Dr. Jordan Peterson s work as a clinical psychology professor at the University of Toronto has catapulted him to international fame with arguments that are challenging and changing the way we all think. He has captured the attention of millions, especially of young men, but some young women as well. Today, he is here, breaking down his provocative rules for life and the prescription for success that will surprise many of you. Dr. Peterson is a clinical psychologist and author, and has decades of experience helping patients. He provides a roadmap towards healing, showing that while the journey isn t easy, it s absolutely possible to find your way forward. If you re suffering, please know you are not alone. There s hope, and there s a path to feeling better. Go to Daily Wire Plus now and start watching Dr. Jordan B. Peterson s new series on Depression and Anxiety: A Guide to Finding a Brighter Future You Deserve, where you ll learn how to deal with the challenges that life throws your way and find a way to overcome them in order to live the life you deserve. You can support these podcasts by donating to his Patryk Peterson s Patron, the link to which can be found in the description of the description. You ll be the first step towards the brighter future you deserve, and the best way to live your best life you can achieve it. Thank you for joining us, Dr. B. P. Dr. P Peterson - The Jordan B Peterson Podcast . Thanks to Dailywireplus for sponsoring the podcast for sponsoring this episode of The Jordan Peterson Podcast! and for supporting the podcast, Dailywire Plus, for sponsoring our next episode of the podcast and for helping to support the podcast. , , DailywirePlus. and Dailywire. for supporting this podcast, go to DailyWire Plus to get a 50% signup bonus of up to $250. to place your bets at Betonline.ag to place a friendly wager at BetOnline.ag to betonline. Use promo code DAILYWIRE.ag, betonlineag BetOnline using promo code Dailywire plus now and get a $250 bet on $250, $250 of up-to $250 in the future you get a better chance of a better bet on the future of your bet? Use Promo Code DAILYWEEPRODUCING $250 by betting online.
01:02:31.920He's undeniably one of the greatest intellectual phenomenons of our generation.
01:03:00.340Dr. Jordan Peterson's work as a clinical psychology professor at the University of Toronto has catapulted him to international fame with arguments that are challenging and changing the way we all think.
01:03:12.380He has captured the attention of millions, especially of young men, but some young women as well.
01:03:16.380And many of you, however, have never heard of him, but you will get to know him for the first time through this interview.
01:03:21.880Today he is here, breaking down his provocative rules for life and the prescription for success that will surprise many of you.
01:03:31.300So it is an interesting group of insights that you offer us, and I can enter it in many ways, but let me just start with, for me, perhaps the most obvious, which is what is it that you're saying that's resonating with so many people?
01:03:51.600We've had a long conversation in our culture about the necessity for self-esteem and happiness, and that's not what I'm talking about.
01:04:03.040I tell my audiences and my readers very straightforwardly that life is difficult and that there's a lot of suffering in it, and that you have to learn how to conduct yourself in the face of that.
01:04:16.720The problem with the pursuit of happiness is that when life's storms come along, happiness disappears, and then you're left with nothing.
01:04:25.740And so you need to pursue something that's deeper than happiness.
01:04:28.400And if happiness comes along, well, then, hooray for you.
01:04:32.220You don't want to despise it because it's fleeting, but it's much better to pursue things that are meaningful than things that make you happy.
01:04:38.560It's deeper, and it orients you more appropriately, and it keeps you centered in your own life and makes you more useful for your family and your community.
01:04:48.780And it's a relief to young people to know that the baseline conditions of life are difficult, but that you can still prevail.
01:04:55.940So it's a funny message in some sense, or a strange message, because on the one hand, it's somewhat pessimistic.
01:05:00.900Now, I talk about suffering and malevolence also, but I also emphasize the fact that despite that being the base conditions of existence, people are tough enough to prevail.
01:05:14.480The other element is the necessity of responsibility.
01:05:18.920So a lot of what people find in life that provides them with a sustaining meaning is a consequence of not the pursuit of rights or the pursuit of happiness or the development of self-esteem, but the adoption of responsibility.
01:05:35.080And the more responsibility, in some sense, the better.
01:05:38.940Responsibility for yourself, for making sure that your life lays itself out like it should.
01:06:20.520And yet you've been a lightning rod in many ways with a lot of harsh comments, especially in the print media.
01:06:28.840What is it that your critics are arguing?
01:06:30.600Well, I got embroiled in some political dispute, I would say, in my home front in Canada, when our government introduced some legislation that purported to be about compassion, which to my way of thinking was about compulsion with regards to speech.
01:06:46.980But I also think that people aren't necessarily that happy with a message of personal responsibility when they're really interested in the mechanics of social change.
01:06:55.900You know, my sense is, is that, well, life is unfair, social structures are unfair, the arbitrary way that illness is distributed into the population is unfair.
01:07:08.600But despite that, the best level of analysis for rectifying that in a practical sense, but also in a psychological sense, is the level of the individual.
01:07:18.960And so people who think in a collectivist manner or people who, who are playing identity politics games that insist that your group identity should be your hallmark don't like what I have to say at all.
01:07:59.960I mean, it's, it's a challenging profession.
01:08:02.320You chose it coming out of a rural town in central Canada.
01:08:07.060How did that advance your life journey?
01:08:09.080What is, what is, what in your life has inspired you to do what you do now?
01:08:12.900And especially to take some of the public steps now that are drawing criticism to you, which is always painful.
01:08:18.900Well, I've always been obsessed with totalitarianism and authoritarian governments, whether they're on the right or the left.
01:08:25.780I mean, for years, decades, really, I spent almost all of my free time thinking about what happened in Nazi Germany and in Russia.
01:08:36.860In, in, in the, during the Soviet era, but also in Maoist China.
01:08:41.040There were other places as well, trying to understand how it was that we could have got off the rails so absolutely terribly.
01:08:47.440And I started studying that at the collectivist level, I would say, looking for political reasons or economic reasons.
01:08:56.420But as I investigated further, those levels of analysis became increasingly, they weren't, they weren't providing the answers that I wanted.
