860 five years down the road, if they had what they needed and wanted in a manner that would be best for

00:25:53.020 them if they were taking care of themselves. Right? So imagine that you're worthwhile.

00:25:57.980 Now you get to have what you need and want, but you have to aim at it. And so you ask yourself,

00:26:02.940 what would that be if I could have it? And so that's the first part of the exercise. And then

00:26:06.540 the next part steps you through seven major components of your life, your education, your career,

00:26:13.900 your intimate relationship, your family, your physical health, etc. Major sub components of your life,

00:26:20.220 asking you to detail out a vision for each of those, and then to make a relatively concretized plan.

00:26:26.540 And then to outline a vision of hell, which is where you might end up if you let your bad habits

00:26:32.300 carry you away. So I used this in my classes, and we did a bunch of research with it as well,

00:26:38.780 showing that it decreased the probability that students would drop out of college by about 50%,

00:26:43.500 which is stunning for a 90 minute. It's stunning. And what's even more stunning is no universities

00:26:48.860 have picked it up. But in any case, one of the things that really struck me as a mystery after

00:26:54.060 that, I started using it in my classes, was, okay, why the hell do we have an education system

00:27:00.940 where kids are taught for 12 years minimum, if they graduate from high school,

00:27:06.540 and never once do we sit them down and say, all right, you could be who you wanted to be in the

00:27:12.860 best of all possible ways. But you have to know what that would be. And then you have to aim at it,

00:27:19.020 even no matter how imperfectly, right, you have to start to flesh out that vision. Why don't we do that?

00:27:24.300 I thought, well, that's such an oversight. How can we have structured an entire education system

00:27:28.620 where we spent 12 years doing everything except the one thing that we should clearly do,

00:27:34.220 which is to help students elucidate a vision for the development of their character, which is what

00:27:38.700 Hillsdale concentrates on. And then I did some background historical investigation and found

00:27:43.980 out that the American public school system and then public school systems in general, Japan,

00:27:48.860 throughout Europe, were based on the Prussian military model. And so the American idea was that

00:27:56.380 when the rural types were flooding into the cities in the midst of the high end of the industrial

00:28:01.580 revolution, that there was going to be a demand for disciplined workers. And so the Prussian

00:28:08.380 governmental authorities wanted to produce surf-like soldiers who were nothing but obedient.

00:28:14.540 And so the Prussian education model, first state education system, was adopted in the U.S. and then

00:28:20.540 broadly in the West. And the underlying ethos was, we'll produce obedient soldiers and then that workers,

00:28:27.260 obedient. Same thing, inculcation of an ideological mode of life, right? And so that's what we have for

00:28:37.100 an education system. And then I would say that ethos to a large degree spread up into the higher

00:28:42.780 education systems too. And so now we have this situation where, well, you know, the proper thing

00:28:47.980 to do with students is to train them to be activists, social justice warriors, and people who are saving the

00:28:54.060 planet in a particular ideologically riddled manner, without this dialogical exploration that's

00:29:00.700 actually the basis of true education, which is, by the way, why we're talking about Hillsdale today.

00:29:05.980 Yeah, see, I realize now why they won't use the self-authoring program, which we will at Hillsdale College.

00:29:15.900 The point is, if they arrive and you think the purpose is to do something to them, then you're not as

00:29:25.100 interested in what they want to do. And yet, and you know, I think it's, you know, the only rule that

00:29:34.860 works in a college, in my opinion, is be good. You know, there are a few details too, but, you know,

00:29:41.660 is that a good thing to do? Don't do it if it's not, you know? And, and so you want to teach them

00:29:50.460 to be good human beings, excellent human beings, but most of the work is in them.

00:29:57.180 I told you a story. When I came to Hillsdale College, about 25% of the freshmen left at the

00:30:05.500 end of the freshman year. And that means that at least one in four are dissatisfied and that changes

00:30:11.980 everything. Now, 25% is a very good number. You know, because it's more like 50 or 60%.

00:30:17.900 That's right. Especially among young men. But it's, but it's, you know, my, my favorite

00:30:25.660 activity is eating in the dining hall with the students, which I've been doing now for 22 years.

00:30:31.180 And it's delightful. And, you know, they soon forget who you are and you just have a talk.

00:30:35.980 And I discovered doing that, that a lot of them were angry with the college. And, and why were they?

00:30:44.540 It took a long time for me to figure this out. But the summary of the, of the arguments was,

00:30:51.020 I finally found a phrase that explained it to me. Nobody told me. Nobody told me about this.

00:30:59.020 Nobody told me about that. About what sort of things? And when was this? This is in the year 2000-2002.

00:31:06.220 The breakthrough came in 2002. And, and, and, you know, like we're a very old-fashioned college.

00:31:13.420 We have, the sexes are separated in the dormitories. And there's no drinking in the dormitories and

00:31:20.460 all that. And so, you know, and that's in the curriculum. It's an anti-animal house institution.

00:31:25.900 It is very much, you know, and, and, and, and, and the curriculum is one half of the curriculum

00:31:34.860 is the same for every student, you know, because there's, we, we argue there are great things to know

00:31:41.580 and you have to be introduced to them, all of them. And you figure out your major, sure. But you

00:31:48.220 won't be able to practice your major if you go into a particular line of work, unless you know

00:31:52.860 something about the world as it's. So anyway, we, so that's all very strict and it was stricter now,

00:31:59.260 but it was strict when I came there somewhat. Well, I finally got to the bottom of it.

00:32:07.020 They have to agree. You can't be doing things to people unless they agree that you may do.

00:32:13.900 Right. Policy, policy that involves compulsion is by definition, bad policy.

00:32:19.100 It is, isn't it though? And you have to spend all the time enforcing it and you produce resistances.

