The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - Cathy Newman Interview & Analysis

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00:00:57.000 Welcome to the Jordan B. Peterson podcast.

00:01:04.000 This is episode 38, the Kathy Newman interview and analysis.

00:01:10.000 On January 16th, 2018, Channel 4 aired the now infamous interview between Kathy Newman and Dr. Peterson.

00:01:17.000 This podcast will be comprised of two parts. First, the original interview, and then the interview between Dr. Peterson and Timon Diaz of Geenstiel.

00:01:28.000 The second interview is an analysis of the first and is followed by an elaboration of five central points to Dr. Peterson's philosophy on how to be in the world.

00:01:37.000 To support these podcasts, you can go to self-authoring.com or understandmyself.com for Dr. Peterson's personality assessment tool.

00:01:48.000 Part two of this podcast starts at the 30-minute mark.

00:01:52.000 Jordan Peterson, you've said that men need to, quote, grow the hell up. Tell me why.

00:01:58.000 Well, because there's nothing uglier than an old infant. There's nothing good about it.

00:02:04.000 People who don't grow up don't find the sort of meaning in their life that sustains them through difficult times, and they are certain to encounter difficult times.

00:02:13.000 And they're left bitter and resentful and without purpose and adrift and hostile and resentful and vengeful and arrogant and deceitful and of no use to themselves and of no use to anyone else and no partner for a woman.

00:02:28.000 There's nothing in it that's good.

00:02:30.000 I mean, that sounds pretty bad.

00:02:31.000 It's bad.

00:02:32.000 You're saying there's a crisis of masculinity. I mean, what do you do about it?

00:02:35.000 You tell, you help people understand why it's necessary and important for them to grow up and adopt responsibility, why that isn't a shake your finger and get your act together sort of thing, why it's more like a delineation of the kind of destiny that makes life worth living.

00:02:56.000 I've been telling young men, but it's not, I wasn't specifically aiming this message at young men to begin with. It just kind of turned out that way.

00:03:03.000 And it's mostly, you admit, it's mostly men listening.

00:03:05.000 It is.

00:03:06.000 I mean, 90% of your audience is a male, right?

00:03:07.000 Well, it's about 80% on YouTube, which is a, YouTube is a male domain primarily.

00:03:13.000 So it's hard to tell how much of it is because YouTube is male and how much of it is because of what I'm saying.

00:03:18.000 But you, what I've been telling young men is that there's an actual reason why they need to grow up, which is that they have something to offer.

00:03:28.000 You know, that, that, that people have within them this capacity to set the world straight and that's necessary to manifest in the world.

00:03:37.000 And that also doing so is where you find the meaning that sustains you in life.

00:03:42.000 So what's gone wrong then?

00:03:44.000 Oh God, all sorts of things have gone wrong.

00:03:47.000 I think that, I don't think that young men are, hear words of encouragement.

00:03:53.000 Some, some of them never in their entire lives, as far as I can tell.

00:03:56.000 That's what they tell me.

00:03:57.000 And the fact that the words that I've been, that I've been speaking, the YouTube lectures that I've done and put online, for example,

00:04:03.000 have had such a dramatic impact is an indication that young men are starving for this sort of message.

00:04:09.000 Because like, why in the world would they have to derive it from a lecture on YouTube?

00:04:13.000 You know, they're not being taught that they, that it's important to develop yourself.

00:04:18.000 But does it, does it bother you that your audience is predominantly male?

00:04:23.000 Does that, isn't, isn't that a bit divisive?

00:04:26.000 No, I don't think so.

00:04:27.000 I mean, it's no more divisive than the fact that YouTube is primarily male and Tumblr is primarily female.

00:04:32.000 Well, that's pretty divisive, isn't it?

00:04:33.000 Tumblr is primarily female. 0.94

00:04:35.000 But you're just saying that's the way it is.

00:04:37.000 Well, it's, I'm not saying anything.

00:04:39.000 It's just an observation that that's the way it is.

00:04:42.000 There's plenty of women that are watching my lectures and coming to my talks and buying my books. 1.00

00:04:46.000 It's just that the majority of them happen to be men.

00:04:49.000 What's in it for the women, though? 1.00

00:04:52.000 Well, what sort of partner do you want?

00:04:54.000 You want an overgrown child? 0.95

00:04:56.000 Or do you want someone to contend with that's going to help you and that you can rely on?

00:05:00.000 So you're saying women have some sort of duty to sort of help fix the crisis of masculinity? 0.99

00:05:04.000 Well, it depends on what they want.

00:05:07.000 I mean, it's exactly how I laid it out.

00:05:10.000 Like, women want, deeply want men who are competent and powerful.

00:05:16.000 And I don't mean power in that they can exert tyrannical control over others.

00:05:25.000 That's not power.

00:05:26.000 That's just corruption.

00:05:27.000 Power is competence.

00:05:29.000 And why in the world would you not want a competent partner?

00:05:33.000 Well, I know why, actually.

00:05:35.000 You can't dominate a competent partner.

00:05:37.000 So if you want domination...

00:05:38.000 You're saying women want to dominate? 1.00

00:05:39.000 Is that what you're saying?

00:05:40.000 No, I'd say women who have had their relationships impaired with... impaired, their relationships

00:05:46.000 with men impaired and who are afraid of such relationships will settle for a weak partner

00:05:51.000 because they can dominate them.

00:05:53.000 But it's a suboptimal solution.

00:05:54.000 Do you think that's what a lot of women are doing? 1.00

00:05:56.000 I think there's a substantial minority of women who do that. 1.00

00:06:00.000 And I think it's very bad for them.

00:06:02.000 They're very unhappy.

00:06:03.000 It's very bad for their partners.

00:06:05.000 Although their partners get the advantage of not having to take any responsibility.

00:06:08.000 But what gives you the right to say that?

00:06:10.000 I mean, maybe that's how women want their relationships, those women. 1.00

00:06:13.000 I mean, you're making these vast generalizations.

00:06:15.000 I'm a clinical psychologist.

00:06:17.000 Right, so you're saying you've done your research and women are unhappy dominating men. 1.00

00:06:23.000 I didn't say they were unhappy dominating men.

00:06:25.000 I said it was a bad long-term solution. 0.66

00:06:27.000 Okay, you said it was making them miserable.

00:06:28.000 It's not the same thing.

00:06:29.000 Yes, it is.

00:06:30.000 And it depends on the timeframe.

00:06:31.000 I mean, there can be...

00:06:32.000 There's intense pleasure in momentary domination.

00:06:34.000 That's why people do it all the time.

00:06:36.000 But it's no formula for a long-term, successful long-term relationship.

00:06:40.000 That's reciprocal, right?

00:06:41.000 Any long-term relationship is reciprocal.

00:06:44.000 Virtually by definition.

00:06:46.000 So...

00:06:47.000 Let me put a quote to you from the book.

00:06:49.000 Sure.

00:06:50.000 Where you say,

00:06:51.000 There are whole disciplines in universities forthrightly hostile towards men. 0.54

00:06:54.000 These are the areas of study dominated by the postmodern stroke neo-Marxist claim that Western culture in particular is an oppressive structure created by white men to dominate and exclude women.

00:07:06.000 But then I want to put to you...

00:07:07.000 Minorities, too. 0.95

00:07:08.000 Dominate and exclude women. 1.00

00:07:09.000 Okay, sure.

00:07:10.000 But I want to put to you that here in the UK, for example, let's take that as an example.

00:07:13.000 The gender pay gap stands at just over 9%.

00:07:16.000 You've got women at the BBC recently saying that the broadcaster is illegally paying them less than men to do the same job.

00:07:24.000 You've got only seven women running the top FTSE 100 companies. 1.00

00:07:28.000 Yeah.

00:07:29.000 So it seems to a lot of women that they're still being dominated and excluded, to quote your words back to you. 1.00

00:07:35.000 It does seem that way, but multivariate analysis of the pay gap indicate that it doesn't exist.

00:07:40.000 But that's just not true, is it?

00:07:42.000 That's absolutely true.

00:07:43.000 I mean, that 9% pay gap, that's a gap between median hourly earnings between men and women.

00:07:47.000 Yeah.

00:07:48.000 That exists.

00:07:49.000 Yeah, but there's multiple reasons for that.

00:07:50.000 One of them is gender, but it's not the only reason.

00:07:52.000 Like, if you're a social scientist worth your salt, you never do a univariate analysis.

00:07:57.000 Like, you say, well, women in aggregate are paid less than men. 1.00

00:08:01.000 Okay, well, then we break it down by age.

00:08:03.000 We break it down by occupation.

00:08:05.000 We break it down by interest.

00:08:06.000 We break it down by personality.

00:08:08.000 But you're saying, basically, it doesn't matter if women aren't getting to the top, 1.00

00:08:11.000 because that's what's skewing that gender pay gap, isn't it? 1.00

00:08:14.000 You're saying, well, that's just a fact of life.

00:08:15.000 No, I'm not saying it doesn't matter.

00:08:16.000 Women aren't necessarily going to get to the top. 1.00

00:08:18.000 No, I'm not saying it doesn't matter, either.

00:08:20.000 You're saying it's a fact of life.

00:08:21.000 I'm saying there are multiple reasons for it, and that aren't being taken into account.

00:08:23.000 Yeah, but those reasons, why should women put up with those reasons? 1.00

00:08:26.000 Why should women be content not to get to the top? 1.00

00:08:28.000 I'm not saying that they should put up with it.

00:08:30.000 I'm saying that the claim that the wage gap between men and women is only due to sex is wrong.

00:08:37.000 And it is wrong.

00:08:38.000 There's no doubt about that.

00:08:39.000 The multivariate analysis have been done.

00:08:42.000 So I can give you an example.

00:08:43.000 You keep on talking about multivariate analysis.

00:08:44.000 Let me give you an example.

00:08:45.000 I'm saying that 9% pay gap exists.

00:08:48.000 Yeah.

00:08:49.000 That's a gap between men and women. 1.00

00:08:50.000 I'm not saying why it exists, but it exists.

00:08:53.000 Now, if you're a woman, that seems pretty unfair. 0.83

00:08:56.000 You have to say why it exists.

00:08:58.000 But do you agree that it's unfair?

00:09:00.000 If you're a woman-

00:09:01.000 Not necessarily.

00:09:02.000 And on average, you're getting paid 9% less than a man.

00:09:04.000 That's not fair, is it?

00:09:05.000 It depends on why it's happening.

00:09:07.000 I can give you an example.

00:09:09.000 Okay.

00:09:10.000 There's a personality trait known as agreeableness.

00:09:13.000 Agreeable people are compassionate and polite.

00:09:16.000 And agreeable people get paid less than less agreeable people for the same job.

00:09:22.000 Women are more agreeable than men.

00:09:24.000 Again, a vast generalization.

00:09:25.000 It's not a generalization.

00:09:26.000 Some women are not more agreeable than men.

00:09:27.000 Yes, that's true.

00:09:28.000 But that's right.

00:09:29.000 And some women get paid more than men. 1.00

00:09:31.000 So you were saying that, by and large, women are too agreeable to get the pay rises they deserve. 1.00

00:09:35.000 No, I'm saying that that's one component of a multivariate equation that predicts salary.

00:09:43.000 It accounts for maybe 5% of the variance, something like that.

00:09:46.000 So surely the answer-

00:09:47.000 So you need about another 18 factors, one of which is gender.

00:09:51.000 And there is prejudice.

00:09:52.000 There's no doubt about that.

00:09:53.000 But it accounts for a much smaller proportion of the variance in the pay gap than the radical 0.78

00:09:59.000 feminists claim. 1.00

00:10:00.000 Okay.

00:10:01.000 So rather than denying the pay gap exists, which is what you did at the beginning of this conversation,

00:10:05.000 shouldn't you say to women, rather than being agreeable and not asking for a pay rise,

00:10:08.000 go and ask for a pay rise. 0.99

00:10:10.000 Make yourself disagreeable with your boss.

00:10:11.000 Oh, definitely.

00:10:12.000 There's that.

00:10:13.000 But I also didn't deny it existed.

00:10:14.000 I denied it existed because of gender.

00:10:17.000 Okay.

00:10:18.000 Because I'm very, very, very careful with my words.

00:10:22.000 So the pay gap exists.

00:10:24.000 You accept that.

00:10:25.000 Yes.

00:10:26.000 But you're saying, I mean, the pay gap between men and women exists.

00:10:29.000 You're saying it's not because of gender.

00:10:30.000 It's because women are too agreeable to ask for pay rises. 1.00

00:10:32.000 It's one of the reasons.

00:10:33.000 Okay.

00:10:34.000 One of the reasons.

00:10:35.000 So why not get them to ask for a pay rise?

00:10:36.000 I've done that.

00:10:37.000 I've done that many, many times in my career.

00:10:39.000 And they just don't?

00:10:40.000 Oh, they do it all the time. 1.00

00:10:41.000 You can.

00:10:42.000 It's.

00:10:43.000 So one of the things that you do as a clinical psychologist is assertiveness training.

00:10:48.000 So you might say, often you treat people for anxiety.

00:10:53.000 You treat them for depression.

00:10:55.000 And you, and maybe the next most common category after that would be assertiveness training.

00:11:00.000 And so I've had many, many women, extraordinarily competent women in my clinical and consulting

00:11:06.000 practice.

00:11:07.000 And we put together strategies for their career development that involve continual pushing,

00:11:11.000 competing for higher wages and often tripled their wages within a five year period.

00:11:16.000 And you celebrate that?

00:11:17.000 Teaching them how to negotiate.

00:11:18.000 Of course.

00:11:19.000 So.

00:11:20.000 Of course.

00:11:21.000 Do you agree that you would be happy if that pay gap was eliminated completely?

00:11:25.000 It depends.

00:11:26.000 Because that's all the radical feminists are saying. 1.00

00:11:28.000 It would depend on how it was eradicated and how the, how, how the disappearance of

00:11:34.000 it was measured.

00:11:35.000 And you're saying if it's at the cost of men, that's a problem.

00:11:38.000 Oh, there's all sorts of things that it could be at the cost of.

00:11:40.000 It could even be at the cost of women's own interests. 1.00

00:11:43.000 So.

00:11:44.000 Because they might not be happy if they get equal pay. 0.86

00:11:46.000 No, because it might interfere with other things that are causing the pay gap that women 1.00

00:11:51.000 are choosing to do.

00:11:52.000 Like having children.

00:11:53.000 Well, or choosing careers that actually happen to be paid less, which women do a lot of. 1.00

00:11:57.000 But why shouldn't women have the right to choose not to have children or the right 1.00

00:12:01.000 to choose those demanding careers?

00:12:03.000 They do.

00:12:04.000 They can.

00:12:05.000 Yeah, that's fine.

00:12:06.000 You're saying that makes them unhappy by and large.

00:12:08.000 I'm saying that that, no, I'm not saying that.

00:12:11.000 I'm, I, and I actually haven't said that so far.

00:12:13.000 You're saying it makes them miserable.

00:12:14.000 No, I said that what was making them miserable was having part, was having weak partners.

00:12:19.000 That makes them miserable. 0.86

00:12:21.000 Right.

00:12:22.000 I would say that many women around the age of, I would say between 28 and 32 have a 0.99

00:12:28.000 career family crisis that they have to deal with.

00:12:31.000 And I think that's partly because of the foreshortened timeframe that women have to contend 1.00

00:12:35.000 with.

00:12:36.000 Like women have to get the major pieces of their life put together faster than men. 0.99

00:12:41.000 Which is also partly why men aren't under so much pressure to grow up.

00:12:44.000 So because for the typical woman, she has to have her career and family in order pretty 1.00

00:12:50.000 much by the time she's 35.

00:12:52.000 Because otherwise the options start to run out.

00:12:54.000 And so that puts a tremendous amount of stress on women, especially at the end of their 20s. 0.99

00:12:59.000 I think I take issue with the idea of the typical woman, because you know, all women are different. 1.00

00:13:03.000 And that's why I want to just put another quote to you from the book.

00:13:05.000 Well, they're different in some ways and the same in others.

00:13:08.000 Okay.

00:13:09.000 You say women become more vulnerable when they have children.

00:13:11.000 Oh yes. 0.96

00:13:12.000 And you talked to one of your YouTube interviews about crazy harpy sisters.

00:13:16.000 So, simple question.

00:13:20.000 Is gender equality a myth in your view?

00:13:22.000 Is that something that's just never going to happen?

00:13:24.000 It depends on what you mean by equality.

00:13:27.000 Being treated fairly, getting the same opportunities.

00:13:30.000 Fairly.

00:13:34.000 We could get to a point where people were treated fairly or more fairly.

00:13:38.000 I mean, people are treated pretty fairly in Western culture already.

00:13:41.000 But we can improve that.

00:13:42.000 They're really not though, are they?

00:13:43.000 I mean, otherwise, why would there only be seven women running FTSE 100 companies in the UK? 0.97

00:13:47.000 Why would there still be a pay gap, which we've discussed?

00:13:50.000 Oh, well that's easy.

00:13:51.000 Why are women at the BBC saying that they're getting paid illegally less than men to do the same job? 0.83

00:13:57.000 That's not fair, is it?

00:13:58.000 Well, let's go to the first question.

00:13:59.000 Those are complicated questions.

00:14:01.000 Seven women, repeat that one. 1.00

00:14:03.000 Seven women running the top FTSE 100 companies in the UK.

00:14:06.000 Well, the first question might be, why would you want to do that?

00:14:10.000 Why would a man want to do it? 1.00

00:14:13.000 I mean, there's a lot of money, it's an interesting job.

00:14:16.000 There's a certain number of men, although not that many, who are perfectly willing to sacrifice virtually all of their life to the pursuit of a high-end career.

00:14:26.000 So they'll work, these are men that are very intelligent, they're usually very, very conscientious, they're very driven, they're very high energy, they're very healthy, and they're willing to work 70 or 80 hours a week, non-stop, specialized, at one thing, to get to the top.

00:14:41.000 So you're saying women are just more sensible, they don't want that because it's not an isolate?

00:14:44.000 I'm saying that's part of it, definitely.

00:14:46.000 And so I work for...

00:14:47.000 So you don't think there are barriers in their way that prevent them getting to the top of those companies?

00:14:51.000 Oh, there are some barriers, yeah.

00:14:52.000 Like other, like men, for example.

00:14:54.000 I mean, to get to the top of any organization is an incredibly competitive enterprise, and the men that you're competing with are simply not going to roll over and say, please take the position.

00:15:04.000 So let me come back to my question.

00:15:05.000 It's absolute all-out warfare.

00:15:06.000 So let me come back to my question.

00:15:07.000 Is gender equality a myth? 0.95

00:15:09.000 I don't know what you mean by the question.

00:15:11.000 Men and women aren't the same, and they won't be the same.

00:15:14.000 That doesn't mean they can't be treated fairly.

00:15:16.000 Is gender equality desirable? 0.52

00:15:18.000 If it means equality of outcome, then almost certainly it's undesirable.

00:15:22.000 That's already been demonstrated in Scandinavia, because in Scandinavia...

00:15:25.000 What do you mean by that, equality of outcome is undesirable?

00:15:28.000 Well, men and women won't sort themselves into the same categories if you leave them alone to do it of their own accord.

00:15:33.000 I've already seen that in Scandinavia.

00:15:35.000 It's 20 to 1 female nurses to male, something like that.

00:15:39.000 It might not be quite that extreme.

00:15:40.000 And approximately the same male engineers to female engineers. 0.61

00:15:44.000 And that's a consequence of the free choice of men and women in the societies that have gone farther than any other societies to make gender equality the purpose of the law.

00:15:54.000 Those are ineradicable differences.

00:15:56.000 You can eradicate them with tremendous social pressure and tyranny, but if you leave men and women to make their own choices, 0.98

00:16:02.000 you will not get equal outcomes.

