The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - Ideology, Logos & Belief

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

00:00:06.480 Dr. Jordan Peterson has created a new series that could be a lifeline for those battling depression and anxiety.

00:00:12.740 We know how isolating and overwhelming these conditions can be, and we wanted to take a moment to reach out to those listening who may be struggling.

00:00:20.100 With decades of experience helping patients, Dr. Peterson offers a unique understanding of why you might be feeling this way in his new series.

00:00:27.420 He provides a roadmap towards healing, showing that while the journey isn't easy, it's absolutely possible to find your way forward.

00:00:35.360 If you're suffering, please know you are not alone. There's hope, and there's a path to feeling better.

00:00:41.800 Go to Daily Wire Plus now and start watching Dr. Jordan B. Peterson on depression and anxiety.

00:00:47.460 Let this be the first step towards the brighter future you deserve.

00:00:54.600 Welcome to the Jordan B. Peterson podcast.

00:00:57.420 You can support these podcasts by donating to Dr. Peterson's Patreon account, the link to which can be found in the description.

00:01:08.060 Dr. Peterson's self-development programs, Self-Authoring, can be found at selfauthoring.com.

00:01:17.240 This is episode 20.

00:01:19.740 An interview and discussion between Dr. Peterson and Transliminal Media's Jordan Levine.

00:01:25.280 It's entitled, Ideology, Logos, and Belief.

00:01:33.360 Please consider supporting Transliminal Media on Patreon, as well as watching the original interview on YouTube.

00:01:40.340 Links can be found in the description.

00:01:41.880 It's been a few years since we last had our first interview, and a number of things have happened in your life, both personally and in terms of your career, and probably your intellectual development as well.

00:02:00.120 So maybe just to start things off, if you could summarize in your own words what that experience has been like for you, just to catch up our viewers on what's been happening.

00:02:07.540 Well, the most significant event was the fallout from a series of videos that I made in late September of 2016.

00:02:18.600 I made one video critiquing the policy framework within which Federal Bill C-16 was likely to be interpreted, taking particular issue with its provisions for compelled speech in relationship to pronouns,

00:02:37.340 but more fundamentally, I would say, by criticizing the theoretical framework regarding human identity that had been instantiated into the law.

00:02:49.840 That the legal claim, and this is mostly stemming from legislation and policies that were developed in Ontario, but that will have a significant influence on the federal level,

00:03:01.400 insisting that biological sex, gender identity, gender expression, and sexual proclivity varied independently.

00:03:09.300 Which is a, it's more extreme than a radical social constructionist view, because the radical social constructionist view is that all of those tiers,

00:03:18.400 including to some degree biological sex, even, are socioculturally determined, and of course, human beings are highly cultural animals,

00:03:28.140 so there is pronounced sociocultural determination of virtually everything that we do, but that doesn't mean that those levels of identity vary independently,

00:03:38.700 which is the claim that's being made. In fact, they're very, very, very tightly correlated, would exceed 0.95.

00:03:44.180 They're virtually perfectly correlated. And so, I believe that that's an unwarranted intrusion of a certain kind of ideology,

00:03:53.040 it's postmodern ideology, fundamentally, with its roots in a kind of a surround of Marxist identity politics,

00:04:00.780 and I think that it was completely inappropriate for that to be transformed into legislation.

00:04:06.080 Anyways, there's been all sorts of consequences of that. I mean, my household was an absolute media tornado,

00:04:14.140 I guess it still is, really, for months after that. There were journalists lining up outside the house.

00:04:21.240 Outside your own home?

00:04:22.600 Oh, yeah.

00:04:23.220 Oh, I had no idea.

00:04:24.020 Oh, yeah, there were journalists in the house all the time, and one after the other, and...

00:04:28.220 What was this like for your... You don't have to answer on camera if you don't feel comfortable,

00:04:31.940 but what was this like for your family? I mean, it was all very unexpected, is my understanding.

00:04:35.880 Oh, it was completely unexpected. I mean, I didn't... You know, the reason I made the videos

00:04:40.020 was because I had something to say. I was trying to... Sometimes, you know,

00:04:44.480 oh, I can't sleep at night because I'm thinking about something, and usually what I'll do is go write it down.

00:04:49.940 I have some writing to do, so I get up and I go write down what I'm thinking, and that usually does the trick.

00:04:53.980 But because I had been playing with YouTube, I thought, well, I'll try making YouTube video,

00:05:02.500 and telling people what I'm thinking about, and see if that performs the same function as writing.

00:05:10.940 And to me, the function of writing, well, it's twofold. One is conceivably to communicate with people,

00:05:16.800 although the fundamental purpose for me is to clarify my thoughts so that I know...

00:05:21.980 to, you know, because if something is disturbing you, what that means is that it needs to be articulated.

00:05:30.480 It's the emergence of unexplored territory, something that disturbs you. That's the right way to think about it.

00:05:36.480 It's unmapped territory that's manifesting itself. It's like a vista of threat and possibility,

00:05:42.260 and you need to articulate a path through it. And so that's what I was doing. It's like, I was thinking,

00:05:48.720 well, this is bothering me, and this seems to be why, and here's what I think is going on.

00:05:52.300 And so I made the videos, and in some sense, I didn't think anything more of it.

00:05:58.420 And then, well, see, what happened, I think, and I've been thinking about this in retrospect,

00:06:04.480 is it's never obvious what's going on, because things go on at multiple levels,

00:06:10.120 and I think they go on at a theological level. That's the most fundamental level of, let's call it, epistemological reality.

00:06:19.040 It might even be ontological reality, but certainly epistemological reality.

00:06:23.180 If I can interject for a moment, what do you mean by theological in this sense? What does that mean to you?

00:06:26.700 Well, it's been my experience as a clinician that the more serious the events that you're discussing with people,

00:06:33.720 the more the language shifts towards what you might describe as the religious.

00:06:38.660 So, for example, post-traumatic stress disorder, that's a good example,

00:06:42.720 or cases of serious abuse, child abuse, or truly reprehensible interactions between people.

00:06:49.760 They're best conceptualized with regards to a dialogue about the nature of good and evil.

00:06:56.400 And, in fact, with post-traumatic stress disorder, that's actually necessary, I believe.

00:07:01.740 And I should say, in keeping with that, I've had a number of war vets come up to me after my recent talks

00:07:08.340 and tell me that watching my lectures has cured their post-traumatic stress disorder,

00:07:13.640 because I've provided my clients with the same thing.

00:07:17.480 Most people develop PTSD and other catastrophic psychological reactions

00:07:23.940 when something terrible, not so much when something terrible happens to them,

00:07:27.960 but when something terrible happens to them because of someone malevolent.

00:07:32.380 And sometimes that malevolent person can be themselves.

00:07:35.680 So, soldiers, for example, often develop PTSD if they observe themselves doing something on the battlefield

00:07:41.420 that they did not believe was within their realm of action.

00:07:44.680 And so, it's as if the archetypal adversary leapt forward out of their soul and seized them

00:07:52.400 and acted for them on the battlefield, and then they're shattered by that.

00:07:55.820 They can't believe that they were capable of that.

00:07:57.900 That destroys their sense of what it means to be human and what being human means.

00:08:03.380 And that's more likely to happen to people who are somewhat naive, I would say.

00:08:09.240 Certainly, that's the case with the PTSD literature.

00:08:13.160 And so, to treat someone in a situation like that,

00:08:17.060 you have to help them develop a philosophy, I would say,

00:08:21.160 but probably a theology of good and evil,

00:08:23.760 because you have to investigate the structure of the motivation for malevolence.

00:08:29.500 And you can't do that outside the confines of religious language,

00:08:33.380 partly because this is a difficult thing to understand,

00:08:36.680 and I think you have to have had contact with true evil in order to understand it.

00:08:42.260 But the fundamental motivation for the most malevolent actions is actually revenge against God.

00:08:49.440 And that's even the case if the people who are malevolent are atheists.

00:08:53.420 It doesn't matter.

00:08:54.680 And it doesn't matter in some sense.

00:08:56.860 It doesn't even matter if God exists.

00:08:58.820 It's the people who are acting malevolently act as if there is a sapient creator

00:09:08.060 who is responsible for this horrible mess against whom revenge must be promulgated.

00:09:15.360 And the earliest literary example of that is in the Cain and Abel story,

00:09:21.620 because Cain kills Abel, who is also his ideal, kills Abel, clearly to spite God,

00:09:28.760 because his sacrifices were rejected.

00:09:31.660 It's an unbelievably profound story, because that is exactly how people react.

00:09:36.140 When their sacrifices are rejected by God, for all intents and purposes,

00:09:40.820 they become bitter and resentful and look for revenge.

00:09:43.900 And the more vengeful they are, the more they enter the territory of absolute good and evil,

00:09:50.600 rather than proximal good and evil.

00:09:52.700 And it's very helpful for people who have post-traumatic stress disorder

00:09:56.460 to start to understand that sort of thing,

00:09:58.760 because otherwise they can't find a way out.

00:10:01.600 And so, you know, things have these levels of existence, theological at the bottom.

00:10:08.100 And that's where the battle between good and evil takes place,

00:10:11.160 and where the power of the word, of the truthful word, is most evident.

00:10:15.580 And then above that is philosophical,

00:10:17.500 and then perhaps above that is political and economic and sociological,

00:10:20.900 and then individual, or familial, and then individual.

00:10:24.360 And, you know, complicated things manifest themselves at all those levels simultaneously.

00:10:29.640 And you have to pick a level of analysis that's most suitable to formulate the problem.

00:10:34.500 Well, the proximal cause of my video production was the promotion of legislation

00:10:44.900 to make compelled speech of a certain form mandatory.

00:10:49.360 And that produced two responses.

00:10:52.000 One was a proximal response.

00:10:53.520 The transgender activist community,

00:10:56.140 a community which, by my estimation,

00:11:02.240 in no way speaks legitimately for the transgender community,

00:11:06.500 and many transgender people have told me precisely that,

00:11:09.280 a substantial number of them,

00:11:11.680 in well-written and well-formulated letters to me.

00:11:14.640 I've received at least, I think it's up to about 35 of letters like that now.

00:11:18.420 Now, they went after me along with the coterie of expected suspects,

00:11:24.660 the LGBT activists and the radical leftists and so forth,

00:11:28.200 and, you know, called me a transphobe and a racist,

00:11:30.760 which is really something I just,

00:11:32.460 I think it was because I made some disparaging comments

00:11:34.660 about the leaders of the Black Lives Matter in Toronto,

00:11:38.120 who, believe me, deserve all the disparaging comments you could heap on them.

00:11:42.920 You know, that's completely independently of the potential validity

00:11:46.060 of the Black Lives Matter movement.

00:11:47.920 I've said virtually nothing about that.

00:11:51.860 So then the argument started, really, I suppose, in the media and online,

00:11:55.580 is, well, what the hell was going on?

00:11:57.140 Was I just this bigoted, transphobic, fossil dinosaur,

00:12:01.500 or was something else happening?

00:12:04.460 And I believe, when I made the videos,

00:12:09.520 that the legislation itself and the policies

00:12:13.180 were signifying a crisis, a disjunction in Western society

00:12:19.720 that was far,

00:12:22.240 of which the gender pronoun argument was only a tiny tendril.

00:12:26.440 And the fact that the videos received so much attention

00:12:30.860 and the aftermath of it also continues to reverberate

00:12:35.280 with no decrease whatsoever in intensity, I would say.

00:12:39.300 And this is like, what, six months later, seven months later.

00:12:42.000 It's a long time.

00:12:43.060 It's no 15 minutes.

00:12:44.620 It's a long time.

00:12:45.660 It's because I put my finger on a nerve.

00:12:50.040 And I've been thinking about why that was,

00:12:52.020 because many people have decried political correctness.

00:12:55.440 But they did it in generic ways, you know.

00:12:57.660 And so here's a strange sequence of thoughts.

00:13:02.960 So there's this idea in Christianity

00:13:04.800 that the word, which is the capacity

00:13:08.620 that's associated with consciousness, I would say,

00:13:11.940 is the mechanism by which chaotic potential

00:13:15.200 is transformed into habitable order.

00:13:17.080 And also the mechanism by which order

00:13:20.020 that has become too rigid is dissolved and reconstituted, right?

00:13:24.460 That's the basic element of the hero myth.

00:13:26.500 And the word, the Logos,

00:13:30.760 is a universally distributed eternal phenomena.

00:13:35.300 But in the Christian context,

00:13:37.700 it's also been given a localization.

00:13:41.060 So it's as if this universal principle,

00:13:43.240 well, that's the word made flesh.

00:13:44.540 It's as if the universal principle

00:13:45.920 was also instantiated in the local.

00:13:50.180 And there's a deep idea there,

00:13:51.860 which is that the universal lacks something.

00:13:55.180 And what it lacks is specificity.

00:13:58.300 So in order to make the universal even more universal,

00:14:01.240 you make it specific.

00:14:03.140 In what sense do you think this is,

00:14:05.340 I mean, I find this fascinating as a cognitive anthropologist,

00:14:07.840 because it seems to speak to the level of cognitive processing

00:14:13.100 that we find most workable as human beings.

00:14:16.320 We've evolved to live in small social units

00:14:22.500 and be attentive to minds that are out there.

00:14:26.600 We have a consciousness of other consciousnesses,

00:14:30.100 essentially a heightened one.

00:14:32.040 And it seems to be that in order to make things tangible for people,

00:14:35.200 it has to be brought down to the level of our regular human cognitive.

00:14:39.280 Yeah, exactly, exactly.

00:14:40.840 Well, the linguists have noticed that as well, right?

00:14:43.340 Because they've identified,

00:14:46.040 I don't remember what they call them,

00:14:47.260 but they're the natural level of semantic formulation.

00:14:51.920 So words like cat, dog,

00:14:53.900 they're often short words,

00:14:55.240 and they seem to signify the typical, automatic, untrained level of perception.

00:15:04.200 And so things manifest themselves to us at a certain level of resolution,

00:15:08.980 and that's the level of resolution at which conscious reality exists.

00:15:13.020 And there is something about that.

00:15:14.660 There's the movement,

00:15:15.980 the encapsulation of the universal into the particular

00:15:18.720 is what produces reality.

00:15:20.520 And the idea is also expressed in the image of the genie,

00:15:25.540 which is, of course, genius.

00:15:27.400 And the genie is tremendous power encapsulated in a tiny space.

00:15:31.820 And there's the Christian idea of that,

00:15:35.300 because one of the things the Christians were trying to figure out

00:15:37.340 was how was the entire majesty of God

00:15:39.560 able to instantiate itself into a human frame.

00:15:42.960 And they had this idea they called kenosis,

00:15:45.940 which was the emptying of God.

00:15:47.700 And I think of that,

00:15:49.120 I think a modern person would think about that

00:15:50.880 as the difference between a high-resolution photo

00:15:53.360 and a low-resolution photo.

00:15:55.300 So, like, human beings are low-resolution representations of God.

00:15:59.480 That's one way of thinking about it.

00:16:01.260 And I think it's a...

00:16:02.520 There's some...

00:16:03.760 You know, there's a profound idea lurking behind that,

00:16:07.420 that we are not capable of formulating properly,

00:16:10.400 and it has something to do with the nature of consciousness,

00:16:12.740 which is something we do not understand in the least.

00:16:15.420 So, anyways, I think that what happened in my case with the videos

00:16:20.300 was that I took this general problem,

00:16:23.040 which is this philosophical and theological schism

00:16:27.240 that's developed in Western culture

00:16:28.720 that's really destabilizing it in many ways.

00:16:31.740 I mean, the New York Times had an op-ed yesterday

00:16:33.540 about how the West has lost faith in its central mission.

00:16:36.860 That was the New York Times, you know.

00:16:38.380 But what I did was take that general problem

00:16:42.500 and make it specific,

00:16:43.720 because what I said was,

00:16:45.600 well, here's a law.

00:16:46.540 It's kind of a little law.

00:16:47.720 It doesn't seem to affect many people,

00:16:49.300 but it has an implication,

00:16:51.060 and I'm not going to do it.

00:16:53.360 And so it made...

00:16:55.000 You know, every global thing manifests itself

00:16:58.120 in tiny, real places.

00:16:59.800 And so, you know, people have asked me,

00:17:02.000 well, why did I pick that hill to die on?

00:17:03.900 It's like, well, you know,

00:17:05.680 you have to pick a hill to die on.

00:17:09.260 That's why.

00:17:10.100 That's why.

00:17:10.780 Because reality manifests itself in the particulars.

00:17:14.760 So, anyways, it's...

00:17:17.000 You asked about my family.

00:17:18.100 Well, the most stressful period, I would say,

00:17:22.300 was the first two months,

00:17:25.500 because, you know, we've had...

00:17:28.400 As a unit, we've had some media experience,

00:17:31.060 not a tremendous amount,

00:17:32.260 but enough so that we were reasonably familiar with it.

00:17:35.300 But this was a clamorous onslaught.

00:17:38.960 And at the same time,

00:17:41.060 the university, in its wisdom,

00:17:43.100 decided to send me first one letter

00:17:46.680 telling me to stop doing what I was doing,

00:17:49.000 which was actually perversely helpful,

00:17:51.280 because I had made the claim that making...

00:17:53.240 While making the video,

00:17:54.280 I made the claim that making the video

00:17:55.840 was probably illegal under the pending legislation.

00:17:59.520 And, of course, people instantly accused me of overreacting.

00:18:02.220 And then the university helpfully delivered me a letter,

00:18:05.460 certainly informed by legal advice,

00:18:08.100 stating that what I had feared about what I was doing

00:18:12.420 was actually the case,

00:18:14.000 that I was violating the university's principles

00:18:16.480 of inclusion and diversity,

00:18:18.080 and also likely violating the provincial guidelines.

00:18:21.960 And I thought, well, thank you very much,

00:18:23.960 because, you know, you proved my point.

00:18:26.540 And they also said that, you know,

00:18:28.580 they'd been receiving many letters

00:18:30.020 from people claiming that I had transformed the campus

00:18:32.620 into an unsafe space,

00:18:33.960 without mentioning the fact that they were receiving

00:18:36.460 hundreds and then thousands of letters and signatures

00:18:39.160 supporting me,

00:18:40.520 which I found...

00:18:41.520 I actually mentioned it once I got the letter.

00:18:43.920 I mentioned it to the university administrators

00:18:46.100 and said, you know,

00:18:46.900 you should take this letter back and rewrite it

00:18:49.540 so that you take both sides of the argument into account,

00:18:52.800 present both sides,

00:18:54.060 and then say that you've decided that,

00:18:56.200 you know, you need to discipline me,

00:18:57.620 but don't omit half the story.

00:18:59.560 But, no, there is no movement on that.

00:19:01.680 So that's really interesting.

00:19:02.760 If I can just pause the conversation there,

00:19:04.880 and this may be a tangent,

00:19:06.980 this may be the next avenue of discussion,

00:19:08.960 but what do you think it is on campuses?

00:19:13.220 My understanding is that it's even worse in the States

00:19:15.320 than it is here in Canada

00:19:16.200 because of just the nature of the profit model,

00:19:19.160 let's say, of the university.

00:19:20.440 Why do you think it is that some administrations

00:19:23.500 seem to have been,

00:19:25.760 if not possessed by, in your terminology,

00:19:29.180 the ideology of the radical left,

00:19:31.920 or some aspects of the radical left,

00:19:33.460 seem to be pushed more aggressively

00:19:35.880 and essentially give way to those kinds of ideas

00:19:41.420 as opposed to other ideas.

00:19:44.120 Is this part of the crisis of Western civilization

00:19:47.060 that you were mentioning

00:19:48.620 that you feel we may be experiencing now?

00:19:50.960 Is there something more substantial underlying

00:19:53.820 why it is that administrations

00:19:57.160 seem to be willing to go in that direction?

00:19:58.880 Well, I think there are profound causes.

00:20:03.460 And they do have to do with a crisis

00:20:08.480 in our belief system,

00:20:10.240 the sort of crisis that Nietzsche and Dostoevsky

00:20:12.380 both predicted.

00:20:13.560 And that is a crisis in the faith in Logos,

00:20:17.060 which fundamentally in Logos

00:20:18.640 is the spirit that you could say

00:20:22.660 imbues matter with life.

00:20:23.980 That's one way of thinking about it.

00:20:25.420 And for viewers that haven't seen

00:20:27.260 some of your previous materials,

00:20:28.480 so let's instantiate that for a moment.

00:20:31.540 The concept of Logos,

00:20:33.560 how would the everyday person experience that

00:20:36.640 in their day-to-day life?

00:20:38.280 And how is that a focus of the crisis?

00:20:42.080 Well, you could think about it as

00:20:43.560 it's the power of speech to transform reality.

00:20:46.600 But even more importantly,

00:20:49.080 and more fundamentally,

00:20:49.960 it's the power of truthful speech

00:20:52.060 to transform reality in a positive direction.

00:20:55.240 And so we have this magic ability

00:20:58.060 to change the future.

00:21:00.760 And we do that through action, obviously,

00:21:04.460 but action is oriented by thought,

00:21:07.220 and thought is mediated by dialogue.

00:21:09.880 And so it's speech in particular

00:21:12.240 that's of critical importance

00:21:13.600 to this Logos process.

00:21:16.240 And the Logos is symbolically represented

00:21:19.120 in the figure of Christ,

00:21:20.620 who's the word that was there

00:21:22.700 at the beginning of time.

00:21:23.680 And so that's a very complicated topic,

00:21:26.360 but what it essentially means

00:21:27.980 is that the West has formulated

00:21:30.660 a symbolic representation

00:21:34.120 of the ideal human being.

00:21:37.280 And that ideal human being

00:21:40.080 is the person who speaks the truth

00:21:42.320 to change the world.

00:21:44.640 Right.

00:21:45.100 And so I'm really curious about this.

00:21:47.160 So in your opinion,

00:21:47.840 is this an especially Western concept,

00:21:50.840 or is it just simply a matter

00:21:52.200 of you having studied

00:21:53.660 mainly Western mythology?

00:21:54.900 No, I think it's, it's,

00:21:56.280 I mean, there is emphasis

00:21:57.560 in other, in other belief systems.

00:22:00.720 Welcome to the Jordan B. Peterson podcast.

00:22:04.940 You can support these podcasts

00:22:06.680 by donating to Dr. Peterson's

00:22:08.360 Patreon account,

00:22:09.620 the link to which can be found

00:22:11.060 in the description.

00:22:13.780 Dr. Peterson's self-development programs,

00:22:17.060 self-authoring,

00:22:17.860 can be found at self-authoring.com.

00:22:23.140 This is episode 20.

00:22:26.140 An interview and discussion

00:22:27.420 between Dr. Peterson

00:22:28.640 and Transliminal Media's

00:22:30.360 Jordan Levine.

00:22:32.600 It's entitled

00:22:33.720 Ideology, Logos, and Belief.

00:22:36.920 Please consider supporting

00:22:40.700 Transliminal Media on Patreon,

00:22:42.840 as well as watching

00:22:43.640 the original interview on YouTube.

00:22:46.300 Links can be found

00:22:47.160 in the description.

00:22:56.200 Going online without ExpressVPN

00:22:58.160 is like not paying attention

00:22:59.580 to the safety demonstration

00:23:00.660 on a flight.

00:23:01.700 Most of the time,

00:23:02.520 you'll probably be fine,

00:23:03.840 but what if one day

00:23:04.980 that weird yellow mask

00:23:06.200 drops down from overhead

00:23:07.240 and you have no idea

00:23:08.720 what to do?

00:23:09.520 In our hyper-connected world,

00:23:11.000 your digital privacy

00:23:11.960 isn't just a luxury.

00:23:13.340 It's a fundamental right.

00:23:14.640 Every time you connect

00:23:15.420 to an unsecured network

00:23:16.600 in a cafe, hotel, or airport,

00:23:18.900 you're essentially broadcasting

00:23:20.080 your personal information

00:23:21.180 to anyone with a technical

00:23:22.620 know-how to intercept it.

00:23:23.960 And let's be clear,

00:23:24.820 it doesn't take a genius

00:23:25.940 hacker to do this.

00:23:27.160 With some off-the-shelf hardware,

00:23:28.740 even a tech-savvy teenager

00:23:30.140 could potentially access

00:23:31.260 your passwords,

00:23:32.300 bank logins,

00:23:33.080 and credit card details.

00:23:34.540 Now, you might think,

00:23:35.620 what's the big deal?

00:23:36.680 Who'd want my data anyway?

00:23:38.260 Well, on the dark web,

00:23:39.380 your personal information

00:23:40.500 could fetch up to $1,000.

00:23:42.820 That's right,

00:23:43.380 there's a whole underground economy

00:23:44.900 built on stolen identities.

00:23:46.900 Enter ExpressVPN.

00:23:48.640 It's like a digital fortress,

00:23:50.120 creating an encrypted tunnel

00:23:51.300 between your device

00:23:52.320 and the internet.

00:23:53.340 Their encryption is so robust

00:23:54.920 that it would take a hacker

00:23:55.940 with a supercomputer

00:23:56.780 over a billion years

00:23:58.200 to crack it.

00:23:58.920 But don't let its power fool you.

00:24:00.800 ExpressVPN is incredibly user-friendly.

00:24:02.780 With just one click,

00:24:04.140 you're protected across

00:24:04.980 all your devices.

