The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 479. Am I Racist？

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00:00:57.420 Hello, everybody.

00:01:10.940 I had the opportunity today to talk to Matt Walsh of What is a Woman? fame.

00:01:16.820 Many of you are familiar with that movie where Matt went out as naive investigator into the world of gender ideology to try to answer the most fundamental question that can possibly be posed to a human being,

00:01:33.280 which is, can you tell the difference between the sexes, which, by the way, is something that creatures without nervous systems have been able to do for 650 million years.

00:01:44.340 So hopefully the answer on your side is yes.

00:01:47.920 In any case, Matt made quite a success with that documentary, and he has a new movie, Am I Racist?, which you can access at amiracist.com.

00:01:58.340 Maybe that's a question you want to be asking yourself.

00:02:01.780 In any case, as many of you know, unless you live under a rock, the issue of racism has raised its ugly head in a massive way once again in our culture since about 2015,

00:02:15.500 mostly because people badly educated at idiot universities have made that the center point of their propagandistic fulmination,

00:02:22.740 much to the decrement of interpersonal relationships across the West and certainly relationships between the different ethnicities and racial groups.

00:02:32.540 It's really an appalling thing to see.

00:02:35.100 And Matt has decided to hit the hornet's nest once again with this new movie and to launch himself out into the world as a diversity, equity and inclusivity expert

00:02:45.600 in search of the answer to the question that all white people in particular are supposed to be torturing themselves with, which is, am I a racist?

00:02:54.880 And, you know, that's a complicated question, actually, because human beings have pronounced in-group preferences,

00:03:00.320 which is why we like our families, for example.

00:03:03.400 And there are some downsides to that, like the fact that people who are less familiar to us are more likely to receive a more negative response instinctively

00:03:17.560 and that we have to fight against that, which I think we were doing with dramatic success before the idiot propagandists got the bone back in their jaw.

00:03:26.540 And in any case, Matt's launching this movie.

00:03:30.580 And we talked a lot about the movie, Am I a Racist?

00:03:33.880 And we also talked about Matt's conservative ethos, right?

00:03:40.700 His, and how did those two things tie together?

00:03:44.860 Well, people are beating the anti-racist drum, I suppose, because they're looking for meaning in their life.

00:03:49.920 That's part of the reason, to the degree that they're just not exploiting the situation.

00:03:53.760 And we talked about sources of deep meaning.

00:03:57.000 And for Matt and for myself, the meanings in our life have really come from our dedication to our wives and our families,

00:04:04.080 our kids and our grandkids, in my case, because I'm older than Matt.

00:04:09.220 And so we talked a lot about sources of true meaning and false meaning.

00:04:13.840 And so you can join us for that.

00:04:16.840 Amiracist.com.

00:04:18.140 That's the URL you want to keep in mind.

00:04:20.740 Join us.

00:04:22.120 Hello, Mr. Walsh.

00:04:24.140 I hear you have a movie coming up.

00:04:26.740 Do you want to tell everybody what it is and when it's breaking and all of that?

00:04:32.100 Yeah, we do.

00:04:33.000 We have movies coming out September 13th.

00:04:36.120 Am I Racist?

00:04:37.280 Is the title.

00:04:39.500 And tickets are on pre-sale right now.

00:04:41.820 We just, we opened up pre-sale about a week ago.

00:04:43.920 It's already going, you know, really well on the pre-sale for the tickets.

00:04:47.880 Which is important because that, you know, determines in large part how many theaters actually show the movie.

00:04:52.700 So people are responding in a big way and I'm excited about it.

00:04:58.440 Am I Racist?

00:04:59.880 September 13th.

00:05:01.220 Well, I suppose we could cut right to the punchline.

00:05:04.880 We'll start with you.

00:05:06.260 Are you racist?

00:05:07.160 Well, that's, that feels like a spoiler, I guess.

00:05:11.940 I mean, look, one thing we learned in the movie is that it is, you know, I'm white.

00:05:16.680 So I guess the answer is yes, you know, that's, that's, that is how they define racism on the anti-racist side.

00:05:25.640 That if you're white, you're inherently racist.

00:05:28.080 And if you're not, then you're not racist no matter what you say or do.

00:05:32.120 So from their perspective, the answer is yes.

00:05:36.100 And it's actually, it's, it's, you know, unlike What is a Woman?

00:05:39.300 The first movie that we made, obviously, that's a, that was a question that they didn't want to answer.

00:05:43.640 It was hard for them to answer.

00:05:44.720 Or this is a, this for them is an easy question to answer.

00:05:48.180 Now, if you were to follow up and say, well, what exactly do you mean by racism?

00:05:52.300 What, what is racism exactly?

00:05:54.000 Then that becomes a more difficult question, but they have no problem pointing to the people who they consider racist.

00:05:59.360 And really, it's just a matter of looking at your skin color and deciding from there.

00:06:03.840 All right.

00:06:04.120 So maybe we could try this.

00:06:06.200 Maybe I could try to give a case from a psychological perspective for the leftist claims,

00:06:12.660 and we could take them apart that way.

00:06:14.800 And I think it is, see, it's a hard conversation to delve into because I don't exactly think this is properly characterized as a leftist claim.

00:06:25.560 It's partly that, but it's also a partly a claim of devious, manipulative, psychopathic narcissists.

00:06:32.840 And that's not exactly the same as a political or an intellectual claim.

00:06:37.480 You know, just like on the religious front, the religious claims of, of great monotheistic systems are often hijacked by bad actors and manipulators.

00:06:46.780 That's the Pharisees in the gospel accounts.

00:06:49.620 You see the same thing on the political side.

00:06:51.800 But let's delve into this a little bit because there's, there's plenty to be said about the idea of, well, we could start with implicit bias.

00:07:00.940 So that's something that the scientific community centered at Harvard around Mazrin Banaji and her work on the implicit association test.

00:07:12.520 That idea of implicit bias is something that the scientific community, the scientific community has offered to the radicals to buttress their claims.

00:07:21.140 So maybe we could delve into that a little bit because people need to understand this.

00:07:24.500 Does that, is that reasonable as far as you're concerned?

00:07:27.180 Yeah, I think so.

00:07:28.080 Yeah.

00:07:28.260 Okay, so your perceptions, all of our perceptions are biased and they're biased towards our goals.

00:07:36.400 So when you look at the world, basically what you see is a pathway forward to a goal that you're pursuing.

00:07:45.120 And then you see the things in the world that will either help you along that pathway or, or get in your way.

00:07:51.880 Everything else is turned into irrelevance.

00:07:54.720 And obviously when we look at the world, we don't see most of it, right?

00:07:59.880 We see what's right in front of us, for example.

00:08:02.520 But even more specifically, we see a pathway to a goal and things that move us towards that and things that get in the way.

00:08:09.780 And that could be friends and foes, for example.

00:08:12.080 So your goals do determine your perceptions in large, in large, in large, in a large, in a large manner.

00:08:24.060 Now there's exceptions to that, like if something unexpected happens, because if something unexpected happens and it stops you from moving forward, that will attract your attention and you'll turn to investigate it.

00:08:34.740 But that's basically the perceptual landscape.

00:08:37.620 And one of the implications of that is that we do live inside something that, if it's described, seems like a story rather than a set of facts.

00:08:48.840 Okay, so this has been more or less understood for something approximating 100 years, because the psychoanalytic types like Freud and then Jung kind of cottoned on to this first, that we live, we have a perceptual structure that filters the world when we interact with it.

00:09:06.480 Now, the social psychologists got a hold of that, and they built a test that purported to measure implicit bias, and they said they showed that the research is unclear, and at best it's speculative and theoretical.

00:09:26.080 They purported to show that we had perceptual biases that favored our in-groups.

00:09:31.760 And that's not really that surprising, as far as I'm concerned, because, you know, you obviously have an in-built preference to care for yourself, and then you have an in-built preference to care for your mother and your father and your siblings, and you have a kin preference, and then you probably have something like a tribal preference.

00:09:53.500 And then you probably have a race preference insofar, at least insofar as other race people are somewhat novel.

00:10:03.560 And so, on that edifice was built up the notion of implicit bias, and, of course, the DEI types grabbed the implicit bias literature and ran with it.

00:10:14.120 It was a gift and a godsend to the HR types, the Karens in the HR world, who could then point to scientific validation.

00:10:21.520 And now, the Mazarin Banaji of Yale, of Harvard, her colleagues who helped invent the implicit association test, most of them have backed off with regards to its political implications.

00:10:35.520 But Dr. Banaji, who's really quite a leftist, right down to the core, like most social psychologists, is still beating the implicit bias drum.

00:10:45.080 Okay, sorry for the lengthy explanation, but you can see that the thorniness of the problem, and that's an important thing to attend to, because the claim that we have as human beings, that we have a bias towards those who are closer to us, depending on the dimension of evaluation, appears to be true.

00:11:04.520 And I'll just close with two things, and then, please, like, push on me.

00:11:10.760 That's implicit or unconscious bias. It's before you perceive.

00:11:15.760 That doesn't mean that can't be overcome by learning.

00:11:18.780 In fact, much of what learning does is modify your implicit biases, right, because you have to see something a particular way when you first perceive it,

00:11:28.160 but you can learn to differentiate your perception and to become more sophisticated.

00:11:32.700 That's what socialization is for, and that's what education is for.

00:11:37.120 But also, there's no reason to presume whatsoever on the implicit bias front that it doesn't characterize all ethnicities and racial groups equally.

00:11:47.500 So, well, so I'm kind of curious about what you think about all that.

00:11:53.020 It's complicated.

00:11:53.880 You know, the idea that we look at the world through a motivated framework, that's a real challenge to the Enlightenment view of rationality,

00:12:02.900 and I'm afraid that the Enlightenment rationalists were, or the empiricists in particular, who thought that we derived all of our conceptions from sense data.

00:12:13.720 That's not true. It's wrong.

00:12:15.520 Yeah, well, I think, I mean, I don't think I would disagree with anything that you said, but with maybe perhaps the exception of, you know,

00:12:22.080 you said that we've known this for the last hundred years or so.

00:12:24.900 I would argue that we've probably known most of this for as long as human beings have been self-aware,

00:12:30.120 because, I mean, just the basic idea that we all are biased and we're all moving through the world in a, you know,

00:12:36.080 in a way that we aren't seeing things like exactly objectively like robots.

00:12:40.800 I think that, of course, that's the case, and we all have our own, like, priorities and preferences and motivations and goals and everything,

00:12:49.060 and you carry that with you, and you bring that into every interaction with everybody and into every situation in your life.

00:12:56.760 Now, as far as that extends to even racial biases, I mean, I think history proves that that is often the case also.

00:13:08.160 So the problem is that on the kind of, quote, unquote, anti-racist DEI side of this,

00:13:16.620 the issue for them is that, well, there's a couple of things.

00:13:20.600 The big one is that they would probably also agree with a lot of what you just said,

00:13:26.040 and even they would say that it kind of vindicates their point of view.

00:13:28.320 They would listen to that and say, see, this is what we're talking about.

00:13:30.080 Except that for them, that applies to white people only.

00:13:35.240 And if you were to say, well, no, this is just the human condition.

00:13:38.680 Everybody is this way.

00:13:41.640 They wouldn't track you that far.

00:13:44.240 They wouldn't go that far.

00:13:45.280 They can't go that far.

00:13:46.540 So that's really the problem.

00:13:47.820 To me, that's the essential problem with the whole implicit bias conversation right now.

00:13:55.300 And it might have been different 50 years ago, but right now,

00:13:57.580 the problem with it is that when we talk about implicit bias,

00:14:00.820 we're only talking about it with one group,

00:14:03.280 and we're not engaging with it as a fact of human nature,

00:14:08.160 but instead as a fact of white human nature,

00:14:11.440 which these people see as something completely distinct and different from,

00:14:15.460 I guess, the nature of all other people who are not white.

00:14:18.840 And then the second problem with the way that they approach the issue

00:14:21.680 is that they see it as something that they have to fix.

00:14:27.580 Which I think is an issue in and of itself,

00:14:30.240 because I don't think that it's something they need to fix.

00:14:32.500 And then all of their prescriptions for fixing it are completely wrong.

00:14:38.460 So there might be a kind of a starting point here

00:14:42.200 where there's some truth in the starting point,

00:14:44.820 but then it just falls apart as you continue along.

00:14:47.640 I'm taking four of my esteemed colleagues and you across the world.