00:32:23.500 And so, so your students were telling you 25% of them that they didn't feel that they had entered

00:32:28.540 into this agreement on a sufficiently informed and voluntary basis. That's right. And that,

00:32:34.060 and I was missing that. I thought they had a disagreement with me about whether they ought

00:32:39.500 to be having sex before they get married. And they may have that disagreement, but that wasn't

00:32:44.540 the operative one. The operative one was nobody told me. And, and so we, when I saw that it was a

00:32:54.780 revelation at a dinner with a bunch of frat boys, uh, who I, I, I saw what the rub was. And the next

00:33:04.620 morning we wrote the honor code and now we don't lose 1% of our students from, from.

00:33:09.500 Yeah. So we need to say that again. So your dropout rate is what?

00:33:12.300 Uh, after the freshman year, 1%.

00:33:14.940 1% compared to 60%.

00:33:16.780 Well, compared to 40%. No. Yeah. Compared to what was it? 40%.

00:33:23.340 Right. Right. And what's the average for institutions? It's more than that.

00:33:27.580 No, I'm, I messed up my number. Ours was 20%. And the, the run in colleges generally is around 40%,

00:33:35.580 40 to 45%. And, and so, and you know, 20% is huge, by the way. It means every time you sit down at a

00:33:42.940 table, there's a couple of people who are unhappy. Right. Right. And you don't want that. You want,

00:33:48.380 because college means partnership.

00:33:51.100 Mm-hmm. It's so strange that you have this strict and traditionalist college,

00:33:56.620 but aligned with that is an ethos of self-determination and self-development. And so

00:34:03.260 it's a very paradoxical, paradoxical juxtaposition of, of order and opportunity. And an interesting

00:34:09.660 one, because people, this is, I think, part of the downfall of an excessive Protestantism,

00:34:15.180 in some sense, is that, and, and it's also a downfall of small L liberal philosophy, is that we tend

00:34:20.220 to think of all external constraints as inhibitions on self-actualization, right? It's just limits.

00:34:27.340 It's just arbitrary walls that you're running into to stop the flowering of the wonder that is you.

00:34:33.020 But it's a very perverse way of conceptualizing opportunity, because it does turn out that under

00:34:38.620 many circumstances, if you accept a strict regimen of a priori rules, like in a chess game, that what

00:34:45.340 that does is open up a wealth of opportunities to you that you wouldn't have otherwise had. So there's

00:34:49.740 this weird relationship between strict rules and freedom. And one of the things that I love,

00:34:55.980 that's why we're having this conversation too, is when I went to Hillsdale, I've been to lots of

00:34:59.820 university campuses in my life, and many in the more recent years, and they're generally per, there's

00:35:07.020 a sense of resentment, entitled resentment, that permeates the establishment. You see that in the

00:35:12.700 faculty, the administrators, and most of all in the students. And it's very unsettling and uncomfortable.

00:35:19.980 And I really felt the absence of that at Hillsdale, talking to all the students,

00:35:25.660 talking to the faculty, talking to the administrators. There was a harmony there,

00:35:29.340 like a musical harmony. And I know your campus is also, one third of the students are involved in

00:35:34.780 the music program in some manner.

00:35:35.980 40%.

00:35:36.540 Right, 40. Yeah, it's amazing. And there was music everywhere in the campus, which I thought was

00:35:40.940 just wonderful. And so, and it's also so interesting to hear you talk about this old fashioned approach

00:35:47.660 with sex segregated dormitories and so forth. And these 1950s rules are before that, let's say,

00:35:54.140 and that students actually find that acceptable if they're brought on voluntarily. So let's talk about

00:35:58.860 that honor code more. So why did you decide that the solution to the problem of their discomfort

00:36:05.660 wasn't alteration of the rules? It was more clear explication of the a priori rules. Why did you go

00:36:12.860 that route? And why do you think it, what was the route? And why did it work?

00:36:16.460 What I thought before I had this revelation, just quickly, how do I have it? A national class

00:36:25.820 long jumper, a very beautiful young man, a frat boy, began senior dinner. They come over to

00:36:34.220 our house and we have dinner with them, you know, and, and this was a senior dinner. And he began by

00:36:39.820 forgiving me for the rules. And, you know, and I was cranky that night. And I said, why'd you come

00:36:51.180 here? And he loved it. He said, I said, what, what do you love about it? You want us to be this the

00:36:59.100 same as the University of Michigan? And then I said the golden thing. I said, could you read when

00:37:04.620 you came here? And he said, yes. And I said, did you? Because if you'd read, you'd know. And how can

00:37:12.300 you be complaining about it four years later? And I just noticed I had the moral high ground.

00:37:20.540 And in the end, it wasn't really the particular rules. If you had the most libertine rules in the

00:37:27.420 world, there'd be plenty of people who'd object to that, right? It's that their will had been

00:37:33.900 consulted. And so. Right. And that was made thoroughly explicit and understood. That's

00:37:39.500 what the honor, that's what the honor code does. And see, we were afraid of the honor code

00:37:45.900 because we weren't very strong in applications. We were very strong now and afraid we wouldn't get

00:37:51.980 enough. And what if they don't come? Yeah. That's the same sort of fear that's, I would say,

00:37:57.580 paralyzed and castrated, let's say, the Catholic Church and its liberalization. It's, well, we're

00:38:03.580 making it too difficult for people. We just have to make it easier. We make it easy enough,

00:38:07.500 then everyone will come. I read Kierkegaard, you know, and Kierkegaard has a famous passage where

00:38:12.140 he describes just how useless and idler he really is and how it's impossible for him to be a benefactor of

00:38:17.900 the industrial age and to make everything that's already been made easy, even easier for people.

00:38:23.100 And so that his signal contribution was to do everything he could to make things more difficult

00:38:28.380 because there would come a time when everything had become so easy that the cry for something

00:38:33.740 difficult would become overwhelming. And I love that. And that's a good example of the necessity of

00:38:39.340 these rules. That's an excellent rule of thumb

00:38:43.100 when dealing with the young. Because what is their drive? They're like, you know,

00:38:49.260 I think of them like plants. I think they grow. I don't think you're making them into anything.

