The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - Jamil Jivani： Activist & Author

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00:00:27.700 Hey, everyone.

00:00:28.620 Real quick before you skip, I want to talk to you about something serious and important.

00:00:33.040 Dr. Jordan Peterson has created a new series that could be a lifeline for those battling depression and anxiety.

00:00:39.380 We know how isolating and overwhelming these conditions can be,

00:00:42.680 and we wanted to take a moment to reach out to those listening who may be struggling.

00:00:46.660 With decades of experience helping patients,

00:00:49.160 Dr. Peterson offers a unique understanding of why you might be feeling this way in his new series.

00:00:54.420 He provides a roadmap towards healing, showing that while the journey isn't easy,

00:00:58.320 it's absolutely possible to find your way forward.

00:01:02.000 If you're suffering, please know you are not alone.

00:01:05.060 There's hope, and there's a path to feeling better.

00:01:08.340 Go to Daily Wire Plus now and start watching Dr. Jordan B. Peterson on depression and anxiety.

00:01:14.000 Let this be the first step towards the brighter future you deserve.

00:01:17.600 Welcome to Season 2, Episode 22 of the Jordan B. Peterson Podcast.

00:01:30.760 I'm Michaela Peterson, Dad's daughter, collaborator, eldest child,

00:01:35.720 and the Peterson that is the most afraid of house centipedes.

00:01:39.060 Weekly update.

00:01:40.300 Actually, there's not much for a weekly update.

00:01:42.440 Mom and Dad are in Pennsylvania waiting for Mom to have surgery.

00:01:44.960 We'll know way more next week.

00:01:47.600 Hopefully that's when I can tell you that life will return to normal.

00:01:50.840 Or whatever is considered normal in the Peterson household.

00:01:54.080 If you're wondering what was up with Mom,

00:01:55.600 I recorded a Q&A that's on YouTube where I explain what happened this year a bit.

00:01:59.940 Just type in Michaela Peterson July Q&A into YouTube and it should pop up if you're interested.

00:02:05.240 Please enjoy this podcast recorded with Jamil Javani in Toronto, Canada.

00:02:09.960 When we return, Dad's conversation with Jamil Javani.

00:02:14.960 Today, I have the good fortune to be speaking with Jamil Javani.

00:02:29.180 Jamil's a Torontonian.

00:02:31.440 He's an author, lawyer, activist, and host of the Road Home podcast, which was launched December 2018.

00:02:39.240 He recently completed a seven-province book tour visiting thousands of young men across Canada

00:02:44.520 in partnership with the Michael Pinball Clemens Foundation.

00:02:49.480 He's 31 years old, grew up in the Toronto area, raised by a single mother.

00:02:53.720 Considered illiterate in high school at age 16, had the highest grades at Humber College by the age of 18,

00:02:59.100 scholarship to Yale Law School by 22, was a lawyer by the age of 25.

00:03:03.240 He's taught at Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto, worked with J.D. Vance, author of Hillbilly Elegy,

00:03:10.300 to start a non-profit in Ohio, corporate lawyer at Tories LLP, leader of police reform and voter education initiatives.

00:03:17.780 He had a book published by HarperCollins last spring in Canada.

00:03:21.520 The book was Why Young Men, Rage, Race, and the Crisis of Identity, U.S. International Publication by St. Martin's Press in May 2019.

00:03:31.400 He's also, and unfortunately, been diagnosed with cancer, battling stage four non-Hodgkin's lymphoma cancer,

00:03:39.380 been on chemotherapy drugs and undergoing radiation therapy since February.

00:03:43.580 So, we have a lot of things to talk about, Jamil and I.

00:03:47.840 So, we're going to start conversing as a consequence.

00:03:50.740 Thanks a lot for making the time to talk with me.

00:03:53.140 Thank you for the invitation.

00:03:54.700 So, why don't we start with your book and your tour?

00:03:57.840 The book came out actually just a month after I was diagnosed with cancer.

00:04:02.300 So, it's been a last year of a lot of highs and lows.

00:04:06.800 Like, the highs have been incredible because I've had the privilege of, you know, like you, being able to go around and speak to people about my book and my ideas.

00:04:15.780 Certainly not as large audiences as you have, but been able to go to places in the country that I think young men need to hear stories of self-empowerment

00:04:24.800 and what individual agency can accomplish and share that experience with, in areas where I think, you know, books are often not seen as relevant to the lives of everyday people.

00:04:39.720 I think I've been able to learn a lot about the disconnect between the literary industry and everyday Canadians.

00:04:46.980 And I think that's true in other countries as well, where books sometimes aren't written for an audience of people who might most benefit from those ideas.

00:04:56.300 And I feel very privileged to have been able to go around and talk to people about the struggles young men face,

00:05:02.720 the tools that are often given to them in terms of how to overcome those struggles,

00:05:08.080 and also the tools they find in the absence of better options.

00:05:12.440 It's been a heck of an experience, you know.

00:05:14.600 I think there's something very humbling about people caring what you think about anything, quite honestly.

00:05:22.180 And there's a responsibility that comes with to take the opportunity of an audience and do something meaningful with it.

00:05:30.880 And I've tried my best to do that with a book, and I'm excited to do that in other countries next year as well.

00:05:37.260 So, you said something interesting about books, and it's something worth delving into a bit.

00:05:44.140 You know, the number of people, the proportion of people who buy books is relatively small,

00:05:48.640 and it's not like books are everybody's friend.

00:05:52.100 So, the active literate audience is actually a rather small minority of people.

00:05:57.200 And one of the things that's quite cool about YouTube, let's say, and also about podcasts,

00:06:01.000 is that it enables people who might be intimidated by books,

00:06:04.780 but who are perfectly capable of understanding relatively complex ideas to access them another way.

00:06:11.280 And it is really too bad that reading is a minority taste,

00:06:14.820 because, well, it's such an effective means of communication,

00:06:18.080 but at least these other channels have been opening up.

00:06:20.940 I agree.

00:06:21.840 And I think, perhaps most effectively, books are a conversation starter.

00:06:25.900 You know, the idea of putting ideas out there and then being able to go to a city you've never been before,

00:06:30.660 and people have a starting point in which they can engage you and talk about their lives and your life

00:06:37.340 and what's similar and what's different, that's maybe the most powerful part of a book to me.

00:06:43.140 I actually think a lot about it in the sense of, you know, the most read book, for example,

00:06:47.580 like the Bible and texts like that,

00:06:49.520 which I think their greatest power is in trying to offer some sort of shared moral universe

00:06:56.320 for people of different backgrounds and ancestries and in different parts of the world to kind of come under, right?

00:07:01.940 And I feel like with a book, you have that ability, I hope,

00:07:06.180 which is to tell a story where you have no real say or power in who picks it up,

00:07:11.580 but you hope that it's powerful enough and truthful enough

00:07:15.980 that whoever picks it up is going to feel like they're part of that conversation.

00:07:20.760 So maybe you could outline for us the main points of your book

00:07:24.140 and also talk about how it grew out of your experience.

00:07:26.440 I mean, part of what's really quite remarkable about your biography

00:07:29.880 is the apparent disjuncture between your status,

00:07:34.560 hypothetically, as illiterate at age 16,

00:07:36.780 and then, you know, a very high academic achiever by the age of 18.

00:07:41.120 Like, so I'm curious about the interplay.

00:07:43.260 I'm curious about that period, about how that happened.

00:07:45.640 And what it meant, but then also about the journey that you took,

00:07:50.040 so to speak, on the road to writing this book.

00:07:53.440 Yeah.

00:07:53.900 When I was 16, I would maybe describe myself as someone who was in the depths of despair, right?

00:08:01.620 I was a really angry person.

00:08:03.740 My father had left my family.

00:08:06.980 My mom was raising me and two younger sisters by herself.

00:08:10.140 I was in a neighborhood where I saw what I regarded as a lot of unfairness.

00:08:17.300 You know, things like racial profiling by police officers, disproportionate poverty,

00:08:22.300 a lack of job opportunities.

00:08:23.520 This is in the suburbs of Brampton, where most of the people in my neighborhood

00:08:26.580 were newcomers to the country or children of newcomers.

00:08:29.800 And I was kind of, I think, being weighed down by a perspective that encouraged hopelessness

00:08:38.400 and victimization in my life.

00:08:40.260 So I was a cognitively capable young man.

00:08:44.060 That's how you go from, you know, illiterate to a Yale law student in less than six years.

00:08:50.080 But what was missing was the desire to show those good parts of me to anyone.

00:08:57.260 What do you think it was exactly that produced that sense of despair that possessed you when

00:09:05.340 you were 16?

00:09:06.620 I mean, you outlined some of it.

00:09:08.400 You know, you lived in a neighborhood that was, well, an immigrant neighborhood, and you

00:09:12.700 saw what you regarded as manifest social unfairness.

00:09:16.300 But then it's obviously the case, too, that for some reason, when you decided to, I don't

00:09:21.980 know if you dropped that idea or transcended it, you did something different.

00:09:26.420 And all of a sudden, your life took off in a variety of extremely positive directions.

00:09:30.960 Like, how do you account for that initial possession by that set of ideas?

00:09:35.280 And then more importantly, how do you account for the fact that you somehow managed to, let's

00:09:40.660 say, escape it?

00:09:42.140 So for my situation, I think this describes a lot of my peer group as well, not having

00:09:49.020 a father around and the kind of dysfunction that often comes with put us in a position

00:09:55.100 where we were looking at a lot of the wrong places for cultural leadership and pop culture,

00:10:01.420 right?

00:10:01.720 Hip hop, gangster movies, things like that filled the void in our case.

00:10:05.800 So the tools I was given to understand my life, to explain my frustrations, were tools that

00:10:14.360 encouraged me to, I think, live with a certain kind of victim identity as my default, right?

00:10:24.160 That I could, for example, believe that being a gangster and a criminal was acceptable for me

00:10:34.260 and my peers because we experienced unfairness, right?

00:10:38.600 The way the world treated us determined the kind of morals that we picked up.

00:10:42.180 Right.

00:10:42.380 So it was justifiable revenge in some sense against an unfair system, right?

00:10:46.900 Or at minimum, it winds up becoming just you lower the expectations of yourself, right?

00:10:52.120 You walk around thinking that what you know to be good is something that you don't have to

00:10:57.620 achieve.

00:10:58.820 You don't have to strive for goodness because the world has put you in this unfair position

00:11:04.120 and therefore anything is possible.

00:11:06.120 Okay.

00:11:06.380 Everything's surrogated.

00:11:07.080 Okay.

00:11:07.400 So how much of that, I'm curious about that.

00:11:09.640 I mean, it's a common, it's a common human attitude to adopt that sort of perspective.

00:11:14.620 And, you know, plenty of people have reason to be doubtful about the appropriateness or fairness

00:11:21.100 of their life and their situation.

00:11:23.180 But, you know, there's two things there that get tangled together, I think.

00:11:27.180 And one is a sense of thwarted justice, right?

00:11:30.880 And that might be the optimistic viewpoint that people look out in the world and they

00:11:34.060 see that it's unfair and that bothers them morally.

00:11:36.800 And there's nothing wrong with being bothered that way.

00:11:39.360 But the problem too is, is that adopting that victimization stance and worse, maybe adopting

00:11:45.760 a stance that justifies a certain amount of antisocial or criminal attitude towards society,

00:11:51.160 given its unfairness, also provides young people, let's say young men in this case, with an

00:11:57.340 excuse not to do their best and not to put effort into anything.

00:12:01.940 And I think that that excuse is often masked by self-justification that's associated with

00:12:09.940 that hypothetical striving for justice.

00:12:14.720 You know, because it's one thing to be upset about social injustice.

00:12:19.920 But it's another thing to use that as an excuse not to strive forward.

00:12:25.100 And right, because there's a psychological element and a sociological element there that

00:12:28.720 are at play.

00:12:29.300 So tell me what you think about that.

00:12:31.860 Then tell me how you progress despite having that attitude, accepting that attitude or having

00:12:38.500 it inculcated.

00:12:40.700 Yeah, I think you're exactly spot on.

00:12:43.100 You know, like later on in my life, when I was a university student, for example, I would

00:12:47.580 hear all of the same arguments over again, but you hear them differently when you have

00:12:52.980 the privilege and opportunity of being at a university, right?