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00:15:41.960 And something new about the world is revealed.

00:15:52.540 Foundations of the West.

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00:15:56.820 Okay, so let's delve into that a little bit more.

00:15:59.680 So, you said that this has been known, you know, in some ways since the dawn of time.

00:16:05.940 And the idea that people have motivations and goals and that they affect their perceptions, that's key to the whole universe of storytelling, right?

00:16:17.540 Because when you tell a story, this is actually the definition of a story.

00:16:20.860 A story is actually a description of the framework through which someone sees the world.

00:16:26.980 So, when you go to a movie, what the movie maker shows you are the goals of the protagonist.

00:16:33.240 So, in your movie, Am I a Racist?

00:16:36.140 And this, you did the same thing in What is a Woman?

00:16:39.960 Your goal is to conduct an investigation into something that's key to the culture war.

00:16:45.400 And so, we watch you as you pursue your goals and we can see the world through your eyes and you're enabling us to do that.

00:16:53.760 And the reason that's so useful is because, well, it's useful for me to see the world through my own eyes.

00:16:59.340 But if I can see the world through the eyes of another person, then I get the vantage point that they developed and that they are learning from without having to take any of the risks.

00:17:10.000 Okay, so now, there is a huge issue here, Matt, philosophically, underneath all this.

00:17:15.860 Because the empiricists, and so they'd be people more on the scientific front, who claim that we derive all our knowledge of the world from facts and from objective facts, they're wrong.

00:17:26.900 And the postmodernists pointed that out.

00:17:29.120 Now, they weren't the only people that pointed that out.

00:17:31.060 And we really don't know what to do with the fact that we see the world through a story.

00:17:36.000 Because that's not what the scientists claimed.

00:17:38.120 It's not what the Enlightenment types claimed.

00:17:40.380 And they were definitely wrong.

00:17:42.160 And this is a big problem.

00:17:43.600 Now, my solution to that, for what it's worth, is to observe that we've had evolved ways of looking at the world.

00:17:52.380 They've biologically evolved and culturally evolved.

00:17:54.800 And they express themselves in the form of traditional religious views.

00:17:59.260 But, you know, we can get into that a little bit later.

00:18:01.860 And if those decline or dissolve, then you have the emergence of these terrible ideologies.

00:18:09.120 So, okay, so the implicit bias types and the postmodernists have a point.

00:18:15.840 We do see the world through a story.

00:18:17.560 Okay, now, here's an explanation of why it's only white people that are racist from the radical leftist perspective.

00:18:27.920 That's where I see the Marxism creeping in.

00:18:31.760 So, what happened in the 1970s, the postmodernist types, Derrida and Foucault and so forth.

00:18:39.660 Foucault is the world's most cited scholar, by the way.

00:18:42.480 The world's most cited scholar.

00:18:43.880 More than Darwin.

00:18:45.820 So, the postmodernists climbed in bed with the Marxists.

00:18:51.000 Almost all the postmodernists were Marxists to begin with.

00:18:53.800 Like, radically leftist.

00:18:55.060 There's no doubt about this on the historical side.

00:18:57.940 And then Marxism took a vicious hit on the moral side in the 1970s, not least because of Solzhenitsyn,

00:19:04.840 who'd exposed all the catastrophes of the Stalinist system.

00:19:08.300 And then the postmodernists, the French in particular, they played a sleight-of-hand game

00:19:13.840 and they transformed Marxism into a multidimensional power game.

00:19:18.080 So, for Marx, the axis of oppression was economic.

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00:20:13.460 You name it.

00:20:42.340 If it distinguished people, it was an axis of oppression.

00:20:45.340 It was like a metastasized Marxism.

00:20:48.780 And because, in principle, white people are at the top of the oppression hierarchy,

00:20:56.080 they're the only ones that can be the oppressor.

00:20:59.960 And then, so this is where, this is the real toxic element of the narrative as far as I'm concerned.

00:21:05.320 That victim-victimizer narrative.

00:21:07.640 It's also empirically preposterous because it's actually the case that, first of all,

00:21:13.500 white people, defending on how you define white, aren't at the top of the economic hierarchy in the United States.

00:21:20.340 The wealthiest people are Indian Americans from the continent of India, for example.

00:21:26.600 And Asians of all sorts do spectacularly well in the American economy, as do Nigerians.

00:21:33.020 Black women do pretty well, as it turns out.

00:21:37.480 And Asian women do quite spectacularly well.

00:21:41.160 And, of course, there's the ever-present fact that Jews do disproportionately well, too.

00:21:48.120 And so, it isn't even obvious that white people are at the top of the economic hierarchy.

00:21:53.120 But the reason that the radicals insist that racism is only a white problem is because of this Marxism that's crept into the stew.

00:22:04.180 And so, well, I'm curious about what you think about that.

00:22:07.820 Yeah, well, I think, right, the victim hierarchy on the left is what this comes down to.

00:22:13.700 And I think what you just pointed out, and this is a big problem for the leftists,

00:22:18.620 that they've never come up with anything approaching a satisfactory answer for it.

00:22:22.840 But the fact that white people are supposedly at the top of the pile, the top of the heap, as it was put to me by someone in the film,

00:22:29.800 but Asians are actually above white people, the fact that what you alluded to,

00:22:36.400 that African immigrants do, by almost every measure, significantly better in this country

00:22:44.560 than black Americans who have lived here for multiple generations.

00:22:48.640 That fact alone is that that completely destroys their entire narrative.

00:22:52.880 Because you would think that if the hierarchy and the victim axis worked the way they said,

00:22:58.220 then you would think that, you know, black immigrants would be would be the worst off

00:23:03.720 because they not only are they black, but also they're immigrants, which are supposedly oppressed as well.

00:23:08.120 That's not the case.

00:23:09.380 And that's an easy thing to explain, by the way, because when you look at all of the groups that do pretty well in this country,

00:23:15.460 and then you compare that with their with their marriage rates and their divorce rates,

00:23:21.900 you like there's a the math is pretty simple here.

00:23:24.820 Asians do well.

00:23:26.740 They also get married and stay married.

00:23:29.400 You know, African immigrants get married and stay married.

00:23:34.520 White people do.

00:23:37.560 You know, our divorce rates are not great.

00:23:40.160 Out of wedlock birth rates for whites are going up.

00:23:42.740 And whites also are are going down or are traveling down the other way and becoming less successful in comparison to these other groups.

00:23:50.120 So to me, it's there are probably many factors that explain why these various groups perform well.

00:23:56.280 But that's that's the number one.

00:23:58.360 And if there's an exception to this, I'm not sure.

00:24:01.400 I mean, is there an example of a of a demographic group that has sky high divorce rates, sky high out of wedlock birth rates,

00:24:09.240 but also performs pretty well economically?

00:24:12.320 I can't think of an exception.

00:24:14.320 Well, there's an interesting example on the Asian side.

00:24:18.540 So if you bring, say,

00:24:21.000 first generation Asians do comparatively well in the United States and their children do better than Americans do.

00:24:30.780 But if Asians are in the country for three generations, then their performance declines to the point of the average American.

00:24:40.200 So there's obviously something cultural going on.

00:24:42.780 And it's hard to specify exactly what's going on in the cultures of the immigrant people who do well.

00:24:50.040 But you can speculate at least and probably with particular accuracy on the Asian side that there's a tremendous emphasis on getting the hell out there and working yourself half to death

00:25:02.480 because your parents took the risk of their life by immigrating and you better get your act together and succeed.

00:25:09.580 And so there's a kind of desperation, I think, that drives the success of the immigrant groups that you're describing.

00:25:15.880 And why that isn't present in our culture, well, that's a hard question, too.

00:25:22.520 We don't exactly know what drives people to be conscientious.

00:25:27.180 You know, and conscientiousness is the big personality predictor of long-term success.

00:25:31.480 And conscientious people are diligent and orderly and industrious.

00:25:36.540 More importantly, I would say they probably are good at foregoing immediate gratification

00:25:41.760 and planning for not only for the long term, but also sacrificing themselves for the good of other people.

00:25:50.380 You know, if you're married, for example, you want to make your marriage work, it can't be all about you.

00:25:56.320 And the same applies to your wife.

00:25:58.660 Both of you have to prioritize the marriage over either of your immediate short-term needs.

00:26:05.020 And you really have to do that with kids even more, which is why I don't think people ever grow up until they have kids,

00:26:11.540 because I don't think you can grow up until someone is more important than you are.

00:26:15.420 And that doesn't happen to most people until they have children.

00:26:18.740 And then it's, well, it's kind of self-evident at that point.

00:26:23.200 And so we don't exactly know what's necessary in a culture to instantiate that ethos of self-sacrifice and conscientiousness.

00:26:32.780 But it does seem to be the case that it's more prevalent among the immigrant communities that do particularly well.

00:26:40.160 Would you say that the issue I just raised with the marriage rates, intact families, how much do you think that plays into it?

00:26:49.560 That's a big part of raising kids to be conscientious is they have to, I would think, have a mother and father in the home

00:26:56.440 who are focused on, you know, instilling that in them.

00:27:01.020 And in the black community, you know, the rates of fatherless out-of-wedlock births are like 70, 80 percent, especially in the inner city.

00:27:11.140 It's just this catastrophic, like apocalyptic type numbers.

00:27:15.560 You can't have a functioning community or functioning society when the numbers are that high.

00:27:20.120 Yeah, well, we don't know the relationship between fatherlessness, let's say, and conscientiousness.

00:27:28.240 And that's a study that should clearly be done.

00:27:30.820 But we do know that, we do know probably more accurately than we know anything else in the developmental psychological literature

00:27:38.340 that fatherlessness is a catastrophe.

00:27:41.560 Fatherless kids do abysmally.

00:27:43.720 Well, here's an example, Matt.

00:27:45.240 This is so striking.

00:27:46.440 Everyone listening should take this with a tremendous amount of seriousness.

00:27:52.860 Fatherless girls undergo puberty on average more than one year earlier.

00:27:58.600 Now, that's a walloping biological effect and an early one.

00:28:03.780 And the life expectancy of fatherless children is lower as well.

00:28:08.100 And that's because they undergo chromosomal damage because of stress.

00:28:12.060 So, right at the biological level, there are massive consequences of fatherlessness.

00:28:17.380 And probably, you know, having a father is an example of long—your father, if he sticks around,

00:28:24.040 provides an example of long-term, other-focused commitment across all the ups and downs of life, right?

00:28:32.320 If you have a father who hangs in there, if your parents are honest, you see them contending with each other, wrestling with each other, fighting with each other as they try to sort out the complex problems of life.

00:28:45.780 There's lots of tragedies that a married couple goes through, lots of difficulties.

00:28:50.220 And the example of committed monogamy shows people that it's possible to make a voluntary bond, a contract or a covenant that extends across decades, regardless of the difficulties that life throws your way.

00:29:07.480 You commented on the accelerating rates of fatherlessness in the black community, and that is a complete bloody catastrophe.

00:29:14.260 And here's, I think, the explanation for it, Matt.

00:29:16.920 You tell me what you think about this.

00:29:18.340 So, imagine a pyramidal structure that represents economic position in the patriarchy.

00:29:26.640 Let's put it that way.

00:29:28.420 Okay, now imagine that you stress the system.

00:29:31.620 And one of the ways you could stress it is by defining the family unit as the fundamental basis of oppression.

00:29:39.740 And that all other family arrangements are fine and that it's okay to love whoever you want for as long as you want or for as short as you want, like, let's say, the next hour.

00:29:51.000 And that's perfectly acceptable.

00:29:53.100 And then you throw that into the culture, which is what we did in the early 1960s.

00:29:57.920 And then you might ask, well, who is that going to destabilize first?

00:30:01.800 And the answer to that is crystal clear.

00:30:04.060 The lower you are on the socioeconomic ladder, the more catastrophic the results of a sociological intervention like that are likely to be.

00:30:13.980 And so, the black community tended to be at the lower end of the pyramidal distribution.

00:30:19.820 And so, that radical sociological change that emerged in the 1960s affected them first.

00:30:26.000 And black families started to fall apart in the 60s.

00:30:28.620 And that's been accelerating ever since, until we get the numbers that you are pointing to.

00:30:33.500 But one of the things we should absolutely 100% be clear about is that Hispanics and Caucasians are not far behind.

00:30:42.600 So, there has been a decline in marital stability in the white and the Hispanic community since the 60s.