01:09:07.340I think partly because I was really interested in the notion that there's something to learn from what happened, say, in Nazi Germany.
01:09:16.620But there's something to learn at an individual level.
01:09:20.800I don't think that there were innocent masses of people led astray by a single malevolent leader.
01:09:26.740I don't think the fundamental motivations for what happened in Nazi Germany were economic.
01:09:32.160And I, I don't think they were in the Soviet Union either.
01:09:34.760As I read more and more about the situations, I realized that the proclivity of individuals to avoid responsibility and to lie,
01:09:43.440especially about their own lives and about their own experience, were really the reasons that those systems went so far astray.
01:09:49.860Now, there were other reasons as well, but those were very important to me because I also thought that the proper lesson in the aftermath of something like Auschwitz is,
01:09:58.080how do I ensure that I live a life such that if I was offered the opportunity to do something terrible by omission or by commission,
01:10:06.660that I wouldn't do it, that I would have enough strength of character to resist.
01:10:10.820And so the lessons there for me were psychological.
01:10:13.600And that taught me an awful lot about, well, the role of the individual.
01:10:17.100People like Viktor Frankl, for example, who wrote Man's Search for Meaning, which is a perennial classic and a great book,
01:10:22.960insisted that a large part of the reason that Germany went off the rails so badly was because individual Germans were so willing to falsify their own experience.
01:10:32.060And Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who wrote the Gulag Archipelago, the best document on what happened in the Soviet Union,
01:10:47.940It taught me about responsibility, about the responsibility of the sovereign individual.
01:10:52.840And, you know, we have an idea in our culture.
01:10:54.660It's a very powerful idea that each of us is of intrinsic value, but that associated with that value is a responsibility.
01:11:02.780And we have a responsibility, let's say, for our own integrity and for that of our families, but also of the state,
01:11:08.880because otherwise we wouldn't have the sovereign responsibility and right to vote.
01:11:13.240Like our whole culture is predicated on the idea that each of us are sufficiently significant so that we can entrust the destiny of the state itself to our decisions.
01:11:25.260And I think that that's a correct idea, which is also why I think that systems that are based on that idea function so well like our Western systems do.
01:11:34.620But that's a responsibility that has to be taken with dead seriousness, because it means that the good things that you do in your life are truly good and they matter.
01:11:43.300They ripple outward way more than you think.
01:11:46.020But so do the things you do that aren't good, including the acts of deception that you engage in, perhaps above all else,
01:11:51.820which would include your willingness to evade responsibility or to push it off to someone else or to play the short term against the long term.
01:12:01.120And so, well, let me unwrap us a little bit, because you're touching on a bunch of themes, and I think they would all benefit us.
01:12:09.640So, first of all, let me say I appreciate that you actually put some of your thoughts down into two books, two books that I've read.
01:12:15.100The latter is a best-selling book right now.
01:12:17.560It's the number four-selling book in the country, 12 Rules for Life, Anecdote to Chaos.
01:12:21.840And I am curious how you put that all together.
01:12:26.420And let's start off with the basic, which is what's it all about?
01:12:28.720What's the goal of life, according to some of the more recent pieces you've been writing?
01:12:35.460I would say that the goal in life is to conduct yourself so that life improves, at least so that undue suffering is forestalled.
01:12:43.280But more than that, so it's to constrain malevolence and suffering to the degree that that's possible.
01:12:49.800But then also to work for a positive improvement in things at every level.
01:12:53.400And that's how you should orient yourself.
01:12:55.540So I saw something you wrote, actually it's in the book in part as well, is to repeat actions that are worthy.
01:13:04.960So you sort of figure out what you should do and then just do it, which I think that's an achievable goal.
01:13:09.820Most people would think that's laudatory.
01:13:10.980That takes me to the next point, which is what's the meaning of life?
01:13:14.320I think the meaning is to be found in that.
01:13:16.320And as you put things together and as you take responsibility for things, meaning emerges from that.
01:13:24.060And so it emerges from that the same way it emerges from a symphony, in some sense.
01:13:27.960Because a symphony is composed of layers of patterns and they're all working harmoniously together.
01:13:32.300And they speak directly to people of meaning, which is why people love music so much.
01:13:36.240I mean, every form of music does that.
01:13:37.660And it's a model for proper being, which is the placing of all the different levels of reality into harmonious relationship with one another.
01:13:47.000And meaning emerges out of that naturally.
01:14:35.040And so if something happens around you that's of significance, often something you don't expect, say something somewhat chaotic, you'll orient towards it.
01:15:32.320Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.
01:15:35.860Well, it's not only appropriate, but I think it's also practical.
01:15:39.820And one of the things about what I do, including my book, is that I'm always trying to take high-level abstract truths, you know, fundamental truths,
01:15:48.540and to make them concrete and practical so that you can implement them in your day-to-day life.
01:15:52.940Because it's the connection between those abstractions and practical action that really cements their meaning and makes them comprehensible.
01:16:00.320And this idea of incremental improvement is a great one.
01:16:03.740You know, if there are things about your life that are bothering you, or things about the world that are bothering you,
01:16:08.300then you want to decompose them into solvable sub-problems.
01:16:12.360And you do this, if you have a child, this is the sort of thing that you do naturally, right?
01:16:16.480Because you want to set your child a challenge that's sufficiently challenging to push them forward in their development.
01:16:22.860So that makes it meaningful for the child.
01:16:25.200That puts them in the zone of proximal development, which is where proper maturation takes place.
01:16:30.780They'll find that intrinsically meaningful.
01:16:32.680You want to make it challenging, but also with a reasonable probability of success.
01:17:17.260Your thoughts around suffering that you began to touch on have been incredibly provocative for a lot of people, wildly debated.
01:17:25.660I think in part because in our modern world, we don't like to acknowledge that kind of suffering can afflict us.
01:17:31.320We think something's wrong with us if we have that kind of suffering.
01:17:33.820So how is it productive to focus on suffering the way you do?
01:17:37.360Well, there is something wrong with us if we're suffering.