00:16:03.000 Right, so you're saying that anyone who believes in equality, whether you call them feminists, 0.93

00:16:07.000 call them whatever you want to call them, should basically give up because it ain't going to happen.

00:16:11.000 Only if they're aiming at equality of outcome.

00:16:15.000 So you're saying give people equality of opportunity, that's fine.

00:16:19.000 It's not only fine, it's eminently desirable for everyone, for individuals and for society.

00:16:24.000 But still women aren't going to make it, that's what you're really saying. 1.00

00:16:27.000 It depends on your measurement techniques.

00:16:28.000 They're doing just fine in medicine.

00:16:30.000 In fact, there are far more female physicians than there are male physicians. 0.64

00:16:34.000 There are lots of disciplines that are absolutely dominated by women. 0.97

00:16:38.000 Many, many disciplines.

00:16:40.000 And they're doing great.

00:16:41.000 Let me put something else to you from the book.

00:16:43.000 You say the introduction of the equal pay for equal work argument immediately complicates even salary comparison beyond practicality for one simple reason.

00:16:52.000 Who decides what work is equal?

00:16:54.000 It's not possible.

00:16:55.000 So the simple question is, do you believe in equal pay?

00:16:58.000 Well, I made the argument there.

00:17:02.000 It depends on who defines it.

00:17:03.000 So you don't believe in equal pay?

00:17:04.000 No, I'm not saying that at all.

00:17:07.000 Because a lot of people listening to you will just say, I mean, are we going back to the dark?

00:17:11.000 That's because you're actually not listening.

00:17:13.000 I'm listening very carefully.

00:17:14.000 They're just projecting what they think.

00:17:15.000 And I'm hearing you basically saying women need to just accept.

00:17:19.000 They're never going to make it on equal terms.

00:17:21.000 Equal outcomes is how you defined it.

00:17:23.000 No, I didn't say that.

00:17:24.000 If I was a young woman watching that, I would go, well, I might as well just go and play with my Cindy dolls.

00:17:29.000 I didn't say that.

00:17:30.000 And give up trying at school because I'm not going to get the top job I want.

00:17:33.000 Because there's someone sitting there saying it's not possible and it's not desirable and it's going to make you miserable.

00:17:37.000 I said that equal outcomes are desirable.

00:17:38.000 That's what I said.

00:17:39.000 It's a bad social goal.

00:17:40.000 It's not desirable.

00:17:41.000 I didn't say that women shouldn't be striving for the top or anything like that because I don't believe that for a second.

00:17:46.000 Striving for the top, but you're going to put all those hurdles in their way as has been in their way for centuries.

00:17:51.000 And that's fine.

00:17:52.000 You're saying that's fine.

00:17:53.000 No, no.

00:17:54.000 The patriarchal system is just fine. 0.92

00:17:56.000 I really think that's silly. 0.73

00:17:57.000 I do. 0.90

00:17:58.000 I think that's silly.

00:17:59.000 I really do.

00:18:00.000 I mean, look at your situation.

00:18:01.000 You're hardly unsuccessful.

00:18:02.000 Yeah, and I battled quite hard to get where I got to.

00:18:04.000 Exactly.

00:18:05.000 Good for you.

00:18:06.000 So that's okay.

00:18:07.000 Battling is good. 0.54

00:18:08.000 This is all about the fight.

00:18:09.000 It's inevitable.

00:18:10.000 But you talk about men fighting.

00:18:11.000 Let me just put another thing to you from the book.

00:18:12.000 Why wouldn't you have to battle for a high-quality position?

00:18:15.000 Well, I notice in your book you talk about real conversations between men containing, quote, an underlying threat of physicality.

00:18:22.000 Oh, there's no doubt about that.

00:18:24.000 What about real conversations between women? 0.92

00:18:26.000 Is that something or are we sort of too amenable and reasonable?

00:18:29.000 No, it's just that the domain of physical conflict is sort of off limits for you.

00:18:34.000 And it's rather unfortunate.

00:18:35.000 Well, you just said that I fought to get where I've got.

00:18:37.000 Yeah, but...

00:18:38.000 What does that make me?

00:18:39.000 A proxy man or something? 0.58

00:18:40.000 I don't imagine that you...

00:18:41.000 Yeah, to some degree.

00:18:42.000 I suspect you're not very agreeable.

00:18:43.000 So that's the thing.

00:18:44.000 Successful women, I'm not very agreeable. 1.00

00:18:46.000 Right.

00:18:47.000 I've noticed that actually in this conversation.

00:18:49.000 And I'm sure it's served your career well.

00:18:51.000 Successful women, though, basically have to wear the trousers, in your view. 1.00

00:18:55.000 They have to sort of become men to succeed, is what you're saying.

00:18:58.000 Well, if they're going to...

00:18:59.000 I've had to fight to succeed, therefore I'm an honorary man.

00:19:01.000 If they're going to compete against men, certainly, masculine traits are going to be helpful. 0.99

00:19:04.000 I mean, one of the things I do in my counseling practice, for example, when I'm consulting with women who are trying to advance their careers,

00:19:12.000 is to teach them how to negotiate, and to be able to say no, and to not be easily pushed around, and to be formidable.

00:19:18.000 And you need to...

00:19:19.000 If you're going to be successful, you need to be smart, conscientious, and tough.

00:19:23.000 Well, here's a radical idea.

00:19:24.000 Why don't the bosses adopt some...

00:19:26.000 The male bosses, shall we say, adopt some female traits, so that women don't have to fight and get their sharp elbows out for the pay rises? 1.00

00:19:33.000 It's just accepted if they're doing the same job, they get the same pay.

00:19:37.000 Well, I would say partly because it's not so easy to determine what constitutes the same job.

00:19:42.000 But that's because, arguably, there are still men dominating our industries, our society,

00:19:49.000 and therefore they've dictated the terms for so long that women have to battle to be like the men.

00:19:55.000 No, it's not true. It's not true.

00:19:57.000 So, for example...

00:19:58.000 Where's the evidence?

00:19:59.000 Well, I can give you an example very quickly.

00:20:01.000 So, I worked with women who worked in high-powered law firms in Canada for about 15 years, 0.99

00:20:06.000 and they were as competent and put together as anybody you would ever meet,

00:20:11.000 and we were trying to figure out how to further their careers.

00:20:14.000 And there was a huge debate in Canadian society at that point

00:20:18.000 that was basically ran along the same lines as your argument,

00:20:21.000 is that if the law firms didn't use these masculine criteria, 1.00

00:20:25.000 then perhaps women would do better. 1.00

00:20:27.000 But the market sets the damn game. 1.00

00:20:29.000 It's like... And the market is dominated by men. 0.99

00:20:31.000 No, it's not. It's not. The market is dominated by women. 1.00

00:20:34.000 They make 80% of the consumer decisions.

00:20:36.000 That's not the case at all.

00:20:37.000 What? 80%?

00:20:38.000 If you're talking about people who stay at home looking after children,

00:20:41.000 by and large, they are still women. 0.93

00:20:43.000 So, they're going out doing the shopping.

00:20:45.000 But that is changing.

00:20:46.000 They make all the consumer decisions.

00:20:47.000 Anyway, what I want to ask you...

00:20:48.000 The market is driven by women, not men.

00:20:50.000 Right.

00:20:51.000 Okay, and if you're a lawyer in Canada...

00:20:52.000 And they still pay more for the same sort of goods.

00:20:54.000 That's been proven.

00:20:55.000 That men for the...

00:20:56.000 You buy a blue bicycle helmet, it's going to cost less than a pink one.

00:20:59.000 Anyway, we'll come on to that.

00:21:01.000 Right, because men are less agreeable.

00:21:04.000 Right, so they won't put up with it.

00:21:06.000 I want to ask you.

00:21:07.000 Is it not desirable to have some of those female traits you're talking about? 0.98

00:21:11.000 I'd say that's a generalization, but you've used the words female traits. 1.00

00:21:14.000 Is it not desirable to have some of them at the top of business?

00:21:17.000 I mean, maybe there wouldn't have been a banking crisis.

00:21:20.000 They don't predict success in the workplace.

00:21:22.000 The things that predict success in the workplace are intelligence and conscientiousness.

00:21:25.000 Agreeableness negatively predicts success in the workplace.

00:21:28.000 And so does high negative emotion.

00:21:29.000 So you're saying that women aren't intelligent enough to run these top companies? 1.00

00:21:32.000 No, I didn't say that at all.

00:21:34.000 You said that female traits don't predict success. 1.00

00:21:37.000 But I didn't say that intelligence wasn't...

00:21:39.000 Intelligence and conscientiousness do.

00:21:40.000 I didn't say that intelligence and conscientiousness weren't female traits. 1.00

00:21:43.000 Well, you were saying that intelligence and conscientiousness, by implication, are not female traits.

00:21:46.000 Oh, no, I'm not saying that.

00:21:47.000 I mean, that's very dangerous territory.

00:21:48.000 I'm not saying that at all.

00:21:49.000 Are women less intelligent than men, by and large? 1.00

00:21:51.000 No.

00:21:52.000 No, they're not.

00:21:53.000 No, the data on that's pretty clear.

00:21:55.000 The average IQ for a woman and the average IQ for a man is identical.

00:21:59.000 There is some debate about the flatness of the distribution,

00:22:02.000 which is something that James Damore pointed out, for example, in his memo.

00:22:05.000 But there's no difference at all in general cognitive ability.

00:22:08.000 There's no difference to speak of in conscientiousness.

00:22:10.000 Women are a bit more orderly than men. 1.00

00:22:12.000 And men are a little bit more industrious than women. 0.98

00:22:15.000 The difference isn't big.

00:22:16.000 But that averages into conscientiousness.

00:22:18.000 Women who aren't necessarily as industrious. 1.00

00:22:19.000 Well, of course.

00:22:20.000 These are...

00:22:21.000 Female traits, though, why are they not... 1.00

00:22:23.000 Feminine traits, let's say. 1.00

00:22:24.000 Why are they not desirable at the top of...

00:22:26.000 Feminine traits, why are they not desirable at the top of this? 1.00

00:22:28.000 It's hard to say.

00:22:29.000 I'm just laying out the empirical evidence.

00:22:31.000 We know the traits that predict success.

00:22:33.000 But we also know, because companies, by and large, have not been dominated by women

00:22:37.000 over the centuries, we have nothing to compare it to.

00:22:40.000 It's an experiment.

00:22:41.000 It's an experiment.

00:22:42.000 True.

00:22:43.000 And it could be the case that if companies modified their behaviour and became more feminine, 1.00

00:22:46.000 that they would be successful.

00:22:47.000 You seem doubtful about that.

00:22:48.000 But there's no evidence for it.

00:22:49.000 I'm neither doubtful nor non-doubtful.

00:22:51.000 There's no evidence for it.

00:22:52.000 So why not give it a go, as the radical feminist would say? 1.00

00:22:54.000 Because the evidence suggests...

00:22:55.000 Right.

00:22:56.000 Well, it's fine.

00:22:57.000 Like, if someone wants to start a company and make it more feminine and compassionate,

00:23:01.000 let's say, and caring in its overall orientation towards its workers and towards the marketplace,

00:23:06.000 then that's a perfectly reasonable experiment to run.

00:23:09.000 My point is that there is no evidence that those traits predict success in the workplace.

00:23:14.000 And there's...

00:23:15.000 Because it's never been tried.

00:23:16.000 Well, that's not really the case.

00:23:18.000 Women have been in the workplace for, what, at least ever since I've been around, 1.00

00:23:22.000 the representation of women in the workplace has been about 50%. 0.90

00:23:25.000 So we've run the experiment for a fairly reasonable period of time,

00:23:28.000 but not, you know, certainly not for centuries.

00:23:31.000 Let me move on to another debate that's been very controversial for you.

00:23:34.000 And this is...

00:23:36.000 You got in trouble for refusing to call trans men and women by their preferred personal pronouns.

00:23:41.000 No, that's not actually true.

00:23:43.000 I got in trouble because I said I would not follow the compelled speech dictates

00:23:48.000 of the federal and provincial government.

00:23:50.000 I actually never got in trouble for not calling anyone anything.

00:23:53.000 Right.

00:23:54.000 That didn't happen.

00:23:55.000 You wouldn't follow the change of law which was designed to...

00:23:57.000 Not once it was law.

00:23:58.000 ...outlaw discrimination.

00:23:59.000 No, no.

00:24:00.000 Why should your...

00:24:01.000 Well, that's what they said it was designed to do.

00:24:02.000 OK.

00:24:03.000 You cited freedom of speech in that.

00:24:04.000 Why should your right to freedom of speech trump a trans person's right not to be offended? 1.00

00:24:13.000 Because in order to be able to think, you have to risk being offensive.

00:24:18.000 I mean, look at the conversation we're having right now.

00:24:20.000 You know, like you're certainly willing to risk offending me in the pursuit of truth.

00:24:24.000 Why should you have the right to do that?

00:24:26.000 It's been rather uncomfortable.

00:24:28.000 Well, I'm very glad I put you on the spot.

00:24:31.000 I'm very glad that I have exercised my freedom of speech.

00:24:33.000 But you get my point.

00:24:34.000 You get my point.

00:24:35.000 It's like you're doing what you should do, which is digging a bit to see what the hell

00:24:38.000 is going on.

00:24:39.000 And that is what you should do.

00:24:40.000 But you're exercising your freedom of speech to certainly risk offending me.

00:24:44.000 And that's fine.

00:24:45.000 I think more power to you as far as I'm concerned.

00:24:48.000 So you haven't sat there and...

00:24:51.000 I'm just trying to work that out.

00:24:54.000 I mean...

00:24:56.000 Ha! 0.89

00:24:57.000 Gotcha.

00:24:58.000 You have got me.

00:24:59.000 You have got me.

00:25:00.000 I'm trying to work that through my head.

00:25:01.000 It's about time.

00:25:02.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:25:03.000 It took a while.

00:25:04.000 It took a while.

00:25:05.000 It did.

00:25:06.000 It did, yeah.

00:25:07.000 It took a while.

00:25:08.000 You have voluntarily come into the studio and agreed to be questioned.

00:25:09.000 Mm-hmm.

00:25:10.000 A trans person in your class has come to your class and said they want to be called...

00:25:13.000 That's never happened.

00:25:14.000 And I would call them she.

00:25:16.000 So you would.

00:25:17.000 So you've kind of changed your tune on that.

00:25:18.000 No.

00:25:19.000 No, I said that right from the beginning.

00:25:20.000 What I said at the beginning was that I was not going to cede the linguistic territory

00:25:26.000 to radical leftists, regardless of whether or not it was put in law.

00:25:30.000 That's what I said.

00:25:31.000 And then the people who came after me said,

00:25:33.000 well, you must be transphobic and you'd mistreat a student in your class.

00:25:36.000 It's like, I never mistreated a student in my class.

00:25:38.000 I'm not transphobic.

00:25:39.000 And that isn't what I said.

00:25:41.000 Well, except you've also called trans campaigners authoritarian.

00:25:43.000 I mean, isn't that grossly...

00:25:45.000 Well, only in the broader context of my claims that radical leftist ideologues are authoritarian,

00:25:50.000 which they are.

00:25:51.000 Yes, but you're saying someone who's trying to work out their gender identity,

00:25:54.000 who may well have struggled with that, had quite a tough time over the years.

00:25:56.000 No doubt they've struggled with it, yeah.

00:25:58.000 You're comparing them with, you know, Chairman Mao.

00:26:01.000 No, just the activists.

00:26:02.000 Saw the deaths of millions of people.

00:26:04.000 Well, even if the activists, you know, they're trans people too.

00:26:07.000 They have a right to say these things.

00:26:08.000 Yeah, but they don't have a right to speak for their whole community.

00:26:11.000 Isn't it grossly insensitive to compare them to Chairman Mao or, you know, Pinochet, Augusto Pinochet.

00:26:16.000 I mean, you know, this is grossly insensitive.

00:26:18.000 I didn't compare them to Pinochet.

00:26:19.000 Well...

00:26:20.000 I did compare them to Mao.

00:26:21.000 He was an authoritarian.

00:26:22.000 He's a right-winger though.

00:26:23.000 I was comparing them to the left-wing totalitarians.

00:26:25.000 Okay.

00:26:26.000 And I do believe they are left-wing totalitarians.

00:26:28.000 Mao, under Mao, millions of people died.

00:26:30.000 Right.

00:26:31.000 I mean, there's no comparison between Mao and a trans activist, is there?

00:26:36.000 Why not?

00:26:37.000 Because trans activists aren't killing millions of people?

00:26:40.000 The philosophy that's guiding their utterances is the same philosophy.

00:26:46.000 The consequences are...

00:26:48.000 Not yet.

00:26:49.000 You're saying that trans activists...

00:26:51.000 No.

00:26:52.000 ...could lead to the deaths of millions of people.

00:26:54.000 No, I'm saying that the philosophy that drives their utterances is the same philosophy

00:26:58.000 that already has driven us to the deaths of millions of people.

00:27:01.000 Okay, tell us how that philosophy is in any way comparable.

00:27:05.000 Sure, that's no problem.

00:27:07.000 The first thing is that the philosophy presumes that group identity is paramount.

00:27:12.000 That's the fundamental philosophy that drove the Soviet Union and Maoist China.

00:27:16.000 And it's the fundamental philosophy of the left-wing activists.

00:27:19.000 It's identity politics.

00:27:20.000 It doesn't matter who you are as an individual.

00:27:22.000 It matters who you are in terms of your group identity.

00:27:25.000 That's murderous...

00:27:26.000 You're just saying things, though, to provoke, aren't you?

00:27:27.000 Not a bit.

00:27:28.000 I mean, you are a provocateur.

00:27:29.000 I never say anything.

00:27:30.000 You're like the alt-right that you hate to be compared to.

00:27:32.000 You want to stir things up.

00:27:33.000 I'm only a provocateur insofar as when I say what I believe to be true, it's provocative.

00:27:39.000 I don't provoke.

00:27:40.000 Maybe for humour.

00:27:41.000 You don't set out to provoke.

00:27:42.000 Now and then.

00:27:43.000 I'm not interested in provoking.

00:27:44.000 But what about the thing about, you know, fighting and the lobster?

00:27:48.000 Tell us about the lobster.

00:27:50.000 Well, that's quite a segue.

00:27:52.000 Well, the first chapter I have in my book is called Stand Up Straight With Your Shoulders Back.

00:27:58.000 And it's an injunction to be combative.

00:28:01.000 Not least to further your career, let's say.

00:28:05.000 But also to adopt a stance of ready engagement with the world and to reflect that in your posture.

00:28:12.000 And the reason that I write about lobsters is because there's this idea that hierarchical structures are a sociological construct of the Western patriarchy.

00:28:24.000 And that is so untrue that it's almost unbelievable.

00:28:27.000 And I use the lobster as an example because the lobster, we divulged from lobsters in evolutionary history about 350 million years ago, common ancestor.

00:28:37.000 And lobsters exist in hierarchies and they have a nervous system attuned to the hierarchy.

00:28:42.000 And that nervous system runs on serotonin, just like our nervous systems do.

00:28:46.000 And the nervous system of the lobster and of the human being is so similar that antidepressants work on lobsters.

00:28:52.000 And it's part of my attempt to demonstrate that the idea of hierarchy has absolutely nothing to do with sociocultural construction, which it doesn't.

00:29:00.000 Let me just get this straight.

00:29:01.000 You're saying that we should organise our societies along the lines of the lobsters.

00:29:06.000 I'm saying that it's inevitable that there will be continuity in the way that animals and human beings organise their structures.

00:29:13.000 It's absolutely inevitable.

00:29:15.000 And there is one third of a billion years of evolutionary history behind that, right?

00:29:21.000 That's so long that a third of a billion years ago, there weren't even trees.