00:12:56.260 When you hear about how rigged the world is and that history has burdened you and opportunity

00:13:02.280 is fleeting because of what you look like or where your parents come from.

00:13:06.480 In a university environment, people take those as, you know, they pat themselves on the back

00:13:12.120 for making those assertions because they think they're virtuously looking at the problems

00:13:17.960 of the world that we often overlook or take for granted.

00:13:22.060 But when you're in the thick of it, when those problems are your life, when you have a choice

00:13:27.180 to make every day, do I tell myself it's worth doing my homework and going to school or do

00:13:31.120 I just stay home and smoke weed in the basement?

00:13:34.300 Do I make the effort to see how the little bit of agency I might have in a difficult circumstance

00:13:40.020 could make the difference of where my life turns out?

00:13:42.960 That's when those talking points become a potential, you know, kind of poisonous moral

00:13:51.660 environment for you to live in because, you know, there's a psychological concept that my

00:13:56.940 friend JD writes about in Hillbilly Elegy in the context of poverty in Appalachia called

00:14:03.380 learned helplessness, right?

00:14:05.320 And I think that's a lot of it, which is you disassociate your actions and behaviors

00:14:10.200 with the outcome of what you experience in life.

00:14:13.600 And when you get to that point, it's really hard to find the motivation to work hard or

00:14:19.480 believe that there's meritocracy at all in the world around you.

00:14:23.060 Right.

00:14:23.200 But the funny thing is about learned helplessness, you know, and this is something that I think

00:14:27.380 it's really reasonable for us to delve into is that in the animal experimental world,

00:14:33.260 which is where the concept of learned helplessness emerges, what happens is that to produce learned

00:14:38.760 helplessness, what you do is you punish an animal for any sort of active behavior.

00:14:46.360 No matter what it does, it's hopeless.

00:14:48.980 And it truly is hopeless, right?

00:14:50.980 Because the animal keeps trying, but every time it tries to do whatever it's going to

00:14:54.360 do, it ends up being punished.

00:14:56.400 And sooner or later, it will just cease to act.

00:15:00.860 And that has been put forward, at least in part, as a model for depression.

00:15:04.660 And I think there's a certain amount of validity to that, although depression is a very complex

00:15:08.140 concept.

00:15:09.360 The situation you're describing is somewhat different because what you pointed out was

00:15:15.020 that when you were sitting at home as an adolescent, let's say, and you had the choice between doing

00:15:20.280 your homework and putting forward your motive agency, however forceful that might have been,

00:15:25.720 and justifying doing something like slinking off to smoke dope and avoiding your responsibilities,

00:15:31.940 you could justify the avoidance by making reference to the fundamental unfairness of society.

00:15:37.860 But that isn't the same as actually having tried really hard a dozen times or a hundred times

00:15:43.880 and failed each time.

00:15:45.600 It's more like the premature presumption of learned helplessness.

00:15:50.100 And I do see this very frequently among young men, is that they've adopted this attitude

00:15:55.100 that the world is such a catastrophically unfair place and life is so unjust in its fundamental

00:16:02.120 essence that there's no sense even trying to begin with, that you're only a fool if you

00:16:07.980 do that.

00:16:09.840 Yeah, I agree.

00:16:11.320 I think what happens is you see other people's failings or other young men, whether they're

00:16:19.000 your peers or people you even just listen to in music or you see on television or whatever

00:16:24.420 the case, you see their attempts and failures as evidence of your own, right?

00:16:29.120 And so if everybody you know has struggled, for example, to go to college or university,

00:16:34.780 then that is in some way you trying, right?

00:16:37.700 You don't see a distinction between your own efforts and those of other people.

00:16:41.320 And that's how I would describe my mentality at the time, which is, for instance, I could

00:16:45.740 go on, turn on the news and see a story about, let's say, like when I was a really young kid,

00:16:53.780 seeing Rodney King get beat up by police officers in Los Angeles, right?

00:16:57.360 And that could stick with me and become an example of what someone like me would have gone

00:17:03.400 through, but for not being there at the time, right?

00:17:05.740 And so you see that example and you internalize that as an instance of, well, people like me,

00:17:10.740 when we walk around the street, we get treated that way by cops.

00:17:13.160 So I might as well have gone through that too, because I see that as an example of me

00:17:17.920 potentially exert, you know, asserting myself in society and then paying a deep price for

00:17:23.700 it.

00:17:24.020 Right.

00:17:24.220 And you accumulate those examples over time.

00:17:26.900 That's the price paid for adopting a certain dimension of identity.

00:17:33.620 And I mean, I think it's inevitable to do that to some degree, because we do belong to different

00:17:38.500 group identities.

00:17:40.300 But you're saying that you classified yourself, let's say, or you saw yourself in the same

00:17:47.040 group as someone like Rodney King.

00:17:49.000 You saw that the group that he was attributed to, you believed that that was a valid group

00:17:55.320 attribution.

00:17:56.120 And then drew conclusions that weren't favorable to your own striving.

00:18:01.400 And that, but that also still sets you up so that you're not really testing yourself

00:18:05.300 against the world, right?

00:18:06.340 You're starting out with these assumptions about, about the primacy of group identity,

00:18:11.020 let's say.

00:18:11.880 Now you, and I'm curious about that too, because you also talked about the negative consequences

00:18:16.680 of fatherlessness.

00:18:17.800 And one of the, so I'm inferring from that, that you see a link between the presence of

00:18:25.540 a father and an antidote to that socialization by, by what?

00:18:32.780 By popular cultural group identity, something like that.

00:18:36.080 I mean, we know that fatherlessness isn't good for people by any, by, by, by any measure.

00:18:40.460 It's, it's a catastrophe.

00:18:41.540 Yeah, well, I think like if you're in that, that, that frame of mind where those instances

00:18:49.260 of group identity start to tell you something about yourself, then having a man in your house,

00:18:55.300 who's not getting beaten up by the cops is automatically way to complicate that, right?

00:19:00.240 Having a man in your house who looks after his kids and goes to work and, and, and takes

00:19:05.280 responsibility for his family and his community, um, who shows you how to love a woman and be

00:19:11.240 kind to people, that is a, a, a, an, an, a complication of an, of a worldview that might

00:19:18.100 otherwise think that every other man who's not your dad has something to teach you about

00:19:22.200 who you are.

00:19:23.000 Yeah.

00:19:23.500 Okay.

00:19:23.880 So, so that's interesting.

00:19:25.180 So, so the idea is something like if, and I believe this, like, cause one of the things

00:19:30.280 I've noticed about kids who are, let's say neurologically intact.

00:19:34.280 So, so maybe these are, there's lots of reasons why people can develop psychological disorders

00:19:42.940 and some of them are physical, but imagine that you take a child who's physically healthy

00:19:48.200 and you put them in a given environment.

00:19:51.420 My, my intuition has been that the child needs to have at least one positive role model within,

00:19:59.800 uh, imitation distance.

00:20:02.520 Now, sometimes he or she can sort of piece that together fragmentarily also from popular

00:20:07.000 media images, you know, the images of the heroes in movies and so on, but it's really helpful

00:20:11.760 to have at least one person in your immediate environment who is manifesting the pattern that

00:20:17.220 characterizes individual success.

00:20:18.900 And so maybe it's something like if that positive role model isn't there, then the easiest default

00:20:25.240 is to a victimized group identity.

00:20:27.620 Does that seem reasonable?

00:20:29.800 I think it's reasonable, especially if you're, if you're from a community and you share an

00:20:35.000 identity that has been, um, very strongly associated with the victimization in the first place.

00:20:42.040 And I think that's a big part of it is, you know, when, when, when I was a kid and thought

00:20:47.160 of myself as a black man that immediately came with a certain kind of baggage of, of historical

00:20:52.760 and present day victimization.

00:20:54.500 Um, and because my father is black, my mother is white.

00:20:58.760 So him being gone and, and in some ways being my, uh, my, my kind of connection to the, to

00:21:04.620 a black family being gone, I was very vulnerable to how blackness was being presented to me because

00:21:11.120 I didn't have a black person in the house showing me something different.

00:21:14.340 And the blackness that I was presented was one that was deeply tied to victimization.

00:21:19.080 Right.

00:21:19.480 Um, and one that was constantly excusing, um, any poor behavior we might have, um, maybe

00:21:26.540 not more than any other group of people, but, but associating any poor behavior we might have

00:21:31.580 with, uh, history.

00:21:33.340 Right.

00:21:33.700 And so it's this idea that you are inheriting, um, low expectations of yourself and of your

00:21:39.940 behavior and you don't know what it would look like to, to look in the mirror and not

00:21:44.380 see a victim.

00:21:44.960 Right.

00:21:45.320 What would that even be?

00:21:46.400 Right, right, right.

00:21:47.220 And it also provides that avenue for justification that we already described.

00:21:51.000 And so, okay, so, so let's look at this two ways.

00:21:54.160 Well, there's an old psychoanalytic idea, you know, of secondary gains.

00:21:57.320 And so if we're going to be, um, critical in our analysis about victimization culture,

00:22:03.800 we might ask, well, what benefits does it bring to the people who adopt it?

00:22:08.500 So, and, uh, you know, those can, and when I mean benefits, I don't mean long-term iterative

00:22:15.180 high quality benefits.

00:22:17.440 I mean, short-term payoffs, let's say, you know how it is.

00:22:20.820 If you have work to do and you avoid it, that's a short-term payoff.

00:22:23.800 It's a benefit.

00:22:24.760 And because you don't have to do the work.

00:22:26.800 Now, there's a medium to long-term cost, but I'm very curious about, about the, the

00:22:32.960 element of victimization culture that justifies, I think, antisocial and avoidant behavior is

00:22:39.800 probably the right way of putting it.

00:22:41.320 Now, you know, where I grew up, I grew up in a working class community and I had friends

00:22:46.620 and associates who were, who ranged from, you know, pretty decent kids to pretty solidly

00:22:51.440 planted in the delinquent camp.

00:22:53.100 And generally the more delinquent types had a whole handful of rationalizations for their

00:22:58.300 behavior.

00:22:59.860 And, and it's, it's very dangerous to have those rationalizations at hand because most

00:23:05.120 forms of antisocial behavior or avoidant behavior for that matter, very bad medium to long-term

00:23:10.620 strategies.

00:23:11.260 So anyways, what negative psychological elements of yours do you think the victimization narrative

00:23:19.840 supported?

00:23:21.980 And what positive aspects did it suppress?

00:23:24.520 Well, it, it, the, the negative ones that supported were, um, want it, wanting to be mad at my

00:23:36.880 circumstances and to not see any way I might be responsible for changing them.

00:23:43.260 Right.

00:23:43.860 Yeah.

00:23:44.080 So I was just, I was looking for that justification.

00:23:48.380 Yeah.

00:23:48.520 The other thing that it does, and I don't know if it was unique to me, cause I think it's,

00:23:51.940 there are variations of it in everybody, but it just means that you don't feel the burden

00:23:56.820 of solving a problem.

00:23:58.560 Right.

00:23:59.020 I mean, it's, it's hard to walk around feeling like if you worked a little bit harder, if you

00:24:05.020 listen to people who care about you, if you, um, you know, just made the effort and put

00:24:10.760 the time in that maybe things could be different, that makes you, you, you feel responsible for

00:24:15.400 that.

00:24:15.600 And when, and that comes with the possibility of failing, right?

00:24:18.380 I mean, it's scary to think that you, you could do something and if you don't get it,

00:24:22.940 then you're failing at it.

00:24:24.040 Yeah.

00:24:24.240 So that's another interesting thing about that, that, uh, assumption of learned helplessness

00:24:29.440 is that if you, if you don't try, as Homer Simpson told Bart, if you never try, you

00:24:36.080 can't fail.

00:24:37.240 Yeah, exactly.

00:24:38.200 Right, right, right.

00:24:38.820 So, which is very comical.

00:24:40.080 So that was, that was definitely, I would say like a negative part of my thinking that

00:24:43.980 wanting to see myself as a victim supported, um, in terms of the positive stuff that it

00:24:49.600 kind of pushed down, uh, I think it, it, it, it meant that I, for example, was willing

00:24:58.560 to put my mom through some really, um, I, I did some really difficult situations where

00:25:05.360 she had to stress and worry about me and what I was doing.

00:25:08.080 And I would later learn that I have a positive power to actually, um, bring value to her

00:25:13.620 life and to make things easier for her, uh, and to help her raise my sisters and things

00:25:18.980 like that.