01:17:39.900And there's something wrong with the world because it's an indication that things aren't set in the order they hypothetically could be set if there's undue suffering.
01:17:48.700And so that is a call to action, and it's a painful call to action, you know.
01:22:21.800These are stories that are thousands of years old, Adam and Eve, right?
01:22:24.880These are constructs that are archetypal to us, are fundamental to who our species is.
01:22:30.320And somehow it seems to have slipped from us.
01:22:32.540Well, you know, knowledge is coded in different ways.
01:22:35.600So a good example, someone who's a good example, acts out for you how you should be.
01:22:42.400And a good story portrays that dramatically.
01:22:45.500But an articulated representation tells you exactly why and explains it.
01:22:49.560And so some of this needs to be more articulated than it has been.
01:22:53.640Because we've become detached, in some sense, from our underlying examples and our stories.
01:22:58.740Partly because they've been criticized so much.
01:23:00.900So, but I think we're at a point where developing this more articulated knowledge is necessary.
01:23:07.500But just so I make sure everyone's clear on this, what I'm taking away is, it's a balancing act between the rights you deserve and the responsibility that you must take.
01:23:16.920And if that balances off in society, and we do seem to focus a lot on people's rights, which is, you know, instinctive to who we are.
01:23:24.600But we often don't match it up with the responsibility that comes along with that.
01:23:28.980Well, which is exactly why I think that what I'm talking about is falling on receptive ears.
01:23:33.560It's because you actually cannot have a prolonged discussion of rights without having an equally prolonged discussion of responsibilities for a variety of reasons.
01:23:42.720First of all, the actual reason that you have rights is so that you can discharge your responsibilities.
01:23:50.140It's like you're granted rights by everyone around you or, or, no, it's not granted exactly.
01:23:56.020It's part of the, part of the, the purpose of your rights in some sense is so that you can be given an autonomous space that's protected in which you can manifest what's necessary about you in the world that's a contribution to it.
01:24:13.380So I have to leave a space for you so that you can make your contribution for yourself, so you can take care of yourself, so that you can shoulder responsibility for your family and so that you can serve the community the best way that you can.
01:24:26.040And I don't, I don't want to set up a society that will interfere with that.
01:24:29.640But then, and then there's the association that we already talked about between responsibility and meaning, which is absolutely crucial.
01:24:37.960And so it's, the responsibility element is more important than the rights element as far as I'm concerned, or it certainly is at this point in time.
01:24:47.920And yet, the role of the victim seems, which is a painful role to have, because something bad happened to you to be a victim, but it's something that society struggles with.
01:25:00.340So what about people who feel like they're a victim?
01:40:57.200I was in graduate school and, and, and, and I had a very social, I was very, very social.
01:41:02.040And a lot of that involved drinking and, and, and that sort of thing.
01:41:06.420Couldn't do both, especially when I was editing.
01:41:09.160I couldn't get my thoughts down pristinely enough, precisely enough.
01:41:12.120Plus the, the emotional magnitude of the things that I was dealing with were more overwhelming if I was, well, in the aftermath of a party, you know.
01:41:22.840So I decided when I was like 25 or so to just stop.
01:41:26.560I've, I've been caught off guard by how politicized you've become.
01:41:30.400And I, you know, as I read of your youth, I know that you had your run is with religion, which a lot of people do.
01:41:37.200You actually got politically active, but on the left, not the right.
01:41:44.920Well, I, in the, in the little town I grew up in, the, the member of parliament, the, the provincial parliament, equivalent to American state, was a democratic socialist.
01:41:56.760He was the only one in the entire province.
01:41:58.280Everyone else was conservative, which would be sort of moderate Republican, I would say.
01:42:04.060And, you know, there's something to be said for political voice for the working class and for the dispossessed.
01:42:10.680And it certainly is the case that hierarchical structures, the hierarchical structures that compose our society, do produce dispossession.
01:42:19.780And, and so people at the bottom need to have a political voice.
01:42:23.760And so I was very attracted to that end of the political spectrum.
01:42:28.840But as I came to investigate some of the problems I've been discussing more deeply, I started to understand that mere economic rectification was insufficient.
01:42:39.780That that wasn't the level of analysis that was appropriate for my inquiry anyways.
01:42:44.680Translated, redistribution of income doesn't work.
01:43:12.820And as long as he was flat broke, he wasn't dead.
01:43:19.820But as soon as his, he was on disability, as soon as his disability check came in, he was face down in a ditch three days later.
01:43:27.060So, well, and you think, well, maybe that's a consequence of his overwhelming poverty, etc.
01:43:33.180You could come up with some social reason for that path that he took.
01:43:36.840But it wasn't, by any stretch of the imagination, that simple.
01:43:39.840It's like, people need purpose more than money, even.
01:43:44.400And, I mean, obviously, we don't want people starving.
01:43:48.220And actually, we're doing a pretty good job of solving that problem worldwide.
01:43:51.140You know, the UN projects that there won't be anyone in absolute poverty by the year 2030, which is really quite the bloody miracle, that's for sure.
01:43:58.740So, we're doing a pretty good job of getting rid of abject privation.
01:44:02.520But then, it isn't the provision of material well-being with ease that allows people to live properly, even though a certain amount of material wealth is a necessary precondition.
01:44:45.340He said if he gave people everything they wanted, so all they had to do was eat cakes and busy themselves with the continuation of the species,
01:44:53.380the first thing they do is smash it all to hell so that something interesting could happen.
01:44:57.060He said that's our fatal flaw and salvation, both of that, that wanting to contend rather than to sit back and have everything taken care of.
01:45:09.040So, how do we get an 18-year-old to understand what Dostoevsky wrote 150 years ago?
01:45:15.480How do you get a 38- or a 58-year-old, which is my age, to understand how to take responsibility?
01:48:10.440Why would you ever give up something now voluntarily?
01:48:12.780And the answer is sometimes if you give up something now, and often something you love, something you're very in love with even, perhaps not for the best reasons, then you can make a bargain with the future.
01:48:24.200And that bargain with the future isn't any different than the bargain you make with other people.