00:29:25.000 It's a long time.

00:29:27.000 You have a mechanism in your brain that runs on serotonin that's similar to the lobster mechanism that tracks your status.

00:29:33.000 And the higher your status, the better your emotions are regulated.

00:29:37.000 So as your serotonin levels increase, you feel more positive emotion and less negative emotion.

00:29:42.000 So you're saying like the lobsters, we're hardwired as men and women to do certain things, to sort of run along tram lines and there's nothing we can do about it.

00:29:50.000 No, I'm not saying there's nothing we can do about it, because it's like in a chess game, right?

00:29:55.000 There's lots of things that you can do, although you can't break the rules of the chess game and continue to play chess.

00:30:00.000 Biological, your biological nature is somewhat like that, is it sets the rules of the game.

00:30:06.000 But within those rules, you have a lot of leeway.

00:30:09.000 But the idea that, but one thing we can't do is say that hierarchical organization is a consequence of the capitalist patriarchy.

00:30:18.000 It's like that's patently absurd.

00:30:20.000 It's wrong.

00:30:21.000 It's not a matter of opinion.

00:30:23.000 It's seriously wrong.

00:30:25.000 Aren't you just whipping people up into a state of anger?

00:30:28.000 Not at all.

00:30:29.000 Divisions between men and women, you're stirring people up.

00:30:32.000 You know, any critics of you online get absolutely lambasted by your followers.

00:30:38.000 And by me, generally.

00:30:39.000 You've got to call them off, haven't you?

00:30:41.000 Sorry, your critics get lambasted by you.

00:30:43.000 I mean, isn't that irresponsible?

00:30:44.000 If they're academics.

00:30:45.000 Not at all.

00:30:46.000 If an academic is going to come after me and tell me that I'm not qualified and that I'm not, I don't know what I'm talking about,

00:30:51.000 I can seriously not say.

00:30:52.000 So you're not going to say to your followers now, quit the abuse, quit the anger.

00:30:56.000 Well, we'd need some substantial examples of the abuse and the anger before I could detail that question.

00:31:01.000 There's a lot of it out there.

00:31:03.000 Well, let's take a more general perspective on that.

00:31:06.000 So I've had 25,000 letters since June, something like that, from people who told me that I've brought them back from the brink of destruction.

00:31:15.000 And so I'm perfectly willing to put that up against the rather vague accusations that my followers are making the lives of people that I've targeted miserable.

00:31:24.000 Jordan Peterson, thank you.

00:31:26.000 My pleasure.

00:31:27.000 Nice talking with you.

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00:34:20.000 Next up, we have the analysis of the interview between Dr. Peterson and Timon Diaz of Geinsteel.

00:34:27.000 Thanks for listening.

00:34:32.000 Mr. Jordan Peterson, thank you so much for joining us today.

00:34:36.000 Good to see you. Thanks for the invite.

00:34:37.000 No problem, man. No problem. Pleasure's all ours.

00:34:40.000 Our main theme today will be to discuss your philosophy on how to be in the world properly as an individual.

00:34:47.000 I've watched your lectures on personality transformations, maps of meaning, and the biblical series.

00:34:53.000 And I think I've distilled your philosophy down to what I think are your five strongest points.

00:34:58.000 Later on, I will present those points and I will unpack them and comment on them.

00:35:03.000 But first, the talk of the day, man. Your interview with Channel 4, Kathy Newman.

00:35:10.000 I was watching this and it was like a self-propelled train wreck for half an hour.

00:35:17.000 It just kept on going. It was quite fun. The memes that came out of it were really good.

00:35:21.000 But I think yesterday or today, it took kind of a more joyless turn.

00:35:27.000 But first, I want to ask you. We'll talk about the aftermath after.

00:35:30.000 But first, how did you experience that interview? What happened there? What was going on there?

00:35:36.000 Well, there were lots of things going on, which is why people are watching it.

00:35:40.000 I mean, there are lots of things going on at many levels of analysis all the time.

00:35:46.000 And it's hard to determine which level of analysis you should focus on,

00:35:50.000 especially when something complicated is happening.

00:35:53.000 The way I experienced it was that I went into the Channel 4 studio and I sat,

00:35:59.000 well, first in the green room where everything was quite friendly.

00:36:02.000 Kathy was being made up in there and so we had a pleasant interchange, I would say.

00:36:07.000 And then I was brought into a room where the interview took place with the cameras.

00:36:13.000 And we spoke for two or three minutes before the cameras rolled.

00:36:17.000 And she was pleasant and engaging, distracted a bit, but it's exactly what you'd expect, right?

00:36:24.000 She's got her mind on many things.

00:36:26.000 But then the cameras went on and she just was a completely different person instantly.

00:36:31.000 And so that was interesting. You know, it was interesting to me that she had both of those,

00:36:36.000 both of those approaches so instantaneously at her disposal, you know.

00:36:40.000 And so, of course, the first thing that entered my mind was,

00:36:45.000 well, I, you know, my eyebrows went up and I thought,

00:36:49.000 okay, which of these two people is the real person, right?

00:36:53.000 And then she, she, well, you could say she played devil's advocate. 1.00

00:37:00.000 I suppose that's one way of thinking about it.

00:37:02.000 She laid out a set of ideological presuppositions.

00:37:06.000 Two sets, actually. Her set and my set.

00:37:11.000 And the set of ideological presuppositions that she laid out for my side of the argument

00:37:17.000 bore very little resemblance to anything that I think or say.

00:37:21.000 Yeah.

00:37:22.000 And so she would ask me a question, which wasn't really a question.

00:37:25.000 It was a barb with bait on the end of it.

00:37:28.000 Yeah.

00:37:29.000 And I would respond and then she would tell me.

00:37:32.000 So you're saying.

00:37:33.000 Yeah. She would, she would say what I said, except then what she would say

00:37:36.000 had nothing to do with what I'd say.

00:37:38.000 She was actually, she was, she was fabricating on the fly.

00:37:42.000 The person that she hoped the villain that I, that she hoped I would be.

00:37:47.000 And then insisting that that was me and that denying it was a lie.

00:37:54.000 Essentially that's what the interview was.

00:37:56.000 So it's deeply insincere because she was not, she was playing an ideological persona

00:38:01.000 and she wanted you to play one as well.

00:38:03.000 Well, she wanted to me to be the proper foil for that, you know,

00:38:06.000 and, and was, was insistent is the right word that I abide by that particular decision.

00:38:15.000 Yeah.

00:38:16.000 And, but there was more to, to the interview than that, because it was, I mean,

00:38:23.000 I've had a lot of experience listening to people, tens of thousands of hours of experience listening to people

00:38:30.000 because I'm a clinical psychologist and I've had an extensive practice

00:38:33.000 and I've dealt with every sort of person you could possibly imagine

00:38:37.000 and a very large number of people that you couldn't imagine no matter how long you tried.

00:38:42.000 So I was watching her after the first minute like a clinician instead of like an interviewer.

00:38:48.000 And I was really paying attention to what she was doing.

00:38:51.000 And I truly don't believe that anything she said in that entire interview was true on its own.

00:39:01.000 It was all, I actually have a chapter about this in my book called Assume that the person you're listening to knows something you don't,

00:39:08.000 which is a taxonomy of conversational types and a discussion about how to engage in a conversation

00:39:18.000 if what you're trying to do is further your knowledge of the truth.

00:39:22.000 If both of you are trying to further your knowledge of the truth, which is a proper conversation,

00:39:26.000 it's the highest form of conversation, not the only form.

00:39:28.000 You could amuse each other too, that's a perfectly good form.

00:39:31.000 Or you can have a friendly spar or you can play a primate dominance hierarchy game, which is very, very common,

00:39:37.000 which is mostly what was happening in that interview.

00:39:40.000 But she was using her words as tools to attain a particular kind of end. 0.82

00:39:48.000 And I couldn't exactly figure out what the end was.

00:39:51.000 Some of it would be to dominate the interviewee, especially if that's a person.

00:39:57.000 Then that would be contaminated with ideological correctness.

00:40:00.000 You want to dominate your interviewee if you believe that they're wrong from an ideological perspective.

00:40:06.000 And you want to do that, number one, to attain victory, and number two, to buttress your ideological points.

00:40:12.000 So there was that.

00:40:14.000 Then there was some devil's advocate, I suppose, and maybe that's more forgivable,

00:40:18.000 because you could say that she has a responsibility to do that as a journalist, which I don't believe, by the way.

00:40:24.000 Asking difficult questions and playing the devil's advocate are not the same thing,

00:40:29.000 even though sometimes playing the devil's advocate is necessary.

00:40:32.000 And then I think there was an underlay of career grandstanding.

00:40:36.000 I don't know that much about her, and I don't know how she's made her reputation. 1.00

00:40:40.000 But she was obviously, she is obviously a combative person. 0.51

00:40:44.000 And my suspicions are that she's made a success of putting people,

00:40:50.000 maybe she's made a success of herself in other ways, but she's made a success of herself,

00:40:54.000 at least in part, by putting people uncomfortably on the spot.

00:40:58.000 And so all those things were going on at the same time.

00:41:02.000 And then, of course, underneath that is the fact that there was an ideological battle being played out,

00:41:07.000 I would say a threefold ideological battle.

00:41:09.000 There was a battle between her position, which was radically neo-Marxist, postmodernist, I would say.

00:41:16.000 She was arguing against who she thought I was, and so that was the battle.

00:41:21.000 And then there was the position I was trying to put forward,

00:41:23.000 which had virtually nothing to do with what she was discussing.

00:41:27.000 She was fighting your strawman. 1.00

00:41:29.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:41:30.000 Yeah, well, and it was like I was able to remain reasonably detached during the interview,

00:41:36.000 because I realized almost immediately that whoever she was talking to bore very little resemblance to me.

00:41:42.000 And so, I mean, she was quite sophisticated in some sense in what she did, 0.74

00:41:47.000 because she did manage to sort of...

00:41:51.000 Her claims became so preposterous and so self-contradictory

00:41:55.000 that it was difficult to remain completely detached.

00:41:58.000 And I think, and this was the crux of the interview,

00:42:01.000 and I think the part that's attracted the most attention.

00:42:04.000 She had asked me at one point, in a provocatively self-righteous manner,

00:42:11.000 just what gave me the right to assume that my privilege of free speech, let's put it that way,

00:42:19.000 gave me the right to potentially offend someone and hurt their feelings.

00:42:26.000 And I thought about six things at the same time.

00:42:29.000 But the first thing I thought was,

00:42:34.000 you're a journalist.

00:42:37.000 That's the last question in the world you should ever ask someone,

00:42:41.000 if you have any genuine integrity as a journalist.

00:42:45.000 Because that's all you have as a journalist.

00:42:48.000 You have the right to offend people and hurt their feelings.

00:42:51.000 And so, I called her out on that.

00:42:54.000 And I said, look, you know, all you've done in the last 20 minutes

00:42:58.000 is everything you possibly could to make me as uncomfortable as you possibly can.

00:43:04.000 And I said it in a way that I would say was designed to let her know that I knew exactly what she was doing.

00:43:13.000 And then I suggested that that was actually okay, because she had every right to do that. 0.85

00:43:20.000 But that she couldn't have it both ways.

00:43:23.000 She couldn't make her living and her reputation using those tactics, let's say. 1.00

00:43:30.000 And for her, those weren't tactics of seeking the truth.

00:43:33.000 They were almost purely tactics of domination, right?

00:43:36.000 And one-upmanship.

00:43:38.000 And maybe, you know, if you live in the postmodernist world, you don't believe in truth anyways.

00:43:43.000 There's just victory in power games.

00:43:45.000 And so, perhaps that's what she was pursuing.

00:43:47.000 I don't know exactly what she was pursuing.

00:43:49.000 But it was so palpably obvious to the two of us at that point,

00:43:53.000 that she had in fact done nothing except try to make me uncomfortable.

00:43:57.000 That calling her on it left her speechless.

00:44:02.000 And then that was the only time, I would say, when I actually spoke to the genuine human being,

00:44:07.000 instead of the ideological front.

00:44:10.000 So the ideological front, it fell off briefly, and then you said, I got you.

00:44:13.000 Well, I would say technically, and this might be interesting for people who are interested in Jungian psychology,

00:44:19.000 if you want to understand what Carl Jung meant by animus possession,

00:44:23.000 which is a very difficult concept, then that interview was a textbook case of having a discussion with someone

00:44:31.000 who is animus possessed.

00:44:33.000 And I can't explain what that means, because it's very complicated.

00:44:36.000 But if you go and read Jung, and you read about animus possession, and you need a demonstration of it,

00:44:42.000 so that you get a sense of what it means, then that interview is exactly indicative of that.

00:44:51.000 And I would say, as advice to people, maybe it's more like education.

00:44:56.000 See, with anyone who is animus possessed, their goal is to engage you in the argument.

00:45:04.000 If you engage in the argument on the terms they've defined, you lose.

00:45:08.000 It doesn't matter whether you win or lose.

00:45:10.000 You lose as soon as you engage in the argument.

00:45:12.000 And so what I did in the interview was just not engage in the argument.

00:45:15.000 So I wouldn't say I did that with 100% perfection.

00:45:19.000 One of my friends, a very smart guy, there was the scene where she was taken aback.

00:45:27.000 I said, ha, gotcha.

00:45:30.000 And my friend said, you know, maybe you could have played that differently there.

00:45:34.000 Maybe you could have said, alright, so, you know, obviously you just thought about what I said.

00:45:41.000 You know, and maybe we could actually have a real conversation about that.

00:45:46.000 But, you know, she had... 0.71

00:45:49.000 I had become somewhat angry, a little bit, at that point.

00:45:55.000 Because she had violated the rules that make journalism possible by suggesting that I didn't have the right to make people uncomfortable with my speech. 0.99

00:46:06.000 Like, she had broken a rule that she shouldn't have broken, in my estimation.

00:46:11.000 And that made me angry.

00:46:13.000 And so I said something that was designed to be witty, hopefully it was witty.

00:46:18.000 And I thought that was a reasonable approach, and maybe it was.

00:46:23.000 But it might have been better to have played it straight and said, look, okay, now we can get somewhere, you know.

00:46:32.000 Because we're actually talking now.

00:46:34.000 Yeah, so you mean that after the ha, gotcha, you would have taken control of the conversation?

00:46:38.000 We could have actually had a conversation.

00:46:40.000 We didn't have a conversation.

00:46:42.000 Well, it depends on what you mean by conversation.

00:46:45.000 We had a kind of conversation, but what we actually had was a dominance hierarchy dispute.

00:46:49.000 Yeah.

00:46:50.000 Right.

00:46:51.000 Yeah.

00:46:52.000 With an ideological overlay.

00:46:53.000 Yeah, definitely.

00:46:54.000 So then, it went quite viral actually, I think.

00:46:56.000 Unbelievable.

00:46:57.000 It was trending on YouTube.

00:46:58.000 Yeah.

00:46:59.000 It was number seven trending on YouTube.

00:47:00.000 Number seven.

00:47:01.000 Number seven, yeah. 0.95

00:47:02.000 Crazy.

00:47:03.000 And some loose clips on Facebook also got...

00:47:05.000 Hundreds, millions of views.

00:47:07.000 Yeah, no, definitely.

00:47:08.000 I know, Derek Blackman in the US made a clip and it got 750,000 views in like one day.

00:47:13.000 Yeah.

00:47:14.000 And the memes came.

00:47:15.000 And then, a day later, it kind of took a joyless turn.

00:47:20.000 Yeah, yesterday and today, right now.

00:47:22.000 Yeah.

00:47:23.000 Well, it's amazing.

00:47:24.000 Well, you see, so here's the strange thing, eh?

00:47:26.000 So I kind of played, let's say, Night on White Horse.

00:47:31.000 And so The Guardian yesterday published an astoundingly reprehensible article.

00:47:39.000 About your book?

00:47:40.000 No, about the Channel 4 interview.

00:47:42.000 No, they've done some nice interviews about my book.

00:47:45.000 So they've been kind of all over the place with me, you know.

00:47:48.000 But the Channel 4 people claim that Cathy has been targeted with threats.

00:47:54.000 You know, a torrent of online abuse by internet trolls.

00:47:59.000 Yeah.

00:48:00.000 And it's like 50,000 trolls.

00:48:01.000 You know, that's a lot of trolls. 0.92

00:48:02.000 Yeah. 0.66

00:48:03.000 You might start thinking maybe they're not all trolls.

00:48:05.000 But in any case, overwhelmed by misogynistic abuse and threats.

00:48:10.000 And that they had called in a security specialist to assess the level of threat.

00:48:16.000 And so it was the beginning of the attempt to twist the story around so that the story

00:48:22.000 became Cathy Newman, poor embattled Channel 4 newscaster, was merely trying to do her 1.00

00:48:31.000 job, even though she might have been a bit provocative, interviewed alt-right hero, Dr.

00:48:37.000 Jordan Peterson, in an honest manner to expose his agenda, posted the results to YouTube,

00:48:45.000 and was immediately mobbed by his army of internet trolls.

00:48:51.000 Right?

00:48:52.000 So she went from, so my sense is she went from journalist playing a variety of complicated

00:49:00.000 games, to target of criticism online, to heroine, embattled heroine, in the panoply of martyrs

00:49:15.000 to whom similar things have happened in the past.

00:49:18.000 And what's terrible about it, and I inadvertently, I would say, contributed to that.

00:49:25.000 Because when the Guardian story came out, I read it, and the story purported to be about

00:49:30.000 the threats that she had received.

00:49:32.000 But really the story, because the story opened with a description of me, and the description

00:49:36.000 was, let's call it, far from flattery.

00:49:38.000 You know, it was the same old thing.

00:49:40.000 Dr. Peterson, he's a provocateur. 0.97

00:49:42.000 He has an army of trolls.

00:49:44.000 If anybody ever dares to challenge him, let's say, you know, all they're doing is honestly challenging.

00:49:49.000 The trolls come out, and then they have to fear for their lives.

00:49:52.000 And that was the story.

00:49:54.000 That's the narrative now.

00:49:55.000 The threats were just the prerequisite for the story.

00:50:00.000 And then, yeah, like a dozen UK news media sources, the newspapers in particular, have

00:50:08.000 picked this up.

00:50:10.000 Some even more critical of me than that, some in a slightly more balanced fashion.

00:50:17.000 But, and see, when the Guardian story broke, I tweeted something.

00:50:22.000 I said, look, if you're, I've looked at the tweet, or the YouTube comments, and most of

00:50:28.000 them were merely criticism.

00:50:30.000 But if you're threatening her, well, stop, you know, because we had an exchange of words,

00:50:35.000 which is what we're supposed to do.

00:50:37.000 I think this message to your followers was one of the most liked tweets you ever put out.

00:50:42.000 Yeah, but here's the terrible thing about it.

00:50:44.000 You know, what happened was that the fact that I tweeted that was instantly used as validation

00:50:51.000 for the claim that there were threats.

00:50:53.000 And that was just, yeah, that's what happened.

00:50:56.000 And see, it's weird, because when I wrote that, I thought, there's part of me that thought,

00:51:02.000 that thought that that might happen.

00:51:03.000 There was a little warning bell that went off that said, look, you know,

00:51:06.000 there's no evidence that these threats are credible.

00:51:09.000 And if you respond by asking people to back off, you're also implying that there are people

00:51:18.000 who should back off, that this is real.

00:51:20.000 And I thought, no, I'm going to do it anyways, because she has been targeted.

00:51:25.000 She has been subject to a very large number of very vitriolic comments.

00:51:31.000 And maybe that's enough.

00:51:33.000 And so, you know, it's okay to come out and say that's enough.

00:51:36.000 But the thing is, it wasn't okay, because as soon as I did it, then the fact that I did it was used as proof

00:51:42.000 that all of these claims were valid.