00:30:48.780 And if you match the curves, the Hispanics and the whites are about 10 to 15 years behind the black community.

00:30:55.420 So, that cataclysmic collapse is starting to spread through our entire culture.

00:31:00.080 It's just that the black population happens to be at the forefront of it.

00:31:03.800 And we know perfectly well that fatherlessness, apart from the biological effects, early puberty for girls,

00:31:09.920 why do girls hit puberty early if they don't have a father around?

00:31:12.920 Well, how about so they become sexually attractive earlier so that a man shows up?

00:31:20.960 How about that for a theory, which seems to be precisely the explanation?

00:31:25.560 And so, that's not exactly so good because probably it's not that good to throw yourself into a sexual relationship

00:31:33.120 when you're still psychologically a child despite the fact that you might be physically mature.

00:31:39.200 So, that's quite the catastrophe.

00:31:41.280 And fatherless boys are much more likely to be in prison.

00:31:45.160 They're much more likely to drop out of school.

00:31:47.120 They're much less likely to attain gainful employment.

00:31:49.920 They're much less likely to be reliable marital partners.

00:31:52.980 And so, it's a cascading effect.

00:31:55.100 It's a complete bloody catastrophe.

00:31:56.880 And even the conservatives have been stupid about this.

00:31:59.280 You know, I talked to a conservative leader the other day and I asked him about families.

00:32:05.980 And he said, well, you know, as long as two people love each other.

00:32:09.240 And I think, no, I don't think so.

00:32:12.100 Not just as long as two people love each other.

00:32:16.100 Love each other, what does that mean, love, without commitment?

00:32:19.840 You mean, does it mean love for tonight?

00:32:22.380 Does it mean sexual desire?

00:32:24.980 Or does it mean that you're going to commit to someone for decades, for better or for worse?

00:32:29.300 Like, what does love exactly mean here?

00:32:30.980 And then, you know, is there a model for love other than monogamous, child-centered, long-term, committed family?

00:32:38.900 It's like, well, just can three people be a family?

00:32:42.500 How about five?

00:32:43.440 How about seven?

00:32:44.820 Swapping sexual partners.

00:32:46.660 How about a man and a man?

00:32:48.780 That's not a model that's going to duplicate well across society.

00:32:52.620 Because two men have a very difficult time reproducing, in case anyone hasn't noticed.

00:32:57.260 And so, the fatherless catastrophe is definitely, it's germane, Matt.

00:33:04.600 And it's not an issue that people are prone to highlight because they don't want to be hard with the brush of, you know, prejudice.

00:33:15.940 And prejudice and judgment, they're hard to dissociate from one another.

00:33:20.980 And, but I can't see any other model for long-term, long-term viability of children than stable, committed, long-term, child-centered, heterosexual, monogamous couples.

00:33:33.360 And people can go to hell in a handbasket, as far as I'm concerned, whatever way they want.

00:33:37.540 But we're bloody fools if we think there's any ideal at the center of a culture that can replace that.

00:33:43.400 And I think the evidence for that is everywhere, as you already pointed out.

00:33:46.640 Yeah, I think people, well, the fact that we're not talking about it just means that no real improvements can be made culturally.

00:33:53.840 Because this is, to my mind, the first issue that has to be addressed.

00:33:58.980 And if we're not going to address it, then you can't solve anything else farther downstream.

00:34:05.720 And I think that people don't want to talk about it because, yeah, it's not politically correct.

00:34:10.940 It's not sensitive.

00:34:11.780 Also because I think we just talked about how everyone has their own personal bias.

00:34:15.860 I think because fatherless rates and out-of-what-locked birth rates are so prevalent now that a lot of the people who should be having this conversation don't want to talk about it themselves because they're a part of that very problem.

00:34:29.700 You know, they've abandoned their kids.

00:34:30.920 They've abandoned their marriages.

00:34:32.300 And so they don't want to indict themselves.

00:34:35.020 I do think, just to back up, you said, you know, is it enough for two people to love each other?

00:34:41.280 And, of course, this is the common thing we hear on the left.

00:34:43.600 I think the answer to that is that it is enough for two people to love each other as long as we define love the right way.

00:34:51.480 You know, if we all had the right conception of love, then it could just be as simple as that.

00:34:57.500 And if we define love, I think Thomas Aquinas said love is to will the good of the other.

00:35:01.680 And, you know, in a religious context, what I would say is that to love is to, another way of putting that, to love someone is to try to help them get to heaven.

00:35:11.720 And that's my job as a child, as a parent, I help my children get to heaven.

00:35:15.340 So, if we define love that way, then, yes, in fact, that could be the guiding principle of your life.

00:35:22.680 And if you are trying to will the good of the other at all times, then it can rarely steer you wrong.

00:35:27.800 But people don't see it that way.

00:35:29.220 They see it as an emotional thing.

00:35:31.640 A short-term emotional thing, too, which is even worse because short-term matters.

00:35:37.040 Hey, I'll tell you something cool and interesting that's very relevant to this, and it's terrifying.

00:35:43.440 So, in the biological world, there are two reproductive strategies.

00:35:48.940 You can conceptualize it as a continuum.

00:35:52.520 And there are low-investment strategies and high-investment strategies.

00:35:58.160 So, the low-investment strategies characterize animals, many animals, mosquitoes, fish.

00:36:04.440 Mosquitoes, let's talk about, or fish.

00:36:09.720 It's sex without commitment and many, many offspring, right?

00:36:14.260 So, a mosquito doesn't invest in any of its children.

00:36:17.760 There's the sexual element, fertilization of many eggs, like with fish, up to millions of offspring.

00:36:26.980 Let's say, in the case of plants, for example, puffballs, I think, produce billions of spores.

00:36:34.440 Almost all of them die, and just enough survive to propagate the species, right?

00:36:39.800 So, it's a low-investment, high-production strategy.

00:36:44.580 On the other end, you have animals that reproduce slowly and invest a lot in their offspring.

00:36:52.780 And human beings are the most extreme example of that strategy.

00:36:57.740 So, we have very few offspring, and we actually make a multi-generational investment in them,

00:37:04.220 because it's not only that you're a parent, you're also a grandparent.

00:37:08.660 And one of the explanations for the human lifespan from the evolutionary side is that

00:37:13.740 we get as old as we get because there's utility to having grandparents around.

00:37:19.240 So, anyways, to have a child, a human child that flourishes, requires an investment that

00:37:26.680 spans decades.

00:37:28.760 Okay, so, we're a high-investment species.

00:37:31.240 Now, imagine you took the same logic, and you looked within human beings, and you said,

00:37:36.440 well, there's going to be human beings that tilt more towards a short-term investment strategy,

00:37:41.140 and there's going to be human beings that tilt more towards a long-term investment strategy.

00:37:46.900 So, the short-term investors would be, they'd be the hedonists, Matt.

00:37:52.900 They'd be the ones who are pursuing the one-night stands, and that believe that love is free,

00:37:59.200 and that every form of sexual expression is acceptable, and that you should just do your

00:38:03.440 own thing and let it all hang out.

00:38:05.580 And they started to, what would you say, march forward en masse in the 1960s, probably partly

00:38:11.980 because birth control made that a more viable philosophy, practically speaking.

00:38:19.040 Okay, so then that, so let's say you can identify, well, let's start with men.

00:38:23.520 You can identify men who have a short-term mating strategy versus men who are high investment.

00:38:29.580 Now, you might ask, well, what are the characterological differences between those men?

00:38:34.440 And this is where it gets fun.

00:38:38.300 The short-term oriented maters, men, are psychopathic, Machiavellian, narcissistic, and sadistic.

00:38:48.480 So, isn't that fun?

00:38:49.940 So, what that means for women is that if women pursue men who are oriented towards one-night

00:38:56.800 stands, let's say, and casual sex, they end up delivering themselves to the dark,

00:39:04.440 tetrad types, the psychopathic, narcissistic, Machiavellian sadists.

00:39:11.160 Now, you can say the same thing about women, is that women, it's rarer for women to adopt

00:39:16.420 a short-term mating strategy because sex is more costly for women, obviously.

00:39:21.440 They pay a higher emotional price for short-term pairings.

00:39:26.180 They're more likely to mistake short-term pairings for genuine emotional commitment,

00:39:30.780 and they're much more likely to be psychopathological if they adopt a short-term strategy

00:39:35.300 to mating, independent of that.

00:39:38.180 And so, what we also see with the breakdown of the family, because that breakdown facilitates

00:39:45.260 short-term mating strategies, is that we see the untrammeled rise of the psychopathic

00:39:52.620 narcissists.

00:39:53.580 And, like, I see that making, as a clinician, I see that making itself manifest in the hedonistic

00:39:59.400 pride movement continually.

00:40:01.360 It's like, we can have sex with whoever we want, whenever we want, under any conditions

00:40:06.060 whatsoever.

00:40:07.200 It's like, okay, who are you?

00:40:09.160 Oh, well, we're the psychopathic narcissists who never grew up.

00:40:12.980 It's like, oh, those are you.

00:40:14.260 Those are the people marching in the streets for their hedonistic sexual freedom, and we're

00:40:18.320 going to turn the culture over to them, eh, with their short-term, self-oriented, pure

00:40:24.580 emotional gratification view of the world, where everything's about them now.

00:40:29.800 It's no different than turning the world over to the worst-behaved two-year-olds you could

00:40:33.900 possibly imagine.

00:40:35.500 And I mean that technically, too, because all of that is a sign of radical failure to mature.

00:40:42.060 So, isn't that fun?

00:40:43.760 All that literature has basically come out in the last four or five years, identifying

00:40:47.880 the relationship between the psychopathic narcissists and the short-term mating strategies.

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00:42:00.560 Brutal.

00:42:04.020 Brutal.

00:42:04.340 Yeah, and it, I was just, there was a clip that went viral on Twitter, I saw a day or two

00:42:11.780 ago, of someone on some podcast, a self-professed queer person, saying that, talking about, and

00:42:19.960 he's HIV positive, and he was explaining why he doesn't think he should have to divulge

00:42:24.360 the fact that he's HIV positive to any sexual partners of his, and basically the answer

00:42:30.560 is that, like, doesn't make, you know, it's uncomfortable for him to talk about it, and

00:42:34.560 he shouldn't have to do it, and it just, it kind of goes to show, and it's, right, and

00:42:39.880 it's no surprise that this is a self-professed queer person, because on the LGBT activist

00:42:45.720 side, it is entirely a celebration of the self, and pursuing your own desires at any

00:42:52.620 cost whatsoever, to the point where now you have LGBT activists, some of them anyway, coming

00:42:57.940 out and saying that, you know, you should be able to pass along HIV if you want to, because

00:43:02.320 it doesn't matter what anyone else says.

00:43:04.460 One of my, you know, we talk about this and how it leads to fatherless homes and everything

00:43:08.840 else, I think the other, even more catastrophic consequence is that it also leads to eventually

00:43:18.320 the decline in population, because what ends up happening, I think, is that people give

00:43:23.600 up on having kids, and I think there's a lot of people in my generation that were raised

00:43:29.520 by parents like this, either broken homes, or maybe both parents were there physically,

00:43:35.440 but they were very self-centered and just kind of miserable parents, and so then those

00:43:40.680 children grow up, and that's the only example of parenthood that they have, and so they associate

00:43:47.460 being a parent with just abject misery, and so then they swear it off entirely, and I think

00:43:54.700 that we see that now.

00:43:56.060 I was just talking, on my YouTube channel, we put up a video a couple days ago of, I went

00:44:01.440 to the Reddit, it's called Regretful Parents, there's a Reddit forum.

00:44:05.440 And it's a very dark and disturbing place, as you can imagine, and it's just nothing but

00:44:09.520 parents, as the name implies, parents who had kids and regret it, and now quite openly

00:44:15.940 hate their own children.

00:44:17.140 I mean, some of these, I read a few of them, and it's mothers with five-year-old daughters

00:44:20.940 expressing that they hate their daughters just for existing, because their kids are infringing

00:44:29.280 on their lifestyle and making them do things they don't want to do.

00:44:32.680 And then you just think, well, when those kids grow up, because, of course, those kids

00:44:35.320 know that they're hated, even if they can't put it into words, and those kids grow up,

00:44:40.680 and many of them are probably going to say, well, if this is what having kids is all about,

00:44:45.120 then I don't want to do it.