01:48:27.800So, that narrow selfishness is blindness to time and context.
01:48:35.560And there's nothing about it that's good.
01:48:37.480And I do think the musical example is a really good one.
01:48:41.160Like, in a musical piece, every note has to fit with every other note across the entire span of the piece.
01:48:46.300Well, that's what your life needs to be like.
01:48:48.020It's like, how you act with me right now has to be in harmony with what you want for yourself tomorrow.
01:48:54.420And that's going to be tangled in as well.
01:48:56.180Well, it's not only that you repeat across time and have to take that into account.
01:48:59.820It's that you repeat across time in the context of your social life.
01:49:04.000And so, all of that has to be brought into the equation.
01:49:06.780And the sacrificial motif is a huge part of that.
01:49:09.620And that also is something that runs contrary, in some sense, to empathy.
01:49:12.900Because sometimes you have to, you know, you have to beat yourself on the back of the head with a stick to get yourself to move forward properly.
01:49:18.640Even though you know, I should be doing this.
01:50:09.880Well, getting that balance right is really hard.
01:50:11.620So in rule two, I think, is treat yourself as if you're someone responsible for helping.
01:50:18.680And that, I was really interested in that issue of people mistreating themselves, you know.
01:50:24.860So, because we are privy to our own weaknesses and faults.
01:50:30.620We know them better than anyone else knows them.
01:50:32.720And so it's very easy for us to determine that we're not worthwhile because of all the ways that we don't live up to what we should live up to.
01:50:40.660And the painful knowledge we have of that.
01:50:42.620And to not regard ourselves as worthwhile and to not treat ourselves properly.
01:52:06.940And one of the things I discuss with my audience is like, well, just think about how you talk to people that you're trying to be, trying to treat properly.
01:52:15.940You don't say to them, okay, here, kid, here's the way you deal with life.
01:52:19.960This is, you put your son on your knee and say, look, lie every chance you get.
01:52:38.440Now, we're tempted because now and then you think, well, I can just cut a corner here or I can get away with this and no one will find out.
01:53:31.100And what I, I like to push you on these biologic issues because you're a psychologist.
01:53:35.480You actually understand how the brain works and how, you know, in fact, the fundamental order versus chaos issue is in part reflected in our brain.
01:53:42.840So, all these balancing acts our brain's pretty good at, yet truth is hard for us.
01:53:57.100You know, a child who's called onto the carpet for their actions is likely to think, well, if I lie about this, I'm not going to get punished for it now.
01:59:54.940And then I guess the level after that would be something like, well, the, the, the desire to cause harm because you're vengeful.
02:00:01.560And that's where the idea that you're a victim starts to play a real role.
02:00:05.320If you're a victim and things are unfair, then it's okay for you to react and to, and to lash out and to hurt.
02:00:11.260And so then there's the, the conscious desire to actually produce suffering.
02:00:16.180And then that can just expand beyond anyone's imagination until what you're trying to do is take, I think, like the, that, that, that maximizes out when you're trying to take revenge against God for the structure of reality itself.
02:00:31.080And I think that's the right language.
02:00:33.880So when, when people, and you see approximations of this with the high school shooters and people like that, especially the guy who shot up the elementary school.
02:00:44.240You got to, you got to go to a pretty damn dark place before you think that the right thing to do with your life is to make people fundamentally identifiable because of their innocence and lack of wrongdoing, the target of your vengeful hatred.
02:00:59.180You've gone somewhere unbelievably dark to get there, but that's not the darkest place you can go.
02:01:04.600It's certainly a suburb of the darkest place you can go.
02:01:08.480You know, you can, you can go to where Hitler went and try to cook up a strategy for destroying everything.
02:01:14.520You know, I mean, everyone says, well, Hitler was trying to dominate the world.
02:01:18.060It's like, well, maybe Hitler was trying to set up a particularly dramatic for dramatic forum for suicide with Europe in flames.
02:01:48.320The alt-right types don't like me at all.
02:01:51.000There's lots of documentation of that.
02:01:52.720And the reason they don't like me is because I don't like people who play identity politics.
02:01:56.800And I don't care if they're on the left or the right.
02:01:59.860You know, the left says, here's the victimized groups.
02:02:03.360And our society is basically an oppressor, oppressed society.
02:02:07.120And we should do everything we can to lift up the oppressed.
02:02:09.980And I don't know what we're doing with the oppressors, but I don't imagine it'll be that pleasant.
02:02:13.920And the identity politics types on the right say, oh, yes, we should play identity politics, but we'll be white ethno-nationalists and look for white superiority or a white ethno-state.
02:02:25.120It's like, as far as I'm concerned, none of those, none of that's even vaguely, it's reprehensible.
02:02:30.760It's thoroughly reprehensible on all fronts.
02:02:33.520The reason that this all came about, there's complicated reasons, but because I'm not a fan of the collectivist left, let's say.
02:02:42.040It's been in the interest of people who push that doctrine to paint me as the most radical of opponents, which, of course, would put me in the far-right camp.
02:02:51.100But just because you're no fan of people who play identity politics doesn't mean you're part of the alt-right.
02:02:56.960So that's been a strategy, I think, that's been, what would you say, put into play against me for a variety of reasons that has been somewhat successful, but not very in the final analysis.
02:03:10.280Maybe it's the wrong axis to put you on, but if zero is ultra-liberal and 100 is the ultra-conservative, alt-right, where are you on that spectrum?
02:03:20.480Do you think of yourself as more conservative, more liberal? I know in your life you've changed.
02:03:25.060Well, I'm a traditionalist in many senses, you know, but I'm a very creative person, so it's very difficult, temperamentally, for me to place myself on the political spectrum.
02:03:36.500It's not like I don't think that the dispossessed deserve a political voice.
02:03:41.460You know, that's why I was interested in socialist politics when I was a kid, and I understand perfectly well that hierarchies dispossess, and that something has to be done about that.
02:03:50.260But I'm also, I also think that we mess with fundamental social structures at our great peril.