00:24:06.160 Phones, laptops, tablets,

00:24:07.760 you name it.

00:24:08.340 That's why I use ExpressVPN

00:24:09.720 whenever I'm traveling

00:24:10.840 or working from a coffee shop.

00:24:12.480 It gives me peace of mind

00:24:13.540 knowing that my research,

00:24:14.860 communications,

00:24:15.640 and personal data

00:24:16.600 are shielded from prying eyes.

00:24:18.460 Secure your online data today

00:24:20.000 by visiting

00:24:20.640 expressvpn.com

00:24:22.100 slash jordan.

00:24:23.220 That's

00:24:23.540 E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N

00:24:25.840 dot com

00:24:26.320 slash jordan

00:24:26.980 and you can get

00:24:27.600 an extra three months free.

00:24:29.620 expressvpn.com

00:24:30.740 starting a business

00:24:36.220 can be tough

00:24:36.940 but thanks to Shopify

00:24:38.040 running your online storefront

00:24:39.620 is easier than ever.

00:24:41.400 Shopify is the

00:24:42.160 global commerce platform

00:24:43.300 that helps you sell

00:24:44.080 at every stage

00:24:44.840 of your business.

00:24:45.560 From the launch

00:24:46.380 your online shop stage

00:24:47.480 all the way to the

00:24:48.200 did we just hit

00:24:49.000 a million orders stage?

00:24:50.500 Shopify is here

00:24:51.280 to help you grow.

00:24:52.720 Our marketing team

00:24:53.420 uses Shopify every day

00:24:54.680 to sell our merchandise

00:24:55.460 and we love how easy

00:24:56.840 it is to add more items,

00:24:58.380 ship products,

00:24:59.080 and track conversions.

00:25:00.740 With Shopify

00:25:01.140 customize your online store

00:25:02.560 to your style

00:25:03.500 with flexible templates

00:25:04.600 and powerful tools

00:25:05.640 alongside an endless list

00:25:07.340 of integrations

00:25:08.060 and third-party apps

00:25:09.020 like on-demand printing,

00:25:10.460 accounting,

00:25:11.040 and chatbots.

00:25:12.180 Shopify helps you

00:25:12.940 turn browsers

00:25:13.560 into buyers

00:25:14.340 with the internet's

00:25:15.060 best converting checkout

00:25:16.140 up to 36% better

00:25:17.840 compared to other

00:25:18.580 leading e-commerce platforms.

00:25:20.200 No matter how big

00:25:21.280 you want to grow,

00:25:22.180 Shopify gives you

00:25:22.900 everything you need

00:25:23.640 to take control

00:25:24.380 and take your business

00:25:25.380 to the next level.

00:25:26.940 Sign up for a $1

00:25:27.820 per month trial period

00:25:28.960 at shopify.com

00:25:30.280 slash jbp,

00:25:31.540 all lowercase.

00:25:32.820 Go to shopify.com

00:25:34.120 slash jbp now

00:25:35.280 to grow your business

00:25:36.300 no matter what stage

00:25:37.520 you're in.

00:25:38.160 That's shopify.com

00:25:39.540 slash jbp.

00:25:40.620 It's been a few years

00:25:45.120 since we last had

00:25:45.720 our first interview

00:25:46.260 and a number of things

00:25:47.880 have happened in your life

00:25:49.180 both personally

00:25:50.080 and in terms of your career

00:25:51.140 and probably your

00:25:51.860 intellectual development

00:25:53.120 as well.

00:25:53.640 So maybe just to start

00:25:55.040 things off,

00:25:55.480 if you could summarize

00:25:56.080 in your own words

00:25:56.680 what that experience

00:25:57.540 has been like for you

00:25:58.360 just to catch up

00:25:59.340 our viewers

00:25:59.740 on what's been happening.

00:26:00.800 Well, the most significant event

00:26:04.460 was the fallout

00:26:06.040 from a series of videos

00:26:07.140 that I made

00:26:07.780 in late September of 2016.