00:44:46.340 They don't know any other way, and then you end up with people that just swear off family

00:44:51.040 life entirely, I think, because of it.

00:44:52.500 Well, I think, too, Matt, it's possible that that's also what's manifesting itself in the

00:44:58.720 proclivity of young people not to date and have relationships.

00:45:03.760 You know, if you're a, there's lots of young women out there who've never seen anything

00:45:08.960 remotely resembling a positive male role model, and it's no bloody wonder that those girls are

00:45:15.040 attracted by the radical leftist insistence that the patriarchy is an oppressive monster.

00:45:20.000 You know, if you're, it's interesting, I read Rob Henderson's book, unfortunately, at the

00:45:26.420 moment, I can't remember its name, but Rob ended up with a PhD in psychology, but he came

00:45:31.360 from the foster care system, and his foster parents were broken family types, and so were

00:45:38.320 the families of all the working class kids that he associated with.

00:45:41.820 And it's perfectly possible now to grow up as a girl and never encounter a man who can

00:45:47.900 commit to anything, not to a job, not to a person, not to his own future, right?

00:45:53.820 The funny thing about the hedonists is that they take advantage of their future selves just as badly

00:45:59.300 as they take advantage of everyone else.

00:46:01.200 And this is the problem with being guided by short-term emotional gratification.

00:46:05.560 It's like a two-year-old is motivated by short-term gratification, emotional gratification,

00:46:11.060 but you don't see them organizing themselves into effective two-year-old societies and planning for

00:46:16.540 the future. Like, to plan for the future and to take everything, everyone else into account

00:46:21.700 requires a lot of socialization and maturation, and it requires a model. And these girls that don't

00:46:28.760 have the model of positive masculinity, they assume that men are there to do nothing but take

00:46:34.640 short-term sexual gratification and carry none of the load. It's no bloody wonder they're skeptical

00:46:39.440 of the patriarchy and then avoidant of men. And it's no wonder that they also see any claim of a man

00:46:47.640 to being competent and productive as just a lie to mask his essential proclivity to take advantage

00:46:55.920 and depart. And so it is a cascading spiral of failure, and there's many communities that are

00:47:04.760 caught in that. Now, I'll give you an example of this. It's weird, Matt. So, when I go do my lectures,

00:47:12.380 my wife does the introduction, and then she does the Q&A. And we didn't exactly plan that.

00:47:23.020 As we've been touring around, I've had different people open for me. Dave Rubin did for a while.

00:47:28.380 My daughter, Michaela, did for a while. I've had various special guests, Douglas Murray, for example,

00:47:33.780 who've done that. At one point, for the opening, we were just doing some advertising for this essay

00:47:41.700 product that my son is working on and for this Peterson Academy that we've launched, this online

00:47:47.000 university. And Michaela, when she was introducing me, was talking about those ventures. And then

00:47:52.660 she decided to go pursue her own things. And I asked my wife if she would do the intros. And she

00:47:58.940 said yes. And so that's how that came about. And then she did the Q&As. And that sort of branched into

00:48:04.600 her pursuing her own description of my rules and so forth at the beginning of the show. Okay, so

00:48:12.800 sorry for all the detailed background. But one of the things that we found was that people were very

00:48:18.460 pleased to have her on stage with me. And so we were watching YouTube comments, for example, when people

00:48:25.800 were viewing this. And what we came to understand was that a very large proportion of the audience had never

00:48:32.420 seen a man and a woman sit down together, like a married couple, sit down together and actually do

00:48:38.000 something productive and useful and peaceful voluntarily together. So just this example, Matt. So when

00:48:47.500 the audience asks questions for the Q&A, those are submitted electronically, and then Tammy goes

00:48:55.180 through them to see which ones are upvoted, but also to sort of string together a coherent set of

00:49:00.380 questions in a conversation. And so then she asks me the questions. And then she actually listens to the

00:49:07.320 answers actively, you know, and sometimes probes further. And we were stunned to find how much of a relief

00:49:14.900 that was for people just to see that it was possible. And that's so catastrophic, because it

00:49:20.200 shows you the depth of misery, I suppose, is a good way of thinking about it, that characterize so many

00:49:27.180 people's lives is that they're relieved to see a display of genuine cooperation between a committed man and

00:49:34.580 woman. You know, that's really sad. So a lot of these girls who are susceptible to the blandishments

00:49:42.980 of the left, it's not surprising, in a sense, when you look at their, if you look at their

00:49:49.520 autobiographical background. Yeah, I think for the boys, too, it's, you have girls that, as you say,

00:49:58.260 grow up and never have an example of a male role model, I think it's probably even more disastrous for the

00:50:04.740 boys to grow up, having never had that example, because, you know, for a girl, that means that, you know,

00:50:10.820 they're not going to know what to expect from men, how to interact with men, they're not going to trust men,

00:50:16.640 and so on. But for boys, it means like, they don't know how to be what they are. And that's one thing,

00:50:23.980 myself, as a father of four boys, two of them are still babies, but two are a bit older now. And

00:50:31.720 you really notice that as a father, when you have sons, that they, and that's why I think it's,

00:50:37.620 people ask me sometimes, like, is it harder to have boys or girls? Because we have two girls as well.

00:50:43.560 I think, you know, there are different challenges with both sexes, but I think probably for a father,

00:50:50.440 it's in a way harder to have boys, if you take it seriously, because there's more pressure.

00:50:56.780 I think as a father of girls, I think there's a little bit less pressure on you. But as boys,

00:51:02.460 you could just feel them watching you all the time, because they're looking to you

00:51:07.940 to figure out how they are supposed to be in the world, how they're supposed to act.

00:51:13.000 They have all, the boys have all this kind of energy, all of this, just, you know,

00:51:18.100 just bursting at the seams with, with energy and all these, this desire to like,

00:51:23.760 I know with my boys, it literally, they want to run out into the woods every single moment of the

00:51:27.940 day. They don't even want to be inside the house. They don't want to be contained at all.

00:51:30.880 And so they have all of this and they're looking at me as an example of how do you,

00:51:34.380 how do you harness that? What do you do with that? And so it's, it's quite a bit of pressure

00:51:38.780 because I know that if I give them the bad example, then I've set them up for failure.

00:51:44.180 A big part of it is this isn't, this isn't all of it, but when you see, I think when you see these

00:51:49.080 boys in the inner city that join gangs and they go out and they do, you know, not just in the inner

00:51:54.440 city, but teenage boys can be known to do things that are just absurdly dangerous, almost suicidal,

00:52:01.740 even if they are not actually suicidal. I think it's because there's this masculine urged for risk

00:52:07.100 taking. And one of the most important roles of a father, I think is to show a boy, show a boy,

00:52:14.080 like, how do you take risks in a healthy way? What are, what are healthy risks to take?

00:52:20.100 Um, and if you don't have a father there to show you how to do that, to show you what that means,

00:52:25.160 then you end up, you know, then you have a teenage boy who's drunk and driving 105 miles an hour

00:52:32.920 on a back road somewhere. Um, because that's, that's his way of, of taking a risk. He didn't

00:52:38.140 have a father to show him, you know, more constructive ways of, of taking risks.

00:52:43.360 Yeah. Well, okay. A couple of things on that. It's like boys are definitely more difficult to

00:52:49.180 socialize than girls. There's no doubt about that. I I'll say the tables will turn when your

00:52:54.220 daughters become teenagers. So be prepared for that because they experience a whole new form of

00:53:00.820 exposure to risk then. And well, so, but boys are less agreeable than girls. And so they are more,

00:53:09.200 um, risk taking and exploratory. So for example, men and women differ within the dimension of

00:53:19.140 extroversion. Men are more assertive and women are more enthusiastic that they're pretty reliable

00:53:25.160 sex differences in temperament. Most of them seem biologically grounded. You can distinguish

00:53:30.460 between men and women with 75% accuracy on the basis of personality scales alone. And if you

00:53:36.740 include interest, because women are more interested in people and men are more interested in things

00:53:41.900 on average, you can increase that diagnostic ability. So that's independent of any physiological

00:53:48.260 signs, right? Just, if you just knew someone's personality and their interests, you can very

00:53:53.460 reliably categorize them as men or women. There's no evidence whatsoever that that's cultural,

00:53:58.700 by the way, because those differences get bigger in more egalitarian societies. This is very well

00:54:04.820 known by psychologists, even if they're afraid to talk about it, which they are. So it is harder to

00:54:11.040 socialize boys. And the way we socialize them to take risks, fundamentally, as far as I'm concerned,

00:54:17.520 is by encouraging them to take responsibility, right? And it's, it's a timeframe issue. Again,

00:54:23.740 is you want your boys to be able to carry a maximal load. And there's adventure in that, but that has

00:54:31.680 to be a socialized adventure. So let's delve into that a little bit. How long have you been married?

00:54:37.320 Almost 13 years.

00:54:38.860 Okay. Why do you like being married?

00:54:43.220 Oh, wow.

00:54:45.480 Well, why not just look, you're a famous guy and you have a lot of money. And so in principle,

00:54:51.480 you could have women at your disposal if you wanted to go that route, that's very, very common for

00:54:57.020 celebrities. And so I could say to you, look, well, you know, why not have your cake and eat it too?

00:55:02.260 You could keep up the, the appearance of your marriage, but you could be having plenty of action

00:55:08.200 on the side. And I'm presuming you're not doing that. And I, and if the opportunity is there,

00:55:14.200 which it is now, because many men, you know, many men are going to be monogamous or involuntarily

00:55:20.280 celibate because they don't have the bloody opportunity. So there's no morality in that,

00:55:24.340 but you're now in a position where you could, well, you could pretty much do whatever the hell

00:55:28.660 you wanted on the sexual front. And so why are you committed to your marriage? What's in it for you?

00:55:36.300 Well, I would say, yeah, it's, it's interesting because there's an, you know, you could say,

00:55:40.220 I have to say this if I'm a, if I'm speaking publicly, but it also, maybe I do, but it also

00:55:44.560 happens to be true that there is nothing about the scenario that you just described that I find

00:55:49.320 even remotely appealing. Um, the idea, the idea of, uh, being unfaithful to my wife, I find it's not

00:55:56.800 even, it's a horror show. When I think about it, like every aspect of that is a horror show,

00:56:02.740 nothing about it. I find even remotely tempting. Why, why is it a horror show? Why is it a horror show

00:56:07.760 when you think about it? Well, because you're, you're, everything you're bringing into your life

00:56:12.960 is terrible. You're bringing lies and deception and betrayal into your, into your life. Uh, I also

00:56:20.640 happen to love my wife very much. And, uh, and as we just talked about loving, I believe is willing

00:56:26.560 the good of the other that is, that is very much not willing what is good for her or my family. Um,

00:56:33.440 you, every part of it, I don't see any advantage. I don't see anything about it. That's appealing

00:56:38.920 at all. Um, and it's, it's the same if I were to, to imagine having never been married at all,

00:56:45.460 um, and being single right now. And then at least you don't have the betrayal and all of that,

00:56:51.860 but that also I find incredibly unappealing. Uh, I, I quite literally thank God every day that I'm

00:56:59.020 married. I, I, I look at people who aren't and, um, I feel sorry for them, especially, especially men.

00:57:05.540 And as you point out, there are men who want to be, they just don't have the opportunity.

00:57:09.260 And I feel an immense amount of sympathy for them. Um, I would hate to be in their position.

00:57:13.860 I don't want to, I don't want to lay it on them even thicker if they're watching right now, but I

00:57:16.840 just, I, I, I feel for them. Um, I'm incredibly happy to be married all the time. And I guess the

00:57:24.380 reason is it's only, it's only hard. It's only difficult to answer the question because

00:57:28.580 the reasons are really infinite in a lot of ways, but, uh, it brings, it brings meaning into my life.

00:57:35.540 Every day that wouldn't be there without it, you know, brings purpose. Uh, there are people in my

00:57:42.740 life who I can love in a way that, uh, if they weren't there, I just wouldn't. Yeah. I could,

00:57:49.980 you know, you could have friends that you love, you love your siblings and your, and your parents, but

00:57:53.880 especially having experienced it now, I know that it's just a different kind of love that I have for

00:57:59.080 my own kids and my own wife that if I didn't have them, um, I wouldn't have any opportunity for that

00:58:05.320 kind of love either to give it or to receive it. And, um, as I said, to, to me, not having that is

00:58:12.400 nothing but pure horror. Uh, I, I, I see no advantage of it. Right. So you outlined, you outlined

00:58:18.240 two dimensions there. You said that, you know, if you took the short-term mating strategy route,

00:58:24.960 let's say that that would introduce all sorts of deception and lies and betrayal and brokenness

00:58:32.160 into your family. So that's sort of on the hell side. And, you know, when I used to counsel people

00:58:37.740 who were thinking about having an affair, one of the things I would do with them was think it through.