00:25:19.480 Um, those are strengths that I had, um, those are, that is a desire for, for responsibility

00:25:25.580 and to be part of a family that I had that I was, that I didn't learn about myself until

00:25:31.940 later on because I, I couldn't see myself as someone who had assets, right.

00:25:38.200 Who had strengths to offer others.

00:25:39.920 Yeah.

00:25:40.400 It was always about what other people were doing to me and not about how I might positively

00:25:45.860 affect somebody else or at minimum, not negative.

00:25:49.320 Right.

00:25:49.640 Well, which is definitely something.

00:25:51.060 Well, yeah.

00:25:51.420 So one of the things it's interesting with regards to the conversation about responsibility,

00:25:56.100 because one of the things that I've been talking to audiences about all around the world

00:26:00.480 now is the idea that maybe we find the sustaining meaning in our life precisely through the adoption

00:26:06.680 of responsibility and, you know, you talked about reasons to be terrified of responsibility.

00:26:11.180 And I think those are valid reasons.

00:26:13.380 What if you try and fail, especially when there's a fair bit of evidence around that

00:26:17.240 that might be, you know, the most likely path.

00:26:19.740 And it is in some sense, because you have to often try a lot of things before you succeed,

00:26:24.020 even if you turn out to be a successful person, but the price that you pay for abandoning

00:26:29.060 that responsibility is that that is where you find the meaning in life that can buttress

00:26:34.860 you against the fact that life is unfair and, and, and, and what would you call typified

00:26:41.220 by suffering and also by malevolence and betrayal.

00:26:44.140 You know, you talked about discovering later in life that you could be a positive asset to

00:26:48.600 your family.

00:26:49.500 And that's a big discovery, man.

00:26:51.340 It's really something to be able to wake up in the morning or in the middle of the night

00:26:55.000 and think, well, you know, at least I'm, I'm doing something positive for the people

00:26:59.140 that love me.

00:27:00.500 To not have that's really a bad thing.

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00:31:09.200 Absolutely.

00:31:10.180 The other thing is you tone,

00:31:13.480 you kind of tune out a lot of the people in your life

00:31:16.600 who might have really important things to say to you, right?

00:31:19.940 Who might possess some genuine wisdom,

00:31:21.520 but because what they're saying doesn't line up with the ideology you've unknowingly,

00:31:27.520 in most cases, clung to so strongly, you don't hear them.

00:31:32.060 And so the good people in your life that actually might be able to teach you something

00:31:36.800 and put the right idea in your head and plant a seed that could grow into something beautiful,

00:31:41.720 those people become less important to you.

00:31:43.480 And instead, the folks who are manipulative in some cases,

00:31:47.380 who want to tell you negative things and want you to believe that you can't do something,

00:31:52.480 like you are destined to suffer until the evil system around you has collapsed.

00:31:58.320 People who tell you that or variations of that message are the folks that you hear from.

00:32:03.360 And that's sad because when I look back, there were good people in my life.

00:32:08.020 And there were people who at my school who did do really well.

00:32:11.260 And I would say, in fact, maybe most people in my community made really good decisions

00:32:15.740 and cared for each other and did really good things.

00:32:18.800 And yet, I was trapped in a world where I couldn't see them.

00:32:20.860 They didn't even exist.

00:32:21.720 In my narrative about my life, those people were either anomalies

00:32:25.840 or they were not part of my worldview at all.

00:32:29.660 Yeah, well, the thing is, too, is that people who start down the bad road, let's say,

00:32:33.740 the bad road, say, that's characterized by irresponsibility, avoidance,

00:32:37.640 and like a kind of a cruel rebellion, cruel and counterproductive rebellion.

00:32:43.800 No, they also tend to be quite annoyed and irritated by counterexamples.

00:32:49.460 And so they are likely to manipulate someone else, a younger person, for example,

00:32:53.640 or their peers into participating in behaviors that aren't in anyone's best interest

00:33:00.400 because they don't want the counterexamples around.

00:33:03.380 And why would you if you don't want to have your cynicism proved wrong

00:33:08.480 because that's too shattering, you know, even though it would be the best thing for you?

00:33:13.220 Yeah, absolutely right.

00:33:15.120 I think that's absolutely right.

00:33:16.780 And the transition I wound up experiencing where I get out of high school

00:33:22.300 and kind of find my voice comes out of some things that were completely,

00:33:28.200 you know, unintentional, right?

00:33:31.960 So I get to this point in grade 11 after I rewrite the literacy tests

00:33:35.660 that we have to take in Ontario public schools.

00:33:39.380 I am finally considered illiterate.

00:33:42.100 So that means I can finish high school.

00:33:43.940 And I get very desperate to earn money because I didn't see a future

00:33:50.420 where I could earn money legally.

00:33:52.100 I thought I would have to be a criminal.

00:33:53.580 And I genuinely believe that was my destiny.

00:33:57.080 And so I come close to buying a gun and I ask a friend for it.

00:34:02.420 He quotes me a price.

00:34:04.460 He says, let me know when you want it.

00:34:06.580 And I go home on a day where I thought I was going to feel like a million bucks

00:34:10.300 because I finally had this tool of a criminal enterprise that I had been looking forward to.

00:34:15.720 And I wind up just like crying my eyes out and I was devastated and I was scared.

00:34:20.800 And I thought if my mom found out I had a gun, she might give up on me and disown me.

00:34:27.300 I was really angry.

00:34:29.240 So that's interesting.

00:34:30.240 So part of what called out to you when you were making what would have been a life-changing decision

00:34:36.560 was the violation of the intimate relationship that you had,

00:34:43.340 the love that you had, that your mother had bestowed on you.

00:34:46.820 So you felt deeply by all appearances that you were betraying that.

00:34:51.680 What else brought you to tears?

00:34:53.580 Because you said, you know, you felt, you thought that one possibility

00:34:57.040 was that you'd feel somewhat triumphant at finally managing this task

00:35:00.640 and joining the cast of outcasts.

00:35:03.860 But that isn't how your conscience responded.

00:35:07.600 No, my conscience responded with a fear knowing how owning a gun sends you into a spiral.

00:35:15.400 I had seen other people go down.

00:35:18.700 You know, when you own a gun as a young man, especially if you intend to use it,

00:35:23.780 you wind up having problems with people who have guns.

00:35:27.340 And all of a sudden, just to walk around the street,

00:35:29.680 you feel like you have to carry a gun on you for your own safety.

00:35:32.180 Like, if you look at the lives of young men who wind up either victims or perpetrators

00:35:38.740 in inner city gang violence, those are often young men who are committing what they call

00:35:44.820 retaliatory violence, right?

00:35:47.000 It is a web of responding to trauma and killings.

00:35:51.340 And I was very scared I would be in the middle of something like that.

00:35:55.320 The other thing that really bothered me was a concern that I was so angry at police officers

00:36:01.780 for how I had seen them treat my father when I was a kid

00:36:04.600 and the treatment that I had experienced in terms of being followed around at the mall

00:36:09.800 or followed home from the bus stop and seeing things like I mentioned, you know,

00:36:13.780 the Rodney King beating and having that be part of how I saw how the world worked.

00:36:19.740 And it presented a certain kind of, almost like a disturbing rite of passage, right?

00:36:25.140 As a black man, I felt like, well, when that happens to you, that means you're growing up

00:36:29.100 because people are supposed to think you're dangerous and a criminal.

00:36:32.760 And so there was a sense of...

00:36:34.420 Yeah, yeah. Well, the thing is, you know, there's even something about that that's true

00:36:37.020 because I think that people are supposed to think that you're dangerous when you grow up.

00:36:41.720 The question is, what do you do with the dangerousness?

00:36:44.080 You know, so there isn't...

00:36:45.600 Yeah.

00:36:45.700 Because you don't want to be naive and weak.

00:36:47.780 It's not helpful.

00:36:49.540 But there has to be a pathway to strength that isn't associated with catastrophe.

00:36:55.840 Yeah. Well, in my case, it felt like I had already felt like I was being treated like someone

00:37:01.220 who carried a gun around.

00:37:03.020 And there was something that really, where I was almost disgusted by myself

00:37:07.640 with the idea that I might validate that stereotype by then doing that thing.

00:37:12.860 Right.

00:37:13.100 And so there was this, like, conflate...

00:37:16.200 It was a mix of shame that I felt, right?

00:37:19.420 A mix of fear and a certain sense of, you know, worrying that I might never be able to come back

00:37:27.440 from that decision.

00:37:28.920 And so what the positive effect all of that had on me is I wound up isolating myself from

00:37:34.760 my social network.

00:37:35.800 Like, all the friends I had who I'd spent years talking tough with and sharing, you know,

00:37:40.800 gangster fairy tales and things like that.

00:37:44.420 I wound up just not being able to show my face around them.

00:37:47.260 Like, I was scared they would think I was a punk.

00:37:49.640 I'm a chicken.

00:37:50.980 So you decided not to purchase the gun as a consequence?

00:37:54.420 I did not, no.

00:37:54.900 Okay.

00:37:55.320 And so...

00:37:55.900 And my life changed really quickly because all the people I was skipping class with, I

00:38:01.000 didn't want to see anymore.

00:38:02.140 And the people I was smoking drugs with, I didn't want to hang out with.

00:38:05.120 And the people who, you know, I wasted so much of my time with, the people who we cultivated

00:38:11.280 that kind of victimization identity together, no longer were part of my life, except for a

00:38:17.060 few outliers.

00:38:17.900 And so I unknowingly put myself in a situation where I could just think about the world differently.

00:38:25.240 And I started to go to class seriously for the first time.

00:38:28.180 And I wasn't a good student overnight.

00:38:29.960 Like, I finished, I had to do day school and night school to graduate on time.

00:38:33.420 And I just so badly wanted to get out of that building of the high school.

00:38:37.040 So I just left.

00:38:38.440 And the way to leave was to get my credit.

00:38:41.800 So I graduate.

00:38:42.640 I wind up at Humber College in one of the transfer programs.

00:38:46.040 Let's go through that in a bit more detail, because it's really quite a remarkable story.

00:38:50.460 So, OK, so you had a choice point in your life.

00:38:54.520 And the choice point was whether or not you were going to, well, become armed and dangerous

00:38:58.540 fundamentally.

00:38:59.820 Yeah.

00:39:00.340 And take that particular path.

00:39:01.620 And you decided not to.

00:39:03.060 You had a crisis of conscience.

00:39:05.040 You decided not to.

00:39:06.320 And that allowed you or forced you, hard to say which, to alienate you from your peers.

00:39:14.640 But that must have been very lonesome.

00:39:16.540 Like, how did you put up with that?

00:39:20.140 Yeah, it wasn't easy.

00:39:21.680 And this is actually one of the hardest things that I talk about with young men who are going

00:39:26.800 through similar experiences, as I'm describing, in terms of negative peer pressure, is it's

00:39:32.500 really hard to accept being alone.

00:39:34.360 And I don't know why I was able to do it, quite honestly, because I look back and I think

00:39:39.860 I'm not sure at 31 I could do it.

00:39:41.580 Yeah, right, exactly.

00:39:42.700 So, I don't know how I pulled it off at 17.

00:39:43.880 I don't know how I pulled it off at 17.

00:39:44.100 It's quite, because it's a huge transformation, not only to start buckling down at school,

00:39:51.660 especially at that age, because, you know, you had 16 years of not being disciplined,

00:39:55.940 let's say, and also isolating yourself from your peers at a point where, arguably, there's

00:40:01.940 nothing more important than that peer association.

00:40:05.040 So, and what did your mother make of this?

00:40:06.620 I mean, all of a sudden, you weren't seeing your friends and you were studying.

00:40:08.980 I mean, she must have been shocked.

00:40:11.520 I'm not sure she knew what was going on, to be honest, because we didn't communicate

00:40:16.000 much.

00:40:16.520 Like, we lived in the same house, but she was so busy just trying to, you know, get to

00:40:21.840 the next day and pay the bills and make sure we had a house and everything we needed that

00:40:27.660 I didn't really have an adult in my life who was providing any supervision, right?

00:40:32.960 Right.

00:40:33.180 For example, my mom never signed off for an, in all four years of high school, she never

00:40:37.940 signed off those papers you're supposed to sign acknowledging you saw your kid's report

00:40:41.500 card, because I would just forge it and bring it in.