00:26:11.980 I made one video

00:26:13.800 critiquing the policy framework

00:26:17.760 within which Bill C-16,

00:26:20.440 Federal Bill C-16

00:26:21.620 was likely to be interpreted

00:26:23.160 taking particular issue

00:26:25.100 with its provisions

00:26:27.840 for compelled speech

00:26:29.440 in relationship to pronouns

00:26:30.720 but more fundamentally

00:26:32.220 I would say

00:26:32.920 by criticizing

00:26:36.940 the theoretical framework

00:26:39.300 regarding human identity

00:26:41.260 that had been instantiated

00:26:42.500 into the law

00:26:43.220 that the legal claim

00:26:45.280 and this is mostly stemming

00:26:47.200 from legislation

00:26:48.880 and policies

00:26:49.760 that were developed

00:26:50.420 in Ontario

00:26:50.940 but that will have

00:26:51.580 a significant influence

00:26:52.760 on the federal level

00:26:54.000 insisting that

00:26:55.460 biological sex,

00:26:56.760 gender identity,

00:26:57.760 gender expression

00:26:58.540 and sexual proclivity

00:26:59.840 varied independently

00:27:01.920 which is a

00:27:03.440 it's more extreme

00:27:05.300 than a radical

00:27:06.420 social constructionist view

00:27:07.960 because the radical

00:27:08.720 social constructionist view

00:27:10.280 is that all of those tiers

00:27:11.800 including to some degree

00:27:13.380 biological sex even

00:27:14.800 are socioculturally determined

00:27:17.320 and of course

00:27:18.900 human beings

00:27:20.080 are highly cultural animals

00:27:21.560 so there is

00:27:22.660 pronounced sociocultural

00:27:24.060 determination

00:27:24.800 of virtually everything

00:27:25.680 that we do

00:27:26.300 but that doesn't mean

00:27:27.620 that those levels

00:27:29.220 of identity

00:27:29.940 vary independently

00:27:31.540 which is the claim

00:27:32.880 that's being made

00:27:33.580 in fact they're very

00:27:34.440 very very tightly correlated

00:27:36.200 would exceed 0.95

00:27:37.580 they're virtually

00:27:38.360 perfectly correlated

00:27:39.360 and so

00:27:40.500 I believe that

00:27:42.100 that's an unwarranted

00:27:43.160 intrusion

00:27:43.860 of a certain kind

00:27:44.840 of ideology

00:27:46.000 it's postmodern ideology

00:27:47.740 fundamentally

00:27:48.320 with its roots

00:27:49.660 in a kind of

00:27:51.060 a surround

00:27:51.560 of Marxist

00:27:52.660 identity politics

00:27:53.660 and I think

00:27:55.380 that it was

00:27:56.080 completely inappropriate

00:27:56.980 for that to be

00:27:57.720 transformed

00:27:58.160 into legislation

00:27:59.480 anyways

00:28:00.340 there's been

00:28:01.740 all sorts of

00:28:02.260 consequences of that

00:28:03.220 I mean

00:28:03.520 my household

00:28:04.340 was an absolute

00:28:05.160 media tornado

00:28:06.980 I guess it still is

00:28:08.540 really

00:28:08.860 for months

00:28:10.160 after that

00:28:10.860 there were

00:28:11.380 journalists lining up

00:28:12.760 outside the house

00:28:13.620 outside your own home

00:28:15.620 oh yeah

00:28:16.460 oh I had no idea

00:28:17.320 oh yeah

00:28:17.640 there were journalists

00:28:18.080 in the house

00:28:18.500 all the time

00:28:19.080 and one after the other

00:28:20.220 and

00:28:20.560 what was this like

00:28:22.380 you don't have to

00:28:23.800 answer on camera

00:28:24.280 if you don't feel comfortable

00:28:25.340 but what was this like

00:28:25.960 for your family

00:28:26.460 I mean

00:28:26.720 it was all very

00:28:27.660 unexpected

00:28:28.240 is my understanding

00:28:29.100 oh it was

00:28:29.660 completely unexpected

00:28:30.480 I mean

00:28:30.900 I didn't

00:28:31.500 you know

00:28:31.960 the reason I made

00:28:32.920 the videos

00:28:33.420 was because I had

00:28:34.500 something to say

00:28:35.260 I was trying to

00:28:36.500 sometimes

00:28:37.200 you know

00:28:37.780 I can't sleep at night

00:28:39.120 because I'm thinking

00:28:40.000 about something

00:28:40.620 and usually what I'll do

00:28:41.880 is go write it down

00:28:43.160 I have some writing to do

00:28:44.300 so I get up

00:28:44.980 and I go write down

00:28:45.680 what I'm thinking

00:28:46.260 and that usually

00:28:46.820 does the trick

00:28:47.380 but because I had been

00:28:48.700 playing with YouTube

00:28:49.460 I thought

00:28:50.780 well

00:28:51.940 I'll try making YouTube video

00:28:55.680 and telling people

00:28:56.740 what I'm thinking about

00:28:57.580 and see if that

00:28:59.580 performs the same

00:29:01.480 function

00:29:02.600 as writing

00:29:03.780 and to me

00:29:05.120 the function of writing

00:29:06.080 well it's twofold

00:29:06.840 one is conceivably

00:29:08.160 to communicate with people

00:29:09.800 although

00:29:10.520 the fundamental purpose

00:29:12.040 for me

00:29:12.440 is to clarify

00:29:13.920 clarify my thoughts

00:29:14.720 so that I know

00:29:15.460 because if something

00:29:17.160 is disturbing you

00:29:18.300 what that means

00:29:19.920 is that

00:29:20.400 it needs to be

00:29:21.720 articulated

00:29:23.000 it's the emergence

00:29:25.000 of unexplored territory

00:29:26.620 something that disturbs you

00:29:28.020 that's the right way

00:29:28.880 to think about it

00:29:29.540 it's unmapped territory

00:29:31.100 that's manifesting itself

00:29:32.600 it's like a vista

00:29:33.880 of threat

00:29:34.500 and possibility

00:29:35.300 and you need to articulate

00:29:37.020 a path through it

00:29:38.180 and so

00:29:39.380 that's what I was doing

00:29:40.500 it's like

00:29:41.160 I was thinking

00:29:42.100 well this is bothering me

00:29:43.180 and this seems to be why

00:29:44.140 and here's what I think

00:29:44.860 is going on

00:29:45.520 and so I made the videos

00:29:47.280 and in some sense

00:29:48.620 I didn't think

00:29:49.680 anything more of it

00:29:51.220 and then

00:29:52.140 well

00:29:53.300 see what happened

00:29:54.280 I think

00:29:54.820 and you know

00:29:56.220 and I've been thinking

00:29:56.780 about this in retrospect

00:29:57.620 is

00:29:57.980 it's never obvious

00:30:00.640 what's going on

00:30:01.560 because things

00:30:02.160 go on at multiple levels

00:30:03.500 and I think

00:30:04.080 they go on

00:30:04.620 at a theological level

00:30:06.280 there's

00:30:06.680 that's the most

00:30:08.280 fundamental level

00:30:09.300 of

00:30:09.580 let's call it

00:30:10.820 epistemological reality

00:30:12.320 it might even be

00:30:13.020 ontological reality

00:30:14.020 but certainly

00:30:14.560 epistemological reality

00:30:16.420 if I can interject

00:30:17.140 for a moment

00:30:17.440 what do you mean

00:30:17.800 by theological

00:30:18.340 in this sense

00:30:18.940 what does that mean

00:30:19.400 to you

00:30:19.740 well it's been

00:30:20.680 my experience

00:30:21.260 as a clinician

00:30:21.960 that if you

00:30:22.600 the more serious

00:30:23.940 the events

00:30:25.520 that you're discussing

00:30:26.500 with people

00:30:27.120 the more the

00:30:27.760 language shifts

00:30:28.920 towards what you

00:30:29.940 might describe

00:30:30.580 as the religious

00:30:31.380 so for example

00:30:32.780 post-traumatic stress

00:30:34.520 disorder

00:30:35.020 that's a good example

00:30:35.940 or cases of

00:30:37.220 serious abuse

00:30:38.120 child abuse

00:30:38.940 or like truly

00:30:40.500 reprehensible

00:30:41.440 interactions between

00:30:42.500 people

00:30:42.880 they're best

00:30:43.860 conceptualized

00:30:44.820 with regards to

00:30:46.240 a dialogue

00:30:47.460 about the nature

00:30:48.420 of good and evil

00:30:49.100 and in fact

00:30:51.240 with post-traumatic

00:30:52.080 stress disorder

00:30:52.840 that's actually

00:30:54.000 necessary I believe

00:30:55.120 and I should say

00:30:56.180 in keeping with

00:30:57.780 that I've had a

00:30:58.380 number of war

00:30:59.100 vets come up

00:31:00.240 to me after

00:31:00.800 my recent talks

00:31:01.740 and tell me

00:31:02.760 that watching

00:31:03.520 my lectures

00:31:04.180 has cured

00:31:04.860 their post-traumatic

00:31:05.700 stress disorder

00:31:06.440 because I provided

00:31:08.160 and I've provided

00:31:09.200 my clients

00:31:09.760 with the same

00:31:10.220 thing

00:31:10.440 if you're

00:31:10.900 most people

00:31:11.840 develop PTSD

00:31:12.980 and other

00:31:14.420 catastrophic

00:31:15.920 psychological reactions

00:31:17.300 when something

00:31:18.520 terrible

00:31:18.940 not so much

00:31:19.800 when something

00:31:20.260 terrible happens

00:31:21.020 to them

00:31:21.380 but when something

00:31:22.100 terrible happens

00:31:22.840 to them

00:31:23.180 because of

00:31:23.880 someone malevolent

00:31:25.160 and sometimes

00:31:26.280 that malevolent

00:31:27.200 person can be

00:31:27.960 themselves

00:31:28.580 so soldiers

00:31:29.660 for example

00:31:30.240 often develop

00:31:30.980 PTSD

00:31:31.500 if they observe

00:31:32.920 themselves doing

00:31:33.800 something on the

00:31:34.460 battlefield

00:31:34.820 that they did

00:31:35.620 not believe

00:31:36.180 was within

00:31:36.720 their realm

00:31:37.340 of action

00:31:38.080 and so it's

00:31:39.220 as if the

00:31:40.100 archetypal

00:31:40.800 adversary

00:31:41.480 leapt forward

00:31:43.880 out of their

00:31:44.440 soul

00:31:44.800 and seized them

00:31:45.840 and acted

00:31:46.680 for them

00:31:47.140 on the battlefield

00:31:47.740 and then they're

00:31:48.340 shattered by that

00:31:49.160 they can't believe

00:31:49.780 that they were

00:31:50.260 capable of that

00:31:51.020 that destroys

00:31:52.080 their sense

00:31:52.800 of what it

00:31:53.200 means to be

00:31:53.680 human

00:31:54.020 and what

00:31:54.820 being human

00:31:55.460 means

00:31:55.900 and that's

00:31:58.420 more likely

00:31:58.820 to happen

00:31:59.240 to people

00:31:59.760 who are

00:32:00.460 somewhat naive

00:32:02.020 I would say

00:32:02.640 certainly that's

00:32:04.100 the case

00:32:04.420 with the

00:32:05.200 PTSD literature

00:32:06.240 and so

00:32:07.580 to treat

00:32:08.780 someone

00:32:09.140 in a situation

00:32:09.960 like that

00:32:10.380 you have to

00:32:10.900 help them

00:32:11.320 develop

00:32:11.760 a philosophy

00:32:13.260 I would say

00:32:14.160 but probably

00:32:15.200 a theology

00:32:15.880 of good

00:32:16.360 and evil

00:32:16.780 because you

00:32:17.660 have to

00:32:18.260 investigate

00:32:19.620 the structure

00:32:20.580 of the

00:32:21.060 motivation

00:32:21.560 for malevolence

00:32:22.500 and you

00:32:23.260 can't do

00:32:23.620 that

00:32:23.880 outside the

00:32:25.080 confines

00:32:25.520 of religious

00:32:25.960 language

00:32:26.440 partly because

00:32:27.380 this is a

00:32:28.840 difficult thing

00:32:29.420 to understand

00:32:29.980 and I think

00:32:30.600 you have to

00:32:31.820 have had

00:32:32.340 contact

00:32:32.800 with true

00:32:33.580 evil

00:32:33.940 in order

00:32:34.520 to understand

00:32:35.280 it

00:32:35.520 but the

00:32:36.580 fundamental

00:32:37.160 motivation

00:32:37.800 for the

00:32:38.940 most malevolent

00:32:39.820 actions

00:32:40.200 is actually

00:32:40.940 revenge against

00:32:41.800 God

00:32:42.260 and that's

00:32:43.420 even the

00:32:43.820 case

00:32:44.100 if the

00:32:44.940 people who

00:32:45.360 are malevolent

00:32:45.980 are atheists

00:32:46.740 it doesn't

00:32:47.200 matter

00:32:47.680 and it

00:32:48.680 doesn't matter

00:32:49.300 in some

00:32:49.860 sense

00:32:50.160 it doesn't

00:32:50.600 even matter

00:32:51.100 if God

00:32:51.560 exists

00:32:52.240 it's

00:32:53.500 the people

00:32:54.440 who are

00:32:55.380 acting

00:32:55.720 malevolently

00:32:56.380 act as

00:32:57.520 if there

00:32:58.200 is a

00:32:58.680 sapient

00:33:00.440 creator

00:33:01.460 who is

00:33:02.400 responsible

00:33:03.120 for this

00:33:03.800 horrible mess

00:33:04.680 against whom

00:33:05.500 revenge must

00:33:06.320 be promulgated

00:33:07.780 and the

00:33:09.460 earliest

00:33:10.100 example of

00:33:10.820 that is

00:33:11.160 in the

00:33:11.740 earliest

00:33:12.340 literary

00:33:12.800 example of

00:33:13.480 that is

00:33:13.860 in the

00:33:14.200 Cain and

00:33:14.460 Abel story

00:33:15.020 because Cain

00:33:15.700 kills Abel

00:33:16.840 who is also

00:33:17.700 his ideal

00:33:18.400 kills Abel

00:33:19.480 clearly to

00:33:20.620 spite God

00:33:21.640 because his

00:33:23.040 sacrifices were

00:33:24.380 rejected

00:33:24.860 it's an

00:33:25.180 unbelievably

00:33:26.240 profound story

00:33:27.160 because that is

00:33:28.160 exactly how

00:33:28.700 people react

00:33:29.440 when their

00:33:29.840 sacrifices are

00:33:31.200 rejected by

00:33:32.200 God for

00:33:33.220 all intents and

00:33:33.880 purposes they

00:33:34.500 become bitter and

00:33:35.400 resentful and

00:33:36.380 look for revenge

00:33:37.180 and the more

00:33:38.840 vengeful they

00:33:39.620 are the more

00:33:40.840 they enter the

00:33:41.620 territory of

00:33:42.420 absolute good and

00:33:43.620 evil rather than

00:33:44.440 proximal good and

00:33:45.480 evil and it's

00:33:46.760 very helpful for

00:33:47.600 people who have

00:33:48.340 post-traumatic stress

00:33:49.400 disorder to start

00:33:50.340 to understand that

00:33:51.340 sort of thing and

00:33:52.240 because otherwise

00:33:52.820 they can't find a

00:33:53.680 way out and so

00:33:55.300 so you know things

00:33:57.820 have these levels of

00:33:59.000 existence theological

00:33:59.960 at the bottom and

00:34:01.960 that's where the battle

00:34:03.120 between good and evil

00:34:03.920 takes place and where

00:34:04.960 the power of the word

00:34:06.560 is of the truthful word

00:34:08.000 is most evident and

00:34:09.060 then above that is

00:34:09.860 philosophical and

00:34:10.980 then perhaps above that

00:34:11.980 is political and

00:34:12.740 economic and

00:34:13.420 sociological and

00:34:14.360 then individual or

00:34:15.800 familial and then

00:34:16.640 individual and and

00:34:17.980 you know and

00:34:18.840 complicated things

00:34:20.140 manifest themselves at

00:34:21.380 all those levels

00:34:22.020 simultaneously and

00:34:23.400 you have to pick a

00:34:24.240 level of analysis

00:34:24.960 that's most suitable

00:34:26.160 to formulate the

00:34:27.520 problem well the

00:34:30.160 proximal cause of

00:34:33.060 my video production

00:34:35.500 was the promotion

00:34:37.400 of legislation to

00:34:39.440 make compelled

00:34:40.200 speech of a certain

00:34:41.180 form mandatory and

00:34:42.920 that produced two

00:34:44.700 responses one was a

00:34:45.840 proximal response the

00:34:47.020 transgender activist

00:34:48.840 community a community

00:34:51.720 which by my estimation

00:34:55.460 in no way speaks

00:34:57.400 legitimately for the

00:34:58.800 transgender community

00:34:59.760 and many transgender

00:35:00.660 people have told me

00:35:01.500 precisely that a

00:35:03.460 substantial number of

00:35:04.500 them in well-written

00:35:06.340 and well-formulated

00:35:07.360 letters to me I've

00:35:08.200 received at least I

00:35:09.280 think it's up to about

00:35:10.040 35 of letters like that

00:35:11.560 now they went after me

00:35:14.380 along with the coterie

00:35:15.440 of expected suspects

00:35:17.860 the LGBT activists and

00:35:19.860 the radical leftists and

00:35:20.980 so forth and you know

00:35:22.320 called me a transphobe and

00:35:23.520 a racist which is really

00:35:24.900 something I just I think

00:35:26.180 it was because I made

00:35:26.940 some disparaging comments

00:35:28.080 about the leaders of the

00:35:29.180 black black lives matter in

00:35:31.020 Toronto who believe me

00:35:32.400 deserve all the

00:35:33.160 disparaging comments you

00:35:34.300 could heap on them you

00:35:36.760 know that's completely

00:35:37.500 independently of the

00:35:38.600 potential validity of the

00:35:39.860 black lives matters

00:35:40.840 movement that I've said

00:35:42.280 virtually nothing about

00:35:43.420 that so then the

00:35:46.060 argument started really I

00:35:47.520 suppose in the media and

00:35:48.500 online is well what the

00:35:49.780 hell was going on was I

00:35:50.780 just this bigoted

00:35:52.040 transphobic fossil dinosaur

00:35:54.500 or was something else

00:35:56.540 happening and I believe

00:35:59.760 when I made the videos

00:36:02.780 that the the legislation

00:36:05.520 itself and the policies

00:36:06.580 were signifying a

00:36:09.280 crisis a disjunction in

00:36:12.400 western society that

00:36:13.360 was was far of which

00:36:16.400 the gender pronoun

00:36:18.020 argument was only a tiny

00:36:19.280 tendril and the fact that

00:36:21.340 the videos received so

00:36:23.580 much attention and the

00:36:24.860 and the aftermath of it

00:36:26.580 also continues to

00:36:28.000 reverberate with no

00:36:30.200 decrease whatsoever in

00:36:31.600 intensity I would say and

00:36:32.760 this is like what six

00:36:33.820 months later seven months

00:36:35.020 later it's a long time

00:36:36.260 it's no 15 minutes it's a

00:36:38.420 long time it's because I

00:36:40.040 I stuck my I put my finger

00:36:42.160 on a nerve and I've been

00:36:44.020 thinking about why that was

00:36:45.380 because many people have

00:36:46.380 decried political correctness

00:36:48.440 but they did it in generic

00:36:50.240 ways you know and so here's a

00:36:53.440 strange sequence of thoughts

00:36:55.360 so there's this idea in

00:36:57.720 Christianity that the word

00:36:59.720 which is the the capacity

00:37:01.980 that's associated with

00:37:03.360 consciousness I would say is

00:37:05.580 that is the mechanism by

00:37:06.980 which chaotic potential is

00:37:08.860 transformed into habitable

00:37:10.180 order and also the

00:37:11.300 mechanism by which order

00:37:13.420 that has become too rigid is

00:37:15.640 dissolved and

00:37:16.560 reconstituted right that's the

00:37:18.440 basic element of the hero myth

00:37:19.880 and and the the word the logos

00:37:23.620 is a universally distributed

00:37:26.480 eternal phenomena but in the

00:37:30.320 Christian context it's also been

00:37:32.140 given a localization so it's as

00:37:35.080 if this universal principle

00:37:36.320 well that's the word made flesh

00:37:37.940 it's as if the universal

00:37:38.820 principle was also

00:37:40.920 instantiated in the local and

00:37:43.740 there's a deep idea there which

00:37:45.400 is that the universal lacks

00:37:48.080 something and what it lacks is

00:37:50.540 specificity so in order to make

00:37:52.820 the universal even more universal

00:37:54.640 you make it specific and in what

00:37:57.060 sense do you think this is I mean

00:37:59.160 I find this fascinating as a

00:38:00.340 cognitive anthropologist because

00:38:01.620 it seems to speak to the the

00:38:04.440 level of cognitive processing

00:38:06.500 that we find most workable as

00:38:09.120 human beings right there where

00:38:11.100 we've evolved to to live in small

00:38:15.120 social units and be attentive to

00:38:18.460 minds that are out there we have

00:38:20.200 we have a consciousness of other

00:38:22.600 consciousness is essentially a

00:38:24.360 heightened one and it seems to be

00:38:26.320 that in order to make things

00:38:27.660 tangible for people it has to be

00:38:29.360 brought down to the level of our

00:38:31.340 regular human cognitive yeah well

00:38:33.000 exactly exactly well the linguists

00:38:34.960 have noticed that as well right

00:38:36.680 because they they they've identified

00:38:39.080 I don't remember what they call them

00:38:40.600 but they're natural the natural level

00:38:43.180 of semantic formulation so words like

00:38:46.000 cat dog they're often short words

00:38:48.620 and they seem to signify the the

00:38:52.160 typical automatic untrained level of

00:38:56.200 perception and so things manifest us

00:38:58.960 manifest themselves to us at a certain

00:39:01.360 level of resolution and that's the

00:39:02.840 level of resolution at which conscious

00:39:04.720 reality exists right and there is

00:39:07.180 something about that there's the the

00:39:08.760 movement that the encapsulation of the

00:39:10.820 universal into the particular is what

00:39:12.920 produces reality and the idea is also

00:39:15.420 expressed in that in the in the image of

00:39:18.100 the genie which is of course genius and

00:39:20.980 the genie is tremendous power

00:39:22.840 encapsulated in a tiny space and and

00:39:25.420 the there's a the christian idea of

00:39:27.940 that because one of the things the

00:39:29.640 christians were trying to figure out

00:39:30.720 was how was the entire majesty of god

00:39:32.960 able to instantiate itself into a human

00:39:35.480 frame and they had this idea they

00:39:37.860 called kenosis which was the emptying

00:39:40.480 of god and I think of that I think a

00:39:42.880 modern person would think about that as

00:39:44.480 the difference between a high resolution

00:39:46.380 photo and a low resolution photo it's so

00:39:49.080 like human beings are low resolution

00:39:51.220 representations of god that's that's

00:39:53.320 one way of thinking about it and I think

00:39:55.120 it's a I there's some there's you know

00:39:58.020 there's a profound idea lurking behind

00:40:00.020 that that we are not capable of

00:40:02.660 formulating properly and it has

00:40:04.200 something to do with the nature of

00:40:05.560 consciousness which is something we do

00:40:06.960 not understand in the least so anyways I

00:40:10.660 think that what happened in my in my case

00:40:13.080 with the videos was that I took this

00:40:15.220 general problem which is this

00:40:17.180 philosophical and theological schism

00:40:20.660 that's developed in western culture

00:40:22.120 that's that's really destabilizing it in

00:40:24.640 many ways I mean the New York Times had

00:40:26.140 an op-ed yesterday about how the West has

00:40:28.400 lost faith in its central mission that

00:40:30.400 was the New York Times you know but what

00:40:33.780 I did was take that general problem and

00:40:36.200 make it specific because what I said was

00:40:38.480 well here's a law it's kind of a little

00:40:40.560 law doesn't seem to affect many people

00:40:42.540 but it has an implication and I'm not

00:40:45.300 going to do it and so it it made you

00:40:48.480 know every global thing manifests itself

00:40:51.520 in tiny real places and so you know

00:40:54.600 people have asked me well why did I pick

00:40:56.080 that hill to die on it's like well you

00:40:58.540 know you have to pick a hill to die on

00:41:02.560 that's why that's why because reality

00:41:05.680 manifests itself in the particulars so

00:41:08.400 anyways it's you asked about my family

00:41:11.520 well the most stressful period I would

00:41:15.400 say was the first two months because

00:41:19.240 you know we've had we as a unit we've

00:41:22.800 had some media experience not a

00:41:24.880 tremendous amount but enough so that we

00:41:26.540 were reasonably familiar with it but this

00:41:29.580 was a clamorous onslaught and at the

00:41:33.840 same time the university in its wisdom

00:41:35.980 decided to send me first one letter

00:41:40.060 telling me to stop doing what I was

00:41:42.160 doing which was actually perversely

00:41:43.680 helpful because I had made the claim

00:41:45.740 that making that while making the video

00:41:47.560 I made the claim that making the video

00:41:49.240 was probably illegal under the pending

00:41:51.900 legislation and of course people

00:41:53.740 instantly accused me of overreacting and

00:41:55.660 then the university helpfully delivered me

00:41:57.900 a letter certainly informed by legal

00:42:00.680 advice stating that what I had feared

00:42:04.560 about what I was doing was actually the

00:42:06.900 case that I was violating the

00:42:08.880 university's principles of inclusion and

00:42:10.740 diversity and also likely violating the

00:42:14.240 provincial guidelines and I thought

00:42:15.780 well thank you very much because you know

00:42:18.560 you proved my point and they also said

00:42:20.960 that you know they'd been receiving many

00:42:23.060 letters from people claiming that I had

00:42:24.940 transformed the campus into an unsafe

00:42:26.760 space without mentioning the fact that

00:42:29.160 they were receiving hundreds and then

00:42:30.860 thousands of letters and signatures

00:42:32.560 supporting me which I found I actually

00:42:35.640 mentioned it once I got the letter I

00:42:37.380 mentioned it to the university

00:42:38.680 administrators and said you know you

00:42:40.400 should take this letter back and

00:42:42.240 rewrite it so that you take both sides of

00:42:44.820 the argument into account present both

00:42:46.900 sides and then say that you've decided

00:42:49.040 that you know you need to discipline me

00:42:50.880 but don't omit half the story but no

00:42:53.440 there is no movement on that so that's

00:42:55.600 really interesting if I can just pause the

00:42:57.160 conversation there and let's this may be a

00:43:00.000 tangent this may be the next avenue of

00:43:01.880 discussion but what do you think it is

00:43:04.520 on campuses and my understanding is that

00:43:07.580 it's even worse in the states than it is

00:43:09.060 here in Canada because of just the nature

00:43:10.600 of the of the profit model let's say of

00:43:12.840 the university why do you think it is that

00:43:15.200 some administrations seem to have been

00:43:18.140 if not possessed by in your terminology the

00:43:22.660 ideology of of the radical left or some

00:43:25.800 aspects of the radical left seem to be

00:43:28.120 pushed more aggressively and and essentially

00:43:32.320 give way to those kinds of ideas as

00:43:35.040 opposed to other ideas what what is this

00:43:38.320 part of that the crisis of Western

00:43:40.020 civilization that you that you that you

00:43:41.640 were mentioning that you feel we may be

00:43:43.040 experiencing now is is there something

00:43:45.260 more substantial underlying why it is

00:43:47.880 that that administration seem to be

00:43:51.080 willing to go in that direction well I

00:43:52.920 think there are profound causes and then

00:43:59.840 they do have to do with a crisis in our

00:44:02.840 belief system that the sort of crisis that

00:44:04.660 Nietzsche and Dostoevsky both predicted and

00:44:07.300 that is a crisis in the faith in logos which

00:44:10.580 fundamentally and logos is is the spirit

00:44:13.400 that that you could say imbues matter with

00:44:16.960 life that's one way of thinking about it but and

00:44:19.200 for view for viewers that haven't seen some of

00:44:20.920 your previous material so how how would we

00:44:23.200 let's let's instantiate that for a moment

00:44:24.800 yeah the concept of logos how how would

00:44:28.080 would the everyday person experience that

00:44:30.020 in their you know in their day-to-day life

00:44:31.620 and how is that a focus of the crisis well

00:44:35.620 you you could think about it as it's the

00:44:37.440 power of speech to transform reality but

00:44:40.300 even more important more importantly and

00:44:42.580 more fundamentally it's the power of

00:44:44.240 truthful speech to transform reality in a

00:44:47.700 positive direction and so you know we have

00:44:50.380 this magic ability to change the future and

00:44:54.660 we do that through thought through action

00:44:57.320 obviously but action is oriented by thought

00:45:00.400 and thought is mediated by dialogue and so

00:45:04.040 it's it's speech in particular that's of

00:45:06.100 critical importance to to this logos process

00:45:09.140 and the logos is symbolically represented in

00:45:12.740 the figure of Christ who's who's the word that

00:45:15.480 was there at the beginning of time and so

00:45:17.920 that's a very complicated topic but what it

00:45:20.460 essentially means is that the West is

00:45:23.460 formulated the symbol a symbolic

00:45:26.860 representation of the ideal human being and

00:45:30.860 that ideal human being is the person who

00:45:34.400 speaks the truth to change the world right

00:45:38.200 and so I'm really curious about this so in

00:45:40.720 your opinion is this an especially Western

00:45:42.920 Western concept or is it just simply a

00:45:45.420 matter of you having studied mainly

00:45:47.200 Western myth no I think it's it's I mean

00:45:49.860 there is emphasis in other in other belief

00:45:52.940 systems on I think it's more explicit in in

00:45:55.740 Christianity it's I would say Christianity has

00:45:58.240 done two things it's developed the most explicit

00:46:00.200 doctrine of of good versus evil and it's

00:46:03.300 developed the most explicit and articulated

00:46:06.080 doctrine of of the logos and so I would say in

00:46:10.380 many traditions it's implicit it's implicit in

00:46:13.560 hero mythology for example and I think what

00:46:16.780 happens is that if you aggregate enough hero

00:46:19.060 myths and extract out the central theme you end

00:46:21.660 up with the logos it's the thing it's the thing

00:46:25.100 that's common to all heroes that's that's a good

00:46:27.700 way of thinking about it right so this reminds me of I

00:46:30.740 don't know if you're familiar with this work but a

00:46:32.100 man named René Girard I mean many people have been

00:46:35.140 talking to me about René Girard right okay so so and just to

00:46:39.140 challenge the ideas here so in our previous uh interview I

00:46:42.180 sometimes played devil's advocate and and viewers

00:46:44.580 apparently appreciated that that tax so when I say these

00:46:47.380 things that's fine just take that with with a grain of

00:46:49.860 salt so René Girard has a fascinating theory about the

00:46:53.860 scapegoat the role of the scapegoat which we won't get

00:46:55.620 into it too in depth here but sort of coincidentally in you

00:47:01.220 know in scare quotes he winds up at a state where uh the answer to

00:47:05.860 all his problems is catholicism you know he has this very this

00:47:09.700 roundabout and really actually intriguing theory about about the

00:47:12.740 nature of the role of envy in human society and how that and

00:47:17.140 how the resolution of that creates bonds but then somehow he decides

00:47:21.780 that the catholicism the particular religion that he was born

00:47:25.380 into uh is is the solution so in what case in it in what sense if

00:47:31.220 you were to look at this self-critically do you think this may be

00:47:34.580 uh an instance of the same thing where in terms of what's available to you

00:47:39.780 um as a as a western researcher is the western mythology so of course

00:47:43.780 that's salient and you're able to make meaning out of that but is it really

00:47:47.460 any any more or less profound in terms of its

00:47:50.740 exploration of these ideas as let's say buddhist mythology or um or

00:47:55.940 islamic sufi mythology how would you or how would you answer that question well

00:48:01.060 i thought again it's a matter of its articulation and dissemination into

00:48:06.820 society as a whole so you imagine that these ideas are implicit

00:48:11.540 which you know there's an idea for example in christianity that christ is

00:48:15.620 implicit in the old testament right which actually happens to be true

00:48:20.020 depending of course on what you mean by true because in the sense of the

00:48:23.540 messianic figure yeah well there's this dawning awareness

00:48:28.100 that out of a plethora of hero heroes the ultimate hero will emerge

00:48:34.660 right think about this psychologically just think about it psychologically

00:48:37.940 imagine that what human beings are trying to do is to abstract out

00:48:41.300 the ultimate patterns for for modes of being and so what they do is they look

00:48:46.180 for admirable people and then they make a story about an amalgam of admirable

00:48:51.540 people that would be a hero and then the hero stories get amalgamated and so

00:48:55.300 you get a meta hero and christ is a meta hero it's completely independent of any

00:48:59.700 historical reality that that's a whole different issue

00:49:03.300 and i'm not denying any historical reality that that's a different issue

00:49:07.220 but the western imagination has been at work for a very long time constructing up a

00:49:12.180 meta meta hero and also his adversary and clarifying the nature of those and

00:49:18.180 that has been done in a sufficiently delineated way so that it's

00:49:23.700 produced a major it's produced a major impact

00:49:28.180 on the manner in which our societies are constructed because

00:49:31.300 the cornerstone of our society is respect for logos and that's instantiated in the doctrine of

00:49:37.460 respect for free speech that also that it's also instantiated in the doctrine that every individual

00:49:43.220 has transcendent value which i do believe is something that the west has developed to a far

00:49:47.780 greater degree than any other culture that currently exists on that currently exists and

00:49:52.740 probably ever existed it's just such an unlikely it's such an unlikely concept you know in in

00:50:00.180 the west even if you're a murderer even if people know you're a murderer you still have intrinsic

00:50:06.020 value you have to be treated as if you're as if you have a spark of divinity within you so but was

00:50:15.780 this would you say that this was the case even during let's say the middle ages and and i know in

00:50:21.860 terms of my meager understanding of uh of medieval historiography is that uh its previous characterization

00:50:27.540 is that as the dark ages is actually quite unfounded but uh could you not argue that that what you're

00:50:34.260 describing is actually a product of and maybe they're related but it's a product of what arose

00:50:40.180 out of particular socio-political processes that actually distanced society from religion itself

00:50:49.940 they may or may not have been a product of that religious heritage but it you know in in the height

00:50:54.580 of uh of the west's or christendom's possession by christianity in an ideological sense as an all

00:51:00.980 encompassing explanation of the universe i mean witches were burned people's thumbs were cut off

00:51:06.100 for for you know for challenging non-heliocentric positions um so how do you how do you reconcile that

00:51:13.380 historical trend i suppose away from religion and towards the sorts of respects for the respect for

00:51:19.700 the individual that you're describing well when you when you asked that question i had a vision and and

00:51:24.900 the vision was of um a plane of of earth barren earth with a gigantic crystal lean structure

00:51:32.740 underneath forcing itself upward and breaking up the the dirt and that's exactly how i would answer

00:51:38.020 that question it's that there's this great idea attempting to manifest itself like it manifested itself

00:51:44.900 for example in the in the decimation of slavery right because there was an idea and the idea was well

00:51:51.140 all men are created equal that's the idea and that's ideas is rooted in a much deeper idea which is

00:51:58.500 that there's a spark of divinity in everyone and that's this logos capacity that that that enables

00:52:04.740 people to name things and and give form to the world and that we're not to violate that and that was

00:52:11.060 that emerged you know you could say well that emerged tremendously slowly but didn't emerge slowly at all

00:52:16.020 man it the idea is only in its thoroughly formulated sense the idea is only about 2000 years old it emerged

00:52:22.820 with incredible rapidity and demolished everything in its path essentially now you can you know the people

00:52:29.700 who are who like to trace the development of the western mind back to the enlightenment and stop there

00:52:35.940 would say that it was actually the enlightenment and that that ran counter to to the christian over you

00:52:41.700 know overwhelmingly oppressive christian dogma that was standing in its way and of course there's a certain

00:52:47.620 truth to that in that religious ideas when formulated can become restricted and dogmatic that there's the spirit

00:52:55.700 and the dogma that are always in conflict and both are necessary because the dogma provides structure and the

00:53:01.060 spirit provides transformation but um my my reading of see i think i take a much longer time

00:53:11.380 view than the typical western enlightenment philosopher who tends to think like charles

00:53:18.900 taylor when he went back to look for the sources of the modern self basically went back 500 years

00:53:23.700 but i think in evolutionary terms it's like that's a that's a scratch on the surface what we're talking

00:53:29.060 about here is something that's indescribably deeper than merely what happened in the enlightenment i just

00:53:34.900 see that as a in some sense as a sideshow of this crystalline process that's emerging you know nietzsche

00:53:41.220 said that christianity developed the sense of truth to such a degree that it died at the hands of its

00:53:47.300 own construction right and i think i think that's brilliant it's uh uh i think it's absolutely the

00:53:53.860 case and so you can see the enlightenment as as part of that is that the spirit of truth was highly

00:53:58.500 developed and that led people to start to criticize the very structure that had given rise to that

00:54:05.060 desire for truth and some of it's also philosophical confusion in my estimation it's like

00:54:10.100 once the the rationalists and the empiricists got going um you know we started to formulate a very

00:54:16.740 powerful doctrine of the objective world and that that doctrine appeared to stand in opposition to

00:54:25.460 the doctrine that was put forth by the christian church the mythological doctrine let's say if you

00:54:32.660 assume that what the mythological doctrine was was a variant of that kind of empirical truth which it

00:54:38.260 wasn't it was something completely different than that right and this is a really important point

00:54:43.220 because i think some people uh construe i don't want to say misconstrue because it could be correct they

00:54:48.580 construe that your um your description of what let's say uh early modern or early humans understood their

00:54:58.580 religious mythology to represent was in fact material reality um and if i understand correctly you've been

00:55:08.100 arguing that that they didn't see it that way there was no con the concept of material reality is a

00:55:15.140 post-enlightenment concept i mean if you look for example at how the alchemists describe things

00:55:20.820 prior to the emergence of the material world they they discuss the the the the nature of the essence of

00:55:27.380 the lemon well you know lemon is solar in essence it partakes of the sun well it needs the sun it's yellow like

00:55:35.460 the sun it has the same it has the same stuff as the sun the sun is golden the sun is mercurial the sun is

00:55:42.980 illuminating like it has all sorts of attributes that we would consider spiritual there there was no

00:55:48.900 distinction between the spiritual and the material so right but if there's no distinction it's not that

00:55:54.580 i i mean humans live in we we operate on a material basis right so if there's if there's no distinction

00:56:02.020 is it is it not in some sense uh sort of a morass of confusion and it's that uh what we would consider

00:56:09.540 spiritual as opposed to material was equally material and spiritual it's more low resolution

00:56:16.020 than confused i mean it's not it's a morass in some sense in that you know when when you can see a cell

00:56:23.700 through a 10x or a hundred let's say a 10x microscope it'd have to be a fairly big cell but anyways you look

00:56:30.420 at a cell through a 10x microphone microscope well now you can tell that the thing is composed of cells

00:56:35.940 well it's still unclear right because the cell that you see is a low resolution cell and then

00:56:43.460 you zoom in and it's wow this thing is made out of all these other things and then you zoom in more

00:56:47.380 it's like wow there's a bunch more things there and so part of the progress of human knowledge is

00:56:52.420 the differentiation of the map now you can get quite a long ways with an undifferentiated map

00:56:58.420 in fact often an undifferentiated map is actually more useful because it obscures useless detail

00:57:04.580 and so we've always been making maps of the world and you know you might say that we were making maps

00:57:10.180 of the objective world even when we didn't know it and i would say no we weren't that's i don't believe

00:57:14.900 that we were making maps of being and that's not the same thing and it's like so imagine that you

00:57:21.780 exist within a sacred landscape okay just for the sake of argument well how could a modern person

00:57:27.540 conceive of that well that's easy leave home for a while and then come back as you know let's say

00:57:36.660 it's your parents home and you've been gone for 15 years and you come back and everything in the

00:57:41.380 house is imbued with magical significance and you might say well that's not inherent to the objects

00:57:46.980 it's like yeah sure depending on how you define the objects now it's completely inherent to the objects

00:57:53.540 as they manifest themselves in your realm of perception and you can dissociate the the object

00:57:59.780 itself from the let's call it the subjective overlay but that's not such an easy thing to do and it's not

00:58:05.540 so self-evident and it's not even obvious that what you're doing when you do that is coming up with a

00:58:10.660 more accurate picture of reality because the picture of reality that that represents the the item let's call

00:58:18.580 it a item of sentimental or or sacred importance how do you know that that importance isn't the

00:58:23.940 most important part of that item that's how you act you won't throw it away well why it's just a

00:58:30.260 material entity it's like no it's not it's an element of being and that's a different thing and so what the

00:58:36.580 what people prior to the dawn of the materialist age let's say we're doing was producing maps of being

00:58:42.100 and and that meant that things had historical significance the the mountain where your where

00:58:48.580 your grandfather was buried is not the same mountain as another mountain and you might say well yeah well

00:58:54.180 yes they are they're made out of the same you know clay and and silica and all of that it's like yeah

00:58:59.460 man you're missing the point now a westerner would say okay well probably not but but a westerner might

00:59:08.660 object yes but it's extraordinarily useful to differentiate and to act as if there's an

00:59:14.340 objective reality and a subjective reality because it enables it opens up all sorts of new avenues of

00:59:18.980 pursuit it's like yes that's why we're technologically why why we're technological wizards but we've lost

00:59:25.700 something what we've lost is our capacity to understand the reality of that overlay that we scraped off in

00:59:32.820 order to produce objective reality and so that's a fascinating point so in what in what sense do you

00:59:39.460 think that um the persistence of religion and not not merely in or not only i should say in the

00:59:48.500 symbolic mythological sense that you've it seems made uh significant effort to resurrect and articulate

00:59:55.940 to a wider audience not only in that form but in the fundamentalist form in the in the isis manifestation

01:00:02.500 let's say or in um you know the uh the far-right evangelical christian movement in the states how

01:00:09.460 much of that do you think is is a response to what you're saying the fact that we lost a certain

01:00:15.060 element definitely it's a response i mean um and and this is something nietzsche and dostoevsky

01:00:21.860 uh delineated with exceptional clarity western people had a hole torn in their soul

01:00:29.460 and something rush nature abhors a vacuum something will rush in to replace it now you might ask well

01:00:34.740 why is that and you know people like sam harris for example and dawkins would think about it as a

01:00:39.940 regression to a form of barbarism but i think they violate their own principles because they're not

01:00:44.900 taking the past seriously enough and and and this is particularly the case with dawkins who i think is

01:00:51.220 actually starting to recognize this um if you take an evolutionary perspective on on on the development

01:00:58.660 of of belief for example you there's all sorts of things you discover quite rapidly that that indicate

01:01:04.820 that the manner in which belief structures are structured is an evolved is something that evolved

01:01:11.460 and it evolved for for functional reasons let me step back

01:01:15.940 from the perspective of the materialist there's nothing more real than the atom let's say okay from

01:01:24.180 the perspective of a philosopher of being alternatively there's nothing more real than suffering

01:01:31.780 you develop a different metaphysic starting from those two different perspectives and what do you mean

01:01:36.100 by being in this sense for those you know putting myself in the in the shoes of one of the people you

01:01:40.820 just described a second ago to them that i think all of a sudden when you shift to philosophy of being

01:01:46.500 it's like okay this is this could mean anything so let's let's try to nail that down and what's how would

01:01:51.140 you articulate that to people who for whom it doesn't resonate immediately yes well that of course you'd ask

01:01:57.380 me that because that's a very complicated problem being is the realm in which suffering is real

01:02:02.180 now people act as if their pain is real okay so so now why suffering specifically because it's because

01:02:11.460 it's not you can't argue with it it's the least it's the least deniable aspect of one's subjective

01:02:16.660 experience well so that's it now descartes you know descartes great investigation into doubt led him to

01:02:22.500 the conclusion that i think therefore i am and i don't think by think he meant think the way we think he

01:02:28.820 meant more like i'm uh the fact that i'm consciously aware is something that i cannot deny that's good

01:02:35.620 that's fine and and you know more power to descartes for taking it to that to that extreme and then

01:02:41.700 producing what he did produce out of that but i i don't for me when i investigated the structure of

01:02:48.420 doubt the conclusion that i drew was that there is nothing more real than suffering and i would say

01:02:54.260 you can tell what people experience as real and and believe let's say because their actions indicate

01:03:02.820 that and people's actions indicate that they believe in their own pain and that's undeniable you can't

01:03:11.300 argue yourself out of it so it's it's it transcends rationality and so it's real and then of course

01:03:18.900 it's a tenant of the of it's a it's an axiomatic tenant of the of of religious systems generally

01:03:26.180 speaking that life is suffering which is a restatement of exactly the same thing and so

01:03:32.020 being is the domain in which pain announces itself as real and that's not the material world it's not

01:03:38.740 the material world pain is not a material phenomena now you can say well it's associated with material

01:03:44.660 phenomena it's like well yes i wouldn't like to point out that that is hardly a brilliant observation

01:03:50.020 everything is associated with the material world because here we are in this world but we do not

01:03:55.700 understand so it's a qualia let's say if you want to think about it from a philosophical perspective and

01:04:01.540 by so by pain here because i immediately leap to uh to the devil's advocate position well yes but pain

01:04:07.220 certainly is a neurological process that can be treated with with uh certain medications and

01:04:11.780 and those have metabolic and chemical interactions that can actually limit pain or decrease pain it's

01:04:17.860 treatable in some sense but by pain i believe what you mean is the experience of suffering generally

01:04:23.700 right is unavoidable you can you can tinker at the edges with uh with medication or whatnot

01:04:29.060 well and quite nicely and thank god for that exactly you can tinker with it in all sorts of ways which

01:04:34.340 is exactly what we're doing all the time you know is trying to people say well they're striving for

01:04:39.300 happiness actually if you look at the empirical investigations into that that's wrong people

01:04:43.780 when people talk about happiness that isn't what they mean happiness is extroversion and and on it in

01:04:49.060 its extreme it's like mania it's enthusiasm and and and joy and and it's impulsive and expressive and

01:04:56.420 that isn't what people want what they want is the cessation of negative emotion so actually

01:05:02.500 the scales that measure well-being for example technically which is something that sam harris is very

01:05:08.420 concerned about um they basically measure the same thing that neuroticism measures it's sensitivity to

01:05:14.500 anxiety and emotional pain and people want very little of that right and then they say they're happy

01:05:20.740 because they're not differentiating like there's the positive emotion end of being happy and there's