00:58:42.680 It's like, so, so what's your fantasy here? I see. So you've, you've found someone new and you're

00:58:49.340 having fun with them and you find them very attractive, but they don't have to bear any of the

00:58:55.500 responsibility for your continued life together. They get all the fun and your wife, who you're

00:59:03.940 thinking about cheating on, she gets all the responsibility and the burden. And so now you have

00:59:08.740 this imaginary person that you do nothing with, but play with. And that's a person who's also

00:59:15.920 willing to break up a marriage. So that's the sort of person that you've tangled yourself up in and,

00:59:21.340 and what, you're just going to keep this secret. So you're going to lie constantly now about

00:59:25.980 everything for the rest of your life while you betray your wife. And you're going to pretend that

00:59:31.660 there's something positive in that for you and your wife and your children. That's the game that

00:59:37.460 you're going to play. And often, not always, but often when people started to think it through,

00:59:45.340 you know, they changed their mind. Now, and you also talked about the positive side. You know,

00:59:50.580 when I worked, my first job as a professor was at Harvard and my wife and I moved down to Boston

00:59:57.340 and we had our second child there. And Tammy stayed home with the kids for a variety of reasons. One of

01:00:04.440 which was that she didn't have a green card. There were other reasons too, because she wanted to be

01:00:08.800 with the kids. And all I did was work and spend time with my family. That was it. You know, I,

01:00:15.560 because at that point in my life, it was necessary to cut out everything that was extraneous if I was

01:00:21.480 going to be successful at those two things. But there wasn't anything I ever found more enjoyable

01:00:28.160 than spending time with my kids and my wife. It was great. And you have a quality of love from

01:00:34.420 your children that you will not get anywhere else in your life, period. And that's the same. The

01:00:39.360 same is true if you are actually in a committed relationship with someone. And the depth of that,

01:00:44.860 what I've been trying to lecture to people, young people around the world is, is that you find the

01:00:49.080 meaning in your life through adopting long-term responsibility. And, you know, your kids are the

01:00:54.540 only people you'll ever meet in your life who want more than anything else to have a good relationship

01:01:00.860 with you. That's what they offer you. And that's such a gift. I mean, you alluded to that. It's such

01:01:06.900 a gift. And the thing is too, it's, it's also something, you know, we have a society that's

01:01:12.300 searching for meaning. It's like having a committed relationship with someone for 60 years,

01:01:18.440 which is what you'll have with your kids if you're fortunate, that's actually quite meaningful.

01:01:22.940 And then you have grandkids too. And that's another

01:01:26.000 source of bountiful provision of stability and responsibility and love.

01:01:32.900 And, you know, conservatives have done a very bad job of selling this to,

01:01:36.820 to young people because they always take the dutiful side and, and pro, pro, what portray it as an

01:01:44.440 obligation and not an opportunity. And that's just ridiculous. And even on the sexual side, so

01:01:49.960 the purely sexual side, the people who have the most sex are religious people in long-term committed

01:01:56.520 monogamous relationships. At least the heterosexual people who have the most sex. So that's pretty

01:02:03.080 interesting. Who the hell would have guessed that? And then you might also contemplate for a moment the

01:02:09.080 difference between sex with love and sex without love. And sex without love produces a fair bit of

01:02:16.340 post-coital regret, both on the side of the man and the woman. And that's a real symptom of just

01:02:22.520 exactly what the hell's going on, which is something like mutual short-term exploitation.

01:02:27.480 And then the realization of that. And sex with love, that's a whole different enterprise. They're not

01:02:32.440 even in the same universe. And that's not something that people speak about very much, but they should.

01:02:38.280 Yeah, I think, and highlighting the, I think you're right. That's, uh.

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01:04:21.540 And I say this as a conservative commentator myself who talks about these issues all the time,

01:04:24.980 but you're correct, that obviously we have not done

01:04:27.800 an entirely sufficient job of making this point. And probably part of it is not highlighting the

01:04:36.560 positives enough. And I mean, when it comes down to it, it's an issue of happiness. And I think that

01:04:42.180 I think it's probably true, and maybe there's like rare exceptions, very rare exceptions, but it's

01:04:49.800 probably true for almost everyone, that you cannot be happy. You can't be truly happy alone. I mean,

01:04:55.040 nobody can be truly happy entirely alone. And now most of us, unless you're on a desert island

01:05:01.040 somewhere, and if you were on a desert island, you would go insane very quickly, actually, being that

01:05:06.300 isolated. But most of all, we're not on a desert island, so none of us are actually completely alone.

01:05:12.840 But I think it probably is true that the closer you are to being alone, the more unhappy you will

01:05:20.040 be. And the farthest you can get from being alone is to have a spouse and children. Now, even then,

01:05:29.780 there's like a certain element of aloneness, I guess, that just because we're human beings and we have

01:05:35.740 our own minds, in a certain way, there's always going to be that. There's going to be a certain

01:05:42.480 feeling of isolation, I think, that we're all capable of feeling, no matter how many people you

01:05:47.060 surround yourself with. But as far as you can get from alone is to have a spouse and have children.

01:05:54.720 And so that doesn't mean there are plenty of people that have kids and are miserably unhappy. I just

01:06:00.380 talked about the regretful parents in the Reddit forum. So I think it's more accurate to say that if

01:06:05.500 you have a spouse and you have children, you have the opportunity for the greatest happiness that's

01:06:11.220 available to human beings. Now, you have to take advantage of that opportunity, but it's not

01:06:17.040 necessarily going to be automatic, but you have the opportunity for it. I think about, there's a movie

01:06:23.100 called Into the Wild about Chris McCandless, who was a guy who left everything behind, I think it was

01:06:30.620 back in the 90s, and burned his credit cards, burned his license, and his social security

01:06:35.360 card, and just went off into the Alaskan wilderness by himself, left society entirely behind.

01:06:41.420 And then when he was up in the wilderness, he ended up eating a poison berry accidentally,

01:06:46.280 and he died up in the wilderness by himself. And in the margins of his notebook, before he died,

01:06:52.260 he wrote something like, happiness isn't real unless it's shared. And I think that's true.

01:07:01.120 He learned it the hard way. He learned it the hardest way you could possibly learn a lesson

01:07:04.760 like that. But there is no happiness unless you're sharing it. I travel a lot for my job,

01:07:13.080 as I know you do. And people say to me all the time, well, it must be nice that you get to go out

01:07:17.900 and travel and see the world, and you get a break from the wife and kids. And the truth is that when

01:07:24.900 I'm traveling, you know, I'm going to do a job. Even if I'm in a really cool place, I don't go do

01:07:29.580 a lot of sightseeing. And on the few occasions when I do get out and do something kind of fun

01:07:34.800 on my own, it's just, it's not that fun anymore because I don't have, all I can think to myself

01:07:40.120 is, well, I wish I had my kids here. I wish I had my wife here to see this because they would

01:07:44.600 really enjoy it. And because I can't share that moment with them, you know, it's nice, but it's just

01:07:49.640 lacking a certain quality that it could otherwise have. So, our whole culture, insofar as our culture

01:07:57.300 is Judeo-Christian, and it's particularly emphasized on the Christian side, our whole culture is

01:08:02.900 predicated on the idea of sacrifice, right? That's why we have the crucifixion at the center of our

01:08:09.640 culture as a symbol. It's a sacrificial symbol. And you're pointing to why. It's like you find the

01:08:17.420 meaning in your life, in the sacrifice of your solitude and your narrow self to the future and

01:08:24.000 to the broader community. And it really is in that where we find not only our happiness, Matt,

01:08:29.920 which you pointed to, so our hope for the future, let's say, our enthusiasm and our courage, we also

01:08:34.760 find our respite from anxiety. There's no difference between being self-conscious and being anxious.

01:08:41.300 They're statistically indistinguishable from one another. The more you think about yourself,

01:08:45.860 the more miserable you are. And so, it is the case, and human beings are so deeply social that

01:08:52.540 we can punish psychopathic predators by putting them in isolation. Just think about that, what that

01:08:57.760 means for how social people are. You can take the worst people, the most predatory people, the repeat

01:09:04.960 violent offenders who can't regulate themselves at all, who act like they hate everyone and do nothing

01:09:11.600 but pray. And if you put them in solitary, they find that torturous. That's how social human beings

01:09:18.920 are. You know, in your observation that you only find realistic meaning in communal experience, it's

01:09:26.140 like I feel the same way when I'm traveling. I mean, I take my wife along and we often have family

01:09:30.640 members and friends along, and that makes a huge difference. But I'm just not that interested in

01:09:35.100 having fun without my wife, mostly because it's just not that fun. You know, I'm not two, for Christ's

01:09:42.380 sake. I'm not searching for immediate gratification. It's shallow. And we have a crisis of meaning in our

01:09:49.800 society, and it is because people don't understand the relationship between responsibility, like long-term

01:09:56.340 committed responsibility, and meaning. That's where all of it is to be found. And that's even true as you

01:10:02.080 get older. Like, I can't imagine what my life would be like now if I didn't have my kids and my grandkids

01:10:09.300 and my wife. Like, what the hell? What am I going to be doing? Something trivial and pointless to while

01:10:17.020 away the time. It's so dull and dry. There's no depth in it at all. And like, conservatives have done a

01:10:24.860 terrible job of showing young people that commitment and meaning are the same thing. It's so interesting to

01:10:32.040 watch this, because I've noticed when I lecture that whenever I draw a relationship between

01:10:36.780 responsibility and meaning, the audience always goes dead silent, because no one's made that case,

01:10:44.420 least of all the conservatives who are always on about duty. And, you know, you did a much better job

01:10:49.580 today than the typical conservative, let's say, in highlighting what you find so spectacularly

01:10:55.520 positive about having a family. You know, it also does a lot for your genuine regard for yourself,

01:11:03.140 you know? Because if you can view yourself as somebody who's reliable and committed in the face

01:11:09.620 of all of life's catastrophes, and that you can keep your word across time, then you're not some

01:11:15.100 miserable, cringing milksop of a thing that's blowing in the wind and crushed by every one of life's

01:11:21.880 minor tragedies, right? You're trying to live out a pattern of someone who can take a fair bit of

01:11:27.600 battering and still prevail and be a model of that sort to your kids, which they look to you for.

01:11:33.460 Part of the reason your boys torture you and push you is to find out what you're made of.

01:11:38.240 Your wife does the same thing. And, you know, maybe you can find out that you're made of more than you

01:11:42.860 think if you are willing to put a little committed effort into the situation. So, let's turn to the

01:11:51.220 move. Oh, sorry. Go ahead, Matt. I was going to say that's an interesting point because I was

01:11:56.460 thinking about it the other day that I agree with what you said at the beginning of the conversation

01:12:01.660 that you don't really grow up until you get married and have kids. I certainly see that in my own life.

01:12:09.460 And I got married when I was 25, had kids when I was, or first set of twins when I was 26.

01:12:14.740 And I, and I look, so I look at my life up to the age of 25 and I see all of that as basically

01:12:21.920 childhood. I don't, I look at myself at 22 and I don't, and it's like, I might as well have been 12

01:12:26.400 in a lot of ways. Because for me, adulthood started once I was actually a husband and then a father.

01:12:34.020 And I think, and also for me, even it's interesting because in the culture, we're always told that

01:12:40.540 having a family is going to prevent you from being financially successful

01:12:45.120 because it's an extra financial burden. And it is true. There's more, it is more of a financial

01:12:50.360 burden, quote unquote, if you want to put it that way. But it hasn't been my experience that it

01:12:55.060 prevents success. In fact, I didn't, my own career didn't really take off until the moment when I had

01:13:00.740 kids and I could almost, there's almost like a starting point right there. And I could draw a line

01:13:06.220 going up from that moment. And I think part of the reason for all of that is that, to the point you

01:13:11.680 just made, that I really started to take myself a lot more seriously when I was a husband and a father.