00:38:54.060 I think they grow. You can stunt them though. You can do that. Oh boy, can't you though? And so

00:39:00.620 they want to grow. They don't even fully understand the process, but they want to grow up. It's the

00:39:13.580 reason why a one-year-old or a three-year-old probably will get cranky if the five-year-old is

00:39:23.340 taught, is treated like more of an adult, right? Right, right. They want to grow up, right? And so

00:39:31.100 you have to harness that. You know, it's not really even a harness. You have to get that on your side.

00:39:38.380 I encourage it. And that means this coming here to Hillsdale College is an act of maturity. Right,

00:39:46.620 right, right. And maturity is a desirable thing. It's better in all ways than being immature. It opens

00:39:52.380 up more possibilities. It's not subjugation to more constraint. That's right. It's the acceptance of a

00:39:56.940 voluntary system of discipline, striving, and the opening up of an immense vista of opportunity. Yeah.

00:40:02.700 Yeah. If I was as good a psychology as you are, I'd trade jobs with you.

00:40:08.940 If, uh, it's, uh, yeah, see that. And you know, I, I'll just tell you, when you approach it like that,

00:40:16.860 happiness blossoms everywhere. I mean, Hillsdale College, I used to sit down in the dining hall,

00:40:22.940 in the lunchtime in the dining hall is come to visit Hillsdale College. I'll take you to the dining

00:40:28.380 hall. We'll have lunch. And you sit down with these kids. I'm the only old guy who sits with

00:40:32.940 the kids all the time. And it's delightful. It wasn't always, they had complaints, you know,

00:40:41.500 and I would, I would leave the table thinking we're subsidizing the day, daylights out of these kids,

00:40:47.740 and they're not happy. What are we spending our money for? And, and, you know,

00:40:53.580 well, it's still very perverse and strange that what you decided to do was to implement an honor

00:40:57.980 code. So first of all, why honor? Why that archaic and old fashioned word? And maybe we could walk

00:41:04.300 through what the code is and how you introduce that to students. And then why they not only appear

00:41:09.980 to accept it, but to accept it so assiduously that they all stay in the college, which is,

00:41:15.420 that's an amazing achievement, right? That's, that's remarkable and very unlikely achievement. So,

00:41:20.540 and it's such a strange route to get there. Yeah. So, so let, so why an honor code? Well,

00:41:26.860 honor. So, you know, I have the advice reading Aristotle and teaching Aristotle, and that's always

00:41:32.780 good for one, in my opinion. And so what you learn about honor, honor is, you know, a great thing,

00:41:38.460 right? It's, you know, to be honorable, to commit a great act of honor, right? You find out that honor

00:41:44.940 is not the highest good. You find out soon because honor depends on other people's opinion

00:41:51.180 and a much higher, in fact, the highest human relationship is friendship.

00:41:55.980 Uh, but you can't start with friendship. Honor does have the advantage of being

00:42:04.220 civic in its nature. It's something that we adopt together and win respect from each other.

00:42:10.460 So it's sort of like identity in its real sense. That's right. That's right.

00:42:14.060 You want an honorable identity. So, and we agree what that is. What the code says is,

00:42:19.260 um, uh, a Hillsdale College student is honest, uh, in word and deed, respectful, uh, of the rights of

00:42:29.820 others, uh, dutiful in study and service and through education, the student rises to self-government.

00:42:41.020 Right. Right. Rises to self-government. Right. And so it's an apprenticeship with mastery as the goal.

00:42:46.300 That's it. And then, and you know, and see commencement is the culminating ceremony.

00:42:52.300 You gave one of the best commencement speeches I've ever heard. And I've heard a past 11.

00:42:57.100 And, and that is the annual

00:43:00.700 signification that the college has done its work. And when I say the college, the college,

00:43:06.860 the word means partnership. It means everybody in the room. And you know, there were close to 6,000

00:43:13.340 people at commencement when you spoke and who were those people. They were the people who had made it

00:43:18.940 happen. They were the students and the faculty. They were the parents. Uh, they were the friends of

00:43:26.220 the college. Uh, and, and they are, they're, they're all there in an official capacity. We have come

00:43:33.820 together to do this thing. And it's to produce these remarkable young people. That's right. No,

00:43:39.340 to not to produce, to see, there's that bloody word again, factory word to encourage the development

00:43:47.500 of these remarkable young people to have had the privilege of encouraging the development of these

00:43:52.380 young people. That's it. Yeah. You know, if you, if you just think, uh, so I, I know a lot about Winston

00:43:58.940 Churchill because if you know about him, I argue you will come to love him. And I did. And, and

00:44:07.980 people always say to me, what explains Winston Churchill? Well, the only possible answer to that

00:44:15.980 is God and Winston Churchill. Uh, Winston Churchill was relatively well-born. Uh,

00:44:23.420 you know, Winston Churchill was very smart, had a tremendous memory, but you know, there's

00:44:32.540 millions of people who have those qualities and every one of them is different from him. And

00:44:37.580 every one of them is different from each other. And that means, you know, you, you, you are to some

00:44:45.260 extent the maker of yourself. Uh, that's a beautiful doctrine in Aristotle. And so in education,

00:44:55.180 you know, the, the first thing you just need to know two things when you admit them,

00:44:59.580 you need to, you need to know that they want to, and you need to know that they can willing and able

00:45:06.220 after that, they're going to do the work and you're going to help them.

00:45:11.420 They have to agree on what the work is because remember it's. Yeah. So how do you, how do you

00:45:16.060 make the honor code not just a proforma document that's empty words? Like, what is it? Because you,

00:45:23.580 there must, there must be specific things you do with the honor code that bring it to life.

00:45:28.940 Yeah. Well, we govern by it. Okay. So, so it's, it is actually the ethos of the institution.

00:45:34.700 So there's a, there's a congruence there, but you, you talk to the students when they first come to the

00:45:40.140 college. Yeah. And so, and I understand that that's part of the transmission of the honor code.