00:51:44.000 And that just floored me.

00:51:45.000 Like I was very distraught, I think is the right word about that this morning, because I didn't see that coming.

00:51:53.000 But were there threats against her?

00:51:55.000 Have you seen them?

00:51:56.000 Defined threat.

00:51:57.000 Threats of violence?

00:51:58.000 There's no threats that were sufficient to get the police involved.

00:52:01.000 See, the Guardian was very vague about what the threats were and who these security people were.

00:52:12.000 They were vague about that.

00:52:13.000 But the implication was that the threats were serious enough so that security people needed to be called in to advise.

00:52:21.000 Okay, well, the narrative has clarified a little bit in the last day.

00:52:24.000 Now they just said, well, they had security consultants come in to look at the threats.

00:52:28.000 Well, so then you think, well, is that because they're actually concerned about the threats?

00:52:32.000 Or is that because they want to spin off a story about how the threats are so severe that they had to call in security consultants?

00:52:38.000 And like I have a strong, so let's say it's 10% the former and 90% the latter, which is what I would estimate.

00:52:45.000 And so, but it doesn't matter now, because the narrative has already been twisted around.

00:52:49.000 Now, I don't know what, I don't know if that's going to, I have no idea if that's going to actually backfire on Channel 4.

00:53:02.000 Or if it will have the effect of further damaging my reputation.

00:53:08.000 I mean, I know the Canadian media has picked up the victimized Cathy Newman narrative and run with it as well.

00:53:15.000 Well, they're certainly trying.

00:53:17.000 The Independent, I think, was a piece today, has a subtitle.

00:53:21.000 When white men feel they are losing power, any level of nastiness is possible.

00:53:27.000 Yeah.

00:53:28.000 In the struggle to regain this.

00:53:29.000 Yeah, I know, that was definitely one of the most appalling headlines that I've ever seen a credible news organization produce.

00:53:36.000 And they, like...

00:53:38.000 See, one of the things I pointed out in my book, in 12 Rules for Life, is that as a clinician,

00:53:45.000 talking to many hundreds of people for many thousands of hours and watching how things unfold in their life

00:53:51.000 from the earliest stages of their childhood memories to their current state of life and into the future,

00:53:58.000 one thing I have learned is that no one ever gets away with anything.

00:54:02.000 And so this reporter has made a kind of statement, a kind of provocative statement,

00:54:06.000 and he or she doesn't understand that there will be consequences of that.

00:54:11.000 And perhaps not the sort of consequences that the author will tie back to that statement. 0.97

00:54:17.000 But that's the sort of... that's a statement that you only make if you are very historically ignorant,

00:54:26.000 or very uncautious, incautious, or if there's a very dark part of you hoping things will go very wrong very soon.

00:54:35.000 And I would say that there's a reasonable possibility that things are going to go very wrong very soon.

00:54:40.000 For whom? For all of us. For all of us. None of what's happening in this polarized atmosphere is amusing to me.

00:54:49.000 What happened... see, even with the Channel 4 interview, you know...

00:54:54.000 And maybe I was a bit self-congratulatory, let's say, when I made my sort of satirical gotcha statement.

00:55:06.000 I'm not... and then I would say you could read what happened with Channel 4 as a victory for me and as a loss for Kathy.

00:55:17.000 Now, depends on what she was aiming at. If she was aiming at 3 million views on YouTube in two days, then it's not a loss.

00:55:25.000 You know, and for me it's like... well, my book went up to number 2 on Amazon.com in the US the next day, right?

00:55:34.000 It's number 1 in Canada, it's number 3 in the UK, all on Amazon.

00:55:37.000 I couldn't have asked for more publicity, right? And so I could also be sitting back and saying,

00:55:43.000 well, you know, she tried to... a person who regarded herself as my ideological opponent, 0.95

00:55:49.000 tried to go after my philosophy and my reputation on national TV, failed brutally, and has been taken apart for it.

00:55:58.000 It's like, this is a good day. But I don't regard it as a good day. I don't think it's a good day.

00:56:03.000 As what do you regard it?

00:56:05.000 I think that it's evidence of the instability of the times that we're in.

00:56:11.000 It would have been much better for me, and for everyone else, if what we would have had was a real conversation.

00:56:18.000 So, it's not good. It's not good. And I asked Kathy, in a variety of different ways now, if she would sit down and have an actual conversation.

00:56:28.000 Because the right way for this to end is not for me to declare victory, because I don't regard it as a victory.

00:56:36.000 I mean, I'm not saying that I would have liked to have the tables turned.

00:56:40.000 I'm not saying that I would have been happy with a loss.

00:56:43.000 But what happened in there was not an optimized victory.

00:56:47.000 What we need to do, what would be best, is if she would sit down with me for about an hour.

00:56:53.000 On camera as well?

00:56:54.000 On camera. Where we could actually have a discussion.

00:56:58.000 Like, I would like to ask her something, for example. I've been trying to puzzle this out.

00:57:03.000 I saw a picture of her today. That was a tweet. It was a tweet by one of her friends.

00:57:08.000 And they said that the tweet was something like,

00:57:12.000 We're amusing ourselves watching the Twitter comments while waiting for the police investigation.

00:57:19.000 Okay. And then there's a picture of Kathy holding a tablet, you know, looking shocked in a very pleased way, I think is the right way.

00:57:28.000 And you see, that's kind of what I'm worried about, is that she is shocked in a rather pleased way.

00:57:35.000 Was this the police investigation into the threats to her?

00:57:38.000 Presumably. It wasn't clear, but presumably.

00:57:41.000 I think she removed those tweets.

00:57:43.000 She did remove them, but it's hard to remove things from Twitter. 0.69

00:57:46.000 Yeah. And so, but I've also been sitting here thinking, like, you know, people write me and they say,

00:57:53.000 Well, you must be, I'm writing you a letter of support. You must be receiving an overwhelming amount of hate mail.

00:57:58.000 You know, keep up the good work. I don't receive any hate mail.

00:58:02.000 I received like five pieces of hate mail in the last 15 months.

00:58:06.000 I can't believe that that's the case.

00:58:09.000 Very modest number.

00:58:10.000 Yeah, and they weren't particularly vitriolic.

00:58:13.000 Yeah, there were criticisms, you know.

00:58:15.000 So I don't get hate mail.

00:58:16.000 Now, I don't know why, but I don't.

00:58:19.000 But, you know, if the tables were turned, you know, and if I had done an interview, and then 50,000 people had written critical comments about me in two days, ranging from, like, pretty severely critical to pretty damn vitriolic,

00:58:38.000 Yeah.

00:58:39.000 I would be having a rough time of it, man. I'd be sitting there thinking, Jesus, you know, what the hell did I do?

00:58:45.000 What did I do that was so deeply wrong that this was the result?

00:58:51.000 But I don't know what Cathy's thinking.

00:58:53.000 That does not seem to constitute her response so far.

00:58:56.000 Well, you know, I hesitate to guess at it, but there's no evidence that that's her response.

00:59:03.000 Yeah.

00:59:04.000 You know, she said, oh, well, it was all in good fun. It was part of the game. Thank you for being a good sport.

00:59:10.000 It's not a game for me.

00:59:12.000 Viva feminism? 1.00

00:59:13.000 Yeah, exactly. Viva feminism, really. And I mean, what my impression of the response to her interview is that virtually everyone watching it online, and I'm judging this response by the number of likes to dislikes and the comments, which are running about 80 to 1 against her, which is like 50 to 1 against you is not good.

00:59:38.000 Like 80 to 1 against you is really, really not good. There's something wrong.

00:59:43.000 And so, and these aren't trolls. These aren't my army of trolls. These three million people who've watched the video, or it's more than that actually, that's all sorts of people everywhere.

00:59:56.000 And they're not happy with the way the interview went. And that would crush me.

01:00:05.000 Yeah.

01:00:06.000 You know, and I think that's the right response to that. It's like, when you're, when you receive overwhelming public criticism like that, the right response should be not glee at stirring up the hornet's nest, but careful reanalysis of what you did.

01:00:28.000 That's hard.

01:00:31.000 It's not as hard as the alternative. Because if you're riding high, and there's a correction coming, and you keep forestalling it, the correction will get larger and larger and larger and larger.

01:00:46.000 And finally, when it comes, you will not be able to tolerate it. And that's the situation. I believe that she's in. The correction is coming.

01:00:55.000 Has she responded to your request to sit down again?

01:00:57.000 No, but it's been made very, very recently. So I've had a colleague of hers contacted me and said that he would do what he could to put us in touch. And other people have been working behind the scenes.

01:01:12.000 Yeah.

01:01:13.000 And I suggested it on Twitter. And, you know, I'm likely going to contact my press agents at Penguin and see if they want to contact her and ask. But, because that's the right outcome. The right outcome is, we have a, we had this bit of combat, let's say.

01:01:31.000 It produced a scandal. Now we actually talk about it. No tricks. Just a conversation. And then everybody wins. Right? Because I can admit whatever mistakes I made. She can admit whatever mistakes she made. We can drop the persona, which is what she had. It was an animus possessed persona, technically speaking. She could drop that. We could actually have a discussion.

01:01:57.000 Yeah.

01:01:58.000 Like, I would open the discussion by asking her why she was taken aback when I asked her about her treatment of me in the interview. You know, and people have also been spinning that as my claims to have been victimized in the interview. You know, so, which is another sign of how pathological the discourse has become.

01:02:20.000 Yeah. Because pointing out what's happening and claiming some kind of victim status are by no means the same thing. So, what you're saying that although it might look as a, as a, as a victory for you and the, in the attention it has generated.

01:02:35.000 It's not a healthy victory.

01:02:36.000 It's not a healthy victory.

01:02:37.000 Right.

01:02:38.000 And taking back to that, you said that it's actually a sign of the times where things could go really wrong for all of us really soon.

01:02:44.000 Yeah. We're, we're playing with fire.

01:02:46.000 Yeah. What do you mean by this? Can you, can you elaborate?

01:02:48.000 Well, things go wrong in cultures all the time, right? You get, you get the polarization increases until people start to act it out. You know, I mean, I'll give you an example.

01:03:05.000 You know, I always pay attention to what happens at the back of my mind, to the bottom of my mind, let's say. And what I learned from Carl Jung, for example, one thing was that if you watch what happens in your imagination while you're speaking, while things are happening to you, you'll see little dreamlike fragments happening all the time.

01:03:24.000 They're not in words. They're really more like, they're more like brief dreams. Jung thought we were dreaming all the time, even when we were awake.

01:03:31.000 And, you know, today I was reviewing maybe 10 or 11 of these newspaper articles that had played this twisty game and accused me of like sicking my internet trolls on the poor hapless journalist.

01:03:45.000 And I thought, this was the dark part of me, right? That's the shadow part. I thought, if I wanted to sick my internet trolls on Channel 4, then there'd be nothing but broken windows and riots.

01:03:57.000 And then there's a little part of me that thinks, wouldn't that be fun? Right. And that's where we're at. It's like, because I'm a reasonable person, a very reasonable person, even though I can.

01:04:06.000 But you do have these thoughts in the back of your mind. Oh, yes. And I pay attention to them because I know that they're part of the collective unconscious, right?

01:04:14.000 They're the shadow part. And when there's part of me thinking, well, wouldn't that just be perfectly goddamn delightful?

01:04:20.000 Then there's lots of people who are not only thinking that way sometimes, but thinking that way all the time.

01:04:25.000 And they're just waiting for that to be the proper response. Well, you see this with the Antifa violence in the United States and with the Charlottesville thing as well.

01:04:34.000 But basically what you're saying is that when you have these dark thoughts in the back of your mind, you kind of tap into the collective unconscious of the culture you're embedded in.

01:04:44.000 Definitely, definitely. There's no doubt about it. The dark part of me and the dark part of you is the same thing in some ways.

01:04:51.000 And we live in the same culture. And so it's going to manifest itself in a similar manner.

01:04:56.000 Yeah. So you're saying the polarization that we're seeing right now, that we are speaking out, it's not in the future we will act out that polarization.

01:05:06.000 If we keep accelerating it, especially if we keep accelerating it with lies, you know, and this whole Channel 4 rat's nest is like 90% lies, maybe more.

01:05:21.000 And, you know, a lot of it's ideologically motivated lies, but it doesn't matter. It still lies.

01:05:26.000 Like Kathy, as I said, there was virtually nothing she said in that interview that was actually coming from her, like a deep part of her, the soul of her.

01:05:39.000 All persona.

01:05:40.000 It was all persona. It was all persona. It was all persona. And, and, and all use of words in a, in a expedient manner as tools to obtain, I think probably, probably status, dominant status and reputation.

01:05:56.000 Yeah. So this is kind of the part where I want to go to the next part of this talk, because what people know you from your, but it's not, it's not actually activism, but your, your stand against postmodernism and identity.

01:06:11.000 My refusal to abide by the dictates of compelled speech.

01:06:14.000 Yeah. Right.

01:06:15.000 That's what most people know you from. But what fewer people know is your philosophy, is your philosophy on how to be in the world properly as an individual.

01:06:23.000 And I think that I don't know which people know more about. I mean, I would say that, that the typical person, like there's people who live in the old media world, and there's people who live in the new media world.

01:06:36.000 And the people who live in the old media world, they know me for that. But the people who live in the new media world, I wouldn't say that's the case for.

01:06:43.000 That's a good point. I was referring to the people in the old. 0.99

01:06:46.000 Yeah. Okay. Well, it's weird that we have to make that distinction, but it's necessary because we're in the time where those distinctions are the case.

01:06:52.000 Yeah. So the thing is, my view on this is, if you implement your philosophy on how to be in the world, you become less susceptible to ideological possession.

01:07:02.000 Well, that's the hope.

01:07:04.000 Yeah, which is kind of the meta importance of that part of your work, I think. As I told you, I've watched most of your lectures, and I've distilled it, I've tried to distill it back to five points, which in my view are the five strongest points.

01:07:17.000 I will list them now in summary, and then we'll unpack them more.

01:07:21.000 Yeah, well, you nailed one of them right away. It's like, I mean, I have my conscious goal since learning what I've learned, which I would say occurred back in the mid to late 80s,

01:07:33.000 you know, when I learned the basic principles that I've been elaborating upon over the last 30 years or so. Once I learned those, then the hope was that sharing that knowledge would make people immune to ideological possession.

01:07:51.000 That was the goal, yeah.

01:07:53.000 I think this is one of your closing remarks in Maps of Meaning. You say that the problem to society's ails is the integrity of the individual.

01:08:00.000 Yeah. Okay, so I'm going to list the five points.

01:08:03.000 Fine.

01:08:04.000 Yeah. So, point one, the absolute centrality of the archetypical hero's myth. Point two, your main instrument during this hero's narrative is the logos.

01:08:14.000 Point three, the way to be in the world is to orient yourself towards the highest possible good you can conceive of, because it's not as if you have anything better to do.

01:08:23.000 Four, make the right sacrifices to walk with God, and in this sentence, the concept of God as a judgmental father is an articulation of the discovery of being able to bargain with the future.

01:08:34.000 And five, minimize your persona, cultivate your essence, and live in its closest possible proximity.

01:08:41.000 You know, for a distillation into five, that's pretty good.

01:08:46.000 Yeah. So, first, let's start with the first point, the centrality of the archetypical hero's myth.

01:08:52.000 What is the archetypical hero's myth? What makes it archetypical? And what is a hero? Could you elaborate on this?

01:08:58.000 Well, imagine that you have a problem, and then imagine that you want a solution.

01:09:07.000 And imagine that there's a particular solution to that particular problem.

01:09:12.000 But then imagine that you have what you might describe as a bigger problem, and that's not the problem.

01:09:19.000 It's the fact that you have problems, because that's the real problem.

01:09:22.000 The real problem is the fact that you have problems.

01:09:25.000 And then you might say, well, you don't want a solution to a problem.

01:09:29.000 You want a solution to the fact that you have problems.

01:09:32.000 And so it's a leap of abstraction, right?

01:09:35.000 So then you might say, well, is there a way of conceptualizing the set of all problems that's universal?

01:09:41.000 And I think there is. That's what religious stories try to do.

01:09:45.000 And they do it using drama, dramatic means, because the problem is so complex.

01:09:52.000 So that's the meta-problem. It's so complex that we don't really know how to formulate it.

01:09:56.000 But that's what we're struggling towards.

01:09:58.000 So it's like, well, what's the problem of life? Something like that.

01:10:02.000 Well, you could say that the problem of life, and I outlined this quite carefully in 12 Rules for Life.

01:10:08.000 The problem of life is this. We're finite and mortal. That's problem number one.

01:10:16.000 So the first problem is that life is essentially tragic. It's little us against infinity. And we lose.

01:10:26.000 And not only do we lose, but we lose in a manner that produces a substantial amount of suffering.

01:10:32.000 And sometimes an unbearable amount. So it's a big problem. So that's problem number one.

01:10:36.000 Problem number two is that that's not the worst problem. The worst problem is that that's true.

01:10:42.000 Plus malevolence exists in the world. Evil exists in the world.

01:10:46.000 And makes that first problem even worse than it would have to be.

01:10:49.000 And that's universally true for everyone all the time. That's archetypal.

01:10:54.000 So when you formulate a situation archetypally, you speak about it in a manner that's eternally true.

01:11:02.000 So there's lots of ways that you and I differ. But there's many ways that we're the same.

01:11:08.000 And so that would be what constitutes our essential humanity, let's say.

01:11:13.000 And what constitutes, what makes us the same is that, like you, I'm mortal.

01:11:20.000 And my life is finite. And my existence is characterized by suffering.

01:11:25.000 And I have to contend with the fact of malevolence in the world.

01:11:29.000 And it's the terribly destructive character of the natural world.

01:11:36.000 It's the tyrannical element of the social world.

01:11:39.000 And it's the adversarial element of myself and every other individual.

01:11:44.000 So that's the malevolent element. And so we're stuck with that.

01:11:48.000 Okay, fine. That's the archetypal formulation of the problem.

01:11:51.000 You could say that's the mythic landscape, right? And it's something like good and evil in a world of chaos and order.

01:11:57.000 It's something like that. It's very interesting.

01:11:59.000 You know, there are games online that have that as their basic structure, right?

01:12:03.000 The game developers have figured this out. So that's pretty interesting.

01:12:06.000 Okay, so then the question is, well, how do you comport yourself in a landscape of chaos and order

01:12:12.000 and when the game is good versus evil? Something like that.

01:12:16.000 Well, then that's where the idea of the archetypal hero emerges.

01:12:19.000 And the archetypal hero is the person whose eyes are open and whose speech is true.

01:12:25.000 And who faces both the chaos of the unknown and the tyranny of the known and balances them.

01:12:32.000 Right? And then you think, well, that's the antidote to the problem.

01:12:36.000 That's the meta solution to the meta problem.

01:12:39.000 And it's something like, in a more straightforward form, and this is something that I spoke about

01:12:45.000 because I was speaking in Holland here in the Netherlands two nights ago about European and Dutch identity.

01:12:55.000 And how to solve, let's say, the conundrums that are associated with the multicultural world and immigration.

01:13:04.000 And my suggestion was, well, it's a very complex problem.

01:13:09.000 There isn't a solution.

01:13:11.000 But the solution to a very complex problem is you should be a better person than you are

01:13:15.000 because then you'd be better at solving complex problems.

01:13:18.000 And lots of them are coming your way.

01:13:20.000 So bloody well get your act together.

01:13:22.000 And that's what I've been telling people.

01:13:24.000 But more than that, because it's more than that, because that's merely burdening people with excess responsibility, let's say.

01:13:32.000 So that can be a crushing message.

01:13:33.000 You're not who you could be. 0.99

01:13:34.000 You know, get your bloody act together. 1.00

01:13:36.000 You're whining away in the corner and you're no good to yourself and anyone else. 0.99

01:13:40.000 You know, it's harsh.