00:40:45.240 And, and she never said anything because she wasn't paying attention.

00:40:48.940 I didn't say anything to her.

00:40:50.860 And so we had this, this period of time where we were just ships passing in the night.

00:40:55.880 We had barely any interaction, but she still, there was a phrase you used in your conversation

00:41:01.340 with, um, a group of boys for the BBC radio at a boxing club where you said, you need someone

00:41:07.880 in your life who represents the light at the end of the tunnel.

00:41:10.860 Yeah.

00:41:11.400 And that's what my mom was to me.

00:41:13.580 Like, even when we didn't talk, even when I was angry at her for picking my father and,

00:41:18.840 and, and, and, and putting me in a situation where I had a parent who rejected me and I

00:41:23.980 resented her for it.

00:41:25.300 And yet she still had this belief in me that never went away.

00:41:29.520 This belief that some point Jameel could be better than he's proven himself to be.

00:41:34.940 Right.

00:41:35.180 So she was that light.

00:41:36.000 Okay.

00:41:36.020 So that's interesting.

00:41:36.920 So it wasn't just her.

00:41:37.900 It was also the fact that you had someone around that actually had more faith in you

00:41:41.240 than you did.

00:41:43.000 Exactly.

00:41:43.580 Yeah.

00:41:43.860 And, and, and, and I think that's such a key part of what young people need.

00:41:47.160 I agree, man.

00:41:48.020 You really need that from a parent, eh?

00:41:49.980 If you get that from both parents, you're unbelievably fortunate, but you desperately need it from at

00:41:54.060 least one person.

00:41:55.280 Someone's got to believe in you.

00:41:57.800 Yeah.

00:41:57.980 So that, the reason I get comfortable, I guess, with, with loneliness is, you know,

00:42:03.240 and this is, I think the role that, um, the internet, I think still plays in people's lives,

00:42:07.680 which is when you break away from us, from a, from an in-person social network at a school

00:42:13.100 or a workplace or whatever the case, the internet becomes a place where you can find an alternative

00:42:18.120 social network.

00:42:18.940 And in my case, I was on these, you know, these like hip hop message boards all the time.

00:42:24.000 When I was a kid, I was always online reading about hip hop and like conspiracy theories.

00:42:29.260 And I got, uh, caught up in a lot of, um, like nation of Islam doctrine and propaganda.

00:42:36.960 And those ideas were especially helpful, uh, to be honest, in some cases, I think they

00:42:41.880 delayed my ability to shake off the victimization identity I had adopted.

00:42:47.500 But what it did do for me was it just gave me an alternative place to belong.

00:42:52.460 And so those became the social networks I had were online relationships.

00:42:56.960 And I think that was part of how I was able to adjust away from my friend circle was that

00:43:02.340 I just had a bunch of stuff on the internet that I could, uh, I could go to and feel like

00:43:07.640 I was connecting with people in another way.

00:43:09.320 Okay.

00:43:09.560 Now, also now you said something interesting.

00:43:12.560 You said that you really wanted to get out of that building and that speaking about your

00:43:17.180 school, but the way that you chose to get out was to pass, to graduate and pass was to

00:43:22.300 accomplish the tasks.

00:43:23.540 Now, why in the world did you decide that that was a good idea?

00:43:27.620 I suppose that's also because I wasn't sure what else I would do.

00:43:30.980 Like at the point, you know, I was a kid who I did my grade 10, uh, career, uh, project,

00:43:37.540 my careers project saying that I was going to be the Canadian Shug Knight, right?

00:43:42.120 Who's a gangster who started a record label that produced Tupac and Snoop Dogg and these

00:43:46.580 guys.

00:43:47.440 That's what I thought like my future was going to be like.

00:43:49.940 And when that gets like taken from you, because you realize you're this game of chicken,

00:43:54.960 you've been playing with yourself, you're going to lose it.

00:43:57.720 And so you get off the train tracks.

00:43:59.800 You don't really know what else to do.

00:44:01.780 And I just thought I have to just walk the path that was available to me, which was just

00:44:06.620 go through school and get it done.

00:44:07.780 Well, that's a brilliant observation, I think, because one of the things that people have

00:44:12.500 often asked me when they're, when they're directionless is, well, what should I do?

00:44:16.900 And the answer is, well, you take the best path that's laid out ahead of you, right?

00:44:22.120 If you don't have an option, staying where you are, staying in despair and not moving forward

00:44:27.280 is a very bad option.

00:44:28.860 If you have a bad pathway forward or a suboptimal pathway forward, let's say, but it's at least

00:44:34.500 forward, then that's the one you should choose.

00:44:36.440 And so you decided that you were going to buckle down and get the hell out of school and you

00:44:40.180 were going to do it by passing.

00:44:42.300 Yeah.

00:44:42.720 Well, I don't know.

00:44:43.500 I didn't feel like I was choosing to do it by passing.

00:44:47.080 I just thought that was my way out.

00:44:48.920 And I wasn't sure how else to get out, because if I dropped out, I don't know what else I

00:44:53.000 would do.

00:44:54.560 So in the process of trying to rush out, right, I'm working as a dishwasher at Red Lobster.

00:45:00.860 I'm taking night classes.

00:45:02.640 I'm taking day classes.

00:45:04.260 I'm trying to get out of my circumstances as quickly as I can.

00:45:08.660 A guidance counselor says to me, well, you don't qualify for many programs.

00:45:12.580 You were streamed in the applied system, which was what we call an Ontario, which means you

00:45:18.940 can't go to a university.

00:45:19.920 You've got to go to a community college.

00:45:21.980 But your grades are so bad, there's no community college program you could get into except for

00:45:26.460 what they call a general arts and sciences program, which in some ways is almost like

00:45:31.980 what grade 13 used to be in Ontario, which is you would learn a lot of the things you

00:45:36.160 should have learned in grade 12, but didn't.

00:45:38.580 And so I go into that program.

00:45:40.240 And I would say what changed for me immediately in terms of my academics was this was the first

00:45:48.260 time I had college professors who said to me, here, you've got to write this 20-page

00:45:54.360 essay, you get to decide what it's about.

00:45:57.060 And it seems so simple, but it was a breakthrough for me because what that meant was the part

00:46:02.480 of me that was interested in, you know, hip hop and the nation of Islam and conspiracy

00:46:07.360 theories and all that stuff I was doing on the internet that no adult had ever seen before.

00:46:11.960 No, my mom, my teachers, no one had ever seen a part of me that could think critically

00:46:16.720 that had curiosity intellectually.

00:46:19.200 That part of me and the, and the version of me that was going to school merged for the

00:46:23.880 first time.

00:46:24.320 Right.

00:46:24.600 Well, thank God that's, that's, that's the huge advantage of higher education is that

00:46:29.060 is exactly what should happen.

00:46:30.360 Right.

00:46:31.440 Absolutely.

00:46:31.880 Yeah.

00:46:32.160 Yeah.

00:46:32.360 And that's what I try to tell young men all the time is like, you might be going through

00:46:36.200 a hard time in high school and it's hard sometimes to know how life could, is going

00:46:42.040 to be different if you just stay the course because you have no reference point to explain

00:46:46.620 it. But in my case, I, it was, it was absolutely a meaningful shift.

00:46:51.200 Like the idea that I could write 20 pages about, you know, Malcolm X or about Tupac, like

00:46:57.320 all of a sudden the writing ability that I had never shown people before started to come

00:47:02.540 out and my analytical thinking and all, it was just, it flowed out of me.

00:47:07.100 And literally in less than a year, I went from barely getting out of high school to getting

00:47:12.020 the highest grades in all of Humber college.

00:47:13.860 And, and that was not something that ever felt deliberate.

00:47:17.720 I was just kind of stumbling around in the dark and hoping things are going to work out

00:47:23.000 for the better.

00:47:23.780 My mom, for example, when she came to my graduation at Humber, like she was shocked that I got

00:47:29.660 on the president's medal for highest grades.

00:47:31.820 Like she had no idea that I was actually a completely different person by that point.

00:47:37.500 Well, you said something interesting too, about what you were doing in high school.

00:47:40.600 You said that you were attending classes during the day and at night and you were working

00:47:45.380 as a dishwasher, as a dishwasher, right?

00:47:49.200 Yes.

00:47:49.520 Yeah.

00:47:49.800 Yeah.

00:47:49.960 Yeah.

00:47:50.020 Okay.

00:47:50.180 So that's interesting too, because one of the things that's very useful, I think to point

00:47:54.660 out to people who are in a situation that's analogous to the one that you found yourself

00:47:59.460 in is that there is something to be said for trying to make yourself so busy that it's

00:48:03.960 absolutely ridiculous.

00:48:05.980 You know, to take on a big burden, that's part of that burden of responsibility.

00:48:09.620 It's like, okay, can I go to school during the day?

00:48:11.500 And can I go to school at night?

00:48:13.000 And can I also work at a job?

00:48:15.000 Can I do all that?

00:48:16.120 Because the answer is, I've seen this time and time again with undergraduates who start

00:48:19.960 to work in my lab.

00:48:21.480 It's like they're already taking a full course load and they're busy.

00:48:23.940 And some of them also have work.

00:48:25.740 You know, they have part-time jobs and then they come and work in the lab.

00:48:28.660 And so then they're so busy that it's just ridiculous.

00:48:30.780 And then they have to get organized and they can't waste time and their grades almost inevitably

00:48:35.200 go up, not down.

00:48:38.100 Yeah.

00:48:38.720 And it's one of those things where before you get to a point where you get busy like

00:48:44.220 that, you have no idea you're capable of accomplishing so many things.

00:48:48.660 And then it starts to become normal to achieve, right?

00:48:51.980 It's normal to say, oh, I could set out and accomplish something in a given day or a given

00:48:57.080 Well, it also becomes something that's really interesting to experiment with.

00:49:03.420 Because once you start realizing that your capability for responsibility exceeds your

00:49:08.880 original expectations, you start to become curious about what the limitations of that

00:49:12.900 are.

00:49:13.180 It's like, oh, turns out I can do a lot more than I thought I could or that people told

00:49:17.740 me I could or that I was willing to believe.

00:49:19.960 How much more could I actually do if I really got my act together and got disciplined?

00:49:24.100 It's like, there's a purpose.

00:49:26.540 It's like, what are you made out of?

00:49:28.600 And how do you find out?

00:49:29.880 And I think you really need to find that out as a, you certainly have to find that out

00:49:33.240 as a young man.

00:49:34.040 You probably have to find that out as a person in general.

00:49:36.620 But it's absolutely crucial for young men to find out that there's far more to them

00:49:41.340 than they think.

00:49:42.580 And you can't find that out without burdening yourself.

00:49:46.240 You're right.

00:49:46.820 And it is, it's the opposite of what we were talking about earlier in terms of that fear of

00:49:50.920 failure, right?

00:49:51.500 Because it's saying, I'm going to push myself to the limit and explore where that line of

00:49:55.920 failing is.

00:49:56.840 And because you're not running from that line.

00:49:58.440 No, you're running towards it.

00:49:59.740 You want to see where it exists.

00:50:00.620 Absolutely.

00:50:01.160 And the funny thing is about running towards that line is that as you walk towards it,

00:50:05.240 it recedes.

00:50:06.280 And as you get more disciplined, the probability that you'll fail gets smaller and smaller.

00:50:12.000 Perfect example of the pathology of avoidance, right?

00:50:15.040 Because avoidance of that just makes you weak.

00:50:17.200 Yeah, absolutely.

00:50:19.860 And, you know, the transition from Humber College to York University, you know, it's just kind

00:50:26.640 of a continuation of what you're describing, right?

00:50:29.080 It's running to the line.

00:50:32.460 And it's me continuing to say, OK, maybe that 12 years of evidence I have of being a really

00:50:38.140 poor student could be proven wrong with every assignment that I do, right?

00:50:42.780 And believing that if I try in this class and I get an A and all of a sudden getting an

00:50:47.500 A stops being an anomaly, it starts to become normal, right?

00:50:52.140 And then when you don't get an A or a B or whatever you're hoping for, you start to feel

00:50:57.320 that sting of disappointment because you actually have higher expectations of yourself and your

00:51:02.160 professors who didn't know you back when you were a knucklehead getting into trouble.

00:51:06.900 They only know you as the guy who came into their class and tried hard.