00:45:46.460 Yeah. They get, I, I, uh, they get it after they're admitted. First of all,

00:45:50.780 if you look at admissions materials from Hillsdale college, the honor code is featured in them.

00:45:56.940 And that means that we're giving you the information from the first step that this place is like this.

00:46:03.500 And if you want it, you know, you'll have a hard time finding an alternative. And if you don't want it,

00:46:09.100 the world is your oyster because they're different or most of them are different.

00:46:13.340 So you start with that, but then, uh, then, uh, along about the 1st of June, after the class is formed

00:46:21.180 and the deposits are in, I send them a letter. It's a page and a half letter.

00:46:26.540 And it's says, here's the honor code. It's a serious commitment. You should read it carefully.

00:46:35.740 Mm-hmm. Uh, if you think that you might not be willing to sign it, you should tell us now.

00:46:42.540 Mm-hmm. We'll help you find someplace to go to college. Uh, it tells them that on the Monday,

00:46:49.580 after you arrive on Sunday for freshman convocation, we will have a talk, me and the senior class,

00:46:56.060 about this document and then you will sign it altogether or go home. And, uh, that's,

00:47:04.380 and you know, I, I have signed it. See, and so we've all, we've all made oaths to be committed

00:47:12.220 to Hillsdale College. Now, one of the things that happens when you do it like that is that

00:47:19.020 enforcement becomes much less important. Right. Well, that's also the sign of good policy, right?

00:47:24.780 Yeah. I mean, Piaget, the developmental psychologist, he was very interested in

00:47:29.740 laying out the rational grounds for the emergence of a moral system. And so one of his propositions,

00:47:35.980 which I love, is that a goal-oriented system established on consensual grounds will out-compete

00:47:44.700 a goal-oriented system, same goal, on, on grounds of compulsion, not least because the system that

00:47:53.260 requires compulsion will waste time and resources in the enforcement. So it's a priori less efficient.

00:47:59.900 And then you can add to that the fact that most positive human emotion. And so that's the emotion

00:48:06.860 that literally makes you enthusiastic, which is to be filled with the spirit of God, because that's

00:48:11.100 what enthusiasm means, right, is that you experience the positive emotion that propels you forward in

00:48:18.380 relationship to a goal. And the goal has to be established voluntarily or the positive emotion

00:48:24.940 systems won't kick in. So if you use compulsion, not only do you waste time and resources on enforcement,

00:48:32.220 but you don't harness the most fundamental motivational systems. And those are so fundamental,

00:48:37.420 by the way, that the drugs that people abuse, cocaine, perhaps foremost among them in terms of

00:48:42.380 its instantaneously attractive and addictive qualities, cocaine directly activates that positive

00:48:49.260 emotion system, which is why people love it. And so, because it's an analog of purposeful goal-directed

00:48:55.900 activity. And if you establish a high goal, the higher the goal, the more rewarding in the technical

00:49:03.180 sense, every step towards that goal is. But that has to all be done voluntarily, because otherwise

00:49:07.820 it's an imposition and entirely different psychophysiological systems come into play.

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00:50:22.780 So here's Winston Churchill. It is at once the safeguard and the glory of mankind that it is

00:50:29.660 easy to lead and hard to drive. And when I was hired for this job, there was an MBA

00:50:36.620 fine man on the committee, and you can spot him a mile away. They asked MBA questions.

00:50:43.660 So if you have to drive, you're not leading. You're a tyrant.

00:50:47.420 Yeah. And Churchill believed, by the way, that particular thing, he says that in the context of

00:50:56.140 how the implausible thing could happen that Britain could defeat Adolf Hitler. And that's why.

00:51:03.100 Right. And people hate that. And, you know, so if you want, and you know, I've become experienced and

00:51:13.980 stubborn now. I don't like to be in a relationship where I'm telling anybody what to do if they don't

00:51:21.500 want to do it. Well, you know, I really learned this as a psychotherapist. And this is partly why

00:51:26.860 I've been so upset with these anti-conversion laws lately. It's like, in a therapeutic conversation,

00:51:33.820 which is any genuine conversation, by the way, any genuine dialogue, you need humility. And the

00:51:40.700 humility is something like, this person that I'm talking to is actually different than me. They're

00:51:47.580 different in their presuppositions. They're different in their knowledge, and they're different in their

00:51:53.740 destiny. And they're importantly and vitally different in that, because I think that each person

00:52:01.740 plays a signal role in manifesting or failing to manifest part of the reality that moves us towards

00:52:09.260 paradise, let's say, in some fundamental sense. Everyone has a signal role to play in that. That's

00:52:13.980 part of the destiny of their soul. And you are not to interfere with that, because you don't know.

00:52:20.460 And so in a therapeutic conversation about identity, so now, for example, therapists are required to

00:52:25.020 affirm the identity of their clients, the gender identity, but more broadly, to affirm it. And that's

00:52:30.620 never the role of a conversation. The role of a therapeutic conversation is always to inquire about

00:52:36.220 identity. But in the spirit of humility, it's right. Like, you and I have been trying to work out a

00:52:40.300 working relationship over the last couple of days, and also with Stephen Blackwood down at Ralston.