01:13:41.000 But then there's another element to that, which is there's way more to you than you think you are.

01:13:48.000 And that you have something necessary and vital to contribute to the world.

01:13:52.000 And if you don't contribute it, then things will happen that aren't good.

01:13:55.000 And that's terrible for you and everyone else.

01:13:57.000 So it's not only that you need to do this because it's your responsibility, but you need to understand that there isn't anything better that you could do for yourself or for anyone else.

01:14:08.000 And people are dying to hear that message.

01:14:11.000 That resonates with young men.

01:14:13.000 Yeah.

01:14:14.000 Well, it's so amazing.

01:14:15.000 I'm in this very weird situation right now, to say the least.

01:14:19.000 It's surreal.

01:14:20.000 My life has been surreal for a long time.

01:14:22.000 It's like being in a Delhi painting, you know.

01:14:25.000 I continually can't believe it.

01:14:31.000 And I mean continually, you know.

01:14:32.000 Does it feel that psychedelic to you?

01:14:34.000 Oh, yeah.

01:14:35.000 It's completely...

01:14:36.000 Well, it's so strange, you know.

01:14:37.000 Like when I got to England, for example, to London, my wife and I were staying at this little Airbnb and we went out to get some groceries.

01:14:46.000 And so I walked into the grocery store.

01:14:48.000 We were only out for about an hour and somebody recognized me in the grocery store and came up and said,

01:14:53.000 like, you know, I was in a kind of desperate situation and I was feeling pretty nihilistic and depressed and I really wasn't paying attention to my life.

01:15:00.000 And I was watching your videos and like, thank you.

01:15:02.000 It's really helped me straighten myself out.

01:15:04.000 It's like, oh, hell, you know, hey, great.

01:15:07.000 And so then I went into the electronics store next door and some guy came up to me and he said exactly the same thing.

01:15:13.000 And so like wherever I go now, it's, well, people come up to me, so they're just, I wouldn't call them random strangers, but you know what I mean.

01:15:21.000 I think they are, and they say they have their own personal take on it, you know, because they usually tell me in which particular way they were feeling nihilistic and revengeful and saddened and unable to pull themselves together.

01:15:36.000 But it's the same thing.

01:15:37.000 And then, you know, when I did this talk, I did three talks in London and, you know, we started with one theater of 300 people, which was, you know, Penguin UK was hoping that we'd do a credible job

01:15:50.000 and sell some tickets and I could talk to about the book and it sold out instantly.

01:15:54.000 And then, yeah, it said that they told me that it sold out faster than any event they'd ever hosted.

01:15:59.000 And it's like, so they put up another one with a thousand people and it sold out right away.

01:16:02.000 And then they put up another one with a thousand people and it sold out right away.

01:16:05.000 And so then I went and talked to these, you know, at these venues and people are overwhelmingly welcoming.

01:16:12.000 It's crazy.

01:16:13.000 And then afterwards, you know, like 500 people line up and they all say the same thing.

01:16:18.000 I've been watching your videos.

01:16:19.000 It's like really helped me out.

01:16:21.000 It's like, how could you not feel that your life was surreal where when that's happening?

01:16:26.000 Yeah, I can imagine.

01:16:27.000 I think what's happening, I see this online and in the memes and kind of in the meme culture around you.

01:16:32.000 I think what's happening essentially is that the hero's myth resonates so strongly with young men.

01:16:39.000 It has to.

01:16:41.000 It's a basic narrative.

01:16:42.000 You descend into the underworld.

01:16:44.000 You go where you least want to look.

01:16:46.000 Yeah.

01:16:47.000 You rescue your father.

01:16:48.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:16:49.000 Because in filth it will be found.

01:16:50.000 Yeah, right.

01:16:51.000 Exactly.

01:16:52.000 That which you most need is to be found where you least want to look.

01:16:57.000 Yeah.

01:16:58.000 It's the King Arthur theme.

01:16:59.000 That's right.

01:17:00.000 It's the theme of the Holy Grail.

01:17:01.000 That's exactly right.

01:17:02.000 Well, so there's a little story that goes along with that.

01:17:05.000 So, King Arthur and his knights are all sitting around a round table,

01:17:08.000 which implies that they're of equal stature, essentially.

01:17:11.000 Yeah.

01:17:12.000 And they go off to look for the Holy Grail, which is the container of that which redeems.

01:17:16.000 It's something like that.

01:17:17.000 Yeah.

01:17:18.000 But of course, who the hell knows where to look for the Holy Grail?

01:17:21.000 Yeah.

01:17:22.000 So each of the knights decides to enter the forest at the point that looks darkest to him.

01:17:27.000 Right?

01:17:28.000 And that's a hell of a story.

01:17:29.000 Because first of all, it shows that courage is the first requirement, right?

01:17:33.000 Yeah.

01:17:34.000 Because you look for what's darkest and you go in there.

01:17:36.000 That's part of it.

01:17:37.000 You know, Jung developed that idea quite substantially with regards to his notion of the shadow.

01:17:41.000 And I think it's also what makes this believable for people.

01:17:45.000 Because, you know, the alternative is something like, well, you know, look for happiness.

01:17:51.000 And everyone thinks, well, I'd rather be happy than miserable.

01:17:53.000 And like, fair enough, you know?

01:17:55.000 But there's nothing about that that has any nobility.

01:17:58.000 And it's not believable.

01:17:59.000 No one believes that.

01:18:00.000 Because everyone knows that life is bounded by tragedy and that malevolence abounds.

01:18:04.000 Everyone knows that.

01:18:06.000 So, and you say, you know, so there's that terrible dark dyad of tragedy and evil.

01:18:13.000 And you wave the little flag of happiness in front of it.

01:18:16.000 It's like, you know, no one believes that that will work.

01:18:20.000 But then when you tell people, look, you're dark. 0.99

01:18:24.000 You're a monster. 1.00

01:18:25.000 You really are. 1.00

01:18:26.000 But that's actually useful. 0.99

01:18:27.000 Because you cannot survive the world without being a monster.

01:18:32.000 People think, oh, well, that's interesting.

01:18:34.000 I kind of suspected that I was a monster.

01:18:36.000 And everyone's always said that was bad.

01:18:38.000 It is bad, obviously.

01:18:39.000 But there's something that can be done about it.

01:18:41.000 And that can be transmuted into something good without being inhibited.

01:18:46.000 So you're saying, to be good, I don't have to be a neutered tomcat.

01:18:50.000 To be good, I can be a monster. 0.88

01:18:52.000 But I can be like a civilized monster.

01:18:54.000 It's like, yeah, that's what you should aim at. 0.96

01:18:56.000 You should be unbelievably dangerous.

01:18:58.000 The more dangerous you are, the better.

01:19:00.000 And then you should control that.

01:19:02.000 Because that's your doctrine on what constitutes morality, right?

01:19:06.000 It contains capacity for malevolence.

01:19:08.000 For mayhem.

01:19:09.000 For mayhem.

01:19:10.000 Absolutely.

01:19:11.000 And I learned this partly from Jung, but also partly from Nietzsche.

01:19:14.000 And, of course, Jung learned it partly from Nietzsche.

01:19:16.000 Because Nietzsche pointed out that most of what passes for morality is just obedient cowardice.

01:19:21.000 So I'm an obedient coward.

01:19:23.000 Well, no one wants to think that. 0.85

01:19:24.000 So they say, well, no, I'm not an obedient coward.

01:19:27.000 I'm a good person, because I don't break any rules.

01:19:31.000 It's like, no, you're not. 1.00

01:19:32.000 You're an obedient coward. 0.99

01:19:33.000 And you're too afraid to break the rules. 1.00

01:19:35.000 That doesn't make you good.

01:19:37.000 It also accounts for why the dark hero, you know, the anti-hero, is so popular in cinematic representations in particular.

01:19:44.000 Because people go and watch the mafia hitmen and guys like that.

01:19:48.000 And, you know, there's a dark part of them that thinks, wow, you know, those guys are really cool.

01:19:52.000 You know, like movies like Quentin Tarantino's movies, you know.

01:19:56.000 Where the hitmen are wisecracking and, you know, they're tough and they can handle everything. 0.91

01:20:00.000 And you think, well, these guys are psychopathic criminals.

01:20:02.000 Why are people looking up to them? 0.97

01:20:04.000 It's because, well, you're not moral if you're just harmless.

01:20:11.000 And the question is, well, what's the antidote to being harmless?

01:20:14.000 And the antidote to that is to open up that doorway into the shadow.

01:20:19.000 And then you could become that, right?

01:20:22.000 There's that gleeful, predatory victory that's part of that, you know.

01:20:26.000 And that would be associated with, let's say, the attitude that I could have had to what happened with Channel 4.

01:20:33.000 It's like, I won. 0.99

01:20:34.000 Look the fuck out. 0.98

01:20:36.000 Right. 0.96

01:20:37.000 But no, that's not right.

01:20:38.000 Because it's not good enough.

01:20:40.000 It's better than losing.

01:20:42.000 By a lot.

01:20:43.000 Because there's nothing in a loss that's admirable.

01:20:47.000 But it's not the highest form of victory.

01:20:51.000 And there's no reason not to go for the highest form of victory.

01:20:54.000 And that's peace.

01:20:56.000 Right?

01:20:57.000 It's not predatory victory.

01:20:58.000 It's peace.

01:20:59.000 Because anyone with any sense, who has any wisdom, regards peace as the goal.

01:21:06.000 And that isn't the peace that means that I'm so afraid of you that I'm not going to say anything.

01:21:11.000 It's the peace that is that, like, it's the peace of armed opponents who respect one another.

01:21:17.000 Right?

01:21:18.000 That's real peace.

01:21:19.000 Harking back to the hero's myth one more time.

01:21:22.000 Do you think that basically all people need to complete this narrative at some stage in their lives?

01:21:29.000 Do all people need it?

01:21:30.000 It is their lives.

01:21:32.000 Like, if you don't act this out, let's say.

01:21:37.000 You're not living.

01:21:38.000 You're fragmented. 0.92

01:21:39.000 You're a puppet.

01:21:42.000 You're a puppet of other motivational forces.

01:21:46.000 Like, this is what happens when you unite the motivational forces that guide you.

01:21:50.000 Unite your own nature with your own culture and rise up above it.

01:21:55.000 That's what happens is you end up acting this out in one way or another.

01:21:58.000 And you might as well know it.

01:22:00.000 And this was Jung's point.

01:22:01.000 It's like, you can be the unconscious actor of a tragic, malevolent, tragic drama.

01:22:10.000 Where you can wake the hell up.

01:22:12.000 And you can decide that you're going to be the hero of not only your story, but of everyone's story.

01:22:17.000 And then you can choose.

01:22:18.000 Which of those do you want?

01:22:20.000 Now the problem with choosing, let's call it the archetypally heroic path, is that you have to take the responsibility.

01:22:27.000 But the upside is, well, what the hell's the difference between responsibility and opportunity?

01:22:34.000 You could say, well, there's no difference between responsibility and opportunity.

01:22:38.000 So the more responsibility you take, the more opportunity you have.

01:22:41.000 Now maybe you don't want that, because you'd rather cower in the corner and hide.

01:22:45.000 But the thing is, is that you probably wouldn't rather do that.

01:22:48.000 Because if you try it, you'll find that there's nothing in it but self-contempt and misery.

01:22:52.000 That's a bad pathway to pull back and to fail to engage in the world.

01:22:57.000 And you end up bitter and resentful and self-destructive and vengeful and then far worse.

01:23:04.000 You can develop a liking for that.

01:23:09.000 I wouldn't recommend it.

01:23:11.000 Yeah.

01:23:12.000 No, I understand.

01:23:13.000 I was summarizing the cinematic history of the past 15 years.

01:23:18.000 And there were a few characters that I found particularly archetypical.

01:23:22.000 And I was wondering, because I don't think you've ever mentioned these in your lectures.

01:23:27.000 So there's Maximus from Gladiator.

01:23:29.000 There's Hector of Troy from Troy, who faces off against Achilles.

01:23:33.000 There's King Leonidas from 300 with the Spartans.

01:23:36.000 And there's Spartacus.

01:23:37.000 And what stood out to me was, these are all deeply archetypical figures.

01:23:42.000 And they have a few core properties in common.

01:23:48.000 One is they talk very little.

01:23:50.000 And if they talk, they talk very decisive.

01:23:53.000 Two is they never or seldom raise their voice.

01:23:56.000 Only if they raise their voice, it's so the troops can hear them.

01:23:59.000 And three, I think that within these archetypes might reside the case,

01:24:04.000 maybe the ultimate case for male monogamy. 0.86

01:24:06.000 Because these archetypes that resonate so strongly with men,

01:24:09.000 what they all have in common is that they're fiercely loyal to one woman alone.

01:24:13.000 Right.

01:24:14.000 Well, that's part of the incorporation of the shadow, I would say.

01:24:18.000 Because, you know, Louis C.K. a while back talked about Tiger Woods.

01:24:22.000 And I really liked it because people were complaining about Tiger Woods and his affairs.

01:24:28.000 And also about Arnold Schwarzenegger and his affairs.

01:24:32.000 And one of the things that Louis C.K. pointed out, quite in a very comical manner,

01:24:38.000 was that, well, many men aren't having the affairs of Tiger Woods.

01:24:45.000 But that's not because they're good men.

01:24:48.000 It's because they don't have, I think he said, a busload of Swedish bikini models waiting for them at the final hole. 0.98

01:24:57.000 So the idea would be that you should conduct yourself so that you are attractive to many women.

01:25:05.000 Maybe that you have your pick of them.

01:25:07.000 But then you should pick one.

01:25:09.000 And that's a sacrifice.

01:25:11.000 Obviously, that's a sacrifice of a sort.

01:25:13.000 It's a strange sacrifice.

01:25:15.000 Because, you know, I talked to someone, a comedian recently, who told me of one of his experiences in Las Vegas.

01:25:23.000 So he went to Las Vegas with a sports superstar.

01:25:28.000 And they went to a party.

01:25:31.000 And what literally happened at the party was one woman brought forward a small group of other women, all very attractive,

01:25:40.000 and basically told the sports legend that he could just pick one of them and she would go home with him.

01:25:46.000 And so that had all been arranged beforehand.

01:25:48.000 And he said that he's been in many situations where something like that has happened.

01:25:53.000 And I thought, well, you know, that sort of is appealing to the Hugh Hefner, playboy, 14-year-old fantasy

01:26:00.000 that sort of gripped our culture from the 1960s onward.

01:26:03.000 But imagine that you sleep casually with 100 women in a six-month period, or a three-month period, for that matter, or a three-week period.

01:26:12.000 I don't care. Pick your timeframe.

01:26:14.000 And you say, well, what, what, and you're ecstatic with yourself because you've been validated by this opportunity.

01:26:24.000 And I'm not making light of that.

01:26:27.000 It's not nothing to be attractive to women like that.

01:26:30.000 It's really something to be attractive to women like that.

01:26:33.000 But it isn't obvious to me that your choice to conduct yourself in that manner enriches your life,

01:26:41.000 and the life of other people more in any way than picking one person and actually having a relationship with them.

01:26:48.000 It's only true that that promiscuous pathway, let's say, is better if you can actually divorce sexuality from all the other elements of life.

01:26:59.000 Say, well, it's about variety and it's about impulsive pleasure.

01:27:02.000 Or maybe it could be even slightly deeper than merely impulsive pleasure.

01:27:07.000 It could be shared impulsive pleasure.

01:27:09.000 But I don't think you can do that, because sexuality isn't divorceable from family and from morality and from all the other elements of your life.

01:27:18.000 And if you're mature, you know that.

01:27:21.000 You know that.

01:27:22.000 And so you make a decision.

01:27:24.000 You make a decision not to capitalize on your opportunity, not to misuse your opportunities.

01:27:30.000 And, you know, a huge part of the Me Too phenomena, a huge part of this battle that's being played out in our culture is a consequence of the failure of men to recognize that.

01:27:42.000 Now, it's not only the failure of men. Let me be absolutely clear about that.

01:27:46.000 Because, for example, with the example of the sports superstar, the women who are lining up in front of him parading themselves and offering themselves are deeply complicit in this pathological game.

01:27:59.000 And so it's pretty clear anthropologically as well that, you know, sexual choice tends towards a Pareto distribution, especially for men.

01:28:09.000 So most men have very little selection at their disposal, and a small number of men have excess opportunities.

01:28:19.000 The question is, what should that small number of men do?

01:28:22.000 And you might say, capitalize on it, and to hell with the consequences.

01:28:26.000 And, like, it's a powerful argument, but I do believe it's wrong.

01:28:31.000 It destabilizes the society.

01:28:34.000 And so, and I also don't think it does your soul any good, because the problem with treating other people as casual sexual partners, let's say, is that you also treat yourself that way simultaneously.

01:28:44.000 And I don't think that that does you any good, because you're not, unless that's what you want to be.

01:28:50.000 If you want to be a casual partner, it's like, well, that's, I wouldn't say that's a particularly noble ambition.

01:28:57.000 You should be able to do better than that.

01:28:59.000 All right.

01:29:00.000 So we just discussed the centrality in your philosophy of the archetypical hero's myth, which is basically, one descends into the underworld, you go where you least want to look, you face the dragon goddess of chaos, you fight with all you have and a little more.

01:29:14.000 And if you survive, you retrieve something of supreme value, and you escort it back into the daylight.

01:29:19.000 And then you share it with everyone else.

01:29:20.000 And then you share it, yeah.

01:29:21.000 And then you share it, yeah.

01:29:22.000 Which is a crucial part, crucial part of it.

01:29:24.000 Yeah, definitely.

01:29:25.000 So, the second point is actually, that within your philosophy, it seems that during this narrative that I just described, the logos is your premier instrument.

01:29:36.000 Right.

01:29:37.000 And you describe the logos as the capacity to articulate undifferentiated chaos into habitable order.

01:29:44.000 Into the habitable order that is good.

01:29:46.000 Yeah.

01:29:47.000 Right, right.

01:29:48.000 Which is like an elaboration that I kind of figured out last year when I was doing the biblical lectures, right?

01:29:53.000 Because one of the things I came to understand when I was reanalyzing the earliest chapter in Genesis is that there's this idea in Genesis that the creative force, God, uses this process, employs this process, the logos, to extract habitable order from chaotic potential.

01:30:11.000 He speaks the world into being.

01:30:12.000 Right.

01:30:13.000 But he uses logos specifically to do it.

01:30:15.000 Then the logos is truthful speech.

01:30:17.000 Yeah.

01:30:18.000 And so there's an idea there, which is that it's a deep idea, it's the deepest idea of the West, I would say, and it's the deepest religious idea.

01:30:25.000 So, but I think it's been, I don't know if it's been articulated best in the West, but I would say you could make a case for that.

01:30:32.000 But in any case, the idea is that there's a way to bring order into being that makes the order good, and that's to bring it into being by spoken truth.

01:30:44.000 So you can bring, you can bring new, you can extract new being out of potential by lying.

01:30:51.000 But it's not good.

01:30:52.000 No, it's hellish.

01:30:53.000 Yeah.

01:30:54.000 It's hellish.

01:30:55.000 So it's order, but hellish order, tyrannical order.

01:30:59.000 Yeah.

01:31:00.000 Right.

01:31:01.000 It's tyrannical order, generally speaking.

01:31:02.000 Well, and we know that to be the case.

01:31:03.000 It's not like this is some metaphysical speculation.

01:31:05.000 If you read Solzhenitsyn, for example, or Viktor Frankl, people like that, who've deeply meditated on the relationship between malevolence and tyranny.

01:31:15.000 I mean, they just lay it out clearly.

01:31:17.000 Yeah.