00:51:10.100 And so they start to speak to you as someone who could do really well, too.

00:51:14.460 Yeah, all of a sudden your life becomes...

00:51:16.180 That's one of the things that's so lovely, too, about being able to go off to somewhere

00:51:21.240 new, you know, because you can leave your past identity behind you.

00:51:25.440 I found that such a relief when I moved from the little town that I grew up in, even because

00:51:29.180 I went to a community college for the first two years of my education as well.

00:51:32.520 I had an experience that was, well, yours is more dramatic by quite a substantial margin,

00:51:37.440 but they're not dissimilar.

00:51:39.460 I was so relieved when I got to college that I could start to write and think about things

00:51:43.440 that I was actually thinking about, that it was like a complete transformation.

00:51:46.760 But I also had the chance to leave my old personality behind, at least some of it, you

00:51:52.420 know, some of it that I didn't want to carry ahead with me.

00:51:56.140 And that's another thing about moving forward in the world is that you can leave the old and

00:52:01.300 insufficient you behind.

00:52:02.780 And that can be hard on you and hard on people around you, too.

00:52:06.680 But man, it's such a relief.

00:52:08.940 It's such a...

00:52:11.040 Well, it's life itself, I would say.

00:52:12.680 It's the opposite of despair.

00:52:15.660 I think that's absolutely right.

00:52:17.340 And as much as you can create the circumstances for that to happen in your life, even if you

00:52:24.460 don't have a chance to move somewhere new or go to a new school or get a new job, but

00:52:30.340 just convince yourself that renewal is something you get to decide and get to control.

00:52:36.420 I mean, it's so powerful.

00:52:39.700 Well, that's the opposite of being a victim, is to notice all of a sudden that you have

00:52:44.040 the capacity to transform yourself, despite, at least to a large degree, despite external

00:52:49.240 circumstances, or sometimes even as a consequence of leveraging them.

00:52:53.480 Because it isn't always obvious that having an impediment is a catastrophe.

00:52:58.320 Sometimes it's a...

00:53:00.320 What would you call it?

00:53:01.620 It's a call to action.

00:53:03.080 It's a challenge.

00:53:05.460 Absolutely.

00:53:06.360 And in some ways, the challenging periods of my life that we've covered provided a roadmap

00:53:12.400 for what I would do with the remainder of my academic career, which is I would pursue

00:53:16.920 opportunities where I could imagine going back in time and solving some of the problems

00:53:21.740 I had experienced, right?

00:53:23.080 And I studied international development and nonprofit management at York.

00:53:29.000 I went and did a law degree because I thought the law was relevant to my life.

00:53:33.700 And insofar as it made a difference in how I wound up and how some of my peer group did

00:53:40.240 in that I was lucky to not be involved in the legal system.

00:53:42.960 So, yeah, I mean, it was a call to action for me.

00:53:46.620 And I think it gave me the motivation, but also the toughness I would need to push forward

00:53:54.740 and do things that, you know, I had good reason to believe were impossible.

00:53:59.260 Because the victim narrative is something like, well, you're so little compared to what's

00:54:04.120 arrayed against you in all of its historical catastrophe, right?

00:54:08.240 Which is like the evil father.

00:54:09.980 You're so little that you don't have a chance.

00:54:11.840 And that's not good because you're not that little.

00:54:16.400 And what's arrayed against you isn't that big.

00:54:19.680 I mean, it's not that it's not big because it is big, but it's that you're nowhere near

00:54:23.760 as little as you might have been enticed to think.

00:54:28.840 Exactly.

00:54:29.580 And I think what you're describing is very, like, I think most people hear that and would

00:54:35.020 agree with you, but they just selectively apply it to different people in our society.

00:54:39.760 Like, they want to tell some of us because of our circumstances that that's less true

00:54:45.460 for some than others.

00:54:47.600 And that's what really got to me.

00:54:49.340 Yeah, well, that's the sort of thing that really makes you wonder where the true racism

00:54:51.460 is.

00:54:52.880 Yeah.

00:54:53.740 And, you know, and as I travel around Canada and I go to other countries and I speak to

00:54:58.420 young men who are in, in some cases, very difficult circumstances, I see over and over

00:55:03.440 again how they're being denied that belief, that they're being told that that belief is

00:55:09.400 somehow competing with recognition of unfairness.

00:55:15.120 Yeah, I heard that described as John Henry-ism.

00:55:18.600 It's a new form of pathology identified by psychologists.

00:55:21.820 It's the belief among minority young men that personal effort and sacrifice and responsibility

00:55:28.460 will actually produce positive outcomes.

00:55:31.060 It's actually, for exactly the reasons that you just described, because it runs counter to

00:55:35.200 the victim and oppressor narrative.

00:55:37.920 It's actually being treated by some people now as a form of psychological disorder.

00:55:42.080 Wow.

00:55:43.980 Yeah.

00:55:44.340 Wow.

00:55:45.820 Yeah.

00:55:46.220 And that, like, and when you say those things, right, when you go to people who are in difficult

00:55:54.800 circumstances and remind them, even to some small degree, that individual agency might

00:56:00.960 matter, right, that it could affect their outcome, that they do not have, they're not

00:56:05.560 destined to a life of suffering.

00:56:07.740 Um, people, there are a lot of people who get threatened by that, right?

00:56:13.500 I mean, they feel like you're undermining the narrative that they desperately want to

00:56:18.120 be true, which is that that young man has to suffer until everything else changes, right?

00:56:23.560 That until we get rid of capitalism and, and patriarchy and white supremacy and all these other

00:56:29.960 evils, right, quote unquote evils of our society, that you, you, you, you will, you cannot have a good

00:56:38.160 life until that is first dealt with.

00:56:40.800 And asking people to sit around and wait for a kind of activist class to create this utopia

00:56:49.620 for them.

00:56:50.900 Um, I, I find that to be very immoral and, and very bothersome because I see, I see, you

00:56:57.640 know, the biggest obstacles I have to getting my message out to young men are people who I

00:57:02.740 would describe as, you know, victim celebrators, right?

00:57:05.460 People who really, really want to celebrate when we're losing because it, it, it fits their

00:57:10.440 narrative, but ideas that might help us win are a lot less attractive.

00:57:15.560 Yep.

00:57:16.540 Yep.

00:57:17.020 Okay.

00:57:17.300 So now you went off to York and what happened when you went to York?

00:57:22.120 Well, I always jokingly say my life got really boring really quickly because I really just

00:57:27.480 studied and did everything I was supposed to do.

00:57:29.780 I like, I am actually surprised by how hard I was able to work in those four years.

00:57:35.460 I would, I took all, I was very careful about picking classes that I thought would build

00:57:40.500 on the momentum I had picked up.

00:57:42.340 So I, I wanted to study subject matter that would connect to things I previously learned

00:57:46.720 because I still had a certain insecurity about going too far from where I had proven myself.

00:57:53.080 You know, I don't know if I could have taken an economics class or a biology class or a psychology

00:57:58.380 class, because those are just subjects that didn't come that I wasn't sure I could handle.

00:58:03.000 So I was very careful about picking things I thought I could do well, things that in

00:58:07.560 my free time I was thinking about, right?

00:58:09.340 So issues around poverty and discrimination and activism and, you know, such a tackling

00:58:17.680 social issues, whether that was in the kind of Canadian context or elsewhere, those are

00:58:22.700 things that I felt comfortable with.

00:58:24.360 And so I picked classes that fit that mold.

00:58:26.620 And as I got more and more confident in myself, I started to branch out into other areas.

00:58:31.740 So I would take an econ class or a class in marketing for nonprofit organizations or things

00:58:37.120 like that.

00:58:38.160 And I, I had a, you know, my whole life up to that point was on one street that I, that

00:58:46.640 Steeles Avenue West, which is on the North end of Toronto.

00:58:50.040 And, uh, you know, where my mom lived, Humber college and York university are all off this

00:58:54.760 street.

00:58:55.320 So my world was very small in the sense that the same bus routes I had taken as a teenager

00:59:01.120 and the same buses I took to Humber and the same buses I took to York.

00:59:05.020 I got very much in a comfort zone there, right?

00:59:08.180 Because I was saying to myself, okay, this is the world I know.

00:59:11.900 This is the world I understand.

00:59:13.320 I can be successful in this world.

00:59:15.100 And so I clung to it and I didn't really do much to branch out.

00:59:18.540 You know, I, I still worked in restaurants as a line cook and a dishwasher.

00:59:22.820 I worked in warehouses, even when I was getting A's, I didn't think, for instance, to apply

00:59:28.360 to like a prestigious internship or to work at the, you wouldn't have known even, you know,

00:59:33.640 like when you come from a background like that, it's, you know, when I went to, um,

00:59:37.760 university of Alberta, I didn't know any people who had had a graduate degree.

00:59:41.780 I didn't know how to go about doing that.

00:59:43.380 And so the idea that I could do that was really something that was quite new.

00:59:47.320 You don't know the pathways, you know, I mean, you can figure them out, but

00:59:50.460 if that's not right in your milieu, no, you just don't know how, you don't know what basic

00:59:55.760 steps to take, you know?

00:59:57.440 Exactly.

00:59:57.960 Yeah.

00:59:58.520 Um, there was this, uh, idea I came across, uh, in, in one of the international development

01:00:05.160 classes I took, um, but it's an anthropology concept called the capacity to aspire, uh, from

01:00:11.580 Arjun Appadurai at NYU.

01:00:14.020 And, uh, it, it stuck with me because he uses it to explain how people achieve social mobility

01:00:19.600 in India.

01:00:20.880 And I think it applied really well to my life in Canada too, which is, you know, your

01:00:26.980 imagination grows with, with the more paths you see in front of yourself.

01:00:31.460 And we all might have a similar destination in mind in terms of what a good life looks

01:00:36.500 like, right?

01:00:37.160 I want a better house, a better car, someone who loves me, someone to love.

01:00:41.720 Um, but some of us have a better sense of the directions, the steps it takes to get to

01:00:46.780 that destination than others.

01:00:48.120 And I, and I, and that idea stuck with me because it helped explain both the difference

01:00:53.600 between myself and some of my peers in university who were more accustomed to opportunity, but

01:01:00.060 it also explained the difference between me and my friends who were not in university and

01:01:05.020 were not making some of the good choices I was.

01:01:07.500 And we're, we're still dealing with the consequences of how we grew up.

01:01:11.700 Well, I have this program that I developed with my colleagues called future authoring program

01:01:16.220 that helps people make a, develop a vision for their life along some of the dimensions

01:01:20.600 you mentioned, but then, and then also to, to put together an implementable strategy.

01:01:26.060 And we've never been able to tell if the utility of the program lies more in walking people

01:01:31.840 through an actual, the actual process of developing a vision and a genuine strategy or suggesting to

01:01:39.640 people that they're actually capable of doing that.

01:01:43.420 Right.

01:01:44.100 So, and I often think it's the latter.

01:01:45.840 It's like, because the, the idea that you are a self-transforming agent is an unbelievably

01:01:51.240 powerful idea.

01:01:52.280 If, if you could, if, if it grips you, right.

01:01:54.800 Or if you allow it to grip you, that might be another way of thinking about it.

01:01:58.180 But, but, but it, but it, it is certainly an idea that you can not have, or that you can

01:02:03.300 be prematurely cynical about, which I think is, well, that's that, that premature cynicism

01:02:07.920 is really what the victim narrative feeds.

01:02:10.460 And I think it's, it's unbelievably mentally damaging to, to young people.

01:02:16.740 It really hurts them.

01:02:18.060 Okay.

01:02:18.260 So, so you went to York and you did real well.

01:02:20.380 And then how did the idea of law school pop into your mind?

01:02:23.700 And did you have encouragement for that?

01:02:25.700 I mean, you had to go write the LSAT and all of this.

01:02:27.660 It's quite a daunting process.

01:02:30.380 It is.

01:02:31.260 I, it was actually a very practical decision for me because I looked around and saw that

01:02:36.080 no one who studied what I studied at York was getting a job in the field.

01:02:39.720 And in many cases were working the same jobs after they graduated that they had when they

01:02:44.940 were a student.

01:02:46.700 So I thought to myself, I need more education.

01:02:49.920 Like I lost, you know, I felt like I had given up a lot to get to that point.

01:02:54.160 Like I, I lost a lot of the friends I grew up with.