00:52:44.460 And one of the guiding principles of our attempts to do that isn't that I want something from you,

00:52:50.300 or that you want something from me. And I think it's partly because both of us know that we don't

00:52:54.780 necessarily know what we want or should want from each other. But that if goodwill prevails, and if we're

00:53:01.420 both aiming up in the highest sense, that we could mutually discover the pathway forward, that would

00:53:06.700 be not only mutually beneficial for us, in a sense that's way transcends the merely instrumental, but

00:53:13.180 potentially beneficial for the movement towards that higher good. And that is, I think, in some real

00:53:19.180 sense, the foundation of the most genuine friendships, right? Because in a genuine friendship,

00:53:25.180 you want the best for the other person, as well as yourself. In Aristotle, friendship is the highest

00:53:31.660 human association. And there are three kinds. In one kind, it's transactional. Commercial friendships

00:53:40.700 are often like that. You know, that's why somebody who sells you wood might send you Christmas

00:53:47.980 king. Right, right, right. And then another kind is pleasure. Aristotle says that's higher. Aristotle

00:53:55.900 says the young are particularly given to that. Their bodies are really great and getting better all the

00:54:01.180 time. And then there's this ultimate kind. And that's the rarest, and it's the permanent kind. And

00:54:09.420 the permanent kind is a shared love of something ultimate and a commitment to pursue it. And that's

00:54:20.380 that's the only map you can have in a relationship that's likely to sustain it. And see, I've discovered-

00:54:28.220 And you get the additional benefit there of not only the hypothetical movement towards that goal, but the

00:54:34.540 deep engagement and pleasure that accompanies each step along the way to that goal. And that's a good

00:54:40.460 marker for the quality of the relationship, right? It's that it's interesting in and of itself.

00:54:44.620 That's it, for its own sake. So, in Book 10 of the Ethics, he describes this beautiful activity. And that

00:54:55.020 is, and you have to become, you have to get the moral virtues first. You have to be courageous, and you

00:55:01.020 have to be moderate, and you have to be just, and you have to be, what, and you have to be

00:55:07.980 wise, prudent, practically wise. You have to be able to manage your life. You have to be able to

00:55:14.220 control your passions. You have to, and it goes beyond controlling them too. It means an active love

00:55:20.300 for the right thing. Right. Yeah, well that, I'm just going to interrupt very briefly. That's a

00:55:25.820 distinction between a Freudian view of emotion regulation and a Piagetian view. Because the

00:55:32.140 Freudians, this is one of Freud's signal errors, and it makes him a Protestant of sorts, I would say,

00:55:39.100 and a liberal of sorts, is that the regulation of aggression and sexuality is held to be a consequence

00:55:46.140 in some sense of compulsion. That's the superego. So that's like the internal tyrant saying,

00:55:51.580 no to aggression and no to sexuality. But the Piagetian view, which is much more subtle and

00:55:56.700 appropriate, is that those impulses are not inhibited. They are integrated into a higher mode of

00:56:03.260 being. And so, and so Jung carried on this idea with his idea of the integration of the shadow.

00:56:09.100 And so for Freud, in some sense, aggression was inhibited by the superego. Right. You need to be

00:56:14.300 aggressive. You want to be aggressive. And, but the society imposes a limit on you that's essentially a

00:56:20.780 form of compulsion. But for Jung, with it, for example, with the idea of the integration of both

00:56:26.540 the shadow and the anima or the animus, which would be the contrasexual tendency, it's a matter of

00:56:32.300 bringing the devil in, in some sense, to play. It's like, well, you need that aggression. You

00:56:38.060 absolutely 100% need it. One of the things that struck me about you when I, when we first met,

00:56:42.780 which I really liked, was that you were someone who was capable of saying no. And I know what no means,

00:56:47.660 because I thought about it a lot, partly because I was interested in childhood development.

00:56:53.900 No means, if you keep doing that around me, something you do not like will absolutely 100%

00:57:03.100 certainly happen to you. And you have to be willing to enforce that, or you can't say no.

00:57:09.980 If you can say no, you almost never have to enforce it. But you can't say no also without the

00:57:15.660 integration of that shadow. And so it isn't that aggression is inhibited. It's that it's

00:57:20.460 integrated into a higher order game. This is really relevant for aggressive young men,

00:57:25.020 because they're competitive. You say, well, we have to socialize them to be more like little girls,

00:57:29.580 which is like the idiot plan of a multitude of psychologists and social workers. It's like,

00:57:33.900 no, you don't. You have to, you have to integrate that competitive impulse towards a much higher end.

00:57:41.980 And then that capacity for aggression starts to become unstoppability and implacability and the

00:57:48.620 ability to be stalwart and noble and to abide by a code of honor, let's say. So a much, a much more

00:57:55.020 optimistic way of viewing. Yeah. Well, and see that energy, you know, I'm heavily under the influence

00:58:02.620 of the Greeks and the Christians and, um, and the Americans because the founders of America were

00:58:08.860 really great too. Um, if the point is your motive action, everything that has a soul, you said, uh,

00:58:21.500 you said some form of the word animation or animal about Freud. That just means it moves itself.

00:58:29.020 Anything that's an animal moves itself. And that's the Latin word for soul.

00:58:33.980 Mm-hmm. Anima.

00:58:34.860 Yeah. And, uh, and so we move ourselves. And the point is, by nature, we can. And that means we want to.

00:58:45.580 Mm-hmm. And so the question is, toward what do we move?

00:58:49.900 Right. That is the question.

00:58:51.420 And, you know, reckless little boys, uh, you know, I was one myself. Uh, Lord knows what they'll do,

00:59:00.380 right? But harness that to some high cause. And first of all, you make their life meaningful.

00:59:08.940 Mm-hmm. Like, uh, we don't want our students tearing up our campus over political causes.

00:59:15.820 We're a very conservative college. We have fame for that. You know, we publish a newsletter to six

00:59:21.180 and a half million people. But we don't talk about the stuff, public policy, very much on the campus.

00:59:29.260 And we discourage it. Because why? Because they're young and ignorant and they get a chance to learn a

00:59:36.140 lot. And then they can figure out what to do with the world. Right, right, right.

00:59:39.820 And, and, and, you know, it happens often because, you know, kids who come to Hillsdale College,

00:59:44.380 any good college, are ambitious. Mm-hmm.

00:59:46.700 And, uh, so they want to, you know, this and this and this.

00:59:49.100 Yeah. They're looking to, they're looking to take their place in a meaningful way

00:59:53.260 at the table in an important sense. And they're eager to get on with that.

00:59:56.540 Yeah. So, so it's no use saying you got to wait. Mm-hmm.