02:03:56.140I think we've destabilized marriage very badly, and that that's been, that's not been good for people, especially not good for children, but I don't think it's been good for adult men and women either.
02:04:05.620And I certainly, as a social scientist, one of the things you learn if you're a social scientist, and you're well-educated and informed, is that if you take a complex system, let's imagine you have a complex system and you have a hypothesis about how to intervene so that it will improve.
02:04:25.340You'll learn, once you implement the intervention, that you didn't understand the system, and that your stupid intervention did a bunch of things you didn't expect it to, many of which ran counter to your original intent.
02:04:39.080So, I learned that, I had a whole series of very wise mentors who insisted to everyone they talked to, who was interested in public policy, for example, that when they put in place a well-meaning public policy initiative, that they put aside a substantial proportion of the budget to evaluate the outcome of the initiative.
02:05:02.060Because the probability that the initiative would produce the results desired was virtually zero.
02:05:07.380And I believe that that's technically true.
02:05:10.640And so, that tilts me in the conservative direction, because I think, well, that's sort of working, that system.
02:05:17.960So, I don't expect systems to work perfectly.
02:05:20.320If they're not degenerating into absolute tyranny, I tend to think they're doing quite well.
02:05:25.920Because if you look worldwide, and you look at the entire course of human history, degeneration into abject tyranny is the norm.
02:05:33.660And so, if you see systems like our systems, say, in the democratic Western world, that are struggling by not too badly, it's like you should be in awe of those structures.
02:05:45.200Because they're so difficult to produce and so unlikely.
02:05:48.480And then I think, well, you take a system that's working not too badly.
02:05:52.980You think, well, I'm going to radically improve it.
02:05:59.080You're not going to radically improve it.
02:06:00.780You might be able to improve it incrementally if you devoted a large part of your entire life to it.
02:06:06.500And you were very humble about your methods and your ambition.
02:06:12.640But if you think that some careless tweak of this complex system, as a consequence of the ideological presuppositions you learned in three weeks in your social justice class at university,
02:06:24.840and that's going to produce a radical improvement, it's like, you can't even begin to fathom the depths of your ignorance.
02:06:32.640You mentioned marriage as an example of this.
02:06:35.760As a social psychologist, what happened to marriage?
02:06:40.160Well, I think a bunch of things happened.
02:06:42.100I mean, one thing that happened might be that we live a lot longer than we did.
02:06:48.380So, the problem of having a relationship that extends over decades is a different problem than having the problem of having a relationship that extends over the period of time where you might have kids.
02:07:01.740I think that women have clearly become more autonomous.
02:07:07.720And so, they've been able to transcend their more limited roles.
02:07:13.080Those roles, by the way, weren't imposed upon them by patriarchal men.
02:07:17.860I think that's a reprehensible view of history.
02:07:21.040Because I think men and women fundamentally served as mutually sustaining partners throughout the course of history, despite their continual disagreements and the difficulties of life.
02:07:33.440Women were relegated to a more restricted role because they lacked sanitation, they lacked tampons, they lacked birth control.
02:07:47.480And those problems have been solved in the last hundred years, essentially, since about 1895.
02:07:52.840And so, that's freed women to participate in a much broader sense than they were able to before.
02:07:59.060But we don't want to underestimate the power of those technological revolutions, even though they sound rather mundane.
02:08:06.100They're not mundane at all, especially not the birth control pill.
02:08:09.120That's put a certain amount of stress on marriage because the traditional roles have been expanded.
02:08:16.720And you might think, well, that's great.
02:08:19.940It is great in that a broader range of people have access to the expression of a fuller range of their talents.
02:08:28.280And in principle, that's good for them.
02:08:30.440And definitely, it's good for the rest of society.
02:08:33.160Because now we have access to the genius of women, let's say, too.
02:08:36.580But that's made negotiating the marital role more difficult.
02:08:40.240And then the other thing that's happened, as far as I'm concerned, is that we got a little too careless about liberalizing the divorce laws and changing the structure of marriage in general.
02:08:51.840I don't think that that was good for people, especially not for children.
02:08:55.460Because the evidence that children do better in intact two-parent families is overwhelming.
02:09:02.040No credible social scientist that I know of disputes that.
02:09:05.600So, and it might be because the minimal viable social structure is actually the minimal nuclear family.
02:09:52.540You have one person who's basically sane.
02:09:56.080And so, that maximizes the probability that you'll do reasonably well throughout your life course.
02:10:01.420But it also makes the pair of you, especially if you're communicating, sufficiently sane so that you're a foundation for the raising of children who will be socially competent and acceptable.
02:10:14.300Because if they have parents, if they have a parental unit, let's say, that's communicating and that's straightening each other out, then the child can adapt to that unit as a microcosm of broader society.
02:10:26.540And so, if the child can figure out how to get along with the parents, in the best possible sense, then they're also simultaneously figuring out how to get along with everyone else.
02:10:37.400So, and I think if you go below that pairing, things fragment in a way that can't be easily rectified.
02:10:45.600I know that you're getting emotional talking about some parts of this discussion, in part where you talk about meaning and responsibility.
02:10:54.440I don't know if that touches you more personally than others.
02:10:57.420Well, I think it's a consequence, actually, of many of the things that I've experienced over the last, especially the last six or seven months.
02:11:04.900So, I meet 150 people or so at each of these events, personally.
02:11:10.800And many of them have stories to tell me, and they tell me overwhelming stories.
02:11:15.380And that has a cumulative effect on you.
02:11:18.760So, one kid, for example, he was in his early 20s, I would say.
02:11:24.100He came up to me and he said, I don't want to take up too much of your time, but a year and a half ago, I just got out of jail and I was homeless.
02:12:03.280And then he ran back to his car and he got his dad out.
02:12:05.440And they came over and they had, he had his arm, they had their arms around each other.
02:12:18.540And they were just smiling away, you know, like with a real Duchenne smile, a real smile.
02:12:24.340And he said, I've been watching your lectures, and I've really been working on putting my relationship with my father together, and it's really worked.