01:31:18.000 In a true tyranny, everyone lies about everything all the time.

01:31:22.000 Yeah.

01:31:23.000 And that's why it's hell.

01:31:24.000 Yeah.

01:31:25.000 And that's exactly right.

01:31:26.000 It's exactly right.

01:31:27.000 You said that in the Soviet Union, in Eastern Germany, one in three people was a government informer.

01:31:31.000 Yeah, that's right.

01:31:32.000 That's insane.

01:31:33.000 It's the very definition of social pathology.

01:31:36.000 Yeah.

01:31:37.000 Because, well, if you can't say what you think, then you don't know who you are.

01:31:41.000 You can't live.

01:31:43.000 You have to live as a crippled person, a self-crippling person. 1.00

01:31:47.000 It's like you're taking a sledgehammer to your shins. 0.93

01:31:51.000 You know, it's you and everyone else. 0.99

01:31:54.000 And it's brutal and murderous.

01:31:57.000 Yeah.

01:31:58.000 One of the things that's so profound about the concept of the logos, because you refer

01:32:03.000 to Genesis, but actually it's older.

01:32:05.000 It's Babylonian, right?

01:32:06.000 It's from the Enuma Elisha.

01:32:07.000 Well, it's older.

01:32:08.000 It's even older than that, right?

01:32:09.000 I mean, it's as old as humanity itself in some sense, I would say.

01:32:13.000 It's the central process by which human beings flourish in the world.

01:32:19.000 Yeah.

01:32:20.000 So, yeah, it's as old as higher consciousness is.

01:32:24.000 It's something like that.

01:32:26.000 And you've also stated that actually that Western legal systems are predicated on the notion that people possess the logos.

01:32:35.000 That's what it looks like to me.

01:32:36.000 Yeah.

01:32:37.000 I mean, well, because the individual has sovereignty in the West, we have a rule here, a meta rule, which is that the individual is not above the rules.

01:32:51.000 It's not that.

01:32:52.000 It's that the rules encounter a boundary where they hit the individual.

01:32:55.000 So that even if you're a murderer, even if everyone knows you did it, say, you still have to be treated with the dignity that you would grant to someone who possesses the capacity to conquer chaos and revitalize tyrannical order.

01:33:17.000 Yeah.

01:33:18.000 You have to, the law itself has to draw to a halt in front of that.

01:33:23.000 Yeah.

01:33:24.000 And that's, people don't understand how amazing it is that that principle ever emerged. 0.96

01:33:31.000 Because the impulsive, correct response to the revelation of a murderer in your midst is to just kill him as brutally and rapidly as possible. 0.93

01:33:43.000 And you think, well, why not? 1.00

01:33:45.000 He deserves it.

01:33:46.000 It's like, well, you could make a case that he deserves it.

01:33:48.000 And you can make a strong case for that, especially if you happen to be the relative of the victim, let's say.

01:33:54.000 Yes.

01:33:55.000 But that's not the point.

01:33:56.000 The point is that there's something even deeper at stake that's real.

01:34:00.000 And I believe that that respect for that logos, let's say, which is something that's a co-creator of being and also something that is possessed of free will.

01:34:13.000 Those are the ideas that without that respect, you cannot establish a harmonious relationship with yourself because you don't know who you are.

01:34:23.000 You cannot establish a real friendship or intimate relationship with anyone else.

01:34:28.000 You can't be a good parent.

01:34:30.000 You can't take your place in your local community and you can't be a productive, useful citizen.

01:34:37.000 It's all of that.

01:34:38.000 If you're not in touch with your logos?

01:34:41.000 Exactly.

01:34:42.000 It's the principle.

01:34:43.000 When your relationships are working, whether they're with yourself or with one or many people, if they're working, they're working to the degree that they're guided by that principle.

01:34:53.000 Well, it's simple in some ways.

01:34:55.000 It's like, well, you and I want to get along, let's say.

01:34:58.000 Well, the first question, the last question even is, well, do we trust each other?

01:35:05.000 You know, and we test each other out constantly.

01:35:07.000 It's like, well, you know, maybe I want to see if I can rely on you a little bit.

01:35:13.000 So I tell you something that's a little rough, something I need a little help with, maybe, or reveal something about myself.

01:35:19.000 And I watch, and then maybe you have some sense, and you listen, and you reveal something about yourself that's about the same magnitude.

01:35:28.000 And we sit and think, okay, that went all right, that exchange was fair.

01:35:32.000 And then maybe I think, okay, well, let's just push this a little bit farther.

01:35:36.000 So I lay another card on the table, and you do the same.

01:35:39.000 And it's like, well, soon we find out that there's reciprocity, so we're tracking the exchanges, and that we can each be relied upon.

01:35:48.000 It's like, great, well, I can rely on you.

01:35:50.000 Well, good, now we can go off and try something difficult together.

01:35:53.000 And that binds us together even more tightly.

01:35:56.000 Well, every relationship is like that.

01:35:58.000 But is this the logos you're referring to? Because in my understanding, the logos is just the capacity to articulate chaos into order.

01:36:05.000 But that's what we're doing when we're mediating in the space between us.

01:36:08.000 That's what we're doing in this conversation.

01:36:10.000 So the space between us, well, we just met.

01:36:12.000 Right, it's chaotic.

01:36:13.000 So there's a chaotic potential here.

01:36:15.000 Yeah.

01:36:16.000 And we can articulate this into...

01:36:17.000 Yeah, the potential is that we just met.

01:36:19.000 Yeah.

01:36:20.000 Right? It's like, you don't know me, I don't know you.

01:36:21.000 So what's going to come of this?

01:36:23.000 Yeah.

01:36:24.000 Well, many potential things.

01:36:25.000 Well, and we're having this conversation that's going to be watched by many people.

01:36:28.000 So we're bringing, by having this discussion, we're bringing, we're reshaping the potential that lies in front of us into something actual.

01:36:38.000 Yeah.

01:36:39.000 And we're determining with every gesture, every word, what that order is going to be.

01:36:46.000 And you're doing that all the time with people.

01:36:49.000 And, you know, one of the things that's really struck me is that people know this.

01:36:54.000 And I talk to people, I say, well, your parents are going to say to you, people who love you will say, you're not living up to your potential.

01:37:01.000 And if they're serious about that, then that strikes at your heart.

01:37:05.000 You think, oh my God, I'm not living up to my potential.

01:37:07.000 That's like the ultimate sin.

01:37:08.000 There's part of you that knows that.

01:37:10.000 And you think, well, I should be, I should be, like, making more of myself.

01:37:13.000 I should be living up to my potential.

01:37:14.000 And you never stop and sit back and think, what is this potential that we're referring to?

01:37:19.000 What do we mean by that potential?

01:37:21.000 And what sort of reality does it have?

01:37:23.000 Well, it's only potential.

01:37:24.000 What sort of reality does it have?

01:37:26.000 It has no reality.

01:37:27.000 It's only potential.

01:37:28.000 Well, so it's in, it's a weird, it's a weird, what would you, what would you call it?

01:37:35.000 It's not even a category.

01:37:36.000 It's, well, maybe it's a category.

01:37:39.000 Man, that's the best I can do on the spur of the moment.

01:37:42.000 We all act as if potential is real and that it can be transformed by our choices.

01:37:49.000 Yeah.

01:37:50.000 So when people say, when people say to me, hey, you're not making, you're not living up to your potential.

01:37:54.000 They're actually saying you're not, you're not articulating order from chaos as you could.

01:38:00.000 Yes.

01:38:01.000 Or the corollary is that you're also not standing up to tyranny.

01:38:04.000 Like, you know, you're not recasting tyrannical order like you should be.

01:38:08.000 It's both of those.

01:38:09.000 Yeah.

01:38:10.000 So there's chaos on one side and tyrannical order on the other.

01:38:12.000 Yeah, exactly.

01:38:13.000 And the logos mediates between.

01:38:14.000 Yes.

01:38:15.000 And so sometimes, and you see this in the story of Christ quite clearly, because first, especially in the extended version, let's say, where Christ is also the logos that exists at the beginning of time.

01:38:25.000 It's like, well, that's the word that brings forth order from chaos, but the incarnate Christ, let's say, the logos made flesh, that's a way of looking at it, has a social revolutionary element to him.

01:38:37.000 So he's standing up constantly against the Pharisees and the lawyers, right, the forces of tyranny.

01:38:42.000 And so he's more in the actual passion story.

01:38:47.000 He's more of a combatter of corrupt order than someone who's calling forth order from chaos.

01:38:56.000 That's the more abstract level.

01:38:58.000 Yeah.

01:38:59.000 But both of them are part, both of them are integrally part of the hero story.

01:39:02.000 The hero is always doing one of those two things.

01:39:04.000 Yeah.

01:39:05.000 So.

01:39:06.000 So when you think about the logos, is this the element that makes the individual possess a certain divinity in your, in your.

01:39:13.000 Yeah, it's indistinguishable from the divinity of the individual.

01:39:16.000 It's the same thing.

01:39:17.000 It's the divine principle of the individual.

01:39:19.000 Yeah.

01:39:20.000 And then the question, one question might be, well, you could say, well, what's the phenomenological status of that?

01:39:25.000 Which would be, how do you experience that?

01:39:27.000 And you experience that in many ways.

01:39:29.000 You experience that as a sense of meaning when you're doing something meaningful.

01:39:33.000 So that's a direct experience of it.

01:39:35.000 You can experience it in more, a more metaphysical way.

01:39:38.000 And people experience that when they experience feelings of the infinite, intimations of the infinite, intimations of immortality.

01:39:47.000 That's another way of thinking about it.

01:39:49.000 And those can happen when you're listening to music.

01:39:51.000 They can happen, they can happen in sexual encounters.

01:39:54.000 There's all sorts of rituals that might evoke them.

01:39:59.000 Micro examples occur when you're working, and you're deeply engaged in what you're doing, and you're finding it meaningful.

01:40:05.000 You can make contact with the part of you that seems infinite in scope.

01:40:09.000 And those are the sorts of experiences that people usually refer to as mystical.

01:40:13.000 And you know, you might think, well, those are just forms of insanity.

01:40:16.000 That would be a classic psychiatric materialist objection.

01:40:21.000 But the problem is, the evidence doesn't support that idea.

01:40:24.000 The evidence suggests that mystical experiences have a profoundly positive effect on all aspects of people's lives.

01:40:32.000 Now, that doesn't mean they can't go wrong. Schizophrenics sometimes have mystical experiences.

01:40:37.000 But they're less constructive.

01:40:40.000 It's not the same thing. It's not the same thing. And it shouldn't be confused.

01:40:44.000 There's no evidence that it's the same thing. And there's plenty of evidence that they're not the same thing.

01:40:50.000 They shouldn't be confused. And so, okay, so that's the phenomenological level.

01:40:55.000 You can experience these things, and people have strived to experience them throughout human history.

01:41:00.000 I mean, almost all the things we do that are cultural, like deeply cultural, all our forms, let's say, of entertainment,

01:41:07.000 which is a very bad way of thinking about it, are attempts to produce those intimations of the divine.

01:41:13.000 And people love that more than anything, and no wonder.

01:41:16.000 You couldn't say, well, that doesn't mean that there's any such thing as divine.

01:41:20.000 It's like, well, that's a whole different argument.

01:41:23.000 Maybe not divine, but transcendent nonetheless.

01:41:25.000 Well, you know, it's good enough.

01:41:28.000 You know, I'm not necessarily engaging in metaphysical speculation.

01:41:32.000 When I did the biblical lectures, for example, I tried to stay on psychological grounds.

01:41:36.000 Say, look, just read psychologically. These stories are sufficient.

01:41:41.000 I do believe that there's a metaphysical reality to the experiences of the intimations of immortality and divine unity that people are capable of having.

01:41:53.000 I believe there is metaphysical grounds for those.

01:41:56.000 I believe they're reflective of a deeper reality.

01:41:58.000 But you don't have to believe that in order to view this from a psychological or pragmatic perspective.

01:42:06.000 Yeah. So what I really enjoyed, I actually thoroughly enjoy it in my day to day life when I started to articulate the concept of the logos for myself.

01:42:16.000 Every morning when I wake up, I think, hey, I have a logos and I can start to create order out of something chaotic.

01:42:22.000 Right.

01:42:23.000 I can start to explore territory and bring it into my map of the world.

01:42:28.000 That's right. There's chaos to encounter and giants to fight.

01:42:31.000 Yeah. It's quite fun.

01:42:32.000 Yes. It's more fun than anything else.

01:42:34.000 I know.

01:42:35.000 It's better than fun.

01:42:36.000 Yeah.

01:42:37.000 That's the thing.

01:42:38.000 Yeah.

01:42:39.000 How would you call it if not fun?

01:42:40.000 Meaningful.

01:42:41.000 Meaningful.

01:42:42.000 It's meaningful, man.

01:42:43.000 And it's better.

01:42:44.000 And the reason to distinguish it from fun is that fun doesn't work when you're not having fun.

01:42:49.000 Fun doesn't work when you have people in your family that are suffering or when you're in a crisis.

01:42:53.000 That's not fun.

01:42:54.000 Yeah.

01:42:55.000 But this works then too.

01:42:56.000 Yeah.

01:42:57.000 Maybe even better.

01:42:58.000 So that's.

01:42:59.000 Yeah.

01:43:00.000 Yeah.

01:43:01.000 It's a boat that doesn't sink in a storm.

01:43:02.000 Yeah.

01:43:03.000 It's an adventure.

01:43:04.000 That's the other thing.

01:43:05.000 It's an adventure.

01:43:06.000 Yeah.

01:43:07.000 Or maybe it's even the adventure.

01:43:09.000 So you wake up in the morning and you think, exactly that.

01:43:12.000 There are dragons to slay and giants to fight.

01:43:16.000 It's like, yeah, absolutely.

01:43:18.000 Yeah.

01:43:19.000 Well, I think this is a good point to go to our third point.

01:43:22.000 The way to be in the world is to orient yourself to the highest possible good you can conceive

01:43:27.000 because you don't have anything better to do.

01:43:29.000 You also say that you encourage people to take on as much responsibility as they can

01:43:34.000 and because this constitutes a meaningful life.

01:43:37.000 And this is, I find this quite interesting.

01:43:39.000 You know what is meaningful because it is encoded into your body.

01:43:42.000 The notion of meaning.

01:43:43.000 Oh, yeah.

01:43:44.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:43:45.000 And.

01:43:46.000 It's the deepest.

01:43:47.000 It's the deepest of the higher instincts.

01:43:49.000 Yeah.

01:43:50.000 Yeah.

01:43:51.000 My reading of this was that, now it's actually your reading, but what constitutes meaning

01:43:57.000 is the right balance between chaos and order.

01:43:59.000 And this is actually what you describe as paradise on earth, being a walled garden where both chaos, the chaotic potential, and the logos mediate supreme beauty.

01:44:08.000 And.

01:44:09.000 Harmony.

01:44:10.000 Harmony.

01:44:11.000 Harmony is a good way of thinking about it.

01:44:12.000 Because, well, people understand harmony because they listen to music.

01:44:14.000 Yeah.

01:44:15.000 It's like, you know, you listen to a piece of music you love.

01:44:17.000 It's like, that's harmony.

01:44:18.000 It's like, well, how would you like things to be like that?

01:44:20.000 It's like, there's not a question.

01:44:22.000 The fact that you love the piece of music means that you want things to be that way.

01:44:26.000 It's direct.

01:44:27.000 It's not mediated by cognition.

01:44:30.000 Yeah.

01:44:31.000 It's something else.

01:44:32.000 It is something else.

01:44:33.000 It's absolutely something else.

01:44:34.000 When I first heard you say this, this sentence, orient yourself to the highest possible good you can conceive.

01:44:41.000 I'd never thought of it that way.

01:44:43.000 But when you just lay it out, it sounds really quite logical.

01:44:47.000 It sounds like the most logical thing to do.

01:44:49.000 Yes.

01:44:50.000 But I never heard it in an articulated fashion like that.

01:44:52.000 Yeah.

01:44:53.000 No.

01:44:54.000 I think that many people, I think it was the closing remarks of Maps of Meaning.

01:44:58.000 I think you refer to Pinocchio when Geppetto, which is from the star, which is the highest ideal.

01:45:04.000 Maps for something impossible.

01:45:05.000 Yeah.

01:45:06.000 Right.

01:45:07.000 But can you elaborate on this?

01:45:08.000 Why does the highest possible good constitute meaning?

01:45:11.000 And why do we feel this?

01:45:13.000 Why do we feel when we're doing something meaningful?

01:45:15.000 Well, I think it's because we go back to the beginning of the conversation is that we have a problem, right?

01:45:20.000 We have the fall.

01:45:22.000 That's the right way of thinking about it.

01:45:24.000 We have chaos and tyranny, and we have evil.

01:45:27.000 It's like, what do you do about that?

01:45:32.000 You pursue the pathway that solves those problems.

01:45:36.000 That's what the meaningful pathway does.

01:45:38.000 And that's why it feels meaningful.

01:45:40.000 It's like, those actually are the problems.

01:45:43.000 See, I've started to think, well, I thought for a long time, there are truths of drama and literature.

01:45:51.000 And there are material truths of science.

01:45:55.000 But there are times when those two align, and they're true literally and metaphysically, literally and metaphorically, at the same time.

01:46:05.000 And the idea that being is a place of tragedy and evil is literally and metaphorically true, both at the same time.

01:46:17.000 And the idea that there's a way of dealing with those both at the same time, and that that's meaningful, that's also literally and metaphorically true at the same time.

01:46:26.000 And the reason for that is that because it's true that our eternal enemies are tragedy and malevolence, we've adapted to them, and we can feel, so to speak, when we're contending with them properly.

01:46:43.000 And that feeling of contending with them properly is the feeling of meaning.

01:46:47.000 And so there you have it.

01:46:51.000 And the meaning that's produced as a consequence of contending with those properly is the antidote to them at the same time.

01:46:58.000 So, you know, in the Christian story, of course, Christ voluntarily hoists his cross.

01:47:05.000 Okay, so that means a lot of things at the same time.

01:47:08.000 I mean, first of all, it's actually a heavy physical object.

01:47:11.000 Second, it's something you have to hoist up into your shoulders.

01:47:14.000 It's a genuine burden.

01:47:15.000 So it's a genuine physical burden.

01:47:17.000 But it's also a metaphysical burden, because at the same time that he hoists up his cross, he's accepting the burden of his death.

01:47:25.000 And he's doing that, not only death, but suffering and death.

01:47:27.000 And he's doing that voluntarily.

01:47:29.000 It's like, that's the ticket, exactly that, is to do that voluntarily.

01:47:33.000 It's like, yeah, there's no doubt.

01:47:36.000 Life is tragic and bounded by malevolence.

01:47:39.000 No doubt about it.

01:47:40.000 Accept it.

01:47:41.000 Accept it.

01:47:42.000 Accept it.

01:47:43.000 Transcend it.

01:47:44.000 And then things...

01:47:46.000 Then you transmute it.

01:47:47.000 That's the...

01:47:48.000 That's...

01:47:49.000 That's what...

01:47:50.000 I've never recovered from that realization.

01:47:52.000 30 years ago.

01:47:54.000 That...

01:47:55.000 Which is a good thing.

01:47:56.000 Right.

01:47:57.000 That's a good thing.

01:47:58.000 But, you know, I would say in many ways I'm a deeply pessimistic person.

01:48:02.000 Because I'm very aware of the finitude of life and the suffering that's associated with it.

01:48:09.000 Acutely aware of that.

01:48:11.000 And also of malevolence.

01:48:12.000 And then I came across this set of ideas, which I've been elaborating, that we've been talking about.

01:48:16.000 And there's this process that's laid out as an antidote.

01:48:20.000 It's like, tell the truth.