01:00:01.900 You just show them the place at the table that's available to them now. Mm-hmm.

01:00:06.300 And that place, by the way, is difficult. Mm-hmm.

01:00:09.020 Very, very challenging, you know. You want to learn, uh, uh, a bunch of boys, uh, and girls,

01:00:18.220 mostly boys though. I, I don't think that a constitutional convention is a good idea. And,

01:00:23.740 you know, a lot of people in my line of work and my political persuasion do. And so a bunch

01:00:29.740 of kids get debating me one time, you know, because they know that I'm against it and some

01:00:35.180 other famous people, I'm not famous, but they are, are for it. And they want to get up a debate.

01:00:41.260 Mm-hmm.

01:00:42.220 They want me to debate these people and them. And I said, okay, I'll do that. I said, uh,

01:00:50.780 the stipulation is that you not spend very much time on this. Mm-hmm.

01:00:55.500 And they said, why not? It'll be fun. I said, yeah, maybe. I said, but, uh, you're not ready

01:01:02.860 to define for me the meaning of the term politics, which is not an easy word to define. It's a form

01:01:09.020 of human community that takes its nature from specific things about the human being that are

01:01:13.820 unique to the human being, right? And so I said, and until you can do that, I don't want you,

01:01:20.700 you're wasting your time figuring out about this arcane point about the constitution.

01:01:27.100 And, you know, do you, do you want to be just another policy wonk? Mm-hmm.

01:01:31.900 Or do you want to be a learned person? Mm-hmm.

01:01:34.380 And that, you know. And, and do you, and have you noticed that there's actually

01:01:37.740 a difference between those two things? Yeah.

01:01:39.420 And it's an important difference. And see, it calms them down, you see?

01:01:42.860 Yeah. Because, and you're, what you, what you said, see, uh, I'm gonna come for you,

01:01:48.380 come to you for counseling. Uh, I guess I'm doing that right now. Mutual counseling.

01:01:53.340 If, uh, uh, it's usually a great idea to suggest something better than the bad thing they want.

01:02:03.500 You know, if it's bad, and it might, it's usually not bad, just not bad right, not good right now.

01:02:08.460 And that, in other words, you stoke their ambitions. Yeah.

01:02:12.940 Because that's the fuel that makes them go. And, uh, you know...

01:02:17.900 Well, and what a dismal proposition it is to set forth to a young person who's 18 and say,

01:02:23.100 well, your axiomatic, a priori political convictions, shallow and unmoored though they are,

01:02:30.460 unabetted by any apprenticeship or knowledge, are sufficient for you to go out and transform

01:02:35.580 the world right now. Yeah.

01:02:36.860 It's like how, what a dismal view that is. And instead you can say, look, if you applied yourself

01:02:42.860 with all due diligence for like 10 years in every direction you could possibly manage,

01:02:47.660 you might be ready to set a tentative toe out on the world stage in whatever manner you could have

01:02:52.780 earned by that point. You know, he, the greatness of, and see, that's another thing. If you can teach

01:02:59.900 somebody, you know, the highest human activity in Aristotle is, uh, a secular version of the

01:03:06.700 highest human activity in Christianity or any religion, communion with God. And that's

01:03:13.900 contemplation is called in the ethnic, ethnic, ethnic ethics. And it's hard to get your soul to a

01:03:20.220 state to be able to do that. You have to be courageous. You have to be, you know, Aristotle says,

01:03:25.340 if you're afraid of the bees buzzing around you, you will not be capable of this thing. It requires

01:03:33.100 all the virtues and years of work. Right. And, and if you get it and it's an immediate beholding,

01:03:40.940 he says, and you don't think about anything else at the time. And then he says,

01:03:45.580 no other, nothing can help you with this except a friend. That's the highest kind of friendship.

01:03:57.340 You do that with people. Right. You see something beautiful. Well, that's what you have when you have

01:04:02.140 a friend is the person, there's something that they see in you. If they're your friend that they

01:04:09.500 love and want to nurture and cherish. That's right. And they aim at precisely that. And maybe they're

01:04:15.980 even better at doing that for you than you are for you and, and that they are for them. So a friend

01:04:23.420 in that sense is in some sense, the best ally. I had a friend university, Morgan Abbott is his name,

01:04:29.020 tough guy from a rough background, poor background. He lived in a, in a,

01:04:34.060 he was poor in a serious way, Northern Alberta, rural poor, that's frontier level poor, man.

01:04:42.300 His dad was a longshoreman. He's a tough kid, this Morgan Abbott. And he's worked with the worst

01:04:47.180 delinquents in Canada for like 20 years, and then worked with brain damaged people. And he's a tough

01:04:52.460 guy. And he was a good friend of mine. When I went to college, he was older than me, came back working

01:04:57.020 in the lead smelters in British Columbia, and then came back to college to get himself educated.

01:05:00.780 And he's the person who really talked me out of my initial socialism, not politically. He just said

01:05:08.380 something like, there's a hell of a lot more to the world that is encapsulated in the socialist

01:05:14.460 philosophy. And he said, you know, most people join the socialist political parties to get out of the

01:05:20.780 working class by adopting a leadership position, which I liked a lot and was commensurate with my

01:05:25.740 experience. And he was a very, what would you say, he was a inspiring figure for me, probably more for

01:05:34.220 me even than for himself, I would say in some sense. And last year, two years ago, when I was

01:05:41.580 unbelievably ill, him and I have kept in contact over the years, you know, less intensely than we had,

01:05:48.220 but in contact. And he walked five to 12 miles with me for almost a year every single day.

01:05:56.620 Yeah.

01:05:58.460 Yeah. See, now that's, uh, uh, if you study the Greeks properly, you learn to love the word beauty

01:06:09.180 because beauty is the perfection of good. And, and so what you just said, that was a beautiful thing.

01:06:19.380 It was, you know, to know that a thing like that happened is worthy and worthy making to

01:06:26.980 everyone who hears it. And so the education of the young is, it involves helping them understand

01:06:36.620 how much they want that. Everybody wants that.