02:12:33.340And so I thought, well, that's a lovely thing to have happen when you're walking through a rough neighbourhood, is that some kid jumps out of his car and comes rushing over and tells you how much better his life is because he's been working hard on the basis of your recommendation to fix his relationship with his father.
02:12:57.520And people are telling me stories like this all the time.
02:13:02.520And the thing that's sad about it, I think, and this is what makes me emotional, is not only that this is so good, and good at a level that transcends politics, absolutely, but that people require so little encouragement.
02:13:20.980You know, there's so many people I see in my lectures, and I have a very diverse range of people who come to my lectures.
02:13:30.480They're starving for encouragement, and they don't need much.
02:13:34.720I said, I had this kid talk to me at a barbecue I was at this weekend, and he's working with delinquent kids, 13 and 14 years old.
02:13:42.720And he said, they were pulled out of other delinquent camps and brought to his camp, which was for the worst delinquents.
02:13:49.640And he started talking to them about my lectures.
02:13:52.460And so they've been watching him, and now they have a little fan club that's based around my lectures.
02:13:56.360And they're doing things like talking to each other about making their beds and cleaning up their rooms.
02:14:01.460It's like, it's unbelievable how little genuine encouragement many people need and how they had none.
02:14:12.120No one ever said to them and meant it.
02:14:15.440It's not okay for you to be a weak loser.
02:18:59.800I think when people look back on you, they'll also see that you began to tie together seemingly disparate parts of who we are as a species.
02:19:09.740And I'd like to get into that because it's deep stuff, but you articulate it in a way that I think people will understand.
02:22:38.380If you're trying to raise a child, you want to instill faith in them.
02:22:42.660Now, you might not say, well, I'm instilling faith in God.
02:22:45.180It's like, well, it's not so easy to decide when you're doing that.
02:22:49.440But to instill in your child the faith in the ability of their own potential to unfold in a positive direction, well, that's faith.
02:22:58.820That's what you want for someone who's confident.
02:23:01.160It's like, yes, in absence of evidence, in the absence of certain evidence, I believe that my commitment to this path of action will bear fruit.
02:23:10.080All right, so let's take this discussion and, I think, make it practical.
02:23:14.340So one of the biggest battles that I sense in America, North America, so I'll throw the West, is that between religion and science.
02:23:22.580In many ways, this is a fracture that you, Colt Nietzsche, is speaking to when he said God was dead.
02:24:08.900Yes, there has to be something beyond that.
02:24:12.600You know, and I believe that, like, I believe that the description that I just gave you of human consciousness is actually scientifically accurate.
02:24:20.880I think that we do confront potential and that we do cast it into reality.
02:24:25.760I think if you understand how the brain works from its ability to first grapple with what's unknown in physical representation and then to represent it in image and then to represent it in word,
02:24:39.300I think that what you see is the process of potential coming into reality.
02:24:44.720So I don't think that there's anything that's not commensurate with the scientific viewpoint there.
02:24:50.380I also think that if we act as if we're each divine centers of consciousness of that sort, then we treat ourselves properly.
02:25:01.860Think, well, you've got some intrinsic value.
02:25:04.240You treat other people properly because I'm duty bound to treat you as if you have some intrinsic value.
02:25:08.960We build social structures on that predicate.
02:25:13.720So the idea that the individual is sovereign in some divine sense, if you act that out politically, it's like, hey, your society functions and people don't starve and things aren't an absolute abject tyranny.
02:25:27.700And your rulers have something to bow to, that principle of intrinsic sovereignty.
02:25:32.140Now, the question is how that might be related to some metaphysical reality because that's the question of God.
02:25:38.400And the way, I don't know exactly how to answer that, except that I've seen this relationship, say, between the opening statements in Genesis,
02:25:46.880which describe God as this being that uses communicative intent to call forth being out of possibility.
02:25:54.520And that that's the essence of God as portrayed in Genesis.
02:27:38.960And I don't think there's a more appropriate answer than that.
02:27:42.280It's like, it's up to you to take it from there in some sense.
02:27:47.560I think part of the reason that you've become so popular is because you take religion.
02:27:54.340And you allow us to see the fundamental grammar that is offered by different religions without people having to first make the very important step of deciding whether they believe or not.
02:28:10.240I know for a lot of people listening there, that's going to be a bit of a struggle.
02:28:12.660But it is one of the more rewarding aspects of reading or listening to you.
02:28:18.400And I do think that a lot of people will come to either a conclusion you just offered, which is I can live my life that way and the fruits of my action will be bestowed on my family and my life.
02:28:29.080And many will just decide to believe, period, because it makes sense, because there's so much wisdom in these writings.
02:28:53.020And one is better about things of order.
02:28:55.240And one's better about things of chaos.
02:28:57.300You know, making sense of what just happened, paying attention to things that are unexpected.
02:29:00.600The other one's pretty good at just automating my life.
02:29:02.460And I start to see that much of my behavior is hardwired, more than I would have normally anticipated or expected.
02:29:10.260And I suspect that when you read some of this wisdom, I've stopped thinking about people who wrote these beautiful old treatises as, you know, like many scientists think about them, as, you know, simpletons who didn't really understand how the stars and the planets worked and this is their best effort at it.
02:29:25.680They were trying to answer a very different question.
02:29:30.880Well, and the thing about belief, I think you put your finger on it, is, well, do you follow the story?
02:29:39.800That's a fundamental religious question.
02:29:41.560You know, when people go to see a movie like Pinocchio, which is a movie I've taken apart online in some detail, it's like they suspend disbelief.
02:29:49.540No one thinks that a wooden puppet has become alive.
02:29:52.680No one questions why the wooden puppet should rescue his father from the chaos of the whale.
02:42:58.080I think it's toothed reptilian predators, which is a broader category than snakes.
02:43:03.760So, and that's the dragon fundamentally, because the dragon looks like an amalgam of predatory cats, predatory birds, and predatory snakes.
02:43:10.640And maybe fire as well, which would have been an ancestral friend and enemy, right?
02:43:15.120Because fire is an ancestral friend and enemy.