01:48:21.000 Orient yourself towards the highest good you can conceive of and tell the truth.

01:48:25.000 And that will work.

01:48:26.000 And the strange thing is, it works.

01:48:28.000 It's like, really?

01:48:29.000 It works?

01:48:30.000 Those are big problems.

01:48:31.000 You might think they're so big that they have no solution.

01:48:34.000 How could they have a solution?

01:48:36.000 It's like, well, they have a solution.

01:48:38.000 Isn't that something?

01:48:39.000 I think in one of your lectures you refer to, or you say, or you tell the crowd, and you make these gestures.

01:48:47.000 You talk about alignment a lot.

01:48:48.000 And you always make this gesture.

01:48:49.000 I like that.

01:48:50.000 You say align your soul with the structure of being.

01:48:52.000 What does that mean?

01:48:54.000 Well, that means it's the same thing that you do when you're dancing with someone.

01:48:58.000 So imagine an orchestra is playing.

01:49:00.000 Are you a good dancer?

01:49:01.000 I'm a pretty good dancer.

01:49:03.000 What style?

01:49:04.000 Well, I wouldn't exactly say that what I have is a style.

01:49:08.000 I can dance with my wife, which is the crucial thing.

01:49:11.000 I mean, I'm a good enough dancer so that she likes to dance with me.

01:49:17.000 And she's actually a pretty good dancer, so that works out pretty well. 0.98

01:49:20.000 And I listen to the music, so I guess maybe that's partly why I can dance, because I actually listen to the music.

01:49:25.000 So imagine there's an orchestra.

01:49:27.000 Okay, now you think about what the orchestra is doing, right?

01:49:30.000 These people are hyper-specialized.

01:49:32.000 They're incredibly skilled.

01:49:34.000 They all have their individual talent.

01:49:36.000 They're all pushing the limit when they're really playing well, right?

01:49:38.000 They're pushing the limits of their capability.

01:49:40.000 And then they're organized into groups, strings, horns, etc.

01:49:44.000 So there's the individual, but then there's the group.

01:49:47.000 And then there's the aggregation of the group.

01:49:49.000 And then there's the conductor, who's the king, right?

01:49:51.000 And he's making sure that all of the skillful players play their part harmoniously.

01:49:56.000 And then they're laying out pattern upon pattern upon pattern upon pattern.

01:50:01.000 And they're modeling the structure of reality, because that's what reality is.

01:50:05.000 It's pattern upon pattern upon pattern, all harmoniously, when it's working nicely.

01:50:10.000 It's the music of the spheres.

01:50:11.000 It's all harmony, from the lowest subatomic level all the way up to the top.

01:50:16.000 And that's what music is modeling.

01:50:17.000 And then there's society.

01:50:19.000 That's all the dancers. 0.89

01:50:21.000 And they're all weaving in and out of each other's territory smoothly and without conflict, because they're paying attention.

01:50:28.000 And so that's society dancing to the tune that the king is conducting for the orchestra of being, right?

01:50:35.000 And then there's the dyad, the two people. 0.93

01:50:37.000 And they're paying attention to each other and matching their bodies to one another and delighting in the stacked harmony.

01:50:44.000 Well, that's perfect.

01:50:45.000 And people find that extremely enjoyable.

01:50:47.000 It's because they're acting out the proper mode of being.

01:50:50.000 They're dramatizing it.

01:50:52.000 And people find that invigorating and refreshing and beautiful, all of those things at the same time.

01:50:59.000 And so that's a dramatized example of how you should live your life.

01:51:05.000 And I mean, should, I don't mean you should live your life this way.

01:51:11.000 It's not that.

01:51:12.000 It's that if you want to make things better and not worse, then that's the pathway.

01:51:21.000 That's what I mean by should. 0.53

01:51:23.000 It's not follow the rules, goddammit.

01:51:25.000 I mean, there's some of that, because without the rules, you can't coexist and you can't become disciplined.

01:51:30.000 But it isn't follow the rules.

01:51:32.000 Your 12 goddamned rules for life. 0.83

01:51:34.000 Right, right. 0.98

01:51:35.000 Yeah, exactly.

01:51:36.000 Exactly.

01:51:37.000 Yeah.

01:51:38.000 No, okay.

01:51:39.000 I understand what you're saying, but it still doesn't quite answer my question.

01:51:44.000 Okay.

01:51:45.000 What does it mean to align your soul with the structure of being?

01:51:50.000 Because this sentence, it fascinated me, but I still cannot articulate in a concrete way what it means.

01:51:58.000 It has to do with speaking the truth when facing chaos.

01:52:01.000 Yeah, because it's partly because, you see, this is something I would really like people to take away from 12 rules of life.

01:52:08.000 It's like, there's a chapter in there called, do what is meaningful, not what is expedient.

01:52:13.000 And it lays out two pathways.

01:52:15.000 And it's so interesting, because I would say that what happened in the Channel 4 interview was that I was trying to use my speech in a meaningful manner.

01:52:24.000 And, you know, I'm not saying that I have no lingering elements of expediency, you know.

01:52:31.000 I'm not saying that, but I was trying to utilize my speech in a meaningful manner.

01:52:36.000 I wasn't trying to manipulate the conversation.

01:52:38.000 I didn't have a plan for the interview.

01:52:40.000 I didn't think, oh, I'm going to go on here and sell a million books.

01:52:43.000 There's no plan.

01:52:44.000 The plan was to go and have a talk.

01:52:46.000 That's it.

01:52:47.000 And to let whatever happened, happen.

01:52:49.000 Well, so the thing about telling the truth that's so adventurous is that you let go of what you want.

01:52:57.000 And you replace it with a hypothesis.

01:53:00.000 It's the hypothesis of faith.

01:53:03.000 And the hypothesis is, it doesn't matter what I want, because I don't know even what I should want.

01:53:10.000 Instead, I can say, I'm going to make a claim, a philosophical claim, that if I tell the truth as carefully as I can,

01:53:19.000 then whatever happens is the best that could have possibly happened in that situation, no matter how it looks.

01:53:25.000 Yeah.

01:53:26.000 Right.

01:53:27.000 Right.

01:53:28.000 That's profound.

01:53:29.000 Well, but it's adventurous.

01:53:31.000 That's the thing that's so fun about it.

01:53:33.000 And I think this is also why it's not merely you should bow down to the rules, because that's sort of a slave mentality in some sense, right?

01:53:41.000 I mean, you have to be a slave to things.

01:53:44.000 You have to be disciplined.

01:53:45.000 So I'm not denying the utility of following the rules.

01:53:49.000 But telling the truth is much more dynamic than that, because you don't know what's going to happen.

01:53:56.000 Yeah.

01:53:57.000 And you don't care.

01:53:59.000 Or, maybe to put it more precisely, as I said, you assume that whatever happens is the right thing.

01:54:05.000 Yeah.

01:54:06.000 And then it was so exciting to me last year when I was doing the biblical lectures to understand, finally, that the link between the idea of God employing the logos to create habitable order and saying that it was good.

01:54:20.000 Oh, okay.

01:54:21.000 So that's the deepest reflection of that idea.

01:54:23.000 The idea is that the being that you speak forth from potential with truth is good.

01:54:29.000 Yeah.

01:54:30.000 Yeah.

01:54:31.000 It's like, that might be true.

01:54:32.000 Yeah.

01:54:33.000 Well, Jesus, just think what it would be like if that was true.

01:54:36.000 Yeah.

01:54:37.000 It's the key.

01:54:38.000 It's like, well, how do you set things right?

01:54:40.000 Tell the truth.

01:54:41.000 I've actually come to think during the past two years that if you honestly speak the truth, it makes you, well, not indestructible, but it does kind of make your soul indestructible.

01:54:53.000 And I think the archetypes are referred to, you know, Maximus, Hector, Leonidas, all men who spoke the truth, they were all defeated in the end, but their soul was not broken when they were defeated.

01:55:03.000 Socrates is the best example of that because we know the thing about Socrates that's so cool is that many things is that, you know, there's arguments about the historical reality of Christ and there's arguments about the historical reality of the Buddha and Mohammed as well.

01:55:18.000 There's no arguments about the historical reality of Socrates. He lived. And we have two transcripts of his trial from two different people. And they basically, and I outlined this again in the same chapter about doing what is meaningful and not what is expedient.

01:55:33.000 You know, when Socrates, when he was accused of corrupting the youth of Athens, there was a game that was going on. It was a political game. And Socrates was a gadfly, right?

01:55:43.000 He bothered people because he kept asking them questions, you know, he wanted to know the answers. He'd ask them questions. And then the people he was questioning would find out that they didn't know the answers.

01:55:52.000 And that was very disturbing to them, you know. And so they all got together. Athens was a small city by our standards, only 25,000 people. Everyone knew everyone, like seriously, right?

01:56:03.000 And all the local aristocracy got together and said, God, you know, we're sick of this guy. Why don't we tell him we're going to put him on trial?

01:56:12.000 And sort of hint that he should get the hell out of town. That was the game. So, you know, they announced the trial and everyone knew it was going to be a fixed outcome.

01:56:20.000 But the idea was, well, we'll announce it six months ahead of time and he can have a colloquy with his friends and get out of town and then we'll be rid of him and that'll be the end of that.

01:56:29.000 Well, and Socrates knew that this was the game and so did his friends. And they all got together and said, well, you know, we've got to get you out of town.

01:56:36.000 And Socrates was thinking, yeah, that's probably a good idea because, like, I don't want to be dead. And then he went off and had a little consultation with his conscience, his daemon, he called it.

01:56:45.000 I think you actually pronounce it demon, but it means conscience for our purposes. And he went and had a conference with it.

01:56:54.000 A little, you know, and he was thinking internally, consulting his conscience. And it said, don't run away.

01:57:00.000 And he thought, well, really? What do you mean don't run away? These people want to kill me. They're going to kill me. What do you mean don't run away?

01:57:09.000 And his conscience said, don't run away. Don't run away. That's how it is. You're not to run away.

01:57:17.000 And Socrates came back and told his friends, okay, I went and talked to my conscience and he said, you know, the one thing that makes me different from all other men is that when my conscience tells me not to do something, I stop.

01:57:29.000 It doesn't tell me what to do. It tells me what not to do. And then I don't do it, no matter what. That's what made me who I am.

01:57:38.000 And he said, you know, the Delphic Oracle had said for her part, he said that as trial that he was the wisest man and she was very highly regarded, right?

01:57:47.000 Whatever she was doing with her hallucinogenic tricks, she was the mouthpiece of the gods and said that Socrates was the wisest man in Greece.

01:57:54.000 And we still remember him. He didn't run. He didn't run. And then he thought, okay, well, if my conscience is correct, let's assume that for a minute.

01:58:03.000 Weird as that is, because how could it be correct? But it's always been correct before. He said, well, look, and he said this at his trial.

01:58:09.000 I'm old. I'm old. I've been renowned for my clarity of thought. I'm going to die not so long from now.

01:58:17.000 And so now I have this opportunity to put my affairs in order and to say goodbye to everyone and to live the remainder of my life with integrity and to say what I have to say.

01:58:28.000 And then at his trial, he just flips the table and he goes after the people who are prosecuting him. And you see why they want him dead. It's devastating. It's devastating.

01:58:38.000 And so, you know, we know the story 2,000, 2,500 years later, 3,000 years later. And well, and that's a reflection of exactly what you said, is that that part of the spirit doesn't die.

01:58:50.000 Now, what does that mean? I think it means that it dies when you corrupt yourself.

01:58:56.000 Well, that's what Solzhenitsyn said in the Gulag Archipelago. You know, he said there's something worse than death. That's a good thing to know. 1.00

01:59:05.000 And that's the death of your soul. And that's whether the soul is immortal or not. It's a psychological idea.

01:59:11.000 It's like there are conditions under which it would be better not to live. Well, that's the cry for freedom, I would say.

01:59:18.000 You know, so because life without truth is hell. That's the right way of looking at it.

01:59:28.000 Yeah. Strong stuff. That's for sure. Yeah, I know. Life is hard. I know. And because life is hard, we're going to the fourth point, which might make it a little less hard.

01:59:39.000 It's from your biblical series. I think this is from Noah. Yeah. The floodman. Make the right sacrifices to walk with God.

01:59:46.000 Yeah. And within this conception, the concept of God is a judgmental father, which is an articulation of our discovery of being able to bargain with the future.

01:59:55.000 Yeah. Right. What does it mean to make the right sacrifices when bargaining with the future?

02:00:01.000 It means that as you, let's say you conceptualize what you're pursuing as good. And you asked a bit about putting things in alignment.

02:00:10.000 And I would say, okay, well, here's a technical description of what's good. It's what's good for you now in a way that's good for you tomorrow and next week and next month and next year.

02:00:21.000 So it can be iterated. Right. So you can't do impulsive things because the problem with doing impulsive things is they're really good right now, but you're dead tomorrow.

02:00:28.000 That's not a good solution. And if it's impulsive now and you're dead in a year, that's also not a good solution. So you're bounded by the necessity of preserving yourself across time.

02:00:40.000 But that's not the only boundary because it has to be good for you, but it also has to be good for the people around you in ever widening concentric circles.

02:00:48.000 And that's not much different from it being good for your future self. So it's a very, it's a very constrained set of procedures, but people are signaling to each other what these things are all the time.

02:00:59.000 So, you know, if you're in a conversation at a party and you behave properly, then people are happy to have you around and they laugh at your jokes and they tell you interesting things and it's engaging.

02:01:09.000 And if you're off the path at all, then they frown at you or they ignore you or you're boring and people are signaling your position on the line between chaos and order at you all the time, all the time, nonstop.

02:01:22.000 Everyone's broadcasting at everyone else always. And so to align yourself with the highest good is to figure out how to conduct yourself so that all things are working as well as they can because of what you're doing right now.

02:01:36.000 Because of what you're doing right now. Now, you're aiming at that. That doesn't mean you can do it. But that's what you're aiming at. And then you get better at doing it.

02:01:43.000 And then while you're doing that, in principle, you concentrate on the day, right? So that you can pay real attention to the moment. Orient yourself properly so you're looking in the right direction.

02:01:53.000 You're aiming at the right thing and then concentrate locally. That's what the Sermon on the Mount, that's the message of the Sermon on the Mount, by the way.

02:02:02.000 The initial question was, what does it mean to make the right sacrifices?

02:02:11.000 Right. OK. So now let's say you're aiming at what you're aiming at. You're walking towards it.

02:02:16.000 Well, you may find that there are things that you're doing that you just have to stop doing.

02:02:20.000 For example, when I was writing Maps of Meaning, I was going out and partying a lot.

02:02:25.000 Three times a week. Yeah. And I particularly liked alcohol. And I think it had something to do with my proclivity towards depression.

02:02:33.000 But if I had a couple of drinks, that just disappeared. And I came from a pretty hard drinking childhood culture, you know, where I grew up.

02:02:42.000 And I smoked as well. And especially when I was drinking. And that was fine. I was pretty immune to hangovers when I was young.

02:02:50.000 But as I got older, that wasn't so much the case. But more than that, when I was working on Maps of Meaning, it was very, very...

02:02:56.000 It was really stretching me like to the limits of my tolerance. And lots of times when I was rewriting and thinking, it was so stressful that if I was hungover, I just couldn't tolerate it.

02:03:08.000 But worse than that, I couldn't think clearly. Not as clearly as I had to.

02:03:12.000 When you were hungover. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It was like, especially if I had, you know, maybe I'd taken a paragraph and written it 15 times or 20 times, trying to get it right.

02:03:20.000 Well, now I had to write it the 21st time. But it was already almost as good as I could make it.

02:03:25.000 And so if I wasn't in tip-top shape when I was looking at it, and I edited it, I'd make it worse.

02:03:30.000 So I had to make a choice. It was like, well, you want to make this better? Or do you want to keep going out three times a week?

02:03:36.000 Because you can't do both. It's like, okay, well, enough of that. So I stopped doing that.

02:03:41.000 And there's lots of things I stopped doing. Because they were incommensurate with the goal.

02:03:47.000 And that's a sacrifice. And you make the sacrifices necessary to trans... 1.00

02:03:54.000 There's no difference between making sacrifices and transforming. It's the same thing.

02:03:58.000 So you think, well, this is what I want. Okay, well, if that's what you want, then you can't also have this.

02:04:04.000 Make your choice. Okay, I'll give that up. Well, does that please God?

02:04:10.000 Well, that's the archetypal way of thinking about it. Well, you'll find out.

02:04:15.000 What you also say in your flood myth lectures is that the flood is kind of a metaphor for natural atrophy.

02:04:24.000 Yeah, sure. Things fall apart.

02:04:26.000 Things decay. But by making the right sacrifice, you can build the ark to withstand the decay around you.

02:04:32.000 Well, I really experienced that this year. So in a synchronous way, you know, while I was lecturing about Noah, you know, I was in this intense political controversy.

02:04:45.000 And I mean, I've been in a situation for 15 months now where if I say anything wrong, I'm done.

02:04:54.000 And, you know, I've said things that were more wrong than they might have been. It skirted that edge, you know.

02:05:00.000 So I've been hyper-vigilant about what I've been saying and what I've been doing for this extended period of time with real catastrophe lurking as a consequence of making an error.

02:05:13.000 Well, luckily, well, during that time, especially when it was really intense at the beginning, it's not so threatening now as it was, even though it's still very strange and intense.

02:05:25.000 You know, I was very fortunate because my parents were at my house when all this broke and my wife and my kids are around.

02:05:34.000 They're adults. And we'd had, we were sorted out. You know, like, I have a good relationship with my father. We've straightened it out.

02:05:43.000 I have a good relationship with my mom. I trust them both. They tell me the truth. They're on my side. Same with my wife. Same with my kids.

02:05:50.000 And then I have a circle of friends outside that that are people. Same thing. We have, our relationship is solid. We tell each other what we think.

02:05:59.000 And so I had people who were supporting me, helping me figure out when I was making mistakes, telling me when they thought what I was doing was working and when it wasn't.

02:06:07.000 We were analyzing this very carefully. And it was maximally stressful. But there wasn't additional stress because of unresolved issues in the family.

02:06:17.000 And that was good because like three or four additional pieces of stress, I would have started to make mistakes and the whole bloody thing would have spiraled down.

02:06:23.000 So let's say that the outside conditions, they were, they were tragedy, but there was no malevolence within your own structure. So you can handle it.

02:06:30.000 There was, there was, it was restricted to the degree that goodwill had restricted it over about a 25 year period.

02:06:36.000 You know, so you never say none because there's always a snake in the garden, you know, but it was, it was as good as we could make it with our honest attempts to do so.

02:06:46.000 Yeah. And that was good enough. And then, you know, when I read about Noah, it was a story that I hadn't delved into as deeply as I had into some of the earlier stories in Genesis.

02:06:57.000 There's one line says that Noah was perfect in his generations. And I thought, I don't know what the hell that means. So I went and looked up every biblical phrase, you know, as comments on it from centuries of commentators.

02:07:10.000 So you can really dig into these and figure out what they mean. And, you know, basically what it meant was that because he was a good man, he had structured his family in a manner that was healthy, you know, and, and, and sustaining.

02:07:21.000 And so then when all hell break broke loose, the arc was, was there and ready. And that's a lesson. It's like, you're going to hit things in your life.

02:07:30.000 Like my daughter, for example, was very, very ill and horribly ill for, for a long time, deathly ill and suffering terribly. She was on high doses of, of opiates for two years.

02:07:42.000 She was basically walking around on two broken legs. And that was, that was only one of the things that was bothering her, you know, so she was in agony, it just about broke her at one point.

02:07:52.000 And so we were completely distraught by this ongoing catastrophe, you know, and had there been any additional trouble between my wife and I, or between my daughter and I, or between my son and I, like, God only knows what would have happened.