01:05:25.700 the not suffering end of being happy and what people mean when they say that they want to be happy is

01:05:32.100 that they don't want to be suffering that's what they mean do you think there's an aspect of our current uh

01:05:36.900 civilization or society whether it's the west or just at this point just globally where we have

01:05:43.220 elevated uh a confused notion of the former with the latter in the sense that because those are

01:05:50.100 undifferentiated in our minds we use this word happy or happiness um people i don't know what pops

01:05:56.020 into my mind are people's instagram accounts and and facebook's other social media things where everyone

01:06:00.180 is trying to show everyone else just how joyous and enthusiastic and wonder-filled their life is because this

01:06:06.900 seems to be our new ideal in a society that lacks any other ideal in the term yes and as solzhenitsyn

01:06:14.900 said uh the the philosophy that life is for happiness is destroyed the second the jackboots kick down

01:06:22.500 your door at three in the morning right it can't withstand tragedy and that's the critical issue

01:06:28.500 because life is tragedy so you need a philosophy that can withstand tragedy that's what everyone needs

01:06:34.900 that's what everyone wants it's and it's and i would say the philosophy that can withstand the ultimate

01:06:40.660 tragedy of being is as close to the ultimate truth as we can strive for and that's what religious systems

01:06:46.900 and uh that's that's what religious systems um are attempting to delineate so for example in christianity

01:06:55.620 there's an idea that people are fallen and they've fallen into the terrible realm of history and

01:07:02.340 self-consciousness with its knowledge of suffering and finitude and its necessity for work which is

01:07:09.460 associated with that because if you know that if you know that there's you and that you know that you

01:07:15.140 can suffer because you're limited and that you could die then you're cursed with work because even if

01:07:20.580 you're okay right now you're not like a lion who's going to go to sleep and be happy or like the zebra

01:07:26.580 beside it who won't run away when the lion is sleeping we know about the future so we're cursed

01:07:32.260 to work and make sacrifices constantly that's that's our destiny let's say and in your uh estimation that

01:07:39.780 is that a function of our i i assume what was an evolutionary process that that from which we arrived

01:07:46.820 at a consciousness of time future we began to see the future and i think it was a large part a

01:07:54.420 consequence of the development of our hyper alert visual systems so and this ties back to some

01:08:00.100 questions we've received from previous viewers so in the sense that uh that you are articulating um

01:08:05.540 and some people would construe it as defending but articulating the validity of the christian position

01:08:11.220 per se it's not in a literal sense that that the let's say people who are conflating the material and

01:08:21.540 the spiritual uh may uh may be assuming but it's in the sense that it reflects something that we have

01:08:28.340 evolved and that has evolved with us and we have begun to experience and and the religious symbology

01:08:35.220 is how we make sense of that oh definitely definitely that's why mostly it's encapsulated in story and

01:08:40.180 image the reason for that is it's too complicated for us to articulate so it's bottom-up it's bottom-up

01:08:46.660 development it's like the the the iconograph iconic iconography of christianity is an attempt to

01:08:52.580 express something that we're not yet smart enough to understand this is a fascinating concept so it's

01:08:57.700 again coming from a cognitive anthropological anthropological position this is uh this is like

01:09:02.500 yes obviously uh but i think for many people the idea that uh religious systems belief systems in

01:09:08.660 general and very probably a lot of what we're living out in our day-to-day life you know now in 2017 is

01:09:14.660 the the outgrowth of something that we that we aren't fully conscious of that we can't yet articulate

01:09:22.740 but is nonetheless a fundamental nature of our experience and sure let me give you an example

01:09:27.060 yeah so um a while back i was in new york and unfortunately i don't remember in which museum

01:09:34.660 but in this room in this museum there was a uh spectacular collection of mid to late renaissance art

01:09:44.580 staggering room you know the value of the paintings in that room they're priceless you know so there

01:09:51.380 was billions of dollars worth of art in that room and then there were people from all over the world

01:09:57.460 looking at it and so one of the pieces was the assumption of mary beautiful not in that iconic

01:10:03.380 manner that was characteristic of medieval art that's that's very graphic that's very abstracted right but

01:10:10.500 the forms are personified so that mary and christ in these sorts of representations are identifiable

01:10:16.980 individual human beings and there were a lot of people standing in front of the painting looking

01:10:22.260 at it and i thought well let's be a cultural anthropologist about this all right that museum is

01:10:31.060 on some of the most expensive real estate in the world there's a tremendous amount of time and effort

01:10:37.060 spent on producing the museum and fortifying it and guarding it and then people from all over the

01:10:45.140 world make pilgrimages to stand in front of it and what they are looking at they do not understand

01:10:52.580 so what the hell are they doing there why are they looking at those pictures well

01:10:58.980 the answer is the pictures speak to their soul but not in the language that they understand

01:11:04.580 and so but that's okay because we don't we we don't understand ourselves that that's obvious

01:11:12.260 we don't we're more than we can understand yes by a tremendous margin and we're trying to understand

01:11:18.180 ourselves and the artists and the mystics are at the vanguard of the development of that understanding

01:11:25.780 and they come up with ideas that are clearer than mere feelings but are not yet clear so you imagine that

01:11:33.700 there's a uh uh is this analogous to the dream in some sense it's analogous to the dream it's the

01:11:39.140 cultural dream sure the dream is the dream is the vanguard of idea right the that there's the body and the

01:11:46.020 dream emerges from the body and then the idea emerges from the dream and and the body the social body is

01:11:53.140 the body politic it's the it's the communal body that's extended over millennia far longer than that it's

01:11:59.700 extended forever and the dream is the mythology that emerges from that and the idea is our attempt

01:12:06.340 to articulate that mythology would it be fair to say that some of the um not to get you off track but

01:12:12.340 this just popped into my head so would it be fair to say that some of the frustration that you and uh

01:12:17.700 and other people who are interested in the same material as you feel with respect to let's say the new

01:12:22.500 atheist movement is that there's a failure to realize that what they're critiquing is precisely

01:12:30.580 the equivalent of the dream that there's value in the not yet precisely articulated

01:12:37.620 experience of well they're also not taking the revolutionary arguments seriously you know these

01:12:43.940 ideas are old like really really old they disappear back into the far reaches of time you know i mean if

01:12:52.740 you look at franz de wal's work for example on dominance hierarchy hierarchies and chimpanzees you

01:12:58.340 know there's this old idea that that the dominant chimp because chimps are quite patriarchal as opposed to

01:13:04.340 bonobos but we'll we won't bother with that for the time being chimps are quite patriarchal and um

01:13:11.060 you know you might think well the biggest meanest ugliest chimp wins he's the king chimp he's the one that

01:13:16.820 gets to father all the baby chimps um yes and no yes because sometimes it is the tyrant that rules the

01:13:26.740 troop but the problem with the tyrant is that two semi-tyrants can rip him into shreds and they do

01:13:32.980 and with incredible brutality and it and it disturbs the entire troop when that happens but they'll tear

01:13:40.020 off his genitals with their teeth they'll rip off his skin i mean chimpanzees are super strong like

01:13:46.820 they're about six times as strong as the most well-conditioned man they can break 300 pound test

01:13:51.940 steel cable with their bare hands they are super strong and they have absolutely no restraint whatsoever

01:13:57.620 on their aggression except the reactions of their conspecifics and so don't mess with chimpanzees

01:14:04.420 well so brute brute rule is unstable among chimpanzees so what what's more stable well the

01:14:13.060 more stable rulers are they pay attention to the females they they facilitate social interactions they

01:14:20.740 reciprocate they have friends and allies and they and they um they maintain their friendships and

01:14:26.820 their and their formations of alliances and so their rule stabilizes and it's because they're acting out

01:14:33.860 what you might describe as the beginnings of an archetypal pattern they're acting as culture heroes for the

01:14:39.940 chimps and and that means that they have to be acting in a manner that's commensurate with the interest of

01:14:45.380 the group as well as acting in a manner that's commensurate with their own interest and so while

01:14:51.300 the chimps are starting to act that out the wolves act that out the rats acted out like if when two rats

01:14:57.460 engage in rough and tumble play two juvenile rats which they will work to do um if they're if one rat

01:15:05.620 is bigger than the other by about 10 that gives him the kind of weight advantage that makes him able to

01:15:10.580 pin the smaller rat in the wrestling match pretty much 100 of the time but if you pair those rats

01:15:16.740 repeatedly if the big rat doesn't let the little rat win at least 30 of the time the little rat will

01:15:22.500 stop asking him to play like there's there's a morality that emerges out of the necessity of social

01:15:28.820 interaction okay so let's say a morality emerges out of the necessity of social interaction okay that's

01:15:34.420 not a particularly contentious statement but let's say that's been true for hundreds of millions of

01:15:41.700 years ever since the dominance hierarchy emerged that's about 350 million years ago there's ways of

01:15:47.780 comporting yourself within the dominance hierarchy that allow for your survival and your the possibility

01:15:53.300 of your victory okay so that's the beginnings of morality now because the dominance hierarchy is so

01:15:59.860 ancient it actually acts as a selection mechanism you see that in human beings you see that in in all

01:16:05.620 mammals that the females use the dominance hierarchy not in every mammalian species but in most

01:16:11.380 to peel off the top so the successful climbers are the ones that leave the most offspring so we've been

01:16:18.500 shaped immensely by the necessity of acting morally within the social space and so there's an optimal

01:16:25.300 manner of interacting with the dominance hierarchy and then that becomes the environment that selection

01:16:30.980 mechanism and then the organisms are selected by that and so they the the that that morality is

01:16:38.900 become structurally part of us as well so then there's this concordance between our felt sense of

01:16:44.580 moral obligation and the demands of the of the social world and that's real it's as real as anything

01:16:51.700 especially if you're a darwinian because what's most real from the darwinian perspective is that which

01:16:58.020 selects that's the most real in fact it's the definition of real it's not the material world

01:17:04.340 right it's not it's that which selects and that's far broader than the mere material world so this is a

01:17:13.540 meta process you're saying that is so fundamental to shaping what we view as material reality and that it's

01:17:20.420 more real than let's say an atom in the sense that gravity is more real than you know well it's

01:17:26.500 real in that it accounts for emergent properties you know like it's not a simple thing to to reduce

01:17:33.780 well consciousness to its material substrate but complex forms of social interactions aren't easily

01:17:39.380 reduced in a causal manner to the material substrate i mean we can't draw causal links we just don't have

01:17:46.020 that level of sophistication and perhaps never will but but the um like so that the reality of

01:17:53.620 the processes that make up social interactions among social animals can't be reduced to their

01:17:57.860 material substrate but they're real and they're so real they select so they're real and this is the

01:18:04.500 problem i have with the people who are simultaneously reductionistic materialists and evolutionary biologists

01:18:10.420 it's like sorry guys you don't get to be both so and that's the argument that i was trying to have

01:18:15.380 with sam harris you know which which augured in very rapidly in the first discussion and i thought proceeded

01:18:24.020 adequately well in the second discussion um you know we be sam he he thinks that you can get the

01:18:31.700 facts to speak moral truths for themselves and and he also has this theory that we should be attempting to

01:18:39.140 you know maximize well-being but i'm not going to deal with the second claim at all because

01:18:44.020 the devil's in the details there with regards to how you measure well-being and our ability to measure

01:18:48.980 well-being is catastrophically unsophisticated to say the least the well-being scales that we have

01:18:55.780 are extroversion minus neuroticism that's a big problem for someone who wants to do scientific

01:19:02.340 measurement it's like okay we're going to increase well-being hey no problem how are you going to measure it

01:19:06.980 it and whose well-being and mine okay mine now my next week my next month mine in a year how about

01:19:13.940 10 years how about 50 and who chooses who how to measure it well precisely and and my well-being in

01:19:19.700 relationship to my significant other in relationship to my family in relationship to the community at all

01:19:25.780 those levels of temporal distinction you're going to measure that eh good luck and don't come and say

01:19:32.420 we can maximize well-being and we can do it scientifically until you get your measurement

01:19:36.020 devices in place and they're not in place and that's fatal that's a fatal flaw i mean i i assume

01:19:43.060 sam would disagree with this but in some sense is that not the fatal flaw of uh of the history of

01:19:48.900 marxism in the 20th century sure it's utopianism right so we can define well-being and then we can

01:19:55.060 collectively work towards it it's like well i'm afraid it's just not that simple from each according to his

01:20:00.740 ability to each according to his need right sounds great devil's in the details and definitely the

01:20:06.180 devil was in the details of that so who defines need who defines ability that's a big problem right

01:20:13.620 it's a fatal problem and literally it's a fatal problem so so anyway so i trace back the development

01:20:21.140 of these religious ideas to their you can trace them infinitely far back and and the issue of hierarchy

01:20:30.500 and hierarchical position is absolutely key it's key to evolutionary survival it's key to mate

01:20:35.140 selection it's it's key to survival it's it's key on on that note uh another side check or potential

01:20:43.220 interesting avenues we had a very incisive question from a viewer um or a statement from a viewer i should

01:20:49.300 say that the centrality of the dominance hierarchy in your thinking or understanding of the evolutionary

01:20:54.740 process in what sense is that not just a re-articulation of the marxist and or post-modernist

01:21:02.580 position that power is everything well it is it that assumes that the reason that you power relations

01:21:09.780 i should say yeah well that assumes that you you relate dominance hierarchy um mastery to power

01:21:17.860 well you can do that because you could define it that way power is what gets you up the dominance

01:21:21.620 hierarchy well first of all we should make a couple of things clear i use dominance hierarchy because

01:21:26.340 that's a shorthand people understand what that means it's not clear that hierarchies are in fact

01:21:31.620 dominance hierarchies and one of my insightful colleagues once told me that i shouldn't use the

01:21:38.500 words dominance hierarchy because marxism is built into that conceptualization that the reason that

01:21:44.660 hierarchies exist is because of power and i thought jesus that's probably true and it never like it

01:21:51.540 was quite a devastating criticism in some sense a comment because it could easily be that the reason

01:21:57.860 that hierarchical structures were formulated as dominance hierarchies was because the biologists

01:22:02.980 who were doing the investigations and the people who were formulating the ideas had already been

01:22:08.100 saturated with a marxist view of power relations but the reason that i brought up de wal

01:22:13.140 earlier marxist or colonial sure sure absolutely yeah it could i mean a lot of the the recent history

01:22:19.060 of western civilization has been one of dominance over in what we're conceived of perceived of as

01:22:24.820 inferior cultures right the white man's burden so well i mean we don't want it we don't want i mean

01:22:30.740 there are a variety of things that contribute to success let's say and one of them is force we won't

01:22:37.300 talk about power because you know power force force is when i get you to do something you wouldn't

01:22:43.220 choose to do and you could say well the person who's best at doing that is the winner and i would say

01:22:49.220 no that's wrong that isn't how the evidence stacks up because the problem with being the person who gets

01:22:56.100 the other person to do something by force is you have to enforce it and that's costly and you can be

01:23:02.420 killed you can be overthrown and so even the most effective tyrannies suffer during times of power

01:23:11.060 transition right it's unstable that's the problem is that a hierarchy built on power is unstable it

01:23:17.940 isn't it isn't operating as a consequence of the will of the masses and so piaget the developmental

01:23:23.860 psychologist piaget thought about this in in in depth you know and he believed from a biological

01:23:29.940 perspective that there were you could think about it as two different two importantly different

01:23:35.220 categories of games one is the set of games that i make you play and then the other is the category

01:23:41.860 of games that you and i play voluntarily and then you might say well let's have a competition between

01:23:46.260 those two sets of games so we'll orient both of them towards the production of a certain goal

01:23:51.780 let's say a stable and civilized society for the sake of argument including one in which some people can

01:23:57.460 be very very wealthy and powerful because of course that's what the tyrant wants so we're going to put

01:24:02.980 them head to head piaget said well look the the voluntary game society will win because it doesn't

01:24:08.260 accrue enforcement costs it's brilliant it's brilliant and that was part of how he formulated the

01:24:14.900 equilibrated state and and as a as a as a something like what would you might you might describe it as a

01:24:21.540 particularization of the kingdom of god that's one way of thinking about it and i think that's fair when

01:24:26.500 talking about piaget because piaget the what motivated him throughout his entire life and

01:24:32.660 people don't know this about piaget generally speaking was the reconciliation of science and

01:24:36.820 religion that's what drove him so and most most people just for the audience that may not recognize

01:24:42.420 his name so most people uh i'm making an assumption here recognize him as a largely a child and

01:24:48.660 developmental psychologist yes which is not how he conceptualized himself he thought that he was a

01:24:53.060 it's something like developmental epistemologist and can you refresh my mind and and perhaps those

01:24:58.820 of the viewers as to as to what that equilibrated state meant in piaget's knowledge structure and how

01:25:04.580 that relates to what we were sure peekaboo with an infant right and so the infant can play peekaboo

01:25:10.660 and what happens when you play peekaboo with an infant is that very rapidly by by gesturing you and the

01:25:17.140 infant settle on the rules of the game and what you want to do is engage the infant right in play

01:25:23.140 because you find that intrinsically rewarding and so the infant will look at you because and then if

01:25:29.220 you smile he'll smile generally speaking you can tell if the infant's in a playful mood and then you

01:25:33.940 can hide your face and look and you can you calibrate that so you don't startle the infant you

01:25:39.220 want to surprise the infant you want to put the infant on the border of order and chaos because that's where

01:25:44.980 the fun is and so you play with hiding and re-manifesting yourself and it produces delight in

01:25:51.780 the infant and so what you've done there is spontaneously organized a tiny micro a tiny

01:25:57.460 societal microcosm and so and and that's the sort of thing that piaget was particularly interested in

01:26:04.260 he was interested in how children formulate games and the games are tiny societies everyone agrees on

01:26:10.420 the rules and they play them out they're they're they're microcosms of society and as the child

01:26:15.940 children transform the the confines of the game expand until the game and the social world are

01:26:22.340 indistinguishable it's like the life of a pro football player is that real life or is that a game

01:26:28.740 well at some point the game is life right and and so then the question is well what should the game be

01:26:36.420 and piaget's answer was well the game should be one that everyone agrees to play and so then that's

01:26:42.420 one that and there's more to it than that it and that some of this is a i i suspect some of my develop

01:26:49.060 further development perhaps of piaget's ideas is that there's a bunch of rules of the game and this is

01:26:53.540 why the post-modernists by the way are wrong about the infinity of interpretations they're wrong there is

01:26:59.060 an infinity of potential interpretations but there isn't an infinity of viable interpretations and that's the

01:27:04.980 issue that's the critical issue so what constrains the range of interpretations well let's say there's

01:27:11.300 a an infinite number of ways of construing the world well there are and that's that's again the

01:27:16.100 post-modernist take right it's not only can you interpret texts an infinite number of ways but the

01:27:20.980 world is a text and it can be interpreted in a number of ways and so you can't define any particular

01:27:26.340 mode of interpretation as canonical that's the fundamental claim okay let's take that apart wrong

01:27:32.420 first of all my interpretations have to keep me going and they also shouldn't result in an excess

01:27:40.660 of agony because those are games i'm not going to play so if i extract out an interpretation like a hot

01:27:47.140 stove is something upon which i can rest my hand my agony will tell me that that's a non-viable solution

01:27:54.340 and it isn't just agony it's it's the whole panoply of things that produce suffering hunger thirst

01:28:00.340 uh temperature regulation the necessity of elimination sexual desire all these built-in

01:28:06.740 biological modules that are part and parcel of our evolutionary history which the post-modernists

01:28:11.940 are forced to deny partly because it undermines their theory and partly because it interferes with their

01:28:16.820 socio-cultural determinism and their marxism but the biological evidence is quite clear with this is why

01:28:23.300 the our concordance with animals is so tight that you can use antidepressants on lobsters and we diverged

01:28:31.460 from lobsters about 300 million years ago there's conservation like you wouldn't believe and so we're

01:28:37.540 made up of biological modules and they have their own world view the hunger system has a world view the

01:28:44.500 pain system has a world view and the pain system that's a dominating system you mess with that thing it'll

01:28:50.740 flatten you is there not a tension here that i mean i i'm with you completely on this i follow you

01:28:56.340 because because this is sort of my bread and butter as an academic i hope the audience is able to keep

01:29:01.380 up as well because it's incredibly important i think uh but is there a tension in your mind between

01:29:06.340 what you're describing that the fact that we're nested in a biological reality that inherently constrains

01:29:12.340 are viable options for interpretation uh is is is there a tension between that and the notion of

01:29:20.660 optimizing for being as opposed to material reality because i think when some people hear you talking

01:29:25.460 about the realm of being versus the realm of the material they assume or conflate the realm of being

01:29:32.740 with what you're describing the post-modernists to indulge in in the sense of well anything is open

01:29:38.260 you're in the realm of imagination you're in oh no being is radical being is radically constrained

01:29:44.900 radically well that and let me outline the other constraints and if i understand correctly this

01:29:49.460 this is precisely the difference between your position your version of pragmatism and the

01:29:54.340 post-modernist position about which there's been significant confusion well that's because

01:29:58.260 partly well because harris had me talk about the person from whom he rorty rorty uh it isn't rorty

01:30:05.460 wasn't part of my pragmatism i made that clear it's it's the william james and and and c.s purse

01:30:11.540 version but there's but there's a conflation i think in some people's minds so so this what you're

01:30:15.540 describing is precisely you're differentiating yes precisely okay so so we'll say first we're subject

01:30:22.500 to biological constraints okay and we're we're subject to biological constraints and then we're subject to

01:30:28.100 temporal biological constraints which is that not only are we hungry today but we're going to be hungry

01:30:32.740 tomorrow and we're going to be hungry in a year so the biological constraints are now and later

01:30:39.540 okay so the solution has to solve both those sets of problems but that's only the beginning because i

01:30:46.420 have those problems but i also have the problem that there you are and you have those problems and so

01:30:52.180 then we we either fight which is a problem um or we mutually negotiate such that we generate a

01:31:03.300 solution such that you get to solve your problems at the same time i get to solve my problems or maybe

01:31:09.220 we even do it better you get to solve your problems in a manner that helps me solve my problems and i do

01:31:15.300 the same for you okay that's not easy that's that's narrow and you know that because if you live

01:31:21.140 with someone you're constantly arguing with them you're and the argument is which interpretation will

01:31:26.340 suffice right and so no there's not an infinite number of interpretations there's hardly any okay

01:31:34.100 so but then it isn't just me and the person i live with it's me and the person i live with and the family

01:31:39.620 and the family and the community and the community and the polity and the economic system and the

01:31:44.420 biological system all of that has to be stacked up one on top of the other so the game is played

01:31:52.420 at every level simultaneously the same way and that's in my estimation that's what a symphony expresses

01:32:00.580 right that's what it's telling you it's stacked the level of being so that every level operates

01:32:07.220 harmoniously with every other level and then i would also say that because we're evolved for that

01:32:14.660 we we can tell when it's happening and that's what the sense of meaning is the the sense of meaning is

01:32:20.660 it's it's our third eye you could say your your eyes blind you because they only see what's here right

01:32:26.340 in what's here right in front of you now they blind you and so you have to use modes of perception

01:32:33.140 that transcend mere vision in order to conceptualize being properly and one of those modes is the sense

01:32:39.380 of meaning and engagement and that involves extraordinarily ancient systems so for example

01:32:45.780 it's produced in part by the dopaminergic systems and they're uh rooted in the hypothalamus which is

01:32:51.700 an extraordinarily old part of the brain and a very very maybe the most fundamental part of the brain

01:32:57.300 it's the one where most of the biological subsystems have their rootings you know the hunger systems

01:33:03.140 and and the lust systems and that sort of thing and so the sense of meaning is extremely old old old old

01:33:10.740 and but it's differentiated very finely in human beings and when you when you're engaged meaningfully

01:33:17.860 then what's what what that is it's an intimation that the levels of being are lining up at least to

01:33:23.220 some degree and you'll feel that you can feel it as a as a well as a sense that life what it is is a

01:33:29.540 sense that life is meaningful and that sense is the thing that enables you to overcome tragedy correct me

01:33:34.740 if i'm wrong but there can be a tension between what is meaningful for a given individual and what

01:33:39.940 is meaningful on a societal level or for the most number of individuals right i'm thinking of let's say

01:33:45.300 you have a despot what's meaningful for the despot is when uh you know he feels like he's in complete

01:33:50.260 control of his country and then he experiences that subjective state of meaning that you're

01:33:54.660 describing as as ancient and yeah but i don't i don't think that is what he experiences i think

01:34:00.260 he's driven substantially by terror and and malevolence and that's not the same thing it's not like those

01:34:06.900 things aren't motivating i'm not saying that this sense of transcendent meaning is the only motivator

01:34:12.020 clearly it's not there's sub motivational systems that can take control at any time but i don't believe

01:34:17.860 that the the the sense of meaning that i'm describing is akin to what a tyrant feels when he's tyrannizing

01:34:26.020 that's more like jealous rage or something like that or resentment but now i would say that there's

01:34:30.740 an exception to that so because one of the things we haven't talked about is the necessity for truth

01:34:38.340 so let's allow for a moment that you you're the faculty that produces this sense of engagement has

01:34:45.300 the qualities that i attributed to it but i would say that also only works properly under certain

01:34:50.340 conditions which is if you are sick but physically biologically neurologically then it's certainly