02:43:17.260There's evidence, I think it was Richard Wrangham, wrote a very good book on fire a while back.
02:43:22.000A very good anthropo- or primatologist.
02:43:24.120He figured we'd been using fire for two million years.
02:43:27.960And that we traded, we traded intestinal tract for brain.
02:43:33.280Once we learned to cook, and that was a secondary consequence of hunting, let's say.
02:43:37.060Or at least associated with hunting, because our diet became so much more nutritious and calorie-rich, especially eating meat and fat, that we could afford to shrink our digestive system and trade it in for brain.
02:43:47.540Chimps spend about eight hours a day chewing, because mostly what they eat is leaves.
02:43:51.800It's like, go out and try to eat leaves.
02:43:53.400It's like, all you're going to do is chew, because they have no nutrition.
02:43:56.960So, anyways, we're built on a hunting platform.
02:44:19.080What should you devote your life to pursuing?
02:44:21.580So, why are these stories the best way for us to articulate these negotiated rules that we all have with each other?
02:44:28.600Because the principles are so complex that we weren't able to articulate them and understand them.
02:44:35.400So, one of the things Nietzsche pointed out was, you know, you tend to think that morality emerges in thought and then is imposed on behavior.
02:44:42.780We think up the rules and then we apply them.
02:50:28.460And the biology reflects the structure of being.
02:50:32.500It's just, that's the musical layering of all these layers, one on top of another.
02:50:36.200So if we get that it's not just random chance, not just a bunch of rules, but it's actually tens of thousands or maybe even hundreds of thousands of years of us seeing stuff, observing stuff, and our biology matches it.
02:50:54.580I think the biggest epidemic is isolation and loneliness.
02:50:57.140But it's manifested in a lot of disagreeable behavior.
02:51:01.880I've heard you use the word complexity management as opposed to mental illness.
02:51:06.460Because a lot of people think I'm depressed, I'm borderline, I'm personality, I've got this issue, I've got that issue.
02:51:12.560But it's actually, if I understand you correctly, something that's much more common, something much more ubiquitous, something much more understandable, that we have a complexity management problem.
02:51:22.860Yeah, well, the doctrine of turning to face that which confronts you is a complexity management solution.
02:51:31.580It's like, what do you do when horrible things are chasing you?
02:51:53.820It means that the standard human pattern of sexual attraction is for the person who decides to confront the predator in its lair to be reproductively successful.
02:52:30.660It's like Lynn Isbell, who's an anthropologist at UCLA, she makes the case that the reason that human beings have acute vision is because we were preyed upon by predatory snakes over a 60 million year period.
02:52:47.180And we're particularly good at seeing the kind of camouflage patterns that snakes have on their skin in the lower half of our visual system.
02:52:58.340And the way she established that was she went around the world and she looked at the acuity of primate vision and correlated it with the prevalence of predatory serpents.
02:53:05.300So the more snakes, the better our vision.
02:53:08.600So that, and that's such a cool principle too, because there's a metaphysical principle there too, which is, you know, why does reality have an adversarial nature?
02:53:17.280Why would God set something on you, say?
02:53:25.200It's like, not if the person who sets the adversary on you believes that you could win.
02:53:30.480Now maybe that's an insufficient explanation, but there's something about it that's, you know, you can think about this biologically too.
02:53:38.720I was reading The Master and His Emissary, which is quite an interesting book about hemispheric function.
02:53:42.700And the author pointed out that if you want to make a very small movement with your right hand, the best way to do that is to put your left hand up and then to push against your right hand and push.
02:55:03.160Well, that's something I've really been struggling with in my lectures.
02:55:07.280I try to make a case for the left and the right wing.
02:55:10.940Okay, so the right wing, the right wing, there's a variety of things that distinguish them.
02:55:15.880But we'll talk about one in particular.
02:55:17.200You have to accomplish useful things in the world just to survive, okay?
02:55:23.300And if you're going to do that in a social space, you do that by constructing a hierarchy.
02:55:26.860And if you construct a hierarchy, it's going to be of a certain steepness because the people at the top are going to be more successful than the people at the bottom.
02:55:33.600There's also hierarchies of productivity.
02:55:35.680So the people at the top are more productive than the people at the bottom.
02:56:53.800So the left wing says, wait a second now, the hierarchies tend towards corruption and they dispossess people and they need to be taken care of.
02:57:19.420So freedom of speech is the mechanism that keeps the opponent process balanced.
02:57:23.740And so you don't mess with freedom of speech, which is why I opposed the legislation that I opposed in Canada, which started all this political...
02:57:33.440So there was a law that said you must refer to transgender people the way they want you to, right, picking the pronoun they use.
02:57:41.400Yes, that was part of the legislation, background part of the legislation.
02:57:44.640And do you have any problems with transgender people being identified by what pronoun they use in private settings in your practice or in your classrooms?
02:57:52.420My proclivity when people ask me to address them in a certain way is that if I believe that they're being straightforward in their communication,
02:57:58.940then I tend to accede to the demand like a reasonable person does.
02:58:04.260The issue was the compulsion of speech and also the government's insistence that it was all right to build a social constructionist view of gender into the law,
02:59:48.440Well, that's a good way of putting it.
02:59:50.040Because what it also means is that the people who espouse those opinions, for whatever reason, get appropriately subjected to social correction.
03:01:17.000Why is every person watching us right now, and there are quite a few, suffering from anxiety, depression, addiction, all three together even.
03:01:24.820How is it possible we're not all there in that quandary?
03:01:27.580Oh, well, first of all, many people are at different periods in their life, right?
03:01:33.000It's a rare person who doesn't have a severe bout of anxiety at some point in their life, often because things collapse around them.
03:01:39.040You know, like they encounter some real catastrophe.
03:01:41.440Even with depression, if you look at the epidemiological studies, most people who eventually suffered depression had their first episode precipitated by something truly awful.
03:01:52.900So, you know, we move in and out of states of terrible negative emotion throughout our life.
03:04:00.560So now, if you were looking three to five years down into the future, and you could have what you needed within the bounds of reason, what would it be?