02:08:09.000 You know, because we barely squeaked through that, but we did, we did, we did get through it.

02:08:14.000 You know, and I told her one thing, for example, which is apropos in this world of victimization. I said, look, kid, she was about eight, I said, you're, you're in real trouble, man, you're in real trouble.

02:08:24.000 It's like, here, you're, you're, you have these terrible physical illnesses. And there's something worse, is that you're going to be tempted to use your illness as an excuse to not engage in life.

02:08:36.000 And it's going to be hard for you to tell when you can't do something because you're sick, and when it would just be convenient of you to use your illness as an excuse for not doing it.

02:08:47.000 I said, look, if you ever do that, you'll not only be sick physically, you'll be sick spiritually, and then you're done. That'll be worse.

02:08:54.000 And to her credit, her great credit, she, she listened, and she didn't ever play victim. Thank God.

02:09:02.000 How old was she when you told her this?

02:09:04.000 Oh, probably eight. Yeah, well, the chips were down already. That was about, she was about that old, too, if I remember correctly, when I taught her how to give her own injections, you know, and that was, so she had to use this chemical that was basically. 1.00

02:09:17.000 And killer injections? No, it was an anti-cancer, it was a, it was a chemotherapy agent. She didn't have cancer, but it was a chemotherapy agent. And, you know, we could have administered it to her, she had to do it, I think, three times a day. And, you know, part of our theory was, well, we want to give her as much control over her fate as possible, you know, and so when she was about eight, I sat her down, she was pretty motivated by money, she's an evil little capitalist. And I sat her down, I said, look,

02:09:46.980 look, kid, here's your needle, see if you can do this, give your own injection. I said, I'll pay you 50 bucks. And you sit there and you see if you can do it. If you can do it, I'll give you 50 dollars. She sat there, like, on the steps for 45 minutes trying to do it. It's quite harsh to watch.

02:10:08.980 She was eight years old at the time? Yeah, and she did it. And she said, I did it. I said, here's your money, kid. And so the next time, she, she had to do it. I said, it's 50 bucks again, but you only got 15 minutes. So she did it. I paid her. And then it was the next, it was like, you got five minutes, and then you got 30 seconds, then you got five seconds, because like, what, do you want her to sit there and torture herself with the needle for half an hour? It's like, get it over with. And she got so she could do it immediately.

02:10:38.980 She gave herself an injection pretty much for then on, you know, but, well, you know, there was no choice. She was either going to climb on top of that goddamn illness, or it was going to do her in. 0.98

02:10:51.680 She recovered? Yeah. Not only did she recover, she figured out what was wrong. And she fixed it. And then she fixed me. So diet changes. Both Tammy and I, my wife, we have autoimmune problems. 1.00

02:11:06.040 I mean, hers are of one sort. My wife has celiac disease, and mine are of another sort, which is not quite specified, but seems to be associated with kind of an inflammation-caused depression that runs in my family.

02:11:19.640 But Michaela, my daughter, seemed to get both of them. And it really, well, she developed juvenile rheumatoid arthritis and had her hip destroyed when she was 16, and then her ankle on the other leg the next year.

02:11:31.740 So it was vicious. But she figured out herself it was a diet issue.

02:11:35.540 Yeah. Jesus.

02:11:37.340 That's for sure. And here it's worse than that even, because her dietary response to something that she eats but shouldn't doesn't occur until four days after she eats it.

02:11:48.680 It's hard to track.

02:11:49.900 Oh, Jesus. And then it lasts a month. So imagine you're trying to figure out your diet. You eat something, you have no idea whether you react to it until four days later.

02:11:59.240 So that's virtually impossible to figure out to begin with. And then if you make a mistake, you're screwed for a month.

02:12:05.240 And so that means that, you know, three weeks into the month, you might eat something that you don't even know you shouldn't eat.

02:12:11.380 And then it's another month. You don't even know. So it's a miracle she figured it out.

02:12:16.460 It does sound miraculous for her to have articulated order into this chaotic mode.

02:12:22.940 Yeah, it is. It's unbelievable. I mean, it's really, she was sleeping 18 hours a day. She could only stay awake using Ritalin. Like, she was seriously depressed, like terribly depressed.

02:12:34.340 And that was actually, I asked her at one point, the depression was partly associated with pain. But not only that, I asked her at one point, and this is something to think about regard to depression.

02:12:45.340 I asked her one day when she was about 13, I said, look, kid, no, no, it was after her ankle had fallen apart on her and she'd undergone all this pain.

02:12:52.740 She had 38 affected joints. And the prognosis was multiple early joint replacements. So we found that out when she was quite young.

02:13:00.840 But I asked her one day, okay, you got a choice, kid. You can either have the arthritis or the depression. Which would you pick?

02:13:09.500 She said she'd pick the arthritis. So that gives you some indication of what the depression was like.

02:13:15.240 Quite severe.

02:13:15.980 Yeah, I would say so. It's a form of agony that you wouldn't wish upon your worst enemy. And it looks like it was inflammation.

02:13:23.600 And at that age, so young.

02:13:27.580 Anyway, she's not taking any medication.

02:13:29.300 No.

02:13:30.640 No.

02:13:31.460 It's amazing.

02:13:32.600 It's a miracle.

02:13:33.340 And she had a baby this year.

02:13:35.620 We were never sure that was going to happen.

02:13:37.740 So that was...

02:13:40.860 We squeaked through, man.

02:13:43.140 By having a relation that was embedded in truth.

02:13:46.020 Well, at least we didn't interfere with whatever was within her that might have been able to manage this, right?

02:13:53.380 Yeah.

02:13:53.720 So her brother, more power to him, I always treated him, Julian is his name, ever since he was a little kid, I treated him like he was, what would you say, capable of wisdom.

02:14:09.780 And when he was little, I used to ask him, you know, hard questions, and ask him about how we should structure things in the household, ask him about how chores should be distributed, bring him into the conversation.

02:14:21.480 And he was always very judicious, very diplomatic, and very mature.

02:14:25.780 And right from the time he was a little kid, I never played any games with him, and any tricks on him, you know?

02:14:33.120 Well, never.

02:14:34.620 I did my best not to.

02:14:36.380 And, you know, when he was about 14, which is sort of prime troublemaking time, and he certainly had the temperament for it, he was a bloody rock, you know?

02:14:44.320 He was perfect.

02:14:45.860 He helped his sister.

02:14:47.800 He stayed around the house.

02:14:49.240 He didn't cause any extra trouble, or if he did, he kept it private and didn't involve us in it, and he accepted the fact that we didn't have as much time to pay attention to him as we would have liked to, and he let his sister rely on him.

02:15:03.580 And he didn't go out with his friends as much as he might have, and he did that for multiple years.

02:15:08.400 No complaints.

02:15:09.960 Perfect.

02:15:11.380 So, thank God for that.

02:15:15.240 Yeah.

02:15:17.140 Thank God, indeed.

02:15:17.960 We have one more point to address, if you want.

02:15:22.040 It's actually the fifth point.

02:15:25.620 It says, minimize your persona, cultivate your essence, and live in its closest possible proximity, referring to the essence.

02:15:32.580 I think there's one lecture of you on existentialism and authenticity, and this is a theme throughout Maps of Meaning, especially the Pinocchio series.

02:15:40.960 Could you elaborate on that?

02:15:42.140 Well, a persona is like a suit.

02:15:45.680 It's like a suit, I mean a business suit.

02:15:48.820 A business suit is the expression of a persona.

02:15:51.280 So, when you go into a bank, and you see the teller, and the teller's in a suit, you really interact with the suit, in some sense.

02:15:59.000 Because you don't want to hear about the tragedy of the teller's life.

02:16:02.500 It's not the time or place for that.

02:16:04.340 And he doesn't want to hear about yours.

02:16:05.920 You want to walk in there in a suit, and you want to see him or her in business attire, and you want to do your financial transaction, you want to say hello, and be polite, and you want to leave.

02:16:15.680 And so what that means is that you have to have a public face for your complexity, and you have to simplify yourself so that other people can interact with you.

02:16:28.700 It's politeness, right?

02:16:29.840 It's politeness to do that, and it's politeness not to poke behind that unless people ask.

02:16:34.940 And then we can, it's part of being civilized, domesticated even, that's the downside, that's the side that subjects you to tyranny, but it's part of being civilized.

02:16:46.060 So you go from the state of nature to possession by the persona, let's say.

02:16:55.240 But that's not where it should stop, because then if you're only persona, that's not good, because you're too tightly associated with the state and the culture.

02:17:02.400 There's nothing about you that's really individual.

02:17:04.880 There's no, the spirit, your individual spirit hasn't been integrated into your personality.

02:17:09.440 So you have to, you have to go beyond the persona.

02:17:12.840 It doesn't mean you don't have to have one.

02:17:14.980 God, you're no good at all if you don't have a persona.

02:17:17.100 Who can stand being around you?

02:17:19.280 You don't know how to behave. 0.95

02:17:21.400 But if you only know how to behave, you're just a domesticated house cat or a lap dog.

02:17:27.040 You have to be, you have to push beyond the persona, and that's what the integration of the shadow does from the Jungian.

02:17:32.400 It's like to pull that monster that's being edited out of you, to pull that back in, and to allow that to reveal itself within your, within your increasingly sophisticated way of being.

02:17:48.420 And then you're not just a persona.

02:17:50.760 So if you want to push back on your persona, are you saying that you have to cultivate your dark, your shadow? 0.86

02:17:56.040 Is that the premier path?

02:17:57.980 Yeah, because the thing is, you can't, you can't escape from your persona unless you can say no.

02:18:04.740 Here's an example from popular culture.

02:18:08.320 In the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter's obviously the hero of the story.

02:18:13.160 He's touched by malevolence, right?

02:18:14.880 The only reason he can stand up against evil is because there's some evil in him that he's incorporated, essentially.

02:18:19.900 Well, and that's exactly right.

02:18:21.840 And the persona, if you're a persona, then you're an obedient citizen.

02:18:27.940 But the problem with being an obedient citizen is that if the society tells you to march the Jews off to the death camp, for example, and you're obedient, then that's what you'll do. 0.90

02:18:38.740 And it doesn't, it isn't like society is civilized, then all of a sudden you're performing some act of atrocity.

02:18:45.560 That isn't how it works.

02:18:47.000 It's like you're an obedient citizen, and then you're asked to violate your conscience a little bit.

02:18:53.160 Yeah.

02:18:53.620 And you have to, because you don't have anything other than that persona.

02:18:58.460 And so, and that's obedience.

02:18:59.940 And so, a little more obedience is demanded, and you say, okay, well, then you're a little bent, because the society is becoming a little bent.

02:19:07.360 And then you're a little weaker, and then you're asked to violate your conscience a little bit more.

02:19:12.100 And you think, well, there's a little less of me, and the pressure's on a little more, and I could have said no before, but I didn't.

02:19:17.000 So you say yes again, and then you say yes again, and then you have a society where one-third of the population is informing on the other two-thirds.

02:19:25.180 It's hell.

02:19:26.400 It's like, well, so how do you say no?

02:19:28.580 Well, that's the shadow.

02:19:29.520 It's like, and that's, see, the reason that the video I did about Bill C-16 and its compelled speech provisions went viral was because I said no.

02:19:42.940 I didn't say it casually.

02:19:44.640 What I meant was, there isn't anything that you can do to me that I can imagine that will force me to utter the words that you want me to utter.

02:19:55.640 Nothing.

02:19:56.740 And I meant it.

02:19:57.960 And when I made the video, I think people could actually tell that I meant it.

02:20:02.700 And so I took this abstract problem and made it concrete.

02:20:06.840 I said no, that's not happening.

02:20:09.360 And so, and that's part of the incorporation of the shadow.

02:20:12.240 But in this regard, the shadow is actually benevolent, not malevolent.

02:20:16.220 Well, once it's incorporated, yeah, well, that's the thing.

02:20:19.340 And I don't know what to make of that in its entirety because it sort of means that if you, it means something like, because one of the old metaphysical problems is why would God allow evil into the world?

02:20:32.260 I think, well, maybe God didn't allow evil into the world.

02:20:34.620 Maybe God allowed the possibility of evil into the world.

02:20:37.440 That's different.

02:20:38.900 And maybe the world with the possibility of evil is actually a better world than the world without the possibility of evil.

02:20:44.640 So, it's something like that, you know, in that maybe a man is better when he's a dangerous man who's being good than he would be if he was just a good man who wasn't capable of being dangerous.

02:20:55.240 And I believe that because the best men that I've ever met are very dangerous men.

02:20:59.440 You don't mess with them.

02:21:01.060 Yeah.

02:21:01.300 So, and you know that as soon as you meet them.

02:21:03.460 Do you think weak men can be virtuous?

02:21:06.160 No.

02:21:06.420 Because I think that when you're weak, let's say that signals that you don't have the options to sin.

02:21:13.260 Right.

02:21:13.400 Which is something that creates resentment, and resentment creates corruption.

02:21:18.860 So, in this sequence, do you think that someone without teeth or without the options to sin can be good?

02:21:26.340 See, that's a real theological question, right?

02:21:29.260 Because the question you're asking is, and this is tied up with the idea of free will and evil.

02:21:33.880 Can a person who doesn't have the option to be evil be good?

02:21:37.120 And I would say no.

02:21:37.940 So maybe that's the reason that metaphysically speaking, you know, and I don't know where you are when you're speaking metaphysically exactly, but the question of why is there evil in the world is a constant question.

02:21:50.120 It's like, it's possible that without the possibility of evil, there cannot be good.

02:21:56.160 Good requires the possibility of evil.

02:21:58.540 And maybe good is so good that the fact that it requires the possibility of evil is acceptable.

02:22:04.600 Maybe it's even desirable.

02:22:05.880 I mean, you know, you kind of end up on the edge of your knowledge when talking about such things.

02:22:11.780 But it seems to me to be right.

02:22:14.360 Yeah.

02:22:14.920 And it seems to be right in a lived sense, you know, like I met Jocko Willink.

02:22:20.700 He's a good example.

02:22:21.600 I mean, Willink was the commander in Ramadan, I think.

02:22:24.260 And, you know, you can say what you want about American military involvement.

02:22:27.680 It has nothing to do with that, really.

02:22:29.560 Not at this level of analysis.

02:22:31.220 He's a tough guy.

02:22:32.540 I follow him on Twitter.

02:22:33.500 Yeah, so you know.

02:22:34.420 He gets up every morning at 5.30.

02:22:36.680 He's a tough guy.

02:22:37.680 He said, he told me quite straightforwardly, that he was one of those kids that as an adolescent could have gone either way.

02:22:43.700 He could have been a highly successful street criminal.

02:22:47.520 Yeah, probably.

02:22:47.960 Right.

02:22:48.380 Yeah, probably.

02:22:49.400 Well, you can see it.

02:22:50.520 But he decided not to do that.

02:22:52.180 And, you know, he's very, I would say, he's...

02:22:53.960 He was a SEAL, right?

02:22:54.940 That's right.

02:22:55.640 He's psychophysiologically intimidating.

02:22:57.780 He's a big guy.

02:22:58.500 You can tell he knows how to use it.

02:23:00.420 And you can tell he used it.

02:23:02.240 But as far as I can tell, he's a good person.

02:23:04.480 And that's actually...

02:23:05.680 All of that capacity for mayhem is part of what makes him a good person.

02:23:10.520 And people know that.

02:23:11.300 That's why they're listening to him.

02:23:12.620 And like I said, the other people I've met, the men I've met who are good men, they're all like that.

02:23:18.520 They're all dangerous.

02:23:20.060 They're all dangerous.

02:23:21.060 Yeah.

02:23:21.600 Have they all been not good men before?

02:23:24.400 Or is that not part of becoming a good man?

02:23:26.460 Well, you know, adolescents break rules, right?

02:23:40.420 And healthy adolescents break rules.

02:23:42.420 And so then the question is, well, how extreme does the rule-breaking become?

02:23:47.020 Well, it would vary from person to person.

02:23:49.740 But I would say that most of them, not all of them, but most of them were more on the end of the rule-breaking spectrum, right?

02:23:55.460 They broke more rules than normal, but they clued in, you know, and decided, explored that and then decided, no, that's not.

02:24:06.680 That's better than cowardice.

02:24:09.300 It's better than weakness, but it's not as good as what's good.

02:24:12.420 So if you follow this doctrine, actually the people that are accusing you of instantiating, like, toxic masculinity, well, let's say that it's true that you're promoting male strength.

02:24:27.780 Masculine strength.

02:24:28.780 Well, it's important because I'm also promoting it in women. 0.99

02:24:32.180 Yeah.

02:24:32.700 You know, like my daughter's a good example, man.

02:24:34.760 She's tough.

02:24:35.440 You don't mess with her.

02:24:36.900 She'll cut you apart. 1.00

02:24:37.800 Yeah. 0.99

02:24:38.720 I believe you.

02:24:40.620 Maybe it was wrongly phrased.

02:24:42.600 No, no, it's okay.

02:24:43.620 No, but the thing, what I'm trying to get is that when you're telling people to empower themselves.

02:24:48.260 I wouldn't say that because I'd never use that word.

02:24:51.020 Empower?

02:24:51.420 I hate that word, but it's okay. 0.74

02:24:53.420 To become stronger.

02:24:54.220 I'm encouraging people.

02:24:54.920 Yeah.

02:24:55.180 I like that word better because I'm encouraging people.

02:24:57.740 Yeah.

02:24:58.000 You know, to put courage into them.

02:24:59.900 That's better.

02:25:00.460 Yeah.

02:25:01.020 So, by becoming courageous, you increase your potential for being virtuous.

02:25:05.180 Mm-hmm.

02:25:05.820 That's basically.

02:25:06.660 Mm-hmm.

02:25:07.760 Well, and one of the most amazing things that I discovered this year, or stumbled upon,

02:25:12.720 was I was puzzling over a line in the New Testament, which I've always been curious about

02:25:18.040 because it never sat right with me.

02:25:20.580 The meek shall inherit the earth. 1.00

02:25:21.960 So, I was, as I said before, if you go online, Bible Hub, I think it's called Bible Hub, it's

02:25:28.700 really good for this because it contains a collection of commentaries, so you can look

02:25:32.020 at a verse.

02:25:32.340 And translations, right?

02:25:32.920 Yeah.

02:25:33.260 Yeah, you can look at a verse and other translations, multiple translations, and multiple commentators.

02:25:38.340 So, each verse is taken apart by many, many people.

02:25:41.680 And I found out that the word meek, meek either doesn't mean now what it meant when people

02:25:48.460 first translated the text, or it was a mistranslation, either way.

02:25:53.800 But, because meek sounds like powerless and harmless, it's something like that, right? 0.98

02:25:58.720 But, what meek actually means, it's the derivation of a word, it's the translation of a word that

02:26:03.640 meant something more like, those who have swords and know how to use them, but keep them sheathed.

02:26:09.320 I thought, oh yes, that's exactly it.

02:26:11.180 The world, those who have swords and know how to use them, but choose to keep them sheathed, 0.99

02:26:17.600 will inherit the world.

02:26:18.980 It's like, yes, exactly right, exactly right.

02:26:22.920 Much different than the idea of meek.

02:26:25.360 Quite different, quite different.

02:26:27.060 I think this is a good point and a good note to close as well.

02:26:30.940 I agree.

02:26:31.960 Thank you very much.

02:26:32.980 My pleasure.

02:26:33.640 Nice talking with you.

02:26:34.540 Thank you for listening to the Jordan B. Peterson podcast.

02:26:39.680 You can check out the original videos by following the links that are in the description of this

02:26:43.980 episode.

02:26:45.880 You can support these podcasts by going to selfauthoring.com or understandmyself.com.

02:26:52.100 Thank you very much.

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - January 29, 2018

Cathy Newman Interview & Analysis

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