01:34:57.540 possible that that meaning system is going to go astray and it's going to signify meaning where the

01:35:04.260 alignment isn't proper well that could happen for any number of reasons it seems to happen for in

01:35:09.700 schizophrenia for example at a very very low level but i would also say you risk making that happen

01:35:18.020 to you which means you can no longer trust your deepest instinct by lying to yourself because what

01:35:23.780 you do so that could be selective omission of information that's the most common form of lie

01:35:28.180 it's passive avoidance you know willful blindness that's the most common form of deception

01:35:32.660 but although active deceit can also play a role if you if you contaminate the structure of your

01:35:40.740 being with with false information with deceptive practices and you willfully blind yourself then

01:35:48.500 you're going to be led astray by your sense of meaning you're going to pathologize it so part of

01:35:53.620 the issue here is that you don't want to interfere with your ability to see because you'll wander off the

01:36:00.340 road into a ditch and so you know people think well why should i tell the truth which is a great

01:36:06.340 question man every smart kid figures that out like the smarter the kid the younger they figure that out

01:36:11.620 it's like well if i can lie to get what i want why shouldn't i given that i want to get what i want

01:36:17.860 and that's a great question okay so here's a follow-up then why not engage in a series of white lies

01:36:25.620 first of all sometimes that's the best you can do like you you could say that well you're morally

01:36:30.100 impelled to come up with the best solution you can under the circumstances and what you want is a

01:36:34.660 statement that that validates that serves all levels of being simultaneously but sometimes you

01:36:40.980 don't know how to do that and that's when you you when someone you know the example that springs to

01:36:46.340 mind for me always is that the classic kind of joke situation where a wife asks her husband you know

01:36:53.300 does this dress make me look fat or what do you think of this dress and maybe the answer is i hate that

01:36:58.580 goddamn dress and maybe that's the answer but maybe the answer is if the question is do i look fat in

01:37:04.660 this dress the answer is i don't answer questions like that right so that would be the truth in that

01:37:11.300 situation and that's or there would be the white lie which is oh you look beautiful but i don't believe

01:37:19.060 white lies are sub-optimal solutions to a complex problem so that that's all because they're true at

01:37:24.340 some levels of analysis and they're false at others so are there cases where stating what appears to be

01:37:29.540 the truth and it's in to the best of your ability to articulate it is inferior to a pragmatically

01:37:38.580 functional white lie i would say it depends on your motivations because you know i can use the truth to

01:37:45.140 hurt you but then i would say that i miss then what i'm doing is like a white lie it's it's it's like a black

01:37:51.460 truth let's call it that it means that it also doesn't serve the this the ordered structure

01:37:58.020 entirely because it's true on three levels of analysis usually sub levels and not true on a

01:38:04.020 really profound level so i can say well i'm just telling you this for your own good and i tell you

01:38:08.500 something true but i picked a context in which or or a state of vulnerability that i know you're in in

01:38:15.140 which delivery of that message has an undermining uh effect and i know that so i could well it was

01:38:21.780 true it's like well no all things considered it wasn't true some things considered it was true and

01:38:28.500 a white lie is the inverse of that it's like well on some levels it's true you know it's it would be

01:38:33.780 wrong of me to hurt your feelings over such a trivial issue um how and so in order not to violate that

01:38:40.500 higher mortar moral principle i'm going to violate a subordinate moral principle right and in your

01:38:45.620 system of thought that higher moral principle that higher level is still part and parcel in fact it's

01:38:52.180 perhaps the pinnacle or uh of the of the notion of truth whereas for someone again just to make

01:38:58.980 reference to the to a previous interview you had with sam harris the conflation or the intentional

01:39:04.660 uh combination of moral truth with factual truth is is either bizarre just it doesn't occur to people

01:39:13.260 but but he wants to do that anyways he just wants to do it in reverse you know because i was making

01:39:18.000 the case that by necessity factual truth is subordinate to moral truth and he was saying

01:39:22.480 no moral truth can be derived from factual truth it's like he doesn't get out of the problem

01:39:27.460 the problem is the necessary coexistence of both forms of truth he just inverts the causal order

01:39:32.920 right now the problem with sam's account is that and this is the problem that emmanuel kant

01:39:38.100 identified so many years ago is like do the facts speak for themselves well no they don't because facts

01:39:45.280 say a number of different things like if you there's if there's a field in front of you it does not tell

01:39:51.340 you which path to take through it right but it's worse than that it's worse than that because there's an

01:39:58.620 unlimited number of facts and the problem is how do you select them and the answer to that is

01:40:04.600 the facts themselves cannot tell you that and that's why you have an a priori interpretive structure

01:40:10.520 which is of course what kant was insisting upon and sam doesn't take that into account and that's

01:40:16.240 mind-boggling to me because that a priori interpretive structure is the sum total of the effect of our

01:40:21.720 evolutionary history so like what about that what where where does that play into the play into the

01:40:29.720 into the game we select we're so selective in our attention it's unbelievable you know we can what

01:40:36.660 there's been estimates that the bandwidth of our conscious attention is like four bits

01:40:40.540 we're we're pinpointing the world well some of that's conscious because we can make decisions about

01:40:46.400 what we look at and a lot of it's unconscious because our attention is attracted by directed by

01:40:52.300 these fundamental underlying biological subsystems but we're making intrinsic value judgments all the

01:40:58.060 time that are not derived from the facts at hand that's a blank slate viewpoint now and how harris can't

01:41:05.360 be a blank slate uh believer if he's an evolutionary biologist and the same goes for dawkins what you just

01:41:11.280 said uh made me think of i think in our previous interview you had mentioned motivated action and

01:41:17.440 motivated speech and i think for people who are not necessarily familiar with or are more than happy

01:41:22.880 to readily dismiss psychoanalytic approaches that doesn't make much sense it's sort of it's a it's a

01:41:28.400 boogeyman an intellectual boogeyman in a sense but i think if i understand correctly when you reference

01:41:33.180 motivated processes you're describing something similar to what you just described in the sense that

01:41:37.080 we have a whole series of of sort of undeniable biological impulses that constrain our cognition

01:41:43.480 that constrain what we pay attention to and what motivates us and even when we think at a conscious

01:41:49.020 level that we're doing something for one reason we're very good at creating rational explanations for

01:41:54.960 behavior that we're actually engaging in for much deeper impulsive reasons well well that's part of

01:42:00.420 the fact that we're not transparent to ourselves you know like people like gazzaniga have have made the

01:42:04.660 claim and i think dennett has really been hitting this hard lately that mostly what our conscious

01:42:09.120 mind does is come up with post-hoc rationalizations for our behaviors and it's like well just because

01:42:16.120 something is partly true some of the time does not mean that it's absolutely true all of the time

01:42:20.480 it is we are trying to understand ourselves continually and sometimes we come up with partial

01:42:25.800 accounts for why we did what we did but consciousness is also the builder of our habits now it's not the

01:42:32.540 only builder but you know you consciously attend to some action in a new domain and practice it the

01:42:38.820 consciousness builds up those habitual structures and then they run automatically but that doesn't

01:42:43.900 mean that consciousness was irrelevant to their production it was very relevant to their production

01:42:48.360 it's not just a mere post hoc add-on it's not that at all it's consciousness is what you're playing a

01:42:56.000 sonata and you make a mistake and you play it again you make the same mistake and so what do you do

01:43:01.540 because you're playing it automatically you've built the habit with hours and hours of practice

01:43:05.340 and conscious attention you've rewired yourself building automatic mechanisms an automatic mechanism

01:43:10.720 fails so what do you do you look more intently at the notes then you slow down and you restructure

01:43:17.140 the habit and then you speed up you speed up you speed up then you play the segment then you play

01:43:22.020 the segment again then maybe go back to the beginning and zip through and then you've restructured that

01:43:26.800 automatic system consciousness did that it's not just a post hoc rationalizer although it can be

01:43:33.200 that and it's often not rationalization either sometimes it's sometimes it's an investigation into

01:43:39.760 the actual causal structure it's like well i did that why did i do it well sometimes i want to come up

01:43:45.300 with a story that sounds good to other people let's say which seems to be you know gazzaniga's theory

01:43:51.700 about why we consciously utter uh post hoc rationalizations to justify our behaviors to

01:43:56.920 ourselves it's jesus that's pretty cynical no you know often it's a deeply it's a deep attempt to

01:44:04.000 identify the likely causal contributors and in part look i mean you could say well that's just we just

01:44:11.160 don't have that capacity it's like yes we do because otherwise we would continually repeat the same mistakes

01:44:16.020 the fact that we can learn from if we learn from our experience what we do is reconstrue

01:44:21.780 our maps of value so that we don't replicate the error in the future and because we are capable of

01:44:29.140 not replicating past errors obviously we're capable of consciously altering our pathway and also of

01:44:35.300 performing a pragmatically useful causal analysis of the cause of our error now if you do psychotherapy

01:44:42.300 with people and they have a traumatic memory won't go away well what do you do with it well you go

01:44:48.880 back into the memory and you you assess the sequence of events in detail until they have an account that

01:44:57.820 is sufficiently plausible so that they believe that if the same circumstances arose in the future

01:45:04.260 they would no longer fall prey to that error so for example if it's a naive person who was

01:45:10.060 manipulated badly by a potential romantic partner then what you do is you say okay well look you know

01:45:16.380 you you what was it about your viewpoint that put you at risk now that isn't blaming the victim it's

01:45:24.140 it's it's it's helping the victim not be a victim again it's like yeah it was 95 the other person's

01:45:30.260 fault man whatever they're not in the room with you all you can do is try not to fall into the same pit

01:45:35.940 that didn't mean someone else didn't dig the pit okay so well i was too trusting okay well so let's

01:45:42.500 take that apart what do you mean too trusting well i always assume the good in people well okay so well

01:45:48.220 what about these instances of people acting in a bad way well i don't really understand that it's okay

01:45:54.240 you start to see they need to differentiate up their worldview to take into account the existence of

01:45:59.700 predatory people and they also generally have to differentiate their view of themselves to stop

01:46:04.600 thinking themselves as nice and harmless because it's the nice and harmless naive person that's

01:46:12.300 exploitable by the malevolent psychopath and that's not moral virtue that's just weakness that's all it

01:46:19.000 is it's it's naivety it's it's child it's it's it's the maintenance of a childlike viewpoint a view of

01:46:27.660 the world far past its expiry date and so you go back and take that apart you formulate a more

01:46:34.280 differentiated and sophisticated view of the world the person finds that plausible then you have them

01:46:40.780 practice it so they can see that it has applicability in the real world and then the traumatic then the

01:46:47.140 emotion from the traumatic memory will go away because what's happening is the anxiety system is saying

01:46:53.060 unexplored territory unexplored territory unexplored territory and what they what that system wants is

01:46:59.260 to know a that someone is trying to map that territory instead of just avoiding the problem

01:47:04.840 and b that there is a plan now it's not cognitively sophisticated enough in some way to know if the plan

01:47:11.980 works it it wants to know that someone's in charge and that it's being taken care of well so that's what

01:47:17.720 you do in psychotherapy you say look you can face this even though you think you can't you can we'll

01:47:22.880 break it into pieces you know i'll discuss with you a plethora of potential solutions we can do it slowly

01:47:28.900 you can bite off as much as you can chew and no more and we're going to come up with something that

01:47:33.880 isn't a rationalization for your behavior a post-hoc rationalization it's a set of new tools so that you

01:47:40.560 do not when you see that hole in the road you walk around it first of all you'll see it second you'll walk

01:47:46.940 around it and people are massively encouraged by that process they're not made less afraid

01:47:53.180 in fact they might be made more afraid but the fear is much more focused and they know what to

01:47:59.160 deal they know how to deal with it it's like we i didn't think there were dangerous people in the world

01:48:03.400 well there are oh my god the world's much more dangerous it's like yes it is well what am i going

01:48:08.420 to do about that you're going to get smarter and sharper right because that's the that's the cure

01:48:14.140 it's not we're going to make the world less dangerous the world is plenty dangerous but it

01:48:20.460 turns out that you're a lot more capable than you thought so so in what sense is this corrective

01:48:25.480 mechanism that you're describing um that is epitomized in this case in psychotherapy uh

01:48:30.320 in what sense is that is is is that only accomplishable with a within a social context

01:48:38.080 where you have feedback from other agents well that that's a good question i mean the first of all

01:48:42.860 i would say to to tie this back to our earlier conversation is that that curative process is the

01:48:48.820 action of the logos in dialogue okay that's what it is that's that's what it is okay and so i would

01:48:57.360 and i would also say that the degree to which you can manifest the logos is going to be radically

01:49:04.180 associated with your functionality in human hierarchies right it's the primal determinant primary

01:49:11.320 determinant of that it's that it's the essence of genuine charisma so now that can be parasitized

01:49:17.560 upon like hitler did that that can be parasitized upon but that doesn't just because uh a mechanism

01:49:24.780 has value doesn't mean it can't be parasitized that happens all the time it happens constantly and

01:49:30.900 the mechanism you're referring to here as genuine charisma is the is is a clear ability to be able

01:49:36.500 to effectively navigate a dominance hierarchy or a hierarchy yes yes yes and well and the world but

01:49:43.160 you know it's like the dominance hierarchy is sort of the mediator between you and the world so

01:49:46.900 you when you're negotiating the social world you are simultaneously negotiating the actual world

01:49:53.260 unless the social world has become so corrupt that it no longer bears any relationship to the

01:49:58.700 real world which in which case you know everyone is in serious trouble serious serious trouble yes i can

01:50:03.960 think of parts of the world where that is oh yes it happens quite frequently you know that's that's the

01:50:07.900 that's the emergence of the tyrannical and senile king right so the the the society is no longer

01:50:14.480 adapted to the real world so then if you adapt to the society well you know it's like you're you're the

01:50:20.480 captain of a sinking ship it's like well you're going to drown along with everyone else so it does it's

01:50:25.520 not it's not that great it's not that useful right so so we right we were talking about how uh so

01:50:31.160 someone who exhibits those qualities those qualities can be used for for good or evil let's

01:50:35.860 say but it's uh someone who exhibits those qualities that it's the simulacrum of those qualities that's

01:50:43.160 used for evil right yeah and then in terms of and to relate this to whether people are able to gauge

01:50:51.120 uh proper behavior meaningful behavior on their own or is there a necessity for social oh yes yes well

01:50:58.040 well they can do it to some degree on their own but that only works until they have a problem they

01:51:03.120 can't solve right and is it is that not uh sort of an opening for self-deception of course of course it

01:51:09.940 is and and and self-deception in all sorts of ways self-deception has a consequence of implicit biases

01:51:16.160 temperamental biases you know i mean um your your capacity to think let's say that's your that's your

01:51:23.040 self-reflective logos is limited by your ability so it's limited by your your motivations and their

01:51:30.120 purity let's say it's it's mo it's limited by your knowledge it's limited by your localization

01:51:36.680 in this particular period of time and place and so it's insufficient and you you can tell it's

01:51:42.400 insufficient because problems arise in your life that you can't solve well so then what you do is

01:51:47.460 engage very frequently in joint problem solving and then you might say well what makes a person

01:51:53.120 particularly let's say powerful but wrong influential able to function well in the social

01:52:00.760 hierarchy that's easy they solve problems that's what they do it's like you know if you come to

01:52:08.280 someone with a problem and they say well here's how you deal with that it's like you're pretty happy

01:52:12.500 about that you'll come back and see them again it doesn't matter what the avenue is that's what a

01:52:16.260 mechanic does you know if this doesn't work well i'll fix it it's like hey right on man i'm bringing

01:52:23.000 my car back there so so we're pretty we're pretty good at evaluating whether or not a problem has

01:52:29.240 been addressed because the problem goes away and so then we're happy about that because we don't want

01:52:34.280 the problem but then how do we account for for all the the various flavors of self-deception that

01:52:39.060 we perceive and mystification of our own hidden motivations that we observe in ourselves so in some

01:52:45.420 cases but certainly in others right when you talk about um not to not to pick on the mind necessarily

01:52:51.120 but just because they pop into my mind the new atheist you'd mentioned in our previous interview

01:52:54.100 that it seems that a lot of that thinking is motivated to a degree but but they certainly wouldn't

01:52:59.120 recognize that it's motivated they see it as rational so it is rational it's just it's just

01:53:05.320 rationality that's bounded to to to to great a degree in my in my estimation it's and and you know

01:53:13.340 some of the motivations are um well you know they picked a hill to die on that that's one way of

01:53:20.620 looking at it you know like dawkins idea of meme is so close to the idea of archetype in fact the last

01:53:26.420 time that that um harris and dawkins spoke they actually made a joke about that and then and

01:53:33.680 harris and dawkins said well if i admitted that everything would just fall apart and then they

01:53:37.720 both laughed and then they went on it's like yeah guys you got it but you backed away and so as soon

01:53:43.900 as you get the idea of meme it's like okay are there functional memes and non-functional memes and then

01:53:49.280 how functional is a functional meme and how about if it's super functional well of course what a meme is

01:53:55.020 just going to rise it's like a parasite it's only a parasite i don't think so why would you make that

01:54:00.500 presumption i mean it certainly seems possible that there are parasitic like memes there are there's

01:54:06.080 absolutely there's no doubt about that ideologies are parasitical memes right that there are multiple

01:54:13.960 ways we can take this the battery the battery's running low so i'm just going to switch that up

01:54:17.680 okay i'm going to get a glass of water what time is it

01:54:19.760 let's be real french fries are the only good tasting vegetable out there but unfortunately

01:54:26.860 they're not very healthy balance of nature fruit and veggies are the most convenient way to get

01:54:30.940 your daily intake of fruits and vegetables you know like the kind of vegetables that actually count

01:54:34.740 balance of nature uses an advanced cold vacuum process that encapsulates fruits and vegetables

01:54:39.080 into whole food supplements without sacrificing their natural antioxidants the capsules are completely

01:54:44.160 void of additives fillers extracts synthetics pesticides or added sugar the only thing at balance of

01:54:49.740 fruit and veggie capsules are fruits and veggies you need nutrients to function at your best each

01:54:54.380 and every day balance of nature helps you do just that go to balance of nature.com and use promo code

01:54:59.480 wire for 35 off your first order as a preferred customer plus get a free bottle of fiber and spice

01:55:04.820 that's balance of nature.com promo code wire

01:55:07.600 when a woman experiences an unplanned pregnancy she often feels alone and afraid too often her first

01:55:15.720 response is to seek out an abortion because that's what left-leaning institutions have conditioned

01:55:20.520 her to do but because of the generosity of listeners like you that search may lead her to a pre-born network

01:55:26.520 clinic where by the grace of god she'll choose life not just for her baby but for herself pre-born offers

01:55:33.160 god's love and compassion to hurting women and provides a free ultrasound to introduce them to the life

01:55:38.040 growing inside them this combination helps women to choose life and it's how pre-born saves 200 babies

01:55:44.440 every single day thanks to the daily wire's partnership with pre-born we're able to make

01:55:49.000 our powerful documentary choosing life available to all on daily wire plus join us in thanking pre-born

01:55:55.740 for bringing this important work out from behind our paywall and consider making a donation today to

01:56:00.800 support their life-saving work you can sponsor one ultrasound for just 28 dollars if you have the means you

01:56:06.800 can sponsor pre-born's entire network for a day for five thousand dollars make a donation today just

01:56:12.340 dial pound 250 and say the keyword baby that's pound 250 baby or go to pre-born.com slash jordan

01:56:19.480 that's pre-born.com slash jordan

01:56:22.060 there are multiple directions that we can take this discussion because it's so relevant to so much of

01:56:32.280 what we experience both on an individual and a societal level but i think to be to be timely and

01:56:39.140 respectful of some of the questions that people have posed in their responses maybe we can relate

01:56:43.000 what we were just discussing to two areas in particular so one is the degree to which we should

01:56:50.480 take our religious or mythological formulations that are the product of thousands of years of evolution

01:56:56.300 both uh biological and cultural seriously and or literally i'm sure you would ask that question

01:57:04.360 right and um uh and and and that ties back to the question i think of the white lie that we were

01:57:12.040 that we were just that we were discussing earlier the white lie or the black truth in the sense of

01:57:15.740 um if something is pragmatically true but uh but literally appears to be untrue

01:57:24.200 that how does one reconcile that if if if it's if it's serving the ultimate good okay okay so let's

01:57:31.640 start with the first one okay so that that question pushes me just just from my own memory and the second

01:57:36.260 point that i want to get to is um the risk of ideological possession in today's political climate

01:57:42.340 and what your own research and what we discuss brings to bear on how to avoid what seems to be

01:57:48.080 an increasingly problematic issue with this particular point in western history okay so the

01:57:53.780 first one is with regards to the the relationship between the metaphorical and the literal let's say

01:58:00.120 yes we've had questions for instance to to concretize it we've had questions from orthodox christians

01:58:05.740 that view you for instance as a defender of christianity because of what they've read online

01:58:10.280 and then they listen to what you say and they're like well okay so he's on my side so to speak but

01:58:16.000 does he really believe in the divinity of christ uh does he believe in uh uh the transformation of

01:58:22.420 bread into flesh and these sorts of things well of course that that depends on what you mean by

01:58:26.540 believe and what you mean by divinity yes exactly and and and the third issue just to go from there is

01:58:32.700 and if so or if not what in peterson's estimation is the role or importance of

01:58:39.740 ritual and acting out certain religious precepts good we'll do we'll start with that so people

01:58:45.740 often ask me do you believe in god which i don't i don't like that question first of all it's an

01:58:52.320 attempt to to it's an attempt to box me in in a sense and the reason that it's an attempt to box me

01:59:01.300 in is because the question is asked so that i can be firmly placed on one side of a two of a binary

01:59:07.760 argument and and the reason i don't like to answer it is because a i don't like to be boxed in

01:59:15.260 and b because i don't know what the person means by believe or god and they think they know and the

01:59:21.440 probability that they construe belief and construe god the same way i do is virtually zero so it's it's a

01:59:29.760 question that doesn't work for me on multiple levels of analysis but but strangely enough just as

01:59:35.880 we were talking i the answer to that question popped into my head i act as if god exists

01:59:42.100 now you can decide for yourself whether that means whether that i believe in him so to speak

01:59:48.860 but i act as if he exists so that's a good enough answer for that then with regards to these other

01:59:56.720 issues the divinity of christ well i would say the same problems with the question formulation obtained

02:00:03.100 what do you mean by divine and also what do you mean by christ these are very very difficult

02:00:09.040 questions now i believe that for all intents and purposes i believe that the logos is divine

02:00:14.780 insofar as we if if by divine you mean of ultimate value of ultimate transcendent value yes it's divine

02:00:24.780 it's associated with death and rebirth clearly because the logos dismantles you and rebuilds you

02:00:31.180 so that's what happens when you make an error when you make an error some part of you has to go

02:00:36.500 that's a sacrifice you have to let it go sometimes it's a big part of you it's it's sometimes it can

02:00:41.740 be such a big part of you that you actually die right instead of dying and being reborn is there

02:00:48.380 something more than merely metaphorical about the idea of being of dying and being reborn yes there is

02:00:53.780 because those are associated with physiological transformations how what's the ultimate extent of that

02:01:00.160 that's a good question you know the question is what happens to the world around you as you

02:01:08.420 as you increasingly embody the logos and the answer to that is we don't know we don't know what the

02:01:15.800 ultimate level of this now the hypothesis is and it's a hypothesis that extends to some degree to

02:01:20.900 buddha as well the hypothesis is that there has been one or two individuals who managed that

02:01:26.720 and that in their management of that they transcended death itself well then you might

02:01:32.240 ask yourself well what do you mean by transcended death well in the case of christ let's assume he

02:01:38.020 was a historical figure for the for the time being which i think is the simplest thing to assume

02:01:43.080 um i think there's sufficient evidence to conclude that you could conclude otherwise but

02:01:48.940 i personally i feel that there's sufficient evidence to conclude that um

02:01:53.980 did he is his resurrection real well his spirit lives on that's certainly the case

02:02:05.300 in what sense do you mean spirit just to qualify that

02:02:10.080 well let's imagine that a spirit is a pattern of being

02:02:15.740 and we know that patterns can exist into patterns can be transmitted across multiple substrates

02:02:22.260 right vinyl electronic impulses air vibrations in your ear neurological patterns dance it's all the

02:02:32.300 translation of what you might describe as a spirit right it's it's that pattern it's independent of

02:02:38.500 its material substrate well christ's spirit lives on it's it's a it's had a massive effect across time

02:02:45.940 well is that an answer to the question did his body resurrect

02:02:49.860 i don't know

02:02:54.900 i don't know

02:02:57.960 it is the accounts aren't clear for one thing

02:03:01.700 what the accounts mean isn't clear

02:03:05.080 i don't know what

02:03:07.480 happens to a person if they bring themselves completely into alignment

02:03:12.720 i've had intimations of what that might mean

02:03:15.740 we don't understand the world very well

02:03:18.720 we don't understand how the world could be mastered if it was mastered completely we don't know how an

02:03:26.500 individual might be able to manage that

02:03:28.520 we don't know what transformations that might make possible

02:03:31.500 i'm going to do a series on the bible

02:03:41.020 one that's one of the things i want to investigate

02:03:44.020 more thoroughly and formulate my thoughts about more thoroughly because it is a crucial issue