03:13:35.680Well, I think we do a lot of, I think we have done a lot of things successfully in our society.
03:13:40.600So the first is, is that it's not a monolithic hierarchy by any stretch of the imagination.
03:13:44.780As we've made society more complex, the number of sub-hierarchies has multiplied tremendously.
03:13:52.400And so, let's say each of us comes to the table with a different set of weaknesses and strengths.
03:13:58.460It's highly probable that you'll be able to find a sub-hierarchy where your particular pattern of weaknesses and strengths actually constitutes the crucial element.
03:14:07.940So if you're high in agreeableness, for example, well, healthcare is a good field for you.
03:14:11.400And if you're really conscientious, then you can be a manager.
03:14:13.500And if you're open, then you can be entrepreneurial or creative.
03:14:41.280But then there's additional complications, and some of them we don't know how to deal with.
03:14:44.760So, for example, one of the things that predicts the ability to succeed in hierarchies across hierarchies seems to be associated with intelligence.
03:14:55.140So all things considered across most hierarchies, it's better to be intelligent.
03:14:59.400So then the question is, well, what do you do with people who are of less cognitive power?
03:15:04.300And that's an increasingly complex problem.
03:15:07.380So, and I don't think we have a straightforward solution to that, because one of the dangers is that as our society becomes more technological and more cognitively complex, the effect of intelligence actually grows.
03:15:49.120Well, this is, the way I, the way I look at this is that, let's say that you're blessed with success, like you've been blessed with success.
03:16:29.980It's not a good medium to long-term solution.
03:16:32.100But, okay, how about your ethical responsibility grows in proportion to the resources that you have at your control?
03:16:39.580And the right thing to do is that as you become more competent, authoritative, and able, is to expand the range in which you're operating to do more good.
03:18:38.520You go to a sports game, and you see a remarkable display of athletic prowess and sportsmanship at the same time.
03:18:47.900Everybody spontaneously gets up and applauds.
03:18:50.400Before they think, it's like, yes, you got it.
03:18:54.160I see that picture, but I also see pictures, often on the set, of men and women coming in, not getting each other.
03:19:00.140And a lot of times, it's hard to understand what the guy's up to.
03:19:05.100Something just, because, you know, I think we're all, as humans, like Maseratis.
03:19:09.780As a surgeon, I see the inner workings of this.
03:19:11.880When one little spark plugs off, everyone can hear it.
03:19:14.740Sometimes you can't hear it over the noise, but it's there.
03:19:17.220So, when a woman is not happy, for example, with what she needs out of life, most divorces these days in middle-aged couples are initiated by the women.
03:19:49.160And so, there's more sensitivity to threat than might be good for a woman's mental health across the span of her individual life.
03:19:56.320But it's the price she pays for being hypervigilant for her infants.
03:19:59.280And it's driving the sorts of things that, we know that one of the predictors of divorce, for example, is high trait neuroticism in at least one of the partners.
03:21:48.100They've been so other-centered that they don't know what it is that they're crying out for.
03:21:54.460And that's often a very lengthy process of discovery.
03:21:57.320But then you have to find out what you want.
03:22:00.280Then you have to figure out how to fight for it.
03:22:01.860Because you don't just get what you want.
03:22:03.420It's like, that isn't how things work.
03:22:06.640This is, you know, since you're talking about fighting for what you want.
03:22:08.780This came up in your Channel 4 interview in the UK.
03:22:12.820About the fundamental difference between women and men.
03:22:15.720And a hot topic that we've talked about on the show is the fact that women aren't paid in a way that it seems equitable to the men in a similar job.
03:22:25.740And you made arguments that there are fundamental differences between men and women where women need to play some of the role.
03:35:41.620And that's pretty counterproductive and mean.
03:35:44.140And then the second thing is if they respect adults and can listen to them, then adults who kind of naturally like children are more likely to teach them things and give them opportunities.
03:35:56.940And so if your child is doing something that makes you dislike them, assuming you're in a relationship and you've ironed out most of your idiocy, then other people will also dislike that.
03:36:08.960And so if you allow or encourage your child to continue in such behavior, you turn them into someone who's miserable and socially isolated.
03:36:17.460Now, if you don't want them to leave home ever, that's probably a good strategy.
03:36:22.960If you cripple them badly enough, they won't be able to drag themselves out of your door.
03:36:27.940But if you love your child and you want them to thrive, then you do everything you can to have the world open up its arms to them.
03:36:35.340And that's a huge part of that is discipline, careful, minimal force, discipline.
03:37:12.960I see this at the end of life quite a bit when your father's dying and all the strange children are coming back into the picture and you see horrible fights at that level.
03:38:43.140Hell would have been her dying and everyone around fighting.
03:38:46.300And everyone walking away, embittered and full of enmity as a consequence of her life and death.
03:38:53.140But what happened instead was that all her kids had a newfound respect for their father, which has prevailed over the intervening 10 years.
03:39:23.200And so these end-of-life scenes, the ones you're describing, it's like those things can, bad can get so horrible if it's contaminated by enmity and deceit and misbehavior.
03:39:34.620And that's the difference between tragedy and hell.
03:39:37.700Since I'm a doctor, let me ask you one medical question.
03:39:40.000I know that your diet has become an issue of interest.
03:39:55.000So what specifically do you eat, do you not eat, and how has it benefited you?
03:39:58.980Well, it's mostly been of benefit to my daughter, who had a very complex autoimmune disease with about 30 extremely severe symptoms.
03:40:08.100And she learned over about a three-year period of experimentation what she could eat, which was virtually nothing, and what she couldn't eat, which was virtually everything.
03:40:23.640And she's been eating that, only that, for a year.
03:40:26.480And she never cheats because cheating has very severe consequences for her.
03:40:31.920And so her mother has some of the autoimmune symptoms, and I have some of them, and so it looks like she got all of them.
03:40:39.020And so when this worked for her, and we watched very carefully over a number of years while she was doing this, and, like, the improvement in her is I just can't believe it every time I see it.