01:06:40.640 And how noble it is to want that.

01:06:42.460 Yeah, that's right. And, and that's so, and, and see if you can get that through to them

01:06:50.300 and you can, by the way, because they're made to know it, you know, and then college also offers

01:06:56.620 that stellar opportunity. I mean, when I went from my little town, my, my pack of ne'er-do-well friends

01:07:02.300 there, um, a few of us went off to college, not very many. Then I had this opportunity to shed who I was

01:07:10.220 and to find a new peer group and to become someone else in a radical way. And to do that to some degree

01:07:15.900 voluntarily, right? To pick a new set of people that I wanted to associate with, to pick a new peer

01:07:20.460 group, some of whom were the great thinkers of the past, right? Because that's one thing college

01:07:25.500 offers you the opportunity to do is to pick a peer group in some sense. That's the great figures of the

01:07:31.420 past. It's a daunting endeavor, but that's what's there before you. And so it is definitely the case that

01:07:38.620 that's a stellar opportunity and a signal contribution of educational establishments,

01:07:42.940 something difficult to replicate online too. So you open the door for students to do that and say,

01:07:48.540 this is what you should be doing at that point. Stellar group of peers who are, who will ennoble you as

01:07:54.300 you move forward and a shared goal of, of apprenticeship and maturation and the opportunity to take your

01:08:00.620 place at the table as an adult, a great, a great adventure, all of that. Yeah. And that's, and you know,

01:08:09.180 you don't want to take the magic out of it. It's, it's, uh, it's not working on them.

01:08:16.700 It's mostly them working and you work with them and it's so fun when you get it right. You know,

01:08:23.900 it, uh, uh, and, and, you know, we have, because we're trying in my opinion these days, and this is

01:08:30.860 mostly because of changes in philosophy that go back 400 years, we're trying to re-engineer the

01:08:38.220 society all the time. And that means you have to re-engineer the people in it.

01:08:44.380 And that means school becomes, that's its purpose. We're, you're going to come here and we're going

01:08:52.220 to do things to you, right? Why is that an attractive proposition?

01:08:57.820 It's attractive if you want to be a slave.

01:08:59.740 That's it. That's it. And so the truth is, uh, like the best teachers, I know a kindergarten

01:09:08.460 or garden teacher who does this. And I know many at the college where I work who do this.

01:09:12.940 In the first 10 minutes of class, there's tingling anticipation.

01:09:21.980 And, and there are two kinds of best teachers at Hillsdale. One kind just says,

01:09:28.780 this is going to be great. The other kind says, this is going to be great. And this is going to be

01:09:34.060 hard. I'm afraid I'm in the second camp and I'm not claiming I'm the best, but I'm pretty good.

01:09:40.060 And mostly because I know that I know this is a beautiful thing and we are going to learn it.

01:09:47.580 And it's, and, and, and we'll be different after we know it for all time.

01:09:53.100 There's a great antidote to cynicism in that too, because part of the culture war that's going on

01:09:58.380 right now is the consequence of an insistence that the fundamental motivation of people who

01:10:02.620 are in positions of authority like you is one of power and domination. So imagine that there is,

01:10:07.420 there's no, there's almost nothing positive in abject and dependent subordination.

01:10:14.620 That's pretty bad outcome. And so then you might say that the ability to use compulsion and to attain

01:10:21.500 domination is a higher moral good than abject subjugation and dependence. Now I'm not saying it

01:10:29.500 is, but I think you could make that case. And then you could also make the case and the postmodern

01:10:34.540 Marxist types do this, that that's really the fundamental motivation of mankind in every

01:10:38.940 relationship, marital relationships, historical relationships, business relationships. It's like

01:10:44.060 the willingness and ability to use compulsion to manifest power, power. And I think, well,

01:10:51.020 that's probably better than dependency, but compared to the pleasure of, let's say, genuine friendship

01:10:59.580 or mentorship, it's not even in the same conceptual universe. And so one of the things that the cynics

01:11:05.420 about business organizations, for example, don't understand by emphasizing the role of power is how

01:11:12.140 much pleasure there is. And this is a paternal pleasure, I think, a patriarchal pleasure in the most

01:11:16.540 fundamental sense, in having the opportunity to find someone who's rife with potential, and to offer them

01:11:23.180 a multitude of beneficial pathways forward, to be able to participate in that. My graduate supervisor,

01:11:28.700 Robert Peel, great guy, still alive. I'm going to talk to him on the podcast soon. He was a great mentor.

01:11:35.180 He had his wheelhouse of authority and knowledge, encyclopedic knowledge of the relevant psychological

01:11:40.940 literature, great administrator and great manager of people. And he took immense pleasure in forming

01:11:49.580 a stable of graduate students and undergraduates and facilitating their development forward. That

01:11:54.860 was the primary motivating purpose of his life. And he was interested in being an author on the papers and

01:12:01.820 getting credit for his role, all of that. But fundamentally, he was a man who got obstacles the

01:12:07.100 hell out of the way and enabled movement forward for those who wanted to move forward. And then there

01:12:12.540 was immense intrinsic pleasure in that. I mean, that was really the hallmark of his life. I went to his

01:12:18.940 Festschrift when he retired with my former colleagues. It was a lovely affair. There was a hundred people

01:12:24.460 there about and every single one of them got up and said, here's the signal manner in which this man

01:12:30.300 transformed my life. That beats the hell out of power. And it's not, it's not only not power,

01:12:37.580 it is the literal antithesis of power. And not this, also not this corrupt, collapsing into an

01:12:43.820 ineffectual dependency that you might attain by abdicating all your pretensions to power.

01:12:50.300 I have, see, I'll bet when you have that Festschrift interview yourself, you'll have a thousand there.

01:12:56.700 I have some protesters. Yeah, you'll have one and we both get that, right? I have

01:13:05.580 about 30 students who've become powerful people, boys and girls, big in the government.