01:13:19.520 I mean, I had the responsibility to care for my family, but I also just started to see myself as

01:13:24.940 a grown man in the world and take myself a lot more seriously. And I think that that, especially as

01:13:31.740 a man, that's one of the prerequisites to, you know, being successful is to, is to see yourself

01:13:38.540 as a serious person, which I think a lot of young men probably don't see themselves that way.

01:13:44.140 And then, and then as a consequence, the world doesn't see that way.

01:13:47.080 You're probably not a serious person until it's about more than you. And that means you don't bring

01:13:52.240 grim seriousness of intent to your pursuits. And the developmental literature is very clear on this.

01:13:57.020 Most young men are quite profligate and hedonistic, let's say, with regard to their consumption of

01:14:03.180 alcohol. And why? Well, because it's fun. You know, we like to think that people drink to drink

01:14:10.840 away their misery. And there is some truth to that because it is a good respite from anxiety. But

01:14:16.660 mostly people drink to party and have a good time, which means to engage in hedonistic stupidity of

01:14:22.380 various forms. And the reason that people do that is obvious. It's, they do that because the

01:14:28.040 substances like alcohol that people use are physiologically rewarding. They activate the

01:14:35.380 dopaminergic systems. That's the same system that's activated when you're pursuing a worthwhile goal.

01:14:40.820 The real question is, well, why not just drink and use cocaine all the goddamn time?

01:14:46.360 And the answer to that, that people usually come up with around the age you did, is that they take on

01:14:52.320 responsibility and decide that that's actually more worthwhile. And so then young men do start to

01:14:58.620 take themselves seriously and to work. And then it doesn't matter that they're burdened by the

01:15:03.300 obligations of a family because that's actually something that becomes motivating. And so it's

01:15:08.500 not a burden, it's an opportunity to mature and to show that you're capable of a hell of a lot more

01:15:13.240 than you thought you were if you just stop doing all the stupid things that were interfering with your

01:15:18.160 life. And so what's the consequence? What has been the consequence for you personally in taking on

01:15:24.840 that additional responsibility? You know, you said you regard yourself as a child or an overgrown

01:15:30.160 teenager until you got married. So what has been the consequence for you of starting to take your own

01:15:35.840 life with some degree of mature seriousness?

01:15:38.360 Well, the consequence for me has been entirely positive. I mean, I say that there's a starting

01:15:48.340 point from when I had kids to now and I can draw almost like a, not a straight line up, but you can

01:15:52.940 see the incline from there. And it's not quite as simple as that, but I can trace all of whatever

01:16:02.560 success I've had in life, you know, both career-wise, financially, spiritually, pretty much in every

01:16:10.420 sense. I can start it there from starting a family and realizing that, you know, everything I'm doing

01:16:24.980 really matters because it's not just for me. I guess that was a big part of the problem when I,

01:16:30.280 you know, I can, I can think back. I moved out of the house when I was 20 years old.

01:16:35.480 So not, not too early, but also early compared to a lot of people these days. I moved out when I was

01:16:39.440 20, got married when I was 25. So there's about almost exactly five years in between when I was

01:16:46.320 living on my own, but I wasn't, but I was single. I wasn't married. And yeah, and there was, you know,

01:16:52.760 there was an opportunity for a lot of the partying and all the profligate stuff that you talk about.

01:16:56.880 There's some of that, but I remember mainly as a time of just, it was a very miserable time. I was

01:17:02.120 not happy. And I think it's because like, I didn't say I had a job. I was, I was working at the job.

01:17:10.920 I was trying to advance in my career, but then I come home to this empty apartment and there's just

01:17:15.600 nobody there. And it doesn't really matter to anyone else what I do or whether I succeed

01:17:23.600 at all. And, and I found that to be quite burdensome. It was much more, much more burdensome

01:17:30.940 than having a family. Like having a family actually lifts that burden. Because coming home and just

01:17:36.700 knowing that it's like, it doesn't, it literally, it's like, it doesn't matter to anyone in the world,

01:17:42.500 really, except, except for my parents. And they're not as invested in it as say your kids and your,

01:17:48.600 your wife will be. It just doesn't matter to anyone whether I'm successful. And I just found it,

01:17:56.020 you know, maybe there's a way to push through that. Maybe there's a way, I mean, there are people who-

01:17:59.700 No, I don't think so. No, I don't think so. I don't believe it. Because why? Like, what's the point?

01:18:06.060 And that, and that's very important because there's lots of suffering in life. And so if there

01:18:09.340 isn't a point, man, good, good luck to you. And the point seems to be in something like the adoption

01:18:14.620 of maximal responsibility. That, that's the, that's the, that's the story of all our great

01:18:21.340 adventure stories, our great romantic adventure stories. The hero is always the person who takes

01:18:25.800 on maximal responsibility. Always. Right? Like Frodo to destroy the ring of power. Well, there's a

01:18:35.200 maximal responsibility. He fleshes out his whole character in the course of his quest so that he

01:18:40.860 can contend with the all seeing eye of the totalitarian state and the terrible burden of

01:18:46.140 power. No one, there's a reason those stories echo. I guess the, the only caveat I would,

01:18:52.980 I would make here is that I think in some cases it is possible to have a happy and successful life

01:19:00.580 where you have responsibilities or fulfilling your responsibilities, have a sense of purpose and

01:19:05.140 meaning. It is possible to have that. And to, to not get married and not have kids. There are some

01:19:11.900 people that I believe are called to, to forego that. But in those cases, that means that if we're

01:19:18.820 talking about a man, that means that they're going to find another outlet for this kind of paternal,

01:19:25.380 as a man, I think we're all called to some kind of paternal service in the world. And

01:19:29.860 for most men, that means having kids. And if you can't have kids, it means adopting.

01:19:35.260 That's going to be most men. There, there are going to be some men though, small minority who

01:19:40.000 aren't, aren't called to that. And so they find some, but you have to find some other way to kind

01:19:45.740 of act as a father in the world. And, you know, as a Catholic, I would say one of the, one of the

01:19:50.240 best examples that maybe you're called to the religious life. Maybe you're called to be a priest or a

01:19:54.000 monk. That certainly can be a very happy and joyful life. And, but, but that is also, it's like,

01:20:00.480 you're not just working some job and trying to make a lot of money for yourself and then coming

01:20:04.840 home to your empty apartment. We call a priest father. So you are a father in a different sense,

01:20:10.020 in a spiritual sense. So there is that, but I think the point is that you can't discard that entirely

01:20:17.580 and say, I don't want to be in service to anyone. I don't want to be a father in any sense of the term

01:20:22.680 at all. I don't want to have anyone depending on me at all. And I just want to focus on myself and

01:20:28.020 have fun. If that's your mentality, there's just no way to be truly happy. Um, except in the most,

01:20:36.040 except in those fleeting moments that you talk about. Right. And you'll get more and more desperate

01:20:40.080 to pursue those fleeting moments too. That's the cataclysmic abyss of hedonism because those,

01:20:46.620 those will also get more and more rare. The more you pursue them. You know, I talked to Jocko Willink

01:20:52.380 Jocko wanted to be a mayhem distributing soldier from the time he was about three. And you can tell

01:20:59.120 that by just looking at him because he's such a monster, you know, and, and he, I imagine he was

01:21:04.720 a boy that was quite difficult to socialize, right? Because there are lots of boys who are,

01:21:10.480 well, 5% of boys kick, hit, bite, and steal at the age of two. Very few girls, by the way,

01:21:19.820 but about 5% of boys, most of those boys are socialized by the age of four, by the way.

01:21:24.560 And most of the people who are miserable with their kids have no idea how to discipline them.

01:21:29.980 Right. So there, it's like they have, they're not living with three kids. They're living with three

01:21:34.640 unhouse trained, stupid attack dogs. And it's no bloody wonder that they're miserable because

01:21:40.660 they're too fragmented and clueless and poorly educated and undisciplined to have any understanding

01:21:46.980 at all what it means to bring your children under some sort of acceptable social order. And so that's

01:21:53.140 a complete catastrophe. I mean, it's, it's obviously the case that dysregulated social

01:21:58.860 relationships can make your life hell, but that doesn't mean, as you pointed out, that that's

01:22:03.540 implicitly the case because you don't have to let your children run roughshod over you. It doesn't

01:22:08.980 take that much. Jesus, how much discipline does it take for a grown man to bring a three-year-old

01:22:15.720 into alignment? I mean, he's three. You can probably take him both psychologically and

01:22:21.580 physically. And if you can't, well, then you're a coward fundamentally, or you've had very bad

01:22:26.200 models. In any case, Jocko, when he went off to be the special forces character that he developed

01:22:35.880 into, discovered very quickly that he really liked mentoring and that that was way better

01:22:41.320 than just, what would you say, living for the sake of adventurous mayhem. And, you know,

01:22:47.860 that was a real profound realization on his part that there wasn't anything better he could find

01:22:52.400 to do with his life, his like monstrous Viking life. Easily could have been a criminal, right?

01:22:58.420 Taken that pathway because he's got that aggressive temperament. He found that there was nothing better

01:23:03.180 that he could find than to mentor young men. And that's to adopt that paternal role. There is a deep

01:23:09.660 source of meaning in that. And that's the spirit of the patriarch that's celebrated in the biblical

01:23:15.420 stories. It's part of the manifestation of the spirit of the God of Isaac and Abraham,

01:23:21.580 that long-term paternal focus that's committed and the opposite of idiot hedonism and pride.

01:23:28.900 So, which is celebrated for months now in our society at a time. So, Matt, let's take a turn

01:23:36.040 to your movie. Do you want to walk people through that a bit? I saw it, by the way, and it looks to

01:23:41.320 me like you'll have the same kind of radical success with it that you did with What is a Woman. You've got

01:23:47.140 this everyman quality about you, you know, and you, I think it's true, by the way. I mean, there is some

01:23:53.300 of that about you, but you also do a good job of being a naive investigator into the crazy world of

01:24:00.660 ideological possession. Do you want to walk us through the movie a little bit?

01:24:05.500 Sure. Yeah, you know, we decided, of course, we had What is a Woman and it was very successful for us.

01:24:14.440 And we're thinking about, you know, this is going back two years ago, we're thinking about

01:24:18.580 what, what, what topic do we want to tackle next and how to tackle it. And for me, it was very clear.

01:24:24.480 I wanted to get into, we talked about, you know, we did the movie, we investigated gender, broadly

01:24:29.060 speaking. Race is the other big one culturally. And so I knew I wanted to investigate that.

01:24:40.640 The question was like, how do you approach it? And with What is a Woman? I mean, the, the strategy is

01:24:47.220 right there in the title. It's just this, this one basic question that the whole thing hinges on.

01:24:54.240 Now with, with race, it's not, not quite like that. There isn't one, there's a lot of questions.

01:24:59.420 There's not one basic one. It's just a different, it's a different beast in a lot of ways.

01:25:06.540 And so, and we also didn't want to repeat just the, you know, we didn't want to do what is a woman,

01:25:12.040 but with race. So at this time we thought it'd be interesting to take a different approach.

01:25:16.420 And that is to start as the clueless, naive investigator asking questions.

01:25:23.460 The only difference here is that, whereas with What is a Woman? I was kind of a blank slate the

01:25:27.440 whole way through, just asking questions, not having any real like position on it myself in

01:25:33.500 the film until the very, very end. And this one we thought, well, okay, well, what if, what if I start

01:25:39.420 by asking questions? And rather than remaining a blank slate and remaining skeptical, I'll just

01:25:45.420 believe whatever I'm told. So they'll give me an answer and I'll accept that. And then I'll let

01:25:51.080 that answer lead me to the next place. And that's, that's the strategy we took with this. And it kind

01:25:58.840 of takes us, and we really did approach it in, in filming this way so that we had a really broad

01:26:04.440 outline of what, what, where we wanted to go with the film and where we wanted to end up, but you

01:26:08.960 can't really script it out because we go to talk to someone, we don't know exactly what they're going

01:26:12.560 to say or how it's going to go. And so this is why filming it was over a year was a long process

01:26:18.760 because we kind of let, we let the story guide us and went down the rabbit hole that way.

01:26:25.020 And in the process, um, because I'm kind of believing what these anti-racist DEI people

01:26:31.140 are telling me and, and sort of adopting their views and trying to, trying to put them into

01:26:35.460 practice. So that was the, that was the goals to, uh, not just ask them about it, but to take what

01:26:41.340 they say, put it into practice on screen so that people can see it. And, um, so it's a much more

01:26:49.080 direct, I think, way of kind of satirizing these ideas, maybe even than we did in what is a woman.