02:03:48.260 friend of mine said

02:03:49.980 and i wouldn't describe him

02:03:52.240 he's certainly not the sort of person that you would describe as a classic catholic

02:03:56.560 he's extraordinarily well-educated individual

02:03:58.740 and he's come back to christianity

02:04:01.060 with the most vicious of internal battles

02:04:04.840 you know and he said to me

02:04:06.080 he was the same person who made the comments earlier about the dominance hierarchy

02:04:09.440 and and so he's very insightful

02:04:11.360 you know he said that

02:04:13.380 it all falls apart unless you believe in the divinity of christ and in the resurrection of christ

02:04:18.220 and he meant that in a very fundamental way

02:04:21.040 and um there's a way in which that's true

02:04:26.040 but i don't know exactly what it means yet

02:04:28.860 like the metaphorical element of that to me is quite clear

02:04:32.020 the death and rebirth idea

02:04:33.320 yeah i mean you see that echoed all over

02:04:35.220 it's it's the most recent manifestation of that idea

02:04:38.100 is or one of the most recent manifestations

02:04:40.180 popular manifestations is in the harry potter series

02:04:42.880 because it's full of deaths and rebirths of the central hero

02:04:45.780 is it not a manifestation of hope for something beyond the finality

02:04:51.480 with which of which we have become inescapably conscious

02:04:55.540 well yes and of course that's that's the freudian critique right

02:04:58.660 he just thought about it as a wish fulfillment

02:05:00.220 although that the problem with that theory is

02:05:03.020 well you know people also generated up the idea of hell

02:05:05.540 which doesn't you know you could say

02:05:06.780 well that's a convenient place to put your enemies

02:05:08.500 and still put it in the wish fulfillment framework

02:05:10.700 but i think that's absurdly cynical

02:05:13.000 people who believe in hell are terrified of hell

02:05:16.100 about for it for themselves

02:05:17.980 and in my estimation they should be

02:05:19.800 because i also believe in hell

02:05:21.120 although what that means again is you know

02:05:23.660 subject to interpretation

02:05:24.800 lots of people live in hell

02:05:26.420 and lots of people create it

02:05:28.220 but it beyond the the sort of the basic freudian

02:05:32.140 you know snide interpretation

02:05:34.480 is it not a belief in the identification

02:05:38.300 with something that transcends your limited existence

02:05:42.040 yes definitely that's well but it's funny too

02:05:44.400 because in the more christian formulations

02:05:46.000 there's an insistence on the resurrection of the body

02:05:48.600 which i find extremely interesting

02:05:50.480 you know even the say more sophisticated

02:05:53.760 deist types are kind of willing to go along

02:05:58.440 with the idea that there might be something

02:06:00.260 eternal transcendent about consciousness

02:06:04.700 or about the spirit or the soul

02:06:07.040 something like that

02:06:08.000 but they're certainly not willing to go beyond that

02:06:10.900 but there's this very peculiar emphasis in christianity

02:06:13.680 on the resurrection of the body

02:06:14.980 which is a glorification of the body

02:06:16.820 which is quite interesting

02:06:17.900 you know it's not something you want to dismiss so rapidly

02:06:20.800 because it is a glorification of the body

02:06:22.940 and an indication of the necessity of the body

02:06:26.220 of that limitation

02:06:27.560 could that not be an instance of what we were describing earlier

02:06:30.700 in terms of a specific instantiation

02:06:33.840 of a general yeah right

02:06:35.660 it's the instantiation itself that makes it real

02:06:37.660 the body is the most real thing that we experience on it

02:06:40.880 on an individual

02:06:41.520 right well and it yeah and it's real in part

02:06:43.160 because it's it's limited right

02:06:44.760 it has limitations

02:06:45.740 so the focus on the mythological representation

02:06:48.360 of the body is resurrected

02:06:49.600 is saying this is more real

02:06:51.320 this is just as real as

02:06:53.300 as you can imagine

02:06:55.580 yes yes well it's an elevation of the material

02:06:57.900 interestingly enough right

02:06:59.100 not a denial of the material

02:07:00.400 an elevation of the material

02:07:01.580 it's a very interesting idea

02:07:02.880 and as I said I want to explore that more

02:07:06.940 because I'm not I'm not fully comfortable

02:07:10.260 with my my ability to bridge the gap

02:07:15.600 between the metaphorical and the real

02:07:18.100 although I think that the way that I described it

02:07:21.200 is as close as it's as close as I can come right now

02:07:25.180 magical things happen as the logos manifests itself

02:07:30.260 now that's self-evidently true

02:07:34.060 when when people and when you say magical

02:07:37.160 you mean magical for for all intents and purposes

02:07:40.080 in terms of our perception as

02:07:41.880 relatively naive human consciousness

02:07:44.820 or magical in like you know rabbits out of hats

02:07:47.680 well certainly the former

02:07:50.460 and God only knows about the latter

02:07:53.860 so you know that takes us afield into strange areas

02:08:01.100 like Jung's observations of synchronous events for example

02:08:06.160 we don't understand the world

02:08:07.860 like I do think the world is is more like a musical masterpiece

02:08:11.440 than it is like anything else

02:08:12.980 and things are oddly connected

02:08:14.960 now you know I know that sounds new agey

02:08:17.900 and it sounds metaphysical

02:08:19.020 and I'm I'm saying bluntly this this is speculative right

02:08:22.580 I'm feeling out beyond my my the limits of my knowledge

02:08:27.300 but there are things

02:08:29.480 I'm not willing to dismiss the mysterious

02:08:33.220 because I've experienced the mysterious

02:08:35.920 in a variety of different ways

02:08:37.700 and it's very mysterious very

02:08:41.160 from a cognitive perspective

02:08:42.760 is that not the most rational position to take in any case

02:08:45.160 because we know our cognition is inherently

02:08:47.020 bounded by a whole range of constraints

02:08:50.940 well we certainly know that we're bounded by ignorance

02:08:53.300 and there's far more going on than we

02:08:55.040 than we know or can know we do

02:08:57.480 the problem is is that

02:08:58.800 when you start to speculate

02:09:00.220 it's a projection of your imagination

02:09:02.420 now that's not necessarily a bad thing

02:09:04.560 because that is actually

02:09:05.600 knowledge advances through projection of imagination

02:09:08.060 but the problem is

02:09:10.340 the you you can see

02:09:12.220 yourself reflected back at you

02:09:14.840 and then and then it's self-fulfilling

02:09:16.880 and so you can see what you want to see

02:09:19.000 that's right and what you're describing reminds me of both

02:09:21.180 what I what I've read and and through my experience

02:09:25.120 understood in terms of the Buddhist tradition

02:09:27.080 as well as as the Islamic Sufi tradition

02:09:29.400 they use almost identical metaphors

02:09:31.400 as as we were just using to describe this experience

02:09:34.320 in the sense that to to to experience the mysterious

02:09:38.180 in its most pristine form

02:09:41.900 you precisely have to rid yourself of yourself

02:09:45.960 to avoid those projections

02:09:48.040 you want a clean mirror so to speak

02:09:50.140 is the is the symbology that's often used in Islamic mysticism

02:09:54.320 so that it so that it best reflects

02:09:56.400 what's actually mysterious

02:09:58.180 and you're not merely projecting your your vain imagination

02:10:00.740 well that that would also be what

02:10:02.400 that would also be akin to the idea

02:10:04.280 that I presented earlier

02:10:05.440 that you want to speak and live the truth

02:10:08.140 so that you don't muddy your vision

02:10:10.420 right because then you're blind

02:10:12.820 and you will walk into things

02:10:14.240 that that's why you tell the truth

02:10:15.680 you see the problem is if you lie

02:10:16.980 you believe the lies

02:10:17.840 the problem with not telling the truth

02:10:20.340 is you falsify your map

02:10:22.060 and you will wander off the pathway

02:10:23.920 how could it possibly be any other way

02:10:26.000 and that's also precisely what

02:10:27.940 according to the scripture Buddha said

02:10:29.700 he said false beliefs are the problem

02:10:32.080 right you have to rid yourself of these false beliefs

02:10:34.280 and if you follow that all the way through

02:10:36.500 then you will reach

02:10:38.120 then you have this soteriological goal

02:10:40.060 which may or may not be

02:10:41.680 you know

02:10:42.220 an achievable reality

02:10:44.720 right right

02:10:45.280 it's an ever-receding horizon

02:10:46.940 that's right

02:10:47.500 but it's nonetheless

02:10:48.180 you know

02:10:48.940 that's what we're aiming for

02:10:50.680 yeah well and it seems like the right aim

02:10:52.420 it seems like the right aim

02:10:53.780 and in Islamic Sufi mysticism

02:10:55.640 regardless

02:10:56.480 you know

02:10:57.060 you can speculate as to the

02:10:59.660 ideology of Islamic Sufi mysticism

02:11:02.960 and its relationship to other forms of mysticism

02:11:05.040 the pre-date Islam

02:11:05.880 the goal is precisely the same

02:11:08.100 it's literally the metaphors that are used

02:11:10.700 are polishing the mirror

02:11:11.680 so you best reflect what is divine

02:11:15.500 and in this sense divine in terms of the logos

02:11:17.760 the ultimate truth

02:11:18.940 and you're not muddying it with your own

02:11:21.740 lies

02:11:23.140 precisely

02:11:25.060 or purely inaccuracies

02:11:26.820 so there seems to be something fundamental

02:11:31.120 yeah well the fundamental

02:11:32.200 the fundamental issue

02:11:33.140 is that you should get your map right

02:11:34.660 right

02:11:35.640 I mean

02:11:36.000 the problem is

02:11:37.500 is that

02:11:37.880 even if you try

02:11:39.760 it isn't clear

02:11:41.120 how good a map you can make

02:11:42.360 but that's okay

02:11:43.180 because

02:11:43.560 try as hard as you can

02:11:45.620 you'll find out

02:11:46.300 but it's certainly the case

02:11:47.720 and maybe it'll be a good enough map

02:11:49.360 maybe it'll be an accurate map

02:11:50.720 you don't know

02:11:51.340 independent of your

02:11:53.400 inevitable ignorance

02:11:54.580 you can certainly stop being

02:11:56.520 willfully ignorant

02:11:57.620 and see what happens

02:11:59.660 and my sense too

02:12:00.540 is that

02:12:00.900 you don't get to complain

02:12:02.660 about the structure of the world

02:12:03.920 until you stop falsifying

02:12:05.600 your relationship with it

02:12:06.700 because you don't know

02:12:07.780 to what degree

02:12:08.640 the pathology of your being

02:12:10.580 is associated with the falsification

02:12:12.360 because it's inherently bound up

02:12:14.320 with your subjective experience

02:12:15.960 or

02:12:16.680 we can even subtract subjective

02:12:18.820 it's essentially bound up

02:12:20.560 with one's experience

02:12:21.160 right

02:12:21.600 right right

02:12:22.240 it's essentially

02:12:23.060 because

02:12:23.480 because what you're doing

02:12:24.440 is you're twisting

02:12:25.140 and bending your value structure

02:12:26.540 and that's what determines

02:12:27.640 the focus of your perception

02:12:28.940 and your emotional responses

02:12:30.560 all of that

02:12:31.260 so get your aim right

02:12:33.040 well what's the aim

02:12:34.060 truth

02:12:35.160 and I think it has to be

02:12:37.060 nested in love

02:12:38.020 and love is the notion

02:12:40.040 that

02:12:40.340 it's something like

02:12:41.100 the notion that

02:12:41.900 despite its suffering

02:12:43.480 being is good

02:12:44.900 and you should serve being

02:12:46.780 and

02:12:47.560 that's a decision

02:12:48.620 you have to make

02:12:49.320 because you can easily say

02:12:50.340 well being is corrupt

02:12:51.320 and evil

02:12:51.760 and there's plenty of evidence

02:12:52.960 for that

02:12:53.440 so it's a decision

02:12:55.800 and so

02:12:57.360 being is good

02:12:58.820 I'm going to serve

02:12:59.740 good being

02:13:00.540 and to do so

02:13:01.600 means to tell the truth

02:13:02.680 well then

02:13:03.720 that's

02:13:04.340 and then

02:13:04.900 you play that out

02:13:05.960 and then

02:13:07.760 the magic happens

02:13:09.180 and that

02:13:10.020 I believe to be the case

02:13:11.260 I think that that's

02:13:12.760 I do believe

02:13:14.020 in some sense

02:13:14.740 that's self-evident

02:13:15.700 what you just described

02:13:17.780 to me

02:13:18.140 so you're

02:13:18.840 you're most familiar

02:13:19.740 with

02:13:19.980 the Christian

02:13:22.200 theological tradition

02:13:23.380 I'm more familiar

02:13:24.040 with

02:13:24.280 Islamic Sufi

02:13:26.760 and Buddhist

02:13:27.640 theological tradition

02:13:28.520 what you just described

02:13:29.740 is incredible

02:13:30.280 from my understanding

02:13:31.820 of Sufism

02:13:32.420 and other mystical traditions

02:13:33.380 in the sense

02:13:33.880 that the twin principles

02:13:35.020 that motivate ones

02:13:37.080 the polishing of one's

02:13:38.840 mirror so to speak

02:13:40.020 are the principle

02:13:41.360 of truth

02:13:42.080 ultimate truth

02:13:43.000 which is synonymous

02:13:43.940 in the Arabic

02:13:44.960 and Persian languages

02:13:45.600 with God

02:13:47.020 it's one and the same

02:13:48.180 haq

02:13:49.220 and

02:13:50.280 and love

02:13:53.020 love

02:13:53.940 and not

02:13:54.520 love in the sense

02:13:55.540 of I

02:13:56.180 you know

02:13:56.780 I love my puppy

02:13:57.900 but love

02:13:59.140 in

02:13:59.460 an all-consuming sense

02:14:01.800 one that

02:14:02.780 motivates your entire being

02:14:04.200 right

02:14:04.460 right

02:14:04.920 well

02:14:05.120 and the way

02:14:05.620 that I

02:14:06.120 interpret that

02:14:07.320 and I try to do this

02:14:08.160 in my therapeutic

02:14:08.800 I try to do this

02:14:09.980 all the time

02:14:10.520 is

02:14:11.120 I want the best

02:14:13.000 for what wants

02:14:14.520 the best

02:14:15.040 in you

02:14:15.640 it's like

02:14:16.400 that part

02:14:17.060 I'm that part's friend

02:14:18.520 and when my clients

02:14:19.540 come in

02:14:19.900 it's like

02:14:20.260 and this is different

02:14:20.980 than the unconditional

02:14:21.820 positive regard

02:14:22.680 that the Rogerians

02:14:23.380 talked about

02:14:23.800 which I think

02:14:24.280 was an oversimplification

02:14:25.500 it's like

02:14:26.280 I don't have

02:14:26.820 unconditional

02:14:27.280 positive regard

02:14:28.080 I am not

02:14:29.020 on the side

02:14:29.780 of you

02:14:30.280 that's aiming

02:14:31.060 at your defeat

02:14:31.840 I'm not at all

02:14:33.200 on that side

02:14:33.920 I'm on the side

02:14:34.800 of you

02:14:35.040 that's struggling

02:14:35.580 towards the light

02:14:36.480 right

02:14:37.300 and I'm

02:14:37.700 and I'm on

02:14:38.220 the side

02:14:38.960 of that part

02:14:39.640 of me

02:14:40.040 at least

02:14:40.360 I'm trying

02:14:40.920 to be

02:14:41.280 on the side

02:14:41.800 of that

02:14:42.200 and that's

02:14:42.920 the definition

02:14:43.480 of love

02:14:43.980 I believe

02:14:44.400 because what

02:14:44.880 it means

02:14:45.200 is

02:14:45.360 I truly

02:14:46.240 want

02:14:46.680 but I said

02:14:47.660 it

02:14:47.820 I truly

02:14:48.500 want the best

02:14:49.220 for what

02:14:49.700 wants the best

02:14:50.620 in you

02:14:51.140 yeah

02:14:52.420 and people

02:14:53.540 love that

02:14:54.100 they love

02:14:54.780 that man

02:14:55.320 if you're

02:14:56.520 interacting

02:14:56.900 with people

02:14:58.180 with that

02:14:58.760 ethos

02:15:00.260 in mind

02:15:00.860 they find

02:15:01.680 that

02:15:01.960 well I think

02:15:03.400 that's partly

02:15:03.860 why people

02:15:04.300 are responding

02:15:04.800 so positively

02:15:05.440 to my videos

02:15:06.200 because that

02:15:06.800 ethos

02:15:07.320 informs the

02:15:08.460 videos

02:15:08.740 I'm saying

02:15:09.240 I'm trying

02:15:09.820 to figure

02:15:10.400 out

02:15:10.580 what's

02:15:10.860 the best

02:15:11.460 for us

02:15:12.560 really

02:15:13.380 like

02:15:13.880 the best

02:15:14.840 not

02:15:15.220 the best

02:15:15.800 for me

02:15:16.340 although

02:15:16.600 that's part

02:15:17.400 of it

02:15:17.660 because here

02:15:18.200 I am

02:15:18.640 you know

02:15:18.960 and I'm

02:15:19.560 in the game

02:15:20.080 too

02:15:20.440 but I'm

02:15:21.560 so greedy

02:15:23.340 let's say

02:15:23.900 I don't

02:15:24.260 just want

02:15:24.840 the best

02:15:25.240 for me

02:15:25.560 that's not

02:15:26.000 enough

02:15:26.300 for me

02:15:26.660 I'm too

02:15:27.020 greedy

02:15:27.300 for that

02:15:27.820 maybe I'm

02:15:28.400 too selfish

02:15:28.980 for that

02:15:29.540 I want

02:15:30.180 the best

02:15:30.500 for me

02:15:30.820 in a way

02:15:31.140 that's the

02:15:31.480 best for

02:15:31.840 everyone else

02:15:32.380 too

02:15:32.680 because that's

02:15:33.420 even better

02:15:34.060 and so

02:15:35.060 and I think

02:15:35.680 well

02:15:35.960 that's another

02:15:37.420 interesting thing

02:15:38.340 about being

02:15:38.780 bounded by death

02:15:39.740 is that

02:15:40.500 you have

02:15:40.840 nothing to

02:15:41.280 lose

02:15:41.620 you might as

02:15:42.260 well aim

02:15:42.760 for the

02:15:43.200 highest goal

02:15:44.100 because

02:15:44.460 what have

02:15:45.220 you got

02:15:45.480 to lose

02:15:45.840 that you

02:15:46.200 aren't

02:15:46.400 already

02:15:46.680 going to

02:15:47.040 lose

02:15:47.360 nothing

02:15:48.180 and you

02:15:48.960 have

02:15:49.080 everything

02:15:49.520 hypothetically

02:15:50.160 to gain

02:15:50.720 so

02:15:51.360 so

02:15:52.260 so what

02:15:52.960 on the last

02:15:54.620 point then

02:15:55.060 to direct

02:15:55.460 this to the

02:15:55.860 to the second

02:15:56.300 question

02:15:56.720 I think

02:15:57.220 it flows

02:15:57.580 quite

02:15:57.940 quite nicely

02:15:58.780 is

02:15:59.740 what

02:16:00.980 motivates

02:16:03.300 people to

02:16:03.900 cling to

02:16:04.660 their

02:16:04.980 particular

02:16:05.540 ideological

02:16:06.300 map

02:16:07.560 of reality

02:16:08.480 in spite

02:16:09.400 of what

02:16:09.840 you just

02:16:10.160 described

02:16:10.620 and it

02:16:11.360 seems like

02:16:12.240 to me

02:16:13.100 and to

02:16:13.480 other

02:16:13.660 observers

02:16:14.000 this could

02:16:14.420 be a question

02:16:14.920 of confirmation

02:16:15.580 an issue

02:16:16.020 of confirmation

02:16:16.480 bias

02:16:16.880 but it

02:16:17.660 seems like

02:16:18.140 as you've

02:16:18.580 said

02:16:18.780 that we're

02:16:19.580 at a

02:16:20.080 sort of

02:16:20.600 turning point

02:16:21.260 in western

02:16:22.440 I would say

02:16:22.820 global civilization

02:16:23.860 at this point

02:16:24.400 I think so

02:16:24.980 the western

02:16:25.200 distinction

02:16:25.680 I don't think

02:16:26.160 is any longer

02:16:26.880 that helpful

02:16:28.220 where people

02:16:31.800 seem to be

02:16:32.860 reacting to

02:16:34.140 what they're

02:16:34.740 experiencing

02:16:35.240 with an

02:16:36.420 unusual degree

02:16:37.140 of ideological

02:16:37.700 fervor

02:16:38.120 yet again

02:16:38.700 it's only

02:16:39.040 been about

02:16:39.560 you know

02:16:40.540 60 years

02:16:41.760 60-70 years

02:16:42.880 since we saw

02:16:43.320 a major

02:16:43.760 conflagration

02:16:44.620 premised on

02:16:46.000 that issue

02:16:46.360 you bet

02:16:46.740 right

02:16:47.180 how do we

02:16:48.460 avoid this

02:16:49.080 how do we

02:16:49.640 learn from

02:16:50.300 that

02:16:50.680 based on

02:16:51.880 your understanding

02:16:52.600 and your

02:16:53.180 in-depth

02:16:53.560 study of

02:16:53.980 this

02:16:54.180 what's the

02:16:56.520 solution

02:16:56.920 there

02:16:57.220 well

02:16:58.440 that

02:16:58.780 I think

02:16:59.500 the solution

02:17:00.020 is an

02:17:00.380 individual

02:17:00.760 one

02:17:01.200 because

02:17:02.760 the other

02:17:03.220 solutions

02:17:03.660 are collective

02:17:04.340 and the

02:17:05.180 collective

02:17:05.460 solutions

02:17:05.940 are in

02:17:07.180 some sense

02:17:07.700 the problem

02:17:08.260 now why

02:17:09.740 do people

02:17:10.220 become

02:17:10.540 ideologically

02:17:11.140 possessed

02:17:11.520 okay

02:17:12.100 well some

02:17:12.540 of it's

02:17:12.860 just

02:17:13.180 confirmation

02:17:14.780 bias

02:17:15.420 like

02:17:17.120 temperamental

02:17:18.680 bias

02:17:19.080 then you can

02:17:20.140 add ignorance

02:17:20.660 to that

02:17:21.140 then you

02:17:21.820 could add

02:17:22.080 willful

02:17:22.380 blindness

02:17:22.680 to that

02:17:23.160 then

02:17:23.920 and with

02:17:24.600 the

02:17:24.720 ignorance

02:17:25.060 issue

02:17:25.500 you can

02:17:25.880 more

02:17:26.420 specifically

02:17:27.020 diagnose

02:17:30.120 historical

02:17:30.760 ignorance

02:17:31.200 that's

02:17:31.880 why I

02:17:32.220 recommend

02:17:32.560 that people

02:17:32.980 read

02:17:33.320 the

02:17:33.640 gulag

02:17:33.880 archipelago

02:17:34.400 for example

02:17:35.000 there's

02:17:35.560 things that

02:17:36.000 we need

02:17:36.480 to know

02:17:37.020 in order

02:17:37.480 to set

02:17:37.900 ourselves

02:17:38.300 right

02:17:38.660 and the

02:17:39.500 people that

02:17:39.880 I found

02:17:40.280 that have

02:17:40.580 been most

02:17:40.960 useful in

02:17:41.440 that regard

02:17:41.940 have been

02:17:42.320 Dostoevsky

02:17:43.000 and Nietzsche

02:17:43.460 and Carl Jung

02:17:44.480 and a smattering

02:17:45.220 of others

02:17:45.640 but I think

02:17:46.140 they have their

02:17:46.640 finger on the

02:17:47.220 pulse

02:17:47.500 fundamentally

02:17:49.680 and it's not

02:17:50.400 like they're

02:17:50.700 the only people

02:17:51.480 I'm not claiming

02:17:52.080 that at all

02:17:52.700 then

02:17:55.620 but there's

02:17:56.200 deeper issues

02:17:57.300 too

02:17:57.600 and one of

02:17:58.480 the deeper

02:17:58.800 issues is

02:17:59.380 well

02:17:59.700 what do you

02:18:01.660 do with

02:18:01.980 the responsibility

02:18:02.680 well

02:18:03.880 if you're

02:18:04.380 an ideologue

02:18:04.780 then the

02:18:05.800 bad people

02:18:06.260 are those

02:18:06.700 who don't

02:18:07.140 think like

02:18:07.540 you

02:18:07.800 that's really

02:18:08.540 convenient

02:18:08.940 it's like

02:18:09.500 not only

02:18:09.960 do you not

02:18:10.600 have to do

02:18:11.080 anything about

02:18:11.560 it because

02:18:11.880 you're already

02:18:12.340 on the side

02:18:12.840 of the good

02:18:13.320 so it's

02:18:13.720 alleviated you

02:18:14.380 of any moral

02:18:14.860 responsibility

02:18:15.460 but yet

02:18:16.700 you can still

02:18:17.320 act as if

02:18:18.100 you're the

02:18:18.520 exemplar of

02:18:19.280 morality itself

02:18:20.660 plus

02:18:21.460 you have a

02:18:22.900 target now

02:18:23.420 for all the

02:18:24.000 unexamined

02:18:25.060 vengefulness

02:18:26.280 and hatred

02:18:27.000 and corruption

02:18:27.620 in your own

02:18:28.220 heart

02:18:28.560 and so

02:18:29.120 that's

02:18:29.400 a tempting

02:18:29.920 plethora

02:18:31.100 of

02:18:31.720 temptations

02:18:35.920 right

02:18:36.420 it's easy

02:18:37.440 it's quick

02:18:38.140 it's handed

02:18:39.280 to you

02:18:39.900 it means

02:18:41.160 that you

02:18:41.420 don't have

02:18:41.780 to adopt

02:18:42.220 any responsibility

02:18:42.980 it means

02:18:43.720 you can

02:18:44.140 camouflage

02:18:44.940 yourself

02:18:45.440 as a

02:18:45.740 moral agent

02:18:46.340 it means

02:18:46.980 that you

02:18:47.260 have a

02:18:47.600 target

02:18:47.960 for your

02:18:48.740 hatred

02:18:49.160 and it's

02:18:50.360 a justifiable

02:18:50.980 target

02:18:51.500 and

02:18:52.240 but I

02:18:53.180 think

02:18:53.440 I think

02:18:54.300 of all

02:18:54.760 of those