01:02:57.360 I worked really, really hard.

01:02:59.460 I, I changed my life in a way that I, it felt like betting on myself.

01:03:04.440 And I was starting to become nervous that the bet might not pay off if I'm 22 with a

01:03:10.740 university degree and no job, but I have a bunch of debt.

01:03:13.980 Right.

01:03:14.300 And so law school and business school were the things that I thought about in terms of

01:03:20.440 they're playing on some of my strengths in the sense that I can read and write well,

01:03:24.740 but they seem very practical in that they lead to a job.

01:03:28.660 Like they're, they're supposed to prepare you for actual work.

01:03:31.940 And I wound up writing the law school admissions test first of the two.

01:03:37.080 And I, I did really well, kind of shockingly, to be honest, I did not expect to do so well.

01:03:43.340 Um, it was the first standardized test I'd ever done well on.

01:03:47.300 And I was just, you know, and I, to the point where I did not write the business school test

01:03:52.840 because I was like, didn't want to test my law too many times.

01:03:56.900 I just thought, okay, like take what, take what you can get, you know?

01:04:00.960 Um, and then because my whole life was on Steeles Avenue West, I was expecting to go to

01:04:07.020 the law school at York.

01:04:08.740 Like that was just, it fit where I was comfortable.

01:04:11.160 I knew what bus I would take to get there.

01:04:13.520 You know, uh, the, the, the limited, um, set of experiences I had made, like even going

01:04:19.760 to university of Toronto seemed like a foreign world to me.

01:04:23.240 Uh, I, the idea of going downtown was like, this is just not a place where people like

01:04:26.900 me should be hanging out.

01:04:28.020 I just didn't feel comfortable there, you know?

01:04:29.880 And so I, I thought I was going to apply to York and, and if I had been admitted there,

01:04:34.760 uh, luckily I would have definitely gone, but I had this like chance meeting with a history

01:04:40.580 professor, David Blight at, uh, he, at Yale, where I was speaking, there's a town in Southern

01:04:46.720 Ontario called Buxton, North Buxton, which was founded by, uh, families who came to Canada

01:04:52.880 from the underground railroad.

01:04:54.740 And they host a conference every year at one of the churches that they set up.

01:04:58.740 So I was presenting some research I had done on black Canadians, uh, at this conference

01:05:04.380 and this Yale professor who was the keynote showed up early enough to hear my presentation.

01:05:09.160 And, and after I was done, he walked over to me and he said, well, that was really good.

01:05:12.860 What are you going to do after graduation?

01:05:14.220 And I said to him, well, I wrote the LSAT.

01:05:16.540 I think I'm going to go to law school.

01:05:17.940 He said to me, you should apply to Yale.

01:05:19.700 And I thought like this guy was a superhero to me because he was teaching at a university

01:05:25.060 that I'd only seen on television, you know?

01:05:27.380 And so in my mind, it was like, I said to him, like, are you sure?

01:05:31.100 Like, and he was like, tell me, you know, he's like, yeah, I think you'd be a competitive

01:05:34.200 applicant.

01:05:35.020 And I was like, wow.

01:05:36.500 So yeah.

01:05:37.380 No kidding.

01:05:38.200 Wow.

01:05:38.480 Yeah.

01:05:38.880 Like his belief in me in that chance interaction where I've never seen him since like it,

01:05:44.860 but we only interacted for a couple of minutes, but that meant so much that I thought, wow,

01:05:50.120 if this guy thinks that I have that ability, I might as well apply to Harvard and Columbia

01:05:54.860 and all these other schools because, I mean, he knows what he's talking about, right?

01:05:58.200 He's this like superhero from Yale.

01:06:00.680 And so I apply everywhere and I get in everywhere.

01:06:03.500 And Jesus, that must've been a shock.

01:06:06.000 Yeah.

01:06:06.240 It was like winning the lottery.

01:06:08.060 Like I just, I was, yeah, I, yeah.

01:06:12.700 And like, you know, and then being able to tell my mom that not only did I get into those

01:06:16.540 schools, but you know, their generous financial aid policies would mean that we would actually

01:06:21.200 be able to afford it.

01:06:23.320 Meaning we wouldn't have to pay anything because we had no money was just like, she, I think

01:06:28.640 like everything she ever wanted for me came true in that moment, you know, and, and it

01:06:32.840 was a really, yeah, it was just a special, special day.

01:06:36.940 Yeah.

01:06:37.100 No kidding.

01:06:37.480 That's quite the, that's quite the miraculous situation that is, man.

01:06:41.440 Yeah.

01:06:42.280 And, and, and it's one where I, I consider myself very lucky and fortunate to be able

01:06:47.700 to have walked down that path.

01:06:48.940 Yeah.

01:06:49.080 Well, brave too, man.

01:06:50.140 You did do the applications.

01:06:51.800 You put in the work, you know, like there's good fortune there for sure, but it's not like

01:06:56.840 it just, it's not a lottery.

01:06:58.440 Well, it is in a sense you, but you bought lots of tickets and you.

01:07:02.240 That's true.

01:07:02.920 Yeah.

01:07:04.060 You gotta, yeah.

01:07:05.400 You gotta buy a lot of tickets to win that lottery.

01:07:07.580 That's right.

01:07:08.180 That's right.

01:07:08.600 Yeah.

01:07:08.800 And, and, you know, as I described, you know, the bet I made on myself, it paid off.

01:07:13.060 Right.

01:07:13.240 I mean, the idea that I would ever be like, I now would have an education where I could

01:07:18.280 choose the job I had and I wouldn't just be, um, given whatever was available to me.

01:07:24.540 I mean, that is really what I was looking for.

01:07:26.260 Right.

01:07:26.420 Like that kind of stability where I could say I'm an employable person, the financial

01:07:31.440 challenges my mom went through, I will not have to go through.

01:07:34.620 And I might even be able to do something for her and other people.

01:07:38.080 Right.

01:07:38.180 No kidding.

01:07:38.880 There's something, man.

01:07:39.840 That's what attending Yale meant for me.

01:07:42.080 Okay.

01:07:42.320 So, so now then, then you went to Yale.

01:07:44.840 How'd you do at Yale?

01:07:47.100 I did well.

01:07:48.040 I had a different kind of experience though.

01:07:49.980 You know, like I, I, I really killed myself for four years studying at York to get there.

01:07:55.620 And part of the appeal for Yale to me was, you know, I had read those stories by, you know,

01:08:01.160 Bill Clinton, where while he was getting a law degree, he was actually living in New

01:08:05.360 York or Arkansas or in London.

01:08:07.460 Like Yale was a place where if you didn't want academics to be your primary focus, you could

01:08:13.760 be doing other things.

01:08:15.380 And because the grading system is generous and because the culture there is encouraging of

01:08:20.720 you to kind of be impactful in whatever way you can be.

01:08:25.800 And so I, it was a very alien environment to me.

01:08:29.760 And I, and I think, you know, I look back and I think some of that bravery you just credited

01:08:34.040 me with, I feel like maybe I was a little less brave there because I really didn't feel

01:08:39.140 comfortable there in a way that I never got used to being around wealthy people was really

01:08:45.080 hard for me in terms of just feeling inadequate all the time.

01:08:48.680 You know, that's one of the problems with, with those Ivy league schools is that, you know

01:08:52.480 what, it's funny because almost everyone who ends up at one of those schools feels inadequate,

01:08:58.080 at least on one dimension, right?

01:09:00.620 Because no matter how rich you are, there's someone richer.

01:09:03.660 And if you're rich, you're not as smart as your roommate.

01:09:06.080 And if you're as smart as your roommate, you're not as smart as your professor.

01:09:09.800 And like, they're very weird institutions because they aggregate people who are remarkable

01:09:15.320 across a number of dimensions.

01:09:16.720 And so everyone who attends them tends to feel like they have imposter syndrome.

01:09:22.040 I really noticed that among the undergraduates at Harvard because they're used to being

01:09:26.060 the smartest kids in their classes.

01:09:27.480 And then when they'd show up at Harvard, you know, they were no longer guaranteed to

01:09:31.620 be the smartest person in the room.

01:09:33.240 That's for sure.

01:09:33.900 Yeah, I think that that's exactly what I observed at Yale.

01:09:37.860 I mean, thankfully for me, I, I, I failed before, so I wasn't too worried about getting

01:09:42.580 a bad grade, you know, like that wasn't really the concern for me.

01:09:46.340 What more so was the concern was I really felt uncomfortable with, with what I saw as like

01:09:51.540 privilege, right?

01:09:52.360 Like I, I, I, I, I, I, in some ways felt like in danger of being a sellout, right?

01:09:58.340 Of being someone who grew up with very little and then being welcomed with open arms by this

01:10:05.260 like opulent institution that was surrounded by people who were living like I used to,

01:10:10.640 right?

01:10:11.120 I mean, the neighborhoods around Yale, right, right.

01:10:13.840 Yale's particularly, particularly striking that way.

01:10:17.780 Absolutely.

01:10:18.500 Yeah.

01:10:18.780 And so, you know, I would walk around campus and walk out of campus and I would see that

01:10:23.500 young men living like I used to live would be stopped by Yale security all the time or

01:10:29.520 would be treated in a very hostile way anytime they came too close to some of the Yale buildings.

01:10:35.120 And it just, you know, it, it, it, it, I was really unsure what to do with that.

01:10:40.540 You know, um, do you, do you embrace that?

01:10:43.520 Do you, do you just start sucking up to the professors and become, you know, part of that

01:10:48.500 scene or, or is there another way?

01:10:51.380 And I, I spent three years trying to figure that out and I'm not sure I really did what

01:10:56.500 part of how I reconciled it all was I took, um, I was part of a project where you could

01:11:02.220 work as a volunteer high school teacher, um, uh, uh, in some of the local neighborhoods.

01:11:08.080 And so I used to teach constitutional law to grade 11 and grade 12 kids at some of the

01:11:12.740 rougher high schools.

01:11:14.040 And that was my way of feeling like whatever Yale was giving me, I was immediately trying

01:11:18.940 to get it back to somebody else.

01:11:20.380 I didn't, I didn't know how else to, to, to, to.

01:11:23.760 Well, that seems like a good, that seems like a good approach.

01:11:26.420 How did that work out for you?

01:11:27.860 Um, well, it worked out well in the sense that I did get a lot of, you know, unique

01:11:32.780 and, and, uh, amazing opportunities as a Yale student.

01:11:36.380 And I did, I think have the chance to, to be useful to a lot of other people at the same

01:11:41.580 time.

01:11:42.020 So the balance, I think I was able to strike it, but I certainly look back and think, you

01:11:46.600 know, there were, if I was a little bit more prepared, if I knew people who could have introduced

01:11:52.640 me and oriented me to that environment, I think I could have gotten more out of it in

01:11:57.640 the sense that I would have known what actually mattered.

01:12:00.300 Like you spend, just as you met, you described that, that, that, um, collection of remarkable

01:12:06.900 people who've done so many things, part of how they cope with their, um, inadequacies

01:12:13.320 or their feelings of inadequacy is they, they are so prone to groupthink, right?

01:12:18.480 Because the way you deal with feeling inadequate is to just try to be like everyone else, but

01:12:23.500 better, right?

01:12:24.280 And so you wind up in this, like, like, like, for example, Yale, um, prides itself on the

01:12:30.820 diversity of its student body coming into an entering law school class, right?

01:12:35.580 So all the different schools they went to and their experiences and the countries they've

01:12:39.640 worked in and all that.

01:12:40.600 And yet more than half of Yale students will have the same job when they graduate.

01:12:45.000 There'll be law clerks working for a fancy judge somewhere.

01:12:48.380 And then most of those people will then go on to work at a fancy law firm.

01:12:51.840 And so it is this, this process where if you come in from a different place, um, and you

01:12:59.400 try to resist the groupthink, you're going to inevitably graduate feeling like you missed

01:13:03.580 out because you're going to be reminded of all the amazing things your classmates are

01:13:07.420 doing.

01:13:07.680 And you're not sure if walking a different path is going to pay off for you, right?

01:13:11.700 You're thinking to yourself, well, I didn't take that clerkship.

01:13:13.940 I didn't take the job at the fancy law firm in, in Manhattan.

01:13:18.800 Um, am I going to kick myself for that for the rest of my life?

01:13:21.680 And that was what was weighing on my mind when I graduated.