01:26:52.760 Hmm. You got DEI certified. Okay. So a couple of comments. So you adopt a persona, you've got a

01:27:00.180 man bun. I've got a hint for you. If you ever do this again, is you have to learn to up talk at the

01:27:06.440 end of your sentences. You have to make every sentence into something that sounds like a question

01:27:12.000 because your voice gives you away because you've got this flat authoritative voice. Like you just make

01:27:18.000 declarative statements. There's no question in them. And one of the things you'll notice

01:27:22.720 about the, the DEI types, this is very telling is that they always end every sentence with an

01:27:29.140 up talk. It's in, it's a form of validation seeking and you're belied by your authoritative

01:27:36.880 voice as a DEI man bun specialist. And so you might want to give that some consideration when

01:27:43.300 you're trying to pass for one of the people who you're investigating. Anyways, you went, got DEI

01:27:48.580 certification. So I'm kind of wondering if that might be handy for you to re-educate me. And so,

01:27:55.000 and also since I seem to be destined now to being re-educated by DEI specialists, you took that

01:28:03.020 training. What the hell was that like? Well, it was very easy. It turns out. Literally anyone can get

01:28:13.520 DEI certified is what we discovered because there's no, it's, it's not like there's some

01:28:19.800 official process. It's not like, you know, there's, it's not like becoming a certified to

01:28:26.940 be a plumber and electrician. You know, it's not anything like that. It's not a real profession.

01:28:30.780 It's not a real thing. So anyone, anyone can get certified. Anyone can declare themselves an

01:28:37.860 expert is what we discovered. And, and anyone, how long did it take you? The actual process of

01:28:45.400 getting certified? Yeah. Yeah. I don't know, 30 minutes maybe. So you mean I could go get DEI

01:28:51.520 certified and then I could present that to the Ontario College of Psychologists as evidence for

01:28:56.140 my successful re-education? You absolutely could and should. I mean, I could give you, I don't have

01:29:01.560 the website in front of me, but there's a certain website we went to, to get our, to get our

01:29:04.640 certification and I'm happy to pass it along to you. I think you absolutely should do that.

01:29:09.320 Oh, I appreciate that. Yeah. It, it, it opens up a lot of doors we, we found. And, um, yeah,

01:29:17.700 even aside from the, the certification, it's really, because you're right that that's, that's kind of

01:29:22.740 one of the, like the meta jokes in the movie that, yeah, I'm, I'm like wearing a costume, but it's not

01:29:27.600 that convincing. It's, it's really just a man bun. I don't even shave my beard. We talked about,

01:29:31.760 we talked about, yeah, in, in the, in the process of, of making the film, we, we, we thought that

01:29:38.220 it'd be very difficult to get in the room with these people if all I'm wearing is a wig,

01:29:41.360 because I am, I do have a pretty distinct look and sound. And so the idea was floated. Well,

01:29:46.280 maybe I shaved the beard. That would be a pretty drastic change of my look. That, that was a no-go

01:29:51.640 for me. I'm not going to do that. There's some things I'm just not willing to do. Um, but what we

01:29:55.880 found is that it actually didn't, it didn't matter because even the wig probably didn't matter that much.

01:30:01.080 All, all they want to know is that you are repeat. There's certain just buzzwords and phrases that

01:30:07.140 if you repeat them back to these people, uh, they will accept you as part of the tribe and they're

01:30:13.960 not going to be very skeptical about it. We had, it was the same thing we were making. What is a

01:30:17.200 woman? We got in the room with a lot of these types in the gender space and there was no disguise

01:30:22.140 at all in that case. Um, and the way we did it was just all you have to, they're just looking for

01:30:28.780 the key words. And, um, if you, if they think that you are part of the tribe, then they drop all the

01:30:35.780 defenses and they'll sit in the room with you. And I think part in both of those cases, part of the

01:30:40.600 reason why it was so easy, uh, may not be so easy for anyone who tries to do it again now after we made

01:30:46.520 both these movies, but it was easy at the time because all of these people live in a, in a bubble.

01:30:52.300 Um, they live in a world where they're, they're never challenged on their beliefs.

01:30:59.280 They're never even around anyone who would disagree with them. So I think for them, uh,

01:31:05.980 the idea that they might be interviewed by someone who fundamentally disagrees with them

01:31:12.880 was really just like unthinkable. They never even considered the possibility

01:31:16.360 because they're never even around those kinds of people. Um, and we, we really kind of punctured

01:31:21.820 that bubble, I guess, in making the film. So the most surprising thing to me, and I don't want to be

01:31:26.740 speaking out of turn here, was the fact that you got to talk to Robin D'Angelo and Robin D'Angelo

01:31:33.300 famously is the author of, um, white fragility, which is really one of the most despicable books

01:31:40.120 I would say that's ever been written. And I think she also fits into that category as a thinker and

01:31:46.280 likely as a human being. And, um, is it reasonable for you to talk a little bit about that? I don't

01:31:52.540 know how you managed that and I don't want to blow the punchline, but yeah, I think there's most of the

01:32:00.940 content of that, of that, uh, exchange with her. I think they don't want me to talk about at this

01:32:06.580 point and give away the spoilers. Okay. Okay. That, that, that conversation does go to a place

01:32:11.460 that's, um, maybe will be unexpected for a lot of people, but, um, the fact that she's in the movie

01:32:17.200 is no secret. We have her in the trailer and, uh, and that, that kind of goes to what I, what I just

01:32:23.360 said that I think for her, she's, she's probably the prime example of this. Uh, cause you would think

01:32:28.020 if you didn't know any better, you would think it'd be difficult to get Robin D'Angelo into a

01:32:32.140 room. Um, and that she'd be looking out for anyone who maybe, who maybe isn't her in her tribe.

01:32:38.180 She'd be looking out for this kind of thing. For example, because you know, you might, you might

01:32:42.040 suggest that possibly Robin D'Angelo, if she was even vaguely informed about absolutely anything

01:32:49.680 that she purports to be doing would know who the hell you are. Right. You would think, but yeah,

01:32:56.960 you would apparently not because, because I think she's probably the prime example of this

01:33:01.720 of someone who I, in her day-to-day life, she probably almost never even interacts with

01:33:08.480 or speaks to anyone who is not, um, as far to the left as she is on all these issues,

01:33:15.180 or at least almost as far, uh, that's, that's just the world that she's in. And so when I'm

01:33:22.240 sitting across the room with her having a conversation, I mean, it's probably the first

01:33:25.520 time in years, if not ever that she has in this case unwittingly, but has found herself sitting

01:33:32.580 in a room with someone who fundamentally disagrees with her, um, about almost everything. And, uh,

01:33:38.840 and I don't know these, these academic leftist types, that's the kind of bubble they're in

01:33:42.040 for a lot of us. We, we, you know, for me, obviously because I am conservative and, uh, you know,

01:33:48.780 my family's conservative and I work here at the daily wire. Most of the people that I'm around

01:33:52.960 are conservative, but, you know, I interact with people that are far left all the time. It's, um,

01:33:59.160 uh, it would be a lot more difficult for someone on the left to do to me what we did to Robin

01:34:03.400 D'Angelo because I'm aware that these people are out there. I know who they are. I'm looking out for

01:34:07.780 that kind of thing. It'd be a hard, it'd be hard for them to pull off, um, because I'm just not in

01:34:12.600 the same kind of bubble, I guess, that she is. So two, two more questions about the movie. Um,

01:34:18.180 what did you learn as a consequence of doing it and why should people go see it as far as you're

01:34:24.580 concerned? I think there are, there are several things, maybe, maybe the main thing that I learned,

01:34:30.440 and I don't know if it's learned so much as had illustrated for me. Um, but the extent to which

01:34:40.640 a lot of people that fall for this, you know, there's the, there are the people that push it,

01:34:46.120 the Robin D'Angelo types, uh, the women who run the race to dinner with who we have in the film.

01:34:51.400 Oh yes. That's Sarah Rao. Yeah. Sarah Rao. Yeah. The DEI. She's the, she's the worst person on

01:34:58.260 Twitter, which is really, or arguably the worst. She, every single thing that that woman does is

01:35:06.820 self-serving and malevolent to the bloody core. She is a real miracle.

01:35:15.880 Totally. She runs those dinners where the white women pay to be humiliated by

01:35:20.520 two unbelievably narcissistic psychopaths so that they can feel good about themselves without

01:35:27.120 actually having to do any moral, having to put in any of the moral effort.

01:35:31.720 Exactly. Exactly. And that's, and that's the thing. So those types of people, the people that

01:35:35.780 are running the show, you know, that's one thing. And I don't know how much they even believe a lot

01:35:41.560 of what they're saying. I don't think they believe all of it, certainly. Um, and there's not a lot to be

01:35:48.240 learned about them. I think that they're kind of, you know, they're, they're grifters, they're con

01:35:51.280 artists. Uh, they're making a lot of money on this stuff. That's, that's a big part of the motivation.

01:35:56.120 It's not very complicated. Um, but what's more interesting to me are the, it's like the women

01:36:02.300 who would sit around that table who are paying money to be there or the people that would, that

01:36:06.680 would willingly attend one of these seminars that we have in the film, people that would willingly

01:36:11.340 read Robin DiAngelo's book. I've always, I'm more interested in them, like what, what's going on

01:36:16.020 with them. And what I found making the film is that, uh, you really can't overstate the guilt

01:36:23.860 that these people are walking around with. What white guilt, white guilt is a very real phenomenon.

01:36:29.300 And I knew that making the movie, but having it illustrated so profoundly was still pretty

01:36:34.240 enlightening to me, uh, that a lot of these people are just, they're, they're walking around

01:36:38.360 with a lot of guilt. And, uh, for someone, for like a, a, a sane, rational white person

01:36:45.020 like myself and you, it's, it can be kind of, it's, it's, it's hard to understand because

01:36:49.780 I I've never spent any time feeling guilty about slavery or Jim Crow. I had nothing to

01:36:55.860 do with it. I it's, it's, it's just, it's, I've never spent any time feeling guilty about

01:37:00.700 it at all. And so it's hard for us to understand people who are over not, not only have they felt

01:37:05.420 guilt about it, but they're overcome with guilt by this kind of thing. And, um, yeah,

01:37:12.140 I guess how much of that is that how much of that though, too, is that they want to signal how

01:37:17.340 overcome by guilt they are so that they look like hyper-moral agents. You know, it's like,

01:37:23.220 I see the same thing with mothers in particular who brandish their trans children, like they're a

01:37:30.400 flag of pride. It's like, Oh, look at how upset and confused my child is. And yet I'm still

01:37:37.520 wonderful enough to love them no matter what. You know, it's a really malevolent game and that

01:37:43.060 parading your self-flagellation as a indication of the profundity of your guilt. That's a pretty

01:37:50.640 bloody ugly game too. Now, you know, I understand that there's a fair bit of genuine moral confusion

01:37:56.160 mixed in there, but the self-serving in public, you notice that those women go to those dinners

01:38:01.680 in groups. It's not Sarah Rayo and her pathological partner with one woman. They have to do that in

01:38:08.800 groups so they, they can signal to each other the depths of their moral virtue.

01:38:13.860 Yeah, I think that that's, that's certainly right. There's a certain amount of virtue signaling

01:38:17.600 that goes into it for sure. Um, but if you're in, you know, the race to dinner, just using that

01:38:23.600 again as an example and that's, you know, that's seven or eight minutes in the movie, but in real

01:38:28.140 life, of course, you're making a movie, uh, especially a movie like this, they take a lot

01:38:33.500 longer to film. And that was really two hours. I mean, that, that dinner went on for two hours

01:38:37.040 and you can see these women sitting around at this table at various points, crying, uh, seemingly

01:38:46.080 very much overcome with emotion, talking about their racism that they feel, you know, and given

01:38:52.220 opportunities to talk about examples of when they're, when they committed racist acts and then

01:38:56.720 they share their examples. And it's like, none of the examples they give are actual racism.