02:18:55.100 issues

02:18:55.420 the avoidance

02:18:56.040 of responsibility

02:18:56.740 is the

02:18:57.240 cardinal

02:18:57.620 issue

02:18:58.000 it's the

02:18:59.040 most important

02:18:59.580 issue

02:18:59.960 it sort

02:19:01.600 of fights

02:19:02.000 with the

02:19:02.740 yeah well

02:19:05.660 that's it

02:19:06.060 it's

02:19:06.560 it's the

02:19:08.700 most important

02:19:09.320 issue

02:19:09.680 this is

02:19:10.920 what I see

02:19:12.460 at the

02:19:12.680 universities

02:19:13.100 is that

02:19:13.560 the students

02:19:14.100 are taught

02:19:14.460 to go out

02:19:15.040 and protest

02:19:15.840 there's the

02:19:17.500 people who

02:19:17.960 are messing

02:19:18.420 up the

02:19:18.780 planet

02:19:19.160 go tell

02:19:20.280 them that

02:19:20.700 they're bad

02:19:21.340 you don't

02:19:22.180 offer a

02:19:22.580 solution

02:19:23.020 even

02:19:24.740 you just

02:19:25.360 tell them

02:19:25.800 that they're

02:19:26.140 bad

02:19:26.480 it's like

02:19:27.000 that's the

02:19:27.700 pathway to

02:19:28.360 achievement

02:19:28.880 it's no

02:19:29.280 it's not

02:19:29.800 one can

02:19:30.620 do both

02:19:31.220 and we

02:19:33.480 see evidence

02:19:33.980 of that

02:19:34.280 in very

02:19:34.920 recent

02:19:35.360 Western

02:19:36.780 political

02:19:37.180 history

02:19:37.560 right

02:19:37.820 the

02:19:38.080 civil

02:19:38.380 rights

02:19:38.640 movement

02:19:39.060 I think

02:19:41.920 that you

02:19:42.200 can't do

02:19:42.600 the latter

02:19:43.000 until you

02:19:43.360 earn the

02:19:43.740 right to

02:19:44.280 you can't

02:19:46.500 because

02:19:46.740 I don't

02:19:48.760 believe

02:19:49.080 that you

02:19:49.540 in what

02:19:52.100 sense

02:19:52.820 is it

02:19:53.360 a case

02:19:54.280 that people

02:19:55.240 on both

02:19:56.020 sides

02:19:56.300 I hate

02:19:57.180 to

02:19:57.420 bifurcate

02:19:58.660 it this

02:19:58.920 way

02:19:59.100 but it's

02:19:59.420 perceived

02:19:59.740 this way

02:20:00.120 two sides

02:20:01.060 of the

02:20:01.340 divide

02:20:01.660 the left

02:20:02.060 and the

02:20:02.300 right

02:20:02.480 in what

02:20:03.700 sense

02:20:04.000 is it

02:20:04.240 that people

02:20:04.640 are mistaking

02:20:05.220 the form

02:20:05.740 for the

02:20:06.060 content

02:20:06.500 in that

02:20:07.860 they may be

02:20:10.100 looking back

02:20:10.600 in history

02:20:10.960 and looking

02:20:11.340 up to

02:20:11.720 movements

02:20:12.100 that

02:20:12.400 involved

02:20:13.300 either

02:20:14.920 speaking truth

02:20:15.940 to power

02:20:16.380 which I think

02:20:16.920 is part of

02:20:17.960 what motivates

02:20:18.520 a lot of

02:20:18.940 the right

02:20:19.280 and even

02:20:21.780 the so

02:20:22.500 called

02:20:22.700 alt-right

02:20:23.140 just saying

02:20:24.320 things that

02:20:24.880 they should

02:20:25.220 be able

02:20:25.540 to say

02:20:25.920 regardless

02:20:26.420 of whether

02:20:27.020 it serves

02:20:27.900 the higher

02:20:29.060 moral truth

02:20:29.640 or not

02:20:30.000 and the

02:20:32.920 inclination

02:20:33.500 to protest

02:20:34.200 and speak

02:20:36.460 truth to

02:20:36.940 the power

02:20:37.340 of the

02:20:37.800 dominance

02:20:38.760 hierarchy

02:20:39.120 the power

02:20:39.500 structure

02:20:39.940 I think

02:20:40.240 is often

02:20:40.600 what motivates

02:20:41.200 much of

02:20:41.880 what's on

02:20:42.140 the left

02:20:42.520 to what

02:20:43.640 degree

02:20:43.920 do you

02:20:44.180 think

02:20:44.420 the

02:20:44.680 conflagration

02:20:45.320 or the

02:20:46.960 coming to

02:20:48.740 a head

02:20:48.940 that we're

02:20:49.200 experiencing

02:20:49.660 is when

02:20:51.020 people mistake

02:20:51.800 the form

02:20:52.460 of that

02:20:53.020 expression

02:20:53.660 the form

02:20:54.160 of that

02:20:54.620 protest

02:20:55.260 for the

02:20:56.240 importance

02:20:56.620 of the

02:20:57.140 content

02:20:57.520 in the

02:20:58.000 sense

02:20:58.200 of the

02:20:58.480 purity

02:20:58.780 yeah

02:20:59.040 fine

02:20:59.420 that's

02:20:59.680 again

02:21:00.880 why I

02:21:01.260 would say

02:21:01.580 that it

02:21:02.200 heads back

02:21:03.860 towards the

02:21:04.380 individual

02:21:04.860 okay

02:21:05.520 but how do

02:21:07.800 we collectively

02:21:08.480 solve that

02:21:09.120 individual

02:21:09.560 problem

02:21:10.040 or is that

02:21:11.180 not solvable

02:21:11.680 I think

02:21:13.920 that we

02:21:14.680 we collectively

02:21:15.980 solve the

02:21:16.600 individual

02:21:17.040 problem

02:21:17.580 by noting

02:21:18.360 that the

02:21:18.900 collective

02:21:19.340 is subordinate

02:21:20.180 to the

02:21:20.640 individual

02:21:21.060 which is

02:21:22.060 really the

02:21:22.440 western claim

02:21:23.100 it's the

02:21:23.460 fundamental

02:21:23.840 western claim

02:21:24.600 is that

02:21:25.020 what's at

02:21:25.940 the pinnacle

02:21:26.520 of the

02:21:27.140 collective

02:21:27.760 is the

02:21:28.800 piece of

02:21:29.240 the pyramid

02:21:29.680 that detaches

02:21:30.460 itself

02:21:30.980 that's the

02:21:31.460 eye

02:21:31.780 right

02:21:32.800 it's

02:21:33.280 it's

02:21:33.600 it's

02:21:34.040 it's

02:21:34.580 it's

02:21:35.200 it's

02:21:35.740 the individual

02:21:36.700 logos

02:21:37.200 fundamentally

02:21:37.880 that the

02:21:38.400 collective

02:21:38.720 has to

02:21:39.160 serve

02:21:39.380 because the

02:21:39.840 logos is the

02:21:40.460 thing that

02:21:40.780 rejuvenates

02:21:41.460 the collective

02:21:42.040 so is there

02:21:42.720 a conflation

02:21:43.220 there between

02:21:43.660 the individual

02:21:44.220 as in

02:21:44.640 the individual

02:21:47.460 human being

02:21:48.240 versus

02:21:48.680 or as

02:21:50.420 well as

02:21:51.080 that

02:21:53.440 that which

02:21:54.260 is able to

02:21:54.860 speak truth

02:21:55.920 as precisely

02:21:56.840 and clearly

02:21:57.360 as possible

02:21:58.440 in your mind

02:21:59.860 are those

02:22:00.220 two

02:22:00.620 melded

02:22:02.300 or

02:22:03.020 well that

02:22:04.100 would be the

02:22:04.500 ideal

02:22:04.880 that they're

02:22:05.440 melded

02:22:05.820 the individual

02:22:06.560 is the

02:22:07.020 truth bearing

02:22:08.760 vessel

02:22:09.260 not the

02:22:09.940 collective

02:22:10.700 the collective

02:22:11.860 is the dead

02:22:12.500 remnants of the

02:22:13.300 past

02:22:13.780 now you

02:22:14.540 need it

02:22:14.980 it's

02:22:15.220 it's

02:22:15.460 it's a

02:22:15.760 container

02:22:16.180 it's

02:22:16.580 necessary

02:22:17.060 but it's

02:22:17.600 always out

02:22:18.060 of date

02:22:18.460 always

02:22:19.060 it's always

02:22:19.900 out of date

02:22:20.400 and at least

02:22:20.920 semi-tyrannical

02:22:21.980 partly because

02:22:22.700 it's out of date

02:22:23.400 partly because

02:22:24.020 it's partly

02:22:24.460 corrupt

02:22:24.940 but it's the

02:22:26.400 it's the soul

02:22:27.160 of the individual

02:22:27.920 the spirit

02:22:28.460 of the individual

02:22:29.120 we could say

02:22:29.720 motivated by

02:22:30.500 love

02:22:30.920 attempting to

02:22:32.900 manifest itself

02:22:33.780 in truth

02:22:34.300 that's the

02:22:35.200 that's the cure

02:22:35.980 for that

02:22:36.460 malaise

02:22:37.420 and that's

02:22:38.080 that's an

02:22:38.520 ancient

02:22:39.260 ancient idea

02:22:40.320 it's the most

02:22:42.160 ancient idea

02:22:42.940 it's the most

02:22:43.520 ancient written

02:22:44.120 written idea

02:22:44.780 we have

02:22:45.140 you see it

02:22:45.580 in the

02:22:45.800 Enuma Elish

02:22:46.440 the Mesopotamian

02:22:47.540 creation myth

02:22:48.160 that's Marduk

02:22:48.840 so could

02:22:49.940 could one

02:22:50.420 again from a

02:22:51.180 devil's advocate

02:22:51.600 perspective

02:22:52.020 not argue

02:22:52.600 that what's

02:22:53.040 motivating some

02:22:53.720 of the things

02:22:54.220 that have

02:22:54.560 that have

02:22:55.980 concerned you

02:22:56.640 with respect

02:22:57.860 to the left

02:22:58.420 is advocating

02:23:00.620 precisely for that

02:23:01.500 the rights of

02:23:02.100 individuals who

02:23:02.980 have thus far

02:23:03.920 been maligned

02:23:05.100 in our society

02:23:05.780 or not given

02:23:06.680 the proper space

02:23:07.380 because of

02:23:07.880 stigma

02:23:08.220 well I do

02:23:09.700 think that to

02:23:10.280 the degree

02:23:10.760 that the left

02:23:11.780 is motivated

02:23:12.620 by the desire

02:23:14.420 by love

02:23:15.040 and the desire

02:23:15.580 for truth

02:23:16.160 that the left

02:23:17.260 does serve that

02:23:18.360 I mean I think

02:23:19.460 the left has been

02:23:20.340 very effective

02:23:21.320 in many ways

02:23:22.200 in holding

02:23:23.860 the concerns

02:23:24.720 of the

02:23:25.480 of the less

02:23:26.900 fortunate

02:23:27.400 in

02:23:28.240 up so that

02:23:30.300 others can see

02:23:31.240 it

02:23:31.440 I believe that

02:23:33.340 that's a valid

02:23:33.900 role the left

02:23:34.980 can play

02:23:35.600 I believe that

02:23:36.720 they've abandoned

02:23:37.400 that role

02:23:38.100 for the

02:23:38.860 because they're

02:23:39.540 serving a

02:23:39.980 particular ideology

02:23:40.720 I believe that

02:23:41.340 that's why

02:23:41.720 Hillary Clinton

02:23:42.280 lost the last

02:23:43.200 election

02:23:43.580 they abandoned

02:23:44.380 the working

02:23:44.780 class

02:23:45.240 that's a bad

02:23:46.320 idea because

02:23:47.060 the working

02:23:47.800 class needs a

02:23:48.460 voice and the

02:23:48.960 working class

02:23:49.400 is in rough

02:23:49.900 shape and

02:23:50.740 there's a variety

02:23:51.240 of reasons for

02:23:51.840 that that are

02:23:52.220 complex

02:23:52.760 the working

02:23:53.720 class needs a

02:23:54.440 voice the

02:23:54.940 oppressed need

02:23:55.480 a voice but

02:23:56.620 that doesn't

02:23:57.040 mean they need

02:23:57.680 they need a

02:23:59.400 genuine voice

02:24:00.420 they need a

02:24:01.260 genuine voice

02:24:02.160 and that's I

02:24:02.840 think that genuine

02:24:03.500 voice is lacking

02:24:04.280 I think it's been

02:24:05.420 I think it's been

02:24:06.580 I think the left

02:24:07.520 has been hijacked

02:24:08.780 by people who

02:24:10.820 are neither

02:24:11.340 motivated by love

02:24:12.640 nor by truth

02:24:13.460 so to concretize

02:24:14.480 this then

02:24:14.860 in terms of

02:24:16.940 people's

02:24:18.460 at least

02:24:20.100 here in

02:24:20.840 Vancouver for

02:24:21.400 instance

02:24:21.680 instinctive reaction

02:24:23.080 to protect

02:24:23.940 otherwise marginalized

02:24:27.620 individuals such

02:24:28.880 as transgender

02:24:29.680 people

02:24:29.940 yes we're not

02:24:30.480 talking we're

02:24:30.960 definitely not

02:24:31.520 talking about

02:24:32.060 instinctive reactions

02:24:33.100 the instinctive

02:24:34.260 reaction is

02:24:34.840 nothing but an

02:24:35.440 impulse it is

02:24:36.560 not a moral

02:24:37.140 virtue right

02:24:38.740 that's just

02:24:39.200 maternal instinct

02:24:40.320 and maternal

02:24:41.320 instinct is just

02:24:42.140 as dangerous as

02:24:43.060 it is as it

02:24:44.100 is benevolent I

02:24:45.440 mean that the

02:24:46.200 that was I

02:24:47.720 suppose Freud's

02:24:48.500 major contribution

02:24:49.380 but you know the

02:24:50.860 Oedipal mother is

02:24:51.760 the devouring

02:24:52.440 mother that's the

02:24:53.380 witch who lives

02:24:54.000 inside the the

02:24:54.940 castle or the

02:24:56.060 gingerbread house

02:24:56.940 she's just too

02:24:57.560 damn good to be

02:24:58.260 true the problem

02:24:59.240 with over mothering

02:25:00.100 creatures is that

02:25:00.900 they stay

02:25:01.280 infantile so

02:25:02.560 the fact that

02:25:03.800 you feel sorry

02:25:04.640 for someone and

02:25:05.360 want want to

02:25:06.180 help them is

02:25:06.740 just the bare

02:25:07.600 beginning of what

02:25:08.520 you need to do

02:25:09.080 to actually do

02:25:09.760 something that's

02:25:10.320 useful and to

02:25:11.180 confuse that with

02:25:12.080 solving the problem

02:25:13.000 is is well I'm

02:25:14.620 caring well yeah

02:25:15.880 who cares if

02:25:17.560 you're caring like

02:25:18.760 fine what a

02:25:21.520 sparrow is caring

02:25:22.800 that's not the

02:25:24.660 issue that that's

02:25:26.820 that's that's the

02:25:27.580 issue at the most

02:25:28.460 at the at the

02:25:29.760 that's not the

02:25:32.040 issue so again to

02:25:34.440 concretize this

02:25:35.100 because I think

02:25:35.460 this exercise is

02:25:36.160 extremely useful

02:25:36.940 based on what we

02:25:38.040 started the

02:25:38.720 conversation with

02:25:39.280 to take this from

02:25:40.180 the more general

02:25:40.740 to the specific

02:25:41.400 in terms of let's

02:25:43.440 say protecting

02:25:44.380 transgender people

02:25:45.280 who have been

02:25:46.360 really maligned in

02:25:48.300 society there's an

02:25:48.980 incredibly high

02:25:49.620 suicide rate amongst

02:25:50.420 transgenders right

02:25:51.220 they have difficulty

02:25:52.280 finding work they

02:25:53.100 have difficulty

02:25:53.720 maintaining normal

02:25:55.340 relationships and

02:25:58.100 let's and well of

02:26:00.120 course they have

02:26:00.700 difficulty maintaining

02:26:01.560 normal relationships

02:26:02.500 they're not going to

02:26:03.580 maintain a normal

02:26:04.300 relationship that's

02:26:05.680 not possible they're

02:26:06.720 in an abnormal

02:26:07.240 situation so by now

02:26:08.840 that doesn't mean they

02:26:09.620 don't get to have

02:26:10.340 relationships but it

02:26:11.580 certainly means that

02:26:12.240 they're not going to

02:26:12.840 be normal and you

02:26:14.520 know there's there's a

02:26:15.560 price to be paid for

02:26:16.520 being different now

02:26:17.700 you could say well

02:26:18.400 that price should be

02:26:19.200 minimized to the

02:26:19.980 degree that that's

02:26:20.620 possible right fair

02:26:21.720 enough that is the

02:26:22.480 argument I believe

02:26:23.260 enough that that is

02:26:24.660 the articulated argument

02:26:26.100 of people on the

02:26:27.000 left yeah amongst

02:26:27.820 those in the radical

02:26:28.540 left that you say are

02:26:29.380 motivated by more

02:26:30.280 nefarious yeah I don't

02:26:31.520 believe it I don't

02:26:32.360 believe that in fact I

02:26:33.360 don't think the

02:26:33.780 transgender people

02:26:34.580 believe it because I've

02:26:35.920 got letters from about

02:26:36.920 35 transgender people

02:26:38.240 now every single one

02:26:39.280 of them except one

02:26:40.140 said they agreed with

02:26:40.980 me they do not regard

02:26:42.340 these activists as

02:26:43.420 their legitimate

02:26:43.960 representatives they are

02:26:45.300 not happy with the

02:26:46.240 fact that this pronoun

02:26:47.080 issue has made them

02:26:48.100 more like more salient

02:26:50.440 to the community they

02:26:52.420 don't trust the people

02:26:53.460 who purport to

02:26:54.160 represent them so

02:26:55.360 like representation

02:26:56.820 requires legitimacy

02:26:58.080 and just because you're

02:26:59.220 an activist who says

02:27:00.580 that you care for

02:27:01.320 people or even if you

02:27:02.420 happen to be a member

02:27:03.420 of that community

02:27:04.680 which by the way is

02:27:05.760 not a community in any

02:27:06.920 sense of the word it's

02:27:08.200 a range of people that

02:27:09.180 are just as diverse as

02:27:10.260 any other range of

02:27:11.200 people none of that

02:27:12.180 gives you legitimacy as

02:27:13.300 a represent

02:27:13.760 representative and I

02:27:15.260 don't and this brings

02:27:16.080 us right back to the

02:27:16.960 beginning I do not

02:27:18.040 believe that legislation

02:27:19.080 like Bill C-16 is in

02:27:21.080 the least in the interest

02:27:22.640 of people who these

02:27:23.700 people who are

02:27:24.240 marginalized quite the

02:27:25.440 contrary I believe

02:27:26.600 they're the there are

02:27:27.700 sacrificial victims to

02:27:29.640 the onslaught of a

02:27:30.800 continuing post-modern

02:27:32.060 neo-marxist ideology

02:27:33.280 right and I think many

02:27:34.900 people just they don't

02:27:36.940 see what you what you

02:27:38.380 say you see they don't

02:27:39.500 see the historical

02:27:40.420 context in which you

02:27:41.640 are observing the

02:27:42.660 phenomenon so how as a

02:27:46.400 message to people who

02:27:47.100 are watching this and

02:27:48.220 trying to work their way

02:27:49.060 through a lot of young

02:27:49.780 people who are trying to

02:27:50.700 navigate this

02:27:51.260 increasingly perilous

02:27:53.920 minefield of divisive

02:27:56.800 politics in today's day

02:27:58.000 and age how do they

02:27:59.920 know what are the

02:28:02.100 heuristics they use what

02:28:03.020 are the signposts they

02:28:03.820 use to understand am I

02:28:05.960 on the right path is is

02:28:08.400 what I'm being taught or

02:28:09.760 is what I'm being

02:28:10.440 attracted to politically

02:28:11.920 motivated from a sense of

02:28:14.720 what's actually best for

02:28:15.980 the community that I'm

02:28:17.100 nominally caring for

02:28:18.500 well that requires you

02:28:19.980 might say well that

02:28:20.800 requires careful

02:28:21.940 meditation and prayer you

02:28:24.180 know if you wanted to be

02:28:24.980 traditional about it I

02:28:26.500 would say you have to

02:28:27.300 orient you have to

02:28:28.200 determine this is a

02:28:29.820 process of soul

02:28:30.940 searching what are you

02:28:32.540 oriented towards and the

02:28:33.720 answer could easily be

02:28:34.540 nothing well this is why

02:28:35.980 I produced the future

02:28:36.720 authoring program you

02:28:38.160 like you got to be

02:28:38.940 oriented towards

02:28:39.560 something because

02:28:41.040 otherwise you're

02:28:41.860 disoriented you just

02:28:42.920 spin around in circles

02:28:43.840 and then you suffer and

02:28:45.560 sort of people around

02:28:46.320 you it's not a good

02:28:47.200 solution orient your

02:28:48.480 self towards something

02:28:49.780 you have to figure out

02:28:51.040 what it is what will

02:28:51.940 work for you what goal

02:28:54.360 would would justify the

02:28:56.360 suffering of your life

02:28:57.380 start trying to piece

02:28:58.640 that together you're

02:28:59.440 going to get better at

02:29:00.400 it but it's a personal

02:29:01.560 process and and you

02:29:04.060 should use your education

02:29:05.180 to inform that so you

02:29:06.460 need a personal place to

02:29:07.680 stand because otherwise

02:29:08.580 you're going to be

02:29:09.340 handed a place to stand

02:29:10.980 on a plate and it may be

02:29:12.460 one that that makes you a

02:29:13.760 puppet of someone else's

02:29:15.100 goals so I would say you

02:29:17.900 know I what are the

02:29:19.580 what are the processes

02:29:20.400 well I think what I've

02:29:22.160 recommended to people is

02:29:23.320 clean up your room that's

02:29:27.040 a good start organize your

02:29:28.760 local landscape schedule

02:29:30.280 your time start taking

02:29:31.700 control of yourself see if

02:29:33.280 you can stop saying things

02:29:34.980 you know to be lies that's

02:29:37.100 not the same as telling the

02:29:38.080 truth you don't get to do

02:29:39.440 that to begin with because

02:29:40.440 you're not good enough at it

02:29:41.720 to even attempt it in some

02:29:42.920 sense but everyone can stop

02:29:45.160 saying things they know to

02:29:46.620 be falsehoods they can use

02:29:48.100 their own damn definition

02:29:49.100 of falsehood right but in

02:29:50.560 your definition importantly

02:29:51.880 I think in your definition

02:29:53.640 falsehood includes the

02:29:56.180 higher level moral truth

02:29:59.420 yes it's living wrong you can

02:30:01.640 say something that is

02:30:02.660 literally true but of course

02:30:04.440 like you said earlier it's a

02:30:05.500 black truth in the sense that

02:30:06.960 at a moral level you're

02:30:09.220 saying something to cause a

02:30:10.960 social effect that is

02:30:11.820 actually negative say stop

02:30:13.260 saying things that violate

02:30:14.680 your conscience instead of

02:30:17.520 stop saying things you know

02:30:18.940 to be untrue because we run

02:30:20.620 into the truth problem but I

02:30:22.000 would say stop here's another

02:30:23.320 idea stop saying and doing

02:30:25.160 things that make you feel

02:30:26.580 weak just all you have to do

02:30:28.560 is pay attention to that some

02:30:29.680 things you do will make you

02:30:30.780 feel disintegrated it's a

02:30:32.620 physiological sensation

02:30:33.860 disintegrated and weak it's

02:30:35.700 something that Carl Rogers

02:30:36.660 commented on he thought about

02:30:38.700 that as part of oh now I can't

02:30:41.300 remember the word it's

02:30:42.660 something like integrity but

02:30:45.100 that isn't the word he used

02:30:46.220 but some things some things

02:30:49.400 improve your integrity and

02:30:50.760 some things disintegrate you

02:30:52.560 now the things that

02:30:53.820 disintegrate you you often do to

02:30:55.540 impress other people or because

02:30:57.140 you're taking a shortcut or

02:30:58.360 you're escaping what you know to

02:31:00.560 be your moral obligation and

02:31:02.160 your moral obligation stems

02:31:03.720 naturally from your aims like

02:31:05.720 once once you have aims you have

02:31:07.480 moral obligations they come

02:31:09.260 together because the moral

02:31:11.260 obligation is what you need to do

02:31:12.920 in order to obtain the aim so and

02:31:15.060 if you don't have an aim well

02:31:16.020 then you're aimless so that's not

02:31:17.780 a solution so along with the aims

02:31:19.620 come the moral obligations then

02:31:21.360 when you violate the moral

02:31:22.480 obligations you'll have a sense of

02:31:23.900 that violation it's like well you

02:31:25.400 have to stop doing that or or

02:31:26.980 that's something you could do you

02:31:28.300 don't have to you don't have to do

02:31:29.940 any of this but I would say that's

02:31:32.080 where where people should start you

02:31:33.580 start small it's not small you think

02:31:36.280 it's small it's not small I had a

02:31:37.660 girl come up to me last night at the

02:31:39.620 end of my talk and this happens all

02:31:41.300 the time she said I started

02:31:43.980 cleaning up my room last year and it

02:31:46.860 completely changed my life she said

02:31:48.420 your room is an externalization of

02:31:50.180 your mind and that's right that's

02:31:52.700 exactly true to the degree that you're

02:31:54.820 in your room the room is you now that

02:31:58.540 isn't how people think but that's okay

02:32:00.880 it doesn't matter if they think that

02:32:02.660 way that's how it is so straighten up

02:32:05.920 what you can straighten up and quit

02:32:07.220 saying things that make you feel

02:32:08.340 weak and then then you'll know what

02:32:10.440 to do next it's a one last point on

02:32:12.960 this that because we're running short

02:32:15.040 on time but I would like to touch on

02:32:16.240 this so one point that concerns me is

02:32:20.600 that is what you're saying because I

02:32:23.060 find so much of what you've shared

02:32:25.300 with well with the world at this point

02:32:27.740 using the technological means we have

02:32:29.480 available to be of immense value the

02:32:31.660 way you articulate what many of us feel

02:32:33.940 to be true but aren't able to to put

02:32:37.400 into logo well see that's another

02:32:38.920 that's another hallmark of truth is

02:32:41.580 that it snaps things together and

02:32:43.360 people write to me all the time and say

02:32:45.200 that it's like it's as if things were

02:32:47.460 coming together in my mind it's like

02:32:49.020 well that's what archetypes do

02:32:50.160 archetypes glue things together so yes

02:32:52.940 it's it's the proper expression of