01:13:24.560 Like I was so stressed out cause I was like, ah, am I going to regret how I played this

01:13:28.880 hand, you know?

01:13:29.900 Um, okay.

01:13:30.300 So what happened, what I want to talk a little bit more about, um, about what happened after

01:13:35.940 you left Yale, you ended up at Tories eventually.

01:13:38.880 But I also wanted to turn the topic to, to something slightly darker as well.

01:13:45.020 I mean, you've also, uh, been suffering from a very, uh, what would you call it?

01:13:52.100 Well, a burdensome illness for the last year, burdensome and terrifying illness for the last

01:13:57.780 year.

01:13:58.040 And I wanted to touch on that at least a little bit because it's a, it's, it's a hell

01:14:03.680 of a second part to the story that you just told, right?

01:14:08.600 Because you, you emerged from a very desperate initial orientation to a degree of remarkable

01:14:17.400 success, I would say, academically and practically.

01:14:20.660 And then you got walloped, you know, it's like, you've, you've done all this work and

01:14:24.800 you've put yourself together and you've helped put the world right and you've changed your

01:14:28.260 attitude.

01:14:28.540 And then all of a sudden, when things are going well for you, you know, you get, you

01:14:32.740 get cut down and I'm, I want to go back to that.

01:14:35.780 I want to go to that.

01:14:36.620 And because I'm curious about how, how you're coping with that and how you're managing it.

01:14:40.740 But let's talk about what happened after you left Yale first.

01:14:43.700 Well, when I left Yale, I just, I, I, I tried to work, um, in the corporate world and do

01:14:53.060 the, uh, community service and, um, kind of activist work that I was really passionate

01:14:59.460 about because Canada is a hard country.

01:15:02.180 I mean, one of the biggest differences I would say between, um, coming back here after graduation

01:15:07.240 versus staying in the U S is where you can, um, create a career for yourself.

01:15:12.820 There's just a lot more options in the U S to be a professional, uh, advocate for youth

01:15:19.080 or to work on some of the issues we're describing, um, at a research center or to do, you know,

01:15:24.240 this and that in Canada, it's, it's, there's, there's few options.

01:15:28.160 A lot of them are government oriented, which is something I've always been a bit, um, cautious

01:15:33.600 of.

01:15:34.040 I'm not a big fan of how, um, top down a lot of Canada works because of the, the, the power

01:15:40.460 our governments have.

01:15:42.300 And so I, I, I had a hard time feeling like I fit in.

01:15:46.300 So the, the, the, the way I thought would work best for me, the honorable way to approach

01:15:50.720 that problem in my mind was I'll earn, I'll earn my keep with a management consulting job

01:15:56.780 or a corporate law job, and then work with youth and work with police officers to change

01:16:02.240 policies and things like that on the weekends and in the evenings.

01:16:05.340 And I did that for a couple of years and it was exhausting.

01:16:09.020 I mean, it was hard to do everything.

01:16:11.340 And I wound up taking a job teaching at, at York university because I thought it was a

01:16:16.220 way for me to do those things.

01:16:17.480 I was passionate about full time.

01:16:19.860 Um, I found out as I'm sure, you know, that, uh, universities also are not places that you

01:16:26.680 get to always focus on being useful to other people.

01:16:30.100 Um, you know, the work I wanted to do, I had a hard time balancing with the expectations

01:16:35.660 of playing up to kind of university politics and, um, you know, you know, doing research

01:16:43.740 that I, or, or being tempted to do research, I didn't think would actually be helpful to

01:16:47.780 anyone, um, in being part of academic pursuits that I, I don't think are immediately relevant

01:16:53.960 to people in our society who, who would benefit most from quality research.

01:16:58.600 And so, uh, it was hard to balance all those things too.

01:17:02.420 And I was in the process of figuring all of that out.

01:17:04.440 I suppose when I got diagnosed with cancer, I spent, uh, by that point, I was a couple

01:17:09.000 of years into teaching and, um, it, it, it happened at a time where I was already hoping

01:17:14.740 to kind of rethink what I would be doing with my career.

01:17:16.880 Cause I didn't feel like university life was the longterm solution for me.

01:17:21.740 Um, and then cancer hit me and it's given me a lot of time to, I guess, like reflect on that

01:17:26.860 and think about what I want to be doing when I get healthy again.

01:17:29.960 So, yeah.

01:17:30.900 So you, so you have stage four non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

01:17:37.300 Yes.

01:17:37.860 And that also caused spinal fractures.

01:17:40.180 So it's really quite the catastrophic mix of, of symptoms.

01:17:44.840 And that, that, that's been, that's been, you've been being treated for that since last

01:17:49.460 February.

01:17:49.920 So the first question is, how did you find, what were the symptoms that led to your diagnosis

01:17:55.400 and how did you find, how did you find out what, what was wrong?

01:17:58.860 Yeah.

01:17:59.440 Well, you know, I, I, you know, one of the things people say about men is that we don't,

01:18:04.480 uh, seek help.

01:18:05.900 Um, uh, and I guess I might be an example of that because, you know, I had pain in my neck

01:18:12.060 for months, uh, and, and, and my lower back or my, and I just like, didn't, you know,

01:18:18.920 take it seriously.

01:18:19.740 I just thought, all right, well, I just turned 30 and I thought maybe this is what 30 is like,

01:18:23.880 you know, you got neck problems and back problems.

01:18:26.260 And yeah, well, you'd never, you'd never leap right to the catastrophe.

01:18:30.420 Yeah.

01:18:30.860 So I wound up, uh, going into the hospital to get it looked at.

01:18:35.660 And I also had a, uh, swollen lymph nodes, which I also didn't take seriously because

01:18:42.540 I just thought, uh, like how, you know, it's not a big deal.

01:18:45.220 And it turns out those things are related because in the, the lymph nodes on my left side

01:18:50.780 is where a tumor had started to grow.

01:18:53.340 And that tumor, um, or, and that, and that, the, the cancer went up spreading from that main

01:18:58.300 tumor into some of my bones and the neck pain and back pain I was feeling, uh, were

01:19:04.180 caused by the cancer cracked, um, the, the, uh, two, two parts of my spine, one in the

01:19:09.940 neck and one in the back.

01:19:10.820 So I wound up, um, at an emergency room visit, which I thought was going to be fairly simple.

01:19:16.260 I thought, you know, I didn't have a doctor.

01:19:18.100 So I went to the emergency room thinking I was going to get, um, antibiotics prescribed

01:19:22.380 to me for the lymph nodes being swollen.

01:19:24.800 And I wound up being held for a week because they had to do a bunch of testing on what was

01:19:29.480 going on.

01:19:30.160 And that's how I basically found out about cancer, about the cancer.

01:19:33.280 Uh, I was at a pretty high risk of paralysis at that point because of the injury and the

01:19:40.080 possibility of the spinal cord being affected.

01:19:43.080 Thankfully that didn't happen.

01:19:44.680 And in a weird way, my bones wound up kind of fusing together.

01:19:48.300 So they're never going to be normal again, but they're stable enough that I won't have

01:19:52.240 those problems at least.

01:19:54.080 Um, but then I went through like chemo and radiation for most of the last 10 months.

01:19:58.180 And I'm just a couple months ago, I finished that up and it's, it, you know, it's been,

01:20:04.780 um, it's been intense.

01:20:06.740 I think I revisited a lot of the, the harmful places that my mind used to be when I was younger,

01:20:11.980 the temptation to be like resentful.

01:20:15.260 Yeah.

01:20:15.780 You know, I put a lot of work into my career and to have this happen in prime kind of earning

01:20:22.020 years, um, to have my income cut drastically when you're the, by far the biggest breadwinner

01:20:28.320 in your family, the first one to finish university and first one to become a professional.

01:20:33.800 Um, and I, and I, and there was a part of me that really wanted to go back to that place

01:20:38.900 where I would just see myself as a victim and be angry at everybody and be angry at God

01:20:43.300 and be angry at life for, for, you know, um, yeah, the problem with that is that then you

01:20:50.900 end up with the illness and being angry at God and at life.

01:20:55.180 Yeah.

01:20:55.700 You know, which, which like, it's not, it's not like I'm making light of your motivation

01:21:00.760 for feeling that way because you know, that that's, that's a hell of a thing to have happen.

01:21:05.400 And it's, it's, it's, it's, it's a blow that would destabilize anyone.

01:21:10.640 And the fact that you started revisiting that same dark places is anything but surprising.

01:21:16.560 You know, I think what's surprising mostly is that you didn't stay there.

01:21:21.520 Yeah.

01:21:22.260 But I've watched with really ill people, you know, it's, it's, it's really bad to have

01:21:27.060 the illness.

01:21:27.540 That's for sure.

01:21:28.360 And it can be ultimately bad, but to also have that embitter you and bring back your cynicism

01:21:36.900 and make you not so much desperate as, as rage filled and angry doesn't help the illness.

01:21:44.240 And all it does is make your situation worse.

01:21:46.620 And I think worse for everyone around you as well.

01:21:49.040 That's also something terrible about being sick is that you tend to feel like you're a,

01:21:53.380 like a, an intolerable burden on the people around you as well.

01:21:57.520 It's another bit of guilt you have to bear along with being ill.

01:22:02.000 Yeah, I think that's absolutely right.

01:22:03.800 And I, I, I, that, that, that, that dark place, um, was, was tempting for a lot of reasons,

01:22:14.040 but, but one of which was it, it just made it, made it, you know, being sick.

01:22:19.380 It's like, you have no one to get mad at, right?

01:22:21.640 It's like, who, who, who's the face of that?

01:22:24.100 Right.

01:22:24.500 And you want to find someone to blame.

01:22:27.660 Like you want to have something to point to and say, this is the cause of my misfortune.

01:22:33.520 Um, and it's not like I had, you know, lung cancer or something where it's like, oh, you

01:22:37.260 know, I smoke too much or I have some sort of, uh, behavior I could associate with being

01:22:42.800 ill.

01:22:43.220 I mean, when the doctor told me I was sick, she said to me, you know, I asked her like,

01:22:46.860 how is it possible that I'm this sick?

01:22:48.940 I don't get it.

01:22:50.000 I have no problems.

01:22:50.940 And she said, you know, it's just bad luck.

01:22:53.560 Yeah.

01:22:53.760 And that's a hard thing to random stupidity of life.

01:22:57.220 Yeah.

01:22:57.740 And I think that's a hard thing to accept, uh, for sure.

01:23:00.980 But what it also did was just kind of like, there was a, there was a message that I needed

01:23:06.280 to hear from people when I was getting out of a dark place, when I was younger, right.

01:23:10.960 When I was getting out of high school, I needed people to believe in me.

01:23:14.360 I need people to think I had a brighter future than I thought I might have.

01:23:17.420 I needed people who still had like an unwavering faith that I could be helpful to the world.

01:23:25.260 And when I, when I got diagnosed, I needed that still, like I needed that just as bad.

01:23:29.940 Like I needed that sense of, from people that you're not just this like burden that, um,

01:23:35.440 now your mom has to stress about you.

01:23:37.280 And it's not like she doesn't already have a whole bunch of other things to worry about.

01:23:40.900 It's that despite this illness, you still have a lot to offer the world.

01:23:46.060 And people who had that message, I mean, you're one of them.

01:23:48.660 You sent me an email, thanks to a mutual friend shortly after I got diagnosed and, um, it

01:23:55.980 matters, right?

01:23:56.660 It matters when people say to you that, you know, as you said earlier, it's a, it's a call

01:24:01.100 to action that you've got a, you've got as you know, a personal catastrophe now that you

01:24:06.620 have to deal with.

01:24:07.480 And in doing so, you're going to learn a lot about yourself and what you're capable of.

01:24:11.260 Well, you talked earlier about that capacity to aspire, you know, and it's like the idea

01:24:17.880 that you should battle on against insuperable odds is in some sense, an idea that it's got

01:24:23.980 a certain amount of hopelessness about it under some circumstances, because there are times

01:24:28.580 when you battle and you lose.

01:24:31.180 And it's, it's even the case that you lose if you battle as forthrightly and courageously

01:24:37.680 as you possibly can.

01:24:38.820 But the truth of the matter is, is that there isn't a better strategy.

01:24:43.100 That's the thing is that first of all, the strategy works most of the time, or if any

01:24:48.700 strategy is going to work, that's going to be the one and nothing is certain in life.