01:39:03.080 And yeah, again, some of that is them just showing off, but I do think that at the core of it,

01:39:08.700 there is real guilt here and my own, and we could spend another two hours psychoanalyzing this,

01:39:12.820 but I think my own theory about how they can feel this guilt is that, uh, it's a, it's a replacement

01:39:19.180 for religion. I mean, these are almost all of them are irreligious people, even if they would

01:39:23.800 call themselves Christian, they're not really. And, um, and, you know, traditionally religion

01:39:31.440 has given us an answer for guilt because we all do now. I don't feel any, I don't feel any racial

01:39:37.100 guilt. I don't feel any white guilt, but I do feel guilt. I do, I do experience guilt, uh, for things

01:39:42.540 that I do that are wrong. If I commit sins, I feel guilty about them, but then I turned to my faith and

01:39:47.840 that gives me an answer for number one, why I feel that guilt, what that guilt is from,

01:39:52.580 and then what to do with it. What do I do about it, about that guilt? Um, and I can turn to my

01:39:57.560 faith and get an answer to all of that. But if you take religion out of it, well, now you've still

01:40:01.960 got people that are sinning, that are doing evil acts. And so they're still going to feel the guilt

01:40:06.740 because of it, but they don't have a way of understanding that guilt. They don't have any way of

01:40:12.140 interpreting it. And so they look around for someone to tell them what to do with the guilt.

01:40:18.880 And then these race hustlers are there and they'll tell you, Oh, I'll tell you why you feel guilty.

01:40:23.380 It's because of this. Yeah. Um, that's a good analysis. I think that's a big part of it.

01:40:27.840 Well, I think that's a good analysis. I mean, look, when you were a somewhat profligate 24 year old,

01:40:34.000 you needed to channel the meaningless and meaninglessness and the guilt that was associated

01:40:40.540 with your unmoored life into something that was properly sacrificial. And you got married and you

01:40:46.760 had kids and that, that provides a pathway, you know, that you, where you can discharge your moral

01:40:52.480 duty. That's the thing is that if you're, it's necessary for human beings to discharge their moral

01:41:00.080 duty. Otherwise they'll be overwhelmed by feelings of inadequacy and, and self deprecation. And that's

01:41:08.120 because we are communal and social creatures and we have to live in relationship to other people.

01:41:12.240 And if we don't do that, we violate our deepest instincts or our most divine calling, you know,

01:41:17.440 and as you said, for the typical person, you find that expiation of your self-centeredness in

01:41:25.060 responsibility to your wife, like long-term committed responsibility and to your kids and

01:41:30.260 your grandkids and to that multi-generational endeavor. And if we didn't have that propensity

01:41:36.080 for guilt, we wouldn't be social the way that we are. And it can be exploited by the sadistic,

01:41:42.240 narcissistic, histrionic psychopaths. And the women who run that race to dinner are great examples of

01:41:48.340 that, man. There's something to watch. And hey, let me, let me ask you one more question, Matt.

01:41:53.460 Tom, I don't think I could do what you did. And I wonder what that points to in, in terms of the

01:42:01.580 difference between our temperament, you know, that room that you were in with all those people that

01:42:06.480 what the hell were they there for? You're in a group of people and they, they kind of figure out

01:42:12.560 that you are in fact a conservative interloper. What, what was that, what was that scene?

01:42:17.600 Why are you in that room?

01:42:20.960 Yeah, that was a, that was a group, a kind of a seminar for people, for white people that are

01:42:25.600 struggling with their, their grief, their white grief over their privilege. And so if you're a

01:42:32.060 white person with white privilege and you're grieving your privilege, it's a support group for

01:42:36.000 that. That was, that was kind of where we started the film.

01:42:38.480 Right. Now, you see, I, I would have a very difficult time doing that because

01:42:43.520 for me to produce that kind of interpersonal tension in a group, like I find that extremely

01:42:50.640 discomforting. And I'm not proclaiming this as a virtue by any stretch of the imagination. I would

01:42:56.560 say that that is a vice that I've had to learn to control because if you're too much like that,

01:43:04.000 you can't say things that need to be said because you're too ups, concerned with, you know, causing

01:43:10.040 emotional distress in the moment, but you seem to be able to tolerate a lot of that. And I'm

01:43:17.760 wondering like, how do you, how did you actually feel in that situation where all these people were

01:43:24.300 displaying signs of discomfort and you were being unmasked and, and why are you willing, like, I want

01:43:30.860 to know how you feel about that. What, what kind of emotional state it produces, but also why you're

01:43:35.480 willing to, to do it. Uh, in the moment, uh, it's extremely uncomfortable and not, not fun. Um, as you

01:43:47.620 can imagine, like, it's not, it's not an enjoyable experience to be, just to be in that room to begin

01:43:51.920 with. Even if I was standing off on the, in the corner watching, I'd find to be quite miserable.

01:43:56.560 And that's the case with, with most of the scenes in this movie and in the last movie,

01:44:01.840 uh, just being in rooms that are, it's, it's, it's, I wouldn't choose recreationally to be in

01:44:07.540 those rooms with those people. Um, of course it goes against, I am a human being. And so it does

01:44:14.040 go against our kind of, our wiring to intentionally say and do things that are going to create more

01:44:20.740 tension and are going to bring attention to you in a very negative way. Like that's,

01:44:26.280 I don't think anyone is wired to do that. At least I'm not. Um, so in the moment it's,

01:44:32.160 I can't say that it's very enjoyable, but, um, we are the fact that we're making a film and we're

01:44:41.760 making a film and we're trying to tell a story and we're, we're attempting to reveal something in

01:44:46.940 a humorous comedic way. But so I just have that ever present in my mind. And so I'm willing to do

01:44:53.640 it to be in those rooms and to cause these extremely uncomfortable situations. Um, because,

01:45:01.440 because we're, we're, we are telling a story and, uh, and in, in both of these films and this one in

01:45:07.600 particular, but even the last one, um, I, I do look at it like we're, we're, we're exploring an issue,

01:45:15.780 you know, we're investigating an issue, an important issue. But even before that,

01:45:20.360 I look at it as a film. So it is a story. We are, we are telling, we're storytellers. We are telling

01:45:25.740 a story. And, uh, and so to me, when we're making a movie, it's like, that comes first. It's like,

01:45:32.280 what, what do we need? What do we need for the scene? What do we need for the story?

01:45:37.080 Here's what we need for it. And I'm just going to go in and get it, uh, no matter what. And that's

01:45:42.820 all that matters. Like turn the cameras on, let's roll. Let me go get what we need for this scene.

01:45:48.220 I don't care how uncomfortable I feel. We're going to get it. And, uh, cause that, that's what

01:45:52.700 matters for this. And so I guess it's just like, I probably feel similar to how you would feel, but

01:45:59.360 I see. Okay. Just suppress it to the best that I can. Well, you could contrast that. I would say

01:46:06.360 with the attitude of, let's say, Sarah Ryle with that underlying histrionic narcissistic sadism,

01:46:13.820 because I think that she takes positive delight in all the misery that she produces at those dinners.

01:46:20.260 She's not uncomfortable at all. And, and then you might say, well, how do you justify that to

01:46:24.960 yourself? Is you think these contemptible fools get exactly what they deserve. And if they're stupid

01:46:31.300 enough to let me pray on them, then I'm not going to be weak enough to have any sympathy for them.

01:46:36.800 In fact, quite the contrary. And that's really the attitude of the true sadist. You know, I talked

01:46:43.240 to a woman a week and a half ago, whose father was the founder of the church of Satan. And she was very

01:46:50.620 involved in that until, well, until she figured out that her dad was, uh, like he was the evil clown at

01:46:59.600 the town circus, you know, and it took her a long time to sort that out. But like so many predatory

01:47:06.860 types, his attitude was, if you're stupid enough to fall for my nonsense, then you deserve every

01:47:12.840 horrible thing that can possibly come your way. And, you know, that's definitely the attitude that

01:47:18.120 someone like Sarah Ryle takes is that if these fools will let me fleece them, then they're the sheep

01:47:23.380 who deserve to have their wool taken. And that it's a very, it's a very, very predatory, predatory

01:47:29.800 and malevolent orientation towards the world. And there's so much of that in the radical leftist

01:47:35.420 world. You know, I used to go to these protests that used to spring up around me, especially when

01:47:41.700 I was stupid enough to go talk to university students. Um, I'd see all these women, all these

01:47:49.060 women in the audience, these young women in their little groups, braying out their idiot cliches.

01:47:55.440 And that was pretty toxic and, and awful. But what was even worse were the predatory men that were in

01:48:01.960 their group trying to be their friends so that they could connive them into bed with their, you know,

01:48:07.360 claims of allyship, a level of narcissistic, malevolent, predatory psychopathy that once you have

01:48:15.120 the eye to see can't be unseen. And so it's a terrible thing to watch so many confused people

01:48:23.340 who've come from devastated families fall prey to the psychopathic machinations of the radical leftist

01:48:30.720 grifters. And you did a lovely job in the movie of exposing that, I think. And I imagine it'll be

01:48:36.680 quite successful. How many theaters do you know that you're opening in? That, the final number is to be

01:48:42.600 determined, but I know we're in, we're in hundreds now and they're, uh, adding more theaters every day

01:48:48.020 because the pre-sales at this point are really strong. So we're grateful for that. Um, uh, you know,

01:48:53.380 I feel, I feel optimistic about it. It's obviously for the Daily Wire, it's the first time we've put a

01:48:57.820 movie in theaters. It's, uh, we're not the first, of course, we're not the first conservatives to put a

01:49:02.780 movie in theaters, but it is still a relatively rare thing, um, to have conservatives competing in that

01:49:10.020 particular arena. And there's always a risk involved because, but the risk is also the,

01:49:17.820 the whole reason it's worth doing is that there's a, there's a, we are in an arena where there's an

01:49:22.280 actual scoreboard, um, which is the box office. And you can't argue with box office, either it's

01:49:28.900 successful or it isn't. Uh, but I think if conservatives want to have, if we're serious

01:49:35.020 about taking back the culture and getting involved in entertainment and all these things, then you got

01:49:39.540 to get out of the kind of conservative ghettos and go into these places where there is a scoreboard

01:49:45.560 and you could be judged based on that. And if you're successful, then nobody can deny it. If

01:49:51.200 you're not, then, you know, it's an embarrassing, embarrassing. You take the hit, but you got to be

01:49:56.440 willing to take that risk. And, uh, so there's a risk involved, but I also think, um, we talked

01:50:01.340 earlier about taking smart risks. And I think this is a smart risk because I, I, I believe it's a

01:50:06.600 entertaining movie. It's a movie that's hitting at exactly the right time for the culture. And, um,

01:50:14.360 and I, I think the audience will rally around it, uh, both because of the message, but also because

01:50:18.700 it's just entertaining. And, uh, so I, I feel cautiously optimistic about where it's headed.

01:50:26.620 Yeah. Entertaining in a slow, prolonged, slow motion train wreck.

01:50:31.340 Sort of way. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So it comes out, tell us again, when it comes out,

01:50:36.600 am I a racist? When it comes out? It comes out September 13th is when it'll be available,

01:50:43.140 uh, in theaters to watch. But again, you can go to, um, amiracist.com to pre-order the tickets. And

01:50:49.220 I know I never pre-ordered tickets in my life up till now. Um, it's not something people usually do,

01:50:55.140 but, uh, it is important for the success of this film to pre-order them. So amiracist.com is where you can

01:51:00.400 get the tickets now. All right, Matt. Well, good luck with your movie. Um, you seem to have a real,

01:51:07.960 uh, knack for delving into complex social issues at a very explicable level and also to time doing

01:51:18.240 that spectacularly well. And it seems like, am I a racist? Fits that pattern. And so, well,

01:51:24.820 good luck with the earth theatrical release. And I presume we'll get a chance to talk about what

01:51:29.540 happened at some point in the not so distant future for everybody watching and listening.

01:51:34.260 I'm going to talk to Matt for another half an hour. I think I'm going to delve into a little bit

01:51:39.600 about the development of his career. He pointed out on this YouTube interview that, you know, once he

01:51:44.800 adopted something approximating adult seriousness with regard to his life and was fortunate enough to

01:51:50.960 find a woman who could put up with him, that he transformed the way that he was approaching

01:51:55.200 things. And I want to, I want to walk, I want to analyze that in a little bit more depth. So you

01:51:59.720 could join us on the Daily Wire side for that. And that's exactly what we're going to do. Thank you

01:52:04.020 very much, sir. Uh, it was good talking to you as it always is. And, uh, as I mentioned, uh,

01:52:10.360 best wishes on the success of your movie. Thank you. I appreciate it.

01:52:13.740 Thank you.

01:52:14.740 Thank you.

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - September 09, 2024

479. Am I Racist？｜ Matt Walsh

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