02:32:56.620 unconscious being teaches people what

02:32:59.620 they already know it's it's kind of

02:33:01.460 like the platonic idea that all learning

02:33:03.760 was remembering it's right it's it's

02:33:06.840 you know and it's it's not right

02:33:08.860 exactly the way that we would think of

02:33:11.000 learning and remembering now but you you

02:33:14.100 have a you have a you have a nature and

02:33:18.040 when you feel that nature articulated it's

02:33:20.520 it's like the act of snapping the puzzle

02:33:22.720 pieces together they're right there yes

02:33:24.500 well that's the that's the that's the the

02:33:27.920 bringing the levels of being into sync

02:33:30.680 into synchrony that's what you feel it's

02:33:32.960 like oh that's synchronized now it's like

02:33:34.780 what I think and the way I feel have come

02:33:37.360 together and you feel that snap it's like

02:33:40.080 oh that's a simpler it's a simpler state

02:33:42.580 it's something like that it's not rife with

02:33:44.600 contradictions anymore yeah so so so just to

02:33:48.480 follow through on this thought then so what

02:33:49.940 what concerns me to a degree is and maybe

02:33:53.340 it shouldn't concern me but I'll express

02:33:55.560 this anyway there's such value in what

02:33:58.080 you've been sharing for the reasons we

02:34:00.540 just discussed just a second ago but

02:34:04.040 because of the context in which this

02:34:06.360 arose recently some of your ideas have

02:34:11.380 been taken up by people on the right who

02:34:15.480 may suffer from exactly the same kinds of

02:34:17.760 ideological possession issues that you

02:34:20.220 argue some people on the extreme left

02:34:22.100 suffer from and the degree to which what

02:34:25.460 you've been arguing or putting forth or

02:34:28.060 sharing with people becomes conflated with

02:34:30.980 the ideologically possessed arguments on

02:34:36.320 the right or the alt-right is is deeply

02:34:39.260 concerning for someone who thinks that

02:34:40.600 who feels and knows that what you have to

02:34:42.780 say is so incredibly valuable because

02:34:45.600 people will they'll just I've had many many

02:34:48.580 people write me from the right or from from

02:34:51.520 you know from the fringes of the radical

02:34:53.680 right say saying precisely that listening to

02:34:56.420 my lecture stop them from going all the way

02:34:58.540 you know so I would say that if people

02:35:02.100 listen to what I'm saying then that isn't

02:35:04.160 going to happen now how to has my message

02:35:07.360 been co-opted I would say to a much lesser

02:35:09.600 degree than people think all you have to do is go

02:35:11.640 read the YouTube comments and there's thousands

02:35:14.000 and thousands of them and I mean YouTube comments

02:35:16.160 it's like they're most of them are you know

02:35:18.600 generated by dead is denizens from the pits

02:35:21.300 of hell they're really dismissive aggressive

02:35:24.580 rude vulgar thoughtless provocative prejudicial

02:35:28.940 I mean you name it man we're discussing before

02:35:31.040 off-camera that the notion of I think it's

02:35:32.520 called Godwin's law where it's a certain

02:35:34.380 point a YouTube or any internet discussion

02:35:36.640 will degenerate into Nazi comparison exactly

02:35:39.380 exactly and so but that isn't what

02:35:41.840 characterizes the comment stream on my

02:35:43.920 YouTube videos with with very rare exceptions

02:35:46.420 and so I don't believe that what I've been

02:35:50.120 discussing has been co-opted to any significant

02:35:53.200 degree I think that what has happened is that

02:35:56.040 at this time and place for some reason

02:35:58.380 it isn't the people on the left who are

02:36:01.200 particularly open to the message but that's

02:36:03.160 because I think that they're far more gripped by

02:36:05.960 the totalitarian spirit than people aligned along

02:36:09.760 the rest of the spectrum and they also have

02:36:12.060 more power now it's a it's just they have they

02:36:15.200 have more institutional power of a certain

02:36:17.340 type particularly in the universe I was

02:36:19.700 going to say this sounds like a highly

02:36:21.240 academic context in which you're that you're

02:36:23.600 describing and I and I identify I've

02:36:26.500 experienced what you're identifying so I can

02:36:28.360 relate to that but in terms of what concerns

02:36:30.880 me is looking at the wider societal and

02:36:33.680 global context there is definitely a

02:36:37.440 resurgence of the right and is someone

02:36:40.220 whose family for instance suffered under the

02:36:42.320 Nazi regime it's it's disturbing and well it's

02:36:48.180 the polarization and the polarization is

02:36:50.480 disturbing and you know what I try to recommend

02:36:53.320 to people and I did in my talk last night for

02:36:55.600 example is that they find someone that they

02:36:57.480 don't agree with and have a conversation with

02:36:59.740 them now it has to be someone that you can have a

02:37:02.140 conversation with but a lot of that will just

02:37:04.120 involve listening it's like we have to extend

02:37:07.120 our hands across the gap because otherwise we'll

02:37:09.520 polarize that's what's happening you know you

02:37:11.460 saw it in Berkeley last week and that's you

02:37:13.980 know that could be just the beginning and

02:37:16.380 there's lots of people who would like that

02:37:17.800 that's not a good idea it's a very bad idea

02:37:20.800 you know and I would say it's still my

02:37:23.700 estimation that at the moment it's the

02:37:26.420 radicals on the left that are primarily

02:37:28.020 responsible for this and it's they're

02:37:29.900 primarily responsible particularly because of

02:37:32.660 their stance on free speech like I can't go to

02:37:34.800 infield college now you know and some arbitrary

02:37:37.580 administrator used a specious excuse to say

02:37:40.320 no well he can't come even although I was

02:37:42.180 invited I was already invited I'd already

02:37:44.220 paid for the airfare it's like they feel that

02:37:46.220 there is a large coterie of people who feel

02:37:48.700 that it's in their bailiwick to determine who

02:37:51.720 can speak and that's a very bad idea so so to

02:37:55.580 clarify for people because I think I think

02:37:57.540 the way you're describing this inherently speaks

02:37:59.700 to people on the at the moment and again I

02:38:03.060 I hesitate to buy into this bifurcation but

02:38:06.500 but people who identify at the moment with

02:38:09.000 the right yeah well put it this way the

02:38:11.140 campuses have not been infiltrated by

02:38:13.520 right-wing radicals not not at all not in

02:38:16.900 the least the campuses yeah well the thing

02:38:19.560 the problem with that is this that's where

02:38:21.140 the the campuses the humanities let let's

02:38:24.160 lay it out again theology at the bottom

02:38:26.140 philosophy after that well that's where the

02:38:27.960 humanities are the humanities are nearest to

02:38:31.640 the foundation of our culture and they're

02:38:33.740 completely dominated by radical leftists

02:38:36.020 post-modern neo-marxists it's not and

02:38:38.400 that's that's not my opinion that's well

02:38:41.120 documented like there aren't even

02:38:43.380 conservatives in those domains let alone

02:38:46.000 right-wingers there's not even any

02:38:47.880 conservatives I mean maybe you can call

02:38:49.440 conservatives right-wing I think you got

02:38:51.360 to you know you're pushing your luck when

02:38:52.940 you do that but there's no conservatives

02:38:55.000 even so the centrists are on the right as

02:38:57.780 far as the people in the humanities are

02:38:59.260 concerned well that's not good and it's

02:39:01.840 seriously not good because those the

02:39:04.320 humanities have way more effect on our

02:39:06.480 culture than we think way more in what

02:39:09.300 sense do you think the the rise and in

02:39:11.760 some sense or frightening resurgence of

02:39:14.120 popularity in in right-wing and even

02:39:17.000 extreme right-wing political movements

02:39:19.120 political as opposed to what's on campus

02:39:21.200 is a semi-conscious reaction to the

02:39:26.840 possession of uh as you were saying the

02:39:29.360 the inherent ideological foundations of

02:39:32.040 our society being I think it's exactly

02:39:36.000 that I mean it's more than that because

02:39:38.460 you know things get amalgamated there's

02:39:41.200 it's always useful for people to find

02:39:43.660 someone to hate and hit and so that

02:39:46.640 motivation drives radicals on both sides of

02:39:49.740 the political spectrum right and obviously

02:39:52.060 you can see that because it's it's

02:39:53.660 starting to happen so but it's certainly

02:39:56.780 the case that look if the democrats

02:40:00.460 wouldn't have played identity politics

02:40:02.000 hillary would have won the election it's

02:40:03.460 as simple as that so and it and and you

02:40:06.260 know people also should know that it

02:40:07.960 wasn't just the federal presidency that

02:40:10.340 the democrats lost they lost everything

02:40:12.700 right at the state level too it's like

02:40:15.380 they're pushing people too hard and they

02:40:19.420 have their ideological reasons for it and

02:40:21.280 I don't find them credible and it's it's

02:40:23.340 the grounding in post-modernism and the

02:40:25.440 secret grounding underneath that in

02:40:27.420 neo-marxism and people are not going to

02:40:29.480 put up with that and they shouldn't so it's

02:40:32.840 so I think we have to wrap up because

02:40:34.320 because you have a remaining schedule here

02:40:36.360 in Vancouver but would you be willing to

02:40:40.360 say for the record and to the camera and

02:40:42.340 if you're not that's fine but would you be

02:40:44.000 willing to say that you you yourself

02:40:45.540 actually do not identify with the what

02:40:50.200 appear to be for some of us more

02:40:52.040 insidious elements of the right I'm not

02:40:54.480 political I've made my decision many

02:40:56.500 times I thought of you know running for

02:41:00.000 political office and if I did in Canada

02:41:02.300 the most logical place for me to be

02:41:04.680 within the liberal party although I think

02:41:06.740 that it's also being hijacked by the

02:41:08.640 social justice warrior types to a to a to a

02:41:12.300 very damaging degree especially you see

02:41:14.160 that in Ontario but I'm I've decided at

02:41:17.260 multiple points in my life that I'm not

02:41:19.140 playing at the political level I'm

02:41:21.640 playing at the philosophical level or

02:41:23.300 maybe I'm playing at the theological

02:41:24.660 level and and I'm what I'm trying to do

02:41:27.900 is to say what I think as clearly as I

02:41:30.600 possibly can and to listen to the

02:41:32.780 feedback and modify my message when that

02:41:34.900 seems to be necessary and apart from

02:41:37.680 that I'm willing to let the chips fall

02:41:39.840 where they will because that's also

02:41:42.540 part of the decision the decision is

02:41:45.180 that if if you believe if you choose to

02:41:48.660 believe if you choose to act as if the

02:41:51.540 truth brings being into existence in the

02:41:54.920 best possible manner then you speak your

02:41:57.640 truth you examine your conscience you

02:42:00.280 listen to feedback and you allow the

02:42:03.140 events to unfold as they will and I am

02:42:06.320 trying to do that that's what I'm

02:42:08.180 attempting to do so on the the very

02:42:11.320 final question then on that point you

02:42:13.480 you you've mentioned how what's most

02:42:16.540 important to you is having the space both

02:42:18.520 individually and as a society to think

02:42:21.280 through the things that you are trying to

02:42:23.080 make sense of in public or with others

02:42:26.300 to our to be able to freely articulate

02:42:28.940 what you're to jointly articulate it yes and

02:42:31.360 we and we don't know how to do it right

02:42:33.220 at the beginning right right definitely

02:42:34.980 know that space to make mistakes oh

02:42:37.120 absolutely yes is there and even to make

02:42:39.560 them publicly that's right is there

02:42:41.100 anything personally now looking back

02:42:43.020 that maybe you haven't you haven't said

02:42:45.120 thus far maybe you have or maybe

02:42:47.160 something you haven't that knowing what

02:42:50.040 you know now having gone through what's

02:42:52.040 what's happened over you know the last

02:42:53.920 year or so is there anything that you

02:42:56.580 would reformulate is there any

02:42:58.620 correcting correction or corrective

02:43:00.680 measure that you would take to more

02:43:02.160 clearly articulate things that you

02:43:03.740 articulated back when this well I would

02:43:06.560 say that I am I'm trying to do that on

02:43:08.820 an ongoing basis I mean right from the

02:43:10.600 beginning after the first video went

02:43:13.820 roughly viral I have a group of friends

02:43:17.980 who span the political spectrum who stood

02:43:21.420 by me let's say as well as my family and

02:43:23.780 I'm talking to them constantly about what

02:43:26.540 I'm doing wrong and mostly what I'm doing

02:43:28.760 wrong you know what meant when I'm angry

02:43:31.220 when I'm because maybe that's maybe I have

02:43:35.820 learned to some degree how to harness part of

02:43:38.720 the energy of anger as a source of energy

02:43:40.860 now that has its advantages and

02:43:44.920 disadvantages it it's advantagedness

02:43:46.960 advantage is a certain kind of forcefulness

02:43:48.840 it's also a good suppressor of a good

02:43:52.300 competitor for fear because anger suppresses

02:43:55.360 fear

02:43:55.680 the feedback I've received is that the

02:44:02.260 more reasonable I am the better and that

02:44:05.500 of course makes sense

02:44:06.520 and then there's been plethora of small

02:44:11.920 and specific criticisms and I've tried to

02:44:16.440 attend to them

02:44:17.140 I've tried to attend to them as carefully

02:44:21.580 as I can I mean I've been in this

02:44:23.060 situation for especially for the first

02:44:25.500 four months where had I said one thing

02:44:28.420 that was

02:44:29.400 self-evidently non-credible you know that

02:44:34.880 would have justified a claim of bigotry or

02:44:37.160 racism or any of those things I would have

02:44:38.600 been sunk and so I wouldn't say I'm

02:44:42.920 pleased with my performance because it

02:44:44.800 isn't a performance and it isn't

02:44:47.400 something to be pleased about or

02:44:48.800 displeased about but I can say that to

02:44:52.420 the degree that it's possible I've done

02:44:55.120 my best to say to do what I said I'm

02:44:58.020 doing which is to say what I think as

02:45:00.440 clearly as I can that's all I'm trying

02:45:02.280 to do when I go in front of people I'm

02:45:04.360 not trying to convince them of anything

02:45:05.860 I'm really not it's up to them to do I

02:45:08.600 don't want to convince people of

02:45:10.360 something they're responsible for their

02:45:12.520 own suffering I don't want to manipulate

02:45:15.060 their destinies I don't believe that I

02:45:17.120 know enough about the particularly

02:45:18.560 particularities of their life to dare to

02:45:20.680 do that what I do when I speak to people

02:45:22.740 is try to formulate my thoughts on that

02:45:26.060 particular topic more clearly that's my

02:45:29.020 lecture style I'm thinking I'm not

02:45:30.960 delivering a pre-packaged talk I mean

02:45:33.040 now and then I'll write it but that's

02:45:34.440 only when I'm developing a really new

02:45:36.360 idea and I haven't and it has to be a

02:45:38.600 structured argument and I I've only done

02:45:40.540 that like in three of my YouTube videos

02:45:42.880 it's very rare most of the time I I have

02:45:45.660 a skeleton there's the argument there's

02:45:49.080 a skeletal outline I see where how I'm

02:45:50.860 going to get from point A to B to C and

02:45:53.000 then when I'm talking like today it's an

02:45:56.360 exploration it's not here's what I think

02:45:59.700 it's right and you should believe it it's

02:46:02.120 like no I'm I'm I'm I'm trying to rectify

02:46:07.080 my errors and extend what I know when I'm

02:46:09.880 speaking and when I'm listening and so I

02:46:13.000 think that genuinely is what I'm doing

02:46:16.700 and I genuinely don't want to give people

02:46:19.060 advice it's something I've learned not

02:46:20.480 least by being a psychotherapist it's

02:46:22.120 like your destiny is not mine to to mess

02:46:26.860 with I don't want to be responsible for

02:46:29.480 your decisions what if I'm wrong

02:46:31.540 nonetheless you as you said you do have

02:46:33.740 the impulse to want the best well yes

02:46:36.240 but by with what an individual yes we

02:46:38.600 could have a discussion a productive

02:46:40.100 discussion about what might be the best

02:46:42.520 for you you know and I do that with my

02:46:44.860 clients all the time it's like they come

02:46:46.180 and see me and they've got problems and

02:46:48.020 I say okay well if we could come up with

02:46:49.620 a solution what would that solution look

02:46:52.580 like you know let's lay the cards on the

02:46:54.600 table we can explore a bunch of

02:46:55.920 different solutions but I'm really trying

02:46:58.600 and this is partly the influence of Carl

02:47:00.440 Rogers you know is I'm really trying to

02:47:03.800 help the person find their own way

02:47:06.040 because that's not going to be my way

02:47:07.820 it's going to be their way and and if

02:47:10.360 they find their way that will be best

02:47:12.800 for them and it will be best for the

02:47:14.080 people around them and so it'll be best

02:47:15.560 for me for that matter so it's it's in

02:47:17.820 my interest in my selfish self-interest to

02:47:20.280 help the other person find his or her way

02:47:23.020 and not my way except insofar as my way is

02:47:27.100 trying to explore and generate more

02:47:30.620 accurate representations of the world

02:47:32.580 right so is it so is there a concrete

02:47:35.220 example to just end on this note of

02:47:37.880 concretization that we discussed and the

02:47:39.560 importance of bringing it to a cognitive

02:47:40.920 level that that is familiar and embodied

02:47:43.200 for us is there a concrete example of

02:47:45.260 something where you you said you said

02:47:48.680 something and I'm not thinking of

02:47:49.760 anything in particular I'm being entirely

02:47:51.580 genuine here it is there an instance

02:47:53.720 where where you feel you said something

02:47:55.860 that that appeared to be true to you at

02:47:57.620 the time and knowing what you know yes I

02:47:59.860 think I was a little I think I was a

02:48:01.520 little dismissive of the men going their

02:48:03.620 own way because I think I called them

02:48:06.780 pathetic weasels which and I had my

02:48:09.560 reasons for that my reasons were roughly

02:48:11.780 speaking that I who are the men going

02:48:13.400 their own way just well they're a group

02:48:14.960 of people mostly on the net who have had

02:48:18.420 who've been burned in their relationships or

02:48:20.620 who conceptualize themselves as having

02:48:22.660 been burned in their relationships and

02:48:24.540 they believe that the legal structure in

02:48:26.780 particular in Western countries is so

02:48:28.800 tilted against men particularly in family

02:48:31.040 dispute situations that and divorce

02:48:33.600 settlement that it's safer for men not to

02:48:35.720 establish permanent relationships with

02:48:37.660 women not to cohabit with them ever and

02:48:41.100 they're a large movement now how large

02:48:43.320 they are I don't know but they're large

02:48:45.020 enough and they have what I would regard

02:48:48.800 as an undue influence over relatively

02:48:51.920 bitter and resentful young men who

02:48:54.700 haven't had great success in the dating

02:48:57.080 market and who are looking for a

02:49:00.200 rationale to write off all women because

02:49:03.320 they they're so hurt by their continual

02:49:05.480 rejection and that is not good for those

02:49:07.920 young men and so the reason that I

02:49:10.020 disparaged the men going their own way

02:49:12.680 was because I had seen the pernicious

02:49:14.600 effect these are often older guys the

02:49:17.080 pernicious effect of their world weary

02:49:20.740 philosophy on young men now these guys

02:49:23.800 think that they're just warning them and

02:49:25.460 they are warning them but they're not

02:49:26.940 just warning them now the reason I regret

02:49:29.740 calling them pathetic weasels is because

02:49:31.700 they also have a point I do believe that

02:49:34.900 the court systems are staggeringly anti-male

02:49:38.300 absurdly horribly anti-male and I've seen

02:49:42.040 my own clients some of them who are really

02:49:44.460 really decent hard-working family-oriented

02:49:47.640 people demolished by the court systems

02:49:50.560 and and so the men going their own way

02:49:54.720 have a point and so I'm sorry that I

02:49:59.700 called them pathetic weasels but I but I

02:50:02.380 outlined my reasons and so yes I do

02:50:04.160 regret that I have to be careful because

02:50:06.040 I do have a satirical dark satirical

02:50:11.900 sense of humor and I can utter epithets

02:50:16.440 let's say for the sake of punctuating a

02:50:19.820 point well simultaneously forgetting that

02:50:23.300 150,000 people will listen to it so so I

02:50:29.780 regret that other than that I'm judging my

02:50:38.680 behavior on the degree to which my trajectory

02:50:41.860 is upward and I believe that I have

02:50:46.180 responsibly improved the articulation of my

02:50:51.280 arguments with every iteration of them and so

02:50:54.100 and I think that had that not been

02:50:56.300 happening I would have been I would have

02:51:00.500 been taught a very serious lesson because

02:51:02.620 there were plenty of people and still are

02:51:04.420 who would be perfectly happy to see me be

02:51:06.400 taught very serious lesson it's quite

02:51:08.380 terrifying you know I I'm on a tightrope

02:51:10.800 it's not as much a tightrope as it was but

02:51:14.500 for a long time for months had I said

02:51:18.520 anything

02:51:19.300 erroneous or insufficiently careful I would

02:51:27.840 have been in trouble and had anybody dug up

02:51:29.940 anything that I said in the past which which

02:51:32.720 is also and that's worked in my favor

02:51:34.520 because of course when I made these public

02:51:36.120 pronouncements there was already 500 hours

02:51:38.040 of videos online and so had I been a

02:51:40.620 reprehensible individual you know unless I

02:51:44.440 was capable of deceit at levels that far

02:51:47.060 exceed the average there would have been

02:51:49.060 some line somewhere in one of the videos

02:51:52.340 that I made when I was having an off day

02:51:54.960 where I said something that could be taken

02:51:57.120 out of context and and you know paint me

02:52:00.540 and and smear me with it but that hasn't

02:52:05.200 happened and I think the reason that that

02:52:07.060 hasn't happened is because touch wood

02:52:10.800 those utterances actually don't exist so

02:52:15.260 that's a great point to end on thank you

02:52:17.680 so much we've gone way over time but I

02:52:20.180 think it was worth it

02:52:20.900 thank you for listening to the Jordan B

02:52:26.460 Peterson podcast

02:52:27.660 to support these podcasts you can donate

02:52:32.620 to Dr. Peterson's patreon account the link

02:52:35.280 to which can be found in the description

02:52:36.900 of this episode

02:52:37.760 Dr. Peterson's self-development programs

02:52:42.880 can be found at self-authoring.com

02:52:45.440 bye

02:52:50.860 bye

02:52:51.480 you

02:52:57.000 you

02:52:57.280 you

02:53:02.300 you

02:53:04.220 you

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - June 07, 2017

Ideology, Logos & Belief

Episode Stats

Length

Words per Minute

Word Count

Sentence Count

Misogynist Sentences

Hate Speech Sentences

Summary

Transcript