01:24:53.260 And so not every strategy ever works a hundred percent of the time, but it's still the best

01:24:58.500 you have.

01:24:59.100 And you, you, you decided apparently to, to rescue yourself from the second descent into

01:25:06.620 the hole of hell of despair, let's say, to continue to try to aspire forward, despite

01:25:12.000 the fact that you'd been thrown another tremendous obstacle.

01:25:15.820 Yeah, well, what's, what's, what's been really good for me is I've really focused on being

01:25:24.860 around people who have their own challenges, you know, and I credit a lot of the young men

01:25:30.400 I've spent time with since my book come out for putting my mind in a place that was actually

01:25:35.200 positive and productive.

01:25:36.640 You know, I spend time with boys who are going through the challenges I had when I was a kid,

01:25:40.680 far worse in many circumstances.

01:25:42.520 I spend time with people who are fighting poverty or abuse, uh, kids who are in the foster care

01:25:48.400 system, kids who have, um, not even a mom that I was blessed to have, right.

01:25:52.560 And, and, and being around those young men, uh, young men who've come out of jail and are

01:25:57.240 trying to do something different, young men who've, who, who are, are figuring out how to

01:26:01.320 grow up on, on the spot because they now have a kid they have to be worried about.

01:26:05.960 Right.

01:26:06.140 I mean, being around those young men in every city I've been able to travel to has, has really

01:26:11.300 made it hard for me to feel sorry for myself and also hard for me to discount what, you

01:26:18.160 know, I don't know where my physical health goes from here.

01:26:21.060 I'm still not, you know, in remission yet, but it's really hard for me to, to, to put

01:26:26.780 myself at the center of a victim narrative, which I know is tempting.

01:26:30.840 And I've talked to other cancer patients who are similarly tempted to look at life that

01:26:35.900 way.

01:26:36.160 And to say, there's still a bunch of young men who I could be useful to.

01:26:40.080 And the idea that I might say something to a guy who just got out of jail or a guy who

01:26:45.820 doesn't think he can be a good student or a guy who, you know, is in a university where

01:26:51.180 he feels in over his head.

01:26:52.580 And that maybe I could say something that could change how he thinks about himself and put

01:26:57.340 his best foot forward.

01:26:58.380 Like that's been, that's been worth living for quite honestly.

01:27:02.300 And that makes the cancer feel so irrelevant by comparison.

01:27:07.040 Yeah.

01:27:07.440 Well, that's a hell of a thing to have accomplished as far as I'm concerned, but I think it's

01:27:11.300 dead, right?

01:27:12.640 You know, I mean, life is a hopeless business and we all die in the end.

01:27:15.740 The question is, what do you do?

01:27:17.460 What do you do in the interim?

01:27:18.560 And everything that you can do to put things in a more positive place is a credit to your

01:27:26.040 integrity fundamentally.

01:27:27.720 And it's integrally associated with the meaning that does sustain you in very dark times.

01:27:34.300 Absolutely.

01:27:34.820 And I think that, you know, the confidence that I had in, you know, individual agency

01:27:41.600 and personal responsibility and the power of how you choose to think about the world

01:27:46.520 and how you interpret the adversity you go through, the confidence I had in that from

01:27:51.340 growing up and from the academic research I've done and the life I've lived has only grown

01:27:56.480 exponentially since I've been sick because I now see it in my own life on a regular basis.

01:28:02.220 But I also get to see it in people who are facing far more severe physical challenges

01:28:08.000 than I am.

01:28:08.680 People who I share a hospital room with or people who I see when I walk, you know, through

01:28:14.460 the cancer center.

01:28:16.140 And it's like, and I see what they have to tell themselves, you know, the rules they have

01:28:21.920 to live by to have, to get through the challenges they face on a day-to-day basis and get to somewhere

01:28:30.580 positive and constructive.

01:28:33.040 And that's, you know, it's incredibly inspirational and it's, and it certainly makes it me, you

01:28:38.200 know, frankly, the limited patience I had for people who undermine or want to downplay the

01:28:43.620 importance of that, that way of looking at life and that way of orienting yourself to

01:28:48.600 the world.

01:28:49.000 That patience is far thinner than it was before.

01:28:51.440 And it wasn't like I was very tolerant of that, you know, before I got sick either.

01:28:55.420 Well, you know, it seems to me that that's probably a pretty good time to bring this discussion

01:29:04.000 to a close.

01:29:04.820 What do you think?

01:29:05.520 What else?

01:29:05.960 Is there anything else that you have to tell people?

01:29:07.940 I mean, I'm kind of curious about how you had the opportunity to talk to all these young

01:29:11.900 men or how you've taken that opportunity.

01:29:15.400 Well, a lot of it has been, you know, people who read the book and want me to come speak

01:29:19.700 to students or youth that they work with.

01:29:23.060 But it's also been because a couple of charities, Big Brothers, Big Sisters, and the Pinball Clemens

01:29:29.700 Foundation, both of whom work with young men across Canada and also in the United States

01:29:34.780 and other countries, they've organized opportunities for me to come speak to young men who they think

01:29:40.780 would, would benefit most from hearing from me, young men who are struggling to find their

01:29:44.680 way, who are having a hard time in school, who don't have parental support or mentors.

01:29:49.920 So that's where a lot of the opportunity comes from is, you know, people who, I guess, feel

01:29:55.640 like my story does resonate or would resonate.

01:29:58.300 I think a lot of it is people who also recognize the institutions they're part of might not always

01:30:02.940 understand young men or know how to respond to their needs.

01:30:06.500 Because, and this is a problem that you've tackled head on in many cases, I think they recognize

01:30:11.680 a need to encourage young men to do well, but don't know how to do it because the conversation

01:30:17.180 around encouragement of men has, in my view, been been undermined and poisoned in many ways.

01:30:24.480 I mean, even we have a prime minister here in Canada, Justin Trudeau, who, you know, goes

01:30:28.880 to international summits and recklessly speaks about men using, you know, the buzzwords that

01:30:35.520 he thinks are going to get him in applause.

01:30:37.460 Yeah, that's when he was talking about the dangerousness of working men.

01:30:40.640 Yeah, exactly.

01:30:41.820 Yeah, I know.

01:30:42.380 I mean, it's absolutely appalling.

01:30:45.320 Yeah.

01:30:45.540 Well, when you, and when you live in a country where that passes as leadership of your nation,

01:30:50.580 no kidding, you know, people, I think, don't know what to do about the struggling young

01:30:55.440 men they see who, who actually aren't, you know, they don't symbolize male privilege in

01:31:00.840 the ways that our prime minister might, might think they do.

01:31:03.360 Right.

01:31:03.600 And so people are looking for other ways to engage and speak about young men.

01:31:07.760 Yeah, well, some words of encouragement go a long ways.

01:31:11.660 I mean, I've been stunned over the last year at, you know, discovering how rarely so many

01:31:18.780 people are encouraged and how starving they are for a few genuine words of encouragement.

01:31:24.660 And well, it's like you said, even when you met that professor who told you that you could

01:31:28.860 maybe apply to Yale, it's just that chance encounter, a few words.

01:31:32.340 And you said that, you know, you've also realized how important the things that you say might

01:31:36.440 be to people and that that's led you some strength to go on even, you know, during your

01:31:41.560 current times of travail, let's say.

01:31:43.980 It is so important to put forward a message of encouragement to young men and say, look,

01:31:48.960 you know, get your act together for Christ's sake.

01:31:50.980 There's a lot more to you than you think.

01:31:52.540 And the world's crying out for you.

01:31:54.980 It needs you.

01:31:55.840 And that irresponsibility, there's nothing about that that's noble or justifiable, even

01:32:02.160 though you have your reasons to feel embittered and victimized.

01:32:05.260 It's not the point.

01:32:07.000 Of course, the world's harsh and brutal, but you're someone who might be able to prevail

01:32:11.780 nonetheless.

01:32:13.020 And that's really something.

01:32:15.380 Yeah, I would say it's not just something, but in some cases, it's everything, right?

01:32:18.560 Yeah, that's right.

01:32:19.300 It's everything.

01:32:20.160 That's exactly it.

01:32:20.980 The difference between giving the world the best you have to offer and giving the world

01:32:27.300 nothing.

01:32:28.240 Yeah, well, then you might be ill, but at least you have a clean conscience.

01:32:32.020 Absolutely.

01:32:32.380 That's not something, man.

01:32:34.440 Yeah.

01:32:34.920 And that's maybe the most valuable thing of all.

01:32:37.020 Yeah, yeah, that's for sure.

01:32:38.720 Look, Jamil, it was a pleasure talking to you.

01:32:41.840 Same to you, Dr. Peterson.

01:32:42.840 Thank you for your time.

01:32:44.080 Look, and best luck.

01:32:45.960 I'm hoping things go well for you, but it's a remarkable story that you told.

01:32:49.960 It's really something on multiple dimensions.

01:32:53.000 And so, like, more power to you as far as I'm concerned.

01:32:55.600 And I hope that lots of people watch this and realize that, like you did, that there's

01:33:02.520 a hell of a lot more to them than meets the eye.

01:33:05.260 I hope so, too.

01:33:06.900 Good.

01:33:07.320 I hope we meet again.

01:33:08.740 Me, too.

01:33:09.400 Thank you, Dr. Peterson.

01:33:10.540 You bet, man.

01:33:11.560 Good talking with you.

01:33:12.760 Hey, let's take a look at your book one more time.

01:33:15.660 Okay.

01:33:16.360 Okay, here it is.

01:33:17.240 All right.

01:33:17.500 It's available in Canada now and the U.S. and other countries next year.

01:33:22.100 Great.

01:33:22.480 Why, young man, race, identity, and?

01:33:26.100 Rage, race, and the crisis of identity.

01:33:28.300 Why, young man, rage, race, and the crisis of identity.

01:33:31.540 Yeah.

01:33:32.000 All right.

01:33:32.660 Well, I hope you get a massive boost in sales as a consequence of our discussion.

01:33:36.800 Thank you.

01:33:37.180 I hope so, too.

01:33:37.840 All right, man.

01:33:39.240 All right.

01:33:39.460 Take care.

01:33:39.940 Give your mom a hug for me.

01:33:41.660 I will do that.

01:33:42.400 She'll be very glad to know that we had a chance to talk about her, too.

01:33:45.600 All right.

01:33:46.400 Ciao.

01:33:46.760 Take care.

01:33:48.300 If you found this conversation meaningful, you might think about picking up Dad's books,

01:33:52.600 Maps of Meaning, The Architecture of Belief, or his newer bestseller, 12 Rules for Life,

01:33:57.080 An Antidote to Chaos.

01:33:58.500 Both of these works delve much deeper into the topics covered in the Jordan B. Peterson podcast.

01:34:03.340 See jordanbpeterson.com for audio, e-book, and text links, or pick up the books at your

01:34:07.940 favorite bookseller.

01:34:08.980 I hope you enjoyed this podcast.

01:34:10.440 If you did, please leave a rating at Apple Podcasts, a comment, a review, or share this

01:34:15.780 episode with a friend.

01:34:16.980 If you didn't like it, don't leave a review.

01:34:18.980 We're trying to keep it at five stars.

01:34:20.740 Thank you.

01:34:21.260 Next week's podcast is going to be a 12 Rules for Life lecture from July 28th, 2018, recorded

01:34:27.100 in Edmonton, Alberta.

01:34:28.740 I'll talk to you next week, and hopefully I'll have good news about Mom.

01:34:32.080 Thanks for listening.

01:34:32.740 Follow me on my YouTube channel, Jordan B. Peterson, on Twitter, at Jordan B. Peterson,

01:34:39.300 on Facebook, at Dr. Jordan B. Peterson, and at Instagram, at jordan.b.peterson.

01:34:45.960 Details on this show, access to my blog, information about my tour dates and other events, and my

01:34:52.600 list of recommended books can be found on my website, jordanbpeterson.com.

01:34:57.920 My online writing programs, designed to help people straighten out their pasts, understand

01:35:03.420 themselves in the present, and develop a sophisticated vision and strategy for the future, can be found

01:35:08.900 at selfauthoring.com.

01:35:11.100 That's selfauthoring.com.

01:35:13.760 From the Westwood One Podcast Network.

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - August 18, 2019

Jamil Jivani： Activist & Author

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