01:13:13.660 And they are still my students. And when I see them, I don't talk about their power. I talk about

01:13:22.060 their character. Uh, and they, and you know, they, and you know, these are people who can go

01:13:30.460 and you know, I have equally talented students who are not at all powerful and I have the same

01:13:37.660 relationship with them. And you know, that's because you get, uh, you know, there's, I teach

01:13:44.540 one class a term and I have about 30 students in it, which is big for Hillsdale standards, but

01:13:51.580 I'm the president and I don't teach much. So I let more in. Uh, and then that means that every year,

01:13:58.700 60, I get to know in detail, except then we have senior dinner and all that. And there's

01:14:05.100 1650 on the campus. That means most of them, I don't know them very well, but in another way,

01:14:13.020 I know them all. And the ones I get to know, well, I remember. And that means you see what, what, um,

01:14:23.900 uh, it would be a better life than I am living to be Abraham Lincoln because

01:14:30.860 he was a beautiful human being. Uh, Winston Churchill, same thing, but to be president,

01:14:41.660 just to be president, you and I are leading better lives than that. And, and you get your mind around.

01:14:50.060 Well, I also think, you know, there's nothing, I've watched university presidents sometimes

01:14:55.660 kowtow to the mob. And I think how dismal that must be from the perspective of

01:15:06.220 making amends with your own conscience that you've attained this position of power

01:15:12.700 without the requisite moral competence. And then when the mob comes because

01:15:20.140 you strive for the position rather than for the character that would entitle you in some real

01:15:25.340 sense to the position that you have to fold in the most ignominious of ways. And to me, that just

01:15:31.660 shows the absolute hollowness of the attempt to attain power without attaining first the authority

01:15:38.780 and the competence that would make that power, that would render that power justifiable.

01:15:45.020 You know, the, the bad thing about authority,

01:15:48.620 I have authority, I have a fair amount of authority. And the bad thing about it is

01:15:56.220 you're at risk when you use it. But if you use it badly in a way to protect yourself,

01:16:03.820 you will do harm to other people and people who don't deserve it. And so somehow you have to

01:16:09.980 find a way not to do that. And, uh, that's, you know, I had somebody say to me once, uh,

01:16:18.780 so I hear you're a pretty good teacher. And I said, I'm okay. And he said, you've written some books.

01:16:23.500 And I said, I have, I've written three. He said, I've read one of them. It's good. And I said, thank you.

01:16:28.620 And he said, why do you do this? You know, because, you know, to a faculty member, the most sensible

01:16:37.260 ones, uh, my job is a pain in the tuchus. Why would you do it? Right. And I looked up and I said, well,

01:16:45.820 partly because I can so far, uh, I'm made so that I can do this probably. Uh, but yeah, I,

01:16:57.260 I, I, it's very possible that when I leave it, you know, unless I'm too old, I will find something

01:17:05.660 better to do right here in this college because there are better jobs than mine. And that's,

01:17:11.020 you know, if you know that you got to keep yourself from being a tyrant, you know, and, and it's because

01:17:19.020 most people don't get to be a grand tyrant. They only get to be a petty tyrant. How contemple of that,

01:17:24.060 but you know, there are wonderful classic books about people who are famous for making people do

01:17:34.300 things they don't want to do. And it's universal rulers over hell. That's it. That's the, that's the

01:17:40.860 accomplishment of untrammeled powers. You get to be the head demon in a chorus of demons. And to me,

01:17:46.540 that's the most cataclysmic failure, not a sign of the success of the psychopathic and narcissistic.

01:17:52.700 And then those people are, are always presented as miserable in the classic books and Shakespeare,

01:18:00.140 too. Uh, even if- Surrounded by babbling sycophants. Yeah. And schemers and the, and you,

01:18:08.140 and even if your schemes are successful and not found out, you know, you know, so yeah, you don't,

01:18:13.580 you don't want a life like that. And, uh, uh, yeah. And maybe you don't want to impose that on other

01:18:21.820 people either. No, you don't, you know, that's, uh, mustn't, you mustn't. And, uh, and that means that

01:18:29.580 pro it's, it's an excellent guide. It's not the only way. Proper authority derives from the will

01:18:37.980 of the person over who it's exercised. That's the consent of the governed, if I remember correctly.

01:18:43.820 That's right. And that's, and that means that then you don't have to fight, right? We're going to have

01:18:50.700 to do one thing or another here. And there are people in favor of both. It means some people are

01:18:56.780 going to be happy, but everybody's given their consent that we're going to decide this thing this way.

01:19:01.180 And that renewed honorably. That's right. Yeah. Wouldn't that be lovely? Yeah. And you know,

01:19:06.140 we've got to get back to that. It's, uh, well, I really saw that at Hillsdale and I'm going to talk

01:19:12.380 to Dr. Arn Moore behind the daily wire plus paywall. I've decided to do a more personal

01:19:18.620 interview with people for an additional half an hour as part of my contractual obligations to the

01:19:23.340 partnership with this arrangement, um, with this, with this group. And so I think that's a good way of

01:19:28.780 splitting it up. And so, well, I talked today with Dr. Larry Arn, who's president of Hillsdale

01:19:33.980 College, which I think is a remarkable institution. And I think one that's whose best days are still

01:19:39.100 in front of it, which is quite interesting and which is offering a proposition, which at the moment

01:19:44.220 has become almost of almost infinite value, which is a disciplined, stringent, strict, educational

01:19:52.860 doctrine, voluntarily undertaken, devoted towards the true ends of a true liberal arts education,

01:20:00.620 man. And there's nothing more valuable than that, you know, accepting perhaps like servitude to God

01:20:06.540 himself. And so thank you very much for talking to me. It's going to be a privilege and a pleasure

01:20:11.180 working with you as we move forward. Mine very much. Thank you. Hello, everyone. I would encourage

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The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - August 04, 2022

276. The Best of Conservative Education ｜ Larry P. Arnn

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